Chapter 152 - 150 — Not Yours to Risk I

"Stop walking."

Mara took another step, more out of irritation than necessity, and nearly put her full weight on the leg Hana had been telling her not to use.

Krüger caught her under the arm before her knee gave way.

"I said I can walk," Mara told Hana, although she made no attempt to pull away from Krüger.

"You can," Hana replied. "You’re demonstrating it badly."

We had been out of Floor Two for less than ten minutes, and already I was beginning to understand why Hana had sounded so pleased when the Tower confirmed our clear. It was not because she could finally stop worrying about the Wardens.

It was because the rest of us could no longer use them as an excuse for ignoring her.

I closed the Tower interface before she noticed I still had it open and moved to Mara’s other side.

"I’m not carrying you," I told her. "I’ve seen what you can do with a spear, and I’d rather keep both my eyes."

"Then make yourself useful and get that bag off my shoulder."

I took the bag.

It was heavier than it looked, mostly because Mara had apparently decided that being injured was no reason to let someone else carry any of her equipment. When I adjusted the strap, she gave me a brief look that suggested she had noticed I was considering commenting on it.

I decided my eyes were worth more than the joke.

The medical facilities in the Tower district were busy, although not with the sort of frantic movement I had expected after spending so long somewhere that every injury could become fatal. A man with a bandaged forehead was arguing over the cost of replacing his armour. Two Players sat beside a treatment-room door, sharing a packet of food while one held a cold compress against her wrist.

People were injured here every day. Some came back from Gates, some from the Tower, and the staff had evidently learned to distinguish between an emergency and a Player who believed his emergency should take priority over everyone else’s.

Hana went straight to the reception counter.

"We have a penetrating injury to the lower leg, bleeding controlled in the field, with impaired weight-bearing," she told the attendant. "We also have a Player with a strained hand and severe mana exhaustion. There are other injuries, but those two need to be assessed first."

Anton looked at her.

"My hand is fine."

"You couldn’t close it properly when we left the chamber."

"I can close it now."

He demonstrated, and his fingers managed about half the movement before they stopped.

Hana looked at his hand and then at his face.

Anton lowered it.

I had seen the man hold a collapsing structure together while tonnes of stone shifted above our heads. Apparently, there were limits to what he was willing to argue about, and Hana Arai had found one of them.

The attendant called for assistance. Krüger helped Mara toward an examination room while Theo collected the equipment she had left beside the counter. I stayed near Anton, who was standing with his injured hand tucked under his opposite arm.

"Are you going to tell me yours is fine too?" I asked.

He considered the question.

"No."

"That’s a relief. I was beginning to think the correct answer was compulsory."

His mouth moved slightly, although I could not tell whether he was smiling or simply trying not to.

A member of the medical staff came to collect him, and I was left standing in the corridor with two equipment bags, a pair of Adamantine-reinforced gauntlets, and nothing that urgently required my attention.

It was an unfamiliar sensation.

During Floor Two, there had always been something to watch. A street, a roofline, the colour of a Warden’s facial slit, the amount of mana Anton had left, or the next place where we might hear Krüger’s voice through a Resonance Pillar.

Now there was a vending machine at the end of the corridor, and the most dangerous thing I could see was a little boy trying to climb onto a chair while his mother filled out a form.

I put the bags down and took off my gauntlets.

The right one came away easily. The left caught around my wrist, where the swelling had stiffened while we were waiting, and I had to work it loose a little at a time.

The Adamantine plates were still intact.

My wrist was not.

I turned it once and felt the ache travel almost to my elbow.

Mercer had warned me that stronger armour would not make the bones underneath any harder to break. I had understood him perfectly well at the forge, and I had understood him even better the first time a Warden struck me.

Understanding something did not seem to stop me from testing it.

"Jace."

I looked up.

Hana had come back out of Mara’s examination room.

"Sit down."

"I’m not in the way."

"That wasn’t what I asked."

I sat.

She checked my wrist and shoulder, then asked me to take a full breath. The old tenderness around my ribs had not entirely gone away since Floor One, and the fighting beneath the Spire had done it no favours.

Hana noticed the way I stopped just short of breathing all the way in.

"How long has that been bothering you?"

"Since before we entered Floor Two."

"And you climbed another floor with it."

"I had it treated."

"That wasn’t what I asked either."

I looked at her, and she looked back without any particular interest in winning the conversation.

I had spent six years in a body that never awakened, training until I could barely stand because stopping felt too much like admitting that I was never going to become the person my father needed. I had come back with a System that rewarded strength, endurance, and surviving things that should have killed me.

It had apparently neglected to give me an Ability that made medical professionals easier to argue with.

"I can breathe," I said.

"Then do it properly."

I did.

She let me get to the end of the breath before moving on to my shoulder.

When she finished, she told me to wait for an examination of my own. I was tempted to object until I remembered Anton’s hand, Mara’s leg, and the rather poor example I would be setting if I began insisting that my injuries were somehow less real than theirs.

"Fine," I said.

Hana gave a small nod and went back to Mara.

I watched her go, then leaned against the back of the chair and looked toward the treatment rooms.

All six of us had come back.

Inside Floor Two, I had kept that fact in the part of my mind where I put things that were too important to think about while I was doing something else. I had been concerned with keeping Hana and Anton alive, getting our half of the party through the city, and reaching the chamber before Krüger’s group ran out of time.

I had thought about the others constantly without being able to do very much for them.

Now they were all here, close enough that I could hear Mara disagreeing with somebody behind a door.

I found that I liked the sound.

By the time we were allowed to gather again, someone had brought us food.

I did not know who had arranged it. There were six trays, enough chairs, and a table in a quiet waiting area away from the examination rooms, which was more organization than any of us had managed during the last few hours of our climb.

Mara had been given support for her injured leg and instructions she looked distinctly unhappy about. Anton’s hand was bandaged. Theo had acquired a clean shirt from somewhere, although he was still wearing the same trousers he had brought back from the Stone Side.

Krüger sat at the end of the table with his equipment arranged beside his chair. He was eating with the same economical movements I remembered from Floor One, as though even now he had decided there was no reason to waste effort lifting a spoon.

I took the empty chair opposite him.

"Did they give you an answer?" I asked Mara.

"They gave me several."

"Any you liked?"

"No."

Theo put a drink beside her tray.

"She asked when she could train again before they finished checking the wound."

"I asked because I wanted to know."

"You asked three times."

"The answer might have changed."

"It didn’t."

Mara reached for the drink, and Theo moved it a little closer before she had to lean over her injured leg. She noticed and gave him a brief nod.

I had spent most of Floor Two thinking of Theo as the man on the other side of a Resonance Pillar who could tell us where the Wardens were moving. Watching him remember which side Mara could comfortably reach was a different sort of information about him.

It was also information I would not have obtained by reading his Player profile.

Hana sat down beside Anton and started eating before anyone could ask her another medical question.

For a while, that was all we did.

The food was ordinary, and I ate enough of it that I started to wonder when I had last eaten a meal without checking whether something was coming toward me. Around us, other Players came and went, equipment cases were wheeled through the corridor, and somewhere behind the wall a machine kept making the same faint clicking sound.

No bells. No Resonance Pillar. No Warden patrol.

I could get used to that.