The three friends traversed the hastily fortified government park. The crowd was an odd mix of dazed-looking civilians who’d been let into the defensive perimeter and people moving with purpose. John noticed that the people without work to do would catch sight of some feat of magic and stare at it incredulously before a work party moved past. The bystanders drifted out of the way before having their attention captured again. The end result was that people moved in eddies visible from the command tent atop a slight rise in the terrain.
John remarked as such to Case and Jen. Case and John got into a spirited discussion about who had been let into the defended area and why. Jen let them volley ideas back and forth before she told them about her rendezvous with her parents while waiting for the meeting.
Case exclaimed, “Duh! They’re emergency planners, right?”
Jen shook her head, “Emergency management consultants, technically.”
John glanced at her, “Is there an appreciable difference?”
Jen hesitated, “You know, I’m not sure. What I do know is how they’re managing the perimeter right now, which is more than you schmoes do.”
John and Case laughed and indicated for her to continue.
“Basically, if folks get caught in between the border of this area and any sort of violence, we’re letting them in. It’d be horrible for people to get caught up in a mage fight because they couldn’t make it through our perimeter.”
Case shook his head, “Won’t the number of ‘useless’ people get too high, and we’ll run out of space?”
Jen agreed, “Yeah, that’s the biggest problem. The relief effort needs to secure as much real estate as possible to handle displaced people. They need to start moving people into the empty buildings soon, which is going to be exciting.”
John was confused, “What’s the problem there? Won’t folks want to be inside?”
Jen shrugged, “Maybe. If people feel like they need to stay mobile to avoid mages, looters, or whatever else, they might get panicky if they feel tied down.”
Case glanced over at the massive trees Jen had grown to supplement the walls, “The perimeter is secure, right?”
Another shrug from Jen, “It’s secure-ish? The people out there aren’t working together and have no real reason to try and bust in here. The wall is mostly a point of friction for an essentially untrained but extremely well-armed population of teenagers and young adults. Ultimately, it’s a bunch of barricaded cars, experimental earthworks, and my trees. It’s working, but my parents and other leaders are trying to figure out what the hell we’re going to do if someone wants in here.”
When Case, John, and Jen arrived at the triage area, John surveyed the surroundings, visually and spiritually. Visually, there were a lot of what he thought of as “walking wounded,” people with slings or bandages over bleeding wounds. His nascent sense for people’s health told a much different story about the patients inside tents. John’s senses lacked sufficient resolution to see exact issues, but the folks in the tents were in a bad way. John evaluated how much mana he had left in the tank. It turned out the stunt earlier was cheaper than expected. Whatever changes his heart had gone through after being saturated with mana reduced his mana expenditure. The problem was that John could not tell which was cheaper, healing Lt. Long or the magically enhanced athletics.
He discussed the issue with Jen and Case while they looked for an orderly to direct them to John’s mom, Dr. Brisal. A National Guard corpsman pointed them towards an open-sided tent before he went back to stitching up a man’s arm.
John called out to his mom when he saw her through the crowd. She broke off from the group of first responders she was talking to and ran over to hug him.
“John! Come over here, my colleagues are anxious to see you!”
Katherine Brisal dragged her son away from his friends towards the crowd of resting medical personnel. John could have easily resisted, but figured she knew how they could help.
As he stumbled after his mom John asked, “Mom, what’s going on? Do y’all need me?”
“Do we ever! I’m hoping you can solve all of our issues! They pulled the bodycam footage of you resurrecting from that gunshot wound earlier, they want to know if your mana can help alleviate our problem.”
Jen caught up with them, but Case had been transfixed by something on one of the nearby tables.
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Jen was curious, “Mrs. Brisal, what problem?”
John twitched. Normally, his mom would firmly correct people who called her ‘missus’ but it seemed today was the exception.
Katherine’s face was grim, “Well, it’s pretty simple. We don’t have the right supplies here to keep treating a lot of these people, but the paths to the hospitals are all too dangerous. We’re hoping John’s healing will be our magic bullet.”
Everyone in earshot winced.
John chuckled, “Too soon, Mom.”
He twisted his arm free of his mom’s grip to stand tall by himself, “Hey everyone, happy to help.”
A man in scrubs stepped forward, “Kid, that video of you healing is pretty impressive. Could you do that for someone else?”
John started to nod but hesitated, “It’s possible. I just regrew a woman’s eyeballs not twenty minutes ago, I haven’t tested the variables. Whether or not the subject is a mage, whether or not they’re me, how bad the injury is.”
That tidbit sent murmurs racing through the crowd. A tired woman wearing fatigues with bloodstains that marked the edge of her surgical apron pushed through the crowd, “Can we get a demonstration or something?”
