He hoped Kyo would be okay, and left him lying there to check on Yesmina. The man wasn’t too worried about her—she had only fainted from fatigue. She was already stirring though. She tried to lift her head slightly, but she was stopped by the man’s hand.
“Stay still,” he commanded, in a stern, no-nonsense voice. It had the effect of her complying without argument. She rested her head back on the asphalt, but turned it to the right so she could see Kyo on the ground. She choked as she saw him so still, and tried to ask if he was alright, but her words were raspy and incomprehensible against her dry mouth and bruised lips. “He’ll be fine. But you have to keep still. I don’t know if anything is broken yet, and I do not want to take chances.”
“Mmph,” she managed to respond. Yesmina got the message, though, and as much as she wanted to rush to Kyo, she stayed on the ground and closed her eyes. Her whole body throbbed. She couldn’t tell if it was from pain or her complete lack of energy. Whatever the cause was, it felt as if her muscles were about to catch fire. She heard a series of beeps, and then silence. A few minutes later, she heard him grunt.
“Alright, let’s go.. Can you try and stand. Please?” he added. Yesmina groaned as she began to push herself up with her hands. When she was on all fours, the man took her arms and helped her up the rest of the way. She swayed a little, and stumbled backwards to lean on the wall. She bent over and threw up, and wiped her mouth on her sleeve.The hero went over to Kyo and gently lifted him up onto his shoulder. His hands were bleeding badly, and his breaths were coming in short gasps.
“Let’s go.”
They began to walk back out of the courtyard. Yesmina picked up the heavy sword and stumbled after the man and Kyo. When she began to feel more comfortable at being upright, she walked more normally. He walked very quickly, taking sharp turns down alleys and passages Yesmina hadn’t even noticed until he disappeared behind a corner. Yesmina’s thoughts were full of panic and worry, though she was too tired and hurt to voice them. Where the hell were they going, and how much longer could Kyo survive like that? She tried not to look at his hands, which turned the back of the man’s back a scarlet red. It had turned quite dark, and each time he passed under a streetlight, Yesmina studied him. The rock was the most disturbing part of him. It covered all of his body, as far as she could tell, but it seemed to flow around his muscles and joints smoothly as if organic. It was dark brown stone, and it looked to weigh a lot—each step the man took resounded against the pavement. He was surprisingly quick on his feet for a golem of rock. A melancholy smile flashed across her face as she labeled him this, remembering the golem that had given her her powers.
“Who are you?” Yesmina said in a raspy, quiet voice. The man didn’t respond, and Yesmina thought he hadn’t heard her. They kept walking, and finally stopped by a metal door on the ground, leading to some underground compartment. As Yesmina caught up and stood next to him, a beep signaled their arrival from his helmet. She was about to ask the question again; she cleared her throat and parted her lips to speak.
“Alpha Impact.”
The sudden response surprised Yesmina, and she licked her lips to speak again.
“Thank you. So much, for helping us.”
“No prob,” he said, then paused. “This is a lab,” he continued, motioning towards the door. “I used my database to find somewhere to take your friend. I don’t think an ordinary hospital would be outfitted to help him, and even if they were, they most likely wouldn’t,” he pointed out bitterly.
He reached down and yanked at the handle. The door opened surprisingly easily for something so rusted. Yesmina went first, down dark stone steps. Alpha Impact followed after her, shutting the door behind him. As he did, lights on the steps began to glow, and the space was illuminated quickly. The walls were modern steel and there was a door at the base of the stone stairs, curved, with a small screen and some sort of camera. There was the sound of tiny motors as the camera focused on them.
“Please state your name,” the door requested in a metallic female voice from a hidden speaker.
“Alpha Impact…” he looked at Yesmina, realizing he didn’t know their names.
“Yesm—” she cleared her throat to speak more clearly, and loudly. “Yesmina Glint and Back Alley Scrapper.”
“Scanning superhuman database; Query: Alpha Impact. Yesmina Glint. Back Alley Scrapper.”
