Begin the Begin
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"Let's begin again, begin the begin.
Let's begin again like Martin Luther, Zen,
The mythology begins the begin."
….Begin the Begin by R.E.M.
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Chapter 1
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The cold metal corridor dampened her spirits as she made her way to work and she lumbered slowly, yearning to return to the comfort of her bed. The water-less shower she took a mere ten minutes earlier only served to get her clean - not vivify her body, or bring alertness or readiness for the long twenty-four hour shift ahead. Not even the steaming travel mug of reconstituted coffee adequately roused her. The young woman yawned, ignored any passers-by who noticed then she followed the complicated yet well-worn path toward the medical facility on the station. After taking four express lifts and crossing kilometers of metal and carpeted hallways, a familiar blue stripe appeared on either wall, signifying she arrived into the hospital sector. Finally, the clear glass doors of the Resembool Station medical facility loomed before her and she took a deep breath and stepped forward until the sensors activated the entryway, the doors separating with a calm whoosh.
"Another day, just get through another day." She uttered.
Winry Rockbell couldn't sleep much anymore. Her nights consisted of dreams with strange heroes and even stranger villains. She saw faces she knew yet she'd never seen before in her life. When she awoke, this complete feeling of loss and grief overwhelmed her almost to the point of tears. Thinking it all stemmed from her being stuck on this backwoods station and not exploring the Sol-system like her classmates, she decided to put in for a transfer to one of the distant outposts that orbited Saturn...if only she could tell her mom first.
"Good morning, Winry." A woman clad head to toe in blue smiled but walked with urgency past the young woman, not giving her an opportunity to engage in further conversation.
"...'morning" Winry tried to respond, but let her voice trailed off when the woman failed to stop. She made her way over to the morning roster of patients, taking her time to scrutinize the holographic display for her name.
ROCKBELL: Bay 4 Trauma w Prostheses
ROCKBELL: Bay 5 Trauma P85
"Great." She rolled her eyes. "Damned cyborg." She decided to take bay five and tackle the P85 first, Possible CyBorg. "Hope, they have him tethered." Winry found her station desk and opened a drawer to retrieve an elastic hair tie then pulled her long blond hair back in a ponytail. Next she donned a surgical apron over her blue uniform. After grabbing her display tablet, she hurried to bay five.
Desperate screams assaulted her ears before the automatic doors opened to the trauma bays.
"Alphonse!"
Winry hurried to the source of the howls and found herself at the entrance to bay four, she only hesitated for a second before activating the floor sensor and opening the door.
"God damn you all! Let me see him!" A golden-haired young man cursed.
"Thank goodness, Dr. Rockbell!" One of the two orderlies attempting to restrain the shouting man looked to the woman with hope. "We need a sedative! He's combative!" The large man narrowly missed being punched by the patient's left fist – his only fist as his right arm was clearly absent.
"Just...just keep him busy and I'll get the medication!" She dodged the burly men, dropping her tablet as they struggled to keep the patient on the exam bed and also prevent him from seriously hurting them in the process. Winry made her way to the pharmaceutical replicator, entered her security code, programmed it for the correct dose and type of sedative, then waited the two seconds for the machine to construct it. A black panel slid open to reveal a small blue vial of liquid, which she slammed into an injector gun with snap. "Alright, big guy!" She lunged toward the fray, trying to find a square of his exposed skin and deliver the fast acting drug.
Smack!
"Doctor! You OK?" Orderly number two turned to assist but couldn't remove his hands from the patient.
"Yeah." She tenderly rubbed her cheek, knowing he'd hit her hard enough to cause a bruise. "Just hold him steady...here it comes!" She lunged forward and found her mark on the patient's left shoulder and the injection gun let out a hiss as the powerful sedative hit the young man's blood stream. His constant slew of curse words quieted down and stopped as did his struggling with the battered orderlies.
"Bitch! Just gimme my brother..." The golden-haired youth stammered and finally fell back on the raised examination bed. The men, each on either side of the cot, held him by his shoulders. His words slurred and he fidgeted, trying in vain to move. "...just...just tell me...please." His final struggle would be to keep his eyes open.
"I think we can lower him, now." Winry set the gun on a side table and scooped her medical tablet from the floor. She scrutinized the slight form on the bed as one of the men pressed a button and the cot reclined until the patient was horizontal.
"We don't get paid enough for this crap." One man mumbled as he inserted the boy's sole wrist into a restraint while the other man did the same with his ankles.
"Hey, this jerk has a fake leg too!"
"Two missing limbs?" Winry raised an eyebrow from her tablet's holographic image – a real time scan of the young man's body. She looked down to see that the visual assessment was correct. He lacked both a right arm and a left leg, although a now-mangled but high quality automail prosthetic left leg was now attached. She tapped the two dimensional image and a three dimensional rendering of the young man's leg materialized over the hand held screen revealing a very nasty looking transfemoral amputation.
