So I'm posting two chapters in one go because the ending of the last one was a pretty evil one.
Chapter twenty
The moment they had an address for the man who had sent the package, Maes was running out of the post office and into the car where the curious Second Lieutenant behind the wheel turned his head curiously towards him. Maes barked out the address as Alphonse, Hawkeye and Major Armstrong got inside the car quickly.
"GO!" Maes shouted at the driver.
After fifteen long minutes of silent tension, they pulled up outside a small brick house and Maes didn't even bother knocking. He kicked open the door and was immediately met by a foul stench that Maes recognised all too well.
…The sickening smell of a rotting corpse. Maes pinched his nose and went into the living room to find the body of a man in his late twenties hanging from the rafters.
Maes turned away, the stench sickening, but his instincts were still present enough for him to shout for Alphonse to stay outside.
Which was when Maes noticed the envelope on the coffee table with the large, blue letters "FOR THE MILITARY" written on it.
His hopes rising once again, Maes grabbed the envelope and went out into the hallway just as Armstrong could be heard going upstairs and Hawkeye seemed to have followed Al outside. Maes tore open the envelope, not risking telling the others in case it was a false lead. The top of the first page had the date of four days previously written on top of it.
Hopefully you're reading this because you found the kid's automail limbs. Consider this my confession and witness testimony.
I'm part of a group of professional kidnappers, under the code name "Red". On November 16th, I was a part of the group that derailed the train that Flame Alchemist Colonel Roy Mustang and Fullmetal Alchemist Edward Elric were on by the use of a controlled explosion. We brought the two alchemists to a secret location and received the payment of the agreed upon sum for our favours by our employer, a Miss Melanie. We removed Elric's automail after treating his broken wrist, a stab wound in his abdomen and a cut to his forehead.
Those are the things I know for certain. I am still a new recruit and they don't give me too much information about the nature of our missions yet. The rest are snippets of information that I picked up from their conversation, but keep in mind that seeming too interested would have been likely to get me shot.
1) They are being held in the town of Maehle.
2) This has to do with Ishbal.
3) We did not know which State Alchemists they were getting until after the train crash.
4) Miss Melanie was accompanied by an Ishbalan man with burns along the left side of his face by the name of Gregor.
5) Miss Melanie mentioned something about being a chimera.
6) It seems that the entire town is in on this thing.
7) Mustang and Elric have probably been tortured for this whole time.
Shortly after being tasked with hiding the automail, my girlfriend called me and told me she was pregnant.
…Made me rethink my ways a bit, I guess.
I was going to wait for you people to come find me and tell you everything, but I guess I lost my nerve, so I hope this will be enough and that my last act in life was to save an innocent child.
Signed: Dennis Warren.
Jean was sitting inside one of the many military trucks as they drove inside the city limits of Maehle. Breda, Falman and Fuery were there along with him and a bunch of other soldiers from the Eastern area. It had taken them a whole day since Hughes called, telling them that they knew where to find the Boss and Ed to get here. They didn't know what they were going to or how many they would be fighting. Just that the sun was setting over a town where two of their friends had been tortured for twenty-four days.
"I hope that they're all right. Ed's only been in the military for two months now," Fuery said nervously.
Problem was that people could do a lot of harm in that time.
"Me too," Breda said. "But we know that the kid's strong and so's the Colonel, that ups our chances."
None of them wanted to say it out loud that it was more likely that they'd find a couple of starved alchemists hanging by their wrists and with injuries that could be so severe that they were going to be discharged from the military.
They went silent again until the truck stopped and a Lieutenant Colonel ordered them out and to search the nearby areas. Jean went together with Breda, Falman and Fuery in the direction of the park as ordered. The sun had gone down by now, but the sky was still too blue for them to see stars yet.
"It's cold out here," Breda commented, his gun at the ready and his face sour. He didn't like the cold, they all knew that.
Jean merely nodded as they went through the arch in the tall hedge, finding themselves in a topiary-infested area.
So it's the kind of park where you get fined for walking on the grass…
"Do you really think that they'll be here?" Fuery asked in a mixture of confusion and hope.
"Either way, that's what our orders were," Jean said, walking ahead, gun at the ready. "We don't really know anything about these people other than that they think it's okay to torture twelve-year-olds. Normal way of thinking may be counterproductive in this case."
He turned around another tall hedge and then he froze. "What the hell?" There was a giant dog cage about two hundred metres in front of him.
And there was a person in there. "I think we've found them!" Jean said as he began jogging as fast as he dared, both focusing on their goal and on their surroundings in case of impending attacks.
Nothing happened however, and as he got closer, he could see that the person had black hair and as he got even closer, he saw that there was in fact a blonde head in there too. Then he saw that they were covered in blankets. They seemed to be asleep.
Jean was just about ready to burst with a mixture of relief, anger and anxiousness. The two alchemists looked relatively fine, but only their heads were visible, the rest covered in blankets. Ed's hair was of course a complete mess, though, and he was lying with a stack of blankets over him and resting his head on the Colonel's left thigh.
Jean wanted to call out, make his presence known, but he didn't know what their mental state was just yet. And so Jean turned to the others, speaking quietly. "You cover me while I get them out of that thing."
The rest nodded and so Jean walked around to the other side of the cage and to the locked door. The sound of feet hitting gravel seemed to stir Ed, and suddenly a pair of terrified golden eyes looked up at him. "Hey, Chief, we're here to get you out," Jean said kindly, taking a few steps forward to see just what needed to be done to unlock this thing.
That set Ed off. The boy squealed and got free of the blankets, revealing that Ed was stark naked and wearing a red collar. Jean froze as he watched him scoot himself away backwards with bandaged fingers and toes and no sign of his automail other than the ghastly scars. He didn't seem to recognise him at all.
The Colonel's eyes snapped open as Ed gave another terrified squeal and he looked up at Jean like he was ready to murder him. Then his eyes widened. "Havoc?" he asked incredulously, his voice hoarse.
"Yeah, Boss. Breda, Falman and Fuery are keeping guard," Jean said, trying to sound encouraging, but Ed's shivering form at the other side of the cage made him feel sick.
Then Mustang stood up, looking unharmed and pretty healthy, considering. He was only wearing a pair of boxers and he had a blue collar around his neck. Jean could see numerous purple spots on his arms, though, indicating that they'd been subjected to a series of injections. "Where's Melanie?" he asked, his eyes widening, betraying a hint of fear, but mostly just intense hatred.
"We don't know, who is she?"
Mustang's eyes clouded over with cold fury. "She's the bitch who broke Ed's mind," he growled. Then he turned away and went over to where Ed was lying, curled in on himself. "Shoot the lock and get us the hell away from this place, I'm taking Ed."