Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: pay thine insurance premiums, and all this can be yours for a low, low price!
Neon Matthew 10:8
- - -
The ambassador had debriefed, well, more like interrogated, her for about a half an hour. She had told him the story of Captain Arpa and mentioned her arm, and, after the ambassador had stood and excused himself, a nurse had appeared and taken her into a small, sterile looking room where she was asked to take off her blood-stained sweater.
Mr. Pipe had been taken away by another guard.
The nurse had her hair tied up in a tight bun held by a blue plastic chopstick. Hitomi thought she had a pretty face, currently set in a stern scowl, and she was wearing a white coat over business-like clothes.
She undid the sticky bandages as Hitomi sat on a paper-lined table. It was cold, just being in her camisole, and as the gauze was unwrapped she stared at her arm with disbelief. She'd already seen it before, in part, but seeing it all at once was jarring.
The flesh of her arm was almost one long stretch of purple and blue. The nurse had gasped, stunned as well, and begun exploring the length of the unsightly lesions marring Hitomi's otherwise beautiful, pale skin. The nurse's light touch traced clinically over her shoulder and over the left side of her chest, before pulling back.
"You're going to need to let that down," the nurse stated.
Hitomi nodded, understanding, and even though it hurt she reached back with one of her hands to unclasp her bra.
Ow, god. It hurt to pull her arm back behind that far, and her pinched face was quickly noticed by the nurse, who must've felt bad. She offered to undo it for her.
"Please," Hitomi said, grateful as she was able to relax her arm and let the pain in her chest subside.
"There you go," the nurse said kindly, unsnapping the latch and then pulling her camisole and bra straps down to the sides. Hitomi looked down, and saw that the bruising didn't seem to extend down towards her breasts. It trailed just above and across part of her collarbone. There was a slight dip of purpled flesh towards her sternum, but that was it.
"No way..." the nurse said in shock, tracing the contours of the contusions, "I've never seen anything like this."
Hitomi nodded, "I know, it was... terrible out there."
"But this is just, I just - I've never even heard of a case like this! I need the doctor to look. Who wrapped you up before?"
Hitomi explained her encounter with the Latvians and the nurse nodded along, complimenting their efforts. She then stepped out of the room for a moment and left Hitomi alone with her thoughts.
Hitomi had a lot of thoughts.
In fact, this was one of the first moments of quiet she had been given in the many hours since the Voice, or, as she was calling it in her head now, the "Messenger", had done what it had done.
She calmed herself, trying to ignore the soreness of her arms, her half naked upper-chest, and the chill in the room. Instead, she tried to focus on the important moments that had happened so far and try to rationalize what to do about it.
First: Magic was either real, or a next-generation level of technology was at play.
At this point it honestly seemed like a toss-up. Although, as Arthur C. Clarke, the famous science fiction writer had once said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
So possible solutions to the angelic assassination and revocation of souls included, by her reckoning: actual gods, aliens, wizards, or a hidden super-society of human technologists that were playing the greatest hoax in human history.
And what a way to start it, with the highest profile murder of a political figure since Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
No doubt other people were doing everything they could to not have to accept that any sort of Holy Judgment had occurred. She didn't know if modern society could handle the reality of a living God, who, after silence for millennia, had completely abandoned all humans.
She could see why the new President had claimed it was all just a terrorist hoax. The alternative was... not just inconceivable. No, it was a spiritual death sentence for an uncomfortably large percentage of humanity.
Her money was on alien interference, at this point.
Second thing: she couldn't explain her strange power, or why she alone seemed to be exhibiting it. Admittedly, she had a very small sample size to compare herself with, but it didn't look like one of those scenarios where the entire world gets turned into "video game rules."
Third to that: her power, whatever it's nature, was incredibly dangerous. Both to others and herself. "It" - she was calling it "it" - had thought nothing of brutalizing the musculature of her left arm to keep her alive during the fight. It had thought nothing of making her stumble and stop, just so that Corporal Ivanova would turn around and shield her body unknowingly from a bullet, at the cost of his own life.
Her body was too weak to handle this kind of preternatural power. She had no training, no skillset for defense (or offense). So it had used her like a meat puppet.
