@exitiumparit | winter soldier au shenanigans
It drips from his shoulder, down his bicep. Self-inflicted. Too clean, easy to close. But it gets him past security, through the door.
A Sullustan medic hovers, gloves bloody, an air of confusion about her. She does her job, gluing skin shut with steady fingers. He doesn’t flinch.
The woman could be going by any name, maybe not the one he was given. It’s an old one. Chyla Richi. But the name doesn’t matter, just the face, and he’ll know it when he sees it. It’s burned into his brain just like the last one, and the one before, and the one before that.
The medic finishes her work, helps him stand. He fakes a stumble, crashes into her, knocks her into her cart of blades and debridement tools and falls to his hands and knees. Surgical durasteel scatters across the floor, drawing shouts of warning and annoyance from the staff and patients walking by.
His hand closes around a scalpel. Armed. This is better.
Scalpel in his sleeve, he gets to his feet, forces out an apologetic phrase. It’s what the General and the Doctor would tell him to do.
The medic waves him off, points him to the exit and he walks. He glances into the faintly reflective durasteel of opening turbolift doors as he passes them. She’s already turned around, tending to another patient. He side steps into the turbolift as if it had been his destination all along and slides back against the wall, behind doctors and patients and visitors.
His leg is cramping; uneven walking has taken a toll. But he needed the leg injury to get inside the last hospital. It doesn’t register as pain, just...inconvenience. A muscle in his left forearm twinges beneath his sleeve. There’s freshly-glued skin there too.
The turbolift doors slide back. Four. Visitor level. He knows the number from the schematics on his ship. Big windows, too open—but lots of people to hide in.
He steps off, finds the line of communication consoles along one wall. For visitors, but still connected to the hospital’s intranet. Ninety seconds of rapid keystrokes and he has the list of hospital medical staff. He scans rapidly, looking for the face.
He stops on a holoimage of a woman in her 30s. It’s her.
Two more keystrokes and he has her floor number and is back on the turbolift. Soft dings, and a metallic voice chimes “twenty-one.” The doors open to a surgical floor.
He’s hit with the smell and he flinches. Smells of singed hair. It tastes like his own blood. Industrial cleaner. The lights hurt his eyes. It’s all stronger here than it is downstairs. He grits his teeth and drives a thumb into his left forearm, still inflamed and sore.
A spike of pain. His vision clears.
He lifts his chin, uses his height to glance over the few beings in the hallway. The woman at the end of the corridor. It’s her. Richi.
He approaches briskly but carefully, heavy boots making little noise on the floor. She begins to turn to face him and he grabs the arm of the nearest person. Some young, petite human female. Perhaps a child. He doesn’t even look at her; she doesn’t matter. Only RIchi.
He pulls his hostage into his chest, wraps an arm around her waist and presses the gleaming durasteel scalpel against her side. A quick movement and the blade will slip between her ribs and pierce her heart.
“Quiet,” he says to both of them, but mostly to Richi. He stares into her eyes and doesn’t wait for any kind of protest from them, just presses the blade close enough to his hostage to draw blood through the thin fabric of her tunic. “Walk.”