Chapter Ten
Much, much later, Devin would successfully argue his case to a panel of fidgety, uncomfortable Rescue Aid Society bigwigs—their emergency medical personnel would never again drop into uncertain, dangerous situations without being prepared to handle the ugly realities of rape. They would have the training, the supplies—
Under current conditions, in a halfway burned-out, isolated Ranger outpost with precious little diagnostic equipment, there were only a few crude, outdated checks and tests Devin could call on. They were only enough to confirm that Gadget had indeed been through a terrible ordeal, yielding little else that would be helpful to investigators. Devin put his best doctor face on and did what he had to; Gadget bore up bravely under his examinations, still having trouble admitting to herself that the damage had been done. Doctor and patient realized the clinical fact, but the consequences were slowly and painfully creeping up on both of them.
"I want to tell," Gadget rasped in a voice hoarse from crying. "We have to get in touch with Rescue Aid before these—" Gadget trailed off, at a loss for words that Devin understood perfectly.
"—monsters, Gadget," Devin growled matter-of-factly, packing away medical tools he prayed he'd never have to use for such horrible, heartbreaking work again. "Only monsters could have done this to you—" Devin spat the words out in his helpless rage, but Gadget's forceful tone shut him up.
"—to my home," Gadget burst out. "To my friends. For God's sake, with those murderers out there, we can't waste a second. We have to talk to Bernard and Bianca, get the word out before this happens to anyone else!"
Devin winced and began to speak, but held his tongue. There were more, deadly things he held secret and wished against, things he could not bring himself to speak of yet. Even in her exhausted, shellshocked state, Gadget picked up on something dark in Devin's silence. "What is it? You look like you want to say something..." Gadget pinned him with a steely glare, her no-nonsense, analytical side glinting through her grief for a moment.
Devin was caught. "Please don't make me go into it right now, Gadge. It's—something you need to know, and Rescue Aid, but I don't want to say it more than once."
"It's something really bad?" Gadget narrowed her eyes at him.
Devin felt the slick bottle of knockout pills in the pocket of his lab coat, wanting to smash them under his shoe, scatter the dust to the corners of the earth...oh, how he feared the second awful truth lurking there, one that could throw so many lives into doubt and shame. He prayed he was wrong, but his eyes had not failed him. "The word 'bad' doesn't begin to cover this, Gadget. It terrifies me, almost as much as the way you were—attacked."
Gadget saw the fear crawling under Devin's fur, threatening to turn him inside out. Better let this go for now, instinct cautioned her. "Okay. Save it for the report if you have to. Let's get to work." She felt a hint of her old resolve kicking in, along with that cold feeling she always hated. Why do I turn into this when the worst happens? she pleaded silently. It was probably what had kept her alive for so long, she reasoned, but that didn't feel like a very good answer just then.
Gadget insisted that a visual link with RAS headquarters was an absolute necessity. Devin sadly agreed. If anything was going to make the paper-pushers in New York get off their tails and start the investigation seriously, and soon, it would be actual images of the destruction all around herself and Devin, Gadget said. Devin suspected the hollow look in Gadget's eyes—the look she tried so hard to cover up, and that made him so heartsick—would be another image they'd have a hard time forgetting. He also feared that once he'd spoken his piece, the RAS would stay away from this crime scene as surely as if it were infected with the plague. He knew they wouldn't risk letting even one more investigator in on the situation. Devin told Gadget a video link would be the best way to report his findings, too, but refused to discuss the subject further.
The smashed vid-unit had been state-of-the-art, one of Gadget's pet projects. Chip, Dale, and the others had always made it a running joke—Monterey Jack suggesting she plug in a few virtual reality headsets while she was at it, Dale lobbying all the time for smell capability... She'd always laughed off the smell adapter idea, but had tackled the VR with a vengeance, getting it halfway working before—
Gadget hissed through her teeth. Before, before. "Get with the program, Hackwrench," she grimly berated herself, and kept sorting through the ruins of the electronics for one more twist of wire, one more circuit board to start with. Devin for once stepped back and twiddled his paws—technical (and especially electronic) work was not one of his strong points. He admired Gadget's determination, but was worried—resourceful and strong as she was, most people who had been just been through her sort of experience would be in heavy-duty counseling, not assembling a two-way video communications system. Devin had gently hinted that Gadget might want to take a rest and get back to work the next day, but her brief irritated growl was all the answer he needed. She apologized for being so single-minded, then went back to soldering for another hour, mouthing surprising but appropriate curses under her breath all the while.
Artwork by Keith Elder
Devin shook his head in wonder. It was uncanny how much she was getting done with half-broken, shorted-out materials and equipment—"She's building tools to make tools," he muttered, scratching his addled head and trying to keep his eyes focused on her flying paws as she assembled components dragged from her careful piles. Every now and then she'd have a heavy piece of junk for him to help lift, and he gladly stepped in. He felt a lot of conflict about that: for all his years of medical training, learning how to fix muscles, bones, and tendons—anything fixable that could go wrong with a creature—when it came to technology, he was a beast of burden. A puller and lifter. Crazily, it was comforting—he didn't have to use his brain while he was doing the physical work, and his brain had been overtaxed and shocked too much that day. Gadget was worse off, Devin knew—it's a hard thing to tell anyone, let alone your role model, that she's been hurt in ways you can't begin to imagine.
Button images by Keith Elder