It was stupid, so minor, it didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. But it kept my mind off of the raspy burr to each of my breaths, the pain, and more than any of that, the fact I didn’t really have any hope for the future.

If my estimation was right, then literally any moment now, the Simurgh would be merging with Fortuna. If she’d miscalculated, then it could be a few minutes more. If I’d lost track of time to a sufficient degree, then it could be already happening, the scream imminent.

And I was waiting in line, so to speak. Sitting in a chair with a plasticky-white cover on the padding, elbow to elbow with the people to my left and right in matching chairs.

“Alright, miss?”

I turned my head—too quickly. I winced as neck muscles pulled at my collarbone.

A female nurse, not the one I’d been anticipating. The guy was stuck talking to someone elderly. A refugee or a cape’s family.

“Antares, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said. My voice had that same just-been-sick burr to it.

“What do you need?”

My hand was holding the washcloth-sized pad of cotton to my collarbone. The cotton was stuck to blood, and pulled at my skin, which pulled at the bone. I felt it grate and click, my expression changing to something like I was screaming, even though the air was locked in my throat.

A dribble of blood ran down from the pad’s edge to the heel of my hand, down to my sleeve. It wasn’t like I didn’t already have a ton there.

“Okay. Don’t remove that. Come with me.”

“I think other people arrived before I did. I don’t want special treatment.”

“It’s on a requirement basis. That’s a clear break and serious blood loss. Do you need help? A chair?”

“I can fly.”

Technically, I knew that they were giving us triage. I knew it wouldn’t be a first-come, first-serve basis. At the same time, I was aware I didn’t have any friends. The Wardens didn’t trust me after my altercations with Eric, non-Wardens had reasons to distrust me because they’d heard Chris’s filtered version of my plan. Too many civilians were anti-parahumans.

On a level, I just wanted to minimize stress on as many fronts as possible.

I floated after the woman, who had ear decorations that threaded through holes in each ear—something that might have come from one of the cultures we ran into with all the interdimensional stuff. She kept looking back to check on me, her eyes flicking down to my feet, as if to confirm to herself that I really was flying. I didn’t run into that a lot.