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Welcome Back - LunaticOnTheGrass - 08-01-2018
He could pain in either armpit, almost all of his weight was being supported on them. Fading in and out of consciousness, he managed to recognize, additionally, that his knees and feet were sliding against something. He was in motion.
...A hallway? Everything was grey.
No, no. Sleep. Your body's screaming for sleep, just go to sleep.
"But I... I can't. Something terrible has happened.", went his inner monologue. Using the last reserves of strength he felt he could muster, he let out a gurgling groan.
"Maybe just five minutes. Five minutes of sleep. I'll feel better."
He gave in to the siren's call of fatigue, and knew nothing more.
---------------
Groggily, he awoke again. Featureless grey room, a little cramped. Three men, one woman; one of the men wore a slate-grey uniform only a shade lighter than the durasteel coffin they seemed to be enveloped in. The air tasted strongly of sweat and burnt toast; he supposed from how chilly his body felt that at least the former was his fault.
The man in the uniform had a perpetual, smug grin on his face as if he were some sort of Neuralvision show's main villain - With his displayed medals, high jackboots, and Rheinwehr cap, he --
Panic.
He tried to move, but his arms were behind his back, a stiff-cushioned metal chair between the wrists and his shoulderblades. He was mag-locked, bound to it. A prisoner.
"Aaaahh. I see that now our little Dreamer's back with us, isn't he?"
None of the other figures in the room spoke; they didn't have visible faces. Chrome and plas-glass full-head visors entirely obscured their humanity beneath anonymity. Each stood at moderate attention, muzzles of their needler-carbines pointed diagonally towards the ground, but in a position where they could be brought to the shoulder in less than a second's notice.
He was trapped. Captured.
Just now noticing that a rusty old table separated the several feet between him and the uniformed man, his eyes blinked glossily. Beaming, the man continued speaking, scarcely able to contain an almost palpable sense of triumph. He leaned forewards and rested his palms on the table, leering down at the seated prisoner with hands literally behind his back.
"You led us on quite a chase, Mister Klugmann."
RE: Welcome Back - LunaticOnTheGrass - 08-02-2018
It was a name he'd avoided using out of habit for a long time now, but Erich's shoulders deflated in an almost instinctual gesture of defeat. They had him, they knew who he was, and the implications of the forthcoming actions needed no clarification.
He didn't feel as if he was still the same person he was two years ago, but beneath the veneer of underclass clothing on his person and the month's-worth of facial hair accumulated was some ember, some spark of defiance. He willed himself to look back up into his captor's smiling, faux-polite face.
Holding out a hand he clearly knew couldn't be shaken in Klugmann's current state, he paused in that stance a moment before having a solo laugh at his own joke, turning to gather a datapad into his leather-gloved hands. "Spezialagent Hermann Vernberg, Marinenachrichtendienst, Mister Klugmann. We may as well make this civilized. Though... I'm very much grateful for the change to my rank your selfless aid will grant me."
"The bounty for your safe escort to custody of the Buro is staggeringly high, my friend. Do you know what could be purchased with ten million credits in our great nation?" Vernberg paused, as if waiting for a response, or even a reaction, to his gloating. Klugmann simply glowered back. The tension of whatever tin-can they'd set him up within could have been cut with a fusion-slicer - Unless it was simply the poor-quality, stale recycled oxygen flooding the constant smell of burned toast into the locked-tight man's nostrils.
Taking a slow breath, Erich finally spoke again. "Where... Where are we?"
Vernberg's smug exterior briefly fell away to expose surprise at the question, before his artificial, mirthless rictusgrin returned. "Mister Klugmann, I hadn't taken you as the type to play dumb. Where's the man that appeared on hacked encryptions, exhorting we commonfolk to put up a bulwark against the foul, genocidal men and women of Rheinland's government who subject their time to stopping the likes of you and your ilk?" The agent began to pace around the table, the three anonymous operatives silent and still, reflecting the man's predatory movement around Erich like glossy obsidian kaleidoscopes.
"Are you simply not as confident after you've lost waves of people you fooled with your populism to throw in front of you, meat for the slaughter? And I assure you, slaughter them we will, given time." He turned back from his victorious, slow lap around the room to rest forearms upon the table, and be more level with his captive's face.
