“You left her behind?!”
Gryph snarl makes it clear that he might actually kill Black for this, but anyone with eyes can see what the hell is happening here. Black is good enough about laying it out there for him though.
He snaps out in a pain-filled growl, “I have two breaks in my leg and a raging blood infection. I didn’t have enough power to bring her back with me. The second a Healer is done with me, I can take you to her. Just get me one now, because she’s on her own.”
Felix bursts through the door with both of the Bensons and rushes straight towards Black, not waiting for an order to heal him. He curses under his breath at the state of Keiran, but his gift is strong enough to do this. He’s the top of his class and a prodigy amongst his peers, not that you can tell from how humble he is. He’s one of a select handful of Healers that I’m willing to let touch me.
Gryph moves aside to let Black be tended to, stalking back over to the table and grabbing the weapons that he’d unstrapped from himself to eat. Gabe moves to stand with the Bensons, murmuring to catch them up on what’s happened, and North is practically vibrating with his phone to his ear as he snaps out orders to mobilize the Alpha and Bravo teams. I can feel his relief that both of them are already on standby, because we’ve been waiting for this moment.
“You can talk while he heals you. Tell me what the fuck was happening to her,” Gryphon snarls as he does one last check that his weapons are secure, and Black grits his teeth while the thigh bone is reset.
“Silas Davies is what happened to her. Silas Davies is what happened to her last time as well. He’s fucking obsessed with her. He was… butchering her, that’s when he heard you in her head. I had to think quick to stop her from getting herself murdered just to keep you all away from him.”
Silas fucking Davies.
Only the fabled super villain of the Resistance, the boogeyman whose exploits are whispered about in the darkest corners of the Gifted world.
North looks over at me and I know that it’s game over for him. That’s the last puzzle piece in the mystery that is his Bond. Now he knows everything he ever needed to know about her. He’s done for; hook, line, and sinker. He belongs to her now, whether he’s admitting it to himself yet or not.
The Healer lifts his hand away from Black’s chest and moves to roll up the leg of his pants to get a better look at his mangled ankle. It looks as though there’s no bone structure left in there, like someone took a mallet to it and ground it to dust. Felix grimaces as he braces his hands on either side to start the reconstructive healing there too.
I have to swallow the bile down at the echoes of trauma in the back of my mind at the sight of it. I need to distract myself, to remind myself that this is something very different to what happened to me. I have to work at it to make sure my voice comes out bored. “What happened to you?”
North and Gryph both see through my attempt, but everyone else sends dark glares my way, as though their disapproval means anything to me.
Black glances at me, sweat still pouring down his face even as he’s looking less sickly, and snaps, “The thigh break happened when we arrived. The blood infection is because they wouldn’t treat it. I snapped my own ankle about a half hour ago to get out of the restraints to get Oli to take out John Franklin, the Resistance’s strongest Shield, so I could get back here. She did, by the way, her bond finally kicked in, and I got her off the torture table before I came here. I checked her bleeding and made sure all of the tourniquets on her were secure. She’ll be fine there as long as Davies doesn’t get back before we get her out. Not to be an asshole, Davenport, but you need to get a move on.”
The Healer shoots him a rueful look and says, “You had sepsis, your kidneys were shutting down, and you were about twelve hours away from complete organ failure. Sorry it’s taking a minute to stop your impending death.”
Sage makes a little gasping sound in the back of her throat, lifting a hand to cover her mouth and muffle any other sounds of horror that she might have.
North curses and snaps, “Just tell us where Oleander is. You can stay here and receive treatment, there’s no need for you to be going back out there. We have enough Transporters to get to her and take control of the situation safely.”
Black grunts and lets out a low groan as the crunching sound of his bone resetting bounces around the room, panting to answer, “I can’t… I don’t know exactly where it is… I just followed the insurgents back there. I can map back, but I… don’t have coordinates or a location.”