Lisa had learned early on that Mr. M, on top of being a self-righteous UN prick, had an incredible talent for showing up at the wrong times. For instance, right after the massive explosion rocked the HLF compound. The sonofabitch must have been watching, waiting for just the right moment to swoop in and gather up all the pieces to paint a picture of a fuck-up of epic proportions. She grimaced as they swept through the halls, shell-shocked fighters raising their hands as a tidal wave of blue rolled over them. When this was all over, Mr. M could see to it that every last one of them spent the rest of their lives in a very small hole in the ground, maybe next to that bitch in Siberia.
Next to her, Felipe nudged her shoulder. “Do you feel like a small bird being sized up by a housecat whenever that M guy looks at us?”
She sighed. “Of course, just glad to hear you feel it too.”
“Everyone!” Francis raised a hand, flanked by a couple of UN riflemen with their weapons slung over their shoulders. “We...we found it.”
“Oh thank God,” she sighed, trotting close. “Francis, what--” she cut herself off as the grave expression in his eyes gave itself away. “Oh God, Francis, what is it?”
“Just…” he drew in a shaky breath, leaning against the wall. “David and Anton, they…”
He trailed off as she zipped around him, past Andre, who smoked a cigarette with a shaking hand as he curled up on the floor. “Anton!? David!” Lisa screamed, squeezing past a half dozen more riflemen, through a charred doorway and into the twisted, burning ruins of a room.
She coughed, a scent like asphalt tar baking in the sun hanging heavy in the air, mixing with the smoke. Someone in a UN uniform sprayed a fire extinguisher over a couple of smoldering corners. A huge hole had been torn into the metal on the other side of the room, and in the middle sat...oh God…
She covered her mouth. In the middle sat a ribcage: charred, black, with a few bits of meat hanging off it, slumped over a smaller leg, still clad in a sneaker and with a few scraps of denim hanging off it. If she tilted her head just so, she thought she could make out a scrap of cloth with a patch on the torso’s shoulder, whether it was UN or HLF though, who could tell? She stood there, transfixed by the gore, hardly able to process it, only snapping out of her stupor when a couple of UN mooks tried to shuffle by with a stretcher.
“Move!” They shouted, making her step back out of reflex, eyes finally dragged off the gory mass in the middle of the room. She glanced down at the charred bit of meat visible at the head of the stretcher as it passed, and gasped audibly when she realized she recognized it. The skin was all charred, the nose was now a sunken crater, and the chin was blasted away, but the gaping eyes revealed a hazy blue that could only be Anton’s.
“Wait, please!” She shouted, forcing the UN guys to pause while she sank to its side. “I know this man!”
“Jesus, what!?” One of the mooks shouted. “Then fuckin’ get outta the way, he’s hanging by a thread!”
Eyes wide, Lisa nodded, stepping back again, only to feel a tug at her shirt. Her gaze sank back to the mishmash of charred meat that had once been her friend and coworker, that hazy eye now locked on her, a wheeze echoing up his throat that was probably an attempt to grunt.
“Wait…” she gasped as her shirt slipped from his grasp. “Wait!” Twisting on her heel, she leaned over the body as the men holding the stretcher came to a stop. The eyes blinked at her. “Anton!? Anton, can you hear me!?” She gasped, struggling to keep her voice soft, yet still audible over the hiss of fire extinguishers and crackling of flames.
For his part, Anton’s eyes flicked down along his body, the trembling hand reaching for something on his waist.
“What…” she started, reaching under the blanket. Searching with her fingers along his waist, she pulled out a mangled mass that was once a pistol, and some extra mags for his rifle. “This!? You want this!?”
Another wheeze, his eyes darting side to side, like a head shaking no.
Grunting in frustration, Lisa threw the weapons away, pulling back the blanket now, her eyes widening. One thing had remained relatively whole: his flask. The flask that had been his partner since the day the Princess had first slipped from their grasp, its simple steel design allowing it to stay whole.
Her hands settled on it, her fingers slowly wrapping around its form to pluck it from its clip and raise it to his face. “This?”
His eyes widened, then darted up and down.
She sighed, unscrewing the cap. Looking at his face, she didn’t think his mouth could even retain liquid, but if the old Russkie wanted a final drink to send him off, she wasn’t going to deny him. She lifted the flask to the blasted meat she thought his lips might have been, but they remained stubbornly closed. Her fingers started to part them, thinking they might have been sealed shut by the heat of the blast, but then she noticed his eyes darting side to side again.
“You...wanted this for me?” She asked.
Finally, frantically, the eyes nodded.
