After having tortured her for another 2 hours, Mineko had tired herself out. By that time Mariko was fading in and out of consciousness. Shed lost count of the number of times that knife had been dug into her and coughed out blood as one of the stab wounds had nicked her lungs.
"To think... rather than being here as a prisoner, you could've been standing beside me as an ally.
Mariko coughed harshly, the metallic taste of blood invading her senses. "Things can't always go the way we want," she rasped.
The ravenette smirked. "Is that so? I'd say I've done rather well in getting what I want. After all, I am here, standing in the heart of the greatest medical research mankind has yet to know... and you... well, you can't even stand." She turned to the metal door at the end of the room and called out for someone to come in.
A guard entered the room, standing at attention as he awaited his orders.
Mineko sighed and gestured towards the woman sitting in a pool of her own blood. "Clean this mess up and take her to sublevel seven," she instructed. She looked down, her clothes and arms were covered in the red liquid. It was disgusting. "I'm going to take a shower. No one bother me or I'll kill you," she said, elegantly walking out of the room.
Mariko lost consciousness at some point while the guard undid her bindings and didn't wake up for some time. When she did she found herself sitting on the floor of a surprisingly clean and modern cell. Everything around her was white, there was no furniture save for a cot and a toilet. A large pain of glass separated her from a hallway full of cells just like hers, except they were empty.
The only other person on the floor it seemed was the guard that undid her bindings. He stood just outside the cell on the other side of the glass.
She weakly knocked on the glass to get his attention. "Hey... Can I... get a first aid kit," she gasped, her hand going to the many wounds on her abdomen. Unfortunately, her quirk allowed her to heal anyone except herself. The only thing she could do was sense what kinds of wounds she had. She'd already known about the osteoporosis but hadn't realized that Mineko had also given her hemophilia. She had several broken bones, and too many stab wounds to count. If Dabi, Toga, and Kurogiri couldn't finish tonight, she had to stop herself from dying so quickly.
The guard looked at her, unconvinced. She was, after all, someone Mineko deeply hated.
Mariko coughed harshly as her body tried to expel the blood that was starting to stream into her lungs. She looked down at her hand which was now covered in blood and weakly held it up to show him. She closed her eyes, her lids feeling heavy and she wanted nothing more than to sleep. "If you don't help me... I'll be dead in... a few hours... Who do you think... will pay the price... for letting his boss's favorite torture victim... die?"
The guard's eyes and moments later, he was sliding an elaborate first aid kid into her cell.
"Thanks," she muttered as she pulled the box closer to her.
The guard said nothing as he turned around and went back to ignoring her presence.
She slowly pushed herself into a sitting position, a white-hot pain shooting through her body as she did so. She carefully stripped her shirt and bra off, cringing at both the movement and amount of blood she was covered in. She used her shirt to wipe off most of the substance and tossed the red soaked article on the floor when she was done. Thankfully, her military days made her less sensitive to the stinging pain of disinfectant, and the alcohol succeeded in keeping her conscious through the process. It made the wounds much easier to see, and unfortunately, most were deep.
"Do they even have a thread for stitches?" she wondered.
She looked through the box, and although she didn't find a thread or a needle, she found a cauterizing pen that was thankfully battery powered. "He must not have wanted to take any chances with me dying," she thought, glancing up at the guard.
She tried not to cry out as she began to cauterize the wounds herself. The scent of burnt flesh invaded her nostrils and she wanted to gag and cry at the same time. The pain was eternal as she had to stop every few seconds to blink her own tears away and clean up the seemingly endless stream of blood. Eventually, she had taken care of the major stab wounds, but she knew that she would need to go to a hospital soon. She couldn't take care of the punctured lung or broken bones herself and Mineko's hemophilia would last another hour or so.
Tossing the pen back into the toolbox. Mariko leaned back against the wall and sighed in exhaustion. She couldn't fall asleep though; she had to stay awake long enough for Kurogiri to get her out of there. To keep her mind occupied, she tried to think about why Mineko wanted to get information on the boys. She had been the one responsible for her dishonorable discharge after all.
"Once she's done with you she'll move on to them," a voice said.
The brunette slowly shifted her eyes to the guard. "Reading someone's thoughts is rude," she said weakly. His words made sense though. They'd all had a strong attachment to her and Mineko had they'd all had a part in trying to kill her before. That's probably why she was so fixated on Hayato too. Mariko had always been closer to Araya, but Mineko had spent much more time with Hayato because they were closer in age.
"Of course, she resents you most of all. You took her future from her," the guard told her.
Mariko raised an eyebrow. "Is he close to her or something?"
"I've read her thoughts," he answered. Once the words had left his mouth he cringed; he knew he shouldn't have said that. If anyone had heard him or if Shimizu decided to listen to the audio on the security tapes he'd get into serious trouble.
"She'll kill you if she finds out about that," she muttered. Even before the woman had lost her mind, she despised people invading her privacy. And what's more private than her own thoughts?
The guard tensed and fell silent. He didn't say anything else after that.
Shetook another slow breath and prayed that her teammates would finish quickly