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Old Guard / IF Central Command Post / Public Areas / IA Quadrant - Visitation
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Emotions Legend
[quote][b]Asmodeus (Aug 22, 2001 03:20 a.m.):[/b] Mode slammed his elbow behind him and hit the man in the nose before twisting his body to plant a foot in his companion's midsection, and the last two of the six went down groaning beside their playmates. As always since he'd been here, it took a conscious effort on his part not to move forward to finish them. Once, he'd been a cautious fighter, never striking the first blow, ceasing his attack as soon as his opponent was disabled. Now he had to work to keep himself in check, even when they posed no further threat. His hands clenched into tight fists, but he held himself in place until the rage left him and he could look down at them without hatred or bloodlust. A blank sadness replaced his anger, accompanied by the tiny thread of guilt that he always felt when he fought people for someone else's sport. They didn't even give them weapons. It was [i]unfair[/i], and he hated providing them entertainment by knocking these poor bastards around. The best he could offer was trying not to cause any permanent damage, and even that was extremely difficult. Whatever hesitance he'd had had finally been burned out of him by the fight with the Creche twins along with the seraphim, and he was learning control of himself all over again. Mode didn't like feeling out of control. That made his current situation even harder to take. It had been nearly three months now since he'd awakened in the IA infirmary with only the clock for company. They'd told him nothing of their plans for him, though he had a few good guesses. Instead, since the very first day, his questions had been shoved aside as unimportant or completely ignored, and they'd done nothing but test him. At first they administered the same basic intelligence tests (or variations) he remembered enduring before the IF admitted him to Battleschool. It gradually became more advanced; problem-solving, analytical thinking, logic, ethics, astrophysics, planar geometry, history, strategy and command, navigation...anything he'd ever had training in they arranged to test him in. They never gave him any results, never acknowledged that he'd done well or poorly, just sent him on to the next battery of exams. This treatment quickly infuriated him, and it was only his knowledge that his reaction to their testing was also a test that kept him from taking his temper out on those around him. He shut up and buckled down and took his only consolation in doing everything he could to run their tests into the ground, because he knew he had to pass them. He had to meet their standards, and then there would be training, and then he would be free. It could take years. He didn't care. He would be free, and he would get back to Katera. As soon as they deemed him sufficiently recovered, they removed him from the infirmary. He was given no clock, no watch, no time-keeping device of any kind. They woke him to test him, and when they returned him to his room he slept. He lived entirely on their schedule, and it was not regular. Sometimes he gauged it had been only a few hours between tests; sometimes it could have been nearly a day. They never let him go too hungry for too long, but even his meals were irregular; he had nothing to mark the time by. When they tested his computer knowledge, he had his chance to locate the date. It was nearly three weeks since he'd left Command School. It took another five days of very careful searching to locate a malleable computerist, and even longer to convince him to do what he asked him to, but Lt. Col. von Starnburg had a long shadow, and the man finally gave in, perhaps hoping to curry favor with a ranking IA official by coddling his pet. Mode didn't hear about it until much later. It surprised him, but not much; the man was going back to Charybdis, and he didn't have a reason to want to live through that again. He wasn't bothered by it; he had no affection for the man. They had come to an agreement, and the IA colonel had fulfilled his half of the bargain before he'd bowed out. Mode felt no sorrow or remorse, just a cold respect. The first of the combat testing had begun two weeks ago. They hadn't bothered testing him on any weapons; he'd never received training in anything more complicated than a flash gun. Instead, they put him in a room with three grown men who promptly attacked him. No warning was given, and no instruction was provided; none was really necessary. He had every intention of doing precisely what they wished of him until he had worked his way out of this web, but that did not include being beaten to a pulp. In the entire time he'd been there, they'd kept him in a small room, taking him out periodically to sit him in another small room. He'd been given no athletic release at all. Maybe they thought he would be out of practice. After the last one was on the floor gasping, he caught himself before he could do the man further injury. It took far more effort than he had expected, and it left him trembling for several minutes after the others were picked up and carried away and he was returned to his cell. And so it went on. It was getting easier now, that reasserting of control, but not much. He didn't like fighting - no, that wasn't true. He didn't like [i]liking[/i] fighting, and he didn't want to do it if his life wasn't in danger, but they gave him no choice. As it was, he didn't like pulling his punches, but he wasn't going to kill anyone for them, not unless he knew it would get him back to Katera. His cell was never dark, but he learned to sleep with the light in his eyes, and he dreamed of her. The nightmares were bad, and he woke shivering. The peaceful dreams were worse, reminding him of what had been taken from him, and from those he woke crying. Control seemed a thing of the past, and he was relearning it across the board, not just for combat. Slowly those tears came to a halt, and the shivering ceased almost immediately after he gained full consciousness. Masking emotion was just another small victory as they woke him and moved him and put him back as they pleased. His life was in someone else's hands; all he owned was himself, and he determined that he would own that self completely. So almost as soon as the fists clenched, they unclenched, and he looked down on his fallen opponents with the same empty despair he looked at everything else. When he was fighting, he felt [i]alive[/i], and it was hard to turn that off and on, but he was learning. There was a flicker of movement behind the nearly opaque glass of the viewing chamber, and he looked up, though he could see nothing of any detail. A few moments later, the door to the small arena opened and