FSE

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///

"Get up."

It was in Russian but he chose to ignore it.

He knew when he was dreaming. Most of the time he didn't, but best to just let it play out or wake up-

A harsh kick to the ribs sent him rolling down what could only be a snowbank, and getting to his knees, he clutched at what was surely broken tenderly...

The pain...? This was no dream... The snow was cold.

It even took a toll on his breathing, he allowed himself to cough and a bit of red fluids came up onto the snow.

"STAND UP!"

Once again in a harsh Russian tongue, the voice was familiar but he didn't recognize it.

He did as they asked, getting to his feet with a hand going for some sort of weapon- but his coat was gone. So were his modded boots, he had a plain black tee and pants without pockets.

The wind howled and he didn't flinch, steeling himself against whoever was in front of him.

"You thought this was a dream, nyet?"

"I have seen stranger things. Show yourself."

As the voice became shape, walking over the dune of sand he saw...

Kylonov Morozovich.

"...No, this is a dream."

He turned to walk away but a loud bang erupted and he turned back to see a white-furred wolf roll down the dune.

As he came to a rest beside Kyle's feet, there was no mistaking the near-yellow eyes, the amount of abuse showing that he himself had inflicted on him moments before death.

"Pytor Orucov. Tell me you remember him."

Kyle looked down at the body not with reverence but with something else.

"I could never forget. Even if I tried."

"No, you have forgotten."

As Kyle came down the snowbank to face Kyle, the wolf stared at himself.

A dream could not be this perfect. He was staring at a mirror image.

"You have forgotten what it means to be Wolf Pack. Look at yourself. Look at your changes... Think on your past."

"What do you mean? Why should I listen to you, an imposter?!"

Kyle was shoved with surprising strength by this counterpart, who was wearing the coat with all the bulges underneath it... There would be no fight if he pissed this one off.

Something told him this was more than just a dream.

He kept his distance now, looking for anything he could use as a weapon in the snow. A rock. A discarded blade... Orucov's corpse was gone now and whatever he had was taken with him.

"I am no imposter. I am Kyle Frost. Just as you are... My life has been erased and yours continues."

"Perhaps we are not the same, then."

The other Kyle shook his head. "Our only difference..."

He held up his left hand.

It jolted Kyle for a second to see that the left ring finger was gone from his hand, and now that this other Kyle was in the light there were so many more scars...

"You're a fake. You're not the dust on my boots."

"You are not much in comparison, after all, you only insult yourself."

"You. Aren't. Me."

"What is the point of this? What are you trying to tell me?"

"Raise your left hand."

"Why"-

"Do it."

A strange emotion passed through Kyle, a malevolent warmth from his lungs to his throat. When it peaked he shivered, and it told him there would be much weight to such a simple motion.

As he did, he inspected it.

Gray fur. The slash across the palm from a scar too far long ago to remember. The mirror of his right, save for the slight indent. Rough hands. Working hands... Killing hands.

"Your ring finger."

"What about it?"

"You still have it... You... You..."

Kyle expected the mirror to lash out again, perhaps with more force but he just looked... Defeated.

It was hard to feel emotion. There was pain. Anger. Sorrow. Fatigue. And hate.

Never had he seen himself like this before- in this state.

"It is over, then. Kyle Frost is over."

"What the hell do you mean? Speak plainly."

The only thing that moved in the mirror was Kyle's mouth. His eyes closed, and he had a premonition they would not open again.

"The coldest day I'd ever felt. Fifteen years old, we were sent into Hellguard territory. Reconnaissance mission. Completely harmless. My squad- those who I ate with, slept with, grew up with... My best friends, all there with me."

The same feeling passed up his body again, this time stronger. It left his head feeling heavy, as if it were filling with lukewarm water. His ears popped.

"We joked. Laughed. Stayed up... But the fire we'd built was not so well hidden. They were double our number when they came upon our camp, and we stood no chance. I felled 3; I remember their faces as they fell. One of them caught my hand with their knife, and severed the finger almost completely. It fell off when I fled."

"This never happened... Stop it. Now."

"It's the truth." To almost his utter shock the eyes opened again, frozen salt and water under them. Kyle realized how cold it had become, and it made his thick wolf fur feel like scales.

"When I got back I was almost dead. Picked up many sicknesses... They offered to reattach my finger but I refused. The reason I let myself live is so I can avenge my own cowardice."

"You were just trainees... They were in home territory. You were outnumbered"-

"I would rather have died among my brethren than live today without them!"

The sudden roar was punctuated by another burst of wind that sent Kyle fully to the ground. Catching himself with his hands, he realized the left ring finger was missing.

No surprise passed through him.

"Remember what it is to be Kyle Frost... I need no avenging. Find the traitor and kill them."

"Traitor"-

As the wind howled again it was enough for hell to freeze over, and everything else.

"You died in Thailand."

///

Thailand

Obsolete Timeline

"TROJAN!"

Kyle gave a cry of sheer anger as he got back to his feet, his heart pounding.