“O-okay Anton,” she gave a wan smile and tucked the flask into a pocket. “I have it. You uh...I’ll see you later, okay?”
The eyes slowly drifted back to center again, and just as the stretcher started moving once more, she thought she saw them give a final side-to-side dart. But that could have been her imagination. She sighed, her hand running over the solid shape of the thing in her pocket.
“My...deepest condolences.” Mr. M’s voice informed her from behind. She clenched her teeth. The bastard shouldn’t have been there. This was a moment for them, for the London crew, he should have just gone back to his nice, cozy office, and let them have it.
“That is...appreciated, Mr. M.” She said tactfully.
“Your other friend, the Yank, is not as bad off, but it’s still not good. Most of him has been taken back to the Illustrious.”
She sucked in a breath. Most of him!? She wanted to whirl around, grab the little bastard by the neck, and squeeze until he told her what the fuck that meant, but knowing how far up a creek they already were, she only lowered her head. “Thank you, Mr. M.”
She stood there until he turned to walk away, but damn him, he paused at the door. “I thought I saw him give you something at the end there. What was it?”
Knowing there’d be no arguing, she held up the flask. “A keepsake.”
“Ah.” And that was all. He stepped outside again, and was gone. After standing there another moment, she silently walked out of the room. The hall outside had apparently become an impromptu meeting space for the others, Akshat and Chen having made their way here from the other parts of the compound. After a moment, Akshat’s hand rested on her shoulder, his deep, dark features furrowed with concern.
“Is it...what’s happened to them all?” He asked, the whole group leaning forward.
Lisa sighed. “I don’t know where the mares are,” she said. “But Dave is back on the ship, for what it’s worth. I think he’s okay. Mostly.”
He nodded, a collective sigh going through the group. “And...Anton?”
Her gaze darted up, her eyes wide. “He just went through here, didn’t you guys see?”
Felipe sucked in a breath. “That was...that was him!?”
It occurred to her that she’d only recognized Anton because she happened to notice his eyes, which were open at the time. If they had closed…it could only be for the final time. As that little fact dawned on her, a tear trickled down her cheek. “I...he gave me this, before they...took him away.” She whimpered as she held up the flask.
The group all watched. A wet cough shivered out of Felipe’s body, his hand covering his face. Lisa kept her eyes on the flask. She shivered, then started to unscrew it.
“Is that the best idea…” Francis started, but Andre held out an arm to stop him, which quickly turned into a hug. Beside them, Chen slowly sank to the floor, leaning against a wall.
Lisa didn’t know what else to do, so she raised the flask in a pantomime of a toast. “I...just hope they pull through,” she sighed. The group all nodded, and she tilted her head back for a swallow. The moment it hit her tongue, she gasped, a bit of liquid spurting out around the neck of the flask, just short of actually spitting the stuff out. Lowering it, she let out an actual cough.
“What, is it that strong?” Andre asked with a weak smile.
With another cough, she shook her head, raising the flask again. “Coke.” She choked out.
The group as one focused their attention on her. Chen rose to his feet again. “Like...liquid cocaine?”
Still shaking her head, letting out a few more coughs, Lisa wiped at her mouth. “No, like Coca-Cola.” She gazed at the flask, then took another sip, smacking her lips. “There’s no alcohol, it’s just fuckin’ Coke!”
“So what, he was just putting on a show!?” Felipe shouted, his shock melting away beneath a sudden surge of fury. “Why!? Why would he do that to us!?”
“There’s no reason,” Akshat said, “Unless the show was not meant for us.”
As she lowered the flask from her lips, it gave a rattle, and she paused with a start. She raised it again, this time tilting it to the light.
“The hell was that?” Akshat started.
She stared a while longer, then upended the flask, cupping her hand beneath it as lukewarm soda fizzed out. There was no denying it anymore as the syrupy scent filled the air, overwhelming the smell of tar that hung around them: the contents of the flask had all the alcohol content of a breath mint, and three times the sugar. But that little find was quickly subsumed when a tiny Micro SD card in a plastic case ran out into her hand and floated in her cupped palm.
Shaking off the rest of the cola, she held it up for all to see, as if it was a jewel she’d just pulled off of Anton’s body.
“Now, what the hell is that?” Akshat asked.
Blinking, a few things clicked into place for Lisa. “Something he went to great lengths to keep secret. He wanted everyone to think he was an alcoholic so the flask would be a part of him, it’d fade into the background…”
“...and nobody would ever think to look at what was inside,” Felipe gasped, gazing up at the SD. “What could be so important he would go so far to keep it secret?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, quickly pocketing the card and turning back down the hallway with a stoic glare. “But we’re going to find out.”
