Chronal Disassociation Ch. 78 (Patreon)

Yuna had been trying to open her hand for some time before she realised there was something lying across it. She pulled, stopped when pain travelled up her wrist, and tried again with her other hand braced against the floor. A piece of metal shifted above her. Grit pattered down her collar, and her fingers came free so suddenly that she struck herself in the chin.

She stayed there for a moment, holding her wrist, waiting for the ringing in her ears to subside. She had already climbed out of Beast before the strike; now she was lying on the recovery bay floor beneath its fallen shoulder. Beast’s shoulder hung over her at an angle she had never seen outside a maintenance cradle. Beyond it, a broken support held up enough of the roof to leave a space where she could sit. She could see light through the dust, though the doors had been in a different direction. Unless she had been turned around.

Her thumb found the switch beside her ear. She pressed it twice, then reached up to check the connection and brought away a loose piece of casing. There was no acknowledgement from the squad channel, no warning telling her what had failed. She turned the fragment over in her hand, absurdly reluctant to put it down.

“Hana?” Her voice sounded distant even to her. Something scraped on the other side of Tokki, and she crawled towards it, catching her knee on a strip of torn metal. “Hana, answer me.”

A hand appeared beneath a panel resting against Tokki’s leg. Hana pushed it aside and dragged herself into the light, coughing into her sleeve. She had lost her helmet, and the dust in her hair made her look strangely unfamiliar until she looked up. She pointed back beneath the panel rather than looking at the wreck above her, “Kyung-soo’s there. I think he’s stuck.”

“I’m coming.” His answer was followed by a scrape, a curse, and the panel rising another few centimetres. Yuna caught its edge while he wriggled clear, then lowered it carefully. Kyung-soo sat where he had landed, inspecting a tear in his sleeve. Through the gap behind him she could see Singijeon’s cockpit crushed beneath a fallen crossbeam. He had finished climbing down before the warning came. All five of them had been outside their cockpits when the roof fell.

Seung-hwa was against the wall a few steps away, both hands covering his ears. He looked up when she called him, but she had to repeat his name before he lowered them. “Can you get up?” Yuna asked. He nodded without moving, then seemed to notice that she was waiting and pulled his feet underneath him. She waited until he was steady before adding, “Stay with Hana. Where’s Jae-eun?”

Kyung-soo turned towards La Princesse Sereine. The mech lay on its side, its recently rebuilt thruster buried beneath the gantry. Beside it, one wheel of the stretcher was still turning. Yuna watched it complete another slow revolution before she heard herself calling Jae-eun’s name.

“I’m here.” His voice came from behind the leg assembly. Kyung-soo got there first, stumbling over a cable, and Yuna followed him around the wreck. Jae-eun was on the floor beside the tipped stretcher, holding his left arm against his chest. “Help me sit up. I can’t-don’t touch that side.”

They got him against the armour together. A dressing hung loose from his sleeve; somebody had managed to start treating him before the strike. Yuna remembered a medic reaching across the stretcher, Genji holding the rail while Jae-eun struggled with his harness. Winston had been coming towards them. Then the warning sounded, and he turned. There had still been people outside, some of them only a few steps from the doors.

Yuna looked towards the bay doors and found a slab of concrete lying where the approach should have been. Tracer had gone back for a woman near the apron. Winston followed, and something red moved from the gantry so quickly that Yuna had barely registered it before Archer was among the civilians too. She remembered thinking he would reach them. She had seen him cross the simulator faster than the cameras could follow; surely he could manage a few metres of open ground.

A crewman had shoved her towards Beast. The mech lurched, its shoulder coming down above her, and she had never seen whether Archer reached anyone. Jae-eun asked where they had gone, but she kept looking at the concrete. The crewman had been beside her when she fell; she could remember the pressure of his hand between her shoulders, though she had not looked at his face.

“I don’t know.” She crouched beside Jae-eun and reached for the loose dressing, only for him to catch her wrist with his good hand. He asked her to leave it for a second, and when she pointed out that it had slipped, his grip eased without releasing her. “I know,” he said, struggling to draw a comfortable breath, “Just give me a second.”

She let him have it, looking over his shoulder while he recovered his breath. Four faces. She checked them again, resisting an unreasonable certainty that she had missed someone, until Hana made a sound that drew her attention away.

