Authour's note: Okay sorry for not updating over the weekend. With my short story final coming up I need to write four more pages by tomorrow evening. I worked hard on it over the weekend but it still looks like I need to put more effort into my story if I want it done on time. Unfortunately for me that is only draft one. Updates on the story might be scattered but after I finish my final I will be writing more I bet. Hope you all like this chapter and thankyou for reviewing!

The Tales and Tails of Elric

Chapter 12

Emergency Room or Bust

Roy clumsily walked down the stairs that morning after he took his own shower, a clean pair of comfortable pajamas on and the robe tied tight around his waist. The entire house seemed to be coated in mud and he atleast didn't want to be. Edward had finally calmed down and they went about doing what they did best, pretending like nothing happened. Edward had gone off downstairs with his empty breakfast plate. Roy only knew this because he could see the kid's muddy footprints mark up his white carpet all the way to the kitchen. Roy didn't see when the kid ate his food but it must have been fast.

He yawned tiredly, trying to push the exhausting events of that morning out of his head. He took a shower, he could start a new day on a better, cleaner foot. When he got to the kitchen he could see Benjamin cooking breakfast for the two of them like he promised he would. He was glad after how angry the man was before hand that he even considered cooking for him at all. Roy knew he was out of line and he was glad that Benjamin was atleast there to kick his ass back into it, however, it was slightly scary seeing the calm and reserved butler snap so feircly. Benjamin gave him a stiff smile as he entered and set a plate of bacon and oatmeal on the table for him. Edward was crouched in the seat on the far end of the kitchen, lightly playing with his tail whenever Benjamin's back was turned. It seemed that his own fascination or horror, whichever it was, was still with him. His long filthy golden tail was lightly placed on top of the table where Edward watched it carefully twitch on its own accord. He caught the kid shiver slightly as he poked it, trying to grasp the concept that it was really there and attached to him. Roy wondered what it must feel like to have a new sensing appendage and be able to feel it where ever you go. It must have sent shocks to his system when it was first transmuted to have all those new nerve signals flow through his body. Roy shook his head and grabbed his seat, pulling his steaming plate closer to him. Edward quickly shoved his tail off of the table and pretended that he wasn't ust examining it. Mud streaked the table from where it laid, the kid having not washed properly at all for the three days he had been there, especially not after their huge mud fest outside that morning. The rain still pattered against the roof but it was muted with the scrapes and noises of Benjamin's cooking.

"Who called?" Roy eventually asked, dragging his attention away from his subordinate for a moment. Benjamin flipped a pancake onto a plate with practiced grace and added some bacon to it before shutting off the stove top, joining the group at the table.

"Mr. Alphonse Elric, sir. He was calling about Edward, quite worried when we didn't really answer the previous two times," the man answered, returning to his usual profession. However, though he wasn't cursing and yelling at Roy anymore, his full business attitude was slightly faulted with a hidden but stiff tone in his voice. The man was obviously still upset. Edward's head snapped up when he heard it was his little brother, making his fear of telephones seem to fade away into a distant dream, like it never happened.

"Alphonse? What did he say? Where is he?" Edward interrogated the poor butler, leaning over the table for the answers. Benjamin chuckled slightly as he caught sight of Edward's tail waving happily behind him. A soft rolling went through the kid, barely audible, but they were still able to recognise it as purring. Roy had to look away for a moment, holding in a slight chuckle. When outside of the traumatizing and fearful moments of Edward's paranoia and Roy's mistakes, seeing the kid this way was kind of funny. He looked like a playful kitten wanting to jump high for the toy that some one was waving around. It kind of gave him hope that things weren't as bad as he thought.

