Chapter 1: Insertion 1.1
Chapter Text
An Oath Fulfilled
"I, Joseph Ramirez, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God." Military Oath of Enlistment
Act 1: Insertion
Chapter 1: Insertion 1.1
January 7th, 2011, 0800 hours
As Taylor Hebert walked to Winslow High School, she couldn’t help but think that the lead up to the winter break seemed quiet. Almost too quiet. Taylor put it out of her mind for now. Hopefully she was just being paranoid. Perhaps the Trio had finally let off and decided to leave her alone. Taylor didn’t think it was likely, but one could hope. When she got to Winslow fifteen minutes later, she noticed something was off. There was this really bad smell, but Taylor ignored it and dismissed it as someone breaking the sewage line as a mean-spirited prank towards the faculty. There was also some sort of tension in the air. Taylor could feel it, almost like the universe was holding its breath. Fortunately for her, the Trio and their usual hangers-on weren't waiting to harass her. 'Maybe they had finally gotten their fill of tormenting me,' a small part of Taylor whispered. Taylor banished the thought, the only times they laid off her was when they were preparing for their next prank. This would be no different. Still, she kept her head down and went to her first class, Computer Sciences with Mrs. Knott.
The class passed in a dull, somewhat boring haze. After getting done with her assignment, Taylor decided to take a look at the news since she missed it at home because she was rushing out the door to try and make it to the bus stop on time. Nothing really interested her when she went looking. The only real spot of interest during her scrolling of news sources came from an announcement made by one of the local news agencies detailing a military training exercise taking place inside the city later that night. They didn’t say where, but she didn’t really care. She assumed it would take place in either the Boat Graveyard or Docks area that evening. Those were the only two real locations they could practice because of the many abandoned hulls left there to rot and generally being such an out of the way location for the former choice. The latter choice was a bit more of a stretch considering how much fighting takes place in that part of the city due to the Empire Eighty Eight and Azn Bad Boys constantly trying to establish a foothold in the area to secure one of the rarely used ports to bring in drugs, weapons, and money from outside sources. As Taylor continued to ruminate on this military exercise and how it would affect her father’s work, she couldn’t help but think back on everything she knew about the major parahuman organizations in her hometown of Brockton Bay.
The Empire Eighty Eight, or E88 for short, were a notorious Neo-Nazi gang headed by a cape with the ability to control metal calling himself Kaiser. Out of the three main parahuman organizations in the city, the E88 had the most parahuman manpower with fifteen capes to their name including Kaiser. The Azn Bad Boys, or ABB for short, was a pan-Asian ethnic gang headed up by the Dragon of Kyushu, Lung, a powerful Changer/Brute combo who only got more powerful as a fight wore on. While the ABB had the fewest capes with only Lung and his lieutenant, Oni Lee, being capes themselves, they made up for this disparity by being both very powerful and very lethal. The Parahumans Response Teams, or PRT, did not employ capes in the traditional sense, but instead partnered with a different organization called the Protectorate that provided their parahuman heroes as a counter to the gangs and villains. The local Protectorate was headed by a well known Tinker by the name of Armsmaster. The full Protectorate roster was only made up of seven other heroes including Armsmaster, but had a program called the Wards made up of another seven capes led by the junior hero named Aegis. The Wards operated as a sort of Protectorate apprenticeship in the sense that young minors with powers would enroll with the hopes of being a Protectorate Hero upon reaching their eighteenth birthday while learning the ropes on how to be an effective hero. The Wards focused mainly on PR events and light patrols rather than heavy duty crime-fighting like their Protectorate superiors. There were other gangs, but those were the three big dogs in the ever shifting battleground that was Brockton Bay.
As Taylor walked out of Computer Sciences and went to her second class, AP English Literature, she kept an ear and eye out for Sophia, Emma, or Madison while listening to the rumors circulating around her. Apparently, there was some rumbling of a new third cape gang starting to pop up calling themselves the Archer’s Bridge Merchants. Apparently, they were being led by someone calling themself Skidmark. However, from what she could overhear from other conversations, they were just a bunch of junkies and drug dealers who decided to band together. Nothing much yet, but Taylor put it at about six months before the gang was either pushed out or disbanded. ‘Why in the hell would some cape name themself about the state of their underwear?’ Taylor thought before shaking away those thoughts, lest she gross herself out to concentrate on the here and now, getting through AP English Literature. This was one of the few classes she shared with both Madison and Sophia. She would need to keep her cool the entire hour long class or else she would get hit with detention. When she got to the class and checked her seat, unlike the last time, there wasn’t any glue or pencil shavings. Taylor was starting to get a bit weirded out and paranoid. Looking at them, they seemed mad about something. ‘Perhaps one of their pranks backfired on them?’ Taylor wondered to herself before scoffing internally. ‘As if, nothing ever backfires on them,’ Taylor groused. By the end of AP English Lit., Taylor was starting to feel worried. The longest the Trio went without making her miserable was usually measured in seconds or minutes, not hours. At this point, Taylor could feel her paranoia starting to kick in. Taylor began jumping at shadows and constantly checking over her shoulder, waiting for the first shoe to drop.
However, nothing came of it, but Taylor refused to let her guard down until whatever the Trio were cooking up came to pass. She never could have imagined it was as bad as it turned out to be.
1415 hours
Taylor was heading to her last class of the day, paranoid and jumpy as hell. The Trio hadn’t done anything to her even during lunch. Needless to say, her paranoia was on overdrive. Her last class of the day was located in the same hallway as her locker on the first floor near the front doors. Taylor learned from everything that happened earlier in the year and made sure to empty her locker before winter break so no one could steal anything, and decided to just carry all of her class materials with her throughout the day so she didn’t stop to put anything in her locker earlier that day.
As Taylor was walking towards her locker, that is when the smell hit her. It was the most god awful, foul smell she had ever had the bad luck to smell. There was something of a crowd around her locker. Numbly, mechanically, she pushed her way through the crowd to her locker. She could see something was dripping out from the bottom of her locker, but it didn’t register in her brain. Taylor slowly opened the lock and opened her locker. What greeted her eyes was something that would stay with her for the rest of her life. The inside of her locker was absolutely covered in filth and swarming with bugs. It had the consistency of thick sludge, like sewage. She thought she could see a rotten tampon in the filth. The smell was frankly, unbearable. It was so bad, the students around Taylor recoiled from disgust and a couple started pushing through the crowd headed straight for the toilets and garbage cans to puke in. Taylor didn’t have that luxury as she had vomited where she stood as soon as it hit her full force. That’s when it hits her, this is what she had smelled first coming into school that morning. And no one had done anything to clean it up or fix the issue. They had just let it rot for the entire day. Taylor realizes that must have been why Sophia and Madison were mad that morning. They had planned to do something with her and her locker that morning, but she instinctively avoided it since she cleared it out before winter break and didn’t bother stopping to offload her books.
While Taylor was out of it from vomiting, Sophia snuck up on Taylor from behind, desperately praying to Allah in her head for forgiveness about what she was about to do to Taylor so Imani wouldn’t go through what she had to. ‘If this doesn’t get the authority’s attention, nothing will. Please, Taylor, Allah, forgive me for what I must do,’ Sophia fervently prayed in her head. Taylor was still feeling woozy from vomiting, but she felt rough hands grab onto her before slamming her face into the locker door, cracking the lenses of her glasses and smearing them in filth. She heard someone, probably Sophia, say something about how this would be her new home now.
Taylor started to feebly resist, but the next thing she felt was a crunch and PAIN.
Eye watering, gut wrenching, mind searing PAIN.
Taylor screamed, but couldn’t hear herself through the pounding in her ears and head.
Another crunch and more PAIN.
Suddenly, Taylor couldn’t stand.
Taylor kept screaming.
Still stunned, a thought pierced the haze, ‘They broke my leg,’ Taylor hazily acknowledged. Then, they were pushing her into the locker, into the filth, into the sludge. When Taylor finally shook off the haze, the Trio had closed the door and locked it. “Enjoy your new accommodations Taylor, this is all you’re worth. You are nothing but a piece of filth to be shoved away, never to be seen again,” the voice of Emma Barnes, Taylor's once sister in all but blood, said. “Come on guys, let’s get to class. We don’t want to get in trouble for helping take out the garbage, now do we?” the voice of Madison Clements simpered. Taylor couldn’t hear what Sophia said, but she started screaming for help from anyone who would listen.
No one answered.
Even as she started throwing herself at her locker door, begging to be let out, no one did anything. They all just walked away. Taylor couldn’t keep track of how long she had been in that state, screaming for something that would never come. The last class of the day came and went, and yet no one still came to help her, not even the janitor. Taylor kept screaming, thrashing, struggling, hoping someone would help her.
Still, no one answered.
Even as her voice grew hoarse, her thrashing turned to shivers, her fingers bled from clawing the steel door, and the bugs started to bite and claw every bit of flesh they could get to, she still hoped someone would come to save her. It wasn’t until her body started failing from exhaustion several hours later that she realized something. Something horrible.
She was all alone
No one was coming to save her.
And in that moment.
Something inside her, broke irrevocably.
And she saw a vast field of stars.
Her last words before falling unconscious were so quiet, not even Taylor herself heard them. As the last of her tears fell down her face, she whispered, prayed, to any deity that would hear her plea.
“Please...someone...save me.”
1930 Hours
Everything went black as Taylor fell unconscious.
End Chapter One
Chapter Text
January 7th, 2011, 2230 hours
Staff Sergeant Joseph Ramirez held on tight as the gas turbines of the MV-22 Osprey roared as the tiltrotor thundered through the skies over Brockton Bay as they approached the target. The interior cargo bay was filled with twenty-eight Marine Raiders doing a live fire training exercise tonight at Winslow High School. Thinking back to the meeting with Patricia Blackwell earlier that week, Joseph couldn’t help but think something was off with her. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but his gut said something big was going to happen tonight. Life altering, almost.
“Ramirez!” shouted First Lieutenant Franklin Bourne, “Something on your mind?” Ramirez quickly thought of his gut feeling and decided to follow it.
“Just got a funny feeling, sir! Almost like something big is about to happen and we’re going to be right in the middle of it!” Ramirez replied.
“That makes two of us, Sergeant!” Bourne shot back.
“Is that why we brought extra back up, sir?” asked Lance Corporal Kurt Mendez.
Now that he thought about it, Ramirez found that question to be pretty accurate. Bringing the entire 1st Raider Battalion’s D Company sounded a bit like overkill, but considering Brockton Bay was notorious for having more capes per capita than any other city in America, it made a certain amount of sense. In fact, Ramirez wouldn’t put it past an unknown villain taking potshots at their birds to try to make a name for themselves despite the announcements during the morning, midday, and evening news stating there would be a military training exercise in the city that night.
As Ramirez shook his head to get rid of those wayward thoughts, he heard the pilot come over the comms saying, “Twenty five mikes out!” Ramirez looked at Bourne and nodded. Bourne nodded back and said over comms, “Weapons and equipment check!”
As the other members of the Raider team performed a weapon and equipment check, Ramirez cast his gaze around the troop bay. He easily picked out the two Navy Corpsmen attached to their team due to their larger rucksacks filled with medical equipment and other supplies. One was a nice but stern redheaded Petty Officer First Class named Paige Smith. The Marines gave her some guff for being much shorter than her partner, but she knew they meant it in the way only a Marine can. The other Corpsmen was a tall, no-nonsense dirty blonde Chief Petty Officer named Natalie Forge. Rumor had it she had a bit of a soft spot for children since she oftentimes volunteered to treat sick or otherwise hurt children while overseas as part of an outreach program or as part of Endbringer relief efforts. Either way, they were two valued members of the team. As Ramirez continued his weapon and equipment check, Lieutenant Bourne decided to review the rules of engagement while they headed to their insertion point.
“Alright, listen up! We’ve already talked about this so I’ll keep it short. Standard ROE applies. Fire only when fired upon and make sure you positively ID a target before engaging. No heroics unless absolutely necessary. Leave that to the pansies in latex. Understood?” he asked. A round of affirmations came from the rest of the platoon. “Alright!” Bourne acknowledged, “As you were briefed, this is a quick in and out training mission. Secure the building, find the objective, and leave. Shouldn’t take us more than thirty minutes.” As soon as he finished that statement, everyone in the troop bay turned a deadpan stare his way.
