SPN/DA: Agents of Fortune (14/?)
Title: Agents of Fortune: Chapter 14
Author: Karasu Yurei
Fandom: Supernatural/Dark Angel
Rateing: PG 13
Spoilers: Yes. Seriously, vague and not so vague spoiler for both series though wildly AU from both. Take that however you want. And also for the Dark Angel written cannon.
Disclaimer: If I owned them Sam and Dean would have hugged more than twice
Warning: Sam without coffee. Alec with soda. Oh yes, Azazel. Azazel-ing. All over the place.
Previous chapters
Author’s note: So, this is the shortest chapter in the history of how much I hate this chapter. I mean seriously. Hate it. This is the second time I've written it and I still want to flush it down a toilet. But enough is enough.
So here it is. Short, but better than nothing. I hope.
Just . . . I dunno, don't stop readying because I suddenly seem to suck? I promise I wont suck next time.
Proofreader’s note: This chapter doesn’t suck. Ignore her. Also, I took the last couple lines of the last chapter and repeated them here, since otherwise it’s been so long that nobody would remember what they’re talking about.
Chapter Fourteen
"What does it say about my life that I actually miss spending most of my time with maladjusted jerks." Sam finally settled into another chair. He thought if he plunked himself back down in the easy chair he would fall asleep again.
"That you're a Winchester," Dean said.
"It says you need therapy," Collin said, as he ambled in. Dean looked him over, head to foot and back again. Sneakers, jeans, and a black T-shirt that said 'Watchmen' in bright yellow block letters. A badge hung from a blue lanyard around his neck, proclaiming him to be a doctor working at the hospital. Dean was willing to bet cash money that this was the outfit that had been stashed on the bottom of the bookshelf, but everything was well worn enough that the clothes didn't hold the creases from where they'd been folded.
Sam just rolled his eyes and cracked a smile. Dean was counting this as a double win. Alec hadn't gone straight to red alert and baby brother was showing signs of life. He did have to admit to being curious as to how the doctor could get away with dressing like that in his work place. He had given the man a heads up on the lab coat, but he sure hadn't expected a wardrobe shift. "Dress down day, Doc?"
"Actually, smartass, it's my day off. The badge keeps security from mistaking me for a bum and tossing me out." He closed the door most of the way, grabbed a chair, and carried it to where they had set up camp around the bed near the window. "When I'm done here, I'm going home and having a beer." Collin set the chair down, back facing Alec, who was sprawled, loose-limbed, across the bed under his pile of blankets. He looked over at the monitors they had on him before straddling the chair. He wrote everything down on a post-it note and stuck it to the front of Alec's chart. Everything looked a hell of a lot better than it had the previous night, and he was glad that Alec hadn't tossed the oxygen. "How are you feeling?"
"Uh . . . not hurting, so at the moment, roughly like eleven million bucks." Alec watched as they all blinked at him. "Half of what I'm normally worth?" They were still missing the train. "Like shit. I feel like shit, but it could be worse. I could feel like shit and hurt. God, are you guys slow? I'm the one that's got a head full of bad genes, loose wiring, and a bloodstream filled with lead. Get with the program." He tried to sit up and failed. Miserably. He felt like a helpless kitten suddenly, with everyone focused on him, not being able to help himself. His lip curled up on one side in a tiny snarl.
"Christ, kid, who ran over your tail?" Dean asked as he help him sit up, wondering a little at the sudden mood shift. It was like living with a fourteen year old Sam again.
"I'm twenty-some-odd million dollars worth of trained efficient deadly weaponry. I don't do helpless well." Alec winced mentally. The morphine was making him a little more loose-lipped than he liked. "Also? I'm fucking starving." As soon as he thought about it, his stomach started to tie itself into painful knots. Just because he could go without food for a week didn't mean he didn't pay for it in other ways, or that he enjoyed it.
"That I think we can fix." Doc Collin motioned for Dean to hand him the room phone. Dean shrugged an forked it over. "What do you want?" Collin asked Alec. The kid looked honestly startled at the question.
"Food? I thought that's where this was going."
"Yes, but what food?" Doc Collin looked like he was wondering real hard about what he had done wrong when Alec's eyes widened.
"Okay. Let’s start simple." Dean knew exactly what was wrong. One look at Alec and he had the problem sorted. The kid had never been given the choice of what to eat before. Even after they got him out. Dean had brought home sandwich stuff; Alec made sandwiches. Bobby cooked eggs and bacon and gave the kid a plate and he ate eggs and bacon. He remembered this lesson from Sam, though Sam have been about four when the concept of 'choices' had come up. Give him too many and he couldn't deal with the overload. "Breakfast food or lunch?" He would take things one step at a time.
"Lunch." Alec was sure. Lunches usually came with more food.
"Sandwich it is, then. Have any preference as to what kind?" Dean watched as Alec shook his head a little. That might have been relief he saw. Dean knew he would have to keep an eye on Alec, to make sure he didn't get lost in what for him was likely the ridiculously complicated task of living out here like a normal person
Doc Collin dialed a number and waited. "Yes. This is Dr. Bishop. I need a lunch tray sent up to room 407. Whatever the cafeteria lunch special is . . . yeah." Dean made a questioning noise. "Can you hang on a sec?" He put his and over the receiver and looked at Dean.
"What's the lunch special?"
"A Rueben." He shrugged. "They're pretty good here."
"Gimme the phone." He only had to glance at Alec to know that the kid had no idea, on this or any other planet, exactly what was in a Rueben or what it would taste like. He took the phone. "Hi. Yeah. I'm the big brother. Screw the Rueben. Here's what the kid wants. Four ham n' cheese sandwiches . . . yeah, four. On wheat bread, cheese on the side, leave the sandwiches dry. One PB an' J, white bread." He looked at Sam for second then. "A bag of chips . . . yeah, just one. Couple of pieces of fruit. Whatever you have, apples, oranges, whatever . . . yeah, seriously, he eats a ton. Two cartons of milk. Two orange sodas and a Coke." Dean grinned suddenly. "You caught me. I am stealing from the tray. The Coke is for me." After another moment, he hung up.
"Lunch is on its way." Dean shot a small grin at Alec, who sighed and settled comfortably back into his pillows. He wondered when Alec was going to crash and fall back to sleep. Sam and the doc were gaping at him. "What? I've seen him eat. He was just being polite at Bobby's." He shrugged. Alec matched the motion, though barely, like he was afraid it might hurt. Most likely smart. The morphine would cut the pain, but the reason for it was still there.
