X-Com Into Darkness
Chapter 8
New Players
A/N: Sorry this took so long, I'll try my best to get the next chapter out a little bit faster.
-Unknown location-
Abel's eyes shot wide open and he let out a small gasp. Immediately he began to take in his surroundings and saw that he wasn't back at the safe house or that observatory that they had found those other magic users in. Instead he was sitting down on a folding metal chair, his hands and legs bound by handcuffs in a dark room with a single lamp illuminating him overhead. While the lamp did illuminate him and parts of his surroundings, most of the room remained cloaked in shadow.
It didn't take a genius to deduce that he was captured by the enemy and was most likely being held for interrogation. Well if that was the case, Abel knew that he couldn't tell them anything. The second he did, he was dead and so were the magic users that he, Reznov and Mei had rescued.
"It seems as though you're finally awake," a cold, dispassionate and very familiar voice called forth from behind. Abel didn't utter so much as a word as a loud screeching noise filled the small room as whoever was behind him dragging something metal along the floor if the loud and obnoxious scraping noises it was making was anything to go by.
Within mere moments the individual in question came into view. The man was a tall and rather lankily built looking fellow, with white hair that went halfway down his neck. The most noticeable and perhaps most disturbing feature of the man, were his eyes. They were completely empty, devoid of any sort of emotion. They were the eyes of someone who was dead inside. Whoever this guy was, he clearly had no sense of morals or ethics -at least not anymore-. It was then that Abel remembered that this was the guy he had met earlier back at the observatory right before he had spat in his face and then promptly passed out.
Once the man had dragged the chair close enough to Abel he took a seat. For several long moments the man simply stared at the boy, as though he were sizing Abel up. The way the white haired asshole was glowering at Abel almost brought a smile to the young X-Com operative's face. The fucker must have been really pissed that he and his friends had failed to capture those magic users back at that little observatory.
Abel was about to make a smartass remark about how the guy reminded him of that weirdo stalker guy from Twilight (and not just because of the creepy staring thing), when the white haired man spoke up "I'm sure you're smart enough to realize the kind of situation that you have found yourself in. Your friends won't be coming to rescue you and the only hope you have now is to cooperate with us. I'm sure I don't need to tell you what will happen to you if you refuse to cooperate."
With that Abel let out a scoff and looked the man dead in the eye "The only thing I'm telling you is that I hope you realize that your awful hair makes you look like you're wearing a mop. Hey buddy the nineteen-eighties called, they want their hairstyle back." Abel hissed out.
The man's eyes somehow managed to narrow even further than they had before. It was actually quite disconcerting actually and it made Abel wonder if he should have said anything to the asshole. For a few moments there was nothing but silence between the two before the man decided to speak up again "Because you're clearly stupid I'll let that little comment slide for the moment. Now I suggest you answer my questions honestly or else there will be some very unpleasantness in store for you. So why don't you tell me who are you and who you work for?"
Abel's eyes narrowed at the man as he started to glare back at the monster in front of him. "Me I'm just a tourist who was walking by, completely minding my own business and thought I'd have a look around. Now why don't you go and fuck yourself with a cactus."
The man didn't seem all that bothered by the insult, in fact he almost seemed to have expected something like that to have come from Abel's mouth. "You are only going to make this worse for yourself. If you continue to be this vexing then I will have no other choice but to use some more heavy handed means to get the answers I want from you."
Abel rolled his eyes. They were going to make this worse for him no matter what he did. Besides he wasn't going to give up any info about the magic users or X-Com to this psycho. "And as I said earlier you cock sucking motherfucker, go fuck yourself with a cactus."
With that having been said the white haired man in the lab coat looked to the left and made a gesture with his head for someone to enter the room. The door leading into whatever small room Abel was in creaked open and one of the men who was with the mad scientist back at the observatory. The new arrival had a crew cut styled haircut and had a handful of scars on his face and definitely didn't seem happy to see that Abel was still breathing. Well that was to be expected, after all Abel and his friends did kill a number of his men.
