Chapter Thirty-Nine

Take your hand and pound it against the wall.

Run it under scalding hot water and get that initial burn going, then scream as that second wave of pain hits.

Wrap it up in broken glass, rub it with Sterno, set it on fire and squeeze it in a vise.

Please, please don’t.  But that is some approximation of how Devin’s left paw felt every time he surfaced from his dark dreams long enough to form an opinion.

Want an opinon? Or just a pin.  Pinned me to the freaking floor.  Ah, God, I don’t even make sense, kill me now.

In this particular interlude between bouts of darkness, Devin remembered to be afraid.  Not for himself, but it brought him out of the stupor like a thunderclap just overhead. Gadget?

”Gadget?  Where are you? God damn it but this hurts!” Devin darted his bleary eyes around the unfamiliar room with its patchwork quilt and found-objects décor.  A packrat might have felt at home in such surroundings, if the love of his life hadn’t been unconscious herself the last time he’d seen her.  He shuffled his footpaws out from under the covers, swung them over, and mostly stood up – the one arm felt like a molten lead weight.

He surveyed the bed behind him—two pillows, one with a bloodstain.  Did I put that there or did Gadget?  She must be awake or—screw that, no “or”--she’s awake somewhere. 

Devin caught his reflection in the rearview mirror.  If anything, he looked thinner (Jack Sprat could eat no fat, his wife can go take a flying leap, his mind freewheeled), and his bad arm was bandaged up to the elbow.  Ooh, maybe if I gnaw it off, only the stump will hurt!

A load came off his shoulders when he noticed the makeshift coat rack in one corner.  His beleaguered lab coat was hooked neatly on it, and someone had washed the blood out – both his and Angela’s.  Someone figured I’d still need that poor old battered wreck of a coat, he grinned/grimaced.  Someone still had hope.  Ah, you’re okay after all, aren’t you, Gadget?

All the standing had finally brought enough fresh blood into the bad paw that it started to throb mercilessly again.  Devin shrieked without shame and collapsed into one of the rough-hewn chairs, cradling the arm and rocking back and forth.

The massive chunk of wood that served as a door popped open, and the lady of the hour stuck her still-bandaged head in.  She was grinning from ear to perky ear, had definitely gotten over her balance problem, and looked like she had just swallowed a watermelon.  From somewhere, she had come up with a new worksuit, in an odd pearly-white, but had stuck with the stretch waistband idea.

“Oh!” she exclaimed.  “Good to see you’re up again.”  Besides the large stomach, she was carrying something very strange--

“Gnnn?” Devin growled through his teeth, though his tail lashed about in his unabashed pleasure at just seeing her.

“Yes, silly, again.  You’ve been up three times and you won’t stay in bed.  The arm keeps putting you back there,” she gestured slightly with the black, bristling, mechanical thing in her arms.  Strip all the tubing off and lose the tanks, and it would definitely look like a—

“Gnnn?” Devin strained again, lips dancing madly over his incisors, gesturing with his good paw.

“This? Oh, yeah, sorry.  Forgot it might startle you.  Just a little gun is all.” She brought the gun up and pointed it at the wall farthest from Devin. “Put a millimeter-sized hole in your head from a hundred paces, virtually no recoil, nearly silent.  If it weren’t a killing machine I could almost admire it.”

“What,” Devin yelped, pads on the good paw doing a frantic fandango on his knee, “are you doing with that frigging thing?”

Gadget grimaced sheepishly.  “Well, er, it’s a good thing you’re awake.  We have to, well--shoot you with it.”

Devin blinked twice through the haze of pain. “Oh, thank God.”

***** 

Gadget shot him full of something else first.  Pure love, fierce determination, protective instinct—the usual—but also just enough Demerol to take the edge off.  Turner had gone out on a scavenging run, and this was but one of his many finds…

Devin slalomed through the root-lined tunnel, drifting on a cloud.  He knew that somewhere his arm was calling to him like a lost boater on a foggy lake, ready to start screaming when he got too close.  He didn’t want any of that, so he just went with the flow.

