Teagan woke up in a mobile medical unit set up on the island, attended to by no fewer than 3 PPDC doctors. Ze was shaking from a cold that emanated from the inside out.
"They're awake," sighed one of them with relief.
Ze mustered a scowl. "'Ze' pronouns, please," Teagan muttered hoarsely, sitting up despite the pain in zir head. "Where's Jackson?"
The doctor nearest to zir swallowed. "He's been taken back to the shatterdome," she said solemnly. The shatterdome? But Kiribati was almost 8 hours away from the nearest of them. If they could treat zir in a mobile unit, surely they could have for him too?
"And you didn't take me with him? Dammit," Teagan hissed. "It's been, what, 6 years since the start of the Jaeger program and you still don't understand how important it is for us to stick together?"
Ze shuddered and eyes burned as ze remembered the moments before Jackson, zir friend of 10 years, had gone out like a light. Ze'd felt his anklebones snap, felt terror set fire to his mind. Ze saw his life flash before his eyes. Half of Teagan's brain felt like aching static.
"Mr. Rosenthal, we get it. Trust us, we get it almost as much as you do. But you have to believe us when we say that this is a unique situation and we think-"
Teagan bristled. "Unique situation?"
"Jackson Finch is in a coma, Teagan." Zir heart sank, and ze swallowed. "We don't know how the drift will impact his ability to wake up, so we're keeping you apart for now. You and Sierra Dynamo will be temporarily relocated to Anchorage while we get a grip on what's going on in his brain."
Teagan struggled to think. "You have to let me see him," ze plead. "Maybe I could reach him through the drift, and-"
"No," the doctor said firmly. "We're maintaining distance between you two until we can understand more about what this condition means for him… and what it could possibly mean for you too."
"This isn't fair!" ze shouted, tears spilling down zir cheeks. "This isn't fucking fair."
"War's not fair, Mr. Rosenthal." Teagan turned toward the opening of the tent, and met the gaze of one Marshal Pentecost. Ze sat up straight in zir cot and saluted despite feeling like shit. The man, after all, was a legend.
He nodded at the medical personnel and they excused themselves, leaving the two Jaeger pilots alone.
"You know this is going to be a rare opportunity for us to further study the impact that drifting has on the human mind, " he said, taking a seat. Something in his voice was soothing and ze found zirself calmed even though his words weren't exactly reassuring.
"I know, sir," ze whispered.
"Mr. Finch is the first ranger to fall into a coma. We're going to do everything we can for him, but is doing a lot for us as well right now."
"I hate feeling helpless, sir."
"Give us two weeks with him and we'll ship you back to Los Angeles. Just two weeks. You have my word, alright?"
Ze nodded, staring at his immaculately polished dress shoes. He didn't just look the part of marshal, he felt like it too; ze found his presence filling the room. Ze could only imagine what he was like back when he was a pilot, too.
"Sierra will be shipping with you, so hang tight until then." Pentecost rose again, heading silently for the tent flap, but paused. "Oh, and do as the doctors say and take a rest. They do know what they're talking about." He gave zir a wink and left. There were shouts outside, but ze didn't really hear them.
Teagan looked around. The makeshift medical facility, airlifted in, was impressively stocked. Crates on the floor were filled with the basics: bandages, gauze, antiseptic. But there were other, more dubious equipment to be found in some of the others. Geiger counters, syringes. A series of "jaws of life" hydraulic rescue tools sat on the floor in the corner. They were stained a deep blue. Dings and scratches told zir that they'd seen a lot of action as well, prying bodies out of deactivated Jaegers.
Ze shuddered, thinking about how Jackson was halfway towards being a corpse himself.
