Gerard’s eyes snap open, and the world above him is bright and white. He assumes that means, despite all odds, there is a heaven and he’s somehow earned a place in it. He’s lying on a path of gold, the light of God is shining all around him, and when he sits up, he’s going to see a pair of golden gates and a benevolent man with a white beard and a halo waving him in, and his father will be there with open arms and a sympathetic ear. Maybe it’s even taken him long enough to get here that Melanie and Martin will be there too, old and bent but getting younger with every step, and they’ll be in paradise together.
All of this passes through his mind in an addled second, only to be abruptly replaced with disorientating dizziness, a cold rush down his spine, and a sudden lurch of nausea as he sits up too fast and his head swims. The thin white sheet covering him head to toe slithers down to his waist, making him shiver with both the tickle of the cloth and the sudden extreme cold.
There’s a clatter of metal and a loud scream that makes his head throb. He turns and sees a woman in scrubs and a surgical bonnet pressed against the wall, a clipboard clutched to her chest and a tray of tools that probably aren’t sterile anymore scattered on the floor in front of her. Her eyes are wide, her face pale, and she’s trembling. There’s also…something else. Gerard isn’t sure how to describe it, except that it’s black, and pulsing, and directly over her heart.
And it’s calling to him. Which is never a good sign.
Questions swirl through his mind—where am I, what’s going on, who are you, what happened—but when he opens his mouth, all that comes out is a rattle and wheeze and a puff of cold air.
The woman scrabbles away from him, stumbles, and falls over, knocking down another tray as she does so. Concerned, Gerard tries to get up, and the world swims again. He feels…frail is the only word he can come up with. Tired. Hungry. Weak. He puts his hand down to steady himself and encounters smooth, cold metal, raised slightly at the edges.
The woman presses a hand to her chest and takes several deep, steadying breaths before pushing herself to her feet. She still looks shaky, but she directs a glare at Gerard before turning towards the door and bellowing, “Lucas!”
She begins gathering the tools. Gerard’s eyes are fixed on that black, pulsing…something. It seems to be getting darker, richer, more intense, but also more solid. Like he could reach out and touch it, and oh, God, he wants to. He doesn’t know what it means, but he wants it. It whispers seductively, promising him…what? The whispers aren’t real. Just—
A tall, gangly figure, younger than the woman, pops through the door. “You called, Doc?”
“Lucas, this sort of thing isn’t funny,” the woman scolds, gesturing at Gerard. “Get your friend out of here and set our John Doe out for the autopsy.”
“I did set out the John Doe, and I don’t—fuck!” The young man’s eyes fall on Gerard and almost pop out of his head. “What the hell?”
Gerard takes a ragged breath, then another, and forces the words out. They come out harsh, raw, little more than a whisper, crackling in the frigid air. “Where…am…I?”
The woman looks even more deeply suspicious, but says, “You’re in Christiana Hospital, son. In the morgue.”
“You were dead,” the young man adds. “Like, dead-dead. They found you in a burned-out shack and they said you weren’t—”
“Lucas,” the woman interrupts, and the young man, presumably Lucas, subsides. “Evidently there’s been some kind of mistake, young man. What’s your name?”
There has been a mistake, Gerard is sure of it, and why is he cold, how can they touch him, he—no, this isn’t right, none of this is right. He looks down at his hands. They’re pale, almost translucent, ice-blue and shaking. The eyes tattooed on each joint, in contrast, are perfectly clear and sharp, almost twinkling. They seem to be made of…whatever is on that woman’s chest. She still seems to be having trouble catching her breath, and the thing heaves and pulses with every exhale, but she’s gone from looking afraid to looking annoyed.
Gerard tries to stand, and the room swims. He nearly collapses to his knees. He’s hungry, so hungry, so drained of everything and he needs, he craves…something, but he doesn’t know what. Maybe food, maybe water, maybe sleep, but he just woke up from sleep so it can’t be that…he doesn’t get it, he doesn’t understand.
Or maybe, he thinks as the woman and Lucas come towards him and his eyes are drawn to the thing on her chest, maybe he just doesn’t want to understand.
The woman reaches out to grab him. The second she’s in range, the almost feral need in him sharpens to a deadly point and he has to, he has to touch it, to take it, to let it sustain him…
Wait.
The word darts through his mind, a single clear thought trying to cut through the black desire and need, but it’s too little too late. His hand shoots out faster than he can control it and grabs, not the woman’s chest but the blackness atop it. She stops dead and her eyes go wide, her breath suddenly stopping as she clutches at her chest.
