Free Guardian by Jo Anderton Page B

shitload of data, but I can’t trace it—”
    “ —can you hear us, Aladio? Respond!—”
    Aladio? I knew, with utter certainty, that the man in front of me was not Aladio, not any more. I felt strangely thin, different, like a part of me was gone. The parts of Lad I had carried inside of me, since his death.
    Lad staggered back. He stared at me, face pale, the hand that had touched me pressed to his lips.
    “ Aladio!”
    He jerked at the name.
    “That Flare needs to be neutralised, now. Get out of there so we can begin construction.”
    Lad backed out of the room. I held his gaze all the way.
    I started to struggle when the door closed behind him. I scratched at the silex across my lap, thrashed shoulders, kicked legs. I barely moved at all, for all the effort, but the cracks were widening.
    The whirring sound strengthened, and the room began to vibrate. The floor descended until I was propped up on a small, stationary ledge. If only I could unbalance myself, I could have fallen and broken the crystal, but the wires held me in place. I glanced up; the ceiling was moving too, rising to a sharp point.
    Would it really be so terrible, to sleep? No Keeper, no child, no Lad to worry about.
    And after all, when I dreamed, I dreamed of Kichlan.
    Then fluid rushed in through the dozens of pipes in the walls, and the great empty space—that hexagon with a pointed top and bottom—began to fill with liquid.
    “ Lad!” I shouted. “Don’t let them hurt my baby. Promise me, I need you to promise! Keep him safe!”
    Nothing. I squeezed my eyes shut.
    Until the rushing stopped.
    I opened my eyes to sudden quiet. The room felt unnaturally still. I peered to the floor as best I could. Not even a quarter full of that thick, living-crystal liquid. Hardly complete.
    My breathing sounded terribly loud.
    The whirring started up, and the silex began to drain away. The room shuddered, then flattened out again: the ceiling descended, the floor rose. And silence beat hard down on me when it had finished, until the door opened again, and Lad stepped into the room.
    His white coat was splattered with blood, his black pants so drenched they shone in the room’s stark light. He carried a strange metallic object out in front of him, something between a hammer and a wrench. It was bent, and coated in blood. His eyes were haunted. He rubbed a hand across his cheek, left a bloody print. And slowly, ever so slowly, he approached me. Gradually, he raised the wrench.
    “ Lad?” I whispered.
    He stood above me, both hands around the weapon now, and lifted it high above his head.
    “I died for you,” he croaked. His voice was raw.
    I closed my eyes again. “Yes, you did.” And I realised this death was better than eternal sleep, and so much more fitting. Because Lad had died for me, and that was unforgivable. “And I am so sorry.”
    I turned my head away.
    Lad brought the weapon down on the silex that encased my body. Again and again he bashed the wrench against it, until chunks of mineral scattered across the floor, until the entire structure loosened, cracked open, and fell from me.
    I sank back against the pole, my legs too weak to hold me. The Flare leaked from my neck and abdomen, dull, and without enthusiasm.
    Lad threw his weapon away and sank to the floor beside me. He clutched at my pants, crawled closer, and rested his head in my lap. The light from within me brightened his golden hair, and highlighted the crimson blood caught in its curls.
    “ I died for you,” he whispered against my legs. I ran gentle hands over his forehead, through his hair, not knowing what to believe, what to think. “And I remember it now. Other damn you, I remember it.”

10.
     
    Lad scrambled through drawers, stuffing tubes of the silex liquid into a large dark bag. I sat against a screen as the repairing crystal he had worked into the cracks at my neck and waist wove deep and uncomfortable bonds. He had also attached a heavy glass chamber called a