It carried him into a cavern of sorts, where he squinted as arclights began a slow glow overhead.  “Gadget?  Does your workshop follow us around or something?”

“No, silly, I just build a new one everywhere I go.  Turner found a model shop that was half burned out and brought me a wagonload of primo salvage.”  She hefted a dislocated remote-control dial and blew away a puff of soot.  “Some of it still smells a little funny, but as long as it carries a current, we’re in business.”

“How’s the arm, Devin?” boomed a deep voice nearby.  Devin slowly and carefully twisted about to see a hulking form bent over one of the benches.  Even without the Demerol, the sight would have been surreal. 

Turner was merrily sending flaps of faintly shimmering fabric—like Gadget’s new worksuit--shuttling along beneath the clicking needle of a pink sewing machine decorated with appliqué flowers.  With a sudden sound of tortured metal, it ground to a halt.  Turner sighed in disgust and rapped the all-too-cute machine with a massive paw. 

“You’ll wear that thing out,” Gadget cautioned.  “Again.”

“That’s all right,” Turner chuckled.  “We’ve got a spare or two.”  Looming behind him was a wall of similar units, still in the plastic.  “I do have to admit, I feel a bit guilty knowing you hacked UPS and got this shipment sent to an abandoned lot.”

“I still had a little left in the old Ranger account.  Emergency fund, though I don’t think Rescue Aid expected we’d buy toy sewing machines with it.” The Daisy El-Lectric Mini (so emblazoned in happy letters along one side) coughed uncertainly but soldiered on for a few more turns of its abused motor.  Turner tidied up his work and held the fabric tube up against one arm. 

Dear God, it’s just a sleeve—goggled Devin. Looks like most of a tent--

“You’ll make a fashion designer out of me yet, Gadget,” said Turner, with his trademark distressing grin.

“I hope you got that stuff in bulk—a few Turner-sized suits of that stuff and you’d use more fabric than Christo…”

Turner’s smile fell.  “Ah, yes.  Christo.  Performance artist.  Human.  He wrapped the whole German Reichstag building in fabric once.”  Turner’s eyes looked a bit haunted.  “You’ll wish he’d wrapped Thorn Valley in this stuff, once the trouble really starts.”

“It would certainly save us a lot of work,” agreed Gadget.  “Do you realize how many El-Lectric Minis we had to sacrifice to make this?” She grinned, as Devin wobbled his eyes back in her direction.  She turned the handle on a utility cabinet, opening the door to reveal an inspiring sight.

Devin snapped to attention, the fuzz clearing out from between his ears and the Demerol haze retreating several paces.  “Please let me put it on.  Now.”

“Let you put it on?  No way.  I’m going to help you put it on,” bubbled Gadget.  She pulled the pristine white labcoat from the cabinet, a pearly iridescence flitting across its crispness.  “Remember your bad arm.  We don’t want to stir up trouble there.”

Devin nodded in awe as Gadget slipped an arm around him and guided his bandaged arm carefully through the sleeve.  “You made this?  Under these conditions?  I’m beginning to think you are MacGuyver, Gadget.  Thank you so much, both of you!”

Turner coughed politely.  “Oh, she hardly let me touch that one.  She did it all herself.  Tough job too—that fabric’s a real horror when you’re trying to cut it.  You need diamond-edged scissors, not to mention the needles--”  Turner bit his tongue, a painful prospect considering his filed fangs.  “But never mind about those, we’ll get to that.”

Devin twisted and turned to look at every square inch of this latest welcome addition to his wardrobe.  It was longer than his old coat—this one reached nearly to his ankles and had a myriad of pockets – some with clasps, some with zippers, others simple flaps, but just the right number in just the right places.  Though solid, the zippers and clasps had that same faint sheen—they had to be made of a material similar to the fabric.

