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Member
Join Date: Mar 2008
Posts: 6
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Many Interpretations
(Warning; Some launguage and nondescriptive violence.)
Many Interpretations
The biting chill from the frozen Siberian air was the least of Sergeant Sergi Androvich's worries, he knew driving the battered pickup truck out into the artic desert was probably a rather stupid move, but orders where orders. Extract the subject to rendezvous site, fail in this, Sgt. Androvich, and I assure you, you'll wish we'd just killed you. Damn him, damn that bastard Kovac. Glancing at his passenger, rocking back and forth, arms wrapped around her drawn up legs, in his heavily accented English, he growled "Girly, I don't know why you're so important, but just shut up and sit still, damned bitch." The girl looked over at him, frowning slightly at his vulgarity, she knew a little about him, enough to know he wasn't that good at English, and she shouldn't bother speaking to him. It hurt too much to talk, she realized, as a fresh spurt of pain hit her brain, and she whimpered again.
The roaring of helicopter blades told Sgt. Androvich he was in deep shit. "Friggen bastard! Damn that Kovac." Androvich muttered as his booted foot slammed the accelerator.
"You can't run from a helicopter in this heap, you know." The girl sing-songed. "You'll be dead, you'll see red, you'll be dead, dead, la-la-la. You'll be dead." The girl giggled.
"Shut up friggen American bitch! Shut up!" He screamed at her. Oblivious to a most obvious fact, she wasn't American, she had Russian citizenship, or she wasn't a citizen of any nation, the girl couldn't remember which. Not that it mattered.
"You can't escape, nobody can. You can't run from them, not from the white coats. You'll see red and be dead." The girls voice was somber, and held a frightened timber. The pickup bumped and groaned its way across the frozen tundra, and Sgt. Androvich knew he was dead before he saw the helicopters crest the frozen dune, and turned the entirety of it's armament (two vulcan cannons, hellfire missile launchers, rocket pods, and Electronic Warfare Countermeasures) towards the peeling grey truck.
"Oh damn." He muttered, slamming the brakes as massive caliber bullets impacted the permafrosted ground where he would have been.
"You can't escape, so we'll die." The girl mumbled, holding herself.
"Shut up!" Androvich hissed, slamming the accelerator and pulling the truck into a reckless turn. I have to reach the damned link up point, or I'm worse than dead. Androvich knew. Damnit Kovac, where is the rescue you promised?
The helicopter clicked on a speaker, and a detached voice in Russian barked out a cursory; "Surrender now, or be destroyed."
"Go to hell, capitalist bootlicker." Androvich screamed out at the white camouflaged helicopter. The girl just giggled again, at the sheer pointlessness of the action.
The helicopter gave a warning spin of it's rotary cannons, but something went wrong. The thermal sensor showed three heat sources, the two in the truck, and on behind them. "Flight Captain!" The Sensor Officer shouted over the din of whirling chopper blades, "We have something weird, an extra heat source. What should we do?"
"Is it a glitch?" The Flight Captain asked, speaking into his radio, to save his voice.
"No sir, it's a person, is it a soldier? Another traitor? Sir! Missile Lock warning! Evade!" The Sensor Officers warning was in vain, as a rocket fired from an unknown vector slammed into the tail of the helicopter, and exploded into a blaze of fire and death. The surviving 'chopper crew burned to death, trapped in the wreckage.
"What the fuck? What is going on?" Androvich muttered, grateful for the reprieve but grabbing his Kalashnikov rifle just in case.
"You can come on out now. It's safe." A disembodied voice crackled over Androvich's radio.
"Who are you?!" He growled into the receiver.
"A man without much patience, get out, hands in the air, or I'll put a bullet in your head." The voice was smug, even through the distortion caused by the cheap radio.
What choice did he have? Androvich tossed his rifle as far from himself as possible, and climbed out of the truck, ignoring the gibbering girl making a fool of herself in the passenger seat. What a stupid fool, is she drugged? Cocaine? Heroin? Androvich wondered idly.
The crackling sound of a stealth field deactivating from behind him, like lightening, Androvich thought, was all the warning he got, before a cold gun barrel was pressing against his skull. "So, how'd you like to die today? Is the girl inside?" The man asked, in terrible Russian.
"Yeah, you bastard, she's inside." Androvich responded in equally bad English.
"Good" the man muttered, putting two ten millimeter rounds into the back of the Russian soldiers skull.
"He's dead, dead, just like I said he'd be dead, la-la-la-la. Heeheeeheee." The girl giggled madly.
