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Date Posted: 02:22:23 07/18/11 Mon
Author: asiacheetah
Author Host/IP: ppp-71-128-198-88.dsl.sndg02.pacbell.net / 71.128.198.88
Subject: Chapter 41 - Elsbeth and Michael
In reply to: asiacheetah 's message, "The Recruit (working title) - Michael pre-LFN story" on 03:47:50 04/25/11 Mon

Chapter 41 – Elsbeth and Michael

Elsbeth rarely made lengthy medical lab visits to injured operatives. If she had spent even 5 minutes per operative that passed through those doors, she would spend all her time there and not get any work done. That made the fact that she’s been sitting by Michael’s sleeping form for over 20 minutes a rare sight to the medical staff working there.

Elsbeth sat unmoving in a hard backed chair next to Michael’s bed, her eyes alternating between his face and staring unseeingly across the room. She studied his face, which was a patchwork of bruises and cuts with swelling that almost rendered him unrecognizable.

She found it unsettling that every time she’s seen Michael alone in person, he had been laying in bed. The first time was when he was first recruited and strapped to the bed. He had looked impossibly young then, but with eyes that had seen and experienced too much. Those wounded eyes had not pleaded for release or reprieve, but rather simply accepted whatever fate was dealt to him.

The second time had been after a dry mission run had failed catastrophically due to Intel failure. Michael had lead his team out from heavy resistance, but was injured in the process. She remembered his eyes that time too. His eyes had looked wounded when he first entered Section, that time his eyes looked haunted, haunted by what he had been forced to do for Section. She dreaded what she would be met with this time after Section had put him through the toughest test it has ever given.

She thought back to the mission debrief from the rescue team.

*****

Stannis: “How much longer are we going to circle the city?”

Dusty: “Your order is to continue in a search grid until we receive confirmation.”

Stannis: “Got it.”

Stannis stretched his shoulders uncomfortably while eyeing his team members in the van who groaned at the news. They had been the city for more than 24 hours searching for a missing Section team. They had taken turns sleeping in the moving van, which only made infrequent stops to gas up again and to allow them to use the facilities.

He was shocked that they had dedicated a 4 man Section team for so long in search of 2 missing operatives. He had never heard of Section expanding so much resource to recover its agents before. Of course their primary objective was to locate the terrorist cell that captured those operatives and take them out. However, normal procedure had them return to base to gather more Intel. The fact that they wanted them to remain on site for a quick response told him they hoped to retrieve the operatives alive.

Being in a van for more than 24 hours gave the team a lot of time to talk and to form guesses on Section’s motives. They thought they figured out why Section wanted to retrieve the missing operatives so badly when they found out one of the missing operative was Michael.

None of them had worked on a team with Michael, but stories of the man had spread far and wide inside Section. The rumor mills inside Section had been churning for months. First, had been his accelerated and multi-discipline training. Next, his rapid ascension and increased leadership roles. Finally, about his role as a team leader leading veteran operatives, while he was still technically a recruit.

His performance in the field had been extraordinary, as well as behind the scene in profiling and tactical operations. The rumor mills had been spinning for months that Michael was being groomed for higher-up positions.

All that expectations and training might have made him an arrogant know-it-all. For those that have met the man, they had said that’s far from the truth. They all said Michael was a quiet man, tough but fair, without the god complex some of those in charge seemed to have.

Stannis remembered the first time he had ever seen Michael. He had been talking to Schmidt in Comm. when Michael had walked by toward Kendo’s office. He had made some snide remark about Section recruiting pretty boys and Schmidt had gestured him furiously to lower his voice.

Schmidt: “Lower your f**king voice! You don’t want Michael to hear you!”

Stannis’ eyes had widened in shock and looked back toward Michael who had disappeared inside Kendo’s office. “That’s Michael?”

Schmidt: “Yeah. Not what you were expecting right?”

Stannis: “I didn’t think he’d be so young, and so…”

Schmidt helpfully supplied: “Pretty?”

Stannis: “Yeah. From everything I heard, I thought he’d be 7 feet tall, loads of muscles, and deadly.”

