Fighting Flatlines (War Over Mobius Saga: Rebel Route #2)

Critical Condition

As soon as Commander Knuckles and Gadget walked through the entrance to the ICU, Gadget began looking around, trying to locate her. 

The walls were eerily stained with blood, and a rebel flag had been draped over the door of almost every room in sight. 

Gadget's breaths caught in his chest as his enhanced hearing picked up the undeniable sound of a flatline just before a nurse walked out of a room very near them, her identity was unintelligible as she was covered in blood-soaked fabric.

Her face, revealing a feline of some sort, was nothing but somber as she looked up at a clipboard next to the door, cringing as tears began glinting in her eyes. She then painfully crossed out the soldier's name and began to sob as she wrote 'deceased' in large letters across the board, announcing the death of yet another young animal, one that had never had the chance to live their life.

Gadget whimpered and began to cry with her, he had no strength to fend off the sorrow of his new surroundings.

There was a sheer screaming inside the room as another nurse dragged someone out of the room, a male tabby who was no older than fourteen, screaming for the deceased soldier. "No! She's not gone! She can't be gone! No! My sister!"

The feline nurse looked up at him, aching for him, her voice in a low monologue. "Your sister has fallen."

Commander Knuckles pulled his away from the site, knowing that seeing a soldier die was not going to help Gadget with his own pain. As they walked further down the hall, Gadget watched the doors of wounded soldiers, indescribably addicted to the very thing that tore his heart.

The commander stopped Gadget at a nurse, a female dog with light blue fur, who was more than willing to show them where Nadia's room was.

"She lost a lot of blood, she bled half to death. We don't know when or if she'll wake up, but you're welcome to stay as long as it doesn't interfere with your war duties, Agent Gadget."

"Ehhh, we'll let him stay here as long as she's alive. Woulda done the same with Amy if Eggman hadn't taken Sonic." Knuckles offered, shrugging as if it was no big deal to take Gadget out of service.

"Don't you need all the soldiers you can get?" The stunned nurse asked.

This was true. The surviving soldiers were nothing compared to Eggman's army, and after losing eighty percent of their soldiers to Infinite, no one wanted to join the Resistance.

"I've thought about it, trying to decide what was best for the Resistance. Are we so desperate for soldiers that we will send ones who cannot handle another wispon fire? Or is it better for us to let the wounded heal, then send them back out into battle when they can handle it? Soldiers like Gadget, if they go into battle, might put the rebellion in more danger than a whole force of soldiers who don't know who their allies are." Knuckles replied thoughtfully, as if the response was him taking responsibility for Operation Big Wave.

Gadget looked at them. "I'll still fight," he began, rubbing his arm in expectation of the too-real vision of his injured love. "I just need to spend some time with Nadia for a bit." He frowned, the nurse reached her arm out, placing it on his shoulder to comfort him.

"Of course, let me show her to you; it's kind of hard to see for the first time, especially since you were just in that bloody battle." The nurse's expression was full of compassion for the soldier; she walked him in once he nodded.

He gasped as his paws covered his mouth unconsciously.

Tears filled his amber eyes instantly stinging and burning, blurring his vision, and worsening a horrible image.

Nadia was covered head to toe in blood-soaked bandages, as still and lifeless as she was when she collapsed.

The fur outside the bandages was matted and crusted with her blood.

An intensely pained expression frozen on her face.

Wires and an oxygen tube were the only things keeping her alive.

As Gadget approached her, stunned with horror, he noticed some of the bedsheets were stained with her precious blood. Once his hand touched the bed, cold from her inactivity, he collapsed and began to sob, tenderly stroking her folded down ear as the nurse pulled a blanket over her. Gadget was having a hard time comprehending how, in ten minutes, Nadia could go from a Rookiez agent, strong and brave, to a soldier heavily injured on the front lines, clinging to life.

He mumbled softly to her; he didn't even know what he was saying, only that he couldn't stop the devastated phrases pouring out from his lips.

Commander Knuckles sighed and left.

The room became so silent that all you could hear was the couple's breathing.