Chapter Text
“One, two, three, four, five,” He counted each finger that touched his thumb along with it.
“...Two, three, four, five,” He repeated for the other hand.
At first, grounding, now this activity was getting more and more anxiety-inducing. But truth be told, in the empty and echoey space of the cell, Tom had nothing better to do.
The cell was bare; he had nothing to sit on apart from the toilet in one corner. There was not even a bench, so for the last… for the whole time he had been here, Tom’s been sleeping on the metal floor. And sleeping seemed to be the most constructive activity he was capable of at this point.
He could also ruminate, and his too used to having much to consider brain loved to do that at the beginning, but sitting and stewing with a high level of stress was slowly killing him. High blood pressure, a knot instead of a stomach, and irregular breathing weren’t good for him. And he honestly doubted that his captors would go out of their way to help him.
Even if they knew about his state of mind, they didn’t seem to care. They didn’t even add drugs to keep him calm!
Tom knew that something was majorly wrong since the moment he had woken up on the Venture Star.
The first pointer was that he had awoken in his avatar body. He didn’t remember getting into it, and, what was even scarier, he couldn’t go back to the human one when he tried. He was stuck! But that shouldn’t be possible! Those bodies were made as empty vessels; there was no way to make a permanent transfer!
He had his first panic attack in space over this, only to be later escorted at gunpoint to the shuttle on which he had been cuffed. That was the second pointer and a cause of the second panic attack.
After getting off the ship, he was met by security forces who wore exoskeletons to match his height and strength. They pushed him around, and one even pulled on his queue. It hurt like a bitch! His only form of orientation was the short trip to jail where he had been pushed in, so hard that he nearly fell on his face, and was mostly left alone.
He did have a doctor's visit at one point, but it was equally unpleasant.
His main observations were this:
- This is not the so widely advertised “Hell’s Gate”;
- This was more of a military base than a research center;
The second one came to him when the main administrator of the whole operation came by his cell. She introduced herself as General Frances Ardmore, and she said that there were certain changes to the structure of this “business venture”. He could nearly see the quotation marks when she spoke.
Ardmore was a military leader and not a paper pusher like…Selridge? Sefridge? Serbridge? Something like that. He honestly ignored this part of the debrief about the Pandoran outpost and didn’t even try to remember the name of the then administrator. He fully expected not to even interact with the guy once during all of his stay.
Whatever had changed in those six years he had spent in cryo, it must’ve been something big since they relocated. He doubted that the outpost just needed space to expand.
What else he had observed was that he was not the only ‘avatar’ on the premises. That was the first time he was actually let out of the cell. For a trip to collect samples.
He could see they were more personalized, with tattoos and stylized hair; maybe they had been here longer than he? Tom wanted to comfort himself with the idea that they had probably been through something similar to him, but…he couldn’t. Whenever they would come by his cell, they would stare coldly or with a sadistic sneer.
‘I know something you don’t know.’ It seemed to speak.
It was weird and uncomfortable, but he could manage. He had jealous coworkers before.
But these people were not scientists.
The four ‘avatars’, as he later learned from the General, were actually recombinant soldiers, were always dressed in tactical gear, and were heavily armed. They also held themselves like Jake, well, before he had lost his legs or even after. They stood strong and firm, sometimes with those annoying all-knowing grins on their faces. It all said that they were soldiers, very experienced ones; they radiated that.
One of them also radiated such hate that it nearly turned Tom to stone. Like the basilisk in the myths. He showed not a simple distaste at Tom’s person but a pure, undisguised fury that he had dared to live! However contradictory, the stare was ice cold yet full of fire. The man had a tattoo of an eagle on his bicep. Throughout all this time, he never introduced himself, yet he gave off the energy that he would take Tom down and was waiting, hoping for a reason to do that.
From the General, he learned that the man had a rank of Colonel, so he figured that he would stand lower in the hierarchy than the general but higher than Jake's…corporal? He hoped he remembered right.
