There was so much pain. Hyejin’s body couldn’t move. She felt so cold, so weak. Every breath was slow and wet and laboured. She was dying.

Searing heat stung at her eyes, even when she turned away from the burning wreckage. The road disappeared into a gaping hole that led straight down to the depths of the undercity. The explosion had taken out most of the overpass. Overturned vehicles and bodies littered what little was left of the street. 

People were screaming, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying. She wanted to scream, too. Her lungs filled with smoke. Her chest hurt. Hot tears drenched her cold face. She could feel it even when she closed her eyes as tightly as she could.

“Spread out. Search the bodies for the chairman!”

I’m here! I’m here! Please, I am here! 

“I don’t think he’s here.”

Dad… Where are you?

“Mister Choi?”

Dad, please help me…

“Hyejin!”

Dad…

“Hyejin!”

It wasn’t him. He was off-world for a director’s meeting. 

“Hyejin!”

She frowned and opened her eyes, searching for the familiar voice. Someone was running toward her.

“Hyejin!”

Atticus?

“Miss?” a soft female voice asked. “Can you hear me?”

Hyejin’s eyes shot open. Bright lights blinded her for a second.

“Bless, there you are,” the dark-haired woman cooed when they locked eyes. “I’m sorry for disturbing your rest, Dear, but I need to make sure you’re not in any pain.”

“Pain?” Hyejin repeated, squinting at her. Now that she mentioned it, she wasn’t in pain. The room was filled with various beeping instruments and an IV was attached to her right arm. It was certainly not her first time in a hospital, but this one was wildly different to what she was used to. The room was tiny and everything looked used. 

“Miss,” the woman prompted, “are you feeling alright?”

Hyejin hummed and tried to sit up. Pain shot through her shoulder and she lay back down again just as quickly. Suddenly, she felt alert and wide awake.

The nurse hissed through her teeth. “Oh! I’m sorry, Dear. I should have told you not to move your arm yet. We don’t have a technician skilled enough to fix it. For now, don’t put any weight on it.” She immediately began rummaging around in the drawers of her battered metal trolley.

Shreds of repli-skin still dangled like moth-eaten fabric from Hyejin’s arm. The tooth punctures perforated so deeply that the twisted and bent inner mechanics of her prosthetic were visible. Her arm was practically in ruins. There was no doubt that it would require an advanced technician to reconstruct the extensive damage. It wasn’t as easy as gluing broken bones back together.

The memories of the last few hours seeped back into place as Hyejin rubbed at her dry eyes. She swore loudly. After a second, she repeated the profanity three more times. It wasn’t a dream. She was on some dying border world in the middle of a city overrun by interdimensional monsters.

She quickly pulled the blanket away from her legs. The mana gauge on the inside of her ankle was at 100%. She tested her knee, bending and stretching her leg slowly. It was fully functional, but there was a large gash in the repli-skin on her thigh. When she stretched it out to a certain point, a sharp pain radiated through her body, making her wince. 

“Don’t overdo it, Dear.” The nurse told her, fussing over Hyejin’s dead arm. She slipped some fabric under it and around Hyejin’s neck to make a sling.

The relief was almost instant. Although NexTech prosthetics were technically not flesh and blood, they were connected to the nervous system to emulate a real limb. Hyejin didn’t have real sensation in her prosthetics, but touch would still send a signal to the main body, almost like a phantom itch or a pressure ache. The connection required significantly more expertise than the simple ‘plug-and-play’ that the older models had.

“Where are the others?” Hyejin asked, looking back up to the nurse who was still hovering over her like a wasp.

“Others?”

“My… friends. I was with them in the truck.”

“I’m sorry, Dear. You are my only charge tonight. I don’t have information about any other refugees.” The woman shone a little torch into her eyes before bringing up a holodisplay on her trolley to begin entering information. “Do you feel dizziness or nausea?”

“Can you find out for me?”

“That’s not my information to give out.”

“Please, it’s important. They saved my life!” Hyejin pleaded, suddenly feeling overwhelmed again. Tears rolled down her face and she recalled Atty calling to her. “Please…”

The nurse bit her lower lip and studied Hyejin for a long time. “Your father explicitly told us to keep you isolated,” she admitted, rubbing her eyebrow. “I’m not even supposed to tell you he’s coming to collect you.”

Hyejin felt the blood drain out of her face. “He’s coming here?”

The nurse nodded and went back to typing. “You didn’t answer your DataCuff, so he called the Mayor. That’s why it’s just me and you. He wanted to keep things quiet for your safety.” 

A memory of her panicked father bursting into her hospital room as a child flashed before her eyes. He’d been so distraught that he refused to leave her side for weeks. The fact that he was coming to find her meant that he’d always known where she was. It wouldn’t take much to learn what she was up to. There was a good chance he already knew.

