LOG: [Forge, Marius] Arrest
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xp_logsForge and Marius in the Medlab, Thursday afternoon.
Someone was opening the door to his room. Marius opened his eyes and turned his head away from the sound of the radio by his bed. A moment of blurriness, and then the figure beyond the plastic of the oxygen tend resolved itself into something approaching normal.
"Oh. Forge. . . . 'Afternoon." He was fairly certain that was right. He was feeling a little lightheaded. Almost unconsciously he shifted his right hand beneath his blanket, placing a thin barrier of cloth between his friend and the abnormally dark flesh. Marius rubbed his eyes with his other hand, trying to ignore the loose, slippery feel of the skin over his left cheekbone. "Pardon the mess. Haven't had the chance to tidy up yet."
Forge tucked his head through the sheets of plastic, sniffing disdainfully at the too-sweet smell of the oxygenated air. "Yeah, this whole Medlab Bohemian lifestyle really isn't going to do a lot for your GQ image. Does wonders for putting the medical staff all in a state, however. And let me tell you, if I ever have to distract Czarina Voght by talking about her studies back in Novogorod? I'm going to set myself on fire."
He cocked his head, inspecting the patches of dark, almost leathery skin along Marius' cheek and shoulder. "So what're they saying, some sort of skin condition? Paige was trying to figure out what would cause lung problems and a skin rash. She's been mumbling about lupus, vasculitis, and West Nile all morning."
"Still no luck with the lungs, but as to the other, yeah, looks like I've contracted the skin condition known as 'sodding nightmare of a secondary mutation.'" Marius coughed shallowly and took a drink of water from the tray by his bedside. "Moira got the biopsy results back a bit ago. Theory so far runs that my little jaunt through Merry Teleportation Hell earlier this month saw my body through with a bit more damage than was deemed acceptable what with the almost dying, so it's gone a bit mental in an attempt to overcompensate. Adaptin'. Again. If all goes well I can look forward to a future bereft of life-endangerin' chemical burns." He coughed again, harshly. "I'm beside myself with joy, as you can see."
Forge gritted his teeth, torn between sympathy and frustration with Marius' condition. "You met Mr. al-Rashid, remember? Cybernetic legs, booted you in the head? His body didn't come with a protection against his own power. Burned his own legs off when he manifested. So you're having a bit of a reaction. It's infinitely preferable to winding up as Marius the Skinless Wonder every time your power kicks in."
He stroked his chin thoughtfully. "That doesn't explain the breathing problems, though. Doc Moira said your internals looked fine on the X-rays. Which is why Paige is thinking you may have picked up some kind of virus or something."
"Yeah, I know Haroun. Helped me with rehabilitation, remember? Also attacked him twice. One remembers these things." Marius raked at his chest miserably, fingers clawing around the sensors. His head hurt, and he couldn't seem to hold a decent breath. He'd been having spells of it for days, but the persistence of it had only started a few hours ago. The tent was supplying pure oxygen, but the air didn't seem . . . heavy enough.
Beneath his fingernails more skin shredded.
"I can't keep endin' up in here." The words were level, carefully modulated and measured. "I can't keep on like this, mate. I can't do it. Here, this place just . . ." His tenuous control cracked. Face twisting, Marius forced his hand away from the splitting flesh of his chest and back onto the bed. "Just no more."
To hell with medical regs, Forge figured, easing his way through the plastic tent to Marius' bedside, placing a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Look, they're going to figure this out, okay? Trust me, if there was something I could build, something I could design that'd stop this, I would. In an instant, you know that, right?"
"Yeah. I know." Two deep breaths, eyes fixed on the iron ring that supported the plastic of the tent above his bed. Steady, breathe steady. Right. Keeping it together. A St. Croix did not break. Marius closed his eyes.
"Funny you should say," he said after a moment, "because I've been meanin' to ask. Tell me, mate, that power neutralizer -- any shot of you rebuildin' it?"
Forge immediately took his hand off Marius' shoulder and stepped back. "No," he said flatly. "God, you think I... do you have any idea what building that DID to me? I mean... just, no."
Bunching his hands up into fists, Forge turned, weakly punching the wall in restrained anger. "Jesus, Marius. Do you have any idea what that would probably do to you? Even if it could reverse this condition, there's no guarantee you wouldn't still need to feed - and without any power to do so? You'd be trading this inconvenience for death by starvation. Furthermore... fuck, you don't even understand what you're asking, do you?"
