Chapter 29
"We reacquired Subject Zero in Bangkok this time. I swear every time we fix one security flaw she finds another." Dr. Theresa Price said to her benefactor.
"Believe me, Doctor. If it were easy to contain her, she wouldn't be worth recapturing. Her injuries?" Jack Harper asked.
"Negligible, as always, but she killed three of our best agents." Dr. Price said.
"Unfortunate but acceptable losses. Perhaps we should be more forceful in our... dialogue with Jacqueline?" Harper suggested. This brought a savage smile to her face.
"Of course, sir." She said.
"Do be careful not to get too enthusiastic this time, or perhaps should I find a new doctor to manage Zero's case?" He warned.
"No, no I will do what needs to be done." She said, paling.
"Excellent. I have the utmost faith in you, Theresa." He said, severing the communication. She reached for a pill bottle with a trembling hand and opened it, popping one into her mouth and swallowing it dry. The blissful peace those lovely pills afforded her covered her like a warm blanket, and all hesitation about what she was about to do dissolved.
"I will do what must be done." She recited to herself as she closed her office door and began the walk to Subject Zero's isolation chamber. It was not a long walk, but the hallway was always unsettlingly quiet, due to the extensive soundproofing installed in each room. It had been handy when all of the rooms were filled with "candidates" but they had whittled it all down to just Jacqueline, or Subject Zero. She had been the only one capable of surviving the gene therapy and physical conditioning, and boy was she about to test the limits of that conditioning tonight. Hopefully soon she would be able to get her hands on Subject One and Subject Two, though Subject Two's usefulness was questionable. Her musing ended when she reached Zero's door. It appears as though the sedative had worn off and she was viciously ripping at her restraints, but her rage turned to terror as Dr. Price walked into the room.
"Hiya Jackie!" She said.
"P. don't hurt me again!" she said, her lower lip trembling.
"I wish I didn't have to, darling, but you leave me no choice." She said with false sympathy.
"No, please, I promise I won't run away again, please no." She said struggling not to cry.
"I wish it were that simple, Jackie. I wish it were that simple." She said, detaching a pair of electrodes from the wall and affixing one to each side of her head. Zero sobbed and begged but to no avail, and soon the room resonated with her tortured wailing. For three solid hours, she tortured the poor girl until she had slipped into unconsciousness. She removed the electrodes and put them back on their place on the wall, then returned to her office and began dictating her notes.
"Subject Zero successfully escaped again, this time through the air ducts. Only one guard was present outside of her cell, this will need to be rectified in the future. That guard would be reprimanded for his lapse however Subject Zero neutralized him. Must remember to inform his next of kin.
Three agents were lost apprehending her, Zero's combat skills are improving exponentially. Will recommend her transfer to an orbital station or somewhere off-world, this time she got too close to being able to alert the authorities. Cerberus must not be discovered by the Alliance at this time.
Subjects One and Two remain outside of our reach, but the Illusive Man suggests that is a temporary hurdle. Not sure what he's got cooking in that brain of his but it can't be good.
Also we're going to have to move away from electroshock as a disciplinary method, potentially go back to breaking fingers and toes, I don't like the way her EKG looks. Otherwise healthy fourteen-year-old girls should not have that level of arrhythmia. Honestly I thought breaking digits was more effective to begin with, but The Illusive Man was concerned about it reducing her combat effectiveness, now that we know the accelerated healing repairs bones to 98% of their original strength that should no longer be a factor. Ms. Lawson here is taking a nap now, but when she awakes I think I'll tune up her index fingers." Dr. Pierce concluded.
Colonel Hastings was having a good day. He felt like he'd made headway with the Lawson sisters, and he was deeply personally invested in seeing to their welfare. Henry Lawson was an animal, and when he had read the case files while preparing for prosecution, he had been deeply disturbed to the point where he almost requested to be recused. Thankfully he hadn't and was able to nail the monster to the wall.
When he returned to his office, he opened his email application and began sifting through the department chatter and boner pill advertisements, he stopped when he saw that one of his contacts had reached out to him.
"Hastings. Meet me at the pube. -Kevin" Was all it said. "Kevin" was not actually his informant's name, the informant was a female Quarian who preferred to remain anonymous, she had been a security office on the Migrant fleet and her qualifications and encyclopedic ability recite any law she read once led to her seeking a career in law enforcement, she was currently starting her second year of education with the Sydney Police department, but she was restless and had taken to doing unofficial PI work on the side. People tended to speak freely around her because she had a talent, even being a Quarian on Earth, of blending into the background.
"The Pube" was joke between she and Hastings. While Kevin was trying to learn to read and write English, she made a comment asking what a "pubelic library" was, Hastings explained the accidental faux pas which at first embarrassed her but now they both remembered it fondly. Long story short, Colonel Hastings was going to meet Kevin at the Library.
