#ensnarled

He turned, feeling like the cradling zero-g had turned to molasses around him, and would probably have collapsed if his knees were taking his weight as he caught sight of her face.

Severe, military command was melded together with wide, slightly desperate eyes – an emotion his godmother usually kept locked away under military-issue steel.  Her fingers were coated in blood and her always-pristine uniform was askew and dirty.

That was not an appearance Colonel Casey ever presented to the world.

“A biker got into difficulty in the desert,” he said, his stomach seemingly obeying gravity even though the force logically shouldn’t have been active on it right then and sinking as far down as it could possibly go.  “Do you have contact with him?  He went dark half an hour ago and I haven’t been able to raise him.”

If possible, her face got even tighter.

“The GDF had a rendezvous with Havoc in Qatar,” she told him.  “She sent a demand for a certain item, and gave us a location to bring it to. We didn’t bring it, of course; instead, there was a strike team assembled to capture her.”

John’s fingers instantly flew across his keyboard again, abandoning Scott’s non-existent signal and worming their way into the GDF database.  What did that have to do with Scott?

“I was hoping you’d know how Havoc captured Scott.”  That was not the answer he wanted.  “She attempted to turn it into a hostage situation.”  A sigh, weary to the bone and tinged with something that on another person John might have considered the label hysteria, slipped past her lips.  “Havoc got away.  Scott is being transported to Al Udeid Airbase for emergency treatment now.”

Emergency treatment.

John’s fingers shook as he found the file he was looking for, skimming over it but barely taking in any of the information.  “How bad is he?”

“Multiple lacerations to the wrist and throat,” she reported, returning to crisp military mode.  John recognised the exact same thing from Scott and Gordon – compartmentalisation.  Coping method.  “He’s in shock and unresponsive; it’s likely that a blood transfusion will be needed.”

“His blood type is O negative,” John recited automatically, latching onto the part of that he could do something about as his mind tried to sift through all the information – both verbal and in the accessed file.

Shock could be fatal. The throat and wrists contained major arteries.  Blood loss was also potentially fatal.

Those facts were not helpful.

“Thank you,” the Colonel said, before turning her head to one side and barking orders at someone John couldn’t see.  “I’m sorry this happened.”

Looking at Havoc’s demands, John could hazard a guess why; there was no way the GDF would have been able to give her what she wanted, no matter who she had as a hostage.

That didn’t mean he liked the fact that Scott had paid the price.  Nor did it mean he trusted the GDF with his brother’s wellbeing.

Kayo was dark, Virgil and Gordon had a rescue to complete, and sending Alan into a GDF base – even with Grandma – was a recipe for disaster.  There was no choice.

“Get me clearance for landing at Al Udeid in fifteen minutes,” he ordered, sending EOS a request to handle the entirety of space monitor duty for the time being.  The GDF flyer was seventeen minutes out.

“I can’t do that, John,” the Colonel told him.  “There’s no civilians-”

“I wasn’t asking, Colonel,” he told her, quietly but unwilling to cave.  “I will be there in fifteen minutes.  Get me and Thunderbird One clearance.”

If she didn’t, he’d just insert it into their system himself.

Strict military posture slumped fractionally.  “Very well.” The reaction was concerning; if there was a solid reason why John shouldn’t be on a military base – and being a civilian was a solid reason, International Rescue or not – then the fact that she’d wavered so quickly only meant one thing.

Scott’s condition was bad.

“Is there anything else I need to know?” he asked, receiving EOS’ acknowledgement and transferring the call to his comm so he could keep talking as he left the communications sphere.

She shook her head.  “No.  Fifteen minutes, John.”

She ended the call, and he took a deep, shaking breath.

Scott was hurt.  Scott was hurt bad.  Realistically, going down wasn’t the best thing he could be doing, not with Virgil and Gordon on a rescue and GDF involvement, but John’s heart told him that was where he needed to be.

The last time Scott had been a patient in a military base hospital, he had been fresh out of Bereznik.  None of them had managed to get in to see him until they’d eventually transferred him to a civilian hospital, complete with honourable discharge, two months later.  Whether or not he’d ever admit it, Scott would need family.

Colonel Casey hadn’t said if he was still conscious.  From the injury report, John almost hoped he wasn’t.

Fifteen minutes and his boots were hitting tarmac, EOS retracting the space elevator as a flyer came into land on the next runway over, a remote-controlled Thunderbird One on its tail.  John wasted no time in running across, ignoring indignant GDF personnel trying to tell him he shouldn’t, and arrived just in time to see the door yawning open.

