Judge’s statement had me thinking about it. I’d been away from my own part of the universe a long time. We were rounding on nine months together, day and night, with my five. They seemed happy, and I really was.
Our routine worked well. Time healed a lot of wounds, made the flu feel far away, and the worry of discovery leave quickly. Cash still hadn’t cured the Infected. XXY died shortly after losing his hand. Lewis had burned both parts of the body, and now a female with what I could only describe as mean eyes had taken his place. She’d kept her hand thus far. They were using a drug regimen on her which seemed to be helping.
I hardly noticed the Infected when I came in the room anymore.
We were eating eggs for dinner. I could always tell when Damian had a long day. He cooked eggs. One of the cows had died. He wasn’t sure why, and he hated doing the autopsies.
I cleared my throat. “You all love me, right?”
The room went silent. Cash looked between the others. “Absolutely. Everything okay?”
“Well, if you love me and you want forever and the babies”—I shot Judge a look, and he rolled his eyes at me—“then do you think you might like to marry me? Make this official? Be my husbands, not just my guys?”
Silence surrounded me, and I wondered if I’d made a terrible mistake. Should I have waited for them to propose? Was I misreading them? Did they not want this?
Noise followed almost instantly. Bursts of “Yes”es and “Of course”s filled the air, and then they were kissing me, one by one. I grinned into the affection. This was the last step I’d needed. I loved them. I would never want anyone but them. Ever.
For now and forever. Sterling dashed from the room and came back in holding rings. Damian grabbed his arm.
“Where did you get those?”
He grinned. “I made them. Borrowed Judge’s tools. Didn’t think he’d mind.” He handed one to each of them. They were all the same except for letters on the front: LH, SW, JT, DO, CW He handed me five rings with the initials D.M. on them. “Give those to us. We’ll give these to you.”
“I can’t wear five at once. Unless they fit all the fingers on my left hand.”
“No, wait.” He dug a necklace out of his pocket. “We’ll each stick one on.”
Lewis cleared his throat. “Take it you’ve given this lots of thought?”
“Pretty much from the moment I met her.” He bent over to kiss my cheek. “Can’t do the white dress. We’d need prep time for that. Too much taxing on the replicator. So I’ll just keep that image in my mind.”
I stood, walking first to Sterling since he’d planned the rings over so much time. I wished I’d known. I had these gorgeous silver rings to give them, but I’d not had anything to do with making them. I would make it up over the years.
“Thank you for the ring, Sterling. Will you take this one from me?” He held out his hand, and I slipped the ring onto his left ring finger. Sterling took the necklace from me and slipped his onto it.
“Will you take mine?”
I grinned at him. “I will.”
He kissed me gently on the lips.
One by one, I asked the same question. I had no idea if this was traditional or if we were making it up as we went along. All I knew was when it was done, I had five husbands. And they loved me. I don’t know how I got so lucky.
Six months later, I lay with Lewis in the bed. He snored pretty loudly for as late as it was in the morning. We’d been up kind of late. He’d been reading books that showed him new positions and couldn’t get enough of me.
I crept from the bed, showered, and dressed. I wanted to go over the beacons and see if they were working. We were getting weird signals from them. The wind blew loudly. It was a change of seasons. I had to get used to the idea that four times a year I was going to be inundated with the noise. I’d almost slipped from the room when Lewis moaned and extended his hand.
“Don’t leave without a kiss.”
I bent over and kissed him as sweetly as I could. Damn, I loved this man. All of them. Every day since our spontaneous wedding had been better and better. I couldn’t ever do without them. Thoughts of my family came and went. I missed them; I always would. But if I had to be sucked through a black hole, where I ended up was pretty spectacular.
The strike of lightning caught me by surprise. The lights flashed before they went out. I jerked around. Had we actually been hit?
It would take a few minutes, but the secondary devices would turn on. We were safe. Judge would need help, and he was probably cursing up a storm. This time of day he tended to be in Cash’s lab with the Infected.
