[MIDDAY]

Will

Aside from feeling like he'd been run over by a train or three, waking up was a nice surprise.

He came to sitting in a chair in a room of stone, someone talking to him. He blinked, trying to get his eyes to focus. The man standing over him was a Level 11 Physician—an old man with short white hair and a tobacco-stained mustache and a too-wide grin that looked unnatural; pasted on.

The man kept babbling on and on, and Will wasn't able to make sense of any of it. He eventually managed to put up a hand to stop him, and worked out: "Who are you?" His voice was a dry croak. His tongue kept sticking to the roof of his mouth.

The Physician took half a step back, somehow grinning and frowning at the same time as he looked Will up and down for an annoyingly long moment of silence. "Oh dear. What's the last thing I said?"

"I have no idea. Who are you? Where am I?" Will looked around the room, found it filled with many books stacked in messy piles and shoved into overfull shelves, but very little in the way of actual furnishings aside from a narrow bed and a desk. Aside from the one before the desk, he was sitting on the only chair in the room. The wooden door was shut tight. Muddled sunlight fell in through a pair of greasy windows on the right-hand wall.

"I'm John Hacksaw, MD, and you are in the land of the living—for which you are, of course, quite welcome." The Physician fished a pack of cigarettes out of a coat pocket—a pack of happy puffs, as it so happened—and put one between his lips, lighting it up with a match that he then shook out and flicked away. "Hopefully the fogginess is down to that knock on the head, and not something more insidious."

Will squinted at the man, struggling to keep him in focus. "You patched me up, I take it?" His head hurt pretty bad. Everything else hurt pretty bad, too.

"If that's what you wanna call it, I'd say you're more patches than person at this point. You ought to thank your lucky stars you're still breathing."

"Yeah, sure. Thanks." Will nodded toward the man's mouth. "Got one of those for me?"

He did. Lit one cigarette off the other, handed it over. Will took a grateful puff. His whole torso thumped and stung when he breathed in too hard.

The doctor proceeded to summarize his injuries, going into more detail than was strictly necessary. "From top to bottom," he said through a smoky sigh, "here's the damage. Moderate concussion—did my best to reduce swelling. Suspected brain aneurysm—not much to be done there. Fractured left collarbone—mended that okay, but you'll want to be gentle with it for a couple weeks. Numerous lacerations across your back—spent all morning picking glass shards out. Mostly minor, though, so I've reserved my AP for the more serious stuff, stitched your back up the old-fashioned way. That means you're liable to rip 'em if you twist around too much. You've got some abrasions on your left palm from that evil sword of yours. Took some real prying to get it away from you. Not too bad on the outside, but I reckon carrying a thing like that around probably isn't doing your gray matter any favors.

"Then there's the big one. Had a blade run through you, I guess. Bad of you to take it out—lost a lot of blood. I Regenerated enough so you won't die, but you're still low. Let's see, uh… I Threaded you up front and back, so that's all right. Bowel was badly perforated; that was trickier. Had to cut out a bit of your intestine, staple the ends back together.

"Bit of intestinal content leaked out into your abdomen. Nasty, nasty. I did what I could to clean things up, but eh…" He shrugged, lopsided grin twitching. "...Well, you've got a bad infection brewing in the lining of your large intestine. That one's still a work in progress. Not gonna lie, it might take you out yet. Have to wait and see, I guess.

"Lastly, your whole left side is all bruised up. Reckon that probably hurts a good deal. Apart from that, though, you're fit as a fiddle!" The doctor laughed—a clipped 'ha ha ha' without much emotion behind it.

Will felt no particular desire to join in. He lifted up the rumpled tunic someone had put on him, found an angry red mass of scar tissue staring back at him on the right side of his stomach and a huge purple patch of bruising that ran down his left.

The doctor gave him water and painkillers, then more water.

"What now?" Will asked.

"For you? Nothing. In fact, the less you do, the better. Just kick back and relax while I roll dice with the reaper to see who gets to keep you."

"You really know how to put a guy at ease, doc."

Hacksaw grinned wider, baring his teeth. "I get that all the time."

