The community hospitals had never been this full.
Not once in a hundred years.
Doctors sprinted through blood stained halls, gloves soaked, coats stained, shoes slipping as they moved from one packed room to the next. There weren't enough of them—nowhere near enough—and the bodies kept coming, dragged from the rubble minute by minute.
New Haven's population had once stood at over three million, the largest of any haven in existence. But now, just from sheer estimates alone.
Word was that over seven hundred thousand had died.
Seven hundred thousand.
Gone.
"Doctor, we've got a child! Her leg's crushed, she needs an amputation!"
"Woman on the east wing—internal bleeding, emergency surgery!"
Even the company building had been converted into a makeshift hospital. Anything to help. Anyone who could move was helping.
Sabrina walked through the doors, dressed in blue scrubs. Her jaw was clenched. Her fists balled.
She was pissed.
"Seven hundred thousand, Love," she said, stepping into the next room. "Do you know how many of them could've been saved if those bastards just helped? If they just showed up?!"
"You know what it's like, Sabrina," Lovecraft replied. He was too tall for the room, his head nearly brushing the light fixtures. "Probably more than anyone."
She stopped. In the room—hooked up to more machines than she'd thought they owned—lay what was left of her people. Elendira. Iron. Vladimir. Theresa. Cillian. Osiris. Massiah. Gran. Dahlia.
So many names.
So many shattered bodies.
Some of them wouldn't walk again. Some might never wake up.
"Fuck me!" she screamed, slamming her hand into the wall. The echo of it cracked through the room.
"I risked my life because I know you," Lovecraft said calmly. "Because of our history. That's the only reason I'm standing here now. If it weren't for that?" He shrugged. "I wouldn't be putting my neck on the line for a bunch of curblickers who don't even know my first name."
"It's seven hundred thousand people, Love!" Sabrina shouted, gesturing wildly. "Could be even fucking more!"
"I understand," Lovecraft replied calmly. "You're angry, more at yourself than anyone else. But deep down, you get it." He turned to leave the room. "That's just life."
The door swung shut behind him.
Sabrina dropped into a chair, her legs slamming against the floor with repeated strikes.
The remaining second grades had taken what was left of the fifths—the wide eyed recruits still tucked in dorms—and gone out, searching for survivors of their own.
While the seconds hadn't suffered that many losses.
The third grades had been decimated. Over sixty dead.
The fourths, assigned to evacuation as well, hadn't fared better—hundreds gone.
"Fuck me!" she screamed.
"Fuck me!"
"Fuck me!"
Her hand tore through her hair, yanking until strands tangled in her fingers. She wanted to scream louder. Tear the walls down. Undo time.
Osiris, Massiah, Elendira—they were alive. For now. They'd survived Knox... but just barely. And that was the problem.
If three of their strongest couldn't take him down, then this wasn't just another enhanced myutant, not like the one in Raval.
No.
This was something else entirely.
Something stronger. Something that couldn't be reasoned with. A ticking time bomb, winding down toward the end of the world.
Her head fell back, going back to Diamantis's words.
"Far to the north, on a small isolated island buried in eternal winter... lies a village. Perched atop the ice, untouched by time. There, you'll find your answers. Either in your blood—or in the blood of my family."
The island was most likely Winterglaides, known for its eternal snow and cold exports. If that truly was where Knox and the rest of his so-called family had holed up, then they had a serious problem.
The haven lay deep in the depths, far beyond the reach of any relay towers. If she sent a team—when she sent a team—they'd be cut off for days. No signals. No updates. No reinforcements. She wouldn't know if they were dead until it was far too late.
It was a logistical nightmare.
Worse still, if they couldn't kill Knox here, on familiar ground, how could they hope to beat him in his own territory? They didn't even know the layout of Winterglaides. It was completely uncharted to them.
No one had been there in years.
No one—except Arsenal.
"Ms. Khusanov!" a voice shrieked from down the hallway.
One of the nurses, scrubs soaked with red, struggled to balance a stretcher, the wheels slicing against the floor. On it lay a boy, battered beyond recognition. His limbs were burned and flayed, his face barely distinguishable beneath the layers of blood and ash.
"Arsenal."
Sabrina didn't shout. She didn't breathe. She just pointed—toward one of the emptier operation rooms at the end of the corridor.
Her legs moved before she realized it, dashing beside the nurses, gripping the side rail with white knuckles as they veered into the sterile, silver-lit room.
He looked... ruined. A part of her, wished he'd already died. Wished he didn't have to feel any of this. That he wouldn't wake up to this kind of agony.
That he could rest.
They hauled him onto the surgical bed, his chest rising and falling in frantic, shallow gasps. Every breath sounded like broken glass caught in a windpipe. His body trembled, both from the pain and the cold.
"Vitals dropping," the attending nurse said, "BP is low. 74 over 39. We're losing him!"
"Stabilize the bleeding first, then clear the necrotic tissue." Sabrina said calmly, grabbing a scalpel. "We need to save as much as we can. We'll reconstruct later."
"I'm so sorry, there weren't any more available doctors." The nurse said.
"It's okay." Sabrina answered curtly, her blade already moving.
She cut quickly, precise movements around the face, pulling away charred flesh and splinters of metal. "Clamp," she said, and it was in her hand before the word finished leaving her lips.
The beeping on the monitor fluttered, steadied, dipped again.
"We need to transfuse. Now!"
The nurse turned, darting toward a cooler in the corner. Sabrina worked without pause, her fingers drenched in blood that didn't belong to her.
Moments passed. Several syringes pierced into his veins, fluid steadily pumping through. Bandages wrapped tightly around his head, leaving only one eye visible beneath the gauze and blood.
Arsenal had never been egotistical about his looks, but he was beautiful. In any other world, he would have the chance of becoming an actor, just off his looks alone.
Now as she looked at him, laid above the bed, breathing ragged. She couldn't help but bite her lips.
The haven was in the most complete sense—fucked, the government had no idea how to act. How to even begin to rebuild. Her earpiece had buzzed ever since the invasion ended and she didn't care, her exterminators came first.
Once again she was forced to act in a way she never wanted to, cold and methodical, to tell the exterminators that immediately they recovered, or even before. They were needed thousands of miles away. How was she even supposed to tell them that.
"How the fuck am I even supposed to—"
"ANSEL!"
Sabrina rushed toward the last room, nurses still trying to pin Dahlia down as she fought against them, pushing off the bed, staggering to her feet. She didn't stop until she was face to face with her.
"Where's Ansel... where is he..." Dahlia asked, chest heaving. Then she stopped, her expression falling. "He's gone, isn't he?"
"Dahlia..." Sabrina reached for her.
"I couldn't protect him," she whispered, her knees buckling as she collapsed. "Of course I couldn't."
Sabrina dropped beside her, pulling her into an embrace as Dahlia broke down against her shoulder. Ansel was gone. And it wasn't just about losing a boy, they'd lost something important. A key, a clue, maybe even the answer. Taken right from under them, and they didn't even know why.
What were they dealing with?
What even were these people?
"He's gone, Sabrina..." Dahlia sobbed. "He's really gone."
Sabrina didn't respond. She couldn't. All she could do was hold her. And as the grief took root, so did something else.
A silent, screaming sense of failure.
And it pissed her off more than anything in the world.