"This is bad." Twenty minutes later I had finished talking and Aster and York were both staring at the ground with almost the exact same dumbfounded expressions on their faces. "How the hell did they manage to create a weapon that can stop our healing? We got sloppy, left them unchecked." Aster mutters, standing up and doing his normal pacing thing. "I wish I had a sample of it… I should have taken a scraping of your dead flesh." I hear him telling himself.
I glance at York, who is rolling onto his feet now. "Where are you going?" I ask him.
"I'm gonna start telling the others about this. We need to make sure everyone knows there are people out there hunting us down with weapons that could seriously hurt us. We don't want what happened to you happening to anyone else." He throws over his shoulder.
"I'm coming too." I say, quickly standing up and following after him. As much as I liked Aster, I wasn't super interested in listening to him go on about my dead flesh scrapings.
"You are sure you're okay?" Aster asks after me, pausing in his pacing and muttering.
"I'm fine." I say, hurrying to catch up with York after giving Aster a reassuring smile. York was being weirdly serious. Seemed to be taking this whole thing to heart, that was for sure. I don't think I'd ever seen him like this in the five years I'd been reaping, not even when he was working. This was much more focused, and I could almost feel the anger rolling off of him as we walked down the dark hallway to the meeting room. Had I ever even really seen him angry before? I don't think I had.
"Hey, York." I say, reaching out to grab his shoulder and stop him before we entered the meeting room. He pauses, glancing over his shoulder. "I just wanted to say thanks for having my back in there." He raises a brow, and I huff in frustration. He was really going to make me spell it out. "I heard you guys when you were trying to figure out how to fix me. You were the one who ended up getting it done, right?"
Recognition flashes across his face and he nods. "I'm going to have to remember in the future you seem to have a weirdly cognitive mind when you're unconscious." Then he turns and keeps walking. I stare after him for a moment, feeling slightly unsettled by his response. I feel like any other day he'd be eating up the praise, rubbing it in my face that he had to save me. That would have been preferable to how he was acting now, to be honest.
He felt… edgy to me. Like he was one wrong move away from snapping and killing everyone. I could understand why, so I tried to brush off the nagging feeling in my gut and followed after him. I wasn't Aster; I wasn't here to monitor his feelings and keep him in check, anyways.
He was already talking to Banks, who was sitting in his chair at the circle table. York was standing in front of him, arms crossed, a serious expression on his face as he talked. Why was it so unsettling to me to see him not crawling all over people or the furniture, cracking inappropriate jokes and making everyone a little uncomfortable? That was his usual move, and it was throwing me that he was taking this all so seriously.
I walk over to them, and Banks looks up as I approach. "Good to see you're still alive and able to walk." He says, standing with a big grin. He brushes past York to wrap his arm around my shoulder, pulling me into his side. "You got to be more careful out there, kid." He scolds me, pulling my head down a little to give me a noogie on the top of my head.
"I know, I know." I say, pushing him off and taking a step back. "I guess York told you everything then, huh?" I glance at York, who is glaring at the ground.
Banks nods grimly. "Yeah. I can't believe those little bastards got a leg up on us."
York scoffs, shaking his head as he walks away from us. I don't know where he was going, but it was clear he wasn't interested in having company there.
"He seems irritated." I comment as I watch him disappear down a hallway.
"Yeah… well. We're all a little on edge. I mean, first Henry gets taken, then we lose a human girl from within our own walls, and now you've been seriously hurt."
"I'm fine." I say quickly, wanting to dismiss at least one of their worries.
He scoffs, shaking his head. "You lost almost half of both of your legs. I would hardly call that fine." I clench my jaw at his words, because I know he's right, but I really don't want to admit it. I'm already fully aware that the portal hoppers are in the lead as of now. My failure was all I could think about, it was consuming me. I had barely gotten away from them, literally by pure luck, and I didn't like that.
"Yeah…" I sigh, moving to plop down in one of the stone chairs. I sigh, running my hand through my hair. Suddenly, I remember something, and stand right back up. "Where's Jazzy? Is she okay? She's still here, right?"
"Oh yeah, she's fine. Demanding to see you every second of every day, but still locked up tight, at least." I nod, letting out a breath.
"Okay. I'm going to go see her."
"She's in one of the operating rooms. We have Grey standing guard outside right now, so it should be easy enough to find." Banks says, gesturing to the hallway where the metal operating rooms were.
I nod, thank him and make my way over there. I wonder if they had told her what had happened to me. I wasn't even really sure how long I had been out, if it was long enough for her to question my absence.
"Hey, Grey." I say a bit awkwardly as I approach the door he was standing in front of. His one dark green eye and one gold one looked me up and down as he crossed his skinny arms over his chest.
"How are you feeling?" He asks with a pointed tone.
"I'm okay… sorry for you know… trying to shoot you." I say, giving him an awkward chuckle.
He stares at me seriously for a long moment and I actually start to get a little worried he was pissed at me. Then his face breaks into a grin and he steps forward to clap me on the side of the arm.
"Come on man, you didn't actually hit me, so no harm no foul, right?" I let out a sigh of relief, glad he wasn't holding a grudge.
"Thanks" I pushed him back a little.
"Your sister has been asking for you." He says, stepping aside. "Aster didn't want to freak her out, so she doesn't know what happened to you. Guess that's up to you if you want her to know."
"Great." I sigh as I brush past him and head into the room.
I wasn't looking forward to explaining why I was now a quarter cyborg to my already half unhinged sister.