Collin noticed the slight hesitation. "Is your shoulder still bothering you?" He had thought about having Alec's arm put in a sling, but had given up the idea after watching Alec worry at the things already confining him, like the IV and the heart monitor, even while unconscious. Suzie said that Dean had spent a lot of the night sitting by Alec's bed and soothing him into staying calm.
"I'll be fine."
"That's not what I asked." Collin stood and took a spare pillow out of the closet tucked into the corner of the room behind the easy chair. "Put this in your lap and rest your arm on it. It'll take some of the pressure off." Normally, he would have helped to arrange the pillow and the patient, but with Alec, he figured it was better to keep his hands out of the kid's personal bubble. He handed the pillow to Dean, who plopped it unceremoniously against Alec's legs and lifted his arm up and onto it with the care necessary, but without bothering to ask permission. At least Alec trusted someone.
Collin plunked himself back onto his seat. He figured they might as well get to the hard part. "Alec, are you feeling up to answering some questions?" he asked. Dean approved of the way the man was handling things. Saying something like 'I need you to answer some questions' would take away Alec's right to refuse, and Dean didn't want him feeling trapped.
"Depends on the questions." Alec picked at the wrapping around his hand and IV, and then he followed the line of tubing up, like he was deciding whether he could tolerate its presence or not.
The doc watched Alec. "I get that you don't like it."
Alec snorted. "I doubt that."
Dean, on impulse, ran a hand through Alec's short hair. "No, I doubt we do either, but I won’t let anyone hurt you." He smirked. "You're a Winchester, kid. Trust me." Being overtly touchy-feely was not normally a Winchester thing, but he would change that if he needed to. The kid was a ball of mixed signals. He hated being touched by almost everyone, but Dean was willing to lay money that he craved contact, since it seemed to calm him. Dean would make sure he got it.
He and Sam didn’t go in for overt contact, but that was because they had never needed to. They had grown up crammed next to each other like sardines in a can shaped like a '67 Chevy Impala, cheap motel rooms, and postage stamp apartments. The person he trusted most in the world was never really more than a breath away. When he was younger, he had wondered how normal kids could tolerate the sort of separation that seemed so commonplace between them and their siblings, to not have that sort of implicit trust in someone else. Now he could only imagine Alec growing up with even less.
"We'll start with the basics." Collin figured he would start simple and work his way up from there until he hit a brick wall. "Do you have any allergies?"
"Yes."
Clearly he was going to have to go with gentle prompting every step of the way. "What are they?"
"Oh." Alec said it like he hadn't quite realized he was supposed to continue answering. "Acetaminophen, aspirin, and chocolate."
"Dude, you're allergic to chocolate?" Dean was horrified. "Your rights to be my clone have been revoked."
Alec wrinkled his nose at Dean, but apparently didn't feel that comment merited any other response. Dean huffed, and Sam cracked a grin.
"So what happens when you have any of those things?” Collin continued. “Hives, breathing problems?"
"Hah. Oh, I wish. The chocolate just makes me sick, you know, pukey. Violently so, but that's it."
"What about the other two?" Collin prompted
"I'm gonna hate this, aren't I?" Dean guessed fatalistically.
"Well, I sure as hell did,” Alec said. “Horking up blood. Definite organ damage. Pain like nothing I can even begin to describe. Un-friggin-fun." He shrugged his uninjured shoulder like it was no big deal. "Then the . . ." Collin watched as Alec swallowed whatever word he was going to say and replaced it with another. "The doctors in Med Lab said to avoid ingesting either ever again." The word 'doctor' came out of Alec's mouth like it was the ugliest insult he could think of. "Like I'm not a genius, right? And couldn't have figured that one out for myself."
Collin watched all three of them carefully, trying to sort out Alec's decidedly odd response. Sam looked like he couldn't decide between being ill, being angry, or being frightened.
Dean's gazed shifted from Alec to Sam and back again, and his jaw clenched. He felt something ugly boil up through him. "They did it on purpose, didn't they. Nearly killed you just to . . ."
"Just to find out what would happen," Sam whispered. His eyes locked down on his own bruised wrists.
Dean wasn't even sure he understood the rage that moved through him, because he was pretty sure he couldn't comprehend that kind of monster. It was sick. And wrong. Midnight uglies may do some wholly evil things, but at least they had the excuse of truly being things of nightmares, whose purpose was to do those things. There was no excuse for a human.
"Don't be stupid," Alec snapped. "They had a list of things they suspected we would have an adverse reaction to. They needed to know which ones hit us and if we'd live through it."
Dean thought Sam looked green. He knew he sure as shit felt green, because Alec had just justified his own torture. And that was the only thing it could have been, if Alec termed the pain as indescribable. Dean knew for a fact that the kid had a phenomenal pain tolerance, given that he had been shot without making a peep and had the bullet taken out with almost as much silence. Doc Collin seemed to have chosen the route of silent stoicism.
"Stop it," Alec snarled. Dean's head snapped around to look at Alec again. The kid had hunched down into himself and his fingers flexed and then clenched down into his blankets. "I know what I am, or at least what I used to be before you stole me. But you did steal me, so you have to take all the bad along with whatever good you think you're getting. You can't fucking tweak out over everything."
"What?" Dean asked, like he couldn't believe the words that were falling out of his brother's mouth.
"Stop giving me that look." Alec gave Dean a narrow-eyed look and lifted his chin in a manner that was so like Sam that Dean swallowed, trying not to think about all the years of Alec growing up that he missed, or what had happened to him during that time.
"What look?"
"The horrified pity look."
"I don't have a look like that." Did he? He had thought his poker face was pretty good.
"Wearing your face. Remember?"
"Alec, they tortured you." Sam's voice was quiet as he threw himself into the verbal fray.
"No, they tortured you. What they did to me was just the way things work."
"Nice try with the distraction technique there, Little Toaster." The kid was good. Dean would give him that. If anything was going to throw him off Alec's tail, it would be bringing up Sam. "Becuase I've already filled the good doctor in." Dean pretended he didn't see or feel Sam's glare, and flashed Alec his most obnoxious smile.
"Crap." Alec bit at his bottom lip for a second. "Look, if you can't stomach the answers, then don't ask the questions." The look that Dean saw shot his way could only be interpreted as challenging. He was a little startled when it was Doc Collin that cut them all off.
"I'll stomach whatever I have to, if you'll answer my questions."
"I'm not here to indulge your curiosity." Alec's eyes narrowed, and his chin came up again. Dean really doubted that Alec realized how much he picked up from this little exchange, at least when combined with what he had already seen. Strangely, Dean thought that the kid's knee-jerk fear and defiance might be a good thing.
