Hain opened his eyes slowly. He lay on his back in a wide bed, the head of it tilted at an upward angle. Dim light trickled around him, the room's single window awash with darkness. A sharp smell like lye clung to the air.

"You're alive," someone said in a flat drone from beside him. "How wonderful."

Hain tipped his head toward the voice. Next to the bed stood a thin, female Vrai, her white ringlet hair bound up in a bun atop her head. Her hands were busy hanging a clear bag of fluids onto a metal rack beside the bed.

"Where am I?" Hain asked, his voice thick with sleep.

"The hospital," she said as she plugged a thin, clear tube into the bottom of the bag. "In Promise."

Hain's brows stitched together. "What happened?"

"Well," she said, "it turns out people don't like it when a stranger leads packs of Vrai into their home." She pointed to his head. "Hence the attempted murdering."

Hain ran a hand over his head and felt a mountain of bandages bound about his skull. Memory flitted behind his eyes at the touch.

Hume.

Lilith.

Shouting.

Crack.

Blackness.

He shook the memory away and looked back to her.

"I didn't lead the Vrai into your haven. They were here when I came," Hain said. "And I don't understand why you're acting like I should favor you people any more than the Vrai. From where I'm standing, you're no different from them."

Sanger spun to face him so quickly that ringlets of hair whipped free from her bun.

"We are nothing like them." She jabbed a finger at his face as she said it. "Nothing."

Hain forced a laugh. "We're nothing like them," he said, miming her outrage. "That's a hard sell, considering someone in a room full of your people tried to gun me down."

She opened her mouth to speak, but seemed to rethink it at the last moment.

"I don't have to prove anything to you. I know who we are." She turned away. "In fact, just stop asking me questions. I'm not even supposed to be talking to you."

"Says who?"

She groaned. "What part of 'stop asking me questions' don't you get?"

"Alright. Alright." Hain held up his hands defensively. "I just wanted to know more about why you thought I deserved to die."

"Seeing as I've saved your life twice now, I think it's fair to say that I'm decidedly in the do-not-kill-the-human group."

"Twice?" Hain said, not hiding his confusion. "How could you have saved my life twice?"

"Typical human," she said, with a sneer. "You only remember when people do things to you, not for you."

Hain plied through his fragmented memories until he felt recognition bloom.

"You were with Lilith in that tent when I woke up," he said. "I kicked you."

"Now he remembers," she said. "Good to know that you're not just a perpetual victim."

Hain fought the urge to snap back at her.

"Sorry about the kick," he forced himself to say. "I'm guessing you're friends with Lilith then?"

"We are." Her tone went stiff. "Just friends, I mean."

"And you're the healer."

"Physician." Heat returned to her voice. "Not a healer."

"Strange name, Physician-Not-A-Healer," Hain said with a straight face. "But I guess this is a strange place."

Her expression was all confusion for a moment before she scowled.

"Funny," she said, going back to the bag of fluids. "My name is Sanger."

Hain smiled to himself. She was nearly as easy to rile as Lilith.

"Sanger," Hain repeated. "I remember you now. You tried to stab me."

"I didn't try to stab you." Her moonstone eyes flashed with irritation. "I was trying to give you a calming medication so that we wouldn't have to put you in the cells, but you managed to pull that off despite us."

"To be fair I'd just woken up after being attacked by nightmare horrors in the Godless," Hain said. "It sort of made it difficult to think clearly."

Sanger snorted a laugh.

"Horrors," she said derisively. "Those were Guardians. Practically nothing more than machines."

Hain thought back to the clearing in the Godless. To the fat, wriggling body and the too-many legs that had chased him down before lancing him with some kind of poisoned spike.

"I've seen machines," Hain said. "They're metal and gears." He shook his head. "That thing was alive."

"How typically human of you," she said, with another derisive laugh. "Being alive and being a machine aren't mutually exclusive concepts."

Hain couldn't help the puzzled look that sprang on his face.

"Stop thinking about it so hard or you'll hurt yourself and Hume will never forgive me."

"Why would he care?" Hain gave a small shake of his head. "I don't see him here fawning over my sickbed."

"Hume has plans for you."

"Plans, huh?" Hain said. "That doesn't sound menacing at all. Any idea when they'll make me privy to my inevitable fate?"

