Body and Soul
While Blackheath and Alex try to find a way to save Dorsey, Jackson and Jai team up to hunt them down. Follows Shattered
Blackheath saw the whole thing through binoculars.
The snipers had done their job beautifully, firing at Ally's signal and disappearing before the Souls had hit the ground. Ally had looked so proud with a job meticulously planned, executed like clockwork. But her satisfaction turned to horror as she watched, a lone silhouette on the rooftop, while the crowd beneath turned into a mob, panicking, trampling each other beneath pitiless feet. She saw her mother go down, like she was drowning beneath them. She saw Alex, Yash on his shoulders, trying to fight through the crowds towards her, being swept away from her by the current of people. Finally the silhouette on the rooftop disappeared like a ghost.
Alex had got there first, pulling Yash down and kneeling beside Dorsey as the crowd thinned, leaving broken people like shipwrecks in the wake of a tidal wave. Ally got there next, standing as uselessly as Yash, watching him do CPR until he shouted at her to get a Healer. Blackheath never got there. He saw Ally turn and run at the same time as the Seeker sirens burst into the square in front of him. Then he disappeared.
He had to.
He had to get Ally safely away. He would have to trust Alex to look after Dorsey. He hated it, but he had to. But Alex had done the right thing, got her treatment, kept her alive, and now had her transferred to the new Zone Clinic. As soon as it was safe, Blackheath had come. His anger had boiled dry by then. Dorsey had promised him she wouldn't go to the peace day celebrations. But she had laughed as she had promised.
"They won't do anything," she'd teased him, "you'd tell me if they were."
I'm telling you now, he'd thought, making her promise. But she had misunderstood. And she had almost died as a result of his actions. He didn't even know how badly she'd been hurt.
Blackheath ran inside the hospital room as soon as he got there. Just let anyone try and stop him. Dorsey lifted her head to smile at him and he stopped as if he'd run into a glass wall, then jumped onto the bed, one hand shaking her shoulder, the other pressing a knife to her throat.
"Get the fuck out of her!" he screamed.
Alex was on him in an instant, arm twined inside his elbow so he couldn't cut her, peeling his hand off her, pulling him back, holding him away.
"She's finding her. Like Flame with me. It's only temporary. Leave her alone," he said into his ear, as calmly as he could. But that silver felt to Blackheath like mercury poisoning her eyes, and Alex had had to shake him before he understood. When the tension in his muscles finally started to ease away a little Alex dumped him in a chair and went to the Soul, who's eyes were perilously close to rolling over backwards.
"It's alright, you're ok," Alex said, holding her gently, stroking her head, "He's gone, he's not going to hurt you."
Blackheath realized in sudden dread that if he had scared her too much, she might just go, and take Dorsey with her. He sat perfectly still, not daring to breathe.
Slowly, the Soul came back. Blackheath had never been so happy to see silver eyes.