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He forced his muscles to unclench.

He had no awareness of when he started to fall unconscious.

At some point, though, he must have.

CHAPTER18

THE MONASTERY

The next time Nick woke,the place where he was felt completely different.

He woke up lying on something a lot softer.

He could move his arms and his legs.

He could smell a lot more people nearby.

The room he was in felt smaller than the one he remembered, too. Not quite cramped; he had a sense of a high ceiling overhead, one that stretched up at least a story, if not two or three. But the stone felt damp, and it had the faint smell of mold and musk, like he’d been put on a bed in a wine cellar, or possible an underground root garden.

On the other side of that door, he could smell a lot of people.

That place next door smelled warm, inviting, and he could hear voices even through the thick stone, although not well enough to make out individual words.

It was enough to get him to lurch upward, into a seated position.

Once he was semi-upright, he realized his arm was fitted with an IV.

He stared at the bag of what smelled like synthetic blood hanging from a hook over where they’d left him. The bag was huge, and now, completely empty. He stared at it, a little bit in awe, then down at himself.

Fresh bandages covered his side and ribs where he’d been hit by the plasma bolt.

When he flipped over his arm, he saw that someone had sealed the ugly gash with a wound-closing gun, then wrapped it in a thick, sticky, but transparent bandage over the whole thing that likely had blood plasma in it, and other organic material that would make his flesh regrow faster. Between that and the giant bag of synthetic blood, his skin had likely begun to knit itself back into one piece already.

His hands and thigh had been treated the same.

So had his face and head.

His throat had been covered in yet another gummy bandage.

That’s when it occurred to Nick that he was completely naked under the metallic blanket he wore. He glanced around the small compartment for clothes, and then, even more absurdly, for a mirror. He wanted to know just how fucked up his face and body still looked.

He reached a hand and fingers back up to his face tentatively, and followed the line of the bandage on there with his fingers. He could feel bruises and other broken parts of himself on his chest and shoulders and back, and it occurred to him he’d probably hurt himself more than he realized in that fall.

He swung his legs carefully over the side of the bed. He kept the metallic sheet wrapped over his lap, at least over his crotch.

He carefully… carefully… disconnected the IV from the band around his arm.

He waited a few seconds after he’d done that, trying to decide how he felt.

Then he rose even more carefully to his feet.

He stood for a few seconds without moving, simply evaluating his body.

He tested muscles, flexing his arms carefully, then his thighs, calves, shoulders. He tentatively touched the hole in his abdomen. It hurt, but not an unbearable amount.

He still gripped the metallic sheet in one hand.

It was bizarrely difficult and complicated, but he wrapped it carefully around his waist below the gash in his side, and lightly over the sealed cut that ran down the length of one leg. He tied the ends together on his good side, wincing a little when he had to twist his waist to reach. He still moved excruciatingly slowly and carefully, not wanting to rip anything open, or disturb any of the healing flesh.