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But something in him knew. He had better not fucking die.
CHAPTER 47
ALINA
She paced for hours, fueled by copious caffeine pills. So long had she been pacing that surely her slippers would soon be wearing a dent in the floor of the medbay.
It was empty. No one was allowed in, and no one would see her. She could pace and cry and freak out to her heart’s content.
She could even break into Dr. Pertin’s office in hopes of finding some Harmonapam lying around. Of course she didn’t. But when Renza left the operating theater and lit up a joint of hak she couldn’t help but come to him and hold out her hand. He raised a brow at her, looking at her curiously as his apertures widened, then handed her the joint and watched her inhale. When she swallowed down the puff easily, he grunted a wry chuckle.
“Is he alive?”
Renza lifted his chin in an alien nod. “For now.”
Alina sniffed and took another puff before handing the hak back to him, grateful to finally have some relief as it spread through her system. “How much longer?”
“Probably all night. Lesthin is halfway through the extraction. It is… growing complicated.”
“Right.” Alina nodded and pushed herself off the wall.
She continued to pace.
Guttural voices speaking Apthian woke her hours later. She peeled her swollen eyes open and winced at the cramp in her shoulder. She was lying on the floor, curled up against the wall across from the door to the operating theater. In front of her face were two pairs of massive black boots. She followed them up to long legs and alien bodies.
Renza and the medic were talking quietly before her. She swallowed the dry needles in her mouth and strained her ears.
“…tell her… when… in case.” Renza was saying.
“Rest… too stimulated, “the medic said in a disagreeing tone.
“Tell me what?” Alina croaked, pushing herself up despite her frozen aching joints. A thermal blanket fell away as she rose, which someone must have put over her at some point.
The uhyre looked down at her, medic sighing and Renza crossing his arms on his chest.
“He is awake.”
Alina jumped to her feet, ignoring the protest of her body. “And? Did it work?”
Renza’s cheeks hollowed as he brought a joint of hak to his mouth and sucked a sharp puff. He considered her closely. “We are about to find out.”
Alina nodded, getting the message. She turned to go into the room when the medic stayed her with a firm hand on the shoulder. “Take it easy.”
Alina didn’t even know how to do that exactly. She had no idea what to expect out of whatever was in that room. Testing Threxin’s new NS was the last thing she cared about right then. She just needed to see him alive and breathing.
She shrugged off the uhyre’s hand, entering the room.
The machinery at his side began to beep rapidly when she walked through the door.
“The pulse,” Lesthin muttered behind her as he and Renza followed her in. He didn’t sound pleased.
He saw something in her face that made the machines scream louder until Threxin thrust out a wire-covered arm and hit the equipment, electric circuits sizzling into silence.
Alina stopped dead in her tracks, breath catching in her throat.
Shit.
He got mad about a few beeps, and he acted on it. Nothing stopped him.