"Well, he wanted to tell you that he is getting on his last train to come here. He expects to arrive at eight this afternoon. He's really worried about you," Benjamin told him. Edward slumped down in his seat with a huge smile plastered on his face. His ears were twitching slightly and his tail and purring had stopped. Something was wrong. Roy watched the boy for a moment but he seemed to be frozen in his spot, thinking of what to do. Did he not want Alphonse to come? But it was obvious he wanted to see him again. Roy took a small bite of his oatmeal as he watched the young alchemist. One question that he was asking himself was would Alphonse be able to recognise Edward? With all of the mud covering the kid he was barely seen as the same bright coloured teenager from before. His hair was matted almost to a brick, and discoloured from its normal golden shine to a nasty light brown. Roy didn't want to comment on the kid's stench but luckily it seemed both Benjamin and himself went slightly nose blind. Who knew how long it was since Edward actually had a real bath?

"Edward," Roy said, startling the kid out of his stupour. The kid nearly jumped out of his seat with the studden diversion. Roy sighed to himself as he spun his oatmeal around in his bowl for a moment. "Edward, if Alphonse is coming you should probably take a bath or something to get all of that dirt off of you." For some reason the kid froze, his face going pale. His tail curled up slight getting closer to the boy's body. Roy raised his eyebrow slightly as he looked the kid over.

"I-I don't need a sh-shower," the kid said quickly, a bit slurred from lack of effort.

"Edward, you needed a bath for the past few days. I can barely tell what race you are," Roy commented. Benjamin gave him a glare for his rudeness but the man tried to ignore it. Edward quickly got up out of his chair which was now coated in a fine layer of dirt from the garden outside.

"I-I took one th-the other day. I don't need another, bastard," he retorted siffly, but there was a slight tremor to his voice as if he was begging him instead.

"You barely took a shower. You were still covered in dirt when you came down." The kid frowned terribly. Roy didn't know what was wrong with this kid it was just a bath wasn't it?

"Sir Elric, your injured foot shouldn't be kept in such conditions if you don't want it to become worse. We need to get you cleaned up and then rebandage it alright? I don't want you to have to go to the hospital because your foot got infected," Benjamin told him, slightly worried. Roy couldn't believe it but the kid turned even paler. His eyes were as wide as dinner plates, looking around as his body shifted back and forth, weighing his options. In the end the kid relaxed slightly and stiffly nodded his head. Roy let out his own breath of air glad that the boy wasn't about to bolt again. Edward slowly marched out of the kitchen like he was on death row, leaving a muddy trail of footsteps behind him. His automail foot making slight tinks on the tile floor of the kitchen. Roy sighed to himself as he turned back to where Benjamin was finishing up his own breakfast. He was already dressed in his fine uniform, ready for work.

"Great," Benjamin smiled picking up his now finished plate and heading over to the sink. He turned it on and started to rinse and wash his own plate as well as Edward's. The sound of rain on the roof was drowned out by the roar of the water. "I will get some linens and clothes set out and throw in a load of wash before I have to go to work. Roy, someone is going to need to pick up the young Elric from the train station. I got work today."

"Don't think you are the only one with work," he muttered taking a spoonful of oatmeal and shovelling it into his mouth.

"Roy, don't go to work, not now," Benjamin scolded him lightly. Roy rolled his eyes as he picked up his plate and deposited it into the sink, grabbing his own sponge and starting to clean his own plate. Benjamin was staring him down the entire time as if he expected him to be so low as to ditch the kid again.

"Ben, I am not leaving the house. I will just be in contact with my team over Kain's field phone. Havoc and I planned this drug bust yesterday when he was over," Roy muttered. Benjamin seemed to relax a bit and set his dishes on the drying wrack for later.

"Good to hear," he said curtly. "But who is going to pick up Mr. Elric?"Roy let out a heavy breath as he finished washing his plate and set it down along side Benjamin's.

"I will ask one of my subordinates to do it when I call. I don't need all of them on that mission," he replied.

"Sir, when were you supposed to call?"

"0900. I got time, Ben," Roy told him.