In that single moment, everyone’s thought process screeched to a halt and they all thought the same thing, ‘You better not have just invoked Murphy, dumbass.’ Upon finishing that thought, Master Sergeant Marcus Greyson couldn’t help but think about his twin daughters. They would be turning eleven soon so he needs to start thinking about what to get them for their birthday. Greyson pushed those thoughts into the back of his mind. He has a mission to do, worrying about his kids can come later.
As soon as the pilot said they were two mikes out from their insertion point, the First Lieutenant had everyone stand up and get ready to leave the Osprey. As soon as they touched down, all the marines were already springing out the troop bay to secure the perimeter.
2255 hours: Touchdown
Now it was time for the hard part, moving from their initial insertion point to Winslow High School. ‘Bag and tag gang members for the police to pick them up, then continue on the mission. Run across any gang hideouts, mark them on a map to turn over to the police. Run into villainous capes, attempt to de-escalate or sneak by them. Only fire when either fired upon or there is imminent danger to the team,’ Chief Petty Officer Forge ran through in her mind, making sure she remembered the rules of engagement correctly. After insertion, it would be a fifteen minute journey to the target building. ‘Assuming nothing goes wrong, which it probably will since the Lieutenant invoked Murphy,’ internally groused Forge. Either way, the operation was now underway. Once the last of the Marines stepped off the second Osprey, they were moving in formation towards Winslow.
While they were moving towards Winslow, Forge cast her mind back to that weird feeling telling her to stock up on antibiotics and saline when she was packing her bag. She hoped she wouldn’t need it, but according to her Senior Drill Instructor back in Basic, if her instincts were telling her to do something, listen to them because eight times out of ten, they are right. “Equipment and sensors can be spoofed or broken, but a person’s eyes and instincts are seldom wrong,” echoed Senior Chief Petty Officer Rosalita Byrne’s voice in her head. Either way, she would trust her instincts, they had gotten her out of many jams and problems in the past.
As the team maneuvered through the streets of Brockton Bay towards their target, they couldn’t help but wait for the first shoe to drop. After being informed this would be their training area, everyone had done their research on the city in question. The team should have been seeing gang members galore, patrols from cops and heroes at this time of night, or even the distant pops of gunfire from a skirmish between the many gangs that called the Bay home. Instead, it was quiet, almost too quiet. Unbeknownst to them, all of the gang leaders in the Bay had put their operations on hold as soon as it was made public there would be a military training exercise in the city that night as they did not want the kind of heat that came with tangling with the military. The last time a gang tried to mess with the military, they were slaughtered to a man and the military made sure everyone knew it.
The military may not have the budget they once had, but that didn’t extend to their creativity. The Marines were especially known for this since it was often joked that the Marines never got the same amount of funding the Army, Air Force, or Navy got. This forced the Marines to be more creative and cognizant of resource expenditures and acquisitions, essentially doing more with less. Each Marine was trained in Basic to do more with less and to utilize unconventional tactics, weapons, and strategies for maximum effectiveness against potential adversaries. With the recent budget cuts and funding going towards the PRT, instead of pleading for more money like the other services, they doubled down on investing into their soldier’s creativity for unconventional tactics, strategies, and weapons to stay ahead of the curve.
Fifteen minutes later, as the Marines got within sight of their target, the tension pooling inside Lieutenant Bourne’s gut was now more apparent than ever. He felt like the moment he walked through those doors, nothing would be the same ever again. Bourne banished the feeling to the back of his mind. Him and his team had a job to do.
“Raptor 1-Actual to Raptor 2, do you have eyes on?” Bourne whispered into his comms.
“Raptor 2 to Raptor 1-Actual, we have eyes on, you are cleared to enter the building,” Raptor 2 replied.
“Roger that Raptor 2. Moving to target,” Bourne acknowledged, signaling his team to take up breaching positions on either side of the doors.
However, before he could give the order to breach the door, a truly rotten smell hit him. It was almost like someone had opened the sewage pipe for the bathrooms and let the toilets overflow with raw excrement. Bourne gagged and swept his gaze to the rest of the team. The others were also gagging, including both corpsmen, who had seen and smelled some truly rotten things over their time in the service. Normally, Bourne would ignore the smell and continue with the mission, but here he made a snap decision to investigate what was going on.
“Raptor 1, change of plans. We’ll investigate the source of that smell and see if we can’t fix the issue. If there are signs of foul play, we’ll document it for the rightful authorities.” Bourne ordered his team.
Lance Corporal Martin Grace, the demo man from Raptor-2, spoke up, “And if it was structural, Lieutenant? Cause I can see some problems just from here with gang tags and signs of structural damage due to neglect. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is still asbestos in the walls with this level of neglect. Also recommend against using explosives, you could cause more damage that may lead to a collapse of the building.”
The Lance Corporal had brought up a valid point to the entire team. Lieutenant Bourne nodded and replied, “Noted, Corporal. If it is structural, document it and move forward with the mission. Copy?”
“Copy,” his team replied.
Bourne looked at the team’s breacher and nodded. The breacher tried the door handles first. The doors swung open. While grumbling about unsecured doors, the team were in the building. The smell was horrendous and there was also a low buzzing noise coming from somewhere. Raptor 1 broke up into three man teams to search for the source of the smell. Master Sergeant Greyson panned his rifle and flashlight over a bank of lockers and spotted the source of the stench and buzzing. “Lieutenant! Found the culprit. Got a locker with ooze coming out the bottom,” Greyson called out on comms. Thankfully, the locker in question was near the front doors on the first floor, meaning they didn’t run across the targets set-up for their exercise. “Roger that. Raptor 1, fall in on Greyson,” the Lieutenant ordered. Petty Officer First Class Smith came around a corner to his left with her team following behind her. At that moment, something started banging against the locker door.
Smith, not wasting any time, immediately shouted, “Hold your fire! Someone’s inside!”
Greyson, flabbergasted and disgusted, immediately ordered the breacher to get that locker door open. What he, his team, and the other teams converging on their location saw in that locker would haunt their nightmares for weeks to come.
2314 hours: Rescue
It was a girl, no older than fifteen.
Tall, thin, with what would have been pretty black hair if not for her situation.
Her arm and leg, broken to fit her inside.
Her body, covered in the filth.
Bugs crawling all over her body, disappearing into her clothes.
Blood and filth dripping from her right hand from where she clawed at the door, currently in the ending throes of a light seizure.
It was a horror unlike any they had seen. Greyson immediately grabbed her and pulled her out of the locker before depositing her gently on the ground. Petty Officer First Class Smith and Chief Petty Officer Forge, who had just arrived with the Lieutenant hot on her tail, immediately started rendering first aid to the unknown girl. The First Lieutenant quickly called across all channels, “Abort! Abort! Abort! Medical Emergency! Medical Emergency!” Halting the exercise. As soon as the Major in charge heard this, he came over the radio demanding a report from Bourne. Bourne made sure to relay the situation at hand and the Major agreed with his reasoning and started relaying the abortion to the rest of the company.
While this was happening, the corpsmen were hard at work trying to save the girl. As they worked, Forge directed Greyson and Ramirez to both start taking samples of whatever the girl was pushed into for later analysis. Chief Petty Officer Forge gasps at seeing her fingers and says, “Lieutenant, this girl is going into toxic shock. I won’t be able to treat her here with what I have,” to First Lieutenant Bourne. Bourne quickly asked, “Can you keep her alive until we get to the hospital?”
Forge nodded, already getting ready to run an IV filled with antibiotics. A thought pierced Lance Corporal Kurt Mendez’s mind, and he couldn’t help but make it known. Remembering his days of getting bullied, he said, “Sir, I don’t think this was an accident. I think she was put in there intentionally and left to die.”
At this, Bourne started issuing orders to everyone.
“Greyson, you’re in charge of security. Take pictures for NCIS to look over. Document everything. Secure the crime scene and radio for the police to come and take a look. Take some men to search Blackwell’s office. I want to know why this happened yesterday!” Bourne ordered.
“Sir!” Greyson responded before choosing his men to search Blackwell’s office and sending them on their way. Next, he started ordering soldiers to start taking pictures of the locker, the state of the girl, and the surrounding scene. NCIS would be all over this once they reported in. The more evidence they gather now, the easier time they will have finding out who was responsible.
“Forge, Smith, get her prepped to be moved. Find out who she is and where she lives. We need to inform her next of kin or her parents. Thunder-1, this is Raptor-1, be advised we are requesting a CASEVAC for an injured civilian to Brockton General. Make sure to have the hospital notified of our approach and have police meet us there,” Bourne radioed to one of the Ospreys waiting overhead.
“Thunder-1 copies all Raptor-1. Coming in for landing,” Thunder-1 replied.
“Marines! Move out!” Bourne shouted, swearing he will get to the bottom of this or die trying.
Notes:
Big thanks to @Wolf_of_the_Sea for the help with portions of this chapter. Really helpful with getting some of the character interactions and their perspectives put down on paper.
Chapter 3: Insertion 1.3
Notes:
I feel like this one came out a little rough. Constructive feedback is welcome. Flames will not be tolerated. Questions are encouraged.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
2318 Hours: CASEVAC
As soon as Chief Petty Officer Forge and Petty Officer First Class Smith had the unknown girl on a stretcher, Thunder-1 was already coming in for a landing. One of the Marines on the perimeter had already popped a flare in the school’s parking lot that was big enough for a landing. The Marines assigned to perimeter security and patrols were curious about why their training mission was called off. Upon seeing the girl being carried out on a litter, covered in what looked like raw sewage, they understood and some wanted payback. The corpsmen had done their best to clean out the girl’s wounds, but it was still a grisly sight. As soon as Thunder-1 landed, they were loading the unknown civilian into the troop bay in a desperate effort to keep her stable long enough for her to last the fifteen minute journey to Brockton General where Panacea would be able to help treat her. The Major in charge of the operation, Major Francis Bragg, had appointed the majority of Raptor-2 to be her security detail once she arrived at the hospital. Raptor-1 would be split up to provide security for the crime scene and the rest filled in by the remnants of Raptor-2 for whatever the Major needed them to do. Once Thunder-1 dusted off, Thunder-2 came in to pick up the rest of the Marines. While they were in the air, First Lieutenant Bourne was in a heated discussion with Major Bragg.
While Bourne was pushing for a retaliatory strike against whoever did this, the Major pushed for greater caution, stating they didn’t have any clues about who she was yet. At that moment, one of the surrounding Marines helping the corpsmen found her wallet and called out, “Her name is Taylor Anne Hebert. Age: 15. Don’t have an address, but at least it’s a clue.” Upon hearing that, Bourne got on the radio with Master Sergeant Greyson.
“Greyson, look for a file under the name Taylor Anne Hebert in the school directory. Once you have an address, make sure you radio it into the Major,” ordered Bourne.
“Copy that, sir. I also found some interesting things in here as well. Looks like she was doing something financially before she left. I’ll make sure to document it for NCIS. Also looks like a lot of complaints about some students that were never filed correctly. I'll get Ramirez to take a look once I'm done,” Greyson reported.
“Ten mikes out!” the pilot shouted over comms.
Meanwhile, the medical dispatcher was in the midst of a panic attack. They had gotten a priority one radio call from the Marine Raider team in town about a medical emergency during their exercise and requested immediate usage of Panacea.
The only problem?
They couldn’t find her.
They had tried calling her cell phone, paging her, and even announcing it over the intercom systems. Right now, they were setting up the Operating Room for the girl they were bringing in to fix her broken bones and deal with her infections. They were also getting the blood filters set up to filter her blood of the infections and getting spare blood from the blood bank prepped for her surgery. The Raiders were only ten minutes away. If they couldn’t find and brief Panacea in the next few minutes, things were going to take a rather desperate turn. The dispatcher was hoping they could find her soon. Fifty feet away, in one of the disused break rooms, Amy Dallon, better known as Panacea, was snoozing away on top of the drink machine unaware of the chaos surrounding her.
2323 Hours: Taylor
‘What’s that noise,’ was the first thought to pierce the haze my mind was in.
I heard someone saying something, but I couldn’t make it out. Someone was shining a light in my eye, but I couldn’t make out who.
Was it the police or paramedics? I couldn’t tell.
There was a pinch in my arm, but I couldn’t make out what it was for.
‘My glasses are cracked, aren’t they?’ was my next thought.
Either way, they had come to rescue me and I needed to tell them about the Trio. One of the shapes seemed to notice and called for another. I opened my mouth to speak, yet nothing came out.
My vision was starting to fade.
