"First Lieutenant Havoc, anything to report?" Colonel Riza Hawkeye said sharply.
"Nothing, sir!" First Lieutenant Havoc answered.
"Dammit, where the Hell are they?" Hawkeye muttered to herself, putting her head in her hand. She was leaning heavily on her desk in her comfortable chair. Since General Roy Mustang and First Lieutenant Edward Elric had disappeared over two weeks ago, without so much as a trace, she'd been working her ass off leading the investigation to find them. So far they'd turned up nothing except for a few alleged sightings at places like grocery stores and on one occasion, there was a report of a man matching Mustang's description sighted on the outside's of Central City, a few kilometers away from the forest. She had sent men to check out each reported sighting, but they'd found diddly squat. It was becoming frustrating, because Riza had absolutely no clue as to where to look for them. Edward wouldn't surprise her so much if it was just Edward that was missing, the youth had been known to disappear for weeks at a time without telling anybody, and then show up randomly a while later. But thee fact that he'd disappeared with Roy was what really worried her. She'd never known Roy to just up and leave without telling anyone, and she'd known him for the better part of her life. There were no secrets between them, she told him everything and he told her everything, that was just the way their relationship was, even if it wasn't a romantic relationship like she'd always wanted - the anti-frat laws forbade such an intimacy between colleges - they'd never hidden things from one another. She trusted him with her life, and she knew he trusted her with his. He had said so himself. She remembered now what he'd said to her when she'd first come under his command.
'I'm trusting you with my back, Lieutenant. And if I ever stray from this path, I'm trusting you to shoot me.'
Riza hoped that whatever Roy was doing now, she wouldn't have to keep that promise. Although, from the evidence they'd gathered, she knew it was more than likely that she would have to follow through.
She was getting a bad feeling about this. A really, really bad feeling.
She sighed. "Second Lieutenant Fuery?"
"Yes, sir?" Fuery's childlike voice rang out.
"Have there been any more reports, any more sightings?"
"Not yet sir, but I'm sure something will turn up." He said sadly.
"I certainly hope so. Major Breda, could you please try one more time to track down Mustang's car? We know it's gone from his home and it has to be somewhere. I know you've already tried but right now it's the strongest lead we have. Please Breda."
"No problem, Colonel." Breda said with forced enthusiasm, saluting and leaving the office.
"Havoc, could you please look over the case file, see if there's anything we missed." She asked tiredly, her head still in her hands.
"Sure thing, Hawkeye." Havoc said, falling into his chair and pulling the case file from his desk drawer, his eyes moving from left to right as he scanned the documents.
Another familiar wave of dread spread through the tired Colonel as she was once again lost as to what to do. They'd gone through every possible procedure to find them, sent squadrons of men across the country to search for the missing General and his Lieutenant, but nothing had turned up. When the decision had been made to do a thorough investigation of Mustang's house, they'd found some truly disturbing things. Well, not so much things as thing. When they'd swept the house, Riza herself had searched Mustang's room top to bottom, and found nothing that could hint to whereabouts of the man she loved with all her heart. Havoc had searched Edward's room, and he'd been in there for a full three seconds when he'd shouted for her at the top of his lungs. She'd almost vomited when she saw the ugly state Ed's room was in.
There was blood everywhere. Soaked into the carpet, spattered on the walls, the inside of the door, there were ever splats of it on the furniture and on the boards of the bed. She drew in a sharp breath and slowly walked further into the room. There was so much blood, too much blood, so much that if it had all been spilled at once, which surely it had to have been, then Edward was most assuredly dead. Surely this had happened recently? It had to have. She knelt down next to the largest dried-up puddle of blood and examined it for a few moments. Ed and Roy had only been missing for three days, but this blood had been spilled three or four weeks ago. How could this have happened? She walked over to the splats on Edward's clothes drawers. At least a month. She repeated her actions with every little bit of blood she could see, and each section yielded similar results.
"H-Havoc?" She said, her voice shaking slightly.
"Yeah?" He responded, sounding a bit sick.
"All of this blood, all of it, it's between three weeks to two months old. None of it is even close to recent. What the Hell happened here?" She said.
