The cafeteria smelled like burnt coffee and grease, but it was the only place in Montrary Soul Hospital where staff could breathe for five minutes without a patient bleeding out on them.
Donna sat alone at a corner table, tray untouched. Her phone buzzed twice. Unknown number. She didn't pick it up.
Across the room, cliques lined up like a high school cafeteria. Interns sat with interns, nurses with nurses, surgeons at their own table laughing too loud about bonuses. And then there were the "specialists"—aliens in human clothes, metas flexing their gifts, all whispering about who was sleeping with who to climb the ladder.
Donna didn't care. Until she heard her name.
"She ain't even supposed to be chief," one surgeon said, shoving fries in his mouth. "Board only keeps her 'cause nobody else wants to deal with this dump."
Another snorted. "Nah, they keep her 'cause she'll break your jaw if you cross her."
"You seen how she treats staff? That hood rat act don't last forever. One of these days, somebody higher up gonna yank her badge."
Donna didn't look up. She just tapped her phone screen dark and stood. When she crossed the room, the table went silent.
She leaned down, voice low, calm, and sharp. "The day you think I ain't supposed to be here, step your ass into my OR and prove it. Until then? Shut the fuck up before I use your license to line my trash can."
The surgeon swallowed hard. Donna walked away. The cafeteria buzz started right back up.
By the time she got back to the ER, a new kind of mess waited.
Two nurses screamed at each other in the hallway. One was crying, the other had her hands balled into fists.
"I'm not covering your shift again, you bitch—"
"You owe me! You think I didn't see you in that supply closet with Dr. Hale?"
A crowd gathered. Donna didn't slow. She marched into the circle, grabbed both women by the scrubs, and slammed them against the wall.
"You fight on my floor again, I'll feed you both to the morgue. You understand?"
They nodded fast, eyes wide. Donna let them go. "Good. Now clean yourselves up before I make you clean the bathrooms for the next six months."
The crowd scattered. Chaos dissolved back into order. That was the thing about Montrary Soul—control didn't come from rules. It came from fear, and Donna knew how to make it stick.
Later, in Trauma Two, the patient was unlike anything she'd seen. A child, maybe ten, skin covered in glowing fractals like tattoos from another dimension. He cried without sound, whole body shaking as if electricity crawled under his skin.
The parents—one human, one something else—stood at the foot of the bed, terrified. "Please, doctor," the mother begged. "It's spreading."
Donna studied the burns, the pattern. Not random. Precise.
Her chest tightened. It looked too much like the man from earlier. Same kind of clean energy burns. Same design.
"Dr. G?" a nurse asked softly. "What do we do?"
Donna slipped her gloves on. "We save him. Same as anyone else."
But inside, her head spun. What the hell were these kids being hit with? And why did it look so familiar?
Hours later, she finished her shift, scrubs crusted with blood and sweat. The ER still buzzed with late-night chaos, but Donna pushed through it like a ghost, her mind somewhere else.
In the stairwell again, she pulled out her phone. The unknown number had called three times.
She opened the messages.
Unknown: Ghost, it's been a while.
Unknown: You thought you could hide in the multiverse?
Unknown: See you soon.
Donna exhaled slow. Her mask didn't crack this time. Not yet.
She deleted the messages, shoved the phone deep in her pocket, and went back to work like nothing happened.
Because in Montrary Soul Hospital, nobody gave a damn about your secrets. They only cared if you could keep them alive until morning.