The sun is a slow bruise on the horizon, oozing red and purple until the whole sky looks like an apology that came too late. A thin breeze moves back and forth through the open window, carrying the bittersweet stench of wildflowers and crushed grass — the world's clumsy attempt at penance.
The infirmary smells faintly of antiseptic and old linen, a clean-limbed lie laid over whatever happened to me. I force myself upright. Pain blooms sharp and polite up my arm, the kind that keeps you honest about the body's fragility. White sheets cling to the mattress like paper on a tombstone, immaculate and useless. The gauze around my arm is surgical and unbothered, the head bandage a crown for someone who lost more than they remember. I'm wearing my old clothes like contraband — washed clean of blood but not of the shape of the thing that spilled it.
In the corner, under a halo of fluorescent indifference, he sleeps or pretends to. A boy my age with light-brown hair and eyelashes that cast small shadows on his cheeks, the kind of features that belong inside finished stories, not in stolen moments between sirens. The room remembers him as I do: present as a punctuation mark, not a person. I can't tell whether the last time I was awake he was dreaming too, or whether he watched me like a bookmark waiting to be picked up again.
"Hey," he says, voice thin as a curtain. It snaps me out of the blur of half-remembered violence and the slow arithmetic of pain.
"Hey," I answer, spare and careful, as if words might wake something worse than conversation. We trade the smallest ritual: acknowledgment without admission, sound without confession.
There is a nervous hum in the walls, an electronic heartbeat that measures time when I have none to spare. The sunset leaks like a slow wound, coloring the infirmary in theatrical sorrow. Outside, insects make their small, useless music. Inside, the empty beds hold the potential for more stories, and I feel the city — or whatever world left us here — pressing its palm against my spine, waiting to see how I will carry the weight.
"You're awake."
The voice sliced through the haze like a scalpel. Cold. Clinical. Not relief—just observation.
A pause.
"The last time you were out cold, I saw the blood—the nurse freaked out when she saw who was being carried by Dr. Hewett and Sam."
The name hit harder than the pain in my ribs. Sam?
Why would he be helping me?
I tried to sit up, but the room spun like a carousel of shadows. The fluorescent lights above flickered, casting staccato bursts of light across the sterile walls. My skin felt clammy, the sheets beneath me soaked in something that wasn't just sweat.
Blood.
Mine.
The memory clawed its way back—fragments of a hallway, the echo of boots. Then darkness.
Sam had been there. Not just there—holding me. Carrying me.
But Sam wasn't the type to help without reason.
Dr. Hewett had always been the quiet one. Too quiet. The kind of man who knew things he shouldn't. The kind of man who kept secrets buried beneath layers of professionalism and a smile that never reached his eyes.
"You were bleeding from your eyes," the voice continued. "They said it was a reaction. But Hewett looked scared. And Sam... he wouldn't let go of you. Not even when the nurse screamed."
I turned my head slowly. The speaker was a girl—a nurse, pale, eyes wide with something that wasn't fear. Something worse. Recognition.
"You're not supposed to be awake yet," she whispered.
The lights flickered again. This time, they didn't come back on.
And somewhere down the corridor, something began to hum.
Low. Hungry.
My eyes, I was bleeding from my eyes. Then it happened, the momentary gap where language stopped making sense. My rapid attempts to search memory for anything that could explain what happened failed horribly. Everything was fuzzy with no actual detail of what happened.
I'm angry at the world, but mostly at myself- for being weak, for being unable to defend myself. The thought is like a slap to the face that stings more than it should. The idea of weakness....disgusts me. I've never been one to rely on others and the though of what happened make my stomach clench. I hear footsteps approaching and I look up, straight into the eyes of the head-nurse. She seemed worried-and for the first time I realized. She actually cared whether I lived or not. That gave me a jolt as I realized everyone had gone silent. I could feel their eyes on me.