The two of them found themselves in a white corridor splattered with blood a heartbeat later, two nurses and a doctor working on the man who lay on the floor, his skin pale and his white shirt saturated with red where it hadn’t been cut away by the medical personnel. “No.” It was a keening whisper.
Dropping to her knees, she found his bloodied hand, gripped it. “No.” You don’t get to go. You don’t get to leave me alone.
There was no answer from the one person who had never let her down.
“We need to get him into the OR!” The doctor looked up. “Vasic, teleport him in.”
That quickly, Aden’s touch was gone from her hand, the medics ’ported away with him. Kneeling on the floor staring at the red on her palm, Zaira felt the rage inside her rise in a murderous wave. She got slowly to her feet, and by the time Vasic returned, she was heading toward Abbot, the younger Tk standing shell-shocked in the hallway.
“I need to get Judd,” Vasic said. “He may be able to do what the medics can’t.”
Zaira heard him through the rage. She didn’t know Judd well, had believed him another Tk. Clearly, he was something more. Vasic was gone on the next breath, and all she wanted to do was annihilate the person who had hurt Aden.
* * *
VASIC couldn’t teleport to Judd, not with the way the other man’s shields were structured, so he did the next best thing: got himself to SnowDancer territory, then called Judd. “Aden’s hit. Dying.”
Judd asked for a telepathic visual and, using it, teleported himself to Vasic’s side, his face set in harsh lines. “What can I do?”
Taking him back to the operating room, Vasic watched the Tk-Cell move in to attempt to repair the damage to Aden’s artery and veins. It was so severe the medics couldn’t plug the hole—Vasic had heard one doctor use the word “shredded,” and from what Vasic had seen, the bullet had been designed to cause maximum damage.
Judd might not be able to do much, either, his ability to move the cells of the body a slow and careful process that might not beat the ticking clock on Aden’s life. But each time the monitor beeped, it meant Aden was alive.
Vasic listened to that monitor for too long.
By the time he realized he hadn’t told Zaira what was happening and went back out into the corridor, she was gone.
PSYNET BEACON: BREAKING NEWS
Aden Kai has been shot. Unconfirmed reports are coming in from those who witnessed the shooting. All state it was a killing hit.
“His jugular was torn wide open, or more likely his carotid, maybe both,” one witness stated. “Look at all the blood on the grass. It just gushed out.”
“No one can survive that,” said a medic who was on his way to a shift at a nearby clinic at the time of the shooting. “He’s dead.”
The Beacon is attempting to make contact with the squad for verification.
Chapter 76
ABBOT HADN’T WANTED to leave Zaira alone in the leafy and sunshine-laden park where Aden had been shot, but she gave him no choice. “You need to cover Aden’s security shift in the valley. Go.”
The younger Arrow hesitated, his sea blue eyes scanning the people who’d drawn back from the center of the scene at their arrival. “You’re not safe here alone.”
That was what she was counting on. “I’m giving you a direct order.”
“Yes, sir.”
Staring at the blood on the grass after he left, Zaira crouched down to touch her fingers to it. It was still wet, the speed of events fast enough that the inevitable gawkers hadn’t stepped close enough to contaminate the scene. Driven by rage, her first thought had been to track the shooter, but then she’d realized there was an easier way. If this individual had shot Aden in broad daylight, then he or she was brazen enough to try again. A second public attack on an Arrow would cement the conspirators’ point that no one was safe.
So she’d give them an easy target.
Only Zaira didn’t play by the same rules as Aden. She didn’t only do surface telepathic scans as she waited while ostensibly checking the evidence; she went as deep as she possibly could without causing damage or alerting her targets. Part of her was still thinking, still able to remember that if she smashed the shields of blameless people, it would undo all the work Aden had done to place the Arrows in a position where the public didn’t fear them so much that they sought to hunt them out of existence.
We can protect ourselves, but what of the Carolinas, the Tavishes, and the other children we don’t even know about yet? If people start to fear Arrows, it’s a short step to start eliminating those who might grow up into Arrows.