The wind whistled through Phil’s ears nearly loud enough to obscure the shouting behind him, a mixture of the policeman yelling at him to stop, Rebecca screaming in horror, and Solomon calling for Phil to roll on the landing. Frankly, though it was only a two-story drop, Phil’s racing mind could only fully process one thought – ‘Fuck I didn’t think this through’.

  Phil hit the ground before he knew it with barely enough time to roll on the impact. It wasn’t enough. As soon as his shoes hit concrete, a sickening crunch tore out from his left leg, causing his roll to be abandoned midway.

  “Son of a whore…” Phil gritted out. He couldn’t stop for more than a second to writhe on the ground in agony. In the corner of his eye, he could see the policeman’s head poking out from the open window.

  A softer impact heralded Lumina’s landing, the more athletic woman (who was also potentially cheating via magic) having made a total of ten rotations during her cannonball plunge from the window.

  “Woo! Bracing!” Lumina laughed and stretched her limbs before making her way to Phil’s side. “Need a shoulder to lean on?” She asked in a more serious voice.

  Phil experimentally pressed his finger into the side of his left leg. A jolt of pain lanced through the limb, but there wasn’t any give to it. The bone wasn’t broken.

  “I think I’m good. My leg’s just being a little bitch. I’ll walk it off. Still feels like my balls are in my throat after that drop.”

  A sharp cracking noise split the air, followed not even a second later by what felt like a line of fire burrowing through the skin on Phil’s shoulder. He jerked to the side with a coarse string of swears just in time to see the officer lining up a second shot with his handgun. Phil’s limbs tensed, and then he bolted. From the window behind him, a strangled cry burst out, but there was no more gunfire to be heard.

  “Go go go!” Lumina frantically cried out as Phil zigged and zagged in a limping sprint across the hospital's side lawn. Doors burst open in the distance, followed by more shouts. He gritted his teeth.

  At this point, he'd be lucky if he were able to even stay within earshot of Rebecca's room.

  -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

  Rebecca’s left arm felt like a bonfire stuck to her body. It was as if the inside of her flesh was filled with broken, superheated glass that tore through her nerves if she even so much as looked at it.

  She hadn't dared to move when the policeman had rushed to the window Phil had jumped out mere moments before with his gun drawn. The 'O' of surprise had still been fixed on Rebecca's shock-frozen face. The ear-splitting sound of the gun firing left nothing but ringing echoes in her ears, ears that felt like they should be leaking blood with how much they hurt.

  In that split-second moment, every last drop of her pain was forgotten as something took over her mind. Instinct, perhaps, or maybe it was rage. Whatever it was, that unknown emotion sent a surge of life flooding through her tiny limbs.

  So, as the cop was lining up his second shot, Rebecca lurched forward with her brows twisted in anger, marched up to the policeman, and buried the tip of her shoe in his crotch with as much force as she could muster.

  “GRAAH! I DON’T KNOW YOU! GO AWAY!” She screeched so loud that her voice was able to pierce right through the terrible ringing in her ears. The officer crumpled to the ground in a curled-up ball, wheezing and clutching at his privates. Solomon hauled her back with a single hand on her shoulder, but a mere look at his face told Rebecca her granduncle (no relation) was pleased by her actions.

  A sunny smile of relief, fragile yet warm, broke out on her face. The weirdo baldie was able to escape. Then the broken glass in her left arm crunched worse than ever before, and Rebecca fell backwards as her legs trembled and failed, black spots dancing across her vision.

  -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

  Solomon deftly caught Rebecca’s falling body in one hand. He was an old man with fading strength that was nowhere near what he had in his youth, but the girl was light and small of stature. He eased her onto the exam table, moving fast enough to see the police officer heave himself back up to a standing position and peer over the windowsill.

  The officer’s face twisted in displeasure. He turned to Solomon and spoke with a growl of anger.

  “That man is a cop killer wanted in connection with several other homicides. And your…”

  “Grandniece.” Solomon calmly said.

