| From: | "Paul J. Adam" <shadowtk@********.DEMON.CO.UK> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Flashbacks |
| Date: | Thu, 9 Oct 1997 23:05:28 +0100 |
>>>>>[TO: D J H Coppinger, Director
Boss, we may or may not have a problem. Doubtless Toad told you about
this already, but here's the footage.
+++++begin trideo
The camera glowers down into the converted cleaner's closet that serves
Lynch, Lilith and Tarkington - Psychopath, the Leopard Lady and the
Horny Toad - as their office. All three are at their desks, intent on
various matters.
Toad sits up and exclaims. "Christ, what a mess! Lookit."
Lilith rises, leans over Toad's shoulder. "What am I looking at?"
"Security footage from Royce Park monorail station in Seattle. Someone
just splattered it. Look at these guys, they're total maniacs."
Lilith, watching the footage on Toad's terminal, is shivering. Lynch
looks up, suddenly alarmed. "Shut it down!" he shouts.
"What?" Toad asks, bemused.
"The footage! Shut it down!" Lynch is halfway across the office when
Lilith collapses backwards, jerking and convulsing.
"What the fuck...?"
"Shut up and help me! Watch her hands!" Lynch snaps, crouching by his
wife. She appears to be having some sort of severe epileptic fit,
clawing and and kicking randomly. Her jaw is set and locked, her eyes
rolled back into the skull, and she's making an awful choking noise in
her throat.
Toad tries to grab a wrist and leaps back as she lashes at him: Lynch
grabs the other, heedless of the deep cut she opens in his arm with her
extended razors as Lilith thrashes about, and jams his medkit against
the exposed wrist. It hisses and clicks, as Lilith kicks a chair over
and it lands on Toad to knock him sprawling.
"Tarkington, get over here and HELP ME!" The tone of command in Lynch's
voice would motivate a corpse to get back up and keep marching, and Toad
manages to grab Lilith's other hand - slick with her own blood where
she'd cut herself badly - as the cocktail of drugs take effect and her
convulsions subside.
"What the fuck was that, Lynch? What the fuck happened?" Toad asks,
bruised and breathless. Lilith appears to be asleep now.
Lynch begins suturing the deep slashes in his forearm. "A present from
the old Agency. A Ladder flashback."
"What?"
"Bartlett controlled his agents with, among other things, a psychoactive
drug. It had some three-paragraph name, but everyone calls it Ladder.
Ares tried it as a combat drug. Works great, you kill everything you
see. Enemy, civilians, your squadmates, yourself if there's nothing else
to kill." Lynch shudders. "Bartlett liked it for his assassins. Lilith
got hit with a lot of it. And like most powerful psychoactives, it
leaves residues and you can get flashbacks for a long, long time
afterwards."
"So what triggered that? I mean, it must be something really specific,
or she wouldn't be on flight status, right?" Toad asks, righting the
chair and picking up the shards of his coffee mug.
"Got it. The hit that broke her conditioning was at a DC metro station.
She and another agent killed nearly forty people in two minutes. Late-
night unarmed commuters inside the Federal Zone, coming off the last
train. The Ladder made her see them all as her stepfather coming back
for her. Then when it wore off, she realised what she'd done, just as
her partner tried to kill her. She took him out, ran down into the
station, down the tunnel, and vanished for a week."
Lynch lights a cigarette. "She doesn't know where she was or what she
was doing for that week. Even a mindprobe doesn't show anything. Just...
darkness, and the smell of blood, and pounding noises. When she came
out, that was when I met her. Didn't know what had happened, of course,
just that this beautiful girl was covered in blood and dirt and needed
help. I thought she'd been beaten up, maybe raped, at first. That was
when the conditioning started to come unravelled, she started
remembering things."
"So seeing a couple of people working over a monorail station with
frags, willy petes and assault rifles tripped the flashback?" Toad
steals one of Lynch's Marlboros.
"Yeah. About the only thing that does. She's been okay for nearly a year
now. Had a few jitters over some of the Thunda business, but nothing we
couldn't handle. Don't worry about it, Toad, she'll be fine in an hour."
"What about those cuts?"
"Check them. Should be healed already. She's a shapeshifter, remember."
Lynch pours himself some coffee. "That helped her a lot. Bartlett's
people and the Doctor especially didn't know. So the memory implants
never took perfectly, and the Ladder was less effective. She might never
have broken free otherwise. Most of the agents didn't."
+++++end trideo
Lilith is indeed fine. Reduced severity and duration, for such a strong
stimulus. Looks like she's still recovering and improving.]<<<<<
-- 1Lt J R W Lynch <23:05:42/10-09-58>
Strategic Intelligence Gathering Agency
