Flashback
Shit. Shit. Shitshitshitshitshit.
Fuck.
You drop the heavy gun out of your hands and on to the wet cement floor.
"Taylor!"
You drop to a dead run towards the figure lying on the ground.
She seems so far away.
While you are running, a thought appears in your mind: Be cautious, Taylor said, don't turn your back on the enemy.
You are halfway through the docking platform used for big cargo ships when you decide to turn your head to the target's last known location to assess the situation.
There's a lot of blood.
So much so that it makes you stumble and stop for a very short moment.
Your body had registered what you had done but it seems your mind hadn't kept up.
Suddenly, from the water a scaly shiny torso breaks the surface causing the water to ripple.
More ripples show up.
Note to self: don't skinny dip in the Bay.
No, correction: don't go swimming in the Bay, dumbass!
What remained of Mush had already floated up to the surface, his own torso floating in one direction and his lower body floating in the opposite. The gore of his intestines spreading through the salt water for all the world to see.
The pieces trembled, being pecked apart by the fish of the Bay in a surprising and worrisome display.
The fish of the Bay might be a bit too accustomed to dead bodies being dropped in its frigid waters.
Forget that! You have more urgent business, you fucking idiot!
"Taylor!"
Your brain catches up to your bodies actions and you begin to sprint again.
You probably only stopped for a few short seconds, in your shock it probably looked like it took more. But even those few short seconds were precious if your suspicious were true.
Taylor, in her costumed suit, was lying belly down on the wet floor.
You don't see her moving.
Somehow you start running faster.
"Taylor!"
You finally reach her.
She is still, the floor is wet from the rain, wet from the salty sea and wet from a red sticky substance that is quickly spreading.
"Shit, fuck, shitty fuckity fuck."
You crouch quickly, dropping on your knees you start praying, wishing in your mind that what was happening was just a bad dream.
You turn Taylor onto her back.
You drop your face right on her nose.
Is she breathing?
…
Oh, thank fuck!
Your eyes finally move down from her face.
You wish you hadn't.
Her entire right flank is fucked. The suit there is gone, some of the edges are burned away, letting you see the damage. The skin of the upper half of her flank is gone, not gone as in burned or scratched or straight up cut, no it was simply gone as in it looks like it was peeled off, skinned like a hunted animal, leaving the muscle beneath exposed to the open air. The lower half was even worse, her guts were showing through three small holes in her body while the rest looked mangled and mushed.
You are pretty sure you are seeing her liver.
Shit! How was she coming back from this?
This wasn't just some fingers that she could lose and say that it wasn't a big deal and then replace them like nothing happened!
"Ai…sha."
What?
You open your eyes you hadn't realized you had shut closed.
She is looking at you.
One of her eyes is unfocused and the other seems like its looking straight at you.
"Taylor!"
"Po…ck…"
"What?"
"ket…"
Ah! Damn!
From the inner coat pocket of her other side you take out a phone.
Your mind halts before you press a number.
Either you could call Jack… or call the Hospital.
See, if they have Panacea.
"Kit…"
You are broken from your contemplation
You know what to do for now and you immediately go for the pockets in the kit she gave you early in the day, that is strapped to your waste.
Just in case, she said.
You take out a vial.
Three, each one is connected to the other by a chain.
One it's purple, of a deep tone you have never seen before, the liquid so thick it looked like goop. The other is very small and its green, a very deep green, but so thin in aspect compared to the normal vials you just used to power your gun. The final bigger one is empty.
You hear a sound.
A grunt of pain.
But not from Taylor.
Your eyes move to the body a few feet from Taylor.
Skidmark's body is down on the ground looking up at the sky.
"Ai…sha."
Shit, you shouldn't get distracted.
"Mix…gi… it."
Mix it? Ah, fuck! What are you doing? She told you all this before!
But before it was just theoretical!
"Ok. Taylor, don't worry you will be okay."
You uncork the green one and put in the big empty vial and then uncork the other and do the same. They turn a sickly blue before deepening in tone, but midway through it starts bubbling and the glass heats up. You can feel it through your fingers.
