Author: Erin Klitzke

23 November 2263
Perie, Caldin – Borderworlds

“They are holding on,” Sotheby announced when I emerged from the bathroom fifteen minutes later, toweling my hair dry. He was standing by the kitchen counter, a communications headset pressed to his ear, a pot of coffee ready on the stove. “Sounds like most of the security forces have spontaneously joined the Resistance.”

“That’s comforting. Has the Imperium landed more forces?”

“That situation hasn’t changed,” Ren said from where she sat on the floor, leaning against the couch where Wil lay unconscious. She’d changed her clothes, too—I knew better than to ask where Sotheby had found some for her—and she looked up at me with a slightly pained expression. “They’ve only dropped the seven landers, but we don’t know if there are reinforcements showing up in orbit or not. There’s a lot of confusion on the spaceport channels.”

“Well, that doesn’t surprise me.” I crossed to the couch, tossing my towel across the back of an easy chair before I crouched down in front of her. The bloody sheets were gone, though I didn’t ask what Sotheby—or Vasily—had done with them. I didn’t really want to know.

“Me neither,” she said, watching me. “Is he really going to be okay?”

“I hope so,” I said, then took her hand and squeezed. “Regardless, this is the safest place for him on the planet right now. It’s the safest place for any of us.”

“But we’re going to leave,” she said, meeting my gaze. Her voice was heavy with certainty. She was planning on coming with me when I went out there again, to try to turn the tide or die trying.

I closed my eyes for a second, exhaling. “I can’t hide.”

“I know,” she said. “No one’s going to force you to.”

I glanced at Wil’s pale face, then at Sotheby. Ren choked on a laugh.

“No one conscious is going to stop you,” she amended, squeezing my hand. Silence stretched for a few moments before she said in a small voice, “You said you figured out how to take the blocks down. I’m guessing you meant safely.”

I nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I figured out the key.”

“Right.” She drew her knees up to her chest. “So how do we do this?”

“You let me in,” I said. “You’ll hear my voice in your head. I’ll try to be gentle but—well. I’ve only done this once.”

“I understand.”

She didn’t, but she also had no way of knowing how much, exactly, she didn’t understand. “Are you ready?”

She nodded. I shifted, turning to face her, then reached over, settling fingers against her cheek and temple. She kept a grip on my other hand, squeezing again. “Will it hurt?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It might.”

Ren nodded again. “Okay.”

“Hey,” I said softly. Her eyes met mine. There was uncertainty there, but her jaw was set in grim determination that was also reflected in her gaze. “I want you to remember that everything he’s done, he did for you.”

Her brow furrowed. “I don’t—”

I was already inside, charging toward the wall that represented the blocks on her memory. Being in someone else’s head like that can be strange, jarring, with the world outside overlaying what the mind’s eye sees in strange ways. This visualization, though—this was familiar. I’d been inside of Ren’s mind enough in the past that the landscape was far from unknown. There were cracks in the wall, and beyond its dark surface I could see color and light.

It was about to get a whole lot brighter.

In her mind, I yelled the name at the top of my proverbial lungs. It gained form, substance, transforming into something that smacked right into that wall in a burst of blue-white light bright enough to blind me.

Ren went tense, her hand spasming around mine as she sucked in a short, sharp breath.

The walls around her memories blew apart in front of me, the pieces vanishing even as I plunged into the sudden tidal wave of remembering.

She made a sound that was half a whimper, half a sob, falling forward into my arms. I held her tightly, still inside her mind, trying to help reorganize everything without looking too hard. These were her memories. I didn’t need to bear witness to all of them. All I wanted to do was to make sure they weren’t too tangled for her to sort out on her own.

I’d probably pay for what I’d done—I had the last time I’d done this for someone—but I never would have been able to forgive myself if I’d waited a minute longer to help her.

She’d been through enough already.

My head pounded as I reeled myself back in and Ren clung to me like someone drowning, her face buried against my neck as she sobbed. Her thoughts were a maelstrom, loud enough for me to hear even without trying. My shields had never been that great in some ways, not like the ones psychics growing up in Alliance space developed. Things were different in Imperium territory.

She was so afraid. I held her tight, threading my fingers through her hair as she cried, shaking. Her voice came muffled, but clear enough to understand amidst the wrenching sobs.

“I did it for him. I did it all for him, so he’d be safe, so he’d make it. I—I left him in that field so he’d live. It was our extract point and I thought I’d make it back in time, I really did. I thought it’d be okay. Oh, god. Oh, god.” She let out a shaky, rasping breath and pulled away just enough to look me in the eyes, her face tear-stained, eyes red and puffy. “Both of me love him,” she whispered, covering her mouth with one hand as she choked on another sob. “Caren loved him more than anything and Ren fell for him in a bar a thousand light years from where it started. I love him. I can’t lose him, Luc, not now.”