His pulse rose in his ears…
Gimme a clamp! Someone gimme a clamp! This guy’s gonna bleed out!
…and fell. Something scratched at the edge of his thoughts, something important, maybe. Well, maybe not so important, if he couldn’t even remember it. His pulse rose…
Fuckin’…find the vein already, man!
I’d like to see you try! Okay…okay, that should do it…thank God…
…and fell. His hand gave a twinge of dull pain, like he’d been lying on it too long and slammed it in a door. He grimaced. Something important was going on there. He sucked in a breath…
All we can do now is wait. God damn…hate to be him when he wakes up…
David…
And his eyes fluttered open, squinting against the harsh fluorescents. He stirred, grunted in pain as another jolt stabbed up his arm. He raised his good hand to cover his eyes, keeping the other hand under the sheet.
He inhaled, a little click sounding in his throat. Damn, he was parched. As his eyes adjusted, he started to drink in the beds around him, the EKG machine beeping somewhere, the IV stand at his bedside with a tube running into his arm, but most of all, an only-too-familiar gentle rocking around him. This wasn’t just a hospital, this was the med bay on the Illustrious.
He slowly turned on his side, and the tension rising in his chest finally released. Lisa sat there, slumped in a hard, plastic chair, eyes closed, shoulders rising and falling with her nasally snores. Oddly enough, he could only find it adorable: usually, he’d find it grating.
He tried to call for her, but all that would come out was a series of clicks. He paused, breathed, gave a labored swallow, and finally managed to croak: “Lisa…”
Even though to his ears, it sounded like a dying frog’s final ribbit, Lisa stirred. Her eyes flit open and her head rolled around on her shoulders in an attempt to find a position that resembled normal. She brushed back a sweaty tendril of hair and gasped in relief.
“David!”
With what he hoped looked like a smooth little smile, he managed to rasp out: “Hey there, sleepin’ beaut--” before a coughing jag rocked his frame, forcing him to sit up until dizziness forced him back down.
For her part, Lisa stood, running a hand along his shoulder. “Easy there, Yank, easy...you’ve been out a couple days.”
“A couple days!?” He gasped between dry, hacking coughs. “What...what happened…”
He searched his own memories, but came up empty handed. He remembered running through the corridors with the smaller princess and Anton, he remembered hearing gunshots and running towards them. And then, just flashes...a door...gunshots...an old man sobbing over a kid...the shimmer of a shield, and…
Oh. Oh Jesus Christ Almighty God...
“Anton!” He gasped, sitting up. Ignoring Lisa’s gentle attempts to get him to lay back down, he whirled on her. “Wh-where is he!? He’s okay, right!? He’s fine!?”
She let in a quick breath, her eyes watering. It told him all he needed to know.
“Oh...oh my God...” he gasped. His other hand lifted out from under the sheets to join its partner at his forehead, pressing.
“He was mostly gone by the time we got to him, just...clinging on, barely…” Lisa sputtered, the words just tumbling out. “It took everything he had left just to see us one last time…”
He was barely paying attention. She faded into the background as he realized his arm, the one where his hand had been aching so much, was at a different angle than its twin. It had to travel longer to make it to his forehead His eyes darted open as his arms slowly sank. Around then, he realized Lisa had stopped talking.
“David…” she started, but too late. He was staring at the impossible: at the bloody gauze over his arm, ending in a stump just short of where his wrist was supposed to be. He flexed, and a pang went up his arm informing him of where the stitches were. But...his hand was sore! How could it be sore if it was gone!? This was a joke, had to be, some sort of trick of the eye...
And then he remembered: phantom pains. He’d read up on them before his deployment, part of some morbid late night reading he’d done on guys that’d rolled over IEDs. Some fluke in the nervous system trying to tell the brain that something was wrong. Guys who lost limbs felt it all the time, usually pretty soon after, too.
He stared at it awhile longer, Lisa watching with her hands over her mouth and a piteous look in her eyes that he hated. He hated it and already knew he was going to have to get used to it, just like he’d have to get used to stares from kids whenever he stopped by a McDonald’s or went shopping for groceries, and painkillers that were more likely to give him a lifelong addiction, and dealing with the VA and surgeries and physical therapy and psychological counseling and stares and hooks and stares and stares and pity and stares and...
He fell back in the bed, chest heaving.
