So here is the first bit of backstory for Smoldering Decay. I have at least 2 more planned.
I'm envisioning these almost as journal entries, recorded to make sure that she doesn't forget, that what happened to her world isn't lost should she die.
So without further delay, onto the story:
Smoldering Decay:
[A Hero Sandwich Production]
Memories (pt 1)
I write this in hopes that I won't forget what drove me here. And that should I fall in battle this will serve as a warning of what may come for others.
I'm not sure what the difference is between the Ritki I know and the ones the heroes face here. All I know is that this place seems to be spared from the scorched earth policy we faced back home. Terra Volta isn't a radioactive slag pile, The Faultline dam still stands, the hospitals aren't smoking husks.
Brickstown was the first to fall, I still remember first tense few hours following the raid. At first we thought it was just a power failure, even the redundant generators in the basement have problems occasionally. Then the stories started to filter in. The heroes had managed to take down one of the raid ships. It was a purposeful crash. A pyrrhic victory. A spiteful loss. We never found out the cause behind it, all we know is that Brickstown turned into a blood bath that day. While the Ritki couldn't shut down the teleportation network, they could interfere with it enough to prevent long distance transports. Every hero in Brickstown who fell and didn't have a med station in their base, who weren't part of a supergroup, or couldn't be reached in time by fellow healers became one more statistic.
Oh we hit them back hard, one whole section of the mothership was reduced to a smoking skeleton the next day. But they saw the effect the loss of the hospital had on battles in Brickstown, it wasn't more than a week before Independence Port was hit. This time there was no question about the intent behind it. Even after the ship had been holed several time through by Statesman it kept going on pure inertia alone. The shields around the hospital didn't stand a chance against a few hundred tonnes of alien spaceship. It was all downhill from there. It didn't matter how hard we hit back, every blow they hit us with hurt more. Sure, the bombing runs weren't nearly as bad with fewer warships floating above us, but every one hurt that much more. The other hospitals quickly became overrun trying to pick up the slack. I even heard rumors of the same thing happening in Cap Au Diable, but I never had the free time to track down the truth behind that statement.
It was the fall of the Kings Row hospital that changed things. I don't know how it started, or if an official order was ever given, but the thugs and criminals just stopped showing up. I don't know if they were left to fend for themselves or if they were never given the chance, I never bothered to ask. All I know is that the drop in incoming bodies, and the freed up room in what used to be the secure ward, meant that the survival rate in the ER went back up. Not to it's pre-agression levels, but better than the 60% we used to be at. And things were looking up. Especially when the vanguard shot down two ships attempting to kamikaze into the base in the war zone.
And then of course the excrement already stuck to the fan had to fly off and hit me. I don't remember how many double shifts I ended up pulling, or how much caffeine I had running in my veins. But I know I was covered in more things than I could name and trying to trying to grab a few minutes of rest when the invasion alarm went off. We immediately started to port the long term patients to other hospitals. The ER got transformed into a relay center, if the arriving heros weren't going to die in the next minute they got relayed to another hospital.
Those few minutes of frantic activity will always stand out in my mind. Pulling people out of the teleporters, spraying them with disinfectants and derma-bond, and shoving them in the teleporters at the other side of the room. There weren't enough people to keep up with the influx, but we tried anyway. None of us were required to stay once we got the long term patients out of the hospital. We were even encouraged to go with them to one of the other hospitals; help them deal with the impending chaos. The other nurses and doctors didn't try and convince those of us that decided to stay behind not to. We all knew that someone had to. I always figured that I could do more good at ground zero, and hop in the teleporter at the last second if the ship was incoming. The truth is that in the chaotic mess of the teleporter room we didn't have a clue the ship was coming until half the ceiling caved in.
The collection of kinetically inclined heroes on the roof did the best job they could, unfortunately there was only so much they could do against several hundred tonnes of alien warship. Their efforts meant the warship careened into the side of the hospital instead of dead center. The sound was deafening, just this rumbling crunch of concrete and steel being forced in ways they were never designed to go. It was punctuated by pops and flashes of light as the two teleporters nearest the wall catastrophically failed. In some ways I'm happy I almost lost my vision to the exploding teleporters, it saved me from seeing what happens when a teleport goes very very wrong. The other two nurses were bringing the next hero in when the hospital got hit. By the time I got back on my feet, the fires and emergency lighting conspired with my damaged retinas to made everything look like it was covered in red smears.
The groans of the hero at my feet brought me back into focus. I had been patching up the worst of his bleeding before the crash, and now I couldn't see straight enough to finish the job. So I did the next best thing: get him to people who can. I had dragged him a little more than half way to the least damaged of the teleporters when I heard something that made me forget about everything else. The crackle of the fire in the corner turned into a screeching hiss of rapidly escaping gas. My adrenaline flooded brain quickly put 1 and 1 together and came up with a very unhappy 3. I hit the ground with my hands curled around my head as the 02 tank lit. There was a roar of flame and wash of light and heat as the fire suddenly got much worse.
After a few seconds I realized I wasn't dead yet; the tank didn't blow. I got back up and started to drag my patient to the teleporters again. By the time I got there I was glad I had to hunch over to pull him along. Standing up would put me head and shoulders deep in smoke. I tried not to think about way his suit was dark and sticky as I manhandled him into a rough fetal position in the center of the teleporter. Once I was assured he wouldn't lose a leg in transit I crawled to the control panel and the big breaker switch that had been grafted into the side of it. The switches were recent additions, along with the fast acting chemical batteries they were hooked up to. Once thrown it would dump enough power into the teleporter for one last use. You got sent to the last coordinates programed in, and you prayed that batteries hadn't been damaged.
I pulled the handle down and prayed to whatever deities were listening that I would make it to the other side.
----------
Good? Bad? Indifferent?
ETA: heavy warships, not musical ones
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy
Woah. That's a hell of a wordpicture you've painted there.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Jeez, yeah thats quite a bleak image you've drawn there, but wow Sweno that was very..very well written..kudos to you.
Maybe it's just emitting many, many different musical notes.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Great. Thanks Wire. Thanks Bob.
Now I can't get this stupid image out of my head:
Kruz'Drector: "Ship: Going down. Orchestra: Must play. To: final impact!"
