He nodded. “Can you walk?”
Before she could respond, the room was invaded by even more League soldiers.
Darling heard the mayday from Maris, but he couldn’t get to the room where they had Maris pinned down. There were League soldiers everywhere now. All of them shooting.
Were they cloning the bastards in a back room somewhere?
Instead of their numbers decreasing, they seemed to be multiplying by the heartbeat. Like some mythic beast. Kill one and two emerged to take his place.
“Mari?” he called, needing to know his friend hadn’t gone down.
No answer.
Darling checked for Maris’s vitals on his bio scanner.
There weren’t any. Nothing at all was registering. His heart stopped beating as cold panic consumed him. And his anger went to a place so fierce and foul that it screwed up his vision even more than the jerking did.
Letting out his battle cry, he charged the soldiers who had him cut off from Maris. All Darling could think about was getting to Mari before it was too late.
He flipped one assassin who came at him over his back and stabbed him through the throat. Turning, he took down another and then shot a third and a fourth.
As Darling came around the corner, he dropped a bead on the next target who was in the room where Maris had gone.
Then he froze in place.
No.
It couldn’t be.
Blinking, he tried to make sense of what he saw. To understand something that couldn’t be. Maris was in the room with a woman in his arms. A woman who wasn’t supposed to be here…
“Zarya?” Darling breathed as his knees went weak.
Maris nodded.
“Darling?” The sound of her voice brought tears to his eyes.
Still, he couldn’t fathom what he saw. Not until Maris handed her off to him. The warmth of her skin…
Her scent…
She was alive.
It wasn’t a dream. It was real and she was here. With him. Not dead. Not missing…
Alive.
Her face was badly bruised and her features pale, but it didn’t matter to him. She’d never looked more beautiful than she did right now.
Tears fell down his cheeks as he clutched her tight.
“I knew you’d come for me,” she breathed, laying her hand against his helmet. “I knew it.”
“She never once lost faith in you.”
Darling looked past her to see the man Maris was now helping to stand upright. Like Zarya, he was filthy and bruised from repeated beatings.
The man licked his chapped lips before he spoke again. “I told her it wasn’t feasible. That you’d never find us, but she was right. She said you’d promised her that you would bust hell itself open to get to her. And that you never lied.” His legs buckled.
Maris caught him before he fell, then swept him up in his arms. “Don’t worry. I’ll get you to the medics as soon as I can,” Maris assured him.
Darling started to remove his helmet so that he could kiss her, but Zarya stopped him.
“They can’t know who you are, sweetie,” she whispered. “It would be an act of war for the Caronese governor to attack a League facility.”
She was right about that.
Still, with her in his arms, alive and breathing, nothing else mattered. Nothing at all. Everything around him faded until it was just the two of them.
He was so centered on absorbing every part of her that he forgot where he was, and what he was doing.
Something brought home an instant later when she reached down and grabbed his blaster, then shot over his shoulder. He turned to see a League soldier who’d had a clear shot at him. But for her, he’d have probably died just then.
Maris growled deep in his throat before he pulled back into the room. “They’re coming in fast and furious.” He set the man in his arms down.
Darling hated letting Zarya go, especially since he had her again. But he had no choice. Not if they were to make it out of here.
And he had no intention of dying today.
He set her on her feet, then swung around. “Let them bring it. You ready, Mari?”
“You know I hate fighting. But I think a little payback for my battlesuit might actually make me feel better for once.”
“I know it’ll do great things for me.” Darling pulled a fully charged blaster off his holster and exchanged it for the one she’d shot. “Stay behind us.”
Maris handed one to the man. “Do you know how to shoot?”
“Not straight… in more ways than one. But if I aim at their feet I can hopefully wound them until one of you finishes them off. And that way if I really miss, I won’t kill an ally. You’ll just limp a little.”
Maris laughed. “Thanks for the consideration. I’m Maris, by the way, and I should probably warn you that it didn’t go well for the last guy who wounded me.”
“I’m Ture.”
Darling tapped his link to call the others. “Hauk? You still evaccing civs?”
“Yeah. You pinned?”