"Roy, i think you better make that call now." Roy looked up at the clock and cursed to himself. it was 9:30, he was already half an hour late. He usually woke up a lot earlier than that and the events with Edward must have been longer than he thought. Roy rushed upstairs and into his room, ignoring the broken door and the mud trail that Edward left behind. A phone was set up on his writing desk along with all of his papers. Roy quickly yanked the phone off of the reciver and was about to dial when he paused. There was the light hum of running water in Edward's room. Roy shook his head and reached down to the rotary. The kid will be fine. But he stopped again. Growling to himself, he yanked the phone out of the wall and piled all of his papers up in a disorganised bundle. He dragged everything out of his beaten in door and into the dark room of his subordinate. The noise of the shower running was louder in here than it was in his room but the door between them muffled it enough to not be a distraction. Roy dropped all of his stuff onto the desk. He plugged the phone into the empty outlet and dialed the number to Fuery's extension.

"h-hello sir?" the young sergent's voice came over the phone. "You're late-"

"Yes, Kain, I know. Where are you now?" Roy asked the kid.

"Outside getting ready to leave, sir. We were awaiting your orders of deployment but-"

"I got hung up on a few things Fuery. Who's all there?" He asked. There was a slight pause as the boy must have been counting heads.

"Riza, Jean, Heymans, Maes, and Vato. We are all here, sir," Kain replied. Roy nodded his head even though the young Sergeant couldn't see him.

"Great. Tell Havoc he has to pick Alphonse up at the train station at six."

"Yessir, but I don't think he's going to like it," Fuery answered.

"He doesn't have to like it Kain he just has to do it. I can't and Benjamin has work," Roy huffed under his breath, pinching the bridge of his nose. He could already tell that this was going to be a long day. The phone was set down with a thumping clatter as fuery went off to tell Jean the bad news personally. Roy heard angry shouts come from the other end of the line and he knew he was in trouble with the second lieutenant. The phone on the other end was gruffly picked up and he heard some struggling from the other side as Fuery must have been fighting him for it back.

"WHAT! Colonel! No! I am not doing this! Get one of the others to do it! I am going on this bust and I will help! You said that you weren't going to do this to me!" Jean ranted. he was obviously hurt that he wouldn't be able to help on the mission but personally, Roy had other plans for the lieutenant that went beyond picking up Elric from the train station. Though it wasn't for a few hours, busts usually went on until the late hours of the evenings. He didn't want Havoc to get mixed up in his work before he could pick Alphonse up. It really was for the better that the man stayed behind.

"Lieutenant, you are too emotionally involved in this. I need to ask you to sit this one out. You told everyone else the actual target and mission details right?" Roy asked him. There has a growl from the other end that scratched through the static of the field phone.

"Colonel, everyone else knows what the drug bust really is for but they are just as involved as I-"

"The difference is, Jean, they don't show it. I will have Maes keep tabs with me for the mission and if I hear one breath that you are there, expect to be court martialed. That isn't an empty promise," Roy ordered. There was a long pause from the other end before Havoc said anything. Though he always gave the threat of being court martialed, they knew that he was never serious about it. However, they knew what being a disobedient soldier could do to the fate of the mission. When he gave the court martial threat, they knew that they should never fight against it.

"Fine," came the usual huffy answer he always got. Roy smiled slightly, glad that he won the argument without too much of a hassle. "When do you want me to pick him up?"

"1800 is when his train is due at the station. I expect you to be pulling up to my house at 1900 sharp," Roy said listing the military times, making it feel like a real mission for the lieutenant. It didn't really work as he heard the phone clatter around as he must have thrown it to Fuery, who had terribly clumsy hands in which Roy didn't understand how he could be so skilled with fine technology.

"S-sir, are we ready?" Kain asked. Roy pulled out some of his files and notebooks on the table and got a pen ready to jot down anything they observed.

"Right, keep me on the line and head out," he ordered. He heard Fuery call the order out to everyone. there was a muffled curse from Havoc that Roy chose to ignore and then the slamming of car doors with the start of an engine. The phone was tossed around a bit, but Roy kept his end close to him, wanting to catch any detail that might slip by. He absolutely needed to know what was going on that mission. With a bit of clatter, the line was handed to someone else and Maes picked up the end.

"So, Roy, Ben told me-"

"Shut up, Maes. We're on a mission," Roy huffed, hoping to shut the man up before he began. He got everything settled down, he didn't want to dive back into his own problems of that morning.

