Kilo-29 (Damned of the 2/19th, Book 15)

Part 33

Site Kilo-29
Personnel Living Quarters
Winter, 1993
Day Three-Late Afternoon
Status: Defensive Status
Facility Status: Alert One-Bravo

Kincaid hit the floor, going to his knees, as the shot echoed in the corridor. Beside him the meathead that had been asking questions grabbed his throat, blood spraying out, and he went down gurgling. The door slammed down with a grim finality as shouts sounded out from further down the corridor.

"Treat this kid first, you've only got a few seconds if anything!" Nancy shouted, bending down next to the kid holding his throat. "He'll need a tracheotomy to start. Move, Ant!"

The last was superfluous, I was already moving, past Kincaid, who was coughing as he let go of the flamethrower and bent forward.

"Kincaid!" Donaldson yelled, moving over to Kincaid, who was holding onto his chest and leaning forward. I could hear him coughing while I moved over to the kid and knelt down.

"Oh fuck, it hurts." Kincaid gasped. "Fucking Toothpick shoot me, Dee." He coughed again. "I saw the fucker, he was the one shooting."

"I need a fucking pen!" I shouted. "Someone give me a goddamn pen!"

The bullet had hit him high in the neck, demolishing the top of his adam's apple and exiting out the back of his neck somewhere. His eyes were open, glassy, and I could tell he was trying to scream even though nothing but blood and a whistling sound was coming out. As I knelt down the kid's hands loosened and the blood bubbled out of the wound in his neck. Nancy kneeling down opposite of him, kneeling down in the pool of blood that was rapidly spreading, pouring out from his neck, from under his hands.

"Just hold him, Ant." Nancy said softly, tears spilling from her eyes. "I'm sorry, Ant." She looked old, and her eyes were full of pain.

"Goddamn, it hurts, Dee." Kincaid coughed. "Get this fucking hood off me."

"It's OK, kid, I got you." I told the young man laying on the ground. His hands went limp. slipping from his neck, and his eyes opened wide, staring at something behind me, something I knew that I wouldn't be able to see if I turned around.

"You'll be all right, kid." I lied. I took one of his bloody hands and squeezed it, reaching out with my other hand and laying it on his cheek. "I've got you, kid. It's OK."

People were flooding into the hallway, but I didn't pay them any mind, all of my attention focused on the kid in front of me. They were yelling, but it was just noise.

His eyes flicked to me for a moment, returned to looking behind me, and he mouthed one word, a very obvious word that I'd seen mouthed or whispered before too many times before. Once was too many. Even without a sound, I knew what he was whispering.

momma

The blood stopped, just oozing out, and the kid's hand changed the way it felt. The eyes changed, something disappearing from them. There was some bubbles from the wound that suddenly stopped. There was a gurgling noise, and I could tell he'd evacuated his bowels.

It was over.

Nancy wailed in pain and grief next to me, and Taggart put an arm around her and pulled her close, petting her hair and comforting her. A small part of me joined them as I laid the kid's hand on his chest and turned away to check on Kincaid.

Three people stopped at the dead kid, one going to his knees next to him, the other two just staring.

"Somebody do something." One of them cried out.

There was nothing to do, the kid was dead.

Donaldson had managed to get Kincaid's helmet off. Kincaid's face was pale, and he was gritting his teeth, his hands at the seam in the front of the J-Suit. He coughed again and groaned.

"Fucker shot me, Sergeant." He coughed. "Right in the fucking chest."

The Major was pushing through the small crowd around us, but he stopped, shushing everyone when he saw what I was doing. He turned away from us and squatted down next to the his dead soldier. I ignored him, my attention on Kincaid.

On my soldier.

"Lay back." I told him. He clumsily moved his legs in front of him while I started undoing the front of his suit. The was no bloodstain on the chest around the small hole in the upper right of his chest, but that didn't mean anything. The suit was designed in such a way that the 'sandwich' layers would seal over any puncture in an attempt to protect the wearer from shrapnel, stab wounds, or debris. Even if the suit hadn't sealed around the wound it wasn't skin tight, the blood would be running down his chest and out his back, filling the lower half of his suit. There was no way to tell how bad he was injured until we got the suit open.

Kincaid leaned back as I pulled it open, fully expecting to see the puckered wound indicative of a gunshot to the chest. Blood would be flowing out, and if it was the second worst of my fears, it would have red foam pumping out of it with each breath.

There was a huge spreading bruise, spreading around his right nipple, which was already purple and swelling up.