Hana was sitting beside Tokki with her hands against her knees, breathing much too quickly. Seung-hwa had crouched in front of her and was asking where she was hurt, but every time she tried to answer, she stopped to take another breath. “Take your time,” he told her, “You’re alright. We’re all here.” Hana shook her head, staring past him, and insisted that she had seen them outside. Kyung-soo looked up from Jae-eun’s arm and told her to slow down before she made herself sick, which only brought her attention sharply towards him.

“We can’t do this.” Hana tried to swallow and coughed instead, bending forward until Seung-hwa caught her shoulder, “We can’t fucking do this, we’re just-we’re stupid fucking StarCraft players, and they put us in those things-”

Seung-hwa reminded her that they had got back, that she had helped get them back, but Hana looked at him with an expression Yuna had never seen on her before. “And then what? Look at it!” His hand fell away as she turned towards the ruined bay, drawing breath after breath without seeming to get enough of any of them. “They’re heroes. They’re Overwatch. They went out there and they-” Her mouth worked around the next words, “They died. We’re not like them. We can’t do what they do.”

Kyung-soo objected immediately, his voice rising when Hana insisted that he had seen the strike hit. “I saw the roof come down!” Yuna flinched. For a moment she wanted to tell both of them to stop, because she had seen it too and neither of them was saying anything she had not already thought.

Instead, she took a breath that scraped the back of her throat and turned to him. “Stay with Jae-eun. Hold that dressing in place.” She waited until he looked down, then caught Seung-hwa’s attention, “Can you check behind Beast? There should be a way into the service passage. Stay where I can see you.”

He glanced at Hana before getting up. Yuna knelt in the space he left, feeling the cut on her knee for the first time, and tried to bring Hana’s attention back to her. “Hana. It’s me.” 

The answer came sharply-she knew perfectly well who Yuna was-before Hana looked down at her own hands with an expression that made Yuna forget the irritation. “I can’t get-I keep trying to breathe and it won’t-”

“It’s alright. You don’t have to explain.” Yuna rested her hand on the floor between them. Her fingers were shaking, so she spread them against the concrete, “Stay here with me a moment.” Hana barely seemed to hear her. Her gaze had returned to the bay, and when she asked why Yuna was not looking for the others, Yuna found herself looking too.

Behind the slab, cables hung down into a gap too dark to see through. She wanted to get closer, call their names, give them the chance to answer before she did anything else. Perhaps someone was trying to answer already and she simply could not hear them. “I don’t know how to get through there.” She admitted. Hana looked back at her, “I didn’t see them come out. But I didn’t see them die either.” Hana glanced towards the gap again and asked whether she thought they could be underneath it, sounding as though she was afraid to consider either answer.

Hana pressed her mouth against her sleeve. Yuna waited through another coughing fit, fighting the urge to fill the silence with something reassuring. She could hear Kyung-soo asking Jae-eun whether the pressure hurt, and Jae-eun telling him that everything hurt. “We need to find the captain.” She said when Hana looked up again, “Tell her where they were. Get someone to help us.” Hana wanted to know how they were supposed to do that, and Yuna looked towards the gap Seung-hwa was examining, “The service side. If we can get out there, we can reach the other units.”

Hana stared at her as though she had suggested they walk into the sea, “Yuna, I can’t fight that thing.” The answer came before Yuna had worked out how to make it sound convincing. 

She moved her hand closer, leaving it between them for Hana to take, “You don’t have to be a hero. I need you to stand up with me.”

Hana looked down at the hand Yuna offered. For a moment she did nothing, then her fingers closed around it with enough force to hurt. Yuna rose slowly, stopping when Hana’s knees bent and she sank against Tokki again. “Wait.” Hana’s voice had grown small, and she looked down at her boots as though she could find the explanation there, “My legs feel wrong.”

“Then we’ll wait.” Yuna stayed crouched beside her, though a tremor beneath her boots made her look up at the roof. Hana noticed. Of course she noticed; she had always been quick to catch the smallest hesitation when Yuna was trying to bluff her. This time she said there would be another strike, and Yuna could not bring herself to disagree. “Maybe.” She tightened her grip, waiting until Hana looked at her again, “Put your feet underneath you. I’m here.”

This time Hana managed to stand. She caught herself against Tokki, staring at the place where her palm touched its damaged armour, and Yuna let her keep it there until she was steady. When they moved towards Jae-eun, Hana followed so closely that her shoulder brushed Yuna’s back.

