Jade War

Hands seized him and rolled him over roughly; the plastic was torn off his face. Air flooded into Anden’s nose and mouth and he gasped violently, blinking and heaving for breath. Shun Todorho knelt over him, his face ashen and horrified. He had a gun in his hand, but he set it down and worked at removing Anden’s gag. Anden coughed and spat, the corners of his mouth raw and stinging. Someone else—Sammy—cut the bindings around Anden’s wrists, and they sat him up, steadying him. Three other Green Bones that Anden recognized from the grudge hall were crowded into the garage. “The phone call was cut off—we thought we were too late,” Tod said.

“We were,” Sammy said, turning to where Dauk Losun knelt beside Rohn Toro’s body. The Pillar of Southtrap rocked back on his heels, tears running freely down his rough face.

Anden shot to his feet, swayed, and stumbled to where Wen lay motionless on the concrete. He tore the bag off her face and pressed his ear to her chest, praying he would hear a heartbeat. He had learned basic first aid at some point in his life, and he struggled to remember what to do if a person was not breathing. He tilted Wen’s head back and opened her mouth, sealing it with his own, and breathed out in two hard puffs. He began doing chest compressions. How much time had passed? It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes… perhaps… He breathed into her mouth again. “Please,” he begged all the gods, “please.”

Wen remained limp.

Sammy crouched down beside Anden and put a hand on his shoulder. “She’s gone, crumb,” he said. Anden stopped in midmotion. In desperate epiphany, he whirled, his eyes wild, and scrambled to the duffel bag still lying open on the floor, out of reach the whole time that Rohn Toro had needed it most. Anden grabbed Rohn’s black gloves and hurried back to Wen; before anyone could even ask him what he was doing, he shoved his hands into the jade-studded lining.

Sharp, physical pain radiated from his broken fingers all the way up his arm and he whimpered, clutching his wrist, curling his body around his injury and bracing impatiently for the more profound pain to come. It had been so long since he had worn jade that he expected the rush to arrive like a sledgehammer, and he readied himself. In his mind, he coiled, the way a man might crouch, arms extended, balanced on the balls of his feet, optimistically hoping to catch a boulder hurled in his direction. Anden breathed in, then out, and for the second time in his life, sensation and awareness engulfed him in a maelstrom of energy. It was not as much jade as he’d once handled in the final battle against Gont Asch, but it was still enough to make his skull feel as if it were being blasted apart. He threw his head back, mouth open and gasping, but he did not cringe from the onslaught; through it all he was aware of the passage of time. Every second he took to adjust to the jade rush, every instant of delay, was one he could not afford.

He had only one chance, and it was now.

With a wrenching force of will, he grasped the jade energy with skills that were ill-used but not forgotten. He bent the flow of energy to his will; he pulled it into a single focus. His eyes were closed, but he could sense the presence of the people around him, breathing, pulsing, living creatures, and he ignored them all. He concentrated only on the form beneath him, the body that had been alive only a few minutes ago—and he saw it for what it was—an organism that had once throbbed with energy but in which the current was now stilled and rapidly draining.

Anden pressed his clenched fists down over Wen’s chest and Channeled. The energy surged into Wen’s heart and lungs. Anden hung on to it the way one might with shaking arms control the shaft of a thrust spear. With his jade abilities straining to their utmost, he squeezed.

Wen’s heart convulsed in his grasp. It gave a juddering spasm and beat once, twice, and then continued to beat, forcing blood through vessels and organs, back into her brain. Anden’s entire body trembled with unbearable effort; sweat bathed his face as he continued to press. Wen’s lungs contracted. She gave a great, heaving gasp, her back arching on the floor. Her eyes flew open.

Anden released his hold on her, turned away, and vomited. His hands were shaking too badly for him to remove the gloves; he tugged them off with his teeth and let them fall to the ground. Wen stared up at him in abject confusion and pain, and then tears sprang into her eyes.

Jade energy crashed out of Anden like a weight dragging him through his own body toward the center of the earth. He was utterly drained, exhausted and empty, as if he’d run for days or crawled through a desert. He pulled Wen into his lap and began to sob, and she clutched him and they rocked together on the floor of the garage, only dimly aware of Dauk Losun and the other Green Bones of Southtrap standing around them, staring and silent with astonishment.