I drew her back in, hugging her tight. “You won’t,” I murmured into her hair. “I promise. Stay with him, okay? You’ll be safe here.”

“No,” she said, pushing me back, mopping quickly at her eyes. “No, no, I have to go out there with you. Someone has to watch your back.”

“I’ll go with him,” Sotheby said gently. Ren jerked, startled, as if she’d forgotten he was there.

My brow furrowed. “Are you sure?”

He nodded. “I still remember how to shoot a gun, Lucas. I was a soldier, once. This is my home, and I was called here for a reason. Maybe this was a part of it.”

“Okay,” I said. Ren’s fingers tightened around my arm.

“Are you sure?” she asked faintly.

“Ren,” I said gently. “I wouldn’t tell you to stay here if I wasn’t sure. Stay with him. Take something for the headache that you’re starting to get. If we need more backup, I’ll send out a mayday, okay?”

“Okay. Okay. As long as you’re sure.”

“Positive.” I pressed a kiss to her forehead and stood up. “Get Constance if he takes a turn, okay? She’ll be able to tell you if you need to get me back here.”

Ren nodded, hugging her knees against her chest again, pressing her back against the couch’s baseboard.

“Vasily will stay with you,” Sotheby said. “If you need anything, just tell him.”

“Thanks, Father Alex,” Ren said, smiling weakly. The smile shrank a moment later, worry in her gaze as she looked up at me.  “Be careful.”

“Of course.”

Sotheby handed me a jacket, one I recognized as mine—I must have left it at some point—then headed back toward his bedroom. “Give me a moment, then we’ll head out.”

I just nodded and went to the kitchen counter, picking up the headset he’d been using to listen in to comm chatter on the bands we usually used. Many of the voices I heard as I lifted the headset to my ear were familiar—I could make out Kalsyn Gamgee’s voice, Conrad King, Conrad’s father, Thomas. That last surprised me a little, considering the last time Thomas and I had spoken, he’d flatly stated that he wanted out of the Resistance—and I’d let him go.

I guess when the chips are down, no one can really walk away.

Not for the first time since the Imperium started their landings, I was glad that Sam wasn’t here. She was my second, but she was also like my little sister—would have been, if her older sister Korea hadn’t vanished on a sector circle four years ago, back when she led the Resistance in our part of the Borderworlds. With Sam off-world, even if something went seriously wrong here, at least the Resistance in this sector would hang on.

“Are you ready?”

I lowered the headset, looking at Sotheby, who was dressed in a dark jacket over his slacks and dark shirt. There was a sidearm holstered at his hip, military-grade, one I was willing to lay odds was his service piece from back when he was still a member of the Alliance’s armed forces. “Ready if you are,” I said quietly.

“Once more unto the breach,” he said, then clapped a hand to my shoulder. “Come on. I think I know how we can get outside the walls without the Imperium forces realizing we were ever here.”

“As long as it doesn’t involve climbing over them again,” I muttered with a slight shudder.

Sotheby laughed. “No,” he said. “I think I have a better idea than that. Come on.”

We ducked out of the residence the same way I’d entered with Ren and Wil—through the storage area with its hidden door. Outside, a frigid, misting rain drifted on the wind and I shivered, tugging my jacket closer around my body.

“Indoors is the best place for him right now,” Sotheby said as he started walking quickly through the grass toward the northern corner of the grounds.

“What?”

“For Wil,” he said, glancing at me. “Can you imagine how miserable he’d be out here right now?”

I choked on a laugh. “Oh.” For as long as I’d known him, Wil had been overly sensitive to cold—something had happened to him before we met, something he’d always avoided talking about despite my making noises that it was a part of his medical history that I might need to know about. In truth, I was really more curious about it than I was concerned. “Yeah, he’d probably be complaining already.”

“Likely,” Sotheby said, pausing as we reached a hedge just shy of the wall. “Just as well.”

“I thought we weren’t going over the wall.”

“We’re not,” Sotheby said, nudging some branches aside. Through it, I could see a door.

“Where does that lead?”

“I’ll show you.” Sotheby grinned. The door opened inward, revealing a flight of stone steps leading down into shadows—shadows that were only deepened by the night and the storm, though the misting rain leant a strange, diffuse light to the world. It made me nervous to think about what it might look like beyond the walls, where there was certain to still be fighting in the streets—fighting we couldn’t hear because the rain and wind and the stone walls had all but dampened all but the nearest sounds.

Sotheby led the way down, leaving me to close the door behind us. Once it had clicked shut, Sotheby snapped a glowstick to life and led me down the stairs to a passageway wide enough for three people to walk shoulder-to-shoulder.

“What is this?” I asked in a hushed voice, somehow worried it would echo. It didn’t, despite the stone of the tunnel’s walls.

