3.13.
Olivia wasn’t certain what woke her. The radio was blaring, but that was normal. She’d relaxed her stance on allowing John to have the radio in recent days. It calmed him, even when news of the war came on. She decided that it was better that he remained informed than worry about him experiencing another trigger like when Western Europe was hit by the Rosanteans.
She heard voices. Not the radio’s voices, but John’s voice, hushed but urgent, and the voice of another boy. She thought it belonged to a boy at least.
They weren’t speaking English.
She swallowed. She hadn’t discussed it with John, but she’d been prepared for the possibility that one of the scouts would come to find him. She quickly pressed the panic button that had been given to her.
Then she did something that she’d promised Agent Morrison, Major Phillips, and everyone else involved, that she wouldn’t do.
She got out of bed and walked downstairs.
She found them in the kitchen. John’s eyes flickered to her, and then there was a flicker as part of the stove changed into something else, flew threw the air, and wrapped around her chest. It hummed lightly with power, and she realized that he had just used his abilities to do something to protect her.
The strange boy, sitting calmly at the table enjoying a sandwich, said something in the language that she didn’t understand. He flickered a hand, and the coffee pot changed shape.
John pointed something at the former coffee pot, and a ray of light shot from the object in his hand, vaporizing the coffee pot and burning a hole in the wall. And beyond.
The boy at the table scowled, said something else, and once more waved his hand.
The electric kettle changed shape, and this time John didn’t shoot it.
The boy spoke again, and this time the former electric kettle spoke once his words completed. “Hello foster mother of Eodar. You are safe, despite what Eodar believes. I did not come to harm you or him.”
“You broke into my house?” she asked.
“Yes,” the boy admitted in english. Then he spoke in his other language. It was translated a moment later. “I was hungry. I made a sandwich. Is good.”
“You’re a scout like John,” she said.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Forward Scout Rank Three. Name Trewali of the Porshaka. Brother of Eodar of the Yonohoah from training, although he does not treat me like it now. We carried each other threw the death march and now he treats me like I am a stranger.”
Olivia nodded. “Welcome to Earth, Trewali. Why have you come?”
“I do not know,” he admitted. “We were not told why. Only to come. And learn. And protect. We like Earth so far.”
“You’re in contact with the others?” Olivia asked. She had a suspicion that the boy was lying, but it wouldn’t be wise to accuse him at this point. It wasn’t her job anyway, she would leave the interrogation to the professionals. She just needed to understand how this affected her and John.
“Yes.”
“Will they come in, like you and John have? We will not harm you.”
Trewali began to laugh. John scowled at him, pointing the weapon which had undoubtedly once been one of Olivia’s appliance at the older boy menacingly.
“You think that because John was caught with his pants down that you pose a threat to us?” Trewali asked through the translator. “We came prepared. We have plenty of strange matter to fight with. If you wish to take us by force, you must be prepared to lose the army you send after us.”
“We don’t want to fight you,” Olivia admitted.
“But you want to control us. Make us part of your society and order of battle. We are not. We belong to Taskforce Ragnarok. You may have John, since he was not part of the Taskforce. But the others must do our duties to mankind. The ones that we were replicated to perform,” the boy said, the mechanical voice of the translator following the sixteen year old’s pubescent words.
“The people of Earth do not believe in child soldiers,” she said. “We wish to help you recover from the trauma of your training. You will not be in trouble with us if you come in peacefully.”
“No. We do our duty,” the boy repeated. “Today my duty is to talk to Eodar and tell him that he has done well. He has found the origin system and set off the protocols to protect it that High-Command put in place eons ago. Taskforce Ragnarok will do the rest. Eodar, you may return to your rest.”
Eodar spoke angrily in the language they were using when she’d arrived.
“You break into my house, into Olivia’s house and eat our food and tell me that I am useless! That I cannot serve! Fuck you Trewali!”
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“It is not I who says you cannot serve. It is Yunono. She is our leader. She says that you are to be respected and honored, but you are not to be given leadership. If she had not said so, I would be here to brief you and bring you into the mission. Instead, I am here to say thank you for your service to mankind, and that is all,” Trewali said. “I must go now. Goodbye Eodar. Goodbye Doctor Olivia Nunes. Be well.”
