First, Do No Harm

The trip to Queens was silent and instantaneous. One moment, I was on the helipad, the city wind whipping at my jacket. The next, Lia Serrano appeared beside me, her hand gripping my upper arm like a vise. The world dissolved into a nauseating gray smear, a place without sound or light or gravity. It felt like being squeezed through a straw made of static. Then my feet hit solid ground with a jarring thud.

We were in a hospital parking garage. The air was cool and smelled of concrete and exhaust fumes. My stomach was trying to climb up my throat.

Serrano released my arm. She looked completely unaffected, not a hair of her severe, dark hair out of place.

“You’ll get used to it,” she said.

“That was…” I swallowed, forcing my stomach back where it belonged. “Unpleasant.”

“It is efficient.” She started walking toward a set of glass doors marked ‘Ambulance Bay,’ her long gray coat flowing behind her. “The alternative was a twenty-minute flight, followed by landing, securing a perimeter, and a slow approach. We do not have time for such mortal theatrics.”

I fell into step beside her. The back of my neck prickled. The passive weight of her mind was still there, a constant observer. She wasn’t actively rooting around in my thoughts, but it felt like standing next to a high-voltage transformer. I could feel the potential.

“So that’s Conclave Uber?” I asked. “What do you call it? A Step? A Fold?”

“We call it transportation,” she said without a hint of humor. “And you will call it nothing. You do not speak of our methods to your people.”

“My people are a little busy trying to stop the world from ending. I doubt they care about your teleportation secrets.”

She stopped at the doors and turned to face me. Her eyes were the color of a stormy sea, deep and cold. “Your people are the reason the world is ending. Do not forget that.”

She pushed the door open and held it. A silent, imperious command for me to enter first. I was the asset, the tool, and maybe the bait.

The ER was chaotic, but not in the way I expected. There was no screaming, no panic. Just a thick, unnerving silence. Staff and a few lingering patients were pressed against the far walls, their faces pale, their eyes wide and fixed on the hallway leading deeper into the hospital. A single security guard stood near the reception desk, his hand on his holstered pistol, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else on Earth.

He saw us and took a half-step forward, his expression a mix of relief and terror. “FBI? They said you were coming.”

“We are here to handle the situation,” Serrano said, her voice carrying an authority that made the guard flinch. “Where is it?”

“ICU,” he whispered, pointing a trembling finger down the hall. “Third floor, west wing. It’s… bad. We sealed the fire doors, but the walls are…” He shook his head, unable to find the words.

“Evacuate this floor,” Serrano commanded. “Then the rest of the building. Tell your superiors it’s a chemical spill. A new, highly corrosive agent. Plausible and terrifying. They will comply.”

The guard nodded, not questioning her. He just seemed grateful to have orders.

We bypassed the elevators and took the stairs. The silence grew heavier with each floor. The usual hospital sounds—the beeps and dings, the squeak of shoes, the overhead pages—were gone. There was only a low, wet, humming sound that grew louder as we climbed. It was a sound I felt in my teeth.

On the third floor, the air was thick and smelled of ozone, antiseptic, and something else. Something organic and raw, like a butcher shop. The corridor was empty. At the far end, a set of heavy metal fire doors were buckled outward, the steel around the frame warped and twisted. The humming was coming from beyond them.

I closed my eyes for a second, pushing past the constant, oppressive awareness of Serrano beside me. I reached out with my mind, gently, like an antenna searching for a signal.

I found it instantly.

It wasn't a mind. It was a psychic scream. A raw, unending broadcast of pure, undiluted terror. It was the mental equivalent of a car alarm that had been blaring for an hour, shrill and agonizing. Beneath the fear was a thrumming agony, a body twisting itself into knots, and a desperate, looping plea. Make it stop make it stop please make it stop.

“He’s alive,” I said, opening my eyes. “He’s terrified. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

“What he is ‘doing’,” Serrano said, her gaze fixed on the buckled doors, “is rewriting the laws of biology in a three-thousand-square-foot radius. His intentions are irrelevant. The effect is the danger.”

She placed a hand flat on the wall beside the doors. The concrete dust on the floor vibrated, skittering away from her palm. “The corruption is extensive. The very structure of this place is being unmade.”

“He’s a victim, Serrano.”

“He is a weapon,” she countered, her voice sharp. “One that has already fired. Our job is to ensure it does not fire again.”

She walked toward the doors. I moved to follow, but she put an arm out, blocking my path. It was like running into a steel bar.

