SERA

The wound was worse than they'd described.

It ran diagonally across his chest, from his left shoulder to the bottom of his right ribs, a ragged slash that was swollen and hot and leaking a dark fluid that smelled like burning copper. The skin around it was gray, the silver spreading outward in a spiderweb pattern that was creeping toward his heart with a slow, visible malice.

He was lying on the narrow cot, shirtless, his eyes closed, his face a color I'd never seen on a living person. ...