Dia had Twenty in one of the death rooms. Bigger than the other medbay rooms, they weren’t used often, and there were only three. Their doors closed by default, however — a whisper of false kindness that left a bitter taste in my mouth.

Twenty curled up on an exam table identical to the one Avon had occupied a few days ago. Two steps from him stood a different type of table; solid metal with no paper sheet. Diagnostic images projected above that table, and the smell of chem-cleaner filled the air. A tiny sink occupied the corner. 

Twenty-one lay on that second table.

The foam and blood were gone, probably rinsed down the drain at the table’s foot. His face was smooth, untroubled, and I couldn’t remember ever seeing such a peaceful corpse.

When I died, would I lie on the metal table? Or would that be Avon, with me on the crinkling paper, waiting while my organs shut down one by one? Would the medicos carve us apart, leaving one behind, lingering?

Turning away, I crossed to an empty piece of wall and oozed down it to sit on the grey tiles. My forehead ground against my knees, allowing me to block out most of the room as the exhaustion and throbbing pain took over. I’d recognized the flux burn when I started feeling it — could even tag it as at least third-degree. Avon had to be feeling it — didn’t deserve it, but caught the backlash, too — and with the collars blocking our connection, I couldn’t tell how bad he was.

Avon leaned against the opposite wall and studied his boot toes. My mouth opened but snapped shut without asking him.

In the silence, A’s boots stopped in the door, then tapped over to Twenty’s bed. 

“Doing okay?”

“Better than you.” The smirk was evident in Twenty’s voice. “Need more caffeine?”

The jab — whatever it meant — struck home, and A retreated to stand beside the metal table. She jumped, boots scraping on tile, when the door whooshed open to admit Dia pushing a herd of squeaky-wheeled stools.

I glanced up when he paused; his glare targeted each of us with equal frustration. He rolled a stool at Avon, then me. Mine smacked the wall with a sharp clang when I made no effort to stop it.. Avon caught his but didn’t take a seat. The third wobbled toward A, spinning erratically as one wheel stuck. It stopped before it reached her, and she looked at it like she expected it to bite.

“Sit your asses down.” Dia tapped his comp, and a new diagnostic projection popped up in the middle of the room. A fell into the seat as if shot, and Avon slumped into his with a huff. I stayed on the floor, and when Dia stepped toward me, scanner in hand, I buried my head in my knees again.

“Avon first.” My knees absorbed most of the words, but Avon heard.

“Oh, now you’re worried about me?” 

I clenched my arms around my legs, pulling them tighter.

“And now you don’t want to talk about how you screwed up?” Metal clanged off tile, followed by the heavy thuds of angry steps.

“I didn’t mean to.” I swallowed past the tightness in my throat. “I didn’t think.”

“You didn’t think. You stole my power, blew up A, and all you can say is you didn’t think?” Avon paced faster. “That was going to be your defense at the inquiry?”

“Excuse me — Nova blew up A? I thought A’s heart exploded as a reaction to the dosing problem,” Dia said. “I assumed it was the same as what happened to Twenty-one.”

“I don’t know what happened to Twenty-one,” Avon snarled. “Though someone seriously screwed the pooch on that, and I want answers.” His footsteps stopped and I felt his glare. “Nova forced his way past the collars, pulled my power, and killed A.” 

His voice grew quieter.

“You knew the consequences — what they’d do to us. And you did it anyway.”

“How the hell didn’t that come up when the DA officer was interviewing us?” Dia’s stool creaked — he must have sat down.

“It… didn’t seem polite to leave that on the cameras. Very messy.” A’s interjection pulled me from my ball of misery, forcing me to acknowledge Avon’s crossed arms — how he turned away from me. “This one should have thanked you before — apologies, but the…” Her head tilted from side to side. “Hmm… situation with the doses has caused a bit of a kerfuffle.”

Sick to my stomach, I couldn’t stop the bubble of laughter that escaped before I buried my head again. I’d nearly gotten Avon killed — as horribly as the humans knew how — and she called it messy and a kerfuffle. 

“O…kay. Setting that aside, how is it that you’re here?” Dia’s natural inquisitiveness breached the silence. “I mean, I saw your chest… gaping open. Blood and — I guess bits of you — were all over that room. And now you’re… fine?”

