This story will get finished, I promise. I just had a dry spell as far as fanfic writing and I had to decide where to go with this. Sorry about the wait.
Malik was dazed, but conscious, blinking up at the ceiling and trying to understand what had just happened. Painfully, she sat up, working air back into lungs that had been forcibly emptied. She winced, getting to her feet, spitting out the remains of the rebreather. So much for being prepared. Her teeth had snapped together when she'd been thrown backwards and the device had activated. Cautiously, she went into the room, her eyes wide. Both captors were either dead or soundly unconscious. One figure to her right was moving.
"David!" she said, rushing to help her boss get up. He was struggling against the wall, waving her off and shaking his head.
"Adam—" he coughed harshly, gasping back his breath. "Go check on Adam!"
She turned, swallowing back bile as she went to the table where he was still strapped down. He wasn't moving. She reached out fingers that wouldn't stop trembling, pressing them into his throat, trying not to think about the electrical burns marring his torso or the coolant stains crystallizing on the table from his strained augments. A pulse pressed back against her fingers and she drew a shuddering breath, tears tracking from the corners of her eyes as she bent her head and pressed her forehead into his shoulder. "I'm so sorry, Adam," she whispered, pressing a kiss to the warm metal and then to his cheekbone. His pulse skipped under her fingers and she felt a pang as though it was her own heart struggling.
"How is he?" David asked, coming anxiously to her side and looking Adam over himself.
"Alive," Malik said, crossing her arms and moving to Adam's other side so David could work. "But if he's going to stay that way we need to get him out of here right now. Are there any others? I didn't see any coming in but we can't afford any kind of conflict, not with him like this. Or you—what happened to your face, your arm?"
David was pressing his thumb gingerly into Adam's eye, nudging back the lid so he could assess the pupil. He sighed, dropping his hand to Adam's chest to assess the severity of the burns. "Adam happened. Kid's smart—knew I'd be a liability if they knew who I was so he took away my two biggest defining features." He shook his head, rubbing his eyes and forehead as he glanced up at the blank vitals screen. Adam's blast had fried it completely. "We can't move him. Not like this. He's gone into a power shutdown, and if we try to force him out of it he will die."
Malik's eyes went wide and she shook her head. "What?! No! We can't leave him here! What do you mean power shutdown, what happened in here?"
David checked the drip that had remained in Adam's neck, adjusting the flow and working with what he had to stabilize him. "They couldn't damage Adam as much as they wanted to with his advanced EMP shielding up. I made the mistake of showing off my knowledge of Adam's augments and they forced me to deactivate his shielding. They drained him, Faridah," David said, and she could feel the anger in his timbre. "They kept him from food, barely allowed him water, and sapped his reserves once the shield was down. He had nothing left. I was able to lie my way into getting him an IV, but it was only enough to give him one shot. He took it. The EMP re-set all of his augments to 0.0, but it's hard to factory zero an augment that wasn't made in a factory. A few weeks ago I adjusted his Icarus augment so he can use it as a launching system. I also re-calibrated so he could use it as a short range stun without requiring him to build the momentum of a fall first."
"You turned him into a stun grenade," Malik said, deadpan and staring at David.
"Yes." He nodded, re-taking Adam's pulse and counting his breaths, doing calculations in his head even as they talked. "It was Adam's idea, actually. Something that worked like the Typhoon but wasn't so destructive. That blast took out our immediate threat, but he's got nothing left. His augments make up sixty-five percent of his body and they use an enormous amount of energy. The only thing keeping him alive right now is this comatose state."
"There isn't some kind of fail-safe against that?" Faridah asked, resting her hand on Adam's bicep, watching his chest rise and fall just to reassure herself that he hadn't given in yet. If Adam died because he was involved in something Malik planned she'd never forgive herself. Finding out Lee's guilt and exposing him was important, but if the price was Adam it was far too high.
"There is. But I had to bypass it in order to take down his shielding. I could try to re-activate, but that's delicate surgery and I don't have the means to do it safely. Opening him up the first time to turn it off was dangerous enough." David moved to the other side of the table and turned Faridah gently towards him with a hand on her shoulder. His eyes locked with hers and she felt something clench in her throat, knowing David was about to say something neither of them would find easy.
"Faridah, we have to leave him. We have to go, clear the way, get supplies, and come back for him."
Anger welled up behind her sternum and she shook her head vehemently, pushing David's hand off of her. "No, absolutely not. You go, get your arm replaced, get us supplies, and come back. I'm not leaving him. I'll guard him until you can get us help."
"Faridah," David said gently. "I don't know this city like you do. I don't even know where we are right now. If Adam is going to have any chance at all we have to lock him in here and you have to come with me for help. I'd stay with him and guard him, but he'll be safer than you locked in here and you said yourself you don't know how many guards there are. I might be beat up but I can still help you fight them off and give all three of us a better chance."
Malik swallowed back angry tears and looked at Adam, knowing David was right. She breathed to steady herself and reached out to give Adam's hand a reassuring squeeze.
"We lock him up, we get back in three hours, tops," she said, letting go and turning to David. "And we contact Pritchard the second we know Adam is out of Hong's influence."
"Of course," David said, and Malik knew she was being unfair in her anger with him. They were both, ultimately, worried about Adam and just doing the best they could for him.
They got out, strangely enough, without resistance. They'd moved both bodies out and locked them in David's cell, just in case they turned out to be more than bodies. They bolted, shut, and dragged things closed before turning off the harsh observation lamps and leaving Adam's hanger, hoping that if anyone came poking around they would think a locked, dark landing pad too much trouble to be worth anything. Malik ran David across the city until they reached a LIMB clinic where they could not only buy supplies for Adam but get David help both legal and physical.