The white haired man didn't even glance at the new arrival. Instead he continued to look straight at Abel "Lieutenant, please soften our guest up a little. But don't do any permanent, or severe damage, I need him to be relatively coherent when he finally decides to answer my questions." With that the lieutenant gave a rather sadistic smile "Sure, I can do that sir."
With that having been said, the white haired man left the room and ignored the noise of punches and pained grunts coming from behind him. As he left Chisato reached into his pocket and retrieved the communication's device that he had found on the boy earlier. Although it was tempting to try and talk to whoever might be listening immediately after interviewing the boy, it would be much more effective if he were to, interrogate the boy first before attempting to make contact. After all, a recording of the brat's screams of pain and suffering might prove useful if he was to make a hostage exchange of sorts.
It could also cause the boy's comrades to become too emotional at their friend's suffering and become much more predictable and foolish. In fact they would probably agree (or at least appear to agree) to whatever exchange he wanted and then try to lure him into a trap. Well that wouldn't work, not so long as Valkyria was with him.
Valkyria had always been one of the more interesting test subjects back at Vingulf. Not only because of her powers but also psychologically. Unlike most of the other test subjects, Valkyria wasn't utterly terrified of Chisato. Instead she seemed almost, enamored with him. Some of the other scientists believed she had developed some kind of Stockholm syndrome towards him over the many years she had spent at Vingulf. That combined with her powers made her very useful in the field so long as Chisato was there to hold her metaphorical leash to prevent her from doing anything…regrettable.
The test subject known as Valkyria was more than capable of dealing with just about anything that these meddlers, whoever they were, would try to throw at him. True he probably hadn't even seen much of what they were capable of fielding, but by his calculations -and the calculations of almost every other scientist that worked at Vingulf- Valkyria was far more than capable of taking on an entire army on her own.
Chisato continued to watch as his more expendable resources continued to beat up the boy that had caused them so much trouble back at the observatory. In fact he watched as they got an old milk carton that had been cleaned out and filled with dirty water and a small black bag roughly the same size as a person's head. Chisato knew where this was going but rather than stay and watch the show he figured that he had much more important things to deal with at the moment.
While Chisato initially wanted to use the communicator to contact whoever the boy's masters were and negotiate some kind of exchange deal immediately , he realized that he didn't know if these individuals had some kind of tracking mechanism embedded in the communicator. While Chisato was more than willing to simply use Valkyria to wipe out any rescue attempt, he didn't want that kind of power being thrown around, especially if these people brought heavy weapons with them. Any kind of a protracted firefight would only serve to make the whole situation more noticeable to the local population.
If someone were to record heavily armed individuals doing battle against a little girl who was able to regenerate from almost any wound and slice people with her thoughts then the secrecy the organization had long since used to their advantage would be lost.
And if that happened, Chisato had no doubt that death would be a blessing compared to what the leaders of the Organization would do to him.
No instead it would be safer for him to wait until after one of the technicians that Chisato had brought along had finished setting up the countermeasures that would keep their location a secret in the event someone tried to trace their location. In the meantime, perhaps Chisato could use the boy to gain some insight into this new faction that was seemed to be on the side of the escaped witches. It was unlikely he knew anything substantial but he could at least provide Chisato with at least some sort of information that he could use.
Chisato heard the sounds of frantic and pained gurgling coming back from the makeshift interrogation center and decided to refrain from asking more questions for at least another few minutes.
-X-Com Safehouse 2, Command Room, an hour and a half later-
Almost an hour and a half earlier Mei and Reznov had at last returned from the observatory with the rest of the kids that had been found taking shelter there. Just a little while ago, Mei and Reznov had been forced to do something that they never thought that they would ever have to do. They left a teammate behind. The entire time they drove back to the secondary safehouse where everyone else had relocated to after they had heard that Abel had been captured, the pair were mentally beating themselves up over it and were hoping to god that the kid would be okay.
Unfortunately given that the group that they were working against did things to kids that would make any Nazi scientist blush, now may very well have gotten their hands on one of their teammates did little to assuage their fears. But what could they have done? Abel was trapped thanks to fallen debris and his only other way out of that building was to go straight through the crazy white haired bitch and her friends. They couldn't have possibly found a way to rescue him without risking themselves and the civilians that were already in their care. Or at least that was what they kept trying to tell themselves.
