A booming voice from out in the hall made Mirk jump. Which made him knock over the bowl he'd been concentrating on, spilling the fever-reducing potion he'd been mixing with Yule's guidance all over the common room table. As Mirk watched the wood sizzle and blacken, he sighed, only half-listening to what the voice was saying.

"Eva! Eva, is that you? Come! I need a knife healer! And Yule, get him too! Give him some of that good shit your uncle makes if he bitches!"

Yule cursed and swiped reflexively at the ruined potion with his sleeve. He cursed again once he realized what he'd done; the potion was quickly disintegrating his robes up to the elbow. "I told you we should have gone up to the potions room to do this. Fuck! These were brand new!"

"It's Niv," Mirk said. The sound of heavy footfalls coming closer drew his attention away from Yule's continued grumbling over his robes. "I wonder what happened..."

"Something stupid, obviously. If anyone asks, I'm not here."

After a moment, Mirk heard someone out in the hall reply to K'aekniv, their voice low and tinged with an accent Mirk had never quite placed. "I have told you, K'aekniv, I'm a surgeon. If Slava can remember, so can you. What's happening?"

Before Yule could throw an arm across his chest to stop him, Mirk scrambled out of his chair and hurried into the hall, searching for K'aekniv. The half-angel was standing in front of the doorway to the basement, a gangly body wrapped in a gray blanket held tight against his chest. Mirk tried to ignore the way his heart leapt into his throat as he ran over.

Eva stood before K’aekniv, surveying both the covered body and K’aekniv’s disheveled wings and mud-streaked overcoat with a disapproving air. She was a tall, serious woman, her blond hair always tied back in a tight chignon that only made her look more severe. And she was an expert in surgery. Mirk only knew her in passing — Eva divided her time between the Tenth and the Twentieth, seeing to both the handful of high-ranking officers who were willing to go under a woman's knife and common soldiers in need of urgent care. Eva pulled back a corner of the blanket. What she saw made her frown shift to a grimace. "How long has he been like this?"

"He was like this when I woke up. Is it bad?"

"I won't know until I see all of him. Bring him back to a room." Her eyes darted over to Mirk, who was vacillating in the hall a few paces away, torn between throwing himself into things and waiting to be called for. "We'll need your team too. Scold Yule a little if you have to." She paused, then turned to walk away, though she continued to give orders. "And tell him I'll give him a bottle. But only if he doesn't complain."

"Oh! Good! You're here too, Mirk," K'aekniv said, the heavy press of his worry against Mirk’s shields lightening when the half-angel finally noticed him. "Maybe it will work better if someone is nice to him between people stabbing him."

"It's Genesis?" Mirk asked, despite knowing full well that it couldn't be anyone else. The commander shared a room with K'aekniv, albeit grudgingly. And he was the only person Mirk had met from the Seventh whose body matched the rough dimensions of the one K'aekniv was clutching.

K'aekniv nodded, heaving a great sigh and turning his attention back down toward the body in his arms. "It'll be all right. It always is. Every time, the same shit..."

Before Mirk could reply, K'aekniv tramped off, heading to where Eva was waving at him from a room down near the field transporter. Swallowing down his worry, Mirk returned to the common room, trying to think up some way to tempt Yule into coming. To his relief, the older healer was already up, shaking Danu awake from where she'd been sprawled out on one of the couches. "I don't mean to be a bother, Yule—"

"It's not your fault," Yule replied, cutting him off. "I'm the one who's been fixing that bastard for years. Just because you got lucky once doesn't mean they're going to stop calling for me every time. If anyone should be apologizing, it's him."

Mirk couldn't fault Yule for being annoyed. Genesis was a thankless patient. Their team had needed to leave and return to the patient room on the fourth floor three times in order to get Genesis's broken leg more or less fixed. Yule had muddled through the bulk of the healing while Danu had kept Genesis's magic distracted. Though Mirk had managed to get in one good burst of healing too, enough to finally fuse the bone in Genesis’s leg together.

It had shocked both Yule and Danu, but it had left Genesis looking more distant and cold than when they'd first found him lurking in the supply closet. Now, a week later, Genesis was back in the infirmary, in even worse condition. Yule and Danu only ever encountered the commander there. Neither of them could know that Genesis had been missing the whole of last week.

Though she still looked drowsy, Danu trailed along after them as Yule and Mirk made for the room Eva had directed K'aekniv to. Mirk did his part and led the charge, hurrying to be first through the door. What he saw sent him reeling back into the hall, his hand pressed over his mouth.

