Power (Dark Anomaly #2) - Marina Simcoe Page 0,86

into the screen, lowering the padded bunk to the ground.

“Nadia,” Vrateus said carefully as he helped me heave Wyck’s body onto the padded surface. “He has no pulse, no detectable breathing.”

“It may be too late,” Svetlana added softly.

I realized that. My brain—the logical part of it—understood it all, but my heart wouldn’t accept it.

“Well, let’s hurry then,” I mumbled stubbornly, swiping the commands on the screen.

The bunk-gurney slid back up along the wall, lifting Wyck with it. A clear rounded canopy descended over him, its edges fusing with the perimeter of the gurney.

“A patient detected. Species errock. Male. Please confirm,” a metallic voice demanded impassively.

“Yes!” I yelled. “Help him!”

“Assessing...” the voice continued. “The patient is clinically dead.”

Blinking the rushing tears away, I frantically swiped though more commands, trying to remember everything I’d been taught during training. The medical capsule was Lee’s area of expertise. The rest of us had only gone through the basic steps of operating it in case of an emergency. No one could’ve imagined back then what exactly the emergency would be.

“Select ‘resuscitate,’” Svetlana came to my assistance, reading the commands for me as the words and letters on the panel merged into a blur in front of my eyes—the fog of tears obstructing my vision. “Then ‘life support.’”

“Right.” I wiped at the tears with my sleeve, entering the series of commands as she kept reading them to me.

Tubes and probes launched into motion inside the capsule, prodding and sliding along Wyck’s body. Two slim tubes snaked into his nostrils. One slipped between his lips and into his mouth.

“Tissue and organ damage detected,” came from the machine. “Recommendation—repair the physical damage while on full life support, before the following functions of the body can be fully restored.”

A list scrolled down the screen, and I glanced at Svetlana, unable to focus enough to read it.

“Yes.” She nodded. “Repair the damage.”

“Please confirm the voice command,” the machine demanded.

“Do it!” I punched the screen buttons to confirm. “Just do it, dammit!”

Svetlana gripped my shoulders from behind as I sobbed, my hands splayed on the glass of the capsule.

The metal tools hovered in a cluster over Wyck’s gaping chest wound. Some clamped onto the rugged edges of it, holding it open, while hair-thin wires descended inside.

Several agonising moments that felt more like centuries passed while the robotics did their work. I moved my gaze from them to Wyck’s face.

The warm glow had disappeared from his skin, making it look dull and ashen. Droplets of blood dried on his cheeks, a few clinging to the lips I loved kissing so much.

“Please, please, please...” I prayed to every deity out there. “Don’t take him from me. He’s all I’ve got. He is my everything.”

Most of the tools withdrew. A few were still working on the skin around the wound. The muscles underneath it had been fused together. A dozen tiny pincers pulled the cleaned edges of the skin to each other. Then, a healing ray sealed the wound, the sides of it knitting together into a flat, pale scar.

Wyck’s chest rose with an inhale but I kept the hope at bay. In full life-support mode, the machine was doing the breathing for him, as it did everything else at the moment.

“How is he?” I croaked, my throat dry and painful.

“What’s the patient’s status?” Svetlana asked in a much stronger, clearer voice than mine.

“The patient has been resuscitated and stabilized,” the life-saving machine replied impassively.

“What is his prognosis?” She squeezed my shoulders in a reassuring gesture.

“Undetermined.”

“Why?” I cried out.

Wrapping her arms around me, Svetlana held me closer.

“How long until you can determine it?” she asked the machine.

“Approximately twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”

Svetlana’s chest rose with a sigh, pushing against my back as she kept hugging me from behind.

“All we can do is wait,” Vrateus said somberly, standing next to us.

Svetlana rubbed my arms gently.

“He’ll be okay.”

I nodded, drawing in a tight breath.

Wyck had to be okay. He needed to get better. Because without him, my life had no meaning on the Dark Anomaly or beyond.

Chapter 22

“DID YOU SLEEP OUT HERE again?” Svetlana asked, entering the common area with a mug of coffee in her hand.

I hadn’t moved our mattress back to Wyck’s and my cabin yet. The evidence of my spending yet another night on the floor under the medical capsule was right there for her to see.

“I don’t want to miss any changes,” I mumbled, drawing circles with my finger on the smooth surface of the glass canopy.

It was the second day of Wyck