‘No! I need to tell them about the Trio!’ I thought frantically.
An idea popped into my head despite the haze.
‘The journals. I can tell them about my journals!’ I managed to move my hand.
I could just make out it still had some filth on it.
One of the people tried to grab it, but I started writing on the floor ‘J-R-N-L’.
Someone started saying something, but I couldn’t hear it.
The world was going black. I couldn’t stop it.
‘Please, find them’, was the last thought to pierce the haze before I slipped back under.
2333 Hours: Brocton General
Two minutes was how long it took Taylor to wake up, write her message on the Osprey’s floor, and pass back out. The corpsmen had redoubled their efforts to keep Taylor stable as they approached the Hospital. The Police dispatcher had already notified them that units were just arriving on scene at both the Hospital and Winslow to secure the crime scene and take statements. Meanwhile, Greyson and his team had reported back and had stated that they had found her file. Greyson told the First Lieutenant what her address was and, according to their GPS, it was only a few minutes away from the school. Major Bragg gave them the order to start prepping for a raid on Taylor’s house for the journals in question just as Taylor lost consciousness. Just as Thunder-1 had landed on the roof of Brockton General, a team of doctors and paramedics were ready to wheel Taylor into the Operating Room. Everything was looking up, but as every Marine knew, that just meant the other shoe was about to drop. And this shoe was very large.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN’T FIND PANACEA?!” Chief Petty Officer Forge yelled in rage at one of the doctors as they raced through the hospital.
“The night was looking to be a quiet one, so I told her to get some rack time. Lord knows she needs it with all the time she spends here,” Dr. Harry Kushner replied. “Besides, she’s around here somewhere. She’s probably holed up in one of the breakrooms taking a well deserved nap.”
Forge and Petty Officer First Class Smith both acknowledged that fact. They had read the files the team put together on the local parahumans in case they ever ran into them. They could deal with the missing Amy Dallon later. Right now they needed to get Taylor to the OR to save her life. Everything else came after. Unbeknownst to them, Amy was just starting to stir from her welcome nap.
As Amy got up, she accidentally knocked her head against the bottom of the cabinets above the soda dispenser.
‘Why did I sleep on top of the soda dispenser again?’ Amy wondered to herself.
‘Oh yeah, it was out of the way and the compressor makes a really nice white noise to fall asleep to.’ Amy remembered.
Once Amy got off the dispenser, she dropped to the ground and made her way out of the breakroom towards the medical dispatcher. As she was walking, she took in the chaos going on around her, and Amy couldn’t help but wonder what happened while she slept. Amy walked up to the dispatcher and just as she was about to ask what was going on, the dispatcher jumped up and screamed, “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!!” Amy, understandably caught off guard, was about to stammer an apology but the dispatcher cut her off before she could get a word in.
“Never mind. You’re needed in Operating Room 3. I’ll brief you on the way over,” the dispatcher said hurriedly. The dispatcher stood up and started running to the OR.
Stunned, all Amy could do was follow her as the dispatcher gave her the details on the case.
“About 20 minutes ago, we received a priority one call from the Marine Raider Company that was going to be using Winslow High as a training ground. They found a girl crammed into a locker filled with, and I quote, ‘raw sewage’ and a broken arm and leg to fit her inside. The samples they brought are currently being studied, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they found excrement, blood, and other bio-hazardous substances in it. She is also underweight for a girl her height and age but there is no evidence of neglect or abuse of any kind. The corpsmen on site ruled it an attempted murder through biohazardous waste and stated the girl was going into toxic shock. The Major in charge of the operation decided to airlift her here for critical treatment before deciding on whether or not they should airlift her to a military hospital. They have since managed to find her identity. The girl in question is Taylor Anne Hebert, 15 years old with no serious health issues before now that required a hospital stay. The Marines onsite believe this to be part of an ongoing bullying campaign aimed at destroying whatever future life she may have had. Taylor was able to regain consciousness briefly to tell them she kept a journal documenting the prior abuse. You are needed to help deal with the infections and broken bones and double check if she suffered a head injury. Did you get all that?” The dispatcher briefed Amy.
Amy was understandably stunned and struggling to keep up with the sudden deluge of information. Well worn professionalism kept her from asking useless questions. As they made their way to Operating Room 3, Amy could see what looked like Marines starting to set up security teams at entrances and exits to the ICU wing. There was also another group giving statements to the police about what happened at the school. As soon as Amy walked up to the OR door, one of the Marines asked for her ID. After handing it over, he waved her through. After going through decontamination and getting fitted with sterile scrubs, Amy walked into the Operating Theater.
It was chaos.
One of the surgeons was asking how she survived so long in the locker with injuries like hers. Another doctor was getting the blood filters set up to clean out her blood of the infections. One of the corpsmen was getting her IV changed while the other got replacement blood ready. The doctors had already gotten her intubated and gotten her oxygen. One of the first things that Amy saw was that the girl was thin. That caused Amy some worries because it was a well known fact that her powers worked off the available body mass a person has. Seeing how thin she was, Amy would only really be able to help purge the infections and reset the bones so they heal properly. After observing a little more to make sure she didn’t miss anything, Amy got to work.
“Excuse me, I need to get skin contact,” Amy told one of the Doctors.
The doctor moved to give her enough space for Amy to do her work. As soon as Amy made contact with the girl, her biology bloomed in her mind. Amy crushed the impulse to start changing everything. She first took a look at her blood and saw that the antibiotics in her IV were putting in a lot of work to keep the sickness from spreading. Amy took what little biomass was available and sped up the production of white blood cells. Amy also looked at her broken bones, and saw that whoever broke them knew what they were doing. The breaks looked clean and while there was a little internal damage to her leg, it looked like the break was agitated before the Marines found her. She quickly took care of the damage and helped the doctors set the bone. Then she took a look at her brain, and then she knew everything was going to get a lot more complicated.
“Shit, I think that locker was her trigger event. She has a fully formed Corona Pollentia and Gemma. We are going to need an MRI to be sure, but I think she is a fresh parahuman,” Amy told one of the doctors.
“We are going to need to inform the PRT soon,” the doctor replied.
“No, we are not. This girl is our responsibility. And besides, looking over the PRT ENE’s record of actually transporting Birdcage or other criminals outside the city has pointed to extensive penetration by the local criminal element. You notify the PRT and every gang in this city will be after her to either recruit or kill at the first opportunity,” said Chief Petty Officer Forge. “Make a physical note in her file, but don’t put it in the system. We’ll take care of it.”
Amy couldn’t do more than begrudgingly nod her head. Thinking back, why hadn’t she brought that up with Carol or any of the other members of the Protectorate? Amy guessed it was because it was never pertinent. Now, being faced with a fresh trigger and having it laid out like that, she couldn’t help but see the sinister facts as they stood. The PRT was compromised by the gangs, the information couldn’t get out or she would be either hunted down or killed. Amy didn’t like it, but she knew what had to be done.
“Alright, you all heard her. Someone make a physical note in her file but no one enters it into the database. Don’t even think about telling the PRT or you’ll have to deal with me,” Amy said out loud.
It was not a suggestion.
It was an ultimatum.
Amy could worry about the consequences later, but right now, she had a life to save.
Notes:
Made a couple more edits, mainly to fix names and ranks. Enjoy!
Chapter 4: Orientation 2.1
Chapter Text
Act 2: Orientation
Orientation 2.1
2325 Hours: Raid Prep
Master Sergeant Marcus Greyson looked over his team. While Staff Sergeant Ramirez was going over the documents they found in the Principal’s office with a couple guys with accounting experience from Raptor-1, Greyson was taking his group of men to raid Taylor’s house in order to secure the journals in question for both the police and NCIS to look over. Greyson cast a look at his gathered men. Ten hardened Marine Raiders and family men are about to raid a young girl’s house for the evidence to pin the perpetrators to a grisly attempted murder.
“Alright, we head to Taylor’s house, search for her journals, and come back. If her father is there, we tell him his daughter is at Brockton General. Other than that, no excursions.” Greyson stated.
His squad nodded. He nodded back and started jogging to Taylor’s house. Hopefully, with no delays, they would get there in about fifteen minutes give or take a couple minutes.
2333 Hours: Detective Work
Pulling up to Winslow High eight minutes after the Raid team left, Detectives Booth and Castle get out of their cruiser. They had gotten the call from the station about an attempted murder that was foiled by the Marines in town at Winslow High School. Detective Michael Booth, a tall, muscular, black male, and Detective Samantha Castle, a tall, white, dirty blonde mother of two. The both of them were considered the odd ones on the force. The main reason they were the odd ones on the force? Unlike a majority of their colleagues, they weren’t on the payroll of one of the gangs. That meant they had lots of enemies waiting in the wings for them to mess up or finally get a green light. Both Castle and Booth however were pretty smart, and knew how to keep their noses clean. They managed to avoid rocking the boat too much and knew how to cover their tracks when it came to putting away some of the more well connected gangers they caught. As Booth and Castle approached the school, they saw the entire place was lit up and there were a couple Marines guarding the doors.
“Hello, I am Detective Booth, and this is my partner, Detective Castle. We were told your team discovered a crime scene?” Booth asked the soldier.
“We did, but can I please see your badges first? Also, be careful. We are planning to get NCIS involved as well,” The guard asked.
After producing their badges for the guard, they were let inside to view the crime scene.
What they found was disgusting.
The sewage had started to spill out now that the door was open, making a mess on the floor.
The smell was the worst part. It smelled like something had died and only been recovered several days later.
The locker was of course open. There were a couple of marines cordoning it off with strips of paracord and duct tape. A couple other Marines were also taking pictures of the scene and the boot prints. Another Marine was carefully getting a sample so NCIS could get a look at it. After handing a roll of crime scene tape she always carried with her to one of the Marines, who nodded appreciatively, Detective Castle made sure to step carefully to get a better look at the locker.
After getting a couple pictures, she turned and asked one of the Marines, “How long was she in there?”
One of the Marines, a lance corporal, replied, “Probably since the end of the school day. How she managed to stay alive until we found her, I have no idea.” Castle nodded at that and felt both pity and rage. As a mother of two, she wanted to find whoever did this and beat the shit out of them, and that was just the start of it.
“Anything else you found?” Castle asked another Marine, a Sergeant this time. Booth was busy taking statements and getting debriefed on how everything happened from another Marine’s point of view.
“We found evidence of what may be perjury since there were a lot of complaints about a few girls that weren’t filed correctly. Blackwell also had financial documents on her desk when we were looking for the girl’s home address. Apparently, the girl kept a record of her abuse in a journal at her house. We sent a team to locate and secure the journals for further investigation,” the Sergeant replied.
“Journals?” Castle asked. “We’ll need to get a look at those as well. How long ago was the team sent out?”
“The team left about ten minutes ago so they should be arriving at her house soon,” the Marine answered.
“Alright, Booth, you go have a look at those documents. Sergeant, if you could please keep me in the loop, I’ll go make sure the boys from the crime lab get here soon,” Castle told the Sergeant.
“Yes ma’am,” the Sergeant answered.
As Detective Booth made his way to the Principal’s office, he started running through what he was able to find out so far. ‘So Taylor was harassed all day, then pushed into her locker just as school was about to be let out. She is trapped in the filth with no one responding to her cries for help. She passes out at some indeterminate time and is left there only for the Marine Raider Company to find her and EVAC her. On the way there, they rule it an attempted homicide. And looking at the locker, bio-hazardous materials were used. That is pretty serious, but if this is just the latest stunt, there might be a pattern of malfeasance and perjury as well. Man, what a mess,’ Booth ruminated. Upon entering the office, he found three other Marines looking through some of the paperwork Blackwell left on her desk.
“Detective Booth, I’m Staff Sergeant Ramirez, got some documents you oughta look at,” Staff Sergeant Ramirez told the detective.
“What have you got for me?” The detective asked.
“Looks like perjury. Got a lot of complaints about some girls named Madison Clements, Sophia Hess, and Emma Barnes that were never filed properly. Looks like the majority were made out by Taylor Hebert with a few more being filed from a few other people. Also got some financial documents, but they look funny to me. I took a few accounting courses before I enlisted so I know what to look for. Come take a look. There is a government subsidy for the school, but it is unlabeled as to whether it comes from the state or the federal government, which is a big no-no in finances,” Ramirez replied.
