Chapter 1:
My feet felt like they'd suddenly been immersed in quicksand. Moments ago, adrenaline coursing through every vein in my body, I'd ducked away as Titus opened fire from barely ten feet away, practically dancing as the self-preservation instinct twisted my body out of the path of the bullet. Now it seemed as though, no matter how much my brain commanded my feet to move, they refused to shift with even a fraction of the nimbleness they'd shown only seconds before.
The shocked expression was frozen on Lexa's face as she clutched her midsection, black blood flowing between her fingers as she dropped to her knees, then rolled, almost lazily, over to her side.
"Heda," Titus's voice was almost dazed, as if he couldn't quite process what was happening either.
An automatic denial was ripped from my throat as I saw her drop and my feet finally listened and drove me to her side.
"Help me get her to the bed," I commanded.
Titus said something, I don't know exactly what, but he was helping me, which was good enough. Jesus, there was blood everywhere. Operating on instinct, I tore her shirt opened, trying to visualize the wound. Black blood poured out of her abdomen and onto the bed.
Pouring, not pumping. My brain dutifully announced. Indeed, black blood was flowing steadily from the wound, without pulsing from it. Small favors. It looked like it was a bad bleed, but not an arterial one. If it were, she'd already be dead. You could bleed dry from the abdominal aorta in seconds.
"I need something to stop the bleeding," I could hear panic creeping into my voice, and I tried desperately to squash it down. "You're going to be okay," I turned back to the woman lying prone, trying desperately to focus through the pain, "Just lie still, okay? I need you to lie still."
"Don't be afraid," Lexa's voice was barely above a whisper.
God damn it. I couldn't see the wound clearly. Blood was everywhere, and more was pouring out every second.
I quickly scanned around. The human body can lose between 2.4 and 4 liters of blood before it becomes life-threatening, Pike's voice from Earth Skills class echoed back at me. There was an irony for you. There wasn't anywhere near that much on the ground. I had time, but not much. "Murphy, I need Aiden and there's a field kit in my chamber. If I can slow down the bleeding enough, we're going to need someone to put it back in. You have five minutes, maybe a little more." I thought for a moment, "I saw him in the throne room earlier, he can't have gone far."
Murphy disappeared. We didn't get along, but he wasn't exactly about to let Lexa die if there was something he could do about it. Knowing him, he was probably playing some angle. Considering how I'd found him, it couldn't hurt for him to foster a little goodwill with Titus. The med kit I had with me had everything I needed to do a field transfusion, but she needed a nightblood donor, and I didn't qualify.
"Forgive me, Heda," Titus's voice whispered.
"Titus, either help or back off," I said sharply.
Lexa said something in Trig, but it barely registered. My mind was in no state to do the translation on the fly. Something about him not harming me.
"Hey, Heda, don't you give up on me," I threatened.
"I'm not. My spirit will live on." She sounded desperately tired, as if she were struggling to remain conscious.
"No," I shook my head in vehement denial. "I told you, I need your spirit right where it is."
God damn it. She needed a surgical suite, or at least a doctor, and there was one less than a day's ride in Arcadia, but it may as well have been on the moon. She would bleed out before we got out of the building, much less across grounder territory to the station. If I could just stop the bleeding, or even slow it down to a trickle…
Why are you hiding from your own people?
Why'd you run away from yours?
It's weird what pops into your mind when you're in a blind panic. It seemed like months ago that Roan had me tied up in that subway station waiting for the Ice Nation army to pass by.
The wound in his abdomen had been almost exactly where Lexa's was now…
"Titus, hold this," I yelled at him. He was muttering some words over her now, but I didn't care. Her life was flowing out of her, and I wasn't about to let him give last rights until her body was good and cold. He'd unfolded some kind of surgical kit on the bed. I could see a scalpel, some forceps, a few rudimentary surgical tools that looked as though they'd seen better days. They could come in useful later, but now I had more pressing concerns. "Titus, dammit, hold this and push hard," I guided his hand to the makeshift gauze pad I was holding over her wound.
I quickly rushed away to a flaming cauldron that stood by the doorway. A hot iron poker sat, its end in the flame, and its end glowing a bright cherry red as I removed it. That'll do.
"Titus, out of the way," I ordered as I came back.
"There's nothing you can do now. The next commander will protect you," Lexa whispered.
"Maybe they will," I muttered, "but not today." I turned to Titus, "hold her down." I turned back to Lexa, God she was pale, "Lexa, I need you to brace yourself, 'cause this is really going to hurt." Without waiting for her to ask, I shoved the hot end of the poker into her wound. Lexa screamed and her back arched as the sickening, sweet smell of burning flesh rose around us. I mentally begged whatever powers were watching to show a little consideration as I pulled the metal rod free, and watched as blood refilled the blistered hole it had so recently occupied.
Very slowly.
I quickly grabbed Lexa's hand, and placed my fingers on the pulse point at her wrist. Her eyes had rolled back in her head. Whatever inhuman torture I'd just inflicted on her, combined with the blood loss and bullet wound, had caused her to lose consciousness. Lexa was far and away the toughest, most resilient human beings I'd ever met, but she had her limits. Her pulse was there. Not strong, but it was steady. Her breathing was shallow and fast, and a sheen of sweat covered her pale face. She was going into shock.
For the first time in what seemed like eons, I let myself take a full breath. She wasn't out of the woods, but at least she wasn't in any immediate danger of bleeding out. There was no way of knowing how much damage the bullet had done, but it should be possible to transport her, if we were careful.
Titus had gone back to chanting over her.
"Back off, Titus, she's not dying today," I belted at him. At least, not yet, I didn't add. Shock, on its own, could be fatal once it set in, but that wasn't the highest priority. We had to get her out of here, and get her some real medical attention.