And as the orchestra plays on, the majestic warship Ti'Tanik plows into the hospital...
Edit to add what I forgot to in the first post: Sweno, great work. You're making me feel guilty, here; I need to get crackin'.
--sofaspud
--
"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
Leaving: Together
Still: Farewell
Possibility of return: Acknowledged
Possible return destination: Earth: Unknown
Hypothesis: No Rikti: To Blame
Ship: Leaving Earth
Query: Status: Forever Changed?
Countdown: Final
Intermediate Destionation: Venus: Posture: Erect
Possible: Visual Contact: Possible: Welcome: Rikti Forces
Remaining Distance: Light Years: Remaining Targets: Many
Statement: Severe Nostalgia for Presence: Designate: Her
Quote:We're leaving together,
But still it's farewell
And maybe we'll come back,
To earth, who can tell?
I guess there is no one to blame
We're leaving ground
Will things ever be the same again?
It's the final countdown...
We're heading for Venus and still we stand tall
Cause maybe they've seen us and welcome us all
With so many light years to go and things to be found
I'm sure that we'll all miss her so.
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies
And here is part 2, now I'm off to grind a few more level out of Decay before DoubleXP weekend is over.
----------
Smoldering Decay:
[A Hero Sandwich Production]
Memories (pt 2)
My return to consciousness was sudden and disorienting. I awoke from disjointed nightmares about burning buildings and flying rubble to darkness. Not the dim half shadows of a dark room, but the total absence of light. The fear that I was blind lasted for all of a second, when my hands encountered a thick wrapping around my eyes. Remembering the explosion of the teleporters and the muted and blurry images from afterwards, I decided to leave it on for now.
Without much else to do I tried to relax a bit and take stock of my situation. I could wiggle my toes, and feel the sheets shifting on my legs as my feet moved around. That combined with being able to use and feel things with my hands ruled out major body or nerve trauma. I sat up with some difficulty, I must have pulled or strained a few muscles in my back dragging the hero to the teleporter.
I ran my hands over as much of my body as I could reach, making sure that there weren't any further injuries that I couldn't feel. There where a few sore spots in my arms and legs, but that was it. Without seeing the color of the bruises I was unable tell if they were minor things from crawling around on the rubble, or if I had some deep muscle bruising and was pumped full of enough pain killers that they didn't feels as bad. But regardless of of how bad the bruising was, I seemed to have come out unscathed. Aside from my eyes.
I was confident enough that I wasn't totally blind. The explosion may have caused some damage to my corneas, but anything that short in exposure that didn't leave me blind right away probably wasn't going to. Especially since it wasn't left untreated for long.
The normal sounds of the hospital seemed unbearably loud, what I usually dismissed as background white noise was being picked apart by a subconscious desperate for situational awareness. It really shouldn't have surprised me, but there is a difference between knowing something and having visceral first hand experience. Lacking anything better to do I tried to pick apart what I was hearing: the hum of machinery in the room; the muted conversations that were taking place outside, too muted to make out individual words; the occasional squawk of the PA system. All of them were familiar and helped to calm me down. It took me a few minutes of listening before I clued in of the obvious. I didn't hear anyone else in the room. The only machinery I heard was positioned at the head of my bed, slightly offset to my right. If someone else was being monitored I should have been able to hear their machinery, or their breathing. But there wasn't anything else. Which meant I was in a room by myself.
This wasn't a good thing. The hospitals didn't have rooms to spare. If I was in isolation it meant I was either unable to defend myself against the common cold, or I was a danger to those around me. I felt fine, and I hadn't bummed against a isolation tent earlier when I sat up, which ruled out the first option. And that only left option number two. I chocked back a hysteric giggle, afraid it would turn into a cry by the time it left my mouth. Everyone on the hospital staff knew the dangers of working in the ER, there were decontamination procedures for a reason. But those procedures got left on the floor like a pair of used gloves when we were attacked. I don't want to think about how many different people bled on me, or what I may have been exposed to when the teleporters blew up. But something had obviously happened, and I was dangerous.
I didn't know if whatever had happened to me would kill me in a few days, a few weeks, a few years, or if I got to spend the rest of my days in a class A hazmat suit. I had to distract myself from thinking about what might be wrong, I knew far too many unpleasant things that could have happened to me. That way lead to madness. The distraction that finally tore my thoughts away from morbidly listing what I might have contracted was a full bladder. The sheer mundanity of it left me blinking dumbly for a few seconds. Then I as slowly leveraging myself upright and carefully sliding off the bed to stand up. This was an isolated room, which meant that they had an toilet, all I had to do was find it.
The air was cool against my arms and legs, the thin almost paper coverings that the hospital called clothing wasn't very good at retaining heat. I ignored the minor litany of complaints that my body raised as I slowly shuffled my way around the room. I could deal with cold feet, sore muscles, and better clothing after I had taken care of the base necessities. I bumped into 2 chairs an a lamp, I think, before I found the bathroom. I knew it was the door to the bathroom, and not the outside, because it opened when I tried the handle. Rooms in isolation are secured, and require at least a badge to enter and exit. My shins, once again, were the first things to find the toilet. But by now I was more relieved than mad. As I sat down I kept one foot wedged in the door, I didn't want to get stuck in the bathroom because I somehow managed to lock myself inside by accident.
I was trying to find the sink and keep the bathroom door open at the same time when I heard the door to the hallway beep and unlock. I gave up my my search for the moment and turned to face the door. When they came through the door I was puzzled for a second; their shoes squeaked and their clothing crinkled.
"Miss Quinn?" The voice was muffled and muted. It took a second but it clicked together, they were in a hazmat suit, and from sound of things a rather bulky one. With that realization the last glimmer of winked out. I had something bad enough that normal people couldn't even breath the same air as me. These things never went well, I saw them every once in while from inside the suit. I can't remember one patient that lived a normal life, or at all.
"Miss Quinn?" The voice repeated, it sounded feminine but I couldn't be certain. The footsteps moved closer, and I had to grip the doorframe to stop myself from shutting the door and hiding in the bathroom.
"What's wrong with me?" I asked. Part of me didn't want to know how much longer I had to live, but I knew that I would obsess over it if I didn't know.
