E-DAY plus 15 YEARS
Vectes Naval Base
Tenth Day of Gale
"I don't like you being around that thing," Sharon confessed quietly, her voice too soft to be heard by Jace and the military policeman at the other end of the hall.
"It's chained up. And Marcus obliterated its knee and shoulder joints on the left side. Plus I've got two guards watching it the whole time, and two more outside the door."
She rubbed her arms in the gesture that meant she was genuinely uncomfortable. "I still don't like it. Those things are creepy. They look a lot like us, but treat us like prey animals. I've seen it."
"In the Hollow?"
"Yeah."
"You want to talk about it?"
"Later. It's … a hard story to tell." Here was the part where she would have embraced him if their relationship had been public. Instead she put a friendly hand on his arm, because Jace and the MP were watching. "Be careful, okay, babe?"
"You got it."
He glanced down at her hand on his arm.
"Three days," he said.
"What?"
"Three more days of privacy, and then we'll tell people about us."
A smile bloomed on her face. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. Trying to decide if we should inform Cole and Bernie first, or just start furiously making out in the mess hall."
As he'd intended, she laughed, momentarily forgetting her discomfort about him interrogating the Chimera.
"You sure you don't want a lap dance instead?"
"Nah." He flapped a hand dismissively. "Don't want anybody but me seeing you like that."
She was definitely struggling to keep her smile friendly, not seductive.
"I'll save that for tonight," she promised.
"Damn right you will," he said as they parted.
"What was all that?" Jace asked as Baird joined them to climb the stairs to the Chimera's makeshift cell.
"Shop talk," Baird lied smoothly. "Why?"
"No reason." Jace had that smirk that Baird remembered from high school. It was the one guys would give him right before he'd drop the bombshell that she was, in fact, his long-term girlfriend and they could shove their opinions up where the sun don't shine.
"Focus, Stratton. We've got work to do."
"Yessir." Jace saluted sassily, something he'd picked up from Baird. It made him feel almost proud of the kid.
The MP pulled out a huge ring of keys and began undoing the many locks they'd welded onto the metal door and its frame. The Chimera couldn't be kept in the base's normal jail because of all the enraged COG soldiers – and some civilians – who'd kill the thing if they got anywhere near it. So instead it was in an old office on the top floor of Admin that had been reinforced with sheets of metal bolted to every wall, even the floors and ceiling. The sheet over the window had gotten more than a few bullet holes in it before they'd bricked it up from the outside.
The two MPs who'd been guarding the door stepped aside as the three interrogators entered. Only Baird was going to be questioning the creature, but another pair of eyes never hurt. Plus he needed help getting the electrodes hooked up to the suitcase-sized "agitation detector" that he'd perfected over the last few weeks.
As per usual, the door guards had secured the thing to its bolted-down chair in preparation. The eerily tall, pale humanoid glared at him, also as per usual. Baird didn't bother suppressing a smirk.
"How's my least favorite prisoner this morning?"
The agitation detector would have been thrown off by the pain from its Marcus-induced injuries, so Hayman doled out the appropriate amount of painkillers to spike its food each day, which
Baird dispensed personally to make sure they didn't walk off and find their way down some junkie's gullet.
"Been fattening up on our disgusting human food? Sorry, still no subterranean lichen or fungi available." That was only half true; the COG had been eating metric tons of mycoprotein for over a decade. The stuff grew even as you watched, and could be flavored with anything. Baird reminded himself to save some of his fake bacon bits from today's lunch for Maria.
"I'm sure we could chase down a Bloodmount or two on the mainland if you're really hungry for meat."
Mentions of the more animalistic Locust species always got a reaction, but Bubba couldn't answer right now even if it had wanted to. The guards had strapped a muzzle from the psych ward over its face to prevent it from biting at Jace and the MP while they hooked it up to the machine. It had never tried it, but better safe than tooth-marked. They'd replace it again when they pinned it against the wall with the crowd-control poles after it had finished with its "biologicals," as Hayman called a patient's need to eat, bathe and defecate.
"Our hunters tell me that carnivores taste like shit because most of them scavenge rancid meat, so I bet you don't snack on Drones, do you, Bubba? They do look the type to just dig right in when they find a rotting carcass. Don't seem like they'd shy away from cannibalism, either."
Bubba glared.
The Chimera hadn't said a word since its capture, so they didn't know its name, which could be any arrangement of syllables. Baird doubted Locust chimeras gave their kids human names, so he'd chosen the nickname that the machine told him irritated it the most. It was a great baseline for the electrodes to pick up.
"Be honest, Bubba. Do Corpsers taste like crab? They look like they'd taste like crab. Don't you think they'd taste like crab, Jace?"
"Their legs do remind me more of crabs than spiders," Jace answered obligingly.
One of the best parts of interrogating was that Baird got to run his mouth in stream-of-consciousness style, saying whatever came to mind until he hit upon something that moved the needles on the machine, and then pursuing that line of thought until he'd gleaned information from it.
"Bet you wish they could swim right now, don'tcha? But they don't. And they won't. Nobody's coming for you but the Lambent. Or a COG firing squad."
