Remy's aristocratic features deepened into worry lines as the doctor confirmed what he had already started suspecting—Mina burned with fever, his skin warm to the touch like coals beneath silk. That altered the tone of their conversation entirely, rendering what might otherwise have been a routine medical examination into something far more serious.
"How long has he been this way?" the surgeon barked, his voice abrupt with professional curiosity as he administered gentle but firm pressure to Mina's abdomen, eliciting a whimper Mina desperately struggled to suppress.
"I knew of his condition only tonight," Remy replied, one hand moving involuntarily to find its way onto Mina's shoulder, the touch so light it might have been mistaken for the brush of a moth's wing. "I came to fetch him and discovered him. thus."
Although the conversation had previously dallied on the mundane, it now made an abrupt shift into surgical necessities, anesthesia protocols, and post-operative care. Words like "peritonitis" and "sepsis" hovered in the antiseptic atmosphere, laden with the weight of life-threatening danger.
Mina drifted in and out of coherence, his consciousness ebbing like tidewater pulled by a distant moon. Fever wove a spider's web between him and the world, so that the voices around him echoed as though from the depths of a well. His own responses, when they occurred at all, were broken whispers, lacking the sharp definition that was the normal characteristic of his voice.
He put most of his questions to Remy, as though he alone could be expected to know what the pale, shaking boy in front of them had in mind. Mina merely nodded with curt permissions or monosyllabic replies, his usual arrogance absent, submerged under waves of pain and confusion.
"We must operate on him immediately," the surgeon said at last, his words falling into the antiseptic atmosphere. "The infection's likely gone beyond this."
Before they could leave the exam room, Remy was summoned out into the hall by the surgeon with a discreet gesture. Mina watched through half-closed eyes as the door closed, briefly leaving him alone with his tangled thoughts and the steady throb that pulsed from his side.
In the corridor, the surgeon's professional manner edged into further hardness, his voice lowering to a confidential whisper. "I know your family name, Lord Remy, and I know about your brother's. exploits in the streets. His being here presents certain complications."
Remy's stance stiffened almost imperceptibly. "Explain."
"It's dangerous for him to be here—exposed, unprotected—but equally dangerous for him to leave." The surgeon's eyes darted to the closed door. "I can only perform the procedure under controlled conditions. He'll have to be restrained—completely secured. We can't afford. accidents."
A shadow darkened Remy's aristocratic features. "I understand."
"And you will have to stay with him," the surgeon went on, his voice allowing no argument. "We can't be held solely responsible for him. Do I make myself understood?"
"Clearly," Remy said, his voice gentle but with steel underlying its velvet tone. "I'll be with him at all times."
Relief was evident in the easing of tension in the surgeon's shoulders. "Good. We'll require blood work, tests of various kinds before we can go in. Has he eaten today?"
"I don't think so."
"That assists. We'll sedate him lightly to begin with."
Preparations were made under clinical ease. Needles shone beneath bright light, flasks filled with deep red liquid, and technicians worked beneath practiced ease. Mina, already disoriented by the fever and the pain, grew increasingly restless beneath the new procedures that encircled him.
His nervousness focused into outright terror when one of the nurses approached, resolved to take blood from the vein that was visible in his ankle. "No," Mina protested, his voice louder than it had been all night, with a strand of primitive fear underlying it. "No, I won't—I can't—" His body tensed, prepared to run despite his weakened state.
In one fluid motion, Remy pulled Mina into his embrace, the embrace tight but somehow yielding, protecting rather than restraining. "You cannot go," he breathed, his lips close to Mina's ear, warm breath against infection-fevered skin. "The infection will kill you if not treated."
A broken laugh escaped Mina's lips, bitter as unripe fruit. "As much as you'd mind." The sentence trailed off into nothing, its bitterness dissolving into exhaustion.
At last, Remy eased Mina down to the examination table, but rather than force, he simply maintained contact—one hand resting lightly on Mina's forearm, the other supporting him in the small of his back. The nurse did what she had to, the needle slipping into pale skin and drawing out the dark richness of Mina's blood.
What cut through Mina's fevered haze was not the temporary prick of the needle, but the strangeness of Remy's demeanor. There was no cruelty in this constraint, no hidden agenda in the cautious firmness of those aristocratic hands. He had restrained Mina's movements briefly, yes, but without the violence or humiliation Mina had come to expect from physical restraint.
As the nurse withdrew, Mina's gaze remained locked on Remy's face, searching for some explanation for this unfamiliar kindness. Something in the touch, in the manner Remy had held him so cautiously, had opened a door in Mina's mind that had been shut for a very long while.
A chilly January morning formed out of the mists of his recollection—Mina at age six or seven, walking the same deserted neighborhood that was both his prison and his kingdom. Only in this recollection, he was not alone. An old man was walking beside him, his twisted hand over Mina's small one with surprising gentleness.
