Private All the King's Horses [Hacks, Doc Painless, Daiya]

[Cassus Akovin]

Last time on Limbo...

"I don't know who Hacks is," she said, "You got the wrong dude." The name had felt familiar enough, perhaps someone she had once known or heard of in passing. "Just leave me alone, I don't know where Belazura is or Devaron, much less been there." she pleaded, "I don't want to have to hurt you. I'm not exactly in the business of ragdolling kids around."

"It's not really her, Cassus. It can't be. Corpos got to her, you saw what she did to me."

"If it's someone who looks like one of us," the street medic told Daiya gently, "we need to find out what's going on. Someone may be taking a page out of Xopsaloff's book, sending something like those doppelgängers after us again. And people... change under torture. We know that."

"Hold on, please." He asked Daiya as he began to accelerate into the night.

It had been a long night for Cassus so far, and he had a sneaking suspicion it was going to get longer before it was going to get shorter.

"You didn't make this virgin, right?" Cassus tried to confirm with the underground bartender, who seemed to have difficulty pinning down his age. They didn't seem particularly amused by his question, and so Cassus gave it a tentative sniff. The acrid scent of alcohol wafted into his nostrils, but he didn't let his face show anything. It looked like the bartender was about to say something, maybe reach over and take it back, so he quickly interjected.

"Of course, your tip. Pleasure doing business," Cassus deftly laid down a 100% tip, which seemed to assuage whatever concern they seemed to have at the time. They moved on from Cassus and practically pretended he didn't exist anymore. He wasn't likely to get another drink any time soon.

Walking with the drink, he peaked his head in where Doc Painless was now operating on an unconscious Hacks . Hiding the glass beyond the door so the Doc wouldn't see, he spoke up.

"I'm checking in on Daiya. Let me know when you're ready with Hacks." It had been some time, and waiting for Hacks to be finished was starting to wear on his patience. Not out of irritation, but how much longer he could stand trying to convince Daiya she was the real deal. The sooner Hacks was on, the sooner things would clear up.

He hoped.

Cassus finally arrived at Daiya 's private booth, where she was still recovering from her injuries. She had gotten better and was able to stand now essentially unassisted. Still, sitting and taking it easy were the Doc's recommendations. Cassus had tried to keep her company as far as she would let him, and this time he came bearing his own form of remedy.

"Meltdown. It isn't virgin. Thought it might help with the edge." He offered it to her as he went to take a seat as near as was comfortable for her.

 

[Hacks]

She floated under a midnight sky. Her four arms sprawled out and legs gently kicking at the mostly still water. There was no smell of an ocean breeze, nor the squawking of birds. As her eyes danced across the waters surface she noted it went on without end. It was the first time she had seen something like this. It was beautiful. The stars above twinkled in a way that only spacers ever truly saw. The stress of her time in the sublevels were forgotten, the daily not-knowing vanished. She was comfortable not knowing who she was if this was existence. This life in the water.

Unaware, far away from this dream world, Hacks lay on a surgeons table, dying.

 

[Doc Painless]

Cassus's safehouse was a bar. Medically less than ideal, but the Doc had operated in worse places.

At least there was plenty of alcohol for field sterilization, if it came to that.

Doc Painless hardly noticed when Cassus checked in, the teenager obviously impatient with the whole situation. Well, let him be. He was dealing with a lot of stress for someone his age, and having Daiya wrapped around him on the speeder ride over here probably had all sorts of other emotions (and hormones) racing through his system. There was no point in snapping at him, and that wasn't the Doc's style anyway. Cassus was doing the vital work of keeping Daiya - who, as the injured and disbelieved party, was even more stressed out about the whole thing - as close to calm as was possible, and that wasn't an easy task right now either.

The girl had taken a nasty knock in the fight. One that might require some PT to fully recover from.

Unfortunately, as much as he liked the kid and wanted her to be happy, healthy, and safe, the Doc couldn't prioritize her right now. Hacks was busy dying on his makeshift table, and that put her at the top of his list. Daiya had blown a good-sized hole through her shoulder, and that was in addition to all the old injuries Hacks had carried with her from... wherever she'd been unceremoniously dumped from. Her apparent amnesia could indicate brain damage, and that was still lower on his list of priorities to look into than the injuries that had incapacitated her. He needed to save her shell before he peered inside it, or the whole thing would be gone and none of this would matter.

The whole person, he reminded himself. Whether this was Hacks, a doppelgänger, or someone else entirely, the body on the hastily-cleaned food prep table before him was a sentient creature in need of help. The Doc had been forced to let go of do no harm the day he'd shot a CorpSec officer to save himself, and he'd hurt or killed many more people since then (for what he could only hope were good enough reasons), but he had yet to willingly abandon someone helpless and in need. So the experienced street medic devoted his entire focus to preserving the life of someone who had tried to hurt one of his friends. Medical ethics were as messy as surgery sometimes.

Hacks (or not?) was still alive and kicking for the moment, sometimes literally; whatever dream she was having, it seemed to involve some kind of gentle, spasmodic flailing of her limbs. If he'd had access to his clinic, the Doc would've strapped her down so that she didn't wiggle off the table, or throw off his aim with scalpel and staple gun. As it was, he didn't have the option... so he straddled her, one knee on either side of her chest, gently pressing down on her upper arm and collarbone to steady her while he worked on her shoulder. It was an awkward position, but his many augmentations helped him maintain balance and precision. Cybernetics had some big upsides.

Actually fixing the damage and recreating a functional shoulder was going to be a big job, one involving artificial muscles and veins cradled in many layers of synthskin, but that was still in the future. For now the Doc worked on stopping the bleeding and stabilizing the organs, keeping his patient's body from shaking itself into shutdown mode as trauma cascaded through her nervous system. Fortunately, he had everything he needed for that in his customary go-bag. Stimm injections, bacta patches, a quick-seal splint, all went carefully into place - as did the neck collar that kept her from further spinal injury, and the mouthguard that kept her from biting (and choking on) her tongue.