There was a brief hesitation before I got an answer. "Your eyes suffered some minor coronal burns, nothing to worry about. You'll need to apply some eye drops to prevent infection. But you'll be seeing things normally in about a week." They were sticking to the safe and comforting subjects first. Not that I blamed them, it was a textbook example of what to do. Unfortunately it doesn't do a great job of calming down the patient when the patient has also read the textbook.
"That's not what I meant. Why am I alone when you could fit three more beds in here at least? Why are you in a hazmat suit? What happened to me?" I stopped asking questions when I realized I was shouting. I leaned against the doorframe and tried to relax,"Sorry, I don't mean to take it out on you. It's just that I've been running though every single thing I know that would leave me here, and none of them are pretty."
There was a longer pause this time before the voice finally answered. "We don't know. Your radioactively hot. Hotter than anything else left at the crash site. Shining Fist, the hero you arrived with, is showing the effects of radiation exposure as well. But he is no where close to your levels. We have been able to piece together a rough idea of what happened from what he as told us, but his story is understandably vague. Any details you could tell us would help."
I noticed that they didn't say how much I was giving off, but I let it slide. "Ok, but can you help me find the sink first?"
"Feeling nauseous?" The question was asked quickly, but the respirator hid any inflection.
"No, I just haven't washed my hands yet." I tried to say it with a smile, but my expression felt more like a grimace.
"Oh. It's waist height, your seven o'clock, about two feet away. Paper towels are about a foot to the right."
"Thanks." I managed to find it with minimal fumbling.
After I had washed up, they led me back to the bed. I'm sure they tried to be comforting. But thick rubber gloves and respirator do a surprisingly good job of hiding emotional clues when you can't see someone's face. I laid back in the hospital bed, surprised at how tired I was from the short trip to the bathroom.
"Anything you remember is useful. I'll be recording it, so I may have some question later. But for now just walk me through what happened." They said as I heard them set something hard on the bedside table.
I took a steadying breath as visions of the event swam up from the blackness. "It was a fairly normal day until the invasion alarms when off..."
----------
ETA: corrected spelling
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy
Yay, Thread zombification!
Also, about 2 months later than I expected to get this out the door. Hopefully there won't be such a large gap in the next pieces.
----------
Smoldering Decay:
[A Hero Sandwich Production]
Memories (pt 3)
It was three days before the bandages came off. It was three days of questions and tests. And three nights of nightmares, my mind reliving the last things I had seen in seemingly endless array of permutations. People I knew, both alive and dead, traded places in a macabre game of musical chairs in my head. But hopefully that would be over soon. Being able to see meant that I could take care of myself, for however long I had left.
The room was dark at first, nothing more than varying shades of black and grey with a vague sense of depth.
"You ok? It's not too bright?" The nurse, Tim, asked.
I nodded and looked in his direction. The only thing I saw was a blurry outline of a person, slightly lighter than the surrounding grays and blacks, in a coverall that might be blue. "I can see you. I think." I said trying to pick out more details than just a blue fuzzy shape.
"Alright, I'm going to bring the lights up a bit at a time. Let me know if they get too bright." Tim said.
I heard a few beeps and the lights slowly brightened, transforming a blurry wash of blacks and grays into a blurry wash of grays and pastels. Except that now I could tell where the floor, walls, and ceiling were. Tim's figure became a little more defined and most definitely blue. Holding up my hand proved it wasn't just a problem seeing things at a distance. I could tell it was a hand. It was properly flesh colored and it had five fingers. But any of the fine details that defined it as my hand refused to come into focus. I concentrated harder to try and bring clarity to my sight, but all that I got was the inclining of a headache behind my eves.
I sighed in frustration and leaned back in the bed. "I can't focus on anything, it's all a blur." I tried to keep the frustration out of my voice, but I don't think I was all that successful.
"Don't try too hard, your retinas took a beating. They haven't had anything to do for the past three days. Give them a minute to catch up." Tim's voice carried the vague wisps of caution through the speaker on his suit. Which meant he must have been trying rather hard to convey his concern. I tried to swallow the frustration that rose in my gut. I had been waiting three days to see again, I could wait a few more hours to see clearly.
I stared at the ceiling, seeing nothing but a off-white wash of color. I knew that there should be details to pick up, but none resolved themselves out of the blur. After all the expectation that had been growing for the past three days, I couldn't stop the depressed sigh that left my lips.
Tim apparently took that as a sign to try and cheer me up, or at least take my mind off of my ocular issues. "I do have some good news." He said as he walked back to the bedside. "We aren't seeing any signs of radiation poisoning or impending systemic organ failure." His voice was upbeat and encouraging, but there was a lot left unsaid.
"But your still in the suit." I finished for him. "And I'm not going to be leaving here anytime soon, am I?" I guess that avoiding the gruesome and painful death that results from lethal doses of radiation poisoning can be considered a good thing, but being stuck in isolation for the rest of my -natural?- life didn't sound much better.
"You know how it is, perhaps better than most. As soon as someone from the radiology department is available we can get a better idea." His voice was apologetic, but I didn't blame him. I knew far too well what the situation was. Everyone was pulling 12 hour days, from the department heads to the interns. And non-life threatening cases got sorted to the bottom. The unspoken bad news was that since I was no longer in imminent danger of total organ failure, my priority got shifted to the bottom of the queue. I supposed that when they needed the room I might get someone too look at what was going wrong with me. But right now saving lives came first, and I couldn't bring myself to be angry at them for making that decision, not really.
"I know." I agreed, trying not to let the feelings of frustration and disappointment stomp all over what should have been good news. "I know what I somehow managed to avoid." I switched my focus from the ceiling to his blurry form. "Days or weeks of excruciating pain while my body dies and rots from the inside is not something I ever want to experience". I had to pause for a moment and try to forget the faces of those who hadn't had my luck. Heroes that had been transfered from Kings Row, dosed with more radiation than even they could stand. Some recovered, a few changed, but far too many just wasted away.
"I just can't help feeling that I should be helping people. Instead of just laying here, waiting for a lull in the fighting" I said, trying to refrain from snapping at Tim. He was only the messenger in this, and my only real human contact the past couple of days. Getting angry with him would be pointless and counterproductive.