"We're in the lower, nigh-lawless levels of Niigata Star City, Sigma FIfty-Nine. You led us here, my friend. Your trail was cold for a long time, but perhaps we should have realized that like a magnet, you'd be drawn to a place such as this." Vernberg made a show of looking back at his datapad, inserting a small chip that looked as if it had some sort of bloodstain on the socket. While he did this, Erich glanced around the room again, reflections glinting off the stationary visors of the Federal Agents on-guard. It looked to be some long-abandoned Hab flat in the lower, impoverished abyss of Niigata's slums.
Long-abandoned, despite the station scarcely being a few years old.
"And you're either washed up and out-of-touch -- As if you couldn't be moreso -- Or someone quite clever, but just not enough. You went even to the trouble of changing your DNA sequences with a Cardamine addiction, all in an attempt to keep your trail cold. How's that worked out for you?" His smile widened as he looked up from his datapad, well-aware that he wouldn't receive a response from the rebel.
"While we wait for your blood tests to process further, Mister Klugmann..." Vernberg said, as if he were some sort of genially caring doctor or nurse. A part of Erich hoped that the people behind the visors were rolling their eyes at his posturing. "... How fares your little band of malcontents? Are they aware that their Rheinland of myth is an impossible fantasy, or did they require several rounds of your spellbinding oratory to be convinced otherwise?"
"You're one to talk." He thought, scarcely stopping himself from saying it aloud.
There was another several moments of awkward, tense silence between the two. If anything, the refusal to speak openly seemed to cause Vernberg's constant grin to widen. "I'd like to avoid using more direct methods of coercion, Mister Klugmann, at least until we've returned to our glorious House. Please, I'm sure you've much to say about your people. Spare me no details."
Erich swallowed heavily, before mumbling. "They're not my people anymore." Vernberg's hand immediately impacted the helpless captive's nose, and he half-shouted his next words, much of his pretense gone in the face of that evasive defiance.
"I can assure you, my friend, the human body is capable of withstanding incalculable amounts of pain and trauma before it finally ceases to be!" He stalked around Erich like the Cheshire predator he seemed to fancy himself. "...Are you capable, I wonder? Your posting doesn't say you need to be returned unharmed! TALK!"
The trapped one-time Oberst closed his eyes tight, loathing the words he felt needed to be spoken, even to a man as despicable as Hermann Vernberg and entourage. "I left them because they were wrong. The Bundschuhpartei is wrong."
The silence that filled the room was the most strangling, cloying one yet.
RE: Welcome Back - LunaticOnTheGrass - 08-04-2018
After the uncomfortable silence from both parties, Vernberg looked at the glossy face-visors of his companions, as if to gauge their facial reactions to Erich's bombshell of a claim he'd made. There was a slight "static" sound from two of their faceless heads indicating speech made on a private channel that the Special Agent was privvy to, but no reactions visible to Klugmann himself.
Blood trickled from the captive Klugmann's nose, from the strike it'd taken moments before. Vernberg's focus returned to his "handiwork" as if for comfort, and that manic grin returned. The air, to Erich, now smelled both of burnt toast and of raw iron.
"It's far too late to simply "change sides" now, my friend. The acts you've committed cannot be undone or simply forgotten - Not that I've any power over such lapses in your recorded history anyway, but..." His stalking had resumed. "...But depending on this preliminary round of questioning, perhaps we might be better able to 'accommodate you' in your stay as our guest."
He resumed his central position in front of Erich, and the dingy light above them flickered a little. "The onus is on you."
Erich spoke up immediately, some of the old fire in his voice returning. "The Bundschuh meant well, but they relied too much on the same thing you do. Ego. Power. The never-ending satisfaction of both." His captor's smile vanished again at the direct accusation. "I was being hunted not just by you, but by leaders among them. And they, like you, are stuck in their old ways. 'Social Democracy' is just the same exploitation with a rainbow coat of paint over it, and it's no verdammt wonder that after only a few years in power, they were back where the -"
Erich's monologue was interrupted by another crack across the nose from the agent's gloved fist. As his eyes glossily attempted to figure out where he was now oriented, he saw blood on the floor, and his nose felt warm and wet. It was his.
"THAT'S ENOUGH!"
