On the first day, I didn't bother with easing Pleb into the subject. The second he stepped into my cell, I sprung into action, disregarding the breakfast tray to the side of my bed and grasping his upper arms. Instinct drove him to reach for his lance with his dominant hand and try and drive me back with his left, but he calmed once he saw the desperation pooled imploringly in my eyes. I could feel his muscles through the kevlar vest ease just a tad.
"There's no easy way to say this, Pleb." I start with. "You know the Hunter's going to visit me in three days and I'll be straight with you: I'm not going to be walking out alive if he and I are in the same room without a door separating us. Your directive is to make sure I'm not harmed, right? You have to do something."
He buffets my arms back once he hears my plea, though firm, it wasn't violent. Instead he encouraged that I sit to the steel bed and I do so to show that I will listen to him and comply, but I needed him to show the same. He remains standing.
"He is Chosen," he repeats as a reminder. Frustration steeples my brow and a fierce frown twists my lips. Seeing my dissatisfaction, he finally joins to sit beside me as equal, reaching over for the tray I nearly knocked to the floor and settled it over my lap instead, voice dropping a bit more tentatively, even if it was hard to hear through the buzzing. "My primary purpose is that you remain in this facility, however. I thought you really were starting to see the truth, past all the lies XCOM has force fed you."
I was shrill when I responded, disbelief worming it's way into my tone. "Do – do you really think that's what has been happening? I'm not the one that's got wool over their eyes." I rap my knuckle three times onto his opaque visor to make a point. He shirks back a little. "Why on Earth do you think I've been put in this cell? Why you were activated in the first place? Or that the Chosen are interrogating me in the first place?"
"You are a dangerous criminal.."
"I know I can't convince you that XCOM isn't the enemy, or that even I'm innocent." I wet my lips, brain frantic to search for an angle I could use, " – But what I can say is that the Chosen you and your kin look up to and blindly follow are all selfish, self-serving assholes with disregard to human and ADVENT life. The Assassin was made specifically to hunt your brethren if you ever step even a toe out of line. The Warlock – he only cares about the Priests. And the Hunter sees your kind as sport."
A quick reprise to draw a breath, ending on a sting; "You're serving something who sees you as nothing more than a body. Cannon fodder. What does that say about the Elders, huh?"
I regard him carefully. His body language – shifting furiously in place, hands unable to remain still, he wants to get angry at what I'm saying. He's hard-wired to respond negatively to any radical propaganda that my words are no doubt being filtered as. But I can see he's struggling. I think he wants to listen to what I have to say and he's fighting against the urge to just hit me, yell something and leave me to it.
I chance it. " – You're not alone in this, Pleb. There are others out there; brothers and sisters that have struggled like you have to make sense of it all. But they all have drawn to the same conclusion that any god of theirs would not view their lives as just faceless, mindless footsoldiers. The Skirmishers – "
"Are traitors." he finally pipes up, staggering to his feet, tone vehement. "They abandoned and slander the Elders, just like you and the rest of your kracsad kind!"
I lean forward, one arm tossed over my knee, gaze never once leaving where I believed his eyes were through the visor. I made it a point to keep deathly calm as I said; "You were never given a choice. So I'm giving you one now. You walk out that door and you stand there and think if you want to be known as ADVENT Stun Lancer, one of millions or Pleb. One of a kind."
I don't expect him to answer and he doesn't. He storms out of the cell and I'm sure if it was possible he'd have slammed the door shut on the way out too. I exhale a breath I didn't know I was holding, easing my back to the wall, appetite lost. Whilst he'd seemed to left angry, the fact that he left with any sort of reaction at all was a good sign, I think. Maybe I just lost the most valuable ally I could've had if I played it differently, maybe it wouldn't really matter until I'm buried six feet under and he realizes too late.
It's done now and I just hope it works.
The dawn of the second day. Pleb doesn't even bring my food. Some other trooper does.
Unable to count on him, I run by my other options. I know from habit of being taken to the courtyard that there are three sets of patrols on the lower tier, Pleb guarding outside notwithstanding. A Trooper and an Officer by the entrance, a Shieldbearer escorting the same blonde haired scientist I saw at the beginning of this mess down the hallway at roughly the early morning and again late night and finally a pod of three troopers near the stairway.
Even if I wanted to try and gain a weapon through assaulting Pleb or any soldier, ADVENT guns are gene-locked. I can only assume the same applies to the stun lances, too. Grenades.. likely not marked the same, but they don't look like standard-issue FRAGs. Plus, Pleb didn't carry grenades.
I do have my fists and some close-quarter combat training, but bare flesh versus armour plating? Not typically a good combo. It did get me thinking, though.
