hold me closer

62

"There has to be another way," said Lydia.

"Yeah... If we had more time, I'm sure we could figure something out, but we don't," Malia said. "Someone is gonna come through that door any second now and bust us. Our last shot at figuring out how to beat the Anuk-ite might be laying on that table so we need to make a decision right now."

"You don't mean 'decide', you mean 'do it,'" Lydia corrected and brushed past her.

"Yeah, I think it's the right decision," Malia told us. "If it were Parrish, he'd want us to do it. He would sacrifice himself for everyone in Beacon Hills."

"But Parrish would be able to make the decision himself!" Lydia argued. "We don't know what Halwyn would do."

"We kind of do," Malia reminded. "He built Eichen. He froze himself for years so that he could be ready to fight the Anuk-ite. The first thing he does when he's unfrozen is start hunting the thing. If that's the only thing he's ever cared about... then he'd want us to do this."

Lydia walked back to us. She gave us a cautious look, then pushed switches, increasing the magnetism.

"Something's wrong," Malia said after a moment.

"What is it?" I asked.

"His heartbeat," she said, focusing on it. "It's too fast, and erratic."

Suddenly, Halwyn began seizing, his muscles spasming. The machine made an annoying beeping sound - a sign for something that wasn't supposed to be happening.

"Turn it off! Turn it off!" I told Lydia urgently. "Like now!"

"Hurry!" Malia told her.

Lydia managed to turn the MRI machine off, but it took a few more seconds to fully power down. Before the lights turned off, I saw that the bullet was yanked out of Halwyn's brain.

The generators soon came on, powering electricity to the room. We ran out of the observation room, staring open-mouthed at Halwyn.

"Where is it?" Halwyn growled.

He tried to lunge towards us but stumbled on his feet. He fell into Malia and me and we gently had him sit, leaning against the wall.

He was panting heavily and asked, "What's happening?"

"The Anuk-ite is destroying our city, that's what's happening," Malia explained. "And we need you to tell us how to kill it."

Halwyn was still exhausted from coming back to life. Then we saw the silver blood dripping from his nose. Lydia noticed his state, too, helping me try to interrupt Malia.

"Does it have any weaknesses? Is there a weapon that we can use?"

"Malia," I called her.

Malia finally stopped talking and looked at us. We gestured to his nose and she looked at it.

Halwyn felt it and brought his hand up to touch it. Then, he looked down at it with concern. "What did you do to me?"

"I'm sorry," Lydia said quickly. "It was the only way to revive you."

Halwyn chuckled darkly at her. "Revive me so I can die?"

"No, so you could help us," Malia said, impatient. "Tell us how to stop it."

Halwyn then began to bleed profusely from his nose and mouth, the silver substance seeping through his lips.

"You can't stop it," he said weakly. "You can't kill it."

"But you did- "

"I trapped it," he corrected.

"Well, how do we do that?" I asked him.