Page 324 of Mercy Written in Blood

Haruki reached the operating theatre alive. Renji knew because he counted every heartbeat between the ambulance bay and the doors. One hundred and eighty-seven. The number should have reassured him. It did not.

Haruki's pulse remained too rapid, too narrow, each beat an incomplete movement beneath the skin. Blood pressure fell despite transfusion. The right side of his chest continued filling faster than the drain could empty it. One bullet remained somewhere beneath the clavicle. Another had crossed the abdomen and left behind a path no external wound could explain.

Renji followed the stretcher through the trauma corridor with dried blood covering his clothes and silver still burning at the bottom of his lungs. A nurse tried to stop him.

"Doctor Takahara, you need decontamination."

"I need imaging."

"The trauma team has him."

"I am the trauma team."

"You are contaminated."

"He has an intrathoracic bleed, probable hepatic injury and a retained projectile near the subclavian vessels."

The nurse moved into his path. Renji stopped. He knew her. Matsuda Yuki. Twenty-nine. Recently married. Allergic to cephalosporins. Her left shoulder had been troubling her for three weeks because she lifted patients incorrectly and refused physiotherapy. Renji had taught her how to identify internal bleeding from changes too subtle for a monitor.

Now she looked at him not as a colleague. As something that had walked into the hospital wearing a colleague's face. Blood covered his hands to the wrists. Some of it belonged to Haruki. Most did not.

"Doctor," she said carefully, "you cannot enter an operating room like this."

Renji looked through the glass doors. Haruki disappeared around the corner. One heartbeat. Then another. Still alive.

"Prepare Theatre Three," Renji said.

"It is already being prepared."

"Massive transfusion protocol."

"Activated."

"Vascular surgery."

"Called."

"Cardiothoracic?"

"On the way."

Renji met her eyes.

"Then decontaminate me quickly."

The fear in her face eased by a degree. A physician had spoken. Not the creature from the depot. She nodded.

"This way."

Renji followed. He did not look back towards Commander Mori. He knew the man had entered the hospital behind them. Accord personnel filled the ambulance entrance, speaking quietly into concealed microphones, sealing doors and beginning to redirect civilians before anyone had been given an explanation for the blood outside.

Containment. The word moved through Renji without feeling. There was no space left for the Commander. No space for Sota. No space for the dead in the depot or what Renji had done to them. There was only Haruki. A narrowing sequence of necessities. Remove the contaminated clothing. Flush silver from the skin. Measure his own oxygen saturation. Ignore the tremor in his hands.

Renji stood beneath the decontamination shower while cold water turned red around his feet. The blood resisted leaving the lines of his palms. It had dried beneath his nails. In the creases around each joint. A surgeon's hands were never supposed to retain evidence. They entered the body clean and emerged stained. Then water, soap and friction returned them to neutrality before the next life required them.

Renji scrubbed. Haruki's blood remained distinct in his memory even after it vanished from his skin. Warm against his fingers. Too fast. Too much.

The monitor beyond the sealed door sounded once. Not Haruki's monitor. Another patient. Renji's body reacted before thought. Every muscle prepared to move. The instinct no longer belonged solely to medicine. He saw again the man on the maintenance platform. The lifted weapon. The path of blood through the vessels of his neck. Renji closing his hand. The life stopping.