Genesis was little better than a corpse. Someone had already pried him out of all his protective layers, exposing a multitude of cuts along with three deep stab wounds in his chest. The injuries had closed enough not to be bleeding too much, but they were all still dribbling blood down his sides. There were a ring of angry bruises around his neck from where someone or something had tried to strangle him. And it was impossible to tell what other injuries his uniform trousers and boots were hiding. Clenching his fists at his sides and trying to rein in his shock, Mirk forced himself back into the room, doing his best to ignore the puzzled looks that Danu and Yule were both giving him.

It was all exceptionally odd. Mirk had caught glimpses of how the healers usually reacted to patients who were brought in with similar wounds. Three or more teams of healers would engulf them, all of them shouting directions at each other, the aides and nurses rushing ahead and behind them to gather supplies. But Eva wasn't grabbing frantically for her tools, and her emotions were level enough to be hidden completely by her shielding. She had her fingers pressed to the side of Genesis's neck, ignoring him in favor of looking at her pocket watch.

Mirk would have been appalled by her indifference, had K'aekniv not seemed alarmed either. Though the half-angel still felt worried, there was a certain tiredness and resignation overshadowing the emotion that troubled Mirk. "What happened?" Mirk asked K'aekniv as he entered, going to his side.

"Who knows? Some shit," K'aekniv said, shrugging his wings. "You know him. He never tells anyone anything."

Mirk wilted a little as Yule and Danu cautiously edged into the room. "Should we be worried?" Yule called out to K’aekniv.

K'aekniv shook his head. "I beat him a little to make sure he keeps sleeping."

"Twenty-seven," Eva said, sliding her watch back into her pocket. "I would like for him to get to thirty before we start, but beggars can't be choosers."

"Is...euh...does this happen a lot?" Mirk asked. "Where is his magic?"

"This bad? A few times a year, maybe," Yule said, joining them at the table. Though the shadows underneath it looked normal enough, Yule wasn't taking any chances. He kept staring down at them, even as he spoke to K'aekniv. "If he slams me, you're going to get it."

"Don't worry so much," K'aekniv replied, waving him off. "I know how this works. If I beat him at the end, then he stays normal."

Despite himself, Mirk was beginning to feel frustrated at the listless way everyone was gathered around Genesis, like his broken body was a chore no one wanted to tend to rather than an emergency. Mirk took a harder look at the commander's wounds as he tried to think of something diplomatic to say. And he avoided looking up into Genesis’s lifeless face as best he could. "Methinks it'd help if someone could explain a little more."

"Ah, right. This is your first time," K'aekniv said. "When you healers try to do things to him when he's awake, or right after someone got him, his magic gets all angry when you try to touch him. But if he's really asleep like this, then it leaves you alone for a while. And it listens to my magic, for whatever reason."

"It listens to his too," Yule said, finally looking up from the shadows, nodding across the table at Mirk. "Sort of. I'm beginning to think it might be an angelic thing. We should make Emir come in here and try with him."

"Maybe. I don't know how this magic works." K'aekniv sighed, rocking back on his heels and running his hands through the ragged locks of tarnished silver hair that had fallen out of his high ponytail. "Like I said. Always the same shit..."

Mirk's frustration got the better of him. "It's not right," he said, in a harsher tone than he'd meant to. It came out more like an accusation than a protest. Everyone glanced his way, but no one said anything.

No one other than K'aekniv, who reached over and set one of his massive hands atop Mirk's head, nudging it gently so that Mirk looked his way instead of continuing to stare at Genesis's body. "He always comes back fine. This is just life, yes? Everyone has something. Listen, did you know he was going away?"

Mirk shook his head. At least, as much as he could with the hot, heavy weight of K'aekniv's hand on it.

"Then I'll tell him not to be a bastard next time. He does everything fucked up, but he'll do something. He made sure we were fine before this, anyway. I think this might be some money thing," K'aekniv added, glancing back at Genesis. "That bastard Ravensdale told horse-fucker not to give us any contracts. You know, make us hurt a little for going off and doing something on our own. The money your deda gave us can take care of things for a while, but you know how Gen is. He wants everything in a row forever instead of just looking at now."

Mirk's chest seized up, but he forced himself to remain still, to broach the subject. "Genesis said that K'maneda don't take any money until everything is over. And it..."

