It was all he could do to put one foot in front of the other. He barely registered the ride in the elevator. His boots hit the plush carpet of the hallway, and he shuffled down to the end of the corridor. He lurched around the corner, hand rising preemptively to grasp the door handle, when he saw Sam leaning against the wall outside his room, cradling her bloodied hand and favoring her right knee.
Strangely, he wasn't put off by her presence. Even Cole's well-meaning but irritating camaraderie would have pissed him off right now. But he had wanted her to look at the jumbled mess of equations and theories on his desk, right? He hadn't anticipated that it would be on the heels of punching Marcus in the face and defending Sam's honor against a bunch of Gorasni rubes. He sighed for the hundredth time that night, and ground the heels of his hands into his eyes, pressing hard enough to see the ghostly afterimages from the corridor sconces.
He took a deep breath and gathered his wits. Sam was a great asset to his team, and she wasn't as irrational as Anya, but she was still a woman, and Baird knew she'd ask questions about the bar fight. Questions he didn't want to answer, questions that shouldn't even have arisen. And she wouldn't be satisfied with "let's talk about it later". He hoped he could quell her curiosity and steer her towards their task. He had been close to the answer for days, and the knowledge that he was mere steps away from the solution had driven him into a manic frenzy that gave him blinding migraines at night.
"Didn't think you'd show," he said, giving her a two-finger salute, striving for his usual air of non-chalance.
Sam rested her head against the intricate wallpaper, unwilling to shift her tired body away from the wall. "You said you needed me, so…" she raised her bloodied hand in front of her, "Ta-da."
The words hung in the air, and Baird was suddenly uncomfortable with the assumptions they raised. He had forcefully entered Sam's life with scarcely any knowledge of possible repercussions, and here she was at his doorstep well past midnight, wounded and limping, all because he asked her to look over something?
Sam turned her head against the wall when he didn't respond. "Hey, Damon. You gonna ask me in? I'm about ready to fall over, here."
He made a face and pushed the door open. "Ladies first."
"Thanks, Damon. You know how to show a lady a good time."
Again, Baird felt the crushing grip of being caught in a situation that had escaped his control. "If tonight was a 'good time' for you, then the past 15 years must have been a regular frat party," he said, following her inside. He mentally winced; the words were his, but they felt forced.
He needed restful sleep, not the fitful, caffeine-laced catnaps he'd been taking, courtesy of stolen coffee from Hayman's private supply. He always tucked away half of any coffee discovery before handing over the rest, at her insistence that she needed it more than anyone else on the island. She'd have his nutsack for a coin purse if she ever caught him. It wasn't the best coffee, but hell, it tasted as good as fifteen-year old coffee could taste, and more importantly, it was a tasty stimulant that didn't come in a syringe. He had nothing against Hayman personally, but she had no more right to it than he did. She could suck it.
"Damon." Sam's voice drew him back to the present. She had settled into one of the plush armchairs in the sitting room, arms thrown over the sides in complete relaxation. Her eyes were riveted on him, a smirk playing at the corners of her mouth. "Are you often given over to flights of fancy? Whatcha daydreaming about?"
Baird saw the opportunity to steer the conversation away from the bar fight. "I'm dreaming of the day we reconfigure the engines around this hellhole."
"Hellhole? It's not all bad. Look," she gestured between her legs at the red velvet upholstery, "My ass has never sat in such luxury."
"Yeah, the gilded edges are nice. It's the poisonous lead underneath that I'm worried about."
Sam sighed obnoxiously. "I refuse to indulge your doom and gloom tonight, Damon. Where's this research I'm supposed to eyeball?"
He gulped down his irritation at being brought up short and strode over to his desk. He scooped up the mess of notes and dumped them into her lap with more force than was strictly necessary. He left her to thumb through the research and hauled out his toolbox. There were a few more servomotors that required tweaking, and he needed something to keep his hands busy anyway; idle hands always led to more introspection than he was comfortable with, and he'd had quite enough of that this evening.
"What's this thing on the engine?" Sam said, breaking the silence.
He glanced at his watch; how had two hours already flown by? He craned his neck over to where she was pointing on one of the diagrams.
"Those are the pistons." He made a motion with his hands. "C'mon Sam, you know that."
"No, asshole, this thing here," She growled, springing up from the chair and shoving it under his nose. It was a old diagram of one of the hotel generator's engines, with differently-colored overlays showing the valves, pistons, and sumps. She yanked the pencil out of his mouth and circled several spots. Baird looked at it carefully, bringing out a few other sketches to compare it with. "Those are the pistons, Sam," he said slowly, almost afraid of her reaction. "Or the piston rings."
She huffed irritably and scribbled an equation on the paper. "Isn't this the normal mixture for Imulsion?"
He eyeballed it critically. "Yes. But any first year engineer could tell you that."
"So what happens if you invert it?"
Baird snorted rudely. "Well, that's a good way to blow yourself up." If all she could come up with was a rehash of the basics of engine mechanics, then he had sorely overestimated her abilities.
Sam took a deep breath and visibly tamped down on her anger. "But Imulsion doesn't combust anymore, right?"
"Right." Baird took a breath of his own, and decided to follow her lead. "The organic quality of Imulsion is what provided effortless combustion. The mixture was dense, unlike fuel from previous eras."
As soon as the words left his mouth, Baird felt his brain shift into high gear, and he suddenly felt lightheaded. He looked down at the diagram, then scratched through the papers until he found the particular diagram he wanted, gleaned from Dr. Fenix's personal research. He closed his eyes, a tapestry of swirling equations and lines dancing into place behind his eyelids. "It's not volatile enough to combust, but if I add this, maybe it could spark, hang on," Baird rambled, shooting up from his seat. He hip-checked a confused Sam out of the way and began rummaging in earnest through the equally cluttered drawers of his desk.
