Page 212 of Alchemised
There was heavy bruising on one side of Althorne’s face, a gouge across his cheek as if he’d been clawed at. Several soldiers picked Luc up gently and started carrying him inside.
Helena was still kneeling on the ground.
Lila had been taken. Whatever happened next, the implications were horrifying.
Lila as a necrothrall, all her proficiency in combat now targeted at the Eternal Flame. At Luc. Or Lila in a laboratory, being used for experimentation.
“May I be dismissed?” Soren said, his voice muted but wavering with emotion. He was looking to Althorne with an expression as if something had been carved out from inside him.
Althorne rested a large hand on Soren’s narrow shoulder. “Until we recover Lila, you’re paladin primary. We can’t lose you, too.”
“They took my twin,” Soren said, looking out towards the rest of the island. “I have to bring her body back.”
“There are three teams in pursuit. If she can be saved or recovered, she will be. We need to debrief and prepare. And you need to protect your Principate. You know where your sister would want you.”
A stretcher arrived for Crowther, and Helena followed it.
In the hospital, Elain was already hovering over Luc, healing his minor injuries, and asking if she could wake him up. She was sternly forbidden.
Helena focused on Crowther. That soft-faced orderly, Purnell, hurried over to assist. He had a gash on his face, but his paralysed arm had taken the brunt of the injury, broken at the elbow.
As Helena began with her habitual block of the nerves, she found why his arm was paralysed. There was an old break of the humerus, and back when it had broken, the radial nerve had been severed. The gap was tiny; any healer could have fixed it.
The injury was old now, and the nerve’s connection to the muscle had died off. Helena wasn’t sure how much dexterity could be recovered, but surely some was better than nothing. If the day had proven anything, it was that the Resistance desperately needed flame alchemists.
She fixed the severed nerve along with the broken elbow.
She’d just finished when she heard shouting.
“They got her! Bayard. They’re bringing her in!”
A combat group practically ran into the hospital with the stretcher. There was a flash of bloodstained blond hair. Pace’s voice rose above the chaos.
Helena barely heard the voices. She moved towards Lila on instinct as the medics transferred her from the stretcher to a hospital bed. One of them was holding gauze firmly against the side of Lila’s neck.
Other injuries.
Priority.
Marino, get her healed. Whatever it takes.
She wasn’t sure who gave that final order. It didn’t really matter. She didn’t need to be told.
Lila was covered in blood, and even before Helena touched her, she could see the broken bones. There were huge punctures all over the right side of her chest, straight through her armour.
The moment Helena’s resonance touched her, she could feel it.
Lila was going to die unless someone cheated death, and fast.
Her right lung had been repeatedly punctured by bites. There was blood pooling in the chest cavity. There was kidney damage, and her liver was punctured. Her ribs were shattered. She’d lost so much blood.
It was a miracle she was alive.
Helena didn’t have time to be delicate with her resonance. It was a cascade of internal failures that she was staunching, but it was all happening too fast and there were too many things that had to be done at once. The medics were cutting off her wrecked armour as quickly as they could, everyone trying to work around one another without getting in the way.
The recovery team had been badly injured.
“It was Blackthorne in command,” someone said. “That fucking psychopath.”
