This is one well trained group, Niki thought.

​      They'd formed themselves into a single unit, the Valids had. Noel sat across Brock's lap in the wheelchair while Estelle and Shawnacy stood behind. Estelle gripped Noel's shoulders, Shawnacy his calves. They wrapped their other arms around each other. Noel, now, also held Trevor's broken, gasping body while Niki grabbed Noel's ankle with one hand while wrapping her other arm around Nacy.

​     Shawnacy lowered the six of them to the ground.

​     They rested Trevor on his back on the pavement. It looked to Niki like every bone in his body from his neck to his pelvis had been smashed. He choked. As he did, blood seeped out from between his lips. He shuddered. Obviously, he was finding it hard to stay conscious, to hang on.

     "No!" Niki wanted to beat on his chest, but she knew she didn't dare. "I just met you! I'm not gonna'....you didn't have to...Trevor! You stay with me! Don't you go out on me! Don't you do it!"

     "The fighting's over," Estelle said. That felt right, too. They were more or less alone there on the pavement of The Fours Inc. grounds. Estelle saw a few running employees. That was it. "Where are the medics?"

     The moment she asked that, they appeared.​     

​      Azure, a half dozen of them, each of them attired in full, head to toe, glittering blue armor. One of them shoved Niki out of the way so that four of them could stand over Trevor.

​     "Hey!" Niki snapped.

​     "Leave them alone," Estelle said. "They're here to save Trevor's life."

​     The other two attached oddly shaped technological gadgets to the shoulders of each of the Valids besides Noel. Niki watched their wounds immediately begin to heal. Whoa.

​     "Do I get one of those?" she asked.​

​     "Of course you do." Even as Estelle replied, an Azure medic attached a healer to Niki's arm.

​     She looked at it in wonder. "Oh man, that's something," she said. Her body took on an immediate added warmth.

​     "It's like every bit of me's bathed in sunlight," she said.

     Estelle smiled. "Feels great, doesn't it?"

​     Niki watched as the slashes on Estelle's arms and torso closed, healed, then disappeared.

​     Niki looked at Trevor. Four Azure medics continued to hover over him.

     "He's going to be all right, isn't he?" Niki asked. "I mean, this gadget's going to work on him too, right?"

     No response. No Valid would look her in the eye.

     "He saved my life," Niki said. "He took the hit rather than..."

     "You're his partner," Estelle replied. "That's how we're trained to be with our partners."

     "I'm nobody's partner," Niki replied.

     Estelle nodded in Trevor's direction.

​     "That's not how he saw it," she replied.

​                                                         CONTINUE