Alec was terrified of doctors, because he had clearly been hurt by them. This was a kid who had been willing to blow his own brains out rather than have to face whatever happened in Psy-Ops. Just like Alec had pointed out, they shared a face, and the kid hadn't been bluffing. But Alec had also toed the line and folded pretty quick when that blonde dude had shown up. If Alec was still snarling at them now, it might mean that he trusted them not to hurt him. All they had to do was not abuse the trust.
Collin was not an idiot. Sam was clearly not pleased with his big brother's loose lips. Not that Collin hadn't had to use a crowbar to pry anything out of Dean. Sam, in Collin's humble opinion, wanted to pretend that none of this had happened. He would take a crack at Sam later. Right now he had to get Alec sorted out, and he had to tread very carefully to do it. Sam was right. Alec had been tortured.
"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious." Alec's lip started to curl up into a snarl. Dean's eyes narrowed, but Sam just directed a dry look at his brother. He still had Sam's trust, and after a moment Dean relented. "But you're right. You aren't here to indulge it. You're here so we can get your epilepsy under control, and then you can go sprinting for the door." The lip was still curled up, but no sound followed. No snarl, no growl. If he was dealing with a werewolf, this would mean he had been granted a hearing, at least. Not acceptance, but a chance to talk. So he took it. "And to do that I have to ask questions, and," he chose his words carefully, "answering as honestly and completely as you can will make me more efficient."
He watched Alec turn all of this over in his head. "I want you to explain things to me. And . . ." He worried at his bottom lip again. "And don't do or give me anything without my permission." Collin snuck a look over as Sam, who was looking just a tad spooked.
"Sounds fair to me. Though, is it okay for your brothers to make decisions if you can't?" He didn't want to ask the question, because he was afraid all of Alec's defenses would snap up and close, but Alec wasn't always capable, and the caveat had to be set.
He was grateful that Dean chose then to throw himself into the breach. "Kid, seriously. Last night, you were God damned out of it. We did right by you didn't we?"
Alec nodded. Crisis averted. Then he suddenly perked up, then grinned. "Lunch." He sat up properly, and a second later someone from the kitchen stepped into the room carrying a bloated tray, giving everyone a funny look.
"Lunch for three?" The guy asked dryly.
"Screw them. They can get their own lunch." Alec snatched a sandwich before the tray was even settled. Collin nearly laughed as he peeled it open on one side and sniffed it, before taking a huge bite.
The cafeteria worker shook his head.. "Should we expect this at every meal?"
"No," Alec said around a mouthful of food.
Dean snorted. "Yes."
"I don't have to eat this much. I can, you know, be normal." The sandwich was already half gone. Like a magic trick.
"Uh huh. Don't doubt it, kid. Doesn't mean I'm going to let you get away with it." He reached out and sorted through the food, then rolled up a piece of cheese. Alec swatted at him. Dean swatted back and crammed the cheese into his mouth. After a moment, he found the white bread sandwich and grabbed it, along with one of the orange sodas. Both items were dropped in Sam's lap. The guy from the caf shook his head and left.
Sam jumped as the cold soda settled against his thighs. His reaction time was in the toilet. "Dean!" He grabbed it and the sandwich right before they slid to the floor.
"Eat."
"Not hungry." It might have been possible for Sam to sulk more, but it would have required a college course and a detailed instruction manual.
"Don't care." Dean's grin was obnoxious.
Sam looked over at Collin. "Don't look for help from me. You look like shit. Eat the sandwich, drink your sugar." He paused while Sam scowled. "Then plunk your ass on that other bed and sleep."
Sam's eyes skipped to Alec, who was working on his second sandwich. Apparently Dean had made the right call about his calorie intake. "Dude, don't look at me. I'm drugged up and unreliable." Alec grinned, and it was frighteningly similar to Dean’s.
"You all suck." Sam pouted but cracked opened the soda.
Collin watched, fascinated, as Alec sniffed. "What's that?" He sniffed again. "It smells good. What is it?" He looked like a five year old with a new toy.
"It's orange soda, kiddo." Dean held up the second can. Collin was impressed yet again by the young man. Alec was clearly new to what most of them thought of as basic food. Looking at what Dean had ordered, it could be assumed that Alec grew up on a healthy, wholesome food. Collin thought that personally he might rather die of starvation. Here Dean was, introducing him to the regular world, one food item at a time.
"It doesn't smell like oranges." Now Alec sounded suspicious.
"Doesn't taste like them either." He held the can out to Alec, who took it with a grin and cracked it open. He sniffed again and then took a sip.
"This is awesome." He sipped it from the can carefully, savoring it.
"Uh, kiddo, most people aren't that careful with things they like."
Alec blinked at Dean. "They aren't? But shouldn't you be? Who knows when you'll get more."
"At dinner." Dean stated flatly. Collin watched Dean's carefully neutral expression, and realized he couldn't imagine what Alec's childhood had been like or what other normal things he'd been denied.
"So why didn't you want any of my Coke?"
Alec wrinkled his nose up. "It'll eat through metal. I'm not drinking it."
Collin couldn't help laughing. "He's got a point."
"Yeah, whatever." Dean took a long swallow of his soda.
Alec put his can of soda down again and poked at the chips. "What're these? I mean, I can read, but are they?" Alec canted a curious look over at Dean.
"Deep fried crack with salt."
"You're a little weird. You know that, right?"
"Says the kid that doesn't know what chips are."
"Uh huh." Alec opened the bag and then sniffed them, almost delicately. Collin thought the kid might lose his mind if he ever got a head cold. About halfway through the bag, Alec fell asleep, chin to his chest. Dean snorted and carefully laid him down into his nest of pillows and blankets. Sam took the bag of chips before they fell to the floor. He looked like he might eat them, but then he seemed to change his mind and closed the bag.
Dean stole the last sandwich and put all the uneaten cheese in it before taking a big bite.
XXXXX
Sifting through a mortal's mind was a lot like dumpster diving. A whole lot of garbage with the chances of finding something good pretty being damned near nonexistent. On top of that, the average human mind was about as orderly as a bag of trash. Azazel figured that maybe he should consider himself lucky that this mind wasn't that disorganized.
Her thoughts did keep slipping from his grasp like a squirming cat, though. Maybe he shouldn't have been surprised. After all, he knew what was in the makeup of an X5, but he hadn't honestly thought that they would think like a cat. Nor that they would fight so hard.
