AN - The character of Grace Mason of course belongs to Jem, and you can read Grace on it Jem's fic, Heartbeat Away From Death. Story ID: /10691430/

Chapter 22: Loyalty

Jeanne cradled Jonny in her arms the whole ride back to the 2nd Mass camp and then carried him straight to Anne. Casey, Maggie, Grace, Hal and Ben reported with Diego to Weaver and Tom in Weaver's tent. Diego explained what they had seen at his hideout, and the plan was to go and rescue those kids ASAP. Casey stood beside Maggie with Etta under one arm. If they were going, Casey was going with them. No Etta this time, but Casey knew the Berserkers were definitely going to be needed.

Weaver had a map of the area laid out on his table and was going over with the group how best to proceed. The problem was that they weren't even sure where the skitters had taken the kids. They could only guess; but Diego had a pretty good idea of where his people were. There was a factory nearby where Diego said his group had seen a lot of harnessed kids . Hal, Grace and Ben had seen the same factory on their scouting mission and noticed it was humming with electricity as well as having a number of Mechs guarding it. So, something was going on there involving harnessed kids. It was the best shot they had of finding Jeanne and Diego's group. With a plan ready to go, Weaver dismissed them all to get ready to leave in an hour.

Etta went right to sleep after her dinner and Lourdes kindly offered to babysit while Casey was gone. Casey had Boon's rifle again, but she needed extra ammunition before they left so she made her way to the weapon's tent where Tom and Weaver were arming themselves.

Weaver was leaving the tent as Casey approached. He smiled when he saw her with the rifle. "Thought you might see this through."

Casey shrugged. "I've got a taste for it now."

Weaver patted her shoulder and kept walking. Casey watched him for a second. He seemed off. The buzz through the camp was that Weaver and Diego had had some sort of argument that Jeanne broke up, which lead to Jeanne storming off from her father. Family drama was something that never seemed too far away from the 2nd Mass. Casey tried to think of it as a good thing, at least people had families to argue with.

"Hey," Casey greeted Tom as she entered the ammo tent. She went to the ammunition table and saw boxes and boxes of bullets. She knew what to get for the revolver, but for the rifle she wasn't so sure. All the bullets she'd used for it so far had been out of their original fancy packaging or already loaded by someone else. She nudged Tom. "What kind do I get for this?"

Tom picked up a green box of bullets and handed it to her. "These." He said. "Need me to help you load it?"

"Nope," Casey made sure the safety was on and then cracked open the chamber of the rifle and began loading the bullets. "Your eldest showed me how."

Tom sighed. "Well, every father wants his daughter to grow up loading guns."

"Then you and my Dad would have a lot to talk about." Casey smirked at him and then clicked her loaded rifle chamber back in place. "So when are we leaving? I'll get Lee and Lyle, we can-"

"No," Tom cut in. "No, we've got a full team."

Casey gave him an odd look. They were going to take on a factory full of skitters; there was no such thing as a full team for a mission like this. Surely Tom could see that. This wasn't exactly a covert operation; they were going in forcefully to get the kids out. The Berserkers were great at that sort of running in guns a' blazing type of thing. Why wouldn't Tom take them along?

Tector chose that moment to come into the tent. He stood straight, his handsome face set in a determined expression. "Take me with you, Boss."

Tom stole a quick look at Tector but shook his head. "You're still benched."

Anger boiled in Casey's stomach. Tom's stupidity at this was infuriating. He hadn't thought twice about bringing his children along for this mission, but the Berserkers had to jump through hoops to help out. "Tector, grab a gun."

Tom raised his eyebrows at her and looked like he might laugh. "Excuse me?"

"We can use him for this," Casey snapped, though she noticed Tector didn't move.

"Weaver put me in charge of the Berserkers," Tom instructed her. "I decide how to use them-"

Casey couldn't hold in a laugh. "You're not using them you're benching them."

Tom look at her, bewildered. "What is your problem?"

"Tector wants to help." Casey argued. "So, let him."

