Saul drew his cloak down tighter over his face as he skirted around the Cathedral of the Goddess. Like the wall, the Cathedral was a study in imposing strength. The miracle-grown dark slate of the walls that loomed in the sky supposedly had no seams or cracks that required mortar, smooth with the exception of vibrant green and gold stained glass that shot through the entire structure like lightning bolts from some wrathful, glass stormcloud overhead. On the crenelated roof, long-limbed gargoyles glared down from their stubby perches at parishioners and supplicants, challenging all that approached on their faith and commitment to their goddess. A long line of New Hope’s citizens led up the stone walk to the steps of the Cathedral where three priests of Yshmari in their golden vestments sat on cushions and held court. Behind them stood the hawkish figures of white-clad Inquisitors that slid their eyes over everything and everyone, looking for impurity or blasphemy.
One by one, the people, all in different states of health, some unable to stand on their own, knelt in front of the three priests to plead their case in hopes of receiving the healing grace of Yshmari. In their hands the supplicants held offerings of coins as large or as small as their stations allowed. The priests heard the supplicants’ pleas, accepted or rejected the offering, then made with the healing incantations in the case of the faithful. Larger offerings saw greater rates of success, mostly as a function of the cost of real healing miracles. From these the Priests took the coins and used the energy contained therein to perform the rites, and a golden light would suffuse the patients’ bodies, leaving them entirely healthy with a good dose of euphoria thrown in. The trick, Saul was told, was to give enough for the healing miracle and a little extra to the church to make sure your case was heard. Rejected petitions were gently issued to the side to speak with Church representatives about alternative solutions to their problems or issued directly to the hospital, Saul’s ultimate destination.
The hospital lay beyond the cathedral, across the broken street in a slight depression. Saul was tempted to cut across the square to get there, but caution dictated that he give the cathedral a wide berth with his head down, his cloak drawn, and his stride quick. His shoulders acquired a hunch and his eyes stayed on the ground in front of him. People with Gifts like his were not well loved by the Ishmarian Church, and Saul didn’t want to attract the attention of the Guard or, worse, the Inquisition. Technically, he just interacted with their goddess earlier today, but there was no arguing with a zealot when they smelled impurity. More than once, Saul had found himself bleeding on the floor of an Inquisition cell, waiting to be tried for the crime of existence without church approval.
Saul tensed as he heard shouting from somewhere behind him. Would it be more suspicious to keep walking like he hadn’t heard or turn and see? What looked the most natural?
Doing his best to keep his posture the same instead of shrink into himself like he wanted to, he turned. Four Guards with pistols drawn jogged in his direction, led by the infamous Inquisitor Kevlan with his shining white armor and glowing golden chain linked around his chest. His severe, angular face, so sharp it could cut, was a broiling red and was sheened with sweat like he’d been running for some time. Saul tensed for the confrontation, doing his best not to let his hands drift toward where he kept his weapons in the field. They weren’t there anyway.
However, the Guard and Inquisitor Kevlan pushed past him until they came to the intersection, at which point Kevlan split them up to go in different directions.
Saul let out the breath he was holding and said a silent prayer for whoever garnered Kevlan’s attention today. He wished he could help them in some way, knowing what he knew about the man’s temperament and methods.
The hospital was one of the only buildings in this part of town other than Yshmari’s Cathedral that hadn’t collapsed with old age or purposeful demolition, though it had certainly seen better days, what with most of its reflective windows cracked or missing entirely. Most of the work that went on was in the interior anyway, but the shabby exterior didn’t do much for the institution’s credibility which suffered greatly next to the instant brilliance of the Cathedral’s ministrations.
Bandaged and broken people limped their way into the front entrance, some of the new patients having to be carried in by friends and family that didn’t look like they could afford the time off of work to be there. Those that left looked more hale but only just. The road to recovery for these people was long and painful compared to the miracles the Priests could do for you, but at least the hospital didn’t give you the bill up front. Even then, they didn’t try terribly hard to collect on delinquent accounts. It was a hell of a thing to have the means to help someone then hold it back. The cold, black worms wriggled and writhed hungrily through Saul’s body, slithering their way closer to the surface of his skin before he soothed them back to a slow boil. They were calmer nowadays, but they liked to remind Saul that they were still there from time to time, especially when he smelled blood.
Saul didn’t enter the hospital through the front door. He’d only done so once back when he was a kid, then never again. Instead, he stalked past the main entrance, past the emergency ramp that once accommodated ambulances back in the hospital’s heyday. The parking garage was dark inside but not so dark that he worried about spawned monsters, at least not overly much. Even if the building wasn’t swept regularly by security, the dark corners rarely got dark enough to manifest anything serious, and even then it would be night time before that happened. His hand slid down and patted the empty spot on his hip where he normally kept his revolver. He felt light and fragile without it after so long in the field.
