Alchemised a novel, p.61
Alchemised: A Novel, page 61
There was another deluge of injuries. Helena could barely keep track of all the battles and skirmishes, the victories and losses. In the hospital it all blurred together into endless screaming. Time seemed to morph into a horrific monotony, punctuated only with Kaine’s cold resentment.
She tried to stay busy. With Rhea’s permission, she attempted a tentative treatment of Titus, but he reacted poorly, becoming severely sick with a fever, putting an immediate end to the attempt.
She was cut loose. Left to her own devices. Everyone else seemed to come and go—even the other healers got dispatched down-island to the new hospital every few weeks—but Helena was always at Headquarters.
Ilva and Crowther no longer made any demands of her except to pass on their orders.
She was a collar around Kaine’s neck, and her job now was to bear it.
SHE WAS RETURNING FROM THE Outpost when her hospital charm grew hot. She sprinted the rest of the way back. There was blood smeared across the ground of the gatehouse.
The guards were waiting for her. “Where were you?”
“Who? What—” she gasped out as they cleared her.
“Lila,” said one of the young guards. “And Soren.”
Dread flooded through her like poison. “Where’s Luc—”
There was a pause and she knew before the older guard spoke.
“Missing.”
Helena’s body moved but her mind had stalled as she raced to the hospital.
No. This couldn’t be happening.
The casualty ward was in a frenzy as Helena entered. Elain immediately turned to Helena, hands covered in blood, her face white with panic.
“My resonance doesn’t work!” she said, her voice rising with panic. “I can’t stop the bleeding.”
Lila was laid out on a bed, covered in dust and dirt and blood. The remains of her armour were smashed and split, her clothes shredded, as if she’d been caught in an explosion. Nurses were cutting off the straps and transmuting her armour to get it off her. A wide gouge ran down her face, from temple to cheek, and below that, at the base of her neck, a large puncture was pouring blood.
“I don’t know what’s wrong!” Elain was saying as Helena washed her hands under scalding water and doused them in carbolic dilution. “I think there’s something inside her, but my resonance doesn’t work! When I try to feel her, it’s like—my hands—”
“Soren too? Or just Lila?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t tried him. We just got them in. She’s bleeding out, and I can’t feel anything!”
“Check Soren,” Helena said. “I need medics for Lila, and Pace. Tell her I need her now.”
She moved next to Lila. The neck was one of the few openings in her armour if her helmet had been off. Her blood was soaking the bed. She’d been hooked up to an intravenous drip with plasma expanders, but it wouldn’t do any good if they couldn’t get her to stop bleeding.
Lila’s head was lolled back. She was still conscious, muttering under her breath, over and over. “… told him—to run. I—told him—t-to run—”
Helena reached out with her resonance and felt the horribly familiar disruption of nullium.
She’d hoped to be wrong. That Elain was just hysterical. Or even burned out.
Anything but this.
The nullium was much stronger than the shrapnel Helena had retrieved from Kaine. Altered in some way to intensify the effect.
She tried to at least get a vague sense of the size of what had been driven into Lila’s chest cavity. Trying to determine if there was a risk of puncturing her heart if they put pressure on the wound. It was like peering through fog. Her hands felt as though they were asleep, needlepoints pricking across her nerves as she tried to search for the most intense sense of dissonance.
It was long and slender. It had likely pierced her lung, possibly grazed her heart, but it was hard to tell.
This was so much worse than she and Shiseo had been prepared for.
“What is it?” Pace appeared at her side.
Helena was pressing gauze over the wound, trying to keep it from bleeding more. Lila had gone silent.
“It’s nullium. She’s going to need manual surgery to get it out. Maier isn’t trained, but you were in the hospitals, back when they still used it, right?”
Pace went very white. “It’s been a long time. I only assisted.”
Helena drew a harsh breath. She couldn’t disclose her own surgical experience with nullium. “I—used to help my father, sometimes. If you’ll lead, and I keep her stable, then maybe. Is Soren—?”
