When the hospital gained its confidence to tell its tragedy. The hallway became darker. Orange lights flickered and buzzed to simulate the hospital’s nightly activity. Neshoba expected the hallway to repeat like before, but it didn’t. Instead, Neshoba came across a fork. The right led to the pathology unit, while the left led to the neonatal unit.

  Without a chance to think, he watched how a doctor walked out of one of the rooms to the left hallway and was gunned down. He slumped against the wall, clenching his chest as blood poured out while he struggled to gasp for air. Two MODOC soldiers wearing US Army uniforms and wielding their Thompsons to the side in a casual manner as they go through the hospital. One didn’t bother looking before shooting at the doctor on the ground to finish him off. That single act, that carelessness in taking a life, it was wrong, out of place even from what Neshoba expected of them.

  Neshoba followed the two MODOC soldiers as they went through the hospital. Not uttering a word besides announcing when they had to reload to give their partner a heads up and be extra vigilant. But their march wasn’t fully without resistance or free of struggle. At one point, a nurse jumped out holding a scalpel and tried to stab one of them, yet it wasn’t meant to be. Like the doctor they murdered before, the MODOC soldiers simply raised their guns and shot her dead before they kept walking. Neshoba looked over the nurse’s corpse to read her bloodstained nametag, which read “Chriss”. She looked familiar, but he couldn’t put together who she was.

  Gunshots rang outside, followed by begs and cries. Neshoba went to the window to see what the world was like during the time of the massacre. It was night; the town residents were gathered up by the US Army and MODOC soldiers to form a line near a wall. Men and women held their hands above their heads, confused and scared at what was going on. No matter how they sobbed, begged for mercy, or tried to appeal to the soldiers’ humanity. Like animals, they were gunned down in front of an unbothered firing squad. Their blood gave the brick wall behind them a new coat of paint.

  The soldiers kept going, lining up a new roll of adults to shoot down till there was no one left to execute. Emotionless throughout the whole ordeal of brutal slaughter, the soldiers shrug as they begin to haul the bodies into the back of trucks to take them somewhere else. Yet there were no children among them. Neshoba figured that the children and adults were separated and killed somewhere else. A likely outcome, given that gunshots rang elsewhere in town besides where the adults were murdered.

  ‘Open the door!’

  Neshoba turned his head to face the two MODOC soldiers in the hospital, struggling to open a door to the neonatal unit. A voice from the other side quivered and sobbed.

  ‘Go away!’

  He realised the accent. It was from Cherell. Barricading the door to the unit with her own body and a heavy metal cabinet. However, it only managed to delay them for a time. As the soldiers managed to kick the door open and shot the Irish woman before she could get up and fight back, emptying an entire magazine into her to turn her entire back into a mess of meat and blood. Disturbed by the loud noise, the babies in the unit screamed and cried. Wanting comfort even though the world would never provide them with any.

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  ‘Are any of them acceptable for extraction?’ One soldier said to the other, who was skimming through the children’s files.

  ‘Negative, all of them are too small or too young. Any suggestions?’

  The soldier pulled out his pistol as he walked over to one of the cribs. ‘We follow the directive. We’ll clean the mess after the mission.’ He finished before shooting one of the babies in the head, snuffing out the light from its eyes before it even had the chance to experience the beauty of the world. Its brain and soft skull spewed out of the crib and splattered on the roof above it. He and his partner walked over every crib to repeat the same thing, executing the newborn children with their sidearms in such a formal and detached manner like they were mopping the floors or scraping rust off metal. A task that was tedious.

  Neshoba froze in place as the room of screaming children was silenced. Mortified at what happened before him. There was no resistance from the soldiers carrying out the killing, just a clarification on what to do next, then pressing the barrels of their guns to the children’s heads and pulling the trigger.

  Yet they didn’t execute the children right away; the soldiers were looking for something that fit their criteria. Too small and too young? Neshoba tried to figure out what that could mean in the context of the time and the mission. MODOC was only going in to conduct a kill order, yet they were doing something on the side. It didn’t make sense.

  Then it clicked. What if it wasn’t just a kill order? What if the order was a cover-up for something else entirely, and they used Jackson as a cover for their plans? MODOC, before their disbandment, had a reputation for doing their own thing without Order approval.

  He wanted to see more of the events that transpired, but the hospital changed to look decayed. Curious, Neshoba looked out the window and saw a bold man outside wearing a grey business suit and smoking a cigarette. On closer inspection, he realised who it was. Nathanael Gay. Neshoba suspected that the Disciplinarian tracked him down; however, he didn’t believe Claire would’ve sold him out like that. Gay was there because Neshoba was, and that could only make sense if he knew where Appleseed was. No one should have that information, and to him it was unlikely Gay would as well. Or perhaps Claire did sell him out without him even knowing.

  Something didn’t sit right with him, and so he left the neonatal unit to head outside to confront the Disciplinarian. The hospital didn’t make the trip out of its facility difficult or use its magic to alter its layout. It wanted Neshoba to leave and speak to the man outside. To speak to the man who knew what happened.