CA

Henry took a deep breath of the icy winds, which quickly started to bite at his nose and ears. "I half thought you abandoned me."

"Me? Abandon you?" Ellie scoffed. "Please. What would I tell Charles? …what am I going to tell Charles?"

Henry chuckled. "Yeah, what were you even doing there, Ellie? Last time I checked you weren't notorious."

"Excuse you!" Ellie squawked. "I happen to be fiercely known as a bandit that plagued the… alright, well, maybe not a bandit. But I like to think I'm a fairly well-known mercenary. My last job out in Alaska might have ruffled some feathers. What about you? What's with the fancy suit and tie?"

"I'm a Toppat," Henry admitted. "Which is probably why they wanted me. I'm pretty well known after all." Wait.

Wait.

He just said that out loud.

To Ellie.

Unknown force, was there any way for him to go back to almost being locked up? No?

Her smirk left her. "A Toppat, huh? That's, uh… unexpected. I didn't see that coming, to be honest."

"Yeah, I never told you guys," Henry said. "For good reason. Say, it's really cold. Do you want to ride this bike–"

"Yes," Ellie stated. "This bike is now mine."

"Well, okay. Not like I have any other choices, huh?"

Ellie hummed. "So, Henry. Uh… where are you heading?"

"I was just at, uh, well I was east. I was going back to Arizona. But I think I might just go to Alaska."

Ellie sent a puzzled glance his way. "Arizona or Alaska? You realize those places are on two different ends of the continent, right?"

"Yeah. Well, the Wall guards found me in Alaska and just… were there already, I guess? But since I can't cross the ocean without a boat or plane, I think I'll head to there and get on a boat. What about you?"

Ellie made a motion resembling a shrug, though Henry honestly couldn't tell. "Like I said, I was just in Alaska when that job went sour. It was a nice job, too. Shame. Anyway, I think I'll find my way back to Nevada."

Henry reluctantly asked, "What about your bike?"

"Smashed!" Ellie exclaimed, throwing one hand in the air, nearly causing Henry to have a heart attack. "They smashed it to bits! I would have escaped them if they didn't fuck up my front tire and throw me and my bike off a fucking glacier." She took a deep, chilly breath. "I managed to jump off and hold onto the edge, but my baby didn't and exploded on the ground. Ah, well. This bike is mine now. So, I guess I'm happy."

"Yeah." Henry ducked his head so the wind no longer burned his face with its frosty chill. "…you know, Ellie. You're fairly skilled. You're good with stunt work and I know you're a good shot. You're clever, obviously."

"Yes. Yes, I am. Your point, Papa Hen?"

"Well, now that we aren't in danger of getting killed or recaptured, I was thinking. I was adopted into the Toppats when I was eleven, a few months before I went to school with you and Charles. But I've seen quite a few members join, some even as young as you or I, relatively speaking. So, I was wondering, if I could talk you into…"

"Becoming a Toppat?" Ellie asked, her voice a little hoarse. "You… are really inviting me to join one of the biggest, most notorious criminal groups in the world?"

"Yeah. The Air Division. It's a little smaller than the Ground or Water Division, but we're the most mobile, and the highest in the hierarchy of the Toppats. If everyone has to get together at once, the Air Division chief would take over, with the Water Division as second and Ground Division as third."

Ellie didn't immediately answer. She stared ahead at the winding road before them. "…You think I'd join the Toppat Clan? I'm not a criminal, Henry."

"…right," Henry started. "A-and that's a big part of being in the Clan. I thought that… we're friends and… you know what? Forget it. Yeah, it was dumb asking you. Sorry."

A very long span of silence stretched between them. Henry huddled up against her back and Ellie watched the road before them. The ocean cliffs fell away as the road turned inland.

Eventually, as the sun started to set, the bike slowed.

Henry looked up as Ellie parked her bike, the Wall's insignia facing the wall of the establishment. He could feel the warmth emanating from the inside. He could hear voices and noise and the very faint smell of food rode upon the less-than-freezing air seeping from the door close to them.

Ellie hopped down and helped Henry. "God, even with all that fancy stuff on, you're shivering!"

"I-I expected t-to be in A-Arizona by n-now!" Henry argued, following her into the bar without hesitance. Heat rushed into them like a tidal wave as the door opened and the two scurried inside.

Ellie shook herself off like a damp songbird and wandered to one of the tables near the end of the establishment. Conversations, mostly in English though he caught a few words in French, raised into a dull roar over the bar. She plopped down at one of the tables, running her fingers through her wind-wild hair. "So, Henry. Uh, to continue talking."

