The Reflective Dissent (Reflection Book 3) by Tamara Rose Blodgett

Author:Tamara Rose Blodgett [Blodgett, Tamara Rose]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tamara Rose Blodgett LLC
Published: 2016-12-08T06:00:00+00:00

Something's stabbing Beth's back.

She lifts a hand without opening her eyes and feels for what it might be.

Grass.

Beth lifts her heavy eyelids. Long stalks of faded green, feathery-looking pasture grass grow all around her, swaying gently in a mild breeze of what appears to be late summer.

Placing both palms at her sides, she hikes herself into a sitting position.

Blood has soaked through her clothes. She places her hand on the wound and finds it's still leaking. Beth tries to steady her breathing, but she's scared.

She cannot feel her legs.

That can mean only one thing. A fragment of the ammunition has nicked something critical. Something beyond her body's capacity to heal. Tears shimmer, skating across her vision and promising to fall.

The pain is enough to keep them at bay if she concentrates on the horrible sensations.

Beth decides to swallow her grief. Feeling sorry for herself and giving in to the compulsion to burst into tears will not help her.

Self-pity never does.

The powers of Reflective healing have corrected the terrible reactive jump she made before when Slade captured her in his arms, arresting her from being a warm, shattered splat on Three asphalt. She tests her arm, swinging it wide. The limb moves smoothly.

It does not appear as though this other grievous wound will correct itself.

Jeb will come.

But perhaps not soon enough. Because Beth has just now easily determined where she landed, and for the life of her, she can't understand why.

The large, opaque spheres, half buried in the soft earth, are her first clue.

The Band and the criminal Zondorae leavings of Fragment roam this sector. And here she lies, crippled from the waist down.

Marvelous.

Beth inspects her wound quite thoroughly. Which is no trouble, considering she has no feeling in the area. The bleeding has stopped, but the exit wound is a huge hole in her leg. There is no talking herself out of the mess. She will always be scarred—if she survives.

She's very happy to note her ceramic blade is intact and at hand.

Based on the sun's position, Beth gauges the time of day to be nearly five o'clock. Her stomach chooses that moment to give an appreciative roar. When was the last time they ate?

She looks around her. No one is here but she. The overwhelming loneliness of her situation strikes her like a deadly weapon.

I will concentrate on the basest needs. Water—food. Nothing else. Beth can mourn and gnash her teeth later.

So she sits in the ocean of wheat and waits for the sun to sink. Minutes take hours, and she licks her lips. Terrible thirst assails her, and each swallow is a parched slide without saliva.

Bloodred light begins to creep across the pasture, tinting the tall stalks of wheat to flags of crimson. The entire grassland appears as if it's ablaze.

Beth is mournful, thirsty, hungry, paralyzed, and fearful. But she admires the beauty of that crystalline moment of the day ceding to night, thanking Principle she still lives to see nature's spectacle.

The huge single ball of sector Thirteen's sun sinks like a scarlet stone, and Beth sighs with its absence.

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