"Yes, he is." The man told her soothingly.
"Will you kill me too?" The girl didn't seem frightened at the prospect, she didn't even have an emotional reaction at all. Her glee wasn't real.
"No, shhh, no. What's your name, girl?" He asked, stroking her black hair, wrapping a blanket he found next to her, around her shoulders.
"My name?" The girl asked, looking at him with wide, far too innocent, brown eyes. "My name? I.....I...." She started sobbing.
"What's wrong?" The man asked her, trying to stay reassuring. The girl shifted in her seat, wrapping pale arms around the mans neck, and sobbing against his shoulder.
"I can't remember! I don't know! What's my name?" She asked him, hysterical.
"Okay. Okay. Calm down, calm down. Try and think, okay? My names John. What's yours?"
"John Sykes, special agent of a special top secret agency, has no official rank in any military, yet by special dispensation, commands anybody or any equipment. You're an assassin." Her voice was calm and distant, as if remembering some half forgotten thing.
"Yes, how'd you know that?" He asked, pulling a small black visor from a pocket.
"I don't know, I.....can't remember. What's happening to me?" The girl asked, her eyes innocent and wide again. Her voice half-hysterical.
"It's okay, alright? But I need you to do something for me, I need you to tell me what color you see, aright? Can you do that?" He asked, placing the visor over her eyes.
"I....red. I see red." A long silence passed before the man, John Sykes, removed the visor from her eyes. She Saw Red. Damn it.
"Contaminated." Sykes whispered, drawing his pistol again, placing the silenced barrel against her skull.
"What are you doing? Are you going to kill me?" The girls voice held no emotion, it was just a question, asking the weather.
"You Saw Red. I have my orders."
"Can I walk around a little please? I'm stiff, I'd like to stretch before you shoot me, can I do that?" The girl asked, her voice old beyond years, and young as a child.
"Fine." He said, helping her climb out of the truck cabin. He noticed she had nothing to cover her feet but hospital issue slippers. "Won't your feet be cold?" He asked.
"Why do you care? I'll be dead soon enough." Her eyes where half lidded, heavy with sleep or fatigue, and she let herself fall down into the cold snow, smiling.
"Ma'am, I....., are you okay?" He called, seeing her tumble down, landing in the snow, arms and legs splayed apart.
"I'll be dead soon enough, John. Did you know that they say snow means love and death? Solitary figures laying in the snow die peacefully, freezing isn't such a bad way, you just want to sleep, and you never wake up. But if two figures are in the snow, the innocent, wide eyed girl is saved from a terrible death by freezing by the gallant, handsome young man that rides to her rescue. Would you have spared me a glance?" The girl smiled, showing her teeth, and looked up at Sykes.
"No." Sykes told her, matter of fact.
"You're lying." She singsonged. Standing up, she brushed snow from her hair, ignoring the icy bite of snow at her feet.
"And you're dead." The gun was aimed at her now, she could follow the laser dot to it's place between her eyes, right dead center on the ridge of her nose.
"John, I've been dead for a decade. You're freeing me, really. I should thank you. I Saw Red. You've saved me. Death, in all it's glory, is only just beginning."
"Right, any last words?" The gun was trembling in his hand now. Shit.
"Does John want to know my name? I've remembered."
"What is it?" Sykes demanded with an intensity he hadn't intended to show.
"I'm Etna. Pleasure to meet you, John." Etna extended her hand, the blanket held around her shoulders with the other.
"Etna.....I'm so sorry. I have my orders." The gun was shaking, held in a trembling hand, but wasn't reholstered. Etna's hand was still held out in front of her, lovely and delicate and alone.
"Don't be, John, you saved me. I love you." Etna grinned, and tapped her forehead. "Right here please."
"Forgive me." The gun sneezed it's silenced report out into the artic chill, once, twice, six times. Calmly, Sykes reloaded the empty gun. "We have to go, Etna, the military base will send soldiers soon."
"I Saw Red." Etna told him, eyes still screwed shut in anticipation of a bullet.
"I don't remember that, in fact, I don't remember ever asking you what color you saw."
"But.....I'll hurt you, I'll hurt people who don't deserve it."
"Not if we get this fixed. Etna, I won't let this happen to you. I'm a soldier, not an assassin. Cade Kovac and his organization can burn in hell. Because I'll meet them there soon enough." Etna giggled again.
"Well then, my feet are kinda cold."
