Chapter Text
“Nope. Nada. Not happening.”
Hawkeye shot to his feet so fast Potter’s desk rattled under his boots.
“Sit down,” Potter said. “And kindly pretend you’ve been listening to Lieutenant Carter—”
“Colonel Flagg.”
“What?”
“My real name is Colonel Flagg,” Colonel Flagg / Lieutenant Carter said. “I’m using an alias.”
BJ, who had been sitting beside Hawkeye and leaning in with interest up to this point, allowed himself a small smile.
“I thought your alias was Major Brooks.”
Colonel Flagg / Lietenant Carter / Major Brooks shook his head dismissively and turned back to the matter at hand.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “you’ve been selected for a highly classified opportunity, straight from the C.I.A.”
“I thought you said you were with C.I.C.,” Hawkeye said.
“That was yesterday,” BJ added. “Today he told me he was C.I.D. while we were in the latrine.”
“Enough!” Potter snapped. “Lieutenant – er, Colonel Flagg, continue before I lose what little patience I have left.”
Flagg nodded, pleased to have regained the floor.
“The Central Intelligence Agency has developed a revolutionary advancement in battlefield communication. A microchip—approximately the size of a grain of rice—implanted in the bicep.”
BJ’s breath caught. He had the unfortunate habit of being curious, which in Korea, always seemed to land him in trouble.
“One chip per subject,” Flagg continued. “Once activated, the subjects will communicate through direct neural transmission.”
“In English, please,” Hawkeye said.
“You’ll hear each other’s thoughts,” Flagg concluded.
“Now in Mandarin.”
Flagg rolled his eyes. Potter’s glare was as sharp as a dagger.
“So you’re offering us the ability to read each other’s minds?” BJ asked.
Hawkeye’s stomach flipped at the fascinated expression playing across BJ’s face.
“It would be instantaneous,” Flagg went on. “Constant communication, unequivocal truth, with the possibility of even transmitting images, if the bond is strong enough. Ideal for surgery under pressure.”
“What about outside of surgery?” Hawkeye asked.
“The system is… continuous.”
“You mean it doesn’t turn off,” Hawkeye said.
“Correct.”
“That’s insane!”
He looked to BJ for backup, but BJ was still leaning forward, enraptured.
Unlike Hawkeye, BJ could see the advantages. The only issue was that he could see Hawkeye unraveling at the idea of anyone rummaging around inside his head, which, BJ suspected, was a crowded and carefully guarded place.
“If it makes us more efficient,” BJ said, “that’s not nothing. We could save more people.”
Hawkeye’s stomach dropped and splattered in a bloody mess around his boots.
“Et tu, Brutus?” he said.
Flagg straightened from where he had been leaning against the wall.
“This program requires a unique compatibility,” he said. “Our research indicates the two of you share an unusually strong interpersonal connection.”
“Oh, we’re special,” Hawkeye mumbled.
“Preliminary trials show the technology only works between individuals with a close bond,” Flagg continued. “You are, in technical terms, ideal candidates.”
“Fantastic,” Hawkeye said. “The one time I get picked first, it’s for brain invasion.”
Potter folded his arms. “It’s a one week trial, Pierce. And that wasn’t a suggestion.”
“No,” Hawkeye said, louder now. “No, no, and still no. I am not your dog.”
“Down, boy,” BJ said, grabbing Hawkeye’s shirt and pulling him back into the chair.
Hawkeye sat, fuming.
“This is how it starts,” he said. “First they read your thoughts, then they edit them, and before you know it, I’m waking up at reveille every morning to recite the national anthem and hospital corner my Army-issued cot.”
“That would be the real tragedy,” BJ said.
“Shall we proceed?” Flagg asked, eager as ever.
Hawkeye closed his eyes. Of all the terrible ideas he had ever survived, this one had the distinct disadvantage of knowing exactly what he was thinking.
That’s precisely the problem, he thought grimly.
BJ looked between Hawkeye, Potter, and Flagg, then settled comfortably on the side of poor judgment.
“I’ll do it.”
Hawkeye turned. “You traitor!”
“Good,” Potter said, nodding. “That’s one sensible officer in this tent.”
Hawkeye pointed a bony finger towards the man he had once considered a friend.
“You, Benedict Arnold, you.”
But BJ gently slapped his finger away and rolled up his sleeve, revealing a tanned, muscular bicep.
“Go ahead,” BJ said. “Let’s see what all the fuss is about.”
Flagg unsheathed a syringe from one of his many secret pockets.
“You may feel a slight pinch.”
Then, he inserted the needle into BJ’s arm. Whatever was in there – some rice-sized microchip – was briskly inserted into the meat of BJ’s bicep.
BJ barely reacted.
“That’s it?” he said.
“That’s it,” Flagg confirmed.
BJ flexed his arm, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary, yet.
Potter cleared his throat.
“All right, Pierce. Your turn.”
“No.”
“Pierce—”
“No,” Hawkeye repeated. “I refuse. I object. I abstain. I opt out. I decline on behalf of my brain, which is the last free territory I possess.”
Hawkeye clasped his hands behind his back and drew in a deep breath.
