“You’ll have to wait,” the nurse said. “It’s not the TV. Supplies are limited and you’re being rationed one dose every eight hours.”

He grimaced.

He did have options. He had a mental template of his uninjured self. With focus, he could round off the edges, hold things off, or take the almost-healed and push it away. It was the holding that he wanted to use here. If his power was to take the ailments of others and then give them to others, then ‘holding’ something was to take it and not shelve it within his own body, with that body feeling the worst of it. He’d hold it in his hand, apart, away, and ready for another target, leaning on the template of self to keep everything in rough place.

Ready for another target—the nurse was being careful, and he was pretty sure using his power on her would get him shot in a more final way. No. And besides, he would feel shitty for making her deal with all of this.

Things got a bit easier as he focused on holding things off. There was a drawback to this, where dropping what he was holding meant it would take hold with a splash. The effects would be worse if held off and accidentally dropped or if he was disturbed enough by outside factors.

“You don’t seem to have a very positive view of this stuff,” the guard said, indicating the television.

“I had a lot of teammates over the years. I lost a few too many of them. I saved a few of their lives, before, and… it was for nothing. I helped save towns and those towns are gone now. When everything went to shit, it all went to shit. No use prettying it up. Can you change the channel?”

The nurse picked up the remote from the small rolling table that would later let him eat in bed. She changed the channel.

Another hero, from another team, talking to people. “No.”

Another show, a children’s cartoon. “No.”

A third segment where heroes were talking to the media.

“Turn it off,” he said.

She changed back to the original channel. “Say please next time, and I might.”

“It’s all pretty words.”

The nurse looked a little upset as she walked around his bed. She approached the IV bag, adjusting something.

It made itself felt over the next twenty seconds. His head lolled back to the pillow.

His power afforded him a greater sense of the shape of things. For a long time, it had been masked or protected somehow, his thoughts steered away from understanding it all. Since the golden calf had been slaughtered, the protections were peeling away. From noises he’d heard while with the Fallen, he wasn’t the only one.

It was a scary thing, to see what they were working with.