Kala had finished cleaning up and tearing apart the hybridized crab-men within a hundred feet of her. Breathing hard and smiling wide she looked around.
“Mikey? Devin?”
Where the fuck did they go? There was only scrap and bodies. She scanned them, none of them looked like either of her boys.
She retraced her steps cautiously in her swiveling pivots. Eventually she abandoned that and ran.
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He had cleared every hybrid near the group. When he told Telane he was going ahead, he had already burnt Nano to restore his eyesight. Tule didn’t look back, he knew Telane would do the job.
Tule was climbing up now, his Toothpick easily sinking sideways into the crab’s chitin as he pulled himself along. The scale, perspective, and his estimation of some of the angles was off. The reason why flickered in, and out of his mind in a split second. He burnt too much Nano with his recovery.
As he swung himself on top of the shell he did a quick mental scan of his body. Most of his most serious wounds had been triaged. That had been done by burning Endurance Nano Allocation.
There was a deep cut into his internals, he didn’t have the Nano to heal that one so he had used what remained of the Medjel packet Jack had given him before.
He slathered his fingers and pushed them through the wound, expanding it by necessity and slathering it with Medjel. It went deeper than he could reach but at least it should keep internal bleeding from being an immediate problem. He tried to burn more Nano to force closed the spots he couldn’t reach.
He coughed and regurgitated another semi-solid clump of blood.
He suspected he was on the edge of dropping his Constitution Tier as well. Damn, he couldn’t remember the last time he was in this bad of shape.
He readied himself, stretching uncomfortably. He forgot how incredibly itchy Medjel was. More concerning than that the portion he inserted into his side had now solidified as his flexibility with his core dropped dramatically.
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“Yuma! Get Tule off of there!”
Yuma wobbled for a second then sped off. Was she always this fast? He kind of always assumed she was faster but how could she have a higher agility than him? Maybe her weighing less had something to do with it.
Tule was standing on the lip of the crab’s, walking forwards, towards the blue dome in the center.
It was bad news, Jack reached out again with his Affinity and pulled it back faster than before. A sense of danger flared through his Affinity. His Affinity felt like a two way street and he didn’t want to risk mixing his own with whatever was happening up there. Electricity was being processed in the four towers atop the crab’s shell and converted into some other type of energy he was completely unfamiliar with. That foreign energy was then being sent into a rising point above the blue dome.
“What’s happening?”
Jack really didn’t have time to cover what he had just mentally processed, “It’s sending some type of energy above the dome. We should meet up with the others.” He took off, Jonah surprisingly quick on the uptake, alongside him.
Jonah eyed the metal towers with two rings around the cone shape, his eyes focused on the metal orb atop each of them.
“It’s electricity? Can you sense it?”
“Its not electricity, well, it isn’t after it runs through the towers.”
Jonah clicked a button on the side of his goggles, he continued to click and depress different combinations of buttons.
“It’s radiological, I don’t, I’ve never seen this type before. Do you have radiation resistance?”
Jack eyed him, “Some, why?”
“You’re going to need it.”
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Tule couldn’t approach any closer to the dome, he was directing every Trace of Nano in his body to fight against the mutation that was happening inside him. There were too many dead zones inside him to combat it completely.
“Tule!” He heard her voice and turned back.
“No! Get away!” He didn’t spare a look back towards the dome and sprinted towards Yuma who had just finished climbing the side of the crab.
She dodged a slow lazy bolt of energy from the tower and shot at it a few times. It flared and Tule tackled her off the edge.
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A pinpoint appeared above the dome. The dome sucked into it like a napkin being pulled up at the center. The towers were pouring more and more energy into the pinprick as it expanded.
A tiny swirling vortex swam out of the pinprick, suspended and pulling everything into it.
Yuma could see this. They were parallel with the ground, Tule’s feet balanced against the edge of the shell, fighting against the growing suction behind them.
He managed to set a foot on the other side of the lip before the suction suddenly jumped.
Tule’s leg caught awkwardly on the lip and it sent them both tumbling towards the growing vortex atop the, was that a Human? It was hard to make out.
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Tule snapped out his Toothpick and caught it sideways in the shell. She had her hands around Tule’s neck, they were now connected to the chitin floor by Tule’s single hand on his Toothpick. The vibrations of the blade almost sent them off and backwards as angle of the Toothpick was off center. It vibrated and slid diagonally for a few feet before Tule managed to stabilize it.
Tule reached out with his free hand towards the closest set of Cryo-Pods. They were far away, still he needed to try. At the edge of his own Magnetic Affinity he felt a faint pull from one of his earlier tethers, the one he had used to spike metallic shards into that hybrid’s brain. He felt it snap into place as his Affinity connected with it. He pulled with his outstretched arm. It wasn’t enough.
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She could tell Tule was in bad shape. She pulled herself around the front of him to take the pull off of his throat. His face was twitching, blood vessels in his eyes had burst. It was the first time she regretted investing so much Allocation into her EQ.
“Why are you so concerned about me? Don’t tell me it’s because we fought together, this is the Labs.”
Tule’s concentration frayed for a second as he looked down at her. He recovered quick, then grit his teeth so hard she heard one of them shatter in his mouth.
“You, Yumata. You’re my sister.”
The precipice at which they were both perched, on the edge of oblivion. Her heart had been steadily beating faster and faster the entire time.
The words he spoke caused the pulsing bio-mechanical organ to stop its relentless pulse for a second and the vast quantity of excess electricity stored in her heart released. The aberrant zapp reached the magnetic tether.
