The woman whose soul Hisoka and Natsume had been sent to take was angry when they explained who they were and why they were visiting her, and understandably so. A person in the last stages of a cancer that had metastasized throughout her body, who had to be on oxygen and strong painkillers and confined to bed until her vital systems finally shut down, then was given a second chance to live and feel better than she had even in her youth, naturally wasn't too keen on the idea of giving her new lease on life back again. No matter how unnatural a couple of strange young men tried to convince her it was.

Though her emotional energy told Hisoka otherwise, she refused to believe they were what they said they were, and threatened to have hospital security remove them if they didn't remove themselves.

It didn't help matters, either, that as the two shinigami were leaving, the patient's children were just arriving to visit her. Ecstatic, tears of joy in their eyes to see the mother they might have already said their formal goodbyes to sitting up in bed, the color back in her cheeks. Eating like a teenager. Such heart-breaking happiness and relief was unexpected in a hospital setting, in Hisoka's experience. He was used to feeling overwhelmed when he came to a place like this, but not in that way.

"Even if she does have the strength of a kicking mule," Natsume sighed as he sat down at their table in the hospital cafeteria, a bland-looking curry and rice on the tray in front of him, "she's still gotta sleep sometime. We can do it then."

"Much as I don't like taking a summons unaware," Hisoka mumbled into his palm, "I'm inclined to agree this time." By the time she realized what they'd done, it would be too late to do anything about it. She would already be halfway through Judgment. "But with her family here, even that isn't going to be easy."

With his other hand, he poked his own lasagne with a spork. It wasn't that the food was bad, necessarily; only having to eat his meals in a hospital, inundated with its particular emotional energy of fear and despair, wasn't doing his appetite any favors.

"This whole situation is messed up. Shinigami are supposed to take away pain, not cause it. We're supposed to bring death to people as a mercy, not drag them back down a hole they'd just managed to crawl out of."

"I hear you, Kurosaki. But these people didn't earn a second chance at life. You can't think about it as they got better and we're robbing them of something that rightfully belongs to them. What's happened to them is wrong. It upsets the natural order. And whatever else shinigami do, first and foremost we correct errors."

Hisoka had to admit he had a point, albeit grudgingly. And he had to remind himself that while he was sitting in an infirmary bed with his feet (when they started to grow back) up, Natsume had already taken on a fair share of patients just like the one waiting for them upstairs. It wasn't right for Hisoka to start complaining now. Nor was it considerate to what surely must have been his partner's own struggles, even if Natsume was careful about allowing Hisoka to see them.

For a moment, he was struck by a sense of deja vu. He could remember having similar conversations with Tsuzuki, only the sides were almost always reversed: Tsuzuki, though by far the veteran, begging to allow their cases a little more time, while Hisoka, the rookie, had to remind him of the rules, and his duties. Though Hisoka wasn't about to offer their current case a last dance, he thought maybe he was beginning to understand.

This is how it starts. You tell yourself, Maybe I can just go easy on this one, and before you know it, you're reluctant to take anyone's life. No matter how much they're suffering. . . .

"I was thinking," Natsume said around a bite of curry. "I know Tatsumi and the chief said not to worry too much about finding out who's behind all this if no opportunity presents itself, but maybe we can stick around a little longer anyway, see if we can't scrounge up a clue or two on our own."

"All that about not investigating didn't sit well with me either." Hisoka was relieved that he didn't have to be the first one to mention it. He wouldn't want his coworkers to think he was trying to make up for all that time he was out recovering, even if that was exactly what he felt he needed to do.

On that note, he pushed his tray away. "I can't stop thinking about what our patient said—"

Natsume helped himself to Hisoka's toast. "About her guardian angel, dressed all in white?"

"Yeah. That. You know how many times I've heard Muraki described just that way?"

"Problem is, kid, we're in a hospital. I don't need to remind you that the place is full of angels in white. Plus, our patient's angel was a woman. She was certain of that."

"True. . . ."

"And all she knew for sure was that this angel was there when she woke up, holding her hand, and that she'd never seen her before then. That doesn't mean she was the one responsible for our lady's miraculous recovery. She could've just been the first doctor to walk by."

"Our patient wasn't the only one that reported seeing a similar person."

"Again: Hospital. Doctors. White coats. It's too anonymous a disguise, too generic."

"And I'm sure that's just the sort of anonymity someone who thinks like Muraki would bet on."

Natsume looked up at Hisoka through his glasses as he silently chewed. He didn't really believe it was a coincidence, either.

"What do you think the chances are that whoever's doing this is sticking close to their patients, waiting to see how they fare with the treatment?"

Natsume snapped his fingers. "You know, I've been wondering the same thing? I noticed that the longer it's taken us to get to our summons and take their souls, the more grouped together they are in a certain geographical area. And it got me thinking, what if we're the ones scaring this angel in white away? What if they're only changing their hunting grounds, so to speak, because the patients they save start dying?"

What Hisoka had meant was that perhaps there was a way the culprit could be drawn back to their patient, like with media coverage or a complication that would be impossible for him or her to ignore. But on second thought, those things might spook their serial savior even more than the loss of another patient who was most likely going to die anyway. "That's actually not a bad theory."

Shouldn't I have noticed that pattern? Am I slipping? Hisoka mentally reviewed what he remembered from the other files. He would have to have them in front of him to be sure, but it seemed Natsume's theory had some merit.

"So, if that's the case, and this is the first instance of our angel showing up in Wakayama—"

"Then we just have to hold off on our summons long enough for him or her to show up and save another life!" said Natsume, wide-eyed and beaming behind his glasses. "There's gotta be more than one patient in this city undergoing treatment for a terminal disease. If we could try to guess ahead of time who the next target is going to be—"

"You think maybe we could catch them in the act of curing another patient."

"I can compile a list of all the patients that would fit our target's profile, staying in hospitals in the Wakayama area. See if there are any that jump out as too good for our angel in white to pass up."

"It's worth a shot," said Hisoka, though it sounded like a formidable task. Surely there were more than just a handful of people who fit those criteria. "Better than always being a step behind, anyway. I'll catch Tatsumi and the chief up on our plans."

"And, Kurosaki? Why don't you get yourself some fresh air while you're at it."

"Hm?" Hisoka looked up, realizing he had been staring at his barely-touched lasagna. Was it obvious how distracted his thoughts had been since returning to work? For all he tried to focus . . .

"You look a little green," Natsume helpfully supplied. "I know you're probably still recovering from your injuries, and I just want you to know it's okay to take it slow your first case back. That's why we have partners, after all. You can't expect to do it all yourself."

K's mrowl summoned Natsume back to the computer. He scratched her head as he peered at screen: lists of the names of patients, what they were in for, and where they were being treated. "Nice job, K-kun! There's some extra tuna in it for you tonight for doing this."

If only she could operate a can opener as well as a computer keyboard, K thought. Then there would be extra tuna every night.

"What do you say we try to refine this search before we bring Kurosaki in on it. I want terminal patients only, in order of when they were admitted if you don't mind. I'll see if the Gushoushin can't cross-reference them with the Kiseki's list of expected. Maybe a name or two will shake out."

With an ear twitch of affirmation, K got right on that. What were partners for after all?

"Alright," Tatsumi said after a long moment of thought, after Hisoka had told him about his and Natsume's plan. "I'll tell the chief that I've given you two another day to let your patient put her affairs in order. But I want you to call immediately if it seems our culprit is still in the area. We don't know who or what we're dealing with, but I don't want the two of you to have to handle it alone."

"Understood," Hisoka said. And let out his breath. He hadn't expected Tatsumi to agree so readily, but the rest of Summons had to be tired of cases like these.

That and the new Tatsumi, Hisoka noticed, the one who had been chief, was quite a bit more trusting of Hisoka's judgment than he had ever been when Tsuzuki was around.

"One more thing, Kurosaki. Natsume is already aware of this, but in case he forgets, would you make sure to get a sample of your summons' blood or tissue before you finish? Hair will also work, I'm told, but it needs to have the root intact. Watari has taken it upon himself to do a cross-analysis of all our related cases, to see if he can narrow down whatever drug they may have received in common."

"Sure thing. Has he found anything yet?"

"Other than some 'fascinating new compounds' . . .?" Tatsumi's sigh was heavy over the phone. Hisoka didn't need to read his mind to know he was dreading how those compounds might "accidentally" make their way into the morning coffee, or a box of donuts. All in the name of science, of course. "Nothing useful, I'm afraid. But every sample helps us get a better sense of the big picture."

When he disconnected, Hisoka took the opportunity to breathe in deep the May evening air. The leaves in the trees were rustling with what little breeze there was in the heavy late-spring dampness, a few kids playing on a slide and swing set in the last hours of daylight.

Most importantly for Hisoka's needs, the spirit of the park was quiet. Such a contrast to the air inside the hospital, where it felt like everyone was screaming in his head and he couldn't hear himself think. There was a time when he'd almost stopped noticing it. Or rather, when he had been able to block most of it out. His and Tsuzuki's cases took them to hospitals and other end-of-life care-giving facilities often enough that his fear of them had managed to fade to a mildly annoying anxiety.

Now he couldn't seem to concentrate enough to block it all out. Like he was starting over as a shinigami. What's wrong with me?

But he knew what was wrong. And it wasn't his injuries—though his toes growing back did start to tingle maddeningly when he wasn't focused on the case.

The way it seemed to take more of a conscious effort to absorb what he read in the case files, how the very act of sitting still was almost unbearable and filled him with guilt that any time spent relaxing was coming at someone else's expense. The feeling he got when he was around anyone from the office, like they felt they had to walk on eggshells around him. . . .

He had had dreams where he went to work having forgotten his clothes. Everyone had them, he supposed. It felt the same when he'd stepped into the office after being gone a month in recovery. Not like he was naked, but like everyone knew there was something wrong with him, and that worried them. Like they could tell somehow that he was no longer the same Hisoka they knew, even though he didn't feel all that different. He was different to them, and that was enough to make him feel ashamed.

All the more reason to put a little extra effort into his current case. He'd already fallen far behind everyone else in Summons; he owed it to them. At least Natsume had a decent plan for ending this "angel in white" debacle. Even if Hisoka hadn't been the one to think of it, he could make sure he supported his partner and saw the plan to fruition.

The call came in sooner than expected, in the early hours of the next morning. From the Castle of Candles. Their suspect had struck again—an awful way of saying another life had been saved from certain death, but in this line of work, there were plenty things worse than death.

The hospital was a private one on the other side of Wakayama. A patient with ALS so far advanced that he needed a respirator, had sat himself up in the middle of the night, and started talking to the nurses. With great difficulty, but improving every minute. Doctors were at a loss to explain it. They said it was a miracle. Theirs was a Catholic hospital, so miracles were at least something many of them believed possible.

The shinigami were of a somewhat different opinion. And this time they were quick to arrive, while the patient's memory was fresh.

"I was awake when she came in," he told Natsume, who for all he knew was just another doctor in a white coat, eager to see the miracle for himself. "I don't think she knew. I couldn't talk or move because of the disease."

Natsume shot Hisoka, who was pretending to be a high school volunteer, a look as if to say, Got her. "Did you see her face?"

But the man shook his head. "Not really. She didn't turn on the lights. Just did something to my drip. A few hours later, I have control of my body again. I can't tell you how amazing it feels! Hey, do you think I could meet the woman who saved my life? Thank her in person?"

"We would love nothing more than to get the two of you back together in this room," said Natsume, "believe me, but we don't even know who she is. And if you can't identify her either . . ."

"There was one thing that stood out," the man suddenly remembered. "She was wearing one of those clip-on badges. I couldn't make out her name, but there was a logo. Corporate. Looked like a cherry blossom. . . ."

Hisoka's heart leaped. He sketched something quickly on the clipboard he was carrying, and showed it to the man. "Like this?"

"Yes!" He brightened. "That was it for sure. I could never forget that logo now if I tried. It saved my life."

Hisoka hated to inform him, then, that he was actually doomed. That could wait. They asked the man a few more questions, but none of his answers were as helpful as that logo; and Hisoka could feel Natsume's impatience to ask him about it the whole time.

Only after they had left the patient to his own doctors did it come out. "Something you want to share, Kurosaki?"

Hisoka turned the clipboard to him. "It's the logo of Sakuraiji Pharmaceuticals."

"Wait. The same Sakuraiji whose house everything went down at a month ago? Wasn't she engaged to Muraki, too? You think she's involved in all this?"

"I don't know." Hisoka shook his head. "Last I heard, Sakuraiji Ukyou went missing after . . ." After my shiki exploded and destroyed her house. "You know. I checked the first opportunity I got to see if her soul had made it to Meifu, but the Gushoushin assured me there was no record of us having received it. Or that it was expected."

"So she could be on the lam," Natsume muttered. "On the run from us and Muraki. But if that's the case, why would she risk getting herself caught by doing something as bold as curing people on their deathbeds?"

"We don't have any proof it's Sakuraiji herself. Could be someone who works for her. It's a big company."

