"Sergeant First Class Briggs isn't it?"
Briggs turned at the sound of a deep bass voice loudly calling her name. A much older,
stocky, balding man wearing a lab coat stood expectantly behind her.
"Dr. Steiner I presume," she said, her voice nearly dripping with sarcasm. She reached over to turn off the blaring radio beside her.
"You know who I am," he replied, his over-abundant ego apparently reason enough to ignore her sarcasm.
"I make it a point of knowing who all the players on the board are," was her response. "Now, was there something you wanted? Or do you just seek out all the non-coms around this joint?"
"What makes you assume I would want something, sergeant?"
"Let's just say you don't look like a man who spends a lot of time in the gym."
"Yes, quite right. You're very blunt sergeant."
She just stared at him, waiting. He said nothing, so, after a moment, she reached over to turn the radio back on.
"Must you listen to that noise? I would like to have a word with you."
She paused, and instead of turning on the radio she reached for the chin-up bar, doing a rapid series of pull-ups before responding, "I'm listening."
"You don't seem to have much respect for me. Don't you realize what I'm trying to accomplish? I hold your life, the lives of everyone here really, in the palm of my hand."
Sighing Briggs dropped away from the bar. "Are you going somewhere with this Doc? Or do you just get off on trying to show everyone what a 'big important man' you are?"
Choosing to ignore her comments he told her, "I've been reading your file Sergeant, I could use a person like yourself, with your abilities that is, on my team."
She laughed bitterly. "Some interesting reading probably, but I highly doubt you have any special need for my, 'abilities' in a lab. Unless you have computers that need hacked,
surveillance jammed, or someone killed."
He sat down on a weight bench in front her. "You don't give yourself enough credit. According to your files you have a well above average IQ. You graduated high school two years early, as valedictorian even, then you started college immediately, pre-med wasn't it? But you dropped out after two years, enlisted in the Army, got into Military Intelligence."
"An oxymoron I assure you doctor," Briggs interrupted. "Are you going anywhere with this, I'd kinda like to hit the showers."
"Please, indulge me for a moment, Sergeant. You continued studying medicine while in the Army, but you never advanced on to med school. You could have gone ROTC, finished your education, been an officer and a doctor, but you didn't. Why? After showing all that potential you just appear to have thrown it all away."
"Lost interest. Found out I was better at killing than saving."
"But you did some in depth studying of biochemistry, anatomy. I really could use you on my team. My researchers, they seem to be getting a little stale. They're not able to look outside the box any longer, see the greater opportunities we have here. I think some fresh insight would be quite the thing to get them back on track, afterall, there are so many things we can learn from those creatures."
"I don't think so Doc. I've got civilians to baby-sit, squads to run, no time to play doctor myself."
"Why don't you at least come down to our labs, see what it is we're trying to accomplish. It may inspire you to join us afterall. Who knows, you could be instrumental to my work..." he trailed off.
She looked at him for a moment before turning towards the showers. "I'll think about it Doc," she called over her shoulder. He smiled as he stood and began making his way out of the gym, looking confidant that she would accept his offer. "Oh and Doc, one more thing," she called. He turned back looking at her expectantly. "You wondered about college, I quit because I got caught cheating on a final, after that I figured I'd learned all I needed to learn there."
"I don't understand Sergeant."
"I learned how not to get caught."
"But what about all the college courses you took while you've been in the army? I believe you took the combat lifesaver course as well?" he asked, genuine curiosity tingeing his voice this time.
"I had this overwhelming urge to kill I guess you could say. How else to learn the best ways to do that, then to learn the weakest areas of the human body. Makes you much more efficient at it." She started to turn and walk away again, calling cryptically over her shoulder, "Oh and Doc, one more thing. If you read my file, then you know what I've been doing for the past seven years. I've stayed alive this long for a reason." With that she disappeared into the women's shower area where she was met by Specialist Steele.
"The game's not until 1700 hours you're taking a big risk being here now," Briggs said.
"We've got serious trouble. The kind that you need to know about before we go into the poker game."
Sighing, Briggs signaled for the younger woman to continue, silently asking herself what more could be sprung on her out of the blue.
"We've got a traitor in our group. Command placed two moles on all the search and rescue teams, people who would slide under the radar unless the rest of the team decided to deviate from orders. Then they would make their move."
"Who was on our team."
"Carson for one," Steele hesitated, prompting Briggs to speak.
"He didn't make it out of Pastor, who else?"
"Davis," she almost said in a whisper.
"You couldn't tell the man you've been fucking is a goddamn traitor?" Briggs asked,
incredulous.
"Thanks, you're a real pal to point that out."
"Yes, I know, I'm a bitch." Sighing she scrubbed a hand wearily across her face. "Don't mind me Bec, he had us all fooled. And I just had a run in with Dr. Frankenstein, invited me to join his merry band of miscreants, so I'm not exactly thinking clearly myself."
"What!"
"He's been reading my file, apparently he liked what he saw. Between that and Davis we need to move and move fast, it's only a matter of time before someone comes up with the misguided idea that they can stop us."
"I have more, news about survivors, bases..."
Briggs cut her off. "Later. We need to contact the others, try to move poker night up some, how's your quarters look?."
"I made a sweep of them this morning and everything was clean, but I've been out of there all day. They've had all kinds of time to change that."
"Fuck. That's why I offered up mine, I knew I was off duty today and had all kinds of time to spend there to keep them from trying to plant something. But we also got something else to think about too."
"What's that?"
"Even if the room isn't bugged, Davis could be wired."
"So what now Briggs?"
"We make contact with the others, tell them to meet at 1600 hours, still my quarters. It's gonna be tight with the duty roster, but we might be able to pull it off."
"1600 hours, affirmative." Steele turned to go, Briggs grabbed her arm.
"Make sure everyone knows, under no circumstances is Davis to know about the change. We'll wait for him to show up, and we'll give him a little show, maybe we can use this to our advantage. We also need to think about adding some more players to the board." With that, both women went their separate ways.