"See, I tried modifying the air intake, then I tried beefing up the spark plugs, but this, if I inverted the fuel mixture percentages and added some of this," he said to her over his shoulder. "Should have thought to look in the library first! Stupid. I'm just fucking stupid. Should have thought about the Bronze Age…"
He leaped to his feet with an arm-load of papers and hastily organized them into piles. Baird whirled around to Sam, who now looked more smug than lost.
"Sam, you're a genius."
"I know," she replied cheekily.
"No, really. You're a genius. Not as smart as me, of course."
Sam punched him in the shoulder. "Exactly why am I a genius?"
He was grinning, genuinely grinning. He shoved a handful of scribbled-on papers with water rings at the corners into her hands. "You just gave me the missing piece to the Imulsion conundrum." He said the last word in a singsong voice.
Sam snorted and quirked an eyebrow in disbelief. "How so? I understand engines just fine, but you know I'm not exactly a quick study in fuel refinery and power conversion."
Baird shook her rather hard by the shoulders, making her drop the papers all over his feet. "Exactly. I was so bogged down in the complex details that I couldn't see the big picture."
Sam made a face. "So I'm an accidental genius, eh?"
Baird gave her a beatific smile and slid his hands up her neck to cup her face. Before she could recover from the shock of such an intimate gesture, he patted her cheek none-too-gently and said, "Then you're an idiot savant. Whatever."
She planted a hand on his chest and pushed him away. "Gee, thanks, asshole."
He continued to grin, his expression one of amusement mixed with respect. "Thank you, Sam."
Sam smiled at his earnestness, her heart speeding up. His touch still lingered on her neck. "What would you do without me?"
"I would have figured it out eventually, of course."
She rolled her eyes. "Don't go tripping over your false modesty."
Baird tilted his head saucily to the side and made a show of looking pious. "I can't help it if I'm blessed with divine intelligence." She made to punch him, but he blocked her fist and dodged it easily. The movement sobered both of them immediately. Breakthrough or no, he couldn't avoid tonight's events forever. And what if that dumbass Gorasni made reprisals? He cycled through several introductory lines, but all of them were either too revelatory or too vague.
"Yeah, that reminds me…" Sam said, taking advantage of his indecision. "Where does a blueblood kid pick up Pesangai?
"I wasn't Marcus, determined to be the opposite of my parents," he said too quickly. Why did everyone always draw that parallel? He and Marcus weren't twins by any means. "It came down to bullies. I was tired of being picked on. I asked my parents for self-defense classes."
"I'm guessing they said 'no."
"Yeah, more like 'no fucking way'. So I hung around the dojos after school, picked up what I could, researched the rest. I guess I could have enrolled myself; it's not like they ever cared where I was." Why the hell was he talking about his parents? Sam just had this way of turning him into a babbling brook.
"You mean you're self-taught?" She leaned over the desk, mouth open in surprise. It was so out-of-character that it would have been humorous if not for the subject matter.
Baird blushed furiously and scratched the back of his head, embarrassed that she was impressed, but also strangely hurt by her blithe indifference. There was nothing funny to him about getting beaten to a pulp every other day during his youth. "Uh, mostly. The rest I figured out the old-fashioned way."
Sam's eyebrows shot into her hairline. "More research?"
He fixed her with a stare. "Trial and error."
Something in her expression softened, and if she understood that her reaction had bothered him, it didn't show because she didn't apologize.
"So, you kept up the training?" Her voice was rougher now, approaching that husky drawl of hers that crawled down his spine to his hips and made it hard to focus.
"Yeah. Never got much chance to use it after E-Day, but you never know, right?"
"Right." Sam thumbed through the diagrams again, pausing on the sheet with sketches of the huge generators that had powered the Maelstrom. There were several stars drawn in the corner in red ink. "Is this what you're going to tinker with first?"
"No way. If I fuck that up, it would take me months to fix it. I'm starting out small―-the ATVs."
She smacked her face lightly with the pile of papers. "Of course. Makes total sense. I must be more tired than I thought." Sam tapped the paper stack into order on the edge of his desk and laid it aside.
He caught how she tried to hide the small wince as the papers rubbed against her injured hand. For the first time that night, he allowed himself to be truly concerned for her. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, or the triumph of the Imulsion breakthrough. He marveled at their wanton disregard for any injuries that were less severe than 'sucking chest wound' and 'intracranial hemorrhage'. Sam was tough; he'd have to approach this particular topic with caution: something he wasn't used to doing. Telling her to attend to her wounds would only make her prickly.
He sidled up to her and reached out wordlessly. After enduring a searching glance, she hesitantly placed her hand in his, palm up. The lacerations were beginning to scab over, but tiny slivers of glass still gleamed in the deepest cuts. She hadn't cleaned it yet. She came straight to you, remember? He pressed gently on the heel of her palm, testing the crusty edges of the wound. Sam had not looked away from his face, and he felt her gaze burning into his forehead.
"You should see the other guy," he said, finally meeting her dark eyes. The tension stretched between them for several seconds before Sam relaxed in his grip.
"Been a while since I've used any kind of blade," she said agreeably, playing along.
Baird quirked an eyebrow. "Really? Because you kicked his ass. With one hand." He led her into the bathroom and unzipped the medical kit on the counter. He withdrew the tweezers, and laid aside a folded piece of gauze. "I was genuinely hoping you'd hit an artery, and the world would be short another asshole," he confessed, before she had a chance to tell him that she was fine and didn't need his help.
She colored a bit at his compliment, and a smug, satisfied look surfaced on her face. "I was rather spectacular, wasn't I?" Sam said, preening.
"Absolutely," Baird agreed, extracting several slivers and laying them aside on the gauze. He flicked on the tap and dunked her hand unceremoniously under the stream of hot water and scrubbed with the carbolic soap. "I especially liked your improvisation. It's not every man who can say a chick beat him with a beer bottle in a fight that wasn't over welfare checks."
