Jenny had done it. She had reached down within herself, and she had found that last bit of gift a natural healer had. That gift was a double-edged sword, however. If used upon a healthy person, it became a weapon. Ben, her former lover, fell and kicked on the ground, his body arching and flexing as every illness ever known suddenly attacked him, coming in from all sides of his immune system and central nervous system.

The other Rovers broke into a run. Marik and his crew surged forward. There was nothing in the chest, of course; it had all been a ruse, and he had bet everything he had on Jenny.

He knew he had to get to her. He had to save her now. They had only needed her gift long enough to make a difference, to send as many Rovers as possible to the ground while their bodies battled illnesses and lost.

The Rovers were falling by the dozens. All of her energy was directed at the Rovers and not them, but Marik knew that she did not get control of it and soon it would spread and radiate outward. Nobody would be safe.

He took a deep breath. Talon said, “Let me. It shouldn’t be you.”

Marik said, “It has to be me.”

He advanced even further and called her name. Jenny’s eyes flew open. The golden light emanating from within her body made her long blonde hair stand up on end and crackle with energy and light. Her eyes shone, lambent and huge, and her mouth was open. Even her teeth were rammed in that light.

She looked right at him, and he saw tears, golden and beautiful, go running down her face.

He drew his weapon.

The weapon fired, and she went down.

The light that covered her winked out, and they ran forward. The Rovers were beyond help. There was nothing they could do, and they might possibly even be contagious. The only thing they wanted to do at that moment was save Jenny, and Marik was the first person there. He scooped her up in his arms, seeing the neat blast hole in her chest. She would die if she were not assisted; she was already now slipping into unconsciousness.

They turned and began to run. The Rovers, so frightened and horrified by the terrible deaths that their fellows were undergoing, also ran but in the opposite direction. It was the most anticlimactic fight that Marik had ever been in, but it was still one the most awful outcomes he had ever seen. It sickened him at the same time that it relieved him.

The Rovers would fall back now. That would give them a chance to load those who were willing to go, as many as possible, onto the ships. Talon’s ship was already at the dock, and two more were coming down. The other two were owned by space pirates who had agreed to carry the passengers for a fee.

Jenny flopped in his arms, and he stared down at her face for a moment, disregarding the dangers and obstacles in the path ahead of him. She had to live. She just had to. He would die without her. He was sure of that. Oh, his body would go on, but his heart would be crumpled and broken to the point where it would not matter if it beat again at all.

They had been busy in the time between the ransom demand and the meeting. They had been rounding up the injured, asking who wanted to go with them to a new planet into a new home. They had sent a crew out onto the street to see if they could find any who were willing. The numbers of those who were was astronomical.

And already among the ranks, fighting was breaking out. Many of those who once lived above began to demand first passage, saying that their station required that they go first. Even now crew members were beating those angry people back, demanding that they wait in line, that they wait their turn, that they understand that all turns were equal.

Those who protested the most, who held their station up the most, who demanded first passage and would not listen to reason or be swayed by the fact that Talon had ordered children to be given first passage were immediately stunned into unconsciousness and then hauled away so as to leave the docks clear for others.

It was horrible. It was beyond comprehension.

They raced onto the docks. Marik laid Jenny down on the ground gently, looking up to see that the ship had not yet opened its bay doors. People, held back by the crew but anxious and frightened, crowded close. He knelt over Jenny and put his hand to the neat little hole in her chest. He put one hand on her pulse. It was weak and thready.

Was he already too late?

Had he shot too close to her heart after all? Had his aim not been as true as he had thought?

Marik summoned up every ounce of energy that he could for the woman that he loved, the woman that he could not live without, and the woman that he may very well have killed.

Marik awoke in a med bay. He lay there looking up at the ceiling, his entire body aching and sick. His head turned, and he stared at Jenny, who stood by his side. Her face was drawn and pale, and her hair was tangled around her face. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her cheeks were sunken and wan.

She said, “You saved my life.”

He managed a smile. “I might’ve shot you.”

She looked away. When she looked back, there was something in her face, something that did not bode well. “Why did you do that to me? Why did you implant me with all of that? Why did you break the implant? You were able to with technology, Jessica told me. She only told me because I pressed and then, when she still wouldn’t tell, I threatened to… Well, I threatened to become a weapon and use myself upon her. I think I scared her.”

Despite the gravity of her words, Marik felt amusement pushing into his being. He said, “She had good reason to be frightened.”

Her voice held anger. “You turned me into a monster. I hate you for that. How could you do that to me? Why did you do that to me?”

He said, “I had to. All natural healers have the gift within them. You’re strong and true, but you have to know that it works both ways. You hold the balance of both life and death; all natural healers do.”

Her eyes burned into his. “Do you?”

He said, “Yes. It’s why I can heal when someone is very close to death, but I do not have the power that you have. I don’t know why you are so strong. I don’t know where it comes from. It’s impossible for you to have that gift. It rarely appears in humans. The last time it did was many, many centuries ago, back in a time of your history and race already forgotten.”

She looked down at the floor and then back at his face. She shook her head. “I didn’t want this. I never wanted this. How could you give me something that would kill?”

He tried to sit up, but the pain from healing her flattened him again. “I didn’t give it to you. I only gave you the knowledge of everything in the universe as far as healing goes. The gift was already yours. I gave you nothing but knowledge.”

Her voice broke. “And you gave it to me in a way that you knew could kill me. Why?”

Marik said, “Because I’ve seen war before. Because I knew that there would be a great many people down here who would need your help and that you were not prepared to help them. That you had no idea of how to do more than just simple healing and you needed to be able to do so much more. That if I gave that to you that you would be able to do so much more. That you can heal hundreds, maybe even thousands if you only accepted your gift.”

Her lip curled upward to show her teeth. “Accepted it? I didn’t even know I possessed it! Why didn’t you just tell me I possessed it and then I could’ve worked on it like a… Like normal people?”

He studied her face. “There is no such thing as normal anymore. Maybe there never was.”

Her head lowered. Tears filled her eyes. She said, “I don’t know why it feels as if nothing ever happened at all. I mean, in my body. I feel every weight of every death that I caused in my heart though. I feel it all. But in my body, I feel fine. I don’t understand.”

He said, “I touch healed you.”

She said, “I understand that. And I hate you for it. I don’t want to hate you for this. I’m so angry at you right now, and I don’t want to be. I’m angry at you for what you did to me on that ship. I’m angry at you for giving me the knowledge of how to kill. I’m angry at you for summoning that forth from me somehow. And I hate you for those things, but I don’t want to. More than anything else I do not want to hate you.”

He knew that she would hate him for a while. He only hoped that, eventually, she would forgive him. He said, “I am so sorry. I promise you that I would not have done it if there had been any other way. I…”

His mouth closed. How could he say to her now that he loved her? She would not hear him even if he did. He sat up; wincing slightly as one last bolt of pain went through his body then subsided. He said, “Have we left the surface?”

She shook her head. “It’s chaos down there. They are trying to load people onto the ship now, but they need help.”

He managed to get off the table and stand. “Then we should go.”

As soon as he said the words, he fell back into a dead faint.