K'aekniv flashed Mirk a smile, ruffling his hair before withdrawing his hand. "That's why your deda gave it to me. He was some peasant before too, he knew I'd know how things work. That honor shit doesn't pay for things." K'aekniv looked wistful for a moment, the warmth of his emotions providing a momentary reprieve from the grimness of the situation. "He was a good man, your deda. A real mean bastard if you did some shit to one of his people, but still pretty good. He even gave us enough to get Ravensdale not to fuck with us when we came back, just in case. Ah, well. What can you do?"

What could any of them do? It seemed like everyone had been repeating the same grisly scene spread out before him for decades before Mirk had come to the City of Glass. Mirk doubted that he'd be the one to break the cycle. Though it wouldn't keep him from trying. Providence wouldn't give him more than he could bear. It had given him Nantes. And now it had given him this. In light of the former, the latter seemed almost manageable.

"We can get to work on this mess," Yule said, cutting into Mirk's thoughts. "We need to get these wounds sorted before his magic starts coming back. Eva and Danu, you cut them open and start getting all the gunk out. You're with me," he said to Mirk. "You healed some of this once. Maybe you'll have better luck without him getting in the way of things."

- - -

"What are you still doing here?"

The voice from the doorway broke Mirk's concentration, made all the strange patterns that held Genesis’s body together fall apart into an indistinct whole. Sighing, Mirk set down his needle and glanced over at the entrance to the room. It was Danu, leaning against the doorway and hugging herself for warmth. She'd put on the thick brown cloak she kept tucked away in the second floor storage closet. Summoning her magic for too long always made her freezing, even in summer.

Mirk shrugged, still at as much of a loss with what to do about Genesis as when he'd first started hours ago with everyone else. "Methinks it's not nice...euh...non, c'est-à-dire...cold? Sad? Something like that."

"What is?"

"Not closing all the wounds."

They had all done their best. Eva had left first, after all the strange purplish growths Genesis's body made when it tried to heal itself had been cut out of his wounds, after all the snaky extra black veins that lead to nowhere had been trimmed back. She wasn't good for much more than that, Eva had said. She had a strongly ordered orientation; getting her life giving-potential through to Genesis was impossible in even the best conditions. And there were other patients to see to.

Then Yule had stormed out, after three more hours spent trying to undo the mess that'd been made of the commander, muttering something about a headache and how Genesis's body would heal itself fine enough now that they'd started the healing process in each of the deeper wounds. Mirk hadn't blamed him. Yule was a thinking healer at heart, one who leaned hard on charts and grimoires, none of which applied to whatever logic Genesis's body followed.

Danu had left shortly after, once Mordecai had started wandering the hall outside the room, concerned for everyone involved, but worried about Danu's well-being above all else. He'd brought a bag full of meat pies and wine he'd teleported into the officers’ dining hall and stolen to share with her, to make sure she had at least one good meal that day. Mirk hadn't blamed her for leaving either. If there was one thing Mirk had learned well over the past weeks, it was that, in the K'maneda, it was important to find what joy you could and cling tight to it to help make up for the rest. If Mirk strained, he could still sense Mordecai somewhere nearby, waiting for Danu again. It really was considerate of them both to check in on him again before leaving.

"You need to look out for those," Danu said.

"What?" Mirk asked, shaking himself out of his woolgathering.

She jerked her head down at the floor. The shadows were starting to get restless. Though some of them curled around Mirk's legs, he didn't sense any particular malice in them. It felt more like they were curious about the odd person who'd elected to linger for so long beside Genesis's body. But he could have been imagining that. Either way, they didn't seem inclined to fight with him, at least not then. "They're not hurting me," Mirk said, with another helpless shrug.

"No...I guess not. He must still be too tired."

Mirk made an attempt at a smile. "They may just be getting used to me."

"They didn't seem very used to you last week."

Mirk sighed, nudging at a few tendrils of shadow that'd wrapped themselves around his ankle. The cold, staticky feeling rose up in them, but they still didn't try to pull him over. "I...I don't know. Maybe they get tired too. Somehow."

"Speaking of tired," Danu said, as she tugged up the hood of her cloak for extra warmth, "it's past dusk, you know. You're due in tomorrow morning. You need to rest."

Again, all Mirk could do was shrug.

"Go home, Mirk. I told Morty to go steal you something to eat too. Since the dining hall's probably cleaned out by now."

