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rally her crew to her side, or she could try to bring Wes back one more time.
    It was one or the other. She didn’t have enough power to do both. Fight them or heal him. She only had one chip to play, one last card to draw.
    And there was only ever one choice for Nat.
    COME BACK TO ME,
she willed, as she placed both hands on Wes’s chest and sent the last of her fire into his soul. The white spark left her fingers just as the iron collar was clamped around her neck.
    Come on, Wes. Wake up. Come on. Make your way back to me. You know the way. We’ve done it before and we can do it again.

4
    A FIRE WAS BUR NING INSIDE HIM .
    No, no, please—
    A spark lit him up from the inside, warm and forgiving.
    Let me be—
    A life force—
Nat’s
life force.
    That’s her name—
    Nat.
    He remembered now.
    And with that, he knew everything about her, all at once. The girl he had met in New Vegas at a blackjack table. The girl he had transported across the black ocean and into the Blue. The girl who rode the drakon. The girl he loved.
    She loves me and she needs me.
    Every ounce of Nat’s strength and her love rushed into him, banishing the cold and the dark for good.
    I cannot leave her like this.
His heart thumped loudly in his chest, each beat stronger than the last.
I will not.
    And then suddenly, miraculously, his body obeyed.
    Wes didn’t know how or why—but he could feel the change coming. Weightlessness became weight. Breathlessness became breath. A thousand cold hands suddenly let go of him, pushing him back up to the surface of the immense darkness. Wes felt the air suck into his chest, and the fire spark back into his heart. He twitched a single finger. It tapped against the deck like a moth.
    Good. I can move.
    It was all Wes could do not to try to sit up immediately, but when he felt Nat move away, instinct told him to hold, to wait.
She’s in danger.
His neck prickled with adrenaline.
Surrounded.
He could feel the tension all around her.
    His senses told him they weren’t out of the clear and he didn’t have all his strength back yet. Feeling came back to his body slowly, working out from the center of his chest, out toward his toes, his fingertips.
    His hearing sharpened. He recognized the heavy footsteps of his former comrade, accompanied by the smell of hair dye and two-credit snowshine, the kind of alcohol that got you drunk way too fast.
    Avo Hubik.
What icy luck.
    Wes and Avo had fought on the same side of the war once, had been brothers in arms. Comrades. Soldiers. Heroes. They even had the same scar above their right eyebrow.
    Then Avo had changed.
    He began to take the jobs Wes had rejected. He trolled the black waters, doing the RSA’s dirty work. He took slaves to the flesh markets and to the White Temple. He’d been rewarded with his own military command, of course, and all the perks that came with it. Somewhere along the way, he’d lost the person he used to be. The soldier had turned slaver.
    Meanwhile, Wes had survived on the margins of New Vegas, working his way down until he was hustling low-paying cons, playing coyote to those who wanted out of its borders. While Avo collected heat credits and kept his belly full of real meat and mead, Wes ate glop and swilled Nutri.
    After Wes had left Nat at the Blue, he’d been forcibly redrafted into the service. It had been the most miserable time of his life and he quickly abandoned his post when he and Nat had found each other again. Unlike Avo, Wes didn’t have a tank or a command or a perk to his name, and that was fine with him.
    More than fine. Wes twitched the fingers on his left hand into a fist.
Better.
    There was the loud clink of chains, which meant they had collared Nat. Liannan, too, most likely. RSA policy was to kill or subdue any marked or magic user first. He’d have to work fast. Wes strained to hear what else was going on—Avo was leaving—a stroke of luck. No.