"So, who was that from?"

"A police officer from Las Vegas, New Mexico in the United States, we have a lead on Li's location, he's apparently been taken to some where's in Arizona, they found his fingerprints during a drug raid where they discovered human trafficking and slavery"

"We have to go over there now"

"No Kindaichi, we don't even know where the criminal organization actually took Li besides a different state, the US is huge with their states sometimes being a decent size as well, we have to wait until we receive word from the American law enforcement that they have found Li before we head over there"

"But I..."

"I know Kindaichi, I know"

And so while the three Japanese officers could only wait with worry, hope and longing (which their therapist had to deal with on a daily basis unfortunately since the three rotated schedules) the American police were simply determined to find Li and bring him home after so long of being away and thought dead. The smaller towns were cleared first while everyone knew that the cities, especially the bigger cities would have to be cleared at a slower pace. The FBI were chaffing at times at the slowness but everything had to be done legally and so slowly was the only way to go in the bigger cities, but finally three months after their solid lead in Las Vegas they would find Li in Phoenix, Arizona during a combined drug and slave raid

"Okay everyone, if you cooperate no one will get hurt, now then we're pretty sure that some of the people here are slaves and we're also pretty sure that this is a drug lab so we're going to be bringing in dogs to search for drugs and will be checking everyone to see if they're legally allowed to work here"

Soon enough people were separated into two groups, those legally allowed to work in the States and those not, and those not legally allowed to work in the States were obviously slaves due to their poor conditions, the raid also revealed a lot of drugs and then one of those legally allowed to work in the States and hadn't known everything that was going on (that turned out to be the majority of those legally allowed to work in the States, only a few higher ups knew about the slaves and the drugs being manufactured) spoke up

"Um officer..."

"Yes?"

"Two things, first of all I didn't know about what was going on at the work place, but more importantly, there's a room that most of us were told to stay away from, if anyone got near it if they weren't supposed to they were immediately fired with no explanation, I can take you there if you want"

"Thank you, and we'll sort out who all knew what was going on here at a later date, for now though we appreciate you showing us that room"

And so the police are escorted to the room and once the door was opened the smell was horrendous, enough to make even the most seasoned officers feeling ill, but what was worse was what they saw on a table that made even the most seasoned officers actually ill, they saw what looked to be a recently deceased person on said table, but once one of the officers regained control of their stomach they did what they hated to do which was check for a pulse to declare death, but that's when they received a surprise

"I need a couple of paramedics in here now, this person's still alive"

The paramedics rushed in, did what they could and then rushed away leaving no answers as to the condition of the person other than what was already known, they also couldn't get an identity off of them until the doctors were done. Two hours later the chief was waiting for word on the person's condition when a nurse came out

"The John Doe is still in surgery however I've been cleared to take fingerprints for the police and have done so, here's the card"

The chief sees the standard card used to identify fingerprints and hands it to an officer who was waiting for just that sort of thing

"How much longer will they be in surgery?"

"Not sure right now, as it is...we almost lost the person twice now, he's in very critical condition and might be forced into a medical coma once surgery is done to give them a chance to heal without dealing with any pain"

An hour after the fingerprints were sent off the waiting room was filled with ten more officers waiting for word on the unknown (to the chief and the medical personnel) person

"Okay, why is everyone waiting for word on our mysterious person?"

"Because he's one of us chief, he may be from Hong Kong, but no matter if they're an American police officer or a foreign police officer, he's one of us"

"What...what's his name?"

"Pailong Li"

"That's..."

"Yes sir it is, the FBI has already been notified and they said that they're going to be taking care of calling his Japanese friends who are also police officers"

"I see, but we don't have any real news for them yet"

"Just the fact that he's been found will be enough for them for the moment, by the time they arrive we'll have further news I'm sure"

"We're not going to be able to convince them to stay behind in Japan are we?"

