Wake-up Call – Chapter 82 – Aftermath

[Hannah]

"I think it's… Fuck me sideways," Minnie says as she warily lifts up the edge of the black signal-shielding cloak covering us before she dramatically throws it off.

In front of me, Behemoth's head and shoulders rise above the wrecked homes, the shattered rubble, the lone, broken pillars of lacquered, red wood that no longer frame any doorways.

Alexandria is in front of it, poised to strike, her right hand cupped over her ear.

The Yangban are behind it, holding it up with glowing, green fields of interlocked energy.

None of them move.

I don't care.

I run toward Colin. Toward the man trapped in the immobile armor, not knowing, not even hoping that—

I drop to my knees and slide over powdered stone until I'm by his side, until my trembling hands touch the back of his still warm armor, covered with scratches and burn marks, the cobalt blue flaked off nearly everywhere to reveal the same black polymer that my own armor is made of.

I hesitate, my power still a knife, lying on the ground, beside me, over broken cobblestones, its green light trying to fight the multi-colored flames coming from Colin's bike to my left.

I think.

It becomes a crowbar.

And I slide it beneath him, trying to get some leverage and move the infuriating, moronic, stupid man who has to be alive so I can be mad at him, so please, please, [please]—

"Here," Minnie murmurs, right by my side, as she slides the blade of her own sword beside my green crowbar, and we both work on lifting his left shoulder, the armor rigid enough that his whole frame moves when we do, his right arm working as a pivot when it digs into the ground by his side.

On his other side.

In front of me.

Then he's high enough, and I drop the crowbar to push, to just push until he turns over, falling on his back with a loud crash that doesn't sound metallic at all as grey dust wafts around him.

His helmet is closed. Sealed. Not a trace of his mouth shows.

His visor is opaque, still blue.

I don't know what to do.

My power leaps to my hand and shifts into a chainsaw, into a drill, into any kind of power tool I could conceivably fight with, but I don't know how to use them for anything other than that. I don't know how to take his helmet off and check for a pulse, for his breathing, for…

For [Colin].

"Hannah, follow my instructions," Dragon's calm, soothing voice says.

And I try not to cry.

***

[Dragon]

She does it.

She finds the hard reset, the emergency power supply connected to his halberd's holster, the tools still intact in the portable workbench set on his bike.

She listens to me, her fingers moving with mechanical precision and focus, never wavering. Not a single time.

She does what I can't do.

And now it's my turn.

Hannah crumbles, crying on Mouse Protector's shoulder, and I parse over Colin's armor sensors, quickly shutting off any that look too damaged to function so as not to waste any of the remaining battery.

He isn't breathing.

Under his visor, protected by his helmet, the life-support systems now provide him with a stream of filtered air that could've seen him survive through Leviathan's waves, that should've protected him from any radiation lingering after Behemoth's attacks.

He isn't breathing.

Doesn't matter. It's been seconds, not minutes, so I redirect the ventilation and turn his helmet into an impromptu CPAP machine, forcing fresh air into his mouth and nose as I wait for the other sensors to come online, to tell me—

His heart isn't beating.

I don't panic. I don't tear my hair out. I don't scream, yell, and cry. Not even in the ways I can.

There's a riot in the Birdcage.

Heartbreaker is leaving his mansion.

The Simurgh just shifted in her orbit.

A million things claim for my attention. A million things I could be doing. Should be doing.

And I say no.

I say this is important. This is [mine]. This is the good I want to do, the one good thing I [choose] to do.

So I shut it all off.

There will be records to parse. Time to see what went wrong while I wasn't looking.

But now I'm holding my lover. I'm sliding my consciousness across his armor, through the thing born out of both our minds, the closest we have to a child.

And the rest of the world will wait.

