“Alright, guys, that’s enough-” Lukas waved everyone down from their side conversations, focusing instead on the initial primary objective, “Gil, you’ve gotta wake up.”
Lukas, of course, was the first by his side, shaking his old friend by the shoulder with only a light urgency. He didn’t want to jostle him too badly, but time wasn’t something they had much of, anymore. Gil wasn’t responding much, only groaning faintly with the shakes. It was a gamble- Trying to wake him up without startling him in some way was going to be like playing Operation blindfolded, and it’ll only get harder with the amount of force that’s being used.
“Maybe we could stick beef jerky under his nose,” Axel offered up. It’s difficult to tell if he’s just joking, or if it's a genuine suggestion. “It always works for me.”
“I’m serious!” Ah, it must’ve been genuine. “It’s strong! You try sleeping through that smell.”
“We don’t have any beef jerky; We’re not at the agency anymore, man,” Jesse shrugged.
“Tickle his eyelashes?” Olivia suggested. “If he doesn’t wake up, his body sure will.”
“Guys-” Lukas started to interrupt and gather the party's thoughts again, but an agitated groan from the bed halted everyone’s suggestions,
“Guys.” Gil, waking before the group could initiate any of their plans, moved his hand from where it rested over the covers to his forehead, rubbing between his eyebrows with his palm. “What’s goin' on?”
“Oh.” Axel and Olivia spoke simultaneously, almost in mild disappointment. Axel continued on in a mumble, under his breath, “Well, that was easy…”
“Gil, it’s good to see you awake-” Lukas jumped quickly on the alert, helping his friend sit up and keeping a gentle support to his back.
“And not screaming, for once,” Jesse added.
“Yes.. How are you feeling?”
While Gil gathered his thoughts, Lukas whispered to Olivia to fetch a glass of water; she nodded and quickly left the room, letting the door shut behind her. Gil hadn’t been awake very long for most of the week- Any time he could, he needed to keep hydrated.
“Like hell…” Gil only replied in a deep grumble. “You all’s talkin’ pulled me out of another- I don’t know.. Nightmare, I guess, but I’m not sure anymore.”
“Yeah, neither am I. Do you remember anything about it?”
“Almost everything, when my head’s not pounding.."
"Good, that's good news… I need you to describe it. In as much detail as you can. What did you see?"
Gil took a moment to think… All of his nightmares became a sort of clash of images over time, combining into a flurry of emotion and color and noise. He tried not to think about all of it, only part of it, the recent parts. He started with what he was just seeing, before being pulled from slumber,
"I… Remember silver. Chrome. Silver walls with- Purple screens and purple stripes. I remember seeing my hands, but they weren't mine. They were darker, dirtier.. Still wrinkled from- From water, maybe. Yet dry, despite it. I held a weapon, a gun; it was silver, I remember…"
Lukas raised his eyebrows a bit, waiting, and slowly beginning to realize how right he may have been.
"Voices. I remember voices. And people. Not many, but they were there. Two voices. Talking about some kind of trip… I remember- PAMA was mentioned, and the U-boat, and.. Something about us. Someone came down the hallway, someone else left. It was easy to hear; these hallways were practically empty. I saw others like me, holding weapons and standing unmoving at posts, but none in this last dream. I think I was somewhere else… And I saw my reflection, once, but- It wasn't really mine, at all. It didn't look anything like me, but- for some reason, I knew him. Brown hair, tan skin, and his eyes- His eyes. How could I have forgotten? PAMA."
Lukas sighed, letting his head dip a bit once Gil made it to the end in mild dread. Gil's voice only fell off as he pressed his palm to the bridge of his nose. Dread was all that hung over the room, for a moment, and why wouldn't it? Their knowledge of PAMA was limited; all they knew was that it invades and controls the minds of its hosts, and sometimes, it didn't need to be turned on to have already invaded. They didn't know where it was located, they didn't know how it worked, or how to rid themselves of it. PAMA was a wildcard, and a wildcard in war is nothing but dangerous, especially if held by the enemy.
"I was right.." Lukas cut through the nervous silence first. "Gil, this could be very bad. You could still be- Somehow connected to PAMA.. But I don't think the Witherstorm knows that you can see it, so we also might have a huge advantage. Otherwise, they would've done something about it, right? I need you to keep remembering. Anything about that conversation; where they're going, when they're leaving, how long, for what purpose? Anything at all, we need to know." Lukas punctuated his conversation with Gil by giving him a pat on the shoulder, and then quickly turned to Jesse. "I'm going to start scrambling the team. Whatever this trip is, it's happening soon, and we need to be ready to move."
