Chapter Text
Trafalgar Law sat hunched over Aurelion’s Codex as though it were not a book, but a living creature whispering secrets only he could hear.
The ancient manuscript didn’t describe the body as a stable thing — not as a cage of rib and sinew — but as a negotiable space, a soft geometry of flesh that could be persuaded, distorted, rewritten.
Aurelion wrote of anatomy the way poets wrote of love: with reverence, madness, and a hunger to break the rules of nature.
And Law devoured every line.
It haunted him.
It thrilled him.
It consumed him.
Every hour he wasn’t treating patients, he poured into deciphering Aurelion’s diagrams — spirals of muscle pathways, nodes of nerve influence, maps of organ-held memories — structures that behaved differently within a ROOM.
Aurelion believed the body was not a fixed architecture.
He believed it was malleable... Clay.
His crew forced him to eat, sleep, blink like a normal organism, and occasionally stand in sunlight so he didn’t mutate into a deep-sea goblin. But the moment their backs turned, Law was already back in his quarters, flipping pages with a hunger that looked almost feral.
He’d even begun teleporting himself back inside whenever someone tried physically dragging him to dinner.
---
The Polar Tang had docked in Brisendell, a quiet port island with crooked alleyways and a thin line of smoke permanently hovering above its old rooftops. Supplies were needed. Repairs too. Brisendell was perfect for that.
Law had no intention of stepping off the ship.
His crew could handle groceries.
He didn’t trust them with medical theory, but he trusted them with vegetables.
Mostly.
---
Jonas and Hakugan were the first to return.
Jonas kicked open the hatch at full volume, boots clanging on metal as he announced proudly:
“Captain! I caught tons of rats from the slums! They were so slow, I think I grabbed thirty!”
He held up a sagging burlap sack like an offering.
Jonas, convinced that the captain’s relentless studying meant he needed fresh ‘experimental subjects,’ had proudly decided that sewer rats were the perfect gift for a doctor obsessed with anatomy.
Law grabbed it without a word.
Inside, the rats barely twitched. Their sides rose in shallow, stuttering breaths. Their eyes gleamed sickly yellow.
Law lifted his gaze toward Jonas’s hands — bare, filthy, probably still warm from holding the dying vermin.
“You touched them?”
Jonas blinked in confusion. “How else do you catch rats? Should I have— I dunno— used tongs?”
Hakugan groaned. “I tried to stop him, Captain.”
Law inhaled deeply — the kind of inhale doctors take when choosing between murder and professionalism.
“Jonas,” Law said, voice as flat and sharp as a scalpel, “a ‘slow rat’ means an infected rat. Possibly dying. You brought diseased animals into my submarine. With your bare hands. Touching everything. Do you understand how viruses work, or is that advanced science for a baker-turned-pirate?”
Jonas grimaced. “What? They’re just rats.”
Law pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose.
“Get. To. The. Clinic.”
Jonas’s face drained of color. “Why?!”
“Because you likely infected half the crew.”
Jonas bolted toward the clinic in terror.
Law turned to Bepo and Hakugan, already shifting into command mode.
“Disinfect everything. Floors, handles, railings, vents. And if a single screw isn’t scrubbed, I’ll use you both as test subjects.”
“Aye, Captain.”
He shoved the sack of rats into the isolation cage in the clinic and was about to return to the Codex when someone barreled inside.
Ikkaku. Breathless. Ash-faced.
“Captain—you need to come outside. Now.”
---
Law had barely stepped out of the submarine before the truth hit him like a blow.
Brisendell was collapsing.
People staggered through the streets, hands pressed to walls for support. Others slumped on crates, benches, doorsteps — breathing hard, sweating through their clothes, skin paling to a waxy color.
A sickness slithered under their skin.
Slowly.
Quietly.
Like rot beneath fruit.
Ikkaku led him through the marketplace, where two men were hunched against a bakery’s shuttered window.
“They were fine two days ago,” she said, breath strained. “Now half the town can barely stand.”
Law drew his mask tighter. His eyes swept the area with calm brutality.
“This is spreading fast.”
Even the steps of Brisendell’s hospital were covered with patients — sitting, lying, curling into themselves. A nurse attempted to push them back, but her knees buckled as she did so.
Inside was worse.
People lay on blankets, sacks, the bare floor. Some retched. Others moaned. Doctors stumbled from patient to patient, working not with medicine but muscle memory, hands trembling with exhaustion.
