62 The Bird and the Cat. Part 1

Yerinobu felt strange. No, nothing threatened him or made him feel uncomfortable. It was just that the situation itself was quite far from what he was used to. He had come to check on and feed a cat belonging to his friend Marcus.

He had to take security and arrive under disguise to one of the mega tower's most expensive apartments. The guards didn't understand what was going on either. Why would the Arasaka heir come here. But when the door opened and a fat, ahem, I mean big cat of golden red color stood in front of them, they realized that the phrase about feeding the cat was not a joke or a code. Their boss had indeed come to visit the cat and feed it in case the owner got caught up.

Yerinobu realized with some sixth sense what was going on in the guards' heads, so he only hummed and went inside Marcus' apartment. The apartment looked typical for an single man who spent most of his time at work. The only thing that was unusual was the board hidden under special glass. Taking VJ in his arms, he walked over to it and they were scanned almost immediately by a hidden camera. The glass became transparent and went upward, revealing frames with pictures taken on film.

Looking at them, a smile appeared on his face. Here's a photo of him and Marcus sitting in an expensive Mustang. Another photo of him having fun with the Penguin Commandos. Another photo of him trying to teach a drunk Marcus how to ride a chopper. Another photo of drunk penguins with Marcus parodying The Lion King, with a catnip-stoned VJ playing the role of Simba. Hilarious moments.

"Meowwww!" - VJ let out his claws, hinting that, you can look at the pictures later, just feed him now.

"Okay, okay. I'll get you a special cut of tuna and salmon now. Although Marcus said you can't be spoiled too much, but we won't tell anyone, right?" - the reply Yerinobu received was VJ's purr, which hinted that he would be keeping his mouth shut.

Setting down the plates of fish, he pulled out his cigarettes and lit up. Sitting down in a comfortable chair, he started reading some documents on a tablet. At one moment VJ jumped on his lap, hinting that he was full and now he wanted to be scratched. So they sat like that until suddenly the cat on his lap tensed up. Jumping off the lap of the surprised Yerinobu, he walked over to the pictures and started meowing and looking at Yerinobu and Marcus. Yerinobu couldn't understand what was going on or what the cat wanted from him. Suddenly, an emergency communication request came to him through an encrypted channel that was supposed to report to him about the mission in Militech's lab.

"Yes. Go ahead." - Yerinobu replied.

"Mission accomplished. Gloom. But we have casualties. Correction. Casualty. Alpha. Condition...not clear. We'll be at point 23 in one hour." - The voice hidden by the voice modulator made Yerinobu nervous.

"Take him to point Ultra 03. A medical team and security will be waiting for you. I will arrive myself along with the inventory squad."

"Copy that." - The channel was cut off and a subsequent beep notified that the channel was down and terminated.

At Yerinobu's feet walked a restless cat. Picking him up, he went to find a carrier for the cat.

"Shh. don't be afraid. He'll be fine. Let's go together to see him. Okay?" - Yerinobu somehow calmed the cat down and after placing him in the carrier, he ordered the guards to drive him to Ultra 03 point and call for additional guard units to the area near his destination.

Getting into the car he began to analyze the situation. Okay. Mission accomplished, but there are casualties. Pluses - prototypes and data are captured, there is no pursuit and no signs of trail, since the word " gloom" was used. Minuses - losses, or rather Alpha is in a hell knows what state, since even the TT specialists have no idea what's going on. Victory. But whether it's a Pyrrhic victory or not. Losing Marcus is the loss of not only a good friend, but also the leader of a gang of elite cutthroats that could come in handy in the future.

The last thoughts even made Yerinobu laugh spitefully. There, originally he thought of him as a friend, and later as a useful tool. Damn corpo life. Starting to think like his father and deceased brother.

Yerinobu didn't have long to ponder, for he arrived at Ultra 03 quickly enough, where the doctors and other specialists began to analyze the data from the life monitors and figure out what had happened and what to do when the patient arrived. From the brief report, he realized that Marcus had been affected by some sort of unusual EMP blast. Many implants had gone offline, but that was to be expected. Except that the EMP had somehow managed to affect his nervous system and brain. After comparing the data received at the moment of impact from the sensors embedded in the protective suits issued before the raid and making calculations, the medics were stunned. The force of the EMP was focused and very powerful, the suit, which could withstand multiple EMP grenade blasts and even an EMP wave in the event of a nuclear strike, broke down almost immediately.

Notification came that the squad had finally arrived back. The medics immediately ran to the patient, loading him onto a stretcher, they flashed off to the intensive care and surgery room. Suddenly, a cat burst out of the carrier and jumped onto the stretcher right next to the unconscious Marcus.

