The flickering ceiling lamp swayed a little as the heavy tank-like Extraction Vehicle, EV they tended to call it, rolled through the road outside the building, shaking the beaten construction slightly while passing. Well, clinging might be more fitting judging from the shape of the worn off cord it hung on in order to fight against the relentless force of gravity. The abandoned ground-floor dental clinic, in which the two men that had gathered in, had seen better days. With the exception of the heavy dentist’s chair, everything that had been loose was long gone. Even if it looked like looters must’ve ditched the seat solely because it was too large to fit in pockets, scratch marks around the bolts attaching the furniture to the floor indicated it hadn’t been left there without trying.
Instead of copper-plated anti-bacterial shelves that were usually seen around these clinics, a few ammunition crates and sturdy wooden boxes, containing medical equipment, filled one of the sides split by the room dividing wall. The other part was dedicated for a make-shift gun maintenance point. Two unopened boxes served as a table for this setup. Welding equipment was leaning to a wall right next to back door, that back in the day was most probably used by clinic employees to sneak out for cig breaks. It gave access to a narrow alley behind the building. The room divider seemed to have fallen victim to someone’s aching renovation itch, as it had a torso-sized hole smashed through it about a meter above the ground. From the partially blocked window that was facing the road in front, the EV could be seen turn around the building’s corner with a handful of mercenaries escorting it.
“… but you should be a bit less footloose in the caretaking of this mechanical wonderr, or you’ll find yourrself a bit… footless. Like a Flamenco Flamingo.”
“For the last time Turtle, I’m damn sure striking puns is not required for this leg maintenance.” said the man of rather obviously hispanic origins, with his tanned skin and strong, slightly singing accent.
“Hey, Phoenix, why such an ass? A little humourr won’t hurrt, isn’t laughter the best medicine or something? Besides, I wouldn’t talk like that to the perrson who is tasked in…”
“¡Vete al carajo! Stop it!”
…handling your extrremities." pierced fellow replied with an ear-to-ear wide grin on his bearded face. Almost underlining R’s in any word his mouth produced gave his Türkish origins away pretty clearly. Despite the chatter, he worked without losing his focus for a single second from Phoenix’s artificial limb. Both the meat and metal hands Turtle possessed worked delicately but rapidly, replacing battered hydraulic tubes and other faulty structures as they went by part after part.
At first, the Spaniard was clearly trying to come back with something, but after a short silence and clenched fist, a surrendering sigh escaped his lips as he turned his head towards the hole in the room divider, giving sightline to the blocked window on the other side of the room, as if he could’ve seen anything much through the small peek holes drilled to its wall-side edges.
The next ten minutes passed in the silent humming of a nearby electrical transducer, that was occasionally speared by distant gunfire and explosions when rest of the band of mercenaries were carrying out their mission. Who knows why that one skyscraper specifically needed EMP charges to be brought down or why it had to be brought down in the first place. There was money to be made and this mission sure paid well.
Turtle got up from the small crate he was using as a chair, wiping his hands clean of oil with a rough microfibre towel. The limb looked as good as new and the bends caused by bullets were gone thanks to memory metal and acceleration of this “healing” process. The damage from fried electronics was fixed now and the leg could once again bear weight and rough situations the battlefield outside threw at them. He grabbed his fine tuning tools lying on the operating chair, while Phoenix started getting up.
“AaalleyHUP! It’s done”
“Finally, it was getting boring. Vamos, we should be going already!” Phoenix
“But it is worrth a while to get such a piece of arrt properly alive and kicking, don’thca think Mr. Medic?”
“Turtle I swear one day I’m going to…”
“Give me the boot?” the engineer snickered while organizing his tools in his camouflaged, sturdy toolbox.
“One more Mr. Mechanic and we will see the end of this mano a mano!” Phoenix said, backing up his statement with a boxer stance and a few sharp swings.
Turtle stopped in his tracks and turned calmly towards the irritated ex-surgeon:
“You surre could have done it yourrself then, eh?”
Phoenix lowered his hands, grabbed his helmet and put it on. With his blazing red hair included, this simple action resembled putting down a fire with a sky blue blanket.
“…gracias” he mumbled.
“That’s better”
The medic glanced again to the covered window and came to a halt. It was eerily quiet.
“Where’s the humming?” he turned to his companion briefly, then back to window.
“Hmm? What?”
“The electrical box. It stopped?”
“Oh those things tend to fall aparrt all the time when we only upkeep ones nearby our strrategic locations, besides our colleagues arre on their way to plant an EMP remember?.”
By the time Phoenix continued voicing his doubts, he had already gotten to the window and proceeded to peek through one of the holes in the wooden planks nailed on it.
“Sí, sí and that’s not even the one delivering power to this building, but we should be plenty away from the EMP for that to affect our positi…”
Just before an ear shattering sound of heavy, probably .50 caliber, gunshot reached them, the blockade simply blew into splinters from the side where he had stood on. As Phoenix fell to the floor, every millisecond made him increasingly aware of the bullet wound in his left chest alongside with sharp slivers that cut deep into the skin of his uncovered arm. The suffocating echo of the shot was accompanied with his sharp, surprised howl. By the time the medic’s fall was complete, Turtle had already grabbed his submachine gun resting on first box within arms reach and was crouching and leaning against the room divider. Getting lower was necessary, as a second projectile penetrated the blockade, rather what was left of it, flew through the hole and smashed into the door in the back with quite a force now that bullets path was less obstructed.
