Noh was rushing from laundry with an armful of bandages when the living pilot came in. The whole room turned at once at the sounds of his breath– so different to the silence of the lobby-turned-morgue, blanched face still more lively than the grey that surrounded them. The stretcher bearers wheeled him through a maze of packaged dead, all meat and hunks and scraps of faces stacked in morbid, stinking piles, ready for processing once the new lot of trucks arrived. Noh stared with the others, stilled from their duties. A glint of hope in his stomach til he shook his head, reminded himself to get back to work. There were living patients here, too. Patients who were waiting on him.

"Awan!"

He turned, smock fluttering against his thighs. Arzt Rahal waved him over frantically, jogging alongside the stretcher.

"We'll need those bandages down in E-7. Get as many as you can find, then prep me 200cc of pentokaminol."

"But I had a patient-"

"They can wait." He snapped. The stretcher clattered out of the room, Az. Rahal's voice ringing out, barking orders to anyone in his path.

Noh chewed his lip fretfully, then did as he was told.

He set the supplies down in the operating room, skirting well around the doctors, who'd already begun to work. Noh peeked over their shoulders– on the table, the man was half-burnt, skin cracking and charred as the surgeons carefully excised it, spraying him down with coagulant with each cut. What remained of his face was pretty and brown, an ashiness to the untouched part of his lips, features just crooked enough to know he must be a type three or four. Modded, classically so, but sentimentality leaving some traces of his parents' genetic flaws. Noh wished he knew what that was like. Being able to see your parents in your own face.

"Bone saw."

Noh jumped and fetched it, pressing it into the surgeon's hand. She started cutting the pilot's arm off above the elbow, a clean, soundless motion, stump end left flat as a screen. The remains, dropped into the hazbag, were nothing but blackened bone, few gristly bits of meat clinging stickily, no blood spilling from the end. Proper nurses arrived, and Noh backed out of the room– it wasn't his place, outside of emergencies like this. As he headed back down to laundry, he passed a flock of white-dressed officials, talking hushedly into earphones as they stalked right past him. Noh glanced back, wondering, then mentally slapped himself. His patient. In all this mess, he still needed to help his patient.

Oxalyl was lying limply in his cot in the corner, the usual rabble and moans of a type four room ringing out around him, picking up in din as Noh stepped inside. Hands reached out to him from passing beds, pleas and curses in that quaint sharpened workhouse tongue. When he finally reached his bedside, Oxalyl's eye lit up. He smiled faintly, with the corner of his mouth that wasn't burnt.

"Finally. I'm itchin' like hell over here."

"I know, sorry, it's crazy out there." Noh huffed a strand of hair out of his face, setting his supplies down on the bed before unravelling Oxalyl's bandages. "Just ship after ship going down… They're saying every hospital in the colony's swamped. Think the war's over."

Oxalyl shook his head, wincing as Noh had to tear at a stuck bandage. "N-Nah, they're gonna win, I bet. They always got pilots in reserve."

Noh hummed. "It's been years. Not much of anything in reserve anymore."

His bandages were damn near glued to his skin in places. Noh dabbed at them with pure water sparingly– they didn't have so much of it left. At least type fours were pain-resistant. Oxalyl gritted his teeth and groaned as he worked each strip of fabric off, but when it was finally done he just wheezed out a laugh, laying trembling as Noh gently dabbed on ointment.

"Fuck, man." He lifted his arm limply, examining his melted skin. His fingers spasmed. "Can't wait to be all healed up."

"So you tell me." Noh cocked a smile. "Motion still okay? Bend your fingers?"

He bent them down, one after the other, a little shaky but functional. Noh hummed approvingly, taking his hand to bandage him back up. He moved on to his face then, working the dressings off slowly.

"Still can't hear anything?"

"Think it fuckin' glued itself shut." He reached out for his shrivelled ear, but Noh stopped him, touching it himself with his cleaner hands. What remained was indeed nothing but a lump of flesh, entrance gone, though the inside was likely just as damaged. He was lucky the spill hadn't killed him.

"I'll still be able to work, yeah?"

Noh glanced up, meeting his gaze. There was a solemnness, a heavy fear on his disfigured features. He brushed Oxalyl's hair out of his face and nodded.

"Yeah. Long as you got arms and legs."

Oxalyl breathed out a laugh, slackening with relief, and Noh smiled. He reached for the ointment again, dabbing it across his gnarly burns.

"Man, I'm gonna end up like fuckin' Halfjon."

Noh glanced up in quizzical amusement, "Who?"

Oxalyl's cheek flushed. "Uh- noone. Just a thing from the 'house."

He finished by daubing carefully inside his eye socket, watching him for signs of pain. It seemed numb. Oxalyl just stared at him curiously, eye following the motion of his long cotton stick. Finishing, Noh picked up the bandages to re-dress him, but Oxalyl stopped him with a sound.

"Um, can I… see what I look like?"

Noh faltered, and Oxalyl threw his gaze away, shrugging.

"M'just curious. Been here a while, an' I haven't even seen myself once."

Noh's gaze darted up as he thought. Did they have anything..? They didn't own mirrors. Maybe if he could find something else reflective…

"I'll see what I can do."

"Thanks, man." Oxalyl's face softened into a grin. "You're the best. Just, don't fuck around about it too much if ya can't do it easy. A buncha other people have been waiting all day for stuff."