Would the Hunter's weaponry have the same sort of restriction as ADVENT's? He's clearly had them longer than the coalition has been around – and whilst I don't expect myself using that giant fucking sniper rifle as anything more than an unwieldy bat, I know for a fact he keeps a pistol. Simple concept: brawl with the Hunter and disarm his pistol to use for myself.
But there's a lot of if's and prayers. I'd have to hope that for one, it doesn't kill me on contact. Two, he brings no additional guards with him. Three, that I'm not restricted or bound in any way and four that I can even lunge for him without getting a bullet between my eyes because he can draw faster than I can tackle him to the floor. Oh, and five: that he's as useless close-quarters as our own sharpshooters are (with an exception of Jill.)
Frankly, I doubt he is.
I come to the conclusion that doing nothing would be game over and at least some half-baked plan has a chance of success, how minimal. I realize rather bizarrely that this is probably why I wasn't the Commander. Fist-fighting a Chosen as a plan of action isn't the most smartest or wisest course of action, but it's all I got. Even if I don't make it out alive, at least I'll die satisfied.
Being fearless didn't mean that I wasn't scared. I was terrified at my own mortality. Death was something we'd faced on the daily and it was never cheapened for us. Sure, we grow casual towards it, like an old friend, but when one of us were killed in the field, it snaps our backs straighter than a schoolmaster's ruler whacking us back into line. So yes. I was frightened of the Hunter and the grim reaper his arrival signifies.
But I wasn't afraid to stand up for myself. To fight against that fear. Stare it down with a daggered smile, just like the one I'll wear when I'm rapping on Hell's gates. I will not cry or grovel for mercy. I'll taunt him to do his worst. Draw it out as long as he damn well likes. I'm not afraid to face it, unlike the Chosen. Their state of deathlessness have only made them arrogant and delusional and in the long run when we figure out how to kill them for good, it'll hit them harder than it ever did us.
Even beyond my regrets, because that's what makes me.. well, me. I look back on the missed opportunities and untold words not with bitterness, but rather a fond remembrance. They would only be someone else's grievances. If I had a chance to get everything off my chest, only to pop my clogs afterwards: they'd have to live with that for the rest of their lives.
I'm not sure how I was supposed to spend my final moments. I felt.. oddly at ease. Actually, the most relaxed I've been since I had to be doped up on morphine for a surgery once. It was a nice feeling to have layered over the simmering dread – a state of tranquil acceptance.
As a side note to my eulogy, I managed to unthread the last red string of the ADVENT logo on my shirt.
When the time came on that third, fateful day, I subverted their expectations of heavy resistance. I did not put up a fight to the ADVENT troopers that escorted me down what felt like the mile of death's row. I've never been big on the Skirmishers, but it's in these moments that I find myself realizing their plight. Their chained brethren here – they're just as much prisoner as I am, without the benefit of a free mind. Pawns to the chess masters of the Elders.
The room was bright and obnoxiously lit, though it was smaller than the conference room that the Warlock had interrogated me in. Boxy, nondescript, with no discernible purpose other than being spare. There was a table to the left with a multitude of gruesome looking equipment set out like a display, with the tall figure of the Hunter by the end of it; his back to me, filling the small, dingy sink with water. There was a projector overhead and a small chair with metal cuffs at the arms and legs in the centre of the room to which I could only assume the purpose of.
"I'm not usually fond of such means to get what the Elders want. If I'm honest with you, I just like to kill things. Something your little band of rebels can agree with." He doesn't turn to me yet, browsing through the selection of tools with a bored appreciation like someone who was dragged to an art gallery exhibit than a torturer. "So, how about we work with each other? You tell me the weak spots of the Avenger, including several haven locations for good measure and I'll give you a quick death. That doesn't sound too unreasonable."
The fact he was met with silence prompts him to finally turn his head to me. He abandons the table of tools, skulking closer, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "Aww. Don't get silent on me now, ranger, not on our.. hm, let's call it a first date. Where's that legendary XCOM bravado you were so full of?"
Again, I don't respond until he's just a few feet in front of me and now I finally crane my head to look upwards. Psionic purple of his eyes met my brown and I think his supernatural sense of stratagem kicked in just a second too late: My fist shot out swiftly into the only part of him that wasn't covered in armor. His face.
My knuckles connected to his jaw with a satisfying crunch of bone (either mine or his, I didn't care) and I used the very short moment of him awestruck to reach for his sidearm, which I spied resting on at his right before he'd stepped closer. My finger tips brushed nothing but his hip and empty holster, though, confusion quick to settle as I tried to overreach to the rifle on his back –
Something sharp stung me, like a wasp's sting and seconds later, I was slumped on the floor, muscles unresponsive. Perfectly lucid – I could think just fine, move my eyes, but I couldn't feel anything below my neck. I struggled in vain, panicked heartbeats thundering in my eardrums. What? This – This wasn't supposed to happen! He couldn't have..
