Chapter 25: A Trace of the True Self...
"Charon!"
Blood splashed against the floor of the bridge.
"Charon! Where are you?!"
Blood dripped over the stairs to the lower deck.
"CHARON!"
"I'm here lassie, what - " Charon said as he exited the engine room, stopping as she saw Mud's tattered, unconscious form in Pearl's arms. His eyes immediately widened as they scanned over the gaping slashes torn across the front of her body. "What... what happened?"
"Mud said you - you - you're medically trained!" Pearl shouted, thrusting Mud's body towards Charon. "Save her! Please!"
"This way," Charon said, his expression hardening as he led Pearl through the lower deck and into the living quarters of the ship. He pointed to one of the beds as he ran over to a nearby cabinet. "Set 'er down there. What happened? How long has she been like this?"
"About two minutes ago. She, uh... some things happened, the Feilong was attacking me, and then, she..." Pearl said as she replayed the events in her head. She sat down on a nearby chair, staring past the floor. "She... she... the claw was about to hit me, then she pushed me out of the way, then - then she - "
"Got slashed by a Feilong's claw? Surprised she ain't dead. But without aura, she might still be if things don't go well," Charon muttered, picking some medical tools out of the cabinet before making his way next to Mud. "She's lost a lot of blood already. I'm gonna need to concentrate to get her stabilized, so if you could wait outside by - "
Before he could finish the sentence, Pearl had already made her way out the door, slamming it behind her. She curled into a fetal position against a nearby wall, rocking back and forth as she clutched her head in her hands.
"I'm sorry... I'm sorry..."
Black.
Everything was black.
Pearl looked around. Or, at least, she tried to look around. But no matter where she turned her head, her vision remained pitch black. Where was she? What had she been doing? Where was -
Something pushed Pearl from behind. She fell forward, and as she hit the ground, she felt cold rainwater splash up against her. When Pearl looked up, she was back on the ship in the middle of the storm. Across the deck was Mud's body laying next to a shipping container. Blood spilled out of the gashes carved into her chest and stomach, staining the puddles of rainwater beside her. Pearl tried to push herself onto her feet, to run to Mud's side and help her, but her joints felt like they were filled with concrete, her limbs stuck as if by glue.
Mud's eyes fixed to Pearl, and her lips began to move.
"If you hadn't tried to kill me... if you hadn't just stood there... if you hadn't... I would have..."
A swooping sound came from above. Pearl looked up to see the Feilong swooping down, electrical energy gathered in its maw as it turned towards Mud's fallen form. Pearl tried to run to her, to protect her, but her body still wouldn't respond. Still wouldn't move.
Pearl could only watch as the Feilong unleashed the blast of lightning, consuming Mud and the deck around her in a massive explosion.
"Mud!" Pearl shouted, reaching out towards her as she suddenly realized she could move again. She pushed herself onto her feet and ran into the billowing cloud of fire left by the explosion. Her head turned from left to right as she looked for Mud, but the smoke and flames obscured everything and she couldn't see a thing and -
"Aah!"
Pearl felt her legs give way as she tumbled to the ground again. As she looked back up, she could see nothing but smoke and fire surrounding her, stinging her eyes and filling her lungs with soot. A sharp pain stabbed at her legs as she tried to get back on her feet, and she looked back to see her legs burned and mangled, unresponsive to whatever she tried to do with them.
"Pearl..."
A voice. Familiar. But not Mud's. Pearl turned back forward to see her mother lying down in front of her, a pile of burning wood and plaster pinning her down and crushing her against the floor.
"Mother!" Pearl tried to shout, only for the scorching air to burn her lungs and make her cough violently as she reached out for her mother. However, her mother didn't move towards the hand, only gazing back at Pearl with contempt in her eyes.
"Why?" her mother asked. "Why did you do this?"
"I... I didn't..."
"Why does this keep happening?"
"I..."
"Who else will you hurt?"
"I..."
"Who else will you kill?"