Yerinobu waited until angry and tired Commando Penguins approached him.

"What's happened?" - He asked and lit up a cigarette.

"Shit. Everything was going according to plan... but then the Borg woke up suddenly and grabbed Skipper. Then there was a gunshot and a bright light... somehow managed to load up and erased all trace of us. Halfway to the exit point, we got confirmation of the explosion. Then evacuation and for an hour our medics tried their best to stabilize, if not stabilize, at least buy us some time before we got here." - Rico said, and then the others recounted, as briefly as possible, what had happened and how the mission had gone.

"Yeah. It really sucks."

"We'll go turn in everything you demanded and Kowalski will send your netrunners all the data along with the keys to decrypt it."

"Okay. Come back to the waiting room afterward. There are screens and a com link to the medics there. Let's hope Marcus survives." - Yerinobu's received nods in response, and penguins went to turn in their trophies.

In the waiting room, they watched medics try to bring Marcus back to consciousness and stabilize him. But the most amazing thing was that there was a cat lying at Marcus' feet!

"Uh..." - Yerinobu pressed the communication button,- "doctor are you not disturbed by the cat?"

"Sir Yerinobu, I wanted to throw him out of the operating room, but as we started dragging him away the patient's vitals became worse. So we decided that in the current situation, with the patient with one foot already in the grave, we could take a chance and forget about the sanitation rules." - The head doctor looked into the camera and replied, pointing at the cat and the vitals.

"Understood. Preliminary report on the patient's condition?" - Yerinobu asked.

"I'll be honest with you. No idea. It's a weird EMP attack. I expected to have to pull out a bunch of burned out or dysfunctional chrome, but the pulse worked strangely. It didn't manage to overload chrome completely, but made it go into a reboot and go into sleep mode. It's a similar situation with the nervous system. There's damage that makes the patient's body unable to get into a normal rhythm, plus there's no normal communication between the nervous system and the chrome. Hell, roughly speaking, the guy went into a medically induced coma by sticking his finger in an electrical socket rather than buying pills. That's the best and most accurate description of the situation so far."

"What's the prognosis for treatment and recovery?"

"Hmm, we'll start with a deep surgery to remove all chrome and then repair his nervous system. Thankfully, unconsciousness will last long enough with no medication required. Once the repair is complete, we'll start pulling him out of the coma, plus possibly restore the chromium during rehab. But that's only if we can get the CNS back to normal, and I don't know how all this will affect his mental state. So the process will take a couple weeks. Minimum. At worst up to six months."

"Yeah. It's a good thing Marcus got himself almost a month's vacation. There's still three weeks before the search for the famous Archangel of TT begins." - Yerinobu began to think aloud and it was only when the Penguins entered the room that he stopped.

Briefly describing everything the doctor had said, Yerinobu prepared to see sadness, rage, or dejection. But instead, it was the calm faces of the commando penguins that looked back at him. And it was real, not feigned bravado, that he asked why they weren't nervous at all.

"Ha. He's gotten us out of a shittier mess than this. And here he just got hit harder than he would with a regular taser. He'll be fine. He'll just have to lie down a little longer." - was the Private's first response.

"Yeah. He had much less of a chance then. And he not only survived on his own, he pulled us out. This time he even managed to take down the bastard that got him." - Rico backed him up.

"At the last minute I managed to hear him thinking aloud, something like feeding the cat or scratching him. If that's what he was thinking at the last minute, and not the frailty of life and all that other philosophical crap he discusses when he's drunk, he'll definitely survive and come back." - Kowalski said and started the recording through the helmet's speakers.

"There's a reason he chose penguins from Madagascar as his mascot after all! Hahah!" - Yerinobu replied, infected by their confidence that Skipper would survive.

Meanwhile, Marcus saw something completely different. He thought it was going to be like that old movie where the guy wandered around as a disembodied spirit during the operation. But instead he saw VJ tapping him on the nose with his paw.

"Fuck. Am I dreaming this whole thing?" - was my first thought, because it was just like the cat usually woke me up in the morning. - "VJ geez let me sleep and stop touching me with your paw after you go pee. The scent of your paws after the litter box is a far cry from Nina Ricci. Let me sleep, for fuck's sake."

But as i rolled over onto a side i noticed that i wasn't lying down, but levitating above the surface, and that I wasn't in my apartment, but in the middle of the desert.

"Holy shit. Where the fuck did I get to? And what are you doing here, you lazy bum?" - I scratch my head and look at the cat perched on my shoulder.

"Who the hell is that? A unicorn? What in the world is this?!" - strange horned horse in a far just added more questions highlighting lots of problems.