Read Beyond the Rain for Free Online

contorted. He wasn’t moving. Matriarchs help her, he wasn’t breathing!
    She flew off the rubble heap and knelt by his head. Vicca ran around them yelping in alarm.
    “Soren?” She brushed her palm over his cheek, but his jaw remained clenched, his lips pulled back in a macabre grimace. With his eyes pure white and lifeless, he lay twisted, his hands clenched up, frozen, grasping at nothing.
    She watched in horror as his skin paled before her eyes. His lips turned purple. He wasn’t getting any air.
    “Soren, snap out of this. You can fight this . . .” Her panic rose like a storm within her. The sound of Vicca’s terrified yelp faded into nothing as the thundering heartbeat in her ears blocked out everything else. She reached down and pressed a palm to his chest. She couldn’t feel his heart, and his lungs didn’t pull in any air.
    “Come on, Soren,” she ordered. He couldn’t die like this. She ripped open the clasps of his shadowsuit and splayed her hand out on the bare skin of his chest to try to find his heartbeat. It stuttered, then pulsed frantically into her palm.
    font size=ungs through the liquid. She inhaled as well, unaware that she had been holding her breath, but the rush of relief was all too brief.
    The spasms began.
    Cyani lifted Soren’s head onto her thighs, and held on tight to his jaw as his body twisted and shook. His head jerked, slamming back down onto her thighs as spit bubbled from between his lips. His eyelids fluttered and his eyes rolled back. She held his head so he wouldn’t slam it into the stone floor. It was the only thing she could think to do, the only thing she felt she could control. She tried to remember her emergency medical training, but she had nothing, could do nothing.
    She closed her eyes, but she couldn’t escape the sharp metallic scent in the air, or the sound of his limbs slapping against the hard stone floor. She wanted to scream and scream to somehow release the stark terror eating away at her as his saliva dripped onto her hands. Instead she let out a helpless gasp and continued to hold on to him, refusing to let go.
    His contortions ended almost as quickly as they began and his limbs stiffened once more. She held still, cradling his head in her lap, hoping his labored breathing would not cease again, and the ordeal was finally over.
    “You have to pull though this,” she whispered, her voice raw and choked. “Please, Soren.” After everything he had suffered, he didn’t deserve a slow and tortured death. The others she had lost had been swift; she couldn’t think before she knew they were already gone. This was too slow, teasing her with time, tormenting her with the need to do something to save him.
    She felt the tension drain out of his muscles as his body slowly relaxed. With a low moan, his breathing eased, though it rattled in his chest.
    Cyani shook all over, feeling weak and battered as she brushed his hair from his face and tried to wipe the saliva from his mouth.
    His throat swallowed, and he tried to lift his head then relaxed against her thigh. His breathing sputtered in his chest as he fell into a deep sleep. He snored. She let out a choked laugh through her clenching fear.
    She sat with him for what seemed like hours, helpless, exposed. The Garulen could come at any minute. She prayed more desperately than she ever had in her life, but his life, his death, was no longer in her hands.
    She needed control. She needed more information. Was this part of his withdrawal?
    “Com, find source files for the general information on species Byralen,” she said, desperate for something to focus on.
    Six files identified.
    “Com, list files . . .” Cyani stroked his hair, smoothing his brow with her palm. The Elite and their rules could go suck on it. In the dark, alone and terrified, the girl she had been resurfaced. In the ground cities, you cared for one another or you died.
    She chose to listen to a log entry from a Union Army lieutenant