Apparently the animal reacted with an instinctive fear of the supernatural, and the X5 had gotten a couple of good solid blows in before he could stop her. They really were extraordinarily fast. He had the girl pinned firmly now though as he idly flipped through the thoughts she was aware of and then dug deeper for things she wasn't so aware of. There were little packets of mental programming and things she'd forgotten, but nothing like what he was after. There was no knowledge of enchantments in long forgotten languages or the whereabouts of the missing X5s from Alpha unit.
Azazel had only intruded on one of Sam Winchester's visions before he, Dean, and 494 had disappeared, but that one glimpse of the future had been more than enough to make him want to cut a swath of destruction across the continent until he found the female X5 he had seen in Sam's vision. One female X5 with dark hair and a spell written across her back that could royally fuck his shit up.
He wanted to find her, and almost more importantly, he wanted to find the person responsible for this. He wanted it done yesterday. Because he couldn't take that the easy route of just wiping out all the females that fit the description for two reasons. The first was that he couldn't find all the slippery things. Not with that devil's dozen still missing. The second was that even if he could find them all, he still didn't know who had the spell to scrawl it across the back of the young woman in the vision in the first place.
He was not going to have millennia of planning ruined by some catgirl with a tattoo written across the skin of her back. He had given humans weapons and the skills to use them. He wasn't going to have one turned against him now. When she slid from the wall, her blood spread wide around and beneath him. The fire spread even wider.
He left it burning as he walked away.
XXXXX
While Alec hardly existed at all in the hospital computer system, he still needed a chart, if only so Collin and the nurses could keep track of everything. The compromise was a good old-fashioned paper chart, complete with little separator tabs. While the chart was in the hospital it either lived in Collin's office, in his hand, or in the second drawer of Alec's bedside table, where his nurses could get to it. Once Alec was released, Collin would put it in the safe he kept in his apartment. The kid was a Winchester; Collin would be seeing him again.
On a hunch, Collin had looked up common feline allergies and poisons. Sure enough, acetaminophen, aspirin, and chocolate were all on the list, along with caffeine, alcohol, zinc, and a myriad of other less common things. So Alec had, to some degree, been lucky and only gotten three out of the list. None of them were so much allergies as outright body-destroying poisons. Collin decide he wouldn't share the details of what those poisons did with Sam or Dean.
He had gotten to talk with Alec again before dinner, and put together a few more pieces of his puzzle. Like the fact that the seizures might be due to possible damage from oxygen deprivation. He had drowned three times. Apparently, that was the penalty for failing the training exercise. Alec had been very sure that he could hold his breath under water for six minutes and twenty-four seconds. He was also very sure that a lot of water could be inhaled in thirty-six seconds, because the X5 standard was seven minutes, and they didn't get to come up for air until those seven minutes had passed. Alec had also grudgingly admitted that he handled each new attempt worse than the previous, until the final time he remembered only waking up three days later and being unable to breathe on his own.
It was almost needless to say that there had been numerous blows to the head. What really interested Collin was that the seizures seemed to have an emotional stress trigger as well. Not so much that stress induced a seizure, but that it made seizures much more likely. Alec had mentioned, hesitantly and with prompting from both Sam and Dean, that when he was in Psy-Ops there was always a team of medical staff assigned to him as well as psych, and that this was unusual. And that he always saw the same doctor, which was also unusual. He wouldn't tell Collin what Psy-Ops was or what happened there. It was the first true wall that he had run into with the young man. There was no coaxing anything out of him on the topic.
After that it had been a strangely normal litany of bullet wounds and broken bones. Collin knew there were still horror stories that Alec was simply refusing to divulge, but Collin let it go, knowing that Alec's tenuous trust only stretched so far.
He flipped back to Alec's bloodwork and sighed. He finished a mug of cold coffee and was pretty sure that no amount of caffeine was going to help him sort out why Alec was having seizures. And since he was still having them on occasion, Collin needed to know why, or they would never get the poor kid on effective medication.
What he really needed was an EEG while Alec was actively seizing, to tell him where in Alec's brain the problem actually was. Easy enough logistically, since Collin was pretty sure that Alec would seize within ten to fifteen minutes of being cut off from the IV medication. The hard part was going to be walking into the kid's room and saying something along the lines of 'I know this entire place scares the hell out of you, but I'd like to hook you up to a bunch of monitoring equipment that will most likely scare you even more, and then purposefully let you seize.' Not easy.
Collin's head thumped down onto Alec's chart and the empty paper coffee cup rolled out of his fingers, across his desk, and onto the floor. "This is so unfun."
XXXXX
Lydecker very rarely ever saw one of his X5s shed a tear. Tears were the product of strong emotions, and he tried very hard to teach them not to feel anything that strongly outside the bounds of their units. In the real world, beyond the confines of Manticore, those emotions could be used as a weapon against them. It was also equally as rare to see one show fear, let alone actually shake with it.
And yet X5-328 did both. He had returned from his mission early and noticeably without X5-413. Lydecker had to admit that he was having trouble deciphering the series of events from the X5’s hysterical babbling. He had managed to sort out that 413 was dead, that there would be no body to find, and that she hadn't been killed by anything having to do with the mission.
After that, things degenerated. He had asked for a description, and 328 had given him a jumble of feelings and scents, but couldn't seem to coherently put together a physical description. It was like the X5 was talking in cat thoughts. The Colonel had a headache. A huge one. There was some unknown person and/or military force out there capable of taking out an X5 easily. This was more than a problem. This was a disaster of epic proportions. And he couldn't do a damned thing about it until he had something to work with.
Eventually, he cut off the babble with a raised hand. If he couldn't get the unit to think like a human, he would have to get a translator. He stepped out of the briefing room and waited for Delta Unit's commander to answer his summons. Renfro appeared moments before the X5 in question showed up. The colonel felt his headache grow to alarming proportions. He ignored the woman in favor of talking to Delta's commander. "I need you to calm your teammate down and get me a physical description of the person that killed X5-413." The X5 nodded once, sharply. 413 was, mercifully, from Charlie Unit, so Delta's commander didn't have a strong emotional attachment to her. "Then take him back to his quarters. Someone else can sit with him if you think it will help. Once that is done, report to me and tell me what you can get from him. Understood?"
"Yes, sir." The unit gave Lydecker a sharp salute and entered the briefing room.
"He should be taken to Psy-Ops to sort out whatever shorted in his brain," Renfro stated.
"I didn't ask your opinion on the matter." He and Renfro both watched through the one-way window as one X5 sat across the other and began speaking.
The only thing that 328 had said to him about the mysterious killer that had made even the least bit of sense was that the killer had smelled like sulfur.
