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Chapter Text

“Stop,” Wednesday said as Bianca’s fingers found her wrist. Her grip tightened around Enid’s—skin to skin, tacky with the aftermath of triage: dried blood, iodine, a smear of whatever antiseptic substitute had come out of someone’s scavenged kit. 

“Wednesday.” Bianca kept her voice low, leadership compressed into two syllables. “You need to—”

“I am staying.” Wednesday’s gaze remained fixed on Enid’s face. “You may remove my body from this room after hers has fully recovered. Only then.”

Bianca stilled. She took in the angle of Wednesday’s shoulders, the set of her jaw, the way her stance had adapted to the bed—one hip anchored close, one hand braced on the rail, ready for anything that tried to take Enid away again. Bianca’s authority functioned by moving people, by assigning purpose and forcing momentum into chaos. Wednesday’s authority functioned by becoming immovable. Bianca could work with stubbornness; she led a camp built on it. Even so, this had the shape of something else. This was devotion wearing the mask of strategy.

Enid lay at the center of the cot like the eye of some storm that had spent itself hours ago, the ring of devastation still visible around her. Divina and the others had already pushed the wreckage of the field back as far as supplies allowed. Instead of the shredded shirt she had arrived in, Enid wore a broad swathe of clean cotton that wrapped across upper chest and shoulder, the makeshift bandage already marked through with fresh red. A slender tube emerged from a small incision between her ribs, arcing toward a cloudy bottle that collected its slow, pale accumulation on the crate beside the bed. The IV fixed into the back of her hand offended Wednesday on sight: a thin plastic catheter, tape from three different brands holding it in place, bruises blooming around it. Wires trailed from beneath the bandages, climbed Enid’s collarbone and throat, and fed into the salvaged monitor that translated each electrical pulse into a run of peaks and murmuring beep.

Her face, outrageously lovely even in this state, rested in slack, careless lines against the flattened pillow. Someone—Divina, almost certainly—had cleaned away the worst of the road grit and dried gore, smoothing Enid’s curls back from her forehead. Strands of bubblegum pink streaks fanned across the pillowcase, a last, vivid flare in a room built from rusted metal, grey fabric, and exhausted hope. Wednesday’s gaze kept returning to it, a remnant of color the world had yet to strip away.

Earlier, during the first frantic stretch, Divina’s voice had formed a brief center of gravity among all the overlapping orders. “She lost a frightening volume of blood,” she explained, elbows slick, hands sunk deep into the torn meat of Enid’s shoulder like a surgeon. “If the bullet had tracked a finger’s width lower, or lodged instead of punching through…” Her words thinned, trailing off as her attention slipped back into the wound. Each image slotted itself into a collection she refused to accept.

Wednesday’s mind supplied the missing phrases. Enid on this table with her chest opened further while Divina hunted shards of bone. Enid in this bed under a sheet pulled crisply over her face, a shape instead of a person. An empty half of the infirmary, curtain drawn back forever, the cot stripped, the pillow flattened under nobody’s head. 

Reality won, though.  They worked on this very table, beneath these struggling lights, with tool trays scavenged from clinics and garages, Divina’s intimate command, and a mutual decision that Enid would survive. Yoko’s grip dug divots into the bedframe as she pinned Enid’s legs, entire body rigid, every usual joke compacted into a tight line of teeth and clenched jaw. Ajax moved between cooler and bedside, arms full of blood bags, face pale, gaze fixed on the fluid levels. Bianca claimed the space between door and table, voice snapping out requests for more light, more towels, cleaner blades, turning raw panic into an organized flow of bodies and supplies.

And Wednesday stepped into every gap that formed.

When Divina’s wrists cramped, Wednesday’s smaller hands replaced them, pressing wads of gauze deep into the opening, feeling the frantic slide of tissue and the rubbery give of muscle under her fingers. When an instrument went missing, Wednesday already held it, handle first. She leaned close repeatedly, cheek almost brushing Enid’s lips, to catch the faint stir of breath; each exhale was tucked into an internal ledger that measured this battle in counts instead of minutes. Thirty-two. Thirty-three. Thirty-four.

Eventually, after some indeterminate period that devoured an afternoon or an entire life, Divina had sagged backward, shoulders trembling. “The bleeding slowed,” she reported, tone dull with fatigue. “The lung’s clear. She’ll hold.”

At that, the entire room exhaled in stages. Ajax sank down onto an overturned crate. Yoko laughed, then covered her mouth. Bianca closed her eyes And Wednesday simply listened to her pulse with a focus that resembled prayer.

“Go take a walk,” Bianca said again, the words softened, rounded at the edges now instead of sharp. Her hand hovered near Wednesday’s elbow, an offer rather than a shove. “You give her a better chance if you stay on your feet. Your arm still need cleaning, and there’s glass in your—”

“The blood belongs to someone else,” Wednesday cut in. “My structural integrity remains intact.” 

Bianca’s gaze swept down Wednesday’s frame in a quick, assessing pass. Her eyes caught every mark: the slender red trail drying into a rusty streak along Wednesday’s sleeve where gore had wicked upward; the smear at her throat, drawn there by fingers that had pushed too close to Enid’s wound; the dark, irregular blooms on her boots where blood had splashed and settled into the leather. Each stain traced back to someone else’s ending. Every drop recorded another body that no longer challenged the fence line, three shapes now cooling in the dirt beyond their perimeter.

“You put all three in the ground,” Bianca said at last. “Outside the fence. With a pocket knife, a coil of rope, and a stolen motorcycle that barely runs.”

“They shot Enid.” Wednesday’s tone flattened further.

Bianca’s mouth drew into a tight line. “I’m not saying they didn’t deserve it. I’m saying you’re running on fumes and spite, and I need you functioning if she—” She stopped. “When she wakes up.”

Wednesday heard the substitution as clearly as the gunshot.

The if Bianca cut off sat between them anyway. It slotted neatly beside all the other contingencies Wednesday kept and refused to honor. If the lung collapsed again. If the chest tube clotted. If infection set in. If the salvaged monitor that translated Enid’s heart into this thin series of peaks decided, in some dim electronic sulk, to fail. She accepted possibility as a concept; it formed the basis of her planning. But she declined to apply it to Enid’s continued existence.

“When she wakes up,” Wednesday echoed. “We agree.”

Bianca’s gaze held hers for a breath. “It might take a while. Divina said the next twenty-four hours are the worst of it. Blood loss like that—” She cut herself off again, jaw flexing. “She’s stable. For now. We bought time.”

Wednesday’s fingers tightened minutely around Enid’s hand. “Then we invest it well.”

“By which you mean you continue to sit here until your spine fuses to that chair and you start hallucinating,” Bianca said dryly. “You’ve already been shaking.”

Wednesday looked down. Her hands lay very still, pale against Enid’s darker skin, red crusted in the seams of her knuckles. “It fluctuates.”

“It fluctuates,” Bianca repeated, dubious. Her eyes softened anyway. “Look, I know what you’re doing. If I drag you out of here, you’re just going to pace outside. But you’re starting to run on fumes, and we need you for more than glaring at a monitor.”

“I’m currently ensuring that the least reliable piece of machinery in this room continues to function,” Wednesday replied. “The monitor is obedient. The human heart less so.”

Bianca’s mouth twitched despite herself. “You’re saying that like you’re not living proof.”

Wednesday let that slide. “Fine. I will eat when Divina returns to change the dressing.”

“I can send someone with food,” Bianca offered. “Soup. Or whatever passes for it. If you faint on me, I swear to God, Addams—”

“I have already confirmed my structural integrity. You may redirect your threats toward more fragile targets.”

Bianca exhaled slowly. “You know I can pull rank. Order you out. You’ll still ignore me, because you’re you, but I could try.”

“You enjoy trying,” Wednesday observed.

“Not lately.” Bianca’s gaze slid to Enid’s face, lingering there in a rare moment of unguardedness. The bandage across Enid’s chest vanished beneath the clean cotton, but its presence distorted everything around it. The chest tube hissed softly with each rise of her ribs; the bottle at the side of the cot collected a slow, watery pink. The monitor tracked each beat: beep, beep, beep. “Losing her would break half the camp. The other half would be too scared of your reaction. So… don’t let that happen.”

“That remains my intent.”

“Yeah.” Bianca scrubbed a hand over her face, then straightened. “The north run isn’t canceled,” she added, a harsh turn. “Before you ask. We still need the meds and fuel. We still need the map update on those northern blocks. The fact that the universe decided to reroute a bullet via our supply runner doesn’t change that.”

Wednesday went still. The run. It had been a neat packet of future hours in her mental ledger: north route, Rowan’s latest intel laid out in ink on a map, a planned divergence to the surprise she’d prepared for Enid in some small pocket of the ruins. Now the packet lay open, contents scattering.

“I assumed as much,” she said. “You intend to send a different runner.”

“I intend to send you. You, Rowan, and a few load-bearers. Enid was on the roster, yes. She’ll be off it for a while. The world keeps moving.”

“And you expect me to leave her?”

Bianca’s eyes flicked back to Wednesday. “I expect you to remember that the camp requires clean water and antibiotics more than it requires you glowering at a beeping box. And that Enid would personally haunt all of us if you torched eighty people’s odds of survival because you refused to leave her bedside for a few hours.”

Wednesday opened her mouth, ready with a counterargument—something about skill sets, replacing her with someone less essential, risk distribution. Instead, she saw Enid on the motorcycle again, arms around Wednesday’s waist, laughing into the wind. This is heaven, Enid said, voice bright and breathless. 

“She would want me to go,” Wednesday admitted, hating the logic even as she acknowledged it. “She would call it ‘doing the right thing’ in that infuriating tone she reserves for moral absolutes.”

“Correct.” Bianca’s mouth softened. “I’ll move the schedule to midday. Give Divina more time to yell at you about aftercare. We’ll talk details later. For now…” She hesitated, then reached out and, very lightly, touched Wednesday’s forearm. “Let yourself be human for five minutes. It won’t kill you. The rest of us need to see that you… care.”

“I have been accused of that repeatedly.”

“Yeah. But usually you hide it behind strategy. This—” Bianca nodded toward Enid. “This isn’t strategy. You’re allowed to be wrecked.”

“I prefer not to encourage the camp to expect visible wreckage,” Wednesday replied. “They might acclimate. Then my restraint would lose its impact.”

Bianca huffed, an almost-laugh. “Fine. Weaponize your feelings later. I’m going to make sure nobody tries to stage a spontaneous vigil outside the infirmary. Yoko was already threatening to sneak back in with glow sticks.”

