Scene 1. Pharmacy Storeroom
The sound of a neck breaking.
Blunt. Similar to a branch snapping, but heavier. Wetter. Flesh and tendon were folded into the sound.
The guard's body slid down the wall.
Lee Kang's hand came away from the collar of the uniform. Five fingers unfolded one at a time. Nothing clung to them. He had killed in a way that drew no blood.
The second guard already lay face-down. The back of his skull had struck the corner of the wall. Breath was still in him. Thin breath. Lee Kang's ear caught it. Caught it, discarded it. Beneath his concern.
He pushed the steel rear door.
No sound. The hinges still held oil. It was a hospital. The door opened onto a corridor. A white corridor. Floor tiles glowed faintly in the moonless dark of pre-dawn.
A smell arrived.
Alcohol. The acrid sting of antiseptic struck his nose. Beneath it, something else. Pharmaceuticals. The chemical smell of powders and liquids mingled. Lee Kang's lungs drew it in.
His heart struck once, hard.
It's here.
His feet quickened. He followed the corridor. Barefoot. He had left his shoes in the abandoned warehouse. His soles grazed cold tile. No sound. The walk of a beast. The walk of a feline with its claws retracted.
The pharmacy storeroom was at the corridor's end.
A padlock was set. Lee Kang's hand closed around it. Gripped. Twisted. Metal shrieked. The sound of the lock crumpling rang through the corridor. The shackle snapped.
He opened the door.
Shelves came into view. Rows of glass bottles. Labels affixed. English. Lee Kang's eyes swept across them. Not reading the letters. Scanning the shapes of the letters. Searching for words he could recognize.
Morphine. Quinine. Adrenaline.
His hands began sweeping the glass bottles into a pile. There was no coat pocket. The coat was beneath Yeonhwa. He had left his shirt behind too. Bare-bodied. Lee Kang seized a roll of gauze from the shelf and spread it open. Set the bottles on the gauze. One. Two. Three. As he reached for the fourth—
Footsteps in the corridor.
Leather shoes. The steady cadence of hard soles on tile. Not a patrol. One person. Lee Kang's ears measured the weight of the steps. Light. Not military boots.
His body melted behind the storeroom door. Into the darkness. The bottles still wrapped in gauze.
The footsteps drew closer.
Passed.
Lee Kang's eyes tracked their owner through the gap in the door. A white coat fluttered through the corridor's dark. From the coat pocket, the sound of metal striking metal. A stethoscope. Or a scalpel. Or both.
A doctor.
Lee Kang's foot slid from behind the door.
Scene 2. Examination Room
When the doctor opened the examination room door, Lee Kang was already standing behind him.
The doctor turned on the light.
In the instant the lamp came on, what entered the doctor's vision was his own shadow. A shadow stretched long across the examination room wall. Beside that shadow, one more. A shadow that did not belong to him. Far larger, far wider.
The doctor tried to turn.
Lee Kang's hand caught the doctor's throat.
Not caught—enveloped. From beneath the jaw to the collarbone, wrapped in a single hand. The doctor's body was hauled backward. His back struck Lee Kang's bare chest. The back of his head pressed against Lee Kang's collarbone.
The doctor screamed.
Screamed was not the right word. He tried to scream. Lee Kang's hand was pressing on his throat, so the sound was crushed in his windpipe. Only a strangled gnnk leaked out.
The doctor's hand clawed at the air. Something fell from his coat pocket. Metal struck tile. Clink. A scalpel. The small, sharp blade spun once beside Lee Kang's bare foot and stopped.
Lee Kang's foot came down on the scalpel.
"Scream and you die."
Lee Kang said. Into the doctor's ear. A low voice. Not a whisper. There is softness in a whisper. This was the sound of iron being ground against stone.
The doctor's body locked. Trembling began. His legs trembled first. Knees knocked against each other. The heels of his leather shoes made a click-click on the tile floor.
Lee Kang's hand loosened minutely on the doctor's throat. Just enough to breathe. Just enough not to die.
The doctor drew in air.
Gasped. A coughing fit. Between coughs, words came.
"What—what do you w—"
English. Lee Kang's ear caught the English. Caught it, ignored it.
"You speak Korean."
Lee Kang said.
The doctor's trembling stopped for an instant. Stopped, then started again. Worse.
"...I speak."
Korean. The awkward Korean a Westerner's tongue makes. The pronunciation was thick.
"A woman is sick."
Lee Kang said. That was all. No symptom, no cause, no history. A woman is sick. That single sentence was the entirety of the information Lee Kang required.
The doctor's eyes rolled sideways. Trying to see Lee Kang's hand. Lee Kang's bare arm came into the doctor's view. A shoulder cooked through with burns. A back where the sutures had come undone. A forearm crusted with dried blood.
The color drained from the doctor's face.
"You're the patient...?"
"Not me. A woman."
Lee Kang cut him off.
He turned the doctor's head toward the examination room cabinet. One hand under the doctor's jaw, twisting the direction. Inside the cabinet, rows of medicine bottles. Syringes. Transfusion equipment.
"All of it. Pack."
Lee Kang said.
The doctor's legs gave way. He started to sink to the floor. Lee Kang's hand tightened on his throat again. Lifted him back up. The way one stands a doll.
"Stand and you live."
No feeling in Lee Kang's voice. Only proposition. Stand and you live. Sit and you die. Nothing existed between.