“They won’t take anyone else,” Ikkaku said. “They’re drowning. They can’t help more.”
“Then we work elsewhere,” Law said simply.
He didn’t hesitate.
He didn’t flinch.
He didn’t waste time.
He was a surgeon in a battlefield disguised as a town.
---
A rundown motel on the edge of Brisendell became his makeshift hospital.
Shachi and Penguin pushed aside tables, benches, shelves.
Ikkaku barked orders until the crowd formed lines.
Those who could walk arrived clutching their stomachs.
Those who couldn’t were dragged or carried.
Law stepped into the swarm of the sick like a blade cutting into flesh.
His eyes moved over each patient with a surgeon’s cruelty — precise, calculating, merciless.
Within minutes, he saw the pattern.
A mutation.
Rats carried the altered strain.
But humans had carried the original.
“This was originally human-to-human,” Law murmured. “But the mutated strain is weaker in contagion and stronger in damage… It’s targeting liver and kidneys with surgical precision.”
He examined a child’s eyes — yellowed.
A man’s side — swollen.
A woman’s breath — labored.
“Only those who had contact with infected rats fell ill,” he concluded aloud. “The mutated strain stops with the rat.”
A small mercy.
And a grim warning.
He needed the first patient.
The origin.
Someone who had carried the unmutated version.
Someone who had passed it to the rats.
Someone who started the chain of death crawling through Brisendell.
Someone very sick… or very guilty.
---
Law left Ikkaku with strict triage orders and sprinted back to the Polar Tang. ROOM flickered around him, pulling equipment closer, clearing paths, rearranging space like a silent assistant.
He prepared the mutated-virus antidote first, showing Bepo each step until the mink could repeat it flawlessly.
Then the antidote for the original strain — slower, more delicate, more dangerous.
Instinct buzzed under his skin like static.
When the first vials were ready, Law turned to Bepo.
“Give Jonas the mutated-virus antidote. He’s infected.”
Jonas, pale and sweating in the corner, burst out, “I said I didn’t touch the rats—!”
“You handled thirty dying vermin with your bare hands,” Law snapped. “You’re lucky you’re alive to whine about it.”
Jonas shrank like a deflated balloon.
Law left the submarine with the finished doses.
And Brisendell swallowed him whole.
He worked without rest.
Without blinking.
Without mercy.
Sutures.
Organ decompressions.
Antivirals.
Emergency ROOM procedures that bent anatomy into submission.
Patients vomited blood into buckets.
Children cried.
Bodies shook with fever.
Law never flinched.
---
By dawn, only a scattering of candles remained lit inside the rundown motel. Their flames trembled in the stale air like dying fireflies. Shadows stretched long across the room, clinging to walls already smudged with the prints of feverish hands.
Ikkaku’s hands shook as she worked, her arms heavy as chains.
Shachi and Penguin looked half-conscious, pale with exhaustion, leaning against the walls between patients as though even gravity had turned against them.
The room smelled of disinfectant, sweat, and the faint metallic tang of sickness.
Then the door opened.
A young woman staggered inside — pale as moonlight, trembling from head to toe, her irises stained yellow like aging parchment. Every breath she took rattled, wet and uneven, as if her lungs were filled with stones.
“My name… is Elira,” she whispered, clutching the doorframe. “My fiancé… he’s worse than me. I came to… ask if you could… see him.”
Her voice cracked.
Her knees buckled.
The hope in her eyes flickered like her failing pulse.
Law didn’t waste a heartbeat.
“Lie down,” he ordered, already stepping toward her.
She shook her head weakly. “I—I’m fine, please—my fiancé—”
“We begin treating you now,” Law cut in, voice low, cold, absolute. “Every second you talk is a second you lose.”
His presence was not comforting — it was commanding.
A scalpel, not a blanket.
He examined her swiftly:
swollen abdomen, yellowed eyes, tremors running through every muscle, slowed circulation, liver distress…
Advanced infection.
Hours away from organ failure.
A ROOM blossomed around them, humming faintly. Law worked inside it with chilling precision — correcting blood flow, easing kidney strain, suppressing inflammation, rebalancing pressure in the liver. His fingers moved like someone stitching reality itself back into place.
“Your fiancé,” Law said without pausing his work. “Symptoms?”
Elira swallowed painfully before speaking.
“He… he can’t move anymore. Vomits blood. His skin has… purple patches. He hasn’t woken up… since yesterday.”
“First-generation infection,” Law muttered.
He motioned sharply.
