Chapter 22
Clare
The door exploded inward.
I was on my feet before my brain caught up, medical kit half-open on the table, supplies scattered like I’d been preparing for this exact disaster.
Because I had been. Every hour they’d been gone, I’d sorted and resorted the emergency medications, rechecked vitals equipment, rehearsed protocols I prayed I wouldn’t need.
Hellhound came through first, snow swirling around him like he’d dragged winter inside. Then Havoc, gasping, tactical gear dripping. Between them:
Xavier.
Convulsing. Violent, uncontrolled spasms wracking his entire body.
His back arched, muscles locked rigid, skull thrown back at an angle that would’ve snapped a normal person’s neck.
Hellhound had one arm under Xavier’s shoulders, Havoc gripped his legs, and they were barely keeping him from hitting the doorframe as they hauled him in.
“Get him on the table!” The command ripped out before I could think. “Now!”
They moved. The wooden dining surface groaned under Xavier’s weight as they laid him down. His body jerked, slamming against the wood hard enough I heard the impact over the storm raging outside.
Massive. Already well past the danger threshold.
“How long?” I was already moving, positioning his airway, tilting his skull. “How long has he been seizing?”
“Started in the car, since we left Geneva. Only intermittently, except for the last fifteen minutes.” Hellhound’s chest heaved, snow melting in his hair.
They had crossed into status epilepticus territory, the kind of seizure that didn’t stop, the kind that could cause permanent brain damage or death.
“Hellhound, hold him still. Don’t let him hit the wood.” I grabbed Xavier’s jaw, fingers positioning carefully to keep his airway open. His skin was burning up, fever radiating off him like heat from pavement. “Havoc, oxygen. Green bag. Move.”
Havoc lunged for the medical kit. I barely registered him digging through supplies because I was already counting, timing, watching Xavier’s chest for respiratory patterns between the brutal muscle contractions.
Xavier’s lids were open but rolled back, showing mostly white. Foam flecked the corner of his mouth. Every muscle in his body was firing at once, a brutal electrical storm shorting out his nervous system.
“Benzodiazepines. The vial marked Lorazepam. And a syringe. Now.”
My grip was steady. It had to be. I’d done this a hundred times in the ER, talked families through the terror of watching someone they loved shake apart. The difference was those patients weren’t...
Not the time. Focus.
Havoc slapped the vial into my palm. I drew up the dose, flicked the air bubbles out, found the muscle in Xavier’s shoulder. The injection site didn’t matter as much as getting the medication in fast.
“This’ll stop it. Thirty seconds. Just hold on.”
I pushed the plunger.
The longest thirty seconds of my life began.
Xavier’s body kept convulsing. His back arched off the surface, tendons standing out like cables under his skin. Hellhound cradled Xavier’s skull, protecting it from the wood.
Fifteen seconds.
Xavier’s respiration was ragged, irregular. I watched his chest, ready to start rescue breathing the second the seizure broke if he didn’t resume normal patterns.
Twenty seconds.
Come on. Come on, you stubborn bastard.
Twenty-five.
The convulsions began to slow. The violent jerking smoothed into tremors, then shudders, then...
Xavier went limp.
Complete collapse. His body melted into the surface like someone had cut his strings.
“Got it.” My grip moved automatically, checking his pulse at his neck. Rapid but strong. Good. “Havoc, pulse ox. I need his oxygen saturation.”
Havoc clipped the device onto Xavier’s finger while I tilted Xavier’s skull, checking his airway was clear. He was breathing, shallow but present. His chest rose and fell with a jerky, uncertain rhythm.
Post-ictal state. The aftermath. He’d be unconscious for a while, his brain rebooting after the electrical overload.
I grabbed a penlight from the kit, thumbed open his eyelids. His pupils contracted sluggishly when I hit them with light, but they reacted. Both of them.
“Responsive.” I cataloged the good signs like rosary beads. “Respiration adequate. Pulse strong.”
The tremor in my own grip started now that the crisis had passed. I pressed my palms flat against the wood, forcing them still.
I did it.
I looked at Xavier’s chest rising and falling, steady despite everything.
“Will he wake up?” Hellhound’s question cut through my thoughts. He was still supporting Xavier’s skull, gentle despite the violence we’d all just witnessed.
“I don’t know.” Honesty felt important. “The seizure was massive.” I rechecked Xavier’s pupils. Still reactive. Still good. “But he’s stable. That’s what matters right now. We’ll know more when he wakes up. However, if another seizure of that intensity starts...”
