Page 116 of Alchemised

His torso had been sliced open, peeled back to expose all the organs, but they were blackened, almost necrotic.

“Fuck!” said a woman’s voice, and she glanced over towards them.

They were clearly trying to finish what they’d been doing when Atreus knocked to warn them.

Two people lunged across the floor and through a door on the far side without a backwards glance, leaving the rest.

The room exploded into violence.

Soren had been waiting for this moment. He shot across the room, his weapon sweeping into a long curving blade. He killed everyone violently. There was nothing quick or clean about it. Warm blood spattered across her face as Helena went for Luc.

Despite being strapped down, his hands had been pierced through with spikes of nullium that Helena instantly recognised by the telltale way they were dissolving into his blood.

Her fingers trembled as she reached out, looking for a pulse, not sure if her resonance would work. She pressed her fingers below his jaw and gave a small sob of relief. He was alive. Drugged and cut open, but alive.

She ripped the mask off his face as Purnell twisted a nozzle on the tank, cutting off whatever they’d been using on him.

What had they done?

Her hands shook as she searched for a talisman inside him, but she felt no signs of lumithium or any other metal. His organs were darkened, as if he’d been poisoned with something, but there was no time to try to heal it all.

She closed the incisions, working carefully, aligning everything. Purnell was prying the spikes from his hands, her breath coming out in rapid pants as she struggled to get them loose. There was a stark look of terror starting to creep across the girl’s face.

The veins and arteries in Luc’s arms had been constricted, the gas administered keeping his heartbeat impossibly sluggish. The combination had kept his resonance inactive while allowing the now dead scientists to use their own on him. He was also conscious, but just barely.

Soren and Alister were trying to force open the door that two attackers had attempted to escape through, without success.

Helena worked as fast as she could, speeding up Luc’s metabolism and forcing his damaged kidneys back into action, making his heart beat more rapidly once Purnell had the spikes out. Helena shoved a decoction into her hands, ordering her to wash the wounds and get them wrapped in gauze.

Then her ring burned.

Pain like fire ran up her left hand. She gave a choked gasp as she kept working. The sensation barely faded before it burned again.

“Is he alive?” she dimly heard Soren asking, his voice shaking.

“Yes. Just give me a minute,” she said, touching Luc’s face desperately. “Come on, Luc. Do you hear me?”

Her ring burned again.

Alarms started. A deafening ringing that filled the air.

“We’ve got to go!” Soren yelled over the din. “Fuck. We’ll just carry him.”

“Luc, wake up.” Helena shook him.

They didn’t have the manpower for Luc to be deadweight. There was no way that Helena and Purnell could carry him all the way out if there was fighting.

She had a vial and a needle. Her hands were shaking as she filled a syringe. She’d never used this—epinephrine combined with painkillers and a few other things to jump-start his body into action. If it was too strong, it would kill him. It would all be for nothing.

“Come on,” she muttered, and jabbed it through his chest into his heart.

Luc lurched, giving a sudden gasp as his body jolted into violent consciousness.

Helena saw a flash of sky blue as his eyes cracked open.

“Hel?” he croaked, his voice dry. He reached out, touching her face with his bandaged hand as if he couldn’t believe she was real.

“Yes,” she said, trying not to cry. “We’ve come to take you home.”

His eyes rolled around, searching, skimming past everyone clustered around him. “Where’s—where’s Lila?”

“Headquarters,” Soren said, his voice gruff, “waiting for you.”

Luc stiffened. “Is she really—?”

“She’s alive,” Helena said quickly. “We took care of her. It’s your turn now. Come on.”

Luc gave a shuddering gasp of relief. “They said if I went—they wouldn’t kill her. She was—bleeding—so much. Wouldn’t even let me burn it closed. She’s—she’s all right?”

“She’s alive, getting better,” Helena said. “Come on. Take this. We’ve got to go.”

She pulled him upright and he groaned, clutching at his chest.

“What did they do to me?”

“I don’t know. I’ll fix you better once we’re safe,” she said, breaking a tablet in half and pushing it past his lips. She just had to hope he was still strong enough that everything she was doing wouldn’t kill him. “Hold still.”

She pressed her hands on each side of his neck, and used the dissolving tablets to manipulate his physiology, getting his internal systems working the way they needed to.

