>>>>>>>11 MINUTES LATER<<<<<<<
>>>>>>>GLOBAL SURVEILLANCE DEPARTMENT OFFICE #6<<<<<<<
>>>>>>>12:02 PM<<<<<<<
Her boots pounded the stone tiles with determination as she made her way to the console in the GSO office, as though telling the emptiness that she was not going to accept any more excuses: official or otherwise. Command had been silent this whole time about what happened in Siberia earlier this week: why only Melody had returned and the other four operatives under her command were officially reported as K.I.A.
When Cassy went to inquire to Paige about the situation the day after the op upon learning of her friends’ deaths, the Lieutenant Commander had turned her away on the condition that the matter “is still being investigated. We don’t have a report generated yet.”
Then a day later when Cassy asked Russell if there had been any update, the Major General had replied, “I can’t disclose that info, Lead Wingman. General Reach hasn’t signed off on the report yet.”
At this point, Cassy was done waiting and beyond fed up. Screw procedure, Command. I am going to find out what happened to our teammates - my friends - if it gets me discharged or imprisoned.
As soon as she sat down at her station, Cassy took up her earpiece, input her GSO login code, then scooted in and crossed her legs as she began searching the terminal. The Lead Wingman then pulled up a window that, while she didn’t always review this type of material, was essential to her little investigation.
>INTERNAL FILES
>MISSION REVIEW
>BODY CAM. FOOTAGE
Cassy paused as she came across two file folders she was looking for, both of them titled Outpost #207 and recently dated. Although her blood vessels were frozen like ice and her hands were anxiously stiff, Cassy relaxed partially but without relief as she saw the names of the operatives whose footage had recently been uploaded to the internal server.
>A. MILLER
>D. CONNOR
>R. ARSHIAN
>R. JOHNSON
This was clearly not the folder she was looking for, so Cassy proceeded to the second folder that was also titled Outpost #207. When she clicked it, however, a dialogue box blocked her access.
PLEASE ENTER YOUR SECURITY CLEARANCE ID NUMBER FOR FURTHER ACCESS.
Glaring with an unimpressed look at the screen, Cassy entered her GSO badge number only to be blocked by another box.
BIOMETRIC VERIFICATION REQUIRED. PLEASE USE COMPATIBLE DEVICE TO SCAN.
“Fuck it, Command,” Cassy growled quietly, but proceeded to click the OK box and then look up at the pin-head sized scanning lens attached to the top of the monitor. The little knob shot a gentle, blueish-green scanning light with a net-like grid appearance into Cassy’s right eye, then her left eye, before uploading the genetic data to the server for verification. “I have Global Surveillance Operative status, so why are you preventing me from viewing simple body camera footage, Command? Don’t block my damn access because you haven’t signed some stupid piece of paper.”
ACCESS GRANTED.
“Well, thank you.” Cassy expressed a disgusted huff and a roll of the eyes to her left while the window refreshed and displayed the folders for the names of the operatives that she needed.
>C. WHITNEY
>J. CARSON
>L. DAVIDSON
>M. ARMSTRONG
>S. DANES
For the first time in a while, the Lead Wingman felt her hands trembling to the point she could see the limbs shaking as she looked at these folders. Her chest also fluttered like paper as the anxiety flooded throughout her body again: not only because - looking behind her - she was observing files that were not yet authorized to be released on the record, but because four of the five folders contained the visual and audible details of her friends’ last moments.
What am I doing? Do I need to look at this? No, no, spare yourself the nightmares, Cassy. But looking at the file folders again, then clicking on Sophia’s folder, Cassy gulped and let out a shaky, sizzling breath through her clenched teeth. Come on, Cassy. Be a big girl. You’ve seen awful shit before. You can stomach this. But as she moused towards the first of the video files, Cassy stayed her fingers again and hissed internally No, goddammit. I can’t watch my friend die. I’ll never be able to live with myself. Cassy abruptly pushed back and stood up, walking to the back of the room briefly, then turned to look at the unlocked terminal. Oh, who am I kidding? I’ll never be able to live with myself anyway. Sophia’s dead. Laney’s dead. They’re…all…dead. Cassy’s internal voice shoved these last few words into the core of her brain, and the ex-Air Force pilot decided what was best for her.
