Liberty or Possessions Chapter 7 Capital G
Liberty or Possessions Chapter 7
Capital G
Chapter 7 Song by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqmEXdkU5hg
Warnings: Xenophobia, Language, Racist and Religious Slurs, Violence, Torture (Psychological and Physical), Mentions of: Drug Use, Starvation
Oliver had no idea how long he had been unconscious because when he woke he was inside yet another building. Sure, he supposed he could have still been in the Molious base, but the room felt different, far more sinister than the few places he had seen in his short stay in this reality. Most places felt sad and depressed, or energized in the case of the base, but the room he sat in seemed far more evil than any location had a right to be. It took several more minutes for Oliver to place why his head hurt and why his vision still swam. When he remembered what had transpired just before his abrupt fade to black, Oliver could locate other bumps and bruises. The one on his head was the most prominent of course, signaling a heavy headache, but further than that Oliver felt like he had been dragged over cracked cement and hit against walls a few times. He could not pick any one location that hurt and just generalized it seconds later as simply 'all over'. It was akin to, Oliver assumed, being stomped on for hours.
The fuzziness of unconsciousness followed Oliver as he tried to look around through squinted eyes at where he was. The walls were painted a grey-blue, but appeared to be made of cement blocks. The floor was used linoleum that was full of scuffmarks and dirty boot prints. Still it was in good repair compared to most things Oliver had seen in the once vibrant Stockholm. He was not entirely sure when he had started to believe Maria, but in those moments as he fought to see, he had begun to take her side.
Thoughts of Maria came upon Oliver. She had been shot, but he had seen her shot before. She had pulled through with almost no problem, but it had been a shoulder wound that time. A gut shot, like the one she had taken, was different and though Oliver hoped that someone had gotten to her after he had been laid out, he still could not convince himself to get his hopes up.
Moving proved to be impossible as Oliver attempted to reach up and rub at his tired eyes. He thought he may have been able to force them into focus that way, but when he tried to lift his hand, it remained stationary against the arm of the chair he was seated in. He tried again, and when once more he found himself unable to move, he forced himself to blink clarity back to his mind. Everything still hurt, but with cleared eyes, he could assess his situation.
As Oliver looked, he saw that he was strapped to a metal chair. Really, it seemed more like a dental chair than anything normally found around a home, but he did not have much time to determine a whole lot more than that. A voice broke through the silence of the room and startled Oliver into looking up. Across the room to Oliver's left stood a man in a very professional suit and tie. His shoes were shined and not dust covered, and flanking him on either side were soldiers with guns. They did not wear the gas masks with glowing eyes as the ones that stormed Molious had, but were simply dressed in fatigues and one wore a hat. The other had a buzzed hair cut, and Oliver did not need to be told in order to know that they were the military for the Government.
"So, finally decided to join us in the waking world, Oliver?" Oliver was not thrilled that the man knew his name, and his expression betrayed him because seconds later the man laughed and pushed from his perch against the wall. He had been holding a clipboard but dropped it on a small metal cart as he approached. "Surprised? Oh please, we know a hell of a lot, Oliver. But you… you're still a bit of an enigma." At first the man did not continue, rolling his shoulders as if limbering up for a fight. Oliver knew that if the man decided to beat him up there would be nothing he could do to defend against it, and hoped that he would not take a swing.
"Who are you?" Oliver asked, not fully understanding what the man was saying nor the words below it, but he spoke in English and Oliver was not one to try and force Swedish. He had learned from Molious that if English was spoken, you speak it back. Hopefully, Oliver thought, he could fudge understanding.
"Ah!" The man declared, snapping his fingers and pointing at the ceiling. Oliver did not understand the gesture at all and just continued to watch him. The man did not look old, but he definitely was in his fifties. He was clean-shaven and held a good posture, but there was something off about him that at first Oliver could not place.
"Yes, my name is Sinclair. Malcolm Sinclair, that is. You can call me Mister Sinclair. That's what everyone calls me." The man had a grand air about him, Oliver could not deny that, but the need to call him Mister Sinclair seemed ridiculous. Oliver did not work for the man, did not even know him, but yet he thrust whatever status he had on Oliver right away. However, still fearing another beating, Oliver played along. If he managed to stay alive, then maybe someone from Molious could find him and save him. He wondered if anyone had gotten a hold of Mikkel after the raid.
"So now, I assume, you're wondering just why you're here. Just why you weren't killed like all of your little friends, right?" The man's tone was full of arrogance, and Oliver felt a bit of his own temper bubble up for just a fraction of a second, but his self-preservation trumped it easily. Still he did not answer the man, only shifted his gaze to the soldiers that stood against the wall. He was brought back to looking at the overly theatrical man by more finger snaps, right in his face that time.
"Oliver. Oliver, I asked you a question. Pretty rude not to answer, is it not?" Again Oliver bit back his temper, teeth on his tongue for a painful second.
"No, Mister Sinclair. Actually, I was wondering where I am." He spoke flatly, and tried to keep the annoyance from seeping into his voice, though not well. Malcolm Sinclair frowned, though he did not look awkward at all. He looked almost as if he assumed Oliver would not work with him, though disappointed that he had been right.
"Oliver… Oliver, look. I'm a man that likes games." He paused for a moment, turning to look at his soldiers before gesturing with his head toward them. "Not card games or board games, but real games with real stakes. I like playing games with peoples' lives, Oliver, so unless you want me to start playing with your fragile little existence, I think you should probably humor me here." He turned back to Oliver, slamming his hands down on Oliver's wrists and using his weight to push them against the metal chair. Oliver bit back the sudden pain under a snarl that was never vocalized. He held it in as best as he could as he looked up at the man, teeth gritted.
"So, we didn't slaughter you like the rest of the flock because, when one of our soldiers did a facial scan on you, you came up as deceased. Now, pretty strange, isn't it that someone who we're certain was buried is alive and kicking around with those so called freedom fighters?" Oliver abstained from answering and, though not rhetorical, Sinclair continued on as if it was. "So I sent the order out not to kill you, but to bring you back here. Because, really, we don't like mysteries." Oliver did not like mysteries all that much either. For a moment, one brief shred of a moment, Oliver thought that maybe the Government could give him the answers that Molious could not. They knew so much more, and he could let them poke and prod him for a little while in exchange for figuring out exactly who he was. However, that attempt at changing to the winning side died as soon as he actually looked at Malcolm Sinclair again. He looked at his smug face, at his high-class suit and cufflinks and Oliver knew he could never side with them, especially when people were starving and being poisoned in his homeland.
"What are you going to do to me then?" Oliver asked, a bit weakly adding "Mister Sinclair" to the end when the other man narrowed his gaze and clicked his tongue disapprovingly at him. When happy with Oliver's use of his name, Sinclair, let up on Oliver's wrists and took a few steps back, turning away from him as if in thought. Honestly he had thought about what to do with Oliver before, but had never quite made up his mind. Now, with the moment of decision approaching, Malcolm Sinclair knew he would need to make a choice.