-----
Briefly seeing double, the mental exertion needed to re-align his face to look at his captor again was exhausting. He might have even blacked out for a few seconds without realizing. "This is pathetic. You're not attempting to 'change sides', you've fallen farther into your rat-hole of an ideology, is that it? Further even than your radical friends? A good thing for the Fatherland that the existential threat you pose will never trouble it again." Vernberg made a motion as if he considered hitting him again, but the micro-bead in his left ear must have buzzed. He turned and had a whispered conversation with it.
Erich felt as if he'd vomit. Even high-G maneuvers with gravitational stability inside a snubfighter turned off hadn't made him lose his lunch or red-out more than he knew he was about to. It was the visions and nightmares he'd developed even before the cardamine addiction.
To him, it was Madness.
-----
Vernberg turned round to face Erich again, but apparently addressing the silent guards as well. "I am to take dinner with an important contact. You will guard our guest in shifts, move no more than fifty meters from him at any time, and await my return. Is this understood?" The nigh-simultaneous salutes and crackling of their modulators suggested that it was. He gave Erich a visibly repulsed and hateful look before turning on his heel.
He paused, however, at the doorway.
"Rumors abound, Mister Klugmann, that you had a fling with one Magdalena Atzenbruck. A contentious and damning one. Would you like to confess to it now, or later?"
This was a question that for once, the ill seated man knew he could weasel his way past.
"Slash-fic."
"...Pardon?"
"It's a slash-fic, people... People write them all the time about fictional characters, famous people too. They usually depict some sort of romance or friendship, and a popular trope is for these people to have a "forbidden" relationship not allowed because of status, ideology, or allegience. Someone must have written a popular one about myself and h-"
"I'm very sorry I asked." He said, finally stepping out into the visibly dingy exterior of the habroom.
-----
Voices, now. There was no turning back from the episode he knew he'd now have to withstand with one of the soldiers watching over him. Escape appeared impossible. He shut his eyes tight and waited for the mental storm about to wrack his brain to be over.
RE: Welcome Back - LunaticOnTheGrass - 08-05-2018
A scorched and burned world, and a female voice weeping for it.
A bloodsoaked flag lowering and raising itself on its pole over and over again.
His hands manipulating a pulsing human brain.
Sounds of coughing, pleading, and screaming in a green mist he couldn't see through.
The sound of a prison's bars clanging shut.
A man he'd idolized turning away and walking into darkness.
These and far more were the images scrolling, bombarding themselves across his mind. He had no idea where he was, and each sight scarcely gave him the chance to orient himself before it vanished.
A keening eagle's cry becoming that of a carrion bird.
Marching footsteps.
Killing a man for his orange grass.
Gently cupping Magdalena's cheek.
The sight of willing entrants to a human slaughterhouse.
The revulsion welling up in his gut at the last of the sights he saw brought him back to "reality". He was still restrained in the chair, but it had fallen over with him in it. His right cheek was cold, pressed into the filthy metal, and the scent of oil joined that of the other foul ones from before. Above him, the three armed agents pointed their carbines at him. He had no idea how much time had passed, or how he managed to fall upon the ground.
"Don' - Hold on! I... I need some medical attention!" Erich pleaded. His head still felt as if it were being pelted by frozen shards of thought, kaleidoscoping glimpses into insanity. He'd already known the symptoms of Cardamine withdrawal. This wasn't one of them.
The woman's quietly crackling vocorder switched to a publicly-audible channel; the voice was sexless and monotone, so as to preserve identity. "What other drugs did you take? You've been foaming at the mouth for two hours now." Gritting his teeth and closing his eyes, Erich snarled and tried to keep enough of his wits about him to reply.
"I don't know what's going on, I - Where is --" His imminent question was answered as Vernberg leisurely strode inside the hab, the pair of uniformed anonymous men he passed in the doorway still brandishing their arms. "What is this? Why is he on the floor?" The agent snapped, whatever good mood from his supposed "dinner" quickly washing away in irritation.
The trio of visors each crackled at the same time, speaking over one another once again in their own private frequency. Listening to whatever they were telling him, he nodded and bent down to leer at Erich and crack his cheshire grin again - The former revolutionary sweating and breathing heavily from the awkward position he lay.
"The Buro are going to have a good ti -"
Whatever other words he wished to taunt Erich with were permanently interrupted by the sight of his head exploding into a visceral spray of crimson mulch. Having been kneeling down to speak to him, his now headless corpse lazily slumped over and atop the prisoner, blood trickling from what used to be a neck.
