ArchivedLogs:Triaging

Triaging
cn: a lot of blood, injuries, death.
Dramatis Personae Hive, Jax, Jim, Kay, Ryan, Flicker, Joshua, Mihail, Rachel, Scramble
In Absentia	2014-07-02 Aftermath of the latest Prometheus raid. (Part of Prometheus TP.)
Location A van
It's kind of a haze, just now, a mess of moaning and screaming, blood and piss and vomit and the vans /zooming/ away on the empty Pennsylvania backroads are not, all in all, the most pleasant of places to be just at the moment. The medics are doing what they can -- and recruiting all available hands that are steady enough and capable of taking instruction to help -- but. It's a noise that won't stop, and right now Jax is trying his best to tune it out, ignore the internal screaming of broken ribs and broken leg and the side of his face charred and half hanging off where a searing fireburst of explosion tore his cheek open -- oh well, at least his eye on that side was /already/ missing -- and a rather impressive gut wound that has yet to be patched (he's holding one arm protectively around it, kind of not looking, kind of /hoping/ he won't see viscera if he ever decides to let go.) Part of his brain is very much wanting to succumb to /sleep/ -- passing out, really -- but there's a wired rush of sunlight and adrenaline that won't really let this happen. He grabs a small vial of blood out of one of the coolers they've brought with them, and it's possible he raises a few eyebrows among the labrats who notice this but it's just as possible in the chaos it goes unnoticed as he flips it open to down it with a grimace, like taking a /shot/. Like taking medicine. And fueled better by this he's able to turn his mind to -- << Hive. >> A gunshot-crack of mental voice, tinged with pain but snapping loud and alert with a firm determination. << Report? >> In answer to this, at first, there is silence. Mostly silence -- a faint stirring that ghosts in small shivery mental touch from mind to mind, van to van; in half these minds it's already threaded in, woven deep. Hive's touch, finally, shifting to lean up against Jax's and Ryan's minds both, is a numb and heavy pressure. Almost a coolly blanketing escape from the sights and sounds and smells of misery around them -- just blank, bland, silent. It takes a moment for an actual /voice/ to stir out of this, though; eventually Hive's mind whispers back in sussurating echo of so-many-minds clustered together. << Still triaging. There's a lot -- >> He falls off into silence for a moment, a short stuttering pause that eventually resumes. << Seven people need care right now. >> And in mental explanation this comes with identities, with the faces and mind-/feel/ of three of the labrats, of Jim, of Jane, of Ash, of Ion. << They're already black-tagging three. >> Identified here, too; two more of the labrats, and Flicker, still /alive/ at the moment though too far gone, right now, they're only getting pain medication in place of care. Amid the chorus of minds that comprise Hive's, there's not much to be found of /him/, really. Not /much/, but with the ghosting mental identification of Flicker and Jim there's a small /clench/, a sick-twisting pain that soon subsides back into numbness. << Rachel's doing what she can. Might be able to stabilize one of the labrats. Maybe Ash. Maybe Ion. Jane and the other two -- and Jim'll probably need constant attention the whole way into surgery if -- >> Another silence, quieter still when he finally resumes: << Three, four of them maybe. Won't be able to get them /all/. Joshua's going to lose half of them way before we get to New York. >> Wherever Flicker is, Jim sits (well, is propped) grimly nearby, just as near as possible without obstructing. Or that would likely be how he /ended/ up with some prodding and aid his brain is a tangled adrenal mess of pain and gut-deep dread. The dart that had struck him had been slow acting at first - to a point that he'd almost hoped he might be immune to it, until the slow soak into his plant matter thawed and softened the area to flesh... and the helpful capillaries and veins circuiting through it. It spread faster after that, and by now the rivulets and crevasses of bark down his face and arms has softened into... rivulets and crevasses of old keloid burn scars, actually, so not much change there! Riddled with gunshot wounds - some of which he hadn't /personally/ acquired but had been helpfully shared with him via a freaking /wound/ bender - one arm broken in multiple zones and a number of things slowly going dark on the internal organ grid, explosive fire damage lashed across the side of his own face and down his chest he's just focused mostly on breathing. A thin, whistling around