“Stay here. I will assess the threat.”

“My job is to get in his head. I can’t do that from the hallway.”

“Your job is to do as I say,” she said, her eyes flashing. “You are an unknown quantity, Finch. Your abilities are volatile. I will not have you adding your own chaos to this situation until I know what we are facing.”

She stepped up to the buckled fire doors. The metal groaned in protest as she placed her hands on the seam between them. I felt a surge of power from her, dense and heavy like bedrock. It wasn't flashy or loud; it was the quiet, immense strength of a mountain.

The warped steel screamed as she forced the doors apart, pulling them open just wide enough for her to slip through.

Then she was gone.

I was left alone in the silent, humming hallway. I could have forced my way in after her. But Sharpe’s warning echoed in my head: You're on her turf. Provoking her now, before I even knew the battlefield, was a rookie mistake. For now, I would be the asset. I would wait.

I leaned against the wall and reached out with my mind again, this time pushing past the wall of sheer panic from the spark-off, trying to get a sense of the room. My telepathy wasn't just about reading thoughts; it was about feeling the shape of a space, the echoes of emotion left on objects, the psychic texture of a place.

The ICU wing wasn't a room anymore. It was a tumor.

The mental landscape was warped, twisted. The clean, right angles of a hospital were gone, replaced by pulsing, organic curves. I could feel the walls breathing, the floor undulating like the surface of a lung. The metal bed frames had been absorbed, their shapes still visible but now softened, like bones barely contained under skin. Wires and IV tubes had become veins and arteries, snaking through the room, pulsing with a faint, sickly light.

And the people. There had been other patients. Nurses. A doctor. They weren't dead. They were… incorporated. Part of the room now. I could feel their fading, terrified minds, trapped in the living architecture. Screaming without mouths.

My stomach turned. I had seen horrible things in this job. This was worse. This was a violation of reality itself.

At the center of it all was the spark-off. A man named Arthur Pinsky, according to the file I’d scanned. Age fifty-two. A retired accountant. No family. His mind was a vortex of pain and confusion, a feedback loop where his terror fed the power, and the power reshaping the world around him amplified his terror. He wasn't controlling it. He was a passenger in his own body, which had become the engine of a nightmare.

I felt another mind in the room. Serrano.

Hers was a fortress. A pillar of granite in the middle of a hurricane of flesh. I couldn’t read her thoughts directly, but I could feel her cold, analytical assessment of the situation. There was no fear. No disgust. Just appraisal. She was a surgeon examining a diseased organ, deciding on the most efficient way to excise it.

I felt her power gather. It was a deep, resonant hum, the vibration of stone grinding on stone. She was preparing to act.

Wait, I sent, a tight, focused beam of thought aimed directly at her mental fortress.

The fortress walls didn't waver, but I felt her attention shift to me. A flicker of surprise, quickly suppressed.

You can speak in this fashion? Her mental voice was the same as her physical one: a clear, cold contralto.

I can do a lot of things, I sent back. Don't do it. Don't kill him.

The subject is the nexus of the corruption. His vital signs are erratic, but his biological output is stable and expanding. He is a threat that must be neutralized.

He’s a civilian. A victim.

He is a casualty of a war he did not know he was fighting. A regrettable but necessary loss. The lives of the others he has… absorbed… are already forfeit. I will not risk the contagion spreading beyond this wing.

I could feel her resolve hardening. She was going to encase him in concrete, or crush him into a diamond, or whatever it is an earth elementalist does to solve a problem. It would be quick, clean, and final.

Give me a chance, I sent. Let me talk to him. I can calm him down. If he calms down, the power might recede.

There was a pause. I could feel her weighing the options. The pragmatist at war with… well, probably just a different kind of pragmatism.

The risk is unacceptable, she finally sent. Your proximity to the nexus could trigger a secondary event. Your own unstable abilities could interact with his. You could make it worse.

And killing him might make it worse, too, I countered, pushing the thought with more force than I intended. What if his death triggers a final, explosive release of energy? What if this biological corruption becomes self-sustaining? You don’t know. You’re guessing. I’m offering a non-lethal option.

I was bluffing. I had no idea if that could happen, but it sounded plausible enough.

Silence. The humming from the room seemed to intensify. The walls of the corridor around me began to ripple, the linoleum tiles softening like warm wax.

You have five minutes, her thought came, sharp and final. Proceed to the nursing station. I will clear a path. If you cannot pacify him, or if the field expands by even one meter, I will end it. And you with it, if you are in the way. Is that clear?

