“I can fix this, Sid, I can fix this—stay with me. You’re not broken, do you hear me? You’re not broken.” Harwood was slicing open Bashir’s shirt and pulling the bulletproof vest off him, the good-for-nothing bulletproof vest, whose plates had shifted when Bashir had been kicked on the ground, a tiny and fundamental flaw that now meant Aazar Siddig Bashir was bleeding out from a shot to the upper chest despite her efforts to stanch the flow. “You’re going to be fine. Ruqsana’s going to be fine, and you’re going to see her again, and you and me, Sid, you and me, we’re going to . . .”
Bashir laughed, a gurgle. “What’re we going to do, Johanna?”
“See this?” She pulled the engagement ring from her neck, and slipped it on her finger. “See, Sid? I do. I do. I already wrote my vows—you’re the best man I’ve ever known, that’s what . . .”
He smiled—it was a wan shadow crossing his face.
Harwood caught at the fleeting tails of her training, applying pressure that made him cry out, shouting at Zofia to find her a med kit, anything, anything at all.
Bashir’s hand caught hers. “Too late. I do, too.”
Harwood pressed her forehead to his. “It’s not too late. I can fix this.”
“Johanna . . .” Bashir’s lips moved over her skin. “You’re not the mole, are you?”
Harwood flinched, sitting back by an inch. Tears spilled over. “You don’t think that, do you, Sid?”
He studied her through narrowing eyes. “No. M’s going to walk us down the aisle.”
Harwood buried her face in his neck, aware of the convulsions of her own body, then suddenly realizing that she did not want to panic him in his last moments—the guilt of this making her cry all the harder, and then draw it in, a short and sharp breath. She shook her hair back and gave him her best smile. “You did it, Sid. You saved Dr. Nowak. You saved one life that could save all of humanity.”
He shook his head, a small movement, but one that seemed to stretch into the years he wouldn’t occupy. “I saved you, Johanna. I know where I want to marry you.”
“Where, Sid? I’ll arrange it now. We’ll do it now.”
“The community center. My hurricane room. There’s this window . . .”
Harwood waited. A film spread gradually over his eyes, chasing out the final spark. Harwood felt her heart dislodge, a physical crack. She was holding a dead man’s hand.
A chuckle sounded behind her. Harwood turned. Mora was laughing. He lay sprawled on his back, one mammoth hand clamping his thigh, where Bashir’s bullet had clipped him. Blood spooled from his mouth. Harwood felt time slow in her veins. She got to her feet. Dr. Nowak stood six paces back, out of breath, a medical kit dangling from one hand and horror stamped on her face. Harwood studied the litter on the floor. She picked up one of the needles, reading the label. She squatted down at Mora’s side.
“I suppose that elixir won’t send me to a sleep of sweet dreams?” His voice was cloudy, an unsteady red fountain.
“The right amount would. It would keep you unconscious until Leiter and Moneypenny get the authority to send a retrieval team in here, for you and all this equipment. That’s what the right amount would do. But it’s been a long time since med school.”
“You swore an oath, Dr. Harwood, to do no harm.”
“I took another oath.”
Mora grunted. “You bend with the breeze. That’s what I like about you.”
Harwood recalled Dr. Kowalczyk saying the same: Your word is worth so little? Recalled the pin of her stare as she asked: Why did you kill the bastard, instead of capturing him for interrogation? Back then, the truth was that she made a shot which looked like a killing blow but wasn’t, at Moneypenny’s orders, despite everything the monster had done to her. This mutability, her capacity to bend with the breeze, had meant Sid asked her with his last breaths if she was a traitor. Now, the truth would be that she delivered a fatal shot because the monster had taken her lover and she had a license to kill.
Mora grunted, squeezing his leg.
“Kill him.” Harwood heard Dr. Nowak come closer as she said again: “Kill him. He doesn’t deserve to live. The world would be better without him.”
Between blinks, Harwood imagined the window Bashir might have described, if he’d been granted a few more words, imagined him waiting for her, imagined M’s hand on her elbow as she reached the aisle. Then she straightened.
“I don’t live in that world. He has valuable intel. Pass me the med kit.”
Mora sighed, resting his head back on the stone. “That’s my girl.”
Harwood sneered. “When you wake up, it will be to a cell darker than this one and the old friend who interrogated you for company. Your real mole.” She took the kit and swabbed Mora’s neck before easing in the tip of the needle.
Mora’s eyes eased shut. His voice was deep with contentment as he said, “I look forward to seeing him again . . .”
Harwood paused in unpacking the gauze and needle. She looked from Mora’s face, the laughter lines, the deep crevice that turned down at his lips, a smirk tucked permanently in the lower right-hand corner; he lost nothing of his self in sleep. Then she looked to Bashir, whose inquisitive gaze, now dulled, was turned to the roof of the chamber; there was no pinch of worry between his eyebrows, and his lips parted slightly as if ready to ask a question, to ask the world what he could give.
Harwood got to work.