Skin (Chapter One)

[thehonorablebat]

 

2015

“Keep me posted, Central out.” He planted his hands on his hips and took in a breath.

“Rough morning?”

Central turned to find Weir standing behind him with two mugs in his hands. He smiled, accepting one.

“The usual,” was all he said.

Weir hummed.

Central didn’t ask where he had been all morning. He’d told him while they were still lying in bed, Will’s fingers brushing his cheek as he explained the council would have him buried in paperwork that day. He must have surfaced for a break.

He ached to go back to bed. With Will, if he had a choice. Having him close relaxed him like few other things these days.

Weir smiled behind his mug as though he knew what Central was thinking. If they weren’t standing in the Situation Room he would have wrapped an arm around him.

He’d never planned to fraternize with his superior officer. If it weren’t for the invasion he would have never been this daring. What was the council going to do? Court martial them in the middle of a world ending scenario? He didn’t think so.

Weir stepped back to go to the out of the way corner he disappeared to when he wasn’t needed and everyone was doing their jobs just fine. He liked watching the gears in the mission control turn.

“It’s oddly soothing.” Will watched him take another of his chess pieces. “It’s easier to think out there than it is in my office.”  

Central stepped up to watch the Geoscape for blips. He caught sight of a UFO cruising over South Africa when the globe flickered.

“What the…?”

He threw a glance over his shoulder to look back at the Commander. The expression he found on Will’s face sent a chill right through him.

Central had never seen the man so afraid.

He focused so hard on Will he didn’t notice Brookes coming up behind him…

–

2035

  

“…celebrations will continue as planned.”

“Perfect.” Weir turned off the TV.

After all nothing mattered so long as the Speaker got time on the big screen.

He sighed.

That wasn’t fair. The Speaker liked the spotlight, sure, it’s what made him perfect for the job, but that wasn’t reason the celebrations were continuing in spite of his protests.

Calling off Unification Day because he ‘had a bad feeling’ would only make them look weak. The rebels were nothing to them, and they needed to act accordingly. He knew that.

But something about today made him tense. He sat poised between fight or flight with no idea why. He had tried exercise to see if he could work it off, but it hadn’t helped. If anything it made it worse.

He itched to call in more troopers as though the squad standing guard in his sitting room wasn’t more than enough to deal with any situation that might arise.

He stood from the couch.

A shower, he thought, would do him some good. Then maybe try to get some sleep. He didn’t have much hope of success on that front, but he could try. What was it his doctor kept telling him? Lying in bed staring at the ceiling is better than staying up? Something to that effect. She would no doubt remind him during their next appointment when he admitted he still wasn’t sleeping well.

The hotel the Administration set him up in was grand indeed, but a security nightmare. He passed through the dining room, glancing up at the skylight as he had that thought, just in time to see the skylight shatter.

–

The flash grenade he tossed down ahead of him threw Weir off balance. Central landed on top of him with no resistance. Weir let out an ‘oomph’ when he hit the ground.

A second later an explosion in the main room and a lot of ADVENT shouting let him know Gatecrasher was going off without a hitch so far.

Central reached for the zip ties in his pocket, his other hand holstered his rifle with more force than necessary. He’d love nothing more than to kill the backstabbing bastard, but the rest of the Resistance had spoken: capture him if you can. And goddamn it, he would follow orders.

An uncoordinated psionic blast knocked him back. The glass from the skylight dug into wooden furniture and upholstery.

So much for flashbangs disrupting psionics.

It didn’t matter, not to him. Central grabbed his rifle at the same time Weir got back to his feet. Another psionic blast knocked off Central’s aim, making him miss by a meter.

“Bradford,” Weir greeted. He brought a hand to his forehead. His eyes unfocused from the grenade. “Still moonlighting as Wile E. Coyote?”

“Fuck you.” He tried bring his rifle up again, but Weir released another blast. This one strong enough to knock him clean off his feet.

‘Where the hell was-’

Another grenade fell from the skylight and landed at Weir’s feet. He blinked at it like he couldn’t comprehend what it was doing there. Only at the last second did he jump away, but the fragments still caught him. Bradford took his chance. He shot Weir in the shoulder as he went down.

“Central!” Lily said over the comm. “Crasher One and Two are down. You need to get out of there!”

“On it.” He ran over to the body. Weir groaned and tried to get back up, but his bloody hands slipped on the wood floor. Bradford pressed his knee against his neck to keep him under control so he could restrain him.

Weir hissed between bloody teeth: “Lucky bastard.”

“It was bound to happen one day,” Bradford said more to himself than him, but he didn’t feel very lucky. He grabbed the old arc thrower off his belt. It took two blasts to knock Weir out.

Kelly dropped in on a line beside him. She ran passed him into the bedroom.

“Sixty seconds!” Lily said.

Bradford slung Weir over his shoulder. Firebrand dropped in a second line for him. He clipped it to his belt and tugged on it as he heard Kelly blow the safe.