Henry, bundled up and praying the heat would get to him eventually, opened his eyes. "Yeah?"

"I… well, I think I like your idea. A little bit," she confessed. "You know me. Always been on the straight and narrow, that's what Charles made sure of. But I hear all kinds of stories. I even chase a few of them down if the cops pay me enough! When, you know, I manage to snag a job. But to be a recruit with a steady job… that sounds like fun. Will I be able to do the stuff you're able to do?"

"In time," Henry said with a shrug, thankful he was able to speak properly again. "I mean, not everything happens immediately. You have to have put time into the Clan, you need experience. You need to make a name for yourself. I've been in the Clan since I was eleven, but I only became a full member when I was eighteen. Let me tell you, I still have seniors barking at me." Henry chuckled. "Okay, so, maybe not. I like those guys. But seriously, you might not be planning raids any time soon, but I'm sure you'll get to be part of the action, especially if they know you're as clever and competent as you are. You've been my friend almost for as long as I've known them, and I'm pretty sure my dads know you, too. I never shut up about you and Charles."

Ellie snorted. "Jeez, you ask my parents about you and I think they'll say the same. Eh… but maybe they didn't know you as well as you knew me, huh?"

"Heh. Maybe." He chuckled and ran his cold fingers over his neck.

"So, your dads," Ellie stated. "I think you mentioned recently it was, uh…"

"Dad Reginald and Dad Right. They'd been close friends when Dad Reginald and Carol adopted me," Henry explained. "But Carol wasn't married and didn't mother me, which is why I never told you guys about her. Oh, right, they're the Chief and Deputy. Chief Reginald and Right Hand Man. Carol is a high-ranking executive, mostly in charge of keeping everyone on the straight and narrow."

Ellie snorted. "You're a clan of thieves. I think she might want to rethink her job."

At this, Henry laughed. "Oh man, don't tell her that! She'd strangle you. Hah! She's in charge of making sure everyone's following the rules. And if people aren't following the rules, she sets them straight. We've got other people with similar jobs, but she's the most vocal of them. Anyway, they trust me, as I do them, and I trust you. So, I'm sure if we talk to them, they'd like to have you, too!"

Ellie smiled, though it looked a little worn. "That sounds great. You know what else sounds great? A bed! A bed and a nice hot meal."

PD

Machinery hummed, its whirring so quiet his fogged senses couldn't pick up on it. He barely heard the gentle lapping of the choppy waves on the hull of the boat. The taste of… metal and medicine filled his mouth. It almost made him want to gag from surprise and the newness of the taste. Something was stopping the action, though. Suppressing it. Was he under? Was he waking? Was this some fevered state where he toed the line between reality and dreams?

The foul thought of death wriggled its fingers into his foggy brain. As his breathing started to change, the smell of saltwater tried to cut through the fog. It was so sharp, so sudden. It tried to overpower the dull, nigh scentless… place of which he resided.

Below him, Henry felt a stiff bed, though it did give a little under his weight. A thin blanket draped over his body. He let out a tiny noise like a groan.

"Henry?" The word barely penetrated his bleary mind. "Henry, are you awake?"

As much as he wanted to stay down, to keep his eyes closed and to keep still, he… couldn't. There was distress in this voice. God, he didn't want to stress more people out than he already did. His stupid stunt of being captured by the Wall was probably already a cause of concern he had yet to address.

So, Henry opened his blurry, heavy eyelids. There was a shape above him, but he couldn't quite pin down a solid outline, or even where the light and dark colors separated. Black and gray, white, brown, yellow… wait… no, he knew this person sitting above him.

"Henry?" the voice asked, a little more urgency in his tone. "Can you hear me?"

A weird noise managed to slither out of Henry's throat in response. He blinked away the sleepiness from his eyes. Sitting above him, shadows under his honey-chocolate eyes, was Dad Reginald.

"D-Dad?" Henry mumbled. "Wha…?"

The man let out a huge sigh. "Oh thank God–Henry, we… didn't know where you went. You never met up with the sea division. Where did you go?"

"…the Wall…"

"Chief Reginald."

Dad Reginald looked back as a female voice, smooth though tasting of an edge, called behind him. He responded, "Dr. Vinschpinsilstien? Yes?"

"He is awake?"

"Yes."

Henry, half numb and dizzy and still struggling to take in his surroundings, pushed himself up so he was sitting. He felt a hand on his shoulder to keep him steady. He looked up at the newest addition to the room: a blonde woman with rose-tinted glasses. A few rebellious strands of hair whisked over her pretty green eyes a little dull from exhaustion. "Hello, Henry," she greeted, her words tinged by a Russian accent. "You were gone for a bit, but I was able to bring you back to life."

