I turned in my chair, gesturing for her to get her ass out of here - she was making things worse, not better - and she backed to the shadows. Stiff and angry, she leaned against a dresser with her arms crossed. I could see her frown even in the dark. The mirror showed her back, making it look like there were two of her. Someone had draped a bit of ribbon over the top to drape down in a smooth arc over the glass, and I realized Ceri had been here before she had gone to pray. She had gone to pray - walked all the way to the basilica to do it - and I hadn't taken this seriously.
The distance Dr. Anders put between us seemed to satisfy Quen, and his clenched body slowly relaxed as the jerks of his coughing eased and stopped. I felt helpless, and tension drew my back into an ache. Why does he want me here seeing this? "Gee, Quen, I didn't know you cared," I said, and he smiled, making his stress wrinkles all fold in together.
"I don't. But I meant it about the bureaucrats." He stared at the ceiling, taking three careful, rattling breaths. My panic stirred, settling in a familiar place in my soul. I've heard this sound before.
His eyes closed, and I jerked forward. "Quen!" I shouted, then felt stupid when his lids flew open and focused on me with an eerie intensity.
"Just resting my eyes," he said, amused by my fear. "I have a few hours. I can feel things faltering, and I have at least that long." His gaze lingered on my neck, then rose. "Having trouble with your roommate?"
I refused to cover my bites, but it was hard. "Wake-up call," I said. "Sometimes it takes a two-by-four across your head to realize what you want isn't what you'll end up with if you get it."
His head barely shifted. "Good." He took a slow breath. "You're a safer person to be around now. Very good."
Dr. Anders shifted position to remind me she was listening. Frustrated, I leaned closer until the new skin on my bites pulled, smelling pine and sun under the medicinal smells of alcohol and adhesive tape. I glanced at Dr. Anders, then asked him, "Why am I here?"
Quen's eyes opened wider and he turned his head to see me, hesitating as he stifled the urge to cough. "Not 'What did you do to get like this'?" he asked.
I shrugged. "I already asked that, and you got all nasty, so I thought I'd go with something else."
Closing his eyes again, Quen simply breathed, slow and labored. "I already told you why I asked you here."
The bureaucrat thing? "Okay," I said, wanting to take his hand to give him strength, but I felt funny about it, as if he would think I pitied him. That would just tick him off. "Then tell me what you did to yourself."
He took a ragged breath, then held it. "Something I had to," he said on the exhale.
Nice. Just peachy. "So I'm just here to hold your hand while you die?" I said, frustrated.
"Something like that."
I looked at his hand, not ready to take it. Awkwardly I scooted closer, the chair bumping over the low wooden mat. "Least you have good music," I muttered, and the creases in his face eased slightly.
"You like Takata?" he said.
"What's not to like?" Jaw clenched, I listened to Quen breathe. It sounded wet, like he was drowning. Agitated, I looked at his hand, then the journal on the bedside. "Should I read something?" I asked, wanting to know why I was here. I couldn't just up and leave. Why in hell was Quen doing this to me?
Quen started to chuckle, cutting it short to take three slow breaths until they evened out again. "No. You've watched death come slowly before, haven't you."
Thoughts of my dad surfaced, the cold hospital room and his thin, pale hand in mine as he fought for breath, his body not as strong as his will. Then Peter as he gasped his last, his body shuddering in my arms as it finally gave up and freed his soul. Tears pricked and a familiar grief stained my thoughts, and I knew I'd done the same with Kisten, too, though I didn't remember it. Damn it back to the Turn. "Once or twice," I said.
His eyes met mine, riveting in their gleam. "I won't apologize for being selfish."
"I'm not worried about that." I really wanted to know why he'd asked me here if he didn't want to tell me anything. No, I thought abruptly, feeling my face lose all expression. It's not that he doesn't want to tell me something but that he promised Trent he wouldn't.
Stiffening on the cool leather chair, I leaned forward. Quen sharpened the focus of his gaze, as if he recognized I'd figured it out. Fully aware of Dr. Anders behind me, I mouthed, "What is it?"
But Quen only smiled. "You're thinking," he said, almost breathing it. "Good." His smile softened his pained features, making him look almost fatherly. "I can't. I promised my Sa'han," he said, and I pushed myself into the back of the chair, disgusted and feeling the bump of my bag behind me. Stupid elf morals. He could kill a person, but he couldn't break his word.
"I have to ask the right question?" I said, and he shook his head.
"There is no question. There is only what you see."
Oh, God. Wise-old-man crap. I hated it when they did that. But I tensed when Quen's breathing became labored over the sound of the faint music. My pulse quickened, and I looked at the hospital equipment, silent and dark. "You need to be quiet for a while," I said, agitated. "You're wasting your strength."
A shadow against the gray of the sheets, Quen held himself still, concentrating on keeping his lungs moving. "Thanks for coming," he said, his gravelly voice thin. "I probably won't last long, and I appreciate you dealing with Trenton trying to cope afterward. He's having a hard...time."
"No problem." I reached out and felt his forehead. It was hot, but I wasn't going to offer him the sippy-straw cup on the table unless he asked. He had his pride. His pox scars stood out, and I did take the antiseptic wipe that Dr. Anders silently gave me, dabbing his forehead and neck until he scowled.
"Rachel," he said, pushing my hand away, "since you're here, I want to ask you a favor."
"What?" I asked, then turned to the door as the music rose when Trent entered. Dr. Anders went to tattle on me, and the music faded as the door shut and the light vanished.
