I had a feeling it was Heather he was talking about. Just call it a deductive hunch and a real genius realization. In a moment not particularly noble or heroic, I knew we had to take McLeod’s offer of “mercy” and leave. Val was the only one of us who could take Heather on in a prolonged fight. Having a hole burned through my arm was bad enough. I didn’t want to get crushed into a puddle of goop. She might’ve been so enraged seeing the guy who killed her brother that she brought the entire mountain down on us.
“Val,” I croaked, my voice sounding as rough as my arm looked. “We need to go.”
“We can’t leave! We can’t let McLeod keep doing what he’s doing.” Her protests ended when she saw my arm. Slowly, she drifted over to us, keeping her sword pointed toward McLeod. She kept throwing looks toward the man, like she wasn’t quite sure if she could trust his word.
“I know, but if we don’t, we’re dead. We need to find everyone else and make an actual plan.” I was impressed that I was able to talk at all. I was starting to see some black spots and my mouth felt as dry as a desert.
“Can you put your arm around me? I know it hurts, but I’ll help you.” There was some trouble in me processing what Rebecca said, so I just stared her. Carefully, she put her body under my right arm, sending waves of pain through my shoulder. Had it not been for the agony my arm was leaving me in, I might have been a bit embarrassed. “Try to stay close, okay?”
“I’m too heavy,” I said. Still, I leaned against her, glad she couldn’t see the pain on my face.
“Ethan, you’re not heavy at all,” she said gently. “Remember? I can bench press a gorilla, so you just keep your arm safe. Let us take care of the rest.”
Even though my legs were in good condition compared to my arms, it still took a bit for us to find our footing. It was the worst three-legged race. At least we managed to get somewhere with Rebecca helping me. There were shouts and orders being barked out around me while Val and Rebecca were calm and quiet, focused on the task at hand. They only spoke when they were deciding which way would be best to get out, like taking the stairs instead of trying for the elevator.
I felt dizzy, and I kept having small blackouts after we got in the stairwell, forcing Rebecca to literally drag me up the stairs at some points. When I was conscious, each step Rebecca took in there matched the throbbing in my forearm. I kept my teeth gritted and my mouth shut. Despite what she told me, I knew I was heavy enough, and the height difference didn’t help with her practically carrying me. I shut my eyes in a poor attempt to shut out the pain.
Val stopped Rebecca for a moment and put a hand over my forehead. “That’s not good.”
“What isn’t?” Rebecca shifted my weight around slightly. “Besides the arm.”
“With that kind of injury, he’s probably going into shock.”
“Shock? What’s that?” I could picture her eyebrows coming together. “Like, electricity?”
“You don’t...?” Even with my eyes shut, I could see the confusion on Val’s sharp features. “Right, you’re not from this time. Probably less common to hear about it then. It’s happening because he has a major injury and there’s a major disruption to his blood flow.”
I was surprised Val knew that. I wondered if she’d had some kind of medical training or knowledge from her time with McLeod. If she was fighting all the time, knowing what your attacks could do to a person and how they might react made sense, right? Then again, maybe it was just basic stuff that someone like me should have known.
“Is it serious?” Rebecca sounded heartbroken, like I was already dead and she was planning the funeral. I wanted to tell her that I’d be fine and that it wasn’t that bad. I couldn’t force the words out of my mouth. They just jumbled and froze in my brain.
“People die from it, yes. We need to get him to a healer or a hospital, but a healer would be for the best to protect his privacy.”
Once again, we were off, this time up the stairs. I could hear sounds of fighting throughout the building as we passed doors to different floors. Not being in any condition to help, I made myself focus on making our escape as easy as possible on Rebecca. Staying conscious was taking everything I had. I was trying to keep my mind occupied by simpler things. How Lori was doing, how I would try to teach Megan, future date ideas with Rebecca, and other little things like that.
“I know, I know. We’ll be out of here soon.” I must have been talking or maybe groaning, because Rebecca started to whisper assurances to me gently. I really felt lame, because she started hitting me with ones that you’d tell a small child to comfort them. Not the coolest quality bonding time with my girlfriend there.
“How many are there? Do you know?” Rebecca was starting to sound winded. I could tell we weren’t on the stairs, allowing Rebecca to take a bit of a breather. The flat, steady ground felt like a safe haven for me. I could somewhat stand on my own two feet, not having to worry about what
“No, sorry. He didn’t have that many in his following before, but a lot can change in a day now.” Val sounded really upset about the whole thing. “Do you need me to carry him the rest of the way?”
“No, I’ll be okay.” I felt Rebecca shake her head. “If we get ambushed, we’ll need you to be ready to fight anyone off.”