Turner gave him a wolf-whistle.  “Hey, that’s my line,” Gadget complained.  “Here.  Put on the glove—your bad paw still won’t fit into the other one.”  Devin wrestled it on.  It was of a piece with the rest of the outfit, but if anything, even more flexible, like a second skin.

Gadget pulled out another one of her proverbial bag of tricks--a full-length mirror, which she wheeled out from behind the cabinet.  “I’ve added a few touches that aren’t immediately visible—but I bet you’re wondering about the cloth.”  Devin nodded and she went on.

“It’s a synthetic, of course.  It’s something like a Kevlar cloth, only thinner.”

“Bulletproof?”

She shook her head.   “It would stop a bullet, but as small as we are, a full-caliber bullet would do too much concussion damage.  It’s the weave itself that gives it the qualities we’re after.”

“So if it’s not bulletproof, what does it do? Besides look really, really good with my fur color,” he eyed himself in the mirror again.

“Well, it’s prick-proof.”

“Pardon me?” Devin arched an eyebrow, still-fuzzy brain trying to get it straight.  “We already know you aren’t.”

Gadget blushed.  “There I go.  I don’t mean to say things like that, but around you they just seem to fly out.  I meant,” she tried again, as Turner chuckled behind her, “it’s a variation on a fabric designed to stop needle punctures, and humans have only ever made gloves out of it—”

“We’re a lot smaller than that, though,” Turner chimed in, “and this fabric is a step ahead of anything humans have presently.  This will take a direct hit from one of those needle-guns.  It’ll even hold up for a sword thrust or two.  I take it you saw some of the bodies from my little raid at Thorn Valley?”

Devin sifted his brain for the images, only a few days old, which now seemed a lifetime away.  Yes, the fight near the cliffs, and the mangled carcasses of the attackers.  But something had seemed off at the time—

“Yes.  After you dropped the package and that severed ear on us, when we were holed up with Timothy and Tina.  You left quite a mess behind…”

“Notice the odd uniforms scattered among the dead?  Sort of an imitation of the Guard uniforms?”

Devin nodded.

“The best fighters in Group B get those.  They like to wear them out of spite, pure and simple.  But they also like them because they’re lined with this stuff,” Turner gestured to the rolls of fabric.  “They can fight well, but that’s not the only reason they’re hard to kill.  I had hoped that Arthur or Dr. Ages would have tested the fabric by now, but things are such a shambles in Thorn Valley that it’s no surprise.”

Gadget grinned.  “Luckily for our side, I’ve been working on a few surprises myself.”  She turned to Turner, tail twitching excitedly.  “You don’t think I’ll blow out a fuse if I turn on the machine again, do you?”

Turner groaned.  “It’s not like I can just zip out and fetch you a replacement.  And I usually draw enough power for a few light bulbs, but if anyone checks their records, they’ll think a college physics lab has sprung up in the hills…”

“But pleeease, it’s a neat lightshow and we need the ammo anyways,” Gadget pouted.  Turner waved her on with his scary claws, and she nodded in thanks.

“More ammo?  What—”

“Watch and be amazed at the miracles of modern science!  Whereas you still need a little TLC—that would be tender loving care, for those of us in the room who are still spaced out on Demerol—our ammo needs some DLC.”

“D—”

“All will become clear,” said Gadget in the proud tones of a sideshow magician with an unbeatable trick coming up.  She whipped the cover off of a small clear box, something like a fish tank, except this one had Styrofoam covering the bottom, with a forest of sewing needles standing embedded on end inside.  She opened a nearby cabinet—albeit a cabinet with multicolored wires, a digital readout, and several dials—one with a post-it note slapped on it reading “Not This One”.

She closed the glass sliding door on the cabinet, lowered her ever-present goggles (handing Devin a spare pair, which he held on with his good paw) and turned a dial that did not have an ominous warning on it.

The lights in the workshop dimmed and flickered as an electric dance of fire danced inside the small chamber, a low humming as purple streams flowed around the needles.  With a small pop! the show was over and the lights came back up.

“All well and good,” Devin shrugged, “but what does it do?”

