Page 138 of Alchemised

H ELENA LAY SQUINTING, STRUGGLING TO SEE, BUT everything was dim, blurring. When she tried to breathe, pain radiated through her, so sudden it jolted her back into consciousness. She clutched her chest, trying to draw breath, but she couldn’t.

What had happened? She couldn’t remember. She fought to breathe, and a low whistling sound came from somewhere. Then it all rushed back. The lorries, they crashed and—

There must have been another bomb.

She struggled, trying to pull herself up.

She tried to spot the explosion, but the landscape was wrong. Where was the road? There was just fire and a crater.

Agony bloomed through her. Her vision turned red.

A whistling sound like a boiling kettle kept coming from somewhere. She tried to find it and realised it was coming from her throat.

She moved cautiously. If she’d damaged her spine—

Calm down. Focus. Assess your condition and act from there.

She forced herself to look down and gave a strangled whimper.

There was a piece of metal buried in the centre of her chest, splitting her sternum.

She kept staring at it, too shocked to move at first. She was going to die. She was going to die in a field hospital, just like her father. All that vivimancy just to run into the same fate.

She closed her eyes, struggling to stay calm as feeling crept back over her. She could sense her fingers. Toes. Her spine was intact at least.

She kept trying to breathe, but she wanted to scream with every hitch of her lungs. It was worse than a knife wound; the agony seemed to radiate outwards, seething like cracks through every rib. It consumed the whole of her consciousness.

Get up. You have to get up.

She could barely make herself move. She looked towards the road again. There was just a hole. The road was gone, but there were still people in the hospital.

She managed to get her hand up and peel the mask off. She didn’t think that lung damage from dust mattered anymore.

The air was so much cooler. She managed a half breath.

She couldn’t die.

She fought to her feet, managing shallow, panting breaths, and nearly fainted when she got upright.

Every movement was agony. The need to breathe warred with the excruciating misery of forcing her ribs and lungs to shift.

She bit down on her lip as she tried to shuffle towards the doors. One step at a time.

Her lungs kept agitating her with the urge to cough, but she fought it back. Pain exploded through her each time, bright white, so searing she’d waver, unable to see.

If she coughed, she would faint, and she’d be dead before she regained consciousness.

She would not die. She would wait. Someone would come back and find her. Maier could operate. Shiseo would work night and day to find the right chelator, and she would make herself recover quickly.

She’d promised Kaine that she was safe, that nothing would happen to her. She could not die.

She made it through the doors. There was a tray with a few discarded instruments and bottles on it. She fumbled through them until she found a vial of laudanum.

She managed to unscrew the lid and forced down a sip of the tongue-biting contents.

Not too much. She had to stay lucid. She searched the rest of the supplies, looking for something, a stimulant to keep herself going.

She’d kill for a cough suppressant.

She forced herself to look down at her chest. She was wearing so many layers, she couldn’t see exactly where the shrapnel went in to tell if it was nullium dissolving into her blood or just a stray piece of the lorry.

She wanted to pull it out but knew better. If it had punctured her heart or aorta, she’d bleed to death in seconds. It might be keeping her alive.

Someone would come. She could wait until a lorry came back.

She made herself keep moving, because it was easier than sitting, feeling the injury.

She checked the remaining patients. The nearest was a boy who’d been cut out of his armour. He was missing an arm. There was an intravenous drip in his remaining arm, but there was so much blood pooled beneath him. Reaching feebly for a pulse and finding none, she drew his eyes closed and moved on.

Most were dead, several unresponsive; only a few were still conscious. She checked all of them, noting where they were.

The laudanum had managed to numb her enough that she could move a little easier.

“Mum …?” one of the soldiers moaned, catching her wrist as she passed.

Pain ripped through her chest and up her spine, shattering the relief. Her legs nearly gave out, and she bit down on her tongue so hard her mouth flooded with blood.

His helmet was crushed around his skull. Through the openings, one side of his face was mangled. There was thick blood oozing from his head onto the pallet underneath him.

“Mum …” he said.

“She’ll be here soon.”

