He gave a disinterested wave in my direction, and his hybrid yanked me off the ground, studied me with scornful red eyes, and hurled me from the tower.
The fall was too long, every wind-whipping foot of it tinged with some horrible familiarity, like the embrace of a long-dead loved one in the night. I plummeted for the streets, reaching for my power. But I couldn’t.
Again I reached, and again it failed me, slipping through my fingers like falling water. Something was missing. A part of me, real as any limb or organ.
Again I tried. Again. The hard ground rushed closer. I screamed in despair. The sound caught in my throat at the sight of two faces below, looking up, calmly watching me plummet toward them. Johnny and Elise. They weren’t dead. Weren’t…
“Help,” I said. Then, louder, “Help! Please!”
The fall stretched on, impossibly long. For too long, they studied me, their expressions cold, detached. Then they turned to one other, disregarding me. The ground rushed up to meet me.
“No!” I yelled. “No! Please!”
Impact.
Blinding, thunderous impact, tearing through every fiber of my body—so hard it seemed a small miracle I didn’t simply explode into a pool of blood and mashed biomass. The pain was oddly disembodied, not so much the crushing sensation I expected but more a deep, inescapable certainty that it was there, overwhelming and terrible, and that I was actually, in fact, dead.
Except I could still hear them talking.
“It’s nothing he can’t sleep off,” Johnny said. He sounded doubtful.
And why wouldn’t he be?
“Look at this,” someone else hissed. Elise. She was staring down at me. “Tell me this is okay, Johnny. Go on.”
They watched my smashed body in silence, their faces oddly blank.
“I’ve never seen him move like that, Lise. It was like something out of a storyvid.”
Was he talking about me? That didn’t seem right. I’d just been beaten senseless—disintegrated into the pavement like a powerless idiot.
“Most of the squad was too scared to go pull him off that rooftop,” Johnny continued.
That didn’t make any sense. Except…
“I don’t give a crap if the squad is scared of a rodent’s shadow,” Elise snapped. “I just…” There was a long, heavy sigh. “I can’t…”
“Why don’t you get some fresh air? I’ll stay here, message you when he wakes up.”
“I’m not leaving,” she said. Then, almost to herself, “Not until he wakes up, at least.”
Wakes up. Why would they expect that? Didn’t they see me here, broken and dying? They had to. Unless…
Unless—
I gasped awake, eyes snapping open to a world of bright light and even brighter pain.
“Talk about timing,” Johnny muttered to my left.
We were in the medica. Something warm planted itself against my right cheek. A hand. Elise’s. I recognized it by feel and scent even before her face appeared over mine.
She looked terrible.
The tired worry, I’d expected. It was nothing I hadn’t seen before, and completely understandable. But this was something more—a kind of deadness in her eyes that chilled my insides.
“I’m losing count of the times we’ve done this,” she muttered, more to herself than me.
She withdrew her hand and straightened, glancing at something in the corner. The door, I realized with a sickened feeling.
What had I done?
I tried to reach for her, to say her name. Between the pain, the disorientation, and the driest mouth I’d ever had, it mostly came out as a weak fumble and a pitiful groan.
“I think that’s hybrid for I’m sorry,” Johnny said, scooting past the foot of my bed and over to the spot opposite Elise.
“Not… funny,” I groaned.
The reminder of those fluent hybrids sent a fresh wave of nausea-tinged horror through me.
“Not even a little bit,” Elise added, though the comment seemed directed more at me than at Johnny.
“What…” I tried. My throat was raw, like I’d been screaming. Because I had been screaming, I remembered—chasing after that transport, doing things I hadn’t known I was capable of. “Those civilians…” I looked expectantly at Johnny and winced at the protests of my sore, beaten muscles. I didn’t like the look on his face.
“They’re… They’ll live. Some broken bones and such, but they’re definitely a lot more alive than they would’ve been if you hadn’t… done your thing. What was that, by the way?”
“I’m not really sure. Some kind of Expression, I guess. Didn’t really have time to think about it. Just kinda opened the taps.”
Elise’s exasperation was palpable.
“Didn’t have time to think about it?” she repeated. “You charged into enemy territory against orders, nearly got yourself killed once, and then decided it was time to start channeling Alpha knows how much energy for you don’t even know what… and you didn’t have time to think about it?”
I glanced at Johnny. “I see you filled her in.”
“Don’t look at him,” Elise said. “It’s not Johnny’s fault you decided to run off.”
Anger bristled in my chest.
She hadn’t been there. She didn’t know what it had been like. How it had felt to watch those civilians pulling away in that transport. The terror in their eyes.
“I did what I had to,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “But we have bigger problems right now.” I turned to Johnny. “Those hybrids… We need to talk to Glenbark.”
I moved to sit up. The pain was exquisite. Especially when Elise pressed me back to the bed with a firm hand to my chest.
“No. You need to listen to the medics for once in your life.”
I opened my mouth to point out that I hadn’t even been awake long enough to speak to one of those medics, then hesitated at the look on her face. She wasn’t just exasperated, or worried, or tired. It was more than that. She was angry. More than angry.
