#she's baaaaack!

[sleepyselkiesims]

I'm OBSESSED

[mariashades]

The Only Acceptable Outcome, Ch 1

Ao3 link here Summary: When your paths are few, and your choices are fewer, what will you do to gain the only outcome you are willing to accept?

This is @pareidoliaonthemove 's fault. My thanks to the usual suspects of Hubby and @the-original-sineater for the help and ideas-bouncing.

Seated at her husband’s right hand, General Svetlana 'Cobra' Bugayev considered it very appropriate that her daughter slept in a travel cot in the far corner of the confidential meeting room of the presidential palace. What was to be discussed tonight concerned the future of all of Bereznik, oldest to youngest. Their decisions would affect their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, so it was wise to have Lilya here to remind them all of the weight of their decisions. 

If anyone disagreed with hers and Anatoly’s philosophy regarding this, well, they were smart enough to keep their mouths firmly shut. 

One by one, the ministers of Bereznik’s new government came in, folders and briefcases in their hands, and found their places at the monolithic rectangle of a table that stretched the length of the room. While both she and Anatoly would have liked to replace the table with something… not made to make a small man feel big, as Tolya had put it, they could only go so far. The dark-stained mahogany table, scratched and scarred by the flaring tempers of everyone who had sat here prior, had dominated the meeting room since the first official cabinet of Bereznik’s first government, it was part of the history of Bereznik, and in a nation as young as theirs, they had to keep certain things to maintain a sense of tradition and continuity.  ‘Traditions such as the military having seats here,’ was her quiet remark to herself as General Maik Dubasov of the army, General Casimir Bystrov of the air force, and Admiral Vitomir Filimonov of their (very limited) navy found their places. 

Their involvement in the government was the result of a particularly careful dance of recruitment and power-balancing, and she would have vastly preferred that they were not here at all. Yes, most of the generals had gone down with the Glory of Bereznik, but the candidate pool for promoting new ones had been a very small pond to fish in, it severely limited their choices. In addition, all the officers within that pool had made it there because of their slavish emulation of their senior officers, who in turn had slavishly emulated Benenora. It had made aspects of the transition… difficult. 

‘But at least there are only three of them, instead of most of the room being taken up by uniforms. They are outnumbered now, it makes them much easier to manage.’ She was well aware that half the reason why the military fell into line was because the ranking officers were terrified of her, and the other half was because they had allowed the military to retain their prominence. People accustomed to power, she knew, reacted poorly to having their power taken away. ‘I have to keep watch on them,’ Cobra reminded herself, ‘and keep them afraid of me. They must toe the line and stay there, especially with the challenges we are about to face.’ 

Finally the last chair was filled, tea, coffee, and water were served, the stewards filed out and the thick, soundproofed doors to the meeting room were shut and locked.

“Let us begin.” At the head of the table, Anatoly opened his folder and turned to the man at his left. “Minister Kadyrov, what is your report?” 

Minister of Agriculture, Tytus Kadyrov, opened his briefcase and passed around a sheaf of folders. “In a word, President Bakov, bad. Not unlike the Soviet Union before it truly began to fall apart, we are one poor harvest away from a total collapse of our farming system.” 

“What?” General Dubasov was bug-eyed. “But the warehouses, the granaries?" 

“Hold enough reserves for one or two months and that is it,” Kadyrov told him. “And before you ask, I have already been talking to the agriculture department at the university. Our soils are becoming depleted, they need extensive rehabilitation with special fertilisers and other things that we simply do not have. We are doing what we can with peat and farm effluent, but it can only go so far. In addition to that we have five more problems: wheat rust, cabbage moths, weevils, and -” 

“Bugs?” Dubasov’s lip was curled in scorn. “We can spray them!” 

“Only if we have the fungicides, pesticides and insecticides,” Kadyrov shot back. “We can’t make enough to meet the demand. Right now farmers are watering down their stocks to make them stretch enough to cover a field…” 

“Oh, it’s the antibiotic problem.” Opposite the admiral, the Minister of Health, Doctor Marcin Ishkov, was pale. “Not good, not good at all.” 

“What ‘antibiotic problem’ ?” General Bystrov demanded. 

“Antibiotics only work at the right concentration,” Doctor Ishkov explained. “If you flush them, then the sewers become full of diluted antibiotics that only kill off the weakest strains of bacteria, leading to stronger and stronger strains that become resistant to those very same antibiotics that used to work so very well. You dilute your fungicides and pesticides…” 

“...the same effect occurs on the farm,” Kadyrov finished.

