Although Anne loathed to admit it, those Foundation doctors absolutely knew their stuff. She was fine enough with the doctors who patched her up and the ones who came to check on her when she was still under armed guard, but once her security level was downgraded all the nurses who kept an eye on her were way too fucking chummy. They didn't even bite when Anne tried to bait them into stupid shit, they just kept asking her shit like 'how many fingers am I holding up behind my back.' If Anne had anything to say about it, they wouldn't be able to move those fingers very well for much longer.
"Miss Byrne?" The portly grey-haired man in the chair a respectful distance from her hospital bed called her name. He busied himself with checking the recording equipment he's set up next to himself. The Foundation recorded fucking everything, even if it was just a redundant follow-up to the information she'd already supplied the actually threatening-looking woman who asked about her Insurgency involvement. "How long did you say the Insurgency… experimented on you?"
The man looked as though he was struggling for a sensitive way to word that phrase, but Anne didn't really care. "Four-ish years. Until I was thirteen," she said with a yawn as she leafed through an outdated magazine.
"And you're certain this did not push any of your anomalous capabilities past, er…" The man leafed through his notes. "'A weak ability to sense emotions when in the absence of… external factors?'"
Anne sighed, closing the magazine and turning to look at him. For someone who supposedly dealt with anomalies all day, he seemed almost spooked. "You mean the conflux, right?"
The man nodded.
"Well, actually, I've really be lying to everyone since I go here," Anne said matter-of-factly. The man sat up into an alert position. "Really, I can kill anyone just by looking at them. For example, now that the guard rotation has been changed, I'm going to kill you with a brain aneurism and break out of here in three…" Anne held up three fingers, then two, then one…
Beads of sweat began to form on the man's forehead. Anne watched him squirm for a few seconds, then just shook her head. "Relax, I was joking."
He cursed quietly, clearly flustered, and Anne rolled her eyes and opened her magazine back up. After a few seconds, he cleared his throat, his 'official' voice coming back. "Do you have any more questions?"
"Uh, yeah," Anne said as she turned to a new page. "What am I gonna do once I'm out of here?"
"Oh, well…" The man thought over what was, doubtlessly, several hundred dense pages of procedure he had memorized. "Well, as a wanted POI from a hostile GOI, normally you'd be a medium-to-high risk CPOI, depending on your cooperation. As an infovore, that almost always means SCP designation, though your limited showing could lead to a CPOI assignment, but I'd have to look over the RAISA filing system again. So, you might just be a CPOI for now."
Anne blinked. The man waited for a response, looking at her like he had just said actual, normal words.
"…Did someone fall asleep on a fucking typewriter when you set all this shit up?" Anne huffed. She was getting really sick of how all the people here talked in code, especially because she didn't think they were doing it on purpose. "Do you people use, like… fucking words in here?"
The man sighed deeply. "Look, why don't you just ask me what you wanted to?"
"Am I going to be able to interact with other people?" Anne asked in a slow, overpronounced cadence as though she was speaking with a toddler.
Another deep, exasperated sigh, and Anne knew she at least still had her mojo if she'd done this to the poor man in under five minutes. "Typically, no, but due to some, er, 'recent changes to procedure' as well as your cooperation, it's a decent possibility. Why, was there someone you had in mind.
Anne felt at her teeth with her tongue. The doctors here were damn good, she couldn't even tell which teeth were fake and which ones were reattached. "Oh, nobody in particular," she replied with a smile.
Anne figured she wouldn't mind seeing a certain someone again, even after everything. At the very least, she was easy to get a rise out of. And it's not every day Anne found another woman so willing to get on top of her.

PHYSICS Division After-Action Report (Abridged)
Submitted by Fireteam SPARKPLUG Leader, Operator #43856518/735 "Bullfrog"
Objective
Secure intelligence on Foundation operations from a third-party broker.
Result
Mission failure. Bad or intentionally misleading information led to the anomalous Foundation special assault team being deployed for the same objective, who were able to secure the package quickly due to anomalous capabilities.
