A/N: So I decided: what if a creepy story Benji had told Ethan in the third movie was real? Slight spoilers for Mission: Impossible III… I guess…

Disclaimer: don't own them :(

Chapter 1

"I don't like this place," Benji whispered under his breath, making his way down the corridor to the control room. The walls looked like they were metallic, and it made every breath echo loudly around the place. "Looks too much like a cartoon bad guy's HQ".

"Aww, you wanted something nice and cozy?" Brandt mocked from where he stood by the entrance, keeping an eye on the guards who were supposed to be there. But they weren't.

"Guess for the next time we should book something of the 'slightly less creepy' category," the Brit retorted, keeping up with the tone.

"Cut it," Ethan interrupted impatiently. "Brandt, how are you doing there? Everything alright?"

"Yeah…" the former analyst sounded surprised about that fact himself.

The mission was coming to its end. All they needed to do was retrieve some data from the computer whose owner, a crazy lunatic who had wanted to set up explosions in several biggest cities in the world, was now dead. The main worry was his minions, about whom the IMF had surprisingly little information.

"Jane?" Ethan asked. He and Carter were both outside, watching around for anyone to approach. "Is it clear?"

"No," Jane breathed. She wasn't sure they saw her but she knew soon she would be uncovered as several men were nearing her.

"How many?" Ethan tensed at his place.

"Lots," Jane sounded increasingly agitated.

"Got it," the leader responded as he jumped up and rushed to her aid.

Brandt froze, thinking whether he should help Jane and Ethan or stay with Benji. The noise he heard from the control room made him end up with his hesitations, and he ran down that very corridor, making loud sounds with every step he took.

Stepping inside the room he saw Benji fighting one of the guards. The guy was huge and looked more like a heavyweight boxing champion. Despite the Brit did his best at dodging hits, the outcome of such fight was fairly predictable. Not wanting to wait for it to happen, the former analyst drew his gun. Aiming at such a giant was quite easy. William was so focused on his task that he missed an important detail out of his peripheral view…

"Look out!" the English-accented voice echoed from the walls for a while after a pair of strong hands wrapped around its owner's throat. Brandt barely had the time to turn his head to see a fist flying in its direction. Catching a punch to the jaw, he squeezed the trigger, as he still had his finger on it. The sound of the gunshot (which is quite a loud sound already, to be honest) was just deafening in the room. For a few seconds everyone stopped, stunned. The first one to get over it was the former technician, using the confusion to his advantage and freeing himself from his attacker's grasp. He quickly picked up his own gun from the floor and hoped to take the sound of another gunshot less painfully, given that he was now expecting it. However, it only increased the ringing in his ears. Having dealt with his attacker, he turned to Brandt, only to see that his friend was dealing with the situation, throwing a final blow at his opponent's skull and sending him falling to the floor. On his way down the guard hit the control panel, sending a few electric sparkles from it before the lights in the room went off.

There were a few seconds during which both agents stood there in the dark, listening to every possible movement. Benji was breathing heavily after being nearly strangled. As the adrenaline was washing away, however, he began to feel something else. Something wasn't right… He stumbled backwards until his back was leaning against a wall. Still trying to catch his breath and feeling an increasing pain, the former technician slid down the wall's smooth surface until he was sitting on the floor.

"Are you alright?" Brandt's voice was somewhere close. "Benji?"

"I-I don't know," the shaky response wasn't something William wanted to hear. As his eyes were now somewhat adjusted to the darkness, he made out his friend's shape by the wall and rushed to it. He laid his hand on Benji's shoulder and winced, feeling it was going wet. With his other hand he finally fished a lighter from his pocket. His heart dropped at what he saw. The former technician's shoulder was a bloody mess. Clearly a gunshot wound. A trace of blood was on the wall, marking the way Benji had slid down it. It didn't take the ex-analyst long to figure out how it had happened, and his own blood ran cold in his veins.

"Oh my God…" he forced after a struggle for his own voice. "Benji, I am so…"

He was cut off by the noise of approaching footsteps somewhere behind him. He turned swiftly, his gun ready for another attack. He was relieved to see Ethan and Jane speeding up towards them. He put his gun in its place, wishing to never even look at it after what it had caused.

"What happened?" Jane asked, staring at both of them as soon as the light from her own lighter caught the Brit's wound.

Brandt's mouth went dry. He swallowed, trying to force himself to speak but the ex-technician was faster.

"My gun f-fell down when I was fighting this guy," he nodded in the huge guy's direction. "And then the other one came and picked it up…" Jane and Ethan nodded in understanding while the tech drew a few long breaths, wincing in pain. "Good thing Brandt showed up in time to take them out".

Brandt wanted to yell at Benji. He felt almost angry at him at this point. And, in spite of this, part of him was grateful to him for not telling the truth to the others. Brandt felt ashamed of that part.

Ethan came up to the computers and wasted no time before taking the hard discs from them. The techs will have fun decoding this, he thought, involuntary catching a flashback to the times when Benji Dunn had been one of those techs.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Brandt sighed, as he was sitting on a couch at his current apartment, staring blankly at the TV screen without acknowledging anything on it. It had been almost two months since the incident, and he never got to talk to his friend about it. While Benji had still been at surgery, he had gotten an urgent call from the headquarters. What was supposed to be answering a few questions turned out to be quite a long journey. When he had come back (just a couple of days before now), the former technician was gone.

Jane and Ethan didn't like the fact that their friend didn't have the time to properly heal before being sent on another mission but they couldn't argue the people at the HQ. And judging from the Brit's worried behavior when they had last seen him, it did seem like something important.

The former analyst hated to feel guilty. And now this burden was squeezing him, almost pressing him to the ground, and he couldn't even talk about it to anyone. All he could do now was wait for his friend to come back. And hope that he would come back.

His grim thoughts were interrupted by a phone call. A bit startled, he looked at the screen to see a familiar name on it…