“Help.” His voice was ragged from disuse, thin and raw, but the link data slammed into Samm like a moving truck. The newly opened eyes were wild with terror, and Samm felt the same terror welling up in his own gut—a numbing, crippling, overwhelming sense of wrongness, of helplessness, of boundless fear. Samm raced to sort through his thoughts, trying desperately to separate his own mind from this irrational fright before the link overwhelmed him; he closed his eyes and repeated every comforting detail he could think of, one after the other like a mantra.

You’re safe. We’re your friends. We’re protecting you. We’re healing you. You’re safe. He realized the soldier probably thought he’d been captured, waking up abruptly with none of his companions nearby and no officer to reassure him; any of his squad mates he could sense on the link would be broadcasting the same catastrophic confusion that he was. We’re your friends. We’re protecting you. We’re healing you. You’re safe.

“Help.” The soldier’s voice was painful to hear, as if the words themselves were bleeding. “Arm.”

“What does that mean?” asked Calix. “Does his arm hurt? Why did he say ‘arm’?”

“He knows he’s unarmed,” said Phan. “He’s afraid.”

“He’s still waking up,” said Laura, shaking her head. “He’s not rational. Give him time.”

“He might never be rational,” said Heron. “We don’t know what kind of brain damage he’s sustained from being asleep for thirteen years.”

“You’re not helping,” said Calix.

“I could shoot you again,” said Heron. “Would that help?”

“You’re safe,” said Samm. “We’re your friends. We’re protecting you. We’re healing you.”

“Hole,” said the soldier. “Blood.”

One of the hospital’s few nurses burst into the room. “One of the others is waking up.” She looked over her shoulder, listening to a distant shout, then turned back with a frantic mania. “Two of them.”

Five of the nine were awake before morning, though all but one of them had to be restrained. They seemed insane, mad and squalling like superpowered children; Laura thought their minds had been destroyed by Vale’s enforced coma, while Calix, more charitably, suggested that their minds were simply still asleep, and only their bodies had awoken. Samm thought about it just long enough to decide that he didn’t have enough information to decide, and that his course of action would be the same no matter what was wrong. He helped to hold their thrashing limbs while the nurses tied each Partial down with sturdy leather cords.