XXXXX
Author: Karasu Yurei
Fandom: Supernatural/Dark Angel
Rateing: PG 13
Spoilers: Yes. Seriously, vague and not so vague spoiler for both series though wildly AU from both. Take that however you want. And also for the Dark Angel written cannon.
Disclaimer: If I owned them Sam and Dean would have hugged more than twice
Warning: Sam without coffee. Alec with soda. Oh yes, Azazel. Azazel-ing. All over the place.
Previous chapters
Author’s note: So, this is the shortest chapter in the history of how much I hate this chapter. I mean seriously. Hate it. This is the second time I've written it and I still want to flush it down a toilet. But enough is enough.
So here it is. Short, but better than nothing. I hope.
Just . . . I dunno, don't stop readying because I suddenly seem to suck? I promise I wont suck next time.
Proofreader’s note: This chapter doesn’t suck. Ignore her. Also, I took the last couple lines of the last chapter and repeated them here, since otherwise it’s been so long that nobody would remember what they’re talking about.
Chapter Fourteen
"What does it say about my life that I actually miss spending most of my time with maladjusted jerks." Sam finally settled into another chair. He thought if he plunked himself back down in the easy chair he would fall asleep again.
"That you're a Winchester," Dean said.
"It says you need therapy," Collin said, as he ambled in. Dean looked him over, head to foot and back again. Sneakers, jeans, and a black T-shirt that said 'Watchmen' in bright yellow block letters. A badge hung from a blue lanyard around his neck, proclaiming him to be a doctor working at the hospital. Dean was willing to bet cash money that this was the outfit that had been stashed on the bottom of the bookshelf, but everything was well worn enough that the clothes didn't hold the creases from where they'd been folded.
Sam just rolled his eyes and cracked a smile. Dean was counting this as a double win. Alec hadn't gone straight to red alert and baby brother was showing signs of life. He did have to admit to being curious as to how the doctor could get away with dressing like that in his work place. He had given the man a heads up on the lab coat, but he sure hadn't expected a wardrobe shift. "Dress down day, Doc?"
"Actually, smartass, it's my day off. The badge keeps security from mistaking me for a bum and tossing me out." He closed the door most of the way, grabbed a chair, and carried it to where they had set up camp around the bed near the window. "When I'm done here, I'm going home and having a beer." Collin set the chair down, back facing Alec, who was sprawled, loose-limbed, across the bed under his pile of blankets. He looked over at the monitors they had on him before straddling the chair. He wrote everything down on a post-it note and stuck it to the front of Alec's chart. Everything looked a hell of a lot better than it had the previous night, and he was glad that Alec hadn't tossed the oxygen. "How are you feeling?"
"Uh . . . not hurting, so at the moment, roughly like eleven million bucks." Alec watched as they all blinked at him. "Half of what I'm normally worth?" They were still missing the train. "Like shit. I feel like shit, but it could be worse. I could feel like shit and hurt. God, are you guys slow? I'm the one that's got a head full of bad genes, loose wiring, and a bloodstream filled with lead. Get with the program." He tried to sit up and failed. Miserably. He felt like a helpless kitten suddenly, with everyone focused on him, not being able to help himself. His lip curled up on one side in a tiny snarl.
"Christ, kid, who ran over your tail?" Dean asked as he help him sit up, wondering a little at the sudden mood shift. It was like living with a fourteen year old Sam again.
"I'm twenty-some-odd million dollars worth of trained efficient deadly weaponry. I don't do helpless well." Alec winced mentally. The morphine was making him a little more loose-lipped than he liked. "Also? I'm fucking starving." As soon as he thought about it, his stomach started to tie itself into painful knots. Just because he could go without food for a week didn't mean he didn't pay for it in other ways, or that he enjoyed it.
"That I think we can fix." Doc Collin motioned for Dean to hand him the room phone. Dean shrugged an forked it over. "What do you want?" Collin asked Alec. The kid looked honestly startled at the question.
"Food? I thought that's where this was going."
"Yes, but what food?" Doc Collin looked like he was wondering real hard about what he had done wrong when Alec's eyes widened.
"Okay. Let’s start simple." Dean knew exactly what was wrong. One look at Alec and he had the problem sorted. The kid had never been given the choice of what to eat before. Even after they got him out. Dean had brought home sandwich stuff; Alec made sandwiches. Bobby cooked eggs and bacon and gave the kid a plate and he ate eggs and bacon. He remembered this lesson from Sam, though Sam have been about four when the concept of 'choices' had come up. Give him too many and he couldn't deal with the overload. "Breakfast food or lunch?" He would take things one step at a time.
"Lunch." Alec was sure. Lunches usually came with more food.
"Sandwich it is, then. Have any preference as to what kind?" Dean watched as Alec shook his head a little. That might have been relief he saw. Dean knew he would have to keep an eye on Alec, to make sure he didn't get lost in what for him was likely the ridiculously complicated task of living out here like a normal person
Doc Collin dialed a number and waited. "Yes. This is Dr. Bishop. I need a lunch tray sent up to room 407. Whatever the cafeteria lunch special is . . . yeah." Dean made a questioning noise. "Can you hang on a sec?" He put his and over the receiver and looked at Dean.
"What's the lunch special?"
"A Rueben." He shrugged. "They're pretty good here."
"Gimme the phone." He only had to glance at Alec to know that the kid had no idea, on this or any other planet, exactly what was in a Rueben or what it would taste like. He took the phone. "Hi. Yeah. I'm the big brother. Screw the Rueben. Here's what the kid wants. Four ham n' cheese sandwiches . . . yeah, four. On wheat bread, cheese on the side, leave the sandwiches dry. One PB an' J, white bread." He looked at Sam for second then. "A bag of chips . . . yeah, just one. Couple of pieces of fruit. Whatever you have, apples, oranges, whatever . . . yeah, seriously, he eats a ton. Two cartons of milk. Two orange sodas and a Coke." Dean grinned suddenly. "You caught me. I am stealing from the tray. The Coke is for me." After another moment, he hung up.
"Lunch is on its way." Dean shot a small grin at Alec, who sighed and settled comfortably back into his pillows. He wondered when Alec was going to crash and fall back to sleep. Sam and the doc were gaping at him. "What? I've seen him eat. He was just being polite at Bobby's." He shrugged. Alec matched the motion, though barely, like he was afraid it might hurt. Most likely smart. The morphine would cut the pain, but the reason for it was still there.