“Foresight in action,” Sotheby said. “This was built when they built the cathedral all those years ago. The memory of the Preytax Wars runs deep, especially inside the church.” He smiled weakly over his shoulder at me. “Not all of us have forgotten that threat.”

I shuddered slightly. “I don’t even want to think about it.”

“No one really does,” Sotheby said. “Never have we come so close to destruction as a people, as a species.”

“Have you shown Wil this?”

“The passageway?” Sotheby shook his head. “I don’t tell him all of my secrets, Dr. Ross. Just enough of them.”

I choked on a laugh. I had no doubt the priest was telling the truth in that regard. “So how far does it go?”

“Not too much farther,” Sotheby said. “It lets out near the river, near the park.”

The park was on the western edge of city center and the river wound its way the northern outskirts to a spot on the southwestern side. I wasn’t sure where the Imperium had landed troops, but I was fairly certain they would be focusing on the city’s administrative center and probably the city’s central power plant on the far northern edge of the city. The Imperium would want to secure city center first, which explained why the cathedral’s front gates were being watched—it was close to the city center. The only major targets of interest that were beyond city center were the now-destroyed Alliance post and the spaceport. One was destroyed, and there were strong odds that the Imperium was less worried about the spaceport than the city’s administrative heart.

They were more interested in securing the planet than stopping anyone from getting off it.

At least, that’s what I hoped.

They must know you’re here. They won’t hesitate to either take you into custody or kill you—depending on who’s in command and what their standing orders are. You know too many of their secrets to allow you to keep running free. You’ve hurt them too deeply.

We came to the exit door more abruptly than I expected—it was down another short flight of steps from the main passage, and Sotheby pushed it open easily on well-oiled hinges. We stepped out into the night, standing near the riverbank. The mist glowed all around us, but still there was no real sound.

Sotheby started walking along the river, heading north, but turned back when he realized I hadn’t followed.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“It’s so quiet,” I said. “You can’t even hear the sirens.”

“There might not be any,” he said. “Come on. We have work to do.”

In that, he was undoubtedly correct.

“There are rally points all over the city,” I told him, checking my footing to make sure that the ground wasn’t starting to get slick. It was still all right; the frigid rain wasn’t coating anything in ice yet. “We had a few plans in place. Come on. We’ll check the one in the park first.”

“What if none of your people are there?”

“Then we get some comms and supplies from the cache in the park and we find them.”

I set off at a jog and Sotheby fell in half a step later, trailing in my wake.

I felt the heat of the explosion almost before I heard it, saw the light of it. I spun, swearing, not knowing what to think or where to run to until I saw the fire’s brightness not too far from me, down the street a little ways.

I’d last seen Wil headed in that direction.

“Wil!”

Nothing–but if he’d been anywhere in the vicinity of that explosion, no doubt his ears were still ringing and ringing loud. I gulped in a breath and ran in that direction, away from where I could see the lights of landers in the distance.

When the Imperium had come to Caldin, they’d come in force, just like we feared they would.

What the hell just happened there? The Imperium wasn’t supposed to have made it this far into the city by now. Nothing should have been exploding.

Moving at a dead run, I almost tripped over him. He choked back a moan as my foot banged into his in the darkness. Backlit by the flames from across the street–the Alliance post was burning–I could see the blood on him.

It was all over and it looked bad.

“Wil!”

“Get out of here,” he rasped. “I’m fine, get out of here.”

“Liar.” I crashed to my knees, pulling his head and shoulders into my lap. He hissed in pain, choking back a scream.

“Ren–”

“Shut up,” I snapped. “What the hell did you do?”

“My job.” He squeezed his eyes shut, his breathing labored and shallow. I swore heartily.

I thumbed a mayday on my comm, knowing Luc wasn’t far. He’d be here fast, I knew it.

He’d better be. We need him now.

“Ren,” Wil breathed. “Ren, please.”

“No,” I said through gritted teeth. “I am not leaving you, dammit.” I caught a glimpse of Luc in the light of the burning building beyond the alleyway. “Luc! Luc, get over here, I need your help.”

He pivoted and swore when he saw Wil, just like I had. I couldn’t stop the tears anymore.

“Please,” I begged in a voice that was barely more than a whisper. “Please, help him.”

Sometime between 2260 and 2263
Parseval, Borderworlds

  

My fingers worried the flesh around an old scar as I knelt there, straddling his leg in the too-narrow bed, weathering a maelstrom of emotions churning in my gut–desire not the least among them.

Wil watched me from his prone position, one brow raised slightly. “What’s the matter?” he asked softly.

“This just feels familiar, that’s all,” I murmured. “Like I’ve done this before even though I know that I haven’t.”

