Page 54 of Alchemised

H ELENA’S JAW WAS TAUT, HER TEETH GRINDING together as her fingers twisted through the air, pulling, tugging at the feeble connection threatening to melt away from her.

Her right hand was cramping, sharp pain shooting along the tendon to her elbow, but if she broke the connection, let her hand rest for an instant, her patient would die.

“Come on,” she said under her breath as her fingers spun through the air, refusing to give up. “Where is it?”

As if she’d needed to just verbalise her desperation, she found it: internal bleeding where the pressure was pooling.

“Got you. Got you,” Helena said with a little gasp of relief, her fingers moving faster now, manipulating the tissue, repairing the artery, drawing the blood away so that she could focus on the task before her: a rib cage which had been split apart.

She’d been transmuting regenerative lung tissue with one hand and maintaining the heartbeat with the other when she’d realised there was something else wrong, and now, finally, her resonance was not screaming at her that death was imminent.

She gave herself a moment to flex her right hand once before guiding the shattered bones back over the new lungs, knitting together the places where they’d broken, regenerating what was missing.

She pushed the mangled skin back, repairing it as best she could.

Finally, she rested both hands on the healed chest, drawing it up, making it rise for breath, letting out her own sigh.

There would still be weeks of recovery ahead, at least a month of convalescence at Solis Splendour. The lung tissue was new and delicate, the repaired bones fragile, but he would live to fight another day.

She let herself look at the face, now that she knew he wouldn’t die, checking the intravenous drip before she gestured for the medics to take over again.

He was young. She knew so many of the faces, but she’d never seen his before. A new recruit, or maybe newly of age. No, he couldn’t be of age. He looked barely fourteen.

She had no time to wonder. She had to wash her hands, douse them in antiseptic, and move to the next bed with a ribbon designating the need for intercession.

Don’t look at the face, she reminded herself as the medics and nurses scattered to make space for her.

She didn’t know anymore how long she’d been on shift. A day or two? It was hard to say.

It had been mostly battle injuries at first, cuts and gouges, stab wounds, broken bones. Then it became burns, charred-off limbs, scorched lungs, skin a charcoal crisp that cracked to ooze blood.

The hospital smelled like roast meat, blood, the stench of gut wounds, and the lavender oil they disinfected with.

Helena used to like the smell of lavender.

Her last patient, she lost. The organs failed more quickly than Helena could regenerate them. She was so tired that her hands trembled uncontrollably with every twist of her resonance. She wasn’t fast enough.

Her resonance rebounded on her, a pulse of energy like a blow straight through her chest. Ghostly cold rushed through her and dissipated.

Gone.

Helena slumped, breathing unsteadily, wanting to scream. A minute more and she could have—

She pushed herself up, hands shaking as she stepped back, looking at the face before she could stop herself.

The body was so badly burned, she couldn’t tell if it had been a boy or a girl. It was horrifyingly small. She looked around, searching for another ribbon, but finding none.

She walked stiffly towards the nearest wall, her knees giving out. Her mouth was parched, and her hands shook as an orderly paused and handed her a cup of water.

She was one of the young ones, with bright-blue eyes. New enough to still be eager at her job.

Helena clutched the cup in her hands, staring dully across the casualty ward, the rows of beds, and the piles of blood-soaked clothes and bandages and sheets on the floor.

She could feel that same blood on her face and hair.

Only her hands were mostly clean. The only thing she’d washed in at least a day.

She pressed her hand against her chest, finding the sunstone amulet under her filthy uniform. The fabric was so stiff with blood, it almost cracked as she squeezed the amulet, trying to ground herself.

“You should have been on break hours ago.”

She looked up to find Matron Pace standing beside her, mopping her forehead with a mostly clean cloth, a chipped cup in her other hand.

The matron’s apron was as blood-spattered as Helena’s, and red-stained wisps of greying hair clung to her flushed, swollen face.

“I didn’t see you on break, either.” Even Helena’s voice shook with exhaustion.

Pace had been in medicine longer than the Paladian Central Hospital had existed. Helena heard she’d been a midwife before the national medical licensing laws came into effect. Women needed alchemy certification to qualify, and Pace wasn’t an alchemist, so she’d become a nurse.

