The person dragging him wasn’t one of the Resistance.
It was one of the Undying. Immediately identifiable by the helmet and black uniform.
By the time the two were in range of each other, Blackthorne had recovered himself and lunged at his attacker. He’d snatched up a sword from the water and swung, going straight for the head, but the other Undying sidestepped.
Blackthorne tried again, and again. His attacks were precise, the movements of a highly accomplished combat alchemist, but his opponent simply dodged. No weapon. No counterattack. Quick and light, evading as if it were a dance, until Blackthorne left himself open for an instant. An instant was all it took.
The Undying stepped past a blow and with his bare hand, punched through Basilius’s armour and into his chest as easily as if reaching through water. A pale, long-fingered hand dripped red with blood as it pulled out a gleaming piece of metal from Blackthorne’s chest cavity.
Blackthorne collapsed into the floodwater, vanishing.
The entire fight had not even lasted a full minute.
In the chaos, no one else had noticed. Helena tried to breathe in but choked from the pressure inside her lungs. She pressed her arm against the wound, trying to prevent more air from seeping into her chest cavity.
The necrothralls began to drop. A few Aspirants noticed the newcomer and seemed confused about what had happened. Before they could react, they were dead. A weapon gleamed so quick that she barely saw it, just watched the bodies fall.
It was Kaine.
She’d never seen him fight. He’d never really fought with her. But she knew. There was no mistaking that brutal efficiency.
He was as deadly as she’d imagined.
She could see the techniques he’d tried to drill into her, the fluidity that she’d lacked, how quick he was. No movement wasted. The momentum of one kill led to the next.
Bodies fell like stars.
He stalked through the water towards Helena. Not a step wavering, cutting down everything that crossed his path.
When a chimaera leapt at him, he lifted his hand, and the instant it touched the creature, the body unravelled, limbs sloughing apart as if he’d ripped out all the invisible stitches assembling it. One minute a monster, and the next dead in the water.
It wasn’t combat, it was slaughter.
A numbers game. Minimum effort, high return.
It was impossible that he’d ever fought to his full potential before. If anyone had ever fought like that, everyone would have known about it.
He reached into a pocket, pulling out a fistful of something and flinging it outward.
They looked like shimmering bits of metal, and as they flew, she felt his resonance expand, carrying them.
The metal sang through the air, moving like an avian murmuration, and hit like a spray of bullets, tearing through the necrothralls’ skulls.
Rather than fall, the metal stayed suspended in midair, sweeping back, dripping blood and gore. Kaine drew his hand up and they came darting back, cutting through more bodies. A flick of his fingers and they shot out again.
When he reached Helena, his eyes were burning with rage behind his mask, glowing bright as molten silver.
“You idiot,” he said, and dragged her up out of the water, crushing her hard against his chest.
His resonance in the air grew heavier. A wave that swept outwards. She watched it hit the nearest necrothralls and Aspirants. They began jerking and seizing, dropping into the water. The necrothralls crumpled, while the chimaeras and those living were gasping as if their lungs were being compressed, clawing at their throats.
Helena could still breathe, although laboriously, but everyone around her was suffocating.
Sebastian was trying to reach Luc but collapsed into the water. Luc was tearing gouges down his throat as his face turned blue, eyes bulging.
“Stop it,” she gasped, realising that Kaine was making no distinction between the Undying and the Eternal Flame. He was killing everyone. “Stop it! You can’t kill them! Stop!”
She tried to wrench away as Luc’s eyes rolled back and he slumped in the water.
The invisible wave reached the walls. Penny collapsed. Alister followed.
The struggle was coming to an end.
“Stop. Stop! Stop!” She fought to get free. “Stop!”
“Shut up,” he snarled through his helmet, letting go of her. “Wait here.”
He stormed over to Sebastian and Luc, Penny and Alister and even Wagner, although she hardly cared if he died. He placed a hand on their chests, and one at the back of their heads, and she watched them jerk and start breathing again without regaining consciousness.
She tried to stand up, but her legs wouldn’t hold her. By the time Kaine was coming to her again, everything was swaying.
He dragged her to the far wall, where several tunnels disappeared into darkness.
“Can’t leave them,” she rasped, trying to pull free.
“Shut up.” The water was only to their ankles, and there was a ladder leading up to a walkway that was shoulder height.
“You can’t leave them,” she said, struggling. “Bring them, or I won’t go.”
He turned without a word and went back, kicking most of the necrothralls into the current, but pausing beside a few dead Aspirants and reanimating them. They crawled to their feet and began helping to carry Luc and the others over and shoving them up onto the walkway while Kaine lifted her as gently as he could. She nearly bit through her lip at the pressure on her ribs. His palms were red with her blood, but he said nothing as he swung up the ladder and scooped her up again.
The necrothralls hauled the rest of the rescue team up over their shoulders and followed.
Helena faded in and out of consciousness in the dark, briefly coming to as she heard the sound of grinding metal and a loud roar of rushing, rising water coming from the flood cathedral before they continued on.
Kaine stopped walking and kicked the wall. A door almost invisible along the endless passages swung open. He carried her into a small room.
There was a table against one wall, and he laid her on it. He turned away, shoving the door closed, and reached up to rip off his helmet. His face was twisted with fury.
“Tell me you can last long enough for me to get a doctor.” His voice was shaking.
She shook her head.
He was breathing fast, but he swallowed. “Then you’ll have to tell me how. Can you still do that?”
“All right,” she said unsteadily, even though she wanted to pass out more than anything. “The first is—my liver. It’s where the blood is coming from. I think. There’s air—in my chest, collapsing my lung. After—after you—fix my liver, you can—stimulate blood generation. I don’t have the tonic, but you should be able to manage some.”
He unbuckled the straps on her satchel and cut away her soaking clothes so he had clear access to the wound between her ribs that had been ripped wide.
She flinched, trying not to recoil as he staunched the bleeding. He listened carefully as she described what he needed to sense to identify and repair biliary ducts.
Without her hands working, without resonance, it was like instructing the blind.
“Shut up,” he told her when she apologised for not being sure of what was wrong. He reached into his cloak, pulling something out. “This one’s for blood, right? Does it work for you?”
He held up a familiar green-blue vial.
Her throat tightened and she nodded. “Yes. That works for me.”
The process of siphoning the air collapsing her lung was difficult because she didn’t have the supplies for it. She swallowed hard. “There’s a tube in my satchel.”
He found it, and she gingerly indicated where to numb and puncture, giving only a small whimpering gasp as it sank through the tissue and into her chest cavity.
She swallowed, staring up at the ceiling overhead, able to think more clearly as breathing grew easier. “You need to look for damage to the lung tissue next, then you wash the wound and close the diaphragmatic muscle and—”