Suddenly, all the flames and smoke gathered at a single point between Pearl and her mother. They exploded, sending Pearl tumbling away from her mother. As she pushed herself back onto her feet, she found herself somewhere different, somewhere she didn't recognize. It was some sort of engineering laboratory or workshop, with various gadgets and tools lining the walls and tables. On the floor directly across the room from Pearl was a girl with long white hair that was sitting in an old wheelchair. Her eyes had a certain emotion to them. Fear. Hatred. Pity.
Pearl recognized that girl. It was herself.
"Please don't look at me like that," Pearl pleaded. "It... it's not my fault. I - "
"But it is," Pearl's own voice said back to her as the Pearl in the wheelchair came closer, her eyes glaring daggers into Pearl. "If you hadn't done the things you did, if you hadn't been in their lives... imagine what may have been. Your mother, alive. Ms. Stone, healthy and well. But instead, Ms. Stone's blood stains the ship and she hangs onto life by the thinnest of threads, all because of you. And your mother, well..."
"Be quiet!" Pearl shouted, stepping back as she turned away. "Stop looking at me like that! I didn't want - I didn't want any of this to happen, I just wanted to - "
"Who will be next? Will it be that kindly old man who runs the ship?" the Pearl in the wheelchair asked, now only a few feet in front of Pearl. "Or will it be your own father? After what you did to your mother, I would not be surprised if - "
"Shut up!" Pearl screamed, raising her cannon at the Pearl in the wheelchair. "Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP! Stop - stop talking - stop talking to me, you're - you're WRONG! I didn't want to hurt them, to kill them, I - "
"And you're going to kill me too?" the Pearl in the wheelchair said with a soft smile, gesturing towards Pearl's cannon. "Go ahead. Do it. You've done much worse, after all."
Pearl closed her eyes, and the cannon fired.
"No... I didn't...
Tap. Tap.
"Why... why is this..."
Tap. Tap. Tap.
"Why do I keep doing this?"
"Hey, lassie, you alright?"
"Huh?" Pearl looked up to see Charon squatted down next to her, tapping her on the shoulder. "Why... why are you here? You just said you were going to stabilize her. Why are you out here?"
"That was an hour ago, lassie. I've done what I can, and she's out of death's door for now, but..." Charon wiped a bead of sweat off his forehead with his arm, and Pearl noticed that his hands were stained red with blood. Mud's blood, Pearl assumed. "She's lost a lot of blood. Without proper care, she might not make it, and she's not gonna get better anytime soon."
"Proper care? You mean a hospital or something like that? Is there one at the port in Atlas? How long until we get there?"
"We're headed to Cape Calypso right now. It's the main hub for sea-bound trade to and from Atlas, and if I remember correctly, they should have a hospital set up there. If all goes well, we should be there by tomorrow morning."
"Tomorrow. Tomorrow. No, no, that's too long," Pearl said, pushing herself onto her feet as she turned towards Charon. "Can we go any faster? We - we need to go faster."
"I... I can overdrive the engines. It'll mess 'em up to hell, but at maximum power, we should be able to get there by tonight," Charon explained, making his way towards the stairs to the bridge. "I can do it, but you two'll owe me after."
"Please. Do it. Whatever you can to get her treatment faster," Pearl pleaded. Charon nodded as he made his way up to the bridge and out of sight, and a minute later, Pearl heard the ship's engines whirring intensely, running significantly louder than before. As it did so, Pearl opened the door to Mud's room to see her unconscious form lying on the bed, the wounds across her chest stitched up wherever stitches could be used. Her left arm was set back in place; Pearl guessed it had only been dislocated, which was a silver lining to everything else that happened. Blood-soaked bandages wrapped around everywhere from her stomach to her back to her forehead, and gauze-covered burns ran up her hands and arms, reminding Pearl of how she - how whatever took over her nearly killed Mud out on the deck. Her chest slowly rose up and down, the only indication that she was still alive.
"Please..." Pearl pleaded as she knelt down beside the bed, knowing Mud wasn't awake to listen. "Please... I don't want to lose anyone else..."