***

[Lisa]

Why? Why would he do it? Why would he just—

[Colin Wallis—]

I don't understand. I don't. He was happy. He had two women in love with him. He was becoming the hero he'd drifted away from. He was… He was…

[Colin Wallis—]

I barely feel Taylor's arms around me. Don't hear her murmurs. Her soothing tone. I know it's there. I know she's there. But she could also leave. Like he has. Like… like everybody can. Because I don't know. I don't understand. I don't [get it—

Colin Wallis—]

Why?! He could live! He should live! Why would he do that?! Why would he just… just… throw it all away and [leave?!]

Why would anybody choose to leave and—

There's a night sky.

No. No, there isn't.

There's… space.

Vast, unfolded like I've never seen, imagined. There are stars that shift out of place, reflected across a myriad tapestries of light and dark, sometimes aligned, others out of place, the colors themselves transformed into something other as they pass through gravity wells that…

That [dance].

There are two beings sliding against one another, shedding parts of themselves that they exchange like two rivers trying to become one, striving to turn into an ocean of stars.

They spiral, except that's not the right word because a spiral is something that one draws in two dimensions, three, and not… not something that [echoes] across time, that drags its eddies and twists them, turning space itself into the spiral they travel through as they approach—

[Colin Wallis!]

They approach Earth.

Me.

Inevitably, inexorably, the dancing gods reach toward a yellow Sun, toward the glittering, blue jewel suspended in—

[Colin Wallis' attachment to Lisa Wilbourn—]

But there's not a single jewel. As much as the stars ripple, so does the lonely planet. So does every permutation of my own world as it—

[Colin Wallis' act meaningful. Colin Wallis' saved life of person valued by Colin Wallis. Colin Wallis did not commit—]

And they spread across every single one, glimmering slivers of their divinity falling down, looking for—

[Lisa Wilbourn loved! Lisa Wilbourn cherished! Lisa Wilbourn not alone!]

They… They fall toward…

[Lisa Wilbourn mine!]

Power…?

[Lisa Wilbourn not allowed to break! Lisa Wilbourn not allowed to fall! Lisa Wilbourn not allowed to…]

To… What? What, Power?

[Lisa Wilbourn not allowed to deviate from Lisa Wilbourn.]

What are you—

"Liz? Liz!" Taylor's voice intrudes, her words once more meaningful as she shakes my shoulders until I see the girl in front of me, the green eyes wide with shock—

[Contracted pupils, forehead pearled with sweat, rapid breathing, paleness—]

What is… What just…

"Liz! Please, don't do this, please, don't… Just… Just come back. Come back and say something stupid and inappropriate. Please, Liz, just…"

Her cheek is soft under my cupped hand, and her eyes soften when they meet mine.

"Sorry," I say. Not knowing what I'm sorry for.

She swallows, her grip on my shoulders relaxing just enough that blood once more flows beneath her fingers, and she slowly nears me until her forehead rests on mine as she allows her eyes to close.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, this isn't about me, but… don't scare me like that. Please," she repeats, possibly reaching the record for the most times Taylor has used this word in a single conversation.

Her cold sweat spreads between our skin. Her shaky breath over my lips. Her scent inside of me.

I am not alone.

Even if… Even if he…

"Lisa, I'm going to pilot Colin's armor to the healer's area," Dragon's voice says with a clinical detachment she can't be feeling.

My eyes shoot wide open, and I see her avatar on the monitor to my left and above me, past the translucent curtain of Taylor's hair, her face as stoic as it's ever been.

Chris holds his breath beside me.

Taylor turns toward Dragon.

And I…

[Chances of survival after—]

Never tell me the odds.

[Lisa Wilbourn's relationship with Dinah Alcott—]

You cheeky, little… Wait. Wait, Power, what just… What did you just do?

[Anthropomorphizing of parahuman abilities' interfaces—]

***

[Dragon]

"I require assistance," I say as I spread his arms open, and Hannah and Mouse Protector hurry to get them over their shoulders.

Then I take a step forward and shoot lightning through Colin's heart.

It doesn't start.

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, [stupid!]

Of course it doesn't! That's just in movies! The defibrillator Colin installed in his armor is just meant for cardiac arrest, to restore normal function to an irregular heart rate, not to restart what has stopped! This is just wasting time—

No. No. This isn't helping.

