The Scrapper
Tuesday, 1st of March, 199 A.C, 09:34
“Morning. Friends gone. Mostly. Need rest. Need new shelter. Warm nearby. Square shelter? No. Can’t get in. And too warm. But stay near. Warm good.” - ???
My shoulder was sore. I shifted around, but my other side hurt too. Probably because of this sorry excuse for a bed. It sagged in the middle, like a cot, and was barely wide enough for me to lay on my back.
That was… wait, that was because it *was* a cot. So I wasn’t in my own bed then. With great effort, I opened my eyes and tried to figure out where I could be.
The light was thankfully dim in the room. Er, well, not a room. I was in a tent, big enough for a few other cots and a table covered in leftover medical equipment. A woman was bent over the only other filled cot, tending to the injuries of the man there.
That was enough to shake the sleep from my memories of last night. The wall, the fighting, the leak. Overexertion was probably a better explanation than the bed theory for why I felt like I had been run over by Impulse’s van.
I made a sort of choked gurgle as I contorted my body to wring out the lactic acid. The woman looked up at the sound and gave me a dimpled smile. She got up and replaced her bloodied gloves at the table, then stepped over, having to stoop slightly to avoid running her head along the canvas of the tent.
There was something familiar about her, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was.
“Good morning sleepyhead,” she said in a smooth voice, “how are you feeling?”
A yawn overtook me and I tried to rub my eyes, but hit the hard shell of my Veil instead. “Like I need to sleep for another two days. We… won, right?” After a second, I added, “Also, who are you?”
The woman chuckled. “Don’t worry. I’m here as a doctor from VA, specialized in treating Veiled like you. Officially I’m Dr. H, but you can call me Yuki. And yes, it was a bit touch-and-go but the city is okay. For another year, at least.”
My relief was short-lived. My dad, and the rest of Impulse, had been part of the fighting. Also, did she say she was from VA? They wanted us dead, didn’t they?
I sat up, ignoring my body’s complaints, and asked, “Are my squadmates alright?”
Yuki shook her head. “I’m afraid I can’t answer that. I’ve only been here an hour or two, so I haven’t seen you all. I *can* say that I haven’t gotten any reports of a death, but I was told that there were some serious injuries.”
“On the bright side,” she continued, “you seem to be none the worse for wear, other than the soreness. How about I get you discharged? Then you can go and see about your friends.”
I drummed my fingers against my thigh as Yuki filled out the discharge paperwork and handed it to me. She pointed under my cot. Someone had stored my backpack there, along with a simple change of clothes.
“I thought you might like to slip into something a little more… civilian before you headed out,” Yuki said. “Don’t worry about your identity leaking. I’ve got to get to my next patient, and that fellow” — she pointed to the man in the other cot — “is going to be out cold for at least another hour or two.”
She slipped to the entrance and was half outside when she stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Oh, she said, “and Beck? Take care of yourself, alright?”
Then she disappeared, leaving me with sweatpants, a t-shirt and jacket, and a fistful of questions. What had happened after I tapped out? Why was a VA rep acting so cordially towards me, a member of an underground squad? And how the heck did she know my name?
I figured I might as well take her advice and get changed before I looked for some answers. After all, my Veiled getup was covered in sweat, grime, and flecks of blood. It was also ripped in multiple places. Lily wasn’t going to like that.
***
Beck
There was a type of… lethargy, I supposed, to the bustle in the camp. The medics had started their work at around the same time as the fighters, but they were far from done. I ducked between lumbering nurses and doctors, all desperate to discharge or transfer their remaining patients.
I eventually spotted a familiar figure by a tent on the edge of the camp. At first I thought it was the Surgeon, but I corrected myself to Darren when I noticed that his mask was an aqua green, rather than the blue of his Veil.
I wondered whether it was really such a good idea to have your Veil be that close in appearance to something you wore on a daily basis. Did other people notice the similarity, or was that another trick of the Veil, hiding our identities until you pulled back the curtain and saw what we looked like underneath?
Regardless, he was seated on a crate outside the tent, pressing his palms into his eyes. He glanced up as I approached. There wasn’t a scratch on him, but he still managed to look in rougher shape than me.
“Ah, Beck,” he said, trying to smile, “how are you feeling? I heard you had a long night.” The odd phrasing reminded me that, with so many people around, it was probably not such a good idea to blab about all our Veiled business.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“I’ve been better,” I chirped, “but I also conked out pretty early so I guess I missed the worst of it?” I tried to think of a delicate way to float the question on my mind. “Anything on your end I should know about?”
Darren ran a hand through his hair. “Yes, well. How about you come inside? It’s best that you see for yourself.”
He ushered me inside the tent, mumbling an apology. It took a second for my eyes to adjust to the dim light, but I quickly noticed that there was only one cot in here. Half empty boxes of supplies covered most of the floor space, but a path had been cleared to provide a private-ish room for the singular patient.
My breath caught when I realized who had been placed here. The Aegis was out cold, which wasn’t surprising considering the giant hole in the breastplate beside the bed and… was that a purplish tint to her veins? What had *happened* to her?
She was still wearing her Veil, but someone had changed her into a hospital gown. It looked out of place on her, like she was in a play and had been cast as the wrong character. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’d ever seen her in anything but her Veiled getup or a jacket and cargo pants before.