She was afraid to know if Soren had nullium injuries. If she and Pace had to choose which twin to save, protocol dictated that the person with better odds of survival should receive priority, but as paladin primary, Lila had priority.
“The others can heal him,” Pace said. “He took a bad blow to the head, but it’s nothing Elain can’t manage.”
Helena closed her eyes as she fought to stay calm, trying to will Lila to survive, because this time she could not make her do it.
“Move her into the operating theatre,” Pace said. “I’m sure Maier will help as much as he can. We’ll need medics and nurses for support. I’ll brief them. You keep her stable.”
It had been only a handful of times that Helena had assisted her father with surgery. Before the massacre.
Observant with a good head in a crisis, he’d said. But that was a long time ago.
Handing over surgical instruments was very different from performing surgery without resonance. No one was prepared. The nullium they’d been familiar with only interfered when they worked with it directly. This was much more diffuse.
When Lila was sedated, Matron Pace used a long pair of clamps to reach into the puncture just above Lila’s collarbone and pull out a long, rusting spike. It was fragile, degrading already due to the unstable fusion. Shards kept breaking off, forcing Pace to reach in over and over, removing them piece by piece.
Helena could feel through her resonance that even with the bulk of the spike removed, there were shards dissolving into Lila’s blood. The nullium was spreading through her body like a fog, thicker and more impenetrable with every passing moment.
The fragility of the nullium was both a gift and a curse. It had taken the path of least resistance. There was a small puncture in Lila’s lung, but her heart was not damaged, nor her oesophagus. It had stayed within the cavity. But the pieces were everywhere, and the alloy was so unstable that it was rapidly dissolving.
Pace wiped her forehead with a cloth. “We’re going to need to do a thoracotomy to get the pieces out. Is she stable enough?”
An alchemical surgeon like Maier could normally perform a thoracotomy without needing to open a patient. It only needed incisions large enough to get slender tools inside; with training and resonance, their instruments were an extension of their fingers and senses.
Helena held back her resonance, using ordinary touch to check Lila’s vital signs, because it was easier than trying to parse all the interference. “She’s holding on.”
They made an incision between Lila’s ribs, using makeshift retractors to pry the bones apart so they could reach all the remaining shards. The pieces varied in size and crumbled if they weren’t picked out carefully enough. There were little cuts and grooves in Lila’s lungs and heart where shards had nicked her—wounds that could be easily repaired if Helena could use her resonance but were laborious and dangerous now, each requiring manual sutures.
The procedure was all unfamiliar, and they were racing against time. The longer the nullium had to break down and distribute into Lila’s blood, the greater the likelihood that she might die from the metal toxicity. The surgery was pushing her body to its utmost limits, and Lila had to survive on her own.
Helena manually siphoned the blood, keeping Lila’s heart beating as Pace worked. A nurse had taken the larger shards to Shiseo to analyse and synthesise the sequestering agent, but that treatment was hours away.
It was possible that until they managed to purge the metal from Lila’s bloodstream, they would be unable to use any kind of resonance on her.
“A thoracic lavage next,” Pace said at last, setting down her tools. Her eyes were bloodshot from strain by the time they finished.
Maier took over the sutures. His stitches were beautifully neat, but he looked shaken as he worked.
Helena looked up and found it was growing dark outside. “I should check on Soren.”
She felt so strange as she washed her hands. She’d barely used her resonance, but the pressure of the last several hours had her head throbbing. Stepping out of the operating theatre, she found most of the hospital crowded around one bed.
Soren was awake and propped up. All the privacy curtains had been pushed aside, and at the forefront of the people surrounding him was Ilva.
Soren’s arm was in splints, and bandages covered half his face. He kept shaking his head. “I don’t—remember. It happened so fast.”
“Did you recognise anyone? Even imagine that you saw a face?” Ilva said, grasping Soren’s wrist.