"Well, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, I'm thinking we're going to play with your life just a little bit to see if you really aren't the soldier I know you're not." His need to explore the oddity of Oliver won out over his need to neutralize what could only be a threat. The way Malcolm spoke, however, gave Oliver pause. There were a ton of negatives in Sinclair's statement and though Oliver knew English, it was still basic enough to require a moment for him to figure out exactly what Sinclair meant. Sure, he got the part where, right then, Malcolm was not going to kill him, but for a good thirty seconds Oliver did not know if the man thought he was a soldier or not. In that time the man took his hand and stroked Oliver’s palm. Oliver wanted to pull back, recoil from the touch, but the bindings kept him still.
"That's how I know, Oliver." Sinclair said in a silky tone that held something underneath that seemed dangerous and venomous. "We chip everyone; Left palm about a centimeter below the skin. Nowadays we implant them in babies when they’re born. It just makes things easier, but back when we just took over this shitty little country, we had to drag everyone in and chip them. You're, what, twenty-three now? Would have been just a baby when this war started, but a bright age of fourteen when we rolled in to town." Sinclair paused to grab the clipboard he had discarded at the start of their talk. He opened it and flipped just a few pages before he found what he was looking for.
"Ah yes, so you were chipped right away and wanted to join our ranks. You enthusiastically signed up at sixteen. Sure, no secret projects or anything because two years into your service you were killed by…" Malcolm trailed off for just a moment, grinning to himself before he let the secret out into the open. "A Molious attack on the western training grounds outside of Stockholm. Oh, now isn't that interesting?" Oliver stared at Sinclair with surprise and confusion. Maria had told him he had died as a Government soldier and that had sounded pretty bad. What she had not told him, what she had kept secret, was that it had been her own organization that had ended his life. He had been a kid, fresh faced and dumb. He did not deserve to die like that.
"Well, isn't that an interesting look!" Malcolm said with jubilation in his tone. He had gotten the reaction he had apparently wanted out of Oliver, and though Oliver rationalized that, he still could not force himself to react differently. He had put his life in the hands of those that had killed him before just because he had made one stupid ill-informed decision in some other life.
"I didn't… they never…" Oliver began, but Sinclair was a man that liked to hear himself talk and took over for the younger man.
"Never told you? Oh, big surprise there. You see, they tried to hide their dirty work, make themselves look like the white knight riding in to slay the dragon of Government, but really, at the heart and soul of that group there, they're just a bunch of anarchists. They live for the fight and don't actually care who gets between them and their goals. Sure, years ago maybe they were doing the right thing by some moral code, but once Boedker joined up, they turned into something else." A part of Oliver knew what Sinclair was doing. He was attempting to alienate Oliver from Molious, from Mikkel, but even though Oliver knew, he could not stop himself from being pulled along.
"I… I didn't know," Oliver admitted slowly, getting what appeared to be a sympathetic look from Sinclair. However, Oliver knew that it was just for show. The man seemed like a sociopath and no matter how many masks he put on, Oliver reminded himself that he probably never felt any of it.
"Getting the chips out isn't easy, and often leaves a pretty obvious scar that we can find no problem when we look for it. We looked for it and couldn't find it so, that really just leaves the idea that you've never been chipped." Oliver had heard about the chips before, from Maria. She had told him that they had not found one either and to her that meant that Oliver was not from their world. He doubted that Sinclair would take that route at all. "So, at first we thought maybe you were Oliver's twin, but everything is an exact match from your finger prints to your DNA. Now, Oliver, we're curious as to how you're not dead." The man trailed off and Oliver realized he had actually asked a question. Of course it was a question he had no answer to though. He did not know how he was not dead; he did not know how he had no knowledge of this world and how years had gone by since when he was apparently killed and when he had suddenly popped back into existence.
There were many theories on how amnesia worked, but they all agreed that it had to do with parts of the brain becoming damaged, whether physically or psychologically. However, Oliver had never heard of a type in which false memories were implemented in place of real ones, and definitely never heard of any that kept the entirety of a person's life and yet had all fictitious events. He could remember playing hockey. He could remember summers in Sweden and winters in America. He could remember how to play hockey and, given a stick, he knew he could prove that he still had those skills. And yet, as everyone claimed again and again that he used to be a soldier, Oliver knew that he did not know how, nor have the skills needed, to be one. He was a hockey player, and unless he was brainwashed to think he was, Oliver had no idea how he could be both.
"I don't remember ever being chipped," Oliver said weakly, attempting to adjust himself in the chair, which ended up being impossible. Instead he curled his fingers in on his left hand, feeling his palm where the chip should have been. He felt nothing but hockey calluses and virgin flesh, reaffirming his memories. Maria could have been on the right track, Oliver thought again, trying desperately to hold on to some sense of self as he thought about everything that did not make sense, and touched his own hands. Surprisingly, Sinclair gave Oliver a good minute to be in his own thoughts, expecting something to come from it. Of course, when nothing did, he pushed on again.
"So your little family in Molious found you and saved you, thinking you were just a civilian. We never got a scan of you that night because of the gas mask, and I never would have figured you to be one of our dead soldiers, so we just waited until you came out from their crow's nest." He tucked the clipboard under his arm and walked about the room. Sinclair kept his chin up and his eyes did not look at Oliver, but scanned around the room as if surveying his empire. “Funny enough, you eventually came out was with that woman. It was easy to get a scan of you then, and we knew right away that you didn’t have a chip. So, when the soldiers found you being protected by her, we killed her and grabbed you.” Oliver had figured that, somehow, the Government had known he had been there, but previously it had just been paranoia talking. Then, to know that he really had been spotted and that may have been what lead the Government to Molious' door put more weight on Oliver's shoulders than he thought he had ever had.
"But… the ballpark?" Oliver asked weakly, looking up at Sinclair as the man moved about the room in front of him. He was not so much pacing as strolling, obviously thinking and scheming as he did so, but when the question was asked Sinclair stopped and turned to face Oliver again, a smirk upon his lips.
"Oh that? Well, we knew who did that, of course. Wasn't hard to figure it out given the signature style it was done with. The certain flair for the crowds that is only ever done by one person." Sinclair paused again, looking at Oliver intensely for any recognition, for any hint that Oliver knew who had done it and why the attack had played so well into his plans. When none manifested on Oliver's face, Sinclair sighed, resigned that he would have to take baby steps with the previous soldier, now brain dead anomaly. "Of course it was Mikkel Boedker," Malcolm Sinclair told him with some vague exasperation in his tone. "Constant thorn in our side that little shit has been, but luckily still just a pawn. Still under our influences, even when he does stupid shit like making all the idiots out there worry about their safety. He loves them, for some god unknown reason, and given the chance didn't blow that whole stupid arena to the ground. Worked well for us because all we had to do after that was take out Molious. Easy, really, but unfortunately Boedker decided not to be there." Oliver's brows had creased, a bit of distress on his face. Sure, the thought that it had been Mikkel had crossed his mind, but Maria was sure it had not been. Or, at least, Oliver thought she had been sure. Looking back, Oliver was not positive on that front either.