Sure when Abel had been assigned to their team, many were skeptical about having a kid who was only seventeen years old at that point being part of an elite multi-national Special Forces unit dedicated to hunting and killing aliens invaders. However since then he had proven himself to be a pretty competent operative in his own right despite the fact that most of X-Com's new recruits never really took him all that seriously when they first met him. But once they saw just how good he was at killing aliens, just about everyone quickly changed their tune.
The entire team save for Mei was standing just a few feet away from Lieutenant Richter who was pacing back and forth in front of them. Richter was a normally calm and collected commander most of the time but even he had his limits and it seemed as though he was on the verge of popping a blood vessel if this continued.
Eventually though the Lieutenant managed to calm himself down enough to where he knew he would not end up saying something that he would regret. They would find Abel and then he would personally shove those psychotic assholes into the interrogation unit himself. Richter looked over at the rest of his unit who was waiting for him to speak. The only one who wasn't present was Mei who was currently looking over the kids that they had rescued.
Time was of the essence and they couldn't wait for Mei to finish with her preliminary examination of those kids. Richter would have Zhang inform her on latest the orders from Commander McNeil. "Alright listen up people, we have some new orders from command regarding our operations in this area. Within the next couple of hours, we're to receive two full squads of reinforcements who are to assist us in locating our MIA teammate. After we've found our friend they will be assisting us in concluding our investigation into the area. After that we are to-"
Richter was unable to finish relaying his orders as several warning sirens started to go off throughout the safehouse. The motion trackers must have picked up someone getting too close to their hideaway. The motion trackers wouldn't activate unless there was something human sized or bigger was moving around. True they had already had a few false alarms with a couple of dumb kids who were wandering around outside but given how Abel was now in the hands of the enemythey could not afford to take any chances.
Within seconds Richter and the rest of Echo squad had grabbed their weapons from their resting places and checked them to make sure that they were ready for use. "Carver check the monitors and get me a visual on who our guests are now!" he ordered.
Carver ran over to the nearby security monitors even as he gave Richter a "Yes sir!" and checked to see who the new guests were. As he did, Richter heard Mei's voice over the comm. channel's "Lieutenant what's going on?" she asked somewhat worriedly and Richter could swear he heard some of those kids from earlier talking in the background, and they sounded even more nervous than Mei did.
"We have possible intruders in the vicinity, get ready to evac the kids if they attempt to enter the safehouse." There was a brief pause as Mei seemed torn between wanting to join her comrades in battle and making sure that the rescued magic users and their friend stayed safe. "I, yes sir," she said rather reluctantly.
After Richter cut the communication's feed, Carver looked over at him "Uh sir I think I have something here, two adults, one male one female and one kid I think it's a boy. They're wearing stuff that makes them look like they just got finished running a sermon at a catholic church."
That, wasn't what Richter had been expecting but he still wasn't going to take any chances. He turned back to look at his other subordinates and began to bark out orders "Reznov, head for the roof and keep your weapon trained on that kid, if he's anything like the white haired bitch from back at the observatory I want him taken out before he can send us into a black hole or something. Zhang and I will flank them from eastern side of the building. Carver you keep an eye on them, and the second everyone is in position I want you to activate the defense turrets but don't give them the order to fire unless I give the word or they open fire first."
Everyone gave quick "Yes sir!" before they went to their assigned positions.
-X-Com Safehouse, Medical Lab, several minutes earlier-
Ryouta could see that several of his friends had become more and more unsettled in the medical section of this place, especially considering that some parts looked like they were made for surgeries. Ryouta knew that the group probably had some pretty bad experiences when it came to medical areas. After arriving at the safehouse, the man in charge; Richter, Ryouta believed he was called, had ordered Mei to do a full checkup on the newcomers. While that sounded harmless on the surface, Ryouta had heard about some of the things that the lab had been doing to the girls that prompted their escape from that place and his friends were clearly nervous about having a "checkup" done to them.
