Shit Blows Up

[moonshadows]

“Commander Reyes, a word? If you don’t mind.”

Somehow, Moira always managed to sound condescending no matter what she said. Gabriel throttled back a sigh. “What is it?”

She gestured him into her lab and over to a screen that showed the blueprints for the HQ. “I was running a few tests on a new scanner, and I found these.”

She pointed to several pulsing points, and Gabriel leaned closer.

“Fuck,” he breathed. “Those look like…if they’re bombs, they could take the entire building down.”

Then the sting registered, and his swarm reported with alarm that he was losing molecular cohesion. 

“So glad you agree,” Moira practically purred. “Goodbye, Commander. I’d say it was a pleasure, but it was barely tolerable.”

The loss of cohesion spread through his system like wildfire, and the world dissolved into static. He talked frantically to the swarm, using them to literally pull his cells back together and rebuilding his body through sheer force of will. When he could see again, he checked for the Irish bitch, but he was alone and several hours had passed. Snarling, he shoved his hands into the screen and the terminal and ripped his way through the data it contained. Most of it was useless, but the map with the bombs and the – what was that list of agents for? Wait. They’d all come down with some flu bug in the last few days. And there – orders to supposedly sick men and women, commanding them to-

Motherfucker. They were moles.

And the bombs would go off within the hour.

Gabriel ran down the hall, commandeered a lift, and booked it for Angela’s lab.

“Commander Reyes!” she exclaimed as he slid to a stop, gripping the doorframe, smokelike wisps of disconnected cells emanating from several parts of his body. “What has happened to you? Let me look.”

Gabriel shook his head. “There’s no time. That Irish bitch betrayed us, she tried to kill me, and I’m gonna take her down if it’s the last thing I do, her and everyone she’s ever so much as looked at, and you might want to evacuate as much as you can, there’s bombs everywhere. The whole building’s going to be rubble in less than an hour and there’s moles, we’ve got fucking double agents in our ranks, and I’m gonna kill them, and then I’m gonna kill the assholes in the UN who hamstrung us, and…” He broke off, breathing heavily, hands filled with his signature shotguns. “It’s been a pleasure, Dr. Ziegler,” he said with a nod. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a lot of people I need to kill and not a lot of time to kill them in.”

“Of course,” she replied politely, looking more than a little dazed.

Gabriel stalked down the hall like a panther, nanites plotting the most efficient route for killing as many of the moles as he could on the way to the Strike-Commander’s office. He ignored everyone in his path, any questions or greetings thrown his way. When he saw one of the traitors, a headshot without warning or explanation solved that little problem. He didn’t even slow down.

By the time he’d reached Jack’s office, the first bomb had gone off and there was shouting and panic in the halls. Jack charged out of his office as Gabriel approached, and from behind, a mole charged at Jack.

Gabriel shot her between the eyes.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, Gabriel?" Jack demanded, all fire and fury.

Too bad Gabriel was fire and fury himself. "What the fuck does it look like I'm doing, Jack? I'm protecting you! Like I always have!"

“By shooting our people?”

“Moira betrayed us. The UN hamstrung us. We have double agents, Jack.”

Jack reeled back in shock. “What-”

He never got a chance to finish the question; a bomb exploded nearby, close enough that shrapnel and the concussive force of the explosion were a very real threat. Gabriel had subconsciously positioned himself between the bomb and Jack, and he screamed as he became a giant pincushion – but he could recover from that. Jack couldn’t. Jack…

Jack had been flung against a doorframe hard enough to snap his neck. Fuck…no, Jack…NO!

Gabriel did not so much fling himself at the fallen Strike-Commander as he let go of his physical form and flowed across the space to solidify – minus the wounds he’d had a moment ago – at Jack’s side. There was no time; he wrapped his hands around Jack’s neck and let his fingers dissolve, reaching into Jack’s body the way he’d reached into countless computers over the years.

Fix it, he commanded the swarm. Every second counted with a severed spinal column. The nanites leaped into action, knitting nerves back together at the speed of thought. He thought he heard someone gasp behind him, but all his attention was on how Jack’s lungs heaved, and the pulse that suddenly returned under his hands. Jack was alive, thank fuck. But he was still unconscious and probably concussed, and as good as dead if he stayed there. Gabriel slung him over one shoulder, one hand holding his legs and the other brandishing a shotgun, and stalked towards the hangar where Agent Ramirez was supposed to be loading their prototype cloaking ship with all their prototype technology and weaponry.

Sure enough, Ramirez was securing the prototype pulse rifle when he turned and saw Gabriel coming towards him like the wrath of God. He hesitated too long and his body was unceremoniously dumped into the hangar while Jack – still unconscious – was strapped into the co-pilot’s seat.

It was time to visit the UN.

Gabriel landed in a park nearby and left the ship stealthed. He didn’t expect to leave the building alive, and fuck if he was going to let Talon have all their prototypes without a fight. Jack was still unconscious, and Gabriel tried not to think about the possibility of brain damage. Still…

He caressed Jack’s fading hair and kissed him once, on the lips, gentle as a baby’s sigh. Then he left the ship as a river of smoke, the door closing behind him, and headed towards the UN.

The council was in an emergency session, he overheard as he slipped inside. Someone had leaked Blackwatch’s existence in such a way that all the worst things were now publicly known. He was blaming one of the moles when he overheard someone say, ‘…bombs with Reyes’s knowledge.’

Motherfucker. He really needed to find and kill Moira.

The swarm helpfully reminded him of which councilmembers weren’t a complete waste of flesh. Then he solidified in the middle of the room and started shooting. The screaming started almost immediately, but when he shot the first ones to run for the door, the rest froze. It was like shooting fish in a barrel, or so he imagined. He calmly informed his chosen survivors that he was sparing them because they weren’t corrupt – they were actually serving their people rather than themselves. The doors burst open just as he reached the end of his kill list and he laughed as security gunned him down.

The wait until he was hauled off and stuck in a morgue drawer was plenty of time for him to think about his next moves. Fortunately, he’d caused enough carnage that he was able to mist away in the confusion. Talon was Moira’s new benefactor, he was sure of it. Creating a new identity and infiltrating them was his next step.

Fuck, he hoped Jack was okay. The ship was gone when Gabriel returned to the park, and he prayed that meant Jack had recovered and fled. He didn’t really have time to worry about Jack, though, because he had to worry about himself. A side effect of whatever Moira had injected him with, apparently, was necrosis because his cells were dying. Even if he solidified completely, parts of his body were black and dead. The swarm informed him that it could not repair the damage without living cells to splice in.

Reaper, he decided with cold humor. Death incarnate. Gabriel Reyes had died on internationally broadcast live television; from now on, he would be known as Reaper.