CHAPTER THREE: END OF THE LINE
For almost all forms of life, the pain of death is not present. The pain of dying certainly is, but death itself is a release from pain. A finality. A peace. For those who cheat death, however, in the moment their soul momentarily faces the infinite, it is said no pain is greater. Such great pain their soul, the culmination of their existence, cracks.
…
Jack awakens to a pain he knows all too well. A moment ago he was dead. Medically, at least. His heart stopped momentarily as his healing factor spent precious moments reacting to the myriad dangers facing him. Muscle fibers had been torn by unimaginable strain, eyeballs ejected by blunt force, limbs torn off by shrapnel, and his prosthetic shredded to metal shards.
He slams into the ground with great force, momentarily breaking a few more bones. He slides across the warm, wet cavern floor, shredding his lower jaw as he goes. As he slides to a stop against a pile of junk that was a train moments ago, he sits up. His head is warm and fuzzy, his eyes blurry.
He can’t feel his right arm anymore and realizes he lost it. Releasing the clamps, he detaches the prosthetic from the socket on his stump. It always hurts to do this, but right now he’s in far worse pain.
Waves of pain and numbness alternate across his entire self. His ringing ears, and the waves of intensity create a feeling akin to washing up from the ocean, but a more distorted, hellish version. He can even feel a light breeze, which is actually the last blast wave from the train exploding. No time to bask in these feelings, however. He pops his jaw back in place, and bangs his left shoulder into the wreckage behind him to put it back into place, deciding to find the others. His sword floats to his hand, and he makes a sheathing motion near his left thigh, dematerializing it.
His clothes are torn to shreds in parts, only barely hanging on to him. “Hmm. Another four scars to the collection,” he thinks, heaving to breath and struggling to even move. Though the damage was superficially healed, scars would remain, as would the pain, and the fatigue he feels would not soon let up. His thoughts race, sticking mainly to more comedic and distracting ideas as to feel less pain. It doesn’t help much.
“What is that, the sixth time? No, the seventh. I’m either the luckiest or unluckiest man alive to have died seven times and come back,” he thinks. As he makes his way to what he thinks is the cabin, he sees Tammie and rushes to her side. “Are you okay Tammie?!?” Jack yells, as she stirs and rubs her hand all over his dirt and blood stained face.
“Shut. Shut it. Shut up. I’m trying to bask in the glory of an explosion here,” she groans.
“You don’t have to move,” Jack states, slurring his words as Tammie continues to smear his face, “I’ll carry you.”
Tammie stops, noticing his lack of a right arm. “Eh, I can walk. Nothing like a little stroll after blowing something up, right?” she exclaims, standing up rapidly and making a loud crunching sound. She then falls to the ground, clutching her left shin.
“It’s broken, Tammie. Let me carry you,” Jack insists, but Tammie keeps Jack at arm’s length. “Fine then,” he continues, brandishing a knife, “I’ll fix it the best I can.”
Jack puts the knife in his mouth and stabs it into his left hand, keeping it in the wound as blood flows down the blade. Just as it begins to drip off, it floats, creating a thin stream of crimson through the air as Jack uses his Arts to magically manipulate his own blood. It enters the wound on Tammie’s leg and she flinches.
“What’s wrong?” Jack asks.
“Nothing, I can just never get used to that feeling,” she responds, gesturing for him to continue.
While it is unseen from the outside, inside Tammie’s leg something remarkable happens. Jack’s blood realigns the bone, filling the cracks, and hardening to at least keep the pieces in place. The blood then begins to externally repair the tissue, again hardening, this time to make sutures and a splint of blood.
Tammie rises slowly, with her friend’s help, and the two hobble over to the wrecked cabin just as Kaizu pulls himself out from underneath. He yells, “Jack, Adam’s hurt! What the hell did you two do that for?”.
“I’ll try to heal him, but we need to be fast. That hive you saw on the map? We entered it quite a while ago by my guess, and there are still monsters around. If you can help Tammie sit down, I can try to heal Adam and get him and sis out,” he responds, grabbing Kaizu’s hand and pulling him up.
