Author's note: I'd like to thank everyone for your reviews. They're really encouraging! And player 0, I hope this meets your expectations. This isn't filler bullshit, I swear!
(DISCLAIMER: I don't own F.E.A.R. – Monolith does – but I do own this fanfic. And Patterson. But who'd steal him?)
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Interval 10 – Ergo sum
"I can't tell you how excited I am of being part of this project, Dr. Wade. I really can't find the words…"
Wade ignored him as they walked; he smoothed his beard nervously as he punched in the combination and pressed his thumb against the slanted soft pad on the front of the locking mechanism.
"We're glad to have you too, Patterson," he said finally.
Bodies torn to fleshy giblets, muscles ripped from the bones. Mouths still open in gaping, open-mouthed cries of horror, silent to all but those who made them. One head, corkscrewed from the body, lying in the puddle of sticky, rusty-smelling blood next to a squeaky swivel chair. The control panel, cracked, displaying an array of flickering numbers, row upon row of gibberish.
"Damnit, I knew this would happen."
"Oh my God… What happened here?" A retch shook the technician.
Under his breath, "Green bastard." Wade leaned closer to touch one of the corpses leaning against the wall. The head fell away, neatly severed, trailing blood down the already splotched lab coat. He wiped his fingers on the front of his lab coat.
He raised a fist to his face, as though to clear the heavy smell of iron that hung in the air. The glass window was fogged and splattered in blood, but beyond it the heavy mass of the cryogenic stasis cell hung blatant.
"I should have supervised the defrosting myself," Wade muttered. Patterson ran to the phone and dialed for help.
-
"Paxton. Paxton."
He opened his eyes. They had taken him to a small room, whose closest wall, made of glass, looked into another – roughly the size of a large gym and brightly lit with large, fluorescent lamps hanging from the metal rigging near the ceiling. Practice targets on one side, training dummies on the other, a door on the far wall. Whitewashed walls.
The Man and Woman stood nearby. His name was Mister Patterson and hers was Miss Aristide, as they told him to call them, but their names really didn't matter to him – there were only two of them.
"Are you ready?"
The large door on the other end of the room opened, revealing a smaller, cloistered portion of the room. People. He recognized them at once. His mind latched onto theirs. They awoke. They looked at him.
He knew them all by name, names he'd given to them – Dennis, Andre, Mark, Walter, Harry, Jack. That was the first row.
"Okay, Paxton," the Woman said. "Tell them to come into the gym." The old routine.
"Move forward," the boy thought, focusing on the image of movement, action, letting the idea crystallize in his mind.
The men did as they were told, clinking forward in their jingling equipment. The Man was madly scribbling in his notebook.
"Good. Now, tell them to fire at the targets."
The Replica Soldiers scrambled into their respective positions, peppering the dummy targets with bullets. Beside Paxton Fettel, the Woman was nodding in silent approval. The pen leaped, drawing further observations across the page.
It was during the melee combat practice that the voice made itself heard again.
"Paxton."
He shut his eyes and listened. Beyond the glass, the Replica Soldiers paused in their movements and cocked their heads.
A brief flash behind his closed eyelids. He heard nothing, saw darkness, then a string of rising bubbles, stretching, colliding, splitting, reforming.
"Kill them. They deserve to die."
"They deserve to die," mimicked Paxton, eyes still closed.
"What's that?" muttered the Man.
"Paxton, what are you doing? Concentrate," demanded the Woman, impatient. "You have to tell them what to do."
The images, sensations hit him again. Blood red, pulsing. A searing pain in his temples. A loud, prolonged shriek. A syringe, filled with clear liquid. A bearded face. A cold, desolate landscape. Driving wind. Snow. Grayish, frozen fingers. The word, echoing in his mind, over and over, until it filled his head and threatened to burst his eardrums from the inside.
"Kill."
He felt his lips contract as he said the word. He opened his eyes.