pinched and burned lungs, where hard nuggets of obstruction stretch and shift on each inhale. One of his hands is - well if Flicker HAS a hand that's available, he'd be cradling it. Or touching his head. And hanging to these small things: for now, he is still breathing. For now, he has not gone cold. Jax listens to this information with eye closing, fingers clenching in against the bloody mess of his mangled body armour and shirt, a slow twine of shadow-tendrils coiling their way up around his limbs. << No no no -- >> There's a quiet background chorus of this in the back of his mind, shoved down somewhere beneath a steadier mechanical assessment of what resources are still available to them. When he opens his eye he /doesn't/ look at Jim, /doesn't/ look at Flicker -- though in these cramped quarters they're close by. Instead he studies the ceiling, lips compressing and the air darkening around him. << Tell Micah to send Mirror out here. Now. >> "Ryan --" This is a little more strained, up to the driver's seat. "/Find/ the nearest ER -- Hive, tell the other vehicles. Follow us to --" To wherever. Wherever the driver finds. His arm uncurls briefly from his stomach (/phew/ thank God guts seem to all be on the inside) to reach out a bloody hand and shove the cooler (... admittedly a little feebly) towards Scramble. "Get one of these vials down the throat of. Anyone. Anyone injured. Shoot some into Flicker's veins if you have to." And now he's turning over the likelihood of getting a bunch of injured and intermittently malfunctioning mutants /treated/ at the nearest ER, of the police showing up while they're there, of this whole trip ending with the lot of them back in Prometheus cages -- and possibly idly turning over the prospect of just exploding any police who try to lay a hand on his team. His eye closes again. "Hive…" Now his voice is quiet, mumbled aloud in his wired-hurt state even though he may as well just think it. "That person. Stealing injuries. Where are they." Flicker doesn't have much by way of available Hand for holding -- one of his arms is pretty much /gone/, charred-broken black-crisped flesh at his shoulder where there really should be a limb. His other is -- there, to be sure, but it's mostly just a mangled waxy mess of charred skin and ooze and bits of glove fused to his flesh. His breaths wheeze out short and labored from the bloody ruin that is his face, singed and cracking and missing swaths of skin in places. An eye that's probably unsalvageable by conventional medicine. Half his nose missing. The painkillers are only helping so much. Across the network of tethered minds, there is a screaming pulse of pain and panic that Hive refuses to relinquish. In some ways it's probably a blessing that Flicker (and Ion, too, where he lies nearby in bloody unconsciousness) have been depowered; it's likely the only thing that keeps erratically misfiring teleporters from staying in /place/ long enough to get any treatment at all. Scramble, at least, is prompt to respond despite her own ruined body armor and thick burns and only-slowly rebuilding mental state; she grabs a tray of vials out of the cooler, starting to dispense them. << Last van, >> Hive finally answers Jax. << All of us who weren't hurt -- or weren't. Hurt as /much/. They're behind -- >> His mind flutters up against Jax's informatively. Then /stays/, pressing to the photokinetic's in hungry (suspicious) seeking for /why/ this is relevant. << Mihail, >> he supplies, << our name is Mihail. >> And, in almost absent afterthought: << Too many gunshot wounds. Too many freaks. Never get out of the hospital without a swarm of. >> Flashes of police, HAMMER soldiers in uniforms, a rush of heat coming down on them, flashes into Jax's mind. Kay is here as well - once again sans the motorcycle he'd come with (the burning wreckage smoldering in a glorious heap back on the lab site), and sans most of his /body armor/ as well, he's not exactly walking so much as leaning heavily on one place then another, stooped over and exposing ghastly bloody teeth in KIND of a crooked grin except one eye is squinched shut and sealed off by a sheaf of drying blood, in the most extreme cases, offering small doses of cauterization to the worst wounded to push back exsanguination. This has been probably one of the primary sources of more immediate screams! He's done to his own injuries already - smoke still sizzles from a long gash down the inside of his thigh, a few bullet shots in his upper chest and where one grazed the side of his neck. Less can be done about the damage of the last bike crash short of escape - there's ankle and knee bones visible where skin had been left behind in a greasy