How long was this going to take? He wasn't sure. But when he had her stabilized, the stimms would help her wake.

And then perhaps they could all find some answers.

Cassus Akovin | Hacks | Daiya​

 

[Daiya]

Daiya shivered.

By now, she wasn't breathing so hard and the pain in her hip was nothing but a dull ache. Whatever Doc Painless had given her worked, but why did they have to come to such a frigid place? The teen wrapped her arms around herself, wishing Cassus had suggested a blanket shop instead of a bar.

The clothing store they'd trekked through to get here had been more cozy, despite the side-eye the shopkeepers had given them. Daiya had been appalled then, with what little emotion she could muster beyond the sensation of someone punching her hip with every step. Now she figured she wouldn't care, just so long as the young shadowrunner could wrap herself in a bundle of garments to compensate for the armor's failing attempt to keep her warm.

Something rattled in front of her. The girl blinked, and looked down as she heard Cassus slip into the booth seat across. Leaning against the booth's adjoining wall, her legs laid out on the bench in the most comfortable position she could manage right now, Daiya had to hunch forward to reach the glass. It was cold, and she felt a pang inside of her at the touch.

"You know my drink," Daiya noted, surprised at the boy's information. She didn't remember ever telling him, so who was his source? Her brow furrowed as her eyes narrowed, looking from the drink over to Pool Boy. He still didn't believe her about the woman in the next room, the one that lay dying but for Doc's pointless ministrations.

The one who had thrown the girl into a pile of trash and fethed up her hip.

"Thanks, but..." she stopped, reconsidering. The mere touch of the drink felt too chilled on her hands, the thought of injesting it was even more revolting in the frigid room. And if this was the boy's idea of an apology, for whatever he needed to apologize for, she wanted no part of it.

A groan escaped her lips, and she grasped the glass in her hand. Thoughts of a fuzzy warmth, of faded pain, of blissful nonchalance all made promises to the melancholy teen. Daiya brought the drink to her lips, tipping it back until the cold liquid started sliding down her throat. The mix of sweetness and biting set her mind on fire, and her eyes seemed to actually see for the first time in an hour.

Daiya let out a breath. She looked back at Cassus, the muscles in her neck tensing as another shiver came over her. "I could really use a blanket or something. It's cold in here."

Cassus Akovin Hacks Doc Painless​

 

[Cassus Akovin]

"You know my drink,"
"Thanks, but..."

Cassus had a habit of knowing things. He was no info broker or expert slicer, and he wasn't the most well-spoken, but reputation, respect, and connections were just as sophisticated to acquire the same results. Of course, in Daiya's case, perhaps he didn't need all of that. Observation gave a quality of information all in its own right.

He watched her hesitance, wondering briefly if he had made a misstep, before ultimately the liquid bit her lips and caused a slight tremor in her busted frame.

"I could really use a blanket or something. It's cold in here."

The air didn't seem frigid to Cassus, and that worried him. He considered for a moment, though, that the Speakeasy was a sublevel below the traditional Twilight Belt. Naturally, it would run a few degrees cooler than some of the upper levels without temperature control. That all seemed beside the point, though. Cassus got up and started to take off his jacket.

"This is all I got right now. Warmed it up for you." He said, ready to lay it along her legs or wherever.

"I can probably grab more from upstairs, but a blanket will take a while." Pausing after Daiya settled in (or rebelled against his gesture as it seemed she wanted to do), Cassus considered his next words carefully. He sat back down, as near as seemed comfortable to Daiya. Perhaps his warmth would be comforting. Or annoying, he was taking her lead on that. At least, as best as he could read her face. Usually, that took some effort for Cassus, given his limited pool of people he knew growing up, but Daiya wore her feelings on her sleeves. Tonight was more obvious than typical, no doubt.

"I'm sorry I didn't get to you sooner. I had to know what I was looking at; too many ghosts on Denon." He offered a half-frown, the largest display of emotion she had seen since they got here. "You get it, right?" He added plaintively.

Hacks Doc Painless Daiya

 

[Doc Painless]

Damn it all, he was losing her.

"Feth," Doc Painless whispered, reaching for another bacta applicator and a tube of coagulant. The hole in Hacks's shoulder was a messy, ragged wound, and it was stubbornly refusing to close. It just kept oozing blood, and by now the patient was not in a state where she had a whole lot of excess blood to lose. But with her organs also struggling, several at the edge of failure, he hardly had time to manage the surface injury; if he so much as looked away from her heart and lungs, that spurting wound wasn't going to matter much, because she'd be dead anyway. Her spasmodic jerking, and the inadequate equipment - it was a kitchen table, for feth's sake - didn't help.

There was only one option left, and the Doc didn't like it. He needed a nurse or two, someone who could literally stabilize the patient while he got to the figurative stabilizing. The only people who both were trustworthy and could possibly get here in time, though, were the pair of teenagers at the bar... and no offense to them, they weren't exactly the street medic's first choice. They were surprisingly experienced for their age, kids forced to grow up far too fast, but they were still kids. So far as he knew, Cassus had no medical training at all. Daiya had a little - he'd been working with her on the basics since the earthquake - but her compassion for this particular patient might be... lacking.

The blood pressure monitor squealed a warning as the number it displayed spiked again, and the Doc swallowed his doubts. He had no other choice. His gloved hands were covered in blood, so he triggered the comlink in his ear by pressing the side of his head against his shoulder. "Cassus, Daiya," he said, interrupting their drinking and their conversation, "I need you back here, stat. The patient is spasming, and I don't have enough hands to hold her still and work on her. Wash your hands and get to the kitchen, or she's going to bleed out before I can pull her organs out of a cascade failure." His tone was urgent, clipped; it was clear that he really did need them.