Living without memory of your past–or bare shadows and vague hints of your past, as the case actually was–kind of sucks. There are some people who would think I’m lucky, that would tell me now I have the chance at a clean slate and a fresh start, but they’re not living my life. There’s a lot I would like to remember and I’m sure that outweighs whatever I might have wanted to forget.

Not that the Imperium had given me a choice in the matter either way.

Wil’s calloused fingers captured mine and squeezed gently. “Don’t torture yourself,” he said.

I was still trying to figure out how we’d ended up in the bed together. Maybe it was because there really wasn’t much to do on Parseval and we were both coming down from the high of secret missions completed for the Resistance.  We’d gotten to talking in a spaceport dive and now here we were in a quiet motel a few blocks away.

It wasn’t that there was no attraction between he and I–there certainly was. I wasn’t even sure who I was trying to be faithful to, if they were dead or alive. There was someone he’d lost, too, I could see it in his face, see the pain when he looked at me. I must have reminded him of her a lot.

He’d called me by her name tonight, before, when he’d been on top of me with his face buried against my neck and my fingers buried in his hair, and it had felt strangely right.

Maybe he reminded me of whatever mystery fiancee had given me the ring I still wore, with the engraving signed with the letter “A.” I couldn’t be sure. Luc Ross might have known, but there was a lot he didn’t tell me.

Probably for my own good.

I smiled gently at Wil and nodded. “I shouldn’t. But sometimes it just happens.”

He smiled and squeezed my fingers again, then let go and settled back. He was Luc’s right hand–or his left, if you were inclined to believe that Sam Cooper handled most of the aboveboard work with me and Wil handled most of the more cloak and dagger operations with his co-pilot, Mackenzie Desantis. There was no mystery about what those two were doing tonight.  It was only a matter of time before there was a ring on her finger. I suspected that Mac was just working up the courage to ask.

“Do you miss her?” I asked softly, my palm settling over that old scar. For the barest second, I could feel blood seeping between my fingers as I struggled to stop a wound there from bleeding his life out onto a ship’s bunk. Then the feeling was gone and I suppressed a shiver.

He seemed to know what I meant and closed his eyes. “Every damn day,” he whispered. “Every damn day, Ren, but there’s not a whole lot I can do about it.”

I stretched out next to him and pulled the blanket up over us both, cuddling against his side and enjoying the comfort of human companionship. He put an arm around me and tugged me a little closer with a soft sigh.

Whoever that woman had been, he still loved her even though she was gone.

There was a lot about Wil Terrel that was a mystery, but some things I knew for sure–like the fact that Wil Terrel wasn’t his real name. He and Mac told everyone otherwise, but they both worked for Alliance Intelligence and they were both out here on orders to help the Resistance. I knew that Wil would’ve done it without orders and I was starting to think that Mac might have, too, which certainly helped the two of them in maintaining their cover.

“I’m sorry,” I said after a moment, resting my head on his shoulder.

He sighed again. “So am I.”

He wasn’t the type of man to have a girl in every port. The fact that we’d tumbled into bed together meant something. Maybe both of our hearts had begun to heal from whatever grief we’d suffered–me in a life I could only barely remember in snippets and fragments, he in a life it seemed that sometimes he’d rather forget, a life when he’d loved a girl named Caren that he’d obviously lost somehow. Luc had told me once that Wil was a complicated man. I believed him because I’d seen very little evidence to the contrary.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

I felt him nod. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

I didn’t really think that he was, but I let it go. We’d been friends for a little while now–he’d been the one to find me when I ended up on Caldin, shivering and fevered and alone after my escape from Imperium custody. He’d brought me to the Resistance and they’d given me a new life. I liked to think that there were things I knew about him that no one else really did, but I was probably lying to myself.

Still, it was a nice thought.

“Should this have happened?”

I wasn’t sure if he was asking me or asking himself that question. I looked at him, brows knitting. “Huh?”

“This. What we just did–what we’re doing now.” His brows knit as he stared at the ceiling. “Should it be happening? Should it have happened in the first place?” He looked at the ring I still wore on my finger. “Are you still holding out hope he’ll find you?”

I followed his gaze and sighed softly. “I think he’s dead,” I said after a long, silent moment. “I…I’ve remembered enough to know that something bad happened to the two of us. I think he died in my arms sometime a little while before I was captured.”

He swallowed hard, pain flickering through his gaze. “That’s awful, Ren. I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t hurt as much as it should, I guess. Probably the memory loss,” I said softly. I reached up and ran my fingers through his hair. “What about you? Are you still carrying a torch for someone back home?”

“I’ve been away for a long time,” he said. “Alone for less time, but still alone.”

“But there used to be someone.”

He nodded, eyes sliding shut again as I combed my fingers through his hair. “She’s forgotten about me by now.”

My stomach flipped and I shivered. “So does that answer your question?”

“Which question?”