"Come on, Mina, a bit faster," the old man had urged, his voice gruff with worry rather than impatience. "You'll catch your death of a chill in those wet clothes if we remain out in this cold."
That night, as the man had foretold, fever had torn through Mina, sweeping him up in waves of fire and ice. A doctor was summoned-for a rare indulgence in Mina's childhood-and he arrived with his bag of ominous instruments and bottles.
Young Mina had fought with all the strength his small body could muster, kicking and shrieking in terror at the needles and unfamiliar hands. But the old man had scooped him up with surprising strength, cradling him against a chest that smelled of tobacco and cloves, making gentle sounds in the same pitch Remy had just used a moment ago.
The memory dissipated as abruptly as it had begun, Mina bewildered by its vividness and the questions it posed. He was already secured to a stretcher, straps looser than standard protocol would require but present nonetheless. Remy stood beside him, one hand on the stretcher's rail as if to maintain some tenuous connection between them.
"We're going to take you to the operating room now," Remy said, his tone adjusted to calm instead of order. "Just relax—the operation will not be long. I'll take you home when it's done."
Mina made no response, unsure whether the words were meant as reassurance or merely information. The stretcher began moving, wheels complaining softly against waxed floors as attendants pushed it down corridors that appeared to unravel endlessly before him. The ceiling above became a blur of light fixtures and acoustic tiles, hypnotic in their repetition.
In the operating room, the intense lights cast everything in ruthless radiance. Masked individuals bustled around him with seasoned effectiveness, their features rendered anonymous beneath layers of surgical equipment. A clear mask was fitted over his nose and mouth, the plastic feeling cool against his fever-warmed skin.
"Deep breaths," an invisible voice instructed him. "Count backward from ten."
Instead, Mina fought. Even as the anesthetic began to take hold, he fought against its subtle pull, eyes darting wildly until they fastened on Remy's shape at the periphery of his vision. Some atavistic survival response would not permit unconsciousness in this room of vulnerability and cutting tools.
To the brave surgeon's surprise, Remy leaned in closer amid protest murmurs from the surgical team. He placed one hand on Mina's shoulder, applying enough pressure to anchor rather than restrain.
"I'll be here when you wake," he promised, his voice low enough that perhaps only Mina heard. "You're not alone in this."
Whether it was the anesthetic finally overpowering his resistance or some deeply buried part of Mina responding to the unexpected reassurance, darkness claimed him in a rush of chemical surrender. His last conscious sensation was the gentle pressure of Remy's hand leaving his shoulder.
Dreamless oblivion claimed him in its arms.
Outside the theatre, Remy descended the stairs with measured steps, his placid face betraying nothing of the complexity churning inside. He located a phone in a quiet corner of the hospital corridor and dialed with careful actions, each digit pressed with calculated force.
Two rings, then the line cleared. "You have a call from General High," an anonymous voice announced.
A moment's pause, then: "Put it through."
"General High," Simoneau's voice was in the receiver, impatience already coloring his tone. "Talk, Remy."
"The situation has.complications," Remy replied, his voice low despite the empty hallway. "He was brought in with neglected wounds and advanced appendicitis. He's on the table now."
"Duration?"
"The surgeon estimates an hour and a half. Recovery will be three to seven days hospital stay."
Simoneau's silence stretched out so long that Remy would have questioned whether the connection had been severed, were it not for the soft sound of breathing on the line. "I see," Simoneau finally responded, his voice indicating no concern for the condition of his younger son. "Keep monitoring. All men are expendable."
It terminated with a loud click and left Remy holding the quiet receiver in his hand. He replaced it slowly, his face impassive, and turned again toward the operating room.
As Mina's body slept restlessly beneath the surgeon's knife, his spirit wandered through countries far distant from General High's antiseptic atmosphere. The anesthesia had promised sleep without dreams, but something much more sinister took hold of him instead.
He woke—or believed he did—in a fever dream of terrible clarity. His spasmodic revival in the recovery room was witnessed by thrashing limbs and labored breath. It took the hospital staff a whole bottle of saline to calm him, his body arching against restraints and helping hands with the same ferocity.
It was several hours later that full awareness eventually came back, and Mina found himself in a private room devoid of all personalizing equipment, the room as sterile and impersonal as a grave. There were shadows in corners in spite of the glare of overhead lighting, and restraints that had been promised by the surgeon held his wrists and ankles to the bed frame with professional effectiveness.
Remy was sitting in a chair near the window, a leather-bound book open on his lap, though his attention seemed elsewhere. When Mina's breathing changed, signaling his return to consciousness, Remy's head lifted immediately, his eyes slanting down in attentiveness.
Mina's lucid moment was fleeting. Disjointed memories of his surgical fantasies rushed back, initiating a physical response he had no control over. His breathing consisted of rapid gasps, his body twisting against the restraints as panic overrode coherent thought.