He was sure that he had never met this guy and didn’t know what would warrant treatment like that.
He could be called a coward, whatever; Tom didn’t really care, but since it was easier just to lower his head and endure this, he would do so. Usually it wasn’t longer than around half an hour, he could sit still for that time.
It was a break in the monotony of the day. However meager it was.
Jake would take it with a straight back, just staring into the eyes of his tormentor. Tom shook his head; his personal auto-bully had activated again. He didn’t want to think about his brother, yet his thoughts always seemed to circle back to him.
Maybe because Jake could also stare like that? Tom sighed; he hated how he had left their relationship, and tried not to think about whether he had any relationship to go back to.
Jakey had invited him to a pub; he remembered that it was just after some operation that went sideways. The news was fear-mongering, as usual, but the lack of contact with his brother had stressed him out too much. That day, Tom had entered the pub and froze when he spotted him in that wheelchair.
“Is this what you wanted?!” He remembered screaming in the face of his disabled brother. He had sneered at Jake, “Look at you! A brave fucking soldier!”
“How does it feel to be a useless burden to society?!”
Tom winced at the memory. He had expected Jake to blow up in his face, that’s how their arguments usually went, but his brother just stared back in this furious, cold gaze and asked:
“Where’s your Nobel Prize, Einstein?”
“Where is it, Jake? Probably in hell,” He whispered into his knees.
It was a jab at his ambitions. Everybody always fawned over Tom’s intellect. And Jake… he never wanted to pursue science, always citing how pricey and unstable the career path it was.
Tom could agree, it was hard to be seen in the crowd, especially in the field he had chosen. Earth’s environment was slowly dying, so it seemed pointless. But he could be stubborn, just like Jake; that’s why they often butted heads, to their grandpa’s displeasure.
“Failed Oppenheimer!”
“Half-assed Darwin!”
“Nobel-less squint!”
It all echoed in his mind, haunting him, but what he would not give to actually hear it live again. He sniffed and wiped some salty wetness that started gathering in his eyes. He never expected that losing Jake would hurt him so much.
Tom wasn’t sure how much time he had spent in this cell, a few weeks? Months? It hasn’t been a year, he was sure of that one. He had no clock (which wasn’t that surprising), and neither a window (it would be more surprising if he had one), so he didn’t really have a reliable way to measure the time.
In theory, he was receiving two square meals a day at equal intervals, but he realized too late that he should be using them as a time measurement. He scoffed to himself, some genius he was.
Another example of his brilliance was how he had ignored and avoided all topics connected to the army after that…situation in the pub.
Tom has fucked up with Jake. He couldn’t even remember why exactly he had reacted the way he had. Still, the fact was that he stopped talking to his brother because of that situation, and on top of that, he also started to avoid all and any topics connected to the army, guns, and the lives of soldiers.
It used to trigger him to a nearly violent response every time someone as much as breathed about the topic.
Now he was kicking himself for that.
Soldiers were, after all, taught how to keep track of time. Oh, how much he would give to have access to that sacred knowledge! He was lamenting on the inside.
Tom used to sneer at the idea of carefully keeping track of time. He loved the feeling of being immersed in the research. With a fond smile, he remembered the hours upon hours he spent in the lab or even in papers researching something. University was one of the best experiences in his life. But now, when everything was the same nearly all the time, losing time was a curse of his reality.
“You were right, Jakey,” He mumbled into his knees, “I am an idiot.”
At this point, admitting that didn’t hurt. He couldn’t be angry at facts.
With another sigh, Tom went back to the finger counting, “One, two, three, four, five.” It still grounded him, even if it made him look stupid. Well, more than he was.
Then his ears perked up at the rhythmic tap-tap in the distance – footsteps. The one positive aspect of this body was much better senses. He would get a heads-up every time someone was coming here.