Focusing back on Hacks again, the Doc put another shot into the meat of her thigh, one that would slow her racing heart rate and ease her hyperventilation... but without help, it might be too late. With every thump of her pulse, another jet of blood bubbled up from her injuries, still refusing to close despite the restorative action of the bacta. She was noticeably paler than when she'd been brought in, a bad sign. The street medic thought of Daiya, still hurting, still angry, and added a little to what he'd said. His tone was gentler, softer despite his urgent worry. "When someone is on your table," he said, "it doesn't matter who they are, or what they've done. You help them."

He hoped she'd hear him, hear the lesson he was giving, the requirement about how his teachings had to be used.

Because he was going to use that knowledge to help Daiya next, and she was grown enough to realize that.

Hacks | Daiya | Cassus Akovin​

 

[Daiya]

"This is all I got right now. Warmed it up for you."

The jacket, worn and dirty from their dust-up on the streets before, spread across her knees as Cassus offered it to her. She passed him a smile, or half of one, before pulling the jacket back toward her body. Another shiver took the smile from her, replacing it with a strained expression. The shadowrunner across from her seemed to take it in stride, wanting to gather even more for her comfort.

Sometimes Daiya really struggled to understand that boy.

"This'll do. Good to know that chivalry isn't dead." Daiya wondered what had happened to the Pool Boy she'd once known. The one who would have been hot on her heels, challenging her choices, reveling in his successes. The unmasked version sitting across from her now, the one whose jacket she pulled across her torso and tucked herself into without putting on, he was nearly a different boy altogether. Nearly a man, the teen thought suddenly, and it just wound up making her more confused.

She sipped the drink some more, happy to have something different to occupy her. Its cold liquid chilled her throat but warmed her bones, dulling the lingering ache in her side. A stalwart companion for when the dreaded apology came at last, wrinkling her nose on the way in. "No, I don't 'get it' Cassus."

Daiya found a spot on the table to look at, her eyes tracing the patterns through its surface. As mystifying as it was, the table's surface held more answers than the apology the boy had mustered up to her. "I don't get why you'd pick her over me." She lifted her chin, staring into those baby blue eyes he so often hid from the world. They seemed almost dishonest to her, a false face from the one Daiya had grown...not comfortable but at least familiar with. "What does she have that I don't?"

"Besides another set of arms," she added dourly, barely more than a muttering. Now it was Daiya's turn to be dishonest, the Hacks she'd known had a lot more than her. Better rep, bigger chest, more friends in places low and high. The young shadowrunner pulled the jacket tighter against herself, shivering again against the cold and the loneliness. Her voice was stronger this time, leaning her whole weight against it. "You saw what she did to me. You can't really believe that's the Hacks we knew, even she wasn't that fethed in the head. Wake up, Cassus!"

The teen reached out to her drink again, downing the last of it. By now, she didn't even mind its chill. It was a more welcome friend to her than most right now, she could even be happy with a second. That was her answer, Daiya decided, a refill. And another, and another, until she was too drunk to even remember her own name.

Maybe it would stop her fething shivers, too.

Kicking her legs over the edge of the booth seat, the teen hooked her booted heels over the lip to pull herself forward. Like a caterpillar she went, scooting forward one butt-width at a time, until her legs could dangle straight down at the knees. Leaning forward, all still without the use of her hands, Daiya's torso bobbed up and then jerked back, a groan escaped from her lips.

"Cassus, Daiya. I need you back here, stat." Doc's frantic voice came from a comlink in the jacket pocket, and Daiya frowned down at the physician's long-winded explanation. It sure seemed like a lot of words to make demands with. The teen groaned again at the man's wistful appeal to her sensibilities.

She really needed that refill now.

"You'd better goooooo!" She taunted, flashing a look over at Cassus once more. "Your new woman needs you, Pool Boy."

As for Daiya? She had appointment at the bar.

Cassus Akovin Hacks Doc Painless​

 

[Cassus Akovin]

"I don't get why you'd pick her over me."

A pang of guilt filled Cassus. He hadn't considered the optics of trying to save a woman engaged in combat with Daiya, especially after the kiss. Hacks hardly seemed like a prospect of that nature to him, but his behavior must have demonstrated otherwise. At least to her weary and now drugged perception. To him, he was saving both from a terrible circumstance. To her, she felt neglected and overlooked by someone she had opened up to emotionally.

"It isn't like that. I'm trying to save you both. Hacks isn't well. That hardware is the same, and right now, her head is that fethed." Emotions were cracking his veneer of stoicism, and he took a moment to recollect. She didn't need to be lectured.

"Listen, you're still messed up from the fight. I promise things will make more sense once this is all over. I promise-"

"Cassus, Daiya. I need you back here, stat."

"You'd better goooooo!" She taunted, flashing a look over at Cassus once more. "Your new woman needs you, Pool Boy."

"I told it's not-" She was making this very difficult.

"Fine!" He threw up his hands and yelled, "Just don't leave this bar or so help me." Cassus, on his way to Doc, threw open a private booth where a couple was having a moment. Disturbed, they look at him in confusion and quickly growing anger. He threw a puck at the bigger one.

"7k UCks, she doesn't leave, or I'm finding you." He pointed at them while palming a blaster pistol with his other hand and then pointed towards Daiya. "Got it choom?"

Not waiting to see if they got the message (he'd deal with them later if they didn't, he never made an empty threat), he ran to Doc Painless 's booth where Hacks was waiting.

