They wove and doubled back at the increasing chittering sounds until she stopped in front of a naturally-fortified door. She pointed to his chest pocket and then to the handpad. He got the hint and plugged in his Local AI as she slapped her hand on the handpad ahead of him. He was kind of impressed with the following room sweep with the rifle.
He had caught her looking at the man’s face in surprise before, now he saw it even more clearly. She was moving away his jumpsuit, trying to see where he was injured. It wasn’t hard to see where he was injured most, the gaping wound in his side was showing the white of his ribs after all. His head also looked like it was about to pop swollen as it was. He paused for a second and stood over them staring at his head.
Her zap got his attention. “Does he have a crab in there?”
Her eyes widened as she snapped her head back and forth. It was good she looked so sure, otherwise, he would have absolutely found out at the end of his foot. He hated seeing Man-Crab hybrids and he definitely wasn’t about to let one get birthed right in front of him if he could do anything about it.
Before he turned around she pointed to the Medjel sack attached to his belt. After judging the man’s likelihood of surviving, not good, he handed it to her.
He unsuccessfully sunk into the soft plastic chair. It was almost comfortable just not quite there. Fidgeting in his seat he watched her look him over again. Part of him wanted to help, but he didn’t actually know her that well. The other part wanted to level up his surgery.
Her patient had a shock of gray hair, he looked old. So probably not her boyfriend or husband, relative, just someone she knew? Those Cryo communities must be pretty tight-knit. If there was one, there must be more.
For having so much Dexterity she sure was clumsy at this. Her tender, uncertain ministrations, and his uncomfortable plastic chair eventually drove him to stand up again.
“He’s gonna die by the time you get anything done.” She shot him a glare. He couldn’t help but shrug and grin, “Not as easy as it looks eh?” She paused, holding her glare, then waved at him and then towards her patient.
He moved towards where she was kneeling on the other side of the man.
He was messed up, coming from a guy missing 4 fingers and had been electrocuting himself healthy for the last who knew how long, that was saying something. He looked him over, she had been treating his side gingerly with the Medjel, assuming that was the most grievous. He would need to cover that side well with Medjel. He hoped that the things missing were secondary organs, he couldn’t quite remember all of the things that were supposed to be in the lower torso. That wasn’t nearly as serious as his head. It looked like it was going to pop it had swollen so large. As he slathered Medjel on his hand and then wiped across the man’s side he finished debating, Jack handed over his claw-blade to Yuma and pointed at the man’s head. Her eyebrow raised.
“Look at his head, I’m still 50/50 on whether or not a crab is going to pop out or if it's just a ton of fluid.” Someone needed to pop it and he was still 50/50 on whether or not a crab was going to burst out. If she was so sure there was no crab then she could be responsible for cutting into it. Her higher Dexterity would also avoid a sudden lobotomy. “If anyone is going to lobotomize him it’s not going to be me.”
He tried to sound as confident as he could as he told her where to cut. Honestly, it was just a guess. The task essentially reduced to slicing around the base of the swollen portion. She looked at him before cutting. He kept his eyes focused on the man, suspecting that if he met her eyes she would be able to tell what he was thinking.
She started cutting around the base and fluid started to leak and then gush out. It was clear and slightly gooey. Jack didn’t like this one bit, it didn’t seem like the man being operated on liked it either as he started seizing. Jack caught it, a slithering just under the skin on his elongated head. Taking a half second to consider he slammed the back of the claw-blade still gently being rocked around the wound by Yuma. Without anything connecting it the mass slopped off onto the ground gushing fluid. Inside was what looked like a second brain and a barely visible shell over the top half of it. Jack forgot the man instantly and stomped the mass into the ground. Once it had been stomped, stomped again, and once more “just in case” he turned back to the man. His head was now open, the part that had been cut off either included the skull or otherwise. Yuma was in shock, less than helpful.
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Before he examined the wound again he already knew that it was hopeless. Whatever type of crab that was he knew that anything that was copying your brain in a semi-external sack wasn’t done without messing up your brain badly.
“Yuma.” No response.
“Yuma!” He shook her harshly and a fat bolt of electricity ripped up his fingers. She looked at him angrily. He explained his conclusion about the man’s brain and how it was probably messed up bad. She told him with her hands to wait and Jack shook his head.
“We don’t have food, we don’t have proper medicine. We don’t know if he will ever recover or what shape he will be in. We could wait for months and he could never wake up, we could wait months and he could be a vegetable. We could think about it for a week and then he could wake up and we could be in the middle of all being eaten by crabs."
