Chapter 17: Aftermath.
"PISS OFF!" Laura screamed as some shitting idiot knocked on her door. Why couldn't the bastards just leave her alone. She was sat in the darkness of their room, bottle in one hand, glowing vibro knife in the other. She didn't know how long she had been here but the bottle was all but empty. It hadn't helped, the pain was still there. A gaping hole in her heart where it used to be whole, swallowing everything and matching the darkness of her room with an abyss inside.
The idiot didn't take the hint and was actually trying the door. Tough shit it was locked and there was no way in hell that she was going to open it.
The door crashed open with a splintering thunderclap. She leapt to her feet to kill the bastard who dared… It was Ranma, he knocked her drunken thrust aside with an almost negligent slap and pulled her into a hug. She hit him, clawed him and wailed her hate. He just held on. She pleaded, he held on. Finally she begged and still he hugged her. At last she finally broke, and fell sobbing into his embrace. He carried her over to the bed and pulled her onto his lap, never letting go, quietly hushing her and rocking her like a baby. His hand stroked her hair and he whispered caring noises into her ear.
"Why" she whispered through her tears. He didn't answer.
"Its not fair" she cried.
"I know" he whispered.
"No you don't" she objected, "How the hell could you!"
"You're right, I don't know nothing about anything" he whispered. " Kami, I'm probably the thickest person on base and give me enough time an I'll say somethin' ta prove it; but for the now, if there is anything in my power…..all you have to do is name it" She just squeezed him tighter and cried all the harder.
"Just hold me" she answered.
"That I can do." And he did, all night long.
"Nabiki's gonna kick your ass!" Laura whispered as she lay there with her head still in his lap. The dawn had woken her and just for a moment she had allowed herself to believe it was all a nightmare. But it was not her husband holding her, and it never would be again. The pain came back like a broadsword through her chest.
"Huh?" he asked, intelligently as always.
"You spent the night in another woman's bed berk" she told him, with the hint of a smile curling her lip.
"Shit," he answered. "Never mind, at least it'll be quick. She just ain't got your evil streak."
"Yeah right?" Laura replied, "she'll cut your nuts off and serve em to you."
"well with her pissed at me I won't have any use for 'em anyway." He answered, and again managed to raise a hint of a smile.
"I want to kill him" Laura said.
"I know," Ranma replied, "and I made them promise to keep him alive till you were finished with the fucker."
"Good!" she swore.
"If you're awake, any chance you feel like eating?" he asked. She sat up a bit,
"Not really" she said, looking around. "Where's Callum?" she asked suddenly alarmed.
"Nabs came and took him to ours," Ranma replied, "figured the two of you could use your sleep." Laura nodded, wiping the tears away with her arm, and looking at him. She immediately spotted the knife sticking out of his shoulder.
"Shit" she said, "Did I?"
"Yeah but no biggie" he replied. "Might even get me some sympathy from Nabs."
"Yeah right" she replied, pulling him round to look at the wound. "You know how much she hates it when you let yourself get hurt!"
"It was in a good cause" he replied, looking into her face with real care on his. She sniffed again.
"She'll still kill ya" she said. He tried to shrug and winced as pain shot through him. This time she did laugh out loud.
"God you ARE stupid!" she said.
"Yup!" he answered, "Wonder where I picked that up from."
"Hey" she shouted back, hitting his good arm.
Then they both looked up as Gos appeared at the door. Laura immediately noted that both her and Ranma had reached for guns that they weren't wearing.
"Bad time?" Gos asked, sheepishly.
"Nah" Laura replied, "I was just kicking this idiot out of bed."
"Don't blame you" Gos replied "he snores something rotten."
"I do not!" Ranma objected.
"Like a flaming lumberjack" Gos argued. "Now I think you better do as the lady says, huh." Ranma looked back at Laura who nodded and then painfully stood up. Being sat all night in that one position had done him no favours at all. HE limped on his dead leg to the door and was just leaving when Laura called after him.
"Ranma" she said "thanks." He gave her his best smile back and limped away.
"He's hamming it up for sympathy" Gos stated.
"Course he is" Laura replied, "Now how about you help me find some clothes."
"Depends" Gos said.
"On what?" she asked.
"If you've got another knife," he replied with a half smile.
"Ha Ha" she offered sarcastically.
-
Some hours later she was sat in the canteen with a warm cup of tea and an uneaten bowl of porridge. The tears were still not far off but were rapidly being supplanted with a cold rage.
"Don't feel like eating?" Nabiki asked, putting Callum into a baby seat next to her and pulling her own baby around onto her lap as she sat down. Laura picked her baby up and clutched him to her chest, shaking her head.
"Don't blame you," Nabiki observed, "That stuff is vile." Laura cracked a little smile again, but the other emotions quickly dragged it away and murdered it.
"What is it with you people?" she demanded, "everyone is a shitting comedian today!"
"We care" Nabiki said after a moments silence.
"I know" said Laura deflating. "Its just…." Nabiki reached out a hand and squeezed her shoulder.
"You don't have to say" Nabiki said, "You're among friends" The other girl pulled the administrator into a hug, careful of the children but tight enough to express her feelings.
"Forget friends, you're family" she whispered. And Nabiki nodded. As the smaller girl pulled away to feed her baby Laura could see tears in her eyes too.
They sat for a while in silence and only looked up as Richard came in. He looked terrible. His clothes were unironed, what hair he had uncombed and his eyes puffy and bloodshot. Laura beckoned him over from where he was hovering.
