When Patience came home, she first took a long, hot shower. The water to her feet dyed red as the dried blood was washed from her body. She leaned her head against the wall, letting the water splash on her back. The medical team had patched her up pretty good, in just a few days there won’t be much left to remind her of today’s horrors.
Patience's fingers carefully touched the big bump at the back of her head, where the guy had crashed it against the fridge. She flinched at the sudden pain, took her hand back and slowly reached for her throat.
‘I nearly died today. It feels like I had already halfway passed over to the other side, before Robin…’
“Fuck!”
Punching the wall with her sore hand, she growled.
“You are weak, Patience!”
“You were useless today!”
“You had to be saved by some dude that never even punched his own pillow before…”
She began to huff, the hot water still flowing around her.
‘I really thought I was on the right track. I should have done better than that. Eight years of training and fighting just to end up like…this?’ Her thoughts began to run wild.
Hitting the wall again, she let the pain in her hand cool down her mind a bit.
“No, that’s not right! I only consider it from one side. I’ve got the first guy perfectly. The second one shot me before I could even engage in a fight and set me in a disadvantageous position from the start. He also had a useful mutation for the fight, which allowed him to keep the upper hand!” Patience began to look at the situation more realistically and tried to find her best course of actions from here on.
She had training, but not the best one accessible to her and her G-Anomaly was a Class D - Enhanced Strength, a mutation that was still upgradeable.
‘How would it have turned out, if I had those flaws fixed before?’
Don’t complain about what you could have done better in the past, concentrate on the moment and what you should do now to improve for the future!
She could hear the old geezer who coached her in her mind, trying to sound profound and badass.
‘Yeah, he probably would say some crap like that…but he would be right.’
With the new studio contract she’ll get better training and step up one level. The other part would be more complicated. Upgrading one's mutation was indeed possible for people with Enhanced Strength. The governmental med centers had fail-safe methods for that, but the price was enormous. She would also be able to get the upgrade from some shady stitch, half the price but also no insurance for success…or survival if shit hits the fan.
Patience eventually turned off the shower and looked for pajamas. A plan formed in her mind.
Step one, get the deal with the new studio done and commit to training even more. Step two, earn a shitton of money by any means possible. Step three, paying the fee for governmental treatment and rank up to Class C.
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“Step four: Beat the shit out of everyone who is crossing my way!” she mumbled, already half asleep.
***
When Robin woke up again, the sun was nowhere to be seen. He still wore most of his clothes from that fateful day, only the shoes and trousers came off and lay on the ground in the middle of the flat. Fighting out of the returning nightmare, he stumbled over into the bathroom preparing to hug the toilet again. He hadn’t eaten much in the last two days, where the hell does his stomach find the shit he throws up all the time?
The bathroom looked as bad as Robin felt. Switching between throwing up and showering really puts a strain on hygiene. Realizing that nothing more tried to force its way out, Robin sat on the edge of his bathtub and looked into the mirror in front of him.
“I look like shit!” he pointedly summarized his appearance. He wore a stained shirt, his hair was disheveled and the circles under his eyes were so dark, they could be mistaken as tattoos.
“What am I even doing here? Holing up at home, hiding from the world and waiting for new nightmares?”, he took a deep breath. That couldn’t go on any longer, he had to pull himself together.
For three days Robin stayed at home already. He just gave a short info to Jim, explaining that he was ill for the week. Now that he watched himself in the mirror, it finally dawned on him, there was nothing to sit out or wait for, he had to make some decisions to move on.
“Let's clean up first of all, then I will take an honest look at all the shit that has happened!” Robin threw his mind back on the right track, turned on some music and began to clean himself and the flat.
When the sun finally rose, Robin sat on the counter in his kitchen. A bowl of cereal in one hand and a fresh coffee in the other.
Rummaging through his memories, he had to admit that there was little they could have done to salvage the situation. Sure, not entering the building would have saved the day, but that aside? He wasn’t willing to let Patience die and damn, he wasn’t willing to die himself! The smugglers clearly had no interest in discussions or negotiations and when they pulled out a gun, they were the ones that escalated the situation.
“Seka Security glossed over the fact that I killed them so easily, only really interested in the damage to the greenhouses. A life isn’t worth anything today. What if it is me that dies the next time something happens? Will someone care or would I be just one more number in some report?”
Robin's parents weren’t around anymore. His father died a few years ago and his mother already passed away shortly after his birth. He had Timothy and Jim, maybe even Patience, who he cared about - but would they care? Robin didn’t want to find out.
“I’ll have to live with the fact that I took three lives that day. But the reason was to survive, a good reason for pulling the trigger!”
Robin couldn’t change that anymore, but he could decide how he wanted to go on from here.
He wanted to see the stars, travel the universe and learn the secrets of the Starborn, the most powerful race known. With the map in his head, he had a first lead that could take him further ahead of anyone else. He will probably not directly find the Starborn with it, as his part of the map only was for the Mereus Cluster, but it was a way forward and maybe he would find further clues in the other relic sites.
“This is my chance to chase after my dreams and goals. If I really want to follow this route, that may not have been the last encounter of this kind. What will I do next time?”
He put his coffee aside and walked over to look out of the window.
“What price am I willing to pay?”
He thought that over for some time and soon came to a conclusion that surprised even him.
“Burn in plasma, I would pay any price. I have nothing to lose and everything to win!”
His eyes focused and he steeled himself, ingraining that resolve into his bones.
“I have to act less naive, be more prepared and think smarter…” Robin said this out loud, to give his decision more weight. No turning back, only looking forward to the next step to take.
“Time to contact Jim and Timothy, I have to make an honest evaluation of all my cards at hand. So, first things first…” he took a deep breath.
“I need a stitch to re-analyse my G-Anomaly and understand what I’m dealing with!”