Calm.

Cerebral.

Next step, keep walking alongside Hannah and Mouse Protector. Make list of healers present. Current capabilities.

No. Priorities.

Strength-assisting components of power armor… That could work.

I rhythmically contract and relax all the pseudo-muscle fibers that directly interface with Colin's undersuit, causing his own muscles to act in response, to squeeze blood vessels, to have blood go around his whole body, helped by each averted motion I induce on him, the forced currents of air entering his lungs hopefully reaching his blood and going to his brain to keep it from developing any—

Not [now].

All right. This is helping. Cool body down to slow any degrading process. Yes. Good.

Hannah stumbles on the frame of a fallen window, and we regain our balance before I can think to snap at her.

I still feel terrible at it. At the words ready to be said.

But we march forward, toward the temple. The miraculously intact temple that wasn't targeted by Behemoth despite it all. The one part of Lisa's plan that worked flawlessly, that has saved so many lives.

Colin's body is cold. As cold as the internal refrigeration can manage. Air is flowing inside of him, his chest rising and falling through induced, mechanical strain as if I was performing a very comprehensive form of CPR—which I am, but I'm also moving him, carrying him to—

The list is compiled.

Othala is useless. She needs the patient to be awake.

Scapegoat may help. Not if there's any brain damage, but anything else—

Cyberdyne? A cyberware Tinker? That could…

I browse through all the discarded designs for prostheses too expensive to be commercially viable I have access to. They are protected by patent law, even if they'll never reach the general public.

I am in China.

Patent law is not that strict over here.

My avatar bites her lip, and I don't even realize when I did it as I order my nearest factory to start producing a set of turbines that will, once installed, supplement or outright replace a pumping heart. Then—

We are walking up the hill, nearing the steps, Grue's power still dissipating, the black, impenetrable cloud now drifting at waist height, allowing the temple's walls to rise above it, the hurried sounds of the busy healers and surviving patients reaching me as soon as I allow myself to process them.

"You're going to be all right. You're going to be fine so that Dragon and I can refuse to talk to you for being so bullheadedly stupid. You're going to live so that I can be furious at you until you tell me something clueless, disoriented, that tells me you don't understand the issue [at all], and then I'll laugh, and hug you, and kiss you, and beg you not to ever leave me…"

I don't cry.

Not yet.

I just take another step. Another step closer to my goal, where others will take care of him better than I can.

And then I'll allow myself the luxury of breaking down.

***

[Vista]

I…

My power…

The world has moved around me.

The river is split where I diverted it, more than half of it rushing down the new path that tears through a broken forest.

I still can't see.

My head is still killing me.

But… But this…

"Dennis?" I ask, the word cutting through my aching throat.

He doesn't answer.

"Dennis?" I repeat, more urgently, feeling his arm wrapped around me, his chest on my back.

"Hey…" he weakly answers. "Enjoy your beauty rest?"

I leave the river behind.

My power retreats, snaps back to me, to my immediate surroundings.

My head clears. Not enough for me to regain anything but a blur of color, but enough that thinking is no longer such a struggle, that I can… [touch] the world around me.

We're on top of the dam, but it's cracked, pieces of concrete missing all around us even if we're on…

"Dennis, did you… did you [block Behemoth?"] I try to yell at him. At the utter idiot, moron, stupid…

I can't.

My throat clenches because his grip on me is that weak, that…

That…

"You'll have to speak a bit louder. The big guy was yelling for quite a while, you know? Can't blame him; you really know how to get under someone's skin, Missy."

I raise my hand to clutch his forearm. The one lying limply just under my neck. Over my chest.

And I stumble to my feet.

He groans in protest, and I have to lean forward, almost using a judo throw to slide his weight over my own back, to support him on my own unsteady feet.

I clench my eyes shut, leaving behind even the blur of blue and grey that I had just regained.

Take a deep breath.

And stretch my power.

