Chapter 22: The Price of Breathing

Chapter 22: Chapter 22: The Price of Breathing

Dr. Hollis kept a plant on her windowsill that had been dying for as long as Elias had known her. She watered it every morning anyway. He’d always liked her for that.

"Sit down, Elias," she said, which was never a good sign.

She turned her monitor toward him. On it was a scan he recognized by now: the faint outline of Mira’s chest, and threaded through it, branching like frost, a pale blue haze. Mana. Raw and crystallized, settled into her lungs and blood vessels, slowly hardening.

"This is three months ago," Dr. Hollis said, and clicked. "This is yesterday."

The blue had spread. Not much: a centimeter here, a new branch there. The same way the scars on Mira’s forearms crept a little higher every week.

"The stabilizer is doing what it’s meant to," Dr. Hollis said. "It keeps her symptoms down and keeps her comfortable. But it doesn’t stop the crystals from forming. It only slows the damage they do." She folded her hands. "Gate sickness is progressive. Every year, there’s a little more mana in her and a little less room for her."

Elias’s mouth was dry. "How long?"

"With the stabilizer alone? Years, probably. But fewer of them than she deserves." She hesitated. "There’s another option."

She pulled up a brochure: a machine like a dialysis unit, with a column of pale crystal filters along its side.

"Mana filtration. Twice a week, we run her blood through these filters, and they pull the free mana out before it can crystallize. It won’t remove what’s already there, but it stops new growth. For patients her age, that can mean decades." She paused. "It isn’t experimental anymore, but the insurers still treat it as if it is."

"How much?"

Dr. Hollis told him.

Three times what the stabilizer cost. Every month. Indefinitely.

Elias sat very still. At the edge of his vision, faint and uninvited, his status window flickered: level 8, two levels from the next slot. He pushed it away.

"When can she start?" he asked.

Dr. Hollis looked at him for a long moment, the way she looked at the dying plant.

"As soon as the first month is paid," she said gently. "I’m sorry, Elias. I wish I could do more."

"You do plenty," he said, and meant it.

The hospital cafeteria smelled of coffee and disinfectant. Elias sat at the corner table by the window with a cup he didn’t drink and a stack of paper napkins.

On the TV above the salad bar, a news anchor was talking over shaky footage of a dark subway platform. The banner read MASKED SUMMONER: HERO OR VIGILANTE? A grainy hooded figure dove off the platform edge. In the next booth, a woman said, "My cousin was on that train," to no one in particular.

Elias turned his chair so the screen was behind him and uncapped a pen.

Filtration: 4,200 a month.

He wrote it at the top of the napkin and underlined it twice, because seeing it made it real. Then he wrote what he had.

Garrick’s envelope: three months of stabilizer. One month of filtration.

Chieftain core: one more month.

Association exchange: groceries.

He chewed the pen. Then he worked the problem the way Marcus had taught him to read a battlefield, slowly and piece by piece, looking for the shape underneath.

A D-rank gate with a boss meant one core at Ozzie’s: a quarter of a month. A D-rank gate cleared for minor cores without its boss: a tenth, maybe. Two gates a night, one with a boss and one without. Thirty nights a month.

He did the math three times. It came out the same every time.

2 gates a night. Every night. No days off.

Underneath, smaller, almost without meaning to, he wrote one more line.

Level 10 = slot 3.

He stared at it. It wasn’t a coincidence. It was the same road. Every gate that paid for Mira’s breathing also pushed him one step closer to the next summon, and every summon would make the next gate easier. Money, levels, and slots, all pulling in the same direction.

He just couldn’t stop.

"What’s that?"

Elias jumped. Mira stood at the end of the table in her hospital socks, a sweater pulled over her gown, one hand on her IV pole and the other already reaching for the napkin.

"Nothing," he said, and grabbed for it.

She was faster. Even sick, she’d always been faster. She sat down across from him, smoothed the napkin flat, and read it. He watched her eyes move down the lines. 4,200. Two gates a night. Every night. No days off.

When she reached Level 10 = slot 3, she frowned, but she didn’t ask. She looked up at him instead.

"Dr. Hollis told you about the filtration," she said.

"Yeah."

"She told me yesterday." Mira folded her hands on top of the napkin. "I asked her not to tell you yet. I knew you’d do this."

"Do what?"

"This." She tapped the napkin. "Two gates a night. Eli, you’re an E-rank."

He opened his mouth.

"Don’t," she said. "I know you’re doing something, and I’m not asking what. I said I wouldn’t." Her eyes flicked past him to the TV, where the hooded figure was diving off the platform again, and then to the bandage on his left arm. She looked at it for one long second. Then she looked back at his face, and whatever she’d been about to say, she let go. "But two gates a night isn’t doing something. It’s killing yourself slower."

"It’s four months," he said. "Maybe five. Then it gets easier. I’ll get faster."

"You’ll get tired."

"I’ll sleep."

"Promise me." Her voice cracked a little at the end. "Promise you’ll sleep. Real sleep, not three hours and a nap on the bus."

He looked at his sister: sixteen, blue frost climbing her arms, trying to take care of him from a hospital bed.

"I promise," he said.

She held his eyes for a long moment. Then she nodded and slid the napkin back across the table.

That night, he cleared two gates: a D-rank swamp full of leeches, and a cave full of slimes where Marcus’s bullets bounced. He got home at 4:40 in the morning and set his alarm for 7:30, so he could be at the hospital by nine.

Three hours, and twenty minutes more on the bus.

He’d promised, and he’d lied. He told himself it was only for a few months.