Booth went over to see what he was talking about. Looking at the financial statements, he agreed, it did look weird. Why was a shithole like Winslow getting extra money from the government? Looking around when he first came in, the metal detectors were broken, the locks hadn’t been changed, the sprinkler system also didn’t look right, and a bunch of other small things didn’t add up. He looked at the entry, then it clicked. That wasn’t a state subsidy, it was a federal one. The only time the federal government gives out a subsidy is if they have a JROTC program, or a Ward on site. But that also didn’t make sense. Last he heard, all the Wards went to Arcadia. So why would the PRT station one of their junior members in such a shithole? He didn’t know, but he could smell something fishy about this situation.
“I think this subsidy is coming from the PRT actually. Since there isn’t a JROTC program here, that is the only thing I can think of as to why they are getting federal funds. The only question now is which one goes here and why,” Booth told Ramirez.
“And also where the money is going. Looking around, it doesn’t seem to be going to the school. Scuttlebutt within the Corps says that schools with a Wards subsidy typically use it to get new textbooks or fix issues within the school itself. From what I saw, not a dime was spent on actually fixing the problems this place has,” Ramirez concurred.
“Thinking what I’m thinking?” Booth asked Ramirez.
“I’m thinking we should get the local IRS agent to take a look at the books,” Ramirez replied.
“Exactly. Also, me and mine won’t be moving on Blackwell until we have a warrant. Nothing could possibly happen in that time, right?” Booth tells Ramirez, hinting that he doesn’t mind if they have a talk with Blackwell before the police do.
“Of course, what could possibly happen to Blackwell during that time? Excuse me, I need to make a head call. Let’s hope the plumbing was updated and the bathrooms are clean at least,” Ramirez told the detective. As the Staff Sergeant left the office to radio the Major about their tacit approval for a black bag op and actually use the bathroom, he hoped the money was actually used to keep the bathrooms clean.
To his complete disappointment and horror, the bathroom was not clean at all.
It was absolutely DISGUSTING!
“WHAT THE FUCK!!! YOU HAVE GOT TO BE SHITTING ME!!!!!! I’VE SEEN LATRINES IN WARZONES CLEANER THAN THIS!!! CASTLE, GET THE CRIME GEEKS IN HERE!! I HAVE AT LEAST A DOZEN USED NEEDLES AND WHAT LOOKS LIKE HEROIN RESIDUE ON THREE SPOONS IN ONE OF THE STALLS!!! WHO THE HELL IS THE JANITOR WHO WORKS HERE BECAUSE I WANT TO GIVE THEM A PIECE OF MY FUCKING MIND!!!” Ramirez roared like a pissed off drill sergeant.
‘Shithole is too light of an adjective to describe this place,’ Ramirez groaned in his mind. “Search the rest of the bathrooms too because there might be more evidence of drugs and other crime here.”
Detective Castle nodded, already marking everything down to later be followed up on.
2337 Hours: Raid Execution
After a twelve minute forced march, the ten man Raider squad finally turns onto Taylor Hebert’s house’s street. Quickly signalling his men to halt, Master Sergeant Marcus Greyson signals them to form up and stay quiet. After forming up, he signals them to approach the house cautiously. As the Marines approach the house, they see a light is still on inside. After alerting the Master Sergeant, Greyson nodded to his team and signaled to stack up and assume a defensive posture around the door. Once set up, Greyson nodded to the breacher. The breacher started knocking on the door loudly. Inside, Danny heard the knocking and wondered who the hell was knocking on his door in the middle of the night. After opening the door, he was faced with a bunch of men in camouflage with guns.
“Danny Hebert. I’m Master Sergeant Marcus Greyson, United States Marine Corps. We found your daughter during our training exercise at Winslow tonight. Can we come inside?” Greyson asked.
“Of course, come inside quickly. Before the neighbors see you,” Danny replied.
Once everyone was inside, Greyson told them the reason why they were there.
“Listen, we were sent here to recover the journals your daughter kept about an ongoing bullying campaign against her. This campaign culminated tonight in shoving her into a locker filled with raw sewage. While we were airlifting her to Brockton General, she came back to consciousness long enough to signal she kept journals of her treatment,” Greyson informed Danny.
“What? What bullying campaign? This is the first I’m hearing of it,” Danny asked. “You know where my daughter is? I’ve been worried sick. Where is she?”
“She’s at Brockton General, we airlifted her there after calling off the exercise. She was in pretty rough shape when we found her,” Greyson replied.
Danny let out a breath of relief and visibly sagged like a giant weight had been taken off his shoulders. “Okay, you guys can search her room for whatever you need. Up the stairs second to last door on the left,” Danny told the Master Sergeant. At this, Greyson nodded to his men and they went up the stairs to begin looking for the journals in question.
Danny moved to the kitchen to get a notepad and a piece of paper.
“Thank you for telling me. I presume you are going to be doing other things in our fair city. This is the address for one of the disused warehouses you can use as a base. It is the old fish cannery warehouse over by the Boat Graveyard. Should be big enough for you guys to use for whatever you need. Consider this a thank you from the DWU to the Marines,” Danny thanked him. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a daughter to see.”
“Safe travels,” Greyson replied in thanks.
‘Having a base to bring back Blackwell and the others involved in the bullying campaign will allow us to interrogate them without getting an outside party involved. Also, since this is being treated as a real operation, we have a lot more leeway in use of force and interrogation methods than otherwise,’ Greyson thought gratefully.
While Danny and Greyson were finishing up talking, the rest of the impromptu Talon team continued up the stairs to search the rest of the house. After finding Taylor’s room, they started tearing it apart looking for her journals. Gunnery Sergeant Ethan Graves was the one to find them while searching her closet.
“Got something,” Graves called out.
“What have you got? One of his squad members asked.
“Looks like the journals she told us about. Look at this. The amount of detail concerning her treatment and the sheer size of it, it must go back months,” Graves said while flipping through the pages and reading some of the entries.
“Try years,” Lance Corporal Mendez corrected. “When I was still in school, I kept a journal of my bullying. When me and my parents threatened to sue, the journal only really had a couple weeks worth of transgressions. Something like that journal would be enough to end careers and splatter the entire school board with enough shit that people could start calling for their resignation. It also keeps mentioning the same girls over and over again. Sophia Hess, Madison Clements, and Emma Barnes. Seems like they were the main ringleaders. Emma and Sophia seemed to do the bulk of the work while Madison did the petty stuff.”
“No shit? Damn, I want to talk to this girl now. She would make an amazing Marine if she decides to join what with all the shit that’s in there,” Graves commented. “Alright, we got what we came for. Let’s clean up a little and head out.”
After straightening the room up a little, the members of Talon team came downstairs. By that time, Danny was already long gone.
“Alright, got everything we need?” Greyson asked.
“Yes sir,” Graves responded, holding up the journal in question. With this, the rest of Talon team formed up and took off back to Winslow. There they would report in, secure the journals for later copying and study, and tell the Major they have an address to use as an impromptu base in the city. So why did this feeling in Greyson's gut keep telling him that tonight wasn't over yet?
Chapter 5: Orientation 2.2
Notes:
Much shorter than the other chapters, and the last one before the party/clusterfuck kicks off. This chapter fought me hard. So any feedback to improve it would be appreciated.
Chapter Text
2342 Hours: Retrieval
As the Marine squad that raided Taylor’s house was making their way back to Winslow with the journals secured, the squad Staff Sergeant Ramirez was part of had already combed through the contents of Blackwell’s office and made the necessary copies of documents in case someone tried to bury everything. After finding more documents to hand over to the IRS, Police, and NCIS, Ramirez was finally able to find Blackwell’s address. After taking a leak in a bush outside, since all of the bathrooms were crime scenes and dirty as FUCK, Ramirez radioed his Lieutenant some good news.
“Lieutenant Bourne, this is Staff Sergeant Ramirez. We found Blackwell’s address from their records. She lives on 1342 Bakersville street,” Ramirez radioed.
“Understood Sergeant. I’ll pass it up the chain. The Major has given us the greenlight to go after Blackwell and other targets of opportunity. Status on the raid team?” Lieutenant Bourne asked.
“The Raid team have found the journals and are on their way back now. Master Sergeant Grayson radioed back and told us to start looking for the addresses for the ringleaders. Names are Emma Barnes and Sophia Hess. We found their addresses as well. Also, the head of the local Dockworkers Union gave us the address to a disused and empty warehouse we could use as a base while carrying out operations in the city,” Ramirez informed Bourne.
“I’ll pass it up the chain. Once I let the Major know, he’ll make the necessary changes. Also, the Major sent one of the Ospreys to pick you up about seven minutes ago, so expect it to arrive soon,” Bourne informed Ramirez.
“Understood sir. I’ll keep an eye out for the team coming back and let you know the results,” Ramirez acknowledged.
After giving Bourne the address of the warehouse they would turn into a base, Ramirez waited for the raid team’s return and started communicating to the police about their imminent departure. He watched as the people from the crime lab and other police officers arrived and got started working. Several minutes later, Ramirez saw the raid force return.
“Master Sergeant Greyson,” Ramirez greeted.
“Staff Sergeant Ramirez,” Greyson greeted and continued, “How goes the investigation? We got the addresses of our targets yet?”
“The investigation is going smoothly. Looks like we have the greenlight to black bag the suspects and perform interrogations. We also have the addresses to two other targets as well. The Osprey to pick us up should be here soon,” Ramirez informed Greyson.
“Raptor-1 this is Thunder-2, we are coming in for a landing. Make sure everything is accounted for,” Thunder-2 came on over the radio.
“Speak of the devil and he shall appear,” Greyson muttered to himself.
As all of the Raiders still at Winslow checked to make sure they had all their gear, Thunder-2 landed in the parking lot of the school. After their final checks were made, the Raiders loaded up onto the Osprey. After Greyson gave the pilot the address to the warehouse, Thunder-2 was dusting off and was on its way to the Closed Fish Cannery Warehouse in the Docks area. While on the way, they could see Thunder-1 lift off from Brockton General, probably ferrying the rest of the company that wasn’t left behind as Taylor’s security detail. Ramirez couldn’t wait to get to the warehouse and plan out Taylor’s vengeance on her tormentors.
January 8th, 0000 Hours: Arrival
The first thing that Lieutenant Bourne thought to himself when looking at the warehouse, was dirty and empty. All of the machinery was stripped out, probably by either the owners for insurance or salvagers later to be sold for scrap or used as material for tinkers. The floor hadn’t been swept or cleaned for years now and it looked like the windows would need to be replaced. Either way it would be perfect to be used as a base. Looking over, he could tell that Major Bragg agreed with his internal assessment.
“This place will be perfect for what we need. Greyson, start setting up some interrogation areas. Ramirez, check to see if the office spaces still have some chairs and desks, we’ll need them. Everybody, we’ve got work to do. Let’s make it happen!” Major Francis Bragg shouted.
“Yes sir!” The rest of the Raider Company echoed.
With that, the Raiders went into action. They proceeded to clear and loot everything inside to the ground. The office area was still in decent shape. There were some tables and chairs that were in decent enough shape. The power was out, but they could easily jury rig something to get some of the lights on or just use their flashlights. The bathrooms were also a total right-off. In fact, one of the Raiders actually gagged at the smell coming from the stalls. Needless to say, those bathrooms were quickly labeled as Bio-hazardous and the rest of the Raiders steered clear. Most of the remaining office space was quickly converted into improvised interrogation rooms and one of the conference rooms was turned into the operations room. The office rooms were closed and chairs were replaced around the tables. Flashlights were strung up to act as light sources and paracord was unraveled to be used as bindings. A couple lengths of chain and a padlock with its keys still inside was also found and it was decided to use it if one of the prisoners started getting either uppity or violent. After looking up their addresses, and noting the layout of the neighborhoods, the Raiders got to work coming up with a plan to take them all out in one go.
“Alright, you guys have fifteen minutes to come up with a workable plan. I would recommend using our transport smartly,” Major Bragg advised.
What followed was a whirlwind of planning and gear checks. The Raiders decided to divide themselves into three ten man teams. The first team would take an Osprey and land two blocks away from Blackwell’s house. They would then hoof it to the target and surround it. From there, they would make their way inside, black bag Blackwell, loot her house for any and all intel relating to her crimes, and then extract back to the warehouse using Thunder-1. The second team would be dropped off three blocks away from Sophia’s house and hoof it to the target while Thunder-2 continued to the final target. It was decided pretty early on that one of the Corpsmen would be in team two and three just in case they were needed. Once team two makes entry into the house, they would quietly take Sophia while gathering evidence as needed. After that, they would radio for exfil and Thunder-1 or Thunder-2 would pick them up, whichever was closer. Team three would have the same objectives and plan, only Thunder-2 would remain on station for exfiltration of team three.
