> I don’t know what the goal of this was, but I think I can guess at least one impact it will have. Can you send along the statistics on how many of the Clothes-Lovers are wearing the black-and-white stripes?

>

> – Radio transmission from Voices for Non-Citizens

“How did you get burned?” Gavin asked, tears streaming down his face. “You’re like a fire king.”

Micah didn’t answer. I knew he was conscious - he was squeezing my hand tightly - but he was nearly insensate with pain. His face was scrunched up and his breath was coming in ragged, wavering inhalations and staccato, sobbing exhalations.

I was glad that Gavin was the healer and not me. I don’t know if I would have been able to keep from dumping all my heals into Micah at once, as dumb as it would have been. Gavin’s tears made it clear that he felt the same way, but somehow he was restraining himself, carefully measuring out his heals, doing his best to fix the damage slowly and steadily.

Part of me was aghast at such a show of maturity from a six-year-old, but I knew Gavin’s expertise had been hard-won. And I was equally stunned by his brother, only three years older, who had clearly made choices just as pragmatic and painful.

“I think the burns were something Micah did,” I said, my vision blurring.

“Why would he do that?! Were there monsters on his skin?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Look at where his injuries are. His chestplate and helmet blocked some of them, and luckily nothing hit his neck, but they’re all in a line on his left side, and it looks like at least one of the spikes went all the way through his leg. Micah knew you could burn injuries to stop the bleeding. We’d talked about it. Just in case.”

Just thinking about it made me angry. I wanted to tear this stupid castle to shreds, but there was no way I was letting go of my baby’s hand, not until he was okay. He could have died! Judging by the amount of blood, he would have, if he hadn’t given up on bandaging himself, if he hadn’t decided…

I couldn’t even complete the thought, furious.

This isn’t fair. Not even a little. Almost no one can sense or detect the traps before they spring. I guess you could manually test or look for them, but… why would you? There haven’t been any traps before, unless you count the nasty bushes from the second Mandatory Trial. They’re… they’re just trying to kill us! This Trial is-

“Mom? What are you doing?”

Gavin’s voice was confused and scared. I suddenly realized that I’d been throwing a Telekinetic tantrum, slamming my iron plates and sawblades and knives against the walls. The walls didn’t seem to have taken significant damage, but one of my knives had snapped in two. I didn’t even know where the tip had gone, but the part I was holding was pretty useless now, just a bare inch of blade sticking out of a hilt.

What the hell was I doing?

“Sorry,” I growled. “I’m just really angry.”

Gavin looked alarmed.

“Not at you!” I hastened to add. “And not at Micah. At the aliens that made all this happen.”

“Oh.” Gavin glared at the wound on Micah’s shoulder. “They are damn poopheads.”

“They really are,” I muttered.

“He is hurt really bad, Mom. The spikes broke pieces off of three of his bones, and a lot of his blood is gone, and when I fix the flashy parts I think it hurts him more.”

“The flashy… oh. His nerves? Then fix those last. You can do that, right?”

“Oh. Yeah, I can! I’ll work on his bones first? The flashy parts near those are all working anyway. The broken ones are near the burn thing he did.”

“Cauterize.” The word was quiet and hoarse. “Burning someone is called cauterizing if you’re trying to help them.”

“Micah!” Gavin yelled happily.

I breathed a sigh of relief. If anything could distract Micah away from his pain, of course, it would be the chance to correct someone. What else could I say wrongly? I drew a blank.

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It was hard to focus. Hard to sit still. Even with my own barely-sealed injuries throbbing it was hard not to get up and run back to Cassie and Pointy, to shout at the rest of the group to hurry up.

They were almost to us. Micah had been in range of my Life Sense when I split from the group, so even if they were taking their time getting around the hazards Gavin and I had crashed through, there was only so much delay possible. I could feel them just around the corner. They’d made it past the pit and the gas trap, and I could hear the ringing of metal on stone as they worked to disarm the final spike trap. Well, not “disarm” so much as disable: we’d been addressing that brand of hazard by pummeling them repeatedly until they stopped working.

I’m sure it was only thirty seconds before Cassie’s Summoned Seekers scampered into view, but it felt like longer. As soon as I saw them, I raised my voice. “Healers! Hurry up! Get over here now!”