"We're on a mission you mean. You are at home probably in your pajamas," Maes commented. Roy looked down and self consciously tighted the belt on his robe. "So, I am guessing Edward is the reason you can't come with us?"

"Yeah," Roy admitted. They both sighed at the same time. Roy rubbed his temple as he waited for them to get to their bust location. Traffic must have been dying down by that point but one could never know how long it would take to get across the city. "Listen, Maes, you are the commanding officer of this group now but keep tabs with the mission details alright? Every single thing you find, tell me. I need to know."

"Don't worry Roy, got you covered. This line isn't going to close anytime soon," Maes reassured him. "We really drug busting a hospital Roy? Couldn't you have found a full search warrant instead?"

"The military is in on this and a search warrant would have tipped them off. Drug searches are always approved speedily because they don't want the culprits to get away. Something big is going on and I don't want Edward to be on the wrong end of it," Roy told him. There was a pause from the other end of the line.

"Is Edward on the wrong end of it? Havoc told me-"

"Yes."

...

"Roy, you're not going to believe this, but they bugged out," Maes sighed into the phone as he and Mustang's group stepped around the abandoned facility. It took only a few moments to enter the hospital with the search papers and find the basement. A few of the nurses had screamed in fright but Fuery, being the nice boy he was, helped calm them down and reassure that everything was alright. That took more than a few moments. They had found the stairwell door easily. The window was smashed out of it and covered up with cardboard so that the patients wouldn't cut themselves on it. He asked Roy about it but he had no clue what went on but there was a high bet that was Edward's doing. Maes was kind of curios as to what really happened to the kid but as he looked around the empty lower levels of the basement he had a pretty good hunch as to what it was, and he didn't like it. They had searched all sub levels of the hospital, finding two floors that looked like normal psyc wards and the bottom few as chemical storage and research facilities that were now burnt out as someone attempted to cover evidence. Large piles of charred substances laid in nearly everyroom and random papers were scattered across the floor, not making it to their designated piles. They quickly searched every room, making sure that there was no one left. Heymans said that the fires were over a few hours old meaning it was unlikely the people were still in the same city district.

There was a loud groan from the other end of Fuery's field telephone and he heard Mustang curse to the heavens. Maes shook his head and sighed to himself as he opened another room, the seargent major following close at his heels so the telephone wouldn't catch. The room was quite different from the rest of the rooms. The others were set up like labs with tables and cabinets or even doctors offices. This one was wide, cement, and open. Maes took a curious step into it. There didn't seem to be any piles of burnt material, he thought it might have just been a spare room but he had a deep dark feeling it wasn't.

"Lieutenant Colonel, w-what's that over there?" Kain asked trying to make his way over to the center of the room. The phone system was strapped around his shoulders and he almost yanked the phone out of his hand. Maes held him back by the shirt collar and handed the young boy his end of the phone to hold onto. He carefully took a few careful steps towards where Fuery was pointing. It was a large discoloration in the middle of the room. There was a large metal staple protruding out of the ground in the center of the mess. Maes bend over and crouched down to the mess. The place was so silent he could hear Roy's demanding and questioning voice from the other end of the line. He sounded desperate for answers but Maes felt that he wouldn't like them one bit. He reached down with one of his bare hands and rubbed one of his fingers against the discoloured floor. Some of whatever soaked it previously crumbled off into his hand. It was dark red and metallic... blood.

"Dear god," he muttered to himself as he stood up. Fuery rushed over to him, rather curious as to what it was.

"Sir, what-"

"Blood. Take a sample," Maes ordered, reaching into one of his pockets and handing the kid a small evidence back that they each were carrying. Kain nodded and got right to work. Maes pulled out his small camera and snapped a few pictures of the wide room. There were some scratches on the floor where the blood was pooled as if something was struggling to get away. The staple bolted strangely into the middle of the floor was much the same way. Maes walked over to it and snapped a picture. Whatever made the pool of blood obviously wasn't going to stay there on its own desire.

