Room 275
Building #1, (Barracks)
Task Force 38 Intelligence Area
Secure Area
Alfenwehr, Germany
1110 Hours
28 October, 2004

A smack broke the silence as they dragged us through the Middle Stairwell door and into Far Hammerhead Hall. There was a angry wail that picked up volume, and Shorty did a little jig in front of us, seemingly feeling no pain from the stab wounds I'd inflicted. He'd made us pause on the stariwell so he could put the two knives in the sheathes behind our backs.

He smiled at the sound. "It appears Baby Girl Taggart has been born," He laughed. He did a little pirouette and faced us, bowing, "You should have seen how enraged the late Miss Taggart was when my men held her down for her ultrasound so I could tell her the sex of her baby."

"Ah'll killya fer thaht," John coughed.

He laughed again, "I expect you, nay, want you to attempt your best, Mister Bomber," He said, "Such things I've done for you, for you both. After I executed her husband, made her beg for the lives of each of her children, who, sadly, are no longer with us, I had my men hold her down in their blood and used the portable ultrasound myself." He made a little finger curl, turning around and walking down the hallway.

The baby sounded healthy, enraged, as they drug us down the hallway.

"After all, some things are best done by the person who wants them done," He said, stopping next to the door to my room.

The blood trail led there.

From where Nagle had carried Taggart's body into my room.

"Toss Mister Bomber in, I want a word with Mister Stillwater," He said. The dragged me to a stop in front of him.

Shorty grabbed my chin, lifting my head up so he could look me in the eyes, "Such an interesting room. So many things happened in there. How many girls have you made love to in there? How many nights spent drinking?" His fingers tightened, "How many people have been killed in that room?"

"I promise you this, you'll be one of them," I said, spitting in his face.

He just smiled at me, wiping the blood and spit off his face with his middle and index finger. He smiled as he used it to draw a line down the middle of my face, then over each eyebrow, then slashes on my cheeks.

"I am piqued that the mountain took the redhead, McCullen," he said softly, "I spent several years trying to find her, but her love of camping and nature made it difficult to find her or track her." His fingers shook slightly as he squeezed my jaw. "And I so wanted her. She's important to this."

I pushed off, trying to lunge at him, but he moved with me, stepping back, his fingers on my jaw. "But I guess that's the price the mountain wanted." He chuckled, letting go of my jaw and stepping back. "Throw him in with the others."

...others?...

They slung me in and I fell over Bomber, stumbling and landing on my face. I groaned, feeling something else tear in my guts. I pressed my hands to my stomach and rolled onto my side, staring at the doorway.

"Oh, Miss Nagle!" he called out, standing in the middle of the doorway. He gave Nagle a second to answer, but there was silence. He shook his head, "I cannot abide rudeness, but I must simply remind myself that none of you are really human any longer," He raised his voice, "Miss Nagle, should you fail to keep any of the people in that room alive, I will come in there, and shoot that little Miss Taggart in her stomach so that you may watch her die."

He stepped back from the door. "I have utmost faith in your medical abilities." He waved at the two men still standing by the door. "Shut the door, I need to find out if anyone has succeeded in finding the location of the most elusive Lady Cromwell," He smiled, reaching out to stop the door from shutting. "You know," He grinned at me, "If Miss McCullen was still with us, I imagine I could wring the location from her, after all, she disappeared next to a Canadian National Forest."

The door slammed like a pronouncement of doom when he let go.

I tried to get up, but my hands slipped in the blood and I fell on my stomach again, crying out in pain from the agony that washed through me. I looked at John, who was facing me, holding his stomach and shivering.

"Haven't hurt like this in years, Ant," He whispered.

"You can take it, Bomber," I answered.

"Thinks are getting dark, Ant," He said softly. "Maybe my girls are waiting for me."

Things were dimmer. I could barely see him. "Be seeing you, John."

"Be seeing you, Ant," His lips were just moving on the last part.

Hands rolled me over, and I looked up into Nagle's face. Her eyes were swollen, her nose obviously broken, her lips split and swollen. She stared down at me, then reached down with a knife to slice through the buttons of my top. She sliced through my T-shirt, pulling everything open, and hissed when she saw my chest.

"Goddamn it, Ant, did you just stand there and let that asshole shoot you?" She snapped. She slapped me across the face, still naked, her heavy breasts swinging back and forth. "Don't go to sleep, you stupid ass."

She shifted over while I stared at the ceiling, feeling my stomach with my hands. Five holes, two leaking blood, three stapled shut, although one the staples had pulled free. My guts hurt, feeling like fire ants were starting to dig into them, and I suppressed a gag as nausea rolled through me.

"Wake up, you big blond hick," She said, and I heard a slapping sound, "Goddamn, you've gotten fat, Texas."

John mumbled something. Still staring at the ceiling I answered him, "Actual all the way," I told him.