Collin noticed the slight hesitation. "Is your shoulder still bothering you?" He had thought about having Alec's arm put in a sling, but had given up the idea after watching Alec worry at the things already confining him, like the IV and the heart monitor, even while unconscious. Suzie said that Dean had spent a lot of the night sitting by Alec's bed and soothing him into staying calm.
"I'll be fine."
"That's not what I asked." Collin stood and took a spare pillow out of the closet tucked into the corner of the room behind the easy chair. "Put this in your lap and rest your arm on it. It'll take some of the pressure off." Normally, he would have helped to arrange the pillow and the patient, but with Alec, he figured it was better to keep his hands out of the kid's personal bubble. He handed the pillow to Dean, who plopped it unceremoniously against Alec's legs and lifted his arm up and onto it with the care necessary, but without bothering to ask permission. At least Alec trusted someone.
Collin plunked himself back onto his seat. He figured they might as well get to the hard part. "Alec, are you feeling up to answering some questions?" he asked. Dean approved of the way the man was handling things. Saying something like 'I need you to answer some questions' would take away Alec's right to refuse, and Dean didn't want him feeling trapped.
"Depends on the questions." Alec picked at the wrapping around his hand and IV, and then he followed the line of tubing up, like he was deciding whether he could tolerate its presence or not.
The doc watched Alec. "I get that you don't like it."
Alec snorted. "I doubt that."
Dean, on impulse, ran a hand through Alec's short hair. "No, I doubt we do either, but I won’t let anyone hurt you." He smirked. "You're a Winchester, kid. Trust me." Being overtly touchy-feely was not normally a Winchester thing, but he would change that if he needed to. The kid was a ball of mixed signals. He hated being touched by almost everyone, but Dean was willing to lay money that he craved contact, since it seemed to calm him. Dean would make sure he got it.
He and Sam didn’t go in for overt contact, but that was because they had never needed to. They had grown up crammed next to each other like sardines in a can shaped like a '67 Chevy Impala, cheap motel rooms, and postage stamp apartments. The person he trusted most in the world was never really more than a breath away. When he was younger, he had wondered how normal kids could tolerate the sort of separation that seemed so commonplace between them and their siblings, to not have that sort of implicit trust in someone else. Now he could only imagine Alec growing up with even less.
"We'll start with the basics." Collin figured he would start simple and work his way up from there until he hit a brick wall. "Do you have any allergies?"
"Yes."
Clearly he was going to have to go with gentle prompting every step of the way. "What are they?"
"Oh." Alec said it like he hadn't quite realized he was supposed to continue answering. "Acetaminophen, aspirin, and chocolate."
"Dude, you're allergic to chocolate?" Dean was horrified. "Your rights to be my clone have been revoked."
Alec wrinkled his nose at Dean, but apparently didn't feel that comment merited any other response. Dean huffed, and Sam cracked a grin.
"So what happens when you have any of those things?” Collin continued. “Hives, breathing problems?"
"Hah. Oh, I wish. The chocolate just makes me sick, you know, pukey. Violently so, but that's it."
"What about the other two?" Collin prompted
"I'm gonna hate this, aren't I?" Dean guessed fatalistically.
"Well, I sure as hell did,” Alec said. “Horking up blood. Definite organ damage. Pain like nothing I can even begin to describe. Un-friggin-fun." He shrugged his uninjured shoulder like it was no big deal. "Then the . . ." Collin watched as Alec swallowed whatever word he was going to say and replaced it with another. "The doctors in Med Lab said to avoid ingesting either ever again." The word 'doctor' came out of Alec's mouth like it was the ugliest insult he could think of. "Like I'm not a genius, right? And couldn't have figured that one out for myself."
Collin watched all three of them carefully, trying to sort out Alec's decidedly odd response. Sam looked like he couldn't decide between being ill, being angry, or being frightened.
Dean's gazed shifted from Alec to Sam and back again, and his jaw clenched. He felt something ugly boil up through him. "They did it on purpose, didn't they. Nearly killed you just to . . ."
"Just to find out what would happen," Sam whispered. His eyes locked down on his own bruised wrists.
Dean wasn't even sure he understood the rage that moved through him, because he was pretty sure he couldn't comprehend that kind of monster. It was sick. And wrong. Midnight uglies may do some wholly evil things, but at least they had the excuse of truly being things of nightmares, whose purpose was to do those things. There was no excuse for a human.
"Don't be stupid," Alec snapped. "They had a list of things they suspected we would have an adverse reaction to. They needed to know which ones hit us and if we'd live through it."
Dean thought Sam looked green. He knew he sure as shit felt green, because Alec had just justified his own torture. And that was the only thing it could have been, if Alec termed the pain as indescribable. Dean knew for a fact that the kid had a phenomenal pain tolerance, given that he had been shot without making a peep and had the bullet taken out with almost as much silence. Doc Collin seemed to have chosen the route of silent stoicism.
"Stop it," Alec snarled. Dean's head snapped around to look at Alec again. The kid had hunched down into himself and his fingers flexed and then clenched down into his blankets. "I know what I am, or at least what I used to be before you stole me. But you did steal me, so you have to take all the bad along with whatever good you think you're getting. You can't fucking tweak out over everything."
"What?" Dean asked, like he couldn't believe the words that were falling out of his brother's mouth.
"Stop giving me that look." Alec gave Dean a narrow-eyed look and lifted his chin in a manner that was so like Sam that Dean swallowed, trying not to think about all the years of Alec growing up that he missed, or what had happened to him during that time.
"What look?"
"The horrified pity look."
"I don't have a look like that." Did he? He had thought his poker face was pretty good.
"Wearing your face. Remember?"
"Alec, they tortured you." Sam's voice was quiet as he threw himself into the verbal fray.
"No, they tortured you. What they did to me was just the way things work."
"Nice try with the distraction technique there, Little Toaster." The kid was good. Dean would give him that. If anything was going to throw him off Alec's tail, it would be bringing up Sam. "Becuase I've already filled the good doctor in." Dean pretended he didn't see or feel Sam's glare, and flashed Alec his most obnoxious smile.
"Crap." Alec bit at his bottom lip for a second. "Look, if you can't stomach the answers, then don't ask the questions." The look that Dean saw shot his way could only be interpreted as challenging. He was a little startled when it was Doc Collin that cut them all off.
"I'll stomach whatever I have to, if you'll answer my questions."
"I'm not here to indulge your curiosity." Alec's eyes narrowed, and his chin came up again. Dean really doubted that Alec realized how much he picked up from this little exchange, at least when combined with what he had already seen. Strangely, Dean thought that the kid's knee-jerk fear and defiance might be a good thing.
