“There is no one greater in this world than yourself. No matter who you are. No matter how low you are. Own it. Live it. Ignore the whims of the world, for they mean nothing compared to your own survival.”
–Hades, “Some Philosophical Shit”. 4 Years After.
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Her fist broke through the surface.
Leah coughed up bloody bile mixed with dust, sunlight washing over her now that she’d escaped that hole. This was it.
I won!? Oh, if her lungs weren’t punctured right now, how she would be cackling like a madwoman. The Lord had sent His best… He’d buried her under an entire fucking mountain… But she’d escaped death because, at the last sliver of a second before the landslide struck, Leah dived into a nearby barrel and curled into a ball, letting her body get shattered upon impact while her brain stood a chance to survive unscathed.
It hadn’t been easy to get this far either. She’d been pinned hard between the rocks and broken wood. One of her arms had to be chewed off just to give her the leeway to wriggle free, and both legs were severed in the process of scrambling forth. Her surviving fingers were now bent and broken where she’d clawed through the loose dirt and stone, and her vision blurred after so much time and blood loss.
But she’d done it. Leah had survived. No help, no nothing. She’d defied the odds all by herself, yet again. Not even the Lord could defeat her!
Her torso slipped an inch. Leah instinctively gripped for something solid, but the fall was too quick. The ground quaked anew, her position unstable. A pop resounded out as a rock pinched her neck, and Leah watched without control as her last surviving palm went limp.
She knew this sense at once. That was her spinal column that’d been cracked. She’d just been paralyzed from the neck down.
A death sentence out here.
No… Fuck, no! Leah was at the exit. She’d made it! The odds had been impossible, but she’d survived. She did everything right. How could this happen to her!?
Her limp wrist dangled in front without answer.
* * *
Hours passed.
Vision getting blurry. Too much blood loss. Not enough oxygen. Couldn’t see straight.
Hollowing. Not Beholder trick. This time, for real. Rez draining out, little by little. Thoughts too hard to track.
Hand still in front. Still empty. Still too weak to save self.
She wanted to cry. She was dying. Right here. Right now.
There was no one to save her.
No one to help.
She was all alone.
All alone…
All…
A shadow passed in front. Took hand. Pulled. Moonlight now. Still hard to see. She blinked.
Figure formed in front. Red eyes behind ballistic helmet.
“Well, shit,” he said. “Not looking so good, boss.”
She blinked. Not able to do else.
“Come on, let’s get you home.”
Eyes blurry. Tears forming. She knew ballistic helmet.
Dwayne laughed. “What? Thought I wouldn’t come for you after Abraham won, huh?” He threw her decapitated torso over shoulder. “Eh, you got me. Maybe all this time’s given me a soft spot for you, Leah.”
He marched.
Tears flowed free. She was no longer alone.
* * *
Stein wiped the viscera from his hands, his chest caked twice as hard. “Twenty hours of surgery… That’s got to be a record.” His red eyes stared into her own. “How are you feeling, Leah?”
“Eyes… Clearing…” she wheezed, glancing from side to side. “Can’t… Feel… Else…”
“Can you tell me where you are right now?”
She couldn’t. The ceiling was made of concrete, and boxes lined the walls, though an IV dripped from a bag from one side, stained with black liquid. A fluorescent bulb flickered above.
When did she get down here? Leah thought back long and hard, but could only remember Stein leaning above as he fiddled inside her abdomen. Nothing before that, other than vague images and places, slowly coming back together.
Wait, if Stein’s here, then that means… She coughed. “Mother’s… Grace…”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Leah, but that is not true. As I told you before, we had to evacuate when the Inquisitors came. You’re now in the basement of the most secure building in Pandemonium, the Central Bank.”
Her pupils quaked. The memories were coming back, but they were so fucking jumbled. Just how long had she been down here, and how messed up was she? Better yet, how did this even happen?
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She studied her body and remembered. Her shattered frame barely qualified as human anymore. She’d lost an arm, half of one leg, and another altogether. The skin of her chest spread apart, with the internal organs exposed for all to see. Even her skull had been cracked, with tubes running through them before disappearing into machinery behind.
“Can’t… Move…” Leah said.
Stein nodded. “Yes, Leah, that is the paralytic I introduced to maintain the surgery. It will wear off as blood reenters your circulatory system.”
“I’m… Fine…?”
He frowned. “We’ve had this conversation before, Leah. There is good news and bad news for you. Because of Dwayne’s intervention, I was able to oxygenate your brain enough to reverse your immediate hollowing. It will take some time for the neural pathways to reconnect though, so you’ll have difficulty pairing short-term thoughts with long-term memories. But you won’t have a full lapse anytime soon.
“However, the greater struggle is still to come. Your digestive system is, for lack of a better word, non-existent right now. Everything, from the esophagus to the lower intestines, was damaged beyond repair when you sustained your injuries. Until I can successfully implant donor organs and they’ve healed properly, your body cannot produce the nutrients your brain needs to sustain a stable reservoir. Any brain cells you lose during this time will be gone forever, along with the memories they held, and there is nothing I can do.”
