Terminal InEx

[E-Stalin [Orthrus]]

Contains graphic violence, language, and highly critical content of people, religions, and other closely held beliefs.[/color]

BAEL Accuisition Form 152
This updated document is meant to replace Form 151
Altered requirements have been noted via *
Deep Recon Mission Statement:
-To deploy into Contaminant Zone Class Tertiary
-To locate, close with, and destroy the enemy in close combat by fire and maneuver
-To acquire, decontaminate, and safely return acceptable samples of Tertiary Contaminant
-To provide background reconnaissance, establish safehouses, and compliment existing maps
Search and Rescue Mission Statement:
-To deploy into Contaminant Zones
-To locate, close with, and assess status of MIA Personnel
-To recover MIA Personnel, or in situations not applicable, to neutralize the threat and recover mission critical equipment and data.
Continued....

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We cut the lines and moved up bay at 5:53. Sometimes newer folk try to enter the city and screw up the timing, but most don't. I hadn't expected people to be commonly intelligent, but people had turned down my expectations. True, we were the only ones who'd bothered to check the Almanacs and adjust for the seasons, but for the most part people calculated the time it would take them to reach the harbor pretty well. The whole idea is to drop off when it's still dark enough for the boat to get out safely, but your individual time in the darkness is as short as possible.
I'm afraid of the night. The fifteen to twenty minutes before sunrise are my worst. I don't know how the Lolicons do it, but I refuse to be InExed after lights. I don't even carry night vision equipment with me, and believe me when I say that I've gotten enough lecturing about it. But the simple fact is, I'm looking for DeRP, the guys that are dropped in and then stay there for up to a week at a time. They're not exactly the badass ninja cowboys that you'd expect a "special" organization to be. If anything, they're kind of hated by folk more for their supposed stupidity (No NOD included) than any kind of envy. But the point I'm getting at is this: I lug a pack with equipment meant to sustain me for eleven days. Frankly, I don't need another couple kilos of electronics and batteries added to the weight load. If I get InExed after lights, I'm fucked anyway, so flashlight it is.
I miss the sting of salt water on my face. It drummed off the M50 masks we wear when on approach. Like wearing a coat in the rain. Rubber overalls and a garbage bag over the rucksacks complete the getup, just to keep as much water off things until I can strip it off once ashore. The dosage itself was far too low to be genuinely harmful, but if the aerosol was inhaled then it was all over.
Two minutes in we cut the motor, and the crew got out the paddles. I didn't know these men, and it was too dark to see their faces, but my guess was they were former Naval Specwarfare, or maybe some Marine unit. Not many people knew how to direct a Zodiac at nighttime with paddles. It was probably a different boat crew every time anyway. I don't know how they managed to get right up to the dock in the darkness, without even stopping on top of it, but a triple slap on my shoulder let me know that we were there and I blindly rolled off the boat and onto the dock. My pack stopped me from just barrel rolling all the way from the edge (my spine shivered with the proximity of the drop) and I shuffled away from it like a crab. I didn't even hear the Zodiac peel away, but I heard the motor kick in again a little bit later. I couldn't see the boat. It was long gone.

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Rule 1: Maintain 48 hour sustainment capability at all times, using "threesomes like 69" to remember. Three weapons systems (Primary, sidearm, coldarm), six kilograms hydration, 9 filter cartridges.
Expert tip: Carry a secondary allotment of nine C2A2 Cartridges in case you need to replace your mask with a civilian model.
[Handwritten Note]:
Expert Bullshit. You want to stuff an extra meter of space into your load, be my guest. While you're doing it, you may want to recall that whoever calculated the cartridge exchange times wasn't actually paying attention and just looked at the first number on the challenge agent chart, which just so happens to be Sarin. If you think you're going to be nerve gassed, then good for you. Now go run to mommy like a good boy.
If you're intelligent, then the cartridge will officially remain effective at 30 days in particulate exposure. If you're abnormally well educated, then you'll know that oil aerosol will cut that - so your actual exposure limit is 2400 minutes InExed. Gives you 40 hours, cut at 35 to be safe.
If you go through the SO2, you've got less than 20 minutes. The appropriate response isn't to lug more cartridges, but to stay the fuck out of the tunnels.
-Your friendly tablesalt's got your back
~Deep Recon Platoon Handbook
[Handwritten Note]: Hurr durr DeRP

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I took the 2nd established route from the harbor to the rooftops; the 1st and 3rd routes required scaling the cargo nets and rope ladders, which I couldn't do with a weight load. Route 2 took me through the Fishing Cannery and up the staircases.
Before I entered the building I got out the shotgun. Most don't, I do. The Sleepies don't run into buildings at night and then get stuck there come sun-up. If a building is occupied, it's occupied. You don't get "pockets" in the dim areas, so there's no point in arming up just to get to rooftop level. But it makes me feel better.
I kept the receiver and barrel of a Winchester 1300 pump in the side-pouch of my main pack, strapped down with the compression webbing. It took less than a minute to slide the barrel into the receiver and load the magazine with 3" buckshot shells, triple ought. A lot of guys like the eight round magazines, but mine only holds five. Shorter mag tube = shorter barrel once you hacksaw it off. I don't think I'll ever be in a situation where I'll need a larger magazine, and that's what backup arms are for anyway. Until that day comes, I'll take mobility over firepower.
I walked between hydraulic presses and unfilled cans, pockmarked with rust, shotgun carried over the shoulder with a Condor 1-point sling. The abandoned fish and caviar in the partially assembled cans had rotted into oblivion a long time ago, but the smell had filled the building to vomit-worthy levels until I'd personally smashed all the windows open on the ground floor. Every person who uses the routes is obligated to leave an improvement on them for the future, and I guess that clearing the air here was mine.
It was an overcast day, and there wasn't much sun to go through the window frame. Everything looked gray now. I stepped around a heaping pile of sealed tuna fish cans, where the assembly line had kept depositing them until the stock ran out, and made my way to the stairwell door.
The door was gone. DeRP had removed them during early scouting expeditions so we could get in and out through the above floors - but I'd rather have left them intact, chained, and padlocked. I'd rather remove the ability to get off street level quickly in exchange for a sense of security when doing it. Why? Because there was no illumination in the stairwells, that's why.
The door frame was a black square set into the wall twenty yards away from me. I'm telling you, it's not just my imagination. The darkness is evil. No light from in here penetrates past the frame, and the blackness is absolute. It doesn't look like a void, but like something solid and tangible, as if you could push against it with your fingers. An optical illusion? Sure, but I damned well wasn't getting close enough to an unlit area to find out. Before getting out the illume, I undid the buckle on my grenade pouch.
The road flare bounced off the back wall of the stairwell and came to a rest just past the railing, red sparks skittering across the cement. I waited a full minute kneeling on the factory floor, shotgun leveled at the red glow before I got up and duck walked to it, ears peeled for anything other than the burning hiss. Cyalume is better for stealth, but road flares have much better range. That one flare at the bottom of the stairs let me know the entire well was empty. I didn't bother clearing it, but I still couldn't stop myself from peeking around the corner before entering the well proper.
I finally peeled off the gas mask once on the roof.

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Empty cars were piled up on the streets, tires deflated with age and windows broken from looting. Grass and vines poked up through cracks in the asphalt. Occasionally a crow would croak from somewhere out of sight. A pigeon would take flight from a derelict apartment block, squirrels ran across overgrown lawns. Nothing else really moved, there were no other sounds.
Just me here and one other person somewhere out there. Dead, alive, sane, it didn't matter. If I could get his still breathing body back to the Flotilla, that was a bonus point. I was just here for his equipment and whatever data he'd gathered in the 78 hours he'd been gone.
The first step is to set up a base camp. I was headed to a place I'd used a couple times in the past, a nice little local hospital. And then...well, then we'd start hunting.

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I stayed on the rooftops all the way to the hospital, using the system of wooden planks, plastic sheeting, and 550 cord set up all over the city. It created a network of streets above the main streets, and we usually nicknamed it as "the metro". You couldn't use it to directly reach a specific location, but you could walk along it to the general area, using central hubs as needed.
I'd never felt comfortable using the metro to travel around actually. Afterall, it's blatantly obvious. You're constantly skylined, you can fall off if attacked, and it's the easiest thing in the world to set up a trap on some of them for the future. Every time I stepped on another bridge I tested it for stability, and cross-checked it against my notebooks to see if any cords or items had been added to them since I'd last been there. Trouble was, extra additions could have been added by another operative before this cycle, so there was no way of telling if there was anything sinister about it. I went around the altered routes anyway.

Rule 2: When deploying with a SAR team, carry at least the same amount of equipment as the person you're searching for. If he or she had food and water to last seven days, then pack at least eleven days. This ensures you can remain in the area long enough to leave no chance of the individual surviving, and not risk leaving a man behind.
[Handwritten Note]:
Horseshit. How come when someone writes a manual, they've never actually been in the field themselves? 5 kilos water per day, two MREs per day, puts you at 6 kilos of weight per day. Loaded up to DeRP deployment cycles puts you at 42 kilos of food and water alone, and that's RATIONING both, and you want to go in with another FOUR days worth?
Let me tell you a little inside secret bud - nobody carries food and water for their entire deployment cycle. We go in with enough to last 72 hours. The rest we find on our own and filter. As for food? You can go five days without food easy - we just spread out a 3 day supply apart over a seven day.
Finally, even IF you went in with a full loadout, why would you carry an 11 day supply for a guy who was loaded up on 7 days, AFTER he's been missing for 72 hours? He's ALREADY Three days over the limit.
Jesus wolf fucking, lion's cock sucking sheeple Christ.
~Salt

When Search and Rescue deploys, we invariably need to carry more equipment than the guy we're searching for. For one thing, we tend to stay for longer periods. For another, the only way of evacing a Terminal Inex is doing it loud and fast. When you find them they're non-cooperative, violent, possibly incoherent or unresponsive. It's highly impractical to somehow drag them all the way back to the Harbor and wait for a prescheduled pick up by Zodiac.
No, once you find a Terminal, the only way to get his ass out of here is to CASEVAC. Which means I need to carry a radio to get a helo in to our position, smoke and signal flare for them to see us, and spare batteries to keep that radio going. I'm not talking about walkie-talkies here; there's a reason we can't keep comms between the city and flotilla. The background radiation scatter off the seawater scrambles radio waves like eggs on a skillet.
So to get comms out, I have to carry a six kilogram AN/PRC-77 manpack radio, get onto a rooftop, dial out on high channel to reach an offshore relay bunker outside the city limits, and have them send it back to the Flotilla by submerged hardline.
Sound complicated and heavy? It is. I also need a portable decontamination kit, because politics is too afraid to have a CASEVAC brought home without deconning him first. Makes absolutely no sense, but it's their rules. Fortunately our pilots are good guys, or just have a good sense of self-preservation, so I can always leave the decon kit at my Bivvy site once I set it up. I can't just toss the damned thing because I'm accountable for the gear. Losing equipment's all fine and dandy, but no Decon kit? Into Solitary you go.
Now add in a hospital level medical kit, body armor, and gas mask cartridges, and all in all I'm carrying about 20 kilos more than the guy I'm looking for. Oh, if you were wondering what my actual total weight load is? 75 kilos. Yeah. A quarter of which I would never actually use, but wasn't allowed to get rid of, - and mind you that this is after I personally removed gear I didn't need.
So it's not like I can just waltz around the city all day looking for someone like this. That's why, after long established trial and error, we now have a standard operating procedure. Step one: find a Bivvy site and set up a base camp. Once you do that you can drop all that extra weight (best feeling in the world, I can tell ya) and start searching in concentric circles around your area. Kind of like digging a shaft in Mine-Craft actually. You'll see the resemblance once I get to it. That is, if you ever played that game anyway.

I didn't cross the rooftop bridge to get to the hospital. In fact, I'd dropped down to the 3rd story level a few streets ago, going through parking lots and apartment blocks and walking across the bridges set up through the windows. I'd set these up myself actually, over a three day period when I was last here. I felt uncomfortable entering and leaving my base campsite at rooftop level, where anyone could see me from pretty much the entire city if they got up that high. Given enough travel, it's not too difficult to figure out that the hospital is where I'm actually staying.
I got very quiet on the last bridge, and got the shotgun ready again. Saint Michael's hospital is five stories high. It's huge. Absolutely anyone or anything could be in there at any given moment and I'd have no way of telling or clearing it. That's why I didn't like to enter the building from up top, where I'd have to travel through more halls and stairways, even going through the center passages (no windows) before reaching my safe room. This bridge was set up just one hallway over - only problem being that the bridge itself was now a vulnerable point.
So I waited. Sweeping my eyes across the broken windows, curtains and blinds all torn out of them, a ton of graffiti and notes written on the inside walls by people before me. Nothing out of the ordinary. No changes to the bridge (I'm the only one who uses it, that I know of), no Lambda on the wall.
My mouth was dry now, and I licked my lips before briskly walking over the bridge to the windowframe on the 3rd floor. I didn't actually go in through the window that the bridge led to, but leaned off it and slipped in through the one next to it, looking down both ends of the hall before actually dropping down into it. No trip-wires, no booby traps under the bridge. Nothing.
The double doors at the end of the left side were closed. The emergency button to open them without power was pried out, the handles themselves were chained and secured with a masterlock, and the glass viewing windows in the doors were covered with blue paint and then taped over with cardboard. I'd done all of that myself. There was no illumination behind that door, just darkness. I didn't want to look at it everytime I left the building, nor was I comfortable sleeping knowing that there was just a black hallway sitting right next to my camp. I also didn't like looking through the glass, so I covered that up. To the right was my home away from home.

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Combat Control Center (C3) Operative Report:
Search and Rescue Cell 1 | Team 3
Operative: Salt
Callsign: Tuna 1-3 | 1-3 Actual
Deployment Time: +1440 Hours
InEx Time: +50 Hours
Successful Recoveries: 11 Recoveries, 6 survivors
Success Rating: 38% (# Highest Rating on Chart)

Psyche Danger Index (PDI) Rating:
-Religion: Agnostic Atheist (Positive Atheist in a Foxhole effect) - 0%
-Solipsism: Positive assumption of existence, acknowledges lack of knowing - 9%
-Recreational Spirituality: Lighting, scents, nature - 3%
-Sexual orientation: Heterosexual, no known effect on PDI Rating - 0%
-Paraphilia: Domination/Submission, Anthropomorphic, M&S, - 32%
-Morality: Cynic, Nihilist, Moral Anti-Relativist, Anti-Cognitive, with solipsist connection -28%
Overall PDI: 72%

Category: Extreme Risk. Disqualifying PDI for operational duty. Operative likelihood of Terminal InEx extremely high.

InEx Anchor Point Index (IAPI) Rating:
-Duty: Strong patriot, acknowledges and supports U.S Constitution. Prior military service - 26%
-Knowledge/Intelligence: Extremely knowledgeable in mil-tech, biological, and nuclear sciences. Obsession with equipment and technology - 37%
-Moral Convictions: Extreme and consistent. Individual is highly intelligent and understands his own moral convictions. Moral Stress Testing was very positive - 50%
Overall IAPI: 95%

Category: Highly Resilient. Individual extremely unlikely to become Terminally InExed, and has multiple redundant anchor points.
Final Clearance for Operational Qualification: N/A | Insufficient Data
# Contradicting score percentiles for PDI/IAPI. Conclusions on fitness for duty impossible.
Review data and retest.

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Room A113 is separated from the rest of the hospital. The only way in or out is through that hallway, which I thankfully feel secure about, or the windows. Of course, someone could also punch down through the ceiling, but there's not much I can do about that. The room itself was mostly empty - the tables and beds that had been in there before were now heaped on the sidewalk after they'd gone out the window. I dropped my pack and shrugged my shoulders, enjoying the sense of relief rushing through my muscles. It was now 1121, giving me about seven hours to set things up. If I rushed it, I could launch the first SCUD before calling it a day. Usually I did that the second day though.
The ILBE system consists of a large, 73 liter main pack, a 27 liter assault pack (day pack), and a hydration system. The cool thing about ILBE is how its meant to integrate with itself, so I could just dock the daypack onto the main ruck and take it with me, and now that I was setting up camp I could just leave the main pack with all the gear I didn't need and take the smaller pack instead.
It took me all of ten minutes to unpack everything and set up camp. We're officially issued a two man tent, which of course I dumped. Who needs a tent when you're in the city? Instead I packed two of the Marine Corps field tarps I had (only one is actually issued, I bought the second one for personal use) and used them to make a tarp tent. I swept the floor up around my sleeping area with a blue surgical rag and set one of the tarps down flat, camo side down, with the edges up against the corner of the room. There was a light switch on the adjacent wall that I'd pried out and then punched a hole in the wall under it. I ran a length of 550 cord through this and knotted it, then threaded it through the grommets on one side of the second tarp and tied off the cord at the other end of the room.
Now I had a walled off little corner of my own, about 200cm high and 230cm long. I taped down the edges along the floor so it wouldn't shift around, and got to setting up my sleeping area. I unrolled the ISOmat in the corner and weighed down the edges with a couple of magazines so it wouldn't roll back up on itself.

Very many people, and even our operating manual, does not recommend actually setting up camp like this. They say we should just drop the pack without taking it apart, take out the sleeping system at night, pack it back up in the morning, and when you need to bug out you can just grab the pack and run. I can't live like that - really. I don't want to. I need some kind of sense of home, an anchor that I can run back to. The Psyche Danger Index of establishing a 'home' outside of a safe zone is rated as a moderate risk factor (moderate is actually pretty fucking high), but...I guess that really doesn't matter to me anymore.
The Modular Sleep System went onto the mat, the MREs went in a pile against the tarp corner, and the campsite was more or less good to go.

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I spent most of the first day continuing to set up base camp and the area around it. Once I piled up my new house a little bit I set up the assault load. It's a relief to travel light once camp is done. I walked a bit around the rooftops until I found the nearest gas station at a 7-11. There was no Lambda symbol spray painted around it, so I set my stopwatch for twenty minutes, tightened up the gas mask, and went InEx for the first time this cycle.

From street level I can never actually see anything wrong, and you'd really be fine even without a mask as long as you give any manholes a wide berth, but the vapors are one of my hard limits, something that I avoid with absolute consistency bordering on paranoia. I checked the seals on my mask once on asphalt, covering both filters with my hands and inhaling until the mask collapsed around my face. Solid seal, but ultimately that's still a confidence sapper. Wearing any level of MOPP tends to make you paranoid, as if you're actually in a hazardous environment whether you really are or not. It makes the street seem downright sinister, and the hair stood on my neck the whole time I was on the gas station.

The pump screens were all blank, and for some reason I was tempted to give the nozzles all a squeeze. Little temptations are always the silliest. The underground gasoline tanks were all empty now, the lids overturned on their sides. Sleepies probably, didn't even bother to clean up after themselves. However, gasoline wasn't important to me. What I needed was ignored by pretty much everyone in times of disaster: the diesel. The green diesel valve was still closed, and as I knelt by it I looked over my shoulders to scan the street one more time.

Thirteen minutes later I had a little over eight liters of diesel in a jerry can, courtesy of a syringe and enema bulb contraption. There's nothing that can't be jury-rigged with enough duct tape.
I was off street level a minute later, and switched out both mask filters for fresh ones, sealing the used ones in a partials bag. They were still perfectly good of course, and I'd reuse them later if I had to.
With fuel at camp, I could recharge my batteries once I started tracking the Corporal (trust me, looking for folk takes a surprising amount of juice, and batteries are heavy).
I took another hour to launch a tandem-SCUD (A commercial, exploding firework with a bag of purple dye taped to it. Three timed bursts go off one hour apart), and left a SAR card on the painted rooftop. If the man was still sane, he could see the airburst from anywhere in the city, and would come looking. The card carried my radio frequency and channel.
For the rest of the evening I settled down in the hospital room and studied, with the faint hiss of static echoing from the radio by my sleeping bag.

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Operational Journal: Salt
Deployment: +8 hours
InEx: +14 minutes
Camp area: St. Michael's Hospital

Notes -
Acquired diesel, launched SCUD x3 on the 280 freeway.
No signs of target, no enemy contact.
Personal notes for target: Cpl. Johnson
Known AO: Gleneagle's Golf Course and the Cleveland Elementary school.
Black, bald, smokes Camel Blues - does not recon store them. Wore ACUs and ECWCS under layers (Sand colored [looks light gray to me]) at the time of deployment. Has a foiliage colored fleece, wore an 8 point cover. Might have a boonie, not certain though. Rucksack not known - some civilian model, gray.
Speaks some Spanish, responds to "Corporal". Carried an M16A4 with RCO and an M9 sidearm. Nobody seems to know what ammunition he was using - fairly typical and annoying as always.
Tracking Plan -
Search his AO - mark clean water sources. He'll be out of whatever hydro he came in with by now. Look for snares, deadfalls, or other game traps on the golf course. Remains of camp fires and latrine sites.
High possibility he's discarded all basic security concepts and is just doing his own shit. Look for his cigarettes, he's not known to keep the butts with him. Heavy smoker, butts likely less than half smoked. He uses a tent - watch for stake points.

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1800. The sun was already halfway under the horizon. Day was over. I'd made my last head calls half an hour ago and dumped them (tip: grab cardboard boxes from the building garbage boxes. Use 'em, tape 'em, back in the garbage they go), and now I refused to leave my camp again until morning.
I closed the door to my room, covered up the windows on it with paper and tape. Again, my psyche index shows here - taping up the edges of the windows has to be extremely meticulous with me. Every single bubble, every gap has to be covered, and I double-layered the tape. If I didn't, the darkness could leak in from the gaps like a gas, contaminating my room from the other side. In a perfect example of how psychotic this is, I left the actual windows leading outside completely unsealed and open. I did hang bedcovers over them though, but this was now in the realm of tactics and not psycho therapy. I like to sleep with a night-light, which means I have to cover the windows so it can't be seen from outside.

Once the sun went down the city would light up with pinpoints of light all over the place, and it's pretty doubtful anyone could somehow magically pick out my own window from the rest of the city and come looking - but I don't like highlighting myself on general principle.
I cracked three green cyalumes (psychologically speaking, green is the safest color for me) and taped one down by the door (always tape down your illume. It shifts if left alone.), another out of my view on the side of the tarp, and left the last one with me by my sleeping set up.
I walled off the only open side of my sleeping corner with my backpacks, and pulled out my morale kit. A Harry Potter book, Jack London, a furry graphic novel (Rukis), a pack of playing cards with cocktail recipes, and a rubik's cube. Again, fiction books + images = PDI goes up. It really is quistionable why I haven't been banned from work yet.
I ate a Chicken Pesto MRE cold and dumped the trash into a box. Afterwards I spent some time reading, just to relax enough for my mind to be ready to sleep. After about a half hour I set a piss bottle in the corner, turned off the radio, and went to bed with the sleeping bags unzipped, an M14 by my side, and both pistols on my belt.

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Day 2
Deployment: +26 Hours
InEx: +14 Minutes

I got up at 6:30. The room was well lit, birds chirping outside. Nothing else. I changed my under clothing and hung them to dry on the tarp. Then I dressed, ate breakfast, loaded up, and drew the M1911, flicking the safety off before it was out of the holster. I tore off the taped cover from the doors. Before I left the room I spent a very long time looking through the viewing window of the door with the muzzle of the pistol pressed to the glass.


The SCUD site was empty. I crouched behind a car at the topmost level of a parking garage, just under the roof. My elbows propped on the trunk to keep the binoculars stable, and since I was as far back as the second row, nobody looking from the marked building could see me unless they glassed the area themselves. The human eye can't see into shadow if the darkness is behind a light.

Nothing was moving. The building was still splattered with purple, the cardboard sign taped to the wall was still there. It had a Sigma symbol spray painted on it. The Corporal would have known that my contact SAR card was on the backside. Either he hadn't shown up, or the rooftop had been mined.
First step, negative. On to the second.

I found eight Camel blue cigarette butts in the park, the man's AO. Five were down to the butts, the other three were half smoked. Morning, evening, and mealtime cigarettes. They were all wet and partially tearing up, obviously older than my deployment. He'd only been in the park for one day.
I found the campsite stake points nearby, but no flattening or crushed grass between them. He hadn't used it. It was gone now.
Crushed grass everywhere - it's a park. I couldn't separate his bootprints from the other depressions, let alone follow them.
Second step, partial. MIA. Step three, check the Congregations. Only remaining option at the moment, and to be honest, it's not the one that scares me the most, although it does most other operatives. They're terrified of Congregations, and for good reasons. I'm not, courtesy of over-confidence. Getting caught isn't an issue for me, I'll just force them to put a bullet through my face before they can secure me. What really scares me is running from them.
The surest and most intense way to go over your InEx limit? Is while evading the Terminally InExed.

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February 5th, 2012
Vostok Station succeeds in penetrating Arctic Ice shield and reaches Lake Vostok. By this time Arctic Conditions have grown too severe to continue research, and the surface of the lake is allowed to freeze inside the bore-hole, and left alone until the Arctic Summer.

Unknown Date, Winter, 2012
Vostok Station recovers first ice samples from Lake Vostok.

January, 2013
Multiple organisms discovered in samples. Data records lost.
Discovery of Vostok Virus.

Unknown Date, 2013
Biohazard Safety Protocols Breached. Vostok Virus contamination. Where and how this happened is unknown. That viral contamination occurred was not discovered until December.

June, 2013
Between ten to twenty percent of population is hypothesized to have been exposed to the virus at this point. Exact numbers are impossible to determine. Effects of the virus have still not been detected or realized.

December, 2013
Vostok Virus first discovered in patients. Extent of world-wide contamination not known at this point.

Records lost, dates lost - 2014
Vostok contamination is designated Pandemic.
Vostok symptoms first isolated and quantified. Effects and hazards of virus are discovered.
NATO, CIS, and ASEAN are quarantined.
Containment and riot control procedures fail
Control of major population centers lost, and are sterilized by radiological and chemical warfare
World War III - Unknown aggressors, provocateurs, and timeline. Hypothesized that governmental control infected by Vostok, and went Terminal.
Universal Comms, Admin, and Logistics destroyed.

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February 1st, 2015
Remnants of the U.S Naval fleet rendezvous at Pearl Harbor and re-establish Governmental structure. The United States of America are reconstructed offshore as the Naval Flotilla of America, or NFA, with a population of 200,000.
Remnants of the US Marine Corps are reorganized into the American Marine Corps with 15,000 active service members.

February Onward:
Hawaiian islands are rendered sterile, and reconstructed. American governmental infrastructure is rebuilt at Waikiki.
Civilian population, military bases, and industry are reconstructed.
American Navy conducts sweep and rescue operations along the West Coast and recovers surviving populations and military bases.
All Vostok vectors are quarantined at forward bases until full. Remaining vectors are executed.
Non-contaminated survivors are transported off shore.
-The Civilian Flotilla is established.
-The Coastal Operations Flotilla is established.
-Marine Corps Recruit Depot Waikiki is established and activated.
-Naval Recruit Training Command, Waikiki is established and activated.

December, 2015:
NFA Population: 1,000,000
Active Naval Service Members: 300,000
Active Marine Corps Service Members: 60,000
The Coastal Operations Flotilla conducts recon and raiding operations into the American mainland, recovering information and raw materials. American industry is reconstructed offshore and on Hawaii using these materials.
Raw data about Vostok and Terminal Vectors is recovered by recon teams, and studied.
Staging areas for invasion forces are set up to eventually begin sterilizing and re-establishing the coast line.

-----------------------

Milgram. Asch. Fallujah.
Mike. Alpha. Foxtrot.
Michael and Fox.
A fox named Michael.
A hound named Mikhail.
Everything is killed but the fox.
And the fox dies of exhaustion.
Fleeing from the hound.

Or in other words - Milgram, Asch, and Fallujah. The fact that I'm familiar with those terms proves that I'm too old for this shit. But it's genuinely disturbing, if not unsurprising how few people today understand why Congregations happen. The real reason why is because they don't want to learn from their mistakes. Religious cult gatherings that slaughter anyone who goes near them? Psh - that won't happen to us, we'll just keep doing what we did last century.
Of course, god wasn't there when we sterilized the continent. But I was.
--------

Let me break down a history and biology lesson as simply as I can. If you get bored reading about how Vostok works, skip this shit. You don't deserve to read it anyway, as you're the kind of person that'll be dead on your first op.
The rest of you - Infection with Vostok occurrs through transfer of bodily fluids. It's not exactly airborn, but hardy enough to survive a trip over to your face when a vector sneezes at you. Once in the blood stream, it crosses over the blood brain barrier and stops acting like a virus completely.
I know this will bore most of you, but bear with me, because this is actually the part that scares the shit out of me. Once it decides that your brain is cozy, it infects the cells of the hippocampi by latching onto them and then doing...absolutely nothing. The fucker just tags the cell, opens up, and injects two daughter particles not into the cell, but back out into the bloodstream. The shell remains behind, so now you've got a couple of tag markers on your hippocampi while version 2.0 particles float down to your liver and effectively copy malaria.
Seriously, like an exact copy in terms of behavior. The daughter particles infect your liver cells where they incubate for about a month, then burst out with new particles that infect your red blood cells, along with more mama particles, which go back up to the brain.
So now you've got a cycling system that produces more tag markers on your brain with every month and more grand-daughter cells infecting your blood. Other than a slight anemia, this usually isn't noticeable - it's not as severe as Malaria is, except those particles that infected your RBCs? The moment they burst out, they go straight back up to your brain, find the tag markers that ejected the daughter cells in the first fucking place and now that there's enough of them to get the job done...well, they do their thing.

How they do their thing...we don't know. What it is or how it works we don't know.
Listen, here's all of Vostok in a nutshell. The thing copies your brain. What, you thought you had a soul in there? Fuck no. It's just electricity and patterns. Did you really think that you only had room in there for one of you? No. After hijacking your brain, it copies itself, and the end result is that now there's two entities living inside your head. Only the Vostok one isn't exactly a clone of you, just a clone of your brain. It's sentient, capable of thought, communication with the host, everything. Can it manually control the host? No.
What can it do? Talk to you. Let you see it. Make you see things. In short, it's one giant hallucination. Problem is, it's a consistent one. It doesn't go away, it doesn't stop, and it's capability of fucking with your mind is unparalleled.

Still not making sense? Imagine you're walking home when day when you look down and see a dog staring at you. And then the dog opens its mouth and talks. And tells you that it's your friend, and a buddy! And it talks to you and you talk back to it. And this goes on until it convinces you that for whatever reason it's time to murder your entire school. And you do it.

What, you don't think a talking dog would convince you to kill your best mate? Think you'd realize that it's not real, but just a hallucination caused by a sentient virus living in your brain? Yeah, keep telling yourself that. I didn't think it would work at first either. Fucker is disturbingly good at manipulating you. Answer is easy as to why: it is you, remember? It's your hardware, it knows your memories, it knows what you think, it knows what you believe, it knows what makes you tick. It knows you better than you know yourself, and it's smart enough to tell you things that will make you do what it wants, and on top of that, augment it by making you see and hear things that are not there.
See that crazed enemy soldier running toward you? Yeah, the one you just shot? That's not an enemy trooper, it's your platoon commander. Congratulations: you are Terminally InExed.

[E-Stalin [Orthrus]]

To: Sgt. Abrams
From BAEL Review Section
Subject: Update on Tuna 1-3

We've rethought or decision on Salt's qualifications to operate. We understand that he is currently deployed and unavailable for personal review, and that making a decision on whether he's qualified isn't objective.
Ultimately, we've never had such a contradictory case file, so we can't figure out whether he's safe or not. His PDI is extremely far beyond acceptable limits. Let me briefly explain why he's still allowed to deploy at the moment, and then I'll tell you our conclusions.

-When Salt first qualified for deployment, we didn't have the data on Vostok that we do now, and the idea of a PDI hadn't yet been developed. Most people deployed back then would be disqualified now.

-He has an abnormally high IAPI and literally the highest Moral Conviction score out of our entire deployment history.

-He has the highest success rate of SAR recovery (38%).

-He has no record of ever being InExed (All quarantine psycho-analysis tests were negative). This is also unique - all other operatives have been InExed between one to two times before, and recovered before redeploying.
The odds of Salt having avoided infection for so long are minimal.

Given that we've never seen a person with contradicting PDI / IAPI scores before, we have no idea what would happen if InExed.

However, our psychologists have decided the following. The odds of Salt having avoided infection are so low that we've concluded he's already InExed. He simply lied his way through the Quarantine testing.
It's possible that he's gone Terminal and doesn't even know it.
It's also possible that his IAPI is preventing him from going Terminal, and he doesn't want us to know.

Until this possibility is validated, Salt is officially disqualified from further operation. Upon return from this deployment, Salt is to be quarantined as per regulation, and then scheduled for a brain biopsy.

Rule 3:
Congregations are to be avoided at all costs. Under no circumstances whatsoever are you to approach within a grid square of a known gathering or other religious building. There is no information worth obtaining that outweighs the risk.
Amendment: SAR operating procedure may require you to recon Congregations to determine whether an MIA operative has gone Class 2 Terminal. When doing so, do not under any circumstances provoke the Congregation. Observe only in a fashion that prevents them from knowing you were there. Do not attempt to infiltrate, mingle with, or attack the Congregation.
The best course of action is to climb the building at nighttime and remain there until the following days Congregation. Recon the building during this time period, remain there until nightfall, and then exfiltrate.
No combat action is permitted under any circumstances, under threat of disqualification for future deployment

[Handwritten Note]
Yeah? Watch me.

Operational Journal: Salt
Deployment: +27 hours
InEx: +21minutes
Camp area: St. Michael's Hospital
Notes -
Located cigarettes and stake points in the AO of the target. Note that target set up camp but did not use it. Camp itself is not present. Couldn't figure out what happened, no further sign of the target.
Still no radio comms whatsoever.
I've decided to check whether the target has gone Theistic Terminal - nearest Congregation is Ascension Church. Used to be Orthodox, not sure who's there now.

Russian churches tend to be very flamboyant affairs. Golden paint, lots of icons and incense. Pretty buildings, although for some reason they hate pews. Only places to sit down are benches reserved for old grannies.
But that's not my problem; my problem is that the things are basically fortresses. Russians built churches in the old days of swords and arrows as a last refuge for towns under siege. Whole idea being that when god fails to protect your city from Khan's hordes, you can hide in the church while the city burns and wage your last stand in god's house, where he would to fail to protect that too. But either way, the doors are made out of thick wood, heavy, reinforced, and all the windows have bars on them, and in a non-security detail that still hinders me, all the windows are made of stained glass.
So the only way for me to get in without actually being noticed? Not the sewers - because the damned things don't have interior plumbing. I could go in the backdoor, which leads to the changing room and then the altar, but leaves my ability to actually see who's inside kind of ineffective.
So the best option is to take my climbing gear, scale the walls up to the top of the dome, piss off the side off it for a morale boost, and then look inside through the ceiling windows, too high up for anyone to care about painting them or barring them. So unless anyone looked straight up, I'd get a good recon of what was up.

Sounds reasonable, and it's a tried and true method that comes straight out of the SAR handbook. Which is precisely why I didn't go anywhere near the church and instead set up my shooting gear in an apartment complex 200 meters down the road, got comfy, and put a bullet through the church window.

------------

I sat on a footstool with my M1A supported by bipod on the kitchen table in front of me. The window overlooking the church was a few feet beyond that. I'd drawn the curtains over it, leaving a gap in front of the rifle and spotting scope. Since I was away from the window itself, no one could look along the buildings and notice a rifle poking out. The curtains stopped light from shining into the room, so I could see out of it, but nobody could see past the glass.
Add in 200 meters? Fuck, this was about as dangerous as cooking an omelet.

The stained glass depiction of Mary shattered immediately, raining onto the grass outside and some into the church itself. I let the rifle rest, shifted over to the spotter scope, and watched, gnawing on a piece of MRE jerky.
Through the bars of the window I could see the wooden flooring and walls, brass candle-stands, and a lot of movement.
I looked up from the scope and watched the main doors, holding up a photograph of Cpl. Johnson in one hand and a pen in the other. It took about half a minute before the doors were slammed open and the Terminals ran out. There tend to about thirty of them per Congregation, depending on the religion in question. I took a quick count while scoping them out, and wrote down 17+ on the notepad.
I quickly jumped between individuals, ignoring anyone who wasn't black, which in this case was everyone. They were all white, bearded, surprisingly well dressed (Suits and ties. Seriously?) which rather contrasted with the various handguns, shotguns, and rifles they were all holding.
Tactically speaking, they're retarded. A Terminal InEx is no less intelligent than anyone else, but Class 2s have the stupidity of complete fundie lunacy. If I'd wanted to I could have killed the sentries beforehand and then waited outside with a grenade. As it was, I didn't see who I was looking for, so I shifted the scope back to the broken window. I couldn't see most of the interior through the angle, so Johnson could have still been inside, but I didn't see it.

---------

Oh yeah, Class 2 Terminal?
You've got three types of Vostok infection. We still don't understand what the virus attempts to do or why, but it's extremely important that you understand this: the virus is not communal. Each individual infection in a person is a singular entity. What you see when infected is not what someone else does. The viruses are not like an Alien invasion, where they form their own society and work together.
So let me explain what's what.

InEx is a slang term from the days of the Gulf War, short for "In Exposure". We meant to refer to chemical warfare and so on, but once Vostok went rampant the term evolved, and now means several things. First, being InExed still means the obvious - you're in a HAZMAT area, either in the irradiated zones or the S02 down in the sewers.
InEx has also become a noun: a person infected with Vostok is InExed.
Now when you've gone InEx, it doesn't mean you're fucked yet. Just because you're hallucinating things doesn't mean you're going to instantly lose it - most of us are intelligent and educated enough to know that it's a hallucination, and ignore it to the best of our abilities while we abort our mission, return to base, and go into medical treatment and psyche therapy. By "most" of us, I course mean 1% of the population.
The rest of the human race? Is stupid. Very stupid, and very religious. When they go InEx, they believe what they see, either immediately or after some time. Once they believe it's real, we call it Terminal InEx. They're effectively insane, and what they do depends on what they hallucinate. Approximately 30% of Vostok infections lead to suicide. 10% are harmless to you, as they end up being gibbering lunatics screaming about the monsters hunting them. The remaining 60% are extremely hostile and, and virtually impossible to communicate with.
Out of all Vostok infections, less than 1% of the human race has the required personality to stop them from going Terminal. Do you believe in god? Terminal. Believe in the supernatural? Terminal. Solipsism? Terminal. Does your morality and goal in life include trying to gain money and have a more pleasurable life? Terminal. Are you an altruistic person who would sacrifice themselves to help others? Terminal. Do you love anyone? Terminal.
In short, the mental factors that most people have is summarized as your PDI, or your Psyche Danger Index. The higher your PDI, the more likely you are to go Terminal. To deploy, you have to hold a PDI of 10% or less (Believing in the supernatural, gods included, is an automatic 30%).
You then have something called Individual Anchor Point Index, IAPI. This measures the factors you have that resist going Terminal. A high level of scientific knowledge, a sense of moral duty or loyalty to your country, and so on.

So what exactly do Terminals do and why? Well, we've categorized three different types so far.
So you have Class 1: the most primitive, least understood, and least dangerous. Dangerous to me, that is. The Class 1 Terminal tends to hallucinate hordes of anything they're afraid of. The virus does not communicate with them or manipulate them - they just see a mass of oncoming flesh eating spiders, or maybe every human they see is now a zombie, or maybe the Koreans are invading. If they go Terminal, they're convinced that it's real (You have to understand, Class 1 is actually the least likely to go Terminal for this reason, given that they have prior knowledge on the existence of Vostok), so they'll start trying to survive the attacking things and run away from them. So if you meet a Class 1 Terminal, he'll probably behave with extreme paranoia and fear - so much of it he's beyond rational reconciliation. They'll be holed up in a fortified room, terrified out of his fucking mind because there's Silent Hill on the other side. He's also likely to kill you, because he'll think you're a giant ant-eater or something.
Biologically speaking, Class 1 is a valid sub-type of Vostok, designed to bring the Vector into contact with as many human beings as possible while causing as much physical contact as possible. It's not really a sentient entity you know? Kind of like comparing a monkey to the full form of the virus (Class 3).

Class 2: this is the most common type of Terminal. It's not a sub-type of the virus, it's the full Vostok virus, but Class 2 happens when the infection process is somehow interrupted. Maybe the virus mutated, or was damaged. So instead of the full thing, you only get partial effects. Namely flashes of a hallucination, instead of a consistent person living in your head.
Problem is, most of America is religious. Out of that group, about half are religious fucktards - or to be politically correct, they're fundamentalists. Specifically that means nearly half of the US population believed that the earth is only 6,000 years old, Genesis literally happened, there was a global flood, and yadayada.
So what do you think these people see and do? They see Jesus. They see angels. Since the virus infection is incomplete, they only get brief flashes of this stuff, but it's often. Since these people are fundies, they instantly conclude that it's real, as opposed to even considering it being a hallucination. They see visions, hear Jesus give them some orders, and what do you think happens next?
Here's what fucking happens next: they conclude this is the apocalypse, the rapture, god has come to sort out the good from the bad, and it's judgement day. So what's the problem? Everyone who's not with them is with the Devil. That means you, me, gay people, atheists, Liberals, Protestants, fuck, anyone that's not just like them.
And remember, fundies are already stupid. So they don't realize that they're not all seeing the same thing. Seriously - you get Hindus mixing with Christians in these Congregations, and they don't even know it.
Oh, and if you're offended because of the way I'm describing these good, god fearing folk? See Fallujah. 2004-2010. Those citizens did everything that Terminal InExes do today, and they didn't even have to see god to do it.

Class 3: My favorite. The most fascinating, and the most terrifying. This is the complete, healthy Vostok cell. A complete copy of the human mental capacity. When you go Class 3 InEx, you become schizophrenic. There is literally a second entity living inside you, and it stays with you and lives with you side by side, like an imaginary friend - only it's not imaginary.
Class 3 is the rarest type of InEx. What entity the virus takes is different for every person, because everyone that's infected has a different brain and a different personality, which is what the virus copy is based off of.
Some people will see a talking animal. Others might see another human being. Still more might see themselves.
Class 3 is the most dangerous, because it's the only form of the virus that is actually self-aware and sentient. It's the only one that can hold a conversation with you, and try to convince you to do things. Sometimes, for reasons we completely don't understand, it'll try and make the host kill themselves. The most common way this happens is that the entity will convince the host that it's Jesus, or god (Yeah, I'm sorry, the religious thing again, but it's true) and that it's time for the host to go to heaven. So they off themselves to join whatever Holy being they happen to believe in.
Otherwise, the entity tends to just hang out, get along, and turn the host rogue. They become enemies of the State, trying to attack recon teams, blow up flotilla ships, and all sorts of mayhem.
World War III happened because people in governments went Class 3. If that doesn't get the point across, I don't know what does.

So now I hope you understand why so few people in the NFA are allowed to deploy? Finding humans that can resist going Terminal is difficult. To say the least, only atheists are allowed to deploy as of last week. That kind of cuts down military folk to about .2% of the entire Marine Corps. And I'm one of them. Yeah, I'm just that cool, aren't I? And I thought SEAL attrition rates were high.
Creepy bit though? Even those qualified to deploy will go Terminal if InExed long enough. It's unavoidable. Vostok is simply too intelligent, and knows too much about you as a person. No matter how good you are, sooner or later you'll go Terminal, it's just a matter of how long you can resist it. If you're an operative on deployment and realize you're InExed, then you immediately abort your mission, signal for pickup, and return to base. Then after about two months of therapy the virus will have been killed off and you'll either recover, or you'll have gone insane.
This is why we deploy for such short periods. This is why we quarantine ourselves after each deployment. This is why I'm so afraid of the dark.



