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Alarms are blaring in her ears in the darklit server room and sweat pools at the base of her neck and at her temples, slowly trickling down. Her tank top is plastered to her skin. As her brow begins to drip, a bead or two falling onto her keyboard, Riley spares a hand for just a second to wipe the gathering layer of sweat there. She takes a deep breath, holds it for a moment, and lets it out in a rush.
Focus, she reminds herself. You got this.
Something else drips, but not onto her laptop. And it’s dripping at a much steadier, more alarming rate. Riley glances down at the floor to see the growing pool of blood that now stains the linoleum.
‘No bueno’, as Jack would say.
Shit, as Riley likes to say.
It makes her a little woozy to see her insides on the outside, so she quickly averts her gaze back to the screen.
Yeah, she knows the wound is bad and that if she doesn’t do something to stem the bleeding, she’s going to be joining that puddle on the floor. But she can tend to the wound soon. The data she’s downloading is 90% complete, and once that’s done, the only thing left is to wait for Mac and Desi who should be jumping in on comms any moment now to tell her they have what they need from the facility. They’ll meet her back here at the server room since it’s on the way out, book it to the car outside, and gun it until they’re beyond the grounds of the facility and they’ve lost any tails they might gain in their escape.
A quick drive to meet exfil, and they’re home free. Easy.
And yet the thought of it makes Riley’s eyes droop and her legs wobble.
“You’re fine,” she tells herself, fingers clacking away at her keyboard. “You’re fine, just focus on the mission. Keep it together just a little longer.”
A minute or two later, the comms come alive and a breathless Desi asks, “You finished on your end, Ri?”
“I’m at 95% with the drive. Almost.”
“Hopefully it’ll be 100 by the time Mac and I get to you.”
“Hopefully,” Riley agrees. “You guys get what you needed?”
“Yeah, we’re just running into some trouble–” Desi cuts off and Riley hears gun shots. “–backtracking to your location.”
“Working on a solution, though!” Mac huffs, cutting in for the first time. Across comms, Riley hears a series of frantic cutting noises, something rustling like sand through an hourglass, a soft clinking of glasses, what sounds like plastic or paper crinkling, and then a grunt. “Desi, get down!”
An explosion goes off somewhere in the probably-too-close-to-be-safe distance.
“Mac!” Desi cries out, sounding concerned.
A moment of tense silence, and then hacking coughs come from Desi’s comms.
“I think I–” cough, cough “–lost my comms.”
Riley can picture Desi rolling her eyes as she sighs, “Again? Dammit, Mac.”
“Sorry,” he wheezes, sounding at least a little apologetic.
Riley hides a chuckle beneath her hand, but it turns into a cough that has her doubling over and using a nearby server tower to keep herself upright.
“Riles?”
“Ri? You good?”
Riley freezes. Well, there’s no point denying it when they’re going to see her wound eventually. The moment they enter the server room and lay eyes on her, they’ll know. Not just because she’s probably got a sickly pallor and a sheen of sweat, but also because there’s definitely no hiding the bloody mess her shirt has become. Or the pool on the floor.
“I, uh…ran into some trouble, too. Earlier during infil into the facility. I didn’t notice it until you guys had left to do your thing–”
For once, Desi’s fury is directed at her and not Mac. “Didn’t noti–?! How bad is it?”
Riley winces. “It’s uh…” she glances down at her stomach, prodding the area gingerly with a finger that comes back sticky with blood. She wipes a finger on a cleaner spot of her shirt, swaying. “...it’s pretty bad.”
Either the shakiness she feels is just as much in her voice as it is in her bones, or Desi just knows. “Shit,” the former Ranger hisses. Riley hears her change out the clip in her gun.
“Riles, we’re coming,” Mac tells her, sounding worried but trying to be reassuring. “Hang tight, okay?”
“Don’t worry,” she assures them, “I’ll be here.”
The comms go silent again and Riley turns her attention back to her rig. 98%.
“C’mon, baby, c’mon,” she mutters, tapping her index finger anxiously against its frame.
She hears a scuffle outside and the jolt of panic that shoots through her has her knees shaking, threatening to buckle under her entirely. No, dammit, stay on your feet!
A muffled cry, a grunt, a crack like wood splintering, and a couple of heavy thuds later, the server room door bursts open and Riley and Mac step through.
Desi’s got a cut on her lip and a spot on her cheek already beginning to change color from bruising, but otherwise she looks fine. Just a little out of breath.
Mac, however, looks like a mess. He’s got a nasty-looking cut on his head that’s trickling blood, a few cuts and scrapes on his arms, he’s covered in dark smudges that she presumes are from the dust and smoke of his bomb, and his hair is all askew. She spies a few specks of dust and little splinters of wood amidst golden strands.
In spite of the circumstances, Riley finds herself giggling. “You look like Beaker from the Muppets,” she says, but the giggles quickly turn into wheezes.
Mac and Desi rush toward her, arms reaching out, anxious to reach her.
Despite wanting nothing more than to collapse into their arms, Riley looks back at the computer. “Thank fuck, it’s done!” she says, triumphantly extracting her drive and pocketing it, wincing when the movements pull at the wound in her stomach.
“Screw the drive,” Mac says with a hostility that she knows isn’t directed at her. “Let’s get you stabilized a bit before we get moving.”
“It’s fine,” Riley says, trying to wave him off even as he takes an arm and slings it over his shoulder. He starts to guide her away from her rig and the server and onto the floor a few feet away. “I can make it to exfil.”