“About whether or not this should have happened.” I snuggled closer. “Neither of us have anyone to stand in our way, so I don’t think that it’s a problem that it did happen. As for what did it mean…I guess we’ll have to see.”

He relaxed markedly and sighed, arm snaking around me and drawing me close. “I guess so,” he murmured, then buried his nose in my hair with a soft, almost contented sound. He fell asleep like that, hanging onto me like a man drowning, like I was all that was keeping him afloat.

We made love twice more in the darkness of the night.

In the morning he was gone and I was alone again.

Final word count totals for May 2019–these are total counts, not words written in May.

That said, word count on Redeemer more than doubled.

June 2019 marks my anniversary on Patreon! What started out as an experiment has shifted how I do things and how I engage with people about my work and I am very glad it has. I’m still working on finding a good schedule and methodology for my livestreams and brainstorming more things that I can do (I really need to get over my abject hatred to seeing myself on camera more than likely!) but overall I think it’s been a productive year.

So what’s going on this month?

To celebrate this milestone, I’ll be (at least trying) to post something every day. Sometimes it’ll be patrons-only, or a patron preview, other times it will be open to the public from the moment I post it, much like this post will be. I’ll be posting some polls, some requests for Q&A/AMA, and—of course—writing. Who knows? I might manage to do a craft talk video and some extra writing streams. As always, there will be pictures of Katy the House Panther and Miracle the Tabby, too.

I’m also hosting a fun giveaway for all current patrons and new ones, too! Current and new patrons who are with me come July 1 will be getting an awesome series sticker of their choice—right now, choices are Awakenings and UNSETIC Files, but I may come up with one for the Epsilon series, too. Anyone who’s pledged at $5 or above will get not only the sticker, but a series magnet, and patrons at $10 and higher will get a series button. Depending on how things go, there might even be something special for patrons at $25 and higher, too—but more on that later once the final decision’s been made.

For now, thanks to everyone who’s been with me this year and here’s to more time and more writing—thank you for your support!

It’s been a little bit since I was able to delve into the Epsilon series in any sort of meaningful way, but something’s been chewing on me for about a week.  Chapter 3 is in part the result of it–more on the rest later.  For now, enjoy chapter three!

Three

  “Hellfire and damnation,” Alexander Sotheby muttered as he lowered the gun. “What happened to the three of you?”

As relieved as I was to see the priest was the one holding the gun, it did nothing to ease the dread that had coiled inside me, gnawing at my guts like a living thing. “I’ll explain later. Help me here.”

He leaned the rifle against the wall without another word, ducking under Wil’s arm. Wil flinched, leaning more heavily on the both of us. He was starting to shiver, now, and blood kept soaking through his shirt and into mine. I swallowed a curse.

I suppose it’d be too much to ask if Father Alex had a fully stocked ER socked away in here. I grimaced. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch for him to have a decent kit, though. Damn. I should have planned for something like this. I kicked myself for not carrying a more extensive field kit on me and for not stashing more supplies at the Cathedral, even knowing how deeply involved in the Resistance Father Alex had become and how much we’d come to rely on him for more than just spiritual advice.

There wasn’t time.

I was lying to myself, but I let it go. I couldn’t afford to dwell on it, not right now.

“The Imperium’s got squadrons all over the place,” Ren said as we hauled Wil into the bright warmth of Sotheby’s apartment. “It’s not looking good for us. The Resistance has gone to ground all over the city, but they’re going to be pinned down and we’re going to lose some people.” She cast a quick glance toward me, pain in her eyes mixing with fear. I shook my head slightly. There was nothing either of us could do—not yet, not until Wil was stable and we all had time to think.

Time wasn’t exactly something we had in abundance, though, and we wouldn’t until we’d somehow managed to turn the tide—if we could turn the tide. Then there was the question of hopefully getting some sort of further explanation out of Wil about what he’d done and why, when his orders had come, and if he knew that the Imperium was coming. I didn’t think he had, but there was always that tiny kernel of doubt.

Of course, I could figure out the why without thinking too hard. Caldin was falling, or at least would come damn close to it. There was too much information that the Imperium could have gotten out of that post if it had been left intact. Of course the Alliance would need it destroyed before it could fall into enemy hands. It made sense that he’d be the one to handle the task. It was the same cloak and dagger bullshit he’d always done.

Don’t get self-righteous. You’ve ha him doing a lot of cloak and dagger bullshit yourself and he’s never said no without a damn good reason backing the answer.

“Stand fast,” Sotheby said, glancing at Ren.  The ghost of a smile curved his lips. “All will be as it’s meant to be.”

The certainty in his words made me shudder. Ren shot him a dubious look.

Stay on task. I shook my head. “Let’s get him horizontal.”