"Really expected him to be back there, so when we stormed the place we could kill him. Unfortunately we didn't get the greatest victory which would have been him using his allies as human shields as he attempted to escape us again. That would have been great to show the public. But, instead, we just get the headline that a group of Chinese supporters have been subdued and that everyone can go back to being safe and secure under our benevolent control." Oliver could not imagine the lengths at which the Government had worked to keep people under their control. He knew it was happening, of course, had seen it almost first hand, but the purely cruel nature in which they lied and fed poison to their subjects was well beyond his scope of knowledge about human conditioning. He could not even imagine doing what the Government had obviously been doing.
"Why them? Why not just go after the real Chinese friends?" Oliver understood sympathizers, but saying it was difficult. He had to work with the words he had and still get the information across, which was proving to be difficult in the high stress situation. Sinclair definitely gave him a look at his word choice, but Oliver kept his face up defiantly.
"Friends? Really, Oliver, I expect better than that and I know you can do better. We made a point of teaching all citizens English." Oliver was a bit disgruntled by the putting down of how far he had grown in his English skills. What he wanted to know was how the Government was keeping his people under their thumbs, not how to say sympathizers. Without the timeline where America made his people learn English, Oliver had come a long way with his vocabulary, even when teammates such as Biz tried to be counterproductive and teach him 'Dat ass' instead of 'Symbiotic'.
"Really can't say it, so help me understand instead," Oliver responded, obviously disgruntled under the shaming Sinclair had begun. Thankfully, instead of pushing the line of conversation into the topic of Oliver's woeful grasp of English, he actually did answer the young man's question.
"No threat of real Chinese sympathizers any more, not after we actually killed them all." He paused, surveying the room once more before he continued. "Actually, China herself isn't even a threat anymore. Those idiots…" Sinclair trailed off again, laughing quietly to himself as he shook his head. It seemed to be a joke that only he knew, one that he slowly decided to share with Oliver. "Those idiots basically blew themselves up. Knowing the little problems we had when taking over European countries, we played them. Launched some missiles, and then fed some lies. Gave them intel that said that Iraq sent the bombs. Even dressed the ICBM's to look like the ugly and botched designs they had been using. Really, the problem just sort of fixed itself." Oliver could only stare at Sinclair when he finished. China had killed her allies, and probably countless civilians in the process, and Sinclair considered it a win. Oliver considered it something else entirely. He bounced between tragic and downright disturbing.
"Then… why are you still here?" He ventured to ask, which seemed to be exactly what Sinclair wanted him to ask. He smiled brightly and returned his whole attention to Oliver. He approached once more, but did not touch Oliver as he had previously. Instead he slipped his hands into his pockets and puffed his chest out a little.
"Well, at first we just needed staging grounds, places closer to the problem areas out here. Sure, England was on our side from the get-go, but they have their own shit and it just ended up being in the way." He paused, as if in thought, and Oliver waited patiently, though he itched to get up and leave the repulsive man. He wanted to beat the shit out of Sinclair for what he and the Government had done to his home country, to Molious, but he knew even slightly giving away his hatred for the man would not work in his favor. "So we took over Spain and France. Easy enough, really, given their proximity to some of the more problematic Governments. We figured out then the power of propaganda. After that, just made more sense to get as much as we could. Of course, the land, water, and resources were a big part, and still are."
"But you're killing the Earth!" Oliver almost shouted back. He could not believe Sinclair could be blind to what was going on outside. There was no way anyone could look at the dirt and not see the lack of grass in what should have been a very green and beautiful part of the world. Sinclair wheeled on Oliver and the younger man wished he had kept his mouth shut or, at least, the venom out of his tone.
"The Chinese killed the Earth!" He shouted back, face less than a foot from Oliver's. His blue eyes shown with spite toward the young Swede, and Oliver did not want to, but his natural reaction was to back up. His head collided against the headrest of the chair, but Sinclair remained way too close for comfort. "They started this war, and we finished it. And we're the villains here? No, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, they brought the nukes into the picture, and we had to return in kind. They killed the Earth, and we're just picking the corpse. Making the best out of a bad situation." Oliver no longer felt mad, but scared and sad instead. The man that stood in front of him actually thought he was doing something good. Not for the world, and not even for America, but for himself. Even Oliver, bound to a chair, could see he was very wrong.
"Then why stay here? War's done! Let everyone know America won and go home!" Sinclair actually did not have an immediate come back, but something changed on his face. He no longer looked mad at Oliver, but actually amused by what he had said. Slowly he smiled, more of a smirk really, and moved back again. He stood up straight and adjusted his tie, looking down his nose when he addressed the young man once more.
"And what? Go back there and starve? Pay twenty bucks for a loaf of bread? Think not, Oliver. Think I'll stay right here where everyone, and I mean everyone, bows before me. Where I have a whole army at my command and no one thinks about charging me a cent for my food or water. Where I don't have to hope that the shipments come in." The shipments? Oliver thought about it, really concentrated on Sinclair's words until he got the whole picture. America was not the victor in the war, but yet another casualty of it. They were in the same state as, if not worse than, Sweden was. They had nothing left and their people were starving on the streets too. That meant that Sweden had something America did not, and Oliver figured it was the places where they made the food and water.
"Why're people here so bad then? Why can't they have food and water more?" At first Oliver could not tell what Sinclair was thinking when he assessed the question, but it slowly became more apparent as his anger came back. It was not the same anger as before, though, because Oliver had not questioned his motives directly.
"They get enough as it is," He responded in a clipped tone. "They get water right from their taps. They get food if they work. Those beggars standing out there crying poverty, well they just don't want to work for what they're given. They want us to feel sorry for them, but we don't. We have enough problems." Oliver could not believe that reasoning. There were children that could not work, and elderly that had no place still working. And then, in addition, there were the sick or the injured that could not do the backbreaking labor that seemed to go with the factories Maria told him about. Thoughts of the woman threatened to creep in, but Oliver held them off. He had to worry about his own survival, and not if she had made it out or not.
"But some…" Oliver started, but Sinclair refused to let him get the rest of his statement out. His rage grew and Oliver was sure he would get beat up for his insubordination.
"No, there is no 'some'!" Sinclair screamed at him, flecks of spit hitting Oliver’s face. "There are those that do, and there are those that die. America and the soldiers she creates are the only ones that did anything to keep free countries free, and those that didn't step up suddenly want all the rewards. No, we're not giving shit to the lowlife atheist towel-head monkeys." Oliver had been told about the Government's take on people that did not exactly align with their ideals, but to hear Sinclair say it in such a bigoted way really put it into perspective for Oliver. Sinclair actually did believe that crap, and he seemed like a powerful man, which only made the rest of the fight for freedom seem more impossible.
