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“According to my intel, there’s only one enemy left. A Yoru,” Cypher's voice said over Reyna's communicator.
"I saw him by the window in mid, but a Jett showed up and I lost track of him," Astra said. "I dunno where he went after that."
"There’s no one over here in B," Phoenix said. "If it’s a Yoru, he’s gonna be hard to find."
Reyna reloaded her Vandal. “He will not escape from me. I'm going over to the double doors,” she told them.
She walked down the short corridor with more caution than usual. A Yoru could be tricky to deal with, and she could hear Viper's voice in her mind, just like she’d said the night before. 'Don't be stupid on your mission tomorrow,' she had said while the two were curled up in bed, just before falling asleep. There weren't many things more annoying than hearing Viper say ‘I told you so’, and Reyna would rather avoid the experience.
She hadn't seen anyone at C site, so if Yoru had gone that way, he would have gone through the window. She was climbing the first step when she heard the familiar sound of a tear in the fabric of the universe behind her. Reyna turned quickly, being immediately blinded by a bluish flash. She fired, but promptly felt the pain of a bullet going through her abdomen and another lodging in her thigh. Her vision went back to normal just in time to be filled with black dots as Yoru darted out of the doors.
I hope that hijo de puta dies , Reyna thought. Mierda , I told her I wasn't going to die today.
Reyna opened her eyes and immediately closed them again, lifting a hand to shield her eyes from the bright light directly above her. The movement caused a sharp pain in her abdomen, and she remembered what had happened. She seemed to be in the med bay back at the base. Great, looks like I didn't die.
"Don't move around too much," Sage said. "You lost a lot of blood."
The healer approached her with an orb and, with a few movements, the orb dissipated in her hands and a momentary relief spread through Reyna before disappearing, making the pain that came from the wound in her thigh even clearer.
"I'm going to have to pry the bullet out there," Sage said. A movement caught Reyna's eye out of the corner of her eye, and she caught a glimpse of a white lab coat leaving the med bay. Viper? What was she doing there? Reyna tried to get up to get a better look.
"Reyna." Sage called to her, and she saw that the healer had a syringe in her hands. Viper was already out of sight when she looked back. “I'm going to give you a local anesthetic, but the dose is low, and you may still feel some pain. Don't move,” she said, before applying the anesthesia. Sage took a pair of tweezers and started to look for the bullet inside the wound.
Reyna bit her lip, holding back a groan of pain. "How long was I blacked out?" she asked, trying to distract herself from the feeling.
"A few hours," Sage replied, focused. The anesthesia seemed to start to have its effect.
"What about the insecto that almost killed me?"
"Astra took care of him," Sage replied. She carefully removed the bullet, placing the instruments on the table next to her and pulling out another orb to finish the healing. “You have to be more careful, Reyna. You can only heal if you are not killed.”
“I was careful. That idiota ambushed me.” Her leg was still numb from the anesthesia, but there didn't seem to be any more pain. "Am I wrong, or was Viper around?"
"She was here until recently," Sage said. “She was in the infirmary the whole time you were unconscious. I don't know why she left just now.”
Reyna could imagine why. She leaned on the table beside the bed and stood up, testing how much weight she could put on her numb leg.
"Reyna, you should really stay in the med bay a while longer," Sage said, already knowing that this was an argument she wasn’t going to win.
"I'm fine," she replied, taking a tentative step. When she figured she could handle her own weight, she walked more confidently to the door. Good thing she had managed to absorb one or two souls before being ambushed, or she might have needed more time. "Don’t worry about me."
Sage sighed, but let her pass. “Don’t put too much weight on that leg for a few days, and don’t do any heavy activities. At least for three days.”
"Sure," Reyna said. They both knew that she’d obey for a day, at most.
Reyna took the familiar path to Viper's lab. Why would she stay in the med bay all this time just to leave when Reyna woke up? The chemist always valued her time in the lab more than anything, and it seemed unlike her to waste time waiting -- and even more to be waiting with Sage. It wasn’t a secret that Viper held a grudge against the healer.
Reyna and Viper had something unnamed since the scientist had lost her patience with Reyna's flirts and decided to do something about it, and for a few weeks now the two of them had been sleeping together more often than alone. But Reyna didn’t expect anything more, and it seemed weird to imagine that Viper thought of her outside the four walls of her room.
She had noticed something changing between them -- but maybe she’d underestimated the size of the change.
Reyna reached the door to Viper's lab -- a little more slowly than usual, but after all, her leg was still numb. The door was closed, but not locked, which meant Viper wasn’t so determined to be left alone. She pushed the door open slowly.
"Viper?"
The chemist was sitting on a well-lit workbench, with her back almost turned to the door, all her focus in a beaker in her hands. She looked up from her tools just for a moment.
“Ah, Reyna. You’re alive. Good,” she said, with disinterest -- but her heart was beating faster than usual. Not too much, but enough to draw attention.
"Don't pretend you weren't worried about me, corazón," she said, leaning on the workbench in front of Viper. The scientist ignored her, continuing her experiment, but didn’t complain -- which was already quite a victory. "I saw you in the med bay."