"Alright Sergeant, do you have the sample?" he asked, but the kid wasn't paying any attention to him at all. He was staring at the mess with a rather perplexed expression. Kain quickly zipped the little bag of dried blood and set it in his satchel before quickly running over to the far end of the room. "What are you doing?" Maes asked but the kid was already climbing up on one of the outcropping cement slaps that looked strangely like bleachers. He looked down at the dried pools of blood and studied them for a bit. Maes caught the kid's sudden realization and how quickly Kain paled before he nearly collapsed. Maes rushed over to him, hoping that the boy wouldn't fall flat on his face. The kid looked sick as if he was going to throw up, he was shaking so hard. He knew that the scene was bad. A boy as young as Kain was, though a great deal older than Edward, shouldn't see things like this. He remembered the first time he went on the battlefield he couldn't keep his stomach where it was supposed to be.

"Hey, keep it together. Don't want to contaminate the-" Maes started lightly trying to sooth the boy but the kid jabbed a finger down at the mess on the floor. He was drawing in deep and meaningful breaths to try and hold his breakfast down. Maes followed his finger with his eyes.

"I-It's... I-It's," Kain stammered but Maes slowly pushed his hand back down to his side, telling him that he saw it as well. From that position it was all clear. Though the chalk must have been erased multiple times, the light from the florecent over hangs had burned a permanent difference into the ground, fading the cement floor. It was a transmutation circle. Though the specific symbols weren't able to be made out, probably from being changed so many times, the circle itself was prominent. His eyes refusing to move from the sudden epiphany, Maes reached down blindly for his camera and snapped a shaky picture of the circle. He quickly grabbed for the phone that was still clamped tightly in Fuery's hand.

"Roy, it's an alchemy research lab. There's a transmutation circle, o-or what's left of one on the floor and... blood everywhere. It looks like they... um... tied their victims down and then... transmuted them. Probably animals for chimera experiments but..."

"Thanks, Maes," the stiff voice of his friend came out. It was tight and sounded as if it was about to choke but he seemed to keep it down. Maes nodded and grabbed a hold of Fuery's jacket.

"Right, lets go check another room," he told the boy softly. The kid nodded and took the phone out of his hand as they quickly but solemnly exited the room, making a mental note never to go back there again.

...

Riza walked into one of the opened rooms to begin the evidence search. It looked to be a Kennel of some sorts. Metal cages lined the walls and there was a horrible stench of urine and ammonia coating the place. Riza nearly choked on it as she covered her nose with her sleeve. The doors of every cage were flung open and ajar showing their empty bellies. There was a huge examination table in the center of the room, metal and matching the rest of the interior. Worn belts and leather strapps hung from it, sending a haunting chill up her spine. She snapped a couple pictures of the room. With the way they were finding things they might be able to fill ten albums with the photos they collected. That was something she wished she never had to do. With all of the different things that they've seen so far they could start to piece together what happened in the bottom of the hospital and there was definitely something that Roy wasn't telling them. They already knew that this was linked to Edward's disappearance, Havoc told them that much, but to think that Edward was in a place such as this was unbearable. What happened to him?

Riza walked farther into the room and pulled out some drawers that were underneath the examination table. They were full of smashed syringes and pipettes, probably purposely broken. She snapped a picture of that and then closed the drawer again. It was a science lab. Chimeras seemed the only dirrection this investigation was going. The kennels in there were probably used to hold the creatures and experiments. She didn't know exactly what they were testing for, a chimera hybrid, a talking intellectual creature, or something else, but she didn't like it, not one bit. The Elrics had investigated Tucker's biological alchemy before and maybe that was what Edward tried to look into here, but it didn't seem right for the kid to go as far as this. To also be doing this for six months without even contacting his brother also was a bit sketchy in itself.

