Blood Bond

The click of the door shutting as Maya left echoed in the quiet room, the silence settling back in, heavier now, the rhythmic beep of the heart monitor now mere background to me. The fragile connection I'd felt with her, that fleeting glimpse of understanding, dissolved, leaving me alone again with the sterile white walls and the turmoil within.

My thoughts, unbidden, recoiled from the present, snagging on the sharp, metallic memory of Stonehand. Not the fear of him, not his looming presence, but the slick, horrifying intimacy of how my blood had seeped into him after he downed his drink. It wasn't nausea or revulsion that came over me then, but temptation. I remember the hunger, the need within me to push my blood cells forward within him to consume his cells to spread into his heart. That rich pulsating muscle that I was poignantly aware of from being in his veins.

I remembered the desperate internal struggle. It wasn't the strain of controlling minds, no, it was the need to push back hunger, the thirst for blood essence that called to me from deep within. My blood could sustain itself inside him by absorbing just enough of his blood essence to maintain stasis, but it wanted more. It took real near physical effort to hold back that need. It was exhausting and sweat was beading embarrassingly off my head by the end of night. I suppose I didn't have this issue with Kael because I had already taken his heart.

I rubbed at my chin. Thinking about it logically, wouldn't their immune systems attack my blood right away? The fact that I could actually coexist inside both Borin and Kael without causing some kind of immune response shock, suggests that my invasive blood is somehow able to blend it, or could it take the shape of their blood to hide from their white blood cells? I seem to have some form of control, albeit subconsciously, over my blood at the cellular level.

Hmm… My gaze drifted to my arm, to the clear liquid steadily dripping into the IV tube. It brought back the memory of Stonehand's clear amber liquor – alcohol that should have annihilated my cells. My blood had held its form within that pool of poison, and as it did so, I remember sensing the shape of that poison, a landscape of jagged edges, points, and peaks. Now, my eyes found the white 'X' of tape on my skin, marking where the needle delivered its own deadly chemical cocktail directly into my veins. Could I feel the shapes within this poison too?

The desire to know germinated inside me, taking root. If I could truly sense at that level, perhaps I could finally understand how this power worked, understand myself. Maybe, just maybe, I could take control of at least one thing in the swirling chaos that both my lives had become.

I took a steadying breath against the rhythmic beep of the monitor and focused on connecting with the blood flowing within that vein. A moment of intense concentration, a dizzying inward plunge, and then, I was there – a river of blood cells sweeping through the confines of a fleshy tunnel. Up ahead, was a massive maw of metal from which a torrent of volatile crystals came roaring toward us. They crashed against my cells with microscopic violence. Some cells seemed to vaporize on contact, sending bright, frenetic arcs of energy spidering through the plasma. Other crystals shattered against the tunnel's yielding walls, spraying a mist of incandescent sparks back into the crimson flow. The assault was relentless, an internal storm of annihilation.

But the cells I was directly connected to somehow weathered this storm. They pushed and nudged away the bristling shards of crystalline points bearing down on them, as if shielded by an unseen, mind-driven force. We became an island in that chaotic, violent sea, a thin ribbon of ordered red, much like my blood had been in Stonehand's liquor. We could hold. But could we do more?

My mind flashed to Kael's wound in Aetheria—how I'd simply willed strands of my blood to knit his flesh closed. The control had felt intuitive then, as if all I had to do was envision and my blood would follow. Could I do the same here, in this body, in this world, in this maelstrom?

I focused on that island of resisting cells and began to will them forward, projecting a mental image of what they should do, how they should move as a cohesive unit through the waves of chemo. It took a sheer force of will, an intense concentration, to impress that image onto the cells. They responded, inching forward, a tiny vanguard pushing through the waves of frothing, exploding crystals.

But I wanted more. I pictured my cells driving upwards, into that massive maw of metal. I cleared all thought. The world around me—the rhythmic beeps of the monitor, the sterile smell of the room, my own breathing—faded into a blank background. There was only the mental image, my will, and the blood. The cells moved.

In the clear plastic of the IV tube, a thin filament of red appeared, snaking its way up against the toxic crystalline stream. I willed it to move left, and it did. I willed it right, and it followed. A profound shiver ran down my spine, goosebumps prickling my skin despite the room's sterile warmth. It's real! The exclamation burst through my focused calm. For the first time, I had absolute, undeniable confirmation: Aetheria wasn't just a dream, not some elaborate fantasy cooked up by my stress-deranged mind.

No. I could do blood magic on Earth.

BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP!

The continuous, screaming shriek of the monitor shattered the silence. Alarms blared. Suddenly, a crushing weight slammed into my chest, stealing my breath. I heaved, gasping, as a blinding, sharp pain stabbed through my mind, the room tilting crazily around me. SHIT. The wordless curse was a raw gasp. I overdid it!

The door burst open and a nurse rushed in, her face a mask of urgent concern.

—

The rest of the day—or perhaps it was already evening, time had become a blur—passed in a haze of exhaustion and the dull throb of a lingering headache. The sharp, blinding pain from my… experiment… had subsided after the flurry of worried questions from the nurse and a brief, probing check-in from Dr. Sharma, whose frown had deepened considerably upon hearing about the episode. He'd ordered more blood tests, of course, and an admonition to "avoid any undue stress."

Undue stress. Right.

I lay there, feeling utterly spent, the memory of the red filament snaking through the chemo a terrifying, triumphant secret. The power was real, here, in this body. But the cost… The mental drain was like nothing I'd ever experienced, a bone-deep weariness that made even thinking feel like a monumental effort.

It was sometime later, as the sterile room was dimming with the fading afternoon light filtering through the blinds, that Mom's laptop, left on the rolling table, chimed with an incoming video call. The faces of Sam and Chloe popped up on the preview screen.

My first instinct was to ignore it, to sink back into the relative oblivion of my fatigue. But then, a wave of something else washed over me – a desperate, aching need for something normal, something that wasn't hospitals, or chemo, or impossible magic. A connection to the life that felt like it was slipping further away with every beep of the monitor.

With a sigh that felt like it dredged up the last of my energy, I reached out and accepted the call.

"Leo! Dude, you're alive!" Sam's voice, a little too loud, crackled through the small speakers. His face, framed by his usual hoodie, filled half the screen, a wide, slightly goofy grin plastered on it.

Chloe's face appeared beside his, her expression a mix of relief and her usual no-nonsense concern. "Don't be an idiot, Sam. Of course, he's alive. How are you feeling, Leo? For real?"

I tried to muster a smile. "Like I've been run over by a herd of… something large," I managed, the words feeling thick in my mouth. The exhaustion was a heavy blanket, and the dull ache in my head hadn't quite faded. "But, you know, still kicking."

"You look pretty wiped," Chloe observed, her eyes, even through the screen, seeming to take in every detail. "Are they… are they figuring things out?"

"Slowly," I said, the understatement of the century. "Lots of tests. Weird results. The usual hospital fun." I sidestepped the truth of the "weird results" – the impossible rebound of my blood cells, my power now in this world.

Sam leaned closer to the camera. "Dude, you wouldn't believe it. So, Kyle's actually in my History class now, and old Mr. Henderson was droning on about the Peloponnesian War, and Kyle starts asking if Sparta had, like, an air force. Old Henderson's eyes nearly popped out of his head." Sam snorted with laughter. "It was epic."

Chloe chimed in, "And you should have seen our Bio class today, Leo. Ms. Evans had us doing virtual frog dissections. I was partnered with Naomi, which was fine, but Kyle somehow managed to distract the group next to us so badly they digitally exploded their frog. Pixelated frog guts everywhere." She rolled her eyes, but a smile played on her lips.

"Sounds about right for Kyle," I said, a weak laugh escaping me. It still felt odd hearing about him being… around them.

"Tell me about it," Chloe said. "Anyway, everyone sends their love. We took up a collection, remember the Switch? Well, Kyle actually fronted most of the cash for that new 'Cosmic Guardians' game you wanted too. It's waiting for you when you bust out of there."

"Seriously? Guys, Kyle too… you didn't have to…" A warmth spread through my chest, a counterpoint to the cold dread that had become my constant companion. Connection. It felt… good. But also strange.

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"Nah, man, we wanted to," Sam insisted. "Gotta have something to look forward to, right? Besides, we need our lead runner back. Cross country tryouts are next month..."

Just then, as if summoned, Kyle's face abruptly squeezed into the frame behind Sam, looking slightly out of breath but with an amiable grin. "They talking about my legendary history takes or my frog cutting skills?"

My breath caught. There they were: Sam, Chloe, and Kyle, all apparently hanging out, close enough to easily join each other's video calls. The image of them together, so casual, so normal, sent an unexpected pang through my chest. It wasn't just surprise; it was a flicker of something else, something that felt uncomfortably like… resentment? Like the world was just moving on, friendships reconfiguring in my absence, my spot at their side now occupied by someone who should never even be there! The thought left a bitter taste.

