by P. S. Power
Without speaking Lancaster handed him another, much thinner, file that looked new and had no smudges at all. Inside there were documents with suggested training, far more intensive armed and unarmed combat, since he had the basics down, advanced survival training, possible ways to send him with weapons and projections which showed that if he had any kind of weapon, his potential life span would go up exponentially. The initial moments of each event - the file called them events not fights - seemed the most crucial in that regard. The initial surprise of his arrival being the biggest part of his power. After mapping out the current fights, it suggested that most of them could have been ended within about twenty seconds if he were armed even with something as simple as a billy club and nearly as fast if all he had was a rock the size of his fist.
After he read it twice he handed that file back too. Agent Lancaster didn't say anything for almost an hour, he just kept working. Brian waited. He'd been shown all this stuff for a reason, he guessed, not just to pass the time. What Lancaster said when he spoke, his tone of voice soft and friendly, shocked the hell out of Brian, coming from a place so different than expected that it seemed bizarre.
"We can get you the training Brian, but... if you want, we can skip it too. Everyone, well, those that have fought at least, knows that you may not want to go on with all this. You've done your part and more already and, if you want... I can make sure you don't have to do it anymore. It's not what I want or what the higher-ups think should be done, but if you're done, you don't have to keep going..."
Brian snorted and shook his head, laughing darkly. The man was offering to kill him during this training thing. Or at least let him die. Where was he two weeks before when that offer would have actually meant something, Brian wondered?
"I have to save them, all those people that die if I fail. I know I can't save them all, but I still have to. You understand, right? If it means living when everything else tells me I should die, then I will. You know that... It's in the file on me there. Page thirty-six." He pointed at the first file, several hundred pages thick, that he'd read first.
"I can't help it, if people are in danger, I'll fight. Fuck it, if they need me, I want to fight. I'll do whatever I have to in order to make this work. Even if it means dying. I tried to off myself about sixty times, but, well, that was f-ed up, sure, but it wasn't me. It was something done to me. Don't mistake that for being what I want."
Lancaster smiled, his eyes sad and tired looking. Brian hadn't given it much thought before, but he must be about forty-five or so. The guy had to have seen way more than Brian ever had, just to be in the position he was. That had to weigh on a soul over time. Dark suit still looking pristine, even after the long flight, the other man nodded and pulled out a small laptop computer. For the next ten minutes they didn't talk.
The agent filled him in on the exercise, a vacation for Brian really, that Lancaster worked out, pulling some strings, spending some old favors and as he'd mentioned before, doing more than a little begging. Brian would get a three day survival training course with what was possibly the best survival expert in the world, which would be followed by four days of living alone in the woods, with nothing but his clothes to help him through. Only pussies took knives with them, the agent told him jovially.
The "vacation" part was that he wouldn't have to put up with anybody staring at him, judging with their eyes, Brian figured.
Cool.
On the ground, at a small private airport, they were met by an older man, gray beard, red and black flannel shirt, long hair tied back in a pony tail and faded blue jeans. He was a thin man for his age and looked, if not hard, at least like he wasn't going to keel over instantly. Then, fifty wasn't all that old anymore and Brian met a lot of old guys that could hand him his behind on a plate and make him eat it in the last months. The man held out his hand and introduced himself as Conroy.
Shaking hands let him feel the calluses and strength the man had. "Brian. Pleased to meet you."
Lancaster told them he'd be back in a week, if Brian lived through the little adventure. The voice sounded humorous at least, as if the expectation was for survival, which was heartening.
The first day was interesting, Conroy showed him six ways to start fires and how to bank one and transport it using ash as an insulator and an array of branches and leaves as a platform. Then he had Brian make a fire using each technique he'd demonstrated, putting each one out as they went. After that they built structures using only branches, pine and fir since the forest had those kinds of trees, and built sleeping platforms. A lot of other information came in a steady stream the whole time, so Brian just filed it away. There would be a test, after all.
Brian half expected the man to kick his over before bed and make Brian sleep on the ground, but instead Conroy just showed him how to insulate his clothing with found materials, explaining that air, if he could cause it to be trapped in small spaces, made one of the best insulators.
"And in cool climates almost anything is better than catching a chill if you can help it. Especially if you can't have a fire for some reason. Say lack of fuel, unsafe conditions or being pursued." The man gave a lot of weight to the last statement, pretty much telling Brian to pay attention to the information now, or else.
Oddly enough Brian got it.
He scooped up pine needles and packed his clothing with them, until he looked about eighty pounds heavier. They poked at him and made him smell like a tree, but when night came and the temperature dropped a bit, it really seemed to help. Like having a heavy jacket instead of just the thin fatigue material.
In the morning they went to a stream and worked on ways to collect water using birch tree bark to make cups and pots, how to wash up, and how to build a small pit boiler, using fire heated rocks and broad leaves to line a small hole Brian cleared with his hands and a stick. They didn't eat much, but Brian had grown used to hunger over the last months.
It didn't feel good, but he didn't feel a need to bitch about it either. It was what it was. In the afternoon his companion started showing him the berries and roots they'd been passing all day long and picked a smooth inch worm from a leaf and held it out to Brian.
