A/N Hey everybody I'm back. Sorry about the delay but I was away on course. But I'm back now and here is Chapter 5 Lovingly Edited by thescottishmcrdragon She doesn't have a Fanfic account but she does have a Tumblr so look her up.

Chapter 5: Getting to Work

WHAM!

Jack let out a groan at the sudden impact of the mat beneath him. This was the fourth time in as many matches that he had been tossed by Lt. John Shepard. The man was annoyingly skilled in Judo. Jack could hold his own with striking, and he was fast too, but as soon as the wiry infantry officer got his hands on him, it was game over. Picking himself up off the mat,Jack said with a touch of annoyance,

"Do you know anything besides that move?"

Shepard paused long enough to wipe sweat off of his forehead before replying,

"Why? Tired of getting your ass kicked in the same way over and over again? I mean, if you're looking for variety I guess I could try something different."

"Asshole." Jack muttered under his breath. It had been a month since they had pulled their asses out of that city square, and already they had meshed seamlessly with the group. Chris had moved in to the in-law suite with his wife, everybody had suddenly found something intensely interesting and loud to occupy themselves with that night. The other three had moved into the rooms in the basement grumbling about having to move into the "barracks". It was true that while still nice, the basement bedrooms were more utilitarian that those on the upper floors. None of them however compared to the rooms that Jack and Krista occupied. Krista's room was like a hidden oasis. It was meant to be for the Wonderland operator and had audible alerts that would sound within the room signaling that their attention was required at the consoles. It had a massive California king bed that overlooked the forest through the floor-to-ceiling windows that wrapped around the outer two walls. To the right of that door was another door that led to an attached bathroom. A large tiled shower dominated one wall, toilet, bidet, and sink dominated another. In the center of the room was Krista's favourite feature. Set into a step-up platform was a gigantic overflow bathtub that you could comfortably relax in with water up to your shoulders.

Jack's bedroom was much the same as he walked through it and into the bathroom. Shedding his sweaty workout gear and tossing it into the laundry hamper, he stepped into the massive tiled shower and let the heat from the multiple shower heads work the soreness from his abused body. Jack knew he had a problem that needed to be worked out. There were too many people here for the number of vehicles that they had. The Humvee could seat four while the warthog could seat three. Jack had divided everyone into three separate combat teams leaving Krista and the Doctor to stay here.

Team 1 consisted of Jack, Chris, and Craig in the Warthog. He had had to include Craig in the Warthog team. The big man had looked like he was about to cry, when Jack suggested taking him away from the chain gun on the back of the Hog.

Drew lead Team 2 with Mark and Jess in the Humvee which left Shepard, Chang, and Flaherty as Team 3 without a vehicle.

Armour wouldn't be a concern for choosing the vehicle as each new arrival had been issued a set of TITAN II almost immediately. The area in the garage where Jack kept the gear lockers was starting to get crowded. He knew what he wanted from the vehicle. It had to be light and fast. Passenger space was a plus but it wasn't necessary as they had the Humvee for that. It had to be able to perform in the near off road conditions that the city had become without losing any of its speed. He also wanted it to be heavily armed. Ideally, he'd take another Warthog, but since the one being worked on in the garage by Mark was the only one in existence, he wasn't holding his breath.

Stepping out of the shower, Jack wrapped a towel around his waist and went to wake up his personal workstation. An hour, two cups of coffee, and a change of clothing later and he found the vehicle he wanted. The Chenowth Advanced Light Strike Vehicle, despite what anyone said, was a dune buggy built for the US Navy Seals operating in the Middle East. It was an advanced version of its predecessor that allowed for a crew of three to move and engage at high speed with maximum firepower. After a small amount of reading, Jack knew that he wanted one. It was designed to drive through both open desert and exactly the kind of blown out, rubble filled environment that the Island had become.

With his mind made up, Jack lept to his feet and strode into Wonderland, scanning his card as he did so. Krista was nowhere to be seen, but Anni's hologram sprang into being as he walked in. Today's outfit was a Slayer t-shirt with long sleeves underneath, a short denim skirt with calf length leggings on underneath, and a pair of ladybug flats. Her hair was a bright red and went down to her shoulder blades in waves.