“We’re here to see Dr. Burstein about an injury,” Alpha Impact added.
The door slid open in response, and a dark corridor lit up in front of them by the same lights that were on the steps, small LEDs on the floor by the walls. The floor, walls, and ceiling were a uniform silver steel seamlessly covering the hallway. Somewhat hesitantly, Alpha Impact stepped forward. He looked back and motioned for Yesmina to follow.
“What is this place?” she asked in a low whisper.
“I’m not too sure. I just Google’d it.”
“Google?” she asked, raising an eyebrow in confusion.
“State-of-the-art technology. It was built in with the suit. It’ll probably be on the common market in a few decades or so.” He left his explanation at that.
Both their footsteps now resounded off the metallic surface, echoing eerily in the desolate place. Yesmina walked apprehensively, unsure if she liked this place. She certainly wasn’t comforted that she didn’t have the energy to use her powers, let alone put up any kind of fight if need be. She wouldn’t even be able to run away. She just hoped she wouldn’t have to.
Finally they came to a big archway with a door. It had a seam down the middle, and when they approached it, the two halves slid silently away into the wall. When the doors had allowed their entry, the two were blown away by what lay before them. It was a large room with a high ceiling, at least twenty feet above their heads. The space was littered with gadgets and machines. There was some sort of giant engine, blinking with a multitude of lights in one corner, connected to a large circle of metal on the wall by thick tubes that snaked on the floor. Off to another corner was an operating table, a bright white surface under an overhanging lamp. There was a small table of scissors and needles and other medical tools next to it.
Yesmina thought it all looked rather sinister. But though the room was crowded with these oddities, there was no one in sight. There could have certainly been someone in the room, Yesmina supposed, what with all the corners and things to hide behind.
Then a door to the side opened, and a tall, thin woman stepped into the room. She was wearing a sleek white lab coat over a colorful striped slip. She wore earrings of interlaced silver circles. Her hair was brown and short, hugging her face. She wore tall heels that clicked on the metal floor loudly with each step. The woman was consulting a clipboard and checking things off with a pencil and writing notes in the margins. She walked right past the trio, her nose buried in her work. Yesmina coughed then, involuntarily, and her hand shot up to her mouth, unsure if she should have made a noise or not.
The woman’s head shot up, her eyes wide to the source of the noise. After a moment, her face returned to normal, and she smiled. She set aside her clipboard and put her pencil behind her ear.
“Ah, I recognize you from the door. My, that poor soul has suffered quite a wound,” she looked at Kyo sympathetically. “I suppose you’ve come for medical assistance. I had my cameras scan your technology when you stated your name—Alpha Impact, was it? I hope you don’t mind. I had to make sure you hadn’t looked me up for the wrong reasons,” she chuckled.
Walking over to the corner with the table, she motioned for them to follow her. Carefully stepping over the wires and tubes, they made their way to her, who walked briskly through the mess without any trouble navigating in her shoes.
“Set him down, please,” she said, looking at Alpha Impact. “Let’s see what we can do… Oh dear, he really had a bad day, I’m afraid.” She said all this with an air of nonchalance, setting both of them at ease. Either she really knew what she was doing, or she had no clue and was pretending the later.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I forgot to introduce myself!” She smiled and reached over Kyo to shake their hands. They did so apprehensively. “I’m Dr. Susan Meer. I specialize in, well, special cases of almost any scientific kind—medical, mechanical, physical, et cetera. I like to think of myself as a jack of all trades, though I do have a particular knack for chemistry.
“Now, let’s not leave this man waiting.” She turned her back to them and reached for a pair of scissors. Taking the bottom of Kyo’s shirt, she began cutting it, exposing her chest. She applied two wires to his chest which connected to a machine with a blank screen on it. As she flicked a switch, a display of lines flickered into view. “This will help me monitor his vitals… Y’know, heart rate and stuff like that. I’ll need you guys to step away, please,” she requested, tying a mask to her mouth. “Thank you.”
