Ch 10 - Caged Fangs

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It didn’t take long for the rest of the team to take action involving the training incident. Surprisingly, Arron was the first to drop in for a visit. Allison greeted him with a slight smile. “Well Aaron, for a communications guy, you sure do talk very little. I think I’ve only heard you speak once since we met.”

“Well, I didn’t have anything worth saying apparently. I’ll get to the point here. Something is obviously wrong. Even our team doesn’t fuck up this much. I’m discussing things with teams Psi and Pi. We should have some kind of conclusion by tomorrow. I also brought blankets for everyone. I heard it gets cold in here at night, and I’m not expecting you to be let out in the next few hours”. Aaron tossed blankets to Allison, Emilia, and Michelle. Mark, who was in a separate cell, received his blanket a bit later. Aaron left, as he’d apparently run out of things that he felt needed to be said.

Their next visitor was Jesse, who burst into the detention area. He was quickly placed at gunpoint and subjected to a search, as it was well known that he was familiar with the detention center, and ways to escape it. After the search, he ran over to the cell holding the girls “Michelle, are you ok”?!

“I’m glad to see you’re so concerned about us…” Emilia groaned.

“Oh, actually, I came to ask if I should, or could, bring the other replacement parts. You’ve gone through 2 in as many days. The only remaining set of equipment should be the normal set, which isn’t equipped with weapons” Jesse responded.

“Well, if it’s that set, have someone bring it. Being imprisoned sucks, but being imprisoned and unable to move sucks even more. A little 3B time isn’t unfamiliar to me, but I never expected to be detained at base…”

Allison giggled “ya know, it’s kinda like the time we met, only we have Mark instead of Jesse, and we have Michelle too. I don’t suppose there will be some kind of awesome rescue though”.

“No. This is pretty much HQ. For that to happen, this entire place would have to be under heavy siege. You know, the kind of siege that would require a full-scale war to actually justify having” Michelle added.

Jesse spoke up again. “Well, the entire squad has come under scrutiny cuz of this incident. I was pretty much escorted when I tried to come here”.

“Well, according to what I got on the radio, and the explanation I received on the way here, we did some pretty fucked up shit. I’m not exactly sure what we did though, aside from blowing up a drone and defense installations… which shouldn’t have fired on us” Emilia muttered.

“Well, that’s just the thing. Blowing up parts of the base is kind of frowned upon. Yeah, I know I’m the least qualified to be telling this to people, but they’re gonna stick to the rules a little more harshly since it’s not me who did it. In my defense, it helps that they think I’m a pyromaniac” Jesse laughed.

“You say that as if you aren’t” Michelle glared at him. “So, about the hacking issue. Got any information? Unless Mark set something like this up way ahead of time, there’s no way it could’ve been him”.

“Well, so far, they tagged the original activation of the system at around 1:10 this afternoon, showing Mark’s credentials” Jesse commented in a seemingly unconcerned fashion.

Allison shouted “WAIT! You said that the initial activation was around 1:10, and it was Mark? That’s impossible”!

“You sound pretty sure of yourself there. I assume you were with him” Jesse replied as he glanced at Allison.

“Well, he was with me and Ems. Unless he had things set up automatically or something, him entering the system at that time is completely impossible” Allison reiterated.

“She’s right. He wasn’t even conscious… I mean he was nowhere near a computer at that time” Emilia added.

Michelle looked at Allison and Emilia in confusion, then suddenly, she seemed to have a realization. “Something about spiders, right”?

“Uhm, yeah… actually” Emilia nodded from her position of leaning on the wall.

Michelle stood up “hey, guard fuckers, I got some info you might want! Hurry over here”!

A guard replied “shut up! We have no reason to listen to you imbeciles”!

Michelle continued, completely unbothered by the reply “hey, wanna see one of us ladies naked, I can make that happen if we can have a moment of your time…”

“HEY, DON’T VOLUNTEER ME TO BE NAKED”! Allison shouted.

“This isn’t cool Michelle, I can’t even cover myself at the moment” Emilia groaned.

Michelle continued “For the low cost of 3 cans of orange juice, I’ll throw in nudes of Jesse”!

