Chương 190: Chapter 181 - Ripper

Consciousness returned in what was genuinely one of the worst ways it ever had." Ugggh—" The groan came out before my brain had fully established what it was even groaning about, operating on pure reflex while the rest of my systems attempted to come back online in whatever order they felt like. The boot sequence was slow—foggy at best—the kind of waking up that didn't have a clean start point, just a gradual and deeply unwelcome accumulation of awareness pressing in from all directions simultaneously.

My body, characteristically, did not wait for the process to complete before filing its reports. Everything fucking hurt. Not in the sharp, localized way of a specific injury making itself known, but in the broad, democratic way of a body that had taken a general vote and reached consensus on the topic of all-encompassing suffering. Every single muscle—including muscles I hadn't even been consciously aware of owning—outside of [Elemental Balance] brief moments of clarity—were sore beyond description.

The shallow breaths I was managing—and they were shallow, my ribcage having apparently negotiated them down to the minimum viable depth—sent a dull, radiating ache through roughly a third of my torso with the reliability of a metronome.' At least it's comfortable here,' some small, exhausted part of me noted, and it wasn't wrong.

Whatever surface I was horizontal on—and I was simply operating on the assumption that I was horizontal, given that nothing had fallen off me yet and the blood wasn't rushing anywhere unusual—was doing its job with quiet competence, and I was prepared to be genuinely grateful for that on a fundamental level.' Okay,'I thought slowly, assembling the internal monologue one piece at a time like someone working a puzzle in bad lighting.' What do you actually remember?' The gig. The foyer.

The Scrapwrights coming through the door in numbers that had required a fairly significant response.' Riiiight—[Anima Razor].

'The memory surfaced with the specific quality of something that explained a lot of the current situation.' Through a katana. First time. While injured. That'll probably account for most of this, yeah…' The broad consensus of suffering currently being reported by every muscle I owned was starting to make considerably more sense. But I was alive. That specific part was unambiguous based on all the pain in my body, and I was counting it as an unconditional win regardless of everything else on the balance sheet.

I gave myself a few more moments of horizontal non-commitment, letting the systems come back online at whatever pace they felt was reasonable, before arriving at the practical conclusion that I should probably establish where I actually was. If the answer turned out to be somewhere under a significant quantity of fourth-layer apartment rubble, the recovery timeline was going to require some aggressive revision.

Through what I can only describe as a genuine world-class feat of will—the kind that absolutely deserved recognition by a body of internationally assigned diplomats of the highest order—I managed to crack my right eye open approximately one-eighth of the way. The world that came back was blurry, dim, and arrived in pieces that my brain assembled into a coherent picture with the enthusiasm of something doing mandatory overtime. I saw the ceiling first—which was good.' No rubble…'

There was a single overhead light source somewhere to my left, but the ceiling itself was very non-descript. Nothing to really give me more information. Walls came next, as my eye made the slow, swimming adjustment toward a slightly wider field of view. Dark paneling, some kind of composite material that had been chosen for being easy to clean rather than anything aesthetic.

Various pieces of equipment mounted or racked along the surfaces—shapes I couldn't fully resolve yet, the focus refusing to cooperate, blurring anything more than a meter away into vague suggestions of form and function. The impression was clinical. The smell was arriving alongside the visuals, now that my brain had enough bandwidth to process it—antiseptic, with something faintly metallic underneath it that I chose not to examine too carefully.' Oh, thank fuck!

I was half-thinking I was in a damn Scav-den with the easy-to-clean walls… Don't want to get ripped to shreds for parts quite yet.' Something beeped quietly, close to my right side.' We made it to the Ripper's,' I concluded, my single half-open eye making one last valiant attempt at focus before giving up and I allowed it to close again.'

So at least one person made it out and had the presence of mind to drag me with them,'I thought, with the sincere and slightly humbling gratitude of someone who had not been in a position to contribute to that particular outcome.' Whoever you are—genuinely, thank you... Reina, probably. She was the least wrecked of all of us, last I saw her.' I gave myself another few moments of horizontal processing time, then decided it was time to be functional about things.