“Yeah, sure,” he says, shoving past Jack’s right shoulder as he helps Tammie to the ground.
Jack exclaims in pain, and Kaizu almost apologizes, but stops himself. Jack’s stump bleeds a little, but he presses on. Just before he dives into the cabin to help the final two, he secretly puts something into his eyes from behind the wreckage.
…
Adam awakens to Maddison shaking his shoulders with her hands. He tries to sit up, but can’t. He struggles, but then notices Maddison’s mouth moving. He can’t hear her, but reads the word ‘no’ on her lips multiple times. He finally looks down to what is pinning him, and all he sees is a thin metal bar. In almost any circumstance this bar would be easy to move out of the way. However, Adam notices something odd. The bar is perpendicular to his abdomen, and covered in blood.
He looks back up, his face pale and his arms frail, to notice Maddison is crying. He reaches out to comfort her, but feels a shooting pain in his chest and coughs up a little blood. As he wipes his mouth, he looks past the metal bar and sees his legs are crushed under large chunks of metal. He thinks, “Odd, I don’t feel any pain.” Then he realizes he can’t feel anything at all. Not a single feeling below the waist. He’s paralyzed.
Maddison turns around to look at the floor of the cabin, now the wall as the entire train tipped over onto one side. Slivers of warm light shine through the wall as Jack’s sword slices through the rusted metal. Adam smiles weakly at his friend before passing out, his head hanging limply just above the metal rod.
Jack gets straight to work, first slicing the rod from behind Adam’s back, separating him from the wall. He then clears the rubble off of his legs, noticing they’re not too heavily damaged. Finally, he returns his attention to Adam’s gaping stomach, remarking under his breath, “I can’t fix that with just my blood.”
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He hauls Adam up over his shoulders, carefully carrying him out to where Kaizu and Tammie are seated. Maddison joins them, wiping tears from her eyes, asking, “What happens now?”
Jack replies after setting Adam down, “We wait for Adam to wake up, then get the hell out of here.”
Kaizu stands up quickly, a stream of blood sloshing off his hair and down his face, forcing him to close one eye. He yells, “Yeah, sure, that would’ve been a lot easier with the train intact!”
Jack turns to him, stating, “That train was headed for the heart of the hive anyways. While this wasn’t the best way we could've disembarked from it, we would’ve had to anyways. Or did you want to be Omegueara chow like Mellimaine?” Jack then pauses, staring at Kaizu’s face.
“What’s wrong, why’d you stop talking. I mean, I don’t wanna hear you anyways right now but-” Kaizu yells, but Jack cuts him off.
“Your face. The blood,” he says.
“Yeah, I’m bleeding. Whose fault is that, huh?” Kaizu barks back.
Maddison speaks in Jack’s place, replying, “No, it’s your mask. You and Tammie lost your masks.”
“Shit,” Kaizu responds, fumbling around until he finds his. “Tammie, you need help finding yours?” he asks, before the group sees Tammie collapsed on the floor, coughing up green liquid.
“Damnit! She’s choking on ash,” Jack exclaims, before giving orders, “Kaizu, find a mask! Maddison, help me prop her up! I need to use more of my blood to make a pathway and drain her lungs!”
Jack extends his hand as Maddison draws a small knife and stabs him. He puts his hand over Tammie’s mouth, and slowly drips blood into her. He then sits back and focuses intently, as Kaizu returns with another mask. He carefully places it over her face, then sits down next to Maddison and Jack, waiting.
A small hole is cut out of Tammie’s throat from the inside, and green fluid gushes out. As soon as the flow subsides, Tammie gasps for air and clutches her now gaping neck. Jack is handed a medical patch by Kaizu, and he helps Tammie place it over the small hole. She hangs her head low for a few moments, then looks up. To everyone’s surprise, her eyes begin leaking green fluid, and her cheeks are still stained from earlier. The whites of her eyes themselves are now a dark green, and she altogether looks quite different.