It was one of the recoms – Mansk. This one was more indifferent to his person, so a bit more pleasant to deal with.
“Get changed, Sully,” He ordered, leaving a bundle of clothes in the airlock. That meant a trip was afoot.
Tom went without complaint. At first, he did try to refuse, but humiliation at the act had passed after a beating…or two. He learned the hard way that privacy was just not something that would be afforded to him.
Even in the shower.
Tom shivered and changed quickly into camouflage pants and an olive t-shirt, classic. No socks, though, for some reason, the recoms didn’t wear shoes during their outings, so he, too, wasn’t afforded any.
With his hands cuffed in front, Tom was escorted to an aircraft where he had been secured to a wall. Headphones were fitted over his ears too. Only humans had filled in the scorpion, as they called the craft, all fully armed, the recoms always escorted them on their banshees during these outings.
Tom was very interested in how they got them since all contextual clues indicated that any travel into the mountains was not allowed. And that's where banshees nested. Curious.
“Hey, T-Sully!” Called one of the soldiers. “Our science pukes,” He felt his ears angle back at the name, “need samples of these.”
The soldier then showed him a tablet with a list of plant species: liucinaria fibrata, panopyra, two lichen species from what he could see, and a blader polyp. Tom nodded, showing he had understood and read them. The recom with the eagle tattoo would have a copy of that list anyway, so Tom didn’t have to memorise anything.
The aircraft had the advantage of having a mostly open hull, allowing not only for the breeze to freely move through but also for the mostly unobstructed view outside. A lush, green forest stretching as far as the horizon…he would never experience a view like that on earth. That was one of the few good sides of his misfortune.
He remembered how it was during the training, stuck on Earth with the ever-present promise of a green paradise and fuckton of research possibilities. He would lie awake in his bunk, imagining working in the Pandoran lab with Grace Augustine and green trees behind the window…now it all seemed like a distant dream.
“We’re coming up on Hell’s Gate,” The pilot notified, interrupting his daydreaming.
The scorpion touched down on the roof of what looked like the control tower, a dilapidated building. This was the place he was supposed to come to originally. The complex showed some damage, both as if something just…cut through the concrete, and if animals just invaded the area. Now that he thought about it, the place looked not only ‘reclaimed’ by nature but like the forest had just invaded a foreign territory. And while Tom was aware of how irrational it would sound, he couldn’t shake off the overwhelming feeling that something was wrong in this place.
One of the recoms let him out only when the rotors fully stopped and escorted him down some previously improvised staircase. The leader of the recoms was already waiting for them at the bottom, a wide metal cuff with a metal line attached to it in one of his hands and a smirk on his face.
He only had to show it; Tom just gave him the left hand. He was effectively put on a leash; it’s been like that since that first outing. At the beginning, the doctors had put a GPS chip in his shoulder, but for reasons unknown, his body had rejected it. The second implantation ended the same. So this was a second-best option, though he knew that it made the recom uncomfortable.
“Alright then, now,” The recom procured the tablet and presented it to Tom, “Where should we start looking?”
“Lucinaria is a fairly common plant; it should be around, but the Panopyra…” He swallowed, “That might be a bit harder to find and…well…reach.”
“And why is that?” The recom’s tail coiled in agitation.
“W-well, it-from what I remember, Panopyra’s grow further into the Omatikaya territory-”
“Near the hometree?”
“Y-yes, ehm…and they hang down from branches,” He finished, hoping that the man wouldn’t be angry enough to retaliate. Sometimes it was hard to judge how he would react to his estimations, but right now he looked thoughtful, the tail swinging in a more relaxed manner than before.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” Literally it seemed. Then he tapped the screen with his finger, “And the rest of them?”
“Those lichens…I think the easiest would be to check around the wide but shallow river? Uh…they like fresh water. But the polyp…this species likes open spaces.”
“There isn’t much open space in the forest,” He spoke with narrowed eyes.
“No, sir. This polyp is most common in the Hallelujah Mountains.”
