The councilman was an old, weathered man with clear time in the army. His name was Mr. Ross and you could tell what sort of man he was by the way he walked, and the creases in his suit. When Ross stopped by, no one was going to have a good time, but least of all the employees he was checking in on.
Blaine and Jakab were the unfortunate ones picked, on a particularly bad day. Ross had visited the med bay with no prior notice, and no intent to wait. Both medic’s hands were still gloved and slick with blood as they turned away from their patient to address their guest. They stood side-by-side, spines straight, and waited with uneasiness as Ross closed his pocketwatch and looked up at them.
“Good evening boys,” he growled. He didn’t seem angry, but neither was he pleased. “I see you keep a tight shift around here.”
Blaine’s nose twitched. He was eager to get back to work, appalled to be put on pause like this. Jakab kept his composure though, a veteran in his field, and did the talking:
“My apologies, Ross. We’re still in a bit of a bind from yesterday. It’s not often that the field medics are so short staffed that we have to head out. If you had called earlier-“
“Phone lines were cut an hour ago,” Ross sighed. “Our supplies too, no doubt, but we’ll manage with what we have. How are supplies here though, hm? Enough to make do?”
The bags under Jakab’s eyes seemed to darken as he watched Ross plod around the room, opening cabinets and drawers and inspecting what was inside.
“We’re well stocked sir. Not much to report.”
“What about beds, have enough beds?” Ross said, turning back and cocking an eyebrow.
It was a joke, though, and both medics knew it, for only one bed was occupied out of the twenty in the room. While skirmishes and spies were still aplenty, the war had moved on from this district, and the med bay was left at minimum capacity until the war ended or the frontlines got pushed back once more.
Jakab was the senior left in charge of the facility, and was well-acquainted with the men enough to be a beloved and helpful member of the team. Blaine was fresh out of school and poorly trained due to the necessity of having more medics on the field. His experience at the med bay while it was bustling, though, made up for his quick schooling. The two had been left behind at the Baron’s Manor while the rest of their team marched forwards.
“The med bay is important at the Baron’s Manor, whether the beds are filled or not, sir.” Jakab argued, delicately. “The fact we have them empty is a testament to our practices on prevention and efficiency in treatment. Nearly three-hundred recruits and a good helping of staff and scholars are at this facility, I needn’t remind you. All require medical care throughout the year.”
“Yes, excellent job,” Ross said passively, finishing his loop around the long, wide room. The entire back wall of the med bay was glass windows in arched iron frames, and they let in the orange light from the grassy courtyards. The light kept the room lit, except for the small are sectioned off with big white curtains, where the shadows gathered. Ross stopped in the shadowy part of the room and tapped on the curtains, “Oh, is this the one we found in Sellve?”
“It is,” Jakab said, noticing Blaine’s distress at waiting to resume work. “If you could let us-“
“Why don’t you go through a full report? I’d like to see our guest.”
“Of course,” Jakab said, with a nod. Blaine took off first, drawing back the curtains to reveal a body laying on a bed, sheets stained and surgical tools haphazardly placed around on trays. The figure was small and mostly covered by the blue sheets of the bay. A small respitory device was sitting nearby, but not yet hooked up to the patient.
“From Sellve, like you said,” Jakab explained. “We found her after a bombing along the north side of the city. She’s the only survivor we found, the last of Sellve, so we’ve been focusing on trying to keep her alive. It’s been an uphill battle though. The boy and I have both spent most of the day stemming the external bleeding, and now we have to deal with the internal.”
“Seems a bit backwards, but who am I to judge,” Ross noted. “Are you sure it’s a woman? Her face is a bit-“
He didn’t reach down to turn her face, but Blaine grimaced all the same as he adjusted his angle of viewing to focus on the woman’s destroyed face.
“Yes sir,” Blaine barked. “We believe she was caught in a grenade at point-blank. A lot of her body is damaged by the metal shrapnel, but her face is the most cause for concern. The bad news is she’ll definitely lose part of her jaw and throat to the blast. The good news is we might be able to save the eye.”
“If she lives,” Ross countered.
“If she lives,” Jakab agreed.
“She’d probably live if we could get back to work… with all due respect.” Blaine said, a bit of indignance finally rising up in him. “Please sir, we should focus.”
Jakab turned away from Ross and scrunched up his face at the young medic, conveying a profound sense of both anger at the outburst and gratitude at someone finally saying it. Ross leaned back into his straight stance finally stopped hovering directly over the body.
“Yes, yes, very well.” Ross said, waving them away. “But I want full details on this when you have the time. It’s not often we get civilians mixed up in the med bay, and quite frankly I’m not so sure what we should be doing about all of this.”
“I’m sure we can sort thing out once it’s all through, sir,” Jakab assured.
“Yes, that’s what everyone says. Pity the war favors those who think ahead. As you were though, gents.”
Ross swept a hand cross his forehead in an almost mock salute, then strode out the door. Blaine’s eyes stayed fixed on that door, certain that the man would swing around and catch them unprepared again, but the hall was silent. Jakab sighed, and shuffled over to close the cabinets that Ross had left open.
“And that happens about once every three months,” he lectured. “Don’t let Ross get your panties in a bunch. He’s top dog among the east wing, so he’s top dog in the whole damn country, and you’d be smart to… well… not be smart in front of him again, Blaine.”
Blaine nodded absent-mindedly as he rubbed away the blood from his gloves with a towel. The young medic was used to being submissive in the face of the higher ups, in fact he’d grown to be quite good at it. But… this was a bit of an unprecedented situation, and Ross’s presence and judgement was quite unwelcome right now.
The young woman was the sole survivor of Sellve, found yesterday as reported. If Blaine had given the report, he would’ve done much the same as Jakab, which is to say obscure the more interesting facts. Facts such as:
Number one, while it was true the lady was the sole survivor of Sellve, it’d be more accurate to say she was the first survivor that had come in from the front lines in nearly three months. Jakab and Blaine had responded to five calls in that time, and each had been massacres. From their chats with medics in other wards, it was the same across the entire country. Civilians were being trampled and slaughtered in the heat of war by all sides involved, and this far into an invasion there was simply no hope left for the stragglers. This lady was the living proof that there could be others out there, which was an unsettling sort of hope to have.
Number two, the lady had clear wounds from yesterday’s ambush, but there were quite a few other scars on her. She was clearly being beaten or cut from someone for many years, though whether it was from family or an enemy, it was unclear. Regardless, it was odd, and something Jakab pointed out but seemed keen on keeping quiet about.
Number three, Jakab had taken something from the woman’s possessions. Blaine wasn’t sure what, but he saw the shifty behavior.
None of that involved Ross though, or rather, should not have involved Ross, so the two of them kept quiet about the minutia of the matter.
“Where am I?”
Blaine’s body jolted as he heard a foreign voice in the med bay. Since Jakab’s death, he’d grown accustomed to the silence here, and thought it rather rude that someone disturb it. At least, that was his first reaction, in his surly mornings. His mind spun quickly though and realized there was only one person who could have talked.
The young patient sat upright in her bed, looking directly at him from across the room. She had dark, stern eyes that seemed to bore into him, but her face still held a type of kindness.
“Ah, you’re in the medbay. We’re in a facility about fifty miles southwest of Sellve. I’d tell you the name but, to be honest, I forgot what they renamed it from. It’s called New Chester, I believe.”
“New Chester,” the lady parroted, rolling the words around in her mouth. The confusion was clear on her face, but it seemed like she was trying to work it out on her own.
“Can I ask you a few questions?” Blaine asked, pulling up the patient card by her bedside, which had sat unfilled for several days now. “I promise they won’t take long.”
“Yes, of course,” the lady mumbled, now looking side-to-side, scanning around. Despite her stillness, there was a sort of caged behavior she was showing off. Her eyes darted around, slow enough to be natural, but never fixing on the same point, a very deliberate scan. As she looked back at Blaine, though, she glanced down sheepishly, aware that she was being noticed.
“I’m sorry,” the lady said, “I’d just… can you tell me a little more about what’s going on? Last thing I remember was getting hurt, but I can’t seem to remember who or why or where that was.”
“Oh, of course,” Blaine said, starting to put down the clipboard. “Right, I’m sorry, I didn’t want to rush you here. You were found in Sellve during an invasion of enemy forces. Our allies were able to repel the invaders, but… there was a lot of damage that occurred during the scuffle.”
Like the entire city being destroyed, for starters. And the lack of survivors. Blaine thought to himself. He was half tempted to tell the full truth here, but the lady didn’t quite look up to the task quite yet for dealing with all that.
Amazingly enough, the lady did however nod, as if content with those answers. She seemed to settle down a bit more, looking expectantly at Blaine.
“Right then, your questions?” “Right,” Blaine said, pulling up the clipboard again. “Let’s see, rapid-fire: What is your name?”
