Off the deep end

Miss Ocean was going through some files while they were in the waiting area. Alex looked out the window into the mountainous landscape.
"Is this your first time in the Alps?" She asked.
Alex looked over his shoulder. "I think we made a stopover in Italy when the 45th was headed for Afghanistan, the Sarge pointed out some famous mountains when we flew in, don't recall the names. Haven't seen much at the time"
"Well, let me be the first to say it then, Willkommen in Deutschland, Herr White."
"If everyone at the base speaks German, I might have a hard time fitting in."
Miss Ocean smiled. "Don't worry, most of them speak perfect English, most of the time."
The sound of an approaching helicopter made Alex look out again. "Is that our ride, ma'am?"

"It's probably another recruiter with his charge, just like us."

Sure enough, as the helicopter touched down two men stepped out, one sharply dressed with a briefcase, the other was thin a thin youth with hair reaching down to his shoulders.

"That guy doesn't look military to me." Alex remarked.

"Who said he has to be?" Miss Ocean asked with raised eyebrows, "Didn't you state that this war needs anyone who is willing and able to fight?

The doors to the waiting area opened and the two men entered. When the sharply dressed man spotted them he smiled. "Good haul this time Felicia?"

Miss Ocean rolled her eyes. "Alex White, meet Reinholt Kralinger, he is a colleague of mine that recruits individuals with great potential like you."

"You still haven't answered my question Felicia." Kralinger said as he dropped himself into the seat across from them.

"Mister White has proven himself in combat already and he has a recommendation from one of Alpha's members."

Kralinger whistled. "So you didn't even have to search for him, just follow Alpha's directions. You get all the easy ones."

Before miss Ocean could respond, Alex got up and stepped towards the young man who was standing a bit uneasy to the side.

"I'm Alex, seems we'll be seeing a lot of each other soon." He said as he put out his hand towards the young man.

I'm Victor, nice to meet you. A voice sounded inside Alex' head.

The young man shook Alex's hand.

Miss Ocean's papers where on the floor.

"He is an Epsilon recruit?"

Kralinger shook his head in denial. "No formal training, no implants or neuro enhancing drugs in his system. As far as we can tell, he is a natural Psionic."

Victor looked at the floor. "I'm sorry if I startled you, Alex, it's hard to differentiate between my inside and outside voice sometimes."

"Is that even possible?" Miss Ocean asked Kralinger, who in turn just raised his hands.

"The people that go into Epsilon already have some form of natural aptitude, or else no amount of drugs or implants could make them psionic, Victor just seems to be a step ahead of the rest of us."

"Unless I try very hard, I can't hear more than people's surface thoughts Miss Felicia, and the medicines against air sickness makes it hard to focus, so you don't need to worry." Victor said.

"Kid, she never asked that question out loud." Alex said, a little apprehensive of his thoughts himself. "So, can you turn off hearing our surface thoughts in any way?" He added.

Victor looked apologetic at miss Ocean, who for the first time since Alex had met her seemed uneasy.

"Usually, I drown out all sounds by listening to music, very loud."

Victor took out an old Walkman and put headphones on as he sat down. Even across the path, Alex could make out some shrieking about pain, death and the devil over a concord of guitars and drums.

"He's not listening anymore?" Miss Ocean asked.

"It's the only way for him to get some quiet, by deafening his normal hearing into sensory overload." Kralinger said, for a moment Alex thought he saw pity in the man's eyes. "And even that is getting harder, since his hearing is deteriorating from it. Unless he gets some real control, he'll be deaf before he turns 22."

"I bet Epsilon is going to be happy with this kind of research material." Miss Ocean said.

"He's not enrolling in Epsilon. He is going grunt, like your boy."

"The commander wouldn't allow that, Reinholt."

"He already has, the boy first peaked our interest after the debacle at Dresden."

Miss Ocean looked at Victor in surprise. "He is Homerun?"

"Hold up, you are now losing me." Alex intervened before Kralinger could answer.