Kincaid was looking up at the ceiling, trying to breathe slow and steady. "How bad is it, Sergeant?" His voice was strained.

"I don't know." I told him. "This is gonna hurt."

"I'm OK, I'm OK, I'm OK." He kept repeating as I reached forward and gently probed at the bruising. He hissed in pain as I pressed, the muscle over the top of his ribs made it hard to tell, but it felt to me like the rib directly under the nipple shifted slightly.

Kincaid looked down, chuckled, then groaned in pain. "Holy shit, I was sure I dead. It felt like I got kicked by a horse or something."

"You've got a popped rib." I told him. "You hurt anywhere else?"

"My hands sting real bad and are tingling, I'm not sure why." He said, and coughed again. "Shit."

I lifted his hands and checked, but they weren't bleeding. I picked up the ejector and took a look at it.

There was dent in the heat cowling, badly deformed and dimpled.

"Ricochet." I told him, letting the whole thing drop down on the floor. "Looks like it hit the heat shroud and bounced into you. That's why your hands went numb, the shock of the bullet hitting the weapon."

Kincaid looked down, grabbing the flamethrower and tilting it to get a good look at. "Aw man, look what they did to you, baby."

"How's Private Kincaid, Sergeant?" The Major asked. He'd moved up while I was checking Kincaid out, and when I glanced at him I saw he had blood all over his hands.

"Broken rib, soft tissue damage, probably deep tissue bruising." I told the Major, standing up. "It didn't collapse the lung, but it's probably bruised."

"I'm right here." Kincaid bitched, leaning back against the fuel tanks still on his back. "Shit hurts."

"Can you breathe OK?" I asked him, standing up.

"Yeah, but my chest hurts when I inhale too deep." He told me.

"Donaldson, stay with him. Help him up when he's ready to move." I said, turning to the Major.

"What the hell happened, Sergeant?" The Major asked. Behind him one of the meatheads was draping a blanket over the dead soldier, covering his face. He looked like he was in pain.

"The recon went bad." I told him honestly. "Natchez got his arm cut off during a door malfunction, and when we got here someone that's been ID'd as the government guys we came in with fired three shots as the door was closing. One of the shots hit one of your men, killing him, and another shot hit Kincaid's flamethrower, ricocheted and hit him in the chest, but the armored J-Suit held."

"Walk with me, Sergeant." He told me. He paused by the dead killed. "Move Houser to one of the bedrooms, cover him up. We'll take him with us when we leave." The two privates kneeling down by him nodded, their grief plain on their faces.

We walked a way down the corridor, both of silent. My knee was throbbing with each step, and my shoulder was throbbing in time with my heartbeat. I was running on fumes and anger, but I wasn't about to show a bit of weakness. Not because I disliked the Major any more, but because if I collapsed in the hallway and curled up in a ball, God only knew what effect it would have.

"What the hell is Kincaid wearing?" The Major asked.

"Armored J-Suit, we use it during real world exercises, it's designed for the NBC battlefield." I told him. He grunted, like he didn't trust his own words. "I issued him a flame thrower based on my estimation of the situation, and following the guidelines and protocols in the NBC warfare handbook."

He made a face, I didn't really understand why. "A flamethrower, Sergeant?"

I stopped and looked at him, holding his eyes with mine. "Sir, I'm about two steps from declaring this a Bravo Class biological incident." I shook my head. "I need to get to the Event biolab, or someplace I can run tests on the samples I gathered."

"Samples?" he asked.

"I took samples of the things that are attacking us. They're showing signs of infectious disease as well as chemical weapon exposure. I need to find out what disease they're suffering from." I told him.

"Then what?" The Major sounded horrified.

"Depending on the biological agent, it could be something I can ignore, it could be something I have to declare a biological incident and then take steps."

"What kind of steps?"

I stared at him for a long time. "From insisting that teams in the site wear protective equipment, to emergency full site decontamination."

He shuddered for a second then licked his lips before changing the subject. "What happened down there, Sergeant?"

I filled him in on what had happened, starting from the elevator ride down to the lower levels, and finishing up with the gunshots through the door way. He let me go on uninterrupted except for asking about my motivations for promoting the two soldiers. I didn't pull any punches, not even with my threatening of Wilkins.

"All right. I'll back the promotions, but I want you and the soldiers who accompanied you to write up an after action report." I nodded. "Write up a separate incident report regarding your suspicions regarding the biohazard."

Kincaid came walking up, someone had given him a towel that he'd wrapped around his waist. He was grinning, his eyes sparkling, and it looked like he'd gotten over the huge bruise forming on his chest. The cut across his head was oozing again, he'd popped another stitch.