"Hey boss. Krista's taking a shower if you're looking for her."

Checking the digital readouts on the mainframe Jack detailed why he was there.

"The ALSV? Yeah it's a good choice. I'm sure the guys will love driving it if nothing else. You want another fifty for it?" She was referring to the M2 Browning that could be mounted on the vehicle. The same kind of weapon that had almost turned them to red jelly on the way here and the same one that was currently mounted on the Humvee

"Nah I want big booms for this one."

"Mark 19 then?"

"Mark 19" Jack concurred. That should give the gangs something to think about.

"Who's out right now?" Jack asked as he got comfortable in one of the swiveling chairs.

"Team 2 is just finishing up their patrol in the Humvee. They should actually be rolling up to the gate any minute now."

One of the first things that they had decided upon the arrival of the C Scotts was to begin constant daily patrols of the city. The teams would rotate through where one team would go out for a three or four hour patrol and then when they came back there would be about a two hour wait and then the next team would go out. These would keep rotating until sunset when all the teams would come back and they would start again the next morning. They kept out of the heavy gang territory for the most part but it had been effective in keeping those territories from expanding. It wasn't enough Jack knew but with the low amount of man power they had it was all they had to work with.

He puttered around for another five minutes, watching the satellite feeds and chatting with Anni. She was a mystery even to him. From the second she had come online she had become a singularity. She was writing code for herself faster than Jack could keep track of. She may not have a body but she was a fully sentient person in her own right. The truth was that even though he'd never tell her, he didn't even need Krista in here. She was an extra set of eyes for the most part. It was Anni who really ran things. The only program that he had written and installed in the large mainframes behind him was Anni. Everything else, from the Satellite uplink, to the secure Internet connection, she had created herself and was running through her servers. She truly was a miracle. If he had let the Government get their hands on her they would have stripped her code down to its base level in an attempt to recreate it. They would have essentially killed her in an attempt to make more of her. They might have even succeeded but that was not something Jack was willing to allow. He saw her as a sort of daughter. He felt a need to take care of her. He remembered once that someone had attempted to hack into her servers while he was away. He had come back to the house to discover that not only had that person been unsuccessful, but she had flooded his hard drive with over a petabyte of bestiality porn. While extremely humorous, it had worried him that someone with access to over a petabyte of storage had not only noticed him but had attempted to break in. She had assured him that she had fixed the point from where he got in but it still worried him.

Jack was broken out of his thoughts by the sound of Krista's door opening. He looked up to see her walking out of her room in a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt toweling off the end of her long blonde hair.

"Oh hey Jack, you seen Craig anywhere?" Her question forced Jack to have to suppress a chuckle. Craig still hadn't noticed her fascination with him. She wasn't exactly being subtle either. Whenever they were in a room together her face would light up like a Christmas tree and she usually just seemed to end up standing right next to him. The big man truly could be clueless sometimes.

"I think he's in the shop working on the Hog's gun. At least he was last time I saw him, though that was about an hour ago." Her shoulders set with a determined look on her face. As she turned to the door. She paused though as if something had just occurred to her.

"Actually I found something that I think you might want to see. Anni could you cue up that bookmarked satellite footage from last night?"

The virtual woman nodded her assent as a video file popped up on the center screen.

"I noticed something that seemed a bit odd when I was watching the cameras last night. Watch this."

On the screen Jack saw something he had seen hundreds of times already. One of the prison gangs was holding a family at gunpoint. From the grainy image he could see that their clothing was ragged and their skin was dirty. They were caught in a warzone and it showed in their appearance. He watched as a gang member hit the adult male in the stomach with the butt of his shotgun as another began dragging off the female away from the two children whom they left under guard. They were tying her hands and pulling a bag over her head. He didn't know for sure what they had planned for her but he could guess. He didn't want to have to see this again. Not when there wasn't anything that he could do. As he began to turn away Krista urgently directed his attention back to the screen.