"Wh-” Jesse stammered, double-taking over his shoulder as Lukas got up to leave, “What are you planning on doing, exactly?"
"We're intercepting. I'm readying the Terminal. Be ready.”
"Well, this could be a problem, putting it as lightly as possible."
Ranger was sitting cross-legged on his bed beside his bags, laptop on his lap. Orion was still helping sort things out while Ranger did a last deep dive into the PAMA system to check for last minute errors. Low and behold, he found one- Quite an anomaly compared to the ones he was used to. This PAMA trip was becoming more and more vital by the second.
Orion glanced up from the dresser to acknowledge him; he’d just finished folding a black turtleneck sweater and tucking it away with the rest of the similarly color-coded clothing. He tilted his head a bit, as if to ask what was wrong.
“Look.” Ranger flipped the laptop around to face Orion, and he shut the dresser drawer and stepped over to examine it. Ranger pointed over the edge of the screen to one of the subject numbers, which looked relatively normal, if not for the red flaring speck in the midst of it. It looked like it was throbbing, inflamed, almost like an infection of some kind. “I thought I saw something like this earlier, but- Now it’s just sticking around.”
Orion watched the red spot, wrinkling his nose a bit in miniscule disgust. The infection was part of P-00-01: the very first agent chipped into the PAMA system. Nine years ago, PAMA was completed; Orion was delicate enough to not waste any human lives on tests… The first soldier connected to the mainframe was a complete success, and had been under since that very day. Every soldier after was equally as successful. Matter of fact, that same soldier was there at that very moment, posted guard outside of the door. Freshly rescued from capture.
“Do you know what it is?” Ranger asked after giving Orion a minute to process.
Orion simply narrowed his eyes.
Just outside of the door, in the hallway, a shout and clatter interrupted the brothers’ ‘conversation.’ Ranger snapped the laptop shut in surprise, while Orion quickly straightened and went instantly to the door. He slid it open, nearly getting his fingers caught in the slot in his hurry, and to the right of the door, the Hacked guard that was stationed there was crumpled to the floor. His weapon was in the middle of the floor, and his hands were occupied, clutching at his skull in what appeared to be anguish.
Orion found himself surprised. There had been occasional fits like this before in Hacked soldiers, but never something so severe as whatever this appeared to be. Such fits were also caused by something foreseeable, like a minor glitch in the system caused by the consciousness of Hacked basically bumping into each other. They would shut down, in a way, but only for a moment…
This soldier was very conscious, very awake, no sign of such a glitch. This was something new.
While Orion looked on in mild horror and Ranger joined him at his side, Trevor was next to join them; he was followed closely by Lukas, who came around the corner in an equal panic. Trevor skid to a stop behind Orion so quickly that he nearly slipped on the slick metal floor, finding himself left as speechless as the leader.
“What happened?” Lukas was the first to speak up, joining the rest of the Witherstorm. “Is everyone-” Finally, his eyes caught up with his brain, and he fell silent at the sight of the soldier on his knees.
He was groaning, and tremors wracked at his body. Lukas had almost gotten used to seeing him around, he’d almost gotten used to seeing how hollow he appeared, those empty expressions and empty eyes– He wasn’t at all prepared to see that emptiness disappear. Not nearly so violently as this, either.
Ranger, still carrying his laptop close to his chest, flung it back open to check the status from before. Now, the red had changed; it’s spread, like the infection it appeared to be before, and Aiden’s subject number was… Broken. Pixels had glitched away from it, like it was fading. A different number was peaking through, one Ranger hadn’t actually seen before. The only number he could make out was a vague ‘6.’ A rogue soldier, a mystery consciousness- This could be bad.
“Leader, look-” He shoved the laptop over to Orion, who finally turned his gaze away from Aiden to examine it. “I think there’s a second consciousness- Somehow, I don’t know how it happened. I think it’s trying to take the front seat. I don’t know how it’s possible- PAMA wasn’t programmed for that, it’s not- His brain can’t take something like that for long.”
Orion didn’t move to answer. Aiden was still crippled, blood from his nose had blotted the floor, his condition only looked to be getting worse. When Orion finally moved, it was to reach down and lift Aiden’s discarded silver firearm from the floor and position it securely in his arms. He wasn’t hesitating. A lift of the weapon and the barrel was pointed directly to Aiden’s skull. Orion pulled the trigger and-
The bullet hit the floor to the left of him, missing Aiden entirely. He didn’t do that- Shocked, Orion turned to face the owner of the hands that had yanked the barrel aside so quickly. He wasn’t necessarily surprised to see Lukas, glowering at him as though he’d just kicked a dog.