Cape Calypso was a large city, visible from Atlas despite the distance between it and the coast. While it was originally a nameless military port constructed during the Great War, its ease of access and proximity to Mantle and Atlas made it a bustling center of commerce for Atlas after the war ended. Residents, businesses, and trade all flowed into the port, eventually turning it into a full city over the course of the century. The hundreds of ships that came in and out of the port, from small sailboats to massive freighters, were a testament to how important the city was to Atlas's economy. Pearl learned all that from her studies while she had been living with her father, but none of that came to her mind as she jumped off Charon's ship onto the dock below.
All that she thought about was Mud's unconscious form in her arms and how to get to help her.
"Where's the hospital?!" Pearl shouted. She looked around before running up to the nearest person, a sailor about to step onto a nearby ship. "I need to get to a hospital now!"
"I - I don't - "
Not needing to hear the rest of his answer, Pearl ran off towards the next nearest person, a dockworker carrying a large crate.
"Where's the hospital?!"
"It's, uh, that way," the dockworker stammered out, nodding his head towards a road leading off the dock. Pearl immediately sprinted off in that direction, running as fast as her mechanical legs would carry her. Around her she saw startled looks and heard hushed whispers, but she ignored them as she raced down the street.
SKREEEEEE!
Suddenly, a car swerved out right in front of Pearl, forcing her to stop in the middle of the road as it skidded to a halt. Before she could make her way around the car, the doors opened. Out of the driver's side door came the man with the crossbow that Pearl had fought back at Seadale - Gale Gunmetal, if she remembered what Mud had said correctly. On the other side was the heavily armored figure with a minigun that had ambushed her and Mud at Arbor, Stormy Gunmetal.
"S - stay back!" Pearl shouted, shifting her grip on Mud so that she could hold her with her left arm while her right arm changed form. She brought her cannon up, pointing it at the Gunmetals as they brought up their own weapons. "I'm not letting you stop me! If you get in my way, I'll... I'll... I'll blow you up! And your car!"
"Ha! Go ahead and try! Let's see if you can make me work up a sweat before - oh, shit," Stormy said. Though Pearl couldn't see her eyes through the helmet that obscured Stormy's face, she could feel her gaze shifting towards Mud. "Damn. Gale?"
"In the back," Gale said to Pearl, pointing his thumb towards the backseat of the car. The two Gunmetals lowered their weapons, turning back towards the car and climbing in.
"Huh?" Pearl said, lowering her cannon. "What are you..."
"You're taking Mud to a hospital, right?" Stormy called out, sticking her head out the passenger's side window. "We know the way, so hop in."
"But you... you're..."
"If you don't want to get in, we'll subdue you and take her there ourselves," Gale said. "Either way, both of you are coming with us."
"Uh... alright, if it's to help Mud," Pearl said, carrying Mud into the backseat of the car. As she closed the door, they sped off down the street, leaving behind a crowd of confused pedestrians as they headed towards the hospital.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Pearl watched the monitor by Mud's bed, her eyes following the green line as it jumped up every second or so. She looked down towards Mud as a nurse attached an IV bag filled with blood to Mud's arm.
"Um... how is she?" Pearl asked, leaning against the frame of Mud's bed. "Will she be alright?"
"She's lost a lot of blood. Honestly, she's quite lucky to have made it this far without dying. Fortunately for her, we should be able to get her blood supply back up in time," the nurse said, turning towards Pearl. "However, there may be some more long-lasting injuries. She was lucky enough that the attack missed her vital organs, but a fair amount of the muscle tissue around her chest has been torn. We have state-of-the-art medical technology that may be able to speed up the recovery process, but even with that, it may take some time for her to fully heal, especially since she doesn't have an active aura."
"Is that... is that so," Pearl muttered, glancing at the bandages across Mud's chest before looking up at the nurse. "Do you know when she'll wake up?"
"She received a strong concussion from an injury around the head, so I can't really say. It could be in ten minutes, or tomorrow, or next week, or... well, longer."
"I see. Thank you," Pearl said, watching the nurse exit the room before turning back towards Mud. Her mind ran back to what had happened back on the shi. The moment she had stepped out into the storm, she - no, that thing inside her - suddenly took over. She remembered everything that happened perfectly, yet... it didn't feel like her own memories. Regardless, the fact remained that it was her cannon that fired upon Mud, and her inaction that caused Mud to end up in her current state. "I'm sorry, Mud. This... this is all my fault. If I hadn't... if I had just... what's wrong with me? I... I..."
