Brotherhood Protectors: Soldier's Heart Part 2 (Kindle Worlds Novella) Read online

  “Really? I’m a ghost, Kate. You keep telling yourself I’m a hallucination.” Jack’s voice was so maddeningly calm, yet every word was the cut of a knife. “So how can I possibly want anything other than what’s in your head?”

  “You said you were changing, same as me! You said that even if I took meds—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Kate, listen to yourself. Better yet, think about that pissant shrink, Dowell. Know what he’d say? That I’m the voice of your ambivalence. You get me to say things you’re either too dishonest to admit to yourself or somehow need to hear out of someone else’s mouth.”

  “What are you, now, my shrink, too? Fuck you, Jack!” Enraged, she pushed to a stand and rounded on him, twisting to her left, trying to catch him out. “Goddamn you! Show yourself, you coward!” Still clutching Gabriel’s arrow in her left fist, she jabbed the air where he must be, should be, always tormented her. “Goddamn you to—”

  She felt it happen, the instant her right crampon slipped. Thought, oh shit. Heard Jack shout her name.

  Right before gravity closed its fist.

  13

  A scream jumped off her tongue, and then she reeled. Gabriel’s arrow leapt away into the dark to clatter onto stone. Her arms windmilled as her crampons scraped and scrambled for purchase.

  If she’d been at the edge, this would have been over in a nanosecond. Instead, because she had worked her way up and faced back the way she’d come, she had a millisecond’s grace and seized it.

  Still wildly off-balance, she threw herself forward, arms in a splay, fingers outstretched. Rock rushed at her face, but she had no time to brace. She came down hard, crashing into the rock, her head snapping on the stalk of her neck. Her forehead smacked stone with a hollow, sickening thud, the blow splitting her skin. Her headlamp went flying. Her vision winked out. Stunned, she went limp, as if all her circuits had hiccupped at once, their power supply knocked out for an instant.

  And then she was tumbling sideways, slipping over icy stone, picking up speed. Her parka rucked up, the fabric making a snaky ssss on the slope as she slid. With a desperate cry, she scrabbled at ice and snow, hands slapping for purchase. Under her right, she felt ridges and bony rock scrape past but almost at a remove because the sensation was so muted, like trying to read Braille through gauze.

  Then two things happened. Her crampons caught on a jut of rock at the same instant her right hand plunged, almost by accident, into a narrow fissure in the stone. Gasping, she crimped her fingers to claws, dug in—

  And stopped moving.

  14

  Oh shit oh shit. For a second, she could only cling, her limbs spread in an awkward star. A high-pitched whine drilled her ears, though she heard herself gasping, sucking air in huge, sobbing gulps. Her heart rabbited in her chest so hard she felt the kick in her throat. Blood streamed down her face. Her mouth tasted swampy. Her vision tried to turn swimmy, and she fought not to faint, pass out. It helped that her skull screamed with pain.

  “Jesus.” A surge of nausea bolted up her throat, and she grimaced at the mix of sour bile and blood. She spat, though weakly, felt the gob dribble down her chin. “Shit.” She was shuddering, her back and check glazed with sweat. “Jesus, that was close.”

  “Kate.” Jack was calm, his voice like a cool hand on her forehead. “Honey? You with me?”

  “Y-yes.” She was trembling all over as if in the grip of a high fever. This was no good. She had to get herself under control.

  “Yes, you do, but you can do this, Kate. You just pull yourself back up. That right arm’s plenty strong. You know this. Even if you slip, it can hold all your weight.”

  Yes, but for how long? Her arm might be a synthetic, but the muscles of her back and shoulder were not, and they would fatigue, eventually.

  “You’ll be long gone before that happens, but you have to focus, honey. Listen to me, and I’ll get you out of this.”

  She knew he was right. She could do this. But then why am I shaking?

  “Because you’re only human. Your right arm isn’t shaking. That’s the rest of you, all right? You’re anchored; you’re not going anywhere.”

  “Unless I rip the rock in two.” She heard the quaver. Stop, stop being such a baby. It’s okay to be scared but not so much you blow it. Her vision was blurry with blood she couldn’t wipe away.

