“You think you know the strands of fate?” He laughs at my arrogance. “You do not know what would have happened if they lived.”
“I know I can’t be what these people need.”
He frowns. “And how would you know what they need when you are afraid of them? When you
can’t even look upon them?” I don’t know how to answer. He stands abruptly and extends a hand to me. “Come with me.”
—
The hospital was once a cafeteria. Rows of gurneys and makeshift beds now fill it along with coughs and solemn whispers as Red, Pink, and Yellow nurses in yellow scrubs move through the beds checking the patients. The back of the room is a burn ward, separated from the rest of the patients by plastic containment walls. A woman’s screaming on the other side of the plastic, fighting a nurse as he tries to give her an injection. Two other nurses rush to subdue her.
I feel swallowed by the sterile sadness of the place. There’s no gore. No blood dripping on the floor. But this is the aftermath of my escape from Attica. Even with a Carver as good as Mickey, they won’t have the resources to mend these people. The wounded stare up at the stone ceiling wondering what life will be like now. That’s what this feeling is in this room. Trauma. Not of flesh. But lives and dreams interrupted.
I’d retreat from the room, but Ragnar rolls me forward to the edge of a young man’s bed. He watched me as I came in. His hair is short. His face plump and awkward with a prominent under bite.
“What’s what?” I ask, my voice remembering the flavor of the mine.
He shrugs. “Just dancin’ time away, hear?”
“I hear.” I extend a hand. “Darrow…of Lykos.”
“We know.” His hands are so small he can’t even wrap his fingers around mine. He chuckles at the
ridiculousness of it. “Vanno of Karos.”
“Night or day?”
“Dayshift, you pigger. I look like some saggy-faced night digger?”
“Well, you never know these days…”
“True enough. I’m Omicron. Third drillboy, second line.”
“So that was your chaff I’d be dodging deep.”
He grins. “Helldivers, always lookin’ themselves in the eye.” He makes a lewd motion with his hands. “Someone’s gotta teach you to look up.”
We laugh. “How much did it hurt?” he asks, nodding to me. At first I think he’s asking about what
the Jackal did. Then I realize he’s referring to the Sigils on my hands. The ones I’ve tried to cover
with my sweater. I unveil them now. “Manic shit, that.” He flicks it with his finger.
I look around, suddenly aware that it’s not just Vanno watching me. It’s everyone. Even on the far side of the room in the burn unit Reds push themselves up in their beds to look at me. They can’t see the fear inside. They see what they want. I glance at Ragnar, but he’s busy speaking to an injured woman. Holiday. She nods to me. Grief still very much at home on her face for her lost brother. His pistol is on her bedside, his rifle leaning against the wall. The Sons recovered his body during the rescue so he could be buried.
“How much did it hurt?” I repeat. “Well, imagine falling into a clawDrill, Vanno. A centimeter at a time. First goes the skin. Then the flesh. Then bone. Easy stuff.”
Vanno whistles and looks down at his missing legs with a tired, almost bored expression. “Didn’t
even feel this. My suit injected enough hydrophone to knock out one of them.” He nods to Ragnar and draws air through his teeth. “And least I still got my prick.”
“Ask him,” a man beside him urges. “Vanno…”
“Shut up.” Vanno sighs. “Boys have been wonderin’. Did you get to keep it?”
“Keep what?”
“It.” He looks at my groin. “Or did they…you know…make it proportionate?”
“You really want to know?”
“I mean…not for personal reasons. But I’ve got money riding on it.”
“Well.” I lean forward seriously. So do Vanno and his bedmates nearby. “If you really want to know, you should ask your mother.”
Vanno stares at me intensely, then explodes into laughter. His bedmates laugh and spread the joke to the far edges of the room. And in that tiny moment, the mood shifts. The suffocating sterility cut through with amusement and crude jokes. Whispering suddenly seems ridiculous here. It fills me with energy to see the shifting tide and realize it’s because of a single laugh. Instead of retreating from the eyes, from the room, I move away from Ragnar down the lines of cots to mingle more with the injured, to thank them, to ask where they’re from and learn their names. And this is where I thank Jove that I’ve a good memory on me. Forget a man’s name and he’ll forgive you. Remember it, and