Chapter Text
To be completely fucking honest, Miles had no clue if it was sheer willpower or simply the Walrider that was allowing him to go on and at this point he didn't give a damn. The only person in the world who was in the same mess as him and who'd be able to fix it was currently dying in the passenger seat. Miles had to get him to a hospital stat.
Originally, when Miles had arrived on the scene of the car crash, the plan had been to yell at the escaped patient who apparently couldn't drive for shit (who the hell drove out of a straight lane right into the only bump of the roadside that was high enough to send the car rolling over?!) and then proceed to hide someplace safe and secluded; so he'd stepped out of the armored vehicle he'd stolen, he'd made the Walrider push his red Jeep the right side up, and he'd watched his totalled vehicle land on its tires with a tired series of creaks and mechanic groans. Some glass had shattered, too.
Miles had started striding towards it while going over the driest, snappiest, sharpest reprimands he could possibly throw in the moron's face. He'd slapped the roof of the car to lean in closer to the shape hidden behind the jagged and bloody window pieces of the passenger side, where Miles' irritated gaze had crossed that of a wide-eyed numbskull. The expression on the patient's face was so dazed and confused, and so clearly disconnected, that it had instantly aggravated Miles into feeling the highest degree of spite bordering on hatred. He wanted to rip the patient's dumb fucking face off just to spare himself the sight of it; that would've been counterproductive, so he'd held back the Walrider and had resorted to verbally spearing the other man with all the contempt he could muster. Which was a whole fucking lot. The patient hadn't answered and then it had quickly become obvious that he wasn't going to survive for very long without the appropriate care.
Miles figured that as long as his body and brain kept holding up then he'd do whatever he could to push this one survivor to do what he couldn't. Miles would die when he died, he was prepared for that, but until then he'd need to guide this guy through the motions of exposing the Murkoff Corp. Yeah, originally when he'd arrived on the scene of the car crash, Miles had thought they would just go into hiding then and there. Unfortunately, the guy in question was in way worse shape than Miles had thought. So, change of plans.
The closest hospital was located in Leadville which was more than forty minutes away from the Asylum. Miles would have already called an ambulance if his stupid phone hadn't been acting up. He'd tried looking for one on the patient but of course he'd found nothing there. All the guy had on him was that camera and some papers. He was clearly bleeding out from the stab wound in his stomach but Miles also suspected that he'd sustained some other kind of trauma severe enough to alter his consciousness, either in the car crash or in the asylum, maybe even both. The blood spurting from his mouth when he'd tried to talk had not been reassuring.
Miles' attention was currently divided between the road and making sure that the Walrider remained tightly wrapped around the patient's midriff to quell the bleeding. It was essentially like having a second pair of arms, though it was harder to manipulate the nanocloud for this kind of operation rather than simply tearing bodies apart and flinging them in the air. Miles felt his control slip a few times and the patient's skin was visibly getting paler and paler against the gray upholstery.
Crummy bastard upstairs better not take this one too, I swear.
The guy did stir awake once or twice but he always looked completely out of it and Miles didn't manage to get his name. All the patient ever mumbled was stuff like "I'm cold" or "It hurts" or "Too loud." It never looked like he was actually listening to what Miles was saying. Nothing indicated that he even heard.
Miles knew he couldn't just drive to the hospital with the way he looked, and he didn't want to attract too much attention to the suspiciously armored vehicle. There was a chance that the police would get involved if people noticed. What he could do, however, was drop off the guy on the way by. He'd need to ditch the car after that.
By the time Miles reached St. Vincent Hospital's whereabouts and found the ideal spot to dump his charge, the patient was unresponsive even when shaken by the shoulder and slapped. Miles still hadn't gotten anything worthwhile out of him and he didn't think there were many options for staying in touch besides leaving him his number. Miles had no idea if he'd even get the goddamn phone to work again, or if this patient would trust the number upon waking up, but he had to try. He pulled out his notepad and ripped out a sheet to scribble his number on it, adding a perfunctory message, and then he stuffed it inside the bloody orange jumpsuit. The man's skin was clammy against his hand and Miles could tell this wasn't good.
There was no way he could get out of the car and walk around to open the passenger side in broad daylight where all the passerbys could see, so Miles had the Walrider forcefully bump the door open and push the patient over the side like a ragdoll. He didn't even try to close the door. He hit the gas and peeled away just as someone yelled from afar. They'd probably call for an ambulance. Miles focused on his next objective.