The System stuff needed handling sooner rather than later—that was the kind of administrative backlog that compounded if you ignored it, and once I was actually upright and mobile the world was going to have opinions about my schedule that I wouldn't get much say in, as it always did. I pulled up the System Interface inside my head and—immediately froze.' Oh, fuck.' [System]: ERROR -! WARNING! - Severe damage to User's Anima Network detected!

[System]: ERROR - Anima-related functions disabled until damage to User's Anima Network is repaired. [System]: ERROR - Experience gains have been temporarily placed on hold, until damage to User's Anima Network is repaired—Experience will not be lost.

[System]: ERROR - The following function(s) have been temporarily disabled: Ego (Active), Blademaster's Slice, Blademaster's Throw, [Manifestation], [{Anima Razor}] (Anima-portion of Skill), [Anima Razor] (Ability), [Serenity], [Homing Beacon], [Lightfoot], [Sharpen], [Wall Runner], [Resourceful Chef], [Spectral Scanner], [Lethal Flow], [Vital Sense], [Appraisal] (Ability), [Flow] (Ability), Rest Function, Inventory Function, Detailed System Interface.

[System]: INFORMATION - The following function(s) have been kept running, by re-routing necessary pathways due to importance for User's current situation: [Double Life]. I stared at what the Interface was showing me for what had to have been a full minute, maybe longer, before the breath I'd been unconsciously holding came out in a long, unsteady exhale.' Well, well, well… If it isn't the unlubricated consequences of my own actions,'I thought ruefully.'

I guess that's what I get for playing around with things I have absolutely no business playing around with at my current level… Not that I had much of a choice, really.' Miss K would absolutely kill me. That was the first clear realization that followed, fully formed and entirely credible. Not metaphorically—or, well, probably metaphorically, but the intent would be sincere regardless. And Mr.

Shori would have his own version of that conversation as well, given that it was his Technique I'd taken and applied in ways that he, specifically, had warned me about.' So… how does one fix a damaged Anima Network, exactly…?' The question sat in the middle of everything else. Because that was the real problem underneath all of it—the System wasn't merely incidental to how I functioned in this world but straight up load-bearing. My one genuine advantage in this world.

It was a crutch, yes, obviously a crutch, but one I didn't exactly get to be all too philosophical about when the alternative was navigating gang-war spillover in Delta, whatever Valeria and her corpo apparatus were building toward, and now apparently a Scav-band-situation-thing that had demonstrated a concerning willingness to escalate out the ass, with nothing but my good-natured attitude and a whole damn lot of nothing else. Fixing the Anima Network had to be first.

Everything else was downstream of that for the foreseeable future. The realization was still settling into its place at the top of the priority list when the door to the room opened. Footsteps, unhurried and slightly heavy, approaching from the left—if slightly muffled.

"Hmm." A slightly nasal voice, close by, carrying the muttered quality of someone talking to themselves as a matter of professional habit.

"I was told it is awake…" A brief pause.

"Are you awake, patient?" Louder this time, and directed, unmistakably, at me.

"Y—yes," I managed, which came out as more of a groan with vowels attached to it than an actual word, but definitely communicated the necessary information adequately enough in my eyes. The footsteps stopped somewhere to my right, and I faintly heard the particular sound of a monitoring strip being checked.

"The patient has been unconscious for approximately nine hours," the voice said, still carrying that muttered, self-narrating quality, as though he was filing a report and I simply happened to be present for it.

"Patient's ribs—four of them, two cracked, two fractured—have been set and treated. The patient should avoid anything that could be classified as physical exertion for a minimum of two weeks, which I highly suspect the patient will not do.

"The patient's jacket absorbed the majority of the projectile impacts across the dorsal surface. Good equipment." That particular part carried something close to professional approval, I found.