  “Of course, you can. Just bend your left arm, move only your arm, and do it . . . that’s better. See?”

  “Ugh.” At the touch of her mitten on torn flesh, a jag of pain ripped into her brain, and she gagged, her stomach clenching with both fear and another cramp of nausea. Her thoughts were going a little airy, too, as the inside of her skull ballooned. Hyperventilating.

  “Slow down, Kate. Deep, even breaths.”

  “Right, right.” For a hallucination she spun from memory and desire, Jack was remarkably composed. Maybe he was right about being the voice of her ambivalence—and common sense.

  “Like you said, your very own Jiminy Cricket. Now, stop gasping.”

  Easier said than done. She couldn’t see well. Her vision was still veiled and muzzy with fresh blood. On the other hand, Jack was right. She was better off than most would be in her situation. Craning carefully, she studied the rock in front of her face and then turned her head so her left cheek lay against rough, icy stone. She lay at a diagonal—head at ten o’clock, her right leg planted at four—her right hand locked in a death grip in that cleft. The entire left side of her body dangled in thin air, nothing below her there at all.

  Except a valley. Or a couple of ledges. Trees. Might get herself skewered like shish-kebab.

  “Enough with the catastrophizing. You got to lose that left mitten, Kate. Otherwise, you’ll never be able to grab hold and pivot. Come on, you’ve rappelled before. You’ve free-roped. You understand points of contact.”

  “Yeah, with a belay and a rope. I’m not a goddamned rock climber, Jack, and I need three points of contact to stay upright on a wall.”

  “You’ll get your leg set. This will work. It’s not as if you’re hanging by a thread.”

  “No, just wires and titanium.”

  “Kate, honey, you have been in this situation before—”

  “Not like this.”

  “Shut up.” Jack was implacable. “Shut up and listen because if you can’t, you will die. It’s as simple as that. So, take a breath. Think. What do you need to do first?”

  Get herself a third point of contact. Normally, she’d have liked that to be her left leg. Legs were much stronger than arms, and her left arm was flesh and blood.

  “I agree, but you’re cockeyed. Your angle is off. So, you have to pivot and to do that—”

  She exhaled a shaky laugh. “I need a third arm?” Or you? Because how real Jack always felt when she let herself go. Why couldn’t she conjure him now? Maybe I have to be in so much trouble, like totally on my last gasp or something, then my brain does the only thing it can to save itself. That’s what happened in that science fiction book about the one-armed detective her dad lent her. Oh, for God’s sake, that was only a story.

  But her brain did have something extra, almost autonomous. Could the biobots organize? Do something to save themselves?

  “Kate, focus. What do you have to do first to save yourself?”

  “Square off against the mountain.” Get her legs bent and her arms straight, so she didn’t fatigue as quickly. All I gotta do is pull up on my right, bring up my left hand, set the fingers in a crevice, on a lip, anything. She would still have to spider her way back up, but her crampons would help. Besides, she couldn’t hang here all night. Her arm wouldn’t fail and neither would her legs, per se—though her right knee bawled with pain and was beginning to jitter with the effort of holding her in place. If that toe slipped, she didn’t know if even she could recover from that because she’d have to reach high enough to set her foot again. She might not be able to do that. Definite design flaw. Gravity made you tip. Shorter legs meant a lower c
enter of gravity and better balance. It was why most great gymnasts—and climbers—were short. If she lived through this, she’d have to talk to Vance and the 7UV9 boys.

  “Instead of worrying about what might happen, focus on what you can control, Kate. Come on.”

  “Right, right.” Easing her left hand to her mouth, she used her teeth to pop the mitten-top and free her fingers. Then, flexing her right bicep, she pulled hard, grunting with the effort. Her parka rasped against stone, the cloth snagging and bunching, but she was moving—slowly, a millimeter at a time—and she felt the pressure in her right knee ease as her leg straightened.

  You got this. You can do this. She would have to grab hold with her left and then get herself turned around somehow, move her body clockwise until she faced into the mountain. Lifting her left hand, never taking her eyes from the rock in front of her face, she groped for a handhold. Her palm slapped air, air—and then solid stone. Crabbing her fingers up, she felt for a knob or lip, something to grab onto, anything, and then she felt a jagged spur protruding from the slope.