the same man who'd come out yesterday with the trainers who came to fetch him and return him to his room entered now. As before, the man paid him no mind. He wasn't in uniform, and neither was the girl with him. Both appeared completely uninterested in his existence. Mode could relate. They could do this a thousand times over, if they wished. Katera was all that mattered. They removed him from the arena, and he expected to be returned to his room, as before, but instead they led him to a small conference room. A metal table stood in the center, surrounded by eight chairs that had been bolted to the floor. His handlers instructed him to sit, and waited until he had done so before turning to leave. He had just begun to examine the room more thoroughly when the door slid open again, and the two strangers he'd seen with his trainers entered. The door slid shut behind them, and he took a closer look as they moved to sit opposite his chair. The man appeared in his late thirties. He had dark hair in a short military cut, and was dressed in a grey suit that looked like it had been cut a little loose to accomodate a holster beneath his arm. He was tall, at least 6'2, with a wiry build, long hands and an ascetic face that looked older than the rest of him did. His expression was as blank as Mode's, but there was a glint of curiousity in his hazel eyes. The girl - for she was a girl, no older than eighteen, surely - was 5'9 and built like a swimmer, with artfully unruly light brown hair that was only an inch or two longer than the man's and cornflower blue eyes. She wore a dark brown jumpsuit, and her holster was out in the open, strapped to her thigh. She did not share the man's curiousity. Her eyes held only contempt. The man was watching him watch them, and Mode finally locked gazes with him and did not look away. The stranger relented first with a small smile. "You're quite the fighter," he said, his voice a friendly tenor that didn't quite match his appearance. "Not much on history, though." The girl smirked. Uncertain and feeling trapped, Mode said nothing. "Do you like it here?" the man asked conversationally. As polished as his control was becoming, Mode still frowned slightly at the question. [i]Like it?[/i] Of course he didn't like it. He flicked eyes to the girl briefly. She was still smirking, and that made him angry enough to be bold, and bold enough to answer the question, though as cautiously as he could without lying. "There are worse places." The man laughed, as if his statement were something truly witty. "Yes, I'd imagine there are. And you'd know a few of those, wouldn't you?" He laughed again, and then sobered somewhat, as if just remembering something. "Oh, yes. There's an officer who's expressed an interest in seeing you. Sarah will be happy to escort you." The girl's smirk disappeared, and Mode watched her struggle with her temper for a satisfying moment before she got a grip on it. The man appeared not to notice, and didn't bother rising from his chair, even after Mode stood. Sarah withdrew her gun from her holster and leveled it at his chest. Mode looked at the gun briefly and then back to her face. "Out," she said gruffly. Obediently, he moved towards the door, and she followed him. "Open it," she snapped, and he reached out and touched the pad. The door slid into the wall, and she ordered him into the hall. It was a long walk to the visitor's quarters. "Sarah" never missed an opportunity to correct him or give him yet another meaningless task to perform. He had an excellent sense of direction, and he was almost certain she was taking him on a far longer path than was necessary. If he'd not spent the last three months learning to control his temper, he might have lost it. As it was, he was mostly irritated and a trifle amused. The girl was obviously new to her job. Mode had extensive experience in dealing with guards, and this one was far too enamored of her firearm to be paying proper attention to her captive. Eventually he decided that he'd had enough. Surely the IA couldn't respect someone who would withstand this sort of idiocy when it wasn't necessary. He was cooperating with them. Cold indifference he could deal with, but this [i]child[/i] with a loaded weapon at his back was going a little too far. He suffered a short internal battle and decided they couldn't punish him too severely if he didn't hurt her. He wasn't that eager to arrive at his destination anyway. Whoever the visitor was, it wasn't Katera, and therefore it could wait. They passed another set of doors that she made him open, and he waited until she had stepped through before turning and plucking her weapon from her easily. Her eyes were still widening when he pushed her gently against the newly-closed door with barrel of the pistol against the hollow of her throat. She looked surprised and dismayed and frozen with fear. Whatever satisfaction Mode might have gotten from showing her how little safety pushing someone unarmed around with a weapon really offered vanished with the appearance of her unvarnished terror, and he sighed and lowered the gun until it pointed at the floor. She watched it descend as if all the danger he posed to her was contained in it, and he figured out the clip and dumped the charge cartridge on the floor at her feet before he handed it back to her. She almost dropped it, and seemed unwilling to look away from him long enough to retrieve the cartridge, and he retreated a half step. "Stop that," he said simply, and turned around and waited with his back to her while he listened to her reload the cartridge. There was silence as she hesitated, and then she appeared to his right, just within his field of vision. Her pistol was back in her holster, and her manner seemed much improved, in his opinion. "That way," she said almost [i]politely[/i], and gestured. He walked, and she followed, and they proceeded in a relatively straight line to the visitation area. The door slid open, and Mode blinked. Captain Robert Quistin stood in the room beyond. Somewhat stunned, he was about to take a step forward when Sarah laid a hand on his arm. [i]Gently.[/i] He looked down at her questioningly and was surprised to see the contempt was gone, replaced by a fair amount of almost comradely chagrin. "The forcefield," she explained apologetically. "I have to disable it." She turned and dialed a code into the keypad out of Mode's line of sight, and there was a red crackle as the shield went down. It wasn't a solid barrier, but 50,000 volts tended to discourage any unruly would-be escapees. The tiniest hint of an unwilling smile touched his mouth and was gone, and he stepped into the room. The door slid shut behind him, and Sarah was gone too. The forcefield crackled back into life, and Nathan Terrence was alone with his visitor.[/quote]
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