There was no need to threaten the prisoner with torture. Even if Hoffman decided to allow it, or simply let Yanik the Disemboweler show them how he'd earned his nickname, they'd get less information than just letting the detector blurt out the Chimera's secrets for him.
So far they'd gathered that there had been only the group of four Chimeras who'd attempted to assassinate the COG Army leadership: Bubba and his dead partner who'd attacked Marcus, the one Hoffman had killed, and a fourth who'd offed Major Reid and was still on the loose. Bubba didn't much care for that last one, and thought it was probably hiding alone in the Vectes jungle rather than attempting to blend its extremely tall, white-haired self in with the Stranded. The Chimeras had arrived one by one with the Stranded navy who'd come to evacuate their people from Vectes when the Lambent had started blowing up warships. But now that the pirates knew what they looked like there was no way to pass for human anymore.
Bubba loathed the machine. Not because it hurt – it didn't do anything unpleasant to him besides the electrodes being a little cold when first applied to its clammy skin – but because it betrayed its thoughts to Baird at what must seem like every opportunity. The Chimera, at least this particular one, was a surprisingly emotional creature, and only getting more so as the weeks went on. It hated how much information the COG was getting without it even saying a word, and its growing hatred only made it easier and easier to read.
Solely by gauging how angry or calm the questions made it, Baird had determined that most of the Chimeras had escaped the flooding of the Hollow and were now scattered around the surface of Sera with their personal cohorts of Grub bodyguards and troops. There weren't a great deal of the Locust masters, but there were enough that Bubba was soothed by simply thinking about them, which meant that each one could pose a significant threat to the COG, especially if they banded together. If the Lambent threat on Vectes grew any larger and the COG went back to the mainland, they'd need to know what to be looking out for.
When all the electrodes were on, Baird settled into his chair at the table with the detector as Jace popped off the muzzle and stepped back. It hadn't said a word yet, but it was close, and Baird wanted to capture every involuntary syllable when it finally cracked.
"Where to begin, where to begin, where to begin?" Baird crossed his ankles on the corner of the desk and laced his hands behind his head, laying the cocky attitude on thick, which he knew Bubba hated. "Do you remember where we left off, Jace?" This creature was never leaving the COG alive, so Baird didn't bother hiding anyone's identity from it.
"Nah. You'll have to start at the beginning."
The needles scratched a bit on the circular strip of paper that went round and round on a small conveyor belt inside the machine. Baird didn't need a printout, he only needed to hear when the needles moved, and he could go over his photographic memory later to review what he'd been saying at the time.
"I was thinking that the shakes must be getting really unbearable right about now."
"The shakes?" Jace asked as he settled into his own chair, slightly behind the Chimera and against the wall, where his presence in its peripheral vision would continually unsettle it. The MP was standing up in the other corner. His job was to check his Lancer every few minutes in a way that suggested he had an itchy trigger finger.
"Yeah, the shakes. Withdrawal."
The needles moved out of baseline.
'I knew it,' Baird thought.
"Withdrawal from what?" Jace was a fantastic sounding board, being a perpetually curious teenager.
"The symbiote. Nobody could stand to have those creepy tendrils constantly digging into their spine without a nice big hit of endorphins every few minutes to take the edge off. And if you've been wearing it for decades, like our friend Bubba here, there's no chance it hasn't developed a chemical dependency. See, Jace, the problem with habitual drug use is that your brain eventually rewires itself to incorporate the drug into its regular functioning. When that drug is suddenly removed, the brain keeps reaching out for a chemical that used to be a constant. It's like trying to bake a cake without half the ingredients. Except it's happening over and over again, night and day, every few minutes, and feels like an electric shock in the brain. Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt."
The Chimera glared, and the needles scratched loudly, which created a feedback loop for a minute where the scratching made Bubba irritated, which made the scratching faster, which irritated Bubba even more.
Baird smacked the table loudly, startling Bubba and the MP who'd been lounging against the wall. He didn't want the Chimera teaching itself emotional control by using the decreasing needle noises as biofeedback. Not when things were getting interesting.
Knowing that the Chimera would expect him to pursue the juicy topic of symbiote addiction like a dog chasing a rabbit, Baird made a hard right turn onto a different topic.
"Delta Squad."
The Chimera's long-fingered hands, strapped to the armrests with thick leather bands, clenched in anger.
Baird grinned, not even attempting to hide how much he was enjoying this.
"Fenix."
Two of the needles, each hooked up to a different electrode, crossed so suddenly that they bound up in each other and snapped, flinging off in separate directions like breaking dry spaghetti.
The Chimera's good arm twisted inside the three belt-like straps keeping it bound to the chair. It snarled, the biggest visible reaction they'd seen yet.
"Marcus Fenix," Baird enunciated with relish. "The undisputed hero of Hollow Storm."
The needles settled into a swooping rhythm, synchronized like a musician's metronome. A high level of constant agitation.
Baird brought his legs down to the floor. "You asked for this assignment, didn't you? You wanted to kill Marcus Fenix in particular."