But we didn’t end up getting ambushed. In fact, through the entire top floor, I barely heard anything. Every now and then, we’d pass someone who sounded like they were in a hurry to get themselves out. Even rarer were the people that stopped us to ask why I was being hauled around by my girlfriend, a quick mention of my wound getting them to run about to finish taking care of their own business. Val’s idea of me being in shock kept going through my head. I didn’t feel like I was in shock. I felt crappy, sure, but I felt crappy the moment I woke up too.
Suddenly, a burst of cold air washed over my clammy and sweaty skin. I tried to get closer to Rebecca to stay warm, despite the protests from my arm and collarbone. She pulled me slightly closer, as much as she could. I still felt a shiver run through me. That was a shame, because I was a lover of the cold weather normally.
“Healer! We need a healer, please!” Val yelled. There had to be people around somewhere. She wouldn’t have risked our positioning otherwise. Her voice wasn’t echoing either, confirming we were outside. “Rebecca, there’s a woman waving us over. Come on.”
It was a shorter distance than I thought it’d be. When we got there, I heard a car door open. The heat from inside clashed with the cold outside, and my body couldn’t figure out which one it preferred. It settled on feeling nauseated for me.
“Seat’s down, help put him back.” The voice was a woman’s that I didn’t recognize. “And make sure you’re gentle.”
“Oh my God, Ethan? What the hell happened to you?” That was a woman’s voice I did recognize, and it was my sister’s.
Heroically, I barely got my eyes open. Even from inside the car, the light hurt. Everything still hurt, so I tried to focus on something. I decided that the warmth of the vehicle was better than the cold of the outside. Rebecca was holding my right hand, looking terrified.
“Do you know him?” The woman, who I assumed was the healer that Val found, was putting on some medical gloves. She carefully rotated my left arm, and when I gasped from the motion, she winced. She had long brown hair pulled back in a high ponytail and reminded me of a younger, paler Mrs. Carmichael. She didn’t carry the same intimidating aura about her, though.
“Yes, he’s my brother.” Shelly was sitting in the driver’s seat, leaning around the back to watch us. “Ethan, what happened down there?”
“I get that this is difficult to see since he’s your brother, but you’ll have to ask questions later. Right now, I really need to focus.” Her tone, while not snappy, was packed with authority. Surprisingly, Shelly backed down with a stiff nod and let the lady focus on me. She sounded a lot nicer when she talked to me. “Hey, Ethan. My name is Charlie IV. I know, I know about the name. It runs on my dad’s side, and he knew I’d be his only kid, so I got stuck with it. Anyway, how’re you doing?”
“I’ve had some better days.” My collarbone reminded me that even friendly chuckles were off limits.
“Yeah, but you got your beautiful girlfriend right there, don’t you?” I nodded and smiled, happy to hear her compliment Rebecca. “You mind giving me a little more info? Just a bit, you don’t have to give me an essay.”
“A guy said he broke my right clavicle and McLeod’s blue fire burned a hole through my left forearm.” Shelly let out a pained groan when she heard about my injuries. “Those are the big two that are hurting. If Rebecca didn’t haul me out of there, I don’t think I would have made it. She’s the best.”
“Okay, great, thank you. And thank you, Rebecca, for bringing him to me. You both did a great job. We’re going to start with your collarbone. Sound good?” When I nodded, a dark look came over Charlie’s face. “I won’t lie to you, Ethan. This...this isn’t going to be great.”
“What do you mean?” My voice was little more than a terrified whisper.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“My healing hurts the wounded area when I use it. To be straight with you, that hole in your arm wouldn’t be able to heal under normal circumstances, at least not enough to be usable. It’s a fourth degree burn and the worst one I’ve ever seen. It would have to be amputated if you were taken to a hospital.”
“Oh.” I felt the color drain from my face. “Can you fix it?”
“I think so, but again, it’s not going to be pleasant. That’s why I’m usually one of the last healers to get called. People don’t like to the way I heal. It’s a bad day, so our top dogs are all occupied right now. I’m going to leave scars, but I’m going to leave you with your arm and a working collarbone.” She held up a tightly rolled bit of fabric. “I’m going to put this in your mouth, and when I do, you need to bite down on it.”
“Why do I need to do that?” I asked. I was starting to sweat from my nerves, and I was just about to tell her that I’d take my chances on my arm and collarbone.
“To help cope with the pain.” With a sly grin, she put the fabric in my mouth. As instructed, I dug my teeth into it to make sure it didn’t fall out. “And so you don’t bite off your tongue on accident. Keep holding your girlfriend’s hand and think happy thoughts. Ethan’s sister, you may want to step out of the vehicle. This can be hard for family.”
“Not a chance.” I wish that Shelly sounded like she believed in Charlie. I could have used a bit of confidence in the healer in front of me.
