Chương 26: Eyes

Gunshots aren't really something you're meant to hear indoors. The sound slams and bounces around off of every flat surface, and it always finds a way to bounce right back towards your ears. This means if the first time it doesn't pop your eardrums, it's going to get as many mulligans as it can to do so. I liked to think mine lasted at least a few rounds before they finally were seized by the perpetual shriek ringing through them.

What they don't tell you about loud noise is, after a certain point, it messes with your sight. Not like everything gets double-vision or something. Your brain will just get so overwhelmed by the sound that your vision just stops processing right. Things skip. Your vision seems to only catch every other step. It's not slow motion, it's something else entirely. I couldn't describe it well if I tried.

All I could describe was how my vision could barely hold together the sight of the rifleman after he fell in front of me. I could barely look over to my right and see blood flying from Christian's head. There was no way to tell how much damage was done. But I needed to do something to the son of a bitch who made the order. The delay in my sight was starting to slow, but that ringing in my ears was still going. There was some kind of chatter going on but I couldn't hear it. My body was set on action.

I reached down with my left hand. The tendons in my arm were shot, but not as badly as my right. I could bring my digits down, just not curl them into a fist. Thankfully, I didn't need that much to grab the rifleman's ankle. It gave way into my grip, but my hands were too numb to recognize texture. Whether or not they broke was not my issue. The terrorist screamed, I think. It's all still so muffled. So maybe it was broken.

Whipping my arm forward, I sent the rifleman hurtling into Father Pine, their bodies collapsing together from the sudden force. They moved like limp dolls. My earpiece was in my right ear. All I could do with my right hand was extend my thumb, and barely. It was enough. Pressing my thumb into my ear piece, I croaked out the word "Ambulance" while the blood loss was in a tense battle with my consciousness. But then I lost............ Light. Flashlight burning into my corneas. The ringing's mostly gone.

There are people who won't shut the Hell up and let me catch my bearings. The flashlight moves aside, providing me with actual vision. Paramedics in blue. My mask has been torn off. I turned my head towards where I thought Chris would be, wrestling my head through the grip by the one examining me without issue. No one. He might actually be dead because of me. There was no chance to dwell on this, as more flashlights shone in my face and the reflexive response I had was to turn my head back up.

Voices started becoming clear again.

"-yes are responsive to light, get him loaded in." The world around me shifted, the ceiling moved. Oh, that was it. I was on some kind of stretcher. The interior of the ambulance was rich in silvers and blacks and blues and yellows. Never seen the inside of one from this position. Usually was watching people get carted in. The man who had blasted my sight with his little flashlight was nowhere to be seen. Instead, something of good news did show up for me. Dr.

Way was there, immediately pressing all sorts of little stickers with wires on them into me. She spoke to someone else in medical jargon. It was alien language to me. Then she finally deemed me worthy of human language.

"Do you know how stupid you are?" Words fought their way out of my throat. I was trying to help let them out but it was a losing battle.

"Chris- Chris got shot in the head-" Sudden flash of vertigo. I clenched my eyes through it.

"Why aren't you with him?" She looked almost offended by that question.

"If he's got a bullet in his head there's not much I can do for him in an ambulance. You, meanwhile, have both of your arms torn open. I can at least stop you from bleeding to death." My arms, numb to sensation, caught my attention as she was using one hand just to slam fistfuls of that clotting powder she used on me before. That couldn't be healthy.

"There's nothing I can do directly but I can at least stop you from bleeding out. We're tapping in another Auditor who specializes in magic to help you. She's being rushed in from DC right now. You just need to hold out." Didn't think this was gonna be the day I was going to get introduced to magic. Couldn't complain, though. Sam was back to speaking medical-ese for the rest of the trip while I dwelled on the fact I got a man killed. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent.

Report any appearances on Amazon. Shouldn't have said shit. Should've waited for the others to show up. That's what those rules of engagement were for. Kept getting ahead of myself. Maybe if he weren't there and it were just me, things would've been fine. Then I could have just torn the place apart. Fucking stupid of me. I couldn't get the thoughts out of my head. Every mistake was put under a microscope. If I tried sneaking, or seeing where Christian climbed up, we could've ambushed them.

Why didn't I wait for them to talk further? Didn't even get any good information besides names. I should've grabbed a chair for myself as my own weapon, then I would've been able to incapacitate both riflemen at the same time. Mistake, mistake, mistake. I was sloppy. Raiding that drug den took weeks of preparation. I just burst into that stupid warehouse thinking, because I thought getting told a hundred times I had resources backing me now meant that it'd be fine.

I spent the rest of the ride debating myself, before the ambulance stopped with a shudder. The doors opened and, after having all of those tubes and wires yanked out of me, I was yanked out on my stretcher, led all throughout the hospital. Now everyone in there would see my face. Exact opposite of what I wanted. My identity was already fucking compromised. And if any of those terrorists escaped they'd be able to get that information too.

A door swung open to an empty hospital room, where I was unceremoniously left without being unstrapped from the stretcher. Samantha followed behind, my blood covering the sleeves of her coat.

"Snickerdoodles, L- Herc. What'd they even do to you?" I let out a groan as the words were able to make their way out more easily this time, but it didn't feel any more comfortable.

"This guy threw these... wooden things. They made a bunch of spikes that stuck in my arm and started digging deeper. I had to get them out before they hit anything important." The scientist pinched the bridge of her nose.

"They did hit important things. Your arms have basically no functional tendons right now. You're lucky they have an Auditor who knows healing magic within a hundred miles. Wish they could teleport but we can't have everything. Otherwise we'd need to somehow get in contact with The Wave. Any solutions I'd have wouldn't be a perfect solution." She let out an exhale, grabbing a chair and sliding it over to sit by me.