I rushed down the hallway and nearly collided with Damian, who had clearly had the same thought.
“Nothing to worry about,” he assured me. “We’ll get it fixed.”
“I know.” I kissed his cheek. “Morning.”
“Yeah. What a way to start the day. Four years. We’ll have a farm. A really normal farm. No lightning strikes.”
We ran into Cash’s lab together. “Can you control the weather, Damian?”
He nodded. “On our farm I can.”
Judge typed furiously on the central computer while Cash tapped his feet. “I can’t believe this morning. Lightning.”
“What do you need?”
He tapped his cheek. “A kiss and then I need you to go to the pod room and hit the breaker. Can you?”
I ran over and kissed him once on the cheek, lingering for a second. Before I ran from the room, I gave Cash one, too. He grinned and gave me one back. “And I was right in the middle of reading last night’s results.”
“Poor baby. Having to wait ten minutes.”
He pinched my rear end while I ran away, and I yelped. Judge had given me a task, and I would get it done. I passed Sterling in the hall. He’d pulled out his gun. I grabbed his arm, and he bent down to kiss me.
Sterling must have just come out of the shower. He smelled like soap. “Today is going to be that kind of day.”
“Nah, we’ll have it together by lunch.”
He kissed me back. “I love your enthusiasm.”
I made it into the pod room and started resetting the circuits when the second boom sounded. I was thrown backwards, my hands on the machine when it was overrun with electricity. My body buzzed, and I must have screamed. Seconds later I was okay. A bad jolt sucked, but it wasn’t the first time I’d endured one. Working with electricity got me shocked often.
My head pounded. Lewis was going to freak out. A thought hit me hard. Judge had said something about the enclosures and lightning strikes. Two in a row. First one takes out the secondary systems. Second one breaks the glass.
I jumped to my feet, even through my dizziness. The Infected might be out.
I stumbled into the hallway where Sterling caught me. “Okay, Infected are out. I’m going to contain them. Damian’s got the stuff. Judge says you need to stay in here and get the computers back on line. As long as the computer doesn’t recognize the Infected as being out—which Judge doesn’t think can happen while the secondary system is out—we’ll be good.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll get it done.”
I worked hard on the computer. It was easy for me. I loved making things work again when they quit doing so. If I hadn’t gotten blown through the black hoke, I would have gotten the beacons working. I was a fixer. And my five loved me for it.
The lights came back on, and I stepped back, grinning. I’d done it.
A second later, the rest of the machines went back online. I stared at the board. That had happened a lot faster than I’d expected.
The pods behind me buzzed to life. I swung around. Why were they on?
Judge roared in the hallway, and I jolted. What was going on? His pod opened, and he was flung into the room, off the ground as the metal chip in the back of his neck sucked him toward the pod. He grabbed onto the doorframe.
“Diana, get the system off. Shut it off. Cash’s current test subject grabbed t
he computer bay. It read him. The system is sending us back.” He roared in pain. It must be horrific to be yanked through the air by his neck. The others would be there soon.
“I have no idea how to turn it off.” I hit the power down, and nothing happened. “The system’s in a loop Judge. It won’t shut.”
His eyes met mine, and I saw his terror a second before the magnet ripped him off the wall and threw him into the pod.
“Diana, I love you. I’ll come back. We’ll all be back. Hear me. I …” The pod closed on him and the gas started. One second he was awake; the next his head leaned forward. He was asleep, gassed into oblivion for his trip through space. I pounded on the machine. Why wouldn’t it react to me? The pod launched Judge into space with a sonic boom that nearly deafened me.
Cash flew forward, swinging wildly to hold onto anything. The wall was gone from where Judge had hung onto it, and there was nothing for him to hold onto.
“Nine months, Boo. I’ll be back. You stay safe. Live on Artemis. I don’t care if this whole place folds. I only want you. Nine months. I love …”
His pod closed. I went numb. This was happening. This was actually happening. I’d never given one thought to those pods. They’d been nothing, an afterthought. Like Judge before him, he knocked forward, asleep when the pod took off.
