Pain. Pain. Pain. Like a never-ending drumbeat. Pain and pain and pain. He had been cut into a hundred squirming pieces, and each one was burning alive.

He should be dead. Why wasn't he? I'm ready. Please…

A face flashed through his head: a little girl, eyes empty. A broken little girl lying motionless in a pit, insects swarming over every inch of her naked flesh. Sakura.

Kariya Matou's heart stirred in his chest, struggling to beat. He couldn't die. Not yet. Not while she still suffered, helpless, in that underground hell. Move, he thought. But his muscles ignored the signals from his brain. He wondered, dimly, if his legs were shattered.

Move.

The finger of his right hand twitched. The rest of him remained immobile. The pavement was hard and cold beneath his cheek. Pavement. He was lying on a street.

A worm wriggled beneath the skin of his neck. They never seemed to rest. Sometimes, late at night he heard them shifting around inside his skull. Sometimes they spoke to him, grating out mockery in the voice of his father, or whispering words of encouragement in the voices of those he loved.

Hold on, Uncle Kariya. We're with you! Rin.

Didn't you promise to play with us in the park again? Sakura.

Kariya…you're so warm… Aoi.

He was losing his mind. He'd known it would happen, sooner or later—and if that was the case, it meant he didn't have much time left. He only hoped he could hold out a little longer. Another week. A few more days. Long enough to win. Long enough to save her.

He knew—in a distant, abstract way—that he had become something out of a horror movie, something that shouldn't exist. He no longer cared.

At some point, Kariya had stopped thinking of himself as a real person. He was too disgusting to be a person. Too pathetic. He was something else—a shadow, a ghost, a broken puppet lurching endlessly and mechanically forward, driven by a single purpose.

By day, he wandered streets alone, dragging his broken body from alley to alley as the worms bred and fed inside his flesh, hiding from the eyes of the world. At night, sleeping in dark alleys alone, he dreamed of the days in the park, playing with Rin and Sakura as Aoi sat nearby, reading her book and smiling her soft, gentle smile.

Those days were gone. He knew that. But if he could save Sakura, it was enough.

If I could just move…

So tired.

Move…

"Saber…look." Irisviel lay a hand on Saber's arm. "Someone's there. Up ahead."

"I see him."

The man lay stomach-down, clad in a dirty, oversized hoodie. Beneath the hood, she could make out a shock of silver hair and part of his face. The skin had a ravaged, withered look. Burn scars?

"Do you think he's still alive?" Irisviel asked quietly.

"I can't sense any mana." It was sheer chance that they'd found him at all. After Saber slew Caster's hell-beast with Excalibur, she and Irisviel had started a sweep of the area to make sure it was secure. They hadn't found anything. Until now.

"Stay here," Saber said. "I'll take a look." She approached slowly and lowered herself into a crouch, examining the motionless form. A faint, sickly-sweet smell of rotting filled her nostrils. She glimpsed movement beneath the man's skin—worms, or maggots—and turned away, pressing a hand over her nose and mouth. Judging by the smell, he had been dead at least a day. Not a casualty of the battle, then. Just some lost soul.

A sad end for any human being—to die alone in this dark and silent alley. Saber looked down at the corpse once more. A blind, milky blue eye stared at nothing. She reached out to smooth his eyelid shut…and her shoulders stiffened in surprise as she touched his skin.

Still warm.

"Saber?"

"Wait."

Carefully, she rolled him onto his back, noting as she did that he was not nearly as old as she had first assumed. The undamaged half of his face was almost handsome, making the blinded, ravaged half all the more jarring. Holding her breath, she placed her ear against his chest. A heartbeat—faint but unmistakable—reached her ears.

Saber looked over her shoulder at Irisviel. "I don't know how it's possible, but he's still alive. Let's get him to a hospital." She started to lift him off the bloodstained pavement…and then she spotted the Command Seal on his right hand. A chill slid down her spine.

His condition had deteriorated so much, he barely resembled the photograph she'd seen, but there was no mistaking that Seal. For a moment, she remained motionless, frozen.

Irisviel approached. When her gaze fell on the man, she gasped. "This is…"

"Yes," Saber said quietly. "Kariya Matou."

In a flash she remembered the looming, black form of Berserker, the red glow of its eyes as it shambled toward her. She flinched. Saber had never feared dying in honorable combat, but fighting that thing…it hadn't been a duel. It had been like facing down a mindless, slavering beast, something without reason or honor. Even so, there had been something oddly sadabout the creature. Its wounded-animal howls echoed in her head.

And this man was its Master.