Tim was silent for a few minutes before he spoke again. "Give me a few days, I might be able to get a mage to ward up one of these suits. That would at least get you out of here."
I was tempted to jump out of bed and hug him, but I doubt that I could have pulled that off without tripping. "Thank you! I'd even do paperwork for 12 hours if it got me out of this room." Of course at the end of the first day I wasn't so sure I would feel the same way, but right now I didn't care.
What might have been a laugh emerged from the speaker on Tim's suit. "Tell you what, do your own paperwork first, and we'll see about letting you deal with other's."
Tim's reminder about my vision may have been a little harsh, but it wasn't totally unneeded. I got so wrapped up in the idea of getting out of this room that I had skipped right over the prerequisites. Being able to walk around the hospital wouldn't do me, or anyone else, any good if I couldn't read anything or see clearly enough to recognize peoples faces.
Soon Tim had to leave to take care of the rest of his rounds. And I spent the next few hours trying to focus on different things around the room. Eventually I had to stop due an impending headache, but I think things were slightly clearer than when I started. All in all, today was a good day. I had one thing I didn't think I would have for quite some time. Hope. And hope is powerful thing indeed.
----------
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy
I don't have much to say on this. It's building... building... BUILDING... but the Best Part isn't here yet, I can feel it.
So, yeah, I'm waiting.
Aside from that, though: I originally suspected that Decay wound up in a Primal Earth hospital after the teleport-gone-wrong; now I'm not so sure.
You're doing a very good job, intentionally or otherwise, of keeping us in the dark on little details like that. So, kudos.
And, ahem. WANT MOAR!
--sofaspud
--
"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
And here is part 4. Sorry for cutting it where I did, but I couldn't find a better place. The meeting with whomever is pulling the strings will happen next, and there was no clean place to break it off once that got underway.
----------
Smoldering Decay:
[A Hero Sandwich Production]
Memories (pt 4)
The next four days were not nearly as bad as the first three. I was able to see small but measurable improvements in the details I could make out around the room. Tim even made good on his earlier offer and let me go over my own patient file. He even scrounged up a palmtop somewhere for me to use.
Enlarging the font size as much as possible made slow, but legible, reading. Making out the details of the the graphs on the palmtops small screen were a lost cause, but with nothing else to do I was able to get the gist of it. The amount of radiation I was putting out hasn't been constant, or as close to constant that a weeks worth of half life should account for. It was all over the board. Some times it almost seemed to disappear. At others it peaked high enough that I worried about Tim's potential fatherhood. I could tell it was following some sort of rhythm. But without access to statistical analysis software and a screen large enough to see the results (not to mention being able to read those results), the details behind the rhythm was lost on me.
Normally, I wouldn't have bothered to read the nitty gritty details in someone's file. As an Registered Nurse in the ER I didn't have the time or the necessary background to understand the details of the blood titration they had last time they were here. And I didn't need to know, the doctors (or the doctors assistants) had that job, and they wrote summaries. Summaries that I could understand and act on. It wasn't a perfect system, but it worked, and it kept the deaths in the ER to a minimum.
One of the failings of the system was that it required a doctor, or someone equally knowledgeable, to look at the raw data and condense it down to something the rest of us could understand; and that took time. Time that was in short supply. Time that got prioritized based on how likely someone was too survive without it. And that meant I was at the bottom of the list.
So unless we won the war tomorrow I wasn't going anywhere any time soon. And even if we did, there was such a backlog that I probably wouldn't be looked at for a month. I had the one thing the doctors needed more of: Time. Unfortunately, I lacked the knowledge to make sense of the what was happening to me. So instead of looking at the slightly less blurry ceiling (that got boring after the first few hours), I attempted to correct that shortcoming.
Fortunately I had access to the hospitals knowledge base system. Contained within was a massive collection of generalized information about superpowers. Everything from how to adjust dosage for patients with accelerated or otherwise altered metabolisms, to what types of metal needles where safe for the various fey and fey-related patients. By no means did it replace the doctors or other specialists. But combined with an accurate hero evaluation it gave the ER staff enough of an idea to not accidentally kill the patient on the table.
I quickly hit my first roadblock a few hours after reading all the general primers for radiology. I had no initial evaluation. No idea if this was due to the various bodily fluids I ended up elbow deep in, the energies I was exposed to when the ship crashed, or some combination of the two. And that left me with a lot of possibilities to cover, and no easy way to pare them down.
After spending a few moments cursing at the absolutely massive list of possibilities that 'all' comprised, I started the not-easy way to pare them down. Reading them one by one. For some of them I didn't need to read more then the introduction (I didn't turn big and green), for others didn't get past the introduction due to only understanding one word in three.
By the morning of the fourth day I had discovered a lot of things I was not, and even more that I didn't understand, but I was no closer to figuring out what I was. My further enlightenment about just how much I didn't know was put on hold when Tim came, and this time he wasn't alone.
Of course I couldn't tell who he was with, just that there were two blue suits instead of one.
"Hello Lisa." Tim's greeting answered one question, but the occupant of the other suit was still a mystery. And I still couldn't make out the details of either face.
"Hi Tim." I said with as much of a smile as I could muster. More tests were not something I was looking forward too. "I thought the testing was on hold until thursday?"
"What? Oh - don't worry." Tim's voice sounded apologetic before picking up the pace. "This is Mr. Stephenson from Warding. He's going to get a feel for you and see if we can come up with something that will get you out into the world."
While Tim's voice was upbeat I could read between the lines. They needed this room. They needed it bad enough to pull someone off a more important job long enough to make me 'safe'. I just smiled at Mr. Stephenson and asked "Anything I need to do?"
"Not really, just relax and stay calm. It might feel a little weird." His voice was robbed of whatever inflection it originally had by the suits speaker. He took off his gloves and held his hands over my torso while muttering in a voice too low for the speaker to pick up.
After a few minutes of this he took out his palmtop and consulted something on it. He looked at me, the palmtop, back at me, and then finally Tim. "I thought you said she was biological?" Even I could hear the confusion in his voice.
"I said we thought she was biological, you've seen how closely her output correlates to the circadian rhythms."
I ignored the fact that they were both talking as if I wasn't there; they were dispensing information I hadn't been able to glean from my earlier readings.
