The seventy-two hours following the assault weren't just a blur; they were a slow-motion descent into a waking nightmare. Time in South Block stopped moving in hours and started moving in the rhythmic, agonizing pulses of the infection blooming in Donny's hand. By the third night, the crushed knuckles had swelled into a grotesque, plum-colored mass, the skin stretched so tight it looked ready to burst. A jagged red line—the silent, lethal herald of sepsis—had begun its march up his forearm, snaking like a poisoned vine toward the dislocated ruin of his shoulder.
The fever took hold of him like a physical weight, warping the air until it felt like liquid lead in the cramped dimensions of the cell. Every breath was a struggle against the wet wool filling his lungs, a desperate fight for oxygen in a space that felt increasingly like a tomb. But Donny wasn't the only one breaking under the strain.
Down in the residential blocks, Sarah Miller had spent those same three days shivering under a mountain of blankets in her dark apartment, gripped by a violent, bone-deep flu. Her skin burned with a fire that no medicine could douse, and her joints ached with a phantom pain that mirrored Donny's fractures with terrifying precision. She was the only one who could check on him without suspicion, the only one who cared if he drew another breath, and her body had betrayed her at the exact moment the Viper had struck. She was drowning in her own bed, while miles away, the King was drowning in a cage.
In the cells flanking 402, Lou and Johnny were living in their own circle of hell, trapped in a state of helpless, vibrating fury. They could hear Donny's labored, whistling breaths through the vents. They could hear the scrape of his good hand against the stone floor as he writhed in the darkness.
"I can't take it, Johnny," Lou growled, his voice a low, vibrating tremor of rage that seemed to shake the very foundations of the block. He slammed his massive palm against the steel bars, the sound ringing out like a gunshot. "He's rotting three feet away from me and those New City bastards are just watching him go. I'll kill 'em. I'll tear the doors off this place with my bare hands."
"Stay steady, Lou," Johnny hissed through the vent, though his own voice was thin with a terror he couldn't hide. "If you snap, they'll toss the whole block into lockdown and we'll never get a medic in here. Just... keep talking to him. Don't let him drift."
By the third afternoon, Donny's delirium reached a terrifying peak. He wasn't in Blackwood anymore. He was back in the old neighborhood, but the streets were made of broken glass and the sky was the color of a bruise. In his mind, his shattered hand wasn't a hand at all—it was a heavy piece of lead, dragging him down into the depths of an oily river.
"Get it off," Donny rasped, his eyes wide and glassy, staring at his own swollen arm with a look of pure horror. "The lead... it's heavy, Sarah. It's pulling me under."
In a sudden, violent burst of septic mania, Donny began to claw at the bandages with his good hand. He dug his nails into the bruised, infected skin, convinced that if he just stripped away the outer layer, he'd find the "Gold" Sarah told him to keep hidden.
"Donny, stop! Donny, look at me!" Lou roared, his face pressed so hard against the bars that his skin turned white. Tears streaming down his heartbroken face."It's Lou! Don't touch it, kid! Look at me—tell me about the '67 Chevy. Focus on the car, Donny! Focus on the chrome!"
Lou's voice acted like a tether in the storm. Donny's hand would drop, his chest heaving, as he mumbled about motor oil and chrome, his eyes darting toward the shadows that danced along the walls. But the peace never lasted. The fever would spike again, and the clawing would begin anew. The guards—Valenti's men—walked past 402 with rhythmic, clinical indifference, their boots clicking against the floor like a countdown to his final breath.
Then, the heavy gates at the end of the tier groaned.
Sarah Miller appeared. She looked like a ghost—pale, gaunt, her eyes sunken from her own fever—but she had dragged herself out of bed because she had felt the snap of the bond. She saw the guards lingering near Donny's door, laughing under their breath as they watched a man expire.
"Shift change," she snapped, her voice raspy but carrying the weight of a blade. "I'm taking the tier. Clear out."
