Bound to the Beast

The water coming out of the chrome faucet was freezing.

It hit Isela Church's hands with enough pressure to numb her fingertips, but she didn't pull back. She scrubbed. She took the stiff bristles of the surgical brush and dragged them across her knuckles. The friction burned, a necessary penance, but just as the bristles threatened to break the skin, her hands froze. No. She couldn't damage them. Her hands were her livelihood, the only instruments that separated the surgeon from the butcher. Even here, in this hell, she was a professional.

She forced herself to drop the brush, staring at her pink, irritated knuckles in the mirror. The face staring back felt like a stranger's. Isela Church. That was the name on her ID badge. But deep in the recesses of her mind, buried under layers of survival instinct and fear, was another name. Ye Jiuting. She hadn't spoken those syllables in years. To speak them was to invite a past she had run halfway across the world to escape. Ye Jiuting was a ghost; Isela Church was the one who had to survive the night.

The digital clock on the wall blinked. 02:15 AM.

Through the ventilation shaft above, the faint, thumping bass of jazz music drifted down from the upper decks. Up there, in the world of champagne and diamonds, the night was just beginning. Down here, in the bowels of the ship where the crew and the secrets were kept, the silence was heavy enough to crush a person.

The door to her office burst open.

It wasn't a knock. It was a collision.

Nurse Miller stood in the doorway, her chest heaving, her face the color of the bedsheets.

"Doctor Church. It's the VIP suite. Room 404."

Isela didn't ask questions. Her body moved before her brain processed the room number. Room 404. Agent Best. The man who had been admitted for mild arrhythmia just yesterday.

"Status?" Isela demanded, grabbing her stethoscope from the desk.

"Cardiac arrest. No pulse. I called the code."

Isela ran.

Her heels struck the linoleum floor, a sharp, frantic staccato that echoed down the empty corridor. The air in the hallway smelled of antiseptic and ozone, but as they neared the VIP wing, the scent changed. It became sweeter. Heavier.

The smell of expensive lilies and decay.

She burst into Room 404.

The monitor was screaming. A flat, high-pitched tone that signaled the end of everything.

Agent Best lay on the bed, his mouth open in a silent gasp, his skin already turning a mottled shade of violet.

"Get the crash cart!" Isela shouted.

She didn't wait. She vaulted onto the bed, straddling the man's heavy torso. She interlocked her fingers, placed the heel of her hand on his sternum, and pushed.

One. Two. Three. Four.

"Come on," she gritted out, her hair falling from its bun to curtain her face. "Don't you do this on my watch."

She felt a rib crack under her force. She didn't stop. You don't stop for bones. You stop for a pulse.

"Charged!" Nurse Miller yelled, holding the paddles.

"Clear!"

Isela threw her hands up. The body jerked violently as the electricity coursed through it.

She looked at the monitor.

Flatline.

"Again. Charge to three hundred."

"Doctor, he's been down for ten minutes before we found him," Miller whispered, her voice trembling.

"Charge it!"

They went three rounds. Three rounds of lightning trying to jumpstart a heart that had turned to stone. Sweat dripped from Isela's chin, landing on the patient's unmoving chest. Her arms burned. Her lungs felt like they were filled with broken glass.

Finally, she stopped.

The room fell silent, save for the drone of the machine. Isela looked at the clock.

"Time of death, 02:28 AM."

She climbed off the bed, her legs shaking. She reached for the sheet to pull it over Agent Best's face, a final act of professional mercy.

"You killed him."

The voice came from the corner of the room. It was soft, devoid of the hysteria one would expect from a grieving widow.

Isela turned.

Mrs. Best stood in the shadows near the window. She was wearing a silk dressing gown, clutching a string of pearls so tightly her knuckles were white. But her eyes were dry. They were cold, hard chips of flint.

"Mrs. Best, I did everything I could," Isela said, trying to keep her voice steady. "His heart condition was severe-"

"No." Mrs. Best stepped forward. She pointed a manicured finger at the metal tray next to the bed. "You injected him. I saw you. Just before he seized."

Isela followed the finger. Lying on the tray was an empty syringe.