"It's okay, Case," Tector said. "We did wrong with Matt-"

Casey held a hand at him to shush him. "This is not the mission to prove a point," Casey told Tom. "You are risking your children's lives because you're trying to make an example of the Berserkers? This makes sense to you? Are you insane?"

Tom glared her down for a few seconds, and then looked over her shoulder. "Tector, grab your weapon," Tom told him. "Just you, not Lee or Lyle or Boon. And just for this; you're back on sanitation duty tomorrow."

Tector gave Tom a firm nod. "Yes, sir."

Casey turned to leave but Tom stuck his arm out in front of her. "Not you," He said. "You are absolutely staying behind."

Casey smiled at him. "Am I?" For some reason she thought she might hit him.

"Dad!" Hal and Grace suddenly bolted into the tent.

"What?" Tom turned to his children. "What's wrong?"

"We can't find Matt," Hal panted.

"He's not in our tent or the mess tent," Grace's young face was stricken with worry. "I can't find him anywhere."

"Jeanne's gone, too. So is Jonny," Weaver said as he marched back into the tent. He averted their eyes, and kept the brim of his cap low. "And Diego, all the kids and their bikes are gone."

Tom's scanned the camp as though he might see his youngest son simply appear. "They went without us?"

"Come on," Weaver gestured for Casey to follow him. "You can ride with me. We'll catch up to 'em."

Casey looped her rifle strap over her head. "Still want me to stay behind?" She muttered to Tom.

xxx

The factory was guarded alright. There were a dozen or so Mechs on constant rotation around the building, flashing their lights about to survey the surroundings. Casey stood between Dai and Tector before Maggie in the shadow of a fallen Oak tree. Weaver was just ahead of them with Tom, Hal, Ben and Grace. Something was definitely going on in this factory. It was uncommon to see so many Mechs in one place, normally scout patrols spotted an abundance of skitters with one or two Mechs along for the ride. This was different. More Mechs meant business.

Two of the Mechs stomped past on their circuit around the factory, and when they had turned the corner Weaver gestured for Maggie and her group to move to their hiding spot. When they got into position, Casey noticed Weaver was pointing at something up ahead of them. She squinted, and saw that lying half-buried in the mud was a familiar red baseball cap.

"That's Matt's hat." Tom realised.

"You think the cockroaches got them?" Tector asked.

Weaver's face hardened. "Only one way to find out." He turned around. "Maggie, Dai, Casey, Tector, you go in the back." Weaver pointed out a hole blasted in the factory's lower wall. "The rest of us, we'll go in the front."

The group sprang off and separated. Maggie led her team towards the hole in the factory. The wall looked as though a Mech blast had hit it, but the hole was the perfect size for someone to hunch down and crawl through. Maggie poised herself by the hole in the wall and ushered her team safely through it. "Come on, go fast and keep quiet."

Tector climbed through the hole first and Casey scrambled in after him. She could hear Dai behind her. Casey pushed herself to her feet and slid the rifle from around her back. They had crawled into some sort of hallway. It was dark, but Casey could hear the hum of electricity running through the walls.

Maggie made her way through the hole in the wall and immediately jumped back in the lead. "Let's go," She took off in a jog and lead the group through the halls.

Casey had no clue what kind of factory it was. She only had a second or two to glance into the offices they ran passed but all she saw were boxes. She hadn't seen a sign or label on the building while they were outside, just old trucks and more boxes. "What was this pla-" she started to say, but Maggie suddenly stopped still in front of her.

"Ssh!" Maggie held up her hand. "Listen"

The group fell quiet, and then Casey heard it, too. Muffled groans coming from behind a closed door at the end of the hall. Maggie took off again and tried the door handle but it was locked, so she stood back. It took her three kicks to open it. Diego and about a half dozen kids from his group were tied up on the floor. And the floor was littered with children's clothing. Tector, Dai and Maggie all knelt down and began untying the kids while Casey guarded the door.

"Where are the others?" Maggie asked as she undid Diego's binds.

"They took 'em already," Diego said. "Jeanne, Matt and Jonny, they're gonna harness them."