“You were just going to kill him? Just like that?” Lukas, understandably, didn’t take too kindly to the situation. Orion narrowed his eyes and quirked an eyebrow at him, before slowly handing the weapon aside to Ranger.
“He could compromise everything,” Orion explained, slowly, putting emphasis on the last word with a more urgent sign. “A liability we cannot have.”
“We don’t have to just kill him,” Lukas argued without hesitation.
Orion’s expression didn’t change much, staying firm, and Lukas’s hardened further in return. Tension hung for a moment in the air, and the twins wilted back a bit from the minor face-off.
“Why prolong this? His brain will melt. Two consciousnesses will kill him.” Orion continued to sign.
“Then let’s try and fix him.” Lukas was urgent, but Orion couldn’t fathom why. It was likely that Lukas must have known him, as he did the Jesse in this world. Perhaps it was jarring. Orion could understand that- Despite everything other than his heart reminding him how illogical that would be.
Hesitation, followed by the leader dropping his gaze to the floor, as though he were thinking. While silence, only pierced by Aiden’s continuous groans, hung heavy over the group for a moment, Trevor was the next to cut through.
“He’s right, Leader.” Orion turned his gaze back up quickly as Trevor stepped closer. “We can fix it- Ranger is going to PAMA tomorrow morning. When he gets there, he can delete the other consciousness from the coding, and that should solve the problem.”
After another short moment of thought, Orion took the weapon from Ranger’s hold once Trevor had finished talking and stepped closer to the crippled soldier. He raised it again, aggression in his stance-
“Orion, wait!” Lukas’s desperate shout was punctuated as he reached out quickly in an attempt to stop him.
But Orion’s fingers didn’t touch the trigger; instead, he gave it a harsh twist, and the butt of the weapon collided with the back of Aiden’s head. There was a harsh crack, and Aiden’s face hit the metal floor. His groans and tremors ceased instantly, leaving him dead unconscious. With a quirked brow, Orion glanced back at his brothers with the same quirked brow; Lukas only stood there, slowly lowering his hand and settling his anxiety. He’d nearly tackled him… Which would have been bad.
Orion tried to appear unbothered by the group's prepared horror, and let the weapon slip from his hands and clatter to the floor.
“It was that, or kill him. Others could be listening.”
With that, Orion reached down, hoisted up the unconscious soldier’s body without much effort, and slung him over his shoulder. He didn’t address them again, only stalking off with Aiden towards the infirmary.
Ranger and Trevor exchanged an equally as concerned glance… Orion was extremely quick on the draw. Of course, that was natural for him, it has been for their whole lives, but for the first time- They weren’t sure they felt entirely settled about it.
For the past ten minutes, Gil had been in a disastrous state, jerking, shouting, gripping at his head. The nosebleed he’d earned from the stress dirtied his white shirt and left dark, heavy stains blotted onto his chest. Both Axel and Jesse were holding him still, keeping him in the bed, trying to wait out the attack- This was the longest it had ever lasted.
And then finally, abruptly, it came to a sudden halt.
Gil fell unconscious in less than a second, like he’d been unwillingly shut down by some outside force. The group took a minute to recuperate, trying to steady their pulses and try and get a read on what just happened.
“There’s never been an attack that long, before…” Olivia started.
“Should we get Lukas? I don’t know if anyone can move, with Gil like this,” Jesse breathed. “He’s really starting to hurt. Look at this bleeding- I don’t know if his brain can handle the pressure.”
“I think that’s a good idea. We already got the information we needed, be it vague or not- We should turn focus to getting him out of it, now, instead of asking more.”
“Right… The minute he tried to dig deeper, we didn’t get anything, and he just got wailed on by some malevolent, incorporeal force. This is a bad idea..”
When Aiden woke up, he… Didn’t recognize his surroundings. Whilst he was used to an empty mind-space of void and silence, this time, he awoke on the rough, beige carpet of a dorm. It felt real, but he knew it couldn’t be.
Groggy, he slowly pushed himself up with his palms. A good look around the room brought his attention to just how- well, familiar, it looked. It was small, compact with not much furniture, only a few deep blue cots and a small metal folding table set up in one of the corners of the room. The walls shared the same color as a floor with a grayer, worn haze. There were no windows, no posters, and only one bullet-gray, metal door. The cot he’d woken up beside was the only one undone, like he’d fallen out of bed… Like he’d had some kind of nightmare, like a little kid.
