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The mechanical beeping grew incrementally faster.

“Red, where is he? I need—”

He resisted the pressure on his shoulders and squeezed his eyes shut like that was all he needed to clear his head. It didn’t help. The light stung just as sharply when he opened them again, his swallow raw, the pasty chalk on his tongue acrid, like his body had forgotten how to make spit.

How long had he been asleep?

Where was Orpheus?

“Fenrir, just lie down, and then we’ll talk. Okay?”

“Red, I need Fifi.”

“Lay down, Fenrir.” There was a strange tenor to her voice, one Fenrir wasn’t used to. “Lay down, then I’ll explain everything.”

Explain? What was there to explain? There’d been a fight. They’d been attacked. He’d been hurt—a lot of people had been hurt. But they were safe now. Right? He’d been hurt but so had that—that—elf—

He tried again for the edge of the bed, shoving past Red’s hands and swinging his feet into empty air. She grabbed for him again, but he was already sliding to the floor. The tile bit cold into his bare feet, grounding in a way his swimming vision seemed determined to prevent. He needed to find Orpheus before that elf did and every second here was a precious moment wasted.

Fenrir planted one hand on the edge of the bed to steady himself, then reached to shove Red away with the other.

Nothing happened.

Fenrir bared his teeth and blinked his eyes. Tried again.

“Fenrir…”

Gravity felt strange, his weight unbalanced. He reached again, resisting an impression of wrongness he couldn’t quite place, Red breathing heavily beside him. When he turned to meet her eyes, he saw it—

Or rather, the lack thereof.

No. No!

Dead space hung, a no man’s land between where his hand should have connected with Red’s shoulder and the stump where his right arm should be.

Gone. His arm was gone.

“Fenrir,” Red said, gentle as a falling tree. “Get back on the hells damn bed.”

Light began to distend in a way that made the room tunnel. Maybe it was the shock or maybe it was the rush of narcotics hitting the tube in his remaining arm, but Fenrir sank back onto the bed and sought sleep like his nightmares could save him.

When he woke next, that became painfully untrue.

There was a hand on his arm. That was the first thing he became aware of when the world began to re-piece itself together. A hand on his arm and a pressure in his chest that made him think he’d spent the last few hours crying instead of sleeping. Someone had turned the lights down low, a dim bluish hush that better matched the cool astringency to the air bleeding through his re-fitted mask.

He didn’t tear it off this time. He kept his eyes closed and his body still while his thoughts unraveled behind the safety of his head.

They’d been attacked. People had died. He still didn’t know where Orpheus was and—and—his arm—

“Fifi?” came out too muffled to hear.

The hand moved from his arm to his mask. It felt like a wave breaking when a gulp of unfiltered air flooded his lungs.

“Orpheus?” Fenrir repeated, willing his eyes to open.

The hand touched his hair this time, stroking gently while Fenrir blinked into the cool darkness.

“It’s only me, my son.”