"I'm not real good at this Doc, things tend to break when I'm involved but I'll do what I can. Daiya is being difficult, could be a minute..." Cassus tried to sound optimistic about that last point. Despite the less than pleasant sight before him of the cyborg's operation, Cassus seemed level-headed and cool about the situation. He was, apparently, no stranger to that kind of sight and appeared unbothered by it.

"Where do you need me?" He asked, moving into place as quickly as he could manage.

 

[Doc Painless]

Every doctor loses patients. People die every day, and sometimes even the best care in the galaxy can't hold death off for another hour. Part of surviving in the medical field, avoiding burnout despite the stress, is accepting that good treatment doesn't always produce good outcomes. It's learning to compartmentalize, to keep from carrying the burden of a patient's death with you so that you still have the mental capacity to help the next one. But that acceptance doesn't come until after the patient is truly and completely gone. Until that moment, a good doctor does everything he or she can to keep the patient alive, fighting like hell against injuries and diseases and everything else.

The Doc was in the fight like hell stage. He'd saved Shai's life when a Sith Lord had literally squashed her. He knew he could save Hacks.

His heart rose as he heard the kitchen door slide open, hopefully not showing off too much of the mess playing out on the food prep tables to the clientele currently enjoying the food. It sank again when he looked up and saw that Cassus had come alone. He was grateful that either of them had come, but he wasn't sure he could do this with just one person's help, not with the substandard equipment and limited time he was struggling with. But he'd been in worse situations, forced to make do with even less. In the fight like hell stage, he would gratefully accept whatever he could get, and he would make do without whatever he couldn't. Triage. One problem at a time.

"Thank you, Cassus," the Doc said, offering the young man a grateful nod. Out of the two teenagers, it was the untrained one who had come to help, but sometimes the most important thing was just a pair of willing hands. "I need you to keep pressure on her shoulder." He beckoned Cassus over, then grabbed the young shadowrunner's hands, pushing them down firmly on the fresh gauze pad he'd just placed over the bloodied bandages and the oozing injury beneath. "Firm pressure," he reiterated, "for the next ten minutes. Even if she thrashes, even if your nose itches, do not take your hands off that gauze pad. We need that injury to clot, or she'll bleed out."

With the seeping wound hopefully under control, the Doc returned to dealing with Hacks's struggling organs. Pressure was building in all the wrong places as her heart raced and her lungs went into overdrive; perhaps in her dream, where she'd been placidly swimming, she had now begun to drown. But maybe not. Maybe her dreams were still peaceful ones, even as her body knew no peace at all. For her sake, he hoped so. Flicking mentally through the various settings on his cybernetic arms, he set them to the one he needed, his palms glowing teal as they gathered electrical charge. At four hundred beats per minute, his patent's heart was going into atrial fibrillation.

"Clear," he called out, and pushed both palms into Hacks's chest. Her spine arched as current ran through her.

The organ monitor continued its frantic beeping. Feth. Feth. Feth. He needed one more pair of hands, preferably one with enough medical training to carry out slightly more complicated orders. He couldn't do this all at once on his own, not without table straps or better diagnostic sensors or a wider selection of pharmaceuticals or a droid assistant or at least one fething thing on that list. The Doc steadied himself with a deep breath... even as Hacks's breathing remained dangerously frantic. "You're doing great," he told Cassus, forcing calmness into his tone. Then he leaned his ear against his shoulder once more, triggering his comlink again, reaching out to the girl at the bar.

A thousand things he could say ran through his head at that moment. He wanted to lash out at her, to yell that she was being childish while a real person died, letting middle school jealousy overrule all the medical ethics he'd tried to instill in her. He wanted to tell her that he wasn't teaching her another damn thing if she didn't have the medical attitude to match the medical skills. He wanted to shout that even CorpSec stabilized its prisoners, and if she wouldn't, what did that say about her? But he swallowed all of that unsaid, pushed his fear and anger deep into the back of his mind. The only sounds that crackled across the comlink were the frantic beeping of the medscanner...

... and five words from him, not angry, just disappointed. "Daiya, you're better than this."

Daiya | Cassus Akovin | Hacks​

 

[Daiya]

At least the jacket was warm.

It was the one thing that shook the young shadowrunner's heart from its stubborn chill. She slipped it on, the right way around, after Cassus stormed away from the booth. It brought no satisfaction to her lips to see him go, just another shiver, prompting the teen to wrap the jacket's promise of warmth around herself. That felt right to her, and she left behind any other doubts at the table.

"I'll have another," she told the bartender, busying herself with trying to find her credit chips. Her hands searched the pockets of the jacket before realizing, and wandering back to the booth to grab her neglected satchel. The teen returned to a questioning look on the bartender's face, leaving her searching more than just her belongings. "Oh, for feth's...a Meltdown."

Daiya glowered at the inattentive bartender as she slapped the credits down on the counter, her irascible mood souring even further. She counted her credits idly while waiting, drawing the jacket closer to fend off more chills. An errant thought filled her head, drawing dreams of warm pleasure and a full stomach to match her anticipation of a drunken stupor. Something that would soothe her bruised ego if not her cold bones. "How about a bowl of Gluk, too? Or something breaded and fried."

Her answer came quick in the form of the bartender's quick jab toward the kitchen door, where she'd spied Cassus going to help the Doc. The reminder dumped the teen into a seat on an empty barstool, her glum mood radiating out enough to prompt looks from other patrons nearby.

"Feth..." The miserable teen traced more lines in the bar counter, shivering to herself until another cold drink graced her field of view. She counted back the credits better spent on food, then left half of it anyway and pushed the lot toward the bartender without any sense of charity.

Daiya simply didn't care any longer.

She could feel more of herself leeching away as the cold and drink sapped it on its way down, her mind craving what her body found intolerable. The churlish teen put her arms up onto the counter, laying her head down against them as a pillow. Her fingers played with the half-empty glass, rocking it slowly on its bottom rim and watching the liquid slosh around while her vision grew fuzzier.