I dropped to my knees. Sterling was next, which shocked me. If he couldn’t stop the pull then no one could.
Tears dripped down my eyes. “Sterling.”
He gripped the computer. “Diana, this is … nuts. The Infected are out but contained on the other side. Get in Artemis. Don’t lose faith in us. We are coming back. Nothing will stop me.”
He let out a yell I’d never heard from him before he fell into the pod. He pounded on the door and it did take him a few extra seconds to fall asleep. Once more, I watched as my husband went away. Damian and Lewis came in together. They must have been a distance away.
“No,” they were both yelling.
I wiped at my eyes where I outright wept now. Evander was taking my husbands back. Maybe it was my complete desolation that kept me from hearing what I should have heard. An Infected stood behind me—and not just any Infected, the one Cash currently was trying to fix. I only realized it was there when Damian cried out.
The Infected bit down on my arm. I screamed out in pain. While he screamed in horror, the pod knocked him out cold.
“Eight minutes …” Lewis’ pod closed. I knew what he was telling me. I had eight minutes to get treatment. I kicked the Infected off, grabbing a broomstick and shoving it through her eye socket. I never saw Damian or Lewis take off. I didn’t need to. I knew what it looked like.
I ran for the lab. The hallway was filled with Zombies. That’s what I’d call them from now on. For the little bit of time I had left.
I’d never make it through the mob. I was dead.
I stumbled into Cash’s lab; everything was smashed, but it was empty. I closed the door, blocking myself in. I was beyond pain, beyond sadness, beyond feeling anything at all. They were gone. They were knocked out by a computer I’d never bothered to learn. I crawled up Cash’s ladder. I didn’t even know why.
The view of Orion that Cash hoarded from the others but never me lay out before me. I lay down.
They were gone. Blood dripped down my arm. I was all alone, and I’d already missed the eight minute window. I wouldn’t be living through this. I finally gave in and sobbed. Peace set in sometime after that. I didn’t want to die. So maybe it was the Zombie infection taking over. I shouldn’t feel okay about this.
I’d had love, and I’d never thought I would. My five had loved me. The sun set on Orion, and for the first time since Sterling and Damian had beat down my door, I was alone.
I knew they’d come back. They’d never lied to me. Not once. They would come back, and instead of finding me here to have a reunion, they would locate me up above the mess. Unless Zombies could climb ladders. Maybe I’d make my way downstairs. Who knew what I was going to do once I was dead?
They’d have to kill me. They’d promised I wouldn’t have to be a Zombie. They wouldn’t leave me one. How long did it take to change? I’d never asked them.
Two days later I shivered violently by the window, watching the white landscape. I couldn’t sit up anymore. The place where I’d been bitten had quit burning. It was pale now, like dead skin. I sweat, but I was freezing. The flu had been worse, which was some kind of weirdness. I couldn’t stop shaking, but I no longer had any pain.
A loud boom caught my ears, and then nothing happened. Maybe my mental facilities were leaving.
Time ticked. The last thing I would see with these eyes was Orion in the way Cash had shown it to me. I was lucky. Their faces flashed before me all the time.
“Dane, I’ve got her. She’s up in this storage space.” A voice I should not have heard called up. I tried to raise my head. C.J.? He couldn’t be there. He was on the other side of the galaxy. “Shit. No. No. No.”
My Uncle’s face appeared before me. I loved C.J. He’d always been there to play with me when I was young. He’d been the first to find my mom and me when they’d come back for us.
“Hi.” I tried to speak. It hurt.
“Baby.” He kissed my forehead. “Don’t worry. We’ve got this.”
Dane looked down over C.J.’s shoulder. I could see his terror before he covered it. “Look at this mess you’ve gotten into. Tsk. Tsk. Always causing trouble. We saw the launch of the inhabitants from here. Were so relieved when I saw your vital signs. Now I wish you had been with them.”