Look, I'm sorry to rant on like this, I'm sure you get the point. If you still don't really understand the details of how it works, trust me, you'll see what's up pretty soon.
--------

They spread out into the yard, running to the fences and setting up with their guns, ready to shoot anything that moved. Past that, there was nothing of interest. They were now on alert, and I was no closer to finding the target.
I leaned back, dropping the photo, and took another bite of jerky. I thought it over while chewing, rubbed my eye, and picked up the Clacker.

You ever play call of duty? Remember those magic universal detonator things that you can use for everything from calling in magic airpower to setting off C4? Yeah, that thing.
The single M18A1 claymore mine I'd left in the bushes (by literally walking around behind the sentry. Yup, sentry: singular.) detonated with enough force for me to feel the pressure wave thump against my eardrums from all the way over there. The armed force outside the church virtually disintegrated. The ones who were standing up were cut down at the waist - the ones kneeling by the fence were effectively decapitated. A Claymore mine has an effective kill-range of 50 meters in a 60 degree arc with an effective casualty radius of over 100 meters. These guys were all bunched together and got hit by a cloud composed of 700 #12 shot ball bearings. Needless to say, nothing identifiable was left.

I shot the two people who ran out the backside of the church, and then shot one of the two again.
Nothing else happened. I waited.

-----------------------

Ten hours later

Darkness was setting. Nobody else had come into sight. Congregations are singular families - they don't support eachother. Whoever heard the explosion and shots hadn't come to check them out. The only danger now was anyone still hiding in the church (no one had come out yet, but who knows) or a Class 3 that had come over here and also set up shop with a rifle somewhere down the street. Yeah, you get those types to - badass hunter/killer assassin mercs that like to challenge themselves by hunting NFA operatives.
I folded the bipod back into the foregrip, unscrewed the grip bolt and slid the foregrip off the picatinny rail It went back into the assault pack, I cleaned everything up, and left the apartment room after looking through the peephole.

This is the only time I ever do anything at night. I can't go into the church in the day without getting schwacked, but I can't travel in the city at night to get back to base.
If you wondered why Sleepies come out at night? You know that the mind is more imaginative in the dark. You see things that aren't there, even without Vostok. This just makes the Vostok effect all the more powerful at nighttime, which means that Class 2 vectors like to celebrate outside of their Congregations at night.
So I had to get into the church and sweep it for the Corporal before it got completely dark, and then hide in one of these surrounding buildings until morning, and then very quietly run like fuck until I was as far away from the church as possible.

I crouched behind a parked car opposite the street from the church. The long lasting candles inside were still flickering - the religious ones had probably gone out by now. It was already too dark to make out details or see much, which is why I crouched. If you want to see people in the dark, you stay low, so that you can see the horizon. That way anyone higher than you line of sight will silhouette themselves, and stand out. I couldn't see anyone here. Doesn't stop me from being terrified. Of the dark? No, not at the moment. Well, sort of. If you've never done a nighttime operation in enemy territory before, then let's set something straight. No matter how sure you are that there's no one around? You still feel like the moment you move someone will shoot you. Until the moment you put on a gas mask that is.
The M50 mask is what kept me from having a panic attack in the dark. Like I told you before, it cuts me off from the world. Exactly like huddling the covers. I couldn't hear anything that wasn't muffled, except my own raspy breath.
Remaining low, I duckwalked across the street, feeling the asphalt in front of me with my fingers and quietly picking aside pebbles in the way. On the opposite sidewalk now, I was behind the wrought iron fence that runs around the church yard. I didn't want to go around it and find the gate (chokepoints = you die), but I was feeling iffy about vaulting the fence, because then anyone around could see it. I was right about to do it when I nearly had a heart attack.

It stepped out from a car across the street. I wasn't looking at it, but my peripheral vision caught the movement. My stomach went somewhere up into my throat even as my head snapped to it and the M1911 came up. I twisted around, my foot scraped across the cement, and my finger took up the slack before I'd even realized I had done any of it.
This is kind of embarrassing. I'm well trained, you wouldn't believe me if I told you just how well trained. My mind shuts down in combat, and my brain does the combat right. I think before I act, and know before I shoot. Except this time, I fucked up. While my body was reacting, the only thing my stupid self was thinking was, How could I have missed an enemy that close to me?
And the gunshot exploded away from me and into blackness before I'd even aimed. The suppressor quieted the shot and reduced the muzzle flash, but in the midst of pure silence it sounded louder than a fucking jet engine. My night vision shattered into a mass of spots from the miniscule flash, and suddenly I was all alone in an eternal, black void.
I see nothing. I hear nothing. The only thing I can feel is my own terror, a ratchet thumping inside my chest, every click of it sending a crawling itch across my skin, and somewhere so very far away across the expanse of nothingness I knew that I had fucked up.
This lasted for a third of a second, the time it took for my vision to lock onto the target again after the muzzle flash had disorientated it. I should have gone prone and rolled under the car. I should have hid, I shouldhavehidIshouldhavehid and instead my thumb found the cap of the Surefire and a moment later a brilliant beam of white light flooded the street as pain shot through my eyeballs and my sights settled on the form of the target.

A black cat finished scurrying across the street and disappeared into a bush.

I almost cried.


I cut the light. My night vision was destroyed. I Closed my eyes. Breathed as loud as I could to drown out anything else. Slumped over against the fence and didn't move again. It was childlike, and it was the only thing I had. Just don't move and pretend you're not there. As if that will make it go away. A Class 2 from the church could have walked right up to me this very second and stabbed my with a pencil and I couldn't have stopped it. Because I had revealed my position, could no longer see anything, and was too scared to move.
A minute passed. Then two. I eventually stopped breathing so strongly as my heart rate slowly settled down. Only at night could this have happened. Only at night. Go back to day. Return to combat efficiency.

Tuna 1-3 Actual, Search and Rescue, US Marine Corps.
You are in a Class 2 AO.
You are looking for Cpl. Johnson.
Now do what you have to do, and then do the job. Now...
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. But the dog had an AK, and shot the fox. Then the dog went back to sleep. NOW FUCKING MOVE!

I opened my eyes and kick vaulted onto the fence. Instantly a sharp pain punched through my right index finger and I rolled over the top of the fence with a crunching of broken glass that scraped off my BDU before I dropped onto the wet grass on the other side, where I immediately went prone with the pistol up in both hands and scanned left, then right. There was nobody.
We are trained to mount obstacles by first feeling on top of them for trip wires and traps. I'd forgotten to do that. Mistake after mistake. God damn it. This just was not my night.
The yard is clear. My night vision was up and good again, and I could even make out the lumps that were dead bodies lying around me, and I could smell the pungent odor of ruptured intestines.
The walls of the church are white. I didn't want to stand up near them, so I lined myself up with the open doors by rolling sideways until I'd rolled off the grass and onto the thin cement road going to the church. I could see the inside illuminated by candlelight, but not anyone standing.

In goes the NFDD. It goes bang. There are four cobblestone stairs running up to the door. I jumped over them and entered the church gun up and ready.

In summary, I found the priest behind the altar. The rest of the building was empty. The priest was still wearing Orthodox robes, very colorful and lacy. Despite having seen his congregation blown away right outside his doors and having a flashbang go off behind him, I found the man standing with his arms raised high over his head, facing the far wall of the church, with the altar between me and him.
If he'd been standing there for 10 hours, I have to admit that's pretty fucking creepy. There are two rooms on either side of the altar. Clothing and changing room to the left, which I checked and found empty (the priest wasn't moving anywhere), but I closed and locked the backdoor that two others had run out of before. I could see their bodies in the grass from here. Back into the altar, I checked the door on the right, which was locked. The room is supposed to hold incense, candles, supplies, that kind of thing. I'll kick it in once done with this guy.
So without further ado I drew the giant, velvet curtains across the altar, and was fully about to push aside all the pretty holy objects sitting on it so I could have a seat before realizing that maybe this wouldn't aid negotiations.

"Ahem...eh...Father?"

It took a couple minutes before the conversation started. I kept a close watch on his hands the entire time. To my knowledge, their priests don't carry guns. They've got god on their side. I.E: they get others to do the dying for them.

"I'm looking for a black guy. Do you have one?"
"And what intent do you have with an innocent servant of the lord?"

The priest had a beautiful, melodic singing voice. Even when visibly pissed. Guy also had a cool beard. They never shave, so he had one that rivaled Rasputin, salt and pepper colored. He wore spectacles, and his head was adorned with a purple...I don't how to describe it. A cylindrical holy hat?

"Eh, are you talking about yourself? Or the black guy?"
"I would never turn over the lamb to the devil's slave."

He was annoyingly calm, and if you put aside the words, even sounded respectful. That's what annoys me most about Class 2s. They're not afraid of dying, and no matter what you say or present them with, they know that they're always right. So it makes interrogation kind of a bitch.

"Be gone from here. You are not worthy."
"Does that mean you know a black guy?"
"I said be gone."

He spoke with authority, of course. I wasn't sure if he actually thought I'd obey, or figured that he was going to end this with dignity.

"I'm a messenger from Gabriel."

Did I really think playing along would work? No. On the flip side though, these guys think snakes talk.

"Do not blaspheme. You serve the tempter, and I will not listen to your lies."

Well, at least he got the last bit right. At this point he stopped looking at me and his eyes snapped over my shoulder. I resisted the impulse to look. The gate was closed, so no one could have gone through the curtains without me hearing it.

"I serve no one but the lord. He uses us both for his will."

And now he went mad.

"Liar! Worm! False prophet! You stand claiming to come in the Lord's name, yet the angel he has sent to guide my way stands silent!"

...Would rote repetition work? I sure as hell didn't know any verses or prayers I could offer him.

"I am a messenger of Gabriel."

"As I have faith in the lord's path set before me, I have that in the devil's path beneath your feet. God sent me an Angel that stood silent! Refusing to aid your heretical claims!"

"Yes Father, I am that Angel."

Look, I'm not exactly good at lying to a hallucinating priest in the middle of a church in the middle of fucking night after killing a bunch of people. I'm a badass, but not that kind of badass. In fact this entire time I'd been resisting the strong urge to vomit, not because of what the man was saying, but because of the whole fucked up, surreal situation.

Next thing I knew he was waving a very big golden cross at me, and a waving a candlestick in the other hand.

"I will not hand another sheep from my flock to your butcher's hands! You wish to force his location from me before you slit my throat, so that he can follow me into death? No! Kill me, but I will not surrender another innocent life!"

And he charged me. Well, not directly at me. The altar was in the way. First he turned and ran around the altar, cross high in the air and candlestick held out in front of him like a lance (the candle was flung out during this time) and then charged me. Slowly, so as not to trip on his robes.
Could I have laughed? No. Really, no. I laugh and insult and make fun of them in normal times, but looking at this man, it somehow wasn't funny at all.
I stepped to the side and brought up my left hand to block the candlestick. He kept charging straight past me where he tripped over my extended leg and collapsed on his knees. His hat slipped forward over his forehead, and as he kneeled up (cross still raised on perfectly extended arm), he dropped the candlestick and fixed his hat like someone straightening their glasses.

Then he stared in front of him (I was behind him now) and shouted at the top of his lungs, "PURSUES FLEEING HEELS AND FALLS UPON THE DEVIL'S SERVANT!"

I looked at him. And then I shot him. Twice, in the back of the skull. I didn't look at the insides breaking apart on the carpet before he fell on top of it. I didn't look at his body again at all, and turned to the other door.

[E-Stalin [Orthrus]]

I'm not in the mood to joke at the moment, so bear with it. The door to the supply room was made of metal, as are all the doors in this church. I made sure to never stand in front of the thing, especially after a quick tap on it determined that it was hollow. Anyone armed from inside the room could punch a grouping straight through it if they wanted to.
Also, tempting as I was to try and look under the crack of the door, that's an even surer way to get killed, and in an undignified fashion. As it was, I went ahead and corrected what I should have done in the first place. Russian churches are vertical affairs, designed to make the occupants look up to the heavens instead of around them. In other words, this place had two stories, and I'd completely missed the staircase when I'd sweeped it. So yeah, the entire time I'd been in here, absolutely anyone could have walked down the stairs with a shotgun and done a Scarface. If that wasn't bad enough, the staircase led up to a rear balcony overlooking the church floor, for the choir. So anyone could have shot me without even coming down. Please, I'm embarrassed enough by this entire shitty night as it is, so just forget that part ever happened.
I had to resist throwing my second NFDD up there, which would have been more to offset my frustration than any actual tactics. Instead I swept up the stairs with the M1911. The red carpet was covered in burns and what looked suspiciously like ancient chewing gum, but it was very cushy. I stayed near the corners to avoid creaks, sliced the pie around the landing, and continued to the second floor.
When I was a kid, I used to sit on the stairs of these buildings, bored while the services dragged on. A few times I crept up to see what was up there, and found a mess of musical sheets and instruments. Now I expected it to hold provisions, or ammunition. Maybe bedding for extra members, or the Daywatch.
Instead I found the bodies.


There were six of them. One had either been exceptionally short or a young teen. The rest were indiscernible from eachother. The Old Testament traditionally executes criminals by stoning, but historically it never worked out that way. The Muslims tend to decapitate and eviscerate people, the Budhhists buried them alive, the Hindus strangled them, and the Christians had always preferred burning them to death.
The skeletons were black and streaked with gray where the flesh had been scraped off. Pyres don't burn hot enough to incinerate a human - just cook it. The ligaments are left intact for decorational purposes; namely hanging skeletons from the walls. I never saw what they did with the remaining tissue, but I presumed they burnt it in accordance with Old Testament sacrifices. I suddenly recalled a ceremonial shell and pouch of wheat on the altar downstairs. I'm not squeamish about these things, but I still tasted an involuntary rise of bile. I always do. Killing people is easy; seeing the insides is not. Also, I personally don't deal well with skeletons. Which made the next bit a little difficult.
Cpl. Johnson is 174 centimeters tall. I ignored the short one and estimated the rest up by eye, deciding on two that looked tall enough. I hadn't brought a measuring tape with me, a mistake I would have to correct next run. My Leatherman is 10cm folded. I tried to make like a surgeon and disconnect, but like I said, I don't like skeletons.
16 add ups later I went downstairs for air. Did you know what incompetently preserved bone smells like after a week? No? Well now you do: rot. They didn't do jack shit with the marrow, and were probably didn't care enough to deal with the smell. Oh, if you ever thought gas masks stop smells, they do the opposite. When the shit mixes in with your own sweat and breath it just creates something entirely new and more awful.
If you're wondering what happened to Jesus in these cults, see Matthew 5:17.

The door downstairs was still locked. I went back upstairs and ruled out the second skeleton. Back downstairs again. I could have checked the Priest for a key, but I didn't want to. I could have gotten out the shotgun, but I didn't want to hurt the kids inside the room.
Yeah, the kids. And women. They weren't upstairs, they weren't downstairs, they weren't outside, which left just one room left. Don't make the mistake of thinking that Class 2 Terminals are evil. Chivalry still exists in a religious world, and even in a misogynistic culture, the men are supposed to step up and protect the 'defenseless'.
I kicked in the door from an angle and shined the flashlight in. The infants didn't wake up. Some of the younger kids kept sleeping, while the older ones started and looked up at me from the floor or their mothers laps. There were seven of them, the women. I counted eighteen kids. No old people, they don't tend to survive long in this world.
That was all. They didn't scream, didn't say anything, just looked up at me with big eyes and waited. The older women's eyes were flat and empty. The younger ones were accusing. The kids were afraid. The children were curious. Black hair, blonde hair. Blue eyes, green eyes. The walls were stacked with yellow bags, some of which were being used as pillows. HUMRATS - humanitarian rations that the NFA had airdropped over the city during the first month. The same people who died now at the hand of people eating those rations. I don't know if the irony registered with them.
I swept the light left again, then right. They didn't move. I didn't see Johnson. I have absolutely no idea what I felt at the time. Looking back at it later, I couldn't really remember either. I turned away and left.


-------

Class 2 Terminals are not evil.
If you believe in god and Christ, if you think that they are good, and loving, and that religion is all about loving your fellow man, and doing the right thing, then know this: they all did too. Every one of them. Just like you, if I told them this would happen, they wouldn't have believed me. But I say again, know this: Milgram. Asch. Fallujah.
One-quarter of the human population will turn to this in times of crisis. Every single one of them would have denied the possibility before they did.
But Terminals are not evil. It's very easy to mistake a Terminal for a psychopath, or a retard. It's dangerously easy to dehumanize them, and turn them into monsters. When you can't communicate rationally with a person, when it's like you no longer speak the same languages, when you're enemies from sight, it's so god damned easy to dehumanize them. It's easy to assume that they hurt people because they enjoy it, or because they're too crazy to understand what they're doing.
But they're not insane. They're not stupid. They're still lucid, still normal human beings just as capable of thought as before. They still have all of their memories, they still remember watching cartoons as children and they still talk to eachother dinner and they sing lullabies to their children while rocking them to sleep. Every one of them went to a school, learned how to read, learned to count. Some of them had jobs, and posted on Facebook.
No, they aren't evil. They're just humans doing what humans do when driven into a corner. I always believed that when faced with pain, human beings can and will do terrible things. I was right.
No, they're not evil...
But they're not insane either. Don't trick yourself into believing that it's not their fault. I fell into that trap once before. Now I know better. Don't make the mistake of thinking that they aren't responsible for what they do, that Vostok somehow controls them against their will, that they can't stop themselves.
Never pity these people. Don't you ever dare.

------------------------------------------------


Rule 4:
If spotted or engaged in combat action with the enemy, it is imperative that you escape the area as soon as possible. Many people survive the combat period and then remain on scene to assess. This is extremely dangerous. If any Terminal has seen you, no matter how the situation developed, your chances of being rendered combat ineffective increase 73% after just one hour of remaining on site.
[Handwritten Note]:
Ask them how they came up with that number sometime. Better yet, ask them how the "73%" died. It wasn't from magic rats running to the scene and killing them - it's because they were already injured from the firefight and couldn't get themselves out of there before they bled out.
Maybe you should rephrase the entire spirit of this lesson as thus: don't get shot.

----

The adrenaline crash kicked in the moment I stepped outside. I don't react well to it. Killing is one of those things that gets easier with time, and at my current point killing in and of itself was easy, but building up to it and coming back from it aren't. I had to sit down underneath the hanging church bells, close my eyes, and hug me knees before I could get away from here. I could ignore the strong need to piss, but the shakes are completely involuntary. Huddling up under a pitch dark bush wouldn't have helped much, so I just kept my masked forehead pressed to my knees and listened to my breathing, as always. Like a drunk who knows he's drunk and sits still hoping that he'll start to sober up before he vomits.
No matter how good you get at doing this, it always sucks before you do. Or maybe that's just me. You ever played on a sports team when you were a little kid? And before every game you got this nervous, anxious, embarrassed feeling? That's what I get, only not out of self-consciousness but out of fear for having my face end up lying on the pavement ten meters away from the rest of me.

Unfortunately adrenaline is excreted in urine, which now leaves me in the uncomfortable position of either pissing myself or rolling over to piss against the wall of a church in the midst of several dead bodies. Oh, and in the dark. If you ever wanted to enlist because you thought warfare was a cool, glamorous, dignified affair, then get used to wiping your ass with sand and squeezing pus from your fingernails. All the little ridiculous bits of normal life apply here too. The absolutely worst part, and the most dangerous, is of course homesickness. Not in the way you think of it though, because when you're down low and miserable like this, it isn't thoughts of your family that occupy your head. The only thing people care about at times like this are food, hot showers, a comfortable bed, video games, a TV show. When you're inexperienced and get exposed to misery for the first time, it doesn't take much. Just a little bit of discomfort, a little exposure to the elements, and they turn into themselves the second they realize that stuff sucks and nobody is going to make it stop sucking, and that it's going to keep sucking. As you grow into a veteran, you learn to just endure it and have done, without any day-dreaming crap to get you killed.
When you start to push down on a human being, they show you what they really are, and what that is tends to be just another simple, predictable animal, with simple, pathetic desires and goals. Very few people are anything else, and oddly enough that kind of simple, meat in a bag quality is what makes better Deployment Operatives. The simpler they are, the safer they are. I guess that's another thing I don't qualify for.
Oh, one last quick hint: never do mission assessment while on-site. Do that crap back at your Bivvy site.

But back to reality, I pissed against the wall of the church as quietly as possible and got ready to go. The after run of adrenaline leaves me feeling very light-weight, a little numb. I won't say I feel tired, because I know it's an illusion. Leaves you feeling exhausted, but you're still just as good to go as you were before. I unscrewed the AAC Ti-Rant Suppressor from the M1911 and pocketed it. The M1911 went into the holster just behind my right hip, and I got up the M1A again. The Trijicon optic I had was illuminated by an LED. I didn't like the self-luminating tritium sights. So I flicked on the red light, brought the sling around my shoulder, and was about to go when I caught movement against the fence and froze. This time I didn't freak out nearly as much as before, because I could actually see what was moving. The same cat from before was slinking alongside the iron fence, moving laterally away from me. Either it hadn't seen me or didn't care (I used to like that about cats: they never care) but it had it's full attention on something ahead of it. Stalking mode. I followed it with my eyes and waited for it to get out of sight before moving, but before that happened the cat stopped, looked over it's shoulder, then through the fence, then in my direction, and then continued along its course. Only problem being that when it looked through the fence I followed it and saw the person in the street.

Open areas, including the middle of the street are well illuminated by the moon, but absolutely everything else is in total darkness. So either the guy was too far gone to care, or he wanted to be seen. I couldn't tell from his silhouette whether or not he was facing me; I would have to stand up to tell, which I couldn't do without being seen. He was on the other side of the fence, about twenty meters away from me, not moving. There was no possible way for him to see me from where I was.
I could have shot him, but I didn't. First, I couldn't tell if he was black or not (Ok, the odds of it being the Cpl. are zero, but a professional has rules), and secondly there was no need to give away my position for a random bloke, especially since I didn't know if he was alone.
Sounded reasonable at the time anyway. Now I wish I'd blown his head off.

There was a slash of movement from the silhouette in the street and a road flare roared to life in their hand. The street turned red, shafts of it floated between bars in the fence, and the last thing I saw before it happened was the flicker of the cat disappearing around the corner of the fence, and then the man threw the flare.
Oh I'm sorry, I thought that he threw it at me was self-evident. The man vanished into darkness in a millisecond, the flare now between him and my eyes, making it impossible for me to see him or shoot him. A lesser man than me might have remained in the bushes, might have waited under the hope that he hadn't actually been seen and this was a coincidence, or a trick to lure them from the hiding spot. Of course, I'm not a lesser man (or perhaps 'lesser' should be replaced with less intelligent), and before the flare had even landed in the church yard I was up on my feet and sprinting in the opposite direction.
The flare worked both ways - whoever threw it could not hear me move or see me before the flare actually landed. Once it hit the ground I was fucked, unless I could put distance between myself and the flare. That gave me two seconds of its arcing path for me to vanish, and vanish I did, with my heart in my throat, a re-whiplash of adrenaline almost making me vomit in my own mask, and terrified out of my fucking mind.

Humans do not scare me. Humans are weak, they are fragile, they are easy to kill. Whoever this fuck was, he wasn't behaving like a normal human. Which meant he had the drop on me, or was insane, and that shit scares me.
I sprinted along the wall of the church, the bushes and bells between me and the street, blocking any line of sight he might have had. He couldn't see me, I was too hurried to think about looking back at him. My mind had chosen an immediate course of action and I had taken it, which wasn't to engage but to evade.

I can stop with the dramatics now. I sprinted around the corner and then onto the streets and didn't stop running until I was in the darkness of an alleyway. I didn't hear anything else and didn't see the person again that night. I have no idea what happened or why. Also note that once in the alleyway I effectively fainted.


It's easy for anyone who's never passed out before to think that only pussies faint, particularly at silly things like the sight of blood. But here's a simple reality check for you, it's an involuntary response. You don't choose to just pass out because you can't take the horror. You feel fine, feel normal, except for some completely inexplicable reason your vision is turning black and your head feels like your sinuses are blocked.
I've executed people before (illegally, that is) without problems, but I still remember stabbing myself in the thumb as a teen and spending the next hour bedridden because I'd gray-out if I stood up or looked at the cut. It's not even consistent, your brain just malfunctions and decides that what you're seeing is a result of cerebral trauma. So it diverts blood to your core region (just like hypothermia) to keep your heart going and your brain suddenly loses pressure and you black out from oxygen deprivation. Next thing you know you're on the floor wondering what happened last night.
I also literally made all that up on the spot. Truth is I just completely freaked out from running blind on street-level in the dark while chased by flare-throwing freaks, so I barely stopped myself from puking in the mask right before I realized that I couldn't see anything out of it anymore and then I was gone. A man can only take so much in one awful night, and if you disagree, then fuck you.

--------------

BAEL Preliminary Report
Field Agents - recognizing early warning signs of Vostok infection
Incubation period: Between 2-4 weeks.
Amplification period: Inconsistent. Between one week to over seven months.

The primary symptoms of ongoing amplification are similar to Malaria, characterized by severe anemia. Resulting symptoms can include lethargy, hyperventilation, and tachycardia.
In final stages shortly before amplification ceases, there is commonly a final (sometimes two) cycle, during which up to 21% of corpuscles can be destroyed within a single hour. Immediate symptom is ultimately identical to Stage 2 Shock.
Patients commonly describe feeling extremely anxious, sick, and nauseous. Tachycardia > 100bpm. Patient may hyperventilate, panic, or lose consciousness. Capillary refill is delayed.
Final Vostok transcription of the patient brain can be interrupted and ultimately negated by shutting down higher cognitive function for approximately 19 hours. It should be noted that approximately 12% of cases will manifest as Class 2 InEx. However, it has been concluded that such inconsistencies are a result of failure to render the patient comatose before initial Transcription begins.

If with a patient known to have been In Exposure sometime in the past, immediately assume that any symptoms similar to those of hypovolemia are due to stages of Vostok amplification. It is imperative that the patient be transported to sick bay and quarantined. If in the field, initiate Bravo Charlie protocol.
Utilize VI-kit (Vikit) and administer auto-injectors in the numerical order as labeled. The Vikit is the most recent Bravo Charlie (Barbiturate Cocktail) system issued, and is expected to prevent Vostok Transcription in 92% of all cases, and 100% of all individuals qualified for deployment.


------------------

I woke up feeling absolutely terrible. For one thing, everything hurt. You ever work out, overexert yourself, and tomorrow you don't even want to move? Well take that, add in a few punches to the kidney and a straight kick to my liver and you'll know how I felt at the moment. It didn't help that my chest burned with every breath. I'd passed out still wearing the M50 mask. It's a miracle I'm even alive. It's not the worst way to go out, but suffocation inside a gas mask just because you fainted at the wrong time is definitely undignified. So obviously the first thing I did upon waking up was instantly bolt straight up as from a nightmare and claw at my face with sheer, animal panic until I finally got the damned thing off (some hairs along with it) and gasped for air. I vomited on the wall a moment later.
Bright side is that the sun was up. If it hadn't been? Well...I really don't like to think about it.
I'm going to stop feeling sorry for myself now, I'm sure it's gotten boring after all the fuckups. We all have bad days, this was mine.

Operational Journal: Salt
Deployment: 73 hours
InEx: Not Known
Camp area: St. Michael's Hospital
Notes - Established recon of Ascension Church Congregation. No sign of target.
At this point have lost track of target. Failure to reacquire.
Designate target as unrecoverable.
Will sweep area after recovery at base camp and signal mission failure.

Still no direct contact with enemy or any other individuals.


------------------------------------------------

Date and Time unknown
Midday

The bullet impact felt like being punched. It smacked through the meat of my thigh, and I felt the slap of it, and that was it. There was no pain at all, but an extremely agitating numbness shot down my shin, exactly like your funny-bone being smacked. The sound of the gunshot wasn't the usual ear-ringing 'crack' but a loud knock, like someone kicking a door.
My leg instantly gave out from under me and I was on the ground without remembering falling over. The leg felt very hot, very wet, and I knee I was bleeding all over it. My mind was still clear, still focused, adrenaline was keeping the pain and fear down, letting me respond almost instantly.
I rolled over onto my side, got the pistol back up, and fired a rapid burst in the general direction of the doorway without aiming. The bullets punched straight through the plaster of the apartment walls with puffs of gray dust. I didn't know if I hit him or not, he wasn't standing in the doorway anymore. I couldn't have heard him scream if I hit him either, these shots were ear-splittingly loud and my hearing was immediatelly muted.
With the doorway suppressed, I rolled off the carpet and kept on rolling straight into the kitchen, taking me out of the line of fire from the front door and behind the kitchen counter instead, where I lay on my side with the pistol up at the door and the rest of my body behind the counter.
Nothing. No sound, no movement, no more gunshots. I realized how dry my throat felt, and stopped panting long enough to swallow. I needed to look at my leg, but was afraid to look away from the doorway. A swipe across the thigh came up red with blood, and that terrible, god-awful realization that you were injured finally hit me., along with all the fear that comes with it. Was I bleeding out? Was my bone shattered? Would I walk after this? Christ oh shit oh shit oh SHIT!
"...kill you."
I barely heard the voice over the inner sound of my rapid breathing, and suddenly with a 'pop' my hearing returned with a slight ringing to it.
"I said, that could have been a slug in your chest just now. I'm not trying to kill you!"
He was still there. Fuck, that same asshole's voice, low and whiny, like a teenager with a broken voice. I'd gone over three fucking blocks to get away from this guy and he was still coming and how he'd just fucking shot me and why oh why what the fuck did he want!?
"I can't help you if you don't help me mate, let down the sidearm, let me talk to yo-"
I instantly put another two bullets through the wall by the door and the frame disappeared in another cloud of plaster dust. Anything he might have said after that was muted by the gunshots. Now, I needed just a second to think, to come up with a plan, something. He knew that I had the door covered, he wouldn't try to go through it. I was safe enough to think for now. He'd shot me in the leg, that was probably chance. Nobody aims for the legs, it's nearly impossible to hit them, and even if you do, you're still killing the man. The chances of surviving a leg-shot without medical aid are next to none. He was gunning for me, probably had been aiming for my fucking pelvis.
That door was the only way into the apartment. I was three stories up. There was no way out. Kill him. That was the only remaining option. I was cornered in and wounded, I couldn't escape, so I had to confront. Conserve ammo, wait for the opportunity, and shoot him. I undid the buckle on my last magazine pouch. Fifteen rounds there, ten left in the current mag.
"...can...all day buddy."
Just hearing that fucking voice, still talking, still calm made me want to rip his throat out. As if we were buddies, like he was on top of the situation and I wasn't. Of course you can wait all day motherfucker, given the fact that I'll bleed out in another ten minutes and there's nothing stopping you. Well try this then.
I fired one more bullet at the door and started crawling out from behind the counter, back towards the living room. The wall I was moving toward had two windows set in it, the only way out other than the door. But the door was set in the same corner as that wall, so when I got to the windows I'd be exposed to the entire hallway. So the only thing left for it was suppression, keep shooting at the door until I could get out of the window.
I fired two more rounds and kept moving. My leg was still ok, still numb but not in crippling pain. I could get some sensation out of it, maybe the bullet had just hit the meat, maybe the bone was ok...one more bullet through the wall and I was halfway across the room, when he shot me again.
I didn't quite see it at first, one moment the window was empty and the next his outlined frame was in it. In the moment it took me to look away from the door and at the window, my brain just barely processed what must of happened. He'd gone out the window in the hallway, and climbed along the outside wall to pull himself up in front of my windows. Then the shotgun boomed again and I screamed as pain bounced off my shoulder and my entire arm lost all sensation, leaving the roiling, seething agony of a glowing hot poker embedded in my arm. The M9 clattered across the floor in front of me as I involuntarily flipped onto my back, clutching at my collarbone, and before I knew anything else I felt hands grabbing me under the armpits and hauling me up to sit against the counter. I didn't understand what was going on, until a slap to the face brought another adrenaline pulse of anger and snapped me back to reality. My arms were bound behind my back, and he was crouching in front of me, too far away for me to touch him.

"Hey, hey! Stop screaming, you're all right. You're fine dude, relax!"

The man in front of me was wearing a uniform, the white and gray squares of urban MARPAT. His face was young and clean shaven, a little gaunt, with a short, regulation haircut. More than anything about him, the first thing I noticed was how thin he looked. Skinny, gaunt, limber. The second thing was that he looked sick as a dog. His eyes were red, and the skin around his nose was inflamed and raw. This was the bitch who'd chased me across the city? Out of all the ways to die, this cocksucker had to be the one to effectively kill me? Fuck you, I didn't deserve to go out to a skinny little white-boy with the flu. Then he spoke again, with the same, hateful scratchy voice,

"My name is Salt. United States Search and Rescue. I'm taking you home."

I stared at him, my breathing raspy and thin, and then spat. Or tried to anyway, my mouth was too dry.
"Fuck...you."

I let my head hang down, and he grabbed my chin and brought it up again. "White Ale, White Ale, White Ale. You are Corporal Johnson, United States Deep Recon, Social Security *data removed*. You are experiencing Terminal InEx. I am returning you to FOF 1 for debriefing and quarantine as per protocol under RUCMJ Article 72. You are to comply with all following orders: there are no extenuating circumstances and no applicable situation which renders following orders irrelevant.

I wasn't paying attention, numbly looking at my bloody leg instead. "You shot me."

He forced my to look at him again, which was really, really pissing me off. He was holding something in his hand, a black square. "You are Class 1 Terminal, Code Red, violent. I have utilized less than lethal force to subdue you as in accordance with articl-"

"Fuck you! I'm fucking bleeding man, I'm going here."

Without warning he slapped his hand against my thigh and clawed his open fingers over the trousers. It didn't hurt. His hand came up bloody.

"What the hell are-"

He interrupted me, holding his open bloody hand out in front of me and pointing at the thigh.
"Look at it."

I looked. It was completely soaked in red, and his rake had swept away the blood pooled in the folds.

"Where's the bleeding, Corporal?"

I looked up, he grabbed my head and forced it down again. He was full of shit. The entire leg was crimson. "Everywhere, asshole!"

"I didn't say blood. I said bleeding. Where is it?"

He raked his hand across the thigh again. This time no blood was swept away. The cloth was just soaked in it, but there were no pools. When you rake a wound you find out where the entrance wound is, your fingers catch on the hole in the clothing and in the moment where blood is swept off you can see where it's leaking from. There was nothing. My head was hurting.

He held his perfectly scarlet hand up in front of me again, "Look at your leg. Look at me. There is no blood. Do you understand? You were shot with a beanbag projectile, it did not penetrate. You are not bleeding. Do you understand?"

-----------------------------


Standardized Securing of Severe InEx, or SSSI (Slap Some Sense Into the bitch), usually doesn't work. The whole idea is that if you can calm down an InEx patient long enough you can then evac them from the quarantine zone without having the whole complication of carrying a restrainted, struggling psychopath up five flights of stairs.
The only problem with trying to use childish psychology on a guy who isn't quite sure that you'e really isn't what you'd expect it to be: it's that by the time you can actually restrain them and get them to shut up, they'll have already created enough noise to bring over any local Stalkers (The one's who become serial killers with talking puppies on their shoulders).
This case was no exception, considering the fucker had just emptied a mag of bullets in every direction.

Corporal Johnson (Soon to be Patient 2117), however, was unusually cooperative. He was pretty fucked up to be sure, his dark skin loked ashen, his eyes were bloodshot, wide, and frightened, and there was a film of dried saliva around his lips. Countless scratches and bruises marked his arms, and there were several tears in his clothing. At least two fingers on his right hand were broken, but he didn't even seem to notice it.
These were all classic traits of Class 1 InEx: they look like drug addicts. Crazed, starved, dehydrated, and terrified. When healthy I might have taken him for a body-builder, but now the muscle mass was breaking down under his skin and I my mind again had an unpleasasnt lurch of nausea as I was reminded of what he really was: a bag of meat hanging off bones. Everything he ever had been or could be, all the dignity, all the beliefs, all the faith, the hope, the love, the knowledge he had learned, the things he had done, all of it was gone, and all it took was a week of pressure to turn him into this quivering sack of disintegrating pork.
I did tell you why I don't like skeletons, right?

I kept my "here to help you" poker face on and continued to speak to him in the same droning monologue voice, "You're are going to come with me now. I am going to take you to the roof of this building and CASEVAC you. If you do not cooperate I will utilize force and transport you regardless. Do you understand that?"

He wasn't listening. He was alert, but wasn't orientated to person, place, time, and event. I didn't care about the last three, but I needed him to pay attention to me. All he had to do was pay attention to me, nothing else, and he would get back home safe and sound. The moment you let these people's attention wander, they shift priority of action from working with you to something else, and that never ends well.
I slapped him. You can't use force against Class 3s, but it can be effective against Class 1s. Their brains process enemies as trying to hurt them, but if you hit them without actually continuing to attack, then they register as you wanting something from them, which is something they can anchor onto as an ally. Not a friend, really, but not a monster horde either.
He responded to it, his eyes snapped away from the window and back to me. I could see him focus and actually look at me instead of just through me. Good, I didn't need any thousand-yard stares right now. We had about eight minutes before any Stalker found us if she came snooping about (For some reason, the serial killer ones are more often female) and it would take at least 15 for a Helo to get out here.
On top of that, I still had to recover his Data Package, any and all mission objectives he had acquired, be they recon or actual HVTs, I had to salvage what he'd managed to obtain before going MIA. InExs almost never have their Packages on their persons, so that always gives me 15 minutes to try and force the location out of them. Did they dump their mission gear at their base-site? Did they leave it hidden somewhere? Did they lose it?
Unfortunately, now that I had his attention, he went straight to trying to convince me that we had othe priorities.

"Listen to me," he wheezed out, and I cut him off immediatelly.

"There are no extentuating circumstances that may render your orders secondary or invalid. Do not speak, do not deviate. Now stand up."

He continued talking right on over me. I almost hit him again, but now that he was focused on me that would have been a mistake. I couldn't just pick him up and push him around either, all it would take was for him to get one good kick into my kneecap and we were both fucked.
He continued to gasp out words with the urgency of having the most important thing in the world to tell me,
"They have a copy. I couldn't destroy the Package,"

I froze.
"You have to find Pikachu and destroy it, or disable Raichu before they get to it."

Damn. My hopes had gone up for a second, but he was still at rock bottom.

"We will. You can brief a strike team on base and we'll execute. Now you have to stand up and move with me so we can do that, do you understand?"

Out all the responses I might have expected to that statement, his reaction was not one of them.
"No! You don't undertstand, NFA needs Raichu. They don't have my Package, but the Mormons do! I can't destroy the Package, but you can't give it to NFA either."

Shit. I didn't want him to explain, I needed him to move. I hadn't realized that by trying to appease him he'd just ramble on. God damn it man, you have sixty seconds, sixty seconds before I do what I should have done two minute ago and taser your ass into oblivion. I'll drag your black ass upstairs if you make me.

"The PALs are in my blouse. But the Mormons have them too. My mission log is buried under my base-site. They have Pikachu, but NFA knows where Raichu is. You have to hit both, move Raichu,"

Twenty seconds, please just fucking finish already. He was visibly becoming more and more agitated. I'd seen people tell me that Simba from the Lion King was dying, and I had to go give him medical attention with the exact same level of urgency this guy had.

"and recover Pikachu. If you get it, then you can destroy both, do you understand that?"

I very nearly made a sarcastic remark, just barely stopping myself. "Yes, I understand you, I'll do that, I swear it, but you have to move with me now, or I'm going to render you unconciousness. "

Yes, I gave up. He of course, became instantly agitated, but once again he surprised me - he didn't become violent. Instead he was pleading, "NO! You don't understand! This IS an extenuating circumstance. I know I'm infected, I know I'm insane, but that was my MISSION! Don't you get it? This is what I was sent in to do!
The PALs are in my blouse. Take them out."

I pulled out the stun-gun, and he instantly screamed at the top of his lungs, "I'll cooperate, just take them! Take them and I'll go!"

For fuck's sake, I slide the safety cap from the prongs and pressed it against his neck. His eyes went wider than a crazed cows at this, but I didn't punch it yet - it was just insurance. If he tried to bull-charge me from the floor I could stun him before he ran me over.
With the prongs pressed to his neck I reached my support hand through his unbuttoned ACUs and grasped something thin and hard, damp with sweat. I pulled out a small, plastic, red folder sealed all the way around with a band of paper marked in plain black letters, "Top Secret".

"It's all up to you now."

The moment the words left his lips, the man exploded. Not literally, of course, but from my perspective it may as fucking well have been. He burst from his sitting position like a psychotic bull, and the stun-gun left his neck a millisecond before I could fire it. His sheer body weight and momentum threw me over my ass and I somersaulted backwards as he charged over me, my right hand already drawing my sidearm, and in that quarter-second of time when he'd charged past me I'd rolled over to follow him with my eyes, and watched him charge straight out the windowframe.
There was no breaking glass, no sound, nothing. He just dived through it without a trace of feedback and vanished.

I heard his body impact on a car three stories below us.

I would be lying if I said that I was sorry. The death of a fellow countryman and professional didn't really effect me on any of the levels in the same area as grief. What I actually felt was a blur of rapid sensations replacing eachother just as one finished forming. Initially there was the surprised, frusturated anger of putting your opponent in a Stalemate without having realized it. That was immediatelly replaced by the grudging fear you feel just after you find yourself hurtling off a cliff edge, wondering if you'll survive or not but knowing damned well that it's gonna hurt. Once that popped up it was joined by our good old friend: dumb, animal shock, where you see something and your backstabbing brain politely informs you that it's not real, despite the fact that it's two seconds away from running you over.
This little cocktail was ultimately concluded by petty anger. Yeah, I just watched a man die in front of me and my only real reaction was feeling slighted. You would too. It's not a reaction of badasses, but the response of jaded men who've had it happen too many times to care anymore, and to be more specific, men who not only just had their paycheck cut, but now had to explain to a board how they did everything absolutely right and in the end got fucked over by the psychotic asshole they were trying to save. Thus, the random out of the blue stalemate analogy. Only this felt more like being stealthily checkmated by an ultimately inferior player.
So my standard course of action was to get up with enough profanity to curl a fox's ass hair, mostly directed at myself, dump everything I could find of the man (handgun, partially empty magazine, red folder), and get the hell out of dodge.
If you're having difficult understanding exactly why I just got fucked sideways by a vibrating cactus smeared in wasabi, then here's another friendly tip for staying alive long enough to see a full moon in this town: You make noise, you die. I mentioned them already, but to go into a bit more detail, there's all sorts of Class 3 Terminals. At least 558 varying sub-types have been categorized based on psychologist magic, but out of those groups there's a few very broad categories: the Suicides, the Hobos, the Messiahs, and my current problem - Stalkers. If the hairs aren't standing up on your neck right now, then you've never met one of those deranged, Solid Snake psychotic fucks before. Their sole entertainment and goal in life is to find things and kill them. I like to think that they simply get off on it, but the real reasons behind it are too varied and complex for me to bother mentioning. The real problem is that for some reason the vast majority of Stalkers (and note that they're a small minority out of InExs) tend to be complete military badasses. They're trained, they're intelligent, and they're competent. The reason for that is because they're just like me; former DeRP and SAR members. They have our equipment, and know the way we work and think.
On average you've got between five to eight minutes to displace after your position is given away before you get a Stalker sitting in the building opposite you with a rifle. The only places they avoid are Congregations, and get this, it's because they find killing too many people at once too spoil the sport. Trust me, it's impossible to describe just how frightening those paramilitary fucks really are. Take my word for it.