“Please discourage that. Enid will be insufferable when she wakes and discovers she missed a party in her honor.”

“When she wakes.” Bianca repeated it again, firmer this time. Then she stepped away from the bed. “Call if anything changes. Otherwise, I’ll be back when Divina rotates.”

She slipped out, the infirmary curtain swaying shut behind her. The murmur of camp life outside dampened to a low buzz again. Somewhere further down the row of cots, a girl shifted in her sleep, the mattress frame creaking. A kid with a broken ankle sniffled quietly as an older runner murmured to them. 

The world continued.

But Wednesday stayed.

She promised herself, long ago, that she would not clutch. That she would hold nothing so closely the world could leverage it against her. She had broken that promise the first time Enid grinned at her over the remains of a ruined fence and said, “Took you long enough.” 

Now she felt the consequences in every line of her body.

She watched Enid breathe. 

Each rise of her chest pulled at wounded muscle, dragged air past the ragged track the bullet had carved. Divina explained the path earlier in clinical terms: entry high near the clavicle, exit somewhere posterior-lateral, clean through a lung that had stubbornly refused to collapse entirely. “Good fortune,” she added. “A glancing blow by apocalypse standards.” Wednesday simply nodded, acknowledged the data, and quietly filed away the image of Enid’s body jerking when the round hit—the sudden collapse, the smear of red across asphalt.

Wednesday found herself replaying it now, as if some stubborn part of her brain believed it could rewind the moment enough times to find a different frame, one where she had stepped faster, where her body had interposed itself between bullet and Enid.

“Your timing remains offensive,” she told Enid quietly. “You chose the day before I planned to reveal a surprise.” Her thumb traced the back of Enid’s hand, following the maze of faint scars and calluses—tiny nicks from scrap, the slightly raised line where she’d once sliced herself trying to open a can with a knife instead of a proper opener. “You are aware there was an itinerary.”

The monitor beeped at her with zero sympathy.

Bootsteps approached outside; the curtain twitched, then parted as Yoko slipped back in, sunglasses shoved up onto her hair. She’d washed her face; the streaks of paint were gone, replaced by a new, raw redness around her eyes. Ajax lurked behind her, half in shadow, shoulders hunched up nearer his ears than usual.

“You look like a crime scene,” Yoko said by way of greeting.

Wednesday didn’t look up. “Are you referring to me or the room in general?”

“Both. Extremely both.” Yoko’s usual cheer sounded sanded down, the edges rough and too bright. “Bianca said we could have five minutes if we promised not to cause a scene. She used our full names and everything. It was very parental.”

“Your self-restraint has been tested. I trust you passed.”

“Barely,” Ajax muttered.

Yoko drifted closer to the bed, as if drawn despite herself. Enid looked small now, somehow, on the cot. The hospital gown Divina fashioned from old shirts dwarfed her; a blanket had been pulled up to her waist, its gray bulk doing nothing to disguise the gauntness shock and blood loss carved in. Someone braided back the bubblegum-pink strands again to keep them out of the way of tubing. The end result made her look younger, almost like the girl Wednesday first met in a Nevermore dorm room—full of color and aggravation and insistent life.

Yoko’s throat worked. “She looks dead,” she blurted, then flinched at her own words. “Sorry. That was—I shouldn’t—”

“She doesn’t,” Wednesday interrupted before the panic could spiral. “The dead don’t breathe.”

Ajax swayed slightly, gripping the metal bar at the foot of the bed. “I keep seeing it,” he murmured. “The way she went down. It’s like—like someone shattering a statue, but the statue is Enid. I should be better with that kind of thing by now. Stone. Breaking. Whatever. But I’m just kind of… stuck.”

“You did what you were supposed to do,” Wednesday said without looking at him. “You got low. You identified the shooters. You helped Yoko clear the area. That is not nothing.”

“I didn’t get to you fast enough.” Yoko’s hands balled into fists at her sides. “If I’d just—if we hadn’t gone out there at all—”

Wednesday’s jaw clenched. “If we had not gone out there, the motorcycle would still be outside the fence, its fuel unused, its potential wasted. The bandits would likely have crept closer. They may have found a weaker place in the perimeter. Their bullet may have found someone else. We are neither fortune tellers nor gods. We made a choice. They made one. I corrected theirs.”

Yoko’s eyes flicked to her, searching. “You killed them.”

“Yes.” 

Wednesday saw it again—the way the first man’s eyes had widened when she appeared at his flank, knife already in his throat; the second reaching for his rifle only for it to jerk away under a telekinetic shove from an approaching Rowan, creating a clean opening for her. The third tried to run. She hadn’t allowed it. 

“Good,” Yoko said fiercely. “I hope it hurt.”

“It did,” Wednesday replied. “But not enough.”

Ajax swallowed. “Do you… regret it? The whole… going out? The bike?”

Wednesday considered. Regret implied a miscalculation she would not make again, something to avoid in future iterations. “No,” she admitted. “I regret the variables I failed to foresee. Not the decision itself.”

“Translation,” Yoko muttered. “You’ll still drag us out for shiny things, you’ll just do it with more rope and guns next time.”

“Correct.”

For a moment, the familiar rhythm of their bickering slid into place. It felt almost obscene in this room, with the monitor beeping its steady line beside them. 

Then Ajax’s gaze fell back to Enid’s face and broke again. “She hates the infirmary. Remember the time she broke her wrist and Divina made her sit still for like an hour? She complained so much Div offered to knock her out.”

“She declined because she had plans to go through the mess leftovers,” Yoko remembered, a damp laugh escaping. “She said if she died, she wanted her last act to be carb-related.”

“She will have many more opportunities for carb-related idiocy,” Wednesday said. “We are not on her deathbed. We are on her bed of temporary inconvenience.”

Yoko sniffed. “You’re very confident for someone who has been staring at that monitor like you could strangle it if it misbehaves.”

“I have strangled less deserving things.”

“Unsurprising.”

There was a soft rustle at the curtain, then Divina stepped back in, carrying a tray with fresh supplies. She’d stripped off her blood-slick shirt and replaced it with another; her hair was twisted up, damp at the edges from a quick, perfunctory wash. “Five minutes is code for ‘I will tolerate three,’” she reprimanded mildly. “Out.”

Yoko groaned. “You’re heartless.”

“Correct,” Divina said. “Someone has to be. Move.”

Yoko leaned over the bed carefully. “You’re grounded,” she told Enid. “You’re not allowed to do any more near-death experiences until I say so. That’s the rule.”

Ajax hovered, then reached out and tapped two fingers against Enid’s foot under the blanket. “I’ll—uh. I’ll keep your bunk from being stolen by the younger kids. They’re already circling. I’m pretty sure one of them has designs on your pillow.”

“Tell them they’ll have to go through me,” Wednesday said.

“That’s the plan,” Ajax replied, managing a watery grin.

Divina flapped a hand at them. “Now, please. Out. Go annoy Bianca. Or Rowan. Preferably Rowan.”

They went, reluctance in every line of their bodies. The curtain fell shut behind them with a soft, final whisper.

Divina set the tray down, then planted her hands on her hips and gave Wednesday a deeply exasperated look. “Out of the chair. Ten minutes. Minimum.”

Wednesday raised an eyebrow. “I was under the impression I’d already negotiated my continued presence.”

“You negotiated staying in the room,” Divina corrected. “I didn’t say anything about the chair. You’re going to pass out and knock her IV loose. Stand up.”

Wednesday’s muscles complained as she obeyed. An ache had settled into her lower back, radiating out along her spine like a slow, dull burn. Her knees threatened to mutiny, one cracking audibly as she straightened.

Divina caught the wince and clicked her tongue. “See? You’re human. It happens to the best of us.”

“The designation remains under debate,” Wednesday murmured, until the room wobbled for a heartbeat.

“Lean against the wall if you need to,” Divina advised. “You’re no good to her on the floor. I promise I will shout for you if anything changes in the next ten minutes. Go wash your hands, at least. You’re turning the concept of hygiene into an abstract.” She nodded at the basin near the back wall, where a trickle of salvaged water ran brownish into a bucket.

Wednesday glanced at her hands—dried blood under her nails, crusted along the creases of her knuckles, staining the cuffs of her shirt. Enid’s, mostly. Some of the bandits’. Hard to tell where one ended and the other began. 

Very slowly, she peeled her fingers away from the place they’d occupied on the rail and crossed to the basin. The water ran over her skin lukewarm and thin, carrying flakes of dried red away in little spirals. She scrubbed methodically, dragging her nails along her palms, scraping at the stubborn stains until the skin beneath flushed raw. The smell rose up—metal, faint soap, the ghost of something sharper that only existed in memory now. Her stomach churned once, then settled. 

In the cracked bit of mirror above the basin, her reflection stared back: pale, eyes blank, hair coming loose from its braids. She looked like someone who’d been in a fight. She looked, annoyingly, like someone who’d lost.

“You are doing your best,” she told the mirror through her teeth.

When she turned back, Divina was leaning over Enid’s chest, eyes narrowed. The siren pressed two fingers just below the clavicle, watching the rise and fall, listening to some internal music.

“Still steady?” Wednesday asked.

“For now,” Divina confirmed without looking up. “Her pressure dipped a little while you were in Dissociative Hand-Washing Land. I adjusted the fluids. The lung is holding. If infection stays away, she’ll hate me in a week. That’s the goal.”

“Mutual hate remains my preferred basis for a long-term care relationship.”

Divina’s mouth quirked. “I know.” She pulled a fresh strip of tape free with her teeth, smoothing it over the IV line. “Do you have any more of those nightmares cooking in the back of your head?”

Wednesday stiffened. Divina had been one of the first to notice when her visions altered after the Fall—when simple flashes of the future turned into layered hallucinations that blurred with the present. The siren had a knack for sensing dissonance, for noticing when someone’s internal song lost its rhythm.

“Fragmented,” Wednesday admitted, because lying to Divina always felt like a waste of energy. “They arrived while we were dragging her back. Too many variables. None of them definitive.”

“I know. I saw your face when we lost her the first time.”

Wednesday’s spine drew taut. “We didn’t lose her.”

“Not yet. That’s good. But it means your brain got a preview it wasn’t ready for.” Divina straightened, cracking her neck. “If it starts throwing pictures at you again, tell me. Even if they don’t make sense.”

“They never make sense,” Wednesday whispered.

