Chương 2501: 84
Chapter 84: Fracture 9-1
Fracture 9.1
I didn't wait to hear anything else.
Maybe I should have. Maybe they would have given me details if only I'd had the patience to wait there with Flechette and ask. Maybe I would've found out what exactly had happened sooner, that way.
Maybe I would have, in any other situation.
But Director Piggot wasn't the only one who would've been in that building when it was attacked. The Protectorate, of course, although they could take care of themselves well enough that I wasn't really worried. The Wards, who weren't quite as good, were vulnerable and inexperienced enough that I was slightly more worried for them.
Even that wasn't really what had my heart thumping and my mind racing, though.
Because Lisa and Amy would've been there, too.
That was why I took off without waiting to hear anything else from Flechette or the radio, even as one called out for me to wait and the other nattered in my ear about not leaving my partner behind. The world blurred around me as I ran, condensing the distance down with every step using my Vantage. Somehow, in the crowded streets, I managed to weave through without running into anyone or knocking someone over.
I wasn't sure what would happen if I ran into someone while going full tilt, only that the other guy would come off the worse for it, and at that moment, it didn't really matter to me that much. Later on, I worried about it a little, but right then, it was the least important thing in my head.
Legend was waiting for me in the lobby of the Protectorate building. Like he knew I'd be there or like he'd predicted I'd come running the instant I heard that something had happened in Brockton. His face was serious and grim and hard, and it looked as though it had been sculpted from marble.
I only slowed down there because I had to. I couldn't say it wasn't tempting to charge right through the door as though it wasn't even there, but I managed to keep enough control of myself to keep from doing massive amounts of property damage less than a day after giving myself the image of a responsible, affable heroine with a heart of gold.
The instant I was within spitting difference, he greeted me with a solemn, "Apocrypha."
I didn't bother with the formalities. I didn't care to, right then.
"What happened?" I demanded breathlessly.
He didn't answer me. He just said, "Come with me."
I didn't want to. I didn't want to wait, I wanted to know now. Just tell me here, damn it. Don't put it off and make me think of all the different things that could have happened.
But he didn't wait for me to respond or reply, he spun on his heel and started off at a brisk walk, and all I could do was follow after him. I was sure we got several looks from the others in the HQ, from the Wards and members of the Protectorate who were off duty and had nothing better to do than stare at me as I stormed behind Legend, but right then, I couldn't bring myself to care more than being annoyed that they were watching.
He led me to a conference room, and the door shut behind us. The noise of the rest of the building that I'd barely noticed was shut out with it — a measure of privacy, which would have made sense, if I'd really been thinking about it at the time.
Instead, I demanded again, "What happened?"
"I think you should take a seat," he told me, gesturing to one of the chairs. It was really more of an order than a suggestion.
I stayed standing.
"What happened?" I demanded for a third time.
Legend sighed, a weary, exasperated sound, as of a man frustrated with an intractable teenager being deliberately stubborn.
Tough shit. You couldn't just tell me that the place where my two and only best friends were staying had been attacked and then tell me to sit down and wait to hear the details. I didn't know why he had even expected that to work.
"We don't have all of the details, yet," he began almost reluctantly, "but the Brockton Bay Parahuman Response Team Headquarters was attacked roughly half an hour after your interview was aired on television."
"By who?" I asked impatiently.
"We don't know for sure," he hedged, "but given Hookwolf was clearly present and several other villains affiliated with him were also sighted and engaged, the current assessment is that it was the remnants of the Empire Eighty-Eight. One of the factions, at any rate. There was no sign of the second faction in the fighting, so at this time, we're assuming that it was only Hookwolf's group and that the two of them haven't reconciled or merged."
I took a deep, slow breath. It helped center me, focus my mind, so I could think about the bigger picture of what could have happened.
My racing thoughts chased each other for answers. Why now? Why the PRT HQ? This wasn't like Khepri's world, where the Empire's civilian identities had been leaked. There was no Child Services taking Purity's child and triggering her rampage through the city. There was no reason for them to do something so extreme.
Was there?
Or maybe it wasn't them at all, and they were just a tool being used by someone else to get at me, to get revenge for something that had happened. Maybe someone had taken them and aimed them at the PRT as a message to tell me that my friends and I weren't safe, even in the heart of Brockton Bay's PRT base.
Someone like Valefor.
"The Fallen?"