"You're… you're fucking crazy!" Oliver hollered back, knowing it was not his best move of the day, which was saying a lot. "Insane! You have everyone and you do bad all the time!" Sinclair's face was still dark, but he slowly smiled and it was not jovial in the least. He was steaming mad, and for some reason, that made him smile.
"You have no idea what this power does, Ekman-Larsson. You don't even have the smallest fraction of what I have, and deep down that kills you. You want to feel that power and, you know what? I'm going to give you a taste of it." Oliver did not like the sound of Sinclair's promise, or possibly his threat. Oliver did not want to feel that power. He wanted to be home, not face to face with the mad man in the fancy suit and cufflinks. He wanted to close his eyes and wake up in his apartment and vow from that day forward to only ever do right by the world.
"No," He told Sinclair, but it fell on deaf ears. The man had never heard a no that he had listened to, and he would be damned if he started that day. Oliver continued to tell the man that he wanted no part of the power that the man claimed to hold, but Sinclair just moved away.
"Go get them," He told the soldier in the hat, and he moved away without question or concern. Oliver followed him as far as he could, but the soldier eventually left the room and left Oliver with even more worries. He did not want to know whom “they” were, the ones that were being gotten, because it only meant bad news for the young man. He prayed and begged in his mind, as well as vocally, for it to all be a dream.
"Oh, come on, Oliver! What I'm giving you is a gift!" Sinclair almost teased, obviously elated over whatever he planned to do to Oliver.
"Don't want your gifts!" Oliver countered. "Just want to leave!"
"Definitely no leaving," Sinclair told him, moving around Oliver as if a predator stalking his prey. "But, we've talked so much about myself, that I find myself wondering more about you. Wondering more about why you're not chipped, about why you're here and not dead, and, mostly, why you were on that street a few nights ago." Oliver definitely had no answers for the man, but he remembered something else Maria had told him. Those with information that the Government did not have were not killed. At least not right away. Sure, they were tortured, probably, but not killed until the Government got whatever it was they wanted. That was how they had gotten rid of the Chinese sympathizers, and that was how they got rid of Molious. They got information, and from there they got what they wanted. Oliver just had to keep being a mystery long enough to escape. He did not answer any of Sinclair's questions, and bit his cheek in order to make sure he did not have any urge to, even with lies.
It took a minute, but Sinclair eventually came to terms with the fact that Oliver would not take the bait. He was sure, bordering on positive, that Oliver was not the soldier that they had in their ranks once, and that made him an enigma to Sinclair. As he had said, Sinclair was not one for mysteries, but there was a strange allure to the Ekman-Larsson question that made him not want to neutralize him right away. Instead he had a better thought, one that would, if all went according to plan, make all of Sinclair's woes go away.
The door the soldier left through opened again. Along with the soldier in the hat’s return came the introduction of three lab-coat wearing men and three more armed soldiers. The guards, as per apparently common practice, showed no expression on their faces. They seemed as dead-eyed and distant as the ones in the room had before the number of occupants grew. The scientists, however, seemed more human, even a little nervous, but they still moved with some authority and purpose. Oliver could only imagine that while not in the same room as the sociopath Sinclair they would be quite normal, maybe even laugh over some lab joke. However, while standing so near to the man that could have them killed at any moment, they were nothing aside from professional.
"I figured it would be a losing battle trying to get you to talk. Molious likes to make sure their new recruits learn to keep a secret, and tell them that if you don't talk, we won’t kill you. In reality, though, when someone doesn't talk we do something a whole lot worse than kill them." Sinclair had turned from Oliver, grabbing the clipboard from the metal cart once more. The scientists moved toward it and began pulling out instruments from the drawers contained below the shiny metal top. Oliver watched and, with a shiver down his spine, realized that he had made all the wrong moves since waking up on the street. If he had only walked away from the city lights, Oliver thought as scalpels were placed on the top of the cart, he could have been free from all the drama he had become tripped up in.
"So, these men are going to give you a chip and then… well, then we're going to make you a soldier." No one at Molious had told him that the Government could make him a soldier. Oliver thought that just a lot of people had fallen for the propaganda and had joined, not that they were forced into it.
"I won’t fight for you!" Oliver told him emphatically, hands balled into fists. If only he could move, Oliver would beat the grin right off of Sinclair's face. Instead, his inability to take action only made Sinclair smile more.
"Well, I wasn't asking you, Oliver. Because, when we're done, you won’t have much of a choice." Sinclair moved back to Oliver, standing right in front of him as he watched the younger man with smug satisfaction. "We lost a damn good soldier when we lost Boedker, and, really, none of these idiots have even come close to the genius he had. He was ruthless when we gave him an order, and we knew it would get done. Sometimes we wouldn't even need to give an order. He would just know when a target wasn't worth the trouble and eliminated them." Sinclair paused, an almost whimsical expression on his face as he remembered Mikkel's perfection as a soldier. He was the perfect model, what they were looking for exactly in all of their soldiers, but which could never be replicated.
"He was the perfect soldier, but a bit more clever than we anticipated. At some point there was… well, a glitch in the plan. At some point he missed taking the drugs and we never noticed. One day usually didn't cause a problem, but that one day caused him to realize just what he was. Then, when we thought he was just sick, we let our guard down." Sinclair grabbed a fist full of Oliver's hair and jerked his head back. His free hand put weight down on Oliver's wrist again and the pain came back, but the younger man clenched his teeth to bear it.
"We don't make the same mistakes twice, Oliver. We'll keep you under until the day you die. And, hopefully, Boedker will be hunting you right now for the slaughter at his precious little base. After your rehabilitation we will let him find you. And then you will kill him and all of my headaches will finally be gone." Sinclair let go of Oliver's hair and reached back. One of the scientists handed him a scalpel and, with some manhandling of Oliver's left hand, Sinclair cut the palm open. He did the dirty work himself as he forced the small chip under the flesh. Oliver could not help crying out as the small piece of metal forced its way under his skin, igniting the nerves with intense pain. He clenched his eyes and teeth tight, trying to internalize the pain, but it only reminded Oliver of how worn down his body already was. It would be a lot easier to just give up right then, he knew. They would not kill him, but, at the same time, Oliver had no interest in being their puppet. He wanted to fight, but he saw no way out as Sinclair stepped back and wiped his hands off on a towel, staining it red with Oliver's blood. One of the scientists moved to bandage Oliver's wound, not letting him force the chip out. He was completely at their mercy.
