[FIC] (Generation Kill) Operation Hallbrook
Title: Operation Hallbrook
Rating: PG-13
Pairing/Characters: Colbert/Nate, Doc Bryan, Reporter
Word Count: 7,500
Summary: Brad loses his memory and wakes up in a foreign place. He finds trying to regain his past is harder than he thought as he searches for clues to what he is supposed to do there.
Notes: Written for 2010's yuletide, originally posted here. Thank you so much to witchling for the last-minute, late night beta. This is post-series AU, along with wiki’d details of weapons.
He wakes up to a dark room with only weak sunlight leaking from the blinds. He can feel wetness under his skin despite the fact that he’s only wearing a pair of shorts. He bolts up from his bed, winces because his muscles are sore. He gingerly pushes himself off the bed.
Every part of his body seems to ache as he treads across the small room. He stops in front of a small mirror situated above the drawers and examines himself. There is nothing out of the ordinary at the front - no bullet holes there, or at the back as he cranes his neck to make sure he hasn’t been randomly beaten, only to have all the bruises on his back.
After declaring himself fit to go with a clean bill of health, at least exterior-wise, he looks around at his surrounding and finds a black sports bag on the only chair in the room. He has no recognition of it, and has no reason to assume it isn’t his. He unzips it and finds a clean outfit inside. He takes it out and puts it on, finding that it fits him perfectly. He looks into the bag again and finds a stack of Euros. His hand brushes through it; he estimates there to be at least ten-grand there. He leaves the money alone with a frown and a deep uneasiness and walks around the room, examining it.
Where did he get such a large sum of money? Why are they Euros and not American dollars?
His hands and fingers work at and around every nook and cranny and pulling out every drawer in his room. Underneath the poorly constructed bed frame, he finds a .45 tucked neatly in the corner. He checks the ammo - still fully loaded and not a single bullet missing.
The realization shocks him. He tosses the gun onto the bed as if his hands were burnt. How would a normal person be so familiar with a gun? He stares at the gun lying on the bed. His mind finally catches up to his surrounding and his situation. It was easy for him to just assume that the bag was his - the outfit he is wearing, the gun, and all that money. He was perfectly fine with it until the alarm bells went off and now he is trying to remember something - anything - that may give him a clue to who he is.
Because he has no memory of anything. His mind is drawing a blank to everything. He knows that he should panic; that’s what everyone normally does, right? But he isn’t. He checks his pulse and his breathing. They are steady at where they should be. Normal.
Just how would he know what a normal pulse and breath rate would be?
He rushes back to the bag and digs through its pockets looking for any clue that may tell him who he is, where he is, or what he is doing here. All he finds is a key. One key. Not even a set of keys. He examines the key, weighs it in his palm, and tosses it in the air before catching it easily. No flashback or memory to what the key is for at all.
Just who was he? A man with no memory with a stack of cash, a loaded gun, and a key.
Great.
*
He takes all his belonging - which is only his bag - with him. As he walks down a busy street, his mind gathers whatever jumbled memory he has left. He must have concentrated too hard as he bumps into a woman with a bag of grocery in each hand.
“Stupid man. Who doesn’t watch where he’s going?”
He bends down to help her with the scattering orange on the ground. “Sorry, sorry. Wasn’t looking where I was going.”
He speaks fluent Czech. That’s good news, right?
He nicks the newspaper from some café’s table. He takes at look at the title - Prague. What was he doing in Prague? And according to the newspaper, it’s March of 2010. He quickly puts the paper into his bag; it may come handy in the future.
His stomach reluctantly grumbles, so he decides it’s time for food. He picks a table that has the door at his twelve and easily settles on the soup and sandwich combo. As he waits for his food, he summarizes all his findings:
The voice in his head speaks to him in English - American English to be precise. It makes sense since he wondered why he has a stack of Euros instead of American dollars, assuming it to be the currency of choice. But he also speaks fluent Czech. What other language does he know? Who brought him back to that room? Did he make it back himself? If he is an American citizen, what is he doing here?
He takes his time enjoying the food, taking in the surrounding. The only way to go is to figure out the importance of the key. Going to the authorities doesn’t seem right. He may be a wanted man. Gun and cash?
He thinks back to the key, not bold enough to take it out and inspect it. He is sure it is no ordinary key, but that’s all he knows for now.
As he finishes the last of his sandwich, he folds up the paper and drops a ten on the table. He figures he should head to the library; they have computers and internet access there. That should be a good starting place for any investigations. He gets the directions from the waitress and leaves the small café.
He finds a computer with the door in his sightline and sits down. His hands are on the keyboard, itching to type something in the internet browser’s address bar but even he can’t will his fingers to type in the familiar addresses. Not even an inkling to check his inbox.
He sighs loudly and slums into his chair. This is no use. He has no plan, no direction, no anything to guide his next move. He’s the Iceman, for fuck’s sake.
Wait, what?
Iceman. He mouths the word. It feels familiar on his tongue. Searching for Iceman gives him results of a superhero. He’s no superhero.
With a feeling of resignation, he pulls out his last hope, the key, from his bag. Now that he’s looking at it for a second time and in better light, he finds a small inscription at the top of the key, so small that he definitely missed it the first time. His thumb gently brushes the words at the top and it suddenly hits him like a freight train and he knows where he needs to go.
*
He gets the direction to the bank from the librarian up at the front and thanks her with a dashing smile. He thinks about taking the bus, but he doesn’t think shoving a ten at the bus driver and asking for change would be a good idea. And it is only a handful of blocks away. It is a good idea to survey the area while he is here.
He turns the corner and spots two cops in the middle of the street staring at him and muttering to each other frantically. If he was anyone else, he would assume he was letting his imagination run wild. But he knows that he isn’t, so he does his best to turn back without bringing attention to himself.
Just what he needs, two cops chasing him down in the middle of the streets. At least the crowd isn’t parting like they should, it gives him enough time to weave his way around and get out on the other side. Taking a few steps at a time, he makes his way up the escalator. He can hear the cops yelling at him to stop. He dashes to the other side of the shopping mall, takes the escalator down, and exits out the doors.
He looks up and his eyes catch several surveillance cameras at the corner of several buildings. He walks into another mall and exits through the other side. He doesn’t even know why the cops are chasing him, but with the way things are shaping up, he needs to get out of the country as soon as possible. They never get on anyone’s case without a serious reason. The idea of going up to the cops and asking them who he is just flushed down the toilet. They seem to know more about him than he knows about himself.
Isn’t there someone back home that misses him? His family? The fact that he doesn’t know how long he’s been here worries him. It could be three days, three weeks or even three months since he’s been here. He doesn’t dare to think he’s been here for three years.
After the long detour, he finds his way to the bank without anymore run-ins with the cops.
*
They leave him alone with his security deposit box and he closes the curtain behind him before opening the box. The first thing inside, the one at the top, is a beige manila folder. He opens it up and almost lets its content fall all over the tiled floor.
He scans the files, eyeing them with suspicion. If he doesn’t remember who he is and what he is doing here, how can he expect these files to tell him anything? He moves onto the page-sized photos. He has no recognition of the man in the pictures. Somehow he doesn’t wish he did at all. Not from the way these pictures are taken - the angles and the candidness of them - they must have been taken by a private investigator of sort. Whatever is going on with this folder, it doesn’t settle well with him. He stuffs them awkwardly back into the folder and places it on the table before moving on.
He rummages through the rest of the security box. There’s nothing out of the ordinary with it, since it contains nothing but clothes and a pair of runners - except there is a hidden pocket lined underneath the hard plastic at the bottom of the box. He slips his hand to pop out the plastic and pulls out a small black bag that’s the size of his palm. He easily pulls the thin stack out. The first thing he sees is an American passport - finally, there’s something useful in all this.
Brad Colbert. This must be his name considering it is his photo right next to his info. He flips through the other pages, but where there should be stamps to acknowledge his arrival into this country, or any country for the matter, there were none.
Just as he thinks he is Brad Colbert, an American citizen, there’s another passport right underneath. This time a British one, but with another name. And another one after that - a French one with another name - more French. But they all have the same passport photo next to entirely different names, birthdates, etc.