“That is three problems,” Bystrov frowned, “you said we had five.” 

“Yes, but the last two are related.” Kadyrov pointed to the last of the briefing folders. “Page nine. Seed stocks and potato blight, the thing that killed millions during the Irish Potato Famine. It’s been detected in two farms, I’m awaiting results on testing from the surrounding six. The problem is that we grow the same potatoes across most of Bereznik and we do not have a way to import new seed potatoes, ones that will be resistant to this strain of blight.”

“And the seed stocks problem?” Doctor Ishkov asked.

“Seed and harvest.” Kadyrov held up his hand, the first two fingers crossed. “They are like this. You cannot harvest without seed, and without seed, there is no future harvest. Under the previous regimes it was harvest, harvest, harvest, all to feed the hungry maw of the military.” He pointed to the generals and admiral, currently scowling at the blame being laid on them. “And you cannot deny it! The military are always prioritised when harvests are lean! Because of that we don’t have enough seed to plant and meet the future demand, and if a planting goes bad because of rain or whatever, we have no spare seed to plant a replacement crop.” 

“Can’t we just go to the black market and buy it all?” Minister of Transportation, Ludomir Akimenko asked, glancing up from the notes he was scribbling across his briefing folder. “New potatoes, new seeds, the chemicals as well, can’t we just buy it all and smuggle it up the rivers on Admiral Filimonov’s covert fleet?” 

“Tell them,” Anatoly said, turning to the Minister of Finance Maryla Okolov, two chairs down from him. 

“We are broke,” was the blunt announcement from the older woman. “I was already aware that our financial situation was poor, but after I was appointed and looked at the books - the real books, not the ones prepared for General Benenora and President Kaitanna - it was even worse than I feared.” She took a sip of tea to wet her throat. “Building the Glory and completing Stormcastle has all but bankrupted Bereznik. Yes, we have natural resources - wood, coal, iron, and so on - but selling them on the black market?” She shook her greying head. “We don’t have the resources to make the treatments to make our pine a valuable building material for export, it is only useful for wood pulp and buyers will walk right past it, they can get other stuff without nearly as much risk as ours. Oak, yes, that is valuable, but it’s extremely limited and we don’t have anywhere near enough to make a dent in our deficit. Coal is rapidly being eclipsed by other, better materials, and while we have the facilities to make coal tar - which is a product of value - it is so wildly available we’ll barely break even on selling it, and again, buyers can get it much more easily than from us. We could send out BESA’s agents to steal secrets we can sell, but again, unless we stumble across something of staggering value - something ridiculously sought after like the location of International Rescue’s base - it will not shift us out of the red and the cost of obtaining those secrets may well eclipse the profit gained.” She nodded to the Minister of Agriculture. “We have already consulted on the possibility of buying the agri-chemicals, and if not the chemicals themselves, the raw ingredients to make them. If we obtain them on the black market, they will be extremely expensive - and the price will only get higher and higher as the sellers detect our need for them.” 

“And,” Cobra knew it was her turn to speak up, “the World Government is watching the black markets. If they learn we are not after military hardware but basic agriculture, they will sense we are weakening. Even with Stormcastle fully operational, it is but one carrier, and they know how to kill our carriers.”  

That announcement, she was pleased to see, took the wind out of the sails of the military, just as they’d predicted it would in the smaller, more private meeting that she, Anatoly, Kadyrov, and Okolov had had this morning, when they laid out their strategy and lines of attack. Proper prior planning truly did prevent so much poor performance.

“Then what are you suggesting?” Admiral Filimonov scowled. “That we go begging to the west? There will be riots in the streets by sundown.”  

“There will only be riots if you or someone else were to lead them,” was the cool retort from Anatoly. 

Cobra hid her proud smile. Her beloved had learned so well! Where Benenora had commanded respect through fear, using bluster and pounding tables to illustrate a point, Anatoly cut through the nonsense with a handful of well chosen words, driving towards the heart of the matter without the machismo that wasted so much time and energy. 

The lack of machismo also kept the military on the back foot. This wasn’t how they were used to operating and they weren’t smart enough to pivot quickly enough to mount an effective offence. ‘And keeping an opponent on the back foot is always a smart tactic.’ 