His godmother was the first out, her uniform just as much of a state as it had been in the holocall. Other personnel swarmed out behind her, but John only had eyes for the stretcher immediately behind Colonel Casey.

It was Captain Rigby who moved aside, out of formation, so that John could file in, horribly out of place compared to the crisp, uniform motion of the surrounding military, until he was next to the stretcher.

Scott’s eyes were closed. His skin was pale, and bandages wrapped thickly around his neck and both wrists.  All three areas were blood spotted, and on the nearest wrist John caught a glimpse of curled metal poking out between the strips.

“Is that barbed wire?” he demanded, resting a hand on the stretcher just beside limp fingers as they hurried along.

“Yes.”  Colonel Casey’s voice was clipped short, sticking to facts with no embellishment at all.  On the one hand, John appreciated that.  On the other, he wanted details.

Details like what had happened to his brother?

The medical sector barred entry at the door, letting the stretcher pass through but not IR blue. A firm hand on his shoulder, unwelcome, held him back from fighting his way through.

“Alert me the moment his treatment is complete,” Colonel Casey told the medics at the door.  They saluted her, and then John was being pulled away from his brother, watching the too limp body being whisked away into the depths of a base hospital without him.  “This way, John.”

“Colonel-” he started, shaking her hand off roughly.

“They need to treat him,” she told him.  “We’ll wait in the office.”

John didn’t want to wait in an office.  He wanted to stay right by his big brother’s side as the medics bustled around and did whatever they needed to do to help Scott.  Intellectually, though, he knew that he’d just get in the way.

“They’ll definitely alert you the instant he can be seen?” he pressed, just to be sure.

“If they don’t, I’ll write them up for insubordination,” she assured him.  “Come on, we’ll talk more in the office.”

Talk more meant the details he was craving, even though they were horrific enough that he felt the itch in his fingers to do something, anything to make sure Havoc regretted every single cut and puncture Scott had received from the barbed wire.  Growing up on a farm meant that John knew what barbed wire was like.  He couldn’t imagine what it took to willingly tie someone up with the vicious material, let alone do what Havoc had done.

Some people really were the worst humanity could offer.

It took an hour for the alert to come through; Scott’s treatment was concluded and he’d been settled in an officers’ ward.  The only reason John didn’t pull up a map of the base and beeline straight for him was because Colonel Casey was already leading the way before the message finished.

His brother was still unconscious when they arrived, hooked up to a blood transfusion that was trickling its way into his arm and a morphine pump.  The blood-spotted bandages were gone, replaced with fresh, crisp white linen. So was his uniform, dumped in a bag on the chair by the bed, leaving him in a loose-fitting hospital gown that did nothing for his brother’s modesty beneath the thin sheets turned down at the chest.

He did, at least, look a little less awful than John’s previous sighting of him, even if he was a far cry from being well.

Life signs monitors promised that he was doing just fine, and John shoved the bagged uniform onto the floor so that he could pull up the chair next to the bed and sit on it.  Colonel Casey stepped up next to him, hands behind her back in a classic military pose that looked rather like she was stopping them from trembling.

“I can’t stay long,” she said quietly.  “Havoc got away and that needs rectifying.  I assume you’ll stay with him?”

“I’m not leaving,” John swore, his eyes finding Scott’s chest and following the reassuring rise and fall as he breathed.  “Not without Scott.”

He needed to get his hands on the medical notes, but once the blood transfusion was complete, it seemed like he’d be safe to transfer home.  There was nothing else hooked up that looked like it couldn’t be removed or replaced by anything they already had.

“I understand,” she replied. “Please let me know when he wakes.” Her reluctance to leave was palatable, but John knew she had other duties that couldn’t be put off.  He gave a slight nod to acknowledge both her words and subsequent departure, but didn’t take his eyes off of his brother.

It was another two hours before blue eyes blinked blearily open, throat rasping from a consciously-taken breath and a hand automatically raising on a collision course with the bandages around his neck.

“No, Scott,” John scolded lightly, touching the hand firmly enough to stop it in its tracks.  “Don’t mess up the bandaging.”

The eyes paused, before settling on him with a confused blink.  “Joh... n?”  Scott’s voice was as raw and rasping as his conscious breathing, and John tapped his hand again.

“I’m here,” he promised. “Take it easy.  You’re hurt, but you’ll be okay.”

