Squishy/Beir – Present.
I can hear the reapers coming, but it's muffled by my own heart thundering in my ears and delirium setting in. He's cold next to me. Reegar. How long I been here, slumped against his body, refusing to let go? We pushed the reapers back with the last of our strength, but they would regroup eventually. I fixed the relay, I remember that, but by the time I had, my team... I only remember falling to my knees beside Reegar and then... a ravager's canon firing and everything went dark.
I can hear a banshee screeching, the eerie thump of a cannibals footsteps up the ramp. They'll be here soon, and I won't be able to stop them. Everything we sacrificed will have been for nothing.
It hurts to turn my head and my eyes refuse to focus properly, but I can just make out the bodies strewn around us. Gabi and Trin, one of his arms still extended out to try and protect her as if he could have saved her from the three gaping pierce wounds in her stomach from the banshee. Lirin, contorted unnaturally over a crate, Reegar brought him in from the ramp. But the force a ravagers gun sent our sniper flying and I can see the ravagers corpse next to him, still oozing that foul acid.
The reapers are coming closer now, they're shooting, shouting, even, but I can't distinguish noises properly any more. I wish they would hurry up, finish it and stop toying with us. We know it, we failed, we'll be the death of hundreds of turians, it'd be merciful for them to just get it over with already.
I feel a pair of strong hands grab my shoulders, and I figure in that case it'll be a banshee to stab me through the heart. Not like I'd care either way how I die.
"This ones still alive!" That sounds krogan?
Now I'm not sure if I'm hallucinating or they did make it. Keelah, I hope they did, anything to make this massacre mean something so that I can die in peace. They're trying to pull me away but I can't leave, I won't leave.
I moan, struggle against them but even if I wasn't half dead there's not much I could do against a krogan anyway.
I've been flung over someone's shoulder and it wracks pain through my body. I figure I've cried out from the agony because the krogan grumbles, "hmph, quarians."
"Get him to the evac shuttle," someone else says. "We'll hold this bleeding place until the turians remember how to fight again."
They're taking me away. I can't leave, I won't. I struggle, trying, hoping that they might let me stay and die with my people rather than trying to rescue me. It won't do any good, I'll die either way, can't they see that?
But they won't let me go and I can see my people becoming further and further away, the man I love disappearing before me. I try and reach my hand out towards him, let his name slip brokenly from my lips once more, before everything goes black and I pass out.
Kal'Reegar.
Epilogue
The field hospital is chaotic at best. There are doctors running around haphazardly, trying to save those they can, and knowing that even as hard as they try, most of the injured soldiers there will die. There isn't anything they can do for the majority of them, there aren't enough staff and there definitely isn't enough supplies. They stopped being able to ease peoples suffering weeks ago.
Now, it comes down to ruthless statistics. They ration what they do have to save the ones with the best chances, and don't think about those they had to leave to die when they try to sleep at night.
But, that is war, and casualty-wise, this war has been worse than any other.
There's a surge of new panic as a krogan comes rushing into the camp, one turian following him. But it's not even close to enough panic to generate more than a glance from the already overtaxed medical staff. The krogan's carrying a body, soaked in purple-red blood, limp and totally unrecognisable if not for the bowed legs dangling and thick mass of tangled wires connected from the person's helmet to the back of their suit.
It's a quarian, and as the krogan places the body on a free bed – permanently stained blue from turian blood – all the doctors are thinking the same thing. What does he expect us to do with a quarian?
Even under normal circumstances, his outlook would be uncertain at best. And under these? It would be insulting to even try and save him, when almost every other turian soldier in this tent would have a better chance of making it.
"Do something," the turian accompanying shouts. It's only then the staff realise he's the general himself and a couple of them glance at the quarian who's breathing is erratic and is unconscious. "His squad saved you all, if you can't help him, then at least put him out of his misery."
There's hesitation at first, but then one staff member comes over. A second follows, and they glance at each other, then back at the patient. The quarian's suit is covered in so much blood they can't even see where it might be coming from. Infection has definitely already set in, but given the current state of the patient, just keeping him from going into cardiac arrest or bleeding out will be more of a challenge. His visor is cracked but still intact and the once beautiful decorations of his suit's shawl is unrecognisable, both from blood, cuts and fraying.
"Connect him to the ECG," one of the doctors states as he leans over the quarian. The other obliges, and neither of them has to be a medical professional to know the erratic beeps coming from the connected machine aren't normal.
It's fast, irregular and worrying, but it only lasts minutes before it becomes a solid, piercing noise and everyone in the room knows the patient's heart has given out on him. There's a frantic couple of moments, shouting and demands from staff and the violent ripping open of the quarian's suit. More equipment is pressed against his chest, his body convulsing with each electrical shock that surges through him.
And throughout, the turian general merely stares at the machine blaring that same, monotonous beep. Hoping, praying, wishing that he hadn't sent every one of those quarians to their deaths, that at least one would survive, something, anything.
There's a curse from one of the doctors and he backs off, but the general doesn't notice it. It's followed by what feels like an hour of eerie silence, before the spirits answer his prays and gives him the smallest, most brief flickers of hope.
A single break in the machine's screeching.
Thank you to everyone who's read and supported me through this :D I really appreciate it!
