Title: Lost But Not Forgotten
Author: peaceful_sands
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 39,500+
Fandom Crossover: Dark Angel/The Losers(movie)
Rated : Mature.
Warnings: There are scenes of violence and torture associated with the capture of a kidnap victim and subsequent efforts to re-indoctrinate him.
Summary : Written for the Dark Angel Big Bang - crossover with The Losers - Alec had been working hard with Max to create the new Transgenic Nation, so it was a surprise when he vanished without trace. With the Transgenics trapped inside Terminal City, how could they send out help to track him down and bring him home? The Losers were still on the run, determined to put an end to Max and Wade's machinations when they spotted a familiar face on TV. It had been years since they'd been deployed alongside X5-494 but he'd always felt like one of their own, so maybe it was time to get back in touch.
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author's Note: Thanks to my betas without whom I'd have panicked myself into not finishing. Any mistakes still belong to me. Special Thanks to user sillie82 at LiveJournal for the awesome artwork.
Lost But Not Forgotten
Prologue
"First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not infrequently) to our cost, when we have been wheedled out of them by plausible professions or studied actions. A man's look is the work of years; it is stamped on his countenance by the events of his whole life, nay, more, by the hand of nature, and it is not to be got rid of easily." (Willliam Hazlitt)
X5-494 ran, heart thumping, eyes seeking out shelter, ducking and weaving to avoid the gunfire. He rounded a corner, panting and wondering how he'd managed to get separated from the rest of his unit. He'd done everything he was supposed to and used the exit route they'd agreed on. He was beginning to feel like he'd been laid out as bait to draw fire.
It only stirred him into running faster, blurring over the space between him and the dilapidated buildings across what passed for a road in these parts. He heard a low shout, "494!" and turning his sightline slightly, he caught a glimpse of the other unit's tech guy. "In here!" He darted across the intervening space and ducked behind the wall to join Jensen and saw Pooch there as well.
"Where are the others?" Jensen asked, grimacing as another volley of gunfire flew into the air over their heads. 494 shrugged, not bothering to give voice to his suspicions. He wasn't sure enough of the situation to tell anyone else that he thought they'd gone against orders, deliberately abandoning him to enemy fire.
"Don't worry, we have an exit strategy!" Jensen was almost grinning and 494 found himself dreading what he was going to say next.
"Are we getting out alive?" he asked solemnly, only to be met with a round of laughter from both his companions, before they all hit the ground flat, hands over their heads as there was the shatter of stone splintering and flying into the area surrounding them.
"Napping on the job, ladies?" Roque's voice had X5-494 jerking up in surprise. The other two men just smirked back at their XO who had just climbed over the back wall and into the shelter with them.
"Oooh, you got toys!" Jensen said with humor. 494's eyes fell to the bazooka under his arm and the clear bulges in some of his pockets that hadn't been there when they'd been setting out on this particular foray into enemy territory an hour or two previously, 494 was sure.
494 was used to screwed up and screw ups. Seriously, Manticore anyone? Basement cell after basement cell filled with off casts, the 'nomalies that no one could ever be sure exactly what they were supposed to be. Then there were the successes. Honestly, 494 didn't even know all the components of his own genetic make-up and he came across as 'normal' on most of the comparisons with ordinaries, apart from the super speed, super strength, survival under extreme duress, super soldier side of who he was.
At least he could walk down the street without drawing more than the passing interest of a few people who were looking, for the most part, at his physical attributes in a positive light.
This team though were supposedly all ordinaries. 494 wasn't sure that he didn't have his doubts about that. They were all a little . . . 'off.' Take the Lieutenant Colonel and the way he 'interpreted' orders . . . there was both a looseness and a certainty that he was right, that screamed of X5 and bred for the position although the guy was too old to be an X5 as far as 494 could tell. There was also a rugged realness to Clay's admittedly handsome features that reminded 494 of how so many of the X5s were 'too' good-looking, too picture perfect, no flaws, as if they were each made to appeal to a particular taste in case it helped on infiltration. He wished thoughts like that would surprise him, rather than make him feel just ever more resigned to his situation.
