Chapter 179: The Signal Remains

The Bureau transport carried Luke and Lauren away from North Basin shortly afterward.

Luke watched the Heartroot through the window until its highest silver branches disappeared behind the surrounding buildings. Only then did he settle back into his seat.

Lauren sat beside him with one hand resting lightly over his left.

Neither spoke much during the ride.

For once, there was nothing urgent to discuss. No tactical map needed their attention. No Bureau team was waiting for Lauren to identify another relay knot, and nobody was asking Luke whether the foreign residue inside his wrist had started reacting again.

The silence felt unfamiliar.

Luke wasn’t sure whether he liked it yet.

The supervised-dive medical facility eventually appeared ahead of them. He recognized the building immediately.

Luke had woken there after returning from Lethariel, flat on his back beneath the raised cover of a dive capsule while Dr. Shaw reminded him that regaining consciousness did not mean his nervous system was ready to cooperate.

At the time, his smallest finger had barely managed a twitch.

Now he could bend it.

That counted as progress, even if it was nowhere near enough.

Dr. Shaw was waiting inside an examination room when the transport team wheeled Luke through the door.

"Onto the bed."

Luke looked down at the chair. "I’m already sitting."

"The examination bed, Luke."

"Oh."

Lauren laughed softly.

Two nurses helped Luke transfer without putting unnecessary strain through his right arm. He disliked needing assistance for something so basic, but he let them do their jobs instead of proving a point nobody had asked him to prove.

Shaw noticed.

His eyebrows rose slightly.

Luke caught the expression. "Don’t."

"I didn’t say anything."

"Your face did."

Lauren covered her mouth, but not before he saw her smile.

Shaw looked between them. "I see you’ve started borrowing her lines."

"I’m learning."

"Lie back."

Luke obeyed.

Shaw removed the outer monitoring leads and passed a scanner slowly over Luke’s wrist and forearm.

A pale image appeared above the device. Luke’s natural awakened pathways glowed blue-white beneath the skin, while the foreign signal remained threaded among them as a narrow dark trace.

It wasn’t moving.

Lauren stepped closer. "Is it unchanged?"

"The reactive behavior stopped after the Route Nine passage collapsed, and it hasn’t resumed."

Luke watched the dark line on the scan. "But it’s still there."

"Yes."

"Can you remove it now that it isn’t reacting?"

"No."

Luke turned his head toward him.

Shaw lowered the scanner slightly. "I could cut into your wrist and remove tissue until our equipment stopped detecting the signal. That wouldn’t prove I’d removed whatever is embedded in your awakened pathways."

"Right."

"Most of your hand also remains neurologically impaired. I have no intention of creating more damage simply because an empty scan would make everyone feel better."

Luke glanced at Lauren. "I wasn’t going to ask him to cut my arm open."

Shaw returned to the scanner. "I’ve learned not to wait until you ask."

That was annoyingly fair.

Lauren studied the image for a few more seconds.

"What about Lifeblade? It separated the corruption from Mason."

Luke had already considered the same possibility.

Shaw’s expression told him the doctor had expected it.

"No."

Luke sighed. "You could at least pretend to think about it."

"I already did."

Shaw pointed toward the scan.

"Mason was deteriorating quickly enough to justify the risk. Lauren identified the healthy pathways, several medics were standing beside you, and Lifeblade was used because the alternative was watching him continue to decline."

His finger moved toward Luke’s wrist.

"You would be experimenting on your own mana channels while the hand connected to them still doesn’t work properly. Those situations are not comparable."

"When you explain it that way, it sounds pretty bad."

"That’s because it is."

Lauren squeezed Luke’s left hand. "I agree with him."

Luke looked at her. "You always agree with the doctors when they tell me not to use my abilities."

"They keep having excellent reasons."

Shaw continued the examination.

"Reinforce remains prohibited through the affected arm. No Arcane Thrust, and no Lifeblade unless another person’s life is in immediate danger and there is no safer option."

Luke waited a moment.

"What about Quickstep?"

"No."

"It doesn’t use my hand."

"It uses your entire nervous system."

Luke thought about the sudden acceleration involved and gave up on that argument.

"Right."

Shaw lowered the scanner.

"No Powerforge until your next neurological review. After that, any return requires my clearance and a supervised dive."

Luke frowned. "So I don’t have to wait until the residue disappears?"

"I didn’t say you did."

Luke looked at him more carefully.

"We have no idea how long it will remain," Shaw continued. "Banning you indefinitely because of something we don’t fully understand would accomplish very little. I need another neurological comparison before I decide whether reconnecting is an acceptable risk."

That sounded considerably better.

Luke nodded. "Okay."

Shaw stared at him for a moment.

"What?"

"I was waiting for you to argue."

"Not today."

Shaw actually paused.

Lauren smiled. "He’s improving."

"Let’s not become reckless with optimism."

Luke looked between them. "You’re both terrible."

The examination continued for several minutes. Shaw checked sensation along Luke’s palm, wrist, and forearm before testing each finger separately.

The smallest responded.

The second moved less.

The others still refused to close properly.

No miraculous improvement had occurred after Route Nine, but the condition hadn’t worsened either.

Shaw seemed far happier about that than Luke.

"Stable."

Luke looked at his hand. "Stable sounds suspiciously close to stuck."

"It means you’re not deteriorating."

That quieted him.

He still hated how little control he had over the hand, but the foreign signal had stopped reacting and the numbness wasn’t spreading.

Those things mattered.

As Shaw began removing his gloves, Luke remembered the others.

"What about Kellan, Dorian, and Iris?"

Shaw glanced at him. "You’re asking before trying to escape the room. Another improvement."

"Shaw."

"They’re recovering."

Luke waited for more.

Shaw sighed and looked at the tablet. "Kellan still isn’t cleared to put full weight on the injured leg. Dorian’s grip has improved, but he’s nowhere near normal training. Iris remains under observation because of the involuntary Lifeline manifestations."

"Is she okay?"

"Stable. Tired, annoyed, and asking when she can leave."

Luke relaxed.

"That sounds like Iris."

"It does."

He hadn’t realized how much he needed to hear that until the tension left his shoulders.

Nobody had emerged from Lethariel untouched. Even after the Hunt moved on, the people who had fought there were still dealing with what the ruined world had done to them.

At least they were alive.

Luke looked down at the dark trace on the scan once more.

His own problem was still there too.

For now, that was all anyone could say about it.