He arrived but was unable to see his contact, until he realized that the unspeakably beautiful Quarian woman in sitting in the true crime section reading a book was her, she must have recently taken the immunotherapy.
"Hey have you seen my friend Kevin?" He asked her. She smiled.
"No but while you're here, Know where a girl can get a Brazilian?" She asked. He laughed out loud at that one.
"Good to see you Kevin, and must I say, Damn you're hot." He said, shamelessly flirting with her, just as he did before the suit removal.
"Oh please you must say that to all the Quarians you meet." She said, with impeccably faked demureness.
"Only the cute ones. Did you have a tip for me?" He asked.
"I do, and it's not good news." She said, her humor fading.
"What's going on?" he asked.
"Your three-headed friends were active today, down at the markets. They grabbed some girl, human, upsettingly young. I tried to stop them but they were so fast they didn't even notice I was running at them." She said, frowning. This concerned Hastings greatly, as it reminded him of another fact he'd recently dug up.
"What did the girl look like?" He asked.
"Skinny, like more than me. Shaved head, I thought she was a boy at first when they pulled her into their transport her shirt lifted and I saw a bra. She had dark eyebrows though and dark brown eyes." She said. Hastings' stomach dropped.
"God..." He said.
"What?" She asked.
"It matches with another case I'm working that's related to the one I just dealt with today. Crap, I need to go report this. Kevin I'm sorry to cut this short. All joking aside congrats on the therapy, you are absolutely beautiful. Please let me know if you see anything else." he said, hurrying away. She nodded and went back to reading the godawful detective novel in her hands.
Hastings rushed back to his office and punched in his high-level clearance codes, which opened a secure channel.
"Rothschild you there?" He asked.
"What's up meat sack?" Rothschild responded, appearing on his screen in his shirtless rock star avatar.
"Our theory about the Lawson sisters might be right. Cerberus just abducted a girl similar to their description, but younger. I think Lawson went for the hat trick." He said. At that stage, the rock star avatar dissolved into a featureless man in an expensive looking suit wearing sunglasses, he liked to call it "the spook" and he only assumed this form when he was being deadly serious.
"Kevin tell you this?" Rothschild asked.
"Yeah, saw them bag the girl earlier this morning, stuffed her in a transport and drove off. She was down by the markets." He said.
"A moment please." Rothschild said. He was thankful but unsurprised that the AI was taking it this seriously. Rothschild for all his eccentricities deeply cared about his people, children especially. It was most likely because his human brethren had taken such loving care of him during his "childhood" that he was eager to return the favor.
"I have a match, behind the meat market. Let me show you." Rothschild said, bringing up a video feed. The girl was hiding in a dumpster behind the meat market, two agents got out of an unmarked transport, one with a bad limp, and opened the dumpster. The girl inside fought but was sedated quickly, the dragged into the transport which drove north.
"Jesus fucking Christ there's no way that girl is even 16." Hastings said.
"Biometric data suggests between 12 and 14." Rothschild reported.
"Can you track them?" he asked.
"Already on it, extrapolating data from satellites and local surveillance cameras. It will take a little while." He said.
"In the meantime I'm going to go get some help. I want to nail these fuckers hard." Hastings said.
"Anything you need, Angus. Seriously. Anything." Rothschild promised. Hastings nodded and called his superior, General Warrick Payton, head of Alliance Intelligence which also served as Earth's police force since the nations came together and formed the Alliance. Fifteen minutes later, three squads of fully armed marines were waiting in an APC for Rothschild's order.
Zero lay curled up under her cot trying desperately not to move her hands. She kept trembling from the electrical shocks and every time she did it sent bolts of agony through her newly broken fingers. She'd almost made it this time. A few more minutes and she could have found a cop, or broken into someone's home or something, but they got her too fast. Did she have a tracking chip or something? No matter, if she could hold perfectly still, the pain would be bearable. She yelped as the room shook, jostling her hands, tears began leaking down her cheeks. Soon after she saw soldiers and doctors running down the halls shouting but she couldn't hear what they were saying. The building shook again this time it didn't hurt as much since she'd braced for it, and the door to her room popped open.
"PURGE EVERYTHING! Burn the papers and load up the EMP, Do you understand?" Dr. price yelled. Getting a few "yes ma'ams" from the soldiers as she entered the room. "Well Jackie, it looks like it's time for us to part company again. This time for good." She said, withdrawing a pistol and sliding a heat sink into it. "I told Harper you were more trouble than you were worth, and now his whole investment is going up in flames." She said, as she held the gun in an armpit to use both hands deleting files from the system in the room. Satisfied at her work, she grasped it properly again and levelled it at Zero's head.
