[Wash has more than one ticking time bomb in his body. The nanochain seems to come bog standard for all these New Hires, but the implant...]
[Even if there's no actual explosive in his head (which he doesn't trust), even if it's something they can pop without making his head blow up, their ability to make it break down and dissolve remotely? Provided that it doesn't cause him to stroke out, there's a life-altering consequence.]
[And if he succumbs to it, how long will he even last in this place? He doesn't know how bad the brain damage is, how functional he'll be. Wash is a survivor, he likes to think that he could maybe recover over time from something like that, hopes he could still strike out into some kind of worthwhile existence even if he can only heal so far. But he can only do those things - heal or find some new normal - somewhere safe.]
[By giving him the brain implant, they've given him a second chance but it's just so they can dangle something else other than death over his head: helplessness. Death from the internal shock collar is a quick way to go, something he might risk facing for a chance at freedom, but being helpless in this place, having to rely on others? There are niggling instincts that tell him maybe a part of him knows how to do that - but if there is one, it's definitely the part locked on the other side of the memory block they said the implant caused.]
[And even if there was a part of him that knew how to do it, it's one he'd have to body check because that only worked with people that could be relied on.]
[Those don't exist. They never really did. Right now - as always - it's him against the world. That means that when Jorgmund tells him to go on a mission, he does. That means when the objective seems sketchy, he ignores it. That means when their mission liaison answers his objections over not getting his armor back with "We'd like to see what you can do without it, Agent Washington," he simply says, "Yes, ma'am."]
[That also means when the liaison says "We hope you understand that your loyalty is to the mission and that you are to hold yourself to that above any other loyalties, including your teammates," he says, "Understood."]
[Of course the mission comes first. This is just another prison and this little deal he'd made - to be Jorgmund's eyes in the field, to make sure someone sabotaged any efforts the group made to go off script - was just another deal to get him out, same as the last one.]
b) A late easter
Motion detectors.
[And a picture of a very suspicious and oddly familiar egg. And a town that's eerily quiet.]
[And they didn't give him back his armor. He's regretting not pushing harder for it now, but chances are they would've still said no, and right now his deal with them is tenuous. He can't risk pushing too hard too early.]
[Wash clicks the proximity alarm to be extra sensitive. They've all got sensors to make sure it doesn't pick up friendlies, and potential attackers have to move faster than a certain threshold anyway, so he wants it to be able to pick up if a rat so much as sneezes.]
[Wash eyeballs the other gear, picking it up.]
And flamethrowers. [At least they look like they're not as low tech as some of the other tech on the rig and are therefore portable.]
[After they're geared up, the drivers start driving away. He sighs the wearily comfortable sigh of someone who sighs frequently.]
And our transport is getting as far away as humanly possible. All of this is just so promising.
[One thing others might find promising, at least he's reassuringly comfortable with his weapons, loading them and getting them ready with the experience of someone who's constantly had a gun in his hands for over a decade.]
c) THIS WAY FOR SENSITIVITY TRAINING
[Wash doesn't just automatically shoot at the facehugger writhing near his feet. He jumps back and then aims his gun. Even with putting some distance between them, a few droplets of acid sizzle through his pants and hit his legs once the thing practically explodes from the bullets. Jorgmund wasn't joking about the acid being under pressure.]
[He winces, but keeps moving, not even bothering to treat it. One of the last things he remembers from home is getting hit by a Warthog and trying to climb over the hood to shoot at the driver. It's not easy to keep him down.]
[He mutters under his breath, his tone an almost perfect imitation of the smarmy middle manager.]
'Let's see what you can do without your armor,' they said. It's not like you'll need a helmet or anything.
[He expected more common sense from that frequently delusional soldier on the red team. Wash isn't even sure of his real name since they only called him "Sarge." He vaguely wonders if his actual name is "Sarge" because he can't actually imagine him having a real name. At least the man seemed like he thought body armor was mandatory dress for all conditions.]