"The patient's skin underneath sustained significant contusion damage across the upper back and shoulder region. Painful, but structurally unimportant. The patient will be uncomfortable for some time." I heard him move around the foot of the bed to the other side. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"The patient's frontal fleshbags— limited as they might be in capacity—took the worst of the secondary bruising in the chest region, likely sustained during a fall or badly-orchestrated carry attempt, which will have contributed to the respiratory discomfort the patient is currently experiencing on top of the rib situation. Cold compression recommended. The patient will live. Larger frontal fleshbags would have likely prevented some of the respiratory issues more efficiently."'

Did he just—was that a dig at my chest?' My brain assembled the thought approximately halfway, still running well below its usual processing speed, trying to simultaneously keep up with the Ripper's ongoing inventory of everything that had gone wrong with me recently.

"The patient also presented with significant soft tissue damage across both hands and the associated connective structures—ligaments, joints. Both hands." He took another pause at that. A longer one this time, with a suspicious length to it that suggested he was looking at something he found professionally interesting.

"The damage pattern is not consistent with any impact trauma I am aware of. It is, however, consistent with sustained extreme hyperextension across multiple joints simultaneously, which is not something that happens accidentally and is not something that I will be asking the patient to explain to maintain Ripper-Patient confidentiality." He said it with complete equanimity.

"I have treated it. The patient's hands will continue to function. The patient should expect reduced grip strength and significant stiffness for at minimum one week, possibly two, before full recovery is to be expected." The datapad he had apparently come in with—as I now realized—clicked as he touched something on it to flip over to a different screen.

"The patient's auditory system sustained bilateral damage consistent with repeated exposure to high-decibel concussive sound in an enclosed space. Both eardrums. I have applied standard tympanic repair treatment. The patient's hearing will return to approximately eighty-five to ninety percent of baseline within two to three weeks. The remaining deficit may be permanent, but the patient is still relatively young—chances for recovery are around eighty-percent.

The patient should consider ear protection in future enclosed firefight situations, which I recognize the patient will also not do."' That explains why everything sounds so damn muffled… Fuck.' He'd used the same flat resignation as with his previous recommendation for this one as well—apparently he'd given this particular addendum plenty of times before. The footsteps moved back toward the door.

"The patient should drink the fluid on the table to the left when the patient is able to do so. The patient should not attempt to stand unassisted for at minimum another hour. The patient should eat something before leaving the premises." He paused briefly at the door.

"I will send the bill to the crew's account. It is not a particularly large number—the patient did not present with the volume of treatable injuries I was expecting, given the context." Another pause, this one carrying a faintly puzzled quality that didn't quite fit the clinical register of everything preceding it.

"The patient's unconsciousness, I should note, was not attributable to any of the physical symptoms outlined. There is no injury present that explains the duration. I have no diagnosis for it and have thus not chosen to bill for it either." He said this with the mild displeasure of someone who particularly disliked not having a diagnosis—or being able to bill someone, maybe.

"The patient should consult other professionals regarding that particular matter. Psychological department, perhaps. It is not my area of expertise." The footsteps faded down the corridor and disappeared. I cracked both eyes open this time—and looked at the door. The door hadn't quite closed behind him—just drifted to, leaving a thin strip of light from the hallway, the faint, muffled sound of a wind-up music box somewhere further in the building cycling through a small, patient sequence of notes.

I looked back at the ceiling.' Both eardrums,'I thought.' Four ribs. Both hands. Unconscious for who knows how many hours for reasons that are apparently a mystery to medical science.' I let that sit for a moment.' Only reason any of this is a "cracked ribs" situation instead of a "I zeroed in a foyer" situation is Misha's gear.' I owed Misha a fruit basket or something. A very expensive one.' What a clusterfuck...'

Two parts of me were running competing arguments at this point, and neither of them was being particularly quiet about it. The first one was angry. Higgins had done the pre-gig research—poorly, apparently. And Cryo had made the recommendation to join his crew, which had apparently been a damn mistake.

