The bunk wasn’t very conducive to sleep, a basic army mattress on what seemed to be a slab of wood with holes in. Tiredness filled his bones and grit stung his eyes as the door opened again, a familiar voice entered his fuddled mind, “Hey, numb-nuts. Get up your wanted.” The kick to his feet made Richards twitch, moving slowly he made out the shape of his partner above him, he looked like fifteen miles of hard road. Stubble covered his chin, there were food stains on his shirt below a coffee stain on his usually smart tie.
“You look like hell.”
His partner snorted as he shifted off the solid bunk.
“So’d you if you’d have driven nearly fifteen hundred miles cross country and through a border patrol that makes the Mexican border look like a Sunday stroll.” Richards shrugged as he got up, looking directly into the red rimmed eyes of his partner who was eyeing the space he’d just vacated.
“Who want’s me?” His partner slid into the still warm space and settled as if it was a king size deluxe, the deep solid sigh leaving his throat making Richards jealous of his ability to sleep anywhere.
“Hey!” He kicked the bunk getting his partner’s attention again, the eyes focussed on him and smiled.
“Carter, outside next to the girls car. He wants ‘a word’.” Richards had been dreading this, if he wanted to talk to him then there was something screwy here and if he wanted to talk to him why should be have to be outside, unless there were some thing’s he didn’t want anyone else to listen to.
Wiping his hand over his tried features he watched his partner dropping into sleep, opening the door Richards made his way to the outside, the darkness out there filled with animals and forest sounds. He’d never liked the ‘great outdoors’, he never knew where the danger was coming from, give him a city anytime, he could find you fifteen different avenues of escape and survival there, but here he was at a loss. This was why he wanted to know why Carter had obviously asked for him on this pick-up, there was something he needed to know and he’d find out as soon as he could be sure they weren’t being listened to.
Huddled under a small light rig the car was being pulled apart, Carter was stood by watching the technicians work on the small car, looking in everything, taking the whole thing apart piece by piece. The pile of personal belongings that had been cleared by the tech’s was sat in a clear plastic bag next to Carter. Richards moved into the small circle of light, his dishevelled appearance stark against his superiors neatness. Carter turned to look at the man, his bulk moving easily in the open air, at home out here in the cool night. His breath fogging Richards spoke to his superior, “Sir, you wanted to see me?” Carter was looking through him, he always did that before he answered anyone, as if he was trying to work out what he could do with you that wouldn’t trouble him too much.
“Yes, you picked up this subject is that correct?” Richards felt a little strange here, Carter must know he did so why was he asking him, deciding to just answer him he spoke.
“Affirmative sir, we picked her up in the hospital,” Carter moved closer to him, his bulk taking the light from his own body.
“Were you the only ‘people’ there for her?” The tone wasn’t lost on him and he began to run the events through his mind, the search for her, the capture, even the way the rent-a –cop helped them take her to the car. That struck an odd note now as he was stood with his superior, the way the guy had been so helpful, even packing her things inside. His eyes must have spoken for him because Carter pulled out a small device from his pocket, button shaped it glistened in the light before his superior dropped it back into his pocket.
Things had just changed, Richards felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise as he met his superiors gaze again. “Let’s keep this between us shall we? Now I want you to take her personals to her,” He motioned to the plastic bag, “Question her while you’re there, be…discreet but quick. I need you to read her while you’re there, see if she knows anything about the child she’s carrying and the donor.” Carter shifted around so his face was in complete shadow and only his eyes were showing reflections from the lights around the car. “I asked for you to be here Richards, don’t make me regret my decision.”
Richards knew then that his partner was expendable, another little piece of flotsam that didn’t matter in the long game and Carter *always* played the long game. You had a better chance of winning and this time Richards was going to make sure he survived as well.
He went through her things before he saw her, the whole lot screamed 20 something female, several different brands of moisturiser, hair products, make-up, although this one even had books with her that had nothing to do with her pregnancy. She had ‘How to live healthy on $10 a day!’, ‘Back Road Summer’s, A journeyman’s remembrances.’ The latter had maps and routes that avoided most major highways, listing hotels and eateries on route and gave them a rating for safety and cleanliness. She’d planned her route, used some intelligence and had still ended up here, ‘here’ being a base in the middle of nowhere where even the food had to be shipped in by air.