Unlike the other healing sessions I had, Charlie didn’t put her hands over the injured area. Instead, she sat between my feet and my sister’s seat. She held both hands out in front of her, and a warm, yellow glow wrapped itself around me. I almost made a snarky comment about how it didn’t hurt at all.
Then my hubris ensured I was punished before I could say anything.
“He might hurt your hand, so please be careful.” Charlie’s voice was directed toward Rebecca. I almost wanted to laugh at how it felt like the reverse of a baby delivery in a hospital.
I felt all the damaged bone, muscle, and whatever other mess that was left of my collarbone repair. The lump that I so badly wanted to poke slowly receded back into my skin. I didn’t even get to know what exactly was causing that. The pain was as bad as when it was initially broken, and it was being drawn out by the healing process. If Charlie told me it was being shattered and repaired over and over again, I would have believed her in a heartbeat. It was so weird to think about, screaming into the fabric bundle I desperately tried to avoid spitting out. Feeling your body return to how it should be, but it being accompanied by brutal agony? Bizarre in the worst way.
With a huff, Charlie pulled her hands back and shook them out. She had a thin layer of sweat on her forehead and couldn’t have been looking much better than I was. Carefully, I tested the motion in my right shoulder. While very sore, it worked like it should have, feeling like I’d gone through an intense workout with it. Sitting up, I pulled the cloth bundle out of my mouth. Rebecca patted the top of my hand. “That wasn’t so bad.”
“Yeah, because that was the easy one.” Charlie had a grim look on her face. “Ethan, I’ve never healed something this bad before.”
“Just do your best. Thanks for fixing up the collarbone mess.”
“Woo boy, okay, okay.” She kept shaking out her hands and took a few deep breaths. “You lie back down, and we’ll get that nasty burn fixed up real quick like.”
I bit down on the fabric again and squeezed Rebecca’s hand. I watched Charlie place her arms out in front of her, the warm glow returning for the second time. Compared to the hole burned in my arm, the broken collarbone was nothing. It was like comparing a bee sting to getting slowly filleted by a white-hot knife. If the healing hurt my collarbone that much, I was silently dreading what it would feel like on my arm. There really wasn’t a comparison of misery I could happily settle on.
When Charlie stuck her hands out and resumed healing, I instantly wished that she just cut off my arm or that the pain would make me pass out.
Pain and anger were the only things I could feel. Where there hadn’t been pain in the most damaged areas, the healing regenerated my nerves and made it feel like knives and needles and saws were slowly being dragged across every inch of the afflicted area. Then I was angry because Charlie was doing it to me. I didn’t want to blame her, but the pain was so blinding that I couldn’t think straight. I was angry that my parents weren’t there. I was angry I’d even accepted the stupid offer to join Luna. I was angry I hadn’t been strong enough to defend myself properly.
Really, outside of the feeling of being tortured and slowly killed, it wasn’t too bad. The seconds felt like hours and the minutes felt like days, so I tried to tell myself that I was holding Rebecca’s hand for that long instead of being in paralyzing pain. That helped curb some of the negativity in my mind while Charlie did her brutal work. Compared to the collarbone, it felt even weirder to feel my skin growing and stretching, eager to find a connecting point across the mess of burnt muscle and bone it was meant to protect.
“And done.” Charlie’s voice was raspy. She leaned out of the car door to let out some brutal dry heaves. The meaner part of me was glad that we were at least sharing some discomfort, not that I would have dared to tell her that. “Under the skin, everything should be good. I’m so sorry I couldn’t do more to make your arm look better...”
I sat up, using Rebecca and my right side to prop myself up. Even though Charlie said everything under the skin should be good to go, I couldn’t shake the image of the burned hole that had my arm barely held together. I was still too scared to try and test its stability. Even thinking about it snapping under my weight was something that made me go lightheaded.
“Oh man, they still hurt.” Again, I felt like I was floored by symptoms of the flu. I guessed that was better than dying from shock, though. “I’m going to need some aspirin tonight.”
“I have something that might help with that,” Charlie said, wiping sweat off her forehead. She rummaged around in a bag she’d brought with her, tossing some things out until she pulled out a transparent orange bottle with a white top and a small bag of white pills. She put eight of them into the bottle and handed it to me. “These are oxycodone pills. They’re used for moderate or severe short-term pain. I haven’t healed anything like your injuries before, so I’m giving you twelve of these. And no, I legally should not have these. And no, I legally cannot give these to you, so please keep that mouth shut.”
I took them with my left hand and got a look at the skin issue she was talking about. On the first day of our chemistry lab, my teacher went through a slideshow of a bunch of burns that came from people not respecting their tools or proper lab safety practices enough. The mess of white and red uneven blotches took up half my arm, and a picture of it wouldn’t have been out of place in my teacher’s scare tactic.
