11-12-2018, 12:15 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-12-2018, 11:38 AM by Nika Raskov.)
The world welcomed her back wanting to play her least favorite game. Where am I? She was curled up on her left side in a puddle. That wasn’t saying much because she was soaking wet from her playdate underneath the bridge and her dip in the pond anyway. Despite liquid generally occurring in either a vertical or horizontal state, it took a minute to reorient to the proper order of things. It was as if she was in space and couldn’t quite shift to the proper perspective of where down should be. Wasn’t something like that in a novel she’d read? The one infernal blinking shoe didn’t help.
It was darker in the pipe which made sense. Pipe? Was that what this was? Not that it really mattered. Nika faced the entrance, or exit depending on your perspective, where she’d meteored in an unknown amount of time ago. The beastie’s corpse was plainly visible and nearer to the mouth of the big drain, a darker shadow against a dark night beyond. It hung impaled on an unfortunate twisting net of rebar and chunks of broken cement that looked like a giant clawed hand throwing dice. Nika had not escaped lady luck either.
She got as far as scraping her shoe off by the heel to flick across the way. Let the blinking lights draw prying eyes elsewhere. Something was terribly wrong though and without pinpointing what she tagged her drone, Big Brother. “Hey buddy,” she whispered. “Send Tennant in with the medkit.” Nika didn’t have to stretch at all for her shoe but she levered herself upward on her elbow and pitched it across the pipe all in one motion. Her abdomen responded with a too-brief warning spike before her brain shut down for a reboot. She passed out just as long as it took for her cheek to fall back to the rough cement.
Nika blinked herself awake. A dull, tearing pain had asserted itself in her middle. She licked her lips and tasted blood for the second time that night. “BB, send Tennant.”
The goggles had fallen around her neck again and she slid them up into place slowly over several new and sharply-protesting cuts and scrapes. A persistent nick at her hairline beaded thickly before leaking a line of red to drip from her temple onto the damp cement her face rest against. The green, spider-tendril wig was gone, still tangled in the stiffening hand of the she-beast. A quality piece, it was already starting to dry out and re-fluff in the slight breeze.
Her weapon was firmly clamped in her left hand still, thanks to the honeycomb cast. Wouldn’t that be the best odd review on the manufacturer’s web page? The thought was too amusing for the circumstances but she smirked regardless. Nika propped her weaponized cast on the inside of her thigh facing the outside. Facing the...scarecrow. Just in case there were visitors. If something came up behind her, well, she might become food.
Nika couldn’t afford to waste time not looking for the problem, as much as she didn’t really want to go poking around. It didn’t take long to find. The gash just above her hip was a garish affair; her armored shirt must have snagged in passing and left her abdomen exposed. It did not look good; her palm didn’t even cover it all. Fuck me.
Despite years upon years spent carefully mastering discipline, Nika could feel anxiety building on the periphery. Her nose beaded sweat just thinking about it. The thing she would have to use in the medkit was both a triumph of modern medicine and undoubtedly the second and third most horrible thing she’d ever experienced. It was the medical equivalent of the atomic bomb; horrifyingly effective. She’d used it twice before; once of her own free will and once...not. She just had to make it until the drone showed up is all. Easy peasy. Except a glance at the puddle with her goggles revealed something problematic. The water she was laying in was not water at all; it was blood. Sweet cheese and crackers. “BB, I will sell you to Papa John’s for a dollar. You must go faster.” I swear, I’ll do it. This time, I swear.
Nika pulled her shirt down over the wound, hand shaking ever so slightly and applied heavy pressure with a grimace. Hurt was wholly inaccurate. She passed out again.
A persistent red strobe in her face woke her. Still here. Ha. The little drone hovered over the medpack. Nika reached for the box, knowing she had to act quickly. Purpose helped push away the hovering cloud of anxious dread. She popped the mouthpiece in immediately as cracked teeth were a common occurrence with this thing. Nika bunched the armored baselayer up and away from the laceration. A purified liquid mixture made her hiss in application. A thick, shimmering moist sheet was extracted one-handed and unrolled from the cylinder housing it. Properly set, it nearly covered her whole left side. She palmed the control unit like a detonator, synched it, then activated it. The light under her thumb turned from red to blue to green. Then it shut off. Hidden by a dark grey flap, this was a military device after all, a screen would read in German, “Unit active. Removal will result in death.” Subtle.
The pad warmed uncomfortably; that was the initial scan. Nanofibers peeled off the sheet and wormed their way into the gash. Nika fought the inclination to vomit her guts all over the place. This wasn’t even the worst part. She bit off a groan as the things moved deeper, probing. Breathing was an alternating affair of holding her breath to keep from crying out and desperately sucking air through her nose when she could. Nika could hear herself gasping. In the tube’s relative silence the sound seemed like a massive ‘come and kill me’ invitation. However minute it actually was.
The process felt like it was taking forever. Nika was getting used to the pain. Then Satan’s nanosnakes began to knit her back together, showing all the delicate finesse of a lioness gorging on a live kill. That is, none at all.
