The Fall Guy

"What are you shaking for? Hand me the forceps!"

Leo's greasy fingers rummaged through Snake Eyes' chest, like someone picking through offal at a butcher's stall.

Lynn gripped the hemostat, his knuckles white.

He stared at the heart exposed on the operating table, watching it beat, once, then again, each time more slowly.

Something was wrong.

Leo's knife had slipped.

The scalpel had sliced through a coronary artery along the edge of the pericardium. Blood gushed out at once, flooding the entire chest cavity.

"Leo, you cut the coronary artery!" Lynn growled.

Leo's hand paused. A flicker of panic crossed his face, but was quickly replaced by a strange calm.

He didn't even try to stop the bleeding.

"It's too late." Leo stepped back and removed his blood-soaked gloves, his voice as casual as if he were talking about what to have for dinner.

Lynn's pupils contracted.

Too late?

You son of a bitch, you're not even going to try?!

He lunged forward instinctively, plunging both hands into the chest cavity to try to clamp the ruptured vessel.

Warm blood welled between his fingers. Snake Eyes' heartbeat dwindled beneath his palms to a faint tremor.

Then it stopped.

The heart monitor let out a piercing, sustained beep.

A flat line.

Lynn froze.

The blood on his hands cooled rapidly in the air, and the metallic stench struck the back of his throat.

He couldn't save him.

"Step away."

Leo's voice came from behind him, cold and unrecognizable.

Lynn turned around. He didn't see panic or fear.

He saw a gun.

The barrel of a Beretta pointed straight at his forehead. Leo's greasy face showed no emotion at all, as if he'd rehearsed this moment long ago.

"Leo, you—"

"Shut up."

Leo's hand was steady.

This wasn't how a doctor who had just "accidentally" killed someone should have reacted.

"Stay right there. Don't make a sound. Don't move."

Leo gestured with the gun toward Snake Eyes' body on the operating table. The meaning was clear: disobey, and you'd end up just like him.

Lynn said nothing.

Not because he was brave, but because he knew all too well that there was no point asking questions with a loaded gun pointed at him.

Leo backed toward the door, never taking the gun off Lynn.

"Click."

The iron door was locked from the outside.

Footsteps quickly faded away, mixed with the sounds of Leo rummaging for something—probably cleaning out the safe.

Then came the sound of the shutter outside rising and falling.

A car started.

The engine noise vanished into the night.

The clinic fell silent.

Completely silent.

Lynn stood still, staring at the locked iron door, his mind blank.

Three seconds later, he finally snapped out of it.

He'd run.

Leo had run.

He'd locked Lynn in with a corpse.

Lynn rushed to the door, twisted the handle, pounded on it, and slammed his shoulder against it.

It didn't budge.

Leo had specifically replaced this door with a high-security one. It could be locked from the outside with a key, and there was no way to open it from within.

He turned to the window.

There wasn't one.

The operating room was at the very back of the clinic. All four walls were solid brick, and the only ventilation was a palm-sized exhaust fan in the ceiling.

Even a cat couldn't squeeze through.

Lynn took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.

Call the police.

He instinctively reached into his pocket—empty.

Leo had taken his phone before the operation, claiming it was "standard sterile procedure."

Now that he thought about it, that must have been part of the plan, too.

Wait.

A plan?

What plan?

Lynn frowned as a wave of unease washed over him.

He began searching every corner of the room.

The instrument cabinet, the medicine shelves, the sterilizer, even the storage compartment beneath the operating table.

No phone, no walkie-talkie, no communication devices of any kind.

Before leaving, Leo had taken everything that could be used to contact the outside world.

But Lynn didn't give up.

He kept searching.

One drawer after another slid open. Inside were gauze, cotton balls, expired lidocaine, rusty curved clamps...

Until he opened the bottom drawer of the instrument table.

A kraft paper folder.

Lynn froze for a moment, then pulled it out and opened it.

Inside was a complete set of surgical records.

His eyes swept over the first line, and his pupils abruptly contracted.

Lead surgeon: Lynn.

Assistant: None.

Anesthesiologist's signature: Blank.

He quickly flipped to the back. His name was on the consent form, too.

But the signature was forged.

The date was from a week ago.

A week ago.

Back then, Leo hadn't even received the case.

Lynn's hands began to shake.

Not from fear, but from anger.

He wasn't stupid.

The surgical records had been forged, and dated a week earlier.

The phone being taken, the iron door being locked, even that "slip" that had been so fatally precise—every step had been planned in advance.

This wasn't a medical accident.

It was a conspiracy.

Leo had never intended to save Snake Eyes.

And Lynn was the fall guy he'd chosen.

But Lynn couldn't understand.

Why?

Snake Eyes was Kingpin's top lieutenant. Killing him was the same as picking a fight with Kingpin.

Leo had worked this territory for years. There was no way he didn't know what happened to people who crossed Kingpin.

He was just an underground doctor at a back-alley clinic. Where had he found the nerve?

It made no sense.

But that didn't matter anymore.

What mattered was... when Kingpin's men investigated, all they'd see was a college dropout whose mistake during surgery had killed the gang's top lieutenant.

All their fury would fall on the scapegoat locked at the crime scene, with no way out.

And Leo had already disappeared into the night.

Lynn hurled the folder to the floor.

Then he kept searching.

He searched the entire room.

Every cabinet, every drawer, under the operating table, behind the light stand. He even crouched down to inspect every brick in the corners.

An exit, a tool, anything that might help him survive.

There was nothing.

Forty minutes later, Lynn stopped.

He slid down the wall and sat on the floor. Across from him was the bloodstained operating table; overhead, the fluorescent light buzzed. The air was thick with the smell of rust and disinfectant.

Snake Eyes' body was already growing cold on the operating table.

He'd only been in this world for three days.

His predecessor's memories told him that this world had Superman, Batman, Iron Man, and all kinds of superheroes who could fly through the skies and burrow through the earth.

But none of that had anything to do with him.

He was just some nobody who couldn't afford medical school and had dropped out, only to be sold out when he tried to get a job under the table.

No money, no identity, no phone, no weapon.

Locked in a sealed operating room with a corpse that would ruin his life, on Kingpin's turf.

The gang would come after sunrise.

Then he'd be facing either a bullet or the icy waters of the Hudson River.

Lynn closed his eyes.

This was probably the end.

He'd crossed over to a world of gods and demons, only to die on his third day in a stinking back-alley clinic.

Not killed by an alien invasion, not caught up in a supervillain's plot.

Framed by a third-rate underground doctor.

Like an ant crushed without a second thought in the filthiest corner.

No one would ever know.

No one would care.

He slowly unclenched his fist. Even the last of his strength seemed to drain away with it.

Just then...

Deep in his mind, a cold electronic notification sounded without warning.

[ DING! ]