"No. Probably not. Because truth be told, since I got here I haven't understood anything." Heat rose in his voice, and he couldn't be bothered to check it anymore. Marius' hands tightened against his sheets, brown and grey against linen, knuckles whitening. "Eighty-seven people I fixed. Eighty-seven people. I put them back, I made them right again after what Masque did. You, too. So why is it that every time another one of my 'inconveniences' happens an' I lose an' I lose I've got nothin' but to get on with it? You're the expert, Forge, so you explain it to me so I can understand. Tell me. How is this fair?"
Why can't anyone help me?
"Lose and lose?" Forge repeated, whirling to face his suitemate. "They can figure out what's wrong with you, Marius. They can fix you. You've got the world's expert on mutant genetics working personally on your condition, you've got geniuses concentrating on this. If it can be remedied, it will."
Marius choked a laugh. A laugh, so it couldn't be a sob. He wasn't going to cry. Not even if it felt like his chest was in a vise. Not even if the sickening antiseptic stench of this place was suffocating him, drowning him, had been drowning him ever since he'd been put back here three days ago. And not even if he could feel all the weight and the helplessness and the horror of the past year coming down on him now, and knew that in spite of struggling with every shred of strength and will he possessed trying to push it away was like holding back water with his bare hands.
Even if, even if.
"I love Moira," Marius said, his voice so low it was almost a whisper. "She's doin' what she can. But figure it out? I've been here nine months now, an' all it gets is worse. Even when it's not somethin' like this, how often am I down here after an attack or beggin' a meal?" He turned his eyes away from his friend, fixing them on the leathery skin of the exposed hand clutched at his side. "You know it, mate. Some things you just can't fix."
Throwing his hands in the air, Forge paced up and down by the side of Marius' bed. "So what, you're going to just lie there like an invalid and accept that? No. Screw that. Funny that you can have all this pride when things are roses but the minute things turn black, look who's giving up. Hey," he chided, reaching out and grabbing Marius' jaw. "Look at me..."
Even in the part of Forge's brain that expected horrifying things from everyday occurrences, he didn't expect his suitemate's chin to split under his touch, olive skin cracking back to reveal dark grey underneath. Reflexively, Forge recoiled, breathing expletives.
Marius wrenched back, and there was a tug at his face as the patch of skin caught in the joint of Forge's prosthetic and tore away. His stomach heaved with instinctive nausea -- a spasm of muscle which suddenly became something far different. Marius had time for one small, abortive choke, and then the air drained from his lungs like water through a sieve.
One quick scream, then Marius' mouth was moving without a sound. Forge blinked, then the sounds of the monitors going off jerked him back to reality. "Shit! Shit shit!" he stammered, trying to make sense of things. The big monitor above Marius' bed was filled with information Forge didn't understand. The big red number was spiking from 90 to 110 to 115, the blinking box that said "O2" was counting down from 75, and the wavy lines were going everywhere like a seismograph.
Except for the blue one that read PULM. Even with his limited knowledge of medical terminology, Forge knew what the flat blue line meant and before he knew it, his fist was hammering the call button.
"Forge to any medical staff, Marius is in pulmonary arrest! Um... O2 is going down and this BP... um... blood pressure! It's all over the place! What do I do?"
"You get out of my way," came a crisp voice from the door as Amelia all but flowed into the room, so fast that she might as well have teleported. She took in what the monitors were telling her with one glance and immediately blurred back into motion. "'Come and work at my school, Amelia,'" she muttered in a very good impression of the Professor's measured accent, grabbing what she needed to intubate Marius and getting to work. "'It will be a relaxing change from your work overseas.'"
Unyielding hands pushed him back onto his bed, then held his head still. Cold metal slid into his mouth and over his tongue. Marius gagged as the J-tube forced open the epiglottis, plastic scraping against the inside of his throat as the guide was inserted. Amelia's face filled his world; a pale, implacable mask, green eyes focused and intent as she guided the tube home. Her auburn hair was almost black in the halo of the fluorescent light behind her. Calm, came the mildly astonished thought as his vision began to darken. She looked so calm. He wondered if that would be the last thing he'd see.
"Breathe, boy," Amelia murmured, her eyes flickering back to the monitors. "I won't have any of you dying on me. That's not to be allowed."