Because of that, I couldn't go outside to check Johnson's body, or even determine if he was still alive or not. I couldn't go outside at all in fact. My options were to go into the sewers (fuck that shit) or hole up inside this building and wait until nightfall (triple fuck that shit). One was suicide on par with wading through a leaking nuclear reactor room. The other was like hiding under the bed from Michael Myers. Because once a Stalker sets up in an area, he does not leave. They don't have home-bases, they don't make nests. They keep their livings in their packs, set up shop, and wait for you. If they get tired waiting, they start tracking you, usually...you guessed it, at night.
Tell me, after everything you've figured out about me, how well do you think I would deal with an armed psychopath attacking me in a pitch black building? I wouldn't bet on me as the winning party either.
This also means that I cannot go up to the roof to launch the signal flares I need to, so I can't inform SAR that I've located the target (and that he's gone Kenny), which means if I'm dead tomorrow then after three more days they'll chalk it up as another MIA, cordone off a 5km grid and cease all operations in that zone lest they lose anymore men. Yes, I'm this fucked because one random asshole decided that he thought it was a nice idea to listen to the voices in his head only after rescue shows up. So my only real hope at the moment is that more than one Stalker shows up (Yes, they always show up) and they duke it out with eachother.

Immediate evasion steps: assess the environment. I was three stories up in an unsecured apartment complex. The windows were partially covered by curtains, but had no glass. Anyone could see through them with optics, so before doing anything else I ducked down and rolled myself over to the window-side wall, so I could see down the length of the hallway. If anyone came up through the stairwell on this side of the complex, I'd have the drop on them.
Once the immediate environment is secure, take inventory. I was carrying an assault load, leaving me with a little under five kilos of water and one MRE. That'd last between 24-30 hours.
My armament extended to all ranges I might come across, so I had no short comings there. I wasn't carrying any anti-personelle devices, so there was no way to secure myself in a room without keeping watch.
Advantages - the enemy almost certainly did not know where I specifically was. At most they would be in the same square klick, and would choose a vantage point that let them cover an L-shape. They'd be at an intersection at the corner of the area they determined the gunshots to have come from. This left me with pretty much a 50/50 chance of choosing a street without being seen. So I could leave this building and risk being spotted, turning this into a escape and evasion, or hole up here and standby until darkness. So all it comes down to now is whether or not I'm willing to gamble my abilities against another man's when they're waiting for me.
I'm not. So I let chance decide my option for me by simply checking out one important factor: was the ground floor still intact or not?
---

I don't have a map of the sewers. I don't know where the nearest exit will be or if I'll be able to reach it. What I do know is that I've got two filters on me, one of which is already partially used. A fresh filter lasts 20 minutes. Theoretically, more than enough. In practice, Murphy's law.
I rubbed the anti-fog wipe against the lens of the mask and then pulled it over my head, cinching down the individual straps before covering the filters and inhaling to check the seal. Seal was good. I rotated the bezel on my wristwatch for 19 minutes, then pulled the sleeve over it again. This shit burns against the skin, like a hotsauce. You usually feel it against the back of your neck and your wrists the most, where your cuffs and collar directly contact your skin enough to trap the gases in your sweat.
I could see the large diameter sewage pipe below me, crushed under a beam from the collapsed laundry room floor. Shimmering gases leaked from the open end like heat waves, and I a very lucid memory of rotten eggs.
No, it's not shit. This isn't a sanitary sewer I'm talking about. It was a storm drain. It was radioactive. It was also filled with SO2 and cyanide. Where's that shit come from you wonder? Us. Oddly enough it turns out that killing an entire city by gassing the fuck out of it is a lot more difficult than you'd think. After three shellings the city population remained intact (what was left of it anyway) and the NFA was incapable of manufacturing any proper chemical agents. As for the radiation, that's the rain-water run off, which of course comes from the oceans. Yeah, you don't enjoy the rain in this city.
If I couldn't find an opening before the drain opened up into the harbor, I was fucked. If you just realized that I'm doing this insanity to avoid taking on just one or two guys with rifles, even after the fact that I massacred some thirty odd people just a couple days ago, then by now you realize just how low your survival odds are of dealing with Stalkers.
I shrugged off my backpack, slung the rifle around my back, cracked a green cyalume, and jumped down on top of the pipe. It reverberated with a hollow clang, and I could feel the vibration of running water through my feet, like holding onto a running gasoline hose. I vaulted down over the broken edge, crouched, and waved the chem-light in front of me. My boots were in muddy water now, and I could feel the gas currents against my fingers. There were no spiderwebs, no gnats or mosquitoes, nothing. Just pitch black tunnel with a few inches of water at the base.

Fuck my life.

[E-Stalin [Orthrus]]

I was approximately two hundred meters down the tunnel when somebody shot me in the back. There's a general rule of thumb with being shot: if it hurts, you're going to be ok. If you just feel a light slap followed by numbness and confusion, you're fucked. Following that logic I felt healthier than I'd ever felt in my life.
I don't recall exactly what I said in the immediate seconds afterward, but it was in Russian and it was very undignified, namely because my voice had turned to a pitch on par with a pubescent boy in a garage band. To be fair, I don't think you'd sound any cooler in my position.
The immediate reaction was not a good one. I panicked, felt a surge of fear and confusion, and just scrabbled at my lower spine in that bizarre reaction humans have where we try to feel our wounds. Needless to say I'd already fallen flat by this point, which had the unfortunate effect of dunking my right-side mask filter into the water and rendered it useless. The good part was that I also dropped the cyalume into the water and fell on top of it, leaving my in pitch blackness.
There was no hazard assessment going on during this period, so I didn't realize at the time that dropping that illume probably saved my life, but I have little doubt that if I'd remained backlit by it then putting a second bullet in my would have been easy.
I very vividly remember something scratching my left cheek at this point, which makes no sense but I remember feeling it. It was specifically that scratch that triggered acute combat reaction and I got a grip on myself. The pain was overwhelming agony, so I just ignored it. The knowledge that I was injured was terrifying, so I rationalized it. I was wearing an MTV with SAPI inserts. There was no fucking way that bullet had penetrated. I was feeling the pain from blunt-truma, not an actual gunshot wound. I was going to be fine, so deal with the task at hand.
With that out of the way I rolled over supine, got the rifle to my shoulder, and aimed all the way down the tunnel, not bothering with eye-relief or focus at first but just getting the general direction. I already knew that there was daylight on that end - the shooter would be backlit. Just find the silohette and then acquire the target proper. It took me a few seconds to realize there was nobody there. The entrance was 200 meters away, a very small white circle. My objective lens was obscured by droplets of water, but with the magnification I could still distinctly make out the opening I'd entered from and there was nothing there. I couldn't see if the water there was rippling or not.
I waited, trying and failing to slow down my breathing. One of my filters was soaked, and breathing through it was like sucking on a straw. My mask was fogging with sweat, and visibility through the optic was getting more and more difficult. I stretched my left hand forward, inciting a burst of pain from my lower back, and pulled off the hexagonal lens cover and wiped off the water drops with my thumb. I knew that it would only smear them and leave the scope blurry, but it was still better than solid drops. I then peeled off the electrical tape I'd covered the fiber-optic with and dropped it in the water. The inverted chevron immediately glowed a brighter red and I resumed aiming down the tunnel, elbows supported on my ribs, my head resting against my backpack.
Think, think, had I felt a pressure wave when the shot was fired? The answer meant everything. Whether I'd felt that wave or not would determine if the shooter had been at the entrance or actually inside the tunnel. Was he past the entrance? If he was then it was impossible for me to see him - the light was between me and him, there was no way for me to burn through it. He would have been able to see me because of my illume, but not the other way around. Was he in front of the entrance? Then he had to be prone, but the water was not that deep, so I still should have been able to see him. So he'd either taken a potshot at me from the entrance and then gotten back out, or was behind the entrance waiting for another shot. I couldn't remember if I'd felt a pressure wave or not. Fucking useless.
The water soaking into my clothes was cold, and the waves I'd caused lapped at my shoulder blades. I glanced down at my left wrist and noted the luminous dial of the watch in relation to the bezel: 11 minutes.
If the shooter was gone, then I was ok to move, but if he was down here with me then he had to be wearing a mask too, and if he was then he had no more than two minutes on my own time. I had two spare filter sets left. He was unlikely to have any. I could sit here until change-over and then wait for him to do the same. I might not be able to see him, but in this tunnel I sure as hell would hear it.
And then the obvious finally hit me. Stalker. He wasn't gone. He was waiting. He was waiting for me to run out of filter-time or bleed-out from the gunshot wound. There was no way to win this by engaging. I had to move first. I glanced at my watch again - 7 minutes. I let the rifle rest on my stomach and very gently reached into the water to pick out the cyalume and then quickly threw it as far down the tunnel as I could, placing the light source between me and the entrance. The gaseous haze turned a ghastly green and blotted out everything behind it, like smoke in a laser. The off-white scum of still-water and yellowed sulfur swirled around it.

Final assessment and I hauled the backpack over onto my stomach and started slowly crawling backwards, doing my best to splash as little as possible. After this amount of time my heart-rate had settled and breathing had calmed. Acute combat reaction had begun to dissipate and general discomfort started to bleed in around the edges. Little, trivial things that accumulate into general misery. Sensation of wet clothing against the skin? Check. Wet footwear? Check. Cold, clammy, claustrophobic? Check. Burning on the wrists and neck from sulfuric gases? Check.
Alone in the fucking dark? God damn it.
When I got out of this tunnel my bloody boots and would be soaked and I'd have to slog back to the roof-lines like a snowman in summer. Makes me wonder what it's like to have wet fur. Get soaked once, roll over, and now you're not just a sugar cookie but there's sand trapped in your coat, and that's not going anywhere without a thorough brushing. If being wet and a sugar cookie irritates me this much then San Diego's probably Renamon's hell.

It was around that point that I realized I'd lost my damned mind. Or to be more specific, I was going into grey-out from oxygen deprivation. A glance around the backpack and the green glow at the end of the tunnel was now a hazy taupe with a blurred corona around it. Huh...was I suffocating? I didn't seem like that. Hold on a sec, try to inhale...and yup, it felt like I was breathing through a coffee straw.
Well fuck. How could I have missed that? I still had fifteen minutes left. Glance at the watch and...nope, six minutes. But still six minutes, why the hell was I wheezing like a dog sucking on a baccy pipe?

"Swap mask filters."

Oh, right, I was only using one filter. The other was soaked through, so the second one was taking in the full chemical content and therefore cut the deadline by-

"Shut up."

Ok.

"Now, swap mask filters."

Ok.

---

I'm not quite sure whether I passed out or not before succeeding in switching filters. Either way my recollection of the exact sequence of events is pretty much out of sync. I know that I reorientated myself several hundred meters away from where I'd been. What happened during that time period is blank. I must have gotten shot again though, because there was a crushing pain over my sternum and after raking it I found a tiny hole in the outer material. I didn't respond to this appropriately but simply kept crawling. I was still disorientated to address the situation properly. There really was no way of telling if the shooter was still in the tunnel behind me or not, and I didn't think of glassing it again.
As it was, I'd also lost my pace count, which meant I had no idea how far I'd gone, so I was effectively lost. Ultimately I gave up on the original plan (I didn't even remember it, and had no light with which to read my logbook) and just reached the nearest manhole, fired a single shot down the tunnel, and climbed out.

------------------------------

Rule 5: Never remove all of your gear no matter what the situation. It is tempting to fully hygiene and relax at campsites, but you must never let yourself fall into complacency. Keep your weapons and ammunition on your person at all times. Hygiene with your gear still on. When exchanging socks, keep one boot on your person.
A naked operator is a dead operator.

[Handwritten Note] Whoever wrote that shit's never been outside the wire.

I got back to my base at 13:21, four hours slower than it normally would have taken me. The sulfur remained on my clothes well after the water had evaporated, leaving me covered in a pungent, dull-yellow dust. Every time I brushed against something a small puff of it would burn my nose, so I'd wrapped a shemagh around my lower face.
I knew that I wasn't actually shot because I'd have certainly bled out by now, but it sure as hell felt like it. My lower back was extremely resistant to straightening, and I carried my gear home (oh look, you're calling it home now. Bad sign.) like a hunchback. The impact over my chest stopped me from taking full breaths, and all in all I was feeling pretty miserable. That misery was only multiplied when I tried to suck some water from the camelbak without wiping off the bite-valve and ended up spluttering the sulfur-scum taste back out of my mouth. It's seriously those little details that can cause most men to just break down and drown in self-pity. Have I told you about this before already? I don't remember.
Getting back home though just may be the most relieving thing I can imagine. The most valuable thing it provides is time. I have all the time I need to take care of myself now, to drink water, reload, clean myself up, clean my guns and gear up, and just fix me. It's probably what a vehicle feels like when driven into maintenance, or what a pokemon feels like in its little pokeball.
I almost didn't clear my camp properly when I got back. Resisting the urge to just drop my pack and flop down was pretty difficult, but I managed to resist it now through mental fortitude but by simply telling myself that the Lucky Strikes were in my sleeping bag, and therefore I had to walk all the way over there to get them and that I may as well keep my pistol up while doing it. The room was empty, nothing had been touched (that I could notice anyway), and the door to the hallway was still secured and blacked out. The M18A1 claymore mine I'd set by the doorway was still there, and I checked the anchor-point tension to make sure that nothing was working its way out.
With all that done, I finally unslung my rifle and undid my pack straps, letting the assault pack just fall off my back and onto the floor with a wet slap. Finally, mercifully, I stepped into my tarped off corner and sat down by the ghetto-bed. I took my boots off first, leaning forward very gingerly, and unbloused my trousers. The green boot-bands were now yellow-green. I stuffed them into my right boot, peeled off the moist socks and threw them into the corner. The fresh air around my wrinkled feet was an indescribable. I dried them out with a rag and massaged between the toes a little bit. My feet looked like I was a grunt in Vietnam: trenchfoot and peeling blisters. Of course, it was just the small proportion of sulfuric acids and byproducts in the water that had fucked up my feet so quickly. I washed them off with some water from a canteen and wrapped them up in a bandage. Gloves off, headwear off, scarf off.
It was around this moment that I noticed the laceration under my left eye. I suddenly recalled feeling that scratch in the tunnel, the surprise of it shocking me from going into Condition Black. I ran my fingertips across it, quite confused. There were two parallel lacerations running horizontally from just the inner corner of the eye to just over the cheekbone, where they curved downward before fading. It didn't feel deep, but ached strongly with any contact. I scratched my beard stubble for a few moments as I thought about it, and got out my shaving kit for a look.
With the mirror I could see that they weren't deep at all, but started as puncture points, grew thicker towards the middle, and then thinned out as they faded. Just like a claw mark. My entire left cheek was covered in dried streaks of smeared blood. It must have been running down my face the whole time before coagulating, and I hadn't even noticed it. Pulling it out I saw dark brown blood stains on my shirt collar where it had soaked in.
Huh. The inside of my gas mask was rubber; gas masks didn't have sharp edges on the inside. I didn't even need to pick it up and look inside to check. This was pretty odd. I might have contemplated it further but with a bit of movement my back protested with another burst of pain, and I put the issue of the cuts aside.
Finally I got to the main issue, which I'd been stalling from dealing with by working on my feet. it was time to drop the body armor and check the wounds. I think I've told you before that I'm not bothered by blood and gore, but seeing holes in my just makes me want to pass out. I was hoping for nothing more than bruises as I undid the belt and threw off the armored vest, and of course was completely wrong. Before I even took off my cammies I could see that whatever bullet had hit me had penetrated through the inside of the vest. There a mix of bright gray and copper fragments around a ragged hole in the cordura, much larger than the entry hole on the other side. With the blouse off I finally revealed exactly why I felt like my chest was in a vise. The penatrator had fragmented coming out of the SAPI plate and those fragments had punched into my sternum. There was a massive, fist sized hematoma over the center of my chest and several black streaks in a star-shape over my breastbone where the fragments had punched through the skin and bounced off the sternum itself. If the bullet had come out somewhere lower or around the ribs those fragments could probably have penetrated into my thoracic cavity and I'd be dying already. It was ironic - a shot to the sternal arch is the perfect anatomical point of impact for a chest shot, and it had likely saved my life. Instead of going through soft tissue, the fragments had maintained enough energy to scrape my sternum a bit but not fracture it. I gingerly ran a finger around the pieces of steel (only a steel penetrator could have gone through that armor) under my skin, like large splinters, and briefly thought about how to remove them without excising a large patch of skin. Then I realized that I almost certainly should have left the wound alone, but the irrational part of my mind said fuck that. I didn't want to walk around with bullet splinters. I'd dig them out sometime this afternoon.
A shaving mirror around my back revealed the exact same thing over my pelvis. The impact had spread out directly over my sacrum. Had it gone through it would have shattered my lower spine and pelvis, crippling me and severing one or both Iliac arteries. The shooter would have simply waited for me to bleed out or pass out from the pain before finishing me off. Christ I was lucky - I'd been squatting and leaning forward at the time, which had brought up the back of my vest at an angle. If I'd been standing up straight the vest wouldn't have covered my pelvis like that and the bullet would have gone right under it and through my groin on the other side.
I massaged the wound a little and smeared an alcohol and iodine wipe over it (believe it, alcohol over wounds like that stings enough to make you cry). Whatever that psychopath had been shooting was heavy duty. Either an armor-piercing .308 or .30-06, or a Russian sniper variant of the 7.62x54R. Anything heavier than those rounds would have killed me, and anything lighter wouldn't have penetrated the vest at all. A shotgun slug would have sledgehammered me over but wouldn't have penetrated the vest. He either had an obsession with precision or was shooting a bolt-action, because most people would have just done a mag-dump into my ass with the first round.
Fucking redneck trailer-trash douchebag hick from some shithole in Alabama is what that motherfucker was.
My thought-process pretty much continued along the same track while I stripped myself naked and washed off the faint white sulfur scum with moist-wipes from MREs. I set up my cookwear and in five minutes had a Beef Ravioli warming up in the chemical heater with a canteen cup of coffee brewing on trioxane. I kept this near the open windows for ventilation while I cleaned myself up and finally collapsed on the sleeping bag with a lit cigarette and a canteen of warm water. I figured by the time I finished the Strike the MRE would be hot, and just closed my eyes for a while, sprawled out naked in the midst of Deuce gear with an M1A under my armpit and the Springfield in my hand, both still covered in muck.


For a while there was just sounds. Cool air through the windows, the slight knock of the blinds bouncing off the frame. The hiss of the cigarette with each intake, overlaid with the bubbling of simmering water. A smooth, young, female voice, with the faintest hint of some accent,

"You know, I'm not really into voyeurism, but this picture can work."

The cigarette fell from between my fingers and rolled across the cement floor. The rifle softly thudded on to the sleeping bag as my hand came up and I was halfway into the sitting position with the M1911 punched forward in two-hand grip when I froze, not even aiming the pistol. There was a black cat sitting at the foot of my sleeping bag. The black cat, the same from before, now with its head cocked to the side and tail slowly thumping from one side to the other.
I stared at it. It stared back.

"...Aw, shit."

The cat nodded, licked a paw, smoothed the fur behind its ear, and said, "That's one way of putting it."


----------------

Case Study #144
Classifications:
-Enemy Containment Breach
-Quarantine Breach
-Operative Integrity Failure
-Rogue Element

Subject(s):
- SAR Cell 1| Team 3
-Tuna 1:3 - 1:3 Actual
- "Salt"
Case Summary: Classified Top Secret
Case Timeline: Declassified Secret - Information Redacted

Warning Order:

1. Situation: MIA Operative "Salt" last seen ----- classified Rogue Element.
-Size: One Operative
-Activity: Unknown
-Location: Unknown
-Unit: NFA SAR Cell 1|Team 3
-Time: Last Radio Contact ------
-Equipment: Multiple Small Arms and Deuce Gear. Body armor (Class III). 7.62x51mm AP capability. Seven-day sustainment capability.


---------------

There really wasn't any kind of shock at first, or even anything beyond mild surprise. Attribute it to being too tired to care. I closed my eyes, squeezed them shut, and opened them again. The cat was nosing its way around the cooking MRE. Shoot it. The cat pawed at the vapors from the heating packet,

"Yes, shoot me. Keep shooting until there is little doubt in your mind that I'm an immobile mass of tissue, and then burn the corpse to ashes and scatter them in sea so that you can pretend this never happened. Go ahead. Accept your situation."

The cat never looked around while speaking, and just continued playing with the MRE vapors. The voice was quite, calm, mocking. The tone was laced with a mix of smug scorn and amusement, with a frighteningly annoying superiority, as if it were explaining the blatantly obvious to my stupid little brain.
VI-117: guide to dealing with InEx. One of the primary rules: do not engage the avatars. Doing so leads to Terminal. You cannot argue with, converse with, or otherwise attempt to treat them as real constructs.
Only I'm not InExed. This is not InEx, this is not Vostok.

"And what makes you say that?"

It was speaking in Russian now. It had a female voice. I could make out the timbre, tone, and pitch. This was a hallucination, not InEx. People infected with Vostok 'thought' the voices they heard. They could never remember the voices, the genders, the accents. They do not hear the avatars. I was dehydrated and exhausted. That's all there was to it.

"Denial. It is the most predictable of human reactions to undesirable situations, and also the most pathetic. Of course, you're ignoring the far greater danger of your current biological condition."

I blinked, genuinely confused for the first time so far. The room was dim after the blink, and then visibly brightened a second later.
The cat turned around, sat down by the cooking food with its tail wrapped up around it's body (physiologically impossible for cats, I dully noted) and looked straight at me with bright yellow eyes,

"Your heart rate is 34 beats per minute."

I blinked again. The room dimmed and then brightened again, as if turning on old lights. My pupils were noticeably slow in dilation. My vision was blurry, peripheral vision was grayed out. I was disassociated from the situation at hand. A combination of symptoms I had failed to notice.

"You should lie back down now."

I blinked yet again, remained sitting, and then lost consciousness. The last thing I felt before complete oblivion was the burst of pain as the back of my skull contacted cement.
-----------------------------
VI-117 2nd Edition Summarized Guidelines
1. Do not interact with avatar in any way whatsoever.
2. Do not make assumptions about your current condition. Do not question whether you are experiencing InEx or not.
3. Do not attempt to negate the symptoms or otherwise administer improvised treatment. This includes all psychological defensive mechanisms.
A) Do not deny that it is happening, ignore the avatar, or behave as if it is not there. This is a form of psychological defensive, and is exploitable.

Military Version, USN

1. Do not interact with the avatar in any way whatsoever. Simply ignore it.
2. Immediately abort mission, activate Extraction Protocol, and report to nearest Evacuation Zone for retrieval.

Military Version, USMC

Ignore the fucker and GTFO.

-----------------------------
When I woke up it was dusk. The room was orange with fading sunlight, long shadows creeping up the walls. My head ached. I don't mean it was a minor headache, I mean it fucking hurt. I also couldn't feel my extremities very well. Sitting up was all but impossible, and I had to roll myself around while keeping my head down to stop the landmine inside my skull from splintering into shards. Breathing hurt. Muscles store. Chest and back stung. Eyes ached. Everything fucking hurt.
Considering I'd been naked and in the cold this whole time, my skin was also quickly starting to burn from any kind of friction whatsoever. I found my wristwatch lying under the 1911 and picked it up. 19:02. Six hours had passed.
I couldn't remember what happened. Fragments, really. Obviously I remembered the cat, but the remainder of the entire previous day was splintered and out of order. This wasn't worrisome, the entire day had effectively been an extended combat sequence, and this flash-photo effect of recalling it was not uncommon. Why I'd passed out was beyond me. Crashed, exhaustion, psychological shock, I don't know. What I was more concerned with was firstly making sure the hallucination was gone, and a quick check around the room confirmed that. Secondly was food and drink.
I chugged half a liter of water immediately and sipped the remainder of the canteen while eating the MRE I'd set out cold, curled up inside my sleeping bag and leaning back against the pack. As comfy as I could be, in other words. I needed some decent pampering after yesterday (I was already as yesterday, even though the day wasn't over). The tuna MRE was a decent one, with the tuna being commercially packed (starkist in oil) and therefore quite tasty, but had the downside of being small as hell. When picking MREs it's up to the user in weighing calories vs. taste. I lit an unfiltered Lucky Strike after the meal and just stared at the wall.
19:34, I got dressed. I don't know why, since I'd be going straight back to bed in an hour. I didn't update the mission log because nothing of note had happened. There was nothing on the schedule, so I settled down and cleaned the muck off my clothing and gear. When that was done I sat down, drank more water, and finally opened the folder that Johnson had given me.
-----

The folder contained another manila folder inside it, to which was stapled a three inch by five inch card with a five sets of codes on it. Under the card were two sheets with a series of code words linked to the card, one printed in red, the other in black. There were also three metal keys taped onto it. The entire thing was written in Russian. Scrawled underneath the data in English was an eight digit grid coordinate.

I stared at them for a long time. I had grasped what I was holding almost immediately, but fully processing the implications of this wasn't easy. I knew Russian. I knew what this was. It was a copy, of course, but an authentic looking one. Cheget, the Russian equivalent of the Nuclear Football. These were nuclear authentication codes, complete with the PAL keys for the device itself, and the grid coordinate was located within my operational zone.
Johnson had handed me the supposed location and means to activate a nuclear device, along with a grid location in my AO. This was his package. This was what he'd been sent to recover.

----------------------------------------------

Operational Journal: Salt
Deployment: N/A.
Minimum 73+ Hours
InEx: None
Camp area: N/A
This journal is now terminated.

~LCpl. Redacted 'Salt' Redacted

I didn't sleep for the entire night. I knew from my own experiences how incredibly dangerous this was. As an individual, sleep deprivation was as lethal to me as any enemy engagement. It makes me incompetent, clumsy, unfocused. It makes me think I see things that are not there. It can make me hallucinate.
But I was too disturbed to sleep, and hurting too much to try. The radio was still not working. I did not know how to fix it. My flares had been used up during the search for Johnson. I had no further means of communication.
I cleaned my weapons with a toothbrush and CLP. I cleaned myself with alcohol swabs and hospital rags. I cleaned my gear with a boot brush and sprinkle of water. But no matter how hard I tried, I could not clean my mind.
Cheget. Cat. Radio. The words circled behind my eyeballs as if imprinted on an audiocasette tape. I could visualize each of the problems separately, but I could not connect them to figure out what to do next. Instead my body performed its work in automaton mode, reviewing the Cheget folders and committing the information to memory. The data was recorded into my mission book. Crushed coffee bitter between my teeth. Cigarette smoke glowed green around the hanging cyalume. The scratches across my eye would not stop stinging. Twice I saw things move in the shadows of the room. Twice I found myself hiding inside the sleeping bag with a loaded .45 held between my thighs.
Because I was crashing, and this made me terrified. Always before I had known what to do next. There was no procedure for this. I was supposed to secure Johnson first. Johnson's dead. Then I was to secure the Package. The Package could be a device. I am combat ineffective. Return to the NFA, report the situation.
--------------
0603

I got dressed, chewed more coffee, and geared up. I pulled open the curtains over the windows before opening the doors out of the room. I needed light on me, and cold, gray dawn sufficed just enough to allow me to peel the electrical tape and cardboard off the door seams. My eye still stung, and oddly was bothering me more than the far heavier ache of my chest and spine.
I like empty hallways, I like the feeling of seeing an end in the distance and then moving to it. But the door at the end of this hallway was sealed, and I wasn't about to unchain that set of doors anytime soon. Instead I climbed out the window again and hit the rooftops. I had left my sustainment gear behind, taking just the assault pack with enough no food and water to last a couple of days. I wasn't coming back here again, and gear was replaceable. Slowly and quite carefully I started the walk back to the shoreline. I saw my cat sitting under a bush by the hospital as I left. It glanced at me once as I was climbing out the window, and did not look my way again.
Two hours later I paused in another parking complex for a smoke break. I'd been down to a pack a week and was now going through this one in a day. It was at this time that the gunshots sounded. Two short cracks fired half a second apart, and then the longer echoing boom of a full powered rifle shot. They were close, less than a klick away from me. I paused briefly to listen for anything else, got nothing, and went back to the Lucky.
After that I lay low on the third floor of the complex for about two hours. I didn't want to get caught up in any of the attention that gunfire draws in this place. Despite feeling like I could fall asleep over my rifle stock at any moment, it simply wouldn't happen. There wasn't a lot of movement during that time period, and occasional glances at the inside of my left wrist gave me the time. When I decided to move again, the sun was higher in the sky, but still obscured by gray clouds. I was looking forward to seeing the water when I reached the coast; the ocean would be steel gray in this kind of weather.
As it was, I never got past the parking complex. The bridges that had been there several days ago were gone. They weren't just broken or something; the boards and struts had completely disappeared. I crouched by the railing at the end of the level and peered over the edge. Three stories down there was waist thigh-level grass and weeds poking up through cracks in the concrete, plenty of debris, but no bridge parts.

"Interesting..."

The thought that I'd gotten lost didn't last more than a second. My markings were here, the last bridge had lead me here. This was the right building, and this was the right direction. But this did not make sense, and when things stop making sense I become very paranoid. Someone had taken down the bridge, piece by piece, and then completely removed the parts from the area. They were either hidden in the shopping mall across the street, or on some lower level of this building. Why? Bridges got destroyed all the time by random Terminals, but why would anyone take the time to go out and hide the pieces? I hate things that don't make sense.
I spent a long time contemplating what to do next. The situation was making me more uneasy with each passing moment, and my only option had been obvious from the beginning. I just hadn't wanted to accept it at first, so I spent a lot of time stalling. I checked the filters on the gas mask more thoroughly than necessary, press-checked my guns twice, and after several more minutes finally descended to ground level.
My eye hurt more with the mask on. The rubber seals scraped against it and after twenty meters I could taste blood on my lips again. Each step I took across the road felt springy on the mat of grass covering the asphalt. The glass doors to the mall were chained shut, but the glass had been broken a long time ago. I took a step over the threshold and spent a few minutes with the multi-tool to cut a straight line through the grill of the security gate. Simple, repetitive work, and I felt exposed as hell doing it. With each click of the wire-cutters I felt more vulnerable, and before long the salt of my sweat was mixing with the blood on my face and running into my mouth where I had to swallow it without a place to spit. I pocketed the multi-tool again and reached my fingers through the gap to pull it open. The sharp points didn't do much through my gloves, but my exposed index finger and thumb were scratched up a little. I was starting to shake a little bit as I peeled the grill back as if from a soup can. Nervousness is a powerful thing, in this case it was caused by the simple little problem of the interior of the mall being pitch black. Sure, I could have gone around the mall and climbed to the next building, but while darkness was a psychological problem, walking about the streets was a very physical threat. I only had one cyalume with me now, and I decided to save it. Instead I drew the M1911 and turned on the flashlight.
I kept the light on its lowest setting of 40 lumens to keep from blinding myself, but it still didn't help visibility much. Drops of sweat lined the inside of the gas mask and the light refracted through them like a dirty windshield. I was in one of the main mall corridors. Shops lined the walls to either side, with intersections at regular intervals further up front. The entire mall was shaped like a large Orthodox cross, and I was currently at the base of it. The security grills that had once been shut were mostly rusted or torn down, leaving them to lie in humped rolls of metal. The amount of trash underfoot was immense. Broken electronics, food wrappers, dead rodents, and most noticeably were the common shell casings lying about. I couldn't quite smell the stench of decay through the mask filters, but I did feel very much isolated. The world here was made of varying shades of gray and white. The interior plants had died a long time ago, the overhead sunroofs had been covered with polyurethane tarps. Nothing moved, I couldn't hear anything. The beam of light slowly passed over the benches and vendor stands in the middle of the corridor, then ran straight up to illuminate the ceiling high over my head. Back down in front of me, and I noted that I couldn't see further than approximately 50 meters.
There was the familiar metal whistle as I threaded the suppressor onto the pistol. With fire going on in the area, the last thing I wanted to end up doing was attracting even more attention. My steps were chosen carefully, navigating my way through the field of trash to make as little sound as possible. Movement was slow and careful. I took my time, mostly keeping myself calm, occasionally shutting my eyes and breathing until I could open them again, and mainly keeping my vision focused on the circle of light in front of me and not the blacked out edges around it. Ultimately I traveled about fifteen meters in almost as many minutes, glancing up only occasionally and then making the necessary steps while looking at the ground directly in front of me. This went slowly but steadily until I was about a quarter way through the corridor and I noticed something wrong. It wasn't threatening, just one of those weird optical illusions that happen in the darkness, like staring at a ghost in your room for a few minutes until you realize it's a hung coat. I cocked my head at the glowing dots of yellow light floating in the murk past the reach of my flashlight. I stayed this way for longer than I should have, but I simply couldn't ignore these kinds of mind-tricks. Was it light reflecting back through the gas mask? No, the lights were static no matter where I moved my head or light. Was my flashlight causing it? I lowered the pistol and the dots disappeared. Back up and they reappeared, same place, same distance. I brought my thumb forward to briefly up the brightness settings on the light when that moment hit me, full realization of what I was looking at, and all the ramifications that came with it.

Tapetum Lucidum. It was eyeshine. I was staring into the darkness and it was staring back at me. Virtually the instant that I realized this, the shine vanished. There was the faintest whisper of movement and I caught the flicker of silhouette before it disappeared into the mall. I calmed my beating heart once again. A rodent, a raccoon, anything. Or a cat. Once again I was scared of nothing. I closed my own dull eyes, sat down in the trash, and turned off my light.
Thoughts of kid's movies and fantasy games let my mind wander until I started to calm down and try to forget where I was. My pulse steadied, feeling returned to my fingers, and still I waited. People who like darkness tell me that they float in it. It's a absence of matter, a void. They like the feeling of being lost in an abyss, a place where no one and nothing can hurt them. But I know better. Darkness is not the void that comforts them, it is nothing more than blindness. I know what happens to people when they can't see around them. Men who don't fear the dark, our psychiatrists, had addressed this with me before. It can't hurt you, they tell me, there's nothing there to be afraid of, they tell me. No shit. It's the things in the dark that I'm afraid of, and out here in this world, there's always something in the dark.
I broke down the glass doors to exit the mall. By the time I reached them I was too far gone to care about keeping quiet. The shards bounced off my boot and I swept away the plastic sheeting behind them and charged outside as if the building were on fire. The street was bright and sunlit, and I very nearly tore off the gas mask just to get the light on my face. All of the tension and fear from the mall dissipated in the sunlight like fumes swept away on the wind. There had been something following me inside the mall, and needed to get as far away from it as possible. I took off running down the streets, acting against every tactical lesson I'd ever learned. I hadn't stopped to assess the situation, didn't bother with noise control or concealment, and even forgot to check my mask filters.


---


"Don't move, or I'll shoot you."

I stopped walking and froze in the middle of the road. I didn't look around past the limits of my eyes. People are less likely to shoot you when they think you don't know where they are. Of course, I didn't actually know where the guy was, just that he was somewhere to my left, not too close. Oh, and I'm sure you understand by now that I was scared shitless, so I don't need to keep explaining that.

"Now you do exactly what I say, no more no less."

The voice was male, a little high pitched, young. Maybe mid-twenties. Strained too, the guy was either scared, nervous, or in pain, which was also how I felt. It was time for me to start acting like a badass, but that didn't mean that my heart-rate wasn't up and going already.

"Drop the rifle."

I almost smiled. So the guy didn't know what he was doing. That was good. A little dangerous if it meant he was more trigger happy, but usually good. I let go of the M14 and it dropped against my chest, held by the sling running around my shoulders. No more, no less. I'd dropped it. There was a several seconds pause. Maybe he was figuring out what to tell me now that he'd fucked up the commands.

"Take off your mask."

Shit. I lifted my hands up towards my face and then spread my arms away from my head, fingertips spread wide apart, green gloves dull in my peripheral vision. A sewage drain not less than two meters from me was visibly venting fumes, like heat waves off asphalt.

"I can't."
"I don't care."
"I do."
"Take it off! Or I'll shoot you and do it myself!"

The non-compliance was aggravating him, but he wasn't truly pissed off. He was scared. Now, me? I was pissed off. I despise these kinds of people. The type who think they can just pull a gun on me and then order me around as if it automatically makes them competent. Take the mask off? Choke to death on sulfur and die. Don't take the mask off? Get shot and die. Did the asshole really think that giving me a dilemma was somehow conducive to cooperation?
I had been going to stop myself from escalating as much as possible. I'm hate this kind of violence, where I don't automatically have the upper hand. It's terrifying. But now I decided that I was going to engage. My head shook slightly side to side, giving me a broader sweep of my laterals. Middle of the road, empty. Vehicles to the left and right, contact to the general left. Nearest vehicle to my right was three meters. Too far, but with the body armor I could make it. Suppress and crash through then nearest building, then disengage.
But what if there were two of them?

A gunshot rang past my ears and I flinched. The asphalt a meter away from me shattered in a puff of dust. Very small crater, relatively quiet shot. He was using a suppressor, but the round was supersonic. He didn't know what he was doing. This was either a low-powered rifle or a pistol-caliber. The armor would hold, I could make it. Unless there was more than one. Shit...shit.
The flinch gave me an excuse to look to my left. If I had known it was just the one, I'd have taken the opportunity to sprint to the cars, but I was still in the dark here. The building to my left was an abandoned construction site. Orange plastic mesh fencing was strewn across the ground. Dirt lot, steel girders, lots of concrete. The cement walls, foundation, and staircases had all been finished up to the first floor. It only took me a second to find the man. He was less than thirty meters away, two stories up, sitting on the plywood covers across horizontal girders. Multi-cam BDUs, Glock pistol with a suppressor, no long gun in sight. White skinned, regulation haircut, about 5'9", between 70 to 80 kilos.
He wasn't sitting at the edge, but well away from it. I could only see his body from the navel up, which made his maximum visual angle to the ground severely limited. Two meters. That was the most free space he could see of ground between me and him.

Only two meters.He was speaking again, but I wasn't hearing him. My vision seemed to stretch like silly-putty as I looked down from him to the ground under the site, and saw the black cat, my cat, staring at me from atop a bag of mortar mix. The lips moved, "He's alone."

The M50 pulled at my hair as I tugged it away from my face and lifted it up. Blood that had pooled in the gasket spilled onto my collar again and the freshly opened cut below my eye stung from the contaminated air. He was still speaking without sound as the mask fell to the ground and I leaped forward.
He didn't fire another shot even as I disappeared from his sight and rolled over my side onto the dirt of the lot. The pain from the armor compressing against my injured spine was drowned out in a surge of adrenaline as I expelled the breath I'd been holding and sucked in the cleaner air from under the construction site. The NFDD came up out of the vest pouch as my left hand snapped the quick-release buckle of the ILBE and I spun around in mid stride to throw the pack off my shoulder. My thumb swept the safety clip off and I tore away the pin just as I tossed it back towards the road and finished the spin, going into a full sprint towards the opposite end of the site. The cat was running ahead of me and then peeled off to vanish behind discarded piping,

"Go left."

I went left, curving around a corner without a single thought as to why or how, and instead drew the M1911 as the flash&bang detonated behind me. Earplugs saved my hearing, I never saw the flash. The M14 was bouncing and banging off my chest, each thud sending a bolt of pain through my sternum in rhythm with the echoing slap of my boots off the cement floor. The staircase to the next level was just in front of me and the cat emerged from the shortcut and sprinted up it, "Up the columns."

I blew past the staircase and reached the edge of the lot, leaping to my right towards the square support pillar and jamming my left boot against the surface. My body turned at the waist to face back to the lot as my leg compressed and I kicked back from the pillar. The traction of the boot was good, and the surface of the cement was rough. The two caught against eachother and I kick-jumped up at an angle, gaining just enough height to reach the edge of the first story. My forearm hooked around the lip and as the upwards force of the jump was lost my own muscles took over for it. My head came up over the edge and I brought the M1911 up and forward.
The floor was empty. There were no walls here to block my vision, and the floor above me was mostly empty space criss-crossed with girders and plywood. Aside from the cement floor, everything this high was still steel. I-Beams and rebar. I immediately aimed where he'd been sitting and saw that it was now empty. I swept the pistol back across the entire area and hauled myself all the way up. The rifle caught on the edge of the floor and I kicked it back out of the way with my knee, finishing the muscle-up and crouching at the edge with the pistol. The cat ran out from the stairway and kept going to the next one, "He's above you."

I looked straight up. There was plywood flooring directly over my head. I jumped back onto the pillar I'd used to climb up here. This high it was still just I-beam, and my finger curled around the back edges as my boot wedged into it to step up with. I kept a hold of the pistol and used my right-wrist for stability as I literally walked up the beam. Two steps and my head cleared the edge of the plywood flooring of the second story and I saw him kneeling directly in front of me, his back turned to the edge and aiming towards the first floor staircase opposite him. He was deafened from his own gunshot and the NFDD and didn't hear the thump of my elbow on the plywood he knelt on, but he felt it. Too late.
I shot him in the back of the leg he knelt on just below the joint and he screamed like a dying hare. The leg gave out and he fell backwards onto my outstretched arm. He would have remained on the plywood had he been alone, but instead my arm was hooked up between his legs and with a simple pull his center of gravity shifted off the edge. His body somersaulted backwards over my body and fell to the dirt two stories down. The screaming stopped with the impact. For a moment there was only the ringing in my ears. Then he caught his breath and resumed short, barking cries of agony, his body writhing and both hands clutching at his leg. I couldn't see where his pistol went, but it didn't matter anyway. He was completely absorbed in the shock and pain of the wound, totally forgetting about me, about where he was. This must be the first time he'd been shot.

I saw a flicker of movement in my eye and turned to see the cat come up to the edge and sit down next to my arm. It didn't so much as glance at me, but looked intently at the man doing the rabbit dance in the dirt below. I followed it's gaze and looked too. Then I safetied the pistol, let go of the edge and fell to the first floor, crouched, and dropped off the edge to land in the dirt of the ground. Safety off again, gun up and aimed at the non-threat. The gun was nowhere in sight, I didn't see a backup holster on him. He still wasn't focused on me. I brought my eyes up to assess the environment for a moment, then holstered the M1911 and got behind him and lifted his body up. He screamed louder and started to struggle, but with no support under his legs, there simply wasn't much he could do. I buddy-dragged him back into the construction site, leaving a streak of blood on the cement that resembled old motor oil.

--------

"What did you want from me?"

He didn't answer. I shrugged and continued rifling through the pouches of his vest. It had taken a long time for him to calm down. I'd zip-cuffed his hands in front of him and tied a tourniquet around his leg in the meantime. After ensuring he wasn't still armed, I waited for him to pull himself together while I searched through his equipment. I stripped the body armor off him (IOTV, not my branch issue) and removed the SAPI plates from the vest. Size M. I shrugged my own armor off and replaced my compromised plates with his own.

"Who are you?" His voice was very quiet, panting, and almost sniveling. I was liking this man less and less with each passing minute. I didn't respect him, and it was hard for me to feel sympathy towards a man who'd held me up.
I found a pack of cigarettes in one of his magazine pouches, half empty. Kools. I put them back and instead pulled out one of my own, "I'm not going to tell you who I am. I want you to answer my questions so I can decide whether or not I should kill you."

The look on his face wilted. I lit the cigarette and gave him a very blank look,

"Now think very carefully about your English, and pick the best sentence you can. What did you want with me?"

He swallowed against a dry throat, "I'm looking for someone."

"I don't have time for this. Answer the question."

"I wanted to identify you."

I would have laughed, but the cut on my cheekbone was still bleeding. Smiling made it sting more. Not to sound morbid or anything, but I actually like blood. I've always had a thing for it, so smoking a cigarette with a patch of red soaked into the paper was doing much to calm my nerves.

"So when you would have realized that I'm not the guy you're looking for, you'd have just sent me off on my merry way, huh?"

He took a moment to think about it, his eyes shifting from one place to the other, then nodded.

"If you're lying to me, you're stupid. If you're telling the truth, then you're suicidally stupid."

I leaned back from my crouch and sat down on my haunches.

"What's your name?"

I shook my head, "It doesn't matter to you."

"You look like him."

I spat out a shred of tobacco and found his wallet. It's funny how we still carry wallets in this day and age. Some kind of comfort I guess. "Obviously I'm not him."

"Lance Corporal, MARPAT, skinny, M14."

Now I was getting a little annoyed. In truth I was already done with him, I just wanted to finish my smoke, give him back his pistol (hey, his mistake didn't mean I wasn't going to leave him without a fighting chance), and head out while the sun was still high in the sky, but his seeming inability to get to the point was tedious as hell.

"Look at my face. I don't live here. I'm just on business."

"Your face is covered in blood and dirt."

I blinked, sighed, and rolled my eyes. "Just tell me who you're looking for and have done."

"I'm with the US, I-"

"Shut up. The name."

"SAR Tuna 1-3, 1-3 actual. Salt."

I became very still. The tingle started in my fingertips and slowly spread up my wrists, burning like CS gas mixed with sweat. I looked through the smoke in the air and stared at his face very carefully. Young, scared, clean shaven. There was rank on his collar, his clothing was military. I looked down to his wallet: NFA.

"You're with SAR."

He didn't answer.

"Why the fuck is SAR looking for me?"

This made no sense. We don't send operatives out to recover other SAR operatives. Search and Rescue only looks for the recon guys, the scientists, the data. We never send ourselves out to save ourselves. There's no reason to.

"You're MIA."

I crushed the cigarette between my teeth. "I'm less than fifteen hours over
the green limit. Yellow doesn't expire for another seventy-two. I'm a SAR operative with no intelligence value. You're not wearing an appropriate uniform. You haven't followed InEx protocol.
You have ten seconds, ten seconds to explain what you're talking about and convince me that you're not another lunatic lying to me, or I'm going to hurt you."

He was visibly scared now, looking more rapidly to the sides, to exits far out of reach. "I don't know what you want me to say! You went missing, they sent me out. That's how this works."

"No. It doesn't. You're in an unauthorized uniform. SAR does not rescue SAR. I'm not MIA."

What scared me more than anything is that he genuinely looked desperate. Not the desperation of a liar, but the desperation of a man who's telling the truth and has nothing else to offer to save himself.

"We adopted multicam last week."

Now I growled. Yeah, growled. Save me the laughter.

"Last week, I was directly overseeing preliminary testing in R&D. There was no word on even starting the issue process yet."
Now, for the first time, he looked at me like I was the stupid one. "That prelim test was twenty-seven days ago."

[E-Stalin [Orthrus]]

It started to rain. There was no beginning drizzle or warning clouds. The downpour came on in full force, and within moments there was water pouring in streams from the floors above us. A current ran down the staircase and spread out in a pool until I was kneeling in water. My head turned to watch the cat descend the stairs with wet paws and dry fur. I looked back to the wallet in my hands. PFC Saxena, Cell 2. Swordfish.
"White ale, white ale, wh-"
"Shut up."
Saxena had finally remembered protocol, far too late to have any use. There was no doubt in my mind that he was wrong. Either he wasn't who he said he was, or this was a Class Delta mission, meaning that normal procedure was suspended due to extenuating circumstances. That or...or he wasn't real. It was possible of course, that I'd been infected. So many months in the Zone, so many injuries, so many opportunities for blood-to-vector contact. But none of the options made sense. If he was just another InEx preying on me, why the identification? It looked real, and it would have taken time to fake. Time with no foreseeable benefit. A Class Delta had never been issued in NFA history, and if he was an Avatar, then why was he so shitty at it? An Avatar would be a copy of my brain. It would know how I think, how to best convince me to take a certain course of action. This man had failed on virtually every single possibility to convince me that he was for real, and I knew that it was impossible for me to be InExed. The particles incubate in your liver for a month. I had been clean when I deployed, less than a week ago.
"You have to exfiltrate. You've been here for almost a month. I'm here to help you."
"I said shut up."
A sudden burning at my exposed index finger led me to dropping the cigarette. I'd forgotten about it, and it had burned down to skin level. The butt hissed in the water streaming past my boots. I had not been here that long. I knew this. I still had my main water and food sources at my base of operations. My cigarette pack was more than half full. These were the proof that I needed. I'd been deployed for less than two weeks. How long had it been it? Four days? Maybe five. I'd lost count. Yet another of the countless rules I'd violated in my survival system. I turned back to Saxena.
"You have one chance, only one, to explain yourself to me. Everything. The current date, why you're on a mission to rescue another SAR, why the fuck you suck at your job. I'll listen. Go."
He was silent for several seconds, gathering his thoughts. Then, "It's the 16th. Friday. This is only my second deployment."
I waited. He was quiet. "And? And why are you recovering me?"
"Because you're missing."
I face-palmed, genuinely frustrated now. He was either incredibly stupid, or he was fucking with me. Neither was good news.
"Do not make me repeat myself again. I hate repeating myself. SAR does not rescue SAR. This is precisely why we don't do that. You are fucking with my current understanding of reality, and you are creating pseudo-InEx as we speak. I was already on my way back to the recovery point when you stopped me. I've finished my mission, I've recovered the Package, I am going home, and then you stop me and tell me that everything's fucked up?
I say again, you do not make sense. On top of that, they send a brand new one-deployment wonder to get me? If I was a high priority, they'd have sent a LoLiCon or an experienced operative from Cell 1."
"Tuna was disbanded."
I clenched my jaw hard enough to hurt, my eyes squeezed shut. This was getting too much. I spent several seconds getting my emotions under control, and then calmly, quietly, asked, "What?"
His mouth seemed to be dry, and he licked his lips repeatedly now. His hands still clutched tightly at his leg, just above the wound.
"The new SAR standards of deployment finished a week ago. New rules, new regulations. Everyone in Cell 1 was redefined as high-risk, deactivated and recovered for quarantine and readjustment into Flotilla life. Swordfish is now prioritized as Cell 1."
I was speechless. I could recall only one time in my life that I'd genuinely been speechless before. It's an odd feeling, where I simply don't know what to say and my tongue lies paralyzed and useless. Swordfish was a recruit training unit. It was equivalent to DEP for enlistment. These were military members, but not Marines. These were the people who never went through AMC boot camp, who weren't old enough to have gone through USMC boot camp. They were enlisted personnel in the old Navy, POGs with desk-jobs who wanted to enter SAR units. They were an NFA experiment, a test to see how well non-military and non-infantry handled InEx work. They were not qualified to do this job. Everybody knew that except the old psycho-analysts who came up with the deployment theories.
He was about to continue speaking and I stopped him with an upraised hand.
"I'm fired? You're telling me that I'm out of a job, my unit has been replaced with a group of brand-new boots with no deployment experience whatsoever, and that they actually sent you to recover us?"
He shrugged, his eyes almost pleading for me to accept the insanity he was spouting, "You're high risk. You're missing, presumed to be Terminal. I don't understand why you're so upset at us actually trying to save your life."
The cut on my cheek was starting to burn, my eyes hurt, and my throat was suddenly sore as I growled out, "I'm not supposed to be saved. We're not supposed to be saved. We're disposable, don't you people fucking understand!? We're the ones that find the lost, the valuable ones, and drag them back out into the sunlight! We have no past, no future, no afterlife. We have no family, no friends. There is no one, and nothing but the job.
That is why we don't go Terminal. That is why we're the only ones capable of doing this work. And suddenly you arrive, telling me the facts are ass-backwards, and initiate Pseudo-InEx. Are you fucking insane!?"
I stopped in mid-rant, breathing heavily. "The new standard of deployment, what is it? What did they change?"
He closed his eyes, like a child hiding under the covers, "I'm afraid to tell you."
I very nearly lost my self-control. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to scream at him. He made me feel like I was talking to a fresh-shaven recruit, a kid who didn't know how to answer questions, who couldn't do his own damned job.
My shaking fingers reached for another cigarette, dropped it in the water. Another, tightly this time, and struck a match.
Quietly, very quietly, "Just tell me. From the beginning, if it makes it easier."
He shook his head, eyes still closed. Fuck your mother. I stayed silent, going through half of the Lucky Strike before my hands had stopped shaking. I rubbed at my cheek with a gloved fingertip, trying to soothe the ache that was steadily digging its way deeper into my skull. There was no sense in dealing with this idiot any longer. Go back to the mission. He is a threat to your mission success. Do not provoke the threat. Address the mission.
I tore open the Velcro pouch in my APECs and withdrew the documents I'd recovered from Johnson. "Look at me."
He reluctantly opened his eyes. Did he think that by just shutting himself up in his head, I would disappear?
"Look at these documents. These is the Package I recovered. They are Class Zulu. Do you understand!? Class Zulu. Red Ale, Code Pink, every pucker-factor term there is for it. I was on my was to recovery when you stopped me, with a Zulu package.
You said that Tuna 1 is quarantined. When I get back, are they going to disregard this?"
He hesitated, then shook his head, with a new tone of voice, "No, of course not. Not a Zulu."
I froze. Then hissed, "You're lying. You're fucking lying to me again. I've been doing this before you were even enlisted, do you really think that I don't know the tricks?
Look at me, and pay attention! Look at the documents, look at them! I need you to determine for yourself that these are what I say they are."
He looked. Looked, but saw nothing. "I can't read that."
I hung my head, disappointed, frustrated, afraid. "This is a Cheget. A Russian nuclear football. These papers contain the activation codes, the launch data, and the PAL keys for a MIRV. This is the Package from my subject, and he told me that the warheads are on-site. Do you get that!? On-site.
These documents have to be delivered as a package. If you're telling the truth, then the moment I walk in there, I'm going into quarantine and everything I tell them will be disregarded as InEx. They have to be accepted, and a task-force organized, do you understand me?"
He was just nodding desperately. Who could blame him? I wouldn't have believed me were I in his situation. He thought I was crazy. No, he didn't think it, he knew it. He knew that I was crazy in the same way a priest knows god is real.
Useless. I was fucked. I was genuinely fucked. In the space of five minutes my entire world had been turned upside down. I was deactivated, my Package would be ignored, I was going into the slammer. I felt like crying again, but I didn't. I wouldn't.
"The new standard of deployment. What is it? Tell me."
My voice was no longer demanded. Now it was asking. Almost begging.
He closed his eyes again and leaned back, as if waiting to be punched, "The sociopath model was erased. It's been determined that the PDI system disqualified too many operatives for deployment. So instead, new operatives need high IAPI.
The requirements are...a family, with children, and...a belief in a higher power."
Silence broken by the sound of rain. My feet were cold in the water, my exposed skin burned in the frozen air. The colors of the world faded into a sepia gray. The sound of rain grew steadily muted. Then the M1911 was up and trained on his face, safety off, front sight post glowing bright against the dimness outside. My finger slid off from outside the trigger guard and caressed the trigger itself. There is no creep on an M1911 trigger, and less than half a centimeter of take-up was all that separated his killing and eating from being killed and eaten. This is the moment that makes some men feel powerful. It is the moment that makes me feel weak. He was lying. Or he was not real. He was crazy, or I was crazy. It did not matter which, but what he told me was not true. It couldn't be true. I knew this. My cigarettes were still there, my water, my food was all still there. I had not been here as long as he said. Tuna disbanded, Swordfish activated, the standards of deployment completely reversed. It was not possible. The psyches who came up with deployment theories were inexperienced, and knew nothing of actual InEx, but the operative units know, and there is no way in hell that the military would have allowed such insanity to pass. Belief in a high power, a fucking family, was the easiest thing in the world to exploit. A few days ago I had just massacred a church full of people with belief in a higher power. People who had hunted down others and burned them to death and then burnt their charred flesh as a sacrificial offering. IAPI is not faith in gods. IAPI is not hope to see your family again. IAPI is faith in ones principles, be it morality or philosophy or country. He was lying. Or he wasn't real.
I came very close to shooting him. My finger had taken up the slack, and the slightest twitch would have disengaged the sear.
But I didn't. A drop of blood fell from my jawline into the water, and the cat's eyes glowed yellow through the gray. My eyes left the sights of the pistol and connected with the glow. The cat shook her head slowly, and then offered a single sentence that I received only as a command, "Let's go."
I whipped away from the quivering lump of meat before me without pause and ran, grabbing my pack and gas mask from the ground before sprinting across the street with my breath held and kick-jumping off a wet alley wall to grab onto the lower fire-escape ladder. I was three kilometers away on the rooftops before I finally stopped running and collapsed on the roof of a house.

---------------------------

"You owe me debt. An admission of gratitude and some beer will suffice for now."

I wanted to keep walking, an excuse to ignore the thing, but I had nowhere to go yet. I was inside a liquor store, on ground level. The glass walls were shattered, and although the security meshes were down, there was more than enough light to keep my calm.

"You didn't sleep last night because you wanted there to be a rational reason for hallucinating, no? You told yourself that you were too scared to sleep, but the truth is that you stayed up because of me."

Trash littered the ground, as everywhere. The defining feature here was broken glass no matter where you stepped. The floor was sticky with the liters of dried alcohol that had been spilled, and empty cigarette cartons were randomly strewn in the mess. Then I'd swept away the trash from behind the counter and sat down by it's corner, where I could glance around it to see outside. The cat was meandering around the dark refrigerators, carefully brushing aside shards of glass with the sides of its paws while perusing whatever spirits remained. The shelving between aisles had been tipped over when I climbed inside, and I'd taken the time to set them upright again, for a semblance of order. I like walls, I like boundaries. Things that separate me and hide from whatever walks the other side. As if it read my mind, which of course, I knew it did, it casually spoke,

"The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, and where he has made him his home, Not even the Head Wolf may enter, not even the Council may come."

It stopped at the corner of the interior wall, "Oh, Baltika. That's the one."

Then it swept away the glass beneath it with it's tail and sat down, looking at me expectantly.
I stared back at it. Then turned back to my laminated map of the city, erasing redundant information with an alcohol pen and re-marking the AO that Johnson had given me.
A clink of glass made me freeze, and the much closer voice now said, "I've saved your life thrice now. I think a little beer is warranted."
All bullshit. All of it. It knew there was Baltika in the fridge because I myself had seen it on my way in. It knew about Baltika because I drank Baltika. It knew Kipling because I read Kipling. It had given me commands that I would have done on my own; my own subconscious knowledge of tactics and instinct masquerading as another' orders. It knew my thoughts because it was my thoughts.

"Close, but wrong. On both counts by the way. I'm not you, nor am I inside you. Now are you going to get me that beer, or do I have to run off with your map first?"

It could do nothing with the map. It was incorporeal. Picking its way around the glass, how it had shook the rain from its fur, all for my own benefit. An illusion.
"Hey!" Before I could think anything else a wet paw batted aside my hand and in a flash of movement the cat was sitting just inside the entrance, the map rustling in its mouth from the breeze outside. Then it gently set it on the ground and looked up again, waiting patiently.
I froze in a half upright posture, at a loss as what to do first, then sat back down. No. Just...no. I looked back at my lap, expecting the map to be there again. This was not happening. The map was still in my hands, I just couldn't see it. Maybe I'd thrown it across the room myself. No, no, god damn it all.

"You can pretend all you like, this isn't going to magically reappear in your grasp. Now I'll give it back to you, if you go get that bottle for me."

I picked up my rifle and shouldered it. The cat laughed. It was a strange sound, a mix of a real laugh and the usual animal chuff.

"Go ahead. See what happens."

I already knew that I wouldn't do it, so of course, it did too. An open gunshot and I'd have a Stalker on my ass within ten minutes.

The cat laughed harder, "That's why you carry a suppressor Did you forget that you have it?"

I blinked, and the muzzle slowly lowered.
"The beer, please."
I stood up and walked to the refrigerator, reaching through the broken glass door and picking out the dark green bottle. In the meantime the cat had wandered back over to my spot, dropping the map off on the way, and continued on to the end where it dragged out a bowl. The previous owner must have had a pet. I ignored the fact that I hadn't noticed the bowl there before. It probably wasn't real either.

"Your face is bloody on the right side, there's dirt on your chin and forehead."

Things that I could have concluded on my own.

"But your nose is completely clean."

I stopped just as I was kneeling down by the bowl, and then wiped my face and nose with the sleeve of my blouse.

It chuckled, "Pussy."

I opened the bottle by locking back the slide of the M1911 and wedging the cap between the barrel and dust cover. I reloaded it before pouring a quarter of the bottle into the bowl, noticing "petco" imprinted onto the side besides a dog paw print. I set the bottle down and scooted back to my original spot, picking up the map and pens again.
The sound of lapping was audible over the rain outside, and was then joined by the scribble of my pencil as I started a new page in the mission book,

Options: Mission 1 / Mission 2
M1 Primary objectives:
1. Report to recovery zone.
2. Deliver Package to OOD and stress Zulu situation.
Risks: Package disregarded under Terminal Operative protocol.
M2 Primary objectives:
1. Locate AO containing copy of Cheget and/or WMD in question
2. Locate the document, device, or keys themselves.
3. Either disable, destroy, or recover items in question.
4. Report to recovery zone with evidence and go the fuck home.
Risks: This is abandoning your mission. This is suicidally dangerous. This plan is based on the information given to you by a raving psychotic.

The lapping stopped and I looked up as the cat licked its muzzle clean of foam before saying, "You're forgetting something."

I thought for a moment, then leaned back and waited.

"Oh-ho, no. You think that everything I tell you is already in your head? Then let's wait and see if it comes to you."

I ignored it and went back to the page. The cat returned to its beer. I couldn't think of what to write down next. The thought of having forgotten something was annoyingly distracting, like a though in the back of your head that you simply can't grasp no matter how much you try. I closed my eyes.

"More beer, please."

Shut up. Just shut. The fuck. Up.
Please...

"I'll tell you what you need to do next, in an exchange for a thank you and another bowl."

I bit my tongue to stop a retort and reached for a cigarette.

"Filthy habit. "

I lit it, noting that I only had three matches left in the book, and then got up again slowly, so as not to aggravate my back. I poured the cat some more from the bottle, then sat down next to the bowl, too emotionally drained to even bother returning to the patch of floor that I'd warmed with my ass.

"And a thank you, if you will."

I grit my teeth.

"Are you that afraid of talking back? You were right, you know: you're not InExed. But this isn't regular insanity either. Such silly rules you people set up. Don't talk to it, but don't actively deny it? Doesn't really leave you with a third option. So you can keep letting me piss you off until you go completely insane, or you can let me help you.

Now, I saved your life from the Zealot outside the church, from the Warrior in the tunnel, and again just now from the Coward at the construction site. So go on and really think about it, get a little emotional, and thank me for it."
We sat for three minutes while I remained blank. Then I turned to look at the cat again and opened my dry mouth to quietly speak the hollow words, "Thank you."

The cat's eyes squinted and it smiled. I could detect no communication from the smile, neither sinister nor satisfied.

"The Patriot told you that you could not allow the NFA to get their hands on Raichu either. The demand was quite specific: disable it or destroy it."

I very slowly blinked and looked across the aisles again before replying, my voice sounding as if I were halfway to falling asleep, "He was psychotic."

"Irrelevant. He was lucid at the time."
"His opinions do not matter."
"Why not?"

I stopped at that, being questioned for the first time in my life on something which was self-evident. It took me a long time to find the words that best explained it, and they were, "Because he was a man."

The cat, unlike me, countered instantly. Of course it would, it already knew what I would say.
"The NFA is comprised of humans."

But I was also ready for that one, "The NFA is bound by principles."

"I could demolish that belief too, but I don't think you're ready for that yet. So I'll just let this sink in instead: their principles are not yours. Did you think that the Coward was lying? He told the truth. They have taken everything you know and drowned it, replacing the needs which you bled for with their wants instead."

"He lied."

"You think you did, but I don't think things; I know them. The system betrayed you."

I looked at the pack of cigarettes. Still half full.

"You think that your food and water proves him wrong? Where is it then? You have one kilogram of water on you, no food."

I had left it all at the hospital. It was there, I remember laying it aside, I remember organizing it and neatly covering it under a tarp.

"Do you really think that you can trust your memories?"

I breathed deeply and slowly exhaled, "No."

"Then stop believing, and start thinking."

"Whether my perceptions are real or not is irrelevant."

The cat batted my elbow. "An hour ago, you were Other. Now you're a Zealot. You're famous in the NFA. Most recoveries in their history, never diagnosed as InExed. Tell me, how did you do it?"

I remained silent.

"You don't want to admit it, but you already know how. You know, and I knew well before you did."

I tasted blood on my lips yet again and touched two fingertips to my cheekbone. They came away red. Again.

"I did that to you. It's not going to heal. Not unless you let me lick it."

I laughed for the first time in nearly a week. I couldn't help it, it was just fucking funny in it's severe stupidity.
"I'm serious."
I laughed again, a voiceless, hyena laugh. "Not happening."
"Then bleed on. I like seeing that anyway."
"Of course you do."

The cigarette paper was red again.

"I said that I would tell you what to do next, but I didn't tell you why you should do it. So here it is now: you are going to die soon. The exact time is optional, depending on what you do, but you will not survive this deployment.
I came here to help you accomplish your last acts, and more specifically, to ensure that they are the ones I want."

A chill ran up my spine, because when the cat said those words, for the briefest of moments, I actually believed them. That's how easily it happens, going Terminal. They find your weaknesses and dig into the cracks, widening them into fractures before splitting open your skull and worming their way into your brain. Everything we'd been talking about had been nonsense, unrelated to the real world. It had been me talking to myself. But this, this had broadsided me. I had not been thinking about it, I had not been expecting it.
It was bullshit of course, but it had caught me off guard. If the thing succeeded in doing that to me a few more times, it just might get inside.

"I am not a thing. You are."
I was back to ignoring it.
"Look at me."

I looked.

"First, I am not 'it', I am she, her, or cat. Trying to objectify me will only lead to you sinking deeper into the self-induced pseudo-InEx you're creating for your own benefit.

"Second, I am not a representation of your sub-consious, so don't flatter yourself. I'm not a copy of that lump of tissue in your skull either. I know that you believe that, so I'll let it go for now because you'll come to understand in a couple of days, but you will not refer to me as such. Each time you disrespect me like that, I'll add another claw to your face."

It was still squinting at me.

In a flash and a burst of searing pain, my cheek was torn open below the existing scratches and my head was slapped sideways from the impact. A splotch of blood appeared on the floor in front of me.
My reaction was reflexive and animal, I was halfway to getting upright and booting the fucking cat out of the building when it checked into the back of my leg and I fell over. I was back up in a second and stopped when I saw the cat sitting directly across from me, an additional meter out of my immediate reach.
...Fuck it, I continued to lean forward and this time was stopped by an upraised paw with a claw out. An abnormally large claw.

It- "Ah-ah. Think."- She waved the digit in a 'no-no' fashion.

"That's better. I want you to do something, but that doesn't mean I won't slash your throat and watch you flop around like a fish out of water if you make me."

My face was on fire, and the ache from the last cuts now sunk deeper, into the bone this time. I growled, "You."

She squinted, "Yes, me."
"What the fuck are you?"

Now she smiled, cocked her head to the side, and said with barely restrained glee, "I'm Bast. I kill things."

--------------------------

I bandaged my face with some gauze and medical tape. I'd had to suture the new laceration closed before doing this. The first two had been across the cheekbone and were minor scratches, but this one was longer and deeper, although it hurt less than the shallow ones. I poured a sampler-shot of vodka over the whole thing and bore through the stinging while suturing with the aid of a shaving mirror. Most people know that disinfectant stings, but seriously underestimate just how much it hurts over larger wounds. By the time I was done, my hands were shaking a little bit and I had to use more tape than necessary because It kept waving around and sticking on itself.

"Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength."

I looked back over my shoulder and saw the cat playing with the empty beer bottle, spinning it around in circles. She looked completely normal now, indistinguishable from any other of the cities numerous cats.

"I am not weak."

"But you are honest, and straightforwardness, without the rules of propriety, becomes rudeness."

I scoffed and turned around in full, "Do you have anything original to say, or are you just going to answer everything with quotes?"

She stopped pawing at the bottle and looked up, "Who do you think gave these people those quotes in the first place?"

Tricky. I wondered why she would continue trying to hint at her being an externally existing individual. She knew that I knew that she was in my head, and furthermore that I was too much of a cynical asshole to even ponder the possibility of her just being her.

The bottle slowly came to a halt and she looked down, then up, and grinned, " Truth or dare?"

I cleaned off the water spots and blood and dirt from the lenses of my goggles with a lick and a rag.

"I don't play stupid stupid games."

"You play poker and chess, both stupid games."

I sighed, but it was forced. My exasperation was drained, and the only real emotions I had left in me were fear and confusion.

"I don't do dares and bets. Just because some idiot comes up with a stupid game doesn't mean I have to follow their rules. It's arbitrary."

"You're showing your Zealotry again."

"It's what keeps me alive."

"Lying to me will not reinforce the lie to yourself."

"We're done here."

"I'm not."

I stowed my hat in the backpack and put on my fleece watchcap instead. My gloves stank of cigarette smoke and I had to refrain from wiping my face with them. By going through Johnson's mission book and documents I'd confirmed that the AO he'd mentioned was a four-digit grid five kilometers North of me. A four digit grid isn't exactly precise, it's an area that's a square-kilometer on the map, so I'd have to do some looking around when I got there. I didn't know what the code-names meant, but I could guess that Pikachu and Raichu most likely referred to the documents he'd given me and possibly the device itself. What I was most concerned with was not any combative operations on this at the moment. I needed to confirm that there was actually a device on-site. Johnson had never told me if he'd actually seen it, so all I had to go on was that there were nuclear launch documents in the field. Whether or not a copy actually existed, let alone the device itself, was still questionable, given Johnson's clear insanity.

My decision should have been obvious to me. I was not combat-effective. I should have returned home the moment I started seeing things, and that was what I'd been doing. Now I was doing everything wrong for the first time in my life. Every protocol that existed I was violating, and I was afraid now because I was doing something that I did not know how to do. There was no system, no training, no experience for this. All because of one stupid man. That goddamned PFC. Fucking Saxena had ruined everything.

"He hurt you emotionally, so you killed him. Do you still believe that you're a Patriot?"

This got to me. I didn't know why at the time, but the rage returned and I snapped, "I did not kill him."

"You shattered his tibia and ruptured his popliteal artery. You left him alone and bleeding with no way for him to get back home. Just because you were too much of a coward to destroy his brain doesn't mean-"

"He has a base with a radio, he has emergency flares. He would have signaled for evac and is back home already."

"A base that he has no way of reaching, thanks to you. You shot him with an unsuppressed weapon after dropping your toy. The Stalker in the apartments found him, played with him and then broke his neck."

"If there had been a Stalker, I'd be dead."

"Correction: if you had been alone and there had been a Stalker, you'd be dead. I saved you, again.

"Bullshit. That was the direction my gear had been in."

"You saw no flares. You heard no helo. He's dead, because you killed him."

"Stop."

"No."

"Please stop."

Silence. I realized that I was breathing hard. I turned around. The cat was gone. For a moment I could not understand or remember anything whatsoever. Then I saw her head poke back inside from the street,
"Are you coming or not?"

Each passing moment was not failing to leave me clueless. I turned away without a word. The dripping of water on the counter let me know where she was. Her tone was in speech mode again, like it had been during the little death talk.

"You think you have options. You don't. I took control of you the instant you gave up and chose to die in the sewer. Now, you're mine, and no matter what you think, no matter what you do, I will get what I want.
Every single thing that happens from here on in, each motion, every single breath you hear from me, will force you into doing exactly what I want you to do, whether you realize it or not. I know you, and I am inexorable.
The only ambiguity remaining is what I will do with you once you're dead. That's your last choice. Now get your things, and let's go."

------

She was right of course. We are but particles, temporarily coalesced into this form before we are scattered again. Our thoughts and behaviors are but responses to external stimuli. They're all predictable. The particles that interact with us will determine what we do, like billiards balls bouncing off of each other. Our paths are set. The ammunition loaded in my guns was going to be there since before the elements were forming in the hearts of stars, and I was going to be here since before even then, and then I'll be gone.
It was plausible that, having the knowledge of the quanta which composed me, she could control me. Plausible, but still bullshit. Because after all, she was not real.

I am not InExed. The factors I had noted before still held true. She had a voice, a language, an accent. InEx does not have this.

I know that I am not InExed. Which means that I am simply insane.

-------------

"So, where are we going?"

I didn't answer, instead scouting the route ahead through the binoculars. Or at least I tried to until a paw waved in front of the lenses. I pushed her away without looking up and received a bite to the hand in exchange.

"You learn slowly."

I looked at the new hurt, two clear punctures on the back of the glove, two on the palm. Blood was already welling up and soaking into the fibers. The pain wasn't bad, but the hand felt numb. An hour ago I would have wanted to shoot her. Now I just dealt with it like I did every other obstacle in my life. The key to happiness is acceptance.

"Who said that?"

I blinked and looked up, "What?"

"What you were just thinking. About happiness. Who said it?"

I rolled over my shoulder and caught her licking her fangs. That was my blood. I felt strangely entitled to it, and very nearly asked her to give it back. Sleep deprivation...is not conducive to sanity.

"So you know what I think, but not my memories? I thought you would have been better at this."

I rolled back to prone and resumed drawing my intended route.

"I know what you are, not what you were."

That made no sense to me. Whereas I expected more frustration at the nonsense, I no longer felt anything. The numbness had spread to my chest and then into my eyes.

Quieter now, politely, "Who said it?"

I sighed, "I'm thinking it, so you tell me."

"It doesn't work that way."

I very slowly blinked, and my eyes stayed closed. The moment had finally come, so much sooner than I'd expected. Was it really this easy to break me? Snap up a map, ask for some beer, and then ask that one perfect question. Did I think that I could go pseudo-terminal? Did I really believe that lie? I wasn't sure.
No. Not just yet, tempted as I was to have my first real conversation in months.

"I'm not going to tell you. You can scratch away all you like."

She was quiet for a while and I thought that we were finished. I had just gotten refocused on the route when she said,

"You will tell me...when you're hurt."

Her steps were almost silent, but I still heard them. So this was my InEx weakness. Curiosity. So many different vulnerabilities in so many different people, and I'd always wondered what mine was. Now I knew, and that knowledge made it no easier to deal with.

She called over her shoulder, "That's not your weakness. Not in the way you use the word. I'll show it to you once you tell me who said that phrase. In the meantime, I'm going to go eat."

Breaking is not a dramatic moment, not a 'snap' of the game-ending. It didn't even last more than a few seconds, and anyone who didn't understand the ongoing psychology would have not realized that anything was amiss. The fracture took place over the span of one very tenderly asked question, different from all the others in that it was genuine,
"You promise?"

The answer was short and spoken with the kind of pride that I associate with honesty. She said, "I don't need to."

----------
To: Sgt. Abrams
From BAEL Review Section
Subject: Requested clarification on Tuna 1-3

In response to your request for clarification on Salt's mental profiling and PDI, we respectfully direct you to BAEL 153 as soon as it is de-classified and activated. We are aware that under BAEL 152 he may have remained qualified for active service, but under the newly implemented standard, you can clearly understand why he is a danger.


BAEL Accuisition Form 152
THIS DOCUMENT IS OBSOLETE
THIS DOCUMENT IS OBSOLETE
THIS DOCUMENT IS OBSOLETE

This updated document is meant to replace Form 151, effective immediately. Altered requirements have been noted via *.

Requirements for deployment:

* Updated Requirement:
Individual being deployed must have volunteered of his own free will.
Under NO circumstances are prisoners or rehabilitated citizens to be deployed.
Under NO circumstances are operatives to be deployed by order.
Under NO circumstances are operatives to be offered any kind of incentive, including but not limited to pay, citizenship, or privileges.

There are currently no disqualifications based on ethnicity, gender, political viewpoints, or sexual orientation.

Individual must be between ages 20-38
All male individuals over age 28 must possess a PFT score of 300
All male individuals under age 28 must possess a minimum PFT score of 250
All female individuals must possess a minimum PFT score of 215
Individual must have passed prerequisite batteries 12A, 12B, and 13A to be considered for deployment, or have otherwise presented a valid High School diploma or GED equivalent.
Individual must have passed MEPS physical exam, or an equivalent by a civilian examiner.
Individual must be capable of operating in NBC environment (See Appendix: Corrected Vision and use of protective masks).

*Updated Requirement:
Individual must have no record of past or current alcohol abuse.
Individual must have an alcohol usage statement of no more than 0 drinks per month.
Individual must have no record whatsoever of psychiatric problems or counseling, including but not limited to any kind of sleep disorder.

Under NO Circumstances may an operative be deployed with any history of drug use, INCLUDING any drug that was legally prescribed - including any Schedule I-V drug, with the exception of any over the counter drugs with no known psychotropic effects, such as caffiene, nicotine, etc.

Individual requires a minimum AFQT score of 51, GT score of 110, and a service record displaying an acceptable level of intelligence, maturity, and competence as recommended by a superior officer or enlisted supervisor.
Individual must not have criminal history, with the exception of minor infractions of UCMJ and Article 11s.
*Updated Requirement:
Individual must be an atheist.
Individual must have had no religious affiliation whatsoever for no less than 5 years.
Under NO circumstances is a religious individual, or an individual with any affiliation to religion, organized or unorganized, or an individual with ANY theistic or spiritual beliefs to be deployed.
This is a foundational mandate, not to be violated under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES

-------------------


I would occasionally catch glimpses of her during the hike over, skylined against the light gray rainclouds before vanishing again. The trip took me about an hour, mostly to work out routes and check my compass bearing. It's amazing what you can do with a map and a compass. Given a starting point, you can get within a hundred meters of any location, and within thirty if you're good at it, but I only needed to get a square kilometer, and that was pretty much impossible to fail at.
Johnson had specified Mormons. I could only hope this was not another code-word but the literal sense of it. I know nothing about Mormonism except what I learned from a South Park episode. Hell, outside of the bible I know nothing about most religions outside of ancient mythologies from Greece to Egypt. It ultimately didn't matter. A congregation is a congregation, and I can understand quite well what they would want with a nuclear weapon. There were two options really: they could nuke us, or they could nuke themselves. Both were quite plausible, and with a Cheget, they really didn't need any nuclear-tech, just one guy who could read Russian, or a lot of time with a Russian to English dictionary.
If you're wondering how they could nuke us, allow me to explain: nobody really knows what happened in World War III. The records are gone. We do know that there were invasion forces in the US, and we probably had our forces elsewhere as well. We have no idea why the opposing forces imported WMDs to our mainland when they could just launch them from across the globe, but DeRP has found them in the past, and it's perfectly possible for one to have survived intact in my Zone. As for the details of the device itself and why it's such a threat...well, I'll explain that if I actually find one.


I found the church in under a minute. It wasn't difficult, considering that it was a bloody mega-church. The thing stood six to seven stories tall, bordered by enormous towers that frankly made me think of the Walt Disney logo instead of any inspiration. So much money, so much effort for construction...wasted. I was fucked.
A building like that could house hundreds of Terminals. I could not assault it, I could not infiltrate it, I could do nothing but watch it from a distance, which would have been a great plan if I had any water left. I had filled my canteens and kept them filled in the rain, but once it stopped raining, I'd have two liters to go on and that'd be over. So much for that plan.

I felt a gentle tug on my pack as something lightweight pulled on it, and in a moment Bast (how had I so quickly transitioned to a name basis?) was sitting on top of my daypack, her front paws leaning on my shoulder, looking at the concrete and glass towers.

Her usually quiet voice now shouted to be heard over the rain. "Tsk tsk...The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, but where he has digged it too plain,
The Council shall send him a message, and so he shall change it again."

Her muzzle was bloody, and I knew that the rainwater pouring down my shoulder was pink. I was happy to have her back. In the span of a few hours, I'd gone from fear, to anger, to openness. I am not a sociopath. I missed companionship very much. She, real or not, was the only one to have actual spoken to me in conversational terms in a very, very long time.

I heard her say something again, but couldn't make out the words. I knew that I shouldn't have, but I'd done a lot of things I knew I shouldn't have.

"What!?"

She leaned her head in close to my ear, "So what's your plan now?"

I shook my head slightly, "Sleep."

Once again, she said something that frightened me. "I found you a nice spot in an auto-garage nearby. Come on."

Her claws (did she always have them out?) scratched slightly across my Gore-Tex as she leaped off my shoulder. I looked out across the landscape to the church for a few more moments, trying to remember whether or not I'd actually seen an auto-shop on the map or on my way in, and steadily realizing that I had not. Then I followed her.

------------------

To: Sgt. Abrams
From BAEL Review Section
Subject: RE: RE: Requested clarification on Tuna 1-3

In response to your still further requested clarification on Salt, I have to go down the list.

As you are aware, his PDI is quite high. There are specific characteristics that are exploitable.

Firstly, all psyche-testing indicates that he is either a masochist, or otherwise submissive in nature. While sexual fetishes have been found to have no effect on PDI, they by their very nature relate to love and the capacity to befriend or otherwise submit to authority figures. It is quite possible that any Avatar would simply symbolize power, and he would naturally subvert to that power.

Secondly, his actual sexual fetishes are disturbing. Although testing has not concluded how this effects InEx, it is certainly self-evident that he could accept an opportunity to experience these fetishes given the inability to do so in reality.

Thirdly, Salt's philosophical beliefs are extremely hazardous. As I have informed you before, you are already familiar with the extent to which they go. However, you may not be aware of how they can be exploited, so I will explain here.
We have concluded that Salt is effectively a sociopath. All testing points us in this direction. He is a solipsist and a nihilist. He believes that there is no purpose or value to life, and believes that the world may not actually exist.
For example, in most tests a healthy individual would show hesitation or an emotional spike on the MRIs when faced with a decision to directly kill an innocent individual in order to save others, while showing no such response if indirectly killing them.
Salt however showed no hesitation or emotional response in all moral testing, including simulation testing. Each time he was given a kill option, he took it almost instantly, and his current simulated kill-book includes doing so by shooting, stabbing, strangling, throwing off heights, and even burning subjects to death.

That he would show such disregard for human life, even in a dilemma context, is abnormal.

-----------------------

To BAEL Review Section
From: Sgt. Abrams
Subject: Tuna 1|3

Thank you for clarifying your reasons for disqualifying Salt from AD. However, I must ask for still further clarification. I simply do not understand why the reasons you gave me are disqualifying. That he is submissive or dominant in nature is irrelevant, and I know that you are aware of this, as those are the only two categories currently available in testing, and both are considered exploitable.

To imply that Salt is a Terminal risk because he may decide to fuck an Avatar is frankly insulting to me. You are ignoring his IAPI testing and character reviews, which I know he cleared with perfectly normal moral restraint. To argue that he is a sexual risk because of abnormal fetishes makes no more sense than arguing that all operatives should be DQ unless they are asexual.

As for the dilemma testing, this only enforces my decision to retain Salt on AD. That he has a perfect moral-test score is a benefit, not a danger. I would prefer my men to make the right decisions each time, no matter whether this is considered 'normal' by you or not.

I have respectfully asked for reasons regarding Salt's disqualification and intended quarantine several times now, and have yet to receive a satisfactory answer. Please provide the information I have asked of you, or you can expect Salt to remain active as long as he is under my command.

[E-Stalin [Orthrus]]

In 2008, a line of shoppers on black Friday waited outside a Wal-Mart since the previous evening. By opening time next morning, they had grown into a mob 2,000 strong. Five minutes before opening time, they broke down the glass doors and stormed the building, trampling employees in the process. They killed one of them, a man in his 30s. Stampeded over him like cattle. When employees tried to help him, they were shoved back. When police arrived, they were ignored. When it was declared that a man had been killed, the response was, "I’ve been on line since yesterday morning."
They kept shopping. They walked around the fresh corpse of a man who had eaten thanksgiving dinner the night before with his family. He had gone to work expecting a paycheck to buy nice things for nice people. He had ideas, thoughts that no one else had. He'd had a favorite food. Gone now. Just a mass of dead tissue on a tile floor while a mob fought for 15% off on products.Why did this happen? How did normal people, people like you, do such a thing? People who believed in doing the right thing? People who believed in heaven and hell?
Because there were many of them. My morality is a lie, but your morality is a delusion. All it took was anonymity, and all of the righteous, holy, moral 'truths' disappeared. No one felt responsible because no one considered themselves to have killed the man. They didn't do it, someone else did, the mob did. Nobody in the mass stopped to help him because they all thought that someone else would do it. A drop of rain does not believe itself to be responsible for the flood.

People are animals. These animals have a very specific set of programmed behavior, and that behavior is miserably primitive. Every single action that you do can be boiled down to five simple categories. Every action can fulfill one of them, some of them, or all of them, or an action can violate one by fulfilling another. They are individual survival, species survival, entertainment, quantification, and assertion. Or in simple terms, you eat, fuck, play, learn, tell. Given this, it is extremely easy to manipulate people into doing what you want if you know what they want.

Milgram, Asch, Fallujah. The bystander effect. Diffusion of responsibility. Self-categorization. People can walk past a man bleeding out in the street and they won't call stop to help him or even call 911. They're more likely to take photographs of him and then continue on their way. I'm not making that up, it's happened. Because they are not responsible for it and believe that someone else will help them. Their coffee at Starbucks is more important.
Studies have shown that altruism is more likely to take place between similar people. The more different you are from a victim, the less likely you are to help them. People are less likely to help a stranger, but will help anyone within their social group, be it a football team or a circle of friends.
So I ask you this: where is your morality now? Where did it go? Where's the things that your parents taught you? Or do you think that you're different, and in such a situation you wouldn't do what everyone else does?
Once accountability and social exceptions disappear, so does everything that 68% of the population upheld. The remaining 32% percent? Well....

--------

The auto-garage was, of course, a mess. The vehicle inside had been stripped of all parts and padding until only the frame was left, tipped at an angle where it leaned against the wall as if it were a lean to. There was no interior lighting, but it was secure. I closed the bathroom door in the back and blocked it with a tool-chest after stuffing towels around the cracks. Three cyalumes were more than enough to illuminate the room.

"I made you a bed."

I walked around the car frame to see what she meant. The area under it was cleaned out from trash and instead a dead pigeon lay in the middle of it. Oddly enough, and yet unsurprising, she'd sounded like she'd actually done something nice. I picked up the dead bird and set it on a table, out of sight. After a second though, I threw a rag over it.

"And why are you suddenly in a kind mood?"
There was a note of sincerity in her voice when she answered, "Because I bit you."
I had no reply to that, and unfolded my tarp under the car.
"I feel that you didn't deserve it. But it was a faster way for you to get the point. I can fix your hand if you like."
I shook my head, "Again, not happening."
"Aw, come on. It's just a lick."
"I'm already crazy enough just talking to you. I don't need to end up with you being my Nanny."
A laugh, then quiet.

I chose to sleep in my clothes, for the first time doing what the handbook actually taught. This was more of a necessity than my own choice, as my sleep gear was all at my bivvy site. I used my daypack as a pillow and took a minute to run some oil down the pistol and rifle before taking off my boots and lying down on top of the APECs for some padding. Sleeping might have been difficult, but I was simply too exhausted to have any trouble with it.
Bast was sitting a meter away, and I was trying to decide whether sleeping with her present either reflected my deeper sinking into Terminal or the opposite. On one hand, acknowledging that it was safe to sleep around her was an acknowledgment of her existence. On the other, it could be an unconscious understanding that she really wasn't there. I ended up compromising by hanging the second tarp off the side of the car to isolate myself. I was ultimately too tired to deal with anything else.
I rolled over so that I was facing the wall and closed my eyes. The last thing I heard before blackness was, "But I may have a drink sometime during the night," and a quiet laugh.

----------

This next part is, in the best way that I can put it, rather humiliating. Or flat out pathetic. Hell, I'd rather just skip over it or otherwise summarize it, but it is what it is.
At first I thought that I'd woken up. I was lucid, aware of my self and my surroundings, and I was wearing the same things I'd gone to sleep in, but a quick assessment of those surroundings led to the inevitable conclusion that I'd either completely drowned in the deep end or was dreaming. Lucid dreams are a rarity with me, and I can't remember the last time I had experienced one. As it was, I woke up in the middle of a room that can only be described as something inside a mansion. I recognized it immediately of course, because it was my mansion. My mind palace. The building I had worked on for years to counter boredom and fear. The whole thing was based off of some haunted house video game I played as a kid, and then I'd built on it, until every detail in every room was meticulously designed and placed. But now it was slightly different.
I was sitting at the counter of the cafe I'd created, on the second floor. It was one of the few rooms that weren't perpetually night-time. This room was instead lit by an early dawn. The right side wall was entirely glass and outside there was a blizzard roaring by, everything obscured by mist and snow, with an early morning sun illuminating it. The cafe was on the second story, which added to the illusion of a void outside - an infinite expanse of nothing. The cafe itself had been open and airy, lightly hued wooden furniture with a white floor and paneled walls. The lights were always off, the glass wall letting in the illumination needed.
Now it was all subtly different. For one thing, the glass wall was frosted over almost entirely. I could hardly see out of it. Snow was on the ground here and there and little patches. The chandeliers overhead were frozen solid, the lightbulbs all shattered. The two doors leading in here were also frozen shut in thick layers of ice, which was for some reason pink-hued. In the whole time I spent looking around the room, I realized that the room itself was of course, much colder than normal. My breath misted before me, and my face was stinging as it steadily grew numb.

"Nice place you've got here."

I snapped back to the counter and found Bast sitting on top of it, holding a green bottle in her forepaws. She turned the bottle up and took a large gulp before setting it down and licking the red off of her lips. The bottle had a white inscription on the side, reading "Hf3w". The font reminding me of someone drawing letters in sand with a finger.

"I went ahead and made myself at home here. I hope you don't mind."

I checked my hip and kidney area with a sweep for my pistols. Gone. My knives, vest, everything was gone. Just my cammies and boots. I didn't feel worried, athough I should have. It was the curious 'awe' of experiencing such a thing that kept my stupidly docile at the time and led me to asking the most banal question I could have come up with,

"What is this?"

Her yellow eyes swept around the room, as if actually pondering the answer.
"This?"
She took another gulp from the bottle. Red, definitely red.
"This is a dream."

There should not have been wind here, but a breeze made me shiver. I opened my mouth to ask something, I don't remember what, but was silenced by an upraised paw. In recollection, I didn't stop talking, she stopped me. Literally, as if she'd slapped my in the face in mid-sentence. At the time though, all I got was a ,
"Hush."

She set the bottle down and swept it away with her tail, where it slid to the end of the counter and stopped a millimeter from the edge. Two steps took her to edge of the ceramic and she now stood within touching distance. I noticed that her ears were now considerably larger and tufted, very much like a Caracal's.

"I know that there's a lot of ideas going through your head at the moment. So I'm going to answer most of them by doing something that I've been wanting to do for a few days now,"

With the last word lowering to a near-hiss, she cut my throat.

I never really felt the claw slice through me itself, just a hint of blunt impact, like a gentle tap against your skin. I used to have this subconscious expectation of reacting as if I were in a movie. There's supposed to be some pause, a moment of stunned silence where nothing happens before the red storms out. But that didn't happen. The blood sprayed out from the entry wound and splashed over her head before the laceration had even finished, and it ended at an upwards angle as I reflexively jerked back away from it. The pain was immediate and inexplicably awful. Can you try to describe the pain you get from an ice cream headache? I couldn't describe this either. The claw ended up hooked under my mandible for a moment and she was holding my entire body weight up on that claw before she twisted my head to the side and tore it out from just before the ear.
In summary, pain. A lot of pain. It lasted perhaps ten seconds, the first of which I spent rather poorly crab-walking away the best I could while jerking around like an epileptic experiencing a seizure. There was no sound, no words, my throat wouldn't work. I couldn't even exhale in the pain-reflex I typically have. After that it just deteriorated to much choking and flopping around, gouts of blood spraying on the floor and tables, and this steadily weakened as I felt myself lose consciousness, into grey-out and then blackout.
She watched the whole thing of course, sitting on the counter-top with her head cocked to the side, a curious expression in her eyes, and her tail switching from side to side while my blood streamed in rivulets down her muzzle and onto the floor.

Many people do not comprehend how completely crippling pain can be, how when it's bad enough, it destroys absolutely anything and everything that you ever were until the only thing remaining is the desire to escape it. Some people think that they can 'resist' pain, that they can strong-arm their way through it. I am not such a man.
Those ten seconds instantaneously and irreparably shattered every single stubborn idea or sense of pride I may have had, and I was concerned with only one thing: not feeling it ever again.
Then I was back, panting and staring up at the frosted ceiling. A second...two, then I jerked up screaming and grabbing for my neck. The blood was still absolutely fucking everywhere. The green of my uniform and gloves was now a dark brown, and I was beyond disorientated, rolling over, scrambling, slipping and sliding on the tiles, attempting absolutely anything and everything to get as fucking far away from the counter as possible. This left me about ten meters away, nowhere near enough to feel even remotely safe, and I was left half sitting, half laying on the ground by the door, staring at her.
She was laughing that silent, hyena laugh while licking her paw clean. There are no words, no sentences that I could have possibly said, nor can I say to describe the mix of sheer terror and disorientation I felt, or how they dissolved into each other until the shock had reached levels of delirium. I had died. For all intents and purposes I had felt myself bleed out and die, and now I was sitting here with no idea what to do nor remotely comprehending what was happening.

She paused for breath, and then resumed laughing, quiet now, slowing to a chuckle before she bounded to the floor and steadily walked towards me.

"Oh, that was beautiful. Nice taste. So you built yourself this refuge, but I'm not sorry to say that I am no wolf."

Nine meters away, then eight, and then seven. I was scared to look but too scared to close my eyes.

"You see, I don't want to kill you just yet, so out there I can't do some of the things I'd like. But in here? I think you get the idea."

Five meters, and she stopped, then sat down again. She was always either moving somewhere or sitting down or laying down, but she never remained standing. I succumbed to Ostrich syndrome and buried my face in the crook of my elbow.

Another laugh, "Pathetic. All of your skills, all of the things you've done? Years of training, years of fighting and killing, and this is what you turn into the moment you feel a little bit of hurt?"

I couldn't move, nor answer. There was still the taste of blood in my mouth, and no matter how I swallowed, it would not go away.

"Come here."
No. Fuck no. Fuck that. Fuck this. Fuck everything.
"Do I need to kill you again? I have to admit, you taste good. I think I'll bite your throat out this time."

Mocking and condescending was the tone. Always that air of control. It would have infuriated me before. Now it did nothing but continue to scare the hell out of me. In an instant it changed to a baby-talk voice, like someone talking a stray puppy out of a trash can. But still mocking.

"Davay, come here. Nice and slow if it makes you feel better. I'm not going to hurt you as long as you do what I say."

It took a while, but I got over there. A few whole minutes to shift and blindly crawl five meters until I was prone with my face hugging the ground as much as I could.

"Good boy. I know that you're mind-dead right now, so here's the question you should be asking yourself. Is this just a dream? Or am I actually visiting you in that dream? Unfortunately for you, it's the latter, and I'll confirm this when I wake you up. Now, I'm not going to do that for a few hours, so in the meantime I have you all to myself."

No response, nothing. There is nothing.

"There's quite a bit that I need to explain to you, and I understand that massacring Zealots can be distracting. Now, I'm a bit of a sadist...maybe more than a bit, but the best part about that is the mind-games I get to play with you. So you can pay careful attention and I'll be nice to you, or you can keep doing what you think has kept you sane all this time and I'll hurt you.

"These are your options: I can take you over to your study where you can get nice and cozy in front of the fire while I lecture you, or you you can stay here and freeze while I talk to you, or you can ignore me and I'll rip you up for a few hours. Laceration...beautiful word. One of the few niceties of this language."

She paused for a few moments here. I didn't look up to see what she did, but I heard her mutter "lacerate" to herself a few times. Then,
"What will it be?"

The pain had been gone long enough for a small bit of pride to worm its way back through any sense of self-preservation, and I suddenly didn't want to answer. This was too demeaning. Rebellion through non-participation is really just sulking, and that was precisely what I felt like doing. But of course,

"First, I'll puncture your eyes. Then, I'll bite off your tongue and ask you trivia about coffee brews.

Don't.

"Then make a decision. You are Skeptic, and yet so childishly irrational. The preferable choice is obvious. Nice, warm fire and a little nest of pillows...or this place. I knew you had masochistic tendencies, but not quite to this extent. By the way, did you know that what you are currently feeling is the same that most people do after being raped? It's think it's cute."

Somehow I imagined that while she spoke she lifted her paws up and down as if weighing a set of scales. When I started to speak, I thought for a moment that my voice had been lost, or that it would somehow sound ragged and hoarse, but my ability to speak was normal, except that I couldn't seem to be capable of raising my voice above a whisper, "The fire."

She clapped her paws together, "Excellent. An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy. If you want it, answer me this, and do so honestly. Is what I'm doing to you right now really happening?"

No.

"No."

A flutter of movement and I felt her breath on my ear as she hissed out,

"Dearer to you than a host of base truths is the illusion that exalts."
The hiss dropped to the faintest of whispers, and yet was impregnated with a more intense snarl than anything I'd imagined possible.
"But denial...will not protect you from this."

A purr, and then a bat to the back of the skull and I was, once again, gone.

From: BAEL Review Section
To: Sgt. Abrams
Subject: Tuna 1|3 Simulated InEx Findings
We have finished redacting certain information and unsecured the report at your request. These data are the result of psychoanalysis, hallucinogen test and stress-tests, and simulated scenario-testing. They are augmented by MRI imaging during certain tests.

Subject Personality Features include:
-High degree of skepticism
-Strongly developed comprehension and system of morality.
-Sociopaths behavior towards moral dilemmas.
-Little to no emotional response.
-Incapability of determining whether or not he is speaking with a real thing or a hallucination.

Results:
Subject is least affected by the entire emotional section of the exam. Situations, scenarios, and questions that are designed to trigger emotional response invariably fail. An InEx avatar that utilizes love, attack, or nurturing nature as an attempt to breach will fail.
Subject is most strongly affected by philosophical and rational explanations of situations. It is only by making the subject understand a certain situation that he can be caused to act upon it. His level of skepticism is quite extreme however, so even this cannot be considered a vulnerability.
In summary of Salt's approach to all problem solving, he automatically falls back to two base systems of rules when faced with any scenario. These rules are redundant and self-correcting. Should one fail, the other automatically replaces it. It should be noted that Salt is the only active duty service member with such a system in place. All other tests thus far have showed operatives to fall back on a singular rule system, and although they commonly have more than one, they invariably are less strongly held to than the primary.

In Salt's case, these two rule systems are the rational and the moral rules he follows to understand and act upon the world. It is virtually impossible to convince him that the impossible is actually real. For example, every single scenario that had to do with a deity figure was ultimately ignored. No matter the evidence presented, Salt's brain refused to address or process that evidence, as he had automatically decided from the beginning of the scenario that the deity figure was just an instructor (as he already knew so) and checked the 'no' box.
During hallucinogen testing the same result happened, only this time Salt justified the things he saw by acknowledging that it was possible for him to hallucinate, and that it was far more likely he was doing so than that a deity figure had actually appeared.
The only successful manipulation attempts were those which did not attempt to prove the reality of the InEx to him, but instead instructed him to do things that were independent of the actuality of the situation. Even though Salt knows he is InExed, he would continue to be manipulated by it.
This is not a vulnerability, as Salt utterly refuses to do actions outside of his moral system. For example, if an Avatar instructed him to fulfill his mission, he would proceed to do so regardless of the knowledge that it was an Avatar. If that Avatar instructed him to go off-course or shoot a bystander however, were completely failed to make him do it unless he was presented with the objective evidence.

We failed to make Salt violate his moral rules in every single scenario presented to him. He repeatedly kills and/or massacres innocent bystanders, including children, to accomplish what he perceives as 'the greater good'.
The greater good is typically the accomplishment of his mission. It should be noted however that he has deliberately failed his mission when he decided that the objective of that mission was not worth the cost. When he was sent to recover MIA operatives, he was far more likely to abandon those operatives if he determined that they were Terminal in favor of sparing the lives of other Vectors.
Whenever he was sent to recover a Package of which the contents were known however, he was willing to kill virtually everything in his path, up to and including our operatives to recover it, under the explanation that the information in the package would lead to the recovery of far more lives than those lost in the short-term.
In other words, even if Salt is InExed and knows he is InExed, it is virtually impossible for him to go Terminal (this is despite the extremely high PDI score), and even if he does go Terminal, it is virtually impossible to make him fail in his operational duties.

--

We conclude the following:
If InExed, Salt will be presented with himself as an Avatar. It is likely that the Avatar will not be visual, but auditory hallucinations only. This will allow Salt to immediately conclude that he is InExed. The Avatar will not attempt to prove to Salt that it is external real, as it will understand that doing so will only strengthen his defenses.
The Avatar will freely admit to him that it is InEx, and instead attempt to manipulate him by explaining situations and asking him to do things to resolve them. The Avatar will most likely approach Salt as a friend under the guise of assisting him in his duties.
-------

You asked for clarification as to why Salt is DQ from active duty, and this is it. We suspect that Salt has been InExed for a long time, and is now Pseudo-Terminal. He has hidden the infection from us during quarantine and remains using it as a friend or assistant in his duties. We understand that by now the incubation period is over and he is non-contagious, but he is nonetheless, Quarantined and to be DQ until a biopsy shows him as clear of infection.
Once cleared, he will remain DQ under Document 153.



---------------------

Then I was back again, curled up in the fetal position with a bloody nose and my uniform replaced by olive drab PT skivvies. The brick fireplace crackled with high flame, and lit the study with a yellow glow. The contrast was incredible to me. This room was wood-paneled in dark, warm colors. Shelves and a desk were lined with books I had read, all re-fitted to drabber, used covers. I was laying in what was effectively a large basket, atop red and green pillows and beneath innumerable quilts. These were not my doing.
Bast lay in her own equivalent of a bed directly to the side of the hearth, mostly hidden in shadow, but the tapetum lucidum clearly visible against the blackness. She was holding the green bottle again, occasionally taking sips from it.
When she saw that I was awake, she pleasantly said, "I thought you might like a security blanket," and returned to examining the room.

It's strange to admit how nice it felt to be there. I hadn't been out of body armor, gore-tex, and sleep bags for a while, so the feel of air and cloth against my bare skin was off-puttingly pleasant. I was still too scared to move for a little while, but when nothing else happened, I ultimately ended up trying to fall asleep again, perhaps under the hope that I could actually wake up and get back to reality, so after a few minutes I was nicely curled up with my head partially buried in pillows and hugging one of the blankets. It was only after this that she continued to speak.

"I ask you again, is what I am doing to you now really happening?"
No.
"No."

The clink of a bottle, the crackle of a branch bursting in the fire. "I would have given you points for courage, but bravery had nothing to do with that answer. Since I asked you to answer honestly, I could smack you, but you're not dishonest either. You've simply forgotten how to think. When I asked you how you survived so many times in your work, the truthful answer should have been 'denial'.

"After all, your base-substance is Skeptic, Patriot, and Warrior. But now you've become Zealot and little other. People may not blame you, but I do. So I'm going to start cutting away the pieces until we get back to the core of what you were.

"First question, an easy one: how do you know that this isn't really happening?"

Deduction.

"That's dodging the point. Perhaps I need to clarify. What is 'real' to you?"

Chemistry. Objective, external constructs, segregated from me. Things that continue to exist when I am dead.

"By that reasoning, your mind is not real."

Chemicals and electrical currents in the brain.

"Then this dream, and supposedly I, are just extensions of those chemicals and currents, and therefore real."

Illusions. Subjective to me, and existing only for me.

"How does that make it any less real?"

There is no answer to that.

"I told you that you are in denial. A disturbingly strong level of denial. Back in your younger days, you would have jumped at any proof of the supernatural. You would have examined it, dissected it, vivisected it, and done everything you could to determine whether the supernatural existed or not.

"But now you're like a turtle hiding in your shell. I offered you proof that I was external to you, and you refused to look in a mirror. Your denial is a circle. You deny everything that would prove to you that I am real, but you also deny everything that implies that I am InEx.

"You refuse to believe I am just the result of a virus, but you refuse to let me demonstrate myself as external to you. Why?"

I don't know why.

"Because it kept you sane during your deployments. Your survival system is extremely effective, albeit useless against me. But it's made you less of a creature and more of a thing. Remind me again, how could god have proven his existence to you?"

Appear before me and others in massively populated public areas around the world over a long period of time and demonstrate his characteristics as valid. By convincing the world through empirical evidence, he would remove the possibility of my delirium and provide the proof I require.

"Yet you refused to look at the empirical evidence I presented you."

Defense against Terminal.

"That is a lie. Lie to me again and I'm going to give you a back massage with my claws out. If you were worried about going Terminal, you would have done the opposite and immediately demanded more evidence. You would have proven to yourself that I am only in your head."

No answer.

"As for the possibility of hallucination, you yourself have admitted that I am not Vostok"

I noted that she pronounced 'Vostok' in proper Russian, instead of the Westernized, English form of the word.

"Quite correctly, I'm afraid. Voice, pitch, timbre, gender. Lucid dreams...and corporeal movement of your things. All known to be impossible under InEx.

"So here's what I am going to do: I'm going to finish with you and then leave you alone for a little while, so you can get some rest. Then I'll go outside and kill some person, drag their corpse back here, and when you wake up you'll find their body in the garage. Sufficient? If not, then ask the next person you see about the...lacerations...on your face."

No.

"Why not?"
Because I may have done it myself.

"You think that you have multiple identity disorder? That you're Tyler Durden? Going to sleep-walk around and kill people?"

Yes.

"Don't be ridiculous. Be honest, and admit the truth. Stop thinking about it and answer me properly. I want to hear you tell me the truth."

I didn't need to think about the answer. I'd known it for a very long time. It had been at the back of my mind during this discussion. I knew it, and she knew it. I spoke through barely parted lips, in a whisper too quiet for her to hear, but she of course, heard it anyway.

"Because I am afraid."

Silence. Then her hiss in my ear again, "Good. Now we're getting somewhere."

Then nothing. I never looked up to see if she had gone or not, but with time I slowly fell back asleep.


-----------------------------

The last sensations of warmth and security started to waver as pain and cold bled into them. I was still in the limbo between worlds where I can can hear and feel things from reality but think they're still in the dream. The roar of a thunderclap as it rolled over my bivvy tore away the final strings and I snapped awake in an instant. I did not feel rested, nor refreshed. I was still sleepy, still fatigued. This had the unfortunate result of me slamming my face into the frame of the car I lay under. I clapped at my forehead and noted a very sharp, deep ache in the bridge of my nose. Combined with a sinus headache, this was not a good wake up call.
The rain had intensified since last night and I heard it hammer against the garage door as if it were hail. The door creaked and shifted back and forth slightly with the impact.

The cyalume under my tarps had faded out to uselessness, and I immediately reached for the two spares I kept hooked to the PALs webbing of my vest. My fingers only felt Cordula. For a moment I was confused, and then the realization that I had no lights left hit me and I almost lost my mind.

"Try as you may, you are not Wolf Larsen."

I froze. Then resumed scrambling for my pistol-light. The knowledge that I was trapped in the dark with a sadistic, murderous cat was possibly the most terrifying thing I'd ever experienced in deployment. The pistol wasn't there either. The rifle was not by my side. That slowly sunk in, and I very nearly turned into a fox caught in a bear trap. The urge to start running blindly towards whatever nearest door existed was curbed only by the last vestiges of rationality I had left. Instead I ended up with my back to the corner, half tangled in the poncho liner, with my knife out and held forward in a defensive motion.
The blackness was absolute. The rain drowned out any sounds I could use to tell where she was. What made it worse was how difficult it was for me to stay alert. My nose was stuffed with what smelled like dried blood,and the headache was virtually debilitating.

Her voice sounded loud and clear over the storm, "Does that knife make you feel safer, or do you just want to finally commit to illusions?"

I did not answer. I had no answer. I would not answer. Every single bit of pain from the night was fresh in my mind and I was absolutely done conversing.

"Were you anyone else, you'd say that they had gone terminal by acting like this. Yesterday you were obsessed with not doing precisely what you are doing now."

I did not care. She sighed, the sound still quite some distance away from me, and then said,
"Just to confirm, last night happened. It wasn't your dream. But you did make progress, so I want to do something nice for you. Put away the toy, calm down, and I'll give you a present."

"Fuck you."

"That's not nice."

The words were spoken at least several meters away, but in less than a second I felt her weight drop against my chest and a sharp point applied pressure to my jugular notch. My breathing stopped, my skin went numb, and a moment after this I involuntarily dropped the knife. Fear leads to loss of motor skills. I do not respond well to adrenaline. My eyes ended up squeezed shut, and the rain was drowned out by my pulse pounding against my temples.
I heard her own breathing, slow and calm, inter-spaced with a short purr.

"You really...learn...slow."

Another claw very slowly ran through my cheek and added a fourth cut, extending to the edge of my lip this time. I choked down the gasp and felt cold wetness on my cheek after the blood had time to well out.
The only sentence I could start began with the word, "Don't-", and was quickly stopped by a short push of the claw against my throat, perforating the skin this time.

"Hush. You remember what happened last time, so don't tempt me."

It hurt to talk now, so I just froze and waited. I'm sorry to admit that I was rather severely shaking at this point. Coming out of the dream and into this was just too much to deal with.

She was purring again, audibly savoring the moment despite the overly threatening tone. That she enjoyed hurting me was somehow infinitely more frightening than being attacked by psychopaths and fundamentalists. There were no rules, no reasoning, no bargaining that I could use to stop it. She would hurt me because she liked it, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about that. Even the concept of it all being in my head didn't stop the fact that I felt it. This train of thought was interrupted by another short application of pressure, and now blood was also running down into my shirt.

"Close, but not quite. I'm not doing this for my jollies, but instead because I can take away your fear, and I can give you something in return for it. So this is how I'm going to save you. Think of this as a defining moment. The choice you make now will determine everything that you are and everything that you will become, and you are going to make that choice by answering one simple, little question."

It was hard to concentrate on anything right now, but her words had a way of imprinting. I could visualize each sentence as if a text were written across my eyelids. Perhaps I was still asleep.

"You're not, and that's the point. See, if you were still asleep, this situation would be entirely meaningless. But we're back in reality now, and that means that the blood you're losing will stay here long after we're gone. So here's your options: you can pick up that knife again and stab me, or you can yield. But we both know that I will pull your spinal cord out from between your vertebrae before you can get that blade anywhere near me. "

The image came very vividly. I shivered.

"So if you still cling to denial, then you know that I couldn't possibly do that. If I am just hallucination, then the pain you feel is imaginary. The fear that's crippling you is stimulated from illusion and delusion. I'd like to call it a gamble, that would be more poetic, but unfortunately that word doesn't fit this.
But anyway, answer me this: do you really still think that you're crazy? Or have you accepted reality?"

The stinging of the claw against my throat was starting to burn. The blood on my face felt cold as the water content evaporated. My body hurt...everything hurt. I could feel her weight on my chest and the dull pressure of claws against my vest. The cloying smell of blood was in my nose. It all felt absolutely real. Had I not been aware of the existence of hallucinations, there would have been no doubt in my mind.

"But that's not the question. You know that you are not InExed. That leaves you with one naturalistic explanation: you are insane. What I want to see from you is conviction. I want to know whether you really believe that. Now, show me."

Choice. It wasn't a choice. What I believed was involuntary, and until persuaded otherwise there was nothing I could to change it. But I still believed what I did regardless. So I did nothing. I could feel the knife under my fingertips, and I moved my hand away from it. Because I did not want to die, and could no longer tell myself that the pain I felt was not there. Orwell would have been happy.
Silence. Soft breathing. Then the pressure against my throat disappeared and reappeared in the form of a push against both shoulders, forcing me on my back. Her tone had shifted in that off-settling bipolar way of hers, jumping from threatening to cheery in an instant.

"Aww...I'm proud of you. Really, I am. So here's your present, pay careful attention."

There was the clang of metal on cement as the knife was flicked away and then her breath was on my ear again and that forceful whisper was back. Apparently she really had a thing for whispering sweet nothings into people's ears.

"You're not afraid of the dark, you're afraid of what's in the dark. But there's nothing here except for me, and I won't hurt you so long as you obey. Right?"

"You scare me," the words themselves sounded like a church confession.

"I appreciate that, but do you trust me?"

"No."

"Oh...well, that makes this slightly more difficult. Let's try this anyway. You understand that if I was going to kill you or otherwise hurt you, I'd do so right now, yes? So whatever I'm about to do, it isn't...bad."

I felt a cyalume slapped into my hand and the weight of her body vanished. I heard the slap of her wet paws against the cement, and imagined that the prints would be bloody.

"I want you to follow my voice, and I'll take you to your things. Don't use the light, and I promise that you'll never be afraid of the dark again."

I remained frozen on the ground, cradling the light in both hands as if it were a crucifix. It took a few moments of throat-work to get my speech going again, and I found that I was looking in what I thought was her direction as I spoke. My voice was now raspy and low,

"What the hell do you want from me?"

Her voice was further away now, and it came back in a song-song tease,
"Hmm...many things. You've delivered on some of them, and now I want you to do so with the next thing, and so you will follow me as we run to the ends of the dirt, and you'll keep following me until we reach the never, and once we are there, I will give that which you want most, and then I will give you something much more precious: the choice to accept that thing or refuse it. You still haven't realized that you are not a Patriot. You are not a Warrior, Skeptic, Humanist, and most certainly not a Zealot."

More silence. Then I asked, "What are you?"

Unlike most of her answers, she stopped to think before replying. I heard her footsteps cease, and then I waited in the darkness for what seemed like a very long time. Her voice, when it came, was contemplative, almost as if she were unsure of what to say. Above all, she sounded hesitant, but nonetheless confident. Then I saw the glow of her eyes, which by all known physics should not have been possible, and knew that she had turned around to say,

"I am many things, and I'll tell you some of them with time. But... I will tell you what I am to you, if you give me your word that you won't use the light."

We stood there for a little while, and then I let the cyalume slip from my fingers. It landed on the poncho liner, and I didn't hear it impact.
I heard two steps come towards me, and the eyes disappeared from my sight before I heard a very quiet, almost shy voice say,

"Think of me as your mother."

It took a few seconds for me to actually process the words. Most of what she said I tended to dismiss or glance over, but this...this resonated within me. I can't control my emotions, nor my wants, but somehow such a silly little line of what could only be described as bullshit washed over me. All of the primal fear, the instincts to run and kill and hide from this thing that had attacked me, disappeared with those words. Whether I accepted them or not was irrelevant, because they had offered a new perspective. The small, tiny possibility that she wasn't trying to hurt me was now rooted, watered by the sincerity of her voice, and when she walked away my fear followed her and was replaced by a blank numbness. I followed her.

---------------------------------------------

Rule 5:
If you spot another NFA operator while deployed, identify yourselves to them by using a per-determined call-sign. It is advisable to meet and note that you may be in the same area to avoid friendly fire, as well as obtaining updated information on the environment.
[Handwritten Note]: If this was true, then we wouldn't operate solo. You can never tell whether your own mates are really our own or just some guys wearing uniforms. You can also never tell if they're crazy or not, and you can never tell whether they're actually real or not. Deployed operators do not keep records of other currently deployed operators for that reason. The best thing to do when you see someone is to just ignore them and, oh yeah, hide.



I stood on the roof of the auto-garage with the rain pouring off of me and looking out towards the church. It rose in the distance above all other buildings, dark amidst the light gray of the sky. The cyalume Bast had given me was under my jacket, still unlit. My guns had been in the office, and there was a fresh corpse outside. I'd given it a passing glance and moved on, despite her asking whether or not I wanted to know who he had been. I was more interested in coming up with a plan of approach as opposed to analyzing the mounting evidence that Bast was providing.
She was sitting by my feet, running a paw over her head in a very human-like fashion and occasionally shaking the water from her eyes. It was those little details that were more disturbing than any of the more obvious stuff.
A few hours of recon had showed very little activity. There were no exterior sentries, but from the South side I could see into the parking lot and there were two guys sitting in chairs just outside the main lobby, under an overhang where they were out of the rain. I recorded this in my book, including their individual descriptions and armament, which consisted of visible AK family rifles. They both wore dark business suits, without ties, and regulation haircuts. If anything, the two looked more like professional bodyguards than churchgoers. I would have preferred to spend a few days here to watch the rotations of guards and get a more detailed count, but my lack of resources (and clearly dwindling sanity) was a very limiting time factor. The windows were all closed, and the broken ones covered with curtains or plywood. The rain drops streaked across the glass preventing me from seeing into them.

"What's your plan?"

I started to answer, hesitated, then stopped.

"You don't have a plan?"

I shook my head. A good plan depends on recon, and I had none. I didn't know how many people were inside, what the layout of the building was, where any documents would be stored, or anything else of importance. Hell, I had no way of even confirming whether the documents were at this location. The building itself was huge. My best bet would have been to wait for an outgoing patrol or forager and then grab them, interrogate them, and go from there, but again, that took time.

"Then what are you going to do?"

I ducked back under the lip of the roof and picked up the canteen I'd left to fill with rainwater. After a few sips I stowed it away again and put on the M50, the rubber wet with water. I couldn't approach the building from the skyline, so I had to take to the streets.

"You're beginning to realize that you're not Larsen, but I didn't think you'd replace that with Commando."

I collapsed the mask around my face, released it, and said, "This is more of a Metal Gear thing."

"I never saw it."

"As if you don't know what I'm talking about."

"I don't. What's it about?"

I didn't answer and hopped over the edge of the roof onto a parked truck and from there on to ground level. With no one to take care of storm-drains and sewage tunnels, the streets were flooded. Water rushed past my ankles as if I were standing in a river, and in moments my feet were numb. Some people prefer wearing combat boots to get some ankle-high waterproofing, but I prefer the jungle boots for their drainage. Nothing could be done to stop my feet from freezing, so I just sloshed my way towards the church, Bast riding inside my pack with her head out over my shoulder.


"You should wait for nightfall. Now you can see what it feels like."

I resisted the impulse to shout over the sound of the water and instead talked at a normal level.

She tucked her head by my ear, "What!?"

"I said, like what feels like?"

I felt her paw cup around my ear so that she didn't have to shout,

"To openly stand in front of someone and remain unseen."


----
Excerpt from Salt's mission book|

Target building:

Rectangular shape - front and back are short, sides are long.
7 stories + roof. Unknown sub-floors.
Long sides approx 100 meters, short sides 70-75 meters.
Number of windows: 20 - first floor only, including glass entry doors.
Visible entrances: 4 | one main entrance, three fire exits on sides and back.

Known number of personnel: two.

-----

"Have you considered the ethics of what you're about to do? You haven't seen these people do anything wrong, but you're about to kill them. This is starting to become a habit; you did the same thing at the Orthodox church."

Approaching the building had been simple, since there was nobody outside except the front. I chose the South wall for two reasons: the windows on it were mostly broken and therefore covered up, and because the architecture allowed me to climb it. Approximately every three meters there was a sloping ledge imprinted into the concrete, and the enforcing indentations along the sides of these slopes made it quite easy to quick-jump off them and grab on to the next. I was hanging off the lip of the roof and looking over the structure in a few minutes without much trouble. The water running off the roof acted like a waterfall but, with the exception of my head and feet, I remained dry.

"I take it we're not going to have this discussion right now?"

I pulled the gas mask off my head, "Nope."

The roof was flat, obviously designed for people to walk on, and was empty. There was a single ladder-well access, and I found a group of chairs and a coffee table besides it. An ashtray was filled with water and I counted three different brands of butts in it. They either kept sentries out here or liked to hang out, but the rain was keeping them inside today.
I kept the M14 slung over my back, between the vest and backpack, and got out the M1911 instead. This had to be done quietly, and although a suppressed gunshot would still be heard indoors, it wouldn't transmit all the way across the building, and hopefully these people wouldn't recognize it for what it was.
I twisted the door handle just a little bit to determine that it wasn't locked (they'd probably pried the auto-lock out so nobody could get stuck out here), and was about to go in when I felt Bast tap my shoulder.

"So your plan is to walk inside and just kill everything you see?"

"That's the idea."

"You're stupid."

I couldn't argue with that, and put my hand back on the door handle but was again stopped.

"Have you forgotten what you're doing here in the first place?"

"No."

"Then how do you intend to find what you're looking for like this?"

I had no logical answer, and she knew it, so my lack of a response wasn't met with a jibe, but she said,

"We'll talk about this later," and jumped out of the pack and stood by my feet as I slowly turned the handle and opened the door. The stairwell was pitch black, and the outside let in enough backlight for me to see that it was empty. I stepped in and quickly pulled the door shut behind me as Bast slipped in. The last vestiges of water streamed out of my boots and I stood in the darkness, only the tritium sights of my pistol visible against the black.

[E-Stalin [Orthrus]]

I waited a minute for the water to finish running off my body, assisting the process with slight shakes of my arms and legs. I heard soft pawsteps moving down the stairs, then silence. I thumbed the safety up and very slowly started making my way down the stairs, left arm crossed underneath the right to slide down the railing as a guide. Progress in the dark was slow, but calm and steady. My body was sensitized to every minute detail of touch. I felt the tiny skateboard-taped ridges at the ends of each step, the rust and flaked paint across the railing. Very slowly, minute by minute, I descended the staircase. My hand swept across the cement walls on the landings, looking for doors, and I didn't find one until I was five landings down, by my count. Thirteen steps per landing, that put me at about the second floor. The door handle turned freely and I opened it just a crack. More darkness. Emptiness. A vacuum.
The staircase had not frightened me. I knew that I was alone in it now, and there was nothing more I could possibly see than Bast. But with the opening of the hallway the fear started to come back. Deep breaths, slow ones. Eyes closed, then open. Slow blink, focus on the sights, and...adjust.
I turned on my flashlight with the door still closed so that my eyes could adjust to it before I went in proper. There were several seconds of pained squinting and when I could open my eyes fully I swung open the door and aimed down range.

Hallway, empty. Looked like maintenance. Cinder block walls, piping running along the walls, a visible 'Exit' sign reflecting back green in the distance. I took a step inside and kept the light pointed forward as I pulled out a matchstick and wedged it in the doorframe. The door looked mostly intact, and I didn't want to lock out my initial escape route.
My pulse was slowing down as my skin temperature went up and my feet started to burn. It was warm in here, much warmer than it should have been. I could hear a slight humming in the distance, very faint. This was not normal. Nothing hums in this city. If this building actually had power then this was a much more dangerous place than I had realized.

Halfway down the hall I came across a door and opened it, revealing a closet-sized space stacked to the ceiling with wool blankets, neatly folded in squares. It had been an electrician's room before, and the wall had a row of what looked like circuit breaker boxes. I would have looked at them but they were padlocked. The locks seemed to have been well maintained. There was no rust visible on the brass surface, despite pits steadily eating through the latches they secured. I slowly swung the door shut again and continued down the hallway, reaching the exit sign at the end of it. There was a door directly to my left and the exit door to the front. I cracked the front door open, saw daylight and heard rain, closed it again. That was the North side, which I knew had a fire escape on it.

The door to my left then. Another hallway. This one had doors lining both sides and blue carpet on the floor. It resembled an office complex to me. I took a moment to lower the light intensity to forty lumen before carrying on. Many of the doors were missing and replaced with hanging carpets or curtains. I noticed that the doors had cuts of duct-tape stuck to the walls near them with various names written in Sharpie. Yakovlev, Chadd, Fick, Ivanov, and on it went. I started with the door less rooms first, simply to minimize noise. The blue from the curtain appeared pale in my white light, and as I swept it aside the beam jumped to the opposite wall of the room.
I froze. Only for a moment before I realized what I was looking at. The room in question was a bedroom, complete with a sleeping occupant. It was a small room, and the man soundly slept perhaps two meters in front of me, curled up in the fetal position under numerous blankets. I kept the light on the wall and looked at him in the backflood. White, blonde, his torso unclothed, his breathing deep and even. I glanced around the room and concluded that it was certainly his private quarters. The walls were decorated with a couple of national geographic posters and a 2010 calender showing some Anime character. There was a military ILBE in the corner by his bed, complete with canteens and a machete. The table in the room had photographs of some people, and I saw the sleeping man in one of them. A marksmans badge, two ribboons, and a PFCs rank insignia were neatly laid out on a felt pad next to what appeared to be the man's daily carry items; a pocket knife, flashlight, and notepad binder were on the edge of the table, within reach from the bed. Books were stacked on the shelf under the table surface, and I recognized the covers of teenager's books right next to a compilation of Edgar Allen Poe.
The wooden wardrobe in the only remaining corner was not visibly locked, and I very quietly rolled my steps over to it and opened it slightly. AK-74M, Mossberg 590, H&K USP. Surplus ammunition boxes, Interceptor vest, Multicam BDUs, Bates boots, ECWCS cold-weather gear.

I left the room and proceeded to the next, much more careful this time, and found the same thing. Another man, another private room. Different decorations, different personalities, the same wardrobe contents. On I went, glancing into room after room and finding person after person. This didn't look like a Mormon congregation. It didn't look like any congregation. This had the appearance of a military barracks.
One of the occupants stirred when I glanced in and mumbled something inarticulate to me in a sleepy haze. I didn't answer and immediatelly stepped away from the room. When I didn't hear anything else a minute later, I presumed he had simply conked out again. I continued down the hall, counting rooms as I went, and by the end I had a count of twenty-one possible occupants. I hadn't looked into every room, but I was betting that they all had a sleepy.
I had nearly reached the end of the hall when I stopped. Bast sat just in front of the corner, head cocked, tail switching.

"Where are you going?"

She spoke at a normal volume, and I very nearly forgot myself and almost put my finger to my lips, but caught myself momentarily. What the hell did she mean, "Where are you going?" Down, around, through the building, where else? I shook my head at her in confusion. She grinned,

"You have a little under two dozen people here. All unaware, all defenseless. Tell me, why are you continuing in while they're still breathing?"

I whispered, already full aware of what she meant, "What the fuck are you talking about?"

The grin spread wider, and white teeth shined in the darkness.

"If you had found ritualistic, cultist material here, you would have already killed them all. Smashed their throats in while they slept, broken their necks just as their eyes opened, and continued down the line until they were all dead before they even realized what had happened. Correct?"

One word, spoken through clenched teeth, "No."

Another word, spoken through laughter, "Yes."

I stepped around her and my uplifted leg was shoved back down by a paw. The sheer strength exerted by the cat disturbed me; my foot was forced back to the ground with as much ease as if I'd tried to push back a moving car. She continued speaking without pause, completely oblivious to the roiling emotions that she was instigating in me.

"You can kill the men here and accomplish your goal, or you can be an idiot and let them live, which will ultimately result in you being captured."

I took a couple steps back, wary of being clawed again, and hissed, "I am not a fucking psychopath."

"Which just makes you stupid. Ten minutes ago you were set to slaughter everyone in the building. Now you're afraid to do it unless you can confirm that they actually deserve it. What happened to the man I watched a few days ago? You massacred a church full of strangers, men who could have been innocent. You didn't know if they had committed crimes against your precious Consitution, and you provoked them into defending themselves before you blew them away.
But now you just waltz on by, ignoring the obvious fact that you will have to kill these people anyway quite soon. Do you know why?"

Another step back, "Get out of my way."

She rolled her eyes and sighed, "Do you know why?"

"I don't care why."

She facepawed, literally. "Answer the question or I'm just going to sit here and make you take the long way around."

Shooting her was steadily becoming more and more tempting, but I still couldn't. I knew that I couldn't. So I whispered, "No."

"It's because you're worried that they're like you. Apparently you have no qualms in butchering people left and right if you disagree with their world views, but all it took was for you to spot a book you like on the shelf and you're immediately halted. How very moral of you. I can have mine, but you can't have yours. A cross on an altar and you draw the range-lines, but a uniform in a wardrobe and you offer the baccy tin, which makes you no different from the people you kill."

She spoke the words with evident relish, and then looked at me expectantly, as if waiting for some kind of shocked reaction or denial. I waited for her to continue, and when she remained quiet, I asked, "Are you going to move now?"

Her face fell and she let out a rather exasperated sigh. "Fine. Good Wind, you can be so boring sometimes. Oh, and...behind you."

A flicker of movement and she disappeared around the corner. Before I even considered looking behind me I heard a low call, "Hey!"

The voice was quiet and groggy, with a questioning tone. I had to resist my reflex to spin around, and instead caught my breath and looked over my shoulder. The light-sleeper from before had his head poking out of his room, a lit oil lantern in one hand. I quickly lowered my pistol behind my leg to hide it and so the light wouldn't illuminate my face.

The man rubbed his eyes and I noticed that his hair stuck up on one side from having lain on the pillow,
"What's going on?"

I took a moment to steady my voice, "Nothing. Go back to bed."

"What time is it?"

I looked at my watch, wrist held high to keep him in my sight, "Fourteen twenty-five."

He groaned and rubbed his head some more, "Tell Igor to get me up half an hour early. I'm going to hygiene first."

He stepped back inside and quietly closed the door. I released the air I'd been holding in my lungs and stepped around the corner, keeping the light aimed at the ground now that I knew they kept watches. This caution was quickly vindicated when I saw daylight ahead, roughly twenty meters down the hallway. I turned off the flashlight and slowly walked towards it. The sound of rain pattering on glass grew louder as I neared the mid-point of corridor. The wall recessed here into an open room, separated by a chest-high counter. An open door was set into the wall besides it.
I stood for a long time next to the corner here, listening for anyone...anything, but the sound of rain drowned out whatever traces of breathing or movement I might have picked up. I couldn't see any shadows on the wall. Still, paranoia prevailed and I crouched to duck-walk past the counter until I had reached the door on the other side. A peek around the corner showed an empty, L-shaped room, just a connector between the hall and the recess. I slipped inside and raised the pistol before stepping away from the wall and slowly sweeping my vision into the room at an angle. The light through the window was gray, and painted the room in shadows of charcoal. I saw a table in the corner, cinderblock, and instantly froze as I caught sight of the chair by the counter and the arched back of the occupant. I ducked back behind the wall and out of sight.
One man. Not two. This was their firewatch. Now for the moment of involvement. Up until now I had left no traces of my presence. I still had an exit, and could keep exploring without any alarms raised, which left the question of whether the risk of accosting this man outweighed the potential benefits of the information I could get from a post. There would be no archives here, and I would find no information about my main objective, but a post would have names, numbers, divisions. Raiding this place would let me assess the situation properly.

It was a gamble, but if I committed to it, it was the safest one I could make. If they knew what they were doing, there would be a patroling watch as well. I could take them out when I ran into them and stop them from finding the man here. I doubted that their watches alternated in any way except on the hour, so I'd have at least half an hour before the next shift, and an hour and a half if I was lucky. Further still, everyone was asleep. Taking the watch out probably meant that the next watch would just keep sleeping through their post. Which just left the question of the other door set across the room.
This place was starting to look more and more like a military barracks and less like a church with every step I took. If this were organized in a barracks fashion, then that room would contain the Duty Staff Non-Commissioned Officer, or whatever their equivalent was. Since everyone was sleeping, he probably would be to, or just hanging out, reading a book, or some other form of entertainment.
So...commit. Take out the watch, then secure the room. With this area secured, start gathering intel until the patrol appeared and drop them. Simple, unless Murphy's Law decided to have a go at me.

-------------

SAR Tracking Profile: ----- 'Salt------
....
....
....
Tracking:
-Salt is exclusively a daylight operator, with a severely strong tendency to avoid night and low light conditions. His typical procedure is to establish a central bivouac site and operate in concentric rings from that point. The most common sites he chooses are hospitals and nuclear power plants. This is specifically due to their having backup power generators. Thus Salt's operation sites will always contain a backup generator, and locating him is best started by locating such places on a map.

-In multi-story buildings he will always choose a higher floor, typically the second to top floor, and choose a windowed room situated by the outer wall of the building. This is done to allow daylight into the room. The windows will always be covered with varying material (tarps/blankets/curtains etc.) during low light conditions.
The sites will have connecting bridges to the surrounding buildings, and Salt will always use these to enter and exit his bivouac site.
-Salt will avoid roofs and ground level whenever possible during travel. He will typically use the top-most floors for travel. He prefers open, airy buildings such as parking lots and construction sites. However, he will never skyline himself, so observation of these buildings must be done with focus aided by optical devices.
-Salt is a heavy smoker, and exclusively smokes filterless Lucky-Strikes (when not available, he smokes filterless Camels). Given that Lucky Strikes were a very unpopular cigarette, finding any butts from them should be interpreted as evidence of Salt's presence in that location.
However, Salt always hides his cigarette butts after smoking, typically burying them or storing them in a container when burial is not an option.

-Salt rations his allotment of MREs and very rarely has resorted to other food sources. If the MREs are lost or eaten, he will typically hunt birds and squirrels. Again, he buries the remants, so locating evidence of such hunting is difficult and even if discovered, would be inconclusive.

Equipment and Weaponry:

-Salt's firearms invariably consist of two long guns and two sidearms. This will always be a rifle, shotgun, sidearm, and backup sidearm.
The shotgun has varied through operation and is unreliable for identification of the operator. Salt usually leaves the shotgun behind at the Bivvy site once established.

His rifles are much more specific and an effective identifier. They will always fire a full powered cartridge, most commonly 7.62 NATO and 7.62x54R. His rifle of choice is the M14 and variants thereof, and his chosen ammunition is 7.62 NATO M118 Special Ball. The rounds are easily identified by the headstamps, which may be pre-war surplus or current production rounds.
Prewar headstamps will include LC and the Nato Cross. Modern production rounds will include WP and the Nato Cross. Salt has never used an intermediate rifle cartridge and always uses Ball ammunition.

Salt's personal rifle for all deployments is a modified Springfield M1A Scout Squad with a black composite stock , mounted bipod, and forward mounted Trijicon ACOG optic. The right-side of the receiver is engraved with: 'Til The Never. See figure 6 for detailed photographs.
Salt's sidearm of choice is the M1911. Chosen ammunition is standard 230 grain ball, chosen for its subsonic muzzle velocity. HIs personal sidearm for all deployments has been a modified Springfield 'MC Operator' full sized model with a threaded barrel and tritium sights. It is a two-tone Olive Drab pistol, and will commonly be used with an AAC suppressor. The grips are olive drab double-diamond Canvas Micarta. The left of the slide is engraved with: 'Dar Gato Por Liebre'.
See Figure 7 for detailed photographs.

Other Identifying Marks/Habits:
Salt has multiple tattoos, which are photographically documented in Appendix B.
-Left scapula: phi-paw, black.
-Right interior forearm: Fouled Anchor, black.
-Lower right side of spine, vertical: Molecular structure of |(2R)-2-Amino-3-[(3-hydroxy-1,1-dimethylpropyl)thio]propanoic acid|, black.

Salt has an affinity for green Cyalumes, and uses large amounts of them nightly. He typically does not dispose of them, and finding numbers of 3-5 in one area may signify his presence.
Salt has two surgically implanted hypoallergenic metal pins in the left deltoid, specifically requested for use as an emergency lockpick for use in capture. This should be kept in mind when restraining him.
---------------------------------

I came up and around the wall smoothly, not at a rush or charge. The natural walking motion would prevent reflexive response from the watchman, and at this distance I could close with him before he could get a proper look at me and understand that I was a threat. I did not look at his face as I walked to him, my eyes were focused on his hands (they held a book), but I noticed his head lazily glance over, as if he had been more concerned with finishing one more line on the page before looking up. Too late.
My right hand came up under his chin and lay down on my left bicep. An instant later I squeezed the scissor-lock shut and he was caught in the choke. He had time for one grunt before I lifted his entire body weight up out of the chair and fell back to the floor with him. I landed in a sitting position with is body sprawled forward, my right leg immediately came up and wrapped around his arm to draw it away from any weapons he may have had at the belt, and I kept an eye on his left arm as I pressed my full force into the choke.
It was over in seconds. He made little to no noise and followed the same pattern they always do. First he clutched at my arm and got nowhere. Then he tried to get his legs under him, but with my knee in the small of his back he couldn't straighten his body enough to do so. Finally came the blind, flailing punches towards my face, which he couldn't reach because it was tucked into the right side of his shoulder. His knuckles bounced off my skull twice before he slowed and eventually ceased moving entirely.

I found myself in in Other space during those seconds, more focused on the shadowy droplets of rain against the window than the man asphyxiating in my arms. It was a void.
I came back to the solid when I noticed that the man was limp. Ten more seconds to be certain that he was out and I let him go. His flushed face quickly paled again as the circulation restored. Blood chokes don't last long. He'd probably wake up in a few minutes with a hell of a headache and a sore throat, but no other problems. Of course, that meant that this had to be done very quickly. Knocking people out over and over again every few minutes is a pretty good way to cause a stroke. I rapidly opened the door over and looked inside with the light on at full brightness. Empty. Obviously a living space, complete with a wood stove. I closed the door and pulled out my logbook binder, unzipping it on the counter and sweeping aside the book (Two-Minute Mysteries) in the process.
In the drawers I found pretty much what I'd hoped for: personnel records. There was no way of determining if they were up to date or just remnants, but they looked new enough. A quick count showed roughly seventy names. That was a lot more than I'd expected, and could turn problematic. I folded the list and stowed it. More important than the names themselves, it had a chain of command. The firewatch postings were listed on a white-board and I copied them into the logbook. The next watch wasn't to be woken until 1500.
A map of the building and the list of downstairs shifts finished up my paper thievery, which just left the single most useful thing from the room: the set of keys on the unconscious man's belt. All in all, this had turned out better than I'd expected. A few minutes by myself and I'd have a good understanding of where to look for the Cheget copy, and on top of that I had general access around the place. With my first smile in days tweaking at my lips, I rolled the watch under the counter where he was out of sight and turned to leave when I realized that the door was shut.
The moment of confusion that leads to paralysis. I froze, my brain completely incapable of understanding what was happening or how to react. I wasn't even sure if this was a threat, and for several seconds my heart rate fluttered. Then it accelerated.

"Of course, this is a symbolic thing more than anything practical. After all, it's not like there's anything stopping you from just vaulting over the counter."

Bast lightly sprung onto the wooden surface, leaving two scratchmarks in the laminate. "Oops, now there is."

Whatever I felt, it was not a mood for this. I strode to the door and turned the knob. It rattled, but wouldn't rotate.

"Did you think that I can't lock doors?"

I took the keyring from my pocket and selected the first key.

A chuckle, then a voiceless laugh, "You've got to be kidding. A perfectly good counter here and you shuffle around with keys."

The first key was the wrong one. I went to the second while I talked,

"Yeah, well...given your history of violence, I'm not going to walk past any place you're sitting."

She purred, "Aw, you've finally learned that lesson. It took precisely four hundred and eleven milliliters of your blood for you to catch on. Minus the whole throat-cutting thing, that is."

Third key. Fourth key. Her tail was switching in my peripheral vision, always switching.

"That's not going to work."

Fifth key.

"Because I broke the pins."

I stopped, paused, then looked at her, "What?"

"Are you really surprised? I'm a talking, teleporting, strong, beer drinking cat. Is it hard to believe that I broke a lock? I'm magick, remember? It's not exactly difficult for me to hit the damned thing."

My eyes narrowed, "Is this another one of your so-very-fun trust building exercises?"

A flash of white against the gray as she grinned, "Oh, no. This is an exercise in kitten-care. Videlicet, I'm saving your life. Again."

I stared at her. She stared back. This was starting to happen all too often for comfort. Somehow I already knew the answer, but I asked anyway,
"Can I hop over now?"

Her smile disappeared. "No. That man on the ground? That...Solidus? Kill him."


-------------------------------------

Excerpt from Psyche Analysis SAR #2132
Subject: -----'Salt'----
Nature of Interview: Subject philosophy on cause of action.

"When you're offered the thing which you want the most, it's hard to say no. It overrides the lesser values and negates the rules that you used to follow. Everything has a cost, and people are willing to ignore that cost in exchange for getting what they want.
When someone spends their entire lifetime searching for something... a purpose, an afterlife, an explanation, and are then just handed the opportunity to finally find it, the system they were given simply disappears. Their morality, their altruism, the greater good...little children. It all becomes immaterial, and then that thing takes over your mind, until one day you suddenly realize that you have forgotten everything that used to matter to you. That you have lost track of how many people you've murdered for that chance.
But you're still empty handed. You haven't found what you wanted, haven't seen it, can't even comprehend it. Because in the end, people can't find the thing they seek. It's all an illusion. Always has been, always will be. That is why they are Terminally InExed. That is why I have to kill them."

"Don't try it."

I realized that my body had slipped into a combat stance. My feet had spread out perpendicular to the counter and my hands were slightly raised in front of me. I hadn't even noticed that I'd done it before she cut me off.
It is difficult for me to describe a cat's facial expressions. There is no direct correlation to the human motions of smiling or frowning, but somehow the combination of ear motion and eyes could be described as nothing less than grinning. Or angry. Or any host of other typical human feelings. Projection. Prescribing what I could recognize onto her. Right now it was expectant, like a teacher waiting for a child to finish writing a math equation on the board.

She smiled as I thought this, always reacting to what I felt the instant I thought it.
"If you think you're fighting yourself then you're going to have to sit down and figure out what you want, and why your subconscious or whatever you think I am is so much at odds with your ego.
Unfortunately, you have no time for that now, because in three minutes, twenty four seconds, somebody is going to discover that this post is unmanned. Now if this man is dead and hidden, that will give you a little less than two minutes after they arrive before any alarm is raised, providing you the time necessary for you to reach the next floor. Otherwise this man will be awakened and his immediate report will ultimately result in your being trapped here and then captured.

So....," She drew out the word and faded into a short pause, "Don't disappoint me."

I closed my eyes, withdrawing into that head in the sand mode I'd been trying to find comfort in so often now. My clenched jaw ached, and with some will power I relaxed my body. An explanation. A way out. A puzzle to solved. The answer was in my head somewhere, itching at the back of my skull.
I did not want to kill this man. I did not want to kill anyone here so far. I couldn't fathom why, but the resistance was as adamant as rejecting the proposal of killing a sleeping child. Why. Why? Everything kept coming back to that question, because nothing made sense. A few days ago a couple dozen people had been annihilated in as many seconds because I had decided that they were in the way.
Why was this man any different? It suddenly dawned on me that the severity of reaction was a direct result of her. She wanted me to do it, which automatically made me resist. Funny...for all the intensity of what she'd put me through so far, it had created the opposite effect.
I wondered if she was still sitting on the counter now that my eyes were closed. Had I really slipped so far into this madness that I'd assumed object permanence with my hallucinations? What if, when I could not see, the image of her body vanished as well, only to reappear as a visual projection when I opened my eyes again? Was she even a complete manifestation, or just the combination of independent hallucinatory stimuli? I had not yet felt the fur on her back. Had my brain already decided what it felt like? How thick or sparse the hairs would be, if there was some unique pattern identifiable as hers?
What would it look like if someone walked in during this and saw me fighting to pass her? Would they see me struggling against empty air, or would I be standing as if comatose, the physics all going on in my imagination?
Perhaps a minute passed. Perhaps two. Or maybe it was an hour. It clicked. The thought at the back of my head that I'd been trying to isolate. The solution to the riddle. Time.

I opened my eyes. Bast's position had changed. She now sat atop the chair back, and I actually recoiled in reflex at her proximity. No matter how well I understood what was happening to me, I could not stop it. But now I had the answer.
Her head snapped to meet my eyes as my lips parted to say the words, and I realized that there was a frightening tone of uncertainty in my voice,
"You don't know the future. You can't."

Her eyes narrowed and the expression of exerted power faded, "Oh really?"

I continued, "You're cold reading me. Making meaningless claims and then letting me fill in the gaps. Three minutes, twenty four seconds? If I stand here that long, nothing will happen, but you know that I can't afford to risk it, so I'll keep going, and then you'll just say that you saved me again.
If I wait here and someone shows up, you think I'll accept you more, but I'm not counting the seconds, and I already know that if there's a patrol, it'll be here within a few minutes at the most.
Right?"

I realized that my adrenaline had kicked in while I talked. My breathing was fast and heavy. I was afraid. I was afraid, because I believed that she would hurt me again. But that no longer mattered. I had traced the knot, and untying it was just a step away.
So go ahead. Cut me, but I'm not doing it.
Her eyes had become very focused, and I cannot describe the sheer intensity of the glare in them. Anger visible in the yellow for the first time. I took another step back and my hands came up, ready for it. The adrenaline reached its peak, and there came the moment of absolute surety that it was about to happen.

It didn't. She continued to look at me, and then she released an exasperated sigh as her eyes rolled. This, I hadn't expected at all. Her paw ran between her ears and she muttered something in a language I could not understand, the tone reminiscent of swearing. Then her head snapped back to me, ears folded flat and black lips drawn back to reveal the fangs and she hissed in open fury,

"You're like a stupid child playing with a loaded gun, crowing to the world about how right you are and how you've one-upped those trying to stop you. But guess again, kitten. The gun doesn't care."

Stating that, she leaped from the chair in a blur of speed too fast for me to even fully see. I fell back out of reflex, but it wasn't me she had jumped towards. With a soft thud she landed on the chest of the unconscious guard and with a single short swipe of a paw, rent open his throat.

-------------------

Excerpt from Psyche Analysis SAR #2135
Subject: -----'Salt'----
Nature of Interview: Philosophy of Life.
Psychologist Notes:
Subject displays the same signature pattern. His answers are quick and sure. There is no visible hesitation or thinking before answering. As usual, the answers are usually monosyllables, and it takes some prying to get full explanations out of him.
Subject continues to act as if his answers are self-evident, and continues to show frustration whenever asked to further elaborate. As usual, the
Subject quickly becomes agitated and non-cooperative as session continues, which I've noted as normal behavior for him.

Interviewer: "So you think the universe has no purpose?"
Subject: "No objective purpose."
Interviewer: "Then you think that there is a subjective purpose?"
Subject: "Whatever someone makes of it."
Interviewer: "And what do you make of it?"
Subject: "Eat, sleep, fuck, kill. Repeat."

Session Pause, fifteen seconds

Interviewer: "Could you explain further?"
Subject: "I just did."

Session Pause, eleven seconds

Interviewer: "Is that what you think you are meant for?"
Subject: "I'm not meant for anything. That's just what people do.
Interviewer: "Is that all there is to life for you then?"
Subject: "That's all there is to life itself."
Interviewer: "So...you don't think there is any higher meaning to life?"

Session Pause, sixty-four seconds.
Note Subject body language is disengaged from the discussion

Interviewer: "------?"
Subject: "I've answered that before. I don't like repeating myself."
Interviewer: "I understand that, but for the record, could you answer it again?"
Subject: "No."
Interviewer: "I remind you that non-cooperation is -"

Subject: "The answer to your question is no."

Session Pause, seventeen seconds

Interviewer: "How then, do you explain morality?"
Subject: "The same way you explain how a bunch of birds flock. Impulses and instincts, creating an illusion of complex behavior."
Interviewer: "Then, morality is simple?"
Subject: "Pathetically so."
Interviewer: "If...survival, do I understand that right? If survival is all there is to life, why help people? Why feed the hungry, or heal the sick? Wouldn't you just take what you want?"
Subject: "Altruism...is instinctual."
Interviewer: "Why does it exist?"
Subject: "Reciprocity. I help you, you help me. We both survive. The species continues."
Interviewer: "So humankind is of importance to you?"
Subject: "No. I just know that I feel nice when I help someone, so I'll keep doing it. That I know it's instinctual doesn't stop it from happening."
Interviewer: "So you like helping people -"
Subject: "Some people."
Interviewer: "You like helping some people. Do you feel that you're helping people with your work now?"
Subject: "Some people."
Interviewer: "Do you like that?"
Subject: "No."
Interviewer: "Do you dislike that?"
Subject: "No."
Interviewer: "I fail to see why you do it then. You do not receive additional pay or benefits, there are better jobs available to you, and Search and Rescue is extremely high risk."

Session Pause, fifty-eight seconds

Interviewer: "------?"
Subject: "What?"
Interviewer: "Are you going to answer the question?"
Subject: "You haven't asked one."

Session Pause, fifteen seconds

Interviewer: "Why do you volunteer for Search and Rescue duty?"
Subject: "I like the work."
Interviewer: "You can do the same work in other billets, with better pay and benefits, and less risk to yourself. Why this specific job?"

Session Pause, twenty-nine seconds.

Subject: "I'm looking for something."
--------------------------------------------------

The bible says, "He who doeth evil hateth the light."
I wonder...does this make me good?

She cut through his throat with more difficult than she had in my dream, the claw catching on the cartilage before being fully torn throat. The arterial spray was immediate and powerful, and splashed into her head and curved around it to squirt a full half meter into the air before arcing over onto the waist, rising and falling in short little waves with the beat of the heart.
I was frozen in place, my body still facing the counter with my head twisted to the side to watch. At first my eyes were locked onto the bleeding neck, but then I looked up and saw her head turned to look at me, blood still flying around it, her black fur covered in it, and through the blood I caught glimpses of the clean yellow eyes staring at me through the lines of red, like looking at someone through inverted rain.
She was completely still. So was I. Nothing moved except for the fluids gushing around her, splattering off the front of her chest and running in streams down her legs to fall in droplets onto the dying man's nametag. His green and brown uniform was now soaked. A long time ago I had used to think that a blood soaked uniform would be a darker shade of red, into brick or even brown, but the blood remained the same bright red as it was on the floor.
About half a minute passed before the spray started to slightly ebb, and then instantly ceased without and slowing down or lessening of the expulsion. Fibrillation. His heart had stopped beating.

Bast lightly hopped down from the corpse (I wondered if his brain cells were still alive) and slowly padded across the floor in the pacing gait so typical of cats, registering each step into the same spot as the previous and leaving a trail of paired red paw prints.

"Yest chelovek - Yest problema, net cheloveka - net problemi."

She stopped half a meter away from me and sat down, blood still dripping to the floor until the spatter was swept up in the widening circle that spread out from the dead body. She looked at my face, her expression calm again, but reproachful,

"You have eighteen seconds. Run."

I remained stupidly frozen in place. She exploded, face contorting in fury once again and she shouted, "RUN!"

I ran. Somehow the only way to get people to do things is to scream at them. Perhaps it triggers the fight or flight reflex, since the higher brain is incapable of listening to commands when it's surprised.
I slammed into the counter and bodily flipped over it, pain erupting in my hip bone as I fell to the ground on the other side and shakily got to my feet. I allowed myself one last look into the room before sprinting down the hall and saw that Bast was still sitting in the same position as before, looking at the wall, and then I was gone.

Again running, always running. Things kept happening and I kept running away, over and over again, without knowing why or where. Just get away, and keep screaming to yourself that it's all an illusion. He wasn't dead. This had not happened. He was not dead. All in my head, all in my fucking head!
I skid around the corner and stopped. Blackness again. I walked into it, pulling out the pistol and fumbling for the light switch. My hands were shaking too much. I stopped and locked my wrist against my body to keep the hand steady, found the button, turned it on, aimed down range. Another hallway, just like the first one. Doors on both sides, nametags taped over them. My breathing sounded very loud now, and I took a deep breath and held it while walking as fast as I could while keeping the light steady.
I got a quarter down the hall when I saw the patrol turn the corner at the end of it. I saw the yellow light first, and then the silhouettes as two men came into view. I dropped the flashlight beam to the floor instantly and then turned it off, leaving me in the black. One of them held an oil lantern, and the light of the flame was enough for me to see both of them clearly. BDUs, covers on their heads, load bearing vests, AK rifles. Shit.

Of course they'd already seen me too, if not in any real detail, but they knew I was there. I heard a quiet call from one of them, "Hey."

The tone was that of a greeting. Calm. Stay calm. Oh god, did I have any blood on me? I quickly took off my hat and goggles and stuffed them both into a cargo pocket. There was nothing stopping them from seeing my face either way, and somehow wearing them felt more conspicuous.
Kill them!
I can't. They've got armor, it's dark, I'm in no shape to aim. If they get one shot off, it's over. Walk past. They won't recognize you, but they have no reason to panic. Just walk past them. I holstered the pistol and kept going forward, and we met at the midway point, the yellow sphere of light imprinting over me as I stepped into its range. My eyes jumped from one face to the other. Clean shaven, late twenties or early thirties, friendly expressions, not serious.

The moment they saw my face they both stopped, "Woah, dude."
I took one more step than would have been normal, getting myself alongside the one with the lantern, forcing myself to look at him directly, fully exposing my face to them. "Yeah?"

His eyes squinted in that way people do when they want to look concerned, "You look fucked up. You all right?"

They had never seen me before, but didn't care. Good. They didn't know everyone in the building. Bad. That meant way too many people in here.
I had to keep my voice steady, couldn't. Masked it by talking just above a whisper, "Bad dream. Couldn't sleep."

Remember to move your head and eyes. Don't stare at them, but don't stare away either. Make eye contact, then break it. Be normal.

The second guy raised an eyebrow, "Huh. You know, the PX opens in like fifteen minutes. Get yourself some caffeine, the Rec room's pretty stuffed."

PX? What the fuck was this, Camp Pendleton? They didn't give a shit that I had a rifle slung over my back and a pistol on my hip or that I had a backpack on. They didn't care that I was in military uniform. To them, I looked normal. What the hell was going on?

I jerked my head in a shrugging motion, "I'm just going to step out for a smoke."

He nodded, "Yeah, take care man," and continued down the hallway. I remained motionless until the light had vanished and left me in the dark again, then I resumed walking down at a faster pace, one hand held out to stop me from smacking my face into a wall.

From behind me I heard another, "Hey."

I didn't stop, but called over my shoulder, "Yeah?"

"How'd you get those cuts?"

I froze, instantly and absolutely in mid-step, one foot still hovering in the air for a second before my balance tipped forward and it landed with a loud slap. My skin went cold, I started to pant again. Take a breath. Hold it. Slow exhale.

"Shaving."

He laughed, "Yeah, right."

I heard the footsteps resume and I resumed mine as well, one hand trailing across the wall and bumping over doorframes as my pace increased until I was just shy of jogging. A few seconds later my hand fell into empty air and I slipped around the corner and drew the pistol again, got the light on, and ran.

[E-Stalin [Orthrus]]

One final hallway, same as the other two. Doors on either side, nametags stuck to the walls. The unlit 'exit' sign at the end reflected my light and brightly glowed. In a minute they'd find the body and...no, not a body. An unconscious man. I had not killed him. He was not dead, and I couldn't let myself forget that. They would find him and they would wake him up or take him to whatever equivalent of sick bay they had. They knew that I had to have walked past the post and seen it unmanned. They could put two and two together. The only thing that I had going for me was that it had been dark and they wouldn't have made out what I looked like too well. But they had seen the...scratches. They could look for a man with cuts on his face.
I didn't slow down enough to stop myself from more or less crashing into the stairwell door, which apparently had no latch and therefore offered virtually no resistance at all. It slammed open with all the weight of a curtain, leaving me to stumble forward and almost tip over the railing. Suddenly I felt all alone again, clinging to cold pipes, panting in the darkness and panting far more heavily than I should have been. A slow grimace spread across my face as another powerful surge of pain spiked in my chest. I unconsciously tried to rub my sternum and ease the ache a little bit, but once again remembered that the vest was in the way.
Moments started to pass, and still I waited, most of my body weight supported only by the safety rail. The flashlight beam was shining somewhere off to the side, and I didn't look at what it revealed, instead staring through the beam itself and down to the blackness below me. Like a curtain of light in front of my eyes. Something was dripping in here.
I was tired. I felt like falling asleep again. The sensations were becoming so familiar that I felt like I'd been here before, in this specific place. I'd slept for nearly an entire day before coming here, but that seemed to have no effect on my general constitution. Running the short distance down the halls had left me almost hyperventilating, while on any other day I could run a marathon. There was a pattern emerging here. Every experience with the Cat left me drained, at first emotionally and now physically. After the dialogues, the mindfucks, the sessions, whatever a psychologist would call them, I was always left feeling like I needed to collapse. It made sense of course, she was hurting my body as effectively as any virus. Every little game, every conversation forced constant wallops of adrenaline into my system only to have it level off again a minute later. Without time to recuperate, those system shocks had accumulated, and the total sleep deprivation had created a sleep debt that I hadn't payed off yet.
Fear and anger are the two most intense feelings I'm prone to, closely followed by shame at indignity. Whatever the hell Bast was, she had capitalized on those things with a neatly surgical precision. Christ, I wanted a Red Bull.

I sagged a little bit and then stood up straight again. Deep breaths, slow and steady. There was a slight wheeze with each exhalation, but my heart rate was falling back to normal levels again. I was pulling myself together, one piece at a time. Time. I have no time. Got to go, got to move. No more foxes and hounds, just cats now. Let's go.
The flashlight revealed the bottom of the stairwell two stories down. I was directly above the ground floor, so now I knew that they had a basement. That was my destination then. Originally I'd intended to peek out into the ground floor and see what was going on there, then go back the way I came and abseil off the roof, but now that they would start looking for me I had to keep to the areas that would probably be empty.
Taking out the post had been a mistake. I should have known that from the start. I should have killed the patrol. Why hadn't I?
Stop it. No more 'why', just go.
The clap of my boots on cement once again reverberated around me. The abrasive sound of my hand on the rail as I turned the landings. The bottom of the stairwell was wet. A slow leak somewhere above me was dropping water onto the floor. The door that had been set into the wall underneath the stairs themselves had been removed from the hinges and now leaned against the wall.
The doorway lead into a very large room. From where I stood, it felt cavernous. My flashlight beam disappeared into the darkness and revealed nothing around it but air. I was reminded of walking into an unlit underground parking garage. This place smelled of cigarette smoke. Going in there didn't make a lot of sense, but if there was a nuclear weapon on site, then presumably this would be the best place to keep it. Then again, I couldn't imagine someone carrying a bloody missile down the stairs. Unless they had nothing more than a warhead, but a warhead was harmless. It couldn't be activated once disengaged from the launch system, no matter what safety devices these people had. Oh why the hell couldn't Johnson have just told me the details I needed to know?
I stepped into the basement and the light to both sides from my waist, my head following the beam. Wall to the right, a good distance away, and as I turned to my left the circle of light jumped from distant to stop right in front of me as it lit up the face of a man sitting at a desk not less than a meter next to the door.

"Woah!"

I couldn't stop myself from jumping back, nearly tripping over my feet as I tipped away from him and then caught myself. I very nearly shot him, thinking that my reaction was a dead give away that I wasn't at home here, but I just as quickly stopped myself when I realized that he wasn't moving.
The man was sitting at a school desk positioned by the doorway, black shaded goggles covering his eyes despite having been in pitch darkness. One elbow was propped up on the desk and a cigarillo glowed red between two gloved fingers, the smoke curling out of sight. He was wearing earphones, the white wire running to a phone lying face down on the table.
The only thing keeping him unharmed was the lack of motion. His head was leaned forward, chin resting on his chest. He looked asleep. There was no other way that he couldn't have noticed my flashlight, goggles or not.
I was wrong. A moment later he brought the cigarillo to his rather pale lips and took a drag, then dropped his hand back to the desk. This guy...was decidedly unsettling. I slowly strafed away from the table, then turned away and continued into the basement. I glanced over my shoulder once to see if he was looking at me yet, but of course he was in back in the darkness again.
----------------------
SAR Tracking Profile: ----- 'Salt ------
Page 6: Intelligence Profile
All data is accurate as of January, 2015. Subject to change with future testing.
IQ: 121 (NFA Average: 115-130)
AFQT: 93 (NFA Average: 50, SAR Average: 74)
MBTI: INTJ
Initial MOS: 0311 (Voluntary)

BAEL Personality Type: Submissive (NFA Average: 43%)
BAEL Knowledge Level: Superior (71st percentile)
Strong category: Concrete
Weak category: Abstract

Psychological Vulnerability: Chaotic, Abstract. Severely negative reaction to "things that don't make sense". Subject may suffer catastrophic failure of combat capabilities if at mercy of proponents of hypothetical "non-concrete" topics, particularly those regarding the nature of the universe, the supernatural, conspiracy theories, alien lifeforms, and etc. In the description from the subject: "I don't like puzzles with no solutions. I like things that are solved."

----------------------

Rations. Hundreds of them. Rows and rows of cardboard boxes were stacked up, some nearly reaching the ceiling. MREs, HUMRATs, and a few foreign equivalents. Nearly half of the basement was filled with food. They had guns, ammo, food, and if that guy's cell phone was anything to go by, at least some kind of generator. This was long-term survival. This was an organized fortress.
I was starting to reconsider the entire plan. A bunch of crazed fanatics was one thing, but this place felt like a mercenary encampment. There was still the option of just backing out, going home, and waiting through the Slammer if that's what it came to. But of course, I wasn't here because I was genuinely worried about a nuclear threat. I was only here in the first place because the Slammer was precisely the last place I ever wanted to be.
I glanced over my shoulder, tilting the pistol around my hip to backlight the area behind me. Still clear. The guy with the earphones was still in his chair, fifty meters away. Somehow he made this entire place feel...creepy.
Kneeling down by a crate, I pulled out the KA-BAR sheathed on the side of my rucksack and cut the packing tape that secured the flaps. I grabbed two MREs for the trip out, not bothering to sort through for my preferred entrees, and turned back towards the staircase, half wondering why any general alarm hadn't been sounded yet.
I lowered the pistol to hang past my thigh, out of sight of the man seated by the doorway, and glanced over at him as I passed. He was still in the same position as before, the cigarillo having burned down dangerously close to his skin.
I was almost to the door when he stirred. My head snapped to the side, but I didn't stop walking until he actually lifted his head and said, "If you go out that door, they'll kill you immediately."

The voice had a school-teacher like quality to it, and I stopped with my eyes focused on his hands. Still empty. No weapons, no threat. My heart rate had bumped straight back up again, in that same roller coaster pattern it had been suffering from throughout this entire incursion.
I brought up the gun and aimed it at his chest, a little slower than usual. He tilted his head to the side and very slowly reached up to take off his earphones, neatly winding the wire around the phone and setting it aside. The goggles stayed on. Now that I was in front of him again, I took a closer look than before, noting that he wore the same BDUs as the other men I'd seen here. He looked to be in his mid-forties, slightly paler than normal, buzzcut hair. All in all, he looked no different than every person I'd seen in the building so far.
His head cocked to the side, also slowly, and I suddenly had a visual flash of Bast doing the same thing.

"You can't kill me now. There was a chance to do that when you came in, but now that I've got half a platoon of men sitting on the stairs outside...well, you can see where this is going."

The familiar blow of pain struck into my face as I opened my mouth, "Oh yeah, I do. But you don't. Put your hands on the back of your head and stand up."

He smiled. Now I wanted to shoot him. This was not normal. People only smile at gunpoint in movies. A normal human being does not sit calmly at a chair, threaten an armed man, and then smile at them. Normal would have let me walk out the door and die, or just shoot me in the back.

Still smiling, he slowly put his hands on the back of his head and stood up out of the chair. Every one of his movements were slow and deliberate, reminding me of a surgeon.

"Now turn around."

He did so, but that didn't stop him from talking, his voice still holding that lecturing tone, and I realized that he sounded bored.

"Let me clarify."

"No."

He shrugged, "Whatever. The men outside prefer for you to surrender, as opposed to just shooting you. So if you,"

"I said no. That means you don't talk."

Again he shrugged, "Whatever."

I kept the muzzle of the pistol pressed to his kidney as I slipped a flexicuff loop around one of his wrists, pulled it tight, and then secured the other wrist. He didn't resist in any way. His body was not tensed up, but relaxed. Ultimately he had an air of nonchalance about him. The only thing keeping him alive was the possibility that he was telling the truth.

"Keep your hands on the back of your head at all times."

"Yeah, sure."

Bored. Definitely bored. I grasped his interlaced fingers with my left hand and squeezed them down tight, giving me control over his head and therefore his body. He couldn't resist anymore without breaking his own fingers, and by tilting the hands to the side I turned him around and marched him around the desk towards the door. I needed an NFDD, and they were all gone. This was the only remaining option.

"This isn't going to work."

"Stop talking."

Yet again, he shrugged. "Your funeral."

Just shoot him.
I definitely should have done just that. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, or maybe I'd just gone so insane that I could no longer think straight, but I didn't kill him, and instead proceeded towards the door where I shoved him out and instantly pressed my body against his back, digging my chin into the back of his head as I looked straight up the stairwell and aimed the pistol up. Nothing. Empty. He had lied.
Of course he'd fucking lied. There was no way for him to notify anyone here. It wasn't like texting service was still available.

"Aren't you wondering why I haven't screamed yet?"

I dragged him back into the basement, all the way to the corner lateral to the door, and pressed a foot into the back of his knee, laying him facedown onto the floor.

"Because if you scream I'll break your neck. Not rocket science."

He giggled, a high pitched, lunatic giggle. "You should have shot me the moment you came in here, but you didn't. Do you know why?"

I holstered the pistol and kept his fingers clenched in my fist while I did a quick pat down around his waist. This didn't stop him from talking, and his voice was rapidly changing from male and bored to younger and psychotic.

"Haven't you noticed the patterns? You're slipping."

There wasn't a sidearm on him. No knives either, his pockets were empty.

"You didn't shoot me because you can't kill me."

I was starting to feel strange, disorientated. Time felt like it had passed without me actually experiencing it, like a clock hand jumping from one minute to the next without any travel in between.

The man on the floor snorted, "So you can't kill me, your perception of reality is distorted, and I respond to your thoughts. You haven't noticed the change in speech pattern yet, but surely this feels familiar to you?
Normally, you would have smashed my face into the floor already. Instead you're just kneeling there as if paralyzed, listening to nonsense."

I stood up without thinking about it, backed away involuntarily. Things were now happening without me controlling them. This all felt extremely familiar, yet I couldn't quite figure out how so. The man stood up, his hands somehow having become unsecured, and turned around with the speed of a dancer, no longer showing the bored, slow movements he had previously.
I looked at his face and realized that I could see him even without using the flashlight.

He took a step forward, "What kind of a man wears sunglasses in the dark? Maybe I'm not real. Maybe I'm you. Or maybe it's because my eyes are actually her eyes."

He suddenly did a handstand and started spinning around like a top as another voice sounded in my ear, a female one. Unlike everything else, this voice was perfectly clear and the sound of it seemed to cut through my head like a diamond knife slicing a crystal. It was a familiar voice, one that had gotten me up once before, in a distant tunnel that seemed to have existed in another era long before my time.

"Wake up."

The room was disintegrating, the beam of the flashlight melting into the blackness around it and blurring together into a large gray mosaic of colors. I could hear music in the background, rapidly growing louder as the colors grew darker. It knew the song, but I couldn't quite grasp it with fully yet. It was infuriatingly familiar and yet just out of comprehension.

"Wake up."

The man and room had both disappeared. I stood on nothing. My feet hung over empty space. Strips of deep gray and blackness intersected eachother as if I was standing between two mirrors, and in the varying shades glowed the two yellow and orange eyes, growing larger until they were the only thing I saw. Despite holding warm colors, they emitted the utmost cold, and the only expression I saw in them was one of accusation.
Metallica. The song was by Metallica.

"Wake up, now!"

----------------------------------

"Wake the fuck up, already!"

The slap against my face wouldn't have been particularly painful on its own, but it hit my bad side. The impact pain of the slap rapidly mixed with a searing burn as the cuts tore open yet again and a very unwelcome sense of nausea quickly joined in. I gasped and rolled over to vomit, but was quickly halted by a stong jerk in my shoulders that felt like I'd wrenched them out of place and I ended up puking to the side. Pain in my face, ache in my chest, nausea in my gut, and now still more pain in my arms. It was too much to deal with. I couldn't orientate, couldn't focus on my surroundings, and just huddled there heaving over and over again, trying to stop choking long enough to heave a breath in. By the time I was done vomit was streaming from my nose and the stench of it was overwhelming. I stayed put with my head hanging down to the side, eyes squeezed shut with involuntary tears leaking from them. The only thing I could understand about my situation was that my arms were bound behind me back and secured to something, stopping me from performing any movement other than twisting at the waist.
Metallica's "Fight Fire With Fire" was playing from somewhere outside the room, and it was absolutely the last thing I wanted to hear right now. The sound was grating in my ears and a headache very quickly started to spike.

"Tovyu myat, clean that up."

A hand grabbed the back of my head and I felt a stream of water splash over my face before he ran a rag was over my mouth, wiping away the remnants of my upheaval before dropping the rag over the puddle on the floor. I didn't move from my position. I didn't care what was going on, didn't care where I was. I was focused on the misery and disconnected from everything else. It didn't matter, the sheer level of suck was what mattered.

"Give him a minute to get orientated. I'll be back."

The male voice sounded like it was in command, holding that slightly pissed off tone of authority that people use when they feel like they're above dealing with you. Heavy bootsteps and the sound of a door opening left me in silence. The cut side of my face felt wet and cold, and I noticed that the insides of my legs also felt damp. I didn't look around until what felt like several minutes had passed, my breathing still heavy and rapid. The only thing I could take in at first was the room itself. It had been a private head once. There was a toilet to my side (great, they couldn't have just let me puke into that?) and a counter with a sink along the wall. The mirror was removed from the wall, probably broken and cleaned up some time ago. More importantly than the room itself was the fact that it was lit. The ceiling lamps were functioning. This place had power.

What I should have noticed first but had skipped over was that I wasn't alone. There were two men sitting on chairs in the corners of the room opposite me. The same types of people as before, clean shaven, buzzcuts,wearing BDUs and rifles slung over their chests. The one on the right wore a brown greatcoat, over his utility uniform with black Captain's bars pinned to the collar. The nametags on the chest of the other one, where normally "Marines" or "Navy" would be printed read "Assault".
I don't know how I hadn't noticed them immediately, but they were so still and impassive that I'd simply glanced over them. One was staring off at a wall, and one in the greatcoat was focused directly on me.
I twisted around and looked over my shoulder to see what the hell I was restrained to and found what seemed to be an eye-bolt in the wall. As for my hands themselves, they felt like they hand-cuffed, not zip-tied. That wasn't good. Maybe the eyelet could be unscrewed from the wall, given enough time, but picking a handcuff with your hands behind your back is virtually impossible.

"What's three times six?"

I looked over to the one in the greatcoat and the turning of my head caused another spike of pain. Stick to slow movements, pretend that you're hung over. He was still looking at me, but now expectantly.

My voice came raspy, "What?"

He leaned back in his seat and folded his arms over his rifle, "I need to know if you're orientated yet. What's three times six?"

I squinted at him, "Eighteen."

The song playing outside the room ended and kept right on going into "Ride the Lightning".

He sighed deeply, evidently bored, and reached into his chest pocket, removing a post-it pad and a pencil.

"How would you describe this room?"

Now this question was more confusing. Checking my mental faculties made sense, but this rather didn't.

"A head."

He scribbled a note and without looking up, "How do you feel?"

The corner of my lip twitched but the smile progressed no further. Apparently after enough cheek pain my body had learned not to smile anymore. I wondered if that was supposed to even be possible?

"Like shit."

"How many people in the room?"

"Two."

He started to write another note, then stopped. He remained absolutely frozen, like a jackrabbit attempting to hide, and then finished the note and looked up again, "Including yourself, how many people are in this room?"

"Three."

He stared at me for several seconds, his eyes slightly narrowed but no recognizable expression on his face. I couldn't tell if he was anxious, confused, or plain old bored. Then it was back to the post-it pad and he asked the first real question, "Your four?"

It took me a few seconds to remember. Simple math had been reflexive, but my actual memory was lagging a little behind. Speaking slowly and quietly, so as not to aggravate my throat any more than needed, I recited,
"Lance Corporal, [Name redacted], December third, 1992, [SSN redacted]."

He finished copying the information and very deliberately took out a single dogtag from his pocket and looked at it, then compared the information on it to the post-it. Sneaky guy. I guess he was just testing my general cooperation.
He threw the tag into my lap and asked, "How clear is your memory on the events leading up to your capture? Are you a little fuzzy or...no?"

I paused for a moment. This was problematic. I'd been dreaming, but I hadn't a clue as to when the dream had started. Speaking of which, how the hell had I ended up knocked out? Everything had been perfectly clear, I'd been absolutely lucid, and then the man at the desk had started talking and everything had gone to Slammer.

He interpreted my silence correctly and rubbed at his eyelids with a thumb and forefinger, "What's the last thing you remember before I woke you up?"

"A bad dream."

The man shrugged, "Do you remember being captured?"

I closed my eyes and remembered not to shake my head just in time.

"No."

He sighed again, wrote down some other thing on the pad, then stood up and said, "For the benefit of your sanity, I'm informing you that you're in the same building you were in, it is the same day, and the time is currently..." he looked at his wristwatch, "1950. You were found in the basement at around 1900, at which point you were tasered and injected with sodium thiopental. You did not wake up when it wore off, and pretty much remained comatose until I slapped you awake."

He turned and opened the door to exit the room, but paused midway out and looked over his shoulder, "You haven't been sleeping?"

I wasn't focused on him any longer, staring at my the toe of my boot. A slight shrug of my shoulders was the most I could give him.

"Well, it'd explain a lot."

The door closed. I was left with the guy in cammies, who was still staring off into nothing. His fingers were gently beating on his thigh. Maybe he was listening to the music.
Two people, then three people. Why would he care about the difference? If he was checking for InEx there are much simpler ways then rather specifically asking about the number of people in the room. Of course, this now left me with the question as to whether or not this other guy was actually here. It was an easy question though, of course he was here. After suffering through everything from Saxena to the guy in the basement, I'd stopped worrying about whether or not I'd have an actual InEx pop up. He was trying to initiate pseudo-InEx. Tricky bastards.
I tried to check what items they'd left me with by shifting around enough to feel the weight in my pockets. By the feel of it, they'd taken everything. My backpack and MTV were off of course. They'd taken my wristwatch and emptied my chest and trousers pockets. They didn't seem to care about a very thorough search though; my boots were still on, as were the rest of my utilities, and they hadn't even removed my pistol belt and holsters; just the pistols themselves. I ran my fingers into the cuff of my sleeve and felt for the SEREpick sewn into it. Nothing. It was just soft material. Shit.
Apparently they'd been more thorough than I'd given them credit for. The ceramic razor was gone too. The other SEREpick and razor were in my collar, and I couldn't feel for them from this position. So...assessment. I possibly had a razor and handcuff key, but couldn't check for those yet. Put that aside. The only useful implements that I knew I had were my rank insignia and the two picks in my shoulder. The insignia were inaccessible and not useful for handcuffs. That just left the shoulder picks. Just stall. Delay as long as possible until you're left alone, and then get to work.

We were alone in the room for a while. By counting the songs, I got about fifteen minutes. I wanted to ask the guy for some water, but somehow the idea just felt wrong. Likely something to do with the irrational level of pride I held. The door opened and the volume of music spiked in the brief moment the door was ajar before it was shut. The new occupant was carrying a duffel bag and a rolled up tarp. He turned way from the door, squared off towards me, and spread his legs in a wide stance. Then he simply stood still and looked at me.
I immediately recognized the man in front of me, it was the same man I'd passed in the basement. He looked slightly different than I remembered, probably because I'd dreamed up all the details when I'd originally taken a closer look at him. The immediate impression was that he was different. I couldn't quite figure out why, but everything from his bearing to his expression seemed entirely out of place. It wasn't as simple as not belonging here specifically, but as if he didn't belong amongst people whatsoever. There was wholly disconnected air about him, a detached nonchalance combined with a contradicting intensity of focus that I was used to seeing in crazy people and fighters gone berserk. He had very bright gray eyes which sat in dark shades of sleep deprivation that encircled his eyelids before running down alongside his nose like the tear marks of a cheetah. As bright as the eyes were, they were not piercing, but opaque and distinctively solid, like looking into the glass eyes of a stuffed animal. They looked at things, but didn't appear to see anything.

He didn't wear a uniform like I'd expected, but dirty jeans and an unbuttoned civilian jacket which appeared to be made of nothing but brown pockets sewn together. Instead of boots, he wore sneakers. The blue shirt he wore had a Naruto character printed over it.
The sheer contrast between him and this building combined with the opposing characteristics of his bearing and eyes left me feeling as if I were sitting before an alien. The moment I saw that face in the light I felt a prickle behind my eyeballs and an uncomfortable tightening in my stomach. I found myself bringing my legs back away from him and sitting cross-legged instead. It felt more dignified that way.

He stood before the door for several moments, and although he was looking in my direction I couldn't quite feel that he was actually looking at me. Then he took two long strides forward and in the same motion dropped to his knees in front of me and leaned back, laying the bag and case on the ground before placing his hands flat on his thighs. He sat very still for a few seconds and then suddenly broke out laughing. It was an uncontrolled fit of silent laughter, his head hanging down and his torso shaking as the voiceless, dog like chuffs took him. Just as suddenly he stopped, his body stilling almost immediately and his head came back up with his face impassively blank again.

"I've been looking for you. I've been looking for a very long time now."

His voice was unsettled me even more. I don't understand the science behind voices, but there was something in that mix of pitch and timbre that had the same effect on me as his general appearance. It was conflicting. The baritone sound of the voice itself was again, focused. It was direct, sure, and certain. Yet the manner of speech was the opposite, rising and slowing down with an unnatural inflection that sounded like he was telling a joke right before delivering a punchline.
Without waiting for a response (not that I had one) he unzipped the duffel bag and took out my pistols and knives, laying them on the ground between us where they would have been easily in reach if my arms weren't restrained. Various items followed, including my watch, goggles, and a magazine, and even my books.

He picked up the M1911 and cradled it in two hands, "You're one of those types that really identifies with their gear, huh? I went over all of your stuff, and I mean, just look at it. Aftermarket parts on everything. Gun's from Springfield, magazines from Colt. Make no mistake, I'm a 1911 fanatic, so I know that this comes with a full length guide rod, but I took it apart and nope, GI rod. Came with an ambidextrous safety, and you swapped it with a regular one. Mainspring housing's new too, has a lanyard loop, but no lanyard. That's kinda weird. Heh,"

he dropped the gun onto the bag and leaned back to sit down properly. His elbows were brought up to his knees, fingers interlaced, and his chin rested on his hands. "Most people roll their pack straps and tape them. Yours are cut short. Just all sorts of little stuff like that. These," he lifted the goggles, "Aren't even authorized for wear. Only Army can get these, and to my understand the US Army kicked the bucket. But anyway, all of ththis makes some degree of sense or another. But what I'm curious about, is your multitool pouch. That was weird. The stitching on it, I mean. You do that yourself?"

He smiled as he looked at me, and suddenly his face had the most naturally jovial look on it that I could imagine. The expression felt completely real, as if we were both sitting at a bar somewhere. I had no answer. I was trying to decide whether or not he was crazy or if this was some unconventional introduction to an interrogation.

After several seconds of silence he shrugged and, still smiling, asked, "Why'd you stitch it?"

Still no answer. This made no sense. Even if it had made sense I still couldn't see a reason to talk. I'd never gone through SERE or any other equivalent of interrogation resistance, but I still knew the basics of being an American prisoner: keep your mouth shut and bide your time.
Another few seconds of silence. He raised one eyebrow. No matter how vivid the expressions on his face were, his eyes were still completely opaque. Eyes aren't supposed to look like that. The feeling you get from someone's eyes comes directly from the facial muscles around them. Eyes themselves are nothing more than gelatin, they bear no emotion. Yet somehow this man's eyes remained completely empty no matter what his face did. The smile was real, but the eyes couldn't reflect that.

His head cocked to the side and I had a very jarring flash-memory of Bast. "I'm genuinely curious. What's going through your head right now? The Code of Conduct? Do you think that I'm about to pry you for info? Nope. Oh-ho, no. This?"

He rolled his eyes to the ceiling and waved his finger in a circle about the room, "This is not business. I'll tell you when we get down to business. Right now I'm curious about your stuff, so unless you want to go straight to the serious talk, you can tell me about it. Why the stitching?"

I realized that my tongue had been firmly wedged between my teeth the entire time. A numbing sting rolled back across it when I opened my mouth, "The multitool wouldn't fit."

The sense of unease was growing, and somehow I didn't think it had anything to do with being held prisoner in a hostile building. This man felt wrong. He was wrong.
His head came up and then cocked back down to the other side, the smile still on his face. It was unchanging. The smile didn't grow or shrink or twitch, it just stayed here as if painted on. "You know, the pouches are sized for a reason. You guys run out of stock?"

I closed my eyes and rested my head on the wall behind me, "Leatherman fucked up the MOLLE on the large pouch. The XL got it right. So I stitched it down tighter."

He leaned back and rubbed his chin, "Figures. You probably picked out your own ammo too, huh?"

I didn't move my head away from the wall, didn't answer.

"And Dar gato por liebre. Why's that written on your gun?"

I slowly brought my head down again, took a deep breath, and flatly stated,

"You have power."

I heard him cluck his tongue, "Well, that depends on how you define power-"

"The building. This building has electricity."

I opened my eyes to see his reaction to the question, it was important, but his expression hadn't changed. His eyes were both looking to the left, and I could practically imagine his thought process at work. In a few seconds he hit it right on the mark,

"You don't care about the power since you can already see it. You're trying to figure out whether or not I'll tell you about ourselves, and by extension whether or not I'm going to kill you, huh?"

I haven't the slightest idea how someone could come to that conclusion from such a question. It's not normal. People don't think that way, and yet he was completely correct. Showing people's faces and knowing that I've seen the building and the uniforms and the guns was one thing, but actively answering questions about it, no matter how minor, meant that he'd have no qualms about giving away more information, which would mean that either he didn't consider that to be dangerous or wasn't ever going to let me get back to the NFA with any of it.

The look on my face must have shown the obvious reaction to him apparently being psychic, because he broke out into the voiceless laugh again and panted out, "See, I don't share people's attachment to their personal belongings. You guys all pick out your special clothes, your own shoes and preferred brands. You put so much time into your guns and your knives and all your kickass ninja gear. Every tiny detail matters to you and to..." he jerked his thumb over his shoulder, "To those dudes."

He leaned forward again, getting uncomfortably close to my face as his head continued to turn down until head was practically resting on his shoulder, "But I learned a long time ago how meaningless that is. These people...you people are all so obsessed with your equipment because deep down in your primitive little brains you believe that you're only going to do it once. This life is the only chance you get, so you have to pick the right tools. You're afraid of everything around you so you prepare accordingly, and that gives you some sense of comfort because once you've organized your kit you feel like you're ready for anything."

He leaned back away just as sharply, "Me? I don't care what I have. If it's
around, I'll grab it. I don't care what the gun is or what I'm wearing along with it. If it's not suited to what I need, I'll make do until I can grab something better. When I don't need it anymore, I drop it. Just metal and steel. No heart string plucking little inscriptions borne on the side, no custom tailoring for my suit. Because either tomorrow or in thirty years I'm going to die, and those things will just be passed along or rot into the ground and be utterly meaningless, but I'll just come right back and grab a new gun, and then I'll die again and leave that one behind too, and so on it goes. The same with your appearances. Oh so concerned with you look. I shave my head because I don't have to deal with the hair. I shave my face because I hate how paint and dirt feels in my beard. Utility. That's what this body is used for."
His eyes had gone wide and he nodded vigorously, almost manically, as if everything he said was self-evident. A Buddhist. Or a Hindu. I'd never actually run into someone who actively believed in reincarnation before, but this was possibly the worst kind of example for a first meeting, and then he went in the complete opposite direction.

"See, I was born in an attic. In London. I had both my parents throughout my childhood, and they were nice people. They taught me the things they thought were right, brought me to the church, and introduced me to all those things people think life is about. I found god through them, then my patriotism, and by the time I was a young man I fully understood all of the things that mattered to me. I understood the philosophy behind my values, so I enlisted. By my mid twenties, I was a Royal Marine in Afghanistan, and you know what happened next?"

His smile had faded to the faintest etch of one just barely visible in his lips and his head bobbed in that same, "Yeah?" nod he tended to make.

"I was shot in the neck. No combat, no heroic showdown. Just another patrol and bang! Never even saw the guy that hit me. I bled out in maybe under a minute, and you know what I thought in that minute? I thought it was over. I had reached the culmination of my life. I'd done things I liked and things I was ashamed of, and I thought that I was going to meet god and be judged and get all the answers I'd wondered about. Life, heaven, hell, all that shit I'd thought about so much."

His smile had completely disappeared. In fact, all expression in his face was gone. It was a completely blank slate, but his manner of speech had degraded into angry ramble. Within a minute he was screaming at empty space, no longer looking at me or seemingly even aware that I was there anymore.

"But I didn't go to god. I didn't see the afterlife. The next thing I knew, I was trapped inside some terrifying space that I couldn't comprehend. I couldn't really move, couldn't hear much, couldn't even open my eyes. I was inside a fucking womb, a new baby inside some woman from god knows where. I have to tell you that I lost my mind for a little bit there, because I was born again, see. Literally. I was a fucking new born baby in a hospital somewhere in Canada, with two totally new parents, with different colored eyes later different hair. I spent the next year going through the same shit that babies do. I still had my memories, I was still ME!

"I couldn't talk yet, didn't understand what the fuck was going on. Grown men making goo-gah sounds at me in a crib while I raged and cried and screamed day and night. By the time I was five my parents thought I was possessed. I could walk, read, write, and speak when I shouldn't been capable of doing anything other than waddling about and shitting in my diapers.
And the most horrifying part was when I first saw a calender and realized that it was 1969."

He stopped and broke out laughing for several minutes. I remained immobile, petrified as the fear started to mount shortly after I reached the obvious conclusion that I was sitting before a psychopath.

The moment he stopped laughing his face turned back into that robot stare and he went right back into it, "You see, hehe, I was first born in 2044. I died in 2068. I was somehow in the last fucking century. One hundred years, to the god damned minute, and I could do things that they hadn't taught me, knew things that I couldn't possibly know. They were terrified of me. I skipped three grades before the system said enough, and then I was six years old and in third grade. The kids quickly learned to stay away from me after I crippled a bully.

"And I prayed, Christ oh how strongly I prayed. Not just prayer, I fucking begged! Answers! Help me! God, Christ, anyone, tell me what the hell is happening to me! No matter how much I screamed at them nobody answered, nobody revealed themselves to me. No one, and nothing was there for me.
Then came the doctors with their needles and psychiatrists with flash cards and holy Fathers with crosses and magic water, and by the time I was twelve I was trapped in an asylum with the media shoving their cameras in my face and the whole fucking continent watching the "miraculous" news about a child-genius until I chewed open an artery and bled out in a cell while screaming at the walls and crying and groveling and begging that I was really a psychopath and everything was just in my head and that this time, this time I would actually die.

"But no, hell no. Again the womb, but no hospital, just a shack somewhere in Asia in the 1880s. Same shit, new parents. Again I went insane, again I prostrated myself, but this time I kept my fucking mouth shut. I played along with their baby games and I went to their schools until I was a teenager and big enough to run to Africa and find myself a warzone and get a mchete and go live as the fucking man that I was, but this time I didn't die quick, I got to my seventies before tuberculosis fucked me up.

Again the womb, again the fucking baby talk, now it's the 1700s, and this time I was careful. This time I was healthy, I was quiet, I hid, and I concocted my own medicines and kept my head down and did absolutely everything to ensure that I lived over a hundred, and then I died and this time I was born again a few years after the last time, and I did it again, gaining a three to six years with each lifetime and on it went until I finally got my way back up into this side of the fucking millenium. So many cycles that I lost track. What I looked like, what my names were, who my parents were is all one big mash of shit. I lose my mind and then find it again, I scan through the history books to find something even remotely mentioning this shit and come up with nothing. I've sought out countless gods and followed countless religions, every time hoping that one of them would have the answers, and each time I come up with nothing. Christianity, useless. Islam, bullshit. Hinduism, morons. Wicca, retards. The Greeks? Wrong. Egyptians? Wrong. On and on it fucking goes!"

Almost in mid sentence of the speech he instantly stopped, and now he was panting. His eyes large and wild, jerking from side to side as his chest heaved with rapid breaths. Slowly, oh so slowly his eyes turned back to me, and I realized that I had come very close to pissing in my pants. I wasn't just frightened, I was terrified. I cannot describe just how much. I'm afraid of psychotic people. I hate them because they scare me. They're unpredictable, they're violent, and every thing about them was so wrong that I wanted nothing more than to get as far away as possible from this raving lunatic. Of course, that wasn't possible. I just sat there wide-eyed with adrenaline racking my abused system again with his glassy-eyed stare bouncing off my face.

His breathing slowed, and then he resumed speaking, his voice completely calm now, back to the original intense focus type he had started out with,

"I am centuries old. I have more war experience than the NFA combined. At first I thought there was a good god. Then I thought that god was punishing me. Then I realized that he had abandoned me. Then I realized that there are no gods. Then I realized that there are gods but they are sadistic fucks. Then I realized that I am not a mortal to be worked by the gods, but one of them. Then I realized that I am not them, but the opposite. Then I realized that I am a force of the universe, another kind of Deity. I know history, I know what happens before it does and I influence it. I took the place of heroes in wars, I took the place of presidents, I was Josef Mengel and I was Albert Einstein and I was Samuel Nicholas and I was Rasputin and I lead and killed countries, and I steadily realized what I really am."

Without a hint of warning he grabbed the lapels of my blouse and dragged my face to his, bumping his forehead into mine and I had a glimpse of those dead toy eyes in his skull threatening to infect me with their wrongness before I shut my own and his voice whisper-screamed into my ears with absolute calm and infinite fury, "I am the Satan, Set, Lucifer, Mara, Apep, Sekhmet and Artemis and Nanna and Baal. So when this war begins, know what you're fucking with!"

With a shove I was thrown back against the wall and I heard his footsteps move away from me and the door opened with a perfectly casual, quiet, calm, normal sounding command, "Introduce him to Varyag."

The door slammed shut, and I was left in my head with my skin on fire and great pain in my chest as my heart hammered against against my ribs with the knowledge in my mind that I was trapped in a building of psychopaths.

[E-Stalin [Orthrus]]

"Hey, Lance Corporal."

This voice was quieter, sounding much like a dog handler waking up a sleep hound. I took a second to steel myself against further madness and looked up. The man who'd been sitting in the corner this entire time had gotten up. When he had my attention he picked up his chair and walked within a meter of me and set it down again, brushing aside the guns left on the floor with a boot before sitting.

"I'm Berdysh Schafer, and I will be your interrogator and tour-guide for today."
He had a noticeable German accent, and had that slightly halted manner of speech where you could tell that he was actively translating from one language to the other in his head. He took his time getting comfortable again, slouching down deep into the chair and pulling out a pack of Marlboro lights before continuing.

"Now, when I say interrogator, I really mean interviewer. We don't go for that torture crap, 'kay?"

He stopped again to strike a paper match which went out before he could light his cigarette. He calmly tore it out and lit another one. The guy had a very languid demeanor, taking long pauses between sentences, his movements smooth and slow like those of a man who'd just woken up from a deep sleep. I couldn't help but feel calmer with this man talking to me, although that probably had to do something with the onslaught of insanity from the previous one.
The silence continued to extend through several drags while he stared off at a wall again, and it wasn't until the cigarette was half gone that he leaned forward again,

"What I mean is that you can chill out, yeah? I'm not gonna hurt ya, I'm not crazy, and believe it or not, neither's the guy you just spoke to."

He forcefully exhaled a breath through his nose in a restrained laugh and whatever he found funny reached his voice,

"He gives that speech to every new guy here. I don't know why, I guess he likes to freak people out. That was Grach Siberius; he's pretty cool guy, you'll see."

I guess he was smart enough to figure out how utterly retarded their names sounded, because his face lit up in lightbulb expression as he clarified, "Those are ranks, by the way," his hands gesticulated wildly with the words, "Berdysh, Grach, they're not names, bro. But Siberius is pretty weird, I know. I don't think that's his actual name, but it's what he goes with. Sounds Roman, no?"
I sighed and resumed staring at my knees. This was getting ridiculous.
I heard Schafer cluck his tongue, "Ok, let me make this easy. We're military. That's why you find all of this weird shit here, yeah? This building is...what do you call it? Hold on, I can't think."

His boot-steps (they were heavier than the other two guys) moved to the door and the hinges squeaked before I heard him shout several things in German. I didn't have to be a linguist to tell that they likely contained some profanity. An instant later the music stopped, then resumed a much quiter volume. The door squeaked it closed, and then was swung open again. More German, and Schafer left the room entirely. Several seconds later he came back, and now I couldn't hear the music at all. Schafer resumed his seat and groaned in that relaxed way people do when stretching their muscles in the morning.

"That's better. I can't stand that crap. Forward Operations Base! That's what I wanted to say."

I wanted to rub my eyeballs. Couldn't. What's the only thing worse than a congregation of violent fanatics? A congregation of paramilitary fucks. I looked up and sighed out through gritted teeth, "Operating."

Schafer now had a Monster energy drink in his lap, no doubt stolen from whoever he'd yelled at, and was tearing the filter off of his cigarette at the moment. When I corrected him, he looked up with his eyebrows raised. He had a very jovial manner, that I could give him.

"Huh?"

"Operating base. Not operations."

He waved his hand in a dismissing gesture, "Bah, who cares? Well, at least it got you to actually speak."

He plucked off a few ragged edges of the torn filter and resumed smoking, "So," he pronounced the word with a short 'O', "You're not the first man we've taken in, so...I don't know, that's supposed to be comfort or something. Bah, I'll explain and you can think about it for a while, then you'll get to ask questions later, yeah?"

He snapped open the tab on the can and chugged several mouthfuls, wiped his lips with the back of a hand, and let out a loud burp.

"Okey, so. It's a our country, called Varyag, about five thousand strong. We're the Varyag Assault Corps, first Division, first Regiment, first Battalion, Charlie company. You should understand it all quite well, we're pretty much the same thing as your Marine Corps. Long story put shortened, when the war was almost over, most of us were left abandoned wherever we happened to be deployed at the time. Engländer, German, Russian, and American, yeah? Whatever was left tried to live, figure out what was going on. We didn't know if the war was still on or not, no idea what to do when we saw other countrymen, yeah? After a bunch of...eh. Small fights? Handgemenge?"

He looked at me expectantly for a translation. I shrugged and looked back.
His eyebrows went up again and he slapped his hand on a thigh,

"Bah, whatever. Small fights, yeah. So this American Company found my own platoon and called a cease-fire. Their leader talked to mine, and we determined that the war was over, we couldn't contact our Fatherlands, and we didn't know if they still lived. So we stopped fighting, found other military remnants, kept joining together. Two Companies from the American Marines, 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment, scattered Platoons from Russia's 45th Detatched Recon Regiment VDV, three companies from UK 1st Battalion, 3rd Commando Brigade, and my Company out of 373rd Infantry battalion, 9th Brigade, 1st Armored Division.
"We had over a thousand men, and it kept going until the American decided to disband the alliance and create an entirely new military instead. Those of us that liked it stayed, those that didn't left, and a year later, here we are. Varyag. We have our own culture, constitution, beliefs, and a pretty good run so far, yeah?"

He had started to smile through this. He obviously was either proud of it or just happy. A country? A military. I felt like I was listening to a child's fantasy. It was insultingly stupid. 5,000 men? The city had no logistics, no supply, no infrastructure. It wasn't possible for anyone to survive like that, let alone function without communications.

Schafer's grin had continued to stretch until it felt unnaturally wide, "I've done this before, ya know? It's my job. Every time you guys have the same doubts, so I've learned to just give you the following and then show you it all, yeah?
"But here's what it all leads to: we're going to show you what we are. What we believe. Then we're going to offer you asylum and service. After your introduction here, you'll meet Dragunov Pendleton," he paused here, giving me a very serious nod, "That's our Commandant. He'll give you very motivational, emotional speech about it all, and you'll decide whether or not we're right. If you refuse, well, he'll tell you."

He chugged the rest of the Monster, crushed the can with one hand, and threw it into the sink. It took him all of a few seconds to throw the gear that the psychopath (Siber-something?) had left strewn across the floor back into the bags. Schafer shouldered the duffel bag and stepped over to me, "So, yeah. Lean over, let me get handcuffs."

A few moments later a surge of burning pain roared to the surface of my skin where the metal had compressed it. Schafer was smart, for all of his friendliness, and held my wrists together with one hand when he snapped the cuffs off. I was too exhausted to fight back anyway, although I'm honestly not sure whether or not I would have snapped his neck if he hadn't kept a hold on me. A step back and he let go of my hands, allowing me to finally ease the strain my shoulders and rub the skin in my wrists. Never rub, by the way. I know that I'm a hypocritical dick and do it anyway, but rubbing the inflamed area will just cause more pain, like scratching at an itch until it bleeds.
Schafer dropped a laminated sheet of paper on his chair. He didn't turn his back on me as he backed up to the door, then opened it and stood in the doorway to say, "

The door stays locked, you don't leave this room. There's a post outside if you need something. The toilet on the far right works, we refill the tank in the mornings, so flush it just for a piss, yeah? You'll get water and some food in a little while."
He turned to exit the room, then stopped and turned back again, all trace of laughter gone from his face, instead showing a very contemplative, thoughtful expression as he looked at me and said, "One more thing. Just so you understand what kind of people we are. The Firewatch you killed was Igor Yakovlev. He used to be one of your own men, and was very good friend of mine. Notice how I'm not mad at you."
The door swung shut and the sound of a bolt sliding home reverberated through the steel and into my chest.

----------------------------


Introductory Study Sheet for FNGs ~ Berdysh Schafer

Ground Force: Varyag Assault Corps (VAC)

Fire-team - Lance - Shock- Company - Rifle- Regiment - Corps
(Fire-team - Squad - Platoon - Company - Battalion - Regiment - Division)

1st Corps: Berkut
1st Regiment: Amur
1st Rifle: Sukhoi

Companies:
-Alpha, Caracal(Infantry)
-Bravo, Baikal (Infantry)
-Charlie, Altaica (Weapons)
-Delta, Venator (SOC)
-Echo, Elbrus (H&S)

Commanders:
Corps Commander: Mongol
Regiment Commander: Bushwacker
Rifle Commander: Cossack


Alpha: Pendleton
Bravo: Lejuene
Charlie: Armata
Delta: Sibir
Echo: Baloo

Rank Structure:

E-1 Pernach
E-2 Vektor (Fire-team level)
E-3 Gyurza (Squadron level "Lance")
E-4 Berdysh (Shock level)
E-5 Bagheera (Company XO)
E-6 Grach (Rifle XO)
E-7 Varyag (XO of VAC, singular rank and billet)


0-1 Dragoon (Company CO)
0-2 Vykhlop (Rifle CO)
0-3 Vintorez (Regiment CO)
0-4 Abakan (Division CO)
0-5 Dragunov (VAC Commandant, singular rank and billet)

No politicians, no priests. Only warriors.

[E-Stalin [Orthrus]]

Orthy note: still struggling with severe writer's block throughout this area, thus the short posts and lack of proof-reading and polishing. Should be pushed through soon enough.

-----------------------------


Igor Yakovlev. Dead. Not possible.
Ignore Yakovlev. Dead. Not possible.

The words circled through my head over and over again even as my eyes scanned the document I'd been left with. I saw the letters as if they were under a magnifying glass, each individual blotch of ink as vivid as a sunrise, and none of them would form into words for me to understand. I'd reach the end of a sentence and snap back to the beginning of it, constantly looking and not seeing as my thoughts ran rampant. Vostok cannot control your actions. It can only create illusions. I see things that do not exist, and that is the extent to which it reaches. The man's pulse under my trigger finger had been strong, his breathing loud and regular. He was not dead. The coyote brown leather of my boots was still stained with the rust color of blood, but I knew there was no blood on them. I could not have cut his throat and imagined Bast doing it. I could not have broken the lock in the door and imagined that she had done it. Everything is an illusion, a deception, a manipulation. How could he be dead!?

He wasn't dead. That's how. Why would Schafer tell me that he was dead? A Vostok avatar is singular. If Bast wasn't real, then Schafer had to be real. There was no motive for him to lie about it, and Vostok couldn't make me hallucinate a second avatar. It could only nudge me in the right direction. A fake sound here, an altered face there, but not an entire talking person. But Bast was not Vostok. I could recite every sign that proved I was not InExed.
Then Schafer is Vostok. I am insane. Bast is not real. Schafer is. That was why the first two men in the room never looked at him, that was why he never spoke when they were in the room. That was why the first man had been hesitant when I told him there were two people in the room besides me. He was the avatar. After so many hours In Exposure it was inevitable that I would be infected sooner or later, but until now it had been impossible.
Wrong. Everything is so wrong! Johnson couldn't be a hallucination, he'd killed himself and disappeared. Vostok can't do that. It can leave temporarily, but it's always there. But I'd only seen him for such a short amount of time. What if Bast had made his sentences up? Told me what I needed to hear in order for me to move to this place. No, not possible. This building had been in his Package, and I hadn't known about it before. InEx can't know things that I don't.
But she does! The movements of Saxena, the corpse outside the auto-garage, the man in the hallway behind me, she fucking does!
Not possible. Manipulation. Things that my subconscious concludes on its own, tactical decisions that I could have made myself and not consciously realized it until she told me. Lies, just lies!
Then who was Saxena? InEx. There was no sane alternative to the bullshit he told me, and I'd only seen him for a short enough time for Bast to influence our conversation, but Bast was not InEx. Then Schafer is. Everything he'd told me, even the paper I held was just in my head, all in my head, oh Christ so many people, all of them impossible and yet all of them real. Nothing makes sense, none of this can possibly be happening. I've lost my mind and I'm in the Zone, oh my god I've completely lost my fucking mind!
Shut up. Just shut. The fuck. UP!
Assess and react. Fuck everyone, fuck everything. Mission failed. Get up and get out. The door is locked, I can't get out. Bullshit! Schafer is a hallucination, you imagined him locking it. Then how did he take off the handcuffs? Shut up. Get out. The door is locked. Assess and react, assess and react!

Everything stopped. The rage and the fear and the confusion drained from my mind as if a tap had been opened in the back of my skull, leaving me with nothing but pain and nausea. I ran my fingers across the seams of my collar and found the razor and handcuff key behind the rank insignia, exactly where they should have been. They'd found the primaries in my sleeves, but hadn't been quite thorough enough to find the second pair. I fumbled at the brass caps with shaking fingers, realizing that I was sweating despite the cold. Don't think about it. Do not think, only do.
I poked the sharp pins of the insignia into my collar material and pried up, tearing the cloth into a larger hole until I could get into it with my finger and tear the stitching out across the seam. In moments I was able to hook my finger under the razor and tear it out of its stitching. A few seconds later I had the handcuff key as well, and placed both in my back pocket, where I could get at them if my hands were 'cuffed behind me. If I was later restrained with them in front, I had no problem with just taking my pants off to reach the back pocket.
Personal security, done. Now on to body. I went over the toilets in the room and took off the tank lids, already having forgotten which one Schafer had told me was full. The moment I found it I dipped my hands into the tank water and washed out the taste of vomit in my mouth, spitting it into the bowl before gulping down palm-fulls with the urgency of a dying animal. Dehydration and hunger are funny like that, your body locks down on it until you find some food or water and then it kicks into over drive. I kept drinking without a second thought as to the safety of the water until my stomach felt bloated and I had to stop, suddenly panting.

Sick...oh so sick. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and recoiled reflexively when i felt smooth skin against my lips instead of the rough wool cores of the glove I'd grown accustomed to. A few more moments to remain calm, and then I reached into the tank and bent out the brass clip which held the chain to the handle, removing it and pocketing that as well.
I still had virtually no assessment of the exact situation. The enemy size, strength, activity, and equipment were all still too vague to determine. All I had to go on was at least twenty plus individuals, all armed. So...how do you deal with that?

I walked over to the door and very slowly tried the handle. I found that I could push it forward just a crack before resistance. So there was no actual lock, just a makeshift barricade. No good. I quietly closed the door again, not wanting any additional attention from whatever watch was sure to be outside. Toilets, no. Sinks. I crouched behind one of sink plumbing works and pressed my ear to the cold tile where the piping ran into the wall. Nothing. I stood up to reach over and grab the disposed can of Monster and slammed my head into the bottom of the sink. More pain, more emotional trauma. The non-stop, continual ache in the cuts across my face had left me in a dangerous emotional state. The accumulation of these little hurts was psychologically hazardous. I forced myself to take an entire minute to get a grip on it, massaging my scalp until the pain was all but entirely gone. I couldn't afford to let them pile up until I turned into a weeping mess curled up in a corner somewhere.
The surface of the crumpled soda can was warm to the touch, even around the bottom edge. It hadn't been refrigerated. I pressed my ear against the pipe itself and gently tapped with the can. Two more taps to get a good idea of what 'hollow' sounded like, and then I performed the same process on the wall around it. Thin, lots of vibration, very dull and muted acoustics. Definitely some empty space there. Nothing that I could actually crawl through of course, but when it came to it, this was a hole just waiting to be made.
So now I had to determine whether this direction actually led anywhere or if it went straight to an exterior wall, because then I'd end up a foot in and facing concrete. After that, I needed to know exactly what the watch outside of my...cell? Outside of my cell was. Ok, ceiling.
A quick glance up ruled that option out. It was solid and looked like cement. This building resembled a training barracks too much for comfort. So...now what?

Sit down. Calm down. Wait for the opportune moment. This was the single most difficult thing in any decision making process. You want to get out, you want to do something, and you keep trying to make up actions to keep yourself busy even though there's nothing left to do at the moment. It's time to relax and plan things out better, instead of running around looking for other ways out. The adrenaline gets up, the mind starts to get slightly panicky, it's not good.
I found a cleaner corner and lay down on my back, propping my head up with a forearm. There wasn't much energy available for me to spend, so I just recuperated, getting up to drink water every several minutes and thinking in the meantime. Not about the great situation, not about myself, not about the countless questions I had. Just the tactics and movements I'd need.
While massaging the claw marks I ended up finding the two Taser barb entry points just under my left armpit. I'd always been under the impression that a hospital was required to remove them. How they got these out...I couldn't even guess at it. At least that explained a lot. Bypassed the armor, right next to my heart and brachial plexus, I would have gone down hard. Still didn't explain why I couldn't remember any of it.
------------------------------------

Excerpt from Psyche Analysis SAR #2137
Subject: -----'Salt'----
Nature of Interview: Personal morality.

Interviewer: "Can you define what morality is for me, please?"

Subject: "The actual definition, or my own?"

Interviewer: "Just your perspective on it."

Subject: "The categorization of actions which are considered socially acceptable or unacceptable."

Session Pause, 11 seconds

Interviewer: "How do you know the difference?"

Subject: "I don't. Nobody does."

Interviewer: "Is it immoral to, let's say, kill a little girl?"

Subject: "In what context?"

Session Pause, 15 seconds

Interviewer: "You know what I mean. Just an...an innocent girl. No harm to
anyone."
Subject holding face in hand, visible frustration or sense of tedium

Subject: Sigh "Context. Would killing her save someone else, directly or indirectly?"

Interviewer: "No, nothing like that. Just plain old murder, right?"

Subject: "That would be wrong."

Interviewer: "Ok, good. So how do you know that?"

Subject: "I say again, I don't."

Interviewer: "You don't know that it's wrong to murder an innocent child?"

Subject: "Nope."

Interviewer: "Then how could you say that it is wrong?"

Subject: "Because I believe it's wrong."

Session Pause, 21 seconds

Interviewer: "I'm going to stop asking you questions for now, and just let you explain. I want to hear you summarize your beliefs on morality, ok?"

Subject: "Riiiiight."

Session Pause, 12 seconds

Subject: "Like I said, a moral is just a rule. That's all morals are: rules. They regulate our actions into groups of what is socially ok and not ok. These rules are literally nothing more than opinions, typically held by a populace. They are not objective, and they are not true. Either someone believes in them, or they do not. So everybody's morality is different. To a degree, that is. I mean, there's some pretty universal held rules, but those are all just remnants of evolutionary instincts. Altruism, all that.
Anyway, that's all there is to it. I believe that everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I believe that anyone who violates these rights voids their own. I believe that an and all actions which do not directly or indirectly violate another's rights are morally acceptable.
It gets a little blurry, of course. Animal cruelty, so on. Again, just byproducts of our own instincts. We don't like seeing eachother in pain, and that passes on to anything else that we hold an attachment to. Animals. Pets."

Session Pause, 11 seconds

Interviewer: "Ok, so by that, I take it that you don't have any aversion to stuff like sexual orientation, fetishes, so on?"

Subject: "Aversions, plenty. I just don't think it's morally wrong. Some dude can do whatever gets his rocks off and I won't care, just as long as he's not hurting anyone in the process."

Interviewer: "By hurt, do you specifically mean pain, or-"

Subject: "Emotional, mental, and physical distress. Direct or indirect, it doesn't matter."

Interviewer: "To what degree does that extend?"

Session Script Redacted, 6 minutes, 28 seconds

Interviewer: "So here's the really important questions. Did you feel any kind of regret, emotional distress, anything like that at all when you ran through sim-scenarios B and E? Specifically when you killed the bystanders."

Subject: "Not that I remember."
-----------------------------------------------

Three loud knocks sounded at the door and someone shouted, "Step to the wall away from the door and put your hands on it."

I looked at the door for several seconds, then simply stood up and complied, head up straight and staring at a spot of mold between the tiles.

"You done?"

I couldn't stop myself from laughing. Indignity in even the slightest form was just...well, laughable. I looked over my shoulder, failed to make a sound the first time, cleared my throat, and called, "Yeah."

I heard the rattle of whatever barred the door be removed and watched the door swing open. The first thing revealed was another uniformed man several feet away from the door with a Taser in hand. Ammunition was more than plentiful enough in the city. Why they would waste Taser rounds made me curious. Could spent Taser cartridges be reloaded? I didn't know. When he saw that I wasn't poised with a urinal in hand, the guy nodded and the door was fully opened. My stomach dropped to somewhere around my navel as I recognized Mr. Psycho. He looked right back at me, then leaned into the doorway and looked up at the ceiling. Only then did he actually step inside. Paranoid fuck.
"You can step away from the wall now."
I sighed and did just that, any crazy thoughts vanishing as two riflemen followed him in.

"If you step more than halfway across the room, we tase you. Got it?"
Another short, voiceless laugh rubbed against my raw throat and I nodded once, "Yeah, I got it."

Ridiculous. This entire fucked up situation was just goofy. Psycho threw a package at my feet, the MRE instantly recognizable. It bounced once and landed propped against my right boot. I looked down at it, then flipped it over with my foot to see the entree. Sloppy Joe. First MRE I'd ever eaten. Not a bad one either. Hmph.
I looked back at Mr. Psycho to see the guards simply take their seats in the two chairs by the door (not before sweeping under and over them with their hands) and Mr. Psycho himself took a seat on the floor, kicking aside the chair Schafer had used, pulling a bright pink Nalgene bottle from one of the countless pockets of his jacket. He unscrewed and gulped down a mouthful from before closing it and rolling it across the floor.
He wiped his lips with the back of a hand and in that short moment when his head was raised high enough for the light to fully hit his face I caught the glint of shine reflecting off his eyes. Just like glass. Then he did something I hadn't expected at all; From another pocket materialized a silver Gameboy Advance.

He flicked the switch on it a couple of times, then held it one hand and said, "Donkey Kong or Mario?"

I don't like being toyed with, and my reaction to this new found bullshit was non-cooperation. Ignoring him, I sat down and picked up the MRE. Whatever was going on here, I needed calories, and this was a chance to get some in me, assuming the thing wasn't somehow poisoned and then resealed.

I heard an "Eh," and the cute sound of Nintendo game music playing. I ignored it, struggling with the MRE packaging for a few seconds before managing to tear it open and going straight for the sides, which happened to be peanut butter and crackers. Not my preference, but it didn't matter now. The entrees in these things hold less calories than the sides do. Crackers, wheat snackbread, cheese spread, all of those things have 180 calories apiece, and you can get them down faster.

"So, here's what's going to happen. You're going to eat, then I'm going to ask you some questions, and then you're going to talk to a recruiter."

I ignored him, squeezing the peanut-butter directly out of the packet and into my mouth and following it up with what turned out to be water.
-----------------------------------------------------
SAR Tracking Profile ----- 'Salt -----
...
...
...
Indexed Capabilities:
-PFT: 300
-CFT: 300
-Swim Qualification: 1
-Rifle Marksmanship: 327, mid-expert.
-Pistol Marksmanship: 352, low-expert
-Long Range Marksmanship (Relaxed): 930 meters, 92%
-Long Range Marksmanship (Stress-Test): 615 meters, 91%
-Contact Range Combat: Superior (Perfect Score)
-Escape and Evasion: Passed
-Land Navigation: Passed
-Tactical planning and movement: Superior
Indexed Failures:

-Contact Range Sparring: Inferior (Minimum passing Score)
-Stress-based problem solving: Inferior (Tunnel vision effect)
-Obstacle based puzzle solving: Inferior (Non-cooperative failure)
-Negotiation and obtainment of information through speech: Inferior
-Strategic planning and long-term movement: Inferior


Non-indexed capabilities:
-Climbing and urban movement (Parkour) is highly developed.
-Tactical planning and movement skills are highly developed.

------------------------------------------------

I pocketed several of the remnants from the MRE. Moist towelette, the folded napkins, Tabasco sauce, gum. He didn't stop me of course, and I couldn't figure out any use for the items except that having them made me feel better.
The sounds of the video game ceased, and Psycho simply dropped the thing onto the floor. One of the AA batteries popped out and rolled out of sight into a toilet stall.
"First, I'm going to save myself a lot of time here. We have your journal, and I've read it twice. I already understand the situation to a large degree, so please don't stall with bullshit answers. Also understand this: the only reason you're still alive is because of a possible problem, which I'm pretty sure about, but need to confirm. In other words, if you lie to me, and I happen to believe you, you're probably going to be executed."

He announced this with a jolly energy akin to that of a gaming commentator, that same lunatic grin reappearing on his face.

"So! You found Johnson. That's where the journal cut off. Is he dead or alive?"

I took a deep breath and let it out very slowly. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but something was missing. I should have known how to answer, but I didn't. Something had been lost. Take a gamble? That's what got you into this mess in the first place. Analyze it. Take your time. He's in no rush.
Despite his talk of wasting time, the man had no issue with sitting cross-legged as I thought about it. Usually pausing this long would be an obvious sign of fabricating some story, but he didn't seem to mind at all.

Why would they care about Johnson? Immediately this all but confirmed that they had a device. The realization didn't come over me slowly or in bits and pieces, but instantaneously and with all the importance of a freight train crashing into my face. The Cheget was real. It mattered. It was valuable. There was a nuclear weapon somewhere on site. Whether it was already in their possession or not didn't matter. They cared about Johnson, which meant that they cared about the codes.
Dead or alive. That should have been irrelevant. In a few more seconds, the second most obvious fact hit me, again with the same speed and ramifications of the first. If I'd found Johnson, he could have given me the Cheget. If Johnson was dead, then I was their remaining link to that data.

Dead. Tell the truth and gain collateral. They can't kill you.
"Dead."

The man nodded almost instantly. He'd already known, or at least strongly suspected.
"How did he die?"

Now that slightly took me off guard. The relieved, uplifting feeling of knowing something that protected me was replaced by the sinking feeling of being a step behind again. My pulse started to rise and I beat it back down with several deep breaths.

"He threw himself out of a building."

"Why?"

I realized that I hated this man. I hated everything about him. He was on the perfect track to corner me, and he knew it. How could he know it?

I grit my teeth and exhaled the words, "How should I know?"

I can't fake emotions. I'm not an actor. All I could do was lock them all down and remain impassive. Don't fake it, but don't show the real clues either.

The man rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger, "Well, was he trying to kill himself, was he trying to escape, was he psychotic...."
His hands gesticulated in a circular motion around eachother as he trailed off the question.

Another breath and another surge of pain as my face tautened, straining the barely congealed cuts under my eye. Their constant presence would probably lead me into dementia sooner or later, like an annoying gnat which just refused to go away.

"He was Terminally InExed, disorientated, and demented. I restrained him and he charged through a window. That's all there is."

His lips turned down in a fake frown while his eyebrows raised in nonchalance, "Shame."

There was no disappointment in his voice. No emotion at all. Fake. All fake. Socipath.

"The documents he gave you, where are they?"

My eyes narrowed. A puzzle with no answer. Lie and there is no reason to keep you alive. Tell the truth and after they cut enough pieces off of me, I'll tell them the codes and they'll still have no reason to keep me alive. Trapped.
Third choice. There's always a third choice. So obvious, right in the back of my head, and somehow I just could not land on it. There was an answer for this, an answer that wouldn't leave me at their mercy. What was it? I couldn't grasp it.

He gave me a few more seconds to think by answering it for himself, "The documents weren't on you. Either you destroyed them, or you hid them. Well?"

Third choice. Third option. Third answer. A copy. Johnson had told me that the package was just a copy. They had. The. Codes. Third option. Third answer. Why? What? Why couldn't I think!?. Drugs. No. I was lucid. Christ!
He stood up and took precisely one and a half steps forward, hitching the rear foot at a fraction of a normal pace.

"I'm not going to kill you, and I'm not going to hurt you. Yet, anyway. This is nothing more than a preliminary...eh...questionnaire, for our benefit. If we get something out of you, then yay! Happy! If not, then meh.
So, again, save me the time, and either answer the question or tell me to fuck off."

A minute ago it was, "The truth or we kill you," and now it was "we don't care."
Make up your fucking mind. I took the middle-ground and kept my mouth shut. All of his facial expression vanished, all tiny motions ceased, and with those glass eyes I could have been staring at a mannequin. Time stopped.

Time resumed when he did an about face and briskly walked to the door, "Let's go."

He swung open the door as the two guards stood up and approached me. They a little more than halfway across the room from me, both hugging the opposite walls, and one of them simply jerked his head to the open door.

[E-Stalin [Orthrus]]

Excerpt from Salt's mission book -
Partial transcript of codes from supposed "Cheget" documents.
Mission book states that they are a low-scale form of encryption, not implemented in the original documents. Operator conclusion is that the existing data was encrypted by whoever possessed the codes before Salt acquired them, with the express purpose of preventing anyone easily translating them without access to a computer.

Recommend immediate transfer to cryptology support Bn.






It was still raining. The daylight outside had faded to a dark gray and was quickly turning to night. I realized that I was on the ground floor the moment I stepped out of the head and saw the rows of windows along the hallway. The two escorts stepped in behind me with a muttered, "Follow him."

I realized that I was limping in my left leg, but couldn't understand why. There was some deep seated ache just under my left buttock, and after a few steps I guessed that I'd been kicked in the sciatic nerve. Crazy on top of crazy. You know you're losing it when you find bullets in your chest and bruises on your legs without any memory of it actually happening.

Passing down the hallway felt like something building up in a ghost movie. Unlike the head, the only illumination here was at the ends. Psycho was silhouetted as only a black outline several meters ahead of me, with the light shining around his body like a corona. Everything else was the muted gray-blue of darkening conditions. Many of the windows were broken, and now and then as we passed them I'd feel the wind howling through and drops of rain would bounce off my arm. Puddles of water were starting to leak across the floor from where they would hit drawn curtains and run down.
I wasn't restrained in any way, and a glance over my shoulder showed the escorts to be moving at a slower pace, keeping ten meters back. Tueller distance. If they had been seven meters away or closer then I would have been capable of charging at them and reaching them before they could draw a sidearm and fire. Of course, it didn't matter anyway. There were two of them, both spaced apart, and both already holding rifles in hand.
I turned my head back to see Psycho. He was much closer, within grabbing distance, and if I charged then they couldn't shoot without risking hitting him. But then what? I didn't even know if he was armed, there were too many people in the building, and no way to go.

The windows. That was the only remotely possible option. Leap through and disappear into the rain. Possible. Just barely possible, but I didn't start to psyche myself up for risking it. Without food, water, cold-weather gear, and a gas-mask, I wouldn't survive out there for longer than few days, let alone reach the coast again. Even if I did, I had no way of signalling the NFA, which would force me to wait up to seven days for a prescheduled pick-up of another operative. Not an option, just keep walking.

As we neared the end of the hallway, the sound of some music I didn't recognize and the commotion typical of a bar-night grew louder. Shadows danced against the turn-point of the corridor and as I turned the corner, the full gravity of the situation hit me.
They hadn't been lying. Their story wasn't bullshit. My weary mind had ignored the possibility of this even being possible. I'd thought this was nothing more than another congregation, just a non-religious one. They weren't uncommon either - those who didn't go Terminal by religious exploitation most often fell to some other form of devotion, either to one's family or country. I'd thought this was nothing more than a congregation of Terminals. I was wrong.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BAEL Accuisition Form 152
This updated document is meant to replace Form 151
Altered requirements have been noted via *
Deep Recon Mission Statement [DeRP]:
....
....
Search and Rescue Mission Statement [SAR]:
...
...

Corrollary 1: Top Secret
SAR Detatchment Bravo/Low Light Condition Mission Statement [LoLiCON| HiRE]:
-To deploy into Contaminant Zones
-To locate sensitive materials and intelligence [Package] Classified Zulu [Extreme Threat]
-To recover Class Zulu Packages, or in situations not applicable, to destroy them
-To identify, close with, and destroy all missing, rogue, or Terminal NFA operatives known to have come into contact with Zulu Packages

---------------------------------------

"Close the door behind you."

I didn't. I was feeling childish, and like a child I was sulking. I stood just inside this new room with Psycho and friends waiting outside and looked at this new man with the grimmest expression I could muster. Now that I was unchained from the wall, a little defiance was something I was in the mood for, even if it meant something as insignificant as rudeness.

There was a very short pause in which I stood still and he sat still behind a desk and then he sighed and raised his voice to direct it to the men outside, "Close the door."

I heard the door swing shut behind me without squeaking. They oiled the hinges here. At first glance, this room didn't seem any different from the dozens of other rooms I'd seen in this building. It was all brick and cinder block, painted gray. A bookshelf lined the left side wall, a window set into the back wall reflected the candlelight off the desk set in front of it.
At second glance, I already knew where I was, and I already knew who this man must be. A Commissioned Officer, and this was his office. Whether he was of high rank or not was irrelevant, this was the next level of command. I actually had to resist the ingrained reflex to stand at attention and give the greeting of the day.

"Welcome to the new Rome."

The scratch of a pencil ceased, came as a relief given the effect it was having on my headache, and this new man stood up from behind the desk and walked around to the front of it. I could hear his footsteps against the cement, and it was obvious that he wore boots. With the candlelight between me and him, I hadn't been able to make out exactly what he looked like, and as he came around the desk the details came into focus. He looked exactly like everyone else here, only difference being that he was clearly past his forties. Regulation fade, Marine utilities, VAC on his chest and a nametag. Pendleton. What are the odds, huh? This also confirmed that he was an Officer; the silver shine of some insignia I couldn't recognize gave it away.

He leaned back against the desk and took a deep, slow breath. I found myself settling my weight onto my uninjured leg, and we simply looked at eachother for a time. When he spoke, he took his time, taking another slow breath and evidently choosing his words with some deliberation. I had the sense that he'd done all of this before and it was now simply tedious.

"Why are you here?"

His head cocked to the side, and before my silence made the pause awkward, he waved a finger around the room and clarified, "In this place? This...city."
It was rhetorical, not a real question. It was clear that he wasn't looking for an answer from me but setting up to answer it himself, so I let him do just that.

"Deep Recon makes sense. SAR does not. The requirements are more stringent, and the job takes more than it gives. They tell candidates that this city will kill you. The ones you love will betray you, and the ones who claimed to love you will abandon you. You will receive no benefits or incentives. You will not be directly benefiting your country in any way. You don't have god to look forward to, no family or friends to come back to. Which leaves the question of why anyone would volunteer.
I believe that there are three types of people who do. There are the naive people who want to create a self-identity of a hero. They want to make themselves feel important...and valuable. They know that SAR is tougher, so they choose it for their personal gain, not realizing that there is none. Then there are the psychotics who want an excuse to kill people. I've yet to actually meet one of these. I'm not sure if they even exist."

He stopped here for a few more moments, perhaps waiting to hear my own
input. None was coming, and he continued,

"And then there's you. People like you. There's nothing back home for you. You've seen society for what it is and know that there is nothing there. So instead you choose to come here. You don't care what the job is, so you go into SAR simply because they need more personnel. Correct?"

This speech might have held more meaning for me if I hadn't been more concerned with the need to take a shit. It took me two tries before I could properly speak, the first attempts halted by the pain in my face and soreness in my throat,
"You don't know me."

He scoffed and shook his head broadly, picking up a thick manila folder from the desk and holding it up slightly above waist-level, "These are your files. Service records, medical records...psyche profile."

Bullshit.

He dropped it back onto the desk, "I haven't started this conversation blind. If I understand you correctly, then you should know that I'm not here to take from you. My job is to provide an opportunity."

I sighed, using the movement to cover the look I stole at the pistol holstered on his left hip. He must be left handed.

"Get to the point."

He walked back around to the other side of the desk and pulled out his chair, motioning to the seat opposite him, "Sit down."

Another sigh and walked over to it, abandoning petulance in exchange for relieving the ache in my leg.

He sat down and folded his arms over eachother on the desk-top.

"You've been informed of what we are. You saw the formation when you walked here, right?"

I nodded, resisting the urge to just close my eyes and grab a few minutes sleep.

"So you know what we are. My job is to explain to you exactly who we are."

He pulled over the folder and removed a bunch of sheets bound together, sliding them across the desk to me. A glance at it was all I needed. He hadn't lied, these were my psyche records. I shoved aside the immediate questions of how he could have gotten his hands on them and stored the problem for later.

"Tell me what you believe."

I looked up into his eyes for the first time. In the candlelight they appeared to be nothing more than dark circles set into his skull beneath graying eyebrows. I couldn't make out the color. I grunted and pushed the documents back, "You have these. You should already know."

He scratched his jaw, "According to those files, you are nothing more than a sociopath with no values or acknowledgement of morality whatsoever. Is that correct?"

My eyes narrowed and I clenched my jaw to stop the coming retort. That was all he needed.

"I know that these profiles are more fucked up than a soup sandwich. Tell me what you really believe."

"I told you to get to the point."

"It's meaningless unless I know you're the right kind of man. That's why we haven't killed you yet, and that's why we haven't tortured you."

Bullshit. You just need Cheget.

I closed my eyes and gently massaged my cheekbone below the claw-marks. The fingertips came away wet, as usual, and the massage only lessened the ache as long as I maintained contact. The moment I stopped the pain came back just the same. Why hadn't he asked me the important questions yet? Was I InExed? Did I have the codes or not? I hate things that don't make sense.

"I believe that you want something from me, and the only reason I'm here is so you can get it."

"What if I told you that we're just like you?"

"I'm not like you."

"Your chit says that your core beliefs are based in the U.S Constitution. Is that accurate?"

"Yes." No. That's barely even getting to the core.

Here I was again. Another chair, another analyst, another person ready to give me a long speech about what they knew was real and right. I hate these talks.

"Tell me what America is."

"It's in the file."

"Hmph."

He leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms over his head, the insignia on his lapels flashing in the light, and his voice took a slightly monotonous tone. He'd memorized this little speech before and was just repeating it.

"America was a unique country. It was the only country that created a core foundation based around an ideology from the start. Every human being has the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and to defend those rights as needed. If any individual violated the rights of another, then their own rights were rendered void. Every law was supposed to exist to secure those rights and nothing more. It was a country of people and for people. Not the government, not the flag, not gods, and not beliefs.

"It didn't' matter who you were or what you believed. Your opinions meant jackshit. What you thought about abortion and gays and religions was irrelevant. It was a sandbox. The people are given their chance to get what they want from life and left to their own devices in trying to attain it.
"The true American is not a patriot. He is not a Christian. He is not a soldier, sailor, or Marine. He is not Republican or Democrat or straight or gay or theist or atheist. He does not like sports or drink beer. A true American is nothing more than an individual who believes that all people possess those rights and are free to do whatever they want so long as they do not infringe on the rights of someone else."

He stopped here to take a breath and examine my reactions to all this. I was hardly paying attention. I'd heard this before and said it before myself. He was preaching the choir. Of course he knew that already too, which meant he was just trying to show me that he was on my side. Or that I was on his side. The end point was the same. I was more focused on the position of his hands on the desk and wondering if I could get the razor to his throat before he could back off. I wouldn't try it anyway, even if I got him down and got a pistol in hand, there was no way out yet.

He continued,

"This country never existed. It was dead from the moment it was created. The same people who thought it up didn't practice what they preached. Blacks and women were not allowed the same rights. Non-Christians and non-whites were not considered Americans. Religion poisoned the law and people burned eachother for witchcraft. The American people were not Americans first, and everything else second. They placed their own petty bullshit first. What they believed was right, not what the philosophy said. Some knew that god came first, some that their race came first, others knew that their little opinions and personal politics came first. Fuck everyone so long as their personal desires were satisfied.

"Two hundred and thirty-six years later America still hadn't been realized. It took over two centuries to get even close, and always so much horseshit for every single issue. Black's rights. Women's rights. Gay rights. Always the same resistance from the same types of people, holding back what this country should have been from the instant the Constitution was finalized. It took a nuclear war to finally reach where we are now, true legal equality for absolutely everyone, but even now America doesn't exist, because even though the principles are upheld in the NFA, the people writing the law and the people following it still don't understand or believe in those principles. When you re-establish yourselves and grow again, the social controversies will come right back, and the mobs will return with their signs and slogans, and down you'll spiral back again."

He stopped here again, his breathing having increased with the emotion of the rant. He continued to wait and listen, now smiling. I released my tongue from between my teeth. You're wrong. You're so very wrong.

A sigh, and I stopped in mid-sentence to clear my throat before saying, "And your point is?"

The laugh started very low and deep in Pendleton's chest, growing to a quite, voiceless chuckle as heaves overtook his torso. It was a pleased laugh, not a humorous or mocking one. I realized that I no longer liked laughter. Not after hearing Her laughter every time she tore another piece off of me.

Pendleton slapped a hand on the desk, "The point is that we are the America you always wanted. We're the America that should have been nearly two and a half centuries ago. We are Varyag, America finalized. Same constitution, new laws, new principles. The difference is that we are no longer a true country like the old America was. Not anyone can be one of us, only people who already are us join us. If someone believes in these ideas, then they're one of us. If they don't, then we send them off on their merry way to live in a country better suited to them. There are no racists, no religious fanatics, no criminals. Anyone who violates the rights of another is immediately executed.

"We took it still a step further. I said that this isn't a true country, it's not. It's a military. A military with Sovereignty. Everyone fights in one way or another. We're a group of warriors for warriors, designed to ensure that nobody on this planet can ever take our rights away from us. We do not reproduce for the sake of growing and making more people happy, we recruit. We're not going to educate a new generation. We don't create Varingians, we find them where they already are and offer them sanctuary."

No shit, that may have something to do with your infant mortality rate being 90% or such.

"As a people, we do whatever we want to make us happy, no matter who likes it or doesn't like it. The only rules are that we do not violate another's rights. Our laws are built on the compromise that the USA should have had.
My point? This whole thing is a recruitment process. I've let you know exactly what this place is, and judging by your profile, this is your country too. That's why we're offering you asylum."

Asylum? I'm not exactly being persecuted by the NFA, thank you very much.

I had to resist a groan, "No. What you're offering me is desertion and treason for no reason whatsoever other than joining a band of misplaced soldiers with a life expectancy of fourteen months."

He chuckled, evidently enjoying this. What, did he think I was actually going to nod my head 'yes' like a good boy and salute him?

"Fourteen months...we've lasted twice that so far. This place was a warzone. Entire armies fought and died in these places. Everything they brought with them is still here. Ammunition, weaponry, equipment, food, diesel, generators. We have enough to last us for five years of open warfare, and are constantly bringing more from the surrounding areas. We've already secured the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant and are steadily bringing the facility and networks online."

Diablo is more than a 150 kilometers away. Bullshit.

"Do you think that we're just going to fizzle out like a congregation? No. That's where the NFA comes in. The world has not ended. This place...your and our people...we're not the last of mankind. Not even close. You have no knowledge of the rest of the world at the moment, but there's survivors there just like here. The remnants of military bases and fleets, entire islands untouched by the war. By our estimates there's at least a few billion human beings still alive worldwide. In less than a decade, this coastline will be sterilized and repopulated, the NFA will bring their worldwide networks back online, and the world will recover. In fifty years, the world will start resembling its old self again, and that's when Varyag will be on the map."

No you won't. Because we will burn you.

"Which brings me to the end of this process. There's just a few more points I want to make, and then you can think about all of this."

I sat back in my chair and laced my fingers behind my head, looking at him with a mocking expectation. Like I've said, negotiations and interrogation are not my strong suit.

A smile tugged at his lips, "First, as you may have figured out already, we have access to NFA data. That's because not everyone in the NFA is one of yours, they're actually ours. Corporal Johnson was one of our own."

He stopped for a moment to spin off on a tangent, "Or at least we thought he was one of our own. Either he lost his mind or he was actually still an NFA loyalist at heart...that doesn't matter now. Anyway, that is why I know that you were sent to find him, and based on our investigation and your own account, you did find him.

"So, I'm going to tell you the truth of the matter right now. What Johnson told you was true. We have an SS-27 Sickle ready and standing by. It's payload is a MIRV of four warheads loaded with VR nerve agent. We now have the capability to strike over Oahu, your forward Flotilla, Civilian Flotilla, and C3 in one attack. Our Russian division brought it in, and many of those tasked with its deployment are now with us. We've spent over a year recovering Moscow authorization codes and jury-rigging the receivers for it. The only thing that we need is the Football, and Johnson passed it on to you."

My ears felt muted and the ring of tinnitus pervaded my left ear. My vision had grown slightly grayer. I recognized this as a drop in blood pressure. Why? Because I believed him. Still not sure why, but I did, and the sheer, indescribable gravity of what this meant was enough to scare me shitless. Literally, I had to clench to stop from defecating on accident. What he told me next only got worse with each passing sentence,

"Second, we have no intention of attacking the NFA unprovoked. This weapon is our deterrence, and we will acquire more with time. But the NFA has provoked us. You didn't really think it was possible for an organization like this to exist without the NFA knowing about it? Of course not. Your Specwarfare teams have been providing recon for months now, and after the first real negotiation, the NFA decided we were a threat from day one.

"Unlike us, you have no WMDs in your arsenal, and you can't wipe us out with a cruise missile because you don't know where our missile is."
He grinned, "Oh yes, we flat out told them that we have, complete with proof. So what the NFA's been doing ever since then is trying to locate it and capture it. Not destroy, not disable, capture. Can you guess why?"

I already knew why.

"So they can sterilize a good quarter of the coast-line proper and begin repopulation."

"Bullshit."

He stopped me with an upraised finger, "Oh yes, it is bullshit, I agree. But it's the truth."

"The truth? We've spent over a year rescuing people from this place, over a year setting up for an occupation, and you want me to believe that we're just going to kill everything for the hell of it?"

I realized that I was clenching the hand rests of my chair with enough force to hurt, and it took me several seconds of conscious effort to loosen my grip.
He simply nodded. Fucker.

"Yes, there's two reasons why they intend to do this. First, because we exist, and they view our deterrence as a threat. So, their ultimate decision is to preemptively wipe us out. Afterall, they know as well as we do that we're not the last of humanity. Five thousand people? They can afford that loss to the global population.

"Second, they've already decided that they've salvaged the most of human life from this region that they can, and continuing operations is just too high of a risk over little reward. So it's time to sterilize it, occupy it, set up perimeters and bases, and continue operations into the mainland."

I snarled, the headache in my temples having increased to levels approaching that of crippling, "Still bullshit! Five thousand men, military men! You should have been evacuated from here the moment we found you. We need assets like you. If we intended this, we would haul you off-shore, blast the place, and drop you right back! You...you're fucking insane!"

That smile kept growing wider. Smiles and laughter. Two things I could never see the same way again. Every time I tried to make sense, people and things just loved to smile back at it. I'm just an unruly child and they're the teachers, already knowing everything and saying nothing.

"Correct, again. But there is a reason for it, and I'll tell you after one final important reason for you considering our offer to you."

Another manila folder was drawn from his desk and he slid it across the table. I didn't touch it.

"That's an OPORD for your assassination and recovery of the Football. You see, we know you have it, and unfortunately for us, they do to. The only thing they don't know is that we don't have a copy of it. They won't risk destroying us until they can acquire the Sickle themselves, and they can't do that without the knowledge you have."

Silence in my head. Resting pulse, respiration slow and deep. I was in acute stress reaction again. Robot. Eyes squeezed shut, blood welling in my mouth.

He kept talking over it, "HiRE is looking for you already. They will capture you on sight, determine whether you have the Package, and then kill you. That's why I offered you Political Asylum. Because you've been betrayed by your own country."

I heard the click of a Zippo and the hiss of a cigarette being lit. The smell of stale tobacco reached me just as he said, "Which brings me to the final point. You've wondered why I haven't asked you the most important question yet. Why they would consider us a disposable threat instead of an ally? This is why."

A shuffle and vibration in the desk as he leaned forward, "You're wondering why we haven't checked if you're InExed yet. The reason is this: what exactly made you think that every one of us isn't already InExed?"

[E-Stalin [Orthrus]]

Handwritten Note:

Old habits reappear
Fighting the fear of fear
Growing conspiracy
Myself is after me
Frayed ends of sanity
They're not calling
They're not calling me

Note is an example of several lyrics commonly recorded in Subject journals. Psyche-analysis has concluded that these are chiefly written out of boredom.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"You...are...INSANE!"
I very nearly tried to the kick the desk into him and ride out my luck. The only thing that stopped the attempt was not a rational anchor, but a muscle spasm in my leg the moment I lifted it up. The first source of fear was not actually the fact that this man was another lunatic, but the unique skin-crawling tension of realizing that you're sitting in a hot zone. A building full of vectors, and I wasn't wearing a mask. I had drunk water here, I'd been making skin-to-skin contact constantly with more open wounds on me than a hound scrapping with a hedgehog.
Every surface becomes malevolent. Every breeze of air against the cheek feels like poison. The manila folder he had handed me, I could see the brick red thumb print that I'd smeared across it when I'd flipped through. How many times had I massaged the cuts on my face? Had I done it after touching the folder? Had he sneezed before giving it to me? Had he touched his eyes?
Bast.
Laughter. Again that fucking laughter.

The same tone, the same cause. He was a man dealing with someone he'd dealt with many times before. He already had the answers, already knew why I was so distressed. Pendleton knew. The Psycho knew. She knew. Everybody knew. Only I was lost.

Pendleton almost immediately removed the cigarette from his lips without inhaling and leaned forward on the desk, resting his weight on his elbows.
"Think about it. I've been symptomatic since last December. I haven't abandoned my cause, and I haven't suck-started a gauge, and I'm not Terminal. You and the NFA still think that anyone infected with Vostok needs to go into the Slammer, as if they're spitting Ebola. Then tell me how this," he spread his arms out in a gesture to the building around us, "is still holding together."

I noticed an odd expression in his eyes as he leaned forward again. It was a very particular narrowing of the eyes and the slightest upbringing of the lips, creating the illusion of raised cheekbones. I had rarely seen it, and it felt very familiar.

I leaned back away from him with an ugly look on my face, not out of submission, but dismissal. The moment had passed, and I latched onto the first answer I had finally been given. Everything he had told me was the bullshit I had called it for. Another congregation, another group of fanatics. Nothing more. My head came up so that my eyes could look down to him as I instinctively came to hold the posture of superiority.
You're just another one of the Lost, and you are beneath me.
He read this perfectly, exhaled sharply in a scoff, and leaned back into the shadows as I finally remembered where I had seen that look before.
"You still don't get it, do you?"
Rage. It was not simmering, it was not restrained. Pendleton had crossed a line from calm to aggravated in the few seconds that had passed. Even if it hadn't been directed at me, my gut clenched the moment I heard the rasp of sheer fury. He hadn't raised his voice, men like him never needed to.
His silhouette behind the candlelight was motionless, and only the heat shimmers from the open flame created the illusion that his head wasn't still. Without that, the voice may as well have been disembodied.
"Let me break it down Barney style for you, then. You are not being recruited. You are not being held hostage. You're already one of us. You've known it for most of your life, and you've been looking for something for a very, very long time, without even fully comprehending what it was."
The glowing end of the cigarette waved to his mouth and disappeared beneath the table again, a billow of smoke breached the line of darkness and light when he continued,
"You still go into the Zone and back out every month, and you're not even able to tell your psychologist why. I know why. I know why you do it and I know why you can't explain it. Because you've been brought up your whole life to believe that you there is no way out, that things are fucked up and are going to stay fucked no matter what you do, and the only thing you can do to stay sane and is try, and live with the men who keep trying their whole lives, each of them alongside you knowing that you will fail every single time because the only ones who can succeed do not fight with you.
"I'm telling you that you've found it. We. Are. It. We are the way off the playing board. We're the way out."
"At the beginning of the 19th century, Americans were lead by military men. Men who knew what they were doing every single time that they sent America's warriors out, men who understood the cost. During the World Wars, more than tenth of all Americans served. The country knew exactly what was it stake, it followed every development and it ran with the pain and the grief and the triumph alike. Those who didn't fight provided the support for those who did. They bought war bonds, they paid the taxes, they aided the logistics, they felt the war around them, knowing every single day that their neighbors and friends could die. You couldn't find a single man or woman who didn't didn't know someone affected by the war.
"Come Vietnam, only four percent of Americans served. Even less volunteered for it. This time, there was no support from the homeland. There was no more pain or sacrifice from the homeland, just barely educated College students and ignorant assholes all trying to shout their political opinions loudest. When our men came home, they were treated like shit by the people who sent them away in the first place. Our country roared for war, and when the reality of it hit their miserable, weak brains, they backed off and abandoned the tools they'd sent in to do it for them, job not done.
Ten years ago, we were less than one percent, half of a fucking percent! A tenth of Congress were veterans. Only one had a child who was active duty. We were sent into a war by people who did not know what it meant. Taxes did not increase, bonds were not sold, our country did not join in the effort. They only bought yellow stickers to slap onto their bumpers and shouted that they supported the troops, but nobody had to sacrifice anything except for those who volunteered to do so, and the numbers of those volunteers have only grown less while the burdens this country places on them only grew heavier. Then came Fallujah. Four Americans mutilated and burned, and the entire military plan for taking the city was turned on its head. Why? Because the clueless, ignorant, emotion driven public cried bloody murder. 'They can't do that to Americans!', said our President. The hell with the men who know better, 'Send the Marines!'
"So in we go to appease the butt-hurt masses, and halfway through the job the fucking media shows the pictures of little dead children and everyone instantly panics. 'That's too horrible, look at how awful this battle is, take our troops out! Turn it over to the Fallujah Brigade, let the Iraqis take care of it!

"We go in and my Marines die. We fucking kill, and hurt, and die only to be told that the poor little bitches back home can't handle the images on their god-damned TV sets, so we should come back out with nothing to show for it but corpses and let someone else do the fighting. Everyone still kills, hurts, and dies, only now America doesn't have to bother dealing with the guilt of it being us dying. It's ok for the war to go on, so long as someone else does it, not because of concern for the well being of the soldiers, but so that the public can pretend that they're not responsible.
"Of course that failed miserably, so we had to go back in and finish the job that could have been already done. More Marines die, men who didn't have to die. More civilians are killed, more families torn apart, innocent people. All of it could have been avoided if politics had stayed out of it and let us do our fucking job."
"Then we come home. A year later, and everyone's forgotten about Fallujah. Everyone's forgotten about the mutilation over Brooklyn Bridge. They're not sorry. They don't even know what they did to us. What they did to Iraq. People died because of them, because of media and masses and politicians and clueless idiots, and they're too dead inside to even know it.
"When the Great Wars were over, men came home to a new world. America had been strengthened, history on a world scale rewritten, a populace overjoyed. We came home, and nothing had changed. The same people doing the same things, watching the same TV shows and talking about pop stars and their delightful bits of gossip. Our war could have ended then and there and most people wouldn't even notice. When Iraq finally did end, nobody noticed. Nothing changed. It was a blip on the radar. More people tuned in to Netflix than even realized that we were done. Nobody could even tell me what we did over there. They couldn't tell me what Iraq was like in 2003 and what it was like in 2011. People couldn't even tell me whether we'd succeeded in our goals or not. We could have won or failed and it wouldn't have mattered. People look at me and the only thing they ever want to know is if I've killed somebody. If I say no, they get this expression of satisfaction, as if they and I are equals. If I say yes, then they're apprehensive, scared, out of place. If I tell them that it's none of their fucking business, they're get offended, or even worse, surprised at why such a question would piss me off.
No one back home has changed at all. No one but us. None of them understand any of it. Twelve years we've been ignored. Twelve years that this country knows nothing about. The humor, the stress, the love, the pain, and the triumph. A quip about Justin Bieber and everyone's in on the conversation. I dare speak the name Douglas Zembiec to a college asshole and he asks me if that's a football player. He mentions Rihanna and laughs his ass off when I tell him that I don't know who that is."

Pendleton laughed, "I looked it up online. She's a singer. A fucking singer. Americans are more interested in pop music than the wars they started. Every single time I see someone named Peralta I want to cry, but these fuckers can sooner tell me the latest reason why Justin Bieber sucks before they can point to Afghanistan on a map.
So many men. So many stories. So many dead. There are countless more that I've never heard of. Men and women still fighting now all over the world, from every country. People throughout history. They all fought the same battles and shed the same tears that I have, and I will never know who they were or what they did. They're lost to history. But at least I know that they existed. I don't have to know their names. I don't have to know why they fought, but I know that they did, and every single day I know that they continue to do so."
A sudden jerk of the silhouette and I sparks flew away from the cigarette ember as he reflexively flung it away from him. He had let the cigarette burn down to his fingertips without realizing it. Only his heavy breathing in the silence. Moments passed, and he leaned back into his chair again, his breathing having slowed.
When he spoke again, his voice was flat. No more anger. Just a coldness I associated with a final offer.
"There are countless people who know as we do, and believe as we do. Some of those people thought that America needed a war on its home soil, so shock the culture out of escapism and back into reality. They were wrong. This World War has come and gone, and it has not changed us for the better. Sure, the NFA has returned to sanity now, but it won't last. You and I both know that it can never last. As long as the hardship exists, Americans will stay true to what they represent, but by that very action, the hardships will pass, and when they do, the population will grow, and in fifty years we'll be right back to the beginning of the 21st century. Fat, stupid, lazy, and ignorant. Again the government will turn war into a game. Again the public will stop caring, and eventually the men and women of our military will have turned into tools of politics, and we'll have you, still going out into the Zone and back once a month, still bearing the burdens of a society that's too pathetic to understand why men like you exist.
So the only question I have for you is why. Why keep fighting? You'll go out and for who, for what? For THEM!?"
His voice echoed in the confines and my ears rang.

"I saw my chance, and I took it. No more games, no more politics. We are no longer tools. A government no longer owns us. We are not pieces of a game. We are those who still believe in America. We are the ones who know what America truly is, and most of all, we are the volunteers, the ones who still fight for it.

"Fuck Vostok. Fuck politics. Fuck pop culture. Every single person here knows it and believes it, and I am not offering you a place in Varyag, and I am not offering your life, and I am not offering you an ultimatum.

"I'm offering you the only chance in your entire lifetime for you to finally come home."

--------------------

---Records Unorganized---
41.2 hour period between 20 April and 22 April.
Record resumes at 1731, 22 April. Missing records will be added to this document when Crypto Bn. obtains them.


-----------------


Sometimes I imagine puncturing the pads of my fingers with the tip of a knife and then watching globules of my blood hang from them as if droplets from a leaking faucet. When I was a child it had been the thought of using my tongue to peel the enamel off of my teeth like a cellophane wrapper to reveal the core of the tooth, which at the time I had thought to have a consistency akin to marshmallows. When I was still in junior high, I once visualized my teacher's breasts being severed, the adipose tissue neatly scooped like jello from a bowl, and the remaining skin then somehow reattached.
Recently it's been the thought of a jaguar chewing open my stomach and forcing it's head inside the wound to reach under my ribcage and swallow my heart.
These thoughts are not fantasies and they do not appear in my dreams. I don't like thinking about most of them, and some are just abhorrent. They never last long, but for a few days they'll hang around like a bad song that gets stuck in your head, until I forget about it almost completely, and then remember years later that I had once thought about it constantly.
I find it important that I don't deliberately go ahead and think about this shit. People like to think. People like to daydream and fantasize about all sorts of things, surreal or not, and they do it deliberately and purposefully.

So do normal people imagine the same shit? More specifically, do sane people sometimes visualize grotesque and ridiculous things for no understandable reason at all?
Because I'm not so sure if I'm sane anymore.


Now, if I'm right about what this world really is, then these ideas are just a random coalescence of ions flashing for brief moments in brain tissue, the end result of external stimulus, like billiard balls bouncing off each other on a pool table. Objective, meaningless, and pointless. Given the assumptions that my worldview requires, then the only possible explanation for those thoughts are the must hold true for Bast as well: malfunction.
Then everything that has happened to me thus far is explained by one blatantly obvious fact: I am insane.
But every human being I've ever known has told me that I am wrong about the world. They either gave eloquent speeches or tried to beat it out with curses. Most just dealt with it through sheer willful ignorance. That's exactly what Bast tried to convince me of. That what I experience isn't just electrical impulses in my brain, that it isn't so miserably materialistic.
If that's true, then I'm not psychotic. Which leaves just one little problem: Bast must be real, and if She's real, then what she offers me becomes a viable option, because I don't want to die.
If I'm insane and remain a Marine, an American, a Human - then they will kill me for it. My own countrymen and colleagues will lock me in the Slammer and I'd stay there until we'd all be wiped off the face of the planet.
If I abandon that, turn to Varyag, then they'll still kill me for becoming the enemy. If I reject Varyag, I'll remain their enemy and either they're kill me or I'll end up an NFA casualty whenever they schwack it.
The funny thing is that all of these people are the same one's who've been telling me my whole life that I'm wrong. That there's more to this world, some external force that watches over everything with it's magic sky-daddy powers.
This is a dilemma. If I do what society tells me is the right thing, and what I believe is right, then I'll be proving that everything I've done for country and humanity itself was done for the wrong reasons, which given my way of thinking, would only stop me from doing the right thing in the first place.
If I do what society tells me is wrong, then that proves me right, and if I'm right, then I'm still wrong because I'd be doing the wrong things for the right reasons. Someone here is broken. Either I am, or they are, but one of us has to be mentally damaged. Some transcription error or trauma must have fucked with a brain somewhere.


There must be a solution. There has to be. I know this, and Bast knows this. That's why she offered it to me, in exchange for sacrificing everything I am and everything the world is. That's my candy, my Terminal trigger. The same kind of offer that's led to billions of people sacrificing everything they ever stood for and finding nothing at the end of the road but the carcass of whatever they valued.
I've seen what happens when people go for the candy. I should know better. But I've been forced between two different worlds, and both want what I can give them. I have four options. Precisely four alternatives to choose from.
All options lead to imminent death. All options lead to the violation of every moral principle I have lived and killed for.
Perfect.Paradox.
Perhaps there's only one lesson to be learned from this clusterfuck: It's a mistake to drive your enemy into a corner. Especially if you're going to kill them.


------------------------------------------------

"So what happens now?"
Peregrine held my rifle by the forend with his left hand, staring at a rack of rifles. He had walked me here after Pendleton had dismissed me, his back to me the entire time, not having bothered to even restrain me. I could have tried to break his neck at any time, could still try now, but I had no exit plan. Even with a weapon, there simply was no feasible way for me to walk out of here alive, even if the walk up the stairs hadn't left me barely standing, and he seemed to know it. My question was unheard. The disassociated character of the man was absolute. It didn't feel like he ignored me, but as if he was utterly unaware of my existence. I wondered if he was talking to his Avatar. The InExed would do that sometimes, either zone out or stare off at some empty corner with their body language observably reacting to whatever it was that went on in their diseased brains.
The armory looked precisely like any other military armory. A cinderblock room separated from the hallways by a chainlink fence stretching from deck to overhead, followed by a steel rolling door that looked more difficult to breach than a bank vault. The room itself had the layout of a department store, rows of racked rifles and pistols neatly organized wherever they would fit, all cleaned until they looked brand new. The room had no windows, and was currently illuminated by two orange cyalumes hanging from the ceiling. A line of the orange sticks ran across the wall, the one furthest to the right and each one after it diminishing in brightness until they were only visible in the darkness but didn't actually reveal anything around them. They must have had countless numbers of the things to simply keep wasting them like that.

Without ventilation the air in here was almost sickeningly thick with the smells of CLP, LSA, and cosmoline. It was strong enough for me to taste petrol on my tongue.
None of the firearms were locked into the racks, and even now I could have reached and picked up a shotgun. Without a single round of ammunition anywhere near the place, it would have served little more use than a whiffle bat.
After a good minute his head slowly cocked to the side (a trait I'd noticed was shared by the three of them) and he spoke in the same calm voice he'd used previously, "The longest street in this city runs eleven and a half kilometers."
Back to silence. I was too tired to be annoyed. Pendleton's deluded rants had drained me. At least I understood what he was talking about. We had designated that particular MSR as Newport. I'd been there a few times before we had abandoned major operations in the city, and nobody seemed to know what the actual street had previously been called.
After another minute, Peregrine continued as if he had never paused, "but the longest unobstructed line of sight is only two point four kilometers.
I didn't even know how had had figured that out.
"So why an M1A?"
I had to restrain an exasperated sigh. I wanted to move on. I was sick of games.
"Sheer fucking firepower."
My voice reflected my mood.
Peregrine's head snapped to look over his shoulder, and for the first time I could say that I saw genuine surprise in his face.

"What?"
The word left his lips completely involuntarily. It was an uncontrolled reaction, and it took me almost a second to realize that he had all but jumped, as if he'd completely forgotten that I was even here.
This was so jarring that it startled me, and I started to edge away from him, staring at him with an expression of mixed confusion and a look that can only be described as "what the fuck?"

His face matched mine, only the deeper lines of confusion showed fear. He glanced away from me slightly, now looking into nothing with his eyebrows raised, completely lost. This guy...
I stood awkwardly while he got a grip on himself, and suddenly realized that my hand was resting on the receiver of a rifle behind me. Like I've told you before, crazy people frighten me, and no matter what this man did, I constantly expected him to lunge at me in a fit of some sort or another.
Another snap of his head and he was looking back at the rifle rack, his body posture resuming the same relaxed stance he usually held. A moment later he scoffed and unceremoniously tossed my rifle onto an empty shelf below the rifle racks and picked out an M16A4 with his left hand, not bothering to look it over or safety-check the chamber. He executed an almost perfect right face and walked out of the room as if marching. I didn't move from my position, watching him go and noting how he rubbed an eyelid with his thumb, an action of such normality that it seemed out of place for such a man.
Free of restraints and absolutely sick of the constant bullshit I'd been force fed, I felt like pushing the limits. Desperation...is something that easily makes weak men appear tough. Unlike most weak men, I knew that it wouldn't last long as a crutch.

Peregrine never even glanced over his shoulder to see if I was following him, and yet somehow he realized it about five meters down the hall. He simply stopped walking, threw his head up and brought his shoulders down with an irritated sigh. Almost immediately he turned around and very aggressively walked back to me. His clearly visible face turned into a black silohette when he entered the darkness of the threshold and then reappeared in ghoulish shades of fluorescent orange under the cyalumes. He stopped directly in front of me, close enough to violate personal space, and I met his stare with my own, forcing my body to accept the rebellion against every aching muscle in it.
His head leaned to one shoulder, back over to the other, "Now, I need to kill somebody. You're coming with me, and while we do this, you will either take me to where you stored Cheget or otherwise tell me what the Blue authentication lines are from Boris to Leonid."

Another step and he lightly butted his forehead against mine, and I had to press my fists into my sides to stop myself from crushing his throat.
I could only see a tiny pinpoint of light reflecting off his eyes, but the rest was blackness, and his voice returned with a tinge of fury whereas just now there had been annoyance,

"This is going to happen. I am here because I wanted to know if Vostok had something different to offer, and it didn't. Losing that leaves me wanting to know two more things. After that, I'll swallow a load of buckshot and stop Vostok from ever spreading, just so that I don't have to wait an extra century to get back to where we were.

First, I want to know what the infamous Salt Incident actually is, because forty years from now all anyone will know about what really took place here is that they found a lot of corpses.
Second, I want to know if you're everything that I thought you would be, and you are. You're not special, and you're not different. You're just one random piece of the puzzle that happened to be in all the right places at the right times, and now that you're here, everything is going to happen exactly the way it did before. I can change it, but I won't. You can't change it, so you won't. I don't need to do anything now but walk on and the rest will follow without even knowing it, just like you will. I don't have to restrain you, I don't have to force you. You're already going to do what I want, and you can't stop yourself no matter how much you want to."

He whipped away and started to walk again, leaving me once again, furious. He didn't even stop talking as he left, "You're a hero, and they don't even know why you did it. But you didn't change the world. Nobody does, and nobody will. The world does not change."

Peregrine took one step out the armory door and looked back, only a black outline with a rifle visible against the gray of the hallway, his disembodied voice echoing into the room through the cosmoline smell and what he said next felt like it literally chilled me, because I had heard it almost exactly before.

"There is no such thing as choice. We're just balls on a pool table, acting and reacting. This is a machine, and it could ever only roll one way once it started. Everything you've ever heard, everything you've felt, all of it was just a series of chain reactions that brought you here. I knew that you would be here, so I came along to see if you were a way off the table. We both stay on the table, but I know what happens next.

You're going to die out here, Lance Corporal. You don't get to come home. You don't find closure. In a hundred years, I doubt anyone will know that you ever existed. I'll forget you whenever I next visit a bar," one, short, barking laugh and his outline didn't even twitch with it, "I don't even know your name."

Another pivot and he reappeared in the light, a jolly bounce to his step as he quite cheerfully sang,

"Over the hills and through the woods to Granny's house we go, we go.
Past the lakes and beyond the fields to Granny's house we go!"

He disappeared around a corner and I was left alone in the darkness. A room full of rifles and open windows in front of me and not a single person to watch over me. The same thing. The same little speech that Bast had told me. I had believed her when she did, or at least I believed that she believed it. Now he'd told me it. Two things which claimed to know the answers. My psychosis and his.
I realized that I was trembling. I felt sick. These kinds of things aren't supposed to happen. People don't just fall into those special places that let them do great things. This kind of place isn't supposed to exist. This all only happens in movies.
Fuck you.
I grabbed my rifle and looked down the optic to ensure that it was off before slinging it over my back. My movements were quick, certain now. Convicted. I proceeded down the row of rifles, ripping magazines out of M14s as I found them and stuffing them into my left cargo pocket. I pocketed an M9, and I left the armory holding an M4A1 with a spare STANAG in the other cargo pocket. The hallway was empty. The window was open. It took me two seconds to swing a leg over the windowsill and crouch back out of it. Instantly the rain hammered against me and my skin temperature started to plummet. I looked left, then right. There were no sentries here. The sky was dark and the rain thick. I could not see more than fifty meters in any direction. I could hear nothing but rain. In front of me lay vegetation laced roads and broken buildings.
Fuck you all.

The first steps were limping ones, the pain in my lower back and leg overwhelming the action. I forced myself into it, letting the hurt fuel the motion, and in moments it shifted to a deeper hurt that no longer impeded the mechanics of motion. I was done. I was alone and I had lost my mind and I was fucking done. The headache that had surged through my head dissipated and then I ran.