She drew her sword and held it against his throat. "You might want to look away," she told Irisviel.

Irisviel reached out and placed a hand on her wrist. "Saber," she said quietly. "Wait. I know he's our enemy, but…are you sure?"

"Believe me, I don't like ending it this way, either. But if we leave him here, he'll be dead within hours. No doctor could save him, at this point. The most merciful thing we can give him now is a quick death."

Still, it felt like murder. To slay a helpless, sick, unconscious opponent was the height of dishonor and cowardice, an action befitting an assassin, not a knight. This went against the code of chivalry—against everything she stood for.

But she was a Servant. To pass up this opportunity would be foolish. After all the lives she had taken, what was one more? She gritted her teeth and pressed the edge of the blade against his throat.

"I can save him," Irisviel said.

Saber blinked, caught off guard. "You…are you sure?"

"No," she admitted. "But there's a chance."

"What about Kiritsugu? What would he think?"

A few heartbeats of silence passed. "I want to see him win this war," she said. "I love him, after all. And I believe in his ideals. But…you are my friend. I know you, Artoria. If you do this, it will haunt you." She lowered her gaze. "It's your choice. Whatever you decide, I won't intervene."

Saber's jaw tightened. She stared down into Kariya's face. At last, she sheathed her sword. "Let's get him to the car, then." She lifted him into her arms. It was like lifting a bundle of sticks. "We'll take him to the base. After that…we'll figure it out."

The tension eased out of Irisviel's shoulders.

They began to walk, Saber carrying Kariya cradled against her chest, like a groom carrying his bride. He made an unwieldy burden, being taller than her, but Saber's strength was far greater than a human's—and for a grown man, the Matou Master was astonishingly light, as if he'd been hollowed out.

Kariya stirred in her arms, moaning faintly. He coughed, and a splash of blood landed on her shirt. Something moved, white and wriggling within the red. Worms. She nearly dropped him, but managed to stifle her reflexes. The worms were already dying, unable to live outside their host's body, their movements slowing as they squirmed on her shirt.

He didn't have much longer. His weak, erratic breathing told her that he was clinging to life by a thread. The blood on her shirt suggested his organs had already been damaged by the parasites inside him. She quickened her pace.

He stirred again. His breath rasped softly in his throat; his good eye rolled and twitched beneath the lid, struggling to open. "Aoi…san…" He coughed again. "Is that you?"

She wondered who Aoi-san was. His wife? A lover? But he'd used the formal honorific.

It didn't matter. If it would calm him, she would say whatever was necessary; given his current state, he was unlikely to remember this exchange. "Yes, it's me," she said quietly. "I'm taking you to a safe place. Now rest and conserve your strength."

He quieted, slipping into merciful unconsciousness.

Saber kept walking, Irisviel close behind her. With every tortured, ragged breath Kariya drew, she was sure it would be his last. There was nothing left of him. He felt so brittle, as though he might crumble apart in her arms. Was this the power of the Matou—a power which ate its users alive from the inside? Even so, this level of damage surely wasn't normal, even for them.

What could have compelled him to take on this burden? What could be worth such agony?

When they reached the car, Saber opened the back door and maneuvered Kariya onto the backseat. There was a blanket folded up in the trunk; she retrieved it and draped it over him, then got behind the wheel. With Irisviel in the passenger's seat, she started up the engine. She'd just have to hope they didn't get pulled over on the way back—explaining why they had an unconscious, blood-spattered man in the backseat might be awkward.

Have I gone mad? She was risking their safety to save an enemy Master, without her own Master's knowledge. Why?

Kiritsugu would not approve. She was sure of that. If he used a command seal and ordered her to kill Kariya, she would have no choice. But until that moment, she would act under the power of her own will, according to her own code and conscience.

Irisviel was silent, but Saber could feel the weight of her gaze.

"We may be able to turn this to our advantage. He may have valuable information," Saber said. "The more we learn about our enemies, the greater our chances of winning the Grail. In any case, if he dies, his command seals may simply pass to a new Master, and that will throw our plans into chaos. For the moment, at least, keeping him alive as a prisoner is in our best interest."

She was rationalizing, and she knew it.

Saber's gloved hands tightened on the steering wheel. "If he makes a threatening move, I won't hesitate to kill him."

"I know," Irisviel.

As they drove, Saber glanced into the rearview mirror. Kariya remained unconscious, but still, she could see the slight movement of his chest as he breathed. Amidst the pity and revulsion, she felt a strange flicker of admiration. His body was in shambles; by all logic, he ought to be dead, yet he hung on seemingly through sheer stubborn willpower.

This man was strong.