Reyna was not going to die for his mistake. That would never happen again, he promised god as his witness at Tartarus...

Pushing back all the lactic acid drowning him from the sprint up the street and into the alleyway, he nearly tripped on the tire iron Reyna had just thrown to get the thing's attention.

It was too dark to see hardly anything on this part of the street; his wolf eyes were made for this sort of thing but however Reyna was faring it couldn't have been well.

He saw the outline at the other end of the street now, climbing up a building, the large fire down the street reflecting on its metallic husk.

Kyle shot at it impulsively, maybe to recapture the attention but now it had somehow become entirely focused on Reyna, ignoring and hefting itself over the ledge and onto the roof.

With a growl Kyle launched himself up the building, almost falling because he hadn't taken the time to look first.

If it was waiting at the top, so be it...

As he got over the edge two figures stood, the cyclops and Reyna.

Whereas the cyclops was standing in the center of the roof, Trojan was backed into a corner, bow in hand. Just as before she was having trouble finding her capsules and the haptic gloves were malfunctioning for her bow, the cyclops running some kind of interference.

Not that the bow would do anything here.

He'd never seen a cyclops die.

It let forth a distorted and tortured wail that made him fall to one knee and likewise the jackal; something deep in his blood boiling and deeper in his soul ripping.

As he stood up weakly he staggered towards it.

"KYLE, GET OUT OF HERE!"

"NO!"

"IDIOT, WE'LL BOTH DIE!"

As Kyle crashed into the beast from behind he had no real idea of what he was doing but it somehow lifted off the ground enough for him to slam it down.

The roof cracked, already sustaining a mortar strike on the lower floor.

Kyle made his best effort, harder than he'd ever tried before to hold it down but the cyclops sprang up, sending him back across the roof.

The single bar of red light across the amalgamation of metal and hell turned on him for a moment.

Was this the key? Distracting it between people?

With another hellish moan it grabbed Kyle by the arm and lifted him up.

A scream of fury from Trojan, there was absolutely nothing she could do here.

No, she rushed forward with her bow in the baton sequence and bashed the head enough to make crunching sounds; whatever flesh this being once had was rending.

All Kyle could see in the dark was Reyna's green eyes, somehow luminescent.

Kyle realized he was going to be dropped from the edge of the building- two stories.

As the beast let go he felt himself not being simply let go but released with force, going halfway across the street.

As Kyle landed he felt his arm buckle inwards the way it wasn't supposed to, a sickening crack that made his eyes water and head swim with icy pain...

Standing up, he was almost glad that it was so dark; he was sure that was bone he was looking at.

The rest of his body sore but spared, he kicked the sidewalk curb hard enough to at the least fracture his shin calmly, though now he was involuntarily giving off a low growl.

Pain split, he began to climb with one and a half legs and one arm.

Up there, more screeches and no sound of the jackal.

Collapsing over the ledge once more they were in the same position as last time, but this time the bar was turned on him far more quickly.

As the cyclops pounced on him Kyle was nearly killed even quicker by the crack of his head against the ledge, much less the tearing open of his chest.

A green light flashed for a moment and his world lit up, emerald flame engulfing them both ever so futilely.

It was beautiful.

This was what it meant to die?

It burned like real fire but Kyle knew it was the nanobots spreading across his body and shutting down his organs, trying to burrow into the cyclops.

All he could see was flame but he felt the cyclops leave him. He could hear nothing anymore but he knew the screeching was immense.

Another burst of flame; Reyna fired on herself as the cyclops tackled her and he heard the hiss of chemicals as the entire roof was engulfed in Trojan fire.

Somehow it was enough to make the metallic figure curl up and fall, either the shock of cold killing running through its veins or it was actually dying.

He remembered how it had cried after it killed Kiri.

As the flame destroyed his body Kyle could not muster the air to breathe his last, his lungs having been gone far before that.

///

G201 House, Norway

December 10th, 0500 hours

As Kyle fell out of bed he caught his bedside table and it crashed down, the lamp shattering and he fell onto the glass.

Head resting on the crushed lampshade for a moment, he gave a growl as he lifted himself up.

Some of the glass stayed with him as he did, he'd love to say it was just his shirt but his chest was bare.

Brushing it off callously none of it fell off but hooked deeper in.

He gave a sigh.

Still dark out, he'd probably woken them up...

What time was it?

He reached for the bedside table before realizing it was on the ground now, wooden legs snapped, and-

As it hit Kyle his heart sank to depths he had only gone times enough in his life to count on his fingers, and he cast aside the glass and wood to search for it.

A glint of gold amidst the debris.

His bloodied hands lifted the back of it first, bearing new scratches.

The side was worse, dented.

That didn't matter... All that mattered was what was inside of it...

As Kyle flipped open the stopwatch a singular but large and deep crack ran across the glass, obscuring a good part of the picture and his mother's face.

A whimper somehow escaping his icy insides, he quivered.

Not because of the cold outside.

Holding it in two shaking hands, one of which had only 4 fingers now, the glass dug into his knees.

