Elissa came to with a great gasp, coughs racking her body and hurting her to her core, lines of fire raking out across her skin.
She couldn't move. It hurt too much to even think about moving. She was soaking wet, the smell of the ocean all around her. Her limbs were dead weight, hands locked around the edge of Stalker Chaos's shoulder plating, a hold she'd somehow managed to get as the jaeger went down; her hands and the few tubes from her drivesuit still connected or wedged somewhere were all that kept her from being swept away to the ocean. If she let go, she'd be gone. She was too weak, too broken to swim. Most of her body was already in the water, moving with the waves as they lapped against Stalker, nearly submerged where he lay in the shallows. Elissa coughed again as she forced herself to move her head, her eyes, to look around and try and get an idea of where she was, what had happened.
Vancouver. They'd been sent to fight Hellhound outside Vancouver. Category IV. Big sucker. It had been close, but they'd won. They'd been headed for the pick-up zone when—
Systems Critical—Multi-Systems Failure—
Explosion. The damage they'd taken must have been too much. Jared had been talking to LOCCENT, to Tendo. Systems started to fail, neural bridge weakened, almost flickered away.
Reactor Breach. Evacuate conn-pod.
The first explosion knocked Jared's harness loose, fried the left hemisphere. The computer tried to route Stalker's control entirely to Elissa, just as the high priority systems failed. The second explosion followed immediately after. Engulfed Jared in fire, sent Elissa flying.
Was Jared okay? No, there was no way he could have survived that. There was no way she should have survived that.
But she had.
The remaining strength started to fade from her hands, her arms. She didn't think the tubes would hold her once she let go. Pain lanced through her bones, her muscles, but she pulled herself up, over the edge and into Stalker's conn-pod, tumbling to the back of the space, landing with a few sickening crunches and the urge to vomit. Elissa did cough, blood splatting the metal beside her, dribbling down her chin. She wouldn't drown here though, so that was something. She could hurt without fear of dying.
Elissa tried to laugh at the thought, but it hurt. Oh God it hurt.
Her head swam, the pain beginning to overwhelm her. Body warming after the cold of the ocean? Shock subsiding? Who knew.
All she could smell was the salt of the ocean and the copper of her blood. She looked down and sure enough, her drivesuit was covered in blood, some drying and sticky, some liquid and black. Her head hurt, she was shaking.
Elissa was dying. She could feel it.
But it was fine. It was good. They'd stopped Hellhound, done their job. Vancouver was safe for now. Stalker was gone and so was Jared. Her father had died two years ago and Raleigh had left. She found it odd thoughts of her father and Raleigh came to her then, but then, it didn't make sense for Elissa to live on without them. With all those pieces of her missing. She'd gone out fighting and that was all that mattered. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the hurt, the burning, the blood. Tried to think about the things she fought for, about what had made her happy.
Working on the jaegers, on Stalker and Gipsy.
Listening to the deep rumble of her Dad's voice as he taught her.
How safe she felt with Jared watching over her.
Sparing with Raleigh in the wee hours of the night.
Darkness closed in and she let it, concentrating on the smell of the ocean air and how it reminded her of Alaska, of the Shatterdome—the only place she'd felt at home.