"Hey, you in there?" Pearl heard Stormy call out. Turning around, she saw Stormy kick open the door. While she was still clad in heavy armor, her helmet was missing, allowing Pearl to finally see her somewhat-aged face and short, ruffled silver hair. "Guess you are. How's Mud doing?"
"She, uh, the nurse said her vital organs weren't damaged, but she needs a lot of blood, and her muscle tissue around the chest got torn up. She said they don't know when she'll wake up..." Pearl explained. It felt somewhat surreal, explaining Mud's condition to the person who ambushed them a few nights prior.
"Huh. Guess running around without aura finally caught up with her for once," Stormy muttered. She gestured for Pearl to follow her as she made her way back to the door. "Gale and I wanna talk to you. Come on."
"Uh... okay," Pearl said, following Stormy out of Mud's room and down the hallway, out into the hospital lobby where she saw Gale waiting at a nearby table. She was apprehensive about going along with whatever the mercenaries were doing; in fact, part of her was considering raising her cannon and blasting Stormy in the back to make her getaway. However, she was in a hospital, and doing so would only risk injuring other patients. Besides, the two Gunmetal mercenaries had helped her get Mud to the hospital, and they were clearly more interested in talking than capturing her or forcing her into a fight. She was also curious as to who had hired them to capture her. Who would want her, and why? Did someone know what she was, who she was? How she had gotten in this situation in the first place?
"How's Mud?" Gale asked as Stormy and Pearl sat down at the table. Pearl repeated what she had told Stormy, and Gale nodded. "Hm. I see."
"Um, I wanted to ask... why did you two help me? And why aren't you attacking us?" Pearl asked. "You two ambushed Mud and me in Arbor and Seadale, so..."
"The client only wants to retrieve you," Gale explained, crossing his arms and looking out towards the hallway where Mud's room was. "Right now, Mud is irrelevant to that request."
"What my husband is trying to say is that the person who hired us wants us to bring you to them. That's it. We can go everything else our way, as long as we bring you to the client intact," Stormy added, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She was about to bring one of the cigarettes to her mouth before Pearl saw her eyes lock onto a "No Smoking" sign near the entrance of the lobby. With a sigh, she slipped the cigarette back into the pack before putting it and the lighter away. "Mud was protecting you, and she didn't seem too keen on giving you up, so we figured we'd rough her up a little so that we could get by her and grab you. But in her current state... well, let's say she's already roughed up enough."
"To be fair, you didn't really give us any reason to listen to you, considering how you introduced yourselves," Pearl said. "I don't believe grenades and electric crossbow bolts are too friendly as greetings."
"Well, you can blame that on Stormy," Gale muttered. "She wanted to rough it out with Mud, and by the time you two got to Seadale I assumed she'd be uncooperative due to your encounter with Stormy, and it seemed like the most efficient way to retrieve you. I hadn't counted on your sudden burst of combat ability."
"I suppose I should be thankful for that... but if Mud is irrelevant, then why didn't you just grab me out on the road?" Pearl asked. "Why go through the trouble of bringing her to the hospital instead of just leaving her there?"
"I dunno if you know how the mercenary world works, but just cause we attacked her doesn't mean we're enemies. It all depends on the jobs we take," Stormy said. "One day you'll be shooting at a guy, the next you'll be buying them a drink at the bar. As long as the job gets done, no hard feelings and all that."
"And we spent years teaching that girl our trade," Gale said. "I would rather not have our efforts wasted."
"I... I see," Pearl said. She paused for a moment to take a breath, but then remembered that she could not. "You... your client. You said that they want... they want me? Why?"
"Couldn't tell ya what she wants. All she told us was that a robot with your description was somewhere in northern Vale, around Pike's Landing, and to take it - well, you - back to her in Atlas, intact," Stormy explained. "Something to do with her work at Green Ocean."