He begged with himself, pleaded with a higher power, asked anything at all for it not to happen. Not to do it... Not to destroy him in this way.

And why it did.

As tears flowed freely for the first time since Christmas day last year, his thumb brushed the image of the life he had been robbed of.

"Kyle, are you alright"-

As he turned to the doorway of all people it was Isaac, an inquisitive look in his eyes.

Kyle locked his door every night.

He watched the fox take in every detail of the room, settling on his bloodied back and what he was holding.

Isaac walked over, boots crunching the glass as he did.

Kyle decided then and there that he would kill Isaac.

He would.

It had to be done, no one else would do it, he had to keep them safe. He had to keep his family safe. He had to keep the one thing he had left in his entire fucking life worth-

"I'll help you clean this up... Is that your family?"

Isaac's hand came under Kyle's and it almost reminded him of the rough mercenary guiding the child from the ruins of his home, showing him the snowmobiles to distract him from his family's corpses bloodied and crushed under the rubble.

"Da."

"...If you ever need me, soldier, I'll drop everything. I just want you to know that."

As the captain moved the glass into a pile with his arm, Kyle walked into the bathroom to pull the glass out of himself.

If only he could do the same with the ice inside his soul.

///

Tai

Unknown Location, Dead Zone

February 22nd, 2263

"We figured you might want this."

A black cylinder was slid across the table, 3 green triangles on-

That was in his room, what the fuck? How did they get it here?

"It's really a simple party trick. There's so much you don't know."

"I... I have questions."

"No doubt you do. But you will answer ours first."

Looking into Jabari's eyes there was no doubt he would comply. He'd never seen this before even with Amira, rooting deep into your head and emaciating it in every way possible...

There was nothing really malevolent in Jabari but there could be if he played his cards wrong.

"Project Alcatraz"-

"I don't even know what the fuck that is. I've been through the worst torture of my life and not been able to give an answer not even a few days ago."

"...Perhaps I would have explained what it was to you."

"Please?"

Jabari gave a sigh. What was her game, then? Could he keep up?

"Clark Garcia knows more than I do, or perhaps anyone does. If not he, then there is a hacker somewhere in the Divided States who holds the only surviving documents of the entire operation."

"...You don't know then?"

Jabari pierced deep into Tai's eyes, further than anyone had ever gone before. It was perhaps the most intense gaze he'd ever withstood, and the only thing that kept him there was her grip on his mind.

"I once knew, but Garcia stole that from me. One of his many abilities."

Tai looked back towards the door, wondering just who the hell Garcia really was...

He'd met him about a month ago.

Came to Antartica after things started to go south, he'd heard someone there had answers and could maybe even train him on how to actually do this shit...

Garcia was give or take half a decade older, and irritable as an old man. And a nasty drunk.

Of course, maybe that had something to do with his immortality. He was supposed to be around 80, a sort of reverse-afflict's lifespan.

Asked a few questions, got no answers. Spent almost the whole month at the abandoned compound, got nowhere. Tai just helped him run a few excursions and whatnot.

At one point they were in New Berlin, the memory was muddled by the immediate torture afterwards. He'd been apprehended by the new afflict. The one that was supposed to put all the others to shame.

The one that actually became what he, Lucian, Damien, and Ariya had all failed to.

And now...?

"I see. I do not mean for you to think this is an interrogation, this is simply a questioning. We side with you, despite our initial introduction."

"...You... Read my"-

"Yes."

He'd learned to defend against that sort of thing now... But this was no ordinary afflict.

Another silent gaze, Tai realized there were two in the back of the room whose eyes also pierced his, but he could stave them off.

Jabari reached under the table and rummaged in a bag for a moment.

"Project Alcatraz is beyond you, and beyond me... But I compiled a list of names I remember from the initial... Memory."

Memory? He took it she meant whatever Garcia had left her with...

Garcia had somehow run into these people before. And taken their memories instead of outright killing them. Or maybe just her...?

Too many details he didn't know...

"I want you to tell me of any that sound... Off."

She pulled out a worn piece of paper. It wasn't just scratch with scribbles but a list with a typed font and everything.

"Roster of Project Alcatraz, October 17th, 2140... My name starts the list."

"...What exactly are you trying to accomplish by this?"

Tai spoke for the first time in what seemed like an eternity, choked back by Jabari's meddling in his head. More than anything it was just to say something.

"Trying to piece together what Garcia stole from me through you... And looking for a reaction."

...What?

He didn't understand any of this. If they weren't afflicts he'd say they were mad. Maybe they were, it seemed to be a trend.

"Gynezis. Choi. I'd expect"-

"He never told me anything about it."

"You've spoke with him, face to face?"

"...Yes."

Jabari's eyes lingered not on Tai but on his name. He noticed through the light and paper it had a mark beside it, only a few had that same mark.

"Garcia."

"He was in on Project Alcatraz?"

"You went to him for answers, no?"

"I thought he just lived in the compound and knew about it from there."