"Jesus, he shot the shit out of you two," Nagle said, moving back to me and cutting away my pants, "Shit, he shot your legs out too." She shook her head, "Fucker took me in Afghanistan. Fucking Red River guys grabbed me, bagged me, had their fun with me, then brought me up here about a week ago. He dumped Taggart two days later, the asshole." She kept talking as she stripped John and me down to nothing, leaving us laying on our uniforms. "He's a goddamn nut, Ant. He keeps talking crazy things, talking about using this place to forge weapons."

"Like us," I gasped.

She appeared over me, nodding, "Like us." She kissed my nose, "I'll be right back, I need help, hold John's hand." She took John's hand and mine and pressed them together, "Hold on to each other boys, I'll be right back."

"I gotcha, Johnny," I gasped, holding onto my gut. The ants were burrowing deeper, their mandibles tearing my flesh.

"Gotcha, Ant," He answered, squeezing my hand.

"Lemme peel off this tape," Nancy said, "Why the hell didn't you start pressing on it with your tongue to... oh..." her voice lowered, "Oh, Dobbs, baby..."

John squeezed my hand right before I rolled over, pulling my legs up, ignoring the nest of wasps in each leg stinging and biting at the muscles in my legs. I held back a cry of pain as I managed to get to my feet, wavering slightly. I looked down and John held one trembling, bloody hand up to me.

"I gotcha, Texas," I said, holding back the urge to cough. I pulled him up, ignoring the tearing feeling in my gut as I got him to his feet. He half fell against the wall, but stayed up on his feet.

"They do this to you, Miranda?" Nagle asked, "You too, Lanks?" She sighed, "Then you too, didn't they?"

I half fell, half lunged into the room, grabbing onto the chair to keep from falling down even though I went down on my knees.

"Goddamn it, Ant," Nagle cursed.

John staggered in, putting his hands on the lower bunk bed footboard. I could see the two exit wounds in his back, blood running down his back.

Nancy stood in front of four other women, all of them bound to chairs, all of them beaten. They had electrical burns on their breasts, on their thighs, their faces busted up so bad that they were almost unrecognizable.

But that wasn't the worst.

A dead man lay at their feet, staring up with one sightless eye, the other eye socket empty. His face was ravaged by shrapnel scars. I knew without reading the nametag on his Class-A uniform who it was lying dead on the floor with a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead. The blood was dark, but not completely coagulated. The man had not been dead long.

Lancer.

I wondered why the four women weren't saying anything, squinting my eye slightly to bring them into focus as I slowly pulled myself to my feet. It took a second before they came into focus well enough for me to see why they weren't talking.

Their lips had been sewn shut. The lack of blood let me know that they had been like that for awhile. Their eyes widened at the sight of John and me, and they all looked at once at Nagle, and then at the baby, who was laying on the bottom bunk of the other bed, crying to herself.

"I'm gonna cut these stitches, but I don't have time to do it gentle. If you get cut, just stuff your fucking tampons in," Nancy snapped, bringing the scalpel up. All four froze, and when she cut each woman's mouth open they gasped.

Gasped, but did not cry out, although they all had tears running down their faces.

She moved around behind them and I heard the brittle sound of zipties snapping under the point of the scalpel.

Stokes had six of them holding her arms back. The Amazon was just as big as I remembered her, and as soon as she was free she wiped her mouth.

"Fucking bastard," She spit, "Our legs are still tied."

I managed to draw my knife, tossing it underhand at her.

It landed on Lancer, bouncing to land next to her.

"Have at it," I gasped.

"Christ, Ant," She said when she stood up. She moved over to John, taking his arm, and leading him to the chair she had just vacated. She knelt down, I couldn't help notice how it just spread her open, and sliced through the zipties holding Dobbs' legs to the chair.

Nancy had moved over to a Special Forces aid bag, the old style one, that was partially dumped out on the floor. She began setting it out carefully, getting ready for what I knew was about to come.

She had to operate on us, and quickly. We were both bleeding out.

When Dobbs was released she went down on her knees, laying across her husbands chest and hugging him tightly.

"Oh, my Jeff, my Jeff," She wept.

"Bastard shot him right in front of us. Pushed the barrel of the pistol against his forehead and told him he was going to do it," Lanks spit as Stokes cut her legs free, "He wanted Lancer to know it was coming. Said that he didn't need him, just Debra."

Dobbs looked up, her face grim. "One of has to kill him," She said, her voice cold and dead, hard as it was after that winter in the barracks when it all came apart on us, "For Jeff, and Taggart."

"Sit down, Ant," Stokes said, half carrying me to the bed, "Lay back," I followed her instructions, gasping at the pain. She bent over, and it struck me again just how massive her tits were. I tried to grab one and she covered my hand with hers, letting me cup her breast. "I'm real, Anthony, Momma Stokes is here." She put my hand on my chest and patted it.