"Wait, your client works at Green Ocean?!" Pearl exclaimed. The first thing that came to her mind was that it was her father, but she then remembered the news article she had read back in Seadale - the one that said her father had long since resigned from the company. "Who is it? What does she want?"
"You'll have to come with us if you want to know," Gale said, crossing his arms. "Our job is to bring you back to the client. If you want to come willingly in exchange for information, that would make our jobs that much easier."
"I... I think I'd like to meet this client of yours, but..." Pearl said, her words trailing off as her gaze wandered over to the hallway towards Mud's room.
"You worried about Mud? Don't worry, that kid's tough as hell, even without aura. She'll make it through," Stormy said. "Besides, there's nothing you can really do for her, unless you have some sorta newfangled med-tech in your body."
"That... that's fair," Pearl said. She looked down at the table, then up at Stormy. "Would you mind if I... if I left a message for her? For when she's awake? I don't want her to panic if she wakes up and I'm not there."
"Huh? Oh, sure," Stormy said, pulling a scroll out from her pocket. She tapped a few buttons and opened up a video recording application before handing it to Pearl. "Just lemme know when you're finished and I'll send it over to Mud's scroll. Think I still got her number somewhere in there."
"T - thank you," Pearl said, looking towards the scroll's camera. She took a breath - well, she tried to, at least.
Then, she started speaking.
Pearl stared in wonder out the window of the small transport airship as it flew over the frozen plains between Cape Calypso and Mantle. She spotted a few roads connecting the cities, as well as a train crossing the plains via rail. The sheer amount of land in her view was something she had never seen before. While she was sure the view from the edge of Atlas was similar, if not better, she had never gone to the edge to enjoy the view when she had lived in Atlas. She had only gone between her home and the Green Ocean research facility, only seeing the view from the edge in pictures on her scroll. Those did the current view no justice.
"Hey, if you don't mind me asking, how the hell did Mud end up like that?" Stormy asked, and Pearl turned away from the view towards her. "Worst I've ever seen her. Guessing a Grimm did that, but what?"
"It was... it was my fault," Pearl said, running the memory of the event back in her head yet another time and wincing as she remembered Mud bleeding onto the deck. "There was a Feilong and it... it was coming down at me and... and... and she pushed me."
"She took the hit for ya, huh? Shoulda figured. If nothing else, that kid was the master of not getting hit, if she could help it," Stormy said with a sigh. "Still, kinda surprised to hear she'd jump in front of a Feilong's claw for someone. Didn't seem like that kinda girl. Musta liked you a lot."
"I don't know... maybe she did, but now..." Pearl muttered, pausing for a moment. "It's my fault that she's injured this badly. I... I wouldn't like me if I were her. I'm the reason she..."
"She pushed you out of the way," Gale chimed in from the pilot's seat. "She knew the consequences."
"I guess so, but..."
"So, how's Mud been doing? Before you got her all messed up, I mean," Stormy asked, leaning in closer. "Wanna hear how my protege's been doing, out on her own in the world."
"Your protege? I did most of the teaching," Gale said. "If she's anyone's protege, she's mine."
"Well, uh, I first met her by Pike's Landing, down in Vale," Pearl explained, thinking back to when she had first woken up. "She was fighting a bunch of Karkinos, and then she found me washed up on the beach. Ever since then, we've been making our way up to Atlas so that I could meet my... my father."
"You have a dad?" Stormy asked. "Thought you were a robot. Were your parents a couple of AK-130s or something?"
"It's, uh... well, that's just my body. Some things happened, and now I'm... I'm this," Pearl explained, gesturing down towards her body. "Anyways, Mud has been... she's been kind to me. Kinder than I deserve. She traveled with me, protected me, taught me things like... like... like how to shoot and about the world outside Atlas, and she comforted me after - after I remembered some horrible things, and even after I was about to shoot her she - she still kept me along and then all I did to repay her was - was - was that."
"That doesn't sound like Mud," Gale muttered.
"What my husband means is that Mud usually ain't that generous. Sure, she ain't gonna play mean with everyone she meets, but she ain't really going out of her way to help people neither," Stormy said. "Though maybe a lot can change in... how many years has it been, Gale?"
