Title: We Live in Deeds
Author: strangelittleswirl
Fandom: Repo! the Genetic Opera
Pairing: Graverobber/Shilo (eventually)
Rating: M
Word Count: 6,722
Summary: 'Her name was Shilo Wallace once.' The aftermath of Opera, and the beginning of a new chapter in the city's history.
Warning: Language, violence, and inferences to mature themes.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. I'm merely playing in the genius world created by DLB, DS, and TZ . I do not have any claims to the poetry used either.
Sparring with Fred was a bit like ripping off a bandage; you were going to have to do it eventually, and it was going to be painful, so you might as well grit your teeth and get it over with.
Ana was very good friends with the workout mats in the old gym. She was a close confidant of those found in the dockside warehouse. But hell, she was all but a fuck buddy of those found in their basement. Want to know what they smell like? Rubber and sweat-male sweat. What they feel like? Absolute shit. And for so many reasons.
Thus far, she had not greeted them yet in the sparring session. With her tongue, she toyed around with the slick smoothness of the mouth guard, still finding it a novelty. Fred had explained that now that she knew what it felt like to loose a tooth or two out in the real world, she might as well keep the rest when she was sparring. Three years ago he had knocked the first of her baby teeth out about five minutes into their first session together.
"Stop fucking with that mouth guard," he snapped from the other corner of the mat. "You let it distract you enough, and you'll still end up losing teeth." Even under the single bare lightbulb that illuminated the area, he had seen it. Old man had good eye sight.
Twenty five minutes later, and she still had not kissed the mat. This fact delighted the girl, who was weaving and darting as she usually did, her brunette ponytail a flag behind her that would mimic the movement of her body after a second's delay. She was still getting used to the feel of the ponytail hitting her neck, and as always she was thankful for the lack of an itchy wig. Between the ponytail and the mouth guard-
'Alas, Madame, for stealing of a kiss'.The punch seemed to come out of nowhere, and then she was falling, trying to brace herself, but when her face was smashed against it her lips still touched the mat anyway. Only her hands spread wide upon the surface of the mat allowed her to distribute her weight enough to keep from breaking her nose. Not that broken bones would be brand-new.
"For a tiny little thing you go down like a sack of bricks" said a voice over her. Ana pushed off the mat and fixed him with a weary glare. He had been using that line since they had first met, back at that horrible school.
But now she knew about his bum knee, and used this to her advantage, whipping out with a leg and kicking just so behind the weak limb. There was a loud thud as he landed next to her. Even through a grunt of pain, he was laughing, the crazy fuck. Ana helped him back up and then assisted with rolling up the mats, the pair working in silence. Space was precious, so the area would be used as a classroom, a meeting room, and a bedroom before the day was done.
The house was large; it had been quite impressive at some point, Ana surmised. But now it had some sort of perpetual layer of patina that all the scrubbing in the world would not remove. There were times when she imagined that the house had once tried very hard to be attractive, but had failed miserably at it and had sunk into despair, allowing its roof to sag and the stairs inside to bow like shoulders.
It had been almost a year since a handful of them had smuggled themselves back into the city. Fred had been in contact with people still in the city, just starting to set the beginnings of the Resistance up. Over the years there had been small groups here and there trying to rebel against Geneco and the city's strict ordinances, but it wasn't until Fred, the former Repo Man himself, that they had any sort of leadership. Fred had been the head of the Repo Training department, before he had cut and run. Like the rest of the group, she owed the man everything.
"So you'll be coming with us on the supply run tonight?" he asked, knowing the answer already. Ana nodded and took a sip from her water bottle.
"Of course, sir." Short and to the point, that's how he liked her answers. For the most part, she found herself generally being silent around him. There was no need for questioning him-like Mischa, she was meant to predominantly shadow the older man, and to assist him. One of these days Frederick would announce who would take over for him, and it was going to get awkward between Misch and Ana. Or maybe he was just biding his time, knowing that there was a real possibility that only one of the two youths would outlive him. But to her, Fred had a face that seemed to have been carved from rock; he was very much immortal to Ana. The idea of his death was something that did not seem fathomable.