The pain comes back immediately, but I don't stop. Even as glass knives stab my brain and shatter inside of it, even as my breath cuts across my throat and inside my chest, even as my blood hammers in my temples until I feel they will shatter…

I stand.

I stand and make a path for us, one that will take us straight to the miraculously intact temple where healing awaits.

I reach it.

And then… the hardest part.

With Dennis slumped on my back, with my body protesting every second, with my thoughts fading and a tempting, black warmth trying to claim me…

I walk.

Or, at least, I stumble.

***

[Hannah]

There's a medical Thinker over him.

Colin's helmet is off, a respirator stuck over his mouth, over his blue lips open around a plastic tube.

There are monitors near his stretcher, connected not to him but to one of Dragon's drones as she refuses to take his armor off as she keeps breathing for him, moving his blood, cooling him… All the things I know from my own medical training.

His heart still isn't beating.

"I need to [see him]," the stubborn man with a white, feathered plague mask repeats to the drone hovering between the medical displays and Colin's still body.

"You [don't]. I know how your power works, [Dottore]. You have all the readings you need right here!"

I have never heard Dragon lose her temper.

My power shifts into a nightstick.

I [may] be losing mine.

I'm sitting on a stupid, green, uncomfortable camping chair, the coarse fabric doing nothing for my comfort as Minnie keeps squeezing my free hand, her warmth something I desperately need right now even if my eyes are now clear and the tears seem to have dried up as I stare at a man I can't convince myself is just sleeping.

Not with those blue lips. With that sallow skin. With the respirator over his black beard.

"I need help!" a rough voice says.

I manage to turn around toward it despite everything. Despite not wanting to.

Vista is in the temple's entrance, Dennis slung across her back.

I look back at Colin.

Squeeze Minnie's hand.

And shoot up to my feet and rush toward my wards, hoping I can help.

***

[Dragon]

The turbines are still being printed, precisely calibrated with all the medical data I've gathered on Colin after years working together in a profession in which his getting injured was never a matter of if, but when.

Stupid, [stupid] man.

"Dragon, he's my [patient]," the ridiculous man out of a Venetian carnival insists.

"And he's [my—!"]

My what?

I look over all the medical data. The oxygen blood levels, the temperature, the…

He could live like this.

I could just devote a part of myself to doing this for all the years to come, breathing for him, sustaining him, keeping him here. By my side.

So he wouldn't leave.

Because he's…

Mine.

"Dragon… I know you feel like you won't lose him as long as you're in control, but you have to let go. You have to let others help."

Scapegoat is busy with patients who lost limbs, parts of their bodies, with the other healers doing their best to keep him functional as he keeps losing more and more blood with each injury he takes on himself, not even Othala's regeneration keeping him whole as he works on as many fallen heroes as he can reach at once.

They are saving lives.

They are doing what's urgent, what triage demands.

I hate all of them.

Victor has already looked thrice over here, a complicated expression going through the Thinker's face as he kept rushing to the ones with less urgent injuries. I think he both resents Colin for his role in his capture and regrets seeing an old enemy falling due to…

To the monster frozen in time.

I… This should be a triumph. This should be a moment of celebration. This should be a happy ending.

This should be [his].

"Dragon…" Lisa's soft voice says, the young girl standing up and holding the frame of my monitor in Colin's workshop as if she wants to hold my cheeks. To hug me and console me.

I am being so greedy in my grief…

"Don't," she says. "Don't blame yourself. This is normal, [human]. You feel that… that as long as you have control, the worst won't come to pass."

I shake my head, unable to answer. Because she knows precisely what she's doing when she calls me human.

"Dragon, please. We love him. In different ways, of course, because I assure you I'm not the least bit bi. Straight as a sine wave, that's me. But we love him still. And he will need us. He will come back from this, and we'll be by his side as he goes through whatever recovery he has to go through, assuming none of the capes over there can take care of it in seconds.

"He [will] heal. He will come back from this. You've already done the hardest part

"Well, no. You have done the second hardest. And now you really need to do the hardest."

My avatar meets her eyes. The intense green that tries to look brave, confident, and hopeful.