…

Seung-hwa found the medical bag near the overturned stretcher. Yuna took a clean dressing from it and handed it to Kyung-soo, who looked relieved to have something that had not been torn from his own clothing. Jae-eun watched them work with his head resting against La Princesse Sereine.

When Kyung-soo reached for the old dressing, Jae-eun stopped him with a sharp reminder that the medic had told him to leave it alone. Kyung-soo denied having meant to remove it, then admitted he had been trying to see where it went. By then Jae-eun was watching his hands so closely that Yuna doubted he would let him touch the bandage again.

Yuna put the fresh dressing over the first and guided Jae-eun’s good hand onto it. “Keep this here while we get ready. Kyung-soo, take his right side when he stands.” Jae-eun muttered that he was glad somebody knew what they were doing. She almost told him that she was remembering the same first-aid lesson he had attended; he had spent most of it complaining about the training dummy’s expression. Instead, she checked that Kyung-soo understood, then turned towards Seung-hwa.

He was looking through the wreckage around Mastermind. One drone lay within reach, its casing split open. The others were somewhere beneath the fallen roof. Yuna stepped closer, careful of the loose metal beneath her boots, and pointed to the one he could reach, “Can you use that one?”

“The assembly arm’s broken.” He picked it up anyway, turning it over, “I might be able to get the controller working, but there isn’t enough material left for anything substantial. Not after the thruster.”

When Yuna asked about the reserve, he looked towards the far side of the bay. She remembered the storage unit standing there, its drawers labelled in Seung-hwa’s careful handwriting; she could not even see the wall it had been against. He set the damaged drone down and began examining the panel beside Mastermind instead, “I could try to get another drone out. If I can shift that panel-”

“Could you get Mastermind moving?” Yuna asked. He studied the wreck for several seconds before admitting that he could not.

That afternoon, he had made a whole cockpit appear while Kingprotea watched, delighted, and Yuna had caught Hana’s sleeve before she could interrupt Archer’s praise. Seung-hwa had carried the tablet around for the rest of the demonstration as though someone might ask him to explain it again. Now he was picking pieces of concrete off a drone that could not help them, and she had to speak twice before he stopped. “Leave it. I need you to show us the passage.”

He nodded, wiped his hands on his suit, and collected the medical bag. While he did, Kyung-soo tried his radio. He switched channels twice, waited, and shook his head.

The nearest base terminal had been torn from its mounting. Yuna stepped around the broken screen to reach the wall handset, but the cable came away when she lifted it. Above her, a camera hung by its wiring with its lens smashed against the concrete. Hana had stopped beside the dead terminal. She looked towards its projector before calling Kiara’s name, quietly enough that Yuna almost missed it, “Can you hear us?”

Yuna waited longer than she meant to. Kiara had interrupted enough conversations without being invited that hearing somebody actually ask for her ought to have brought an immediate response. Nothing appeared above the projector. Somewhere inside the broken console, a fan scraped to a stop. Seung-hwa pointed beneath the gantry, explaining that the relay had been there. They would need another terminal, assuming they could find one that still had power.

“We’ll try one when we find it.” Yuna looked towards the gap behind Beast, “The fallback staging area is past the service yard. If the recovery crews can’t use this bay, that’s where they’re supposed to go.” Kyung-soo asked whether she thought Myung would be there, and she settled for the answer she could defend: someone there ought to be able to reach her.

He helped Jae-eun upright while she spoke. Jae-eun stopped halfway, eyes squeezed shut, then straightened with his good shoulder against Kyung-soo. Yuna told him to say when he needed to stop, earning a muttered request that they manage it before Kyung-soo dropped him. The immediate, offended denial almost made her smile.

They ducked beneath Beast’s armour one at a time. Yuna held a loose cable aside while Hana passed, then waited for the others. From here she could see how the landed mechs had caught the falling structure. Singijeon’s wreck lay across the space Kyung-soo had crawled out of; Tokki’s frame supported the panel above Hana’s position. Beast had taken enough of the roof to leave this narrow way through.

She had told them to get back to base. All the way over the water, she had watched the batteries behind her and thought they only needed to reach them. Seung-hwa had to call her name from the passage before she realised she was still holding the cable. She released it carefully and followed him through. Beyond the bend, she lost sight of Beast altogether. They were leaving all five mechs in the ruined bay. Whatever happened on the way to staging, they would have to manage on foot.