“Yeah, I know.” Divina reached for a syringe, drawing up a small amount of clear fluid. “But sometimes they rhyme. And rhymes I can work with.”

Wednesday watched the needle slide into the IV port, the plunger depress. Sedative, she guessed. Or something to blunt the raw edges of Enid’s body’s alarm, allow it to rest enough to do the quiet work of rebuilding. “Will that slow her breathing?” she asked.

“A little. But not enough to worry me. The pain was making her tense even unconscious. We need her muscles to stop fighting us.”

The idea of Enid’s body fighting even now fit so well Wednesday could almost smile. “She remains contrary in all states, it seems.”

“Wonder where she picked that up,” Divina hummed.

The sedative took hold quickly. The tiny furrows at the corners of Enid’s eyes smoothed. The muscles along her jaw unclenched. Her fingers, which had twitched occasionally in response to some internal storm, went still. The monitor responded, too, a subtle shift in rhythm—each beat fractionally further apart.

Still within parameters, Wednesday told herself. Still safe.

Time blurred once she returned to her chair. Ten minutes. Thirty. Enough, at least, for the sun’s angle to shift outside, for the light bleeding around the infirmary curtain to tilt toward gold. Someone came by with a bowl of something approximating soup; Wednesday accepted it and consumed the contents, more for Bianca’s future peace of mind than any real hunger. The salt hit her tongue; the warmth sank into her gut and did very little to touch the chill that had settled in the rest of her.

Above all else, the monitor kept beeping.

It became too easy to take that sound for granted, a background metronome her brain filtered out until something else drew attention to it—a minor glitch when the generator stuttered, a shift in volume when someone brushed against the machine. She knew, academically, that complacency hovered in that space. She had watched enough horror to know the beat always stopped at the worst possible moment.

Even so, when it changed, it took her a second to register.

Divina was at the far end of the infirmary, checking stitches on a scavenger’s arm. Bianca came and went twice, leaving more information about the run on Wednesday’s mental desk. Rowan appeared once, stood in the doorway with his notebook in hand, eyes dark and distant, then disappeared again when Bianca snapped at him that this was not the time.

The room had settled into a tired rhythm. 

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Until it shifted.

Beep… beep… beep…

Wednesday’s spine snapped straight. “Divina.”

The siren glanced up. “What—”

The monitor blipped into a high, wandering note, then wobbled and flattened briefly before stumbling back into peaks.

Wednesday was already on her feet. “Divina.”

In two strides Divina was at the bedside, fingers on Enid’s wrist, eyes flicking between patient and screen. “Heart rate’s dropping. Pressure?”

Wednesday stepped aside enough to let her at the machinery while still keeping within arm’s reach of Enid. The blood pressure cuff around Enid’s upper arm hissed as it inflated, then deflated. The reading on the small digital display dipped lower than Wednesday liked.

“Could be the sedative,” Divina muttered to herself. “Could be—” The monitor blipped again. “Shit.”

“Problem?” Bianca demanded, already half through the curtain.

“Arrhythmia,” Divina said. “Her heart’s wandering. Might just be a blip, but her system’s already—”

The rest of her sentence drowned in the sudden, horrible sound of the monitor’s pitch changing entirely. Beeps merged into one long, unwavering tone.

For a moment, Wednesday’s brain refused. But then the numbers at the side dropped to zeroes, and worst of all, it looked almost… peaceful.

“Fuck,” Divina snapped. “No, no, no—Bianca, get the crash kit. Wednesday, move.”

Wednesday’s hand latched around the rail instead; her fingers whitened. “No.”

“Wednesday.” Divina’s voice cut through, fierce. “If you love her, get out of my way.”

Wednesday jerked back a single step, enough for Divina and Bianca to explode into the space she’d vacated. Divina climbed practically onto the bed, hands interlaced, and started chest compressions—heel of her palm slamming down over Enid’s sternum in a rhythm that looked brutal, jarring her whole body with each push.

“One, two, three, four—” she counted under her breath.

Bianca wrestled with the battered defibrillator they’d salvaged months ago, slapping pads onto Enid’s chest above and below the bandage. “Come on, you bastard. Come on, come on—Divina, keep going—”

Wednesday stood at the foot of the bed, frozen. Her eyes kept flicking between Enid’s face—slack, gray, mouth slightly open as Divina’s compressions forced air in and out of her lungs—and the flat green line on the screen.

Her visions surged.

In the span of a heartbeat that wasn’t happening, she saw three different futures overlay themselves like bad film:

Enid’s body still on the bed, skin waxy, eyes closed under a sheet Divina drew up with shaking hands while the camp gathered outside in a restless, stunned cluster. Enid’s cot empty, weeks later, her scent faded from the blankets, her laughter missing from the mess tent as Bianca announced the details of a memorial they couldn’t afford. And Enid, older, hair longer and threaded with more pink, standing on the ramparts of some repurposed building Wednesday hadn’t yet conquered, yelling at her about weaponizing traps while the sun rose over a city they’d bent to their will.

They collided, scrambled, left behind a static-riddled mess. For the first time since the collapse, Wednesday wanted to claw her way out of her own skull.

“—clear!” came Bianca’s shout.

Divina lifted her hands just long enough; Bianca thumbed the button. The shock jumped Enid’s body, arching her back off the cot. Still, the tone pressed on.

“Again!” Divina barked, already dropping back into compressions. Sweat beaded on her forehead, dripping down the side of her face. “Come on, Sinclair. You don’t get to check out now. You promised me more headaches than this.”

Bianca glanced once at Wednesday. “Talk to her. You’re the one she listens to. Talk.”

Wednesday’s throat turned to sandpaper. Words did not come easily at the best of times; now they jammed somewhere between chest and tongue. She forced them out anyway.

“Enid.” Her voice sounded wrong in her own ears—hoarse, raw, stripped. “You are being extremely inconsiderate. You have a book you promised to read. You agreed to wait until after our run. I rescind the condition. You may open it the moment you wake. That is an enormous concession. For me. I refuse to waste it.”

The prolonged pitch continued.

“You still haven’t heard the surprise,” Wednesday tried again, voice shaking now. “I spent weeks preparing it. You will be intolerable about my effort if you miss it. I won’t have it said that I planned a sentimental gesture for nothing. Get up.” Her hand found the cold metal of the bed rail again, gripping hard enough that her knuckles ached. Something hot gathered behind her eyes. 

The defibrillator whined as it charged again, a high keening sound that made the hairs on Wednesday’s arms stand on end. 

“Clear!”

Another jolt. Another arch. Another sick, empty stretch of flat noise.

“Enid Sinclair,” Wednesday hissed, and everyone in the room flinched at the way her voice cracked. “I forbid you to die.”

The flatline held for one more impossible second, as if the universe weighed Wednesday’s authority against physics and found it amusing. Divina’s hands kept driving down into Enid’s sternum, ribs flexing under the force, the cot frame squealing in protest. Bianca hovered over the defibrillator, jaw clenched, eyes flicking between the screen and Divina for permission that never came; she had leadership in her voice, but Divina had ownership of this moment, and everyone felt the hierarchy re-sort itself around the girl on the bed. 

“Again,” Divina snapped. “Bianca—time. Don’t guess. Count.”

Bianca’s voice steadied. “Two minutes. Thirty seconds since the last shock.”

“Good.” Divina kept compressions going, shoulders locked, elbows straight. “Bag her.”

A runner whose name Wednesday failed to guess fumbled the ambu bag into place, pressing the mask over Enid’s mouth and nose with shaking hands. 

Divina didn’t look up. “Seal it. Don’t hover. Squeeze on my count.”

The bag wheezed. Enid’s chest rose, fell, rose again, obedient to plastic and human insistence. 

Divina’s gaze cut to the crash kit tray. “Epi. Now.”

Bianca was already cracking an ampule. “Last one.”

Divina thrust out her wrist without stopping compressions; Bianca slid the syringe into the IV port, plunger depressing. 

“Push,” Divina ordered. “One—two—three—four—” 

Wednesday remained at the foot of the bed. Her mouth opened and closed once, words collecting and scattering, because speech felt obscene beside this violence—hands crushing bone to coax a heart into remembering itself. Bianca had told her to talk. Wednesday understood why. Enid listened to her in every realm—awake, half-asleep, furious, delighted. The body carried loyalty deeper than consciousness.

So Wednesday leaned in, close enough that her breath brushed Enid’s cheek, and forced her voice into existence.

“You are required,” she said. “You have obligations. Your continued survival is a logistical necessity. You still owe Yoko for breaking her sunglasses last week. You owe Ajax for stealing his sweater and claiming it was ‘community property.’ You owe Bianca the satisfaction of yelling at you when you wake. And you owe me—” The word caught in her throat. She swallowed hard, refusing to let it show. “You owe me the decency of staying.”

The straight line twitched.

“Hold,” Divina barked, hands pausing midair, palms hovering inches above Enid’s chest. “Rhythm check.”

Bianca leaned in. The runner with the bag froze, knuckles white around the rubber.

For half a second the monitor teased them—one soft blip, then another, small and pathetic. 

Divina’s fingers found Enid’s carotid. Her face went eerily still. “There,” she breathed. “I have a pulse. Weak. Keep oxygen. Keep her warm. Do not touch anything unless I tell you.”

The long tone broke into beeps again—slow, uneven at first, then stumbling into something resembling rhythm. A number crawled upward from zero, shaky as a newborn foal. Enid’s body reacted before her mind could. A hard, involuntary gasp jerked through her, mouth opening around the mask, eyes fluttering beneath lids that remained stubbornly shut. Her fingers twitched faintly against the sheet.

Wednesday’s knees threatened to unlock. She caught herself on sheer spite, on muscle memory, on the simple fact that she refused to collapse in front of anyone.

Divina swore softly, more tired now than angry. “Okay. Okay. We have her back.” She dragged a forearm across her brow, leaving a smear of sweat. “Bianca, I want a fresh battery on this monitor if we have one. If we don’t, I want someone sitting here with a stethoscope and a watch like it’s 1890.”

Bianca nodded, already turning. “Ajax,” she barked toward the curtain, “find me batteries. Tear apart the radio stash if you have to.”

A muffled, frantic “On it!” came from outside.

Divina’s gaze returned to Enid. “That was an arrest,” she explained. “Triggered by arrhythmia. Her pressure dipped, her heart panicked, her system chose the dramatic option.”

Wednesday’s voice scraped. “Why?”