  “Your grandniece let him escape. Keep a better handle on her next time.”

  The cop spun around and left the room in a blur of motion, the radio strapped to his shoulder blaring in a mass of static and crackling voices. Solomon watched him go with guarded eyes.

  “Cop killer… they’re moving fast.” He darkly muttered to himself.

  “Is… it true?” Rebecca’s voice weakly answered his. She was cradling her broken arm close to her chest with a pained, almost sickly expression.

  Solomon leaned against the exam table and placed a comforting hand on her unbroken arm. His face softened. Poor girl.

  “I know Phil. He’s a man capable of many things. But he wouldn’t hurt anyone without a good reason. And you can bet,” Solomon tweaked her nose with a smile he hoped would hide the worry he felt deep in his heart for both Rebecca and Phil, “He’s already found a good hiding spot nearby just in case. The two of us can see off any of those villains if they try to come back, you can bet your bottom dollar on it!”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “I don’t have any dollars-“

  Rebecca’s response was interrupted by the sound of the door clicking open to reveal Doctor Moretti, who somehow looked even more tired than he had when he’d left to grab the paperwork for Rebecca’s cast.

  “If her guardian would sign here, in triplicate.” Doctor Moretti said in a voice that was utterly dead inside. The smell of stale cigarette smoke clung to the man’s body like an uncomfortable cloak. In the doctor’s hand was a lit cigarette.

  As Solomon dutifully signed the forms, Doctor Moretti began to speak in between puffs of the foul, smoldering stick.

  “Making and applying the cast will take at most an hour and a half, but expect more like 45 minutes. Rebecca, I’ll have you take some painkillers before we start. Mr. Muto, you can wait here or in the waiting room.”

  A nurse sucking on the end of a lit cigarette bustled in carrying a roll of measuring tape in her hands.

  “I’ll wait here, if you don’t mind.” Solomon politely said. He took a seat near the window, watching both Doctor Moretti and the nurse, who introduced herself as Maki, with a careful gaze that paid special attention to the movement of their chests, the words they spoke, and the looks in their eyes. All were specific areas Phil had made certain to mention, as the dead men who were hunting him and Rebecca often seemed to pay little attention to making their hosts breathe or speak as normal men and women would.

  The doctor and the nurse all spoke as normal, though their tones had a bit of gravel in them, as was normal for heavy smokers. Their chests moved up and down as they breathed in and out. Their words synced up with their mouths.

  Solomon still did not drop his guard. Shouts could still be heard outside as the manhunt continued. Boots clattered against concrete. Tires screeched to a halt on asphalt. He couldn’t help but hide a smile behind his hand.

  Try as they might, bringing all the manpower the Domino City Police Department could muster, Solomon simply could not imagine them ever catching Phil if he did not want to be caught.

  -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

  It was surprisingly easy to lose the cops after breaking their line of sight with a few buildings and a sewer grate torn open by Lumina’s always impressive strength. Two stars, Phil likened the pursuit to. Two stars on the wanted level. Policemen shooting to kill, but nothing more than a large-scale manhunt. No choppers. No military. And apparently, no thought of searching the sewers.

  Phil didn't blame them for that part. He'd prefer to stay out of them himself if they weren't so darn handy to use as an escape route.

  “It’s as bad as the last time.” Phil said with a wrinkled nose. The stench was nearly unbearable. Rotting food, raw sewage, and… he was pretty sure a decomposing human body had floated by a few minutes ago. Nothing he particularly wanted to see. However, the slime-encased walls did provide shelter from the police. The stench was also doing a pretty good job at taking Phil’s mind off the pain coming from his leg and his shoulder. Fortunately the bullet had only grazed his flesh, which had allowed Phil to get by after wrapping it with a makeshift bandage created from a torn strip of his shirt.

