Behind me, Ragnar moves past my wheelchair and slides down next to me. Legs dangling off the edge like mine. His boots comically large. The breeze of a passing shuttle catches the ribbons in his beard. He says nothing, at ease with the silence. It makes me feel safe knowing he’s here. Knowing he’s with me. Like I thought I would feel near Sevro. But he’s changed. Too much weight in that helm of Ares.
“When I was a boy, we always wanted to know who the bravest of us was,” I say. “We’d sneak out of our homes at night and go down into the deeptunnels and stand with our backs to the darkness. You could hear the pitvipers if you were quiet. But you could never tell how close they were. Most boys would break and run after a minute, maybe five. I always stood the longest. Till Eo found out about our game.” I shake my head. “Now I don’t think I’d last a minute.”
“Because you now know how much there is to lose.”
Ragnar’s black eyes hold the shadows of a vast history. Nearly forty, he’s a man who was raised in a world of ice and magic, sold to the Gods to buy life for his people, and served as a slave longer than I’ve been alive. How much better does he understand life than I do?
“Do you still miss home? Your sister?” I ask.
“I do. I long for the early snow in the throes of summer, how it stuck to the fur of Sefi’s boots as I carried her on my shoulders to see Níðhǫggr break through the spring ice.”
Níðhǫggr was a dragon who lived under the world tree of the Old Norse societies and spent his days gnawing at the roots of Yggdrasil. Many Obsidian tribes believe he comes up from the deep waters of their sea to break the ice that blocks their harbors and open the veins of the pole for their spring raiding boats. In honor of him, they send the bodies of their criminals to the deep in a holiday called Ostara, the first day of true spring light.
“I sent friends to the Spires and the Ice to spread your word. To tell my people their gods are false. They are in bondage, and we will soon come to free them. They will know Eo’s song.”
Eo’s song. It seems so fragile and silly now.
“I don’t feel her anymore, Ragnar.” I glance behind us to the Oranges and Reds who spare glances our direction as they work on the ripWings in the hangar. “I know they think I’m their link to her. But I lost her in the darkness. I used to think she was watching me. I used to talk to her. Now…she’s a stranger.” I hang my head. “So much of this is my fault, Ragnar. If I hadn’t been so proud, I would have seen the signs. Fitchner would be alive. Lorn would be alive.”
“You think you know the strands of fate?” He laughs at my arrogance. “You do not know what would have happened if they lived.”
“I know I can’t be what these people need.”
He frowns. “And how would you know what they need when you are afraid of them? When you can’t even look upon them?” I don’t know how to answer. He stands abruptly and extends a hand to me. “Come with me.”
—
The hospital was once a cafeteria. Rows of gurneys and makeshift beds now fill it along with coughs and solemn whispers as Red, Pink, and Yellow nurses in yellow scrubs move through the beds checking the patients. The back of the room is a burn ward, separated from the rest of the patients by plastic containment walls. A woman’s screaming on the other side of the plastic, fighting a nurse as he tries to give her an injection. Two other nurses rush to subdue her.
I feel swallowed by the sterile sadness of the place. There’s no gore. No blood dripping on the floor. But this is the aftermath of my escape from Attica. Even with a Carver as good as Mickey, they won’t have the resources to mend these people. The wounded stare up at the stone ceiling wondering what life will be like now. That’s what this feeling is in this room. Trauma. Not of flesh. But lives and dreams interrupted.
I’d retreat from the room, but Ragnar rolls me forward to the edge of a young man’s bed. He watched me as I came in. His hair is short. His face plump and awkward with a prominent under bite.
“What’s what?” I ask, my voice remembering the flavor of the mine.
He shrugs. “Just dancin’ time away, hear?”
“I hear.” I extend a hand. “Darrow…of Lykos.”
“We know.” His hands are so small he can’t even wrap his fingers around mine. He chuckles at the ridiculousness of it. “Vanno of Karos.”
“Night or day?”
“Dayshift, you pigger. I look like some saggy-faced night digger?”
“Well, you never know these days…”
“True enough. I’m Omicron. Third drillboy, second line.”
“So that was your chaff I’d be dodging deep.”
He grins. “Helldivers, always lookin’ themselves in the eye.” He makes a lewd motion with his hands. “Someone’s gotta teach you to look up.”
We laugh. “How much did it hurt?” he asks, nodding to me. At first I think he’s asking about what the Jackal did. Then I realize he’s referring to the Sigils on my hands. The ones I’ve tried to cover with my sweater. I unveil them now. “Manic shit, that.” He flicks it with his finger.
I look around, suddenly aware that it’s not just Vanno watching me. It’s everyone. Even on the far side of the room in the burn unit Reds push themselves up in their beds to look at me. They can’t see the fear inside. They see what they want. I glance at Ragnar, but he’s busy speaking to an injured woman. Holiday. She nods to me. Grief still very much at home on her face for her lost brother. His pistol is on her bedside, his rifle leaning against the wall. The Sons recovered his body during the rescue so he could be buried.
“How much did it hurt?” I repeat. “Well, imagine falling into a clawDrill, Vanno. A centimeter at a time. First goes the skin. Then the flesh. Then bone. Easy stuff.”
Vanno whistles and looks down at his missing legs with a tired, almost bored expression. “Didn’t even feel this. My suit injected enough hydrophone to knock out one of them.” He nods to Ragnar and draws air through his teeth. “And least I still got my prick.”
“Ask him,” a man beside him urges. “Vanno…”
“Shut up.” Vanno sighs. “Boys have been wonderin’. Did you get to keep it?”