“Lise,” I said softly, “what’s going on? I’m okay. I’m—”
She bent down to pluck something from under my bed and held it out for my inspection. A translucent polymer bag, full of some unpleasant, rust-colored liquid. Across from her, Johnny gave a little groan and looked pointedly away from the stuff.
“Do you know what this is?” Elise asked.
“Uh… kinda looks like bloody urine.”
“Your bloody urine,” she growled. “You tore yourself up inside. They showed us the scans. Your muscles, your joints… Medics said you tripled the record for the most micromends they’d ever had to pull on someone who hadn’t been hit by a bomb or a moving vehicle. They gave you so many nanites they wanted my dad to sign off on the dosage before they—”
“Okay!” I grimaced at the bag of bloody urine. “Scud, okay, I get the point.”
“I don’t think you do,” Elise said, bending to reattach the bag below.
The anger flared in my chest again, stronger this time, begging for release. I’d nearly killed myself trying to help people, and—
“I think I’d better let you two talk,” Johnny said, inching away from the bed as if he were afraid we might spontaneously explode.
Elise and I spoke at the same time, her telling him that would be much appreciated right as I told him it wasn’t necessary. We traded a look that made me feel cold inside.
“Yeah, I’ll be outside,” Johnny said, hurrying for the door. He disappeared, then poked his head back in a second late. “You crazy kids just remember you love each other, okay? And that—Right, leaving.”
The door slid shut behind him with an electronic hum, and I turned to meet the glare Elise had chased him from the room with. Her gaze didn’t soften when she turned it to me.
“So what? You want me to apologize for saving lives now?”
The words were pure venom leaving my mouth. I practically spat them.
Her fists were clenched. For a sp
lit second, I thought she might even hit me.
She visibly forced herself to relax, keeping her gaze fixed on the bump of my feet beneath the blankets, safely away from my eyes. “You can’t keep throwing yourself at every problem in the world,” she said, her voice flat. “Giving it everything, every time. Giving more of yourself than you have.” She hesitated, jaw tight. “We’ve both seen what happens when you tap too much power.”
It was like she’d punched me straight in the gut.
For a second, I was back at the White Tower again, watching in horror as Carlisle wielded wild power beyond anything I could have imagined. Watching as he smote our enemies down with that barely-contained fury, the bleed-off whipping the entire Great Hall into a violet maelstrom.
Watching as that arcane storm turned on him, consuming him until he lost control. Watching as he vaporized the entire Great Hall with him and our enemies still inside.
Something between a gasp and a whimper escaped my throat, hot tears pressing at my eyes.
How could she do this? She didn’t understand what I’d been facing back in that Humility courtyard. Didn’t know what I owed Carlisle.
You are the best I have to offer this world, Hal.
She didn’t know. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to tell anyone about Carlisle’s message. Hadn’t even been able to listen to it again myself. And for her to use his death like this… for her to wield my grief against me like a weapon for trying to save innocent people…
It was unforgivable.
When she finally looked up to meet my eyes, I could see that she wanted to take it back. I looked away before she could try, refusing to let her, a dull ache settling in the back of my throat.
“I know you feel like you have to save everyone you can,” she said quietly after a while. I felt her start to reach for my hand, and hesitate. “I would’ve wanted to do the same, Hal. I know that. But you won’t be able to save anyone if you wind up in an urn.”
Like Carlisle, I could practically hear her saying. Except there’d been nothing left of Carlisle to put in the urn, had there?
I rested my head back on the pillow, staring pointedly at the pristine white ceiling, avoiding her eyes. I didn’t want to think about it. Whatever I’d done back in Humility hadn’t been anything like what Carlisle had…
No. I couldn’t think about it right now. About any of it. About Carlisle’s final moments, or the fact that Elise would stoop so low as to use it against me like this. The woman I loved, stabbing me right in the deepest of wounds.
“Hal…” She took my hand, her expression torn. “I didn’t mean to… I just—”
“I’d like to be alone.”
They didn’t feel like my words. Not really. Those words belonged to the ugly, wounded thing inside me. The same broken thing that pulled my hand away from hers—refused to meet her eyes.
No. They weren’t my words. But they left my mouth all the same. And I didn’t take them back.
I felt Elise teetering there. Heard her swallow, open her mouth, close it. Then the door slid open with a low hum. I closed my eyes, unable to cope with the thought of adding anyone else to this mess.
“—all due respect, sir,” Johnny’s flustered voice drifted in, “I’m not sure right now is the best—”
“Raish.”
My eyes slid open at the sound of Glenbark’s voice in the doorway.
“I need to speak with you,” she said. She didn’t add the alone or the right now, but they came across clear enough in her tone.
I wasn’t sure whether to dread what was coming or to be relieved for the excuse to escape my skimmer wreck of a conversation with Elise. Glenbark strode into the room without waiting, not quite fuming—she was too controlled for that—but clearly not happy. Elise hovered uncertainly beside me.
“Elise was just leaving,” I said.
The look she gave me told me the words cut deeper than I’d meant. Or maybe exactly as deep as I’d meant. I couldn’t tell anymore.
