Page 92 of Alchemised

Whatever had happened did so without warning. Normally as soon as significant fighting started anywhere, messages to Headquarters were dispatched and the hospital was prepped. This time the sirens had gone straight to full alert.

“Nothing yet,” Pace said as she directed medics. She’d only returned from the other hospital a few days ago, worn to the bone, but she never stopped working.

Orderlies and nurses rushed around, making sure everything was ready.

The bell was still sounding.

“I’m going to the main gates to find out what’s happening,” Helena finally said.

Out in the courtyard, without the walls acting as a barrier for the sound, she could feel the Tower bell’s ringing in her teeth, its low cadence a vibration in her stomach.

The noise finally cut off as she reached the gates. There were dozens of soldiers and guards, all awaiting orders. Even Crowther was lurking, curious as everyone else.

“Do you know what’s happened?” Helena asked a guard.

“Ambush,” he said, his eyes locked out towards the street. “Don’t know much more than that. Two teams went out. That’s all I know. We’ve heard nothing else.”

There was a commotion beyond the gates.

Then she heard Luc, his voice pure rage. “Let go. Let me go!”

Then there were other voices. Shouts of “Watch out!” and “Hold him!” and a scorching whoosh of flames.

“Let me go!”

Helena went forward instinctively, along with a dozen others.

There was an explosion of fire as she emerged from the gatehouse to the sight of nearly a dozen people trying to drag and wrestle Luc towards Headquarters. Soren, Sebastian, Althorne, and several others from Luc’s unit had him by the arms and legs, trying to pin him to the ground.

Luc had been disarmed, but they couldn’t pry his ignition rings off his fingers. Fire sparked but suddenly vanished as Crowther darted forward. His left hand swept through the air and extinguished the flames as he clenched his fist.

“Marino, put him down!” Crowther snapped.

“You left her! Let me go ! ” White fire exploded off Luc, flame tearing in all directions, violent and uncontrolled, fuelled by rage. Luc lurched to his feet.

A tongue of metal shot out, Althorne’s arm jerked back, Luc hit the ground, and there were several people on him again. Fire erupted and vanished.

“Marino!” Crowther snarled.

Luc lunged violently, ripping one hand free, and a wall of fire shot in all directions. It slammed into Crowther, and he hit a wall with a sickening crunch.

Everyone froze, including Luc.

“I didn’t mean to—” He was still trying to get free. “Just let me go—”

Helena reached out towards him.

“They got Lila,” he said, taking her hand without hesitation.

She squeezed tight, resonance shooting along his arm. Betrayal flashed in his eyes, and then he was unconscious.

The men pinning Luc down let go cautiously. Helena sank to her knees, kneeling over him, her fingers slipping into the occipital dip of his skull to ensure he would not wake.

He was bruised and covered in blood. Half his fingernails were missing.

Soren didn’t get up; he was slumped next to Helena. One of his eyes was black.

“Get him inside and keep him unconscious,” Althorne was saying. “I don’t want that boy awake until we know what’s happened to Bayard. Someone get Crowther to the hospital.”

There was heavy bruising on one side of Althorne’s face, a gouge across his cheek as if he’d been clawed at. Several soldiers picked Luc up gently and started carrying him inside.

Helena was still kneeling on the ground.

Lila had been taken. Whatever happened next, the implications were horrifying.

Lila as a necrothrall, all her proficiency in combat now targeted at the Eternal Flame. At Luc. Or Lila in a laboratory, being used for experimentation.

“May I be dismissed?” Soren said, his voice muted but wavering with emotion. He was looking to Althorne with an expression as if something had been carved out from inside him.

Althorne rested a large hand on Soren’s narrow shoulder. “Until we recover Lila, you’re paladin primary. We can’t lose you, too.”

“They took my twin,” Soren said, looking out towards the rest of the island. “I have to bring her body back.”

“There are three teams in pursuit. If she can be saved or recovered, she will be. We need to debrief and prepare. And you need to protect your Principate. You know where your sister would want you.”

A stretcher arrived for Crowther, and Helena followed it.

In the hospital, Elain was already hovering over Luc, healing his minor injuries, and asking if she could wake him up. She was sternly forbidden.

Helena focused on Crowther. That soft-faced orderly, Purnell, hurried over to assist. He had a gash on his face, but his paralysed arm had taken the brunt of the injury, broken at the elbow.

As Helena began with her habitual block of the nerves, she found why his arm was paralysed. There was an old break of the humerus, and back when it had broken, the radial nerve had been severed. The gap was tiny; any healer could have fixed it.

The injury was old now, and the nerve’s connection to the muscle had died off. Helena wasn’t sure how much dexterity could be recovered, but surely some was better than nothing. If the day had proven anything, it was that the Resistance desperately needed flame alchemists.

She fixed the severed nerve along with the broken elbow.

She’d just finished when she heard shouting.