Together, Sotheby and I hauled Wil to the living room. The residence was attached to the Cathedral, tucked away at the back of the massive building. It was cozy without feeling close, warm without being stuffy. A fire crackled merrily in the fireplace and I was oddly grateful to see it even though it reminded me of how cold I was thanks to the combination of the wind outside, the rain, and Wil’s sodden clothing.

“The floor’s fine,” I said, knowing it would likely be bloody work that I was about to do, but I’d be able to do it just as well kneeling on the floor as anywhere—besides, Sotheby’s kitchen table was too tiny for the job.

“There’s spare sheets in the closet over there, Ren,” Sotheby said. “Get two. We’ll put him by the fireplace.” He paused for a second, then added, “Get the shears from the kitchen drawer, too.”

Ren moved fast and I was silently grateful for her haste. Wil was getting heavier by the second and it didn’t take an MD to see he was fading fast.

Shock’s set in. Not much time.

Sotheby’s front door opened, the one that connected the residence to the Cathedral proper. “The sisters are settled in the cathedral, Father,” Vasily Andresen said as he stepped inside. The groundskeeper hesitated a bare moment when he spotted Sotheby, Ren, and I carefully lowering Wil down onto the sheets that Ren had spread on the rug in front of the hearth.

His brows knit. “Is that Wil?”

“It is,” Sotheby said, his voice far more calm and measured than mine would have been. “Were the sisters so kind as to bring the supplies that were being hidden at the Cloisters?”

Vasily smiled briefly. “I’ll get the crate.”

It was the first flicker of relief I’d felt since finding Wil in the alley. I watched as Vasily ducked back out the door.

Wil swallowed hard and rasped, “Only the sisters?”

“Seems the monks decided to stand and fight,” Sotheby murmured. “Some of the sisters, too, but many of them decided to come here. Something about a duty to those who survive.” He gave Wil a paternal smile. “Now lie quiet and let Dr. Ross do what he does best.”

“Somehow, I don’t think leaving the Resistance is what I need him to do right now,” Wil said, then coughed. He was trying to be funny. I shook my head.

“Good to see your sense of humor didn’t get wasted with the rest of you.” I took the shears that Sotheby handed me and started cutting Wil’s sodden, shredded clothes away from his body. From the corner of my eye, I could see Ren standing nearby, watching, her hands flexing and unflexing, as if she was itching to do something but wasn’t sure what.

“Got to hang onto something,” he muttered. His gaze drifted, settling on Ren for a few seconds before looking at the ceiling for a few seconds. Then he closed his eyes. “There’s not much that I can.”

Ren dropped to her knees next to him, catching his hand in both of hers. “Hang onto me,” she whispered, then swallowed hard. “I—I have a feeling that what he’s going to have to do is going to hurt.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Wil said, sagging slightly. His head lolled toward her and he opened his eyes, focusing on Ren as I worked.

Just keep him distracted. That’s all I need right now. Keep him focused on something other than what I’m doing and we’ll be in good shape.

I hope.

Fuck-all, he was the bloody key. It had been staring me in the face the entire time and somehow, I’d missed it. How could I have missed something so damned obvious? Madeline had been her husband’s key. Why wouldn’t I have thought Ren’s would be Wil?

Daniel never mentioned his son. Daniel never told you how it worked beyond what you’d figured out on your own. She was a message he sent to both of you, but you never considered that he’d use his son as the key for someone else’s blocks. And why not? You never drew any connections. That’s dangerous—and has caused this to go on far, far too long.

Everything was connected. Everything.

Aaron Taylor is the bloody key and he’s been here the whole damn time.

His injuries were worse than I’d initially thought—an assessment that could be forgiven based on the circumstances of my initial attempts at diagnosis—and it was something I figured out fast once I’d gotten most of his clothing cut away. Sotheby brought some towels to try to dry what he could and a first aid box that would help get me started, but I found myself praying pretty damn hard that whatever supplies Vasily was bringing from the cache stashed at the Cloisters were of a far more substantial variety.

“Have faith, Dr. Ross,” Sotheby said as I worked. His gaze was on my face, on my eyes, even as he fell easily in the role of a scrub nurse as I got to work.

There were times I found it very hard to believe that he’d been a pilot in a past life.

“I’m trying,” I muttered, “but my faith is a work in progress.”

“He’ll be all right,” Ren said firmly, her gaze locked to Wil’s. “He’s got something to live for.”

“Ren,” Wil started, his voice a desperate whisper.

“Just shut up and don’t talk,” she said. “Just let him work, okay? Let him work and hang on. Hang onto me.”

I suppressed the urge to wince at the desperation that was in her voice, too. Whether she remembered loving him before she’d become who she was now or not, she sure as hell loved him now. Maybe that was all that mattered in the end.

I’m such an idiot. I should have known. Of course he would risk it—it was his only choice.

I should have known.