  Okay. Her left fingers curled, clamping down until the edge bit into her flesh. Okay. Despite everything, her lips split in a ferocious, bloody grin. Now, if she could just pull herself to the right and push with her left—scooch myself around—she could use her left knee. Her right hand still clung in its death grip. Digging in with her left, she pushed against the stone spur, her mind already jumping ahead to her next move. Jam my left knee into the slope. Then lift her left leg as high as she could and against the slope—

  “Kate!” Jack’s voice blasted through her head. “The rock!”

  Too late. She’d been thinking ahead, not focusing on what her body was telling her, what her fingers felt, but her conscious mind wasn’t registering.

  Loosened by her weight, what she thought was a spur—but which was really a large piece of rock jimmied into a crevice—came free.

  “Ah!” Her body plummeted a foot in a sudden convulsive jolt. Her left arm flailed air; her left leg, which never had a chance to set itself, pedaled uselessly as the crampons on her right foot shifted—

  And came loose.

  “No!” Frantic to reclaim her perch, she bent her knee, tried angling the foot so the crampons aimed into the mountain. She heard metal scrape stone once, twice as she kicked and kicked. “No, no!”

  Her crampons struck . . . nothing. No stone, no ledge, no lip or purchase. Nothing to snag.

  There was nothing under her at all now, but thin air.

  “Jack!”

  No answer.

  “Jack, Jack!”

  No answer.

  He’s gone. The realization struck her through like a spear. He’s gone? Of course, he was. He’d never really been there. Why was she calling for a hallucination?

  I’m going to die. Her lungs went airless. I’m dead. I can’t hold on forever. She couldn’t even activate her tracker now. For that, she needed both hands.

  Then, something bloomed in her head. An indescribable feeling, it was not the airiness of panic. It was something blooming and opening and widening and then . . .

  “Kate.”

  “Jack.” She sobbed it out, couldn’t help it. “I thought you were gone, I thought . . .”

  “Listen to me.” Jack’s voice hummed with urgency. “Scream, honey.”

  “What?” She grabbed back a hysterical sob. “Jack, what good will—”

  “Scream, Kate.” Jack’s voice was deep, sonorous, remorseless. This might even be the voice of a god. “Scream as loud as you can. Scream now.”

  15

  He was shivering too hard to truly sleep. Instead, he faded in and out, his mind mired in a kind of stupor, a swimmy vertiginous fever dream of pain and dread and fear. Shivering was good because it meant his body hadn’t given up the ghost just yet. His muscles were working hard to keep his blood warm, his organs going. His hands and feet still hurt, as did his face. So that was good, too.

  Still.

  He shifted, drawing himself into as tight a ball as he could. He’d found a crevice large enough to wedge himself and pull in what little gear he had after. The cave wasn’t deep and smelled a little rancid, as if small animals had been there before. If he’d been thinking, he might have worried about disturbing something nesting there, even a bear. But he’d been bleeding badly and in too much pain.

  How many hours ago . . .? He didn’t know. A while.

  He’d been sitting on the ledge, his feet dangling over the abyss, and dithering, debating, turning the revolver over in his hands. He had originally intended to shoot himself through the mouth. The bullet would drill through soft tissue and bone, and his brains would empty out onto the rocks at his back. Easy, peasy.

  Except, here was the killer. The force of the impact—the way the bullet would plow into and through the back of his skull and cavitate tissue as it traveled—meant he’d rock backward. You can’t be a soldier and not understand ballistics, what happens when you were in the shit, belly flat to the ground, bullets kicking up dirt and pinging against rock, and then your buddy lifts his head just a tiny smidgeon too high and opens his mouth to say something—only nothing ever came out. Because the next second, your buddy’s head snaps back then rocks forward, the mess of his brains and blood leaking from beneath his helmet before you even hear the hiss of another bullet—meant for you—passing only inches from your ear.

  So, he couldn’t count on simply slithering off the rock as so much dead weight. His gear might go, but even that wasn’t a given. Which meant she’d find him—and, well, shit.

  So, through the mouth was out. Ditto under the chin for the same reason. Physics could be such a bitch.