Plucking the thin plastic bag off the dirt, Richards went back inside the contents shifting and moving around. Her things spoke to him as he walked through the cold corridors, she bought small things that could be replaced easily. Her jewellery was silver and minimal, nothing that would stand out in a crowd or be worth the effort of stealing. Walking to the nurses station he found the sister filling in charts and reports, coughing politely he got the woman’s attention, earning himself a basilisk stare as he stood there. “Yes, can I help you?” He held up the plastic bag to her eye level before answering her.
“Orders from Security Chief Carter, I’ve to see the girl I brought in yesterday,” he held the bag as proof, her hand was going toward it when he pulled it back a little out of her reach. “I have orders to ‘see’ her.” The inflection he gave to the word made the sister blink and she quickly came out from behind the station, keys in hand.
“You do know she can’t be touched, she’s on watch as well as guarded. Doctor Howard believes she’s the most valuable we have so far, so please don’t stress her any more than you need to.” Richards grabbed the sisters arm tightly and squeezed it hard, his eyes narrowing to slits as he whispered to her.
“When you get back you’ll switch off the camera to that room and you’ll forget I was down here. Do I make myself clear?” His grip increasing as he shut his mouth, he could feel the thin bone of her upper arm in his grip and for a second he saw her eyes show fear before nodding. “Good, glad we understand each other, now take me to her.” The sister led the way through the bright clean corridors where the soldiers were evenly spaced, he could hear the cries of new-borns along with the crying of women, his curiosity peaked he grabbed the sister again as they walked.
“How many do you have in here?” She didn’t stop walking she just stumbled a little before moving on with his hand around her arm.
“Twelve in all, four have already given birth but the babies aren’t viable.” A cold sensation crept through his blood as they walked to the final corridor where the woman he'd brought in was being housed. Before they reached the two soldiers outside her door he stopped the sister dead, there were things going on here that he needed to know before he went in and talked to the occupant he was heading toward.
“Viable? What do you mean viable?” The sister was reluctant to look at him but a squeeze on her already bruised arm made her see the darkness in his thin tight mouth. Her breath seemed hard to get as she looked at him, her features settling on pain mixed with guilt.
“They’re not human, the donor’s genetics don’t mix well with everyone. We estimate one in twenty will resemble human shape, one in a hundred will look human. The donor’s mutation isn’t well mapped, Doctor Howard thinks that’s why he’s so prolific, his body is trying to get around it’s own mutation, to have a normal baby.”
Richards looked down the corridors they’d just come down, there were more than forty rooms here and they’d all been occupied, the grip he had on the sister suddenly made him feel sick. Dropping his hand his pushed her ahead of him, no longer wanting to think about what might be behind those doors he’d passed and the pain that was already eating into him as he imagined women giving birth to monsters at the will of the small man who ran this facility. Now he knew why Carter was here, why he’d disappeared off the company radar and what his role was. No matter what he found out from her, her child had to die, if the donor managed to produce a viable child with the mixed traits of both mutant parents….it didn’t bear thinking about.
The sister opened the door for him, revealing the woman he’d picked up to his view, her eyes pleading with him to be calm, not to stress her in any way. The young woman on the bed looked at him and her saw her fear rise, he’d been the last thing she’d seen before she’d woken up here and it was a valid fear. If he had to he’d be taking the one thing she’d been protecting all this time on the road, her baby. Smiling at her frightened face as the sister left, closing the door behind her, he offered up the plastic bag filled with her stuff. Seeing her eyes dart to it he broke the tense silence, “Hi there, I’m Jeff Richards and I’m pleased to meet you at last Marie. Anything you want to know please ask me, I’ve been sent to answer any question you have and to re-assure you that you’re not going to be hurt while you stay here. After all it’s your well being that’s important to us all here, so please relax and I’ll do my best to answer your questions.”
Moving himself into the room and pulling the smaller chair to the side of her bed, so he was below her eyeline giving her a sense of superiority over him. Handing her the plastic bag and smiling his best ‘I’m on your side’ smile all the while his stomach was churning at the thought of having to kill her and her child in the near future. Swallowing the rising bile he waited for her first question, his eyes seeing the little red light on the camera switch off above them, Marie too busy looking over her things to even see it go off. They were alone now and he had an hour at the most to get what Carter wanted from her and he’d get it by any means possible.