It felt like forever before Vasily returned, two of the sisters of the Ordo Excaelis helping him haul a crate of supplies into Sotheby’s living room. The younger of the pair cracked open the crate while the elder—a woman of perhaps sixty, knelt down next to Wil.

“Let me help,” she said softly, glancing first to Sotheby and then to me. “I was a nurse on Hyllard before it fell to the Imperium.”

“Thank you,” I said, only glancing up for a second.

Her head dipped in acknowledgement. Sotheby didn’t leave Wil’s side, continuing his assist as I kept on working. Ren hunched over a little, both of her hands still wrapped firmly around Wil’s holding his gaze. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I also couldn’t spare much attention to find out, either. Wil just stared at her, his eyes still open, though his lids drooped every so often. He was still shivering a little, though that was slowly easing the longer we worked, the longer he lay near the fire. I could feel its heat against my back but ignored it.

There was too much work to do, too much damage to address. I wished I had him on a gurney in the ER at St. Mikhail’s. But I probably would have only felt concerned about something else if I did—and it didn’t matter, anyway. I had him on the floor in a place he was probably safer than he would’ve been at the hospital and I was going to do my damnest to make sure he pulled through this, just like he’d managed to pull through every other shit situation he’d ever found himself in.

“What’s your name?” I asked the nun who’d stepped in to assist. I glanced up for a few seconds to look at her—round face, gray eyes, hair more gray than brown—before I turned my attention back to my work.

“You can call me Sister or Constance,” she said. “That’s Miriam over there at the crate. Her father was a surgeon and she and her mother used to help at his clinic.”

I nodded. “I’m Luc.”

“Dr. Ross,” she said, then smiled faintly as she handed me some gauze. “Redeemer.”

For a second, I felt like I’d just been kicked in the stomach. I shouldn’t have been surprised that they knew who I was, but there was a part of me that felt guilty that they did. The Resistance had been leaning on the church—both the usual priests and the brothers and sisters of the Ordo Excaelis—for a long time, now. It hadn’t started with me. I had to keep reminding myself of it.

Hell, if it hadn’t been for Wil, I might never have learned to trust them myself.

“What happened to him?” Constance asked, jarring me. I swallowed quickly, getting myself back to work. Miriam was suddenly by my side, delivering a bottle of sterile solution so I could start washing out the wound in Wil’s thigh.

“We need to run fluids,” I muttered. “Can you do that?”

Constance nodded, then glanced at Sotheby, then Miriam. The younger nun headed back to the crate. Sotheby cleared his throat.

“Lucas,” he said gently. “You don’t have to answer, but—he destroyed the Alliance post, didn’t he?”

From the corner of my eye I could see Ren get tense for a second, then relax. A lump rose in my throat, threatening to choke me. I nodded, voice hoarse when I answered. “How did you know?”

“It sounds like Longshot,” Sotheby murmured. “I’ll put some water on, get some buckets. We’ll need to clean him up once you’re done.”

“I’m still here, y’know,” Wil murmured, his eyes half lidded, voice faint. “I’m still awake.”

“Wil,” Ren whispered. “Please.”

I saw his hand flex in hers and exhaled, reaching to tighten the fresh tourniquet around his thigh before I could get to work on debriding the wound there. “There’ll be more than enough time to talk about what the hell happened out there after we deal with everything that’s already on our plates. Just hang in there, okay, Wil?”

“Right,” he said, eyelids fluttering. There was a grim resignation to his voice an expression, though one tinged with pain. I knew he’d been through something like this before—except it had just been him and Ren.

It had been when he’d lost her, before he and I met.

That’s where his head was—suddenly back on Carmiline, clinging to his partner because she really was the only thing keeping him alive.

You’re not going to lose her and she’s not going to lose you. Not if I have anything to do this it. This isn’t going to be Carmiline all over again. It won’t be—I won’t let that happen.

“It’s going to be okay,” I said. I meant it, I just wasn’t sure how I was going to make sure it was.

“Right,” he whispered again. Ren looked at me, fear in her eyes.

“This feels way too familiar,” she said, her voice quiet and choked. “Why does it feel so familiar, Luc?”

Wil answered for me. “Don’t worry about it,” he whispered faintly. “Just—just stay with me, Ren. Please?”

“Forever, if you asked me,” she whispered back, then leaned down to kiss him gently.

I swallowed hard, tried to ignore what was going on between the two of them. He was my best friend and needed my help more than anyone else right then, but she would be next.

He’s been the key the entire time.

I knew that if he’d been stronger, he would have argued with me. He would have told me to help her first, then the Resistance, that he would keep. It would have been a lie and I never would have forgiven myself if I’d dared to believe him. She wouldn’t have forgiven me, either, nor would Sam Cooper or Mackenzie Desantis. None of them would have forgiven me if I’d let him convince me that he’d keep.

