Chapter 43: A Beaten Survivor
Beep-beep! Beep-beep! Beep-beep! The monitor squealed one incessant, shrill heartbeat after another. He reached over with his free hand and locked an arm over her torso, pushing her down and yelling over her to stop. Ch-4 attempted to restrain the arm on her side, but it snaked free of her weaker grip and swung, smashing into her nose.
She came away for half a second, eyes wide with shock and clutching at a nosebleed. Then her ingrained instincts as a serviceman kicked in and she was back, ignoring the state of her face to latch onto the flailing limb with renewed vigor before it could handle him with the same treatment.
"Be calm; you need to calm down!" The words they shouted had as much effect as injecting water. "Calm yourself, you're safe!" Pa-5 couldn't, or wouldn't, hear them, struggling with wild disregard for the state of her body.
"Hold her still!" Three medical staff squeezed through the doorway at once, assessed the situation, and dashed to different positions. One moved toward the base of the cot to steady the suspended mattress and grab ahold of her lower stumps. Unable to kick with what little leg remained, she arched her back and continued screaming.
The second tried to grab her head and pull her down, but she cried and twisted, biting her harsh enough that she withdrew. Ch-4 exchanged positions with her without a need to exchange words; she took hold of the head, and weary of a repeated incident, applied plenty of force to thrust Pa-5 back against the cot.
While they wrestled with the incensed survivor, the third among the trio pulled an injector from a storage in the wall. He filled it with something from his belt and jammed it into her, close to the sideline of her shoulder. Though it should have felt painless, Pa-5 reacted like an Aud trampled her.
Oh, that final scream! It made the first and second sound like whispers in comparison. She struggled for a few seconds longer, then her limbs went slack, the tension abandoning her without warning. Ch-4 was there to prevent her falling back at an awkward angle and one of the staff led her away to have her nose treated; the one bitten, he observed.
The Prime Beacon picked up his chair, knocked over in his panic, and sat, chest heaving from the sudden exertion. Where had she pulled that strength from? "Is she paralyzed or unconscious?"
"Paralyzed. Not to worry, the effect is short and will fade in a quarter-hour's time. Try talking to her, and if by the time it wears out of her system, she displays the same behavior, we'll return her to unconsciousness for now."
The two that remained scurried around the room, setting everything back to the way things were and ensuring none of the medical equipment had suffered in the altercation. Satisfied, they left, though they warned him not to close the door even if he desired privacy.
Though he knew the staff had done their job well, he still examined every inch of visible skin himself for bruising or other injuries. Only after had he thought about the actual matter itself. "It's good that you're awake. We don't know if you suffered amnesia, so you might not know who I am; there was an injury to your head." The thought made his stomach churn. "You don't need to do anything. Listen to the sound of my voice, alright?"
He recounted a tale of her youth, the first time when he'd let her leave the residential scraper and explore the city before the Light Institute's classes began on her own. He used phrases that existed between the two of them as jokes and emphasized their connection.
At first, he saw movement under her eyelids--too much, but after a couple of minutes, they calmed their erratic motions. Using the visual queue as a representation of her calmness, he continued to speak to her as if he were addressing a dying friend, determined to bring comfort in final, uncomprehending moments.
He saw one of her fingers seize, then twitch and tense. He frowned. It had only been thirteen minutes, if his HUD wasn't malfunctioning; it never did, so why was he considering this option? The muscles in her neck tightened next, and she rolled her head in his direction. The eyelids were already pulled away, revealing eyes.
They still held some unknown, wild look that put him on edge, but they weren't wandering without purpose. They centered on him--an improvement, if there was any metric to go by. Her tongue extended, wet her chapped lips, and retreated. "Wh….e…." She coughed. Her body wasn't even on the way to recovery before she woke and lost herself to unrestrained panic. He imagined the screams did more damage to her frayed throat than the Aud.
"You're safe. Breathe, take your time." He wanted to offer her something to drink but was unsure if that was medically sound, so he called the staff back. Only one came to avoid overwhelming her and began a series of light tests. Another waited by the entry, recording on her screen.
They took ample time to ensure nothing changed for the worse than when they admitted her, though they denied her immediate water access. They said they needed to check her internals hadn't torn or ripped tender because of her mindless thrashing. The incident was already out of her memory, proven as she asked the staff conducting the testing what he was talking about when he tried broaching the topic.
They injected her with new fluids and retreated, leaving behind an injector with a second dose that he could administer if he stayed long enough for the next injection. Pa-5 was lifted into an upward reclining position, so she turned her head to watch them go. Once the two of them were alone, she looked back. "Wh…why am--" she choked long enough on her saliva to make him question if he should call for help, "I alive?"
"I do not know," he answered, honest. She had beaten the odds in more than one way, at more than one time, and at more than a single place. To see her before him as anything other than a mindless corpse of a body or nothing at all was a miracle. Nothing short of it, and nothing less than it. A miracle. "But the fact you are brings me joy."
She reached for his hand, and he offered it. Her new grip was weaker, but meaningful. "I can't…feel my legs. My arm."
"...you're alive. That's what's important." What else could he say? If someone could think of something and tell him it at that moment, he would wish to make merry with and cultivate their acquaintance.
He'd switched sides of the cot to be on the side with her remaining arm, because…painful. It hurt his chest to look at how soon the masses beneath her sheets ended, but it hurt more to see her other arm ending a bit below the shoulder. It was obvious compared to the legs, a cry for attention.
She might have had the eyes Eighth Headman used; she looked into him until he looked away, remorseful. He stared at the edge of the cot and kept his mind on how her hand felt. Cool, clammy, rough. Not the one she had left with. The only one she returned with.
"Thank you for being here."
"It's the least I could do. How are you feeling?"
"Like an Aud trampled me." They shared a muted chuckle.
"Did one?"
"It was all such a blur. It still is." She shook her head and looked toward the door. I did the same, but there was no one there. "I can hardly remember anything from the time I entered the greater western tunnels to the time I was being carried by a WAV."
"But do you remember everything before?"
She knew what he was referring to, even in her post-drug-addled state. "How Io fell?"
He tipped his head forward. She grimaced. "They'll question me until I want to gouge my ears out, won't they?"
"It's worse than that." He sighed, already predicting the response from the other direct representatives. "You're even closer to me than an ordinary conscript, so the Chamber of Meet's interior will fill with accusations of abandoning your duty and running."
She sniffed. "That's not fair. I didn't want to leave them." Unable to comfort her with words, he pulled her into his embrace. Her body tensed and shook, tremors racking every centimeter of her in contact with him. He wouldn't fault her for crying here.
They stayed locked together long enough for one of the medical staff to come by and ask him to use the second injector. Pa-5 suffered a small stutter in her breathing. He ignored every communication attempt connecting with his HUD and communicator, even those from his allies. When her breathing slowed and she went slack in his arms, he laid her back on her cot. In sleep, with nothing to bar her, the tears began to flow. At least her face wore a smile of relief.
With a heavy hand, he picked up his communicator. With a heavier heart, he spoke into it, opening a communication with all the direct representatives. One-way only, of course, since he didn't want to disturb Pa-5's slumber. "The survivor the Nyx Breaker found has regained consciousness and shows lucidity. Please assemble in five hours for a meet at the Chamber to discuss Fort Io's fall, and the Directory's next steps."
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