Chapter 36: The Resurrection

(Got it? Resurrection. ‘Cause she woke up. From the coma. And maybe Hana’s soul too. Never mind.)

Hana was back at the hospital.

Alone in the nurse’s break room, crouched over a sink with trembling fingers, she dug the bullet out of her shoulder using sterilized pliers and a whiskey flask she stole from an unconscious janitor’s locker.

Not ideal. But she’d been through worse.

(Like that time she stitched her thigh with a fishing hook and dental floss in Myanmar. But that’s another story.)

She sutured the wound herself. Sloppy, but it would hold.

She wasn’t about to explain a bullet wound to anyone, least of all the system.

She was, after all, just a cashier on a beer and pork belly diet.

In the hallway, the TV blasted breaking news.

“ ... the aftermath of a shootout that claimed the life of a known local gangster and several of his men. Sources allege an escalation of gang war, possibly involving a rival syndicate with foreign paramilitary support...”