Eyebrows furrowed as though Scott didn’t believe him.  John didn’t blame him.  He wouldn’t have done if he hadn’t snatched the run down from a nurse about an hour earlier and read through everything they had to say on the subject.  There were traces of a paralytic in his blood stream, and his wounds had all been closed using a variety of methods, including stitches, glue, and band aids for the less significant punctures.

“Wh-?” his brother rasped, not too dissimilar to sandpaper, and John leaned across him, pressing his hand lightly on his shoulder to stop him trying to sit up in the process.

“You’re safe,” he promised him.  “Don’t move; you’re midway through a blood transfusion.”

Scott blinked up at him sluggishly and John straightened back up, having retrieved a small tray of ice chips from the other side of the bed.  From the sound of his voice, Scott needed them.

“Wh-” his brother tried again, trailing off when he couldn’t finish the word and looking somewhat frustrated.

“Ice?” John offered, holding up one slippery chip so it was in Scott’s eyeline.  Blue eyes lit up in a clear yes, so he gently pressed it against his brother’s lips.  They parted willingly, unusually so for someone who usually tried to do everything himself rather than let others help, and the water gently melted its way into his mouth.

Scott’s swallows were weak and clearly uncomfortable.  Thankfully, the barbed wire had only caused superficial wounds to his throat so there was no damage to his vocal cords, windpipe or digestive tract, but the throat was a sensitive area in general and John knew it’d likely pain him until it was fully healed.  The punctures to the underside of his jaw had caused more damage, reportedly serious enough to draw blood within his mouth that had subsequently trickled into his throat, but that, too, would heal up well enough.

His brother wasn’t in for a good time in the interim.

“Why’re you here?” Scott managed, voice still rasping but less like dry sandpaper, once the chip had fully melted.  John would have been offended if he didn’t understand Scott’s confusion.

“No-one else could make it,” he said, half-honestly.  He rested his hand back on Scott’s shoulder, thumb lightly rubbing against the thin material his brother had been clothed in.  “I’ll get you home as soon as you’re clear to travel.”

There was no way Scott was staying there, in a military hospital so far from home, a moment longer than he had to.

Tired, heavy-looking eyelids fluttered back down over blue eyes, fighting it but clearly on the losing side of the battle.  John glanced across at the morphine levels and was unsurprised to see that the dose was reasonably high.  Scott needed it.

He ran his free hand through his brother’s hair, silently reassuring him that it was okay to sleep a little more.  Scott blinked up at him slowly, each time taking longer to lift his eyelids again, until he didn’t.

John watched him sleep again, beyond relieved that he’d been at least partially lucid, despite the painkillers he was being pumped full with.  While still pale and a long way short of being recovered, it went a long way to pushing aside the first moment he’d laid eyes on his brother on the stretcher and feared something far worse.

Havoc had to be stopped. That wasn’t a new observation, but it was stronger now that she’d committed something so heinous.  There was a difference between causing chaos at random and twisted, cold-hearted murder attempts, and while one was simply annoying, the other needed to be stopped immediately.

If only he had enough faith in the GDF to believe they might actually be capable of catching her.  So far, they hadn’t shown him anything remotely promising; indeed their latest attempt had ended up like this, with Scott limp with sleep in a military infirmary and facing what was likely weeks of recovery before he was fully healed.  And that was just the physical wounds.  Mental was something else entirely.

John pulled Scott’s hand back down to his side gently, cupping the fingers in his own and carefully avoiding the bandages on his wrist.

Gunfire rang out, sharp cracks as bullets rushed through the air to the space Havoc occupied, but the woman was crafty and highly skilled in evasion.  Her hostage situation failed, she cut and ran.

“Get her!” the Colonel barked, even as Val was moving forwards, towards the rasping, struggling young man.

“Yes, Ma’am!” came the automatic response.  She trusted them to do what they could without her; she had a life to save.

Scott was still conscious when her knees hit the ground before him, but the way he was thrashing around, trying to get free but just tearing more and more of his skin apart on both his throat and wrists, told her that rational thinking had fled, leaving little more than the instincts of a snared animal.

He was going to kill himself if he kept this up.

Val felt sick as she reached out and gripped his head, pinning it in place in a cruel mimicry of Havoc’s own actions.  Bloodstained metal disappeared into flesh, scrapes and tears criss-crossing his skin at random where the cruel barbs had sunk in and moved against his thrashing. The collar of his flight suit went high, but not high enough to protect him from this.

Scott fought against her grip, still trying to jerk away from the barbs hooked in his skin as alarming choking noises came from his throat.

