In Lab 7, assistants and researchers walked through the hallway just outside of the office where Gale sat in front of Ollie’s desk. Rachel leaned by the door of the glass wall that separated them from the outside. Monitors mounted on those walls displayed the familiar table of patients as subjects.

“Wait, so he just ran?” Ollie leaned from his chair, inching closer to Gale.

Gale fiddled with his fingers. “Not really. After I knocked him out, I checked on the victims. When I turned around, there were drag marks on the ground.”

“And you didn’t follow, right?” Rachel asked.

“I didn’t. I stayed with the victims,” Gale said.

“You did the right thing. Path agents picked up the victims 20 minutes after your call.” Ollie rubbed his eyes, the dark circles already looking worse after giving him the Vit Vial. “So tell me. What’s the Aurian like? Fighting style? How strong?”

“I don’t really know. Definitely not attuned though. Just an awakened,” Gale replied. “He fought like an animal, like on all fours, lunging and jumping off walls. Just like a beast.”

“A beast,” Rachel sat up straighter. “That sounds like the Silver Lion family’s style. They’re known for transformation, an animalistic style, and partial animal transformations that enhance physical capabilities.”

Ollie laughed. “The Silver Lions? They’ve been quiet for a decade. Not even a whisper of trouble from them since old man Petrov died.”

“That we know of,” Rachel countered. “They could be moving into the dust trade. It would explain why he was there around Gale’s neighbourhood.”

“Speculation without evidence,” Ollie said, standing up. “Without the suspect in custody, we’re just guessing.”

“What about the victims? How are they doing?” Gale leaned to the side to look over through the glass doors. Beyond was just the unit where they put the injured man in.

“They’re down the hall. Come see for yourself,” Ollie said, walking over to the door.

They left the office, walking through the main lab area. Researchers stepped aside as they passed. A few waved at Rachel. Everyone moved out of Ollie’s way.

“The dust trade is getting worse,” Rachel said as they walked. “Even near Gale’s streets are filled with it.”

“I’m aware,” Ollie said.

They reached the patient ward in the lab. Gale saw the man from the alley through the window that stretched from the door to the other side of the corridor. The man’s face was bruised, the swelling gone down a lot. A doctor was tapping away at his tablet while they came in.

Ollie entered the keys swiftly on the panel beside the door. The doctor looked up, nodding and then leaving without a word.

“Hey,” the man said, directed at Gale. “Are you the one that saved us?”

Gale nodded but didn’t speak. He wasn’t sure what to say.

“How’re you feeling?” Rachel asked, picking up the chart at the foot of the bed.

“Better,” the man said. “They gave me something for the pain. Is my wife ok?”

“Your wife was exposed to something we call dust

,” Ollie said, voice flat, didn’t even bat an eye as he continued. “She had direct contact with it. We’ve run the tests three times.”

“Seven days, maybe less. That’s how long she got left” Ollie added.

The man’s face crumpled, more like confusion rather than anger. “Kid, what are you trying to say? Magic? Isn’t this a hospital? I wanna see my wife. Come on!”

“I’m sorry,” Ollie said without an ounce of emotion at all.

The man cried, trying to get out of the bed but the restraints stopped him. Gale stepped forward, but Rachel caught his arm, shaking her head slightly.

“The crystals have already started forming in her lungs,” Ollie said, tone flat. “It’s hard to accept, but this is reality, a different one than you know. By day five, she won’t recognize you anymore.”

“All of you are crazy!” the man shouted. “Get me out of this damned bed. Let me see my wife!”

Ollie turned away from the man. “You weren’t exposed. The test results show no trace of dust in your system. You can leave today if you want, or stay with your wife until the end. You were lucky.”

Without another word, Ollie left the room, leaving Rachel, Gale, and the man restrained on the bed. Through the ward’s windows, Gale saw Ollie stop a lab tech in the hall.

The man in the bed cried, tears running down through his temples.