When it stops boiling it's a deep blue so dark it's almost black, but it seems to shine with light of its own.
"Gi… it."
"Ok."
You put the vial filled with the new chemical abomination of a liquid next to her lips.
She weakly opens her mouth.
You drop the entire content inside it.
She tries to swallow but fails so you move one hand to her throat and make her swallow it.
Your hand is taking out another vial inside kit. You fumble a bit with the amount of cotton put in there so the glasses wouldn't break.
This vial is a more traditional purple colour that you have come to associate with Taylor's inventions, but inside there is a large amount of crystals.
Your hand moves to meet the other and you click the vial and a needle together.
Taylor should start to convulse any second now.
…
Taylor's sole focused eye rolls into her head.
You move before you can think about it.
The needle goes straight into her heart and with a push you inject all the contents inside the vial. The small crystals break and crack audibly in protest, but you keep pushing.
By the time there is no liquid or crystals on the vial anymore, you take the needle out.
Taylor shakes immensely on the ground.
Her mouth opens in an empty scream.
1 Mississippi
2 Mississippi
3 Missis-
"AAAAAAaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh"
There it is.
You can't do anything about that, so you let your more basic instincts take hold and let a few tears flow but not before looking to the closest possible source of danger.
Skidmark is on his belly, for whatever reason he can't seem to get up and you can hear curses that would make your father blush being muttered in between sounds of pain.
You pick up the discarded phone and dial the number on speed dial.
"Talk to me" it barely rang before Jack picked it up on his end.
"Shit's fucked. Come get us now!"
"Where are you?" He can probably hear Taylor's cries of pain, because he immediately sounds hurried and worried.
"I… don't fucking know!" The night went from them suffering an ambush to a running battle from the end of the Docks to the Boat Graveyard with the Merchant capes running away. Squealer's corpse might be still where the fight went from a brawl to a retreat.
"Are you in the Docks?"
"No, Graveyeard."
"Give me the name of the ship that it's closest to you, then."
You look around.
"The Maribelle."
"I'll be there in 5."
"Come quick, please."
You look back at Taylor.
She stopped screaming and she is breathing hard.
Her side previously wounded beyond belief is now pinkish, the colour of new skin. The holes in her body are still there, but smaller and the rest of the wound no longer looks like she was hit by a… honestly, you have nothing to compare it to.
Before either of you can say anything, there is the sound of a grunt next to the both of you.
Skidmark is there.
He somehow crawled all the way to only a few short feet of you.
He is still on his belly, and he looks furious in his grief.
"Fukin bitch, what you lookin at? Stay there cause I'll fucking kill you fucking rug munching toe licking daughter of a three legged whore!"
He slams his hand to the ground, the blue of his acceleration field quickly expanding in a line towards a few rocks and gravel that his other hand threw but before they could connect-
CRACK-BANG
-you hear the sound of a hand cannon right next to you.
A sudden spurt of blood comes out of Skidmark's collarbone, right on the end of his neck, and he visibly recoils with the force of the hit.
He immediately drops dead.
Taylor sighs heavily and tiredly.
Her hand drops the gun.
"Shit." You say, with neither the energy nor the will to say anything else.
Silence.
You are still holding on to Taylor so you feel her readjust in your arms.
"I…" Taylor says, softly. One of her eyes is still somewhat unfocused.
You look at her.
She looks at you.
"I.. we… we did it."
The both of you look at each other.
"You are very hurt." You simply say. "What in the world happened?"
"His.. fields… kinda re… bounded my… shot."
You sigh.
"Is there anything else I can do?"
"My lab."
"What?" You are feeling like you are going to say this a lot. Your mind seems to be in a need of a vacation because this whole half-hour was something from hell and tired you out like nothing else.
"Wounds… lab."
You look back at her wounds in her flank. Yep. Still three holes, but while they had stopped bleeding right after the injection, that was no longer the case. They were bleeding again just as bad as before.
Ah, shit.
"Hold on. I have to maintain pressure on the wound."
Now which wound?
The one that bleeds more, dumbass!
You put your hand on the uttermost right, the one you thought you had seen her liver from and put pressure there.