There is something really wrong at work here.
He adopts the name Brad, the one that sounds the most right when really, he has one in three chances of being correct. And there’s the fact that all three of these passports could be aliases of his real identity. But Brad it is.
After going through the small stack of passports, he finds a slim cellphone and turns it on.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Brad finds three texts waiting for him. All three are recently sent to the phone.
Target acquired. Target information enclosed.
Target on the move. 7 days.
Contact this number if you need assistance.
The last text is finally the most useful one and sent only yesterday too.
Brad takes out the plastic bag from the trash can and uses that to carry his things. Who would throw out trash here when everything in your box is confidential and important? Idiots, that’s who. He keeps the key, just in case he has more instructions in the future from the mysterious person who put these things here and tosses everything into the black sports bag he’s been carrying around. Not suspicious at all.
He didn’t plan on returning to the tiny one-room thing that he woke up in. But since he has nowhere to stay and it’s getting dark, he might as well crash there for the night.
He doesn’t get very far when he stops at his floor, there are men in uniform and police tapes surrounding the area that was his temporary room.
Shit. He backs away quickly and dashes down the few flights of stairs and out the door in record time. This explains why the two cops were staring at him with interest. He made the right choice to run off when he still had the chance. It doesn’t explain what happened in his room though.
Fuck. He manages to find himself in a park and picks a bench that has the view with all most of the park in front of him and an escape route right behind him. And one underneath a street lamp so he can figure out his next move.
He takes a sip of coffee out of the cardboard cup that he purchased as he walked further and further away from the apartment building. This will last him for awhile before he has to find shelter for the rest of the night.
Brad pulls out the files - the one from the security box and looks through them again. Maybe now that he isn’t in a hurry, he will extract new information from them that he missed. He never really gave them a good look the first time around either way.
The first few sheets of paper have the basic information. Nathaniel Fick. Citizen of the USA. Served in the Iraq War. A schedule of his visits in Europe, with the dates of his Czech visits highlighted and circled.
The few photos that they have of him haven’t changed since he last looked at them. The man has brown hair, tightly cropped that mirrored his own. Other than that, there doesn’t seem to be anything special about the man. Yes, Brad read the long list of accomplishments by this man. But it doesn’t warrant his interest long enough when he is trying to find information about himself.
After he drains the last of the coffee and puts away the files again, Brad decides he’ll call the number from the texts tomorrow. He needs a good night sleep to prepare for what’s to come.
*
Brad wakes abruptly from something poking at his ribs. He tries to cling onto the image of a man in his dream, so sure that it wasn’t a fickle of his imagination. But when he opens his eyes to see what the commotion is, the image fades away without imprinting itself into Brad’s memory.
“What is it?” Brad asks, blinking away his sleep.
“You can’t sleep here.” The person pokes him again, harder this time. Brad recognizes it right away, along with the men doing the poking. Fucking cops. Don’t they have anything better to do?
“Okay, okay, I’ll move,” Brad mumbles, slowly getting out of the park bench and gripping tightly onto his sports bag. There is a reason why he picked this park bench out of all of them. It failed him once because he closed his eyes, but there was the latter reason. He could make a quick getaway if he wanted to.
“Hey, hey!” One of the cops calls after him. “That’s him!”
His legs pick up speed as he rounds corners and crossing streets without oncoming cars to stop him. He scouted his place earlier before arriving at the park. He knew his way around enough and remembered there was this dump of a place the people here called a pub that he could hide until the cops think he’s ran off.
“Can I get you anything?”
“Scotch, thanks.” Brad picks one of the booths rather than sit at the bar. He can feel the adrenaline pumping, coursing through his veins, yet he doesn’t feel the weariness or the ache in his muscles, or even the pull of his lungs since he doesn’t need to catch his breath despite running at top speed for more than several blocks.
Really, the last thing he needs is the cops after him. He wasn’t certain before, but this just confirms it. If it’s anything serious, every department of this government would have his pictures and files which will ban him from leaving. The faster he figures out the files, the faster he can get out of the country.
Now that he has a second to absorb what just happened in the last fifteen minutes, he starts back at the beginning. The dream - the man’s face, something seems so familiar with it. He knows he’s seen it before, but can’t place it. He’s usually so good with faces too.
“Your scotch, sir.”
Brad thanks the man for the drink and pays him right away. He picks up the glass and swirls in around. The more he swirls the drink, the more he remembers, albeit very faintly, from the dream. There is a name attached to that face that’s at the tip of his tongue.
It had felt more like a memory than a dream. He remembered the sand underneath him. Not just underneath him, but fucking everywhere around him. He could feel it in his pores. That’s how much he remembered and despised the sand.
And make-shift toilets.
Brad gulps down the scotch all in one go, hating himself for feeling incompetent. He cannot remember his own name but remembers how much he despised sand and digging a hole in the ground to shit in.
Luckily he finds a 24-hour fast food joint for him to stick around in until the sun comes up. He should have called yesterday when he first found out about the number. Fuck this, he takes the phone out of his pocket and types in the number from the text.
He doesn’t even get a hello when the voice on the other end starts to speak. “About time you called. I thought you backed out. Did you get the assignment?”
“Of course,” Brad replies with caution. So it is what he thought it was. But he never signed up to kill anyone. At least he doesn’t think he did, not that he would remember if he did. “Is there anything else I need to know?”
“Everything you’ll need is at the train station. Locker 3B. You have three days left. But you know that already from his profile.”
Brad knows the question he is about to ask is highly unnecessary, but the mystery man is going to hang up and he needs to drag this out longer while not sounding suspicious at all. “Do I need to call you afterwards?”
The man chuckles. “Colbert, we’ll know it if you’ve done your job. At the same time, we’ll know it if you’ve failed. But we know that’s not going to happen, is it?”
*
While he dreams of sand and the sun, this time it is different. He can feel the sand around him everywhere, but there is water in front of him - not a desert. Next to him, a surfboard and a plastic cup of iced coffee half-buried itself into the sand.
“Hey,” the man says, with a smile even brighter than the sun. “You better finish that drink. I’m not having you spilling it all over the rental.”
“I told you I should have ridden the bike over.” Brad hears himself speak. He doesn’t remember this though.
“It wasn’t going to fit your board and me at the same time. We’ve already went over this,” the man says with a slight frown, but not meaning it at all as his face brightens up again.
Brad picks up the plastic cup and drinks it from the brim. He wasn’t going to drink it out of the straw like some girl. The man, now standing up and casually brushing sand off his shorts and legs, laughs at him while shaking his head.
“C’mon,” the man extends his hand out. Brad gladly takes it without a second thought and lets the man pull him up with ease. He takes the board with him and the two of them walk towards the white Prius.
“Don’t start about the car. I didn’t know we were going to need room to put your board in there too,” the man replies when Brad’s eyebrow goes up in half-hearted disdain. Brad knows that the car is exactly what the man drives back in DC, but he keeps his mouth shut. Instead, he has another use for it and pulls the man in for a kiss. There’s no one around - he’s checked and that’s why he chosen this beach in the first place - so they keep at it a little longer. He can taste the salt water on Nate’s lips and smell the sunscreen on him. He can’t get enough of this. They need to go back to his apartment as soon as possible. He wonders if Nate will let him drive; he knows that he can get them back in record speed. They break apart when Brad feels his grip on his board loosening. He catches it just in time before it smashes itself against the concrete.
Brad smiles sheepishly when the other man rolls his eyes. “So it’s the board over me?”
“You’re both very important in my books. Along with my bike. Oh, and that coffee brewer I got for Christmas. All very important.”
*
Brad doesn’t remember falling asleep, but here he is, head resting on the sports bag, still sitting on the hard plastics they call furniture of fast-food booths with an empty cup of coffee on the table next to his head.
He finds it odd that he keeps dreaming about the past. He thought dreams were supposed to be his subconscious and his imagination tossed together and bam, have a dream.
And yet, he is so sure that this really happened. He doesn’t think his mind is clever enough to make up these fantasies, considering they all feature the same person.