Erich's limited field of view from the floor showed him that one of the two men at the entryway had now just emptied four shots into the center of mass of the other, his body armor depressurizing and creating an omnipresent hissssss that filled the room. The woman raised her own identical weapon to fire at him, panicked, from the hip, but all three antipersonnel sliver-fragments went wide and embedded themselves in the dark, metallic walls.
The killer's sixth shot bit into and amputated her left forearm at the elbow, several small gobs of blood and shattered bone falling onto Erich's exposed cheek. The woman fell onto her rear, a long static noise from her vocorder as if she'd been screaming in their private channel. The man pitilessly stepped forewards, swung the gun by the barrel, and put an end to her misery with a stock to the head. The visor cracked like a mirror, and she didn't move again.
In the span of ten seconds, the man had emptied the room of everyone but himself and Erich. Moving over to him and shouldering his carbine, he fiddled around with the maglocked cuffs. The exact same anonymous voice from the now-late woman exuded from the man's own vocorder.
-----
"Come on, we need to get bloody moving." It had to be Erich's own "guardian angel", Roger Hargreaves. He was a Bretonian Freelancer who'd worked many a job with Erich, and had many of his exorbitant bar tabs written off in exchange. It was hard to tell where the symbiotic favors began and ended, but Hargreaves had once been nigh-legendary among the Widerstandsarmee for his marksmanship, versatility, and apparent invulnerability to harm - Or at least unbelievably good luck in avoiding it.
Helping him up, Roger watched Erich's knees wobble a little unsteadily after the hours of being chair-bound. "How did you know -" The dull, sarcastic vocorder's tone cut him off. "Mutual friend of ours pointed me here, got me credentials. We have to go." Weakly, Erich couldn't offer any more resistance than a protesting exhale. He reached down to snatch one of the cast-aside MND Needler-Carbines. Presumably it had a full clip.
He followed Roger out into the open dingyness of the hab block; identical and squalid doors lining it for what looked like half a kilometer in either direction. There weren't many people milling about, and those who were seemed unfazed by the relatively-quiet sounds the Rheinlandic firearms had made. No-one would be the wiser until they saw the massacre scene in the now-vacant apartment.
"Ro - " He barely stopped himself from using the still-uniformed, anonymous man's name in the open. "Sir, my belongings. I don't even know why I came here -" He was interrupted again by the impatient man. As they briskly passed the Star City's underclass, many huddled around electric-spark fires or barefoot on the dirty metal, most people recoiled and moved aside for fear of the weapons they carried.
"Your room was on deck sixty-three, we're on eighty-seven right now, near the bottom. This place isn't safe, and we're going to have to get out of here from the deck's waste disposal." The flat vocorder said. Walking with a slight limp and unable to match Roger's hurried pace, he protestingly attempted to get a word in edgewise. "My things. We have to go ge-"
This time, Erich's voice ran out of steam on its own accord. Roger had been scanning several identical-looking wall panels, before he located a loose one. They could feel worried eyes upon them as he moved it aside and crawled in, gesturing Erich to follow. The looks the slummers had been giving him - Bemused, frightened, simply confused - Were the last thing he saw before the panel was returned to its original position, leaving them in darkness.
-----
"Maintenance shaft." The vocorder helpfully declared as Roger's weapon shone a bright blue beam of light through the darkness as they walked; occasionally interspersed with crawling and climbing. "What with the bloody business going on a system over, I don't think we want to run into any station security."
"Where the hell are my things, Roger?!" Erich's impatience finally got the better of him. Roger paused, shone the blue beam of light down to a corner in the maintenance room they found themselves within; one suitcase, three duffel bags apparently full to the brim. "I've got your bloody stuff here, calm down. The former user of all the stuff I'm wearing was rooting around in there; put him down." His tone's casualness matched the lacksadaisical means by which he put down the entire room of Federal Agents earlier.
"As far as I'm aware, this place is on the Guild's watchlist since it hasn't been removing its trash on schedule. I think it means that -" He was cut off by a faint "crack" noise, and a bullet impacting the metal corner he was about to round. "- Bloody hell that was close." They both dropped into readier stances - for what good it'd have done them - while they searched for the shooter. "...I think it means that we're gonna have to shoot through the locals." he finally murmured, as rueful as the monotone of his vocorder could make him sound.