(I Swallowed Hard, Like I Understood) Chapter One: Upload

[companionwolf]

 [CONTENT WARNING: medical trauma mention in the form of conscious dissection, a head exploding and the aftermath of that being described aka some gore.]

 

Normally, there is time.

 

Normally, there is little resistance. 

 

Normally, Jane Kelly throws a grenade; a hole is blown in the wall, and John ‘Central’ Bradford lugs the body of his Commander through, struggling on to a waiting Skyranger despite a shot to the side. 

 

Normally, they escape.

 

This is not normal.

 

That is what Bradford knows, when one moment he is clutching the suited body to his chest in undiguised fear as ADVENT troops storm the clinic, and the next (filled with blinding blue and a terrible sense of ripping) he is a dark room, the only source of light a series of blinking computer monitors to his left, bathing everything in low silvery blue. There is only one door, and it is ADVENT trademark, and it is death incarnate. 

 

This is not normal. This is not right. 

 

Central squints in the dark, at the shapes that loom in the half black. There are shelves, boxes, and he sees papers scattered about the floor, which is unusual for what appears to be some kind of office. The computers are signature ADVENT models- sleek, minimalist, flat holoprojected keyboards that only light when you touch where they’re supposed to be. 

 

But none of this really matters. What matters is the strange chair in the back middle of the room. It’s almost like a old timey dentist chair, with metal armrests and a red padded cushion. A white headset looking object hangs over the seat, connected with a metal frame and wires that snake into the dark. 

 

Central shivers. Some kind of torture device, maybe?

 

Then.

 

A prickling in his head, a sensation that feels like knowing, but that’s foreign all the same: he does not have much time, before ADVENT finds him or the Commander dies. But he must not leave. No, something else is to be done. He doesn’t quite understand why, but he needs to put them in that seat, get that helmet off their head, plug them into... 

 

What is that thing? The name dances just out of his knowledge, there but not. He shakes his head, and gently gently kneels, lowering the Commander to the gray concrete. Gingerly he runs his hands over the helmet, the mask, the lock mechanism of the neck. The knowing pricks again, and following it Central slowly removes the mask first, breath catching. 

 

They have not changed. They have not aged. Just the same as twenty years ago. 

 

Guilt twists in Central’s heart. What did they do? What did they do to you?

 

He pushes it aside with some difficulty, finishes removing the suit’s head piece finally, fingers lightly brushing the shaved head of his superior officer for wounds before as he hefts them back into his arms. 

 

Central carries them to the seat, taking care to set their arms on the arm rests and their legs straight. They still slump somewhat, but with a little gentle maneuvering he manages to get their head inside of the headset. He stands back then, staring at the suited figure - they look silver in the monitor light, not the bright biting red of ADVENT. 

 

The knowing leads his attention away from them, assures him he has time but he must be quick, and brings him cautiously up to the computers. Most of them are blinking error messages but one, one is open to a screen that has input fields, and a pair of buttons: START SCAN and UPLOAD SCAN.

 

Central swallows. What is a scan?

 

The knowing insists. Sit sit sit sit. Fill it in. 

 

He sits, and taps the flat surface in front of the monitor; the holo keyboard springs to life under his fingertips. He glances at the input fields: name, birth date, scan date,  scan type. Central bites his lip as he types in the Commander’s name and birth date- Blaine Cohen, 10-18-82. The scan date is easy enough: March 1st, 2035.

 

The scan type is what throws him off for a moment. The options are in a drop down menu, and they don’t make a lick of sense. He doesn’t know what the difference between a legacy file and a Nakajima compressed file is. If he does his wrong, will it hurt them? Central’s gaze flicks from the monitor to the seated figure of the Commander and back, and with shaking fingers he selects what he hopes is the most modern file type. 

 

The START SCAN button turns from grey to blue, and after another moment of hesitation, Central clicks it. He hears gears whir, machinery start up, and whips his head toward the seat in time to see the white headset drop down over the Commander’s exposed head. 

