The shakes would just get worse now. The aches, too, leaving him weak and making every movement misery. The bruises left by Two Square’s goons would only add to the pain. But that misery was nothing compared to the panic welling within him. He needed something to get by until his body healed, but now he’d been cut off. How long could he get by before it got so bad his only way out would be—
“Hey.” The woman’s voice again, softer this time, coming from right above him. “Hey, man, can you hear me?”
It took a supreme effort of will, but Nolan managed to open his eyes. The woman crouched over him, a worried look on her face.
“Can you hear me?” she asked again.
“Y-Yeah,” Nolan managed. Forming bruises stiffened his jaw, and the blood filling his mouth garbled the word.
“Good!” Relief diminished the worry in her eyes, softened the furrow in her brow. “You know your name, buddy?” Even as she spoke, she ran a hand over his upper body, poking and prodding at his injuries—much like IAF combat medics. When Nolan didn’t answer, she pressed. “Look, you took some hits to the head. I need you to tell me your name so I know your brain’s fine.”
Nolan swallowed, which only served to make his mouth hurt more. He’d bit his tongue when one of Two Square’s goons kicked him and it still bled freely. Yet around the pain, he managed to mumble his name. “N-Nolan.”
The sound of his name elicited a strange reaction from the woman. Her expression grew curious and she narrowed her eyes. Long seconds passed as she stared hard at him, as if seeing him properly for the first time.
“Nolan…Garrett?” she ventured.
Surprise slithered like ice through Nolan’s veins, freezing every muscle in his body. He sucked in a sharp breath—which turned to a cough as a sharp, stabbing pain in his right side made itself felt. Groaning, he curled up around his injured ribs and tried to breathe through the misery.
Yet there was something about the woman that struck him as familiar. He couldn’t remember what, but her voice, her face, and the way she’d said his name tugged at some faint memory buried deep in his mind. How did she know him?
“Garrett,” the woman repeated, her voice quieter this time. “Warbeast Team, right?”
The name sent a chill down Nolan’s spine. For a moment, every trace of pain faded in the face of paralyzing astonishment. It seemed impossible that anyone in Shimmertown—much less in a filthy alley like this—could possibly know that name. He hadn’t heard it since the day he received his medical discharge papers and bid farewell to the only life he’d ever wanted, and the only place that had truly felt like home.
Yet he hadn’t mistaken it. She had spoken the name. A total stranger knew the call sign for his Silverguard unit. He looked at her closer, forcing his eyes to focus on her features. She wasn’t a total stranger. Something about her face—the strong nose, oval-shaped eyes, the sharp jawline, and the way her eyebrows pulled together when she frowned—felt awfully familiar. He knew her, somehow, but his mind, still reeling from the beating, couldn’t figure out how or from where.
“Aww, shee-it.” The woman dragged out the syllables of the curse. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten me after all this time!” Her voice turned jovial, even a tad wistful. “And here I thought our joint op on Terra Omega would be a lot more memorable.”
The words filtered into Nolan’s pain-numbed mind, and suddenly he remembered how he knew her. “T-Tanis?”
A smile broadened the woman’s face and she winked down at him. “The one and only.”
Despite the pain, Nolan couldn’t stop his jaw from dropping wide open. Tanis Janssen, call sign Cruella De Vil, a Silverguard—former Silverguard, given her presence here—and the best combat medic in the IAF.
She was the one who had saved his life after catching the shrapnel that left his legs paralyzed.
Chapter Two
Too surprised to respond, Nolan could only stare up at the woman. He hadn’t seen Tanis since the incident on Terra Omega. She’d been the last face he’d seen before he blacked out from blood loss and pain. The last person he’d spoken to while he could still walk.
“Damn!” Her grin wavered and a shadow darkened her eyes as she glanced at his injuries. “You’ve seen better days, eh?”
That snapped Nolan from his surprise, replaced it with burning shame. Disgust—at himself—coiled like a serpent in his gut. He knew what he looked like. Filthy, even before Two Square’s guys knocked him into the muck, his ratty, fraying clothing stained with blood and who knew what else from the Bolt Hole shanty where he’d spent the last few nights burning through his last dose of Blitz. His useless legs lay sprawled in the mud, the muscles wasted by inactivity—and the effects of the drug, which consumed the body even as it deadened the mind.
He hadn’t known her well—they’d gone on a handful of missions together, always with Blackguard Team serving as backup to Warbeast Team–but he hated the fact that she, a Silverguard, was seeing him like this. A shattered wreck, the hollow husk of the man he’d been just a year ago. He’d cut off all contact with everyone he knew—everyone from his old life—so they wouldn’t have to see what he’d become. What he’d been reduced to now that his purpose in life had been ripped away.
His gaze fell to the muck-covered floor beneath him. He couldn’t meet Tanis’ eyes, couldn’t see the look he knew would be there. Disappointment, pity, disdain—they all drove a dagger into his gut, and cut far more deeply than even the sharpest Echosteel blade ever could.
“Come on, let’s get you up and back in your chair.” To his surprise, Tanis’ voice held no judgement, condemnation, or pity, only compassion. Righting the knocked-over wheelchair, she moved to wrap her arms under Nolan’s shoulders and lifted him bodily from the mud of the alley. He hissed as a wave of pain coursed through his bruised chest, stomach, back, and sides.
“Damn, when did you Warbeast guys turn into such whiners?” Tanis’ snort echoed loud in Nolan’s ear, accompanied by a grunt of effort as she lowered him into his wheelchair. “It’s just a few bruises and contusions, but nothing broken.”
“Sure feels broken,” Nolan said, his tongue still thick and stinging. The pain, mingled with his surprise at running into Tanis, helped with the cravings. A little. It didn’t totally push back the twitchiness, the nerve-jangling need for something to make him feel better, but if he leaned into the aches of his bruises, he could forget about the urge for a few minutes. At least enough to hide it from Tanis’ combat medic-trained eyes.
“Tough it out, then.” Tanis rolled her eyes and gave a dismissive wave—a big, sweeping gesture, made even more noticeable given her size. That was one thing that had made her immediately memorable to anyone who met her. She stood over six feet tall and was impossibly broad in the back and shoulders, with arms that bulged with far more muscles than any human should possess. She’d even given Erasmus Gull and Darron Askvig, Warbeast Team’s resident heavy gunners and strongmen, a run for their money when hitting the training room. Hauling injured Silverguards and IAF Ironhands in full combat suits had a way of making combat medics strong.