Page 338 of Alchemised

She traversed the island on foot. She knew from flyovers which parts were still intact, and that she was headed in the right direction when the air began to smell of smoke and burning flesh.

Whenever she spotted Resistance units, she asked for updates. Reports were contradictory, but there were consistent stories of many necrothralls dropping, leaving whole districts with only a few bewildered Aspirants to defend them. They were making piles of the necrothralls and burning them to ensure they couldn’t be recovered and reanimated.

With all the good news, Helena began to doubt herself. Was she paranoid? It was going so well. She refused to turn back, though; she had to find Luc.

A broad-shouldered commander that she vaguely recognised as part of Luc’s battalion stepped out of a building.

“Marino?” He said her name doubtfully.

“I need to see Luc,” she said, gripping an obsidian knife in her pocket so hard the handle bit into her skin.

“Well, he’s not here, he’s fighting,” the man said.

She must seem insane. “I know, but it’s urgent. I can work with the medics on-site until he comes back.”

The commander looked confused but didn’t object.

Healing at the front had none of the organisation used in the hospital. Most of her work was stopping blood loss by staunching and closing wounds, healing only the simple injuries. The priority was completing the most urgent interventions and then sending the patients on to Headquarters for full treatment.

The bombing was believed to be either an accident or an act of sabotage. No one even considered that the Resistance might have planted a bomb.

The miracles had begun, people were saying. The gods were on their side.

Victory Day, they were already calling it. They’d retake the whole city.

The injured combatants arriving slowed to a trickle because the battalion had pushed so far into the West Island, no one was being brought back.

The field commander was on the radio, wanting to know if they were supposed to relocate closer to the action. They’d had no instructions about whether to follow.

The current base of operations was in an old building on a mid-level of the city. It had solid walls and small windows. It was a good place to fall back, reasonably defensible. The air inside grew suffocating, warm from bodies and motion. The medical transport lorry had departed for the hospital and not yet returned.

Helena was closing a deep cut along an inner thigh when someone outside yelled, “They’ve taken Headquarters!”

Everyone looked up, staring at one another in confusion.

The lorry driver stumbled in, gasping for air, his head bleeding. “The Undying have taken Headquarters!”

No one spoke for a moment as shock rippled through the room. In all these years, Headquarters had never been touched. There were so many protective measures in place. It was the most secure place in the entire city.

Everyone seemed to snap back to life. There was a clamour of furious voices, everyone descending on the driver, demanding information. Helena pushed through, checking his head. He had a graze, and his hands were torn up.

“I went through all the checkpoints,” he said, allowing Helena to tilt his head to the side and close the wound. “Showed my papers, got waved through. Everything was—normal. Pulled in, the patients were being unloaded.” He mopped his forehead, smearing blood across his face. “Quiet, though. really quiet. I get fuckin’ awkward when it’s too quiet. Always rather talk, you know? Asked a guard a question. No answer. I thought all the blood on them was from carrying the wounded. Asked another question. They started moving towards me. That’s when I realised. They were all greys. Fresh killed, still warm. I drove out—ran over a few, didn’t look back. First checkpoint, tried to report it. They weren’t talking, either. Barricade was up. So I ran. Didn’t know where to go except come back.”

The building was palpably silent as everyone tried to absorb this. It was beyond belief.

The Undying would have needed extensive information about their security protocols to infiltrate, a spy with a high-level security clearance to get in, and intimate knowledge to create necrothralls with the right instructions. How could it have happened? With no word? No distress signals?

The commander tried to contact Headquarters by radio, but there was only static.

“Signal to anyone you can, without setting off any alarms. You, you, and you,” said the field commander, pointing at several men. “Go check the nearest checkpoint.”

Only two men came back.

“They were all dead,” said one, holding a hand against his stomach where blood seeped through his fingers. “They were waiting for us.”

The field commander sent out anyone capable of carrying word to intercept and recall any units or lorries they encountered, and then he sat down at the radio and began uttering a string of jargon into channel after channel, arguing furiously with everyone who answered, because no one wanted to believe the report.

The door burst open, and Luc strode in, Sebastian only a few steps behind him, concealing a limp, the rest of the battalion milling in back of him.