 

There is a buzzing staticky noise accompanied by a loud fwoosh, followed by the smell of something burning and a terrible popping and cracking sound, which in itself is accompanied by a cascade of thumps against the headset. Central leaps to his feet as pieces of skull and brain fall and settle onto the seat and the Commander’s lap. 

 

Blood runs down from the stump that is exposed as the headset lifts, down the neck and down the suit and down the chair to the floor, and Central screams. It’s a violent brutal thing that hurts his throat and sends out spittle and tastes vaguely like blood but he can’t stop. He screams until his throat clenches and he vomits, the brownish green semi liquid mixing with the dark red on the concrete. 

 

He’s on his knees, shaking, vomit dripping down his chin, tears streaming down his face, soundlessly screaming even as the knowing again bursts across his mind’s for front: it was never meant to be used on them. but that is how it works. it destroys resistance while saving it for manipulation.

 

“Why?” he manages finally, and the word drops heavy in the dark room. “Why that?”

 

But he knows. He knows. And it explains every friend who never came back. At least, that’s what his gut tells him. His heart still believe they escaped, that they live in the woods or on the beaches or somewhere out of reach, but his heart is breaking and so is that belief.

 

Any resistance that was caught, they were interrogated, and then they were killed.

 

He knows this.

 

He also knows if he is found, he will die in the same way. Or maybe his death will be special. Maybe he will be strung up in front of the crowds, ripped limb to limb by Mutons; maybe they will dissect him alive, maybe they will keep in a everlasting state of half death— on the brink and then brought back, over and over. 

 

He shudders, weakly rises to his feet. Faintly, faintly, he hears noise beyond the door. Faintly, faintly, he hears death sing from two directions.

 

Faintly, faintly, he senses choice.

 

He does not know exactly how he got here, but he knows how he will leave.

 

But first. This must not be for nothing. The knowing knows something he does not, but it pushes him to follow it, urges him this will be retribution for their death. 

 

So he follows. He moves their headless body from the chair, hand slick now with their blood as he lays them in a corner, vomiting only once as he positions them into a way that makes it look they are only sleeping with their head covered. He removed his knife, and his rifle, and sets them down with the Commander- a burial site, a shrine, something. Anything to mark this. To mark them both as having lived. 

 

(Who will miss him? Kelly? Shen? Tygan? He does not know if any of them are alive, Kelly by way of his own disappearance, and the latter by their incoherent screams in his earpiece one day and a empty Avenger when he ran back to meet them..) 

 

He comes back to the monitors with a tremble to his form, shakily clicks the now blue UPLOAD SCAN button. The computer whirrs, and then blinks green at him. 

 

It’s done. They’re out there, among the stars. And soon he will be too. 

 

He does not have time to think about how he knows this, or what it means, or how he feels about it.

 

There is not time. 

 

The knowing walks next him through the auto scan and upload setup, clicking menus and setting a timer. His hands, despite resolve, shake as he enters his information. 

 

NAME: John Bradford

 

DOB: November 17, 1979 (11-17-79)

 

SCAN DATE: March 1st, 2035 (3-1-35)

 

SCAN TYPE: Namajika (compressed)

 

He goes and sits in the chair, feels the blood begin to soak into his pants. Pieces of brain and skull cling to the chair and he deliberately looks up until the headset comes down to cover his eyes. 

 

Will it hurt?

 

The knowing wraps itself around him. Yes, it says, but not for long. He braces himself, even though through the knowing he knows all the bracing the world will not make him ready for this.

 

There is a burst of blue as the machinery whirs, and then the blue is replaced by staticky white, and then there is searing heat and pain and —

 

SCAN COMPLETE.

 

...

 

UPLOAD COMPLETE. 

 

DELETING FILES jb.nkj and bc.nkj...

 

...

 

FILES DELETED.

 

AUTO SCAN SETUP HAS INITIATED SELF DESTRUCTION OF THIS COMPUTER SYSTEM DUE TO THE CONFIDENTIAL NATURE OF FILES. 

 

BEGINNING DESTRUCTION PROTOCOLS...

 

DELETING CORE FILES...

 

...

 

VIGILO CONFIDO.