Deck 9, Freeport 1, Omega-3 System, Border Worlds
02/04/824 AS, 0322 Station time
It was a quiet day on the Freeport. Or, at least, as quiet as it could be on a station harboring the biggest assembly of scum and villainy on this side of the Walker Nebula. People passed her on the left, often colliding with her shoulders painfully, but she didn’t mind. Pain had long left her perception. Or was it the drugs she’d put in her system to mask them?
She really didn’t care. All that mattered was the door ahead, Quarter 455. Something was hindering her ability to read the name noted under the number, but she remembered that the station guard had told her that she’d be on the right address here.
Had been really easy, actually. The only thing she had to do was lift the fabric of her shirt a little - not even to seduce him or anything, but just to show the amount of bandages. He almost immediately wanted to call for the nursing unit, but she had assured him that she’d be making it to the doctor’s office on her own.
The moment she stood in front of the door, she was presented with another challenge. Opening it was impossible, and pressing the doorbell proved to be a much harder endeavour than initially expected, as her remaining hand was occupied holding a bag of what was left of her belongings. But she didn’t bow down easily. Defiantly, she pushed the despair welling up in her aside, and kicked the door. Not hard, but enough to make a muffled ‘thud’-sound. Another time, and a third time, then she had exhausted her reserves and sank against the door, using it as a crutch to not topple over.
And then the door opened, and, robbed of her help, she did topple over, and landed on the hard station floor. For a few moments she tried to fight the rising unconsciousness - but only for a few moments. She willingly closed her eyes and decided it was time to sleep now. If the door had been the right one, she might survive. But if not… Well, this place was as good a place as any to breathe a final bit of recycled, stale station air. And then, everything went black.
Deck 9, Freeport 1, Omega-3 System, Border Worlds
02/04/824 AS, 0325 Station time
Quiet. Possibly the one adjective Arthur Atkins despised above all. And thus, this day was neither one of his favourites either. He had already felt it in his urine of the routine morning piss: This would become one of these days he could have well enough passed up, one of these days he usually tended to revile with the harshest of words known to a Texas-born like him. He had never done a study about it, but he was certain that Houston was the place to go if you wanted to be taught the widest vocabulary of abusive words you could ever imagine. Sometimes he imagined how his life would be like hadn’t he been born there, hell, or if he hadn’t been born in Liberty at all. But that was just the signal for him to stop with the procrastination get to work again. Looking back at his past life created a certain anguish in his chest that he prefered to never get overly into, for his own well-being. Here he stood, where he would stand if things had been different were of no relevance anymore. Business was of relevance.
One of the reasons he despised quiet days was that they gave him barely anything to do. And he needed to do something, at the very least, otherwise he would feel like vegetating. He had come to learn and hate that feeling, and exactly because of this did he never want to indulge into it again. Under no circumstances. Not after everything that had happened.
And with no patients whosoever visiting his comfy quarter, he definitely had nothing to do. It was a large apartment he had rented on Freeport One, one that he even grown attached to over the months that he had resided in here. During this time the room had steadily undergone some major changes in order to, to word it neutrally, make it fit his “needs”.
Those needs being a full-fledged doctor’s office. Not as full-fledged as you would expect from one of the all-well-known star doctors of Manhattan or Los Angeles. But he was not of their kind. Not exactly. And so he would not profit from a flamboyant office either.
He had just pulled the third cigarette this hour out of the box and lit it and elegantly put his legs onto the office desk and leaned back on his swivel chair when he suddenly heard a noise from outside his office, from out on the hallway. He shook his head and pricked up his ears. First he dismissed it as some random junkie who had gotten an overdosis and now played out his splendid phantasies, but it would not take long for him to realize there was actually somebody knocking on his door, and then he realized there was actually somebody trying to kick it open. He inhaled deeply. Calmly, he grinded the cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray, opened one of the desk’s drawers and grabbed the gun that was hiding inside it. A good model.
He took his time to walk over the door somebody so vividly attempted to open. As he stood before the door, for a few seconds would he listen to the noises, out of curiosity how long this dude would keep trying and trying. Then however he sighed and decided to open it at one go. The gun, pointing straight forward, he held in his right hand. He couldn’t guess what this guy wanted. Maybe it was just a patient with some drug problems. But it could also be a troublemaker. He had come to know these before. One shot in the kidney and they were usually not much of a problem anymore. On Freeport One, you could get away with something like that.
But before he could even think about pulling the trigger, Arthur saw a woman’s body. One that collapsed before him, to be precise, apparently bereft of any strength. After a moment of shock, he scratched his neck. “S.hit,” he mumbled, looking down at the woman, then at his gun, then stretched his head out to get a glimpse on the hallway. “Thank God.” Nobody there.
He couldn’t waste time. That woman had to get out of the hallway, or else it would look seriously fishy. With a sigh, he stooped, darned his bad back, grabbed the unconscious woman by her waist and hauled her body into his office and quickly closed the door behind him. The least thing he needed right now were the few guards that actually were on the station to find a person collapsed directly before his doorstep. People would start to point fingers.
As soon as the door fell close, Arthur dragged her to one of the walls of his office and leaned her against it. By now, he panted slightly. Still with the gun in his hands, as a form of precautional measure, he looked at her, examined her, slowly lifted her face and checked on her face. It took him a few seconds to realize what he was looking at. But when he realized, it struck him so much so that had to cough. Despite the black hair that hid some of her facial contours, he could easily recognize that scar. The product of a long incised wound that had stretched well over her face. It was clear to him immediately: That stitch had to come from a master of his craft. “Oh bloody hell,” he mumbled under his breath and stepped back a meter. He remembered that stitch well. And as consequence, the person behind the scar as well. He had not thought to see her again, but he could have guessed so much, since he had already doctored her up once.
