“Do you smoke?” Sakura asked the nurse, hoping to play for some time outside in the fresh air. The hotel room had been stifling, and the odours from the bathroom hadn’t helped. The nurse shook her head emphatically. Sakura didn’t smoke, either—she had quit when Yamato was born—but she would have lit one up if it had meant she could stay outside for a bit longer.

Her cell buzzed. She glanced at the screen to see an incoming text.

Stay there. I’m coming.

She got to her feet and turned to the nurse.

“Okay.”

The two women went inside and walked back down the corridor to the room. Sakura hoped that Katsuro would be quick. Smith would be back at some point, she knew, if only to collect his bag. It wasn’t that she was ungrateful to him for helping her, but she didn’t want him to get involved any more than he already was. If he turned up at the same time as Katsuro, it was possible that things could get complicated. Katsuro had a temper, and he had taken pleasure in telling her some of the things that he had done for his father.

She would just have to hope that the paths of the two men did not cross.

“On the bed,” the nurse said as they re-entered the room.

Sakura did as she was told, even offering up her forearm with the cannula. The nurse inserted the needle into the thin tube and injected another dose of the opiate antidote. She was brusque and efficient, noting down the time on a small notepad.

Sakura felt a sudden billowing of nausea, and for a second, she thought she would vomit. She made to sit up, but the nurse laid a meaty hand on her shoulder and pushed her back into the bed. Everything was strange. The nausea passed as soon as it had arrived, but an overwhelming lassitude took its place. Sakura’s eyelids grew heavy; she tried to keep them open, but knew that it was a struggle that she would not win. The room spun around her, noises blended into one another, and Sakura gave in and let her eyelids close.

Her final thought as she passed into unconsciousness was that whatever had been in that syringe, it was not an opiate antidote.

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