He pulls out the beige folder again, and this time going for the photos instead. He must be going crazy. As he examines the photos again, the man in the picture no longer has short cropped hair. Instead they were longer, months past in between to grow out of its shortness. And yet Brad had thought, no, remembered it to be shorter when he first looked at the photos.
“Would you like a refill of that?”
Brad closes the folder and looks up, hiding very well that he was startled when he knows he shouldn’t have been. “Yes, thank you.”
“I wish I had better news, but it’s soon to be rush hour and you can’t stay here much longer. My manager doesn’t like people loitering here around that time.”
Brad shakes his head and offers the girl a smile, thanks, I’ll just get something else to eat. He heads up to the counter and orders a breakfast and another coffee. That will last him for awhile as he plans his next move.
As Brad sits the tray down on his booth again, it finally clicks for him. Despite his amnesia, he thought he was better than this. He whips out the folder again, splaying the files on the table.
There he is, Nathaniel Fick. The man in his dreams. It is obvious enough. Even with a different hairstyle, he still has the same smile and same eyes. It doesn’t help the fact that Brad remembers the way Nate’s lips tasted.
And he is supposed to kill this man.
*
Brad reads over the schedule again. Today, Nate is going to be meeting with the US ambassador at the US consulate.
He finds the famed Locker 3B, but he has no idea how they expect him to know how to open it when he doesn’t have a key for it. He keeps only the phone and his American passport on him before shoving his bag into another locker a few rows down.
As he walks towards the consulate, he decides to take the ‘scout then approach’ tactic, considering what he is about to do. Not to mention the amount of security they’ll have around Nate.
After scouting around the place for an hour, he can’t find an opening in other than the front door. Even after showing his passport at the front and heading inside, there are security personnel in front of every door. The entire mission feels off. He is going into a territory where he has no idea where everything is. Not that the library would have the floor plans to a consulate.
Brad smiles awkwardly at one of the guards while pretending to wait in line that hasn’t moved for the past half an hour.
Looks like today is a bust.
*
After another unsuccessful day of doing recon for Nate, Brad is ready to give up. He had another dream last night - one that would have made a girl blush, but he wasn’t a goddamn girl.
The phone buzzes annoyingly in his pocket. He pulls it out reluctantly, knowing what the call will be like before he even picks up the call.
“Colbert. Did you or did you not get the information about your hit? Considering he’s leaving tomorrow, you get your goddamn ass to where he is by then. I don’t know what is going on at your end, but you better finish your job or we’ll finish you.”
“Yes, sir,” Brad replies sternly, his back straightening without a second thought to what he’s doing.
He thinks it’s imagination, but after everything that’s happened, he opts to trust his instinct instead when it is telling him that there are two men wearing all black staring at him through the window from across the street. Shit, now he has more people on his tail.
“Good. Do what you’re trained to do, Colbert.”
The line cuts dead and Brad stuffs the phone back into his pocket. He picks up his bag and decides to head to the train station where he’s supposed to open Locker 3B there. It’s interesting how he has to go to the locker to get more information when he already has a gun and way too much money in the bag. And he doesn’t even know where they come from. The gun, okay, he can say that it is for protection since he apparently knows how to handle them well. But the money? If he is here to kill someone, why in the world would he have thousands of Euros? Even if it’s a deposit on the hit, there is no way someone is stupid enough to carry it with him. It would more sense to have it deposited into his bank account - which turns out to only be a safety deposit box - or even in cash, in a bag, stuffed in the mysterious Locker 3B. Not the other way around.
*
Out of all three days, today’s location for the assassination is easily the least complicated considering it is outdoors. They should have just told him to be here on this day and he could have finished the job without batting his eyelash.
Brad finds a random building - really, any of these tall buildings would have worked - and gets to work.
After another visit to the train station to open Locker 3B, it apparently worked with the same key as the safety deposit box, Brad gains another weapon in his unnecessary arsenal, this time a long-range sniper rifle for his mark. Whoever employs him for this at least provided him something better than a forty-five to kill someone from a distance.
It is as if he never lost his memory, Brad’s muscle memory sets up the rifle like he's done it all his life. He spots Nate easily despite there being a sea of people down below. Even as he watches, his mind races around for other options other than it ending with a death. If this Nathaniel is the same Nate in his dreams, he holds the key to Brad's past.
He’s tried the ‘recon and approach’ tactic. Not only did that fail miserably, he also has his employer up on his ass. He scans the scene in front of him and easily singles out the guards donning similar outfits to the men from yesterday.
Brad’s mind briefly wonders if these men are to protect Nathaniel, or to make sure he’s dead. He puts on the headphones and lets the words from the speech that’s happening on the podium wash over him.
He moves on to wondering if this is a test - this assignment - a trial put on to test his loyalty to his employer, whoever that may be. And Brad would have applauded the creator of this test if the person carrying out the task hadn’t lost his memory and along with losing the reason to carry on with the goddamn assassination.
Brad calls the hit off himself. This is pathetic. He doesn’t even know who his employer is. Why should he be doing their dirty deeds if there is no reason left for him to do so? He puts his hand on the rifle, ready to take it apart when suddenly there’s a hand on his shoulder. His reflex kicks in - his hand grabs a tight hold onto the perpetrator’s wrist but he fails to get the hand off on his shoulder.
“Brad, Brad - stop!”
The man’s grip is too strong. Brad turns around ready to jam the heel of his other hand into the man’s face but misses when the man dodges easily, catching Brad’s hand and twisting it behind his back.
“Shit, Brad, you still struggling?” The stranger asks, as the two of them gets tangled up on the ground, half trying to get free, half struggling to keep the other man bound.
“Brad, it’s me. What the fuck?”
Brad turns and looks at the man who has him pinned to the ground. He doesn’t recognize him - that one is obvious, but the way the man spoke to him with such familiarity and ease, he should know him from somewhere but nothing’s coming as usual.
“Now would be a good time to tell me everything. Haven’t seen you in months and the first thing you do is attack me.” Should he trust this stranger? What if he’s one of the cops who is after him? Brad has no time to waste as the man stares at him strangely.
Brad begins telling the stranger about everything that’s since happened after he woke up without his memory in the room. After that, he learns that this man served with him in Iraq - which explains the endless dreams about sand and holes in the ground of various sorts, or the fact that he is in top physical form. And the man’s name is Tim Bryan, but Brad would have known him as Doc, or well, Tim now that he’s out of the corp.
“How did you find me?” Brad asks, now that things have calmed down.
“You remember Reporter?” Tim starts, then shakes his head. “Right, you have the amnesia thing going on. Long story short, he was with us as an embedded reporter during the invasion of Iraq. He got wind of this story - apparently it’s been going on for months - assassinations of US citizens, officials, everyone really, always oversea and made to look like accidents or someone else’s fault. Reporter has his sources. Anyway, this time he managed to find out the next target before it’s too late - it’s Nate. He called you, since you didn’t answer, he called Gunny, but Gunny’s off doing something - Reporter wasn’t specific about it, so he found me to scout things out. At least he found me before he got to Ray. To be honest, I thought you were here to protect him, not kill him.”
Brad can only shake his head. The story makes sense to him, yet at the same time, it all feels foreign to him. This is getting fucking tiresome. At least it gives him a reason to not aim the gun at Nate anymore.
“I need to get my memory back,” Brad says with utmost seriousness, as if his life depends on it. And it does.
Tim nods understandingly. “I’ll get in contact with Reporter as soon as I can. For now, get out of the country and lay low for awhile. He might have some news on you too if he knows about the attempt on Nate. I’m just fucking glad I got here in time.”
Brad carefully packs the light fifty back into its case while Tim watches nearby. He doesn’t tell Tim that he wasn’t going to go through with it by the time Tim arrived. But that wouldn’t have made a difference either way, so he keeps it to himself. Just like the question of how Tim found him up in this building will never be asked. He doesn’t mind knowing, but he just won’t ask it.
*
It only took thirty seconds to a minute, if Brad was counting as he walked into his house for the first time in ages with his guards down, for someone to kick down the door, put a bag over Brad’s head, and inject something in his blood stream.
By the time he is conscious again, Brad is sitting on a wooden chair in the middle of the room. His hands and legs are free and he’s already come up with ten different ways to break out of this room - something in him tells him that he’s been trained to do so - but he knows after that he’d be at a lost at what to do when he doesn’t know the layout to this place at all.
