Page 23 of Jump or Fall

Mara

T hey lay coiled around each other in bliss. Mara’s head rested against his chest, the slow rise and fall lulling her toward sleep.

His hand moved gently over her arm, rousing her just enough to keep sleep at bay. She thought back over their time together, reliving how incredible he felt.

Then, she got to the part where she’d waged war with her own body.

He’d been so patient, but she couldn’t help feeling embarrassed.

“I’m sorry for acting strange.” She swallowed hard, trying to find words. “It’s more automatic than I realized. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

He gave her arm a light squeeze. “It took a year for me to use a knife again,” he said. “I avoided eating anything that needed to be cut—hell, my hair isn't this long just to hide the scar. I’d be an asshole to expect something like sex to be easy.”

“How did you get better?”

“I still have bad days and a lot of nightmares. Kimmie gave me a fake dagger when I left for Naxos, and I carry it with me when I’m struggling. It kind of helps with facing my fear, I think.”

“Hmm, so we need to keep having sex,” she teased.

His chest shook with a chuckle. “I won’t complain. But we can take it slow. I hope you realize—I don’t see this as short-term.”

She pressed her lips to his shoulder. “ Me either.”

After so many years with Dawson, she’d stopped entertaining the idea of a real relationship. She’d only been with Lukas for a short while, and she was twenty when that had ended. The possibility of being with someone she loved seemed so out of reach.

Gordon’s heartbeat quickened beneath her cheek.

“Are you okay?”

He hesitated. “I don’t want you to go back.”

“I don’t want to go back either,” she said, “but I still have a job to do.”

“We could leave everything and go to Naxos. Or live on the road. Find somewhere else.”

She sat up slightly, bracing on one arm. “What about the mission?”

He brushed his fingers under her chin and drew her in for a kiss. “The only reason I agreed to do this was because I had nothing to lose. Now I do.”

“What about Silva and Kimmie and all the others who need this?”

“They can figure it out.”

“I want to take them down,” she said. “I want to help Nella. Most of all, I want to destroy him.”

His jaw tensed. “It’s just… I can’t stand the thought of him touching you with those fucking claws or any other part of him.

” He let out a shaky breath. “The first time we met and I saw you on the floor, I thought you were dead. Then, when you woke up sick and I watched you stitch up the new stripe…” He paused.

“I don’t know what he did that day, but I hated him even more.

And the night you showed up with the scratch on your face?

It took everything in me to not track him down and shoot him. ”

A lump rose in her throat. “I can’t run. Not yet.”

He met her gaze, pain softening his eyes. “Then I’m here with you.”

Mara buried her face in his neck. “We will win this.”

She wanted to say more—wanted to tell him how deeply she felt—but it was too soon. She didn’t want to scare him away.

“Yes,” he whispered. “We will. ”

A quiet beat passed before she asked, “Do you know what happened to Kimmie and Silva? I didn’t hear anything else after we ran.”

Gordon reached over for his tablet and showed her a message.

Kimmie

All ok. In Horus. Contact ASAP.

The message had come through twenty minutes ago.

She watched as he typed in a response.

Gordon

All ok. Meet in Tower at 12.

It was 11:30. At least they had thirty more minutes to themselves.

He sighed. “I suppose we should put some clothes on.”

“I prefer you this way,” she said with a coy smile.

He smirked and playfully tossed her clothes at her.

As she dressed, something clicked in her memory. “I need to see your suit. Your augmented strength wasn’t working.”

“What kind of tools do you need?”

“Some varying-sized screwdrivers and a soldering gun, probably. But I have to see what’s wrong with it.”

He pulled a box from under the bed, revealing a trove of tools.

“You are a busy man.”

“Show me how you troubleshoot this,” he said, planting a kiss on her forehead. The casual intimacy made heat rise in her face all over again.

She gathered the suit pieces. First, she checked the power source at the hip—it wasn’t at full charge, meaning it had been using power at some point.

Trailing a finger along the spine of the chestplate, she said, “This connects to other areas like a nervous system. And like a spine, if the connection is damaged, it can result in loss of functionality. The Araflex layer connects the parts together and provides power to the other pieces. The helmet has its own power source, but you lost comms when it broke.”