On the Skyranger, he secured Weir in a seat. Kelly zipped back in with a bag slung over her shoulder.

“Package secured, sir,” she said with a grin. The Skyranger door closed behind her. A pang went through him at the realization that there was no need to pick up the others.

“Good work, Kelly,” he managed. Bradford reached for his comm. “Tygan, are you set up?”

“Yes, Central. I am…prepared.”

The hesitation in his voice made Bradford pause.

“Is there a problem?” he asked.

“No. No. I am prepared to handle the patient.”

“Good, we’ll be there shortly.” Bradford turned off his comm. He took a seat across from their prisoner.

Kelly knelt down to get a look at Weir. She braced her hand on the seat to keep from falling over when Firebrand made a turn.

“You sure he isn’t going to bleed out before we get there?” she asked.

“He’s tougher than he looks,” Bradford said.

And wasn’t that a sad truth? After trying to kill Weir for nineteen years, he was willing to bet the man was part cockroach at this point.

Even so, he didn’t stop her from reaching up for the spare medkit they kept on the Skyranger.

–

“Careful!” Tygan said as they transferred the unconscious body unto the makeshift operating table. “This procedure is going to be delicate enough without further complications.”

“Little late for that, doctor,” Bradford said. He strolled over with his arms crossed over his chest. Little cuts adorned his face. Tygan would tell him to put some ice on that bruise forming on his jaw, but knew he would be ignored.

Tygan looked down at his new…patient and suppressed a grimace.

“He’s stable,” Bradford said. “His damned psionics partially healed him on the way here. If we don’t get this operation underway he’ll wake up anytime now.”

“I got that!” Shen’s head popped up from behind a monitor. She dashed to wheel over the anesthesia. She placed the mask over the Weir’s face and turned the valves to turn on the tank. Tygan would be concerned if Shen hadn’t already programmed the machine for the correct dosage.

It allowed time for Tygan to hesitate further.

Bradford eyed him.

“We’ve had you developing this procedure for two years, doctor. It’s a little late to be backing out now,” he said. “Besides, you said it yourself, it’s not going to hurt him.”

“If I am wrong…If I make even one mistake-”

“We have no Plan B,” Bradford interrupted.

And if Weir wakes up as he is now, he’ll kill them all. Tygan closed his eyes and nodded.

He walked over to one of the scanners to make sure everything was as it should be. The Spokesman had given them access to Weir’s medical files from before the war, but nothing more recent. They couldn’t ask their benefactor to risk his position trying to obtain them.

Even if it was the Spokesman’s idea they capture ADVENT’s General alive.

Tygan brought up the brain scan. His fingers paused, hovering over the screen.

“That has to be removed first.” He recognized the chip. How could he not? Why in the world did the General have one?

He turned to his equipment, searching for the tools he needed. Untested. Just like everything else.

“What is it?” Shen asked, though Tygan didn’t hear her.

He spotted the devices with the rest of his seldom used equipment behind Bradford. He hadn’t laid them out for the operation. Hadn’t thought he would need them.

Tygan grabbed them both and returned to his patient’s side. He pressed the first device against his patient’s forehead. It beeped, letting him know it succeeded in deactivating the chip. One hurdle down, he grabbed the removal tool.

The General’s eyes snapped open just as he turned on the device.

“Oh shit!”

Shen’s hand grabbed his wrist and yanked it down, slamming the tool against the General’s head.

Tygan did not think he would ever forget the sound of Weir’s blood curdling scream. The device whirred, digging through flesh and bone to get to the chip.

One of the monitors beeped out alerts. Shen glanced up.

“He’s going into cardiac arrest,” she said in a tone someone might use to inform you it was lunch time.

There wasn’t any backing out at this point. The device grabbed hold of the chip. Tygan pulled it out and tossed it onto the table next to him. He used both hands trying to keep Weir’s head steady as he convulsed. His eyes stared wide open. Tygan saw the briefest flash of purple go through them.

“He’s stabilizing.” Shen frowned.

Weir’s eyes returned to their normal brown before they slid shut again. Out cold.

“Well,” Shen started. “Now you’ve got his head open, you can do what we really came here for.”

“Please,” he said. She had a point. He needed to do something before his patient bled out, but that…

Shen looked around.

“Where’d Central go?”

“To find a drink,” Tygan guessed. He took a deep breath and reached for his scalpel. Now wasn’t the time to fall apart. Not with someone’s head cut open in front of him.

–

Weir woke with a silent scream. He tried moving his hands, but discovered his wrists strapped to the bed. He managed to twist onto his side to dry heave. A strong shudder ran through his body.

What did they do?

Moving his mouth produced no sounds but a strained release of air.

What did they do?

He couldn’t find his psionics. It used to flow through him like blood. Now he couldn’t even get a drop.

What did they do to him?

He attempted to swallow, but there wasn’t any saliva in his mouth. Weir cursed them in silence. He’d always known in the back of his head that for all his strategies and careful planning, it could all be countered by just one idiot getting lucky.