The emergency lights still worked along one wall, throwing a low glow across fallen plaster and a slab obstructing the corridor. Yuna could see the maintenance doors beyond it. She climbed onto the lowest edge, helped Hana across, then turned back for Jae-eun and showed him where to put his foot.

He agreed to try, with Kyung-soo moving behind him to help, but his boot caught against the concrete as he raised his knee. The sound he made stopped Yuna reaching for him. Kyung-soo pushed, misunderstanding, and Jae-eun swore. “Down,” Yuna told him immediately, “Put him down.” Jae-eun insisted that he could manage, though he was breathing through his teeth and had made no attempt to lift his foot again.

“Wait.” She looked along the slab instead of towards the doors. Near the lockers, a bent ventilation cover concealed a narrower gap. She pulled it loose and found enough room to pass sideways, “Here. We’ll go around.” Kyung-soo stared at the opening, and Yuna knew what he was going to ask before he asked it. Yes, they could have done that first. She held the metal aside while they guided Jae-eun through, reminding him to watch the injured arm, and his face coloured as he adjusted his grip.

She could hardly blame him for asking. She had looked at the obstacle, decided how she would cross it, and expected the others to manage. Ten minutes ago she had nearly told Jae-eun to hold altitude when he could barely work his controls.

Hana waited beyond the slab, watching them. Normally she would have contributed something by now, probably about Yuna making everyone take the difficult route for training purposes. Yuna found herself wanting the complaint badly enough to almost prompt it.

At the maintenance doors, Seung-hwa caught her sleeve before she stepped through. A beam had fallen across the covered loading passage, leaving a space underneath that looked just large enough. “The bracket’s coming out,” he said. Yuna followed his finger to the upper end. One fastening had torn free; the remaining metal had bent around the weight, “It moved when I opened the door.”

Yuna stepped back and told them they would use the yard. Kyung-soo immediately pointed out that it was open, glancing towards Jae-eun as though he was hoping she had forgotten. She had been thinking about that stretch of ground since Seung-hwa showed her the bracket. “We can stay behind the storage wall most of the way,” she said, “There’s an equipment entrance at the far end.”

Seung-hwa confirmed that it led through to staging and started towards the junction, but she touched his shoulder before he moved away. “Show me from the doorway. Stay close.” Then she turned to make sure the others had heard where they were going.

Nobody argued. She would have liked to believe that meant they trusted the decision, but Hana was staring at the floor and Jae-eun looked as though he would agree to almost anything that brought the walking to an end.

The side exit had jammed. Seung-hwa and Kyung-soo worked it open while Jae-eun leaned against Yuna, trying to keep his weight off her. She told him to stop helping and received a faint, annoyed look for it.

Outside, smoke obscured the coast. A damaged vehicle stood beside the loading area with its doors open, and scraps of insulation moved across the yard in the breeze. Yuna listened for the Colossus. Heavy impacts sounded beyond the buildings, farther away now, mixed with gunfire from the city. Seung-hwa peered around the door and reported that he could see nothing moving in the yard, though he kept looking after he had said it.

Yuna checked for herself. She could see the route along the storage wall, then the exposed stretch before the equipment entrance. If she had still been inside Beast, she could have crossed the distance in a few strides. Here at ground level, the storage wall hid most of the approach, and she had to lean past the doorway to see where they could walk.

On foot, with Jae-eun leaning on somebody to stand, she considered every patch where they would be visible from the coast. “We’ll stop behind the wall first,” She said, pointing so they would all be looking at the same place, “Kyung-soo, stay with Jae-eun. Seung-hwa, don’t get ahead of us.”

They moved while the firing remained distant. Yuna kept Hana beside her, slowing when the others did. The wall was close enough to reach when a heavy metallic crash sounded behind them.

Hana stopped so abruptly that Yuna took another step before she noticed. She turned back and found Hana half crouched on the concrete, one hand lifted in front of her as though it had closed around Tokki’s control grip. Her thumb pressed against empty air.

Yuna called her name, and Hana looked down at what she was doing. Her fingers opened slowly, then curled again when another crash sounded beyond the bay. “I know,” she said before Yuna could ask, staring at her bare hand, “I know it’s back there. I just keep trying to turn the matrix on.”