Sam rolled her eyes dramatically. "Are you saying I'm uncouth?"
He withdrew a shard of glass that had escaped his attention and began looping a clean bandage over the area. Sam cleared her throat loudly. "Well, are you? Am I," she paused a moment to think, "boorish?"
There was the tiny hint of a threat in her tone; Sam certainly didn't like being kept waiting, did she? Baird made a mental note to dissect that later when he was alone. He tied off the bandage and fixed her with a pitying look. "Whoa, Sam, slow down on those dictionary words. People might think you're flirting with me."
Her shocked expression quickly morphed to one of indignation. She shoved him back against the counter and strode past him to the door. "Samantha, I'm joking," Baird said, grinning like an idiot, even as his stomach plummeted into his feet. Didn't she know he was kidding? Women had a supernatural ability to send mixed signals. He heaved an internal sigh and started after her. "Samantha, this―"
"I trust you can work out the repair schedule for this week without my blindingly brilliant genius." Sam opened the door and stepped into the hallway, fighting to keep her poker face. It was just so easy to get Damon. "I'm going to enjoy a nice brandy courtesy of Mr. Wallin before retiring to my chambers for my nightly slumber. Good evening, Damon." She turned around and bowed deeply, not trusting herself to catch his eyes or her performance would fall apart. Suddenly his feet were in her vision, and she tried to shut the door on him, but he arrested its movement. He drew her hand up, forcing her to straighten.
"Good night, milady," Baird drawled in the puffed-up voice he normally reserved for making fun of Marcus. He chastely kissed the top of her hand, amusement sparkling in his tired green eyes, before releasing her and quietly shutting the door. Sam tried to think of a witty retort, but the brush of his lips was overloading her brain. After a moment's thought, she limped back down the hallway to the elevators, already replaying the events in her mind. She hadn't been joking about her nightcap.
"So if we saved the world, how come we keep pulling the graveyard shifts?" Jace said, glancing at Clay over the rim of his cup. Cole had given them hot tea to try and ward off the unseasonably chilly winds coming off the waves. It was more a cup of hot water, but Jace wasn't complaining. He remembered many snow-filled nights where he would have killed for a cup of anything hot.
"I'd rather be hauling my ass around on some quiet game trail than be out in the open, broad daylight, with grubs popping up behind a barricade to Hammerburst my head off."
Jace took another sip and contemplated the bricks under his feet as they passed through yet another park on the way to the start of their patrol route. "Good point," he yawned.
He'd had the last three days off, but he hadn't slept well. It was starting to infringe on his normal calm. Jace worked quietly to adjust his attitude to a more cheerful one. He cycled through one of his many mantras: Happy to be alive. Happy to have all of my limbs. Happy to be unhappy instead of dead. He found himself perking up. Perspective really was important.
Anya had downsized patrol routes on the far side of the island from four Gears to just two, and patrol time had lengthened as a result. All in all, it would take an hour to reach the game trail, about four to conduct patrol, and an hour to make it back to the hub. A waste of the day, but at least it promised to be uneventful, Jace reasoned. "Didn't you mention some kinda bee in Anya's bonnet?" He asked his friend.
Clay nodded and drained his cup and cast it aside on the grass."Yup. Reeves and his buddy didn't rendezvous with Anya last night. Got her panties in a twist over it."
"Why's she so torqued out? Guys half-ass shit all the time around here."
"You know how she is, worried about danger. Funny right? Because she's sleeping with Mr. Dangerous himself."
Jace privately thought that Clay was just as scary as Marcus when it came down to brass tacks, but he kept his comments to himself. Clay hated compliments.
"He was probably too tired to come all the way back last night," Clay continued. "And it's dark as fuck once you leave the hub."
Once they reached the beginning of the game trail, both men pushed into an easy jog. The ever-present beach was to their left, about 100 yards away, dotted with the occasional waterlogged Locust corpse. To their right, the foliage rose up steeply around them, with gaps providing only the briefest glimpses at the distant cluster of buildings.
Jace had walked this patrol last week, and he looked for the familiar markers: the pile of rocks, the remains of an old bridge, and the bright orange flags stuck into the ground that marked the patrol where the natural path on grass and stone was hard to see.
They had just reached the turnaround loop when a familiar smell caught Jace's attention. It was heavy, gamey, and tinged with the unmistakable odor of old blood.
"You smell that?" He asked quietly, unslinging his gnasher. He chanced a quick look over his shoulder.
Clay already had his weapon drawn and leveled at the trees. "Some things you don't forget," he whispered back.
No kidding, and the stench of dried blood was one of them. Jace indicated he would sweep the shore side of the path. Clay nodded and vanished into the trees. Jace came across the corpse of a Berserker on the beach, nothing but a collection of marbled bones and swollen flesh. He bent over to give the dead creature a quick sniff, just to make sure.
"Jace! Jace!"
He whipped around even before Clay had stopped shouting and stormed up the incline to the trail, plunging into the foliage at a run. Gnasher low and primed, the adrenaline and fear surging through his chest, it was all somehow comforting, like meeting an old friend. Jace felt himself going through the ritual of dismantling his fear, turning it into the calm litany that provided his battle frenzy with a power source.
He abruptly crashed into Clay, who was standing several feet away from a monstrous pile of red and black gore covered in a thick blanket of insects.
"Ugh, what is that?" Jace said, covering his mouth with his hand reflexively. He was glad he had woken up too late this morning to avail himself of breakfast.
Clay stooped to pick up a stick, and approached the body. He waved away most of the insects, and crouched down a few feet away. He angled the stick into the swarming mass of tissue and poked and prodded. Jace was about to crack a joke when he saw Clay's eyes widen. He shifted his weight forward, closer, and moved a meaty blob aside slowly. He tentatively reached into the gore with his bare hand, intent upon something Jace couldn't see.
