CHAPTER 65: THE RAMBLE

The Ramble was a different kind of jungle.

It was a tangled, chaotic maze of winding paths, ancient, glacial rock formations, and trees so old they seemed to be holding up the sky.

The distant, percussive roar of the battle on the Great Lawn was muffled here, replaced by the soft rustle of leaves and the frantic, panicked thumping of Michael’s own heart.

"Okay," Jax grunted from where he was being half-carried, half-dragged between Michael and Jinx. "I think I can officially say that my leg feels like it’s been put through a meat grinder."

He let out a pained, theatrical groan.

"A very stylish, very heroic meat grinder."

Jinx just grunted, her face a mask of grim, focused determination. "Quit your whining, Boomer. You’ve had worse."

"Have I, though?" Jax asked, his voice full of a genuine, almost childlike curiosity. "I feel like this is definitely in my top five worst leg-related injuries. Maybe top three."

They found it a moment later. A small, hidden alcove, a natural depression in a massive outcrop of rock, shielded from view by a thick curtain of overgrown ivy.

It was the closest thing to a safe zone they were going to find in this hellhole.

Jinx gently lowered Jax to the ground. He hissed in a sharp breath, his face going pale under the grime and sweat.

She didn’t offer a word of comfort.

She just went to work.

Her movements were a symphony of brutal, efficient pragmatism. She pulled a wicked-looking combat knife from her boot and, without a word of warning, sliced his pant leg open from ankle to thigh.

"Hey!" Jax yelped. "These were my favorite pants! They had extra pockets!"

"They were also covered in ghoul guts and about to get cut off by a medic anyway," she retorted, not looking up. "I’m saving you the fashion lecture."

The injury was ugly. His leg was bent at an angle that was fundamentally, sickeningly wrong.

Michael felt a wave of nausea. He had seen a lot of terrible things in the last few weeks. For some reason, this felt worse. More real.

This wasn’t a monster. This was his friend.

His teammate.

Acceptable loss, a cold whisper echoed in the back of his mind. The voice of the Cable Hound.

He shoved it down, hard.

Chloe’s voice crackled in his ear, a thin, tinny thread of logic in the chaotic aftermath.

"The fibula appears to be fractured in at least two places. Compound fracture is a seventy-eight percent probability. You need to immobilize it to prevent further tissue damage."

"Thanks for the helpful diagnosis, doc," Jinx growled, already pulling two sturdy branches from a nearby tree and a roll of thick, black tactical tape from her pack. "Any other brilliant observations from your five-star sniper’s nest?"

There was a moment of static-filled silence.

"My apologies," Chloe’s voice came back, stiff and formal. "My field-medicine experience is... limited."

Jinx just grunted, her hands already working, creating a makeshift splint with a speed and a precision that was both terrifying and deeply reassuring.

She was in her element. A scrapper. A survivor.

Jax, despite the white-hot agony that was clearly radiating from his leg, was trying his best to be helpful.

"You know," he said through gritted teeth, "this reminds me of a joke."

"No one wants to hear your joke, Jax," Jinx said, pulling the tape tight.

"A skeleton walks into a bar," Jax continued, ignoring her completely. "He says to the bartender, ’I’ll have a beer... and a mop.’"

He looked up at them, his face a mask of pained expectation.

"Get it? Because he doesn’t have any guts? To hold the beer?"

Michael just stared at him.

"I think the pain is making you hallucinate," he said.

"Tough crowd," Jax muttered, slumping back against the rock.

The splint was done. It was ugly. It was brutal. But it was solid.

The immediate crisis was over. The adrenaline began to fade, leaving behind a cold, gray exhaustion.

Michael stumbled a few feet away, slumping down with his back against the cool, damp rock.

His head was pounding.

The constant, psychic scream of the Red Gate was a physical weight, a migraine that had taken up permanent residence behind his eyes.

He felt like a radio that was stuck between stations, a constant, overlapping shriek of static and rage that was slowly driving him mad.

This is the raid’s area-of-effect debuff, his inner monologue drawled wearily. Minus ten to all mental stats. And it gives you a headache. Lame boss design. One star.

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to build the mental walls Chloe had taught him, but it was like trying to build a sandcastle in a hurricane.

A soft, nearly silent footstep approached.

He didn’t look up.

It was Chloe. He could feel her presence, a cool, analytical island in the stormy sea of his own emotions.

She stood there for a long, silent moment. She wasn’t assessing him as an asset. She was... observing.

He braced himself for a clinical diagnosis. A tactical suggestion.

She did neither.

She just sat down on the rock beside him.

She didn’t speak. She didn’t touch him.

She just sat there, a quiet, solid presence in the chaos of his mind.

Her silence was a language he was beginning to understand. It was her way of offering support without the inefficient, messy variable of actual words.

He focused on the feeling. The simple, solid reality of her presence beside him.

The warmth of another person. The shared, unspoken understanding of their mutual, screwed-up situation.

He used it as an anchor.

He started to build his wall around it.

A small, quiet space in the middle of the hurricane.

The psychic screaming in his head didn’t stop, but it grew fainter. More distant.

The static began to recede.

He took a slow, deep breath, the first one that didn’t feel like he was inhaling broken glass.

"Better?" she asked, her voice a quiet, low murmur.

He just nodded, not trusting his own voice.

They sat there in silence for what felt like an eternity, two broken people in a broken park, watching the sky burn red.

He didn’t know how long they had been there.

He just knew that the weight in his head was a little lighter.

The world was still ending.

The monsters were still screaming.

But for a single, fleeting moment, he didn’t feel so alone.

He was so lost in the quiet, fragile peace that he almost missed it.

The hunger.

It started as a low, quiet whisper in the back of his mind, a cold, insidious thought that was not his own.

Power...

He opened his eyes.

Twenty feet away, half-hidden in the undergrowth, was the corpse of a gargoyle, its stony flesh still smoking, its dead eyes staring at the angry red sky.

The whispers in his head, the ghosts of the monsters he’d consumed, stirred from their slumber.

Empty... need to feed...

He is weak. Power is the only solution.

Just one taste. It will make the screaming stop.

He felt a sudden, sharp, and deeply shameful wave of desire.

His [VE] meter was flashing a critical red. He was running on fumes.

One touch. One quick meal. And he would be whole again. Strong again.

His hands clenched into fists, his knuckles white.

His breathing, which had been slow and steady, hitched.

He was fighting a war no one else could see.

A war for his own soul.

He was so lost in the internal battle that he didn’t see Chloe turn her head.

He didn’t see her cold, gray eyes narrow.

He didn’t see the flicker of analytical curiosity in her expression replaced by a new, sharp, and deeply unsettling alarm.

She saw the look on his face.

The pale, sweaty sheen.

The flicker of something cold and predatory in his eyes.

The barely-suppressed hunger.