New Elysium: Weapons of War (Book 2)

A Time To Break Down Part 3

He grabbed the coffin lid as soon as the latch clicked open and shoved it aside. Inside was nothing but a dark liquid. Some of it sloshed out onto the floor, and for a moment he thought he'd been wrong. She wasn't here.

Ember?

Panic threatened to overwhelm him, he'd been so sure she was her. He'd followed her signal...

And then the liquid sloshed again, and a small hand shot up. He reached for it and pulled her out as fast as he could, catching a glimpse of her wide eyes for a moment.

Fear, real fear etched in them.

His Ember was not afraid of much and yet, she clung to him even as her father slammed the lid down, catching the cable in her back. The thing  that meant to keep her alive in there.

How long was she supposed to be in there?

But when he looked over across the lid of the containment unit it wasn't Ember's father there at all, but her brother Jack.

It was Jack Dawson who pushed the lid down, with a final click even as Ember whimpered in his arms. He reached around and twisted the cable out of her back tossing it to the side.

Jack stood there observing him for a moment. "Do you even know who the real evil is here, Captain Scott?"

Red tightened his arms around Ember as she trembled. He looked down at her face again, her eyes were still wide with fear; the fear of being trapped in the darkness.

Did she know? He asked himself again.

Did she know what? He answered himself.

His eyes opened in the darkness and he trembled in spite of the warmth.

~ ~ ~

"I want to go home."

His words cut the comfortable silence she was currently enveloped in.

Ember's eyes opened as she stared into the darkness of the room. His arms had tightened around her and at some point. She must have fallen asleep because she'd turned around and was laying with her back to his chest. It was a sensation she was getting used to.

"Red, we're on New Elysium. This is our home now."

He snorted and pulled her closer. She felt him inhale into her hair. "No, it isn't. The Ember is ours, remember? We still have to duke it out to see who it belongs to."

"I thought you were going to duke it out with Null over the Aphelion." Ember smiled when she heard him chuckle.

"She can have it, she can have the Perihelion as well. Hell, we can make sure she takes the credit for both of them. Then Jack could have a new leader and we could disappear into unknown space."

Ember turned around to look at him, and realized that he was perfectly serious. He really didn't want his old life back in any shape or form, nor did he want to become any sort of freedom fighter.

He just wanted her.

Damn, life wasn't fair.

"You'd really just take off like that?" She whispered.

It was both exciting and oddly terrifying. They hadn't known each other that long and yet Ember couldn't imagine life without him in it. Every day they spent away from Helion 7 together was a day he grew more relaxed and even enjoyed life. Despite everything that had happened since.