"Looking for this?" I couldn't really move my head to see what he was gesturing at. I swallowed thickly when he crouched over me, his pistol waved tauntingly in my face. How.. ? That wasn't possible! He must have had to drawn his pistol before I'd even begin to punch him!
"That's – you – "
"I'm amazing, I know." he humbly said, rocking on the balls of his feet, tapping my forehead with the barrel of the gun. "I'm trying to decide either or not I should be insulted that you didn't think I'd expect something like that. Honestly! Oldest trick in the book. I knew you were plotting something the moment you were tempting me to get closer. Actually, that's a lie. I knew what you were going to do before you'd even stepped out your cell. To answer your question, no, you wouldn't have died handling my weaponry, but good luck getting your hands on my goods."
My struggling continued and by some miracle I managed to.. flop uselessly onto my front. I cringed as it felt like a million pins needled into my body. Okay, fuck what I said about accepting death and the pain, right now I wanted to writhe in agony and I was denied even that. "Fuck you!" I defaulted, because damn that was the only sort of pain relief I could get. "Just fucking end it! You know I'm not going to tell you shit, you Elder-humping piece of -"
"There you are." he slips an arm under me, effortlessly hauling my dead weight like it was nothing. My limp limbs drag on the ground as he carries me towards the chair. "I have to admit, it would be just like my brother to leave you dead but functioning so I was wasting my time on a corpse."
He dumps me on the chair and I topple onto him as I couldn't control my own weight. He rights me so that I'm leaning back into the seat. There's no need to fasten the cuffs, because whatever he'd shot into me paralyzed me. It hurt like a chemical burn in my veins, my blood boiling. I fidget, or at least try to and only really succeed in twisting the muscles of my face into a pained grimace.
"Oh, I should repay you for that little love bite you call a punch. Let me show you how it's done." He nurses his jaw as if my punch did anything more than momentarily daze him from the sheer audacity that I'd resort to fisticuffs.
Like a dizzying sucker punch, it's like lights were exploding behind my eyes and I'm seeing stars –
Damn, fuck!
He can land a right hook like a certified boxer. Warm blood oozed generously from my nose as it was now likely broken. My head lolled forward, a few drops of the crimson liquid dotting the floor before I forced myself to lift it rather than have it hang defeated. My lip twitches, tongue darting out to wet them on instinct and only serving to coat my teeth red.
If this is how he's going to interrogate me, then I know, at least I won't balk under it. I offer him a vicious grin that bordered on a snarl before gathering the blood-mixed saliva in my mouth and spit at him. It splattered onto the breast-piece of his armour.
He looked down on it, taking great care to slowly wipe it away before sighing. "At least you have the mannerisms of the Reapers you so want to be."
The Hunter grabbed a fistful of my hair, dragging me sharply out of the chair and towards his torture table at the other end of the room. I grunted, numbing pain emanating from my dead limbs as they bashed against the floor. He slammed my body with more than enough force against the table for me to feel it through the toxin, jostling the tools out of order. The only thing I managed to give off was an alarmed cry before he drove my head into the sink full of water.
I screw my eyes shut and try not to struggle, to conserve my energy. I lasted a full minute before the dense pressure started tightening my lungs and I desperately fought against his restraining hand to take a breath. Panic settled in swiftly until the Hunter jerked my head out of the water. I inhale greedily with spluttering coughs interspersed with my breaths. The pain alleviated from my lungs, but the burn still remained.
"Vulnerabilities on the Avenger. Start talking, or it's back in the water." he warned. I didn't miss the frigidness of his tone; beneath the sardonic surface lay a cold-blooded predator that unsheathed it's claws once in a while – and I didn't like the fact I was the first one to find out what it was like when he got, quote, 'serious.'
… He liked to toy and play with us like one did with food, but eventually, he'll dive for the kill.
That didn't stop me leering. "If this is your idea of getting a woman wet, then you have never been laid. I feel sorry for you."
And back my head goes. I quickly take a breath before I was plunged into the water. I pass the minute mark once again before the strain on my lungs start to burn at a level I couldn't stand, though he kept me in the water longer. I could feel myself get light-headed and woozy, needle-point agony drilling into my sternum until he pulled me out. I cough a lot more violently, vision hazy and wits scrambled.
