Another Unoriginal Oneshot Book

Mercury's Messenger

Note: Based on this Wikipedia article, I'm aware that the medical information presented in this chapter may be inaccurate. But Fallout's never been medically accurate, so I'm going by Hollywood logic for drama's sake.

—

Mojave Wasteland, July 2283.
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Sage threw her body weight down on her arms once, twice, again and again. She ignored the tears pricking at her eyes. She shouldn't be getting emotional now, not after everything.

"Remember to breathe," Arcade murmured beside her.

"You breathe," Sage retorted, but sucked in warm, stale desert air all the same. She heard her heartbeat in her ears, the clicks and snaps of Veronica's deft hands jury-rigging scrap behind her, the wind on sharp boulders, and the occasional hiss of Arcade performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the dead boy.

He was thirteen, by Sage's estimate. She had never killed a child. (Not so young. Not face-to-face, not intentionally.) Lucius was still sending assassins after her, but they seemed to be getting younger and younger.

The Legion was running out of reserves.

She was lucky she'd brought her two idealists. The others might have been saddened, but they wouldn't have tried to resuscitate their enemy, or had the technical skill to do it anyway. His heart had stopped, but a stimpak had prompted his still-oxygenated cells to stitch themselves back together, and Veronica had set to work on a makeshift defibrillator.

"His chances of survival are pretty slim, Courier," Arcade reminded her for the eightieth time. Sage drowned him out by humming Big Iron in time with the compressions, ignoring the way the child's broken body popped under the pressure.

"Give me one more minute!" Veronica called. The girl was a wizard; at least Sage had Elijah to thank for something.

Arcade and Sage switched stations. He had more upper body weight and was less shy about using it; Sage heard one of the boy's ribs crack. Arcade didn't let up. Sage readied another stimpak to fix it once urgent matters were attended to.

She heard a final click and a shout from Veronica. "Ready!" Arcade made way and helped her position the electrodes on the boy's chest. Sage sent up a silent prayer, unsure who exactly was on the other end of the line, but confident Someone was listening.

"Clear." Veronica connected a wire to a fission battery, and the boy's muscles seized all at once.

A checking of the pulse, and a second attempt at defibrillation. Arcade moved his fingers to the boy's neck again, but was stopped by a twitching in the young legionary's face.

They breathed a collective sigh of relief. "Keep it handy. He may flatline again," Arcade warned them.

The child's eyebrows crinkled, and he turned his head as if reluctantly waking up from a deep sleep. He breathed, gasping for every painful breath. Sage administered the stimpak, and his eyes flew open as the burn marks faded and his chest morphed back into its original shape.

"Hey, kiddo. How are you feeling?" asked Veronica gently. The kid sat up, or tried to, and batted their hands away frantically.

"Slow down there, Spartacus. You need to rest," said Arcade, pinning him down firmly with one hand. "What now, Sage?"

"Dunno. Didn't expect to get this far." Sage stood up, shaking out her frenzied nerves. "We take him back to the tower, I suppose. Or maybe the New Vegas Medical Clinic. But I feel like this one will be a handful once he's up and moving again."

"Let me go," the boy said weakly. "I — I feel strange. What did you do to me?"

"Killed you!" Sage thundered dramatically, "And then brought you back again."