Chapter 161: Price
The sliding doors sigh open with a soft hydraulic groan, and Lucas is already moving before they finish their tired complaint. He streaks through the entrance like a shadow peeled from the night, a dark blur carved out of borrowed hospital light. The fluorescent beams overhead catch on the edges of him—on the lines of a body that has only just finished stitching itself back together on the drive over. His spine hums with the memory of realignment, nerves crackling as if testing themselves, skin smooth again where Tony's tendrils had burrowed deep.
Inside, the sterile air hits him like a blast of winter. That sharp, chemical cold—antiseptic, metallic—clings to the back of his throat. But the real impact, the one that truly hits him, is fear.
Erica's room is empty.
For half a heartbeat, everything inside him stops. His pulse. His breath. His certainty.
The world narrows to a pinpoint.
Then a nurse looks up, eyes widening when she recognizes the name on his lips before he can force the question out.
"Are you here for Erica?" Her voice trips, falters. "They— they moved her to ICU. She… she crashed."
Lucas's stomach drops—heavy, sinking, like someone cut the anchor rope and let him fall straight into the dark.
He doesn't sprint. He doesn't even think.
His body moves for him. Fast—too fast for human eyes, cutting through hallways like he's slipping between frames of the world. Doorways blur. Floor tiles smear into streaks of white and gray. He's a storm moving on instinct alone.
He only stops when he sees them.
Erica's mother is collapsed into her husband's chest, her fingers twisted in his jacket, clutching it with the desperation of someone drowning. She sobs so hard her entire body trembles, each sound tearing out of her throat raw. Her father stands stiff beside her, staring at the floor as though it has personally betrayed him. His jaw is locked so tight the muscles twitch—holding back a scream, or maybe a collapse of his own.
A few feet away, Malia and Isaac stand like they've been carved out of the same stone the hospital walls were built from—pale, rigid, and barely upright.
Malia lifts her head first. Her eyes are glassy, rimmed red, furious in a way only fear can make them.
"She coded, Lucas." Her voice cracks down the middle like a branch under too much weight. "Out of nowhere. One minute she was stable, and the next—" Her breath catches; she shakes her head sharply as if refusing the image. "They got her back, but she's… she's in a coma. And the doctors aren't optimistic."
Isaac swallows hard, steps forward. His voice sounds scraped raw, like every word has to fight its way out.
"Give her the Bite."
Malia whips toward him. "Isaac—"
"It saved me," he fires back instantly, voice shaking but fierce. "I was dying, Lucas. I almost died. And I came back. She can too."
Malia's jaw tightens, her hands balling at her sides. "Isaac, she's not like you were." Her voice trembles but doesn't break. "You were dying, but your body wasn't shutting itself down piece by piece. Erica is barely holding on. If he bites her now, it could kill her faster."
Isaac's eyes flick to the ICU doors—just for a second, just long enough to betray how terrified he is—then back to Lucas.
"She's going to die anyway if we do nothing."
Malia snaps at him, voice sharp with desperation.
"Her chances of coming back from the coma—no matter how small—are still significantly better than her surviving the Bite right now."
The words hang between them, heavy, suffocating.
Lucas stands in the middle of it all—between them, but also somehow nowhere. Silent. Unmoving. Hollowed out.
And then he finally does.
"I know."
The whisper is so soft it nearly disappears into the hum of machines and distant pages—but they hear it. And it stops everything.
He looks at Malia and Isaac, at the grief twisted raw in their faces, and something inside him twists with it. A knot pulling tighter and tighter until it hurts to breathe.
"There's no point in you guys staying here," he says quietly, words gentle, steady, far softer than the storm inside him. "You've done everything you can. Go home. Rest. I'll stay with her."
Malia nods—slowly, like it costs her something to do it. She looks wrung out, emptied of arguments and hope alike. Isaac places a hand on Lucas's shoulder, the gesture heavy with gratitude, fear, and resignation.
As Malia and Isaac gather themselves to leave, Erica's parents drift away from the ICU doors as well, moving like ghosts who haven't realized they're dead. The hallway gradually falls quiet—too quiet.
Malia lingers. She turns back.
"Lucas… don't do anything stupid."
He meets her eyes. And for one brief second—one unguarded instant—she sees everything inside him. The war. The terror. The fury. The guilt. The determination that has hardened into something dangerous.
"I'll take care of her," he says.
It isn't an answer.
She knows it.
But she's too drained to push him further tonight.
She and Isaac leave.
And the moment their footsteps fade, Lucas slips silently into the ICU.
Erica lies impossibly small against the sea of white sheets, her skin a shade too pale, lashes still as if she's only pretending to sleep. The machines that surround her beep in slow, fragile intervals—each sound a reminder of how close the line is, how thin the thread holding her here has become.
Lucas steps to her bedside. He stands there a long moment, breathing carefully, fighting the tremor threatening to shake through him.
"I'm sorry," he whispers, voice breaking in the quiet. "I don't know if I'm saving you… or...? But I won't let him win. I won't lose you."
He bends.
Opens his mouth.
Lets the fangs descend with a slow, trembling breath.
And with a shiver of fear and resolve twined together—
He bites her.
The monitors react instantly.
BEEP—BEEP—BEEP—
A frantic, violent spike.
Then—
Flatline.