Oh. That word again.
Meat.
Perhaps there was some sort of connection with the Messenger, after all? But... she wasn't a Christian, she wasn't a believer. She was just Hitomi.
But now she was a Hitomi Hisakawa that, for whatever reason, had some sort of protective force shrouded around her. It seemed like it would keep her alive at all costs, but, what would living be like if it left her a limbless torso, unable to even move?
But what could she do about it?
Stay inside a locked room, forever?
She wasn't a fighter. She didn't really know how to use a gun or swing her pipe around like her body had managed to force her to. She had seen the surprised look on one of the flicker-Hitomi's when the gun had run out of ammunition.
Oh! The after-images, the flickers! They were... they were the "hers" that failed to perform the right action at the right time. That must be it.
It was almost like a Quick Time Event in a video game: if she made the wrong choice, she died.
But the choices seemed to be being made automatically.
Think, Hitomi. Think!
This is like Daiichi's games.
If she had to give it a name, it would be "Absolute Defense." No, actually, wait, maybe "Absolute *Personal* Defense." It did nothing to help others.
But wait, that wasn't exactly true: what about the baby she had saved?
The door opened band interrupted her line of thinking.
"My god, what the hell happened to her?" the doctor said - also female, Hitomi noted, which she felt vaguely surprised about for some reason. The woman fetched up Hitomi's left arm in her hand and Hitomi flinched, but was unable to pull her arm out of the woman's grip.
The doctor had very short hair, down to just below her ears, and it swished back and forth in a black halo around the doctor's head as she moved around, assessing the damage. She was older than the nurse, much older, but still had a youthful cast to her features. Like the nurse she had a white coat on, which was buttoned, but was obviously wearing some sort of office suit beneath it.
She was palpating and pushing with her hands all up Hitomi's arm. Hitomi let out gasps with each painful prod and tears of pain came to her eyes. As quickly as it began it was over.
The doctor had a scrunched up nose and was sniffing her own fingertips.
"Diclofenac gel?" she asked the nurse, who shrugged non-committedly, so the doctor turned to Hitomi.
"Do you know what the other doctor put on your arm?"
Hitomi shook her head, she'd been in too much pain to care.
"Hmm... probably just an NSAID like I thought, but these look like non-contact contusions. The damage to the blood vessels is all internal. How'd you do this?"
"Um, I was attacked with my friends, and I kinda... just kept swinging a pipe at them as hard as I could?"
The doctor scoffed, "A pipe? What type of pipe? PVC?"
"PVC?" asked Hitomi, unsure what she meant.
"Plastic," the doctor clarified.
"Oh, um, no, it's made of steel, I think, about this long." Hitomi showed her by stretching out her arms, which sent another wave of dull pain down her arms and chest.
The doctor, pushing her glasses up her nose, looked completely unconvinced. Obviously she hadn't been made privy to the security camera footage of the massacre at Sheridan Circle.
"You can't be serious?"
Hitomi simply nodded, having grown very tired ] of having to repeat her story ad nauseam, but decided to fill in the background details based on what Hailey had come up with.
"I have some martial arts experience and I just - um, massively overdid it. Maybe it was the adrenaline? It was a near-death experience."
The doctor was massaging Hitomi's upper arm, testing for the most painful parts, and her expression had softened a bit.
"I'm sorry that happened to you, but you have to avoid using those kinds of martial arts again. The damage is extensive, but it'll heal if you let it. Are you left handed?"
"Yes," Hitomi confirmed.
"How rare," the doctor commented. "Well, hmm, the best I can do for you is ibuprofen. It's all internal, just don't do... whatever it was you did, again."
"Thank you very much," Hitomi said.
The nurse stepped forward and handed her a flat, white cardboard box.
"These are a change of clothes and some undergarments. Toiletries too. We have a shower here in the medbay, over there, so if you -"
Hitomi jumped off the table in excitement, realizing she could finally wash the day's grime off of her body.
"Thank you so much!" she said again, this time with far more enthusiasm.
"We'll leave you for some privacy for a bit; if you hear a knock it's because we need the room for another patient. Until then, ah, make yourself comfortable. There are towels in the cabinet. Try to relax: doctor's orders, OK?"
