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Elena was in pain.
She was trying to hide it, but Markus could tell. She barely picked at the limited food rations their captors were giving them. Her movements were sluggish and deliberate. He caught glimpses of her pressing her palm to her abdomen out of the corner of his eye.
One...day? Night? It was hard to tell, locked up without any windows as they were. Markus couldn’t ignore it any more. Elena was sitting on the edge of the bed they’d conducted so many surgeries in, hunched over and clearly hurting. Markus caught Valerie’s gaze from across the room. From the worried look in her eyes, she’d noticed something was up, too.
Markus knelt in front of their nurse. “What’s wrong?” he asked, quietly.
“Ah, it’s n-”
“And don’t say ‘nothing,’” Valerie added, joining them and laying a hand on Elena’s shoulder.
A rueful smile flitted over Elena’s face. “I guess I couldn’t hide it forever. It’s my pancreas again. I think the immune suppressant pump is malfunctioning, somehow.”
Markus frowned. “But we replaced its chips so recently.”
“I know,” Elena said. “But these symptoms are familiar. I don’t think it could be anything else.”
“Could it be from all the stress your body’s been under?” Valerie suggested. “In the last few weeks, you’ve been put through much more than what’s expected of an average nurse.”
“And dealing with so many novel pathogens, too.” Markus nodded. “That could be it.”
Silence fell for a moment as the three collectively had the same thought. Valerie was the one who finally voiced it.
“So...what are we going to do? It’s not like Kidman’s cronies are going to contact Concordia and ask for a set of replacement chips.”
“Probably not,” Markus agreed. “I hate to ask, Elena, but how long do you think you can go without surgical intervention? If you can hold out until we escape...”
Elena tried to laugh. It sounded more like a sigh. “If we escape.”
“We will,” Valerie said, firm. Even if they still had no idea how they were going to accomplish that.
“Well, as long as the symptoms don’t get worse, I should be fine for now.”
‘For now’ turned out to be less than forty-eight hours. When Elena nearly fainted while assisting an operation on a mutated Ops patient, Markus had had enough.
“I’m going to operate,” he announced, once the patient had been wheeled out and Valerie had given Elena her ration of water. “We may not have replacement chips, but there has to be something we can to do jump-start the existing chips back into action. These things are supposed to last for years; there must still be some juice in them. If you keep on like this, your body could shut down.”
Elena didn’t argue. Which meant she must be feeling even worse off than they’d thought.
Glass clattered as Valerie rummaged through their medical supplies. “We’re practically out of stabilizer, and completely out of antibiotic gel...even our suture thread is almost gone.”
Markus jumped at a sudden banging noise. Valerie had walked to the door of their cell, and was hammering at it with her fist. “Hey!” she called. “We need help in here!”
“Val, I don’t know if they’ll-”
He was interrupted by the door swinging open. And the barrel of a gun pointing at them.
(If Markus was being fair, it did probably sound like they were executing an escape plan and hoping to jump the guard the moment he came in to help. The guns made that difficult.)
“What?” the guard asked, his voice irritated. It matched the snarling expression on the carved wooden mask concealing his face.
“We need to perform another operation,” Valerie announced, trying her best not to be intimidated by the weapon. Markus saw how stiff her back was, but her voice didn’t waver. “And we’re low on supplies. Provide us with them so we can keep doing our job.”
“I haven’t seen the boss bring in any more patients,” the guard said.
“The operation is for her,” Valerie replied, nodding to Elena.
The guard snorted. Markus wanted so, so badly to punch him in the face. Hopefully it would break his mask and send the shards digging into his skin. “We aren’t running a charity here, Doc. If the boss didn’t order it, we’re not helping you do it.”
“She could die,” Markus said.
“The nurse? Eh, we don’t really care about her. We took her ‘cause she was with you, but it’s only you two we really need.”
Markus couldn’t see Valerie’s expression, but he could imagine the anger in it as she snarled, “How dare you-”
“What’s all this racket?”
Markus recognized the voice and mask of the taller goon walking up behind the guard. Leland, he’d heard Kidman call him. Leland was trailed by another masked man who Markus hadn’t seen much of yet.
While he didn’t hold out much hope for any empathy, Markus tried to help Valerie explain the situation to the newcomers as well. No dice. Leland just snorted.
“Connor here’s right.” Leland nodded to the guard with the gun still aimed at them. “We can’t give you anything more than you need to do what the boss asks you to do.”
“You can’t?” Valerie said. “Or you won’t?”
Leland’s voice was unbearably smug. “If you get off on semantics, then: We won’t. Don’t wanna. Is that better for you?”
Valerie’s fists were clenched so hard Markus worried she might try and take on the guards, weapons be damned. “You little-”
“I understand,” Markus said, louder than he was used to speaking. He stepped closer to the door. His eyes flicked between the barrel of the gun and the soulless masks of Kidman’s subordinates. “Is there anything you want? That we can offer to you in exchange for the supplies we need to save Elena?”
Leland raised a finger.
“Besides joining your effort to build a weaponized form of Stigma,” Markus added.