“A is truly the worst sort of failure.” The genuine good humor in Twenty’s chuckle was entirely misplaced. “How many times have you failed to stay dead?”

“That is not relevant.” A inhaled and continued, “This one is more accustomed to dealing with dosage fluctuations, so the body didn’t… self-destruct like Twenty-one’s. And the physical trauma afterward provided an outlet for the excessive energy from the higher doses.” She paused, and I looked up to meet her eyes. “Again, thank you.”

Swearing, Dia threw the scanner at Avon and tapped on his comp, throwing up some additional displays. “Put that on your forehead and leave it. Channeling through a collar block isn’t a joke.” He poked at three graphs until they stacked on top of one another. “This is what I was looking at this morning. This one,” he tapped a line and it turned green, ”is Twenty-one.”

The line was relatively level on the left, with small spikes and drops, then leapt up on the before stopping.

“This one’s Twenty.” He tapped another line, and it turned red. This line plummeted on the left, with tiny spikes followed by wobbles, then began climbing on the right, but not back to where it started. It blipped, adding more data points to the right.

“The last is A.” Dia frowned. “Why are they numbered, and you’re a letter?”

“Each subject has a number and letter combination, designating series and sequence.”

“Yeah, but that was too complicated — we got here and some jerk decided to re-designate us.” Twenty flicked his claws out and sliced into the paper sheet. “Except he didn’t designate Lea. Why does everyone ignore Lea?”

I ignored the kerfuffle that spawned and traced A’s white line. It started at the same midpoint as the others, dropped, then, for the most part, climbed until it stopped at about the same point as the green line. Standing, I crossed to the display and zoomed in. Avon looked over my shoulder; he saw it, too.

“You tried to stabilize Twenty.” The spikes on his line lined up with the dips on hers. But then his wobbled, and hers kept going up. “Why didn’t you…” I shook my head, unwilling to give away my thoughts.

Fortunately, Avon stepped in.

“You transferred — what did you call it, energy? But something about it wasn’t working. You had to stop.”

“Energy transfers tend to increase aggression and create mental instability.” A glanced at Twenty. “The unthinkable becomes desirable.” 

“And with Twenty not getting his antipsychotics, that just made it worse.” Avon nodded.

“Antipsychotics?” Dia’s voice was deadly, and I realized that he still didn’t have the manuals.

I began to tap my comp, but Avon grabbed my wrist.

“No. If you send it that way, it’s traceable.” He dropped my arm and wiped his hand across my face, then on his fatigues. My gut clenched — how long had I been crying? “A, can you send the files you gave us to Dia?”

Dia’s comp pinged before Avon finished asking. A hadn’t moved, and her wrist was still bare under the too-long fatigue sleeves. Dia moved the biometric display to the side and popped the three manuals open.

“Maybe skip to the feeding section. Though it didn’t explain why injections are under feeding.” Avon’s voice rumbled against my back, and I missed his warmth when he crossed to the graphs again. “What is this, anyway? BLR?”

“Not sure,” Dia said distractedly. “It’s the default — took me a half hour to get anything like heart rate out of the monitor this morning, and it resets every time it’s closed.”

“Blood level ratio.” A shrunk under Dia’s sharp glance, but steeled herself to continue, “It’s calculated differently depending on the model, but it’s the easiest comprehensive interface. Under ‘Getting Start—’”

“Blood level? That’s—” 

Dia smacked my arm, and I shut up.

“Why did your feedback stop here?” Avon traced the white line to where it ended. The red line extended a good three inches past it and blipped new data points regularly.

“Oh!” A touched the black, flexible collar around her neck. It had washed clean, but was scorched and torn in places. “It’s broken. Pardon — this one will reroute the data.”

The white line extended, dropping sharply, then flattening at a new ‘normal’ still high above the starting point. It kept pace with the red line now, not blipping but smoothly appearing as if it had always been there.

She was fucking hardwired. 

My eyes narrowed. The procedure was insanely tricky, left most ‘volunteers’ dead, and those that survived went bat-shit crazy within three to five years. And I’m not kidding; they found one poor sod — implanted for four years — in a cave after his patrol was wiped out, eating bat guano. No one could prove he’d killed them, or if they had they didn’t tell us peons, but still. He’d lasted another three years before his particular brand of crazy was deemed unmanageable, and the humans put him down. 

