Reputation was currency in this world.Whining devalued it.
I worked methodically, stitching the torn muscle with steady precision.The rhythm was familiar: pierce, pull, knot, repeat.
Another one of the wounded men sat in a chair across the room while one of Atlas’s medics finished wrapping his shoulder.The atmosphere was quiet, almost routine.
I tied off the last stitch and trimmed the thread.
“There,” I said.“Try not to tear it open.”
Gianni glanced down.
“Beautiful work.”
“Of course it is.That’s why you called me.”
He slid carefully off the table.
“Your body is starting to resemble a map,” I added, looking him over.
“Battle scars are attractive.”
“To whom?”
He considered that.
“Fair point.”
I looked up when the door opened.
Archie Popovich stepped into the room like he had just wandered in from a quiet dinner somewhere civilized instead of arriving to inspect the aftermath of a violent operation.
His suit jacket was gone, the sleeves of his shirt rolled neatly to the elbows.The white fabric was immaculate—no blood, no grime, not even the faint smudge of gunpowder.
Which meant, of course, that he had arrived after the fun part, which wouldn’t sit well with him.
My eyes dropped briefly to his legs without meaning to.
They moved smoothly when he walked now.Strong.Controlled.A slight limp which sometimes flared up and was more pronounced at peculiar times, a phenomenon that no-one had an explanation for.
Months ago, my cousin Gianni had shot him through both knees.It hadn’t been an accident, but a very deliberate act of violence.
I still remembered the moment clearly—the way Archie lay collapsed on the ground, blood pouring out of him while the rest of the world dissolved into chaos.Most men would have been screaming, or cursing, or begging someone to do something.
Archie had simply looked down at the damage like it was an inconvenience.Then he had looked at me.
“You are the doctor,” he had said calmly.“Yes?”
I had spent the next four hours elbow-deep in blood trying to save his legs.The ligaments were shredded.There were bone fragments where bone had no business being.It was the sort of damage that usually ended with a wheelchair and a lifetime of bitterness.But somehow—against probability and logic—I had put him back together again.And now he walked like nothing had ever happened.
Which was impressive.And mildly irritating.Because since that night, Archie had developed a habit of appearing in the periphery of my life like a particularly well-dressed parasite.
I had started privately referring to him as the Russian bug.
Not because he behaved like one—Archie was far too controlled, far too refined for that—but because he kept showing up when I least expected him.
In hallways.In meeting rooms.In the middle of bloody wars he had no business finishing.Each time with that same calm expression and faintly amused eyes, like he had wandered there entirely by accident.
He was a humorous bug, admittedly.But still a bug.