"You killed a good man today. A real good one."
Mike's hoarse voice sounded cold, as he watched the surgeon tie his arms against the outstretched wings of the gurney.
"And no matter what my fate in all this will be, I will make sure that you pay for murdering my partner. All of you!"
For the last couple of minutes, the Korean doctor barely acknowledged his anger-filled words. Instead, he followed his protocol with decisive precision, organizing his tools on the many metal trays, setting boxes for harvested organs aside, preparing the ventilator and EKG machine, and eventually, stripping him out of his dress shirt and tying him half-naked to the gurney.
Mike had to fight hard to push off the overwhelming grief for his partner's fate, still praying for Danny to change his mind, but now forced to focus on his current situation. Taking in the scene around him, he noticed the tile walls and top-of-the-line equipment elegantly hidden in the old farm house basement.
A cabinet full of scrubs, wound dressing and packaged syringes stood wide open and next to it sat an assortment of stainless-steel trays full of scalpels and other tools Mike wasn't familiar with.
He flinched when he felt a needle inserted into the inside of his right elbow, connected to an IV bottle up above. Noting his reaction, the surgeon smiled deviously, before grabbing another stethoscope from the nearby counter and wrapping it around his neck.
As an involuntary shudder ran through his body, Mike rested his head against the gurney and stared up at the large OR room lights, envisioning the last minutes of countless innocent people who'd come before him.
"You're still waiting on your backup, Lieutenant Stone?", the surgeon said arrogantly and attached an assortment of EKG electrodes to his bare chest, before flipping the machine on. As the frantic beeping mirroring Mike's inner turmoil filled the otherwise quiet room, he clenched his jaw, fighting hard to remain calm.
"What's your name?", he asked in return, hoping to continue to stall.
"My real name, or my American name?"
Mike turned his head and watched the doctor collect a set of scrubs, face masks and gloves, before neatly setting them onto the nearby counter.
"How about both?"
"Over here they call me Tony Chong. In my home country of North Korea, they call me Doctor Taeyong Hyun-Soo."
"Did you work for the regime? Is that why you came over here? As a spy?"
"Lieutenant Stone, your curiosity honors me.", the doctor said genially before grabbing another assortment of packaged syringes and needles before stacking them onto the shelf, "I was a member of…I guess you would call it the national army for the Leadership. They saw my potential early on and allowed me to earn my degree in medicine. I helped advance their research into combat medicine and extensive limb sparing surgeries, but I decided to switch my main focus to organs transplantation. After a while…let's just say that there was a minor misunderstanding about my…my methods of practice. And I deemed it to be safer over here. I forged my papers and became a refugee."
As Mike was beginning to shake from the cold, he bit his lip, then took a deep breath, trying to keep his voice steady.
"You will find that unlike where you came from, this country values the life of a human being."
"Do not kid yourself, Lieutenant Stone.", the man countered, his cold brown eyes filling with anger, "The only thing this country values is money. Money to purchase land. Money to purchase women. Monday to gain power. And, in our case, money to preserve life."
"You are very wrong about that, Doctor Hyun-Soo.", Mike argued, surprising the other man by his accent-free pronunciation of his last name, "The value of a human life is regarded as the most important value of all. And each soldier and police officer in this country works hard every single day to preserve that very value."
Restoring his unreadable expression, the surgeon hesitated for a moment and sat down on the gurney next to him.
"The value of a life, Lieutenant Stone, is a mere currency. See, you will find that some people are willing to pay a lot of money to sustain, even save the life of those they love. And just as many people are willing to throw away their own lives in pursuit of vices that destroy their bodies. Some of these people are of no value to society. They don't contribute to the common good. They don't work. They cause problems. They are diseased. My…methods…not just help to cleanse your pool from all these troublesome individuals while saving the lives of those worthier of a cause, they are also…they are a valuable compromise to stabilize this…currency we are talking about here."
Mike grunted in disgust, before shaking his head, the machine next to him beeping faster, the more upset he became.
"I don't care how eloquently you put it, Doctor, murder is murder. And what you did by picking off the most innocent and vulnerable people you could find to perform your surgeries on, those who didn't have anybody to care for them, those who were alone and helpless is…beyond reproach. I am sickened at the thought of how many lives you wasted because they didn't fit your order sheet, just like that young cop outside who was chained and defenseless.", Mike hesitated when his voice broke. Swallowing hard, he drew in a deep breath before continuing, his words a mere growl, "Well, let me assure you of one thing. There's a special place in hell for people like you!"
"There is no need for hostility, Lieutenant Stone.", the doctor answered in a cheery singsong, before stepping off the gurney again, "We are merely disagreeing."
"Tony, do you want me to check on Danny?"
Bobby appeared by their side, his shotgun at the ready and yet his expression was as emotionless as that of a baker kneading dough.
"Yes, please do. I want to ensure that his first kill was…executed properly."
Mike swallowed hard at those words, futilely fighting his restraints, when Bobby spun around and headed for the door. Unaffected by the disruption, the doctor turned back toward him, a broad smile appearing on his lips.
"See, Lieutenant Stone, you believe that all life is valuable. Me, I see how many billions of people live on this planet…their existence governed by both, fate, and life choices. We cannot control fate, but we can control how we lead our life. In the animal kingdom, Mother Nature weeds out the weak and feeble. But us humans, we foolishly believe that we must sustain life even when the very individual doesn't strive for a valuable existence. By going against the laws of this planet, we have, in fact, upset the very balance of nature and health for our population. It will take many people just like me to weed out the weak links and work toward a stronger, healthier breed."