What if he was told that his friend was dying? Or worse. What if someone like Ollie had told him that Rachel was dying? And she did almost die. The sobs he spent in that stone tower after she disappeared through the exit rift came back to him. The ache of his heart at the thought of not being able to see a friend again, and then someone suddenly saying such cold insensitive words to him? He would’ve snapped.

His eyes turned towards Rachel. She looked back at him, not saying anything as her eyes trembled. She at least cared enough to stay by this man she didn’t know. What Ollie did was cold blooded. It wasn’t right.

“Excuse me,” Gale said to Rachel before stepping quickly out of the room.

He caught up to Ollie, grabbing his elbow and pulling his arm to turn him around. The lab techs nearby saw what happened and then went quickly out of the vicinity.

“What the hell was that?” Gale asked.

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Ollie looked back at him, eyes still dead. “What?”

“That man’s wife is dying. She has days left. And you told him like you already rehearsed what to say.”

Ollie shook off Gale’s hand. “That’s how this business works. We get twenty to fifty new cases a week. They’re numbers in a spreadsheet at the end of the day.” He turned toward a private lab room. “If we don’t get this cure figured out, there’ll be thousands more.”

Gale followed him, letting the door slide shut behind them. “They’re not numbers. They’re people. That man deserved more back there.”

“Deserved what, exactly? Do I have to pretend to care about all 50 patients that come in week after week?” Ollie said, sitting down and turning away from Gale to his desktop’s monitor. “You know how many dust victims I’ve watched die in the last five years? Thousands upon thousands. Each one gets 11 days. Do the math.”

“This isn’t about math.” Gale moved around to face him. “It’s about giving people care that they deserve. That man’s wife is going to disappear!”

Ollie’s fingers stopped typing. He looked up, dark circles seemingly darker than before. “You wouldn’t understand, Gale. You’re still too young.”

Something snapped. Sure, he was young, but that didn’t mean the pain that people feel when losing someone would disappear as people grow older.

“Then tell me, Glory!” Gale said, gripping Ollie’s forearm. “Explain to me why you’re acting like an asshole to people who… who’ve lost someone!”

For a moment, neither moved. Techs outside the glass wall paused their movement as if frozen in time. Ollie stared into Gale’s eyes, his face blank.

“Let go of me,” he said quietly.

Gale didn’t budge.

“It’s better this way,” Ollie continued, still not fighting back. “Better for you to stay who you are. The north star of the survivors. The person above all this… bureaucracy and compromise. This isn’t the world you fit in, Gale.”

“Shut up.” Gale tightened his grip. “That’s not your call to make. Your world is also mine now too, whether you and I like it or not.”

Ollie tried wrenching his arms free, staggering up from his seat, but Gale followed. His arms slammed against the metal cabinet beside his desk, its panels crumpling inwards. Ollie’s head dropped, mumbling something as he looked to the floor.

“What?”

“I said,” Ollie’s voice grew louder, cracking. “You don’t understand anything.”

He slammed his fist against the cabinet, breaking the hinge and bending the corner inwards.

“When I got back after that rift,” Ollie continued, each word getting louder, “I didn’t even get to see her alive. She was just… there. Alone in the bed. Crystals poking through her skin.”

His breathing sped up, looking straight at Gale. Eyes, lifeless and dilated as if Ollie was looking else where.

“And you know what?!” Ollie shouted, eyes focused again. “It was all my fault! I was already studying dust before we got trapped. She was probably exposed because of me. Because I left samples in my bag, in our apartment.”

“That wasn’t your fault…” Gale said, his voice grew weak.

“That’s not the point. I lost her. And I wasn’t there. For five fucking years, I wasn’t there. What do you want me to do?!” Ollie asked, voice trembling yet no tears came.

The man slid down the cabinet and sank to the floor. “All I could think about in that rift was getting back to her. Hugging her when I got back. Instead…” Ollie’s fist clenched. “I hugged her crystallized body on the bed we shared.”

The ambient noise of the heart rate monitors that echoed along the hallway seemed to die down. Through the glass, Gale saw Rachel standing just outside the door.