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Doctor Howard had just finished running the bloodwork through the microscope, Marie was showing a normal rise in hormone, everything about her pregnancy was normal. The others she’d been given charge of were all showing rising levels of white blood cells, as if the mother’s bodies were trying to clear themselves of an infection. Thing was they were all healthy, it was the foetus’s they were carrying that were suffering, nearly every single one of them were showing deficiencies in either bone or nerve growth. It was as if they reached a certain point in development then just began to die, all except Marie D’Canto. Even the babies that had survived weren’t going to make more than a few months on their own, she’d been brought in too late to save most of them.
Thing was the donor seemed to know when one of his progeny died, as if he could sense when it happened. She’d been checking his fluids and read outs when the E.E.G showed a huge spike, the donor had opened his eyes for a moment, the slits showing a flash of glowing hazel before he’d sunk back into the coma he seemed to sleep in.
His lucid moments were getting more regular and longer, soon he’d be awake for most of the time, his body was putting on weight now and condition. He ate through his stomach tube still, but regular feeding on high protein had done wonders to his frame. They’d had to re-enforce the straps holding him down, he’d thrashed out in one lucid moment breaking the strap as if it were cotton. They’d learned from that and now he was chained as well as being strapped, she didn’t like the thought of having to do it but she’d read the reports on his mutation and his strength when he was at full health. It was prudent to be careful and she was prudent, she wanted to live through this if possible.
Casting her mind back to the original problem of Marie D’Canto, why was she able to carry the donor’s child normally, was it her latent mutation, was that the key? Was it in her RNA? Where was the answer? She wasn’t a specialist in mutant DNA and to get the answer that her boss wanted she’d have to get some help as soon as possible. Maybe her old contacts could help her, there were several who were sympathetic to the mutant cause, and maybe they could help her get to the bottom of this. But if she went to her boss he’d know she couldn’t solve this herself, her life expectancy would drop substantially.
Her gaze dropped on her laptop, she still had access to her old university files, maybe she could query the alumni through the intranet, no full details just hypothesis. It could give her somewhere to start from and that would be better than nowhere, the decision made she began firing off e-mails, even if she was found out they couldn’t trace it back to here. Her connection was via several secure servers, it’d take a super computer to track her to here and they didn’t grow on trees, at least not in her experience.
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The little light flashed in the darkness, the green cursor blinking like a beacon in the panelled room. When it was noticed the occupant clicked on the cursor, his eyes reflecting the screen in glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. Reading the text that had been sent to his inbox, the words sending his mind into cartwheels of unexplored thought. The hypothetical scene being given felt too real to be truly hypothetical, the data too complete, his mind quickly putting the pieces together and finding something he really didn’t want to think about.
Setting his face he picked up the slim phone by his computer, pressing a button he whistled the tone of the code being dialled. He knew it by heart as well as the voice that answered the call, the honeyed tone making a smile come over his features, “Ororo, could you bring Scott here. I think we have a new project for him, one I’m sure he’ll enjoy.” When he finally replaced the receiver Doctor Hank McCoy turned his mind to the problem being displayed on his machine. If what was on here was true, then the secret war had taken a turn for the worse, if this ever came out things would never be the same for either side. The darkness was still wrapped around him when his guests came to see him, no solution had presented itself to him, he only hoped that the two people that had answered his call would give him another option.
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“Where am ah?” Richards met her frightened gaze, readying his lie and moving closer to her to make her believe what he was going to tell her.
“You’re in a secure facility for mutants, a little out of the way but nowhere dangerous. You’re perfectly safe here.”
Marie watched the man talk, he inclined his head to her as he spoke, his eyes never leaving her own for a second, even his demeanour was calm and relaxed.
“What do they want with me?” Richards moved back now, giving himself a little room now, he knew why she was here but she wasn’t going to know the details of it.
“Now that even I don’t know, all I was asked to do was pick you up. I’m not much more than a glorified go-fer.” He smiled his best ‘I just work here’ smile, the one where it softened his eyes just a touch, he saw her lose a little fear about him after that. “What about you? Where are you from originally?” She hesitated for a few seconds her fingers touching the silver necklace through the thin plastic before answering him.
“Meridian, kind of left in a hurry though,” he noticed her tears beginning, she didn’t get flustered just sad, nodding he reached out toward her hand on the plastic. Noticing she snatched her hand away from his, her eyes filled with fear, not for her for him, her voice trembling with it as she spoke to him.
