Risen: Shatterverse - The God War

Chapter 2: Battered and Bruised

Nodding, I stayed crouched and hopped over to where the rest of the Ascendency troopers were grouped helplessly around their fallen comrades. I then used my omni-field to fashion a physical tool that replicated the action of the probe.

"Here," I said, handing it to the closest trooper. "Take this and do what I do, okay?"

"Yes, sir," the soldier breathed shakily. I pointed him towards the trooper while I kneeled beside the lieutenant.

"Activate the probe by depressing the stud on the end," I directed as I reached out over the lieutenant and extended my probe. "As soon as it hums, press it against your comrade's body."

Nodding, the trooper did as I instructed, his hands shaking. And he breathed in astonishment as the interface appeared with the trooper's body image and the DNA cylinder.

"Now touch the top of the cylinder like I'm doing," I said as I tapped the top of the lieutenant's cylinder and watched it flatten and expand. "You need to remove all of those red spines. You do so by pressing the outside tip, which will release it from the core. You then will pull it out and throw it away. Like this." And I quickly demonstrated by removing several spines from the lieutenant's cylinder.

"Got it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Now take those spines out as quickly as possible. The interface is losing color and light. That means your comrade is fading. You need to get those red spines out before it goes dark. Understand?"

"Yes, sir," the trooper said as, his hands shaking, he continued to pull spines free and flick them away.

By this point I had already removed all of the lieutenant's bad spines and, with a brush along the cylinder's surface, I pulled the replacements from the core and reset the lieutenant's systems. As he began breathing regularly again, I hopped over to where the trooper was about half done and joined him in pulling out the remaining spines.

"Then you pull out replacements from the core by running your hand along the surface of the cylinder like this," I then said, running my hand down over the outside surface. The trooper gasped again in astonishment as, in a flurry of light and motion, the spines were replaced from the core and the downed trooper twitched before beginning to breathe regularly.

"Then you put the interface away like this," I said, tapping the top of the cylinder to tighten it back into a DNA double helix before pushing his hand holding the probe back, which made the interface wink out of sight.

"That's ... amazing!" one of the other troopers breathed in bald amazement.

"Yeah, pretty handy. Here, give me the probe." Which I quickly stored into a utility pouch. "Make sure they take a stim stick when they wake up, yes? I need to take care of my guys now. It's all yours from here!"

Then I was scooting over to where Naveaia laid in an untidy heap, her Risen team grouped around her.

"Okay, boys, give me some room," I said, moving up her side. "I'm going to use my omni-field to pull her back together and I don't want any of you getting caught in the wash!"

A cursory examination of the hole made me sigh in relief. The spike, while it pushed it out of alignment with the rest of her, hadn't destroyed Naveaia's goa spark. That would've killed her to the point I wouldn't have been able to bring her back.

Now, that wasn't saying she wasn't seriously fucked up. She totally was, her internal mechanisms battered, shattered, and torn. Even her primary power core was gone, punched out of her body by the sentinel's brutal attack from behind.