A Legacy left Behind - Initial encounters

Part 2

Without much conscious thought, he emptied the clip in his hand gun into the crawling mess and watched it explode into a thousand tiny, fleshy, bloody pieces with detachment. And with that, he felt the strange awareness that held him captive and his senses overly sharpened, slowly drifting away into the deep confines of his mind again.

He felt consciousness waving in and out as he struggled to remain upright. He had to fight the urge to lay down next to the horrors he had just killed. Adrenaline and whatever extra boost his body had been riding had gone down to zero. The killer headache he was sporting felt like his brain was trying to eject through his ears and nose. Absently wiping his face, he noted that he had a nose bleed as well.

His mind was trying to tell him about a downed Black Hawk in bits and pieces while his weary body was clumsily dragging its' way back to where he landed. He could hardly recall how he made it back and how he ended up meeting the not-so-welcoming committee of four pissed-off SEALs. He remembered the relief at realizing that he actually knew one of them. Before that relief had time to settle, he was roughly being dragged, efficiently disarmed and tied up. And the supposedly friendly face of one Steve McGarrett was thrust close to his, screaming at him for leaving his people behind.

His exhausted mind was making a valiant effort trying to understand the accusations and alarming amount of fire now consuming the two Hawks, but was failing miserably. He hadn't even registered any explosions.

He remembered giving up coherent thought just before he was hauled into the back of a Humvee.

..........

John knew that all this had come to pass some time ago and he was sort of reviewing the whole thing from a safe and comfortable place, though he didn't know exactly where. He had a feeling that this was serving some sort of an educational purpose; how to fight this particular nightmare version of bad guys and remember how to resist their apparently evil telepathic powers. John was able to appreciate the whole thing in an academic sort of way thanks to the comfortable and companionable presence that was still surrounding him in a warm cocoon. It was keeping the pain away as well. The pain he knew that was lurking there at the edge, courtesy of the hellish five or so days he spent at the base under torture.

Yeah, those clowns had shown up before his ass hit the door of his prison cell on the way in. He suspected a classified branch of military or maybe even the Firm. They had started friendly enough in the beginning, and steadily gone downhill from there, resorting to outright torture when John had not being forthcoming with information. Their questions were too canny and pointed, as if they knew a whole lot more about the crazy, evil, stinky aliens. And John, to his own detriment, had a very strong feeling, almost a compulsion not to reveal anything of what happened. After what he survived, he had a healthy respect for whatever it was, that had awakened in him. So he kept giving them the name, rank and serial number routine until they lost patience with him.

Now here he was, wherever he was. But he knew without a shred of doubt that he was wanted, even needed here. He was welcome here, in fact he was home; the warmth insisted. It was a nice feeling, John decided. Not something he'd had even at home before he left to join the Air Force to his father's great displeasure. So he allowed himself to burrow into the offered comfort and drift away for a while, trusting that he would be brought back when it was time.

Central Command

Terra Atlantus

Antarctica

Carson was annoyed. Make that supremely annoyed. Why couldn't the impatient bugger wait for a couple more days? He had already been waiting for just over twelve days, hadn't he? What difference one or two more days could possibly make?