Resistance

Chapter 32

Eren

One second I was running, determined to evade the incoming soldiers, the next I was stumbling to the ground as my mind splintered like a bone snapped in two. Bolts of agony ruptured inside my chest and sparked a fire in my lungs that made breathing almost impossible. The pain, which was a ghost of Levi's, reflected onto me through our bond, left me immobile. All my senses were linked to his. The one experiencing this anguish firsthand was him. Something had happened. Something terrible.

I tried to stand, but another lick of pain forced me onto my knees. There was something wrong with his ribs. Several seemed to be broken. They were pushed inwards and shifting whenever he moved. Had one of them punctured his lung? Is that why he was having difficulty breathing?

"Levi," I said in a hoarse voice filled with grief and desperation. I had to go back for him. He needed me.

Just as soon as I righted myself, Jean stopped beside me and shouted, "What are you doing? They're coming. We have to get moving." I paid him no mind, stepping around him to head in the same direction we came from. He snatched me by the wrist, and I growled at him. "That's the wrong way! Where are you going?"

"Back." I pulled my arm out of his grasp. "Levi needs me."

"No, Levi is back at the lab, safe and sound. I need you to focus on getting us out of here. If you haven't noticed, those vehicles are right on our asses. So unless you want to fight your way through them, I suggest hurrying."

There was no time to explain to him why I couldn't continue as planned. With every passing second, Levi's strength diminished, and nothing was more important than getting back to him. But even as the thought crossed my mind, I knew I wouldn't make it before the end. The connection between us was already faint. I could barely feel him anymore. Then the irrevocable truth hit me.

Levi was dying.

His essence was fading from the bond mark and leaving me hollow inside—scraped clean of anything that mattered. How could I fight the serum now? Without him here to guide me, to keep me on the correct path, this anger threatened to consume me. And if he was gone, I wanted it to.

"Eren!" Jean's sharp voice broke through the haze I'd been in. As soon as my eyes focused on him, he put his hands on my shoulders and shook me. "Pull yourself together. They're coming."

"Levi," I repeated.

"Levi is fine. If we don't get moving, we're the ones that aren't going to be."

I went to explain when a burst of blinding white light flooded my mind. For one moment, it felt like staring straight into the sun. My entire world went blank. No sound. No taste. No feeling. Then everything went black, and I snapped back into myself all at once. But...

"Can't feel...Levi," I said in a panic. Our connection had been severed. That could only mean one thing.

Jean pointed ahead. "You're about to feel plenty."

His voice blended in with the background noise as I focused all my attention inward. I scoured through the bond for even a hint of Levi, desperate for something, anything that would indicate he was still holding on, but there wasn't a trace of him left. In the back of my mind, I knew what that meant—what it had to mean. For a bond between mates to be broken, one of them had to die, but I wouldn't accept that. Levi had to be alive. I just had to find my way back to him. Then I'd fix this.

I turned to Jean and followed his gaze. The vehicles were almost to us now. He wouldn't be able to outrun them. Not like I could.

"Just go," Jean said without looking at me. "It's not like it makes a difference. By tomorrow, none of this will even matter to me anymore."