“Ah’m dangerous to you, you can’t touch me. Ah’ll hurt you if you do, an ah don’t want to hurt you.” Her reaction almost made him stop, she was concerned for his safety not her own, he moved his hand back but not entirely away. Showing her he wasn’t afraid of her or her skin, looking at her tear-streaked face he decided to go for the information he needed.
“Have you always been a mutant?” Her eyes grew cold as she looked at him, expecting him to move when she’d told him she could hurt him, when he hadn’t Marie had begun to wonder why. Her suspicions were growing but about what she didn’t know, just that it felt wrong to have someone in here with her letting her ask questions if it was somewhere she was in danger. Yet she’d never have another chance as good as this one to ask what she wanted to know.
Swallowing her nerves she looked at the shabby man seated next to her bed, she could touch him if he tried to hurt her. Deciding to answer him Marie began her story, telling him about her visit to the clinic for her father’s friends, her test and the switching on of her mutation, the one thing she didn’t even know she was. Until now, her own mind had been wondering about what Doctor Howard had said, that she thought it was a self defence mechanism of her body to keep her and the baby safe. She voiced that to Richards, his face creased as he followed her logic, “So you think it might go when the baby is born?” Marie nodded and held her hands over the proud bump that hid her child from the world.
Richards took that into account, if the doctor wasn’t sure about the mutation in the mother then the child may not inherit anything from either parent. He knew from the file on her that she’d shown no mutant power up until the first trimester of her pregnancy. Could the whole thing actually be from the donor? He’d just found out that the donor’s genetics didn’t mix well with normal humans so she might have been lucky in one sense but damned in another. At least the child she was carrying seemed normal enough, he was about to continue when the door opened to the room, and a trolley came in with a female orderly. The lunch wagon was here, the camera in the ceiling flicked back to life and he got up to leave, the rattle of the trolley covering his cursing. He turned to see Marie looking at the food trolley with almost relief in her gaze, if he’d pushed her any further he might have blown it with her. She needed to believe someone and he’d be the one she’d believe, he cast her a warm smile and pointed to her food, “Make sure you eat all that, we want you to be healthy, both of you. If you have any more questions just ask for Richards, the soldiers will find me and I’ll come to talk to you okay?”
Marie took the plastic plate in her hands her mind telling her she might have an ally in the man who’d come to see her. Hope surged as he left the room, she might have someone else to get information from but if she could trust it was another matter entirely.
The orderly was about to leave when Marie got her attention, “Excuse me but do you know Richards. The man who was in here when you came in?”
The orderly just looked at her as if she’d asked if the sky was green, “Honey I don’t know everyone here but as far as I know he’s only been here as long as you have. Come up with you and went back for the other one.” She was fishing out the dinner menu when Marie saw her opportunity.
“Other one?” Her hand covered in plastic took the menu, protecting the orderly form her bare touch. Looking at Marie she came a little closer to point out something on the menu but her voice was telling her something entirely different.
“Don’t know who he is but they say he’s chained down like an animal, Rudy takes food down to him. Liquid food. He don’t say much about him but Rudy don’t like it, he’s a good man Rudy but he’s going to get himself fired if he’s not careful about what he says and to who.”
“Fired?”
“Yeah honey, fired. An I don’t mean with severance pay either.” The look that passed between them both made Marie’s blood run cold, the things she’d been told were no longer fun. It didn’t feel like a game to get one over on the people who were holding her here, it was survival. No one was trusted, even the staff, they were miles away from anywhere and anything could happen to her, the orderly plucked her card out of her covered fingers and spoke loudly to the camera watching above. “SO that’s the salad, pork, mashed sweet potato and cheesecake with grapefruit juice, big order there honey, just hope you can stomach it all. Eating for two huh?” The woman had her back to her so she couldn’t see the pale reflection of Marie in the room. It was a risk to hope that Jeff Richards really was on her side, but if one person was couldn’t another be?
She wasn’t hungry but she ate anyway, a small call button was plugged in after her lunch so she could call for a nurse if she needed help. Her baby’s life and her own would have to rely on others for a while and for that she needed to trust her instincts about who she could trust and who she didn’t. At the moment all she knew was that she was locked up somewhere no-one knew or cared about, the father of her child was here as well and that was a priority to find out about. How she did it was another matter entirely.
