Ex-Isle by Peter Clines (electronic reader TXT) 📕

she’d freed from a laptop.

Cesar watched her for a moment. “You okay?”

She didn’t look up. “Fine.”

“No,” he said. “I mean…y’know. Are you okay after having one of them in here with you?”

Danielle sighed.

“I just…I know you have problems, sometimes, with the exes. We don’t talk about it, and I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I just—”

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She looked him in the eyes. “I think it might’ve done me some good. Made me think about how I’ve been wasting a lot of time hiding like this.” She waved her hand at the room and the worktables. “I’ve got a lot of stuff to get done. I can’t let being scared slow me down anymore.”

Cesar smiled. “That’s good,” he said.

“Yeah. But you’re deflecting a bit, aren’t you?”

“What?”

Danielle gestured at his left arm. “How are you?”

“I’m good.”

“I’ve seen the suit. I know you’re not good.”

He shrugged. “Is what it is, y’know? God’s will, that’s what my mom would say.”

“Let me see it,” said Danielle.

He sighed and tugged up his sleeve. Once it was past his elbow he held the arm out to her. She leaned in to study it.

His forearm sagged across the top. The loose skin sunk down and formed a shallow trench from the inside of his elbow to his wrist. There were a few long scabs at either end of the gouge. Two or three of them were going to leave scars.

“Did it bleed a lot?”

Cesar nodded. “Not, like, tons, but enough to freak everybody out when I got out of Cerbe—out of the battlesuit.”

“You can call it Cerberus,” said Danielle. “I think you’ve earned it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

His lips curled into a smile. “So, anyway, d’you know Megan?”

“The scavenger? Yeah, I met her back at the Mount. I think she was an EMT or something like that.”

“Paramedic, yeah. Near as she can tell, I ripped out one of my arm bones. The radials.”

“Radius.”

“Yeah, that one. And some tendons, maybe. They won’t be sure what until I get it X-rayed, maybe CAT-scanned.”

“But you’re okay?”

“Feels a little weird, but yeah.” His hand flopped back and forth. Palm up, palm down. Palm up, palm down. The valley of flesh rippled, filled in, and then sunk back into his arm. “Think it gets me out of any heavy work for a while.”

“At least until we can get the supports back in.”

He blinked.

Danielle gestured out at the courtyard. At the wounded exoskeleton. “Once they get the fence reinforced,” she said, “we can get the supports back, straighten them out, and put them back into—”

Cesar shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “I don’t think it works that way.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No,” he agreed, “but it doesn’t feel right, y’know? I think when part of me, of whatever I’m in, is gone, it’s just…y’know, gone.”

He flexed the arm again, twisting the hand back and forth.

“I’ll see if I can come up with some kind of brace for you,” Danielle said. “Something to reinforce your wrist. I mean, if Doc Connolly doesn’t have a good one back at the Mount.”

“Nah, you don’t have to.”

“Yeah,” she said, “I do.” She looked at him. “I’m glad you’re on the team, Cesar. That you’re part of Cerberus. You’re going to do great things with the battlesuit.”

“Thanks.”

Danielle cleared her throat and waited for him to say something else. When he didn’t, she bent her head back to the motherboard on the worktable.

“So,” he said. “The first sergeant, huh?”

“Kennedy? What about her?”

“She’s kinda got the hots for you.”

She shrugged and didn’t look up. “Sounds like it.”

“Does she even have a first name?”

Danielle stopped and thought about it. “I mean, she does, yeah, but I don’t think I know what it is.”

“And you?”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “You know my first name.”

“No, not that.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.” Cesar made a point of studying something outside the window. “I didn’t know if you were into, y’know, girls.”

“Never thought about it.”

“No?”

Danielle shrugged again.

“I mean, it’s cool with me.”

“Gee,” she said, raising an eyebrow, “thanks.”

“No, I didn’t mean it like that, I just meant, y’know, if it makes you happy, that’s cool.”

She smirked and shook her head.

“Way I see it, you like girls, I like girls, just gives us something new to talk about, right?”

She hid her chuckle behind a cough, or maybe it was just lucky timing. “Cesar,” she said, “if anything happened between me and First Sergeant Kennedy—and it’s not going to—I wouldn’t talk about it with anyone.”

“I’m just saying, y’know, I’m here for you.”

“Great. Since you’re here, grab my soldering kit, would you?”

He chuckled and pulled open a drawer in the tool chest. He pulled out the leather bundle and tossed it to Danielle. She grabbed it with both hands and winced.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, it’s nothing.” She put the kit on the table and pulled her sleeve back down to her wrist.

“Hey,” he said, “you’re not wearing the contact suit. I been trying to figure out why you looked different.”

“My braid’s not tucked in.”

“Yeah, that too, but I think the only time I’ve ever seen you not wearing it was when we—”

“Hey,” she said, coughing out the word. “We don’t talk about it anymore.”

“Sorry.”

“Like I said, after the whole thing with Lester and the ex, I just…I didn’t see any point in being scared anymore.”

Cesar smiled. “Good. ’Bout time we got you out there to kick some ass.”

She reached over to brush her other sleeve down, and he saw the edges of white tape and gauze peeking out. “Hey,” he said. “What happened to your arm?”

Danielle glanced down as if she hadn’t noticed the bandage before. “Oh, it’s nothing.” She gestured at the Longshot on the worktable. “It wasn’t mounted on anything and didn’t have the housing on, so when I fired it the whole thing jumped up in the air. I cut myself on one of the interior struts.”

“Is it okay?”

She tugged the sleeve down over the bandage and managed a tight smile. “Yeah, of course. It’s nothing to worry about.”

MY