Providence

When it came to some occupations, people assumed that the professionals executing them were completely self-reliant.

But that wasn't the case. Not at all.

If trouble comes, a lawyer needs another lawyer. An engineer can look up a thing or two on the Internet to help with a current problem. Mathematicians may even use a calculator for simple arithmetic. And when doctors get sick… they need doctors, too.

On the floor of the Infirmary was—even though he never called himself it—the head honcho of their battalion having an epileptic fit. Blood like motor oil was spurting out of him in every direction while faint silver-black energy flashed from his head to his feet.

And then, his darkened Garb vanished.

Ugo stretched his arms forward and motioned for everyone to back away, like what a drunk partygoer would do before they bust out some wicked moves on the dancefloor, widening the circle they had enclosed around Zeke.

He could barely get a good look at his brother's face with how hectic he was moving. He was jerking violently and continuously all over like he was being electrocuted. The banging of the back of his head on the stone tile floor resounded across the room in a disturbingly rhythmic kind of way. Then came the awful gurgling—a mass of black froth fizzed from his mouth.

"What's happening to him?" AJ asked. A question that provided no helpful contribution to the situation.

"I think…" Naomi started. "I think he's turning into a demon."

Widened eyes all moved to Naomi and then onto the seizing Zeke.

Once Ugo began to pay attention to the other signs, such as the increased demonic energy Zeke was putting out and the intensified stench of sulfur, it was regrettably true. The diagnosis was a 912: Demonification. There was also something he was sensing that was extremely sinister, as if he was feeling the touch of the creator of darkness itself trying to corrupt his soul.

AJ bolted to the carved sofa where vials of the White-Magic-based solutions were, grabbed armfuls of the medicine, and came running back, sliding to her knees and stopping nearby Zeke. She clumsily dumped the vials on the floor (it was a miracle they didn't shatter), held one of them up, and then froze as she stared at Zeke. "How are we going to get this in him?"

"He's moving around way too much!" Aida said, stating the obvious. Her fox ears were flattened against her orange hair.

A garbled mess of words came from the juddering Zeke, followed by a fit of scrambled laughter.

"It's taking over!" Naomi cried. "What do we do? What do we do? What we do?" Her voice was strong and loud like a hurricane.

"Ugo!" AJ called. "There's a part of the brain that causes seizures, right? Can't you use your magic to locate and disconnect it?"

"I'm not a neurologist!" Ugo replied. "I don't know what I'll be looking for or…" he let himself trail off and decided to act upon the first idea that popped into his head. "Rutapexy Samhita," he said. After garbing up, he moved over to where the top of Zeke's head was facing, summoned his knife, crouched to his sick brother, and then held the electric-laced blade over his protruding Adam's apple.

Ugo applied the Gordian knot principle, perhaps a little too faithfully, beheading his brother.

AJ screamed while Naomi looked away, making a soft cry.

Zeke stopped moving, filling the room with a tense silence. No blood leaked out of the stump left behind on the body or the bottom of their head doctor's head.

Between the body parts was a slash mark imprinted on the beige tile cladding still hissing and trickling with electricity as blue as Ugo's wet, pain-stricken eyes. He put the swathed surgical knife aside and held up his brother's head in his hands—his face was covered in bruises and swelling in various areas.

The sludge-like liquid oozing from Zeke's clogged mouth cascaded down his cheeks, stinging like ice when they touched Ugo's bandaged hands.

Zeke's head, which was upside down, felt like it weighed no more than a bowling ball. Ugo stared down at the Diagnostician's eyes that went completely black. His filled mouth was trying to make out something, but Ugo's brain didn't bother to try to decipher it, it was too busy trying to process what was happening. He was holding a human head—his brother's head. It felt so real and unreal at the same time. Ugo knew that he hadn't killed his brother, but the macabre imagery before him made his stomach churn.

An orange flash hit his eyes and forced him to pay attention to his surroundings once again.

AJ was shivering more than he had ever seen before as she stared at Zeke's headless body that had an arm that looked like it didn't back down from a game of chicken with a hydraulic press.

Naomi was exerting herself to keep her eyes on Zeke without looking away; she was barely making a good effort.

"He's breathing… right?" AJ asked.

"Of course," Ugo confirmed. "The spell I used is… weird. Basically, I made him into something that was born as just a head, and his body something completely different that came into the world like that."

