They flew back in a Phantom.
Trent and the others rushed him out of the Control Room to a waiting Phantom that brought them up through its gravity beam. Below them, the battle was dying down. The Elites had brought in more firepower and were wiping out the bugs by the dozens. Another squad of Yellowjackets had come up and were currently holding the Control Room itself. Trent had taken off Blake's helmet and was staring at his pallid face while Cann did his best to keep him stabilized. They were moving as quickly as they could and had radioed ahead.
Trent could feel a familiar despair creeping over him. He hadn't even had a chance to get over losing Eric yet. While Blake certainly wasn't as close as Eric, Trent had come to think of him as one of the team by now.
"How far out are we?" he asked, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. They were going as fast as they could.
"Five minutes," Enzo replied tightly. Trent suppressed a sigh. Too long, it felt like much too long, and it might be.
"How's he doing?" he asked.
"Not good. He'll need surgery. I think one of his organs might have been nicked, but I can't tell for sure. I've got the HQ prepping a surgical bay for him. I'm doing it all myself. They'll get him offloaded and prepped while I strip and get scrubbed," Cann replied.
Trent nodded and sat back, waiting for the agonizingly long ride to be over.
When they hit dirt, a team was already on standby. They got Blake onto a gurney and rushed off for the base. Trent stood there for a moment. He was exhausted, dead tired. Part of him wanted to go and watch the surgery but a bigger part of him really didn't want to. He pulled out a cigarette and lit up. He was nearly out.
"I'm going to check in with Childs," Enzo said quietly. "Would you like to come?"
"I think I need some sleep, man," Trent replied. "It's been...well, it's been a long...day, week? I dunno. A long time."
"All right. Call me if you need me."
"I will." Trent watched Enzo and Kiza head off towards the main base. He simply stood there for a long moment, smoking, watching the chaos of activity that seemed constant as Marines and Elites moved swiftly across the landing pads, loading and unloading shipments. Heading out to whatever mission or situation needed them the most.
Trent killed his Yeheyuan and made for the base. He was right, he needed sleep. At least a little bit of it. He made his way across the landing pads, aching to at least be out of the sunshine. He had a headache and it was fixing to become a full-blown migraine soon. He slipped in through the main entrance started to make for one of the side doors when he locked eyes with a very familiar face. He hesitated.
"Ah hell," he muttered.
"You shit!" Jennifer snapped, striding rapidly towards him.
"Look, I got stuck in a time-" She slapped him, very hard, across the face. Then grabbed him and kissed him harder.
When she let go, he said, "That might have been the most cliché thing you've ever done."
"Oh, good god!" Jennifer cried. "Do you have any idea how shitty it's been for me?!"
"Is there like, any way we can do this somewhere a little more private?" Trent asked. Everyone in the main lobby was staring at them now. She heaved a sigh, grabbed his hand and began pulling him out of the lobby.
"You got me started on these things, you jackoff," Jennifer said, puffing out a cloud smoke from the blunt. Trent chuckled and took it from her, pulling on it himself.
"Well, not a bad habit to have. Helps relieve stress, ease tension, helps you sleep..."
"Sounds like sex."
"Speaking of sex..."
"Aw hell...he told you, didn't he? Before you get started-" Trent held up his hands in defense, then passed the blunt back to her.
"I'm not mad, I understand," he replied.
"Really?"
"Yeah. I was dead, as far as you were concerned."
"Man, why can't other guys be this easy? Well, it didn't help. Just made things worse."
"Why?" Jennifer sighed and was silent for a long time. She stared into nothingness for a while, the blunt perched between her slender fingers. She began massaging her temples, then finally slipped the blunt back into her mouth.
"Because when you died, I guess...it kicked something inside of me. I've been going on like this for a while, you know? No real relationships, just flings, one night stands, screw buddies...and then you came along and you were just too much fun to give up. I found myself wanting a real relationship again and I decided to embrace it. Told myself nothing would happen to you...you were invincible. Heh, should've known, just had to hold out for six months. But when you died...part of me just wanted things to go back to the old way, another part of me just wanted to give up. It really sucked. When I slept with Blake, it felt like I was cheating on you, even though you were dead and gone. But now you're back and...I feel a whole hell of a lot better."
"I can't promise to live through this," Trent said after a long moment. "I just...I can't. It's not fair to you. The best I can do is promise I'll try as hard as I can not to die."
Jennifer laughed. "I guess that'll have to do...now let's go for round two," she replied, killing the blunt.
Trent woke four hours later, showered, shaved and dressed. In a fresh uniform, he made for the infirmary and found Cann checking in on Blake, who was unconscious in one of the beds. As soon as he spied that slow rise and fall of the man's chest, Trent relaxed. The rational part of him knew that if anything had gone seriously wrong, they would have called him. But still...it helped to see. Cann glanced over from checking Blake's vitals.
"How you holding up?" he asked.
"Better, now. Pretty much picked up where I left off with Jennifer. Holy shit, it suddenly occurred to me that you're all now six months older than you were...and I'm not. I guess biologically speaking. My birthday's still the same...I'm getting off track. How is he?" Trent replied.
"Stable. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was. We repaired the damage. He should be up in a few hours. Combat ready, however...he might be out of the game for awhile."
"Ah, hell, that'll really piss him off."
"Yeah, I know. I'm likely going to need your help convincing him to stay down because he's probably going to be all like 'No way, I can handle it!' Like all the soldiers always do..."
"All right, I can do that. Where's everyone else?"
"I'm not entirely sure..." Cann was cut off as his comms unit went off. He activated it and spoke quietly for a few moments, then turned to Trent. "It seems Childs is back on the scene and figures we've had enough downtime. He wants us all to gather for the next briefing. Apparently this is a big one, and that's saying something."
"Hopefully it'll put us a lot closer to finishing off Black Ops," Trent replied.
They headed out of the infirmary and navigated the outpost until they found the briefing room. Trent found every other Survivor there but Nauls, who he assumed must still be at the Control Room. Jorge, Linda, Jared and Melissa stared at him with varying degrees of interest.
"Huh," Jorge murmured.
"Knew he wasn't dead," Linda said. Melissa and Jared didn't say anything.
"Yes, yes. I've resurrected Trent from the dead. Call me Lazarus and sit down. We've got a war to win," Childs grunted.
"Is this a war?" Jorge asked.
"Might as well be now. All right, now we're all here. Well, except Blake, but he'll be out of commission for a little while. Now, let's get right down to it. We're going to be hitting two targets. The first is Black Ops HQ. We've finally found it on a rainy little island in the middle of nowhere. Trent, you are taking Cann, Jared and Enzo are linking up with a trio of Yellowjacket Squads to take down their HQ once and for all. I want you guys to get in there, crack that egg open, get all the gooey information inside and blow that place to hell.
"Now, the second objective. Kiza, Melissa, Linda and Jorge are going to investigate a second site that Black Ops seems particularly interested in. That one is more of a stealth so I'm simply giving you for a Pelican to go off by yourself and figure out what the hell is going on over there that they're so interested in. Questions?"
There were none, as per usual.
"Excellent. Get up, grab your gear and go kick some ass!"