Lucien spent most of the night staring at the ceiling, running through options until one plan began to take shape.
He was going to the hospital across the street.
Staying in the office building wasn't an option anymore. That group of looters had already found the place once. Who was to say they wouldn't come back with more people? And his food was running low anyway. Two, maybe three days left if he rationed carefully.
The hospital made sense for multiple reasons.
First, supplies. Second, the layout. Hospitals were mazes of corridors and rooms, with multiple floors and exits. Much better for hiding and evading than an office building where every floor was basically one open space.
And third, most importantly, that's where Rick Grimes would wake up.
Being close to Rick meant being close to the start of the story he knew. He could track the plot, prepare himself, and position himself to join the group when the time was right.
He worked quickly, packing everything he'd scavenged into his hiking backpack. The trunk went in last, wedged tight against the food and water. When he shouldered the pack, it came up to nearly half his height and weighed enough to make his shoulders ache.
One last look around the manager's office. He'd been here for weeks. It had felt safe, for a while.
Nothing was safe. Not really. Time to move.
He pulled the Invisibility Cloak over his shoulders and slipped out into the early morning.
---
The street was worse than Lucien had expected.
Walkers everywhere. More than he'd seen in days, shambling aimlessly through the intersection, clustering around abandoned cars, dragging themselves along the sidewalks. The horde that had been drawn away by the car alarm must have dispersed into the surrounding blocks, spreading out like an infection.
He pressed himself against the wall of a building, watching them move. The hospital was maybe two hundred meters away. Straight shot across the street under normal circumstances. Now it might as well be a kilometer through a minefield.
He couldn't just walk through them, even with the cloak. There were too many, packed too close together. One wrong bump, and they'd swarm.
He'd have to go around them and use the buildings for cover.
He moved carefully, keeping to the edges of the street where the morning shadows were deepest. The cloak made him invisible, but it didn't make him silent or intangible. A walker passed within arm's reach, its head turning toward a sound Lucien couldn't hear. He froze, not breathing, until it shambled past.
Another ten meters. Then twenty.
He was halfway to the hospital when he heard a soft cry from somewhere ahead. His first instinct was to ignore it. But curiosity got the better of him. He edged forward, peering around the corner of a burned-out car.
A woman was sitting on the curb, one hand clutching her ankle. Mid-forties, maybe. Black hair pulled back in a ponytail. And behind her, a walker in a stained nurse's uniform was shuffling closer. Five meters.
Four.
The woman hadn't seen it yet.
Lucien's hand went to his wand. He told himself to leave. This wasn't his problem. Getting involved meant risk, meant exposure...
The walker was three meters away now.
Two.
"Fuck," he muttered under his breath.
He pulled his wand free and pointed it at a chunk of rubble lying on the ground near the woman's feet.
"Wingardium Leviosa."
The rock lifted smoothly into the air. He flicked his wand, and the rubble shot forward like a bullet, cutting through the space behind the woman's head.
With a dull crack, the walker's skull split open.
Only when it collapsed to the ground not far behind her did the woman turn around. When she saw what it was, she let out a short scream. She stared blankly at the fallen walker, then looked around at the empty surroundings.
"Who...? Is someone there?"
Lucien didn't answer.
She quickly realized that someone had saved her.
She stood slowly, testing her injured ankle. Then she turned toward where Lucien was hiding, not looking at him exactly, but close.
"Thank you," she said quietly. "I don't know who you are, but... thank you."
She hesitated. Then she shrugged off her backpack and pulled out two boxes of medicine. She placed them on the ground.
"This is all I have," she said. "I hope it helps."
Then she limped away, disappearing around the corner at the end of the block.
Lucien counted to sixty and made sure she was really gone. Then he moved. He used a cluster of walkers as cover, weaving between them to reach the spot where she'd left the medicine. The boxes disappeared into his backpack in seconds.
Two boxes of antibiotics. It could save his life if he got hurt.
Worth the risk of getting involved? Maybe.
He pushed the thought away and kept moving toward the hospital.
---
Elsewhere...
The woman limped through the door of the two-story house and was immediately caught by strong hands.
"Jenny! Where did you go? You look terrible... what happened?"
"I'm fine. I just... there was a walker. I almost didn't see it. My ankle..."
Jenny told him the story.
"I left them the antibiotics," she finished, ducking her head. "The ones we found yesterday. I'm sorry, Morgan. I know we needed them for Duane, but I couldn't just..."
Morgan pulled her into a hug before she could finish.
"You did the right thing," he said quietly. "We're still people, Jenny. Even now. Especially now. We help each other. That's how we stay human."
A cough from the inner room made them both turn.
Duane shuffled out, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
"Dad? Mom? What's going on?"