Riza sighed as he stood up, trying to block the stench out of her nose. What did this entire thing have to do with Edward? There was a pile of burnt papers and evidence in the corner of the room. Most of the fires in the other rooms were controlled in some sort of way in order not to set off the fire alarms but this one seemed a little more out of control. It was as if the scientists or whoever ran this joint were rushing through their work a little too quickly. that was great for her and their investigation team because it meant that they didn't take care to make sure everything was fully scorched. The walls were tinted with the smoke and some of the paint seemed to have burnt off where the flames caught. Instead of being doused, this fire seemed to have choked itself out instead. Riza curiously started to pick through it. They were going to have a long night searching through every single one of the piles in all the rooms. The top of the pile consisted of a full foot of ash, having been effectively burnt to a crisp. Ignoring the soot stains that were covering her uniform, Riza dusted the pile off until she found the bottom few layers where the fire didn't reach all the way. It seemed to be a ball of cloth of some sort. She reached in and pulled out a bunch, not caring which way the dust scattered to the floor. As she straightened whatever it was out for examination, her mind seemed to freeze up as she clenched the fabric tight in her hands. she felt her stomach give way as she caught the navy blue of a military uniform.

...

Heymans knew it wasn't any use but he opened the drawers of the filing cabinets anyways. They were already emptied probably to be burned but he just had to make sure. He was in one of the examination rooms. It was built much like what a doctor's office would look like or a veterinary clinic. There was a diagnostics table in the middle with medicine cabinets on either wall. Some scaling machines and other tools which were too big to bugg out with were left behind, still plugged into their outlets and the lights still running. Vato was on his own search through the pile of burnt files. The papers were crumbled up individually before they were thrown onto the fire, effectively wasting all possible chances of recovery, but Vato none the less tried to get something out of the piles of ash.

"Find anything yet Falman?" Breda called out as he walked over towards the medicine cabinets and opened them up, finding them to be in the same state as the filing cabinets.

"Nothing yet," the man sighed, sifting through the dust.

"Try digging to the bottom. Maybe the ash coated the bottom papers and smothered the fire before it got to the rest," he replied, opening another empty cabinet. Vato gave a muffled reply and dug his hands deeper into the pile. It was a rather large pile of ash, having had so much paper go into it from the cabinets. Vato practically had his elbows burried in soot to reach the bottom of it. A sudden victorious cry was given out and Heymans turned around to see Vato holding a rather burnt file. He hurried on over to see what it was.

Papers in the bottom fire were layered ontop of eachother, only the top few layers having been scorched to dust. Whoever started the fire probably started to toss the files together before correcting their technique and crumbling the papers. The bottom layers, though being slightly discoloured and burnt around the edges, were legible enough to keep. The file that Vato was holding seemed to be a profile of some sort. On the top cover it read Kennel 10, Experiment 36, specimens 909 and 455, Serpentes Canine.

"Snake Dog," Vato noted as he flipped the packet open. Heymans rolled his eyes, knowing that Falman was the book worm who probably knew every species latin name off the top of his head. However, they now officially knew that this place was infact, a chimera lab. They had a hunch but Heymans wanted to prove it before going on with it, even though it was pretty obvious what was going on here. Vato shrugged to himself after a quick skim of the file and placed the papers gently on the ground before starting to sift through the pile once more.

"I just don't understand why they would try to cover up a chimera lab. Everyone knows that the government experiments in biological alchemy," Heymans said as Vato handed him another file. He opened it up to see Lion Goats. How in the world the scientists managed to get a lion into the hospital without anyone noticing, he couldn't even begin to comprehend. He set the file down next to the other one. "I mean, Tucker was a State Alchemist who got his liscense because he made a chimera."

"Well," Vato puffed as he dug around the pile of ash, "They did decommission labratory number five."

"It could be that they were embarrassed by the incident with Tucker and attempted to cover up their research but this facility seems too old to have been only just under a year old," Heymans said. Vato looked up from his pile of soot and studied the walls for a few moments.

