CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

                                    

                                          
            Abriel came awake in stages, moving to the surface of consciousness like a lake-diver breaking through a swell of waves. Deep and dark at first, then lighter, until your face hits the open air and you realize you can breathe again and you're not dying. Except, it wasn't quite like that. As Abriel opened her eyes, knowing something was wrong but unable to place it or understand why, she realized she was dying. In fact, she was dead. Or rather, dead inside.
            Keko was gone.
            Not sending her his usual patter of commentary. Not a constant presence humming in her head. Not even a tiny dot of sleeping unconsciousness. Gone. As if he'd never existed, his patterns unraveled from her mind to leave smooth channels of empty silence. It was just her, in her own thoughts, with everything else cut away and gone. It was a severing, but there was no physical pain from that severing. No tearing from the severed bond. Nothing other than the knife-edge of aloneness as the growing realization of his disappearance settled over her like a smothering blanket.
            A heartbeat later, after she'd probed the extent of Keko's loss did she note Porter was gone too. It was like an afterthought in the wake of absolute destruction, but it was a blow nonetheless. She wanted to scream and huddle into a ball, except...
            She was tied up. Her hands and ankles were bound together. Worse, her pistols were gone. She was in a vehicle, maybe a lowboy, and it was moving.
            Abriel choked back panic and concentrated very hard on being still. Her thoughts were awkward and lumbering, and she couldn't quite focus. She'd been drugged, she realized sluggishly. Shot in the chest with multiple tiny darts. Then she'd passed out. But only after she'd managed to wound or kill several others, and before Keko—
            Abriel cut off the thought. Not the time for it. Now, she had to figure out how to escape whatever situation she was in.
            "Good, you're awake," said a deep, male voice she didn't recognize.
            Abriel opened her eyes, squinting in the bright sunshine. The light hurt, but she fought through it. She needed to assess the situation. She caught a shape—the back of a man's head, ahead of her and a little above her eye-level. Long hair like Porter's, but not as long, and brown not blond. The voice wasn't as rich, but still deep and solid. She caught his profile. Chiseled, but older given the slight lines bracketing his eyes and mouth. They were in a lowboy, and she was in the back seat, tied-up.
            "Who are you?" she demanded, voice both rusty and slurred from lack of use and drugs.
            "I'm the one saving your life."
            "It shouldn't have needed saving. I should have killed you when I had the chance."
            "Who knows? Maybe you'll get a lucky break later on," came the sardonic answer. Then a more thoughtful, "Why didn't you?"
            She squirmed a little in the hot leather seat, trying to ease a cramp between her shoulder blades. She thought about lying, but didn't see the point. "You weren't assessed as an immediate threat. Keko said he read no kill impulse, so the plan was to wound then interrogate."
            And there, she did falter because she couldn't go on. It hurt—not the physical pain of a torn mental bond, but the emotional one. She'd lost everything that meant anything to her. Keko. Porter. Her father. The Crescent. Being a scout. Her team. Her friends. All of it was gone. What did she have left now? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
            Tears walloped in pounding waves and she no longer cared if she lived or died or what might happen to the rest of the world. She let them flow, let them streak down her cheeks and onto the seat where they pooled in the leather. What did any of this matter now? Who cared if this stranger saw her crying? She had never been smashed this low, and could see no way back. Didn't know how to exist or every think right now.