章節 39: Visiting, Going
He was going to visit his office. That was what he'd planned after checking on the Nyx Breaker, In-3, and settling matters with the site--acting sitesman. He needed to meet with the Sixth Headman and the other faction leaders of the militarists. It would be conducive to perform both tasks simultaneously, and it had crossed his mind he should send a communication ahead to have them assembled in lieu of his arrival. But as he was learning in recent days, and would no doubt continue to learn in those coming, the things he planned weren't as hard-pressed to resemble scutumsteel's durability as they once were.
When his communicator was in his hand--though he could skip this step with his HUD, he preferred a more involved approach--Ni-6 hailed him. The message was brief, asking him to come. When he asked in return why, the message sent chills down his spine in a way he hadn't felt in years: "The medical staff said she's going to pull through. I almost wish she wouldn't. No one should have to."
Suspicious, and like what In-3 had said to him not fifteen minutes prior, he lengthened the distance he covered between strides and, though gentle in his manipulations of the crowd around him, elbowed his way to the boarding node. Without Ni-6 at his side to converse with, pass the time, and make him approach slower, he was in the queue in one minute, boarding a railskipper in two. As he waited for the boarding area to empty of waiting passengers, his imaginative, devious side conjured all sorts of gruesome interpretations of what could have inspired those words.
Limbless? Spine jutting halfway out her back? Guts pooling free from a jagged slit across her stomach? Was it worse? Even with the boast-worthy speeds the railskipper moved at, it didn't qualify half as fast as his current need. Yet, he was already a passenger and had to wait, drowned in impatience while slow to sink into worse emotions ill-suited to who he needed to be. He'd sent a return communication asking where they took Pa-5; she was transported swiftly and quickly to receive treatment under Ardiseg Hall's own medical staff.
He hardly remembered to return his yellow band to his bicep and would have charged into the entry if not stopped by the newer servicemen outside. For once, it irked him that his careful ministrations over the years to remain as unidentifiable and common to the eye as possible slowed him down at this moment. He shoved it into the sensor, jamming the machinery within from the force he pushed down the band. He sprinted through the scanner, retrieved his band, and hurried off, up the steps in the spacious entry room and utilizing old instincts in his musculature to remain dodgy and free of colliding with anyone.
The first medical staff he encountered on their floor had been expecting him and grabbed his arm. Fighting the urge to throw him off and hurry to search himself, he let an Ancient with a white coat over his skinsuit lead him to the correct room. The door hung, and retracted, leaving it open to outside observation or immediate entry. He made use of the latter convenience without a second thought, finding Ni-6 in his path with a worrisome light present in his eyes.
"Before you see her, sir…it's bad."
"I came knowing that. Please move aside."
"It might suit you more to--"
"Ni-6. Please move aside; let me see her." There was a tone of finality in his voice, injected through the unconscious. He would not ask a third time.
Shoulders slumping, the younger between them did so. The path forward unobstructed, he crossed the room in three strides and halted beside a cot. Elevated, it hung from the ceiling with thin, taut cables. Its lone occupant looked small in comparison to the grand thing.
It was too large for her. That was his first thought. After looking her up and down, closing his eyes, and imprinting the vision vulnerability and proneness into his memory, a second bubbled to the surface.
'Where are her legs?'
Under the cooling sheets, there were no raised masses below her waist, like how her arms were--he turned away. "Ni-6."
"Sir?" He felt the presence at his shoulder. "Are you alright?"
"Yes." Amazing, that he could speak such nonsense with no quiver afflicting his lip, or tremor in the bowels of his throat. "Please remain with her for now."
"Until when?"
"Until she wakes. I…will come to visit then." As he was about to make for the exit, a detail stuck itself out for noticing, and that morphed into a thought he had neglected to address. He turned back, finding Ni-6 already lingering over her. "I will have a funerary memento made and sent to your family. For Ra-3." Being so close with the younger brother, he knew the eldest by some personal regard.
"Thank you, sir." Ni-6 tilted his head, the ghost of a smile eking a meager existence. "They would appreciate it."
His memory after that suffered, though he did remember sitting beside the Sixth Headman on his sofa and nodding, mindless, as the other droned, continuous, and inexhaustible. He had said some things, others were told to him and made more deals, the details of which eluded him every time he thought back to it. The most frustrating part of it? His HUD shut down during the discussion, undergoing quality management for its software, so he couldn't access the stored memories. He'd need to approach the Eighth and borrow their surveillance feeds later.
He found himself in a training hall, every sound he produced muffled to emerge no louder than a whisper as he swung a training blade. One: wide sweep. Two: form up and thrust. Three: backpedal into an overhead. His arms repeated the flowing motions until they burned and shook, and only then did he come back to himself, finally free, though for a mere moment or two, as Pa-5 faded from prominence.
He took a knee, grasping the hilt and grasping for fresh oxygen with deprived lungs. He blinked sweat from his eyes. His arms, moving through the cuts with enough speed to produce air resistance, had gone from heavy exertions to complete rest in a second, and the lack of gentle relaxation irked them. They made it their priority to inform him of this, aching and trembling worse than before. How long had he used the blade?
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