Page 181 of Alchemised
Her voice was barely more than a whisper.
“They blocked the doors and started killing and reanimating everyone. The necrothralls they made helped them kill faster.” She swallowed. “The hospital wasn’t equipped. My father—he’d never—he’d only heard about necrothralls. These were colleagues. Patients. I told him they weren’t people anymore, but he still didn’t fight back when they caught him.”
She reached up, pressing her palm against her throat for a moment, her fingers curled, following the thin scar just below her left ear that swept towards her throat.
“He was so gentle. He had this deep voice that would rumble in your chest when he hugged you. He would never have hurt me …”
“The reports said there were no survivors.” Ferron’s voice seemed to come from somewhere far off.
“They didn’t find me right away,” she said dully.
She squeezed the glass in her hand. “All the field hospitals. In one day. They killed everyone, nurses, doctors, surgeons, all the patients. And we found out about the liches. And what I was.”
“The liches who infiltrated the hospitals were a failed experiment, I’m told,” Ferron said quietly. “Morrough and Bennet were trying to see if placing talismans inside other living bodies would let the Undying take over and remain alive. But the host bodies always went into shock.”
“Oh,” was all Helena could think to say. Her intoxication had struck; even stringing words together felt arduous, but she struggled through, Gettlich’s face floating in her mind. “Do you know what they’re working on now?”
His eyes narrowed. “I don’t hear much beyond rumours presently. Why?”
She looked away. “No reason.”
“Why’d they make you a healer?”
She blinked. “Healing’s efficient. Things that can take weeks or months to recover from, can be fixed in minutes or hours with vivimancy. They needed someone who could save people.”
Ferron gave a derisive scoff.
Her anger reignited. “You have no idea how hard it is to save someone, to fix all the ways the people like you break them.” She glared at him. “I hope someday you have to try. See how little you think of it then.”
He looked away.
She felt an odd spark of satisfaction.
There was a long silence. Ferron seemed completely lost in his thoughts, and Helena was so drunk she could barely see straight. She closed her eyes, drifting. When she reopened them, he was staring at her.
She looked back and couldn’t help but think he looked different now.
Older. Or perhaps she was incredibly intoxicated.
“Can I ask you a question?” she asked, struggling against dizziness. “Do you feel the array? Can you tell it’s affecting you?”
“Yes,” he said with a faint nod. “I didn’t think I could change, but it’s like being cold-forged. I’m gradually being beaten into a new iteration of myself. It doesn’t countermand who I am, but I feel certain things less than I did. It’s easier to be ruthless and focused, harder to dissuade myself from impulses that align with what I want.”
She squinted at him. “Why that design? What was Bennet trying to turn you into?”
“I designed it,” he said quietly.
That information was shocking enough to sober Helena. She sat up.
“It was my punishment,” he said. “I expected it would kill me, but if I survived, I didn’t want them to choose what I became. So I asked to design it, as proof of my penance.”
She sat forward, studying him. She wasn’t imagining it; he was different. It was like witnessing a slow metamorphosis. The effect of the array was likely exacerbated by the delay in healing, the deterioration making him more malleable.
His features had grown more defined, still gaunt from sickness, but it had carved the boyishness from his face. He actually looked like an adult now.
She tilted her head to the side. If she saw him, without the context of who he was, she might find him rather handsome.
The thought made her blink so hard, the room went out of focus.
