To heal a Rogue

LYCAON

I found a healer alone in the corridor, one hand braced beneath a stack of files as she hurried toward the next ward. I reached out as I passed and let my fingers settle lightly against her forearm.

She barely had time to glance at me before I slipped a thin thread of magic beneath her skin.

Her steps faltered.

Then her eyes went completely black.

The pupils flooded outward until nothing recognizably human remained, and when she turned to face me again, there was only that glassy, obedient emptiness I had come to enjoy.

"Hey, friend," I said through the witch’s borrowed mouth, pitching my voice soft and casual, the way young women spoke to one another when they wanted a small favor and expected to get it. "I need your help with something."

"Anything, bestie."

"Where’s the rogue they brought in tonight?"

She answered immediately.

"There’s a private containment room at the end of the east wing," she said. "Past the surgical bay. It’s behind the reinforced door marked for high-risk patients."

"The one with the cameras?" I asked. "I’d rather know what I’m walking into."

She nodded.

"Yeah. There are two cameras outside and one inside. Armed guards are stationed at the entrance, too."

I had to bite back a laugh.

Of course there were.

Mortals loved their little fortresses. Locks. Cameras. Reinforced doors. Armed men standing around with weapons they genuinely believed would make a difference.

"And the room itself?" I asked.

"It has reinforced walls and no windows."

"How reassuring."

She shifted the files in her arms, her expression remaining perfectly vacant.

"No one who isn’t supposed to be there will get out once they’re inside."

That made me smile.

"I’ll see about that."

I gave her arm a gentle squeeze.

"Thank you, bestie."

"Anytime."

"One more favor," I said, already withdrawing the magic from her mind. "Forget we had this conversation."

"Of course."

I released her completely.

She blinked once.

Then twice.

The blackness receded from her eyes, color returning to her irises as confusion flickered briefly across her face. She glanced down at the files in her arms, adjusted the stack against her chest, and continued down the corridor.

She never looked back.

By the time she disappeared around the corner, the conversation was already gone from her mind.

I turned toward the east wing.

A private containment room... Reinforced walls... Cameras... and armed guards.

They had gone to a great deal of trouble to keep their rogue contained. I was almost curious to see how long it would take me to ruin all of it.

I walked the route she’d given me at an unhurried pace, shapeshifting as I went and now wearing the healer I’d just spoken to’s shape like a comfortable old coat that fit better with each passing second, unbothered by the late hour or the low murmur of activity still humming through the infirmary’s distant wards.

A camera watched from the corner of one hallway, its small red light blinking with patient, mechanical persistence.

I waved at it first, almost fondly, the way you’d wave at a child pretending to guard something important, and then flicked two fingers toward it and tore the mechanism apart from the inside out.

Wires snapped loose in a shower of sparks, the lens shattered with a sharp pop, and the ruined casing sagged against the wall before going dark.

I kept walking as a small bubble of magic settled around me, swallowing the corridor in a pocket of silence that would keep whatever happened next from reaching the rest of the infirmary.

A sentinel stepped into my path before I reached the door, rifle already angled across his chest, and his posture carrying the particular seriousness men adopted when they believed themselves to be the last line of defense against something they didn’t understand.

"Only the head healer is permitted past this point."

"Blame yourself," I said, almost gentle about it, "for being so damn loyal to a job that’s about to get you killed."

His hand moved toward his sidearm, fast and practiced, the reflex of someone trained since boyhood to react before conscious thought could interfere. I caught his wrist before his fingers could close around the weapon and held it there, suspended uselessly between us.

His eyes widened as he finally understood that whatever he had been trained to fight, it was not me.

I closed my fingers.

His skull collapsed inward with a sickening crunch.

For a fraction of a second, his face remained almost perfectly intact, his mouth hanging open around whatever words his brain had been preparing to form. Then the pressure inside his head became too much. His eyes ruptured first, spilling bloody fluid down his cheeks, followed by the wet splitting sound of bone giving way beneath the force of my magic.

The top of his skull burst apart.

Blood, brain matter, splintered bone and strands of tissue sprayed across the wall behind him, spattering the sterile white surface and sliding down in thick, uneven trails. A piece of his scalp slapped wetly against the floor beside my boot while something that looked disturbingly like a portion of his jaw landed several feet away.

His body remained standing for another heartbeat, trembling violently as blood poured from the ruined cavity above his neck, before his knees finally gave out.

He folded onto the floor with a heavy, boneless thud.

The rifle slipped from his fingers and clattered beside him.

I stepped around the spreading pool of blood, crouched, and picked up the weapon before continuing toward the containment room.

Three more sentinels rounded the corner at the sound of the commotion, weapons already raised and tracking, shouting something I didn’t bother listening to closely. I threw a thin shield around the borrowed body fast enough that their first volley struck it and flattened against the invisible barrier, bullets spinning uselessly through the air before dropping around my feet with little metallic clinks.

I let myself fall anyway, collapsing with enough theatrical weight that one of them immediately spoke into the small radio pinned to his collar.

"Threat neutralized. Repeat, threat neutralized."

Apparently, they were eager to believe it.

One of them approached to confirm the kill, moving cautiously with his weapon still trained on my motionless body. He had almost reached me when I opened my eyes and fired from the stolen gun.

The bullet entered beneath his jaw and tore through the back of his skull, spraying blood and fragments of bone across the wall behind him. His body jerked violently before collapsing forward, his weapon striking the floor a moment before the rest of him followed.

The remaining two stumbled backward.

I was already on my feet.

I shot the first through the hand before he could raise his weapon again. His fingers burst apart around the grip, blood and shattered bone spraying across the tiles as the rifle slipped from what remained of his hand. Before he could even finish screaming, I put the next bullet through his forehead, the back of his skull opening against the wall behind him in a wet explosion that left him sliding slowly to the floor.

The last sentinel turned to run because apparently, his magazine was fucked and he needed to reload.

I wasted no time because I only had seconds before this became a problem for me.

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