"He's a madman, but Armand does incredible work." The doctor said as he looked at the scans. "Physically, she should heal up perfectly fine. But the trauma will take much longer to recover from. There's not a trace of anesthesia in her system."
"Are you saying he cut into her brain without knocking her out?" Clint asked.
"He did much more than that, but the simple answer is yes." Fitzsimmons replied.
Rebecca shook her head and looked over at Lin. "Is that why she's in a fugue state?"
"Honestly, I can't say. I'm not entirely sure what he did to her. Lin isn't human, so her scans don't read like human ones." He said, tossing the scans onto the larger screen. "I can approximate a good number of things because of the physical similarities, but that's about the extent of it. I wouldn't know where to begin treating her other than the basics."
"Looks human to me." Clint said, scrolling through the scans. "Heart, lungs, brain, even ovaries. All look like ours."
"That's where it gets tricky, while these things are functionally similar, indicating her home planet is likely very similar to Earth, there's incredible differences. Take her brain, it's three times as dense as an average human's is at that age. And that nodule is even more so."
"Explains why she's so smart." Clint muttered, then turned to Rebecca. "What do you think?"
"Is this going to help her recover?" She asked.
He shrugged. "No idea. Doctor?"
"It's unlikely."
"Then I don't care. And Kurokawa won't either." She said, walking over to the bed and sitting down on the stool. "Just do what you can for her."
"Of course." Fitzsimmons said, excusing himself from the room.
Clint dropped into one of the chairs and groaned. "This is beyond anything I ever thought I'd be dealing with."
"Just gotta take it a step at a time." She replied, then got up. "I'm going to go look for him."
"He said he'd meet us here." Clint sight, stretching.
"Did he?" She asked, narrowing her eyes.
"Yeah, I mean..." He tilted his head. "He told me to bring her to Mercy, ask for Fitzsimmons, and-"
He paused and that was all Rebecca needed to confirm her suspicion as she headed for the door. "I'm going."
"Fuck, wait, Bex!" He said, grabbing her arm. "I'll go."
"He's my brother." She snapped, pulling herself free then hesitating. "Kind of."
Clint narrowed his eyes. "Okay, and he'd want family to watch over Lin."
"I'm not going to sit here while the last piece of my fucked up family might be out on some mountain, injured or worse!"
"And how are you going to drag half a ton of armor onto the transport?" She scowled at him. "Thought so. Stay here, I'll find him."
"Fine."
~
He stared at the battered helmet in his hand before dropping it into the snow and looking at the expanse of white in front of him. There was something beautiful about how pristine everything looked. It was well below freezing, but he couldn't feel it. He couldn't even feel pain anymore.
He turned and looked behind him at the bodies piled around the entrance to the mountain compound. They'd all had lives. People they cared for, reasons for doing what they did, years ahead of them. But now...
He sighed, watching his breath crystalize on the air, and returned his gaze to the snow, only just noticing the footsteps that broke the unmarred beauty. A trail of red between them the only evidence the victor survived long enough to walk away.
He knew he was dead, his mind simply hadn't caught on to the fact yet. Impulses in his brain keeping his heart pumping and lungs pulling in the crisp, frigid air. Their battle had raged for three hours, but in the end, he was still mortal and had limits that his body finally reached mid-punch. It would've only taken one more blow, but his opponent stopped and began walking away, leaving him behind.
His eyeline moved, passing the peaks of the distant mountain and registered the pale blue of the sky. It was while focused on that cloudless sky that Blitz took his last breath.
~
Clint dragged Fuse's body onto the transport and reached into the exposed gel layer of the armor's undersuit and grabbed a handful of wires, ripping them out. The remaining pieces of the armor fell away and he watched as the teen's chest rose and fell easier.
"How the fuck?" He panted, grabbing the medical kit while trying to decide where to start.
It took him two minutes to decide that he was better off not doing anything and leapt into the pilot's seat. The already strained engines screamed as he pushed the transport to take off at top speed. Fortunately, where they were going wasn't as far away as Satan City, so he knew the vehicle could handle it. All the same, it still shuddered violently as he flew it north.