“Colbert, it is nice to see you again.”
Brad’s head snaps up. Only now does he realize that he is not alone. Whatever they injected in him played a hell of a trick on his senses if he overlooked an actual person standing in front of him who is only a few feet away from him.
“It looks like they were right. The drugs did work,” the man says, staring intently at Brad.
Brad returns the glare with the same intensity. There is something about the man’s voice that wakens something in him. His brain works overtime trying to place the gravelly voice. He has no idea what the man is talking about. Of course the drugs worked. He is here after all, isn’t he?
The man, again with the cropped haircut, shakes his head and chuckles. “But not entirely. You didn’t carry out your mission like they said you were supposed to. Godfather does not take failure easily. They are already working on a new prototype for the drug as we speak. They told Godfather it was foolproof, but you are the living proof that it did not turn out the way Godfather envisioned it to.”
For one second there, Brad thought he was following along but now he is lost in this man’s lingo.
“You have no questions for Godfather?”
Brad contemplates on asking the questions are the tip of his tongue. But he wonders how much this man - Godfather - is willing to divulge. He has a feeling that the man is going to tell him what is going on without him saying another word. “Why am I here?”
“Godfather isn’t going to let a malfunctioning weapon like that wander around without guidance. Godfather is here to get you to unfuck yourself.”
“How come I don’t remember anything at all?”
“An obvious question, but Godfather will answer it nonetheless. Those scientists have been tasked to help usher in a new era of warfare. Godfather does not select the hits. Godfather only oversees the program’s logistics. It seems like you are our first malfunction. I can see why after they sent Godfather your files. Did you know that it was Godfather’s suggestion that they bring you into this program? You were being wasted out there by those incompetent fools when you could serve your country better with us.”
Brad remembers, just a flash, when he signed up for Hallbrook, thinking that he was serving and protecting his country as part of his military career. It was nothing but a thin disguise for something darker and more sinister.
“Fick is a good man. But it is not Godfather’s choice in who Hallbrook chooses.”
Brad flinches at the mention of Nate. During the flight back from Prague, he passed out the moment the plane took flight. He dreamt of nothing but Nate in various times - in Iraq, in Oceanside, in his house, on his bed, in DC, in Baltimore with his nieces. He watched all of it like a bystander, remembering none of it, yet knowing how the Brad in his dreams felt when he saw the despair and frustration in Nate’s eyes in Baghdad, the soft smile on Nate’s face as he pours another cup of coffee in Brad’s kitchen, and so on.
This must be what Godfather is talking about when he said the experimental drugs failed. Brad has his memory wiped, but not clean enough as it seeps through to his subconscious. He shouldn’t remember Nathaniel, or know who he is at all.
“Godfather can see that you are starting to understand what is happening. You have nothing to worry about. You won’t remember this conversation either way.”
When they toss the bag over him again, he doesn’t struggle. The Marines hammered in the lessons in him well. If he was anyone else, he would have been struggling, punching and kicking his assailants to break free. But now is not the time to do when the drug they dosed him with is still in his system, making his dazed and weak.
They leave him in a windowless room equipped with a single bed, a desk, and a chair, and even a separate room for the bathroom. Picture of luxury right there. But he can’t complain when he remembers watching himself digging a hole in the middle of a desert use to take a dump. A flushable toilet is high-end luxury.
*
OPERATION HALLBROOK SHUTS DOWN AFTER DOCUMENT LEAKS OF ILLEGAL TREATMENTS OF SOLDIERS
Samantha Judge, Associated Press
Two days after an anonymous source leaked documents and stories of the treatments and abuse of soldiers in an undercover military experiment, Operation Hallbrook has been shut down until further notice. The Secretary of Defense, Ben Folger, vows to give the public a proper answer to this horrendous and tragic exploitation of American soldiers, and is also said to lead the investigation into the matters.
“What has transpired today will not be condoned by the Department of Defense or the American public. We have begun our investigations into Operation Hallbrook and all personnel involved with this will be questioned until we reached an understanding of this tragedy. We are disappointed that we have failed to protect our soldiers when they put their trust in us. I want to make a apology to the soldiers and their families who are involved with this, and to the American public who has continued to support the Armed Forces.”
After the initial story of a soldier who was placed into a foreign country without his memory and ordered to assassinate a US official came to surface, similar stories of emerge to back the claim.
…
Sources say that the drug were to only lasts between twelve to eighteen months before it flushed out of the system, as per the length of the contract the soldiers signed for Operation Hallbrook.
All soldiers who participated into the program are released from their contracts and will be given a time of leave as they recover from the experimental drug.
*
Brad closes his laptop to stop himself from reading anymore of these articles. After a whirlwind of physicals, interviews from officials, and paperwork, he is finally released and sent home until they need him again. He still doesn’t remember the house, but he remembers enough of the bike parked in his garage to take it out every day and just lose himself on the open road.
He leaves his phone back at the house after his story broke. After talking to several of his Marine buddies and his family - he remembers none of them despite his effort to regain those memories, he has had enough and needed to get away. He is tired of the sympathy and the eagerness of them wanting him to remember. But if what they are printing in the papers were right, it is going to take another few months before the drugs begin to wear off.
Brad turns back when the sky starts to dim. While he knows that his skill with the bike hasn’t gone away just because his memory has gone missing, he decides to be safe than get into an accident and have it splashed across all the newspapers and news outlets. HALLBROOK SOLDIER CRASHES BIKE - ACCIDENT OR SUICIDE?
As Brad slows his bike to a stop on his driveway, he eyes the car parked in front of his house warily. He doesn’t expect any visitors, especially when he vehemently protested after his sisters and his parents offered (more like threatened) to stay with him until who knows when. While he appreciates the offer, he cannot bear to see the disappointment and frustration in their eyes when they realize that Brad really doesn’t remember them at all.
He takes his time parking his bike in the garage and wiping down the exterior (that he remembers to do for some reason). When he walks into his living room, he can’t tell if he is surprised or breaths a sigh of relief when he sees Nate sitting on a couch and flipping through some boring magazines he picked up at the store when he went to get a case of beer after he polished off the ones he had in his house after the first few nights.
“So I hear you tried to kill me,” Nate says, placing the magazine back on the coffee table. Of course Nate would use a fucking coaster for his beer. Brad got them as a present when he first moved into this place. It’s been sitting there as decoration for years but he’s never had the heart to toss them out or even put them away.
“It didn’t work out that well from my end.”
Nate smiles tentatively. “I hope not.”
Brad continues to stand there, not bridging the gap between them. There is a part of him that wants to walk over there, put his hands on both sides of Nate’s face, and kiss him hard, expecting it to end (or begin) in his bedroom.
But that part of him is still small, small enough to only be detected by a magnify glass if one were to look.
So he stands there, unsure how to approach Nate. To him, Nate is his past; a memory inside of him, only coming out when Brad dreams. So really, the man sitting on his couch is nothing but a stranger, just like all those who have called and tried to visit him.
Yet. Yet, he doesn’t want Nate to leave. He doesn’t want to push Nate away until he gets his memories back and remembers what Nate really means to him.
Brad can be fearless when he is supposed to kill a man he doesn’t know. He can cope being locked up in a cell not knowing when they are going inject him with something newer and better and toss him out there to do their dirty work.
He knows how this goes. If Ray was here, he’d be clapping Brad’s back and ramble on and on at how cliché this is. What if Nate falls in love with this Brad, the one who doesn’t know a thing about Nate, like they’re starting fresh. What if a few months from now, Brad will get his memories back and then Nate finds that he prefers the other Brad. Or some bullshit plot that they always use in those Hollywood rom-coms. Without the happily ever after ending.
Brad watches Nate get up from the couch and walks towards him. He’s never cowered to guns pointed to his temple or bombs tossed his way. But he wants to take a step back and avoid Nate’s hand slowly descending onto his arm.
