Page 72 of Alchemised

T HE NEWS THAT M ORROUGH WOULD BE GONE along with so many of the Undying was the opportunity the Eternal Flame had been waiting for. Like a machine springing into action, the Resistance rapidly began preparing to attack.

Crowther had been disseminating Ferron’s intelligence over the last several months, attributing to various sources his maps, the information about patrols and rotations, chains of command and the hierarchies of who’d be called on first, and how they’d counterstrike if the Resistance attacked.

The battalions were raring for the fight.

However, a relentless sense of dread lurked beneath Helena’s skin, growing with each passing moment. What if it was a trap? What if Ferron had lied, hidden a noose within his information? She kept thinking about how strange he’d seemed.

The hospital waited, tense, strangled between hope and dread. Then the sirens started, and the lorries began to arrive, bodies flooding in, filling the hospital and lining the halls. There wasn’t room for all the wounded.

Helena had no opportunity to more than register her despairing guilt as the fallout of the battle filled the hospital. She had to work.

Your fault. You should have known. Ferron’s a monster. A born traitor, just like his father. She had never done so much healing, working in such a frenzy that the amulet around her neck almost burned against her skin. Two of the trainee healers collapsed, their resonance shot from burnout.

It was more than a day before someone told her they hadn’t lost. The attack was not a failure but a spectacular success. The Resistance had the ports; they’d retaken most of the East Island. Battles were still raging in the south-west corner, but they expected to retake the entire island.

Even once it was confirmed, Helena still barely believed it. The injuries just kept coming.

The Resistance found prisons filled with dissidents.

One of the largest buildings near the ports had been a laboratory.

The Resistance brought back lorries filled with medical supplies and tools that Helena had not laid eyes on in years.

Real anaesthetic and antiseptics. Cases upon cases of opium resin. Gauze and fresh bandages.

But the elation that filled the hospital as all the supplies poured in vanished as the victims from the laboratory began to arrive. Medics and nurses who’d worked unflinchingly for years had breakdowns over the victims and had to be excused.

The laboratory had not only been making chimaeras with animals. The victims arriving were nearly unrecognisable, experimented on in ways that defied reason. Bodies methodically dismembered and reassembled. There were so many.

Attempts to treat them fell to Helena. The surgeons were at a loss, and the trainees couldn’t take it. There was nothing Helena could do, either. No matter what she tried, they all died.

For their combat forces, the Retaking was over quickly. What the Undying had spent years slowly carving into, recovered in one coordinated sweep. It was regarded as a military triumph for the ages.

For the hospital it was an unending nightmare.

Reports that Morrough had returned were followed by rumours of extreme upheaval among the ranks as blame fell. Then came the counterattacks and attempts to retake the ports.

It took weeks before things finally calmed, the hospital shifts slowly resumed the normal rotation, and more trainee healers were brought in. Crowther and Ilva somehow knew exactly who possessed the latent resonance for it, even when the girls themselves did not.

Helena was so exhausted by the end that she could barely talk for several days. As if she’d forgotten how to be human anymore.

Pace kicked her out of the hospital when she found her in the supply room, mechanically taking inventory, saying that barring an emergency Helena was not to come back for four days at least.

Helena didn’t know what to do but resume her old schedule, and so when Martiday arrived, she rose with the dawn, took her satchel, and went out of the city. The spring flooding had ebbed, and the wetlands had come into bloom.

There were flurries of insects dancing in swarms, light glistening on their wings.

Sun limned the eastern stretch of the mountains, turning their ridges gold.

The wind no longer rattled the dead reeds but whispered through marsh grass.

The air was filled with warbling birdcalls.

The wetlands were lush with new growth, brimming with life.

Helena could have harvested for hours and still left plenty behind.

She took only what she thought was most valuable before she washed her hands in an alga-green pond and headed to the Outpost.

She’d barely had time to think about Ferron, but she figured she should at least check and see if he’d left any messages. She’d received no instructions from Crowther since the attack.

She caught sight of him the instant the door opened. He was leaning his hip against the table. His shoulders were stooped, arms hanging limply at his sides.

“You look awful,” he said as she came through the door.

She stopped short. “You look worse.”

He gave a strained laugh. “Do I?”

She was too shocked to reply.