"We still on the clock, Sergeant?" He asked me.

"Yup. Now for the fun part, writing up reports." I told him. He gave a Homer Simpson-esque groan and I grinned at him. "Get the rest of the squad, make sure everyone washes thoroughly, changes their uniforms, and after that bring them into the entertainment room. Then we'll go in and do the reports right away in the entertainment room." I shrugged. "I've gotta put my samples in the fridge, then I'll join you."

Part of me cringed at just tossing my samples into an unsecure fridge, and I was slightly worried about cross-contamination of the samples, but all I was really after was confirmation of what they were exposed to, so cross contamination didn't really mean shit.

Kincaid and the others went into rooms to shower, and I went to one of the rooms that nobody was using, just tossing the whole medical kit into the fridge after ripping the wire shelves out of it and leaving them on the cheap tile floor. Afterwards I went in, showered, and pulled a clean uniform out of my duffles to change, feeling good that I'd changed into something clean that didn't crackle with dried blood and wasn't soaked with charcoal. It took awhile to get the stains of the charcoal out of my skin, and the heat from the shower felt good on my wounds.

By the time I got back, the Major had pulled the paperwork out of his briefcase and Donaldson, Shads, and Kincaid were writing. The Major was talking to Wilkins, who looked plenty upset.

He was probably telling them about how Kincaid had assaulted him, how I'd threatened him with a knife, and how he'd tried to stop us from using the flamethrower, not to mention playing up how he figured I was crazy and needed to be relieved and possibly sequestered.

If Wilkins thought that I'd allow myself to be sequestered, allow myself to be put under arrest, or anything else, he was a goddamn idiot. If the facility was fully contaminated, if it was one of a dozen or so nasty diseases I could identify easily, then I'd have to get everyone out, blow the self-destruct charges, and have everyone put in quarantine to make sure none of us had contracted the disease. I had way to important stuff to do to allow myself to be placed under arrest. Like making sure all of us wasn't infected with some goddamn disease that would turn all our internal organs into liquid shit.

The bite wounds I'd taken burned at the thought.

It wouldn't be the first time Heather'd visited me in quarantine. She'd stood on the other side of the Plexi in her uniform, putting her hand on the polymer wall, so I could match her hand. It looked corny as hell in movies, but standing there in a paper robe, with my only human contact being the nurses and doctors that were poking and prodding me, it meant everything to me at that moment. If my career kept going the way it had been, it wouldn't be the last time I'd be in quarantine, the last time she visited me with a Plexiglass wall separating us.

It beat the hell out of being in 2/19th.

Filling out the paperwork was boring, but routine. It wasn't the first time I'd had to do an after-action report that took about ten pages. It wasn't the worst one I'd had to fill out either, either from before, or after. It still didn't make it any less difficult. I told the truth, not glossing over threatening Wilkins, not hemming and hawing over ordering Kincaid to burn down everything with the flamethrower, noting Wilkins' objections in my report. Halfway through the reports the Major came over so I could sign the promotion paperwork for Wilkins and Kincaid. DoA PERSCOM would undoubtedly back the promotions up, and it wasn't like the circumstances would be put in a file easily accessible by any future commanders.

Unless Kincaid and Donaldson stuck with me.

I waited for the others to finish before calling them together, excluding Wilkins. That took our little group down to me, Shads, Donaldson, and Wilkins. I wish I had access to more men, part of me wanted to drop Shads but I couldn't remember why, but the kid had had what it took when it all went down, and that was good enough to keep him with us. Everyone was exhausted, but the fact the lights kept dimming and brightening the entire time we were writing our reports bothered me.

That, and the fact that the Alphabet Boys had ambushed us.

Dicks.

We met with the Major in his little office. He was sitting behind the desk, and we all pulled up chairs so we could cram into the little space on other side of the desk, waiting for him to finish reading the paperwork.

He questioned us about what we had seen, our actions, and our reasoning behind our decisions that led to those actions. I could tell that he wasn't exactly happy with some of my decisions, but he didn't let if effect his questions, and I was hoping it wasn't effecting what he was writing.

When it was over, he let Shads, Donaldson and Kincaid leave, but I stayed behind. The other three took their chairs with them. It was silent in the room for a few seconds, while he glanced over his yellow notepad.

"How bad is it, Sergeant?" He finally asked me, breaking the heavy silence.

