Page 3 of Holding the Line
The lab was quiet, save for the low whir of fans and the occasional electronic chirp from the rat’s nest of machines Marsh Clarkson had built from parts no one else could make work.He sat in his wheelchair, hunched toward the dual monitors glowing like twin ghosts in the gloom, one hand on a soldering iron, the other on the coding interface that scrolled lines of syntax like a digital rosary.
Outside, Obsidian Ridge was completely silent.Inside, Marsh wasn’t.
He was simmering.
Six months since the blast.Six months since they’d had to carry him out like broken cargo.And six months of everyone looking at him like he was seconds away from snapping in half.Like he was something broken.And perhaps he was.
He hadn’t let them fit him for a prosthetic other than the one he had done immediately after the accident.Ezra had pushed for a new one.Ricky had diplomatically kept his mouth shut, like a good teammate.Ezra had said the line Marsh couldn’t stop replaying in his head, bitter and barbed.
“You keep going like this, and it’s not the leg that’s gonna get you killed.”
Like Marsh didn’t know what was best for himself.Like he needed babysitting.
And Ricky?He just hovered, present but silent.He knew better than to poke the bear.That made one of them in that relationship.
The translation mod, a new piece of tech he was tinkering with, was the only thing holding his focus.A real-time auditory comms filter that could auto-detect and translate over thirty languages through bone-conduction earpieces.It should’ve been revolutionary.Instead, it was glitching, spitting out nonsense like “angry biscuit frog” in response to standard Czech.
He grunted and dove back into the code, the rhythmic tap of his fingers almost meditative.
But the quiet didn’t last.Not inside his head.
His memory spat up the worst of them when the rest of the world stilled.
He remembered the exact moment he woke up in the hospital down in Jackson.Fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, sterile white sheets that smelled like bleach and lost battles.Pain had been immediate and blinding, a full-body scream with no voice.His left leg was killing him, especially below the knee.
He’d looked down.
Expecting to see blood, carnage, something that would support the agony that radiated from his lower leg.
But there was nothing.
Just the thick bandage where his left thigh ended mid-way down.No leg.It took a moment for his mind to work out that it was what they called phantom pain.Which was a ridiculous fucking name for it, because it sure as shit felt real.Nothing phantom about the pain he could feel in the part of his leg his eyes said was gone, but the rest of him rebelled against.
He’d stared at it, waiting to wake up for real.Waiting for someone to shout, “just kidding,” and for his leg to suddenly still be there.
But then Ricky had come in.Quiet.Haunted.Sat down next to the bed and didn’t say anything for a long time.No jokes.No forced cheer.Just sat there, like he was keeping vigil.
The look on his face?It told Marsh everything.
So, Marsh had done what he always did.
Blustered his way through it.
“Don’t look so grim,” he’d said, voice dry, cracking.“Think of all the spare change I’ll save on boots.”
Ricky had let out a pained half-laugh.“You’re an asshole.”
“Always have been,” Marsh replied, gritting his teeth against the wave of nausea crawling through him.
A beat later, Hogan had slipped in, holding a coffee that looked like tar.He took one look at Marsh and gave him the world’s most unimpressed stare.“You done being dramatic yet?”
“Just getting started,” Marsh shot back.“You gonna just stand there or give me that coffee?Or worse, drink it out of spite?”
“I did get it for me, just sayin’,” Hogan replied, but handed it over anyway.
They’d made him laugh.Almost.But the pressure behind his ribs didn’t let up.
He hadn’t cried.Not once.Not when the meds wore off, not when the phantom pain hit in the middle of the night like lightning through his nervous system, not when he realized his life would never be the same again.