Liberty or Possessions Chapter 13 The Great Destroyer
Liberty or Possessions Chapter 13
The Great Destroyer
Chapter 13 Song by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1_jnOtd2cE
Warnings: (Minor) Character Deaths, Drug Use, Violence, Gore, Language, Mentions of: Blood Diseases
Oliver's labored breathing filled the silence between questions. He was unsure how he kept his eyes open, and if it were not for the chair he had been put in, he would have been face down on the floor. He felt sick from all the water, stomach churning and preparing him to vomit, except for the fact that he had no energy to do so. Instead he drooled, eyes wide open but unseeing as he stared at the man across the table from him. The man that asked questions and gave a wide berth in conversation just incase something were to get through to Oliver and elicit a response.
"Where have you been for 5 years?" He asked for the twentieth time that day, getting the same response of breaths and a blank stare. Oliver was an honest to god mess, the drugs in his system raging wars against his normal functions that made Vietnam look like a walk in the park. The Opal was probably the only thing that kept him in any state of consciousness, and even that front was debatable.
"Are you a traitor?" The man asked after the allotted two minutes of silence. Oliver again did not move, but something was going on with him under the surface. It was something familiar, something that tugged at him, urged him. It was not instantaneous when it cut through whatever was clouding every input port Oliver had, but it eventually did with a slow crescendo. It was a voice that spoke steadily to him, a tone that was not forcing nor coddling. It was a voice that told him what needed to be done and told him that everything would be okay.
It took almost twenty minutes after Oliver first realized it was there for him to place it as Mikkel's voice. It was a familiar voice telling him things that were far less familiar coming from his tone.
"What can you tell us about the operations of Molious?" The voice did not let Oliver even entertain the notion of answering that question. Actually, the voice of Mikkel did not even acknowledge that the man had spoken at all. It just continued to talk, short sentences that grew slightly more complex as it latched onto Oliver's slowly returning consciousness.
"What is your name?"
"Say your name. Try to speak as clearly as you can."
Oliver could not feel his mouth forming the words, but they came out and he heard them. He heard himself speak and though it surprised him, nothing showed externally on his features. He remained as lax as he had been for hours. Or was it days? As he spoke, more excess water pushed passed his lips, dripping down his chin. He could not feel it either, but knew it was there. He wanted to remember how to vomit. The man straightened when Oliver spoke, staring at him for several seconds. He had obviously been surprised by Oliver’s sudden words, not predicting them in the least.
"Were you with the terrorist cell Molious?" The man asked after a moment in which he had picked up his pen and wrote down Oliver's response.
"Yes," Oliver supplied, ridged and unnatural, almost as if reading from a script. He was prompted to answer in the affirmative by the voice of Mikkel in his head, but nothing more. He honestly was not even sure if he could do anything else such as add tone and timber.
"Nod your head. They're watching you. Try to make it look good." Oliver did as instructed, definitely questioning his own sanity at that moment. The motion came much jerkier, stiffer, than a normal head nod would be. He could not feel it, but it was very off. He knew nothing about his blank stare, his salivating mouth, and how his slight movements looked anything but close to normal, but it also did not seem very important to him. There was another pause from the man across the table where he wrote, before he continued with the questions.
"Are there any extensions of Molious? Other cells that require our attention?" Nothing entered Oliver's head at that question, so he just remained sitting and staring, drooling and lost. Bile and water mixed at the base of his throat, but came no higher, though he locked up slightly in preparation for it to do so. His body, essentially, was on autopilot, controlled by the drugs. The minutes of silence stretched again before the man prompted once more with the same question.
Oliver had begun to retain parts of memories, was able to think back and remember the man writing (though he was unable to recall what the man had been writing, or even what the last thing he had said was), yet he still could not manage to deduce if he was conscious or not. Mikkel's voice had sunk back into silence. Oliver was not sure if he could do anything until he was instructed to by that voice, and yet he did not try.
Minutes seemed never ending as the man asked several different questions. He had begun to wonder if the responses elicited from the boy had been flukes, strange neuron firings that just happened to be connected enough to appear to be answers and not just involuntary hiccups of information. Oliver was in rough shape, and he felt the haze of the drugs begin to edge back into his system when Mikkel's voice returned, low and, this time, soothing.
"I need you to concentrate, Oliver," It told him, almost as if he could feel the blurred edges in Oliver's vision returning. Oliver guessed it could if the voice really was in his own head. "I need you to fight it, but not let them see that you are. You need to fool them, not let them put any more drugs in you."
"Okay," Oliver replied, more spit than words, and the man across the table looked up at him briefly, before back down to write what Oliver had uttered. Even though it was entirely out of context from what the man had asked, he was under strict orders to document everything.
Oliver worked hard after that to attempt to concentrate. He tried to focus on the man across from him, on the wall, on anything he could. He gave a brief attempt at reading the man's paper upside-down, but realized quickly that the drugs turned it into a sort of thin-lined Rorschach test. Mikkel's voice wanted him to keep away from that stuff, so Oliver tried his hardest. Still he could not vomit, but with the slow return of his consciousness came the vague touches of sensation. He could almost feel the wetness on his chin from where the excess water was forcing its way out of his mouth; touches of sensation in the aches and pains that came with sitting in a chair far too long and being beaten up at basically every turn. He tried to decide how long he had been in that room, but nothing solid before the last five minutes or so came to the surface, and still, certain things continued to slip passed his consciousness. He felt like he had studied the man before, but when he looked back it was like someone else was sitting there. He fought to remember more details about him, clearly ignoring the questions when the Mikkel in his head did not supply an answer.
Oliver was sure hours had passed since he began retain a notion of time, and though he had managed to remember the man's uniform, the way he leaned slightly to his left when he reached for something on the table, and how occasionally he glanced at something behind Oliver, he still felt like he was a long way from any real functionality. He blinked slowly and his eyes ached. Though most of his body hurt, his eyes held a pain that took precedence and he concentrated on that. He tried to only blink when the man looked down, but the man's need to consult the paper in front of him had become less frequent, and Oliver's need to wet his eyes more desperate.
"I want to vomit," Oliver thought, but received no response from the Mikkel in his head. He wanted to sigh, to shift, and to get up. He wanted to be home-- in Arizona or in Sweden, he did not actually care-- but he said none of those things out loud since the Mikkel in his head told him not to let them know he was functioning, even at a basic level. The man seemed to have come to some conclusion that the responses Oliver had given were flukes and appeared highly disinterested and very weary over sitting in the room with the drooling Oliver much longer.
"What is your name?" He asked again, almost absently.
"Oliver," Oliver muttered out again, gaining anther surprised look from the man. Oliver forced his eyes to stare straight, though they ached and watered with the need to close. Mikkel told him to answer and he did, but his mind really was not with it. It was occupied with sobering up.
"Keep it up, Oliver." The Mikkel Oliver had met in this world never sound as caring as his Mikkel did, but that phrase was close. Oliver blinked slowly, and when he opened his eyes, the man was watching him. Oliver panicked, and realized he had messed up severely when he met the man's gaze and stared back. He no longer felt the pain in his eyes while he locked up in fear. They knew he was waking up and the voice of Mikkel in his head had made it pretty clear that that would not be a good thing.
The man was on his feet in a moment and Oliver tried to do the same, tried to stand, to run, but he was not well enough for those sorts of functions yet. He managed to kick his feet in an attempt to either push his chair back or have them support his weight, but all he managed to do was slide his soles across the floor and lurch hard against the back of the chair. It seemed like magic how fast the man had a syringe of Opal in his hand, and it was not a far distance between him and the practically incapacitated Oliver.
"No, please!" Oliver begged in Swedish, in hopeless gasps, but the man neither understood nor cared about Oliver’s desperate begging. Oliver slammed his eyes shut, scared of the sedation he knew would come-- of the more water and Opal they would pump into his system. His muscles finally came back to life in the minor capacity of a scared twitch when a gunshot echoed deafeningly through the room. Oliver's eyes flew back open again to see that the man had disappeared and left only a large blood splatter (dripping wetly toward the floor) and a single bullet hole in his place. They both marred the perfectly white wall.
"Should have warned you about blinking," Mikkel muttered from somewhere behind him and Oliver turned quickly, causing his head to reel and his sight to fade to blackness and starbursts of light for a minute. He hurt more than he could ever remember, including his ears that rang and popped with an attempt to equalize pressure.