Again, she went quiet for a good moment.

"May I ask you something... Jabari?"

She looked up, fierce.

"What is... Do- can you tell me what you do know about Alcatraz?"

She thought a moment, and his fears became personified in a 'no'.

Maybe Jabari wasn't likeGynezis, Garcia, everyone else... Maybe he'd get something. Anything.

"A lexicon. Operation Alcatraz is a... Lexicon."

"...What?"

She seemed distant, more distant than she had been thus far.

"Everyone wants their hands on it... And yet, it belongs to itself."

Tai's eyes narrowed, mouth still opened with another question.

She was mad.

This was a more than implied fact. They all were.

"You may go back to... No, I want to hear what you have to say."

"W-what about the rest of the list?"

She motioned towards the recording device.

"You want me to...?"

"Continue with where you left off. It is vital I piece this together, then I may understand."

Understand what?

This was ridiculous. He hadn't cared hardly even a moment ago but now that she was choosing to withhold it from him the list was burning into his core...

She was withholding it from him for a damn reason. And there was nothing he could do.

After all, interrogations aren't compromise.

...

With undisguised venom he grabbed the recording device and turned it on.

///

Tai

G201 House, Norway

December 10th, 0900 hours

It was at the lowest setting, but, being honest, it still hurt like a bitch.

One of my knuckles had been busted open earlier, I'd been at it for about an hour now.

The weight room was bigger- and at the corner there was a sort of AI hand to hand arena.

You fought some kind of programmed figure, it was kind of like those DIY simulation setups but this one Isaac could watch you and nitpick the hell out of your CQC.

I was alone, though, facing down a slightly transparent blue figure with the same shape and strength as myself.

It could be programmed to the point where it was indistinguishable from me but that took too much work.

The fights with it were to the death, but it stopped at the killing blow. I'd lost a good few times.

As I heard someone coming down the stairs I didn't look, I was too into it.

Another jab, I barely moved my head out of the way and back into position.

Fighting myself was honestly worse than fighting Reyna; and I could never figure it out.

It wasn't even a mirror, it was...

As I saw the jackal coming down the steps through the transparent screen I took a jab to the muzzle and fell onto my back, a quick win.

I mean loss. A quick loss.

Quick padding over to me followed it, a sound only my heightened senses could pick up. Footwraps, a lighter animal trained in stealth.

"Tai, you shouldn't be doing that!"

I stood up partially only to see an arm held out for me.

She'd done it before...

"Doing what? Fighting something difficult?" I said as she pulled me back to my feet.

"Fighting in general. I... I assume you know your limitations."

We both winced slightly, myself first and Trojan after my reaction.

"That never stopped us before."

"I didn't know before... I'd like to talk to Kyle about this, if you're ok with it. You always trained with him a lot more than with me."

I narrowed my eyes. Did everyone just leave me alone, then, the first few weeks when Kyle hadn't been officially recruited?

I wouldn't focus on the past if it didn't affect me so much.

"I'm sorry for... Letting you know so abruptly."

She didn't make any gesture to acknowledge me this time; I really didn't think she would.

"It's not your fault. I just wished I had seen it sooner."

It was something absolutely shocking, staring at the new person. The new Reyna.

I missed the old one.

I missed the rejection. The disapproval from my teammates. The arguments, the pain, the stamp in my face, washing my clothes in the middle of the night so no one would see them painted in my blood.

She turned me into a masochist. Simply.

"Tai? Are you alright?"

"Fine. Just thinking."

She moved to reprogram the AI arena, and I stepped out of her way as she pondered at the console for a moment; then settled on Isaac's mirror.

"I've been having vicious nightmares lately, strange ones I'd rather forget... Yet they're so clear I can describe them to you now..."

As the blue outline appeared Reyna looked fiercer than ever. Or perhaps I just hadn't seen her face in so long that it caught me.

Isaac made the first move, a jab casually ducked out of, and then it was back to the waiting game.

"It's always in Thailand. Only me and Kyle are there. Before that- I forgot to mention, I was yelling. At myself. Or rather, being yelled at by myself. And sometimes beaten..."

This time the opposite happened; a jab from Reyna ducked out of.

"After that, it goes to Thailand. Very detailed, very realistic. Have you ever heard of the Jinn Cyclops?"

"N-no..."

A kick followed up by an elbow, Isaac dodging both and bringing his leg up for what looked like a catch to her escape but deciding against it.

"I hope you never meet one. The only thing you can do is run... I think we briefly had a department dedicated to studying how to kill them in Trojan... But we could never capture one. Dead or alive."

Just after she finished, she gave a quick exhale as if she hadn't expended her air talking. Some sort of tactic to catch Isaac- or Isaac's AI, whatever, off guard.

I was surprised how much respect they were giving each other. Old Reyna would have decimated him already.

"But I end up killing myself and Kyle simply to spare us the pain. Using my Trojan bow of course, which is supposed to melt anything it wants to, but the Cyclops shrugs it off like nothing."

