I’ll have to talk to him later and figure out how he knew she could be in danger.
We rounded the bend into the patient wing.
The last four Scales waited at the end of the corridor. Shivering, they placed their weapons on the floor and raised their hands.
Sweat dripped down the first one’s face. “We are turning ourselves in. We did not—”
Reo shot him before he could finish.
The other three tried to run.
Reo fired three more rounds and did not break stride. They dropped one after the other—with a bullet either in their heart or forehead—collapsing to the floor.
Reo signaled to our men. “Clear the wing.”
They split into pairs and moved fast—one Scale low and one high at each doorway, weapons cutting the air in disciplined sweeps. Doors opened in rapid succession. Boots crossed thresholds. Muzzles arced left, then right. Inside each room, the soft echo ofclearcame back to us in clipped controlled voices, one after another.
But at the last door in the hallway on the right, a Scale yelled, “In here!”
A woman’s sobbing rose in the air.
We all raced forward.
The diamond reformed as we moved. Two Scales hit the doorway first with their weapons up, one going low and one going high. They cleared the threshold in two seconds and signaled back.
Reo flowed in behind them with his sidearm raised, sweeping right.
Two more Scales peeled inside and took the corners.
The rear pair held the corridor behind us with their rifles trained back the way we had come.
What the fuck will we find in there?
Hiro and I crossed the threshold inside the formation.
A horrid stench slammed into my nostrils. Copper. Antiseptic. Some other chemicals.
A doctor was sprawled across the bed. His mouth hung open. His chest jerked in fast, shallow heaves. His eyes had rolled back so far I could only see the whites.
A scalpel stuck out of his throat.
The handle was buried just under the right side of his jaw, angled up. The blade was lost in the meat of his neck. Blood pumped out around the steel in a rippling surge that matched the jerking of his chest.
Two nurses worked over him.
One pressed both hands against his throat on either side of the embedded scalpel. She was packing the wound with a wad of gauze that had already soaked through. Blood ran down her fingers and dripped from her wrists. Her sleeves were soaked to the elbows. The front of her uniform was streaked dark from the chest down.
The other nurse stood at the head of the bed. She leaned hard against the doctor's shoulders to hold him still as his body jerked. Her hair had come loose from its tie.
“Hold on, Dr. Goda!” Tears ran down her cheeks. “Please. Hold on!”
Her left wrist hung at a wrong angle against her stomach. Someone had grabbed it and twisted hard. Still, she was using her right hand and her forearm to brace him anyway. She sobbed through her teeth as she worked.
Neither of them looked up when we entered.
Reo took it in with one sweep of his eyes. Then, he pointed to a pair of Scales. "You two, help them. Put pressure on the wound and don't pull the blade. Keep him alive until we can move him."
The two Scales slung their rifles over their shoulders and moved fast. One took over from the nurse at the throat. His bigger hands wrapped around hers, and he applied steady pressure as she eased back to grab a fresh pack of gauze from the toppled tray.