Cover me. Someone needs to... [There's the briefest hitch in his voice] - do something for these people.
[He may be a soldier, and is certainly comfortable with killing people that might not deserve it if he feels he needs to - like when he shot those two red team soldiers. He's even comfortable with a certain degree of civilian collateral. But at the end of the day, things like Project Freelancer were supposed to be protecting people. They had utterly failed at it, but all the soldiers that signed up for it had thought they were doing the right thing.]
[It doesn't feel wrong, but sometimes even if you can do something, that doesn't mean it feels good. That's the least they deserve - that someone might feel uncomfortable with what needs to be done - and that they'll still do it anyway.]
[The second he has someone at his back, he takes out his sidearm to do the job, going towards the nearest groaning person with an open egg right in front of them. He wants to save the larger rounds in his assault rifle for...whatever laid these. (And even though it seems impossible, he's fairly certain he knows what did).]
[The facehuggers are the babies. If this is anything like the movies (why is it like the movies??) he knows what's inevitably coming next will be a lot bigger.]
d) YOU DONE KNOCKED OVER THE ANT HILL
[He's clearly engaging in some positive self talk as he fires at one alien after another, prioritizing the ones lunging closest.]
It's just aliens. You've fought aliens. Maybe they didn't have pressurized acid blood and didn't lay eggs in your chest but you've fought aliens.
[He's by nature a very brave person, who has indeed fought in a war with aliens.]
[He's also seen the Aliens movies and that pushes this a small degree into 'aaah what the fuuuuck??']
[Breathe, just breath. Count rounds. His brain ticks an ongoing ammunition count and every time he's close to out of bullets, he's ready with the flamethrower in the other hand, pushing the aliens back so he has a chance to reload.]
[Whoever Wash is with can at least be reassured by the fact they're with someone pretty competent. Maybe even hyper-competent compared to the average person. The way the muscular, blonde soldier carries himself is tense but he's definitely sweeping through the room and controlling the chaos around him.]
[But they're still getting awfully crowded in.]
There are too many! Head towards the exit, we need to fall back to a more defensible position!
We also need to cover each other when we reload. Do call outs when you're close. We can cover each other with powers or the flamethrowers.
[If the other person doesn't, in fact, have a weapon, he hasn't noticed because all he's looked up enough to see is that they're a teammate.]
[Also, who would be dumb enough not to bring a gun to an alien fight? The fact they offered flamethrowers and gave them a picture of a very unearthly egg should've been a clue.]
g) ON THE ROAD AGAIN
[Wash is exhausted. Because weird...confusion power or not, otherwise he is 100% human, and he's used to having his armor helping to take the edge off of just about everything. That's what power armor is for, it's protective, so you take on less injuries, it eases the burden of movement slightly, it's got life support functions to help regulate your temperature, etc etc.]
[He's been hurt, even shot, while in his armor. He barely survived the latter. But he hasn't been this exact combination of hurt, dog tired, dehydrated, and sweaty since basic training. Or...there was another time wasn't there? A time he couldn't move. There was a room and figures frozen - no, whatever memory he'd been thinking of slips out of his hands like soap in the bath.]
[Even worse - the water bottles waiting for them in the transport he's in have some kind of un-removable no-spill sippy top that prevents you from just guzzling water, and he can't seem to pry the lip off when his fingers are practically numb from the cold, since they're passing through desert that's rapidly cooling as night falls.]
Why is this childproof?
[It's the weird cherry on the shit sundae that today has been.]
[And it's definitely gone to shit because he purposefully flipped the bird to the mission objective and is dreading what might result from that. Before they left he made sure to damage as many of the storage units as possible, enough to kill what was inside.]
