Sarah Powers is a simple person.
Each day, she goes to the hospital - where she… well, depending on who you ask, either flirts with her patients or treats them. She does her daily paper work and then she goes home.
It's a simple life. Predictable. Comfortable.
Well... that's how she wanted it.
It rarely ever turned out that way.
---
One year prior.
"Alright people! You've dealt with this before lets focus!"
A stern face shouted to a group of people. The speaker looked intensely focused, but also pissed off that this was happening at all.
She wore a sharp blonde bob that framed her face with precise, no-nonsense edges. An aquiline nose sat perfectly at the center of her features, giving structure to a face that was otherwise softened by her full cheeks. But it was her piercing blue eyes that drew the most attention. Clear, cold, and unwavering, they suited her stern demeanor perfectly.
Before the awakening she worked as a charge nurse for the largest emergency room in Boston, and now she was doing the same - except on a much different scale.
"Thomas, Avery - you're on triage!" Sarah barked, pointing as she moved. "Bethany, you're green. Muhammad, yellow. Jackson, red."
She barely paused to catch her breath. Sweat forming on her brow. "We've got hundreds of people coming in from a realm and not just any realm, a locked one. That means instead of a getting steady stream of injured during the exploration, we're getting all of them dumped on us at once."
Her thoughts flared with fury, a roiling flame of disbelief. "Really?" she seethed inwardly. "They thought no one coming out for weeks was normal? Even a five-year-old could tell this was a locked realm."
She turned, regaining her composure, as more medics gathered, her voice sharp and focused.
"Green is superficial. Keep them in chairs, keep them conscious. Yellow is near-critical, watch them closely. Thomas, Avery: yellows are one step from red, so treat them like they could crash at any second. Red is immediate surgery. Prioritize accordingly."
She paused and her tone a touch quieter.
"And black is... DOA. Dead on arrival."
A beat passed, then her command voice returned.
"Alright! Bethany, Muhammad, Jackson, grab your residents! And remember your ABCQ's: Airway, Breathing, Circulation, and Qi. I want a meridian specialist on every team. No exceptions!"
With that, a flurry of activity began, and Sarah was in the thick of it the entire time.
---
Present day.
Sarah sat on a bench on the blue line platform for State Station.
She was taking a break from the chaos of running a FOB[1] for the past 5 hours with absolutely no training.
Her blonde hair was pulled back with a bloody bandana. Her sharp blue eyes were tired and on the verge of closing. And her scrubs were covered in an impressive array of gore and bodily fluids.
As her head nodded and she was about to slip into a fitful sleep, a voice jolted her awake.
"Sarah! I heard you're in charge now?"
Juliya approached with an out of place, full smile, ash still clinging to her clothes, but her usual spark not dimmed at all.
Unbeknownst to Juliya she was displaying obvious signs of excessive blood loss.
"What? Was the ER floor getting too boring for you?"
Sarah looked up in surprise and saw one of her close friends approaching her.
Still in a state in between fight-or-flight and crashing, Sarah immediately noticed the poor state Juliya was in.
She stood up and barked orders to anyone around her, "I need a gurney and three bags of O-neg. Now!"
A flurry of activity began on the surrounding platform as other resting medics, soldiers, and people rushed to listen to their new CO[2].
Then she rushed forward, catching Juliya just as she began to stumble.
"Hey, what's the big deal?" Juliya mumbled, offering a faint smile. "I think I'm fine… for now. The Qi down here is great, I'll be fine! Who knew we just had to go underground?"
"Yea sure babe," Sarah muttered, scanning her wounds, "Whoever did this splint obviously wants you dead; you've got a trail of blood behind you."
Juliya turned her head to look. Her knees buckled.
She grabbed Sarah's shoulders for balance, blinking at the red path she'd unknowingly left behind.
As she reached out to steady herself against Sarah, she caught sight of David jogging around the corner, slightly out of breath, ash-streaked and wide-eyed.
"Juliya!" he called, voice tight with concern and slight annoyance. "You need to get to triage, now!"
He stopped short as he saw who was holding her. "Oh."
"Oh. Yeah... maybe I do need some help," Juliya admitted weakly. "I think... I'm just gonna take a nap."
