xp_logs | Trojan Horse, part six - Cable

Nathan is brought before the Mistra directors while they decide how to handle his re-entry into the program.

"Sit down."

He nodded and took the chair indicated, staring at the floor in front of him. No point in looking up and at the table. The directors were backlit, their faces indistinguishable, and he didn't need to see them, anyway. They were there and he was here and that was all that mattered.

"So, Nathan." A hearty voice. Older, male. Very familiar. "It's been a long time."

"Yes, sir," he said quietly. Stick to direct answers. No hesitation, no equivocation. He knew the drill.

"How are you feeling?" Female voice, this time. Much cooler.

"Acceptable." His injuries were minor, and the drugs were gradually working their way out of his system. His head hurt, one place in his mind in particular... no, not going there, notgoingthere... but it wasn't incapacitating. That was all that mattered. His operational status. Priorities, priorities.

"You've put us to a considerable amount of trouble, Cable," a third voice, male, much colder, said.

There it was. It didn't feel as strange to hear them call him that as he'd thought. In fact, it almost felt right. "Yes, sir."

"Why?"

Strange question. Didn't they know? Or were they curious about what he saw as his motivations? He thought about it for a moment. "My conditioning was damaged, sir," he said. Stick to practicalities. "After the mission in China. The deaths of my team."

A long, long silence.

"Do you blame us for that?" A fourth voice. There would be two others he hadn't heard yet, he knew. They would stay silent unless something very unusual happened in this meeting. Silent and watching. Deciding whether he lived or died. It was always that way.

"No, ma'am. I blame the enemy, ma'am."

"Then why did you run?" She sounded angry.

Angry and betrayed. "I was... confused, ma'am."

"I don't believe you, soldier."

"Enough." The third voice again, the cold one. "'Why' is immaterial. I'm still in support of punitive measures."

Punitive measures. Didn't they know? The conditioning teams had taken care of that already.

"That is hardly productive," the first voice protested. "Spend all this time and effort to get him back and then waste time punishing him? Put him to work."

First, what was left of the psi-link. They'd warped the remnants of it, turned it around so that it fed back on him. All the pain, all the loss, ricocheting back at him anytime he tried to reach out. To teach you that you don't have any ties outside of us, one of the telepaths had said smugly. The other had just laughed.

"I'm not in support of that," the second voice said suddenly. "Not until he's been assessed more fully. I don't think--"

Then, they had left him just enough room, a small space beyond the ice-cold hardness of the conditioning, where he knew what was happening. Where he remembered what it had been like to be free of it, even in part.

He wasn't afraid of what other punitive measures they might come up with. They could hardly do anything worse.

"The field operatives already know he's here," the first voice insisted. "We could hardly order the team that brought him back to keep their mouths shut. Do you really want to keep him out of the mix for any longer than necessary? Why did we retrieve him, if not for this?"

"True enough," the second voice conceded. "I still advise caution, though. He broke his obedience compulsions once--"

"Under critical levels of emotional stress," the first voice pointed out. "Caused by a situation that could have been avoided."

"Let's leave that argument seven years in the past, shall we?"

"Just making a point. I'm not saying don't give him time to acclimate. In fact, I support keeping him out of the field for at least the next several weeks. But we need to get him out there among the other operatives, interacting with them. We need considerably less dysfunction in their internal social structure if we want them to start operating at peak again."

"A lot of responsibility to put upon the shoulders of a newly reclaimed operative," the fourth voice pointed out. "Are you up to it, Cable?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said dully. Knowing there was no other answer. "Whatever you need."

"Well!" The first voice sounded hearty again. "Why don't we let our field leader get about reintroducing himself to the troops, then?"

No disagreement from anyone, even the silent two. The guards came forward to escort him out, and Nathan--Cable followed silently. Guess this meant he lived, then.

Pity.