Terminal Point Read Free

“He does okay work for being such an obnoxious pain in the ass.”
    â€œI’ll take that as a compliment because I’m not arguing with someone in your current state.” Jason eyed her. “You should lie down, Threnody.”
    With Jason’s help, Threnody once again stretched out on the row of seats that was her berth, wrapped securely in thermal blankets and modified harness straps to keep her stable. Once Jason saw to Threnody, he headed over to Lucas, picking up a hypospray half-full of nanites from a case as he moved through the cargo bay. They couldn’t afford weakness, and all of them were damaged in some way. Recovery was going to be slow for some, quicker for others, but even Jason knew that if they wanted to survive what was coming, they would need Lucas at full strength.
    â€œGet the bleeding stopped,” Lucas said as he sat down beside Samantha and let Jason inject him in the throat with a dosage of nanites. “The rest will keep.”
    Jason braced himself over Lucas with one hand, his other curving carefully over the left side of Lucas’s skull, pale blond hair beneath his fingers a dirty mess. Jason closed his eyes, bent his head, and let his power seep into Lucas’s skull. Down through the blood-brain barrier, down to the dura mater, into the brain itself with its swollen tear, just a few centimeters long. Jason could feel where Lucas had picked at it telekinetically, struggling to ease the pressure there with a power that couldn’t compete with the one Jason now wielded.
    â€œMessy,” Jason muttered.
    â€œI don’t need your opinion on how I keep myself alive.”
    Jason dug his fingernails into Lucas’s scalp. “Be still.”
    Jason saw capillaries and cell structure, flash images of hemoglobin and plasma, as he worked through nanites to carefully reattach torn capillaries. Blood flow returned and the swollen tension in the cells around the area began to fade. Jason spread his microtelekinesis through Lucas’s skull, helping the nanites chase down stray blood cells that were shifting into clots and teleporting them out of Lucas’s body. Tiny drops of red splattered intermittently to the shuttle’s deck until Jason was certain he’d done enough to ensure that Lucas wouldn’t keel over and die from an aneurysm right when they needed him most.
    Jason retracted his power, opening his eyes. The layers in the world wavered and it took effort to fix his vision. He wondered if he would ever get used to this, to the way he could see things, feel things, through his power.
    â€œI never wanted to be this.”
    â€œThis is what you were born to be,” Lucas said, satisfaction curling through his voice. “I’m not the only one the world needs.”
    Jason’s answer to that was a twisted smile that reminded Lucas of Kristen. Lucas found little comfort in the expression. They stared at each other for a moment, the only sounds in the cargo bay the quiet hum of the environmental system and everyone’s soft breathing.
    â€œYou’re awake” came Matron’s rough voice a few seconds later. She stood in the open hatch with her arms crossed over her chest, tapping her foot. “Get your ass up here, Jason. Novak needs some help with the hack.”
    Jason straightened up, but didn’t move. Lucas smiled tightly at him. “Go.”
    â€œAll right.” Jason left the cargo bay for the flight deck.
    â€œHow come you’re the only one not bleeding out their eyes?” Matron asked as he took over the navigator’s seat.
    Jason reached for a wire embedded in the controls. “I don’t know.”
    His fingers brushed over faint flecks of blood on the console, his power momentarily slipping free of his control. It seeped into the blood, and the only DNA he could identify in the fluid was Lucas’s. He grimaced, clenching down hard on his control.
    The world looked, and felt,