Schedule Update
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Ren hummed while he organized the surgical tools on the shelves behind the reception desk. Nothing in particular, just a tune that had been in his head since the morning, repetitive and slightly off-key. He arranged the instruments by size, then by function, then by size again because the first arrangement had bothered him.
You are reorganizing the same shelf for the third time, the System said. The scalpels were already in order.
"They were in the wrong order."
They were in the order you put them in yesterday.
"Yesterday I was wrong."
I see. And today you are correct. This is a consistent pattern.
"Will you shut up."
I am simply observing that you have been standing in front of this shelf for twenty minutes and the scalpels are now in exactly the same configuration they started in.
"I moved the retractors."
By four centimeters.
"Significant improvement. Goodbye."
I am not going anywhere. I live here.
Ren picked up a bone saw, confirmed it was clean, set it back down. He reached for the next instrument.
A soft chime, different from the System's usual notifications, rang through his awareness.
INCOMING CONNECTION REQUEST: Abomination unit designate MONK EON wishes to link an external space-fold to Clinic entry point. Grant permission?
Ren set the bone saw down.
The little monk. He had not expected him back this quickly. Whatever the mission in the prison had produced, it had produced it fast.
Grant permission.
The clinic bell rang.
He turned from the shelves.
Monk Eon stood in the doorway, round and orange-robed, his hollow eye sockets directed toward Ren with the warm attention he directed at everything. Beside him, held upright by one of Eon's steady hands, was a figure in considerably worse shape.
Axel Krane. Mythical rank Berserker, Major General, veteran of forty-seven gate raids. Currently bleeding through his shirt, one eye swollen mostly shut, chains still hanging from his wrists where they had been snapped rather than unlocked.
Axel looked at the clinic. The sign. The black walls, the pulsing veins, the man behind the reception desk in the mask and black coat.
It's actually him, Axel thought. He had been ninety percent certain in the prison. Standing here was the other ten percent.
"This humble monk greets the Bodhisattva," Eon said, with a short bow.
Axel looked at Ren. "Doctor."
"So you're back," Ren said.
Eon smiled and opened his mouth. His tongue came forward. Carved into it in black, raised against the flesh, were the words: No. 2 — Retractor.
"I have not failed you, Father," Eon said.
"Good." Ren came around from behind the desk. "You can go. I'll call you when there's more work."
"Yes, Father."
Eon bowed again, turned, and walked out through the door, which let him out into a space that was not the forty-fourth floor corridor. The bell chimed once as he passed through. Then the space closed.
The clinic was quiet.
Ren looked at Axel. Axel looked back at him, one good eye and one that was mostly lid.
"How have you been," Ren said.
Axel's jaw moved once. He held whatever wanted to come out and compressed it into a single breath.
"It's been hard, Doctor."
He started from the beginning, voice flat, reporting rather than recounting. Ren stood in front of him and listened.
After that day in the Outer District, the retaliation had come within seventy-two hours. Clean, targeted, complete. Axel's family. Steven Bright's family. They had not spared the children.
He had been arrested four days later. The interrogation had begun immediately after that, and had continued for however long he had been in that cell. They wanted everything he knew about the Doctor: location, abilities, network, contacts, the full scope of what Nox could do.
The irony, Axel said, his voice staying flat, was that he knew less than the Empire's own intelligence division. He had seen the rubble field. He had read Phenomenon-08's classification file. Beyond that, he had nothing.
So the interrogation had not ended. It had just kept going.
Ren's expression, behind the mask, was doing something Axel could not read. What he could read was the quality of the silence.
"You've suffered much," Ren said.
Something broke loose in Axel's chest that had been held since the cell. Tears came, simply present on his face. He did not wipe them.
Ren placed one hand on his shoulder.
"Now let me cure you," he said.
Axel laughed. It came out rough and slightly broken and genuine. "Can I refuse?"
"Nope."
"I figured."
Ding. Somewhere in Ren's internal accounting, a fear point reserve ticked upward. He noted it and moved on.
. . .
Axel lay on the reception sofa forty minutes later. Wounds closed, eye functional, chain marks gone. His breathing was deep and even.
Ren sat on the edge of the reception desk, turning a scalpel between his fingers, watching him.
"Doctor," Axel said, staring at the ceiling.
"Mm."
"Can I get a graft."
Ren turned the scalpel once more. "What kind."
Axel sat up. "I want revenge. I have nothing on my name right now, not a single cent. I can't pay you for anything." He stood, and with the careful deliberateness of a man who meant every part of it, he bowed deeply, both hands at his sides, head down. "I'll pay you back with interest. Whatever you need. Please, Doctor."
Ren looked at him.
"I have a better idea," he said. "Let me pitch something to you first."
"Go ahead."
Ren set the scalpel down. "You know the monk who brought you here. Before the process he was an S-rank entity. After it, he carries three Mythical-level abilities. The process rewrites what a person is at the foundation, adds capabilities they would never reach through normal cultivation, and leaves the person themselves intact. Memory, personality, identity. All of it stays."
Axel was very still.
"In your case," Ren continued, "you are already Mythical rank. I don't know exactly what you would gain. The ability that emerges is specific to the person. But the floor is considerably above where you are now."
Axel was quiet for three seconds.
Then he dropped to one knee on the clinic floor, head down, the bow full and complete.
"Please proceed, Father," he said.
Ren looked down at him.
"That's the spirit," he said.