Mikkel moved quickly and he seemed like a motion blur to Oliver's stunned mind and senses. He bolted the door before he walked around the room and tore out every camera that protruded from the wall. Finally he grabbed the voice recorder from the table and crushed it under his heel. He stepped over what Oliver eventually realized was the man that had been asking him questions, head blown open and brain largely displaced from his skull. Oliver still could not find his voice so he stared at Mikkel in shock instead of asking him obvious questions. He hoped it was not a trick by the Government because he was sure he was about to cry with relief. Instead he vomited, managing to get most of it onto the floor. Mikkel just watched in silence until Oliver dragged in a shaking breath. He then laid his gun on the table and dragged the corpse to the corner of the room, depositing it unceremoniously before returning to the table. He sat quickly down in the chair that the now dead man had been in, and stared long and hard until Oliver managed to calm enough to meet his eyes.
"How are you feeling now?" He asked and Oliver grinned crookedly, managing through reflex alone to bring his hand up and wipe away the vomit and drool that clung to his chin. He did not reply for several more beats, but when he did it was not an answer.
"I heard you in my head," He told Mikkel weakly, and something on the other man's face betrayed his stoicism for just a moment. Carefully he stood again and leaned across the table toward Oliver, reaching behind the younger man’s ear to disengage a very small round device. He showed it to Oliver on the tip of his finger. Oliver did not know what it was, but he had a guess.
"You heard me in your ear. I knew a threat like the one I gave Sinclair wouldn't go without retribution, and I knew it was going to be you or me they got. I hoped it would just be me, but this was a safety precaution incase it went the other way." Oliver nodded, but Mikkel putting the device back into place stunted it. He licked his lips carefully; brain still not ready for full functionality, but the much-needed expulsion of the water in his stomach had helped.
"I didn't know if it was you, or the Mikkel I know, but it made me feel better. Made me not want to just die." Mikkel did not look at Oliver as he stepped away and grabbed his gun once more. He also did not sit again but, instead, slowly walked the perimeter of the room. Oliver had come to accept that this Mikkel did not share, did not take admissions like that well, but he had still hoped for something, anything, that was like his Mikkel. He wanted to feel like he was home, even for a moment.
"This Government likes its poisons; its mind controlling. What they forget, though, is that there are things in this world that can counteract what they do to a person." Oliver watched Mikkel's back as he slowly picked at the bullet imbedded in the wall. There was no way he would get it out, but it was at least a reason to not look at Oliver.
"What could counteract it?" Oliver asked meekly, wonderment in his voice.
"Sentiment and familiarity," Mikkel told him slowly in English, glancing for just one second back at Oliver before he derailed the conversation. "It’ll be a story I'll tell you one day, but right now we need to concentrate on getting out of here and getting as far off of the Government's radar as we can." Oliver nodded, this time more surely, and used his arms to try and help himself stand. Mikkel did not help immediately, but when he saw how difficult it was for the other man, he approached and propped him up. It was slow going, and even after getting to his feet, Oliver could not exactly stumble effectively, let alone run, crawl, or whatever else he would need to do to escape from that place. He looked at Mikkel and expected to see displeasure, even annoyance on his features, but he looked calm and easy. At first Oliver thought it really might have been his Mikkel, but then he placed the other emotions on the older man's face, and they were along the lines of understanding. He had been subjected to Government testing before; Oliver had gathered that much info from the snippets that Maria, the other members of Molious, and even this Mikkel himself had given up. But what clicked into place right then was that Mikkel had been subjected to the exact same brainwashing that the Government had just begun doing to Oliver. That was how the other man knew what Oliver needed to come out of it, because it had worked on him too.
Oliver knew he did not have all the time in the world to remember basic motor skills, but that was cemented when a warning siren began to blare through the base. Both Mikkel and Oliver gazed up at the ceiling as if it would hold all the answers, but Mikkel was listening and Oliver did it just more as reflex. They needed to hurry and get going, and without even a word from Mikkel, Oliver knew that.
"Either they just found the bodies and their cameras disabled, or we're in a lot more shit than I planned on," Mikkel said, spoken obviously to Oliver, but toned almost like he was talking to the air. Oliver tried to force his legs to hurry and remember what walking was, but he stumbled a little and fell against the wall, gritting his teeth and slamming his eyes shut in frustration. He would get them both killed if he could not just remember how to walk.
Mikkel, however, seemed far less worried about Oliver's impaired state, and more intent on slinging his backpack from his shoulder to rummage through it. Oliver watched him through squinted eyes and scrunched brows. He should not have been as surprised as he was when Mikkel pulled out a pistol and handed it, grip first, toward him.
"We're going to be hugging walls, so as long as you can manage to walk like that, we're going to go." Oliver licked his lips and reached for the gun, but was not exactly thrilled with Mikkel's plan.
"Like hell. You should just go. I'm useless and will only slow you down." Mikkel turned a hard glare at Oliver, shifting something in his hand that Oliver immediately looked at. It was the Opal syringe that had had his name on it before the man debriefing him had received the bullet lobotomy. Mikkel did not even have to look at it as he fit the needle under a fingernail and injected the tar-black liquid into his own body.
"I risked a lot getting in here to get you out. So, here are your options, Oliver." His voice was monotone, his eyes hard and serious. "Either you shut up and follow me as fast and as quietly as you can, or I put a bullet in you right here so there is no chance that they will do to you what they wanted to. If I were you, I'd pick the first and stop arguing with me. There’s a lot riding on me getting you out of here, and though right now you probably feel a lot like a soldier, you’re not one, and you need to remember that." Oliver limply held the gun in his hand and stared blankly at Mikkel. He had kind of figured that death would have been the other option, but to hear that Mikkel would do it right there and right then put the severity of the situation in full light. Oliver knew he was not strong. He would succumb to the Government, run out of usefulness, and then be killed or be turned against those that had risked everything to help him. He would rather the bullet, but he would much rather attempt an escape first. If they got captured and it turned into him or Mikkel, Oliver hoped he, himself, would do what he thought was right. The drugs in his system told him that there was no question. If it came down to that Oliver would not hesitate to kill himself.
"Alright, what should I do?" He asked quietly, and Mikkel relaxed a little, posture not reflecting that somewhere deep down he was still a killer. He gestured toward the door with a cock of his head and Oliver glanced at it momentarily before he returned his attention to Mikkel.
"Basically like before, back on the first night. Just stick with me and if I tell you something, you do it without hesitation. Even if that is to kill someone, Oliver." The notion of killing someone did not well up the dread Oliver had thought it would. Instead his brain thought more tactically, thought about how much he would slow Mikkel down, weighing the pros and cons of self-sacrifice and self-preservation.
"Are you going to be okay with…?" Oliver alluded to where Mikkel had doped himself with the Opal, and Mikkel spared a glance down at his blackened nail before he looked at Oliver again, hard and directly in the eyes.
"It takes the edge off, removes fear, and boosts my reaction. You'll understand when the Parepin and Prozira in your system gets out and the Opal can work." Oliver hoped that would be soon because somewhere, under the paranoia and twitching muscles, he could almost feel it. Oliver knew intellectually that the Government had put a ton of drugs into his system, but when Mikkel called them out by name, he was able to pinpoint the way they altered him. After all, he had just considered letting the older man kill him.
"Alright, then I'm ready." Oliver did not have to ask Mikkel to take into account his limitations, his lack of training, or even his opposition to killing anything bigger than a spider, because he knew that Mikkel knew all of that and would cover him as much as he could. However, they were in a Government base surrounded, probably, by hundreds of Government soldiers who really would not find any hardship in killing them or capturing them again. Oliver recognized that there could very well be a time to have to use force, and it still did not shake him.
Mikkel unbolted the door carefully, making as little noise as he could, before he edged the door open and took a look at their situation. The room was sound proof so there was a very good chance that they had not heard the gunshot that killed the auditor in Oliver's room, but the destruction of the cameras could have given the Government a good idea about what was going on. Surprisingly though, the hallway was clear, and the only noise (yet one that masked virtually any other noise Mikkel would have been listening for) was a repeated message. It was in military code, echoing loudly in the hall. It seemed to be about the grade of threat the base was under. Aqua level ordinance: 71839J, it said in a robotic woman’s voice. Mikkel did not need to know the specific order number to know that Aqua level meant something really bad was happening. Not for a moment did he think that Aqua had been engaged because of him or Oliver.