Clay suddenly snatched his hand back as if he'd been burned; something metallic glinted in his fist. "Oh, fuck, fuck. Fuck." Clay turned away from the sight and puked up his meager breakfast. He coughed raggedly a few times and threw up again. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, ran a shaky hand through his hair, trying to collect himself.
Jace flicked his attention from the mess to his friend, deeply unsettled that Clay had lost his stomach. This was the guy who regularly stacked wounded Locust in bundles and chainsawed them until he was shoulder-deep in giblets.
"What?" He asked, afraid he already knew the answer.
Clay had turned around, his expression stony. He rubbed his forehead with his clean hand, then thrust his fist out for Jace to see. Jace knew instantly what they were.
"It's Reeves. He must have been attacked by an animal or something." There was a lilt to his friend's voice that Jace had only heard when Clay got roaring drunk and talked about his brothers.
Jace stared at the corpse in horror, now able to pick out the vague shape of bones, dull white slivers poking out of the putrescent flesh.
"Do you think it was..."Jace started to say, but Clay shook his head.
"No, not the grubs. This," he gestured at the pitiful remains, "this looks like an animal attack."
"Looks more like he was pulped by a Grinder."
Neither of them voiced the unspoken question: Where was the other guy?
"We should move him-it. We should move it," Jace said. Clay just nodded, clearly far away from the sad spectacle before them. Jace suddenly remembered the psych portion of basic training: 'in cases of field trauma, it's best to dehumanize your enemy/victim. This allows you to operate at maximum efficiency, both for yourself and your fellow Gears'.
But what happened internally when you stopped seeing people and started seeing meatbags? No one Jace trained under had ever thought to address the consequences of such tactics. Maybe no one thought they'd ever see an end to the war.
He looked to Clay, hoping he'd take the lead, but his friend was staring into the horrific mess, a stormy, faraway look in his hazel eyes. After the initial survey, all Jace could stomach looking at were the sticky cog tags. He sighed and knelt before Reeves, shrugging out of his windbreaker.
"Wait," Clay barked, right as Jace began covering Reeves with his jacket. Jace froze. "Shouldn't we look for evidence?"
Jace gave his friend a sympathetic look. "Evidence? On this? We don't know what to look for, and hardly anything to look at. We don't have dental records or any of the shit we used to have to I.D. people."
"But Fenix will probably want to see this. He might know forensics, right?"
Jace studied the bigger man, trying to figure out what Clay was driving at. Avoidance didn't normally figure into his behavior. "Fenix treated school like a buffet: little of this, little of that, from what I heard. Baird would be our forensics man, if anything."
"Someone should get the Doc," Clay said suddenly, seizing on another train of thought. He shook his head and took a breath, and something of the Grub-Killer came back into his demeanor. "I'll, uh, go get her if that's ok. Do you mind staying with the victim?"
The last thing Jace wanted to do was hang out with a body that he had seen playing cards not two days ago, but he understood that Clay was desperate to get away. Reeves had been in his cave detail several times, so he knew him far better than Jace ever had.
"Yeah, man. Just hurry up."
He stared after where Clay had disappeared, already anxious for his friend to return. He consciously turned away from the remains and began reciting the lyrics to a song he often had stuck in his head, trying to put himself at ease. He didn't holster his gnasher, though.
The group walked down to the makeshift morgue to speak with Doc Hayman soon after receiving her summons. What was left of Pvt. Preston Reeves had been carted off to her to see what information could be gleaned from the injuries he sustained. Baird noticed that Cole had wanted to shy away from the meeting: he didn't want the images he'd see today to taunt him during the night. He knew that Cole didn't have a problem with blood or gore - none of them did, they'd been covered in both more often than not in the last decade or so, thanks to the chainsaw bayonet– but, he didn't like the feeling of helplessness that came when he saw his compatriots in the aftermath of a violent death.
The smell of death hit Baird before they even entered the room, and it clocked him in the chin with a sound uppercut once they passed through the swinging doors to find the doctor.
"Damn," Sam whispered to herself, pressing the back of her hand to her nose and mouth. Baird grunted out an agreement and saw that they all wore similar pinched expressions of disgust.
"Doctor Hayman!" Marcus called, not seeing the older woman in the blindingly white room.
"I'm here Sergeant." The doctor quickly entered the room to meet them. "You might want to suit up unless you feel like getting covered in viscera." She gestured to a nearby wall that housed gowns and gloves for them to use.
Once they were all properly dressed, they passed through the clear plastic panels and into the morgue to see Reeves' remains. It was the first time any of them had seen the injuries that killed the young man and, even with their combined histories of violence, were taken aback by what they saw; Reeves was practically unrecognizable even after the blood had been washed away. To Baird, what was on the table looked less like a corpse and more like poorly tenderized meat. He heard Gus swallow hard a few times, trying to force his gorge back down. What the hell could have done this?
"What are we looking at, Doc?" Marcus growled out. Baird was having a hard time reading his expression. Marcus was working that heavy browed look that cast deep shadows over his blue eyes and made him completely inscrutable, but Baird assumed that what he was seeing was a mixture of repulsion, anger and worry.
Hayman gripped one of the corpse's arms and folded it in, moving the loose skin back to show them deep grooves in the exposed ulna. Baird swore he could just see a hint of red bone marrow towards the ends of the scratches. He felt a stab of pity for Reeves – his final minutes must've been terrible.
"It looks like some sort of predator got a hold of him. I couldn't even begin to tell you what it is, though. We don't know anything about the flora and fauna on this island." Hayman moved around to let the group get closer to the corpse to see where the skin was ripped and chunked . "These look similar to what I used to see when soldiers came to me with wretch injuries, but I've never seen anything like this – not with the cuts deep enough to damage the bone."
"What happened to his stomach?" Anya asked. Her question drew Baird's attention down to the ruined hole where his internal organs used to be. He gagged and took in a deep breath, trying to ease his roiling gut, only to gag once more as the horrific smell assaulted him and dared him to inhale that deeply again.
