Chapter 17: The Blood of Another Time

Emergency Room, 10:17 PM.

The pager blared in the silence, a red alert, urgent, violent. "Seriously injured, brought in by an unknown masked individual he disappeared after saying take care of him; he belongs to you.'"

Dana pulled on her gloves she entered the room, and the smell hit her immediately: blood, but not normal blood. It reeked of iron, electricity, and something more.

"Status report?"

"Arterial cut, multiple wounds, energy weapon burns... he's alive, but barely."

She approached the man was tall, with scars on his arms and shifting tattoos, as if his body contained a living electronic circuit. In his eyes, a flicker of fractured green light a nurse whispered, "We should call the police."

"Already done," Dana said. "But as long as he's here, he's a patient, not a target."

She began to clean his wounds the man moaned, opened an eye, and murmured, "This world is still whole?"

Dana looked up "You talk as if you came from another."

"Almost."

She continued working, not another word two police officers arrived. "We received an alert from an unidentified source he's reportedly a highly classified fugitive, not in our database."

"And you want to take him away when he's half-drained of blood?" Dana asked, sharply.

"We're doing our job."

"And I'm doing mine."

The officers hesitated, but Dana had already activated a high-level medical authority code hospital sacred, total patient protection after the operation, Dana remained alone with him.

"Do you want to tell me where you're from?"

He hesitated, coughed a little his voice was hoarse "You wouldn't understand."

"Try me."

"Fracture-7 prison, a rift in time, sealed by gods from a world where time is a virus but I fled. I saw the future die i saw what you will become."

"And you think I'm just going to let you go, just like that?"

"I expected better, but you're stronger than I imagined."

He stared at the ceiling, his eyes dull. "Something is approaching, something that devours the multiverse, and it always begins with a world that refuses to believe."

Dana stared at him, glacial. "Then rest, and prove it."

As she left, Dana met the director. "Who is that man?"

"A patient. nothing more."

End of Chapter 17: The Blood of Another Time