"C'mon," Mikkel said quietly to Oliver before he pushed the door open and exited the cell. The Opal did more than just make him a better soldier; it ate into his system and told him more. He had no idea where the Americans made the drug, or how they had synthesized it to make him experience complete dissociation, but right then, in the thick of what could be a fight for his and Oliver's lives, he wanted that exact effect. He wanted to be removed from everything that held him back, even his overwhelming urge to make every person in that facility pay for the attack on Molious.
The halls appeared deserted, but noise from soldiers moving around would have been masked by the repeating alert announcement, so Mikkel kept his eyes peeled for any sign of hostility. Luckily the alarm also masked their noises: Oliver's stumbling, the gun shaking in his unsteady hands, and the way his shoulder slid along the wall. If the alarm was not for them, which was reaffirmed by the lack of soldiers charging Oliver's cell, then Mikkel assumed they had not found the dead sentries that were stationed strategically throughout the corridors yet. As he had made his way further inside the building, Mikkel had had to get more creative with the killings. He had wasted two perfectly good knives in the name of stealth, and had to pick up lethal yet quiet weapons along the way.
Oliver let out a gasp of cry that was muffled by his own realization of the situation when Mikkel lead him into a small room off of the main corridor. Inside were three bodies, all almost unrecognizable with extreme facial wounds. Dissociation was a two way street, obviously, because though Mikkel remembered killing the guards, he had forgotten just how brutally. He had reverted to the soldier in himself, to the blind rage that was quite animalistic in nature, but yet very different from the Berserker’s qualities. All three guards had their eyes gouged out and faces raked up. Lying not far away was a spoon, fork, and knife. All three had blood glistening on them, just starting to grow sticky with exposure.
"Did you…" Oliver began to ask, but was cut off by Mikkel's hasty affirmation. He did not need to talk about what pure brutality he displayed, about the way he remembered, vaguely beneath the drugs, stabbing one of the men in the lung from the side, how the other got his throat slashed, and how the third was disarmed, dragged to the floor, and intestines punctured. How he took a few rounds, targeting each man in turn, ripping at their organs before using the other tools to blind them and rip their faces to pieces, stopping only after their voice boxes were removed, their mouths stretched and cut open, tongues cut out, and bits of skull made to peek out from blood and skin. Oliver really had not needed to see the bodies, but the room cut to the other side of the building via a maintenance hallway, and it would remove a lot of guesswork to take the short cut. If the kid were scared, then it would be just a lesson to him that though he had memories of a different Mikkel with the same face, it was not he. He was hardly a man anymore the drugs reminded Mikkel. He had hardly been a man for a long time.
"Be thankful that I'm not trying to kill you any more," Was all Mikkel told him before he lead Oliver past the bodies and out the door on the opposite side of the room, pushing back his own worries. The freshest dose of Opal would kick in soon and that would erase any guilt he felt.
Going was slow and thorough, but they came upon no resistance. The base seemed emptied out, and Mikkel's ever-present soldier instinct ranged between thinking that it was a stroke of good luck, and wondering just what else worse had drawn away every person in the base. If it was something more frightening than Mikkel's carving of dead men and pension for extreme violence, he hoped not to meet it.
The alarm continued on, but it was soon background noise to both men. It was information that was both nonsense to them and, yet, comforting in a way. As long as it continued to repeat, they were going to be able to make it out.
A T in the hall was where Mikkel paused. He was roughly ten feet from the intersection, and on his way in had taken note that it would be the trickiest part of their escape if they even could make it that far. He turned slightly, holding his hand up to signal that Oliver should stop and stay. He did not spend much of the exiting trip keeping tabs on the younger man, using the scuffs and labored breathing that made it past the overbearing sound of the alarm as evidence enough that he was still following, but when he focused his attention on the younger man, he began to notice just how bad off Oliver was.
Oliver looked strung out. They had had him for a few days, had probably been pushing the drugs into him after the first hour, and coming off of them was not exactly a walk in the park. A thin layer of sweat was shining on every bit of skin that showed, and his eyes were deep and dark. He continued to drool a little, too much water still in his system, and he shook from head to toe in light but constant tremors. Either they had given him so much Opal that his body no longer knew pain, or the kid was tougher than Mikkel had given him credit for. Either way, whether because of the drugs that made Mikkel’s own heart cold and uncaring or the fact that he knew that they were in mortal danger being anywhere within a five mile radius of the compound, Mikkel could not risk checking him over. He could not even spare time for the rest Oliver would need to recover. Instead he let the knowledge of Oliver's weakness and diminishing health pass right through him, letting instinct and primal preservation consume him again. He would worry about Oliver's state when they were safe.
Creeping forward, Mikkel shifted his gaze to the right, knowing that a sentry there would spot him against the left wall, but still listening and feeling for anything from his left. When he got to the corner, Mikkel peeked around, but the hallway, much like every other, was devoid of people. Carefully he lowered his pistol, stepping back against the wall to signal Oliver to join him. As he turned, though, he saw that Oliver was not alone. Sinclair stood behind him, gun pressed threateningly against Oliver's temple, and other hand over the younger man's mouth, stopping him from making any sound that would have been heard over the alarm. Oliver looked frightened, staring desperately at Mikkel as the gun shook between his palms from both the detox tremors and fear.
"Told you to drop it, Oliver." Sinclair chided, and Mikkel’s instincts told him that he would never again get a chance to dispose of the man as cleanly as right then. As a soldier there was never a problem with civilian casualties. They were accepted, sometimes even encouraged, and the Prozira had brought him back to being a soldier. They had brought him back under, had begun to reform him into the property of the Government, but they had not finished. Mikkel was a soldier, he had no doubt about that, but he was a soldier of a different organization. He had been remade into a soldier of the Presence, and though the voices and images had become silent, Mikkel could still feel them watching him constantly. Carefully Mikkel stood up straight and nodded to Oliver, telling him that dropping the gun was a damn good idea. In the hold Sinclair had on him, him blowing Oliver's brain out would be the merciful death. Breaking his neck was far more brutal.
Oliver looked at Mikkel for several long seconds with unwavering eyes before the gun slipped easily out of his hands, colliding to the ground hard but not discharging. Mikkel held his hands up, palms facing Sinclair in an image of surrender, but he did not put the gun down. If he was told to, he would consider it, but until then, the simple act of shooting Malcolm through Oliver was still a very tempting offer, regardless of how the Presence warned him against it. Mikkel tried to push the Opal back, remind himself that sacrificing Oliver for his own safety was a stupid move, one that would be met with his own blood. He was not a heartless killer any more, regardless of how he had disfigured the guards.
"Always thought you'd come back to haunt us, Mikkel Boedker. At the beginning you were so promising, such a good soldier. Now," A harsh laugh left the man, not at all jovial and far more cynical. "Now, you're just a rabid dog. No good to your precious Molious, your fiancée, or this boy. Biting hands that feed you left and right. Thought we could remind you of your loyalties, but now I see that was just wishful thinking."
"Then why not put me down?" Mikkel asked, eyes hard on the man, not looking to Oliver who begged him silently to do something. The Opal should have made Oliver resistant to fear, but it still seemed to be lacking in his system, still hidden below the Parepin and the Prozira. Mikkel was not sure whether to buy him more time, or attempt to disengage Sinclair around him. "That's what you do, isn't it? Put down the problem? Seemed to be your specialty if memory serves me." The cruel laugh came from Sinclair again, his attention turning down to Oliver who only rolled his eyes to look at him after the man's breath puffed against his hair.
"I want that death match, Boedker! I want him to rip you apart. I wanted you to lead my army, but now I see how blind I had been. There is no redemption for you and that is why, right now, I’m done with it all. You’ll get the death by bullet you always wanted.” Mikkel's fingers twitched. He wanted to take the shot and to hell with Oliver's survival. Oliver was not a soldier, regardless of the drugs and training they had done to him in the days Oliver was captive. However something whispered to him, told him to wait, and drew the seconds out to eternity. The Presence told him that it would be over soon and no action from himself was needed. Maybe it was the Opal that gave him perverse optimism, but it was there, and the more Mikkel tried to ignore it, the stronger it became.