Forge backed away, half-paralyzed by shock, half-intrigued by the numbers and readout on the monitor. Concentrate on something, don't lose it, don't lose it...
O2 sats... blood oxygen saturation! Dropping because his body's using up all the oxygen in his blood because his lungs aren't taking any oxygen in thus his heart rate and blood pressure are going crazy which uses more oxygen which his lungs aren't taking in because...
Forge pressed his palms to his eyes. It was a circular system. Problems cannot spring from themselves, dammit, he insisted to himself. Cause and effect. Cause and...
He opened his eyes to see the chair against the wall. Where the plastic tub had held Marius' belongings after his teleportation accident.
Items: Watch, broken. Wallet, partially melted. Clothing, samples of hydrogen sulfate...
The nursery rhyme came to Forge's lips unbidden. "Mary took a little drink..." He smiled despite the chaos, sprinting out of the Medlab shouting "Keep him alive for two minutes more!"
"... keep him alive, indeed." Amelia's eyes narrowed slightly, her version of an infuriated look. "~Mad children,~" she murmured in Russian, her attention fully back on Marius. "~I live in a house of mad children.~"
Forge practically bounced off the wall as he raced down to the chemistry laboratory. "Mary took a little drink, now Mary is no more..." he muttered as he leaped through the opening doors, bypassing the decontaminant shower. No experiments today, just... supply cabinet!
Smashing the lock with his prosthetic hand rather than go searching for the key, Forge scanned the shelves as fast as he could. "Mary took a little drink, now Mary is no more... for what she thought was H2O..."
His hand shot out like a snake, grabbing a sealed bottle from the shelf.
"...was H2SO4."
Amelia was still above him, working. Marius felt the air moving through his lungs, but it was just movement. Nothing was holding. His hands grasped the railing of his bed, strangely conscious of the dull pain in his palms as the mouths convulsed uselessly against the stainless steel. Last time Jay and Kyle had been there to save him. This was different. A healing factor couldn't help him now. His eyes fell closed, grip slackening.
I still don't understand.
The Medlab door burst open as Forge barrelled into it, his one-hundred-thirty-five pound frame moving he was doing his best Juggernaut impression. "Move!" he shouted as he tore the side of the oxygen tent away to get access to Marius. "His lungs have adapted," Forge exclaimed, giving voice to his deductions. "The same way I'll bet his skin is, adapting to survive in that environment he teleported through. Moira and Paige found traces of highly concentrated sulfuric acid in his clothes, but they weren't burned. That means it was vaporized."
He held up the bottle in one hand as he stripped his shirt off with the other. "Simply, there isn't enough acid in the air for him to breathe!"
Holding the glass bottle in his prosthetic hand, Forge wrapped the shirt around it as tightly as he could. No time to disconnect tactile sensors, he thought before he clenched his hand into a fist, the acid pouring out and saturating the rag.
Before Amelia could move, Forge lunged forward, holding the acid-soaked rag over Marius' mouth and nose, pressing on his solar plexus with his other hand. "Breathe, dammit! You are not giving up on this, not now!"
The blow jerked his lungs into contraction. The vapor was foul, and sharp, but it had the one thing the oxygen of the tent had been lacking: substance. Marius shuddered and gagged again, this time at the introduction of usable air. The corrosive dampness of the rag soaked into the skin around his nose and mouth, tingling, dissolving. Marius didn't care. One hand shot up to press the prosthetic hard against his face, gasping air in gulps. The blackness that had swallowed his vision evaporated in a hot rush.
Breathe, the thought sounded somewhere beyond the roar of blood in his ears. Marius clutched his friend's hand to him, eyes tearing. In, and out. In, and out. Holding, and getting stronger. Breathe.
"His vitals are returning to normal," Amelia said after another moment, as if observing that the sky was blue. Her lips were tight, however, as she peered at Forge's hand where it was holding the rag against Marius's face. "We will need to come up with some way..." She trailed off, shaking her head. "We need to speak to Moira."
Forge stepped back, letting Marius breathe on his own through the makeshift filter. "She'll know how much he needs to keep breathing, until you guys can set him right. I can... I can rig up a respirator for him, something to keep his lungs working. I can do that."
He backed away, then his face twitched as he held up his metal hand, deep lines etched through his hand and forearm from the acid, tarnished black streaks still smoking into the air. "...and I could really use some painkillers right now..." he gasped.
