Alden still hadn't moved an inch. The emergency room bustled around him, but he stayed stock-still, holding Meg's hand, watching the monitors tick by. He had his phone out, but he couldn't focus on it. There were more news stories popping up, about failed awakenings and warning everyone not to try. He was glad they'd gotten the word out, whether it was Rachel or Cinza or whoever.
Nobody else should go through that…
She'd made such a terrible noise. Alden didn't think it'd ever leave his head. Every few seconds, his mind drifted back to it—to the look on her face, the terror in her eyes, her vice grip on his arm.
He'd give anything for Meg to try and tear his arm off like that again.
Alden hadn't heard any other asphysxiation patients come in, either—at least, what he could make out through the curtain into the main bustle of the hospital. Everything else was still gunshot victims, people cut by broken glass, other scrapes and wounds taken during the massacre.
"Meg!"
He looked up. Alden's parents burst through the curtain. His mother fell on her knees on Meg's other side, clutching her hand. Alden's father, meanwhile, looked pale as a sheet. He ambled over to Alden, like a blind man lost in the forest.
"...What happened?" he finally managed.
"Meg…" Alden trailed off, working up to the words. "She tried to awaken. It… it didn't work."
"Tried to… my baby tried to what?" asked his mother. She stared at him across the bed. "I… I don't under—"
Alden whipped around. He felt something coming—something massive. There was a huge wave of magic, so powerful, so all-encompassing, spreading outward from somewhere far away.
The lights in the hospital went out.
"What's going…" started his father—but Alden couldn't see him anymore. There weren't any windows in the emergency room. The whole place was suddenly pitch black.
Alden vaguely recognized the sensation. He pulled out his phone from his pocket. Dead.
Hector's electricity-disabling field. But… here? Why?
"I need some help!"
A nurse was calling from the next curtain over. Adrenaline spiked in his blood. Everything seemed to speed up and slow down at the exact same moment—all the machines were dead, and they wouldn't be coming back.
The life-saving machines.
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Alden plunged his hands into his jacket pockets, grabbing every gemstone he'd saved up. He squinted through the semi-darkness outside the curtain. A little light was spilling out from the midday sun through the front doors.
More nurses were calling out. Alden rushed into the main throughway and summoned a light—not fire, but a simple light, calling photons to him as Cinza once explained online.
The emergency room lit back up. It wasn't as clearly lit as before, and there was only one source, a pale white light hovering above him, but it was enough to give a sense of where everything was.
A nurse stopped in front of him. It was the same one as before, the one who knew he could do time magic.
"Do you know what's going on?" she asked, still surprisingly calm.
Alden nodded. "All electricity's gone."
"...But we have backup genera—"
"Those are gone too," he said hurriedly. "Nothing's gonna work, but it only affects a certain range. If they need machines to survive, we need to get them out of here. Right now."
"Any idea how far?"
Alden shook his head.
The nurse nodded. She turned toward the ER in general, where any nurse and doctor who wasn't otherwise occupied had started to gather around the magical light Alden emitted.
"We need to get everyone out of here. Triage by anyone who needs life support ASAP. No electricity will function."
A soldier who happened to be nearby was digging through his pockets. He pulled out a pack of what looked like white glow sticks. The soldier passed them out, and nurses began breaking them, filling the ER with bright light.
Alden gratefully released the light spell as soon as they had enough lit up. Another soldier ran in from the front doors, and behind him, Alden spotted Meg's best friend Kelly, looking just as terrified as he felt.
"Electricity's still working about two blocks away," the soldier reported. "Over on 13th street."
"Start calling ambulances," said the nurse. "Get as much transport as you can find. We're going to have to move a lot of patients very quickly." She turned back to Alden. "You're with me."
His parents were in a daze by Meg's bed. A nurse grabbed them and started instructing them how to manually pump air into Meg's lungs to keep her breathing. Alden tore his gaze away and followed the nurse, who he quickly learned was the "charge nurse" of the emergency room.
The next few minutes were a whirlwind of activity. Alden helped slow time and manage transport of patients on gurneys out of the hospital, one by one, doing whatever the nurses and doctors told him to do. He burned through stone after gemstone, desperately keeping up with the steady flow as the charge nurse directed each team of transporters.
Outside, the now-grounded soldiers were shoving inanimate humvees out of the way. They cleared a straight path down the street to the border of the zone, where the street lights were still on. At the edge, several were on radios, calling for support as fast as they could.
Ambulances began arriving in minutes, and patients were whisked away—most to St. Peter in Olympia or to other, closer facilities if available. There was a line of hospital administration staff on phones right at the border, shouting down the street to pass messages. Alden might have been impressed by how quickly they pulled back together, if he weren't so busy trying to help.
One after another, they rushed patients out. His head was spinning, but somehow, Alden kept pressing on. He ran out of gemstones, but he persisted. They needed him.
Sometime later, Alden realized Meg had vanished—they'd already moved her out as well. High above, he saw a plane gliding by overhead, utterly silent. As soon as it crossed the threshold, they heard the engines trying to restart. It took a terrifying few minutes, but soon enough, the jets roared back to life, and the plane was moving again.
He tore his eyes away and rushed back inside. The charge nurse was calling for help again, and they needed every hand they could get.