He wouldn’t. That was abundantly clear the longer I worked on him. I didn’t know how close he’d been exactly when the explosives he’d rigged went off, but it had been too close. At least he was safe here—as safe as anywhere on Caldin would be.

Constance was good at what she did—she must have been a trauma nurse back on Hyllard. It was easy to find a rhythm, and she anticipated my needs almost as soon as I concluded what they were. We said little, simply worked, treating Wil as best we could with the resources we had available. The crate the sisters had rescued from the Cloisters was well-stocked, and there was a part of me that hoped there was another one, because something in my gut said we’d need it before the night was out. I didn’t have to wonder where the supplies came from, though. I already knew.

They’d come from the same place the man I was working on had come from—from the Epsilon Alliance, smuggled here quietly and secreted away for the moment when they’d be needed. Somehow, I didn’t think that the Alliance would have expected them to be used quite this way, to treat one of their own.

By the time we were done, the sheets beneath Wil were half-soaked with blood. So were my hands and the knees of my pants. Wil was barely conscious as I snipped the last suture threads, Constance coming in behind to clean it up with a sterile pad and a bit of boiled water.

Sotheby brought some more hot water over with a bucket. Vasily followed with an armload of towels, the groundskeeper’s complexion gray and washed out. I doubted he’d ever seen this much blood before.

“I’ll get some spare clothes,” Sotheby said quietly to me as he set the bucket down on the blood-soaked sheets. “Then we’ll get him on the couch with some blankets after he’s cleaned up and dressed.”

I nodded mutely, watching Constance work. Miriam came to me, putting a hand gently on my shoulder. Through it all, she had been bringing supplies from the crate as Constance and I asked for them, quietly and without complaint. I blinked at her blearily, my eyes having trouble focusing for a few seconds.

“Are you all right?” she asked softly.

I nodded almost convulsively, not really sure if I was or not but willing to pretend. There was still work to do.

There was always still work to do.

“Luc,” Ren said softly. I looked at her, rubbing my face with the crook of my elbow, trying to clear the sudden sting and grit from my eyes. “Is he going to be okay?” she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.

“I hope so,” I said, standing up slowly. My legs ached from kneeling, half asleep with pins and needles dancing along my limbs. I limped to the kitchen to wash my hands before I came back to Wil. Constance had already started cleaning him up and I joined her. Vasily tugged Miriam away to help him with something—though I suspected it was more to just get the young nun away from the situation. She’d been a great help, but she’d certainly seen enough for one night.

I knew I had, but it wasn’t over yet.

We bandaged after we cleaned. Sotheby was back by then, with a change of clothes for me, a pair of shorts for Wil, and several blankets. He started getting the couch ready as Constance and I finished.

“You need a shower before you think about doing anything else tonight,” Ren told me, her brow furrowing.

“I have to get out there,” I said, shaking my head. “They’re fighting in the streets.”

“They’ll still be fighting in the streets in ten minutes,” she said. “At least wash the blood off before you go, okay?”

I was about to tell her that I was just going to get bloody again, but something stopped me. Maybe in the back of my head I realized that any of them seeing me with my clothes full of blood, like I’d been kneeling in it—because I had been—would probably have bene a morale-killer. Wil’s absence would have been notable to most of the Resistance on-planet and seeing me like that probably would have caused them to assume the worst.

I nodded mutely.

She hugged me hard, blood and all, and I hugged her back, chin resting against her shoulder. My heart felt like lead in my chest.

“I know how to fix it now,” I whispered. “I know how to give you your memory back.”

She pulled away, staring at me, one hand gripping my arm tightly. “You do?”

I swallowed hard and nodded. “Yeah. I—the key’s been in front of us the entire time and I never knew it.” I barely stopped myself from looking at Wil. I was sure she’d understand after I broke the blocks.

“I can’t ask you—”

“You’re not,” I said. “I made you a promise, Ren. I’m going to keep it. Are you ready?”

“Ready?” She blinked. “You mean—no. No, Luc, not right now. You’ve got work to do. The Resistance—”

I put my free hand on her arm, squeezing gently. “I have to do it before I go out there. Just in case.”

Her lips thinned but her jaw trembled. She nodded once, hard. “Okay. Okay. Uhm. Let us handle getting him settled. Go take a shower. Once you’re done—once you’re done, then we can do it.”

“All right,” I murmured. I squeezed her arm. She leaned in and kissed my cheek.

“Thank you,” she whispered, eyes brimming with tears. “I mean it.”

I reached up and brushed away a tear from her cheek with my thumb. “I know.” I sucked in a breath, glancing toward Constance. “Give him a sedative, okay? Nothing too strong.”

Constance nodded slightly. “And a painkiller?”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

“Of course. Now go do what the girl told you, hm?”

I choked on a laugh, gathering up the clothes Sotheby brought me, and headed for the bathroom and the shower that I so desperately needed.