Law hadn't slept much the night before. Lucien could tell from the way he was sitting when they came in the next morning, straight-backed and still, the kind of still that comes from being awake too long rather than being rested. He'd pushed the bed against the wall to give himself more floor space. The food from yesterday was gone at least.
Lucien took the spot by the door. Idris stood near the window with his arms folded. Neither of them said anything. Law didn't acknowledge them beyond a glance.
He sat cross-legged on the floor and closed his eyes.
The room sat still for a long time. Then the bubble appeared, large and steady, expanding outward until it enclosed his entire body with Law sitting at the centre of it. His brow creased. His breathing stayed even. A minute passed. Then another. The bubble held but nothing moved inside it. Law's jaw tightened. He pushed further. Another minute.
Nothing came out.
Law opened his eyes. He stared at his arm inside the bubble for a moment, then dissolved it. He looked at the floor.
"Nothing," he said.
"Try smaller," Lucien said. "Start with just the blood. One draw."
Law looked at him. Then he closed his eyes again. The bubble reformed. This time it was tighter, closer to the skin. The concentration on his face was different now, more specific. Another long minute passed.
A single drop appeared at the surface of Law's forearm. White. Dense. It floated inside the bubble and sat there.
Law opened his eyes and looked at it. He didn't say anything.
"It's in the bones," Law said.
"Pulling all of it at once isn't going to work. Do it in sections. One part of the body at a time," suggested Lucien.
Law looked at the drop floating in the bubble. He was quiet for a moment, working through it. Then he nodded.
"Left leg first," he said.
He dissolved the bubble around his arm, reformed it around his left leg, and closed his eyes again.
It took a long time. Long enough that Idris shifted his weight once and then went still again. The bubble held. Law's jaw was tight. Then the white came, slow at first, threading out from beneath the skin in thin lines before pooling at the bottom of the bubble. More than a drop this time. Considerably more.
When it stopped, Law opened his eyes and looked at it. His breathing had changed, was heavier now
"I have to keep the bubble intact," he said. "If I dissolve it the contamination spreads back."
"Then keep it," Lucien said.
Law nodded. He kept the bubble around his leg and lay back carefully against the bed, one hand resting at his side, the other held slightly away from his body. He was asleep in under a minute.
Lucien looked at the bubble. It held even as Law slept. He hadn't been sure it would.
He and Idris left the room and pulled the door shut.
Three days later
They checked in once in the morning and once in the evening. Law was methodical about it in a way that required no supervision. Right leg. Then the abdomen. Then the chest. Each session left him exhausted, and each bubble remained intact while he slept, a growing collection of white pooled in separate, contained spaces around his body like something clinical and precise. He ate when they brought food. He didn't talk much. There was nothing to say about it that wasn't already visible.
On the fourth day, Lucien opened the door, and Law was already sitting up, waiting.
"Head today," Law said.
Lucien leaned against the doorframe. "Take your time with it."
Law looked at him with the flat patience of someone who had not needed to be told that.
He closed his eyes.
The bubble that formed around his head was the smallest and the most controlled of all of them. It also took the longest. Lucien stayed in the doorframe. Idris was in the hallway behind him. The room was completely quiet except for Law's breathing, which stayed deliberate and measured for a long time before it began to slow.
The white came last from the base of the skull, the final threads pulling free in a way that looked difficult and precise at the same time. When it stopped, Law sat completely still for a moment.
Then he opened his eyes.
He looked at the bubble around his head. At all of them, the ones around his legs, his torso, his arms. Every one of them still intact. He looked at his hands.
Then he passed out sideways onto the bed.
Lucien watched him for a moment to make sure his breathing was steady. It was. He pulled the door mostly shut and turned to Idris.
"How much longer on the ship?"
Idris exhaled through his nose. "Pushed back. The materials didn't arrive when expected. A week at most."
Lucien looked down the hallway. "We can't stay another week."
"I know."
"The longer we sit here, the more likely the Marines have already figured where we are."
Idris didn't answer that. He didn't need to.
Two large Marine battleships cut through the North Blue at full sail, heading directly for Lake 4. The sea was calm and the wind was behind them, which meant they were making good time.
In the captain's room, a junior officer stepped through the door and straightened.
"Sir. Lake 4 is a day out."
Sakazuki didn't look up. He was sitting with a cigar between two fingers, the ember at its tip burning low. He waved the officer off without a word. The man left.
Sakazuki brought the cigar to his mouth, exhaled a long breath of smoke, then closed his fingers around the remaining length of it. The magma that bloomed across his knuckles consumed it completely. He set his hand back down on the table.
"Can't wait to capture Lucien Vosgrave," he said. Flat. Like a man crossing something off a list.
Across the room, Borsalino glanced at him. He said nothing. He looked back out the window at the open water, and the faint expression on his face sat somewhere between mild disapproval and quiet amusement, closer to the latter.
The ships kept moving.
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