The Society (A Broken World Book 1) (25 page)

"What are you doing? You're going to make things worse."

Brennan gave me a shaky smile. "I'm fine. Tyrell has me so immobilized from the waist to the neck that I couldn't reinjure myself even if I tried."

I shot Alan a questioning look, but he held his hands up as if to say the decision had been made without his input. "Tyrell was in here half an hour ago and he approved limited movement as long as Brennan was careful. I'm not sure that this is quite what he had in mind though."

Brennan weakly waved away the objection. "He told me not to do anything to increase my pain level. Sitting up isn't causing me any more discomfort than what I was already feeling lying down."

Alan shrugged. "Far be it from me to keep arguing with the boss. Skye, there's more morphine on that shelf. I know you don't know how to do injections, but apparently Brennan's expertise extends into this kind of thing as well. Tyrell wrote down dosages on that sheet of paper next to the morphine—your job is to keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn't overdo it, give him the morphine when he needs more, and make sure that he doesn't overdose himself, probably as a result of overdoing it. I'm past due for a date with my bunk."

Once Alan was gone, Brennan turned back towards me. "I see that Lexis found time to finish up the outfits I ordered for you."

My face went hot with embarrassment. "I'm sorry I'm not in uniform today. I figured you'd still be down for at least a few more days, and since I didn't have anything else clean to wear, I was hoping to get away with wearing my non-official clothes until the laundry had a chance to catch back up with everything I haven't been putting out for them to collect."

"You misunderstand me, Skye. That wasn't meant as a criticism. I think you look quite lovely today—even more so than normal."

I wasn't sure what the proper response was. Lexis' words from earlier were still echoing through my mind. If she was right, then Brennan's feelings for me were very much starting to mirror what I was feeling for him.

That was amazing and terrible all at once. If she was right, then things were even more complex than I'd realized. The last thing I needed was to add complexity to a situation that already had me so conflicted, but despite all of that I found myself hoping that my feelings were being reciprocated.

It was going to take a lot more than just hope though before I was going to be willing to act upon any perceived interest on his part. Even apart from the fact that I was supposed to sabotage his life's work, I had zero experience when it came to interacting with guys in a romantic sense. Back home the idea of dating had made me uncomfortable; making a pass at my boss—the guy who controlled a few dozen city blocks—was downright terrifying.

Brennan seemed to sense my uneasiness—that or maybe he felt at least a shadow of the same awkwardness. "Well, since I'm awake and at least partially lucid, how about you bring me up to speed on how things are going inside the compound?"

"I'm sorry, I wish I knew, but I haven't left this floor of the building in more than twenty-four hours. Any information I have is dreadfully out of date by now."

Brennan's smile somehow made all of the awkwardness go away. "Let's just start with what you know—it at least has the benefit of being more recent than anything I know."

"I guess you have a point there. For starters, I did talk to Lexis, and she indicated that Tyrell has them at least partially back up and running."

Brennan nodded. "He must've hooked up some kind of alternate power source to the drive shafts that power the sewing machines."

"Yeah, it sounds like he's actually using people to generate the power required to turn the drive shafts. Lexis said that he's promised to get another three sewing machines up and running very soon."

"Good. It's not a perfect solution, but it will keep things moving there while we hunt down the raw materials we'll need to create another drive belt. What about the foundry?"

"I haven't heard anything about the foundry since just after you were hurt. Tyrell and Jax kicked the rest of us out while they were working on you, so I ended up down in the foundry looking for something useful to do."

"Were you successful?"

There was a teasing tone in Brennan's voice that belied the pain I knew he had to be in. Without thinking about it, I stuck my tongue out at him. Someone like Piter would've been yelling to have his enforcers beat me unconscious, but Brennan just chuckled and then grimaced in pain.

"I was going to tell you good job—I don't think I've seen you that unguarded since you arrived—but I probably shouldn't encourage you when the results make me hurt so much."