Personnel Report

Team Leader "Bullfrog" 43856518/735: No injuries.
"Skunkboy" 43852165/735: Moderate testicular trauma. 96 hours of medical supervision recommended.
"Kitten" 43857764/735: Minor cuts and bruises. No medical attention needed.
"Spider" 43861212/735: Possible psionic contamination. 24 hours of observation recommended.

Threat Entity Assessment

Two (2) possible humanoid UTEs, one male and one female. Foundation affiliation. VERITAS scanning returned abnormal readings but no anomalous capabilities were returned.
One (1) confirmed UTE, appeared female. Foundation Affiliation. Possible physical augmentations, appeared to teleport upon death. More information needed.
KTE-11971-Green Ember. Foundation affiliation. Capabilities on par with what has been previously documented, barring one change (see below).
KTE-12275-Green Carcinoma. Insurgency affiliation. Capabilities possibly augmented by unknown paratech (see attached documentation on the incident in Wild Rose, IL. shortly after the operation).

All Threat Entities returned to or were captured by the Foundation.
Fireteam member Spider attempted a thaumatological link with KTE-11971-Green Ember in order to retrieve information about the KTE's identify or Foundation intelligence. Spider reported that this resulted in the KTE corrupting the link which forced Skunkboy to manually disrupt the link to prevent further psionic contamination.
Spider is an accomplished Thaumaturge and not prone to mistakes. The event described points towards possible latent memory-affecting or memetic capabilities from KTE-11971-Green Ember.
I recommend that additional resources be allocated to combating the Foundation's special assault force making use of humanoid anomalies.

Jackie's back stiffened as she stepped out into the cold early spring air, cursing under her breath. Not that she wasn't used to it, of course. With all the freezing hells she'd been to on her 'expeditions,' she'd become well accustomed to far more extreme temperatures, but even after all these years stepping out from under a space heater and into the cold was as hard as ever.
She scanned the scene, only seeing some cheap, disorganized chairs facing a drab overlook of the mountains. It probably would have looked much nicer with any leaves on the trees, or snow, or flowers, but this was that special time of year where the forest had started to thaw out but not yet begun to wake up. Well, at least this forest can wake up, Jackie reminded herself.
Truly, only an idiot would want to spend time sitting out here.
"What do you mean you're 'okay?' You're in a chest brace!"
…Or someone trying very hard to avoid other people.
Even in passing, Iris had made it clear how much she hated the cold. Something about calling every state where it got below 40 degrees a 'shithole' in that comically divisive way she did. However, this seems to have led her to overestimating how much other people disliked the cold. Or perhaps just the tenacity of a couple of teenagers.
"Look, it's… fine, it'll heal up." Iris clearly looked uncomfortable, but managed to maintain a smile when speaking to the two teenage girls. The girls, for their part, looked pretty concerned to see Iris wrapped in bandages.
"We were worried about you when we didn't see you in the cafeteria this morning…" The smaller one - Stacey, Jackie recalled - said in a small voice.
Seeing her chance to continue pushing Iris, the louder one chimed in again. "You always say you've got 'testing,' but then you come back looking like this all the time! Why don't you just quit? You always say that we shouldn't agree to that stuff!" Her eyes narrowed. "Unless there's something you're not telling us."
Iris moved her mouth around in silence, clearly backed into a corner. The fact she was sitting down and looking up at them probably didn't help, as the whole scene looked more like an interrogation. "Uh, look, Leora, I…"
Jackie sighed, making her way over to the three of them. "Alright, you two. Let's give our friend here some room to breathe, okay?"
The two girls looked up at Jackie, mouths opening slightly as she made her way over. Iris met her eyes for a moment before looking away, trying to cover up a look of shame.
"Oh, s-sorry, we just…" Stacey stuttered, having to crane her neck to make eye contact with Jackie as she spoke. "We were just worried about Iris."
It made sense, Jackie figured. From what little she saw around Site-17, Iris was somewhat nicer than usual to the kids who were contained here. They seemed nice enough, at the very least. "If she was really hurt, they wouldn't let her out of the medical wing, you know," Jackie told them.
