More and more
And here comes the next part! Plz tell me what you think.
“You know Captain Pryor. May I call you Vince? You know Vince-” He said, causing him to look up once again. “I asked you here for an important reason, but more importantly I asked you to this location, guided you to this exact spot, for a reason.” The man said, rapping his finger against the desk again for emphasis. “Can you tell me why?” He asked. The unusual question bothered Vince. It was overly simplistic and made him feel like he had failed to notice something important and obvious.
“Our… Your Intel suggested-“, the stranger raised his eyebrow and smirked. “-It pinpointed a nest. A nest… that…” Now the Captain felt uncomfortable. It was hard enough to bear the simple truths when he had them buried in the back of his mind but when he was pressed to actually vocalize them they shot a deep set pain through his heart. He struggled trying to form a tactful way to say it. After a moment the stranger interjected, “we could use?” He said, simply.
“Yes. That we could use. And that is happening right now, as you requested.” Vince shifted in his seat and looked down at the corner of the desk. He took a deep breath and tried to calm his thundering heart that threatened to explode in his chest, seemingly in retribution for his guilty conscience. The edge of the desk bore one of many large gashes that had been incised into its hardwood exterior. It bit deep into the graining and cleanly ran through to the other side of the corner. Whatever had made these marks had to have been exceptionally sharp.
The stranger leaned back into his chair and sighed as it slowly declined back into a laying position.
“Vince… It isn’t by my request that we do this, you know that. I only informed you of your options and opportunities.” He gestured up into the air with his arms. “It was your decision; I’m just here to make sure it all goes as smoothly as possible.”
Vince reeled at the comment. “I’m sorry.” He immediately apologized. “I didn’t mean it that way. You’re right. This is my burden and I’m sorry I worded it differently.” The stranger merely waved his hand through the air dismissively before sitting back up in his chair quickly.
“That’s all well and good but do you know why I asked-you-here?” He queried, rapping his knuckles on the table for each of three last emphasized words. “I mean, to this exact location. …Where we’re sitting right now to be exact. Other than it’s a private location.” He added, Vince frowning in response. That it was private was going to be his exact answer. His mind wasn’t working right, he was missing something. This was an unusual location; it seemed to be a long forgotten military base, making it strange that he hadn’t heard about it in his own city. More importantly, judging by the doors outside this office, it seemed to be a research base, but he was unsure of its purpose. Vince continued to frown and looked up to meet the man’s eyes.
The stranger rolled his unnaturally colored eyes and made an irritated noise in his throat.
“Fine. I’ll just give it ALL away then.” He said disappointedly. He lowered his hand down to the desk and flicked a long triangular polyhedron, which had been tucked behind some refuse on the desk, across its surface and slid to a stop in front of where Vince was sitting. He carefully reached forward with a gloved hand and picked it up. Across the front was a brass name plate with the words ‘COLONEL EDWARD WINCHESTER’ clearly visible in the warm lighting.
“Edward Winchester?” Vince furrowed his brows in concentration. The name buzzed in the back of his mind for a moment before hitting its mark. Hard.
Suddenly he burst up from his chair with an astonished gasp. The chair fell backwards in his excitement, landing with a soft thump as it hit the soft carpeting underfoot. Vince stared at the name plate in bewilderment for many more seconds before asking, “THE Colonel Winchester?!” his eyes almost bulging with shock and excitement.
“Exactly!” The yellow eyed man chirped, standing up and thrusting his hand, pointer finger up, into the air to match Vince’s excitement. “I thought you might like that.” he said in a smooth tone as he leaned over the desk. “So even though it was a bit out of the way for you I thought you might deserve a bit of a treat.”
“This was his base!” Vince blurted, more exclamation than question as he reached down to the tipped chair, righting it back up without taking his eyes off of the name plate. His partner closed his eyes and beamed as he nodded his head in enthusiastic agreement.
“You’re right on the button.” The man said. “This is… was the main head quarters for Colonel Edward Winchester and his band of merry men, otherwise known as the Shadow Ops. Section 4. Your predecessors.” Vince took his eyes off the name plate and stared with rapt attention into his partner’s eyes.
“This base is all that’s left of the facilities they had under their command.” The man continued. “Back in 1903 it was shut down and erased from the records of your division for reasons most could never imagine.” Vince was quite aware of the emphasis put onto the word ‘most’.
“This base was supposed to be so secret that even 95% of our higher command didn’t know its location. Winchester was supposed to be one of the few, not to mention the people he had under his command, if I may point out the obvious.” Vince mused aloud. “If this base was shut down, a base that’s status and location was so top secret that even in operation little was known about it, it’s not so farfetched to think that, should it be shut down, we still wouldn’t know anything about it.”