She took a needle and carefully inserted it into his arm, just below the crook of his elbow. She barely found a spot of skin far enough away from his wounds to put it in. She hooked a bag of blood onto a metal stand and the blood began flowing into Kyo from the bag. From a distance, Yesmina and Alpha Impact watched as she carefully examined the many cuts on his torso and arms. She took the most time around his hands where the most damage had been done. His fingers were mangled and his hands had been cut to the bone in some places. Taking heavy gauze from a drawer, she carefully wrapped his hands in it. They almost instantly became soaked in blood, and she replaced them efficiently. She wrapped them incredibly tight around his wounds, aiming to prevent more blood loss.
The magic that ran throughout Kyo’s body helped clot the blood quicker than a normal man’s would, and as the wounds became slightly less critical, Dr. Meer unwrapped them, one at a time, and began stitching up the gashes. She seemed to work for hours, meticulously and thoroughly. Her face was unexpressive throughout the ordeal.
Yesmina fell asleep shortly into the procedure, and Alpha Impact did the same an hour later. When they woke up, the lights in the room were drastically dimmed, and it took both of them a few minutes to adjust to the lack of light.
Once the darkness became less thick, they were able to make out the shape of Kyo lying on the table. His chest rose up in down in quick, short gasps, though his breathing was quiet, an improvement from before. Standing up, Yesmina went to his side and laid a hand on his arm. He was covered in bandages and IVs, and he smelled like a hospital—all the medicine, disinfectant, and sickness.
“Don’t think about healing him, missy,” a clear voice warned from behind. It was Dr. Meer. “His body would heal better with conventional medicine this time. Your still weak from whatever, and your streams of energy wouldn’t even half-heal his wounds. It would just make his recovery slower.”
Yesmina was shocked. She was certain she hadn’t let anything slip. She wasn’t sure if she had said anything at all. Unless somehow the good doctor had done something to her during the night. “How did you… know?” She began reading her mind for an answer, but there hadn’t been anything done to her last night. Alpha Impact and her had been left alone.
“I could tell from your expression last night. You so desperately wanted to do something, but you knew you couldn’t. The way you looked at him helplessly. That, and I scanned your code-name when you said it at the door,” she chuckled and winked at her.
Yesmina smiled in return, though hers wasn’t really genuine. She still thought the doctor wasn’t entirely alright.
“He’s pretty stable right now,” Meer continued. “His body’s pretty tough. No one should have survived something like that,” she said, staring at him sleeping with mild curiosity. “He won’t be able to use his hands, of course, I’m afraid,” she said, looking at his sword laying on the floor. “But I have a feeling he needs them, direly. Am I right?”
“Yes—he can’t work without ‘em.”
“Well then follow me. I’m developing something that might come in handy.”
The two women began to walk away. Yesmina looked back at Alpha Impact, who began to get up to follow them. “Stay there. Look after BAS,” she communicated to him telepathically. “I’ll be fine,” she reassured him.
He settled back down and nodded, but turned so he could see the door they exited through while keeping an eye on Kyo.
Yesmina stayed a few steps behind Burstein’s loud heels. They went through a door that looked the same as all the others in the facility, and entered a hallway made of the same grey steel.
“It’s a bit of a walk, where we’re going, so I hope you don’t mind,” she called back.
Yesmina grew suspicious, being taken away so far from the others. She figured though that she couldn’t do anything to her. She could take her.
“Do you have this whole place to yourself?” she asked. “It seems gigantic.”
“Oh yes, but I do have a few robots to help maintain the place. You know, help me with experiments, clean up, all that stuff.”
They finally made it to a room. This one had a rectangular glass door, different from all the others. Touching a metal button on the wall, the doors swung open and they entered. On a raised metal dais were two egg-shaped pieces of metal. They were plugged in at their base to a glowing blue socket.
“I built these last night, but I’ve had the idea for quite some time,” she said.
“What are they?” Yesmina asked.