The touch is reassuring, hey, we’ll take this slowly okay. Nate looks into Brad’s eyes. Brad hopes that Nate will find no fear in him. And Brad nods, ever so slowly. It is only a few months. They can wait it out until then.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing/Characters: Colbert/Nate, Doc Bryan, Reporter
Word Count: 7,500
Summary: Brad loses his memory and wakes up in a foreign place. He finds trying to regain his past is harder than he thought as he searches for clues to what he is supposed to do there.
Notes: Written for 2010's yuletide, originally posted here. Thank you so much to witchling for the last-minute, late night beta. This is post-series AU, along with wiki’d details of weapons.
He wakes up to a dark room with only weak sunlight leaking from the blinds. He can feel wetness under his skin despite the fact that he’s only wearing a pair of shorts. He bolts up from his bed, winces because his muscles are sore. He gingerly pushes himself off the bed.
Every part of his body seems to ache as he treads across the small room. He stops in front of a small mirror situated above the drawers and examines himself. There is nothing out of the ordinary at the front - no bullet holes there, or at the back as he cranes his neck to make sure he hasn’t been randomly beaten, only to have all the bruises on his back.
After declaring himself fit to go with a clean bill of health, at least exterior-wise, he looks around at his surrounding and finds a black sports bag on the only chair in the room. He has no recognition of it, and has no reason to assume it isn’t his. He unzips it and finds a clean outfit inside. He takes it out and puts it on, finding that it fits him perfectly. He looks into the bag again and finds a stack of Euros. His hand brushes through it; he estimates there to be at least ten-grand there. He leaves the money alone with a frown and a deep uneasiness and walks around the room, examining it.
Where did he get such a large sum of money? Why are they Euros and not American dollars?
His hands and fingers work at and around every nook and cranny and pulling out every drawer in his room. Underneath the poorly constructed bed frame, he finds a .45 tucked neatly in the corner. He checks the ammo - still fully loaded and not a single bullet missing.
The realization shocks him. He tosses the gun onto the bed as if his hands were burnt. How would a normal person be so familiar with a gun? He stares at the gun lying on the bed. His mind finally catches up to his surrounding and his situation. It was easy for him to just assume that the bag was his - the outfit he is wearing, the gun, and all that money. He was perfectly fine with it until the alarm bells went off and now he is trying to remember something - anything - that may give him a clue to who he is.
Because he has no memory of anything. His mind is drawing a blank to everything. He knows that he should panic; that’s what everyone normally does, right? But he isn’t. He checks his pulse and his breathing. They are steady at where they should be. Normal.
Just how would he know what a normal pulse and breath rate would be?
He rushes back to the bag and digs through its pockets looking for any clue that may tell him who he is, where he is, or what he is doing here. All he finds is a key. One key. Not even a set of keys. He examines the key, weighs it in his palm, and tosses it in the air before catching it easily. No flashback or memory to what the key is for at all.
Just who was he? A man with no memory with a stack of cash, a loaded gun, and a key.
Great.
*
He takes all his belonging - which is only his bag - with him. As he walks down a busy street, his mind gathers whatever jumbled memory he has left. He must have concentrated too hard as he bumps into a woman with a bag of grocery in each hand.
“Stupid man. Who doesn’t watch where he’s going?”
He bends down to help her with the scattering orange on the ground. “Sorry, sorry. Wasn’t looking where I was going.”
He speaks fluent Czech. That’s good news, right?
He nicks the newspaper from some café’s table. He takes at look at the title - Prague. What was he doing in Prague? And according to the newspaper, it’s March of 2010. He quickly puts the paper into his bag; it may come handy in the future.
His stomach reluctantly grumbles, so he decides it’s time for food. He picks a table that has the door at his twelve and easily settles on the soup and sandwich combo. As he waits for his food, he summarizes all his findings:
The voice in his head speaks to him in English - American English to be precise. It makes sense since he wondered why he has a stack of Euros instead of American dollars, assuming it to be the currency of choice. But he also speaks fluent Czech. What other language does he know? Who brought him back to that room? Did he make it back himself? If he is an American citizen, what is he doing here?
He takes his time enjoying the food, taking in the surrounding. The only way to go is to figure out the importance of the key. Going to the authorities doesn’t seem right. He may be a wanted man. Gun and cash?
He thinks back to the key, not bold enough to take it out and inspect it. He is sure it is no ordinary key, but that’s all he knows for now.
As he finishes the last of his sandwich, he folds up the paper and drops a ten on the table. He figures he should head to the library; they have computers and internet access there. That should be a good starting place for any investigations. He gets the directions from the waitress and leaves the small café.
He finds a computer with the door in his sightline and sits down. His hands are on the keyboard, itching to type something in the internet browser’s address bar but even he can’t will his fingers to type in the familiar addresses. Not even an inkling to check his inbox.
He sighs loudly and slums into his chair. This is no use. He has no plan, no direction, no anything to guide his next move. He’s the Iceman, for fuck’s sake.
Wait, what?
Iceman. He mouths the word. It feels familiar on his tongue. Searching for Iceman gives him results of a superhero. He’s no superhero.
With a feeling of resignation, he pulls out his last hope, the key, from his bag. Now that he’s looking at it for a second time and in better light, he finds a small inscription at the top of the key, so small that he definitely missed it the first time. His thumb gently brushes the words at the top and it suddenly hits him like a freight train and he knows where he needs to go.
*
He gets the direction to the bank from the librarian up at the front and thanks her with a dashing smile. He thinks about taking the bus, but he doesn’t think shoving a ten at the bus driver and asking for change would be a good idea. And it is only a handful of blocks away. It is a good idea to survey the area while he is here.
He turns the corner and spots two cops in the middle of the street staring at him and muttering to each other frantically. If he was anyone else, he would assume he was letting his imagination run wild. But he knows that he isn’t, so he does his best to turn back without bringing attention to himself.
Just what he needs, two cops chasing him down in the middle of the streets. At least the crowd isn’t parting like they should, it gives him enough time to weave his way around and get out on the other side. Taking a few steps at a time, he makes his way up the escalator. He can hear the cops yelling at him to stop. He dashes to the other side of the shopping mall, takes the escalator down, and exits out the doors.
He looks up and his eyes catch several surveillance cameras at the corner of several buildings. He walks into another mall and exits through the other side. He doesn’t even know why the cops are chasing him, but with the way things are shaping up, he needs to get out of the country as soon as possible. They never get on anyone’s case without a serious reason. The idea of going up to the cops and asking them who he is just flushed down the toilet. They seem to know more about him than he knows about himself.
Isn’t there someone back home that misses him? His family? The fact that he doesn’t know how long he’s been here worries him. It could be three days, three weeks or even three months since he’s been here. He doesn’t dare to think he’s been here for three years.
After the long detour, he finds his way to the bank without anymore run-ins with the cops.
*
They leave him alone with his security deposit box and he closes the curtain behind him before opening the box. The first thing inside, the one at the top, is a beige manila folder. He opens it up and almost lets its content fall all over the tiled floor.
He scans the files, eyeing them with suspicion. If he doesn’t remember who he is and what he is doing here, how can he expect these files to tell him anything? He moves onto the page-sized photos. He has no recognition of the man in the pictures. Somehow he doesn’t wish he did at all. Not from the way these pictures are taken - the angles and the candidness of them - they must have been taken by a private investigator of sort. Whatever is going on with this folder, it doesn’t settle well with him. He stuffs them awkwardly back into the folder and places it on the table before moving on.
He rummages through the rest of the security box. There’s nothing out of the ordinary with it, since it contains nothing but clothes and a pair of runners - except there is a hidden pocket lined underneath the hard plastic at the bottom of the box. He slips his hand to pop out the plastic and pulls out a small black bag that’s the size of his palm. He easily pulls the thin stack out. The first thing he sees is an American passport - finally, there’s something useful in all this.
Brad Colbert. This must be his name considering it is his photo right next to his info. He flips through the other pages, but where there should be stamps to acknowledge his arrival into this country, or any country for the matter, there were none.
Just as he thinks he is Brad Colbert, an American citizen, there’s another passport right underneath. This time a British one, but with another name. And another one after that - a French one with another name - more French. But they all have the same passport photo next to entirely different names, birthdates, etc.
There is something really wrong at work here.
