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I’m headed out. You should go home as well.”
    “Good idea.” I heaved myself to my feet.
    We plodded down the sterile hall. “So, aside from getting under Rancin’s skin, how’d your debrief go?”
    “As expected.” I meant to sound nonchalant, but it came out aggravated.
    “That bad, huh?”
    “Yeah. I’ve certainly had better evenings. Even at HQ.” I ran a hand over my weary face. “I wonder what’ll happen to us.”
    Mick shrugged. “I spoke with one of my buddies who works for Elder Watkins. Since Arbent is the leader of the team, he’s taking the brunt of all this. The Council suspended him for one month without pay, plus he will receive official reprimand from the Elders. The rest of us will likely get benched until further notice.”
    “More like until they need another rift closed.”
    “That sounds about right.”
    The pressure in my head thumped against the side of my skull. “Man, what a mess.”
    “Could have been worse. At least we didn’t lose anyone.”
    I was hesitant to ask the question lingering on my lips, but forced the words out. “Any word on Alistair?”
    Mick’s face was suddenly lined with exhaustion and worry. “Nothing good. That venom is nasty stuff and no one knows how to counter it. R&D swears they can create an antidote based on the samples we recovered, but there’s no telling if they’ll be successful in time. The Healers have him in an induced coma to slow the spread of the venom in his system.”
    I felt sick. The kid wasn’t ready for the field, but he’d stepped up when it mattered most. And he’d been grievously wounded in the process. The scar on my neck tingled as if to remind me how fragile and unfair life can be sometimes.
    “What’s your opinion?” I asked. “Think he’ll make it?”
    “No idea. The fact that he’s still alive is good, but he has a rough road ahead if he’s going to recover.”
    The poor kid.
    “Who the hell puts a greenhorn on a rift team like that? Especially one who was clearly not ready?”
    Mick shrugged. “Daddy has connections. Uh, no offense,” he added.
    “None taken,” I replied, covering my discomfort with a forced smile. “Speaking of nepotism, how is Old Man Monroe taking all this?”
    “Hard. He was at the family infirmary the moment we arrived with Alistair and refused to leave his bedside. He was still there when the Council recalled me for my inquiry. As much as I dislike the conceited jerk, my heart bleeds for the guy.”
    I only knew the Councilman tangentially through my dealings with the rift teams, but he seemed like the embodiment of a stereotypical politician. Stiff and scheming, he was always around when something important was going down. Rumor had it he was a hard-ass, both with the policies he endorsed and the ones he opposed. But bureaucrat or not, he was still a father. I couldn’t begin to fathom what he was going through with his child on Death’s doorstep.
    Hopefully, I never would.
    We walked through the security point near the entrance of HQ, pausing to recover our gear from the guards. A lot of Council members, and from what I heard much of the Skilled community, questioned the use of Normals for the building security, but I respected the politics of the move. The two societies were only a couple decades into the peace accord, one that was signed after generations of us living in secrecy. The magically gifted Skilled had spent seven-hundred some-odd years in hiding after our massive civil war killed tens of thousands of innocent Normal bystanders. Most of them died at the hands of a version of the Black Death that had mutated when exposed to the unrestrained magic we used in the war.
    Or, at least, that’s what the history books taught us.
    Whatever the actual motivation, the Normals came after us with a vengeance under the guise of various forms of persecution. The Inquisition, the Crusades, the Salem Witch Trials and so on. The names always changed, but the mission was always the