“Blood loss. Stress. That sedative. Her body’s running on the edge of its own reserves.” Divina checked Enid’s pupils, lifted a lid, watched, then released it gently. “And you know what else it could be.”

Wednesday’s visions surged in response, as if summoned by the word could. Images tried to stack again—Enid gray and still, Enid laughing on a motorcycle, Enid under a sheet. Wednesday clenched her jaw until the pressure steadied the world back into one layer.

Divina’s tone sharpened. “Electrolytes. We gave her old blood. We gave her what we had. That stuff shifts potassium, calcium, magnesium—sometimes the heart hates you for it. Sometimes it stops. We got her back.” She paused, then added, “We got lucky.”

Wednesday flinched at the word. 

Luck was for people who surrendered control.

“Don’t do that face,” Divina warned. “Your glare can’t intimidate biology. What I need is data. Watch the rhythm. If it starts wandering again, you call me instantly. Don’t debate. Don’t bargain.”

Bianca returned to the bedside, defibrillator half-closed, shoulders still squared. “We’re good?” 

“For now,” Divina answered honestly. “And the next if we behave.”

Wednesday’s hand, which had been hovering uselessly, finally found Enid’s again. Her fingers lay slack, cool against Wednesday’s palm. The IV tape tugged slightly as Wednesday adjusted. Then, she made a small sound—barely a breath, barely a voice. 

Divina leaned in, listening. “She’s trying to surface,” she murmured. “Don’t get excited. Her brain is rebooting.”

Wednesday bent closer anyway. “Enid. You complied. Continue complying.”

A faint twitch at the corner of Enid’s mouth suggested either an attempt at a smile or a spasm. Her lashes fluttered. For a second, Wednesday thought she might open her eyes. Then the moment passed, Enid sinking again, pulled down by chemicals and exhaustion and the simple weight of what her body had endured.

Divina adjusted the drip, checked the chest tube line, then frowned at the cloudy bottle. The drainage, which had slowed earlier, started to creep faster again—thin pink turning darker at the base. Divina’s thumb tapped the bottle.

Bianca noticed. “What?”

Divina didn’t answer immediately. She ran fingers along the tubing, checking for clots, then traced the line back to Enid’s side, eyes narrowing. “The lung’s still expanding. Breath sounds are… present. But she’s bleeding more than I want.” Her gaze flicked to the monitor again. The rhythm had stabilized, but there were little stutters—premature beats that nudged the line out of perfect uniformity.

Ice settled behind Wednesday’s ribs. “What do you need?”

Divina exhaled. “Ideally? A hospital. A surgeon. Blood that didn’t sit in a cooler for who knows how long. A lab to run electrolytes.” She forced herself to refocus. “In reality? I need to keep her rhythm from wandering again. If she arrests a second time, our odds drop.”

Bianca’s voice lowered. “So what’s the fix?”

Divina’s expression tightened. “Amiodarone. Or lidocaine. Something to steady the electrical chaos. I have… half a course left. Maybe enough for tonight if her body behaves. Her healing is faster than a baseline human’s. It’s also messier. It burns through meds like they’re a suggestion.” She glanced at Wednesday. “If she starts throwing runs of ventricular ectopy again, I’ll need more.”

Bianca didn’t have to ask what more meant. The camp lived on scarcity; every item existed in an inventory and an argument. 

“We don’t have it,” she said flatly.

Divina shook her head once. “We have scraps. Enough to fake competence. Not enough to feel safe.”

Silence swelled between them, filled by the monitor’s beeping and the faint hiss of the chest tube. Outside, the camp’s alarm had faded, replaced by the low buzz of people processing violence and almost-loss. 

Bianca’s gaze sharpened, already reaching for maps in her mind. “North run.”

Divina’s eyes lifted. “Yes.”

Wednesday stilled. 

Bianca had already mentioned it earlier, in the blunt way she delivered bad news: the universe rerouted a bullet, the schedule stayed. But now the run shifted shape. It stopped being about antibiotics and fuel in the abstract. It became a line from Enid’s chest to a bottle of pills in a ruined pharmacy somewhere north, a thread pulled tight enough to cut.

“The clinic on Main?” Bianca asked, thinking out loud. “Or the old urgent care by the river?”

“The urgent care got stripped last month,” Divina replied. “The clinic on Main—if the doors held, if the back storage didn’t get raided, if the humidity didn’t ruin the stock—there’s a chance.” She looked down at Enid. “There’s also a hospital wing attached to that rehab facility you scouted, the one with the locked pharmacy cabinet. The place you called a ‘nest of mold and disappointment.’”

Wednesday remembered it: a sagging building with barred windows, the smell of rot, a hallway lined with abandoned wheelchairs like corpses. She’d marked it on the map because the pharmacy door resisted her attempts at entry, steel reinforced and stubborn. She’d filed it away as a future problem.

Now it became a lifeline.

Bianca didn’t waste time. “Tomorrow. Dawn. Earlier if we can see.”

Wednesday’s body reacted first—an immediate, visceral revolt at the idea of leaving this room. Her fingers tightened around Enid’s. Strategy tried to override instinct. If she left, Enid could flatline again. If she left, she wouldn’t hear the first shift in the monitor’s cadence. If she left, something could happen and she’d return to an empty bed and a sheet and Bianca’s careful voice saying we did everything we could. Then Divina’s earlier order snapped through her: data, behave, odds.

Enid’s survival required more than proximity. It required supplies.

Wednesday forced her jaw to unclench. “You’ll keep her stable,” she told Divina.

Divina met her stare without flinching. “I’ll do my job. And you’ll do yours.”

Bianca’s gaze flicked between them. “We’ll rotate guards in here. “Someone sits with her at all times. You go out, you come back with what Divina needs, and Enid stays alive to be furious about it.”

“Agreed,” Wednesday added.

Divina reached for another syringe, drew something clear, then hesitated. Her eyes slid to Wednesday. “If she wakes, she’s going to want to fight the tube. She’s going to try to sit up. Her body will argue with her brain. If that happens, I need her calm.”

Wednesday understood. Enid’s energy was a wildfire even when healthy. Waking in pain, with foreign plastic in her chest and bruises blooming under bandages, she would thrash simply to prove she could.

“What are you giving her?” Wednesday asked, careful.

Divina’s mouth twitched with the faintest tired humor. “Something to keep her from turning this into a full-contact sport. And something for pain.” She glanced down at Enid again, softer. “I’m aiming for sleep, not oblivion. I want her responsive.”

Wednesday’s fingers stroked the back of Enid’s hand once. “Do it.”

The medication slid into the line. Enid’s brow smoothed again, tension easing out of her face. The monitor’s rhythm steadied, still fragile but less chaotic. Divina watched for a long moment, then finally exhaled. Bianca moved toward the curtain, already issuing orders into the hallway: inventory check, medical stock, assign night watch, prep packs. Her leadership snapped back into its familiar grooves, because the camp survived by motion, by tasks, by refusing to freeze.

Before she stepped out, Bianca paused and looked back at Wednesday. “Eat something. And sleep at least an hour. You look like you’re about to start seeing ghosts and arguing with them.”

“I already did,” Wednesday replied.

Bianca’s face tightened, understanding in her eyes. “Then sleep anyway.”

Divina lingered as Bianca left, hands moving through the practiced ritual of securing lines and tightening tape. When she finished, she leaned on the bed rail for a breath and studied Wednesday.

“You did good.”

Wednesday’s gaze stayed on Enid. “I did the minimum.”

“You spoke to her,” Divina countered. “You anchored her. That matters.” She hesitated, then added, “When she wakes—when she’s lucid—she might remember pieces. The flatline. Your voice. Don’t… get weird about it.”

Wednesday’s mouth pressed thin. “My baseline is weird.”

Divina’s almost-smile returned. “Then don’t get weirder.” She tapped the monitor lightly. “I’ll be in the next bay for twenty minutes. You call if this line does anything but behave. Even if it’s a hiccup. You hear me?”

“Yes.”

Divina followed Bianca out.

Wednesday sat again, because she needed to be at Enid’s level, to keep her hand in hers, to keep the physical anchor. She watched the monitor the way she watched perimeter lines: constant, intent, waiting for the first sign of threat. Minutes blurred into something less measurable. Someone brought her water; she drank. Someone else slid a bowl of broth into her hands; she ate three spoonfuls. 

At some point, the medication wore thin enough that Enid stirred again. A small motion first—fingers curling, a faint pull at the blanket. Then her lashes fluttered and her eyes cracked open, unfocused and glassy.

Wednesday leaned in instantly. “Enid.”

Enid blinked. “Weds,” she slurred, voice thick with sedative. Her gaze drifted, found the monitor, drifted back. Confusion tightened her brow. “Why… everyone looks… scared?”

Wednesday’s throat tightened. “Your heart stopped.”

Enid stared at her for a beat. Then she made a small, offended sound. “Rude.”

Wednesday’s mouth twitched despite herself. “You came back,” she said softly. “As ordered.”

Enid’s eyes slid toward their hands. She squeezed. “Did you… get mad at it?” 

“Yes. And I intend to continue.”

Enid’s mouth curved faintly. Then her gaze sharpened abruptly, panic flickering through the drug haze. “Did I—did I—” Her breath hitched, chest rising and tugging at bandages. Pain flashed across her face. “Ow. Ow. Okay. Did I die?”

Wednesday tightened her grip. “Briefly. You chose to reverse the decision.”

Enid swallowed, eyes suddenly wet. “I didn’t… mean to.”

“I know,” Wednesday murmured. “But you are here.”

Enid’s gaze drifted again, heavy. “Okay,” she whispered. “Okay. I’m… so tired.”

“Sleep,” Wednesday ordered, and this time the word softened into permission. “I’ll remain.”

Enid’s lashes fluttered. “Promise?”

Wednesday leaned closer, forehead almost touching Enid’s temple. “I operate on promises. You know that.”

Enid exhaled, tension easing out of her shoulders. “Good. Because… you’re my… anchor.”

The word emerged slurred and unguarded, too honest for Enid’s usual bright chatter. Then her eyes closed again. Her breathing deepened, slow and careful enough to avoid pulling at the wound. And the monitor continued its steady report.

Wednesday remained.

Night crept up in increments rather than a clean fall. The light beyond the curtain shifted from pale to amber to a bruised gray. The generator faltered twice; each time, the monitor flickered and Wednesday’s entire body tensed, ready to tear the machine apart with her bare hands if it dared. But it held. Bianca rotated guards in and out as promised—Yoko came in once, face scrubbed raw, sunglasses absent, her usual chaos compacted into quiet fury. 