Val wasn’t a nurturing woman.  Not a mother, and never the one to look after distressed little boys – that had always been Lucille’s role.  Empty reassurances always fell awkwardly flat and hollow, failing to do their job, if she said them, so she didn’t.

In the military, no-one had time for soft spoken false promises that everything would be okay.  She dealt with logic, hard facts, and the laws of the world.

“Scott, stop moving,” she ordered, the exact same tone and sharp expectation she’d used barely seconds earlier on her own team.

It wasn’t soft.  It wasn’t nurturing, or reassuring.  But Scott’s military instincts were still strong despite being out of the organisation for years and his obedience was immediate. Blue eyes were hazed over with shock and pain, and she knew he wasn’t seeing her, but as long as he was hearing her, she could do this.

“I’m going to get you out,” she told him – not a promise but a fact.  “You need to stay still while I do.”  He didn’t acknowledge her words, verbally or otherwise, but when she cautiously released his head from her grip he remained motionless.

A glance over to where her team had been showed them still attempting to capture Havoc.  There was a high chance that if they hadn’t caught her by now then she would escape, but that was a problem for the Colonel to address later.  One of the men was hanging back, and seemed to be favouring an ankle.

“Corporal!” she barked at him.  “Find me wire cutters and a stretcher.”

His acknowledgement was immediate and she returned her attention to Scott.  Even though he wasn’t moving, his chest was still heaving with panic, and there was a disgusting gargling noise emitting from his throat as he tried to breathe with limited success.

It sounded horrifically like he was choking on blood.

Val prioritised.  The wrist injuries were nasty and blood loss was a major concern, but there was no sign of an arterial bleed.  His throat was rapidly approaching fatal.

There was little she could do until the wire cutters arrived, laser cutters worse than useless so close to Scott’s skin, but she gripped slippery wire with her fingers and started easing the outermost coils away, loosening the snarl in an attempt to distance it from his bloody throat and jaw.

The results were negligible at best, but she had to do something while she waited.

Wire cutters were easily located on a flyer as a staple part of an engineer’s kit.  Even with a dodgy ankle, the Corporate returned barely a minute later, holding the tool out in shaky fingers while an equally shaky voice caught her attention.

“Colonel.”  He was pale, too, face white as his eyes focused on Scott and a sheen of sweat across his skin.  He’d been too fast, but at that moment she could feel nothing but gratitude for his determination.

“At ease,” she allowed, snatching up the tool and immediately deploying it on the loosened strands.

The ones furthest from Scott’s skin were easy to cut away, blood spattered rather than coated and falling obediently into a discarded heap by her side.  It was the closer ones, more red than the original dull silver of the metal and slippery that gave her trouble, even before she reached the ones still embedded.

Each barb had to be cut out individually, the twisted wire either side being cut as close as possible before she withdrew the metal from skin that was almost reluctant to let it leave. There were more of them than there ought to be for the length of the wire, and in the back of her mind she wondered just how prepared Havoc had been.  Blood dribbled free from the exposed punctures, running down his skin and soaking into the collar of his flight suit.  Crimson and blue made a dark, bruising purple.

The last barb came out with a sickening suction noise and Scott’s head immediately lolled forwards. She let him for a moment, blood trickling out of his mouth as well as the holes in his throat as he weakly coughed it up, before tilting his head back slightly.  Her fingers left bloody streaks across his cheeks and in his hair.

There was no good position for him while he stayed upright, his choices to bleed out externally or choke on blood internally, and she dived straight for the snarl of barbed metal keeping him pinned to the wire fence.  Her own hands picked up superficial scratches that were ignored as inconsequential as she hacked away at the wire, disentangling the short scraps until she could pull his hands apart and forwards.

Blood trickled across his wrists, the metal still tangled around them and biting in, but he was choking on blood again, his body wracked with coughs and head bowing forwards in an attempt to expel the liquid before it flooded his lungs.

The Corporal reappeared in her periphery, still too pale but nudging a hoverstretcher in range.

“Do you need assistance, Colonel?” he asked, and he was in no state to be lifting anyone but Scott was tall and the rest of her team had yet to subdue Havoc – or admit defeat and slink back with their tails between their legs.  She made a mental note to ensure he got plenty of rest and treatment as soon as circumstances allowed.

“Take his legs,” she instructed as she shifted around enough to grip onto Scott’s torso.  Her eldest godson hated being stretchered anywhere and always fought for the right to walk no matter how badly injured he was, but this time he didn’t even begin to resist as they bundled him down onto the stretcher and over onto his side in a bastardised version of the recovery position.

