He set about taking on Gambol’s injuries, bearing them himself, distributing the load among his fellow selves while using his own wellness as a template to contrast with and highlight the damage. The pain hit him sharp, and the strength went out of his legs, seemingly concentrated in a trio or quartet of lower-back muscles, which started crumpling into themselves, or that was how it felt.

“Step away from the prisoner!” a guard bellowed. “No contact!”

“I have first aid training and field experience! If we don’t stop him from moving, he might do permanent damage to himself!”

“Step away!”

“I can’t!” was his answer. He met Gambol’s eyes. “If I let go, he might never walk again!”

“You will not be asked again!”

It wasn’t the jerk guard from before that was making a point of this. It was a new face, female, stern, and rigid, who was acting like a wall, getting in his way.

He avoided looking at her, his attention on Gambol and the aftermath of the violence. He looked past Gambol and at the arrangement of other Gambols, who had made their own decisions and faced their own consequences.

He was already taking on a lot. The pain in his back was intense, no doubt permanent. Part of the reason he said he couldn’t back off was that he wasn’t sure he could walk.

The cut on the hand transferred to his own body, a dotted line drawn across his palm, raw and painful. The dots were where other Williams had taken some of the burden onto their own shoulders. Unwitting and unwilling.

There had been a time when he had felt bad about it.

“Step away!” A new voice. They’d said he wouldn’t be asked again. The woman was talking into her radio.

“Can’t!” he shouted. “But I’m not hurting anyone! I’m safe!”

“Our decision, not yours!”

It wasn’t that he didn’t respect that kind of thinking. Stubbornness was strength, in its way. He’d seen it among the Crowley Fallen, especially. Weak opposition could be broken surprisingly easy with enough stubbornness.

Gambol, oddly enough, was a good representation of that kind of confidence. The issue was that like the Mathers Fallen, he’d stirred up things that could have been left alone. Gambol had crossed the guards, made them look and feel dumb, and their resentment had hit a limit. The Mathers group had attracted too much attention in too short a span of time.

Had either been subtler in that, they might have provoked the enemy while making that enemy look unreasonable if they went on the offensive.

William winced as the pain set in, worse than before, and winced because he was pissed off that the recklessness of others landed on his shoulders. The Mathers’ failure was why he was here. Gambol’s idiocy had brought them to this crossroads.