The New City guards exchanged a look, but they didn't want the paperwork of a confrontation with a senior officer. They moved on, leaving her alone with the dying King. Once the heavy boots of the other guards faded, the silence of the tier was broken only by the whistling, wet breaths coming from Donny's cot. Sarah stepped up to the bars, her knuckles white as she gripped the steel. She saw the purple, swollen mass of his hand and the red streaks of sepsis climbing his arm like a map of his impending death.
She didn't open the door yet. She couldn't. Instead, she turned her head toward the shadows of the flanking cells, her voice a sharp, professional whip that hid her trembling.
"Inmate 4492," she barked, addressing Lou by his number to maintain the "No-Badge" protocol for any roaming ears or hidden microphones. "Report. How long has he been non-responsive?"
Lou's face appeared against the bars of 403, his eyes bloodshot and wild. "He ain't been 'non-responsive,' Officer. He's been dying. Since you left, it's been nothing but heat. Three days. Three days of him rotting while those bastards watched and laughed."
"Has he had water? Anything?" Sarah asked, her eyes darting back to Donny, who was currently mumbling to a shadow on the wall.
"He won't take it," Johnny's voice hissed from the vent in 401. "He thinks the water is lead, Miller. He's been out of his head for twelve hours. He tried to rip the bandages off his hand this morning—said the 'Gold' was trapped inside. Lou had to talk him down for four hours straight just to keep him from tearing his own skin off."
Sarah felt a cold stone drop in her stomach. The weight of her absence felt like a physical blow. "Delirium. Delusional. Why wasn't a medical request filed?"
"We filed 'em!" Lou roared, slamming a fist against the wall until the tier echoed. "The guards tore 'em up in front of us! They said 'the King likes to sleep.' They're letting him go septic on purpose!"
Sarah looked back at Donny. He was shivering so violently the cot was rattling against the stone. He began to claw at his arm again, his good fingers digging into the red lines of the infection.
"Donny, stop!" Sarah hissed through the bars, her voice a desperate plea.
"He can't hear you, Officer," Johnny whispered, his voice cracking with grief. "He's in the old neighborhood. He's been calling for his Ma and someone named 'Sarah' since midnight. You gotta do something. He's burning up."
"I can't open the gate without a second officer or a visible medical emergency," Sarah whispered, the protocol feeling like a physical gag in her throat. "If I break the line, Holden takes my badge, and then there's no one left to protect him."
"Visible emergency?" Lou growled, his voice thick with tears. "Look at him! He's a ghost in a jumpsuit!"
Donny suddenly groaned, a guttural, wet sound that signaled the end of his endurance. Driven by a septic spike of mania, he hauled himself up, gripping the sink with white-knuckled desperation.
"Donny, stay down!" Sarah commanded, her hand reaching for her radio, her heart screaming partner, lover, stay still. But the room tilted in Donny's eyes. The "Lead" he felt in his arm finally dragged him down. He went down hard, the side of his skull connecting with the sharp, unforgiving edge of the steel toilet with a sickening, hollow crack.
"DONNY!" Lou and Johnny screamed in unison, a sound of absolute devastation.
The seizure took him instantly—the rigid, terrifying arch of the back, the drumming heels against the concrete, the pink foam appearing at the lips.
Sarah didn't wait for a second officer. The "visible emergency" was here, written in blood and bone. She slammed her radio. "Code Blue, Cell 402! Grand mal seizure, massive head trauma! Get a trauma team now!"
She threw the door open, the steel shriek echoing the cries of the men on the tier. She knelt in the blood, following the rules she had memorized: turning him on his side to clear his airway, protecting his head from the unforgiving stone. But as she looked at Lou through the bars, her professional mask finally slipped, revealing the shattered woman beneath.
"Did he... did he say anything else?" she whispered as the seizure subsided and Donny went limp in her arms, his breathing shallow and thready.
Lou looked at her, his eyes softening with a terrible, knowing pity. "He said 'Stay Gold,' Officer. He said it until he couldn't speak no more."
The medical team swarmed the room, a chaotic blur of blue scrubs and shouting. Sarah was pushed back, her uniform stained with the crimson map of his collapse. She stood against the wall, a ghost among the living, watching them wheel the King away into the cold, fluorescent light of the hallway.
The silence was over. The war had truly begun.