The recom pursed his lips, considering…Tom, “We will see,” He said after a while.
“Alright, Lieutenant Walker,” Colonel turned to the human officer, “Hold the base. This may take a while, and we might need backup.”
“Where should we look for you?”
“We’ll head towards the mountains. Expect communication every two hours. If we won’t come back to an hour after the eclipse ends, and won't respond to contact for another hour, just head back and report a total loss of my unit.”
“Yes, sir!” The human saluted, somewhat giddy, and returned to the aircraft.
Without further commentary, the Colonel and Mansk started towards the jungle, pulling Tom along.
All this “if we lose contact, then we’re dead” crap once scared Tom nearly to death (no pun intended), but now he was used to it. During the training, they all had been informed that the relationship the RDA had with the local, native tribe was…ah, not a favourable one. He knew that the tensions were slowly escalating, not strange, since RDA had been slowly but surely destroying more and more of their land in the process of excavation.
But it seems that the relationship had fully gone sour if all that everybody was expecting was an attack, mostly unprovoked. And not only that. From what he gathered, either by observation or just a sense of smell, humans were afraid of the forest. Not the Na’vi or the animals in it, they feared entering the trees!
Tom looked at the sunrays seeping through the dense foliage and the vapor floating in the upper parts of the trees. His ears caught some yips from an animal a fair distance away, and there was buzzing from all the insects all around, but otherwise, there were no animals really. Sometimes they would scare some fan-lizards while trekking through the taller grasses and shrubbery, and from time to time they would spot a group of prolemurs swinging in the canopy. But no larger game.
They must’ve walked at least a mile away from the old base, and when they entered a larger meadow, the Colonel had stopped, “Wainfleet report, how does it look upstairs?”
Whatever Wainfleet, his right hand, had reported, it satisfied Colonel, “Good, come back.”
Then the four banshees, two of them with their riders, landed with a screech. They took off some equipment from them and repacked their backpacks.
“Okay then, Sully,” The colonel began, then, with a smirk, made a wide gesture with his hand and added, “Fetch!”
Joke’s on him, Tom thought as the colonel's hand literally pointed straight at the lucinaria.
Gathering samples: roots, stems, seeds - if possible. It was all familiar, and he could nearly go through the motions automatically. It was one of the only times when he was not being pushed, pulled, or otherwise disturbed. Nobody tried to even imply that he should hurry it up.
On his first outing, they did it constantly to a point that he could barely hold the tools well enough to actually collect the samples. It was the one and only time when Tom had witnessed Colonel and his recoms being berated both by the lead scientist of the science division and by General Ardmore.
“I’ve given you one, simple job, Colonel - Babysit the botanist, THE BOTANIST! I am genuinely curious how your…unit managed to fuck up such a simple request!”
Tom was the first target of her ire, which was caused by a fuming scientist who had complained about the quality of the samples. So Tom tattled, “Ma’am, I am sorry, b-but the Colonel, h-he threatened me! He wanted to cut off my fingers!” Which was true, the man had a really short fuse and a huge/deep distaste for scientists.
So she called him and his blue team in and started to, very publicly, call out his incompetence and stupidity.
“Do I need to remind you, Colonel, that the earth is dying? These samples are crucial in case that terraforming Pandora becomes impossible!”
She had been steadily raising her voice until the last part came out as a shout.
“You failed to deal with that traitor and cost the company millions of dollars! This is your last failure, Colonel. Another one, and I will consider the project terminated!” She had threatened the recoms. Tom knew that he was also part of it, the project, but it was still very blunt and vague at the same time. He could only think about one way to ‘terminate’ a living being, and he didn’t like it. Then she pointed at him and ordered, “Take him away!”
‘The traitor’ was another curious aspect of the case.
Tom was sure that this traitor was connecting the abandonment of Hell’s Gate, the ‘Na’vi insurgency’ everybody talked about, and hate towards his person. Call him paranoid, but the unfounded hate ought to have some…foundation. It needed to come from something, anything!