"I needed some information from Sage."
"That’s not what she told me."
Viper finally looked at Reyna. She loved the intensity in Viper's unreadable eyes, their deep shade of green.
"What do you want?" Viper asked.
"Why didn't you want me to notice that you were there?"
Viper's pulse quickened, but didn't let it show on her face. She turned her attention back to her experiment again, trying to look disinterested in the conversation.
Reyna felt each heartbeat telling her otherwise.
"I didn't want you to think it meant more than it really does," she said.
Reyna kept staring into her eyes, waiting for Viper to break her feigned concentration. The scientist took another vial and poured some of the liquid into her test tube.
"Liar."
Viper looked at her with a look that would have made other people shiver. Reyna held her gaze, perfectly calm, a half smile on her lips.
"What do you mean by that?" Viper asked, with a low, almost threatening voice.
"I don’t know. All I know is that you’re lying. I can feel it,” Reyna said, leaning over the workbench toward Viper. For a moment, neither of them moved -- a duel between stubborn minds, none of them wanting to show weakness by looking away. It was a battle that Reyna was determined to win.
Viper looked away first, turning her attention to the test tubes. If Reyna was just a little more impatient, she would have shattered those vials a long time ago.
"What is it that you don’t want to tell me, cariño?" Reyna asked.
Viper poured the contents of another test tube, and the liquid turned into the characteristic bright green shade of her toxins as she mixed the contents. It felt like an eternity to wait, but just when Reyna opened her mouth to complain, Viper broke the silence.
"Do you know what parallax means?" she asked, still keeping her eye on her work. Reyna shook her head no.
“It’s the error in a measurement that comes from perspective, the angle where you look, that can lead to mistakes. It can taint all your data,” she said, carefully placing the contents of her test tube in a vial. “Distorting a measurement that would be correct if it weren't for subjectivity. Impossible to remove completely. All you can do is make it smaller.”
Reyna hesitated. This wasn’t what she was expecting from this conversation. "Where are you going with this, corazón?"
"I can't seem to be objective when it comes to you," she said, finally making eye contact. “I have to be objective and make the plans, but whenever I try to measure how much each agent is worth, I can’t act like losing you wouldn’t be worse than losing anyone else. I can’t pretend anymore that I don't care if you die. And you always put yourself in danger,” she said, her tone growing just a little higher as she spoke. Reyna had never seen that much emotion in her, who always seemed so composed -- at least, on the outside. Viper took a deep breath, trying to get back in control of her emotions.
"I know you can take care of yourself, but I worry about you, and I hate it," Viper continued. "I'm afraid of what this means to me."
It had been a long time since anyone had cared for Reyna in that way. She would never have imagined that Viper, of all people, would care. But at the same time, it was Viper . It was a mark of trust, that she would show her vulnerable side to Reyna, and she knew it because she herself would never do it for someone she didn't fully trust. She understood Viper perfectly, because they thought in the same way. Not all the time, of course -- they always argued over plans and strategies --, but about everything that actually mattered.
Reyna couldn’t find the words to say all of that, but it didn't matter. She went around the counter, held Viper's face and kissed her, more gently than she had ever kissed Viper before. She returned the kiss, and for a moment, there were only the two of them -- standing in the middle of the empty lab, as close to each other as it was possible.
"If I'm just another distraction for you, you can get out now," Viper said when they came apart, her eyes back to a cold gaze that made Icebox feel like a beach resort. "I don't want anything from you if it’s out of pity."
"Don't be stupid, mi amor," Reyna replied immediately. Viper snorted in mild indignation, not seeming convinced.
"I wouldn’t lie to you. Not to the only person here who understands me,” Reyna said. If Viper could feel her heartbeat, she would hear an honesty that scared even Reyna herself.
It seemed to be enough to convince her, because Viper pulled her in for another kiss, clinging to her like that was all she wanted. The intensity of what was between them was terrifying, but magnetic. Reyna was afraid she would drown in it.
"Hmm, maybe I should get close to death more often, if it makes you so sentimental," Reyna said, smiling.
"Don't you dare ," Viper said.
"I wouldn't dream of it." Reyna gently brushed a strand of hair from her face.
"Good."
They looked at each other for a moment, wondering what was this between them -- at least, Reyna was. They were both hard people to handle, both people who had been hurt before. She knew that Viper was thinking the same as her: that one more bond was one more vulnerability, something else they could lose. But it was a matter of admitting the truth: Viper already was someone she didn't want to lose.
"I have to finish this test with my toxins," Viper said, breaking the silence. Of course she would turn back to her pragmatism as soon as she got the chance. "But I’ll see you at dinner?"
Reyna smiled. "Of course." She started to walk away towards the door, but Viper held her hand. She turned back.
"You’re worth the risk," Viper said, like she was trying to convince herself of that too. Perfectly serious, but with a whirlwind of emotions under her chest. She was fascinating, terrifying, brilliant, beautiful. Cielos, Reyna was just as much of a whirlwind of emotions when it came to her.
"So are you, mi amor."