“Shachi. Penguin. Bring him here. Gloves, masks, full protection. And don’t touch anything you don’t have to.”
They nodded and ran.
Elira’s head lifted weakly.
“Please… save him.”
Law adjusted her IV with a soft, final click.
“We’ll see,” he said. It wasn’t a promise. It was a verdict.
---
When Shachi and Penguin returned carrying Elira’s fiancé, Law felt something cold shift inside him — not fear, not dread… recognition.
The man - Roderick- looked less like a man and more like a corpse that hadn’t yet been informed of the fact. His skin was grey. Lips cracked. Breath shallow. His body sagged between Shachi and Penguin like an empty sack.
Law prepared for surgery immediately.
He opened a ROOM, lifting organs gently from the body to assess the damage.
And froze.
Roderick’s lungs were mottled with dark clusters, bleeding like crushed berries.
His liver was swollen nearly double its size.
Blood moved sluggishly, thickening in unnatural patterns.
His stomach lining showed stress tears.
Penguin leaned closer, voice unsteady.
“Captain… do you think this is natural?”
Law’s lips curved — the faintest, coldest smile.
“This has fingerprints.”
“What kind?”
“The underworld kind.”
Roderick wasn’t just sick.
He was mutilated.
One kidney gone.
Half his liver missing.
A chunk of pancreas removed.
Sections of intestine absent.
Not rotting.
Not decomposed.
Removed.
Recently.
And the scars… rough, rushed, but undeniably skilled hands had made them.
Law held the organs suspended in the air, studying the edges of each cut.
“A butcher,” he whispered. “A skilled one… but sloppy.”
He stabilized what remained of Roderick’s organs, redirecting blood flow and repairing tissue where he could. It wasn’t salvation. It was buying time.
Barely.
He lowered the organs back and released the ROOM.
---
Five hours later, Elira awoke — lucid, breathing normally — but her answers were useless.
She knew nothing of Roderick’s past.
Only that he’d grown secretive, angry, distant.
That wasn’t evidence. That was noise.
Law needed truth.
Real truth.
He gestured sharply toward the door.
“Shachi. Penguin. Find everything you can about him. Family. Work. Enemies. Habits. Do not come back without answers.”
They left immediately.
The motel sank into uneasy quiet — a chorus of groans, coughing, and the creak of beds.
Law moved among the recovering patients, changing IV lines, checking fevers, adjusting antiviral doses — but his mind was somewhere else.
Every few minutes, his eyes drifted back to the unconscious man on the bed.
Something was wrong.
Something deep.
His hands kept working, machine-like, but his thoughts sharpened:
What kind of man loses half his organs and says nothing? Who hides a wound like that? And why, despite being half-dead, does he radiate guilt more than fear?
Law hated uncertainty.
Hated gray areas.
Hated that human behavior refused to fit into the clean logic of anatomy.
That was chaos with a pulse.
Law tightened a bandage on a patient, jaw clenching.
If he’s a victim, I’m carving into an innocent man. If he’s a predator… I haven’t cut nearly deep enough.
He paused mid-motion.
And if I let him go before Shachi and Penguin return, I might lose a thread leading straight into the underworld.
Annoyance tightened in his chest — not fear, but responsibility pressing like a weight he couldn’t ignore.
He had to wait.
He had to be sure.
He had to trust his instincts — the instincts that had saved him more times than mercy ever had.
---
Roderick wakes
A soft rustle broke the silence.
Law’s head turned sharply.
Roderick groaned, eyelids fluttering before he forced himself upright — shaky, but conscious.
Elira gasped, tears filling her eyes.
“Oh, you’re awake… I was so worried… Are you feeling better? Are you alright now?”
Law paused — not because he cared, but because the warmth in her voice violently clashed with the hatred twisting across Roderick’s features.
“Where are we?” Roderick rasped.
“You were very sick,” Elira whispered. “I brought you to the doctor. He cured you.”
His face snapped into fury.
“I told you to leave me alone! Not bring me to any doctor!”
Her eyes filled with tears. “You were dying… I couldn’t just watch—”
“I was going to die from your meddling, not the disease!”
Her breath hitched like he’d struck her.
Law stepped forward, glass edge slipping into his tone.
“That’s quite a statement,” Law said, “coming from someone who infected an entire city. You would’ve died on your filthy floor, but considering your personality… perhaps that was a mercy.”
Roderick turned his glare on Law.
“And who are you, you arrogant wretch?”