The medical crew was waiting on the roof as he landed the transport fifteen minutes later. They all froze when they got a look at him, but Fitzsimmons burst from the doors looking furious. "What the hell are you all doing!? Get him in here! Now!"
They loaded the teen on the gurney and rolled it inside as Clint unsteadily exited the vehicle and vomited before making his way back into the building. Rebecca rounded the corner just as the doors closed to the operating theater and she sprinted over to him.
"Kurokawa?" Rebecca asked, then froze when she saw Clint's face.
"He's alive." He said shakily. "I don't know how. Bex, he's... God, I don't even know where to begin. He'd made it halfway down the mountain when I found him. Miles away from Phoenicks' base. The guy he was fighting was just outside it."
"I'm going to see him." She said, starting toward the door.
Clint caught her wrist. "NO! No, you can't. You shouldn't see that."
"Shouldn't see what?"
"Just, please, Bex. You don't need to see him. Not like that." He pleaded, his hand squeezing her wrist tightly.
She stared at him, not having seen him so serious before deeply unsettled her. "But he's alive."
He nodded once and she relented. "Okay, let's get back to Lin."
"You go. I'll stay here and keep an eye on things." He said, giving her a shove. "Fuse was a GA soldier and we're in the Frontier. I'll keep you updated."
"Clint-"
"Bex, just go." He said firmly, giving her a harder push.
Once he was sure she was gone, he leaned against a wall and sank to the floor. "What the fuck did we get ourselves into?"
~
They were bickering again. It was always the same fight these days. What to do with the creature in their daughter's room. The vile, twisted creature was the result of a madman's attempt to create a clone using necrotic tissue. Rinku could've told them it wouldn't work, couldn't work. But he was curious.
His mother was too old to carry a child, but she insisted. Undergoing rejuvenation treatments and various ingestible therapies to ensure that it would be born. And born it was. Twisted, diseased, and it died minutes later. Instead of disposing of it, they kept the corpse. His sister, he reminded himself multiple times. The traditional cloning processes failed as the body's genetic coding was too damaged by what his mother had done to herself.
Then they summoned him. Her worked tirelessly for weeks with the decomposing body of Rinku's sister. Until finally he had a stable, living creature. It was unlike anything they'd ever seen. They had the madman executed for what he'd done. But now they were stuck with this child that was no more their daughter than the nursemaid who looked after her.
Getting up from the table, he left the dining hall and made his way to the nursery. He would do what they didn't have the courage to. And in their grief, he'd slip away.
"There you are." He said calmly, staring down at what should have been his sister.
She wasn't twisted and deformed. She was perfectly proportional. But she was tiny. Too tiny. And her thin hair was dark, as was her skin. Unlike the fair skin and pale hair their species were known for, this was the most obvious sign that she wasn't a natural creation. The fractal shaped irises were the color of blood, which only made her look more threatening than she really was.
"They created you to alleviate their pain. But all you've done is create more pain." He murmured, wrapping his hands around the infant's neck and squeezing.
Instead of screaming or crying, she only stared up at him. His brow furrowed and his hands pulled away from her, as if burned.
"You don't understand pain yet." He said, then grinned maliciously. "But you will."
His electric blue eyes stared at the ceiling of his quarters as he replayed the dream in his mind. The small device on his ear beeped and he tapped it. "Speak."
"Master Rinku, they're ready."
A smile crossed his face, the dream already fading from his mind. "Excellent. I shall join you at HQ directly."
He climbed out of the lush bed and walked into the bathroom, ducking into the shower as movement caught his eye. The human woman he'd laid with the night prior struggled to move. He watched her for a few moments as she whined in pain, looking over at him. A trail of blood leaked from her mouth.
"I would apologize, but you only have yourself to blame. You're simply too fragile." He said calmly.
Her arm reached for him. "My lord..." She moaned.
"As a parting gift, I grant you clarity so that you'll take this knowledge into whatever life awaits you beyond this one."
The woman's eyes widened as she stared in horror at Rinku. She recalled throwing herself at him and begging him to take her. The pain of his thrusting into her and how she felt herself tearing apart from the inside, which was once a beautiful agony, now a death sentence as her vision darkened.
