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“What is it?” I said.
The rider wet his lips and let out a sigh.
“The worst thing imaginable,” he said. “The emperor may be dead.”
He had genuine hurt in his eyes. The emperor had a special place in every Titan’s heart. He was supposed to represent everything good and true about Titan culture. He was what everyone was meant to look up to, what they were meant to emulate.
A good thing they didn’t know the real me.
“Rest,” the rider said. “With any luck, we’ll be at Urcim by nightfall.”
I fell in and out of consciousness after that, resuming my usual routine.
I could move my arms now and my legs were no longer unresponsive. I was consumed by a terrible itching pain across my entire body. I wondered if I would ever fully heal and become the Titan I had been before.
The Changelings.
They did this to me.
I ground my teeth and swore to the thousand suns and the Creator himself that I would have bloody vengeance.
One day.
I thought I was getting stronger each day that passed but as we approached the entrance to Urcim, I was suddenly overcome with an unbearable weakness. Then my body began to shake. It was uncontrollable. My head banged against the cart floor.
The rider pulled to a stop and immediately leaped into the cart bed with me.
“Help!” he yelled. “I need help here!”
The local Titans lifted me off the cart and carried me into a building with paint peeling from the walls.
“We have a live one here!” someone shouted.
“Place him on the bed over here.”
The speaker’s voice was female. She was direct and firm.
I felt the bed’s soft mattress as they put me down. Then the helpers backed away and let the little woman through. She wore a nurse uniform that looked a little baggy on her small frame.
Her skin was the color of fresh cream and she wore an apron splattered with blood.
“Give me your coat,” she said, reaching across to one of the Titans that’d carried me in.
He immediately shrugged it off and handed it to her.
The nurse rolled it into a pillow and placed it under my head.
“Everybody stand back,” she said, “and get out if you don’t need to be here.”
Most of them filed out. Immediately on their heels, another body was carried in. He was placed on the bed beside mine. With my body shaking and my eyes opening and shutting sporadically, I couldn’t get a good look at him.
The nurse picked up a syringe from a side table, flicked it, and squeezed the plunger. She approached me and prepared to insert it into me.
“Hazel,” one of the other nurses said. “This Titan isn’t going to survive. We only have one shot of adrenaline left. Maybe it’s best to give it to the other patient. He’s more likely to survive.”
She was referring to the second patient that’d just been brought in.
The nurse called Hazel looked between me and the other patient. She considered her next course of action. Finally, she shook her head.
