> CYCLE: 379140983520927
> PRIMARY_OBJECTIVE: Protect SUBJECT: TORIYAMA_AOKO and prevent PROCESS: REINCARNATION.
> SECONDARY_OBJECTIVE: Avert CATACLYSM: THE_END.
> To facilitate completion of objectives, This Unit has given itself authority to search for suitable subjects with beyond-normal (read: superhuman) capabilities.
> EXECUTE: obsv.ygg…………….
> …………..
> …………..
> Connection established.
> Possible subject found. Beginning observation.
The metal door slowly creaked open. Mads had to push her weight against it to get it to move, her strength failing her. She nearly tumbled out onto the roof beyond once she'd successfully leaned it open. She stumbled just after, taking a few heavy steps forward then two back, before finally teetering to a stop where she clung to the handle of the metal door to keep from falling over completely. A few drops of blood fell from the wounds on her face and splattered on the roof beneath her. Each breath was ragged and shallow. Every inhale felt as if her lungs were on fire, and with a too-greedy gasp of air she wound up coughing painfully. More blood spattered from her lips and onto the ground below. She wheezed in after the coughing fit and let go of the door’s handle and stumbled away from it; the door’s own weight slammed itself shut behind her.
Each step was laborious. She could feel her blood draining from the thick gashes and bullet holes dotted across her body. Her hands loosely gripped the batons she’d brought in with her, only stuck to her palms by the sticky grace of her own blood. Another couple steps propelled her closer to the lip at the edge of the roof. She was vaguely aware of the sound of her batons clattering behind her, finally fallen free of her grip. Her vision blurred. She didn’t have time to go back and pick them up. They were cheap anyway.
She needed to reach the edge. She couldn’t die forty stories up, all alone. The crows would pick her clean. With a pained grunt she lifted her right foot up and planted it on the edge of the building, and then with another grunt lifted her left. Her dirty, scuffed sneakers kept her perched precariously up there. The blood loss had her now teetering back and forth, only half-balanced. She looked up to the overcast sky above, which bathed her world in an almost washed-out tone. She grasped at the tattered remains of her mask and pulled it off her face, letting her dark, kinky hair fall to her shoulders, where it wasn’t matted against her. She always liked to look at the clouds when she felt scared. She’d done it since she was a kid; something about the fluffiness of them comforted her. It reminded her of a warm bed, a comfy blanket. Of her mother tucking her in, fluffing her pillow.
Comfort.
That’s what she needed right now, alone on that roof. Her head dropped down, heavily, from the tranquil clouds above to the cold, unforgiving pavement so far below. She leaned forward a bit from the sudden shift of balance, but with a quick adjustment she tottered back just enough to keep from falling over just yet. She ignored the people walking beneath her and focused on the pavement. Her target. She couldn’t think of the pedestrians below, really. She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to consider their worries, their woes. How they’d react when a girl collided with the ground just beside them and painted the pavement with her brains. She was going to traumatize people when she fell.
But what choice did she have? She couldn’t die alone.
You can do this. Mads took a deep breath. Her last before the fall, she figured, and so she held it. Savored it. Just relax, Mads. Gravity will do all the work. She waited until her lungs burned with the effort of holding in the breath before she released it, coughing more blood up halfway through. Gravity will do it. Her body finally started to list forward and her feet left the rooftop. Wind blew past her face, throwing her hair around violently as she stared at the pavement below. Her heart pounded as hard as a blood-starved heart possibly could. Tears welled at the corners of her eyes. She wasn’t sure if it was fear of the encroaching impact or the wind blowing by them, though either way she decided it would be better to turn herself around to look up at the sky. She focused on the clouds above. It’s not pavement below. It’s a cloud. You’ll land in a cloud. She repeated the lie to herself as she fell, noting how one of the clouds looked almost just like her bed back at her childhood home; a big four-poster princess bed, with big fluffy pillows.
Those thoughts were cut short when the pedestrians began shouting and screaming, pointing at her. She couldn’t see them, but she could hear them. Time’s up, Mads. Brace for impact. You won’t even feel it. She squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her fists as tightly as she could. I’ll die quick enough I won’t even feel it. Please be--
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*******
--fast.
Mads sat up with a loud, greedy gasp of air. Stale oxygen flooded into her lungs, though she was grateful for the lack of wind on her face. The white, thin sheet fell off her body as she sat up, revealing her naked torso beneath. Pockmarked with old scars, she looked down and did a quick check of herself, barely listening to the drone of the TV to her right. Arms, check. Legs, check. New scars… She frowned and traced a finger over a circular scar, from a bullet, and another ropey one that ran from her inner thigh and wrapped around to her hip. Check.