“What we must do is what so many have done before us,” Anatoly went on, “we must look to the greatest empire of the western world: Rome.” 

“How do you mean?” Akimenko glanced up from his notes again.

“Bread and circuses.” Anatoly began. “Most of the population were dirt poor, but they were fed, they were entertained, they knew what it was to be Roman and they were fiercely proud of it  because they were surrounded by the glory of their empire and her spoils.” He started ticking off points on his fingers. “We have the entertainment: Minister Polosin and the Ministry of Culture has seen to that with movies, songs, and festivals. There is now a radio in every house playing music, educational shows, and news broadcasts, and there is a television in every school. We have the glory: our monuments, our new buildings, the might of our military, and our industrial and scientific prowess demonstrated in Stormcastle. But we need the bread, we need a steady supply of food. We will ask for experts in agriculture to teach our farmers, for soil scientists to rehabilitate our fields, for equipment, supplies, and seed. Let them be magnanimous towards us. Let them revel in their generosity and congratulate themselves on it, and while they do so, we will build up our strength again.” He offered a sly smile to the room. “Every penny they spend on us is a penny we can spend elsewhere: on our fleet, on our army, on our aircraft, on our infrastructure, on our hospitals, on our schools, and most importantly of all, on our families. The family unit is the building block of society, when the family is strong, the nation is strong. We must, above all else, look after our people. It will take swallowing our pride, I acknowledge that, but we will come out of this all the stronger - and the World Government, who has tried for so many years to weaken us, will be the ones bearing the cost.” 

That got slow nods around the table. 

“But how will we spin it to the people?” Minister Danuta Polosin asked. “If we tell them the truth, if we tell them that our exchequer is empty and our food supplies are in danger, they’ll panic and we’ll be back to those riots in the streets.” 

Drumming his fingers on the mahogany table, Anatoly pretended to think about it, but again, this was something that had been considered well in advance. “The narrative will be this: the great experiment of Bereznick is entering a new phase. Now that we know ourselves, who we are as a people, we can challenge the world on their own stage.” That got more nods and some smiles around the table. “We are inviting the world to show us the best they have to offer. We will take what we want, leave the rest, and let them marvel at the glory of the queen of nations as we make our way in spite of all they have done to stymie us.” 

“And Stormcastle will remain our big stick, yes?” General Bystrov asked, keen to show off his prized possession. “She will patrol our airspace when the foreigners stand on our soil?” 

“Yes.” Cobra nodded once. “She will dominate the sky and remind everyone - inside our borders and outside - that we are only doing this because it is agreeable to us, and as soon as it becomes disagreeable,” her smile was slow, “she will be our way to let them know it.” 

0o0o0

Hours later, Svetlana laid her sleeping daughter into her proper cot, took a moment to revel in successfully getting her from the meeting room to the nursery without waking her, checked the security, then quietly slipped out and shut the door behind her. The presidential apartment was the one place in the palace that they’d extensively remodeled before moving in; closing off unnecessary rooms, stripping away the heavy gold decorations, disposing of the personal effects of the prior residents, and removing the furniture that quite simply did not suit them. In the process they’d discovered many things, such as enough vodka, spirits, and other alcohols to stock five bars, Benenora’s go-bags full of American dollars, Kaitanna’s jewelry wardrobe (in addition to her walk-in wardrobe and a separate closet just for her shoes), and enough dirt on the leading figures in government (in addition to what BESA and BISA’s archives held) that no one complained when she and Anatoly reshuffled who was responsible for what, demoted quite a few people, promoted others, and ‘gently’ encouraged certain persons to take their pensions early and retire. 

The entire remodeling experience had all been an enormous headache as far as she was concerned - decorating was not one of her strengths nor Anatoly’s - but she could not relinquish control to a professional decorator, so she leaned on Franciszek and his architect brother to come up with something they could live with and live in. ‘But,’ Svetlana smiled as she made her way to the newly-installed kitchen, ‘it at last gave us enough room for Tolya to have his own personal library.’ That had been a long-held dream of theirs, to have somewhere for him to have all his books in one place instead of split up between his study and his office at the university, and now he finally had it. His private office was lined with bookshelves, his desk (an early birthday present) was a genuine, 19th century Victorian oak and walnut pedestal desk with a black hide leather top, and she was quietly using her resources to fill the gaps in his book wish list that he didn’t know that she knew about.

She filled the kettle, spooned tea-leaves into the samovar, and while she waited for the kettle to whistle, Cobra turned her mind back to the meeting.