Darren predicted my question. “We just don’t know. It looks like she’s stabilized, but I don’t think anyone’s seen this kind of wound before. The… whatever that contaminant is. A woman from VA came in here earlier — Yuki, I think her name was — and even she didn’t have any answers.”
“How did she get like this?” I asked.
“Right,” Darren replied, “You had collapsed by then. Just before dawn a new type of Psychon appeared — people are calling it a Sagittarius — that was absolutely massive. The Pugilist and Berserker eventually brought it down with help from the Deadeye, but before that it managed to take out a big chunk of the wall. Would have been much worse, but the Aegis here foolishly took the brunt of the hit. Did something to her Veil, too, but I don’t know what.”
I stewed on the info for a bit. If I had been there to help, maybe… No. I had to remember what dad had told me. Limits, Beck. I *couldn’t* have been there.
“How about everyone else,” I probed, watching the Aegis’ breathing. It was faint enough that to keep track of it I had to focus on something in the background that would get covered up when her chest rose.
“Well I’m alright for starters,” Darren began, “but you knew that already. The Runner made it through unscathed thanks to that Veil of his. The Scout and Deadeye too, other than a few scrapes and bruises. The Heister is doing fine physically, but her bat was damaged past usability, which she’s pretty torn up about. She’s also been taking this business with the Aegis pretty hard.”
He sighed and rubbed his face, trying to remember everything through a cloud of fatigue. “The Aegis apparently had to beat some sense into the Duelist because he was Veil dragging, but he’s okay otherwise. The poor kid thinks he’s responsible for what happened though. Then there’s the Berserker and Pugilist, both of whom suffered pretty serious injuries fighting the Sagittarius, and just in general throughout the night. The Berserker fell and dislocated her shoulder, and has a number of minor wounds that she didn’t notice until her Veil finally let up at the end of the night. The Pugilist is… well, you know how the Pugilist’s Veil is at this point. All his injuries are long gone, but he lost a lot of blood.”
I nodded. Nobody was dead, at least. That was something to be thankful for.
“What now?” I asked. “What’s everyone doing?”
“Oh, this and that,” was Darren’s response. “Some people are helping with the cleanup and disaster response. Some have gone back home, or are in medical care. I’m going to sleep as soon as someone arrives to transfer her,” he gestured to the Aegis, “to a hospital. I don’t know what’s taking them so long, actually. They should have been here hours ago. A VA facility, for the record, so her identity stays private.”
I tilted my head. That weird feeling from when I was talking with Yuki returned. “Actually,” I said, “I’ve been meaning to ask about that. What’s with these VA people being so friendly all of a sudden?”
Darren rubbed his chin. “I think we won, Beck.” He sighed as he said it, but this time it was the sigh of a weight being lifted from his shoulders. “Sable was right. They can’t disappear us now that we’ve made waves like this — saving the city from a massive, never-before-seen Psychon — so they’re acting cordial. For now, anyway. I wouldn’t trust them too much. This is more likely a temporary truce until they can find something to pin on us.”
He had a sudden realization, and turned to the exit. “Ah! But you shouldn’t be worrying about that right now. Go find your dad, I’m sure he’d be happy to see you right about now.”
I had to literally keep myself from jumping at the news that he was okay. Then I looked at the Aegis again and deflated, feeling ashamed to be happy in a room like this.
“Do you know where he is?”
He did. After some quick directions, he waved me off.
I took one last glance at the Aegis before I left. In my months as a Veiled, I supposed I had internalized this idea about saving people. But there was nothing I could do for her right now. She would live or die, and had to just wait and see.
***
While Dad and I embraced, I thought back to the beginning of my time with Impulse. We had hugged just like this back then, on the doorstep of our apartment, though this time it was *me* who was relieved that *he* was okay.
My soreness seemed to melt away, at least while we were close. It seemed like such a stupid thing to care about, a little bit of muscle pain, in the face of what really mattered.
He asked why I was here, to which I retorted that it wasn’t hard to figure out where he had gone, mysteriously leaving on New Year’s Eve.
“Touche,” he said.
I brushed aside his concern about my nicks and scrapes by joking about the state of the area around us. Then I interrogated him about why he had lied to me, which he deflected with a quip of his own. Apparently he thought that I wouldn’t have let him go if he had told the truth, which I supposed wasn’t wrong. If I hadn’t been looking for an opportunity to sneak out myself, anyway.
A grin spread across his face as a thought struck him. “You know, I’ve been so worried about getting through the night that I almost forgot about the pay.”
That was right! We would both be getting a pile of Bits for tonight. I’d have to swing by the safehouse later to grab my share.
Dad started off towards the accounting table. “How about we go eat somewhere fancy to celebrate?”
“Well,” I said, hopping along behind him, “I don’t know that anywhere is gonna be open today. You know, New Year’s and all.
Dad bapped himself on the forehead. “Right, of course. I don’t know how that slipped my mind.”
I chuckled. “Probably because of the severe sleep deprivation, dummy.”
That got a snort out of him. “Yeah, probably so. Fine, fine, you win. Let’s plan for it in the future then?”
“Sounds good to me.”