The XO for the group, Roque, was tall and brutal. He was mean and driven and obsessed with his knives, but deadly. He didn't suffer fools at all and 494 could not help but admire his single minded efficiency. It didn't, however, stop him from worrying that the guy might take a dislike to him and follow it up with a knife to the throat while he slept. In truth though, 494 had been following orders too well for that right then. He had drawn all those assumptions from watching Roque's reaction to the tech guy, who in honesty would be enough to wind anyone up.
The tech guy was something else entirely. 494 found himself drawn to the guy, Jensen, whose age wasn't too different to his own. He could talk in a way that 494 didn't think he'd ever really experienced before and he had been accused of having a smart mouth way too often. He was easy on the eyes as well, 494 knew they had thrown a few looser sexual preferences into the X5 mix in case it was useful to have them working undercover and infiltrating but he was also well aware that the powers that be didn't extend the same belief to the rest of their soldiers and so despite this guy's pink shirts when they were not in the field, and overly familiar friendliness, 494 knew he was better off keeping his distance.
Jensen was clever, real clever when it came to computers and hacking and he could talk a mile a minute on just about any subject you cared to mention. 494 found it stimulating. He felt like he was having to use parts of his brain that lay dormant in most of his dealings with ordinaries just to keep up. He liked it, would love to have been able to get used to it.
Or at least once the initial misunderstanding with the sniper was over. Cougar was terrifying, even to someone with 494's heightened senses. He would admit that there was a reassurance to knowing how good at his job the sniper was; more than once now, 494 had been out with Jensen and felt his hackles rise with the sense of 'observed – tracked – vulnerable'. Jensen smirked at him the first time he reacted, looking round for the threat, and then just laughed, saying , "Cougs really is just that good! Don't bother looking, you won't find him." 494 had tried and failed, equally unnerved at the slight snort of what he was sure was disparaging laughter he'd heard through the comms. Jensen had smiled wide and pointed discreetly but equally unerringly in a direction that he hadn't even suspected and heard the quiet "Si" from Cougar indicating that Jensen was in fact right.
Cougar's silence was unnerving as well, 494 didn't think he had heard the guy say ten words in the first week with the unit. It was strange that Cougar's silence affected him so much, when his own unit were almost silent. They weren't like some of the X-7s with the whole Manticore mindmeld deal, but there was no conversation between them at all or not that they had let him in to anyway. But as for Cougar, 494 was adjusting and he wasn't sure they liked each other yet, but there was a healthy mutual respect and 494 was under no doubt that Cougar had his back.
Pooch was another kettle of fish entirely. He was the most ordinary of them all in 494's opinion. There was nothing that screamed 'different' but he was damn good at his job and seriously his skills as a driver were enough to have 494 white-knuckled and fearing for his life. It was as if he thought they had all got X5 regenerative powers, which they clearly didn't but then he was so good he got them free of more than one scrape with little by way of serious injury.
They were a team but they were adjusting. 494 knew they had his back, knew they were trying to fit him intoi their/i team; there was no fixed mould so it was kind of working. He was adjusting too. He had screwed up just enough to feel like he fitted there and he was coming to like his spot and hoping that the army saw fit to leave him there with them and forget all about him. He almost wished that he was ordinary enough to stay as part of a team like this one, but he knew that really all Manticore was doing was widening his experiences to make him blend in more. It wouldn't last; the good things in his life never did.
He wouldn't be left there, no matter how good the fit, because in truth, that wasn't his team, his unit. He loathed his own unit, used to the way they treated him, although clearly Clay's team didn't understand it. In his more optimistic moments, he thought the only reason this mission had gone anywhere near to plan was that he had fallen into the role of some sort of liaison between the two groups. Clay didn't trust the other X-5s, but then they had done nothing to engender trust or even respect. They had made clear their disdain for ordinaries, almost sabotaging the mission with their refusal to follow Clay's orders until 494 pointed out why it was going to work and how with a little tweaking they could play to their strengths. He'd talked them into it, but his insistence that they informed Clay of their 'improvements' nearly earned him another beating.