Playlist by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://8tracks.com/masterpenguin/liberty-of-possession
Chapter 7 Song by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqmEXdkU5hg
Master Post: http://z4rf3.livejournal.com/16531.html
Chapter 8 My Violent Heart: http://z4rf3.livejournal.com/18472.html
Capital G
Chapter 7 Song by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqmEXdkU5hg
Warnings: Xenophobia, Language, Racist and Religious Slurs, Violence, Torture (Psychological and Physical), Mentions of: Drug Use, Starvation
Oliver had no idea how long he had been unconscious because when he woke he was inside yet another building. Sure, he supposed he could have still been in the Molious base, but the room felt different, far more sinister than the few places he had seen in his short stay in this reality. Most places felt sad and depressed, or energized in the case of the base, but the room he sat in seemed far more evil than any location had a right to be. It took several more minutes for Oliver to place why his head hurt and why his vision still swam. When he remembered what had transpired just before his abrupt fade to black, Oliver could locate other bumps and bruises. The one on his head was the most prominent of course, signaling a heavy headache, but further than that Oliver felt like he had been dragged over cracked cement and hit against walls a few times. He could not pick any one location that hurt and just generalized it seconds later as simply 'all over'. It was akin to, Oliver assumed, being stomped on for hours.
The fuzziness of unconsciousness followed Oliver as he tried to look around through squinted eyes at where he was. The walls were painted a grey-blue, but appeared to be made of cement blocks. The floor was used linoleum that was full of scuffmarks and dirty boot prints. Still it was in good repair compared to most things Oliver had seen in the once vibrant Stockholm. He was not entirely sure when he had started to believe Maria, but in those moments as he fought to see, he had begun to take her side.
Thoughts of Maria came upon Oliver. She had been shot, but he had seen her shot before. She had pulled through with almost no problem, but it had been a shoulder wound that time. A gut shot, like the one she had taken, was different and though Oliver hoped that someone had gotten to her after he had been laid out, he still could not convince himself to get his hopes up.
Moving proved to be impossible as Oliver attempted to reach up and rub at his tired eyes. He thought he may have been able to force them into focus that way, but when he tried to lift his hand, it remained stationary against the arm of the chair he was seated in. He tried again, and when once more he found himself unable to move, he forced himself to blink clarity back to his mind. Everything still hurt, but with cleared eyes, he could assess his situation.
As Oliver looked, he saw that he was strapped to a metal chair. Really, it seemed more like a dental chair than anything normally found around a home, but he did not have much time to determine a whole lot more than that. A voice broke through the silence of the room and startled Oliver into looking up. Across the room to Oliver's left stood a man in a very professional suit and tie. His shoes were shined and not dust covered, and flanking him on either side were soldiers with guns. They did not wear the gas masks with glowing eyes as the ones that stormed Molious had, but were simply dressed in fatigues and one wore a hat. The other had a buzzed hair cut, and Oliver did not need to be told in order to know that they were the military for the Government.
"So, finally decided to join us in the waking world, Oliver?" Oliver was not thrilled that the man knew his name, and his expression betrayed him because seconds later the man laughed and pushed from his perch against the wall. He had been holding a clipboard but dropped it on a small metal cart as he approached. "Surprised? Oh please, we know a hell of a lot, Oliver. But you… you're still a bit of an enigma." At first the man did not continue, rolling his shoulders as if limbering up for a fight. Oliver knew that if the man decided to beat him up there would be nothing he could do to defend against it, and hoped that he would not take a swing.
"Who are you?" Oliver asked, not fully understanding what the man was saying nor the words below it, but he spoke in English and Oliver was not one to try and force Swedish. He had learned from Molious that if English was spoken, you speak it back. Hopefully, Oliver thought, he could fudge understanding.
"Ah!" The man declared, snapping his fingers and pointing at the ceiling. Oliver did not understand the gesture at all and just continued to watch him. The man did not look old, but he definitely was in his fifties. He was clean-shaven and held a good posture, but there was something off about him that at first Oliver could not place.
"Yes, my name is Sinclair. Malcolm Sinclair, that is. You can call me Mister Sinclair. That's what everyone calls me." The man had a grand air about him, Oliver could not deny that, but the need to call him Mister Sinclair seemed ridiculous. Oliver did not work for the man, did not even know him, but yet he thrust whatever status he had on Oliver right away. However, still fearing another beating, Oliver played along. If he managed to stay alive, then maybe someone from Molious could find him and save him. He wondered if anyone had gotten a hold of Mikkel after the raid.
"So now, I assume, you're wondering just why you're here. Just why you weren't killed like all of your little friends, right?" The man's tone was full of arrogance, and Oliver felt a bit of his own temper bubble up for just a fraction of a second, but his self-preservation trumped it easily. Still he did not answer the man, only shifted his gaze to the soldiers that stood against the wall. He was brought back to looking at the overly theatrical man by more finger snaps, right in his face that time.
"Oliver. Oliver, I asked you a question. Pretty rude not to answer, is it not?" Again Oliver bit back his temper, teeth on his tongue for a painful second.
"No, Mister Sinclair. Actually, I was wondering where I am." He spoke flatly, and tried to keep the annoyance from seeping into his voice, though not well. Malcolm Sinclair frowned, though he did not look awkward at all. He looked almost as if he assumed Oliver would not work with him, though disappointed that he had been right.
"Oliver… Oliver, look. I'm a man that likes games." He paused for a moment, turning to look at his soldiers before gesturing with his head toward them. "Not card games or board games, but real games with real stakes. I like playing games with peoples' lives, Oliver, so unless you want me to start playing with your fragile little existence, I think you should probably humor me here." He turned back to Oliver, slamming his hands down on Oliver's wrists and using his weight to push them against the metal chair. Oliver bit back the sudden pain under a snarl that was never vocalized. He held it in as best as he could as he looked up at the man, teeth gritted.
"So, we didn't slaughter you like the rest of the flock because, when one of our soldiers did a facial scan on you, you came up as deceased. Now, pretty strange, isn't it that someone who we're certain was buried is alive and kicking around with those so called freedom fighters?" Oliver abstained from answering and, though not rhetorical, Sinclair continued on as if it was. "So I sent the order out not to kill you, but to bring you back here. Because, really, we don't like mysteries." Oliver did not like mysteries all that much either. For a moment, one brief shred of a moment, Oliver thought that maybe the Government could give him the answers that Molious could not. They knew so much more, and he could let them poke and prod him for a little while in exchange for figuring out exactly who he was. However, that attempt at changing to the winning side died as soon as he actually looked at Malcolm Sinclair again. He looked at his smug face, at his high-class suit and cufflinks and Oliver knew he could never side with them, especially when people were starving and being poisoned in his homeland.
"What are you going to do to me then?" Oliver asked, a bit weakly adding "Mister Sinclair" to the end when the other man narrowed his gaze and clicked his tongue disapprovingly at him. When happy with Oliver's use of his name, Sinclair, let up on Oliver's wrists and took a few steps back, turning away from him as if in thought. Honestly he had thought about what to do with Oliver before, but had never quite made up his mind. Now, with the moment of decision approaching, Malcolm Sinclair knew he would need to make a choice.
