Tell the wolves I'm home.
-unknown
My mind went live to silence. Harsh cold against my skin, I was on my side laying on concrete. I heard footsteps approaching me, and mustered what little strength I had to open my tired eyes and peer into the darkness. Suddenly a single incandescent bulb jutting out from a socket in a nearby wall beamed to low-wattage life; it's understated brilliance stretching far up the wall from which it was mounted before being devoured by the night. Standing on the edge of the shadows was a tall and solid man with nearly black hair. He looked to be in his fifties, and the personification of strength and discipline. When I saw his eye patch, I realized that I knew this man to be Secretary of Defense King Bradley, Brigadier General Mustang's commanding officer.
"You're awake. I was wondering when you'd finally come to. I knew it would be a bit, since we've been sedating you, but two days is a long time."
I was desperately hungry, dehydrated beyond belief, and too weak to move almost at all. I fidgeted slightly and found my wrists were bound behind me. My legs were bound at the ankles, as if it would have mattered, I didn't have the strength to budge them even an inch.
"Please help me." I croaked softly, my throat raged from the dryness. I shook uncontrollably from the cold and being clad in only my undergarments and silky house robe, now filthy.
"I'm afraid I can't do that Miss Rockbell. You see, you've served a great purpose to the military all these years, but we needed one last thing from you. By the time we're finished here you'll be dead, and Fullmetal will be too distraught to stop my plans. It was too easy really, orchistrating everything. Putting you both in place and then yanking him to and fro whenever I needed: you've both been perfect pawns. Kimblee's been watching you for weeks. He's seen EVERYTHING. Mustang's team swept your apartment, but they didn't find the cameras we planted the night the body was hung in your living room."
"We disguised them as ordinary nails," He said. "Driven into the wall and painted over, able to read through as though they were completely exposed, to anyone else it would seem like an ordinary nail pop. You might have noticed them, in the living room... the bedroom... the bathroom..."
My stomach turned.
"My specialist N.V. made them. He also made the body and the eye. He's brilliant, really. He's a master in fabrication. He can make anything, he even makes prosthetic cowls; full masks that can completely change ones appearance. He changes his all the time just for practice, so much in fact that I've forgotton what his true form looks like."
I couldn't tell if my nausea was brought on by my malnourished state, or the way he smiled so genuinely when talking about the inner workings of my torment.
"I have another accomplice, a greedy son of a bitch. He's so damn obsessed with getting his. He wants everything. Sex, power, money, invincibility. He and I are two sides of the same coin really. I want some of those things too, and we'll be getting them and getting rid of Edward Elric with help from you. See, I'm preparing to build an army. The most powerful army the world has ever seen. Your perfect blood combined with Edward's can help me do that."
My whole body hurt, my head pounded from trying to wrap my mind around the information. My eyes slid down my body and I found myself speckled with drops of blood. My arms were covered in fresh scabs and bruises at the elbows, and I suspected from the sensitivity, the wrists as well. They had been taking my blood.
"Edward, as you've noticed, is not like other men. He's almost half machine. He's too strong, too fast, and too intelligent to be considered average. No enemy who's ever dared to challenge him lived to tell the tale. This is why I could never attack him directly. I knew we'd never win. I'm an excellent fight for a man of my years, but I'm also smart enough to know that you sometimes must retreat if you ever hope to gain the upper hand."
He suddenly kneeled in front of my and grabbed a fistfull of my hair, pulling roughly as I cried out.
"When I realized how similar you two were, I knew he'd latch on if you spent enough time together. So I staged everything. The note on your car, the eyeball, the voicemail. I sent the threatening letters to Mustang, and I ordered Elric back from Moscow to watch over you despite Mustang's protests. I needed him to get close to you. I also staged the phone call about 'the promised land' and sent the message threatening to fire bomb your apartment so he would leave, just for the opportunity to turn the knife some more when I sent him the pictures Kimblee took of you while you were sleeping. I knew my efforts would be rewarded with his obsession with you, its impossible for him to not relate to you. You're both government experiments! The only difference being while you're the 'Control', complete physical perfection inside and out, he's a malformed abomination. A mentally short-circuting experimental failure. A good assasin should be largely apathetic, but Elric is emotional, so I dangled you in front of him like steak to a starving dog in hopes to ignite a reaction, and he didn't disappoint. The key to bringing down the Fullmetal Alchemist isn't hand-to-hand combat or a battle of weaponry. It's not physical. It's mental. It's emotional. It's YOU."
He shoved me away and stood, turning to walk away from me towards a metal table under the single light. He picked up a syringe full of a vermilion substance to show me.
"This is a test sample of the blood we've synthesized from Elric's. Obtaining his blood was simple, I just pulled some from the lab during his last automail modification. He bleeds quite a bit during those procedures." He said with a sick smile. It was obvious that seeing Edward suffer was how Bradley got his kicks. He disappeared into the shadows and reappeared a moment later with Kimblee at his side. I glared at him furiously, though I knew it wouldn't come across through my exhausted state.
"We're currently synthesizing some of your blood and preparing it to be combined with his." Kimblee added. "The result being a genetic code that's inhumanly strong, fast, intelligent, and wired for combat like him, with the pure health, perfect physical proportions, and accelerated healing from you. Not only are you helping us bring down Elric, but you're also helping us create unstoppable humans. People who will have automail just like him. Soldiers that we'll craft into killing machines. The U.S. military will be a truly unstoppable force."