"Where did-" Maggie was cut off by the sudden barrage of gunshots from somewhere else in the factory. "Guess they found 'em."

Casey ignored her instincts and ran towards the gunshots. She swung left around a corner and saw an orange glow emanating from a room at the end of the hall. When she pushed open the door a wave of heat smacked Casey in the face. The room was full of thick, humid steam, that made it tough to see more than a few feet in front of her. She thought she could hear Weaver's voice but she didn't see him. The orange colour seemed to be emanating from huge translucent vats of peachy coloured liquid. There was one right next to Casey, and she guessed the room was full of them. The vats seemed to be encased by some sort of glass. Casey stomach churned; she could see live harnesses swimming around inside the liquid.

A chittering noise caught Casey's ear and she snapped to her left. A skitter was standing with its back to her. It was leaning over a child strapped to a gurney; a child with a head of curly hair that Casey knew was Matt. The skitter was holding him down, and Casey realised there was a chute coming off of the vat in front of the skitter. Casey watched, sickened and frozen to the spot, as a live bug harness slid down the chute and onto Matt's back.

All of a sudden Tom burst through the steam with his shotgun and blew the skitters head clean off. Then he grabbed the harness before it could latch on to Matt. He had to fight with the thing, it seemed determined to latch itself to Matt, but Tom managed to overpower it and toss it on the ground. He pumped his shotgun again and shot the harness to mushy pieces. The sound of the blast jostled Casey out of her funk, and she ran forwards to Matt.

"Get me out!" Matt was crying.

"Hold on, hold on," Casey swiped the knife hanging from Tom's belt and slit through the bindings around Matt's wrists and ankles. As soon as he was free, Matt climbed onto Casey and flung his arms around her neck.

"They were gonna harness us!" Matt sobbed.

"It's okay," Casey gasped. He'd never hugged her before, and he was squeezing her. She could feel him shaking. "It's okay."

"Matt?" Grace called out, and Casey saw through the dissipating steam that Grace, Hal, Ben and Weaver were all untying the kids from gurneys.

"He's okay," Casey tried to unhook Matt from around her neck but he was clinging to her. Tom had to lift him off her body.

"Dad!" Matt cried when he realised his father had him. "I'm sorry I didn't listen to you."

"It's okay, I'm here," Tom kissed the side of Matt's head. "You're okay now."

As the smoke cleraed, Casey's eyes fell on a small body still strapped to a gurney. Jonny. And he had a harness attached to his back. "Oh, God," Casey ran to the boys side but she didn't know how to help him.

"Jonny?" Jeanne ran forwards from the steam and knelt by the boy. "Jonny?" She ran her hand across his hair. "He's unconscious, get that thing off his back."

"We can't just pull it off, can we?" Grace asked worriedly. "What if it kills him?"

"He'll be okay," Ben swung his rifle over his back and grabbed the harness with both hands. "Harnessing is a process," he peeled the bug off Jonny's back like it was a piece of tape. The boy woke and started to scream in pain. "It's not instant." Ben didn't have nearly as much trouble pulling off the harness as his father did. He threw the bug to the ground and stomped on it hard enough that it crushed to goop under his boot.

Casey used her knife on Jonny's bindings to cut him free. There will little spots of blood on Jonny's back and he was crying as Jeanne picked him up. "You'll be alright," she soothed him and turned to her father. "He needs to see that doctor."

A sudden flash of blue light caught Casey's eye. She looked over and saw Ben's spikes glowing on his back like Christmas lights. The boy had his hand against the side of one of the vats of liquid, and one of the bugs swimming inside came right up to Ben's hand and latched itself onto the glass between them.

Hal moved towards his brother. "Ben?"

Then all of a sudden Ben stood back, his spikes stopped glowing and he began firing his rifle. He blasted the tank of harnesses until it shattered and the bugs spilled out onto the floor. Tom, Grace, Casey, Hal and Weaver all began shooting the bugs as they flopped around on the floor like newly caught fish. Casey wasn't even sure she was aiming right, but it didn't seem to matter. The harness bugs were wriggling around so much she figured even her errant bullets were hitting them.