After looking over the plans, the Major voiced his agreement and gave them the greenlight for their mission.
0035 Hours: Operation Start
Just thirty five minutes after landing at the warehouse, the Raiders were already back up in the air heading out on their self-appointed mission.
Chapter 6: Execution 3.1
Notes:
This chapter kicked my ass hard. It also doesn't help that I decided to go in a brand new direction with this fic. As well as the fact this will be the longest chapter in this fic to date. I'll update the tags come next chapter for obvious reasons. Fair warning though, there is a rape scene in this chapter, so if you are easily triggered or offended, please keep moving along. Helpful/constructive criticism is welcome, but flames are not. Credit goes to a few other AO3 authors for helping iron this doozy of a chapter out. Enjoy the chapter.
Chapter Text
January 8th, 0015 Hours
As Danny pulls up to Brockton General Hospital, he couldn’t help but wonder how it all came to this. First, his daughter is being bullied and is stuffed into a locker? Then rescued and airlifted to Brockton General by a team of Marine Raiders? The fact she kept a journal detailing the abuse? It was all too much for Danny. Why wouldn’t his daughter come tell him? He would have helped her. He may not have been as attentive as Annette, but surely she knew that he would always be there for her? Right? Danny shook his head, clearing away those intrusive thoughts. Right now, he had to get to his daughter.
After getting out of his truck and walking through the doors to the hospital, he could see that the chaos that heralded his daughter’s arrival at the hospital had died down significantly. He could also see other Marines have taken up guard positions around some of the doors. Most notably, the ones leading into the ICU’s psych ward. Danny became worried when he saw their set up.
Danny walked up to the front desk to ask where he could find his daughter.
“Hello, I’m Daniel Hebert. I was told that my daughter was brought here earlier tonight. Would it be possible for me to see her?” Danny asked the receptionist.
“Yes, she is currently in the Psych Ward. Room 357. Through the doors over there, up two floors, and just follow the signs,” the receptionist told him.
“Thank you,” Danny said.
As he made his way over to the Marines guarding the door, Danny couldn’t help but wonder why Taylor was in the Psych Ward. After thinking about it for a couple of seconds, he decided he didn’t want to know just yet. He wanted to be by his daughter’s side right now. Everything else could wait until later. Walking up to the door guarded by the Marines, Danny could already tell what was about to happen.
“Can you show me some ID, please? No one sees her unless they are medical staff or family,” the Marine said to Danny.
“Of course. Here you go,” Danny said, reaching into his pocket to take out his wallet for his ID.
After handing it over and it being studied and compared to his face, the Marine gave it back to him and waved him through. Heading through the door, he nodded to them. As he made his way to Taylor’s room, he was stopped twice more but didn’t make a big deal about it. He knew that when Marines were given orders to protect someone or something, they took it very seriously. Once he reached her room, he saw her. Taylor in a hospital bed, thinner than he saw her this morning. He wondered why before crushing that thought. He could also see that she was strapped down to the bed. There were also a few more people in the room, nurses and doctors if he had to guess. Walking up to her, he decides to start asking some questions.
“What’s wrong with my daughter?” Danny asks one of the Nurses.
“She had an intense infection from being stuffed into a locker filled with rotten and used feminine waste products and other sewage, toxic shock from the infections, lacerations on her fingertips from trying to escape the locker, a broken arm and leg from being stuffed inside, and suffers from seizures due to a possible concussion. We had Panacea treat her in accordance with the Marines who found her on-site during their training exercise,” the nurse replied.
Danny nodded his head and silently made a vow.
‘Never again. This will never happen again. But first, time for the nuclear option,’ Danny vowed in his mind.
For years, he had known Winslow was a shit hole, but once rumors started cropping up about a Ward being in attendance, he had hoped that the infrastructure would finally be repaired or improved upon. Just a couple days ago when he drove past on his way home, he knew that wasn’t the case. Now, it was time to bring the hammer down, but first he had to make a few calls.
“Thank you for telling me. I will be outside making a few calls. It’s time Patricia Blackwell faced the consequences of her actions,” Danny said out loud. With that, he turned around and marched out the doors to find a telephone he could use. He knew a couple of city inspectors and Fire Marshals that weren’t on anybody’s payroll who owed him a couple favors. He knew that he was going to be bringing down a lot of heat on himself, but sometimes, the only way to fix something, was to purge it in fire and watch the wicked be consumed.
Coming up to the aid station around the corner, he quickly asked if he could borrow their phone. When the nurse said he could, he immediately dialed a number he knew. After ringing three times, he heard the other man pick up.
“Who is this?” The man groggily asked.
“Fred, it’s Danny. I need you to do me a favor. I need you to head down to Winslow for a surprise inspection. Something tells me that the building hasn’t been up to code in the last 15 years,” Danny told the now named Fred.
“Danny, you know I was in bed right? Kelly is going to kill us both if this isn’t serious,” Fred replied.
“I know, but I wouldn’t call you if I didn’t think it was serious. My daughter was just the victim of an attempted murder by students over there. I am not in the forgiving mood right now. I want you to head over and document each code violation Winslow has and make sure nobody stops you,” Danny told Fred.
“Ok, I’ll get over there. Anything else I should know?” Fred inquired.
“I’ll also be calling a Fire Marshal to help. Something tells me nothing was done to that school since at least the fifties,” Danny said.
“Ok, let me tell my wife where I am going, and I’ll head over there,” Fred replied.
“Godspeed,” Danny said before hanging up. He dialed another number he knew. The phone rang once before being picked up.
“Hello?” the other person asked.
“Hey Frank, can you do me a favor?” Danny asked.
0040 Hours: Raid 1 Begins
“Five mikes out!” the pilot of Thunder-1 shouted back to the first Raid team.
“Final weapons and equipment check!” Master Sergeant Greyson shouted to the rest of his team.
As the rest of the team went through their last weapons check, Greyson cast his mind back to the objectives the company had set for this operation. ‘Find and secure Blackwell, loot her home for evidence of her crimes, and exfiltrate back to the warehouse for interrogation,’ the Master Sergeant listed off in his head. Once the Osprey came in to land in an empty lot, the Marines were already running down the ramp out of the troop bay. As soon as the Marines hit the blacktop, they quickly secured the perimeter and got ready to move out. Greyson signaled his men to remain quiet as they moved to the target house. Once they turn the corner a couple minutes later, a single thought echoes through the majority of Greyson’s team heads’. ‘Well, that’s where the money went. The greedy bitch,’ the team thought. Sitting right in the middle of the driveway was a rather expensive luxury car for someone supposed to be a high school principal. Greyson signaled his team to stack up on the door. Once they were all set to go, Greyson nodded at the breacher. After trying the door handles and finding them locked, the breacher pulled out a set of lockpicks and got to work on the lock. It was decided while they were planning the operation that they would try and stay quiet to avoid alerting the neighbors and keep the targets from destroying evidence. The breacher only took about thirty seconds to pick the lock, and everyone got ready to enter the house. Greyson signaled his team to use their Night Vision Goggles so they didn’t wake anyone up. After that was done, the team entered the house. Upon clearing the first few rooms, the team made their way into the main living/dining room. After finding nothing, Greyson signaled his team to split up to cover more ground. Greyson took his two partners to find the home office. The other parts of his team went to secure the rest of the house and to find Blackwell for questioning.
A couple minutes later, Greyson found the home office. Him and his partners started looting everything they could get their hands on that looked important. Files, hard drives, laptops, books, potential ciphers, password logins, everything was being taken for investigation. Meanwhile, one of the other teams found the bedroom Blackwell was sleeping in. Upon entering the room, the Marines decide to have a little fun at Blackwell’s expense. After checking to make sure she didn’t have a weapon nearby, one of the Marines decided to wake her up. He gently shook her awake and when she woke up, he gently put his finger on her lips and said, “Shhhh shh. Be quiet, the kids are still sleeping,” while the rest of his team pointed their weapons at her. Blackwell at this point was wide awake, and one of the Marines could actually smell something bad coming from her bed.
“Holy shit, I think she actually shit herself,” one of the Marines commented to his teammate.
“She deserves it for not doing anything to stop that girl from being pushed into that locker,” another Marine fired back.
“Lock it down! Blackwell, you’re coming with us, we need to ask you a few questions,” a burly marine told her.
After dragging her out of the bed and securing her hands in 550 cord and throwing a bag over her head, the Marines started moving towards their initial entry point. The team bagging Blackwell also met up with Greyson’s team as they were leaving the house, duffle bags full of evidence in tow.
“Is that her?” Greyson asked the team.
“Yes sir. She even shit the bed when we woke her up,” one of the Marines stated.
“You don’t say,” Greyson replied, wrinkling his nose at the smell. “Either way, get her prepped for transport. This will be a long flight if she really shit herself.”
Once they got her ready for transport, the Marines hauled her out of her house back towards the waiting Osprey. As Greyson led his men to the Osprey, he was already compiling a list of what questions they would need to ask her about. He was looking forward to her interrogation. Forty five minutes later, after landing and unloading from the Osprey at the warehouse, Greyson could already tell something was wrong. The Major looked ready to go on a rampage that would put the fear of Chesty Puller into the fucking Butcher and his Teeth. It also sounded like the Major was on the horn with a Lieutenant General about something. Greyson could already see a couple comms specialists looking downright thunderous as they spoke into the comms for Team 2. Greyson directed his men to take Blackwell to the interrogation rooms. Greyson caught the attention of one of the Lieutenants as he walked over to give his report.
“Lieutenant, we got Blackwell. I have my team taking her over to Interrogation Room 1,” Greyson told the First Lieutenant.
“Good,” the First Lieutenant growled.
“If you don’t mind me asking sir, what happened? Everybody looks just about ready to go on a Teeth style rampage,” Greyson asked.
“There was a… complication, ” the Lieutenant practically spat out. Greyson could practically taste the sheer loathing in his voice. One thought went through Greyson’s mind once again once he heard there was a complication.
‘What happened this time?’ Greyson wondered as he shook his head.
0058 Hours: Raid 2 Begins
Lieutenant Bourne heard the pilot of Thunder-2 tell his team they were only two mikes out. Bourne looked around and saw his team doing their last checks of weapons and gear. Looking over to his First Sergeant, he nodded at him and signaled him to get the fast ropes set up. The First Sergeant nodded back and got Lance Corporal Mendez to start hooking everything up. Bourne stood up, thus signaling for the rest of his team to stand up as well. Once the Osprey started hovering, the troop bay doors opened up and Mendez threw the ropes out. Once they reached the ground, Bourne was the first one out and down the ropes. As the rest of his team followed him out, Bourne took a look at his surroundings while he formed a perimeter. The houses here looked smaller, more rundown, and generally more abandoned. The grass was overgrown, there were potholes everywhere, the houses looked more like tar-paper shacks, and what streetlights there seemed either broken or nonfunctioning. Bourne wondered who the fuck would even choose to live here. Bourne shook his head, banishing the thoughts to focus on the here and now.
Once his team was deployed, he signaled them to start moving towards the target. As they moved to their target, Bourne cast a quick glance at his team. He had Lance Corporal Mendez, Chief Petty Officer Forge, Staff Sergeant Ramirez, First Sergeant Ryan Murdock, a family man with a son and two little girls, plus a few more people he was supposed to lead. He knew a few of them were family men like Murdock and had children of their own, but he wasn’t able to really talk with them since some of them came from Raptor-2 and he didn’t get to know them too well on the flight over. Either way, it was his job to lead them and he would lead them through hell itself if he needed to. As he was looking at his men, he noticed his breacher had also grabbed an Enforcer, a battering ram designed for police and military use and was able to deliver nearly three tonnes of impact force to a door lock. He was about to question the man, but stopped himself. He knew his breacher. If he felt he needed the Enforcer, he wouldn’t question it, he trusted his partner’s judgement.
After ten minutes of traveling, the team came up to the target house. It was small, barely 950 square feet by their estimates. The lawn looked overgrown but cared for, like someone had just started to care for it but would need time to fully tame it. The windows weren’t illuminated, but clean. The roof looked like it had just been redone. The house looked like someone wanted to take care of it, but lacked either the money or knowledge to take care of it. Once they stacked up on the door, the team could hear something inside the house. It was too faint to truly make out, but it almost sounded like sobs. Bourne looked at his breacher, a cold, uneasy feeling coiling in his gut. He steeled his nerves and gave the signal to the breacher to pick the locks. Once the door was open, Bourne led his team into the darkness.
