Two guards at the end of the corridor. They saw me coming, opened fire. I moved between cover points—a supply cart, a doorframe, a corner that gave me a shooting angle. One guard down. The other tried to retreat, reached for a radio. I put a round through his hand and another through his kneecap.
He screamed, dropped. Not dead, but he wasn't going anywhere.
The corridor ended at a set of double doors—reinforced steel, industrial-grade locks, a window of thick glass at head height. The surgical suite. Brand's operating theater.
I looked through the window and my heart stopped.
Maya was on the table.
Unconscious, or at least unmoving. Strapped down at wrists, ankles, hips, chest. Hospital gown thin enough that I could see the black lines traced across her abdomen—surgical marker, incision planning, the kind of careful mapping surgeons did before they cut.
Organ mapping. They'd marked her while she slept.
And standing over her, positioning a scalpel with the steady hands of a man who'd done this a thousand times, was a surgeon. Distinguished. Silver-haired. Kindly.
Dr. Richard Brand. The architect of this nightmare. The man who'd trained Maya, destroyed her career, and was now about to take her apart piece by piece.
The door was locked. Reinforced. Built specifically to keep people out of this room.
I hit it with everything I had.
First kick: the frame groaned, held.
Second kick: something cracked, but the door stayed in place.
Inside, Brand looked up from his work. Through the window, I saw him register what was happening—the assault, the breach, the man trying to break down his door. His face shifted through emotions too fast to track: surprise, calculation, decision.
He pressed the scalpel to Maya's skin. Not cutting yet. Just letting the blade rest there, a threat, a bargaining chip.
Third kick: the door gave.
I was through before it finished swinging, weapon up, sight picture on Brand's center mass. But he'd already moved—positioned himself behind Maya's body, using her as cover, the scalpel now pressed against her abdomen where his incision marks began.
"One step closer," he said, his voice calm, reasonable, the voice of a man used to being in control, "and I start cutting. She's worth more in pieces, but I'll take what I can get."
I stopped. The monster screamed for blood, but Maya's life hung on a razor's edge.
Brand's hand was steady. Of course it was—he was a surgeon, had probably held that same grip on a thousand scalpels over a thirty-year career. The only tremor I could see was in his eyes, and even that was controlled. Calculated.
This was a man used to holding lives in his hands. Used to being the one who decided who lived and who died.
"You don't understand what she is," he said, almost conversationally. Like we were colleagues discussing a difficult case. Like Maya wasn't unconscious between us, mapped for dissection. "Universal donor. O-negative blood, compatible tissue markers across the board. Do you know how rare that is?"
I didn't move. Couldn't risk it with that blade pressed against her skin. One flinch, one sudden movement, and he could open her up before I crossed the distance.
"Her organs could save six, seven lives." Brand's voice warmed with conviction. The true believer, explaining his faith to the unconverted. "Important lives. A senator who needs a liver. A tech CEO whose kidneys are failing. A diplomat whose heart is giving out." He tilted his head slightly, regarding me with something like pity. "These are people who matter. People who make decisions that affect millions. What's one disgraced doctor against that?"
The words landed in my skull like lit matches on gasoline.
One disgraced doctor.
People who actually matter.
The exact wrong words. The precise combination of syllables that could make me stop thinking, stop calculating, stop being anything except the monster I'd spent thirty years becoming.
I didn't remember throwing the knife.
One moment it was in my hand. The next, Brand was screaming—a high, shocked sound that didn't match his composed face—and red bloomed across his wrist. The scalpel clattered to the floor, bouncing twice before spinning to a stop against the wall.