Morgan crossed the room in two strides and pressed his hand to his son's forehead.
"The fever broke," he breathed. "Thank God. It broke."
The three of them held each other.
---
Lucien had no idea what his small intervention had set in motion. He was already inside the hospital, moving through corridors.
Harrison Memorial was bigger than he had expected. The hospital stretched across four floors and multiple wings, with long hallways that all looked the same. Crooked emergency signs hung from the walls, and wheelchairs sat abandoned in corners. Medical equipment was scattered across the floors, as if whoever had been here had been in too much of a hurry to care.
And it was quiet.
He checked each room before he passed it. Most were empty. A few had bodies, patients who'd died in their beds, or nurses who'd been attacked while making rounds. The walkers were isolated. He was looking for Rick's room. That was the priority.
He was halfway down a third-floor corridor when he heard a scream coming from somewhere ahead.
His first thought was not again. His second thought was move.
He ran, following the sound to a storage room at the end of the hall. The door was ajar. Through the gap, he could see movement.
A blonde woman was backed into a corner. A walker in blood-stained scrubs lurched toward her. Before Lucien could react, another woman burst from the side and drove a knife through the back of the walker's skull. The walker crumpled.
The woman with the knife had short dark hair and looked to be in her late fifties. She wore a doctor's coat as she pulled the blade free and helped the blonde woman to her feet.
"You okay?"
"Yeah, I think so." The blonde was shaking. "Thank you, Dr. Gale."
There was a third person in the room. A man in a wheelchair, slumped to one side, blood seeping through a bandage wrapped around his waist. His breathing was shallow.
Lucien stayed hidden in the doorway, invisible beneath the cloak, and listened.
"We can't stay here, Karina," Gale said. She was checking the man's pulse. "This wing isn't secure. There are more of them on the lower floors."
"What about Paul?" The blonde, Karina, based on how Gale addressed her, gestured at the man in the wheelchair. "He's getting worse. We need to do something."
Gale didn't answer right away. She finished her examination, then stood, wiping blood off her hands with a rag.
"Tell me what happened out there," she said quietly. "How did you end up here?"
Karina's story came out in fragments. They had been part of a camp near the hospital, maybe twenty people in total. They thought they were safe. A horde had come through two days ago. It overran the fences and killed most of them.
Karina and Paul ran. Paul had been bitten on the way out. no, not bitten. Karina was quick to clarify that. He had been stabbed. Some asshole from another group, trying to loot the camp during the chaos.
They made it to the hospital hoping to find medicine, supplies, maybe even a doctor.
Gale had been here the whole time, since the beginning. She stayed behind when the hospital evacuated, taking care of the patients who couldn't be moved.
"There's only a handful left now. Most of them..." She trailed off.
Lucien's mind was working. So that was how Rick had survived so long in a coma. Gale had been looking after the patients who were left behind, feeding them, medicating them, and keeping them alive.
"Can you help him?" Karina's voice broke through Lucien's thoughts. "Please. I know it's a lot to ask, but..."
"Let me see what I can do."
Gale knelt beside Paul again, unwrapping the bandage to examine the wound. She rewrapped the bandage slowly. Then she stood.
"I'm sorry."
Karina went pale. "What?"
"His body's shutting down. I can barely feel his pulse. The supplies we have here... they're not enough. I can't save him."
"Then get more supplies!" Karina's voice rose. "There has to be something..."
"There's nothing." Gale met her eyes. "I've checked. Everything nearby has been looted or overrun. Even if there was something, I couldn't get there and back in time."
"So what are you saying?"
Gale looked away. "I'm saying... I have to take him away."
Karina's face crumpled. She dropped to her knees beside the wheelchair, her hand finding Paul's. "No. No, you can't. There has to be something we can do. Please!"
Gale crouched down beside her. "I'm sorry. I really am."
Karina broke down, sobs shaking her whole body.
Lucien stood frozen in the doorway. There was a procedure in hospitals, even now. When someone was dying and there was nothing left to do, they were moved to a separate room. And then, when they died, they were dealt with before they could turn.
Paul was likely dying. Gale was going to move him somewhere private and wait for the end.
It was the kindest thing she could do.
Lucien felt something twist in his chest.
Watching someone slip away while the people who loved them could do nothing but hold their hand and wait was cruel. No one deserved something like that. Not even an enemy.
Not that he had any.
He should leave. This wasn't his business. He'd come here to find Rick, not to get involved with random survivors and their tragedies.
But he didn't move.
He stayed there, listening to Karina cry and Gale murmur words of comfort that didn't mean anything.
And somewhere in the back of his mind, a thought formed.
Maybe there is something I can do.