"Ha... haha... oh God... oh God..."
Merle stared at Lucien like he was seeing something impossible. His eyes were wet and he was laughing. The sound was high and broken.
"I knew it," he gasped, the words tumbling out fast and desperate. "I knew... I knew you wouldn't leave me. God wouldn't... couldn't..."
His free hand shot out and grabbed Lucien's arm.
"Kid. Kid, listen to me. You gotta... there's gotta be tools around here somewhere. An axe. Bolt cutters. Anythin' that can break these goddamn cuffs—"
"Calm down," Lucien said. "Just breathe. I need you to breathe."
"I can't, there's no time—"
"There's time." Lucien looked at the handcuffs binding Merle's wrist to the pipe. Standard police issue, hardened steel. You couldn't break them with brute force, not without the right equipment. "But you need to let go of me so I can find something to help."
Merle's grip tightened. "You ain't leavin'. If you leave—"
"I'm not leaving." Lucien met his eyes, held his gaze until some of the panic bled out of Merle's expression. "The route I came up is clear. I saw a fire axe in one of the emergency cabinets downstairs. I'm just going to get it."
He paused, glancing toward the chained door where the walkers were still pounding.
"But if you keep shouting like this..." He let the sentence hang. "Blood draws them. Sound draws them. And if more of them find their way up here, neither of us is getting out."
Merle's hand loosened and he took a shaky breath.
"Okay. Okay. Just come back. You hear me? You come back."
"I will."
Lucien was turning to go when movement in his peripheral vision made him freeze.
It was the door. The one T-Dog had chained shut. Something was wrong with it.
The metal was warped and bent out of shape from constant impacts. Through the gap, a space that should have been too small for anything to fit through, a hand was reaching.
Not just reaching. It was pulling.
Lucien watched, his stomach dropping, as the hand found grip on the doorframe. Rotting fingers dug into the metal, one of them missing entirely. Then the walker began forcing itself through the gap.
Its head came first. One side of the skull was crushed by repeated impacts, leaving brain matter visible through fractured bone. Its jaw hung loose and broken, and its teeth clicked together. Its eyes were clouded, yet they followed Merle.
Then came the shoulders. They were too wide for the gap, but the walker did not care. It pushed forward, bones cracking and flesh tearing, forcing itself through. Half its torso was inside now. And it was still coming.
Merle saw it at the same time Lucien did.
The color drained from his face.
"Oh Jesus. Oh fuck. Kid, move!" His voice rose to a shout. "Get the axe! Get the fuckin' axe right now!"
He was pulling at the handcuffs, twisting his wrist even though the movement made blood well up fresh from his wound.
"Wait," he gasped, looking at Lucien with wild eyes. "Give me your knife. The one on your belt. I can..."
But Lucien wasn't moving toward him. He was moving toward the walker.
His hand went to his belt, fingers closing around the spike holstered there. The weapon came free.
"What the hell are you doin'?! That's a toy! That thing'll tear you apart!"
Lucien didn't answer. He was counting steps. The walker was pulling itself further through the door.
He raised the spike. His magic was low, but he had enough for this.
"Goddammit, kid, get away from..."
Lucien threw.
The spike left his hand in a blur. It tore through the walker's skull with a thunk, like an axe biting into wood.
The walker stopped moving at once. Its arms went slack, the hunger in its eyes fading as if a light had been snuffed out. It sagged against the doorframe, truly dead now, blocking the gap it had fought so hard to force its way through.
He flicked his wrist.
The cord attached to the spike went taut. He pulled, and the weapon tore free from bone and brain. It flew back to his hand, trailing droplets of black blood.
Behind him, he could hear Merle breathing.
Another walker was already pushing at the first corpse, trying to use it as leverage to get through. Lucien didn't give it the chance. Another throw, another perfect hit, and that one dropped too.
He cleared the doorway. Four walkers total. By the time he was done, his arm ached and his magic felt scraped raw, but the threat was dealt with.
He wiped the spike clean on his jeans and returned it to its holster. Only then did he turn back to Merle.
The man was staring at him.
"How the fuck did you..."
"Rest," Lucien said simply. "I'll be back in a minute with the axe."
He disappeared through the fire door before Merle could respond.