Isaac suddenly shifted stance and bounced in with his arms in front of his face. As soon as his fist came out, despite Reyna blocking it, he disappeared.

Meaning he got the kill. Just... Just like that. He took out Trojan. I should have seen it there, oh my god...

Even Reyna looked surprised, if not frustrated.

More footsteps; I guessed everyone was just waking up. I was somewhat relieved to see Kyle walk through the door this time, I didn't know why.

He came from behind the AI ring, from the underground hallway. Probably running simulations- he'd explained it never did exercise you physically.

"Reyna! What did I tell you about training with"- He cut himself off and a strange expression came over his face, as if he'd seen something shocking.

We stared at him for a good bit, and he stared somewhere between the opposite wall and the roof, mouth open and eyes wide.

"Morozovich? You got a fuckin' problem?"

"N... No. I thought I was... I..." He shook his head. It took the self-confidence out of me all in one move, just another thing I couldn't explain.

"You're fine. Just don't yell at me like that."

Every time Reyna did something now I'd think of how she would have reacted if she was...

Reyna.

They were both fake. I was looking at fake people.

But here... Reyna was... Normal. Not cross and narcissistic and everything.

Kyle? He seemed alright. I could call him a friend before but now I actually felt like I could hang out and do normal stuff with him besides chat and throw knives around. And it seemed like he didn't have that air of discomfort that followed him, as if everything but a shred was being held back.

All I had to attribute to this change was the timeline shift, but I supposed it was the only thing that could be attributed to this.

I... I had power.

Things were finally catching up to me, everything I'd been doing was reality and now I had to face it.

"Tai, a word?"

It was a new voice and for a moment I couldn't place it, but it was perhaps the most cemented voice in my mind.

"Of course..."

Kyle and Reyna were already sparring each other; no one noticed me leaving.

Marshall looked at me in a strange way from the doorway, I somehow hadn't noticed that his shades were off. Maybe that was it.

Walking up the stairs, I followed him into the medbay.

He closed the door behind us. Something to my memory, even when we discussed sensitive things he never did.

Marshall gave a wolf's heavy sigh, then plopped a manila envelope on the table where I was sitting.

"I meant to give you this back in Thailand. You already know what it is, I suspect."

"...No?"

"Give it a moment. Think back to the previous... Timeline."

He looked me dead on and now I knew why he'd let me see his eyes for once. I could hardly move, if he did this to me in the middle of a fight I'd lose hands down.

I couldn't take myself from them, of course I'd seen them before but he had some power to hold me there through the sheer... Marshall that he exerted.

"I-It's a dossier"-

"Quit stuttering."

"It's a dossier... Sir."

"You're not wrong. I gave it to you in Pattaya City but after you... Messed with things, it ended up back in my briefcase. You know what else happened after the Timeline shifted?"

A plethora of things, he appeared to be more aware than Riddick.

He was completely aware, in fact...

"I started seeing ghosts. My friend's here on an assassin's contract looking for someone with a very interesting description, and she's supposed to have been long dead."

His choice of words held venom, and he blinked a few times rapidly.

"You can't go back. Ever. You've screwed this whole operation up, if your affected teammates don't know they're slowly realizing. Why the hell did you try something like that?"

How had I screwed anything up? Nothing was even changed except people's disposition towards each other... Maybe...

Had I seen Lynx since it shifted? I couldn't remember.

What if I'd caused people to stop existing?

"I know you wrote the message on the wall, too. You know, I like you. I do. I fished you out of Gibraltar myself, and you're probably getting tired of me reminding you, the only fucking reason you're here today is because of me. But Tai... You do some pretty suspicious things. Some really dumb things"-

"Riddick! I..."

He was taken aback at the exclamation and so was I.

Riddick?

What the hell was I going to say, I went crazy and fucking killed him?

Ariya said they'd euthanize me, if I was lucky...

"I killed Riddick, I accidentally... I... I just went into some kind of... A-and I..."

He stared at me in shock, mouth open.

No, I'd done it. I'd blurted out and killed myself.

"When R-Reyna and Kyle came back, they were acting weird and- Isaac! He's totally different, and Lio and Mari aren't even supposed to be on this squad"-

"Tai!"

When I looked back into his eyes, jarred from my dams breaking, I saw fear. Fear in Marshall's eyes.

"That's enough, Tai. You need to... Just calm down..."

I watched his eyes dart around the room, as if he was seeing something I didn't.

"Tai, I'm... I'm glad you did this. It's pretty fucked up but Riddick and me were both dead in the original timeline. I died on Albatross island- it's off the coast of Myanmar. You saved my life, alright?"

What...?

I was processing too much, maybe the fact that I hadn't just killed myself above all.

"But the last person who could do that, change the Timeline... They did some bad things. They were on our end, but they did some absolutely horrible things. Horrible."

I registered he was more scared than I was, licking his lips before he was talking, huffing more than breathing.

"So Tai... Don't tell anyone about this. It wasn't in your dossier; this is completely abnormal... Just... Just take the... I'm sorry, I..."