“I missed the eight minute window. They can stop it if you’ve been bitten in less than eight minutes.”
Dane sniffed. “Is that so? All right, well then there is more hope than I thought. Diana, I am going to sedate you then stick in you a state of extended sleep for the ride back home. I’ll fix this and then you.”
My father and Cooper were next to arrive. Dad was pale. There was no other way to put it. He kneeled down next to me. “Baby, this is going to be okay. We found you. This will be okay.”
Dane patted his back. “It actually will be. I’m going to fix it. I’ve got to get the records off their computer. Did you get the rooms cleared?”
Cooper nodded and then knelt down next to my father. “Diana, it took a little bit to get here. Wes had to hook up the computer on the ship with this new tech so we could follow your specific time stream. We are so sorry.”
“Guess I’m just a constant screw up.”
His face scrunched up. “Don’t say that. You’re the most amazing woman ever. You saved Asher. He is alive. On the ship waiting for us to bring you. He’s been a mess for a year to get to you. We love you. You never screw up. You survive.”
My father took my hand and kissed it. “Mom wanted to come. She, Wes, and Nolan had to stay. The station—I don’t know if it’ll be there when we get back. They took the kids to protect them. You don’t need to hear all this. You’re going to be fine.”
Dane came back and injected me with something. “That’s good. Your heart rate is lowering. Phew.”
C.J. touched my necklace. “What’s that?”
“I got married. They’re gone. Evander took them. I loved them. Five of them. They’re gone.”
My father touched my head. “When you wake up, I want to hear about all of them. I have to know the guys my daughter picked out of the whole universe.”
I laughed. “Come on, Dad. I was kind of thrown at them.”
“Trust me, baby. There’s not a guy in the universe who would complain.”
The world was fading. Dane’s drugs were working. “Dane, I don’t want endless sleep. I don’t want to be revived when you’re all gone and everyone I love is dead. There has to be a time limit. Two years. You end this.”
My father gasped, and C.J. grabbed his shoulder. Only Cooper kept my eye contact. “You sure about that?”
“Yes.” My husbands were gone. When I could feel again, I was g
oing to weep.
“It won’t take that long.” Dane stood over me. “What should we do with Artemis?”
I fell asleep not knowing if I’d live or die.
Chapter Twenty-One
Because He Promised Her
Sterling Whitworth sat on the edge of the medical bed and watched the poor woman who took his vitals sing to herself. She had no idea he was awake or that she was about to not be. He’d never seen her before; she hadn’t been involved in the program that created him or the abuse afterwards. It wasn’t her fault she happened to be in here right at this moment.
But she was between him and Orion, where his girl remained waiting for him. From this moment on, anything that got between him and Diana would either be knocked out, killed, or destroyed. There wasn’t much that Sterling wanted in life. His wife and his friends were it. They were his family. He’d promised her he wouldn’t leave her, and he’d broken that promise. When he saw her, he would fall to his knees and beg her forgiveness. When he finally made her smile again, and the others had their turn, they’d move on to someplace warm where he could see her in the sunlight.
He stood. In two seconds, he’d grabbed her neck and cut off her oxygen. He choked her until she passed out but wasn’t dead. He gently set her on the medical table and took her keys. He hurried through the hall. He was personally worth more money to Evander than any of the others. When he was discovered missing, it wouldn’t be pretty.
So he needed to be out of there with his brothers before anyone realized it. Sterling locked the door behind him. He listened to the noises in the hallway. After five years, he knew the others by their heartbeats, even when they were asleep. It had been everything he could do to not listen to Diana’s all the time when they were on Orion. Only a few times a day when he had to make sure she was safe.
Sterling couldn’t believe all the ways he’d failed her. The universe gave him Diana, and he hadn’t kept her from harm. She had to be terrified by now. It had taken him six months in the pod to get to Evander Corporation. The stolen ship he would get after he found his friends would make the trip back in three.