Chapter 34:
September 15th, 2180
"So, you haven't seen your fiancé for how long, miss?" Asked Detective Garrus Vakarian, of the Drell woman in front of him, he had no clue why, but she seemed incredibly familiar to him.
"I told you, Detective, I haven't seen him for two days, ever since the Memorial." Explained the Drell, 'Jorra Niatsu' was her name.
Jorra Niatsu was agitated, to say the very least. She'd spent a majority of the night of the 13th, the entirety of the 14th, and several hours of this day looking for Christopher McGraw, but the only clue she had was the terrorist attack that had happened at the Presidium, where a medal, the Serpent of the Station had been found [She decided to break into C-Sec to steal the medal late the previous night, they had no leads as to the thief's identity]. After twenty four hours had passed, an APB had been put out on the mercenary, Ghost, but that was more or less a formality, due to the fact that no one knew who he was, all they had to go on was his uniform, his gender, and his species, which weren't much, seeing as how the latter-two were masked by the former-most.
The fact that she'd gone to C-Sec was only proof of her desperateness. She very much doubted that Chris was on the station, but she also knew that she had to declare him missing, or risk being called into suspect herself.
"Ma'am, you do realize that many have gone missing ever since the battle of the Suns…" Garrus let the statement hang.
Jorra's fist slammed onto the table she was sitting at, putting a slight dent in it, she made a mental not to apologize to Chris if - when - she found him, he'd spent good money on this table. "I know when I last saw him. He went to the grocery store after the memorial, he didn't return for several hours. I went looking for him for days, and now you're here, telling me what I already know: He's not here!" Angrily stated Jorra.
I awoke, with a start, to find my head throbbing, and my back sore. My wrists felt cold, and my chest bare, as quickly as I realized that I wasn't wearing a shirt, or shoes, I realize I've been shackled to a steel table.
I try to resist the shackled, but a voice - a voice I've come to hate - speaks to me over the inter-comm, "Ah, ah, ah, Ghost!" A door behind me opens, "You won't break from those, even if you used your biotics, or psycho powers, or whatever you used to blow up my guys, they're biotic suppressant, and you've got every sort of mental depressant running through you." The table shifts from it's horizontal position, to a vertical one, I'm greeted with the smug mug of Tor.
"Want to know how I got this job?" He asks, I spit in his face; he wipes the spit from his eye, "That wasn't too nice!" He says, flicking his hand to remove my saliva.
He looks from the spit-stain on the floor, to me, and I spit in his face again.
"Alright asshole, do that again and I'll -" I do it again, his fist slams into my jaw. "Now that I've got your fucking attention I'm not going to be nice about it." He violently grabs my head and turns it to my right arm, which a pale, sickly-gray color. The fuck has he done to me?
"We checked your immunities, you get another month, at least." He states, before he slams my head into the table.
"Jesus Christ on a burning crucifix, what did you do to me?" I ask, "Run out of Joker references, so you decided to cut off the blood flow to my arm?" I taunt.
He slams his fist into my jaw again, "Shut up! Those references are amazing! They will never get old!" He shouted, as he reared his fist back again.
"Now now, Tor, let us not harm the patient too terribly bad." Says a deep, German-accented voice, though I don't quite recognize how familiar it is, I'm more focused on what Tor said to me.
My immunities? What the hell is he talking about? Did he infect me with some... Alien disease? What'll happen in a fucking month!?
"Damn it Maxis, this guy spit in my eye! Twice!" Tor moves out of my line of - what did he just say?
"That is enough, Tor. You can go." Says the German, Tor huffs and leaves the room, slamming the door on the way out, "Sorry about that, Herr Ghost." Says the German, as he moves in front of the table, but stops to examine my arm.
He clicks his tongue and shakes his head, I can't get a good look at his face, "This doesn't look good at all… Must have been the stress from the Suns Invasion, advanced the infection process." He says.
"What infection process?" I demand.
The German ignores me, "I'm amazed you've lasted so long without any side-effects… Very few others have lasted as long as you. Tor tells me you were bitten in his compound?"
Bitten in the compound, what -…
…
Oh my fucking god, the Zombie bite?!