Law’s lips curled.
“Oh, I’m the wretch who saved your life. And your fiancée’s.”
“You didn’t save anyone,” Roderick spat. “You’re just another con artist.”
Law laughed — low, dark, humorless.
“You came to me half-dead,” Law said, stepping closer. “Missing pieces of your internal organs. Care to explain?”
Roderick froze.
Elira’s voice broke.
“Missing… what? Did you sell them? Is that why?”
“You believe this charlatan?” he scoffed. “We’re leaving.”
He staggered toward the door.
Law blocked it with Kikoku without hesitation.
Roderick clenched his fists.
“Move, or I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” Law whispered.
Roderick glared, panting.
“Listen—I’m fine! Move, or you’ll get what’s coming to you!”
Law’s smile sharpened like broken glass.
“Interesting. Two threats already.”
He leaned forward slightly.
“Go on then. Show me.”
He pressed Kikoku firmly across the doorway.
“And spare me the pretense,” Law continued, voice dropping. “I’m not keeping you here because I care what happens to you. I’m keeping you here because you’re dangerous. And I have no pity for underworld parasites.”
Roderick lunged.
Law didn’t bother drawing his sword properly.
He dodged lazily, hands behind his back, letting the man exhaust himself.
“What do you want from me?!” Roderick yelled.
“Answers,” Law replied. “Who took your organs and why?”
“Why do you care? They’re my organs! My decision!”
Law’s voice cooled further.
“It stopped being your decision the moment you infected this town.”
Roderick attacked again, but Law moved with bored precision.
Finally, Law sighed.
“My patience is thinning. Either tell me the truth… or I’ll start cutting.”
“I told you—there’s nothing—nothing to tell!”
Law’s eyes narrowed into razors.
“Fine.”
ROOM flashed.
A finger dropped to the floor.
Elira screamed.
Roderick stared at the severed digit, horror widening his eyes. There was no blood. No pain. No sensation—
But his mind couldn’t understand that.
Law crouched, voice poised and cold.
“Next time, it’s your wrist. Then your hand.”
Roderick trembled violently.
“Why… why are you doing this?!”
“You have secrets,” Law said. “And I need answers.”
---
Roderick broke.
“I— I can’t speak,” he whispered. “They said they’d kill me if I talked—”
“You’ll die anyway,” Law said simply. “Pick how.”
Roderick shook, sobbing, trapped.
Law waited.
Silent.
Unmoving.
Patient as a predator watching prey unravel.
Roderick finally stammered, voice trembling like a rotten beam ready to snap.
“F-Fine… fine. I’ll tell you. I was… I was drinking at the Gallows Lantern—the bar near the docks. I’d been complaining about my debts, shouting, really. Everyone heard me. Then this stranger sits beside me. Black coat, hood low… the kind of man who doesn’t belong in a place like that. He tells me… he tells me he can make the debt disappear. Said all I had to do was sell something valuable.”
He swallowed hard. Sweat beaded on his already pale skin.
“I… I said yes. I didn’t even ask what ‘valuable’ meant. I was drunk, angry, desperate. He told me to follow him out back. We went into the alley behind the tavern. It was dark. I think I saw a wagon… or maybe it was a ship crate? I… I don’t know. Everything went blurry. My legs went weak. Felt like something hit me. Then nothing.”
His fingers twitched as if remembering pain.
“I woke up lying on the ground. Could barely move. My shirt was soaked with blood. Stitches running across my side and back. I crawled home. And the next day… I found out my debt was paid. Completely paid.”
He lifted his chin like he expected applause.
---
Law’s silence was colder than a drawn blade.
And then the chill sharpened.
There were holes everywhere.
No organ trafficker leaves a witness alive out of charity.
No professional forgets to stitch properly.
No ring that cleanly extracts organs leaves a drunken debtor in an alley like lost garbage.
Law’s lips pressed into a razor-thin line — the kind of expression that meant the air itself should be afraid.
“I’m not buying it,” he said quietly. “Try again.”
ROOM.
The space around them bent, thickened, held its breath.
Law moved Kikoku, the man’s wrist separated from his arm — clean, bloodless, silent — as if the world itself had agreed to the incision.
Roderick stared at the stump in mute disbelief before the panic hit him like a tidal wave.
Then he screamed.
He collapsed backward, clutching at the perfectly smooth, blood-free cut, eyes bulging with animal terror.
“PLEASE! Believe me! I’m not lying! I’m the victim!” he sobbed, voice cracking.