0109 Hours: Sophia's POV; Deliverance
He came tonight just as he had every other time he came. Quietly, without waking anyone else up. I felt him when he brushed his hand through my hair. I woke up trying to scream for help when he put his hand on my mouth. I tried biting it, but he had learned about that trick long ago.
Still, I fought him, to preserve whatever dignity I had left.
He still overwhelmed me.
Slowly, tauntingly, he stripped my clothes away. I was left naked and vulnerable to his every whim. When I looked into his eyes, there was nothing there except for a twisted sense of delight. His mouth twisted into a feral grin, like he took great pleasure in my torment.
I knew he did.
I looked away and tried to preserve what little dignity I had left, but it was rapidly being taken from me. He was already naked, smiling that twisted smile. I tried to fight back twice as hard, but he slapped me hard, stunning me. He flipped me over and pushed my face into the pillows. I could feel the tears welling up. He forced his dick into my anus without any regard, and started thrusting his hips. I tried to hold in my sobs, but they came out regardless. At that moment, I felt so violated and disgusting. And I hated that my body felt so good from it. The only form of consolation I could take from this was that only Chester was here and he hadn’t brought any friends with him. I thought I heard something outside, but I dismissed it. No matter what I did, no one was coming to save me. Imani was safe, locked in her room. Heather was stoned out of her mind on heroin in her room. All I could do was take it in an effort to protect my little sister from him. Maybe this was my punishment for tormenting that girl Taylor? If so, then maybe I deserve it. All I could do was pray this was enough to protect Imani.
That’s when I heard it. A creak, not from the bed, but from the floorboards in the hall. Too heavy to be Imani. Someone was in the house. The briefest flicker of hope bloomed in my heart. I managed to bite down on his wrist hard enough to make him grunt and hit me. While he was distracted by his wrist, I took as deep a breath as I could and screamed out, “HELP ME!! RAPIST!!!”
Chester punched me in the face and started choking me. I tried to fight back, but my vision was going dark. I faintly heard someone say to get the door open.
CRASH!!
My door came flying open, the door jam splintering under the force. It was enough noise to wake the whole house. But those four words yelled out afterwards were deliverance incarnate. And when they came, they came out from the shadows.
“US MARINES, US MARINES!!!”
Chester was pulled off of me and I could finally breathe.
“GET OFF OF HER YOU PIECE OF SHIT!!!”
There was the sound of a struggle and screams of pain coming from Chester.
Rescue had finally come for me. All I needed to do now was reach out to them and hope I’m not dreaming because if I am, I wouldn’t be able to take it.
“CORPSMAN, CHECK HER OUT AND GET HER OUT OF HERE!”
As I sucked in great gulps of air, I asked the woman, “Are you real? Am I dreaming?”
All she did was smile at me and nod while wrapping me up in a blanket while another soldier rifled through my dresser for a change of clothes. All I could do was grab onto her and sob. Great heaving sobs of relief as the nightmare finally ended. And through it all, she just held me as all the pain, fear, and despair finally had an outlet to escape.
I was finally free.
0113 Hours: FUBAR
As CPO Forge comforted Sophia and reassured her that they were indeed real, she couldn’t help but notice how thin she felt. Forge made a mental note to get her an MRE into her once they were back at the warehouse. Not only that, but the sheer multitude of scars she has. She couldn’t have been older than 15 but she had more scars than some Raiders and Delta Force members Forge knew. And that was when the universe decided to make things even more complicated.
“Big sister,” a drowsy voice called, “what’s going on? And why are there so many people in our house?”
There at the corner was a little girl, no older than six, clutching what looked to be a plushie of some sort, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Murdock stepped forward and knelt down to reassure her that everything was fine. Bourne had a couple of Marines search the rest of the house but he was rapidly approaching the point where he couldn't let things go anymore. As such he had to make a call, one that may change everything happening right now. NCIS was going to have to get involved a lot sooner than anticipated. He was hoping, along with the Major, they could delay them until they left the city and reported in back at base, but after seeing what was happening, he knew that hope was long gone. And just when things couldn’t get worse, his subordinate came back with a pensive expression on his face.
“Lieutenant, we have a problem,” the marine said.
“What kind of problem?” Bourne asked.
The marine motioned him to follow after him out of the room. After the Marine and Bourne left the room, the marine told Bourne he found the mother dead from an overdose of heroin in the master bedroom. Another marine came up to them and told Bourne that he found a Wards badge in her drawer in her bedroom while getting Sophia a change of clothes. Bourne now had a headache at everything that happened tonight. After learning those tidbits, he decided enough was enough. They were letting the professionals deal with this now. After walking back to where the kids were, he signaled Murdock to take what appeared to be Sophia’s little sister to another part of the house since she didn’t need to hear about the rest of this. After Murdock left with the little girl in tow, he spoke to the rest of his marines there with him.
“Change of plans everyone. We can’t put this off any longer, we’re getting NCIS involved now. Leave everything where you found or left it. Sophia, are there any journals or other bits of evidence you managed to keep track of?” Bourne asked the young girl.
“I made sure to keep a detailed log of his actions ever since he started. I also know where he likes to keep his toys. A couple times, he also brought ‘friends’ with him and I’m pretty sure he recorded it, but I was pretty out of it cause I think they roofied me,” Sophia responded.
“Alright, be sure to write down the locations of those items and whatever names you can remember about his friends,” Bourne said. “We’ll make sure to forward them to NCIS once we radio everything in. I'll go let Murdock know he's on guard duty. Mendez, grab the scumbag and get him ready for transport. Forge, get Sophia changed and ready for transport as well. Everybody else, get ready to report back to the FOB,” Bourne laid out.
There were a round of nods from his men as they got to work. Lance Corporal Mendez grabbed the scumbag from where he was whimpering on the floor and started dragging him out the door after securing his hands with 550 cord and a bag over his head. Chief Petty Officer Forge gently directed Sophia back into her room so she could change into the clothes left on her bed.
Once that was over, he followed Murdock to where he was keeping Sophia's little sister. Once he got there, he waved Murdock over so he could speak with him. After Murdock walked over, he relayed his new orders.
"Murdock you're on guard duty. Choose two other marines to lock this place down. No one goes in or out until NCIS gets here,” Bourne ordered.
“Understood,” Murdock replied.
After rejoining his team and directing Sophia's little sister to her, Murdock picked his two teammates to lock down the house and got to work securing everything for NCIS. Bourne took this opportunity to radio base and make everything known.
“Talon-2 to Hawk-Actual, come in Hawk-Actual,” Bourne said.
“Hawk-Actual here, send traffic,” Major Bragg replied.
“The situation is FUBAR. NCIS needs to be brought in immediately. Primary suspect appears to have been the target of a sustained sexual assault campaign by her stepfather. She called out to us when we came into the house and we caught him in the act and he tried to strangle her to death. Be advised, the primary suspect is a Ward. I recommend we get in contact with a Brigadier General at least to sort this out,” Bourne reported.
“Understood, I’ll report it up the chain,” Major Bragg growled out. “Hawk-Actual out.”
After reporting in, Bourne got on the horn with Thunder-2 for a pick up since their part of the operation went according to plan. Their team had captured Emma with no one the wiser. They were on their way back to the FOB with her and a slew of intel on the bullying and corruption taking place at Winslow. Emma had tried to kick up a fuss, but once they managed to shove a gag in her mouth and physically carried her out the door, her situation seemed to sink in and she kept quiet. As Bourne and his platoon left Murdock and his squad behind to get to the LZ, Bourne could only hope that everything else didn’t spiral out of control. He had a sinking feeling in his gut that said the shitstorm brewing was only just beginning. He hoped he and his men would be able to weather it when it came.
0130 Hours: Reporting In and Prep Work
After Major Bragg got into contact with a Brigadier General and reported their situation, the General agreed with the Major that their situation was untenable and that for the charges to stick, they needed to get the best man they had on it. And the General knew just the man to call.
While the General made the call, Major Bragg had another call to make. And this one was bound to kick off a hornets nest. He got his comms specialists to tune in to the local BBPD police radio network so that he could get in contact with one of the detectives who arrived at Winslow.
"Detective Castle, are you there?" Major Bragg asked.
"Who is this, and how are you on this frequency? This is a secure police channel, and you are potentially in violation of the law," Detective Samantha Castle shot back, sounding quite angry.
“Detective Castle, my name is Major Francis Bragg. I was told you were one of the two detectives that came to Winslow?” Major Bragg asked after the radio call went through to their cruiser, ignoring her tone.
“My apologies Major. That would indeed be me. What can I do for you sir?” Detective Castle asked.
“We hit a snag,” the Major replied.
“Define snag Major,” the detective wondered.
“One of our teams uncovered a lot more than just corruption and bullying. We’re going to have to call NCIS a lot sooner than we initially planned. Also, how deeply penetrated is the local SVU?” Bragg elaborated.
“Major, what the hell did you find?” The detective asked, worried.
“You don’t want to know,” the Major growled.
“Well, shit,” the detective stated. “I’ll let my partner and the forensics guys know so they can prepare a briefing for them when they get here.”
“Much appreciated Detective. Major Bragg out,” Bragg replied before cutting the connection.
Major Bragg was still pissed about what he found out from Team 2. In fact, he was going to handle Chester’s interrogation himself and put the fear of Chesty Puller into that absolute sack of shit. He couldn’t wait.
0135 Hours: Calling in the Calvary
In an apartment on a Marine Corps Base in rural Virginia, there sat a phone. This phone was totally normal and mundane, nothing special from all the others except for one detail. The only thing special about it was its age. Unlike many of the modern phones, this one did not have a screen or even buttons on it. It used an old rotary system to dial numbers.
And it began to ring.
The sharp, harsh mechanical ring of the phone blared through the bedroom. With a surprised groan, it was answered with a man's voice speaking an introduction.
The man sat up in response to something said on the other end of the line. "The Director himself? Why?"
There was a pause before the man's eyes were suddenly wide awake. "Brockton Bay? What happened?" he asked.
The phone buzzed and the man cursed under his breath. "Marine Raiders found evidence of what ?" he asked, tone disbelieving.
Again the phone buzzed. "Christ. Get The Beast ready?" the man asked, referring to a mobile HQ built and permanently attached to a semi-truck trailer.
There was a pause as the Director on the other end of the line replied. "Got it, I'll get my team up there. Should I leave anyone behind? It is Neo-Nazi central.”
A grin spread across the man's face. "Got it, bring the whole crew. FBI?" he asked.
“DEA and IRS are involved too? How deep does this go?" The man asked in response to something, obviously confused.
Then his features turned rock hard, his gaze sharpening. "SVU and a PRT Ward ?" he snarled, voice dripping with fury.
“Yessir, we'll nail the fuckers responsible for this to the wall ." NCIS Supervisory Special Agent Leroy Gibbs growled.
Chapter 7: Execution 3.2
Notes:
I don't know any real interrogation techniques so I just glossed over that stuff, but if anyone does have experience in that field, drop a comment so that I can continue improving this story.
Chapter Text
January 8th, 2011, 0155 Hours: A Call To Arms
A call to arms had been sent out once Agent Gibbs was briefed. Every single member of his team was called in the middle of the night to report for duty, regardless of what they were doing or where they were. At 0155 hours, they were standing by the airstrip in the Quantico Marine Base in rural Virginia. Once there, they saw The Beast being loaded onto a C-5 Galaxy to be ferried with them to Brockton Bay where they would link up with elements of the Marine Raider Company currently using one of the unused warehouses in the city as their impromptu Forward Operating Base.
While they were waiting for everything to be secured, Gibbs was trying, and failing, to enjoy his cup of coffee that one of the flyboys poured for him while making calls to several people he knows in the FBI to make sure nothing is left to chance. He was constantly pacing around the same spot, the pressure needing to bleed off for what may come. The taste of the coffee was atrocious, some nasty instant coffee lovingly called “jet fuel” by the pilots in the Air Force. While Gibbs was choking his coffee down, one of the flyboys came up to tell him they had twenty minutes before take-off. At this point, Gibbs had finished his first round of calls and Ducky decided to make everyone’s thoughts on why the hell they were woken up in the middle of the night known.