Alec was terrified of doctors, because he had clearly been hurt by them. This was a kid who had been willing to blow his own brains out rather than have to face whatever happened in Psy-Ops. Just like Alec had pointed out, they shared a face, and the kid hadn't been bluffing. But Alec had also toed the line and folded pretty quick when that blonde dude had shown up. If Alec was still snarling at them now, it might mean that he trusted them not to hurt him. All they had to do was not abuse the trust.
Collin was not an idiot. Sam was clearly not pleased with his big brother's loose lips. Not that Collin hadn't had to use a crowbar to pry anything out of Dean. Sam, in Collin's humble opinion, wanted to pretend that none of this had happened. He would take a crack at Sam later. Right now he had to get Alec sorted out, and he had to tread very carefully to do it. Sam was right. Alec had been tortured.
"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious." Alec's lip started to curl up into a snarl. Dean's eyes narrowed, but Sam just directed a dry look at his brother. He still had Sam's trust, and after a moment Dean relented. "But you're right. You aren't here to indulge it. You're here so we can get your epilepsy under control, and then you can go sprinting for the door." The lip was still curled up, but no sound followed. No snarl, no growl. If he was dealing with a werewolf, this would mean he had been granted a hearing, at least. Not acceptance, but a chance to talk. So he took it. "And to do that I have to ask questions, and," he chose his words carefully, "answering as honestly and completely as you can will make me more efficient."
He watched Alec turn all of this over in his head. "I want you to explain things to me. And . . ." He worried at his bottom lip again. "And don't do or give me anything without my permission." Collin snuck a look over as Sam, who was looking just a tad spooked.
"Sounds fair to me. Though, is it okay for your brothers to make decisions if you can't?" He didn't want to ask the question, because he was afraid all of Alec's defenses would snap up and close, but Alec wasn't always capable, and the caveat had to be set.
He was grateful that Dean chose then to throw himself into the breach. "Kid, seriously. Last night, you were God damned out of it. We did right by you didn't we?"
Alec nodded. Crisis averted. Then he suddenly perked up, then grinned. "Lunch." He sat up properly, and a second later someone from the kitchen stepped into the room carrying a bloated tray, giving everyone a funny look.
"Lunch for three?" The guy asked dryly.
"Screw them. They can get their own lunch." Alec snatched a sandwich before the tray was even settled. Collin nearly laughed as he peeled it open on one side and sniffed it, before taking a huge bite.
The cafeteria worker shook his head.. "Should we expect this at every meal?"
"No," Alec said around a mouthful of food.
Dean snorted. "Yes."
"I don't have to eat this much. I can, you know, be normal." The sandwich was already half gone. Like a magic trick.
"Uh huh. Don't doubt it, kid. Doesn't mean I'm going to let you get away with it." He reached out and sorted through the food, then rolled up a piece of cheese. Alec swatted at him. Dean swatted back and crammed the cheese into his mouth. After a moment, he found the white bread sandwich and grabbed it, along with one of the orange sodas. Both items were dropped in Sam's lap. The guy from the caf shook his head and left.
Sam jumped as the cold soda settled against his thighs. His reaction time was in the toilet. "Dean!" He grabbed it and the sandwich right before they slid to the floor.
"Eat."
"Not hungry." It might have been possible for Sam to sulk more, but it would have required a college course and a detailed instruction manual.
"Don't care." Dean's grin was obnoxious.
Sam looked over at Collin. "Don't look for help from me. You look like shit. Eat the sandwich, drink your sugar." He paused while Sam scowled. "Then plunk your ass on that other bed and sleep."
Sam's eyes skipped to Alec, who was working on his second sandwich. Apparently Dean had made the right call about his calorie intake. "Dude, don't look at me. I'm drugged up and unreliable." Alec grinned, and it was frighteningly similar to Dean’s.
"You all suck." Sam pouted but cracked opened the soda.
Collin watched, fascinated, as Alec sniffed. "What's that?" He sniffed again. "It smells good. What is it?" He looked like a five year old with a new toy.
"It's orange soda, kiddo." Dean held up the second can. Collin was impressed yet again by the young man. Alec was clearly new to what most of them thought of as basic food. Looking at what Dean had ordered, it could be assumed that Alec grew up on a healthy, wholesome food. Collin thought that personally he might rather die of starvation. Here Dean was, introducing him to the regular world, one food item at a time.
"It doesn't smell like oranges." Now Alec sounded suspicious.
"Doesn't taste like them either." He held the can out to Alec, who took it with a grin and cracked it open. He sniffed again and then took a sip.
"This is awesome." He sipped it from the can carefully, savoring it.
"Uh, kiddo, most people aren't that careful with things they like."
Alec blinked at Dean. "They aren't? But shouldn't you be? Who knows when you'll get more."
"At dinner." Dean stated flatly. Collin watched Dean's carefully neutral expression, and realized he couldn't imagine what Alec's childhood had been like or what other normal things he'd been denied.
"So why didn't you want any of my Coke?"
Alec wrinkled his nose up. "It'll eat through metal. I'm not drinking it."
Collin couldn't help laughing. "He's got a point."
"Yeah, whatever." Dean took a long swallow of his soda.
Alec put his can of soda down again and poked at the chips. "What're these? I mean, I can read, but are they?" Alec canted a curious look over at Dean.
"Deep fried crack with salt."
"You're a little weird. You know that, right?"
"Says the kid that doesn't know what chips are."
"Uh huh." Alec opened the bag and then sniffed them, almost delicately. Collin thought the kid might lose his mind if he ever got a head cold. About halfway through the bag, Alec fell asleep, chin to his chest. Dean snorted and carefully laid him down into his nest of pillows and blankets. Sam took the bag of chips before they fell to the floor. He looked like he might eat them, but then he seemed to change his mind and closed the bag.
Dean stole the last sandwich and put all the uneaten cheese in it before taking a big bite.
XXXXX
Sifting through a mortal's mind was a lot like dumpster diving. A whole lot of garbage with the chances of finding something good pretty being damned near nonexistent. On top of that, the average human mind was about as orderly as a bag of trash. Azazel figured that maybe he should consider himself lucky that this mind wasn't that disorganized.
Her thoughts did keep slipping from his grasp like a squirming cat, though. Maybe he shouldn't have been surprised. After all, he knew what was in the makeup of an X5, but he hadn't honestly thought that they would think like a cat. Nor that they would fight so hard.
