Most did not survive.
I couldn’t let her see this dark misery, didn’t want her tainted by Hive filth. “No, Amanda.”
“Please, Rav?” Her eyes were fervent. Eager, not to see the harshness of what the Hive did to us, but eager for the truth. “I need to see for myself.”
“No,” I repeated. My first instinct was to protect my mate, and there was no fucking way she was watching one of these motherfuckers die on the table.
Grigg growled and I knew I was going to hate the next words out of his mouth. I wasn’t wrong. “Show her, Rav. That’s an order.”
“Fuck.” I shook my head. “I fucking hate you right now.”
“I know.”
I couldn’t look at him as I turned to my team. I ignored Amanda as well, she and Grigg following me like shadows.
The warrior had been strapped to the surgical table with special bonds we’d created just for this purpose. The Hive implants made them so fucking strong we’d had to develop special alloys to contain them.
The warrior Doctor Rhome had taken settled and I knew that his fate would be decided in the next few minutes. I dismissed him from my mind. He was in Doctor Rhome’s hands now. I had my own patient to worry about.
The warrior on the table before me was covered with silver skin starting at his neck, up his face to his temples, but for some odd reason the Hive had left his forehead and hair alone. His left arm had been completely mechanized, the robotic compartments opening and closing as small gadgets and weapons searched for a target. His legs appeared to be normal, but there was no way to be sure until we’d stripped him naked and done a full inspection.
We wouldn’t bother unless he survived the next five minutes.
“Sedate him, now.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
Amanda hovered near his feet and I couldn’t look at her as my patient strained and cried out, the words an unintelligible jumble of sounds. The noise faded and the bio-monitors on the wall indicated his mind had settled into unconsciousness.
r /> “Turn him.” Four medical staff hurried to do as I bid, all of them faces I knew and trusted, faces who’d gone through this hell with me before. Again and again.
Looking over my shoulder, I signaled an unoccupied member of my staff to join us. The young woman, newly mated and still innocent of the horrors of this war, hurried to stand before me. “Yes, Doctor?”
“Please notify Captain Myntar, in person, that his second was recovered from the Hive Integration Unit and is being processed in med one.” Captain Myntar would understand what wasn’t said, and, if he was smart, would keep his mate, Mara, far, far from here for a while.
“He’s on the command deck,” Grigg added. “Damn it.”
She hurried to do as I bid, to deliver the news to our third in command as Amanda raised her hand to cover her mouth. “Myntar?”
“Yes.”
Amanda gasped and I turned to her.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, it’s just—Mara. I know her. She’s the one… He’s Mara’s mate?”
I lifted my gaze to Grigg’s and he nodded. The time for secrets or half-truths was over. I softened my tone when I answered her. “Yes, mate. This is Mara’s second.”
“Oh, God.”
Grigg led her to the edge of the small surgical area, his arm supporting her waist as I returned my full attention to the warrior whose life hung in the balance. Now lying on his side, my team had cut away the armor covering his spine. The new scar was easily visible, the mark nearly five inches long running the left edge of his spine, not far from his heart.
“Bio-integrity field?” I asked as I took my place at his back.
“Activated and fully operational, Doctor.”
The energy field surrounding his body would prevent infection or cross contamination when we opened him up. I rolled my shoulders slightly, trying to ease the tension pinching me like microscopic vices. Some days I fucking hated my job. This wasn’t being a doctor, healing the sick, this was being a butcher, and oftentimes, a killer.