Why the recoms hated him could be explained easily - they were, as Ardmore put it, babysitting him. It must be a punishment for the other task they failed.
But the hate appeared earlier than the first assignment, so it probably wasn’t the cause. It’s as if Tom’s person itself was a reason, so who was that traitor? Was it an Avatar driver? Did he know them? Maybe it was Norm? They had been close during the training, but would it warrant behavior like that? He shook his head to scare a fly away, clearing it.
The Panopyra had been easier to find than he thought it would be. They found some hanging from branches like misplaced medusae, just beyond a waterfall.
“So…how are you going to get these samples?” Wainfleet asked as they all stared at the massive, purple-pink plant hanging above a deep chasm.
That was the beauty and danger of this place; tall trees could grow out of a deep hole.
“Sully?” Colonel prompted him.
“I…maybe from the other side?” Tom suggested.
“The trench stretches to the other side,” Mansk added with a raised eyebrow, the woman popped the balloon from her gum, also not impressed by his thought process, so Tom clarified.
“No, I mean, from above,” He clarified and pointed out, “It’s hanging from the branches, it's attached to them.”
“Alright,” Colonel whipped out the tablet, “So, the science pukes ordered a ‘cap tissue’ and ‘stinging cells’, whatever those are.”
“It’s the,” Tom interjected, but cringed away at the death glare sent his way. With lowered ears, he mumbled anyway, “It’s the dangling parts of the plant.”
“Alright, how do we collect them?” Mansk asked.
“I need to-”
“No!” Colonel roared at him. “You don’t need to do anything! Explain to my men how to gather these samples because your ass is staying on the ground with me!”
“Boss…” Mansk tried, but the Colonel sent his withering glare his way.
“Don’t interrupt me, private!” The man growled out. He never used ranks with his men! “He’s trying to escape and you-!”
“I’m not trying to escape,” Tom blurted out, looking at his feet. “I just…” He broke off; silence followed.
As they got closer and closer to the river, Tom did see that the colonel got progressively more tense. The river probably was some sort of a border.
“Then how do we collect the samples?” Wainfleet asked, breaking the tense silence somewhat.
Slowly, occasionally stuttering and throwing side-eyes at the recom leader to whom Tom was still tied, he explained, step by step, how to gather the samples. It probably wouldn’t be of the best quality, but it should suffice, or the recoms will be berated again.
He sat down on a nearby root thick enough to support his weight and resigned himself to watching the soldiers climb the tree.
The cuff, that cell, sneering, and all the riffles always poking him in the back, spoke loud enough that he was considered not only a flight risk but also a security risk. Being behind the “enemy” lines was putting all of them on edge, but wasn’t that an overreaction?
It would be illogical to try to run. Even if locals were sympathetic to him, Tom didn’t know where to look for them. And being a botanist in no way meant that he would be fine surviving a night in the jungle with many predators. Thanators, viperwolves, and the territorial big game were all threats he didn't know how to deal with.
But the Colonel didn’t seem to be following much logical reasoning, preferring to keep to his suspicions and paranoia. It was causing the man to pace back and forth, tail whipping around, ears angled back, teeth tightly gritted.
“Shit!” Tom’s heart had skipped a beat, eyes flying back to the other two, spotting one dangling from a branch.
“You okay, Lyle?!” The Colonel shouted.
“Yes, sir!” Wainfleet grunted as Mansk and the woman pulled him back up.
Tom sighed and took a deep breath, trying to relax a bit. If any of the recoms got hurt…he shuddered, knowing fully well that even if it wouldn’t be his fault at all, his life still would turn into a much bigger hell than it already was.
His hands shook when he brought them forward. “One, two, three, four, five,” Tom repeated the exercise a few times to ground himself.
