Dawnpoint

Chapter 30

Begrudgingly spilling their limited gatherings onto the floor, they wiped down their grazes before separating the food from Micah's needed ingredients and hauled the metal pot onto the stokes by the fire. Micah offered to light it, having better movement in his arms, whilst Phoenix prepared the food, rolling his head around his shoulders.

Liliana shuffled into the kitchen, face drained and eyes wide as she stared at them. Micah looked up at her and frowned, immediately ran to the bedroom, and fell beside Oryn, checking him over frantically. His pulse was strong: a good indication. His temperature was normal for their environment and the wound hadn't gotten any worse or better in the time they were away.

He placed his hands on the edge of the mattress, twisting his torso to shout through to the kitchen where he could hear Liliana's spear tapping against the ground as she grew closer. And just as he was about to ask her why she looked so bewildered, Oryn slipped his hand into his and squeezed it feebly.

His head spun back around to look at their hands and when he looked at Oryn's face, a small smile was there, his eyes still closed.

"Hey, inconvenience," he croaked out, voice hoarse and slow as he tried to form the words.

Micah gasped and immediately fussed over him, checking his temperature once again. Oryn chuckled weakly, fluttering his eyes open and then closing them again.

"You're awake," he muttered in disbelief. "How are you feeling?"

"My chest is torn open," he drawled, talking using more energy than he had.

Micah laughed, relieved yet thrown by the remark. He gripped Oryn's hand tighter and pulled it to his chest, hugging it close as he tried to open his eyes again.

"I was so worried," he admitted as the others came into the room and Phoenix immediately ran over and grabbed his other arm, forcing himself to not squeeze out what little life he had left in him. "We thought we'd lost you."

"Can't get rid of me that easy," he joked, and Phoenix huffed out a laugh.

"Almost dying changed you," he retaliated, grinning with glazed over eyes when Oryn turned his head to him.

Liliana wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand and sobbed quietly. Oryn beckoned her closer and loosely gripped her fingers, sending her a reassuring smile. Micah gently removed his hand and swallowed, looking between the three as he stood to leave.

"I'm going to start making that disinfectant," he announced and walked off without waiting for a response.

When he entered the kitchen, he knelt in front of the ingredients and curled his fists, digging them into the cold concrete. He tried to fight against the hurricane of emotion surging through him, knowing he would end up flitting from one state to another in a mere matter of seconds if he thought about anything that had happened since he first found Choi mansion in that old corner of the internet.

Oryn had almost died.

He had been trapped in a war with his mind.

They had all been injured. Couldn't fight.

Anything could have happened and there was nothing he could have done about it. He wasn't a healer. He wasn't a saviour as Phoenix had made him out to be. Everything he was experiencing at that moment could have just been another mind-game where he was forced to stay deluded until he grew old.

For all he knew, he could be in a coma brought on by the radiation poisoning. Or he could have made everything else up, including finding the case and convincing Kato to come with him or even becoming a reporter in the first place. The people he loved, the life he had made for himself...it could all be fake. An illusion. He pondered the possibility of him lying strapped to a hospital bed in a mental health unit, rotting away as he lived his life elsewhere.