Another orange flash added light to the room for a second, and Aida was on all fours skidding to a halt near Zeke. She released a couple of bronze and silver syringes from her mouth and rolled up Zeke's sleeve and pant legs—revealing more marks of injury—grabbed a vial, bit off the cork, inserted the syringe's needle, and filled the instrument with the solution.

The other girls followed her lead, picking up a syringe and extracting the medicine from the vial.

They started administering the medication, spearing various spots on Zeke's body.

"The demonification process is different from a demonic infection," Yuri spoke from the corner of the waiting room; the massive hole in his torso hadn't started healing. Ugo turned back and looked at him as the girls injected the medicine. "It doesn't infect a focused area and gradually spreads. When it begins, legions of Minor Demons spanning thousands of species spread across the muscle tissue, and blood, and attack numerous vital organs at once. The process begins on the inside, which simultaneously changes the soul's composition along with it, and quickly after that comes the final stage, which is when the observable transformation of the Container—"

"I know!" Aida barked as she stabbed a needle into Zeke's forearm and then literally barked and growled at Yuri as she pushed down the plunger. "How could you let him go this far—?"

"Instead of picking a fight, why don't you let me finish?" Yuri interrupted and then pushed his head back onto the wall, giving up keeping his eyes closed for everybody's comfort. "What I am trying to get at is that with Ugo's powers, we can save him more effectively…"

"Okay, say what I have to do then!" Ugo said, trying not to look into the nauseating blend of colors the dead muscles and nerves showcased in Yuri's eyeless sockets.

"Then let me finish!"

"Everybody stop yelling!" Naomi yelled as she pulled out a needle from Zeke's wrist. The girls were actively avoiding his mangled arm.

"Yuri!" AJ joined in on the screaming, clutching an empty syringe in her hand. "Just speak! Quickly! Get to the freakin' point."

"I have no organs in me right now, gimme a break," Yuri said and then made an effort to—as AJ lovingly put it—get to the freakin' point. "Exorcisms work quicker if the infected object is out in the open, and the countermeasures are applied to them directly. Do the exorcism prayer while having the organs submerged in holy water mixed with salt, but not all in the same batch. They need to be separated to increase the success rate. It'll slow down the process a lot quicker than what you're doing," he said.

Ugo turned his gaze to Aida. "What do we think?"

"I don't have that much experience dealing with demonifications," Aida said as she injected more of the solution into Zeke's bare shoulder and then pulled his stretched collar back up, "but yeah, his idea sounds better than what we are doing."

"Didn't Yuri say that the demonic lifeforms spread everywhere, though?" AJ reminded as she filled her syringe with medicine again.

Naomi dropped the syringe and got up. "After Ugo removes the organs, we should give him a holy water bath."

There was another orange flash, and Aida was gone.

Ugo looked over at AJ. "You go with Naomi to make the bath."

"Okay," she said and rushed out of the room with Naomi.

Ugo's eyes went back down to Zeke. I'm not going to let you become a demon. No way.

Aida returned, pushing a slim, long slab of wood with some cushioning on top and wheels attached that extended below it—it was an old-fashioned stretcher taken from the inventory room, put together by previous users of their oh beloved Infirmary. "Ugo, come on," she said and hoisted Zeke's headless body in her arms.

He's not dead, Ugo had to remind himself again, looking at Aida placing the body on the stretcher. "Yeah, let's head to the operating room," he said as he slowly got up and put his brother's head on the stretcher.

Aida spun on a heel, grabbed the end of the apparatus and rushed to the doorless arch leading out of the waiting room as she pulled.

As they moved, Ugo carefully held down Zeke's severed head as he pushed his end of the stretcher with his gut and guided (what he could) with his elbow, appreciating Aida not using her speed on their way to the operating room.

AJ barged into the bathroom with Naomi, the automatic white sconces lit up alarmingly quick as if they were startled by the troubled girls.

It was one of the many bathrooms in the Infirmary that weren't found in the patient rooms. They were more vast and opulent, with pristine white walls that didn't pull attention away from the star of the show—a crystalline mosaic tile floor that bore mesmerizing shades of blue. All colors were hidden under layers of centuries-old muck until Naomi took one for the team and cleaned it up.

In the center of the room was a fountain, but again, differing from the ones found in the patient room lavatories, it was massive with a statue of a naked Poseidon standing on the plinth—not packing much. He stood commanderlike with his huge trident in hand and surrounded by, as additional evidence for the clear reason why he was compensating, a trio of nude nymphs hugging his legs as they looked up with faces of desire and amazement. A basin large enough for multiple beings to bathe in at once ringed the aged stone sculpture.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

AJ ran up to the stack of wooden buckets tucked away in a corner as Naomi dashed to the columns and rows of small valve wheels fixed into the east wall of the room.

