CHAPTER 65 - FISHER

Agony.

It was such a simple word. But Pavel Fisher realized he had never truly understood what it had meant at the same time he opened his eyes and found himself blinded by the afternoon sun. But that wasn’t a true pain, that was just his brain telling him to close his fucking eyes.

That discomfort was nothing compared to the actual pain, to the ache that spread and pulsed throughout the whole of his body. It was a throbbing sensation that went well past the wear and tear that came with just the right combination of age and abuse—a hundred empowered confrontations in his younger years.

But that wasn’t the true source of it, either. This agony radiated out from a rough ring in his side—the edges burned and hurting, and there was just nothing at the center of it.

That was not a good sign.

On the ground, on his back, Fisher forced himself to breathe. In through his nose, out through his mouth. The air carried a wispy aroma of burnt, melted armorweave. It lingered in his nostrils and on his tongue. It was a very distinctive smell, and it always said dead cape.

But he wasn’t dead, was he?

Fisher groaned, and someone pressed something cold to his neck. There was a sharp pain, then cool relief. A hazy figure loomed over him and resolved into a fair-skinned woman with sandy blonde hair, pale brown eyes, and an expression of strange, sardonic relief.

“I got you, you son of a bitch,” Sam said. “I got you.”

Fisher stared up at her, not quite comprehending. He tried to say something, but his throat was raw and dry. He swallowed what little saliva he said and croaked, “How?”

“I’ve pumped you full of just about everything we had in the medkit,” she said. “It’s not pretty, but I think you’ll hold together until we get out of here. Well, maybe.”

Nodding, Fisher turned his gaze downward to catch a glimpse of the painful ring, but Sam grabbed him by the chin before he could spot it. She turned his eyes back to her own.

“I really don’t recommend that.”

“That bad?”

“Honestly, Pavel? Worse. Your chances are not great.”

“But not great’s better than zero.”

“Hell yeah.”

“Well,” Fisher said, looking up at the clear blue sky and then to the grassy hills and ruins of history scattered around. “I guess there’s worse places to die.”

“No good places to die, chief,” Sam replied. “And you don’t really wanna do that, anyway.”

“I guess.” Fisher flailed at the ground with his stumps. Oh, right. His hands. He’d lost them for a second time.

“Help me sit up. I’m not dying on my back like this.”

Sam did so. She hauled him against a rock, helped him sit up. Fisher avoided glancing down at whatever damage Monkey’s weapon had done to him. He leaned back, rested his head against the rock, and listened to the birds. It wasn’t something he’d ever done before.

“Where are the others?” Fisher asked.

“Sabra and her robot went in after Monkey. While I was patching you up, I think our baby boy slipped away and went inside, too.”

“Not you?”

“Yeah, ‘thanks for saving my life,’ that’s what you could say.”

“I’m not ungrateful, but the mission—”

“Wouldn’t be changed by anything I could do. What’s one more gun going to do in there?” Sam pulled out her cigarettes and lighter and lit up. “No killer robots though, so, I guess it’s not going too badly.”

“Yeah. Thanks for saving my life, Sam.”

“Ain’t saved yet,” she said. “But don’t mention it. I’m serious about that. I’ve got a reputation to maintain.”

Fisher laughed, but only a single syllable—the pain put an end to anything more than that.

It occurred to Fisher now that his heart was going a mile a minute. What had Sam pumped him full of, and in what combination? On the one hand, Sam was only a scientist in the sense of being able to calculate a ballistic trajectory. On the other, she had almost certainly been a grunt, and probably knew the basics of how to keep someone alive. Nevertheless, the idea that his life was hanging by a chemical thread was not reassuring.

The ground shook. That wasn’t reassuring either. And when that happened, and Fisher tried to move his legs, the impulse ended somewhere around his hips.

Ah, Fisher thought, like it had happened to someone else. That explains a few things.

“Sam,” Fisher said, to take his mind off it. “What’s going on?”

“Shit,” she said, as the rumbling intensified into what had to be an earthquake. “Don’t ask me. Who do I look like, Preceptor?”

Seconds later, Jack came racing out of the entrance into SHIVA’s catacombs, and no one else. As Jack was about halfway to them, the mountain collapsed from the inside out, dust and debris erupting from deep within. It was like the entire mountain shuddered and imploded, sagging into the Earth—but that could’ve been the drugs and the painkillers.

Jack hit the deck and slid to a stop, gasping for breath.

“What the fuck happened?” Fisher asked.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Engineer brought the mountain down on us.”

“Monkey?”

“Dead.”

“What about Sabra and Revenant?”

Jack picked himself up, confused, and peered back into the calamity.

“I thought she was right behind me.”

Well, if she had been, she wasn’t now.

“Don’t think she made it out, Pavel,” Sam said.

Fisher closed his eyes. The news should’ve hurt, but it didn’t quite connect. They’re dead, the painkillers said, oh well! For Sabra to come all this way, just so she could succeed and die—it was astoundingly unfair. He’d asked her to come with him on this insane adventure, hadn’t he? He was alive, as tenuous as it was, and she wasn’t. It was astoundingly unfair—but when had life ever been fair?

It would’ve been nice, though. Just this once.

“We have to go back for her,” Jack said. “I mean, she’s wearing armor, right? Her and Revenant—they might still be—”

Sam shook her head. “Even if the armor survived, kid, there’s the concussive force alone...”

Jack stood there as still as a statue. “But.”

“Jack,” Fisher said. “We can’t stay here. We have to go. If the Concordiat wasn’t aware of what happened here before, they will be now. We need to get out of here before they come to investigate, and we don’t know how far away they are.”