“So yeah. I don’t cry for every new case anymore. I can’t, I shouldn’t, and I won’t stop till we get the cure.” Ollie stood back up, dusting his suit off and sat back down in his chair.

Gale didn’t know what to say. His friend had lost his loved one, and that wasn’t something he could judge him on.

Behind them, the door slid open. Rachel stepped in.

“The latest test results just came in,” she said, “The modified dust from my lab…”

Ollie wiped away a piece of metal stuck on his sleeve. “And?”

“It’s… different.” Rachel held up a tablet. “The crystallization rate is slowed by about 50 percent.”

Ollie straightened, switching back to his usual mode of business. His breath shook as he looked near Gale’s direction, but not at him. He held his breath, taking in a couple of deep breaths before saying, “show me”.

Before Ollie was about to say something else, he squared his shoulders, fixed his hair, and straightened his maroon tie before turning back to him.

“And Gale… sorry. I didn’t mean to…” Ollie didn’t finish.

Looking towards Rachel and then back to Ollie, he couldn’t say anything. He was as powerless as before. You thought wrong, Gale. Keeping connections was harder than you thought. Now look at you. Can’t even say anything and looking like an idiot thinking you knew everything. Ollie has his own reasons.

Yeah, it was fine that way.

Rachel cleared her throat, “The full results are in room 416. You should head over there first. Dr. Chen wants to show you the protein binding comparison.”

“Right. I’ll check it out.” Ollie stood up and moved to the door, pausing before leaving. “We’ll… talk later.”

The door shut behind him. The lab came back to life as the scene ended. Everyone went back to their jobs.

Rachel tugged at Gale’s sleeve, pulling him toward a different corner away from Ollie’s glass office. They walked to an empty ward. Going inside, she sat him down on the bed as she pulled over a seat to sit in front of him.

“Gale?” she called to him.

“Yeah?”

“It’s going to be fine,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“He’s still the Ollie we know.” Rachel’s hand reached his arm and squeezed softly. “Just… a version that’s been through something. We need to be there for him, no matter what. Even when he pushes us away.”

A lab tech walked past with a tray of blue vials. Each one was filled with a substance that had killed the man’s wife. Dust, or whatever it is, killed mundanes no matter what. Here he was, in Ollie’s lab, seeing how hard the man works everyday just to get a cure.

“I get it now,” he said. “Why Lily and the others said those things about him. He even called himself ‘the machine.’ It’s like… he’s turned himself into this cold thing because feeling hurt too much. I didn’t know.”

“No one told you, right?” Rachel squeezed his arm firmer. “That’s just how he survives now. Eventually, maybe, when we find the cure, it’ll be back to normal.”

“Yeah.” Gale stood up from the bed. “People disappearing hurts. I’m sorry too… for disappearing.”

“It’s okay.” Rachel stood up too, reaching him eye to eye. “Friends stick together. We’ll stick this one out for Ollie. Isn’t that right?”

“Yeah. That’s right.”

“And friends fight through monsters and obstacles all the time, right?”

“Right.”

“It’s no one’s fault,” she said, turning her head to the ward’s entrance. “Not his. Not ours.”

She took a deep breath. “All we can do is keep going. Keep trying. As long as we stick with the project, keep pushing forward… we’ll get there eventually.”

“You really believe that?”

“I have to.” She looked up at him. “Otherwise, what’s the point of any of this?”

She’s right. Everyone was trying their best.

“I’m also trying not to…” Gale mumbled.

“Trying not to run away?”

His face flushed. She was right. He was trying his best not to run away from any of this.

“You’re not alone anymore,” she said. “Remember what I said. Share your burden, otherwise I’ll get mad again.”

“Right.” Gale nodded, although he wasn’t sure whether he deserved someone like her cheering him up. Adult and children’s friendships did have quarrels. It was a common thing he needed to get used to. All he needs to do now is just find a way to help with the research in his own way. That’ll cheer up Ollie. Definitely.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep