It would never have occurred to Ginoza that Kogami had access to any sort of communication device at all, let alone a transponder. But it was pretty clearly laid out in his file, along with the channel on which Kogami could be reached. Contacting Kogami was thus far the most concrete way of assisting him that had appeared - it seemed almost too good to be true.

Ginoza agonized for a few minutes over whether or not to call him - what if Kogami was hiding right now, and the buzzing of the transponder alerted his pursuers to his presence? But there was absolutely no way for Ginoza to get more information on what he was currently doing aside from talking to him, and he thought if he waited too long, he would overthink himself out of trying to contact Kogami at all. So with shaking fingers, he pulled the channel up on his watch and let it ring.

There was a horrible moment where it seemed like Kogami wasn't going to pick up. That made sense. He had probably lost the transponder, or even discarded it so he couldn't be tracked. Ginoza would just have to keep digging through his file, until some other method for him to help presented itself.

And then, the call connected with a small click.

"H-hello?"

The voice was unmistakably Kogami's. Even in that one word, Ginoza could tell he was hurt - he sounded weak and shaky in a way that Kogami never would if he was well. But he was alive, and Ginoza could talk to him.

Ginoza was glad that he had already been sitting down. If he'd been standing, he doubted he would have been able to stay that way. The relief was that great.

"Shinya?" Ginoza said. "I…it's me. Nobuchika Ginoza."

Kogami laughed weakly, although Ginoza wasn't sure what was funny. "I can't believe…how'd you get ahold of me? How did you even figure out where I was?"

"Nevermind about that. You're injured, yes?"

There was a small pause, filled by the ragged sound of Kogami's breathing. It was uneven and painful-sounding, and Ginoza had - unfortunately - seen Kogami hurt too many times to mistake the sound for anything else.

"Shinya? Answer me."

"Gino…what did you do?" Kogami sounded exhausted, and a good deal less sharp than usual. "How did you find me?"

Ginoza fully intended to explain what he'd done and why. In fact, he'd originally planned to start the call leading with that, and he'd had a short script worked out in the few seconds that it had taken Kogami to pick up the transponder. But all that was unimportant now that he knew that Kogami was hurt. His explanations could wait, no matter if Kogami might disagree.

"That's not important right now," Ginoza said, as patiently as he could. "I need you to tell me how badly you're hurt, and where the injury is. Do you understand me, Shinya?"

A quick, shallow intake of breath, followed by a choppy exhalation. "Gino…where…?"

Kogami's voice was starting to sound almost dreamlike, and Ginoza recognized the telltale signs of shock. Ginoza closed his eyes, massaging his temples with his right hand. Kogami was thousands of miles away from him and could be slipping further with every wasted moment, and Ginoza didn't have a way to force him to focus.

"Operative Phantom," Ginoza snapped, calling on all the bureaucratic fury Kogami had been subjected to over the years. He didn't know if this would work, or even if Kogami had heard the codename in an official context, but he desperately needed something to get through to his husband. "Report your condition immediately."

This time, when Kogami's voice issued through the watch, it sounded automatic and almost clinical. Still weak, and Ginoza could hear the pain laced through it, but he doubted that anyone else could.

"Stab wound to the abdomen. No injury to internal organs. Injury…." Kogami broke off and gasped lightly for breath, making a soft sound of pain in the back of his throat.

Ginoza's heart twisted at the sound of it, wishing he could offer comfort in some way. But if he interrupted Kogami, he was worried that he'd never get a straight answer out of him.

Kogami coughed once, painfully, and continued. "Original injury widened with…with-"

Ginoza couldn't stand it anymore. "With what, Phantom?" The codename sounded awkward in his mouth, but it was doing its job and keeping Kogami's focus sharp.

"Reinjured with removal of the knife," Kogami answered, sounding a little faint. "Blood loss is…ah…significant. The full extent of the trauma is…not currently known."

Ginoza drew in a trembling breath. He realized in some distant corner of his mind that he had set his metal hand down on the metal desk, and tightened it there. There were now four visible dents where his fingers had pressed. He made a conscious effort to release the pressure. He wasn't sure it worked.

"Where are you?" Ginoza said sharply. He wished that he had an option to sound cool, calm, and collected, but at this point he thought his choices were either angry or scared. Angry was probably better for Kogami.

"I'm in…a basement," Kogami said. The lucidity that had flooded his voice when Ginoza had used his codename was already pretty much gone, but at least he was still responding to Ginoza's questions. "I'm in an abandoned house. No people living within…at least a half mile radius, as far as I can tell."

"Is there rioting close to you?"

There was a long pause - Ginoza couldn't tell if Kogami was trying to determine the answer to Ginoza's question, or if he was just trying to figure out what the question had been at all. "No," Kogami finally said. "Got out of the city alright."

"Did anyone see you?"

There was a small shift in Kogami's breathing pattern. Ginoza had known him for the better part of twenty years, so he knew that this meant that the next words out of Kogami's mouth were going to be a lie. "No."

"Kogami?"

"No…no one left alive."

Ginoza's mouth went sour, and he swallowed delicately. He decided he didn't need to press on that one right now.

"I'm reading your file now," Ginoza. "It says here you have…a first aid kit with you? Do you still have access to that?"

"Yeah," Kogami said softly.

"That's good. You're going to need to get that wound taken care of."

"Yeah."

Ginoza was pretty sure he would need to be a rather active participant in Kogami's first aid if he wanted it to get done at all. He had absolutely no idea how to dress a wound - he pulled up a browser on his watch and searched for instructions. The first few sites just led him to SIBYL's guidelines for minor wound care for civilians, which Ginoza was pretty sure they'd gone well beyond. Eventually, he narrowed it down to a more professional-sounding list, although a few of the steps it called for were a bit above Ginoza's head. He knew that Kogami was highly experienced in field medicine, so hopefully anything that Ginoza didn't understand wouldn't be so cryptic to Kogami.

"It says-" Ginoza stopped and cleared his throat. He didn't like presenting himself as an expert on topics he knew little about, and would often err on the side of underplaying his knowledge rather than risk being told he was incorrect. But in this instance, he thought Kogami needed someone who sounded confident, rather than someone who sounded as though they were reading off a publicly available website.

"You need to clean the wound out, Kogami. Do you have the supplies to do that?"

There was a long pause, punctuated by the sound of various objects shifting against one another. "Y-yeah."

Ginoza waited a moment, but no more information seemed to be forthcoming. "And what are they?" he prompted.

He didn't actually have any idea what Kogami had, or what he should use, but hopefully letting Kogami talk it through with him would remind his husband what he was supposed to be doing.

"Water," Kogami mumbled. "Not…a lot, or I won't be able to drink. But I can spare a bottle."

That matched with what Ginoza was reading, which said that wounds should be irrigated with clean water or saline solution, rather than any kind of potentially damaging disinfectant. "What does your first aid kit have? Is there anything you can use there?"

"Antiseptic wipe," Kogami answered automatically. "Clean up…the edges. Afterwards."

"Good," Ginoza said. He tried to sound soothing, but still official enough to keep Kogami's attention from slipping. "Start with cleaning out the wound as best you can."

"Yeah," Kogami said again, and water sloshed against plastic as he presumably picked up the bottle he meant to use. This time, he sounded more aware, and Ginoza breathed a small sigh of relief.

"Don't waste too much water," Ginoza told him, probably rather uselessly. Kogami knew that, and he had a great deal more experience going without basic supplies than Ginoza did. Ginoza just didn't want to stay silent for too long, in case Kogami forgot he was there. And even more than that, he wanted to hear his husband's voice.

"Yeah," Kogami whispered. "Don' worry, Gino."

There was the wound of water trickling, and a sharp, pained inhale from Kogami. Ginoza realized he was biting his lip, and his fingers were back to denting the flimsy metal desk. But he couldn't get his muscles to unclench.

"Alright," Kogami said softly. "Wounds cleaned out. I think. Next step?"

Even in this horrible, overwhelming situation, Ginoza couldn't help but be a little touched by Kogami's trust in him. He hoped it wasn't misplaced.

"Next step is…."

Kogami was unfortunately pretty familiar with back alley first aid. It was risky and stressful even at the best of times, but any sort of first aid that you had to do on yourself was automatically not the best of times. By the time Kogmai had finished flushing out the wound with water, his hands were shaking, and the basement was shimmering vaguely in and out of focus. If he hadn't been forcing himself to stay lucid enough to keep responding to Ginoza, he probably would have passed out by now.

Under Ginoza's instruction, Kogami swiped the antiseptic across the open edges of the wound, which stung enough that Kogami thought he may have accidentally cried out. But everything was clean now, and it did actually seem like the bleeding was slowing, finally. Sitting still would do wonders for that.

Kogami had done enough emergency first aid that while Ginoza talking everything through with him was helpful, Kogami didn't feel that it was strictly necessary. Once he'd stopped panicking, and managed to pull it together enough that he no longer felt like he was on the edge of passing out, his hands had pretty much taken over for his brain. Ginoza had told Kogami he needed to stop the bleeding, but by that point, Kogami already had fished a little vial of superglue out of the first aid kit. The wound was too big for stitches, and he doubted he had the dexterity left to stitch himself up anyways.

Kogami pinched the edges of the wound together, applied a thick coating of superglue, and waited for it to dry. It took a long moment - everything was still so slick with blood that the glue had very little to adhere to.

"Has the bleeding mostly stopped?" Ginoza asked.

"Um…," Kogami said. "Mostly."

"Did you…?"

"Glued it shut," Kogami murmured.

"Glue!" Ginoza was loud enough that the connection briefly exploded into static. "Is that…is that standard practice?"

Kogami waited for Ginoza to quiet down. Right now, he didn't have the strength necessary to raise his voice over the other man. "When you got no other choice, sure."

"That's horrible," Ginoza said, clearly forgetting himself somewhat. Kogami closed his eyes and imagined Ginoza's face, distressed and annoyed, surprise making his expression soften in a way that took Kogami's breath away.

Kogami cut himself off sharply from that. He needed all his breath. "Gino-"

"I mean, well done," Ginoza said hurriedly. "That wasn't in the…I didn't…I haven't heard of that before, but I suppose as long as the wound is closed, that's the important part."

Kogami felt his dry lips twitch into a smile, and he barely managed to stop himself from chuckling. The superglue needed time to dry, and he didn't want to rip his wound open by laughing at his husband.

Carefully, Kogami reached for the remainder of the first aid kit and pulled out a roll of bandages. The added pressure would stop the wound from reopening, and if he managed to get his shirt back on, the fabric wouldn't rub against the edges of the wound.

"What are you doing now?" Ginoza asked sharply. "You're still there, aren't you, Shinya?"

"Mmhmm." Ginoza was the only one who ever used his first name. Up until maybe twenty minutes ago, Kogami had thought he was never going to hear it again. A wave of relief swept through him, making him dizzy. Or maybe that was the blood loss.

"Well? What are you doing now? Are you…?" There was a pause, presumably as Ginoza read over whatever guide he'd managed to find. Kogami was fairly sure that Ginoza wasn't overly familiar with emergency first aid.

"Bandaging it," Kogami finished. "Just…waiting. For the-"

"Glue to dry." Ginoza sounded unhappy, but resigned. He sounded like a man who, if circumstances allowed, was about to research the efficacy of gluing wounds closed. If Kogami made it back, he was sure he'd hear all about it.

"Is it dry yet?" Ginoza asked, interrupting Kogami's vague fantasy about being lectured on wound safety by a characteristically irate Ginoza. "Can you apply the bandages?"

Kogami looked down at the mess of blood and glue on his stomach and - cautiously - poked it. It still hurt, enough for him to bite back a whimper, but it was hard and flexible and dry to the touch.

"Yeah," Kogami said. Even though Ginoza wasn't really helping, Kogami was glad he was there to talk everything through - Kogami felt weak and distant and lightheaded, and without Ginoza's voice, he wasn't sure he would be able to close up the wound himself. Even though his hands had mostly taken the job over, his brain still needed to be online too.

Kogami taped a gauze pad over the glue. Then, he peeled himself off the wall with some difficulty, and began winding layers of bandages around his middle. He didn't have unlimited bandages, but he tried to save enough that he would be able to change the whole wound dressing at least once, in case it got dirty or he bled through it or something.

Once the bandaging was done, everything really did look a lot more manageable. He'd survived stab wounds before. Hell, he'd survived gunshot wounds too, and he'd broken practically every bone a person could break. His situation was bad, yes, but this was hardly the worst injury he'd ever received.

"Are you done bandaging it?" Ginoza's crackly voice came through the receiver - Kogami realized he hadn't spoken in a few minutes, and Ginoza was probably worried. "Does it look better?"

"Yeah," Kogami said hoarsely. "Think so."

"Alright," Ginoza said. "Do you have painkillers with you?"

Kogami frowned. "Not…not sure I should take those. What if someone finds me? Might need to fight."

"Phantom," Ginoza said sharply. "You're hurt, and you need rest. You know you won't be able to sleep if you're in this much pain."

The idea of surrendering himself to sleep, alone and unguarded, was terrifying. But Kogami knew Ginoza was right. Sleep was one of the very few things he could control at this point - he had a set amount of food and clean water, and he couldn't exactly un-lose his blood or un-stab his stomach. Whatever physical needs he could still meet, he needed to do everything in his power to do so.

So Kogami swallowed back two tablets with a small sip of water, which was about all that he thought he could manage. As he waited for them to kick in, he explained to Ginoza what had happened since he had left Japan. All this information was very classified, but while he still wasn't exactly sure how Ginoza had managed to locate him, he thought that that ship had sailed at this point. Clearly Ginoza had pieced together enough information that little details like how Kogami had actually managed the assisination were moot.

"How…how did you find out how to contact me?" Kogami asked once he was finished explaining his side of the story, and Ginoza had completed his round of follow up questions. As Kogami was speaking, he realized his words were slurring, which was his first sign that the painkillers had started kicking in. He experimentally probed his side, and the stab wound did in fact hurt less.

He realized a little too late that Ginoza was talking.

"...and from there, I just demanded classified access and ordered them to barricade themselves in the bathroom."

That didn't sound good. Kogami blinked, fighting against the mental fog that always came with painkillers. "You…what, Gino?"

"You heard me, Shinya."

Kogami shook his head, remembered that Ginoza wasn't there, growled in frustration, and finally spoke. "Didn't. Say it again."

"Oh. I took the MFA analysts hostage so I could use their security clearance to find you. It was the first thing I thought of, once I saw the EENA news story."

Kogami closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the hard rock of the basement. That was…bad. It was the kind of thing that sounded more like something he would do, rather than something Ginoza would do, and that was never a good sign.

"Gino…."

"Well, I couldn't exactly leave you to die, Shinya. And don't pretend that isn't what would have happened without my interference."

Ginoza wasn't wrong. Kogami had all but given up before hearing his husband's voice, and realizing that he now had access to resources beyond the items he was carrying with him. But he'd been trying so hard to get back in the first place to see Ginoza, and now it was starting to sound like Ginoza might be put in jail before that happened.

"What's your plan?" Kogami managed.

"To get you home safe. I told you that."

Kogami shook his head again, frustrated. The painkillers were really kicking in now, slowing his thoughts and, even more than that, making it hard to form them into words. "No. Your plan for you."

Thankfully, Ginoza was well-acquainted with Kogami's brain on painkillers. "Oh. Well, I do have one. At some point, I'm sure someone will arrive to find out where all the analysts have gone. When it's been escalated far enough up the chain, I'll make a deal with whoever they send. If they stay out of my way, and continue to allow me access, I'll get you home safely. Upon your arrival in Japan, I will release the hostages in exchange for my own safety as well. If, and hopefully this doesn't happen, you're caught, I'll immediately release the hostages and turn myself in."

It took Kogami a handful of extra seconds to process through the painkillers. By the time he'd worked out everything Ginoza had said, understanding the whole thing had taken long enough to take the edge off the anger he knew he should be feeling.

"Did you…did you wait until I took pain meds to tell me your…terrible plan?"

"Tsk. It's not a terrible plan."

"Did you?"

There was silence on the other end of the transponder. Kogami found that very telling.

"Gino," he sighed.

"Well, it's not like I had a lot of options here. If you have a better plan, I'm all ears. And before you ask, no, I am absolutely not willing to hurt the hostages. Keeping them with me is leverage, nothing more."

Kogami did not have a better plan. At least, not one that he was going to tell Ginoza. But he couldn't let Ginoza just throw himself at the mercy of the SYBIL system - the plan that Ginoza had outlined would absolutely end up with Ginoza in jail, whether Kogami made it back to Japan or not.

Kogami already had a better plan taking shape. Kogami's deal with the government of Japan - that he was allowed to go free on the condition that in an emergency, he would do Japan's dirty work, no questions asked - wasn't exactly something that SYBIL would want the general public to know about. Obviously, Kogami's freedom depended on him keeping the deal a secret, and even though it had never been outright stated, he knew that Ginoza's did too.

But if Ginoza was already in jail, they wouldn't have anything left to hold over Kogami's head, not really. He could threaten to spill everything about the deal he'd struck with Japan, and trade his silence for his and Ginoza's safety. Hell, he'd keep being SYBIL's hunting dog if that's what they wanted, and they would get to keep a good operative in the bargain.

Of course, in order for any of that to be possible, Kogami would need to make it back to Japan in more or less one piece. If he didn't, he would have no way to blackmail anyone, and it was almost certain that Ginoza would be arrested.

Kogami desperately needed Ginoza to have any shot at getting out of this situation, but now, Ginoza needed Kogami too. Kogami wondered if Ginoza had arranged that on purpose somehow - he could be tricky like that. And he knew that nothing would motivate Kogami the way that Ginoza could.

Kogami knew he couldn't tell Ginoza about the blackmail plan - he wasn't sure what Ginoza was going to do if he knew, but he was sure that it wasn't going to be good. That would just have to be something he learned about if Kogami made it back to Japan.

When Kogami made it back to Japan.

"I don't know if that was your brightest move ever, Gino," Kogami slurred. "If we make it back, we're going to need to have a talk about this."

"A talk about taking hostages?"

Kogami rolled his eyes, or at least tried to. The painkillers were preventing him from reading Ginoza's voice, and he didn't know if he was being deliberately stupid or if he was genuinely confused. "About you, putting yourself in danger."

"Not as much danger as you," Ginoza said, with an edge of finality that Kogami knew from experience meant the conversation was over.

He would argue more, but not right now. Right now, he needed to save his strength if he wanted to save his husband.