Will quickly figured out from the pattern of the cut stone making up the walls that he was somewhere in the Academy. Fletcher's bedroom, it seemed like, which meant somewhere inside the library. He didn't get the chance to ask who had sent for Hacksaw before Nyx strode into the room with the graceful bearing of a particularly self-involved queen, followed closely by Serene, which dispelled the mystery for him. Serene had sent for the demon, and the demon had sent for the doctor.

"Hello, William," Nyx said with a demure smile. "I heard you chattering away from the other room, so I assumed you were lucid. Good to see you up and about." A thin thong was the only thing that separated her sleek body from complete nudity.

Will stifled a cough, not wanting to upset his jumbled insides, and cleared his throat. He motioned for the doctor to hand him another cigarette.

"One's enough for you, I think," Hacksaw said, holding a protective hand over his pocket. "You got your lollipop already."

"Oh, have a heart," Nyx said with a wiggle of her fingers, long black nails gleaming. "A bit of nicotine is the last thing that'll kill him."

"Actually, it puts him at greater risk of springing a leak on account of that aneurysm."

"Actually, those don't contain any nicotine," Will growled.

"How'd you know?"

"I made the bastard things, that's how. Now give me the fucking cigarette. Better yet, give me the whole pack. Nyx'll reimburse you."

Hacksaw sped the demoness a long look, his corpse grin taking on a doubtful edge. When the demoness nodded, he shrugged and handed over the pack. Seven left, Will counted as he fished out a cigarette between his teeth, waited as the doctor lit it for him. Six now. It'd do for now.

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"Doctor made it sound like I got a little messed up last night," Will said. He took in a grateful breath of smoke, scrubbed at his scalp with the heel of his hand. "Feels like it too."

"Don't worry, dear," Nyx said with an encouraging smile. "I have often heard it said that human women enjoy a man with scars. I'm sure Samantha will appreciate the new additions."

"Assuming he doesn't bite it first," Hacksaw muttered, and held up his hands defensively when Nyx shot him a perfectly neutral look. "I'll do my best to keep that from happening, obviously!"

"Guess it's just as well I'll be bedridden for a while," Will said, "considering I'll need to hide out for a while. Academy's as good a place as any. I assume you know the basics already?"

"I do," Nyx replied. "You've got some events you need to be filled in on, however."

"Such as?"

"Can you stand?"

"Dunno. Think so."

"Then I recommend that you start by looking out the window."

It took Will a minute and a couple of unsuccessful tries to get his feet under him, struggling with bouts of vertigo and a thudding rush of blood in his temples, but he eventually made it to the nearest window and peered out through the dirty glass.

Based on the elevation, he had to be on the third or fourth floor. Pillars of black smoke rose above an indistinct skyline, too many to count, lit orange at their bottoms with distant fire. The smoke bled upward, staining half the sky dark, looking like an encroaching storm front.

"No one put out those fires yesterday?" Will asked. "I guess Captain is in hiding now, but still." He shook his head. "This is… not great." How had it spread so fast?

He found the demoness standing at his side, hands clasped before her. "It's a little worse than that, I'm afraid."

"Because…?"

"Lord Brimstone appears to have departed from whatever was left of his senses. A few hours ago, he activated his semblance, and has been tearing through the city indiscriminately, obliterating anything and anyone he comes across."

"Shit." Will mulled things over for a while, puffing occasionally at his cigarette. "At least if he's already blown his semblance, we've got a day before he recovers it. Leaves him exposed. Might make for a good window to finally take him down."

"Not quite. Understandably, it's been difficult to get anything resembling timely and accurate information on developments in the streets, but I have been able to verify with relative confidence that Brimstone's semblance art… it never ended. He's not slowing down, either. If anything, he's gaining momentum."

"That's impossible."

Nyx threw her head back and let out a sparkling laugh. "William! I thought you were better than that. You've done enough exploiting of the Concord on your own account to know that 'impossible' is only a barrier to those lacking in creativity."

Will groaned. "Sure, but some things are more or less set in stone. Brimstone's level 24. He's got one SP crystal. A normal semblance lasts, what, five minutes? Ten, tops? There's way too wide a gap between 'a few minutes' and 'a few hours' to be accounted for by individual variance alone."

"Agreed."

"How, then?"

Nyx's black lips quirked in an incredulous smile. "Don't look at me, dear. I'm no expert on Concord interactions. Those are mortal concerns. I believe you have a better chance of figuring it out than me."