“I have been betrayed,” he went on, louder now. “By my country, my commanding officer, and most of all—” he pointed dramatically at BJ “—by my supposed best friend, who has sold me out for a grain of rice!”
“Alright, fine,” Potter said, softening. “Nobody’s forcing you, son.”
Hawkeye narrowed his eyes. He did not believe this, but he wanted to.
“They’re not?”
Potter extended his hand across the desk.
“You have my word.”
Hawkeye looked at the hand. Looked at Potter. Looked at BJ, who gave him a small, apologetic shrug.
“Oh, I’ll remember this,” Hawkeye said. “All of this. When history asks where I stood, I will say I stood alone.”
He took Potter’s hand. It was cold, like a fish, or perhaps a snake.
“Thank you,” Hawkeye said. “Nice to know there’s still a shred of decency left in—”
Potter’s grip tightened like a vice.
“Now!” Potter barked.
“What—?”
Flagg moved with GI speed, taking out a second syringe and jabbing it into Hawkeye’s arm.
“Ow! You son of a—!”
By the time Hawkeye yanked free, Flagg was already stepping back, looking pleased with himself.
“It had to be done,” Flagg said.
Hawkeye clutched his bicep and opened his mouth, gearing up for a proper speech, when—
Hawkeye?
He froze.
BJ froze, too.
They stared at each other.
Did you just—
Yeah.
Hawkeye blinked rapidly. He felt the sudden urge to empty his stomach of the World War II surplus he had eaten for breakfast.
“Oh, no.”
BJ was standing now, chest flush to Hawkeye’s back, one hand wrapped protectively around his wrist, as if he were taking his pulse.
“Hawkeye—does it hurt?”
He’s worried.
The thought came to Hawkeye, unbidden and uninvited, and teleported straight into BJ’s brain.
God, Hawkeye thought, why does he have to be so—
BJ’s expression changed.
Hawkeye’s face went red.
“No,” Hawkeye said. “Strike that. Disregard. Cancel that thought.”
BJ’s mouth twitched with a barely containing a laugh.
“Why, Hawkeye, I didn’t know you felt that way,”
“I didn’t mean for you to hear that.”
“Well,” BJ said, “you thought it.”
“That was private thinking!” Hawkeye snapped. “Internal! Off-limits!”
You really think I’m endearing, Hawk?
Hawkeye shot to his feet, knocking the chair over and onto its side.
“I am leaving,” he announced.
Abort mission. Retreat. Operation: Salvage Dignity—
“I am going far away,” he said, slamming the doors open. “Very far away. Possibly another country.”
“Hawkeye—”
The doors swung shut almost violently behind him.
“Hawkeye?”
Nothing.
Hawkeye?
Nothing.
Already, BJ could feel the absence. It was like a radio going dead mid-sentence.
“Why can’t I hear him?”
Flagg scratched the back of his head.
“Ah. Yes. That.”
“That what?”
“The transmission radius,” Flagg said. “The connection is proximity-based.”
“How much proximity?” BJ asked.
“It depends on the strength of the subjects’ interpersonal bond,” Flagg said, spreading his hands. “Stronger connection, greater range.”
BJ stared at him, turning over this new information in his head before heading for the door. On his way, he nearly collided into Radar, who was trying and failing to hide a stethoscope behind his back.
“He, uh—went that way, sir,” Radar offered.
“I can see that, Radar.”
Outside, Hawkeye was halfway to the Swamp, his shoulders slouched to such a degree that it looked like he was trying to fold over on himself.
Hawkeye?
Hawkeye paused mid-step.
He turned around to glare at BJ.
At least there’s a limit to this thing.
It appears so, BJ thought.
Hawkeye took a step backward. The thoughts immediately stopped.
BJ took a step forward. The connection snapped back into place.
Go away.
Step.
You realize I live with you, right?
Step.
Find somewhere new to sleep.
Step.
You’d hate that.
Hawkeye was terrified BJ might realize how true that statement was.
“Alright, quit it!” he snapped, hovering at the edge of audibility.
“You first,” BJ said, taking another step just to prove he could.
Hawkeye stumbled back out of range.
BJ followed.
Hawkeye was red in the face. His mind, which he had always considered a private residence with selective admissions, had just installed a picture window.
BJ, for his part, was beginning to understand that he, perhaps, didn’t know everything there was to know about Hawkeye’s mind, if his panic was anything to go by.
Finally, they stopped, seesawing on an invisible line, not ready to concede.
Potter came out behind them and sighed.
“Gentlemen, if you’re quite finished inventing a new form of insanity—”
“I hope you all burn!” Hawkeye shouted dramatically as he ran into the Swamp and slammed the door shut behind him.
BJ scrubbed a hand down his face.
“Well,” he said. “That went well.”
Flagg beamed. “Fascinating, isn’t it? I trust you’ll keep this confidential – secret military technology, and all that. I’ll return in seven days. Colonel, I expect detailed notes. Operational efficiency, behavioral changes—all the data you can get.”
Potter shook his head. He looked at the Swamp, then at BJ.
“This is going to be the longest week of my life.”