"Tank's gonna be pissed at you," she added on. I nodded.

"I'd be too." The doctor shook her head and spoke further.

"Not that kind of pissed. He sounded hoarse when he mobilized everyone. I get you don't like him because he's a jerk, but he doesn't have bad intentions with us. You heard his argument with the chief, he doesn't even like the fact we're here." He was hiding his powers from everyone but me.

"I don't trust him, but I do trust that he doesn't want us getting hurt like this. Those rules of engagement are for our protection, Hercules." Stop using that fucking name, already. I was prepared to call her on it, but the door abruptly swung open as the sunglassed, mustached asshole himself burst right in. Speak of the Devil.

"You're lucky I respect the Red Cross enough to not slap an injured man in a stretcher. You said it was one guy, and we come in and there's a total of seven assholes including you and Flowstate and blood fucking everywhere! Three of those guys are gonna be in wheelchairs, by the way." Good. He rubbed his head, fingers treading across his receding hairline and looked out a nearby window.

"What the Hell happened, kid?" Croaking out the words was an awful process, but I managed it.

"We got in, found some rags to use as masks. I confronted the group while Chri-" Tancred's head snapped away from the window, focusing on me.

"... Flowstate got into an ambush position. He disabled the guns but they had like... wood magic stuff. It wasn't too big of a deal but the ringleader there, some old guy, he tied Flowstate up in vines and threw these wooden things that put spikes in my arms. When I ripped them off, one of the guys shot him." The gunshot rang out in my memory again.

"I got him shot. That was my fault for not thinking. If I have to go to the Firmament, I get it." The auditor spat on the floor.

"You're not going to the desert, moron. You didn't point the gun at his head. Why the Hell would we lock you up because some other idiot managed to squeeze the trigger at the last second?" The words flew out of my mouth.

"I got him killed, Tancred." He stared at me through his glasses. Not a single word. I could feel Dr. Way's gaze lingering on me as well. The door swung open again, drawing our attention to a woman in a suit similar to Tancred's, smoking a pipe. She also wore sunglasses, though hers were solid black.

"That my subject, Abichail?" Tancred nodded.

"Yeah, Morgan. Do your shit. I got other fish to fry right now. Don't let the stretcher belts fool you, he could probably bench press this hospital." Agent Tancred waved dismissively as he walked out of the room. The woman spoke as she approached me.

"I'm Super Commission Auditor Agent Lafeuillade. I'm one of their top magical experts and one of the few people to master the art of healing magicks." She had some kind of accent. Almost French, but off.

"What's his malady?" She asked, gazing at Sam. The doctor answered without missing a beat.

"Practically every tendon in his forearm is shredded. The only one that didn't seem particularly damaged was his lower extensor pollicis on his inner right hand, and his flexor carpi ulnaris on his left. He was bleeding out for thirty minutes." Shocked I didn't die.

"I used hemostatic agents about fifteen minutes ago, but I had to be excessive just in case, but that means he has a hypercoagulation risk. There might be bone damage but I couldn't tell without my equipment." I couldn't tell, either.

"He already had a mending laceration on his inner left forearm, digging into the extensor carpi radialis longus. Is there anything we can do?" The auditor took a draw of her pipe, blowing out circles in the air.

"Sweetheart, magic can do anything you put your mind to. That's what the word means if you get down to the etymology of it. I have flesh restoration magic, though nerves are more complex. Expedition of the blood magics to prevent hypercoagulation will also be materially expensive." Sam nodded, understanding far more of this than I did.

"So what do you need? What can I do?" The auditor shook her head.

"You don't need to do anything. My issue is rationing out my expenses. I eschew materials by using little bits of myself, typically my liver since it can regenerate. That's great for mending muscle, dealing with blood, but nerves..." She tapped away at her pipe.

"The only abundant regenerating nervous tissue I can think of is in the brain and spine. I'd risk giving myself a stroke since the ratio of repair versus how much I'd be giving up isn't even." The doctor spoke.

"Your peripheral nervous system regenerates, up to a millimeter a day. You just need Schwann cells, you can get those from your spleen." Lafeuillade hummed.

"The spleen doesn't regenerate without trauma though. And it wouldn't be a perfect regeneration. I'd be damaging my own immune system permanently." Dr. Way shook her head.

"The spleen doesn't, but the glia in your spleen is full of those Schwann cells, which specifically do regenerate." The doc sounded confident, I had no idea what I was listening to.

"Hm. Sell some of my liver for flesh, and see if I can isolate specific cells for rapid nerve growth. I'd need a perception spell for that. Are you a virgin?" Sam sputtered for the first time since I met her.

"Excuse me?"

"I need an adult virgin woman's blood in my eyes for an enhanced perception spell." Things were being said that I didn't know would ever need to form as their own sentences.

"That's the only one you know?"

"The only one that lets me see in my body precisely." Silence rang through the air, before the doctor rifled through her coat and procured something out of my line of sight. She flinched for a second, before holding a finger out.

"This is ridiculously unsanitary." At that moment, it occurred to me that Samantha had two kids. The agent, who I could now process was in fact wearing gloves that just happened to be a similar color to her skin, used her own finger to swab up the blood from Sam's digit. She then reached under her shades, a wriggling motion for each eye. She stood there for a moment before taking her glasses off.

This wouldn't be such a big ordeal if her irises weren't such a prominent shade of yellow, with pupils slitted like a cat's. The auditor properly made her way to the side of my stretcher, resting her hands on either side of it.

"This is the part where I have to explain that due to the nerve repair needed, I can't apply any painkilling spells on you. You're going to feel your nervous system be remade. Do you understand?" Not entirely, but I just nodded to get things going.

"Right, let's begin the operation."