"And just because of that you think she's biological? I swear half the staff at this hospital need a bioinfomagics refresher." His small tirade against employee training was abandoned as he started to sketch runes in the air. The patterns that his glowing fingers drew were too fine in detail for me to make out, but I could tell they were complex. And when he finished less than a minute later, the two interconnected concentric circles changed from a soft white blur to a green on the inside with blue streaks on the outside.
"I mean look at it." The mage said when he was done, his exasperation evident even through the suit speaker.
Tim was silent and still, apparently staring at the glowing structure that hovered above my chest. Since he wasn't going to get me any answers for the time being, I decided to solicit my own.
"What does it mean?" I asked Mr. Stephenson, craning my head in an effort to get better angle. The fact that the construction stayed parallel to my chest conspired with my poor eyesight to thwart any effort of understanding it on my own.
"You can't -" he resumed his earlier tirade before catching himself, "Oh right, your eyes." The second bit almost sounded apologetic.
He was silent for a moment before turning to Tim. "I don't have time for this, you missed it, you explain it." He said while shoving his palmtop into Tim's hands and walking out the door. A trailing "I'll be back in two hours" was all he said before the door swung shut.
It took my brain a few seconds to catch up with what just happened. When it finally did I took out my frustration on the only available target: Tim. "What the hell was that! What the hell is this?" I badgered him, gesturing first at the door, then at the glyphs floating above my chest.
"Your magical?" Tim's voice was apologetic and questioning, as if he wasn't sure of the answer himself. The plastic hood crinkled as he looked between the palmtop in his hands and the hovering glyphs.
Despite my agitated state, I recognized that Tim had a much better chance at understanding what was going on that I did, if only because he could actually see said glyphs. So I refrained from more verbal abuse and settled on simply glaring at him until he started talking sense. It didn't take long for more of an explanation to appear, though the amount of sense it made was up for debate.
"Your magical core was- um, stressed, by something you were exposed to. And, uh, it attempted to reach a new, equilibrium. With the environment you were in." Tim's explanation was fragmented as he tapped on the palmtop and looked at the glowing symbols. "Your body is trying to, uh, adjust to this. So it's taking longer than normal to heal."
There was a pause in his explanation as he muttered something to softly for me to make out. I was about to ask what he said when he continued. "You should be able to control your output on a conscious level with some training. And I think the side effects should be minimal."
"You think." I didn't make much of an attempt to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
"Runic color theory was never my strong suit." Tim offered as an apology.
I couldn't blame him too much, all I remembered was the meanings for single colors. Once you add in more than one the best I had was guesses as well. Our collective lack of knowledge did spark one thought in my head though.
"Tim, since when was I important enough to rate a visit from someone of Mr. Stephenson's caliber?" I asked, not sure if I wanted the answer or not. I wasn't a serious enough case to rate a visit from anyone above an intern for quite some time. And suddenly someone skilled enough to draw a multi-element diagnostic ward, freehand, sans supplies, was having a look at me. Even if they needed to move me to a different room, it shouldn't have taken one of the new mages more than a few hours to ward up a suit for me; It only needed to last for half an hour at most.
"As far as I know? Never. But Shining Fist, the hero you brought in, asked about you the day before yesterday. I told him you were still in Iso. due to unknown causes, but you seemed to be stable." Tim said as he shifted on his feet. I didn't blame him for the minor breach of privacy, if someone saved my ass I'd want to know if they made it out ok.
When I didn't bite his head of for telling non-staff about my condition, Tim continued. "I didn't think much of it yesterday, but this morning your case is at the top of the queue. When I asked Dr. Fisher about it, he said that certain people felt you had been overlooked and that a better use of resources could be made."
Even if I had been unable to hear the sarcasm in Tim's voice I would have smelled the political maneuvering from a mile away. Someone had put the pressure on to get me out of Iso, but I had no idea where I was going to end up. For all I knew I was out of the frying pan and into the fire. "Any clue who is puling the strings?"
"No idea." Tim said with a shrug. "But I bet if you pay Shining Fist a visit you may be able to find out."
"Yeah, seeing as how that's not currently an option, want to try and explain Mr-Vastly-Overqualified's notes again?" I said with a gesture at the palmtop Mr Stephenson left behind.
"Uh, ok." Tim clearly wasn't overjoyed to try and slog through a topic that showcased something lacking in his knowledge, but he was willing to give it a shot anyway. I needed to remember to do something nice for him when I got out of here.
*****
We spent the better part of the next two hours slowly grinding through the notes that Mr Stephenson had left. I know we didn't pick up on the nuances of everything. I'm sure we missed an important point or two when the glyphs finally faded out. But we had a much better idea about what was happening to me.
While the root cause was still unknown, we had a better handle on the end results. Or at least an extrapolation of the end results by someone who knew what he was talking about.
* I was now inherently radioactive, and it looked like I would be as long as I was alive (or at least as long as my cells metabolized things).
* The amount of energy I put out strongly correlated to how excited/stressed I was, the inverse was theorized but not confirmed.
* I mainly emitted in the infrared spectrum, with a few small patches in higher energy ranges. Given what I was exposed to (a room full of burning teleporters and hospital equipment), this is assumed to be an attempt by my body to compensate.
* With enough training I should be able to control my power. But until that point in time staying calm and wearing protective clothing would be sufficient preventative measures.
Tim and I were struggling through some of the second level effects (sunburn may never be a problem for me again), when Mr Stephenson came back in. This time he wasn't bothering with a hazmat suit, and he carried a bundle of white cloth under one arm. He tossed the bundle on my bed and announced "Get dressed and put that on. You have a guest in the waiting room." Having said this he retrieved his palmtop from Tim and left once again.
I stared blankly at the bundle of cloth for a minute before Tim spoke up. "I'll go get your clothing." was all he said as he made his way out of the room.
I got out of bed and held the bundle of cloth at arms length, letting it unfurl until it almost hit the floor. It was a large lab coat, or at least it started life as one. Now it was covered in a series of embroidered runes. Some that marched from the cuffs to the shoulders, other that circled around the waist and collar. On the back were a pair of protection glyphs, large enough to be identifiable to even my blurry vision. Having nothing better to do, at least until Tim returned, I tried it on. The bottom reached all the way down to my calfs, but it wasn't uncomfortable, just heavier than I expected.