“Katrina. Katrina Masters” “Birthday?” “I’m twenty nine.” “Where do you live?” “Just outside of Sellve.” “Any allergies?” “Not that I know of.” “Any injuries we should know about?”
Katrina raised an eyebrow and gave Blaine a glare. “I don’t know, do you have any injuries I should know about?” “That’s-“ Blaine chuckled. “I mean I’m mostly just asking in case you need further medications than what we have you on.”
“And what AM I on?” Katrina asked, eyebrow still cocked. “Anti-inflammatory, a few test antibiotics for the face, and lots of painkillers. Lots and lots. You should be on painkillers for a while.”
At the mention of her face, Katrina’s hand immediately shot up. The light mood that Blaine had a moment ago suddenly became gripped with apprehension as the lady’s hand gingerly touched the corners of the marred flesh. Blaine’s mouth began moving before his mind did.
“It’s not going to be that bad forever,” he said, desperate to reassure, “and you can undergo further surgery to have it heal. We mostly just had to stem the bleeding and get the shrapnel out, it was our top priority. There’s still more to remove, so you’ll need to be careful, but once it’s out we can begin patching the skin.”
Katrina continued to prod the wound absent-mindedly, but then focused back on Blaine. “Wait, shrapnel? As in steel?”
Blaine’s mind seized for a moment, debating whether or not to tell Katrina about the type of metal found. Someone had clearly killed Jakab over this information, so he ought to be tight-lipped. But then again, this was a mystery that could probably only be solved by the patient.
“Not steel, actually,” Blaine admitted. “Steel would have been easy. We’re not sure how, but… there was actually gold shrapnel caught in your face. Would you have any idea about how that came to be?”
Katrina’s eyes darted again to her wounded cheek, hand still pressed up against it. It looked like she was just about ready to cry. An angry cry, that was. Her face was drawn back into a snarl, like a wounded animal, unsure of how to lash out.
“I…” she said, the words catching in her throat.
But, after a deep breath, that sentiment seemed to fade, and she put her hands back down into her lap, focusing once again.
“Right. Sorry. I’m… very confused right now, but I understand that’s not helping. What should I do?”
“Just rest, I suppose,” Blake answered. “ I’m honestly trying to work that question out myself.” “That’s right,” Katrina said, “wasn’t there two of you here? Or was I just hallucinating.”
“There certainly was two of us,” Blake said. He didn’t know how to elaborate further, so he didn’t. After a few odd blinks towards the window, his mind went back to where he wanted it to be.
Normally he’d reach for a patient’s hand at this point, say something comforting, but Katrina already seemed quite cagey, and didn’t strike him as the sort to want that sort of reassurance. She’d asked for direction. “It’s our highest priority to help keep you alive and get you to as full of a recovery as we can. As such, I just want you to answer some basic questions for me about how you’re feeling right now, and then I’ll leave you to rest.”
Katrina nodded immediately, as if she’d already known that. Blake ran through the procedures with her, and found her surprisingly difficult to work with. While she was blunt earlier with her questions and answers, she was surprisingly slippery with basic questions about how she was hurt and whether or not she was in pain. After the semi-interrogation, Blake had closed up the curtains around her and left her to rest, as promised, and then bit his thumb as he reviewed the responses.
There was very little to work with here. Whatever had gotten Jakab killed, Katrina was undoubtedly part of it, and likely a large part of it. Maybe even aware of what it was, from the way she was acting. Sure, she held herself steady and strong and told her lies efficiently, but you could only be so convincing when you’re in a foreign room, in pain, with half your face blown off. Blaine was sure she was hiding something, and it had to do with the gold.
But, even so, he was a doctor, not a detective. Jakab had pried, and they’d found him in multiple pieces. Blaine knew better than to ask questions and snoop around like that. His answers would have to wait, and besides, his had spoken truly. His first priority was making sure the girl recovered. The rest would have to wait.
It had been a lonely time in the infirmary after Jakab had died. The compound was already so understaffed that Blaine went a lot of his days without seeing another soul. Jakab had been a mentor to Blaine, and a strict one at that, but he’d also been a friend. Jakab was really the only one he’d had in that time, and he’d been all that Jakab had had.
He was skeptical of letting Katrina fill in that hole in his routine, but not for long. She spent most of the day asleep, dosed high on painkillers and anesthetics, and Blaine devoted a bit of every day to putting her under to try to reconstruct her face a bit more. It was an arduous process for them both to do it on the daily, but neither complained. Katrina seemed to understand the necessity of it all, and Blaine knew full well that there was no better use of his time. Even so, the little comments and jokes she directed at him while he went about doing his non-Katrina tasks were difficult to stomach. He was still wary of who this woman was. Her charm and grace made him feel welcomed to come and talk, but also put him ill at ease.
But in truth, what finally made Blaine cave was realizing that Katrina was just as lonely as he was. She couldn’t go anywhere, do anything, or see anyone else. He thought it might be torturous to her that he was her only option of a friend here, but if it did cause her any hesitation or pain, she didn’t express it. For weeks, they danced around each other, testing the waters and trying to figure out how to feel about one another. The compromise was a surprisingly easy friendship: two dry, sarcastic people trying their best to help one another.
“So this compound of yours,” Katrina said, post-surgery one day. “You gonna tell me what it’s like outside those doors.”
“Not nearly as pretty,” Blaine said, pointing over at the fancy windows of the infirmary. “This used to be our old chapel, but they busted out all the windows. Saved the ironwork, but had to replace the stained glass with regular stuff. Outside of this room, it’s like the underside of a bunker, or a really shitty school.”
“You should take me out there, just for a peek,” Katrina cooed.
“I’d get fired on the spot,” Blaine laughed. “Everyone else out there is just as bland. Our boss, Ross, is waiting for a chance to tan my hide about something. If I step one toe out of line, he’ll throw me to the frontlines.”
“So who exactly do you work for, and why do I get to stay here for free?”
Blaine slid his chair over from where he was doing paperwork. The roller chair squeaked as it slid a solid twenty feet across the clean tile, and closer to where Katrina was in bed.
“We’re the Burnished Saddles, which is a branch of a branch of a branch.” He explained. “Except pretty much none of us are actually from any of the allied countries, and only one section actually goes out to fight anything. We’re mostly researchers and medics who’ve been side-lined and told to hold our ground in the city, and there’s not a lot of fighting, so anyone civilians we come across are rare and also a stellar example that we’re actually doing our jobs.”
“So I’m justifying your worthiness to keep receiving a paycheck?” Katrina asked, with a hint of a smirk.
“Well, you’re more than that, but you asked why you get to stay here for free. Corporations don’t care about individuals, military’s no different. But, you stand for something the military wants to promote, which is to say you prove we aren’t assholes by invading this land and killing everyone within it.”
“Charming.” Katrina said. “So what happens if you come across an enemy who’s been injured? You leave them?”
“According to the book, yes. There’s a lot of exceptions though. It’s not exactly the best thing for people’s consciences if you tell them to run out and ignore the suffering and death of others.”
“How do you tell civilians and enemies apart?”
“Same way the military does,” Blaine shrugged. “Why, are you suggesting that perhaps you’re an enemy in disguise?”
“I’d never lie about that,” Katrina huffed. “I’m simply a poor, unfortunate soul caught up in this war. I’m happy that my dear old military boy has rescued me, and intend to pledge to his cause on behalf of the good Samaritan nature of the… what’s the name of the organization again?”
“Burnished Saddles, which is ironic since we don’t have a cavalry anymore,” Blaine said, rolling back to his desk in sad little spurts of movement. “Pity you’re not an enemy in disguise. Would’ve made quite the scandal.”
“You’re bored enough to welcome a scandal?” Katrina teased. “What a shame. And here I thought you had your hands full with all the patients in the infirmary.” She said, gesturing to the empty room.
“You’re handful enough,” Blaine said. “Hey while you’re awake, why don’t you make yourself useful.”
“Useful doing what?”
“Well I’ve got most of the patient forms sorted out, but our boys are currently in another skirmish downtown, and that means they’ll probably stop by afterwards to get injuries treated. We’re in a good enough spot that I wouldn’t expect them to be returning with any serious issues, but I’m sure they’ll have some scraped knees and scratches that we’ll have to clean up to keep our jobs.”
“And what would you like me to do?”
“You,” Blaine said, getting up and walking over to a counter. “Can help by sorting out these prescription bottles that got returned to me last week. I’ve already cleaned them out, but you need to scrape the labels off and sort them by lid size. I’d do it myself, but you’ve got sharper nails than I do and ought to be getting them off better.”
“Wow,” Katrina said, “offloading your work onto the sick and wounded? What a fantastic doctor.”
“You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to,” Blaine said, semi-seriously. “But you were just talking about how much you wanted to help the org, so-“
“Fine, I’ll do it-“ Katrina huffed, clearly happy to have been given work.