"Five."
"Yeah, five years since she set out on her own," Stormy said, turning back towards Pearl. "If she's helpin' ya, there's something she's getting out of the whole thing."
"Well, she said she wanted to meet my father," Pearl said, remembering the picture Mud had shown her back at the pub in Pike's Landing. "She... she said she was tracking down her sister. And that my father was the latest lead she had."
"Huh. I guess that'll do it. Mud's still looking for that sister of hers huh?" Stormy said with a brief chuckle. "Surprised she's still going. Figured she'd either found her or lost hope by now."
"Mud, she... she told me about her sister. About what their life was like, and about the night when they got separated," Pearl said. "She... by the way she talks about her sister, I don't think she'll be losing hope in the near future."
"Really? Took me a year to get that out of her. Didn't even know she had a sister until a few months in," Stormy said. "That just means she likes you, enough to - "
"Cut the chatter. We're here," Gale interrupted, getting up from the pilot's seat and gesturing for Stormy and Pearl to follow him. Pearl looked out the window to see that the airship was approaching a docking station along the edge of Atlas. "The client should be waiting for us where we land."
"So... what will happen once we meet your client?" Pearl asked. "I'd like to ask your client some questions, but I'm not sure if..."
"You can worry about all that stuff later, alright? For now, let's just get you over there," Stormy said as the airship descended to the docking station, landing with a soft thud. With the hissing of hydraulics, the back of the airship opened up, allowing the three to exit out into the hanger bay. Further down the hanger, Pearl saw a trio of figures approaching the airship. Two were AK-130 Atlesian Knights escorting the third figure, a woman wearing an odd combination of a lab coat and what looked like a professionally-fitted suit. Her hair was gray and tied in a short ponytail, and her face looked somewhat aged; Pearl guessed she was in her upper forties. What caught Pearl's attention the most was that her right arm seemed to be completely missing, with the arm of her lab coat and suit both tailored to not have that arm at all. Her eyes first scanned over the two mercenaries before widening upon seeing Pearl, then going back to their normal size half a second later.
"Good work. I'll have the money transferred to your accounts at once," the woman said, nodding towards Stormy and Gale. "Also, be aware that I may have need of your services again in the near future. You won't happen to be traveling away soon, will you?"
"If it means another paycheck, I won't say no to a little relaxation up somewhere in Atlas while we wait for a call from you," Stormy said, gesturing towards Pearl. "By the way, I think the bucket of bolts here wants to talk to you."
"Oh? What do you mean?" the woman asked, still facing Stormy.
"Uh... hi," Pearl said, hesitantly stepping forward towards the one-armed woman. "Are you... are you their client? Or - "
"PETRA. Production override code twenty-six five o four," the woman suddenly interrupted as she turned towards Pearl. "Run self-diagnostic and report."
"What? I'm not sure what you're talking about, but I'm... I'm Pearl. Pearl Koschei," Pearl said. "Who are you? Stormy said you work at Green Ocean... is that true?"
"Hm. Strange," the woman said, pulling out her scroll and rapidly typing out some notes in it with her single hand. She mumbled to herself in a way that Pearl couldn't really hear, though she caught a few words here and there. "Override unsuccessful... possible neural restructure... some sort of overwrite..."
"Um, hello?" Pearl said, prompting the woman to look up from her scroll. "Who... who are you?"
"Very well. I'll indulge this for now," the woman muttered, putting away her scroll and clearing her throat. "You said you are... Pearl, yes? Pearl Koschei? I used to work with Ivan Koschei. I am Erika Grisele. Head Researcher of Green Ocean Bioinformatics."
A/N: And that's chapter 25! Pearl's going through some tough times, Mud's at the hospital, and it seems Pearl is just a little closer to getting back to her father, as well as unraveling the mysteries surrounding herself.
I've actually got a few chapters batched up, which is why I got this one out so quickly. If you've got anything to say, whether it's a question, comment, or feedback of any sort, please leave a review! I'd love to get to know what y'all are thinking of the story. Thanks for reading, and have a nice day!