"Go ahead," he said with a smile that reached his eyes, his beard shifting. "Watch out for the fuzzy bugs, the smooth ones are almost all edible, but bright colors can mean poison, so watch that too."
Brian looked at the little creature, crawling slowly over his hand, looking cute in an alien kind of way. It had a low green color and rounded looking segments running its length. He shrugged. Could he afford to be picky? After all, he'd gotten at least a little of the Jackal in his mouth when they'd fought and couldn't help but swallow some in the effort of beating him with the fire extinguisher. A bug seemed... innocent, compared to that. Slapping it into his mouth, he chewed it quickly and got it down as well as he could. This was what he'd come for after all, learning to do new things he couldn't before.
Conroy looked impressed. "Not bad. Normally we have to have some big production and let people starve for half a week before they do that. Back when I trained special forces units half the guys couldn't do it unless we disguised the bugs in something else first. Well, good, we can see what we can collect and catch for dinner then, instead of wasting time on this crap. Cutthroat said you wouldn't puss out." The man's eyes glinted.
"Cutthroat?" Brian asked, picking up another caterpillar thing and eating it since he knew they were safe.
"Lancaster. Said you'd had some rough times, last bit. Didn't fill me in..." They walked and talked at the same time, Brian quickly going over everything including the whole time he'd spent on floor eight. The man didn't say anything until the whole story had finished, then he just nodded. Brian saw the back of his head making the right motions as he followed behind the man on a trail that could barely be seen.
"Yeah, that sounds about right for Cutthroat and his buddies. Let you go through hell and then reward you with "special training" that most people would consider wo
rse than prison. Could be worse, I suppose. You're IPB so they could have Cast Iron or Felix working you instead. Not people you'd want riding your case all the time. I ought to know, I trained them all, those two make Daryl look like a sweetheart. Good at their jobs, of course, but I selected them out for being half crazy to start with."
Not having heard of them he asked Conroy who they were, figuring they may be going by their real names or be working with one of the other teams. Team two probably, that being the most intense group when it came to training. He didn't know a lot of agents, he told the man, who chuckled as they wended their way back toward where Conroy had seen some vines growing and pointed them out the day before.
"Felix, that's Jason Montrose. Ex-Navy Seal and all around hard-ass. Even his old unit thought him a little intense and those guys aren't wimps in general. Cast Iron, she's one of you, an operative. Started out as something else, which I can't fill you in on, but let's just say she's hard. That's her old code, I haven't seen her in years though. Marcia Turner? You've probably met. Kind of pretty, can't be hurt, enjoys kicking the shit out people for fun?"
Laughing, Brian shook his head, but realized the man in front of him couldn't see his head moving, Conroy half turned and asked him what the joke was.
"Eh, well... Marcia, she's on the same team I am. She's been teaching me how to fight the whole time. Jason is our team trainer, he's done the firearms and explosives training. So, you know, it sounds like I got the trifecta there. They all seem nice enough really. When they're not beating me or trying to get me killed. I guess that when I go back training will be getting a bit more intense. I don't really know how. Probably painfully though."
Conroy told him that he'd probably come OK, if he could survive what those three put him through. The man didn't sound amused by the situation, just a little perplexed. They shifted topics and collected vines, which were turned into crude nets for collecting fish. Then using sticks they picked up - fairly stout green ones that wouldn't weaken easily - broken roughly, because they didn't have anything to cut with, they dug up some roots as they walked, the plants being identified by leaf shape. Brian tried to memorize that as they worked. Extra food just sitting in the ground could be useful sometime.
By nightfall they had six fish back at camp, small ones, probably a half pound of meat on each, and Conroy had Brian start the fire, which took three tries, but got done, even as darkness wrapped around them. He used a stick to spin on a larger dry log, running it between his hands because they didn't have anything to use as a loose bow string. Well, his shoe laces, but Brian didn't really want to lose one of those if he could help it. It was, Conroy assured him, about the worst way to try and start a fire, but if you could do it once, you'd never get stuck without flame again, not if you had things that would burn.
"It's a psychological thing, like eating the bugs earlier. Once you do it, you'll be able to at need again. Just being willing to do what you need to survive makes a huge difference. The rest is part knowledge, part practice. Like learning to swim, where just knowing that a human can do it makes a vast difference once you accept it."
The fish tasted good, and the roots, while not exactly gourmet, were better than starving at least. They tasted a little like vomit to Brian, but Conroy swore they weren't poisonous, so he munched without comment. After they ate, they banked the fire for the night carefully, burying a decent sized piece of half green wood deep in a heap of ashes and dirt, to limit how fast it would smolder.
The older man woke him at dawn by moving around outside the little shelter Brian had made for himself. The pine needles in his clothes pricked and poked him, but didn't bother him a lot after the first night at all. He felt it, he just didn't care about it anymore.
That day the man showed him some other things, how to hide his tracks if chased, advice as to how to hide a fire if he thought he might be watched and how to tough things out if they got bleak.
