Fathom (Mermaids of Montana #3) - Elsa Jade Page 0,31
mapping the network against her own figure. She could hold her breath and slow this pulse or quicken her breath and move things faster or flex over here—
“Not the whole ship,” Sting cautioned. “Just the data gel.”
She released her hold on the brighter lights and turned her focus to another network—finer also brighter. Command lines, delicate but powerful.
Elation tingled in her. “I see it,” she whispered excitedly. “At least I think I see it.”
“Do you see any nodes where the synapses are thick enough to spare a vial or two?”
In her imagination she traced her fingers across the scintillating lines, seeking spare power. She found a few thin places and smoothed out a few tangles to reinforce them but she needed more…
She came up against a darkness. Not the blood-tinged shadows of her own closed eyes, but blackest obsidian, layers of translucent glass so thick they stopped all light.
“Sting,” she breathed.
“Stop calling me,” he said, his voice even rougher than usual. “I’m not what you’re looking for.”
That blackness was a wall she couldn’t reach around or over. In her mind, she reached out her hands as she’d done with the threads of electric light.
But there was nothing to touch.
“Lana.” His growl this time was a warning she felt in her sternum that reverberated around the cage of her ribs to shiver down her spine, an absence so cold it converted in a sensory overload that turned to fire, burning toward her core… She jerked her wandering hands back to her chest before her fingertips ignited. “What was…?”
“Don’t touch,” he said, the same way she’d warned him. “Find the data gel so you can get rid of me.”
Oh yeah, the mission. She would’ve made a terrible soldier for Tritona or anyone else. But against the obsidian burned into her vision, the paler lines of the electrical nodes stood out more clearly.
She swiveled, her fingers tracing along the invisible line. “There.” She snapped her eyes open, her index finger extended at one otherwise unremarkable drawer.
Not hesitating, Sting strode to the compartment she indicated and triggered it open. Inside the drawer were hundreds of interconnected capsules. He glanced back at her. “Which one?”
She bit her lip. “That one?” When he gently disconnected the capsule and lifted it from its companion, the glow inside was less than her imagination. “Or maybe not?”
When he held up the small, barely flickering capsule, his big fingers made it look even more inconsequential. “It’s been centuries since it was charged, like a mind that is asleep and dreaming.”
With her eyes open, she couldn’t be sure that the flickers of light weren’t a reflection of the ambient ship’s glow off the capsule itself. “Dreaming? Or dead?”
“Find out,” he said. “Wake it.”
She grimaced. “Find out? Not even sure I found it.”
“Like you sent the call, but stronger. Give it what it needs to live.”
“How?” His challenge stung. She wasn’t a warrior like Ridley or leader like Marisol. According to the Tritonesse, she wasn’t even a killing machine like Sting; no, she was something worse. “I can’t…”
He took one step to close the distance between them and thrust the data gel capsule between her interlaced fingers. “Bring it to life,” he demanded. “Use your power to light it up.”
Something twisted deep inside her, a behemoth of panic about to be unearthed. “It’s not my power.”
“Who else’s? It’s in you. Call it.”
The twists of the panic threatened to pull her under. “You showed me how to do the call, but I don’t know this.”
“You want me to show you?”
For a suspended heartbeat, the broken timbre of his voice was a refuge of hidden shadows where she might cling and hide. There might be dangers in those cracks, but for the moment… “Yes,” she whispered.
“As the Tritonyri used to say before they dropped ordinance—fire in the hole.”
Big hands wrapped around hers, with the guttering capsule between them, he leaned across the bare inches of distance between them, and crash landed his mouth on hers.
What…?
For another endless instant, her mind was as blank as the obsidian trap. His mouth on hers was hot and heavy and utterly unmoving, like the weight of a mountain compressing everything underneath. But under that… A volcano. Not breathing for her, but sinking her deeper. If that deep, hidden force found even the barest fault of weakness…
She parted her lips to steal a breath.
The glass around her mind shattered in concentric waves that left her shattered and exposed. She anchored one fist on his harness and yanked higher on