In this shelter that had originally been used for trading flesh, the air was even more suffocating than the cordite and smoke outside.
In a room that used to be soaked in suggestive red light, it now felt like the cramped interior of a submarine hiding from depth charges—oppressive, airless, with soft sobbing and whispered prayers spreading through the gloom.
There was not the slightest trace of flirtation left here. Only a heavy, nauseating stench: cheap powder, mould, sweat, and the expanding iron-sweet reek of blood.
Besides the working girls, the place was packed with trembling old people, women, and children. As for the men, most of them were outside doing the kind of things that made these people sob and pray. Every time an explosion thudded somewhere beyond the walls, another wave of suppressed crying rippled through the room.
"Quiet. Anyone cries again, I'll stuff your mouth shut." Black Lilian stood at the door with a boning knife she'd gotten from who-knows-where, her voice sharp enough to scrape glass. The pale foundation on her face had been cut into grooves by sweat, making her look like some ridiculous clown, but I couldn't laugh.
I huddled in a corner piled with junk, trying to steady my breathing after a full sprint (yes, I know, saying that in a brothel sounds weird), with a broken-legged vanity table beside me. Spark clung to my arm with both hands, shaking like a leaf.
Honestly, I wanted to shake too. If I could, I'd dig a hole and bury myself, then climb out after this chapter ended.
I was leaning blankly against the wall, forcing my brain to grind through what I was supposed to do next, when a small trembling hand suddenly grabbed my hem. I looked down. A filthy little face stared up at me, tears washing tracks through the grime like a tabby cat's markings.
"Save my mom…" His voice was hoarse and shaking. "Please! Saint, sir, please save my mom! They hurt her. She's going to die!"
I followed him into a corner. A woman was slumped there at a crooked angle, making a rasping bellows-sound with each breath. She still had a bloodied knife clenched in her hand. Dark blood spread beneath her, and a scantily dressed prostitute was trying to look after her.
I stepped in, gently moved the panicking girl aside, and crouched to examine the woman. One hand was pressed to her chest, blood soaking through her clothes. Pink foam kept bubbling from the corner of her mouth. I pulled her blood-slick hand away.
Blood was welling out in thick, bubbling gulps. With every breath, the wound made that horrific sucking sound as air dragged through it. When she saw me, something lit in her clouded eyes. She released the knife and grabbed my sleeve, trying to say something, but all she could manage was a useless, garbled wheeze.
I turned my head and glanced at the child—crying, wiping his face over and over—and all I wanted to tell him was: This time, I'm not going to be able to "perform a miracle in public."
The woman had been punched clean through the chest. An open pneumothorax. Her lung was collapsing. This wasn't something you could fix with a quick bandage job. Without proper medical treatment, she would be dead soon.
"Stop looking, my lord." Black Lilian caught my gaze, bit her lip, and looked away. "There's no saving her. Go out there and you die. Stay here… at least you live a little longer."
I stared at the woman's ashen face, at the child's helpless fingers clutching his mother's bloodstained clothes.
Two voices were fighting in my head.
The rational one was screaming itself raw: You're just an ordinary person! You're just a pathetic shut-in! You're not some damned saint! Survival comes first!
The emotional one only said a single line, flat and quiet:
You do have a way to save her, don't you?
…
"Fuck." I muttered it under my breath. I didn't know whether I was cursing this world, or cursing my own damned conscience.
I stood up hard.
"Give me that." I pointed at the silk scarf on Black Lilian's waist.
She froze for a second, then handed it over on instinct. I tore open the woman's clothing over her chest, wadded the scarf into a tight plug, and rammed it into the hole. I ignored her painful thrashing and just kept forcing it in until it was packed tight, then cinched it down from the outside with a strip of fabric.
The horrible sucking sound stopped. Her breathing was still weak, but it steadied—just a little.
But it was temporary. If she didn't get surgery immediately, she wouldn't last half an hour.
I gripped the child by both shoulders and forced my voice into something calm.
"Listen carefully. I'm taking your mom to Granny Marta's clinic. That's the only way she lives." I jerked my chin at the prostitutes nearby. "The other big sisters will watch you. Outside is dangerous. You stay here. Don't move."
His eyes were full of tears as he nodded frantically, then watched me bend down. It didn't take much effort to haul his mother onto my back—she was light as ash, already soaked in blood.
The clinic has equipment. Granny Marta can save her.
I took a deep breath and tasted rust in my lungs. I looked around at the terrified eyes filling the room. These girls—who made a living by selling smiles and skin—were, in their own way, one of the few splashes of colour this shithole still had. Now they looked at me like I was some kind of monster, like flowers wilting in a burning estate's garden.
"I'm taking her to the clinic now." My mouth twitched, and then my gaze found that orange hair. My tongue didn't quite cooperate. "But… I don't know the way. Spark, can you guide me again?"
"You're insane!" Black Lilian lunged in front of me. "It's nothing but madmen out there who kill without blinking. You'll die!"
"If we don't go, she dies for sure." I could feel the woman's faint heartbeat against my back, like a countdown with no idea how much time was left. "…Move."
In that moment, I don't know what my face looked like. Probably ugly. Probably vicious. But Black Lilian recoiled as if she'd been burned, snapping her hand back.
Spark wiped her nose, silently picked up a small knife from the floor, and walked ahead of me.
She pushed open the heavy iron door. Heat slammed into us.
Like a snail dragging a heavy shell, I stumbled into the fire.
Outside, the streets were no longer the Warehouse 7 I knew. Golden flames raged. Black smoke filled the gaps between buildings like a dark jungle set ablaze by divine fire. From the distance came that heavy, muffled thunder unique to the black-armoured women's big guns—like a brutal giant stamping its feet.
We ran like our lives depended on it through smoke-choked alleys and streets where fire leapt into the sky. Only now, unlike the first half where I'd been panicked and lost, I had a clear target.
The woman on my back felt like a mountain. Every step made my calves tremble. I only stared at that bouncing orange figure ahead and did not dare stop for even a second.
…"What is he doing?"
…"That big guy… who's he carrying?"
From the ruins on both sides, from gutters, from ventilation ducts—countless eyes watched me. Hidden residents. Gang rats gripping homemade weapons. Cowards who'd been running for their lives moments ago.
I remembered the grand narrative the Inquisitor had once told me: a so-called Living Saint wearing glittering golden power armour, wielding a flaming greatsword, halo behind her head and pure wings at her back, descending on the battlefield like a god to reap the enemy…
But the way this "Living Saint" looked right now, I probably didn't even measure up to a beggar.
My face was smeared with grime. Half my hair had been singed off. My clothes were shredded like a mop rag. A blood-soaked woman—alive or dead, I couldn't even be sure—hung on my back. I was chasing an equally filthy orange cat that had gotten its fur singed.
I ran in a state of pure humiliation. I even ate dirt at the edge of a shell crater, slamming my knee hard enough to make sparks pop in my vision. But the first thing I did after scrambling up wasn't to curse—it was to check the person on my back.
No halo. No hymns. No miracles.
Just a filthy mortal, trying like hell to keep another mortal alive.
(End of Chapter)
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