“I’m going with you tomorrow,” Yoko told Wednesday, voice flat with intent.

Wednesday didn’t argue. “You’ll obey orders.”

Yoko huffed. “I’ll obey some orders.”

Wednesday met her stare. “All orders. Enid’s life depends on it.”

That did it. Yoko’s jaw tightened. “Fine.”

Ajax arrived after, carrying a handful of scavenged batteries like treasure. “Bianca’s turning the whole camp inside out. She’s got Rowan drawing maps again. Like, aggressively. And she told me to pack for you. Which is scary. Because I pack like a raccoon.”

Wednesday glanced up. “Did you bring the correct batteries?”

Ajax raised them. “I think so. I stole them from the radio stash like a criminal, so… probably.”

Wednesday accepted the lot, installed them with care, watched the monitor brighten and stabilize. 

Sometime after that, Divina returned, exhausted but functional. She checked Enid’s bandages, listened to her lungs, frowned at the drainage again, then nodded. “Her rhythm’s better,” she murmured to Wednesday. “The meds are holding. But I want the antiarrhythmics anyway. I want antibiotics too—broad spectrum. That wound’s a feast waiting to happen.” Her gaze lifted. “If you find ceftriaxone, amiodarone, lidocaine, magnesium sulfate—anything in that family—you bring it. You don’t get picky. You don’t prioritize fuel over her.”

“Enid first,” Wednesday confirmed quickly.

Divina studied her for a breath, then softened. “Good.” She hesitated before adding, “Weather’s turning.”

Wednesday’s eyes flicked to the thin slice of outside visible past the curtain seam. The light had dimmed in a way that suggested more than sunset.

Bianca chose that moment to return, a map rolled under one arm. “We leave before first light,” she announced. “Storm front’s coming in from the east. If it hits hard, the roads north turn to mud and the river crossings get ugly. So we beat it.”

Divina’s mouth tightened. “And Enid stays here.”

Bianca nodded. “With you. With two runners on rotation. With Yoko screaming at anyone who breathes wrong.”

“Good.” Divina turned to Wednesday. “You need sleep.”

Wednesday’s spine remained rigid. “I’ll sleep when—”

“When you’re a liability,” Bianca cut in sharply. “Which will be sooner than you think if you keep trying to outstubborn your own nervous system. Divina’s here. I’m here. Enid is sedated. You get one hour. In the back room. I’ll wake you. That’s an order.”

Wednesday wanted to argue. The argument lined itself up in her mind—probability, risk, vigilance. Then she looked at Enid’s face, smoothed by medication, and understood that if she kept grinding herself into dust, she’d go out tomorrow with dulled reflexes and slower thought. She’d fail Enid in a different way. 

So, she leaned down, brushed her lips to Enid’s knuckles and whispered, “Remain.”

Enid didn’t respond. But her fingers curled faintly, as if even unconscious she knew the shape of the word.

In the back room, sleep hit Wednesday like a blunt weapon. Her dreams tried to layer visions over reality anyway—Enid’s flatline, the road north, a pharmacy door resisting, rain hammering metal, Rowan’s eyes too bright in the dark—but Bianca’s hand on her shoulder yanked her back before the images could solidify into prophecy. 

“Up,” she whispered. “You’re moving.”

Wednesday sat up instantly, heart kicking hard. For one second she didn’t know where she was, then the smell of antiseptic substitute and old metal snapped her into the infirmary’s geography. She stood without comment, because Bianca’s face told her time had tightened.

Enid still slept, monitor steady. Divina was at the bedside, scribbling notes in a ledger that had once tracked attendance for a pre-Fall clinic. 

She didn’t look up as Wednesday approached. “She held. For now.”

For now. Time bought, time invested.

Bianca unrolled the map on the edge of a table, smoothing it down with both hands. The route north was marked in thick ink, notes clustered like scars: collapsed overpass, flooded underpass, possible raider activity, salvage points. One location was circled twice, heavy enough to tear paper: the rehab facility with the locked pharmacy cabinet.

“We go here.” Bianca tapped the circle. “We get meds and whatever else isn’t rotted. We hit the fuel cache if it’s still there. We get back before the storm turns the roads into soup. Rowan’s bringing bolt cutters and his big telekinetic ego. Ajax and Yoko stay to help Divina and keep the generators alive.”

Wednesday’s gaze remained on the circle. A locked cabinet. A storm. A clock that started the moment Enid’s heart chose silence.

“Understood.”

Divina finally lifted her head. “Bring me amiodarone if you find it,” she repeated. “Bring me antibiotics. Bring me saline. Bring me sterile gloves if the apocalypse has decided to be generous.” She leaned closer, lowering her voice to something that belonged only to Wednesday. “And bring yourself back. I can keep her alive for a night. I can keep her alive for a day if the meds hold. But she wants you here when she wakes for real.”

Wednesday’s throat tightened. She nodded once, because anything more would betray her.

Bianca rolled the map back up, already moving toward the doorway. “Gear up. We move in three hours.”

Wednesday looked down at Enid one last time. The bandage across her shoulder had bled through again in a small, stubborn bloom. The chest tube bottle held its slow accumulation, pale pink turning darker at the base. The monitor kept its rhythm, each beep a fragile agreement with the universe. She slid her fingers under Enid’s again and squeezed. 

“I’m leaving to steal your heart medicine,” Wednesday murmured, because Enid would appreciate the grim joke when she woke. “Stay alive out of spite.”

Enid’s brow twitched, as if her body heard and objected to the phrasing.

Bianca’s voice snapped from the doorway. “Addams.”

Wednesday let her hand linger a moment longer, then withdrew. She straightened, rolled her shoulders, and stepped away from the bed like. 

Outside, the camp had already shifted into pre-run tension—people moving, voices tight, supplies laid out in neat piles. The sky beyond the fence had taken on a heavy, bruised cast, clouds stacking low in the distance.

Wednesday headed for the armory without slowing, because every second between her and the pharmacy cabinet now carried a cost measured in heartbeats.

Enid lived inside the moment before impact.

She and Wednesday moved through a day that felt smooth at the seams. There was a table, and on it sat a spread of ridiculous abundance: fruit that looked freshly stolen from a market, bread that tore with soft resistance, cups sweating with cold that implied ice still belonged to the world. Outside the windows, the sky sat blue and cooperative, the sort that promised nothing bad could possibly happen under it. But Enid knew, in a distant and entirely unurgent way, that this had to be wrong, that the apocalypse didn’t do “cooperative,” that blue skies were usually just a prettier cover for cruelty. 

Wednesday sat across from her. She wore black, but it wasn’t the grim, utilitarian black of scavenged clothes and blood concealment; it was a dress that looked like it had never met dirt in its life, fabric smooth and elegant, sleeves drifting down her wrists as she moved her hands. 

“You’re staring,” Wednesday observed.

Enid grinned and didn’t bother pretending otherwise. “Because you look like you’re about to ask me to discuss stock portfolios and pretend we’re in a Jane Austen book.”

Wednesday’s mouth did its almost-smile. “I would never ask you to pretend.”

“That’s true,” Enid admitted happily, leaning forward so her elbows landed on the table. “You’d ask me to comply.”

“I would ask you to behave,” Wednesday corrected.

Enid laughed. She reached for a strawberry, popped it into her mouth, and let herself enjoy the sweet shock of it. “You know, I keep waiting for you to tell me this is some kind of trap. Like, surprise! We’re actually in a simulation! Or a cult recruitment pitch! Or a twisted little ‘what if’ scenario where you’re trying to test my loyalty.”

Wednesday’s gaze held hers. “Why would I test your loyalty?”

Enid blinked. The question sounded simple. It sounded almost sincere. It sounded… slightly wrong.

Wednesday didn’t ask questions like that. Wednesday rarely asked questions at all, at least not ones without blades hidden in them. Wednesday used statements. Wednesday used commands. Wednesday used conclusions. If Wednesday ever asked Enid about loyalty, it would come out like, Do you intend to betray me? Or, Your pattern suggests… Or, Your values are questionable.

Enid’s grin faltered for the briefest instant, then she smoothed it back into place. “Because you’re you,” she said lightly. “Because you test everything. You test fences. You test weapons. You test people. You tested me the first time I—”

“The first time you chose me,” Wednesday cut in.

Enid’s stomach did a small, slow flip that had nothing to do with strawberries. “I did choose you,” she said, softer now without meaning to be. “I keep choosing you. Like, aggressively. Like, some might say it’s a problem.”

“I noticed.”

Enid waited for the dry insult to follow. For the observation about Enid’s poor decision-making. For the breakdown of why this choice would get her killed. Instead Wednesday reached across the table and touched Enid’s wrist, thumb pressing lightly to the inside of her pulse like she was checking, like she was making sure Enid existed in this moment. Enid’s skin warmed under that touch in a way that felt startlingly real.

“Do you remember,” Wednesday said, “when we thought the future was a thing we could plan?”

Enid laughed again, automatically. “We still plan. Bianca plans. You plan. You love planning. You plan your planning. You probably have a backup plan for if your plan gets bored.”

“I planned,” Wednesday corrected, and Enid’s smile hiccupped because there it was again: a word shifted by a fraction, a tense slid sideways. Planned. Past tense, like the planning was over.

Enid tilted her head. “Okay, what’s up with you? You’re being… soft. Like, soft soft. Like you’re auditioning for ‘Most Improved Emotionally Available Girlfriend.’”

Wednesday’s fingers tightened faintly, then loosened. Her gaze drifted past Enid’s shoulder. When she looked back, her eyes held that steady dark intensity Enid knew well, but there was a sheen at the edges that didn’t belong.

“I am… practicing.”

“Practicing what?” 

Wednesday’s lips parted. For a second, Enid thought she might actually answer directly. Instead she said, “Tomorrow.”

Enid blinked. “Tomorrow, as in…?”

“Tomorrow,” Wednesday repeated, like the word itself contained instructions.

Enid leaned back in her chair, the calm room suddenly too quiet in a way that made her skin itch. “Okay,” she said slowly. “If this is some metaphor, I’m gonna need you to use less Wednesday language. Give me, like, subtitles. Or a PowerPoint.”

Wednesday’s mouth twitched. “You would sabotage your own epiphany for comedic effect.”

“Absolutely.” Enid beamed. “Comedy is my coping mechanism and also my love language.”

“Your love language is persistence,” Wednesday said, and again the sentence landed wrong because it landed too gently. 