Sinclair moved, slow motion to Mikkel who could do nothing to disarm him. He shifted, gun moving from Oliver’s temple to out-stretched, barrel pointed directly at Mikkel. He wanted to shoot Sinclair while the older man was not fully behind Oliver, wanted to take the shot just as he had millions of times before, but the Presence stilled him. It would not risk Oliver’s safety for Mikkel’s, and though Mikkel wanted to feel wounded by that, he could not. Finally something in those never ending seconds clicked in Oliver, something loud and violent that shot through his system like electricity. He jerked, slamming his head back and into Sinclair's face, feeling his nose and teeth shattering with the impact. He turned and slid the man's knife from the holster on his belt without looking and, using both of his hands, Oliver slammed the decorative blade into Sinclair’s shoulders one at a time before the man even had the chance to fall back. Sinclair's scream echoed loudly above the alert, and that, along with the blood splattering onto Oliver's face, snapped him out of whatever had come over him. Wide-eyed in fright, Oliver stumbled back toward Mikkel who pushed past Oliver. He grabbed the knife just as it came loose of the younger man's shaking grip, and went to work. He bent over Sinclair; cutting tendons on his legs and arms, not letting the man have a second chance to catch them unaware.
"Grab the guns," Mikkel told Oliver, and the boy did not immediately comply. He continued to stare in horror at what he had done, and it took another harsh bark of orders from Mikkel for him to move and pick them up. There were specks of blood on his skin and after he had a hold of his and Mikkel's guns, he began scrubbing his hands off on his jeans. He shook and kept his eyes down, unwilling to look at what he had done as Mikkel finished.
"I… I didn't…" Oliver began, and was told to shut up by Mikkel as he handed Sinclair's gun to Oliver. He took it, fumbling with all three, hands not entirely wanting to work, as Mikkel moved around Sinclair to grab at his injured and useless shoulders. Ignoring the screaming, and hoping that no one else heard them, Mikkel dragged the limp body toward the door that Sinclair had come out of. He left streaks of blood that trailed after them and just hoped Aqua alert would keep everyone away for a little longer. Once inside, Mikkel realized exactly where they were. The room had been updated since he had been there, but it was definitely where they had experimented on him. It had been the reason Mikkel had always wanted to return there with countless pounds of C-Four. It had been the room that plague Mikkel subconsciously, unable to draw upon memories of it, only feelings.
Mikkel threw Sinclair to the floor unceremoniously as Oliver shut the door behind them. Moving around the mutilated body, Mikkel grabbed a hold of the man's uniform collar and pulled him up, eyeing him dangerously through the blood that poured from his shattered nose.
"I'm imagining you're pretty fucking terrified right now," Mikkel hissed through gritted teeth, giving the man a hard shake. "Imagine you're thinking how you should have just put the bullet in us and walked away, but you have some damn pride, don't you, Sinclair. Some need to terrorize, to make us kill ourselves. Your downfall, your weakness, is how much you don't listen to instinct." The man managed a snarl, spitting blood into Mikkel's face that only elicited a closing of Mikkel’s eyes. He had been covered in worse.
"Think you won, Boedker? Carved me up a bit, made me scream? Soldiers will be on their way here in a few seconds, and they have that instinct you enjoy so much. They'll blow you and the little boy into bite sized pieces and then we'll feed them to the civilians and they will ask for more as their starving stomachs fill!" Mikkel glanced back to Oliver who had yet to calm down, who hyperventilated against the wall by the door, who looked at the machines, the gurneys, and flashed back to what they had done to him there. Blood dripped down Oliver’s face, still speckled his hand where they held too many guns, shaking and useless. Whatever had clicked in him and allowed them survival had passed as fast as it had come, and left him as just the outsider again. Mikkel dropped Sinclair who howled in pain again, and approached Oliver. It took until Mikkel wiped a bit of blood off his face for Oliver to realize he was even there.
"Are you okay?" Mikkel asked quietly, keeping their conversation private, even though it was in Swedish and more than likely not understood by Sinclair. At first Oliver did not move, still a deer caught in headlights, but then he nodded slowly, almost contemplatively, before finally settling on shaking his head no. It took him a few moments to find his voice, and when he did it came out meek.
"I don't… I didn't mean to… S-something just kinda… happened, and then I had the knife, and I knew where to… to…" Mikkel grabbed a bit of Oliver's hair, bending him to place their foreheads together. He could feel the shaking going through the boy, letting it bleed off into himself where he remained grounded.
"You know he was going to kill us, right? Maybe not right then, but eventually we'd both be dead." Mikkel waited for Oliver to nod a little in response. "Then you also know that what you did, however you did it, was just for self-protection. You're not him, Oliver. You're not me, Oliver. You are still you and this blood is not on your hands. Let this blood be on mine." It took awhile for Oliver to speak, but when he did it was barely a whisper.
"Are you going to kill him?" Mikkel nodded his affirmation that time, gently massaging at the back of Oliver's neck. It was juxtaposition from the words he spoke which were soft and yet hard.
"I'm going to get my revenge for everyone I loved. I'm going to get revenge for Sidney, Molious, you, and myself. It won’t take long, so please wait outside and stand guard." Oliver did not move as Mikkel took two of the guns from his hands and stepped back. Oliver remained where he was and finally stopped shaking.
"I want to watch." He said a bit louder, eyes hard and directed right at Mikkel who looked back at him. "I want revenge too, Mikkel."
"Not your fight, Oliver," He reminded the younger man, and expected no more resistance from him, but got a sharp tone from Oliver in return.
"It is my fight. They made it my fight. This isn't my world, this isn't where I belong, but I'm here, and what they did was real. What they did to you, Molious, and me was real. This is my fight and I want to see it through." He was resigned; his body and mind both confident in his decision. It was the Opal, Mikkel reminded himself, finally breaking past the Prozira and Parepin, taking charge of Oliver, but the younger man had always been stronger than he had given him credit for. It had become his fight when Sinclair’s soldiers had almost killed him back on the street the first night, and it really was something he deserved to see the end of. Carefully Mikkel nodded, sliding his own pistol into the holster on his hip before bending. He shoved Sinclair's pistol in his backpack and then turned, grabbing the man and pulling him across the room by one almost severed shoulder.
"Just fucking shoot me!" Sinclair demanded in howls of pain, but Mikkel ignored him, dragging him to a padded chair, hoisting him up and tossing him unceremoniously against it. He pulled and twisted the man's useless limbs into place against the metal structure of the chair, pulling leather straps tight so he could not wiggle from the chair. Finally, Mikkel grabbed a fistful of the man's greying hair and yanked his head back, strapping it in place against the metal brace that forced him to look up. Sinclair knew what was going on and shouted all levels of curses toward and against the two men, but Mikkel paid him no mind. When Mikkel stepped passed the chair and turned up a pressure gauge, Oliver finally knew what was happening as well.
At first Oliver felt terrible, flinching as the water started to shoot down against Sinclair's face. Mikkel let the man sputter and fight the stream for a few seconds before he moved back around the man. He pulled on Sinclair's jaw, wedging it open and getting each hand inside his mouth in turn. The man screamed, but no longer begged as Mikkel pulled once, hard, and left Sinclair's bottom jaw broken and dislodged from the rest of his skull. It hung limp and crooked, tongue twitching as the water plummeted right into the open chasm of his mouth. Oliver had wanted to see, and Mikkel made sure he saw all he needed to. The man would drown in or explode from the water, but he was dead. No help was coming for Sinclair, none that would arrive in time regardless, and his last thoughts would be about how those that had been force-fed the water had felt. Oliver felt nothing, and then he felt sick. He looked away right before Mikkel pulled his side arm and shot Sinclair in the heart, jumping as the gun discharged but still unwilling to look any longer at the sight. With one last final twitch Sinclair died, body under the constant flow of water. Oliver refused to move even when Mikkel returned to him, even when the older man placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
It was a few minutes before Mikkel decided that it was enough time for Oliver to have processed what had happened. It had not been pretty, had definitely not been humane, but it was satisfying to Mikkel and, silently, he thanked the Presence for giving him that one ounce of peace. It was not over, he knew, but at least one front of his war had ended in a victory.
“We have to go, Oliver,” Mikkel said softly and though it took several more seconds, the younger man seemed to come around, nodding softly and slowly. His hand tightened around his gun and Mikkel took that as a good sign. There was a little bit of the soldier still in Oliver, and it was possible they would need that in order to escape. Mikkel slowly nodded to Oliver too, attempting to reassure him, before he moved to the door, checked that the coast was clear, and, together, they both slipped back into the endless white corridors.