Schmidt chuckled: “Don’t let his looks fool you. He is deadly. Don’t worry, he won’t kill you for stupidity or if you say the wrong thing.”

Stannis: “Good to know.”

Stannis attention snapped back to the present when Kendo’s voice crackled on over the comm. sets.

Kendo: “Team: we have received confirmation of the location of the Crimson Storm base. Be advised that we have a Section operative on the inside.”

Stannis: “Who is it?”

Kendo: “We received Intel from Michael that there are 8 hostiles inside the camp and one other Section operative. Sending coordinates now, you should arrive at the location in T-minus 20 minutes.”

Stannis: “Affirmative.”

The team started gathering their weapons and straightening their gear. Stannis thought wryly to himself that he would finally get to meet Michael after hearing so much about him. That he was still alive after being captured more than 24 hours ago was impressive.

When the team had shown up at the site, they had found no resistance at the perimeter, and the gate unlocked for their entrance. A truck was blocking the entrance to the warehouse so they had to move that aside to enter.

Two operatives pulled the double doors open, as Stannis and another operative entered with weapons raised. They drew up short when they were greeted by a half naked man with his gun pointed directly at them.

The operative to the right of him yelled out: “We’re Section.”

The man paused for a moment with his gun still trained on them, before slowly lowering it. Without the distraction of a pistol aimed at his head, Stannis could finally see the man welding the weapon. He was clad only in black mission pants and was standing barefoot and shirtless. Every inch of his skin was covered with bruises and cuts, with some deep purple bruising against his ribs, obvious signs of internal bleeding. There were bruises and cuts on the man’s face as well, with one eye completely swollen shut and his nose swollen and obviously broken.

The man finally spoke: “I’m Michael.”

They all gaped at the man, shock at finally recognizing him behind the myriad of bruises and swollen features.

Michael continued: “The group leader is over there in the corner by the door. There are two more dead inside the warehouse, 5 outside the rear door, and 2 more in the field near the freeway.”

They gaped at him silently in astonishment at the news. Michael ignored their shocked looks and continued: “I recovered the disc from the substation from the initial target site, downloaded the data on the computer here and destroyed it.”

Stannis finally recovered enough to croak out: “Let’s go then, I’ll call in housekeeping.”

Michael pointed at another body at the corner of the room and replied: “Take him with us.”

Michael might be team leader for the mission, but he was the leader for this recovery team. Stannis shook his head and replied: “Leave him for Housekeeping.”

Michael: “That’s Adam. He’s a Section operative. They’ll want to recover his body.”

Stannis looked at the corpse he had assumed was one of the hostiles. The body was fully clothed, without any visible signs of torture. He frowned at the weapon by the body and clothes that were not Section issued. He looked up at Michael to argue again, but held his tongue at the look of warning he read there.

They got back to the mission van and pulled out as housekeeping pulled in. Someone gave Michael a jacket, which he pulled on slowly. Stannis frowned at the slow movement and directed one of the team members to check Michael health status. He had found Michael’s blood pressure was precariously low. As he was calling into Section to report on the status of recovery mission, Michael had finally passed out from his injuries.

*****

A beeping sound jerked Elsbeth back to the present. She checked to see that it was from the monitor hooked up to Michael. His heart rate and blood pressure remained stable. Michael had arrived on a gurney over 36 hours ago, unconscious. The doctors had found broken nose, fractured cheekbones. They also found four broken ribs, one of which had punctured his lung. He had extensive bruising throughout his body, and his genital swollen to twice its normal size. Most troubling, they had found internal bleeding and a lacerated liver. Had Michael not escaped when he did, he most likely would not have lasted another 24 hours from the internal bleeding.

Michael had been kept sedated, giving the doctors a chance to repair his various broken bones and to stop the internal bleeding. Elsbeth had ordered he continued to be sedated another 24 hours to allow his body to recover further. She had ordered the medication to be tapered back to allow Michael to regain consciousness one hour ago, which is why she was now sitting by his bedside, waiting for him to awaken.

She had already pieced together what had occurred from debriefs from the recovery team and from housekeeping, as well as the data Michael had retrieved from the two sites. She knew Michael had been tortured and interrogated for more than 24 hours. Apparently, the terrorist had decided that Michael would not give them the information they want and decided to cancel him.