"No we're not, not with how long he's been declared dead and the three knowing the truth of the matter"

Four hours after that the doctor came in

"You're here for the John Doe that you rescued correct?"

"He's no longer a John Doe, but correct we're here for him"

"Tell us his name later, in the meantime..." (sighs) "I guess the best news out of all of this is that he's most likely going to live if he survives the next forty-eight hours without anything serious happening to him, as the nurse already told you according to my directions when we gave the update we'd already almost lost him on the operating table twice at that point in time, we nearly lost him a third time shortly after that update was given. He's in serious condition and will remain so for a long time after he's past the critical point which I gave as forty-eight hours, he's been drugged so often I don't know what that will do to his body since we can't gently ween him off of any of those drugs since we have none available to us, he has an obvious head injury, his left leg is shattered in three different places and will need further surgery just to stabilize it completely later on since the orthopedic surgeon couldn't find a lot of bone to piece the leg back together so he'll have permanent rods in place, his right ankle has a simple fracture which will take a bit of time to heal but no surgery needed thankfully, his right collarbone is broken, his left shoulder was dislocated, several times from what we can tell, both arms are also broken though again no surgery will be needed for the breaks to heal fortunately, a quarter of his liver is gone because it was simply too badly damaged, had to take out part of his intestines due to the damage there, there was a lot of internal bleeding that we had to take care of...oh yeah three cracked ribs, two broken ribs and bruised lungs because of the damage to the rib cage, and we have him on dialysis since his kidney's are in failure due to everything he's been through, which actually includes starvation and dehydration"

"How is he alive?"

"A miracle, that's all I can say, it's a miracle that he's still alive right now, now then what's his name so that we can put it on the chart?"

"Pailong Li, an officer will be with him at all times by the way, not just because he's at risk of being abducted but because of the fact that he's one of us, he's a police officer out of Hong Kong and you know how protective we are regarding one of our own"

"Yeah I know, and I remember the one time a foreign police officer was in here due to cross training, that wasn't a pretty sight"

"I'm sure it wasn't, now then is he in recovery?"

"Unfortunately yes and will remain there for at least an hour"

"Understood, anything else we should know?"

"Yes actually, he's going to be on blood transfusions until further notice and due to the head injury he most likely has amnesia"

"Understood, what room will he be taken to once he's out of recovery? I want to check that room first"

"Of course you do, I'll have a nurse take you to the room in the meantime"

"Thank you"

An hour after the group clears his private room Li's brought out of recovery and he definitely didn't look the greatest, he was hooked up to several machines that were currently keeping him alive and also hooked up to several IV's, one was a combination of hydration and the drugs needed to keep him in an induced medical coma, one was the blood transfusion, one IV was simply for nutritional needs and the last IV he was hooked up to was a combination of various antibiotics and more hydration fluids. As for the machines he was hooked up to, he was on dialysis, a machine that breathed for him, a heart monitor, one that helped with the draining of wounds to help stem infection if possible, and one that was attached to a catheter so that the doctors could monitor urine output

"I think...I think we need to prepare his friends before they see him once they arrive in town"

"Yeah, definitely agreed on that, add in the fact that he's going to be in a medical coma for an undetermined amount of time means that they might not be able to stay until he's awake"

"Good point, bet they won't like that bit"

"Too bad, things are what they are"

"Um...about the officers we're going to need a translator since we know that one of the officers doesn't speak any English that we know of"

"Once I know their flight details I'll get a translator arranged"

Suddenly a new voice speaks up

"No need, we FBI agents will handle that part, we're also going to be joining you in protecting detective Li"

"Understood, I know better than to fight you on this"

Four days later and Akechi, Kenmochi and Kindaichi are escorted to the hospital with the FBI agent explaining things to them so that they wouldn't be ask shocked when they finally saw their friend for the first time in years, but the agent also knew that there would still be shock involved since no one could walk into that room and not be shocked at all the equipment and IV's Li had in him, the only saving grace was that Li was no longer on blood transfusions which meant that his body had started the road to recovery

"I see, well I guess it's time to see him again for the first time in a while"

And so the three were escorted into the room and were visibly shocked at his condition, what they didn't notice was that they were being given privacy by everyone, or at the very least as much privacy as was available with armed guards at the front of the room. Eventually though the doctor had to come in and when he was noticed Akechi is the one to speak up

"When will he be brought out of the coma?"