The only one who didn't seem to be nearly as nervous was that other magic user, Hatsuna. Instead she seemed completely terrified about another matter entirely. When they had first arrived back at the safe house, Hatsuna had frantically asked their other two rescuers where Abel was. She hadn't taken the answer that he was either dead or captured very well. In fact she almost looked to be on the verge of breaking down to tears. The only thing that had kept her from doing so was that the leader of this group had told her that they never left anyone behind and that they were going to do everything humanly possible to get him back.
The high school kid had found it odd that she would have such a reaction in regards to someone who she had known for only a few hours at best. Ryouta wanted to say something, that Abel was probably okay and that these people would find him soon but he may inadvertently make things worse by mentioning the guy who just saved their lives back at the observatory.
This woman; Mei, Ryouta had heard her being called, was obviously a medical officer of some sort. Whatever group these guys were part of they seemed to be well trained and well equipped. This made Ryouta wonder who they were and just what they were doing here. They were obviously some kind of Special Forces unit but they were obviously not from Japan. Ryouta had noticed that there were at least three people of different nationalities in the group, Russian, American and Chinese. Those were three nations that didn't have the best track record of getting along, so why would they be working together. Unless all of them were American and he was just overanalyzing things. In either case what would a military unit from either America or some military group composing of Russia, China and America be doing in Japan?
That woman meanwhile, looked Japanese so she was probably from Japan as well unless of course she was from America as well.
Eventually the woman, having noticed the scared looking kids and gave them a sympathetic look "Look I can't even imagine what you might have gone through in that laboratory but I give you my word that we aren't like that. We have no intention of harming you."
At that point Hatsuna decided to add her own two cents to the conversation. "It's true, they aren't like the people at the lab. They never did anything…like what was done to me back at that place." As Hatsuna spoke, Mei gave her a sympathetic glance as the girl tightly gripped herself as she probably remembered what had happened to her back at that laboratory. The group seemed at least somewhat reassured by Hatsuna's words they still seemed somewhat hesitant that this wasn't just some kind of trick.
Mei then gestured towards one of the pieces of scanning equipment that was nearby. The scanner in question was a cushioned plastic chair that was surrounded by several large rings that were attached to several small support columns but they were currently raised above the chair so that they wouldn't be any problems if someone wanted to take a seat. There was also a cord that went from the back of the chair and one of the columns over to a nearby computer console.
"I've been asked by one of my superiors if we can measure some of your brainwaves, I promise that the process doesn't hurt and it will only take a few moments."
Much to Mei's surprise it didn't take long for someone to give a response "I'll do it," said Kazumi in a seemingly nonchalant tone even as some of her friends gave her odd looks. She saw the looks that her friends were giving her and shrugged "I've seen this kind of technology before, it's a new piece of medical equipment that hospitals will be using soon, and all it does is work like a next generation CT, X-Ray or MRI scan only it doesn't fields give use radio waves or magnetic fields or even give off radiation when it's being used." With that everyone, including Mei gave the girl even more incredulous looks.
Kazumi put her hands up in mock defense. "What? There isn't all that much to do in-between school and the Astronomy Club activities. And looking up things on the internet is actually pretty good way to kill time."
There were many in the room that couldn't really argue with that analysis. "Alright then, Miss Schlierenzauer would you please take a seat in the chair?" Mei asked politely "Sure, but just call me Kazumi, I'm not much for formalities."
"Very well." And with that Kazumi walked up to the chair and took a seat as confidently as she could manage. When she had taken her seat in the chair, a small mechanical humming noise came from the machine as the rings started to lower downwards. Blue lights shined out at Kazumi as the rings began to lower downwards further and further until the very bottom one almost reached the floor before they began to move back up.
As the scanning process continued Mei started to look at the results and began thinking to herself 'Hmm, Just like with Hatsuna, the only thing abnormal about Kazumi is that she has that piece of metal on the back of her neck that contains a monster. Everything else, even her brainwaves are completely normal.' In fact there was seemingly no activity from the creature within that cylinder at all.
Perhaps the creature only became active when the magic user active her power. Maybe they could test this theory sometime. Of course they would have to do it in a way that wouldn't cause any pain for the girls. So that ruled out asking Hatsuna to use her powers of regeneration but maybe one of the other girls could demonstrate their abilities while they were in the scanner. In any event all the noteworthy scans were over for the moment so Mei deactivated the scanner and motioned for Kazumi that she could stand up and return to her friends.