He’d crash terribly once it all wore off, but she’d be there. She could make up all the difference once they were safe.

“Up now,” she said. He was breathing too fast; she could feel his heart racing dangerously. She tried to slow it a little, but the more conscious he became, the more he comprehended their danger.

She pulled one of his arms over her shoulder and Purnell took the other, and they dragged him to his feet.

“You came …” Luc said, slumping heavily on her.

“You’re my best friend,” Helena said, staring ahead. “Of course I did. Come on. We need to get you out.”

He kept tripping over his feet, his body bearing down so hard that her knees nearly buckled. She was grateful he was not in armour, or she didn’t know how they’d manage. The floor was slick with blood and gore.

“You shouldn’t be here. You’re not—trained,” he said when they were halfway down a flight of stairs.

“Helping you is exactly what I’m trained for,” she said.

Her ring kept burning, again and again. She ignored it.

She had been afraid that after all the fighting to get there, Soren and the others would be too exhausted to keep going, but recovering Luc had reinvigorated them.

However secret the prison had been, it was not so secret that there weren’t plenty of necrothralls now that the alarms had gone off.

Not shoddy, damaged necrothralls that shambled and ravaged carelessly; these greys were expertly reanimated, so capable it was hard to believe they were dead except they kept coming no matter how Soren and Sebastian sliced them apart.

The narrowness of the hallways and tight corners was both gift and curse.

“I need a weapon,” Luc said, trying to pull away from Helena as Soren was slammed against the wall and crumpled. A necrothrall nearly took his head off, but Sebastian rammed into it, buying Soren enough time to scramble to his feet and decapitate it.

He was fighting left-handed, his right arm cradled against his body.

The drugs were taking effect. Luc was strong enough to resist Helena’s attempts to hold him back and alert enough to realise how outnumbered they were. Still she tried to stop him.

“Luc, you’re injured. I’m not even sure how much. You’re just not feeling it.”

“I’m not watching them die.” He tried again to shove her and Purnell off.

She dug her fingers into his arms. “Luc, you don’t have resonance.”

“Then heal me again later,” he said, finally ripping himself free and throwing himself into the fight. He kicked a necrothrall so hard his foot went through its chest. He snatched up its sword.

Soren called him several names, but there was no time to do more than curse as they kept fighting their way down.

Helena pulled out a knife when they reached the basement.

Wagner was huddling behind Purnell as if he expected her to protect him.

Purnell’s eyes were wide, the whites glaring with visible panic as she clutched back.

They shouldn’t have brought her. The girl was beginning to fall apart. She didn’t have the nerve for combat.

They got into the room and blocked the door, but it was barely secured before the whole wall shook.

They fled into the tunnels, scrambling after one another into the sewers, trying to reach the flood cathedral.

Alister brought up the rear, crushing and sealing the tunnel behind them, step after step, so that pursuit would be slow.

They reached one of the larger tunnels and paused, gasping for breath.

“You’re not supposed to be fighting, you moron,” Soren said, slumping against the wall. In torchlight, he’d turned very grey and his nose was broken, blood streaming down his mouth and chin.

Purnell was crouched on the ground, rocking and muttering, Mummy? Mummy, please don’t, over and over.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Luc said, breathing hard, shifting his grip on the sword. “This sword is shit. You could have brought a weapon for me. Do you have my rings at least?”

“You don’t have resonance,” Helena snapped.

Luc grimaced but gripped the sword harder.

“I don’t know how Lila’s never killed you,” Soren said, pushing himself up but looking ready to topple over.

“Hold on.” Helena went over and checked him. His arm was broken again. Three times in a year. It was unlikely to ever heal properly after this. She aligned the bones again and fused them.

“Do you have something for pain?” Penny asked in a small voice. “Or maybe you could block off some nerves.”

When she was done with Penny, she made them all take her blood tonics, so that if they required healing, what she’d need would already be there. She’d brought two for everyone but hadn’t expected an extra prisoner. Wagner drank hers while she was passing out the others.

“We need to keep moving,” Soren said. They had to drag Purnell with them; she was completely gone, staring blankly as if she didn’t know where she was anymore, still saying Mummy, her voice chillingly childlike.

They retraced their steps, following the maze of tunnels back to their entry point. At first it was a relief that they weren’t being pursued, but the closer they got, the eerier it was.

Helena’s ring burned again.