In one leap across the room, chair and book were abandoned by Remy without hesitation for the bedside chair. Rather than calling out for the nurse, he perched cautiously on the edge of the bed, his weight making a depression that tilted Mina in his direction.
"Be still," he whispered, one hand coming up to sweep sweat-dampened hair from Mina's forehead with unexpected gentleness. "All is well. We'll be home before long, just as soon as the doctors permit."
The unexpected gentleness in Remy's voice—so different from what Mina had grown to expect in his father's household—sliced through the fog of panic. His breathing steadied beneath Remy's relentless ministrations, the rhythmic stroke of fingers through his hair offering a beat that anchored him to the world.
Yet the dream continued, more vivid than any nightmare had any right to be. In the other world, Mina had stood before a ruined mansion, its architecture a twisted parody of the stately manors that adorned Lara's wealthier districts. This house seemed to be constructed of equal parts shadow and substance, windows like empty eyes staring out from a face of weathered stone and rotting wood.
The crowds of featureless individuals who wandered the property had not frightened him; they were merely extras in this carnival of horror. What had chilled his blood was in the backyard, a figure intuited more than perceived, a gravitational sink of terror pulling at his consciousness.
"What am I doing here?" he had whispered to the stale air. "Please, wake me. Wake me!" The plea had grown more desperate with each repetition, but no salvation was at hand.
He had dreamt that he lay in the hospital bed, seen Remy sitting beside him, and yet been unable to bridge the gap between the worlds. He had shouted until his dream-throat was sore, but his body and his brother had shown no sign of hearing his anguish.
Grasping spectral arms had seized him then, pulling him back to the mansion with a strength he could not fight. "Get me out!" he had shrieked, the words tearing from him like strips of flesh. "Get me out of here!" But the arms had only tightened, thorns piercing skin that could not be made to bleed in a dream.
Standing once more in front of the mansion, Mina had made a decisive choice. "Very well," he had muttered to whatever power had led him here. "I'll go in, whatever is waiting."
He had found a discarded broken knife in an alley along the side of the mansion, its blade notched but still sharp enough to cut. Armed with this meager defense, he had propelled himself towards the backyard, though the distance appeared to elongate impossibly before him, stretching with each step he took.
Finally, the back yard had unfolded itself to reveal a monolithic tree which flouted the decrees of nature. Its boughs, shrouded by billowing clouds, drew on shadows that seemed to live with some malign intent, like black lace moving to evil intent. The tree's branches twisted illogically, more like roots that reached to the sky than like branches seeking sunshine.
Out of the underside of the massive trunk issued a river that quickly split into three separate streams before his eyes. One flowed black as tar, darkness made liquid. The second was the crystal clarity of unshed tears, mirroring light for which there was no apparent source. The third flowed crimson, not the dull rust of common blood but a bright red that summoned sunsets and warning flags.
As Mina had penetrated deeper into this impossible landscape, the brooks had become rivers, the rivers raging torrents, and ultimately a great sea that extended beyond the horizon of his dream-vision.
With each step closer to the mighty tree, it had backed away behind him, staying well beyond his grasp no matter how insistently he tried. Ultimately, his dream-legs had collapsed under him, landing him onto his knees in earth that was simultaneously damp and dry.
"How shall I escape from you?" he had cried, the question torn from the depths of his soul. "You're everywhere in my dreams! Do you wish to annihilate me, or will my agony alone be enough to gratify you? Why persecute me thus?"
There had been only silence in response, the vast tree static in its impossible glory, the three rivers flowing toward the ocean of forgetfulness with never-ceasing motion. He had felt smaller and more insignificant than at any moment of his waking life at that instant of utter solitude—a speck of awareness afloat on a universe indifferent to his very presence.
Now, in the hospital bed, with Remy's unintended comfort anchoring him to reality, remnants of that dream still seethed in Mina's mind. The straps around his wrists suddenly seemed like those phantom branches, and for a moment, panic once more attempted to gain the upper hand.
"The tree," he whispered, the words escaping before he could censor them. "It's always the tree."
Remy's hand stilled against his hair. "What tree, Mina?"
But Mina had already slipped back into fitful sleep, his face easing slowly as consciousness departed him once more. This time, mercifully, no dreams visited him—only darkness soft as velvet and quiet as the stillness between heartbeats.
Remy remained seated on the edge of the bed, his hand resuming its gentle rhythm against Mina's hair, eyes distant with secrets he would never share with anyone. Night pressed against the windowpane outside like a living thing, the darkness of Lara hiding unknown secrets in its fold.
Something moved—maybe just the dance of light and shadow, maybe something else—out in the darkness. Remy's head swung toward the motion, his body tightening for a moment before he eased once more. Whatever he may have seen or thought he saw, he did not share it and focused instead on the gentle rise and fall of Mina's chest under the hospital blanket.
Tomorrow would bring its own troubles. For now, this small reprieve was sufficient.