High Flyer - Michelle Diener Page 0,65
a hand on her shoulder. “You're so pale. You look worse than you did yesterday. Save the medication for your foot.”
She shook her head as she rose up with what she needed for his side. “My foot's fine.” She inclined her head toward the ruin, visible through the open doorway. “That's what's making me feel bad.”
He frowned at her. “The ruin?”
She leaned closer to him, put her lips near his ear. “What's under it. The engine.”
He pulled back, eyes wide, although he kept his arm in a hard band around her waist, anchoring her to him. “You can hear it?”
“I can't hear it, but I can feel it.” She swallowed audibly and touched her fingers to his chest, drummed out the timing. “It reaches right in and makes me sick.”
“How?” He caught her fingers in his.
“The same way I could feel where that tracker was in your back. The same way I can hear runners coming from miles away. The same way I can fly like I'm one with the machine.” She turned her face away from his, unable to look at him. “Because I am one with the machine.”
“Whatever you're thinking, whatever you believe about yourself, don't make the mistake of thinking for a moment it's going to change how I feel about you, Hana.” Iver grabbed her chin between his fingers and tipped her face up to his. “I already knew some of what you've just told me and it didn't stop me for a second.”
She gave a nod and then tried to eke out a smile. “We should probably have talked about this yesterday morning, uh, before things got a little heated between us.
“We're talking about it now.”
She heard the implacability in his voice, and shot him a genuine grin. “Understood. No straying from the topic.” She gave a Themis military salute and then lifted his shirt, juggling the medical supplies in one hand.
He kept his gaze on her and she sighed.
“It's hard to talk about because I don't fully understand it myself. That's why I was planning to spend a couple of days in the Spikes. I was going to look for answers, seeing as this is where I changed.” She admired his chest as he finally shrugged out of his shirt, and then got down to applying the cooling gel to his ribs.
He closed his eyes in relief. “How? When?”
“During the war, I crash-landed in the Spikes. I went down deeper than where we are now. I was piloting a Dynastra, flying out to fetch a team of soldiers retreating from their position, and I was the only one onboard. There was a sudden storm, one of those ones that just blow up out of nowhere in the Spikes, and I had to veer off course. I hit a dead zone. I'd had to fly lower than usual because of the storm, and I flew straight into it. I fought to get the engines started again, but I got caught in a downdraft and went down like a stone.” She applied the wrap band to Iver's chest as she spoke, and as soon as the two ends were joined together it expanded and then settled across his ribs.
He took what she guessed was his first deep breath since yesterday.
“I don't think I've ever heard of anyone encountering a dead zone at that altitude.” He tilted his head toward the ruin. “It wasn't . . .?”
She leaned back against the doorjamb and crossed one ankle over the other, closed her eyes and tipped back her head, enjoying the sun warming her eyelids and cheeks. “Maybe. It's crossed my mind a few times since I arrived here.”
“It would explain how your engines cut out, even above the mountain tops.” Iver pulled his shirt back on. “What happened next?”
“At the time, I thought I was dead. I remember the crash, remember seeing the Dynastra was on fire, and I crawled out of it.” She finally lifted her gaze to his. “And then, I don't remember. I sometimes think there was a necklace of silver beads. That it was wrapped around my wrist, across my palm, like I'd grabbed it up off the ground as I was crawling away. The next thing I remember, I was awake, the Dynastra was still burning, but I was feeling better, and I got up and started walking. A rescue team found me a couple of hours later.”
“The military never went back to find your runner?”
She shook her head. “I told them it