Chapter 19 · Iron and Arteries

"Hold the damn light steady or I'm stitching your fingers to the table!" Kaelen roared, his voice grating like gravel in a blender.

Roxie didn't flinch, though her hand trembled slightly. She leaned over him, the harsh LED lamp casting jagged shadows across the blood-slicked metal of the workbench. "Maybe if you stopped screaming like a dying whale, I could actually see where the artery is," she snapped back.

Kaelen let out a sharp, wet hiss. He had his shirt ripped open, exposing a chest that looked like a battlefield. A jagged piece of reinforced plating from a corporate Walker was still embedded deep in his side, pulsing in time with a heartbeat that sounded like a ticking bomb. Every time his heart hammered, a fresh spurt of crimson painted the table.

"Shut up and cut it out," Kaelen commanded. He didn't use anesthesia. He couldn't. The moment his consciousness dipped, the gravity core in his chest would destabilize, and they’d all be flattened into two-dimensional pancakes.

"You're insane," Roxie muttered, her fingers dancing over the wound. She felt the heat radiating off him—not just fever, but a raw, humming energy that made the hair on her arms stand up.