Playlist by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://8tracks.com/masterpenguin/liberty-of-possession
Chapter 13 Song by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1_jnOtd2cE
Master Post: http://z4rf3.livejournal.com/16531.html
Chapter 14 Another Version of the Truth: http://z4rf3.livejournal.com/20136.html
The Great Destroyer
Chapter 13 Song by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1_jnOtd2cE
Warnings: (Minor) Character Deaths, Drug Use, Violence, Gore, Language, Mentions of: Blood Diseases
Oliver's labored breathing filled the silence between questions. He was unsure how he kept his eyes open, and if it were not for the chair he had been put in, he would have been face down on the floor. He felt sick from all the water, stomach churning and preparing him to vomit, except for the fact that he had no energy to do so. Instead he drooled, eyes wide open but unseeing as he stared at the man across the table from him. The man that asked questions and gave a wide berth in conversation just incase something were to get through to Oliver and elicit a response.
"Where have you been for 5 years?" He asked for the twentieth time that day, getting the same response of breaths and a blank stare. Oliver was an honest to god mess, the drugs in his system raging wars against his normal functions that made Vietnam look like a walk in the park. The Opal was probably the only thing that kept him in any state of consciousness, and even that front was debatable.
"Are you a traitor?" The man asked after the allotted two minutes of silence. Oliver again did not move, but something was going on with him under the surface. It was something familiar, something that tugged at him, urged him. It was not instantaneous when it cut through whatever was clouding every input port Oliver had, but it eventually did with a slow crescendo. It was a voice that spoke steadily to him, a tone that was not forcing nor coddling. It was a voice that told him what needed to be done and told him that everything would be okay.
It took almost twenty minutes after Oliver first realized it was there for him to place it as Mikkel's voice. It was a familiar voice telling him things that were far less familiar coming from his tone.
"What can you tell us about the operations of Molious?" The voice did not let Oliver even entertain the notion of answering that question. Actually, the voice of Mikkel did not even acknowledge that the man had spoken at all. It just continued to talk, short sentences that grew slightly more complex as it latched onto Oliver's slowly returning consciousness.
"What is your name?"
"Say your name. Try to speak as clearly as you can."
Oliver could not feel his mouth forming the words, but they came out and he heard them. He heard himself speak and though it surprised him, nothing showed externally on his features. He remained as lax as he had been for hours. Or was it days? As he spoke, more excess water pushed passed his lips, dripping down his chin. He could not feel it either, but knew it was there. He wanted to remember how to vomit. The man straightened when Oliver spoke, staring at him for several seconds. He had obviously been surprised by Oliver’s sudden words, not predicting them in the least.
"Were you with the terrorist cell Molious?" The man asked after a moment in which he had picked up his pen and wrote down Oliver's response.
"Yes," Oliver supplied, ridged and unnatural, almost as if reading from a script. He was prompted to answer in the affirmative by the voice of Mikkel in his head, but nothing more. He honestly was not even sure if he could do anything else such as add tone and timber.
"Nod your head. They're watching you. Try to make it look good." Oliver did as instructed, definitely questioning his own sanity at that moment. The motion came much jerkier, stiffer, than a normal head nod would be. He could not feel it, but it was very off. He knew nothing about his blank stare, his salivating mouth, and how his slight movements looked anything but close to normal, but it also did not seem very important to him. There was another pause from the man across the table where he wrote, before he continued with the questions.
"Are there any extensions of Molious? Other cells that require our attention?" Nothing entered Oliver's head at that question, so he just remained sitting and staring, drooling and lost. Bile and water mixed at the base of his throat, but came no higher, though he locked up slightly in preparation for it to do so. His body, essentially, was on autopilot, controlled by the drugs. The minutes of silence stretched again before the man prompted once more with the same question.
Oliver had begun to retain parts of memories, was able to think back and remember the man writing (though he was unable to recall what the man had been writing, or even what the last thing he had said was), yet he still could not manage to deduce if he was conscious or not. Mikkel's voice had sunk back into silence. Oliver was not sure if he could do anything until he was instructed to by that voice, and yet he did not try.
Minutes seemed never ending as the man asked several different questions. He had begun to wonder if the responses elicited from the boy had been flukes, strange neuron firings that just happened to be connected enough to appear to be answers and not just involuntary hiccups of information. Oliver was in rough shape, and he felt the haze of the drugs begin to edge back into his system when Mikkel's voice returned, low and, this time, soothing.
"I need you to concentrate, Oliver," It told him, almost as if he could feel the blurred edges in Oliver's vision returning. Oliver guessed it could if the voice really was in his own head. "I need you to fight it, but not let them see that you are. You need to fool them, not let them put any more drugs in you."
"Okay," Oliver replied, more spit than words, and the man across the table looked up at him briefly, before back down to write what Oliver had uttered. Even though it was entirely out of context from what the man had asked, he was under strict orders to document everything.
Oliver worked hard after that to attempt to concentrate. He tried to focus on the man across from him, on the wall, on anything he could. He gave a brief attempt at reading the man's paper upside-down, but realized quickly that the drugs turned it into a sort of thin-lined Rorschach test. Mikkel's voice wanted him to keep away from that stuff, so Oliver tried his hardest. Still he could not vomit, but with the slow return of his consciousness came the vague touches of sensation. He could almost feel the wetness on his chin from where the excess water was forcing its way out of his mouth; touches of sensation in the aches and pains that came with sitting in a chair far too long and being beaten up at basically every turn. He tried to decide how long he had been in that room, but nothing solid before the last five minutes or so came to the surface, and still, certain things continued to slip passed his consciousness. He felt like he had studied the man before, but when he looked back it was like someone else was sitting there. He fought to remember more details about him, clearly ignoring the questions when the Mikkel in his head did not supply an answer.
Oliver was sure hours had passed since he began retain a notion of time, and though he had managed to remember the man's uniform, the way he leaned slightly to his left when he reached for something on the table, and how occasionally he glanced at something behind Oliver, he still felt like he was a long way from any real functionality. He blinked slowly and his eyes ached. Though most of his body hurt, his eyes held a pain that took precedence and he concentrated on that. He tried to only blink when the man looked down, but the man's need to consult the paper in front of him had become less frequent, and Oliver's need to wet his eyes more desperate.
"I want to vomit," Oliver thought, but received no response from the Mikkel in his head. He wanted to sigh, to shift, and to get up. He wanted to be home-- in Arizona or in Sweden, he did not actually care-- but he said none of those things out loud since the Mikkel in his head told him not to let them know he was functioning, even at a basic level. The man seemed to have come to some conclusion that the responses Oliver had given were flukes and appeared highly disinterested and very weary over sitting in the room with the drooling Oliver much longer.
"What is your name?" He asked again, almost absently.
"Oliver," Oliver muttered out again, gaining anther surprised look from the man. Oliver forced his eyes to stare straight, though they ached and watered with the need to close. Mikkel told him to answer and he did, but his mind really was not with it. It was occupied with sobering up.
"Keep it up, Oliver." The Mikkel Oliver had met in this world never sound as caring as his Mikkel did, but that phrase was close. Oliver blinked slowly, and when he opened his eyes, the man was watching him. Oliver panicked, and realized he had messed up severely when he met the man's gaze and stared back. He no longer felt the pain in his eyes while he locked up in fear. They knew he was waking up and the voice of Mikkel in his head had made it pretty clear that that would not be a good thing.
The man was on his feet in a moment and Oliver tried to do the same, tried to stand, to run, but he was not well enough for those sorts of functions yet. He managed to kick his feet in an attempt to either push his chair back or have them support his weight, but all he managed to do was slide his soles across the floor and lurch hard against the back of the chair. It seemed like magic how fast the man had a syringe of Opal in his hand, and it was not a far distance between him and the practically incapacitated Oliver.
"No, please!" Oliver begged in Swedish, in hopeless gasps, but the man neither understood nor cared about Oliver’s desperate begging. Oliver slammed his eyes shut, scared of the sedation he knew would come-- of the more water and Opal they would pump into his system. His muscles finally came back to life in the minor capacity of a scared twitch when a gunshot echoed deafeningly through the room. Oliver's eyes flew back open again to see that the man had disappeared and left only a large blood splatter (dripping wetly toward the floor) and a single bullet hole in his place. They both marred the perfectly white wall.
"Should have warned you about blinking," Mikkel muttered from somewhere behind him and Oliver turned quickly, causing his head to reel and his sight to fade to blackness and starbursts of light for a minute. He hurt more than he could ever remember, including his ears that rang and popped with an attempt to equalize pressure.
