Alien Cowboy Queen

Later, once the surgery has wrapped up successfully, he walks all the way to Master Sargeant Manes’ room. He stays in the doorway and watches the man in his coma. The man’s condition is baffling to everyone. By all Kyle’s predictions, Manes should have woken up a long time ago. All the tests come back clean and all his readings seem normal. Otherwise, he would be afraid that he’d miscalculated and damaged Manes’ brain irreparably by the dose or by waiting too long before getting help for him.

That still might be the case.

It’s another thing he tries to not think about, but fails miserably. He is sure Alex would forgive him, he is sure that his is already irredeemable in the eyes of the other Manes’ boys, but neither of that truly matters. If Manes never wakes up, he is going to have to come to terms with having gone against his oath. Although it was in self-defense and although he had done everything he could to avoid the consequences, he is not sure whether he can accept his own innocence.

“You deserve to live more than he does,” says Isobel’s voice quietly, if coldly, from behind him.

“Who’s to measure that?” Kyle asks as he turns to face her. She is holding her customary bouquet of flowers. “Were you reading my mind?” he realizes belatedly.

“I didn’t need to,” she says. “You are easy to read.”

He inhales deeply and let’s her walk past him into the room and replace the flowers. He always expects military security at the door, but there appears to be no need for it. There is a security guard by the entrance to the department, who didn’t use to stand there, but other than that, there is no one but the medical staff to worry about.

Still, Isobel’s next words come as a psychic whisper. It makes him flinch. “How do you resist?” she asks and she is looking at the monitors showing Manes’ vitals.

It takes Kyle a moment to realize what she means. “It’s not my call to make,” he says, voice snappy. If he tried to end Manes’ life now, it would make him a murderer. “It’s no one’s call at all. There’s brain activity.”

Isobel nods. She steps closer to the bed and rest her hand on Manes’ temple. “And what ugly brain activity it is.” She turns to Kyle again.

Isobel has a presence around her that doesn’t leave people unaffected, but Kyle notices it doesn’t have the effect on him that it normally would. It’s not just the hospital room. He has a boyfriend to return to and even though the relationship is fake, the feelings have become very real.

“I mean it, Kyle,” she says, voice unusually soft. Her next words come in through her telepathy again. “You had no choice. It was you or him. And still you found it in you to be merciful.”

She rest her hand on his arm and speaks aloud. “You’ll be happy to hear that I found someone to help our mutual friend put her life in order,” she says. “My late husband left me with some connections.”

It’s good news. Whatever plans and connections Isobel has, Kyle is glad that she wants to use them to get Rosa a legal identity. But even as he smiles at her, he thinks about the rest of her words. She is right, he knows. And most days he remembers it.