by C. M. Adams
Kale stood there and watched him walk away until the doors hissed closed. And when she still stood there watching nothing, Birdie stepped up beside her. “Kale?” Some strange twinge of jealousy tingled in Birdie's stomach, just at the fact that Kale and the doctor were on a first name basis. She quickly shoved that aside, though. Something was bothering the agent.
Kale shook her head slightly, and looked to her. “We need to get over to O.S,” she turned and started back up the walkway.
“What's O.S.?” Birdie asked as she and Brian followed her.
“Ordnance Storage,” she supplied. “It's where we keep any recovered weapons, and replacements if we should ever need them. It's not a large facility, but it's all we normally need.”
“Pardon me for bringing this up,” Brian said, “But if my math is correct, there are like four agents not out of commission right now. Aren't you kinda freaking out at all? Because I feel like someone should be freaking out right now...”
“Mr. Farran, I am aware of the current situation,” Kale replied without breaking stride or looking at him. “I can tell you that I am trying to process our options, and that I am finding it difficult to calculate how it would be possible with the meager amount of agents at my disposal. But 'freaking out', as you so eloquently put it, would be the opposite of help for our current situation.”
They took an access door off the side of sickbay, and stepped through into an even smaller walkway. Lights flickered on as they walked, and Birdie tried her best to not even allow herself to think about the confining space they were in. If she let herself think about it, she'd start to panic.
“So uh... Mind if I ask what you did before you came here?” she asked Kale as a distraction.
“Like a job?” Kale asked, glancing at her momentarily, before looking forward on their path. “Well, as soon as I graduated, I joined the Navy,” she told them. “I was a Navy brat. Both my parents served. Well, Dad was a Marine. I felt like I had to. Like a family right of passage thing. I served four years. Thought I'd end up at NCIS, but the Secret Service snagged me. Something about my service record and testing scores making me a perfect candidate.”
“Secret Service over Naval Criminal Investigation?” Birdie asked. “I'd have picked the one where I didn't have to wear a suit,” she smirked.
“Secret Service sounded more dangerous,” Birdie replied. “Also, less incompetent.” She immediately shook her head at the choice of wording. “Not...not that NCIS is incompetent. I meant that Secret Service was more 'all business', and I needed that. I couldn't tolerate people who weren't there to work.”
“I understand,” Birdie nodded, though Kale wasn't looking at her. “I spent a lot of days wondering how some guys made it into the DEA.”
“Oh yeah,” Kale glanced at her again, before stopping at another hatch door. “I almost forgot you were with them before you were a beat cop.” She pulled open the hatch and looked at them both again before heading inside. “Most of our agents were beat cops in their former lives. Not that they usually need any more experience to work on the island.” She let the others in and closed the hatch behind them. “But it's difficult sometimes, being one of the few who takes things seriously.”
“Sounds like my last job,” Birdie smirked.
“Sounds like why I work alone,” Brian chimed in.
Kale made a small sound that might've been a laugh. “Alright, this is it,” she said as they walked through a set of double doors. Birdie and Brian took a look around. It wasn't exactly small, as it'd been described to them. But it definitely wasn't very complex, either. It looked like a super-sized storage unit; rows and rows of metal shelving, filled with storage containers. In front of it all was a small table that was covered in papers and looking very much like a work area. The chair, however, was empty. Kale seemed to have been expecting someone there. “Of course,” she mumbled to herself.
“This looks like something out of a science fiction show I used to watch,” Brian commented as he looked around. “The place where they stored all the files of information and evidence on conspiracies they were covering up.”
“Oh, I know what show you mean! It does!” Birdie agreed, then looked to Agent Kale to see if she understood. But the agent's face was expressionless and unamused, glaring a bit at her. The smile dropped from Birdie's face. “Sorry.”
Kale turned toward her comm. “I need a weapon's expert in O.S,” she spoke. “Anyone who can be spared. Preferably Maverick,” she added.
A moment passed in silence, and then a scratchy voice sounded over the speaker, “I hear you finally want a piece of ol' Mav.” Laughter could be heard on the other end. Kale swiped a hand down her face. “What can I do you for, Agent Kale?”
“I need someone to take a look at the Defectors' weapons that were confiscated today. There may be some sort of modifications that can slow regeneration.”
“Sounds like we'll need forensics then, too. No weapon's gonna slow down our re-gen time. Not unless it's biological.”
“Then assemble a team, Maverick,” she replied. “I've got agents down and we don't have time for it.”
“I'll get it set up. Be there within the hour. Just make sure I have clearance this time, will ya?”
“You'll be cleared. Kale out.” She seemed glad for the discussion to be over with. She looked to Birdie, “Do you need a break?”
“Um...” she hesitated.
