#getswitchedon

“If you like your neck where it’s at, you’ll pretend it was coyotes and keep your damn head down.”

The snap was sharp, commanding, but not overpowering. It was the voice of a man who knew what he was doing, knew what she’d seen and probably knew how to survive this. He didn’t know who she was and she didn’t know him, but given that they were both garbed in U.S. military gear, both speaking English, the delta force sergeant figured she couldn’t be as big a threat as what he knew was out there. 

“Follow me, soldier.”

The Hyena speaking (well, practically growling) seems to surprise even the operative next to her — he’s masked, too, albeit with a bandanna instead of the snarling bones and teeth on the face of the Revenant warlord. Her right hand is holding Chris’s jaw steady as the somehow softer left one tends to his eye. Well, where his eye used to be, anyway. There’s a man who appears to be a medic hovering behind her, and after she clears some of the gore from the big man’s face, absolutely heedless of the fact he probably outweighs her close to doubly, she backs away to let more experienced hands do their work. But only just. Chris Redfield might have found Revenant’s good side tonight, but he isn’t about to run back to his handlers and tell about it.

“Get him patched up enough to move — we gotta go. See if he feels like eatin’ on the road.”

Chris is weak and in pain and his heart is hammering angrily. He had looked into those eyes with his one remaining and he had seen… him. Oh god, he’d seen… He tried to struggle, or what his brain told him was a struggle, but the soldiers who moved in on either side to lift him didn’t seem to have trouble beyond his weight.

“You know the rules,” Sandman observes from across the room, a glass of eggnog in his hand. His chin jerks gently toward the mistletoe in one of Hawker’s many tendrils. As she has grown more accustomed to the mutation, she’s become better at controlling her shifts. This one will not cost her so much, as she is conserving plenty of energy mimicking a house cat.

The match doesn’t seem to be over; her habitually white-clad opponent drags her bodily nearly up onto the hood before she puts a stop to it by hooking her heels into the grill guard. There is a minor scuffle, a staredown laden with palpable tension, and then the two are at each other again, only it is with significantly less textbook grappling technique and far more judiciously-applied teeth and hands. Here they are, two living weapons, exhibiting the gleeful, delirious energy of unsupervised teenagers in a decrepit bunker in the middle of a war zone, in utter defiance of their cruel purpose.

They are unaware they aren’t alone, in fact, because those sharp senses are completely and utterly preoccupied.

Sandman watches from the shadows, arms crossed, leaning against a doorway. They’ll see him if they look, sense him if they feel like it, but they are occupied with each other. It’s good to see her smile, to watch her enjoy herself. He is glad the one called Sixteen has come out of his shell, as well. Martin Thorne is the alias he has used in the past for undercover work, so perhaps he will take that up again, but for now, the man is, ironically, learning to be human.

“They grow up so fast.” Agent Kennedy is quiet in comparison to the volume of his personality. The old soldier had been so occupied with the play fighting across the vehicle bay that he, like the Apexes, had not heard Leon approach. Then again, isn’t that one of his… features? Something about Kennedy’s infection renders him nigh-invisible to bio-organic weapons of all kinds these days. It hadn’t always been that way and he has the scars to prove it, but the more creatures he encounters, the more his body seems to adapt to something they can’t or don’t want to see, Sandman included. He nods.

“It’s good to see ‘em that way,” agrees Sandman, “both of ‘em.”

In the med bay, the staff converge until one tests the unresponsive Apex’s pupils with a pen light and finds them slitted and monstrous. There is intentional delay; spinning wheels as they are suddenly afraid to touch him, but Sandman has the BOW fully on his shoulders and is living to tell about it and it only takes one intrepid medic yanking the quick-release of Sixteen’s plate carrier to embolden them again.

The layer underneath is almost totally soaked in blood, a gory wound evident where the armor-piercing round tore through. It is this that commands the medical team’s attention and they delicately hoist the dead weight off his bearer’s back. They are cutting away fabric almost before he is fully on the table, and for all the world it looks like they are handling anyone else’s bullet wound. Hawker did not choose this team because they are skittish.

Sandman watches the change from fear to professionalism happen in a flash. He is impressed, and knows he can leave them to their duty, but stays anyway for his own peace of mind. He has sensed no true ill will from Sixteen, only that of an animal who is cornered, far from his master, and desperately seeking… something. He folds his arms over his chest a moment, watching the procedure from the doorway, ‘ti lhe notes the ichor on his person and makes a face.