Yuna recognised the movement. She had watched Hana use it to cover La Princesse Sereine while Seung-hwa rebuilt the thruster, holding Tokki in place long after she had warned that its matrix was running out. Hana had walked away from the wreck with them; she knew perfectly well that there were no controls in her hands and no armour around her. Still, each sound sent her reaching for the protection she had been taught to use.

Yuna crouched beside her, bringing the storage wall back into her line of sight. “There. We can get behind that.” She offered her hand low enough for Hana to take without standing first, “Come on. With me.”

Hana glanced towards the smoke again. Yuna stayed in front of her, though every sound made her want to turn around. Finally Hana took her hand, and they covered the remaining distance together.

Jae-eun sat as soon as they reached shelter. Kyung-soo lowered him carefully this time, asking before he shifted his weight. Seung-hwa opened the medical bag without waiting for an instruction. Yuna crouched beside them and checked the dressing; it was stained through, though Jae-eun still held it firmly. Kyung-soo said they needed a minute, and she nodded, turning at the sound of something rattling across the yard beyond the wall. All five of them went quiet until it stopped.

Hana was looking back towards the bay. When she spoke, Yuna had to lean closer to hear her say that they had come here for them. Yuna agreed, following her gaze, but Hana continued before she could offer anything else. “Genji was getting Jae-eun out. Winston was coming over, and then-” She rubbed at a patch of dust on her glove, “We just left them.” Yuna began to say they had not gone far, regretting it as soon as Hana looked at her. That was not what she meant, and they both knew it.

Yuna could still feel the crewman’s hand against her back, and she had not even called for him by name. She looked at Jae-eun, at the dressing he was pressing to his arm, and tried to imagine taking him through that corridor again. “We need help to get into the bay,” she said, “People with equipment. Medics.” Hana listened without looking away from her. When she asked what would happen if the people underneath were waiting for them, Yuna had to look down.

She wanted to promise that Archer would already have found a way out, that Tracer would appear beside them and complain about the mess. Hana’s hands were still moving against each other, rubbing at the same patch of dust. “Then we need to tell someone where to look.” Yuna waited until she met her eyes, “I remember where they were. So do you.” Hana said nothing more, but when Yuna stood, she came with her.

They reached the equipment entrance together. Its lower hinge had twisted, leaving the door caught against the frame. Seung-hwa tested it while the others sheltered beside the wall, then called Kyung-soo over. Between them they pulled it far enough for Yuna to see into the corridor.

Lights were on at the far end. She was listening for movement when a voice called an order beyond the corner, followed by the scrape of something being dragged. Seung-hwa looked at her, his hand still on the door. He asked whether she had heard it too, keeping his voice low as though he was afraid of losing the sound.

She nodded and leaned into the gap. Two figures crossed beneath the light, carrying a stretcher between them. Yuna recognised the cut of their uniforms before they disappeared, “Regulars.” She looked back at Jae-eun and asked whether he could get through with their help. He was already pushing away from the wall, though he waited for Kyung-soo before taking another step, “Try stopping me.”

Kyung-soo took his right side without being asked. Seung-hwa held the door while Yuna brought Hana through, then helped guide Jae-eun past the bent frame. Once they were inside, she checked the four of them again and stepped towards the light. “MEKA Squad!” Her voice carried farther than she expected, bringing an answering movement beyond the corner, “We have an injured pilot. We need a medic!”

Someone answered beyond the corner. Yuna raised a hand, waiting until a soldier appeared and saw them, then looked back for Hana. She had paused inside the doorway, facing the smoke.

Yuna went back and stood beside her. Hana’s eyes moved from the ruined bay to the hand she offered, and this time she took it without being asked.

…

A/N: Oh boy, here I go traumatizing Hana again!

On a more serious note, this will likely be the only chapter for the week. Something came up at work, and it looks like I'll have to do overtime + offset my work hours to very late in the day. I don't think I've said it yet, but I have been doing actual work for the past couple weeks now, not just training, so even I'm affected by the time crunch we're on. On the bright side, no work from Monday to Wednesday next week, so expect the chapters to be out by then!

The announcement I've scheduled to come out after this chapter will more or less be what's written above, so if you read this, there's no need to read that one.

As always, thank you all for your support!