Between the two of them, the Scrapwright affiliation of the safehouse had gone completely unnoticed, and the gap that had left in the operational picture had cost me badly—in more ways than one. I had signed up for a clean in-and-out. Quick Credits, some Experience, a bump to my Operator-cred, and then back to the rest of my life which already had plenty of its own ongoing disasters to manage without adding gang-affiliated Scav ambushes to the list.

I had, distinctly, not signed up for whatever absolute bullshit this whole debacle had brought us all into. But that, right there, was the rub, wasn't it: All of us. That was the argument the other half of me had.' I'm not exactly the only one who got shafted here,'I thought, and the first line of arguments started losing air the moment I let that in.' Takeda-san might be dead for all I know. Higgins too, from what I managed to hear while I was building up the [Anima Razor]...'

The anger didn't disappear exactly, but it lost its clean target. Hard to maintain a really satisfying grievance when parts of the people you were directing it at were potentially in worse shape than you were.

And beyond that—beyond the immediate crew's issues and Cryo likely not even having had any idea about the gig's details at all—there was the more foundational problem with the entire line of reasoning, which was that getting upset about an Operator gig going sideways was roughly equivalent to getting upset about rain being wet. That was quite literally the job.

That was just about the whole description of the job, boiled down to its essential components: Take the missions that were too risky, too legally ambiguous, or too likely to go catastrophically wrong for anyone operating through legitimate channels to touch, accept the corresponding pay rate, and live with the understanding that a fairly non-trivial percentage of those missions were absolutely going to try to kill you.'

So,' I summarized, continuing to stare at the ceiling with the particular flatness of someone arriving at a conclusion they weren't thrilled about.' In a way, I did sign up for this, didn't I…' I sighed deeply, which I immediately regretted, the ribs filing an emphatic objection to the full range of motion, and made the executive decision to do something I didn't do nearly often enough: Listen to medical advice. At least one more hour of bedrest it was.

About thirty minutes into that hour, muffled footsteps approached my bedside—I only realized they were there when they were right next to me.' That's gonna be a big fucking problem… Stupid eardrums.'

I cracked one eye open and was surprised by who I saw—Reina. She stood there with the energy of someone who had decided to do a thing and was going to do it regardless of whether it came naturally, which on Reina looked exactly as uncomfortable as that sounded. The expression she'd arranged on her face was somewhere in the general vicinity of warm and hadn't quite made it all the way there, but the effort was visible and I found, somewhat to my own surprise, that the effort counted for something anyway.

"Ripper said you were awake," she said, stopping beside the bed with her good arm tucked against her side and her injured one in its sling.

"Came to see how you were doing." That tracked completely. The Ripper did not strike me as a man who delivered news gently or with any particular concern for the emotional readiness of the recipient—or in a timely manner. He'd probably have mentioned it in passing, between other things, with the same inflection he apparently used for everything.

"How are you doing?" she asked.

"Honestly?" I considered the full inventory for a moment.

"Could be significantly worse. Nothing permanent, nothing critical. Just—a lot of things that are going to be annoying for a while..." Reina nodded once. The silence that followed had a slightly awkward texture to it that neither of us seemed to have an immediate solution for, so I took the available conversational exit.

"How's the arm?" Her posture shifted. She lifted the sling slightly, angling it in a way that was almost demonstrative.

"Ripper stitched it up. Said the first-aid wasn't bad." She delivered it neutrally, but it definitely sounded genuine—she wasn't just saying that to make me feel better. Which allowed me to feel a small, real spike of satisfaction at that. Coming from an actual Ripper, especially somebody like that, meant that " not bad" probably translated to something considerably more complimentary in standard human vocabulary.

"Couple days of rest and it should be back to normal."

"That's genuinely good to hear," I said, and absolutely meant it. Another stretch of silence followed as we awkwardly tried not to stare at each other. This one stretched considerably longer, and had a different quality to the previous one—not the absence of things to say, but the presence of one specific thing that was sitting between us waiting to be addressed and that neither of us was in a rush to be the one to pick up. Ultimately, however, I was too curious about it to leave it, so I took the initiative.