"I don't know, Colonel. Hey, I don't know if this will help, but the blood might not even be Edward's. We might have to run a DNA test to be sure." He suggested.
"Havoc, that technology is new and faulty, it can't be trusted. No, I think this is definitely Edward's blood." She insisted, not because she couldn't think of another explanation, but for a more logic-less reason. She had looked after Edward for three months almost, and she had come to regard the child as a son. Without knowing, she just knew that this blood belonged to Edward. She just knew. "At least the age of the blood is varied, some, it means it was spilled over time. He shouldn't have died from this, at least, I hope not. But who would do such a thing? And how would they manage it without Roy knowing?" She asked, more to herself than to Havoc.
"Uh, Hawkeye?" The First Lieutenant said slowly.
"Yes?"
"Look at this." He motioned her to come to where he was kneeling, and when she had, he pointed to something on the floor. A closer inspection revealed it to be a fair sized section of singed carpet, something she hadn't noticed before. She frowned.
"What do you think?" She asked.
"I think my recent suspicions have just been confirmed. At least, they're as good as." He replied.
"What suspicions are you talking about, Havoc? And why haven't you voiced them?" She demanded.
"A while ago, I noticed that Edward wasn't acting like himself. He was flinching at everything, noises, movement, other people. It was so weird, because it was just so out of character for him. I asked him about it but he bluntly refused to tell me. But there was something else I noticed. Since he moved in with Mustang-"
"He's been limping." Riza finished. "I know, Fuery told me that he'd noticed it too, but he wasn't sure what to make of it. He was also too afraid to confront the General about it, in case he was thinking along the wrong lines."
"Yeah, well, if his thoughts were following the same path as mine, then he was definitely not wrong. When I confronted Mustang about what was wrong with Edward, his behavior changed completely. He went from casual and relaxed to dark and guarded the second I mentioned Edward's name. At the time I thought it was just because he was worried about Edward, but now I think it was because he was worried Edward ratted him out about what he had been doing."
"Havoc, what on earth are you even suggesting?" Riza ordered.
"What I'm saying, sir, is I think it was Mustang that was hurting Edward. You remember that day Ed fell out of the tree?" He asked suddenly.
"Yeah...I do, why?" She asked slowly.
"Can you tell me what you remember from that day? Everything concerning Edward and Mustang." She asked.
"Well..." She said, thinking. "Edward left early in the morning to go for a walk. Twenty minutes later, Mustang went out to get groceries...oh, wait, Mustang never brought any back..." She trailed off, her brow knitting into a frown, trying to remember what happened concerning Edward next. " A few hours later Edward came bursting through the door, bloody...I patched him up and I was almost done when Mustang got back. He was drenched. Why?"
"How did Edward react when Mustang got back? Was there any noticeable change in his behavior?" Havoc pressed.
"Well..." Riza thought back, frowning as she realized the answer to the Lieutenant's question. "Actually, I think he did seem a lot more tense than he had been from when I went to open the door for the General and when we got back. He seemed more...guarded. But I didn't notice at the time..."
"I think we just figured out why, Colonel. Mustang's the one who's been hurting Edward all of this time." Havoc concluded sadly.
"Havoc...but...It just can't be true." Riza sputtered, unbelieving despite the evidence. "...The General-"
"Riza!" Havoc cut in, beginning to sound furious. "I don't want to believe it any more than you do, but Goddammit, this entire mess just proves it! And I'm willing to bet that wherever we find them, Edward is going to be worse for wear than we'd like him to be! You can't waste anymore time wallowing in your self-pity! I know you love the man but the evidence is overwhelming! Whatever he was when we started following him, that man is long gone! We have to devote all of our energy to finding them, whatever they're doing! Now let's go!"
Riza swallowed back bile that had begun to rise in her throat, blinked back tears at Havoc's harsh -but painfully true- words, and saluted, despite the fact that she was the current officer in command. "Yes sir!" She said, and forced her mask of calm back over herself. She'd momentarily lost it, and she couldn't afford to do that now. She had to find Edward, and she had to find Mustang.