"So far, it's looking really bad." I told him, sighing and rubbing my face. My shoulder hurt when I did it, but I ignored it. "If we didn't have a serious Class Alpha situation already at another site I could get a bunch of Warfare troops here pretty fast. Hell, if we could get the doors open, I could radio for instructions. As it stands, I'm left with doctrine and protocol."

He nodded at that, then tapped his yellow notepad. "What about these civilians victims? Is there anything you can do?"

I shook my head. "Sir, they're all suffering years, some of them decades, of exposure to God only knows what, and to top it off, I'm starting to worry they might have also been exposed to selected bioweapons. Either as part of the experiment, or accidentally when they broke into one of the biowarfare storage areas."

"Then what do you suggest we do?" The Major asked me, flipping over the notepad page to give him a clean writing surface.

"Right now, the options are only impossible, difficult, or ugly." I told him. He made a motion for me to continue. "We can pop the doors, but I'm not even sure that will work. I can try to seize control of the system and try to get it to unlock the doors, but I'm not sure I should yet. We can kill everything in here, wait out a possibly infection timeline in one of the isolation areas. Or, we can try to wait till the doors are unlocked and hope that the system hasn't locked the whole site down. Or I can follow protocol and see where that leads us."

He'd been jotting notes. "What does the protocol say?"

"Protocol says that I lock the whole area down, try to determine the nature and type of the chemical exposure, try to determine if these people have been exposed to a bioweapon and if so the nature and type of the weapon." I told him, closing my eyes and pushing memories away. "Normally I'd have a full team, all trained and experienced, with some of the military CDC liaisons for backup, and for something like this we'd have Air Force assets on standby."

That made him raise an eyebrow. "Air Force assets?"

"The Shiva option." I told him, shrugging. It had an official name, a harmless little name probably dreamed up by some cobra blooded little man in a gray suit in an office somewhere, but it was mostly referred to as "Shiva" to cover about twelve different solutions.

He opened his mouth, then closed it for a moment before starting again. "Since you don't have any of that, what do you plan on doing?"

I was honest with him. "I'm not sure." I sighed again. "I'm just a ground pounder, sir. The officers I work with normally make all the decisions and I just do them."

"I have no idea what to do, Sergeant." He admitted. "The most complicated thing I've helped decommission was an old ammunition storage point."

I nodded. "And this is rapidly becoming a cluster-fuck."

"Have you ever worked on something like this before?" The Major asked me.

"I cannot confirm or deny that I may or may not have ever taken part in any type of operation that you may or may not be referring to." I said. He nodded.

"Come up with a plan, Sergeant." He stared at me. "Then we'll compare notes, and I'll help figure something out."

I nodded, and he dismissed me.

Donaldson, Kincaid, and Shads were sitting in the room we'd pretty much staked out for ourselves. Kincaid had the handbook open for the flamethrower, looking over barrel and ejector assembly maintenance, he'd pulled the toolkit out of the canvas bag and had taken the ejector assembly apart. Shads was sitting on the couch, his boots on the coffee table, reading a field manual on medical treatment. Donaldson was in the kitchen, frying something up that smelled terrible even in the frontroom. Bomber was sitting at the kitchen table, sharpening a knife and looking bored. Nancy was sitting on the couch next to Shads, wearing PT sweats and reading a medical FM that had the name blacked out, probably a field surgery manual. Taggart was sprawled out in the other over-stuffed chair, her helmet tilted down to hide her eyes, probably asleep.

They all looked up at me, watching as went over to the overstuffed chair and sat down. I noticed that my gear was all sitting by the kitchen table, still set up the way I'd had it set up. It looked kind of stupid, more like what you'd see on a shittily researched movie.

It sure as shit wasn't a basic load.

Sometimes I wished I was in my wife's Army. The one where it was pretty basic. No more underground bases, just a regular basic load that didn't include chemical detectors, biowarfare kits, or radiation kits depending on the mission. No more sealed bullshit. No more getting my mail sent to a unit I'd never met but had all my mail and paperwork sent through.

Being part of a regular unit was as much of a fantasy as my dreams of a white picket fence and a normal job.

I was born to die in a ditch somewhere, bleeding out and alone. People like me didn't get the good ending. Monsters don't get the happy ending in the movies. We get to die.

It was nothing personal, just the way it was.

"I think the barrel's fixed, Sergeant." Kincaid said, tapping the disassembled ejector assembly on the table. "I pulled the feeder valve nubbins, like the manual says to, and replaced them with the steel ones that were in the weapon's kit. According to the manual, we should have replaced the valves before we used it, the brass ones are only for test firing."

"What about the bullet hit?" Shads asked before I could.