"Not that you need to hear it from me, but it's part of the course, you don't want me to lose my place or anything, right? I'm all old and you know how us aged folk get." A huge grin hid behind the gray beard as he spoke.
The next day Brian would be expected to survive on his own, he knew, and expected Conroy to be gone when he woke up in the morning. This wasn't hand-holding class, and letting people suddenly feel abandoned would probably make things more realistic.
He wasn't disappointed, waking up to find the entire camp gone, except the shelter he slept in. Even the fire pit had been carefully buried and covered while he slept. It was still visible, but had been hidden pretty well. If he were just walking along he could easily miss it.
Brian shrugged, and carefully took the pine needles out of his clothing again, then took the small shelter down carefully, spreading the branches around the little clearing they were in.
If he wanted to test what he'd learned, that meant starting from scratch, not with a convenient little lean-to already set up. The first thing he did, after going to the bathroom, was find water and rebuild his shelter from scratch. Then he searched for some more vines to use as a net, but couldn't find any, so he built a mesh out of green branches, cutting them by using a sharp rock, pounding on them with it on a larger stone by the stream until he could finally get them to snap off at about the right lengths. Conroy hadn't mentioned doing it that way, but it made sense and he had told Brian that he should improvise if he could. The basic principle was the same, wasn't it?
Then he waited for the fish to come, sitting next to the cold water of the stream, a fairly sizable one that had a lot of rocks and boulders in it. The water wasn't high, it being August. Conroy had described how that would affect things. There were fish and they could be seen from the surface. He got eight using his stick net carefully and then carried the whole thing back with him. He could use it the next day, if he didn't build something better. The edges could be a little sturdier, since three of the sticks kept trying to pop out while he lifted the fish from the water.
Cleaning the fish required him to break them open with his teeth, which was a little gross, but doable. He'd ripped things throats out before that way, hadn't he? Then he collected wood and took nearly two hours to start a small fire. Sitting calmly he used some more green sticks to make cooking stands for the fish, so he could bake them before things got dark, that way he could make sure the meat got done all the way. He hadn't found any roots to eat, but had managed to collect a cargo pocket full of berries, which would give him dessert later. They were blackberries, distinctive even to Brian, and something the old man had pointed out to him several times, so he knew they wouldn't poison him. A few got crushed and left his hand and no doubt his pocket, a sticky mess when he removed them and set them on a couple large flat leaves near the fire pit he'd built.
When it got dark, but was still too early to go to bed, Dharma came and sat with him, looking at him a little sideways across the fire.
"Fish. I never liked fish that much. But then I didn't really like anything, you know? First mode angst, back then at least. Your first mode may suck balls at times, but angst bit all the time. I much prefer living in your head." She reached into the fire and then poked one of the fish. It looked like it moved to Brian, the flesh distorting a little under the pale finger, but he figured hallucinations didn't actually make things move, not his at least. Some of the others at the base, the ones with telekinesis, probably would have had movement from theirs, he just lacked that ability.
He smiled and winked at her. "Hey, Dharma. So... living in my head... Um, sorry about that?"
The girl threw a small stick at him over the fire, but it never hit, not being real.
"No shit. I mean, I didn't realize how annoying all that "No one likes me, everything dies'" crap was until I heard you going on about it. Part of not being life's little emo-bitch-girl means not giving up. I didn't get that before, probably couldn't, you understand, right? Just like you couldn't let some innocent person be killed in front of you. I just wasn't wired for it.
Really, it was a surprise that I lasted as long as I did. Angst and depression as first modes don't make it long. Depression's the worst, they usually pop Infected and off themselves within hours. Like you three weeks ago, but without the round the clock medical care. Or the getting better."
She threw another stick into the fire and they both watched it burn.
Brian looked at her, a pretty girl, striking with her red-tipped hair and black make-up, a little thicker through the body than some of the girls back at the base, but not unfit. Hard looking under the clothes actually. Then, she'd been built for power if her weight lifting report had been honest. Her chest looked smallish, but that didn't really matter to him and made sense given the kind of ability she'd obviously had. Her image was in layers of clothing, dark velvet and stockings with vertical red and black stripes going into black combat boots. She had a dark green mini skirt on and he could just see where the stockings ended as she sat. creamy flesh above.
Not that what she looked like mattered. Either a ghost or a hallucination, he reminded himself. If she was a ghost, it would be rude to judge her looks and if a hallucination, just a bit insane. After all, that would probably mean that the girl in front of him was what he wanted on some level, right? Cute enough, he had to admit. She looked at him and laughed, then flashed her underwear, something black that he couldn't make out in the firelight.
"Perv! No, seriously, I don't think I'm really either of those. I think... I'm an echo really, that's kind of moved into your head from my sister's. Maybe that's what a ghost is? But I hear what you're thinking, and get more of it than you do consciously, so, yay for me. So, what am I? Jiminy Cricket? Here to help you learn to be a real boy?"
Scooting a little closer to the fire for warmth, Brian wondered what level of insane seeing Goth girls counted as. Was it better than hearing voices? Of course he also heard her, so that benchmark had been passed too. He ate some fish while they sat, Dharma going silent for a while too.