“WHAT THE FUCK MICHELLE”?! Jesse roared.

Another guard approached and muttered “3 cans of orange juice huh”? Everyone present, including the first guard, stopped and looked at the newly arrived guard.

The first guard spoke “Ok, ok, I’ll hear you out, just …don’t give him those kinds of pictures. I’ll listen and get you all a round of whatever you want as drinks, just for the love of fuck, do not give him those pictures!”

“I’m glad we have an understanding. We need the surveillance video from the hallways in the west wing of building 5. Trust me, security knows the area well. They have the footage. Tell them that it needs to be reviewed for the case against us. Also, allow Jesse to go to Mark’s lab and pick up the replacement stuff for Emilia. Emi, what model was it again”?

“I’m so annoyed with you right now I can’t even… model 3. Just get it so I can smack you already…” Emilia sighed.

“Well mister guard, you’ve heard all I’ve got to say. Can you do that for us”? Michelle said with a not-so-sweet smile.

“I’m not sure if I can allow him to enter Mark’s quarters, you know this is…”

“I’ll throw in pictures of Mark for…” Michelle never even had to finish her sentence.

“OK! I’ll have someone escort Jesse! You are one conniving bitch”!

“And don’t you forget it” Michelle smiled triumphantly.

Jesse returned about an hour later, after having notified the security teams, and retrieving Emilia’s replacements. Emilia was back to a functional state within 10 minutes of his return, and Mark was released between the combination of the new evidence and other factors.

Mark took his leave of the detention center, leaving behind the words “I’m gonna go talk to a few people… You guys should be out of here soon” He tossed his extra blankets to the trio of girls still in the cell. That is where they spent the night, grumbling and laughing. Even if it was behind bars, bonding was still bonding. The original guard gave up on any ideas of seeing the girls naked after dealing with Michelle, a choice that probably saved him from much agony.

Soon after his release, Mark found himself at the door of his old division, Pi. Housed in building 3, the digital technical division (Pi), wasn’t exactly close to any of the events that happened earlier in the day. There would be no preconceived ideas about who did what. Upon being allowed entry, he took a look around. “Hey, Arnold, I was hoping you’d be around here. I need your help with something…”

The small and pale man named Arnold turned as he was addressed, and slightly cowered in fear of the larger-than-average Mark. “What is it? We didn’t upset you in some way, did we”?

“Well, that depends. Did you guys activate the base’s defense system? And if you did, were you foolish enough to set friendlies as targets? I know you guys are better at programming than that… right”?

“OF COURSE OUR PROGRAMMING IS BETTER THAN THAT! We got asked about something related to the defense system earlier. I’m assuming your team is somehow involved”.

“Yeah, I did a bit of jail time earlier. Wanna do me a favor”? Mark looked down at Arnold, who was still trembling slightly.

“Uhm, I guess, depends on what it is and how much refusing would actually hurt…”

“Oh, I wouldn’t hit you… I think. But you know what I can do. In any case, I can’t really do investigating myself due to the whole ‘I’m under constant surveillance’ thing. I need you to investigate all activity related to any aircraft launches from this base, as well as all information on the access and activation of the defense system. Can you do that”?

“Piece of cake. Any particular reason”?

“Someone faked my credentials to access part of the system. I’m not ok with that. You know me and my work well enough. When you find anything tagged to me, can you analyze it and lemme know the similarities and differences and all that shit. The first step to getting my teammates out of jail is to pin down what the hell happened”.

“Fine, I’ll take about 3 days to go through that much information”

“I suspect something here is bigger than I think it is, and my teammates are in jail. You have 24 hours or I’ll bring Jesse by next time”.

Arnold froze and turned around. “Guys, we got a priority job here. I want everyone on non-essential tasks examining the base defense system. Rick, Joel, and Winthrop, I want you 3 checking all outbound flight manifests of everything outbound from base as of yesterday! I want detailed reports on my desk or message within 12 hours! Failure may possibly result in death!”

Mark nodded in approval “Thanks Arnold” and took his leave.

“You bastard…” Arnold muttered in a tone Mark couldn’t hear. The girls were released the following morning, cleared of all charges due to various system malfunctions.

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