I'm back again! This chapter's title comes from Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die," title song of the 1973 James Bond film.

WARNING in this chapter for: blood, needles, medical unpleasantness, graphically described injury/death, respawn sickness, and serious gore.

Your fourth day at the base dawns as early as the rest. The team is back to warring over the gravel pit, to endless rounds of capturing one point after another, and you hear nothing more of the stolen intelligence—either in reprimand or concern—until a chance encounter with the last person you wish to meet on the field.

It was an accident, judging by the surprise that flickers across his face when you turn opposite corners to stand, face-to-face, in a narrow alley. You had been pushing to the next point, and the BLU medic… had probably been answering the call of a teammate or two of his that you had left bleeding.

But, oh—the grin that captures his lips when he recovers makes your blood run cold.

You raise your shield just as the doctor pulls the trigger on his syringe gun, and the dart bounces off Kevlar with a metallic clink.

"Fräulein."

"Doctor." You're covered well; you know nothing short of a rocket at point-blank range will knock you down, not here between these walls. You draw your Gyrojet—

His brows arch, gaze searching the alley's mouth behind you. "Ah—Herr Pyro."

Shit. You turn, anticipating the threat of flaming demise, drawing the Gyrojet high to level it with—air. Thin air.

And there's a dull, burning sensation in your shoulder. You follow the barrel of the pistol to your wrist, over forearm and elbow, to the needle buried at the fold between shoulder and chest.

Your vision swims; arm drops to your side, heavy.

Oh. Oh, no. No—

Precisely what your medic had warned you against.

"This wasn't your fault, really, fräulein." You thrust your shield-arm forward, but the doctor dodges the shove smoothly, sidestepping across cracked soil to fire his syringe gun again—and you've left your chest open, shield drawing back just a fraction too slowly—fuck.

The dart whistles—a stab, a pinch in your abdomen, and you rip the needle out of your coat and skin as fast as you can, gritting your teeth against the tug and slide.

With a snap, you strike at the man's grinning face again, but—

Burning. Across your thigh, you hear fabric tear under the teeth of the bone-saw, your leg gives, the moment transforming into a slow battle to keep yourself upright; you lash out, steel-toed boots striking true—a grunt as the medic hits the ground behind, and you scramble to crawl back the way you had come, dragging your injured limbs, and—

"BASTARD!"

White flashes of pain blind your eyes, his gloved hands wrapped around your bloody thigh, fingers digging into your torn flesh and muscle, and you roll, hissing, dragging his arm under your legs, scrambling to your forearms—you fall. The shot to the abdomen has made half the necessary muscles near-useless, little better than a steamed mound of pasta sloshing about against your will. You throw yourself to one side, your bodily weight centered atop the medic now, your blood smeared over his blue gloves and once-white coat, lips drawn back in a snarl. You strike his face with your shield. Once, twice—glass cracks between wire frames—before his free hand brings the bone-saw to your hip.

The blade grinds against bone, tears a scream from your throat, tenuous fibers of uniform fabric dragging, fraying, mingling with sinew and skin, and the medic is far stronger than you anticipated—

Crack.

Face-down in the orange dust. Long fingers clasp the back of your skull, your hair, and—

Crack.

The pain is white, red, burns, turns your stomach, draws the strength from your limbs, dust in your eyes—

Crack.

Again, he slams your face into the crumbling soil. Your nose is broken beyond repair, you're sure—blood hot, dusty, coppery on your lips, tongue—pins and needles dance across already swelling flesh. Gasping breaths through your bloody mouth. Distantly, you can hear the BLU medic cackle, and if the pain had not overloaded every nerve, your flesh might crawl.

The shield is pinned beneath your chest, and your remaining arm barely listens to command, inches across the cracked landscape of orange soil, grasping, clawing at dirt, catching on trousers, can't find your Lancaster's holster to—

"Allow me, fräulein."

You scream. It takes a moment to register why—he's sliced the holster free from your leg, with no care for the flesh he's taken with it. Your head spins; you gasp against the gritty dirt.

Only one option occurs to you:

"HELP!" Your voice cracks, echoes along the alley walls.

That sets the medic laughing even harder. "Gott im Himmel—you think someone will come? They're busy with the next point; they have no time for you."

You spit, spraying the blood from your nose and half-numb, swollen lips onto the dirt. "Then kill me."

"In good time." A pinch at your shoulder, but thrashing does no good, soil falling into your jacket, loose stone and clumps of dirt digging into your stomach. The doctor's knees are solidly on your back, his legs pinning yours. "A case full of medical records and none of yours among them, Specialist—but don't worry: I'll rectify my lack of knowledge shortly."

Your head spins. Medical files. Why?

"Have you any idea what I can exploit with the right information?" Apparently your question had been verbal.

The ground seems to lurch beneath you.

He tears another scream from your lips with a slice across your spine. The teeth of the saw grinds, vibrates along vertebrae into your skull. You squeeze your eyes shut as the void creeps into the edges of your vision, white sparks of pain blurring your thoughts.