Law stepped closer, “Exactly,” he said softly, as if explaining something obvious to a child. “That’s the part I think you’re lying about.”
His tone wasn’t angry.
It was worse.
It was disappointed.
And inside — where no one could see — something twisted sharply.
What if he was wrong?
What if this pathetic creature actually had been prey and not a collaborator?
What if his instincts had finally misled him?
He hated the thought.
Hated it with a cold, brittle intensity.
Law could live with spilling blood.
He could live with cutting monsters apart.
He could live with cruelty when cruelty was earned.
But hurting someone who didn’t deserve it?
That was different.
That left a taste he couldn’t stomach.
He needed Shachi and Penguin.
He needed confirmation.
He needed the world to align with his instinct or he’d tear it apart himself.
He couldn’t let the man go.
Not until he knew.
Not until doubt stopped clawing at his spine.
Inside his mind, the conflict spiraled:
If he’s a criminal, good. If he’s a liar, even better. But if he’s innocent… then what am I becoming?
Then—
The clinic door burst open, the sound slamming through the stillness.
Shachi and Penguin stood in the doorway, eyes widening as they took in the scene:
The man on the floor, trembling.
The hand lying beside him.
The perfect, surgical cut.
Law standing calm and cold in the center of it all.
---
Shachi and Penguin froze the instant they stepped through the door.
On the floor lay a severed finger and a cleanly detached wrist, motionless and bloodless under the glow of the clinic lamps.
Roderick writhed beside them, breath hitching in panicked bursts, eyes red and wild.
And at the center of the room stood Law — immaculate, untouched, not a single strand of hair out of place, as if he had merely rearranged furniture instead of body parts.
Penguin swallowed hard, voice barely a whisper.
“Captain… what’s happening?”
Law didn’t look away from the trembling man.
“You tell me,” he said, tone flat as a scalpel on metal. “What did you two find out?”
Roderick stiffened. Fear slicked over his skin like oil—thick, shining, impossible to hide.
Shachi cleared his throat, trying not to stare at the scattered pieces on the floor.
“He, uh… has a terrible reputation, Captain. Starts fights with everyone. Most people I questioned didn’t even blink when I said he was dying in the clinic. No concern. No sympathy. Just… annoyance.”
Law slowly turned his head toward Roderick, eyes narrowing.
“Still claiming you’re the victim?”
Roderick’s voice shook.
“I—I might be short-tempered, but that doesn’t change that I’m a victim of organ theft!”
“Technically,” Law replied, “your organs weren’t stolen. They were bought... as per your story”
Roderick flinched. “Same thing!”
Penguin stepped further inside, his normally laid-back posture gone, replaced with something grim.
“No, not the same. And we aren’t finished yet.”
Roderick froze.
Penguin continued, each word landing like a nail.
“He curses people he fights with. Five people vanished the day after crossing him. No stable work. Lives off petty theft and gambling. Involved in shady business around town. And one guy said he heard him bragging — drunk — that he knows the Joker personally. Said the Joker could ‘teach a lesson’ to anyone who pisses him off.”
Roderick went pale.
Law… smiled.
Not a warm smile.
Not even a mocking one.
A slow, delighted smile — the kind he wore when every piece fell into place exactly as he suspected.
“Knowing the Joker personally,” Law mused, “is that so?”
Roderick’s voice dropped to a terrified whisper.
“Yes… and when he finds out what you’re doing to me, he’ll kill you. So let me go while you still can.”
Law clicked his tongue softly.
“Really? And where was Joker when your organs were being stolen?”
“He… he’s the one who saved me! Whoever did this is dead now!”
Law laughed. Quietly. Without humor.
His amusement sharpened into something razor-thin.
“I highly doubt Joker revealed himself to a fool like you.”
He stepped closer, Kikoku tilting upward.
“And believe me…”
His voice slid into something lethal, absolute.
“...I know the Joker very well.”
Roderick trembled violently.
Law lifted Kikoku, the blade’s shadow cutting across Roderick’s trembling form.
“Now,” Law murmured, “shall we resume the slashing? Or will you finally tell me the truth?”
“They’ll kill me,” Roderick whimpered, eyes swimming.
“I think you should worry about escaping me first.”
ROOM shifted — a thin hum — and another clean cut separated Roderick’s other wrist.
He screamed, collapsing sideways, shock trembling through every bone.
“Fine! Fine!” he sobbed. “But promise me you’ll let me go alive!”