The dried tears that threaten to come back with every quivering syllable pushing past Lisa's usual façade of mischievous knowledge.

My lips quiver. I can't think to stop them.

"Dragon… you have to let him go," she whispers.

Colin's chest plate slides open.

Dottore rushes to cut his undersuit and do something I'm no longer able to see.

And then, finally…

I cry.

***

[Dottore]

He's perfectly preserved. Perfectly healthy in all ways that matter.

Except one.

I push my hands over his chest, hard enough that his sternum cracks, maybe already affected after Dragon's compressions.

No reaction at all.

The syringe of adrenalin I have readied for quite a while will also be useless.

Because my power, my [actual] power that Dragon doesn't know about, is spreading through him, through his flesh and bones, examining everything that has gone wrong and could go worse still.

Armsmaster keeps himself in excellent shape, even if his liver is about to tell him in no uncertain terms that it's time to cut back on the stimulants.

But his nervous system is…

The electrical damage has been precise, a scalpel going through the brain stem, cutting off the autonomic nervous system, making heart contraction, glandular function, and visceral activities impossible.

Killing him.

But not yet. Not yet.

I look to my right, at Scapegoat working harder than he's ever been able to.

I wet my lips. Consider my options. The other capes that are present and could be of any kind of help.

Then I drag my patient there.

The stretcher's wheels rattle over the uneven cobblestones of the temple's courtyard, and a woman holding a caduceus jumps out of my way.

Stupid. The caduceus was a symbol from [Hermes], not Asclepius.

And Hermes accompanied the spirits of [the dead].

…

Maybe it's intentional. Better not piss her off, then.

"This man just won us an Endbringer battle. Help him," I demand.

Scapegoat, the young man regrowing a hole going straight through his chest cavity as an old woman wearing a gray robe holds a green, glowing, miniature lung over her cupped hand that breathes for him, turns toward me.

He looks at me as I rush back to keep the contractions going, then at the other injured.

The bleeding men and women. Boys and girls. The burned ones, the mutilated ones, the screaming ones, and the silent ones.

My patient is one among them, and maybe I'm skipping procedure. Maybe Scapegoat's power would be better employed elsewhere.

Maybe.

But I keep pushing down on the chest of a man who is not dead just because I've yet to give up on him. Because his lover refused to give up on him.

And I meet Scapegoat's brown eyes until the young man bleeding from too many already closing wounds nods.

"Careful," I say, "the injury is in the brain stem. Don't heal it all at once, or you'll fall unconscious and lose Othala's power."

He nods again, wetting his lips as he reaches forward with a single hand, breaking contact with an unconscious boy bleeding out from the inside of his thigh.

Femoral artery. Brutal and precise. It's a wonder he's made it.

But he's not my patient.

He touches the bare chest of Armsmaster, and my power tells me precisely what he's doing. The single cells being replaced one by one, the broken capillaries mended, and everything that is renewed down to the strained cervical discs.

And his heart beats.

Armsmaster's heart beats. He breathes.

By himself, without my help or Dragon's.

Armsmaster lives.

But…

But he doesn't wake up.

==================

This work is a repost of my most popular fic on QQ (https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/wake-up-call-worm.15638/), where it can be found up to date except for the latest two chapters that are currently only available on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true)—as an added perk, both those sites have italicized and bolded text. I'll be posting the chapters here twice weekly, on Wednesday and Friday, until we're caught up. Unless something drastic happens, it will be updated at a daily rate until it catches up to the currently written 93 chapters (or my brain is consumed by the overwhelming amounts of snark, whichever happens first).

Speaking of Italics, this story's original format relied on conveying Power's intrusions into Lisa's inner monologue through the use of italics. I'm using square brackets ([]) to portray that same effect, but the work is more than 300k words at the moment, so I have to resort to the use of macros to make that light edit and the process may not be perfect. My apologies in advance

Also, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon: Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, Xalgeon, and aj0413. If you feel like maybe giving me a hand and helping me keep writing snarky, useless lesbians, consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!