"Oh, yeah… That makes sense." Stacey quieted down, but it still looked like there was something she wanted to say.
Her friend, however, didn't have any reservations. "Well, we're still worried about her! Is that so wrong?" The girl, named Leora, asked while speaking with her hands. "She must have hurt herself somehow, and she's been avoiding us! I think we have a right to know what's going on."
"Well, um," Jackie said as she scratched the back of her head, "I just don't think she wants to talk about it right now. Maybe you two should, er…" What did kids in containment do again? Hell, what did kids do again?
Mercifully, Iris chimed in again after a few agonizing seconds of silence. "I haven't been avoiding you two, I just wanted some space." The two teenagers turned back around to look at her again. "I'll come talk to you two in a bit, okay? I think they got some kind of… game thing set up for the anomalies now as well, so you can go check that out in the common area." Her voice was soft.
Leora huffed upon hearing that. "No, wait-"
"Okay! We'll head over there now!" Stacey tugged on Leora's arm while taking a step back through the doors, though whether she was driven away by the awkwardness of the conversation or her visible shivers was anyone's guess. Leora bristled, but allowed herself to be dragged back inside.
Once the two of them were gone, Iris' face hardened back into the combative, cold expression Jackie was more familiar with, though it didn't seem like her heart was in it this time. "I suppose you came by just to tell me you told me so?"
"Guess again, sir." Jackie smiled as she handed Iris a box with warm-ish food in it. "I'm here to make sure you're eating. As the team medic, and all." They both knew this wasn't part of her duties, but neither said anything.
Iris cautiously reached out and grabbed the box as though she was scared it would bite her before opening it up and inspecting the contents. Eggs and hash browns with some vegetables. She grimaced, though it seemed like it was more at the offer than the food. "I thought I told you to stop calling me 'sir.'" It certainly looked like that wasn't what she wanted to say.
"Oh, uh, force of habit." Jackie opened up her own box of food, and Iris quietly groaned as she realized Jackie wouldn't be leaving anytime soon. "I just figured it was the respectful thing to say."
"Respectful, huh…?" Iris said ruefully as she poked at her eggs with a plastic fork. "Well, 'sir' isn't actually a gender-neutral term, for one."
"Sorry. You know, I, um… I'm new to this whole thing," Jackie replied, thinking back on her years as a scientist. "…Ma'am."
Iris cringed so hard she cursed and brought a hand up to her chest again. "Oh, god, fuck that. Stick with sir."
"Got it, sir," Jackie chuckled.
Despite Jackie's hopes that maybe Iris would be willing to carry on a conversation from there, she just set about to poking at her food in silence. Jackie just sighed and got to eating. She'd learned that she couldn't really force things with Iris. At least she seemed a little bit more willing to talk now.
The face Iris had was softer than it normally was, somehow. Iris always looked at her with a cold sort of distance, similar to the way the people from this Foundation had treated her when they first 'contained' her. Jackie wasn't entirely sure why she kept trying with Iris. She'd known plenty of people who she just had to take a professionally distant stance from in her past, many of them looking down on her for her SCP designation. But there was something about the way Iris looked at her that always gave her pause. Whatever was behind those cold eyes wasn't ignorance, but something far deeper. Something that reared its head when she shot at Jackie back in the basement on their last operation.
"You know, I don't hate the hash browns." The sound of Jackie's own voice nearly startled her, falling victim to her habit of feeling like she needed to fill up awkward silences. She glanced up at Iris, expecting some scolding, but she just kept lethargically poking at her food. Her annoyed expression had shifted to a troubled one, but she still didn't say anything.
"My mom used to make them for me when I was a kid," Jackie continued, more to the air around herself than to Iris. "Always threw a bunch of shit into it and undercooked it. But, um, you know… I didn't think it tasted bad. Though maybe that's just since I always had them on Saturday mornings, heh…"
"What do you know about Omega-7, Jaqueline?"