It dulled her senses to a haze. The system was not equipped with anesthetic, you just had to endure and survive until you inevitably passed out from shock and pain. It was easier, no it helped, to find something to focus on. Nika put everything into maintaining a vigilant watch on the entrance. If something came to finish the job, she was ready. Until Black Hour, that is. Then she was screwed.
It was darker in the pipe which made sense. Pipe? Was that what this was? Not that it really mattered. Nika faced the entrance, or exit depending on your perspective, where she’d meteored in an unknown amount of time ago. The beastie’s corpse was plainly visible and nearer to the mouth of the big drain, a darker shadow against a dark night beyond. It hung impaled on an unfortunate twisting net of rebar and chunks of broken cement that looked like a giant clawed hand throwing dice. Nika had not escaped lady luck either.
She got as far as scraping her shoe off by the heel to flick across the way. Let the blinking lights draw prying eyes elsewhere. Something was terribly wrong though and without pinpointing what she tagged her drone, Big Brother. “Hey buddy,” she whispered. “Send Tennant in with the medkit.” Nika didn’t have to stretch at all for her shoe but she levered herself upward on her elbow and pitched it across the pipe all in one motion. Her abdomen responded with a too-brief warning spike before her brain shut down for a reboot. She passed out just as long as it took for her cheek to fall back to the rough cement.
Nika blinked herself awake. A dull, tearing pain had asserted itself in her middle. She licked her lips and tasted blood for the second time that night. “BB, send Tennant.”
The goggles had fallen around her neck again and she slid them up into place slowly over several new and sharply-protesting cuts and scrapes. A persistent nick at her hairline beaded thickly before leaking a line of red to drip from her temple onto the damp cement her face rest against. The green, spider-tendril wig was gone, still tangled in the stiffening hand of the she-beast. A quality piece, it was already starting to dry out and re-fluff in the slight breeze.
Her weapon was firmly clamped in her left hand still, thanks to the honeycomb cast. Wouldn’t that be the best odd review on the manufacturer’s web page? The thought was too amusing for the circumstances but she smirked regardless. Nika propped her weaponized cast on the inside of her thigh facing the outside. Facing the...scarecrow. Just in case there were visitors. If something came up behind her, well, she might become food.
Nika couldn’t afford to waste time not looking for the problem, as much as she didn’t really want to go poking around. It didn’t take long to find. The gash just above her hip was a garish affair; her armored shirt must have snagged in passing and left her abdomen exposed. It did not look good; her palm didn’t even cover it all. Fuck me.
Despite years upon years spent carefully mastering discipline, Nika could feel anxiety building on the periphery. Her nose beaded sweat just thinking about it. The thing she would have to use in the medkit was both a triumph of modern medicine and undoubtedly the second and third most horrible thing she’d ever experienced. It was the medical equivalent of the atomic bomb; horrifyingly effective. She’d used it twice before; once of her own free will and once...not. She just had to make it until the drone showed up is all. Easy peasy. Except a glance at the puddle with her goggles revealed something problematic. The water she was laying in was not water at all; it was blood. Sweet cheese and crackers. “BB, I will sell you to Papa John’s for a dollar. You must go faster.” I swear, I’ll do it. This time, I swear.
Nika pulled her shirt down over the wound, hand shaking ever so slightly and applied heavy pressure with a grimace. Hurt was wholly inaccurate. She passed out again.
A persistent red strobe in her face woke her. Still here. Ha. The little drone hovered over the medpack. Nika reached for the box, knowing she had to act quickly. Purpose helped push away the hovering cloud of anxious dread. She popped the mouthpiece in immediately as cracked teeth were a common occurrence with this thing. Nika bunched the armored baselayer up and away from the laceration. A purified liquid mixture made her hiss in application. A thick, shimmering moist sheet was extracted one-handed and unrolled from the cylinder housing it. Properly set, it nearly covered her whole left side. She palmed the control unit like a detonator, synched it, then activated it. The light under her thumb turned from red to blue to green. Then it shut off. Hidden by a dark grey flap, this was a military device after all, a screen would read in German, “Unit active. Removal will result in death.” Subtle.
The pad warmed uncomfortably; that was the initial scan. Nanofibers peeled off the sheet and wormed their way into the gash. Nika fought the inclination to vomit her guts all over the place. This wasn’t even the worst part. She bit off a groan as the things moved deeper, probing. Breathing was an alternating affair of holding her breath to keep from crying out and desperately sucking air through her nose when she could. Nika could hear herself gasping. In the tube’s relative silence the sound seemed like a massive ‘come and kill me’ invitation. However minute it actually was.
The process felt like it was taking forever. Nika was getting used to the pain. Then Satan’s nanosnakes began to knit her back together, showing all the delicate finesse of a lioness gorging on a live kill. That is, none at all.
It dulled her senses to a haze. The system was not equipped with anesthetic, you just had to endure and survive until you inevitably passed out from shock and pain. It was easier, no it helped, to find something to focus on. Nika put everything into maintaining a vigilant watch on the entrance. If something came to finish the job, she was ready. Until Black Hour, that is. Then she was screwed.