And an interesting coincidence, Hisoka thought, that the same flower that bloomed forever in the land of the dead should be associated, in the form of this pharmaceutical company, with immortality in the living world too. Wasn't it supposed to be, according to all the poems, the exact opposite?

"I'll check the sign-in sheets," Natsume said with a nod. "We can check the other hospital's when we go back for our summons. Whoever our angel is, unless they teleported in they would have had to get by the nurses' desk first. And if they were wearing a pharmaceutical company badge, there's a good chance they were actually here on some official business."

"At least that should give us some idea of who's behind all this. As for the what and how, I think we'll find everything we need to answer those at the Sakuraiji labs."

But first, they had two perfectly healthy and perfectly doomed souls to take.

Zepar stretched like a cat, luxuriating in the feel of the enormous bed beneath him, the cool of the sheets against his naked body, the guiltlessness of knowing there was nowhere else he needed to be.

It was good to be king. But even better to be the king's confidante.

"So, the grande odalisque deigns to rejoin the world of the awake."

He nearly jumped and covered himself at the sarcastic male voice; but that would have been taken as a sign of weakness, and unbecoming. Fuck it: Let him stare. It was not as though Zepar was ashamed of his beauty.

"Lord Paimon," he purred as he rolled over to face the intruder, pouring every ounce of his disgust into his sweet tones, "you could have knocked. Or was it the promise of catching a glimpse of yours truly in all his natural glory that makes you sneak around so?"

The other laughed, a deep, rich sound. "I don't have to sneak around for that, as everyone in Pandemonium knows. They only have to poke holes in your glamour, and they see more of you than anyone in their right mind would want to."

A jab at Zepar's recent run-ins with shinigami, and being temporarily incapable of changing his shape. Even Zepar wasn't fond of the flayed, winged default version of himself that lay underneath the glamour, but he wasn't about to admit that to another being. Not even Ashtaroth—who, after all, was rather more fond of his more human iterations.

"And it's King Paimon," said his tormentor. "Or has her highness convinced you that I've already been usurped?"

"Now I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about."

Zepar sat up, crossing his legs in a Buddha pose as he turned to face the demon king. Paimon had always inspired a touch of revulsion in him. Though he resembled some unholy offspring of a macaque and a man, like a living version of Sun Wukong complete with crown and prehensile tail, there was surprising strength in his lithe body, and an androgynous beauty to his beastly face that just seemed unnatural to Zepar. It didn't seem right, that a walking abomination should be as captivating and as commanding as that.

Yet there was a reason Paimon was king, and not Zepar.

At Zepar's loss for a response, the youthful king smirked, and leaned against a pillar. "I know half of Hell thinks I'm a simpleton, but I'm not so daft as to miss it when Ashtaroth and her minions are plotting. Nor am I deaf. And she makes no secret of the fact that she's grown tired of seeing my face."

"You interrupted my beauty sleep just to tell me you figured it all out?" Zepar snorted back. "Or are you expecting me to relay the message?"

"Relay all you want, I'm sure she already knows I know. That's part of the game, isn't it? The mouse knows he's fucked. It's just a matter of whether he can kill the cat before it kills him first."

So, it's to be war after all, is it? Zepar had never taken a very good look at Paimon in the past; but now as he looked in his eyes, he saw how wrong he was all these millennia to just assume Paimon was a fool. But, oh, Paimon was just as culpable: He had played that part so well.

Feeling a chill at his back, Zepar said, "What do you intend to do?"

Paimon smiled. "As if I would tell you my plans. Or, if I did, as if I would be truthful. No, Zepar, your first instinct was more on the nail. I just had to see what new plaything the Lady had taken for herself."

"Why, you almost sound jealous, my king. But then, I guess it's no secret she never liked you. How many millennia have you been co-rulers of this place? I imagine it must stick in your simian craw to see an upstart like me sharing her bed."

"My good duke," said Paimon, "I think you do confuse jealousy with pity. You do know the Lady Ishtar has broken everyone and everything she ever loved, don't you? She loved a shepherd once, but grew bored of him and turned him into a wolf, to be forever hunted by his peers. She loved the wildness of horses, and broke them with the whip and saddle. And I suppose you've heard of Tammuz. I do believe it's his form you've taken. Or, one assumes, what the Lady believes she remembers of it."

"She told me about her husband," Zepar said, feigning boredom. "How she went to the Land of the Dead to ransom him when he was abducted by the goddess of death."