She promptly fell into Sarah's arms, just as the gurney arrived.
---
A few hours later Juliya awoke to a bright light over her head, the smell of damp concrete and sewer permeating the air around her.
She looked to her side and saw, a now clean, David slumped asleep next to her in a fold out chair.
He looked like a little kid who fell asleep in the car and she couldn't help but giggle. A small smile creeping on to her face.
She looked around in a daze for a few moments.
The air was thick with moisture and her "room" was a cubicle made out of patched together sheets held up with an assortment of junk.
She felt an IV in her arm and followed the tube to a bag of fluids that was slowly rehydrating her.
Her splinted arm was now in a proper cast - well at least as proper as it could be in a warzone.
Was this a warzone? Juliya didn't really know what was going on.
She decided to wake up David to get some answers.
Before she could though a thought struck her:
"It's really quiet."
Not just the absence of explosions and chaos that had followed her all day - but a deeper, internal silence.
Her mind was peaceful for the first time in 5 years.
Then realization hit her like a bolt of lightning.
"DAVID ELIAS HATTER!"
She roared his full name with every ounce of strength she had. It came out hoarse, but the force behind it was unmistakable.
David jolted awake so violently that he fell out of the chair and hit the ground with a loud thud.
He groaned in pain, "Ow!! Why are you yelling at me?"
Blinking up at her, his pain was momentarily forgotten.
Her beautiful curls had been gathered at the crown of her head in a stunning double puff. Her skin, a rich sepia tone, seemed to glow in the shine of the florescent light, perfectly complementing the fiery gleam in her eyes. Her sharp, angular features radiated a soft yet dangerous beauty - the kind that warned you she could destroy you... and make you apologize for making her do it.
Still holding eye contact, Juliya spoke, her voice low but heavy with accusation.
"You dissolved my cultivation?"
She wasn't shouting anymore, but the sheer weight of her words made David flinch.
David attempted to stammer out an explanation. But before he could, Juliya cut him off.
"I mean we are in what I think is an active war?" Her tone now betraying her growing feeling of exasperation.
"And your bright idea was to make me the weakest person here?"
She paused for a moment thinking.
"Not just here! In the world!"
She shouted this, her eyes going slightly manic.
"Every ten-year-old on the planet could beat me in a fight, and you thought that was a good idea?"
Her breathing started accelerating. Her mind light headed and dizzy. She started looking around for something she could do.
She settled on attempting to rip the IV out of her arm.
Before Juliya could do that David rushed to stop her.
"Juliya, please," he said softly. "Just listen to me before you do anything."
David's hand was lightly holding Juliya's own, but the strength he exhibited was far beyond hers.
Now that she was mortal again, she realized: she truly was at the bottom of the totem pole.
Calmly he spoke, almost inaudible, "Please just let me explain."
---
David felt terrible.
When Juliya collapsed, Sarah immediately got her hooked up to an IV and started the blood transfusion.
For a while she seemed like she would be fine, and it would just take some time for her to wake up. That sense of peace was quickly interrupted by one of the medics shouting:
"She's crashing!"
Sarah and David immediately rushed over trying to diagnose whatever they could. Sarah's pre-awakening medical knowledge came in handy 90% of the time, but it was that 10% - Qi related injuries - that she really had a hard time with.
While Sarah was checking Juliya's mortal vitals and trying to figure out why she was crashing, David was attempting to help in his own way.
Calmly circulating his Qi, faster now than ever before, he began to project his Qi sense.
He focused his mind.
"Smaller!"
"I need the vision to be smaller. I can't miss a thing!"
The vision cone began to rapidly shrink - acting as a microscope. He could feel his upper dantian in his forehead, as it strained to accommodate this request.
Blood began to come out of his tear ducts as he peered into Juliya's meridians.
He began to methodically check every single major meridian in her body.
He only recently learned this information from his system reward, but there are 12 Major Meridians.
The meridians of the arms are the Lung, Heart, Pericardium, Large Intestine, Small Intestine, and Triple Burner.
The meridians of the legs are the Spleen, Kidney, Liver, Stomach, Bladder, and Gall Bladder.