But Mischa was gunning for the leadership position, and the role was not one that Ana really wanted. The two of them were handpicked, selected for reasons only known to Fred, and their opinion had never really been asked.
She climbed the steep steps to the first floor of the home, only to find Mischa and a few of his friends pawing through the cupboards of the kitchen. She rolled her eyes and snorted, causing the bulky, dark-complected young man to turn around.
"Where is the food, Ana?"
"Your stomach," she replied, tartly. "Fred asked Medi to pick up some on the way back after her shift, but you could always go out and be helpful for once." Fred's potential successors got along rather well, except for the part where they were tearing at each other's throat on a constant basis. Mischa was perpetually vying for the position, and Ana loved to piss him off.
"Can't," said one of boys in the back who was clutching at a cereal box, the one Ana could never remember the name for. His ears stuck out, and he chewed a bit more before continuing. "Mischa overheard Fred say there was a raid tonight."
"I knew already, actually," she said breezily and continued out of the room. "Sorry, Misch-Misch."
"Don't even think about responding, Mischa," growled their mentor from the doorway, waving a gnarled finger in the youth's direction. "Ana's in a bitchy mood and I can't afford to have either one of you breaking bones during your next sparring set together. Ana, stop simpering and go prep for tonight."
Now where was the fun in that?
She continued on her way back to the guns, the knives, and the scalpel that would find their ways into pockets and holsters upon her clothes for the night. Without anything else to do for the time being, she decided to take apart her handgun and clean the parts.
This had to be, by far, the worst part of town that the Graverobber had ever stepped foot in, which was really saying something. Sure he could take care of himself, but the man was not stupid, he knew where not to go.
"Password?" asked a voice that had to sound younger than it really was. Cracking and thin like that? There was no fucking way that the businessman's connection was-
"Illegitimis nil carborundum." The man butchered the phrase, but oh well.
Well shit, it was a teenager. A freckled, red-haired, and gaunt boy with a bleary nose popped his head through the crack of the open door, swept the area with a quick glace, and looked nervously behind the businessman at Graverobber.
"He's with me, he's cool." The word did not sound right coming from his customer, but he brushed aside as they were ushered in. From somewhere in the backroom of the dingy one-story building, Graverobber could hear the buzz he remembered from old tattoo shops. These days people simply purchased a skin graph with the image already on it.
"Um, I'm Brian, by the way," said the youth, who then turned and showed them into a small side room. It was a dark room, with curtains blocking out the light. There were unwashed plates about the place and a lingering mildew smell. It looked a bit like the thief's place.
Brian seated himself at a computer and swiped his hand over the touch pad, causing the moaning woman with globe-like breasts jiggling while in the throws of pleasure to fade off of the screen. The kid cleared his throat with embarrassment.
"Guys must have been-I mean, that's pretty unrealistic...from what I've heard," he muttered, tapping desperately at the touch pad. Finally, the screen cleared and he folded his hands on the desk facing the two men in a sort of business-like manner. "So how can I help you gentlemen?"
"Remember that favor?" asked Graverobber's client. "Been supplying you for a while, and well, I mean, I should have called the Repo Men on your ass, and I didn't-"
"And my uh, my ass and I have thanked you very much for that," interjected the kid.
"-Well I was hoping I could call on that favor now. Could you set my friend here up?"
Brian looked over at the Zydrate peddler. "You don't have one yet, man?"
"Schedule's been too full," he responded, tersely. "How long is this going to take?" While he'd noticed a lot of thug-like men assembled around the house during their quick walk-through, he didn't like being in the place.
The kid pushed his chair back, and swivelled to face the computer. "Like twenty minutes once I enter the code, no problem. I just need your name so I can link this up in their database."
