Page 135 of Even Angels fall

My voice is barely above a whisper, but they all hear me perfectly.

Anna moves aside, but stops me when I join them at the threshold.

“Cass, you don’t want to see him like this,” she tells me, and I can hear in her voice that it’s painful for her to tell me that, but I don’t care.

“Is he alive?”

I strain my ear for a heartbeat, focusing on everyone else than the five heartbeats right next to me at the door.

“Yes, but…” she answers at the same time I hear a very faint heartbeat on the other side.

“It’s my dad we’re talking about,” I say, and I don’t know how my voice doesn’t waver with the fear that is shaking me from the inside, but it stays strong.

“I know, but he wouldn’t want you to see him like this,” she tells me. Two of the guys that are still at the door nod in agreement with Anna.

“He’s not here to tell me that,” I say with as much strength as I can muster. “He’s there on the other side of that door, and there is nothing or no one that will prevent me from seeing him.”

She must see the resolve in my eyes because she removes her hand and at the same time the men at the door part to let me through.

I choke on my own breath.

She was right.

I’m not ready.

I almost vomit in my mouth at the sight in front of me.

My dad is laid on a table that looks right out of a surgery room in a horror movie.

His ankles and wrists are tightened to the table with metal bands and there are leather-like bands anchored to the table at hip forehead and throat level.

His body is not moving, but I can see his eyes erratically sliding under his eyelids. But that’s not what made me hold my breath when I entered.

There are tubes everywhere. Every blood vessel has a needle in it, fluids of doubtful colors are moving through them and his torso and head are opened.

The room isn’t aseptic, it’s just a normal room and yet it’s been used as if they were in a sterilized environment.

The skin of my father’s torso is opened and held by clamps on the sides and I canseehis heart slowly beating. There are pieces of what look like organs on the side table, as if my dad has been cut open just for the sake of seeing how fast his organs would grow back.

The tubes and the open chest could actually be okay. We heal fast. He might have to sleep for a while to regenerate, but he’ll survive that.

But I slowly walk to the side and look at what is going on with his head.

Like the torso, it’s opened. And the skull has been cut open so I can see my dad’s brain.

I want to vomit, but I keep looking just to be sure what is happening there. There is no tube like the rest of the body, but small cables are still “plugged” into his brain and I think I saw something glint.

I refuse to even blink just to be sure and… here it shone again.

That looks way worse than what was done to Léandre, and I just feel helpless all of a sudden.

No, I can’t think like that. My dad is alive. Whatever was done to him can be undone, I’m sure of it.

“Anna, did you call Elhyor already?”

She’s the only one with a holo here.

“He’s sending someone,” Anna answers, and I slouch to the ground.

Everything is going to be alright.

The End.