Enid opened her mouth to respond—and then sound seeped into the room like ink bleeding through paper.

It arrived as an edge first. A distant ripple of harsh syllables, muffled as if carried through walls. The calm… warped. The blue sky outside the windows held, but the light shifted. Enid’s head snapped toward the sound. But it came from nowhere and everywhere at once.

“What was that?” she asked.

Wednesday’s gaze remained on Enid’s face with a focus that suddenly felt hungry, urgent. “Ignore it.”

Enid laughed. “That’s rich,” she said, though her pulse had started to climb. “I ignore danger so well.”

The sound surged again, closer now, clearer. Someone shouting. Someone arguing. Words she couldn’t quite parse, consonants jagged, vowels stretched sharp with panic.

Enid stood up without realizing she’d moved. Her chair scraped the floor. “Is that Bianca,” she realized. “Is something happening?”

Wednesday stood too. “Enid. Listen to me.”

The shouting grew loud enough now that Enid caught fragments: —tell me what happened— and —blood— and —left— and a voice that might have been crying.

Enid turned toward the sound again. “We should go. If someone’s hurt—if the camp—”

“This is not the camp,” Wednesday interrupted, and now her eyes were shining. “This is… where you are safe.”

Enid stared at her. Her brain tried to hold onto jokes, tried to hold onto denial, but the dampness in Wednesday’s eyes shredded the impulse. “Wednesday,” she murmured. “Why are you crying?”

Wednesday’s throat worked. She rounded the table and lifted a hand, fingers trembling faintly as she cupped Enid’s cheek. Her palm was cool against Enid’s skin, and Enid leaned into it reflexively.

“I am apologizing in advance,” Wednesday whispered.

Enid’s heart lurched. “For what?”

Instead of answering, Wednesday kissed her.

Enid made a sound, half-laugh and half-sob, her hands fisting in Wednesday’s sleeves like anchors. When Wednesday pulled back, Enid’s lips tingled. For a heartbeat the room blurred around them, the table and the windows and the impossible strawberries dissolving into light.

Wednesday’s hands stayed on Enid’s face. Her thumbs stroked beneath Enid’s eyes, as if mapping them. Tears slipped down her cheeks now—silent, furious tears that made Enid’s stomach twist because Wednesday didn’t cry. Wednesday endured. Wednesday calculated. Wednesday avenged. Tears belonged to other people.

“I’m sorry,” Wednesday rasped. “I’m sorry for the way I leave.”

Enid’s breath punched out of her. “Leave? What do you mean leave? Where are you going?”

Wednesday shook her head once, slow. “Not yet. Not like this.” Her gaze flicked toward the sound again, and the shouting had become a roar now, voices overlapping, frantic. “You will hear many versions. You will want to believe the loudest one because it will match your fear.”

Enid’s chest tightened around the sentence. “Stop. Stop doing the thing where you talk like a haunted diary entry. Just tell me.”

Wednesday’s mouth trembled. She inhaled shakily. “I need you,” she said, and it sounded like confession and command at once, “to be persistent when it matters. I need you to find me when you are ready. When you choose it.”

Enid stared at her, heat flooding behind her eyes. “I always choose you,” she said, voice cracking. “That’s my whole thing. That’s—”

“I know.” Wednesday’s voice softened even further, and the softness broke something open in Enid. “This time, you will choose me again. In motion. In pain. In spite. You will come back to tomorrow.”

Enid swallowed. “Tomorrow,” she echoed. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” Wednesday continued, and a tear slid down her cheek and dropped onto Enid’s skin like a small burn, “you keep walking when your body insists you stop. It means you follow even when you bleed.”

Enid’s breath caught on the word bleed, because in the same instant, warmth bloomed in her belly.

At first it felt like relief. Like sinking into a bath. Like melting. Then it thickened, spread, grew heavy. Enid’s eyes dropped instinctively to her own torso.

Red stained her shirt.

It pooled fast, blooming outward like ink, like the strawberries on the table had exploded, like the dream had decided to become honest. Enid’s hands flew down, pressing against the spreading wetness, and her fingers came away slick. Blood glistened bright against her skin.

Enid made a small sound of confusion. “What—”

Her knees buckled.

The world tilted. The calm room fractured. The floor rushed up, and Enid hit it hard enough to jar her teeth. Pain flashed, sharp and wrong, and with it came the sick, familiar realization: she couldn’t move. It wasn’t just weakness. It was paralysis. Like her muscles had forgotten their instructions. Like the warmth spreading through her had stolen her limbs.

Enid clawed at the floor anyway, nails scraping, trying to drag herself forward toward Wednesday. “Wait,” she gasped. “Wait—don’t—Weds—”

Wednesday stood above her, silhouetted by the bright impossible sunlight spilling through the windows. Her face looked carved out of grief now, tears streaking down her cheeks unchecked. She knelt, just for a moment, lowering herself to Enid’s level, and kissed Enid’s forehead like a blessing.

“Follow me,” Wednesday whispered. “When you can.”

Enid’s throat closed around a sob. “I can,” she insisted, furious even as terror strangled her. “I can. I’m trying. I’m—”

Wednesday’s smile broke. It was the smallest, sharpest thing, more pain than expression. “Be the persistent one this time,” she murmured, and Enid hated that she sounded proud.

Then Wednesday stood up again. She took one step back. Then another. The room brightened around her, light swallowing edges, turning her into a figure walking into sun.

Enid’s whole body shook with effort. “Wednesday!” she screamed, and it tore out of her with enough force that it ripped the dream’s fabric. The sound of it mixed with the shouting that bled into the room, two realities tangling.

Wednesday paused at the far end of the room and turned.

For one perfect, awful second she stood framed by the windows, sun behind her like a halo that belonged to nobody. Tears ran down her cheeks, catching the light. Her lips formed words without sound, mouthing, “Hold him down.”

The words hit Enid like a slap because they didn’t belong here. They didn’t match strawberries and blue skies. They belonged to the infirmary. They belonged to triage. They belonged to hands on a bleeding body.

Enid’s eyes snapped wide.

She woke up choking on air.

For a second she couldn’t tell if she’d come back to her body or if she was still trapped in some halfway place, because everything felt wrong and heavy and far away. Her chest hurt in a deep, bruised way that made her want to curl inward. Her shoulder screamed when she tried to move, pain radiating up her neck like lightning. Something tugged at her side—foreign pressure, a line, a tube—and her first instinct was to rip it out. 

Instead, she lay still, panting through a throat that felt coated in sand. Her eyes struggled to focus. Dim metal walls. A curtain. Shapes moving. The monitor beside her bed chirped its relentless little beeps, a sound Enid recognized with sudden violent clarity: the sound of her being alive.

Voices crashed over each other at the far side of the infirmary.

“Hold him down—hold him down, he’s going to tear his own stitches—”

“I need pressure on that wound, now, now—”

“Bianca—Bianca, he’s not breathing right—”

“Where the hell are they? Where’s  Rowan? Where’s Wednesday?”

Enid’s heart kicked hard at the last name, a reflex as immediate as pain. Her head turned toward the sound, slow and nauseating, and the movement made her shoulder burn. She swallowed a cry and forced herself to keep looking.

“Hold him down—no, hold his head, he’s aspirating—”

“Bianca, move, move—”

“Where’s Divina—where is she—”

“She left us to die!” the boy’s voice wailed again, cracking on the last word. “She left—she left—”

The dream clung to Enid like cobwebs. For a moment she expected to see Wednesday framed in sunlight again, tears on her face.

Instead she saw blood.

A boy sprawled on the floor between two cots, half-carried, half-dragged by runners whose hands were already slick red. He looked young—late teens maybe, early twenties—but the apocalypse aged everyone in strange ways, carving hard lines into soft faces. His shirt was shredded open and soaked through. Blood bubbled at his lips when he tried to breathe. One of his hands clawed at his throat as if he could pull air out by force.

Enid recognized him anyway.

“Mason?” she rasped.

Mason Holt. Mason with the too-big grin and the nervous jokes. Mason who always volunteered for perimeter shifts because he couldn’t stand sitting still. Mason who’d begged to go on the north run last week and then backed down when Bianca told him he wasn’t ready yet, his face burning with embarrassment. Mason who’d promised Enid he’d bring her back “something cute” from salvage if she ever let him tag along.

Now he lay on the infirmary floor choking on his own blood, eyes wild, face white under the grime.

Enid’s stomach dropped through the bed.

“What—what happened?” She tried to sit up again. Her body responded with immediate rebellion—pain tearing through her chest, the world tilting. 

A runner—someone Enid didn’t catch in the chaos—grabbed her shoulder gently but firmly. “Enid, stay down,” they pleaded. “Divina said—”

“Where’s Wednesday?” Enid forced out. “Where’s Wednesday? Where’s Bianca—”

Bianca surged into Enid’s line of sight like a storm given human shape. Blood streaked one side of her jaw—someone else’s, judging by how she hadn’t bothered to wipe it. Her eyes snapped toward Enid for half a heartbeat, a flash of assessment, then locked onto Mason with ruthless focus.

“Mason,” Bianca said, voice hard and sharp as a command. “Look at me.”

Mason’s gaze skittered. He found Bianca and clung to her like she was a fixed point in a spinning world. His mouth opened. Blood spilled.

“She—” he tried again. His voice collapsed into a wet cough. He gagged, panic flaring. “She left us—”

“Divina!” Bianca barked toward the curtain. “Now!”

Divina slammed through the infirmary curtain. Her sleeves were rolled up. Her hair had come loose again. Her expression was pure focus, all softness burned away by urgency. She took in Mason in one glance—blood, breathing, posture, skin tone—and moved.

“On the bed,” Divina ordered. “Now. Lift him—careful—don’t bend him like that, you’ll tear whatever’s still holding.”

Runners scrambled to obey. Mason cried out as they moved him, a thin animal sound that made Enid’s wolf slam against her ribs with helpless rage. Pain flashed across Mason’s face and then flickered into something else: fury, betrayal, raw horror.

“She left us to die,” he choked again as they hauled him onto the nearest cot. His eyes darted wildly, searching for someone. They snagged on Enid.

For a second, Enid saw accusation there too.

Her throat tightened. “Mason—what are you talking about? What—what run did you even go on? You weren’t—”

“I wasn’t supposed to be on it,” Mason spat. Blood sprayed with the effort. “You were. And then she—she said—she said she needed—” He coughed again, hard enough that his whole body jerked. 

