Chapter Fifteen:

Everyone in the hospital would have heard the scream. It was a sudden burst of energy – a sound that couldn’t be controlled. Robert had been in an office on the other side of the hall from where he left Quinn. He had managed to pilfer a white coat and a name tag emblazoned with the name: Dr. Kunakai. In the doctor’s desk draws he discovered a sealed plastic bag with a pair of scissors, and a scalpel. He felt sick pocketing the tools that could easily become weapons, but he remembered the gun in the apartment and reassured himself that it was a precaution worth taking. Under the bag he found a set of keys which he stared at trying to decide whether he would take them. In the end he grabbed the small bundle and hoped that Dr. Kunakai had spares. It was at that moment that he heard the scream.

He had already pulled the white coat on and he stuffed most his findings in one of its pockets, slipping the sheathed scalpel into the other. He then ran to the door. Outside, the hall was still clear so Robert darted to the room where he had left Quinn. Without much finesse, he shouldered the door open to find Quinn on the floor beside him, her foot caught in an immense sliding filing system. She was crying and pointing down the length of the room to where an enormous man was scrambling over prosthetic limbs and pills to get to his feet. Robert grabbed the handle of the Compactus and twisted it away from Quinn so that he could pull her free. The man at the far end of the room started to yell at him and out of the corner of his eye Robert saw him start to limp towards them, his hands gripping his right knee just above the joint. The artist hoisted the girl to her feet and she hooked an arm over his shoulder for support. In a smooth pivot he maneuvered Quinn through the door with a twist his body and simultaneously pulled the scalpel from the coat pocket, flicked the sheath off with his thumb nail, and threw it at the lumbering man. 

He didn’t want to know if it hit him – he didn’t want to see the man hurt – he just wanted to slow him down.

Back out in the hall Quinn was standing on one foot and holding the wall for support. Robert slammed the door and fumbled in the coat pocket for Dr. Kunakai’s key chain. His hands were operating without much input from his brain and as he found the keys he imagined that the hospital would largely operate with a single master key. Quinn snatched the keys from his hand and told him to hold the door shut while she found the one they were looking for. The door snapped out of Robert’s hands for a split second as the man on the other side attempted to yank it open, but he managed to keep his grip for long enough to pull it shut again. He braced his feet against the frame of the doorway and leant backwards while Quinn inserted the key and twisted it into place. 

The two of them exchanged a hurried expression of exasperation before he slipped a hand around her waist and half-walked, half-carried her down the hall. They could hear the man behind them pounding on the door and as they rounded the corner Robert glanced back to see a thin muscular woman enter the hall at the far end and catch sight of him. Around the edge of the wall Robert stopped and leant Quinn against a stationary stretcher, she was still holding the keys.

“Use the stretcher for balance. Further down the hall on the right is a door to the carpark. Use the buzzer to find the car. Go!”

The girl looked horrified – she wanted to say something, he could tell, but he gave her a shove just in time to turn back to the corner and catch the pursuing woman off-guard. He had hoped to tackled her to the ground like he had with Hammett in Mrs. Hotori’s apartment, but instead he just fell on her. 

The effect was similar. 

The two of them hit the far wall and their head connected painfully as they tumbled to the floor. Robert’s muscles were tired, it was as though his body was running out of the adrenaline that had been keeping him going all afternoon. For a second or two they wrestled like equals. But she was much more adept than he was and it didn’t take her long to discover where he was weakest. Her hand shot to his face and mashed at his inflamed nose bringing on a new rush of hot blood which he spat at her hoping to make her stop. He should have expected her counter-move but his face was screaming in agony and there wasn’t much thought going on inside his head. Her knee rose sharply between his legs and the breath left his body, instantly reducing him to a writhing mess. She pushed him away from her onto the floor and punched him again in the face which sent rivets of pain that felt like electricity through his skull. 

Amidst the torment that rippled through his body was the horror that he had failed. He hoped that the girl was smart enough not to wait for him – that she had found the doctor’s car and was fleeing into some glorious Tokyo sunset never to be found again by Takami and his goons. Then he thought of Misaki, of what they might do to her. Surely they couldn’t blame her for his actions? If they held her for too long the Yakuza brother Robert they met in Starbucks would surely find out what had happened and Takami would have an entirely new set of problems to deal with.

A weight fell on top of him but he no longer cared. His eyes were closed and he felt light-headed, the pulse in his face pushing more and more blood from his undoubtedly destroyed nose. 

There was noise. 

A voice. 

A repeated shaking of his shoulder. 

The sound started to resolve itself into tears and whimpers and repetition of his name. Slowly, through a fog, he opened his eyes and tried to draw the situation into focus. Quinn was kneeling beside him, her pretty clothes stained with blood and sweat. She was shaking him incessantly. There was a body on him. The woman he had fought with was unconscious – a lump the size of a fist growing on her forehead.

He didn’t understand what had happened. Quinn kept pulling at his arm, realising that he was awake, and was desperately trying to get him to sit up. Robert coughed violently, sending a gob of sticky red muck onto the floor as he propped himself on one elbow. The girl rose to her feet awkwardly, using something beside her to push herself upwards – a fire-extinguisher. 

She had hit the woman with a fire-extinguisher. 

He couldn’t help the smile that sent a new wave of agony through his head. Remembering the other man who was probably being let out of the storage room as he lay there, he renewed his efforts and shoved the unconscious woman onto the floor, rolling onto his knees. With Quinn’s hand under his arm he got to his feet and the two of them leant on the stretcher and stumbled down the hall in a mangled hobble. 

The carpark was small but big enough to worry Robert about how much time it would take to find Kunakai’s car. Thankfully, doctors were given special privilege and all of their cars were lined up near the main doors. Quinn began mashing the button on the car remote and after several steps they saw the flashing indicator lights of an older BMW. The two of them clambered into the dark vehicle, Robert taking the keys from Quinn as she lifted her damaged foot into the rear passenger-well after her. He jammed the car into reverse as he started to hear angry voices yelling after them in Japanese and before long they had swung the car out of its space and were zipping around the carpark towards the exit.

He almost stopped when he saw the black van at the edge of the parking lot – the van were Misaki was being held. But as he started to slow down a man opened the driver’s door and aimed a gun at the BMW. The sound shocked him into releasing the wheel temporarily and a clean hole burst through the windscreen. Robert ducked his head, grabbing the base of the wheel and trying to keep the car straight as he accelerated through the gateway into the busy streets of Tokyo.