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Mirk thought his smile came out more genuine that time. "Thank you both for thinking of me. I won't be long. I only have a little bit left. And...I don't know. I hope...maybe..."

Mirk looked back down at Genesis's lifeless body. His pulse had gone up to forty, but he still didn't seem to need to breathe often. It made Genesis appear more dead than he actually was.

"Hope what?"

"There's a pattern to how he's made. No, maybe...a not-pattern? Sais pas. But there is a normal. It's just...hard to see. You have to feel for it. Or listen, maybe."

The voices tucked away in the bodies of the other patients Mirk had tended to had always been clear, the parts crying out to be reunited, each in their own, plaintive, distinctive way. Genesis’s body was static. A hissing that rose and fell for reasons Mirk couldn’t work out.

But with every hour he spent prodding at him, stitching and trimming and trying a little healing here and there, Mirk thought he could sense something else in it. A discordant, halting voice, speaking a language even feelings couldn’t understand. Neither singing nor speaking, something variable, something in-between. It shouldn’t have surprised him that Genesis’s body was like that, Mirk supposed. He’d never met anyone else who could manage to be both so predictable and so enigmatic at once.

"What does that have to do with why you're still here?" Danu asked.

"Methinks he wouldn't put up with someone poking at him for hours if he was awake."

Danu laughed, tiredly, turning to leave. "Fair enough. But if I find you on the common room couch in the morning, I'm locking you up on third with the rest of the lunatics until you get real sleep. So you'd best listen."

Mirk nodded. "Of course, Danu."

It was the truth. As soon as his vision started to go vague and the world started to drift off-kilter, Mirk planned on heading back to his room. His work would be done then. There was no sense in continuing if he couldn't see straight.

Mirk didn’t think Genesis would appreciate waking up to a chest full of crooked stitches

- - -

They were at the table in the common room again, as always, waiting for the other shoe to drop, for an aide to come back from the waiting room with the next worst off patient hanging off their arm. An aide never came. Instead, a nurse appeared, out of breath and shaking.

She was one of the ladies who attended with Eva, one of those rare nurses with very little empathy and a good amount of ordered Earth potential but no healing ability proper. They always smiled warmly at Mirk whenever he passed them in the halls, but their eyes never quite softened. At the moment, the nurse’s eyes were wide and glassy. The smock over her robes was smeared with blood. Mirk had been at the infirmary long enough by then to know it was fresh.

"We need Yule in the room third down from the transporter," she said breathlessly. She braced herself against the doorframe for just a moment longer before dashing off.

Yule shot both Mirk and Danu a questioning look. "None of our divisions are out today. It has to be pretty bad if command is going to let a worthless Teague touch one of their precious boys."

Danu replied, but Mirk didn't hear her. Something felt wrong. Mirk couldn't quite put his finger on it. He strained with his empathy to pick up on what it could be, going so far as to lower his shields halfway to let in any subtle emotion that might have been hiding under the constant, low-level thrum of pain that permeated the infirmary. There was nothing there.

But he did catch something with his physical eyes, as he stared at the now-empty basket that the morning buns had been dropped in. The shadow the basket cast on the table was off. It was pointing the wrong direction, stretched out twice as long as it should have been. Forcing down the panic that welled up in him, Mirk scanned the rest of the room. All of the shadows were off, in exactly the same way. They were leaning toward the hall the field transporter was at the end of. Mirk shoved himself to his feet.

"It's not that," he blurted out, talking over Yule. "It's Gen. He's back."

Danu and Yule exchanged a tired look. But they got up quickly and, together, they headed off to see what mess the commander had made of things. "I should have known," Yule muttered to himself as he passed through the common room doorway. "Every time that bastard decides to fuck off for more than a month, he always comes back shredded."

Mirk probably wouldn't have put the pieces together if it hadn't been for the things Genesis had left before he had run off again, two days after the last time the commander had been in. Genesis had vanished in the middle of the night, disappearing without a word to anyone from the patient room Yule had locked him in with strict orders to rest. But when Mirk had woken up that morning, there'd been a stack of books left on his dresser, along with a note that he should make inquiries with the ghosts at their central counting house about whether or not they had a ledger under his family's name. And that he needed to take Pavel with him.

