Excalibur awoke to the sound of whirring mechanics and a pain in his left arm. Groaning, he opened his eyes, only to see darkness. Blinking his eyes in confusion, his vision suddenly cleared and a swarm of warning messages and blinking lights flooded into his HUD. There were so many messages, that they blocked up his whole visor, effectively blinding him. He sighed, and began to manually close every single one.
Catastrophic blood loss
Multiple injuries sustained
Armor penetrated in multiple areas
Honestly, the warnings made it sound much worse than it actually felt. He felt great, besides the fact that his left arm felt like it was on fire. He also couldn't move very well. It's like something held him back from let's say adjusted a leg or sitting up. He could move his head just fine, but everything below his shoulders resisted his urge. Great, he was injured and paralyzed. This was what Tenno were trained for. Go into battle, fight, get hurt, get medical attention, go back into battle. It was just a constant cycle. Of course, Jack didn't mind the killing. He never knew anything outside of it. His earliest memories were fuzzy, he couldn't even remember his parents. Come to think of it... He couldn't remember anything before his time in the cryopod very well. There were snippets of memories here and there, but put together they made no sense.
Jack was jolted out of his thoughts as he heard a door open. Craning his head, he saw someone in a lab coat. Then his training kicked in, he analyzed the door opening sound he had heard, it was efficient and smooth... Obviously Corpus design. If the doors were Corpus, then he was in a Corpus base, which meant the man in the lab coat was also Corpus. That meant he was going to get dissected really soon. Fantastic.
"How are you feeling?" A feminine voice asked softly. Woman in a lab coat, Excalibur corrected himself. I'm going to be dissected by this lady.
Jack chose not to answer her. He wasn't sure he could, he vaguely remembered something about the helmets being soundproof, something about not wanting captured Tenno to reveal secrets about the Lotus...and Jack was exactly that.
"Silly me, your helmet's on..." With that, she deactivated his suit and took off his helmet with apparent ease. "How about now?"
Jack just stared at her. It took a week of training to deactivate a Tenno suit... And she had done it in seconds. Even he had trouble with it, usually Tenno just say a command and the helmet slides down folding into the suit. No one really ever needed to deactivate their suit. Who was this woman, and how did she know? There were certain button combinations that had to be memorized. Then there were rules on how hard you had to press the buttons. Jack never understood that either, but apparently the Orokin took warframe security seriously. For good reason as well.
"You can talk, it's fine. We're not going to dissect you, we just want... Well... Never mind. He'll tell you soon enough." She told him soothingly, as a mother would calm her child. That reminded him a little bit of the Lotus. Of course, Lotus was usually just an operative, directing him. But sometimes... Just sometimes she would speak with that same tone. She had especially loved her Kubrow, it was a cute little thing. Occasionally, when he walked past her operations room, he would see her talking to her Kubrow in the same tone. It reminded him that even though she was their leader, she was still human. They were all human.
"You were the woman from the infested ship!" Jack blurted out. How had he not seen it before? She had the same brown eyes, the same fair skin.
The woman smiled at him, "Yes. We didn't expect to find any Tenno there, but we found 4." Her expression darkened, and she turned her gaze to the floor. "3 dead, 1 in critical condition. He was near death, but we brought him back and fixed him up." She looked up at him with a sad expression, "I'm sorry about your friends."
Excalibur closed his eyes. He could remember the screams, the shouts. Saryn had ordered Excalibur to get away, to abandon the mission and get to the extraction point. He had refused. Tenno fight together, after all. But it was no use, Saryn soon went under a swarm of infested. The smell of metallic blood filled the air. Rhino went into a rage, stomping and punching infested to pulp. But his iron skin soon fell apart, and he went under too. Now it was just Nova and Excalibur. He blinded the infested, and they raced to the extraction point. But they never got there. Rounding a corner, Nova was suddenly hit by an Ancient's arm. She hit the floor with a sickening thud. Before she died, Nova slammed the ground with her arm weakly, priming everything in the room. Excalibur detonated all of them with a single shot, and tried to save Nova but she was dead as well. They were all dead.
He opened his eyes. Jack saw the woman staring down at him, with the same sad expression. "You're not alone, Jack. There are others here as well."
"Other... Tenno?" Jack couldn't believe it, where was he?
She just smiled at him, and stood up. Walking to the door, she opened it, and stepped out. In came another woman, but in a suit. She was in a warframe. She walked around Excalibur's bed, and then sat down next to him.
"Hey." She grinned down at him. Her hair was looked like a wisp of fire blown backwards. Her eyes were a deep shade of green. But her suit was obviously Tenno. There was no doubt about it.
"..." Excalibur was speechless. There were other Tenno here?
"Cat got your tongue, eh?" She simply grinned even wider, and then leaned back in her chair. "I suppose I should introduce myself. I'm Ember, and you are...?"
"Jack." Excalibur said weakly.
"Alright, Jackie. I suppose you're wondering where we are. This is Corpus outpost 5.11-8, but don't worry. It's more of a rogue Corpus outpost, where research is conducted on Tenno without dissection. Don't worry, you're safe here."
"Five dot eleven dash eight." Excalibur felt dizzy, why was he here? "Rogue corpus. Dissection."
"No dissection." Ember corrected him, "Safe. Got that Jackie?"
Jack wasn't sure he 'got that'. The ceiling seemed to spin and he was having trouble focusing on Ember's face. Everything was out of focus.
"Woah Jackie, easy there." Ember told him, "Let's sit you up."
She grabbed him and lifted Jack up into a sitting position. She looked him over, examining his left arm the most. Then she gave him a sympathetic smile, "Take it easy pal. Your left arm seems to be broken in several places, try not to move it alright?"
"Alright." Excalibur murmured.
Ember sighed, "We've finally got 4... That's perfect." She seemed to be talking to herself.
"4 what?" Excalibur asked.
She just grinned and patted his arm, "Get better soon Jackie." She stood up and walked away.
"Wait!" Excalibur called. Ember stopped at the doorway and turned around.
"Yeah?" She asked.
"My name isn't Jackie."
"Got it, Jackie." Her eyes glinted mischievously and she left.
Excalibur shook his head. How did he get into this mess? He had went to an infested ship with plans of exterminating all life forms inside, but his cell got obliterated, and Jack got captured, and now he was in a Corpus outpost (of all places) with a crazy Ember and a strange woman. To top it all off, he was practically useless. His arm was broken, and he still couldn't move his lower body. He couldn't even get back home.
Home.
Come to think of it, what was his home? Jack told himself it was the Liset, but it didn't feel like home. It just felt like a methods of transportation, something to carry him from one massacre to the next. Where did he belong? Everywhere he went, he felt like a stranger. Going to a Corpus marketplace, people always whispered and kept their distance. At Operations, where the Lotus was, he always felt outranked and inferior. People didn't notice him at all, he was just the background to them. Even at his clan dojo, he felt like he didn't know anyone. They were complete strangers.
Excalibur shook his head. He wasn't in a Nyx Warframe for good reason.
Take it easy, Jack heard Ember in his head. He supposed he should stop trying to be a psychologist and just get his rest. With that, he slowly nodded off as sleep wrapped its comforting blanket around him.
