volunteers—trained and untrained—were stretched to the limit.
Tazia fell exhausted on her sleeping bag hours after full dark, some kind person having rolled it out after putting up a tent for her and Stefan. When Stefan came in bare minutes later, his face drawn, and, digging into his duffel, threw her a Psy nutrition bar, she gulped down the tasteless thing. It was only then that she realized she hadn’t eaten since the plane. “Will you be okay?”
“I’ll need at least six hours of sleep to recover to a level where I can continue to shift material.” With that, he threw her another bar, ate four more himself, and went to sleep.
Or she thought he must have. Because she woke with the nutrition bar still in her hand. A glance at the clock showed only five hours had passed. Moving about quietly so as not to wake Stefan, she stuck her feet into her boots and ducked out to use the facilities. Afterward, she rinsed out her mouth with careful use of water, then took a long drink as she finished off the bar. Shower facilities were nonexistent, the well having been crushed in the quake, but the locals had repeatedly cautioned her to make sure she drank enough water to stay strong and hydrated.
Tazia had forgotten how easily the desert sun could sap a person’s strength.
Tankers were on the way and those villagers not involved in attempting to rescue buried survivors were trying to resurrect the well, but until then, personal hygiene had to take a backseat to survival. It was better not to ask Stefan to ’port in more water—he was already being pushed to the edge of his endurance lifting the debris.
Stepping back inside the tent, she found the box of wet wipes she’d grabbed from the little shop next to the Alaris offices and glanced over at Stefan. He hadn’t moved, his breathing steady. Six hours he’d said, and six hours it would be. Turning her back to him, she stripped off the clothing on her upper half, her skin burning at the idea of being near-naked with a man who wasn’t her husband, then quickly wiped herself down as much as possible, before getting into a fresh bra and T-shirt.
Her clean clothing wasn’t going to last, since she’d brought only three changes, but that was a nonissue given the devastation. Tazia had been dirty before, would be again. Putting the used wipes in a plastic bag for later disposal, she placed the box of wipes by Stefan’s duffel so he’d see them when he woke. That done, she grabbed her jacket—dusty and grease streaked from the day before—and went to see what she could do about a damaged generator that was the backup power source for the village’s small medical clinic should its primary generator malfunction.
• • •
Stefan woke after exactly six hours of sleep. Like any trained soldier, he’d been aware of Tazia coming and going, but his mind knew she was no threat, and so he’d continued to sleep. Had it been otherwise, she’d have been immobilized before she realized he’d moved. He might’ve been deemed too psychologically flawed to be an Arrow, an elite black ops soldier, but the training had stuck.
And officially an Arrow or not, the men and women of the squad considered him one of theirs. He’d been given off-the-books training, and still sparred with active-duty Arrows whenever possible, considered them his brethren. No one could sneak up on him even when he slept—but with Tazia, the risk profile was nil.
Violence was simply not part of her nature.
Getting up, he did what needed to be done, then returned to the location of the worst collapse. If he could have, he’d have worked through the night; he knew there were people trapped under that rubble. He’d had to force himself to be logical, to remind himself that he’d be useless to everyone for far longer than six hours if he burned out his psychic abilities.
Now, recharged, he focused on the most unstable section and got to work. He was conscious of Tazia moving around the village, picked up her voice speaking a language that was close enough to the one spoken in this land that she was understood. When she said, “Stefan,” he glanced down.
Her head only just reached his breastbone but he’d never thought of Tazia as small. She had too much inside her to be small—like a storm gathering up its power before it struck.