1. Cassia #3
Junia stares at me, her jaw clamped tight, eyes burning with furious loyalty that makes her both impossible and irreplaceable.
Then grabbing her canvas sack off the floor where it landed during the blast, she slings it over her shoulder to jab a finger at me.
"You're out of your mind, Ward. Completely, certifiably insane.
" She backs toward the service tunnel door at the rear of the alcove. "If you die, I'm going to kill you."
The door creaks open and thumps shut, and then I'm alone with the Dragon.
Up close, the ceremonial blood markings carved across his chest and arms show vividly through the gore, creating a map of violence written directly into flesh through old scars layered over older ones.
Bearing down on the pressure pack, I feel his ribs flex under my palms and work.
I start by packing wounds and cutting away scorched fabric fused to burned skin.
The generator stutters overhead, threatening to quit entirely, and I operate by feel when the light fails, my hands remembering what my eyes are unable to see.
His blood coats my gloves, running hot and unnervingly dark, nothing like the human red staining the apron I've been wearing all shift.
"Stay with me," I mutter through clenched teeth, cinching a tourniquet above the shoulder wound. "Don't you dare die in my clinic and make this my problem."
His eyes focus on me for one fracturing second. Confusion, or maybe surprise, flickers through them before they roll back and he goes limp against my hands.
From the main room, the front door crashes inward. I hear boots, multiple sets, and the hard metallic click of weapons readying.
My hands freeze on the tourniquet. Through the fabric curtain separating the alcove from the main clinic, I hear them spreading out, the sounds of multiple sets of boots on concrete and the scrape of rifle barrels against doorframes marking their systematic search.
I move fast, stripping the blood-soaked gloves off and shoving them deep into the rubble pile beside Rhykor's body.
Half-buried amid chunks of ceiling and the splintered remains of the exam table, his massive frame lies pinned under concrete slabs; in the gloomy shadows, he looks less like a living thing and more like part of the destruction itself.
After yanking the curtain closed between us and wiping my shaking hands down my apron—already crusted with layers of dried human blood from the night's patients—I step through into the main room.
I spot four human men armed with scavenged pulse rifles and radiating feral, adrenaline-soaked energy that comes from hunting dangerous prey.
The one in front is gaunt, with neck tattoos crawling up past his collar and a scar bisecting his left eyebrow.
Sweeping the room with his rifle barrel he lands on me, standing alone in a demolished clinic with dust in my hair and blood on my apron.
"Where is he?"
"Where is who?" I cross my arms over the apron, tucking my fingers against my sleeves. My nails still feel tacky. "If you're looking for patients, I sent everyone to the back corridor when the ceiling started coming down."
The gaunt man's eyes narrow. He scopes out the gaping hole in the ceiling and the shattered equipment scattered across the blood-smeared floor. In the failing generator light, the puddles all look the same color, dark and anonymous.
"Heard something big come down in this sector." One of the others jerks his chin toward the ceiling. "Right through the roof."
I gesture at the destruction around us with both hands, keeping my palms angled away from the light.
"Yeah, the roof came through the roof. Half my clinic just caved in.
I've got injured civilians sheltering in the back, no power, and you're standing in my operating space with weapons drawn.
" I let irritation sharpen my inflection, let it crowd out the fear until I almost believe my own outrage.
"So either help me clear this debris or get out. "
The gaunt man takes a step toward the curtain.
My heart stops. "Supply storage," I snap, loud enough to pull his attention back. "Expired painkillers and surgical tubing. Unless you're in the market for outdated antibiotics, there's nothing back there worth your time."
His attention anchors to me, heavy and suffocating, refusing to break away.
Holding my ground, I cross my arms tightly over my chest, tucking my fingers into stillness.
An even cadence stabilizes my breathing, while my face settles into that distinct brand of exhausted irritation that comes naturally after a twelve-hour shift in a collapsing underground clinic.
It is the look of a woman too tired and too angry to be hiding anything more interesting than empty supply shelves.
Spitting on my floor, he jerks his head toward the door, and the four of them file out into the darkened corridor, leaving silence in their wake. The door swings shut behind them.
I remain perfectly still, waiting until my lungs burn. Letting out a breath that feels like it’s been trapped inside me since birth, I shove back through the divider to the unconscious Kraaj enforcer bleeding out in my ruined alcove.
Slipping on fresh gloves, I grab clean forceps from the tray. My hands are still shaking, but they have shaken before. They know how to work through it.
"You owe me," I whisper to no one who can hear me. "You owe me so much."
And I keep working.