It wouldn't be the first at the hands of that unit. He didn't fit; they didn't want him there. They knew more about his past than he could reliably remember. There were snatches of memories in dreams, moments when something he saw or heard or smelled would start to trigger something more, something older. He knew the signs, if only from having seen them in others: he had been through re-indoctrination and judging by the headaches that any of those memories seem to trigger, it was something big. He wasn't inclined to prod and poke to find out more.
His unit knew enough to treat him with derision; in their eyes, he was something less than X-5. His memory might have had gaps, there might be things he wasn't sure of, but one thing he knew for sure was that he icould be/i X-5 and he was bred to be superior, to be the ultimate soldier and so he didn't care what the others thought or tried to imply, he knew how good he could be.
Turned out that Roque had no intention of relinquishing control of the bazooka to any of the others, but he was happy enough to hand over the grenades and ammunition he'd acquired before joining them. Once they were all restocked and an interim plan formulated that apparently involved "blowing shit up", "setting the world on fire" and "hauling ass", 494 thought he knew what they were about to do, although part of him thought Manticore needed to reconsider what it called 'Common verbal usage' because there was a point at which he felt somewhat adrift from the conversation until the others had registered his bewildered expression and explained it all more clearly. Five minutes later, he was running down a dirt track with the others and he could see in horrifying Technicolor detail just what "blowing shit up" and "setting the world on fire" looked like and seriously "hauling ass" sucked!
Ten minutes later and Clay approached in a 'borrowed' transport. He didn't actually stop the vehicle, just slowed down enough that Cougar who was on the back could help haul them each up in turn. 494 was surprised when he wasn't the last to be pulled in, it was what he would have expected of his own unit. Roque gave him a shove forward though and so Cougar grabbed his arm and as he started to pull, Jensen reached over to grab his other hand and before he could say a word he was falling gracelessly onto the floor and trying to roll out of the way before they pulled Roque in on top of him. He was not going to tell them that as an X5 they should have left him until last, that he could have run faster, but wasn't going to leave them behind, that he could have jumped in on his own, but didn't want to risk landing on any of them in the process. He tucked himself into the corner of the transport out of the way and waited to see what happened next, because he didn't know how to deal with the situation any more.
They were all on board and Clay had put his foot down to the floor and had them speeding away before anyone asked again about the rest of his unit. He shrugged; he had no idea. There was a knowledge and understanding in their eyes that he didn't get, not sure what it was they thought they had worked out. He was just grateful they didn't leave him behind as well.
He closed his eyes as Pooch and Clay performed some weird and definitely life threatening maneuver that put Pooch in the driver's seat and had Clay shifting to the passenger side without slowing down at all, or at least that was the way it felt, although there was a lurch of more speed once Pooch was settled into position so 494 just quietly wrapped his fingers around the edge of his seat and closed his eyes until the world seemed to balance out again.
X5-494 startled when he felt a hand on his arm. Fool that he was, he hadn't been concentrating. He looked at the hand, followed it up to see Jensen looking at him worriedly. Cougar was passing him something from his pack and before 494 could stop him, Jensen had got a cloth and was wiping blood from a cut on his forehead that he hadn't even noticed. Jensen was quick but thorough and Cougar handed him what he needed without a word. 494 knew he ought to tell them not to bother, he wasn't ordinary, his body should be able to deal with this, but something stopped him and he didn't understand what it was. Roque was shifting his position, pulling 494 round and holding him still. He still couldn't get a word out, didn't know what this game was, but for all the determination and forcefulness, Roque didn't seem to be trying to hurt him and the next thing he was aware of was Cougar moving closer, handing Jensen something that he hadn't seen before Cougar's hands were on him as well.
He didn't get it, didn't understand at all, until he felt the sharp pain of Jensen digging into his side and before he could force them off, pull away, Jensen was saying, "I've got it!" and then the worst of the pain was over and Cougar was passing a wet cloth over the area and they were applying a dressing and Jensen was holding out a piece of shrapnel and 494 knew he should know what it meant, but he couldn't process it right then.