I had my arm, and I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Thank you for the painkillers and for keeping me in the world of the living.”
She must’ve picked up on the sadness in my tone. “I can try to heal the scarring more, if you want. I can’t guarantee it’d work. I can help along the body’s normal healing process, and in cases like these, help regenerate an area that would have to be removed otherwise. I know it’s not perfect. I’m so, so sorry that it turned out this way.”
“No, no, it’s okay,” I said, gently rubbing over the area. Some parts were raised and all of it was sensitive to the touch. I winced at the discomfort. She’d turned it from the mess it had been to something that felt more like a bad sunburn. “Thank you. Better to have an ugly scar than a beautiful funeral, right?”
“Does everything work how it should?” Charlie sounded pained with every word that left her mouth.
I slowly flexed my fingers and balled my hand into a fist. My arm felt slow and stiff, and I could really feel where everything had just been healed, but it all worked. “I think everything is good. I feel a bit clunky. I take it I’ll feel better in a few days. Thanks again. You said that was a fourth degree burn?”
“Yeah, that clunky feeling should go away within a day or so,” Charlie told me. “For the type of burn, it really depends on who you ask. Some doctors break down burns by severity after third degree ones, so I think it was fourth degree and then some.”
“Are they addictive? The pills, I mean.” Shelly was still watching from the driver’s seat. She’d been so quiet that I almost forgot about her entirely. Val was next to her in the passenger seat, remaining completely silent herself. “How many should he take?”
“One every four hours. You’ll get sleepy and your routine might be disrupted for those two days, so be ready for that. I don’t think you’ll complain much when you feel how they help with the pain.” Charlie hesitated a moment under the always-scrutinizing gaze of my sister. “They can be addictive, yes. There are only twelve, so take them as directed, and everything should be fine.”
“Thank you for healing him and for all your help. Do you want to come with us?” Shelly awkwardly reached around her seat to shake Charlie’s hand. The poor healer looked like she just wanted to nap for a few days.
“Can’t. I volunteered to stay, so healers have to be on call and ready to go.” She sighed and the corners of her lips turned up in a sad smile. She jabbed a thumb at me and pretended to be pretentious. “You guys get out of here and get safe. Those are your doctor’s orders and I expect you to follow them. You got it?”
“Absolutely, ma’am.” I tried to match how stiff she looked. It just sent some more aches through me, so I settled on shaking her hand. “Thank you for helping me and everyone. Stay safe yourself.”
With a brief nod, she shut the door and took off toward the front of the complex. That’s when I realized I was seeing the actual front of the complex that I hadn’t seen before. It looked like a large, single-story office building and we were in a massive parking lot. It was so unassuming from the outside that I had trouble coming to grips with the extraordinary that it housed just a few floors beneath us. Peering my head around, I saw a bunch of SUVs like the one we took on our own trip heading out onto various roads as quickly as possible.
“This is their evacuation for the people who stayed, isn’t it?” I asked, my chest feeling tight. “That means we lost the building. We couldn’t beat them back.”
“No, we couldn’t.” Shelly sounded pretty upset about the fact too. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Wait, why didn’t you use the teleporting token Mrs. Carmichael gave you?” Seeing her there but not having Megan around wasted no time making me feel like a caged animal. “Where’s Megan? She had one too.”
“Ethan, relax.” Shelly started up the SUV and went to the closest road that led away from the complex.
“Don’t tell me to relax!” I yelled. Before I could catch myself, I just kept going. “Lori got concussed and Alex had to take her. I don’t know where Lizzy and her team are. I barely got out alive myself. Don’t tell me to relax when I don’t even know where Megan is.”
I heard the deep sigh come from my sister. It was the first time I yelled at her for anything, and I immediately felt horrible about it. “Megan used hers and I gave mine to an older woman. I wasn’t going to leave you behind.”
“I’m sorry that I yelled.” I looked down at the burn scars I was stuck with. The brand from McLeod that told me I still had a mountain to climb before I could beat him. “I’m just worried about my friends.”
“They all know the evacuation plan and we’re all going to the same place.” Shelly checked around to make sure there weren’t any other SUVs speeding toward us to cause an accident. “Relax a bit, then text them.”
“Where are we going?” I asked, resting back against my seat. Rebecca tenderly ran her fingers over the burn scars. It hurt a lot less than when I did it.
“Allendale, Nebraska. Same place we sent a lot of the others before the attack. It’s right by Lincoln, so if you wanted to check out the University of Nebraska, that’ll be your chance.” Shelly wasn’t surprised, but the three of us were. “There’s a Luna base there. Not underground. It’s closer to a big, gated community, really. I hope you’re ready for another twenty-hour drive.”