She tapped various points, watching as dull light responded beneath the surface. When she reached the upper back, the lights stopped around a crack in the plates. She grabbed the helmet and tapped it—nothing.

“The helmet is a goner and this,” she gestured to the chestplate, “is the suit equivalent of a broken neck. Do you have rubber gloves?”

He handed her a pair. The gloves would protect her from getting shocked if a charge was being held somewhere. She took a small screwdriver and disconnected the outer shell, revealing a frayed wire likely damaged by the impact.

In his impressive collection of wires, he found one that would work. Together, they soldered it into place.

After reattaching the shell, she said, “You should try it on. It isn’t a permanent fix with that weak point, but it should be okay for now.”

The suit powered on, and he promptly used his augmented strength to bend the metal chair leg in half.

Mara laughed. “Good work.”

A knock sounded at the door. Gordon checked the peephole. “It’s them.”

Kimmie entered first, scanning the room before her eyes landed on the chair.

“What the hell happened here?”

Gordon straightened it back out and gestured to the broken helmet. “Suit broke when I got slammed by a door. Mara just fixed it.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Okay. Well, anyway, we may be fucked.”

“What happened?” Gordon asked.

Silva answered, “Millon just messaged me. We have to deploy the synth-minds to all units. Tomorrow.”

Kimmie wrung her hands. “My boss is freaked out about the mech being taken down so easily, and I think the Silvers are getting wind of something. ”

Mara sank onto the bed, head in hands. “Shit.”

Silva singled her out. “Mara, I think you should get home and check your messages.”

She sensed Gordon’s discomfort, but she replied, “Sure.”

Gordon shed the armor in exchange for his riding gear, then he said to Mara, “I’ll take your armor to Crux later. Doubt you want to put it all back on right now.”

“Okay,” she said. He was right—walking back to Crux fully armored would be uncomfortable and attract too much attention.

The stairs leading down were steep and shook slightly beneath their weight.

Earlier, when they had run through, Mara had barely noticed.

Everything had blurred together in a haze of lights and sheets of rain.

Though the storm was beginning to taper off, the city remained drenched.

Water trickled from overhangs, dripping onto their heads.

The winding pathways of Eight were disorienting, yet Gordon navigated them with ease.

“How many times did you get lost before you figured this place out?” she asked.

He snorted. “I still get lost. There are virtually no rules for construction, and they just keep adding on more levels when space runs out. Beck occasionally threatens to tear it all down when they breach the boundary, but this is where he keeps all the undesirables.”

Glancing upward, she searched for the dark sky but couldn’t find it. “So they just keep building up?”

“And down.” They turned again, entering a large stairwell. Water whooshed through a channel dug into the ground beside the stairs, diverting somewhere into the distance.

The ride on his motorbike, after she finished dressing in Crux, was overshadowed by a growing sense of foreboding. Gordon’s offer to run away together became more tempting with each passing minute .

Why should they sacrifice for this place? Why should they risk their lives? Surely, a life with Gordon somewhere far away, in a place she had never heard of, would be better. Smarter, even.

She thought of their scars, the irreversible damage inflicted on their bodies and minds. She tightened her grip around his waist and felt the reassuring weight of his hand over hers.

The Silvers needed to suffer. She wanted to see them butchered into a thousand pieces and their remains scattered across the very streets they terrorized.

Maybe she didn’t truly care about saving anyone. Maybe revenge was enough.

The bike slowed as they pulled into a shadowed section of the street, close to her apartment.

Gordon cupped her face, tilting it upward for a long kiss while his fingers wove through her hair. “It isn’t too late to change your mind.”

“We will run away into the night together. Just not yet. I don’t think we could ever sleep soundly with them still out there.”

A pained smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “I don’t think we ever sleep soundly, Mara.”

She buried her face in his chest, inhaling deeply. He smelled like armor and gunpowder, but underneath was him—the one that made her feel safe and whole.

“Keep your key on you at all times,” he said. “Please. If something happens, then I can find you.”

“I will.”

They held each other for a long moment.

And then, she pulled away to walk down the narrow alley that led to her apartment. The cold settled in again where his warmth had been. A terrible, sinking feeling buried itself in her bones.

She should’ve run.