smear across the pavement. His mind, however, is pure bright and fiercely focused on the living. Not hearing half of the conversation, he sucks his teeth. "ER's gonna be complicated." And not just for those wanted by the FBI. "Gonna be complicated," Jim rasps, voice flat, not lifting eyes from Flicker, "any time there's corpses." Or corpses in the making. Though he's tallying - which labrat escapees would be better off in a hospital where they MIGHT survive, against dying in the back of a van... "ER's going to be a nightmare," Jax agrees, but it's flat and simple, a bland acceptance of this as just one more obstacle they'll have to contend with. He has, for a moment, been watching Kay's cauterization with a slow pensive interest, his hand starting to glow brighter where it rests against his midsection. The glow dims and fails, though, and he sinks back against the wall with an exhausted slump of shoulders. "Stop the vans a minute, we need him in this one." There is still an assessment ticking in his mind, harder as he rifles through Joshua and Rachel's triage decisions. << Hive, how does he work, exactly? Can he pick and choose what injuries to take? How much can he, uh. Transfer. Into one person. Out of one person. >> And here despite himself he does look back to Flicker and Jim, that hard steady note to his mind cracking and wavering into just a dull sick unease. "Drink," is all he adds aloud to his wounded team around him, as Scramble distributes vials of Dusk's blood. Given the hivemind twined o back on the road. A slight scrap of a youth -- likely still in his teens, possibly just out of them -- with a mess of coarse black ringlet curls framing his tawny skin. He looks /wary/ as he enters, not solely because of the sound and stench of the dying around him -- his eyes are locked on Jax with a sick clench of unease in his exhaustion-clouded mind that wonders if they didn't, maybeperhaps, change their /minds/ about letting him come with. "... what." Maybe given his unease he should default to polite; instead it just comes out in a sullen thud of a word. He rests a hand back against the van's door -- not, really, seeking anything as reckless as jumping /out/ as they speed again down the road. Just /tired/, slumping, a bone-weary heaviness lanced all through him after the battle. << Can transfer into one person until they're dead. Can't work with corpses. Can transfer -- /everything/ out of someone. >> Hive's answer comes at a small delay, filtering this information out of the young man's own mind. It takes a longer while before he elucidates further: << Pick and choose -- in theory. We're fucking tapped out. Can probably barely operate at all let alone -- with any. >> The sentence finishes in an amalgam of concept-feel rather than words. Precision, finesse, these things kind of slip by the wayside when struggling to even operate at all. Pretty much a risk of all-or-nothing till he's had a solid meal in him and probably a few /days'/ worth of rest. << Can't regrow limbs, >> he adds in musing afterthought. << Just heal up what's left. >> And, in sharper inquiry: << Why. The fuck do you want us to do? >> Thick woods blur past the front windows. Hands wrapped in fingerless gloves steer steady, grip tight as they maneuver down the Pennsylvania roads. Ryan is silent, brooding, miraculously unscathed except for a grazed cheek, a few peppered scrapes and ripped clothes. His vehicle speeds along, leading the caravan of the rescued and wounded. Stops when ordered to admit one more passenger. Continues. Jaw set in grim determination, clenching with focus, little of his actual attention devotes itself to the actual act of driving; his green gaze flicks constantly to the gruesome scene captured in his rearview mirror. Classical music adds an ironic backdrop of harmonic order to the chaos. The radio is on less for ambiance, more for practicality: a numbing tranquility hovers along the edge of ragged minds, smoothing over the jagged peaks of pain and suffering with a trance that lulls where it can't distract or heal, only //enforce// some semblance of bliss for those who might be in their final seconds of life. His own mental presence expands across the network of joined minds, a burst of vibrant energy tinged with worry. Guilt. Still, it has a sonorous quality, the way it dresses each word in a soothing lilt to reverberate in the headspace it occupies: << We're going to the ER. We need to stabilize our most critically injured. >> A moment's hesitation, then: << And we need to switch drivers. >> Over by Jim, Flicker twitches. Less agitated than he has been -- possibly with the soothing combined influence of the empathic music and the drugs or possibly