Chapter Text
Keep me, keep me beating
You never saw what was within
You never looked beyond my skin
Emer Dineen - Artificial Skin
She was hit. Looking down at her jacket, Killjoy’s sensations slowly returned to her as the ringing in her ears subsided. The splinter of pain underneath the yellow kevlar was fast becoming the centre of her being. Scanning her surroundings one last time, she struggled with one hand to open the zipper on the sturdy fabric.
Killjoy grit her teeth, internally scolding herself for her carelessness. Too distracted by bots, again, Klara. Emerging from her last stronghold behind two crates, she could see a heap of black uniforms adorned with Kingdom insignia collapsed near the archway. A perfect trap, sprung at precisely the correct time.
Observing the results of her inventions filled the engineer with pride, but instead of inspecting closer, the Agent within her sent her stumbling for cover, as if on autopilot. She threw away her empty Phantom as she reached a corner of relative safety, the gun skidding through the bullet casings scattered across her previous defensive position. Collapsing between the wall and a generator, she couldn’t supress a wince at the sharp pain in her abdomen.
“Scheißeee…” She grimaced at the alarmingly red mark that had already formed on her shirt. Spurred to action by her survival instinct, the German tried to activate her comms. The motion of touching her earpiece seemed to take ages and Killjoy glanced at her arm with a puzzled frown. I haven’t even lost that much blood yet.
“South is clear, they’ve all moved again.”
The distorted grumble of her ghostly teammate thrummed from her ear and momentarily cleared the fog in her brain.
“Copy.” The immediate response came from a woman, one whose muffled voice had said the exact same mere minutes ago, as the engineer had called for backup. “Come in Killjoy! We are on our way!” The sound of her impending rescue prodded Killjoy to respond.
“Killjoy here, radianite is secure. I stopped their attack… but I’m hit.” She tried to keep her voice as level as she could but wasn’t sure she was succeeding. Again, the response was instant. “Understood, where are you? Are they near?” Where am I?
Killjoy pushed her glasses up on her nose, feeling like her blurry vision was infecting her brain. “I’m behind the generator in the western courtyard. Kingdom is probably regrouping…” She craned her neck to look towards the archway. Where are they? “…near the café… It’s good to hear your voice Viper.”
Killjoy noticed with a small amount of wonder that her speech was slurred at the end of her last message. That had never happened before when she got shot. I think. Her gaze dropped again to the stain on her shirt. It was only slowly getting bigger, she assured herself. “KJ, we’ll be there in two. Can you hold out?” Viper responded.
Killjoy tilted her head back against the wall. The purple hue of the evening sky seemed like a warm blanket. “Ja, it’s not a bad hit, I think. I’ll hold out until… you get here,” she responded as she let out a deep sigh and relaxed her tense shoulders. Where did the pain go? “I’ll be oookaayyy…” she murmured.
Viper’s voice reverberated in her skull. “Killjoy! Stay awake! We don’t know how bad it is yet!” Killjoy’s eyelids slowly fell over her view of the sky. Why is she so loud? The engineer felt utterly relaxed. Instead of pain, a warmth filled her abdomen, slowly spreading through her limbs. I’ve never heard her voice like that before.
“Omen, block them off. She doesn’t sound normal.” Killjoy registered the faint grunt that was transmitted as a reply. “Killjoy! You need to secure yourself! Do you hear me? Use your Lockdown!” Killjoy pondered on the yelled suggestion for a moment. It seemed like everything would work out anyways, why waste a magnum opus for nothing? But… I’ll do it to calm Viper down.
Activating the device on her bracelet, she whispered to Viper. “Lockdown… initiated.” As soon as the words had left her, she slowly slid along the wall until her head hit the dusty concrete. The impact felt soft, as if falling onto a pillow.
A haze as thick as the clouds in the night sky settled throughout her body, stopping her questing mind from figuring out where it’d gone wrong. No, what is wrong, right now, she corrected herself, the thought forming slowly, the words trickling in little by little. Her eyes started closing again, but not before she focused on a bullet casing close to her face. It perplexed her, but her brain would no longer cooperate with her endless researching.
I’m so tired…
Moments before losing consciousness, it occurred to her. A thought, which nearly made her open her eyes wide, fighting against an impending, yet peaceful, darkness.
They never got a chance to shoot me.