Jackson Finch was Sierra's primary pilot, and in his 3rd year with PPDC. He was a young man of 27, a good hand taller than Teagan and could bench-press almost twice as much as zir, but was lean. They met in high school, when the both of them were on the track team. They found themselves at many of the same parties, with many of the same interests, and soon became inseparable friends. There was a drunk kiss once, but that was about it. Drifting with someone had a tendency to tie up your loose ends real quick. In fact, that was how Jackson found out ze was trans and had been taking blockers since shortly after puberty. And Teagan found out he was a little bi and had an interest in "cute" boys. But they'd made the decision early on not to get involved like that again (Teagan didn't care for romance much anyways), and to keep themselves away from any related thoughts while drifting.
In short, Jackson was the one to encourage Teagan to come out while at PPDC, and somehow that brought them even closer than a neural handshake could. Now, all of zir documents could be found marked with an X instead of an M. But that's besides the point.
Teagan suddenly found zirself getting claustrophobic inside the tent. Ze threw off the blankets and stepped outside, shielding zir sensitive eyes from the bright, flaming sunset.
The beach was a complete wreck, Teagan noted. High tide had come in to wash most of their mess away, but ze could still follow where the fight had taken them out of the water and onto the shore. Entire groves of coconut trees had been flattened, and about 100 yards away, ze could clearly make out the dark bowl in the dirt where Slugfist had caught Sierra on its back, determined to pound it into tinfoil. It looked like a tornado had touched down on just that spot.
The ranger turned away from the gruesome landscape and faced back toward the sun, toward the Jaeger. Teagan began the plod over to the gargantuan machine almost as a reflex.
Ze didn't know when, exactly, Mammoth Apostle had come to their rescue, or what condition their Jaeger was in when Slugfist was torn off them. Mammoth was on standby on a neighboring island, though, so the response was, thankfully, quick.
Teagan walked past a clean-up crew as they mopped up the remnants of the blue mess behind bright yellow tape marked with biohazard symbols. Ze stopped short of a group standing with the marshal, surveying zir machine.
Sierra was covered in enormous dents, and had a number of pieces of plating ripped off. Miraculously, the conn-pod didn't look any worse for wear than the rest of the body, and was definitely salvageable, though ze imagined that the right forearm would need to be completely rebuilt.
The Jaeger was top-heavy, like all Jaegers tend to be, with a wide, bulky chest to contain the dual-cell core system. The conn-pod, zie'd heard through the grapevine, would be the model for Australia's mark 5 Jaeger that was currently in development. It had a lupine look to it, ze'd always thought, though Jackson maintained such was a hilarious association to make. "It looks like a robot," he would always retort with a charming dismissiveness.
"I thought we'd told you to stay put, Mr. Rosenthal?"
Teagan started at Pentecost's voice.
"I… I needed some fresh air, sir."
He stepped over to zir and they looked at the Jaeger together. "You know," he began. "You technically piloted solo today."
Teagan's dark brows flew up. "What?" ze blurted out. "No way. I just had the left arm for a few minutes is all."
"Still."
That was all he said about it.
Off in the distance came the flickering growl of a helicopter approaching, and Marshal Pentecost, accompanied by a few others, headed for it. He gave zir shoulder a firm pat as he walked past.
"Two weeks," he shouted as the aircraft came in closer, whipping around hair, clothes, and sand alike. "See you in Alaska!"
Ze watched them take off from a safe distance, letting zir shoulders droop when they were up and away. "See you," Teagan murmured, turning back toward Sierra. Ze wasn't sure what else to do.
The young pilot climbed the hill of sand piled up against the Jaeger's arm from when it was dragged from where it'd been taken down by Slugfist. It was laying on its back, adjacent to the beach, with its legs extending down into the water. It looked very much like a beached whale in the dying light. Ze watched the crews finish up their shifts under the gaudy brightness of floodlights, putting up one of what would be many signs in the sand declaring the beach too toxic for boats to come ashore, as though the rotting carcass a mile inland wouldn't be enough of a deterrent for years to come. At the top of the sign was the all-too-familiar logo of the mutant crab claw, the universal symbol for "kaiju".
I miss you, Jax, ze thought, letting zir head fall back and rest against the cold metal.
There was no reply.
