The Hospital was as alive as anything in New Rydynn could be. It was more or less "full" of people, activity, interlopers, undesirables, and of course, the dead. The cafeteria was more or less empty, it was a relatively quiet night as Bliss Lovejoy sat eating. She looked up from what the hospital liked to call food as the man known as Caine entered the cafeteria. She waved to him, smiling a bit."Caine. Take a seat." He accepted the seat, casually, melting slowly down into it calmly. Bliss continued to smile at him as he sat across from her. "I have a proposal for you."
"What kind of proposal?" He inquired, looking over at her with his pearl gray eyes.
"It’s simple really, I just need to get home and pick up some things and I need a vehicle bigger than my cycle to do it." She smiled a bit, trying to warm him up. "I was wondering if you could supply me with a large vehicle, maybe a truck, and a driver."
As the two of them talked an aide with the Union of Medics entered the hospital, the faint squeak of rubber souls against cool tile followed her along the still air of the hallway as she moved to the reception desk. She settled her small frame into an uncomfortably stiff chair and signed herself into the duty log.
"Well," Caine said, leaning back thoughtfully, "I can get you a surplus army truck and some drivers. How’s that?"
"That depends, how much of my place are you planning on taking in payment?"
"That depends on what kind of stuff we’re talking about here."
Bliss shrugged. "My gramps had a lot of mechanical equipment in his work area, some inventions, some solar panels, some generators and the like. There’s all the equipment that’s left from my gran’s hydroponics lab, you can have whatever you want, except what I’m going after."
"Well," Caine scratched his chin for a minute "the solar panels and the hydroponics lab should be a fair trade."
Mera, the Union's aide sat silently behind the reception desk, carefully filtering out the conversations around her, listened with a bit of annoyance to the soft music that came from the speakers mounted in the ceiling above her.
"Elliot? With all of the music selections available in your databases, do you have to play the same things over and over again?"
With a mechanical click and a momentary hiss as it’s processors decided upon the proper answer to Mera’s question the computer’s speakers began to play a different selection of music. "No, Mera, I do not." Mera smiled for a bit at the light, spacey feeling selection that Elliot’s speakers began to pipe into the room, leaning back a bit. Her listening was quickly disturbed by the distant rumbling of a dirtbike’s engine as it approached the Hospital. She frowned just a bit, sitting up in her chair to peer out into the night that was wrapping itself delicately over the worn surfaces of New Rydynn, trying to discern the approaching vehicle against the dark curtain that had fallen behind the ruins. She smiled to herself, recognizing the darkly robed figure moving through the destruction strewn about the streets.
The low rumble of the engine grew deeper, pulling up to the steps of the monument to hope that was The New Rydynn Memorial Hospital and the rider got off, quickly securing his bike. He looked around him for only a moment before heading up the brief stairway and heading into the lobby, his black longcoat flowing loosely behind him. He removed the helmet that concealed his face, taking another cautious look around before he proceeded down the hallway, heading towards the cafeteria. He smiled at seeing the kind face of Bliss Lovejoy and quickly made his way over to her. Without so much as a greeting he blurted out the question that had been plaguing his mind.
"He’s dead, isn’t he? Fang-face?" Bliss nodded back at him, smiling a bit at her accomplishment.
"Extremely dead. Unless you think he can come back from a pile of ashes." Shad’s face was stuck between a grin and a frown, showing both his elation at the successful destruction of the embodiment of evil that was ‘Fang-face’ and his disappointment at not being the one who destroyed him. He nodded at Bliss, "I’ve been away, training with some of my dad’s associates, otherwise I would’ve helped you deal with him."
"That’s all right Shad, I hope you enjoyed your trip."
Mera stood up from her seat behind the front desk and wandered towards the cafeteria, seeking some way to ease her boredom. She saw Shad standing near Bliss and Caine and wove through the few people that occupied the cafeteria smiling towards Shad.
"So they finally let you out of here."
He grinned back at her. "Yeah, they did."
"You’re staying out of trouble I hope."
"I wish." He smiled at her.
With a shove the doors to the ER came springing open, revealing the form of Mirandahh Drachenn storming out into the lobby. She carried a box full of worn, soiled parts that looked like they belonged to at least seven different beaten vehicles as she made her way past the swinging doors. Mera turned to the woman, smiling.
"Hiya Mira. You need some help with those?" She nodded to the armload of metal the woman carried.
Ash returned her smile. "Sure." She staggered with her burden towards the desk. Mera intercepted her, accepting half the weight of the box and the two women eased the load onto the desk together.
"What do you have here?" She asked as they put the heavy container down, accompanied by a symphony of metal clashing together. Ash looked up at her for a moment before she began to root through the box.
"I’m salvaging a semi." Mera pulled out a side view mirror and looked at her reflection in it, wiping her sleeve over it, then she looked up at Ash. "Is this for the ambulances, or are you going to trade it?"
"A little of both I think. I would’ve gotten more, but I had to come in." She nodded out the window to the rain that had begun to come pouring down from the heavens, blanketing the ground in a sleek, dark layer of water.
"I understand, I’d hate to be caught out in that." She stared out into the rain where the skeletal remains of an 18-wheeler stood like a giant, decaying beast trapped in the rain, she was able to discern the image of a radiation symbol that adorned the passenger side door. "A Nuke truck, eh? Well, at least the stuff’ll go to better work."