He said he'd rather enter it himself. The kid eyeballed him curiously for a second, but when he realized that the newcomer was not backing down, he threw his hands up in a defensive manner. "Sure, man. That's fine."
The red-haired boy bobbed and wove his way into Geneco's system with surprising efficiency. Soon enough, a new window had popped up, allowing the boy to generate a new bar code.
"Got a preference for location?"
"Chest." It would be easy to access for a scan. And the quicker that happened, the higher his chance was of getting out of a Repo Man scan alive.
"Congrats, Graverobber, you have a new heart-like new new. The ones they just revealed a month ago. Now just gotta skip over to this section and pop all the info in. Alright," he pushed his chair away from the desk and tilted the screen so that Graverobber, who had crossed to the other side of the desk, could securely enter his information. He'd tried to keep this sort of information to himself; for that past almost thirty years it had been working.
"That goes into the system and even I can't go back in and find it. Now just take this number to the back, ask Seamus to hook you up, and you should be good, man."
A short while later, chest slightly throbbing from the newly acquired tattoo, Graverobber snuck out a back entrance and started his journey back to his own territory.
"On the raid tonight?" queried Pierre looking up from his conversation with Medi as Ana came down the stairs, zipping her jumpsuit up. She nodded and took a slice of toast from the older woman, who fixed her with a frown.
"Not right for a girl your age," she said with distaste. Her husband gave his wife a long-suffering glance, which she obviously caught.
"We all are, Medi, baby." Pierre pointed to the words painted over the kitchen table, painted up there in Fred's loping cursive-'Lucter et emergo'-before continuing. "Now Ana ain't your baby and she probably don't want to be. You smother that kid Brian enough." Ana considered taking her plate of food out of the room; the couple were touching on deeper subjects, and she did not need to be present for it.
It was times like this that left Ana wondering how the sensitive medic and the obtuse gunsmith had remained married for so long. A look of hurt flashed through Medi's eyes, and Ana immediately thought of Hemingway and baby shoes, and then the memory of greasy-slick blood and shrill panic. That had been the only time she had ever seen Medi seem powerless. 'I always lose them', she had whispered after they had cleaned the room and gotten rid of the girl's and the baby's bodies. 'Mine and everyone else's.'
Ana slipped out of the room. Fred was her mentor, yes, but Medi and Pierre were pretty close to parents, somewhat. They fought as loudly as they fucked, and the middle-aged couple adored one another. They were like gears of a clock, working separately at their own functions, but joining together to create a whole. Magnets that could be separated for periods of time, but always finding their way back together. And they both looked out for Ana with fierce affection.
She finished eating on the basement stairs, watching the class now being taught in the same area she had been training in earlier. The Resistance members' few children were being instructed by the former educators, given fairly thorough lessons.
Soon enough she had to return her dirty plate to the kitchen, finding it now abandoned. A quick look at her wrist watch informed her she still had a short amount of time before the kitchen meet-up. She returned to her poetry book.
The beaten up book was all that tied her to her old life, that and the paper she had found tucked into the back-a signed, legal copy of Rotti Largo's will. She didn't think he'd meant to give it to her; he'd probably tucked it in there without thinking, since it seemed a place that wouldn't be bothered. While Rotti had said there would be stipulations, he had already signed over Geneco. It was hers.
When she had been younger, reluctantly scrubbing a bathroom, or climbing a cliff face (before she had realized how fantastic the activity could be), or picking herself up off the mat for the hundredth time, she had fantasized about a different life. Where she sat behind that Largo desk and had run that company. She had made the Largos pay for all her pain and hurt. The vengeance had taken on different forms at different times.
But she now realized she had to bide her time. Amber no longer went out in public without guards, and since the woman had taken over Geneco, Amber was now her adversary in that regard. With her own slew of legal assistants at her beck and call, Amber could justify her command and Ana's consequential murder with very little effort.