because, in small ripples along the mental network, one warm spot of mental presence is rapidly fading out. Joshua's jaw tightens, though he doesn't look up from where he's dressing the sucking burbly hole torn into Ion's chest. He does take one of the vials of blood for himself, though, and a second for Ion -- though it'll need to be /injected/ since unconscious people, not so much with the swallowing. His thoughts come in strange mental echo, his /own/ telepathy projecting them by habit though on the network they get transmitted in tandem. << Half these people aren't going to make it to a hospital. I'm doing what I can but -- >> But. But he's injured, too, and overworked, and even on his best of days he still couldn't get through all of them. Today -- he'll probably have to pick one or two, and pray surgery can salvage the others. << S'a couple of the labrats in the other van who can drive. Or Scramble -- >> She's only a /little/ bit -- exploded, right? Kay needn't be told twice; he downs his portion of blood without hesitation nor change in features nor pause in his stagger-limp amongst the wounded, /grateful/ for what vitality it gives. Outside of a glance to Ion, who he'd already done his grim fire's work for, the younger Mongrel's status has fallen into a simple pragmatic hope... and a cool preparation for some yet unspecified transition. The faded glow under Jax's hand instead draws him, and convenient enough placement kind of drop-lands him along side the photokinetic with a wet hiss. The heat between them is likely immense, and Kay jerks a chin at Jax's belly in silent offer. To look. Or maybe burn it shut. Who knows. And even without the rest of the telepathic conversation, Mihail's presence suggests enough for him to murmur thoughtfully, "...I could probably take some the fire damage. But uh." He doesn't need to finish - the pale lack of color in his lips and pinched tightness around his eyes says enough. Anything /other/ than fire damage and he's not going to be quite so vertical. In some parallel world, Jim is taking his blood easily, he's up and moving through the van, helping where he can, offering to drive, watching their tails. He can see it so clearly it's hallucinogenic, and utterly independent of the laborious and rapid thudding his pulse is falling into. Not quite as helpful! He leans harder against the wall, coughing wet and reaching for whatever bag or bucket his twisting-wrenchy empty stomach can try heaving into. Probably, injection of blood will ensue here as well. Jax pulls his breath in in a slow -- almost relieved inhale when Kay's fierce heat settles in near his own ebbing warmth. His teeth clench, fingers curling against the twisted-melty panel of his body armour to pull it back, baring a stretch of stomach bloodied red against the pale expanse of skin and more colourful stretch of tattoo. There's a twin set of punctures at the left side of his stomach -- kind of more ragged and messy than bullet entry wounds, probably some secondhand-acquired damage shunted from a guard to him. "Says he can't -- can't well control how much damage gets pushed around right now," he voices aloud to Kay, eyes scanning over the other man and then Scramble in turn. "... ngh. Don't suppose either of you is. Up for driving -- get some blood into him, too," he adds to Scramble afterwards, fingers fluttering towards Mihail. "Might help with the. Stamina." His own words are coming a little shorter, choppier, though it's clear enough through mental link this has more to do with the throbbing pain than any real /fading/ of presence. His eyes slip over Ion, over Ash and Jane, over Flicker and Jim together across the van from him; they settle across there, last, mind turning over Joshua's words. There's a brief consideration of who on their team has healing factors << … nobody, fuck. Where's Dusk when you -- >> before he just gestures Scramble over to take another /few/ of the vials for himself. He is opening one with his teeth to down the blood inside. "Hive could pluck someone out of one of the other vans to drive," he suggests to Ryan, as he takes a second hit. "Rachel, Joshua, I need. Priority on -- who can you work with? Who /can't/ you -- start where they tell you, okay?" This is to Mihail, brows lifted in almost hopeful questioning, though there's a coldly /determined/ cast to his mind, now. Rachel just nods, in answer to Jax. Not badly injured herself, her current state of taciturn just comes from grim determined focus, far too many injured, far too few hands. She's likely none too comfortable with her large wings harnessed and bound as tight as they can /get/ but in the grand scheme of what people /around/ her are dealing