Overall, just like every meeting since Anatoly’s promotion, it had been a relatively pleasant experience. No shouting, no pounding tables, no shattered glass or ceramic as someone lost their temper and threw something at the wall or floor - it hadn’t been that common during Benenora’s reign, but had quickly become Kaitanna’s version of pounding the table as she strove to emulate her father.

‘And not only that, people feel safe enough to bring bad news to the table. So much more efficient than trying to dance around egos or figure out how to obscure the truth enough to get a fix for a problem without revealing enough to get you shot. At last we can get things done - and speaking of things that need doing, Admiral Filimonov ... I need to look into him again. He was bold with his suggestion of riots - too bold. What is he up to? I may need to do something about him, but has he done enough to risk disrupting the navy again?’

The kettle sang, she poured water over the tea-leaves, and wrapped the silver samovar with a tea towel they’d been given at the wedding. Again she used the intervening time efficiently, setting plain tea glasses on a small tray, then checking the freezer to see if the water-filled teething rings were there. Bunny was well into cutting her next set of teeth, the teethers were a sanity-saver for all of them. 

Finally the tea was brewed, she poured it into the cups and carried the tray over to Anatoly’s library - she’d already seen the glow under the door and knew he’d be hard at work crafting the message he was to send to the World Government. A knock with her foot, then she pressed the door handle with her elbow and strode inside. “Tea, Tolya.” 

At his desk, Tolya looked up from the papers before him with a smile. “Rose, you have read my mind!” A sweep of his hand cleared a space for the tray, and Svetlana set it down before perching herself on a corner of the desk and claiming her cup. 

“How goes the letter?” she asked, simply holding the glass for now and letting the warmth seep into her fingers. 

“It is making me miss my students, as difficult as they could be,” was the answer, delivered with a wry smile. “My book of poetry languishes with the demands on me, but,” he was quick to add, “I do not regret it. Can you imagine what would have happened today if Benenora still sat at the head of the table?” 

Svetlana shuddered. “He would have insisted on ignoring it, Bereznik would have fallen like a star from the heavens, and our neighbours would swallow us whole.” 

“Yes,” Anatoly grimaced, also holding his tea in both hands. “As many wise people have said: those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and that is exactly what would have happened under Benenora. But you have changed our future, Lana. Because of you, the board was cleared and the right people, those who know history and how to avoid those mistakes, have been placed where they can do the most good for our people and our nation.” He gestured to the half-written letter and the collection of folders from the meeting. “This, Lana, is a night-time storm that we must weather, a storm that will spend its fury and rage, but all it will accomplish is watering the land, and with its remains, those tatters of cloud left strewn on the horizon, make the coming sunrise all the more glorious.” 

“It will be glorious indeed, my love,” Cobra smiled gently, put down her tea, and leaned over to kiss her husband. ‘And now I know what to do about the admiral. He does not appreciate history. I will take care of that later, right now I have my own letter to write. We will need all the help we can get.’ 

0o0o0

Elsewhere, other minds were also considering Bereznik’s situation; weighing it up, dividing each factor into its component parts, and theorising possible chains of causality. In the space of a few minutes the analysis was complete and a summary of conclusions were presented to the Mysteron Consciousness to be ruminated upon.

Fact: the leadership situation in Bereznik was prone to fracturing and several members were inherently volatile.

Fact: the country as a whole had numerous vulnerabilities in addition to the food supply.

Fact: the military rankled under their loss of prominence in the government and could be considered belligerent as a baseline standard. 

Conclusion: this would easily be turned to serve our purposes.

Satisfied with the viability of this line of attack, the Mysteron Consciousness turned from analysis to action. This was a prime opportunity, it could not be allowed to go to waste. 

[mariashades]

The Only Available Choice

CSaTM

Sometimes the only acceptable choice and the only available choice are two very, very different things.

Ao3 link here

Red alarm lights were flashing, but the sirens had been silenced, and Scarlet was very glad for that. Vintersol Company had picked a very shrill two-tone for the general alarm and it had set his teeth on edge. 

‘Here’s hoping I don’t get to find out what their radiation alarm is like,’ he thought to himself as he crept down one of the long, brightly-lit prefab hallways. The warning signs for that particular hazard, a yellow box marked with that deadly butterfly, were all dark for now, and he desperately hoped they’d stay that way. The full team was here and if the Mysterons managed to compromise Vintersol’s storage area… ‘...there’ll be precisely one survivor of that. If they follow through on their threat and blow the entire facility, well, it’s not going to be my problem any more.’ 