At least you'd bleed out before he accomplished much, at this rate. Was this even meant to yield results? So far the only thing he could find out, it seems to you, is that you both feel and react to pain.

Quite the revelation, that.

You're floating a bit now, some combination of the drugs and blood loss, and, really, this isn't the worst thing that could have happened to you; your own mother has faced worse. Faces worse. This; this is nearly over now.

"Spesh, could use some support!"

"Where the Hell are ya?"

There's no chance of your hand reaching the button at your ear now, as your breath comes in weak rattles. The sun fades to a hopeless grey.

"ON YOUR LEFT!"

"Where in the fu—"

"FOUR O'CLOCK, FOUR O'CLOCK!"

The darkness fades to familiar black before a cracking pain brings you, gasping, back. The sun glares in a clear sky, and you squint, groaning; the pain is gone now, leaving only a hum in your limbs that warms you down to the bone, and though your eyes reveal nothing but an indistinct blur, it is a sensation you recognize by now.

You let your eyes settle closed, allow them to rest a moment while your body and mind take inventory. You need to ask if he knows what was stolen from the base yesterday. If he does not… "Medic?"

"Ja."

Something's wrong.

Your eyes snap open again, and you realize only now you can't move any of your limbs, cannot lift your head, muscles groaning under useless strain.

The BLU medic's visage swims slowly into focus as he sets his medi-gun aside. Your lips draw back in a snarl, but his voice is just as amiable as that first reply: "Oh… am I not the one you were hoping for?"

"What the fuck?"

"I don't have zhe data I need." His grin turns your stomach even as rage races through your veins. Where is your team? How long have you been here? What the hell does this bastard think he's doing? "Now hold still." A short laugh. "Not that there's much choice, of course—"

Panic rises in your throat as the fabric of your coat parts beneath the blade of his saw, burgundy threads snapping and fraying.

"Let me die!" you blurt, heart racing. "Please. This is wrong. This is a battlefield. You can't—"

"Shh—shh. Specialist. I will let you return to respawn in a few moments." He chuckles. "Very nice of me, nicht? It's more than your medic did for our spy. Has he told you zhe story?"

You have no idea what the fuck he's on about, and waste no more time considering it and try with everything you are to thrash, to move—anything at all to get away from that razor edge. You strain until tears prick your eyes, but your head only lolls uselessly to one side and another on steady waves of panic. Your limbs lay heavy and useless as stones spread on the cracked, orange dirt.

The medic lowers his blade to your chest without another word, and pain erupts, racing across your skin. You hiss, you wail, unintelligible syllables falling from your lips. First, haphazard cuts shred flesh, sending flecks of blood across his face, catching on cracked spectacles, and you squeeze your eyes shut, clench your teeth, screaming, as the saw grinds on bone, sending tremors through your chest, vibrations along your spine.

"Ah, so he is experimenting with another model… Oh, Specialist—wouldn't you like to see?"

No. No, you wouldn't. But when a hand plunges itself into flesh that should never touch the afternoon air, your eyes snap open.

You've seen flesh before, and blood, and muscle and bone, ragged sinew and skin—things outside in the hot, desert sun that should never have seen the light of day.

But you have never seen a human heart.

And this—you're not sure it's human any longer, if it ever was; this beating burgundy bundle, crossed with veins and wire, larger even than your fist, open and throbbing in the desert air, clenched in a cerulean palm.

There's no sound now from your throat, as though the pain no longer matters, as though you're so far beyond repair that your mind knows there's no sense in sounding the alarm. You stare. You stare as rubbery fingers slip through your flesh, paw through intestines and veins like so much ribbon, as the blood flows in waves and feeds the dry soil, fills sandy cracks in ruby rivers, and the sun goes dim.

Icy eyes alight with glee, spectacles sliding down his nose.

The image of your heart, beating steady, copper branches gleaming to the sky, is first, last, foremost, forever in your eyes.

Knees on concrete and here you are, retching again. Distantly, as the heaves subside, you hear a scream. Someone is in pain. The voice echoes into the hall, but with trembling limbs, you're in no condition to answer. You just dearly wish it would cease.

It does not until you close your mouth tight.

Fucking shit.

"Spesh, you outta respawn yet? The Hell happened to you?"

You spit and hit the button on your earpiece at last. You flex your fingers as you stand. The joints are stiff, but they comply.

"On my way. Got in a fight with the enemy medic."

If you could call it that.

"Apparently ya got pretty trashed—that asshole is lookin' awfully cheerful right now."

You feel a bit ill at the thought. "I'm sure he is. Somebody do me a favor and shoot him in the stomach a few times and let him bleed out. Or maybe put a knife in his gut."

"Only if you take care 'a this heavy first. Can't even get to the freakin' point!"

"I'm on my way."

The nagging question of whether your team knows what intelligence was stolen will have to wait.

Note: I think I forgot to mention last time: I'll be referring to Spesh's shield exclusively as a ballistic shield, as that's a bit more correct than using 'ballistic' and 'riot' interchangeably. The main difference being that a ballistic shield is made of sturdier stuff with a little plexiglass window vs a riot shield made for police facing smaller projectiles and made mostly of plexiglass.