He knew this face. He knew when it was cold, when it was calculating, and when it was pleased. He’d seen it cracked open in the sanitarium, the desperate want underneath. He had never seen it likethis. Everything was gone at once — every layer, every mask — and what was left was grief. Pure and uncomplicated, with no performance attached to it.
The tears were already there, tracking down his cheeks, like he wasn’t even aware of them.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and the words came out wrecked, barely recognizable as Asher’s voice. His fingers pressed harder, uselessly, against a wound that wasn’t going to close. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t — I can’t—” He pressed his forehead down toward Levi’s, and Levi felt the warmth of it even as his vision narrowed further. “We’ll try again. You’ll understand next time.”
Next time. There’s always a next time. That’s the whole—
“I love you.”
The words landed like a second shot to his back, and Levi’s thoughts went quiet.
“I love you too much to let you leave.” Asher’s voice broke on the words as he pressed his lips to Levi’s forehead, the same way Levi had done to him, and held them there. “That’s why. That’s the only reason. Do you understand? That’s the only reason.”
The pain was getting distant, the edges of his vision going soft.
He actually loves me?
He shot me, and he loves me, and I don’t know what to do with either of those things.
Levi turned his head. Just barely.
Asher had the pistol at his own temple, his eyes closed.
Levi’s vision blurred, whether from dying or tears in his own eyes…he wanted to tell Asher to keep going. He blinked the tears away and saw Asher’s profile against the light of the corridor.
He loves me.
The darkness came like it always did.
2
Really Should Have Read the Instructions
Consciousnesscamebackwitha gasp.
“Easy, easy, you’re fine. Just breathe.”
The pod’s lid was already open, the cold air hitting his skin like a slap, and someone was pulling him upright before his eyes had finished adjusting. His hand went to his throat before the rest of him caught up — two fingers against the bite mark, checking. Still there. His chest had no hole in it, but his sternum ached with the memory of one, and his nervous system kept reaching for it the way a tongue finds a missing tooth.
“Wow, Levi, you weren’t kidding when you mentioned cryosleep doesn’t agree with you,” Maddie said. She wore a white uniform, holding a scanner in one hand, practically giggling to herself as she smoothed down his hair. “You look like shit.”
Play along.“Thanks, Maddie, that’s very helpful.”
His eyes swept the room while she ran the scanner over him. His items were there — the compass wedged against the pod’s interior wall, the sanitarium map folded small near his hip, thejournal pressing against the inside of his jumpsuit breast pocket. Maddie’s scanner moved over his chest without pause. She wasn’t looking at any of it.
Leave them. You can come back.
He swung his legs over the edge, and Maddie’s hand was on his elbow before his feet hit the floor. “Uh, thanks for the help,” he began. “I need to go—”
“To the mess hall,” she said. “There’s coffee to help get your brain functioning again before Captain Reynolds calls a briefing. You can shake off the cryo fog on the way.”
I need to find Asher.
But Maddie was already walking, and the game had decided this time around to give him a person attached to his arm. If this was going to be his one chance to figure out what the game wanted from him, he’d take it.
The corridors were narrower and older than before. An exposed conduit ran along the ceiling, the visible bolts painted over so many times the heads had lost their shape. The floor plating had a grain to it, scuffed down the center where years of boots had worn the anti-slip coating smooth. Somewhere above them a pipe ticked with thermal expansion, as regular as a metronome. The lighting was the same blue-white LEDs as the pod bay, but half the strips had been replaced with a slightly different color temperature, giving the corridors a patchy, jury-rigged look. The ship had been out here a while.
Maddie talked the whole way.