"I'd say I'll miss you, but you've been a constant pain in my ass for years. Goodbye, you troublemaking little shi..." Her statement was interrupted by a bang, causing Zero to shriek and cover her head. Oddly though she didn't feel the pain of a bullet, she remembered what those feel like. She felt nothing except the aching throbbing in her fingers. She risked looking up only to see Dr. a mess of gore where Dr. Pierce's head used to be, a fountain of blood erupting from her neck and a pissed off looking soldier with a smoking shotgun standing behind her.
"Please, Mister. Please don't hurt me. I'll be good, I'll do anything you say, just please, no more." She begged, sobbing.
"Sweetheart, I'm here to save you from these people. You know Rothschild?" He asked. She nodded.
"He showed me how to find you. I work for Alliance Intelligence, my name is Angus Hastings. You can call me Gus. Can you come out here please sweetie? I have a doctor with me who wants to take a look." As he said this she shrieked and backed further under the cot.
"Please, no doctors, please No more!" she said, panic obvious in her eyes.
"Ok, how about we wait on the doctors. How about a medic? You know what that is right? A soldier good at patching up other soldiers? Then once he's made sure you're safe we'll find you a real doctor, not a monster like this piece of shit on the floor here." He said. She was torn, her fingers hurt really bad and she couldn't stop shaking, but the only doctor she'd ever known was the same one that kept hurting her. Eventually she reasoned that the guy that had killed the woman who hurt her so badly is probably more likely to be telling the truth than she had been, so she reluctantly nodded and got to her feet. She took a few shaky steps forward before stumbling and falling on the ground.
"Honey is it ok if I carry you out of here? I don't want you to hurt your hands any more." He asked. She nodded and he scooped her up, grimacing at how little she weighed. He carried her out of the building and over to one of the APCs where one of the squad medics was patching up a Quarian marine that caught some Shrapnel.
"He'll help you out in a few minutes, ok?" Hastings said, sitting next to Zero. She nodded. She looked over at the marine getting taken care of and tugged on Hastings' jacket.
"What's wrong with that guy? His skin is purple." She asked.
"Oh there's nothing wrong with him. He's Quarian. A while ago we met these really nice aliens who had trouble with their ship, and they didn't have a home world any more so we invited them to stay with us, now they're our brothers and sisters." He explained.
"That's right, young one. I was born on a starship called the Taka. I'm Evo'Duun Vas Taka." He said smiling at her.
"You're all set, Duun. Take it easy on that shoulder, and even though your immunotherapy took well let me know if you see any sign of infection, got it?" The medic said.
"Yes Sir, thanks again, Toombs." He said, walking over to Zero.
"What Is your name, young lady?" He asked. She hid slightly behind Hastings.
"Zero" She whispered.
"That is a peculiar name for such a pretty girl." Duun said.
"Doctor Pierce called me Jackie but I don't like that name." She said.
"According to some documents we found, your name is Jacqueline Lawson." Hastings offered.
"Now that is a pretty name for a pretty girl. See you around, Jacqueline." He said, waving at the girl before jogging back to his commander.
"Can we call you Jacqueline?" Hastings said.
"That's ok, or Jack. Just not Jackie." She said.
"Well Jack, I think Sargent Toombs is ready to see you." He said, leading her over. Toombs while abrupt with soldiers who damn well knew better by now was far more pleasant with Jack.
"Hello young lady, your hands are bothering you?" He asked.
"Dr. Pierce broke them because I broke out and she wasn't allowed to shock me any more." Jack said, almost nonchalantly.
"That is absolutely horrible and I promise you this young lady as long as I am in a position to prevent it nobody will be doing those awful things to you ever again." Toombs said as he applied a numbing agent to her fingers.
"I need to give you a shot, it has medicine that will make your fingers numb so I can fix them, ok?" He said. She nodded, Shots never really bothered her. After a few minutes her fingers were in splints and Hastings was holding up a juice box so she could drink from it.
"So I got good news and bad news, Jacqueline. The good news is we're getting you the hell out of here and you'll never ever have to come here again. The bad news is that you're going to have to hang out with a bunch of dumb jar heads for a couple of days until we can find a home for you." He said, more of the benefits of Toombs and his squad.
"I'll show you dumb Jar heads.. I mean, Uh, Colonel Hastings, Sir." Toombs said, correcting himself as he remembered Hasting's rank.
"As you were Toombs I'm not gonna bust you if you're tossing sass back at me." He reassured him. "So we need someone to look over you that has more training and equipment than Seargent Toombs over here, but we understand why you don't like doctors, so I was hoping we could introduce you to a couple that might change your mind. They're really nice and I asked them to wear their military uniforms instead of lab coats to make you feel a little safer, is that ok?" He asked.
"Um. I guess. Can you stay with me?" She asked.
"Of course, no problem at all honey." He said, patting her back. Jack was terrified this was all just a wonderful dream and she was going to wake up back in the lab, but dream or no she was going to savor every pain free moment she could find.