Blaine gathered up all the prescription bottles in a large tub meant for dishwashing, and gingerly dropped them off on Katrina’s lap. She still couldn’t move, so he’d needed a task that she could do while still staying in her hospital bed. If he’d been in her situation, he would have felt some awkwardness in trying to sort out of that large tub while practically laying down, but Katrina didn’t seem to have any issues with the task. In fact, she performed the duty rather efficiently, working at a much faster pace then Blaine would have figured.
“Hey now,” he cut in. “Those need to be sorted properly.”
“They are being sorted properly, don’t you worry,” Katrina assured. “I don’t half-ass my work.”
The two continued talking for quite some time while working, keeping their heads down in their work but also learning more about each other and the environment of the time. Katrina’s story was rather plain. She’d been raised locally in her own little hometown, working as the daughter of a knife-maker. The family business didn’t make them a ton of money, but it was one of those trades where it made just enough to justify its own existence. She’d spent her entire life raised by her father in that small town, up until he’d passed on and it was on her to continue the trade. She’d been roaming from city to city ever since, eventually making it into the country, and peddling knives for several months out of the year before returning home.
“Do you want to send a message back home?” Blaine asked. “Even if you don’t have any family around, surely there’s someone who’d want to hear you got hurt and were alright.”
“It’s fine,” Katrina assured. “I just set out from the forge a few months ago. No one would be expecting me back until summer came around again. No one would be able to come pick me up anyways, so I’ll be stuck here until I can travel on my own. Not that that’s a bad thing.”
“Was your father your only company growing up?” Blaine pried.
“Yes.”
Katrina continued sorting bottles, picking off labels at a slower speed. A few minutes later, she faltered with the lid of one, and had to spend a great deal of time and exertion getting it open. After it finally budged, she inspected it closely.
“I have a brother too. We don’t get along well, though. I’d rather not contact him.”
Blaine didn’t look up from his work, trying not to raise attention to the comment.
“Of course,” he responded. “I get it. I’ve been working out here for a while now, and I haven’t written to my folks even once for the same reasons.”
“Oh, what beef could your parents have with you, Mr. Perfect Doctor Man?” Katrina drawled. “You must make a stellar salary.”
“Not in the military you don’t. Besides, that’s what was the issue. They didn’t want me running off to go join in the war. Thought I was throwing my life away, and for a country that didn’t really treat us properly right in the first place. Truth be told, they did have a decent point. I really didn’t have much reason to become a medic, and not a real doctor. But… that’s not what got to them. My mom, she interpreted it more as ‘I want to get away so bad that I don’t care about leaving my family behind’. She saw it as an act of open rebellion against the family, like I hated her. Despite how many times I assured her otherwise, she never really got the hint.”
“Wow,” Katrina said.
“Yeah, pretty wild.” Blaine laughed. “But honestly, I don’t regret it in hindsight. I may have entered service without much intention, but I find a lot of use in it now. It’s kinda nice to serve a bigger man, just executing on the orders of someone who knows what they’re doing. I get to go out there and save lives of people who would never have seen a medic if we hadn’t been there. It counts for something.”
“Indeed it does,” Katrina said, continuing her work. “Serving a bigger man… I get where you’re coming from.”
Katrina needed surgery. They sanctioned off about four hours a day to trying to fix her face, which was exhausting for both of them. It wasn’t just as simple as numbing up the area and then using tweezers to pick out the debris. No, it was a serious procedure every time it had to be undergone, and spreading out across several weeks didn’t make it any easier.
The patient couldn’t eat much, both since she needed anesthesia and because her face was so messed up. Solid foods were off the table entirely, so broth was about all that Katrina could eat every day, which didn’t do anything to improve her mood or energy. Then, she had to be prepped for anesthesia every day, and put under during the entire surgery process. She usually went without a fuss, but Katrina spent most of her waking day under the knife, and Blaine could tell the sort of toll it took on her.
Blaine would have complained about the length of the procedure, but since the infirmary was still empty, he had time on his hands enough to dedicate to this task. Prepping and performing the surgery was incredibly difficult with Jakob there, and it filled him with dread every time he had to do it alone. Thankfully, it was a very repetitive task. He wasn’t setting multiple bones, or patching up gunshot wounds throughout various armymen, he was just trying to fix the face of the same young woman, day after day.
The injury was aggravated from repeated surgery around the area, but the alternative of leaving the gold shards in seemed much worse than letting it just be. Blaine’s first priority was to get the metal out from around Katrina’s eye. A few small pieces had punctured her right eye, rendering it blind, but they were shallow enough that Jakob had believed she’d recover sight if they were removed. Blaine had tested that theory first, trying to get out as much of the gold as possible, and trying to salve up the lens and reduce the swelling enough around the eye that Katrina would be able to open it easier. After a few days of surgery, Katrina was able to open the eye again at will, but the normally brown eye was a caustic white, clearly blinded. Katrina claimed she could still make out some light through that eye, but Blaine’s vision tests seemed to prove otherwise.
Regardless, some vision was better than none. The next high priority task was fixing Katrina’s throat. Most of the damage from the grenade had been caught across Katrina’s face, but a few shards were embedded in her neck, which was incredibly dangerous. None seemed to be directly harming her at the moment, but Blaine was afraid that if she slept at an odd position, or if someone struck her in the throat, she may be killed. There were lots of vital blood vessels and airways in the throat that could be punctured by an odd metal pieces being stuck in there, so removing those was also a high priority. It was also the riskiest surgery, since he could easily make the wrong cut or pull out the wrong piece and mess things up that way. It was for that reason that he went slowly here, taking his time, despite Katrina’s protests.
The rest of his time went towards repairing her face. They both had known fairly early into the process that there was a lot to do, but that recovery was going to be stunted. Katrina would be missing half her face for the rest of her life, and it would be a notable injury. The damage stretched from splotches along the base of her throat, to about halfway up her scalp. Her hair in those spots had to be removed, and the flesh beneath was a torn pulp. The skin along her cheeks was red and puckered, full of stitches and shiny with scabs. Her nose was the most jarring, partially cut into, but still relatively whole.
Blaine did his best on trying to repair her face, but he realized he had to prioritize utility over beauty. Katrina didn’t seem to mind. He spent hour after hour trying to pull out the metal shards from the sinew of her cheeks, and was well aware that he wasn’t doing anything to try to salvage the skin. Even so, Katrina seemed to wake up happy but tired after every surgery. Looking at herself in the mirror and joking about her appearance. If she was scared of how she looked, it didn’t show. She seemed happy to be alive, and happy towards him for helping her feel better. When she joked about looking in the mirror, he never yielded to her invites to make fun of how she looked. He always talked about how beautiful her face was.
And surprisingly, one day he meant it.
It had mostly been out of reassurance that he’d said it the first few times, but now there was always something to point out about how she looked. The way she wore her hair, loose and taut in a ponytail, was funny to him. Her oil-slick hair, though damaged and missing in some spots, was still styled back like she was trying to wear it fashionably. It was nice to see her try that out. Her eyes were lovely, even the damaged one. They always held a little mischievous twinkle in them. He could tell before she spoke when she was about to start some banter, just from that little look. Her skin was freckled, mercilessly freckled, little dots that made her look cute, and blended into the scarring across her face. And that scarring… well somehow it seemed to fit her. At first, he thought it was a tragedy he’d never see her with a full face, undamaged by the horrors of war. After thinking on it, though, he realized he loved how she looked now. She wore her injuries confidently, and they suited her bold way of talking. She was recognizable, she stood out, even in a crowd of one, and Blaine liked her.
Blaine sat at his desk, alone. He’d moved Jakob’s desk right next to his as soon as Katrina had recovered enough to walk, so that she could help with paperwork alongside him. He sat side-by-side with her now, as the afternoon light filtered in through the windows, and he kept thinking about that: He liked her. He hadn’t expected to like anyone out here, let alone a patient, but life was full of surprises. Katrina sat by his side, happily working away at paperwork and teasing him for the way he filled out forms.
And Blaine was happy. He didn’t think she knew that, but she had really made him happy.
The front moved backwards. It wasn’t really supposed to do that, from what Blaine had been told, but it happened regardless, because in a war everyone generally tries to be optimistic, despite what the facts may say. After Jakob’s death, Ross had assured Blaine that a replacement would be coming to the clinic to help out with the new influx of patients, but he hadn’t been good on his word. Two months had now come and gone, and Blaine was still the only doctor working for the branch.
Thankfully, Katrina had stepped up and made good on her promise to be useful around the clinic. Since Blaine didn’t have time to complete the facial surgeries every day, Katrina had a lot more time on her hands, and could spend most of the day awake. She was bored from having to sit in the hospital bed, so, despite Blaine’s protests, she spent most of the day on her feet, roaming around the clinic and helping out where she could. She was insufferable when bored, and complained loudly whenever things were going to slow, so Blaine found work for her, and made her try increasingly difficult tasks.