In time, she'd face that woman. For now, her greatest strength was her apparent death. Anastasia had risen from the ashes of Shilo Wallace, and for now Ana waited for the Resistance to grow in strength and number. Shilo Wallace would reappear, as if by magic, at just the right moment.
She flipped open the ratty textbook and started to read. I know him, that man/ walking- toward me up the crowded street...
Once upon a time, two young men had a genius idea, a way to save those who were dying around them. Their small, upstart cloning business-it was mostly old women who wanted cats and dogs cloned-could be the location of a great change in their dying society.
Rotti had the business brains, and his friend Malcolm had a great grasp of the scientific parts of it. Together they set the plans in motion to make Geneco a household name. Malcolm would work in the labs and out of the spotlight, and Rotti would create the image. The money slowly started to pour in, and success was theirs.
For a time.
Rotti thirsted, needed for many things-sex, money, power, blood. He started to press for repossession legislation as Malcolm begged him to reconsider.
"We've got the money, we don't need to go that far," he said, looking up from his work with a young surgeon, Nathan Wallace. "Can we discuss this later?"
They never did, because the poison that Rotti had been slipping into Malcolm's coffee had finally kicked in, and he was quickly bedridden, forced to retire. Legislation passed quickly after that.
Rotti still thirsted. If anything, knowing how blissfully simple it had been to get rid of his partner made Largo want to do more. Marni had left him a year before, and had become ill. Largo's daughter had sat with her father as he had assigned the order for Marni's death, had sat in the corner when he had handed over the vial of poison.
You could say the desire for control, power, and blood, well, it ran in the blood.
Amber was currently reclining against the headboard when Nathan slid quickly out of the bed and crossed to the pile of clothes upon the floor to start to search through them. Behind lowered eyelids, Amber feigned disinterest and sighed.
"Here," he said, throwing a small piece of black plastic onto the comforter. She picked it up and placed it in her palm, where it fit easily. "It's a remote wave disrupter."
She sighed again, giving him a look of disgust. "Jesus, Nathan, English. It looks like an old car remote. What the fuck does it do?"
"Remember those new hearts?"
"Yes," she answered defensively. Meaning that she did not. Bitch was so far gone on a week-long Z trip she had been bathed like a baby by attendants.
"They were recycled old ones. We rewired the hearts, got 'em to start again. Imbedded a regulator box and marketed them."
"That's not a heart in your hand."
The assassin tamped down the desire to gut her, and instead continued. "This is set to the same wavelength that the cardiac regulators work on. One press of this button and anyone with a Geneco heart flat lines."
She looked up at him, and back down at the piece of plastic in her hand, a slow smile passing across her features. "You've got one of those hearts," she said before pressing the button.
Nothing happened. Nathan took the piece of plastic from her and threw it across the room. He pushed her back down onto the bed. "Do you really think I would trust you with a real one? You're a dumber bitch than I thought, Amber."
He woke up a short while later spent and sprawled across the bed, with a handful of Amber's hair in his hands from where he had pulled it out, and three deep scratch mark across his chest.
The raid was on a supply building close to Sanitarium Square, a distribution center located close enough to the Surgicamps to be able to be used by several of them. Because of its high turnover rate (interning Repo Men were sent there) it had become a bit of a joke, breaking in there. Ana checked the that her thin black mask was in place, and turned to the newbie next to her, looking her over. She seemed to be level-headed enough, to have trained enough.
"Supply run virgin, huh? Poppin' the cherry?" cracked Pierre, clapping the new girl on the shoulder. The teenager, despite her sturdy build, stumbled a bit-Pierre was a boulder of a man. She gave him a nervous smile.
"Stop scaring the noob, Pierre. I'll snitch to Medi when we get back," taunted Ana. "Fred's talking in my comm and I can't hear for shit."