"Look! Look! Right….Now!" Just as she said now, one of the men's heads exploded in a spray of gore. All of a sudden the gang was under attack seemingly from all sides. Who ever was shooting at them clearly had training. They were using single carefully aimed shots to drop each fighter. The gangs all tended to blast away on full automatic without aiming too carefully. Once they were all dead Jack expected to see the armoured figures of Team 2 come out of the shadows and bring up the Humvee. What he saw instead was a group of six step out of the surrounding buildings all wearing an assortment of tactical gear including several CF issued helmets and frag vests. That they were military was not in doubt. What Jack wanted to know was where they came from, and how had they not noticed them before.

"After that they take them around the corner and everyone gets into a Brinks truck. I lost them after they went into a tunnel." Both Jack and Krista were staring at the frozen image on the screen of the only obviously female member. All they could see was a black ponytail and a C7 rifle. There were new players in the game and unless Jack was mistaken, they were here to help.

An hour later found Jack underneath the Warthog up to his elbows in grease and hydraulic fluid. He was reconnecting the main Hydraulic line that allowed the turret to traverse when he felt a tap on the sole of his foot. Rolling out from beneath the hog he looked up from the shop creeper he was laying on to see Jess looking down at him. She was wearing the lower half of her armour having just come back from a patrol. The top half of her bodysuit was tied around her waist and her upper body was covered only by a plain black sports bra. Sometimes, he really hated Chris, lucky bastard. Her hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail and she held a sandwich on a plate out to Jack.

Wiping his hands on a rag, he sat up and gratefully accepted the offered food. He realized he was hungry and with his patrol coming up it was going to be a while before he got another chance to eat. Team 3 was chomping at the bit to get out but their vehicle wasn't set to arrive for another two or three days.

As he munched on his sandwich, turkey and swiss on rye, he pondered on the people he had seen in the satellite footage. Who were they? Who was that woman? How could he get in contact with them? His thoughts were interrupted by Jess plopping herself down on the floor next to him with a loud metallic thud.

"Sorry, forget sometimes how heavy this stuff is. Anyway, what's on your mind?" Jack contemplated his response as he polished off the last of the sandwich.

"Krista showed me a satellite feed of military trained personnel rescuing civilians from gang members. I'm just thinking how we've been here for three months now, with all our gear, and what have we accomplished? We shot up a downtown square and pulled a couple of guys out of the fire. Here these people are, with gear that they scrounged together making an actual difference in the lives of people trapped here. What's the fucking point of having all of this if we can't actually help anybody?" Jack realized that he was yelling by the end of his rant but it was too late to take it back.

Jess sat for a long moment taking in everything he said. When she responded she was very calm

"Ok first off, one of those 'guys' as you put it happens to be my husband. Bringing him back to me safe made more of a difference in my life than you realize. We're here too you know. Second we managed to set up a perimeter around the city. It gets smaller every day because of our efforts so don't take that lightly. Soon enough there won't be any safe havens left in this city. After that we can expand to the rest of the island. This is directly because of the patrols we started. So stop with the fucking pity party and let's get back to work, yeah?"

Jack had to sit there for a minute after she left to go shower just digesting what she said. Unexpectedly Chris rolled out next to him from under the engine where he had been changing the oil.

"Dude… you just got your ass handed to you by a chick that could be one of Santa's elves"

"Well what's that say about you? You married her!" Jack found his smug smile strangely infuriating.

"Yeah which is why I know not to pity myself where she can hear me. Besides, did you see what she looked like just now? Can you blame me for never wanting to let that go?" With another smug grin, he rolled back beneath the vehicle before Jack decided to throw a wrench at him. Looking down at the wrench in his hand he figured he had taken long enough of a break and rolled back beneath the truck. Goddamn hydraulics…

Another hour later and Jack was securing the catches on his helmet and running the power-up sequence on his armour. He wanted to try something different than just driving through an area even though they tried to randomize the routes they took. So instead of grabbing his SCAR-H off of the weapon rack he moved down through the assortment of weapons until he reached the SR-25.