  “Last time we were also fleeing the police. After the motorcycle duel, right?” Lumina said. Her hand was at her chin as she thought. Even though her body was incorporeal, Lumina’s legs still worked carefully to keep her flats out of the worst of the sludge puddles.

  "Sounds about right…" Phil absentmindedly replied. "This way, I think." His memory of his flight from the hospital was still recent enough, but as expected, trying to navigate his way back to the building was a little bit tricky without being able to see landmarks or even street signs, only the vague general direction he hoped was correct.

  Eventually Phil came to a halt. He directed a quizzical gaze to the grate above.

  “Lumina, if you would?”

  Lumina nudged past him, hoisting herself up two of the rungs welded to the wall to give the sewer grate a sharp punch that saw it pop off a few inches – enough so that she could grab its edges and slide the now-dented metal grate away. Phil heaved himself up the rungs to match Lumina's position. Side-by-side, they balanced on the rungs, watching carefully with their eyes poking over the edge of the grate to watch for something, anything that could tell them where they were.

  The street above the sewer was narrow. Cobbled bricks stuck out from the ground at uneven angles. The walls closed in to give the surroundings a claustrophobic feeling that was only intensified by trash cans filled to the brim and, at some points, overflowing with putrid trash bags, some even split open midway to vomit their contents onto the ground. Even the sky above could hardly be seen, choked out from view by the clustering buildings that dominated the surroundings.

  Phil wrinkled his nose. Somehow, this alleyway smelled even worse than the sewer below. His disgust did not last for long. No more than a block away, he could see a familiar-looking corner. The hospital, no doubt, though he couldn’t tell which side, whether it was the end Rebecca was in or not. He’d gotten too turned around in his escape to know.

  A disgusting alleyway. One with a few crucial facts. No police to be seen, close enough to the hospital to hear a ruckus, and… unfortunately, a solid hiding place.

  Phil hoisted himself out of the sewer.

  “No… don’t tell me…” Lumina began, but the pity in her eyes betrayed her curse of knowledge. She knew precisely what Phil’s next move would be.

  “The things I do for the people I care about.” Phil muttered. It would be disgusting, but he couldn’t hear if anyone needed help if he remained in the sewer. His shoes hit the brick. He dusted his shoulders off, even as fruitless as the gesture was, and walked over to the largest receptacle of them all, an overflowing dumpster near the mouth of the alley. The topmost layer of leaky trash bags was casually tossed aside to land with wet squelches near a cluster of tarnished metal bins.

  Lumina covered her face as Phil eased his body into the dumpster, heedless of the vomit-inducing noises the trash around him made.

  “That’s disgusting. I’m gonna go take a walk around the hospital. See if I can figure out how far away you are from Rebecca’s exam room.”

  Phil shot her a lazy two-fingered salute from his den of filth.

  “Cheers. I think I’m starting to lose my sense of smell already, so please let me know as soon as they leave so I can make that temporary instead of permanent, if you’re picking up what I’m putting down.”

  Lumina turned and marched away, but not before directing another weirded-out look at Phil, who appeared neither delighted nor particularly miserable in his current situation. He lurked there, like a mildly grumpy trash frog waiting for a Son to appear like a fat, juicy fly for him to snatch up with his tongue.

  Soon a series of off-key whistling noises filtered out of the dumpster, accompanied by a tuneless song sung in words dripping with boredom.

  “Hm hm~ stakeout~ or a steakout~? Buh doobie doo~ bored on a stakeout~ oh what do I do~.”

  The whistling fell silent. Phil scratched his cheek and shifted in place.

  "I shoulda' just brawled with the cops. I'd be dead or in jail, but at least I wouldn't be bored. Getting shot at is exciting. Waiting in a dumpster in the off-chance I can gank a Son isn't." He mumbled to himself.

  “Patience~,” Phil mumbled tunelessly. He bumped his head against the side of the dumpster. “Patience is the stuff~. Can’t get reckless, oh no no no~. Reckless… is how Rebecca joins Arthur…”

  The last few words were said with an empty voice.

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