July 19, 2011

Billie's Journal - Torture

Kimano, Tsimshian, 26 December 2050

The Wildcats shaman did a good job on me and I'm back on my feet and while I still hurt a bit, I shut out the pain. Helps that I can literally shut off the pain. We help the injuns unload their gear from the osprey and then Finlay sends it off to scout for any sign of the escaped HNLA members. But they're long gone.

We turn our attention to the two that Sharron knocked out with the stun grenade. Finlay and Sharron get them sat up back to back and start asking questions. Not surprising they aint too keen on answering, so I shoot one of them in the knee. He wails on a bit while Zero and Sharron pull me away telling me to stay calm. I sulk in the corner glaring at the unhurt one, while Finlay hauls the crybaby away to patch him up and kiss his knee better.

To be honest, I'm a little shocked at myself. That was pure Billie. I feel her taking control again and light up a cigarette to calm myself down. Zero takes over the interrogation, hooking the unhurt prisoner up to the generator while whispering to him in her soft French accent. He doesn't seem to know much about where Wallace, their chief, was heading or what the target was although he does admit that they were going to make the government pay. Tsimshian's government is in Kitimat, but unless they are targeting the parliament buildings themselves, they could be anywhere in the city. And while I assume its going to happen soon, we just don't have enough to go on.

We take turns asking questions, and eventually I get Zero to 'juice him'. Unfortunately the girl has the generator set to 'fry' rather than 'juice' and kind of cooks him a bit too much. I realise we aint going to get anything more of him and pump him full of morphine to shut him up.

Luckily, Finlay has a bit more luck with the softly, softly approach and gets a possible location of their base from the one I shot. It's up on the Algonkin border in the middle of nowhere. Good place for a secret hideout.

But before we go, we still need to check out the bunker. The Wildcates brought NBC suits with them, so we suit up and take a look. It's dark and abandoned with little to see beyond the big drumlike container that's clearly the fuel-air device that never went off. We tip-toe around it. Then one of the Wildcats finds Father O'Reilly. To our amazement he's still alive. He's been shot to shit and lost a lot of blood, but he's still breathing. We carefully haul him out of there and the Wildcat shaman does what he can to patch him up. He's in a bad way and is likely going to lose his left arm, but he'll live. A fraggin miracle!

We continue our search, turning up some old computer system which Zero works on to remove some ancient storage devices called hard drives. Then Sharron almost stumbles on some vials abandoned in one of the biohazard units. I hold up one of the vials to the light of my torch but can't read it. I hear a click of a safety as the wildcat behind me asks me firmly but politely to hand it over. I aint too keen to be handling no death plague and am only too keen to hand it over along with the four other vials Sharron discovered.

We return to the surface and I breathe a sigh of relief when the Wildcats seal up them vials in a padded case. Zero hooks the 'hard drives' up to her deck and manages to pull some data off them about the facility and the 'Red Mask'. Yep, its a bioweapon. It's delivered in aerosol format and goes dormant once it infects the host and breaks down in sunlight in a couple of days. Perfect for killing people without any collateral damage. Whoever came up with this stuff was sick in the head, and as the team's resident crazy person I know what I'm talking about.

With no hard data on the target, we decide to try the hideout. Zero thinks she has located the base on satellite maps and Osprey flies us out there in his bird. Most of manage to snooze on the way. He drops us off about an hour or two's walk away and we start trudging through the snow towards the base. I'm kind of glad to have the NBC suit as the extra padding helps keep out the cold.

Then Finlay hears a noise. Sounds like motorbikes but there is no road to be seen. Then we spot headlights and take cover. Soon enough four snowbikes come into view, with two of them doubled up. They pull up 33 meters away and I can hear them talking but not what they are saying. Finlay and Sharron step out into view, Finlay calling out that we are police and they are to put their hands up. They reach for guns.

Five out of the six go down within seconds. The last stays slumped over the back of one of the bikes. As we approach its clear she is sick with the Red Mask and so were her friends. I give her something for the pain but it's clear she aint going to last long. We take the bikes and head back the way they came.