Sitting down at the terminal again, Cassy clicked on the first file titled “S.Danes_Out207_BCam01.sio” The clip began right as the Harrier was touching down in the courtyard of Outpost 207, and Cassy’s brain felt sweet and lightheaded as she heard Sophia’s smooth and upbeat voice in the foreground talk to Melody, who sat across from her in the helicopter’s bay.
“So what exactly are we dealing with here, Osprey?”
“Kilo Team gave us a mission update. Sounds like something broke out of its cage in the Kremlin’s little snow base. Authorities in Moscow are trying to stall Kilo Team’s approach to the site for obvious political reasons, so they’ve told us to go in first.”
“Hey, Tomcat,” a younger girly voice then piped up to the side, and the camera turned to view Laney on the right, “you wanna say a few words before we go in?”
Sophia huffed in a friendly reply before adding as the camera looked around at her teammates, “Let’s make this count. We’ve each got loved ones back home, and friends who are anxiously awaiting our return. Some of us even have a loved one at base, and I only pray that we get back to them in one piece.” Though Cassy assumed Sophia was talking about her now-widowed husband William, when the camera turned to focus back on Laney, the Lead Wingman knew she was also referring to the latter. Hikari had just proposed to the Lance Sergeant last week, and up until the fateful day Cassy was now watching, the marriage was planned to take place in California a week-and-a-half from today.
The footage continued on, and Cassy watched as Sophia and a teammate whom she recognized as Jack given his height took point. But given that the clip was only ten minutes long and there were three video files uploaded, Cassy wasn’t going to waste time looking at everything Sophia saw on her final mission. She closed the first window and clicked on the third and final file on the list.
What Cassy saw here put a stiff feeling in her chest: the bodies of two scientists lay around the scene of the outpost’s primary laboratory, and straight ahead of Sophia was some tall human with reddish-orange skin like he’d had an allergic reaction to something in his body despite looking otherwise healthy. Sophia had drawn her knife, but when this being lit up his hands with some kind of aura, she retreated and Cassy wasn’t sure if she could release her tensely-held breath at the sight. The fact that Kaurus persisted in trying to close the gap with Sophia made Cassy’s chest thicken with worry, even when the warlord retreated in pain and grabbed at the slash wound to his own chest when her friend lashed out in defense. But then Kaurus recovered with such speed that Cassy only had to blink once before the former’s arms lit up again and he threw his next attack.
Cassy had heard her sisters cry in pain before, but nothing like what she listened to here: following a brief flash as the camera was overwhelmed by the brightness of the incendiary attack, Sophia’s hollering, wavering scream of pain was so chilling that Cassy was inclined to throw up just from the sound of it. The camera then looked downwards at the floor, where only Sophia’s toes and a blackened mess of ash were visible, before it suddenly snapped back up in time to see Kaurus’ face up close. The last thing Cassy saw through her friend’s camera was a flipping of the world as Sophia’s neck was broken from the uppercut to her chin and the vital reader next to the main screen flatlined with a long beep before she finally came to rest facing up at the ceiling. After that, the camera feed stopped and went black.
Cassy’s chest was now so heavy that she felt unable to breathe: watching her friend die and being more than several thousand miles too far to save her. It filled the Lead Wingman with a magma of anger that was forced to cool down inside as she realized she would never be able to expel it. Even if I killed this fucking bastard, it won’t bring my friend back. And now that I have seen this footage first hand, how…how in the world do I tell the others? How do I tell William about his wife? Or Hikari about her fiance? Or Richard about his brother-in-arms and childhood friend? She tried to suck back her tears, but then choked on the fluid and started coughing frantically, shortly dropping her head into her arm on the desk as she could no longer hold back the pain.
