ALEX
Doctor B stoodbeside me in his white coat, a hand on my shoulder as I watched the monitors.
My fingernails bled as I kept chewing, shifting, jolting at every red line that spiked or dropped. This wasn’t his department, but every staff in the hospital had been put on alert when the news started to spread. He was one of the first faces I saw when Reed and I rushed in next to the stretcher that carried Leo’s blackened body.
The VIA was in shambles—Heroes were injured, or missing entirely. Their own facilities were filled to the brim, and the overflow spread to Nightmyre General.
“We aren’t equipped for this,” I breathed, refusing to turn away from the machines. “We need healing Variants, the best ones.”
Leo was right there in front of me, but I couldn’t stomach it, couldn’t handle glancing down. Nearly seventy percent of his body was damaged. His arms and legs got the worst of it, and were wrapped in white bandages that were stained with red. It was his lungs, though, that had me on edge.
“Your friend put out a call to the VIA—they should have some arriving soon,” Doctor B tried to soothe me, squeezing my shoulder.
I was still in my Hero suit, covered in ash, sweat and blood. My eyes kept flitting between Leo’s heart rate, his blood pressure, hisoxygen. It hovered around seventy percent, and I tried to convince myself that he’d be fine. No brain damage, no death. If only we could get afucking healer.
“His levels are rising,” he pointed to the monitor as Leo rose to seventy-one percent. “The ventilator is working. He’s not done yet, Alex. Give it time.”
Leo was registering at fifty when we’d first come in. I wanted doctors surrounding him, wanted them to rush him to surgery, but the whole ER was in chaos. Codes being called over the speakers, stretchers rushing by our room with CPR in progress. My body trembled, and Doctor B pushed me down gently, guiding me into a chair.
“Alex,” he knelt down in front of me as my breath came short. “You may be going into shock. I need you to sit and breathe for me. Can you do that?”
My limbs had gone numb, and I couldn’t stop staring at those fucking monitors. Did his blood pressure drop, or was I imagining it?
“C-check him, please,” I stuttered. “Eighty over sixty?—”
“—is the highest it’s been since he came in,” he responded. “He’s stabilizing. Variants are durable, he’ll recover quicker than most. The VIA will send someone, and everything will settle. But we need you grounded. He can’t get through this without you, right?”
I froze, finally ripping my eyes away to look at him, and then to Leo. He was alone in that bed; tubes and machines surrounding him. But his chest rose and fell with the ventilator, and his face was still intact. He didn’t look like Chin-Hae, or howI imagined Joon would have. Bandages covered his neck and jaw, but he was still recognizable. He was still alive.
Leo is practically fire proof on the outside. But how much did he burn, inside? How much damage was done?
My thoughts swirled, anxious and tired and filled with fear. I couldn’t lose another person—I wasn’t sure what Leo was to me, but I was sure that if anything happened to him, I would break all over again. I couldn’t handle any more loss.
Reed burst in, panting and covered in soot. We whipped our heads to him as he leaned his palms on his knees, his face nearly as red as his hair.
“Okay,” he breathed. “Fuckthe VIA, for real. I had to threaten to suffocate, like, seven people before they would hear me out.”
Doctor B frowned. “You know, for a bunch of Heroes, you lot are a bit dark.”
“Are they coming?” I nearly shouted.
“You think I’d come back empty-handed?” Reed put his hands on his hips as he leaned back and let out a long breath. “Yeah, they’re on their way. Twenty minutes tops. We’ll get him fixed up, no problem. Leo’s an asset to the VIA, they won’t let him die.”
Every ounce of strength left my body. I leaned back, let out a long breath, and my body finally turned to jelly. Leo wasn’t going to end up like Joon did. He was going to make it—he had to.
Reed murmured something to me,and all I could do was nod as he left. I couldn’t remember if he said he needed to shower, or eat, or go off to threaten the VIA again. I stayed there, staring at Leo, stroking the back of his hand with my thumb.
Wake up. Please wake up.
After eighteen hours and six rotations of healers sent from the VIA, we were able to take him off the ventilator. New skin had grown across his hands, no more bone or charred flesh. If Leo got only a few degrees hotter, if he’d stayed burning in that blue fire a few moments longer, he would have died. Variants were exceptional, but we couldn’t bring back the dead. I’d gotten to him in time.
When Reed and I saw those blue flames, we knew. Leo was burning out, and we didn’t know how to stop it. I’d thrown up an illusion of a wave on a whim, hoping it would do something to stop the fire, startle him enough to make itstop.I didn’t care about that Villain that had cornered him; I just needed him to stopburning.
But he didn’t burn me.
I knew it was a risk, but he’d been doing so well, all I could hope was that he’d stop. He always reacted to the scar on my hand as if the sight made him loathe himself. There was no doubt in my mind that he’d make sure not to burn me again. When the healers had finished with him, I had one more request.
Make it go away.