A groan rumbled in her throat when the jacket's comlink beeped again. The voice that came through was low and slow, she could feel his disappoint as if it was something physical. She shivered again, prying the comlink from the jacket at last, winding her arm as if to throw it. It paused near the teen's mouth, where a semblance of Daiya poked her head up from the foggy storm around her. "She doesn't deserve better!"

Even through her buzz, Daiya knew it wasn't true. She could feel it in the core of her being, that nagging sense she wanted so much to drown out right now. The hurt and pain and chills just piled on top of her, so much that she could barely keep her head above it all. Daiya had no more feths to give, least of all about the woman badly pretending to be Hacks.

Or any to fight Doc, either.

With a practiced hand by now, the teen drained the rest of her glass, shuddering as the liquid froze what was left of her heart. It made it easier to tell the comlink, "Feth it. Fine, but I'm only doing it for you Doc."

Daiya knew why Doc wanted her there. The sparse medical knowledge she'd learned from him wasn't on her mind when she pushed away from the bar, or paced cautiously toward the door to the kitchen. Her unfocused thoughts could only keep one thing in view once she intruded upon the gruesome scene in the kitchen, sweeping past the gore and bloodied pose of Cassus standing over the near-dead woman on the table.

The teen came when friends called, that was all.

Cassus Akovin Hacks Doc Painless​

 

[Hacks]

And then the ocean grew restless...

All at once Himiko Ota found herself drowning. It had been peaceful moments ago, and now she was struggling to survive. Her arms were heavy and weighed down, only now noticing that she did not have her extra pair of mechanical arms to help. In fact, when she caught glimpses of herself she saw she was naked of all enhancements. She kicked her feet in horror as she began to breathe in water. Her body thrashed in response, protesting the intrusion on her lungs.

Something violently shocked her. The buzzing drone that haunted the back of her mind for months ceased. Clarity washed over her and the ocean receded. There was nothing now but wet floor and her reflection. She was young, far too young. Perhaps five. A childs face looked back, confused and afraid. Her eyes glanced up and she found she had been staring into a puddle. The room was dimly lit. Quiet chatter among gangsters filled the cantina. It was familiar, she remembered this place. The name came back to her. Frida's Spaceport Cantina, Nar Shaddaa. She had been here as a child, sold by her father, a member of the One Sith, and traded to the Red Raven Syndicate.

She watched the room, unsure why she was here, how she was here. She felt the same fear gripping her as she had felt it that day, years ago. A man was walking down a hall, hunched over, grimacing. Another man was choking out words, dragged across the floor by his teeth. He was a crime lord of the Black Suns, and the other, Lysle of the Hydian Way. Lysle dropped the man in the room, put a blaster to his forehead and pulled the trigger. That action had started a war between the Red Raven and Black Sun Syndicate, and had started Himiko's path down a dark, depressing fate that no child should face. She cried for her mother.​

 

[Cassus Akovin]

"Thank you, Cassus," the Doc said, offering the young man a grateful nod. Out of the two teenagers, it was the untrained one who had come to help, but sometimes the most important thing was just a pair of willing hands. "I need you to keep pressure on her shoulder." He beckoned Cassus over, then grabbed the young shadowrunner's hands, pushing them down firmly on the fresh gauze pad he'd just placed over the bloodied bandages and the oozing injury beneath. "Firm pressure," he reiterated, "for the next ten minutes. Even if she thrashes, even if your nose itches, do not take your hands off that gauze pad. We need that injury to clot, or she'll bleed out."

Cassus had no training, that much was true, but this wasn't the first time he held someone's life in the palm of his hand. Handling life, whether it was taking it or holding it together, required steady hands. These were the hands he was born with, but they were also the hands that he made. Not in the same way that his mother made things, no. Nonetheless, every action he had taken while on his own was written in the creases of his palms. Every trigger pulled, every grip tightened, an entire history no man - no boy - should ever have to carry so young pressed down into Hacks.

"You're doing great,"

Moments passed, or they must have passed. The words of encouragement bounced around in his head, and he focused more on them. Echoing the words in an internal mantra. Intensity filled his eyes, his ears deaf to almost everything except the three people breathing in this room.

"Daiya, you're better than this."

Three people, that should be four.

"She doesn't deserve better!"

"Feth it. Fine, but I'm only doing it for you Doc."

Disappointment etched across his lips.

Hacks Doc Painless Daiya

 

[Doc Painless]

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep beep beep beep bebebebebebebebe....

The frantic pulsing of the organ function monitor was like the beat of a slowly-intensifying dance, the tempo picking up as the performers swirled faster and faster across the stage. "Going again," Doc Painless barked, his normally calm tones strained to the limit. "Clear!" His hands glowed as he pressed them into the dying woman on his table, the woman who was slipping away from him despite his best efforts. Again she arched, muscles spasming, twisting in Cassus's grip. To his credit, the kid kept pressure through it all, holding on like a rancher restraining a bucking nerf - just as the Doc had asked. And this time, they got somewhere. The frantic beeping ceased...

... replaced with a long, slow, flat beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-

"She doesn't deserve better!" Daiya's words thundered in the Doc's ear, loud in the sudden relative quiet.

He said nothing. He was busy, too busy to deal with her tantrum.

Well, the good news was that Hacks wasn't in atrial fibrillation anymore, and her heart wasn't going to explode. The bad news was that it wasn't beating. Without blood circulating through her system, carrying oxygen to her brain, Hacks was living on borrowed time. In about four minutes, she'd start suffering permanent brain damage, losing speech and locomotion and memory as neurons withered and died. Four to six minutes after that, there would be no getting her back. As Hacks slipped into a spiral of darker - but more peaceful - dreams and memories, the Doc frantically switched out syringes, weighing the pros and cons of filling the dying woman with even more meds.