Chloe gave Kyle a light shove. "Mostly the frog guts, Kyle. But yeah, Leo, he's been… surprisingly less annoying since you've been gone. Maybe what happened with you scared him straight."

Kyle just shrugged, looking a bit embarrassed but also pleased. "Figured you'd want to know you're not entirely forgotten, Vega. Even if you do always beat me by five seconds." There was no real malice in it, more awkward than anything else, he just doesn't belong there. "That Switch game is supposed to be pretty awesome, by the way. We can, uh, try it together out when you're back."

The conversation drifted for a few more minutes – more school gossip, reassurances that they were thinking of me. It was a balm, this brief immersion in their normal, everyday concerns. But with every shared laugh, every update I couldn't fully participate in, the chasm between their world and mine felt wider. They talked about homework and upcoming movies; I was thinking about blood magic and the crushing weight of a secret that could get me labeled a monster or a lunatic.

Finally, I could feel my energy waning rapidly, the earlier exhaustion reasserting itself with a vengeance. My eyelids felt heavy.

"Hey guys," I interrupted gently, "I think I need to… zone out for a bit. Getting pretty tired."

"Sure thing, man," Sam said immediately, his earlier boisterousness softening. "Rest up, okay? We'll call again soon."

"Yeah, Leo. Take care of yourself," Chloe added, her voice warm. "And don't worry about school stuff. We've got you covered."

Even Kyle offered a small, awkward wave. "Later, Vega. Get better."

The call ended, the screen going dark, plunging the room back into its sterile quiet. The warmth of their connection stayed, a fragile shield against the encroaching darkness. But beneath it, the sense of isolation was sharper than ever. They were there, together, moving forward. And I was here, tethered to machines, grappling with a reality they could never comprehend. The secret felt heavier, colder, a stone in the pit of my stomach.

—

Hours crawled by. Nurses came and went, quiet and efficient, checking the IV, taking my temperature. Mom had eventually gone home after her shift change, promising to be back before dawn, leaving me to the dim glow of the nightlight and now normal, rhythmic beeping that was the soundtrack to my confinement.

The profound exhaustion from my earlier... experiment... had receded somewhat, leaving behind a dull ache in my head. The sharp edge of panic from the alarms had also faded, but a restless, almost bitter energy thrummed beneath my skin. The earlier feelings from the call coiled into a quiet self-pity. Yet, layered over that was a stubborn, analytical curiosity.

I couldn't shake the memories of my blood cells rushing into the maelstrom.

What had I actually sensed in that interaction? What was that 'shape' I perceived, and how did it differ from Stonehand's liquor? The need to understand, to categorize, to find some pattern in this terrifying new power, became imperative. If I was going to survive either world, I needed to know what I was dealing with.

With a new resolve solidifying through the lingering fatigue and the ache of loneliness, I carefully pulled Mom's laptop back onto the rolling bedside table. The glow of the screen felt almost conspiratorial in the darkened room. My fingers, still feeling a faint tremor from the day's exertions, hovered over the keyboard.

Where to even begin?

A name surfaced first, one I'd managed to get from Nurse Miller during a moment of lucid curiosity between waves of fatigue: Cytarabine. That was one of the drugs currently dripping into me, one of the agents in the "chemical cocktail" designed to kill my leukemia.

My fingers, still marked by a faint tremor, typed the drug name into the search bar. Cytarabine. Mechanism of action. Molecular structure.

Rows of blue links appeared. I clicked on one, then another, skimming through dense medical jargon and complex chemical diagrams. I wasn't looking for a layman's explanation of side effects; I was hunting for something that might align with the sensation I'd experienced – that chaotic onslaught, the "torrent of volatile crystals" that "came roaring toward" my cells, the "bright, frenetic arcs of energy" and "incandescent sparks."

My blood cells had no eyes, no way to "see" these molecules in the way my own eyes saw the diagrams on the screen. But I had felt through their interactions a distinct 'shape'. I could intuitively map contours as feelings of edges, forces, and explosive reactivity.

I scrolled through images of Cytarabine's molecular structure – rings and branches of atoms. Did any of these precise, almost sterile scientific representations evoke the violent chaos I'd felt? Not directly. The diagrams were static; my experience had been anything but.

But then I found a description of its mechanism: "Cytarabine is a pyrimidine nucleoside analogue... it inhibits DNA synthesis. The drug is incorporated into DNA... leading to chain termination and apoptosis..."