There had been a ledger, full of references to others tucked away within the quiet depths of the French counting houses. The ghost manning the public room had only divulged those secrets once Mirk had plunked his grandfather’s staff down on the front desk as proof of his claim. Mirk hadn’t known what to do with that bit of knowledge. He’d settled for taking out a small sum for necessities, though he must have badly misjudged what counted as small among the low-born K’maneda. The tidy stack of mage gold the ghost had floated back from the vaults with had been enough to make even Pavel, quiet and unassuming as he was, whistle and shake his head.

Mirk had been in the middle of putting the gold he'd requested to good use, ordering a new cloak and proper clothes for the coming autumn from the nearest reputable-looking tailor, both for him and everyone else he could think of who looked like they needed better things to wear, when Pavel had gone off. The Seer had shifted from being gloomy and bored into a frenzy in seconds, his eyes going wide and cloudy. He made Mirk sprint with him back to the East Gate through a network of back alleys that Pavel himself only seemed to half know. Mirk had asked him why he'd done it, but Pavel had simply told him to go back to the infirmary and not worry about it.

Though Mirk had tried as hard as he could to take Pavel's advice to heart, he couldn't manage it. And as Mirk had worked through each book, following the cryptic instructions and guide for further study tucked into the front of every volume, he'd grown more and more worried. He'd finished with the last of them the night before, feeling more uncertain about the rudimentaries of enchanting stone than when he'd first began. And even worse about what was going to happen now that he'd completed all of the work that'd been left for him.

His instincts had been right. And so had Genesis's. Genesis had left him just enough work to cover the time he was gone, gauging Mirk’s reading speed and tendency to woolgather exactly. And Mirk had been right too — there was nothing good waiting for them down the long hall to the transporter. Just as Yule turned the corner onto the hall, a body skidded down the length of it, tumbling to a stop right at the top of the stairs to the basement. Mirk knelt down beside it. It was another of Eva's nurses. Shaken and a bit bruised, but otherwise fine.

"What's happening?" Mirk asked her as he helped her back to her feet.

She shook her head. "I'm not going back in there. It's hopeless."

"Can't say I blame you," Yule replied with a sigh. "Go take a break. We're the ones who'll have to handle the worst of it anyway."

Mirk began to move off toward the transporter alongside Yule, but paused once he noticed Danu wasn't following them. She was standing stock still and staring off down the hallway that led to the waiting room. Mirk backtracked, nudging her on the shoulder. "Danu? Are you all right?"

She didn't turn to look at him. "It's Uncle..."

Mirk took a step back to look around her down the length of the hall. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. It was the usual mid-morning crowd, aides escorting weary patients toward the back as nurses debated which team would be best suited to handling their complaints. "Uncle?"

"Uncle Ankou," she said, fumbling at her side until she caught hold of Mirk's bare wrist. Only when he was touching her skin-to-skin could Mirk see it: a tall white figure drifting slowly down the hall, its face indistinct under the hood of its cloak. Rather than stepping around the patients and their attendants, it was passing straight through them. "He's not like me or Da. He's a Scythe Bearer. They only ever come for things that don't die easily. Like necromancers, and Patchworks, and..."

Ahead of them, Mirk heard Yule groan. "Oh, hell. You've got to be kidding me."

Danu tore off down the hall, grabbing Yule's arm as she ran past, dragging them both to the third room down from the field transporter. They all stopped in the doorway and Mirk took a frantic look around.

The scene would have been comical, had Mirk not known better how Genesis's magic and body worked by then. The commander was still wrapped up in his ugly oversized coat, motionless on the exam table. Eva and her three remaining nurses were standing as far away from his lifeless body as possible, lined up against the far wall of the room with their backs all pressed against it. The surgeon looked to them in the doorway, shaking her head. "It's bad. Five minutes, no breathing. No matter what he is, he has to be almost dead."

"Can you do anything?" Yule asked her.

Eva trained her gaze back on Genesis's body. "His magic let me look at him a little. Long enough to see that his chest's blown open. But if any of them get close…” she trailed off, making a sideways gesture at her terrified nurses. “It must know I never try to use magic on him. Which is nonsense. Magic can’t know anything. But here we are."

Mirk tried to approach Genesis's body, but Danu held him back. "Don't go rushing in. We need a plan."

"There is no plan," Yule snapped, frustrated. "If his magic is throwing anyone who gets close down the hall, what are we supposed to do?"

Eva gave a helpless shrug. "You can try getting in."

"And end up just as dead as he is? What good is that?"

