Jake wants out of the med-bay. He doesn't know what happened during the fight, although he knows from the constantly scrolling newsfeed on the wall that between Athena and Fury the Kaiju was taken down. The last thing he remembers is Mako falling, screaming, into thin air, still feeling her sweaty fingers brush his palm.
Mako isn't even in the same room with him. She's in a private ward, apparently still in deep coma. Jake wasn't supposed to know any of this, but when the medics were bringing him out they sounded very concerned, and deeply relieved when he woke up. He remembers them saying something about not understanding the difference, and he guesses they said that because he and Mako should have gone under the same way, and both woken up the same.
The doctors won't tell him anything, and he's sure he won't be allowed to see her. He knows it was always like that when Dad had to go in for treatments. Jake never got to see him until everything was over, and then he was a little paler, the smile a little faker, when he gave Jake a reunion hug.
He knows, logically, why the PPDC is so hush-hush about pilots' conditions, even to fellow pilots. While many organizations make employees sign disclosure waivers, the PPDC made Jake sign one on his first day at the Academy that stated that all his medical records and procedures were to be treated as confidential under PPDC Regulation 51B, and he was not allowed to discuss any medical details, no matter how minor, with anyone unless he filled out permission form 63-754-F. He knows that in the war years that regulation got trampled on, for the most part, with pilots sharing war and scar stories and trying to outdo each other. But now, under McTavish, the rules are back in full force.
He's her copilot and family. He should be there by her side. But he's pretty sure that McTavish knows if he sees Mako laying there, so small and fragile and almost dead-looking (he can see her in his head, like his friend Kaela looked the time she fell in the lake and Dad had to pull her out and give her mouth-to-mouth), then Jake will move heaven and hell to get answers, and he will tell the press everything. Right now, the only thing keeping him from busting out of here and going straight to those reporters with the whole story of McTavish's insistence on using a Jaeger with untested Drift tech is thinking maybe if he stays on their good side he'll get to see Mako eventually.
He can see how this job wore Dad down. There are so many rules, so much stupid, time-consuming bureaucracy. When he was a kid, he imagined being a Jaeger pilot as simply being able to go out and smash Kaiju in the face, and doing news interviews. The reality of it, both at the Academy and here, is a lot of boring downtime that the brass manages to fill with boring paperwork, and being asked the same questions over and over when something goes wrong.
No, he doesn't know what happened. He doesn't think Mako chased the R.A.B.I.T. Yes, he was having trouble connecting to her, so she could have. Yes, he was having trouble before she started losing control. No, he doesn't know if everything was connected properly. They were in the middle of preparing for a war, he has no idea if the techs got all the hookups right.
He's letting his anger get the best of him, and he knows he shouldn't, but these people are the reason Mako is catatonic and if someone would have just listened to her I wouldn't be here now.
He's relieved when the somewhat spooked-looking nurses leave, clutching their clipboards as if Jake was going to punch them like they were the invaders from space (honestly the thought crossed his mind; he prefers fighting kaiju to dealing with actual humans). The relief doesn't last, because Marshal McTavish enters before the door even closes. (The kaiju don't deserve the degradation of being put on the same level as this guy. It would be an insult to their intelligence and their regard for human life).
"What do you want?" Jake's struggling to keep the fury out of his voice. He'd like nothing more than to stomp McTavish under one of Venge's giant feet, but the man is the only way he's going to get permission to see Mako.
"I'd like you to make a press statement that the Jaeger malfunction was a pilot error, not faulty technology."
"There was something wrong before Mako started fading out. She and I both felt it. There hasn't been enough time for conclusive diagnostics."
"You and I know that. The bloodhounds trying to tear through the doors with their video cameras don't. Listen, if rumor gets around that these new Jaegers have tech faults, no one's going to feel safe. Not the people we're protecting, not the parents whose kids are pilots. It would be a disaster."
"But if there is a technical problem, people have a right to know. And Gipsy Avenger was the only one with an experimental system. Which you ordered scrapped in favor of the old hookups." Jake wonders if the problem was a tech compatibility. Maybe the system designed for wireless drift wasn't made to work with the old wired harness system.
"All the more reason to keep things calm. Gipsy Avenger is the first step toward remotely piloted Jaegers. Soon we won't need to send pilots out in them. Our people can stay safely on land while the Jaegers fight Kaiju. And if word gets around that the new systems aren't fuctional, it could set the program back by years, years we can't afford now. We'd lose all backing and support."
"The only reason Mako's new systems failed was because you ordered her people to do a rush job. She had Venge set up for her new design and you made them replace it. If anything went wrong, that's why." I can't be sure it wasn't an error on Mako's part. But I know her. She'd be meticulous at every stage of design. And I know McTavish, more focused on results than safety. All this talk about the safety of the remot pilot program, like a little hiccup is going to make that much of a difference when the Jaegers just became the world's hope again. He just doesn't want word getting out that he's the reason the only First Kaiju War pilot still in action is currently comatose. It feels wrong to say First Kaiju War. But there's another one now, so it's the only thing to do.
He remembers Dad reading them books about history, and how the First World War was supposed to be a war to end all wars. People had really believed it then. And now, everyone had believed the Kaiju were gone for good. History repeating itself. We were so sure they'd never come back. We told ourselves there'd never be another war like this. In a way, he can understand McTavish's actions. No one was prepared for this. He did what he thought he had to in the moment. But that didn't change the fact that the man was arrogant and bullheaded and didn't listen to the one person who actually knew what she was talking about when it came to Jaeger tech.
"I won't make a statement like that. I won't have my sister's name dragged through the mud because of a lie." Mako isn't a failure. It isn't her fault this happened. He knows how fast a Jaeger pilot's reputation can be irreparably damaged. He watched it happen over and over to people in his dad's Shatterdomes. As soon as anything went wrong, from a kaiju making landfall to a Jaeger getting destroyed to a pilot's death, whoever was blamed went from being a hero to a scapegoat. That's what happened to Mako's old co-pilot.
Mako and Raleigh had both been at Dad's funeral. Jake hadn't seen Raleigh Becket since the man dropped off the grid after his brother died. Or more accurately, was ordered to resign or be dismissed in disgrace. Raleigh had changed a lot since he was at Dad's Anchorage Shatterdome. From the few times he'd come to the Shatterdome with Dad while school was out, Jake had remembered a mischievous prankster who enjoyed playing practical jokes on other pilot crews and his own brother, someone who never stopped smiling and had enough energy to play Kaiju and Jaegers at the end of a long day when Jake was bored and couldn't find anyone else willing to take the time.
The Raleigh from the funeral was a different person. Serious, with a prematurely lined face and sad eyes. Someone with a weight of guilt shoving him down, making him seem shorter than the giant hero Jake remembered. Jake knew some of that was unavoidable; Becket lost his brother in Drift and it had wrecked him. But some of the pain was what people had said. Jake remembered his own anger and confusion when he watched the news and listened to the man he'd always heard praised as a hero instead called a failure and a disgrace. People were ruthless. The slightest thing could make them turn, and when they did it was a feeding frenzy. Jake was pretty sure, from the memories he'd seen in Mako's head, that Raleigh was falling apart, probably partly because of that unreasoning blame. He wasn't going to let that happen to Mako.
"If you want me to say someone failed out there today, it won't be Mako I blame. It will be me."