The door clicked shut, leaving Hitomi alone again at last.
No stranger to having to take a quick shower with the threat of interruption (thank you Smith family children for the good training!) she shrugged her straps back on and bustled over to the cabinet the doctor had indicated and found a stack of thin, pressed towels inside.
She took one out and slung it over the shower curtain rod, then sat down in a nearby chair and quickly opened the box, finding the contents exactly as described.
A long, XL white T-shirt that would swallow her to her knees, a pair of grey sweatpants, again, very large but at least with a drawstring, some boring underwear that left everything to the imagination, and tiny hotel-sized bars of soap and mini-bottles of 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner.
Ah, thank you Hotel de Embassy Japan!
She gingerly disrobed, folded her skirt (tucking her panties between her skirt and camisole), and peeled off her tights.
Oh wow, yeah, they were ruined. Holes, runs - you name it. Minako might've liked the grunge look, but it wasn't for her.
Huh. Weird. Her shoes were actually pretty OK. Scuffed a bit, but otherwise fine.
Her bra was serviceable too, so that was a plus.
Her camisole was a complete goner thanks to the bloodstains that had soaked through her poor sweater. The cream-colored ribbed-sweater had been one of her favorites, but would now only serve to remind her of that terrible, empty look on Corporal Ivanova's face.
It was better left in the small metal trash can, where her camisole and hosiery quickly joined it.
She stacked everything else on the chair in a logical order: skirt (underwear and bra tucked inside), shoes, necklace, and her barrettes.
There were was a light switch next to the dim alcove, and she flicked it on. An exhaust fan buzzed to life and a small light illuminated the plastic shower's prefabricated enclosure.
She stepped in and pushed the shower's nozzle to aim at the corner, then turned on the water and closed the curtain, waiting for it to warm up as she was splashed with the occasional cold drop of water.
She looked down, assessing herself. Her body looked the same as ever: slightly below average bust, totally average Japanese derrière. Small hips. Average sized legs with just a little bit more thigh than she liked - built up from all the single-gear bicycling she used to do getting to school back in Takasaki.
Her left arm stood out as a the wild exception, of course. She hoped it would heal soon. The T-shirt didn't have long sleeves and everyone would be able to see it, most likely.
The small spritzes of water droplets that were randomly splashing on her had turned warm, so she aimed the nozzle at herself and...
Heaven.
Happiness.
Warmth and Completeness and Warm Puppy Hugs.
She had had terrible days before, sure, and a hot shower always felt good and was a nice way to unwind. But this? This was Bliss with a capital B.
The warm water felt so incredibly good on her sore chest, and when it hit her left arm it felt like a connection between lightning and the ground - waves of electricity flowed away from her through her feet and the terrible, dull agony eased just enough to make her smile in gratitude.
It was in that moment that she felt a ridiculous loyalty to her species, at first starting out as an irreverent worship to whoever had invented modern showers, but quickly evolving into a powerful feeling.
She liked this. This modern world. Even with all its problems it was worth preserving. Worth protecting.
That... God. It wanted to dare call itself a Heavenly Father? Abandoning its children and leaving them without hope for a world to come?
Fine. Fuck you. Fuck you God!
They'd build Heaven here on Earth.
They would fight off the despair. Much of the world had never had hope for an afterlife in the first place. Earth had thousands of religions.
So what if only one had been right? That was God's fault. So what if they had all been wrong? Nothing had actually changed for them.
They just needed to survive the chaos caused by all those who felt they had actually lost something. Even if everything went back to normal tomorrow, how many people had already died in a half a day of insanity and societal breakdown?
They had to come out of this better than they were. Stronger.
And she, she just needed to... what?
Learn how not to die?
The water coursed through her hair. She let her thoughts run free. The water ran down her back as she leaned over and then tucked into a squat, resting her weight on her heels as she swayed a bit back and forth.
It was her shower-thinking position.
"But I could do it," she whispered to the water.
She looked up into the stream of droplets and let them splash in her face, then stood, promising herself as she stared at her left arm.
"I could become stronger."