The threat had come in the middle of the night and it might have had them stumped if it hadn’t been for Green and Magenta’s work to include newspaper articles in the computer’s search parameters - one of which had led them here to Jan Mayen, a remote island in Norway crowned by the Beerenberg volcano.

A lopsided blotch of land in the sea, once upon a time it had been an important whaling port and war-time radar station. After the first two World Wars and a number of technical advancements, Jan Mayen had slowly fallen into obscurity until it was only home to a bird sanctuary, some polar bears, two satellite reference point stations, a meteorological station, and one ‘town’ - Olonkinbyen - a worker village for staffing the weather station and housing the small number of Norwegian soldiers who guarded the place. 

That had all changed last year when - over the protests of many environmental groups - Vintersol got permission from the government to build an experimental facility here to convert spent nuclear fuel into fist-sized ‘diamond’ batteries that were powerful enough to run a factory, all powered with geothermal energy from the volcano that had birthed this island. They’d managed it by bribing the government with the promise of providing a number of diamond batteries for them to use for a remote seabed mining to take advantage of the nearby mineral deposits - gold, silver, zinc, copper, cobalt, scandium and lithium - and salved consciences by sending the surplus electricity to the mainland via an undersea HVDC cable. 

Vintersol had draped their sprawling facility around the Nordlaguna, the island’s northernmost lagoon, so they could fill their geothermal tap with the exceedingly cold water of the lagoon. The electricity they generated was used to power a device called ‘The Core’. He had no idea how it worked but when they’d called in Chief Engineer Onyx and explained the situation, the man had gone dead white before telling them how very, very important it was that it not blow up.

All added up, Vintersol was using revolutionary technology, had quickly become a critical piece of infrastructure, was poised to become key to expanding the Norwegian economy, and had enough materials on site to make a hell of a dent in the surrounding landscape if someone pressed just the right buttons in just the wrong way. ‘Which makes it a perfect target for the Mysterons.’ Scarlet paused at an intersection to listen intently before slinking deeper into the maze. 

When they’d arrived, the site manager, Askel Dhal, hadn’t believed them and had stalled, delayed and obstructed them at every turn until one of the security team burst into the office with the news that the body of their chief of security, Kurt Lund, had been found outside the perimeter fence, half-eaten by a polar bear. Spectrum had hardly any resources here so the colonel was doing some very fast talking to get the military to loan them the soldiers at Olonkinbyen to help with the sweep for the agent - most likely now agents because of the delay Askel’s antics had caused. 

Until those soldiers got here, all they could do was evacuate any unnecessary personnel and secure the critical areas - the nuclear storage, the control room for The Core, and the power plant - and the immediate areas. What complicated matters (and explained the timing of the attack) The Core was loaded with nuclear waste and in the middle of a ‘cycle’ - purging out the isotopes they didn’t want and keeping the ones they did - and it absolutely could not be shut down under any circumstances.

All of which brought him to this moment. He’d been on his way from the nuclear storage to the control room when that familiar ache had started up behind his eyes, the warning that a Mysteron was close, and he’d updated the others and altered his path accordingly. 

Pistol in hand, Scarlet swung around the next corner… and came eye-to-muzzle with a rifle - what looked like a Q Honey Badger SBR to his eye - held by a hazel-eyed woman with a heart-shaped face, a generous mouth, and loosely curled brown hair currently gathered up into a ponytail. She was wearing a grey jumpsuit that would have perfectly matched the Vintersol uniform if it wasn’t for the gunbelt around her waist and a satchel slung across her back, and Scarlet recognised her instantly.

“Colonel Cobra.” Hiding his surprise - this was the last place he’d expected to meet her and the odds could only be astronomical - Scarlet kept both his eyes and his gun trained on her. “I would say it’s a pleasure to meet you, but it’s really not,” he told her in Bereznikian. 

Cobra actually winced. “Speak English, please,” she told him in a perfect mimicry of a light Midwestern American drawl. “You sound like a Frenchman trying to speak Russian that was taught to him by a Pole.” 

Scarlet was baffled, but he did switch back. “What’s wrong with that?” The banter was a bit ludicrous, but this entire situation was a bit ludicrous, so it fitted right in. 