"Eh? Yeah, right, one second." He picked her up, legs tucked under his left arm, holding her against him with his right. She helped by wrapping her arms around his neck. Stay focused on the mission, stay focused, stay focused. The mantra was repeated again and again, but it lost more and more of it's power with each repetition. He walked over to the truck cabin, and set Etna down in the seat, before pulling off his pack and digging out a spare pair of socks, thermal insulated and water proof.
Handing them to Etna, Sykes dragged the Russian soldiers corpse a fair distance away, and removed the mans boots and jacket. He didn't like the idea of Etna wearing a dead mans clothes, but he understood freezing was a distinct possibility otherwise. He drew the line, however at the trousers. "God must hate me." Sykes muttered, picking up the battered boots and jacket.
"You've been gone for a while, John, I was getting worried." Etna told him, laying against the cushions of the cabin, still holding the socks in her hand.
"Found you some shoes." Sykes held up the boots.
"Thank you." Sykes sighed, and pulled the socks from Etna's hand, and put them on her feet. She smiled and pulled on the boots, but the laces confused her. "John......I...help?"
"Huh?" Seeing her fumbling with the laces of the sturdy Russian boots, Sykes chuckled, but bent down and quickly laced up the boots, trying to ignore the fact that she was wearing a hospital gown and her legs were........ Mind on the job, maggot, mind on the job! He told himself, again and again. "All done." He proclaimed, feeling a satisfaction he had no reason to be feeling.
Etna giggled, kicked her feet, getting used to the heavy boots.
"So, what are we going to do? Where can we go? Won't your boss kill you for this?"
"Maybe, maybe not, I don't know. I'm the best, Etna, but Cade, he's better. Our best shot is to run far and away." Even as he told Etna this, Sykes knew the odds of survival had just been lowered from negliable, to absolute zero, Cade Kovac was far too sharp to let the two get away.
"Hey, John, how old are you?" Etna asked, letting him help her into the oversized jacket, it hung down to just above her knee, and the massively oversized boots came up to above mid calf.
"Me? I'm seventeen. Not many suspect a kid of being able to hip shoot a BAR or huck a rocket launcher across the Artic hardpan."
"Tundra and permafrost, John, it's permafrost." Etna corrected.
"Is that so? And how about you, missy, just how old are you?" Sykes asked, a teasing tone twisting his voice.
"Why Mr.Sykes! Don't you know it's rude to ask a lady her age?" She teased back.
"I'm grateful it isn't your bra size." Sykes muttered sourly. Etna agreed, and told him the measurement as well. "Hey! I wasn't serious!" He stammered. She laughed.
"I'm sixteen, but I'll be seventeen in November." She told him, looking at her hands. "That's what they told me, anyway."
"Really? Humph, well, I'll be sure to get you something nice then." Sykes resisted the urge to add another smart remark.
"Do you think we'll live that long?"
"Hey, cheer up, I'm the depressing one, not you." Sykes told her, forcing a smile. "Cade took me in, trained me to be everything I am now. But that means I know what he'll do, and he doesn’t know what I'll do, I am, after all, an unpredictable hormonal teenager. I'll report in as usual tomorrow, and tell them you're dead. I can fake my own death, that will fool them long enough to get us time to escape the country. We can't go to America, that's Cade's stomping ground. And we'd stick out like sore thumbs in Asia. Europe might be a good bet, Cade can't be too obvious there, or Interpol will get interested, and his agency has no power, official or otherwise over Interpol."
"Do you think we can hide there?" Etna asked him, her brown eyes trusting and full of adoration.
"Until I can think of something else, yeah." Stop looking at me like that, Etna, please.
"Then we should go."
"Right, are you able to handle a walk? My transport is a few miles from here." Sykes had every intention of carrying her if he had too. I've invested too much energy into this to give up now.
"Sure. But," Etna climbed out of the truck cabin, and stood, wobbling slightly in her oversized boots. "Are you sure you don't want to just shoot me?" She tapped her forehead. "Right here, and none of this will have ever happened."
"Lets go." He told her, grabbing the Russian soldiers AK-47 and shouldering it, after all, extra firepower is always handy. Taking a glance at her, in her thin hospital gown, the green jacket hanging on her thin shoulders, the massive boots that came to just below her knee, and the brown blanket wrapped around herself, she looked endearingly cute. You're breaking my heart, Etna, I think I love you already. His teenage hormones had never gotten him in trouble before, Sykes supposed this was evening the score.
They made good time, almost making it out of the country before Cade Kovac and his agency caught onto their scheme.
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