He adopts the name Brad, the one that sounds the most right when really, he has one in three chances of being correct. And there’s the fact that all three of these passports could be aliases of his real identity. But Brad it is.
After going through the small stack of passports, he finds a slim cellphone and turns it on.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Brad finds three texts waiting for him. All three are recently sent to the phone.
Target acquired. Target information enclosed.
Target on the move. 7 days.
Contact this number if you need assistance.
The last text is finally the most useful one and sent only yesterday too.
Brad takes out the plastic bag from the trash can and uses that to carry his things. Who would throw out trash here when everything in your box is confidential and important? Idiots, that’s who. He keeps the key, just in case he has more instructions in the future from the mysterious person who put these things here and tosses everything into the black sports bag he’s been carrying around. Not suspicious at all.
He didn’t plan on returning to the tiny one-room thing that he woke up in. But since he has nowhere to stay and it’s getting dark, he might as well crash there for the night.
He doesn’t get very far when he stops at his floor, there are men in uniform and police tapes surrounding the area that was his temporary room.
Shit. He backs away quickly and dashes down the few flights of stairs and out the door in record time. This explains why the two cops were staring at him with interest. He made the right choice to run off when he still had the chance. It doesn’t explain what happened in his room though.
Fuck. He manages to find himself in a park and picks a bench that has the view with all most of the park in front of him and an escape route right behind him. And one underneath a street lamp so he can figure out his next move.
He takes a sip of coffee out of the cardboard cup that he purchased as he walked further and further away from the apartment building. This will last him for awhile before he has to find shelter for the rest of the night.
Brad pulls out the files - the one from the security box and looks through them again. Maybe now that he isn’t in a hurry, he will extract new information from them that he missed. He never really gave them a good look the first time around either way.
The first few sheets of paper have the basic information. Nathaniel Fick. Citizen of the USA. Served in the Iraq War. A schedule of his visits in Europe, with the dates of his Czech visits highlighted and circled.
The few photos that they have of him haven’t changed since he last looked at them. The man has brown hair, tightly cropped that mirrored his own. Other than that, there doesn’t seem to be anything special about the man. Yes, Brad read the long list of accomplishments by this man. But it doesn’t warrant his interest long enough when he is trying to find information about himself.
After he drains the last of the coffee and puts away the files again, Brad decides he’ll call the number from the texts tomorrow. He needs a good night sleep to prepare for what’s to come.
*
Brad wakes abruptly from something poking at his ribs. He tries to cling onto the image of a man in his dream, so sure that it wasn’t a fickle of his imagination. But when he opens his eyes to see what the commotion is, the image fades away without imprinting itself into Brad’s memory.
“What is it?” Brad asks, blinking away his sleep.
“You can’t sleep here.” The person pokes him again, harder this time. Brad recognizes it right away, along with the men doing the poking. Fucking cops. Don’t they have anything better to do?
“Okay, okay, I’ll move,” Brad mumbles, slowly getting out of the park bench and gripping tightly onto his sports bag. There is a reason why he picked this park bench out of all of them. It failed him once because he closed his eyes, but there was the latter reason. He could make a quick getaway if he wanted to.
“Hey, hey!” One of the cops calls after him. “That’s him!”
His legs pick up speed as he rounds corners and crossing streets without oncoming cars to stop him. He scouted his place earlier before arriving at the park. He knew his way around enough and remembered there was this dump of a place the people here called a pub that he could hide until the cops think he’s ran off.
“Can I get you anything?”
“Scotch, thanks.” Brad picks one of the booths rather than sit at the bar. He can feel the adrenaline pumping, coursing through his veins, yet he doesn’t feel the weariness or the ache in his muscles, or even the pull of his lungs since he doesn’t need to catch his breath despite running at top speed for more than several blocks.
Really, the last thing he needs is the cops after him. He wasn’t certain before, but this just confirms it. If it’s anything serious, every department of this government would have his pictures and files which will ban him from leaving. The faster he figures out the files, the faster he can get out of the country.
Now that he has a second to absorb what just happened in the last fifteen minutes, he starts back at the beginning. The dream - the man’s face, something seems so familiar with it. He knows he’s seen it before, but can’t place it. He’s usually so good with faces too.
“Your scotch, sir.”
Brad thanks the man for the drink and pays him right away. He picks up the glass and swirls in around. The more he swirls the drink, the more he remembers, albeit very faintly, from the dream. There is a name attached to that face that’s at the tip of his tongue.
It had felt more like a memory than a dream. He remembered the sand underneath him. Not just underneath him, but fucking everywhere around him. He could feel it in his pores. That’s how much he remembered and despised the sand.
And make-shift toilets.
Brad gulps down the scotch all in one go, hating himself for feeling incompetent. He cannot remember his own name but remembers how much he despised sand and digging a hole in the ground to shit in.
Luckily he finds a 24-hour fast food joint for him to stick around in until the sun comes up. He should have called yesterday when he first found out about the number. Fuck this, he takes the phone out of his pocket and types in the number from the text.
He doesn’t even get a hello when the voice on the other end starts to speak. “About time you called. I thought you backed out. Did you get the assignment?”
“Of course,” Brad replies with caution. So it is what he thought it was. But he never signed up to kill anyone. At least he doesn’t think he did, not that he would remember if he did. “Is there anything else I need to know?”
“Everything you’ll need is at the train station. Locker 3B. You have three days left. But you know that already from his profile.”
Brad knows the question he is about to ask is highly unnecessary, but the mystery man is going to hang up and he needs to drag this out longer while not sounding suspicious at all. “Do I need to call you afterwards?”
The man chuckles. “Colbert, we’ll know it if you’ve done your job. At the same time, we’ll know it if you’ve failed. But we know that’s not going to happen, is it?”
*
While he dreams of sand and the sun, this time it is different. He can feel the sand around him everywhere, but there is water in front of him - not a desert. Next to him, a surfboard and a plastic cup of iced coffee half-buried itself into the sand.
“Hey,” the man says, with a smile even brighter than the sun. “You better finish that drink. I’m not having you spilling it all over the rental.”
“I told you I should have ridden the bike over.” Brad hears himself speak. He doesn’t remember this though.
“It wasn’t going to fit your board and me at the same time. We’ve already went over this,” the man says with a slight frown, but not meaning it at all as his face brightens up again.
Brad picks up the plastic cup and drinks it from the brim. He wasn’t going to drink it out of the straw like some girl. The man, now standing up and casually brushing sand off his shorts and legs, laughs at him while shaking his head.
“C’mon,” the man extends his hand out. Brad gladly takes it without a second thought and lets the man pull him up with ease. He takes the board with him and the two of them walk towards the white Prius.
“Don’t start about the car. I didn’t know we were going to need room to put your board in there too,” the man replies when Brad’s eyebrow goes up in half-hearted disdain. Brad knows that the car is exactly what the man drives back in DC, but he keeps his mouth shut. Instead, he has another use for it and pulls the man in for a kiss. There’s no one around - he’s checked and that’s why he chosen this beach in the first place - so they keep at it a little longer. He can taste the salt water on Nate’s lips and smell the sunscreen on him. He can’t get enough of this. They need to go back to his apartment as soon as possible. He wonders if Nate will let him drive; he knows that he can get them back in record speed. They break apart when Brad feels his grip on his board loosening. He catches it just in time before it smashes itself against the concrete.
Brad smiles sheepishly when the other man rolls his eyes. “So it’s the board over me?”
“You’re both very important in my books. Along with my bike. Oh, and that coffee brewer I got for Christmas. All very important.”
*
Brad doesn’t remember falling asleep, but here he is, head resting on the sports bag, still sitting on the hard plastics they call furniture of fast-food booths with an empty cup of coffee on the table next to his head.
He finds it odd that he keeps dreaming about the past. He thought dreams were supposed to be his subconscious and his imagination tossed together and bam, have a dream.
And yet, he is so sure that this really happened. He doesn’t think his mind is clever enough to make up these fantasies, considering they all feature the same person.
He pulls out the beige folder again, and this time going for the photos instead. He must be going crazy. As he examines the photos again, the man in the picture no longer has short cropped hair. Instead they were longer, months past in between to grow out of its shortness. And yet Brad had thought, no, remembered it to be shorter when he first looked at the photos.