“I need coffee,” Kale told her. “I should eat, but I need coffee. And it looks like we've got some time.”
“I know a place,” Brian raised his hand.
“There's only one place,” Kale shook her head.
“Oh. Oh yeah.”
..
Four
“How long do we need to do this underground thing for?” Birdie asked as they sat down with their coffee in the cafe that she'd been in earlier that day. It was strange knowing it was underground. She was grateful though, at least, that the windows were covered in copper-colored blinds, hiding that there was nothing but more evidence that they weren't top-side. Her claustrophobia was starting to kick in a little.
“I'll be advised when the media is finished. Military is sent here on top-secret orders for clean-up.”
“How will they explain the plane being here?” Birdie asked.
“Emergency landing, most likely. They'll tell the public that the plane was flying to Fort Myers, encountered technical problems, and crashed here. None of us can be top-side for it. It's an exposure risk if there's anyone out there that could recognize one of us.”
“Just think,” Brian chimed in, “If you were home watching the five o'clock news and you saw me walking around in the background,” he smirked.
“Yeah,” Birdie shook her head. “I'd fly out here in a heartbeat, just to make sure I wasn't crazy.”
“Exactly,” Kale replied. “We'll have to stay under until the wreckage and bodies are cleared. It could be days.”
“Oh,” Birdie looked down into her mug of coffee.
Brian appraised his sister from where he sat beside her. Her suddenly tense form was a clear warning of what could come. He put a hand on her back, even though he knew she didn't like accepting this kind of comfort. Brian wasn't the kind of guy that followed rules that didn't make sense to him. “Hey, it's totally okay,” he told her. “It's like an ecosystem down here. There's fresh air.” He looked over at Kale who had a brow raised in question. “She's claustrophobic,” he explained quietly.
“I am not,” she retorted. “I'm just...”
“You start to panic in confined spaces. You're claustrophobic, Birdie,” Brian repeated.
“I can handle it.”
“You can handle it in small doses. But not knowing how long you'll be in one, you start to freak out.”
“Are you trying to get me to punch you in the face, right now?” she looked at him incredulously.
Brian smirked, “Better angry than scared.”
“I'm not scared,” she pushed him.<
br />
“You don't let yourself show it, but you are so.”
“You can feel free to shut the hell up, any time now, Brian,” she glared at him, and he raised his hands in surrender. “Seriously,” she looked over at Kale, “It's not that big a deal.” She looked back down at her coffee, trying to fight off the feeling of embarrassment. “I'm going to use the restroom,” she told them as she got up from the table.
Once Birdie disappeared behind the bathroom door, Kale noticed that Brian seemed to regret having given her a hard time. He folded his hands around the warmth of his mug and peered into it. “I was just trying to get her to focus her attention on something else,” he said. Kale wasn't sure if he was thinking out loud, or explaining it to her. “To keep her from getting panicked,” he continued. “I mean, I'm not claustrophobic, but being down here makes me feel that way after a while.” He looked up at her with an awkward half-smile. “I imagine everyone does.”
“I don't,” Kale replied, raising her brows. “I find it rather comforting, actually.”
“Comforting,” Brian looked at her from the side, skeptically.
“It's safer under here,” she argued, neither of them seeing Birdie coming back from the restroom now. “The bomb on the plane, for instance, wouldn't have been able to penetrate this level. Also, there's no reason to fear being in this particular confined area. It's larger than most cities, for one. Its construction is pure genius; not requiring electricity in order to function. In fact, there are several backup energy sources that keep it running. It's highly unlikely that they would ever all fail.”
“Highly unlikely doesn't mean impossible,” Birdie said as she sat back down at the table with them.
“One way to get over an irrational fear is to-”
“It's not irrational,” Birdie interrupted Kale.
Kale raised a brow at this. “On the contrary, an irrational fear is a fear that an individual experiences that doesn't necessarily have any basis behind it.”
“But it does,” she argued. “And it's not really a fear. If I fear anything, it's the possibility of suffocation.”
“That is also irrational,” Kale replied. “For us, anyway.”
“I don't care that it couldn't permanently kill me,” Birdie retorted. “And I especially don't like the fact that I could die on multiple occasions from the same thing. Oh...oh god,” a slightly horrified look plastered her face. “What if there are...people out there; Proprietors that haven't been kept track of, and they died and were buried, and they woke up in their grave, only to suffocate and die and wake up again and again...”
“Whoa there, sis,” Brian put his hand on her shoulder. “That imagination. Sometimes it surprises me that you're not the writer in this family.”
“Regeneration can't process without oxygen,” Kale told her. “We've had to exhume bodies in the past. Our bodies don't begin regeneration until the oxygen levels in the surrounding environment are normal or higher.”