Now that he was starting to come to, he was starting to feel things. Notice things. His skin felt like it was waking up for the first time in a long time, prickly with pins and needles and chilled. Not to mention, his face was warm, and his fingertips were cold- He felt alive, or more like he was beginning to live again, after years of being gone. A heat above his lip caught his attention, and he moved his fingers quickly to his nose; he was startled, disturbed, even, to be met with deep red spots coating their tips and glistening in the faint light as he moved them away. Since when did he bleed? And what was causing it?
His hazy, mystified thoughts were interrupted by a sound that came from the other side of the door; confused groaning and what sounded like the metallic squeal of a door opening in the distance. This mind-space shouldn’t have had more than one room- Not in Aiden’s head.
The idea that Aiden wasn’t alone was even more jarring than the rest of the situation, but, as was his way, he wasted no time before making his way to the door and pushing it open.
He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but the sight of another person at the end of the hallway was… Not it. The figure was hunched over, holding a hand to his face. Aiden listened closely, on guard, and could hear the man’s mumbling and a faint tapping of drops of a thick liquid onto the now concrete grounds… Aiden didn’t remember the last time he had to listen closely to anything. He forgot how good he was at it.
When the man noticed Aiden on his end of the hallway, he lifted his head in a sort of surprise. His face was covered by the shadow at the end of the hall, and Aiden couldn’t make out his appearance, or his expression. He squinted and stepped forward; whatever strength he was used to missing, it was making its way back very quickly here.
“Who are you?” He snapped, breaking through the hollow silence of the hallway. “Where are we?”
The mystery man didn’t answer, for a moment. He only scanned the area around him, slowly taking everything in.
“I know this place,” he rasped out, eventually. “These are my old barracks.”
“Yeah, before.. Before the Witherstorm. Maya stayed here, with me. This was my door.” The man put a hand to the metal entrance to the room he appeared to have come from.
Aiden was surprised, but didn’t let his defense fall.
“These were my barracks, I stayed here.” He gestured to his own door, getting the man’s attention again.
“Wait a minute…” The man stepped closer, and continued to move closer than Aiden would have liked.
“Back off,” he growled, putting a hand up defensively.
“Hang on… I’ve seen you before.”
Aiden blinked, surprised, and thoroughly creeped out. He didn’t lower his hand, but didn’t bother looking for a way out. If he needed to, he’d fight his way out. Tentatively, he finally continued,
“In a reflection. And in these barracks. Your squad was mine, too. Maya, Magnus, Gabriel-”
“Ellegaard, Soren..” Aiden finished, his voice growing more gentle as he recalled the names. “The Order. And you-” The other man finally came into visible light. His face was streaked with blood from the nose, much like his own, and his face- Familiar, as he was starting to expect. It took him a moment to settle, but the appearance couldn’t be argued with. “Gil… I know you, but- How? How are you here? I’ve been gone for so long, I shouldn’t be-”
“I don’t know,” Gil interrupted, sounding equally as confused, and equally as worried. “I think I’m connected to PAMA, somehow, but not fully there,” he tried to find a way to explain, but even saying it out loud started to befuddle him even more. He wiped at his nose, but the blood was quickly replaced by more… The stress on their brains must’ve been awful, but it was necessary.
“You’re in my head..” Aiden lowered his gaze. No wonder they were here. Gil’s memory must be still intact, so they found a common ground.
“I think so.” Gil nodded.
“And so- Where does that leave us?”
“In a lot of danger, if this is anything to go by,” his old friend gruffed and lifted his wrist, displaying the blood that coated it. “But… I can assume you know things about PAMA, and about the Witherstorm, right?”
Aiden winced, and dipped his head, almost in hidden shame.
“Yes. I’ve seen everything from these past years… I know.”
“I’m with a group that can help. They’re trying to stop the Witherstorm, but they’re too elusive to get any intel on in this radioactive hell triangle- And I don’t think it’ll take them very long to figure out what’s going on and get rid of me. This could be our only way in. This accident- Maybe it wasn’t such an accident after all. We can win.”
Aiden’s gaze reached Gil’s, widened, with more life in them then he ever expected there to be; the idea of freedom, the idea of bringing down these terrorists, these monsters- They imbued him with a determination to finish this, once and for all. Forever. For good.
“What do you need to know? And how can I help?”