Law leaned down, meeting his eyes with a calm so cold it burned.
“If your story convinces me,” he said, voice soft as poison, “I’ll leave the chance to finish you off to Joker.”
---
This time, Roderick shattered completely.
The lies, the bravado, the fake victimhood—
all of it collapsed under the pressure of fear and pain and the silent promise of more cuts.
His voice broke as he finally spoke.
“I’ve… I’ve been in the underworld for four years,” he choked out. “Drugs… weapons… narcotics. I built connections. Networks. I knew people who knew people. And then someone introduced me to… to organ trafficking.”
His throat bobbed as he swallowed, trembling.
“My job was to look for the forgotten ones. Homeless men… orphans… lonely people no one would miss. I’d send reports. A name, a description, where they slept. Then they’d be kidnapped. Their organs stolen.” His breathing cracked.
“Until—until I fell victim myself.”
For a heartbeat, the room was silent.
Law stared at him with an expression that wasn’t disgust.
Wasn’t rage.
It was disappointment.
Cold, clinical disappointment, as though Roderick had failed a test Law already knew he wouldn’t pass.
Then Law cut off the man’s hand.
ROOM shimmered.
Another perfect, bloodless slice.
Another piece of the man hitting the floor with a soft, awful thud.
Penguin swallowed hard, face tight.
Shachi inhaled slowly, forcing himself not to look away.
Law didn’t blink.
Didn’t flinch.
Didn’t care.
Roderick collapsed into hysterical sobs.
“They warned me!” he cried. “I—I broke the agreement four times. I reported people who bothered me, but they had families—people who’d look for them. I wanted revenge. That’s all. Revenge felt good. I wanted them gone. And the fifth time… I think they wanted to kill me for it. But I… I’m stubborn. I survived.”
A strangled laugh escaped him.
Law let out a low, cruel sound, something between amusement and disdain.
“That’s your grand theory?” Law said. “You think you ‘survived’?”
He crouched slightly, eyes gleaming.
“If they truly wanted you dead, Roderick, you’d never have crawled out of that alley. They would’ve taken everything—lungs, kidneys, liver, eyes. Left you empty.”
Roderick whimpered.
“But they didn’t,” Law continued, voice turning sharp as Kikoku’s edge. “They stitched you up just enough. Not cleanly. Not carefully. A message.”
He leaned closer.
“You are replaceable. And expendable. A spare cog. A dog they expect to limp back to work.”
Roderick trembled so badly the bed shook beneath him.
“Okay,” he whispered. “Okay. I told you everything. Let me go.”
Law straightened.
“Not before you show me the trading post.
Roderick hesitated.
“It’s … in Valgaire,” he said finally. “Three days from here. Big place. Lots of ports.”
Law grabbed him by the front of his shirt and hauled him upward as though he weighed nothing.
“You’re coming with us.”
Roderick panicked instantly.
“You promised—!”
“I promised,” Law said calmly, “that if your story convinced me, I’d leave the chance to finish you off to Joker.”
His eyes turned colder than the sea outside.
“Whether Joker wants you alive is none of my concern. Now move.”
Roderick stumbled as Law dragged him toward the door.
But Law didn’t set sail.
Not yet.
Because outside the clinic, dozens of patients still lay recovering.
Sick, fragile people who had come to him desperate and afraid.
He would not abandon them half-treated.
He would not leave a city infected.
He would not let Jonas panic in fever while he ran off to chase monsters.
Law released Roderick only long enough to secure him in the submarine brig — chained, monitored, watched by Shachi and Penguin.
Then Law went back to work.
He sterilized equipment.
He checked vitals.
He administered treatments.
He forced medicine down throats that resisted it.
He stabilized the children.
He replaced bandages.
He calmed terrified parents.
He monitored the last pulse of the infection until it finally, finally broke.
And when Jonas finally stopped shivering.
His fever broke.
His breathing steadied.
Law checked him three times, then a fourth, until he was certain.
Only then did he look toward the horizon.
Only then did he give the order:
“Prepare to depart.”
The crew loaded supplies while Law took one last walk through the clinic, ensuring each patient was stable, each wound tended, each family reassured.
When he returned to the submarine, he didn’t look back.
“Set sail,” Law commanded.
This time, the Polar Tang slipped beneath the waves not in haste, but with purpose —
carrying a doctor who healed the innocent with the same precision he carved into the guilty…
…and the trembling rat who would lead him to the next den of monsters.