Funny. When did that become normal?
Up the ramps, following the suspiciously freshly-painted yellow arrows, Saul let his feet take him to the fourth floor, until he came to the former security office that sat next to a bank of four elevator doors that hadn't opened in decades. The cloudy glass of the security station did a lot to obscure what was in there, but ill-defined shadows played across its surface from the other side. The doorman, a hunched but solidly built man nodded to Saul as he approached, not bothering to get up from his stool or to turn and grab the curved, thin-bladed sword leaning against the cinderblock wall behind him. Saul was pretty sure the doorman lived here somewhere in the gutted security offices or converted restrooms on this floor, but he’d never asked, somehow intuiting that it would be rude to do so, or, at least, would be perceived as such. You don’t want to be rude to the guy that takes care of the chaos beasts and violent customers.
“Busy day?” Saul asked, knowing the answer already, but hoping the question counted as polite smalltalk.
The man grunted and scratched his graying beard then spit something brown into a cup that was perpetually clutched in his left hand. Saul had never seen him empty the thing out, but the dark stains on the sidewalks outside told a long, gross story of just how much chew the man consumed over the years. The doorman gestured to the door with his head and went back to staring straight ahead in the general direction of the parking ramp.
Saul cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Alright… Keep fighting the good fight, brother,” he said, pulling the door open and stepping inside.
Once a suite of offices for security personnel, meter maids, and maintenance staff, this corner of the building was now a sparse clinic. The walls that used to separate the place into partitions were long since knocked down and cleared away, leaving only windowless, concrete exterior walls and steel support pillars at regular intervals to keep the integrity of the structure. Stained but mostly sanitary wooden and canvas cots that wouldn’t be out of place in the Rangers’ barracks sat at regular intervals with metal IV stands perched at their heads. Foggy plastic curtains hung from the ceiling to give potential patients some modicum of privacy, though if you went to the back door clinic, you were more interested in discretion than privacy. Next to the door where Saul entered were several old metal folding chairs, where a young woman in bloody coveralls and a gray mechanic’s cap sat staring intently at a partially drawn blue plastic tarp that half-concealed the room’s only true hospital bed. Her leg bounced up and down nervously making a tap tap tap sound that echoed off the bare walls. They really needed to upholster in here someday.
They jokingly called the central blue-tarped partition the Arena due to the sometimes combative patients they tended to get in the backdoor clinic, but it was a term of endearment. More than once, they’d all had to pitch in and hold someone down for a particularly painful procedure with only a bottle of cheap booze to kill the pain. Actual anesthetics were a luxury available for the legitimate clinics, while those that came here could choose between surgery au naturale or let Saul do his thing. Most chose the booze. The pained hisses and groans that came from the Arena alongside discordant cheerful whistles told Saul who was on shift today.
He nodded to the bloody woman in the chair, pretty sure she wasn’t going to notice, but it paid to be polite. “Ma’am.”
Then he strode past the waiting area drawing the tarp aside with a hiss, just enough to allow himself and the woman to see inside. On the table was a pale girl with sweat matted blond hair and red rimmed eyes, probably in her teens, most likely in pain due to the gunshot in her quadricep. In her mouth was a belt that kept her from biting her tongue or breaking her teeth.
Veer Patel, a slight man with brown skin and perfectly combed and parted black hair, hunched over the girl’s leg, a pair of forceps in his hand rooting around inside the open wound while he whistled tunelessly. Perched on his nose were orange tinted, rectangular glasses looking nearly opaque from this angle in the glare from the overhead lamp. Next to Veer sat a tray of bloody metal bits, all twisted and folded on themselves like you see in hollow point wounds. A short scream escaped the girl’s mouth, but she got herself back under control nearly instantly, reseating the belt in her mouth and soldiering on.
Saul looked back toward the waiting area. The woman in bloody coveralls was on her feet now, staring unblinkingly at the scene, one foot forward as if debating rushing to the girl’s side. The worry in her eyes pained him, but he’d seen it before. She would hang back and let the doc do his work. When Saul turned back, Veer had the forceps deep inside the girl's leg.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“There it is. I have it,” said Veer in his British accent he’d inherited from his parents, the head surgeon and administrator that headed this hospital before the Fall. “Just one more.”
The girl ground her head into the dingy white sheets of the bed, staring up into the powerful overhead light that Saul helped wire into the ceiling not long ago. Her eyes closed, and her ragged breathing was forcibly brought under control.
Then Veer pulled with the forceps, bringing out a nasty, jagged piece of bullet. The girl writhed, doing some of the extraction work for Veer, though messily. The bleeding would be more extensive now. The doctor threw the forceps and the bullet fragment into the tray with a flat clang, then used a squeeze pump to suction some of the blood. Veer leaned toward the girl’s head and waited for her to open her eyes.