"Hard to say, he's only two days past the critical forty-eight hours and still needs a lot of support from us and a lot of healing left to do, plus at least three more surgeries to completely deal with his leg which he would have to be sedated for anyways"

"Is he at risk for ultimately losing his leg?"

"According to the orthopedic surgeon we have a good chance of saving the leg in it's entirety, but it's going to be work, he got the majority of the bone fragments out during the initial surgery but he still has some cleanup work to do in there and then there's at least two more surgeries to put in all the rods he's going to need in order to simply stand on that leg, I will admit that amputation was discussed when we realized the leg was shattered in three different places but the surgeon said that there was just enough bone fragments at two locations that he can work with them"

"Which means he's looking at months to years of physical therapy because of the other broken bones you haven't mentioned yet"

"Fortunately just months since the rest of the broken bones can mend without any surgery, they just need to be in casts for the time they take to mend, though admittedly he might need surgery on his shoulder in the future if it becomes a problem with how long it had been dislocated in the first place"

"Then why not do surgery now?"

"His body can't take it, he may be out of critical condition but it's still serious enough that we're willing to let the body heal what it can without intervention before doing what we have to to keep him working as a police officer...if that's even possible after being tortured for so long...you should also know that we didn't say anything but detective Li was raped, and quite a few times at that"

"Was...was there evidence of it being regular?"

"Unfortunately yes, the damage that we saw does indicate that he was regularly raped, we just don't know how often and with the fact that he most likely has amnesia we may never find out, but we gave the police the samples needed for testing and the guilty parties will be convicted though we know it's not much comfort for any rape victim"

"It's something at least, though...it also looks like we won't be here for his awakening"

"Not unless you have a lot of leave accrued, he's looking at being in the coma for a minimum of two to three months while we let his body heal and do the remaining surgeries needed"

The three officers from Japan were very grateful to learn that there would be officers around the clock not only to protect Li but also talk to him even while in a coma so that hopefully he'd recognize a few voices when he was allowed to wake up and know he was safe, especially because they were only allowed to be in the States for a week

"Are we...can we tell Hong Kong and Taiwan about him being alive?"

"Yes, and just like with the others we rescued we're already starting on the paperwork needed to get him declared as alive, it's going to take longer considering how long he's been declared deceased but we'll get there eventually"

"We'll help on our end, as will his fellow officers once they find out that he's alive"

"So when are you leaving?"

"Next Wednesday, we only got a week's leave"

"Right, you three have unlimited visiting hours, the police visit during normal hours and bring their families too so he does have visitors, and most likely we'll get a couple of friends or comrades at the very least once he's been revealed as alive to people overseas but they'll unfortunately be limited to normal hours if only because of the fact that I know that they won't be able to stay for nearly as long as you three are"

"You're right they won't be...wait how do you know why we're able to stay for so long?"

"Your medical files were sent over, I'm temporarily the police doctor which means I get everyone's medical files including visiting police officers"

"And thus you know that this is a mandatory vacation for us except for some training in new computer things that are supposed to make things easier with repeat criminals"

"Exactly"

And so a week goes by with the three getting in the training they needed but also primarily staying with Li the entire time, they had also informed the other two locations that needed to hear the truth regarding Li but what no one knew was that no one from Taiwan or Li would come except Li's family, but only because it would cost too much money and not enough vacation time between the two locations. Four months after Li was admitted into the hospital, one month after the doctors declared they would start weening him off the dialysis, and two weeks since his final surgery for his leg Li was weened off the medications that kept him in an induced medical coma