with, it's a discomfort that she barely registers. She takes a fistful of vials from Scramble, prepping them for injection for those too injured or too /unconscious/ to take it themselves. Flicker's face and two of the most severely-injured labrats flutter through Joshua's mind first with grim acknowledgment of the quietly fading light that is Flicker's mind. << They've got -- I don't know. Minutes. S'nothing I can -- > << -- Don't you fucking dare, you goddamn well /fix him/ I swear to -- >> This is Hive, cutting in in a sharp angry flare of /fury/ at Joshua's thought that there's no way to help, only minutes left. It's only a quiet mental push from Jax that simmers this fury back down into something quieter. << -- can do for them. Jim's going to be a hard case, too, there's stuff /in/ him, I'd need to -- I don't know. Be on him kind of full-time. I can probably get to -- >> Joshua stops for a moment, drawing in a breath, gauging what energy he has left. Taking another shot of blood for /himself/. << Maybe Ion. Maybe Jane. Maybe Ash. Probably not more than them. I mean, and we have a crapload of labrats here who /also/ need -- there's just no way. >> Though here he's rather /suspciously/ eying Mihail, and Jax with his reinforcement of blood. "Well," he acknowledges aloud a moment later. "OK. I guess there's /that/ way." << Hive, I'm pulling over. Inform the others, and have a driver ready to transfer over to our van, >> issues the order, brightness dimming into something harder, more rhythmic that pulses across the mindlink. Ryan reaches to turn the volume dial on the van radio, foot already pressing on the brake pedal to bring the vehicle to a halt, its motor dying out with a puttered choke and the loosening traction of wheels as they slow along the rough backroads. << I'm gonna need y'all to make up some shit 'bout why we're all gonna be at the hospital. >> There's a nervous tick to his presence now, sliding into the same vocal accent he disguises so well aloud -- a moniker of his Southern upbringing. Clearing his throat, his gaze flicks up to the mirror again, surveying the carnage. << Joshua, concentrate on those three maybe first then, >> pairs with his verbalized, "You." He's focusing on Mihail from the front, staring at the corner of the van he occupies from his reflected view. "I'm going to need you to redistribute some of the injuries in here from the ones that are dying. Get them to a point where they can make it to the hospital." << This is some real Louisiana voodoo shit, guys. But let's be real: if I'm the one on their deathbed instead of Flicker or Jim, I'm much more likely to get proper medical treatment, >> is threaded through, backed by a percussive wall of musical empathy, girding his words with iron-clad conviction. "I can't," Mihail answers this with a further cringe back against the door of the van -- "or I can but it's not. It's not going to be /neat/ I can't. Be that. Selective, I -- it's just probably going to kill some new fucker instead of --" << oh shit oh shit, >> his mind is suddenly freaking out, oh no, he cursed, what if they kick him out /now/. "I mean, you guys /want/ to die for them that's your call but --" His hands spread, glancing between Ryan and Jax. << Micah's calling -- people. Everyone. /Someone's/ gotta be able to get out here and help, >> for now is the only interjection Hive contributes to this -- though along the mental network his slow fury is starting to simmer again, sick and unhappy at Jax's preparations, Ryan's words. The pressure of a thumb, dimpling tattooed belly flesh to open the red mouth of a wound. While listening to the parts of the conversation spoken, Kay is mostly focusing on poking around Jax's gut. A twenty years history of gunsmoke and knifework stack provide quick decision making, and he locks fingers with Jax's hand - for comfort possibly but also to restrain it, gripping it away from the punctures. Because, "Okay, brother, this part's gonna suck." He almost sounds cheerful even! And abruptly he pushes fingers /into/ Jax's wounds, works them in deep while simultaneously igniting a snarl of fire that kind of catches for a moment on Jax's remaining tatters of clothes and singes up Kay's palm. Flesh sizzles and grows pale, dry. And then, still gripping the other man's hand, arm going shelteringly around Jax's back, he tells the others, "I'm gonna have to sit /this/ sharing circle out on that plan. I can tide over a while, but nothings gonna bring HAMMER down on the place faster than my ass checking in." From the corner, stooped over with a rhythmic clenching and unclenching of abdominals, Jim is... laughing? ISH? It carries on for just a little while. And he says, "Guys." Jax