Murphy appeared at the door, clearly out of breath. "Found him," he commented, gesturing at the young blond teenager next to him. I almost collapsed with relief. My focus was so frazzled that I could barely choke out the Trig phrase "beja sis me au, sis yu heda au," please help me help your commander. I'll never know if he understood what I was asking of him, but he clearly heard the desperation in my voice and knew not to ask too many questions that I didn't have answers to.
I reached for his arm, opening the med kit as I did so and unwinding the transfusion kit, and tying the tourniquet around his upper bicep. Immediately, a vein presented itself in the crook of his elbow and I inserted the 16-gauge needle into it. I watched as the black blood flowed into the plastic tubing, then inserted the opposite end into a vein in Lexa's arm. Fortunately, she hadn't lost enough blood for them to collapse. Yet.
I could only guess at how much she needed. That was the hard part, getting enough blood from Aden that Lexa would be stable enough to move, but not so much that Aden would be in danger. So I kept my finger on her pulse and waited for it to strengthen. I quickly pulled off her left boot and checked that the I could still detect a pulse at her foot. Finally, I dragged my thumbnail up the sole of her foot and watched as her toes curled downward. Whatever the bullet had done, it didn't seem to have compromised circulation, or any of the nervous connections to the lower extremities.
I closed my eyes and tried to steady my breathing. The surge of adrenaline subsided, and I felt my hands start to shake uncontrollably. She wasn't safe, not yet, but she was stable enough that I could get her to some real medical help.
"What have you done?" Titus demanded.
"I saved her life," I countered. For now, I didn't add.
"You have only delayed the inevitable," he insisted. "Once word of her condition becomes known, she will be in no state to counter a challenge."
"So we'll take her to Arkadia. She'll be safe there, and nobody would dare attack while she's being treated there."
Titus shook his head. "My people will see that as a kidnapping by the clan she just blockaded. It would be an onslaught. Both you, and she would be safer if she were dead."
"So we let her die," I said.
"You have already saved her life," Titus said sadly.
"But nobody outside of this room knows that," I answered. "What happens when a commander dies?"
"The conclave is held to determine the new Heda, and the spirit is transferred to them," Titus said.
"Trikru burns the bodies of their dead. Can you keep this secret until you burn… something in her place?" I asked.
"I don't under-…"
"Can you do it?" I demanded.
"Yes, but…"
"Good. Then do it." I ordered. I turned to Aden. "Aden, can you keep what you saw here today a secret?"
He looked over at the unconscious Lexa, and nodded, "I will."
"You know what this means, right?" I asked him. "There will be a conclave. You will have to fight, and you may lose."
"If it is Heda's will that I die in the conclave, then I will keep her secret with my last breath," he said, firmly.
"I do not understand," Titus spoke up. "You save the commander only to have her spirit pass on to another?"
"No, you don't understand," I shook my head sadly in agreement. "I was never saving the commander. Will you help me save Leksa Kom Trikru?"
He held my gaze for a moment. "This is weakness," he shook his head.
"So be it. Will you help me?" I asked again.
"I was fleimkepa for five commanders, I will be fleimkepa for a sixth," he nodded.
"Okay, what do we do?" I asked.
"Help me roll her onto her side," he ordered.
"Careful, she could still bleed out," I told him.
His head bobbed forward as he helped me roll Lexa's limp form onto her left side. He reached for the scalpel from the medical kit he'd unrolled only moments earlier. For the first time, I saw the exit wound, just above her hip bone on her left side. It was bleeding, but not badly. I could pack that wound and have her mobile. It was a through-and-through. She had a real shot at recovery if it didn't hit anything vital.
"Wait, what are you doing?" I demanded. Of its own accord, my hand darted out to grab his wrist.
He held up a hand to calm me down. "You must trust me. I would never harm Leksa Kom Trikru."
I felt that the gunshot wound in her abdomen was a pretty strong argument against that, but, to be fair, he had been trying to hit me at the time. And in his own way, I guess he was trying to protect Lexa.
"I must do this," he added, sensing my apprehension, "and you must let me. If she could, she would tell you herself."
Hearing Lexa's words, almost verbatim, quoted at me shocked me into obedience. He slid her dark hair aside, revealing a figure-eight on its side tattooed on the back of her neck. The long-held symbol for infinity. With a practiced ease, he made a small incision, only a couple of inches, across the symbol. He whispered a phrase. It sounded like Latin, but I have no clue what it meant.
At his words, a small crystal slid free from the back of her neck, retracting tiny delicate tendrils as it did so.
"What the hell?" I'd almost forgotten that Murphy was there as I watched, almost transfixed by what I'd thought only moments ago was some kind of religious ritual.
"What is that?" I asked.
"It's an A.I." Murphy realized first. Although how he realized that, I'm not sure I know.
Titus shook his head as he carefully cleaned the device and slid it into a metal box. "No, it is the spirit of the commanders."
When Lexa woke up, that was going to be a conversation.
"You can disappear under cover of darkness," Titus announced. "I will take care of the rest."
"Murphy, do you think you can sneak my mom out of Arkadia?"
"I thought the plan was to sneak her in," he nodded at Lexa.
I shook my head, "no, Titus was right about that. If word gets out that Lexa is alive and at Arkadia, they'll demolish the entire town trying to get her back. All of Skaikru and a lot of the coalition will die. I need to get her somewhere where we can operate, but nobody will think to look for her."
"And what do you want me to do?" He asked.
"Meet me there," I said.
-x-
The door of the trading post swung open to Niyla's very confused face. To her credit, she took in my disheveled look, blood-soaked clothing, and tangled hair with relatively little comment.
"Now I've been taken by the mountain," I told her, "will you help me?"