I. Current
It was raining.
That seemed odd, but Carolina was cold and her limbs were heavy, and she could feel the water trickling down her closed eyelids, and so she drifted, and so she remembered. Warm rain on a cool night, the eaves filling to overflowing, the trees swaying in the wind, thunder rumbling slowly, building, building, her fingers clenching deep into the blankets, pulling them over her head, but not afraid. Never afraid.
There was something loud, something that rumbled and kept rumbling, and above it all a high, tinny sound, like a siren wailing in the distance.
She opened her eyes. It seemed to take a long time. Words flickered in front of her like ghosts. When she looked past them, she saw only darkness.
The alarm sharpened. The words focused. Armor integrity compromised.
She inhaled—one short, sharp, waking gasp—and the water bubbled around her face, sluiced down her throat. Coughing, she shifted her sluggish limbs, found the right arm wouldn't move the way she wanted, felt a dull hint of pain beyond the numbing chill, then activated her speed unit, kicking out faster and faster and faster.
And then she was breaking the surface, dragging off her helmet, gasping and coughing and retching. The wind-lashed waves drove themselves into her again and again, the relentless rain streaking down in sheets, the darkness lit only by eerie flashes of lightning. She managed to keep her head above water when the next wave broke, but her shoulder was stiff and burning and she floundered under the wave that followed, sucking in a mouthful of water and choking it back up.
She thought, briefly, about what it would mean for her to die here, out in the chaos of the water and the wind.
She felt hot and feverish, a sure sign that her speed unit was seriously taxing her metabolism. She was hungry, and everything was too bright and too loud. One more wave drove her under, and this time she cranked up the speed unit, striking off in a direction chosen at random. If she was going to die, she might as well do it trying to save herself.
Her heartbeat was slamming in her ears by the time she reached the shore, her legs churning uselessly in the sand until she remembered it was okay, she could collapse, she could just fall and keep falling. Everything faded.
Lightning flashed, and the thunder made her chest ache.
She dragged herself back to consciousness half-curled in the sand, shaking, waves lapping hungrily at her feet. The mission, she thought, experimentally, and then with a little more emphasis, The mission!
She rolled to her feet, belatedly fumbling for a weapon that had been lost in the struggle against the waves. Standing didn't seem like a terrible idea until the dizziness hit her head-on, and she staggered, kicking up sand. There was blood in the sand, she realized hazily, and touched her right shoulder. Her fingers came away red.
She remembered the shot, the Insurrectionist sniper, and with the memory came pain, and that was all right, she thought, gritting her teeth. She knew pain. She knew how to deal with pain.
When she shifted the shoulder experimentally, the feeling of grinding bone immediately made her lose her gnawing appetite. She moved quickly and efficiently, locking down the affected area of the armor to immobilize her shoulder, sterilizing and numbing the wound, applying the biofoam. The pain faded, and she hissed a long breath.
The rain was letting up. She stared into the sky, blinking away the water in her eyes, then thought, forward, and matched thought to action, stumbling but surer with each step. She couldn't find her helmet, couldn't think where she'd left it—in the water, probably, somewhere during the desperate struggle for air. She'd have to go back for it at some point.
There was a burned-out shell of a Hornet along the shore, and she watched it warily until she was sure the only movement was the slow sway of debris in the wind, until she was sure the only light was a reflection of the slow, dying flickers of lightning along the horizon.
A body was face-down in the shallow water, drifting slowly in time with the driving and receding waves.
She moved closer, then stopped, because it was familiar armor and because she couldn't quite make out the color and because she didn't want to know, not really. She swallowed, hard, then moved forward again. She knew what it would mean not to say goodbye.
She crouched next to the armor, and this close, with the thinning clouds letting some light through overhead, she could see grey and yellow, and she exhaled slowly. Gently, carefully, she rolled Wash onto his back.
He'd taken a bad hit during the explosion—he'd been closest because he'd caused it, locking down the Hornet's systems with his EMP but not anticipating the cooked grenade the pilot was preparing to throw when everything started going to hell. The deep slash across his chest had to have been caused by debris, and the hollow in the sand where his body had been was streaked through with blood. He was limp and still, and without her HUD she couldn't tell if he was alive.
"Wash?" she said, and her voice shook, which was stupid, it was stupid and childish, but all she could think was that if he was dead she'd have to leave him and stumble back to the scene of the fight, and what if four other bodies were out there waiting, what if this was all that was left of her team?
She released the seals on Wash's helmet—his suit appeared to have fared slightly better than hers, keeping the water away from his head. His face was tense, his brow furrowed. She could see immediately that he was breathing, and for a moment the relief was so strong that she nearly collapsed all over again.
The moment passed. Something was moving over by the Hornet, a flicker of activity that kept drawing her eye, too often to be some harmless motion of debris. On any other day, she would've felt confident enough with her fists and her feet, but with one arm out of commission and her lungs still burning and her heart still pounding, she reached for Wash's Magnum and brought it to bear. She didn't make a particularly imposing figure, still crouched in the sand, but she wasn't entirely sure she'd be able to make it back to her feet without crumpling.
"Hey," she shouted, and her voice was hoarse and strange in her ears, but she was so tired, she was so tired. "I see you over there."
"Holy shit, you're alive." A figure stumbled out from behind the wreckage of the Hornet, empty hands palm-up, and Carolina squinted for a moment before she recognized the color of the armor in the faint light.
"South?" She relaxed her grip on the pistol, lowering it to her side as South jogged closer. Scorch-marks scuffed her armor and one arm was guarding her side, but she was alive.
South crouched down next to her, reached out awkwardly to steady her when she swayed. "Fuck, I saw you hit the water after the explosion. You didn't come up again," she said, her voice a little too high and quick. Her attention snapped to Wash. "And this guy's gotta have some sort of fucked-up guardian angel thing going on, I mean, I saw him get slashed by a piece of the Hornet. He was down."
"South," Carolina said, and South's attention snapped to her sharply, abruptly, and the overwhelming relief started to fade, because nobody else was running out to meet them, and South was definitely rambling, nervous and shocky. "It's okay. I need you to focus right now. What happened here? Where are the others?" The mission, her mind murmured. "Did the leader get away?"
South raised a hand to her forehead, like she'd forgotten the helmet in her way. "I think I hit my head, boss," she said, in a small voice. "There was a blast, and I saw you and Wash get taken out, and there was some asshole with a grenade launcher, and I think I hit my head."
Focus. "Where's your brother, South?"
South exhaled, staring down at the sand for a long moment, then looked up. "I don't know. North was— I know York was hurt. He got, he got distracted by the explosion I guess. I saw him get stabbed, but he was still moving around, you know? Connie was in the middle of things, setting up shots for North, I think." She tilted her head to the side, like she was half-expecting them to come up beside her. "I looked around for a while after I woke up, but I didn't see them. No bodies or anything. Our orbital link's down, too. Jammed, maybe."
Carolina breathed slowly, tried not to think about what might've happened if South had managed to reach the Mother of Invention. Would the Director have sent a rescue team? Would he have sent Tex? Or would he have cut his losses and moved on, away from his failed experiments?
"Fuck," South said, and grabbed Carolina's arm when she started a slow slump toward the sand. "You're not okay, are you?"
"Sniper shot, right shoulder," Carolina said, and hell, it was really starting to hurt again now that she'd mentioned it.
She must have started falling again, because South's grip on her arm tightened. "Jesus. Was that before or after you got exploded into the ocean?"
Carolina thought about it, because everything might have gone a little hazy but she was still clear-headed enough to remember that words were important, precision was vital. "Before," she said, calmly and clearly, and pitched forward into unconsciousness.