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed something change on the monitors by my bed. By sticking my face right up next to the screen I was able to read what had changed. Gone was the orange warning about hazardous (but not lethal) levels of radiation. Instead it had a green notice about a slightly higher, but still well within safe range, level of radiation.
I sat back down on the bed and smiled for the first time since the incident. The thought of who was waiting for me a distant worry in my mind. All that seemed to matter right now was that I could actually go out there and meet them.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy
Smoldering Decay:
[A Hero Sandwich Production]
Memories (pt 5)
----------
I didn't have to wait for more than a few minutes before Tim returned, a bundle of clothing under his arm. He paused for a moment when he saw me sitting on the bed in the modified lab coat.
"Here." He said while handing me the bundle of cloth. "The teams repairing the hospital pulled these out of your locker." He hesitated again before adding. "I'll just wait outside."
I looked at the clothing in my hands for a minute before it clicked. These were my clothes, the ones I had worn to work a week ago. I had given them up for lost. Apparently someone on the repair crew had gone the extra mile and salvaged the contents of the staffs lockers. It wasn't something I had expected. But then again, the other hospitals that had been attacked were just piles of rubble now. Skyway hospital was the first one still standing after an impact, even if it was a bit crooked.
After a self conscious glance at the camera in the ceiling corner, I stood up and turned my back to it. There was no sense in changing in the bathroom, that had a camera as well and it was significantly closer. The lab coat joined the clothing on the bed, and the hospital scrubs made a pile on the floor. I ignored the beeping of the equipment as room went from 'safe' to 'hazardous'. Putting on actual clothing felt strange after a week of wearing nothing but the paperweight scrubs. The denim and heavy cotton felt more like putting on armor than clothing, but I was willing to let that mental contortion slide by for the time being. I'd take all the help I could get, even if it was only in my head.
Tossing on the lab coat over the jeans and sweater felt a little bulky, but I ignored the minor discomfort in favor of worrying about who was waiting to see me. The happy feelings of freedom I had been so centered on a minute ago were doused by apprehension. Going into meetings without a clue had never ended well for me. And this meeting was with someone who had a lot of influence. The only thing that kept me walking towards the door was the knowledge that people with a lot influence rarely liked to wait.
I knocked on the door and, after a beep from the other side, it opened. The lighting in the hallways was brighter than my room and I had to squint for a few seconds before my eyes adjusted.
"Here," Tim said as he held out a pair of sunglasses for me. "I figured you could use these." His voice sounded strange without the distortion of the hazmat suit.
"Thanks." I said as I slid them on. The sunglasses reduced the details I could make out further. But, more importantly, they made is possible to see without squinting.
"Come on, this way to the waiting room."
I mumbled an affirmative and made sure to focus on him as he lead the way. To my blurry vision he was just one more head of dark hair in hospital scrubs, easily lost in the crowd. It didn't take all that long to reach the waiting room. Tim stopped beside a man in military dress. I couldn't make out his exact rank, but with everything that I assume he made happen, 'Important' seemed to fit the bill.
"Ahh, Miss Quinn. It's good to finally meet you." He said as we shook hands. "I'm officer Michaels. I was hoping we would have a chance to talk about your future."
"I'd be happy to, sir. But I'm lost as to why this is happening." I said, hoping that I could finally get some answers to all the strangeness that was going on.
"Certainly, but the details should be discussed someplace a little more private." He turned to Tim and dismissed him with a brief handshake and a "Thank you Mr Davis."
I followed Michaeles as he left the waiting room and made a beeline for a rather large black suv. "Shouldn't I check out?" I asked as someone, also in military dress, got out to open the car door for us.
"Don't worry about that, that paperwork can be taken care of later." Michaels said as climbed inside and scooted over to the far seat. I took the implicit invitation and got in as well. When the car door closed with a solid thunk I tried not to think about frying pans and fires.
"Miss Quinn, you present us with a unique opportunity. As you know hospital staff would normally be fast tracked for recovery. But due to the unique circumstances surrounding your accident we didn't know what to expect, and by the time we did, well it was obvious that the hospital was no longer an appropriate fit." He pulled a folder out of the briefcase at his feet and passed it to me. "I'm hoping that we can provide a better use of your talents."
I opened the folder with more than a little trepidation. I knew that my talents, if you could call the unconscious emission of dangerous levels of radiation such a thing, would be a barrier to getting back to work. But had hoped that with time I could control it. Michaels talked as if all of this was a forgone conclusion. I took of the sunglasses, and opened the folder to find surprisingly legible (read: large) font. The first few pages where both comforting and worrying at the same time: A patient summary and in depth analysis of my abilities, as well as few theories about their practical application. Comforting because I could understand them, and worrying because they were far more detailed than anything I saw at the hospital.
When I got over my shock and flipped past the first few pages, I ran into something even more confusing, page after page of hospital surveys. They were by no means comprehensive but they all listed possible patient loads as well as technical sophistication. And throughout it all was a liberal sprinkling of abbreviations and acronyms that made no sense to me.
"I don't get it." I finally said. "you want me to do hospital surveys? High stress environments full of already sick people is just about the worst place for me. And you already seem to know this." I emphasized my last point by tapping on my patient summary at the front.
Michaels had answers for my concerns. "We are willing to provide equipment and training to help deal with your abilities. You current attire is just one possibility. Any residual radiation will be mitigated by limiting the amount of time you would spend on site. You are one of the few people with the necessary training to evaluate these locations, and who is unable to contribute locally. We would prefer to get you back on your previous job, but unfortunately that isn't an option."
His arguments sounded logical, but something was off. "I doubt that recruiting me to evaluate hospitals would warrant the amount of weight you have thrown around to get me in this car. And the fact that you would have had to access my, supposedly confidential, patent records to create this patent survey hasn't escaped my notice either."
The smile that Michaels had worn from the beginning went away, instead replaced with a much more serious expression. "Miss Quinn, allow me to be frank. We are losing this war. You yourself came very close to being a casualty. They are destroying our hospitals faster than we can rebuild them. We need trained people to help us evaluate alternate locations for patent care. You will receive more than fair compensation for your services. Any details beyond that will have to wait until after you have agreed to help us." Having said that, he pulled out another form from his briefcase and laid it on top of the folder in my lap.