Rinku didn't move until the light was gone from her eyes. After which he turned on the water and washed the remnants of her off his body, shaking his head as he did. "Too fragile."
Humans were laughably easy to manipulate. He hadn't been on the planet a full year yet and he'd already ingratiated himself to nearly every major organization that ruled over it. He had a handful of devout followers that worshipped him as a god and all but threw themselves at him. They were useful, whether for elevating his position or idle distraction.
But there was a tangle in the net of control he was weaving. Something he'd overlooked upon his arrival. That wretched creation that he'd all but forgotten was still alive and on this very planet. And what's more, she'd somehow gained the loyalty of what he'd learned was one of the fiercest warriors on the planet.
But he had fierce warriors of his own, cut from the same cloth and boasting their superiority to him in every metric. It was them he was preparing to speak with as they learned of his location, meaning she would be there as well. And he wondered if she finally understood pain.
~
"Details are still forthcoming. The only things we can confirm is he's in critical condition and she's comatose." Porter said. "We don't have a presence that far north in the Frontier, so getting their records is proving difficult. Especially since the doctor in charge of them keeps his files on a private network."
"If extermination's what you're after, a two man team could handle it. But if you want extraction, that complicates things." Avery added. "Our best bet would be a legitimate transfer to the C-Corp medical facility. But it'd take weeks to facilitate that, especially if you wanted to keep it under the radar."
Rinku nodded and looked over at Caspar. "What do you think?"
"The more moving parts, the more risk of something going wrong." He said dully. "Taking them out now is the efficient play, but it's loud. Extraction gives them time to recover, but it's quiet. The problem is the two spies they have watching over them."
"Clinton Roberts and Rebecca Chase." Porter said, bringing up their files. "Roberts was an intel operative, top of the board. Left the military after the Liberation and joined law enforcement where he became chief of his precinct after two years. Worked there for two more, was recruited by Echelon where he was being groomed to take over for their chief Veronica Chase."
"'Chase'." Rinku said thoughtfully.
"Mother of Rebecca Chase." Porter said, answering the unasked question. "Rebecca is Roberts' partner. Graduated at the top of her class, scored the highest points on Echelon's training program. Worked efficiently with him, but never stood out the way he did despite having the potential to be better than him. Comments in her jacket claim her biggest weakness was getting in her own way."
"Just a nice way of saying she second-guessed herself too much." Avery muttered.
"Which of our two options would rouse their suspicions more?" Rinku asked.
Caspar gave Avery a nod. And she sighed. "The first. And we really can't afford to have anymore mud smeared on HQ or the GA right now after the recent events."
"So the second option it is." Rinku said, giving his hands a single clap.
"Best way to make it look legit, is to make it legit." Porter said. "There's no lies or deception to hide that way."
"Do it." Caspar said dully. "Make it legit."
~
Fitzsimmons blew smoke out of the open window as Rebecca read through the file, her brow furrowed as she scanned the screen. "How do you know all of this? Echelon doesn't have this level of information on any of the kids from the Program."
"He sent you to me because I worked alongside Armand. Other than him, nobody else knows more about those kids than I do." He said, taking another drag on the cigarette. "Not sure how he knew where I was, though. I defected to the Frontier around the same time Armand left the Program."
"But, these things you did..." She said, holding up the tablet. "You did them to children."
"Not our first attempt, either. We tried with adults first. The advanced ossification would result in more brittle bones. Muscle enhancements turned into advanced Parkinson's after a few months. Gene therapy to boost cellular regeneration became MS. You get the idea." He said with no emotion, butting his cigarette out.
"But children still have stem cells."
He nodded, closing the window and moving over to his desk. "Someone paid attention in biology. A-Corp wanted the next generation of soldiers while Armand wanted the next evolution of humankind. Their paths crossed and nothing makes money flow like impending war."
"Somebody had to-"
"Oh, they did. At first. Then the orphanages started filling up. After that, it got easier to look the other way. Especially when the results turned promising." He said, sitting down. "That's when we buckled down and made our selections. Picked the ones that had the best chances of surviving the procedures and while the military trained them, we'd improve them. And they exceeded everyone's expectations but Armand's."
"It wasn't evolution." She said.
