Patreon bonus story: Mercy

All but the topmost level of the hospital was underwater, and the Friend was more worried for the structural integrity of the lower levels than the rain. Most of the building had already been evacuated by the swiftest, most silent boats and planes that the Silversky Collective could sneak past the border guards, and it was only this last load of thirty seven patients, collected on the top floor, left. Thirty seven patients and three Silversky members, including the Friend itself.

The Friend glanced at Courtney, at the window, eyes glued not on the rising waters but on the sky, alert for bombers that might take advantage of the floods to do a little civilian damage and blame it on the floodwaters, although the friend personally thought that that would be a waste of their time. It glanced at Hamlan, moving from patient to patient, talking and laughing with each in a voice that stayed gentle and full of humour, even now. It glanced at the communicator in its hand, with that final notification.

SLVRCOL – ROUTE CLOSED GET OUT

Nobody was coming for them. Nobody on their side, anyway. They were out of food, at the mercy of the soldiers above and the waters below, and the Friend knew enough about disaster zones to know that it would be a miracle for them all to survive the night here.

They had the one boat that had brought them, designed to hold three. The Friend, always a high choice for a hospital evacuation for its medical training and Friendly advantages; Courtney, with her years of sailing experience; and Hamlan, who knew the area and had two grandparents in the hospital. One, now; his grandfather had been evacuated the night before.

The boat was supposed to hold three. Courtney had already assessed it and revealed that in an emergency, it could probably fit seven, if they crammed in with no supplies and tied themselves in place and didn’t mind the very real possibility of capsizing and drowning.

Of their thirty seven remaining patients, thirty five of them were unable to move without a lot of assistance. Bedbound, mostly, and carried patiently up the stairs by the three Silversky members as the flood waters rose, the elevators of course out of commission. Some could move, but wouldn’t survive the length of a boat ride without the bulky equipment they were attached to. The last evacuees were the most difficult to move, in the mathematics of life preservation. The rule was to get as many out as you could.

And Friends, in particular, were excellent at this sort of mathematics.

There was the boat. Or there was starvation, drowning, infection, possible bombing. Discovery by the attackers would be no mercy; none of these people would survive the journey to a POW camp.

The three Silversky members conferred.

“We can take four with us, without life support equipment,” Courtney said. “If we take someone with bulky equipment, that’s a lot less.”

“You can take five with you,” Hamlan said. “I’m staying.”

“You’ll die here,” the Friend pointed out.

“Maybe. Maybe not. The waters might recede tonight. Other rescue might come. Even if we’re arrested by ‘peacekeepers’, they’ll have food and safety. But if I’m not here to help these people, they have no chance at all.”

Courtney bit her lip, but didn’t say anything. This was the sort of reason you weren’t supposed to bring people who were related to the evacuees on missions like this. But the Friend suspected that Courtney considered it Hamlan’s choice to make.

The Friend didn’t say anything about it, either. Instead it said, “One more night. We can risk that, to get everything settled and to give these people and Hamlan the best chance. This Friend will run you through what medical supplies we still have and what each patient needs. Tomorrow, Courtney and this Friend will take the five most likely to survive, and evacuate.”

And it was agreed.

That night, the Friend did the final rounds, one last time, with Hamlan. He smiled and joked with the patients and helped them to eat while the Friend doled out medications, and took a needle, and injected a fatal dose of antidrenomate into one old woman’s IV line.

With his grandmother having passed away peacefully in her sleep, it wasn’t hard to convince Hamlan to take the boat. He and Courtney loaded in the five patients most likely to survive the journey and took off over the floodwaters, putting their lives at the mercy of the calmest patches of water and Courtney’s sailing skill. The pair had accepted the friend’s decision to stay as easily as they’d accepted Hamlan’s, but Hamlan watched it with some suspicion as he climbed into the boat. Possibly he’d suspected what it had done.

But they had a job to do, and no time to fight. So the boat left. And the Friend turned to its patients.

“The last rescue boat has been let through,” it lied. “We’ll be on our way in a few hours.” The mood lifted; relief and gratitude and joy was in the voices and expressions of the patients as the Friend passed around morning medications and helped people eat and injected a fatal dose of antidrenomate into thirty one IV lines.

There was antidrenomate left, and the Friend considered taking a dose. It would certainly be a less painful way to go than the myriad of possibilities before it. But the Friend could move about and last much longer without food, water or medical care than the patients. The Friend could possibly get to a safer building, could find and help other survivors, wouldn’t be seen as an inconvenience and executed if captured, could get to and survive in a POW camp.

The Friend had forfeited its right to easy ways out when it had taken its vows. So, painful and dangerous it was.

-----------------------

Hamlan sipped his tea and checked the news. It had been years since he’d lost his grandparents in that flood, and he still wasn’t sure if there was anything he could’ve done to save his grandmother, if it was something he’d said and done that had set that PUF off. He should’ve made a fuss about sending a PUF to help such vulnerable people in the first place. Desperate hospital patients needed the help of other people, not something ruthless and unpredictable. But he hadn’t known that at the time, and it had greatly outranked him, so he wouldn’t have been listened to anyway. If anyone would be thrown off the mission, it would have been him.

Maybe that would’ve saved his grandmother. The PUF had targeted her, presumably to get him on the boat. And when the cleanup crews had found that hospital ward after the fact, full of those patients all killed with antidrenomate… those people he’d helped, joked with, worked to keep alive…

He didn’t think much about that any more. It had been a bad time. But it was pretty hard not to think about it with such a distinct and familiar face staring out at him from a minor news article about arrests made on the Japanese border. That unearthly pale complexion, so rare in those without Koreazone heritage. Those dead eyes. The face that would have been the last face that those patients in that flooded hospital had seen.

It’d be released from custody, of course. It was a Public Universal Friend, a group widely known for their good works, escorting children across a border to safety. The people who had arrested it had no idea what it had done. What it was capable of.

Hamlan would need to contact the authorities.