Jack snorted, like it was funny. “Then let’s get out of here.”

“One more thing,” Fisher added. “That’s going to be a bit of a problem for me.”

“Why?”

“My legs are, shall we say, non-functional.”

“Oh,” Jack said, and didn’t seem to know what to say. “Ouch.”

Sam nodded. “Mm. Yeah. Blast clipped his spine on the way through. Shit’s kinda fucked.”

On the way through. The words echoed in his head, followed by what he’d said earlier. That bad, huh? Yeah, Sam’s prognosis seemed fair. Panic nibbled away at the edge of his thoughts, but Sam’s life-preserving cocktail kept it far away.

“Shouldn’t we say a few words or something?” Jack said.

“I don’t really know what to say,” Fisher said. So, they sat there and watched the thick plume from SHIVA’s final collapse thin out into a dusty haze and smear grey across the sky.

“I don’t believe it,” Jack said.

“She couldn’t defy everything.”

“I’ll take that bet,” Sam said.

“Sam,” Fisher replied.

“Pavel, fucking look.”

He brought his eyes back to the ground. There was a distinctive silhouette in the smoke and dust, motions jerky and halting, and the eyes on their leonine helmet shining through the haze. The dust parted before Sabra, and Fisher saw she was carrying Revenant like a bride across the threshold.

Fisher’s smile lasted as long as it took for his mind to realize that only one of them was moving.

Sabra approached them and set Revenant down gently, then reached up to remove her helmet. She hadn’t been crying, but the shock was etched onto her features. She dropped her helmet to the ground and followed it down to her knees.

“Is she...” Jack asked.

“I don’t know,” Sabra said. “I had to disconnect her. I couldn’t leave her there to be crushed. I pulled the plug, and she just didn’t wake up.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I killed her. I saw it.”

Fisher shook his head. “Sabra, you didn’t—”

That pushed something too far in Sabra, and she fell forwards, crying over Revenant’s body. Eventually, it subsided into sucking gasps and Sabra drew herself up, fingers running through Revenant’s hair. The lights and indicators on her headpiece were dark.

“I told her I’d protect her,” Sabra said. “I told her I wouldn’t let SHIVA take her. She wasn’t— She wasn’t a fan of my knight in shining armor routine.”

“She was always a bit prickly,” Fisher said. “But I’m sure she appreciated you in her own way.”

“She did.”

“Sabra,” he said gently. “We have to go. If we bring her with us, maybe someone can—”

“Don’t give me false hope,” Sabra said, but she picked her up, gathered her in her arms like she had just before. “It’s good to see that you made it, though, Pavel.”

“Only barely. Still might not make it.”

“I believe in you.”

“Belief can’t do much for my legs, and we’ve got a ways to go.”

“Then Jack and I will take turns,” Sam said.

“Yeah,” Jack added. “As far as you need, Pavel.”

“Thank you.”

Jack shrugged, and the world swung around Fisher as Sam set him over her shoulders in a fireman’s carry. He’d done it before, but had never experienced it. A part of him knew it was surely aggravating the damage to his spine, but he already couldn’t move his legs—how much worse could it get?

Sabra made a strange choking sound. Fisher craned his head to see her.

Revenant reached up and set her hand on Sabra’s cheek.

“Is it tomorrow yet?” she asked.

----------------------------------------

The sun was setting by the time they crossed the border separating the Concordiat territory from the rest of the world. Fisher wasn’t sure how long it took, because his recollection was broken up by periods of blissful unconsciousness—and every time he felt himself on the cusp of that nothingness, he was certain that he would never wake up again.

But he always did.

However long the journey took, the Animals carried him all the way. The mood, at least that Fisher was aware of, was somber in the way all great victories were. But despite the dull agony, he felt relief, happiness, and pride. “Put me down, Kasembe,” Revenant said at one point, but it seemed half-hearted at best, and she endured Sabra's grip on her like a put-upon cat.

Kids.

Just as Blueshift had said, there was an aeroshuttle in SOLAR colors waiting for them just on the other side of the border. Aegis, as surly as ever, limped over to meet them.

“Well,” Aegis said, “Look at the happy couples. Must’ve been a hell of a reception. Talk about rotgut, Impel.”

“It’s nice to see you too, Aegis,” Fisher said.

“Get him onboard,” she told Sam. “Get Chevalier—big guy, knight’s helmet, can’t miss him—to strap him in and set up the auto-doc. It’ll hold him together until we get back to Geneva. If he’s made it this far, he should be fine.”

“You’ve got it, boss,” Sam said, and carried him up the ramp and into the shuttle. Fisher turned his head and watched everyone else follow along. Revenant was on her feet again. Some part of him had thought Aegis would leave the mercenaries behind.

It was good that she didn’t. She was many things, but not exactly heartless. Whoever the pair had been in the past, they weren’t those people anymore. Where would they go from here? Hell, where would any of them go from here? What would he do with himself, if there was anything he could do at all after this?

The SOLAR aeroshuttle was different—battle-ready and arranged into sections. Sam moved through it with a casual lightness and carried him into the medbay. Hanging from the roof was an auto-doc system, all pristine white and dulled edges, limbs folded over each other like a dead spider or surgical mantis.

Sam set him on the bed underneath it. It was cold, even through his armorweave, through the pain, through the meds. His body, happy to be prone again, thought it was as comfortable as a five-star bed.

“Prepping for launch,” Aegis said. “Chevalier, make sure our injured guest is ready for the trip. If he dies, you’re fired.”

“That’s my cue to strap in,” Sam said. “See you in Geneva.”