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There were irons on his wrists, forearms and shoulders, forcing his eyes to open in the glare of the room he made out the shapes that were moving around him, the white of their clothing made his voice box rumble with hatred. They stopped work immediately leaving him alone, a single solitary figure approached him, a familiar scent filling his nostrils. He knew this one, this was one who’d caused him pain and his growl deepened, words he half understood made their way into his consciousness. “Get him washed, take out the stomach tube, from now on he gets hand-fed. When he’s aware I want at least one person with him at all times and the physio machine running, he needs exercise to build his strength up. Get yourselves ordered into a rotation, I’ll take the morning shift, we’re collecting new sperm samples tomorrow for analysis.”
The movement of his bed from prone to vertical made his head spin for a moment, light dimmed somewhat for him and he took his first look at the face that had caused him so much pain. Mousy blonde hair, cut short in a bob that aged the face, dark circles under the washed out blue of the eyes. A face that watched every movement of his own body with obvious glee, she moved closer to him so he could sense the sickness radiating from her. A scent that told him of her dying body, of the corruption hiding just beneath the surface of her skin, she was death walking and his body was repelled by her. Flexing his muscle to move away from her, seeing her eyes follow the movement and her smile waxy and pale filling her tired eyes. “Nice to have you with us Wolverine, I’m sure our distinguished leader would like to meet you at last.” She turned away from him as she moved around the bed he was on, her hands redoing the straps and ties that kept him to the bed securing him properly before risking her bosses exposure to him.
Fury was building inside his mind, scenes of depravity, pain, torture, humiliation at the hands of soldiers dressed in green, of being held down while he was beaten unconscious. The scent of ammonia filling his nose as they pissed all over his bruised and battered form, knowing he should be able to get up and fight back but his body couldn’t. Their laughter filling his ears as they dragged him outside, the snow cold on his battered skin, numbing the aches they’d given him. Leaving him outside to freeze as night fell, his naked body trying to keep warm as he shivered, the pain almost making him black out as each wave went through him. Frost-bitten he’d been left in a cold dank cell to recover, his body eating muscle mass to repair the damage. Pissing blood for days, his body too tired to digest whatever they threw at him, throwing it back up as soon as it touched his stomach.
That’s when ‘he’d’ come, the soft toned voice that made his nightmares flare into life, the things he’d done to him made the abuse he’d suffered so far feel normal. Stripping him of his mind, his humanity, his manhood, taking everything that was left of him until there was nothing left but the animal. Then the burning had begun, the testing of his body, the strength he had left being sapped away by ‘treatments’, his own body becoming heavier even though he could barely raise his head anymore without help. Then finally he’d snapped, losing his sense of self, of life itself, retreating after years of abuse, the final straw the sight of the blades in his arms.
No longer human, no longer fighting the pain or darkness that covered his mind, losing himself in the animal they wanted him to be, Wolverine. Everything lost to the darkness that raged through his skull, to the world he was an animal to be used, trained, taught to act human until his skills were needed, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a mutant killer.
It was this face that he showed to the man who walked into the room, his small frame glowing with pride as he walked toward his bed. Lunging forward he listened to the voice that had haunted his nightmares, the soft cultured tone forming each word carefully knowing full well he could understand him. “Well, we have you back to your old self, Wolverine. I think if you continue to progress the way you have over the last week we should have you back in the program in just under a month.” The face leaned closer so he could scent the pleasure radiating from his skin and his nostrils flared with the familiar scent making him test the restraints on him further, his flesh parting as he strained to get at the man who taunted him with his closeness.
Seeing the blood flowing from his prize the man turned to the doctor who was watching the interaction between them, “Doctor if you don’t mind I’d rather the restraints were padded, we don’t want him doing himself an injury before we start work again.” The small pale hand reaching out, caressing his cheek, the snap of his own teeth barely missing the hand that was touching his skin, making it creep as the touch swept over the healthy surface. Letting go he turned his back on him talking to the doctor the words reaching him through the haze of hatred, “Make sure you feed him properly doctor, I want him back to his original weight before the month is out. We have a lot of work ahead of us and I need him fit to do it.” His gaze landed on his strapped and naked form, eyes caressing every inch of him as if he were a lover, “We have so many things to do him and I, improving on nature takes time and effort, I have the effort doctor but not the time. Do I make myself clear?” He heard the female tormentor answer, watching him leave the sterile room smiling as he went, the scent of pleasure wafting toward him as the door closed on him.