It was quiet in the back of the transport and 494 watched as Cougar checked them each over before the attention turned back to him. He had enough time to clear his head, to understand that, for reasons he didn't understand, this team was worried enough about his injuries to try and fix him up first. As it turned out, his was by far the worst injury, a slice of something that he didn't even notice in the melee across his head and up into his hair line and something sharp and evil embedding itself in his side. He didn't want to see it, although Jensen had offered. This team was worried about him and that was the bit that 494's thought processes kept grinding to a halt on.
They had reached a safe enough distance to slow the transport down a little and try to work out a plan of action, Clay threw Jensen a bag and as the rest of the team watched, Jensen managed to rig up some sort of communication device that he then patched into the frequency their comms should have been on. It was stronger than what they used individually, could pick up fainter signals but there was nothing. 494 began to wonder if maybe the other X5s just hadn't made it.
Jensen's black look suggested something else however, 494 wasn't sure what, until he saw the tech begin to search other frequencies. They heard it then, clear as day, the voice of X5-671, 494's unit leader, not injured, not stressed, just planning and acting as if his was the only unit in the area. 494 didn't know what to say so he stared at the space between his feet and hoped that Clay's team could just forget about what they'd heard and that he could have known what his unit were planning. He could feel eyes on him and shivered. The sound went off and Jensen said, "They fucking left you to it! They left you out there as bait!" 494 could hear the disgust in his voice and tried to keep still, to not press himself any tighter into the corner. He was an X-5, he reminded himself, created to be stronger than this. He tried to draw himself up, to sit straighter, but they were still looking at him and he couldn't look up, he couldn't bear the thought of what he would see in their eyes.
Cougar was the one to shift position. He stepped over Jensen's bag in the middle to stand alongside 494, rested a hand on his shoulder for a moment, just long enough that 494 felt compelled to look up. Cougar nodded, didn't say a word, but his eyes were soft and filled with understanding. He sat down alongside. There was silence, 494 found himself counting the seconds, wondering how long before someone else said something, said what they really thought of him.
Cougar broke the silence and wasn't that just the kicker. 494 was almost shaking with the strain of other people knowing how much of a failure he was, so much that a unit would abandon him, would use him as bait and he wouldn't even know until it was too late. "What now?" Cougar said.
Clay's voice was terse as he said, "Jensen, get that turned back on and tuned in so they can hear every damn word I say. . . "
Jensen flicked a couple of switches and then passed the equipment off to Clay. 494 might have been dreading what came next but he couldn't help feeling a very secret little quiver of pleasure as X5-671 actually goddamned squealed when Clay's voice first started in with no warning. Judging by the reaction of this team, when Clay broke radio contact without giving the other unit any time to question or change his orders, Clay went easy on them. Roque was snarling like some kind of rabid animal as he sharpened one of his knives.
Jensen shifted position but stayed on the floor, instead coming to rest leant back against the bench seat that 494 and Cougar were sitting on between their legs. He gave 494's knee a squeeze before settling back to make himself more comfortable, then turned his attention back to his equipment and his efforts to get through to the military pick up that was due, to arrange exact location and timing
Battered and bruised and still feeling the pull of the healing wound where the shrapnel hit, 494 threw the last of the kit bags to Cougar, who passed it up to Jensen to store inside the helicopter they were about to move out in. The bulk of the weaponry was loaded first and Roque, Clay, Pooch and the helicopter pilot were putting the final touches to the planned route out of the danger zone. The rest of the X5 unit were loitering idly against the wall, soaking up the sun. The Losers seemed pretty relaxed, relieved the mission was over and glad to be heading back to US soil. 494 felt a lightening of his spirit as he watched Cougar deliberately fake throwing a bag without letting go of it and Jensen almost fell out of the chopper as he grasped at thin air. Jensen flipped them both the bird before reaching to snatch the bag from Cougar's hands with an off-hand, "Asshole!" before smirking at the sniper.
"494! Get over here now!" 494 looked over at his unit leader. The glare he received in return was murderous. He looked round, knew the job was done and that he was not just abandoning the other team to finish the loading. He held his head high as he crossed to join his own unit.
