—drive her bladed hand into his chest, rip his heart out, and show him its final bloody beat.
—pull him apart the way a child strips the petals from a daisy.
Scylla showed her all the wonders she could perform, promising that she would at last have an outlet for all the hurt and anger and frustration. That to take this man down would be right and feel so good…
Angel shuddered, blinking back the visions and somehow keeping the angel subsumed. Swallowing hard, she found her voice.
“Please leave! Please!” she wailed, unable to keep the naked entreaty from her voice. The mercy turned and ran.
She watched him disappear through the airlock door, hoping with every fiber of her being that it was truly the beginning of the invaders’ retreat.
Marchey stood just outside sensor range of the door to Valdemar’s room, his head cocked to one side as he listened to Jon telling him what had just happened in the bay.
“Get everybody to hell out of there,” was the only advice he could offer.
[What about Angel?] Jon demanded.
“What about her?” he hissed through clenched teeth, that question tolling over and over in his head.
He rubbed his forehead, trying to think. “Sorry. You say she’s got them stood off for the moment?”
[Yeah, but I doubt it can last. Their sort won’t give up this easily.]
He was afraid Jon was probably right on both counts. This had been no more than a skirmish. A testing of their defenses. Now that they knew they were up against someone in a combat exo the gloves would come off.
“She hasn’t done anything overtly hostile?”
[Not yet.]
He couldn’t even begin to guess which would be worse for her: getting badly hurt or even killed as Angel or reverting to Scylla. He hoped to hell he could fix it so he didn’t have to find out.
“Okay, I’ve got to go now,” he began. The sooner he got to Valdemar the better everyone’s chances.
[Just a second, Doc—] Jon put in. Several seconds passed.
[Okay. The bay is almost completely evacuated, soon as it is we’ll seal it up. Danny just came back in. He says Angel told him to tell you that she knows you’re trying to fix everything. She says she’ll hold them back until you can get them called off our backs. She says… she says she’ll try to make you proud of her this time.]
Marchey closed his eyes for a moment, daunted by her courage. Her loyalty and trust. He found himself remembering the first and last times he had seen her, and all the mistakes he had made in between.
“Hang on, Angel,” he muttered half under his breath, opening his eyes to stare at the door to Valdemar’s room, less than a dozen steps away. The final barrier to his objective.
“This time I won’t let you down,” he whispered, an apology and a promise all in one.
He started moving. Had there been anyone else in the corridor to see him, the cold, tight-lipped expression on his face might have made them try to stop him.
Not that it would have done them any good.
Angel listened to her message being delivered as she moved closer to the airlock doors. She had refused the remote Danny brought her because her exo already allowed her to monitor the channels they were using. She had not mentioned it because she did not want them to know she was listening, to give them the chance to try to talk her out of the task she had set for herself.
The invaders were going to try to come out again. Soon. Angel wanted to believe otherwise, but knew better. Scylla knew it for certain, and was just waiting for her chance to be reborn like a vengeful phoenix in the heat and flames of battle.
All she could do now was wait.
The bay had been evacuated and sealed up tight. That was good. It was one less thing to worry about.
Marchey would come through. She did not doubt it for one single moment. He had helped deliver the people of Ananke from oppression once before, and he would do it again. Somehow the mantle of guardian angel had been passed on to him.
For all her telling him that he was dead inside, she knew that there was a strength in him, a steadfastness that she had first seen clearly when he stared Scylla straight in the eye—stared his own death straight in the eye—and refused to back down. Not because he did not care if he died, but because when pushed to stand by what he thought was right not even an angel’s rage could move him. There was something deep inside him every bit as durable as his silver hands, just as bright and stainless. He was capable of so much more than he knew.
He would save them all. Only this time, she would be at his side. They would be… together.
[Hang on, Angel,] his voice whispered in her ear.
Her breath caught in her throat. He didn’t know that she could hear him, but that didn’t matter. It was enough that he had said it. And she knew—knew— that he was telling her to hold on to the identity he had given back to her, and not revert to the other.
[This time I won’t let you down.]
Or I you, Angel vowed, placing herself directly in front of the airlock’s double doors. Fatigue and apprehension and the effort it took to keep Scylla subsumed made her head swim.
But she stood tall and proud, a solitary silver sentinel with a gentle smile on her face. Knowing that he cared after all strengthened her, fortified her sense of purpose. She would protect those she had once terrorized. She would make her mother and all the other dead proud of her. She would prove once and for all that she was no longer what she had once been.
She would give Marchey the time he needed, no matter what it cost. This time her life was pledged to something worthy.
She would show her love for him the only way she could, and hope that when this was all over he would realize that she was more than just his ally, and it was more than just help she wanted to give him.
Preston Valdemar was sitting up in bed, dressed in pearly white silk pajamas, hunched over a sleek wood-trimmed pad and speaking into it when Marchey appeared in his doorway. He looked up, eyes narrowing and brow furrowing in suspicion.
“Who the hell are you?” he demanded, putting the pad on standby and hugging it protectively to his chest.
Marchey didn’t answer. He stood there, taking a good long look at his patient. Sizing him up.
Valdemar appeared to be in his late fifties, the skin of his face blotchy, loose pouches of flesh sagging under his eyes and chin. According to his records, he was in his late sixties. The full range of antigeria techniques had been used on him just over a year before, so he should have looked to be in his late thirties at most. Maxx addiction had undone most of that. His close-set eyes were muddied by it and medication, their whites bloodshot and jaundiced.
There was also an unhealthy saffron cast to his skin. It was unlikely that the bloodcleanser racked in beside his bed was there for show. His liver and kidneys were probably little better than spoiled meat.
“Answer me, dammit!”
He had the fat, greedy mouth of a libertine, and his thick lips were pressed together petulantly as he glared at Marchey, waiting for him to respond.
Marchey ignored him, checking the room over carefully. There was a full communit at his bedside, probably linked to the pad. Good. The door he had just come through was the only one in or out. He locked it so they wouldn’t be disturbed.