Chapter 16: Surgery and Secrets
The surgery was a success by any reasonable measure—Carl's vitals were stable, the bullet was out, and the infection that would have killed him had been prevented by Jake's subtle alchemical intervention. But as Jake sat in the farmhouse kitchen watching Hershel suture the final layer of tissue, exhaustion crashed over him like a tide of molten lead.
"Beautiful work," Hershel murmured, his hands steady despite his age. "Though I have to say, your assistance was... unconventional."
Jake had been careful during the operation, using his alchemy only when Hershel's attention was focused elsewhere. But the old veterinarian was observant, and some of Jake's interventions had been impossible to hide completely.
"Medical school teaches you to improvise," Jake said, which was true enough. "Sometimes you have to work with what you've got."
"Indeed." Hershel's eyes were thoughtful as he cleaned his hands. "Though I've never seen sterilization techniques quite like yours. That rust removal from the forceps—how did you manage that without proper chemicals?"
Jake's vision blurred slightly, the aftereffects of power drain making it hard to focus. "Trade secret."
It was a weak deflection, but Hershel seemed to accept it. The older man had seen enough desperate improvisation during his years of practice to recognize when someone was operating beyond their normal capabilities.
"Carl will need to rest for several days," Hershel continued. "But he should make a full recovery. You may have saved his life with your quick thinking."
Jake nodded, not trusting his voice. The praise felt hollow when he knew how much it had cost him. His hands were shaking now, fine tremors that spoke of nervous system overload. Using alchemy for medical purposes was always draining, but doing it while exhausted had pushed him dangerously close to his limits.
He excused himself and stepped onto the farmhouse porch, hoping the evening air might clear his head. Instead, the world tilted sideways and he found himself sitting hard on the steps, his vision fracturing into kaleidoscope fragments.
"Jake?" Maggie's voice cut through the haze. "Are you okay?"
Before he could answer, his legs gave out completely. Strong hands caught him before he could fall, guiding him to a cushioned chair on the porch.
"You pushed yourself too hard for him," Maggie said, her voice mixing concern with something that might have been admiration.
"He's a kid," Jake managed, accepting the glass of sweet tea she pressed into his hands. "Worth it."
Maggie settled into the chair beside him, close enough that he could see the worry creases around her green eyes. "You really care about these people. Your group."
"They're family," Jake said simply. "Not by blood, but... yeah. Family."
The word seemed to resonate with her. Maggie nodded slowly, understanding passing between them. In this new world, families were built by choice rather than genetics, forged in shared danger and mutual survival.
"I can understand that," she said quietly. "We've taken in our share of strays over the years. People who needed a place to belong."
They talked as the sun set, their conversation meandering through safe topics—life on the farm, memories of the world before, hopes for whatever came next. Jake found himself relaxing for the first time in days, drawn to Maggie's warmth and easy laugh.
She was exactly as he remembered from the show but somehow more real, more three-dimensional. Television couldn't capture the way she gestured when she was excited, or the way her eyes lit up when she talked about her father, or the unconscious grace with which she moved.
Jake tried not to stare, but he failed completely. And when Maggie caught him looking, she smiled instead of turning away.
"This is real. Not a TV show, not a fantasy, but an actual connection with an actual person. Whatever happens between us, it's going to be genuine, not scripted."
The thought was both terrifying and exhilarating. Jake had spent so much time thinking about these people as characters in a story that he'd almost forgotten they were individuals with their own agency, their own desires, their own capacity for choice.
"Thank you," Maggie said as the evening wound down. "For saving Carl. For helping my father. For..." She gestured vaguely, as if trying to encompass something larger than words could contain.
"For being someone worth talking to?" Jake suggested.
Her smile was radiant. "Yeah. That."
When Jake finally felt steady enough to walk, he made his way to the guest bedroom Hershel had offered him. But sleep wouldn't come. His mind was too active, too focused on the secret that lurked forty feet from the farmhouse.
At midnight, he slipped out of bed and transmuted a makeshift crutch from a broken chair leg—his ankle was still tender from his earlier collapse. The farm was quiet except for the usual night sounds of insects and distant cattle.
The barn loomed against the starlit sky, its weathered wood silvered by moonlight. Jake approached slowly, his death sense growing more precise with each step.
Fourteen voids. He counted them carefully, fixing the number in his memory.
The next night, he returned to find fifteen.
The night after that, sixteen.
Someone was adding walkers to Hershel's collection on a regular basis. Jake knew from the show that the old man believed they were sick people who could be cured, that keeping them contained was an act of mercy rather than madness. The revelation of this delusion would eventually tear the group apart.
And somewhere among those growing numbers, Sophia Peletier would eventually join the count.
Jake tried to speak the truth, even alone in the darkness where no one could hear. "Sophia is in the barn."
The words tangled in his throat, becoming meaningless syllables. He tried again, forcing each word separately: "Sophia... is... in..."
His hand cramped so violently that he dropped his improvised crutch. The speech block had evolved, preventing him from voicing the truth even when no one was listening. Jake doubled over and vomited into the grass, his body rejecting the psychic strain of fighting his cosmic censorship.
"I know where she is. I know exactly where she is, and I can't tell anyone. Carol is out there right now, searching the woods for her daughter, and I'm standing twenty feet from Sophia's location with my mouth sealed shut."
The frustration was maddening, a special kind of torture designed specifically for someone with his knowledge and limitations. Jake was Cassandra, cursed to know the truth but powerless to make anyone believe it.
He limped back to the farmhouse, leaving the barn and its terrible secret behind. Tomorrow would bring another day of watching Carol's hope slowly die, another day of pretending he didn't know the answer to her prayers.
The worst part was that even when the truth finally came out, it wouldn't be a rescue. It would be too late for that. By the time they opened the barn, Sophia would be beyond saving, another casualty of a world that devoured innocence without mercy.
Jake lay in his borrowed bed and stared at the ceiling, counting the ways his powers had failed him. He could command the dead but couldn't locate the living. He could transmute matter but couldn't transmute words. He could heal bodies but couldn't heal hearts.
What good were godlike abilities if they came with human limitations?
Outside his window, the barn stood silent in the darkness, keeping its secrets for another day.
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