While he was inspecting her meridians, he split his focus for a moment to ask the system a question.
"System! What can I do?"
A system message appeared in the air in front of him.
System Message: "You have all the information necessary to save this cultivator.
No more quests or rewards will be given."
The sharp response immediately shot down any hopes David had for quick solution.
"Dammit!"
With a mental curse he pulled his focus back to Juliya. Just in time to notice a strange sight in the meridians connecting to her Kidney and Liver.
Normally, when he looked at Qi it had a bright blue quality to it that reminded him of the Blue Raspberry flavor of a slushie. However, when looking at these meridians he could see a roiling black Qi flowing in reverse.
The blue and black clashing against each other violently - like two oceans with opposing currents.
He didn't know entirely what was happening, but he knew this was the cause.
"Sarah!" He broke his focus and looked at Sarah, who was in the middle of putting something in Juliya's IV bag.
"I know what's happening! The Qi is being rejected by her kidney and liver. It's flowing in reverse and causing the meridians to collapse."
Sarah's shoulders sunk and her previously focused face went blank.
She knew what would happen next.
Qi was still a mystery, but one thing they did know was that Qi reversal was completely fatal.
Sarah had to accept this knowledge as fact and holding out hope was a fools errand.
However, David still looked like he had that hope. That same hope that Sarah herself had long abandoned.
"David, there's nothing we can do."
She said it somberly trying to break the news that she was sure he already knew.
With a stern voice David turned and spoke to everyone in the make shift cubical, "Clear the room!"
With a moment of confusion passing between the medics, they looked to Sarah.
Sarah sighed and nodded to the exit. "You heard him."
With that, they all began to file out and Sarah began to make her way to the exit as well.
David stopped her, grabbing her shoulder, "You stay."
After everyone left he got closer to her and whispered, "I can fix this, but it is going to take me several hours to do."
Sarah's eyes went wide at the information.
"David, we've tried everything there's nothing you -"
She was cut off by David squeezing his hand on her shoulder.
"I can do it, but I need you to trust me." He looked back at Juliya. "Don't let anyone in here. Not until I come out."
Sarah saw the burning motivation in his eyes and sighed, "Alright. I won't let anyone in."
With that done, David turned to Juliya and recalled everything he had to do.
The list of things he had to do was long.
First he had to stop the flow of Qi to her Liver and Kidney. This in itself was deadly, but it was required to ensure that the reversal ended.
If Qi reversal killed in minutes, then the Qi being blocked from her organs would kill her in weeks - unless he successfully reverted all her meridians to their dormant state.
Next he had to go to each major meridian and strip off all of the minor branching meridians - like pruning a tree.
For each branch he had to cut off the flow of Qi by putting his own Qi at the split like a wine cork. He then cut off the branch by spinning a new disk of his Qi, right after the cork, rapidly in place like a circular saw. Severing the branch - pruning the limb.
After doing that hundreds of time per Major Meridian he then had to restore the Major Meridians.
This was the trickiest process. Sure the first half was laborious, but this one was straight up hard.
He had to slowly absorb her Qi while, simultaneously and strategically, placing his own Qi on the outside anywhere there was a stretch mark.
This enabled the meridian to collapse itself back to it's virgin state.
However, this was easier said than done.
While trimming the branches he could do everything from inside of each meridian - now he had to keep hundreds of Qi corks active while trying to find the outside of a meridian.
That is not as easy.
David had learned from the system that meridians were somewhat ephemeral.
They exist but they don't - not physically at least.
To find the outside of a meridian he had to physically manifest Qi.
He knew instinctively that at the Qi Sensing realm this should be impossible. It felt like trying to catch steam rising from a boiling pot of water.
He had no idea how to do this and, as far as he knew, no one else did either. But the system gave him the way.
He began to focus on his own meridians.
The pristine quality of them were in sharp contrast to Juliya's meridians.
He quietly muttered to himself, "It's okay baby I got you"
He held his breath, began rapidly cycling the Qi in his middle dantian, and then he forcefully ruptured it.
[1] Forward Operating Base - A military term used to denote a base of operations that is not permanent, but acts as a close foot hold to the action
[2] Commanding Officer