"Colonel Hawkeye!" Fuery suddenly called, breaking her out of her memories. She lifted her head and studied the young man for a moment, taking in his messed black hair, his round glasses that were slightly crooked, the tired bags under his eyes. He looked every bit as exhausted as she felt right about now. He was holding two fingers over one of the dials on the radio (the one Edward had fixed alchemically for him, so many long years ago, she remembered). He was also holding the headphones over his ears, one side pushed back behind his ear with his other had so that he could talk to Hawkeye. It occurred to her that she had been sitting silent for a few beats too long, and she quickly shook her head to regain her clarity.
"Yes, Second Lieutenant?" She asked, her voice sounding surprisingly intrigued despite her attempts to keep it passive. She couldn't help it, because Fuery's tone of voice sounded like something promising was coming.
"I've just received a report of alleged screaming noises, though barely perceptible, coming from the old abandoned warehouse district from an elderly woman who lives in the area. She says she's been hearing the noise for roughly two weeks, but she hasn't been able to identify the sound properly until a few minutes ago, when the noise was particularly loud. Her report matches the time frame of Ed and Roy's disappearance, so it could be them...?" He finished, sounding hopeful.
"Let's check it out!" Hawkeye said immediately.
"Wait Riza." She heard Havoc say.
"Yes, Lieutenant Havoc?" She asked.
"I don't think we should rush in there just yet. For all we know it might just be coincidence. It might not even be screaming the old geezer is hearing, could just be some cat stuck in a wall or something. While I admit and agree that this could be it, we don't want to go rushing in there, unprepared and with our hopes up, only to find something else."
Everyone let Havoc's words sink in for a moment, and, conceding that he was most likely right, as Jean Havoc usually was in these situations, both Kain Fuery and Riza Hawkeye nodded their agreement, Kain then asking nervously what Jean proposed they do before Hawkeye got the chance to.
"I propose that we send in one or two men who are skilled at stealth to go in and take stock of the situation. If it's another false lead, then there shouldn't be a problem. Who knows, though, maybe the woman was hearing screaming, but all the same, it still might not even be Edward." Riza couldn't help but noticed how Havoc intentionally neglected to mention Mustang. "It might be something even bigger for all we know, could be some sort of smuggling ring or something for all we know. We need more intelligence on this before we charge in full force. I know a couple of good men who know how to keep secrets. They actually happen to fall under Armstrong's command, so I'm sure he won't mind if I borrow them for a little bit. I'll send them in to gather some intel. on the situation and report back to us. If it's nothing, we keep looking. If it's something really big, then we can hand it over to someone else, someone that doesn't have completely full plate right now, like Captain Maria Ross. She's got command of a huge amount of officers now, she'll be able to handle it."
"Captain? Isn't Ross a First Lieutenant?" Fuery asked.
"Was." Havoc said, just a tad bit bitterly. "She was promoted a few weeks ago. She'll be able to handle it if it's something that's just gonna get in our way."
"And if it is Mustang?" Riza asked, trying to keep her voice neutral.
"If it's Ed, we find out from the guys I send in as much as we can about where exactly they are and what's happening, and go from there."
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"Warrant Officer Molina! Staff Sergeant Thurber!" First Lieutenant Havoc, said, and Molina saluted respectfully, seeing through her peripheral vision that her partner, Jack Thurber, saluted at the same moment that she did.
"Yes, sir!" They both said in unison.
"I have a mission for you both. It requires extreme stealth and covertness, which is why Major Armstrong has recommended you two for the job." He said.
"What is the mission, sir?" Molina asked, allowing only the tiniest hint of curiosity to enter her voice.
"It requires you and Warrant Officer Thurber to investigate the old abandoned warehouse district. There has been a report of screaming sounds coming from the place, and we need to know if this report had any accuracy to it. We believe it's possible that it is connected to our own case, but we need to know for certain what's going on before we go in." Havoc explained.
"What are our orders, sir?" Thurber asked.
"You are to covertly inspect each and every warehouse in the district, but make sure that not a single soul sees you. It's very important that no one knows what you are doing, as we don't know exactly what we're dealing with here. It could be dangerous or it could just be nothing. You will both be sent in with small radios so that you can contact us if need be. For your own safety we won't try to contact you unless you contact us first. But before you try to, should the need arise, make sure you are not within earshot of anyone you may have found. And if you happen to come across Roy Mustang, I am ordering you to shoot to kill, do you understand?" Havoc ordered them.