While they were working on giving David a temporary replacement arm Malik spoke with LIMB security about how he'd come to be in that shape to begin with. LIMB clinics were only a step down in safety from a police station since they were protected by all kinds of legal tape against malpractice, discrimination, and terrorist attack. She didn't know how long those laws would remain with the recent scares about augmented individuals and registration, but for the time being they held and she knew she and David would be as safe as possible inside the walls.
She didn't dare tell security what had actually happened, knowing that Hong had way too many fingers in LIMB and that if the officers thought the damage done to David was anything other than a hate crime they might report back to him. She considered leaving David in their hands and going back to Adam herself, but she couldn't risk patching in to speak with Pritchard and without him or David she wouldn't be able to get Adam back on his feet. She didn't know near enough about his augments to fix him herself and trying to contact Pritchard might alert Hong that something wasn't right. She was shocked that more hadn't happened already—it seemed too good to be true that there hadn't been cameras fried by Adam's blast to alert Hong that he was losing his leverage.
Malik chewed at her lip and re-checked the supplies she'd bought while waiting for David, running scenarios through her head in a whirl. She was missing something. Getting out had been too easy. Something was not right. They were going to get back and Adam would be—Adam—she bit down harder and tasted blood.
"Ready?" David said, jumping Malik out of her state as he came back to the waiting room. Already his face looked miles better and he was working the fingers of a high-level standard prosthesis around and around a credit chip as though getting used to the feel. Malik recognized basic dexterity therapy movements in his perceived fidgeting and admired David's subtle determination.
"Ready," she nodded, taking his arm and thanking the officer at the door as they walked out, looking for all the world like father and daughter. To try and preserve their cover a little longer Malik had either tied over or ripped off identifying marks on her suit that linked her with Sarif. By the time they'd gotten done vandalizing her flight suit she looked no different than one of the free runners that populated the Lower Hengsha streets popping stunts and climbing scaffolds for credits. David hadn't needed a disguise, his suit had been torn and dirtied beyond recognition as nice clothing and he'd stripped down to his undershirt while at the clinic, leaving him in a grease-smeared tank top and ripped pants. Despite their ethnicity they would blend right back into the crowd and have no trouble getting to the abandoned landing yard.
Getting across the yard and back to Adam was a different story.
Malik cursed as they ducked behind a rusted mobile office, grabbing David's shirt and yanking him hard to crouch by her, just avoiding a flashlight beam from a pacing guard. She closed her eyes and pressed her back against the wall, her arm across David's chest forcing him to do the same. They both stayed there and breathed, and under Malik's palm she could feel how hard Sarif's heart was beating. He was keeping his cool visually but inside he was just as scared as she was. She lowered her arm as the footsteps passed by and leaned around the corner, watching as the guard turned back towards the hangers.
"He's definitely working for Hong," she whispered, scanning the yard for others. There were at least five.
"How do you know?"
"He's not wearing any insignia, which means he's private muscle hired for a private job. Even the gangs have symbols, and it's considered betrayal not to wear them prominently. He might be Belltower or Sharpedge. They both have been known to ditch the uniform for a little extra work on the side. Bottom line is we can't fight these guys, not on our own," she said, the last few words coming through grit teeth as she thought.
"Any chance there's police not paid off by Hong?" David asked, peering around himself to see what they were dealing with.
"Maybe, but there's no way to tell, no time to find out, and they couldn't help us anyway. This is gang territory—a neutral zone that all the gangs use equally. Cops don't dare come in because the only thing scarier than the Harvesters is the Harvesters working with every other crew in the city. A cop sets foot inside that fence and he doesn't come out again."
"How can all the gangs get along like that?" David asked. "This seems like a good spot, why hasn't anyone claimed it?"
"It is a good spot," Malik conceded. "And that's why. It's too good. They'd lose too many members fighting over it so there's this unspoken rule that they share. Civilians aren't a problem and cops don't dare. Any gang that tries to establish ownership over the area is going to have the other three or four who use it against them and they're going to lose."
She fell silent again and edged back further into shadow as two more guards patrolled past, and as she watched their symbol less backs something clicked. She turned to David, tapping his shoulder and motioning for him to follow her. Silently, they moved around the building and retreated back towards the fence, using old barrels and crates for cover until they reached a signaling tower at the corner. Glancing around to make sure they wouldn't be seen, Malik jumped and caught the first rung, pulling herself up the tower. David followed suit and they both perched there, out of sight and earshot but able to see most of the yard.
"How many do you count?" Malik asked, gesturing to the figures milling around by the hangers.
"At least fifteen," David said. "Probably more underground. Why?"
"That's way more than capacity," Malik said, a grim satisfaction settling in her eyes.
"I don't follow. What's going on, Faridah?"
"Hong was smart to keep this thing low key, but now that we've pissed him off he got sloppy. A handful of unmarked soldiers using this spot as a torture point is no big deal to the gangs, but this many at once without declared allegiance and purpose—this is an act of war. Right now Hong's men are displaying intent to take territory, and the gangs aren't going to like it. Most of them probably already know and are gathering up for a fight."
She looked at David, a hardness in her eyes that he had never seen before settling into her words.
"We need to go to the Hive. Tong will want to know that his dumping territory is being threatened, and if we can convince him to help us maybe Adam won't get caught in the crossfire."