Blood splattered onto the surface by his mouth the moment they had him rolled over.  Both his arms were arranged loosely in front of him, wire still tight around his wrists, and with the danger of choking alleviated as much as possible, Val turned the wire cutter’s attention to them.

While the damage was older, it was clear that Scott had had his wits about him up until his throat had been impaled because they bore no more signs of struggle than could be attributed to his shock-induced panic.  The wounds were deeper, though, and some barbs Val elected to leave in until he was in the hands of a medical professional.  Scott had already lost too much blood.

How he was still conscious – albeit unresponsive and in clear shock – she didn’t know.

With the wires removed and discarded, crimson glistening on the tips of the barbs and stained onto the twisted sections, she looked over to where her team had been and was disappointed yet unsurprised to see Spoiler blinking out of existence as it teared away.

Another failure, and this time all they had to show for it was a badly wounded Scott Tracy.  His family were going to be furious when they found out, and once again she wondered how he’d ended up in Havoc’s clutches. No-one had known about this mission; Kayo and Lady Penelope had been investigating another lead and thereby uncontactable, and while she wasn’t naïve enough to think that John couldn’t hack the GDF information, she doubted he did it unless he had a reason.  She was also certain that he wouldn’t have informed Scott about this even if he had found out about it.

She straightened up as they approached, the hoverstretcher rising with her.  Her heart screamed to ignore Havoc and get Scott to a hospital immediately, but that was Val talking, and she needed to be the Colonel.

“Your orders, Ma’am?”

There were nineteen of them not counting the injured Corporal, and Captain Rigby was standing at the head of the pack looking like he’d bitten into a particularly sour lemon.  Behind him, eyes were divided between looking at her and the limp figure on the hoverstretcher, and she knew there were torn instincts in more than just her.

“Back to the flyer,” she ordered.  “Captain, I want every part of this analysed. What went wrong, why it went wrong, and any new information about Havoc that it’s brought to light.”

He saluted, still visibly frustrated.

“All injured are to report to the medical officer,” she continued, sending a pointed look at the Corporal before sweeping across the ranks before her, seeing a few others standing stiffy.  Havoc had truly lived up to her name.  “We’ll return to base and re-strategise there with the information we’ve gained here.”

A sea of salutes acknowledged her and she barked at them to get moving.

Beside her, Scott made another wet choking noise and more blood splattered out onto the stretcher. Base had hospital facilities; depending on why Scott was coughing up blood, it should do.  If full hospitalisation was required, that could also be arranged there.

Ignoring her team as they obeyed her orders, she guided the hoverstretcher into the back of the flyer, where painkillers, antiseptics and bandages were waiting in bulk.  Scrapes, gouges and punctures alike needed cleaning, and it wasn’t the Colonel’s job but Val needed to do it herself rather than trust the eldest son of her best friend, her godson, to the care of anyone else just yet.

Soft she was not, but when it came to medical treatment she could do precise.  Scott remained limp as she poured on the hydrogen peroxide then dabbed at his throat and the tender skin beneath his jaw, not even flinching against the sting of the disinfectant.  The same was repeated on both wrists as best she could.  The neoprene sleeves had held up against the barbs, and likewise held up against the fabric scissors; blood had seeped through and underneath it, but she couldn’t chase it to clean it up and was forced to leave it as she worked around the deep-set barbs she hadn’t dared remove.

Captain Rigby must have given the order for take-off while she was intent on treating Scott’s injuries, because as she reached for the rolls of bandages the flyer rumbled beneath her feet and she had to steady herself on the stretcher.  It was technically insubordination, but she would let it fly given the circumstances.  The man knew Kayo, and how deep her fury would run when she found out about this.

The crisp white bandages didn’t make things look better when she wrapped the wounds.  It made things look neater, no red smudges and dark wounds ravaging skin, but it highlighted just how pale Scott had become.

Blood loss and shock. Both were dangerous enough to kill and once Val had the blood flow stemmed by the linen strips she located a foil blanket to wrap around her godson.  His eyes were somehow still open, but hazy and unfocused enough that she hesitated to consider him conscious any more.

Val was a Colonel, not a medic.  She could stop bleeding but little more, and even if she could set up an emergency blood transplant, International Rescue’s uniform didn’t come with a useful dog tag containing blood type information, and off the top of her head she didn’t know Scott’s.

Now the wounds were cleaned and wrapped, there was nothing else she could do for Scott.

Well.  Nothing except the one thing she was inwardly dreading.