He used an old parking lot on the other side of the city to leave the vehicle and take a more insconpicuous car. It was a quick and sloppy job, not the most ethical, but then again Miles had always made sure that the balance between rights and wrongs was tipping in his favor before he did any dirty work. What was one or two stolen cars in the grand scheme of unveiling Murkoff's sick experiments to the world?
He chose one that had accumulated enough dust on its windshield to ensure that it had been left there for a while, since it would make it harder for anyone to pinpoint on which day it had disappeared, then drove out of Leadville to the nearest big town. There he repeated the swap just to be sure. As soon as he'd transferred all his documents to the back of the discreet gray Toyota Prius he'd claimed for an indeterminate amount of time, Miles headed back for the St. Vincent Hospital.
Once he'd found a spot to park on, Miles took a moment to wind down and really, truly take stock of the situation he was in. First order of business was figuring out how to control the Walrider's shadow so that it wouldn't give him away if anyone peeked into the car. Miles checked himself in the rearview mirror and concentrated on pulling back the darkness of his features into his skin. It took him a while to get a grasp on the black smoke which kept slipping through his metaphorical fingers, but he finally felt his attempts latch onto something at the two-hour mark. Miles started pulling. It didn't come easy. Miles' grasp slipped too soon and he cursed when he felt the Walrider escape his control once more. His fist flew out to hit the side of the car in frustration. He was breathing hard. He hadn't realized how taxing it was to do this.
He knew what to reach for now so he tried again as soon as his breathing returned to normal. Miles repeated and failed for several more attempts before he could tell that he finally had the black smoke firmly in his grip. His head ached from the tension in his mind as he forced the entity to fold. Something trickled down his lips. He didn't let go and continued exerting the same steady pressure to push it down where he wanted it. The Walrider receded gradually and almost reluctantly, but it did recede, and half an hour later most of the dark cloud had crawled its way beneath his skin in writhing black veins. Miles was left staring at his exposed face.
It wasn't the face he'd grown used to seeing in his reflection all his life. His skin was pasty beneath all the dried blood and bits of flesh, his lips were white, there were dark bags under his eyes. That in and of itself should've been freaky enough because he looked like he'd just climbed out of his own coffin, but obviously the universe had decided that it wasn't, because Miles decidedly did not look like a regular human anymore. The unnatural veins stood out starkly across his skin and his eyes had become white irises over black scleras, like a photo negative of what they'd used to be.
"Are you kidding me?" he rasped to himself.
He thumped back against his seat and ran a hand through his disheveled, gore-matted hair in distress. I look like a fucking Halloween party reject, he bitterly thought. Some of the greasy strands caught onto the bone of his severed fingers and he cringed. Miles didn't feel a lot of the pain for each individual injury anymore, it was mostly just that dull, pervasive ache everywhere in his body and the same dying sensation he'd felt ever since he'd gotten up from the floor with the Walrider inside of him; but it was still goddamn uncomfortable to feel anything brush up against his exposed bones and flesh.
The thought reminded him to check his bullet wounds. He shrugged off his brown work jacket and then cautiously looked down at himself. God, he didn't want to do this, but he really needed to at least try to understand how he was still moving. It wasn't like the sight should've been that much more disturbing than all the shit he'd seen at the Asylum, but it was different when it came to his own body. Miles steeled himself and pulled up the stained dress shirt to uncover the injuries. He stared. The muscles of his torso moved in rythm with his breathing as if nothing was wrong, as if he hadn't been peppered with bits of lead, as if they weren't still inside of him. The Walrider's smoke spilled out in tiny, floating rivulets from each hole.
Miles suddenly wondered if he'd feel any different without the bullets there. The Walrider was what was keeping him alive, but could he still heal from wounds? Was he more like a zombie, just a corpse with no chance of recovering? Or maybe his body was frozen in time. It would explain why he'd been feeling like he was stuck in the moment just before dying. The Walrider had stopped the bleeding but Miles couldn't ignore that there was a risk this was only a temporary solution. Maybe he'd be able to lengthen his survival if he gave his body a chance to get better by extracting the foreign objects lodged inside it and getting some liquids in him to compensate for all the lost blood. For that, he'd need supplies, but there was no way he could go into stores looking like this. Miles looked up, his unnaturally white gaze resting on the square shape of the hospital. Hopefully the Walrider would hold him together until he could tend to his injuries. For now, he had to put together a plan for revenge. Miles turned around to grab one of the files and reflexively pulled his phone out, and just as he remembered that it had been acting up, he was surprised to see the device functioning normally. Whatever, this was good, he'd work better with his phone on hand. Those Murkoff assholes were going to pay.