She was found by Mulligan’s officers shortly after, and collapsed into their attentions shortly after that. It was an embarrassing privilege, she thought, being helped immediately when so many people were going to have to wait. She tried to say she was well enough to leave the medic tent under her own power, and wound up sobbing on the medic’s shoulder instead. This aggravated her broken ribs, which in turn aggravated the medic. She had no idea why she was falling apart now; That would have required introspection, which she wasn’t able to manage right now.

  Finally somebody sent for Captain Spectre and Emile, who arrived at the medic tent shortly after Hawk was threatened with a sedative. “Thank god,” The medic said, when the two of them arrived at her bedside. “Maybe she’ll listen to you.”

  “I’m fine.” Hawk said, and tried to smile. Her heaving chest, the flood of tears, and the swelling dizziness of hyperventilation said otherwise.

  Em studied their friend for two seconds, turned to the medic and said, “Sedatives. It’s the only way.”

  “I am not that bad,” Hawk said.

  “The ride has stopped for you, and your body knows it even if your brain does not. You’re doing that whole ‘venting trauma’ thing. You also went down in a crush not fifteen minutes ago, which has all of us terrified because that shit is lethal, Hawk.”

  “I have a broken rib.” She tried acting dismissively, which involved a shrug. This was a mistake. It lit her whole world up like fire.

  “You’re lucky it’s only a broken rib, and I’m not convinced that’s all it is.” The medic said. “I really want to hang on to her for observation.”

  “That’s sedatives.” Emile agreed.

  “I’m not taking sedatives. I assume you’re here to take me to General Mulligan?” She said. Maybe a change of subject would work.

  “We were. Then you went down in the crush. Now we just want to keep you alive, which is apparently a full time job now.”

  This was awfully harsh for Emile. “What’s it to you? Why are you taking my health this personally?” Hawk asked.

  “You’re my friend. And you fucking failed to get a piece of somebody’s orb, right?” There were sudden, hot tears in Emile’s eyes. “I’m not going to lie and say I’m not disappointed. But I never really believed in your stupid long shot anyway. I just wish you hadn’t gone, because I almost lost you in the name of a farce I don’t even like.” And they stormed out of the tent.

  Hawk, studying Emile, turned to Spectre and said, “They’re not handling Henry very well, are they?”

  Spectre looked discomforted. “The situation with Henry and Mattias is not improving. In fact…” but there was a commotion outside this medical tent. Shouts of fear, of recognition, of hope, and then of a different timbre of fear. The first was the fear of the lion, that it can eat you. The second was the horror of the unknown or impossible, and Hawk had gotten very used to the nature of that sound over the past few weeks.

  “What’s going on?” She said, and tried to stand. Spectre gently pushed her back into her cot.

  “I’ll find out if you’ll wait here,” he said, and stepped away from her side. The medic chose this moment to wrap Hawk’s chest and try to stabilize her broken ribs. “You really ought to go straight to a hospital.” She said.

  “Forgive me for wanting to stick around,” Hawk snapped. The rib-wrapping hurt.

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  The commotion neared, rising higher in tidal waves, and Spectre burst into the tent. “Clear a space!” He shouted. “Clear a space!” and two people, one of them Emile, entered the tent with a limping, longing pace. Emile dropped their burden in the first clear medic cot in this little tent, and that was when Hawk saw it was a naked Shadow, who was oozing the milk-white fluid that made up an Archetype’s vital fluid. And now she was up, hang her ribs, and racing across the floor to him.

  “What happened?” She said.

  “A weapon of Argon’s scored a lucky hit on the back of his neck. He shifted and wasted a bunch of time digging at the wound,” Emile sounded disgusted. “He made it to the spire before he collapsed, and nobody was willing to help him.”

  Digging at the wound? Hawk thought, and panic hit her with addictive thrill. “You didn’t. Shadow, please tell me you did not—”

  “I’d give up my whole life for a friend,” He said, and coughed up a surge of fluid. “I knew that already. Now I know I’d die for a friend-of-a-friend. What a wonderful thing to know. My shriveled heart can reach that far.” And he collapsed back against the cot. More of that offwhite milk pale fluid escaped his mouth. And his ears, she thought.

  “We need to see what condition his Orb is in,” Hawk said.

  “Do you know how to put it back together if it’s broken?” Spectre said.

  “No. But I still need to look.” She began trying to roll him over. Spectre, realizing she wasn’t going to give up and the Shadow wasn’t helping—he seemed beyond offering help, giggling lightly to himself as if this were all amusing—took hold of the Shadow’s shoulders and helped. They heaved him over and could finally get a good look at the back of his head.

  It looked, she thought, like someone had taken a baseball bat to his head. There were flecks of bone and the area around the main wound had a terrible spongy feel, as if the bones of his skull had been pulverized. Then slowly she realized it was not only bone, though one great ivory fragment had ripped through his scalp. She was looking at fragments of his orb.

  “Oh god. It’s broken. It’s broken.” She began to breathe harder, faster. It was as if all the oxygen had fled the room.

  “It’s alright,” The Shadow said, and held up something in his clawed fingers. “I’ve gotten the piece I need for Henry. It’s right here!” and he giggled to himself again. Horrified, Hawk snatched it up. It was a sliver the size of a fingernail, or maybe a fish-scale, but its pearlescent beauty screamed that it couldn’t be anything more or less than a fragment of an Orb.

  “I’m not going to waste a chance to save a friend and a friend-of-a-friend.” He said. “And I still know what I need to do to save them both, so I haven’t traded that away. It must be something else in the fragment. Something I’ve forgotten for good,” And he giggled again.

  “We’re going to need to operate on him,” A medic said.

  “Why?” Laughed the Shadow.

  “Because we’re putting your Orb back together.”

  “Don’t bother,” the Shadow said. “As long as all the bits are still in the same bag, it’ll be fine. It’ll all come together again, right as rain. Except for the part she’s holding, but I don’t think I need that part of myself anymore. I’m alive without it, aren’t I?”

  The medic, outraged, looked from one face to the other and said, “Dr. West, Captain Spectre, I want both of you to leave this tent, right now.”

  “Why me?” The captain said.

  “Because I know you’ll drag her out for me. I’m going to patch this bastard up.”

  And on that note, despite her many, many protests, Spectre indeed helped her out of the tent.

  ***

  She was escorted out of the Hole by two different MPs, straight to the nearest hospital, a temporary affair set up atop the skyscraper Mulligan was using as headquarters. Here, she was assured that the Shadow was fine, multiple times, by multiple people who couldn’t possibly have known this. She begged to be sent back to Holia. She was given a popsicle for her blood sugar and booked in for an X-ray. Her ribs were broken, and several other bones were pronounced bruised, and many contusions were identified when the nurses arrived to re-wrap her ribs. She needed to be kept for observation because of a possible concussion. She rolled her eyes and protested, often and loudly, until one enterprising young doctor told her that the Shadow was being brought to this hospital, too. At which point she sat down and shut up, and allowed them to continue wrapping ace bandages around her middle.

  Then at long last, she was brought over to a real, actual bed and told to get into it. When she protested that she needed to watch for the Shadow, at least, that she would be absolutely needed very, very soon, they nodded and gave her a cup full of pills to swallow. She did, with the unthinking trust of the medical profession backing her choice to down a very nice cocktail of sedatives.

  She continued to insist that she had to be awake when the Shadow came, and they continued to humor her until sleep at last arrived.

  When she woke, the Shadow was by her side.