“French has a built-in superiority complex and refuses to acknowledge how silly a language it is,” she informed him. “English at least has the decency to embrace that it’s a ridiculous language and run with it.” 

That… was actually a fair point.

“Now,” she went on to say, “you are going to put down your pistol and whatever other weapons you have on you, you are going to put your hands on your head, and you are going to come with me. If you don’t come with me, or if you try to escape, I’m going to shoot you in the head and be done with it. I have my mission. Bringing you back with me is simply a bonus.” 

“No.” 

Cobra blinked. She had expected resistance, even though she was better armed than he, but with the tone of his voice and the set of his jaw… ‘immovable object’ was the phrase that came to mind.

“Colonel Cobra, let me make something very clear to you. I understand and respect that you are fighting for your country, your people, and,” his eyes flicked to her chest for a moment, “your baby…” 

‘How does he…oh, I’m leaking. And through the pads too. Ugh, another bra ruined.’ She didn’t feel at all embarrassed by it, but she was frustrated. Bunny needed that milk, she had her pumps and everything in the boat, and now it was being wasted! Shaking the emotions off, Cobra made herself attend to the present - the captain was still talking. 

“...but right now, I’m not particularly concerned with whatever you’re doing. My current problem is trying to ensure that we’ll still have a world to squabble over.” His eyes narrowed and the hands on his pistol were still rock-steady. “Either get out of my way or make yourself useful.” 

Cobra let that sink in. That he had a bigger problem than her, Colonel Cobra of the BESA… well, it certainly put things into perspective. ‘I know when a man is lying to me, and he’s not lying. But who… ah… this must involve the Mysterons.’ 

That put a very different slant on things. 

Unlike most of the Bereznik High Command, she took the reports about the Mysterons and their ‘War of Nerves’ very seriously. The bulk of the ruling junta brushed it off as a fabrication the World Government was using to control their populaces, but she had seen enough fragments of data to know it was real and the junta’s refusal to authorise a fact-finding mission was one of her many reasons to clean house with Project Stormcastle - which was why she was here and not at home with Tolya and Bunny: Bereznik needed a new energy source to power the production facilities for Stormcastle and the diamond batteries Vintersol were making would be perfect. ‘But there’s another problem now: he knows that I have a child.’ That thought chilled her to the core. She knew what she could, would, and had done with information like that. What Spectrum could do… she hid her shiver. ‘I will attend to that later. Right now the current mission takes priority.’ Aloud, she asked “The Mysterons are attacking this facility, yes?” 

That he blinked in surprise was very satisfying. A pause as he weighed up what he could say to her, then he nodded sharply. “Yes. Our best guess is that they’re trying to overload something called The Core. If that goes up, our data says it’ll vaporise most of the island, including a great big chunk of the Beerenberg volcano.” 

“Exposing the magma chamber underneath,” Cobra realised. “And when the seawater hits that…” 

“Yes.” The word was grim. “It will aerosolize the radioactive materials and when the ash plume hits the upper atmosphere, the jet streams will carry it across the world. The resulting volcanic winter will be the least of our concerns.” 

Cobra added that to her rapid recalculation of the situation. ‘It’s almost spring, if the sun is blotted out, the crops will fail and my people will starve. The generals might have opinions about it, but there is only one path open to me. But first I need to be certain that their predictions are correct.’ “The threat, Spectrum, I know the Mysterons always issue a threat. What was it?” 

“ ‘At dawn, the home of the winter sun will blot out the world’s light’, and it’s Captain Scarlet.”  

‘Winter sun - Vintersol Company, and their promise of clean energy to light the darkest part of the year, being used to darken all of our skies…’ This time Cobra didn’t hide her shiver. ‘Tolya would appreciate the poetry in that. He would loathe it, but he would appreciate it. Well then, there’s only one choice I can make right now, and I’ve been putting it off for too long. The captain hasn’t tried to kill me yet, and this is a big facility, they must need every set of eyes they can get.’ Decision made, she clicked the safety onto her rifle and slowly lowered it. “I will help you, Captain Scarlet.” 

“Thank you.” He also lowered his gun. “We think the Mysterons have taken the head of security Kurt Lund as their agent. Have you seen him? Big guy, six two, red hair and beard.”   

“I have.” Cobra nodded back the way she’d come. “He’s this way.” 

[missinglinc]

Happy Beyoncday!!!!!

[thelumineers]

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