The silence that followed the ICU collapse was not peaceful. It was the frantic, jagged noise of five hundred people suddenly remembering they had lungs, limbs, and grievances. Elian’s head felt as though a thousand needles were being driven into his cortex, each one relaying a different, contradictory sensation of the room. He felt the cold air on the skin of the man to his left, the metallic taste in the mouth of the woman to his right, and the crushing, overwhelming weight of Thorne’s own cold ambition.
Sarah shook him, her fingers digging into his shoulders.
Elian, look at me! You’re leaking again.
He opened his eyes. The violet light was gone, replaced by bloodshot brown, but his vision remained doubled. He saw the room in physical space, and superimposed over it, he saw the shimm
