Issues with Respawning (1)

--Gatix--

“Three weeks...” I took a sip of the white gunk handed to me earlier. The doctor had called it oatmeal. I had other unflattering names in mind.

“Three weeks and three days.” Boss nodded from his chair at the foot-end of my bed. “A miracle, honestly...”

“What exactly happened to me?' I asked while bringing another spoonful of gunk to my face. I didn't taste anything, but I suspect that was the point.

“Dax, care to fill him in?”

“I'll start with your physical injuries.” Dax tapped his tablet as he spoke. “Moving from top to bottom: concussion, no brain hemorrhaging. Dislocated right shoulder, medium bruising on upper right arm. Five broken ribs, two of which contained multiple fractures. Bruising on the spine but no cracked vertebrae. Cracked right hip, broken right tibia, and fibula. Both your femurs were broken. Four broken toes, two additional cracked.” He looked up from his tablet. “You are lucky to have kept your right leg.”

“Marvels of nanite-infused medicine at work.” Boss nodded his thanks at Dax. “Played chicken with a train, Gatix?”

“If only.” I swallowed some more of the gruel. “You said `physical', which implies something else.”

“Indeed: we suspect the teleporter may have inflicted some additional neurological damage.”

“Seem to be feeling fine.”

“You were in a coma for sixteen hours.” Boss answered. “Some of the men started a bettering pool whether you'd woke up.”

“What were the odds?”

“Nine to one you'd be proclaimed dead in five days.”

I grinned. “That's what you get for betting on a sure thing.”

“They nearly had it. You stopped breathing for thirty seconds on the second day, but the machines caught it in time. It took two hours to stabilize you.”

“Glad to see the Reaper is still scared of me. What's the damage?”

Dax tapped on his tablet again. “We found small sections of decreased neurological activity.”

“Meaning what? Loss of movement, loss of intelligence?”

“No, the damage is limited to your occipital lobes. You may suffer symptoms such as hallucinations or temporary vision loss. Possibly increased difficulty in reading, but I cannot say for sure. The brain is outside my area of expertise.”

“So if I see any aliens running around, don't shoot them. Can it be fixed?”

“Not with any natural means. We have adjusted our treatment to include some experimental drugs to help in this regard. There has been a small uptick in neural activity between your arrival and now, but I doubt your brain will fully return to normal, at least not in the imminent future.”

“You sure this is the teleporter?”

“The damage is too localized to have come from the concussion, and we have not detected any other cranial trauma.”

“I see.” I put the gruel back on the tray. “So when are you sending me back out?”

“You're shitting me.” Boss narrowed his eyes. “You just woke up from a coma and want to go back out?”

“Client needs the trisortium, and wouldn't you believe it, I had some before I got my ass handed to me on a silver platter.”

“About that...” Boss leaned back in his chair. “What happened there? We asked Nev, but we're having a hard time following. Magic? Skeletons? A dragon? Please don't tell me you've been exposing the AI to your fantasy novels.”

“I wish,” I replied with a laugh. “Nah, Boss, he's right. Teleported, solved some grievances from last time, shot a snake in the head, pissed off some regenerating skeletons, and picked a fight with a dragon skeleton. The last one maybe not have been such a smart decision.”

“It seems the AI actually spoke the truth.” Dax raised an eyebrow at Boss.

“So it would seem.” The Boss only shook his head in disbelief. “You said you had some trisortium?”

“Nev thinks so. It looked like a bunch of rocks to me. I got it from the snake.”

“Dax...” The Boss didn't turn his gaze away from me. “Did Nev say something about a snake? Otherwise, I think his brain damage might be worse than you thought.”

“The AI mentioned some kind of `Seer' if I understood it correctly.”

“Yup, that's the snake. The disgusting thing looked like a seven-meter-long cobra with arms.” Boss didn't have a reply to that. “Telling ya the truth, nothing wrong with my head.”

“Dax says otherwise.”

“Join me and I'll show you.” The scientist merely shook his head. “Then give me a camera.”

“Your suit has one, but the internal hard drive was destroyed. We only have Nev's logs at our disposal and those don't contain video, hence why we're asking you.”

“Add redundancy?”

“The matter is being looked into as we speak.”

“Add a pistol to the list as well. A little backup if Scythe overheats.”

Dax shot a look at Boss who replied with a nod. “I'll see to the matter.”

Boss cleared his throat. “Circling back, you said you had some trisortium?” I answered with a nod. “What happened to it?”

“I asked somebody to look after it.”

“Who?”

The Demon Queen. Best not to say that. If a seven-meter talking snake was hard to believe, they wouldn't go for a red lady shooting fire out of her hands. “A local gal who helped me.”

“Nev's logs indicate you had extensive conversations with an `Azala'?” Dax raised an eyebrow in question.

“Yup, that's the one.”

“He says she's a Queen of some kind?”

“She did mention something like that, but I haven't seen her kingdom. Might as well be self-proclaimed for all I know.”

“What's she look like?”

“Red and horny.”

“Moving on...” Boss only shook his head. “Considering the state you arrived in, what makes you think she'll be alive?”

She can drop firebombs from half a kilometer away. “She was retreating when I fell, and all the skeletons were focused on me. My intuition says she got away. In case she didn't, I had about fifty grams of trisortium. You said there were two kilos of the stuff on that world?”

“Three,” interjected Dax.

“I see.” Boss nodded, putting his hands on his knees in a motion to stand up.

“Yup, we should be good. So when am I going back out?”

“Prove you're healthy, then we'll talk. You should be discharged in a few days, barring the doc finding anything wrong with you. Therapy starts after that.”

“Makes sense.”

“Dax will also need some time to get you a new suit. Everything should pan out well.”

“Hang on, now?”

“Your suit was damaged beyond repair. We had to cut you out, and considering your state at the time, rather quickly. It saved your life but wrecked the suit. Dax is building you a new one with some enhancements.”

“Guess I should say thanks.” I turned to the scientist who nodded in turn. “But remember the pistol.”

“I won't forget.”

“With that settled, think we should give the patient some rest. Let's go, Dax.”

“Rest well, Agent.” Dax walked out of the room, but Boss grabbed hold of the door on his way out. “Mind if I ask something a bit more... crude, Gatix?”

What was with that smile of his? Outwardly I replied with a shrug. “You're the boss, can't exactly say no.”

“You're not exactly a people person, so how did you get this Azala, a queen no less, to not only talk to you, but do you a favor?”

“Shot somebody she didn't like through the head. She liked that.”

Boss gave a hearty laugh. “Only you, Gatix.”