When people followed my son around the corner, I saw that many of them had irritated expressions… but to their credit, that irritation fell away into shock and concern when they saw Micah.

He was by far the worst-injured person we’d come across since the fight with Big Mama, or at least the only one still living. His quick thinking and ruthlessness had saved him.

We had five other healers with us, and after each had brushed their fingers over my baby’s cheek, Micah let out a long, relieved, breath and stretched, pushing himself to sitting. His skin was still twisted and blackened near the site of each of his injuries, but he was clearly feeling much better, moving and opening his eyes.

“Have you given him anything to eat yet, Meghan?” Pointy asked.

“No, not yet.”

I frowned. Why hadn’t I? We’d realized a while back that having extra nourishment in your system made some types of healing more efficient, especially blood replacement. Even my pack had some food and water, and the kids were each carrying a day’s worth of water and three days’ worth of food.

Gavin tugged the water bottle out of Micah’s backpack. “Here! Drink! I’ll get you a spacecake.”

Micah obediently took a sip, but glanced worriedly behind him. “There’s something big that way. Warmer than the castle. It was moving toward me. I was trying to get away from it when I hit the trap.”

“One of the rock elementals,” I said, and flashed a quick hologram of an X to mark its location. I squeezed Micah’s hand. “We’re pretty sure it won’t come closer as long as we’re watching it.”

“Really?” Micah sounded disgusted. “That would have been good to know. Ow!” He flinched as a healer took another turn, but the scarred patch on his arm visibly shrank.

“As soon as Micah’s healed, we need to get moving again,” I said. “Cassie used Seek. Dad’s here too.”

Gavin frowned at me. “You’re hurt too, Mommy. We should wait and heal you too.”

“We need to get moving. I’m fine,” I said, pulling myself to my feet. “It’s not that-”

A sharp burst of pain as I put weight on my right leg made me stumble, and the resulting shift to my mangled left foot wasn’t any better. I held my breath to keep from screaming.

My six-year-old regarded me skeptically. “I think you are hurt pretty bad, Mommy.”

“Maybe,” I allowed, the word eking its way out through gritted teeth. “But we can’t wait, we need to-”

“Meghan,” Pointy interrupted. “Did you breathe in any of the gas?”

“No! Well, maybe. Just a little bit, though.”

The turtle used her mastery of sound to project a perfectly judgmental sigh right to my ears. “The Maffiyir showrunners seem to enjoy their themes. I had suspicions about what the gas might do after the chemical weapons of the walldruggers induced extreme calm, and I’ve been able to listen in on you since you reached Micah. You’ve been acting erratically. I think the gas introduces feelings of restlessness and anger.”

I frowned. “And we don’t have Cure Poison. Well, get me one of those walldruggers, so I can get poisoned by that too. They should cancel each other out.”

There was a moment’s dead silence, then Pointy raised her voice and addressed the group, her tone matter-of-fact. “Well, that’s that. I am assuming command. Meghan’s judgment is irreparably compromised.”

“What?!”

Pointy’s voice dripped condescension. “Listen to yourself, Meghan. I tell you you might be drugged, and your immediate reaction is that you should take an unknown, unmeasurable amount of a second drug that seems to have a conflicting impact?”

“Well… I mean…”

“Chemicals aren’t math, Meghan! You can’t just take two opposite effects and assume they’re going to cancel each other out. Especially when you know one is a toxin that moves through the airways and one enters the body via the bloodstream. You may be a meatsack, but you’re not that stupid.”

“It could work.”

“Listen to the turtle,” Pierced Eyebrows called. “You don’t have all your cups in the cupboard right now.”

“But if-”

Hospital Lady cut me off, her voice flat. “It could leave you unable to breathe. There’s a reason we keep pharmacists on staff to do medication reviews!”

A man I didn’t know raised his voice. “You can’t just slap an alien critter on your wrist and hope for the best. Even a hedgehog knows that!”

The unity of my opposition made me pause.

If everyone felt that way, my judgment must really be impaired.

“Fine,” I said. It came out in more of a growl.

“We’ll stay here until you and Micah are physically intact,” Pointy said. “Then we’ll head out after Cassie’s father.”

I slammed my fist into the wall, frustrated at the delay.

“If you injure yourself, it will just delay us longer,” Pointy said.

My response was an inarticulate noise that stopped just short of being a yell.