He wouldn’t let go of her wrist. He tugged again. Her vision flashed white.

“Mum … sorry. Forgot to say goodbye. Sorry.”

“It’s all right, d-don’t worry,” she said.

His fingers relaxed enough for her to slip her hand free. She looked down.

He was dead.

She took another sip of laudanum. It was growing harder and harder to keep from coughing. She couldn’t tell if the blood in her mouth was from her lungs or her tongue.

She tried to listen for any sound of the lorries. The sounds of fighting were fading. She headed for the doors.

She was growing increasingly certain that her injury was beyond the Resistance’s means. The bone and potential heart damage would require extensive manual surgery beyond what Maier could manage without alchemy. One of her lungs was likely punctured. She’d need at least two surgeons, possibly three.

If triage protocols were in place, which they would be given the mass injuries, no one except Luc or Sebastian would qualify for three surgeons.

She leaned her head against the wall.

Even with a successful surgery, her likelihood of survival would be low. She’d be at high risk of complications and infection, a drain on their limited supplies. The hospital would save far more people if they passed her over. Any half-rate medical assessment would realise that.

Whether the lorries arrived or not, she was going to die. She looked down at her hand, wishing she had the resonance to send a pulse code to Kaine. Some way to tell him she was sorry. That she had tried.

The edge of her vision was beginning to fade, unravelling like fabric, slowly shrinking smaller and smaller.

When she blinked, there was someone standing in front of her. Her mind stumbled through the fog of pain before realising it was a necrothrall. It stood studying her as if confused about whether she was dead or alive.

Her lungs seized, trying to force a cough, to clear the fluid inside her chest. A rasping whimper escaped her as she tried to hold it back.

Movement caught her eye. There were more necrothralls. The sounds of fighting had ceased. Althorne and his men had died or fallen back. The necrothralls were coming for the hospital. For the dead and the survivors.

She couldn’t let them take the survivors.

She stepped back, trying to find a scalpel, something sharp, something that would be quick and painless. She wouldn’t let them be taken to West Port. All she could find were filthy bandages and empty bottles of medicine. She needed one scalpel.

Something under her clothes bumped against her leg. It took her a moment to remember what was there. The obsidian. She had been holding it when the bomb went off; she’d shoved it in her pocket without thinking.

She fumbled for it and slit her finger open. The piece must have shattered in the explosion, but it was sharp at least.

She was too slow. The necrothralls were already inside. There were bodies by the door, and several necrothralls had stopped there, dragging them away, while the rest moved deeper.

They weren’t moving fast, but they were faster than Helena. They reached the survivors before she did.

“No!” Helena rasped out, her raised voice splitting her chest.

One of the necrothralls moved towards her. She tried to fend it off. All she had was the obsidian. She slashed at the necrothrall with it. The soft, deteriorating skin split easily on contact, and then the tip hit bone.

She’d used barely any force, but that pressure alone caused enough pain that her legs failed her.

When her head cleared, she was on the ground—and so was the necrothrall.

Blood dripped from her fingers where she was gripping the obsidian, the edges of the black glass buried in her skin. There were still so many necrothralls.

They moved towards her, bodies blotting out the reddish light filtering through the door. Wind fluttered across her face.

Her eyes slid shut.

W HEN SHE TRIED TO OPEN her eyes again, they were heavy, as if her lashes had tangled. When she tried to move—her body wouldn’t.

She tore her eyes open. There was glaring light, and everything was blurred until she found a vague dark shape near her. She recoiled, then squinted.

Kaine was standing beside her, pale and wide-eyed, his face impossibly haggard.

“You …”

The word emerged cracked and croaking. Her tongue was thick and dry, as if she hadn’t touched water in days. She couldn’t feel anything below her neck.

She tried to look down but couldn’t move.

She was paralysed.

Her eyes crossed as she tried to look down her body. All she could make out was an intravenous drip in her arm. When she squinted, she could see saline and other things in upended glass vials all running down into the tube.

“What?” she asked. The words crackled in her throat and slurred across her tongue. “What’d you do …?”

“What did I do?” Kaine repeated slowly. “I saved your life.”