"Yeah, and it was working until that guy with one eye shot up the battery." With that she sat down at an E7 terminal to begin inputting the newly acquired parts into Elliott's databanks.
"I can’t believe that you didn’t have to fight off the scavengers for it."
Ash turned and flashed Mera a knowing smile. "Who says I didn’t?"
As they talked a figure crept through the front doors of the Hospital, dripping wet he leaned heavily against one wall. Mera walked nearer to one of the front windows, wiping a hand across it to see out into the storming night before she saw the man standing against the wall.
"Can I help ye?" She said, turning to face him. The man shook his head, water dripping off of his nose down onto the floor as he tried to keep the last meager dinner he ate down. With a groan he let the weight of his body pull him sliding down along the wall to the floor.
Ash groaned to herself as she worked, not having noticed the man who had entered and now lay crumpled in a pile on the ground. She tilted her head towards one of Elliott's speakers and grimaced.
"Geez. what is Elliot playing now?" Mera didn’t answer, instead she stood still, looking down at the man in concern. Ash turned to look at her and the man who was curled at her feet. Mera knelt down to where he lay, talking softly to him.
"Are you hurt sir, do you need help?" The man squeezed his eyes tightly and moved to open his shirt.
"I’m not sure, let me check." He pulled back the fabric to expose a crudely bandaged wound adorning his chest. "Well, now that you mention it." He put a hand to his head as dizziness began to spin the room around him. "I think I might."
Shad Grey entered the lobby from the hallway leading to the cafeteria, tucking a pistol into his cloak as Mera looked down at the mans old, soiled bandages with disgust. She turned to look at him as he came in and waved him over.
"Shad, could you help me get this man to the ER? He needs help." Shad nodded at her, glancing at the injured man as he walked over and helped Mera lift him. Slowly the three of them made their way into a cubicle in the ER. As they exited the lobby, Mirandahh Drachenn merely watched as the latest victim of random violence was eased into the ER.
Shad helped the man onto the examination table, looking over at Mera. "That it?"
"Yeah, thanks a lot." She replied, giving him a warm smile.
"Not a problem." He said, turning to look at the wounded man one last time before turning to exit the cubicle.
Mera turned her attention from Shad to the nameless man who now sat on the examination table. "So." She said as she had so many countless times to so many other nameless victims of life. "What happened to you?"
He shook his head a bit at her question as he tried to remember. "Well, I’m not really sure." Mera began to remove his shirt to get a better look at what appeared to be a gunshot wound on his left pectoral. "I can remember being cornered in a canyon, being cornered. I can hear a gunshot and I have this feeling like there was a fight, but the next thing I can remember is this, this guys face, it was all messed up and caved in, and...and my hands, I can see my hands covered in blood ... but that’s it." He shook his head again in puzzlement and confusion, trying to sort out the sights and sounds that floated freely through his head.
As Shad Grey walked out of the ER and past the cafeteria Bliss Lovejoy sat staring at Caine from behind a pair of fairly ridiculous looking mirrored glasses, giggling as Caine fixed his hair in the reflection that hid her eyes.
"Like you ever have a hair out of place." Bliss said cracking a smile. Caine gave her a smug smile, agreeing with her before leaning back and slipping into his business "mode."
"Bliss, you’ve been around the Hospital for a while. Have you noticed a lens grinder anyplace?"
"I think I have, I’m pretty sure they have one in the optical lab."
"And that would be where?" His hand found it’s way into his pocket and began to rattle what sounded like glass.
"It’s up one level, out the elevator and to your left. Go down the hallway a bit and it’ll be the second room on your right."
"Thank you." He stood and turned, making his way out through the lobby towards the elevator, passing Shad Grey who stood at the main desk’s Elliot 7 terminal talking to Mirandahh Drachenn. She was humming along to the free, sir-like tune that Elliot was spilling out into the Hospital as she picked up a distributor cap and punched at a few keys on the terminal in front of her. Shad perked an ear to the slow, twisting, winding melody that seemed to linger in the air about him.
"Odd." He said to Ash. "What is this music?"
Elliot answered for Ash, centering his electronic, perpetually happy voice into the waiting room speakers centered about Shad so that the man could better hear his reply. "This evenings selection is Celestial Symphony in D by Gustadd Mozalff." Shad nodded as if the name of the long dead composer meant anything.
"It sounds familiar, yet ... I’ve never heard anything quite like it before." He shook his head, trying to make his mind clear off the cobwebs on the memories that were always collecting on his memory. His moment of recollection was interrupted as Ash looked up from the terminal to Caine who was waiting for the elevator to take him up to the optical lab.
"And just where are you going?" She said with an air of superiority.
"Upstairs. I think."
Ash chuckled at him, mildly amused. "Oh, so you’re a patient?"
"Do I need to be?"
"As a matter of fact." She smiled to him. "But, is there something I can help you with?"
"If you have a minute." He stuck his foot into the elevator door to keep it from closing, a gesture both of impatience and of confidence, showing Ash that he was certain he would be on his way in but a moment.
Ash didn’t move from her seat, keeping a casual air of authority wrapped tightly around herself, ignoring Caine’s gesture and keeping her composure. "So, what can I do for you?"