Awake

THIRTEEN

I forced myself to stay in the zone, to take a deep breath — but then Jake's reaction to me sticking him with the pen sank in and eclipsed my rising panic with yet another flavour of panic.

I was becoming a connoisseur.

I stared at the needle still in his hand and suddenly lunged forward, grabbing it off him. "Oh, shit! Is this poison? Did I poison you? What is this? I thought it was medicine! It was in a first aid kit — is it incompatible for humans? Are you — what should I do? Is there an antidote? Is there something I can find — "

He just stared at me, and I resisted the urge to shake him, again. Why was he being so obtuse? Was the poison already working on his brain?

I half got to my feet, and he grabbed my wrist. "It isn't poison. It's medicine."

I slowly lowered myself back to the ground, probably a good thing, since I was feeling unsteady standing up. The adrenalin must have been wearing off.

I stared at him. I needed to tell him something. I could feel it at the corner of my consciousness — but at that moment I was preoccupied by the blood all over my skin, and the pain blossoming all over my body — the many times I'd fallen, been thrown, manhandled and sliced finally registering.

At last, I remembered. "We need to get out of here. Before more of those things turn up. What if they radioed someone?"

"We have an hour or so." he said, looking around the room, then back at me. "When I first sensed them, I set up a warp. Disabled their communications. Their signal will have dropped out. The Hierarchs won't be able to track their exact route for a while."

"We were fighting for at least —" I began.

"Just, be quiet, for a second, ok?" he hissed. "I need to think." He stared at the Singer, its organs glistening on the floor, then me. "You..." He looked at it again. "How did you kill it?"

"You dropped your gun." I said. "I just shot in the direction of the sound... How does it make you hear things that don't exist? How does it make you see things that aren't there? Who was that soldier? Why were all those voices saying your name?  What do they want?"

He wasn't listening to my questions. He suddenly sat up, his displaced shards rippling back into place along his arms — his assault rifle reforming.

"The other! There was one more Hierarch!" He half-shoved me out of the way, but I resisted him.

"He's dead." I said flatly, gesturing in the direction of the next room.

Jake sat back down slowly. For the first time since he'd woken up, he seemed to be looking at me clearly.

"You're covered in blood." he said. "Are you hurt?"

I looked down at myself. "I don't think so."

"There's blood all over your face."

I refrained from telling him it was probably thanks to his needle assault. "It's his." I replied.

"Your feet."

I looked down at my feet and bit back a gasp. That blood was mine. They were filthy, and covered with cuts — pieces of wood and debris visible in the wounds.

"Oh." My stomach heaved and I bit the nausea back. I don't know how I hadn't noticed that. I don't know how I'd walked on that.

Jake slowly got to his hands and knees and reached past me to grab the open first aid kit I'd discarded after searching the first Hierarch.

"Use this," he shoved it into my hands. "It's called a medstick. Hierarchs are good at human medicine, I'll give them that, at least."

I stared at it. "But why are they good at human medicine? Does it work on them, too?"