Someone was opening the door to his room. Marius opened his eyes and turned his head away from the sound of the radio by his bed. A moment of blurriness, and then the figure beyond the plastic of the oxygen tend resolved itself into something approaching normal.
"Oh. Forge. . . . 'Afternoon." He was fairly certain that was right. He was feeling a little lightheaded. Almost unconsciously he shifted his right hand beneath his blanket, placing a thin barrier of cloth between his friend and the abnormally dark flesh. Marius rubbed his eyes with his other hand, trying to ignore the loose, slippery feel of the skin over his left cheekbone. "Pardon the mess. Haven't had the chance to tidy up yet."
Forge tucked his head through the sheets of plastic, sniffing disdainfully at the too-sweet smell of the oxygenated air. "Yeah, this whole Medlab Bohemian lifestyle really isn't going to do a lot for your GQ image. Does wonders for putting the medical staff all in a state, however. And let me tell you, if I ever have to distract Czarina Voght by talking about her studies back in Novogorod? I'm going to set myself on fire."
He cocked his head, inspecting the patches of dark, almost leathery skin along Marius' cheek and shoulder. "So what're they saying, some sort of skin condition? Paige was trying to figure out what would cause lung problems and a skin rash. She's been mumbling about lupus, vasculitis, and West Nile all morning."
"Still no luck with the lungs, but as to the other, yeah, looks like I've contracted the skin condition known as 'sodding nightmare of a secondary mutation.'" Marius coughed shallowly and took a drink of water from the tray by his bedside. "Moira got the biopsy results back a bit ago. Theory so far runs that my little jaunt through Merry Teleportation Hell earlier this month saw my body through with a bit more damage than was deemed acceptable what with the almost dying, so it's gone a bit mental in an attempt to overcompensate. Adaptin'. Again. If all goes well I can look forward to a future bereft of life-endangerin' chemical burns." He coughed again, harshly. "I'm beside myself with joy, as you can see."
Forge gritted his teeth, torn between sympathy and frustration with Marius' condition. "You met Mr. al-Rashid, remember? Cybernetic legs, booted you in the head? His body didn't come with a protection against his own power. Burned his own legs off when he manifested. So you're having a bit of a reaction. It's infinitely preferable to winding up as Marius the Skinless Wonder every time your power kicks in."
He stroked his chin thoughtfully. "That doesn't explain the breathing problems, though. Doc Moira said your internals looked fine on the X-rays. Which is why Paige is thinking you may have picked up some kind of virus or something."
"Yeah, I know Haroun. Helped me with rehabilitation, remember? Also attacked him twice. One remembers these things." Marius raked at his chest miserably, fingers clawing around the sensors. His head hurt, and he couldn't seem to hold a decent breath. He'd been having spells of it for days, but the persistence of it had only started a few hours ago. The tent was supplying pure oxygen, but the air didn't seem . . . heavy enough.
Beneath his fingernails more skin shredded.
"I can't keep endin' up in here." The words were level, carefully modulated and measured. "I can't keep on like this, mate. I can't do it. Here, this place just . . ." His tenuous control cracked. Face twisting, Marius forced his hand away from the splitting flesh of his chest and back onto the bed. "Just no more."
To hell with medical regs, Forge figured, easing his way through the plastic tent to Marius' bedside, placing a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Look, they're going to figure this out, okay? Trust me, if there was something I could build, something I could design that'd stop this, I would. In an instant, you know that, right?"
"Yeah. I know." Two deep breaths, eyes fixed on the iron ring that supported the plastic of the tent above his bed. Steady, breathe steady. Right. Keeping it together. A St. Croix did not break. Marius closed his eyes.
"Funny you should say," he said after a moment, "because I've been meanin' to ask. Tell me, mate, that power neutralizer -- any shot of you rebuildin' it?"
Forge immediately took his hand off Marius' shoulder and stepped back. "No," he said flatly. "God, you think I... do you have any idea what building that DID to me? I mean... just, no."
Bunching his hands up into fists, Forge turned, weakly punching the wall in restrained anger. "Jesus, Marius. Do you have any idea what that would probably do to you? Even if it could reverse this condition, there's no guarantee you wouldn't still need to feed - and without any power to do so? You'd be trading this inconvenience for death by starvation. Furthermore... fuck, you don't even understand what you're asking, do you?"