"There's no indication that they played any part in this," Legend answered. "The Think Tank hasn't gotten back to us yet, but a week and a half is nowhere near enough time for any sizable group of them to make it to Brockton Bay unnoticed and set a plan in motion. For now, we're assuming that this was strictly the Empire's own agenda."
Good. That was good. Well, not good, exactly, but the Fallen being involved always made things messier and more dangerous, so the longer they remained uninvolved in anything in Brockton, the better.
The question of why still hung, unanswered, but I could think about that later.
"What about Director Piggot? She was injured?"
Legend grimaced, briefly closing his eyes. "Director Piggot was gravely injured in the attack," he admitted. "It seems Hookwolf targeted her especially and managed to wound her before he was repelled. She was medevaced for emergency treatment to the nearest qualified trauma center available and is currently in surgery. Our latest update puts her in critical condition."
A niggling doubt squirmed in my chest.
Because an injury, even one severe enough to require emergency treatment, should have been easy to handle.
"Why not just ask Amy —"
The look on his face told me the answer before I could even finish the question. My gut churned as a block of ice lodged itself in my stomach.
"No —"
"Panacea was also gravely injured during the attack," he told me reluctantly. "She's also undergoing emergency treatment as we speak."
But I didn't wait to hear anything else, because I didn't need to. Knowing Amy was injured, knowing she was hurt, that was all I needed to know. Nothing else fucking mattered.
"Apocrypha!"
I was already reaching for a hero as I turned, already pulling him inside of me.
Set. Install.
My costume became gleaming silver armor, embossed on the chestplate with an eagle. My hair pulled up into my scalp and turned a sort of muted blond that looked almost green. An orange cloth wrapped around my torso from shoulder to hip. In my hands, I could have held a spear or the reins of a chariot, had I any use for them at that moment.
"Wait!" Legend urged, but I ignored him.
Because I needed a hero who could cross vast distances in the blink of an eye, a hero known for his tremendous, overwhelming speed. I need a hero who could be called the fastest, who raced through the battlefield like a comet, passing through obstacles and closing the gap without stopping.
A hero like Achilles.
I took off at a sprint, and I only just had enough self-control not to bowl through everything in my way, even if I nearly tore the door off its hinges as I yanked it open. Then, I was out in the streets, and I turned in the general direction of Brockton Bay, tensed my legs, and rushed off again.
It took everything I had to control my speed as I ran through the city, to keep myself from accelerating to supersonic and breaking every window I passed. My thumping heart and racing thoughts egged me on, but somehow, I managed to not cause millions of dollars in property damage, even if I wanted nothing more than to throw caution to the wind and go full tilt.
Once I got onto the highway, I didn't bother. I maneuvered to the outside of the lane, far enough to the side to avoid any motorists, and unshackled myself, and immediately, the air shook and howled as my body took off like a rocket. In some far off, barely cognizant part of my brain, I noted the lack of shattering windows as I raced past every car on the highway.
Time passed weirdly. My thoughts seemed to move at the speed of light, and my body didn't seem far behind, but the distance was still vast — almost three-hundred miles stood between New York City and Brockton Bay. As it stretched out before me, it seemed like an almost interminably long distance.
Later, someone told me that I crossed it in about four minutes.
It felt like forever before Brockton Bay finally came into view, and I had to decelerate to more reasonable speeds as I entered the city, and even then, the windows of the first several buildings rattled and warped in my wake. Even then, it felt far too slow, like I was wasting time by trying to prevent from causing more damage.
When I made it to the PRT HQ, the most obvious and glaring thing about the attack was immediately clear: a large, gaping hole had been torn into the side of the building, carving away at the concrete, steel, and glass, like someone had taken a backhoe to the front wall and started to tear it down. I could see inside to the offices and conference rooms that had been ripped in half, with shattered tables and chairs and dangling wires that were visibly sparking even from this far away. The skeleton of the PRT HQ was laid bare.
It took a moment for my mind to process what I was seeing. Not because it was horrific or awe-inspiring, but just because I couldn't immediately place a name to who could have done so much damage. Leviathan, for sure. Any of the Endbringers, really. Several S-Classes who had no business being on the East Coast, let alone Brockton Bay.
But someone on the Empire's roster? Who…
Fenja.
It was something I'd never seen from her before, but if she and her sister had enough strength at full size to wrestle Leviathan, then she might be capable of this. Maybe not with her bare hands, but with a weapon? She carried a shield, didn't she? Could she have used it like a shovel to scrape away the outer wall?
Unimportant. I could think about that later, too.