Her story had been true: Katrina was very good with knives. Knives and needles, actually. He didn’t let her do a lot of work with either, since she wasn’t trained to do these things in a medical setting, but quite frankly she might as well have been. She was an expert at giving shots, and all the big tough army men liked being doted on by the young nurse more than Blaine, so they cooperated a lot easier. Her coy attitude was well appreciated by everyone who stopped boy, honestly. She fit in very well with the department, and got along with everyone. Some folks muttered about how it was a shame about her face, but she didn’t seem to pay it much mind. Once they’d left the med bay, she’d saddle up to Blaine and gossip with him about all the juicy details she’d been given by the patients. It seemed she enjoyed playing patients for rumors more than she enjoyed doing the nurse job, but that seemed fine given the circumstances. Jakob had also been a gossip, so Blaine had missed that aspect of his life since his passing.
As the lines of the war shifted, they found themselves busier and busier in the infirmary. The typical day for Blaine before had been a few regular patients in the facility dropping by for their bi-monthly check-in, or to pick up some prescriptions that he’d have filled the day before. About once a month or so, he’d be called out to help assist in a field mission, or would just treat the field team after they’d returned. He’d seen his fair share of wounds, but not a ton of serious stuff in the more recent months.
That was no longer the case. Every day cases were coming in now, and while they typically didn’t require a long amount of treatment, they still required urgent care. People were now showing up with bullet wounds on the regular, and more and more units were reporting in to Blaine’s infirmary. There were a lot more smaller injuries, and some days they’d have to triage who got treated and who got told to go treat it themselves with a med kit. Blaine took care not to turn away anything that could turn into a potential life-threatening issue, but when five men came in with their limbs blown off by a stray mine, there wasn’t time to address the other man with a scraped arm.
While things became stressful on that front, Katrina helped alleviate some of it by helping out more frequently with the nurse tasks. She assisted Blaine in a lot of the surgeries now, but otherwise just did a relatively good job in keeping the infirmary in working order while Blaine was pre-occupied. He began to rely on her more and more as time went on, to the point where she was soon irreplaceable.
The Burnished Saddles hired her on Blaine’s recommendation as their newest nurse for the division. She stopped sleeping in the infirmary, and moved into the doctor’s room where Blaine and Jakob had roomed together. Her injuries were still present, but didn’t seem to slow her down in any sense, and while the Burnished Saddles had tried to saddle her with the expenses of her prolonged treatment, she’d countered by offering to work cheaper than a trained nurse would. Ross had been delighted at that, and had welcomed her aboard with open arms. Blaine’s life was crazy from all the work and the horrors of war that were now beginning to roll in, but Katrina was a refreshing surprise in the mix.
He was worried for a while about how she’d react to the soldier’s wounds as well, but Katrina hadn’t batted an eye. Perhaps it was the fact that her own visage was so destroyed, but Katrina seemed to keep cool under the pressure of having to deal with guts and blood and bodies that were destroyed beyond all repair. She and Blaine worked together to keep people moving in and out of the facility at an efficient rate. No deaths were on their watch, and the others working in the building were happy to report that their med team was one of the best in the business.
One afternoon, Katrina was across the room, washing bandages. Blaine was just seeing off the last patient of the day, and when he’d made it out the door, he’d sauntered over to where she was working.
“Alright, you’ve got to show me your secret,” he mused. “Those were the cleanest stitches I’ve seen since med school. There’s no way you learned that as a knifesmith.”
“Maybe not,” Katrina laughed. “But my father is excellent at sewing, and made me practice a lot. Plus, I cheat.”
“You cheat?” Blaine laughed back. “How can you cheat at stitches?”
“Easy, magic.” Katrina said, continuing to wash away.
“Magic?”
“Magic.”
Blaine froze where he stood, watching as she continued on without a fuss. “You’re not being serious, are you?”
Katrina looked up now, glancing at him, and then over towards the door.
“I… I was being serious. I controlled the needle with magic, Edward just saw me do it. Is that… a bad thing?”
“No… no, no, no, that’s great, that’s fine,” Blaine said, suddenly becoming ruffled. “I- can you show me how you did it?”
“Sure… thing…” Katrina said, looking apprehensive. Blaine expected her to walk over to the table and pick up the stitching kit over there, but instead Katrina just lifted her hand and a silver needle shot into it from across the room, followed by a long black thread. The thread flew through the air and looped itself into the needle effortlessly as she held it aloft, and within a second the needle was ready for use. Katrina held up the gauze in her other hand, and the needle practically leapt into it, weaving in and out in a clean set of stitches as Blaine gawked. The needle tied itself off, and then flew back into Katrina’s hand, where she gently handed it over to him.
Blaine didn’t grab the needle though, he began walking quickly towards the door of the infirmary, and slammed it shut. Katrina looked on, worried, as Blaine began walking back nervously.
“Okay,” Blaine said. “It’s great that you have magic, but… you can’t do that again. You can’t let anyone know.”
“Why?” Katrina laughed nervously. “What’s going on? I thought magicians were you know… accepted here? Is there something I don’t know?”
“Magicians are-“ Blaine shot a nervouse look towards the door. “We love magicians. The Burnished Saddles loves magicians, they just don’t… treat them well. Magicians are rare, and they’re powerhouses in the war. They weaponize their mages, put them through brutal training to make sure they don’t die, and then throw them into the worst of circumstances out in the field. I’ve treated mages before in this clinic, back when the frontlines were directly over this spot, and Katrina, things were bad. If they find out that you’re a mage, you’re going to get recruited into the magicians corp and they are going to beat you to death.”
“So they don’t know I’m a mage already?”
“/I/ didn’t even know you were a mage,” Blaine admitted. “It’s not a common question to ask. They’re rare enough that we don’t ask that sort of thing. All mages are registered with the government, they’re tracked throughout their entire lives. The ones here in the Burnished Saddles have had training since they were young, and were paired with other mages to try to have… you know… mage babies. That’s how messed up the magician’s corp gets. It’s controversial, and they burn through a lot… and I mean a lot… of the mages which they have in short supply.”
“So if I don’t keep quiet, they’re going to whisk me away?” Katrina asked, half-mocking and half-serious.
“They’d pull you out of here in a heartbeat, and put you through whatever trials they run on magicians,” Blaine said. “It wouldn’t matter if you were a survivor of their bombings or not. They do the damndest things to get more magicians to the top of their ranks, and they’d pick up anyone, even a lowly nurse like you.”
“I’m going to give you a pass but don’t call me lowly again,” Katrina drawled.
Blaine sighed and sat down in his desk chair, swiveling to face Katrina.
“Look, I’m just- I don’t want them to kill you. Mages who enter that program get killed, or they live pretty miserable lives. I can’t see you go through that, do you understand?”
“I hear you,” Katrina said, looking distracted or disturbed, it was hard to tell which. A bit of concern played across her face as she looked out the window. “So do we have to worry about Edward ratting me out?”
“I don’t think so,” Blain said, running a hand over his hair, “But if there’s anyone else you’ve used magic on, it’d be good to keep an eye on them. If word gets out, just… deny I ever told you anything, and pretend like it’s all news to you, like how you’re reacting right now. No one can hold it against you then.”
“Got it.”
Katrina moved from where she stood and got in front of the infirmary doors again, wrapping a hand around the handles of both heavy doors. With a huff, she opened the infirmary back up, unafraid of the consequences of her actions. While Blaine was racked with worry and anxiety over what could happen, Katrina continued acting normal, smiling and laughing with all the patients who came in. Blaine watched with fear throughout the entire day, now aware of the ticking timebomb that’d been put on their lives. It was really only a matter of time now. Someone would be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Katrina would exit his life as suddenly as she’d entered it.
It had be an unconventional day, to start. The days were getting shorter, and the evening light had begin to filter in even earlier than usual. Katrina and Blaine were both hard at work wrapping up the end of the day tasks when Ross and company had stormed into the infirmary, dragging a wounded man behind them.
Blaine immediately jumped out of his chair and was moving towards the door. Katrina stayed where she was across the large room, watching curiously but unable to approach the situation.
“What going on?” Blaine asked. “I didn’t hear of any missions going out today, who is this?”
Ross and several armed men from the division crowded around the tables in the infirmary, and one man broke off from the group to grab a folding chair from across the room. Blaine watched in confusion as they brought the injured man forwards, and Blaine realized that the man was wearing a bag over his head.
“Enemy spy,” Ross spat, watching as the chair was being dragged over. “We just rooted him out minutes ago. The boys’ve roughed him up a bit, and I told em’ to go no further until we had a doctor on call to preserve the fellow.”