  He’d sat there, the bitter tang of gunmetal and slick oil on his tongue, thinking how he couldn’t do even this right, and decided, fuck it, a head shot, then. Right through the temple. Except . . . now he would only fall sideways, wouldn’t he?

  “What are you doing, you moron?” He remembered shouting that, feeling the wind strip the words from his mouth almost before they’d flown past his lips. “You’re a fucking loser, you know that?”

  The only way to be absolutely certain he tumbled off the ridge would be to weigh himself down in precisely the right way.

  Ballast to the front, then. That would do it. Threading his arms through his pack, he hugged it to his chest the way women did in crowded cities to foil pickpockets. After another moment’s thought, he slid his bow over his shoulders in a cross-carry, with only his quiver seated between his shoulders.

  There. He was as ready as he ever would be.

  Jesus, who ever thought offing yourself would be such a big deal? His mouth quirked at the morbid humor of it all. Cautiously, he eased his right buttock forward but only a smidge, his heart lurching as gravity tugged his chest. Take it easy, go slow. Bad to fall off while he was still alive.

  “Okay.” Pressing the S&W to his right temple, he slipped his index finger through the trigger guard and took up a smidgeon of slack. Don’t overthink this. He watched his breath blue in the headlamp he’d taken from Mac’s camp. Should he take it off, leave it for her? Moron. The point is to not advertise. But Mac wasn’t dumb. There would be some blood, so she’d figure it out. She might need the headlamp, too. Why hadn’t he thought about this before?

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Reaching up with his left hand, he hooked his fingers, bloodied and raw from the cold and rocks, under the band and tugged—

  He felt the instant his weight shifted. Having cocked his head to the left, he’d inadvertently lifted his right buttock, and now he started to slip, the darkness below his feet nothing but a black and bottomless maw.

  “Shit!” Jerking left, he tensed in a sudden spasm of fear, the gun in his right hand slipping at an odd angle, and then he was trying to wrestle that back to true while maintaining his balance—while forgetting he’d already taken up slack on the trigger.

  The gun exploded with a huge, roaring, percussive BANG! Something fast whir
red past, the bullet plowing through his scalp but skipping over the bony vault of his skull the way a flat stone hops over still water. Hot gas and burnt powder seared his face and then the pain caught up. Jesus! It felt as if someone had taken a blowtorch to his right eye. Shit, shit! Screaming, his left hand still tangled in his headlamp’s strap, he slapped his right hand to his scorched orbit, forgetting he still had the gun. He bawled again, the sound like a wounded mule, as the revolver’s hammer caught and tore his right eyebrow.

  It was a wonder he didn’t fall off. This one time, though, physics was his friend. He’d been leaning left when the gun went off, and when he jerked, he propelled himself back and away from the abyss. Now, tumbling heavily onto the rocks, he grunted with fresh pain as his bow and quiver dug into his neck and shoulders. For a moment, all he could do was lie there and suck air like a trout suffocating on a dock. His head bellowed. There was a high-pitched ringing in his left ear.

  And yet, through his right, he caught a muted pop-pop-pop.

  Shit, shit! Instinct kicked in. He was taking weapons fire. He needed cover, cover!

  A jump cut, a hiccup in time, and the next thing he knew he was upright, staggering over rock and scuffing through snow. A part of his mind scolded he should drop, low-crawl . . . head down, soldier, head down! . . but his thoughts snarled like a ball of yarn mauled by a kitten. Later, when he was safe in his hidey-hole, he thought what a cherry he’d been, standing up like that. A guy could get his head blown off that way.

  How he found the crevice, he couldn’t recall, but he wormed inside somehow. Blood slicked his face and neck; he could feel the wet dribbling beneath the collar of his parka to soak his shirt. Spreading his tarp over cold rock, he grappled with his pack, yanking it open then plunging his face and hands inside, breathing out warm air, trying to keep at least his head warm and stave off the moment when he would almost certainly freeze to death. The tarp was poor insulation. Lying on the rock was no better. Stone would steal his heat as assuredly as if he’d decided to nap on a slab of ice. Eventually, his thoughts turned runny and indistinct, melting into one another.