Work Text:
There were far too many inputs screaming at me all at once to even attempt sorting through them. The worst one was probably the chaotic screaming from MedSystem, with multiple different alarms and alerts going off all at once. Well, terrific.
Normally, I was expected to be able to handle it with no issue at all. I had more than enough processing power. But my own systems were also screaming at me about the extensive damage to my body, as well as the crashed hopper's systems, and comms, and whatever else was going on around me in the smoke and dust. I was still trying to get a handle on my inputs and work out what parts of me were functional and not. Luckily, my body was automatically working on sealing off arteries and rerouting different fluids to keep from losing more.
I raised my head from the ground. Thankfully, the front of my helmet was intact. I couldn't feel my arms even though they seemed uninjured. Okay, that wasn't quite true. I could feel painful tingling and the uneven flow of blood pumping through my fingers. That suddenly didn't matter, because I realised I was no longer holding onto what I'd grabbed as we were going down.
Oh, right. We. That's why MedSystem was being so annoying. I'd tried to shield Gurathin from the worst of it, but it had been quite chaotic in the crash. It was still chaotic. I could barely think.
I could see a mess of dark hair, slowly being covered in dust as it settled around us. On the ground between us, I grabbed his hand and got no response. His black nails were covered in fresh red blood. That was bad.
MedSystem kept screaming. It was begging for immediate emergency medical attention all while some asshole system inside of me was insisting it was too late and to leave him to check for other survivors and to save equipment. It didn't know what the fuck it was talking about, so I silenced it. We'd been alone in the hopper, and he was my client—my stupid dickhead annoying augmented human client—and nothing could make me leave him here. The option wasn't even on the list.
Besides, who was to say that him being augmented didn't give him better chances of survival? Fuck MedSystem and fuck that system insisting he wasn't worth salvaging. I marked it for deletion.
I gracelessly stood up on unstable legs (My gyroscope must have taken a hit.) and had to push pieces of debris off of him before I could pull his limp body into my arms. He was surprisingly easy to lift. Was he always this light, or was it the adrenaline in my system messing with my ability to gauge his weight accurately? Whatever. I didn't want to think about it.
As I started walking from the wreckage, I was hyper aware of my breathing, the utter chaos in my code, and yet I felt strangely calm. Numb. There were still a thousand things asking for my attention, but I couldn't silence any of them. I needed to know exactly where I was, how far I had to go, and how long I had before MedSystem got eerily quiet.
I wondered, was this what a quiet panic attack felt like?