“They got her! Bayard. They’re bringing her in!”

A combat group practically ran into the hospital with the stretcher. There was a flash of bloodstained blond hair. Pace’s voice rose above the chaos.

Helena barely heard the voices. She moved towards Lila on instinct as the medics transferred her from the stretcher to a hospital bed. One of them was holding gauze firmly against the side of Lila’s neck.

Other injuries.

Priority.

Marino, get her healed. Whatever it takes.

She wasn’t sure who gave that final order. It didn’t really matter. She didn’t need to be told.

Lila was covered in blood, and even before Helena touched her, she could see the broken bones. There were huge punctures all over the right side of her chest, straight through her armour.

The moment Helena’s resonance touched her, she could feel it.

Lila was going to die unless someone cheated death, and fast.

Her right lung had been repeatedly punctured by bites. There was blood pooling in the chest cavity. There was kidney damage, and her liver was punctured. Her ribs were shattered. She’d lost so much blood.

It was a miracle she was alive.

Helena didn’t have time to be delicate with her resonance.

It was a cascade of internal failures that she was staunching, but it was all happening too fast and there were too many things that had to be done at once.

The medics were cutting off her wrecked armour as quickly as they could, everyone trying to work around one another without getting in the way.

The recovery team had been badly injured.

“It was Blackthorne in command,” someone said. “That fucking psychopath.”

Helena could hear the flurry behind her, but she couldn’t worry about anyone but Lila.

If Lila died, so would Luc. Maybe not immediately; if he never saw combat again, physically he’d live, but every day, bit by bit, the guilt and grief would kill him.

“Don’t you dare die,” she said, shoving her vitality down through her resonance, in a wild attempt to keep Lila from slipping away, forcing the feeble heartbeat to keep going. “Don’t you dare! Elain. I need Elain! And a medic! Where is everyone?”

Elain appeared, her hands bloody. “I’m already—”

“I don’t care,” Helena cut in. “Stand near her head. I need you to keep her breathing, and don’t let her heart stop! Do you understand? I need both hands to heal, and I need to know she’s breathing and her heart is beating while I work.”

She waited until she felt Elain’s tentative resonance assume the rhythm of Lila’s heartbeat, the laborious in and out of her breath, as the last of Lila’s armour was finally out of Helena’s way and she worked easily.

A medic appeared at her elbow. Helena acknowledged her with a jerk of her head.

“I need four vials of that blood-supplementing tonic in the cabinet. You have to administer them without letting her choke.”

“We’re not supposed to—”

“I need more blood! If I can’t regenerate more, this healing will kill her, and if I do it without the tonics, it’s going to make something else fail. I don’t have enough hands. Do it now!”

It was intense, delicate work. Helena’s vision was blurring, and her resonance had singed the inside of her bones as she fought to get Lila stabilised. Elain was saying something about a hand cramp. Helena told her to shut up.

When Lila finally stopped feeling on the verge of death, Helena wanted to cry with relief. It had been so close. She could never tell anyone how close.

She leaned over Lila, her hands covered in blood, and touched her cheek for a moment.

“You can stop,” she finally remembered to say to Elain.

The punctures covering Lila’s chest were roughly transmuted skin. They’d scar, because Lila’s body would be focused on vital recovery, but she would live. Elain disappeared so the nurses and orderlies could take over.

Helena’s fingers trembled uncontrollably as she squeezed Lila’s hand. “Idiot. You know you’re not allowed to die.”

Her knees gave out. She sank to the floor, her head resting against the mattress of the hospital bed. Lila still had at least twenty broken bones, fractures in both legs. Half her fingers were broken, but Helena’s heart was pounding too violently to think straight.

“Marino, can you—” Pace was calling to her from another bed.

She tried to lift her head but couldn’t move. Her whole body was leaden. Why was it so heavy?

“Pace, check Marino.”

Was that Crowther’s voice?

She tried to look up, but instead the world tipped sideways. She could see feet moving under the rows and rows of hospital beds. Bloodstains on the floor.

She was rising upwards.

“Come on, Marino, no napping here,” Pace was saying as she pulled her to her feet. Someone was on the other side as well. Her head lolled, and she saw Crowther watching her from one of the hospital beds.

They passed through a door into the records closet that Pace used as an office.

“Just here, Sofia. Thank you, I can manage from here,” Pace was saying as Helena was lowered onto a camp bed.

Helena knew, dimly, that she’d gone too far.

She was normally careful, but there hadn’t been any choice this time.

She was so cold and tired. Blankets were pulled up and tucked around her. She heard Pace’s voice, calling her a fool girl with no sense.

Helena just wanted to sleep for a few years.

She felt a needle in her arm. It made her skin itch, and when she tried to transmute it out, her hand was smacked away.

“Worst patient I’ve ever had.”

Thick velvet darkness swallowed the world.