As Kazumi did as was requested of her Mei looked over at her and said "Well it seems that aside from that thing on the back of your neck, you're a perfectly healthy girl."
At that point. Ryouta decided to try and get some kind of answers from the woman who had been examining him and his friends. "So just who exactly are you people and why have you been helping us?"
With that Mei sighed she had known that one of them was probably going to ask that kind of question sooner or later. She had been hoping that they would wait at least until they were out of the danger zone before they started asking questions. But given how Richter had explained who they were to Hatsuna, Mei figured that she could give them some of the same information.
Mei explained who they worked for and part of what their organization was doing in Japan but she decided it best not to go into too many details. Suffice to say, once she was finished explaining, the entirety of the group had very shocked expressions on their faces. At first some of them didn't look like they believed Mei's explanation but they soon seemed to come to the conclusion that she was telling them the truth.
"So what will happen to us?" The long blue haired girl asked. Mei remembered her introducing herself as Kuroha Neko on the ride back to the secondary safehouse. Echo squad's medic looked thoughtful at the group for a few moments before she answered "More than likely some of our higher ups will want to ask you a few questions about the place in which you were being kept, any information you can give us would be extremely useful and we may be able to save more of your friends from that place. After that's done you'll be put into witness protection and you'll have more of those death suppressants than you could ever ask for until we can find a means to remove those things from the back of your necks without hurting or killing you in the process."
The group seemed to accept that explanation, for the moment at least. Ryouta looked like he wanted to ask her a few more questions but before he could, someone started talking to Mei on her communicator "Lieutenant what is going on?" she asked a little bit worriedly. There was a brief pause as her commanding officer answered her question "I, yes sir." She answered reluctantly as she retrieved her pistol from its holster and pulled back on the slide, sending a round into the chamber and readying it for use.
"What's going on now?" asked Kana through her text to speech device. "We have some company, according to my boss it might be the same guys who have been hunting us. My orders are to get you all to safety if things go south. For now we're heading for the rear garage and we'll wait there until we're told to either leave or head back in. Please come with me."
While reluctant to blindly follow this woman, the group realized that they didn't have much in the way of choice and decided to follow her towards the garage.
-Outside the Safehouse-
Richter and Zhang were already taken up positions in an alleyway that was to the side of the new visitors. Richter had with him one of his assault rifles while Zhang carried an LMG on his person plus a rocket launcher. Considering that the last hostile magic user the group encountered was able to throw around anti-matter seemingly whenever she wanted, it never hurt to be properly prepared in case this kid had similar abilities.
If this boy had the same powers that the albino haired psychopath had back at the astronomy clubhouse had, then a rocket launcher probably wouldn't even come close to being enough to providing an even playing field. No they'd need something along the lines of a MOAB (Massive Ordinance Air Blast. AKA Mother Of All Bombs) level airstrike. Or at least a carpet bombing or two.
Still they had to make do with what they had. If worst came to worst then maybe they could at least buy some time for Mei and the others to make it to the secondary rendezvous where X-Com reinforcements would be waiting for them.
Reznov was broken out of his thoughts by the voice of the team's resident sniper, whose words reverberated through the comm. channels. "Echo One Actual, this is Echo Four I am in position at the vantage point and am awaiting your orders."
"Roger that. Hold fire until I give the order or they open fire on us. Echo Five activate the defensive turrets in ten seconds but make sure that they don't open fire yet."
"Got it boss."
The leader of Echo squad made sure that the safety to his rifle was switched to the off. He didn't' intend on shooting it yet, but if these people proved hostile he didn't want to waste half a second putting his rifle into "Dangerous" mode.
"Echo Three With me, now!" Richter ordered as he moved from cover to confront the new visitors. As both he and Zhang emerged from the shadows of the alley their guns trained at the visitors even as Richter yelled at them, taking them completely by surprise.
"Don't move! Keep your hands where we can see them! If you try anything we will use lethal force!"
To be Continued.