Finally making sense of the crackle, Ana related the directions to Pierre, and the two led the small group through the last few yards of tunnels. Brian notified them that he'd temporarily dropped the motion detectors for the manhole, and they scurried up, Pierre keeping track of their short time.
The manhole lead to a small area behind a shed on the building's grounds, just on the inside of the fence. The group reassembled, and they started to discreetly make their way to the building.
It was like those old cliched movies; a pair of Repo Men were standing and commiserating a short distance away, and from beneath their helmets their breath floated out in clouds in the cold air. These dragons weren't as dangerous as some of the ones they had faced in the past.
Ana plucked at the new girl's sleeve, giving her a momentary grin before gesturing for her to follow.
Ricky, a ferret-like man in his late twenties, scurried him way up the building and in through a large broken window; this was his job, it was always his job. Less than a minute later, the group was let into the deathly silent supply building.
Pierre trotted over to the refrigerated section, grabbing perishables and plasma. It was difficult in the dark for some of the less experienced ones, but Ana gestured to show them where to go, and she followed Pierre to the blood storage section. They ended up back to back, squatting and passing over cold shelves with dim flashlights.
"You wouldn't really rat on me, would you?" Although Pierre was one of the most self-assured people Ana knew, he had a tendency to speak in questions.
"Of course not," she whispered, grabbing as much Common and O pos as possible, then going back and stuffing a few of the rarer blood packs into her sack. "I just like busting your balls. Especially right before it's your turn to cook dinner because-"
She never finished her sentence, because there was a clattering noise a short distance away, followed by a long string of swearing. Female voice. Young. Shaking. Ana could all but smell the fear from where she crouched. "Shit," she said, herself.
"Aww, fuck. Come on, girly, let's go!" There was the sound of heavy boots headed in their direction, echoing off of the tall storage shelves that rose towards the airplane hanger-like ceiling. The old power conservation programs did not allow the floodlights above them to turn on immediately, and the pair took advantage of the darkness to scramble for an exit.
The door they had entered through was now locked, but they already knew that. They sprinted for the stairs to the catwalk. There was a clatter on the stairs behind them, and Ana risked one quick glance behind her to see that it was the new girl, and Ricky.
The lights directly above them now, those large, cup-shaped halogens of old, started to flicker to life. Pierre inhaled sharply at the same time, out from the shadows, a Repo Man appeared. No guns, not in this building with its constant gas leaks. Just a taser that he had no time to reach for as the petite brunette ducked his outreaching arm and slammed an elbow into his windpipe. She kept going, knowing that Pierre was already dropping the man over the side of the catwalk.
The lights were fully on now, blinding everyone. A scalpel flashed in her face, and she felt it catch at the material of her jumpsuit, just scraping her skin as she jumped out of the way. A kick to his side, and he went tumbling down on top of a trainee coming up the stairs. Ana was thankful that none of these Repo Men could throw scalpels like Fred.
Her feet slapped against the metal grating as she sprinted towards the end, where the open window was situated.
Repelling down the side was a hurried and frantic affair. The second her feet touched the ground she was up and running, darting past a guard, breaking another's nose, and continuing through the open gate. The pack slapped against her back rhythmically as her feet sped her towards Sanitarium Square, and the copse of trees that would be her shelter for the time being.
"Brian," she gasped, knowing the comm would pick it up as she darted down back streets and avoided late-night denizens. "You better get that thing open!"
And even as she ran for her life, Ana felt alive. Instead of Fred's scolding voice above, Pierre was laughing somewhere behind her. Electric and free, like the cliffs again.
Sanitarium Square was an easy place to make a buck, but it was also an easy place to end up with a bullet between your eyes. Graverobber stuck to the edge of the artificial trees and watched the usual people mill by. Aside from Opera Week, the park was one of the few places with some sort of foliage in it for the rest of the year. He ran through his mental list of clients, and sought them out amongst the couples on park benches and against street lights-some owed him money. A lot of them owed him money. This time of hushed up and hidden things was when he could get that money.