I was back and forth between sweltering and freezing to death. My body shook from the cold yet sweat dripped down my brow, frigid concrete being both my torture and my relief. My abused mind began to wonder. If it had really been two days, where was Ed? Was he even coming for me? Nauseating dread filled me when I realized that he probably had no idea where I was. I was surprised to find tears welling; I figured I'd been dehydrated beyond the ability to cry.
"Please don't do this." I cried softly. Bradley walked to stand over me again, as dozens of his soldiers flanked him from the shadows, armed with heavy artillery.
"There's nothing that can stop us now. And once we've killed you, Edward Elric will no longer have the will to live and taking him down will be simple. He's fought tirelessly for the lives of others, but he despises his own. He's been ready to die for years, why do you think he'd take such a dangerous job at only 14 years old? He wants to be put out of his misery, only problem is his manufactured genetic code. He's hard wired for survival." He said.
I stared blankly, unable to make heads or tails of what I was hearing. Bradley must've sensed my confusion, because he grinned wickedly and said,
"You don't know about him, do you? Since you're about to die, I'll let you in on a little secret. See, I've tried to form this army once before, but one by one every test subject died. No one could withstand the limb removal and following automail surgery. Their memories were wiped, then replaced with the knowledge of how to be the perfect soldier. The perfect assasin. But none of them could handle it, they either died during surgery or went mad and killed themselves after the mental procedure. Everyone except Edward Elric."
'NO...' My eyes squeezed shut and the tears spilled, my heart crying for Ed's broken soul. Bradley wiped a tear from my cheek, then back handed me hard. I tasted blood.
"That bastard ruined EVERYTHING! A fucking kid broke my entire system! The scientist in charge of him fucked up, implanting our combat technology in Elric's brain before erasing all memory of his former life. He woke up half way through the mind wipe, lost it and slaughtered my entire team. When we inject our new synthesized Perfect Blood into humans, we believe they'll finally be able to withstand the limb removal and automail replacement surgery. I'll finally have my unstoppable army."
I gaped at him in wide-eyed horror. King Bradley had always been considered a brave and honorable man, earning the respect of his soldiers for many years. I was convinced there was no way Mustang could have known he was actually a confirmed psychopath.
"Instead of having him executed, I allowed Edward to become a State Alchemist at the incessant pleading of Roy Mustang, and put his newfound 'talents' to good use against our enemies. In a sense, he wound up doing exactly what I'd wanted from the start. But I didn't account for him spending the next 16 years digging for answers about his former life and nearly exposing my involvement. I can't have him getting in the way this time." He picked up a box and handed it off to a soldier.
"Drain her."
My heart pounded and I let out a choked sob. This was it. The soldier knelt before me and poised the needle at the surface of my bruised skin, when there was a loud shatter. The empty syringe had burst, and blood exploded from a hole in his hand. He screamed, and the single lightbulb shattered, shrouding us in darkness. Multiple guns ratcheted, ready to fire at an unseen target. The moon's brightness poured in from skylights high above us, and cast its white glow over the 20 some-odd men surrounding me. I could barely see anything in the blackness, and keeping my eyes open had become a trying challenge.
"It seems we have a visitor." Bradley said. "And if it's who I think it is, then it's safe to say he's brought his rag-tag group of soldiers with him!" I felt my head suddenly yanked back harshly by my hair yet again, pain shooting through my scalp and my neck twisting awkwardly. Bradley whispered in my ear,
"And with any luck, one particular State Alchemist."
He slammed my head into the concrete and everything went black again.
My head swam to the sounds of gunfire and screams being cut off in a throaty, gutteral sputtering. I heard guns and bodies dropping to the floor, and an explosion rocked the room, followed by Bradley's raging screams of protest. Something about all his work being gone forever. The was brightness coming through my eyelids; sudden heat scorching my frigid skin from a distance, and I tried to peer my eyes open but was foiled by my splitting head ache.
"I've spent years watching you live in your misery, all leading to this moment right now. I took everything from you Fullmetal! I took the memories of a life you'll never know, a family you'll never know. You destroyed my dreams of ultimate power, at least I can watch in delight as your will to live washes away. We all saw it happen when you lost Nina, the figurative little sister. Imagine my sheer excitement to see you lose the woman you love."
Adrenaline shot my eyes open. He loved me.
My moment of euphoria came and went in a flash, cut short by my vision newly focused on flames roaring across the room and quickly climbing the walls. Beakers, test tubes, and vials all lay smashed: thier crimson contents pooling across the floor surrounding the gleaming shards. Dozens lay in blood with faces petrified in wide-eyed horror, paralyzed by their final vision of the waking world. My gaze shifted, and there he was, a dark silhouette against the bright orange flames. His back to me while gripping his enemy's collar, with his metal arm pressing the gleaming edge of a long blade against Bradley's throat.
"I don't want to die anymore. I stopped wishing for death months ago, because I have someone to live for. You took everything from me once," Edward's deadly voice graveled. "You're not taking it again."
I watched, suspended in horror and fascination as his right arm reared back then drove the blade home in the base of King Bradley's throat. I'd never known so much blood could come from one person. I had no idea someone's muscular anatomy could be pulled from their body with such ease, then wick away from blood-covered metal with such grand, devastating flourish. I knew he'd killed before, I suspected he'd killed nearly everyone in the room. I didn't know that seeing him take a life in such a vicious, primal way would leave me breathless. In awe of his deadly grace, rocked by his predatory glare finally finding mine, horrified and nauseated at his blood-coated EVERYTHING; heart-stopped when his expression crumbled and he dropped to his knees, head in this hands, having just revealed to me the darkest part of himself.
A/N: Thank you for reading and reviewing. More on the way.