My eyes swept down and around the courtyard, where it seemed like the entirety of the building had been evacuated. Officers and agents in fatigues and civilian staff in tidy suits milled about, walking briskly back and forth as they attempted to restore some semblance of order, and Achilles's piercing gaze saw them reporting to an older man leaning over a table under a hastily erected tent. He could only be the Deputy Director, Renick if I remembered his name right, the man now in charge with Piggot out of the picture.
Any other time, the appropriate thing to do would have been to report to him. Maybe I should have, still, because as the man coordinating the cleanup of this mess and to whom everyone was reporting, he would almost certainly have had the information I needed. He could have told me where Lisa and Amy were.
But I'd be lucky to get a word in, and I didn't want to wait or have to push my way to the front of the line, so I turned away from him and his group and kept looking. Almost as an afterthought, I let Achilles go.
I spotted Armsmaster a moment later, and it was immediately obvious he'd been in a fight. There were large cuts and scrapes scored along his armor, some shallow, some deep enough to expose the innards, and some so deep that they'd come within a hair's breadth of cleaving straight through and into flesh. It gave him a haggard, battle-scarred look, like he should be doing anything else except standing and giving orders. His characteristic halberd was the only thing that seemed completely intact.
With those sorts of "wounds," he had clearly been the one to engage Hookwolf, probably been the one to drive him off. From the looks of those cuts, Hookwolf had been playing for keeps, and Armsmaster had almost paid for it.
He, too, was surrounded by agents and troopers, and seemed to be in charge of clearing out the rubble from the damaged front wall. I was about to go over to him — as leader of the Protectorate, he would know where my friends were, too, and I was getting impatient trying to find someone who did — but at that moment, he turned in my direction, seemed to meet my gaze, and jerked his head to the side.
My eyes turned in the direction he'd indicated, and there, there was Lisa, still dressed in her pajamas, with a domino mask hastily slapped over her eyes and nose. The other Wards were with her, and she was being attended to by a medic, who was dabbing at some — thankfully shallow-looking — cuts with an alcohol swab.
I made a beeline over for her, heart thumping. It took every ounce of my self-control not to go running and bowl over everyone in my way.
"Ouch!" I heard Lisa say as I got close. "Ow! Hey, Doc, think you could be a little more gentle?"
"Quit your whining," the medic grumbled. "Vista was more cooperative about this, and she's four years younger than you."
Behind her, Vista's cheeks flushed.
"Yeah, but Vista's a total badass," Lisa said loudly. Vista looked like she wanted the pavement to swallow her up. "I'm just an ordinary girl thrust into an extraordinary situation." Clockblocker snorted. "I'm delicate, not made for this kind of thing — hey, Chief."
Attention drawn by her sudden segue, that was when the rest of them finally saw me.
"Holy shit," one of the other Wards said, "isn't she supposed to still be in New York until later tonight?"
"Tattletale," I greeted her solemnly.
I looked her up and down, and aside from a few minor cuts and an obviously ruined pair of pajamas, she didn't seem all that hurt. No broken bones or missing arms, no gaping wounds pouring blood, just a few scratches that really didn't amount to more than papercuts.
A sigh of relief hissed out of my nostrils. "You're okay."
Lisa waved off the medic, who hesitated. "I'm not finished."
"I'll be fine," Lisa assured him. "It's not like I'm in danger of bleeding out or anything, so you can leave off here and go handle the skinned knees, now, okay?"
The medic rolled his eyes and huffed, then left, sparing me only a short glance. When Lisa turned to me, all traces of a smile and humor had left her face.
"I got lucky," she told me. She thumbed one of her earrings meaningfully. "That, and I really underestimated how good I got from your training. I'm not gonna be armwrestling Alexandria anytime soon, but most of the Empire isn't exactly breaking Olympic records either."
She looked over her shoulder at the Wards, who were still trying to wrap their heads around the fact that I had gotten here from New York City so quickly.
"In fact, all of us did a lot better than we had any business doing. Nothing more than a few scrapes and bruises all around."
"It was pretty crazy," Clockblocker agreed. "I didn't even realize I could run that fast."
"Or dodge that easily," Vista added.
A glance in their direction revealed it to be true: none of them were majorly injured. A few minor things that barely even warranted a mention, but nothing at all like the damage Armsmaster's armor had taken.
"And Amy?"
"Ah." Lisa grimaced and closed her eyes a moment. "Yeah. Panacea…wasn't quite so lucky. She ran into Cricket, who…wasn't particularly gentle with her."
