■

Her voice was the first thing he heard when he woke.  “Welcome back.”

I suppose the reinforcements saved him?

“I survived,” his voice rasped.  He’d had a tracheotomy.

Tracheotomy… *looks up*

Oh right, that procedure, where they basically make you a second breathing hole. I think I’ve looked that up before, though I don’t remember if it was for the blog.

The only explanation for his throat being this sore would be having a tube rammed down it.  Looking around, he saw a laptop propped up beside him, and a get well card from Miss Militia.  She must have put the laptop there when she left the card.

That’s nice of her. Now Army can go surfing the web while he recuperates, or work on some of his projects.

Mannequin wrenched his hand back, as if to make it clear that he had let him get that close, that Colin had never really stood a chance.  Colin was pulled to one side, and he didn’t have the strength in his midsection to keep from falling over.

It seems like Colin’s getting more ragdoll-y himself.

His knife clattered from his grip as he fell to the floor.

The villain picked up the knife, examined it, then pressed the button to test it.

Uh oh.

You may have given him some ideas, Colin.

The last thing Colin saw before darkness consumed his vision was the bastard using the weapon on the wall beside the window, dust billowing where it made contact.

Oh, okay.

Hey, I told you that was a security threat! For this exact reason!

In the last seconds of consciousness, he heard Dragon’s voice, as if from a far away place.  “No!  No, no no!  Colin!  Stay awake!  I need you!”

Awake? He’s barely staying alive right now. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, staying alive, staying alive.

Couldn’t lapse into that kind of thinking.

I guess he’s better off focusing on the enemy?

Still had the knife.  One hole in the self-contained systems that were one of Mannequin’s vital body parts would cause a leak of fluids, an introduction of pathogens that Mannequin surely wouldn’t be able to fight off.

…I suppose that does make sense.

By the way, I guess the electromagnetic attachment of some of his limbs might be results of some of his chains getting severed, though it ought to be possible for him to repair that.

He tried to speak, but there was too much blood in his mouth, and he only managed to start coughing violently, spraying blood on the white of Mannequin’s chest.  His vision was getting hazy.

You fucked up, pal.

“Colin, stop, please!”

Dragon’s words didn’t matter.  He was going to die anyways.  He’d known the moment he recognized Mannequin.

No faith in the reinforcements, huh? Sounds familiar.

He’d go down fighting, hurt this motherfucker the only ways he could.

But yeah, if he thinks he’s gonna die anyway, this behavior makes much more sense beyond just pure wrath and recklessness.

“You want to compare us, freak?  Maybe we both had bad days.  Days where nothing went right, days where we were too slow, too stupid, too weak, unprepared or tired.  Days we’ll look back on for the rest of our fucking miserable lives, wondering what we would have done different, what we could have done better, how things could have played out.  The difference between us is that I actually did something with my life, and I’m still trying to do more while I serve my sentence!”  He stopped and took a breath.

Oh jeez. Mannequin better hope whatever he made his casing out of is fire resistant, because Colin is really turning up the heat.

“You started your big projects, got every fucking person in the world to get their hopes up, and then you failed to finish anything because you couldn’t hack it when your fucking family got killed!  You insult their fucking memories every motherfucking second you exist like this!”

I’ll give him that last one. It’s not exactly a good way of honoring their memories.