Mikkel moved quickly and he seemed like a motion blur to Oliver's stunned mind and senses. He bolted the door before he walked around the room and tore out every camera that protruded from the wall. Finally he grabbed the voice recorder from the table and crushed it under his heel. He stepped over what Oliver eventually realized was the man that had been asking him questions, head blown open and brain largely displaced from his skull. Oliver still could not find his voice so he stared at Mikkel in shock instead of asking him obvious questions. He hoped it was not a trick by the Government because he was sure he was about to cry with relief. Instead he vomited, managing to get most of it onto the floor. Mikkel just watched in silence until Oliver dragged in a shaking breath. He then laid his gun on the table and dragged the corpse to the corner of the room, depositing it unceremoniously before returning to the table. He sat quickly down in the chair that the now dead man had been in, and stared long and hard until Oliver managed to calm enough to meet his eyes.
"How are you feeling now?" He asked and Oliver grinned crookedly, managing through reflex alone to bring his hand up and wipe away the vomit and drool that clung to his chin. He did not reply for several more beats, but when he did it was not an answer.
"I heard you in my head," He told Mikkel weakly, and something on the other man's face betrayed his stoicism for just a moment. Carefully he stood again and leaned across the table toward Oliver, reaching behind the younger man’s ear to disengage a very small round device. He showed it to Oliver on the tip of his finger. Oliver did not know what it was, but he had a guess.
"You heard me in your ear. I knew a threat like the one I gave Sinclair wouldn't go without retribution, and I knew it was going to be you or me they got. I hoped it would just be me, but this was a safety precaution incase it went the other way." Oliver nodded, but Mikkel putting the device back into place stunted it. He licked his lips carefully; brain still not ready for full functionality, but the much-needed expulsion of the water in his stomach had helped.
"I didn't know if it was you, or the Mikkel I know, but it made me feel better. Made me not want to just die." Mikkel did not look at Oliver as he stepped away and grabbed his gun once more. He also did not sit again but, instead, slowly walked the perimeter of the room. Oliver had come to accept that this Mikkel did not share, did not take admissions like that well, but he had still hoped for something, anything, that was like his Mikkel. He wanted to feel like he was home, even for a moment.
"This Government likes its poisons; its mind controlling. What they forget, though, is that there are things in this world that can counteract what they do to a person." Oliver watched Mikkel's back as he slowly picked at the bullet imbedded in the wall. There was no way he would get it out, but it was at least a reason to not look at Oliver.
"What could counteract it?" Oliver asked meekly, wonderment in his voice.
"Sentiment and familiarity," Mikkel told him slowly in English, glancing for just one second back at Oliver before he derailed the conversation. "It’ll be a story I'll tell you one day, but right now we need to concentrate on getting out of here and getting as far off of the Government's radar as we can." Oliver nodded, this time more surely, and used his arms to try and help himself stand. Mikkel did not help immediately, but when he saw how difficult it was for the other man, he approached and propped him up. It was slow going, and even after getting to his feet, Oliver could not exactly stumble effectively, let alone run, crawl, or whatever else he would need to do to escape from that place. He looked at Mikkel and expected to see displeasure, even annoyance on his features, but he looked calm and easy. At first Oliver thought it really might have been his Mikkel, but then he placed the other emotions on the older man's face, and they were along the lines of understanding. He had been subjected to Government testing before; Oliver had gathered that much info from the snippets that Maria, the other members of Molious, and even this Mikkel himself had given up. But what clicked into place right then was that Mikkel had been subjected to the exact same brainwashing that the Government had just begun doing to Oliver. That was how the other man knew what Oliver needed to come out of it, because it had worked on him too.
Oliver knew he did not have all the time in the world to remember basic motor skills, but that was cemented when a warning siren began to blare through the base. Both Mikkel and Oliver gazed up at the ceiling as if it would hold all the answers, but Mikkel was listening and Oliver did it just more as reflex. They needed to hurry and get going, and without even a word from Mikkel, Oliver knew that.
"Either they just found the bodies and their cameras disabled, or we're in a lot more shit than I planned on," Mikkel said, spoken obviously to Oliver, but toned almost like he was talking to the air. Oliver tried to force his legs to hurry and remember what walking was, but he stumbled a little and fell against the wall, gritting his teeth and slamming his eyes shut in frustration. He would get them both killed if he could not just remember how to walk.
Mikkel, however, seemed far less worried about Oliver's impaired state, and more intent on slinging his backpack from his shoulder to rummage through it. Oliver watched him through squinted eyes and scrunched brows. He should not have been as surprised as he was when Mikkel pulled out a pistol and handed it, grip first, toward him.
"We're going to be hugging walls, so as long as you can manage to walk like that, we're going to go." Oliver licked his lips and reached for the gun, but was not exactly thrilled with Mikkel's plan.
"Like hell. You should just go. I'm useless and will only slow you down." Mikkel turned a hard glare at Oliver, shifting something in his hand that Oliver immediately looked at. It was the Opal syringe that had had his name on it before the man debriefing him had received the bullet lobotomy. Mikkel did not even have to look at it as he fit the needle under a fingernail and injected the tar-black liquid into his own body.
"I risked a lot getting in here to get you out. So, here are your options, Oliver." His voice was monotone, his eyes hard and serious. "Either you shut up and follow me as fast and as quietly as you can, or I put a bullet in you right here so there is no chance that they will do to you what they wanted to. If I were you, I'd pick the first and stop arguing with me. There’s a lot riding on me getting you out of here, and though right now you probably feel a lot like a soldier, you’re not one, and you need to remember that." Oliver limply held the gun in his hand and stared blankly at Mikkel. He had kind of figured that death would have been the other option, but to hear that Mikkel would do it right there and right then put the severity of the situation in full light. Oliver knew he was not strong. He would succumb to the Government, run out of usefulness, and then be killed or be turned against those that had risked everything to help him. He would rather the bullet, but he would much rather attempt an escape first. If they got captured and it turned into him or Mikkel, Oliver hoped he, himself, would do what he thought was right. The drugs in his system told him that there was no question. If it came down to that Oliver would not hesitate to kill himself.
"Alright, what should I do?" He asked quietly, and Mikkel relaxed a little, posture not reflecting that somewhere deep down he was still a killer. He gestured toward the door with a cock of his head and Oliver glanced at it momentarily before he returned his attention to Mikkel.
"Basically like before, back on the first night. Just stick with me and if I tell you something, you do it without hesitation. Even if that is to kill someone, Oliver." The notion of killing someone did not well up the dread Oliver had thought it would. Instead his brain thought more tactically, thought about how much he would slow Mikkel down, weighing the pros and cons of self-sacrifice and self-preservation.
"Are you going to be okay with…?" Oliver alluded to where Mikkel had doped himself with the Opal, and Mikkel spared a glance down at his blackened nail before he looked at Oliver again, hard and directly in the eyes.
"It takes the edge off, removes fear, and boosts my reaction. You'll understand when the Parepin and Prozira in your system gets out and the Opal can work." Oliver hoped that would be soon because somewhere, under the paranoia and twitching muscles, he could almost feel it. Oliver knew intellectually that the Government had put a ton of drugs into his system, but when Mikkel called them out by name, he was able to pinpoint the way they altered him. After all, he had just considered letting the older man kill him.
"Alright, then I'm ready." Oliver did not have to ask Mikkel to take into account his limitations, his lack of training, or even his opposition to killing anything bigger than a spider, because he knew that Mikkel knew all of that and would cover him as much as he could. However, they were in a Government base surrounded, probably, by hundreds of Government soldiers who really would not find any hardship in killing them or capturing them again. Oliver recognized that there could very well be a time to have to use force, and it still did not shake him.
Mikkel unbolted the door carefully, making as little noise as he could, before he edged the door open and took a look at their situation. The room was sound proof so there was a very good chance that they had not heard the gunshot that killed the auditor in Oliver's room, but the destruction of the cameras could have given the Government a good idea about what was going on. Surprisingly though, the hallway was clear, and the only noise (yet one that masked virtually any other noise Mikkel would have been listening for) was a repeated message. It was in military code, echoing loudly in the hall. It seemed to be about the grade of threat the base was under. Aqua level ordinance: 71839J, it said in a robotic woman’s voice. Mikkel did not need to know the specific order number to know that Aqua level meant something really bad was happening. Not for a moment did he think that Aqua had been engaged because of him or Oliver.
