She ignored all instances of sympathy gazing from her own reflection through the glass door and into the elder rat-man's tired eyes on the other side. His actions belittled her hospitality, providing him a medical bed and instead he succumbed to the cold, dry floor. For three days, she recalled him reciting a Japanese prayer multiple times, boring Chaplin to tears but holding her attention.
"I can't decide between Chinese takeout or tacos," Chaplin mumbled as he walked away without his wallet. She held it in the air and felt a light breeze behind her when he returned meekly for it. "Thank you, Miss Karai..." Her reflection shuttered from the door closing.
She customarily let the prisoner speak first. The rat spoke a few words to her on the second day with a bit of drowsiness, like she had forced him on a death march, but she did no such thing. Her quick wit and reflexes saved him from a rather gruesome, pathetic end. He slept through the pain, something she expected from an elder and an experienced spiritualist.
After the rat fought against the initial shock, his first words to anyone in the room were, "I should have listened to you, my son" followed by sporadic moments of silence and nervous breaths. She was certain he didn't realize, or care, where he was contained. If he knew, he would have fought her and clubbed Chaplin on the way out the door. Chaplin insisted on hiding under his desk or in a corner, for he feared the four angry green sons wouldn't be far behind, looking for their family member.
Yet, it was now the third day, and no sign of the Mutant Brigade. Chaplin's anxiety waned between his idle chatter of food and medical babble. With him out of the room, she could handle the conversations more... sensibly.
She pushed the intercom, waiting for the short beep. "Do you know where you are?" The room's ticking ambiance flooded the speaker. She saw his mouth open, and move, but his voice was as quiet as a heartbeat.
"Do you know where you are?" she attempted again, with more force and brevity. Her reflection's eyebrows flinched when the Rat looked in her direction, his mouth still moving but no sound coming forth. His eyes looked fearful, subdued.
One final time, she whispered into the intercom.:"Do you know where you are..." She paused, looking behind her to be certain no one was there. "...Ojii-san?"
"...with me..." was all she could understand from him inside the room. He twitched in his sitting position on the floor.
"Pardon?"
"...with - meeee.." His words prolonged through more violent twitching until his body collapsed and fell into a mild seizure. Karai opened the door as slick as ice, but Chaplin cried for her to stop in her tracks. He brushed past her, securing the door behind him, and saving the Rat from, what she knew to be true, dying on their floor.
For the moment, at least.
"I'm terribly sorry I screamed at you, Miss Karai. It's very important that I'm the only one who goes in there to help him," Chaplin talked behind her, more so at her reflection. "I can't risk you getting injured, and this mutant isn't responding to the treatment." He sighed and unwrapped a taco. "I'm surprised the taco place was open with everything going on lately..."
She became agitated the more he fiddled with food wrappers. He talked on and on about nothing meaningful, or important to her.
"Hydrophobia will begin setting in soon, Miss Karai..."
She almost didn't catch what he said, or the way he said it, like he was speaking to a child.
"I am aware of the situation," she spoke in his direction. "I will take watch for now."
He munched through a crispy shell and lettuce. "I might be close to another solution. I just need to work out the chemistry and look back on how I-"
"Then work it out." She returned her gaze to the Rat, now restrained to the bed. "I will call for you if something happens."
"No need. I have an app on my phone. Do you want a...?" He held up a taco, and she shook her head without looking at him. "...Okay." He munched like a savage through his cheap meals and clinked the keys on his laptop, still needlessly chatting at no one in particular. By the time he shoved on his headphones to listen to MIT video lectures and drown out their little underground world, her fingers found the intercom button, watching it flash red and the return of the hiss from the room.
She had memorized the Japanese prayer he recited for days. It was a prayer from her youth, when the streets were called home and there was never an opened door. A distinct memory appeared behind a thick curtain: a dog. A no-named dog. She tried pushing and kicking the mutt away from her. No matter how far she ran, the dog eventually showed its face, hiding in a dark corner or jumping out at her. It was always there until the day it wasn't anymore. If she questioned its disappearance, she had accepted its invitation into her unsatisfactory life. An existence, pale and thin and ... brutal.