is -- /quite/ distracted, for a bit; he's in the middle of knocking back his last vial of blood when Kay's fingers lock through his. A twist of shadow coils around both their hands -- though a moment later that has /heated/ into a sudden fierce-hot sear of light that skims in glancing surface-level burn against Kay's skin. Jax's jaw clenches, his head thudding back against the wall in time with a strangled scream that gurgles up from behind gritted teeth. His other hand pounds down in solid thump against the floor of the van. The screaming doesn't really /stop/ till Jax is out of breath; past this there's only rough gasps drawn in through his teeth until eventually the burning ceases and Jax just slumps in against the arm Kay has offered. For a while, then, he's mostly quiet. Heavy pulls of breath edged in small whimper. A mind cluttered with searing-burning that struggles to reroute itself back to -- "Yeah. Not. No. Don't want. To draw attention to." To Kay, evidently; his forehead thumps against the other man's shoulder. "... Ryan and I. Draw. Attention. But not." << -- the kind with /warrants/ out. >> His eye ticks over to -- well, nothing. Hive isn't /here/ though with his constant mental presence there's a confused pain-fogged moment where Jax is seeking him out anyway. "-- Blood," he finally summons up. "For Ryan. Too. Then Mihail can --" For a moment his brow creases. "What help? How long's it going to." He's looking back to Flicker, considering -- there's not long /left/." Finally giving up on words altogether, he just looks over to Jim and his laughter with a questioning lift of brows. << Get him ready, >> he tells Hive, of Mihail. Joshua returns to focus in on his work on Ion with Ryan's order, though there's a /pinched/ quality to his expression that carries over to his mental presence in the network. << They're /fucking dead/, >> finally ripples upward, though his eyes don't leave the bloody electrokinetic under his hands. << You guys go through with this, you will be, too. >> Then quiet, again. He does have a job to do. "-- is this. What is this?" Mihail accepts his vial of blood though it's with a puzzled look. Everyone else is drinking it, though! So he downs it quickly despite his initial suspicions and -- immediately splutter-gags when it turns out oh shit it /was/ actually blood. "What the fuck is wrong with you people --" And then yet again he is clamping his mouth shut like /oh/ crap wait don't piss them off! It does its job, though; there's a faintly greater perk to his posture, a wave of rejuvenation brightening the haze of his mind with the newly added strength. It can only do so /much/ when what he really needs is /rest/, but -- it's something. His fingers flex, and he moves over to the first of the nearly-dead labrats, breathing only shallowly on their mat on the floor. Beside them, the second one -- might /already/ be dead. It's hard to tell, there's a large pool of blood, a lot of singed flesh, and if they /are/ breathing still, it's barely visible. Mihail looks from AlmostCorpse to MaybeActuallyCorpse to the VerySoonToBeCorpse of Flicker, pushing out a slow breath. "OK. Just tell me where to shove." << What the fuck /is/ wrong with you people, >> Hive is echoing all across the mental network, now, a cold wash of dread butting up against Ryan's calming influence. It's hard to say, though, if this dread is directed /more/ at the interaction between Jax and Ryan and Mihail or at the side of the van where Flicker's intermittent small moans of pain have quieted into nothing but still silence and a very faint shallow breathing that is growing less and less steady. << Micah's got in touch with the school, at least. They're sending the jet to hurry people back to the Clinic. Kate and Corey are there -- >> There's a clipped note to Hive's tone, though, with this relaying of information. Quietly probing at Joshua's awareness to figure out just who of the injured will be /able/ to hang on long enough for pickup. Heat-seared from Jax's body, Kay's breath shorts out and shudders to a vocal squall of sound, still hanging on until the cauterizing is over. And then continues to, afterward. Slumped against the illusionist almost as heavily /back/ - poor Jax had probably been put off to last on the list, and by now the pyrokinetic doesn't have much juice left to him, save a sluggish beginning of healing to his burns. Skin blistered, then loosening; peeling. Soon enough, pink skin will form beneath. Of whatever other war wounds he's collected, these are a minimal concern compared to -- Well. His arm remains around Jax. And watches And waits. Relief surges through the van, a cool anesthetic pouring through the music, amplified to drown out the low, guttural calls of pain that come from the back of the throat. Cauterized Jax, whimpering Flicker, manic Jim, anxious Mihail -- they all feel a feathery envelopment that probes, absorbing the natural empathic state to coalesce into something more centered. *Click.