I started to apologize, but he rolled his eyes at me. "Don't worry about it, it's my fault for teasing you in the first place. In all seriousness, what did you do while you were there?"

"There were piles of fired bricks stacked inside the cavern, so I told everyone to get started ripping the old bricks out of the furnace. I hope that's okay, it seemed like the kind of thing we couldn't screw up."

"Absolutely. I was saving that step for a time when I couldn't be around to supervise. How far did you guys get?"

Despite Brennan's words, I was still nervous. We'd had to hit the bricks pretty hard to break them up enough to get them out of the furnace. The fact that he'd asked how far we'd made it indicated that we shouldn't have finished up in just one session.

"We…ah, we got it all."

Brennan's smile got even bigger. "That's great news, Skye. I was expecting it to take a shift and a half to get that all out."

"Oh, then we weren't as far off as I was thinking we were. The day shift stayed around to help the night shift work on it, so we probably put the better part of eighteen hours into the project."

Brennan looked off into the distance, considering for several seconds, before he took an experimental breath as though testing how bad his chest was going to hurt.

"Inside the cabinet on the west wall—the taller one—there's a wheelchair. Could you please go get it?"

I put my hands on my hips and did my best impression of a crèche nanny who'd just found one of her charges misbehaving. "Yes, I'm perfectly capable of walking over and getting a wheelchair out of that cabinet, but if you think I'm going to get it so that you can leave this room, then you're still on way too much morphine."

I hadn't realized I'd started moving toward Brennan until he held up his hand to ward me off. "Tyrell said that I could determine what was and wasn't safe for me to do based on how I was feeling. I'm not kidding when I say that he's got me wired to this frame so tightly that I couldn't move if I wanted to."

"There's a reason for that. The entire right side of your chest was crushed, Brennan. I'm no doctor, but I can't believe you're even awake already, let alone wanting to move around."

Brennan was still smiling, but I could see the stubbornness that had allowed him to begin rebuilding civilization starting to manifest in his gaze. "You're right, Skye, you're not a doctor. All of the people you grew up with probably suffered from malnutrition, which means their bodies weren't operating the way they should have been. I, on the other hand, have been getting three square meals a day for years now. I'm not malnourished any more than I'm one of those useless ants who spend every hour of every day high on some substance that the human body was never meant to take in. I'll take it easy, but I need to be out there."

I was ready to keep arguing, but his comment about people from the Society being high all of the time struck too close to home. He was right—I had no real idea what the human body was capable of under normal circumstances. I'd seen military personnel injured, but they weren't a good yardstick because their bodies were chock-full of nanites.

I'd spent my early years around kids who were nanite-free and well-nourished, but the crèche nannies had been very careful to make sure that none of us got seriously injured. It boggled belief that Brennan could actually be healed enough to tour the compound, but if there was one thing I'd learned in my time in the city so far, it was not to underestimate Brennan. He was already sitting up, and Tyrell had been okay with that. Being pushed around in a wheelchair wasn't that much different than sitting motionless on a table like he was already doing.

"Okay, I'll get your wheelchair, but you'd better be right about this. Everything depends on you pulling through this."

"Yes, but if I spend too much time down here nursing my wounds then everything will come crashing down just as surely as if I'd been killed by Jerome the first day that we met."

He was talking about Piter and the others. Under other circumstances, a delay of a week or two wouldn't matter for someone who was rolling out technologies that hadn't been seen outside of the barrier for more than a century, but that wasn't the world that Brennan and his people lived in. There was a limit to how long Brennan could stall his customers, and once that limit was reached people were going to die.

I found the wheelchair and brought it over to the table as Brennan slowly turned himself so that his legs were hanging off the table. Part of me wanted to lift him all by myself. My nanite-infused muscles could easily accomplish the task, and I desperately wanted to touch him, but that would blow my cover.