"General Mustang? But why would we shoot him?" Thurber exclaimed. Molina elbowed him sharply, and he amended himself. "I'm sorry, sir, I didn't intend to be disrespectful. But, if it is all right for me to ask, is there a reason you want us to shoot your Commanding Officer?"
"I'm afraid I cannot divulge that information, Warrant Officer, is it is part of the case I'm currently investigating, but I can tell you that I know for a fact that he's done things lately that would have him Court-Martialled, and that he's become a terrible person. I am ordering you not to repeat this information, and I trust you not to. Now, if you could begin your investigation tonight, under the cover of darkness, that would be better suited to you, I think you'll find. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get going. And remember, you can't tell anyone where you're going. That order comes down from Colonel Riza Hawkeye herself." Molina stiffened at mention of the fabled Hawk's Eye, her personal idol, and resolved to herself that she would not tell a soul.
"Yes, sir!" She said enthusiastically, looking forward to tonight's mission.
As Havoc walked away, back to the office, Molina and Thurber both went back to their own assigned offices to prepare for tonight's mission. After cleaning and restocking the ammunition for their guns, consulting a map of the area so that they knew exactly where each building was and how to navigate each one, and finally, made sure they were well rested for their assignment.
That night, under the cover of darkness, as Havoc had suggested, they quietly crept into the first warehouse of twelve.
The air around the entire district was spooky, heavy, wrong. Molina felt it as soon as she stepped onto the premises, and couldn't suppress a shudder that had nothing to do with the nighttime cold. And judging by the tremor that went through Thurber, she knew he could feel how wrong it felt as well. They navigated their way through the maze of buildings until they came to the first warehouse. Molina was aware of a background noise, something that sounded suspiciously like screaming to her senses. She wanted to go check it out, right then and their, but her strict orders were to investigate all the warehouses, so that's exactly what they were going to do. Starting with this one; Warehouse Number One.
As they drew closer to it, it seemed to loom up high above them, right into the sky. There seemed to be much more shadows in this place than strictly possible, but there they were. Molina motioned for Thurber to pull out his torch, and simultaneously they clicked them on and pulled open the door of the warehouse. Inside seemed to be mountains upon mountains of cardboard boxes. The did a quick sweep of the warehouse to make sure there was nobody inside, and then they both began to check a few of the boxes. Everything they checked contained nothing but old documents that, judging by the yellowed paper and, more importantly, the dates, were several decades or even centuries old, some of them dating back to the founding of the country. After checking a few more boxes and making sure there was nothing in the cold building but paperwork, Molina and Thurber left and went on to check the second warehouse.
This one was even colder, and contained what appeared to be bombs, grenades, cannons, all war tools that made Molina very nervous to be near. It made her even more nervous that the military was actually holding all of these things so close to civilians. If all of this were to go off, Central City would be nothing more than a crater in the ground. So, to ease her mind just a little, she closely examined every single grenade, bomb, cannon and stick of dynamite in the building, making sure everything was not about to detonate. The dynamite sticks turned out to be really old, so they probably wouldn't pack much of a punch anymore. The pins in the grenades were all safely jammed and most of the wires in the bombs were unconnected. There were no cannonballs in the cannons to worry about and those were all stored in thick metal boxes. Her mind eased, she took Thurber to the third warehouse to inspect.
If it were even possible, the atmosphere seemed to become colder every step they took towards the twelfth warehouse. The noise that sounded like muffled screaming seemed to be growing louder, but she did her best to ignore it. She had warehouses to inspect, she would deal with the noise when she got to it.
Inside the third warehouse were, to her astonishment, tanks! Fully assembled, fully operational war tanks! After the initial shock that had frozen the pair to the floor, they relaxed. The tanks weren't as operational as she'd thought. Closer inspection revealed that while most everything else was completely in order, that actual engine was not connected to the rest of the tank. It was in place, just unconnected. Unless someone took the time to get under there and connect the cords, these babies were immobile.