During the first days of exploring the entirety of the Infirmary, the team had learned that each of the fountains in the bathroom featured multiple options for water magically pulled from all kinds of Realms—Sparkling, revitalizing waters from the Atargatis Realm (where merfolk and other magical sea creatures could be found), bone-freezing waters from the coldest and inhospitable regions of Jotunheim, the purity-burning waters from the Netherworld, and the sacred holy water from Heaven. It only took spinning one of the valve wheels that were no bigger than an ordinary hand, each with a sigil representing a region over it, and then the basin would fill to a suitable level. AJ squatted and grabbed the tower of buckets by the base, lifting them with no problem and carrying them over to the fountain. Naomi turned a valve and after it made its grumpy creak, water sprayed out from the top of overcompensating Poseidon's head and spilled from the plinth.

As the basin filled, AJ reached for the bucket on top and handed it to Naomi. Then, for reasons AJ didn't understand but got her mad enough to clench her jaws and for her nose to flare, Naomi sprouted out her tri-colored wings.

Naomi flew up, keeping one bucket in her hand, and grabbed one tilting off the top of the stack. She descended, filling both containers at once, glided to one of the bronze clawfoot tubs, and dumped the water in—doing it all without spilling a single drop somehow.

By the time AJ filled her bucket and made it to the bathtub, Naomi had already made two trips, and the tub was full.

Naomi descended, withdrew her wings, and ran out. AJ sighed, putting down the bucket, and tried to catch up.

Ugo and Aida reached the operating room, only halting when they got close to the surgical table—it was a long wooden piece of equipment with cushioning on the surface and wheels on the bottom but heavier and less agile than the stretcher. Aida picked up Zeke's decapitated body in her arms from the stretcher and put it down on the table as Ugo bolted for one of the levers on the wall.

He pulled the lever, and a massive iron chandelier in the shape of a pentagram silently lowered and settled over Zeke's ruined frame, shining it with its blazing candles.

Aida took Zeke's head, and placed it on the operating table right over his neck stump.

Ugo sprinted to his brother, summoned a pair of blue surgical scissors, and cut Zeke's tunic shirt down the middle.

An archipelago of splotches and bruises were scattered across the expanse of his pale skin. He heard loud gulping that made him look over at Aida, who was knocking back two large Mana bottles at once. Like a broad who had three too many, she smashed the bottles into the ground. "Sorry," she said, cleaning what was left of the blue juice on her mouth with her wide Healer Garb sleeve.

Aida dropped and planted her hands on the floor. She pulled back—her ears were erect, her tail was vertical, slightly toward her back, and the brightness of her red eyes doubled.

Winds blew in Ugo's direction as she zipped out of the room, he was convinced that she had done something to stop herself from breaking the sound barrier and blasting all of the equipment to the ceiling. He looked down at Zeke's wet, brutalized face and thought about what Yuri had said about it being better for the infected vital organs to be exposed during the exorcism. Under all that curly, luscious, telenovela-star-worthy head of hair and an undoubtedly thick skull was a brain with tiny demonic lifeforms fighting to take complete control; yes, the team had faced plenty of supernatural cases up until that point, but Ugo never did brain surgery before.

Rutapexy Samhita spoke to him in a way only Healers could understand. It let him know that he was capable of doing it. He just needed to remain calm.

An orange flash went off, and a stainless steel table cart appeared near Ugo. The square-shaped utility table had a bucket filled with sloshing holy water. Ugo shook his head and started moving. From his Healer's Garb special toolkit he summoned a knife—it was archaic, with an electric blue blade and white gauze swathed around the handle. An Arabic-like symbol inked the gauze. The tool was smaller and thinner than his usual knife, about the size of a modern-day scalpel. He gave the instrument a quick spin in his hand and then hunched over Zeke to start the surgery.

Ugo held out his hands forward, and they were shaking. There was a reason why doctors weren't allowed to operate on relatives, but he was the only one with the magic capable of pulling it off. He made fists and clenched them in an attempt to fight the shaking—it was as effective as trying to sell a boat in a desert.

Another burst of orange and a new rolling table with a bucket were added to the operating room. This time,, its carrier stayed in the room and moved over to Ugo. She touched his back and gave him a smile that may have done more harm than good. "You got this," she said ebulliently, then zapped out of the room, leaving behind a streak of burnt orange that lingered in the operating room for a while.