He leaned against a tree, out of sight to anyone passing by, to start counting up the money for the night. It was a decent amount, not his greatest work, but it would do to pay for the rent and food, with a little left over.
The pissed, shitfaced, and brain-dead all stirred to life when a siren grew into a harsh scream a short distance away. On his part, he straightened up, senses on high alert for the Repo Man with a gun. These new ones, they lacked finesse, but they made up for it with brute strength and sheer maliciousness. Just last week he saw them gut a scalpel slut for the hell of it.
Into the park, hurdling at a speed that seemed almost inhuman, was a person clad entirely in black, their back misshapen. Down the street, he could just make out another figure as well. The person darted around a couple who had stopped to watch the spectacle, and then leapt over a bench like it was nothing. As they landed on the other side, he could just make out a bit of hair bobbing behind them, like a fox tail. After a second he realized that the runner had the same idea he had-the section of trees where he stood was shadowed and an ideal hiding place. This was not good. Not good at all.
The masked person now noticed Graverobber in their intended hiding place, and something silver in their hand winked. He held up his Zydrate gun. "Hey, on your side," he hissed.
The person slipped past him, moving further into the trees and away from the path. "Guess we're both going to benefit for this," they muttered, and he knew then that the short figure was female. She lifted her communicator and whispered into it. "Hey, can you scramble the park?" She must have had an earpiece in, because he didn't hear a response. Expensive stuff, perhaps he'd be able to swipe it. "You're the best."
An impressively large man was running through the park, and just behind him a Repo Man was taking aim with a rifle. Perhaps he'd be able to pick-pocket the corpse, once they were finished taking the parts. The assassin pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
A handful of other Repo Men were now in the Square, and starting perplexedly at their own weapons.
"Oh, man, I love that kid," chuckled the bulky man before he promptly punched the nearest guard, knocking him out from the force of it.
Then a Repo Man was behind him in the brush. When the fuck did he ask to be apart of this?
Nearby there was the noise of a grunt, and a then a yell followed by a quick noise of a body falling. The Graverobber couldn't look up, as he was too busy dodging a guard who tried to butt him with the his rifle now that it was useless. The thief grabbed the weapon and pulled it past himself, using the other man's own weight against himself. He all but walked into the punch. To be on the safe side, he jabbed a needle into the guards neck. The chamber had only a small amount of Z int it, but it was enough to incapacitate the Repo Man.
He could just make out another Repo Man laying on the ground, and the girl as she crawled out of the bushes. It was silent in the park.
"Rides gonna be hear soo-" the girl never finished her sentence, because a Repo Man had woken up just behind her, and had found his taser on his tool belt. She fell to the ground, convulsing. Bulky McBigArms ran over and kicked the taser out of the guards hands before kicking the Repo Man savagely in the side. With a gloved hand, he yanked the small electrodes from the girl's back before removing the gloves to feel at her neck.
"She's got a pulse!"
There was the noise of screeching tires, and a van pulled up at the exit to the park. A few other black-clad figures were coming out from the shadows and making their way to the van. A man got out of the vehicle, rushing the group along. He looked at the girl on the ground for a moment, then picked her up with a sigh. On the way back to their escape, this older man whispered to Hefty.
"You can come with us willingly, or we can drag your corpse out; which is it going to be?" It took a moment for Graverobber to realize he was being addressed. Well, shit. As silently as possible, he started to crawl backwards. There was a dumpster near the back, and after he crawled on top of it, he could easily just get over the wall.
But that wasn't going to happen, since another one of the group's members had crept up behind him and had a gun to the back of his head.
"And before you decide to get cocky, realize that our scrambler? It stopped about a minute ago, so that gun to the back of your skull? It can easily cause your brains to be splattered all over this fucking place. You coming?"
He brought his hands up slowly, feeling the cool metal continue to be pressed into his hair. "Well, there wasn't anything on TV tonight, anyway."
"Put the blindfold on."