The SR-25 was a sniper rifle designed by the same man who originally designed the AR-15, the weapon that the C7 and M16 assault rifles are based off of. As such it looked incredibly similar to them except for the fact that it had a longer barrel with a suppressor, a solid stock like the C7 A1, a bipod, and a Leupold M3A Scope mounted. It was 7.62 and semi automatic which was perfect for what he wanted to do with it. Grabbing it off the rack he slung it over his shoulder as he hadn't had time to modify it to lock to his armour like the SCAR-H. He slid his 1911 into his holster and climbed into the passenger seat of the Warthog. Chris was driving today as Craig got ready to climb up behind the gun. He was picking up his helmet from the table when out of nowhere Krista pushed through the other people, marched right up to the big man and damn near kissed him out of his armour. It went on long enough after Craig wrapped his arms around her that a few people began clearing their throats uncomfortably. Finally she released him with a whispered "Come back safe," and quickly retreated back to Wonderland, her red face lighting the way.

"Well as long as all the surprises are out of the way, does anybody mind if we head out now?" Jack couldn't help the dry tone that entered his voice. He was happy for them, he really was, honestly.

The big war cat's engine roared as they accelerated out of the garage and down the long driveway to hell. Jack checked his ammo one last time and knew that he had enough to last barring the entire city coming down on them black hawk down style.

"So why is called a warthog anyway?" This was from Chris as he smoothly turned to avoid the shot out carcass off the MilCOT at the end of the driveway.

"I think it's a combination of the ram bars in the front that look like tusks and the sound of the engine." Craig was scanning their surroundings for threats as they entered a more built up area. Snipers were a very real risk, with all of the tall buildings around them.

"I don't know, man. I think it looks more like a puma." Jack could almost hear the grin in the man's voice as he made the groan worthy reference to red vs blue.

"Warthog, Puma, Chupathingy, it really doesn't matter as long as you don't crash my baby." There was no denying the dry tone that entered Jack's voice now it was absolutely dripping with sarcasm.

"So… does that mean the name does matter if I crash it?" You could almost hear Chris' grin in his voice.

"Chris?"

"Yeah boss?"

"Shut the fuck up."

"Sure thing, boss."

They continued to drive deeper into the city, heading closer and closer to gang territory. Finally, as they began to reach rows of apartment complexes, Jack had Chris stop the vehicle. He wanted to test a theory he had, concerning the effectiveness of the patrols. He knew that the gang leaders weren't stupid. Through necessity they had followed a fairly regular patrol schedule which meant that they were able to time almost to the minute when the next patrol would come through. It had taken them a little while to realize this. At first resistance was heavy. They would have to make repairs to the vehicles every time they came back in. Then it started to lessen to the point where you could go an entire patrol without seeing anything. Everyone else thought that it meant they were pushing them back and slowly retaking the city. Jack had a different theory. He believed that they had realized that with their armour and heavy weapons, Jack and the teams couldn't be beaten by the odd small arms they had managed to scrounge. So they hid and waited for the vehicles to go past. All the evidence they needed was in the satellite feeds. So today Jack was going to see if he couldn't take out a few more.

After a brief search he located a building with an excellent view down one of the main shopping streets. It looked like it used to be a condo with all the security it had at the entrance. There was an old adage that said "Locks are only there to keep honest people out." Apparently that also held true with the non-desperate because where the safety glass wasn't destroyed it was wrenched out of the way to allow access into the building. Jack had to step over a long dead body as he entered the building, marksman rifle leveled. From the state of the desiccated body, it had been there since the purge began. A lot of people had died during the panic of that evacuation. Jack supposed that was part of the plan all along though. Less of a load on the government, if half of the evacuees killed each other in their panic.