“Gauntlets. Gloves, for your friend. They can be electrically wired to his brain, allowing him to control them.”
“There aren’t any fingers,” Yesmina pointed out.
Dr. Burstein laughed. “Oh, contraire!” She chuckled to herself.
Pulling a remote out of her lab coat pocket, she pressed a button. With a whir, the top of the gauntlets receded into itself. After a clicking noise, five tubes extended from each. Yesmina realized they were fingers.
“How much do these cost? Why would you go through all this trouble for someone you just met, and haven’t even spoken to?”
“Oh, they’re free of charge. I just feel a…impulse to help others,” she smiled, showing the whites of her teeth. “They may be a little troublesome to get on, but I’m sure your friend can handle it.”
“These are pretty neat. I’m sure he’ll really appreciate it.”
Yesmina walked closer to the gauntlets perched on the platform. Leaning over it, she inspected the finely curved metal and precise grooves of where two sheets connected. The fingers were a marvel; they had two joints each, except for the thumbs and were carefully built to be sturdy but nimble. Yesmina’s admiration was interrupted by a loud clunking noise behind her, and the clink of metal on metal.
“Damn it, leave!” she heard Burstein whisper to the robot.
Yesmina turned around slowly, first to see her waving her hand to dismiss the robot, then the robot itself. Her heart dropped like a stone as it began to beat rapidly. Standing in the hallway was a bronze and steel robot. Its arms were thin and ended in three-fingered claws. Though it had no visible head, it had a single circle on a plate which helped it navigate. “Oh my—,” she was cut off by Burstein.
“Well, I didn’t mean to reveal myself so early,” she bit her lip in mock contemplation. “But I guess I’ll just have to get rid of you three sooner than I expected.”
She laughed and pulled out a small gun. Yesmina barely had time to react and tried to sidestep the laser beam. It barely missed her, chipping her nail.
“Bitch!” Yesmina threw a ball of energy at the doctor, but she flattened herself against the wall and watched it whiz past her face. She ran out of the room and pressed a button on the wall next to the door. It began to close quickly, but Burstein didn’t wait. She ran around the corner, speaking quickly into a microphone hanging from her ear. Yesmina dashed for the closing gap, but a stream of electricity came from the robot’s hand, hitting her chest and knocking her to the ground.
She pressed her hand where the lightning had hit her, and cursed. The steel door had closed, and there was no way she knew to get out. She searched the room but found no buttons or keypads to open the door. She’d have to get out by force, and brute strength was not something she was best at.
Focusing resolutely, she closed her eyes and forced herself to think about the shot of power that was about to blast from her raised palm. Taking a deep breath, she exhaled in a loud grunt and allowed her energy to flow out of her hand. She felt it leave her body and hoped it had done something to the door. She opened her eyes slowly, not wanting to know she had failed. She sighed in frustration when she saw she had only managed to sear off one layer of metal. It had revealed the wires underneath, a complex spiderweb of red, blue, and orange cords connecting and plugging in to different nodes and switches.
Then something caught her eye. It was a big box at the edge of where her hole had exposed the wiring. Some of it was still protected behind the metal, but Yesmina rushed over to examine it further. Every one of the wires, as far as she could tell, came back to this one. She hoped it was something like a power core. If she fried this, she hoped it would open the door. That or it would cut off any mechanical ways of opening it. She decided she had little other choice.
Stepping back again, she kept her eyes opened and trained her fingers on the edge of the box. The psychic energy came easier now that she had warmed up a bit. As it impacted with the metal of the box, a small explosion erupted and smoke began billowing from the door. Underneath the thick cloud of smoke, Yesmina saw a sliver of light, though. The outside.
