Chapter 20 Blood Debt

• Alexander’s ragged sobs subsided into shuddering breaths, his face still buried in the thin pillow. The monitors continued their rhythmic protest, but the frantic peaks of the neurostorm seemed to recede, replaced by a terrible, hollow stillness. It wasn't calm; it was collapse.
• He slowly turned his head. The defiance, the rage, the desperate bargaining – all were gone. What remained in his fever-bright eyes was a dawning, horrifying comprehension. He wasn't looking at me, not exactly. His gaze seemed fixed on the slow, relentless drip of the IV line – my blood flowing into his vein.
• "Five years," he whispered, the words raw and stripped bare. Not an accusation, not a plea. A simple, devastating statement of fact.