“That’s how she died?” a voice inquired, startling Cassy with a somber squeak. She lurched back in her chair to find one of the people she was afraid to talk to: Corporal Hikari Li Sano.
“Wh-who?” was all a shaken Cassy could ask.
“My girl…Laney. That’s how she died?” Hikari’s sharp eyes were wide and filling up with tears of her own, amplifying the color of her light brown pupils.
“How long have you been here, Hikari?” Cassy demanded softly with a wary face, still trying to process how much of the recording her friend had seen of Sophia’s death.
“Answer my question first, dammit. Is that my girl dying there?”
“NO!” Cassy screamed angrily, then thrust herself head first into her desk-supported arms again. Snorting back some more tears, Cassy repeated her response with a bubbly and moaning, “No. It’s….it’s Sophi…Sophia.” When Hikari respectfully stayed silent, Cassy looked up with a wet and reddened face and closed the camera feed window. Without Hikari asking her to, Cassy braved the throbbing pain in her chest and the anxiety in her arms as she went to Laney’s body cam folder. Hikari, meanwhile, pulled up a chair next to her and watched the footage play out.
Just like with Sophia’s body cam, Cassy skipped ahead almost twenty minutes to the last file, taking a moment to clutch her stomach and look away as she had to fast forward over Laney’s observation of Sophia’s death. Both girls then watched as Laney followed up behind Melody and they ran through the corridor back towards the exit for evac. Then one of the other super soldiers came up and threw both Laney and Melody to the floor, and as Hikari predicted, her fiance was the first to get back up. Laney held her ground, throwing punches and even a kick to the superbeing’s face that made Hikari snicker with amused sympathy as she remembered how feisty the tomboy was in close quarters: one of a few reasons fueling the girls’ ever-passionate relationship.
But then Hikari was forced to watch as her fiance was thrown against a corridor wall and then fatally socked in the face. The triple crack in the visual feed as the camera took some of the force of the punch was horrifying enough that Hikari could hardly imagine what her friend’s face looked like after that before Laney’s visual slumped down a foot and then fell flat into the floor; the visual going black after that as the recording ended.
“La…Laney,” Hikari moaned, her eyes now wide and her teeth chattering with horror. All that Cassy could do in response was show a tearfully somber face of her own, shake her head and look away. Having now seen two comrades die in the same place and being unable to help in both cases, Cassy refused to watch the other three operatives’ recordings.
Hikari pushed away and stood up, towing her chair behind her. With an amazing amount of rage-driven strength, Hikari then picked up the chair with both hands and threw it across the room with an angry scream. The chair knocked over a computer terminal in the background and split into several pieces as it made impact with the unit.
“Jesus, Hikari! That’s nineteen million dollar equipment you’re destroying!” Cassy exclaimed.
“I DON’T CARE!” Hikari screamed, picking up another computer unit and smashing it into the floor, spreading its mechanical guts all over the place and kicking some of the pieces aside.
Pushing back abruptly, Cassy hurriedly restrained Hikari by the shoulders and, facing her, shouted, “Hikari! She’s gone!” Still blinded by anger, Hikari punched Cassy in the jaw and broke free, but her comrade recovered, grabbed Hikari by the back collar of her uniform and lightly shoved her temple into the desk before repeating, “Hikari! Stop! Just…stop. Please.” Cassy made the wise decision of standing to the side of Hikari instead of behind her, just in case her friend tried to kick her boot up into her gut and break free again.
But by this time, Hikari had drained her strength and was now moaning and wailing against the table, spilling her feelings of loss over the desk. So after slowly releasing her and allowing Hikari to stand back up to full height, Cassy hugged her sister-in-arms - one of the few she had left - and let the former sob into her shoulder.
Why would Command withhold this from us? Cassy thought. General Reach, how could you be so fucking selfish? Our comrades are dead, and we have to find out for ourselves how they died? You couldn’t just release the report outright?