Which…sounded both like and unlike the Cricket that Khepri knew, as much as she knew her. Admittedly, it mostly boiled down to a single fight, but you could argue that the circumstances should have put her at her most aggressive.
"Cricket…normally toys with —"
"She didn't," Lisa interrupted. "None of them did. The Empire was on a warpath, today. There was no playing, no following the rules, no avoiding escalation. They came today to fight a war, and they fought it. Frankly speaking, considering the body count some of them left behind, I won't be surprised if at least Hookwolf gets a Kill Order."
How many?
I wanted to ask the question. How many people had been killed today, while I was off in New York giving an interview? How many could I have maybe saved if I'd been here to be part of the fighting?
Would the attack have even happened if I'd been here? Would the Empire have dared to wage a war on the PRT if the Endslayer stood opposite of them?
But this wasn't the time to start wallowing or feeling guilty. I had something far more important to deal with.
"How bad?" I asked instead.
Lisa met my eyes and hesitated, and she conveyed more in that moment than she could have with a book's worth of words. I didn't need her to give it voice.
I swallowed. My eyes prickled and I wanted to cry, but that wouldn't help anyone and especially not Amy. So I gathered my strength and pushed myself to do what needed to be done, rather than what the churning angst in my gut tried to demand I do.
"Where is she?" I asked next.
"Brockton Bay General Hospital," she answered. "By this point, she should be in the ER, undergoing surgery."
I nodded my thanks and turned away.
"Apocrypha," Lisa's voice stopped me. "She and I don't always get along, but…I'd hate to lose my favorite person to argue with."
I didn't reply. In the first place, she didn't need to tell me to save Amy, because I was going to do that anyway.
"Set. Install."
In a flash, I was Medea, and I lifted off the ground again, much as I had the night previous with Legend. I poured on as much power and speed as I could and took off in the direction of the hospital, but if Achilles sprinting across the countryside at supersonic speeds had felt achingly slow, Medea flying over rooftops was like floating through molasses.
Intellectually, I knew I was just being impatient. It hadn't even been twenty minutes since I first heard about the attack from the console jockey in New York. I'd made excellent time getting back to Brockton Bay and I was making excellent time still getting to the hospital on account of being able to go over buildings rather than having to take a winding, indirect path through the streets below.
But that didn't stop my heart from racing. It didn't stop me from chewing anxiously on my bottom lip. It didn't stop me from putting even more energy into my flight, just so I could be that little bit faster.
And it most certainly didn't make me feel any better about the fact that my friend was currently lying on an operating table as a surgeon and his staff tried to frantically put her back together before she bled to death.
I didn't land in front of the hospital's main entrance so much as descend and hover for a short moment, then teleport through the doors instead of waiting for them to open all the way.
It was more crowded than I expected it to be, a fact I learned when several people shouted and jumped out of their seats, startled by my sudden appearance. A baby even started crying, loudly bawling its eyes out from somewhere off to the side.
Is my visage truly so horrifying that it inspires such terror in even a child?
It didn't do anything at all for my patience, so I had to shove my annoyance and frustration to the side as much as I could as I flew directly up to the receptionist. She eyed me a little fearfully, like she didn't know what to do and was trying desperately not to freak out, and her fingers were white-knuckled as she clutched to her mouse with one hand. The other, presumably, was hovering over an emergency button on the underside of her desk.
"If…you have an appointment today," she told me, voice threaded with barely constrained terror, "p-please sign in and take a seat until you're called. If you'd like to…make an appointment…"
"Amy Dallon," I cut in, "where is she?"
She shook her head. "I-I'm sorry, but I can't —"
"Panacea," I spat, "which room are they operating on her in?"
Her shoulders shuddered and her arms quivered, but still, the receptionist refused.
"I…I'm afraid I can't tell you that. Ma'am, if…if you would like to visit a patient, please use the visitor's entrance and s-sign in at the desk."
"You…" My frustration and impatience got the better of me, and before I could stop it, Medea's venom slipped from my tongue. "I'm going to heal her, you insufferable twit! So either tell me where she is or find me someone who will!"
She flinched back away from me, and I snarled at her, because I was done with the fucking waiting for her to actually tell me where my friend was being operated on while her life hung in the balance —
The door to the side opened. "Apocrypha?" someone asked.