It was that urge that finally made me realize just how bad my situation was. Brennan had saved my life—saved it when he'd had every reason not to. I didn't want anything to come between us, but my very presence there in his room was a lie. There was no course forward where Brennan and I ended up together. The best I could hope for was that he wouldn't hate me forever, but in order for that to happen I was going to have to betray everything that I'd arrived in the city believing.

I wasn't sure I could do that, but the thought of killing Brennan hurt me in ways I'd never been hurt before. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place with no idea how to get out.

Brennan was too focused on holding himself still so that he wouldn't be in pain to notice my internal battles, and by the time he looked up I'd pulled myself back together enough to pretend that everything was okay. Once I was sure that he hadn't overdone it just rotating on the table, I went out and asked the two guards at the door for assistance.

The two of them were just as doubtful at the prospect of moving Brennan as I'd been, but they'd had even more experience with the futility of denying him anything he wanted. Working carefully, the three of us slid Brennan off the table and got him situated inside the wheelchair, which looked like a hundred-and-fifty-year-old model that he'd had Lexis refurbish with a new seat made out of material from the textile factory.

It was obvious that Brennan was in a lot of pain, and for a moment I thought he was going to ask for more morphine, but he didn't. Maybe he knew that would be the straw that convinced me he wasn't fit to leave the room.

At some point during Alan's shift, Tyrell had added to Brennan's bandages, covering his chest so completely in white that there was no trace of visible skin left. It almost seemed pointless to cover him up with additional layers, but I wanted to make sure he didn't get chilled, so I grabbed the blanket off of his hammock and wrapped it around him as we left his room.

The first obstacle to be faced was the stairs, but none of us were foolish enough to try to carry him up them without more help. I stayed with one of the guards, a weathered black man in his early forties, while the other guard started knocking on doors looking for additional help.

A few minutes later we had four more guards, all sleepy, all in various states of undress, assembled to help carry Brennan up the stairs. I watched from the side until they'd managed to convey him up to the ground floor, and then resumed my spot behind the wheelchair so I could be the one to push him. It was obvious that all four of the new arrivals were torn between going back downstairs to catch up on their sleep and staying with Brennan to make sure he was adequately protected.

We all knew what Jax would've demanded, but Brennan gently but firmly insisted that he would be fine with just three guards. I wanted to argue with him. There was an awful lot that Jax and I hadn't been seeing eye to eye on lately. I knew that Jax wouldn't consider me an adequate guard in my current state. Even when I'd been armed and in uniform, Jax hadn't been thrilled at the idea of Brennan moving around the compound with only three of us for protection.

He was right—if not for quite the reason he thought—but this time I was inclined to agree with him. Brennan needed more protection than I could provide.

I was a heartbeat away from verbalizing my concerns when Brennan turned to me with a serious look on his face. "I know what you're thinking, Skye, but there isn't anybody else who can be spared right now. I was the one who came up with a contingency plan for this situation. All of my normal bodyguards are working sixteen hour days trying to make sure that nobody—inside the compound or out—decides to stage some kind of coup while I'm too injured to rally our forces."

"Do you hear what you're saying? That's all the more reason that you shouldn't be running around with only two bodyguards."

Brennan shook his head. "First of all, there are three of you—just like Jax and I agreed days ago. Second of all, given how many people we've got out on patrol right now, anyone who wants to hurt me will have only seconds before the three of you are joined by half a dozen other guards. I'm as safe as I'm ever going to be and it's vitally important that I'm seen moving around so enemies don't get any ideas."

I looked at the other two guards hoping for help, but neither of them seemed willing to argue with Brennan like Jax would have.

"Fine, but you tell us before you start hurting so we can get you back to your room without further aggravating the damage to your ribs."

Brennan held up his hand. "I solemnly swear to do exactly that."

For all that I knew Brennan was vitally important to the future of the compound, part of me had been convinced he was overstating the importance of him being out where everyone could see him. I realized just how wrong I was when Tyrell came hurrying out of the bore less than five minutes after we left the headquarters building. Either someone in the headquarters had sent a message down to the foundry, or runners had set out as soon as Brennan had been spotted.