---
The stairwell was dark and quiet. Lucien took the steps carefully, one hand trailing along the wall for balance. His legs shook slightly as the adrenaline crash hit, now that the danger had passed.
Four flights down, he found the fire axe exactly where he remembered it, mounted in its glass case next to a faded emergency procedure poster. He broke the glass with his elbow and pulled the axe free.
It was heavier than it looked.
He hefted it and started back up.
By the time he made it to the roof, his arms were burning and his breath was coming in gasps. The door seemed impossibly heavy when he pushed it.
Merle was slumped against the pipe he was cuffed to. For a second, Lucien thought he was dead. Then he saw the shallow rise and fall of his chest. He was passed out. Lucien could not tell whether it was from blood loss, exhaustion, or the sheer emotional whiplash of the last few minutes.
He approached, the axe heavy in his hands, and looked down at the handcuffs securing Merle's wrist.
The problem was the wrist. The flesh was mangled from his earlier sawing.
One wrong swing with the axe and Lucien would do more damage than the cuffs ever could. He set the axe down and pulled out his wand instead.
First things first: make sure Merle didn't wake up at the wrong moment and see something he shouldn't. He pulled off his jacket and draped it carefully over Merle's face.
The man didn't stir.
Lucien took a breath and pointed his wand at the handcuffs.
"Alohomora."
Nothing happened.
The metal did not so much as twitch. The spell simply fizzled, like trying to light a match in a windstorm.
Lucien's cheeks burned. Of course the Unlocking Charm would not work for someone who had taught himself magic from books. Some spells required proper instruction, technique, and a level of training he simply did not have.
He cleared his throat and tried again, going for a different approach.
Transfiguration. That he could do. It required more power than the Unlocking Charm would have, but his reserves could handle it. Probably.
"Bigger," he whispered, focusing his will through the wand. "Wider."
The magic flowed sluggishly, resisting him, but it flowed. The handcuffs began to change. Metal that should've been rigid started to warp, expanding outward like clay being pulled by invisible hands.
He gritted his teeth. The drain on his magic was brutal. Sweat beaded on his forehead. His vision went fuzzy at the edges.
But the cuffs kept expanding.
Once the opening was wide enough, he carefully eased Merle's ruined wrist free. Without the pressure of the metal, fresh blood welled up at once, and Lucien had to fight down a wave of nausea.
He released the transfiguration, and the cuffs snapped back to their original shape.
Lucien slumped back. Then his brain caught up with what he'd just done.
The cuffs.
When Rick and the others came back, they'd find Merle free and the cuffs mysteriously undamaged. No way to explain that.
"Shit," he muttered.
He grabbed the fire axe, positioned the blade against the joint of the handcuffs, and brought it down.
The impact jarred his arms and sent vibrations up through his shoulders. The metal dented beneath the force. He swung a second time, and it bent further. On the third blow, the cuff finally broke, leaving a clean gap in the circle.
He pried the gap wider with his hands until it looked like something that could've broken from Merle desperately hacking at it with the hacksaw.
"There... That's... that should work."
He wiped his hands on his jeans and turned his attention back to Merle's wrist.
The wound was bad, worse than he had thought. The saw had cut deep, past skin and fat, into muscle and tendon. Bone was visible in places. The bleeding had never truly stopped. Merle had lost too much blood and was still losing it. Without proper treatment, infection would kill him. If that did not, blood loss would. If that failed as well, shock would finish the job.
He pulled out his medical supplies and got to work.
First, he cleaned the wound.
"Aguamenti," he whispered, and water fountained from his wand tip. Not as much as usual, but enough. He flushed away the grime and the blood, revealing the full extent of the damage.
Then came the alcohol. He poured it directly into the wound and winced, even though Merle was unconscious. The man's body tensed, and a low groan slipped from his throat, but he did not wake.
The gauze came next. Lucien wrapped it as tightly as he could, trying to create pressure and stop the bleeding. The white fabric turned red almost immediately, but he kept going, layer after layer, until the blood finally began to slow.
It wasn't enough. He knew it wasn't enough.
The wound needed stitches and antibiotics. It needed a real hospital, with real doctors who knew what they were doing.
Lucien stared at the wound for a moment before raising his wand one more time.
"Episkey."