My recollection of the events is more lucid than I would have liked. Perhaps it was the emperor granting Emmaline a constant reminder that I still lived, and though the pain was almost unbearable on my end, I would not have had it any other way. 

My world was a flickering light. Sometimes I would be awake for many moments, and others I was lost in a swirl of blackness I could [i]feel[/i] bearing down on me, but like a man in deep water I was unable to break free to the surface. I recall the aircar, where Selencia tended my wound and Emmaline watched me with wide eyes, fraught with worry. There was another man in there I did not recognize, whom later I was told was one of the physicians in the emergency vehicles out front. I recall my hand brushing paving as I was carried, and I remember the surgery room just before I was put under by Selencia's doing. When next I woke, my throat felt drier than Tallarn and my eyes were as heavy as an astartes ceramite. And yet I forced them open, and though I was tied down to a bed, curved to allow my upper body to rest above a flat surface, I managed to shrug my shoulders and tug the restraints. 

"Ma'am!" A medical assistant cried, my sudden awareness shocking her from her bored stupor and sending her scrambling out of her seat. I was in a beige room with no windows, a door to the left with a 'vacant' sign indicating a restroom and two doors on the right, one likely leading into the hall and the other for some unknown purpose. Perhaps a closet. An IV was in my arm and various equipment reading my vitals were arrayed to my left and right. Food was placed along a small standing desk next to my bed, the room cluttered with chairs and potted plants and a tele-screen hanging at the corner. 

"What..." I started, but it came out as a croak. I summoned my breath. "What day is it? How many days have I been out?" 

"Ma'am! He's awake!" The assistant cried into the hallway. 

I should not have done this, but I did not get shot in this god-forsaken hive to be ignored by the staff, and my worry for my team and Emmaline burned a fire in my chest. "How long have I been out?" I asked, using my will. The woman almost leaped from the mental shock, stricken by the sudden assault. 

"It's the same day," She answered simply. "The early hours of the morning." 

"Where is my team?" 

"Doctor Selencia and the mechanicus thing are approaching down the hall. Two large men accompany them. I don't know where the blonde and the brunette are, or the other two large brutes." She responded obediently, and her slack jawed expression drew me out of my single-minded determination to squeeze information and I felt a small modicum of shame for overpowering her like this. I let her go as gently as I could, but she stumbled onto the floor all the same. Selencia stood in the doorway, shock intermingled with worry and anger. 

"Hadrian Drakos you absolute idiot!" She exclaimed, wiping her untidied dark hair out of her face and kneeling down to help the woman. She had evidently fainted, and that made two of us nearly. My energy was almost spent already. "Throne, what did you do to her?" 

"Kronus always said he had a way with women," Lazarus pipped in, his voice monotone and yet I could sense an unwavering sense of humor in him.

"Where is Emmaline?" I asked hoarsely. "What's happened?" 

Selencia ignored my question to let me stew as she tended to her newest patient. I supposed if Emmaline was in dire trouble, she would not be playing games with me. Lazarus stepped passed them and bore down on me with a look I had not seen on him for quite some time. 

"Rest boy," He said, and at the moment I did not question the 'boy,' though it had been at least a decade since he referred to me as such. All it did was made me tired. 

"Just answer the question." I said to him. 

"Emmaline and Clara are interrogating Arbites Ortega in a room three halls away. Two of Urien's men are outside standing watch." He informed me. 

"Ortega?" I asked, swallowing to parch my throat. "Where are we?" 

"In the administratum embassy just above the lower hive. Better medical equipment here, and many holding rooms for those less cooperate. Now rest. I'll wake you as soon as I know something. It's not often you get a second chance." 

"What?" I asked as my world grew dim.

Lazarus's words were the last I heard before I was gone from the waking world: "Oh, yes. For a few moments there, you were dead."