"Feth it," buzzed the voice in his ear again. "Fine, but I'm only doing it for you, Doc."

The doors slid open, and Daiya walked into the kitchen, joining the bloodsoaked scene. The Doc nodded at her. He was proud of her for putting aside her emotional response during a crisis, even if it'd taken her a while to get there. He just hoped it wasn't too late. "I need you to give her chest compressions," he told the girl, even as he fitted an oxygen mask over Hacks's face. That would negate the need for CPR's rescue breaths, which was good; this was safer and more sanitary, for one thing, and he was not at all sure he'd be able to get Daiya to press her mouth against Hacks's. "Push down by the width of two fingers. Push hard. Do it to the beat of Turbulence in your head."

Sliding aside to allow Daiya in toward the table, the Doc showed her where to put her hands, folding the heels of her palms against Hacks's sternum. "You might break ribs. That's okay. Don't stop. When you get tired - and you will - let Cassus take over. Cassus, watch what she's doing so you're ready to do it the same way." Pure oxygen was flowing into Hacks's lungs through the mask, but until her heart restarted, they needed to manually pump the oxygenated blood through her veins. Trusting that task to Daiya while Cassus kept pressure on the woman's oozing arm, the Doc pulled out his bacta sprayer and set to work on closing up the other surface injuries.

If he could seal her up, stop the bleeding, his meds could do their internal work. She might just wake from all of this...

Daiya | Hacks | Cassus Akovin​

 

[Hacks]

Something, somewhere, shocked her again

The room spun rapidly, darkened. The red neon lights of Frida's vanished. Blurred faces in front of her were gone, replaced by women more familiar, more family, to her. They were older than her, gruff and toughened by years on the streets. Their bodies were largely inorganic, vanished from years of cybernetic enhancements that pushed the boundaries of flesh and steel. Hacks' blinked away crust on her eyes and felt a deep pain in her lungs when she drew breath. "Cybernetic-rejection," one of the women said, looking down at her. She wiped sweat from her brows. Her skin clammy. "She'll live," someone else offered.

They were in an apartment somewhere on Nar Shaddaa, but she couldn't recall exactly where or when. Hacks' eyes glanced down to two new arms beneath her organic ones, the durasteel arms a gloss chrome finish. "Good work sis," the eldest woman said, clamping a cybernetic arm on her shoulder and giving a gentle squeeze, "You're one of us now." The room was growing dark, her eyelids grew heavy and breathing seemed less important than it should.
​

 

[Daiya]

Pool Boy frowned at her, while Doc just ordered her around. She gave no reaction, liquor sloshing between the ears of a teen too buzzed to care.

It took all her effort just to follow the instructions of the stalwart medic, and the nature of his patient made that easier for Daiya. She didn't want to think about the woman lying on the table. Dying on the table. Good. She let the thought consume her mind, until the teen could feel the too-gentle eyes of Doc Painless drilling holes into her own skull.

Daiya let out a quick exhale, letting her eyes roll as her limbs responded to commands she loathed to take. She forced herself not to look at the woman yet, as impossible a task as it was. The young shadowrunner climbed up onto the table, straddling on top of the bloody, prone form lying there, and for a moment she could believe the body underneath her was just a goon or CorpSec thug she'd run into on a job. It lasted long enough for her to follow Doc's instructions, letting him position her hands together on the body's chest, and press down with her first movements.

She closed her eyes, listening for the beat of the song in her head, pressing as hard as she thought Doc wanted. And then a little harder still. The rhythm of the song couldn't overpower the teen's irritation, her enmity for the woman beneath her. The need for vengeance drove her teeth to grind and her palms to push deeper.

Eyes flew open as the teen heard a sickening crunch, wet and foul beneath her hands. Daiya was met, at least, with the face of the woman on the table. The face of a woman she had looked up to and eagerly followed for a time, only for the same face to appear on a woman who would have eagerly torn her to shreds. Lines crossed her face, deepening furrows of pain and sorrow and disgust that drew her features together into a solitary troubled mess.

Daiya kept pumping, her arms still limber and the rhythm still strong inside her head. Yet while she administered the life-saving attempt, the girl struggled with another inside her. It welled up inside her chest, coating the sides of her throat, drowning her eyes in tears. A sob broke through her rhythm, catching the girl off-guard, before renewing her effort. Softly, accompanyed by a mostly-dry weeping, she voiced her struggle to the woman at the center of it all.

"Feth you, Hacks," she whispered quietly. A cascade of thought and emotions dammed up inside of her, wanting so desperately to come out but for the rhythm driving her hands and the bloody mess underneath them. All she could say, to the woman who might once have been more mentor than maniac, was a repeat of that mantra. "Feth you."

Cassus Akovin Hacks Doc Painless​

 

[Cassus Akovin]

Cassus' experience with health care was complicated.

It had been where he had spent most of his capital to save his mom. It seemed to be working, but he never got a chance to see it succeed. She was taken from him, by the Doppelgangers, by CAD.

Doc Painless obviously wasn't connected to the medicinal lies peddled out to him - a gullible and desperate rich kid - and Hacks certainly wasn't his mother, but she was someone he knew, someone he thought was worth saving. As Daiya cursed her name, it put a painful memory in his head. He knew this Hacks was real. He trusted the data he collected.

But the thought they had once been fooled by familiar faces, that they had all suffered under familiar faces, shook his confidence. As he kept quiet and put pressure into Hacks , all he could see was the lifeless face of his mother with a glowing hole through her chest wielded by the semblance of his own hand.

Triam trusted that face. It was the last thing she ever saw.

Cassus looked at Daiya , and considered her perspective for the first time.

Would he act much different in her circumstances, knowing what they know?