This was something I wasn't all that surprised to see. Non-disclosure agreements were not unheard of as part of hospital life in paragon city. Every time a hero comes up with some new technology that they want to test (usually on themselves), and they are smart enough to realize that it may have an adverse reaction to their well being, they will make arrangements to have medical personal on site. An NDA is usually involved in these cases, as they have to tell us enough about the device that we can help them if something goes wrong. Those NDAs don't threaten treason for failure to comply with them though.
I read it, and understood enough of it to be sure that it just put limitations on what I could talk about to whom. The exact details of what and whom were buried in legalese. But I trusted that those would be made clear to me if I signed it. Part of me wanted to scrawl my name on the dotted line, just to figure out what all this was about; part of me resented the rather obvious manipulation tactics they where using. But in the end my choices boiled down to staying in the hospital and waiting months or even years to figure out what was going on, or sign my name and find out. After a few minutes of thinking it over I scrawled my signature at the bottom. I knew there would be strings attached to the carrot they were waving in front of me. But it was a mighty fine carrot.
I handed the form back to Michaels. After a brief glance at it his smile came back. "Glad to have you on board." As the car pulled away from the curb Michaels placed a few more files on the seat between us. "As you may have guessed these are not normal hospitals we want you to evaluate. We have been working in conjunction with Portal Corp to find alternate wolds where we can use hospitals for longer term patient care. We can't afford the time it would take to start negotiations with all of the possible candidates. We need someone to evaluate the candidate worlds and report back on which ones would be the most capable of helping us. I hope that someone is you."
I was stuck speechless by the audacity of the plan. I picked up one of the folders and leafed through it without seeing the contents, stalling for time while I tried to come up with a response that wasn't laughing or crying. After a minute I remembered some of the stories I heard through the grapevine. "we aren't talking about the praetorian mess or that shadow shard place right?"
Michaels was quick to quell my fears. "Oh no, the places you'll be visiting are nowhere close to those hotspots. You will be surveying much lower risk locations. Your job won't be without some risk, but nothing more than what you faced before the ritki started kamikaze-ing into hospitals." He leaned over a bit to look at the page I had open in front of me. "Beta Tau 3-48, a close analog of our own dimension, relatively speaking. Something happened in the past between Hamidon and Nemesis leaving both greatly diminished. Their largest worry seems to be with a stronger version of the Clockwork King." Michaels paused for a moment to give me a reassuring smile. "But don't worry about that, you just need to be concerned with how many patients they can help us with, and how quickly those heroes can recover while they are there."
It didn't take much longer for me to decide to sign up for the program. If I wasn't able to help people in hospitals here, I would at least be able to get them the best help that I could elsewhere. There were more papers to sign, with mind numbing legalese and scary repercussions, but it seemed like a good deal. At least I understood why they went through so much effort to get me out of the hospital. I spent the remaining time of the car ride combing over my patient profile, trying to figure out what I could do to control my abilities.
My ruminations were interrupted as the car came to a stop and the door was opened by the driver. I had been so absorbed by my reading I had missed our arrival. We were in a small underground parking structure. More black vehicles with tinted windows filled the spaces around us. I followed behind Michaels as he badged us through several doors and into an elevator. Inside the elevator there were no buttons, which suggested that there was only one destination, or it was tied somehow to the badge that called it. The doors opened to a much more hectic scene than I expected, technicians and military personal bustled through the corridors, intent on their own destinations or conversations. Michaels didn't waste any time, setting off at a brisk pace; I followed, feeling slightly out of place among the throng of people who obviously knew where they were going.
I won't bore you with the details of next few hours, suffice to say that there were tests, papers to sign, more tests, and more papers to sign. By the end of it all I was feeling rather worn out, and was happy to follow my driver cum guide to my temporary onsite housing. Michaels had disappeared sometime between the second set of testing and form signing. After making sure that my newly issued badge opened my door, my guide, whose name I have long since forgotten, informed me that wandering the halls wasn't recommended and that someone would fetch me in the morning.
I mumbled something vaguely affirmative in nature and shuffled into my room. The first thing that caught my eye was the shingling on the walls. Heavy grey plastic bags about two foot square and half an inch thick were bolted on all four walls, stenciling across the surface identified them as lead. Even the back of the door didn't escape treatment, though they had to overlap a bit in the center to fit two rows. Either then floor and ceiling were thick enough that they didn't have to worry about additional shielding or there was only one floor to this place. The only vertical surface to escape the treatment was another door. This one lead to an en-suite bathroom, which was shingled as well. Someone had been thoughtful enough to hang a small mirror above the sink, as the original fixture had been covered or removed by the lead shielding. The small shower had been made just a little bit smaller, and I wondered briefly about the possibility of leaks, but in the end it wasn't my problem. I used the facilities, shrugged out of my clothing, and curled up on the rather stiff cot.
*****
The next two weeks passed in a rush of training. Training on how to safely use the portals, training on how to reduce my emissions, training on how not to stand out in a crowd. The last one came as a bit of a surprise. Apparently not all of the worlds I would be investigating were on the best of terms with us, and I would have to avoid drawing attention to myself as I made my evaluations. During that time there was an attempt on the Galaxy city hospital, apparently it was also turned into a glancing blow. I never found out exactly how bad the damage was, just that the hospital was still standing. The only improvement in the routine was when they moved me into more permanent quarters. The new room didn't have slabs of lead bolted to the walls, I figured they were in the walls instead. When I moved in the walls had a fresh coat of grey paint, and the door had a much more solid feel to it.
My first evaluation was almost anti-climatic, though I will admit to getting a small thrill my first time through the portal. I forget the exact name of the place, just that they had never seen a resurgence in their war with the rikti. The local contact greeted me as I emerged from the portal and led me on a informative, if slightly boring, tour of several hospitals. I observed things, I took notes, I asked a few questions, and I came home. After that first successful run through they had me doing one or two a day, starting with the worlds that knew we were coming. Those made up a rather short list and soon I was visiting the worlds where I wasn't welcomed with open arms, or at all.