"C'mon," Mikkel said quietly to Oliver before he pushed the door open and exited the cell. The Opal did more than just make him a better soldier; it ate into his system and told him more. He had no idea where the Americans made the drug, or how they had synthesized it to make him experience complete dissociation, but right then, in the thick of what could be a fight for his and Oliver's lives, he wanted that exact effect. He wanted to be removed from everything that held him back, even his overwhelming urge to make every person in that facility pay for the attack on Molious.
The halls appeared deserted, but noise from soldiers moving around would have been masked by the repeating alert announcement, so Mikkel kept his eyes peeled for any sign of hostility. Luckily the alarm also masked their noises: Oliver's stumbling, the gun shaking in his unsteady hands, and the way his shoulder slid along the wall. If the alarm was not for them, which was reaffirmed by the lack of soldiers charging Oliver's cell, then Mikkel assumed they had not found the dead sentries that were stationed strategically throughout the corridors yet. As he had made his way further inside the building, Mikkel had had to get more creative with the killings. He had wasted two perfectly good knives in the name of stealth, and had to pick up lethal yet quiet weapons along the way.
Oliver let out a gasp of cry that was muffled by his own realization of the situation when Mikkel lead him into a small room off of the main corridor. Inside were three bodies, all almost unrecognizable with extreme facial wounds. Dissociation was a two way street, obviously, because though Mikkel remembered killing the guards, he had forgotten just how brutally. He had reverted to the soldier in himself, to the blind rage that was quite animalistic in nature, but yet very different from the Berserker’s qualities. All three guards had their eyes gouged out and faces raked up. Lying not far away was a spoon, fork, and knife. All three had blood glistening on them, just starting to grow sticky with exposure.
"Did you…" Oliver began to ask, but was cut off by Mikkel's hasty affirmation. He did not need to talk about what pure brutality he displayed, about the way he remembered, vaguely beneath the drugs, stabbing one of the men in the lung from the side, how the other got his throat slashed, and how the third was disarmed, dragged to the floor, and intestines punctured. How he took a few rounds, targeting each man in turn, ripping at their organs before using the other tools to blind them and rip their faces to pieces, stopping only after their voice boxes were removed, their mouths stretched and cut open, tongues cut out, and bits of skull made to peek out from blood and skin. Oliver really had not needed to see the bodies, but the room cut to the other side of the building via a maintenance hallway, and it would remove a lot of guesswork to take the short cut. If the kid were scared, then it would be just a lesson to him that though he had memories of a different Mikkel with the same face, it was not he. He was hardly a man anymore the drugs reminded Mikkel. He had hardly been a man for a long time.
"Be thankful that I'm not trying to kill you any more," Was all Mikkel told him before he lead Oliver past the bodies and out the door on the opposite side of the room, pushing back his own worries. The freshest dose of Opal would kick in soon and that would erase any guilt he felt.
Going was slow and thorough, but they came upon no resistance. The base seemed emptied out, and Mikkel's ever-present soldier instinct ranged between thinking that it was a stroke of good luck, and wondering just what else worse had drawn away every person in the base. If it was something more frightening than Mikkel's carving of dead men and pension for extreme violence, he hoped not to meet it.
The alarm continued on, but it was soon background noise to both men. It was information that was both nonsense to them and, yet, comforting in a way. As long as it continued to repeat, they were going to be able to make it out.
A T in the hall was where Mikkel paused. He was roughly ten feet from the intersection, and on his way in had taken note that it would be the trickiest part of their escape if they even could make it that far. He turned slightly, holding his hand up to signal that Oliver should stop and stay. He did not spend much of the exiting trip keeping tabs on the younger man, using the scuffs and labored breathing that made it past the overbearing sound of the alarm as evidence enough that he was still following, but when he focused his attention on the younger man, he began to notice just how bad off Oliver was.
Oliver looked strung out. They had had him for a few days, had probably been pushing the drugs into him after the first hour, and coming off of them was not exactly a walk in the park. A thin layer of sweat was shining on every bit of skin that showed, and his eyes were deep and dark. He continued to drool a little, too much water still in his system, and he shook from head to toe in light but constant tremors. Either they had given him so much Opal that his body no longer knew pain, or the kid was tougher than Mikkel had given him credit for. Either way, whether because of the drugs that made Mikkel’s own heart cold and uncaring or the fact that he knew that they were in mortal danger being anywhere within a five mile radius of the compound, Mikkel could not risk checking him over. He could not even spare time for the rest Oliver would need to recover. Instead he let the knowledge of Oliver's weakness and diminishing health pass right through him, letting instinct and primal preservation consume him again. He would worry about Oliver's state when they were safe.
Creeping forward, Mikkel shifted his gaze to the right, knowing that a sentry there would spot him against the left wall, but still listening and feeling for anything from his left. When he got to the corner, Mikkel peeked around, but the hallway, much like every other, was devoid of people. Carefully he lowered his pistol, stepping back against the wall to signal Oliver to join him. As he turned, though, he saw that Oliver was not alone. Sinclair stood behind him, gun pressed threateningly against Oliver's temple, and other hand over the younger man's mouth, stopping him from making any sound that would have been heard over the alarm. Oliver looked frightened, staring desperately at Mikkel as the gun shook between his palms from both the detox tremors and fear.
"Told you to drop it, Oliver." Sinclair chided, and Mikkel’s instincts told him that he would never again get a chance to dispose of the man as cleanly as right then. As a soldier there was never a problem with civilian casualties. They were accepted, sometimes even encouraged, and the Prozira had brought him back to being a soldier. They had brought him back under, had begun to reform him into the property of the Government, but they had not finished. Mikkel was a soldier, he had no doubt about that, but he was a soldier of a different organization. He had been remade into a soldier of the Presence, and though the voices and images had become silent, Mikkel could still feel them watching him constantly. Carefully Mikkel stood up straight and nodded to Oliver, telling him that dropping the gun was a damn good idea. In the hold Sinclair had on him, him blowing Oliver's brain out would be the merciful death. Breaking his neck was far more brutal.
Oliver looked at Mikkel for several long seconds with unwavering eyes before the gun slipped easily out of his hands, colliding to the ground hard but not discharging. Mikkel held his hands up, palms facing Sinclair in an image of surrender, but he did not put the gun down. If he was told to, he would consider it, but until then, the simple act of shooting Malcolm through Oliver was still a very tempting offer, regardless of how the Presence warned him against it. Mikkel tried to push the Opal back, remind himself that sacrificing Oliver for his own safety was a stupid move, one that would be met with his own blood. He was not a heartless killer any more, regardless of how he had disfigured the guards.
"Always thought you'd come back to haunt us, Mikkel Boedker. At the beginning you were so promising, such a good soldier. Now," A harsh laugh left the man, not at all jovial and far more cynical. "Now, you're just a rabid dog. No good to your precious Molious, your fiancée, or this boy. Biting hands that feed you left and right. Thought we could remind you of your loyalties, but now I see that was just wishful thinking."
"Then why not put me down?" Mikkel asked, eyes hard on the man, not looking to Oliver who begged him silently to do something. The Opal should have made Oliver resistant to fear, but it still seemed to be lacking in his system, still hidden below the Parepin and the Prozira. Mikkel was not sure whether to buy him more time, or attempt to disengage Sinclair around him. "That's what you do, isn't it? Put down the problem? Seemed to be your specialty if memory serves me." The cruel laugh came from Sinclair again, his attention turning down to Oliver who only rolled his eyes to look at him after the man's breath puffed against his hair.
"I want that death match, Boedker! I want him to rip you apart. I wanted you to lead my army, but now I see how blind I had been. There is no redemption for you and that is why, right now, I’m done with it all. You’ll get the death by bullet you always wanted.” Mikkel's fingers twitched. He wanted to take the shot and to hell with Oliver's survival. Oliver was not a soldier, regardless of the drugs and training they had done to him in the days Oliver was captive. However something whispered to him, told him to wait, and drew the seconds out to eternity. The Presence told him that it would be over soon and no action from himself was needed. Maybe it was the Opal that gave him perverse optimism, but it was there, and the more Mikkel tried to ignore it, the stronger it became.