“That was the worst of it, but now I have to stop the bleeding. Just lie still, and you’ll be done in no time,” he said pleadingly, making sure to get a nod from her before he continued. He pulled his glasses down and off his nose, enough to get an unobstructed view of the damage, and the doc’s eyes, normally a deep and vivid blue, began to pulse with light.
Saul looked away, having learned this lesson the hard way long ago during his apprenticeship. There was a flash in his peripheral vision, a hiss, then a brief but intense smell of burnt copper. The black worms deep in his flesh writhed.
“There,” said Veer, his smile back in his voice, loud enough to be heard by the woman in the waiting area as well. “Now it’s just a few stitches and some b-vitamins, and you’ll be back on the parkour circuit in no time. Just watch out for the rough edges this time, eh?”
The girl didn’t seem to hear, just lying back and letting the tension in her body go. With that, Veer closed up the wound with some neat stitching and helped the girl to her feet. Saul reached out and gave her a hand to pull herself up, and, with the assistance of Veer, they were able to get her on her feet… or foot, wobbly but upright. She wouldn’t be walking on the wounded leg for a while.
Veer washed up in the sink then strode over to the woman in bloody coveralls who handed him a fistfull of silver coins. Their voices were low and furtive, but Saul caught snatches. Veer shook his head and said something like “This is too much” and “We couldn’t possibly…” but the woman shook her head and closed Veer’s fingers around the silver, not taking ‘no’ for an answer.
“Nice to have someone in your corner like that,” Saul said as he helped the blonde girl hop away from the bloody bed.
Her face was damp and too pale. She must have lost a good bit of blood. She looked up at Saul for the first time, seeming to just now realize she was being supported by someone other than Veer. Saul tried to ignore the slight widening of her eyes and the tremble in her hand, but he felt his heart tighten a little. He also tried to ignore the hungry quivering beneath his skin. Before either of them knew it, he and gunshot-girl had traveled the ten steps to the waiting area. The woman in the coveralls tried to smile reassuringly as she got under the girl’s arm on her bad side, then they both limped out of the door, which Veer held open for them.
As the door clicked shut behind the pair, Veer already had his arms stretched out wide and coming in for a hug. Saul let it happen, knowing resistance was futile. Veer only came up to Saul’s chest, but the little man had an earnest, irresistible warmth to him that he wielded like a weapon. If Veer wanted to make you feel welcome, well, that’s what happened. Of course Saul returned the embrace. There were way too few people in this world that got near Saul on purpose. Best not leave one of that highly peculiar group hanging.
A few seconds passed before Veer finally broke away but still kept a manly bro-grip on Saul’s forearms. “You’re back from the wilds, eh mate. You get in without the Guard giving you trouble?”
“Yeah, no one paid me much mind. Didn’t see a lot of Guard on my way in though,” Saul said.
“Probably all waiting around the courthouse for a chance to have a go with the Downers when the trial ends,” said Veer with a pained smile.
“Small blessings, considering most of our clientele today are the shy type,” a familiar voice called out from the dimmer part of the room. Doctor Samantha Wright, a lanky, blondish woman somewhere in her 50s stood up ponderously from one of the unoccupied cots. Her black cane clicked on the concrete floor as she stepped fully into the harsh lamplight, casting a long shadow behind her. “Veer, you did well with the extraction, but your sutures need work.”
“Doctor Wright. How are you ma’am?” Asked Saul. The woman had been a fixture in his life for so long, he probably should be calling her Samantha by now, but he’d never tried even in his awkward teenage years.
“I’m well, Saul. Thank you. Did your expedition sufficiently challenge you?”
“Yes, ma’am. A few times I had to get real fine on my control to patch up my people.”
“And you learned something from it?”
“I think so… though I probably learned more about my limitations than anything else.”
“Knowing yourself and knowing when to ask for help is a step on the path to professional maturity, one I wish this one would learn sooner rather than later.” She turned a harsh glare upon Veer. “The world gives you laser eyes and suddenly every little thing requires cauterization.”
Veer threw his hands up. “Unbelievable. I’m never going to live it down am I? You set one guy’s lung on fire…”
Dr. Wright turned back to Saul. “Well, Saul, are you ready to learn more today?”
“Uh, yeah. I want to learn exactly what made Veer turn a man’s chest cavity into a pizza oven. I’m not as experienced as you folks, but aren’t people generally… juicy on the inside? Did he live?”
“He lived. You can hear the story some other time, perhaps. Just remembering the incident makes me long for the days when retirement was a thing.” Dr. Wright groaned, bringing one of her hands up to massage her temple.