Kincaid tapped the housing. "I hammered the dent out on the table, so it fits back over the barrel, the barrel's fine even though it's a little discolored and I followed the advice in the TM and rotated it."

"Good going, Specialist, good initiative." I told him. Kincaid smiled and went back to work, putting the heat shroud back on.

I heaved myself back out of the chair, moving into the kitchen and digging in my gear till I pulled out the little plastic tray that had 14 separate little compartments, each labelled with a day of the week and either blue or purple. My morning meds, and night-time meds. I slapped it down, then dug further until I found the 7 slot tray, which contained my mid-day meds. I dug a couple out and dropped them on the table before pouring the rest into my hand. I dropped the ones I'd pulled out back in the box, then snapped the lid closed.

I got a glass of water and swallowed my pills before shaking two Vicoden into my mouth and swallowing them too, then dumped out the water, set the glass upside down on the counter, and walked back over to put my meds away.

"How long are you gonna be out?" Donaldson asked me, scraping the mixture he'd fried up in the pan onto a plate. When I raised an eyebrow he shrugged. "Ham slices, the egg shit, potatoes all rotten, and some tobasco."

"Yum yum." I grinned. "They'll make me a little sleepy, but I'll be able to stay awake. I've got too much shit to do."

"Like what?" He asked, sitting down and squirting ketchup packets on his food. I noticed they were Burger King ones. He was like a lot of guys I knew, that snagged the ketchup and mustard packs to take with them when they went to the field.

"Gotta figure out a plan of action." I told him. I sat down, dug in my ruck to get a yellow pad, and laid it on the table. I started sketching a map the best I could remember, as well as listing the areas I'd read off on the walls or seen lines heading for.

Donaldson sat watching me, eating his crappy food while I drew maps based on my best recollections.

"That's why you keep counting steps, isn't it, Sergeant?" He asked at one point. I nodded and went back to work. He didn't take offense at my lack of answers, just rinsed off his plate, mixed himself a glass of red Kool-aid, and sat down to watch.

I listed what I'd seen the people wear, their weapons, the way they attadcked, and the markings on the walls I'd seen. I wrote down the symptoms I'd seen on the smaller ones and the females, as well the various symptoms I'd seen. After I was finished, I leaned back. Donaldson moved over the microwave and punched in a little bit of time, then leaned against the counter.

"How's the plan coming?" He asked me.

"Got a couple snags." I admitted.

"You need a live patient and access to one of the hospitals." He guessed.

"I'd prefer the biowarfare lab." I told him. "There should be one in here somewhere, and I need to quit screwing around and gain control of key parts of the facility."

Donaldson nodded, then turned back to the microwave when it beeped. He pulled out a cup, grabbed some small brown packets off the top of the microwave, set it all on the table, and pushed it toward me.

Hot coffee, creamer, and sugar.

"Thanks." He nodded as I stirred in the sugar and creamer. "The bio lab will let me run tests, and have the manuals I need to check to find out what's going on." I sipped the coffee and smiled. "Goddamn that's good. Anyway, this place is fucking massive, but it's gotta follow a few rules. I need to stop reacting and start following my training."

"I heard you tell the Major that you don't have troops. How many more do you need?" He asked me, smiling at the compliment for the coffee.

"I'd rather have a full team of twelve, but I can do this with just the four of us if I need to. Kincaid's an asset, he won't flinch and will more than likely do whatever needs to be done with a smile. Shads don't flinch, and you're doing just fine as the assistant squad leader." That brought another smile. He didn't look as young as he had before we'd come inside Kilo-29.

"I want to gain access to the primary control area, then move to the backup areas, then, gain control of the primary computer operations center. Once we do that, we figure out how to get the site to do what I want, I lock the site down, and we find out what those creatures are infected with."

"So, we're not going to open the doors?" I shook my head and he nodded slowly. "You don't want to open the doors until you find out if we're all infected or not, right?" I nodded again. "And if we're infected with something really nasty..." his voice trailed off and he glanced at Kincaid before looking back at me.

"Yeah." I told him.

"Jesus." He wiped his mouth off, then took another drink of his Koolaid. "What do you think?"

"I don't think it's going to be something nasty like Lassa Fever or anything like that." I shrugged. "I can't think of anything that leaves heavy pus around the lungs and in the abdominal cavity right off hand, but it might have been an old Soviet weapon."

"Why would the site have old Soviet weapons?" He asked. "Why have biological weapons at all?"

"I won't know till I can figure out what the site's mission is." I shrugged. "We've got Event Lockers, Deep Storage Lockers, so this isn't a normal site." I sipped the coffee. "I think this is something different."

"And in this job, different is dangerous." He said thoughtfully.

We sat there for a few moments in silence while I kept working, sketching things down.

"I think it's fixed, Sergeant." Kincaid told me, coming back in dressed in a clean uniform. "My baby should be good to go now." He sat down in one of the chairs and smiled. "So, what are we talking about?"

"Sergeant Ant's trying to figure out our next move." Donaldson told him.

"What's it going to be?" He grinned again. "Kill that asshole with the toothpick?"

I nodded, tapping on my list where the To-Do list was. Underlined twice was "Feed Toothpick his fucking pistol" at third place.

"So what's the problem?" He asked me.

"Gotta get a map to this damn place and find out what the goddamn mission is." I told him. "Without finding out the mission and seizing control of key systems, we're playing catch up."

His grin got cruel. "Why don't we ask that fucking bitch you have locked up?"

I shook my head. "She won't tell us shit."

"Then make her tell us." Kincaid said. "What's she going to do, complain?"

Donaldson shook his head. "She's still got rights, Kincaid. We can't just go in there and beat the information out of her."

"Bummer." Kincaid said, then yawned. "I'm gonna hit the rack. I'm fucking exhausted, that suit's fucking heavy and hotter than shit."

He stood up and went back to the bedroom, vanishing inside but leaving the door open. Shads swung his feet around and kicked them up on the arm of the couch, pulling his softcap down over his eyes.

"Grab some shuteye, Donaldson." I told him, tapping my papers. "I'm going to talk to the Major, see if he can help me come up with a plan."

Donaldson nodded and got up, heading into the frontroom, vanishing into one of the other bedrooms. I figured that they'd settled it by rank, leaving me one of the bedrooms. I waited a little bit, till I could hear Shads snoring, then pulled my medical bag up on the table.

I took a few tools out of the kit, dropped them in the breast pocket of my uniform, and quietly left the room, stripping off my eyepatch and shoving it in my pocket as I left. I lit a smoke, pulling the drags as fast as I could.

There was a pair of guards in the hallway, leaning against the lowered blast doors with their weapons held loosely. I smoked three cigarettes real quick, knowing what it would do to my already damaged voice. Neither one of them paid any attention to me as I walked down the hallway, but the closest one paid attention when I stopped in front of the room we had sequestered Agent Killain inside.

"Sergeant?" He asked.

"Checking on the prisoner." I told him.

"We fed her about two hours ago. She's still in there." He told me.

"I've got a few questions to ask her." I reached out and tapped the door. "Unlock it, will you? Lock it behind me, don't unlock it unless I tap 'shave and a haircut with three hits instead of two at the end."

He nodded, quickly unlocking it. I opened the door and went inside the darkened room. There was no sense in trying to flip on the lights, I'd put two bullets into the switches.

Agent Killain was sitting at the table, and when she looked me up and saw me standing in the doorway she stiffened, obviously unable to tell who was standing there.

"Who's there?" She asked. I could hear a trace of fear in her voice, but didn't say anything, just took a deep breath, letting my shoulders raise and fall slowly. "Who's there?" She asked again.

She pushed the chair back and stood up from the table, backing up from the table when I just kept standing there.

"You better answer me or you'll be in a world of hurt, soldier." She told me. Her voice was shaking. I just kept standing there, rumbling a low growl.

"Who's there, goddamn it!" She cried out. She moved around the table and started moving toward me.

As soon as she stepped past the lit doorway of the kitchen/dining room, I took a single step forward, rolling my shoulders, and growled again.

She jumped back.

"I demand you leave this room at once." She told me. I could hear the fear in her voice, smell it from where I stood. I knew I was frightening her, and a small part of me filled with glee.

I just kept standing there.

"You can't be in here. Your OIC stated he has to be present if anyone comes in here." She tried again.

I took another step forward. I knew that I was still completely in the dark. Unlike the rest of the soldiers under the Major's command, I wore jungle boots, desert boots when I was off duty, and as soon as she spotted my boots, if she was thinking clearly she'd know who I was.

I wanted her to be plenty scared.

"GET OUT!" She shrieked at me.

I answered by drawing my knife slowly, knowing she'd be able to make it out.

"I'll scream. I'll scream and they'll come running." She tried. "I'm a federal officer, don't think I won't report you."

A nice low chuckle, making sure that it rumbled so it was more a growl than anything else, was the only answer I gave her.

She stepped back again, running into the chair, so she was backed up against the table and unable to move back.

"Please... no..." She pleaded. "I didn't do anything to you guys. Whatever it is, it isn't my fault."

I took another step forward and she leaned back from me. I knew she could see my boots and pant legs.

"Please... leave me alone... I didn't do anything..." Super Agent Killain was gone, in her place was a terrified woman.

Several slow steps took me into the light, and I stopped just out of reach from her as her eyes widened and she started to smile. Then her eyes dropped to my knife and when her eyes returned to my face the blood had drained from her face.

"Fifty... fifty..." She stammered, her voice a hoarse whisper. She licked her lips and tried again, managing a sickly looking smile. "Come for some fun, Fifty?"

I just stared at her, silent, and her eyes locked on my face and I knew that she was staring at my bad eye. Where a normal eye was white mine was blood red, the iris, normally hazel, was red tinted like the pupil. It often leaked pink tears, and I hadn't bothered to wipe off my face. I could feel a drop of liquid running down the side of my nose and my face, and knew it would leave a red streak down my face. Hell, I was depending on it.

"What do you want, Fifty?" She tried to make it sound sexy, but the fear robbed her voice of anything but her fear.

Her nervousness got worse as I just stared at her, tilting my head down slightly to emphasize to her how much shorter than me she was.

"What? WHAT!" She yelled. She went to take a step toward me and I suddenly lifted the knife. She scrambled around the table and pressed herself against the wall.

Without a word I just grabbed the table and threw it across the room one handed, the table crashing against the wall and staying on its side. I kicked the chair away as she plastered herself against the wall, leaving only the chair she had been sitting in between us.

"What do you want, Ant?" She was starting to panic and left my first name behind, hoping that a snap of command and my last name would work.

"Sit down, Agent Killain." I told her.

I knew how my voice sounded. I'd almost had my voicebox crushed in 2/19th, told to talk as little as possible for a month. I'd spent a week coughing and spitting up blood after the injury, and my voice was rough and low. The smokes had made it worse, making it sound like I ate cigarettes instead of smoking them.

She shook her head, her eyes wide. I moved over by the counter, grabbing the chair and flinging it behind me before running my knife, all the way down by the hilt, against the chrome edge of the counter. A thin sliver of fake chrome curled up, and I made sure Debra saw me flick it away.

"Sit down, Agent Killain." I growled again. She shook her head and I stepped forward, grabbing the other chair and sliding it behind me.

She flinched when it crashed against the wall next to the other chair.

"Sit down or I'll make sit you down." I told her, carving another sliver off of the counter edge. I avoided putting any special emphasis on any word, and I could see that she was shaking in fear as she moved and sat down in the chair.

I walked behind the chair and shoved her forward with my boot. She grabbed the edges of chair as she slid forward on the cheap tile, ending up in the middle of the room.

"Stand up, Agent Killain." I ordered. She stood up, and I could tell she was shaking in fear, trying to control her breathing but hyperventilating anyway.

"Strip down to your panties and bra. Now, Agent Killain." I told her, moving in front of her and letting her see the knife in my hand.

She shook her head and I grabbed her jaw, locking her head in place. "Your uniform. Remove it." She flinched, but started undoing her top as soon as I let go of her jaw.

The whole time she stripped her top and T-shirt off, I just stared. I didn't care about her tits, she wasn't even a person to me right then. She was a thing. Something that stood between me and what I needed to get the Major and his boys out alive. A thing that stood between me and my crew doing our jobs.

And she'd killed Captain Bishop.

Captain Bishop had called me in his office a few months after the barracks had burned down. The CO that had replaced him as acting CO had given me a site a couple of months prior, and my crew were hard workers, and I wasn't sure why he wanted to see me, since he wasn't in my chain of command. It turned out that the fact I didn't speak unless it was necessary, and then I used as few words as possible was "disturbing" many of my fellow soldiers as well my crew. He asked why I didn't talk, and accepted my explanation of "No reason." He'd taken several meetings to convince me that it would fine to start talking to people, and had told my chain of command that it was all right, I was just "one of those quiet guys" and, as I found out later, had told my platoon sergeant to have me give classes, give briefings, and even give safety lectures.

Captain Bishop was the one who taught me that it was all right to talk, as well as providing one of the few officers that proved to me that officers could be trusted, were not all waiting to betray me, kill me, or screw me over.

And the woman in front of me had shot him in the back of the head, supposedly for wanting to do the right thing.

I let all my hate for her show on my face.

Her hands started moving faster, and I heard stitches pop with how fast she pulled her T-shirt off. Her belt jangled as she undid it, then hurried up and took off her pants, boots, and socks.

"Sit down, Agent Killain." She went to put her arms over her breasts and I growled. She froze, staring at me with wide eyes, then sat down.

"Arms at your sides and legs together, Agent Killain, or I will tie your arms behind your back and legs to the chair." I told her. Her hands were shaking, and when she grabbed the edges of the chair her shoulders shook. "Right now, your arms and legs being free is a privilege that I will revoke at my whim, Agent Killain."

The constant use of her CIA rank was to remind her that we were no longer comrades. That she was no longer Deb, or Colonel Killain. To dehumanize her in a way.

"What do you want?" She whispered. Her lips were dry, and even when her tongue ran across them, they stayed dry.

She cried out when I slapped her on the cheek. "Do not speak, Agent Killain." She shrank back, my handprint reddening on her cheek.

"Nobody knows I am in here." I kept my voice a low, hoarse growl, and spaced my words. I knew it made her strain to hear me clearly. "Nobody will be coming in here to rescue you, Agent Killain. Not the other soldiers, and certainly not your fellow Agents. They are more concerned with murdering people who might be able to talk about what happened here, giving them a lot on common with you, Agent Killain."

She looked around, and I could smell the fear from her.

"I am going to ask you questions, Agent Killain." I told her. "You will answer them. You will answer them truthfully."

The smell of fear got stronger as she nodded jerkily.

"You know I've been trained in this, Agent Killain." I reminded her. Her face looked almost sick. "You told me you read my file, so you read how did well in that class." She nodded again, still nervous jerks. "So you know that there will be serious repercussions if you so much as try to lie to me, Agent Killain."

"You... you can't do this..." she tried.

Another slap, right in the same spot, rocked her head to the side. "Do not speak, Agent Killain."

She flinched back.

I moved closer, staring down at her. "Or what? You'll kill my family? You'll go after my wife and kid like you promised, Agent Killain?" Being reminded of her threat against my family made her look even sicker. "There is nobody here to stop me." I paused for a long moment to let that sink in. She swallowed thickly. "And unlike what you did, everything I am about to do actually does fit under the National Security umbrella."

I took sick glee in throwing that in her face, watching the knowledge of what I had just told her seep in as I sheathed my knife.

"I'm willing to answer a closed session of the Armed Services Committee and the Intelligence Committee why I subjected a murderous rogue member of the CIA to strenuous interrogation." My smile got wider, and I knew the nerve damage to my face was pulling one side up higher than the other. "You are withholding vital intelligence that will allow me to complete this mission, information that might prevent extensive civilian casualties." I paused again. "And since I have not been able to take my medication as directed after you destroyed them, I doubt I will be found liable, Agent Killain."

When she opened her mouth to protest the last part, I slapped her.

"Do not speak unless I ask for an answer, Agent Killain." I told her. Her mouth opened again, and I slapped her again, same force. Just enough to redden her cheek, to sting, not a full power strike that would knock her ass out of the chair. This time, her mouth stayed shut.

"Seeing as you won't be any condition to testify by the time I am done, and seeing as the CIA and I already have a history, and adding in that you threatened to have my family tortured and killed, I'm sure that at the most they'll just quietly discharge me with full benefits. There is nothing stopping me or holding me back during this interrogation, Agent Killain." I pulled some surgical tubing out of my pocket and draped it around my neck.

She licked her lips again.

"Do you understand, Agent Killain?" I asked her, putting a hand in my pocket and pulling it out closed.

She clenched her jaw. I waited a moment, then took the surgical tubing from around my neck and slapped it across her bare thigh, just above the knee, leaving a wide red welt that wrapped around her thigh almost the whole way. She screamed and I just stood there.

I draped the surgical tubing back across my neck before asking her if she understood again.

She said nothing, her jaw clenching and her body tensing up.

I slowly removed the surgical tubing and slapped her across the leg in the same place.

"Do you understand, Agent Killain?" I asked her when she stopped screaming. I opened my hand, allowing to her to see the small carpet nails in my palm.

"Yes." She choked out as I draped the tubing back around my neck. I nodded, and put the carpet nails back in my pocket instead of following through with the threat of pushing a few through the surgical tubing before using it on her again.

"Now, Agent Killain, let us begin." I paused for a moment. "You will talk. We have both been through anti-interrogation training, Agent Killain. Keep in mind one simple fact, Agent Killain: the trainers showed me when they waterboarded me

"Everyone has a breaking point."