“Not to mention it was before even your time, so your ‘higher ups’ have had plenty of time to cover up the stories of this place. It was one of the darker chapters in your division.” the man said with a shrug. “There was no way you were going to find out about it without a little… help.” He said spinning his chair till his side faced the captain.
Vince stared over the man’s shoulder and into the side of his face, almost as if to read what happened to this place by his facial expressions. Aside from a small grin, it was fairly placid. After a moment of silent anticipation Vince finally asked the question he’d been dying to know.
“What happened to Section 4?” The man looked over his shoulder and gave him an almost devious grin.
“Breakdown in protocol.” He said with lavish delight. “They were bringing in a specimen for study and I guess they didn’t take the necessary precautions for complete quarantine and, from how I heard it, it stung one of its handlers.”
“Stung?” Vince replied incredulously.
“Yup! Stung.” The man replied with a nod. “Well, from there, to make a long story short, the man stung started developing flu-like symptoms and after a little while finally died.” The way he said it was so natural he might have suggested that the man went to a party, “So, out of curiosity, as you guys are notorious for,” he continued with a flamboyant flip of his wrist, “they placed him on a slab and went immediately to dissecting, yes dissecting,” he reiterated at Vince’s shocked expression, “him to analyze what had killed him. However…” The man paused for effect, his mouth split into a wide grin of what would seem to be amusement. “With his chest cut open and half his organs removed for examination, the man… came back to life!” He exclaimed with glee, throwing his hands up into the air. His words were echoed by the thunderous clap of another grenade going off in the distance. The man’s excitement held onto his face almost painfully as the corners of his mouth twitched in irritation. Vince slightly bowed his head in shame.
After another few moments of awkward silence followed the shower of dust that dropped from the cracked and glowing ceiling. The suited man let out his breath slowly and dropped his hands in defeat.
“Well ANYWAY.” He said with a not so subtle strain of annoyance. “The corpse was up and about and, caught off guard, the scientists observing him quickly fell victim to the voracious and aggressive behavior exhibited by the infected cadaver. To make a long and wonderfully gruesome story short, the scientists’ bodies also became infected and raised up and began killing and spreading the infection.”
“So, to put it simply, this place, its entire crew…” Vince dared speak despite his shame.
“Well… here in lies the point of the story. Now, you’d think if something like that was to happen it would be threat to the outside world.” The man said.
“No. I mean… That wouldn’t happen. Even if they were caught off guard-“
“Which they were.” The yellowed eyed man interjected with a nod. “By the time word got out that they were being attacked from within their own complex the majority of the medical wing had been infected.”
“Right. But even then, Sec. 4 was notorious for being one of the most secure, most prized section of the Shadow Ops. There’s no way something, even as terrible as that event seems, could completely wipe out an entire base and leave no one to report it or leave absolutely no evidence of what had happened. Someone should have been able to get away or at least send out a report,” Vince explained, his energy levels building as he thought less about being in the presence of one he felt so intimidated by and more along this thought process. His eyes were open but were unfocused as he stared down into nothing trying to comprehend what could have possibly happened to an entire battalion and no one knowing about it.
“Well… All of those questions can be answered very simply.” supplied the strange man who, until now, had been sitting quietly while Vince had been trying to absorb this bounty of information, staring at him with a blank expression. “You see, the fact of the infection was made known. But only to their liaison in the White House.”
Several seconds passed before Vince suddenly looked up at the man, almost startled.
“Wait. Someone DID know what happened here? I mean right after it happened?” Vince asked incredulously. “Why didn’t I hear about this?” He inquired, leaning over and propping himself up on his elbows in rapt attention.
“Well it’s simple really. As I said it was something your ‘folks’ didn’t want to leak out. If what they did in response was made known to the rest of their forces… Well let us just say it would be disastrous to moral,” the man said with a hearty chuckle. After a moment of silence Vince couldn’t bear waiting for the man to reach the conclusion on his own time and forced the subject.
“What did they do?” He asked quietly.
“Sanitized the whole complex,” the man responded with an abruptness that almost startled Vince. “Which means, before you ask because I knooow you will,” he stated melodically, “that because of the risk of mass public infestation should the mutation leak, they decided to sacrifice the whole complex. I heard they unleashed some sort of bio-toxin, or bacteria, or something that breaks down all genetic matter it touches. It effectively stopped the infection from spreading but it also cost the lives of every person in this base.” He said, looking down at the dust on the table again.