“So, the same would happen for drowning, or being burned to...” Birdie's eyes grew wide and she looked over to Brian. “We...we had you cremated!” she nearly shouted, then looked back to Kale. “We can come back from that?”
“Actually, no,” Kale looked back and forth between the two of them. “You signed off for him to be cremated. But he never got that far.”
“I have his ashes...I mean I had...”
“Funny thing about a lot of those places,” Kale told her, “Is they don't mind 'donating a body to science' for the right price. What you had was beach sand mixed with fireplace ash and some crushed animal bones. You are correct, however.”
“Uh...about what, now?” Birdie was slightly confused as she was still processing this information.
“Being burned to death. If it's to the degree of cremation, there is no coming back from that. At least, not to our knowledge. There have been occasions where we were too late to retrieve the body. Early enough before regeneration would've started, mind you. Some people waste no time putting deceased family members to rest.”
Birdie and Brian sat in silence for a few moments as Kale took a long drink from her coffee cup. “I guess it's a good thing we waited,” Birdie said a bit quietly...
..
Brian led Birdie back to their apartment, through the tunnels. These tunnels were a lot bigger, of course. Aside from the obvious fact that they were underground, it was the same set up as it had been up top. The tunnels were wide and endless. Each standing structure that had been lowered into the ground had its own second foundation in the tunnels, with the lowering structure doubling as a support system for the high ceilings. Birdie felt a little better that she wasn't having to duck as she walked. The ceilings were at least thirty feet high.
In the blue-tinted lighting, the copper-colored metal and gears took on a more dazzling look. They seemed out of place in the real world. She'd never seen anything like it, outside of fantasy movies she'd seen in her childhood.
“This place is kind of insane,” Birdie commented as they walked.
“I thought we'd already established that.”
“I mean, other than the obvious. The way this place was built, is what I'm talking about. Did the military build it? I know the debriefing area is an old submarine. And I get why it's separate from everything else. But it seems so out of place compared to all of this,” she waved her hand around at the buildings.
“The military built the tunnels,” Brian told her. “That much I know. It was a lot different before they started constructing for life up top. Apparently there's this guy, a First-gen, that was this brilliant scientist and mechanical engineer. He came up with the design for everything, and helped build the place. He created the energy system, too. Rumor has it, he was a bit claustrophobic as well,” he smirked. “The military's system wasn't adequate enough for his taste, and so he decided to fix it.”
“How do you know so much about that?” Birdie queried.
“Research,” he replied. “Sometimes when I'm writing about my own fictitious world, I tend to forget about the fact that I live pretty much in one, myself. I like to learn about this place; what they let us, anyway. A lot of it is very hush hush, top secret.”
“Why?”
“I think it has to do with whatever those military guys came over for. For safety reasons, I guess. They don't tell us everything, because they fear if any of us run away, we might be a danger to the rest of us.”
“Makes sense,” she nodded as they continued to walk. “What was his name? The engineer...”
“It's listed as Rowland 'Rollo' Oswyn.”
“That doesn't sound like an American name,” she commented.
“He wasn't American,” he confirmed, glancing at her. “That's the first thing I noticed, too. So I dug a little deeper and discovered he'd come to America with his family as a young man. He was a brilliant inventor and engineer and they recruited him for the military as a strategist, for his renowned genius. His interest in science had him crawling all over the experimental serum, insisting he be part of the trial.”
“There's public information about all of this?” Birdie looked doubtful.
“Not...really,” he replied. “Remember that friend I told you about?”
“The one that was arrested?”
“That's the one,” he half-grinned. “He discovered this after years of prying with drunken First-gens on many lonely Friday nights.”
“Something tells me you carried on that legacy after he left.”
“What ever would give you that idea?” he raised a brow, a smirk playing on his lips.
Birdie let out an amused laugh. “So...Oswyn. I take it he's one of the First-gens that is no longer with us?”
“No one seems to know the answer to that,” Brian told her as they came into view of their apartment building. “Rumor has it he left with the Defectors. But his interests seemed so loyal to this place, it doesn't seem like that would be the case. He might've been killed. Like permanently.”
“Assassinated?”
“Who knows,” he replied with a sigh as they reached their front door. “It doesn't make much sense, though, to kill off someone who was so important to this place.”
“No, it doesn't,” she agreed, then was overpowered by a yawn.
“Oh don't start that,” Brian chided, then was hit with a yawn of his own. “Damn you!”
“Sorry!” she laughed. “I'm kind of exhausted.”
“Your first day top-side on Pritchard's Island has been an exceptional one. And you just got a huge promotion, as temporary as it might be. I think you should probably get a little sleep before it starts all over again in the morning.”