Helena sat, the joints in her hands aching from the constant repetitive flexing. Inside her chest, there was a feeling like a rope pulled taut. She dreaded the thought of beginning to feel her feet again.

“Go rest,” Matron Pace said.

Helena shook her head, her eyes fastened on the door where any new casualties would be brought in. “I should stay in case of an emergency. Is Maier still in the surgery?”

Maier was one of the most accomplished alchemical surgeons Paladia had ever produced. He’d left a hospital in Novis to join the Resistance and keep their hospital running after the Undying wiped out all the field hospitals and clinics.

Maier was a genius surgeon and a hard worker, but also short-tempered, and he did not like women.

Unfortunate when the war hospital was predominantly staffed and run by women.

He kept to himself and the few male assistants he’d brought with him, leaving the management of the hospital and any dealings with medics, nurses, or orderlies to Pace.

“Marino, there are plenty of accomplished medics here. You’ve worked longer than you should have, go rest.”

Helena watched a sheeted gurney pass, already on its way to the crematorium. “I don’t want to sleep right now. I’ll just dream of being in here.”

Pace sighed. “I don’t know that I should tell you this, but there’s a meeting in session. The Council asked for a report from the hospital. If you’d like to go.”

Exhaustion had dulled Helena’s mind to near incomprehension, but the thought of giving a report in the war room left her numb.

She hated going into that room where everything was reduced to figures and zones of interest. The dead were only numbers in that room.

“Do we have the numbers yet?” she asked.

“Just the preliminary ones.” Pace picked up a file, holding it out.

T HE MEETING WAS UNDER WAY when Helena entered the war room.

The Resistance Headquarters were based in what had once been the Holdfast Institute of Alchemy and Science.

The war room was previously the faculty boardroom; now it was an audience chamber.

Span ning a wall was a tiered map of the full city-state, the two main islands, and the mainland abutting the mountains, the levels and water districts all marked out.

Most were coloured black or red, a tide of blood closing in on the blue area centred in the upper half of the East Island. There was a gleam of gold in the sea of blue marking the Institute itself.

The Council of Five sat at a dais behind a long marble table. Two chairs were empty. Falcon Matias sat on the far right, beside him was Steward Ilva Holdfast, a gaunt, grey-haired woman with a large sunstone pin affixed over her heart.

The seat of honour, in the centre, sat empty. It had been weeks since Helena had even glimpsed Luc. Was he still fighting?

The fourth seat was also empty, its occupant standing beside the map, a long staff in his hand. As General Althorne touched parts of the map with his staff, areas which had been black turned red, indicating the active combat zones.

To the far left of the dais sat Jan Crowther, his eyes scanning the room, watching the audience rather than Althorne.

Everyone else was seated in rows of chairs split in the centre to form an aisle. Helena hung back. Those in attendance were all clean, and Helena was covered in blood and other fluids.

“If we continue to push back in the upper trade district, we should be able to press our advantage …” Althorne was saying, indicating a series of buildings near the ports.

“Hold, Althorne,” Ilva spoke up. “We finally have the hospital report.”

All eyes turned to Helena, eyebrows rising at the sight of her. She should have cleaned up more before coming. It had felt so urgent when she was on her way.

“Marino, you have the floor.”

Helena swallowed and looked down at the file in her hands, chest tight as she walked towards the centre of the room where there was a large mosaic of the sun, rays spanning out around it. Speakers were supposed to stand in the centre.

“These are only the initial estimates,” she said, her voice hardly loud enough to carry, but it carried anyway; the spot where she stood had been designed to capture any sound and amplify it due to the oddly stepped ceiling overhead.

“An estimate is fine,” Ilva said.

Helena opened the file. The numbers felt so incomprehensible, they threatened to stretch and distort as she read them out.

Estimated casualties, estimates on how many would be permanently removed from combat, estimates on how many might recover enough to return to the front. Every number but the last too large.

The report was met with a long silence.

Althorne cleared his throat. “Would you say those estimates are likely to rise or drop in the final report?”

“Rise,” she said in a dull voice. “The hospital resorted to triage care per protocol and prioritised the patients most likely to survive, but preliminary reports are usually conservative.”

There were concerned murmurs.