Something in the tone of Yule's voice — the defeated note to his anger, the way the word "dead" rolled so easily off his tongue — made Mirk snap. He yanked his arm out of Danu's hold, though some small part of him recoiled from his rudeness, his insistence. "I can find a way."

Yule caught his other arm before Mirk could get very far. "Don't be stupid. You're no good to anyone dead. Stop and think. Do you even have a plan?"

"I just have to be able to touch him. Just a little. If you and everyone else keeps his magic back, I'll—"

Yule narrowed his eyes at him, trying to elbow Mirk back out into the hall. "You'll what? Get slammed through a wall?"

"I'll find a way."

Yule cursed, releasing Mirk in favor of running his hands back through his hair, yanking on it, either in frustration or in an attempt to get himself to focus. For a moment, Mirk's resolve wavered again — who was he to tell the healer who'd been handling Genesis for decades how to do things? Who was he but a trainee who got all his bones mixed around still, who couldn't put together the simplest potions? But Mirk forced himself to speak up, blinking the blurriness out of his eyes. The beginning of tears of mingled desperation and fright. “Please, Yule. Let me try. I have to do something.”

Yule relented, sidling cautiously into the room. He hugged the wall until he was beside the last of Eva's nurses. Though Mirk wanted to bolt for the exam table, he followed along after him, Danu taking up the rear after another long look down the hallway toward the stairs to the basement.

After surveying his options for a minute or two, Yule spoke. "All right. You three go in together through the middle. Link up so that it takes him longer to shove you off," he said to the nurses, who all gave shaky nods in response. "We'll cut in before he can slam you. Eva, you take the left. Throw your order at him, that'll draw his magic. Then we'll come in from the right. You know what to do," he said to Danu, before his eyes locked on Mirk's. "And I don't know what the hell you're planning, but that'll be the only chance you'll get. A minute or two at best."

There was a momentary pause, a collective holding of breath. Then the three nurses shoved off against the wall, arm in arm, and the struggle began.

The nurses made it halfway across the room before the shadows swarmed out from under the table and enveloped them. Though the nurses slid backward a foot or two, they held on, their different magicks escaping through the writhing black coils snaking around them, faint glimmers of multicolored light in the darkness.

Before the shadows could throw her nurses, Eva plunged into the fray. She projected her magic, surrounding herself in a haze of green-tinged golden light. The shadows were drawn to it, as Yule had predicted, no longer pushing the nurses further away in favor of trying to consume the ordered half of Eva's magic. Still, she struggled onward against it, coming almost within arm's reach of the exam table before getting stuck.

Once it was clear Eva could go no further, Yule and Danu each took one of Mirk's arms and started for the table. It took time for the shadows to reach them, but they came before they got within arm's reach. Danu's grip on Mirk's arm grew tighter as she released her Deathly magic, her mental and physical touch going ice cold. The shadows rushed in to encircle her, ripping her away from Mirk. Though they jerked Danu's body this way and that, the shadows couldn't throw her out the door.

The shadows had better luck with Eva across the room, yanking her hard and smacking her into the room's supply cabinet. Eva cursed, but kept projecting. Mirk couldn't tell in all the chaos whether she cursed because she was hurt, or because the jolt of her hitting the cabinet had sent all the supplies on it flying, including all of Eva’s enchanted surgical tools and the potted mint plant kept in every room they did emergency healing in. It was there for the healers and attendants to pluck leaves off and chew on to distract from the oppressive taste and smell of the almost dead.

Mirk and Yule kept going. The shadows weren't satisfied with the others. Soon they came for them. They started with Yule, prying his hand off Mirk's arm. They seemed less intent on crushing or throwing Yule than they did the mages in the room with an ordered orientation. Mostly, they were intent on dragging Yule under the table that Genesis, still motionless, was lying on. What they planned on doing with him once he was there was unfathomable to Mirk. They wanted to keep Yule in some way, Mirk felt. Though how he knew that, or if it was even true, was impossible to tell.

He was alone now. Mirk gritted his teeth and pressed onward, ignoring the shadows curling up his legs like a trellis, falling just short of reaching Genesis before he could no longer lift his feet and keep moving. Mirk stared at Genesis's body as he thought. The commander's drab overcoat was saturated with blood. Growing puddles of it had dripped onto the floor on either side of the exam table.

There was so much blood, too much for such a thin body to hold. Eva had to be right. No matter what else Genesis was, above all else, he had to be on the brink of death. The thought of it gave Mirk the strength to struggle on further, just far enough to flail one hand onto Genesis's arm. He couldn't feel anything through the commander’s overcoat.