"The Elders saw it fit to bless me with something unique over my siblings: patience." He tells, unceremoniously dropping me on the floor so that he can collect the chair and bring it closer to the table of tools. I distantly hear the metal squeak and scrape before it rattles just behind me. Once again I was hauled up like a sack of dead weight and tossed into the chair, which I partly slumped out of, supported by only the arms. I glare at him beneath my sopping fringe.
"... Which, unfortunately for you, means that I can go as long as this planet's lifespan before I grow tired. Naturally, you won't last that long, but if you think you can hold out until I get bored, then don't bother." He selects a particularly nasty looking knife from the lineup, brandishing it with skill and wanton care of a highly efficient killer. I tilt my head away from it reflexively as the point breaches closer to my personal space until it rests on the line of scarring I was given by the Warlock.
"Vulnerabilities on the Avenger. Talk."
A muscle in my neck twitches, face nonplussed and masking a cool panic easily. "You know, when I thought I was going to be tortured by an alien, I didn't think it'd be a repeat of Pre-invasion Iraq. Isn't this a little primitive for your tastes?" Those words sit with me uneasily.
I add in; " – Are we approaching second base? Come on. Buy me dinner first. I'm thinking Chryssalid burgers, seeing as you're just a cheap imitation of a Reaper, you probably eat like one too."
"You try to mask your true feelings behind a facade of gung-ho obscenity," A grin splits across his face, all pointed teeth and purple, not-as psionically infused eyes swirling in their maddening depths and for one brief, lucid moment I wonder if the long hunts and isolation had made him as mad as his brother. My brewing panic only intensifies. "But I can smell your fear, Jane Kelly. Of course these methods are primitive! I want to squeeze out every last drop of suffering out of your weak body."
Well, that took a turn. My breath hitches as the tip of the blade traces, mockingly loving, across the length of the scar. Not quite with enough pressure to open, but certainly enough to be uncomfortable.
"The Reapers wish they were like me," he grouses. "They are nothing but amateurs. It makes me sick to my stomach that I was one of them, once. I'll show you what awaits being a Reaper. What it's like."
The glint of steel and then a blood-curdling scream at it's suddenness. The blade ripped open the scar, now fresh and oozing with crimson that painted the flat and drip-dropped onto my thighs, staining the black. This time, I was not lulled into whatever false slumber induced by the psionic infiltration as each stroke of the blade meticulously and painfully seamed open the scars.
Consciousness … barely. Cold. Floor. Wet. Shivering.
Someone talking?
…
Can't move. Pinpoint gunshot wound on my biceps where I must have been injected with the paralyzing toxin again. Arm's broken anyway. I can see that in the inhuman angle it's bent at. Or maybe my vision's just fucked up. All I see is blur.
Hunter's cleaning his rifle. I think he's waiting to see if I kicked the bucket or if it was a momentary blackout. I close my eyes again and try to chase a few more moments of solitary peace.
"So, you survived. I'll get back to you after I've tended to Darklance." He named the fucking thing.
Legs don't work. Other arm does, oddly. I make the mistake of trying to push my weight forward in some pathetic excuse of a shimmying crawl, if only to get out of the pond of water and blood. Bad idea. My enter body protests with a screech of pain. Broken ribs? Maybe.
"Humans are so fragile," he notes, more to himself than to me. Rambling to his gun. Muttering to himself like a raving madman, a splitting image of his older. He conceals his own insanity well. Better than I do hiding my fear. ".. yet so tenaciously durable, like a cockroach, really. No wonder the Elders like you lot so much. Such interesting genetics in an otherwise uninteresting, bland, ugly species."
I groan, at least that was the polite way of putting it. More like a guttural plea of primal pain mixed into exasperation. Does he ever shut up?
"Maybe I'll just leave you guys to it. You all do such a good job of killing each other. It might be fun to watch it for a change, rather than to cause it." He slides the black cloth down the eerie red lanced through the unknown, alien material, polishing it with a semblance of tender care. "The only challenge I've ever had is my sister, anyway. I'll hunt her after I'm done with this business of the Elders. End her miserable, empty little existence. I didn't ask for a baby sister."
Happy family. He does nothing but whine, whine, whine.
"Then my brother. Or maybe I should go after him first? What do you think?"
It struggled to breathe, let alone attempting to talk. But with gurgled rasps, I manage; "I'm .. not .. your fucking .. therapist."
"You would have made a terrible Reaper, Jane Kelly." he finally shifts his full attention back onto me and I crumple under the pressure of it. Just end it. Please. "I've watched you and XCOM for a while now. You wouldn't be able to give them up. Abandon them for darkness and winter."
The Gods have mercy on me. I'm slipping out of consciousness once again, the Hunter's voice but a buzz in the background.
I find a middling serenity amidst it all.