Ross choked out the words from behind a cigar. Blaine’s chest filled with fury as he looked down at the hooded man, and then up at the assailants.
“So what, you’re beating a man to death in my office now? I’m a doctor, for crying out loud, leave this shit out of here. I’m here to patch up your men and civilians, not to let you beat a man to death and then bring him back.”
“Why not,” Ross said. “The alternative is simply beating him to death. He’s already condemned enough of his so-called friends at our sister facility who trusted him with an innocuous job after he came begging at their doorstep. He’s already turned down the charity of our people, and let their bodies get eaten by their own dogs after he slit their throats in the night. The only thing this man’s good for now is ratting out who put him up to it, and that’s what we’re gonna get him to do.”
“He was an assassin,” another guard added. “I knew it from the start. Those damn- those damn-“
The guard choked on the word, and entered into a coughing fit. Another guard slapped him on the back, trying to help. When the man’s hacking finished up, he was just shaking his head.
“I watched this guy eye up everyone important over at St. Clair. He murdered folks in their sickbeds. He ain’t got a right to live.”
Ross and the others watched Blaine’s reaction, curious to see what he thought. Blaine opened his mouth to protest again, but Ross shot him a look that warned him against it. With a sigh, Blaine took a step backwards, and tried to avert his eyes from what was happening before him.
“Tell your girlie to head to the back room,” Ross growled. “Ain’t nothing she needs to see in here.”
Blaine shot a look over at Katrina, who shot him an angry look back. With a huff, she dissapeared around the corner, still looking over, but out of direct sight of everyone.
The spy was beaten to a pulp in front of Blaine, while everyone else crowded around for a better look. Ross hung back, asking questions from time to time, but mostly just letting the scene unfold. These men had anger to take out on the spy, and it showed. Blaine could hear the bones cracking in the man’s body, and made mental notes to himself about what would have to be done to preserve the spy’s life. Ribs were cracked, broken, obliterated… the spy would never breathe right again. One of his legs was busted too, the kneecap shattered beyond saving by an especially brutal slam. The armymen showed no mercy, and bloodied him up real bad, but in their haste they made some mistakes.
The bound spy spat up blood as they began to lay off. For a moment he was still, and Ross turned over to Blaine.
“Well then, how much do you reckon we can keep going like this until things get a bit risky?”
“Risky how,” Blaine said, deadpan. “You’ve already-“
While Ross’s back was turned, the spy jumped out of the chair with a thrust that he didn’t seem capable of a moment earlier. None of the men guarding him had time to react as he pulled a gun from his jacket and fired a shot at Blaine.
Blaine reeled back at the sound, and felt around his chest, trying to stem the wound. The guards pulled the spy back into the chair and one of them pulled out a gun of his own, shooting the spy between the neck and collarbone. The spy slumped in the chair with a small splatter of blood, and the remaining men held him down as he died.
“THE HELL- NONE OF YOU CHECKED IF HE CONCEALED A GUN IN HIS-“
Ross looked at Blaine in horror as the doctor grasped his chest but…
As Blaine kept taking his hand away from his chest, it wasn’t red. He didn’t appear to be bleeding. Ross looked him over in concern and wonder, and then turned his head up.
“Blanks, I suppose,” he muttered. “But why would the spy have blanks to begin with?”
“Who the hell didn’t check him for a gun?!” One of the guards shouted. A series of fights broke out among the group, with all but Blaine and Ross joining in. Blaine leaned back against the nearest hospital bed, still with a hand pressed to his chest, and stared down at the floor. He was fine, but that could have been it for him.
As Blaine stared at the floor, he found the bullet.
Ross followed his gaze, and the two of them stared down at the ground. The bullet from the ground would have been rolling down the inclined floor, had it not been impaled with a needle. The bullet wasn’t just struck through with the needle, it was pinned to the ground, having been thrown with such accuracy, speed, and force that it must have collided with the bullet mid-air and forced its trajectory down in an unnatural fashion. Ross raised an eyebrow at Blaine, and Blaine made the mistake of looking over across the room to where Katrina was hidden, out of sight.
Katrina didn’t poke her head around the corner, but Ross began walking over, already aware of where she was. Blaine stepped forward, about to block his path, but the little voice inside his head told him to freeze, and he did. He watched as Ross walked all the way across the room, and then around the corner to where Katrina was surely standing. The guards continued to argue, and Blaine stood frozen, thinking the same thought over and over.
“Please kill him, kill him. Get away. Don’t let them take you for this-“
And as Katrina resurfaced from around the corner, he hoped for a brief shining moment that she was going to do it. For a brief moment, there was a black, dark gaze in her eyes, almost bored at having been driven to reveal herself and who she was. Then, in a trained fashion, it faded, and the doe-eyed girl made herself present.
Ross followed on her heels, and together they walked down the length of the infirmary. Katrina refused to meet Blaine’s gaze as she passed, and her eyes were full of a steely cold expression, devoid of laughter and love. She walked firmly past him, and out of the infirmary, directed by Ross. The other guards exchanged confused expressions, but left as well, kicking the corpse of the spy behind them.
They left Blaine alone in the infirmary, with the corpse. He kept holding onto the bed behind him, alive and unharmed, but alone again. He knew that for that display of magic, they’d never let Katrina go. She was gone.
“Morning.”
…
“Moooorning. Rise and shine, get up.”
Sawyer’s ribs creaked as a boot was shoved into his side, probing him as he lay suspended in chains. He’d be kneeling for god knows how long now. His knees protested as his body lurched in the prison, pulled up by the Gold Master.
“Morning, squirts.” he rasped through his skull mask. “You were supposed to report back a month ago. What are you trying to pull, keeping your old man waiting for so long? Waiting for my bones to wither to dust?”
Sawyer blinked the blood out of his eyes, barely comprehending what was being said. He gazed up in abject horror as the Gold Master held him up by the chin, turning his head around and inspecting.
“My, my. Did the dog lead you into a kennel? I thought you’d know better than to follow that bitch blindly. Come on then, get yourselves out! What’s the use in lying about.”
Sawyer’s chest heaved as the Gold Master held him up higher, clutching a hand around his throat.
“The chains-“ Sawyer choked out.
“Simple magic. Easy to cut. Probably fae in origin, just use a steel blade. Come now, is this what stymied you for so long? Allow me to demonstrate.”
With a flourish, an ornate knife shot out of the Gold Master’s sleeve, snapping apart the magic threads that held Sawyer’s hands and torso. His body fell to the floor in shambles, trembling.
The Gold Master loomed above him, waiting for Sawyer to get up. The young boy’s body was too weak, though, and he lay on the ground instead, amidst the pooled blood from his old wounds. The Gold Master cocked his head to the side.
“First your sister doesn’t wake, now you seem content to nap while the day wastes away. What lazy children you turned out to be. Well… easier to work with a heavy sleeper than a corpse. Up you go-“
The Gold Master reached out for Sawyer, but the thief held up his hand in protest.
“-nO! Don’t leave her! Take her home.”
“Yez?” The Gold Master asked. “Why, what’s the point in that? You’ve won boy, last one standing in the family. Embrace your victory and get back to work.”
“Please,” Sawyer begged, still facedown on the floor. “She was your favorite. Get her help. Her face-“
“Yes, yes. Shaved off quite bad. Wasn’t quite pretty beforehand, least not in the way you were. You’d have the girls running just by-“
“Shut up, please-“ Sawyer croaked out. “Just take her to get help, I’ll beg it of you. I don’t know how much longer we can last.”
The Gold Master hovered before Sawyer for a moment, before turning to the silent, adjacent cell.
“And you’ll last until I return? It’d be a damn shame for me if I lost both of you. I’ll take her, but only if I know you’re still here as the backup.”
“Yes, yes, fine. That’s fine,” Sawyer replied. “Just go.”
The Gold Master didn’t hurry though, taking his time to watch the young man as he curled up on the ground, still bound in the bard’s magic. With a huff , the Gold Master phased over to the next cell, where a young woman lay nearly dead on the floor. Unceremoniously tossing her over one shoulder, the Gold Master fiddled with his keyring and slipped through the worlds.
He chose the location with care though, a place he’d be interested in visiting and scouting before anyways. He slipped into the world and was hit with the sheer presence of autumn, in the midst of the warzone. Everything was orange and red, from the sky to the soil, and everything stank of burnt earth.
Turrets fired to the side of the city, if you could call it a city any longer. The sound of machines was distant, but not far enough away for stray shots to poke holes in the Gold Master’s robes. The Gold Master shifted Yez so she sat in his arms, and waited.
“Five…four…three-“
A whistling sound grew from the side of the city.
“Two,” “One,” “See ya, kid-“
The Gold Master tossed Yez’s body into the dirt as the missile hit the ground beside them. Ash and shrapnel flew just above their heads, decimating everything nearby, but leaving the two imposters relatively unscathed.