 

[Doc Painless]

The Doc worried about Daiya sometimes.

No, scratch that. He worried about Daiya all the time.

The kid had a good heart in her, a heart that could have grown and thrived in a better place. You could see it when she was out with her friends, off on a shopping trip with Brie or laughing over drinks with Yula. There was a fun, carefree, energetic girl down at her core, the kind of person who'd have some wild years and take some time to find herself but have a blast along the way. And in the end, that person would land on her feet, and life would be good. But Denon, fething Denon and its fething greedy Corpo overlord sleemos, was working hard on fouling all that promise. It was surrounding her with violence, hate, despair, crime, oppression, and bitterness.

And like all young people, she was soaking up the energy her surroundings gave off like a sponge.

As the Doc watched her kneeling astride Hacks, wracked by dry, quiet sobs of anger and hurt, he felt his guts twist with that eternal worry. Even from this distance, even while distracted, he could tell that she was pushing too hard on purpose. It was the petulant act of a child, the kind who would look up at a parent and scream I'm doing what you told me, leave me alone! while deliberately doing it wrong. But he wasn't her parent, and he didn't know how to be. Doc Painless could fix organ failure and dismemberment and cranial tumors, but he couldn't fix that, at just shy of sixteen, lying and stealing and fighting and killing had become Daiya's daily realities.

So he worried that her good heart, planted in this poisoned soil, might not be growing.

He worried that the hate he could see poking through was choking it.

Burned skin mended beneath his bacta applicator, and the ragged edges of gashes rejoined as his micro-suture gun hummed over them. The wound Cassus had been holding finally stopped seeping, and the Doc offered him a grave but grateful nod. "Thank you, Cassus. You did well." He glanced back at Daiya, whisper-sobbing profanities into the patient's chest as she ground broken ribs beneath her hands, and felt his jaw clench as he grappled for what to say. "Let's have you take over for Daiya," he began, gently laying a hand on the girl's shoulder - the shoulder of a friend, a mentee, but one whose distance from him seemed to be lengthening despite his best efforts.

"Thank you, Daiya. Let's give you a rest." He spoke quietly and gently, hoping she wouldn't fight him, hoping that hurt and rage wouldn't turn against him next. He'd had to use her when she'd been at a low point, when shock - physical and mental - had been overwhelming her, and he wouldn't blame her if that sense of betrayal she felt would be focused on him next. Wouldn't blame her, but he hoped with all his might that she could find it in herself to understand. He would treat her as soon as he could for the physical shock, for that coldness and exhaustion that had seeped into her muscles and bones, but he didn't know what to do about the coldness in her mind.

Before he could say more, though, it became apparent that Cassus wouldn't have to take over. The organ monitor, after steadily flatlining for a nerve-shredding two minutes, pulsed weakly. The Doc blew out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, and the breath became a nervous chuckle. "Well," he said, looking at his two young charges, "you've saved your first trauma patient. We kept her alive long enough for the stimms to kick in, and she's pulled out of the cascading organ failure." He offered them a shaky but genuine smile. "Well done. I couldn't have done it without you." And yet all he could think of, looking over at Daiya, was what it might have cost.

"Your turn," the Doc told her, trying to be gentle and firm. "You've been through plenty, too. Can I take a look?"

He indicated a nearby chair. "Cassus, please keep an eye on Hacks, in case she wakes."

Daiya | Cassus Akovin | Hacks​

 

[Hacks]

Darkwire . . .

Denon. The city was vast, incomprehensibly so. It was dizzying to look at. "Something else, isn't it?" Hacks heard a woman say. She turned to see Frankie walking over, a Shadowrunner from Denon. Hacks gave a quiet shrug and tilt of her head in agreement. Her eyes peeling away from Frankie and back out the viewport of the starliner that was beelining through the atmosphere to take them down to the planets surface. This was the start of her journey in Darkwire, the opening days of the Corporate Authorities rise to power with the skilled machinations of the shadowrunners.

Something tugged at her mind, a sense of loss. Confusion and anger she had felt for months. She was living through the answers she had so desperately sought for so long. Who am I? she had wondered all those months lost deep in the undercity. She no longer saw the cityscape out the viewport but her own reflection. She stared for a long time, more memories washing over her. Floodgates had opened, then so too did her eyes.

She awoke from her dreams, slowly stirring, eyes fluttering. A deep pain resonated through her, nerves fried. A deep sigh eased from her lips. She heard a voice unfamiliar too her but couldn't make out the words. Her vision was blurred, staring up at the ceiling, in fact, staring directly into the light and in her confusion she couldn't understand what it was she was looking at. Her natural arms relaxed but her mechanic arms began to stir, holding up a durasteel hand to shield her eyes.​

 

[Daiya]

Daiya couldn't remember sitting down. Her chest heaved with strained breaths, and her head felt like it was barely attached. The teen had to hold it with her hands, for fear that she might lose her head completely.

Her body shuddered, dry sobs still plaguing her lungs. The memory of the cyborg woman, lying prone underneath her, still plagued her mind. The teen shook by herself, pulling her head away to stare at her hands.

A pair of tear-streaked, bloodstained hands stared back at her.

The horror of what she'd done cut at the soul of the young shadowrunner. Her gut twisted as her eyes leaked into stained hands. Her skin was clammy, like she wore someone else's entirely, and for the moment Daiya could have been happy if it was true.

"I shoulda fething killed her," the voice she heard didn't sound like hers, even if Daiya could agree with its words. Her eyes stared at Doc, through him, barely acknowledging the man's presence other than as someone to listen. Daiya was barely present herself, her eyes darting from her hands to someplace past Doc's head. "She was right there. Just lying there, Doc. It woulda been so easy."

She blinked, and for a moment her vacant expression held a moment of clarity again. "I coulda just done nothing, right?"