"Sir!" he said as he stood to attention. He felt as other members of the unit jostled him, but he didn't react, just kept his eyes straight forward. There was a sudden kick to the back of his knee but he didn't make a sound as he tried to stand his ground without stepping away. It was a struggle that he barely managed.
It wasn't enough though as he felt his chin grabbed and the warm puff of air across his cheek as X5-671 moved in closer. He kept his eyes straight ahead and tried not to flinch as X5-671 sneered, "What game do you think you're playing this time, soldier?"
He didn't know what answer to give so for the moment he remained silent. Loading up was clearly not the answer 671 was going to want to hear. He breathed steadily for a moment, counted the beats until 671 stepped back. "Nothing to say for yourself? We could always see about making that permanent!" Before he could do anything, 494 was pinioned between two members of the unit and 671 was drawing a fist back. He did the only thing he could, bracing himself ready for the first blow.
It didn't come. Instead he heard the Lieutenant Colonel's voice behind him, "Problem here?"
671 was glaring, but there was no answer. "Let him go!" Clay ordered and 494 dropped to his knees as they released his arms, suddenly off-balance again. "If you don't want to be left behind, you'll get in that chopper now!"
The rest of the unit were already moving, heading for the transport when 494 felt a hand go under one arm as he was hoisted to his feet with a sudden jerk and found himself face-to-face with Roque. The man's gaze was appraising and 494 found himself looking away in embarrassment. "You okay?" Roque said, voice quiet despite its gruffness. 494 nodded. Roque shook his head as if he didn't believe it. "Load up now, soldier." It was an order, but it lacked any vehemence.
Clay was watching as well as 494 walked across and accepted Cougar's offered hand as he climbed into the back of the chopper. 494 knew they would be sharing some sort of look that spoke volumes, he had seen them do it before, but he could never decipher what was being said.
There was a sense of relief as Clay swung up into the back and gave the pilot the order to move out. Clay saw him look round to check that they were all on board, then they were on the move.
Clay was glad to have the mission over. Not that that was a particularly unusual sentiment at the time. He wasn't sure where he went wrong with this team, but they seemed to get progressively more ridiculous assignments; ones that no one could reasonably expect to come back from alive.
He hadn't lost a soldier yet, and he was pretty determined that wasn't going to change any time soon, but there were plenty of times when he felt that the deck was stacked heavily against him.
He didn't like the 'unit' that he had been 'given' to work with. They were not right, they were not normal. For fuck's sake, they didn't even have names! How could that be right?
He knew their leader was just waiting for the opportunity to not follow his orders, but he still had no idea why the guy was so antagonistic. Christ, none of them were older than Jensen and seriously, Jensen was just a kid . . . these . . . these 'soldiers', they were babies! Weird and fuckin' evil babies, but babies nonetheless. Clay seriously doubted whether any of them were even old enough to need to shave! It wasn't right.
He couldn't quite decide whether that frightened him more than the way they fought or not. Then there was the silence. That wasn't natural either . . . seriously, Clay had been working with Cougar for the last couple of years and that was a man who took silent to a whole new level, but those kids . . . the silence with those guys was just plain nasty.
He had watched them and he could honestly say he had never seen anything like them before. Most of this strange team were silent; virtual automatons in the back of the van, but he saw a sick gleam in their eyes just before they'd been deployed. He didn't like it; it wasn't normal, the way they worked, the way they relished the blood and gore. He'd felt sickened as he'd seen them hunt down a few of the druglord's minions who'd managed to escape the initial slaughter. They were like animals the way they'd torn the bodies apart. They also had no compunction to avoid civilian casualties, another thing that Clay detested. Fuck! That alone nearly blew the operation when his own team was ready to turn on them for the negligent slaughter of bystanders. It had taken himself and 494 to drag them all out without them killing each other. He didn't want to spend too much time thinking about how he was going to deal with all of that crap when he got them all back to U.S. soil and he also didn't like the thoughts that were going through his mind about what could happen to 494 when he was alone with his unit.