“Doc!” Lucas springs forward to grab her, ignoring Gerard as the doctor sways on her feet. Gerard is the only one who can see the black thing flow into his hand and course through his body. Every single one of his veins suddenly stands out inky-black for a moment, then blinding white. Strength fills his limbs, the hunger and exhaustion and pain drains away, and the cold doesn’t really disappear, but he can tolerate it. He gasps at the rush as it reaches his brain—
—then draws his hand back sharply, eyes widening, as the doctor’s eyes go completely vacant and she drops into Lucas’ arms.
“Doc! Doc! Dr. Weston!” Lucas lowers her to the ground and feels desperately for a pulse. “Shit—help! I need help!”
He begins pressing her chest rapidly, fingers laced together and shoulders braced, but Gerard can tell it’s useless. To his eyes, the woman—Dr. Weston—has gone grey, like a faded old photograph. She’s dead. Her life force is gone…circulating through Gerard’s system, powering his body. Sustaining him. Fueling him.
Shit.
“Call someone!” Lucas bawls at him, jerking his head at a phone on the wall. “Tell them you’re calling from the morgue, Exam Room B, and we need transport to the ER, stat!”
Lucas hasn’t been Marked, as far as Gerard can tell—that’s never been his gift—so he doesn’t understand what just happened, or know that this is useless. And Gerard can’t, won’t, tell him, won’t bring yet another innocent bystander into this, not when he can still get out unscathed. Won’t doom another soul to this cursed knowledge if he can help it. So he goes over to the wall, lifts the receiver, and dictates Lucas’ message, hoping he sounds appropriately panicked and not utterly calm—or utterly guilty.
And when the orderlies with the gurney rattle past him and order him out of the way, he sidles into the main room, snags a pair of scrubs set aside and waiting, and runs before anyone can notice him, or stop him.
He shouldn’t be able to get far. Not without having issues. He’s been a smoker for too long and his stamina is quite frankly shot, and then there’s the fact that he’s dead, or should be anyway, and not ten minutes ago he couldn’t even stand on his own without the room spinning. But he sprints and manages to clear the hospital, sprint through a thickly-wooded area on the other side of the road, dart through a clearing blazed for power lines, and into another strip of woods before pulling up short at the sound of heavy traffic not far away. He isn’t even winded.
What the fuck is going on?
Gerard stops and looks at his hands. Even in the shadows where he stands, he can see them; while they aren’t as ghostly white as they were previously, he’s still pretty fair-skinned. The tattoos on each knuckle, in contrast, have faded from the sharp black lines of before to an almost bluish-grey. There’s no sign of what these hands have just done, but…
But he feels stronger. Healthier. Fuller. Like he’s just had a full plate of Melanie’s special-recipe shepherd’s pie and a cup of Martin’s tea. He feels like he could take on the whole world.
Realization crests over him like a wave, and Gerard drops slowly to his knees, weighed down by the pressure of the truth. In the moment of his death, his second death, the release from the half-life he was trapped in, he begged the universe for life. And the universe responded. He’s been claimed, Marked, and not by the power he’s half-served and half-feared most of his life, not by the one that has Martin in its clutches, not by the one he’d ever expect.
Terminus has always been the one he’s, well, feared the least. Always sort of greeted it as a mate, in a way. He remembers reading the Discworld books to Martin (and Melanie, who wouldn’t leave his side) the one and only time he was ever sick enough they were able to convince him to stay in bed, and how all three of them agreed they wouldn’t mind Terminus so much if he was like Terry Pratchett’s Death. Now Gerard wonders if that’s what put him in this mess to begin with.
He pushes himself to his feet and looks around him. There’s a motorway, a pretty busy one from the sound of it, and he’s tempted for a moment to run out into it. But he doesn’t know if he can die now, not like that…and besides, he didn’t want to die, did he? That’s why he’s here.
Not like this, a voice in the back of his mind whispers. You don’t want to live like this. Not at this cost.
It’s high. Probably too high. But at the same time…well. If he’s being perfectly honest, he wants to go home. He wants to see Martin and Melanie again, maybe get their advice. If nothing else, he wants to die on his own terms, in his own home, the way he wanted to the first time—with his brother and sister there to hold his hands.
Besides. He has to find out if the old bat has turned back the Unknowing yet. And whether she has or not, he has to warn them about the Watcher’s Crown.
Taking a deep breath, Gerard jogs towards the motorway, not to fling himself in front of a car, but to flag one down. He’s got to figure out where he is, and when it is…and then he can worry about getting home. Somehow.