She hurried for the door, barely even acknowledging Glenbark, averting her face as if to hide tears, and vanished into the hallway. Outside, Johnny called her name, hurrying after her.
Glenbark paid the display little more attention than to close the door when Elise and Johnny had gone.
Silence.
Then, in a quietly menacing voice, “What were you thinking?”
I caught myself before the excuses started. Willow whipping wouldn’t do me any good here.
“There were enemy telepaths on the field. I stayed to stop them.”
Anger flashed in her eyes like I’d never seen.
“You stayed to—”
She closed her eyes, jaw tight. I waited, speechless. It was oddly terrifying, seeing her like this.
Finally, she regained her composure and opened her eyes to fix me with a stare that was slightly calmer if no less frightening. “Can you make me these cloaks, Haldin?”
I swallowed, surprised by the question. “I… Yes. I’m doing my best, sir.”
“Your best,” she repeated, as if testing the idea out. She shook her head. “No, I don’t think I believe that.”
“Sir, with respect, I’m—”
“Do you remember what I told you after Vantage, Citizen Raish?”
I took a breath, trying to collect my thoughts. Trying not to explode. I couldn’t handle another person telling me I’d gropped up. Not even the High General.
“You told me that I should get used to following orders or get off your base, sir.”
“No one gets a free pass,” she agreed. “No matter what they can do. And today, you defied orders for the second time.”
“I saved lives, General. Maybe hundreds. If I hadn’t been there—”
“You defied orders, Raish. It’s as simple as that. And before you go tallying how many lives you think you saved, tell me this: did you even stop to think how many lives you were endangering, putting your neck on the line like that?”
I froze, mouth half-open, realizing I had nothing to say to that.
“Just as I thought,” she said when I’d been silent too long.
I scowled down at my hands. “You don’t understand what it’s like, being told to stand back and play it safe when you can do the things I can do. When you’re the only one out there who can.”
She was silent for a few moments. I kept my eyes pointedly averted, studying my fingers without hardly seeing them at all.
“Look at me,” she finally said, when it became clear I wasn’t planning on rejoining the conversation.
I didn’t want to look at her. Didn’t want to talk to her. Didn’t want a single Alpha-damned thing to do with any of this anymore.
“Look at me, Haldin,” she repeated, calm but firm.
I met her gaze with a scowl, and was surprised to find empathy in her stern blue eyes.
“Every day, I make decisions that I know will mean the deaths of good men and women. Every day I wrestle with my choices, wishing it could be different, that I could save everyone. That I could do the impossible.” She shook her head. “Don’t be so quick to assume what I do and don’t understand. More importantly, never forget that every action, no matter how small, has a cost.”
I opened my mouth—to say it wasn’t the same thing, or maybe even to apologize, I barely knew—but she silence me with a look before I could start.
“It was a mistake sending you out there,” she continued. “I see that now. Which is why it won’t happen again. I’m placing you under house arrest, pending the completion of your assignment.”
“That’s your small cost?” I cried. “Sir, you can’t—”
“You don’t understand, Raish. This isn’t a discussion.”
I bristled, preparing to argue, but she stared me down with pure adamantus in her eyes.
“This is larger than either of us now, Haldin. You have no idea the scudstorm you kicked up with your display back in Humility.”
That gave me pause, a familiar dread cree
ping in my gut. One more thing I hadn’t had time to think about…
“The reels,” I murmured.
“Are filled to bursting,” she said, “and far too many are talking about you, calling for the Sanctum to step in and give you the noose again.” She tilted her head. “Of course, some are calling for heroic busts of you in the town squares as well. Enochia doesn’t quite know what to think.”
“But you do.”
She adopted an expression reserved for pouting toddlers. “Believe it or not, I have more pressing issues to think about at the moment.”
I frowned. “What else is happening?”
The faintest sneer pulled at her lips. “What? Outside the world of Haldin Raish?”
Despite how much this wall all making me want to hit something, I found myself staring back at my hands, heat rushing to my cheeks at her words.
“Humility wasn’t the only target,” she said, all traces of derision gone.
My stomach sank, my own freedom forgotten for the moment. “Where else?”
“Service. New Amestown. A few smaller towns you’ve probably never heard of. All the same. Hybrid forces, in and out. Thousands taken across Enochia.”
I stared at her, unbelieving. I was going to be sick. All that effort. The trouble I’d apparently stirred. The legionnaires we’d lost. I’d nearly killed myself trying to save those four last civilians. And it didn’t matter. Because, meanwhile, the hybrids had been snatching up thousands more.
“Do you understand now why I need your uninterrupted focus?” she asked. “We have to strike back. Now. And we need those cloaks to do it.”
“Keeping me prisoner isn’t exactly gonna help me focus.”
“And letting you run wild isn’t going to help you survive. You leave me with little choice.”
“Sir… Please. Don’t do this. I’ll be more careful next time. I’ll…”
“It’s for your own safety as much as anything else, Haldin. General Auckus is already calling for both our heads on pikes, and after today, something tells me the Sanctum might be all too willing to answer that call.
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