Leland scoffed. “In that case, there’s nothing you can offer us. Unless...” He turned to the other goon who’d trailed behind him. In spite of their masks, some silent understanding must have passed between them, because they nodded at each other. When Leland turned back to them, his body language was laser-focused on Valerie. “Unless someone would care to engage in a bit of the oldest profession. Then, we might consider doing you a favor.”
“You’re disgusting,” Valerie hissed. “You’re - huh? Markus?”
Markus had stepped forward, putting himself between Valerie and their captors. He sighed, rubbed his temples, and said, “Wait. I remembered something your boss might be interested in. It has to do with the genetic origins of Stigma.”
Leland cocked his head. “Oh?”
Markus nodded. “I won’t help you weaponize it directly, that hasn’t changed. But...if it’ll let us save Elena’s life, I can make it easier for his team to figure out a blueprint, so to speak. Let me talk to him and I can give him the details.”
Valerie was aghast. “Markus!”
Markus refused to look her in the eye. “I’m sorry, Val. I have no choice.”
After some more wordless communication, the thugs grabbed Markus and nudged Valerie back inside their cell. “You girls sit tight,” Leland said. “We’ll have a nice chat with your friend.”
The door slammed shut. The lock clicked. As he was dragged away, Markus heard Valerie saying, “Markus, you idiot.”
He couldn’t argue with that one.
He was brought down a long hallway and ushered into a room that looked like the love child of a conference room and an interrogation chamber. Fitting for a mobster, he supposed. Leland shoved him towards a chair on one side of the long table that dominated the space.
“Sit tight. The boss’ll be in to speak with you soon.”
Markus waved his hand. “That won’t be necessary.”
“What?”
“I lied,” Markus clarified, his voice flat. “There’s no secret Stigma info. I just wanted to be separated from my colleagues.”
He...probably should have expected the blow that came his way. When the flash of pain cleared, he blinked and realized the guard with the gun had pistol-whipped him on the side of the head.
“What kind of game do you think you’re playin’, huh?” The third man spoke up for the first time. He grabbed the collar of Markus’s coat, pulling him half out of his chair. “I’m gettin’ real tired of you lot.”
Markus raised his palms in a pacifying gesture. He was still a little dazed, but he tried to keep calm and speak clearly. His thumping heartbeat wasn’t much help. “Listen. What I really want to do is make a trade.”
“The hell are you talking about?” Leland asked.
Markus swallowed. “You said it yourself. You’d be willing to provide what we need in exchange for sex. So that’s what I’m offering you.”
There was a blessed silent moment where none of their captors spoke. Then, the man with the gun snickered. “You aren’t nearly as cute as your lady friend, Doc.”
“What?” Markus challenged, doing his level best to provoke them. “Am I too manly for three of you to handle?”
“Ah, shut up,” Leland said. But he sounded like he was considering it.
The man who’d been holding Markus’s collar released him, and glanced back at the others. “Well? I mean...a mouth’s a mouth. Since joining up with Kidman I’ve been way too busy to get laid.”
“I wouldn’t be satisfied with just his mouth,” Leland warned.
“You could - you can fuck me,” Markus hurried to say. The words felt unwieldy spilling out of his mouth. (He wasn’t the type for romance, and his sex drive - while not nonexistent per se - had never been a significant part of his life. He wasn’t used to saying things like this. He wasn’t used to doing things like this.)
Another round of silent communication passed between the three men. This time, it ended with them all in agreement.
Leland walked over and grabbed a handful of Markus’s hair. As he dragged Markus out of the chair and onto his knees, he said, “Remember: You asked for this.”
They got their supplies.
When Markus was dragged back to their cell to rejoin his coworkers, he’d mostly managed to put himself back together. His coat was missing - yanked off and thrown, without care, in some dark corner of the conference-interrogation-hybrid room. But he’d smoothed down the dress shirt he was wearing underneath the best he could. The men had even given him a moment to fix his tie. What gentlemen.
Now it was just the three of them again. Elena was curled up on the surgical bed, in a restless sleep. Valerie, seated beside her in vigil, turned to stare at Markus and bit her lip. A mixture of gratitude and anger showed on her face.
Markus did his best to smile. He thought it worked. “Don’t worry. I fed them bogus info. By the time they figure out that the numbers I gave them won’t work, we’ll be long gone.”
He didn’t clarify if that meant ‘escaped’ or ‘dead.’
Valerie’s expression softened, but she didn’t quite smile. She’d caught the vague word choice. “There’s the Doctor Vaughn I know.”
In the end, it was no grand escape plan or violent prison break that set them free. It was Kidman’s own short-sighted hedonism and hubris.
“That dumbass,” Valerie muttered victoriously as they hurried to the nearest public space. They were soaking wet and freezing cold, but they were free. They were free, and Elena was safe. The operation they’d carried out hadn’t been a permanent solution, but it was enough to keep her body running safely until they could perform a proper chip replacement procedure.
It had been worth it. Markus reminded himself of that fact many, many times.