Apoptosis. Programmed cell death. The clinical term felt cold, a stark contrast to the microscopic violence I'd sensed. Yet, chain termination… inhibits DNA synthesis… these phrases resonated with the feeling of a force actively unraveling or shattering the very essence of my cells. Could the "volatile crystals" and "exploding sparks" be my internal, sensory translation of this profound cellular disruption, this forced self-destruction at a molecular level?

I wasn't sure, but it was a starting point. A possible correlation between my unique perception and the scientific reality.

Next, Stonehand's liquor. I typed: Ethanol. Molecular structure. Effects on blood cells.

The ball-and-stick model of C2H5OH appeared – simpler, less overtly complex than the Cytarabine diagrams. I read about its dehydrating effects, its ability to disrupt cell membranes. Could that account for the "landscape of jagged edges, points, and peaks" I'd sensed in Aetheria? A feeling of something sharp, abrasive, pulling at the integrity of my blood cells from the outside, rather than the internal, explosive disruption of the chemo.

It wasn't a perfect match, not a one-to-one visual correlation. But the feelings... the distinct contours of those sensations I'd experienced… they were different, and the scientific descriptions of how these substances interact with cells seemed to echo those differences in a way that made my skin prickle.

I was onto something. I could sense these interactions at a profound level.

Driven now by a feverish curiosity that temporarily eclipsed my fatigue, I opened new tabs. My earlier research into biology served me well. I searched for "enzyme substrate specificity," "lock and key model," "induced fit theory." Diagrams appeared showing complex protein structures, active sites precisely shaped to bind with specific molecules. I imagined my blood cells encountering these: enzymes not as aggressive, shattering crystals like the chemo, or abrasive like ethanol, but perhaps as intricate, yielding locks, or perfectly matched puzzle pieces, the 'shape' of their interaction a smooth, almost seamless click of recognition. If I could sense the hostile shapes of poisons, could I also learn to perceive the other chemical shapes within my own body?

Could I will my blood to mimic these shapes? After all, my cells could push against parts of them.

The thought was both exhilarating and overwhelming. I delved deeper, looking up "blood composition," "plasma proteins," "hematopoiesis." I skimmed articles on hematotoxins – poisons that specifically targeted blood – and then, almost as an afterthought, "antidotes." With each search, I wasn't just absorbing information; I was trying to cross-reference it with the library of sensations I was slowly building, a lexicon of how different substances felt to my unique internal senses.

The sheer volume of information was staggering. The digital clock in the corner of the laptop screen ticked past 2:00 AM, then 3:00 AM. The dull ache in my head had returned, a persistent throb now, and the letters on the screen began to blur. The initial adrenaline of discovery was waning, replaced by a bone-deep weariness. The mental exertion of not just reading, but constantly trying to correlate this new knowledge with my internal, alien senses, was taking its toll, much like my earlier experiment with the IV.

The hunger, that familiar hollowness, also began to stir again within me, not as sharply as it did in Aetheria, but a low, insistent emptiness that gnawed at the edges of my concentration. I knew, with a chilling certainty, that for me on the other side, it would be worse. That power is stronger and more easily controlled there, and so its hunger is sure to be stronger. I had experienced it.

I needed a way to manage it, to control not just my blood, but my mind, my focus, the very urge that this power seemed to generate. The backlash from the IV experiment was another warning.

My fingers, almost of their own accord, typed a new search term: "Meditation techniques for focus and control." I'd read about it vaguely, seen it in movies – people sitting quietly, finding inner peace. It sounded a world away from my current turmoil, but perhaps that was exactly what I needed. A way to quiet the internal noise, to strengthen my mental fortitude against the drain of my powers and the insidious call of the hunger. I couldn't risk hurting anyone, not here, not in Aetheria.

I scrolled through articles on mindfulness, breathing exercises, and visualization. Much of it seemed too esoteric, too far removed from my immediate, desperate need. But one phrase caught my eye: "single-pointed concentration," using a mantra or a simple focal point.

I closed the laptop, the sudden darkness of the screen making the room feel even quieter, the beeping of the monitor more pronounced. I leaned back against the propped-up pillows, the ache in my head a dull counterpoint to the restless thrumming in my veins.

I wouldn't sleep, not yet. I had to try something.

Closing my eyes, I took a slow, deliberate breath, mimicking one of the exercises I'd just read about. I searched for a word, a simple anchor.

Control.

No, too loaded.

Focus.

Better. I tried to hold it in my mind, a single point in the swirling chaos.

Focus. Calm. Stillness.