Code Lyoko: Revolutions and Evolutions

Chapter 25

AN: Thank you so much to all of you, my faithful readers, and reviewers. Entertaining you with my vision for this story is the whole reason I began, and I thank you for your dedication and support. This chapter is one that I am incredibly proud of, and I hope you all enjoy it. Thank you for your time, reviews, and support. And thanks be God for helping me write in a way that is deeply satisfying for me and helping me out of my writing ruts I don't know how many times.

Pagliacci-11

The gentle beep of the heart monitor sounded in the very early morning hours. Aelita was asleep her head on the bed as she held Anthea's hand. The doctors had decided to proceed and removed Anthea's spleen for safety's sake but also because the bullets had decimated the organ as a whole. Anthea was breathing on her own, but she was still very much in recovery. The drugs that were coursing into her system destroyed any sensation of pain, but even Aelita knew that the drip of drugs would have to be ceased eventually.

Odd was asleep in the chair nearby the bed, having finally gotten to sleep in the stiffly upholstered chair as was common in such an area. Yolanda, however, stood mute and still in the dark. She knew she could easily remove Anthea from the equation, this was something, she was very much adept at and had been doing for years on behalf of the initiative. However, Yolanda knew better than to act in haste. True, she had the potential to end any possible retaliation and do so, so that none would notice. But would it have been prudent?

Yolanda patched into her implant, and she thought, "M-1202 to North. I am in perfect striking distance of the target. How should I proceed?"

There was silence a moment and North-Gate replied, "I see what you see, and I advise you to stand down for now. She is wounded and in recovery. We will have plenty of time to act beneficially. Just not now. Stay your hand. This is very much a scenario that will remedy itself."

Yolanda nodded and ended the communication and sat in the only other chair in the room and closed her eyes. She listened to the sounds of the hospital. The beeping of the monitors, the sterile gloss of the floors outside. The smell of sanitizer and a hint of lemon. It came back to her half why she loved hospitals, the other half why she hated them. The love came from the versatility that such places afforded. All manner of tools to maim, hurt, heal, and cure all stemming on the mood of an overseeing doctor. The exact nature of the hospital, a form of battleship. Every person had their function and had to perform it with a degree of exacting precision.

Yolanda knew that there were some nurses from her experience in the States, how some nurses didn't precisely have the bedside manner, but they were efficient. Those who weren't efficient usually had a reasonable degree of bedside manner. Then there were the undesired, the squelchers as Yolanda called them. Getting their nursing degree to get a more natural hold on laboratory precision drugs than risk the dangers of the street supply. Such people were those she ordinarily dismissed in years past; however, now they were to her as valuable as gold. Where doubtless many saw junkies, Yolanda, now she had her eyes opened by her years in the operations, saw nothing but untapped raw manpower.

However, the hospitals as much good as they had given, as many elements of resources as they provided, Yolanda knew the darkness hospitals. It was an element which she called, 'the sweet-worded reaper.' Cancer had devastated many of her friends and family back home. It was the same with John, she knew. He had lost his friend, Dave Hickey, to cancer and just a few years after his own mother. But it was from him, her philosophy of 'the sweet-worded reaper' took root. The hospitals would give chemo, give painkillers, help as best they could. Yolanda knew that due to what she had seen personally and what North-Gate had shown all of them, cancer was something generations upon generations in the making. A slow poisoning of the people from ever-present advancement to better feed the people, that was just one cause. But in this place, Yolanda and indeed the whole team knew there was an entire slue of other reasons. Could hospitals help? Just barely and even then, there was an eye out to ensure that there wasn't a resurgence. But what all the North-Gate team knew was that when it was environmental, it didn't matter how many drugs, how many chemo treatments you had. In time, your time would be up.