“No, not like that you can’t.”
“Mac, I–”
“Trust me,” Mac says, looking up and meeting her eyes with a sharp look that brokers no room for argument, “You can’t.”
Right. Mac’s got quite a bit of experience with this, hasn’t he? Riley nods in resignation, letting him ease her to the ground before he begins his triage. It elicits a pained groan from her that Mac apologizes profusely for.
Desi, meanwhile, unzips Riley’s bag and grabs the medkit tucked inside, passing it to Mac.
“The most important thing –and honestly the only thing we can really do for now– is to staunch the bleeding. You’ve already lost a lot. Let’s not let you lose any more.” With that, he gets to work. He uses the medical scissors to cut away Riley’s shirt to get at the wound, much to her dismay. With some gauze, he gingerly wipes up the blood around the wound, then sets about bandaging it. “Now here’s the shitty part,” Mac announces with a grimace. “I’m going to add some layers of gauze and then use my belt to help keep pressure on the wound.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t sound like much fun,” Riley pants, watching as he slips off his belt, uses his SAK to poke some extra holes in it, and ties it around her torso. She’s done well up to this point, but as soon as he tightens the belt–
“Ugh, son of a bitch !” she cries out, throwing her head back against the wall and squeezing her eyes shut.
“Sorry, I’m so sorry, Riles!” Mac murmurs, full of contrition.
“It’s okay,” Riley huffs through clenched teeth. “You gotta do it.”
She’s pretty sure she’s paler than she was before he started, and when he helps her to her feet, she stumbles. Her legs feel like jelly.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got you,” Mac promises, slinging her arm around his shoulders again and helping her toward the door. Desi opens it for them, carrying Riley’s bag with her rig inside, then joins him on Riley’s other side. Together, she and Mac carry her out, although Desi’s got her gun still in her hand in case she needs to use it.
Thankfully, they meet no more resistance inside the building. They make it to the car, and Desi chucks Riley’s things into the back seat. Mac and Desi help to ease her into the back, as well, before Mac slides in beside her. Desi hops into the driver’s seat.
For once in their fucking careers, no one manages to tail them on their way out. No car chases, no bullets whizzing, no crazy in-transit inventions or climbing out of windows for Mac. Riley silently praises Patron Saint of Field Ops, Jack Dalton, and tries to stay awake even as her energy wanes. The closer they get to exfil, the more the adrenaline slips away and she’s left feeling bone tired.
But knowing they’re in the clear and since she’s feeling cold and miserable, Riley can’t help but let her eyes slip closed.
“Just stay with us a little longer, Riles,” Mac pleads, pulling her close and wrapping his arms around her. No wonder, since she’s pretty sure she’s shivering. He rubs his hands along her exposed arms, trying to warm her up. Riley can’t help but hum in appreciation.
“M’kay,” she mutters.
“You’re not gonna fall asleep on us, are you?”
Riley tries to say ‘no’, but all that comes out is a wordless groan.
“That doesn’t really convince me, Riles,” Mac says with a laugh, but she can hear the tightness in it. The concern in the way his voice wavers just slightly.
She whines, like the dignified grown woman and super badass hacker agent she is. “Tired,” she manages.
“Yeah, I know.”
“‘N’ col’,” she adds.
“I know,” Mac says again. “I wish I had a blanket for you, but all you got is me.”
“Good thing…you run warm,” Riley says with a breathless laugh, burrowing her face a little more into his side.
“Hey, feel free to snuggle, but no sleeping!” Desi yells back.
“I’m noooot,” Riley groans.
Mac starts to chuckle, but it turns into a cough. It prompts Riley to lean back so she can 1. Let him breathe without her weight on top of him and 2. To check him over. She’d almost forgotten about the explosion earlier and the fights he’d surely been in.
It goes, literally, a little sideways as she overcompensates and nearly faceplants into the center console before Mac catches her. Riley’s brows crease in concern as she looks up at him. “You ‘kay?”
He looks startled by the question. “Me?”
“Yeah, you,” she says, smacking his shoulder weakly.
“You’re the one who nearly took another nosedive just trying to sit up,” Mac says with a pointed look. “I’m fine.”
“You don’ look fine,” she argues, ignoring his comment about her.
“He’s totally not,” says Desi from the driver’s seat. “I wager he’s got a concussion, plus some minor cuts and bruises from the fight with security and that mini explosive he made earlier.”
Mac rolls his eyes, wincing. Riley wonders if it’s because it pulls at a cut across his cheek or because he really does have a concussion and he’s starting to get a really killer headache. “Well I feel fine.”
“Bullshit,” Desi grumbles. “I don’t care, you’re still getting checked out by medics when we get to exfil.” She glances into the rearview mirror, back at Riley. “I contacted Matty to make sure they had medics on the team. They’ve got us covered.”
“Good,” Riley weakly replies. “You’ll get…checked out, too, right, Des?”
“I don’t need to get looked over, I’m–”
Mac jabs a finger at her. “ Don’t say fine!” When Desi eyes him sharply in the rearview mirror, he adds, “If I don’t get to say it, neither do you! You took a few hard hits.”
Desi grumbles, but raises a hand to signal defeat. “Okay, okay, I’ll get checked out. But only after Riley and you do.”
“Deal,” says Riley.
“But–” Mac begins to protest, but with a look from both women in the car, he sagely shuts his mouth and nods. “Deal.”