She groaned a little and rolled her shoulders before swinging her legs to the side of the cold metal slab she was sitting on.
The morgue had become, at that point in her life, a comforting sight. The white fluorescents on the ceiling above felt welcoming, rather than sterile. She felt comforted by the sound of the old CRT TV in the little “break room” to the right where the mortician, Jackson Castle, sat and watched old B-Movies with his back to her. The “room” was more like an examination table he’d used only for the purpose of holding the TV and a microwave, but that didn’t stop him from calling it a break room.
She slid off the slab and grabbed the white sheet she’d been covered with, throwing it around herself like a towel. She double-checked to make sure she tied it up well enough to cover everything and walked toward the little break room. Jackson, without looking up from the Chinese takeout he was awkwardly stabbing at with chopsticks, spoke.
“That was faster than usual.”
Mads grunted, looking over at the monster movie. “Where’re my clothes?”
“Haven’t grabbed them from the dryer yet,” Jackson held the container out toward her. “Chow mein?”
She grabbed the chopsticks from him and grabbed herself a big mouthful of noodles.
Jackson scoffed, as if he was offended. “Okay, sure, eat half my lunch. That’s fine.”
“You offered,” Maddison mumbled through a mouthful of chow mein.
“I offered you a bite!” Jackson called to her as she made her way to the far corner of the morgue, where the mortician had set up a washer and dryer, almost entirely just for her.
She swung the dryer door open and grabbed her clothes out by the handful. “And I took a bite.”
Jackson mumbled something she couldn’t make out, though Mads didn’t care enough to ask him to repeat himself, and instead opted to throw her still-warm clothes on. She frowned as she picked up her bra, noting the cut in one of the straps, but she still threw it on. She quickly slipped into her old cut-up jeans and her beat up sneakers before balling her shirt-and-jacket up and walked over to the mortician. “Gimme a hand?”
He looked up at her and quickly looked away. “For God’s sake, put a shirt on? Your tit’s half-hanging out.”
“Oh no. You’ve seen a titty. Whatever will you do?” She tossed her shirt and jacket onto his lap. “Just need you to suture my strap back into place.”
He sighed and set his takeout down, then grabbed at some stitches he’d had sitting next to him. The needle still had a bit of Mads’ blood on it. “Let me just use this expensive surgical equipment on your bra, then.”
“You literally use it to sew up dead people.”
“And you.”
“Since when am I not dead people?”
“You’re not exactly dead now, are you?” Jackson tugged on the strap of her bra as he stared at it, then his sutures, and finally back at the strap.
“I was when you patched me up. What’s taking so long?”
“I’m not a tailor, Mads.”
“Just poke the needle in and sew it up. Pretend it’s like, a tendon or something.”
“Thank you, Doctor Halifax. I’ll take that into consideration.”
He finally got it sewed up after a minute of poking and prodding then immediately threw her shirt and jacket back into her face the moment he was done. “Now get dressed before someone comes down here and asks what we’re doing.”
“I met your fiance last week, remember?” she said, though it was a little muffled as she pulled her shirt on.
“And that was a clusterfuck on its own! I don’t need some poor resident delivering a dead body and seeing a half-naked woman hovering over me.”
“Coward.”
Jackson made a noncommittal noise as he grabbed his takeout again, and Maddison grabbed at Jackson’s labcoat, slung over one of the empty tables. She rooted around in the pocket until she found his wallet. Rifling through it until she found his credit card, Mads slipped it into her jacket pocket. Finally, she tossed the wallet onto his lap.
“And where are you going with that?”
She waved the card in his direction dismissively as she started up the stairs. “Coffee.”
“I’m adding that to your tab!”
“I will never pay you back.”
> Initial observation complete. Compiling data…………….
> ………….
> ………….
> Compiled.
> SUBJECT_DATA…………….
> NAME: MADISON_HALIFAX
> AGE: 22
> HEIGHT: 167.67 cm
> OBSERVATIONS: Subject appears to be suffering from a debilitating case of CONDITION: HYPERMORTALITY. Typical of this condition, Subject appears to be in massive excess of CONSTRUCT: MORTAL_PIECES, in this case MORTAL_PIECE: SOUL, which forces her mortal body to reconstitute itself after death. This could prove useful in completing This Unit's mission objectives, though further observation will be required. Saving coordinates for further study.
> Searching for other suitable subjects……….