Frantically, Mirk scanned the room. Everyone was pinned down. But the sight of the mint plant and its shattered pot on the floor and the feel of the shadows squeezing around his legs gave Mirk an idea. Closing his eyes to the horror around him, the shadows swarming over everything and Genesis's blood still dripping, constantly dripping onto the floor, Mirk banished his shields, ignoring the waves of panic and anger it let in. Instead, he reached out first to his own magic, then to the feel of the plant, a pinprick of life at the very edge of his senses. And then he thought of growing.

Mirk heard crunching. Then he felt something else curl around his body, something warm and pulsing with life, as strong as the shadows but not quite enough to overpower them. He blinked open his eyes. Roots, thick and bone white, had unfurled from the mint plant and come to his summons. More and more of them kept branching off and joining him, as long as Mirk kept feeding them his magic.

He had to be careful. He had to find balance. He couldn't drain himself of his magic before even getting to Genesis's chest. Biting his lip hard enough to draw blood, Mirk willed himself forward, willed the roots to hold strong, to curl him closer to the table. Mirk didn't know how long he struggled. Time felt like it'd become meaningless, everything taking an instant and eternity. But he made it. He slumped over Genesis's lifeless body, forcing a root-wrapped hand inside the commander's overcoat. He'd have to trust the plant not to take too much from him. Mirk drew his mind away from the plant, though he left his magic open to it, turning his attention to Genesis's body.

The shifting not-patterns of Genesis's insides flickered in front of his mind's eye, their pulsing changes quick and unsteady. Mirk ignored everything but the mess he'd unknowingly dipped his hand into. There was a deep and wide wound in the commander's chest, along with some sort of crushing injury that had knocked his ribs out of place. For a moment, Mirk struggled to remember the structures he'd learned, which bones met which and how a heart felt, how many veins and arteries branched off from it, his fingers searching weakly for answers. None of that helped him. But the inhumanly tall white figure that Mirk saw appear across the table from him did.

Mirk glanced up. The man across from him seemed puzzled, the human expression on his face disconcerting, his narrow brows furrowed over eyes that were black pits into a bottomless expanse, his lips straining over a mouth filled with jagged teeth. Biting his already bloodied lip harder, Mirk refocused on the wound, on the faint, wet warmth of Genesis's body beneath his hand.

"What is it?" he heard Yule call out, distantly.

"I...it..." Mirk squeezed his eyes shut, spreading his fingers out into the wound. Everything he felt with his hand was slippery and meaningless. He felt with his mind instead. Mirk had never examined Genesis's heart closely; he didn't know what was normal, whether there were supposed to be six or a dozen indistinct branches spreading out from it. Mirk shoved the question from his mind, pressing his mind deeper. Something was out of place. His fingers slid over a fragment of bone. That had done the damage. But how to repair it, what parts to call together and which to spread apart...

Danu's voice came through to him in a faint mental whisper. Uncle, please...

Mirk couldn't look. If he opened his eyes, he'd lose it. Fear would claim him, or uncertainty. And then he would fail; he’d lose what he’d fought so hard to save, again. Instead, Mirk focused intently on the ever-shifting patterns of Genesis's body, on what felt right instead of what made sense. He could sense Genesis’s torn heart as a snarl of chaotic magic, fighting to remember what shape it went in. It was a void, like the eyes of the figure across the table. The void sucked in magical potential, draining life. But, in the depths of it, Mirk thought he could feel a pattern, a ghost of what had been there before. And he could hear a voice, tired, alone and confused. Hissing along with the shadows.

He didn't have time to make certain of it. Mirk drew in all his potential, yanked hard on the life energy still burning bright and unwavering within himself, and slammed it into the wound in Genesis's chest, forcing it into the pattern that he thought -- that he knew -- was right.

For a moment, nothing happened. Mirk's body ran cold and everything suddenly felt distant and strange. He heard a sickly, rattling wheeze.

Then Mirk was hurled away from the table, his back crashing into stone, his limbs going limp and useless. Everything went black. The darkness cleared for just a moment as Mirk forced his eyes open. He was closer to the floor than before. The shadows that had been creeping over everything had vanished. And the impossibly tall white figure on the other side of the table, its void-window eyes a bit wider than before, disappeared as well.

With a breathless, aching laugh, Mirk let himself slip back into unconsciousness.