Kralinger and miss Ocean looked at him for a moment. "He's your recruit, you fill him in on our darkest hour Felicia."

"You know that we lost Dresden to the attackers?" Miss Ocean asked as she sat back down.

"Dresden is when the official response to the attacks began, but according to the files, X-Com had been active for about seven months at that point." Alex recited what he had learned from Miss Ocean's files. "During the attack, most of the city was destroyed by the fighting in the streets. What was left standing was brought down by an unknown ordinance. Casualties among civilians and military add up to nearly half a million."

"And yet, we were winning that battle." Kralinger interfered.

"What isn't as widely known," Miss Ocean began, "is that Dresden was the largest operation of X-com up until now. As soon as we realized the scope of the attack, we deployed the entire Delta Division, it was also the first time we openly coordinated our operation with the local military forces. As the battle advanced in our favor we had a several medics leave the front of the assault to start aiding both military and civilians. They were the only Delta units that weren't at ground zero, and we managed to retrieve some of their armor."

Kralinger took over: "Two armors that were recovered had their video logs still somewhat intact. Both had at one point in the attack spotted a civilian engaging sectoid with what seemed to be a baseball bat. The boy was assumed dead in the blast, but the video went viral on base. People started to refer to the boy as Homerun."

"But," miss Ocean interjected. "Homerun was spotted well within the blast range, going by the time stamps on those videos, he could not have gotten out of the city alive."

Kralinger shrugged. "Probably threw up some type of shield. While I was scouting him out, he more than once reacted to something with his powers in a way that he could not recreate under controlled circumstances." He then started smiling. "Best part though, Homerun is completely wrong as a nickname, he was using a wooden samurai sword at the time."

"You mean a boken?" Alex asked.

"Sure, something like that."

"But, if he is untrained and not in full control of his abilities, then why won't he be given to Epsilon for research?" Miss Ocean asked.

"Because we have this volunteer based system that you and I have to work in." Kralinger sighed. "The kid refused to sign anything that would turn him into a lab rat. His contract with X-Com clearly states that he will be given standard military training with some additional training in the use of his psionic abilities. We try to probe him more than that, his contract becomes null and void and we lose a soldier, and since we lost Delta, we can't afford to lose anyone."

Alex shook his head. "You're a top secret worldwide organization, backed by the most powerful nations in the world and you couldn't just kidnap one person in order to research his weird abilities?"

Miss Ocean looked offended. "We try to abide by a higher standard than the aliens. Simply kidnaping and dissecting civilians is not an option."

"Yeah right, you keep believing we are honorable people Felicia. Fact of the matter is, Victor is a German citizen, and any dissecting we would do on him would have to be reported to the council, at which point the German representative would start fussing about it. Had the boy come from some small backwater country that has not even a clue that we exist, he'd have been on the dissecting table a month ago."

"You are making me reconsider signing up for this, Mr. Kralinger." Alex said.

"Don't worry Alex, Reinholt likes to be pessimistic about where this war is headed." miss Ocean intervened.

"Felicia is probably right, we may be forced to do some dirty deeds in order to keep mankind safe, but we're not that desperate. Not yet."

Alex leaned back in his seat, trying to let all this information sink in. Kralinger had taken out a paper called Der Spiegel and started doing a crossword in German, miss Ocean returned to her files. The only sound came from Victor's headphones.

Trying not to be too obvious about it, Alex took a closer look at Victor, when he signed up for X-Com he had expected his fellow soldiers to look like just that, big and battle-hardened. But right opposite him, sat one of his future fellow soldiers, a boy barely twenty years old by the looks of it, wearing a shirt of some metal band called Dimmu Borgir. Victor was about average in height and weight, and Alex had no doubt that he could probably easily lift up and toss the lad, had his appearance been all there was to him.

A month ago, I worried about bullets maybe not working against these things, now I'm sitting opposite from a guy who could toss me around with a single thought.

Victor looked up at Alex, music still screaming through his headphones. Don't worry, we all get used to it.