The door swings open.

Mikado feels his insides twisting into knots as he catches sight of the doctor's furrowed eyebrows.

Shinra turns to him. "Mikado, do you know that kid?" The curiosity in his voice has the teenager quaking. He was well aware of the sort of thing that piqued Shinra's curiosity, and he hardly manages to nod.

"Could you come with me for a second then? I just have a quick question." Mikado's knees are shaking as he stands from the couch and for a moment he thinks he's going to make another unexpected trip to the floor before he steadies himself and follows the doctor towards the door.

Why does a simple slab of wood seem so foreboding?

It's because Mikado knows what hides behind it.

Blood blood there had been so much blood. How could someone live after losing that much? And Masaomi, he had been so pale. Deathly pale.

Oh god. He's dead isn't he? To think, Mikado had worried all evening if his friend was still with the living, and yet it had seemed such a shallow fear because of course he was, to think that these fear addled delusions had come true, it made him want to sink to the floor and violently sob. The closer Mikado gets to the room where he knows his friend is probably laying cold and lifeless on Shinra's operating table the faster his pulse is jumping. It throbs throughout his entire body. He prepared himself to come to terms with the fact that his friend, his best friend, is probably already gone. This is what Shinra wanted to ask about isn't it? He wants to ask if he can dissect Masaomi's dead body in the name of science.

He steps into the room and does his best to look anywhere, anywhere, but the darkening blood on the floor and the table and oh god it's everywhere. There's no where safe to look.

His heart is in his throat and he can't find his lungs and the room is growing smaller. Growing smaller until it crushes him and all he can hear is his heartbeat echoing off the cramped walls and the inside of his skull.

And then Mikado feels a hand on his shoulder, a voice from underwater becomes clearer as he's grounded.

"Are you alright?" It's only with the third repetition of the phrase that the question registers with him, but he manages a hollow nod.

The look Shinra gives him is a dubious one, but he retracts his hand.

"Does your friend have any heart condition that you know of?" The question throws Mikado. Realistically, that's a pretty standard question for a doctor to ask about a patient. But wasn't it obvious the problem wasn't with his heart? It was with the way he was bleeding so much.

"W-What?"

"A heart condition? Or maybe some kind of brain irregularity?"

"What? N-no, he has nothing like that."

"Hm, no that wouldn't make sense either." He mutters to himself then turns toward the blond on the table, where Mikado had been trying to avoid looking.

Masaomi looks much better without all the blood smeared across him, but he's still paler than a ghost and breathing (He's breathing) shallowly.

Mikado strangles a whimper in his throat before it has a chance to surface.

Shinra pulls the sheet back from Masaomi's bare torso, letting it rest around his hips. He pints to a straight pink line of stitching.

"This here is what I just did, it looked like it had been stitched recently and tore open, but that's not the most interesting thing." His glasses glint and Mikado feels a shudder chasing itself up his spine, chills erupting across his body.

"Look here," The doctor points to another place on Masaomi's abdomen, near his hip. Even Mikado can tell it's wrong, wrong, so so wrong.

The glint of metal against his skin, over a swell, a shape, that just shouldn't be there.

His stomach had dropped somewhere in the vicinity of his shoes and he has to grip the edge of the table to stay upright. Despite this he cannot bring his eyes to look away.

After swallowing thickly and spending several agonizing seconds trying to regain control of his tongue he manages to choke out a shakey "W-what the hell is that?"

Shinra just seems a little too gleeful as he turns his head to face him. "Well why don't we find out?" He lifts his scalpel and the dangerous glint from the reflective metal matches the glint in his eyes.

Before there is a chance to ask what he means or if that really is the best idea the blade is descending on his friend and sweeping across the disturbing mystery.

A tear of blood weeps out and Mikado can hardly imagine Masaomi has any more he can afford to lose, but the beading red is wiped away before he has much of a chance to pursue the thought. Shinra peels the pale skin away from the protrusion like the curtain to their own personal horror story.

His stomach churns restlessly as gloved fingers probe inside the bloody pocket and slowly and gently pulling out some grey thing. The blood and skin cling to it as if reluctant give it up and Mikado's grip tightens in the white sheets, surely wrinkly them beyond the smoothing abilities of even the best iron. Mikado is awake but this is surely a nightmare, because he can see the tiny light on the mechanical trinket that Shinra turns in his hands and it sounds like he's at the wrong end of a call with poor reception as the doctor says, "It looks like some sort of tracking device."

Suddenly Mikado can feel his lunch making a second appearance as he leans over and retches. His breathing has quickened once again and this time the edges of his vision are fading to a dark that he can't seem to blink away. The floor pitches beneath him and he waits, fully expecting to forcefully introduce his face to the tile, but he is steadied by a pair of strong arms just as the rest of his consciousness leaves him.