Page 274 of Alchemised
Althorne jerked his head, and two of his men came over and seized Wagner’s arms.
He grumbled but didn’t resist, clearly preferring Resistance captivity to the Undying.
“You are all currently in custody for your violation of orders,” Althorne said, once the boat was pushed off. There was no bite to his words.
They’d rescued Luc; any censure for that would be a formality.
Helena slumped against the side of the boat. The journey passed in a blur—docking on a concealed wharf, being herded up a staircase and into the back of a lorry.
When they arrived at Headquarters, Penny, Alister, and Luc were taken away to the hospital ward. Wagner was placed in a cell. Helena and Sebastian were checked, cleared of serious injury, and escorted to their rooms to be locked inside with guards stationed at the doors.
Helena was glad not to be kept in the hospital, even though she could have used the saline and plasma expanders. She stripped out of her wet, ruined clothing, hands shaky and trembling, and took a shower, washing away the filth of the tunnels and spring melt.
As the traces vanished, she grew eerily removed from what had happened, as though at some point during the battle, she’d left her body and couldn’t return to it. Back in her room where everything looked familiar, it felt as if it had been a dream.
Soren wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be.
She would go out and see him sitting next to Luc in the hospital.
The memory of him, dead in her arms, felt like a tear in the fabric of her mind, as if the way she’d tethered him back to life had been ripped out when the connection between them broke. The person she knew and the body she’d reanimated had been tied together, and now there was a wound left.
He couldn’t be dead.
It was a horrible dream.
She stared down at her hands. Somehow she’d expected them to be stained or blackened by her necromancy.
What would Sebastian tell the Council? He’d have to tell the truth in a report. Once the truth came out, there’d be consequences.
It would have been a lesser crime to have murdered Soren. Murder was only a mortal crime; necromancy was a crime upon this life and the afterlife.
She packed away all her possessions in her trunk and sat waiting.
There was a loud banging on the door. She stood, ready.
“Helena! Helena! There’s something wrong with Luc!” It was Elain outside. “We need you in the hospital!”
All thoughts of arrest vanished.
“What’s wrong?” Helena opened the door, and the guards stepped back to let her out. She rushed towards the lifts with Elain.
“We’ve done all the examinations and doubled-checked for talismans, and he’s clear. But his organs—they’re all poisoned. I don’t know what they could have done. We tried reversing the damage, but they won’t regenerate. We were trying to get his fever down and Pace had me wake him, but he started screaming. Now he won’t stop, and he doesn’t let anyone near. He’s hurting himself.”
Luc was in a quarantine room at the far end of the hospital. She heard him before she saw him.
His eyes were deranged, his face gaunt with scarlet stains in the cheeks. There was a ripple of heat coming off him as if he were molten gold.
Ilva was standing helplessly in the doorway, along with Althorne, Maier, Pace, and several medics. Ilva kept trying to talk to him, but Luc didn’t seem to hear anything. The screaming faded as his throat stripped itself raw. He’d seemingly forgotten how a body worked. He seized, his arms and legs and fingers and head all tilting into bizarre angles, and then he slammed himself into the wall.
“I brought Helena,” Elain said breathlessly.
Luc’s head swivelled. He stared at Helena. His eyes seemed to grow, bulging from their sockets, head weaving like a snake.
“Hel—” he croaked. He reached for her. His fingers looked broken, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Hel—”
“Careful, he’s been violent,” she dimly heard Pace say. She paid no mind.
She reached out, laced their fingers together, and touched the side of his face with her knuckles. His skin was so hot, it almost burned. He somehow bent his fingers, not seeming to notice the pain, clutching her hand, pulling her close.
