The Last Heir of the Forbidden Family

The Bleeding Age

Chapter 16: The Bleeding Edge

"Keep your weight on me, Dorian. Don't let your knees lock," Seraphine grunted, her shoulder hooked under Dorian's armpit as they stumbled through the rusted iron door of the abandoned auto-repair shop.

Dorian’s boots dragged uselessly across the grease-stained concrete floor, leaving a dark smear of mud and crimson. He didn't answer. His head lolled against his chest, every ragged breath sounding like dry paper tearing in the wind. The golden light that had pulsed beneath his skin during the container yard escape was gone, replaced by a terrifying, dull crimson glow that throbbed irregularly along his collarbone and crept steadily up toward his throat.

"Drop him on that hydraulic lift table before his legs give out entirely," Kenji ordered, kicking aside a pile of rusted catalytic converters with his boot. He slammed the heavy steel deadbolt home on the repair shop’s side entrance, his breath coming in shallow gasps. "Quickly. We have maybe five minutes before Vane's cleanup crew sweeps this alley."

Seraphine heaved Dorian onto the cold, grease-slick metal of the lift table. The moment his back touched the surface, Dorian convulsed, a low, wet gasp tearing from his throat as his back arched violently off the metal.

"Hold his shoulders down!" Seraphine yelled, her hands already flying across the open latch of a battered metal first-aid kit she had scavenged from the shop’s wall. "His internal temperature is spiking. The bio-enhancement is rejecting the neural dampeners completely!"

Kenji vaulted across the workbench, throwing his heavy weight onto Dorian’s chest to keep him pinned to the table. "Dorian! Hey! Look at me. Stay with us, kid. You don't get to check out here."

Dorian’s eyes snapped open, but the amber warmth of his iris was completely swallowed by a churning, blood-red ring. His teeth bared in a soundless snarl, and for a terrifying second, the kinetic hum beneath his skin flared so hot that the metal surface of the lift table began to warp and hiss beneath his palms.

"He's going to blow," Kenji cursed, bracing his arms against Dorian's thrashing weight. "Sera, do something! He's tearing himself apart from the inside out!"

"I'm trying!" Seraphine screamed back, ripping the foil packaging off a heavy-gauge medical injector. Her hands shook so violently she nearly dropped the syringe onto the concrete. "My father didn't just build a soldier, Kenji! He designed an unstable biological battery. The energy source he put in Dorian's spine—it's eating his organ tissue to sustain itself!"

"Well, fix the damn leak before his heart explodes!" Kenji shouted, ducking his head as a static-charged shockwave of heat blasted off Dorian's chest, singing the hairs on Kenji's forearm.

"I need to inject this directly into the sub-occipital nerve cluster at the base of his skull, but if my angle is off by a millimeter, I'll paralyze him permanently!" Seraphine pressed the cold titanium tip of the injector against the back of Dorian’s neck. Sweat poured down the bridge of her nose, dripping off the edge of her cracked glasses onto Dorian's damp hair.

"Do it!" Dorian choked out, his voice sounding like grinding stones. A fresh stream of dark blood spilled from the corner of his mouth, staining his collar. "Just... do it, Sera..."

Seraphine closed her eyes, swallowed her terror, and shoved the plunger home with all her weight.

Dorian didn't scream. He simply went rigid, every muscle in his body locking up as a violent electrical shudder rippled outward from his spine. The crimson light beneath his skin flickered, stuttered like a dying fluorescent bulb, and then abruptly plunged inward, sinking deep beneath his flesh until his skin returned to a sickly, pale grey.

He collapsed back onto the metal table, utterly limp, his chest barely rising.

Kenji let out a long, ragged breath, releasing his grip on Dorian’s shoulders and wiping his brow with the back of his blood-caked hand. "Is he alive?"

Seraphine pressed two trembling fingers against the side of Dorian's neck, counting the beats beneath his skin. Her face was bloodless, her lips pressed into a thin, white line.

"His pulse is thready," she whispered, her voice cracking for the first time since they had fled the bunker. "The synthetic suppressants bought us some time, but they aren't a cure. They're just a leash."

"How much time?" Kenji demanded, stepping away from the table to peer through the grime-caked window of the shop's front door into the deserted alleyway.

"Forty-eight hours," Seraphine said, her eyes fixed on Dorian’s motionless face as she pulled a wool blanket from a nearby stack and draped it over his shivering frame. "If we don't clear the blockade and get him the proper stabilizing isotopes, his heart will give out from the strain. The tissue degradation will be total."

Kenji turned back from the window, his expression hard as flint. "Then it's a good thing we know exactly who has those isotopes."

Seraphine looked up, her brow furrowing in confusion. "What are you talking about? My father's labs are locked down tighter than a vault. We don't have the clearance, the gear, or the firepower to break back in."

"We aren't breaking into your father's lab," Kenji said, reaching down to pick up his customized pistol from the workbench and checking the magazine with a sharp, metallic clack. "We're going to hit his secondary logistics depot down at the municipal docks. That's where they offload the raw materials before they ship them to the R&D floor."

Seraphine stared at him, disbelief flashing across her features. "The docks? Kenji, that's a heavily fortified corporate shipping hub. Augustin Voss has an entire private security battalion stationed there twenty-four seven. It's a suicide mission."

"Do you have a better idea, tech-girl?" Kenji asked flatly, walking over to the door and peering into the shadows of the street outside. "Because sitting here waiting for Vane's syndicate thugs to kick our door in doesn't sound like much of a retirement plan."

Seraphine opened her mouth to argue, to throw another statistical impossibility in his face, but stopped as she looked back down at Dorian. A faint shudders racked his frame, and the crimson glow briefly flickered beneath his jawline like a dying ember refusing to go out. Her jaw tightened, and all the hesitation vanished from her eyes, replaced by a cold, sharp resolve.

"No," Seraphine whispered, standing up and sliding the burner phone into her jacket pocket. "I don't have a better idea. Let's go ruin my father's shipping schedule."