With more shaky breaths he got up and walked down the hallway to the simulation rooms, not leaving but wanting some sort of alone time.

Unfortunately Rochelle was running sims, I thought...

Holy shit I hadn't said hardly anything, and there he went...

I propped my elbows up on the table, my head on them and looked at the envelope for a little while. As if it would move or something, as if it were some kind of artifact from the other Timeline.

No, I remembered that too. He'd given me a folder.

As the door opened I jumped and exclaimed, nearly falling out of my chair.

Riddick gave me a strange look before moving over to a cabinet and pulling out some bandages.

"Headaches again, Tai?"

"...Yeah."

He grunted, and I watched him pull off his shirt.

I'd never seen his exposed torso in full light before but as I did it hit me like a tank shot.

His back was a criss-cross of faded scars and around one shoulder smoldered, bare flesh. I could pick out the bulletholes from the slash wounds, but the latter outnumbered the former.

On his ribs it looked like he'd been sprayed by some low-caliber gun, with just a thin layer of protection keeping him alive.

On one hipdisappearing below his waistband, another patch of flesh.

This is why he got drunk or high as much as he could... It must have been torture just to move.

God, the chafing must be absolutely hellish...

One wound on his shoulder was bleeding, not fresh but cracked open.

"Help me out with this, would you?"

"Of... Of course..."

I barely even noticed how he was trying to clumsily bandage his back, over the wound that was actually profusely bleeding now.

It was one of the smoldered flesh wounds, angry red and black. Like char.

I stared at it; what else could I do? As I took the bandages from him my hands shook putting them on, a sinking feeling in my stomach.

I'd seen commensurate wounds in Gibraltar, even in Thailand, but this was why the med-room doors were locked whenever he was in here.

I realized it meant he trusted me enough to let me see.

"Quit shaking, you'll tear something. You've seen it all before, haven't you?"

"Just the... The front."

"It's a lot worse back there, isn't it?"

I gulped, finally finishing patching him up.

"What... Happened to you?"

He gave a sarcastic chuckle. "Fucking ANZU using me as a meat shield."

"Someone... Actually grabbed you and"-

"No, but that's what we were."

He turned back around to me, and I hadn't even seen this part in full light.

The veins, pink and bulging around his collar spread out like some sort of root down the right side of his chest, splitting into tips as far down as his stomach and as far center as his sternum.

"I'm just lucky they missed my face..."

"Can't you get surgery to correct all of this?"

Riddick shrugged. "I've looked into treatment with Trojan but their specialist is already backed up. He's more of a prosthetics guy anyways."

I gave a nod, still looking over him.

"You like what you see?"

He gave a laugh as my eyes snapped away, looking for something besides him to anchor onto.

"It's fine to stare. Everyone does, I would if it were someone else."

"A-aye..."

The hyena pulled his shirt back on, a workout shirt with sleeves that opened nearly down to his ribs.

And to think, I'd never even noticed.

I made more of an effort to hang out with him actually after he came out to us.

Of course everyone would be reluctant but I was just coming to understand why. Maybe the reason I tried not to look at him too long was because I was afraid he would think I liked him or something.

Or maybe everyone else just couldn't stand him. He'd gotten better but when G201 was concurrent he had a problem with almost everyone.

"I'd offer to train with you but you look roughed up enough already."

"Yeah, I... I was messing around with the new AI thing."

"New? They updated it?"

"...N... Uh, yeah."

He did the Jake thing again, reaching up and ruffling my tuft of hair.

"If you're not doing anything today, want to go catch a movie?"

"S-sure..."

I didn't know why I stuttered there.

He grabbed a bottle of water I hadn't seen him put down on the table and walked out, leaving me to stare after him.

Maybe something was going on, I felt weird as all hell...

Especially in my stomach. It didn't have anything to do with seeing all those scars, there was some poor bastard in Gibraltar with no muzzle and no legs, and I could deal with that fine.

It wasn't even a really bad feeling. I kind of...

I dunno, liked it? I can't really say that, I...

...

Fuck, quit rambling.

We went and caught a movie later, nothing else really happened that day.

///

"So can I see the list again?"

"Why did you stop?"

Tai huffed, tapping the recording device to the table.

"Nothing else happened that day. Plain as that. Now let me see the list."

He said it somewhat forcibly, and he hadn't realized until then but it had been eating at him the whole time he was recording, his shortest session yet at around 10 minutes.

"I'll give you another name. But that's it"-

"Why the hell does everyone give me it in portions? Why can't I see the whole thing for once?!"

"You will learn to be content with what you have!"

Jabari's fist banged on the table, punctuating her sentence and her authority.

For a moment they stared each other down, each reminding the other where they came from, who they killed, what names they had etched into their souls.

Jabari pulled away first, to the shock of all.

Tai stared at her, plainly.

She seemed to wander around the scrap of paper with her eyes.

"Ramses Trojan."

It wasn't a huge shock Trojan had something to do with it.