Apparently the animal reacted with an instinctive fear of the supernatural, and the X5 had gotten a couple of good solid blows in before he could stop her. They really were extraordinarily fast. He had the girl pinned firmly now though as he idly flipped through the thoughts she was aware of and then dug deeper for things she wasn't so aware of. There were little packets of mental programming and things she'd forgotten, but nothing like what he was after. There was no knowledge of enchantments in long forgotten languages or the whereabouts of the missing X5s from Alpha unit.
Azazel had only intruded on one of Sam Winchester's visions before he, Dean, and 494 had disappeared, but that one glimpse of the future had been more than enough to make him want to cut a swath of destruction across the continent until he found the female X5 he had seen in Sam's vision. One female X5 with dark hair and a spell written across her back that could royally fuck his shit up.
He wanted to find her, and almost more importantly, he wanted to find the person responsible for this. He wanted it done yesterday. Because he couldn't take that the easy route of just wiping out all the females that fit the description for two reasons. The first was that he couldn't find all the slippery things. Not with that devil's dozen still missing. The second was that even if he could find them all, he still didn't know who had the spell to scrawl it across the back of the young woman in the vision in the first place.
He was not going to have millennia of planning ruined by some catgirl with a tattoo written across the skin of her back. He had given humans weapons and the skills to use them. He wasn't going to have one turned against him now. When she slid from the wall, her blood spread wide around and beneath him. The fire spread even wider.
He left it burning as he walked away.
XXXXX
While Alec hardly existed at all in the hospital computer system, he still needed a chart, if only so Collin and the nurses could keep track of everything. The compromise was a good old-fashioned paper chart, complete with little separator tabs. While the chart was in the hospital it either lived in Collin's office, in his hand, or in the second drawer of Alec's bedside table, where his nurses could get to it. Once Alec was released, Collin would put it in the safe he kept in his apartment. The kid was a Winchester; Collin would be seeing him again.
On a hunch, Collin had looked up common feline allergies and poisons. Sure enough, acetaminophen, aspirin, and chocolate were all on the list, along with caffeine, alcohol, zinc, and a myriad of other less common things. So Alec had, to some degree, been lucky and only gotten three out of the list. None of them were so much allergies as outright body-destroying poisons. Collin decide he wouldn't share the details of what those poisons did with Sam or Dean.
He had gotten to talk with Alec again before dinner, and put together a few more pieces of his puzzle. Like the fact that the seizures might be due to possible damage from oxygen deprivation. He had drowned three times. Apparently, that was the penalty for failing the training exercise. Alec had been very sure that he could hold his breath under water for six minutes and twenty-four seconds. He was also very sure that a lot of water could be inhaled in thirty-six seconds, because the X5 standard was seven minutes, and they didn't get to come up for air until those seven minutes had passed. Alec had also grudgingly admitted that he handled each new attempt worse than the previous, until the final time he remembered only waking up three days later and being unable to breathe on his own.
It was almost needless to say that there had been numerous blows to the head. What really interested Collin was that the seizures seemed to have an emotional stress trigger as well. Not so much that stress induced a seizure, but that it made seizures much more likely. Alec had mentioned, hesitantly and with prompting from both Sam and Dean, that when he was in Psy-Ops there was always a team of medical staff assigned to him as well as psych, and that this was unusual. And that he always saw the same doctor, which was also unusual. He wouldn't tell Collin what Psy-Ops was or what happened there. It was the first true wall that he had run into with the young man. There was no coaxing anything out of him on the topic.
After that it had been a strangely normal litany of bullet wounds and broken bones. Collin knew there were still horror stories that Alec was simply refusing to divulge, but Collin let it go, knowing that Alec's tenuous trust only stretched so far.
He flipped back to Alec's bloodwork and sighed. He finished a mug of cold coffee and was pretty sure that no amount of caffeine was going to help him sort out why Alec was having seizures. And since he was still having them on occasion, Collin needed to know why, or they would never get the poor kid on effective medication.
What he really needed was an EEG while Alec was actively seizing, to tell him where in Alec's brain the problem actually was. Easy enough logistically, since Collin was pretty sure that Alec would seize within ten to fifteen minutes of being cut off from the IV medication. The hard part was going to be walking into the kid's room and saying something along the lines of 'I know this entire place scares the hell out of you, but I'd like to hook you up to a bunch of monitoring equipment that will most likely scare you even more, and then purposefully let you seize.' Not easy.
Collin's head thumped down onto Alec's chart and the empty paper coffee cup rolled out of his fingers, across his desk, and onto the floor. "This is so unfun."
XXXXX
Lydecker very rarely ever saw one of his X5s shed a tear. Tears were the product of strong emotions, and he tried very hard to teach them not to feel anything that strongly outside the bounds of their units. In the real world, beyond the confines of Manticore, those emotions could be used as a weapon against them. It was also equally as rare to see one show fear, let alone actually shake with it.
And yet X5-328 did both. He had returned from his mission early and noticeably without X5-413. Lydecker had to admit that he was having trouble deciphering the series of events from the X5’s hysterical babbling. He had managed to sort out that 413 was dead, that there would be no body to find, and that she hadn't been killed by anything having to do with the mission.
After that, things degenerated. He had asked for a description, and 328 had given him a jumble of feelings and scents, but couldn't seem to coherently put together a physical description. It was like the X5 was talking in cat thoughts. The Colonel had a headache. A huge one. There was some unknown person and/or military force out there capable of taking out an X5 easily. This was more than a problem. This was a disaster of epic proportions. And he couldn't do a damned thing about it until he had something to work with.
Eventually, he cut off the babble with a raised hand. If he couldn't get the unit to think like a human, he would have to get a translator. He stepped out of the briefing room and waited for Delta Unit's commander to answer his summons. Renfro appeared moments before the X5 in question showed up. The colonel felt his headache grow to alarming proportions. He ignored the woman in favor of talking to Delta's commander. "I need you to calm your teammate down and get me a physical description of the person that killed X5-413." The X5 nodded once, sharply. 413 was, mercifully, from Charlie Unit, so Delta's commander didn't have a strong emotional attachment to her. "Then take him back to his quarters. Someone else can sit with him if you think it will help. Once that is done, report to me and tell me what you can get from him. Understood?"
"Yes, sir." The unit gave Lydecker a sharp salute and entered the briefing room.
"He should be taken to Psy-Ops to sort out whatever shorted in his brain," Renfro stated.
"I didn't ask your opinion on the matter." He and Renfro both watched through the one-way window as one X5 sat across the other and began speaking.
The only thing that 328 had said to him about the mysterious killer that had made even the least bit of sense was that the killer had smelled like sulfur.
XXXXX