The boy stood and left. When he opened the door to leave, he was greeted by a SWAT team. With a smile, he raised his hands in surrender.
~~~~~~
Major Mary Phillips arrived at the facility. It was the same one that they had used to house Eodar, or John as he was now being called, during the process of his decommissioning. Which had now, apparently, been undone.
She felt a faint tingling on her molars as she adjusted to the feeling of the nanite-suppressors, which were turned all the way up. Trewali had been cooperative with his captors so far, but everyone remembered perfectly well how Eodar had cooperated the first time they’d caught him. Right up until he’d been placed in a squad car, at which point he’d escaped by turning the car into a suit of power armor.
“Welcome to the freak-show,” Agent Osterham said, passing her a latte. She tasted it and decided that she liked Osterham a little better now.
“Is he still cooperating?” she asked.
“If by cooperating you mean sitting there in the paper pajamas we had him change into and smiling and pretending not to understand a word we’re saying, then yes,” Osterham said.
“I thought we had a translator,” Mary said.
“The device in the Nunes kitchen was crafted with his nanites. It fell apart into dust when we tried to bring it into the facility, and I’m not convinced that the kid wouldn’t have retained control over it anyway,” Osterham explained.
“Where’s Eolai?” she asked.
“On the other side of the planet? How the hell would I know, it’s above my pay grade, ma’am,” Osterham said.
Mary sighed and pulled a PHDA from her pocket. She requested a connection to the Yonohoan representative. He connected a moment later, the hologram showing only his face. He had a very sleepy expression.
“Yes, Major?” he asked.
“We’ve captured one of the scouts. He showed up at John’s house and was taken in by SWAT,” Mary said.
Eolai’s expression abruptly changed to one of alertness and seriousness. “You did not capture him, Major. He chose to come in. You must be very, very careful. He will not abandon his mission easily, and he has capabilities beyond your imagining.”
“He’s in a nanite suppression field,” Mary pointed out. “We had him searched and changed into clothes we provided. He’s unarmed.”
“A scout is never unarmed. A scout is never helpless. Do not think that because you could control John after he decommissioned himself that you have control of this situation, Mary. Your scout is in control of this situation, not you. I simply hope that he is not there to cause havoc. Send me your location and I will be there as fast as I can.”
Mary sent him the location of the facility, and he vanished.
~~~~~~
They rested in the FBI’s mobile command unit as the agents swept their house. Olivia held his hand. John sat, feeling numb after the adrenaline had faded. He was exploring his emotions silently, trying to understand how the experience had affected him.
Like Olivia, he hadn’t known what had caused him to awaken, but he’d known something was wrong immediately. He’d utilized his training to sweep the house. He knew that Olivia would be angry with him when he’d decided to change some of the wiring and part of the wall into a plasma pistol, but not for a second had he questioned his instincts.
Finding Trewali in the kitchen had startled him.
Trewali was … they had gone through hell together. Trewali had respected him, followed him, supported him. Worshiped him, as Eodar had shattered all of the expectations of the scout class and set a new standard.
But that had been a very, very long time ago. They had literally been different people. Now, Trewali was older than him, having actually completed Scout training instead of simply being ‘harvested’ for his imprint, as John had been.
Trewali had volunteered to have his imprint taken. He had chosen to be what he was. John had had that choice taken from him without even realizing it.
And now, Trewali continued to serve, while John was put out to pasture.
“Are you worried about your friend?” Olivia asked.
“No,” John admitted. “I am worried about the people who are with him. I hope that he does not hurt them.”
Olivia swallowed, but didn’t share her thoughts on the matter further.
“If he had asked me to join him, told me the mission and asked me to serve Taskforce Ragnarok, I do not know what I would have done,” John admitted.
“That’s okay,” she said immediately. He knew that it was okay not to know, but it helped to hear her say it.
“Why don’t they want me?” John asked.
“I don’t know, but I have a few guesses,” Olivia admitted. She swallowed. “They’re a military organization. Loyalty to their organization is paramount. They probably don’t trust anyone who wasn’t replicated specifically for their taskforce, John. They probably have additional safeguards in place to make certain that everyone obeys their chain of command.”
John relaxed when he heard her say it. “Yes, that makes sense,” he agreed. “It is not because I am a failure.”
“You are not a failure John,” she said emphatically.
John didn’t press the issue further.