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No answer. The attackers were moving along the edge of the containment field, testing it, one of them shouting orders to the others.
“Since when?”
He set his jaw and watched them work.
“Since the corridor.”
The old battle. His unit. The wound that almost killed him. I kept my hands flat against his side and felt the ŭre stutter, flare, stutter again.
“Your healing never came back completely.”
“No.”
“You didn’t think that was relevant?”
“I was functioning.”
I pressed harder against the wound until he hissed through his teeth. “You are not allowed to say that word anymore.”
The corner of his mouth moved. Not a smile. Almost a smile.
Wrong time. Very wrong time.
The quarantine notice cycled again, the automated voice cool and uninflected against the blare of alarms. A sharp crackle from a handheld speaker cut through it. “Human female! Step away from the hostile asset!”
Hostile asset. The words were sterile, efficient. They stripped him down to a problem to be solved.
Another voice, smoother, from a different direction, “Surrender the evidence and medical stabilization will be authorized.”
My breath caught. Veyr’s fingers, slick with his own blood, closed around my wrist. The pressure was faint, but the intent was absolute. A single word, forced out between shallow breaths. “No.”
The smooth voice returned. “Transfer the archive. Disarm the Ghost. Treatment will be provided.”
I looked down. The skin around his mouth had taken on a white cast. Each inhalation was a short, tight pull of air, each exhalation a faint shudder. Beneath my other hand, pressed to his side, I could feel the frantic, stuttering pulse of his ŭre—a light that flared, dimmed, and flared again against the steady seep of blood.
“Treatment,” I breathed.
His eyes, which had started to lose focus, sharpened instantly. “No.”
“They can stop the bleeding.”
“No.”
“You don’t know that they won’t.”
“I know.”
The speaker crackled once more. “Compliance guarantees immediate stabilization.”
My gaze flicked from the sealed medical doors back to Veyr’s face. “After stabilization?” I shouted toward the sound.
Silence. Heavy. Absolute.
It was the same silence he’d been given when he’d asked about me.
A hard, ugly sound tore from my throat—less a laugh than a cough of rage. “Right.”
Veyr’s bloodied hand was still on my wrist. His eyes held mine. “They need the records.”