Sinclair moved, slow motion to Mikkel who could do nothing to disarm him. He shifted, gun moving from Oliver’s temple to out-stretched, barrel pointed directly at Mikkel. He wanted to shoot Sinclair while the older man was not fully behind Oliver, wanted to take the shot just as he had millions of times before, but the Presence stilled him. It would not risk Oliver’s safety for Mikkel’s, and though Mikkel wanted to feel wounded by that, he could not. Finally something in those never ending seconds clicked in Oliver, something loud and violent that shot through his system like electricity. He jerked, slamming his head back and into Sinclair's face, feeling his nose and teeth shattering with the impact. He turned and slid the man's knife from the holster on his belt without looking and, using both of his hands, Oliver slammed the decorative blade into Sinclair’s shoulders one at a time before the man even had the chance to fall back. Sinclair's scream echoed loudly above the alert, and that, along with the blood splattering onto Oliver's face, snapped him out of whatever had come over him. Wide-eyed in fright, Oliver stumbled back toward Mikkel who pushed past Oliver. He grabbed the knife just as it came loose of the younger man's shaking grip, and went to work. He bent over Sinclair; cutting tendons on his legs and arms, not letting the man have a second chance to catch them unaware.
"Grab the guns," Mikkel told Oliver, and the boy did not immediately comply. He continued to stare in horror at what he had done, and it took another harsh bark of orders from Mikkel for him to move and pick them up. There were specks of blood on his skin and after he had a hold of his and Mikkel's guns, he began scrubbing his hands off on his jeans. He shook and kept his eyes down, unwilling to look at what he had done as Mikkel finished.
"I… I didn't…" Oliver began, and was told to shut up by Mikkel as he handed Sinclair's gun to Oliver. He took it, fumbling with all three, hands not entirely wanting to work, as Mikkel moved around Sinclair to grab at his injured and useless shoulders. Ignoring the screaming, and hoping that no one else heard them, Mikkel dragged the limp body toward the door that Sinclair had come out of. He left streaks of blood that trailed after them and just hoped Aqua alert would keep everyone away for a little longer. Once inside, Mikkel realized exactly where they were. The room had been updated since he had been there, but it was definitely where they had experimented on him. It had been the reason Mikkel had always wanted to return there with countless pounds of C-Four. It had been the room that plague Mikkel subconsciously, unable to draw upon memories of it, only feelings.
Mikkel threw Sinclair to the floor unceremoniously as Oliver shut the door behind them. Moving around the mutilated body, Mikkel grabbed a hold of the man's uniform collar and pulled him up, eyeing him dangerously through the blood that poured from his shattered nose.
"I'm imagining you're pretty fucking terrified right now," Mikkel hissed through gritted teeth, giving the man a hard shake. "Imagine you're thinking how you should have just put the bullet in us and walked away, but you have some damn pride, don't you, Sinclair. Some need to terrorize, to make us kill ourselves. Your downfall, your weakness, is how much you don't listen to instinct." The man managed a snarl, spitting blood into Mikkel's face that only elicited a closing of Mikkel’s eyes. He had been covered in worse.
"Think you won, Boedker? Carved me up a bit, made me scream? Soldiers will be on their way here in a few seconds, and they have that instinct you enjoy so much. They'll blow you and the little boy into bite sized pieces and then we'll feed them to the civilians and they will ask for more as their starving stomachs fill!" Mikkel glanced back to Oliver who had yet to calm down, who hyperventilated against the wall by the door, who looked at the machines, the gurneys, and flashed back to what they had done to him there. Blood dripped down Oliver’s face, still speckled his hand where they held too many guns, shaking and useless. Whatever had clicked in him and allowed them survival had passed as fast as it had come, and left him as just the outsider again. Mikkel dropped Sinclair who howled in pain again, and approached Oliver. It took until Mikkel wiped a bit of blood off his face for Oliver to realize he was even there.
"Are you okay?" Mikkel asked quietly, keeping their conversation private, even though it was in Swedish and more than likely not understood by Sinclair. At first Oliver did not move, still a deer caught in headlights, but then he nodded slowly, almost contemplatively, before finally settling on shaking his head no. It took him a few moments to find his voice, and when he did it came out meek.
"I don't… I didn't mean to… S-something just kinda… happened, and then I had the knife, and I knew where to… to…" Mikkel grabbed a bit of Oliver's hair, bending him to place their foreheads together. He could feel the shaking going through the boy, letting it bleed off into himself where he remained grounded.
"You know he was going to kill us, right? Maybe not right then, but eventually we'd both be dead." Mikkel waited for Oliver to nod a little in response. "Then you also know that what you did, however you did it, was just for self-protection. You're not him, Oliver. You're not me, Oliver. You are still you and this blood is not on your hands. Let this blood be on mine." It took awhile for Oliver to speak, but when he did it was barely a whisper.
"Are you going to kill him?" Mikkel nodded his affirmation that time, gently massaging at the back of Oliver's neck. It was juxtaposition from the words he spoke which were soft and yet hard.
"I'm going to get my revenge for everyone I loved. I'm going to get revenge for Sidney, Molious, you, and myself. It won’t take long, so please wait outside and stand guard." Oliver did not move as Mikkel took two of the guns from his hands and stepped back. Oliver remained where he was and finally stopped shaking.
"I want to watch." He said a bit louder, eyes hard and directed right at Mikkel who looked back at him. "I want revenge too, Mikkel."
"Not your fight, Oliver," He reminded the younger man, and expected no more resistance from him, but got a sharp tone from Oliver in return.
"It is my fight. They made it my fight. This isn't my world, this isn't where I belong, but I'm here, and what they did was real. What they did to you, Molious, and me was real. This is my fight and I want to see it through." He was resigned; his body and mind both confident in his decision. It was the Opal, Mikkel reminded himself, finally breaking past the Prozira and Parepin, taking charge of Oliver, but the younger man had always been stronger than he had given him credit for. It had become his fight when Sinclair’s soldiers had almost killed him back on the street the first night, and it really was something he deserved to see the end of. Carefully Mikkel nodded, sliding his own pistol into the holster on his hip before bending. He shoved Sinclair's pistol in his backpack and then turned, grabbing the man and pulling him across the room by one almost severed shoulder.
"Just fucking shoot me!" Sinclair demanded in howls of pain, but Mikkel ignored him, dragging him to a padded chair, hoisting him up and tossing him unceremoniously against it. He pulled and twisted the man's useless limbs into place against the metal structure of the chair, pulling leather straps tight so he could not wiggle from the chair. Finally, Mikkel grabbed a fistful of the man's greying hair and yanked his head back, strapping it in place against the metal brace that forced him to look up. Sinclair knew what was going on and shouted all levels of curses toward and against the two men, but Mikkel paid him no mind. When Mikkel stepped passed the chair and turned up a pressure gauge, Oliver finally knew what was happening as well.
At first Oliver felt terrible, flinching as the water started to shoot down against Sinclair's face. Mikkel let the man sputter and fight the stream for a few seconds before he moved back around the man. He pulled on Sinclair's jaw, wedging it open and getting each hand inside his mouth in turn. The man screamed, but no longer begged as Mikkel pulled once, hard, and left Sinclair's bottom jaw broken and dislodged from the rest of his skull. It hung limp and crooked, tongue twitching as the water plummeted right into the open chasm of his mouth. Oliver had wanted to see, and Mikkel made sure he saw all he needed to. The man would drown in or explode from the water, but he was dead. No help was coming for Sinclair, none that would arrive in time regardless, and his last thoughts would be about how those that had been force-fed the water had felt. Oliver felt nothing, and then he felt sick. He looked away right before Mikkel pulled his side arm and shot Sinclair in the heart, jumping as the gun discharged but still unwilling to look any longer at the sight. With one last final twitch Sinclair died, body under the constant flow of water. Oliver refused to move even when Mikkel returned to him, even when the older man placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
It was a few minutes before Mikkel decided that it was enough time for Oliver to have processed what had happened. It had not been pretty, had definitely not been humane, but it was satisfying to Mikkel and, silently, he thanked the Presence for giving him that one ounce of peace. It was not over, he knew, but at least one front of his war had ended in a victory.
“We have to go, Oliver,” Mikkel said softly and though it took several more seconds, the younger man seemed to come around, nodding softly and slowly. His hand tightened around his gun and Mikkel took that as a good sign. There was a little bit of the soldier still in Oliver, and it was possible they would need that in order to escape. Mikkel slowly nodded to Oliver too, attempting to reassure him, before he moved to the door, checked that the coast was clear, and, together, they both slipped back into the endless white corridors.
Playlist by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://8tracks.com/masterpenguin/liberty-of-possession
Chapter 13 Song by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1_jnOtd2cE
Master Post: http://z4rf3.livejournal.com/16531.html
Chapter 14 Another Version of the Truth: http://z4rf3.livejournal.com/20136.html