Jackie was about to put another forkful of barely-cooked potatoes and onions into her mouth when Iris finally spoke. Caught off guard, she let it hover there for a moment before placing it back down and responding. "Um, not a lot. Probably just what, you know, most people know."
Refusing to look away from her food, Iris didn't immediately respond. It seemed like she was still arguing with herself. Eventually, though, she did continue, in a restrained tone. "I was really just a proof-of-concept then. Something to say 'hey, think of all the other neat gimmicks we have.' But the real…" Iris took a shaky breath. "…The real centerpiece of the whole thing was A-"
Iris sucked in a breath before finishing the word. "Was Able."
"Well, the, uh… name rings a few bells," Jackie said in what she hoped was her most nonthreatening voice. She could scarcely believe Iris, of all people, was coming out and saying this, but didn't want to spook her. "I was told not to mention him too much." He tended to get brought up in conversations with her research team whenever someone needed the most extreme example of a past fuck-up, which was told off for being in poor taste each time. All Jackie really knew was that he ended Omega-7.
Iris looked like she was shaking a bit, and not from the cold. "Ab- He always got results. Throw him at a problem, and hey, at least the first problem's gone, one way or another. He was… a real machine. Right up until he just… killed the whole team." Iris spat out her last few words like they were poison, staring at the ground in front of her with unfocused eyes.
The chair Jackie was sitting on was starting to feel very uncomfortable. It was clear Iris didn't want to be talking about this, but it seemed like she felt that she owed Jackie some kind of an explanation, although for what, exactly, was still unclear.
"I could have stopped it, you know. I could have-" Iris cut herself off, voice breaking. That unapproachable hardass Jackie had come to know suddenly looked like she could have been shattered by the breeze.
"Hey, hey," Jackie half-whispered as she scooted closer to Iris. She reached out a hand to rub her on the back lightly, but remembered how she screamed when Jackie tried to help her when she was hurt and instead just leaned in closer. "You shouldn't have been expected to do any of what you did. You did so much more than enough." Jackie only knew bits and pieces of what had happened to Iris, but she knew she wasn't much older than those two girls when it happened.
"Probably. You're probably right," Iris said grimly. "But back then, I couldn't even try. I mean, I had worked with him. Talked with him." Her gaze fell back to her food once again, now cold and unappealing. "Ate shitty powdered eggs with him."
…Oh.
"They knew what he was from the start, and they didn't tell me. I don't know if they told anyone back then, really," Iris muttered, breaths uneven. "I guess I just… didn't want to get burned again."
Jackie wanted to lean back, just to take it all in, but she felt like backing away from Iris now would be wrong, so she just rubbed her chin. She supposed this was Iris' way of apologizing, or at least offering an explanation. An actual 'I'm sorry' would be nice, of course, but seeing Iris so vulnerable almost felt wrong. Still, if she had felt like this until now, what made her come clean now?
"I'm… scared of dying. Scared of getting hurt, too," Iris stated once her breath had become even again. "Of course, I get hurt, and I… I've thought about dying before, but it still… really scares me. I see it in other people, too. That fear. I don't let myself forget that. I don't let myself forget what it means when I pull the trigger.
"I know he forgot that," Iris added bitterly. "And for the longest time, I thought it was because he didn't have that fear. That he couldn't see it in anyone else since it became so foreign to him.
"But back then, at that house, when it was just me and Anne… There was a point where… There was a point when I…" Just like before, Iris was having a hard time speaking, though this time it seemed more out of shame than fear. "There was a point where I… I lost sight of that, too. Since then, I've been thinking, maybe it's not the fear. Maybe it's just knowing you can do it."
Tears welled up in Iris' eyes as she refused to look up. Jackie took a deep breath, and reached out to place her hand on Iris' back. Her whole body seemed to tense up as her head jerked towards Jackie, but she didn't make eye contact - nor did she swat the hand away. That was progress. "Sometimes things get the better of us, sir. I know that," Jackie said, just barely louder than a whisper. Her hand started running up and down "But you stopped. You kept sight of yourself. You…" Jackie struggled to find the words for a moment. "You're a good person, sir. I know you are."