Not really a shock at all. Gynezis, Garcia, Ramses.

"...Well?"

It meant nothing to him again, the list was just going to be-

He wanted to reach out and fucking take it. This was absurd.

Reading his intentions, she put it away again.

"You will have a thirty minute break, and then we will resume."

Jabari got up and left the room, the other two flanking her.

As he turned back around to watch them leave there was no doorway.

Something deep within him told him there was really nothing keeping him there. He could kill them all, every last denizen of this damned insane 'tribe'. Even Garcia paled in comparison to him.

Even Amira.

...

That wasn't true, though. At least the last bit.

Tai folded his arms and rested his head, staring at the wall.

A scrap of fucking paper.

...

Damn it, he hadn't asked her what 'speaker' meant. But he had an idea of it...

///

Gynezis

Unknown Location, China

December 11th, 0100 hours

"I'm going to be completely honest with you, one of my tech people gave me the memo a week ago. And I forgot. Sorry."

The girl tied to the chair was already broken, he could get whatever he wanted. But that wasn't as fun.

"I thought you died of shock or something. At the airfield. I certainly didn't mean to keep you alive, I... I guess I should have made sure you were dead. Sorry. But... You're here now. So I might as well do something with you... If Singh sent you thinking there was some semblance of a chance you'd make a fucking scratch on me, you gotta be good. And my mistake of a son has gone rogue, so that's your first assignment. But first I need to run something by you."

He walked over to the mutt, one of Razor squad who'd attacked him at the abandoned airfield in Thailand.

One of Singh's. The one he'd yelled at for a moment, she'd passed out. The only real damage he'd done was shattering one of her legs at the shin, and throwing her without any real force about 5 feet.

"I've been doing research on a particular corpse as of late. A Jinn operative from the warlord in Korea, Eun Jung Hae. You wouldn't be too familiar with her, but... We found the corpse of one of her operatives in the aftermath of Thailand. It appeared to be a regular corpse until we touched it, and the texture was off, flesh and uniform alike."

Gynezis paced. He wasn't even sure if she was conscious. Her dried blood was on the ground around the chair, concrete in this room nearly all brown from use.

"It looked interesting enough, so we killed an Indian delegate over it. They wouldn't trace it back to us, though." The panther snickered. "Anyways, after a while the corpse became completely transparent. Apart from the organs, it was like a bulletproof gel you could see through to the heart and brain and all that. Pretty fuckin' cool. I brought some of it with me..."

He reached in his pocket and brought out a chunk of the gel, squeezing it. It only gave way enough to make the slightest handprint and then decompressed, but his arms were in normal function.

"Her name was Yu-oe, which translates to 'glass'. As in the glass you make windows with. We found some documents afterwards explaining it. She is not only bulletproof, she could shapeshift down to the scars just hearing someone's voice. She wasn't grown in a lab either, she was a soldier, just like you... Who got really, really fucked with..." He laughed again.

When he looked at her she stared back, neck twitching and eyes wide.

"We'll put you to sleep for the procedures"-

"I'll tell you anything!"

"You can speak now? Well, if I wanted something from you I would have left you in the room with Lynx and cut the lights. You're out of luck... Glass."

Her protests and screams died as he shut the door, nodding to the scientists outside.

As they went in, a grin stretched across his face.

///

Damien

Berg's Hideout, Finland

December 11th, 0530 hours

"Norway, huh? My friends in Thailand reported seeing a white domestic there just weeks ago, so we have our name."

Damien said nothing. He still couldn't fucking believe he'd slipped up.

He'd let himself get brought here and willingly given away the information, that Tai was in Norway...

Idiot...

"Damien? I asked you if you knew the condition of this afflict? Reportedly he was shot in Thailand."

"What was the type of bullet?"

"Is that relevant?"

"A .22 might break standard GRA but sure as hell not GSS armor. And an explosive round would mean he's dead. So yeah, it is."

Berg looked through the reports.

"Eyewitness says... He sneezed fire or something and then passed out."

"Sneezed?"

"I'm reading it off of here, see for yourself."

Damien grabbed the file from Berg, sliding it to his end of the wooden table.

Berg's place was a forgotten bunker in the middle of Finland's north. Nothing but forests and tundra for miles and miles... But the bastard had powerful friends back in Jinn territory, so he could tell if someone was moving around too closely.

Sneezed fire...

"Incendiary then. He's immune to incendiary rounds, I'd say shock was what knocked him out."

"The fire heals him?"

"You've seen that type of thing before?"

"Like I said, I have more Jinnrai than any other insurrection force in the world."

And he wouldn't stop fucking reminding him of it, either...

The panther gave a sigh, looking over at Berg.

"I've been here for some time now, I should carry on. Told you everything I know."

"And your cooperation is much appreciated..."

The icy feeling snaked ever so calmly but quickly into the back of his head, rushing through his psyche.

Any other day he could throw off such a reckless attack but it was joined by several others.

Damien kept staring at Berg, the mutt slowly grinning.