X5 – 494 worried him. If this 'unit' fell under the usual army umbrella, he'd be checking up on the kid, informing the chain of command that he was concerned for the kid's safety in his own team. That avenue wasn't available to him; the usual rules didn't seem to apply. Sure, he would make the complaints, but he had every reason to believe that they would be ignored. He knew the kid was a good soldier, reliable, followed orders, thought stuff through.
Clay could imagine that in a team where he was valued, 494 would be more like Jensen and sure, Jensen had gotten more than the usual share of black marks to his name for insubordination but Clay saw why and had figured out how to utilize the kid's intelligence and play to his strengths without the need for the disciplinary action. Of course, he still had to turn a blind eye to . . . certain less desirable traits like the garish t-shirts and the hacking in his boxers, but Clay counted it a small mercy that he did in fact wear boxers while hacking. After all, things could have been worse. He also figured that DADT applied to more than the usual when it came to Jensen, and he most definitely did not want to know what else Jensen had hacked into in his downtime.
Clay would have been willing to add a permanent sixth to his team, if the brass had ever been going to go for it, but he knew it wasn't an option. This kid would be shipped back to wherever they all came from and Clay doubted very much that he would ever see him again.
They were sat on a military helicopter that was flying them clear of the danger zone and to a regular army airfield from where they would get the next transport plane back to the US. The two units were sat facing each other, expressions of distaste on both sides. X5-671 looked at his unit, who with the exception of494 were ranged to his left and right. They had performed well, even 494 for the most part, although he would be glad to see the back of that particular loser when they returned to Manticore. He also wouldn't hold back on his criticism of 494's 'over-familiarity' with this other unit, his lack of loyalty to his own kind. He would happily tell their superiors at Manticore of every last one of his failings and he would also make sure that everyone else knew of his 'ordinary sympathies'. 494 wouldn't be able to move at Manticore without someone breathing down his back until he knew exactly what his place was.
671's gaze settled on the ordinaries they had been working with, not bothering to hide his disgust at having to follow the orders of their CO. They were . . . pathetic . . . ill-disciplined and inferior. He would have liked nothing more than to fully let his thoughts flow and to have informed this 'team' of how ridiculous they were in his eyes. He knew better though. He was under no illusions that he was being judged on his ability to perform and to lead his unit. This was a test, the same as carrying the weight of 494 was a test.
Both were tests he did not intend to fail.
His eyes slid across to the ordinary tech specialist with utter revulsion. He might have been technologically trained, but 671 was sure it was nothing that he or another of his unit couldn't have learnt to do quicker and with far less pointless chatter given the opportunity. Not that they would ever be given the chance. He had heard the tech say something about hacking into their own government's systems. 671 was astute enough to know that there wasn't any chance of Manticore giving X5s that skill set. They would be too frightened of the backlash. 494 might be the only one to have defied orders, but it didn't mean to say that the rest of the unit were entirely loyal. Judicious – that was the key. Manticore's days were numbered, the days of ordinaries dictating to superior X5s were ticking away; not that 671 was going to risk his ass by precipitating anything, but he was damn sure going to be ready when the chance came.
He sneered as the tech started on another ramble, trying to engage 494 and their sniper in some wild description. It was easy for X5-671 to sit there and picture ways of silencing the fool. He closed his eyes to enjoy the images more fully. An image of the tech, gagged and suspended as he sliced him open, drew a pleased sigh from him.
The image was spoiled as he sensed that he was being watched. It wouldn't have been his own unit . . . they knew better, were probably imagining something similar themselves. His eyes snapped open, glaring round the inside of the transport until they landed on 494. The worm didn't even look away, but 671 could see the analytical appraisal in his eyes, before 494 looked disgusted and turned away.
494 would be made to pay for that. Traitor that he was. Ordinary sympathizer. He knew what he was looking for even if 494 himself didn't remember what he had been before. Sacrificed a mission in an effort to save an ordinary girl. Scum! He could hang with the ordinaries for all 671 cared, maybe hang him first, that would teach him what it really meant to betray your own kind. Of course there would be the added pleasure of knowing that 494 would last longer than any number of ordinaries. It would be worth the effort.