"We got to wag it and shag it," Weaver ordered when they seemed to have killed all the harnesses. "We're gonna have beaucoup skitters coming any second-" Out of nowhere, a harness bug slid up off the ground like a snake and bit into Weaver's calf. "Ah! Sonuva!"

Casey was closest to Weaver and she grabbed the harness. The slimy critter tried to fidget out of her grasp but she clung to it. It hadn't latched onto Weaver's leg like it had to Jonny's back, but it sure had him by its teeth or pincers or whatever they were. Casey dug her fingers into the harness as hard as she could and yanked the thing off Weaver's leg. As soon as she let go of it, Grace was ready with her gun and blew the thing to a mess of nothing. Jeanne handed Jonny over to Grace and came to help Casey get Weaver to his feet. Casey slung Weaver's arm over her shoulder to help him walk.

"Come on, let's go!" Weaver commanded the group as he hung onto Casey with one arm and Jeanne with the other. "Let's get the hell out of this place."

xxx

Anne assured Casey, Maggie and everyone that Weaver's harness bite wasn't too serious, but she gave him antibiotics to ward off infection anyway. She also put him on bedrest, and Jeanne sat by her father's side to make sure he complied. Anne thought Jonny would be just fine. He was laughing and smiling again, and the bleeding on his back had stopped and there was no hardness along his spine. Ben said the harness hadn't been attached for long enough to do any permanent damage, although he didn't share how exactly he knew that. Casey figured it was something to do with his spikes. The way they glowed in the factory, and the way that live bug harness reacted to him. It was like they were communicating.

After she checked Weaver was off his feet, Casey went to the mess tent and fixed two mugs of lukewarm tea before she made her way to the Masons tent. Tom was sitting out the front of it unloading the spent shells from his shotgun.

Casey handed one of the mugs towards him. "Here." Tom looked up, and for a moment Casey thought he might just ignore her completely. But he set the shotgun at his side and took the mug from her. Casey sat herself on the crate across from him and let her mug of tea warm her fingers. "How's Matt?" She asked.

"Exhausted," Tom said. "But he's sleeping. Grace is with him. He didn't want to sleep alone."

Casey couldn't blame him. He had almost been harnessed. And after he'd seen what happened to his brother, he'd have been terrified knowing that was about to happen to him. "That place," Casey felt a cold shiver run across her skin as she thought of that tank with the harness bugs swimming around inside it, that chute sliding a bug onto Matt's back, the way that skitter was holding Matt down. "I didn't think it would be that bad."

"Neither did I," Tom shook his head. "To think Ben was in a place like that.

"Tom, I'm sorry about before." Casey admitted. "Arguing with you. Insubordination, and all that crap."

Tom shrugged. "Forget it."

But Casey knew she had to try and explain herself. "No. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have questioned you like that. I won't do it again."

"Well," Tom sighed. "For what it's worth, I put Tector back on sniper duty."

Casey tried not to look surprised but she wasn't sure she masked it all that well. "Good," she said. "Good, we need his eye."

"Yes, we do." Tom said. "And you were right. What you said about my kids."

Casey shook her head. "I shouldn't have said anything-"

"No, you're right." Tom confirmed. "I guess I think that as long as I'm with my kids then they'll be safe, even if we're all armed to the teeth and fighting aliens." Tom hung his head. "I hate that's the way things are but that's the way things are." He fell quiet for a second. "Jimmy got injured scouting with Ben, and after Jimmy died I remember thinking to myself that I'd never let Ben out of my sight again." Tom stared at a spot on the ground for a few moments. "But I did. Hal and Grace, too. And I let Matt go on that scouting mission with the Berserkers. Doesn't matter what happened out there, I gave him the okay to go."

"Look, even if you told them not to go, they'd go anyway." Casey pointed out. "But they're strong kids, all of them."

Tom looked thoughtful for a moment. "I think part of it is Anthony being gone," he said quietly. "I mean, before, if he was out with Hal or Grace or Ben? I didn't worry as much. Because I knew that he would protect them just like I would. I feel the same about Anne, and Weaver." He paused. "And you."