Crystal, I sent back.

I took a deep breath, shoved myself off the wall, and pushed my way through the seam in the fire doors.

The sight was worse than the psychic impression. The air was so humid it was like breathing soup. The walls pulsed with a faint, reddish light, covered in a network of thick, vein-like cords. The ceiling sagged, dripping a clear, viscous fluid that sizzled when it hit the floor. The floor itself was soft and yielding, like walking on a giant tongue. The absorbed bodies of the staff and patients were visible as distorted, human-shaped lumps in the walls, their faces frozen in silent screams.

Serrano stood about twenty feet into the room. She was untouched, a figure of sharp angles and hard lines in a world that had gone soft and curved. The floor around her was solid stone, a perfect circle of gray in the fleshy pink landscape.

She didn't look at me. Her focus was on the back of the room, where the central nursing station used to be. Now, it was a throne of pulsing organic matter and twisted metal. And on it, suspended in a cage of what looked like living wires, was Arthur Pinsky.

He was barely recognizable. His body was elongated, his limbs stretched and fused with the machinery around him. His chest was open, and I could see his heart, now the size of a basketball, pumping a luminous fluid through the veins that covered the room. His face was the only thing that was remotely human, and it was a mask of sheer, abject terror.

“Five minutes, Finch,” Serrano said aloud, her voice cutting through the wet, humming air. “The clock is running.”

A line of solid stone shot out from the circle at her feet, racing across the fleshy floor to stop just in front of me. A bridge. My path.

“Stay on the stone,” she ordered. “Do not touch anything.”

I stepped onto the stone path. It was cool and solid under my shoes. I started walking toward the center of the nightmare, my eyes locked on Pinsky. The psychic screaming in my head intensified with every step, a wall of noise that threatened to overwhelm me.

I had to get through it.

Arthur, I thought, focusing my will, shaping the thought into a calm, gentle wave. Arthur Pinsky. My name is Owen. I’m here to help you.

The psychic scream faltered for the barest fraction of a second, then came back even stronger. The living wires around him tightened.

Pain! his mind shrieked. So much pain!

I know, I sent, keeping my mental voice even, soothing. I was about halfway across the room now. The air was getting harder to breathe. I know it hurts. But you can make it stop, Arthur. You have the control.

No! No control! It’s inside me! It’s burning!

The floor beneath my stone path rippled violently. Serrano, from her island of stability, raised a hand. The stone under my feet thickened, anchoring itself deeper into the structure of the building. She was holding my bridge steady.

It feels like it’s burning you, but it’s just energy, I sent, pushing the thought. I had to give him a concept he could grasp, an anchor in the storm. It’s too much energy, and your body doesn’t know what to do with it. You have to let it go. Gently. Like letting the air out of a tire.

I was ten feet away from him now. I could see the tears streaming from his wide, terrified eyes. He was just a man. A scared, dying man who had been handed the power of a god and didn't know how to turn it off.

“He is becoming more agitated,” Serrano called out. “Your method is failing, Finch.”

“It’s not talking, it’s telepathy,” I snapped back without looking at her. “It takes a minute.”

Listen to my voice, Arthur, I focused again, pushing everything else out. The pulsating walls, the smell, the oppressive presence of Serrano. All of it faded until it was just me and the terrified man in the cage of flesh. Don’t think about the pain. Don’t think about the room. Just focus on your breathing. In. Out. A slow, steady rhythm. Can you do that for me?

I projected the sensation of a slow, deep breath. The feeling of lungs filling, holding, and then releasing. Over and over. A simple, biological metronome.

For a moment, nothing happened. The psychic screaming continued unabated. Then, I felt a flicker. A tiny, minuscule shift in the hurricane. He was trying.

The massive heart in his chest, which had been hammering erratically, gave one steady, rhythmic beat.

Then another.

The chaotic energy field wavered. The humming in the room dropped in pitch. The walls pulsed a little slower.

Good, I sent, pouring encouragement and calm into the thought. That’s it. Just like that. In. Out. You are in control, Arthur. Not the energy. You.

The rhythmic beating of his new heart grew more stable. The psychic screaming began to subside, replaced by whimpers of pain and exhaustion. The living wires around him loosened their grip.

“The field is contracting,” Serrano said. There was a note of clinical surprise in her voice.

The fleshy walls began to recede. The colors faded from pink back to the sterile white of the hospital. The metal bed frames began to reassert their original shapes, shedding the organic coating like a snake shedding its skin. The absorbed bodies sloughed off the walls, falling to the floor in heaps of lifeless, but human-shaped, flesh.