She wanted to scream. A slowed but steady rehollowing, all while she lay powerlessly in this bed. The fact that she couldn’t remember having this conversation before proved it was already happening.
“Fortunately, hollowing is a process with both physical as well as psychological components,” Stein continued. “It occurs fastest when patients lose all hope. If you avoid that trap, you might make it to the other side as yourself. I must be clear with you though, Leah. No one has ever suffered these types of injuries and survived. Not without losing their reservoir altogether.”
He stared deep. “But there’s still a chance. If anyone could beat those odds, it is you, Leah. You just have to fight against it. You just need to find whatever it is that makes your life with living.”
My life… She concentrated hard, but the more the memories bled back in, the more futile her circumstances became. Her body was shattered and her city had been lost, and all she could do was lay here and stare. What a joke. Did she really have anything left to make this suffering worth it?
And yet, Stein still sat above. Watching her. Praying that this would not be where Leah disappeared for good. Could she let his work have gone to waste?
“Thank… You…” she squeaked. “I… Will… Fight…”
* * *
“‘Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death,’” Fran continued. “‘But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself…’”
Leah watched on as Fran turned the page of her book, shifting between English and whatever language it was first written in.
The paralysis had worn off, but still, Leah could not move. Air forced its way into her throat through a tube, and every couple of minutes, her body convulsed when an electric shock jolted her dead heart into a beat, pressing blood and oxygen through her veins again. The IV had been swapped with a chained-up hollow, and a vacuum pump circulated its fluids into hers, replacing the exposed blood before it could coagulate.
And Fran had taken this opportunity to preach to her endlessly…
She scoffed. “Don’t give me that look, Leah. If what the doctor says is true, then your Rez is hollowed enough. Might as well take the opportunity to fill it with something other than that crude Hunting of yours.” She lifted her book and continued.
Leah supposed that this was okay. With nothing else to do, why not hear about a new book? Fran was right too. Something more profound hid beneath Tolstoy’s words. A certain poeticism she’d never heard before.
One of Fran’s guards entered, his rifle drawn. “Boss, we’ve got someone approaching on the northern perimeter.”
“Who?”
“Looks like that human woman showed up with a group of Beholders, waving a white flag. You’d better come up and see for yourself.”
Fran sighed. “Oh well, ‘tis no rest for the wicked, I suppose.” She set her book aside and strapped a riot helmet in place. Her guard began to wheel her away. “Don’t hollow out on me until I return, Leah. There’s plenty more where that came from!”
Her arms were tied in place to keep the convulsions from becoming too intense, but Leah managed to squeeze her braced fingers an inch.
It was the closest she could do to wave back.
* * *
“I see your legs are healing back nicely,” Chantelle said with a grin. “Stein says you’ll be back to full mobility before long.”
That was only half true, Leah knew. Dwayne had managed to dig up the limbs she’d severed a couple days back, but some chunks were beyond repair. Having small sections of muscles implanted would be less deleterious to her mobility than foreign replacements, but it was more than possible that she’d forever walk with a limp. Returning to full strength seemed like a passing fantasy.
And that was before her hollowing, which still pressed against her mind, every second of every day that passed while her stomach lining grew back. Two surgeries to go before you’re in the clear, she reminded herself.
“Looks like you’re starting to shrivel again,” Chantelle said. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”
Her chest and scalp had been closed for the time being, but Leah still couldn’t move. Not with the defibrillator that spiked occasionally, along with the oxygen tube shoved down her throat.
Chantelle didn’t mind taking care of her though. Wiping away the dead skin, applying the preservatives, and giving her fresh makeup to keep her skin flush. She chatted casually as she went through the routine, as though nothing bad had happened.
Then Chantelle reached her midsection and cringed. A vile smell filled the room the moment she pulled up the plastic wrapping around her waist. Leah didn’t need to see the damage to estimate how fucked her bowels still were, along with how little control she had over them.
But Chantelle buried the wince with another smile. “At least you’re strong enough to crap again!” She drew some gloves and went to work cleaning it away.
If only Leah could respond, she’d say the one thing on her mind. How the hell do I deserve you?
* * *
“I raise you twenty pics,” Dwayne said, tossing the chips on the nightstand beside him. “What you want to do, boss?”
Leah blinked once.
“You sure you want to call? All you’ve got is a pair of fours.”
She blinked twice this time.
He shrugged. “If you insist.” He flipped over his own hand and chuckled. “Look at that, three of a kind. Another eighty pics for me.” He pulled the earnings his way and reshuffled the deck.
This was the most rigged game of poker imaginable. Because Leah couldn’t move, Dwayne acted as the dealer and challenger, and left her cards face up for both to see. She’d tried every strategy of communicating back via blinking too, from a simple one-two language style of yes and no to Morse-fucking-Code, but regardless of what she chose, he made every decision for her.
In the most Dwayne fashion imaginable, they had played over a dozen hands, yet he hadn’t made a single bet. He was just helping himself to a box of pics while Leah could do nothing but watch on.
And yet, somehow, this was still fine. Just having someone else in the room helped to keep her mind going…