His face had grown gaunt, as if he’d lost almost all his remaining weight, the bones of his skull jutting starkly through his skin.

He looked—

—like a corpse.

Her heart lurched into her throat.

His skin was grey and papery, eyes sunken. His dark hair hung limp around his face. Dirty and uncombed.

He didn’t appear to have eaten, slept, or bathed in all the weeks since Helena had last seen him.

“Are you—are you a—are you dead?” she forced herself to ask. Could he be killed and then made into a lich using his own body? Was that possible?

He cracked a smile that made his lower lip split, a trickle of red blood running down his chin. It healed instantly. “You’d think that, wouldn’t you? No. Still—alive.”

“What happened?”

She went forward but was afraid to touch him. He looked like he might crumble into dust.

He drew a shallow breath. “Well, you may have noticed, the High Necromancer wasn’t pleased about the ports.” He drooped, his head dipping, but then he jerked up sharply, face contorting in pain. “Bad luck—for the commander in charge.”

Helena’s head went light. No … that wasn’t possible. He’d been gone, with Morrough and the others to Hevgoss.

She shook her head. “But you’re not in command there. It’s—they were commanded by—by—”

She couldn’t remember the name, but it was someone else. She would have remembered if Ferron had been the one in charge. He wasn’t ranked high enough for a position like that.

“It was a recent change in leadership,” he said. There was hoarseness to his voice. “Doesn’t matter. Did it work? The attack? Obviously you got the island, but—” He swallowed. “—you’ll keep it? You have enough men for that still?”

She wasn’t supposed to tell him anything, but he was so clearly in pain, she couldn’t help herself.

“More than we hoped,” she said.

He swallowed and gave the barest nod. “Good.” His eyes fluttered closed for a moment. “That’s something, I guess.”

He drew an unsteady breath. “I should go. Just—wanted to know … Won’t be making this trip again.”

He tried to straighten but collapsed. He caught the chair and fell onto it. A low, almost screaming gasp escaped him. He tried to stand again but couldn’t seem to put weight on his arms. His breathing was growing increasingly ragged.

“Ferron, what’s happened to you? What’s wrong?” Her voice rose sharply as she hovered, not sure what to do.

His eyes shut. He was breathing shallowly. “F-Fuck off, Marino.”

She approached like he was an injured animal, her hands outstretched and visible.

“Ferron—I know you’re hurt. Maybe I can help,” she said as gently as she could.

He gave a rasping laugh. “There’s nothing you can do.”

“Let me try.” She was close enough now to see the veins beneath his skin along his neck, not blue but almost black like poison. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

His eyes snapped open, anger lighting his face.

“Don’t pretend to care,” he spat. “You expect me to believe you didn’t know this would happen?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t. I would have come back sooner if I’d known.”

Based on his appearance, this was not quick deterioration he was suffering from. He’d reached this point slowly, over the course of weeks.

If he was telling the truth, if he’d been in command at the ports during the attack, then all the information he’d passed on would have been to his knowing detriment.

“Please.” She held out her hand. “Let me try to help.”

“Your marsh herbs aren’t going to fix this,” he said, grimacing as he tried to stand again. “A medic like you can do fuck all.”

She swallowed hard.

“That’d be true if I actually was a medic.” She touched his cheek with her fingertips, and didn’t hide her resonance.

She knew that she was sabotaging her mission, but that wouldn’t matter if he died; the mission was already a failure on every level.

When her resonance connected with his body, she almost snatched her hand back.

The talisman in his chest was emitting so much power, it threatened to burn her nerves touching him.

Every cell in his body was singed from it.

He was dying. Over and over. His body pushed so far over the edge that it failed, only to be instantly regenerated, and fail again. He was simultaneously dead and alive because it was a sort of repeating cascade of regenerative failure.

Ferron jerked away as if he were the one burned. “You conniving little bitch. I knew I felt your resonance when I lost my arm.”

She let her hand drop, avoiding his accusing glare. “I was ordered not to tell you.”

“And now?” His eyes were narrowed into slits.

“I don’t think it matters. If I don’t do something, you’re going to die.”

“I doubt I’m fortunate enough to manage that,” he said in a dull voice.

She reached out, just barely touching his arm. “Ferron, what’s happened to your back?”