* Ryan unbuckles, seat belt flying back into its holster as he bolts upright, crawling into the back of the van, certain his replacement arrives soon. He reaches out, grasping for a vial of proffered blood, knocking it back like so many late night shots, strung out on a cocktail of alcohol and drugs and adrenaline -- except right now it's broad daylight, and only the familiar neurochemical reaction of the last pumps through his veins. "Look, it doesn't matter if you don't have any finesse to it. Just redirect what you can to me without killing me in the process." << Hopefully, >> is the added afterthought, a private bubble drifting through the void of feeling he is quickly swaddling himself in preparation for what's to come. It sucks, it swallows, it snags over a substance, a desperation. "..." As Ryan crouches down beside Flicker, his gaze flicks to Jim. "Jim." << Guys-- Hive-- I think… Jim is laughing to //volunteer//. >> He swallows hard, distracted from the dwindling lifeforce of his friend -- multiple friends. With a sigh, with a resignation, he shakes his head, gathering focus, and just… nods at Mihail. << Direct Mihail to put the rest on Jim. >> It's a math of sorts; the expenditure of aggregate energies, the passage of time, the number of opened and battered bodies spilling out and growing still; Jim is meeting Ryan's eyes when he's looked to, and thinking: kidney failure. Thinking: Hive and Flicker curled together on the couch. Thinking: so many young lives and smoke rings collapsed lungs Jax's cupcakes and deep soil and shadows that are gone passing through branches that are gone - And says back to his name: "Yeah." << Would you /rather/ he goddamn well die? >> Jax does, at least, have a small note of relief in his mind with the information about the X-Team, a -- very /faint/ note of hope blossoming in his mind. Maybe Joshua can't keep /everyone/ alive till relief comes, but one or two -- though this hope shivers out quickly at Ryan's last order. << Jim's half dead already, he's never going to /make/ it if you -- > << FUCK you, >> cuts in Hive's response sharply, another snapping-hot surge of fury flooding the mental links. << Fuck you and your fucking martyr act, >> is very clearly cutting in towards Jax, << Fuck you and your stupid fucking suicidal /bullshit/, >> is over to Jim, and to Ryan, << and fuck /you/ if you fucking well think we're about to -- >> Here his words cut off, though. Across the network there's a sudden tight clench, a hard seizing-up of firm mental control that very /solidly/ arrests everyone right where they are. The van door is opening though this is almost just a background afterthought -- the young woman climbing into the driver's seat may not, actually, even know how to drive. Who knows. But through the mental connection one person's skills are /everyone's/ skills so it's really rather irrelevant. Mihail isn't talking, anymore, a little stiffer, a little glassy-eyed with the tight coils of mental control binding him. Telepathic fingers dig through Joshua's peripheral awareness of the bodies and injuries flooding the van around him, and when Mihail's hands lift it /is/ to shove, push-and-pull, yanking injuries from Flicker, from Jim, from Jane, from a handful of the worst-off labrats around them and pushing it in one hard shunt into the barely-there awareness of the almost-dead labrat maybe-possibly-breathing on the floor of the van. Or, well, he /was/ maybe-possibly-breathing; the sudden explosive accumulation of a /stack/ more injuries decides this very firmly and in the spiderwebbing mental pathways that connect them all, one faint-dim mind gutters out. Mihail slumps down in a crumpling heap against the side of the van; the pulse of /his/ mind now is quieter. Still there. But faded into a heavy background unconsciousness. Where he crouches over Ion, Joshua exhales a soft breath. Finishes with the wound dressing he was working on, and turns his attentions to Ash. Amidst all the lingering injury crowding in heavily at his senses there is, suddenly, a lighter note very much like relief. His head tips up to Rachel, quiet. "Come help me with this one," is all he says in the wake of this rush of fury, mind ticking over what still remains to stabilize, remaining wounds and shrapnel still buried in people that will continue doing its damage even after this sudden cleansing surge. "Guess we'll be going home after all."