"You're talking about the fucking zombie bite!?" I demand, "As in, a half year ago? He fucking said nothing would happen!" I roar, not because I'm pissed off - but make no mistake, I am - but because I, unlike everyone I know, can actually say I've been bitten by a zombie, and am turning into one. Seriously, what the fuck? The G-Man never cared to mention this to me? Wouldn't the virus, or whatever it is, have left when I shot myself? Or is it because I shot myself, that it never left? God damn details!
"Ah yes, you people call them 'zombies' now, I prefer the Untoten." He pauses, before letting go of my suddenly numb arm, and moving into my field of vision.
I get my first good look at the guy, he's probably in his thirties, but he's absolutely bald, I think he must fucking shine his head! He's also got many, many wrinkles on his face. He's wearing the stereotypical scientist's white overcoat, tan white skin, dark blue pants, and has black gloves and boots on.
"Allow me to introduce myself… Ludvig Maxis." Did he just say what I fucking think he just said?! "As of now, you are infected with a strain of virus that - up until last month - was incurable." He tells me, "Normally, I would simply cure you and euthanize you so I could have a look at your augmentations. However… We know that you do not originate from this plane, so the infection is our advantage." He says, his accent thick. "I shall make it simple, you tell us from where you originally came, and anything you may know, and we shall cure you, and induct you into our fold to work for us."
I hear the door behind me slam open, and hear some whistling guy enter, "Should you refuse, we will allow the infection process to proceed for one week, until we reevaluate your position."
I'm still reeling from what the fuck he said first, is he the Maxis? As in, Call of Duty zombies? What the fuck sense does that make? I mean, I guess, in a broad sort of way, having 935 be some sort of precursor to Cerberus would make... A little too much sense, but seriously, G-Man, what the fuck did you do to this Universe?! First we've got Modern Warfare, then we've got Assassin's Creed, then somehow we got a couple guys from Halo and Metal Gear... And now we've got fucking Call of Duty Zombies!? What the fuck?!
"Doesn't seem so bad, can I have a TV? A burger? And a side order of - Go fuck yourself! I'm not telling you anything." I state. Well, at least one good thing - if you can even call it that - comes out of this... I get to see what Maxis looks like. This guy was the one that helped make the zombies, in the game. I think it had something to do with Unobtanium, and teleporters, and dead people. Obviously I haven't had too much of a reason to remember Call of Fucking Duty's campaign, outside of what affected me, but if I remember right, the Unobtanium was what reanimated the dead corpses, and the teleporters ran on Unobtanium, and when Maxis and his assistant would teleport people, the teleporters would kill 'em, and reanimate them. Maxis then decided he'd play god, and he tried to make an army of zombies, obviously, that didn't work out, otherwise we wouldn't have CoD Zombies in the sense that we do... Or... Did? I guess? If this universe runs off of a Modern Warfare storyline, then did World at War - and, by proxy, Black Ops - happen?
"Not so bad? Well… Edward? What do you think of that?" Asks Maxis, as a cart full of surgical supplies, knives, and other such tools wheels into my field of view.
"Oh, nein, it is a horrible idea." Says a loud, light voice that takes me a few moments to recognize, "Not so bad? If he refuses I will have to play with him, and if I'm allowed to play with him, I'll only be allowed to use the machine on him, and that's no fun. Not when compared to the surgery." Says the new German, as he himself enters my field of view.
This one is wearing a world-war-2 era Nazi Uniform - why he's refused to take it off, I've no fucking clue, - he has a thin, oval-shaped head, a buzz cut, and dark red eyes. If this is Doctor Maxis, than this guy must be the one I should really fear. This guy, if I remember his face correctly, is Edward Richtofen. He's the guy that was one of the driving forces behind controlling the Zombies, but that's not everything. If I remember correctly, he's also a sociopathic, insane, schizophrenic, asshole who would torture prisoners for fun. I think I remember reading on the internet at one point that his past time was sticking dynamite onto those clapping monkey toys, changing their voice recordings to make them scream, and laughing as they exploded. Doesn't that just cry 'Model Citizen'?!
