Hey, it's a new chapter! Philips gets some answers, and ARK gears up for a rampage.
Un-beta'ed, so quibble away.
- o – o -
Chapter fourteen: Red Is Blue
Cutting out the worst of the videotapes probably would have been a better idea, in the short run. In the long run, it wouldn't have mattered—ARK would have been out for blood anyways. While some of the residents of Palm City saw them as thugs and bootlicking toadies to Peter Fleming, everyone was well aware of the fact that the ARK troopers stuck together and protected their own. Even the janitors in ARK Towers stuck with the troopers; from the top to the bottom, ARK Corporation stuck together.
Loyalty was a precious commodity in the rest of the world; ARK had loyalty in spades. If one of their own was missing or in trouble, the rest of the company could be expected to pull together for them—even if a lawsuit was involved. The Palm City Police Department's old hands who'd transferred to ARK after the take-over had been amazed by how seriously the troopers took the "Thin Blue Line"—which, in their case, was more of an impenetrable blue wall.
The ARK troopers who'd worked closely with Philips had been put in detention in the holding cells under ARK Towers to prevent them from mauling anyone who looked suspicious. Given what they'd seen on the videotape, it wasn't so surprising. The rumor was that the Cape had given the tape to Fleming; the general consensus was that Philips would be rescued, and then they'd maul the vigilante.
Loyalty was a very big thing in ARK. Unfortunately, the loyalty that transcended barriers within ARK Corporation did not extend to the press, or the press officers (whom everyone agreed were scum). Within three hours of the tape's release, the presses were sharing information and writing stories that would only make the average trooper even crazier with rage.
Thomas Sexton, Officer Philips' direct superior, was unavailable for comment. Officially, he was going over evidence with a fine-toothed comb. Unofficially, he was putting fist-sized holes into the break room walls. No one bothered to tell him to stop.
- o – o -
Sexton stopped putting his fist through the wall when Sawyer walked into the break room.
"Coffee ready?" Sawyer asked, pointedly ignoring the plaster dust marring the front of Sexton's uniform. He sat down at the table in the center of the room, the only surface not covered with plaster dust or bits of wall. The security officer would have brought up the possibility of anger management lessons or counseling, but he wasn't suicidal. He had kids to look after.
"Yeah. It's…covered in plaster," Sexton sighed in annoyance. He slouched over to the table and slumped down in a seat. "I…may have gone a bit far," the man admitted as he looked around the room. The only untouched wall in the room had the door, and that was probably because Sexton had tried punching a hole through it yet.
"Just a bit," Sawyer replied, using a spoon to scoop bits of plaster out of the coffee. "Couldn't you have covered the coffeepot first, at least?" He and Sexton laughed at that. Coffee was the one thing everyone in ARK held sacred and would go to extreme lengths never to damage. It was, after all, the reason all of them made it through shift.
"Wasn't thinking," Sexton grunted, pulling a water bottle out of the fridge. He cracked the seal on the lid and took a sip. The man looked at the bottle in his hand, an odd look on his face. "Do you think the prick that's got him knows he's got allergies, or that he prefers water at room temperature?"
Sawyer stared at Sexton. The Lidless Wonder had actual human emotions… Holy shit, if only he had a tape recorder with him.
"No," Sawyer replied. There was no point in sugar coating what they both knew wasn't going to happen. "You saw the same thing I did. If Philips is alive, we'll be lucky if he can even string two words together."
"Shit," Sexton muttered, leaning against the fridge door. "Why can't you just sugarcoat something, for once?" he asked his friend.
Sawyer smirked. "When you tell me how you're able to do the lidless wonder trick, I might." He left, carrying a mug of mostly plaster-free coffee with him. Alright, so they hadn't managed to completely erase the trauma, but for a few minutes, they'd managed some small conversation that wasn't focused on how utterly fucked ARK's investigation currently was.
- o – o -
Peter Fleming, the richest man in Palm City, was in a bit of a quandary. The day before, the Cape had given him information that was probably going to lead to the capture of the serial killer that seemed to have some special hatred for ARK Corporation's employees. That wasn't what was bothering him, however. After the first few unwanted visits from the vigilante, Fleming had started recording the meetings with the man. He'd even begun running voice analysis on them, in the hopes of coming up with some sort of match.
Well, he'd found one.
The billionaire strode into the sitting room of his penthouse and flopped down on one of the sofas. He had the file on his laptop—an ARK model that wasn't due on the market for another six months—and it was causing him no end of grief. Somehow, some way, Vince Faraday had survived the blast that was supposed to have killed him.
He is unkillable, Chess said with a note of appreciation in his voice. I wonder what else he could survive…
"He's still married," Peter replied, covering the words with his mug of coffee. "I somehow doubt he'd be willing to join us in bed…"
More's the pity, Chess muttered unhappily.
"No doubt," Peter nodded. Judging by everything he'd been able to uncover on Faraday, especially prior to his work with the Palm City Police Department, the man had been one hell of a specimen. He'd joined West Point at the age of sixteen (he'd been exceptionally brilliant and lucky, in that case), had graduated with honors… The only thing that didn't make sense was why he'd been put in charge of a gang of murderous psychopaths on his first tour, at the tender age of twenty, rather than being sent somewhere where he could learn the ropes.
I wonder if he'd be top or bottom…
"Chess…" Peter said warningly. His alter-ego retreated, sulking. Alright, the other man did have a point, but still.