Hellhound’s palm was still on Xavier’s brow, touch gentle despite the size of his grip. “I’ve seen him survive worse. But not like this. Not from the inside.”
The words hung in the air, a reminder that these men had a history I couldn’t begin to understand. Battles fought, missions survived, brothers forged in violence.
Havoc moved to the surface, slamming something down with a metallic crack that made me jump.
The drive.
Small, black, innocuous. The thing they’d risked everything for.
“We got it.” Adrenaline still flooded his system, making his tone shake. “The codes. But there’s a problem.”
I barely looked up from monitoring Xavier’s respiration. “There’s always a problem.”
“The encryption is military-grade.” Havoc was already pulling out his laptop, fingers flying before the screen even finished booting. “I need time to crack it. I started in the car, but between a sketchy signal and Xavier, I didn’t finish.”
“How much time?”
“Best case? Four hours.” Havoc’s jaw tightened. “Worst case? Eight.”
My skull snapped up. “He doesn’t have eight hours.”
The words came out flat, clinical. But underneath, terror clawed at my throat.
I’d stopped the seizure. I’d stabilized him. But the PSI-317 was still flooding his brain, the implant still leaking poison into his system. Every second that passed brought him closer to irreversible damage.
Havoc pulled up a file on his laptop, turned the screen toward me. Xavier’s face stared back, a clinical photo, cold and detached. Underneath, walls of text I couldn’t process fast enough.
“There’s more. Kill switch protocol. Remote termination.”
Ice flooded my veins. “What?”
“Dresner can trigger the implant remotely. Force maximum chemical release.” Havoc’s fingers tapped nervously against the keyboard. “Catastrophic neural overload. Instant death.”
“Then why hasn’t he?” The question came out strangled.
“The damage from the river.” Hellhound sounded grim. “The fall Xavier took destroyed part of the regulation system. The implant’s been malfunctioning, leaking chemicals instead of dosing precisely. That damage is the only reason Dresner hasn’t killed him remotely already.”
“The signal’s intermittent,” Havoc added. “The kill switch might not work fully. But even without it...” He gestured at Xavier’s unconscious form. “The chip’s leaking PSI-317 at an accelerating rate. His brain is drowning in it.”
I stared at Xavier. His face was slack, peaceful in unconsciousness. No tremor, no tension. Just respiration.
How long until the next seizure? How long until his brain couldn’t take anymore?
“How long?” The question came out steadier than I felt.
Havoc met my gaze. The pity there made my stomach drop.
“Hours. Maybe less. We need those codes now.”
Havoc set up in the corner, laptop balanced on a stack of philosophy books, secondary monitor rigged on the windowsill. His fingers flew across the keyboard, muttering under his breath, half prayer, half profanity.
A progress bar crawled across the screen. 12%. 15%. 18%.
I stayed at Xavier’s side, one palm on his wrist monitoring his pulse, the other holding a penlight to recheck his pupils every few minutes. Repetitive. Obsessive. But I needed the data points, needed to see the progression or deterioration in real time.
Hellhound paced. He moved like a caged animal, checking the windows, the door, the perimeter. Keeping watch while Havoc worked, and I monitored and Xavier lay broken on the surface between us.
The storm outside intensified. Wind howled against the Gothic windows, rattling the glass in the frames. Snow piled against the panes, turning the world beyond into formless white.
Inside, we waited.
“Come on, come on.” The progress bar inched forward with agonizing slowness. 23%. 26%.
I verified Xavier’s respiratory pattern again. Still Cheyne-Stokes, irregular, cycling between deep and shallow. Not great, but not immediately life-threatening.
His skin was clammy under my touch, pale except for the fever flush high on his cheekbones. I grabbed a cloth, dampened it with cool water, pressed it to his forehead.
He didn’t react. Gone too deep.
Twenty minutes after the first seizure, Xavier’s respiration changed.
The pattern shifted, faster, shallower, more erratic. I watched his chest, counting each cycle. Thirty per minute. Too fast.
Then the tremor started.
It began in Xavier’s palms, a fine vibration that spread up his arms, into his shoulders. His eyelids fluttered.
“No. Not yet. You can’t...”
Xavier’s back arched.
“Seizure! Havoc, how much longer?”
“37%! I’m going as fast as I can!”
Xavier’s body convulsed, muscles locking rigid. I grabbed his skull, protecting it from the wood, feeling the brutal force of the contractions shuddering through him.
Shorter than the first. Forty-five seconds of violent shaking before the medication still in his system wrestled it back under control.
He went limp again, respiration ragged.