Cut off from his view of the one he wanted to kill Wolverine howled, the song filled with rage and pain, echoing through the entire complex, making new-borns echo their fathers cries, mothers to be shaking in fear as the sound reached them. Marie a few corridors away heard the sound, it filled her with a terror she couldn’t understand but her instincts could. It was the sound of the dark, of the thing that lurks just outside the firelight, the killer that hunts the weak, old and very young. Wrapping herself around her baby Marie tried to shut out the howls that were coming from somewhere close by, her mind telling her that it could be her next.
Falling to sleep her dreams were filled with scenes of wolves hunting over the snow, chasing her down, but their teeth never bit her, they just surrounded her, the sound she’d heard echoing through her room filling her dream and driving her deeper into sleep. Escaping the reality by running into her mind, where at least she had some control and she was taking whatever she could get.
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“What do you know?” Carter was still annoying, he could hear a mouse fart at fifty feet so he had no chance at sneaking up on him but he still tried. Richards sat himself in front of the desk that Carter occupied here at the base, running his hand through his now clean hair he ordered his thoughts.
“The girl doesn’t know anything about the donor, she’s a dupe, just like the rest of them here. She has no idea of who or what he is and why she’s here, or even where she is.”
“So she’s stupid?”
He shook his head as he undid the button on the shirt he’d borrowed from a closet in the barracks, “No, she’s smart. Street smart though, she knew to go by back roads, to stay low off the main radar. She got caught by thinking about her kid, she wasn’t a mutant to begin with so she learned to keep herself low. Using the spray plaster was a good idea to cover her mutation.” Carter looked through him, “Her mutation is her skin, she drains the life from people who touch her, so she covered whatever skin was on show with a thin barrier of plastizied starch. Her skin could breathe but she was protected from random touching.” Carter nodded as he saw the sense of her decision, something that had allowed her to move safely and quickly through places she might be at risk otherwise.
“What about her child?”
Richards moved forward to look Carter in the eye, his gaze questioning, “Well that’s a bit of a quandary for us.” Carter looked through him again making him fill the silence, “Doctor Howard seems to think that her own mutation was triggered by the donor’s genetic material. She might not retain the mutation after the child is born, that is if it’s born normal.” Carter’s eyebrow lifted skyward, this was the cue for him to elucidate, “The sister was very helpful about this part, seems like our man in charge hasn’t been very honest with you or the guys running this show. The sister told me there were twelve occupants here needing attention but the rosta at the nurses station had nearly forty names on it. Seems like the experiment goes a little further than anyone realised, the children don’t live long, that’s those that actually make it to being born. And those that do aren’t entirely ‘viable’.” His mouth almost spat the word ‘viable’ across the desk into Carter’s lap, Carter steepled his fingers as he moved back in his chair.
“Go on.”
“Seems like the ones who do survive end up as guinea pigs for the rest, the non-viable that is. The ones who don’t look human.” He’d been down to the labs, gone on a security inspection at the orders of the man seated opposite him. What he’d seen had turned his stomach, babies being dissected on marble blocks, small tiny organs being removed into jars for further study. Some were still living, he’d seen their eyes follow him across the room as he’d been dressed in the green smock everyone else had been in. They’d been neutered, their humanity stripped away, they were specimens to be studied, labelled and pickled. Their shapes were horrific and now he knew why the women had been crying, each one had been breast fed for the first few weeks until their systems had begun to fail. They’d had every chance at survival but the genetic mix had failed and the bodies of the children were malformed or had no feeling at all.
“I saw two children who looked human, were ‘viable’ but they were sickly. Locked up in quarantine, not even barrier nursing to help them, everything has to be sterilised before they can have it near them otherwise they’ll die. They have little or no immune system to speak of, they’re useless unless you want a soldier who can fight from a plastic bubble.” He felt dirty still, even after showering for nearly an hour he could still feel the dirt under his clothes, it made him angry and he couldn’t be angry, not yet. There’d be time soon enough if he was right about the reason for Carter being here but for that he had to ask a few questions of his own.
“Permission to speak freely sir?” Carter nodded his assent, he knew Richards would want some answers soon and he’d give him as much as he could. “What are you doing here sir? Someone of your experience it doesn’t ring true to me and it shouldn’t to the rest of the security service either.” Carter fixed him with a cold stare, his face didn’t change as he leaned forward on his elbows crowding Richards with his bulk.