He nodded, sweeping his skirt down as he rose. "I'll be right back."

He managed to find a clean lunch-tray down in the kitchen– lunch was another thing lagging behind, and he'd have to make sure someone was feeding people soon –and he carried it back to Oxalyl, polishing it on his clothes. It wasn't perfect, but it was reflective enough– he held it up, letting him examine his slightly blurry face.

The minute his eye locked onto himself, Oxalyl's expression dropped. He hovered a hand beside his burnt cheek, scars running thick where dead tissue hadn't been trimmed until it festered. The corner of his mouth tugged down, immobile, and the skin around his eye socket was warped. It was a slap-job. Noh knew it as well as the doctors. When a tear rolled down Oxalyl's unscathed cheek, he set the tray down, taking his hand.

"Jesus…"

"It's not the worst I've seen." Noh offered.

"I look like a goddamn nightmare."

Oxalyl's voice broke, a sob heaving out of his bony chest. Noh chewed his lip, squeezing his hand in comfort.

"Look like my fuckin' dad…"

"I'm sorry."

"No," Oxalyl squeezed his hand back, grimacing, "just… thanks for showing me. Least I've got time to get used to it."

Reluctantly, he had to slip away, slip his hand out of his. The cries of the other patients were growing louder, and Noh could only idle here so long. He bandaged Oxalyl, gathered his things, and headed on to the next patient.

Noh was rushing down to the supply closet when a tech stopped him, shoving an ice-box into his arms. She looked harried, dark circles under her immaculately-proportioned eyes.

"Get this to E-7, I've got more print-jobs to run."

Noh hesitated, but she'd already run off. Sighing, he changed course for the operating room.

The surgery was still well in progress when he walked in, the living pilot still living. Usually, they would've died of shock by now. Noh placed the box down, catching a doctor's attention.

"Great. Finally. Get the stems out for me, Awan."

Noh opened the ice-box, fetching out the jars of fleshy paste. He passed them off to the doctors one after another, watched them lather the pilot's burns. He was fully cleaned now, all damaged flesh gone, body left cratered and wet, twitching muscles and spongy fat. The stem cell paste would fill it, slowly– if the pilot survived, he'd lie comatose in a burn ward bed, dressings lovingly changed each day as his tissues regrew unmarred. He'd wake up with a new arm, new face, no memory or sign of anything that'd happened. As the last of the paste met his body, Noh prickled with loathing.

The doctors stepped back in tired relief, as the nurses began bandaging. One of them looked back at Noh, raising an eyebrow.

"What's the ETA on the arm?"

Noh perked up in surprise, hoisting up the ice-box. "I'll go check."

"Tell 'em to be quick. Only so much time before the connections close up."

He hurried back out again, feet aching as he crossed the hospital for the hundredth time that day. In the print lab, he dropped the ice-box down, unloading the jars into the dishwasher.

"Is there an arm coming for E-7?" He called out, scanning the room.

That's when he saw the officials standing there, and the officials saw him. They were huddled in a corner, techs crowded between their imposing stature– the whole group turned to lock eyes with him, harried and cold. One of the techs finally spoke.

"It's not possible for him."

"What?" Noh blinked, frowning in bewilderment. "The docs are waiting on an arm, waddaya want me to tell them?"

"We'll talk to them." An official– head of civil needs –spoke. "If you must tell them something… say it's for the good of the colony."

Noh faltered, but nodded, the pressure in the room finally getting too much to bear. As he headed out, he heard someone mutter, "Keep an eye on him in case he talks."

Shivering, Noh rushed back to E-7.

The war ended on the day that the living pilot woke up, though deep down everyone knew it was over before then. No more ships in the sky, no more explosions. The hospital returned to normal, floors clean and air free of the stench of casualties.

Noh was in the hall when he saw the pilot led out of his hospital room, just out of his induced coma and still stumbling on untrained legs. His eyes were hollow, darting, broad shoulders slack below the embellishments of his formal uniform. One sleeve was empty, pinned up below the stump. Noh met his gaze for a second as he passed, before the guards shoved him aside, throwing a cloth over the pilot's head as they herded him out a maintenance door.

The world stopped an hour later to hear him speak on every radio. Noh passed sub-nurses stilled in the halls, staring up at the speakers fixedly, duties forgotten. Even the rowdy type fours were quiet. Oxalyl didn't say a word as he removed his dressings for the last time.

"Guess you were right about the war being over." He said idly, once the broadcast ended, testing the motion on his arm. "Man. Well, if we'd lost, we'd all be dead, huh? So I guess we won?"

"Who knows." It sure didn't feel like they had.

Oxalyl hummed, hopping out of bed. His workhouse had sent him clothing, and Noh watched as he dressed, hovering ready to help. Shirt, pants, high rubber boots: pieces that marked him as a chemical processor. He smiled back at Noh, smoothing down his curly hair.

"It's kinda nice he's one of us. The pilot. I know so many guys who're missing legs an' shit, they're never gonna stop boasting they're like him." He laughed. "Makes me wish he got a fucked up face too… Nah, that's too much for anyone."

Noh swallowed, skin prickling, the realisation hitting him like a fist. He put on a thin smile for Oxalyl, leading him out to his pick-up car. Across the street, workers were sticking up a billboard: a drawing of the pilot, gone arm held up, flames rising into a fist of victory.