"Well, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, I'm thinking we're going to play with your life just a little bit to see if you really aren't the soldier I know you're not." His need to explore the oddity of Oliver won out over his need to neutralize what could only be a threat. The way Malcolm spoke, however, gave Oliver pause. There were a ton of negatives in Sinclair's statement and though Oliver knew English, it was still basic enough to require a moment for him to figure out exactly what Sinclair meant. Sure, he got the part where, right then, Malcolm was not going to kill him, but for a good thirty seconds Oliver did not know if the man thought he was a soldier or not. In that time the man took his hand and stroked Oliver’s palm. Oliver wanted to pull back, recoil from the touch, but the bindings kept him still.
"That's how I know, Oliver." Sinclair said in a silky tone that held something underneath that seemed dangerous and venomous. "We chip everyone; Left palm about a centimeter below the skin. Nowadays we implant them in babies when they’re born. It just makes things easier, but back when we just took over this shitty little country, we had to drag everyone in and chip them. You're, what, twenty-three now? Would have been just a baby when this war started, but a bright age of fourteen when we rolled in to town." Sinclair paused to grab the clipboard he had discarded at the start of their talk. He opened it and flipped just a few pages before he found what he was looking for.
"Ah yes, so you were chipped right away and wanted to join our ranks. You enthusiastically signed up at sixteen. Sure, no secret projects or anything because two years into your service you were killed by…" Malcolm trailed off for just a moment, grinning to himself before he let the secret out into the open. "A Molious attack on the western training grounds outside of Stockholm. Oh, now isn't that interesting?" Oliver stared at Sinclair with surprise and confusion. Maria had told him he had died as a Government soldier and that had sounded pretty bad. What she had not told him, what she had kept secret, was that it had been her own organization that had ended his life. He had been a kid, fresh faced and dumb. He did not deserve to die like that.
"Well, isn't that an interesting look!" Malcolm said with jubilation in his tone. He had gotten the reaction he had apparently wanted out of Oliver, and though Oliver rationalized that, he still could not force himself to react differently. He had put his life in the hands of those that had killed him before just because he had made one stupid ill-informed decision in some other life.
"I didn't… they never…" Oliver began, but Sinclair was a man that liked to hear himself talk and took over for the younger man.
"Never told you? Oh, big surprise there. You see, they tried to hide their dirty work, make themselves look like the white knight riding in to slay the dragon of Government, but really, at the heart and soul of that group there, they're just a bunch of anarchists. They live for the fight and don't actually care who gets between them and their goals. Sure, years ago maybe they were doing the right thing by some moral code, but once Boedker joined up, they turned into something else." A part of Oliver knew what Sinclair was doing. He was attempting to alienate Oliver from Molious, from Mikkel, but even though Oliver knew, he could not stop himself from being pulled along.
"I… I didn't know," Oliver admitted slowly, getting what appeared to be a sympathetic look from Sinclair. However, Oliver knew that it was just for show. The man seemed like a sociopath and no matter how many masks he put on, Oliver reminded himself that he probably never felt any of it.
"Getting the chips out isn't easy, and often leaves a pretty obvious scar that we can find no problem when we look for it. We looked for it and couldn't find it so, that really just leaves the idea that you've never been chipped." Oliver had heard about the chips before, from Maria. She had told him that they had not found one either and to her that meant that Oliver was not from their world. He doubted that Sinclair would take that route at all. "So, at first we thought maybe you were Oliver's twin, but everything is an exact match from your finger prints to your DNA. Now, Oliver, we're curious as to how you're not dead." The man trailed off and Oliver realized he had actually asked a question. Of course it was a question he had no answer to though. He did not know how he was not dead; he did not know how he had no knowledge of this world and how years had gone by since when he was apparently killed and when he had suddenly popped back into existence.
There were many theories on how amnesia worked, but they all agreed that it had to do with parts of the brain becoming damaged, whether physically or psychologically. However, Oliver had never heard of a type in which false memories were implemented in place of real ones, and definitely never heard of any that kept the entirety of a person's life and yet had all fictitious events. He could remember playing hockey. He could remember summers in Sweden and winters in America. He could remember how to play hockey and, given a stick, he knew he could prove that he still had those skills. And yet, as everyone claimed again and again that he used to be a soldier, Oliver knew that he did not know how, nor have the skills needed, to be one. He was a hockey player, and unless he was brainwashed to think he was, Oliver had no idea how he could be both.
"I don't remember ever being chipped," Oliver said weakly, attempting to adjust himself in the chair, which ended up being impossible. Instead he curled his fingers in on his left hand, feeling his palm where the chip should have been. He felt nothing but hockey calluses and virgin flesh, reaffirming his memories. Maria could have been on the right track, Oliver thought again, trying desperately to hold on to some sense of self as he thought about everything that did not make sense, and touched his own hands. Surprisingly, Sinclair gave Oliver a good minute to be in his own thoughts, expecting something to come from it. Of course, when nothing did, he pushed on again.
"So your little family in Molious found you and saved you, thinking you were just a civilian. We never got a scan of you that night because of the gas mask, and I never would have figured you to be one of our dead soldiers, so we just waited until you came out from their crow's nest." He tucked the clipboard under his arm and walked about the room. Sinclair kept his chin up and his eyes did not look at Oliver, but scanned around the room as if surveying his empire. “Funny enough, you eventually came out was with that woman. It was easy to get a scan of you then, and we knew right away that you didn’t have a chip. So, when the soldiers found you being protected by her, we killed her and grabbed you.” Oliver had figured that, somehow, the Government had known he had been there, but previously it had just been paranoia talking. Then, to know that he really had been spotted and that may have been what lead the Government to Molious' door put more weight on Oliver's shoulders than he thought he had ever had.
"But… the ballpark?" Oliver asked weakly, looking up at Sinclair as the man moved about the room in front of him. He was not so much pacing as strolling, obviously thinking and scheming as he did so, but when the question was asked Sinclair stopped and turned to face Oliver again, a smirk upon his lips.
"Oh that? Well, we knew who did that, of course. Wasn't hard to figure it out given the signature style it was done with. The certain flair for the crowds that is only ever done by one person." Sinclair paused again, looking at Oliver intensely for any recognition, for any hint that Oliver knew who had done it and why the attack had played so well into his plans. When none manifested on Oliver's face, Sinclair sighed, resigned that he would have to take baby steps with the previous soldier, now brain dead anomaly. "Of course it was Mikkel Boedker," Malcolm Sinclair told him with some vague exasperation in his tone. "Constant thorn in our side that little shit has been, but luckily still just a pawn. Still under our influences, even when he does stupid shit like making all the idiots out there worry about their safety. He loves them, for some god unknown reason, and given the chance didn't blow that whole stupid arena to the ground. Worked well for us because all we had to do after that was take out Molious. Easy, really, but unfortunately Boedker decided not to be there." Oliver's brows had creased, a bit of distress on his face. Sure, the thought that it had been Mikkel had crossed his mind, but Maria was sure it had not been. Or, at least, Oliver thought she had been sure. Looking back, Oliver was not positive on that front either.
