Free Powerless by S.A. McAuley Page B

conversations both remembered and created in my dreams—that were even more achingly tangible in the daylight.
    Sleep became the place where I lived, where I continued that fruitless search night after night. Seeing the face of every person I’d ever killed, my vision sweeping past their bloodied forms without care, because none of them were Armise.
    No matter how much I sought him out, those blue-silver eyes were elusive. I could no longer feel his presence, and the lack of what should have been spectral—surreal and untethered to reality, yet so real to me—was jarring. I hadn’t realised how much I’d pinned my own existence to his until he wasn’t with me anymore.
    And when I awoke, I would push it, push all thoughts of him away. Burying his absence under my singed skin, under the ripped flesh, under the tattered muscle and snapped tendons. Sliding the latent echo of his fingertips so deeply inside me that it was caged under my skeleton—the only part of me that was nearly whole. The only part of me that was still strong enough to contain those memories.
    The Armise I knew never would have left me. Not in this state. Not in this place. But I could no longer deny that he was gone.
    The only word I conjured was betrayal.
    Each night I swore that tonight would be the first time I would forget him.
    Each night I spent chasing his ghost tore me down further and further.
    So I stopped sleeping.
    If I didn’t sleep then I didn’t have to think about him. To remember him. To wonder where he was or why he’d left.
    At least Simion didn’t sleep much anymore either.
    * * * *
    “Neveed is coming to see you both tomorrow,” Feliu stated calmly, as he emptied another vial of futile surge into Simion’s bloodstream.
    My head snapped up. We had been in the medical facility for almost two months now, and if Neveed was coming then a decision had been made about Simion’s and my abilities to continue on as soldiers for the cause. And although I was relatively certain there was a chance for me, I couldn’t imagine a scenario in which Simion would be allowed to go back on active duty as a part of my team or the President’s personal guard. The synth he’d received after the DCR was one thing. The risk of a possibly compromised brain was quite another. And it didn’t matter how ineffective his brain was, there was too much stored in there for him to not be a part of the Revolution and still be allowed to live.
    I glared at Feliu. “What’s going to happen to us now?”
    Feliu looked up at where I stood next to Simion’s bed. “There are other procedures I can do now that you’re both stronger. You get better and you go back into active service.”
    “And what if we don’t?” Simion asked.
    “ You will,” Feliu answered without breaking eye contact with me.
    I could hear the inflection in Feliu’s voice. He was talking to me, not Simion. My heartbeat sped.
    I searched Simion’s face. His eyes were clear, mind sharp, completely free of the dullness and incoherent fog he’d fought through in the weeks after emerging from his coma. But I’d been able to glean enough information from my conversations with Feliu to know that he was concerned about the lingering effects of Simion’s brain injury.
    I could see the fear in Simion’s eyes as the same realisation dawned—he was a liability. And we both had intimate, insider knowledge of how liabilities were dealt with.
    I was going to be tasked with recovery, so I could fight once more. But Simion… He knew too much to just be left to become a civilian again.
    I had to protect him and I couldn’t do that here.
    I grasped Simion’s biceps. “It’s time to go, Sims.”
    “What? No,” Feliu sputtered, standing. “Merq, I can’t let you walk out of here.”
    “You will. Come on,” I urged Simion.
    Feliu stepped in front me, blocking my path. Completely ineffectively, but his intent unquestionable.
    “I don’t want to hurt you, doc. You’ve been good to both