The Monsoon War by Bina Shah

Author:Bina Shah
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media/Delphinium Books
Published: 2023-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

13.

Katy moves through the chilled air of the hospital like she’s swimming in a cloud. She shivers, feeling the sting of goose bumps on her skin. The mountain gets cold, but she’s uncomfortable in this artificial, sterile atmosphere, pumped in through vents in the ceiling and smelling sharply of antiseptic. She feels exposed in the fluorescent lights that remove the veils between day and night; you can’t tell what time of the day it is because there are no windows. Ever since she left Dhofar, she’s been inside so many industrialized buildings that she feels totally out of touch with the rhythms of the natural world.

As she creeps through the hallways, following the map of the hospital Zayn Battuta has loaded onto her device, she keeps her head down to avoid meeting the eyes of passing staff. A few attendants offer her a greeting—“Morning of light”—but instead of returning the customary response, she just nods and scurries farther along down the corridor.

She’s reached Green City just as planned, traveling by boat from the port at the City of Gazelles all the way to Mazunian waters. They put her ashore at the mall being built on the outskirts of Green City. There, she was met by a Semitian spy, who led her to the construction tunnels and waved her in the direction of Shifana Hospital. She hesitated at the mouth of the tunnel, but the spy just turned his back on her and walked away.

Katy has never liked rats, but she had to turn into one and do this job with all the stealth and cunning of a rodent. This is not an open battlefield, where there is nothing to hide, where your courage shines five feet in front of you and keeps you going even when you have nothing left to give. Into the tunnel she goes, holding her breath all the way, until she’s out on the other side, and moving in the bowels of the hospital. It’s empty right now in the middle of this early-morning shift, so she manages to slip into the staff changing room undetected. The gender gear is hardly making any difference to how she is being perceived because there’s no one around to perceive her presence.

While she’s scrambling into the nurse’s outfit left for her in locker number 17, she thinks about the man whose life she’s going to end in a matter of minutes. Zayn Battuta has given her the liquid that she is to put into Reuben Faro’s intravenous infuser, delivering fourth-generation antibiotics and fluids to him as he lies in his bed. She’s gone over it many times in her mind on the way over to Green City: the design of the infusion device, where she has to insert the capsule, what Reuben Faro will look like as he receives the poison directly into his bloodstream. Will he die the way men have when she’s done it with a bullet?

Katy knows why she has to kill Faro—to create a little

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