Shouts started up from the distance as the final lives were taken in the battle. A pair of medics, one old one young, came bounding over the rubble, following the trail of destruction.
They wouldn’t see the Gold Master, but they would find what they were here for. A lone survivor in the city of Sellve.
Jakob stole away down the hallway as soon as Blaine had retired to his room. The older doctor held the responsibility of locking up the infirmary before heading to bed, but truth be told no one really held him accountable for the task. Ross was an incredibly stiff boss, but he very rarely visited and got on their case about regulations. Besides, on most days there was absolutely nothing of interest for potential theives to find. Their patients were usually civilians or low-level soldiers, and their wares were just medical equipment.
Except for the past week. That girl they’d brought in…
Jakob kept the pan of gold flakes pressed to his chest, underneath his jacket as he walked down the hallway. He kept his pace at a frantic shuffle, eyes darting between the ends of the hallway. He was well aware that he looked like his was up to no good, but he simply couldn’t help himself. Something extraordinary had come into his possession, a mystery that filled his mind with excitement in the way the war hadn’t these past months. He was excited, for god’s sake, and excitement was even more valuable than the monetary worth of the gold in his hands.
Jakob slipped into the custodial cabinet for the infirmary, just a few inefficient hallways down from the infirmary itself. He closed the door softly behind him and jammed a broom into the door’s handle. It wouldn’t lock from the inside normally, and it swung outwards, so he had found a slight means of barring entry by just jamming the handle with a long pole. It wouldn’t hold up if someone really wanted to bust in, but who many people were going to run into the custodial cabinet at full speed anyways? The only thing he was afraid of was accidentally being caught with the gold, and the broom trap at least prevented accidental entry or even peeping without alerting him.
As soon as the broom was in place, Jakob softly kicked over a rolling bucket just to be safe, pushing it against the door. Wouldn’t stop entry, but might confuse anyone trying to rush in. He knew it was a little silly, but building this little barricade had become a ritual, and he felt safer with it up. Felt less exposed.
He set aside the gold pan and skirted over to the back of the surprisingly spacious closet, where an overturned bucket and table were setup. The table was covered in cleaning supplies to give the illusion of the table having a use, but in truth Jakob had dragged it in here from the hallway one very stressful night so that he could have a little desk to retreat to outside of the infirmary. Ended up paying off dividends when they’d started pulling gold out of the patient’s wounds, since now he had a desk to put them together on.
Jakob sat down on the bucket and carefully, silently, placed all the cleaning supplies on the floor to clear off the table. He picked up the gold pan and set it in front of him, and then opened one of the drawers of the desk and pulled out the velvet bag full of his previous work, placing it gently on the table. Reconstructing the golden fragments hadn’t been easy, but he’d made good headway, and he was excited to see what the night had yield.
It had really all started when they’d extracted a particularly large metal fragment from the patient’s face. Jakob and Blaine had already been bewildered by the fact that the metal they’d been extracting had been coated with gold foil, but that large piece revealed something more to Jakob. That piece was large enough for Blaine to realize it was sculpted, curved in a way that implied that it was a piece of something bigger. Surely it wasn’t a golden grenade that went off in the city, something golden must have been destroyed next to their patient. That golden object must have been held close by the patient too, otherwise the gold would have just vaporized in the blast.
That alone would’ve been enough mystery to get Jakob all excited for the work ahead of reassembling what had been destroyed. But, there was another catch to this that Blaine hadn’t picked up on.
The gold object destroyed was a magical artifact.
Magicians were scarce in this dimension, Jakob had realized that very quickly once he’d arrived from the North. He’d been happy to settle down in a little town in the middle of nowhere, but when he started going back into the cities and poking around, he was shocked by just how normal everything was. Sure, there was the odd mage force here and there and some magical happenstances in the news from time to time, but it was beyond rare. Jakob himself wasn’t a mage, but he knew the feeling of magic, and this world lacked that feeling. It was great.
But a little magic from time to time did get Jakob excited, especially when it landed directly in his lap. The army’s magical division would definitely fund his research into this phenomenon, but he wanted to savor the mystery just for a bit longer. He wanted to have something substantial, not something that Ross could sweep under the table. The fact the artifact was gold made Jakob suspect that if he didn’t have perfect proof that something magical was afoot, one of his higher ups would happily sell it off for some quick money, and while he’d get a quick buck, he’d lose the joy and mystery of putting together the puzzle.
So, Jakob sat alone in his little office, working away at trying to put the pieces of the gold artifact back together. It was incredibly tedious work, since most of the gold fragments were so small, and Jakob spent most of his time simply spreading out all the unassigned fragments into their own little area, and then spending lots of time looking them over, thinking about how they could fit together. It was an odd mixture of relaxing and exhilarating,
The pieces Jakob had managed to put together were interesting, to say the very least. He’d found homes for about 50 of the gold shards, and they’d formed two separate pieces. Both looked like circles with convex edges, like two small, delicate funnels. Neither funnel was deep, just a very shallow curve that could’ve just been a decorative inset. Jakob was immensely proud that he’d been able to fit those pieces together, and was only thrilled by the fact he couldn’t figure out how any of it went together.
He continued sorting and staring at the new set of shards, cleaned and dried from their removal, and watched as his clock ticked down minutes into hours. Every now and then he heard footsteps echo through the hall, the odd workers taking a late night stroll or checking up on something, but he never felt the need to hide. No one would open up the closet, and he was quiet as a mouse in there. Sorting the little flakes of gold made almost no noise whatsoever. In-fact the only form of detection that would worry him was that the shards still gave off a little bit of that magic that they’d initially stored. If any of the army’s mages had stopped by, they might have grown suspicious, but Jakob knew for a fact that none of the residents of this base were inclined towards magic. It was a crime not to report your ability to perform magic, and these were all good, law-abiding citizens.
Jakob made steady progress, connecting the two funnels and taking a bit of solder to fuse the pieces back together. They looked like glasses now, big glasses missing the lenses, and flared out in a decorative fashion on the sides. He looked at them amusedly, and continued fleshing out what the entire piece could have looked like, building out the glasses more and more. They hummed with magic beneath his fingers, and he wondered just what exactly they did. Whatever this gold artifact was, it certainly survived being split into hundreds of shards. Maybe it saved the life of the girl back in the infirmary, or perhaps it was what got her in trouble in the first place. Whatever the case, there was no way they could ask her about it. This would soon be a government secret, but in the meantime it was a Jakob secret.
Jakob slotted another piece into the glasses. His finger froze in place, still gently resting on the eyepiece. It was not a set of glasses, it was a mask. Of course. He… he recognized it.
“Well damn, and here I was thinking you’d let things slide.”
Jakob’s body tensed as the rasping voice picked up from behind him. The room suddenly smelled like spices and rot. The broom was still there, leaning against the door, but another presence had joined him in the closet. The man hovered inches away from his face, looming over his desk.
“Jakob Hertz, your new name. Not a very good one. Couldn’t even change your first name? Give it a new spelling? Did you think you were too old to re-learn your name? That was my fear when I adopted by new moniker. You reach a certain age and what people call you, well it gets to you a little more and more, don’t you think?”
Jakob tried desperately to hide what he was working on, and then to block the voice out of his head. But… he could be here. This may not be an apparition, this could be real. And if it was real, things were about to get very, very, bad.
“Come on now, Jakob,” the stranger cooed. “Come greet an old friend.”
Jakob lifted his head, looking miserable and afraid. With trembling limbs, he scooched the bucket chair forward, and sat up proper. The man hovering in front of him craned his head downwards, revealing that immaculate mask beneath the black robes. His mask was a skull, gold and silver, split down the middle with the colors partitioned to each side.
“Hello, Gold Master.” Jakob whispered.
“Why, Hello,” the Gold Master whispered back.
The Gold Master cackled and suddenly reeled back, looking more at ease and trapezing around the crowded room.
“I see you’ve put two-and-two together! Oh, what a shame. I had been hoping to keep this all a nice surprise.”
“That woman who we found, the one with the broken face,” Jakob whispered. “That’s Yez? All this time, Yez has been a young girl? She looks barely older than my granddaughter. Did you really have her do all your dirty work?”
“Well, her and her brother,” The Gold Master admitted, choosing not to take in Jakob’s shocked expression. “Teach em’ young, obscure their identity. The masks are important, you know, and it’s not just for the anti-magic they provide. There’s a sort of soulless power in being assassinated by someone with a hollow face. Really strikes fear into people’s souls right before they go plummetting down into the next afterlife. You remember hollow faces like that, even after death claims every other memory from your mind. I wonder if my face gives the same effect. What do you say, Jakob? You remember this face?”