As he made his way through the building a story began to unfold just from what he saw in the hallways. Dried smears of blood on the floor and stacks of bodies in carefully selected rooms said that someone had tried to live in the building after the purge. Unstacked bodies in other rooms told of how successful they had been. At one point he had to pause as he reached a stairwell that had been barricaded by furniture. His first reaction was to try and find another way up. None of the elevators worked as the Island had lost power within the first week, but then he realized that was ridiculous and began tossing the relatively light objects out of his way. He did his best to remain quiet but one of the couches broke as his powered gauntlets lifted it up out of the way. It hit the stairs and bounded down with a resounding crash. He froze, listening and hoping. A light thud from up above him told him what he feared. He wasn't alone in the building. Checking to make sure the safety was off on his rifle he stepped over the last of the makeshift barricade and silently made his way up the stairs. When he reached the top he was confronted by an empty hallway. It was startlingly clean compared to what he had come through before. There was evidence of a struggle but one that had been cleaned up and made livable again. As he stepped off the stairs and into the hallway he was rushed by a skinny man with a kitchen knife. With just a glance Jack could tell that this man was not a fighter. Instead of shooting him, Jack swung the rifle around on its sling and grabbed him by the knife wrist with one hand. With his other he backhanded the man to stun him and slammed him up against the wall. By flexing his free hand in just the right way he extended the six-inch blade from its recess in the armours forearm and held it up to the mans throat. Not enough to break the skin but he definitely felt it when he swallowed convulsively. Keying his helmets external coms, he spoke in a deep low voice.

"I'm not interested in hurting you. I'm just on my way to the roof. Drop the knife before you hurt yourself and I'll forget I ever saw you."

Jack waited until he felt the muscles relax in the skinny man's forearm and heard the clatter of the eight-inch chef's knife hit the ground. It wouldn't have come even close to penetrating the armour but Jack was serious when he said he wasn't interested in hurting the man and there was a very real chance that the blade would have caught in a groove in his armour and broken off. Relaxing his blade arm, he let the stiletto re-sheathe itself with a quiet snick and let the man go. Stepping back Jack swung his rifle back around and was about to continue on to the roof when he looked into the room his assailant had run out of. Standing inside was an equally skinny woman holding a baby protectively against her chest. Both the man and the woman now that he got a look at them, looked like they hadn't eaten in days and even then nothing that could be construed as a proper meal. Sighing to himself he opened one of the storage containers on the front of his torso armour and pulled out two of the meal replacement bars he always carried with him. Taking his helmet off he stepped into the room and silently handed them to the starving mother. She accepted them without saying a word but she smiled at him and nodded, her eyes tearing up. Replacing and locking his helmet Jack stepped back into the hallway and addressed the two of them.

"Pack whatever you need that can be carried on your back. I'm going to have a vehicle come by in a few hours, and pick you up. They'll take you somewhere safe and get some food into you. We'll also have our doctor take a look at your daughter."

With these last words, Jack turned and continued on up to the roof after contacting Anni and telling her to get Team 2 to stop here and pick them up when they came through.

Jack reached the roof without any further incidents and set up a good firing position that overlooked the once busy street filled with its local boutiques. Now it was covered in garbage, broken glass, and bloody bodies. He set up the bipod and ensured a round was chambered before removing his helmet and pulling out an earpiece for coms. As much as he wished he could, it just wasn't possible to look through a scope for long periods of time with the helmet on. He settled in to wait.

It wasn't long before his theory was proven correct. Five armed hostiles stepped out of one of the shops wearing red shirts or strips of cloth half an hour after the warthog came through. The red signified them as one of the larger gangs to take over this particular city. It didn't particularly matter to him if they were Americans or Canadians however. They were killing innocent people and had to be put down. He lined up his first shot. At this distance, windage wasn't going to have much of an affect but he accounted for it anyway. After making all the necessary adjustments he lined up on the easiest shot, a large man standing slightly off from the group lighting a cigarette and prepared to fire. He closed his eyes and took two slow deep breaths in. On the second breath he stopped halfway through the exhale and opened both eyes. The split view was a little disorienting but by focusing on what he could see through the scope he could see the crosshairs centered on the mans chest right over his heart while still being aware of the other four targets with his other eye. He flicked the safety off with his thumb and squeezed his whole hand slowly into a fist causing him to smoothly squeeze the trigger. The recoil actually surprised him for a split second as the rifle barked out the shot with a thwak CRACK sound.