Veer, now behind Dr. Wright at the examination bed, squinted at a phantom patient. Then he pantomimed an explosion with his hands, followed by panicked arm flailing and screaming. Narrowing her eyes, Dr. Wright cast a suspicious glance over her shoulder only to see Veer picking up his surgical tray and taking it to the sink for cleaning.
She sighed, but then spoke again to Saul. “I have a home visit for you to make today. I know. I know. You are uncomfortable with house calls, but this is a special case. There is a girl in the Downs who has fallen ill coinciding with the absence of her father. I need you to go see what you can do. Buy her time at least until her father returns.”
“Not sure what I can do for illness other than give her nightmares on top of whatever else she’s got going on. I’m a trauma guy. And why are we waiting for her dad? He some kind of church healer?”
“No. Her father is Christopher Michaels.”
Saul whistled. “The Miracle Man himself? The guy’s a legend. Hell, if he couldn’t heal his girl, what do you expect me to do?”
“Mr Michaels has, in fact, healed his daughter many times, but this is a genetic or chaos based condition that returns regularly. Now that Michaels is not with his daughter, she needs competent outside help.”
“And that’s me,” he said, arching an eyebrow even though Dr. Wright couldn’t see it.
“Yes. Some of our staff have been by to keep her stable, but they do not have the gift or aptitude you do.”
“Hey!” came an indignant shout from Veer, still at the sink washing his tools.
Dr. Wright ignored him. “Furthermore, the Church will not help the girl due to Mr. Michaels’ heretic status.” Her face darkened at that. Heretic was a label branded on those that had the audacity to use their Gifts to heal the sick and wounded. There was something about using your Gift to patch people up that the Church considered dangerous and profane, though they never bothered to explain their reasoning to someone like Saul. Wright didn’t hold the Church’s dogma in high regard, considering she trained heretics in this very room.
“Where’d Michaels go anyway?” Saul asked. “Can’t imagine Miracle Man ever leaving his people in the Downs.”
Dr. Wright looked confused for a moment, like Saul had just asked if the sun was hot, but then she seemed to come to a realization. “Of course, you’ve been away. I’m sorry, Saul,” she said, fiddling with the old lanyard dangling on her chest. “Christopher Michaels is the man currently on trial for murder.”
Saul’s mouth dropped open momentarily as his brain assimilated that statement, preposterous as it was. “No way. He’s old school ‘Thou shalt not kill’ and all that. Even when he was in the Pits he never killed anyone. Hell, he was good enough to beat you near to death then heal you back up to take a bow with him.” More than a few Downs kids grew up on stories about Miracle Man, Saul included.
“I know this. I simply give you the facts. He’s on trial for murder, and the Guard has pulled patrols from this area to focus on the trial. That should make things easier on you, as long as you avoid the more unsavory elements in the Downs. As you might imagine, there is some civil unrest over the trial.” Dr. Right handed Saul a tiny slip of paper with the address. “Standard protocol for remote work. Bring nothing but the basics. If the Guard catches you…”
“Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know you, and I’m unaffiliated with the hospital.”
“Good. If you are taken to the cells, we’ll send an agent to bail you out along with a hefty bribe to look the other way.”
“Nice, but doesn’t that incentivize the next capture?”
“Yes, but they only get their bribe if you are intact.” Wright said with an apologetic look on her face.
“It’s a bandaid, but it beats getting beat right?” Veer chimed in.
“There’s a lot of wiggle in that logic.” Saul grabbed one of the nondescript medical bags from the hook on the far wall and checked inside to make sure it was fully stocked, not that he needed most of it. His silent partners did most of the work there. Still, it was better to have the basics just in case. “Veer, I just want to put it out there now, if I do get my ass kicked, I’m opting out of eye laser surgery.”
Veer made a show of checking his pockets. “Ooh, sorry, mate, I would need that in writing, but I don’t have a pen.”
“Keep me to a medium rare then?”
“Not making any promises.”
The group said their goodbyes, Veer with another full body hug and Dr. Wright with a curt nod and a little smile. Then Saul was out in the parking garage again, past the silent doorman, down the ramps and past the pay booth. He nervously tugged the hood of his cloak once again before stepping out into the blinding afternoon sun, directly into the path of a charging Inquisitor Kevlan, white armored, heavy blessed golden chain dangling from his hand, and righteous fury emblazoned on his all too familiar face. He jammed a gauntletted finger uncomfortably into Saul’s chest.
“You! You are involved in this as well!” His accusation was a lightning bolt from the sky. The kind that came out of a particularly quiet but cloudy day, then you felt all the hair on your body stand to attention to let you know that you, in particular, pissed off the Almighty. “Where is she? I swear to the goddess I will take your head myself if you do not give a satisfactory answer!”