Interlude: Barkbite
I watch my sister answer messages on her phone, excitedly typing replies to family and friends. A miracle.
A lot of the messages built up over the last few days, and I've partly been too busy to stay and answer them for her. Mostly, though, I just didn't want her to see me crying for a good chunk of every day. I was halfway through the paperwork for a live-in nurse when I was summoned to one of those damned gang summits they do. My seat is really EViRT's seat, and I'm there to represent the interests of the city. I'm not too proud to admit I was considering murdering any of the Nightjars who dared to show up.
Still, those shitty little gangs do a lot of public outreach, to make them seem less objectively shitty than they are. For example, a medical clinic. Keeping up appearances is the only reason why I didn't bring a gun.
He was already sitting when I walked in, an entirely decorative cane in his hands as his bodyguard stood alert behind him. A lot of EViRT money went to this clinic of his disguised as an anonymous benefactor, so he's important to someone important. He's some kind of empowered healer. Allegedly, anyway. I knew him as the bizarre vigilante who mangles Victorian speech as part of a confused character, and who escaped me after he tried to inject a fugitive with a mysterious liquid followed by creating a plume of smoke.
He kept up the character during the meeting, threw another smoke bomb, and antagonized the real bastards. And inexplicably cured my acid reflux, which still has yet to come back.
Obviously, since he had a healing ability, I had to try. I was left with a list from what I assumed was a random noun generator, all of it completely unrelated trash. That was probably the point of the smoke, in retrospect: to make the potion while obscured so no one could see his method. Really clever, not an average idiot who got some kind of power like my sister or I. I called in a few favors with some other hero friends, and we gathered a good amount of the things on the list he gave us.
I got a long lecture from Defrag, one of the state's EViRT supervisors, about letting hostile powers enter the headquarters. I told Defrag to just recruit the guy if it was such a problem.
Defrag actually tried, too, but, the healer denied becoming a sanctioned hero, and then he nearly got into a fight with Defrag. Defrag absolutely instigated it, knowing him, but still.
Of course, despite what Defrag wanted, I brought the healer and his bodyguard back. Tiff wasn't doing well. Her condition wasn't sharply declining, but not improving. No one can live like that for long.
The healer tried to start an argument with me on the hovercraft, his bodyguard ever silent. I avoided it. I wasn't in the mood for a shouting match. I haven't been in a long time, funnily enough.
He locked himself in a bathroom for ten minutes, and when I went to check on him, his bodyguard stiff armed me. God damn, she was stronger than she looked.
When he came out, he was tucking things into his coat, and walked straight to my side, with his bodyguard at his. I brought him to my sister's room, and stood outside. I heard snippets of a conversation. An introduction. Sleeping gas? Again, I tried to go in to check, but instead of firmly blocking me, his bodyguard gently patted my shoulder, and nodded. She made a good point, and probably stopped me from interfering.
Some forty minutes later, far less time than it should have taken, he steps out completely drenched in my sister's blood. "Barkbite, In. Solvent, stay put." Beaker said, showing me in.
And there was my sister. Not about to die, all the burned away skin on her face and body back. Hell, she didn't even have the small scar on her cheek from falling out of a tree when we were kids.
Beaker showboated a bit, deservedly so. What I didn't expect him was leaving within sixty seconds, taking his bodyguard with him, not feeling the need for accepting more praise. It's like he only wanted acknowledgement that he was the one who did it, and didn't actually care about my opinion.
-
I watch as my sister groans, the phone on the rolling table next to her vibrating with so many messages it almost rattles off the fake wood. I catch it, turn off the vibration, and put it back down. She smiles.
In return for this genuine miracle, he asked for... being left alone. Let him run the Apothecary. That was the extent of the request, other than a joke about sending cash instead of flowers.
I'm pretty sure I would kill someone if Beaker asked me to. Not positive. But pretty sure.