>>
|
1177ca.jpg
Red Ruby Pouncer
1177ca
>>186477
I stay in my place for some time, waiting for the worst pain to pass by, and perhaps seeing whether I could repair by myself. Unsurprisingly, I can't.
I start to feel around myself with my only remaining hand - a painful process, even that - also letting the damage reports flood over my screen.
CRITICAL DAMAGE SUSTAINED. MAINTENANCE IS RECOMMENDED. No shit.
My spine has been fractured on two places: the severity of the damage would be enough to put any normal man on wheelchair for the rest of their life, but thankfully it is not quite as big an issue for myself. If it was, after all, then how could I move my legs until now anyway? Unfortunately, it gives me a significant risk for further injury, enough of which could prove fatal, and it bloody hurts too.
Three of my ribs have snapped clean off, and there are further fractures along my ribcage and my collarbone. I find the broken pieces from inside my machinery, and collect them to my hand. [RIBS added to inventory]
Thankfully, my inner machinery has not been as severely damaged as I initially feared. I was lucky enough to suffer practically no harm to the systems that control and regulate my cybernetics: only those maintaining my flesh and other human parts, none of which I have anymore, have been damaged. They are of no consenquence for now, but should the opportunity ever arise to restore myself to full life and health, it would be necessary to fix these as well.
Finally, my bionic arm has shattered to a thousand pieces. Some metal bone is protruding from it, several wires dangling miserably in the air. I look at it somewhat melancholically: it had been with me for more than a half of my life, and cost a fortune when I had first installed it. I cannot survive for long with just one arm, I think, so I will need to fix this quickly as well.
Looking at all this damage makes me reflect that I am an old, fragile thing, my bones brittled, metal rusted, and most systems barely working or not at all. It's not just the most recent injuries I need to fix: a much more thorough maintenance is, sooner or later, required.
I get up on my elbows, painful as it is, and survey my surroundings. There is blood everywhere, chunks of meat and metal scattered around me. I can see the lower body of some weird creature, the size of a wolf, its tail and hindlegs and spine orphaned on the ground. There is another similar body further away, except for being entirely whole: I suppose it could be mistaken for a very large and very ugly dog, from some distance, but upon close it is very clearly not such. It is entirely black, with two rows of massive teeth, horns growing all over from its spine, and three uneven, gleaming red eyes of different sizes in its forehead. It has a large tongue, dangling from between its teeth and lying on the ground. As I watch, it twitches violently, and I shrudder.
Jeb is still sitting next to me, having produced a medical pack and opened it on the ground next to me. As I watch, he cleans up his wounds and applies bandages on them. "Listen, thanks for saving my life," he tells me as he notices me watching, his voice trying to be brave but showing the pain he is going through. "I think, if you hadn't been here, these buggers would've been the end of me..." He coughs.
>>186516
"So, what kind of food did you find?" I ask purely so that we would have something to talk about, very much doubting they could help me in any manner I can see: my metal parts do not benefit from human cuisine, and the entirety of my digestive tract has been lost to the ravages of time long ago anyway. He tells me that the crates contain many different kinds of canned and dry-packaged foodstuffs, while the ice chests are mostly filled with meat and frozen vegetables.
"We grow our food, but very slowly," he narrates. "There just isn't enough to stuff a hundred mouths, so we've got to regulate. And any extra stuff always helps." He smiles exhaustedly.
|