Grumpy glanced around and ran to a small grocery store across the street. K. saw him banging on the door with his rifle butt and shouting.

A crane arrived. A hook was latched onto the slab. K. cannibalised two slats from a picket fence and decided they were narrow, but about the right length. He finally found a shorter one too. At that instant, the slab broke in half. Hands immediately went up in the air. “Stop! Stop!” Everyone shouted and rushed into a newly formed gap. The crane stopped lifting the slab. Two chunks of concrete were prised apart.

Water was poured onto the stones out of two-litre bottles to tamp down the flying dust. A fragment of the slab was again hooked onto the crane and dragged away. A shout. A whistle. K. swore and ran in their direction, tourniquets in hand, as people looked on motionlessly. A little boy was passed down from hand to hand. He had blond hair, he was about six years old, slim, covered in dust from head to toe. Dozens of hands reached out to lift him from the rubble. K. quickly examined the boy’s thin legs and fastened the tourniquets around the top of his thighs. The boy clasped his arms around a man’s broad neck. Pushing through the crowd, K. guided them to the ambulance. He took hold of the boy and gently placed him on a stretcher.

Grumpy stood nearby holding a plastic bag.

“Don’t just stand around. Go! Quick!” K. yelled at him. They slid the stretcher into the ambulance and jumped in after it. The siren was deafening.

All the other sounds—the excavators, the hammering, the screams—receded.

“You try use that tone on me again, you can expect to get shot!” Grumpy hissed.

“What are you waiting for?” K. muttered. “Hand me a bandage. Get a bunch of bandages! Why are you staring? You were the one who wanted to learn!”

After losing his focus momentarily, K. pulled himself together. He looked at his watch and tightened the tourniquets. “Aaah,” the boy wailed. He had no open wounds, but his bones were broken in several places. Grumpy was still fumbling with the bandages.

K. gave the boy a novocaine injection, but it wouldn’t be enough. They’d need something stronger. He rubbed the abrasions and small cuts with alcohol.

Grumpy finally handed him the bandages.

“In the event of a compression injury,” K. explained, “the goal is to mitigate the release of toxins.”

“Yeah, I see.”

“You see what, brainbox? Wrap the legs as tightly as possible, each layer should partially overlap the previous layer. Apply the bandage all the way from the foot to the tourniquet.”

“You’re really pushing it. Like this?”

“Yes, that’s it.”

The ambulance howled past the last checkpoint at speed. Nikolai had performed splendidly, keeping the vehicle steady enough to enable the dressing operation.