“What else would you expect from a disgraced former operative commander? A ‘welcome home all is forgiven’, no you get sent here, sent to look after the dirty laundry because someone has just as much on you as you have to deal with here. It’s not a job Richards, it’s a reprieve from ‘retirement’. Thing is you shouldn’t always believe what you read in reports or on the gossip vine, you know that yourself. You were at Farah, you know how important it is to get the facts straight.”
Richards almost swallowed his tongue, Farah had been a total fuck-up, and a small insurgent force had been found according to the local militia. So they’d gone light, what they’d found was a whole regiment of Taliban fighters as well as a training camp. They’d just managed to get out with two vehicles out of the eight they’d brought, fifteen men cut down before they’d even had a chance to react to what was in front of them. He’d taken a shot to the shoulder himself and after that he’d made sure he knew exactly what he was getting into in Afghanistan, always checking every report with aerial photographs if possible. The entire thing had changed the way they’d reacted to reports from so-called ‘friendly’s’, thing was some ‘friendly’s’ were actually spies sent from the warlords to infiltrate villages. Letting them win a few minor battles and get some credibility before sending a bunch of soldier’s to their deaths in ambush.
Carter was telling him that he was the same, just because he looked the part didn’t mean he ‘was’ the part, Carter had always trusted him, given him assignments that he didn’t want anyone else near. Things that needed his ‘skill’s’, he seemed to have a sense for the work, to pick up on lies, to ‘feel’ out someone who was different or odd. That was why he questioned the removal of his then boss over a year ago and the rumours that had come out about his swindling of the government resources he had. Richards knew Carter and it wasn’t right, he’d spoken out but he’d been slapped down and demoted, sent on every crap job going, even this one, which had been countersigned by his section head. A pick-up job for a branch of the military, he’d complained until he’d seen the request, it had come from further up the line, almost as high as you could get. That was when he’d started questioning about who’d requested him and he’d been answered when he’d walked into that office to give his report about the crash.
The crash, there was still something niggling him about it and finally he saw it, there had been three guards at the roadside when he’d first come back with the girl, when they’d come with the donor there’d been four. That was what was odd, the guards had moved and acted as if they didn’t know the other one, they looked to the ones they knew and not to the new guard. The new guard hadn’t been one of those who’d helped them out of the ditch but every guard had been scrambled. That was the difference, “Sir I think we’ve been infiltrated here, I remember now what the thing was, what was odd, a guard at the gate, one who wasn’t there the first time I came in and was there the second time. When we crashed they weren’t there, even when all the guard on the gate was sent for, they weren’t there!” Carter smiled as he handed a gun over the desk to him.
“Keep it out of sight, use it *only* if you have to. Keep yourself near the one you brought in, she’s important if she’s the only one with a viable child. On no account should any harm come to her, shield her if necessary.” Carter’s words made no sense whatsoever to him, he’d asked him earlier to get as much information out of her as possible by any means necessary and now he was asking him to lay down his life if necessary to protect her.
Hiding the gun on his body he looked into his superiors gaze and saw a little fear showing there and if he was feeling fear then he should be out of his mind with it.
“Sir, why the change of order?” Carter’s face was grim when he replied the light had gone from his eyes and a gauntness had replaced his usual full features.
“Because I’d rather be remembered as a Schindler than a Mengle Jeff, because this is how it starts. You’ve heard the rumours, seen the little gold insignia on the soldiers here, I can’t save everyone when whatever goes down goes down. But you’ll be clear enough from this to come out clean enough to have a conscience again, me I’ll just have to take what comes down the line.” He moved back and straightened himself, the shadows retreating a little from his eyes, “So make yourself useful to me and keep your eyes and ears open for our little intruder, something tells me they’re still here.”
Richards knew how serious it was and how deep he was in it, Carter had used his first name, and he’d only ever used that the day he’d thought he was going to die in Farah. Telling him that he could die on his own time but not on his, and he was on his time, almost shouting it at him as he’d laid there on the jeep hood flying over the ground. His shoulder wound staining the brown of the jeep bright red and Carter screaming at him to stay awake, using his first name to get his attention back on him.
Leaving the office he had his orders and he’d follow them to the letter.
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