"But in this line of work... There's always something else you can get out of someone... So I'm going to bleed you dry."

Berg struck Damien across the face and turned, sprinting out of the room. Preoccupied with staving off the Janus attack, Damien simply took it and returned his glance to Berg's fleeing back.

With a low growl, he finally turned around to face the 5 masked assailants who'd crept into the back of the large room.

They were more dead than alive, a good bit of them with tubes running in and out of their suits.

Jinnrai clones. Cheap but efficient... Jinn's finest assassins.

The strange shapes and protrusions of their armor showed their deformities, most of them wearing it because they didn't grow a lung or something by the wheezes.

The masks because most of them didn't have faces.

"Get out of my way..." A threat empty because they couldn't understand anything but psychic attack...

"Or you'll be crawling back to hell."

They rushed forward, two of them moving to either side of the group, smoke trailing out the back of their bodies. It filled the room, Damien raising his swords defensively.

On a single target they would be hellaciously deadly... And being in a confined space opened up too many possibilities for them as well, none of which he wanted to entertain.

Damien bolted for an exit, only the dull glowing, pale blue eyes setting him off.

He blocked a strike from some sort of blade, staggering back. Of course, they'd gone for the exits. But there was one they surely hadn't accounted for...

Sprinting back towards the center of the room, a shriek followed by a heavy swath of footsteps accompanied his sword smashing the trapdoor on the ceiling, jumping through.

His liftoff was a basketball star's wet dream, but they could fling themselves as dead weight for nearly 20 feet.

Damien didn't give a look back, smoke billowing out of where he'd just been. He jumped off the roof and almost caught a bullet.

Berg's regulars had waited outside the room for an ambush of course, not expecting him to make it out...

He had no reputation besides 'Choi's brat'. No one gauged his strength... Sometimes a good thing.

Vaulting over the barbed wire fence lining the perimeter, shouts and shrieks blended together as the whole party began to rush after him.

Damien curved to the right as one of the Jinnrai landed limp in front of him, dragging itself up and running like they were free falling.

Damien checked for his caltrops, none there. He'd expended them in the initial fight...

Turning around, a body crashed into him and flew over him at least ten feet, Damien rolling to a halt about 5 away.

The others dug their heels into the ground, in a circle around him.

"I've got no plans to die here!"

He cut at the nearest one and its counterpart on the other side kicked him in the ribs, a weak slash on the both of them for his efforts.

Instead of withdrawing for threat of the blade, the Jinnrai who kicked him slammed into his side, sending him on his back.

They all pounced, a blast of Janus flame disintegrating one and sending the rest scrambling away.

Instinctively he raised his arm to kill another, but it fizzed out. He'd discovered the same thing happened earlier, Berg's Jinnrai had some sort of disruption. He'd just caught them off guard with that kill.

Gunfire, a tree beside him splintering. He had to move...

Anticipating the next kick he caught the Jinnrai's leg and threw it with ease towards the closest one, that one doing a vertical flip over it and faceplanting, getting back to its feet and dogging the panther.

They looked like fucking jokes... But damn, if they weren't a pain in the ass...

He looked back this time to see the next one right in his face, tackling the panther front to front.

Damien took the momentum and flipped the Jinnrai into a tree, face-first with a sick cracking sound meaning he'd gotten his second kill...

And had three to deal with.

They caught up in a matter of seconds, resolving between them not to go ahead of the pack like that one had.

They took on more civilized poise for once, strolling to surround him once more instead of dragging limbs or twitching violently...

None of them moved for a split second, and he knew why.

Before he had a chance to bolster his mental defenses they overwhelmed him, two attacking him psychically with the remaining one dashing towards him, knife in hand.

Any other time he could take this one out with ease but this layered front was straining him...

This was it, he was dead.

A slash to the cheek finally caught him, opening him up. Not deep enough to get to the mouth but enough to draw blood... His vision started blurring as well, some sort of poison on the knife he wagered...

At the same time he felt the slow and excruciating flood of his mental facilities, falling onto his back after staggering a ways.

This was it. This was...

He wasn't ready to die...

A close gunshot echoed in his ringing ears, Berg's men finally-

Damien jolted as he saw one of Berg's regulars fall in a spray of blood, some blur leaping to a Jinnrai and taking its head clean off.

The other two stood still for a mental attack but the blur didn't slow at all, slashing them down as they foolishly stood unguarded.

A few more regulars, he was on the verge of passing out.

Maybe the mental attack was gone, but the poison... He hoped it wasn't lethal.

Damien felt himself being lifted, carried swiftly as if he wasn't a well-built male panther with armor.

All he could focus on was one of his sword he'd dropped, the other clutched tight in his hand.

...

He could already hear father's words of reprimand.

///

Damien forms kind of a trinity between Lynx-Tai and himself, might go back and edit him into first person tbh

The assassin storyline's been out of it for a while so I'll pick that up next chapter. Sorry for not posting in a while either life's been hell

ANYWAYS I'm really excited for chapter 28, huge reveal ;)

Stay frosty