Annika felt as if somebody had split her brains in half with a searing hot blade, and continued cutting down until they reached her spine. Or further? She didn’t even try to fight it down this time, because the fact that she felt pain meant that she was still alive. That could only mean someone had found her. For a few moments more, she tried opening her eyes, but decided against it after the light shining down on her decided to hammer the blade a little further down her spine.
‘Think’, she ordered herself, even though her mind didn’t quite obey. Another few moments passed, then she tried to find out where she was at least by grabbing whatever she lay on. The electric signals sent up from her remaining arm seemed inconclusive. No idea still. Frak it. Her lucidity began to slip away, yet again, and again, she didn’t even try to fight it. There was no strength left in her to stay awake - even coming here had cost her more than she thought possible.
The next time she became lucid - not conscious, or at least she refused that this state of nebulous, incongruent thoughts seemingly strewn together by moments of what she interpreted as sleep deserved being called ‘conscious’ - the pain in her head wasn’t as bad as last time. Or had she just gotten used to it? Didn’t really matter. Another try to open her eyes, this time rewarded by at least the outlines of the room around her before she had to close them again. She was absolutely certain that this time she had said something before drifting off again, but it might as well just have been an incomprehensible groan.
‘Alright, this time you try focusing’. Moments later, she managed to make a fist with the remaining hand - the painful absence of her other one began to seep into her mind again, but she banished it to the edge of her consciousness, where it lingered, only to pounce on her again if it had the chance. This time, she identified the reason why her head was hurting so much when she opened her eyes. The only thing visible was the outlines of the room, coupled with bright letters. It seemed to read ‘Malfunction’. Darn. More broken things to fix. She kept the lids shut, but tried to squirm a little - if only to find out where she was. When she identified it as some kind of bed, slowly, her memories began to return. It took her another five minutes - or so it felt - before she could finally open her dry mouth, feeling every single crack in her lips, and muttering something. “Whereami”
After he had realized who the person was that had, without any prior warning, intruded his apartment, Arthur had, in the old medical fashion he was still used to after all these years, wasted no time and gotten into check-up mode instantaneously. Since she had still seemed to be unconscious, he had all his freedoms to expect the body as closely as he had to. He didn’t shy away from lifting the fabric of her shirt further than he would have actually had to, just to make sure he would not miss anything important. Usually he wasn’t the sort of guy who did his work before any talk about the money consideration had happened, but in this special case, money talk sadly was more complicated. So he had to willy-nilly postpone it, he thought.
She didn’t look good. Not at all. Only a blind man would have missed the great number of bandages placed all over her body. Partially they had still been soaked in blood, it didn’t seem like they had already stopped bleeding, Arthur had observed with a frown painted on his forehead. And then, not to forget about her arm, or rather the part of the arm that was nowhere to be found anymore - her left hand. All in all, it was clear that this was one of those rare cases of an emergency. Arthur didn’t experience them often these days. But emergencies paid well, he knew. And somewhere back in the corners of his mind there was even the slight thought he perhaps should help an old patient, perhaps even a friend, from the past in such a dire situation. That would fall under common courtesy. And thus, Arthur had rolled up his sleeves and had gotten to work.
After he had dragged her body, barely giving any life signs at all, into the medical room of his apartment, with some effort had he put her onto one of the beds situated there. Some time had passed as he had prepped everything up and brought her into a condition that, so he hoped, wasn’t life-endangering anymore. He took a quick blood sample and swiftly put it under the scanner. He couldn’t tell for sure what there was more of running through her veins, blood or drugs. It was fine; that way he could at least spare his stock of analgesics for the time being. The only thing he had to ensure was that the level of painkilling drugs in her blood would stay constant all the time. In general, he preferred a bit more painkillers than necessary over a bit less. Sleeping patients behaved far better than the ones who regularly screamed their lungs out.
The missing hand had proven to be a difficulty in terms of stopping the bleeding, but nothing Arthur could not manage with a little professional focus. He had seen many severed limbs in his career, to be honest. It didn’t overly shock him anymore. Another difficulty was the fact that Fräulein Haupt was partially a machine. Arthur was a doctor, not an engineer, or at least not a graduated one. But a malfunctioning right arm prosthesis or malfunctioning cybernetic eyes were hardly life-threatening. So he neglected that for the time being.
Arthur had just finished the first few steps and wanted to reward himself with smoking another cigarette, and had already lit it and puffed, when suddenly he could hear a feeble, female voice sounding under her breath. He could not suppress a quiet sigh. His rest would have to wait a little more, it seemed. He puffed another time with relish and only then turned on his heel again and walked back to the medical room he had just come from.
“Don’t ya worry, you’re in perfect company,” he said when he reached her bed, exhaling the smoke and perking his head up. In the meantime he fumbled about with the cigarette in his hand. There was no true hurry anymore - at least not for him, he probably could not say the same about Fräulein Haupt -, so he did not see the need to overwhelm her with all the facts. Besides, he knew little to no facts, only that she had to have got into major trouble; again. And that she had had the luck of her life: Only half an hour later and she would have with no doubt bit the dust, that he was absolutely certain of.
He examined her. “Alright, so. Let’s get to it. Do ya feel any pain? Just say the word and I’m gonna be pumpin’ some more painkillers through ya.”