chocolate chip mint and vanilla with sprinkles, butterscotch and malt
Story: Timeless { backstory | index }
Title: Heaven
Rating: G/PG
Challenge: Chocolate Chip Mint #28: lumpy, Vanilla #16: unexpected luxuries/simple pleasures
Toppings/Extras: butterscotch, sprinkles, malt
Wordcount: 651
Summary: EC-15 wakes up after her operation.
Notes: Follows Cogs. I just couldn’t leave it there. BtS reward prompt #87: Help me get my feet back on the ground.
The first thing EC-15 noticed when her eyes opened blearily was the extreme discomfort around her midsection. For a while her thoughts whirled kaleidoscopically, unused to not waking up to the harsh alarm bells that pierced the Dorms every morning before sunrise. Then she realised that she wasn’t in the Dorms.
Then she remembered that the last thing she had been doing before she awoke had been dying.
This jerked a reaction from her and she peeled her eyes open again, dry throat emitting a surprised rasp to find that she was not on some heavenly plane but in the medical bay of the Facility. Both things were similar in her mind though: very white and very clean. She struggled to sit up and felt a sharp pain jolt across her front.
Somehow she felt very heavy. Although the pain she felt now was nothing on the unadulterated torture of being impaled on a spiked shaft...
Footsteps clicked across the tiles somewhere to her left.
“You’re awake,” said the soft-spoken Child next to her. He wasn’t exactly a child any more though-he was in his late teens and dressed in the white tunic of the helpers in the medical bay. He looked a little bit angelic and once more she considered the idea that she was in heaven. Ten-year-old EC-15 flopped back against the pillow.
“What happened?”
“Do you remember the obstacle course?” he asked her gently. She nodded, trying not to wince. “Dr Blackledge operated on you after that and we managed to... bring you back.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Um, we had to do a lot of replacements. You lost most of your lower digestive tract and we couldn’t save your liver, though we actually had a spare kidney... which was handy... and the rest is cybernetic now. There was spinal injury too, but that’s... um, sorted.”
She had a feeling that he wasn’t going through a comprehensive list of her injuries merely to save her the horror. He needn’t have bothered-she had experienced the horror with every sense she possessed.
EC-15 put a hand over her belly under the thin blankets of the narrow hospital cot. There were hard lumps beneath her scarred skin. It was still a little sore, but she pressed down a little harder and felt her finger glide over something rigid. There were a few moments of silence as the stranger stood uncomfortably by the side of her bed.
“What’s your serial?” she finally asked.
He hesitated.
“AG-2,” he finally said. “I was there for the operation.”
“Oh,” EC-15 said. She put a hand to her shoulder and twiddled the loose strands of her blackish hair there before moving her hands to rest on her stomach, this time over the covers. Her hands were pale and slightly crinkled, like they’d always been. She felt surprisingly similar to how she had before the accident.
If she were quiet enough, would she hear her new cogs turning?
“Well, if you need anything...” AG-2 said, taking a faltering step away from the bed, eyes averted from the young girl. He didn’t want to look pitying. Anything but that.
“How long am I going to be here?” she asked him quickly, before he could escape.
“You’re not going to be completely healed for a month at least,” he said, leaning over the end of her bed to look at a clipboard hooked there. “And you’re not going to be out training with the rest of your batch for long after that. I’m afraid you will probably never reach the same potential that they do...”
EC-15 let out a deep and happy breath, settling herself back against the pillows, adjusting how she lay to make it more comfortable. A month in bed? And then even more time away from the vigorous training she had faced every day since she could walk?
Perhaps she was in heaven.