"Shit," Will muttered. "Got an estimate on the death toll so far?"

"'A lot' is about as much specificity as I can give you. People are fleeing the destruction, of course. Most of them trying to leave the city. Go north, I suppose, to find shelter in Greensby."

"Is the militia heading this up?"

"No. It appears that Commander Thorpe has ordered the entire militia force to barricade itself behind the walls of the military compound. I suppose they mean to weather the storm there."

"And leave the rest of the city to the dogs."

"Yes."

"Figures." Given the state of his commandos, Will had already assumed that Thorpe was with the Omen Bearers. This more or less sealed the deal.

Confirmation would have been nice, though. If only I could have gotten a bit more information out of Handsome. I guess it's too late to ask the crooked bastard now…

"Monsters are going to take notice of that many refugees going up the road," Will mused, "will flock to them in droves. Without armed protection, it'll be a bloodbath."

"Most likely," Nyx agreed. "Henri Saint Capitaine is heading up an effort to evacuate civilians to the Academy instead."

"Good thinking." The buildings were mostly stone, so they wouldn't burn. It was near the eastern edge of Topside, so away from most of the devastation. And, assuming the vagrants were willing to share, there was plenty of room for people to be housed, at least temporarily.

"He's got a few defecting militiamen volunteering alongside him—veteran guardsmen who remember being under his command way back when—as well as some of the more altruistically minded pit fighters in Golden Boy's employ. I contacted him this morning, and he had the good sense to haul most of his promotion down here before things got too far along.

"Still, Henri is sorely lacking in manpower from what I understand, and he's the only one who has any real experience with fire suppression. They've seen a little under five hundred to the Academy so far. Not exactly inspiring numbers."

"I understand," Will said, gazing out over the city. He took a last drag off his cigarette, stomped out the butt against the stone flooring, and let out a long sigh. "I'll need to head out there. Help the evacuation along where I can."

"Um, as your Physician, I would strongly fucking advise against that," Hacksaw said. "You need to stay right here if you want to give me a chance at keeping your ungrateful ass alive."

Will didn't look back at him. "Sorry to disappoint you, doc. Can't stay here and do nothing, though. Not if I'm the cause for Brimstone going over the edge. My sloppiness. That makes me culpable."

"Matthew would mourn your loss," Nyx said slowly. "Then again, this city is not only his home, but also a vital component in the continued existence of Octant Six. Its destruction would decidedly not serve his interests." She let a sharp fingernail trail across her bottom lip. "I can't call it. It's your choice to make, William."

"I'm going," Will said immediately, not giving himself any wiggle room to start working up doubts. Ignoring the rot churning in his belly, and the repeated mallet blows to his skull. He set his jaw tight.

"Sure, yeah, why not?" Hacksaw grumbled. "Why listen to me, right? I'm only a fucking doctor. I swear to god, why do I waste my time on these idiots when they're all infected with terminal stupidity?"

Will faced the man; still grinning painfully wide even though his cheeks were twitching with annoyance. "How long?" he asked.

The doctor's white brows rose. "How long what?"

"How long can you keep me going?"

"Assuming you don't care if you come out the other end breathing?"

"Yeah."

He thought about it for a moment, looked Will up and down like a horse trader eyeing an animal of particularly decrepit stock. His held his cigarette up to his mouth for a drag, pinched tight between two fingers. "Hard to say, really. You've got so much shit wrong with you it's impossible to know exactly how it'll interact. Probably a day or two before the infection gets bad enough to put you sideways. Time bomb in your brain… could go off any moment if you keep pushing your body like you have been."

"But it might not?"

Hacksaw squinted hard. "I suppose. But you wouldn't pull the pin on a grenade and shove it up your ass just 'cause it might be a dud."

"Duly noted."

"Aside from that, your heart might just give out from exhaustion."

"Also noted."

"Then by all means, feel free to kill yourself at your leisure. None of my business, really."

"I don't plan on dying."

"Ha! You're just hilarious, aren't you?"

"I get that all the time."

"Ha ha!" Hacksaw went and lifted a heavy doctor's bag onto the desk to begin rifling through it. "Well, let's see what fun stuff we can find to dope you up with."

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