“I don’t know,” Soren said again, his voice straining. “There was—an explosion. Something hit me. Might have been out seconds or minutes. When I got up, I couldn’t see. Luc was gone, and Lila was on the ground, bleeding out. She kept saying, Told him to run. I didn’t know where to look—so I came back.”
“There was no warning?” The questions seemed to be exploding from Ilva. She was visibly agitated. “No signs at all? Who was leading the unit?”
“I—” Soren’s expression twisted, and he seemed to struggle to remember.
“I always said it was a mistake, allowing a female paladin,” Matias said. “If I had been Falcon at the time, I would never have allowed such a violation of tradition to be entertained. I warned you, Ilva, Luc was partial to her, but no: Lila Bayard was too exceptional to separate from him. Now look what’s happened.”
“Shut your mouth!” Ilva snarled over her shoulder at Matias, her fingers still digging into Soren’s wrist. Then she turned back and shook him. “Did she say Luc surrendered himself? Did he hand himself over because of Lila?”
“I don’t know,” Soren half whispered.
Elain was standing near Soren’s bed, too awed by the number of Eternal Flame members currently flanking the bed to interfere.
“Pardon,” Helena said in a curt voice, and she pushed herself through the crowd. “Soren Bayard has a head injury. It’s inadvisable to stress him.”
Everyone turned to look at her.
“Is Lila awake? Can she answer questions?” Ilva said, instantly rising to her feet.
Helena shook her head sharply. “She is not available for anything. We performed an extensive manual surgery to remove a spike of nullium that she’d been stabbed with, but the alloy deteriorated and distributed through her bloodstream, which will interfere with anything involving resonance until it’s removed.”
“How long will that take?” The panic on Ilva’s face was clear.
Helena shook her head. “We have her under anaesthesia right now, but we’re working blind. She may wake in the next few hours, or it could take days. Lila is very strong, but this will still be harder on her than past injuries. Nothing’s certain yet.”
Soren had slumped back and looked as if he was on the verge of a panic attack, but Ilva drew herself up like a viper.
“I thought you had prepared for this eventuality,” Ilva said. “What have you all been doing?”
Helena’s jaw tensed. Why was it always the hospital’s fault when things went wrong? If Helena had come out and said that surgery was a success and Lila was already getting out of bed, they’d all be off to the perihelion to offer Sol flames of thanksgiving. But bad news was always the hospital’s fault.
How nice it must be, to be a god.
“The alloy has been altered, and the interference is much more intense. Manual procedures are not simple, especially in a hospital where only two people have any experience performing them. If you want the hospital prepared to perform manual surgery, the Falcon will need to approve the cadavers for practice, as we requested several months ago.”
Matias coughed as if he’d swallowed something the wrong way and suddenly stopped looking like he wanted to be present.
Ilva was gripping her cane but looked ready to topple. It was as if Luc’s loss had ripped the ground out from beneath her.
“Examine him, then,” Ilva said, moving unsteadily away from Soren’s bed. “There will be a Council meeting in an hour. I want full reports on both the Bayards.”
Everyone filed out. Helena glared and jerked her head, indicating that Elain put the privacy curtains back as she sat down next to Soren.
He was leaning back amid the pillows which had propped him up, covered in newly healed cuts. She could tell, as soon as her resonance touched him, that he’d lost his right eye. Whatever had hit him had fractured the socket and crushed it.
Her fingers trembled.
“She’s never going to forgive me,” he said, his voice a near whisper.
Helena didn’t know if he was referring to Ilva or Lila.
She squeezed his hand. “If you’d gone after Luc in this state, all three of you might be dead. That wouldn’t have been any help. I’m sure there’s more people looking for him because you came back.”
Elain had done well with her healing. He’d had several broken bones, including the same arm he’d shattered just a few weeks ago. It hadn’t fully healed, and it was likely to have lingering issues now.
“Do you think he’s still alive?” Soren asked.