Paxton Fettel was lying on the floor. Above him, the Woman was peering at his face. The Man was saying something into a telephone receiver nearby.
"…immediate assistance…"
"Paxton," the Woman said. "Are you alright? Can you hear me?"
The glass shattered, sending shivers raining in all directions. A shadow vaulted through the window, followed by another, and another.
"Patter – urk!" the Woman screamed before she was thrown towards the wall by a volley of bullets.
"Amy!"
Paxton's mind was a blank. He heard a distant whisper from Mark, "…eliminate all targets with extreme prejudice."
"Who are you?" Paxton wondered.
"Bravo Team reporting in," was the only reply he received. "What are your orders?"
The voice was silent once more, its motives unknown, its methods unquestioned.
-
"I should never have believed you, Harlan," the voice hissed and crackled from the receiver. "I should've known right from the start. Seventeen years ago…"
"It was an accident. None of us could have foreseen this. It was nothing more than a routine check-up."
"The amount of damage caused to the labs, not to mention the loss in personnel… and property. This is extremely disappointing."
"Don't worry, Senator, we're taking care of this as best we can. We won't let you down in the future."
"You better not," the man said. "I'll let this go, if only for old times' sake."
He hung up, muttered, "'Synchronicity event', my ass."
-
Patterson looked up from reading the get-well card from Jennifer for the thousandth time.
"What do you need, Dr. Wade?"
Wade looked surprised. He pushed up the glasses on his nose.
"Need? I don't need anything."
Patterson shrugged carefully, watching his cast all the while. "It's just in my experience that whenever you turn up in my office, you need something from me. I thought I gave you enough sperm to last for a while." He laughed; his eyes didn't smile.
Wade sat down on the corner of Patterson's desk. The technician's eyes followed him and frowned.
"You look tired."
"I'm only human. And I don't really need anything," Wade said. "I guess I just came down to see how you were doing."
"Came to sign my cast?" Patterson said, proffering his arm.
"No."
"Okay. Came to talk?"
"Maybe."
Patterson swiveled his chair. "Have you ever wondered whether what we're doing is right… I mean, morally?"
"It's for the greater good," Wade grunted.
"I'm not trying to piss you off on purpose, Dr. Wade. I'm just trying to keep my mind open. I doubt, therefore I am, you know?"
Wade looked tired. How much Patterson had changed, since he had been hired to help on this project. Once a bright, green technician, he had become a frustrating cynic. The use of his sperm for the in vitro fertilization of Alma hadn't helped matters, either.
"Well, then." Patterson leaned forward in his seat. "I've got a question for you. How does it feel to give your own daughter up to these tests? This mission of 'greater good'? I won't even start counting the number of other people you've sacrificed to this cause. Even I'm tired of this. But I never once saw you object to anything done to Alma. For all I know, you did most of the torturing. Your own daughter. I mean… really, how human are you?"
Wade stood up and punched him.
Patterson rubbed his face with his good hand. "That kind of proves my point. I suppose that, in a way, I'm to blame too, for all this. I never tried stopping you."
"You won't have to," Wade replied. "You're fired."
-
She sifted through the box of personal items shipped to their home after the death of Amy Aristide. Her nimble hands brought out a bobble-headed pen, the one she had given Amy for Christmas. There was a framed picture of the whole family; she used her left hand to wipe the dust away from the pewter frame.
A crinkled envelope lay at the bottom of the pile, labeled "Property of ATC. CLASSIFIED." She brought it out to examine under the warm afternoon sunlight and ran a finger under the flap to open it. She took out the papers contained within the envelope and looked at them carefully, soon puzzled by their contents.
"Armacham Technology Corporation? Project… Perseus? Origin? What's all that?" she wondered.
An envelope, left by accident in Amy Aristide's desk. Confidential information released into civilian hands.
Genevieve loved secret things. She ran upstairs to hide the envelope under her bed.
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