"And did she also tell you that when she finally returned, after being tortured by her sister, after dying a thousand deaths for him, it was Tammuz she found sitting on her throne, ruling in her place? Did she also tell you what she did to him in her rage?"

"So King Ashtaroth doesn't like usurpers. Who does?"

"It's always those traits that remind us most of ourselves that we despise the most in others."

Zepar felt the weight of the accusation in Paimon's unblinking stare as much as his words. But the devil king's fate was sealed. Nothing Zepar said to his mistress would change it. Nor did he want to. After this, he wanted Paimon dead more than he ever had before.

"Well," he said, "luckily for me, I have no intention of betraying my lady's wishes."

Paimon laughed. "Then you're a bigger fool than I previously thought. So, no, I don't envy you your newfound favor. I just hope I'm still around to witness the spectacle when she grows bored with you. And I'm betting that will happen right around the time that child she desires so badly is born.

"After all," his voice seemed to echo about the bedchamber as he slipped away, "you're just a placeholder. It's another Tsuzuki Asato she wants, and you, Zepar, are not and will never be he."

Ukyou should have known it was too good to be true when her captors left her unguarded and her room unlocked.

She had thought to make her escape—to find a way out of this nightmare and back to a part of the world that looked familiar to her, where she might have a chance at calling for help.

But the compound, or whatever she ought to call the cyclopean structure she was stuck in, was a maze, one that shifted around her in impossible non-Euclidean configurations that left her feeling as though she were trapped in a fever dream. As though this world itself defied everything she thought she knew about the laws of physics.

Her old self would have convinced her she was experiencing an hallucination. Now that she knew things like shinigami and demons existed, however, and had seen them work miraculous feats with her own eyes, when some terrifying bipedal creature with the head of a schnauzer and claws like an iguana told her she was in Hell, she felt inclined to believe it.

That didn't mean she had to want to stay here, though.

Unfortunately, the longer she stayed lost, the more lost she became. Maybe there was no way out, no door through which she could simply slip back into her own world. She might as well be on another planet. The very thought that she was breathing in some alien atmosphere was enough that she could feel herself slipping into the beginnings of a panic attack. She hadn't felt this overwhelmed since exam time in college, though even that she would have traded for this any day, a thousand times over.

Then, what little luck she still had ran out. She heard voices—speaking a strange and horrible language she couldn't begin to understand, but she was sure they were talking about her. They must have discovered her missing. They must be coming for her.

She dashed toward the next corner, hoping to find a place to hide—and almost collided with the two hulking demons in armor just around it. They hadn't been behind her after all.

Ukyou stumbled back against the wall. The demons, just as surprised as she was, laughed. "Well, speak of the human and she appears! Nice of the little runaway to come running back to us."

Are they speaking Japanese? Weird that she would be able to understand them, when they were twice as tall as her, with voices like truck engines.

"What do you suppose she's doing all the way out here?" said the one that looked like a bipedal snapping turtle. "Not trying to escape, are we? Is that any way to repay your hosts?"

"Better return her, before word gets to the top she's flown her coop," said the other, a very large, muscular aye-aye with torn bat wings sprouting from his back. Before she could draw away, he grabbed her arm in his long-fingered hands, the cracked nails digging through her sleeves and into her flesh as he tried to yank her to him. "Don't mean we can't have a little fun first, though."

No! Ukyou screamed. She dug in her heels and tried to pull away from the demon's grasp, but he held her tight, her struggle only seeming to make him and his companion laugh harder. Just like that night after the festival, all over again. Those men who seemed to have been waiting for her, the promise of violation in their eyes and in their heartless grins. . . .

Only Kazutaka and Oriya weren't here to save her. No one was. No one cared. And she couldn't be sure she would even survive what these two monsters planned to do to her. . . .

"Release the woman—NOW!"

The aye-aye hand around her arm relaxed its hold, and the two demons shrank back from the voice that had given the command, eyes lowering to the ground. "We—we didn't mean any harm, milord. Just a bit of light torture—"

"'A bit of light torture'? Just what do you imbeciles think the definition of 'harm' is? And when I tell you to release her, I expect you to release her. So do it!"

The grip on her arm went away, and Ukyou's knees gave out in shock when she tried to move away from her would-be attackers. When she had managed to steady herself, she looked up at her savior, and immediately wished that she hadn't.

