A Fantasia of Faint Familiarity

[Albert Wesker]

There had been a big, unnecessary scuffle and flurry of activity once the hospital had been entered. As they were prone to do, the staff reacted quite earnestly to seeing the state Joline was in. When they discovered she was a prime, the haste and fervor in their actions diminished slightly, but an entirely different kind of swiftness took hold of their movements. Gone was the frantic rush of furious activity desperate to save a life that was irreplaceable. No frenetic rush of haste and preparation to placate the searing pain, both mental and physical, and pull an apparent child back from the precipice of death.

No, there was undeniably a certain brisk rush to the movements. A haste born of professionalism, and of a desire to finish a task quickly, efficiently, and with grace. It was the bearing of a group who had just been presented with an opportunity. And it took only a short look around, spotting one of the nursing staff speaking with someone bearing an insignia on the shoulder of their uniform, for the soldier navi to hazard a guess as to why. A quick image capture, upload, and dataverse search turned up enough results to confirm his guess. The Empire Peace Division. Always looking for new recruits, and doing whatever they could to get primes in their good graces to offer incentive to join. The efficiency and lack of panicked rushing that this revelation brought to the table was undeniably appreciated, given the situation, but it served only to tighten the scowl on the features of the otherwise stoic machine.

Bureaucracy, he thought to himself. The inner workings of places like this were always complex and convoluted, with endless schemes to get what they wanted.

Regardless...matters were being taken care of. The medical attention that Joline had wanted -- and needed, even with the resilience and natural healing ability of primes, given her newness to all this -- was being administered. And he had been promised, somewhat awkwardly, she would be fine in short order. Most primes could recover from injuries even that bad in just a couple days of rest, if they put their minds to it. With some proper medical treatment, they assured, she'd be right as rain by tomorrow, at the latest.

Colonel would believe that when he saw it.

For now, he sat quietly in a waiting room. One of, he had been informed, several. Why there needed to be more than one, he didn't know, and wasn't going to question. What he did know was that he had been required to spend several minutes to pool together a bit of omnilium and summon forth a chair large and sturdy enough to support his damaged, still-sparking bulk. After one of them had creaked and groaned in distress just from his gaze settling on it, he had wisely decided ahead of time to just not risk it. In some corner of his mind, he could see the comical situation: taking a seat, and the flimsy thing giving way under him, or catching fire from an errant spark in his battle-damaged systems igniting it. There was no scowl fierce enough for how much he did not want to have that happen.

And so there he sat, in a sharply contoured beast of steel. It looked highly uncomfortable, made solely of metal supports and structuring, with nary a trace of padding to be seen. But it was sturdy, and with nothing for his marred, mangled plating to catch on, and nothing for the occasional flickering spark to set alight. He settled into it, slowly leaning back and shifting his tattered — all but shredded, really; just about completely ruined — cape over one shoulder to drape over the back of the chair, and let his eyes slowly drift closed.

He drew up his internal diagnostics, turning his systems toward analyzing and setting to repairing the damage he'd sustained. He re-routed the new programs and routines he'd developed for omnilium to assist with the task, taking full advantage of a prime's natural regenerative capabilities. He doubted he'd make much progress in the short time he planned to wait here to hear word of the progress on his unlikely companion, but if he could at least take care of the worst of the internal 'bleeding', as the analogy had been made to him by a doctor upon a cursory examination of his damaged state, it would be satisfactory for him.

By the estimation of his internal clock, it was scarcely twenty minutes later that he was roused from his partial slumber, by a light plink against his shoulder and a simple "Oi, toaster." His eyes cracked open, with a flicker of green. Momentary static greeted his vision, his field of view shrouded in snow as it sparked and fizzed, slowly clearing away to reveal the form of Joline standing there, looking at him with a strange expression on her face.

"Not lookin' so hot there," she said, hands on her hips. "And here I thought I was supposed to be the one here for medical treatment." The cheeky grin on her features made her teasing evident, but it practically fell apart when the cybernetic soldier slowly placed his hands on the armrests of the chair he sat in, and levered himself up into a standing position, once more towering over her. He didn't say a word for several long, tense seconds, during which Joline's expression rapidly dwindled into a nervous frown. "Uh...y-you, uh...okay, there? You look--"

"Why are you here?" he cut her off in mid-sentence, his tone cold and sharp. "Even with a prime's regenerative abilities and proper medical treatment, you couldn't possibly be recovered yet."

The young girl looked away for a brief second, muttering something under her breath that the warrior program's damaged systems couldn't pick up. "I, uh...it wasn't as bad as it looked," she finally said aloud. "Or something. They got me all patched up and I'm okay now." She looked back up, and found Colonel's unblinking gaze still leveled on her, and she visibly flinched. "R-Really, I swear!"

He said nothing, just continued to stare down at her. For nearly a minute, he remained motionless, impassive, and impossible to read. But finally, his eyes closed, and he shook his head. Without breath to draw, he couldn't sigh, but he did a very reasonable approximation. "...then we should be able to leave here, if you are sufficiently recovered." And he turned aside, starting to walk off with his signature, heavy stride.

"Yeah, I guess so..." came the uneasy reply of the girl as she started after him. There was a quartet of steady steps, then a matching set of uneasy shuffling strides, and a spattering of unsteady stumbling and a heavy thud.

The digital soldier stopped in his tracks, his gaze fixed forward. "....Joline." He spoke the name with a sharp, cold tone in his voice as per usual, slowly turning around to survey the scene, and finding her all but collapsed on the floor. He could detect the recoiling as his gaze fell on her, a look of complete indignation practically laser-etched into his features. A sharp, viridian gleam sparked in his eyes as he took a stride back toward her, and knelt down, the displeasure radiating off of him almost palpable. "I believe you lied to me."

She looked up at him, confusion written on her features as she tried to regain her posture. Limbs trembled weakly as she made a valiant struggle to get her legs under her again. "Huhwha...? Whaddya mean, 'lied'...?"

"You told me you were alright. That you had recovered." In his internal heads-up display, his targeting systems were already scanning the girl before him over. Several reticles and targeting icons flickered into view, locking onto various points. Trembling limbs, points of weakness, still-visible bruising and only mostly-sealed wounds, already threatening to bleed again. His expression softened, almost imperceptibly. The stark, steel-cold glare in his eyes faded, replaced with something almost approaching genuine concern. He had worked too hard, and made too many decisions he was still calculating over to let this silly girl prevent herself from getting proper treatment and recovering for whatever inscrutable reasons she had in her head. "You have clearly not recovered anywhere near as much as you think you have."

"No, no, I'm totally fine!" she insisted, smiling weakly while looking at a point several inches to his left. "Yeah, the nurses let me out. Oh, hey, and there was this really cute one that Iiiiii'mgonnatakeanap--" Her struggles finally ceased, and she fell flat to the floor, sprawling out on it with a pitiful-sounding thunk.

Colonel stared down at her, his expression as impassive and inscrutable as ever. He merely heaves another faux-sigh. Slowly he rises up to stand, turning to go alert the staff of this place there patient had taken it upon herself to decide she was sufficiently recovered.

He was really going to need some rest after this.