Sarah’s face appeared above his own, and blocked out the brilliant light. “Hi,” she said softly. “You’re back.”
Murhder started to smile. He wasn’t sure exactly how well he managed it. His mouth felt loose as yarn.
“Back …” His voice was like sandpaper. “Back to you.”
She was gentle as she brushed his newly shorn hair at his temples. “You were so brave.”
“What … happened? Results?”
“It looks good. It looks really promising. We’ve ordered a second set of the drug. Havers said he should have it by nightfall. If I’m right, it’s John’s best shot at a cure.”
“You’re … going to be … right.”
As Murhder’s eyelids became heavy as garage doors, he fought to keep them open.
“It’s okay,” he heard her say. “You rest.”
“Stay … with me?”
“You bet your life I will.”
Second time was the charm. This time, when awareness returned to him, his sensory functions were much more normalized: He knew he wasn’t having seizures, he could feel the bed underneath his body, and his hearing was back.
His eyes popped open. He took a deep breath. And he sat up, rising off the thin pillow, the hard mattress.
“Sarah?”
He glanced around—ah. There she was. On the floor, curled on her side against the wall, hands tucked up under her neck, a security blanket of her own making. Her hair had fuzzed out from her ponytail, wisps touching her face, and her features were tense as if, even in her repose, she was waiting for bad news. Worried about him. Worried about John.
Murhder looked down at his legs and wondered whether they were going to hold his weight. There was a sheet covering him, and he lifted it aside—only to stop. There were terrible marks on the front of his calves, the twin lines of bruises standing out bright purple and deep red.
It made him remember the fire. The kiln.
He smiled. After two decades of floating, he was now firmly on the earth, thank you very much. Granted, he wasn’t sure he could stand up, but that was only one measure of being grounded.
His thoughts were clear as they had been before everything had happened up at the symphath colony. The artificially stimulated change had been the last part of the cure he needed, the final piece to making him whole, the unexpected blessing that had finished the job.
Now, let’s try for some footwork, he thought as he moved his legs off the table one by one. His joints felt like they’d been over-oiled. And he had wires still attached to his chest. Glancing over his shoulder, he checked out the front of the monitor and located the off button. The machine went silent and dark when he pushed the thing, and he removed all the sensors that had been clipped on his chest via pads that had been stuck on him.
They’d already removed the IVs. Good.
The tile floor was cool under his bare soles, and he was relieved when his legs held him up. Baby steps. Little, shuffling baby steps. And as he lowered himself down next to Sarah, he used the wall like it was crutches, buttressing himself on the way to the tiled floor.
Sarah woke up just as his butt hit proverbial pay dirt, and she sat up like an alarm was going off.
“Hi,” he said. “That’s the first word you spoke to me afterward, by the way. Or at least, the first one I heard.”
“How are you feeling? Do you need me to get the—”
“Just you. That’s all I need.”
He lay down with her, spooning her body so that he was her wall to lie against. Sure, they could have moved to that room they’d been in before, or gotten up on the bed under the bright lights. But all that was too much like work. He was bone-tired.
As she settled in against his chest, using his arm as a pillow, she said, “They’re administering the drugs to John as we speak.”
“God, I hope it works.”
“Me, too.”
“Murhder?”
“Hmm?”
“You were very brave.”
“I’m going to will the lights off, ’kay?”
At his command, the big eight-light chandelier in the center—the one that had made him think he was in the Fade—extinguished. And then the ones along the ceiling followed. He kept the line under the cupboards as it was, the glow making everything seem a little less medical.
“You were so brave,” she murmured.
“So were you.”
Murhder closed his eyes and let out a long exhale. He only had some vague memory of his first transition; it had been centuries ago, after all. But he