“Would you like a refill of that?”
Brad closes the folder and looks up, hiding very well that he was startled when he knows he shouldn’t have been. “Yes, thank you.”
“I wish I had better news, but it’s soon to be rush hour and you can’t stay here much longer. My manager doesn’t like people loitering here around that time.”
Brad shakes his head and offers the girl a smile, thanks, I’ll just get something else to eat. He heads up to the counter and orders a breakfast and another coffee. That will last him for awhile as he plans his next move.
As Brad sits the tray down on his booth again, it finally clicks for him. Despite his amnesia, he thought he was better than this. He whips out the folder again, splaying the files on the table.
There he is, Nathaniel Fick. The man in his dreams. It is obvious enough. Even with a different hairstyle, he still has the same smile and same eyes. It doesn’t help the fact that Brad remembers the way Nate’s lips tasted.
And he is supposed to kill this man.
*
Brad reads over the schedule again. Today, Nate is going to be meeting with the US ambassador at the US consulate.
He finds the famed Locker 3B, but he has no idea how they expect him to know how to open it when he doesn’t have a key for it. He keeps only the phone and his American passport on him before shoving his bag into another locker a few rows down.
As he walks towards the consulate, he decides to take the ‘scout then approach’ tactic, considering what he is about to do. Not to mention the amount of security they’ll have around Nate.
After scouting around the place for an hour, he can’t find an opening in other than the front door. Even after showing his passport at the front and heading inside, there are security personnel in front of every door. The entire mission feels off. He is going into a territory where he has no idea where everything is. Not that the library would have the floor plans to a consulate.
Brad smiles awkwardly at one of the guards while pretending to wait in line that hasn’t moved for the past half an hour.
Looks like today is a bust.
*
After another unsuccessful day of doing recon for Nate, Brad is ready to give up. He had another dream last night - one that would have made a girl blush, but he wasn’t a goddamn girl.
The phone buzzes annoyingly in his pocket. He pulls it out reluctantly, knowing what the call will be like before he even picks up the call.
“Colbert. Did you or did you not get the information about your hit? Considering he’s leaving tomorrow, you get your goddamn ass to where he is by then. I don’t know what is going on at your end, but you better finish your job or we’ll finish you.”
“Yes, sir,” Brad replies sternly, his back straightening without a second thought to what he’s doing.
He thinks it’s imagination, but after everything that’s happened, he opts to trust his instinct instead when it is telling him that there are two men wearing all black staring at him through the window from across the street. Shit, now he has more people on his tail.
“Good. Do what you’re trained to do, Colbert.”
The line cuts dead and Brad stuffs the phone back into his pocket. He picks up his bag and decides to head to the train station where he’s supposed to open Locker 3B there. It’s interesting how he has to go to the locker to get more information when he already has a gun and way too much money in the bag. And he doesn’t even know where they come from. The gun, okay, he can say that it is for protection since he apparently knows how to handle them well. But the money? If he is here to kill someone, why in the world would he have thousands of Euros? Even if it’s a deposit on the hit, there is no way someone is stupid enough to carry it with him. It would more sense to have it deposited into his bank account - which turns out to only be a safety deposit box - or even in cash, in a bag, stuffed in the mysterious Locker 3B. Not the other way around.
*
Out of all three days, today’s location for the assassination is easily the least complicated considering it is outdoors. They should have just told him to be here on this day and he could have finished the job without batting his eyelash.
Brad finds a random building - really, any of these tall buildings would have worked - and gets to work.
After another visit to the train station to open Locker 3B, it apparently worked with the same key as the safety deposit box, Brad gains another weapon in his unnecessary arsenal, this time a long-range sniper rifle for his mark. Whoever employs him for this at least provided him something better than a forty-five to kill someone from a distance.
It is as if he never lost his memory, Brad’s muscle memory sets up the rifle like he's done it all his life. He spots Nate easily despite there being a sea of people down below. Even as he watches, his mind races around for other options other than it ending with a death. If this Nathaniel is the same Nate in his dreams, he holds the key to Brad's past.
He’s tried the ‘recon and approach’ tactic. Not only did that fail miserably, he also has his employer up on his ass. He scans the scene in front of him and easily singles out the guards donning similar outfits to the men from yesterday.
Brad’s mind briefly wonders if these men are to protect Nathaniel, or to make sure he’s dead. He puts on the headphones and lets the words from the speech that’s happening on the podium wash over him.
He moves on to wondering if this is a test - this assignment - a trial put on to test his loyalty to his employer, whoever that may be. And Brad would have applauded the creator of this test if the person carrying out the task hadn’t lost his memory and along with losing the reason to carry on with the goddamn assassination.
Brad calls the hit off himself. This is pathetic. He doesn’t even know who his employer is. Why should he be doing their dirty deeds if there is no reason left for him to do so? He puts his hand on the rifle, ready to take it apart when suddenly there’s a hand on his shoulder. His reflex kicks in - his hand grabs a tight hold onto the perpetrator’s wrist but he fails to get the hand off on his shoulder.
“Brad, Brad - stop!”
The man’s grip is too strong. Brad turns around ready to jam the heel of his other hand into the man’s face but misses when the man dodges easily, catching Brad’s hand and twisting it behind his back.
“Shit, Brad, you still struggling?” The stranger asks, as the two of them gets tangled up on the ground, half trying to get free, half struggling to keep the other man bound.
“Brad, it’s me. What the fuck?”
Brad turns and looks at the man who has him pinned to the ground. He doesn’t recognize him - that one is obvious, but the way the man spoke to him with such familiarity and ease, he should know him from somewhere but nothing’s coming as usual.
“Now would be a good time to tell me everything. Haven’t seen you in months and the first thing you do is attack me.” Should he trust this stranger? What if he’s one of the cops who is after him? Brad has no time to waste as the man stares at him strangely.
Brad begins telling the stranger about everything that’s since happened after he woke up without his memory in the room. After that, he learns that this man served with him in Iraq - which explains the endless dreams about sand and holes in the ground of various sorts, or the fact that he is in top physical form. And the man’s name is Tim Bryan, but Brad would have known him as Doc, or well, Tim now that he’s out of the corp.
“How did you find me?” Brad asks, now that things have calmed down.
“You remember Reporter?” Tim starts, then shakes his head. “Right, you have the amnesia thing going on. Long story short, he was with us as an embedded reporter during the invasion of Iraq. He got wind of this story - apparently it’s been going on for months - assassinations of US citizens, officials, everyone really, always oversea and made to look like accidents or someone else’s fault. Reporter has his sources. Anyway, this time he managed to find out the next target before it’s too late - it’s Nate. He called you, since you didn’t answer, he called Gunny, but Gunny’s off doing something - Reporter wasn’t specific about it, so he found me to scout things out. At least he found me before he got to Ray. To be honest, I thought you were here to protect him, not kill him.”
Brad can only shake his head. The story makes sense to him, yet at the same time, it all feels foreign to him. This is getting fucking tiresome. At least it gives him a reason to not aim the gun at Nate anymore.
“I need to get my memory back,” Brad says with utmost seriousness, as if his life depends on it. And it does.
Tim nods understandingly. “I’ll get in contact with Reporter as soon as I can. For now, get out of the country and lay low for awhile. He might have some news on you too if he knows about the attempt on Nate. I’m just fucking glad I got here in time.”
Brad carefully packs the light fifty back into its case while Tim watches nearby. He doesn’t tell Tim that he wasn’t going to go through with it by the time Tim arrived. But that wouldn’t have made a difference either way, so he keeps it to himself. Just like the question of how Tim found him up in this building will never be asked. He doesn’t mind knowing, but he just won’t ask it.
*
It only took thirty seconds to a minute, if Brad was counting as he walked into his house for the first time in ages with his guards down, for someone to kick down the door, put a bag over Brad’s head, and inject something in his blood stream.
By the time he is conscious again, Brad is sitting on a wooden chair in the middle of the room. His hands and legs are free and he’s already come up with ten different ways to break out of this room - something in him tells him that he’s been trained to do so - but he knows after that he’d be at a lost at what to do when he doesn’t know the layout to this place at all.