He might have been pleasant-looking once, with a gentle and rather youthful face, and shaggy hair held back in a ponytail that had gone white. But the pallor of his skin was one of death and decay, the color of flesh that had been sitting in water for far too long; his eyes were cloudy; and he had a ragged gash on one cheek that was putrid. As if that weren't nauseating enough, the smell of decaying kelp and fish that wafted from his direction made her want to gag.

Still, the demons who until a moment ago had been sure to hurt her obeyed and were afraid of him. Even though he was half the size of each.

"Have you two any idea who this mortal is?" There was power in his voice, though the body that produced it was weak. It was the sort of voice that could not only threaten, but follow up on its threats—the sort of voice one didn't test. "Have you any idea what she carries—how valuable she is to Lord Ashtaroth? Why do you think it was ordered that she remain inviolate? And yet here you two were, about to damage more than just the hairs on her head—"

"Thank evilness you were here to stop us in time, Lord Focalor!" said the aye-aye. "As you can clearly see, not a hair is out of place, heh-heh. . . ."

He mimed smoothing Ukyou's hair, but to her relief did not actually touch her again. It seemed he was afraid to in this Focalor's presence.

"I don't suppose we can all forget this ever happened, milord?" said the snapping turtle.

"That depends," said Focalor, pinching the bridge of his nose. "If anything untoward should happen to this woman while she is here with us, I don't care who's responsible, I will make sure the two of you are the first to feel Lord Ashtaroth's wrath. So I guess it's in your best interests to make sure she is well taken care of from now on, is it not?"

To Ukyou's surprise, her attackers shrank back and muttered nervously between themselves at the mere threat. She could only guess that his Ashtaroth character's punishments were legendary, since the two demons seemed big and thick enough to take a lot of blows without flinching. "Of course, Lord Focalor!" "Took the words right out of my brain, milord!" they said as they bowed repeatedly and made a hasty retreat.

Leaving Ukyou alone with the decaying man. She shied away.

For a moment the man looked hurt by it. But he could not have been ignorant of his looks, or his smell. "You don't remember me, do you?" he said. His voice was cold, but not cruel.

"Should I?"

"I brought you to this place. It was I who made sure you were afforded the proper comforts. You should have stayed where I put you."

"In that cell?" The thought that that man had touched her, held her, done who knew what to her while she was unconscious, was almost more than she could bear without slipping into an anxiety attack. It wasn't that she was afraid of dead flesh either; she would never have been able to do the job she did if that frightened her. But there was something very, very wrong with flesh as long past dead as his walking and talking.

"That cell," Focalor said through his teeth, "is for your own safety. There are those in this place that wish you harm, simply for the blow your demise could deal to their enemy. You carry something priceless to the one I serve. I have been charged with making sure both of you meet with no evil while you are here."

Ukyou's hand went to her belly before she could catch herself doing it. She curled it into a fist instead. What were the chances the first gesture would escape Focalor's notice? "Is that why you're being kind to me?"

"Kind?" The thought hadn't even crossed Focalor's mind. Certainly he wished the mortal woman no ill will, but perhaps in light of his countrymen's behavior, his own seemed downright gentlemanly in comparison. "It is in my interest to keep you alive, Dr. Sakuraiji." He held out his hand to her. "Just as it is in yours to accompany me back to your room. Don't take it more personally than that."

Ukyou stared at his hand. There didn't seem to be anything wrong with it, other than its stark whiteness. She could guess it must be as cold as marble. "I can walk on my own without any help, thank you."

Focalor wasn't sure he believed her.

And neither was Ukyou the first few seconds after she pushed off of the wall. Her legs were still shaky from the adrenaline; but as she refused to let the decaying man touch her, if she could at all avoid it, she would make them work.

Focalor regarded her first few shaky steps skeptically, but he decided he would respect her wishes. It was no matter to him one way or the other, so long as he got her back in one piece. He only hoped he would not have to carry her again. Her weight, slight though it may have been, taxed this corpse of a vessel to its limits.

"You really ought to be more careful," he warned her as he followed at her elbow. "You cannot fathom the preciousness of what you carry, how many millions' hopes rest on that child. If you understood what a great honor has been bestowed upon you, you would know to stay where I put you. Where you can be protected."

Ukyou stared up at him in disbelief. "What part of any of this is an honor?"

She couldn't be sure the grin he flashed her in response was one of genuine sympathy, or sadistic glee. Only that she liked him better when he didn't smile at all. "It isn't every day one is chosen to be the mother of the Savior, Doctor."