Saxifrage Fire

0029

The stone walls of the hospital room seemed to close in inch by inch, minute by minute, foot by foot, hour by hour; Alethea sat in a chair beside Hitoshi's bed listening to the heart monitor beep with eerie pauses in between.

Ezi was asleep on a mat with a pillow and sheet across the room.

She studied Ezi's face; even in sleep, she held the same grimace was when she'd watched behind a pane of glass as Kaleo surgically pulled bone splitters from Hitoshi's lungs and fixed titanium plates to his broken ribcage.

Thea had seen a live brain flayed open like a flower in bloom and been unbothered, but she hadn't been able to watch past the first incision of Hitoshi's surgery. She'd fled the room and been met by a high rank asking for her to attend a meeting- she had to appoint Luintenants and give orders. She'd ordered every active team to transfer to the surrounding mountains to guard the base. No one was getting within ten miles - they'd be blown to hell- and not a single Sera unsoul could make it past those defenses; it would only take a couple of toxin canisters to turn the Mountain Base into a massive graveyard. She'd spoken with engineers and helped them design filters for the air system and a sensor/alarm system while she'd spoken with others on the matter of manufacturing the masks Kaleo and Ezi had designed. The materials they needed were limited so they'd sent a team to bargain with the Acahttas and pass off the blueprints. She'd worked so quickly and spoken so coldly, the people around her had started to cast nervous glances at each other, surely wondering if their new General, the woman who was charged with their lives, was Sera. One young man had given her such a nauseated look that she'd dropped the mug of coffee he'd just passed her, and it had shattered along with her composure. She'd felt like her lungs were being crushed; her breathing had turned quick and shallow and she'd nearly passed out by the time they'd been taken to the hospital. She'd refused to stay in her own room for more than an hour, then moved to Hitoshi's to sit on his floor and listen to his heart monitor.

People had come to beg for orders, but Pa had waved them away or answered the questions himself. Finally, he'd left to take matters into his own hands in her absence. She'd muttered words of gratitude, but she'd been too absent to notice the door had already shut.

She moved for the first time in hours, turning to face Hitoshi; there were deep bags under his eyes and his lips were still blue from lacking oxygen for so long. She reached out and grasped his hand and grimaced at its icy temperature. Her own hand was raw from digging through the rocks and gravel for Alex's body, which she never found. That night returned to her mind: she stood among the maimed bodies of the koro people who'd given their lives trying to free her sister from the Seras racing towards Eirene. There had been a young woman, younger than her; the whites of her eyes had turned red with blood from the bullet that had passed through her temple. Did she have a sister who sat so still as to feel the earth spin as the walls closed in around her? Who would toss her ashes to the wind? Half her heart cared, and half her heart only cared for Alex who was surely scared, alone, in a cell in the depths of a facility beneath the very lake where she used to run and splash and collect little pieces of ancient glass to string and hang outside her window in elegant chimes. She'd always imagined the worst of primal rage in images of men screaming men with veins popping out of their foreheads and biceps while they pounded already dead bodies bloody. But the worst Primal Rage, as it turns out, was a still and silent power. She felt it eating away at her every fiber like the blue flame in the hot, hungry heart of a fire.

She squeezed Hitoshi's hand and uttered absentmindedly.

"I'll get her back."

She studied his face, imagining what his expression would be when he awoke to remember that he hadn't been able to save her.

There was a knock at the door.

"Come in," she called hoarsely.

A young man stepped in and handed her a concealed envelope.