“Are you going to tell us why we were woken up in the middle of the night and we are scrambling The Beast as well?” Ducky asked Gibbs.
The answer was given in the most calm, even, mechanical voice Ducky had ever heard come out of Leroy Gibbs’ mouth. It was spine chilling in the amount of wrath it concealed behind his next words.
“Rules 44 and 49 are in effect,” Gibbs replied.
Ducky and the rest of the team, besides Ziva, were shocked into silence. Rules number 44 and 49 were two of the more severe rules to be invoked, and he only invoked them whenever something really bad happened. Those things typically ended up being either terrorist plots or truly despicable acts of crime. Di Nozzo could only groan quietly about finally getting all of his paperwork done from the previous case only to get hit with another, preventing him from getting his deserved sleep. Then, Gibbs surprised Special Agent Ziva David with his next statement.
“Special Agent Ziva, as you know, Brockton Bay is a hotbed of Nazis. The Director himself said that you are cleared to use your own discretion when dealing with potential Nazis,” Gibbs told Ziva, greatly surprising her.
Ziva was stunned at that statement. She thought she was going to be left behind because of her ties to Israel. If they were letting her go to Brockton Bay, then they must already know something major had happened if they needed all hands on deck. But something still confused her.
“What are rules 44 and 49?” Ziva whispered to Ducky.
“Rule 44 states to first hide the women and children. Rule 49 states to take your worst nightmare, and multiply it tenfold,” Ducky told her.
All Ziva could do was nod to her partner in horrified silence. After that short exchange, Gibbs had the rest of his team make their way to the plane that would take them to the heart of the shitshow. It would be a roughly three hour flight from Quantico to Brockton Bay, and Gibbs was going to make sure he used those three hours wisely. Once the plane took off and was making its way to Brockton Bay, told Di Nozzo to start briefing the team while he continued making phone calls, this time to the DEA.
“Di Nozzo, since you already heard a majority of this, you can go ahead and catch everybody up and catch some rest afterwards. Everyone else, look alive,” Gibbs told his team.
“Yesterday, at 2314 hours local time, a Marine Raider Company was using Winslow High School as a live fire training course to practice their CQB and CQC skills inside of a school setting. Instead of proceeding to their target, one of the Lieutenants decided to investigate the source of a truly rotten smell. One of his soldiers, a Master Sergeant Marcus Grayson, found the source of the smell to be a locker with a strange ooze coming out the bottom. As they converged on the locker, the unknown occupant started experiencing a mild seizure, creating a banging noise that reportedly caused a couple of the Marines to jump. Before they could open fire, one of the Navy Corpsmen attached to their company managed to prevent them from opening fire,” said Di Nozzo, trying to keep his gorge down. “Upon opening the locker, they found a 15 year old girl named Taylor Hebert trapped inside of the locker and covered in the filth it housed. After discovering her, they called off the exercise to airlift her to the local hospital where they utilized the parahuman healer Panacea to help treat her injuries, some of which included toxic shock and a couple broken limbs. Analysis from the hospital they airlifted her to found the filth to be biohazardous in nature as it was the rotten and fetid remains of several garbage cans worth of bathroom waste. This waste included used tampons, bathroom pads, blood, contaminated tissues, paper baggies with drug residue in them, and more," Di Nozzo said.
"While enroute to the hospital, Taylor was able to regain consciousness long enough to signal she kept a record of her abuse in the form of a journal somewhere in her house. That journal lines up with several complaints Taylor and several other students filed with the office concerning the behavior of three girls named Sophia Hess, Emma Barnes, and Madison Clements respectively. A team was assembled to successfully retrieve the journals in question. As a thank you from the head of hiring of the local Dock Workers Union, one Danny Hebert, Taylor’s father, directed them to an unused warehouse they could turn into an impromptu Forward Operating Base while they carried out subsequent operations in the city. That will be our new home while we sort out this mess. Now this is where shit really starts hitting the fan. One of the marines onsite at Winslow also found a dozen used needles in one of the bathroom stalls and spoons covered in heroin residue when he had to make a head call. The Marines left before they could be made aware of any further evidence, but I have reason to believe we will be briefed on something truly disgusting once we get to the school. Documents seized by the Marines also point to the fact that Patricia Blackwell, Winslow’s principal, was embezzling money from a federal grant given to her school for housing a PRT Ward onsite. As such the local IRS agent was called in to take a look at the books and will meet us there once we land. While pursuing more evidence to make our jobs easier, the Raiders launched three simultaneous raids on three separate houses. Those houses were the homes of Patricia Blackwell, Sophia Hess, and Emma Barnes. According to on-site analysis, Emma and Sophia were responsible for a long-term bullying campaign that culminated in the attempted murder of Taylor yesterday evening via the locker I told you about, while Blackwell covered for them to keep her embezzling activities hidden,” Di Nozzo briefed the team.
Several members of his team, Abby Sciuto, the team’s forensic analyst, in particular were horrified that something like this was happening. Ducky and Ziva were just about to start yelling in outrage about everything that happened.
Before they could get started however, Gibbs just raised his hand and said, “He’s not done yet,” in that same eerily calm voice, silencing every member of his team.
“While being treated at the hospital by Panacea,” Di Nozzo continued. “Panacea noted that Taylor had undergone a trigger event, and while an MRI would be needed to confirm that status, Taylor was most likely a parahuman. Upon one of the doctors stating they would need to get the PRT involved, CPO Forge, one of the Corpsmen helping treat Taylor, said that if they were to do so, all of the gangs in the city would be after her due to them penetrating or subverting the local PRT branch. Panacea backed them up on this, and since Taylor was discovered on an officially sanctioned training mission, that makes it our job to investigate, not the PRT's. After getting to the hospital and checking his daughter’s condition, one of the Marines attached to her security detail heard Taylor’s father start making calls to what the guard believes to be a building inspector and Fire Marshal to inspect Winslow for possible building code violations. So if you see them, they are just doing their jobs and will probably help us build a case of fraud and negligent endangerment if the neglect is as bad as some suspect," Di Nozzo paused to take a deep breath, preparing for the part of the briefing he dreaded speaking about.
"Anyways, while conducting the aforementioned raids, Raid teams 1 and 3 were able to secure their objectives and complete their missions without much incident. Team 2 on the other hand found something that necessitated them calling us sooner than expected. While attempting to raid Sophia’s house for evidence to pin her to Taylor’s attempted murder, the Marines were heard by Sophia and she called out to them for help. Reportedly, just before the Raiders arrived, Sophia’s step-father Chester had entered her room and began sexually assaulting her for his own twisted amusement. Upon hearing the Marines in her home, Sophia called out for help. Chester then began strangling her to death before he was pulled off her and beaten into submission by the Raider team once they broke the door down. Upon starting treatment on her, her little sister came out of her room and asked what the commotion was. A couple marines were able to calm her down and explain they were there to help Sophia chase off monsters so she could sleep safely. While they were searching her room for a change of clothes and a bag to put her toiletries in and the others secured the rest of the house, one Marine found her PRT Wards badge while another found her mother in her bed, deceased from a heroin overdose. After informing their commanding officer of what they found, the Lieutenant in charge of the team decided to inform the Major in charge of the operations of everything and recommended we be called in. The Major agreed and called a Lieutenant General he knew who called us. The Lieutenant left behind a few men to garrison the crime scene so no one tampered with it and instructed his men to leave everything where they either found it or left it, with the exception of a change of clothes in Sophia and her little sister’s case. Sophia told the Raiders that Chester had friends that he would invite over to also take part in their activities while she was incapacitated and provided a list of names and possible acquaintances, as well as a location as to where Chester kept his ‘toys’. They took Chester into custody for further questioning. Patricia Blackwell had only been ten minutes from their base when they called us in and are probably interrogating her as we speak. Any questions?”
Aside from the roaring of the plane’s engines, the cargo bay was deathly silent. Every member of Gibbs’ team knew what their purpose was and what their mission going forward would be. Nailing everyone responsible for this clusterfuck to the wall, as hard as possible.
0200 Hours: Interrogation Room 1
After getting Patricia Blackwell settled in her new room, the Marine Raiders decided to let her stew in her own fear and shit to help loosen her lips. Inside the room, Patricia Blackwell was shifting between panicking and being apoplectic with fury about her treatment. She had figured that the Marines would come into her school, do their exercise, leave, and no one would be any the wiser to her actions. But no, something had to have gone wrong. That Hebert girl probably had something to do with it. She was a problem ever since she started there, always making up stupid things to get back at the popular kids and crying wolf and getting pissed no one would listen to her. And now, instead of doing their exercise, the Marines woke her up in the middle of the night at gunpoint, dragged her out of her bed, thrown a bag over her head, taken to who knows where, and sat in this room while still in her soiled pajamas like she was just trash to them. Once the person in charge came through that door, Blackwell was going to demand her lawyer and sue them for everything they had.
Blackwell heard a door open and then the bag was ripped off of her head. After letting her eyes adjust to the light, she looked up and saw a muscular black man wearing a patrol cap on the other side of the table she was sitting at. He had a folder in his hands and there was a thunderous expression on his face. Seeing her chance, Blackwell made to start demanding her lawyer.
“I want my lawyer. You had-,” Blackwell began before being cut off.
“Shut up. You won’t be getting a lawyer because these allegations are coming from my beloved United States Marine Corps. My name is Sergeant Major Johnson and I will be your interrogator,” Johnson told the sack of shit in front of him. Johnson didn’t smile, he showed his teeth.
“Let’s get started,” Johnson growled, intimidating Blackwell.
It was at this moment Patricia Blackwell knew, she fucked up.
0245 Hours: FOB Gehenna Breakroom
After a roughly 25 minute flight back to Forward Operating Base Gehenna, and close to an hour of gentle questioning about everything that happened the previous day, CPO Forge showed Sophia and Imani to the makeshift breakroom they had rigged up. A couple of Raiders were already inside and relaxing after the whirlwind of events that took place in the last few hours. After sitting Sophia and Imani down in the makeshift break room, the first thing that CPO Forge did was get a couple MRE’s into the two girls.
“Alright you two, I have a few MRE’s for you to choose from. I have beef pot roast with vegetables, a vegetarian pasta with sauce, Chili-Mac, and a few other options for you to choose from,” Forge told Sophia after she threw out the veggie omelet meal she found.
“As long as it doesn’t have pork, I’m ok with anything,” Sophia told her while reaching for the veggie pasta option. Imani had already chosen the Chili-Mac meal, correctly guessing it was the best one of the bunch.
“If you don’t mind me asking, why is that?” Forge asked Sophia.
“I’m Muslim. I’m not a very good Muslim, but I still try to hold to the tenets when I can,” Sophia replied.
“How do I eat this?” Imani asked.
As CPO Forge walked Imani through how to set up and eat an MRE, she gently asked Sophia about herself, the part of town she lived in, and how she got her scars. Forge did this in an effort to take Sophia’s mind off of the interrogation she just went through. Sophia was happy to tell them a little bit about herself, even speaking in Swahili to Imani to get her to sit down and listen to the nice Chief Petty Officer. She told them about Little Kenya, the small neighborhood market she shopped at to get ingredients for some of the dishes she made at home. Sophia also talked a little bit about her tenure as a vigilante before being picked up by the PRT.
That is when things decided to go down the drain. Due to space, number of usable rooms, and furniture constraints, the breakroom was set up near the interrogation rooms where several interrogations were being carried out. As such, it was pretty easy to listen in when the interrogations got pretty loud. Such as when Sergeant Major Johnson started thundering about Blackwell trying to get out of the consequences of her actions.
“ARE YOU SERIOUSLY TRYING TO BRIBE A NON-COMISSIONED OFFICER OF THE UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS WITH YOUR STOLEN MONEY??!! AND AFTER YOU ADMITTED TO COVERING UP ALL OF SOPHIA’S BAD BEHAVIOR WITH HELP FROM HER HANDLER AND CASEWORKER JUST SO YOU THREE COULD CONTINUE EMBEZZLING MORE MONEY!! DESPITE KNOWING FULL WELL SHE WAS BEING RAPED IN HER OWN HOME!!????!! NO, IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO LEARN YOUR ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES!!!! YOU WILL TELL ME THE NAMES OF YOUR ACCOMPLICES OR SO HELP ME CHESTY PULLER, YOU WILL NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY AGAIN!!!!” Sergeant Major Johnson roared at Patricia Blackwell.