John smiled, “Sure thing. Someone mind cutting me?”
Jen formed a vine and grabbed a scalpel out of a nearby bin of supplies and tossed it to John.
“Thanks Jen. Any takers?”
The man from earlier stepped forward. His badge said he was a medical resident at one of the local university hospitals. John liked his demeanor. The doctor was tall, with blonde curly hair and a winning smile.
He shook John’s off hand, “Name’s Sam. Do you want anesthetic or something?”
John shook his head, “I don’t know if it’ll work and from the feel of the folks in the tents, we can’t waste time.”
Dr. Sam swallowed hard, “You’re right. Dr. Brisal, are you ok with this?”
Katherine waved her hand dismissively, “He can take it, and I’m just as curious as you are.”
John was taken aback by how flippant his mom was, but she was in gear. He guessed the time for touchy feely was over. Right now, they had people to save. He handed the scalpel over to Sam, who led him to a table that other personnel dragged over.
“Alright John, lay your arm down on the table,” Sam instructed as he unwrapped and sanitized the patch of folding table.
John did as he was told. Someone produced an iodine spray for his arm, which he thought was a little silly. He’d taken two bullets to center mass and had yet to go septic, this was hardly anything in comparison.
The cut was quick, clean, and professional. Sam put a 4 inch long, half inch deep incision straight down the center of John’s forearm. John’s breath hitched, but he held back the instinctive rush of mana.
“Ok everyone, crowd around. I’m going to let my mana run to the wound and heal it up,” despite the pain, John was giddy. He was excited for professionals to see this process up close.
As his heart beat, mana was sucked up into it and directed down his arteries to the arm. When it arrived, the blood that should have seeped out instead glowed and flowed evenly to cover the laceration. The wound scabbed, scarred, and evened out to normal, slightly pink skin in around thirty seconds. John was deliberately slowing down the flow of mana, he was willing to bet he could have done the same wound in maybe five seconds if pressed.
The crowd around him gasped. John’s mom had fished a notebook from somewhere and was writing as fast as humanly possible. Theories started to fly.
“…accelerated cellular replication…”
“… substituting nutrients and matter with mana, somehow?”
“removes the need for a cellular matrix or provides it…”
John held up a hand, “Just want to throw this out there, I got pretty hungry when I healed my heart this morning. I think there is some sort of nutritional requirement.”
Impromptu, he started fielding further questions from the members of the crowd without work to do elsewhere.
“Does your skin itch when it heals?”
“Uhh, not so far. But there’s always been something more painful happening, so who knows. It didn’t just now.”
“What type of mana do you have?”
“Blood, I think? At least that’s what I can control with it so far.”
“How much mana does it take?”
Finally! Someone had asked what John had been concerned about.
“Healing that cut took basically nothing. Regenerating my heart took most of my total tank. Healing other people is a lot less efficient, but something happened recently that might’ve made it cheaper.”
John was pretty certain his healing was cheaper now. The amount of mana required to heal that cut was essentially negligible. He felt surprised it had been so cheap. Now he needed to test the expenditure of enhancing his muscles. And maybe I should keep track of my mana as I use it… can’t drive a car with no gas gauge, after all. That’s what Jen would say, at least.
“What changed?” The doctor who’d pitched the question had a gleam in his eye.
“I’m not going to answer that, sorry. Dunno how important it’ll be,” John shook his head, to the disappointment of the medical community.
John’s mom came to his rescue, “That’s enough! Come on John, we have work to do.”
She leaned down and whispered, “I’ll be asking you things later. I always wanted to publish!
Dr. Brisal led her son to a medical tent with several patients inside. John could sense a lot of blood, soaked into clothes, bedding, and bandages. He would have preferred to sense more where it was supposed to be inside patients. Medical professionals shouted orders, requests, and instructions inside, trying to keep the people John felt alive.
“Jesus, Mom. It feels horrible in there.” John grimaced.
“Feels horri- oh. You can feel it with your magic. Right. That’s where we’re keeping the patients with gunshot wounds. Hard to properly treat punctures in the field, and they’re our most critical cases.”
“Really? I’d figured mages fighting would have inflicted worse casualties.”
“Well, aside from the little dustup y’all had earlier, most mage fights haven’t blown apart large portions of buildings all at once. At least around here. Glancing impacts from crossfire has hurt some people, but so far any casualties have been walking wounded or ‘unrecoverable corpse’ with little in between,” Katherine sniffed, “I’m almost glad you have powers now, helps me worry just a hair less about you and your friends.”
John hugged his mom before turning back to the tent. “Let’s get to it.”
His mom’s eyes watered, “Sure thing.”
“Love you, Mom.”
“I love you too. Follow me.”