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Jack was now running faster, but it was hard to tell. The loose metal was sliding towards the vortex at the center. Jonah lost his feet and caught his head on a sharp corner of a rising piece of metal.
Jack turned back and slung him over his shoulder to continue running.
“Turn me around turn me around!”
Jack awkwardly shifted the older-man onto his other shoulder, now facing forward.
It threw him more off balance until his body adjusted. Even though he wasn’t standing still he could feel his Skills Moving Equilibrium and No, You Move provide some serious combined utility.
“Look it’s Yuma!” Jack flipped on his Affinity sense as soon as he heard her name and followed Jonah’s finger. His Affinity was the only way he could clearly tell if it was Yuma or not through the noise of the surroundings. It was her. He felt a connection between the current inside of both of them. It created a tether stretching the distance.
He felt the electricity building up inside her. Dangerous levels. It was way higher than it should be before an involuntary zapp should have been released. He slowed a bit to focus on her heart.
Shit. He had vastly overestimated how long her damaged heart would last.
“Wait, where did they go?”
Jack was only able to track her through the tether they shared. He had felt an undeniable pull forward as he perceived the unique pattern of her zapp.
“Wait, you said ‘they’?”
“Yes she was with Tule the BladeWorker.”
Jack didn’t even have to ignore the title Jonah placed, the tether to Yuma was dim and fading fast. He dropped Jonah unceremoniously and pushed his Agility and Endurance.
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Kala had slowed down. Finding Mikey and Devin was one thing, getting sucked into whatever-the-fuck was going on above the crab was another. Her wide steps shifted through the rubble keeping her center of balance low and stability high.
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Jack ignored the shouting behind him as he found Yuma and Tule crumpled, both speared through by a large chunk of metal.
Shit. He was analyzing what to do as the vacuum picked up another octave.
Praying occupied the part of his mind that wanted to panic. The other parts unzipped his Medjal bags, again, and got to work.
As he applied Medjel on the outside of their wounds, around the jagged tear of metal, Jack jumped into his Affinity. Tule was alive and Yuma… It wasn’t good. The metal had nicked her already damaged heart. The metal inside her was grounding any any electricity her feeble heart was able to produce. Jack jumped back as Tule started talking, “No, just take her.”
Jack wasn’t sure what was going on between the two but if he could avoid losing both qualified individuals that would be best.
“Well I can’t remove her until I take you off.”
In response Tule released Yuma and reached behind him and started pulling.
Jack watched, silent in shock, as Tule managed to pull himself back inches before his hands slid on the blood and it reset him back down.
“Let me,” Jack started to pull him off carefully.
“Hurry, just yank me off, I’ll be fine. You’ve got to get to Yuma.”
Well, he was right about that. He pulled hard and amongst the bone grinding on steel Tule popped off with a wet suck. Jack stooped to apply a packet of Medjel to the wound but Tule snatched it away. A metallic glow surrounded Tule’s gut wound as Jack saw it close at multiples faster than his own regeneration. He saw him reach deep into another wound at his side and empty the packet in there. That was definitely going to itch.
He wasn’t needlessly delaying, perhaps a little. Through his Affinity he was trying to correct some of the broken paths in Yuma before applying the Zappa.
He had to get her off. Wrapping both hands he gingerly started to pull. Tule came to assist as well. As the metal narrowed near the tip Jack slathered on more Medjel than was necessary around the gaping wound in the center of her chest.
There was a lot of blood. Jack placed the Zappa gently inside the hole and depressed the button. Yuma twisted and shook then threw up a gout of blood over the front of him.
“Jack you have to hurry.”
He knew that, no shit he had to hurry.
“Oh no!” Great, another opinion incoming now that Jonah had finally caught up.
“Ok, you two, grab her by the shoulder and the hip then pull her off gently when I tell you.”
They grabbed her and then Tule vomited his own blood.
“Tule. You better not drop dead.”
Tule didn’t look him in the eyes as he wiped his mouth and retook his position, “I won’t. Let’s go, I’m fine.”
Jack didn’t have any extra time to worry about him. “Ok, start moving her now. Slow.”
He opened another packet and spread his application over the increasingly exposed wound.
Immediately after she was slid off they dropped her to the ground. Jonah didn’t have the strength and Tule fell with her. Jack doubted that he was “ok.”
He covered the final portions leaking blood as he re-examined her. He could start carving again, he probably should. The wet ground stopped providing the necessary friction as he slid backwards, toward the vortex. It would be worse to be interrupted in the middle of surgery than to not do surgery at all.
There was nothing he could do. He looked through his Affinity. The amount of electricity was enough to cycle her heart but the distributing connections were an absolute mess, he wouldn’t even know where to start. He looked around, he felt the Cryo-Pods around him now, there was an advanced looking one a bit further back.
“Cryo-Pod right now, there’s nothing else I can do.”
Tule approached to take his own look at Yuma’s condition.
“Tule, there’s no time. Her hearts going to fail.”
“Can’t you fix it somehow?”
“Not while that,” his thumb pointing behind them, “is still going to do something. Plus, I’ve operated on her heart before, it’s what the Terminal calls, a Non-Standard Organ.”
Both looked at him in surprise as he gently picked her up in his arms. He forgot how light she was. Her stares weighed more than she did. He sprinted over to the safest, most secure-looking Pod he could find and put her inside.
Before he set her down he thrummed the weakened tether they shared between them, hoping something would happen.
Nothing happened. Hopefully she could feel it.