"Mmm, well. We didn't, for a bit. Pipes and Drift, the two people I brought with me contracted it, I contracted it--the acute, fast-acting version, of course--but of course Pharma had an antidote cooked up right along with the original pathogen. I found out it was him that actually planted the disease in the first place, told everybody so, and he drew a gun on the lot of us and blew up a power generator that was fueling all the life support machines of the sick patients because he knew a pack of medics would drop everything to get that in order before doing anything else. But I managed to catch up with him and wring most of the story out of him and infect him as well before we got into an extremely stupid fight on the roof of the building in the middle of a howling blizzard and I managed to trip him up so he fell. I could barely walk at this point, I was going blind, I had the antidote, so I tried to leave him there, clinging to the edge of the building, let him decide whether to rot or drop to death. I don't know where he got the weapon from."
Ratchet slows again, remembering--he's editing out of necessity, to try to conceal the inhuman aspects of what had happened, since humans don't contract rust viruses, but most of this story is unvarnished and raw. He recalls the snow on his face, the anger and disappointment, the awful, copper taste in the back of his throat as he felt his systems slowly failing, one by one. It's excruciatingly clear.
"Anyway, he tried to shoot me out of spite before I could leave him and Drift... I don't know. He was worse off than I was, but somehow he dragged his carcass up onto the roof and managed to lunge for Pharma just before he fired. With a sword--that's what he fights with. Chopped Pharma's hands clean off tipping forward, which was pretty much all he could manage in his condition, and sent him off the edge of the building." He's quiet for another moment, fairly sure that York can do the math about what happened after that but unwilling to leave it ambiguous. "We can't just grow organs like they apparently do here, and I had a medibay full of dying patients and antidote to cook more of and... I took them. Pharma and I were a match, and they were able to, to transplant them.
"So that's why. The scars, I mean. They're where my old hands were removed and the graft done. Everybody else lived and I didn't have to give up the title of CMO, because I would work again. That's all."
no subject
Ratchet slows again, remembering--he's editing out of necessity, to try to conceal the inhuman aspects of what had happened, since humans don't contract rust viruses, but most of this story is unvarnished and raw. He recalls the snow on his face, the anger and disappointment, the awful, copper taste in the back of his throat as he felt his systems slowly failing, one by one. It's excruciatingly clear.
"Anyway, he tried to shoot me out of spite before I could leave him and Drift... I don't know. He was worse off than I was, but somehow he dragged his carcass up onto the roof and managed to lunge for Pharma just before he fired. With a sword--that's what he fights with. Chopped Pharma's hands clean off tipping forward, which was pretty much all he could manage in his condition, and sent him off the edge of the building." He's quiet for another moment, fairly sure that York can do the math about what happened after that but unwilling to leave it ambiguous. "We can't just grow organs like they apparently do here, and I had a medibay full of dying patients and antidote to cook more of and... I took them. Pharma and I were a match, and they were able to, to transplant them.
"So that's why. The scars, I mean. They're where my old hands were removed and the graft done. Everybody else lived and I didn't have to give up the title of CMO, because I would work again. That's all."