Jakob did, and he was terrified. He’d fled to the North for a better life, and while his family was content up there, he couldn’t stay around. It hadn’t been so simple to leave though. He’d been employed by the Gold Master, and he’d done the dirty work for the man. There was a lot of blood on Jakob’s hands thanks to the Gold Master, and when he buckled and couldn’t keep up with the killing, he’d been assigned a medic. Somehow, that was even worse, because you got to see how the Gold Master treated his own men. The only two guildmembers Jakob never saw were Yez and Sawyer, the cat and the rat, the right and left hands of the Gold Master. They were his assassins, and took pleasure in gutting and torturing on behalf of their old man.
And the cat was the one who he’d planted in the infirmary. Lord knows how she had really gotten her injuries, but he’d treated her like a simple civilian, when in fact she’d killed more people than Jakob had met. He felt sick to his stomach.
The Gold Master let him recount his time, and his actions, staring passively at Jakob with his body turned away. That skull mask gleamed in the low light of the custodial closet, a threateningly beautiful thing.
“I let you go,” the Gold Master said. “And I gave you purpose, a chance to redeem yourself. You got too curious though, which I didn’t expect out of you.”
“I didn’t get too curious,” Jakob said hurridly, “Please, I didn’t know, I thought-“
“It doesn’t matter what you thought,” the Gold Master said, like a teacher lecturing a five-year-old. “What matters is that you’re a little tuned in on who’s in that bed now, and I don’t think you’re going to go back to normal after a revelation like that.”
“It’s fine,” Jakob said, burying his face in his hands. “It’s fine, I’ll head back to the infirmary, and I won’t say anything. I don’t belong here either, and you let me come here. You have enough dirt on me that you can trust me. It’s not like I want to hurt the kid either, I’m a doctor, I took an oath. She’s a civilian, just not in the right dimension, and she hasn’t even woken up yet. I know she’s gonna be fine, and I’ll do my damndest to get her fixed up for you. I swear it won’t be an issue.”
“I don’t need her fixed up,” the Gold Master said. “I just needed her alive. The other doctor can manage.”
“You- you can’t just-“
“There are two doctors in this place. My daughter only requires one. All it would take for you to finish off my favorite little girl is slipping the wrong blade into the wrong spot at the right time, or changing the dosage juuuuuuust a bit to mess things up. I don’t like little mistakes, Jakob. I don’t like wagering on a game where someone else is holding the cards.”
“Then erase my memory,” Jakob said.
“Too much work.” The Gold Master responded. “Tell the gods I’m coming for them next.”
The Gold Master’s sleeve flicked upwards, and hundreds of sewing needles shot out of the golden arm beneath it. The needles shot into Jakob’s throat, clustering together in odd bunches. Jakob gasped as the slight metal sank deeper into his throat with each dying breath, and the mask fell onto the floor.
The Gold Master across Jakob’s body, feet crushing his bones as he passed over. He knelt and picked up the mask, shuffling it into his pocket.
“Damn shame,” he said. “Well you’re coming back with me then.”
The Gold Master collected the reconstructed golden mask that Jakob had treasured, and dissapeared through the portal he’d entered from. The needles in Jakob’s body flew out in a hurry, returning to their master, and leaving the doctor in a bloody heap on the ground. Jakob’s corpse was left alone in the closet, robbed of all valuables, and killed in a fashion that no man could excuse when they found him the next day.
Months passed by without word about Katrina’s fate. Blaine figured that she’d have been cut off from returning to the infirmary after they labelled her as a magician, but he thought maybe she’d find a way to weasel out of it. She was very clever, and quick with words, and could have convinced Ross that she was innocent. She could have even blamed the magic on Blaine, and labelled him as a magician. At the very least, she could’ve snuck out and seen him, or sent a message of some sort, but no. No message came through, and Blaine was left alone in his infirmary.
There was absolutely no mention of Katrina from that point forwards. At first, Blaine kept quiet about the incident, embarrassed by his own inaction and afraid of drawing more attention to her by asking around. But, the silence began killing him, eating away at him to the point where he felt he was going mad, and he finally caved. He asked all the residents of the branch who he knew he could trust about Katrina, but none of them had any answers. He tried the more untrustworthy folks next, but they wouldn’t budge either. Some had eyes that darted when he asked, like they knew something, but knew they couldn’t say anything. That killed Blaine, but he wouldn’t be able to force it out of them.
Finally, he confronted Ross, repeatedly visiting his office and waiting to be let in, and asking the same questions over and over. Ross had the same, boring responses: unhelpful and untrustworthy. He held but a look of contempt, and a sneer of contentment on his face, and Blaine realized that the man had gotten exactly what he’d wanted. Supplying a mage to the Burnished Saddles was a boon, and a golden feather in the cap of whoever turned them in. Ross was beloved, and if Katrina was still alive, he’d continue to hold that source of pride until she finally died in a mission, and was forgotten.
Blaine ended up spending his days working away at the infirmary, trying to forget the past few months. Jakob was killed, Katrina was abducted, and he couldn’t quit. They wouldn’t let him quit, they were so understaffed at such a bad time, and he knew too much about the events that had unfolded regarding the spy’s interrogation. He was too valuable to cut loose, and despite the job being stressful and horrible and breaking him slowly, he couldn’t let it go either. The job filled him up, and distracted him so much that it became the respite. When his shift ended, and he was too exhausted to stay late in the infirmary, a wave of dread would hit the moment he sat down. He couldn’t read, could barely sleep… he just ended up doing paperwork to distract away from what was happening in his life.
Eventually, Blaine fell into a sort of slump. In order to manage everything and keep people treated in the infirmary, he had to disconnect himself a little from the job. As the frontlines got pushed further and further to his location, injured were more plentiful, and the injuries were more severe. People began dying in the infirmary, and Blaine couldn’t do much about it. Eventually, the influx of patients was so severe that Blaine had to start triaging who would receive treatment and who wouldn’t.
On one afternoon, it became the worst day of his life. So many units had come into the infirmary that, for the first time since he’d been hired there, all the beds were filled. There were still more divisions being directed into the infirmary, and he just had to deal with the worst of it, and push the excess out. He wasn’t just turning away new soldiers, he had to uproot already treated soldiers who needed the beds to make room for soldiers with even worse injuries. Some he just refused to treat entirely, marking them as too far gone the moment they reached the door.
One of the last groups that came in for the night was the worst. Two of the members were dead on arrival, and Blaine barely skirted over them as he inspected the rest. They were still fully garbed in combat attire: broken helmets, shattered visors, and shot vests riddled with holes and tears. Blaine walked down the group and, one-by-one, tried treating the most severe injuries.
The current soldier Blaine was working on had a bullet through the stomach and between the thigh and groin. Despite being shot twice, the soldier’s body still seemed in relatively good condition, and they were able to stabilize relatively quickly. With a quick explanation over to the commanding officer, Blaine dismissed the soldier and ordered them to be taken out to make room for the others. As Blaine was moving away, he heard the seemingly unconscious soldier laugh weakly:
“Hah, how rude…”
Blaine froze in place, and shooed the other officer away, reaching over to remove the helmet of the soldier on the table. Beneath the helmet, the pale but cocky face of Katrina beamed back at him.
“Surprise…” Katrina lolled, almost losing consciousness. “You wouldn’t believe how hard they tried to keep me from coming to this specific hospital.”
“Katrina…”
Blaine grabbed Katrina’s shoulders, looking around. There were a lot of eyes on the two of them, though no one seemed immediately to catch on to the significance of this encounter.
“I didn’t actually get shot just to be here,” Katrina admitted. “Guns are really… really unfair. I grew up with knives, and that shit made sense. You pull out a knife, and then someone else pulls out a knife, and you try to stab each oth-“
“Katrina!”
Blaine stared down at Katrina as she looked back, confused. Despite stopping her from talking, Blaine realized he really didn’t know what to say. He was so overwhelmed, both relieved and terrified at both the best and worst scenarios coming to light. Thankfully, Katrina decided to do him a favor in that moment and pass out completely. The absolute fear clutching Blaine whittled itself down to a small whine in the back of his head as he returned to work, insisting that she stay in the infirmary.
The rest of the day passed on, and Blaine took care of all the remaining patients in the infirmary. By the time night fell, a surprising number of the beds had cleared out, more than Blaine had remembered dismissing. There were only a few people left, including Katrina, so he spent his time at her side, wishing she would wake up and talk with him again. Explain everything. Instead though, she slept the night away, and left Blaine wondering what was going to happen and when Ross would come for her again.
Blaine finally retired to his own quarters, half-tempted to extract Katrina to her own bed as well in the doctor’s room, but aware that she needed to be kept in the infirmary to stay connected to the machines helping to keep her alive and healthy. Blaine went to his room alone, but tossed and turned throughout the night.
The strangest thing kept him awake.