The touch felt heavenly. Ugo wondered just how good it would feel if he weren't in demon form or how it would feel if they were in their physical Containers. He bit his lower lip under the wrappings on his face; he hated it, but the touch killed his trembling like the world's best over-the-counter medicine. It gave him vigor, coupled with an increased disgust toward himself.

He focused on Zeke, cranking up his reasoning to deal with the ordeal. Where should he even start? Ugo sucked in a breath, closed his eyes, and searched the vast and clear memory bank of his computer-like mind for any moments in his life where he saw, read, or heard anything related to brain surgery. The browsing culminated in a plethora of results pulled from his memory with Zeke: All the medical documentaries and TV series he'd watch in his free time while Ugo was nearby, either playing a parent-disapproved game on his GameGuy or reading comic books of the same kind.

Ugo tried to collect the bits of neurosurgery he'd catch on TV every time his eyes averted from whatever he was consuming. He also found and used data from when Zeke mentioned brain facts.

The breath was let out. Ugo's hands started moving the second after he opened his eyes. It wasn't exactly how the professionals did it, but the remembering had him come up with something that just might work, thanks to his abilities. He poked the top of Zeke's hairline with his scalpel, and darkened blood trickled out, running over his eyelid.

The Surgeon stopped to recollect himself. There was no need to spill blood, he could just sever the skin cleanly. As Aida continued to bring in more tables with buckets and one with a thick black book on it, Ugo grabbed the bottom of Zeke's jaw with one hand and used the other to trace the scalpel's blade along his hard-to-pinpoint hairline, cutting into his skull. The heat from candles above Ugo was squeezing sweat out of him as he gently guided the scalpel over the back of Zeke's right ear, moved it across the hairline on the back of his neck, and just when he was about to maneuver the tool over the Diagnostician's left ear, Aida approached Ugo by his side, wearing her leather gloves, and swiped the sweat off his forehead with a cloth.

Ugo looked over and got another beautiful smile from her, this time with a nod. He kept going and made it to where he started tracing.

Aida put on her oni mask and dragged a table cart with a cloth over it near the surgical table. Ugo propped Zeke's head on top of it. Like an orange, he peeled back the skin and curly black hair, then handed the grotesque wig to Aida, who carefully placed it aside on the table.

The next step was the skull, which was no match for Ugo's standard surgical knife. He summoned it and executed a circular motion over Zeke's skull—a maestro with his blade—and popped off the top with a flap of skin attached to the front.

Aida took the severed part from him, put it down aside.

The sulfur they were getting from Zeke was merely a whiff compared to what they were smelling now; it successfully bypassed the coverings the Healers had over their faces. Ugo and Aida backed up a bit, dry-heaving as they stared at the exposed pulsating brain with an entanglement of blood vessels surrounding it. But the healthy red and blue colors were being invaded by black and gray. Darkened spots were appearing and disappearing in various areas.

"This is my first time seeing a brain… out in the open," Aida said.

"Yeah, me, too," Ugo said. It was a bizarre thing to believe that the small wrinkly thing before him was the mainframe that kept every other clog in the machine that was the human body working as it should. It was also responsible for all of Zeke's incessant self-sabotaging torment as well as his wonderful gifts.

Ugo's heart felt like it was going to explode. The vibrations of its frantic beating traveled to his ear. Without wanting to look at it anymore, Ugo put down his knife, grabbed Zeke's head and moved to a bucket. "Here goes…" he dipped his brother's head into the water, and sizzling sounds burbled from the heating liquid. Ugo stepped back and watched bubbles form on the surface and steam shoot up from the water.

The pair shared a look that read mostly the same: "Oh God, I hope that's a good sign."

AJ and Naomi came dashing into the operating room, wearing leather surgical masks and gloves, and then shot a look at the Healers.

"How is he?" AJ asked, her eyes slowly moving to Zeke's bare figure.

"We don't know, yet," Ugo said and re-equipped his knife. A line was cut down Zeke's torso, and then he dug his hands into the slit and peeled back the skin and deep tissue. He held up his knife, charged it up, and proceeded to slash away at the chest bone and ribs in the way.

Aida came by his side with an empty bucket in her hands; Ugo collected the cleanly cut bones and dropped them into the bucket. The thud he heard made him stop and look into the container holding his brother's bones.

And then he noticed the blotches of darkened blood that marked his Garb while his hands were drenched in it. His eyes darted to Zeke's body… was it still a living body? Or did he just turn his brother into a corpse?