Jack pounds the ground with his left hand, knocking the blade out, telling her, “Now you’re like us. Infected. And it’s all my fault.”
Tammie puts her arm around him, stating, “It was me who blew up the train, right? I have nobody to blame but myself.”
Kaizu stands up and walks away, while Maddison jumps up to follow him. Jack turns his attention back to Adam who is slowly stirring. No matter how little Jack thinks he can do for his friend, he has to try anyway. That’s what it means to be as close as they are. To be family in all but blood.
…
As Kaizu leaves the group, Maddison quickly catches up. “Where are you going?” she asks.
“I’m going to try and find some supplies, and maybe some monsters too. Gotta take out my frustration on something,” he calls back, not turning around.
“Why are you so angry right now? We need to be as level headed as we can be!” she tells him, but it falls on deaf ears.
“Why am I mad?!? Why? Because of Jack. Because he’s always pulling these kinds of stunts. He has no regard for his own life and safety, because why should he? His healing factor will fix him right up. But us? We just get caught up in this and end up hurt. He’s lucky none of us died, or else I’d have kicked his ass!” Kaizu explains, finally turning around, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“You’re in no condition to fight. Come back with me,” Maddison commands him, “And he does care about us. He didn't intend for any of this to happen, and he’s doing his best to fix it.”
“And that just makes it okay?” Kaizu asks in response.
“I don’t know!” Maddison yells in return, “But I do know we need to work together, because those eyes in the dark are getting closer. The monsters can tell we’re strong but wounded. It’s just a matter of time until they come for the kill.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Kaizu says, as another voice says the same thing. A massive figure emerges from the darkness behind Kaizu, revealed in the light of the flaming scrap to be Mellimaine.
“You!” Maddison roars, drawing two knives and entering a low combat stance reminiscent of her brother’s.
Mellimaine puts up her hands in surrender, telling the two, “I am not here to fight. I am here to do what I was always going to. To help you.”
“Why should we believe you?” Kaizu asks, before Maddison puts a hand on his shoulder.
“We can trust her,” she tells him. “Jack wanted to keep this a secret for whatever reason, but she’s on our side for now.”
“Hmm. Interesting. If Jack told half truths, you tell three quarters. Impressive,” Mellimaine says while heartily laughing. She gestures for the two to return to the others, handing Kaizu a syringe and stating, “That’s a high end suppressant, should keep the young miss at full strength for a while. It’s always rough for the newly Infected.”
Kaizu takes it, then asks, “What will happen to you?”
“Me? While I appreciate the worry, this is the end of the line for me, at least for now. You kiddos get off this rock, and if I survive, maybe I’ll see you around. Now go! I can’t hold them all forever!” she exclaims, as monsters begin to move in for the kill. She bares her fists and her teeth, roaring a primal sound and running into combat.
…
Adam awakens once more to see Jack trying to do anything to fix his legs. He tells Jack, “Just leave me, I’ll only slow you all down.”
“Nonsense. I’ll figure something out, I promise. Hey, do you think you could move if you put your armor on your legs?” Jack inquires.
“Maybe, let me try it,” Adam responds, focusing and groaning as a pair of metal greaves and boots materialize onto his body. They are similar to mining equipment designed for the depths of planet cores, and as such are nearly impenetrable to any environmental or even physical attacks. Their unique power, as one of Adam’s God Arms, is to make his defenses increase by approximately twenty-five percent for each piece of armor, capping at just below one-hundred percent damage invulnerability with the full set equipped. The downsides are his ability to harm others and his mobility decrease so with all four pieces on he can barely move and is incapable of harming others. He tries to stand with the armor on, and with Jack’s help he stands. Kaizu and Maddison return to tell the group about Mellimaine’s assistance, and they decide to depart. Following Kaizu’s map, Jack leads the group, carrying Tammie, while Maddison and Kaizu help Adam walk. They slowly make their way through the cavernous Underground, unsure what other hardships they will face before reaching the egg vessel.