Despite Jackie's attempt at comforting her, or perhaps because of it, the tears welled up even more as Iris made a pained noise in her throat. Before any of the tears could actually fall, though, Iris turned away again and wiped her eyes, gently pushing Jackie's hand away with her other arm.
Jackie leaned back a little bit to give Iris some space, but not so much it felt like she was pulling away. After taking deep breaths until she was sure her voice was even again, she started up once more. "Do you want to know what scared me the most about him?"
It sounded like a rhetorical question, but Jackie didn't want to seem like she wasn't listening. Luckily, though, Iris answered before she could think of a response. "Sometimes, he almost looked human.
"Sometimes he seemed sad, or almost lonely, but I'll never know if that was just another lie." Iris finally, finally turned to look at Jackie in the eyes as she spoke. "He never talked about how shitty cafeteria hash browns made him miss his mom."
"I think I get it," Jackie said, more to show that she was listening than anything.
"Thanks," Iris whispered. After another pause she cleared her throat, straightening her posture back up. "I'm sorry. As your commander, it wasn't right of me to treat you like that. I felt I owed you an explanation for my conduct, but it isn't an excuse," she said in cadence Jackie was far more used to.
As your commander. Iris was clearly trying to put some distance between herself and… whatever that was just now. Building those walls of professionalism back up. Well, Jackie supposed that was to be expected.
Deciding not to rest her hand on Iris' arm, Jackie put on what she hoped was her most reassuring voice. It was important to validate people when they come forward to you. "I'm really proud of you, sir."
"Pr- tch!" Iris flushed, bringing a hand up to block her face and looking away. Not that it did much, Jackie could still see her ears turning red. "I wasn't… Look, don't expect me to make it a habit, alright? I just… felt like I had to! This one time!"
"Alright, alright, I get the picture," Jackie chuckled as she leaned back in her chair.
Another silence fell over the balcony, but this one was a far less choking stillness than before. Jackie rested her back against her chair and looked out over the balcony for a while, letting Iris scarf down some cold food in an attempt to calm herself down in peace.
After a little while, Iris tuned back to Jackie. "I… sort of figured you'd have a bit more to say, if I'm being honest."
Jackie raised her arms above her head and stretched. "Not much for me to say, really. I'm just glad I know what's up now, I was wondering what the deal was."
"What do you mean?" Iris asked with a furrowed brow.
"Well, uh, if I'm being totally honest…" Jacke scratched at her cheek while wondering if this was even a good thing to say. "…I kinda thought you might have just been, like, racist or homophobic."
If Iris had flushed before, she turned beet red. "I- What- That's not- Why would you even think that?" She hissed.
Failing miserably to stop herself from laughing, Jackie doubled over in her seat, making weird noises as she tried to choke back her laughs. This only seemed to incense Iris even more, who started blustering incoherently.
"Look, look, look," Jackie gasped out while trying to catch her breath, "I was just wondering what was up is all. I know you're not like that now."
"A-Alright! A-And don't forget that!" Iris attempted to form a more coherent sentence. "And what do you even mean with that second thing?"
"Oh, uh…" Jackie sat up straight in her chair again, hastily trying to wipe the smile off her face. "I don't know if it's come up before, but I'm a, y'know, lesbian."
Iris blinked. "Oh. Okay." She seemed to trail off as she squinted. "Why would I have an issue with that?"
"Well, uh, I don't know. It's not anyone's business, really, but some people take issue with it," Jackie explained.
"Rude of them," Iris muttered. She opened and closed her mouth a few times as though she wanted to say something else.
Jackie suppressed a groan. "Look, if you want to ask me something, you can. I'm open about it."
"Well, um, I just…" Iris seemed confused. "I thought you said you were from Michigan."
"…"
"…"
"…"
"…"
"Iris are you fucking with me right now?"

« Voices Carry: Part 4 | Devil's Advocate Hub |