As he took his seat both women could see that he too had been crying. Somehow they didn't resent him his emotions. Instead Laura reached out a hand and briefly clutched his. The relief that lit up his face was a pleasure to see.
"He was probably afraid you'd stab him" Nabiki whispered.
"Nah," Laura replied, "he's too pathetic to kill." Richard, despite being shattered from one of the worst nights of his life, saw the horseplay for what it was; acceptance. This grieving widow somehow had found the strength to support him in her time of pain. The realisation brought the tears back with a vengeance. He squeezed the hand back with all his might, like it was a lifeline for a drowning man.
"Talking of stabbing," Laura began, "I may have sort of stabbed you husband a bit."
"He's tough, he'll get over it" Nabiki replied. "Teach him to be more careful next time."
-
-
Technician Johnson was in a world of pain. When hey had caught him they had not been gentle. He had been sure that the reports of Saotome's skills were exaggerated but now he had proof. In the time it took him to slide the bolt on his home-made sniper rifle backwards and forwards again the commando had covered nearly a hundred meters, grabbed the weapon and was readying it to crush his skull. Instead the swing had reversed, hit him in the chest and pushed him from his crouch to fully upright, the return blow had snapped his right arm and crushed some of the ribs it knocked against.
As far as he could tell at least half of his ribs were broken at least once, along with his right arm and his cheekbone. His left leg was almost certainly dislocated and his right eye closed over from swelling. All he could taste in his desert dry throat was the metallic taste of his own blood. In short he hurt, a lot.
"Good morning filth" came a voice he failed to recognise. As he painfully looked up he saw that it was the very same man who had beaten him down. Saotome Ranma stood over him with an expression that would have made Korean torturers blanch. "I won't ask how you are feeling because I really don't care. The simple truth is that right now you think you are in a lot of pain. You are wrong. By the time my master sergeant is through with you, you will dream of only feeling this bad." The man moved closer and turned Johnson onto his back with a boot.
"But before that happens you are going to tell me everything you know, and you are going to plead for your life. It won't work but you won't care by that point." He stepped away and said one word, "Gos," and then the world dissolved into nightmares.
-
-
"Who was he" Richard asked. He was sitting in Nabiki's office, more for the company than anything else. Not four feet away the two babies were investigating new ways to put things in their mouths, quietly overseen by the new widow.
"Technician Johnson" Nabiki said handing him a file. "Canadian born and a fairly old hand." She said still going over his list of associates.
Richard took one look at the photo in the file and said "I know him!"
"What?" demanded both women at once.
"Where from?" Nabiki asked.
"I'm trying to remember" he said wracking his brain, but it wasn't coming. He knuckled his forehead and tried harder but still he couldn't place the man.
"Stop" commanded Nabiki. He obeyed and looked at her. "Try colours, what colours do you associate him with?" she prompted. Suddenly it all fell into place, the proverbial light bulb lit.
"CIA" he said with sudden conviction, and both women's faces went cold as ice.
"I am going to kill them all" Laura hissed.
"Join the queue" Nabiki replied.
"Oh no" Laura retorted, "I get first go."
"Done, but I get a turn too" said Richard, the two girls looked at him and he knew he had chosen the right side.
-
Special Agent Jonathon Flag, aka technician Johnson was lying in a puddle of his own effluent, shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. Like every deep cover agent he had been schooled in anti-torture techniques but this was way beyond him. The people here were far too good at this. The story said that if questioned by a professional everyone broke on day three, but Flag was having trouble getting through hour three.
In his line of work capture, torture and eventual murder were par for the course but he was having a really hard time convincing himself that he could have expected this. Then the voice of his tormentor cut through his haze.
"Special agent Flag you have been holding out on me" said the devil in human form. "I am most…disappointed." And then the nightmares and screaming started all over again.
In the viewing room Nabiki, Laura and Richard all stood watching the man thrash around on his broken limbs.
"What are you doing to him?" Richard asked, somewhat repulsed.
"Remember the globe-tv" Nabiki asked. He nodded, "we have found that making captives relive the memories of the alien experiments is most….'efficient,' in making them more compliant.
"So at the moment.."
"At the moment he is imagining himself on one of the vivisection tables under the alien's lasers. It is quite frightening I believe." Nabiki explained in a voice that could have frozen larva. Richard shuddered and then staved off his sympathy with the memory of what this man's victim had sacrificed so that he and people like him would not have to actually experience what the CIA man was imagining.
"He'll break soon," said Nabiki. "In the mean time I suggest we make some more phone calls."
-
Indeed the agent broke very soon indeed and was heartily begging them to listen to him. As it happens Gos wasn't convinced so he got another hour's torment before they finally let him talk. And talk he did, he named names, offered codes, fingered accomplices and told every little secret he had, from his fondness for Thai lady-boys to stealing form the school shop when he was ten.
Everything was carefully recorded and re-verified and then finally, after half a day of questioning the session ended, leaving the traitor a broken wreck of a man, full of shame, remorse and regret.
Which is when Laura stepped into the room. She had brought a doctor with her who administered a jab, with what felt like a hosepipe.
"What you are feeling is a stimulant, for the next few, final, moments of your life you will feel everything, absolutely everything." She stepped around him, turning him onto his back much as Ranma had done.
"Actually you're in luck, my shrink tells me that any extended torture of you will harm me nearly as much as it would harm you." She lifted his head between her hands. "So if I can't make this last I have to make it hurt!" and with that she pushed her thumbs into his eyeballs, and through into his brain beyond, and indeed he felt every moment of it like it was a lifetime.