"We've got him secured." The man thumbed over his shoulder to the now silent and formerly hostile youth, currently strapped down and covered with a thin blanket. "He's strong for such a little guy."
"Fucker..." The patient on the cot spat, his hearing quite competent even if his body was immobilized.
"Don't get too close, Doc." The second muttered as he walked past. "The other guy that came with him is in bay five...odds are he's an eighty-fiver too, so watch yourself."
"Another?" She groaned. "Did they get him restrained?" She cursed under her breath. Five cyborgs in as many days and she needed a break. Suddenly, the horrific memory of the last one, the last artificial human's howl's as the station guard's weapons evaporated him played in her mind. She shook her head slightly as if it could rattle the unsettling sound from her head.
"Yeah...he wasn't as mean as that little shit." With that, the two men tripped the automatic door and exited with a whoosh as it closed behind.
"...not little." The immobile man groaned.
"Great." Winry took in a deep breath and came closer to the young man. "Mr. Hostile, you have some broken ribs..." She touched certain parts of the hologram emanating from her tablet and with her index finger and thumb manipulated the image of the patient's insides until she found all his injuries. "A slight concussion...and a smashed pinky toe." She smiled.
"Kicked one of 'em." He growled.
"Will you tell me who you are? What happened to you?" She tapped the screen and the hologram vanished allowing her to come to the head of the bed and peer down. He opened his eyes with a snap to reveal bright gold irises...such a color she had only seen one other time in a human. "I just want to help you...if you cooperate, we'll get you and your friend next door in the same recovery room..." Winry knew if the "friend" in the other bay were truly eighty-five percent or more machine that this was a lie. By Sol-System law, cyborgs were an abomination and were destroyed when apprehended.
The corners of his mouth curled and for a second he thought of a horrible euphemism for lady parts to yell at her. However, his amber eyes locked onto the doctor's soft face as strands of yellow corn silk-colored hair from her ponytail tumbled over her right shoulder and he just couldn't curse. Instead, he focused on the brewing red mark on the young woman's right cheek and remembered hitting her. Her cerulean eyes searched and she waited for him to answer. Somehow, deep within, he knew she would help him, she could get him back to Al, and they could continue their search. For a minute, he regretting striking her. Although she looked a bit older than him, he thought she was kind of cute.
"Well?" The young doctor stood straight back and crossed her arms.
"Ed...just call me Ed."
"Good, at least that's a start..." Winry moved toward the wall behind the bed to a sleek black panel of controls, her fingers typing swiftly and lights responding to the heat from her body which put the healing mechanisms of the medical robots into motion. "Just relax and we'll get your wounds healed up and I'll take you over to see him...but your arm..." She searched the room, knowing that when the emergency responders arrived on site to space wrecks, collisions and other accidents, they were required to bring in any body parts be they metal or biologic. "Ah, here." She picked up a pale blue sack from the second bed in the room and emptied its contents. A twisted metal arm fell to the mattress in three pieces. "...appears to be broken."
"Fuck." The quiet expletive sounded from his lips before he could stop it.
"Don't fret, we'll get you working again...just means you may have to hang around on Resembool Station longer than I think you want." She thought to herself, "Like I am." Winry failed to mention that she also acted as secondary automail engineer in the robotics lab. Somehow, she just really didn't want to be the one fitting this dangerous man with an even more dangerous steel arm. She rubbed her sore cheek. "Stay still so they can repair the damaged areas. It may feel strange when the bones knit back." The young woman moved toward the doorway but a quiet sound made her turn.
"Hey..." He knew he'd been an asshole, but Ed didn't want to be here. He could have gotten his ship to the repair station and found his own mechanic to fix his arm...then he could fix Alphonse. If only he hadn't passed out and caused the crash. "Don't let them...don't let them take him...Al's no freak...he's, he's my brother."
She turned without answering and stepped forward as the doors opened then snapped closed behind her. Winry exhaled, knowing that there was just nothing she could do. If the medical scanners registered fifteen percent or less biological matter, the patient in bay 5 would be destroyed. That was the law.
"I'm not a cyborg." Alphonse lay on his own medical bed in bay five. If he had a stomach, he's sure it would be churning with worry...he may even have vomited if he still ate. His one golden-colored eye tracked the medics flittering around the small emergency room cell as they tried to ascertain just what he was. "You can search but there is no human in me." Anymore. Al could easily pull the fabric restraints from their attachments and burst into the room across the hallway, the room where he knew his brother screamed. Yet, he also understood that any violence on his part could only frighten the hospital staff more than they already were. No, he had to stay calm and know that Ed was in good hands – they wouldn't let him die and despite his own scanning systems and perfunctory medical knowledge, there was nothing he could do for his brother. His lone left eye scanned the right side of his body. He had protected Ed from the explosion at the cost of the whole right part of his frame.
"Ok, people..." Winry stormed into the room, her blue eyes scanning the staff and equipment at hand until they fell upon the half-man tied down to the bed. "Holy shit."