That was exciting for a while, but it slowly became simply stressful. I was dropped off in an out of the way alley or dark corner of a park. I would make my way to the nearest hospital and find a seat in the waiting room. Put a slightly worried or tired look on your face and you blend in with the rest of the crowd. Watch the people as they come in, and see how long it takes for the minor cases to come back out. Look at the heroes as they exit from the deeper in the hospital, if they have any limps or bandages still attached. If that wasn't enough, walk around like you know where your going. A purposeful walk and the right attire will get you surprisingly far.
*****
I had thought that if things went sideways it would be while I'm on the other side of the portal. I was wrong, but not by much.
I was prepping to visit one of the not-on-the-best-of-terms dimensions. The chatter of the portal technicians as they dialed in the portal settings a familiar murmur in the background. My review of the map was interrupted by the alarms blaring. In my crash corse introduction they had never covered what to do in if the base alarms go off, so I looked to the technicians for a clue. They were both huddled behind the control panel looking fearfully down the hallway. I shot a quick look down the hallway as well and noticed what they were so afraid of: Rikti. Their glowing portal hung in the air as more continued to come out. I realized, after a glance around the room, that the technicians had the only cover available. So I scampered over to join them, hoping that we wouldn't be seen and the troops that always seemed to plentiful around the base would be able to save us.
"Any clue how much longer it's going to take?" I asked in a whisper.
"You want us to start up that portal now?" The tech nearest me hissed back.
"Well, yeah, better stuck in a dimension that we have good, or at least non-hostile, relations with than captured by them." I answered with a nod of my head toward the hallway.
The pair of them looked at me for a second, then glanced down the hallway before nodding at each other. "Right, no guarantee, but at least we won't be captured."
"Good enough for me." I said as I moved to act as a lookout.
It was a tense few minutes listening for approaching rikti and making the occasional glance around the corner. Thankfully they all seemed to focus their attention at the other end of the hallway where there were sporadic sounds of gunfire. Their inattention did not last once the portal opened up though. The guards closest to us turned and drew their rifles at the noise from the portal.
"They're coming!" I hissed over my shoulder at the pair.
"Need more time!" was the only response I got aside from rapid clatter of keys.
I sucked in a breath between my teeth and concentrated on the one skill I had been able to cultivate in my weeks of training. Sticking my head around the corner I focused my will against the breathing mask of the closer of the two guards. After a second the collection of plastic and metal started to smoke and the guard got a lung full of rather noxious fumes. The other guard, rather than try and help his compatriot sighted along his rifle. I didn't wait for him to pull the trigger. The rifle pulse took a smoking chunk out of the corner and I winced as hot metal fragments bounced off the back of my neck. I psyched myself up for a few seconds and glanced back around the corner. This time the rifle came back up almost immediately. But the adrenaline must have helped, because his respirator started to smoke as well before he could pull the trigger.
My momentary elation sunk like a lead weight when I saw three more rikti round the hallway's far corner and run towards us. "No more time!" I shouted as I got up and to beat feet for the portal. At this point not caring all that much where it went, as long as it was away from here.
Two steps from the portal I heard one of the technicians yell "Wait! It's not sta-", but it was too late and my momentum carried me through.
I hit uneven ground on the other side and barely managed to avoid face planting on the metal grating that was the floor. After an awkward stumble I looked over my shoulder at the portal, just in time to see it disappear. It didn't take a genius to figure out what the tech had been trying to say. And it didn't look like they were going to be joining me any time soon.
Looking around the room I was now stuck in revealed damaged machinery and pieces of armor embossed with the crey logo. Great, I managed to land in a crey facility that had recently seen an outbreak of violence. If this place was anything like home that meant one of two things. Either the hero corps was going to send one of their forensics teams down here to bag and tag everything; a relatively good thing in my estimation. Or crey was going to send their own clean up crew; a not so good thing. It all depended on what happened and who got out.
Given my previous luck I wasn't going to bet on the hero corps showing up, so I set out in an effort to find an exit. Hopefully before someone unfriendly found me.
An hour and a half later I had a much better appreciation for whomever had decided to shut this place down. Every room I looked in was either littered with broken equipment, broken crey powersuits, or spent brass. I saw plenty of half assembled portal technology, so I had a good idea what the crey were doing here. And perhaps, if my training about portal tech had been worth anything, a good guess as too why I ended up here.
The sight of a larger heavier door set in a little alcove raised my hopes. I knew I was on the highest sublevel from the elevators, and this door was different from anything else I had seen. So with a slight spring in my step I hurried over and pressed the button next to it.
The glowing red sky and floating islands of the shadow shard started back at me through the door way.
"Well crap."
----------
Finally done!
I'm sure those of you participated in the task force that spawned the idea for Dark!mirror-verse heroes know exactly where she is. But for those of you who don't know Dr. Quaterfield's task force centers around crey who have been experimenting with portal tech in the shadow shard. Its fun, you should try it out some time.
I'm also not sure if/when I will write the next bit of Decay-fic. So it's safe to assume that the hero corps, or more accurately the portal corps, show up to do a final bag and tag of the base and find her there. Cue much paperwork and a trip to atlas park.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy
Hmm. Well done. Though I'm curious. Were the first couple of chapters intended to give the false impression that Decay'd been in Primal Earth ever since the teleportation accident? I saw several hints along the lines of her getting special treatment that made no sense in wartime...but would make perfect sense on Primal Earth, where the Rikti aren't causing anywhere near the same level of casualties.
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."
Special treatment? kinda.
Trained medical staff are in high demand due to the increased load on hospitals.
She was one of the only survivors of the ship plowing into the hospital.
They couldn't dump her back on the streets (without causing more cases of radiation poisoning).
As with any profession, there is a tendency to take care of your own.
The fact that she stayed behind to ferry the wounded did nothing to reduce the amount of behind the scenes favoritism that inevitably goes on.
So a conspiracy of small things added up to her getting stuck in an isolation room for far longer than she really should have been. J Random Hero probably
would have lasted a few days until they figured out what was going on. Then been shoved in a rad suit, given a pair of glasses, and been told 'good
luck' and perhaps 'stop by MAGI on your way home'.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy