Allan laughed nervously and laid down on the examination table. “You're making me a little apprehensive there, Director.”
“You probably should be. Like I said, fifty/fifty shot of survival.”
Allan looked around at all the gear and technology. “So, what's happening? Level with me. Tell me what to expect.”
“That's the problem, I can't. But I can describe to you the actual procedure. Basically, what we're doing is giving you the ability to go into your own mind.”
“I...what?” Allan replied, not sure he was understanding the Director.
Hawkins chuckled uneasily. “That's about as simple as it gets, I'm afraid. These machines will allow your consciousness to go into your memories, the landscape of your psyche. Something is triggering your insanity. Some singular event that you're likely repressing. You are going to search your memories for this event and...deal with it.”
“How will I deal with it?” Allan asked.
Hawkins shrugged. “I don't know. It's different for everyone. Given your past...I imagine you'll shoot it, whatever it is. I don't know what it is, what it will look like, how it will affect you...it's your head, Allan. You'll have to do what makes sense to you. I imagine it will be very confusing in there. The scientists that concocted this strange thing said things tend to be...figurative. Things represent other things...hell, listen to me rambling on. I don't really know much about this procedure. It should take somewhere between twelve and twenty four hours, real time. As for how much time will pass in your head...no idea. Unfortunately, after that, you're going to need some recovery time. At least a week, minimum.”
“Recovery time?”
“Yes. Everyone who has survived the treatment has reported needing days or weeks of recovery time. They found the experience very emotionally and physically taxing. So I'm slating you for a week minimum. I want you at your best,” Hawkins replied.
Allan sighed. “So much for a quick turnaround time.”
“Hey, it's better than years of therapy. Which, I'm going to admit, I'm still going to recommend you do after this.”
Allan hesitated. “What do you mean, I thought you said-”
“What I said was, this will cure you of any more psychotic breaks. No more hallucinations, no more needing to wear armor all the time. But the damage has been done. You're going to need to make slow, consistent repairs over the course of months or years with the help of therapy and medication if you want to experience a better quality of life.”
“I'll...take it under consideration,” Allan replied after a moment.
He thought Hawkins would leave it alone after that, give the word to begin the procedure, but he didn't. He continued to stare at Allan. “Why are you so averse to this?”
“Isn't it obvious?” Allan replied.
“I want to hear you say it.”
Allan sighed. “I guess, because...I don't know. There's kind of a stigma against it. Not as much as there used to be, but, it's like, you kind of get pegged as that crazy guy who couldn't handle the pressure, who needs help, who couldn't just tough it out and get drunk like a normal person.”
Hawkins laughed. “I think I delivered almost the exact same speech seventy years ago,” he said. “Right before I started going to counseling.”
“You? Really?”
“Yep. Let me tell you something. Picking up a rifle, slapping on some combat armor and going to shoot bad guys tends to fuck a person up. Only the really screwy individuals are perfectly okay with doing what we do. Everyone has different ways to dealing with that. I spent twenty years looking for help at the bottom of a bottle. A friend of mine finally talked me into trying therapy. I went, mainly because I owed him a few, he'd saved my life more times than I cared to count. I ended up staying in it for ten years, helped me work out a lot of problems. I won't make you go, Allan, but I'll heavily recommend it.”
Allan stared at Hawkins a moment longer, expecting him to say more, but the Director seemed to have said his piece. He gave a quick nod to the pair of med-techs, who had remained so silent and immobile during the conversation that Allan had forgotten they were there. One of them moved over to a large node of technology, a sophisticated workstation attached to the wall behind him, while the other approached Allan and gently placed a hand on one shoulder, indicating that he should lie back. He did, lying flat on his back, his arms at his side.
“Will it hurt?” he asked as the second tech moved to the joined the first.
“Physically? No,” Hawkins replied.
“I don't like that answer,” Allan murmured.
Hawkins laughed. “I don't either.” He hesitated. “If you don't make it...” He looked at Allan imploringly.
“If I don't make it...tell my parents I was killed the in the line of duty and give them another five hundred thousand credits.”
“And Callie?” Hawkins asked.
Allan laughed. “Why does everyone think there's something going on between us?”
“Because there is. Even if you won't admit it.”
Allan sighed. The med-techs were attaching leads to him now, sticking them to his temples. One of them injected him with something, while the other set up a banana bag of some strange bluish liquid, which was fed through a drip into his bicep.
“Tell her the truth,” he said finally.
“I'll do that. Good luck, Allan.”
The world began to swirl and get dark. Allan laid his head against the pillow that had been provided for him. “Thanks, Director.”
The world went black.
* * * * *
Allan groaned and shifted, trying to get his bearings. He was immensely tired, lethargy turning his mind to a sluggish, incoherent fog. He heard voices, lots of voices, and a great deal of activity going on. His head hurt, it felt like someone had fired bolts into both his temples. Slowly, he opened his eyes, and was immensely surprised to see a very familiar face leaning over him, staring at him intently, frowning.
“Welcome back to the land of the living, Sergeant Gray,” Carpenter said.
“Captain Carpenter?” Allan asked, the words more coming out as a moan than anything else. Carpenter offered his hand.
“The one and only. Come on, get up. We've got work to do and time is short.”
Allan took the older man's hand and was pulled roughly to his feet. The world tipped and swayed, slowly sliding into focus. He was in what looked to be a receiving area for a high-level prison complex. The room was large, ringed by automatic defenses and security stations. At the back of the room was a huge, metal door. Very much akin to a bank vault. A huge hole had been forcefully ripped through the door from the inside.
All manner of death and destruction seemed to have taken place within the receiving area. There were dead bodies, pools of blood, spent shell casings everywhere, dents in the floors and walls, debris strewn about. A couple of dozen men in Security-Investigations uniforms were sweeping up the bullets, mopping up the blood and hauling away the bodies. Allan slowly took this all in, at first immensely confused about where he was.
“What happened?” he asked finally.
“It escaped,” Carpenter replied bluntly. He turned and began walking away, towards another large door that been forcefully broken open. He raised one hand and motioned for Allan to follow. He did, moving slowly at first.
Everyone he passed stopped what they were doing and saluted him crisply, their expressions deadly serious. Usually a sharp 'Sir!' accompanied the salute. There was something disturbing about all the varied men and women that comprised the clean-up crews. They all seemed to vaguely resemble each other. They looked like generic raw recruits of SI: clean-cut, young, bland faces, hard bodies, tempered by training but not yet used by the job.
Something was really wrong here.
Where was he, again? What was he supposed to be doing?
He hurried after Carpenter, coming into a break room. Carpenter stood before a small kitchenette area. Allan stopped and blinked, surprised at the t
ransition. Having a casual break room just beyond a receiving area for a high-level prison was extremely incongruous. Carpenter seemed not to have noticed. He turned as Allan approached, his left hand cupped, holding three white tablets, painkillers, Allan saw, the second one holding a Styrofoam cup of coffee.
“Drink,” he said.
Allan's head was pounding, and he felt like shit anyway, so he accepted both gratefully. Popping the pills into his mouth, he swallowed them with the bitter, black coffee. Almost immediately, the fog in his head began to clear and the pain in his head started to recede. He drained the coffee and handed it back to Carpenter, who threw it away.
“Feeling better?” he asked.
“Yes...you're dead,” Allan replied after a moment.
“As far as you know, yes, I'm dead. I very likely died back on Lindholm.”
“Which means...this is a hallucination.”
Again, Carpenter nodded. “Yes, or as close to. You remember now?”
Allan massaged his temples for a moment, then slowly nodded. “Yes. Hawkins. The procedure. I'm inside my own head right now.”
“Yes.”
“This is...nuts,” he muttered. He glanced back through the torn open door into the room he'd awoken in. “What happened? You said it escaped. What's 'it'?”
“For lack of a better term, your insanity, the seed of your madness. It was locked up, but after the incident on the Stygian, it escaped and began wreaking all kinds of havoc. It's done a lot of damage, and if we don't kill it soon, it may very well kill all of us.”
“What is it? What does it look like?” Allan asked.
Carpenter shrugged. “I don't know. I can't know. That's the point.”
Allan shook his head. “What? I don't get it.”
“Look, you don't know what's the root of all this, which means that no one in your head can know either, see?”
Allan sighed. “Yeah, I guess so.” He looked around the break room. There was only one other door. “Well, this sucks,” he muttered.
“You have no idea. Come on, I've already assembled the team. They're in isolation, going over all the relevant data, preparing for the mission. They're just waiting for you.”
Allan hesitated. “The team? What team?”
“The team of people most capable of dealing with this problem.”
“How are we going to deal with this problem?”
Carpenter stared at him. “How do you deal with all your problems in life, Sergeant Gray? You hunt them down and shoot them. So, come on.”
* * * * *
His team was not quite what he expected.
Banks, the miserable comms tech from his Lindholm mission, was there, still looking miserable and very put-upon.
Poet was there, too. Allan was surprised to see the Spec Ops soldier again.
Duncan accompanied them, a goofy grin still plastered on his face.
Greg, of all people, was there. Allan was curious about him. He could understand the others, but why Greg?
Then, the final member of the squad...
“Wilson,” he said softly. “Wilson, I...”
“I know what you're going to say, Allan, and I forgive you,” Wilson replied.
Robert Wilson had been the medic on his original team who had been brutally murdered just before the events that had befallen him on Lindholm. Wilson had been one of his closest friends, someone who he had connected to more than all the others he'd come in contact with over the past decade or so of his life.
“But that's not true,” Allan said. “I should have-”
Wilson raised his hand. “We both know that's bullshit, Allan. There was nothing you could have done. We did that by the book, we just caught some bad luck and you caught a whole heap of survivor's guilt. Come on, Allan, do you think I'd want you to be like this? Do you think you deserve to suffer because of the sacrifices you had to make?”
“Of course I do!” Allan cried. “I let my whole team die, I killed millions of people!”
