Chapter 16: An Excellent Time to Shut Up

Dante opened his eyes against somebody’s knee and tried to sit up, discovering that the room kept moving after his head stopped. Rhea held his shoulder down while Anika knelt beside him, her hand gripping his sleeve hard enough to twist the fabric.

"Stay on your side until the medic checks you," Rhea said, looking past him as the responder opened the door. He tasted blood when he tried to answer, and she gave him a folded dressing from the packet the responder handed over.

The table in the private reception room stood above him with a red smear on its edge. The wall screen had frozen white, so he could no longer see Jett or the other patients. He remembered trying a new spell to free Jett and asked whether the black pad had come off.

"We couldn’t see," Anika said. "The picture failed, and you stopped answering me." She only let go of his sleeve when the medic crouched beside her. Dante had passed out before anyone could tell whether his attempt had helped, and Anika still didn’t know if her brother was safe.

The medic asked his name, checked his eyes and waited while he explained the heat behind them. Dante admitted that he had attempted something new, although calling it new felt dishonest when he hadn’t known how to do any part of it.

"Did you know it would work?" Anika asked while the medic checked his pulse, and he couldn’t make himself look at her. He told her he had hoped it would, which was the closest he could get to admitting why she had believed him.

"You said you knew," she replied, keeping her hand near his shoulder without touching him again. Rhea told the medic about the earlier burns and asked Dante whether he could feel his fingers, refusing to let him turn the answer into another performance.

Mercer offered private care from across the room, but Rhea said Dante was going to the university medical ward. The responder told the donor to stay available for questions while Iris kept Jett’s agreement under her hand. Being hurt had not made the meeting or the missing patients go away.

He could hear applause beyond the door again, followed by somebody asking whether the reception photograph would include the donor. Apparently they could lose a student on the floor and still worry about getting the right people into a picture.

Miss Vale arrived while the medic helped him sit with his back against the wall, carrying her phone with both wrists still dressed. She asked the medic whether he could travel before asking Dante anything, and he was grateful until she crouched where he couldn’t avoid her.

"Tell me exactly what you pictured, without explaining why you thought it was necessary," she said, listening while he described the loose pad and Jett breathing. When he admitted that he hadn’t seen it done, she passed that information to the team downstairs. ℴ

Dante asked whether he had made things worse. Vale said she did not know yet. The medical team had reached the rooms downstairs and was checking the patients in person, but the frozen screen could not show them what was happening. She would tell him when the team reported back.

Anika retrieved his fallen phone and showed him its newly cracked corner before putting it in her jacket pocket when he couldn’t hold it steadily. He wanted to apologize for that too, although she looked ready to throw it if he worried about glass before her brother.

The medic helped him onto a wheeled stretcher and raised its back before taking him through the reception. Dante kept the dressing beneath his nose while a woman holding champagne asked whether the blood was part of the demonstration.

"Only if the tuition includes compensation," Rhea replied, walking beside him while the woman hurried away. Dante would have laughed if the movement hadn’t made his head hurt, and the medic told him to save whatever he was planning to say.

Anika stayed with Vale at the reception to wait for news about Jett. Rhea went with Dante on the stretcher. He almost asked Anika to come too, then remembered why she needed to stay. "Tell me as soon as you know," he said instead, and she promised she would.

Rhea called Posey during the trip, explaining that they were taking him to the medical ward and that he was awake. She handed the phone to him only after warning him that he wasn’t to describe passing out as a controlled withdrawal.

"I said I’d come back and tell you," he told Posey, holding the phone against his ear with help from Rhea. She asked whether he could breathe properly and said she would meet him there, without making him explain the promise he had broken.

At medical, the silver-haired nurse took the bloodied dressing while the medic gave his report, then settled Dante into a bed near the window. Rhea returned her phone to her pocket and stayed until the nurse finished checking his hands and eyes.

"Does every medical placement involve this much stupidity?" he asked, trying to sound less frightened while she fetched the water the nurse requested. "You’ve made a strong argument for specializing in patients who can’t talk," she replied, placing it within reach.

She told him her main subject was poisons and their treatment, which gave him several jokes before the nurse told him to drink. For once he obeyed, letting the water clear the taste of blood without pretending it fixed anything else.

Professor Artemis arrived after the nurse called her laboratory, still wearing the plum dress beneath her coat but carrying her hat by its brim. She asked permission to look at him, then examined the fresh blood on the discarded dressing without touching his face.

"You frightened people who care about you," Artemis told him. Dante admitted that he had said he knew how to help when he only hoped he could. She asked whether Anika believing him had made him more certain, or just made it harder to admit he was guessing.

He couldn’t answer before Rhea’s phone rang, and she moved beside the window to hear Miss Vale. The nurse stayed with him while Artemis waited, giving him nobody he could charm into saying the attempt had been worth it.

Rhea asked Vale to repeat the count, then turned back with the phone still against her ear. The rescue team had reached the room from the screen and found four patients alive. Dante had seen five. The bed beside the pipes, the one where Jett had been strapped down, was empty.

Dante remembered Jett’s blanket filling the screen. Through Rhea’s speaker, he could hear Anika asking the team to search again. They had reached the right room, but her brother was no longer in it, and nobody could tell her who had taken him out.