"Judging by the walls and structural soundness, I would have to gues this was made maybe ten years ago with the use of external wiring up at the cieling. However, this hospital was made in the early 1800's meaning that it could date older. This was originally made as a psychiatric ward but it shut down due to lack of funding, making the Hospital the only working facility in the building. The entire place was reconstructed before the Ishvalan Civil war to apply the new technological advancements and to update the walling and the floors as had been done several times in the past but the government started to fund the project then and the psycward was restored meaning that this was probably put into use as a research facility around that time," the man noted. Heymans looked up at the walls and noticed the older electrical systems. That man was practically like a walking encyclopedia, he didn't know how he did it. Vato could probably list the entire phone book off the top of his head if he wanted to. But, even though it was amazing, everyone on the team had to admit that Falman could be a little too knowledgeable for his well being. Vato picked up another file, gave it a quick look and dropped it back down to the others before digging back into the ash. Heymans sighed as he rolled up his sleeves and started to dig around in the pile as well.

"It could also be because this was made outside of the governments knowledge and therefore doesn't have the right authourization," he noted as his hands came over a thin file. He pulled it out, saw the words Felis Sapien, and tossed it onto the pile to read later. "but we know that's false since the government is paying for them to work."

"Heymans-"

"So, that means that the reason that the government doesn't want this public knowledge is because they are doing something that is probably inhumane, or frowned upon. Probably immoral is my guess, to not only the extreme single interest groups but also to anyone else. It could also be breaking one of their own laws, making it look bad if the public saw it," he said, thinking out loud. He looked up to see Vato not digging around in the dirt like he was, but staring down at the file that he just tossed down. The man looked pale as he leaned over and picked it up, his dirty hands smudging the folder even more. Heymans curiously leaned over his shoulder.

"Kennel # 6, Experiment 203, subject 15 and specimen 106, Felis Sapien," Heymans read out loud.

"Feline Human," Vato translated. Heymans felt his heart stop as he stared at the slightly scorched words.

"I guess we found the reason," he muttered under he breath. Vato didn't say anything but simply nodded. It was sick, human experimentation, but to know that the government was doing it right under their noses was even worse. Breda wanted to know what the government was planning to do with the experiments but with Ishvalan war over and in the stage of reconstruction, it seemed that all of these would be useless. Another thought tugged at his subconscious lightly. What did Edward have to do with this? Supposedly to the Colonel, the big guy was the person who found out the information that they needed for their fake drug bust along with some of Havoc's research, but Heymans had a hunch that was only for a deeper find. However, he was afraid to find out how far the kid was in on this investigation.

The file was thin, smaller than most of the others they picked up. Vato slowly opened it. The entire thing looked to be hand written, being a log of dates, procedures, and short diagnostics of the experiment.

"P-Pages are missing," the man noted pointing towards the center of the vanilla folder. It was creased, obviously worn down by a lot more paper than was just there. Breda took it out of his hands to look at it more closely. The dates were recent, only a few months old. The first line of the log said subject captured 28/09/1914.

"Falman, what day did Edward go on that mission?" Breda asked.

"If I remember cor-rectly, lieutenant, it was... the same date," Vato muttered slowly. Breda nodded his head, the words bouncing around in his head with thunderous melody.

"Unfortunately, you always remember correctly," he said, having wished it all a coincidence. He flipped through the file nervously. All of the dates had small notes, vaguely detailing the event that went on. From that information, Heymans could only guess what really happened to the subject. The final date was labeled 03/05/1915 subject mental evaluation requested. That was the date that Roy found Fullmetal again. "Mental evaluation?" Heymans muttered under his breath.

"Yes, also known as a psychological examination. They are used to test the mental stableness and well being of a person probably traumatised or suffering from a brain illness or mood disorder varying from-"

"Vato, please shut up," he ordered and the man quickly shut his mouth. Heymans didn't want to hear of all the things that could have went wrong if this really was Edward they were talking about. There might have been a slim possibility that it was different, maybe the dates just so happened to match up. There was a knock on the door as Riza came walking into the room. Heymans looked up and his body froze as he realized how wrong he was to bet on that slim possibility of coincidence.

"Look what I found," the Lieutenant's stiff voice shook out. In her hands she held a long piece of red fabric; Edward's coat.

...