Jensen didn't like the other unit that they had been deployed with. Well, one of them was okay, but the others definitely fell into the category of 'dislike' to put it mildly.
Actually, the one he kind of liked, X5 – 494, which was kind of weird as far as names go, worried him a bit. The whole not having a name thing was . . . disturbing. Jensen had been called a lot of things in his time and not all of them had been complimentary, but he had always hung on to his name like it was part of the real him, even when no one was going to be using it any time soon. Jake, Jacob, Jensen . . . they were all like some ingrained part of who he was. He couldn't imagine not having a name at all and 494 was pretty adamant that he had never been called anything other than that, not unless you count 'soldier' or 'asshole' he tried to joke. Jake tried to laugh, but he didn't really find it all that funny.
X5 – 494 worried him because he didn't fit with the rest of his 'unit'. Jake couldn't help wondering if there was something to the semantics of always using the word 'unit' instead of 'team' that was important there. Sure he knew that on paper he was part of Clay's unit, but in practise they referred to themselves as a team . . . somehow it meant something more.
Jensen had a couple of run-ins with the rest of 494's unit. They thought nothing of jostling him, pushing past him, trying to take his legs out from under him or kicking his chair as they passed. It was pretty pathetic, juvenile stuff and he wasn't sure why they weren't trying to take it further. He was itching for a fight and he knew his own team would have his back – no question. Then again, it was probably better that they waited until the mission was over and they were all out of the danger zone.
There was a malicious gleam in the eyes of a couple of the X5 team that Jensen was pretty sure was supposed to be intimidating. Call him a fool, but he was definitely not going to give in that easily. Mind you, he wouldn't mind having the opportunity for a little payback for the civilian casualties. He had worked with ruthless teams in the past, but they were just . . . animals.
He glanced round the chopper and saw the look of disgust that was being directed at 494, the look 494 was working hard to ignore. He needed to talk to Clay about that, because he really didn't think 494 was safe in that team. The kid needed a transfer out. He didn't fit with them at all. He seemed almost resigned to the civilian slaughter on the first op, but he was a pace behind them all the way, and Jensen hadn't failed to see both the look on his face and the way he behaved. His job it seemed, was to put any survivors out of their misery, the ones who wouldn't survive anyway, but would die painfully. He made it quick. Jensen wondered about that.
Jensen wanted to ask, to pry and poke at it until he understood. The behavior of the others was clearly no surprise, but what did 494's actions say about him? Did they make him a better man than the rest of his unit or not? He hadn't tried to stop them after all. Then on this second mission, they fucked off and left 494, no cover, no warning. Jensen was under no illusions that it was anything less than deliberate.
Jensen would be glad when this mission was over. He wanted to hack a few government files and see what he could find out about this X5 unit and whether there were others like them. They were not stationed on any of the bases Jensen had ever worked out of and no one else on his team seemed to have come across them before, which covered a lot of the US bases. He needed a little more information, 494 was the most likely source of that. He would have to try and get 494 on his own for a bit, might be a good opportunity to check up on him anyway and see if he did want Clay to put in a word on his behalf. For that matter if he wanted, Jensen would be willing to hack some files and get him a transfer if the kid wanted it.
Back on US soil and reporting in at Fort Bragg was as tedious as ever. Clay's team were all tied up with paper work and the usual medicals, while only X5-671 seemed to be under any obligation to report in. The rest of his unit had been put into a temporary barracks, so the growing tension between the two units was no longer an issue.
Although it had to be said that Clay had noticed how each of his team seemed to be able to pass by the other barracks at regular intervals throughout the day. He was pretty sure they were trying to check up on 494. He had done it himself. Mind you, he had also mentioned what he thought was going on in that unit to the brass, who told him to shut up and mind his own business; after all, "they're not regular army ". Clay couldn't help but snort at that – after all, his team weren't exactly regular army either, still it didn't do any good.
In the end, they only caught one last glimpse of X5 – 494 before his unit was shipped off back to wherever they came from. He looked a mess and the mistreatment that they'd thought was going on seemed to be pretty much a certainty, but he was already on a bus heading out and all they could hope was that he would get a transfer to a different unit when he got back.