Given the simplest means to remove an enemy, and Daiya had failed at that. The knowledge gripped a heart that was beating a lightyear per minute, pulling a whimper from the teen's chest. She took shallow breaths, staring vacantly back at her hands again. She closed and opened them, watching the dried bodily fluids crack and flake in the creases of her palms and digits.

"Eiko would be so mad at me. He used ta always talk about wringing their necks. Didn't matter who, just whoever pissed him off that week." The teen giggled to herself, the shuddering laughter decaying into dry sobs and quick breaths until she recovered again. "More like that day!"

"'dja know he's the one who taught me the most? I mean, how ta survive?" Daiya's eyes found Cassus sitting nearby, kindling a warmth within them again. Her heart gripped tight again, drawing a thready gasp from the teen's chest. She had to swallow to regain her will to talk, pushing down the memory of his lips against hers, a fleeting sensation of what could never be. "Showed me how ta look behind me and not give it away. How ta lose a tail. Never ta take a gift and not look for the cost. What kinda clothes can hide a blaster or vibroknife. How ta hold and shoot a blassa. And how ta make sure you always beat yer enmies."

Daiya leaned forward, a sharp hiss proceeding as her hip shifted on the upturned milk crate. She gritted her teeth while she edged forward, and it pulled her lips into a smile approximating the malevolent grin on the toothy Zabrak in her memory. A hand retrieved the object she had stuffed in the jacket pocket earlier, and it slapped the kitchen knife handle into Doc's hands.

Her eyes stared past heavy eyelids right into his this time, their fire turned as cold as she felt.

"Kill 'em before they kill ya."

The young shadowrunner tried to close his fingers around the knife, but they struggled to respond to her now. She managed to pat them before pulling back, her haughty grin fading to a mournful version of itself. "I guess I'm pretty chit at it, huh?"

Cassus Akovin Hacks Doc Painless​

 

[Cassus Akovin]

"Cassus, please keep an eye on Hacks, in case she wakes."

He would do that, the role extremely familiar to him. Sitting beside a person that had gone through hell and back again, looking for signs of recovering, discomfort, or consciousness. The parallels were making his stomach turn. Why did he always end up in situations like this? Why did the responsibility fall to him over the fate of other people's lives?

Part of it was his own damn fault, of course. A bounty hunter, by definition, makes other people his business. Can't complain if it's something you chose to do... but was it really a choice? This was not something he sought out on his own. He didn't choose for his mother to be sick. He didn't choose what she had taught him to be. He didn't choose CorpSec taking her. He had to make the decision to do what needed to be done to prevent the one thing he never wanted to see, based on the hand he was dealt.

None of this was a choice, and the blame fell squarely at those at the top. He wouldn't have to make a decision if they went to lay in their graves and stayed there while he buried them. Then he could finally make a choice.

Later, he'd figure out what that was once his friends could step away from death's doorstep.

"'dja know he's the one who taught me the most? I mean, how ta survive?" Daiya's eyes found Cassus sitting nearby, kindling a warmth within them again. Her heart gripped tight again, drawing a thready gasp from the teen's chest. She had to swallow to regain her will to talk, pushing down the memory of his lips against hers, a fleeting sensation of what could never be. "Showed me how ta look behind me and not give it away. How ta lose a tail. Never ta take a gift and not look for the cost. What kinda clothes can hide a blaster or vibroknife. How ta hold and shoot a blassa. And how ta make sure you always beat yer enmies."

Daiya leaned forward, a sharp hiss proceeding as her hip shifted on the upturned milk crate. She gritted her teeth while she edged forward, and it pulled her lips into a smile approximating the malevolent grin on the toothy Zabrak in her memory. A hand retrieved the object she had stuffed in the jacket pocket earlier, and it slapped the kitchen knife handle into Doc's hands.

Her eyes stared past heavy eyelids right into his this time, their fire turned as cold as she felt.

Stomach doing flips, he felt a kinship with Daiya even as she slipped into an accent he didn't recognize. He fell into the trap of deciding he knew everything about Daiya in the few short years he'd known her but quickly realized how stupid that was. They shared so much. Time, hate, words, affection, meals, and trauma.

That didn't mean he knew her. Not really. He looked down at Hacks for a long time.

"Kill 'em before they kill ya."

The young shadowrunner tried to close his fingers around the knife, but they struggled to respond to her now. She managed to pat them before pulling back, her haughty grin fading to a mournful version of itself. "I guess I'm pretty chit at it, huh?"

Those words resonated with Cassus and drew his eye in time to see the knife she had procured. It was a side of her he knew was there, but seeing a blade in her hands, which given her current emotional state seemed child-like, struck something familiar. Immediately after his mother's death, he too had put a knife in his own hands. He hadn't used it in a while and didn't like admitting the satisfaction of using... something he kept buried. Seeing it made him angry... and relieved... and confused.

He was angry because of what decisions led Daiya to take after him.

He was relieved he was not alone and that his own emotional decisions became validated in another.

He was confused, because he was not overly concerned by the implication that Hacks would be dead had she followed through as he had. How was he supposed to untie that Gordian knot of mental gymnastics?

She awoke from her dreams, slowly stirring, eyes fluttering. A deep pain resonated through her, nerves fried. A deep sigh eased from her lips. She heard a voice unfamiliar too her but couldn't make out the words. Her vision was blurred, staring up at the ceiling, in fact, staring directly into the light and in her confusion she couldn't understand what it was she was looking at. Her natural arms relaxed but her mechanic arms began to stir, holding up a durasteel hand to shield her eyes.

"She's waking up." He stated simply to the others, "Welcome back to the living Shadowrunner." Cassus felt kind of stupid saying that, but felt himself mentally tripping over calling her Hacks. Did he actually know what was being woken up here?

Doc Painless