It wasn’t too much of a stretch to assume if her “safe” home had been cleared out then things were bad and getting worse around here. He broke out of his reverie for a moment and saw Yuma staring down at the man’s face with tears running down her face. When in doubt.
He made sure to emphasize that there were no promises but there was a chance she might get a few seconds if the Medjel worked how he thought. It wasn’t hard to imagine that the crab-brain he had crushed had been somehow connected to the man’s brain. The thought flashed into his head from somewhere, the crab-brain must have had feelers that had been either cut and died in the man’s brain, exposing his brain to instant decay, or that it had damaged the man’s brain even before being excised. This was fucking gross. Operating on Yuma wasn’t this bad. He took a moment as he fought down the desire to get away from it and the rocking sea in his stomach. It was easy to be relaxed when he was thinking about operating, the doing was much worse.
“I might be able to give you a minute, maybe less. You will have to zap him.”
At that, he took the discarded claw-blade and started tracing a line around a wide portion of the man’s skull. Yuma took the blade out of his hands and started to precisely cut away the man’s skull. She looked focused, face flushed and tears streaming down her eyes as they were. As parts of the man’s skull fell to the ground Jack was ready and had carefully moved him to a sitting position with the man’s back to his chest. As soon as she was done he started pouring their remaining Medjel into the man’s brain, trying to massage it between the brain folds into areas that looked like they had gotten crabbed. He didn’t think brains were supposed to have this lack of… integrity? He didn’t know but if he hadn’t been waiting right there, what was in this guy’s skull would have just slopped out. Jack was thankful for the first time, so far, that he was half starved otherwise he would have added his flavor to the cranium soup. He had zero idea what Medjel would actually do when applied directly to a Human brain. What he did know were some of the properties of the fluid. It would activate and instantly attempt to secure the wound and repair damage. Between the initial healing pulse and the hardening properties, it should give Yuma a minute or two to talk with this person. He prayed, he wasn’t sure “to whom” it was addressed but somehow he instinctively knew how to do it.
“Now Yuma! Zap him!” Prayer AND a Zapp of course.
----------------------------------------
He was incredibly uncomfortable. It had somehow worked and the man could talk and hear, but not see. Yuma couldn’t talk. After the initial freak-out from Jack’s voice coming right behind him, Jack was forced into translating Yuma’s increasingly frantic hand signs.
“Yuma I don’t think he feels anything below the legs,” she had been trying to rest her hand on his knee. Jack poked his arm with his middle finger and the man started to thrash. “OW OW OW who is kicking my shin!” Jack managed to hold down 99% of his grin at that. What? He had to take fun where he could find it as he tried to keep his thoughts off the fact of what felt like him having to rearrange the man’s brain. The Medjel’s stiffness helped, to a point. As it started to harden and refused to re-softened, for the 20th time in the last few minutes; Jack needed to find his own answers.
“How do we find other people?”
“I… don’t know,” Jack moved back the part he had just moved, “We had everyone run, run, run in different directions…”
“We need to get to the core.”
At this, the man screamed “NO NO NO!” and started to thrash. The hardening Medjel and the general weakness of the brain tissue caused an aneurysm that squirted blood into Jack’s mouth as he tried to calm the man. Yuma grabbed his claw-blade off the floor, pinched her lips together then sliced as she yelled, “Dad!” The old man was still.
He couldn’t hold back anymore, even being, especially being part of a sandwich with the sobbing, lipless girl and her brain-souped father.
Jack fought off the wave of cold shivers as he stood and gently let the man’s body to the floor. Yuma followed his body to the ground, still sobbing. As it hit the brain sloshed out of his skull and Jack violently emptied his stomach onto the floor.
After he had finished and wiped his mouth with his brain-covered hand, then dry heaved then recovered from that, he went to place a hand on her shoulder. As he got next to her he saw the now brain-Medjel mess on his hand and pulled back. He stood there for what he assumed was a respectful moment then moved away. Instead, Jack sat uncomfortably in his chair and tried not to stare, his stomach was still a little twisty.
It was weird to hear her voice, weirder even as she had an awful forced, lipless smile as she sobbed over her dad. He didn’t rush her. He squeezed every ounce of EQ he had and tried to put himself in her shoes. It didn’t work with it at 3, but it was enough to get him to wait quietly.