"Really expected him to be back there, so when we stormed the place we could kill him. Unfortunately we didn't get the greatest victory which would have been him using his allies as human shields as he attempted to escape us again. That would have been great to show the public. But, instead, we just get the headline that a group of Chinese supporters have been subdued and that everyone can go back to being safe and secure under our benevolent control." Oliver could not imagine the lengths at which the Government had worked to keep people under their control. He knew it was happening, of course, had seen it almost first hand, but the purely cruel nature in which they lied and fed poison to their subjects was well beyond his scope of knowledge about human conditioning. He could not even imagine doing what the Government had obviously been doing.
"Why them? Why not just go after the real Chinese friends?" Oliver understood sympathizers, but saying it was difficult. He had to work with the words he had and still get the information across, which was proving to be difficult in the high stress situation. Sinclair definitely gave him a look at his word choice, but Oliver kept his face up defiantly.
"Friends? Really, Oliver, I expect better than that and I know you can do better. We made a point of teaching all citizens English." Oliver was a bit disgruntled by the putting down of how far he had grown in his English skills. What he wanted to know was how the Government was keeping his people under their thumbs, not how to say sympathizers. Without the timeline where America made his people learn English, Oliver had come a long way with his vocabulary, even when teammates such as Biz tried to be counterproductive and teach him 'Dat ass' instead of 'Symbiotic'.
"Really can't say it, so help me understand instead," Oliver responded, obviously disgruntled under the shaming Sinclair had begun. Thankfully, instead of pushing the line of conversation into the topic of Oliver's woeful grasp of English, he actually did answer the young man's question.
"No threat of real Chinese sympathizers any more, not after we actually killed them all." He paused, surveying the room once more before he continued. "Actually, China herself isn't even a threat anymore. Those idiots…" Sinclair trailed off again, laughing quietly to himself as he shook his head. It seemed to be a joke that only he knew, one that he slowly decided to share with Oliver. "Those idiots basically blew themselves up. Knowing the little problems we had when taking over European countries, we played them. Launched some missiles, and then fed some lies. Gave them intel that said that Iraq sent the bombs. Even dressed the ICBM's to look like the ugly and botched designs they had been using. Really, the problem just sort of fixed itself." Oliver could only stare at Sinclair when he finished. China had killed her allies, and probably countless civilians in the process, and Sinclair considered it a win. Oliver considered it something else entirely. He bounced between tragic and downright disturbing.
"Then… why are you still here?" He ventured to ask, which seemed to be exactly what Sinclair wanted him to ask. He smiled brightly and returned his whole attention to Oliver. He approached once more, but did not touch Oliver as he had previously. Instead he slipped his hands into his pockets and puffed his chest out a little.
"Well, at first we just needed staging grounds, places closer to the problem areas out here. Sure, England was on our side from the get-go, but they have their own shit and it just ended up being in the way." He paused, as if in thought, and Oliver waited patiently, though he itched to get up and leave the repulsive man. He wanted to beat the shit out of Sinclair for what he and the Government had done to his home country, to Molious, but he knew even slightly giving away his hatred for the man would not work in his favor. "So we took over Spain and France. Easy enough, really, given their proximity to some of the more problematic Governments. We figured out then the power of propaganda. After that, just made more sense to get as much as we could. Of course, the land, water, and resources were a big part, and still are."
"But you're killing the Earth!" Oliver almost shouted back. He could not believe Sinclair could be blind to what was going on outside. There was no way anyone could look at the dirt and not see the lack of grass in what should have been a very green and beautiful part of the world. Sinclair wheeled on Oliver and the younger man wished he had kept his mouth shut or, at least, the venom out of his tone.
"The Chinese killed the Earth!" He shouted back, face less than a foot from Oliver's. His blue eyes shown with spite toward the young Swede, and Oliver did not want to, but his natural reaction was to back up. His head collided against the headrest of the chair, but Sinclair remained way too close for comfort. "They started this war, and we finished it. And we're the villains here? No, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, they brought the nukes into the picture, and we had to return in kind. They killed the Earth, and we're just picking the corpse. Making the best out of a bad situation." Oliver no longer felt mad, but scared and sad instead. The man that stood in front of him actually thought he was doing something good. Not for the world, and not even for America, but for himself. Even Oliver, bound to a chair, could see he was very wrong.
"Then why stay here? War's done! Let everyone know America won and go home!" Sinclair actually did not have an immediate come back, but something changed on his face. He no longer looked mad at Oliver, but actually amused by what he had said. Slowly he smiled, more of a smirk really, and moved back again. He stood up straight and adjusted his tie, looking down his nose when he addressed the young man once more.
"And what? Go back there and starve? Pay twenty bucks for a loaf of bread? Think not, Oliver. Think I'll stay right here where everyone, and I mean everyone, bows before me. Where I have a whole army at my command and no one thinks about charging me a cent for my food or water. Where I don't have to hope that the shipments come in." The shipments? Oliver thought about it, really concentrated on Sinclair's words until he got the whole picture. America was not the victor in the war, but yet another casualty of it. They were in the same state as, if not worse than, Sweden was. They had nothing left and their people were starving on the streets too. That meant that Sweden had something America did not, and Oliver figured it was the places where they made the food and water.
"Why're people here so bad then? Why can't they have food and water more?" At first Oliver could not tell what Sinclair was thinking when he assessed the question, but it slowly became more apparent as his anger came back. It was not the same anger as before, though, because Oliver had not questioned his motives directly.
"They get enough as it is," He responded in a clipped tone. "They get water right from their taps. They get food if they work. Those beggars standing out there crying poverty, well they just don't want to work for what they're given. They want us to feel sorry for them, but we don't. We have enough problems." Oliver could not believe that reasoning. There were children that could not work, and elderly that had no place still working. And then, in addition, there were the sick or the injured that could not do the backbreaking labor that seemed to go with the factories Maria told him about. Thoughts of the woman threatened to creep in, but Oliver held them off. He had to worry about his own survival, and not if she had made it out or not.
"But some…" Oliver started, but Sinclair refused to let him get the rest of his statement out. His rage grew and Oliver was sure he would get beat up for his insubordination.
"No, there is no 'some'!" Sinclair screamed at him, flecks of spit hitting Oliver’s face. "There are those that do, and there are those that die. America and the soldiers she creates are the only ones that did anything to keep free countries free, and those that didn't step up suddenly want all the rewards. No, we're not giving shit to the lowlife atheist towel-head monkeys." Oliver had been told about the Government's take on people that did not exactly align with their ideals, but to hear Sinclair say it in such a bigoted way really put it into perspective for Oliver. Sinclair actually did believe that crap, and he seemed like a powerful man, which only made the rest of the fight for freedom seem more impossible.