“Kodiak, Unicorn, debrief now. Sand, join us when you can.” She turns and swiftly removes herself from his presence. Until then, Sixteen stares into those impenetrable red mask lenses and wonders if she still looks like he remembers, if her eye ever regenerated…

The Asshole Squad, as he recalls her labeling them, is a razor-toothed and cunning serpent. This is not the last kill team Sixteen’s former allies have sent for him and it will not be the last, but they are getting better and this time they have wounded him so badly he cannot even fight Sandman’s gentle direction to keep his eyes on Hawker for a fraction of a precious second more. He tastes copper and wonders how many more lives Wesker believes his is worth, how many more times he will have to murder men who are only doing their jobs and trying to feed themselves in his own defense, if he is safe from their onslaught in the hands of Revenant —

The adrenaline carrying him fails abruptly, perhaps on the whim of some instinctive notion that he is indoors and among people who have not yet tried to kill him and that he is safe. The Apex finally collapses there in the hallway, against the man holding him up, and the merciful dark spares him for a time from the pain of his wounds.

“Understood,” comes Sandman’s acknowledgment as he guides their newest… guest toward rest and recovery.

Leon turns his gaze on Hawker and nods, then returns it to Chris, who has yet to move. He whispers something to the man which prompts his feet to begin putting themselves forth, one after another, though his mind is elsewhere. His gaze fixes on Sixteen and Sandman’s retreating backs until they are out of sight and he can no longer focus his anger on hisgreatest, human-shaped weapon. Sarah could have been that,he reminds himself, but she fought it. Why can’t he?

But he knows. He doesn’t know the extent, but he knows. He knows because it might have been him, albeit at a much younger age. Leon’s arm wrapped securely around his and squeezing brings him back to reality as the man whispers: “Penny for your thoughts,” almost playfully. There is an edge to Leon’s voice that speaks of worry and warning, that Chris had better be up front and honest, because he willbe found out if not.

Farther down the hall, about halfway to the med bay, Sixteen collapses. Sandman can feel the shift of weight and he shifts his own to accommodate. Stooping and readjusting the limp body—it, like Hawker, is heavier than it looks, and that is saying something as Sixteen is almost Chris’s size—Sandman displays a feat of strength that is, to say the least, inappropriate for a man of his age and build. The few men from his team who’ve joined him grunt and nod with approval, muttering compliments.

Sixteen does not need to see her face. He recognizes her stance and the way she tilts her head when she focuses on something even from here. She lived. The realization is momentous and there is an uncharacteristic kick in his chest that prompts him to shudder almost abruptly against Sandman’s shoulder, his breathing hitching audibly with the subtle hiss of the oxygen concentrator, and he straightens as much as he can before he winces in response to something pulling painfully. His one exposed eye is fixated on her.

There is an odd lack of tension with the staredown, no hostility; Hawker simply always carries herself with the energy of someone who knows she is in charge and Sixteen either lacks the energy or the desire to challenge it — but it does go on for a borderline uncomfortable period before she speaks.

“Containment. Medical if he’ll take it.”

Her voice is low and to experienced ears it is lacking some of its edge — not quite trembling, but close. If she is shocked, she hides it well, but Leon is standing close enough that he may very well feel the shift in that ever-present, self-assured aura of hers.

“Easy big guy,” Sandman chides quietly, one brow rising. What in the world had just happened? It had been minute, but his senses had certainly picked up something when Sixteen’s eyes had fallen on the commander. He watches them both carefully, with a third eye, as it were, on Chris, but with Leon in attendance, he won’t need to watch too closely. They keep each other in check well enough. In fact, Leon is watching Chris, the look on his face unreadable to anyone who has never loved someone deeply and fully. It’s not something that can be verbally described, just a feeling, a deep knowledge. Something in Sandman’s heart squeezes and he looks away, focusing on the commander.

“Understood,” he responds, jerking his head minutely to signal his men to follow him. Before they move away, however, he spares Hawker one more look and prays she interprets it clearly: See to Redfield. Likely, Leon will step in, but something about Sarah Hawker draws them all to her, makes them listen and want to stand alongside her, rather than in opposition—without Apex, no less. Sandman appreciates that about her. She is a born leader.