The door had opened itself a few feet, and she could tell smoke was leaving the gap into the hall. Hoping it was big enough, she turned herself sideways and began to squeeze through the door. She had managed to push herself halfway when she heard a hiss like the firing of a piston. With a sudden lurch, the metal jaws began to close again. She felt the two pieces slowly begin to put pressure on her, but she was too far to get out quickly. Panicking she pushed harder against the ground to get her body through the minimizing gap. She could hardly breathe from the pressure and she could tell her bones would soon be crushed. But she was almost out. With a final desperate push, she wiggled her shoulder into the hallway. Almost forgetting, she retracted her leg quickly to her side and out of the clutches of the door as it snapped shut with a resounding echo.
Yesmina let out a sigh, but didn’t rest long. She raced after the mad doctor, back through the maze of tunnels back to the main room. Taking sharp right and left turns, she moved without thinking too much, praying that she remembered her way back to Alpha Impact and Kyo. A loud whirring sound told her she had taken the right route. Sliding to a halt into the room, she saw another army of the clockwork men. They had surrounded Alpha Impact, who was kicking them one at a time as they tried to climb to a perch he had found on a ledge. Yesmina looked around and found Dr. Burstein, unperturbed by anything else in the room, looking over Kyo. She had a syringe in her hand and was filling it up with a green liquid from a glass tank under the table.
“What the crap do you think you’re doing?” Yesmina shouted, trying to stall the doctor from injecting Kyo with whatever was in her hand. Alpha Impact froze for a moment, his head swiveling to see Yesmina. He remembered his position, however, when one of the robots grabbed his leg. Kicking it off with his other foot, he resumed to his slow attacks.
“Oh, just running a test,” she smiled, without looking up. “You do realize, with your friend’s superb invulnerability, he’s the perfect person for all my little experiments? His body should handle most of what I give him.”
“And how do you know they won’t kill him?” she began to scream somewhat hysterically.
“One can only hope,” she smiled again, looking up at Yesmina this time with madness in her eyes.
Yesmina started running towards her, but a group of the clockwork men intercepted her. The one went to grab her, but she quickly blocked his claws with a blast of psychic energy.
“Yesmina!” Alpha Impact called clearly above the noise. Yesmina couldn’t turn around to look at him though, occupied with her own problems all of a sudden. “Yesmina,” he called again, “look up! There’s a switch right above you, about twenty feet up. I have a feeling it turns on that tower in the middle, which is some sort of super magnet. Get to it!”
“What about you?” she called back without turning her head. “Your helmet!”
“It’s attached to me pretty securely. I’ll just have to hold on!”
She hit another of her attackers with a blast and she pushed herself off the ground with her mind. She didn’t go anywhere though. She frowned and tried again, but she stayed firmly on the floor. She tried to focus, but a hit from a robot began to draw blood from her shoulder.
“I can’t focus! There’s too much going on!” she cried, fully in hysterics now.
“You have to try! You have to get up there!”
Looking to Kyo again, she saw that Burstein had just finished filling the syringe. She held it up to the light and squeezed it a little, allowing some of the liquid to squirt out. It landed on a metal table and proceeded to melt through the surface. She grinned.
Yesmina tried to calm herself and to get control of her powers. She imagined herself flying to the lever, pulling it, and getting the hell out of there. Pushing back the line that was advancing on her in order to give her some time, she looked up at her goal. Biting her lip, she felt her feet begin to rise, slowly off the ground. She looked down and tried to achieve more control over her ankles, but she would not go any faster. She pushed and pushed and managed to gain a little more speed, but she was afraid it would be too slow. The syringe was inches away from Kyo’s skin and Yesmina was still a foot away from being able to reach the lever. The needle contacted Kyo’s flesh, but its resilience kept it from puncturing. She grasped it firmer in her hands and began again, ready to push harder. Yesmina was now just inches away from the lever.
She watched in slow motion as the needle got closer and closer and this time suceeded in entering a vein. Dr. Burstein’s thumb muscle contracted, about to push the liquid into his body. Yesmina felt the cold metal of the lever, and pulled with all her strength at the switch. The effects were instant.
Posted by ecstaticmuse 
Posted by ecstaticmuse 
Posted by ecstaticmuse 