After that, it was a blur of smell and jostling movement as he was placed into the car. He couldn't remember the last time he was in one of them, must have been when he was a kid. It smelled like shit and sweat, must have been an old clunker that they pieced back together.
They parked and dragged him out, clamping handcuffs around his wrists, keeping them behind his back. "I usually don't do this thing until after dinner on the date," he muttered, hearing his voice and scuffed steps echo off of the walls and the roof above him. The air was moist and cool.
They walked a short distance before he's pushed into a room, and then a chair. There was commotion outside the doorway.
"Woah, woah, woah!" comes a voice he recognizes. "Dude, what the fuck are you doing?"
"This guy was in the woods at the Square," replied a grizzled voice. "We're going to try to figure out what to do with him."
"Fred, this is why I said I should go on the raid, and not her. I'd have gutted him there."
"He got a tat this morning, man," continued the person who recognized him. It was that guy, Brian, from earlier. He never thought he'd be so relieved to hear that pubescent voice, but he certainly was. "He's a Z supplier, best there is."
"Think Medi can talk to him? She's been trying to test something," said the other voice, the one that had threatened him in the park.
A silence. The older man was considering. "It's Graverobber, right? Yeah. Fuck, of course. Let's go get him cleaned up."
Their was the smell of cigarettes as a body entered and stood before him. The blindfold was removed, and a gray-haired man with a weather-worn face stared down at him from his perch on the edge of a desk.
"You've been skirting the Repo Men for a while now," he said.
"About a decade." Christ, that was a long time, now that he thought about it. With his arms behind his back, he had lost feeling in the limbs. He tried to wiggle his fingers to try to get the blood flowing again.
"Obviously you know about the Resistance, so here's the deal," said the man, who extracted a cigarette from his breast pocket and a lighter from his trousers, making efficient work of lighting the cigarette. "You supply us Z, which we will pay you for, keep your mouth shut, and we won't blow your head off."
"Fair enough. I like my head intact on my shoulders."
He exhaled, a ring of smoke escaping from between his lips. "I'm being perfectly serious. You say a word about us to anyone, and Luigi Largo's idea of torture will seem like a trip to Geneco Opera compared to what we will put you through."
"Got it."
The old man studied him for a moment, then stood and walked around behind Graverobber. He started to remove the handcuffs.
"And another thing, don't talk back to me. You only need one eye to deal Z."
His hands were freed, and he rolled his shoulders a bit to try to start to get feeling back into them. The older man-Fred, he introduced himself gruffly-ushered him out.
They were standing in what appeared to be an old subway station, from the original construction of the city, far below the ground level of the new one. The ceiling curved above them, tall and tiled, and people walked about with a sense of purpose.
"Brian, show your friend to the infirmary."
The gangly youth gave him a grin and started bobbing his way towards what appeared to be an old security station. Inside, a handful of people that had been in the park were now being stitched up.
"Where's Ana? Anyone seen Ana?" Brian called the instant they were inside.
"She's in here. And for heaven's sake, bring that tall fellow next to you in here; I can't have him bleeding all over this place." The voice came from a small room off of the main one; beyond the doorway he could make out silver and white. The youth next to him took off, stopped, then returned.
Brian grabbed at Graverobber's sleeve, much to his surprise. It wasn't until he was seated in front of a very stout woman wearing old, red SurGen scrubs- obviously pilfered - that he realized that the sticky, wet feeling dripping down the side of his face was not just sweat, but blood, as evidenced by the cloth the woman was wiping at his forehead with.
"You got clocked pretty bad, huh?" she muttered with a snort. She was an older woman, with a no-nonsense, practical air to her, and she did not even turn to look as she reached for a brown bottle on a table behind her. She extracted a cotton ball from the pocket of her top and placed the cotton at the lip of the bottle, tilting it with a well-practiced motion. "I'd tell you to be careful next time, but none of you really listen, and usually you all come back with worse."