He felt the weird look that the Colonel threw at him, but no comment was given. Good. Tom felt pathetic enough without additional commentary from third people.
Then something moved in the corner of his eye.
It was…the weird medusa-like dandelions. It looked like a dandelion seed, but it moved in a pulsating way like a medusa. It also floated with purpose.
On the two previous trips, they encountered them too, floating among the trees. He didn’t know what type of creature they were; none of the studies about Pandora's biology included any information about them, and since the local scientist never asked for them to also be ‘sourced’, Tom didn’t bother with looking or capturing.
But the creatures didn’t care that he didn’t care.
Whenever he would sit, and they were around, they would float down and sit on and around him for a while. Like now. Tom pulled his hand out, palm up, and the small wisp sat on it. He marveled at how impossibly light they were, like holding a soft feather. So… soft and delicate and fragile.
“Hello,” He whispered, staring transfixed at the creature. Feeling all of his body relaxing, ears forward, with only his tail tip flicking.
The wisp just…stayed there. Soon, it was joined by another.
And another.
And one more…
Tom sat there surrounded by a cloud of these in no time. Then, as if he sneezed, they all dispersed back into the foliage around them.
“Why do those things do that, Sully?” The Colonel asked. His tone calm and steady, he too must be curious then, Tom decided. The way he allowed one to bounce on his arm and shoulder was also quite telling. “And what even are these things?”
“I don’t know,” He admitted without looking at the recom.
At that first time, he didn’t comment at all. These things had flocked to their whole group, really. Tom was just hogged the most by them. He was also sure that this part of their excursions had been skipped in all of the reports.
“We got it!” Mansk shouted, jogging up to them, brandishing secured samples. He was grinning like a child. Wainfleet wasn’t far behind.
Sometimes, Tom couldn’t stop comparing these hardasses to innocent kids. They could genuinely enjoy something new and had no problem expressing that. Though the woman was more reserved than the others.
They even presented those samples like children when giving a present to their parents. To his surprise, the recoms actually did a good job, and when he confirmed that, they high-fived. Tom longed for an interaction like that, for something familiar and warm, but he didn’t have much time to dwell as they quickly moved on after packing up.
Their group rounded back to the river and followed it down until it transformed into a wide and shallow lake. They found both lichen species there, as per his suggestion.
“Ya done?” He heard the woman ask. The recom reclined on the rock, watching him lazily. They all had used this opportunity to wash off some of the dirt and sweat.
“Yes, ma’am,” Tom answered, returning the borrowed knife and now full containers.
“Good. Colonel, he finished!”
Colonel nodded and pulled his vest on, “Good, so we’re done?”
They all looked to Tom. They had a tablet! Why should he remember? But said only, “There was also the Bladder Polyp, uh…these are these-”
“-That grow in the Hallelujah Mountains. Yeah, I remember,” Colonel groused.
“Should we risk it?” Wainfleet asked.
“Fuck if I know,” Colonel threw his hands up, “That woman is harder to read than Shakespeare while drunk!”
They all just stood, or in Tom’s case sat, around as the Colonel came to a decision. With a tired sigh, the man asked, “Sully, how far into the mountains do we need to go for the polyps?”
“Not far,” He admitted. “We should find them on a first, not forested mountain.”
“Ah, fuck it,” Colonel swore and called the human crew, “Lieutenant Walker, this is Blue One, over.”
“We’ll be heading further towards the mountains. Over.”
Then the Colonel clicked off the radio and called for their mounts and got a screech in response before the three banshees landed around them. Alien birds nuzzled their riders. It was astounding how ‘Colonel-Asshole’ in seconds became ‘Cat-Daddy’. The man melted like ice cream in the summer heat! A truly bizarre picture.
“Okay, saddle up!” He pulled Tom to sit behind him. “Let’s go, Cupcake!”