[He was smart about it. Set the temperature regulation too low until the eggs and facehuggers froze solid, then knocked them to the ground enough to shatter what was inside. Then he grabbed the dismembered arm of one of the drones and ruined a very nice knife he kind of wanted to keep to strategically splash acid over each one of them. By the time they got back to the rig, the contents would be an acid filled mess. He even took some light spray to his fore-arm and a few droplets to the face for his efforts that he was going to pretend happened during the battle. He'd needed the transport medic to dilute the acid down and they'd bandaged it for now, with some kind of healing gel.]
[Those things needed to stay as far away from civilization as possible, and that included the thousands of people - including kids and innocent families - on the rig.]
[He's already mentally rehearsing what he'll say to explain not completing his first mission objective. Unfortunate damage during the battle, they should've warned them about the acid. They'd been going black on ammo. The New Hires have nanochains because they're that much of an asset that Jorgmund can't leave them volunteering to chance, and they were looking at a full team wipe if they hadn't prioritized escape, etc etc.]
[It's about protecting the more important asset over the other. Of course. No other reason.]
[It's a tight rope he has to walk here, the lying. But he's used to lying his face off to a commanding officer. He'd done it the entire time he'd worked against to expose Project Freelancer. There are times he'll just do what he's told but this...this time was different.]
[For some reason he's erring closer to the side of rebellion than caution here. He doesn't entirely know why. Not very long ago he'd cut a deal to get out of prison and killed two members of the Red Team he'd worked with, to make it clear he meant business and only left one alive to call down a medic.]
[And he's made a similar deal here, sold his soul yet again, promised to add to the mountain of regrets he'd already built up. There is far too much he's risking losing. But there'd also been the tiniest thread of shame, a vague feeling like he'd be disappointing someone if he just did what they said.]
[The problem is: he has no clue who it is he'd be disappointing. If there was someone, the memory block caused by the implant means he can't remember. But the feeling had still been there, so he'd acted on it impulsively - and had to hope he could be convincing enough to make them buy it.]
[He turns to the driver.] Do you think you can turn up the heat?
["No," the driver grunts. "My pay is higher if I save on gas."]
[Wash lets his head thud back against the side of the transport and then takes a sip from his sippy cup, wallowing in the indignity of it all.]
Agent Washington | Red vs. Blue | cw: mercy killing for option C
[Even if there's no actual explosive in his head (which he doesn't trust), even if it's something they can pop without making his head blow up, their ability to make it break down and dissolve remotely? Provided that it doesn't cause him to stroke out, there's a life-altering consequence.]
[And if he succumbs to it, how long will he even last in this place? He doesn't know how bad the brain damage is, how functional he'll be. Wash is a survivor, he likes to think that he could maybe recover over time from something like that, hopes he could still strike out into some kind of worthwhile existence even if he can only heal so far. But he can only do those things - heal or find some new normal - somewhere safe.]
[By giving him the brain implant, they've given him a second chance but it's just so they can dangle something else other than death over his head: helplessness. Death from the internal shock collar is a quick way to go, something he might risk facing for a chance at freedom, but being helpless in this place, having to rely on others? There are niggling instincts that tell him maybe a part of him knows how to do that - but if there is one, it's definitely the part locked on the other side of the memory block they said the implant caused.]
[And even if there was a part of him that knew how to do it, it's one he'd have to body check because that only worked with people that could be relied on.]
[Those don't exist. They never really did. Right now - as always - it's him against the world. That means that when Jorgmund tells him to go on a mission, he does. That means when the objective seems sketchy, he ignores it. That means when their mission liaison answers his objections over not getting his armor back with "We'd like to see what you can do without it, Agent Washington," he simply says, "Yes, ma'am."]
[That also means when the liaison says "We hope you understand that your loyalty is to the mission and that you are to hold yourself to that above any other loyalties, including your teammates," he says, "Understood."]
[Of course the mission comes first. This is just another prison and this little deal he'd made - to be Jorgmund's eyes in the field, to make sure someone sabotaged any efforts the group made to go off script - was just another deal to get him out, same as the last one.]