“Colbert, it is nice to see you again.”
Brad’s head snaps up. Only now does he realize that he is not alone. Whatever they injected in him played a hell of a trick on his senses if he overlooked an actual person standing in front of him who is only a few feet away from him.
“It looks like they were right. The drugs did work,” the man says, staring intently at Brad.
Brad returns the glare with the same intensity. There is something about the man’s voice that wakens something in him. His brain works overtime trying to place the gravelly voice. He has no idea what the man is talking about. Of course the drugs worked. He is here after all, isn’t he?
The man, again with the cropped haircut, shakes his head and chuckles. “But not entirely. You didn’t carry out your mission like they said you were supposed to. Godfather does not take failure easily. They are already working on a new prototype for the drug as we speak. They told Godfather it was foolproof, but you are the living proof that it did not turn out the way Godfather envisioned it to.”
For one second there, Brad thought he was following along but now he is lost in this man’s lingo.
“You have no questions for Godfather?”
Brad contemplates on asking the questions are the tip of his tongue. But he wonders how much this man - Godfather - is willing to divulge. He has a feeling that the man is going to tell him what is going on without him saying another word. “Why am I here?”
“Godfather isn’t going to let a malfunctioning weapon like that wander around without guidance. Godfather is here to get you to unfuck yourself.”
“How come I don’t remember anything at all?”
“An obvious question, but Godfather will answer it nonetheless. Those scientists have been tasked to help usher in a new era of warfare. Godfather does not select the hits. Godfather only oversees the program’s logistics. It seems like you are our first malfunction. I can see why after they sent Godfather your files. Did you know that it was Godfather’s suggestion that they bring you into this program? You were being wasted out there by those incompetent fools when you could serve your country better with us.”
Brad remembers, just a flash, when he signed up for Hallbrook, thinking that he was serving and protecting his country as part of his military career. It was nothing but a thin disguise for something darker and more sinister.
“Fick is a good man. But it is not Godfather’s choice in who Hallbrook chooses.”
Brad flinches at the mention of Nate. During the flight back from Prague, he passed out the moment the plane took flight. He dreamt of nothing but Nate in various times - in Iraq, in Oceanside, in his house, on his bed, in DC, in Baltimore with his nieces. He watched all of it like a bystander, remembering none of it, yet knowing how the Brad in his dreams felt when he saw the despair and frustration in Nate’s eyes in Baghdad, the soft smile on Nate’s face as he pours another cup of coffee in Brad’s kitchen, and so on.
This must be what Godfather is talking about when he said the experimental drugs failed. Brad has his memory wiped, but not clean enough as it seeps through to his subconscious. He shouldn’t remember Nathaniel, or know who he is at all.
“Godfather can see that you are starting to understand what is happening. You have nothing to worry about. You won’t remember this conversation either way.”
When they toss the bag over him again, he doesn’t struggle. The Marines hammered in the lessons in him well. If he was anyone else, he would have been struggling, punching and kicking his assailants to break free. But now is not the time to do when the drug they dosed him with is still in his system, making his dazed and weak.
They leave him in a windowless room equipped with a single bed, a desk, and a chair, and even a separate room for the bathroom. Picture of luxury right there. But he can’t complain when he remembers watching himself digging a hole in the middle of a desert use to take a dump. A flushable toilet is high-end luxury.
*
OPERATION HALLBROOK SHUTS DOWN AFTER DOCUMENT LEAKS OF ILLEGAL TREATMENTS OF SOLDIERS
Samantha Judge, Associated Press
Two days after an anonymous source leaked documents and stories of the treatments and abuse of soldiers in an undercover military experiment, Operation Hallbrook has been shut down until further notice. The Secretary of Defense, Ben Folger, vows to give the public a proper answer to this horrendous and tragic exploitation of American soldiers, and is also said to lead the investigation into the matters.
“What has transpired today will not be condoned by the Department of Defense or the American public. We have begun our investigations into Operation Hallbrook and all personnel involved with this will be questioned until we reached an understanding of this tragedy. We are disappointed that we have failed to protect our soldiers when they put their trust in us. I want to make a apology to the soldiers and their families who are involved with this, and to the American public who has continued to support the Armed Forces.”
After the initial story of a soldier who was placed into a foreign country without his memory and ordered to assassinate a US official came to surface, similar stories of emerge to back the claim.
…
Sources say that the drug were to only lasts between twelve to eighteen months before it flushed out of the system, as per the length of the contract the soldiers signed for Operation Hallbrook.
All soldiers who participated into the program are released from their contracts and will be given a time of leave as they recover from the experimental drug.
*
Brad closes his laptop to stop himself from reading anymore of these articles. After a whirlwind of physicals, interviews from officials, and paperwork, he is finally released and sent home until they need him again. He still doesn’t remember the house, but he remembers enough of the bike parked in his garage to take it out every day and just lose himself on the open road.
He leaves his phone back at the house after his story broke. After talking to several of his Marine buddies and his family - he remembers none of them despite his effort to regain those memories, he has had enough and needed to get away. He is tired of the sympathy and the eagerness of them wanting him to remember. But if what they are printing in the papers were right, it is going to take another few months before the drugs begin to wear off.
Brad turns back when the sky starts to dim. While he knows that his skill with the bike hasn’t gone away just because his memory has gone missing, he decides to be safe than get into an accident and have it splashed across all the newspapers and news outlets. HALLBROOK SOLDIER CRASHES BIKE - ACCIDENT OR SUICIDE?
As Brad slows his bike to a stop on his driveway, he eyes the car parked in front of his house warily. He doesn’t expect any visitors, especially when he vehemently protested after his sisters and his parents offered (more like threatened) to stay with him until who knows when. While he appreciates the offer, he cannot bear to see the disappointment and frustration in their eyes when they realize that Brad really doesn’t remember them at all.
He takes his time parking his bike in the garage and wiping down the exterior (that he remembers to do for some reason). When he walks into his living room, he can’t tell if he is surprised or breaths a sigh of relief when he sees Nate sitting on a couch and flipping through some boring magazines he picked up at the store when he went to get a case of beer after he polished off the ones he had in his house after the first few nights.
“So I hear you tried to kill me,” Nate says, placing the magazine back on the coffee table. Of course Nate would use a fucking coaster for his beer. Brad got them as a present when he first moved into this place. It’s been sitting there as decoration for years but he’s never had the heart to toss them out or even put them away.
“It didn’t work out that well from my end.”
Nate smiles tentatively. “I hope not.”
Brad continues to stand there, not bridging the gap between them. There is a part of him that wants to walk over there, put his hands on both sides of Nate’s face, and kiss him hard, expecting it to end (or begin) in his bedroom.
But that part of him is still small, small enough to only be detected by a magnify glass if one were to look.
So he stands there, unsure how to approach Nate. To him, Nate is his past; a memory inside of him, only coming out when Brad dreams. So really, the man sitting on his couch is nothing but a stranger, just like all those who have called and tried to visit him.
Yet. Yet, he doesn’t want Nate to leave. He doesn’t want to push Nate away until he gets his memories back and remembers what Nate really means to him.
Brad can be fearless when he is supposed to kill a man he doesn’t know. He can cope being locked up in a cell not knowing when they are going inject him with something newer and better and toss him out there to do their dirty work.
He knows how this goes. If Ray was here, he’d be clapping Brad’s back and ramble on and on at how cliché this is. What if Nate falls in love with this Brad, the one who doesn’t know a thing about Nate, like they’re starting fresh. What if a few months from now, Brad will get his memories back and then Nate finds that he prefers the other Brad. Or some bullshit plot that they always use in those Hollywood rom-coms. Without the happily ever after ending.
Brad watches Nate get up from the couch and walks towards him. He’s never cowered to guns pointed to his temple or bombs tossed his way. But he wants to take a step back and avoid Nate’s hand slowly descending onto his arm.
The touch is reassuring, hey, we’ll take this slowly okay. Nate looks into Brad’s eyes. Brad hopes that Nate will find no fear in him. And Brad nods, ever so slowly. It is only a few months. They can wait it out until then.