The liquid stung; a vague memory of this stuff, its sting and bubbling sensation, came back to him. The last time someone had used peroxide on him- shit, he must have been a kid. People had stopped using it, since Geneco Zydrate had some sort of antibiotic/antiseptic in it. He couldn't help but wince as she dabbed a liberal amount onto the wound at his temple..
"Stop that," the woman chastised. "I bet you all the credits in my pocket that it hurt more to get hit in the head than that." She rubbed some sort of ointment on it and went over to the sink to wash her hands before changing gloves.
Brian was hovering next to him, and it was starting to get annoying. "Is Ana alright?" he finally asked. Hands in the pockets, kid, the Graverobber thought, save face and stop wringing those hands like a little old broad.
Graverobber looked to the right of his chair, to the bed that he was situated next to. The girl in the black jumpsuit from the park, the one who had been in the woods with him, was now lying on the bed, wires peeking out from the opening of the suit. He couldn't really see her face, just the underside of her chin and her nose, but she had some sweet little curves to her body. If that Brian kid had a thing for her, he could see why.
"She's fine. I have her on the heart monitor for now, just to keep an eye out, but she should wake up in an hour or so-or now, just to prove me wrong. Welcome back, dear."
The bright Nevada sun is warm against her bare shoulders, and she tries to soak it in, the heat and the breeze that's whipping her short hair around, the view before them. With a giddy feeling, she realizes that she has done it, has finally climbed the entire side of the cliff. A giddy grin sprouts on her features.
"Don't get too happy, girly," grunts Fred. He's seated on the edge of the cliff and she can tell that he's enjoying the view just as much even if he won't admit to it. "Still gotta get back down, and I want to see that touchdown without you falling on your ass, you hear me?"
She nods, continuing to marvel at the landscape below.
"You're learning fast. Picking up on everything I'm showing you."
Saying that it's easy is a lie, so she waits to see if he'll elaborate. The rocks are searing hot beneath her palms.
"If you can keep up, I'm gonna train you. Got my eye on a couple of you. Someone's going to need to take over when I'm gone, figure I might as well make sure whoever it is aint a complete fuck up." Fred spits over the side then glances over at her before wiping at a bead of sweat making its way down his forehead. "Look at you, up here and fancy free. A few months ago you were in that damn ward and pale as a ghost."
"Thanks. For saving my life." God, that sounds lame. Horribly so. Fred had been making a run for it and had seen her get shot trying to slip the barricade. He knew people on the outside, and he had taken her to a compound close by. A van had been waiting a few miles away from the barricade, and he'd carried her all the way to the vehicle.
"Just dragged your bony ass. You're the one who decided to come back from the dead. Resurrect yourself. Gonna find out a name that means that, other than Jesus, I guess. That's what I'm going to call you."
So far, she's been 'girly' and 'kid' or 'you'. Shilo Wallace had died back at the barricade-one of the last people to make it out had told her about the news coverage, and it was strange to think that an entire city thought she was dead.
After a few minutes they get ready to repel back down the side, and it leaves a fantastic queasy feeling in her stomach as she descends. She touches down, and stumbles, and when she falls she can feel, the pillow behind her head, and the thin cushion she's laying on.
Anastasia woke up and instantly regretted it, because she felt like complete shit. With a wince, she tried to sit up.
She must have still been out of it, because the Graverobber was sitting at the foot of her bed.
'Alas, Madame, for stealing of a kiss' by Sir Thomas Wyatt
Illegitimis nil carborundum - Don't let the bastards grind you down
Luctor et emergo - I struggle but I'll survive
'I know him, that man/ walking- toward me up the crowded street' lines 1-2 of 'Chance Meeting' by Susan Browne
The phrases "what's hushed up and hidden" and "pissed, shitfaced, and brain-dead" are paraphrased from the poem 'Nightwatchman's Song' by the fantastic W.D. Snodgrass