Gears of War: Jacinto’s Remnant Read Free Page B

someone was swimming.
    I’m not alone. God, I’m not alone. It’s Sorrens. He made it .
    Bernie took a few breaths and gathered her strength to sit up as best she could and take a look. Before she did, she tried calling Control again.
    “Control, this is Mataki, requesting immediate extraction. My position is the Allfathers Library roof.” She could still hear the splashing. It was getting closer. “Control, come in …”
    The splashing stopped.
    Bernie raised her head and looked down at the sea. Now that she was facing away from Jacinto’s death throes, the seascape simply looked stormy, the drifting smoke more like dark clouds than the end of urban society. She couldn’t see anyone in the water—nobody alive, anyway.
    “Sorrens?”
    She couldn’t ignore what she’d heard. She tugged on the line to make sure it was secure, then tied the other end around her waist like a safety line. She was losing body heat, she reminded herself, and there was a cold night ahead, so any survivors would stand a better chance if they huddled together. Braking her slide with her heels, she edged down to the top of the wall again, wondering how she’d haul him inboard. The sea looked almost solid, like churning, oily lumps rather than water. She strained to see a head bobbing between waves. Nothing.
    Then the water erupted.
    A body burst through the surface like a porpoise breaching. She sucked in a breath, jerking back, because it wasn’t Sorrens, and it took her a second in her exhausted state to register that fact. She was face -to-face with a Locust drone, a big gray bastard of a grub. It could swim. It should have been dead. It wasn’t. It scrambled for the wall, her wall, her safe haven.
    “Shit,” she said, and reached for the knife in her boot.
    KING RAVEN KR-239,
    EN ROUTE TO PORT FARRALL.
    The comms link crackled in Dominic Santiago’s earpiece. “KR -Two-Three-Nine to Control. Are you receiving that signal?”
    Oh shit oh shit oh shit, did I do it? Oh God, I did it, I killed her. I killed her . Dom could hear the chatter between the two Raven pilots, but it was just noise, words, sounds without meaning. His body was carrying on without him; he felt like he was coming around from an anesthetic. Whatever instinct had held him together during the mission was now wearing off, leaving behind it a paralyzing horror that drove out everything else except the sheer choking pain from that last look into her eyes. I killed Maria. I killed my own fucking wife. It couldn’t have been her, could it? Did I really do it? Oh God oh God oh God, how am I going to breathe again—
    “Roger that, Two-Three-Nine. It’s Mataki. We lost the signal, but she’s somewhere on the Allfathers’ roof.”
    “We’re low on fuel.”
    “Okay, we’re just calculating which KR can get back to her—”
    Marcus’s voice cut in. “Control, I’m up for it. If Sorotki thinks he can make it.”
    “And if not?” Sorotki said.
    “Then drop me off and I’ll frigging swim back for her.” It wasn’t a growl. Marcus just sounded exhausted.
    “Baird, you got any objections?”
    Baird must have shaken his head, because Dom didn’t hear a reply. The guy always came back with some smart-ass retort about Mataki. But not this time.
    “Just so you understand,” Sorotki said, “we don’t have the fuel for anything fancy. We just winch her clear and go, okay? We’ll be flying back on vapor as it is. Hey, Mitchell, quit the sightseeing and get your ass back here. Crunch me some numbers.”
    “On my way.” The co -pilot abandoned the aerial recon and stowed the camera. “Mataki punched out Baird. We’ve got to rescue her, so she can do it again.”
    Marcus put his hand on Dom’s shoulder. “Hey … you with us?”
    “Yeah. Yeah, let’s do it.” The words were out of Dom’s mouth before he could think. Shit, he couldn’t think. There was a loop playing in his brain now, over and over, disjointed but agonizingly vivid, and it wouldn’t