Divina swore and shoved an oxygen mask over his face. “Breathe,” she snapped at him. “Or you die and I don’t get answers. Your choice.”

Mason’s eyes rolled toward her, fever-bright with panic. He sucked in a shaky breath through the mask. The plastic fogged with each exhale.

Bianca leaned in close. “Mason. I need specifics. Who left you? Where? When?”

Mason’s gaze flicked again toward Enid, then away, like he couldn’t decide where to throw his blame. “Wednesday.”

The name hit Enid like a gunshot all over again.

Her body tried to surge upright. Pain detonated. Stars flared behind her eyes. Someone pushed her gently back, but Enid barely felt it—her mind had already sprinted ahead.

“No. No, you’re wrong.”

Mason’s eyes widened, wild with desperation. “She left us,” he insisted, voice cracking. “She left—she had a bike—she—”

“Slow,” Bianca ordered. “Start at the beginning. Did you go north? Did you reach the rehab facility?”

Mason swallowed hard. Blood slid down his chin. His hands trembled under the blanket. “We left,” he whispered. “Before the storm. It was supposed to be… fast. In and out. Grab meds. Come back. Easy.” His eyes squeezed shut for a second as if the memory burned. “It wasn’t easy.”

Divina’s hands moved over him—checking his pulse, lifting the shredded fabric, pressing gauze against a wound Enid couldn’t see from her angle. “He’s got a puncture under the ribs,” she muttered to herself. “Possible liver. Possible spleen. Jesus.”

Mason sucked in a breath and whimpered around the oxygen mask. “We got there,” he gasped. “The rehab place. The stupid—stupid locked cabinet place. Rowan said he could—he could pop it. He could—”

“Rowan’s with you,” Bianca confirmed, eyes narrowing. “And who else

Mason’s lashes fluttered. “Dev,” he said, and even through the mask Enid could hear how the name twisted with fear. “And… and Lark. And—” His face pinched, like forcing the names out made them more real. “And Grant.”

Enid knew them too—Dev, a quiet runner with fast hands and a habit of braiding her hair tight before missions. Lark, older, broad-shouldered. Grant, of the load-bearers Bianca trusted because he didn’t panic. All three of them had been on the prep roster. All three of them had left this morning with Wednesday.

Enid’s stomach churned.

Bianca’s voice stayed steady, but something cold flickered behind her eyes. “Where are they now?”

Mason’s gaze slid toward Enid again.

“Dead.”

A runner made a small sound behind Bianca—shock, grief, an attempt to swallow it down and fail. Divina didn’t look up. Her hands pressed harder against Mason’s side, staunching blood with practiced brutality.

Bianca exhaled once through her nose. “Mason. Tell me exactly what happened.”

Mason’s breath hitched. His eyes darted, unfocused for a moment, like he was falling backward into the memory and couldn’t stop. “We got inside,” he rasped. “It was… quiet. Too quiet. Like the building was holding its breath. Rowan—Rowan kept saying he felt something. Like… like pressure. Like his head was full of bees.”

Enid’s wolf bristled at the description. Rowan’s powers did weird things to him. Everyone knew it. Everyone had learned to treat his unease like an omen.

“We found the cabinet,” Mason continued, voice shaking. “It was still locked. Still. Like it was… waiting for us.” He made a small laugh that sounded like a sob. “Wednesday was… she was calm. She always is. She told me to watch the hallway. She told Grant to stack furniture. She told Dev to stop tapping her foot because it made too much noise.” His eyes flicked toward Bianca. “We were listening to her. We were doing it right. We were—”

“What changed?” Bianca demanded.

Mason’s throat bobbed. “The door.”

Divina’s gaze snapped up. “Which door?”

“The front. We didn’t hear them come in. We didn’t hear anything until—until it was already happening. Like the building… hid them. Like it wanted them inside.”

Enid’s skin prickled. The dream’s wrong doorway flashed in her mind, and she hated herself for the association.

“Raiders?” Bianca asked sharply.

Mason shook his head fast, then winced at his own movement. “No,” he whispered. “Worse.”

Bianca’s eyes narrowed. “Define ‘worse.’”

Mason’s breath came shallow. “They weren’t yelling. They weren’t laughing. They weren’t talking like people. They just… moved.” His gaze went distant, unfocused. “They had these… masks. Like old gas masks, but—painted. Bright. Smiling.” He swallowed, and his throat worked like he was trying to force bile back down. “And they had guns. And knives. And—”

“That fucking cult,” Bianca hissed under her breath.

Divina swore softly. “Shit.”

Mason’s eyes snapped back to Bianca. “They shot Grant first. He didn’t even—he didn’t even get to lift his gun. He just—he just fell.” Mason’s voice cracked hard. “Lark tried to pull him back. She got hit too. Right in the chest. She made this sound—” His breath hitched. Tears slid down the sides of his face into the oxygen mask straps. “Rowan screamed. He—he pushed, like he does, like he can. He threw one of them into the wall so hard I thought the wall would break. And Wednesday—Wednesday was moving. She was cutting. She was—she was everywhere.”

Enid’s heart squeezed, because she could picture that. Wednesday in motion. Wednesday turning violence into geometry. Wednesday refusing to lose.

“So how,” Enid rasped, voice shaking despite her effort to keep it steady, “how does that turn into her leaving you?”

Bianca’s gaze snapped toward Enid. “Enid—”

“No,” Enid insisted, trying again to sit up. Pain flared, but she ignored it, breath coming harder. “He’s saying she left. I want to hear him say it. I want to hear what the hell he thinks he saw.”

Divina shot Enid a look that could have melted steel. “Stay down. Or you rip your stitches and we get to do this again with you.”

Enid’s hands clenched in the blanket. Her wolf pressed against her ribs, restless and furious.

Mason’s gaze locked onto Enid again, and this time the accusation burned bright. “She ran,” he choked. “She had the bag. She had the meds—we got the cabinet open, okay? We got it open and she—she grabbed the stuff, she grabbed—she grabbed what Divina wanted, she grabbed—” His voice collapsed into a ragged sob. “And then the cult people came in from the back too, like they were waiting for us, like they knew. And Wednesday looked at Rowan and… and she said something. I couldn’t hear it. But Rowan started yelling at her. He was screaming. He was calling her—calling her a liar. Calling her a coward.” Mason’s breath accelerated, the mask fogging. “And then she… she shoved me. She shoved me into the stairwell and she said ‘Stay.’ Like she was giving an order. Like she was… saving me. And I thought—okay, okay, she’s protecting us, she has a plan. She always has a plan.”

Bianca’s jaw tightened. “And then?”

Mason’s eyes went wet again. “And then I heard Grant—” His voice broke. He swallowed hard, forcing himself forward. “I heard Grant choking. And Lark… Lark was… she was gone. And Rowan was fighting. And Dev was—Dev was screaming, like she’d lost it. And Wednesday…” His gaze flicked away, like looking directly at the truth hurt. “Wednesday was gone.”

Enid’s lungs seized. “Gone where?”

Mason’s eyes snapped back to her. “Out,” he whispered. “Out the side door. The one we came through. She had the bag. She had a bike. She—she left.” His voice rose, hysteria cracking through. “She left us to die!”

Enid shook her head hard, denial surging like instinct. “No,” she said, and her voice broke. “No, she wouldn’t—she wouldn’t.”

Mason’s expression twisted, furious and terrified. “You weren’t there,” he spat. “You didn’t hear Rowan screaming. You didn’t see her face. She didn’t even—she didn’t even look back—”

“She looks back,” Enid said fiercely, because she had seen Wednesday look back—seen her do it when she thought no one noticed. “She always—she—”

A wet cough from Mason cut her words off. Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth under the mask. His eyes rolled back for a fraction of a second, then snapped forward again in panic. His hand clawed weakly at Divina’s wrist.

Divina’s expression sharpened. “He’s crashing! Bianca, move. Get out of my way.”

Bianca stepped back instantly, but she didn’t leave—she hovered like a shield, eyes flicking between Mason and the doorway as if threats might storm in next.

Divina ripped the oxygen mask away and leaned in close, her voice turning into command and comfort braided together. “Mason. Stay with me. Breathe. Breathe for me.”

Mason’s chest hitched. His breath came in a thin, broken rasp. His eyes were huge and unfocused now, like he was drowning on land.

“I can’t,” he choked, voice tiny. “It hurts. It hurts. It hurts—”

“I know,” Divina said, and her hands moved fast—checking the wound, pressing harder, barking for supplies. “I know. You can. You will.”

Bianca cut in. “Mason—where is Wednesday now?”

Mason’s mouth opened. His eyes flicked toward Bianca, then toward Enid, and something like pleading flashed through the panic.

Then his body jerked.

His gaze went blank.

The monitor at Enid’s bedside beeped faster, reacting to her own spike of adrenaline. Another monitor—one dragged hastily close to Mason—screeched as its line wavered.

Divina swore, vicious. “No. No, stay—Mason, stay with me—”

Bianca’s face tightened. “Divina—”

Divina shoved her hands down onto Mason’s chest and started compressions. “Runner!” she barked. “Crash kit—now!”

Enid’s body went cold. She watched it happen like she was trapped behind glass—Divina’s hands slamming down, Mason’s body jolting, blood smearing. Bianca snapping orders into the doorway. Runners scrambling with supplies. The room compressing around violence and desperation the way it always did.

Enid’s mind tried to split into pieces: one part screaming Wednesday, one part screaming Mason, one part screaming Rowan and Lark and Dev and Grant, one part screaming this can’t be real.

Her wolf surged, furious and protective, pressing against her ribs like it wanted to tear out of her body and run—run north, run through rain, run through cult masks and gunfire until it found Wednesday and dragged her back by the collar.

Enid tried to move again.

Her muscles refused.

Pain bit deep, a reminder of her own wound, her own fragility. She gripped the blanket hard enough to make her fingers ache and forced herself to breathe in slow counts the way Divina had taught her, because if she spiraled, if she ripped her tubes, she would become another emergency in a room that already had too many.

Divina’s voice rose over the chaos. “Clear!”

A jolt. Mason’s body arched, then fell limp again.

“Again,” Divina snarled, sweat shining on her forehead. “Come on, Holt. Come on. You do not get to dump this on my floor and die.”

Bianca hovered over the defibrillator, jaw clenched. “Clear!”

Another jolt. Another arch. The monitor screamed, then wavered, then—

A blip.

A shaky pulse crawled back onto the screen.