Henry jolted. "I was dead?" he whispered, his words hardly audible in a wheeze. His throat hurt.

"Yes, but not for long. I was able to bring you back and keep you alive. I also specialize in military grade augmentations," she said.

Henry blinked. What did that have to do with anything? He raised his left hand to touch the bandages over his head but stopped mid-reach upon seeing metal… way more metal than a wrist band. He held his left arm out. Rather than flesh and skin, he saw metal, banded with rings to give him more movement. A blue bulb inlay in his palm. Henry flexed his fingers. He couldn't feel the appendages, but he watched as they complied with his will and moved.

"I was forced to replace spine and left arm as some of the damage you sustained was beyond repairing," Dr. Vinschpinsilstien explained.

Henry reached his other arm to rest on his back. Beneath his clothes, he felt a bump running down to his pelvis. From his neck down to his tailbone was replaced by metal and was raised above the skin. When he tried to turn back, the skin on his back near his spine burned and he stopped, sucking in his breath. Bandages were taped to his back in twin stripes.

"Easy, easy," she calmed, holding her hands out. "You are still healing. Your spine is above your skin. I was able to connect the skin on your back to the prosthetics, but it will take a little while for you to fully heal."

Henry nodded as if he understood, barely aware of the action. He heard every word Dr. Vinschpinsilstien said, he knew every individual word and their definitions, but it was as if there was a block in his mind, a dirty filter too thick with particles to allow the words in enough to be understood as coherent thoughts.

"What… what happened?" he managed.

Dr. Vinschpinsilstien said, "I found you in the water, near the Wall. Do you remember anything?"

Henry narrowed his eyes. He tried to reach into his memories, but everything felt so… suppressed, blurry, as if he was wandering through a fog. "There was… snow… cars. Like when I was a kid." He could still hear the echoing shots of different guns around him. "Guns and… something happened. I fell? Did I fall? I thought I held onto the cliff. With Ka… I fell." He held onto the cliff with Katie. Katie had needed him, and the Wall guard didn't look twice. But it had been a trick. Katie didn't need him, not right then, and Henry was old enough to know he needed himself more.

Henry shook his head. Now the fog was parting. He gave them a synopsis of what happened, from getting captured to falling out of the air from a parachute. "Wait… Dmitri is dead. Ha!" He couldn't help the cold, humorless noise. "Deserved it."

"Dmitri is dead?" Dad Reginald echoed. "The Warden?"

Henry nodded. "As dead as someone who fell off a cliff into the rocks can be." He looked up. "What now?"

"Now," Dad Reginald said, "–you recover and learn how to use that." He gestured to Henry's new arm.

Henry looked down at his arm again. He held it up and waved it beside himself and opened and closed his hand. "Doctor?" he asked. "What does it do?"

For a moment, he swore he could see a little amusement cross her features. "It functions as your arm did before, at a baseline. However, I went beyond cybernetic repair, which would have kept you from total paralysis and loss of function of your left arm. Cybernetic augmentation allows you to do much more. You are now… hmm…" The specialist paused in thought. "You have new abilities. Hold out your hand for me."

Henry obeyed, still dazed and hardly able to comprehend this new development.

She stepped to the side and took his wrist. There was a quiet, hardly audible click and quite suddenly his hand was gone. In a shrik of metal scraping upon metal, his hand transformed into a rapier–long and sharp and thin. He jumped and pulled his sword-hand closer to himself. He waved it slowly before himself, watching as the light glinted off the sharp edge. After a moment of thought, he concentrated on his hand. The rapier shortened and widened into a baseball bat.

Henry raised his eyebrows and looked at his father, who mimicked the expression.

Henry turned his bat-hand back into a hand. The bulb glowed, but nothing happened–probably because he didn't command it to do anything.

"Whoa, whoa!" Dr. Vinschpinsilstien cut in. "Do not use that inside my boat."

Henry looked up at her. "What…?"

"It is laser."

"Oh." Henry closed his hand. He hummed and looked back, though he knew he wouldn't be able to see his spine. "So…?"

"There are functions in your spine, too," Dr. Vinschpinsilstien said. She walked around behind him and explained her work, experimental even by her standards. "I have worked on patients with partial paralysis, where their spine was broken at some point lower in their body. I have also worked with partially severed or cut spinal cords. But I have never replaced one's entire spine, as I have done with you. Henry, there are a few important points I must explain."

Henry turned his full attention back to the doctor.