"That's the other odd thing. It looks like Reeves was preyed upon as food. You can see where there are parts that were bitten off. Locusts and Lambent never did that. We're dealing with an animal here."
Baird shook his head. "Does that make it more dangerous or less?"
"You tell me, Corporal. Is your peril greater dealing with something that has higher thought processes and sees you as an opponent or something that has a rudimentary reasoning system and sees you as food?" She shrugged. "I don't know. I can tell you, however, that short of being caught by a frag or an exploding Lambent, I've never seen an injury quite like this. We'll all need to be careful and vigilant."
Hayman looked at the body and sighed tiredly. "Whatever happened, this young man fought back, he tried to protect himself. There's something deadly out there, ladies and gentlemen." The doctor pulled the stained sheet back over the cadaver and ushered the squad back into the main room.
"Anybody up for lunch?" Baird quipped. He was met with varying degrees of disgusted looks from the group and took an involuntary step back, holding his hands up in surrender. "Whoa! Sorry."
"You're hungry after that?" Gus asked him. His face was still a little wobbly from the urge to wash the walls with vomit so Baird forgave his incredulity. "I don't think I'm going to eat for a week."
"Really? Because Dizzy and his little helpers are serving up pork chops tonight." Baird raised an eyebrow at his friend, goading him.
"I'm not going to eat until dinner time." Gus amended, nodding to himself in satisfaction. Baird started to respond but Marcus interrupted the conversation.
"Any chance we could get back on track?" he asked, eyeing them both.
"Back on what track, precisely? We'd been walking in silence for five minutes." Baird shot back acerbically. Marcus made a production of relaxing his shoulders after they'd tensed at Baird's response. They might be better friends now than before, but there were still times when it was all Marcus could do to not knock the engineer on his ass when he shot his mouth off.
He turned and sent the younger man a cold glare, but Baird only rolled his eyes and shrugged.
"We need to work out our next move. Everyone get what you need and meet me in the common room in twenty minutes." Marcus waited for acknowledgment from each person before turning on his heel and heading to the elevators with Anya.
"Somebody is going to slap the shit out of him one day," she said from beside him. "Please, God, let it be me." She mocked a prayerful pose before letting her hands drop to her sides.
"Baird isn't so bad." Marcus told her.
"Oh, because you're good friends now, right?" she snapped.
Marcus sighed and didn't answer her. He leaned his head against the glass and wondered to himself when the fuck they were going to catch a break.
Twenty minutes later the team was sitting around the coffee table in the common room near Marcus and Anya's quarters. Marcus surreptitiously eyed each member, trying to determine where each one was emotionally. They were all putting on brave faces, but he knew that they were more affected by Reeves' death than they let on. They had gone just long enough without any of their people dying that this felt like the first time all over again. Marcus couldn't decide if it was a blessing or a curse. On one hand, he hated that it drummed up all those old memories of dead comrades, but on the other, he was relieved to find out that he wasn't so calloused and desensitized that he couldn't be stirred by the passing of another person. Dom's face flashed in his mind's eye before he mentally batted it away; he needed to focus on planning their next steps.
"We're going to need to find our other guy." he said. "Anya, who was assigned to partner with Reeves?"
"Uh," Anya flipped through her notes. "That's Johenes."
"I need you to get us information on what route they were taking – our best bet is going to be retracing their steps."
Anya nodded without looking up and made a note to herself on the pad she'd brought along.
"Baird, Cole, pull Jace and Carmine later on to go over the route information once Anya gets it to you. I want the four of you to take the reins on the search." Marcus would've liked to have split them up in order to spread the people he trusted the most into different areas, but he knew that the two men functioned better when they were together; Baird didn't have to worry about how to convey a message without pissing everyone off, and Cole didn't have to worry about Baird's well-being. Marcus knew the former Thrashball star watched his younger friend like a hawk – especially after the system shock of Dom's death.
"What about me?" Sam queried. She was eager to help out – Sam's main drive was to protect her friends and family.
Marcus eyed her a moment. "How's that knee?" He hadn't forgotten how badly she'd been limping when she came to fetch him to break up the infamous bar brawl. She'd told him afterwards that 'one of those Indie fuck-sticks' mule kicked her during the fight.
"It's fine. I checked with Doc Hayman and she said it's just some heavy bruising, but no real damage."
Marcus nodded. "Okay, then. First, team up with Anya. I want the two of you to work out a security plan. Put the squads together and make up the routes. I need the number of boots on patrol doubled and try to get some overlap on each detail just in case something goes down. After that, Anya, you stay on comms – each patrol needs to check in every hour. Sam, you'll go with me. We'll fill in whatever blanks need filling for security."
He made sure that everyone understood their roles before standing from his seat.
"The search will start early tomorrow, so let Jace and Carmine know tonight – Anya will have the trail information ready for you first thing. Everyone try to get some rest - we need to be fresh in the morning." The group dispersed as he and Anya walked back to their room. Marcus sat heavily on his side of the bed after they entered.
"What's wrong?" Anya asked, scooting her knees up behind him to massage his tense shoulders.
Marcus dropped his head and sighed at both the pleasure he felt at her touch and his own disquiet about the unfortunate turn of events.
"I'm just wondering if I'm making the right decisions here. Trescu asked me why they follow me and I couldn't answer him. I don't know why." Anya's hands paused in their ministrations briefly before they regained their rhythm.
"I think you're doing that best that anyone could do. No one expected to get marooned on this island and certainly no one expected to encounter any violent animals here. You can't know everything, Marcus. You can only act on each unpredictable situation as it's presented to you." She leaned in to kiss the nape of his neck. "And we follow you because you're a good leader – we respect you. Besides, given your part in war these last few years, there isn't anyone better suited for the job."
Marcus craned his neck to look at her disbelievingly from the corner of his eye.