Divina’s shoulders sagged for half a second, then snapped rigid again. “Pulse,” she panted. “It’s weak. Bag him. Now.”

A runner shoved the ambu bag into place. It wheezed with each forced breath. Mason’s chest rose and fell, too shallow, too reluctant.

Divina leaned in, eyes narrowed, fingers on Mason’s neck. “Stay,” she muttered. “Stay. Stay. Stay.”

Bianca’s gaze snapped toward the doorway. “Someone find me a radio,” she barked. “Now. I want Rowan. I want Dev. I want—” Her voice faltered for a fraction of a second before hardening again. “I want Addams.”

Enid licked her lips, mouth dry. “Bianca.”

Bianca turned sharply. Her eyes met Enid’s, and for a moment the leader mask cracked enough for Enid to see what lived underneath: fear, anger, exhaustion, the weight of too many lives balanced on her spine.

“Stay with Divina,” Bianca ordered. “You don’t move.”

Enid’s laugh came out broken. “I can’t,” she whispered. “I literally can’t. But I need—” Her breath shook. “Bianca, Wednesday wouldn’t—she wouldn’t leave them.”

Bianca’s jaw clenched. “I know.”

Divina snapped, “Less talking,” without looking up. “Enid, breathe. Bianca, if you need to interrogate someone, do it outside my triage space.”

Bianca’s gaze flicked toward Mason again. His eyes were closed now, lashes dark against his cheeks. His breathing was still being forced by the bag. Blood continued to seep despite Divina’s pressure.

Bianca lowered her voice. “He’s in shock,” she said to Enid. “He’s traumatized. He’s bleeding out. People say a lot of things when their brains are trying to find a reason.”

Enid swallowed hard. “So you think he’s lying.”

“I think he believes what he’s saying,” Bianca replied, and that was worse. “And I think we need to find out what happened out there before the camp tears itself in half over it.”

As if summoned by her words, shouting erupted outside the infirmary curtain—other voices now, angry, frantic, desperate for answers.

“Is it true?” someone demanded. “Did she leave them?”

“Bianca—tell us—”

“Where’s Lark? Where’s Grant?”

Enid flinched at each voice like it was a physical blow. She tried to focus on Mason’s face, on Divina’s hands, on the simple fact that Mason was breathing for the moment. But the phrase kept echoing.

She left us to die.

Divina’s voice cut through again, sharper now. “His pressure’s dropping. We need blood. We need—Bianca, I need you to stop being a wall and start being a supply line.”

Bianca’s gaze snapped to Divina, then toward the door. Her whole body vibrated with the tension of doing two impossible jobs at once. Then she made a decision. “Hold him,” she ordered the nearest runner. “Do exactly what Divina says. Divina—keep him alive. I’m getting you whatever you need.”

Divina didn’t look up. “Move.”

Bianca turned to Enid one more time, and her voice dropped low, fierce. “You stay in this bed. If you get up, you rip your chest open. If you rip your chest open, Wednesday comes back to two bodies instead of one. You understand me?”

Enid’s throat tightened. She nodded once.

Bianca paused, her eyes flicking briefly to their joined reality—Enid’s bandages, the chest tube bottle, the monitor still faithful. Then her face hardened again, armor sliding into place. She yanked the curtain aside and stepped out into the shouting.

Enid heard her voice rise immediately, cutting through panic with sheer authority. “Shut up. If you want answers, you wait until I have them. Divina is working. If you interfere, you kill him. Back up.”

The crowd’s noise dimmed to a tense murmur.

Inside the infirmary, Divina kept moving. She worked like she’d done earlier for Enid—hands sure, voice clipped, a competence that forced the world to cooperate. She shouted for plasma expanders, for saline, for anything that could fake blood volume. She ordered someone to heat water, to warm blankets, to keep Mason from slipping further into cold shock. She pressed harder against the wound until her hands were red to the wrists.

Enid lay there and watched, helpless in the way she hated most: forced to be still while people she cared about bled.

Her wolf paced. It pressed hot and restless beneath her ribs, keyed up by the scent of blood and the sound of fear and the absence of Wednesday. Enid turned her head toward the doorway as if she could will Wednesday into appearing, as if she could summon her by wanting hard enough.

No black braids. No pale hands. No sharp voice ordering the universe into place.

Only the monitor’s beeping.

Mason’s eyelids fluttered once. His mouth moved under the mask as if he were trying to speak.

Enid leaned forward as much as her body allowed, straining. “Mason?”

Divina shot her a warning look. 

But then Mason’s lips moved again. A sound slipped out—faint, wet, half-swallowed.

Enid’s wolf surged forward, every instinct screaming for meaning. “What did you say? Mason, please—tell me—”

Mason’s eyes cracked open. For a second they found Enid’s, and there was something there that wasn’t accusation anymore. Fear, yes. Grief, yes. But also—confusion. Like he’d seen something that didn’t fit the story he was clinging to.

His lips moved again.

This time the words came out clearer, scraped raw by blood and panic.

“Rowan—”

Divina’s head snapped up. “What about Rowan?”

Mason’s gaze drifted, unfocused. His breath hitched. “He—he—” His throat worked like he was swallowing shards. “He said—he said they—”

“Who?” Enid demanded. “Who did Rowan say—”

Mason’s pupils blew wide. Panic surged back. He tried to inhale and couldn’t catch it. His chest jerked. His body tensed, then went abruptly slack.

The monitor beside him screamed again, line wobbling, then dipping.

Divina swore and lunged in, hands slamming down, compressions starting again. “God damn it,” she snarled. “Holt—stay—stay with me—”

Enid’s world narrowed to sound: the beep, the shout, the harsh count under Divina’s breath. Somewhere outside, Bianca’s voice rose again, barking orders into the camp, demanding radios, demanding runners, demanding calm.

Mason’s body jerked under Divina’s hands. His mouth opened as if he wanted to speak one more time.

But he didn’t get the chance.

Divina’s compressions slowed only when the monitor’s line crawled back into a shaky rhythm. She leaned in, checked Mason’s pulse, then pressed her forearm across her own eyes for half a second like she was wiping sweat and rage away in one motion.

“He’s alive,” Divina panted. “Barely.”

Enid’s lungs burned as she exhaled.

Dvina reached for a syringe with hands that trembled for the first time since she’d entered. She drew up something clear, injected it into Mason’s IV line, then checked his pupils. “He’s slipping,” she muttered. “Shock’s eating him. Brain’s starving. He needs surgery we don’t have.”

Enid’s eyes stung. “Is he going to—”

Divina’s gaze flicked to Enid, and for a second Enid saw how close Divina was to cracking too—how much she carried, how much she swallowed. “He’s going comatose,” she said bluntly. “If he stays alive, he stays asleep. It’s his body’s last defense. We can keep him breathing. We can keep him warm. We can wait.” Her jaw tightened. “And we can pray the universe feels generous.”

Enid let out a shaky breath that sounded suspiciously like a sob.

Divina turned away from Enid and adjusted the drip. Mason lay still now, eyelashes resting against his cheeks, mouth slack under the mask. His chest rose and fell shallowly without his permission. The shouting outside surged again, louder now—more voices joining, fear turning into anger the way it always did when people felt powerless.

Enid heard Bianca snap, “Back. Off.”

Enid heard someone else yell, “Where’s Addams?”

Enid heard the word “betrayal” spit like poison.

Her wolf growled low in her throat, a sound that made the runner near her bed glance nervously in her direction. Enid clenched her jaw and forced it down, forced herself to stay human, to stay still, because Wednesday’s absence already felt like a wound and Enid refused to make it worse.

Divina crossed to Enid’s bedside and slapped two fingers against Enid’s wrist like she was checking a pulse and also reminding Enid she existed. “Your heart rate’s climbing. You spiral, you arrest again. I don’t have the patience to revive two idiots tonight.”

Enid’s laugh came out wet. “I’m not spiraling,” she lied.

Divina’s eyes narrowed. “Your wolf is pacing in your pupils.”

“He said she left them,” Enid whispered, and her voice cracked on she like it was a betrayal of its own. “Divina… Wednesday wouldn’t.”

Divina held Enid’s gaze for a long moment, the siren in her eyes humming with something unspoken—too much emotion, too much truth, too much history. Then she said, very quietly, “I don’t believe she wanted to.”

Enid’s stomach dropped. “That’s not—Divina, that’s not the same thing.”

“I know,” Divina replied. “People get cornered. People make choices that look like cruelty from the outside. People…” She exhaled, controlled. “People come back haunted.”

Enid squeezed the blanket until her knuckles ached. “So you think she did?”

Divina’s gaze flicked toward the curtain where Bianca’s voice still cut through the crowd. “I think something happened out there that Mason couldn’t understand through blood loss and terror. And I think Rowan’s involvement makes everything worse.”

Enid latched onto that. “Rowan,” she repeated, and her wolf snarled at the name. “Mason was trying to say something about Rowan.”

Divina’s jaw tightened. “I heard.” She watched her for another long second. “Sleep if you can. I’ll wake you if anything changes.”

“Everything’s changing.

Divina’s eyes softened for the briefest instant. “Not you. You stay.” Then, she moved away.

Enid lay staring at the ceiling, heart thudding, mind racing through fragments: Mason’s words. Bianca’s map. The storm front Bianca mentioned earlier, the bruised sky outside. Wednesday leaving on a “prep run” and failing to return. The dream’s insistence on tomorrow like it was a place you could reach, if you just kept walking.

Enid turned her head slowly toward the seam of the curtain, toward the muffled sounds of camp outside—the shuffle of boots, the murmur of voices, the clink of gear being packed. She imagined Bianca rolling out the map again, stabbing a finger at the overpass, barking orders. She imagined Mason loading weapons with hands that shook. She imagined Rowan’s telekinetic focus hardening into something sharp enough to break locks and bones.

And she imagined Wednesday alone out there, somewhere between ruins and stormlight, either bleeding or hiding or calculating or… leaving.

Enid’s fingers curled into the sheet again, nails biting fabric. Her throat felt tight with unsaid words. She forced a breath in, slow and careful, feeling the tug of the tube, the ache of her shoulder, the bruised protest of her ribs.

Be the persistent one this time, Dream-Wednesday had said.

Enid swallowed hard and whispered into the dim, into the beeping, into the space where her dream had shattered, “Okay.”

She lay back, breathing through pain, listening to the camp gear itself into motion beyond the curtain, and held onto one fierce, stubborn truth like it was a weapon she could keep even from herself:

Wednesday could walk away.

And Enid would follow.