Yan Wuchang scooped up Miriam Hess's limp form before her skull struck the walkway gravel.
"Miriam!" Elias barked, his tailored sleeves bunching as he lunged forward. Toby, still on his knees in the dirt, clawed at the mud, letting out a choked rasp.
Miriam hung light as dry balsa across Wuchang's forearms, her throat fluttering with shallow spasms. A corrupted miasma chewed through her meridians, blackening the fine vessels beneath her paper-pale skin. Only a Tier-5 cleansing pill could purge the taint before her pulse stopped.
"The staff lounge!" Wuchang snapped. "Move!"
Shouldering past the reinforced double doors, he sprinted into the linoleum corridors, ignoring orderlies who flattened themselves against the handrails. Elias and Toby ran hard behind his heels. He kicked open the staff lounge, a narrow nook smelling of burnt Maxwell House and bleach.
"Clear it!" Wuchang laid Hess onto the vinyl sofa, where her spine arched in a brittle tremor. "Sweep that laminate flat!"
Elias dragged his forearm across the prep station, sending ceramic mugs, stale crullers, and laminated compliance memos crashing to the tiles. Toby pressed two trembling fingers to Miriam's cooling wrist.
Wuchang scanned the prep shelf. An ancient metal-boxed appliance sat beneath the cabinets, grease crusted across its turntable: a crude crucible. Next hung a red canister of pressurized chemical foam. From an open tote bag on the table, he snatched a half-eaten tuna sandwich, a bruised Gala apple, and an unopened tub of lime yogurt.
"Toby!" Wuchang gripped the boy's collar. "Wake the Leviathan. Now!"
Toby looked up, his face a mess of snot and tears. “But… but she’s dying!”
"She expires within three breaths if you hesitate," Wuchang said flatly. "Draw the current up from your gut. Just a droplet!"
Toby shut his eyelids tight, his ribs trembling under his hospital smock. The floorboards vibrated with a deep oceanic drone. Pale indigo sparks bled from his cuticles, scenting the stale coffee air with brine and ozone as the slumbering beast within stirred.
Wuchang ripped the door off the appliance, tearing free the interior mesh to expose the humming magnetron. He hurled the sandwich, fruit, and curd into the chamber. Snapping the rubber hose from the extinguisher, he jammed the brass valve directly into the vent slots, using his bruised dantian to siphon a thin trickle of intent into the grease.
"Anchor the flow!" Wuchang shouted over the rising whine of copper wire. "Do not break the thread!"
The indigo haze around Toby thickened to deep sapphire. Wuchang seized the fringe of that primordial resonance, guiding the raw force into the exposed wiring. Coils smoked; the magnetron screamed like a wounded raptor as high-voltage sparks leaped between his knuckles and the chassis.
"Unit four, get the master key!" a sergeant shouted down the hall. "They barricaded the staff lounge!"
The door panel jumped against its latch as boots kicked the exterior oak. Elias slid his body weight against the frame, digging his leather soles into the threshold to brace the lock.
"Thirty seconds!" Wuchang shouted. Inside the metal box, the food collapsed into a foaming emerald sludge that boiled into pure, luminous marrow. The appliance casing slumped like warm wax, paint blistering into toxic flakes.
The jamb splintered under an iron pry bar. Wuchang ignored the shrieking wood, weaving his fingers through five ancient mudras to compress the roiling sap into a singular dense point. The harsh tang of rotten milk vanished, replaced by the scent of crushed winter mint.
"Form!" he commanded. He shoved his bare palm straight into the white-hot chamber. The searing paste spun into his grip, congealing into a pearl of translucent jade that hummed against his calluses.
The door gave way with a crash, two institutional guards tumbling across the linoleum with batons raised. They skidded to a halt before the slagged appliance and the pearl shining between Wuchang's soot-blackened fingers.
Wuchang vaulted over the coffee table to Miriam, pried her jaw apart, and dropped the pellet onto her tongue. The jade sphere liquefied into clean vapor down her gullet. Her ribs rose abruptly; the grey rot vanished from her cheeks, leaving pink flush across her cheekbones. Her eyelids lifted, focusing directly on the smoking mound of molten steel on the bench. Her lips moved, dry and barely audible.
“You weren’t hallucinating… it’s all real.”