Gadget put on a pair of oven mitts and retrieved the now slightly discolored glass box from inside the cabinet, setting it back on the wooden workbench.  “DLC, just like I said.  Easier to show than explain.  Just for your benefit, I happen to have some of these made up in advance,” she announced, so very like the host of a cooking show.

“Well—I’m entertained.  New clothes, fireworks—the only thing missing is dinner.”

Gadget wrinkled her nose.  “Hopefully you’ll keep something down this time.  You’ve more than gotten even with me for puking on your shoes the first time we met.”  She shook a paw-sized container and something inside rattled slightly.  “This is what passes for an ammo clip.”  She scrawled a few letters on the container with a permanent marker, put it into a pocket, and picked up a smoother, smaller version of the needle gun.  Seeing his questioning look, Gadget patted the gun.  “This is my version.  Doesn’t need a compressor.  Runs off a miniature CO₂ canister—lighter and quieter.”   

Stalking over to another corner of the workshop, she leveled the gun at a pockmarked practice dummy a fair distance away—its ears were shot nearly off, as was the nose, but the torso was draped with a vest made from the shiny super-fabric, looking untouched.  “You killed my brother, you dirty raaat,” she snarled, in her best Jimmy Cagney, though not a very good one.

Keep your day job, thought Devin, though not unkindly.

With a succession of ffft sounds, needles zinged toward the dummy.  Some stuck in the head (others went straight through it), but most hit the vest and dropped harmlessly to the floor, tinkling musically.  “Remind me to make you a fold-up hood for that lab coat,” Gadget winked over her shoulder. 

“And maybe a mask—” Devin gulped as a large chunk of the dummy’s head gave up and fell off. 

“I think it’s time I lived up to my word and actually took a shot at you, Dev,” Gadget motioned him into her line of fire.  “Just come closer, though—want to make sure I hit you in the arm or stomach, just so you’ll have an idea of how it feels.  I wouldn’t want you to get your first taste of this in a combat situation.  Don’t look at me like that!  I had Turner shoot me in the leg when it was my turn.”

Devin resigned himself and held out a paw.  “Cover your eyes with the other sleeve just in case,” warned Gadget.  “And remember, I love you.”

Devin nodded behind the sleeve.  “My muv yu mu,” he muffled.  With the trademark puff of CO₂, a single needle sliced the air, and as planned did not slice into Devin’s labcoat.  He jumped, but found himself intact.  It still smarted, though.  “That’s going to leave a good welt,” Devin grumbled, flapping his arm.

“I’ll kiss it and make it better,” Gadget promised.  “Here’s where the DLC comes in,” she went on, voice turning much more serious.  She popped the ammo clip off the gun and slapped in the one from her pocket.  “I’ll set the gun to half-strength just to make the point.”  She ratcheted back a lever on her weapon and sighted in on the dummy, squeezing the trigger again and again.  Several satisfying THWAP!s resulted, and she gestured Devin over.  Uneasily, Devin approached, and was astonished to see the dummy bristling with needles—not only on its poor head, but embedded firmly in the vest made of the miracle fabric.

“DLC,” Gadget said, to a very confused rat doctor.  “Diamond-Like Carbon.  A triumph of science.  And our secret weapon against the forces of evil.”

Devin staggered back a step.  “You—diamond-coated the needles?  So we’ve got a real edge on them?”

“In more ways than one,” Turner called across the chamber.  “Can I put that poor dummy out of its misery, Gadget?”

“You just want to show off.  Oh, go ahead, I got to have my bit of fun.  It’s only fair.”

Shutting off the sewing machine (which seemed to almost sigh with relief), Turner cracked his knuckles in anticipation.  He snagged his swordbelt from a nearby peg and flung it on.  In a very few, very large strides, he had crossed the floor of the workshop.  Grim as an executioner, he pulled out his sword, a length of razor-sharp steel as wide as an outstretched paw.