Quen's eye twitched, telling me he knew Trent was here. He took a careful breath, then, softly so he wouldn't cough, he said, "If I fail, will you take my position as head of security?"
My jaw dropped, and I pulled away. "Oh, hell no," I said, and Quen's smile widened even as his eyes shut to hide that unsettling seeing-around-corners glint.
Trent came up beside me. I could sense his irritation at me for not waiting for him, and under that, his gratitude that someone, even if it was me, had been with Quen.
"I didn't think you would," Quen said. "But I had to ask." His eyes opened to fix on Trent beside me. "I had someone else lined up if you said no. Can I at least get you to promise to help him when he needs it?"
Trent shifted from foot to foot as his tension looked for an outlet. I went to say no, and Quen added, "From time to time, if the money is right and it doesn't compromise your morals."
The scent of silk and other people's perfume grew stronger as Trent became more upset. I glanced at his frustrated worry, then back to Quen struggling to take another breath. "I'll think about it," I said. "But I'm just as likely to haul his ass in."
Quen's eyes closed in acknowledgment and his hand rolled palm-up in invitation. My eyes pricked again. Shit. Shit. Shit. He was slipping. His need for support had surmounted his pride. I hated this. I hated it!
Hand shaking, I slipped my warm fingers into his cool grip, feeling his fingers tighten about mine. My throat closed, and I angrily wiped at my eye. Damn it all to hell.
Quen's posture eased, and his breathing evened out. It was the oldest magic in the universe, the magic of compassion.
Dr. Anders began to pace from the window to the dresser. "It wasn't ready," she muttered. "I told him it wasn't ready. The blending had only a thirty percent success rate, and the linkages were weak at best. This wasn't my fault! He should have waited!"
Quen squeezed my hand, and his face crinkled in what I recognized as a smile. He thought she was funny.
Trent left the sunken area, and I relaxed. "No one is blaming you," Trent said, a hand on her arm in solace. He hesitated, then said without emotion, "Why don't you wait outside."
Surprised, I turned to see her indignant shock. "Oh, she's pissed," I whispered so Quen would know, getting my fingers squeezed in return. But I think she heard me, too, since she stared at me with a prune face for an entire three seconds, fumbling for words before she turned on a heel. Pace stiff, she went to the door. There was a flush of drums and light, then the soft smothering of darkness returned. Takata's base thrummed through it like a pulse.
Trent stepped into the lowered pit of Quen's bedroom. In a fast motion of anger, he shoved a piece of expensive equipment off a low cart. The noise of it hitting the floor shocked me as much as his unexpected show of frustrated anger, and I stared as he sat down where it had been to put his elbows on his knees and drop his head into his cupped hands. Trent had once sat and watched his father die, too.
I felt my face blank as I saw him raw and stripped down to the pain in his soul. He was young, afraid, and watching yet another person who had raised him dying. All his power, wealth, privilege, and illegal bio labs couldn't stop it. He wasn't used to being helpless, and it tore at him.
Quen's eyes had opened at the crash, and I found them waiting for me when I turned to him. "This is why you're here," he said, confusing me. Quen's attention slid to Trent, then back to me. "Trent's a good man," he said as if he wasn't sitting right there. "But he's a businessman, living and dying by numbers and percentages. He's got me in the ground already. Fighting this with him is a losing battle. You believe in the eleven percent, Rachel." He took an arduous breath, his lungs moving in an exaggerated motion. "I need that."
The long speech had winded him, and as he labored to catch his breath in wet inhalations, I held his hand tighter, remembering my father. My jaw gritted and my throat closed as I heard the truth in his words. "Not this time, Quen," I said, feeling a headache start and forcing my grip to ease. "I'm not going to sit here and watch you die. All you have to do is see the sunrise, and you're home free."
It was what Dr. Anders had said, and unlike Trent, I saw it as a real possibility. Hell, I didn't believe in the eleven percent, I lived on it.
Trent was staring in horror at us as it sunk in. He wasn't capable of living any other way than by his graphs and predictions.
"It's not your fault, Sa'han," Quen said, his gravelly voice carrying a softer pain. "It's a mindset, and I need her. Because as much as it looks otherwise...I want to live."
His face riven, Trent stood. I watched him rise out of the sunken area and walk away, pitying him. I could help Quen - he could not. The door opened and shut, letting in a sliver of life before the uncertain darkness that hid the future cocooned us again in a waiting warmth and smothering stillness. Waiting.
We were alone. I looked at Quen's dark hand in mine and saw the strength in it. The coming battle would be fought by both the mind and the body, but it was the soul where the balance lay. "You took something," I said, my heart pounding at the chance that he might actually talk to me. "Something Dr. Anders was working on. Was it genetic? Why?"
Quen's eyes were bright, still seeing around corners. Taking a breath that it hurt to hear, he blinked at me, refusing to answer.
Frustrated, I took his grip more firmly. "Fine, you son of a bitch," I swore. "I'll hold your stupid-ass hand, but you're not going to die." God, give us the eleven percent. Please? Just this once? I hadn't been able to save my dad. I hadn't been able to save Peter. I hadn't been able to save Kisten, and the guilt of his dying to keep me alive was enough to bring me sobbing to my knees.
Not this time. Not this man.
"It doesn't matter if I live or die," he rasped. "But seeing me through this is the only...way you'll find...the truth," he rasped, his body clenching in pain. It was getting worse. His bird-bright eyes fixed on mine, and the hurt in him was obvious. "How bad do you want to know?" he taunted as the sweat beaded on his forehead.
"Bastard," I almost snarled as I dabbed it away, and he smiled through the pain. "You son of a bitch bastard."