Wilson shook his head. “To save countless billions,” he replied softly. “You made the hardest choice that possibly anyone has ever had to make. And you made the right choice, even knowing how miserable it would make you. You made the right choice, Allan. It's important you know that. What you're doing now, atonement, redemption...it's not a bad idea. But...there's nothing saying that you can't be happy while you do it.”
Allan opened his mouth, to respond, to argue, but Carpenter cleared his throat.
“Gentlemen, please, we're very short on time. Bring Gray up to speed so he can lead this charge,” he said.
“I'm in no shape to lead this mission,” Allan said.
“I'm afraid that doesn't matter,” Carpenter replied.
“What? Why?”
“You're the only one who can lead this mission. It's your head. You're basically talking to yourself here. You're the only real thing here, so you have to lead this mission. I'll leave you to it, I've got to see about damage control here.”
With that, he turned and left.
Allan sighed and looked at the others. They were all standing around a holographic display table, staring at him intently. He looked at them each in turn. They must all be here for a reason. All but one of them was dead.
Were dead people really the best to deal with this?
“Let's clear the air,” he said. “Banks, Poet, Duncan, I'm sorry you're dead. I did everything I could to keep you alive.”
“You know you're just talking to yourself, right?” Greg asked. “None of us are really here.”
“Thanks, Greg. Why are you even here?”
“Isn't it obvious? I'm your best friend.”
“What?! You're my best friend?” Allan replied, honestly baffled.
“Yes. You respect me and you think I might be the best at connecting with you because of my lost memories. The others, Trent, Drake and Enzo, are all so self-assured and confident in themselves. But not me, or you, and that's what connects us.”
“That...actually kind of makes sense,” Allan murmured.
“So, the next chance you get, hang out with me. Oh, and get over yourself and actually ask Callie out on a date.”
“Now, what a minute-” Allan snapped.
“Okay, look, we forgive you for killing us, can we get to work?” Poet asked.
“I don't forgive you,” Banks muttered unhappily.
“Whatever. Gray, look, here. Your insanity escaped and started making its way through your memories. This,” he said, pointing to a complex holographic display, “is a topography of your memory. The insanity is moving backwards through time. Currently, it's making its way through the Stygian. It has a head-start on us, so we're going to bypass the Stygian entirely and try to cut it off at Lindholm,” Poet explained.
“If we can do that, why doesn't it just head for Lindholm?” Allan asked.
“Although technically your insanity has been around here longer than any of us, we know a few shortcuts because...well, we're not insane,” Duncan replied.
“Wait, longer than any of you?” Allan asked. “What do you mean?”
“Unfortunately, we have almost no relevant data on the true nature of your insanity. We were just trying to keep the damned thing locked up,” Poet explained. “But, as far as intel reports, its quite old, years, way before Lindholm. We believe it originated on Frontier.”
“What...that doesn't make any sense,” Allan murmured.
“It probably does. Like I said, we have basically no intel on it. Which is just your brain's way of telling you that you forgot or, more than likely, repressed the memory.”
“Wait, I repressed something?”
“More than likely. Now, come on, we've got to get to the armory and gear up. We need to head this bastard off, kill it once and for all. It's the only way any of us are going to ever have anything resembling a happy life,” Poet said.
* * * * *
The armory was just as dusty and ruinous as the rest of the building. There were l
arge cracks running down the metal walls and a few of the lights were out. Despite that, there was a veritable plethora of weaponry. Allan's 'team' spread out across the room, taking their pick, loading up with all manner of lethal gear.
Allan decided he should do the same. He grabbed a pair of pistols, putting on one each hip holster, then grabbed an SMG, let it hang across his back and finally grabbed a long-barrel, powerful assault rifle. He noticed everything took armor-piercing bullets. Allan finished loading himself down with ammunition for all of these, as well as a few fragmentation grenades, and looked at the others. They had all pretty much finished up.
“Ready to go?” he asked.
They all gave affirmative responses.
They left the armory.
Chapter 11
–Lindholm Revisited–
Their transport was what appeared to be a retrofitted jump ship.
“What the fuck is this?” Allan asked, stopping in the doorway that led to the hangar.
“Our ride,” Poet replied. “Now, hurry up. We don't have any time to spare.”
Allan sighed and kept moving. The jump ship was painted a flat black, seeming to adsorb the sparse light in the hangar. While the front of it had the normal, slightly boxy look of a jump ship, onto the back someone had affixed a huge engine. It almost looked like a cancerous growth.
“That's an FTL drive?” Allan asked as he and the others walked beneath it, towards the cargo ramp at the back that would admit them.
“Yeah. Come on,” Poet replied impatiently.
Allan sighed and walked up the ramp. He'd never seen something like that before. Though, now that he thought about it, it was a thing he'd thought about before, when he was younger, just grasping the concept of FTL flight.
But it would never work because-
“Don't,” Greg said suddenly.
“What?” Allan asked. They were settling down into their seats in the back of the jump ship. Poet had gone forward to the cockpit.
“Stop thinking about the engine, you'll screw it all up,” Greg said, sitting across from him, fixing him with an intense gaze.
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