The thing with firing a supressed rifle, the thing Hollywood always gets wrong, is that a suppressed weapon isn't truly silent. All a suppressor does is quiet the initial bang. The initial sound of the round being fired. What it doesn't and can't control is the sound the bullet makes as it breaks the sound barrier. You would need to be using subsonic ammunition, that is bullets that travel slower than approximately 343 meters per second, to get that Hollywood pfft sound. In actuality all a suppressor does on a high powered rifle is make it extremely difficult to tell exactly where the shot came from.

That is exactly what happened here. To his friends on the ground, one second he was standing there calmly lighting a cigarette, the next he was falling back with a spray of blood coming out of his back followed immediately by the crack of a rifle.

Jack watched with his off eye as the other four scrambled for cover. He tracked over to the next target, a skinny Hispanic man that kept poking his head up to try and figure out where the shots were coming from. Too late.

Thwak CRACK! This time the shot caught him in the temple and he simply disappeared above the shoulders. They were in a panic now and still no closer to figuring out where the shots were coming from. A few of them were blindly firing their weapons over the cover they had crawled behind but none were even close to hitting him. He caught movement up the street from his open eye and adjusted to hit the new target. He was an extra 50 meters away, but Jack didn't have time to correct for the distance, he simply aimed higher and fired. The round missed, instead hitting a covered object that was sticking up over his shoulder. The man exploded, literally exploded with a large fireball. He must have had an RPG though Jack couldn't figure out where the hell he had gotten it. They were definitely 100% illegal in Canada. Purge or not there was no way he should have been able to get it in here. Unless… unless they were being supplied by an outside party. This would bear investigation when he got home. For now the explosion had distracted his original targets enough that they had poked their heads out of cover to see what the noise was.

Thwak CRACK! This round caught the man in the middle of the spine and he fell to the ground screaming and twitching. If he didn't bleed out he would certainly never walk again, either option suited him just fine as he sighted in on the man running toward his injured comrade. He almost, ALMOST chuckled when he realized that he was using the very tactics that the CF was taught to fight against. Injure one so that the sounds of his screams drew in more to help him and then kill them too. He didn't like fighting like that but damn if it wasn't effective.

Thwak CRACK! The last one went down when he too tried to sprint to the dying mans aid. As effective as it was to leave him there, Jack knew he couldn't do it to the man any longer. Out of something close to compassion he sighted in again.

Thwak CRACK! With the crack of the round, the injured gang member fell silent.

Jack decided that he had drawn enough attention to himself and that it was time to at least move to another building. As he was getting up from his prone position he heard a scuff behind him. He whipped around just in time to be hit in the face with the butt of a rifle. After that all he saw was black.

On the other side of the country in the CNN offices in Toronto, Jade Saira was pissed to put it lightly. She had just been told by her producer that under no circumstances was she to continue badgering the Canadian government for information on what's happening on Vancouver Island. She had been an investigative journalist since she was 23, and at 35 she had enough experience to know when something wasn't right. For the first month after the outbreak all anyone had heard when they turned on the news was about the massive smallpox outbreak in BC. Now, it was like the place didn't even exist. She wasn't an idiot. She knew it was the nature of the press to move on to the next big thing as soon as it came up but it was different when you were on the other side of the camera. They would often receive updates up to a year after a major event. It was just usually filtered out by the producers. But now it was a complete blackout. She knew when she was being lied to and it pissed her off.

She walked into the employee breakroom and poured herself a cup of coffee. It was her… hell she didn't even know how many she had had. She knew she should cut back but she had added it to the very long list of things that she would get to eventually. Like quit smoking, or go to the gym, or ask out the cute girl across the hall. None of it was as important as the next story.