She said through the intercom, "Gentle."
Chaplin snapped off his headphones on command. "Yes, Miss Karai?"
She released the button, silencing the hiss and the rat's labored breathing on their side. "I said nothing."
Sometime during the early morning hours, Karai's feeble slumber was jolted by the rat's squeals and rapid bed movements before the machines blared. Chaplin's headphones blocked the initial sounds from his ears, allowing her to dash into the room before Chaplin woke up and protested. Although when she leapt to the rat's side, she asked herself again - what could she do to help him at that point?
White, bubbling foam splattered from his mouth, and his dark pupils crawled up the sclera, forging a trail of seared, throbbing vessels. The restraints creaked from his body's wild jerks like a final performance of the night.
Flustered again by his mistress' inability to understand 'rabid mutant, don't enter', Chaplin muted the machine's whirls and horns, before mumbling, "What is it about this specimen she likes so much!" thinking she couldn't hear him over the noise.
And he was correct: why was she so concerned with a former enemy? Over the years, the rat, now dying under her watch, tried killing her and successfully wiped out her clan. A year later and under the radar with only the twitchy Chaplin by her side, she found the leader-less life more calming and rewarding, a surprise she didn't expect.
Now she couldn't remember what it was like to be a sheep, or a wolf. Then what would be a neutral medium? A rodent? A mouse.
Chaplin waved frantically at her, "Please stand back!" He plopped a mask over his own head and leaned in to wipe the grueling saliva off the mutant's face and neck, still complaining over the incident. "He is going to expire soon, Miss Karai. Let me end it for him now and keep us out of danger."
Of all the words fumbling out of his mask, she heard those the clearest, and they stung the sharpest. By the gods, why was she was concerned over this rat?! It was infuriating!
"Watch out!" She slapped Chaplin's arm from the slobbering jaws of the unfortunate rat, Splinter. Since she said his name, it meant he was more than a slight worry. Without missing a beat, Karai placed the second mask over her head, slipped into gloves, and shouted at her partner, "You have two choices, Isaac Chaplin, and you will need to make them by the time he finishes this round of seizures. Pick up the syringe you need to either fix this, or end it. You will make this time and moments yours."
She was certain Chaplin's knees were shaking; he was never good at being under pressure these days. Her hands delicately swabbed around the corners of Splinter's mouth. In the fire under his mournful surface, Karai applied warm water to smother the disease festering in every cell in his body. She didn't waste time with unimportant words and gentle squeezes. That was meant for his family, either in his resurrection or his passing.
"Now," she said at Chaplin, who she knew was ready with his decision, judging from how close he was standing next to her.
Terror and the madness faded from Splinter's weary eyes. There was something about a man's surrender to mercy that filled her heart with a passionate empathy.
Chaplin un-clamped all four restraints on the bed as the rat laid limber. The numbers were barely reading on the machines. She removed her mask, feeling strands of her dry, coarse hair and the worry of the past few days on her shoulders. So much noise. Now so little.
"Miss Karai..." Chaplin's mask jiggled.
She stopped at the door. "Yes?"
"Would you mind if I stayed behind while you delivered him back to his family? I have-"
"Certainly. Pack all of his belongings, please, and my instructions."
Chaplin set his mask aside, picking up three more syringes and vials. "They'll actually need a lot more than I anticipated so, uh... make sure they understand COMPLETELY that you must give him this every three hours, ON the hour, and if they miss a dose..."
Those kinds of important ramblings from him, she didn't mind. She actually smiled while he packed an enormous supply bag, scrambling around the room and thumping the end of Splinter's bed. Even with remembering complex medic instructions, her next journey of searching for a very worried, angry clan and delivering to them a frail family member, she was content in the far extent of her abilities to save him. What will come to pass, will pass.