"No. Probably not. Because truth be told, since I got here I haven't understood anything." Heat rose in his voice, and he couldn't be bothered to check it anymore. Marius' hands tightened against his sheets, brown and grey against linen, knuckles whitening. "Eighty-seven people I fixed. Eighty-seven people. I put them back, I made them right again after what Masque did. You, too. So why is it that every time another one of my 'inconveniences' happens an' I lose an' I lose I've got nothin' but to get on with it? You're the expert, Forge, so you explain it to me so I can understand. Tell me. How is this fair?"
Why can't anyone help me?
"Lose and lose?" Forge repeated, whirling to face his suitemate. "They can figure out what's wrong with you, Marius. They can fix you. You've got the world's expert on mutant genetics working personally on your condition, you've got geniuses concentrating on this. If it can be remedied, it will."
Marius choked a laugh. A laugh, so it couldn't be a sob. He wasn't going to cry. Not even if it felt like his chest was in a vise. Not even if the sickening antiseptic stench of this place was suffocating him, drowning him, had been drowning him ever since he'd been put back here three days ago. And not even if he could feel all the weight and the helplessness and the horror of the past year coming down on him now, and knew that in spite of struggling with every shred of strength and will he possessed trying to push it away was like holding back water with his bare hands.
Even if, even if.
"I love Moira," Marius said, his voice so low it was almost a whisper. "She's doin' what she can. But figure it out? I've been here nine months now, an' all it gets is worse. Even when it's not somethin' like this, how often am I down here after an attack or beggin' a meal?" He turned his eyes away from his friend, fixing them on the leathery skin of the exposed hand clutched at his side. "You know it, mate. Some things you just can't fix."
Throwing his hands in the air, Forge paced up and down by the side of Marius' bed. "So what, you're going to just lie there like an invalid and accept that? No. Screw that. Funny that you can have all this pride when things are roses but the minute things turn black, look who's giving up. Hey," he chided, reaching out and grabbing Marius' jaw. "Look at me..."
Even in the part of Forge's brain that expected horrifying things from everyday occurrences, he didn't expect his suitemate's chin to split under his touch, olive skin cracking back to reveal dark grey underneath. Reflexively, Forge recoiled, breathing expletives.
Marius wrenched back, and there was a tug at his face as the patch of skin caught in the joint of Forge's prosthetic and tore away. His stomach heaved with instinctive nausea -- a spasm of muscle which suddenly became something far different. Marius had time for one small, abortive choke, and then the air drained from his lungs like water through a sieve.
One quick scream, then Marius' mouth was moving without a sound. Forge blinked, then the sounds of the monitors going off jerked him back to reality. "Shit! Shit shit!" he stammered, trying to make sense of things. The big monitor above Marius' bed was filled with information Forge didn't understand. The big red number was spiking from 90 to 110 to 115, the blinking box that said "O2" was counting down from 75, and the wavy lines were going everywhere like a seismograph.
Except for the blue one that read PULM. Even with his limited knowledge of medical terminology, Forge knew what the flat blue line meant and before he knew it, his fist was hammering the call button.
"Forge to any medical staff, Marius is in pulmonary arrest! Um... O2 is going down and this BP... um... blood pressure! It's all over the place! What do I do?"
"You get out of my way," came a crisp voice from the door as Amelia all but flowed into the room, so fast that she might as well have teleported. She took in what the monitors were telling her with one glance and immediately blurred back into motion. "'Come and work at my school, Amelia,'" she muttered in a very good impression of the Professor's measured accent, grabbing what she needed to intubate Marius and getting to work. "'It will be a relaxing change from your work overseas.'"
Unyielding hands pushed him back onto his bed, then held his head still. Cold metal slid into his mouth and over his tongue. Marius gagged as the J-tube forced open the epiglottis, plastic scraping against the inside of his throat as the guide was inserted. Amelia's face filled his world; a pale, implacable mask, green eyes focused and intent as she guided the tube home. Her auburn hair was almost black in the halo of the fluorescent light behind her. Calm, came the mildly astonished thought as his vision began to darken. She looked so calm. He wondered if that would be the last thing he'd see.
"Breathe, boy," Amelia murmured, her eyes flickering back to the monitors. "I won't have any of you dying on me. That's not to be allowed."
Forge backed away, half-paralyzed by shock, half-intrigued by the numbers and readout on the monitor. Concentrate on something, don't lose it, don't lose it...