"I know. Bullshit." Anya smiled sheepishly for a second. "I guess the real answer is that I don't know why we're willing to follow you to such ends. It's just... a quality about you. Your particular brand of mystique." She shrugged. "What makes anyone a leader? Why did we follow Prescott all the way to near extinction? It's something about you, Marcus. It's inexplicable."
Marcus turned forward and sighed. "I never wanted to be in charge. I never wanted to be in a position to send Gears to their potential deaths."
Anya wrapped her arms around his broad chest from behind. "I know. But here you are."
Marcus barked out a laugh and nodded his head. "That's about the shape of things, isn't it? Here we all are."
"We'll make the best of it, Marcus, all of us. And, no matter what happens, I'm with you."
He grasped Anya's arms and maneuvered her forward and around to his front before pulling her into a kiss. She quickly pressed her chest to his and straddled him, deepening the contact. She ground her hips into his, swiveling them the way she knew he liked and letting him know that tonight wasn't ending with just a kiss.
"I thought I said to rest up." Marcus joked lightly even as he trailed his hands up her sides to cup her breasts.
"Mm hmm. After." Anya pressed into him again, already slipping her hands under the hem of his soft t-shirt.
The sun had only been up ten or fifteen minutes, but Sam had been awake for the better part of an hour. She knew that Baird's squad would move out early this morning to retrace the route that the missing recon detail had taken. Given the state of poor Reeves' body, she doubted they'd find anything pleasant. Sam's worry for the men in general, and Damon specifically, had kept her up most of the night. She had tossed and turned, her active imagination showing her every horrible way that her friends could be hurt.
Sam pulled out from her fetal position and rolled onto her back, stretching briefly. She levered herself into a sitting position and felt her dark hair brush about her shoulder blades. She normally kept it short, but had been too lazy in past months to cut it, even though it irritated her. Sam swung her legs over the side of the bed and dragged her toes back and forth in the soft carpet as she thought about the upcoming mission. A knot of dread grew in her stomach; she didn't want them to go. The soldier in her understood the necessity – they had to find the missing Gear, dead or alive – but the friend in her wanted them all to stay where she could see them until this mess was resolved. Marcus could send whomever he wanted as long as it wasn't Damon or Cole or Jace or Carmine. She quietly scoffed at herself. She knew how capable these men were. More importantly, she knew that Gus would never let anything happen to Damon – he'd guard him with his life if it came down to it.
Sam's stomach did a greasy roll at the thought of either man being hurt or killed. She was moving towards her hotel room door before she even realized it. She didn't bother with shoes or a bra, or with changing out of the shorts she'd slept in. It was early yet; she doubted she'd meet anyone on the way up.
Sam knocked quietly when she reached Damon's door and waited impatiently for him to open it. She was just about to try again when it swung open to reveal a shirtless Damon Baird. She forced herself to stop molesting him with her eyes and looked up to meet his quizzical green orbs.
"Sam? What's up?" Damon asked, moving aside to let her in.
"Couldn't sleep." she answered, looking around the room. Damon's kit was laid out meticulously on his bed. He must've been up a while, too. She could see where he'd been cleaning his weapons at the desk on the far wall.
"Why not?" He moved around her to grab his cotton shirt off of his chair and pulled it over his head. Sam briefly mourned the loss and moved to sit in an open space on his bed.
"Just... worried, I guess. We don't know what's out there." Sam traced the shapes on the duvet as she spoke, not wanting him to see the naked fear that was doubtlessly showing in her eyes just then.
"That's true, but we're not going in unaware this time. Whatever it is, it'll have a hard time catching us off guard." Damon shoved some of his armored plating aside and sat in front of her, close enough that their knees touched. "Anyway, we've dealt with worse, if you recall. You were there."
Sam huffed out a laugh. "I was worried then, too." She smiled ruefully at Damon and noticed that his eyes quickly flicked from her breasts to her eyes. She became hyper-aware of the fact that she'd forgone a bra when she decided to come see him. Sam felt her body flush with heat and she hoped that her suddenly hardened nipples weren't showing too obviously through her thin top. Sam mentally wrestled the horny demon that lived in her loins and beat it into submission. Now is not the time for that.
"Are you cold?" Damon asked suddenly.
"What?" Sam ripped herself from her thoughts to focus on the blonde in front of her.
"You have goose bumps. Are you cold?" Damon ran a warm hand down her arm as if to show her where they were.
"No, I.." No, I just want us both to take our clothes off and – stop it! Sam mentally slapped herself, wishing she had a bucket of ice water. Damon cocked his head at her, but didn't pursue the line of questioning.
"What made you come up here? Dizzy probably had breakfast ready for the early birds."
"I wanted to see you." Sam sighed internally at the statement. "I mean, I wanted to check in before you all left."
"Oh." It was his turn to avoid eye contact. "Did you go to the others?"
"No, just you," she answered. Her stomach tightened in anticipation, but Damon didn't respond. He only looked at her as if sizing her up. Sam felt a charge in the air although she couldn't pinpoint what it was.
"I wanted to tell you to be careful. And to be sure and come back," she continued.
Damon blinked at her and shifted to sit akimbo in front of her. "Gus is worried, too. He hasn't said anything yet, but seeing Reeves got to him."
"Were they friends?" Sam asked.
"Everyone is friends with Gus." He reminded her, laughing quietly.
"Do you think he's scared?"
"He'd be crazy not to be." Damon shrugged and looked around the room as he chose his next words. "But, it isn't so much fear as exhaustion, I think. We were supposed to be safe. The war is over, but here we are again wondering which of our buddies is going to get killed next. It's tiresome."
Sam moved closer to him, trying to offer whatever comfort she could. Even though the two of them had gotten a lot closer of the last days and weeks, this was the first time he'd talked to her with such candor. Damon Baird was never without his armor of sarcasm.
