Scene 1. On the Ashes
A blood-soaked hand caught the ladder.
One rung. Two. The shoulder wound—the through-and-through—split open with every climb. Each time he raised his arm, the flesh inside the bored hole pulled. Breath leaked from Lee Kang's mouth. Ragged.
His head emerged from the manhole.
Ashes. Dawn was coming. A gray sky. Gray ashes. Among them, embers not yet cooled were lodged here and there, red.
Lee Kang crawled up onto the ashes.
Yeonhwa still bound to his back. The medicine bottles still cradled in his chest. He braced both hands against the ashes and hauled his body up. Ash crumbled beneath his palms. Warm. Ash not yet cooled. His soles stepped onto it. Something hot stabbed his soles. He tried to ignore it.
It would not be ignored.
Pain arrived.
All at once. Every pain that had been switched off in the sewer switched on at once when it met the air aboveground. The through-and-through in his shoulder. The bite on his forearm. The laceration on his side, laid over five times. The gunshot in his thigh. The burns. His soles. All of it screamed simultaneously.
His knees buckled.
He drove one knee into the ashes. Yeonhwa swayed on his back. His hand reflexively gripped her thigh. So as not to drop her. That, at least.
A cough burst from his mouth. Blood-mixed. Red specks scattered across the ashes. Dark red on gray.
Water dripped from his chest.
From the medicine packet. From the packet soaked in sewer water, muddy water dripped, drop by drop. His hand drew the packet deeper into his embrace. So no more would fall. The paper had gone soft beneath his palm. Mushy as paste.
His eyes looked down at the packet.
Wet paper. Softened herbs. Licorice and peony steeped in muddy water. There was no one to turn them into medicine.
Lee Kang stood.
Staggering. One step. He did not know where he was going. He simply stood. Because if he stayed still, he felt he would sink.
He walked.
Across the ashes. With no direction.
Scene 2. A Third Muzzle
A gunshot came from behind.
Lee Kang's feet stopped. He turned. Beyond the ashes, uniforms were approaching. A sanitation unit. A second mop-up squad. Five masked uniforms. Carrying rifles. One pointed at Lee Kang and shouted. Japanese. A fire order.
The muzzles turned toward Lee Kang.
His body tried to react. Tried to gather strength in his legs. It would not gather. Exhausted muscles did not obey the command. Like a gun out of powder. The energy he had filled with cannibalism had all flowed out through the shoulder wound.
His knees tried to buckle again.
If he fell with Yeonhwa in his arms—
A gunshot cracked.
Not aimed at Lee Kang. It came from the side. From within the smoke. From a place unseen. Muzzle flash flickered among the gray smoke. Once. Twice. Three times.
The sanitation unit's uniforms fell.
From the front. One. Two. Precise shooting. Head and chest. The uniforms fell onto the ashes. The rest turned, swinging their rifles to the side. Toward the smoke. From within the smoke, gunshots came again. The rest fell too.
All five lay on the ashes.
Lee Kang's eyes turned toward the smoke.
What had fired was not the Imperial Army. Not uniforms. Within the smoke, figures were moving. Dark clothing. Cloth covering their faces. Hands holding rifles.
Suspicion ignited in Lee Kang's head.
They did it.
The ones who took Doctor Jang. If not the search party. It might be them. His hand clenched into a fist. His exhausted body gathered its last strength. The amber eyes narrowed toward the smoke.
The figures within the smoke stopped.
Lowered their muzzles.
Scene 3. Out of Focus
A masked man stepped forward.
Rifle slung over his shoulder. He raised both hands. A sign of no hostility. Only the man's eyes were visible above the mask. Those eyes looked at Lee Kang. His blood-soaked body. Yeonhwa bound to his back. The sanitation unit corpses scattered on the ashes, and beyond them, the traces Lee Kang had left toward the sewer.
Something rose in the man's eyes.
Awe. Awe mixed with fear. The eyes of one facing the true nature of a thing that had torn apart Ookami, slaughtered a sanitation unit, and stained the heart of the Empire blood-red.
"We're not enemies."
The man said. In Korean. Low and careful.
"We can help an injured person."
Lee Kang's eyes looked at the man.
One word of the man's speech lodged in his brain. We can help. An injured person. Yeonhwa. They can help.
His mouth opened.
"Is there a doctor."