"That's not anything I even want know."

"Come on," Hain said. "It's not like I have anyone else to ask."

"You have Lilith."

"Lilith?" Hain sat up. "Where is she?"

"She'll be around," she said, and pulled a short white cylinder from the pocket of her jacket. She held it up for him to see. "But in the meantime, I need to take a look in your eyes."

Hain threw her a dubious look, but didn't argue.

Sanger pulled back each of his eyelids, pointing a bright light into each eye in turn, while the tool emitted a whirring sound like spinning gears.

"Still not going to die," Sanger said as she leaned back from him, a hint of regret in her tone. "At least Hume will be happy."

Hain managed a scowl. "I'll try to die better next time."

"I already said, I don't want you to die," Sanger said. "Just get hurt bad enough so that you can't talk."

"What kind of a healer wants that to happen to their people?" Hain said. "Wait. I know." Hain held up a finger. "The worst kind."

"I told you," Sanger said, sounding more irritated. I'm a physician, not a healer." She slid the cylinder back into her pocket. "And being happy that you're alive isn't a prerequisite for keeping you alive."

"Keeping people alive while wishing horrible disfigurement on them," Hain said. "That's an interesting take on healing."

"It's called, medicine."

"Is medicine always so painful?"

"Only when I practice it on you."

"Tales of your compassion must be the stuff of legend," Hain said flatly. "Nearly as legendary as whoever tried to kill me. Speaking of which," he said, thinking back to the scene in the room with the benches, "I remember someone shouting just before the shooting started."

"I heard about that," she said.

"Who was he?"

"Smith," she said, sounding unimpressed. "Loves the sound of his own voice and pretending he's in charge."

"Any idea as to why this Smith might want me dead?"

She blew a rude sound through her lips. "Smith doesn't want you dead. He might be angry you're here, but I doubt he'd waste time trying to kill you."

"This might come as a surprise, seeing as you're usually so focused on ridiculing sick people in your hospital, but murderers are often angry prior to beginning their killing."

She barked a laugh. "If disliking you qualified people as suspects, then we'd have to question everyone in the haven."

"Sounds pretty typical for a Vrai," Hain said, now trying to get a rise out of her.

"We're not Vrai."

"Oh, right. Obviously," he said. "You just try to kill people you don't like. Totally different from the Vrai."

"Maybe you should watch your tongue the next time you tell a room full of people that you allowed Vrai to butcher their friends and family," Sanger said, her voice growing louder. "Especially when there are so few of those friends and family left."

Hain's interest hooked on her words. He thought back to the empty streets he'd seen on his course through the haven. To his suspicion of a plague.

"What do you mean, 'so few'?" Hain asked. "Why are there so few?"

Sanger's lips pinched into a tight line. "We're not talking about that."

"It's not like you'd be telling me anything I don't already know," he said, bluffing as best he could. "Besides, I'm sure the crisis in the haven must have been hard for you to deal with."

Sanger's face stiffened. She turned and began gathering up things from a tray beside his bed.

"Of course it was," Sanger said. "I knew some of the Foew who were killed in the battle that you let happen. They were my fiends."

"We both know that's not what I mean," Hain said. "I'm talking about before that."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," she said, her voice low.

"You're a physician, aren't you?" Hain watched her closely. "You fix people who are sick."

She looked up from the tray, moonstone eyes blazing. But there was something besides anger there.

"Something wrong?" Hain said.

"What? No. Not at all." She looked away as she spoke. "I was just thinking that you're probably almost ready to go."

"I get it." Hain said. "You're not supposed to tell me. I'm an outsider."

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said again.

"It must have been a big job," Hain went on. "Taking care of so many sick. So many dying."

She spun to face him.

"How do you know about–" She broke off, cheeks flushing. "Did Lilith tell you?"

Hain did his best to look surprised. "Tell me what?"

"About the sickness. About what happened."

Hain played dumb. "Lilith never told me anything."

Sanger began to protest, but he cut over her.

"Now, you though," Hain paused, showing her a smile that oozed smugness, "you told me more than enough."

Sanger's mouth pinched into a thin line before she spoke. "I hate you."

"That's alright." Hain lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "Seems like there's a lot of that going around."