He called his mount ‘Cupcake’. The hissing, leathery, Pandoran counterpart to an earth goose that was dubbed as ‘cobra chickens’ by the past generations (the ones who had experienced gees), was called from a cute and sweet dessert. He really didn’t have any better ideas? Like Smaug or a Drogon or…something?
Literature was full of great names; why not choose one? Oh yeah, he remembered! One would need to know how to read, Tom thought sarcastically. Jarhead clan of imbeciles.
His growing annoyance at once dissipated.
Jarhead.
Jake used to talk a lot about his military life. Grandpa was always curious, and he had a suspicion that he might’ve preferred to talk to Jake. Science had a tendency to use ‘big words,’ as he heard people put it.
“Big words for something so simple.”
Somebody once laughed straight in his face. There was some truth to it, he reluctantly agreed, but those names were needed for precision, for which he learned nobody apart from the scientific community really cared.
Jake spoke in simple, utilitarian language that stemmed from the need for easy and fast communication. It wasn’t stupid, but different…and he called Jake a stupid jarhead for it.
He gazed at the dark landscape below them, his mood now completely soured. The eclipse had set fully during their flight, painting the sky in the blue and pink auroras. Unfortunately, the darkness made it harder to experience the sight of the mountains.
Great! The one time I actually get to see the famed mountains, and it's too dark to see them fully! He brooded.
“Where should we look for these polyps?” The Colonel asked again.
“Look for a grassy mountain. Like that one!” Tom pointed at the closest rock not covered in trees. There were glowing plants on it, but to confirm if polyps were there, they needed to get closer.
“Aha,” He voiced and whistled. They adjusted the course, but there were no polyps on it. They actually got quite deep into the mountains before they found any.
“Hurry up, Sully,” The Colonel growled, holding his rifle more securely.
He didn’t stall. As quickly as he could, Tom gathered a sample, “All done, sir.”
“Fuckin’ finally!” He got a response. “Let’s boogie!”
* * *
“Uneventful trip, Colonel?” Walker asked when Wainfleet was securing him in the aircraft.
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” He heard a reply.
“Good. Finish this up and let’s go!” Walker ordered and entered the aircraft. Then Tom heard the man mumble angrily, “Let’s not tempt fate more than we already have.”
What Walker meant, he figured out later when he heard the first screech of banshees. Many banshees, many more than the familiar four in their escort.
“Hostiles incoming!” Pilot notified them with a slight panic.
“All crew, prepare to engage!” Walker shouted.
Were the Na’vi attacking? It could be his chance! Tom straightened up as stealthily as he could. If they got close enough, maybe he could call for he-.
“Open fire!” The SecOps team straight-up fired, a continuous onslaught of bullets. Tom curled back to the wall and hid his face in the crook of his elbow to hide from flashes.
It was too loud! Even with headphones, it was overwhelming.
Also, he basically gave up any possibility of escape right now. It was more probable that they would end up dead on the forest floor, in a crash.
“How did this happen?” He finally heard in his headset and realised that the battle was over. “How the fuck, did this happen?!”
Whatever was answered, it only angered Walker more, “THAT had never happened before, Colonel!” He spat the title like it was poison. “What the fuck were you doing in that forest!”
It took Tom a moment to realize that that last part was addressed to him, “...What?”
“What the fuck did you do in the forest?!” Lieutenant repeated standing right in his face. “Did you think that those fly-bitten savages would come rescue your ass?! Huh?!”
“What?!...N-No, no!” He was lying. It must’ve been obvious. But the next sentence was honest, “Why would they-?”
He couldn’t finish as Walker grabbed him by his throat, the small hand cutting into it. “Don’t fucking lie to me, Sully! We all know what kind of person you are!”
What was that supposed to mean?! He spoke as if they knew each other, but Tom was sure as hell that he had never met anybody here. But that might not have been the case, seeing the pure fury radiating from the man’s eyes showed that his marbles were not all there at the moment.
“Lieutenant, let him go!” He heard Colonel bark at the man. “The General will not be happy if you kill her property.”