The floor under my stone path firmed up, the linoleum pattern reappearing from the morass.

I kept my focus on Arthur. You’re doing great. Almost there. Just keep breathing. Let it all go.

With a final, wet shudder, the transformation collapsed. The last of the vein-like cords detached from Arthur and withered into dust. The room was suddenly just a room again. A wrecked, horrific mess of a room, but a room nonetheless.

Arthur Pinsky slumped forward, the now-dead wires falling away from him. He was still horribly mutated, but the ambient, world-warping power was gone. He was just a man again, trapped in a ruined body. His mind was quiet, save for a low murmur of pain and exhaustion. He was falling unconscious.

My stone bridge retracted, pulling back into the circle around Serrano. I walked the last few feet on my own, my legs feeling unsteady. The adrenaline was fading, leaving a hollow ache behind it.

Serrano surveyed the room. Her face was an unreadable mask of stone. She walked over to one of the bodies on the floor, a nurse still in her scrubs. She knelt, placing two fingers on the woman's neck.

“There is no life here,” she said, her voice flat. “They are gone. Your method saved the catalyst, but not the victims.”

“They were gone the second he sparked,” I said, my voice hoarse. “There was nothing I could do for them. But he’s alive.”

“For now.” She stood up, brushing dust from her coat that wasn’t there. “His body is irreparably damaged. He will not survive for long.”

“We get him medical care. The best you’ve got. Conclave doctors. Something.”

She turned to look at me, and for the first time, I saw something other than cold pragmatism in her eyes. It was a flicker of… something. Annoyance? Respect? I couldn't tell.

“You would expend immense resources to prolong the suffering of a man who will die anyway?” she asked.

“It’s not about prolonging his suffering,” I said. “It’s about showing him compassion. He’s not a monster. He’s a victim. We don’t execute victims.”

I stared her down. This was it. The line in the sand. Sharpe had told me not to push, but some things were non-negotiable.

Serrano held my gaze for a long moment. The silence in the ruined ICU was absolute.

“The Conclave’s first priority is containment,” she said, her voice low and even. “Our second is the preservation of the balance. Compassion is a luxury we have seldom been able to afford.”

“Then maybe it’s time you started budgeting for it,” I said.

A small, almost imperceptible muscle tightened in her jaw. “Your sentimentality is a weakness, Finch. It could have gotten us both killed.”

“It didn’t, though,” I pointed out. “It worked. My way worked.”

“This time,” she conceded, the words sounding like they were being pulled from her teeth. “Against an untrained, terrified civilian. Do not assume it will work against a true threat.”

She turned away from me, pulling a small, silver cylinder from inside her coat. She twisted the bottom. It emitted a high-frequency pulse that made my ears ache.

“A containment and cleanup team is on its way,” she said. “They will retrieve the subject and sanitize the area. We are done here.”

She started walking toward the fire doors. She didn’t wait to see if I was following. I was dismissed.

I took one last look at Arthur Pinsky, slumped in the wreckage of the nursing station. He was breathing, his mutated chest rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm. Alive.

I turned and followed Serrano out into the hallway. The air outside the ICU felt clean, fresh, even though it was the same stale, filtered hospital air as before.

We walked back toward the stairwell in silence. The fragile, hostile alliance had survived its first test. We had worked together, combining her power and my telepathy, and we had succeeded. But the chasm between our philosophies was wider than ever.

She saw a world of threats to be neutralized. I saw a world of people who needed help.

As we reached the top of the stairs, she stopped.

“You drew a line today, telepath,” she said, her back still to me.

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess I did.”

“Do not mistake my compliance for agreement,” she said, turning her head slightly to look at me over her shoulder. Her eyes were hard as diamonds. “I allowed you to test your theory. The data was… interesting. But if a situation like this occurs again, and I deem the risk too high, I will not hesitate. I will act. And you will not stand in my way.”

“And if I do?”

She faced me fully. The immense pressure of her mind focused on me for a second, a sharp, pointed spike of sheer will. It was a warning. A promise.

“Then you will discover just how much of an abomination you truly are.”

She turned and descended the stairs, her footsteps silent on the concrete. I stood there for a moment, the echo of her mental voice still ringing in my head.

The day was far from over. And my partnership with Warden Lia Serrano had just become infinitely more complicated. She hadn’t just accepted my line in the sand. She had drawn one of her own, right back.