Skye Life - The Hobo Part 2

Serena looked around. She’d been jumped before trying to help someone pretending to be injured, then all of a sudden, two other guys showed and took the cred stick, but this – this didn’t seem like that, and there was that humming - that sound - it was coming from him. “Hello?” She said tentatively, nudging him with her foot.

There was hardly a response and now the tip of her shoe had a wet blue stain on it now. His breath was short and shallow, he was alivish. The pulse Serena could hear was more rhythmic but still has moments of irregularity. Now that she was close enough she could see tac gear, broken straps, his clothing which looked more militaristic which was riddled with holes, cuts and rips. She could see half dried jagged cuts and more than a few neat round holes stained blue.

“You have nanomites,” she told him. “They’ll fix you up. You’ll be okay.” She said it more to convince herself than him. “They’re already working on fixing you up.” She stepped over him, but stopped. If he had anything of value on him, he could get mugged, and hurt worse before the nanomites fixed him up. Taking his stuff - it was doing him a favor, really, this way someone bad wouldn’t take his stuff. She knelt down next to him, careful not to get his blood on Cyd’s outfit. He didn’t have much that she could find. A cred stick in his top pocket with less than 40 credits on it. A knife that matched her own, and a gun. Mathias could use that.

It was all Vas could do but groan as he stiffly tried to curl his leg in. He hurt. Bad. He was so damn tired but he couldn’t even sleep. He was in rough shape. Shot twice once in the shoulder and on in the leg, something also had hit him really good, so he was scraped up, swollen and he tried to pick out all the glass from his one arm but focusing had been too difficult and just as he was about to finally pass out something else happened. He cracked open his glittering copper eyes, one slightly swallowed where his cheek was scraped up.

“Are you tweaked out on something? She asked. “Uppers? Downers?…” she asked.

Vas moved to sit a bit straighter the slum angle he was at making the aches all the more sharper. The stupid flack vest was on so tight it fell like it was stranging him.

“What’s your name?” She asked, still eyeing his pistol. He wore a uniform of sorts, but he wasn’t a Jagg - the slang term for the local peacekeepers. JackBoots. Most people in the sprawl called them Jaggs. If you were Mathias, you added Off to the word. She slowly reached for the gun on his belt, unclipping the holster as her eyes fell on the tag around his neck. “Vas? Your name is Vas?” She asked.

There was a sharp sound the little machines inside him made. A hand grabbing her wrist held his dog tag, his grip was weak with a slight tremor. His breath came in sharp and shallow. One eye was much more swollen than the other, his blue eyes more striking against the black sclera. “What are you doing?” Vas struggled to speak. His eyes were glassy and unfocused, his mocha skin chalky pale, even the fingers around her wrist were stiff and cold. He was in so much pain, there wasn't a part of him that didn't hurt and his head! The pressure made him want to curl up and cry. His already weak grip loosened the bust of energy that had pushed him awake was already fading.

“My Vas?” She asked. “Puppy? But… how? What happened? Why are you here? “ She fired off questions rapid fire. It was him, he’d lost a little bit of baby fat in his face, and he was much taller, but those were unmistakably his eyes. “It’s me! Serena! Rabbit. You called me Rabbit.”

Vas mouth pressed down to a fine line in pain as he gave her a confused look. He only caught half of what she was saying. Vas’s addled brain swam and thinking too hard made him see spots. His grip slipped off her wrist leaving a smear of blue as he tried to answer but nothing came to mind. He felt dizzy and his eyes dropped a bit forgetting the questions already.

“Come on…. Come on, let’s… let’s get you out of here.” She said, throwing his arm over her shoulder. “Can you walk? I don’t live far off.”

Vas’s face twisted in pain as he let out a cry of pain as he tried to stand. He looked like a baby deer trying to walk for the first time. Vas could barely bear his own weight at the moment and the head rush made him nearly black out. He limped heavily, his leg stiff and wooden. Even the short walk left him taking ragged wet breaths.

Serena opened the door to the small apartment. “Almost there, almost there,” She told him. Couch? No. Chair? There was only one logical place - the tub.

“There’s a first aid kit in the bathroom,” she said, breathless from the strain of helping him walk. “I’ll put you in the tub, Cyd’ll kill me if I get blood all over the apartment! This is why we can’t have rugs.”

Vas was on autopilot; he was reduced to only being able to focus on dragging one foot after another. He wasn't taking in his surroundings and he had already forgotten the girl. Vas was hanging on by a thread and leaving a droplet trail of blue blood on the floor, the strain of walking reopening he wounds again.

“There you go, there you go,” she soothed, easing him onto the cool porcelain.

Vas didn't go down easy, for all of Serena's attempts to try to carefully put him in the tub he was too weak and too big for her to maneuver him in and he more or less awkwardly fell in the tub with a leg hanging out. He was dripping in sweat, he smelled like copper and he looked to the side and his vision blur wanting to close his eyes.

“Okay, puppy, okay, we’re here,” she soothed. “We’re here. Hold up, hold up, I’m gonna give you something for the pain, okay? And then… and then I’ll try an’ patch you up. Sound okay? Sounds good, right? Sounds good?” She said, nervously.

Vas would have agreed to just about anything make the loud voice stop so gave a what could pass for a nod. Anything so he could sleep.

“You’re okay,” Serena said, turning on the faucet of the tub to dampen a towel for his forehead, like Cyd did for her when she was little and had a fever. She knelt by the tub, trying to assess the damage. “Tell me what I can do,” she said, but she wasn’t speaking to Vas, not exactly.

Vas sighed the cool water bringing relief to the heat and pain in his head. Cleaning the grim, sweat, and blood on his face she could see how feverish he actually was. While normally as far as she knew Helloubnds didn’t get sick that was based on the fact their Nanomites kept them in tip-top shape. What ever he had gone through the damage must have been catastrophic enough that something as basic as his immune system was less of a priority. The machines inside him were fighting on multiple fronts just to keep his heart beating and hard choices were being made. He was losing blood faster than they could make it and faster than they could seal up the wounds, worse they had no way of cooling him down as his temperature started to spike.

“I wish we had ice,” she said, deciding that running water into the tub might be a good option. “Lucky for you we don’t have hot water right now, right?” She said, trying to keep herself calm. “You’re bleeding, a lot –” her eyes darted side to side for a moment, “Pressure. I have to put pressure on the wounds, and I can’t pull the glass out on account of then you’ll bleed worse. We gotta wait for that til you get stable, and,” she paused for another moment, her eyes rolling up towards the ceiling this time. “An’ I need Mathias.”

The teen dialed her brotther back as she rummaged through kitchen cabinets for the first aid kit and something for Vas to eat.

Pick up, pick up, pick up… she silently wished. C’mon, get lucky!

“Where are you!” Mathias' voice was barely audible over the lund music in the background.

“Home,” Serena told him, grabbing a tube of paste from the fridge. “I need [I] *static*[/I] first aid kit. Where [I]static [/I] keep it?”

“Under the sink in the bathroom. So your home? Are you sure you're okay?” Mathis said loudly the tone of the conversation shifting.