“The…shield she raised for you was only meant to keep the explosion out, not keep anything in…” she explained in halting, stilted gasps. “You reached right out of it, there…there wasn’t anything left…the bomb just…”
He settled back down, breathing heavily, staring up into the fluorescents. His eyes unfocused. His mind blanked. A tour in Afghanistan: a stint in the Korengal, literally the most dangerous post the US Armed Forces had to offer, and he came out unscathed. And now, here, with the UN, at a time that was supposed to be peaceful, he had been changed in a way that would be permanent, and that everyone was going to see for the rest of his life.
Lisa talked more. He didn’t listen. After awhile, she left, and took that damned piteous look with her. He stared for a long time after that. He stared until a nurse came over to inject something into his IV, and finally, he stopped staring as his eyes drifted shut against the beginning of tears.
All the terror, all the pain, watching a body bag being pulled back on his ship...it was almost worth it, the Admiral mused. Almost worth it to see this: Mr. M with his face buried in his hands. It was likely the only good thing to come of the whole fiasco. Well...that and the “subjects” were finally secure below decks again, for all the good that would do when the footage of them working in the refugee camp came out.
After a moment, the Admiral set his flask down before him. M lifted his face out of his hands. “I don’t drink on the job.” He said, trying to sound like his usual scolding voice, but the slight waver gave him away.
“You might want to start.” The Admiral said, tapping the security feed showing the hall just outside his office.
Mr. M glanced up. He blinked. He picked up the flask and took a swig, still sipping even as the bulkhead crashed open and the six remaining members of the UNJDI team stormed in, helmed by Lisa, who didn’t so much as sit into a chair as stormed into it, glaring across the desk at the pair.
M sat up a little straighter, straightening his arm to distance himself from the flask still in his grip. “You are not authorized to--”
“Lisa Townshend, British Special Air Service,” she said suddenly, cutting him off.
Mr. M balked, wide eyes darting from her to the remainder of the team. “That...this is very much against the…”
“Akshat Laghari, Assam Rifles.” Akshat put in.
Mr. M turned to look up at the Indian with widening eyes. He earned a dark glare back. The group didn’t stop.
“Chen Li,” Chen put in, also glaring. “Leishen Commando Airborne Force.”
“Andre Robert, French Foreign Legion.”
“Francis Zimmerman, GSG-9.”
“Felipe Santos, BOPE.”
As each member of the team named themselves with their military organization, Lisa counted each off on a finger. When the group standing there had finished, she continued counting: “David Preston, United States Marine Corps, and...and Anton Sokolov, Spetsnaz,” her voice choked up just a hair when she said this final name, then set her hands down on the armrests, still glaring evenly, her legs crossed as she sat. “Eight diplomats for an elite crisis-management team? Please, how about eight jarheads left in an office and forgotten about?”
Mr. M said nothing. The Admiral plucked the flask from his hand and dragged a few swigs down.
Because nobody else was talking, Lisa kept the initiative: “You plucked a bunch of soldiers out of their respective services and plunked ‘em down in the middle of a random office building in London, told ‘em if they sat still and were nice and quiet they could play at bein’ diplomats and emergency managers, even told ‘em not to reveal their military backgrounds so’s they couldn’t put two an’ two together. Why?”
Mr. M raised his hand to his lips, then looked down in surprise at his bare palm.
“First of all, what clued ya in?” The Admiral asked in his stead.
“You mean besides the fact that we’re still breathing despite the HLF’s best efforts?” Lisa sneered, then from a shirt pocket she pulled out the MicroSD, flicking it onto the table. “Anton made this before he died, and made damn sure we would get it. Tucked it in a flask filled with Coca-Cola. It’s got all our files in it: files the UN used in our selection process.”
M balked at that, staring at them wide-eyed as the Admiral chuckled. “Knew we wouldn’t waste our time keepin’ tabs on an old rummy, faked his alcoholism...” he shook his head. “Wily old bear.”
Lisa turned to him from M. M was obviously still going to play tight-lipped, but whether it was the drink, what they’d had to endure in Tokyo, or just the fact that he was old and tired of listening to paper-pushers from far-off office buildings telling him his years of combat experience were wrong and they knew what was best, the old man was giving up answers. “Okay,” she said. “So we’re not diplomats. We’re just a bunch of ex-soldiers sent to the far corners of the world to stare at each other in cubicles. Why?”
“Well, think about it,” the Admiral replied, downing another gulp. “It was after the Collision Wars, mankind needed the UNJDI more than ever, but the HLF had agents everywhere looking for UN throats to slash just outta pure revenge. I mean, there was that bombin’ at the New York headquarters, the mob lynchings in Nairobi, the militant strike on Beijing…and it goes on and on and on…”
“And...where do we come in?”
“It still ain’t obvious?” The Admiral leaned forward, grinning with his yellowed teeth as his scotch-laden breath washed over her. “You lot are the bait.”
