Stormblood, стр. 134

Hideko screamed at the sight of Lasky. But the Jackal didn’t even seem to notice his injured comrade. His gaze latched onto me as he unstrapped himself with frightening speed. I shoved my body into the spacesuit and reached for the emergency hatch with numb fingers, but Hideko was faster. She flipped the ship into a barrel roll. The world spun as I slammed into the ceiling and plummeted back down again so hard I swore I heard a rib crack. Another flip and me and the still-screaming Lasky went smashing into the bulkhead. The Jackal was on his feet and speeding for me, slingshiv glinting in his hand. But he mistimed his lunge and went slipping on Lasky’s blood, skidding past us, the hooked curve of the slingshiv missing my eyes by inches. I leaped through the open barrier, stabbing a button to slam it down. The armoured doors began pinching together as the emergency exit hatch slowly peeled open. Wind howled in, fast-freezing my sweat. A pit opened in my gut as the distant streets yawned beneath me.

A scream behind me. Lasky was crawling furiously towards me, his mangled face plastered with hair and blood, twisted in a vicious sneer.

He was so obsessed with tearing me apart, he didn’t notice the barricade.

He glanced up just as the armoured barricade pinned him in place, crushing him to the floor. Anger melted into horror and horror melted into agony as the barricade’s magnetic seals clamped down. His body twitching as his ribcage and then his spine splintered like rotten twigs.

There’s the answer to the age-old question: how do you get Lasky juice?

You squeeze.

I spilled out into open space, spinning in freefall as the Jackal roared my name. The spacesuit used its anti-grav systems and thrusters in small, controlled bursts to guide me down to the hard concrete of the rooftop. I rolled to my back, alive and intact, bloody and sobbing with relief. My bruised body was trembling. Whether from relief or trauma I didn’t know and I didn’t care. I was alive.

I did it, guys. I did it.

Couldn’t afford to sit around, in the likely event the Jackal decided to swing around and finish me off with a railgun. I struggled to my feet, scanning for an exit. I stumbled, pitching over as a hot mass of glutinous stormtech came surging up my throat, splattering wet and thick around my knees.

Make that barely alive.

The unfamiliar streets spun around me. Every noise and smell crammed so hard into my skull I was waiting for the moment I’d hear it crack open. My skin was rubbery and translucent as wax, giving me the bizarre notion that if I approached a heat source my flesh would melt and peel off my bones. My bruised arms dangled by my sides like lead pipes. My head pulsed in throbbing waves of pain so deep they knocked me to my knees. My vision was a hazy fog. My insides were clenching so hard it felt like my guts were dissolving in acid, molecule by molecule. My body had suppressed Jae’s overdosing to help me survive, but the comedown always swung around, and this time I might not survive it. It felt as if I were already dead, parts of my body slowing and shutting down, while others hadn’t realised what was happening.

Go to sleep. Go to sleep and rest for ever.

But the stormtech and my own stubborn pride wouldn’t let me.

I had enough sense to tear away my harness and prisoner’s suit. Cutting the muzzle from my face was another matter. I netted a dozen fresh wounds and nearly gouged my eye out in the attempt, but the broken strip of steel I’d found eventually cut through the thing and I tugged it off my face. I slipped into an underskin shoved into a broken printer, smelling of someone else’s sweat. Judging by the shape, the previous owner had been an alien, but I didn’t care. Couldn’t care about anything but surviving this nightmare.

I stumbled. Grabbed someone. ‘Find Katherine,’ I slurred. I was shoved away, slapped against the wall. Bloody skinnie, someone spat as the world tilted into stabbing whiteness. I blinked, and I was lying in an alley. Shivering under a blanket of garbage. Freezing wastewater was dripping on me from a broken pipe and I was covered in clammy sweat. My body was still adjusting to the new stormtech, diverting toxic flood water down the sewer pipes of my arteries. I coughed, retching up a sticky glob that was practically fluorescent. I burst into stuttered laughter that morphed into racking, miserable sobs. In the distance I heard the crackle of Harvest gunfire, the dull smack of my father’s fists hitting flesh. Felt bruises erupting along my arms like the mushrooming clouds of artillery fire from orbit. Artyom refusing to leave my side when I was sick with fever. Kasia hugging me. My fellow Reapers standing with me in the dawning light.

Someone kicked me out of the alleyway. I snuffled through a garbage disposal for food, soaked up to my elbows in dripping trash. I tried to hunker down in a spaceport shanty, but a group of bored bullies dragged me out to the streets. Punched me a few times before leaving me curled up in a gutter. Blackness came in between blinks. Rain drizzled down. Made myself move before I drowned.

Neon lights from a club stabbing me in the eyes. The guard outside shoved me backwards as I tried to enter. Staggering into an alleyway, sliding to the ground, back scraping bricks. I puked again, lying in my own sick.

Walking. Endless walking. Looking up to see a language I didn’t know smudged high above me. People and faces turned into discoloured, nightmarish smears. A hand on my shoulder, quickly starting to melt and drip away. Was I all right? Did I need help? ‘Never better,’ I said, and threw up again.

I imagined my friends were here with me. Grim urging me