Casey felt herself blush a little. "Even though I pick fights with you?"

Tom tapped his thumb against the side of his coffee mug. "When Hal and Grace were younger, they fought over the smallest things. They'd be laughing and playing one second and then just like that," He snapped his fingers. "They'd be screaming at each other. My wife said it was because they were so alike." He caught Casey's eyeline. "She'd say people who are alike bicker because they're arguing with someone just as stubborn as they are. So they both know they're not going to back down."

"My dad would just say 'sort it out on the field'." Casey said. Thinking of her late father generally made Casey happy. She missed him, of course, but she loved her memories of him. But right then the memory didn't evoke the wistful smile or nostaligic warmth she had come to expect. "Actually, my Dad might be the reason I start stuff with you." She said. "He was a good man, but he had a short fuse."

Tom smiled. "And here I thought you were channelling John Pope," he took a drink of his tea. "Picking a fight for no reason is something he liked to do."

John? Casey hadn't heard that before. And it occurred to her she hadn't asked anyone about it either. "His first name's John? Huh, there's another thing I didn't know." Her face felt weirdly heavy, drooping, like all her facial muscles had taken the night off. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Tom watching her.

"Casey," Tom asked after a moment. "Are you okay?"

Casey looked up from her full mug of tea and over at Tom's concerned expression. "No," She admitted. "I'm sad." Casey gave him what she was sure was a weak smile and got to her feet to leave. "Goodnight, Tom."

Casey sipped her tea as she wandered back towards her tent feeling the cool chill of the air wisp across her skin. The closer she got to her tent, the heavier her body started to feel. And by the time she pushed through her tent flap she felt as solid as a log. She set the empty mug on top of her backpack and let herself drop heavily onto her bed. But she wasn't alone for long. Lourdes came through the tent with Etta's basket in her arms.

"Hey," Lourdes set the basket down beside Casey's bed. "She slept for a couple of hours but I think it was too noisy for her."

"Thank you," Casey told her. "I owe you big. I won't ask you to do this again."

"You didn't ask, I offered," Lourdes reminded her as She gave Etta a kiss goodbye and then headed out of the tent. But not before she looked back at Casey. "Get some rest." She said with a smile, and then she was gone.

Casey kicked off her boots, scooted onto the ground with her back against her bunk and sat cross-legged by Etta's basket. The baby was awake and sucking on her fingers. When she saw Casey hover above her she made a happy little gurgling noise and drooled.

"Can't sleep?" Casey ran the back of her finger along Etta's soft, chubby cheek. "Good, you can stay up and talk to me."

Etta kicked out her legs and gurgled some more. Casey reached into the basket and lifted the baby out. She was getting heavier, according to Anne that was a good thing. Casey tucked her knees up and rested Etta against her thighs so she was facing her.

"Tom misses Anthony," Casey said quietly as she played with Etta's dainty hands and teeny-tiny fingers. "I do, too. But that's okay, because Anthony was a good man—is a good man. He was a cop before all of this. Do you know what cops are? They're very brave people. But Anthony, he's already brave. He's just a good person. He's kind, and loyal. Everybody loves him."

Etta made a humming sort of noise in agreement.

"Everybody for sure did not love Pope." Casey continued. She kept her voice low so no one passing her tent would overhear. "What he let happen to Maggie—he had to go." She nodded, as if affirming the statement to herself. "He couldn't stay here with us." She bit her lip. "I can't miss someone who I didn't really know, right? I shouldn't miss someone who did what he did."

Etta gurgled and stamped her feet against Casey's abdomen. Casey smiled at Etta with her goofy little grin and bright green eyes, her growing golden hair and her round little face, and then out of nowhere Casey spoke again. "I love you."

Casey hadn't known she was going to say it, nor had she meant to. It just fell out of her mouth. But she realised almost instantly that she wasn't at all sorry she'd said it. Instead, she smiled to herself and pulled Etta in close to her chest. "I love you."

xxx