Stormblood, стр. 132
They were going to Blue me out.
Jae flipped the switch. The machine lurched forward into me and a chrome helmet with an open faceplate grew around my head. Ice-cold metal clamped to my cheeks, my forehead, securing me in place. ‘This is for every innocent Harvester you killed,’ she whispered. Her eyes were wet and shiny like fresh, dark paint. A flicker of the depths of pain behind those eyes, the things she’d had done to her, the things she’d done in order to survive. ‘Every bomb you dropped, every bullet you fired, every life you ruined. Harmony will pay for them all.’
No one was coming to save me. Not Grim, not Kowalski. I glanced one last time at my brother, his face cold and barren as a winter tundra. I struggled as the fluorescent blue liquid slowly, slowly gurgled out of the machine and coiled through the shivering tendrils and into me. I jolted against the restraints as the shockwave rolled through. My body already knew something was wrong. The stormtech was mutating, clawing inside me like a live creature. Every attempt I’d ever made to fight it, every mental exercise, every rehab technique, was being torn and shredded apart like wet paper with vicious, alien fingers.
Agony like I’ve never known detonated in my skull.
Blood was dripping from my ears. I could smell myself: the overwhelming sticky sweetness oozing out of my pores like a skinnie. I gagged as the stormtech inched up my lungs, clawing up my throat. Blue froth foamed from my mouth and nose. The assault burned through every cell, every crevice, fusing the stormtech to the depths of my body. It felt like freezing parasites had begun to take root inside my body, giving birth to slithering infestations, crawling under my skin. I thrashed and jerked against the restraints with bone-breaking force, my back arching, legs shuddering in a seizure. Eyes rolling to the back of my head, the world smearing in a black haze. Choked screams gurgling from my throat. A cascade of fire on every nerve ending. A hundred glass shards jamming into every joint. My bones wrapped in razorwire, shredding my body apart, tsunamis of pain crashing down.
Artyom, blank-faced and stiff, watching me die from the other side of the universe.
One last wave of agony smashed down over me, and I drowned in my own body.
43
Hold the Dark
Most New Vladis believe in the afterlife. Not a heaven or a hell. Just some unnamed landscape where animals roam the endless wilderness and cloudy skies of never-ending light stretch over snowcapped mountains and seething blue oceans, watched over by guardian giants with sad, mournful eyes, their bodies constructed from rocks and animal bones.
Never bought the whole idea. Not really. But there was always a sliver of belief buried in me somewhere. That very far away there existed a quiet, tranquil world tucked neatly away beyond the dimensions of life and death. The valleys trickling with rivers filled with fragments of lost dreams, broken memories and the nameless dead.
Now I knew it was all a lie.
There was nothing here. Nothing but an ocean of darkness and pain. I was just beneath the surface, hooks slowly trying to drag me under. My body was wrapped in a numbing void, all senses and stimuli locked out.
I kicked back. Fought it. But I was barely keeping my head above this sinkhole. The stormtech hadn’t won its battle for my body, not yet. But it was close. Every time I fought it, it tried to claw me back, harder each time. It was like being swaddled in syrup. I clenched my teeth, tensing my muscles despite the blistering agony, attempting to shrug off the blue chains wrapping around me. Everything was alien and hollow inside, my body telling me something was terribly wrong. There was nowhere for it to go, so the stormtech kept drowning me.
Something rumbled under me. The stink of oil and burning metal. A golden flash. Metal cladding. Engines churning. I was being taken somewhere by spacecraft.
The stormtech ripped me back with a violent tug. Darkness clenching around me again. No, no, no. I wouldn’t let the monstrosity inside my body win. But there was too much churning and sloshing through me. It was like being devoured by an oil slick. Every time I shoved it away, something bigger came swarming in, wrapping wet and tight around my limbs. I was going to die here.
Katherine, Grim, Juvens, Jasken, Saren. My friends, waiting to see me succeed, to find a way to live with the monster clawing inside my heart. Not giving up on me no matter what I did or how I treated them. I hung onto them as my lifeline. Imagining myself tearing free of the layers of thick, wet swaddling around me, crawling towards them. Fighting the stormtech with everything I had.
But what if I did not fight it? Fight it, and it’ll fight you, Sokolav had told us Reapers. Draw closer to it, and it’ll draw closer to you. All this time I’d been battling it. Two opposing rips in a never-ending ocean current. Dividing my body. Never accepting the infestation rooted inside me. I’d spent almost a decade fighting Harvest, fighting my own body. I’d run away from my home and father rather than find an accommodation. I’d always picked the easy route. I’d always chosen to fight.
My Reaper brothers and sisters torn apart on the battlefield. Their bodies pushing them towards the onslaught, even as they resisted it. Mindlessly shooting, hacking, tearing. My friends staring at me through the smoke and screams when it was all over. Heaving in their armour. Ash raining down on bloodied faces. Hands clenching with the