She went motionless. “What was it like?” A whispered question.
“I don’t have the words.” A slumbering part of him had awakened at the contact and that part craved the feeling of belonging that he’d sensed from Vasic. As if the world could fall, but Vasic knew Ivy would always be there, no matter what. Aden wanted the same. Not yet, not when so many of his Arrows needed him to remain their leader, alone and strong, but one day in the future, he wanted that intimate, absolute connection with another being. “Even before that experience, I wouldn’t have left you behind. You know that.”
“You have to go ahead,” Zaira said, pressing her hand over his mouth when he would’ve spoken again. “Listen to me. If you go ahead, there’s a chance you can find help, bring it back. We won’t get half as far with me slowing you down.”
Waiting until she removed her hand, he wrapped his arm around her waist and began walking. She came rather than hold him back. “Aden.”
“Do you think,” he said, “that I could continue on as I’ve been doing knowing I’d left you to die alone in the cold dark?”
Zaira’s arm came around his waist; the sign of capitulation had his muscles tensing. Because it meant she was far worse off than she’d let on. Zaira never held on to anyone, never accepted help except in extreme circumstances.
Seeing movement a bare half minute afterward, he froze, his eyes tracking the lumbering shape until it resolved itself into the form of a black bear. The creature wasn’t interested in them, disappearing off to the left while Aden and Zaira went forward.
“We need to get the implants out,” he said, realizing she was right in one sense—they were too slow to outrun a chopper and if their captors had any intelligence they’d eventually do a low sweep over the entire possible search area while transmitting the command that would cause their brains to implode. “It’s possible I’m wrong and there might not be a fail-safe switch, but we can’t take that risk.”
“Agreed.” Zaira’s response was immediate, her voice rough. “If we remove them, we might regain our abilities, be able to contact the squad.”
Scanning the unforgiving landscape around them, he found a thick grove of trees that would provide cover and a shield against the wind. When Zaira stumbled, he picked her up and carried her there. Pain shot down his left leg from where he’d been injured in the fight outside the bunker, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle.
Placing Zaira on the ground, her back against what looked like it might be a young chestnut tree, he found the medical kit and started to go through the supplies. “Two disposable lasers left.” One for each of them. “Power grade means it should be strong enough to cut through the skull since the area is already weakened, but it might not be enough to fully seal the wound.”
Zaira took one laser. “I should do you first. Talk me through it before I lose consciousness.”
It was a smart request but impossible. “I need to figure out how to get it out without paralyzing or killing us.” If the implants had integrated into their brains and/or had filaments woven into their spinal columns, both were very real possibilities.
“What are the chances they’ve put it in a part of the brain you can’t reach?”
“I won’t know until I remove the bone. Our only advantage is that the surgery was clearly done recently and in a hurry—there’s a high probability the implants won’t have fully integrated.” Fewer connections meant less chance of a fatal mistake.
Zaira handed back the laser. “My head’s swimming. If you operate first, I might not remain conscious long enough to remove your implant.”
“I have a longer window of life—they want to break me. Execution is a last resort.” He looked up at the sky as he felt a spit of rain on the back of his hand. “Now, before the clouds open up. Angle your entire body to the left.”
When she did, he dug out a penlight he’d taken from a guard. The beam was too thin to be useful anywhere but in close quarters, but it was bright enough at that range. Holding it between his teeth, he gathered up Zaira’s barely shoulder-length hair and used a rubber band from the med kit to tie it up off her neck, exposing her nape and the area immediately above. Then he tucked a bandage between her collar and her spine to soak up the blood.
That done, he snapped on a pair of disposable surgical gloves. “This will hurt.”
She reached out to grip one of the tree roots that had curled out over the earth before flowing back in. “Go.”
Thin beam of light shining on the reddened and jaggedly sealed flesh low on her scalp where a rough square of her hair had been shaved off, he frowned. “Damn it, it’s infected.” Whatever their captors had shoved in there, Zaira’s body was rejecting it. Grabbing the disinfectant, he wiped the area and knew he’d have to hurt her again later by washing out the wound.
His muscles threatened to tense, but he couldn’t allow that to happen. Not now, not when he needed to have rock-steady hands and iron focus. Thinking back to the lessons on the brain he’d had as part of his training, and of everything he’d learned as a result of his attempt to find a fix for Vasic’s gauntlet, he put one hand on the back of Zaira’s head to hold her in position, and very carefully made four incisions along the lines of the scar to cut through the skin and muscle and into bone.
She bled and it was a clean red, no sign of deep infection. Good.
Wiping away the blood with a swab he’d dampened with disinfectant, he put down the laser and disinfected a disposable scalpel, then used the tip to gently check if he could lift out the tiny piece of bone. No. He had to go deeper. Squeezing Zaira’s shoulder to warn her, he used the laser again. It took three careful series of cuts to get the bone out. Zaira’s breathing was beyond shallow by that point, but she was holding on to consciousness.