My head swiveled, and there was an orderly or a nurse or whatever, dressed in scrubs and with a badge clipped to his shirt. If he was put off by the expression on my face, then he gave no indication of it at all.
"We just received a call from Armsmaster a few minutes ago to expect you," he informed me calmly. "I was sent down to show you to the emergency room where they're operating on Panacea. If you'll come with me?"
I whirled away from the receptionist, cloak fluttering, and behind me, I heard her let out a relieved sigh. Medea wanted to spin back around and fire a petty revenge shot at her, just something that would inconvenience her and make sitting in that chair uncomfortable for a week or two, but I reined that in and pushed her back a little.
That won't help anyone.
Object lessons are the best teachers.
The orderly led me back through the doors, and I stalked behind him, purposefully taking heavier steps than necessary. It was petty, but it served as a good outlet for the anger still simmering in my gut.
The walk through the hallways was short, likely intentionally, so that they could get their patients to the emergency room as quickly as possible, but thirty seconds had never felt more like thirty minutes before in my life. When we reached the right door, the red light above it was on and blaring in bold, capital letters, EMERGENCY ROOM.
My guide lifted up the mask hanging from his neck and tied the ties up behind his head so that it covered his nose and mouth. My lips pursed, but I didn't have anything like that myself and it felt like a waste of time to bother.
He pushed the door open and began, "Doctor, Apocrypha is —"
I pushed the other door open and strode in impatiently. "I'm here."
One of the attending nurses startled at the sight of me and dropped an instrument. It hit the ground with a clatter.
"Mask!" someone shouted at me frantically.
"You can sterilize this room to your heart's content later!" I snapped back.
"Apocrypha." Contrary to the others, the doctor was calm and cool and didn't for a second take his eyes off the girl lying on the table in front of him. "Good. They told me to expect you." A little jovially, he added, "Not that I couldn't handle this myself, but her arm is an absolute mess and there's only so much I can do with modern medical technology."
I stepped up beside him, taking a deep breath to regain control of my emotions, and the nurse at his side stepped away as though I was diseased. Whatever. No time to bother with that.
"How bad?" I asked.
"Bad," he told me grimly. His smile crinkled his mask, but his eyes remained solemn and narrowed. "She's already lost three fingers on her right hand, and the entire lower arm has been slashed to ribbons. Frankly, with how many pieces the arteries are in, it's a miracle she didn't bleed out before they got her here. The only reason it's still attached is because the cuts couldn't go through the bone.
"That's the least of her troubles," he went on, rattling it all off rapidfire. "See here? Whoever did this was trying really hard to disembowel her. Luckily, they failed, but they managed to do some serious damage to her large intestines. That's not even mentioning the cut that miraculously missed her femoral artery or the one that nearly got her carotid. That cut to her left ribs? Actually penetrates pretty deep. We had to drain the fluid buildup and reinflate her lung."
I tried not to pay too close attention to what he was showing me, because I was sure this scene would feature in my dreams for the next few days enough without having a vivid image of every injury seared onto the insides of my eyelids. It was a losing battle.
"We've been managing to keep her stable," the doctor concluded, "but with everything else we have to deal with, the reconstructive surgery on her arm would've been too much. We probably would have had to amputate."
"No," I said softly, "not today."
I lifted my hands and held them out over my best friend. One of the two, and fuck the semantics of grammar. My gaze drifted up to her face, pale and peaceful and utterly unaware of exactly how close she'd come to dying. From the corner of my eye, I saw the doctor finally stop working and look at me.
Then, I turned back to the work to be done.
…Take what you need from me. Stalwart friends are more precious than all the gold in the world.
And in a soft whisper, like a lullaby, I chanted the words that would save Amy's life, and watched as all her wounds vanished in motes of golden light.
When it was all over, I rested my fingers against the smooth, unblemished skin of her stomach, as though to reassure myself that it had really worked, and I let out a sigh when I found not the slightest trace of the jagged cut that had been there before.
If a relieved sob choked its way out of my throat, no one mentioned it.
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
NOTES
Later than usual again, because sleep again. It is what it is.
So, Amy managed to avoid losing an arm. What is it with me and characters losing arms? I don't know. The characters keep losing them, for some reason.
This last week has had me regretting not taking the whole month like I did before the beginning of last arc, so next chapter might be delayed by a week. I doubt it, but we'll have to see how things pan out.
Special thanks to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best.
If you want to support me and my writing, you can do so here:
P a treon . com (slash) James_D_Fawkes
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As always, read, review, and enjoy.
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