But the monster was dead, and that was all that mattered.
Exhausted and losing blood fast, she stumbled into a wall herself, using it for support as she slid down to the floor. She clutched at her wound, trying fruitlessly to staunch the bleeding. Suddenly she felt cold. Very cold.
Epilogue
Military Hospital
North of Milan
Afro-European Alliance
Sunday 3 May 2725
DAY 14
Reality came back slowly, but as usual it was a jarring shock. People said it got easier with experience, but truth be told, it never did. One just got better at tolerating it, learning to wait the process out without trying to fight it.
Toscano had lost track of how many times her body had experienced this gut-wrenching emergence from a nano-coma, but she knew that since drugtox had become an inevitability it had got worse. Her stomach heaved and she was blessedly grateful that there was nothing inside it. She dry-retched, but mercifully her body was too weak for it to last long, and the nausea settled back down to a manageable level. And then the pounding headache came right on schedule.
‘I would express my sympathies, but frankly, it does seem well deserved,’ said a familiar voice, distracting her from the sensation of her nerve endings dancing in fire.
Toscano opened her eyes and waited for a few seconds until they focused. She was surrounded by bright, fluorescent light and white sterile walls. Definitely not Olympus.
She was the only patient in the small room, and there was a man sitting next to her hospital bed. Her vocal cords and her tongue weren’t up to the task yet, so she tried a weak smile instead.
Larsen smiled back. He was back in his work-day black uniform with dark blue trimmings, usually worn by Elite officers while on duty at MIS HQ, and the rank insignia of a colonel decorated his epaulettes. There was also a nano-dressing on his wrist where his old BCC had been re-inserted, identifying him yet again as Colonel Mathias Larsen.
‘Colonel…’ Toscano croaked, forgetting her promise not to rush her body’s waking-up process. It was good to see him back in uniform, with the rank he had earned and deserved. His face still looked like that of DCI Gonzalez, but even there, subtle changes were noticeable where his original features had started reasserting themselves. The nano-transformation that would give him back his old face had already begun, and it would run its natural course in a few weeks, causing no discomfort. Unlike the partial transformation he had subjected his arm to when trying to hack Wagner’s comp.
‘What…’ she tried again. Her hand, resting by her side, moved feebly, as if to investigate the abdominal wound. But there was no wound there. There wasn’t even a dressing left. ‘How…’
‘Shh,’ he rebuked her gently. ‘No talking yet.’ He placed a straw between her lips and she sucked up a small amount of lukewarm water. The act of trying to swallow nearly brought tears to her eyes. Her throat felt as if someone had scraped it raw with sandpaper, but the moisture made it feel better. All those nano-meds and she still felt as if an old-fashioned tractor had been rammed into her.
‘How long?’ she croaked a little bit more firmly.
Larsen sighed. ‘Will you stop trying to talk for now? I’m not going anywhere, and I swear I’ll answer all your questions.’
Toscano felt her cheeks try to blush, though no colour appeared on her ghost-white skin.
I’m alive.
‘Almost three days,’ Larsen said when it became clear that Toscano had given up trying to speak. For a second, he hesitated, but then with a small shrug he reached out and took her hand in his.
Almost three days? That explains why there’s no wound. That was some epically long nano-coma. She giggled inside, but then sobered as her memories started rearranging themselves.
‘How?’ she demanded.
‘Will you shut the fuck up?’ Larsen demanded just as forcefully, though his eyes danced in joy that she was bouncing back so well. Toscano felt her lips curl in a mischievous smile, but this time she obeyed.
‘Sergeant Kaal saved your ass. The doctors in the hospital weren’t impressed with his crude improvisations. They said something about damn antiquated barbarians and nano-glue, but they do admit he’s the reason you’re still alive. He and Al-Qadir got to you just before you bled to death, though you were so far gone it’s a miracle there’s no brain damage from hypoxia. They carried you to the hangar and used one of the Moebiuses. Ferreira piloted the Chimera; I think he invented some new swear words when the time came to land it solo. Everyone on board was fine.’
The mischief left her eyes as her semi-awake brain processed the information.
‘You could have died,’ Larsen added as an afterthought.
Rich, coming from you, an angry voice in the back of her head chimed in. But deep down she knew the difference. The need for revenge had blinded her; she could have died for no good reason. Wagner was dead anyway. And if it weren’t for Kaal and his friend, she would be dead too.
Her eyes narrowed in thought. Did Kaal decide to save her on his own or did Larsen order him to?
‘Sorry,’ she croaked. ‘I had to…’
Larsen gave her a stern look and held her eyes for a few heartbeats. At a hospital bed with Toscano barely conscious wasn’t the most ideal scenario for dealing with all this. Part of him knew it was a lost proposition to have her see common sense on that one, but he wasn’t about to give up without a fight.
‘You’re one of the best operatives I have ever mentored, and you’re one of the best pilots the Alliance has. Choosing wilfully to throw all that away on a quest for revenge is one of the dumbest things I’ve seen you do. Wagner was not going to live. We had dozens of ways of killing him without you bleeding out in the process.’
‘Not… same…’
‘I don’t remember