To his relief, neither Valerie nor Elena had seemed to notice anything off. Val did question him about some bruises on his cheek and neck. Markus explained that he’d played coy with the ‘important Stigma data’ for a few minutes, to lower their suspicions. Kidman’s goons had just roughed him up a bit to get him to talk, that was all.
He was lucky they had no opportunity to change their clothes while locked up. The bruises on his hips would have been harder to explain away.
When they finally returned to Caduceus’s headquarters, Elena and Valerie submitted themselves for a quick medical examination to make sure there were no unnoticed side effects from their rough treatment. Markus declined the offer to do the same.
More importantly: He had work to do.
There was the outbreak to help contain. There was Professor Wilkens’s apparent betrayal to cope with. There were new manifestations of Stigma presenting in patients who needed to be operated on, urgently.
There was plenty for Markus to do besides think about what he’d done.
And, for a couple weeks, it was smooth sailing. Business as usual - at least, relative to how unusual their brand of business was at Caduceus.
And then Markus walked into work late one day. Upon setting a single foot in the building, he was told he needed to be in the Director’s office “immediately.”
He sighed. There’d been a traffic jam. There was no need to be this much of a stickler about punctuality.
When he knocked and entered the office, he saw Valerie and Elena sitting with Director Quatro. So maybe this wasn’t about his tardiness. He breathed a sigh of relief.
“Morning, Director,” Markus greeted, sliding into a seat across from her. “How can I...help you...?”
He trailed off, noticing the atmosphere. Elena had her elbows resting on the conference table, hands on her forehead and gaze cast down. The Director’s face was schooled into a stony version of concern. Valerie - well, Valerie looked devastated.
A quiet, nervous laugh escaped Markus. “What’s going on?”
He expected tragic news about Professor Wilkens, or maybe something related to the troubles Cynthia had been having that caused her to leave the organization. He did not expect the Director to slide a phone across the table and motion for him to look at the screen.
“I’m sorry, Doctor Vaughn,” she said. “But we thought you should hear this from us first.”
The phone displayed a screenshot from a popular file-sharing site. Like most things on the internet, the majority of users went to it for pornographic material. So it wasn’t a surprise to see that the video still in the screenshot showed a man, disheveled and half-naked, on all fours. One cock was shoved down his throat while another penetrated him from behind.
The brain’s capacity to deny what was right in front of it was a powerful thing. Markus didn’t recognize the man in the image as himself until his eyes landed on the video title in the screenshot: “Caduceus’s Finest, Ladies and Gents.”
He’d been so overwhelmed by what had been happening to him, he hadn’t noticed one of the men pulling out their phone to film it.
“Oh,” Markus muttered.
That was all he could think to say. Just. Oh.
The Director retrieved the phone. “We’ve gotten the original upload taken down. But as you know, things spread fast online...we’re trying to eliminate every trace of the video we can find. I can’t guarantee we’ll be successful, Doctor Vaughn. People are already talking about this scandal.”
Valerie’s hands smacked the table as she stood up. “Don’t call it a ‘scandal,’ Director,” she said, voice low and hot. “Call it what it is: A crime.”
“Did you do that for me?” Elena’s voice was much softer. She sounded near tears. “You shouldn’t have done that. I...I would’ve been fine, probably. You didn’t need to subject yourself to that.”
It occurred to Markus that he wasn’t really feeling much of anything at the moment. Shock, most likely. He was sure the humiliation and anger would set in any minute now. For the time being, he enjoyed the clarity. “Hey, hey. Don’t beat yourself up over it. It’s fine. I’m sure they only released this video to punish us for escaping.”
“As if that makes it any better?”
Valerie walked around the table and leaned down, pulling Markus into a firm hug. Markus jumped at first; he wasn’t used to such close physical contact. Then he relaxed, returning the gesture.
“I, uh...I’m sorry for worrying you guys,” Markus said.
“Idiot,” Valerie muttered, giving him another squeeze. “You’re not the one who should be sorry. When we get our hands on those bastards, I swear...”
“We’ll handle the matter appropriately, Doctor Blaylock,” the Director said. “We must go about things properly, if we’re to have the legal system on our side.”
“Look,” Markus protested, “You shouldn’t be worrying about this. Focus on Stigma. Focus on Professor Wilkens. This isn’t something-”
“’This’ was an assault on one of Caduceus’s employees,” Director Quatro interjected. “It is not something I’ll take lightly.”
Markus lowered his head. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see Elena standing beside him. Her eyes were still wet, but her mouth was set with resolve. “If anyone thinks they can hurt one of my doctors and get away with it, they’ll have to learn otherwise.”
Markus wanted to argue. He wanted to say he"d been the one to offer himself. ("Remember: You asked for this.") He wanted to tell them they shouldn’t concern themselves with protecting him from his own poor decisions.
But, if he was honest with himself...it felt kind of nice. He’d felt so powerless locked up with Kidman’s gang. He was sure they all had. Out here, though? They had all the power. They had the deep coffers of Caduceus’s massive investigative and legal budget. They had all of the connections that came with being a subset of a massive government organization. They had three determined women whose ire was a dangerous thing to earn.
Yeah. It felt nice.