“So… we’ve got another assignment, today…” Churchill began, in a soft, paternal voice, as he gently dabbed a wet cloth against his team mate’s burning brow, “It’s a hell of a job.”
“Hmmn?”, Eva probed in response, through a weary, dreamy groan.
She’d spent most of last night sedated, and had been conscious for barely an hour.
“Well, since you asked so articulately, Madame Shakespeare-”
Weakly, a clammy hand- pallid and slicked with sweat- rose slowly into the air, and poised to strike…
Before resting, quite misleadingly, against Church’s cheek.
He winced: He’d hoped she wouldn’t notice.
“What’s…” she began, ailing, “What’s this?”
“Nothing,” he replied, flashing her the most charismatic smile he could muster with a swollen cheek, as if that might somehow contradict the verdict of Eva’s own eyes.
“Is… is this a bruise, Church?”
“What? No. What? You’re crazy!”
It was a bruise, alright, and then some: A shiner, clean and true.
It throbbed at least two agonising centimetres from his jaw, and was a worryingly deep shade of inky dark-orchid.
It was true, Churchill had won his boxing match with Escuela through and through: But that didn’t mean it’d been easy.
On the contrary; The two had littered one another with a flurry of lead blows; Painted each other black, blue and crimson, and worn themselves down to bone of their knuckles in the process.
It’d been a war of attrition, and in the end Churchill had only come through with a final uppercut the likes of which had- in some desolate, depraved crevice of this city- made Roark himself half stir from his slumber.
But the victory had only been moral: Physically, he felt as if he harboured the world’s most unforgiving hangover, the likes of which would require the mother of all prairie oysters to mend.
And worse yet, it wasn’t just him who’d taken a beating: The resultant knock-out of Church’s final punch had stirred the crowd into a frenzy, and a riot broke out throughout the gym.
It was quickly controlled by Sectors V and X, but not without a few scuffs and scrapes along the way.
Still, Church wagered he was amongst the worst for wear.
Most of his bruises were below his shirt, fortunately… but it was hard to obscure the most prominent of them, because it’d landed on his left cheek and left behind a most opaque and overt shadow.
He’d hoped that Eva would be blind to it, once medicated…
And, it seemed, he’d been wrong.
“It is!”, she declared, seemingly made lucid by the realisation.
“Listen, Eva, I can-!”
Smack
Clatter
Churchill hurtled quite suddenly from his seat, and to the floor, clasping his wounded cheek as a fresh handprint pulsated against his bruises.
He hissed bitterly through his teeth, in some effort to defuse the pain, and rolled across the sterile, aged tiles of the hospital floor.
“Agh! Jesus! Why?!”
“Because you’re an idiot! You promised you wouldn’t fight that match!”
“Sorry, what? I can’t hear anything over my own internal screaming!”
Sighing, Eva shook her head disappointedly towards him, as he clambered wearily back into his seat at her bedside.
“What am I going to do with you, Gunner?”
“Stop hitting me?”
“Man up.”
“Man down.”
The two scowled at one another for one long, spiteful moment, before looking away in indignant silence.
Soon, however, the stinging in Church’s cheek faded into naught more than a dull throb, and the annoyance in Eva’s face softened.
“Tell me about the mission,” she eventually muttered, albeit without turning to face him.
“Cultists”, he replied quietly.
“Cultists?”
“Yeah… they’re immune, like us. Except they think it’s a gift from God, or something: That it makes them the master race, or… something to that effect.”
“So, they’re like us?”
“No,” he shook his head, “We’re Runners, a community founded upon the idea that we should nurture others like us.”
“And they…?”
“Sacrifice them, usually. Runners especially… they call us ‘heretics!’”
“My God!”, she called, attempting to sit upright in indignation, before Church pushed her back down again.
She growled lightly in response, but obeyed his wishes all the same.
“So…” she began, having taken a few short breaths, “Who did they…”
“Sector H.”
“Damn… the medics?”
He nodded solemnly, finally turning back to her with a softened expression of his own, “They faked a distress call… bagged them somewhere to the West of us.”
“God… who are these guys?”
“They call themselves something in Latin, it’s ridiculous. The kind of thing your typical ‘edgy’ teenager would say.”
“Tabula Rasa?”
“Bingo!”
“My next guess would’ve been carpe diem.”
Church smiled sportively, “Well, I’ve just taken to calling them ‘Stupid’. How do I say ‘Stupid’ in Latin?”
“Plumbeus,” she replied, without missing a beat.
There was a pause, before Church’s smile curled into a teasing grin, “You’re such a nerd.”
“Shut up, and help me out of bed.”
By the time the two had managed to hobble their way into Sundown’s courtyard, the mid-morning sun had already begun to climb the sky, and greeted them ardently as they paced out to meet a familiar- and for that fact alone, unwelcomed- figure.
MacReary awaited them in the piazza’s centre, his teal robes motionless despite the definite breeze that blew through Sundown’s cloisters and halls, and his hoary hair swept back in a manner most unstylish.
In one hand, he held a small, glowing slate- one of the last remnants of technology Sundown had to offer, a data-pad on which mission histories were stored- and in the other, a small leather satchel.
Church and Eva sighed in unison, as they made their approach: They walked like dead men, they looked like dead men.
Their joints ached, and with Eva’s arm slung over his shoulders, she and Church looked as though they’d just finished the mission, as opposed to having only just arrived to start it.
MacReary seemed un-phased by this: Or pleased, honestly it was hard to tell.
“Gunner,” he greeted, gelidly.
“MacReary.”
“You’re looking well.”
“You’re sounding snarky.”
The Elder smiled wryly, before handing Churchill his data pad, which he in turn handed to Eva, before gesturing to the bag MacReary held in his right hand.
“That better be painkillers.”
“Some of it is painkillers. Some of it, antibiotics… none of it yours.”
“Then whose is it?”
“Well, with Sundown’s chief medical officers currently held captive, I thought it sensible to send a separate medic with you… a doctor for the doctors, so to speak.”
“A medic? Who the hell are you talking about, old man?”
“Oh, have you not met?”
MacReary took a step to the side, and- with his robes still otherwise totally stationary- gestured backwards.
In his shadow stood some delicate- and only vaguely familiar- figure, whom Church eyed sceptically.
“I’m sorry, I must have missed the memo that said you were suddenly in charge of my team, old man.”
“Ah, silly me, I must not have passed it on: Did you at least get the memo that explains that I’m an Elder?”
“Ah, I remember that one: I think Marina blew her nose on it.”
“Well, you know what they say about snot nosed children.”
“That you put them into Sector Y?”
Both Church and MacReary opened their mouths to protest the other, before Eva’s elbow quickly reminded Church’s ribs- and thus, the rest of him- that a new recruit was spectating them.
With a pensive sigh, Churchill turned to face her: Acacia was somebody he felt as though he’d met before, albeit fleetingly.
Perhaps, on one of many trips to the infirmary.
He raised a hand- The hand which wasn’t propping both himself and Eva up- and gave her a two-fingered, Polish salute, “Welcome aboard, I’m Churchill Gunner.”
MacReary handed Acacia her satchel- which, amongst other things, contained a trio of tranquilising needles, intended for ending combat without fatalities- before turning his attention solely to Sector V’s somewhat beaten-up leaders.
“And the rest of your Sector is…?”
Straightening up, Church craned his neck slightly, and lifted his chin to the sky.
“Sector V!”, he bellowed- motivated slightly by the fact that the gesture also defused the pain- “Front and centre!”
Stormyx