On the way back to her desk she followed her normal route. A quick glance in the mirror to check her make up and hair. She was graced with a high metabolism due to her Persian heritage so she remained slim despite her mainly take out and fast food diet. When she was positive there was nothing unprofessional about her appearance she stepped out of the breakroom and wound her way to her desk, sidestepping Norm the Perv's workstation as she did so. When she got there she cleared away the numerous empty coffee cups and takeout boxes so she could get to her laptop and was surprised to find she had an email from a blocked sender. It read;

"Dear Ms. Saira,

In times like this it's good to remember what Oscar Wilde said about what the world calls a romance.

Keep trying.

K. "

Jade was intrigued to say the least. She had no idea who K was or what Oscar Wilde had written. However, she could answer at least one of those questions presently. Pulling up Google she typed: Oscar Wilde; World calls a Romance, and hit enter.

What she read next caused a Cheshire cat grin to spread across her face.

"Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance."

Someone was telling her that she was being lied to and she'd be damned if she was going to let them.

Jack was starting to get incredibly sick of waking up with a splitting headache. He tried to move and shock surprise, once again his arms were tied behind his back. What really concerned him was the fact that he could feel the duct tape digging into his wrists. He could feel the seat of the metal folding chair he had been placed on. They had stripped him of his armour. Now to find out who they were. He opened his mouth and began to demand answers

"huuurrrrruuuoogh…"

Well that wasn't exactly graceful but at least it was a start. Next up was to open his eyes. Unfortunately, that didn't go quite as planned because apparently his left eye was swollen shut. Luckily he was right eye dominant so he shouldn't have a problem shooting but it was still a pain in the ass. What he saw around him however was not promising. He appeared to be inside an industrial kitchen complete with bandsaw and meat grinder. And blood. Lots and lots of blood.

"Hey boss, looks like secret agent man is waking up." This came from a gruff voice just out of his field of view that spoke with a distinct Jersey accent.

"Yeah? No shit. He's still fuckin alive after all." Brooklyn this time. When he looked to the left he saw a man get up from where he was sitting on a stainless steel prep table.

"Wakey wakey, asswipe. You and your people have taken out a lot of our guys. I'm gonna kill ya fo' that. But first I think im gonna let Tony here kick the shit out of you. You killed his brotha see so I figure he owes you that much."

The punch completely blindsided him. He literally did not see it coming. Jack knew he was going to die and that it was probably going to be painful but he would be damned if he showed these shitstains any weakness. Spitting the blood out of his mouth, he looked up at Tony and said,

"Careful son that's a great way to break your wrist. Straighten it out more for the next one."

It was satisfying to see the man flushed with rage as he swung again.

"That one wasn't bad, but you're not using all the power you could be. Plant your feet, pivot from your foot up through your hip, and put your shoulder behind it."

WHAM! Oh that one hurt. That fucking hurt.

"Much better! But you're still punching from the arm. Here, let me show you."

WHAM! He was officially seeing stars now. Despite the "advice" Jack was giving him Tony had a cannon for an arm. He knew he'd be unconscious any second now and welcomed it. It was an escape from the pain.

Tony meanwhile was furious.

"I'm gonna fucking kill you, mother fucker!"

WHAM! Jack had to spit out more blood this time before he could speak.

"How very eloquent, my simple minded friend."

The beating continued, and Jack was unfortunately conscious for it all. It was surprising therefore that no one noticed the sound of a gunfight happening in the other room.

Suddenly the door to the kitchen burst open, and three figures rushed in C7's leveled. The unnamed boss went down first, followed quickly by Tony.

"Clear!" yelled one of the voices from another room as they all lowered their weapons. One of the figures in front of him, it was hard to tell as his vision was rather blurry at the moment lifted something to their face and said in a clear feminine voice

"All clear, let's pack up the hostages and move out."

Suddenly Jack's vision was filled with the face of the most beautiful woman he had ever seen as the mysterious leader leaned in to cut the duct tape behind him. He knew she was speaking to him but he just didn't care right now. All he wanted was to sleep.

So that's exactly what he did.

A/N Jesus Jack just can't catch a fucking break can he? Any way I'll start working on chapter 6 six soon. Leave a review. Reviews and messages make me write faster. Oh and check out my tumblr as well fremen1992 for story updates.