Once Sophia heard that Blackwell knew about her home situation and didn’t do anything, she started crying again. Forge, Smith, and Imani quickly swept her up into a warm hug with a few of the Marines also in the breakroom trying to think up ways to comfort Sophia without being creepy. But one thing was certain in everyone’s minds. And that this night was going to get a lot more complicated before they could rotate out with another Marine company once NCIS showed up.
0510: Touchdown and Briefing
Three hours after lift-off, the C-5 Galaxy responsible for ferrying The Beast and NCIS’s premier investigative unit touched down in Brockton Bay’s regional airport. Considering they were on a federal mandate to get there as quickly as possible, the runway and surrounding airspace had been cleared for them to land ahead of time. Fifteen minutes into the trip, a flight of six F/A-18 fighter jets had taken up an escort position around the C-5 to make sure any villainous, civilian, or even heroically aligned flights didn’t interfere with their trip. Three times the F/A-18’s had to threaten to shoot down flyers and Tinkers alike to keep them from interfering in the C-5’s flight path. One of those times they nearly shot down a villainous flyer trying to investigate the commotion in their airspace before they changed their mind once they saw the fighter jets and heard one of the pilots over their radio start counting down until they fired off a missile. Despite the little bits of excitement, the ride was mainly pretty boring so Ducky and the rest of his team took the time to catch a few hours of sleep while they could. Agent Gibbs stayed awake the entire trip and finished calling in markers and favors at about the halfway point in their journey before he started reading a book he packed for the flight over. Once they felt the cargo plane start to descend, everyone woke up and got ready to disembark. Once the C-5 was wheeled over to a secure hangar for unloading, that was when their fighter jet escort turned around and headed back to their base for refueling and maintenance. After the C-5 was secured, Gibbs turned to his team and said four words they already knew would come out of his mouth.
“Let’s get to work.”
His team nodded and grabbed what they needed. They had a job to do and they knew they would do the best job possible, regardless of the consequences it may have.
After disembarking from the C-5, Gibbs and his team noticed the formation of Raiders escorting two young girls. Ducky could guess they were both Sophia and Imani Hess from how protective their guard detail was being. The Master Sergeant in charge snapped to attention upon seeing them and the rest of his platoon followed suit.
"Agent Gibbs, my name is Master Sergeant Greyson. Major Bragg placed me in charge of briefing you of what has happened and escorting these two young girls back to Quantico," Greyson told Agent Gibbs.
"What have you managed to figure out so far Master Sergeant?" Gibbs asked.
"It's an honest to God clusterfuck, sir," Greyson told Gibbs.
Chapter 8: Exfiltration 4.1
Chapter Text
Flashback; January 8th, 2011, 0345 Hours: FOB Gehenna
While waiting for the NCIS teams to get to Brockton Bay, a group of 5 lance corporals and corporals gathered together to talk about a heartbreaking sight. While talking they decided they needed to find a way to help fix it in the only way they knew how: a raid.
“Alright, we gotta do something for Sophia. She’s stopped crying, but she’s just been sitting in her chair with a thousand yard stare while holding her sister. She’s practically catatonic. It’s heartbreaking seeing it on her face,” a lance corporal said while whispering to some of his buddies in the breakroom corner.
“I know the NCIS team will be here soon, but we should probably do something to get her out of her funk soon. Once NCIS gets here, we’re taking her to Quantico and getting her to a SHARP representative, ASAP,” another lance corporal said in agreement while nodding. “Anyone got any ideas on how to snap her out of her funk and cheer her up?”
“If we can find a convenience store, they might have snacks and stuff we could buy,” one of the corporals said.
“Gas stations would be better. They have candy bars and snacks, as well as beer. Maybe that oughta take her mind off of the revelations from tonight. Not to mention being open 24/7,” another lance corporal suggested thoughtfully.
“Dude, she’s Muslim. She doesn’t drink on principle, and besides, she’s only about 15 years old. Not to mention a rape victim as well. She’s probably had a bad experience with any type of inebriation. W-What about chocolate? Kids like chocolate bars right?” A corporal leaning against the wall asked while spreading his arms questioningly.
“Gonna have to be careful about that. Some candy bars have nuts in them and we don’t know if she has a nut allergy,” a lance corporal points out while sitting on a field stool he packed.
“What about ice cream? I mean, you can’t exactly go wrong with ice cream, right?” The first corporal asked.
“Some ice creams use pig fat in the production phases and Muslims don’t eat pork products. If we want to get her ice cream, it’ll have to be the fancy Italian stuff or non-dairy ice cream like sorbet,” the leaning corporal said.
“Ok, we can work with that. But where are we going to find gelato at this time of night? Gas stations may be open 24/7, but their selections of ice cream are typically limited to what can be easily eaten in a car. A convenience store may be closed, but they also have a larger selection. Not to mention the fact that this area isn’t exactly that affluent,” the sitting corporal pointed out to the group.
“Don’t gas stations typically sell those little containers of frozen lemonade? It may not be the good stuff, but it could work in a pinch.”
“That could work. Also, I remember seeing some brand of ice cream cone being kosher. I’ll look it up to make sure and see if it is popular. If it is, we can grab that as well. Alright, now the next problem is finding a gas station that is still open in this area with the things we need.”
“Let’s get to work.”
0415 Hours: Inside a 7/11 Gas Station
Three men in dark hoodies walked into a 7/11 gas station. The store wasn’t exactly deserted due to the early risers coming through to pick up some last minute things before heading to work. The men in hoodies spread out to cover the store where they could while trying to act natural. One of the men picked up some snacks before getting in line to get his items rang up. One of his partners walked up to the cold section and started pretending to debate getting one of the energy drinks on offer. The other hoodie wearing man made his way to the hot food section and started looking over the choices on offer.
Once the first man got to the register is when their plan kicked into gear. After putting his purchases on the counter, he pulled the gun out of his waistband and pointed it at the clerk in a threatening manner.
“OPEN THE REGISTER AND PUT ALL THE MONEY IN THE BAG!!” the robber screamed in the clerk’s face.
Elsewhere in the store, his buddies leapt into action. Pulling concealed weapons from their clothes, they waved them in the air and started rounding up all of the shoppers.
“EVERYBODY ON THE GROUND NOW!!! THIS IS A ROBBERY!!” one of the robbers screamed out.
As the people in the store quickly complied, the robbers couldn’t help but feel that their plan was going to go off perfectly.
Unknown to them, their getaway driver noticed a group of five men approaching the store with what looked like military spec gear. He had noticed them when he was pulling in after dropping his buddies off a couple blocks away trying to take off some of their gear by the gas station sign, but upon seeing the commotion inside the store, they put their gear back on and got ready to intervene. Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, the getaway driver sped away in an attempt to not draw attention to himself by looking like an innocent bystander was fleeing from the robbery all the while sweating bullets. After successfully driving away from the robbery without being stopped, the would-be getaway driver couldn’t help but breathe a little easier.
While the store clerk was slowly filling the plastic bag full of money in the store, the robbers were starting to get a little antsy. Thinking he could scare the clerk to go faster, the robber fired a bullet into the ceiling. This is when everything started to go wrong for the robbers and what heralded it was the sound of the entrance bell dinging pleasantly
One of the robbers looked over to where the doors were after the bell rang upon being opened. As soon as he saw them, he knew he was in deep shit. Five men in urban camo flowed into the store with their guns up and ready to fire. Just when he thought it couldn’t get any worse, three of them opened their mouths and started yelling at nearly the same time.
“US MARINES!! LET ME SEE YOUR HANDS!!”
“YOU!! DROP THE WEAPON!!! NOW!!”
“DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT, ASSHOLE!! KISS THE FUCKING FLOOR!!”
All three of the robbers went white once they heard the words “US Marines” come out of the men’s mouths. They immediately tossed their guns away from them and surrendered immediately. They had not planned on being caught until after they made their getaway, if at all. As they started kneeling down and complied with the soldiers, they knew their night couldn’t get any worse.
The clerk on the other hand was relieved and a bit surprised by the fact the Marines answered the call and not the cops. Once the Marines had all of the perps rounded up and secured, one of the Corporals got in touch with his Sergeant to relay the situation and look for a small cooler while two more raided the cold and snack section looking for the frozen lemonade, ice cream cones, and other snacks while the last two kept an eye on the would-be robbers.
“Claw-1 to base, come in, base,” Corporal Halsey reported over comms.
“This is Staff Sergeant Ramirez, what do you need, Claw-1?” Ramirez replied.
“Hey staff sergeant, we kinda got into some trouble,” the Corporal relayed back to his superior.
“Corporal, what exactly did you and your teammates do this time?” the Staff Sergeant groaned.
“We wanted to help cheer Sophia up, so we came up with a plan to get her some frozen lemonade, ice cream, and other snacks for the flight to Quantico.”
“And what exactly went wrong with this plan?”
“Well, the gas station we chose to pick the stuff up from also ended up getting robbed before we finished taking off and stowing our gear. As such, we ended up stopping the robbery and apprehending the robbers.”
The corporal could hear his staff sergeant groan over comms. He could already see his superior rubbing his face in stress and heard him mutter something like ‘this fucking city’ under his breath. A couple seconds later, the corporal heard his staff sergeant come back across the comms.
“Are the robbers secure?”
“We have them detained right now. I’ll have one of my teammates watch over them until the cops get here and provide a statement. We’ll try not to get mixed in anything else on the way back to base.”
“You had better not. JAG is going to be all over us as it is, we don’t need anyone playing vigilante as well.”
“Understood sir. We’ll be on our way back soon.”
“Understood, corporal. Base out.”
After his brief report to his Staff Sergeant, Halsey resumed searching for a small cooler that could fit on an airplane. After a couple minutes of looking, he found a nice, navy blue soft cooler that looked like it would work. After grabbing it and seeing his teammates having found the ice cream, frozen lemonade, and a selection of snacks for the flight to Quantico, Halsey made his way to the cash register to buy everything.
Once he got to the counter, he placed everything before the clerk so that he could ring everything up. Halsey could tell that the clerk was a little nervous with everything that happened and so sought to ease his nerves.
“Don’t worry, just ring everything up and we’ll be out of your hair before long. Can you also include a bag of ice in the total? That would be greatly appreciated. Also, my teammate will keep an eye on the robbers until the police get here. After giving them a statement, he’ll head back to our FOB. That all right?”
The clerk stared at him for a few seconds before shrugging and muttering something under his breath. After this, the clerk started to ring up everything that was placed on his counter. Counting the time since the attempted robbery, only about ten minutes had passed since the Marines arrived. After ringing everything up, the clerk told the Marine what the total was.
“And everything totaled up will be $102.39. Would you like to pay with cash or card?” the clerk said.
“Cash,” the marine replied, pulling out his wallet.
After paying the clerk and getting a receipt, the marine rounded up the rest of his men and walked out of the store. He grabbed a bag of ice from the box outside the store and dumped a good portion into the cooler. After filling the cooler with ice and the assorted snacks an d ice cream, the marine troop took off at a fast jog back to Camp Gehenna.
0433 Hours: Camp Gehenna
After getting back to Camp Gehenna, the Marines made a quick stop to give Sophia their gift. It was decided on the way back that Corporal Richard Elrod would be the one to make the delivery as he was among the more friendly and empathetic members of the unit.
As he made his way to the break room, he saw Sophia. She was still sitting in the same chair from when he and his team left, holding her sister. She was still staring into space, but she had started stroking her sister’s hair sometime in the near past. Elrod could see that Sophia was slowly getting better, but it looked like it was slow going. That’s why he was chosen to comfort her with frozen treats and snacks. After walking up to her, he made sure to set the cooler on the table with some noise in order to give her a little shock to get her aware of things again.
THUNK
“Hey Sophia, me and the guys noticed you were a little out of it. So we decided to get you something for the flight to Quantico,” Elrod told the girl.
After saying that, he opened up the cooler and started pulling snacks out of it.
“We got you your standard beef jerky, chips, candy bars, soda, and energy drinks if you need them. But we also got you something that I think you will love. Ice cream. Don’t worry, we checked and it is kosher. Here Sophia, have one,” Elrod told her after putting the cold treat against her cheek.
Sophia flinched away from the cold and turned to see what caused it. After turning and seeing the sealed package, she took it and opened it. Elrod smiled and handed another to Imani who opened it without hesitation and began eagerly eating it. Sophia carefully opened it and took a bite. It was cold, chocolatey, and tasted like hope. If being rescued felt like the end of a nightmare, then this was the beginning of a new dream.
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