After a minute of silence with Taylor's breathing getting weaker and you panicking, trying to keep her awake, there is the sound of the motor of a van coming towards you.
The van stops right next to you.
Jack and a couple of other guys get out from it.
"Boss, what do you need?" He drops to one knee, ignoring the pool of blood.
"Take… me… lab."
"Will do, boss."
"Corpse…"
"What was that, boss?" Jack is already giving out orders to the others. From the car a stretcher is taken out and put close to you.
"Squealer… Skids… Mush… bring."
"You heard her! The two of you get Skidmark! Little boss, where's Mush and Squealer?"
"Squealer is still on the docks next to that warehouse we burn the experiments in. Mush…" You point to the Bay. His torso is still floating but his legs have disappeared, and you can't see the fate of his head from here.
"Ah, shite. We get him last. One of our boys will come back to get it." He turns around giving other orders
Taylor is already on the stretcher and being moved inside the van. You climb on to the vehicle.
With everyone inside, including Skidmark's cooling corpse, Jack puts the peddle to the metal.
Four minutes later the entire back side of the car is almost drenched in blood, both Taylor's and Skidmark's.
But you finally arrived to the warehouse.
"Use the cargo elevator, I don't care about the noise we need to be quick." Says Jack.
A downwards ride later you arrive at the bottom level.
"How are you still alive?" Martin, the caretaker of the vats down here, sounds incredulous as he looks at the boss.
"Shimmer." Taylor spits out.
"Ah, makes sense."
Martin opens the door to her office and your whole group move to prepare the lab.
"Ok, what do we need?" Martin asks Jack. After a short list is spat out by the boss, the two of them start gathering chirurgical material while you go open up a few drawers and closets getting the amount of Shimmer required for this.
You organize the vials the same way you did before.
Martin, who had been a male nurse at Ander's Memorial Hospital before being fired for his skin colour, gathered everything in a metal table. At the time he had been trying to study to become a doctor, but fate had other plans, so you trust that he will his job well. Jack, who has no experience beyond first aid, focuses on keeping the boss awake.
The bullet that her hand cannon shot had fractured into pieces either when they hit Skidmark's field or right after. The biggest three passed clean through, creating the holes, but the rest left behind loose shrapnel on the rest of her body.
The brand new mechanical fingers were also ruined and will need replacing.
What follows are three agonizing hours of opening the boss, cleaning her wounds and regrowing several organs with the help of the chemical mixtures.
You are correct in assuming her scream will haunt you for the rest of your life.
She cries purple liquid and begs for her mom and dad.
She thrashes so hard she starts bleeding from the back of her head and she needs to be restrained with two belts from the men and four handcuffs you had to get from a random drawer and a call for your goons.
In a single moment of clarity, she tries to tell you something, her eyes focused on you.
But then Martin pushes something inside her stomach, and she screams again.
The horrible truth is that anaesthesia would disrupt the chemical process the Shimmer is doing to her body.
Pure Shimmer formula allows the body to relax its rules on the mutation of its cells, paired with certain other chemicals several outcomes can be created. The commercial formula functions as a halogenic drug but the few the Boss has made on the side have other purposes.
The one currently being forcefully injected into her spinal cord would allow for a mutation to occur in her cells that would give the Boss, theoretically, apex human condition and regeneration.
Three hours of this.
After three hours of bloody work, you finally approach Taylor's still conscious body.
Her voice is thoroughly ruined from the continued screaming and the places where she was restricted in movement were visibly red. Her eyes are closed and was still crying purple. The massive sobs and sniffles were hard to hear.
Her naked torso was bloody but of the holes nothing remained but scars, and even that might fade with time and other applications of Shimmer.
You run your hands through her gorgeous hair, trying to soothe her.
"Hey, sweetie. It's okay. It's over. I am sorry. I am so sorry. I shouldn't have gotten distracted with Mush. I-"
"Its… ok." Her voice comes out deeply scarred.
Her eyes open.
"I am alive. You are alive. That's all that matters." She said in between coughs.
Her eyes are deep glowing purple.
"You are all that matters."