Fine, grumbled Chess. You still owe me some time in the driver's seat.
"Soon enough," Peter replied, closing the file on Faraday. After a few seconds, he deleted it. Somehow, letting anyone else have access to the information seemed…wrong.
Someone's in love.
- o – o -
Philips hated feeling helpless. Being injured only made the feeling worse; every time he went to the hospital, his usual doctor put him out with a sedative before trying anything. (The security officer wasn't a difficult patient for nothing, after all.) Two days ago, Doctor Whacko had severed the tendons and nerves in his ankles, making it impossible to escape. (Philips wished he hadn't brushed his nieces off when they'd offered to teach him how to walk on his hands.)
Being crippled while under the dubious care of Samuels—the psycho who'd kidnapped him almost two weeks ago—wasn't helping his blood pressure. The security guard was doing crunches to relieve the boredom and give himself something else to focus on, other than the blood-soaked bandages around his ankles and the cold ball of fear in his gut. It wasn't working too well. If he was judging the time right, he had about an hour before Samuels came back to the cabin from work in the city.
One of the more-or-less helpful benefits of his captivity was that his ability to calculate time was getting better. His abs were also getting more defined—and he'd gone up to a hundred fifty crunches in a minute. Passing that section of the yearly ARK personnel physical was going to be easy. The running… Well, maybe he could convince them to let him skive that off. He wrapped his arms around his knees and stared at the reddish-brown bandages around his ankles. Of course, they'd have to keep him employed first…
Philips flopped back on the thin mattress with a groan. He wasn't escaping anyways; who was he kidding? Even if he, by some miracle, survived the ordeal and managed to escape, he wouldn't have a job anymore. ARK wouldn't keep him on—he had no administrative skills, and his paperwork was just barely good enough to pass muster. Added to that, he was crippled.
The security officer bit back a soft sob of fear when the door at the top of the stairs opened. God knew what Samuels was going to do to him this time. The paralytic had worn off—the bag had been empty for the past eight hours, but he was still sluggish. There would be no way he could fend off an…
Philips froze as Samuels picked him up, being unusually gentle. Compared to the past week-and-a-half, the surprising display of tenderness worried Philips more than if the psychiatrist had come down the stairs with blood in his eye and a hatchet in hand. (Quite honestly, he'd have preferred the hatchet. At least the possibility of death would have given him some measure of peace.)
Samuels carried him up the stairs, being careful not to let the security guard's feet brush against the door. He set the younger man down in a wheelchair and duct taped his ankles to the leg rests. The psychiatrist had enough presence of mind to keep Philips' pants legs pulled down to protect his skin from the adhesive in the tape, although the security officer would have welcomed the slow, painful death by allergy at this point.
Philips didn't even react when the psychiatrist tightened the zip ties around his wrists to painful, constricting tightness. Samuels wheeled him into a room the security officer had never seen. It looked a bit like a psychiatrist's office, crossed with an operating room and a home theater. Philips had only seen combinations like that in horror movies, so it wasn't exactly the most comfortable feeling—he didn't need a reminder that he was basically living out a horror film.
"Good evening, Jacob," Samuels said pleasantly. He held a cup with a straw up to Philips' lips, silently encouraging the man to drink. Philips hesitated for a few seconds, and took a tentative sip. Cold, clear, pure water met his lips; he began drinking eagerly, trying to make his mouth feel a little less like the Sahara Desert or an old shoe.
"Thank you," Philips rasped, more out of inherent politeness than anything else. Being polite to his subconscious—an annoyingly accurate representation of the Cape, as a corpse, with Faraday's face and voice—had been what kept him…mostly sane. Arguing with yourself did not a sane person make, after all.
"Of course," Samuels replied, grandfatherly smile in place. It sent a shiver down the security officer's spine, like someone had walked over his grave. "You know…" he began, tone as pleasant as always. "You have to be the most fascinating specimen I've ever had."
Philips glared at him, not willing to say more, or anything that would get him beaten.
"Of course, you still haven't fulfilled my little project," his captor continued, tone verging into disappointment. Philips flinched, more out of instinct than anything else. "It's…disappointing. So, so very disappointing…"
"Bite me," Philips rasped. "Your experiment can go fuck itself, and the horse it rode in on." His head snapped back, and he tasted blood. Philips couldn't help but feel he'd won the argument… What? He couldn't have his private mental fantasies of superiority at this point? Life wasn't fair.
"You have no idea what I'm trying to do," Samuels snapped, rubbing his knuckles. "My only goal is to help my patient get better, and to do that, I need to understand what happened to him!"
Philips had a good idea where this conversation was headed, and he didn't like it.
"Peter Fleming is my number one priority. If I'm going to rid him of Chess, that annoying second personality of his, I have to understand what created that insane bastard in the first place!"
Philips blinked. Alright, he'd assumed this entire psychotic episode had something to do with Fleming, but… Chess was a second personality? Wow. Fleming had more problems than the office pool said he did.
And every ARK trooper and worker who'd been abducted had been tortured past their breaking points in an attempt to cure him of those problems. Philips was just the latest—and somehow, most promising—failure.
Somehow, that wasn't exactly comforting.
- o – o -
So, what did you think? Good? Bad? Want to see ARK kick Samuels' ass? Drop a line and let me know?
Oh, and updating is going to be a little sporadic over the next few weeks. I'm in the middle of helping remodel a bathroom. But I only have two reviewers who actively read this, so who cares?