"You're… you're fucking crazy!" Oliver hollered back, knowing it was not his best move of the day, which was saying a lot. "Insane! You have everyone and you do bad all the time!" Sinclair's face was still dark, but he slowly smiled and it was not jovial in the least. He was steaming mad, and for some reason, that made him smile.
"You have no idea what this power does, Ekman-Larsson. You don't even have the smallest fraction of what I have, and deep down that kills you. You want to feel that power and, you know what? I'm going to give you a taste of it." Oliver did not like the sound of Sinclair's promise, or possibly his threat. Oliver did not want to feel that power. He wanted to be home, not face to face with the mad man in the fancy suit and cufflinks. He wanted to close his eyes and wake up in his apartment and vow from that day forward to only ever do right by the world.
"No," He told Sinclair, but it fell on deaf ears. The man had never heard a no that he had listened to, and he would be damned if he started that day. Oliver continued to tell the man that he wanted no part of the power that the man claimed to hold, but Sinclair just moved away.
"Go get them," He told the soldier in the hat, and he moved away without question or concern. Oliver followed him as far as he could, but the soldier eventually left the room and left Oliver with even more worries. He did not want to know whom “they” were, the ones that were being gotten, because it only meant bad news for the young man. He prayed and begged in his mind, as well as vocally, for it to all be a dream.
"Oh, come on, Oliver! What I'm giving you is a gift!" Sinclair almost teased, obviously elated over whatever he planned to do to Oliver.
"Don't want your gifts!" Oliver countered. "Just want to leave!"
"Definitely no leaving," Sinclair told him, moving around Oliver as if a predator stalking his prey. "But, we've talked so much about myself, that I find myself wondering more about you. Wondering more about why you're not chipped, about why you're here and not dead, and, mostly, why you were on that street a few nights ago." Oliver definitely had no answers for the man, but he remembered something else Maria had told him. Those with information that the Government did not have were not killed. At least not right away. Sure, they were tortured, probably, but not killed until the Government got whatever it was they wanted. That was how they had gotten rid of the Chinese sympathizers, and that was how they got rid of Molious. They got information, and from there they got what they wanted. Oliver just had to keep being a mystery long enough to escape. He did not answer any of Sinclair's questions, and bit his cheek in order to make sure he did not have any urge to, even with lies.
It took a minute, but Sinclair eventually came to terms with the fact that Oliver would not take the bait. He was sure, bordering on positive, that Oliver was not the soldier that they had in their ranks once, and that made him an enigma to Sinclair. As he had said, Sinclair was not one for mysteries, but there was a strange allure to the Ekman-Larsson question that made him not want to neutralize him right away. Instead he had a better thought, one that would, if all went according to plan, make all of Sinclair's woes go away.
The door the soldier left through opened again. Along with the soldier in the hat’s return came the introduction of three lab-coat wearing men and three more armed soldiers. The guards, as per apparently common practice, showed no expression on their faces. They seemed as dead-eyed and distant as the ones in the room had before the number of occupants grew. The scientists, however, seemed more human, even a little nervous, but they still moved with some authority and purpose. Oliver could only imagine that while not in the same room as the sociopath Sinclair they would be quite normal, maybe even laugh over some lab joke. However, while standing so near to the man that could have them killed at any moment, they were nothing aside from professional.
"I figured it would be a losing battle trying to get you to talk. Molious likes to make sure their new recruits learn to keep a secret, and tell them that if you don't talk, we won’t kill you. In reality, though, when someone doesn't talk we do something a whole lot worse than kill them." Sinclair had turned from Oliver, grabbing the clipboard from the metal cart once more. The scientists moved toward it and began pulling out instruments from the drawers contained below the shiny metal top. Oliver watched and, with a shiver down his spine, realized that he had made all the wrong moves since waking up on the street. If he had only walked away from the city lights, Oliver thought as scalpels were placed on the top of the cart, he could have been free from all the drama he had become tripped up in.
"So, these men are going to give you a chip and then… well, then we're going to make you a soldier." No one at Molious had told him that the Government could make him a soldier. Oliver thought that just a lot of people had fallen for the propaganda and had joined, not that they were forced into it.
"I won’t fight for you!" Oliver told him emphatically, hands balled into fists. If only he could move, Oliver would beat the grin right off of Sinclair's face. Instead, his inability to take action only made Sinclair smile more.
"Well, I wasn't asking you, Oliver. Because, when we're done, you won’t have much of a choice." Sinclair moved back to Oliver, standing right in front of him as he watched the younger man with smug satisfaction. "We lost a damn good soldier when we lost Boedker, and, really, none of these idiots have even come close to the genius he had. He was ruthless when we gave him an order, and we knew it would get done. Sometimes we wouldn't even need to give an order. He would just know when a target wasn't worth the trouble and eliminated them." Sinclair paused, an almost whimsical expression on his face as he remembered Mikkel's perfection as a soldier. He was the perfect model, what they were looking for exactly in all of their soldiers, but which could never be replicated.
"He was the perfect soldier, but a bit more clever than we anticipated. At some point there was… well, a glitch in the plan. At some point he missed taking the drugs and we never noticed. One day usually didn't cause a problem, but that one day caused him to realize just what he was. Then, when we thought he was just sick, we let our guard down." Sinclair grabbed a fist full of Oliver's hair and jerked his head back. His free hand put weight down on Oliver's wrist again and the pain came back, but the younger man clenched his teeth to bear it.
"We don't make the same mistakes twice, Oliver. We'll keep you under until the day you die. And, hopefully, Boedker will be hunting you right now for the slaughter at his precious little base. After your rehabilitation we will let him find you. And then you will kill him and all of my headaches will finally be gone." Sinclair let go of Oliver's hair and reached back. One of the scientists handed him a scalpel and, with some manhandling of Oliver's left hand, Sinclair cut the palm open. He did the dirty work himself as he forced the small chip under the flesh. Oliver could not help crying out as the small piece of metal forced its way under his skin, igniting the nerves with intense pain. He clenched his eyes and teeth tight, trying to internalize the pain, but it only reminded Oliver of how worn down his body already was. It would be a lot easier to just give up right then, he knew. They would not kill him, but, at the same time, Oliver had no interest in being their puppet. He wanted to fight, but he saw no way out as Sinclair stepped back and wiped his hands off on a towel, staining it red with Oliver's blood. One of the scientists moved to bandage Oliver's wound, not letting him force the chip out. He was completely at their mercy.
Playlist by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://8tracks.com/masterpenguin/liberty-of-possession
Chapter 7 Song by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqmEXdkU5hg
Master Post: http://z4rf3.livejournal.com/16531.html
Chapter 8 My Violent Heart: http://z4rf3.livejournal.com/18472.html