That was an understatement, and although utterly humiliating, for once, Tom was happy to actually be considered more as a prized possession…or was it a pricey possession? In general costly expense, than an actual…human being. Walker let him go after a minute.
Tom coughed and stayed curled up. For the rest of the way, nobody made a move against him. A few soldiers even threw a pitiful look his way. But only when they landed did he realize that this altercation would have a part two.
“He wanted to kill us all!” Walker started throwing accusations just as he jumped out of the scorpion.
“Bring him out, Colonel,” The General ordered, her tone annoyed or bored.
The recom leader swiftly uncuffed and then recuffed Tom’s hands behind his back and pushed him to kneel in front of the General. She was in her exo-suit and stared at him from her elevated position. Her face betrayed nothing. The Colonel was right, she was hard to read. So he did the same as when the recom would come to his cell, he lowered his head and tried to make himself smaller.
“Did he cause you any problems, Colonel?” She inquired.
“No, General. He located all the plants, collected the samples without any fuss,” The recom stated.
“Yet, something was different,” She pressed.
“One of the samples could only be found in the mountains,” Colonel admitted.
“You see! They are all no better!” Walker shouted somewhere to the side.
“Calm down, Lieutenant,” She ordered, nearly offhandedly, without looking away from the recoms. “Were you spotted?”
“No, General. We retrieved the sample without any confrontation.”
“And how would you explain the attack?”
“It wasn’t insurgents. The animals just attacked, part of the immune response,” Immune what?! “They focused on the scorpion. My men managed to fight and scare them off.”
“Not without losses,” She pointed out, thoughtfully, “Nevertheless, it does seem that it was just an unhappy coincidence.”
“Of course, you’d say that,” Tom’s eyes widened, and he raised his head in disbelief. Everything stilled, the atmosphere thickened.
“Do you have something to say, soldier?” The General asked, deceptively calm on the outside, voice carrying only a hint of cold.
“Yeah, you people in charge always chalk these things up to ‘accidents’ or some other shit!” The man complained, wildly gesticulating. “First it was Selfridge, and now you. A brilliant plan! Create some more blue monkeys to outsmart the planet, only for them to cover their own asses and risk the lives of good men and women!”
Oh, this man had a death wish.
“These dogs should’ve been demoted when they failed their last mission or even been put down!”
Holy fuck! Tom froze, wishing to be stuck in his cell. Or anywhere that wasn’t here, for that matter.
“Stand down, soldier! I understand you lost-”
“You don’t understand shit! You stupid bitch!” Everything stopped at that. If somebody was going to be demoted, it was Walker. “It’s what had gotten us into this place to begin with! It’s like you never learn, and the real soldiers are stuck with the consequences! Because of course we have to risk our lives while you hide in the HQ like the coward you are!”
“Steven, calm down,” One of the others meekly said from the side and tried to slowly approach the man.
“NO! I WILL NOT CALM THE FUCK DOWN!” He roared at his friend, then pulled out the gun and pointed it straight at Tom. “And I will not allow another-”
Tom jumped at the sudden explosion sounding in the air.
Then Walker collapsed.
“You shot him,” Tom heard himself gasp. Only that made him realise what had happened.
The General ignored him, “Summarize the progress of your second assignment.”
“We are stuck at the moment, General. S- The traitor had left the sea clans and returned to the local insurgents, but unless you give my team permission to comb through the mountains, for now, we are unable to pinpoint any potential location in which they may be hiding.”
They nearly revealed the name of the traitor!
“Only a few months of relative peace, only for the insurgency to spread out to the sea,” Ardmore shook her head in disappointment. It wasn’t an addressed complaint. “However, a potentially, at least partial solution to your problem should be arriving on the next shuttle.”
“General?”
“You will find out in due time,” She decided. And abruptly looked down at Tom again. She finally remembered that he was still here. “Take Sully back to his cell.”