She also knew that Adam had betrayed Section and Michael by giving the terrorists profiles of their initial mission. She had personally inspected Adam’s corpse to document no signs of torture was on it, confirming the duplicitous role he played.

While Adam had given himself away as a double agent, it was obvious that Michael had not taken the easy way out and betrayed Section. He had unquestionably proven his loyalty to them when he had cancelled Adam, a man they knew was a friend of his. He proving his allegiance to Section was what they desired, but Elsbeth was feeling the uncomfortable pangs of guilt at what the young man had to go through. She put away those unusual thoughts, along with any pity she felt and focused on the Section business at hand. She leaned slightly forward when she noticed Michael’s eye lashes started fluttering as he stirred awake.

“Good morning.”

Michael slowly opened his eyes and was greeted by the overly bright lights of the med lab. Elsbeth was seated beside his bed with a slight unreadable smile on her face. At seeing him awake, Elsbeth’s smile grew wider. “How are you feeling?”

He could feel the effect of the pain killer in his system, dulling the multiple aches and pain from throughout his body. “I’m fine.”

“You’ve been out for a while. We’ve repaired the breaks in your nose and cheekbone as well as set your broken ribs and bind them. You will have to cut back on physical excursions for a few weeks to let the breaks heel.”

“When can I leave med lab?”

“Not for a few more days I’m afraid. The doctors want to observe you to make sure there is no internal bleeding.”

At Michael’s lack of response, Elsbeth continued: “I wanted to congratulate you. You’ve passed the final test and is now a full fledge operative. In fact, we are so impressed with your progress; we have decided to promote you directly to Level 3.”

Michael looked at Elsbeth for a long moment, mulling over the news, before focusing on something she had said. “What test?”

Elsbeth’s smile faded and a hard glint appeared in her eyes. “We received intelligence that a Section agent was leaking Intel to Crimson Storm. We believed the most likely culprit was Mr. Adam Tucker.”

“Why didn’t you just take him out?”

“We weren’t sure that he was the double agent and had to draw him out.”

“And the test?”

“We had to see if your loyalty to Section is absolute.”

“You lost 4 other operatives in this test.”

“They were abeyance operatives.”

Michael’s mind reeled at the extreme length Section went through just to test him. It told him without a doubt that they were all expendable and that Section was utterly ruthless. He could either do their bidding until the day he died, or kill himself now.

He had been raised a Catholic and fully had been taught the concept of heaven and hell. He had thought he was in a hell of his own making when he first arrived in Section. For a little while he had been lulled into complacency, that this particular hell wasn’t as bleak as it could be. He now knew that he had just barely scratched the surface of this particular purgatory.

Elsbeth watched Michael closely as he reacted to the news she had just given him. Or rather, watch him not react at all. His face had remained impassive at the news, with his eyes a dull gray-green, betraying no inner thoughts. She realized that she was wrong to be afraid of what she would read in his eyes. She had been afraid she would be met with haunted or wounded soul betrayed by his eyes. It was infinitely worse to not be able to read anything in his gaze, as if Section had managed to kill him emotionally so that only an empty shell remained.

She was extremely uncomfortable, feeling like a murderer, more so than when she actually pulled the trigger and killed before. She had a sudden need to leave, get away from the living carcass of her and Section’s creation. She stood up abruptly and stood awkwardly as Michael looked expressionlessly up at her.

“I’ll let you get some rest. Kendo will take you to your off site quarter in a few days when you are released from med lab.”

“Thank you.”

Michael continued looking impassively up at her. She pasted on a cool Section smile and left quickly, resisting the urge to run.

Michael stared at the door where Elsbeth was last seen for a long while, puzzled by the fear he had read briefly in her eyes. He felt detached from himself, not just his body but his emotion. He knew some of it was due to the drugs and shock from the physical trauma he just experienced. He wondered if he would ever get his emotions back, or if he even wanted to feel again. Feeling meant being hurt, a much deeper hurt than any physical pain. He realized he much preferred being numb. It made it easier to perform what was expected of him.

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