“How many times did you say you’d died?”

Avon’s and Dia’s focus snapped onto me, and Avon’s remained there for an extra heartbeat. 

“421 times as of this morning.”

We gaped at A, except for Twenty, who had curled back up and watched with his usual smirk.

“That’s…” I shook my head. “And you just pop back up?”

“Sometimes. It depends on the body’s damage and BLR.”

There she went again, talking like whatever happened didn’t touch her. I ground my teeth and curbed my anger, knowing it wouldn’t endear me to Avon today.

“Damn.” Dia spun away from a projection I hadn’t noticed, yanked the diagnostic tool off Avon’s forehead, and slapped it onto mine. “You’ve got second-degree flux burn.” He stomped out, the door whooshing open and shut. 

“Avon…” I scrubbed my hands across my face, pulling the tool off and tossing it onto the metal table. “I’m sor—” 

“There’s things sorry doesn’t fix.” Avon crossed to the table and paused with his hand on the blinking tool. Then he turned and replaced it on my forehead. “Leave that on.”

He glanced over his shoulder and my throat locked up tight.

“Maybe he’ll come back, too.” Twenty sounded uncharacteristically pensive. “I mean, you’re an older model, right, A? Newer is better — we should be able to do anything you can, and more besides.”

A hummed and looked away. “There’s a lot of assumptions there.”

“Yeah? Name one!”

“Isn’t staying dead intrinsically more successful than failing to do so?”

“Only in your twisted mind.” Twenty sneered. “Lea and I aren’t dying, but if we did, we wouldn’t stay that way. Nothing is going to stop us.” He grinned at the air next to his bed, then jumped down from his table and took the two steps to the other. Raising a fist, he brought it down with a hollow thud on Twenty-one’s breastbone. “Come on, dickweed! Get up!”

How dare he treat Twenty-one that way? A growl bubbled up inside me and my hands clenched. 

But…

The sick thought crept through my gut.

What if it did bring him back?

A muffled sound from Avon pulled me into motion. I wrapped my arms around him, tugging his head down to rest on my shoulder. His hot tears scorched the burns beneath my collar, and he shuddered with each thud as if the blows fell on his flesh.

“Twenty.” A’s tone was stern. “Stop. That won’t help. He’s… empty. This one hasn’t seen anyone who felt like that come back.”

“What do you know?” Twenty turned, fist raised.

A stood her ground, and that ground placed her squarely between Twenty and my brother. That may have been the first time I felt a sliver of gratitude toward her that wasn’t tainted by bitter anger.

Amazing what a shit-ton of guilt will do for your perspective.

“This one has access to the records. A search —” 

“Records of what? You dying and coming back?” Twenty turned his head as if looking at someone we couldn’t see, then climbed back on the paper-covered table. “Lea’s right — everyone else’s stayed dead.”

“People stay dead,” A agreed as the door whisked open.

Dia froze mid-step, then continued briskly. He pulled down the collar of Avon’s fatigues, raised the metal links away from the burns on his neck, and smeared a pungent cream across the abused flesh. Then Dia did the same to me. Avon only moved far enough from me for Dia to reach around, then mashed his face tightly against my shoulder again. He didn’t even jump when Dia pressed the hypospray against the side of his neck.

Me? I flinched — that sucker burned like ice even with our bond blunted by the collars.

“Avon, you should be on med-leave for a week. Nova, you’ll probably need the same.” Dia walked to the corner sink and washed his hands. “I’m requesting two weeks. Hopefully, they’ll approve at least four days. You’ll feel like death warmed over in the meantime.” He grimaced when he realized his poor choice of words, but continued, “Once you’re sent back on patrol, try not to channel your power too much.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I rolled my eyes. We knew the routine — there wasn’t a single mage who hadn’t been flux burned at one point or another. If I wanted to be honest, my reckless tendencies — on and off base — made me intimately familiar with the choice agony. And though I couldn’t tell either of the mages, I deserved every minute of punishment my flux burns would provide.

Though I could have done without the lecture Dia gave me once my diagnostics finished. On the bright side, he was so spitting-mad he didn't say out loud how bad it was — he just put in the request for more leave. Avon's exhaustion kept him from noticing Dia’s anger, and he didn’t see the diagnostic screen, either. That couldn’t last, but I'd take it while it lasted.