With a casual flick of the sword (a hefty swing for anyone else), he slashed across the dummy’s chest, and it fell neatly in two.  Even the vest parted like water.  Turner reached up and absentmindedly pulled out a whisker as Devin winced.  Turner calmly turned the sword on edge and trimmed the whisker into two tiny ribbons.  “Gadget’s little machine doesn’t just coat needles, Devin.  She gave you a blade of your own, treated the same way, though she figured you’d need something a little less flashy—”

Devin turned back to Gadget, about to ask, but she beat him to it.  “It’s in your pocket.  The left one, with the zipper.”

Devin frowned and felt about for it.  There was a feeling of something, about the size of a toothbrush still in its packaging, pressing against his side.  He unzipped the pocket and retrieved a slim rectangular contraption with an elastic strap attached.   Gadget rolled up the sleeve on his good paw and slid the strap over it, so that the slim little container fit along the underside of his wrist.  She rolled the sleeve back down over it.

“Now,” she cautioned him, “hold out your paw open, away from anything else, and flick your wrist like this.”  She made a sweeping motion with a twist, backing away a bit.

Devin shook his head, trying to take it all in, but stretched out his paw and gave it a try.  He made a small surprised sound as several inches of steel rocketed out and a handle sprang into his waiting paw.  The brighter-than-steel edge of a scalpel glimmered at him as he held it up to a nearby worklamp.  “Holy crap,” he understated.  The scalpel itself was a custom job, like an extension of his paw, with a delicate G.H. stamped into the handle.

“A doctor should always have his tools close at paw,” explained Gadget, grinning slyly.  “And it never hurts to have a little something extra up your sleeve.”

“I don’t know how I feel about carrying it.  But I guess we are at war.  It’s beautiful work, Gadget, all of it—even if it’s a little disturbing.”

Gadget’s smile fell a bit.  “The Rangers never carried weapons, really.  We never needed them.  But we got caught unprepared.  That’s not going to happen this time.  I won’t let it.”  She bit her lip, and began to tear up.

She hasn’t forgiven herself, Devin mourned inside for her.  Gadge, Gadge—it wasn’t your fault.  Don’t let it eat you up.  Afraid that he might remind her more of her terrible loss, he decided to butter her up a little.  “I’m glad you put your initials on that scalpel.  I’ve never seen a nicer one.  I just hope I use it more as a healer than a fighter.  I’m surprised you’d want to do the same for that big clunky needle-gun, though.”  He gestured with the scalpel at the old-style gun parked on the workbench.

After a long stretch of surprising Devin with her new contraptions, it was Gadget’s turn to be confused.  “I didn’t put my initials on that thing.  I feel a little dirty just touching it.  It’s clever, and well built, but it’s only meant for one thing—killing.  I’d just as soon never have to pick it up again.  I didn’t even make that one—”

“—it’s an old prototype I found the last time Group B had to pick up and move.  I figured it wouldn’t be missed as bad as one of the newer ones,” Turner seconded.

“But back in the bedroom, when you came in and showed it to me, I saw some scratches on the barrel.  It looked like letters.”

“I’ve been over that thing with a fine-tooth comb, but—hey, wait a minute,” she shoved some notes and blueprints aside and retrieved a magnifying glass.  “I never did look at it from that angle.  You’ve got sharp eyes—”

Gadget trained the glass on a series of scratches on the underside of the barrel.  Turner and Devin came over to watch.  Gadget stuck one of the used needles under the glass to trace the scratches. “Ah!  There they are.  Looks like—”  Gadget drew back, totally mystified.  “—you’re right, Dev.  They couldn’t be anything else.  But I swear, I didn’t put them there.  Besides, there’s an extra ‘G’.”

Faint, but plainly visible, were the initials G.G.H. .  Devin scratched his head.  Gadget’s tail slapped the floor in consternation.  “You don’t have any idea, do you, Turner?”

Turner pursed his lips over his razor-sharp teeth, praying he looked sincere.  “None at all,” he lied.

Button images by Keith Elder