"How are the others?" I asked.

"Did anyone—" I left the end of the sentence where it was. Reina's expression didn't change dramatically—which was probably a semi-good sign.

"Kaito's stable," she said first.

"Blood loss. Ripper's got him medicated but he's sleeping it off. Should be functional."' Good news… Thank fuck.'

"Takeda-san—" A brief pause as she seemingly struggled to find the right words.

"Ripper's not optimistic. Brain pressure from the crash, internal bleeding or something… He's alive, but—" She didn't finish that one either—she didn't have to. I got the gist.' Fuck… With the amount of blood he lost, I was really hoping it wouldn't come to that. But internal bleeding and brain pressure being listed? He's in a coma, isn't he…?'

"Higgins…" The word came out of her differently from the others. There was something moving underneath it that wasn't anger at the Scavs, or not only that.

"He took a round in the leg during the foyer. Femoral artery." She stopped briefly, then added, "Lost tons of blood—I barely got to him in time. Lost the leg..." I went still.

"He's alive, at least," she added, quickly enough that I suspected she'd planned to tag it on fast.

"We got to the Ripper in time. But—Yeah. The leg's gone. And his lungs from the crash—Ripper's being cautious about the long-term read on those as well. Likely to be permanent damage of some kind—probably need chrome or biografts or something in the future…" I looked at her face for a moment, trying to find the emotion of what was underneath it, and couldn't quite get there. Whatever it was, it wasn't something she was going to show me right now, and I wasn't going to push for it.

"You'll still get your share, of course," she said, almost like it had been an afterthought she'd remembered at the last second—but the insistence underneath it was real.

"You did your job. And then some." A brief beat, and I got the impression she was working slightly against her own grain here, the same way she had started the whole conversation with.

"I just—wanted to say thanks, I guess. For trying—for all of it, really." Something shifted in her expression, that I couldn't place either, "Not sure we would have made it out without you…" I wasn't entirely sure what to do with that, so I defaulted to the first honest thing that came to mind.

"It still wasn't enough," I said quietly. Not in a self-pitying way—just the plain read of the situation. Looking at Takeda-san's odds, Higgins' leg, the math of what the gig had cost against what it had paid… It definitely hadn't been enough, despite my efforts. I watched it land on Reina's face in a way that I hadn't anticipated nor planned. Her expression hardened.

"You're right," she said.

"It wasn't. Not on my end." And there it was. It clicked into place with the specific, slightly embarrassing clarity of something that had been visible the entire time I'd been awake and that I'd been too freshly conscious to read properly. The way she'd pressed the words about Higgins out between her teeth or the thing underneath the pauses that hadn't quite been anger at the Scavs... Survivor's guilt.

Not just that she'd made it out, specifically, but that she'd made it out fairly unscathed while others had lost entire parts of themselves—or even potentially their lives. I knew that feeling all too well. Knew it in the particular, bone-deep way of someone who'd lived in its company long enough to recognize it on other people's faces without needing it explicitly spelled out. I absolutely should've caught it earlier.'

But then again, I've been in an Anima-induced coma for who knows how long, so I can prolly chalk my slow-uptake up to that one, at least this once…' I didn't say anything about any of it. There was a version of this conversation where I said something, and it wasn't a version that Reina was going to be receptive to right now, and I very much knew that too.

She straightened up abruptly after a moment, the movement carrying the slight over-deliberateness of someone creating forward momentum by pure decision rather than natural inclination.

"I'm going to go check on the others," she said. The others who were, in all likelihood, still exactly as unconscious as they'd been three minutes ago when she'd presumably last checked. I didn't point that out.

"Sure. Let me know how they're doing," I said instead. She nodded once and left, the door drifting most of the way closed behind her and letting in that thin strip of hallway light again, the muffled sound of the wind-up music box still cycling through its patient handful of notes somewhere further in the building. I looked back up at the ceiling and breathed my shallow breaths. I stayed there a while…