O2 sats... blood oxygen saturation! Dropping because his body's using up all the oxygen in his blood because his lungs aren't taking any oxygen in thus his heart rate and blood pressure are going crazy which uses more oxygen which his lungs aren't taking in because...
Forge pressed his palms to his eyes. It was a circular system. Problems cannot spring from themselves, dammit, he insisted to himself. Cause and effect. Cause and...
He opened his eyes to see the chair against the wall. Where the plastic tub had held Marius' belongings after his teleportation accident.
Items: Watch, broken. Wallet, partially melted. Clothing, samples of hydrogen sulfate...
The nursery rhyme came to Forge's lips unbidden. "Mary took a little drink..." He smiled despite the chaos, sprinting out of the Medlab shouting "Keep him alive for two minutes more!"
"... keep him alive, indeed." Amelia's eyes narrowed slightly, her version of an infuriated look. "~Mad children,~" she murmured in Russian, her attention fully back on Marius. "~I live in a house of mad children.~"
Forge practically bounced off the wall as he raced down to the chemistry laboratory. "Mary took a little drink, now Mary is no more..." he muttered as he leaped through the opening doors, bypassing the decontaminant shower. No experiments today, just... supply cabinet!
Smashing the lock with his prosthetic hand rather than go searching for the key, Forge scanned the shelves as fast as he could. "Mary took a little drink, now Mary is no more... for what she thought was H2O..."
His hand shot out like a snake, grabbing a sealed bottle from the shelf.
"...was H2SO4."
Amelia was still above him, working. Marius felt the air moving through his lungs, but it was just movement. Nothing was holding. His hands grasped the railing of his bed, strangely conscious of the dull pain in his palms as the mouths convulsed uselessly against the stainless steel. Last time Jay and Kyle had been there to save him. This was different. A healing factor couldn't help him now. His eyes fell closed, grip slackening.
I still don't understand.
The Medlab door burst open as Forge barrelled into it, his one-hundred-thirty-five pound frame moving he was doing his best Juggernaut impression. "Move!" he shouted as he tore the side of the oxygen tent away to get access to Marius. "His lungs have adapted," Forge exclaimed, giving voice to his deductions. "The same way I'll bet his skin is, adapting to survive in that environment he teleported through. Moira and Paige found traces of highly concentrated sulfuric acid in his clothes, but they weren't burned. That means it was vaporized."
He held up the bottle in one hand as he stripped his shirt off with the other. "Simply, there isn't enough acid in the air for him to breathe!"
Holding the glass bottle in his prosthetic hand, Forge wrapped the shirt around it as tightly as he could. No time to disconnect tactile sensors, he thought before he clenched his hand into a fist, the acid pouring out and saturating the rag.
Before Amelia could move, Forge lunged forward, holding the acid-soaked rag over Marius' mouth and nose, pressing on his solar plexus with his other hand. "Breathe, dammit! You are not giving up on this, not now!"
The blow jerked his lungs into contraction. The vapor was foul, and sharp, but it had the one thing the oxygen of the tent had been lacking: substance. Marius shuddered and gagged again, this time at the introduction of usable air. The corrosive dampness of the rag soaked into the skin around his nose and mouth, tingling, dissolving. Marius didn't care. One hand shot up to press the prosthetic hard against his face, gasping air in gulps. The blackness that had swallowed his vision evaporated in a hot rush.
Breathe, the thought sounded somewhere beyond the roar of blood in his ears. Marius clutched his friend's hand to him, eyes tearing. In, and out. In, and out. Holding, and getting stronger. Breathe.
"His vitals are returning to normal," Amelia said after another moment, as if observing that the sky was blue. Her lips were tight, however, as she peered at Forge's hand where it was holding the rag against Marius's face. "We will need to come up with some way..." She trailed off, shaking her head. "We need to speak to Moira."
Forge stepped back, letting Marius breathe on his own through the makeshift filter. "She'll know how much he needs to keep breathing, until you guys can set him right. I can... I can rig up a respirator for him, something to keep his lungs working. I can do that."
He backed away, then his face twitched as he held up his metal hand, deep lines etched through his hand and forearm from the acid, tarnished black streaks still smoking into the air. "...and I could really use some painkillers right now..." he gasped.
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Date: 2006-06-30 12:10 am (UTC)