Bubba hissed angrily through its teeth, ejecting a small amount of spittle. The metal supports of the chair squealed a bit from the strain that its good leg and arm were putting on the rivets that held it together.
It hated Marcus Fenix. It hated that Baird knew it hated Marcus Fenix. And it hated that there was no way Baird wasn't going to bring in Marcus Fenix to torment it with his very presence.
Baird grinned hugely. Without breaking eye contact, he triggered the tac/com in his ear and said, "Control, Baird here. I need Sergeant Fenix's assistance with an interrogation ASAP."
For the ten minutes it took Marcus to arrive, Baird kept the prisoner off-balance by making sudden loud noises, mixing fairy tales together in a way that made absolutely no sense, and having Jace warble out a children's song that absolutely everyone over the age of twelve hated with a passion because of the repetition.
The Chimera was well and truly wound up by the time Marcus stepped through the door, but Baird was still surprised when it launched straight into a tirade aimed at the sergeant. Bubba hadn't said a syllable in over a month, but all it required to break was Fenix walking into the room.
"You killed her! You killed her, you filthy p'tarcha!"
Its accent was stronger than the Queen's, more foreign and sibilant.
Irregular patches of its corpse-white skin went red with anger. The whites of its milky blue eyes started to turn pink. It strained against the leather straps that had it buckled to the chair like it wanted to leap from its seat and strangle Marcus with its bare hands. Which was probably the truth.
The MP and Jace stood straight, flicking the safeties off of their Lancers.
Baird put his feet up on the desk again in a calculated gesture of disdain.
Marcus was completely unphased by its outburst. "You're gonna have to be more specific."
"You forced her into a lake of poison that scrambled her insides! And when she was screaming for me to help her, you burned her to death, you frakking – soulless – monster!"
"Burned who?"
The Chimera simply screamed in rage and strained against its bonds until the ligaments stood out in its neck.
"I think it's talking about the Lambent Brumak," Baird guessed.
"She trusted me! She trusted me and you murdered her! She died in terrible pain because of you!"
"It was dying from the Lambency, asshole," Marcus said flatly.
The Chimera was practically crimson with rage.
"I'll kill you, Groundwalker! I don't care who your father is! I'll tear your head off and piss in your eye sockets, you frakking p'singasa mun heptet no frigao!"
The Chimera wouldn't have known, but the tiny flick of Marcus's head told Baird he was startled. Why would the Chimera be expected to treat Marcus differently because of Adam? Did it have something to do with the professor's audio recording in the Locust computers? Was there a connection to the Queen talking as though she'd known Adam personally?
"Should've kept your dog on a leash if you didn't want it put down."
The Chimera was so enraged by this statement that Baird worried it might actually have a stroke, and this would be the last info they ever got out of it.
"Frakking p'tarcha! I raised Bas'Tet from a hatchling! I was the first thing she ever saw!"
"She made a great bomb once she'd gone Lambent, I'll give her that. We wouldn't have been able to flood the Hollow without her."
Baird's mind kicked into high gear with a dozen hypotheses. 'How big are the eggs? How many in a clutch? How long from laying to hatching? Were they parthenogenetic, or did Brumak reproduction need a sire? Did they imprint on the first thing they saw? What if the first thing they saw were a human instead of a Locust chimera? What if the COG could get their hands on an unhatched egg? Marcus had already ridden one, so they could be human-tamed. What if –'
Baird made a mistake. Later in his photographic memory he would have a chance to go over it, but in the moment he frakked up so badly that he almost lost an eye, and Jace lost a finger.
He let himself get distracted by pondering the possibility of a COG Brumak. He also assumed the Chimera would have already broken free of the metal chair if it had the strength.
There was a shrieking explosion of metal pieces, and Marcus caught the wild swing of the chair arm with his left hand, halting it barely two inches in front of Baird's face. The end of the boomerang-shaped metal strut would have gone straight into Baird's eye socket if the sergeant hadn't had freakishly fast reflexes.
The Chimera was also freakishly fast. The instant Marcus pulled the strut loose from the leather belt that had been holding down Bubba's bicep, the thing thrust its hand forward so that Marcus's flattened right hand chopping toward its throat passed into the loop. Then it twisted its hand elaborately, and Marcus's wrist was bound to the Chimera's forearm.
Baird expected the Chimera to go for a headbutt when it yanked Marcus toward itself, but nope: Bubba was a biter. Its teeth, unusually sharp for a humanoid, opened wide and went straight for the sergeant's jugular.
Jace was fast too, and that was both an asset and a drawback. He leapt from behind and wrapped his hand over the Chimera's face, holding it away from Marcus's neck. He saved his sergeant from a nasty, possibly fatal bite, but lost something in exchange.
The Chimera's powerful jaws closed on Jace's little finger and Baird heard the most sickening crunch of bone ever. Jace's scream echoed off the metal walls, amplified into a banshee shriek that pierced Baird's eardrums.
The boy screamed even louder when Bubba wrenched its head to the side and tore off the crushed finger, splattering Marcus's face and neck with Jace's blood.
Baird was still getting up when the Chimera spat the finger into Marcus's face, and Marcus headbutted the feral humanoid into unconsciousness.
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