The doctor's trembling hand opened the cabinet. The sound of glass bottles striking each other. He took out syringes. Cotton. Bandages. One bottle slipped from his hand. It hit the floor and shattered. Clear liquid spread across the tile. The smell of alcohol rose.
Lee Kang's eyes dropped to the broken bottle.
One beat.
"Break one more and you lose the hand."
The doctor's hand stopped. Not the trembling—the motion stopped within the trembling. Then began again. He started putting bottles into a bag. One at a time. Teeth chattering as he worked.
Lee Kang stood behind him and waited.
While he waited, the scent piled inside his nose. Alcohol. Pharmaceuticals. Sterilized metal. A clean scent. The scent of a hospital. The scent of a place that could fix Yeonhwa.
The corner of Lee Kang's mouth lifted, barely.
Behind the doctor's back. Where the doctor could not see.
Then, from the corridor, a sound.
Military boots.
Scene 3. Breakthrough
Not one pair.
The sound of boots filled the corridor. Two. Three. Four. Five pairs of feet hammering the tile, running.
"The guards—" the doctor tried to say.
Lee Kang's hand clamped over the doctor's mouth. He thrust the bag into the doctor's chest. One hand caught the doctor's waist. The way one would seize a sack of rice.
He kicked the examination room door.
The door opened inward, so it did not fly outward. Instead, the hinges tore free. The door panel toppled into the corridor and skidded across the tile.
At the far end of the corridor, uniforms came into view.
Muzzles first. Behind the muzzles, faces. Behind the faces, expressions. There was no time to read expressions.
Lee Kang ran.
Left. Not toward the rear door. The rear door was already dead. They had discovered the guards he had taken down. Left. Toward the emergency exit.
The first shot cracked.
The gunshot split the corridor. A hole opened in the tiled wall. Splinters scraped Lee Kang's cheek. It stung. He ignored it.
The second shot grazed Lee Kang's side.
Grazed. Plowed across the skin and passed. A hot line drew itself across his side. A kkh escaped Lee Kang's mouth. His legs did not stop.
The third shot hit the doctor's bag.
The sound of glass breaking inside the bag. The smell of pharmaceuticals burst out. Lee Kang's nose caught it. The smell of what he had come to save shattering.
His teeth clenched.
The emergency exit door appeared at the far left. A steel door. It might be locked, it might not. No time to check.
His shoulder hit the door.
The left shoulder. The side where the sutures had come undone. The instant the shoulder struck the door, the wound that had already been splitting fully ruptured under the impact. Flesh parted and something hot poured out. Lee Kang's vision tilted once. The world rotated forty-five degrees to the left.
The door opened.
His body spilled outward on momentum. Stairs. Emergency stairs. Not up but down. His feet hit the steps. Three at a time. The doctor's body swung at Lee Kang's side. The doctor was screaming. Through the hand pressed over his mouth, a sound like weeping leaked out.
Blood ran down his back.
Blood that had begun at the ruptured left shoulder traveled down the spine to the waist. Each time he leaped down a step, blood splashed behind him. Red marks stamped themselves onto the stairs.
He kicked the door on the lower floor.
It opened. Outside. The pre-dawn air struck Lee Kang's wet back. Cold. Sweat and blood cooled together and his body shuddered once, hard.
An alley. The narrow alley behind the hospital. Trash bins and empty pharmaceutical crates piled together. Lee Kang's foot stepped onto wet earth. Slipped. His knee buckled. The doctor's body tried to slip from Lee Kang's grip.
Lee Kang's fingers burrowed into the doctor's waistband.
Did not let go.
He straightened his knee and rose. Ran. Turned the corner of the alley. From behind him, the sound of boots kicking through the emergency exit. Shouting. Japanese. Lee Kang's brain received the language, did not translate it, discarded it.
The alley forked.
Left and right. Lee Kang's nose moved. From the left came the smell of sewer. From the right, the smell of oil. His feet turned left. Toward the sewer. Toward the familiar. The way a rat returns to its hole.
The blood that had run down his back drew a thread across the alley floor.
Lee Kang did not look back.
Scene 4. Return
The warehouse door opened.
Drip. Drip.
The water from the ceiling came first. Then the click of Doctor Jang's pipe being turned between his fingers, coming from the deep end of the dark.
Lee Kang set the doctor on the floor.
Set down was not the right word. He dropped him. The doctor's back struck the dirt. A blunt sound. The doctor was already unconscious. Somewhere in the middle of the alley, his head had hit the corner of a wall and he had lost consciousness. The bag was still gripped in his hand. The bag with shattered glass inside. The smell of pharmaceuticals spread across the dirt.
Lee Kang's knees gave way.
One knee to the ground. Strength was draining from his arms. Blood still ran from his left shoulder. The graze along his side smarted. His entire back felt as though it had been laid on a fire.
Doctor Jang's footsteps approached.
Lee Kang raised his head.
Through the dark, Doctor Jang's outline came into view. The pipe was no longer at his lips. He was looking down at Lee Kang. At the doctor on the floor. At the doctor's bag. At Lee Kang's blood.
The corner of Lee Kang's mouth lifted.
A grotesque smile. A smile that climbed from a blood-dried mouth, splitting it as it rose. The eyes did not smile. Only the amber burned in the dark like a banked ember.
"I brought him."
Lee Kang said.
"The one with the best medicine."