Helena’s heart caught. She couldn’t think of any reason the Undying wouldn’t immediately kill Luc.
“Until we know he’s dead, he’s still alive. And we’re going to get him back,” she said, forcing her voice to sound hopeful. “Stop worrying now. I need to check your head.”
He had a concussion, but his eye and brow bone had absorbed most of the blow. All her visits to Titus had made her more familiar with brains; she felt as if she understood them better and could at least diagnose accurately, rather than shying away.
Elain hadn’t known what to do with the destroyed eye and had left it, just wrapping gauze over it and repairing only the bone.
“Soren, your right eye’s—”
“I know,” he said brusquely, as if it didn’t matter. “I can still fight, though, right?”
Her hands stilled. “You’ve broken your arm and lost half your range of vision. That’s going to require adapting. You’re going to be vulnerable. You won’t see things from the right.”
“I’ll just turn my head,” he said in a flat voice. “Handy thing, necks.”
She sighed. “You’re not going back out. Not for weeks at least.”
He shook his head. “Lila’s out. I have to bring Luc back before she wakes. She can’t wake up and find out I didn’t go after him.” His chin trembled. In twelve years of knowing him, Helena had never seen Soren cry. He looked down. “I didn’t tell them, but she told me to leave her. To go find him. But I didn’t. I told her I’d go, as soon as I got her safe—”
He started trying to climb out of the bed. It only took one hand to push him back. He was barely strong enough to sit up.
“Soren, I need to deal with the ruptured tissue in your eye,” she said, trying to sound firm.
He ignored her, trying to shove her off, but she was adept enough at combat now. She deflected his hand and slipped her fingers behind his head. It took only a frisson of resonance and his remaining eye rolled back as he collapsed, unconscious.
She closed his eye gently so it wouldn’t dry out. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered as she set to work.
If there was anything intact inside the socket, there would have been a small chance of saving some of his sight, but Soren’s eye was wrecked.
She removed all the tissue that couldn’t be repaired so that it wouldn’t rot or cause infection, then carefully rebandaged him. In a few weeks, someone would make a beautiful glass eye for him, or perhaps shape a gem.
Assuming there still was a Resistance in a few weeks.
Rhea arrived just as Helena finished.
It had been a long time since both twins had been in the hospital.
Rhea’s expression was stoic, but her eyes were searching as she moved towards Soren.
Helena stood up. “I just finished. I can wake him,” she said, quickly covering all the eye tissue with a cloth.
“No, let him rest.” Rhea sat down slowly on the edge of the bed, studying the parts of Soren’s face that weren’t obscured. “My little boy,” she said softly, her voice a murmur, as if she feared Soren might wake.
Helena stepped back, not sure if Rhea would want privacy or answers.
“You know, he was such a little thing when he was born,” Rhea said, one of her hands reaching and covering Soren’s. “Titus could fit him into one hand. The doctors didn’t think he’d make it. Lila came out bright red and screaming, but my little Soren was just a wisp of a baby. Quiet and pale. Even when he needed to nurse, he’d barely make a sound. He always followed Lila around, never caused trouble himself, but was always right there, getting into hers.”
Rhea gave a sobbing laugh. “I thought I was doing such a great thing when they were born. Twins. Two babies for the Bayard family. Our little paladins.” Rhea’s body trembled as she held Soren’s hand. “And now Titus doesn’t even know what’s been done to our beautiful children—all my family, I only have pieces of them left.”
She folded over Soren. Her body was shuddering, but she cried silently.
There was a trick to sobbing like that; it was something a person had to learn to do.
Helena slipped away, to give her space to grieve.
THE MEETING WAS SOMBRE. ILVA sat at the Council table, looking almost drugged while the reports were being given. The attack had occurred on the lower part of the East Island. Luc and Lila had been leading the battalion towards Headquarters; they’d passed a condemned building, and just as Luc and Lila stepped beyond it, there had been an explosion. The building had collapsed.
