Precipice by Robert Stanek

Author:Robert Stanek [Stanek, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: RP Media

Chapter 8

Node: 110

Luke looks like fresh death. I don’t know how I get him up the stairs, but I do. One exasperating step at a time. “Don’t die, Luke. Don’t you die on me. You die, I’ll never forgive you.”

Inside the standing room, I prop Luke against the wall and hold him up using the weight of my own body. The connectors are buzzing around us like angry birds. I try to keep them away.

I slap Luke’s face twice, three times. “Hang in there. Stay with me. I need you to look at me. Look at me, Luke! Look at me!”

I take hold of the connector with the red and white blinking lights and give Luke a bath in its mists. The mists also find me and we stand in them together.

“Luke, I’m here, here. Luke, it’s just you and me. We have to do this together.”

His cuts, scrapes and lacerations are being bathed in healing mist. I see them sealing over, but he doesn’t look any better.

“Please, Luke, please. Stay with me, Luke. Talk to me.” I can’t say the word die anymore. I can’t. “Don’t you go; don’t you go.”

Looking up, I implore the empty air, as if something out there can save him. Pain stabs through me as everything I am, everything that’s happened, falls away. None of it matters. Nothing matters without Luke.

I blink and I see red. Red so deep it’s scarlet. I blink again, and I feel his hand in mine, rain on my cheeks. I hear his quick laugh and see his ready smile. I hear him telling me what we are, what we’ve become.

It’s not real, but it feels real. Somehow I realize I haven’t exposed the blaster wound on his back, so I push him against the wall and step back. I rip off the makeshift bandage and expose the damaged flesh. Then I douse the wound like I’m drowning a fire.

“Luke, you and me, we’re in this. We’re in this together. You go, I go. You hear me? You listening?”

A low rasp escapes his throat and I know he wants to come back to me. Healing alone won’t save him though, I know this. He’s in shock. His body needs food and water, sustenance, so he can fight and live.

“We can do this, Luke. We can.”

I know how to get him what he needs, but I can’t risk him communicating with the collective—any collective. Clutching one of the primary connectors, I dissect its wire bundle. After removing the eighth, twelfth and twentieth nodes, I ram the connector into the back of his skull. The pod does the rest. It connects tubes to feed, relieve and replenish.

Once Luke is connected in, I find I can barely stand. I stagger and tumble into the wall.

My eyes go to the windows. It’s there. Central is right there, so close my fingers can pinch it, so close I can hear Celeste’s melodic voice and Sierra’s beautiful laugh.

I want to go. I do, but the warm glow of the pod’s interior lulls me.

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