The lizard had one hand on the breed button, watching my vitals worriedly. His instincts, our instincts, said to breed, pass on our line, because we might be dying.

"Let's take a look at you, little one," She picked up the baby, putting her finger in its mouth. She rolled it slightly back and forth, looking at it.

At her, you goddamn Hammerhead.

"Healthy, a little over nine pounds, you did a good job on the cord, Nagle, although I see you sliced her on the butt," Stokes said. "But you were pressed for time and the bleeding has already stopped."

"Any deficits?" She snapped, looking through the medication pouches with an air of desperation.

"Not as far as I can tell, but she's really young. She tracks my finger, and has a good grip," Stokes said.

"Come away, Debra," Daniel "Little Bit" Lovawitz said gently, reaching down for her. Dobbs looked up, snarling for a moment, until Little Bit jerked her head in Bomber's direction. "Nancy's going to need us, those two went and got shot up again." Dobbs nodded, her face hardening, and stood up.

"Goddamn it," Nancy yelled, throwing a pill packet against the wall, "All that's in this goddamn thing is Percocet, Vicodin, and goddamn Ibuprofen."

"What about the five syringes on the desk?" Lanks asked quietly.

"What are they labeled?" Nancy asked, looking up hopefully.

"Meetoh, uh, Meto-clo-pram-ide," She said. "What the fuck is that?"

Nancy and Stokes both frowned, but it was Dobbs who spoke first, "It's used to induce lactation," She reached forward to open the fridge, "I had to take it when Jeff and I..." Her voice choked a moment, "When I had Donny."

"And Donny?" Nancy asked gently.

Dobbs just looked at Taggart pointedly, then up.

"Oh," Lanks said.

"He's leaving us with nothing," John groaned, holding his belly. "Holy shit, this hurts."

"Umm, Nancy," Dobbs said, looking in the fridge. The door blocked my view.

"What?" Nancy said, looking up from the surgical instruments she had prepared.

"The fridge is full of Wild Turkey, Ausbach, and pints of blood," Dobbs said, turning and holding one up. It was labelled B Neg, and I knew that was John's blood type.

"What the hell is this guy's problem?" Stokes asked, picking up one of the small hand mirrors and looking at her mouth.

"He's a fucking nut," Lanks suggested. Stokes started picking the stitches out of the holes on the outside of her lips, cradling the baby. The baby moved in that blind, seeking way that newborns have and suddenly latched on to one of her nipples, grabbing her breast with both little hands. "Good suction." She said.

"That's good, sounds like she didn't go without oxygen for long," Nancy sat up. "OK, here's how we're going to do it," She said. Her face was grim. "I'm going to have to operate on these two, or they're going to die. They're both gutshot, if they don't bleed out then infection will carry them off in a few days."

"This is going to suck, isn't it?" John groaned.

"The son of a bitch left me without morphine or anything else, and we can't bet on the goddamn Percs or Vikes putting them down, so we're going to have to do this ugly." Nancy said, ignoring what John said. She stood up, "Dobbs, take the Metoclopramide, inject it into your leg, and you hold the baby." She looked at Dobbs, "How old was your child?"

"Seven," She said. Her face twisted in pain, "He was seven."

"Ant's first, he's full of goddamn holes," Nagle said. I flinched back as she motioned at me.

"Bring Ant down on the floor, and hold him down," She said. Stokes and Little Bit grabbed me. The heaved me up, ignoring my scream, and pulled me down on the floor.

She held up the scalpel, "We've done this before, Ant," She said. "You've survived this before, hold onto that."

Stokes grabbed my arms, putting her feet on my shoulders, and pulled them back. She looked down at me. "Mama Stokes has got you, baby," she said.

Lanks went by with a blanket in each hand as Little Bit came back with John and my belts, tossing one to Stokes and taking the other one and running it around my ankles and pulling my legs toward her before sitting on my thighs. Stokes used it to strap my arms together over my head, then sat on them, her knees folded, holding my head between her thighs.

"Thank you, Lanks, for covering both Jeff and Taggart," Dobbs said, "Christ, it's been so long I don't even remember your first name or hers."

"Her's doesn't matter any more, she's gone. It was Shirley before he found me, Shirley Peddlemend," Lanks said softly, "Now it's just Lanks. That's all I am any more. That's all he left me. And you're welcome, Debra."

"I'm sorry, Ant," Nancy sliced open my stomach and I screamed.

"Hold still, baby, hold still for Momma," Stokes said. "I know it hurts, baby, but Momma loves you."

I kept screaming, but they didn't stop.

"Pass out, please  pass out," Lanks said, staring down at me, "Just pass out, Stillwater."

I didn't.

And Nancy, to her credit, didn't stop. Not on me, not on John.