She went on, "Your spine had been close to shattering by the time I found you. Your nervous system now hinges on the technology I have given you. I was required to modify your brain stem to accept the new technology more readily. But your arm and spine will not work forever. You will need to recharge and handle yourself with care. This design will cut all activity with your arm if your cybernetics lose enough power. If they are broken or completely lose power, you will no longer have use of your nervous system. This includes your vital organs, such as your heart and lungs. You must not run out of power. The technology is very efficient, so you may not need to recharge for quite a while. You could use a cord or replace battery in upper spine."

Dr. Vinschpinsilstien tapped the back of his neck just above his shoulders. "Use of your cybernetics will increase power usage, but you should be able to go about a month before charging. Heavy use or injury can cause you to use more energy. Alert system installed will tell you when you are low on energy."

Henry set his hands on his lap. "…" He turned to Dad Reginald, who no longer really looked at Henry despite having turned in his direction. His eyebrows were furrowed and eyes unfocused. "When will my skin heal?" Henry asked.

"It should take a few weeks, a month at least, two months at worst."

Dad Reginald chipped in, "Thank you, doctor."

"I am doing my job," she stated, again her tone a little sharper with Dad Reginald than Henry.

Before Henry could question this weird development, Dad Reginald stated, "I must be getting back to the airship. Doctor, is he able to move?"

"Yes. Henry, as I was forced to replace some of your nervous system, there may be times when you feel weak or are unable to properly use your legs or right arm, so you are at risk for falling, at least for the next month. Take it easy and check up with your own doctor frequently."

Henry nodded and pushed himself to his feet. He wobbled and almost immediately fell but was able to catch himself on his bed. Dad Reginald rushed around to his side and held onto his right hand. Henry took a deep breath and walked. This… would take some getting used to.

IRO

Henry took a deep breath, sitting strapped down in his chair with his back against the cold metal. It was warmer in the chopper, at least!

"Hey, Henry!" Charles greeted. "Nice to see you again."

Henry opened one eye. "Good to see you again, man!"

Charles grinned back at him and turned forward again. The grin faded. "So, uh… you remember me talking about the captain, don't you?"

Henry hid a grimace. "Yeah."

"I was able to swing by and pick you up, but with his permission. Well, he had to sanction this pick up," Charles explained. "In return we kinda need your assistance. I hope that's alright."

Working for the government. Well, Charles did save his life. "…sure. What do you need help with?"

"Great!" His smile returned. "So, uh, you know the Toppats, right?"

Oh fuck.

"Yes," Henry managed, hoping to God his voice didn't waver.

"Oh, cool! Well, they've been causing us a lot of trouble," Charles explained. "So, we've, uh, we've been looking for some help. In taking them down. You see, uh, we don't really have any solid evidence on them as a whole. We know they're doing something illegal, but we can't really pin down what. The Captain knows about you and how skilled you are, so he wanted your help, anyway. He, uh… heh… he knows you don't have the cleanest record out there." Charles chuckled, though it was a little uneven. "He agreed to help you out if you help us out, ya'know?"

Henry turned away so Charles couldn't see his facial expression. What did you get yourself into this time, Henry? "…Um… what are my other options?"

Charles gave him an odd look. "Other options? What do you mean?"

"I know I broke out of jail and tried to sneak into a vault. But I've never tried to go against anyone like the Toppats. I heard of them at the Wall. I heard they're one of the biggest organization of thieves out there. You don't really think I'd be able to go in there and get out that easily, do you?"

"Oh, yeah! Of course I do! You're amazing!" Charles said unhelpfully. "You could take down that whole airship on your own if you wanted to."

Henry chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck. "…uh, okay. I mean, maybe. But if they do catch me? If you can't arrest all of them? What if they know who I was, and they went after you or Ellie?"

This quieted the man.

"…Ellie can kick anyone's butt, Henry. You know that. In fact, the Captain tried contacting her first! And you know me, I'm, uh, I'm not afraid of some thieves!"

"You got a point," Henry relented. Jesus Christ, please take the hint, Charles! "But…" Henry let out a quiet sigh. "Look, I can try, but I don't know if I can guarantee anything." Maybe he could fake them out? Grab some fake documents, something worthless to the government? They had some fake documents that looked very real at first glance, and it's not like they'd be counting on him to comb through every detail on such a dangerous mission. "Actually, yeah. You helped me, I'll help you back. I owe you one."

Charles glanced back at him, absolutely beaming. "You will? Awesome! I'll swing by the base and we can talk to the General! Oooh this is going to be awesome!"

Henry chuckled. "Yeah. Awesome."