"Hey," Aida said, caressing his shoulder. "You're doing great, and you need to continue doing so for his sake."

There it was again. That unreasonably alleviating sensation from just one touch. Ugo shrugged her hand off and stepped back, the trepidation came back with a vengeance. "Th-th-this is too much, I can't… I-I-I…" His body curled up and he began to retch as he dropped to his knees.

"Ugo!" Naomi cried and ran in his direction, AJ was right behind her.

It wouldn't be long before Aida would come to help, too. A trio of girls to comfort him and give him their heartened support. A dream young Ugo had dreamed many times before.

Too bad, unlike young, deluded Ugo, he was sober and wide awake.

Naomi was inches away from him, extending her hand toward him, and he smacked it away. "Get away from me!" The warped expression on Naomi's face had Ugo pull himself back on his feet and say in a measured tone: "Sorry… I'm good now. I can do this."

After lying to himself and the group, he strode past the girls and back to the beheaded patient. All of Zeke's blackened, diseased organs were unobstructed, throbbing in a peculiar rhythm paired with faint, tiny voices rising—it sounded like an invoking chant, perhaps calling on more Netherworld organisms to help with the demonification.

Zeke was dying and he thinks that gives him the right to let girls console him? How dare he?

Ugo made it up to himself by promising Zeke under his breath that he wouldn't let his focus falter again. He powered up his knife, electricity was spitting out of it like it came out of a sci-fi movie. It was done quickly but with precision—he severed the trachea and every blood vessel, artery, vein, and duct there was.

The other three brought a bucket of holy solution to Ugo for every organ he scooped out with his bandaged hands and then lowered into the salt-mixed holy water until there was nothing left in Zeke's body except for meat and sliced bone.

"Take him, please," the exhausted Ugo said, dropping his quietly buzzing knife.

AJ and Naomi grabbed both ends of the operating table and rolled the body of the room while Ugo fell onto his rear, pulled up his knees, and settled his arms over them. Holding back the urge to cry, he pushed his bloody wrist onto an eye and started sniffling.

"Here," Aida said as she crouched to him and extended an uncorked Mana bottle. "Drink."

Ugo moved his wrist away, looked at the bottle, and then unwrapped the bandages around his mouth.

Without waiting for him to reach for it, Aida pushed the opening to his lips and angled it for him to drink until it was half-empty.

He gasped as Aida pulled it away. "Um… thanks—"

Aida put her lips where his had touched no more than a couple of seconds ago and guzzled the rest of the Mana potion. "What?" she said, reading his blank look.

The universe seemed to be constantly testing Ugo. He attempted to pay it no mind. "Nothing," he said and got up. Aida followed and collapsed. "Aida!"

"I'm okay," She said, out of breath as she forced herself back on her feet. "I'll rest once I know Zeke is healthy, and then I can scream at him until his eardrums pop for making us go through this."

They were surrounded by multiple buckets of boiling water, filling the room with steam and horrible, intense hissing mixed with weakening moans.

Aida moved over to a table with a book on it and rolled it close. "I got this for us—"

"No need. I have it memorized," Ugo said, raising a hand.

"Wow, oh yeah, that's right," Aida said, raising her brows in amazement, and then leafed through the book until she found what she needed. "Okay, let's do the exorcism."

AJ and Naomi rushed Zeke's body—a few crucial, organs-light—into the bathroom where they had the holy bath prepared. They stopped near the copper clawfoot tub and shared a look, knowing what came next.

With closed eyes, AJ held Zeke's ankles and felt the weight ease on the other end. She stepped to her left and let go. A splash followed by deep fryer levels of sizzling had AJ jump back with raised hands. She slowly opened her eyes and saw a piping hot body of water covered by a haze of steam.

The stinging in her eyes pained just as bad as her heart hammering in her chest. Was she too rough with him? Why did she just drop him into the water like that? How about if that's what leads to his death?

She wrapped her trembling arms around herself as a nervous smile stretched from ear-to-ear. He's going to be okay, right?

A sharp cry from Naomi stole AJ's attention. She was doubled over while rubbing her hands together. "Naomi?" AJ said, moving up to her and realized that steam and sizzling were coming from her small hands as well.

"I'm fine," Naomi said with one eye twitching.

AJ had completely forgotten about her vulnerability to holy water. How long was she enduring it?

"We forgot the salt," Naomi said.

"Don't worry," AJ said and turned on her heel. "I'll get it."