When I try again, it works a little better. A dirty gray ceiling swims into focus overhead, and I know immediately I’m not at home, where all the ceilings are carved from rock. My ears register a high, mechanical beeping, and I struggle for a few moments before I can place it. It’s a medical monitor.
I turn my head a fraction, but the haze of light starts to blur and sparkle, and I’m forced to close my eyes. There’s something over my nose and mouth, making it hard to breathe. I reach up and feel with my fingertips, encountering soft plastic, and start to tug it away. There’s a sharp catch in my throat, but before I can start coughing the mask is back over my face, someone else’s hand over mine.
When I risk opening my eyes again, I find Jubilee looming over me, holding the thing over my mouth. She’s filthy, hair mussed, black smudges all over her face, eyes flashing. She’s in combat gear, the dull, semi-metallic gleam of her armor-suit marred by grime and soot.
“Did you know?” she hisses. “I swear to God, I’ll kill you right here.”
I stare at her, trying desperately to swim toward understanding, but it feels like wading through waist-high mud. “What happened?” I ask, and she eases the mask away so I can speak. My voice is a wheeze, my throat raw, and it catches and constricts as coughing takes over my body. My vision starts to darken at the edges, and the black creeps in as I struggle for air, my pulse pounding through my temples.
She shoves the mask back in place, holding it there until the panic starts to recede. I blink back the tears, waiting for her answer.
Her voice is flat, furious. “A rebel managed to sneak onto the base. Planted a bomb at Bravo Barracks, killed over thirty soldiers while they slept.” She leans in, eyes locked on mine. “While I was talking to you.”
The shock that goes through me is a physical thing, the adrenaline surge rushing down my arms until my hands tingle. “No.” The plastic of the oxygen mask swallows my voice. “Oh God, no. I didn’t know. You know I wouldn’t—”
She’s gazing down at me, Stone-faced Chase, absolutely unforgiving, soot and ashes streaking her face like war paint. For a moment I half expect her to pull out her gun and shoot me on the spot, the anguish in her face is so clear. Then she breathes out slowly, dropping her head, and I realize she does know.
“You have smoke inhalation and a concussion, but they won’t have had time to check beyond that,” she says, softer, duller. “Does anything else hurt?” She reaches out to run her hands down my arms, watching for a wince.
“I don’t think so.” I ache all over, and I just want to close my eyes and let the pain carry me away. It has to have been McBride, or one of his lackeys. Everything’s spinning out of control, and I don’t know how to move, let alone steady Avon’s course.
I manage to turn my head, scanning my surroundings. “I don’t think I should be in a room full of soldiers when these guys wake up,” I rasp. My shirt’s been cut away, and there are electrodes stuck to my chest. I can hear my heartbeat on the monitor beside my bed.
She shakes her head in a sharp movement, running her hand up my leg and patting along my side to check my ribs. Only a few days ago I was doing the same for her. Maybe we’ll never meet without one of us ending up in the hospital.
“Nobody here knows who you are,” she replies. “You were still in uniform.” Her jaw squares, and I know this is another tiny cut, another betrayal that’s scored a line across her heart.
“I have to get out of here.” I shove the mask aside so she can hear me better. “I have to try to stop this from getting worse.”
She reaches for a bottle beside my bed, angling the built-in straw so I can take a sip. My throat burns as I swallow. “Keep drinking this, it will heal your throat. As soon as you can move, I’ll help you get out, for whatever you can do out there.” She sets aside the bottle and reaches for an adhesive bandage from a rack above my head. As I watch, she starts wrapping it around my forearm, covering my genetag. My heart skips. What would I have said if someone tried to scan it?
She finishes smoothing the bandage down, expression grim and locked away, then straightens. “I have to go. Anybody wakes up, say you’re from Patron. A new boatload came in yesterday, nobody knows their faces yet.”
She turns to walk away, her purposeful stride reduced to a weary shuffle. Even locked in a cell, beaten and bloody and tied to a post in the ground, she never let the steel go from her spine; now her shoulders are bowed, her hands trembling before she eases them into her pockets. And I know what’s sweeping through her, stripping away her strength, because it’s sweeping through me, too.
We’ve lost. The ceasefire is over.