The man's eyes blinked once. Not the question he had expected.
"...Comrade. We share the same enemy. The Empire makes people like you, and hunts people like you. That power—"
"I asked if there's a doctor."
Lee Kang cut him off.
The man stopped. Started again.
"There's a physician. In our organization. He treats wounded comrades."
Light returned to Lee Kang's eyes.
The amber, dimmed by exhaustion, found focus. Not the change that comes when prey's position is marked. Something else. The change in a drowning man who spots a piece of driftwood.
"Can he make medicine."
Lee Kang said. Touching the medicine bottles in his chest with one hand.
"With this. Ether. And opium. And this."
The man's eyes looked at Lee Kang's chest. At the glass bottles cradled against a blood-steeped chest. At the softened packet. The man did not know what they were. Did not know what Lee Kang was saying.
"Whatever it is you have," the man said carefully, "our physician will look at it. Come with us. We have a safe place, away from the Empire's eyes."
The man took one step closer.
"With that power of yours, we could bring down the Government-General. Korea—"
"There's a doctor in the safe place."
Lee Kang cut him off again.
"And he can make medicine. That's what you're saying."
The man's mouth closed. One beat. Something passed through his eyes. The eyes of one who realized this monster was not hearing a single word he said. Independence, toppling the Empire, comradeship—none of it was reaching this monster's ears. This monster was hearing only one thing.
The man decided to use it.
"That's right," the man said. "There's a doctor, and he can make medicine. If you come with us."
Whether truth or lie, Lee Kang did not weigh it. There was no need. He can make medicine. That alone reached him.
The corner of Lee Kang's mouth lifted, faintly.
The man saw it and stepped back. Because the smile did not look like a smile.
Scene 4. Tool No. 2
Lee Kang followed the man.
Across the ashes. Along the shadows of collapsed buildings. The masked figures moved surrounding Lee Kang. As if escorting. As if guarding. Both.
The man—the squad leader—led the way. He spoke as he walked. Without stopping. About the organization, about operations, about the monster unit the Empire had loosed in the heart of Gyeongseong.
"There's word they came out from beneath a great house," the leader said. "Count Lee's estate. Finished types, made there. A different order entirely from the ones you faced."
Lee Kang's ear caught the words. Caught them, discarded them. Great house. Count Lee. Monster unit. Words with no meaning. Words unrelated to making medicine.
The entrance to an underground passage appeared.
Beneath a collapsed building. A concealed entrance. A narrow, dark passage led down. The leader descended first. As Lee Kang moved to follow, the leader held out his hand.
"Let me carry the packet. It's wet, so before it spoils—"
Lee Kang's body locked.
The leader's hand was reaching for the packet. From Lee Kang's chest. Lee Kang's hand wrapped the packet. A growl climbed from his throat.
The leader withdrew his hand.
"...You carry it, then."
Lee Kang entered the passage.
Narrow. His shoulders met both walls. Lee Kang bent at the waist so the head of Yeonhwa on his back would not touch the ceiling. The passage led downward. Into the dark.
His mouth opened.
To Yeonhwa. To Yeonhwa on his back. In a voice too small for anyone to hear.
"Doctor Jang is dead."
Lee Kang whispered.
He was not dead. He had fled. But what came from Lee Kang's mouth was that he was dead. If he was dead, it was not fleeing. It was not betrayal. Doctor Jang had not betrayed him—he had been lost. What was lost could be replaced with something new.
"It doesn't matter."
Lee Kang whispered on.
"These ones will make it. They say there's a doctor. They say he can make the medicine."
The medicine bottles struck each other in his chest. Clink. Ether. Opium tincture. Catalyst. The softened packet.
Yeonhwa's hand hung limp over Lee Kang's shoulder. Cold fingers. Resting against the side of his neck. Whether a pulse beat there, he could not tell. He could tell only that it was touching.
His feet descended into the dark.
Ahead, the leader was walking. The leader's back swayed in the dark. He was looking forward, speaking again. Things about saving the nation, about the greater cause. His calculation to use Lee Kang as a weapon. His design to make Lee Kang into Korea's blade.
Lee Kang looked at that back.
His amber eyes glowed in the dark.
The leader believed he was leading Lee Kang in.
Lee Kang was going in to use them.
Two different thoughts walked down side by side through the same darkness.
The passage deepened.
The light receded.