But it did take a moment for Molina to remember why there were tanks in Central City.
After the Cue-de-tat from Briggs almost a year ago, the new top Brass decided that Central needed to be better protected. Once all the business with the Briggs rebels was sorted out and they were all let go, declared innocent and acting under the orders of the then Major General Olivier Armstrong (who was now a General), they were let free. The General herself's actions was also decreed justified, once the plot to sacrifice the nation's population was unearthed and it was discovered that she was trying to thwart said plot. Fuhrer Grumman had requested she lend Central a few tanks to help better protect the city, should another crisis unfold, and she had agreed to send four Briggs Tanks to Central. Apparently, they were now stored in the third warehouse.
After a quick sweep that determined that there was no one else in the building besides themselves, they left and headed towards the fourth warehouse. This one was further along than the regular pattern, due to a road that cut through the district separating it from the building they had just left. They went in and took a look around the completely empty warehouse, and then went on to the fifth, and the sixth, and the seventh and the eighth and the ninth, all of which yielded the same relieving result of emptiness. By the time they were done with the tenth, Thurber's teeth were chattering through the silence and Molina couldn't shake the feeling of vertigo that had spread through her somewhere around the eighth warehouse. It was like she was standing on the top of an enormous cliff, so ridiculously high that she could not see that bottom, and that there was someone standing right behind her, moments away from pushing her off the edge and sending her plummeting. She shivered, and pulled her military jacket tighter around herself as they entered the eleventh warehouse.
Again, this building held no humans other than themselves, and very little in the way of physical objects. They did a thorough search of the place, all too aware of the extreme cold that had enveloped them, and left, making their way to the twelfth and final warehouse.
As they did, the temperature seemed to drop to below freezing, and the muffled screaming became much more audible. There was definitely someone inside.
"M-Molina?" Thurber chattered quietly as they slowly stepped closer and closer toward the building that somehow felt like the embodiment of doom.
"Yeah?" She whispered back.
"I really, really don't think we should go in there." He said, nodding towards the twelfth warehouse.
"But we're under strict orders to investigate each and every warehouse in the district, Thurber. If we don't we'll be directly disobeying orders." Molina argued.
"We don't need to go in there." Thurber insisted, stopping in his tracks and shaking his head furiously. He hugged his chest and continued. "You can hear that screaming just as clearly as I can, we know that there is someone, multiple someones, in that building. We can go back to Central Command and tell them that. But Warrant Officer, you can't tell me that I'm the only one here that doesn't want to go in there. You can't tell me that I'm the only one here that feels that...that...that something is seriously wrong in there! That I'm the only one that has noticed the cold that's radiating from that building! It's...it's like a bomb of freezing cold dread blew up in there. If we go in there, I can guarantee you something really bad is going to happen. You feel it too, don't you?" He pleaded with her.
"Yeah, I feel it, how could I not?" She exclaimed. "But still, I think that those reasons you've just pointed out just prove that we have to go in! There's someone in there, Thurber, someone in extreme pain, by the sounds of it. As military officers, it is our job to rescue whoever is inside and bring whoever is causing them to scream to justice. Besides, could it possibly be that bad?" She asked, but felt immediately after like she shouldn't have.
"No, I'm not going in." Thurber said, digging his heels into the gravel. "It's not safe. We should report back to Command."
"Well, if you want to disobey a direct order, that's your decision, don't blame me if you get demoted. Whether you come with me or not, I don't care! But I'm going in there!" She said, her word final. Shivering, she began to walk forward, towards the building that sent chills down her spine.
"You're not going anywhere." A cold voice stopped her in her tracks, and from the shadows emerged General Roy Mustang. Instinct told her to run, to run away as fast as she could, because he was raising his hand, and she should be running, running, but she was frozen in place, her legs wouldn't move. He's the source of all this cold and dread, she realized. She heard Thurber taking a running leap forward, calling her name, her first name -Cassy, but before she could react, the man's fingers snapped.
A huge jet of flame shot towards them, enveloped them, burned them.
And that was the last living memory Jack Thurber and Cassy Molina had before their fiery deaths.