Destiny: Quantic Dreams Book 3 by Elizabeth McLaughlin (books for 20 year olds .txt) 📗

painkillers, my love, and we have a three day journey. You have the choice. Relief now, or relief later.” I fingered the two packets of gel in my pockets. It wasn’t going to be enough.

“I’ll take it later. The inflammation has made everything pretty numb.”

“Can you walk? We need to keep moving.” As I spoke, the noise of twin engines screamed past overhead. Even with the starlight it was too dark for me to see who the aircraft belonged to. Tenzen’s rant suggested that there were humans out there who had the capability to operate military hardware. Could it be them, sending out a patrol to guard us strangers? If so, I was damn grateful. Hopefully our guardian angels would keep close by. We needed all the luck we could get.

Chapter Twenty-Two

We made camp as best we could, having sacrificed the lion’s share of our resources in our haste to escape the machine city. Marcus and I retrieved as much brush as we could from the last ruminants of the forest—we had covered a fair amount of ground—and lay a bed of leaves and brush as thickly as possible for Eliza to sleep on. A meager pile of sticks and branches served as a fire where we roasted up a couple of critters Marcus managed to trap. Eliza weathered her injuries like a soldier, her only expressions of pain mutterings under her breath. Her commitment to physical fitness was paying off; her vital signs were stable. As long as we managed to avoid infection, she was in for a rough surgery when we made it back but she would pull through. We had a single survival blanket between the three of us. Marcus wrapped it around Eliza snugly and she sighed. The pressure of the blanket took some of the strain off her wound and she was asleep within minutes.

Marcus and I settled in around the fire. He was quiet, poking at the fire with a stick. “You doing okay, sweetheart?” I touched his arm but he didn’t react.

“It's been a rough couple of days, Mom. I’ve seen a man horrifically murdered and my own grandfather killed by androids. Momma is laying there with a hole through her shoulder and we are at least two days walk from the colony. I’m sure Jason and Nicole are doing a great job running things but when I get back they’re going to expect me to take over duties again and...”

“And what, honey? What can I do to help?”

“I honestly would kill for a day off.”

I burst out laughing and quickly clapped a hand over my mouth so as to not wake Eliza. “I’m sorry, Marcus. I’m sorry. I just relate to that so damn much.” He cracked a grin and laughed.

“Fair enough, Mom. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to complain. I know you and Momma have gone through so much more than I have.”

“It’s not a contest, Marcus. You’ve done an admirable job, rising to the occasion the minute we left the virtual world. I couldn’t be more proud to have you as my son. You’re doing just fine.” He quirked the ends of his lips. It was hard to remember that he was still young. Even in his early twenties, our son had only dealt with problems in the virtual world. It’s where he developed the confidence and leadership skills that shone from him today. But it was one thing to experience challenges in a world where all of his other needs were met and another to feel all the aches and pains of reality.

“Is she going to be all right?” He cast a worried look toward Eliza.

“You know your Momma honey, a little wound like that? She’ll be up ordering us around again in no time.” A wistful smile. Neither Marcus or I were ignorant to the science. Even with a through-and-through wound there was still the potential for Eliza to get an infection. At our age that could result in anything from a nasty wound and extended healing time to sepsis. No amount of medical technology would be able to save her then. “Go to sleep. I’ll take the first watch. I need you to be at your best, Marcus. We might need you to carry her tomorrow if she wakes up feeling worse.”

Marcus stood from the fire and wrapped his arms around Eliza to share his body heat. I was briefly overcome with a sense of melancholy. Had I done Marcus a disservice by having our family live in the virtual world for so many years? It wasn’t like I gave him a choice. One day it was decided for him that he would be forever taken from his grandfather, a man who he had come to love deeply, only to return to him a year before his death.

His death.

The grief that I was holding back during our escape from the machine city crashed over me and I found myself screaming silently to the heavens. White hot pain ripped through my body and I gagged, spilling a thin line of bile into the dirt. Thankfully neither Marcus nor Eliza stirred. I didn’t want anybody to see me like this. The knowledge that he was gone, truly gone, was surreal. I kept expecting him to appear over the horizon, a crooked smile on his face and a “hey, kiddo” on his lips. His last days, that precious time that should have been a respite from the hardships of life were dashed. Who knows how long he lay on that floor, his guts split open like a fish? How much had it hurt? Did he think we had abandoned him, or did he know we would come? Why hadn’t we come just a little bit sooner? Tears flowed down my cheeks and I sobbed, sinking my teeth into the loose fabric of my shirt to muffle the sounds. My mind flashed back to the sight of his body, the exhaustion etched permanently in his face. I should have been