The whole room turned to him. Nobody dared to move. Finally, Chen spoke up: “What?”
“Dontcha get it? We set you up in big, flashy buildings with big, fancy UN signs up front, didn’t that strike you as odd? Didn’t it occur to you that the UN would wanna keep its important staff safe? That if you were so important, you’d be somewhere a little more secret? Or wait, maybe you never thought you were important,” he grumbled, adding another sip from the flask. “Good, at leastcha weren’t that stupid.”
Another moment, and Lisa’s eyes lit up, her face falling. “Oh my God. We were bait to lure the HLF out.”
The Admiral grinned. “Bingo. Worked pretty well, too. Caught a few shitheads over in Rio a couple years back when they attacked and tried to take hostages, those fuckers got the surprise of their lives. Then there’s you, Hadji,” he tilted his flask in Akshat’s direction. “You and that little stunt you pulled in London with the Yank. That was enough to convince the UN t’keep the ruse going a little while longer.”
“You…” her teeth clenched. Her fists curled up on the armrests of the chair.
“You painted bullseyes on our backs.” Felipe hissed, stepping forward, his glare speaking of bloody murder. “You had us parade around for years to keep the HLF distracted from the actually important people. Why? We didn’t give enough for our countries? Our service meant nothing?”
“Of course it did!” The Admiral guffawed. “It meant we knew you had the skills to actually hold off the bastards long enough for us to get there and round a few up.”
“You placed soldiers’ lives in the line of fire without telling them,” Lisa hissed, her nose wrinkling in pure revulsion. “That’s disgusting.”
“Oh, but it worked!” The Admiral gasped, turning in his chair as he pulled out a remote. The TV showing the hallway outside flicked over to a new image: the side of a familiar wall inside the HLF compound. A young man bleeding out on the floor. David working furiously to restart a pulverized heart. “You think a buncha diplomats would’ve made it that far!? A normal UN negotiations team would’ve all died out there, and the pretty ponies’ executions would be scoring a few millions views on YouTube right now.
The Admiral leaned back, took another sip. “It might’ve been monstrous, might’ve left some bad tastes in some mouths, but it worked. It. Goddamned. Worked.”
The group all remained standing, all not moving, probably because each knew if they tried to move they might try to strangle one or both of the men on the other side of the table.
“So…” Lisa whispered. “Everything we did was a lie? The work we did, all the administrative shit we had going on with the Second Emergence…”
“Light administrative work done with a sense of urgency to maintain the illusion of importance,” he shrugged, sipped. “No more, no less.”
“You fucker…” Felipe hissed between clenched teeth, his fists balling up so hard his arms shook. “You fucking fucker…”
“Look at it this way,” Mr. M sighed, finally speaking as he leaned back in his chair. “You got to be on the frontlines for everything. From start to finish...you were there.”
A heartbeat passed, and then Felipe was upon him, fists flying, teeth bared, a roar rising from his throat. The others took a second to react, to grab him as every single ounce of the rage he felt came out through his fists, his kicking feet, his gnashing teeth. M sported a black eye and a bloody nose when it was all over, but managed to straighten his coat out, even as his breath heaved and blood stained his undershirt.
“You’ve just assaulted your superior in the UN, sir.” He said between gasps.
“Fuck you and fuck the UN!” Felipe shouted as he was dragged bodily out of the room, Andre and Francis holding his arms while Chen tried desperately to maintain a grip of his feet.
Looking shellshocked, Lisa just watched them leave with a thousand-yard stare. Her gaze rolled up to Akshat, the only one in her team remaining, and back to the pair sitting with her around the desk. After some time, she finally spoke: “I hope you both live long enough to regret ever being born.” She said. She said it without malice or hate, just with the most factual deadpan possible, like she was telling them to wear a sweater next time they were on-deck because the air was a bit nippy outside. Then, she rose from her chair and headed for the door. Akshat held it for her. She nodded her thanks, walked out, and he followed, neither of them looking over their shoulders at the pair.
The Admiral sighed and looked over to M, now pressing a tissue from the box on the desk to his bleeding nose. He let out a chuckle. “Gotta say, you take a punch a lot better than I thoughtcha would.”
M looked up, looked ready to say something, when the door burst open. The Admiral immediately recognized his rear admiral, and frowned. “Son, can’t you see we…”
“I’m sorry, sir!” The other man gasped, snapping into a salute. “It’s...Siberia sir, there’s been a development..”
When he was finished talking, the Admiral found himself wishing for a flask a little more full. In fact, they all did, knowing what was now heading their way.