"It wasn't. That's when he left, then I left, and the Program became A-Corp's project. Perfect soldiers." He laughed bitterly. "But they were still children and behaved as you'd expect a child capable of killing just about anything to. Ultimately, that's why the Program folded."
"What about Kurokawa?"
Fitzsimmons sighed. "There's always an exception. He just happened to be it. He's not special, Miss Chase. If anything, he's flawed product."
"You clearly never saw him in the field." She said defensively.
He laughed. "That may be, but I've seen his body. Scars tell more than words on a screen ever could."
"And seeing him getting those scars says more than after-the-fact criticism." She shot back, setting the tablet on his desk. "You moved him to a recovery pod."
"Like with your Miss Lin, his physical recovery is proceeding smoothly. However, I'm less confident about his chances of ever regaining consciousness. He's been stacking injuries and not properly recovering from them for some time, and not just minor cuts and scrapes. Injuries that could cripple or kill even the most hardy of individuals." He said, pulling up the current readouts on the screen behind him. "Trauma like that and the body will do anything it can to shield itself from further injury. Even if that means shutting itself down. And that's if he's strong enough to survive being put back together. At the very least, you should expect a level of brain damage."
~
Lin sat in the wheelchair, staring blankly ahead as Clint wheeled her into the room where Fuse was. He could see his body floating in the pod's amniolyphic fluid and felt his stomach turn slightly as images of what he'd looked like flashed through his mind. But he swallowed the bile back and wheeled her chair closer, then applied the brake.
"I'm not supposed to bring you in here." He said, smoothing her hair down gently. "But I thought you'd want to see him."
He stepped away to give them some privacy, walking over to the window and leaning his forehead against it. The cool of it eased his stomach slightly and he sighed, closing his eyes. "Let me know when you're ready to go and I'll wheel you back to you room, okay?"
After a few seconds, he heard a thud and looked over to see Lin leaned over in the chair with her head pressed against the transparent material of the pod. Her eyes closed, but her mouth moving. Swallowing his instinct to say something, he stood there and watched until she went limp and fell out of the chair.
"Oh, fuck!" He hissed, running over to her and picking her up. As he was putting her in the chair a nurse walked in and narrowed her eyes at him.
"You're not supposed to be in here." She said sharply.
He grinned at her. "Yeah, sorry about that. Thought it'd do her some good, though."
The nurse continued glaring at him as he undid the lock on the wheelchair and pushed it toward the door. He gave her his most charming smile as he walked past her, then without warning pulled his gun and pressed it to her back. At the same time, he felt something sharp pressed against his abdomen.
"How'd you know?" She hissed.
"Recognized the bruise on your face. Same dent was on the helmet we found outside Echelon." He replied quietly, pressing the gun deeper into her back. "What're you doing here?"
She hesitated, then dropped the scalpel and raised her hands. Clint took a step back, making sure to shield Lin's body with his.
"Would you believe me if I said I was hoping to get his help?" She asked.
"No. But it's a good starting point for the conversation I'd like to have with you." He replied. "You push the chair. Both hands on the handles."
She nodded and walked carefully past him. He let her get just outside of kicking range before he started following after her, holstering the gun. She looked back and smirked. "You know it blocks the firing mechanism, pushing that into my back like you did."
"I did. But I knew you knew that. I wanted you to know that I didn't want to shoot."
"Hm." She muttered quietly, looking forward.
"Third on the left."
Eve nodded and as she rounded into the room, she let go of the wheelchair and raised her hands.
"I've got her, Bex." Clint called. "All the way in, please."
Rebecca got out of the chair she was sitting in while Eve pushed Lin into the center of the room. Clint stepped in and closed the door. "Sit."
She moved over to the chair Rebecca indicated and took a seat, placing her hands on her knees. Clint locked the wheels before drawing his sidearm again and resting it in front of him. "Okay."
"Like I said, I was here to get Fuse's help. I didn't realize he was like that, though." She said.
"Help with what?" Rebecca asked.
"Escaping HQ and the GA."
"Fuck're you talking about?" Clint blurted. "You're the ones after us."
She sighed. "You haven't heard, have you?"
"Heard what?" Rebecca asked.
"About the ghosts from Keystone's past."