"I mean, don't get me wrong, Gus is the bravest man I know, but seeing so many people die… it gets to him. Well, it gets to everyone, of course, but Gus cares so much – even about people he doesn't know. I sometimes wonder how he carries all of that around. I couldn't." The look in Damon's eyes as he spoke was something Sam couldn't put a name to.
"But, don't you already? You have friends that you care about." Sam lifted her other leg onto the bed to mirror Damon and rested her elbows on her knees.
"True enough. I guess I don't understand how he can like everyone he comes across." Damon chuffed a laugh, "I should be thankful, though. Otherwise, he wouldn't be friends with me. I'm not exactly a fun guy to be around."
"Don't sell yourself short, Damon. Sure, you're a prize winning asshole sometimes, but you come around eventually," Sam teased.
Damon sent her a half smile and rolled his eyes. "Not really. That may just be specific to you and Gus." He thought a moment, "And Bernie."
"Oh, I feel so special, Damon!" Sam laughed out, patting him on his knee. She glanced at the armor plating strewn about the bed and quickly sobered up. "What do you think you'll find out there?"
Damon sighed heavily. "Ideally? Johenes huddled in some hole waiting for back-up. Most likely? Bloodied COG tags." He shrugged and shook his head. "I'm hoping we don't run into whatever mauled the fuck out of Reeves."
Sam felt worry bubble up in her chest and wind its spindly fingers around her heart. All the horrific images she'd conjured up while she slept ran across her mind's eye at high speed. The thought of her guys meeting up with some unknown threat and her being too far away to help made her feel useless and afraid.
"Promise you'll be careful and look out for each other." She reached out and gripped his forearms tightly, trying to convey how serious she was in her request.
"Yeah, of course we will." Damon's eyebrows had shot to his hairline at her vehemence.
"Right. Say it, though. Promise me."
Damon watched her for a few silent moments before responding.
"Okay, I promise." He broke eye contact with her when he said it and Sam couldn't identify the expression in them when his eyes floated back to her.
She didn't think very much about her next actions. She followed her instincts and hoped that she hadn't been misreading the signals. Sam transferred her grip to his shoulders for leverage and pulled herself towards him. She paused when she got close, giving him a chance to pull away. When he didn't she closed the distance between them and pressed her lips to his. The kiss was borderline chaste, but Sam reveled in it all the same. She sighed through her nose before pulling back, allowing a few scant inches of space between them. Sam licked her lips and opened her eyes to watch him, trying to gauge how he was taking it.
She noticed the look of uncertainty showing in his eyes before they flicked back down to her lips. She took in a breath to speak, but Damon had already slid his hands to the nape of her neck and pulled her back down to him. She didn't try to stifle the quiet whimper that escaped as heat flooded her body again. Sam moved her hands down and around Damon's back, encircling him with her arms.
Finally, she thought as she leaned into him. Damon deepened the kiss and moved his hands from the back of her neck to trace his calloused fingertips along either side of her collar bone and between her breasts, coming to rest on her hips. He finally pulled back from her for breath and loosed a quiet laugh.
"Well, that was sudden." He said, trying to escape the heaviness of the mood. The humor fell flat, though, and Sam could still read the uneasiness in his face. Her stomach clenched at the thought that maybe he hadn't wanted what she'd wanted. She forced a smile onto her face and tried to play along with him.
"I figure making out with you is a sure-fire way to kick-start your sense of self preservation." Sam fell back from him, folded her hands into her lap and looked away. She felt like a fool. "Anyway, I'd better let you finish preparing."
She tossed him a tight smile and made her way to the egress.
"Sam…" he called after her. "Samantha. Hang on a minute."
She turned halfway to him, her hand still on the door handle ready to make a quick get-away if this turned into a 'it's not you, it's me' speech.
"Look, I don't mean to mix you up, okay? And it's not that I hadn't been… waiting on that kiss, but-"
A sharp knock came at the entryway and Gus' voice rang from beyond, telling Damon that they were heading out in five minutes. Damon sighed and looked at her with an apology in his eyes.
"I meant it when I said to be careful." She told him quietly.
"I know, and I will be. We all will. And…we'll talk after, I promise."
Sam nodded once and turned to leave only to quickly turn back to Damon and pull him into a tight hug. That he came willingly bolstered her spirits and had her sliding her hands up to tangle in his thick hair and pressing her lips to his again.
"I'll see you when you get back, then." The hopeful feeling that spread throughout her body was only tempered by the apprehension she felt about the mission and the pending talk.
Baird quickly made his way down to main foyer to meet the rest of the squad after hastily putting on his gear. When he arrived at the meeting place, though, only Gus was there lounging on one of the chaises spread across the ornate carpets – looking inexplicably comfortable for a man decked out in armor plating. Baird tapped him on shoulder to announce his arrival and took the seat next to him.
"I could've sworn I was late." He said.
"Nah, not really."
"Where are the others?" Baird asked, looking around the sprawling room for Jace and Carmine.
"Oh, you'll be happy about this. Carmine happened across a crate full of emergency supplies -including rechargeable flashlights. I sent them to get us a few." Cole finally opened his eyes and shot a smug smile to Baird. "They'll be back here in a minute."
"Flashlights? You mean we won't have to rely on our armors indicator lights to guide us through the pitch? It's as if someone read my diary and granted my most secret wishes."
"Uh huh. I'll tell Carmine you said 'thanks'. Anyway, there are more important things for us to be talking about right now. " Gus shifted from his reclined position so he could look see Baird without straining his neck.
"Such as?" Baird asked, slightly put off by the gleam in his best friends eye.
"Such as? Such as, guess who I saw coming out of your room this morning?" Gus dropped his chin and gave Baird a challenging under eyed look.
"Me?" Baird hedged.
"No, Baird, it wasn't you. What was Sam doing in your bedroom in the wee hours of the morning? I want details, man. You can't have major changes in your life without telling me about them!" Gus lightly shoved Baird's shoulder in punishment for holding out on him.