"Oh, come now, Doctor Richtofen, you will have your chance to operate… Later." Son of a bitch! I was fucking right! Okay, Maxis I'm not too terribly frightened of, I don't know much about him, but he strikes me as the guy who'll try everything before he gets into the 'gory' procedures to get the info he wants. Tor, I'm not scared of period, he's the kind of high-school jock asshole who will punch you if you say anything bad, and if I can get shot for a living, I can take a few punches from a dumbass ex-con. But Richtofen? Fuck no, I've no problem admitting it, going from what I know and remember about his character, I'm god damn down right scared of this guy. "As you see, Herr Ghost, it will not be 'not so bad'…" Maxis reaches onto the cart and pulls out some sort of helmet device. "I assume you've heard of the Quarian race? Abominations, the lot of them… They have the nerve to be the most aesthetically similar to humanity? Bah!" The helmet gets violently shoved onto my head, I feel something prick my skull and my neck.
"Oh yay! We get to test it?!" Demands Richtofen, his way of speech is much more odd than Maxis', his 'S'es sound more like 'SH'es, and his 'I''s sound like 'EE's, it creeps me the fuck out. It's like every stereotypical evil Nazi German doctor stuck into one guy, and he's practically chomping at the bit to gut me. I'm amazed I haven't wet myself...
"Not yet." Maxis says, after seeing Richtofen practically dive onto the cart to look for some machine. "You see… Herr Ghost, the Quarians have a machine… They call it the 'Nerve Stimulator'… You see, because they spend their entire lives in those suits - a god send, if you ask me, hides their blasphemous images, - they must find ways to… Well… To put it bluntly, masturbate." Oh god, what the fuck is he going to do to me? "To do this, they created the Nerve Stimulator. This machine, in essence, stimulates the nerves at any point in their body, be it their arm, their leg, their groin, it will be stimulated.
"But, I found myself wondering one day… 'If it can stimulate the body, why not the mind?'… And that's how this came to be." He tapped the helmet, "The Nerve Stimulator -P6.12, is designed to stimulate not your body, not give you… Pleasure… But it's meant to stimulate your mind. Specifically, the areas that receive and translate pain." He pauses, a sneer stretches across his face, "Richtofen, if you would please demonstrate." Richtofen picks up a small device, and presses a button.
Immediately, my body is wracked with an almost indescribably horrible pain. It feels as if my blood has been replaced with lava, as if my skin is being meticulously carved into by scraping needles, as if my bones are being set ablaze, as if my organs are being shredded, put together, and shredded again, and as if every single cell in my body is slowly being torn apart. This pain is worse than any I've felt before, worse than every gunshot, worse than every injury, every bruise, cut or bump I've received in my entire life, all at once, multiplied by ten. It's unbearable.
It seems to go on for an eternity, and just as I wonder if this is what it feels like to be in hell, the pain is lifted, and I suddenly regain the hearing I didn't notice I'd lost.
"Ah hah ha! Ah hah ha hah ha!" Laughs Richtofen, "Did you see him, Maxis? Did you hear him?! He was like -" Then Richtofen proceeds to do some sort of dance, and scream like a caveman on drugs.
"Indeed." Chuckles Maxis, "Do you want to know the best part, Mister Ghost? You cannot die from this. That pain was purely mental -" It didn't fucking feel mental! "- and thus, you will not die, even if it is left like that for days - weeks on end! You will continue to survive!" He rants. "Now, I shall only ask you this one time, before I give you to Richtofen, who is much less… Kind… With it than I am." He tells me.
"Who are you? Where do you come from? What can we learn from you?!" He demands, getting right into my face.
Through heavy breath, I find the will to speak, but it comes out in mumbles.
"What was that? I couldn't hear you." He says.
"Your… Hair dresser… Your barber shop… How to cut your hair…" I tell him, laughing at the end. Richtofen descends into maniacal laughter, he apparently found my joke to be hilarious, Maxis however, did not.
"I see." He growls, "Do not say I didn't warn you." He warns, "Richtofen, he is yours." With that, he leaves the room, and slams the door behind him.
"Oh… Oh Ja, that was a good one!" Says Richtofen, wiping a tear from his eye, "But, sadly, that will not help you. At all." And with that, the indescribable pain returns.
A/N:
I recognize that this is a damn short chapter, but I seriously just couldn't think of anything of note to add.
I had a 'Price looks for Chris' segment, but that ran on too long and got far too little accomplished, so I ended up scrapping that.
Thanks for reading!