She couldn’t stay. If Hyejin didn’t leave before her father arrived, he was going to have every Sentinel on the core planets escort her everywhere she went. She frowned. Why does that matter? The plan had already failed. She was almost chewed up by monsters because of her stubbornness. I’m not ready to give up yet.

Hyejin leapt to her feet. All she was wearing was a hospital gown and a single compression sock. Someone had cleaned her up pretty thoroughly. Thankfully, it seemed that there was no trace of the venom left in her muscles. For someone who had been close to dying, she felt remarkably well-rested. “How long has it been?” 

The nurse rushed to her side, grumbling. “Not long enough, Dear. Sit down. I will get you anything you need. You don’t need to go anywhere”

“I need,” Hyejin sneered, avoiding the nurse, “the bathroom.”

The flustered nurse faltered. “Right. Of course. Let me take you there.”

“Am I a prisoner?”

“No, of course not! Why would you think that?”

“I don’t know, something about a nurse who won’t answer my questions or let me move without trying to stop me.”

The woman bit her lip again. “Dear, I’ve been told—”

Hyejin didn’t want to listen to excuses anymore. She ripped the cannula out of her arm, pulling a splurt of blood out with it and sending the nurse into a panic. It didn’t take much effort to storm past the woman. It seemed she wasn’t actually allowed to physically stop her from leaving. Good.

It took Hyejin nearly twenty minutes to finally lose the guard-nurse in the crowded halls. The facility was like a maze. She’d never seen a building quite like it. Everything was separated into wings for different specialties, yet everyone in a uniform, and even some without, seemed busy either ferrying people or treating injuries. She had lost the nurse, but she had lost herself as well.

The young man on the other side of the desk finished typing on his holodisplay and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Ma’am. I only have a ‘Dion Saunders’ in the system. There’s no Atticus Floyd anywhere,” he confirmed again, remorse etched into the creases of his apologetic expression.

Hyejin wanted to cry all over again. That was just her luck. The only person in the universe who could help her was likely dead. Atticus seemed fine when he pulled her into the truck. Did the trigbies catch up after all? She swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded quietly.

“Mr Saunders is in Section H4, room 17 with his three children.”

Hyejin blinked. “His what?”

“The babies. They’re all safe, thankfully. Dion sustained some heavy injuries, but he seems to be all fixed up now. I’m impressed.”

Is it someone else? Hyejin was at a complete loss for words. She frowned and tilted her head. “You said Section H4?”

The male nurse nodded and brought up a holodisplay with a map over the counter. He pointed to a glowing red dot on the map. “This is us, here: Section J18, ManaTech Surgeries. You need to follow these three corridors until you reach the old dock. Then take the first corridor on your right, it’ll take you to the living quarters if you follow it the whole way.” He used his finger to trace out the path in red on the map. 

“Why does a surface hospital have an indoor dock?” Hyejin asked, tapping her DataCuff to the DataPoint on the desk. The light on the DataPoint turned green and the large map on the hospital holodisplay swapped to her cuff.

The man on the other side of the counter shrugged half-heartedly. “I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t always a hospital? It’s got a lot of old tech.”

Hyejin pulled up a real-time overlay on the map directions. It wasn’t as immersive as helmets or glasses, but the DataCuff did a decent job of lining up the miniature navigation map with her surroundings.

“Thank you. I mean it. You’ve been the most helpful person in this whole building so far.” She waved goodbye to him as she jogged down the corridors marked on the map. 

As it happened, a large portion of Tollindo’s people had some form of mana prosthetic. When she thought about it, it made sense why they would be the most common survivors of the disaster; they were already decked out in the very weapons that were designed to fight back against the monsters. She briefly thought of the woman who had driven off and left her for dead.

Hyejin stopped outside room 17 and hesitated. She wasn’t sure what to say. She wasn’t entirely sure it was even ‘her’ Dion inside. What if something bad really happened? What would I even say? 

“Harder!” a male voice cried from the other side of the door. A strained groan followed.

“It’s too tight!” another male voice replied, breathlessly. It was Dion. That was a relief.

“Don’t stop!” An audible deep breath and a moan.

“How deep do you want it?” Dion asked.

“I want to slide it all the way in…” Hyejin was pretty sure the other voice was the tall man, the one with the chocolates. 

Hyejin’s eyes were frozen as wide as they could go. Heat rose in her face as her imagination ran away with itself. The door opened suddenly, startling her.

“Hyejin!” Atticus was in the doorway, dressed in a bathrobe. “You’re okay! Thank Earth. I was just about to look for you.”

Before she could protest, Atticus tugged her into the room.