The thought that suddenly began plaguing him was about Jakob’s death, and the gold. He’d stopped thinking about it at some point, unknowingly, after Katrina had woken up and they’d begun talking. Afterwards, her disappearance and work kept his mind focused elsewhere, but now that she was around again, it suddenly resurfaced in his mind. If she’d been a magician this whole time… did the gold have something to do with that? Did she turn the grenade shrapnel into gold before it hit her face, or did something else happen?
Eventually the thought drove Blaine to waking up and heading out to the cabinet where the gold shards were stored. It was a very small box that was incredibly well hidden, but not on Blaine’s person at any given time. When he’d continued extracting gold from Katrina’s wounds, he’d been afraid that Jakob’s murderer would come looking for it, so he’d taken care to put the box in an inconspicuous place, but nowhere where a thief would have to kill him to get to it. If someone had really gone digging around in the shelves, they would have found it easily, but no one had done so.
At least, that’s what he’d thought. It actually wasn’t in the same location as before though. He could have moved it by accident, but he found the box in a completely different location in the infirmary, pushed to the back of a locked cabinet. He knew he hadn’t placed it there, nor had he given the code out to anyone else in the facility. Blaine’s hands shook as he picked up the box, but he opened it immediately, revealing the gold pieces. He took the box over to his room and shut the door, spreading out the gold and inspecting it. There seemed to be no more clues here than there was before, but Blaine’s mind couldn’t rest on the subject any longer, and he just spent hours staring at the gold.
The next day went by, and Katrina woke up, but Ross returned. He didn’t demand her be taken out of the infirmary, but he kept guards trained on her bed for ‘safety’. Blaine and Katrina talked the way that a doctor and patient would, and nothing more. Blaine tried talking in code to try to deduce more, but Katrina either didn’t pick up on it, or was too tired to respond in kind. She spent most of the day sedated, and while the rest of the infirmary cleared out, the two guards remained. Night fell, and Blaine returned to his work.
He sat at his desk, poking away at the gold pieces, when he decided to do some serious sleuthing. He needed to visit where Jakob had been killed. They still hadn’t found who in the facility had done it, and now that was weighing heavily on his mind. How many months had it been since Jakob died? How many months had he just accepted the fact that no one was apprehended for the murder? So much was on his mind as of late… he felt insane for chasing so many loose ends. Even so, Blaine waited until the early AMs and pushed his way out to the custodial closet his mentor had been found in.
The custodial closet was, perhaps unsurprisingly, still used for custodial items. A small desk was pushed into the corner, but everything else was cleaning supplied. Blaine poked around, trying to find any clues, but there didn’t seem to be anything jumping out. Whoever had murdered Jakob had clearly stolen all the gold, and there was no sign of who killed him.
Except, there was a drawing. It was folded up neatly, tucked underneath the desk, pressed down by one of the desk’s legs. Blaine had only known to search there since Jakob had hidden documents in that bullshit way in the past, so he was somewhat expecting it going in. The drawing was simple, and had been refolded and added to several times. It had a rough outline of what looked like Jakob’s best attempts at putting the gold flakes back together. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to go off of based on the note. It looked like two bowl-like formations, or maybe the same bowl at two different angles. The important part wasn’t what the gold flakes were forming though, it was that Jakob had clearly seen a pattern that Blaine didn’t. Suddenly, Blaine was very much aware that perhaps it wasn’t a robber who had gotten to Jakob.
“For Pete’s sake, does everyone want to get murdered in this closet?”
Blaine jerked around, spinning completely to face the source of the sound. A man, shrouded in black cloth, loomed near the door, looking at him. Instead of flesh, the man was covered in gold and silver, his face spun into a skull.
“Alright kid, you know the drill,” the intruder said, flexing his hands. “You stumble on weird secrets, you get whacked. That’s just business.”
Blaine backed up against the desk, looking around frantically. He knew how Jakob had died, and he didn’t want to share the same grisly fate. Whoever this magician was, they were serious, and they were going to end him very painfully.
Before the man could raise a weapon though, there was a slight knock on the door.
Both the man and Blaine froze, confused. The man sighed, and turned around, opening the door. “Kinda busy here- Oh, just who I was looking for.”
The man opened the door fully, revealing Katrina standing out in the hallway. She’d done away with her hospital gown, and put on her combat gear again, with two pistols strapped to her sides. Blaine’s brain screamed as he realized she’d followed him out here, and was now about to be murdered as well.
But Katrina entered gently, and purposefully, as if she’d found what she was looking for. Her eyes darted over to him briefly, but then over to the intruder.
“He’s the Gold Master,” she explained, pointing at the intruder. “You shouldn’t talk directly to him if you want to live.” She pointed over at Blaine, “This is the doctor who took care of me. Show some hospitality and let him live. It’s not like he’s got any dirt on us. I doubt we’ll be coming back here.”
Blaine’s heart hammered in his chest, looking into the cold eyes of Katrina as she scanned him, waiting for a response. Her face was completely neutral, like inspecting a stranger or a spot on the pavement.
“I suppose I am generous, aren’t I,” The Gold Master laughed. “Also damn, your face is all sorts of whack. Good thing you’ve got a mask. And you’re right, I don’t see us coming back here. Much better hospitals in the 21st century, I assure you. Even so, it was nice to stop by, wasn’t it? Your first taste of what the world can be. Come on, let’s get a move on, you’re very behind on your work.”
The Gold Master turned away, fiddling with some keys by his side. Katrina kept staring at him, and he kept staring back, focusing on the ruined part of her face he’d stitched back together. “Who is he? Who are you?,” he asked, trying to keep as quiet as possible to keep the conversation between the two of them.
“I work with knives,” was Katrina’s response. For the first time, it sounded like a threat, more than a skillset. It clicked in Blaine’s mind that maybe smiths weren’t the only folks who grew up wielding knives. Katrina flexed a hand, and Blaine’s eye darted down to look at it. There was a scalpel in it, slick with blood. A sick feeling rose in his stomach, as he realized Katrina couldn’t have gotten down the hall to the closet without the guards noticing.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
Katrina’s eyes flicked over to the Gold Master, and then back to him instantaneously. “We won’t be back. I was injured, so he dropped me off here. I’m better, so I get to leave.”
“You were shot yesterday,” Blaine pleaded, desperately. “You’re not good enough to leave the infirmary, for any weird ass reason, by anyone’s standards.”
“He’s impatient,” Katrina responded, refusing to elaborate further. As they continued to stare at one another, Blaine thought he saw a hint of something as she said that, like she wasn’t elaborating because she herself didn’t know either.
With a sound of enlightenment, the Gold Master pulled out what seemed to be the correct key from his pocket, and stuck it the wood of the closet’s door. With a loud WHOOSH and a swirl of light and sound, a large golden portal expanded before them, opening up space in front of them much wider than the room had been. The room stretched out to match the width of the portal, bending and groaning to match what magic was at play here. The Gold Master stepped through the portal, and Katrina turned to do the same.
“Katrina-“ Blaine said, reaching a hand out desperately.
Katrina paused, and turned back to match his gaze. The portal was pitch black behind her, but the portal’s rim casted a bright yellow light across her face. She waited expectantly, but he saw the disappointment in her eyes, as though she didn’t expect him to say anything important. He knew what to say this time, though. It was what he should have said when they took her the first time. It’s what he was going to say, now that another man had come to take her to the place where her face had been destroyed.
“Katrina, run.”
Katrina smiled at that. A big, incredulous smile, like she thought it was a joke. She didn’t laugh though, she just let it fade away completely. They stood looking at one another for a moment more, with no expression left on Katrina’s face.
“Bye Blaine.”
Katrina dissapeared through the portal. The portal vanished. The lighting returned.
Blaine stood alone in the custodial closet for a good few minutes. He pushed open the door.
For a moment, he just stood in the dark hall, lit by only the few fluorescent lights they kept on at night. He looked up the hall, and saw no one. He looked down the hall, and saw no one. Katrina’s guards were dead, and she’d vanished without a trace. His mentor was dead, and a magician had killed him for finding out the secret of who Katrina had been. The war continued, and he was an overworked medic on the wrong side of the war, working for the worst people. What was he doing? What was he doing?! Nothing made sense, it hadn’t made sense in such a long time… but he was still here. How long had it taken for things to get this bad?
Blaine took a breath in the hallway, absent-mindedly grabbing at his coat. Katrina wasn’t going to listen to him. Katrina wasn’t going to come back, and even if she did, she’d let the Burnished Saddles throw her into the mage corp again. She was going to let them keep her under their foot, these guy and the man in gold who’d abandoned her here after she’d been too injured to work for him. Didn’t she know better?
The thought finally broke through in Blaine’s mind.
Did- Did he know any better?
Blaine took a final look around the hallway, panic beginning to well up in his chest. He decided on anywhere but here. He began to run.