"Life changing? No, no, no. She was in there maybe ten minutes, Gus. Seriously. She just came by because she was worried about the mission today."
"And?" Gus cajoled.
"And, she made me promise that we'd all be careful. That's it." Baird shrugged and looked away. He never had been a convincing liar.
"That's it?" Gus asked doubtfully.
Baird's mouth opened and closed as he warred with himself on whether or not to tell Gus everything.
"And… she. Well, she kissed me." Baird said quietly.
"What?"
"Keep it down, Gus! Damn, man, I don't need any more information about me floating around this place.'
"Sorry, sorry." Gus looked appropriately contrite for a moment before a wide grin spread across his face. "Look at you, getting in with the ladies."
Baird rolled his eyes and prayed for his friend to find something else to be interested in.
"It's not ladies, it's Sam. And it's not a big deal, Gus. Really."
"Uh, that's a big, fat lie. You and Sam gettin' all warm and fuzzy for each other is a pretty big deal." Gus retorted.
"No, it's –"
"Was it a good kiss? Did you let her touch Big Jim and the Twins?" he joked.
"What? You're really fucking with me about this? I'm already bewildered enough about this whole thing and I don't need you making it worse." Baird's shoulders slumped. "I just don't know where this is all coming from and until I figure it out, I don't want to talk about it."
Gus leaned back and raised his eyebrows at Baird, but didn't answer. Baird felt a brief shot of regret that he'd offended the older man when he snapped at him, but he quickly stamped down on it. Whatever was happening between him and Sam was not up for discussion – not before he'd talked it out with her.
The clanging of metal boots interrupted the awkward silence that had fallen and Jace and Carmine came into view.
"Look who decided to join the party." Jace greeted them. " Kick any asses today, Baird?" The younger man began to playfully shadowbox around Baird.
"Oh, I see you've got jokes this morning. I'm overwhelmed with joy that I could be here to hear them." Baird sent him an unamused look before standing from his chair. "I heard tell of flashlights?"
The four men surveyed the ruined face of the abandoned lab with trepidation. There was nothing yet to indicate the whereabouts of Johenes, which meant they were going to have to go inside.
"Oooh, this place is snazzy." Jace piped up, eyeing the scarred building. "Shazaam."
Baird had to give it to Jace: he did always try to lighten the mood even if, this time, the humor came off a little bit stilted. He could understand why, though. Just being here made his skin crawl. Part of him was screaming for them to turn around and rush back to safety. Baird was sure that he didn't want to meet whatever monster had mangled Reeves' body into a mess that was only a step or two from being human soup. There wasn't any telling what they'd find beyond those heavy doors, but the fact that they looked like they were made of reinforced steel gave him some idea. Stupid fucking scientists. They never learn. He wondered how many times the COG had used 'for the good of the nation' as an excuse to shove the barrel of a metaphorical gun against its peoples' heads. Baird wasn't sure what pissed him off more; the fact that he and his friends had to keep suffering for their idiotic ideas or the fact that most of these so-called geniuses weren't around to see how wrong they'd been about the pansophy they'd believed themselves to be so possessed of.
"Okay, the building doesn't seem too big. We'll take it floor by floor. Cole, Carmine, you two take the left. Jace and I will take the right. We'll meet up at the center of the back wall." Baird looked at each man, "Above all, we stay in contact with each other, got it?"
The three men nodded at him and pulled their lancers from the holsters on their backs. The sound of fresh clips being slotted into the rifles was both comforting and frightening. The men settled smoothly into roles they hadn't played in months. Each of them took up defensive postures and stretched their senses to pick up on every little detail, every possible threat.
"Breaching in three, two, one." Cole and Carmine used their considerable combined weight to burst through the door and into the darkened room. The sunlight only traveled so far into the space and what little did get in cast odd shapes and shadows on the nearby walls and floor.
"Good thing you found these flashlights, Carmine." Cole said quietly.
"Jace. On me." Baird looked to Cole and gave him a quick nod, a silent message to be safe. He and Jace moved off to search the right side of the room. Each team moved slowly in a grid, sweeping their lights from left to right. They looked for any sign of the missing soldier – any sign of anything, really. So much weird shit had gone down on the island lately that the list of what they might find here was endless.
Baird's comm crackled in his ear. "Nothing on our end yet, but do you smell that?"
He took a moment to scent the air. "Yeah. What is that? It seems familiar, but I can't place it."
"I was hoping you could tell me. Damn."
"Alright, let's keep looking, see if we can find the source." Baird checked behind to make sure Jace was doing OK. The younger man had his back to Baird, watching their six. He turned when he felt Baird's eyes on him and gave him a curt nod before taking up his post again.
The teams began moving towards the back wall again. They didn't find anything to clue them in to the smell, but they did note that all the furniture and tools were in good condition. Nothing had been toppled or broken. It's like someone came in, cleaned up and then abandoned the place. It put them all on edge. Something wasn't right.
"Stay frosty, everyone. I have a bad feeling," Baird said, depressing the button on his comm so Cole and Carmine heard the warning as well.
"Copy that." Came the response.
The men met at the other end of the room as planned minutes later.
"This place is fucking weird, man. Let's finish up and get out of here," Jace said. Baird knew he was a solid soldier, but his expression said that this place made him feel like he was going to be snatched up by some monster from the old wives tales he'd heard growing up. And, he was only saying what they were all thinking.
"It may not be a quick bang, Jace. We don't know how far down the place goes and we have to check everything." Baird shrugged. "Let's get moving." They made their way quietly to the stairwell in the far corner. Baird eased the door open and took a low position with Jace covering high.
"All clear," he called softly. He noticed that the steps only went down one floor. "Maybe you'll get your wish after all, Jace. Looks like we've only got the floor below to clear."
Baird ate his words when they pushed open the door exiting the stairwell. It was just one floor, but it was easily four times the size of the one above it.
"Or not." Jace sighed.
