Survivors

Central Officer John Bradford dropped his head into his hands as the door closed behind him. These interviews were exhausting, emotionally, and the hours weren't helping. He didn't think he'd managed to sleep more than a few hours since they'd managed to wipe out the attackers, and reclaim the HQ.

The worst part, the part the Commander had confided was also keeping him up nights, was the implications of the whole thing. The X-Rays knew where XCOM HQ was; maybe they'd always known. With the seemingly inexhaustible forces they were able to put on the ground, they'd launched a token offensive that had still managed to take them off guard and result in multiple casualties. The X-Rays could probably wipe out XCOM any time, but hadn't. That was the thought that woke him multiple times a night drenched in cold sweat. Why? What was their purpose in holding back?

There came a knock at the door, and Bradford took several moments to compose himself before he spoke.

"Enter," he said, raising his voice to be heard through the door. The analyst who came through the door was one of the ones he'd been dreading; He knew that today, the last day of interviews, had been stacked with painful interviewees. The man had a bruise on his face, and refused to meet Bradford's eyes. The last time Bradford had seen him, he'd noted the manic, violet glow, and had put the man down hard.

"Intelligence Officer Pidgeon, reporting as directed, Sir," the man said, standing stiffly before the table, until Bradford gestured at the seat.

"Sit down, David," he said. "This won't take too long."

"Sir," replied the analyst, sitting down, still as stiff as ever, and looking everywhere but Bradford's face.

"I want you to tell me everything you remember about the attack," he said, lifting a recording device to indicate that the interview was being recorded. "Start at the beginning, go slow."

"Sir," the analyst said again, stalling a moment while his gaze turned inward, remembering. His face scrunched in pain, but then he took a deep, slow breath, and began speaking. "I remember my screen flickering, several times. I leaned over to... Anderson, I think? To look at their terminal, see if they were having problems too. Then the hologlobe got all flickery, and..." The man trailed off, his eyes flickering up to the bruising on Bradford's temple for a second.

"Go on," Bradford replied, knowing full well what Pidgeon was remembering.

"Then... things got weird." The Australian swallowed heavily. "I heard a voice telling me to grab the fire extinguisher. It seemed important, so I did. I knew what I had to do. You-" another swallow, followed by a nearly inaudible gasp, "you needed to be stopped. So, I hit you, and you went down, but you weren't out. I came in again, but you were quick enough to stop me." The man let out a sudden, barely human sound, and squeezed his eyes shut, until tears leaked from the corners.

"It's alright, David. It happened, and it's over, but I need you to continue." Bradford didn't feel the calm he heard in his own voice. He felt the adrenaline spiking, and his jaw ached from the effort of not clenching it.

"Sir, I'm sorry," Pidgeon replied, wiping at his face, and visibly taking control of himself again. "You pushed me away, and got the gun. I was trying to get up, to stop you, but you put the gun to my head. You... said something? I don't know what you said. It was like gibberish. It- it scared me."

"You couldn't understand what I said?" Bradford nodded as he asked, as it confirmed the stories of others who'd been controlled.

"No sir," it was just garbled noise," he grinned suddenly, mirthlessly. "I recall thinking that the accent was American, though." The smile faded, replaced by the same thousand-yard stare he'd been wearing the whole time. "Then you hit me with the gun, and that's all I remember until I woke up later, in the brig."

"That's all?" Bradford waited, and when the analyst nodded, he nodded in return. "Thank you, Intelligence Officer. That's all I need from you, for now." When the man got up and moved toward the door, Bradford spoke up suddenly, surprising himself. "It wasn't your fault," he said. "I don't blame you. It was them, not you, who attacked me."

"Yes, Sir," replied the other man listlessly. His tone gave no doubts that he didn't believe the reassurances. "Thank you, Sir." Then the door closed, leaving Bradford with his thoughts again.

He suddenly remembered that IO Pidgeon had been a friend of SSG Parsons; They'd been countrymen, and had become friends shortly after the project started. He thought it likely that IO Pidgeon was carrying the guilt of that, as well. He made a note on the tablet before him to pass that on to medical.

Another knock on the door signaled another interviewee. He indicated that they should enter, and SFC Leigh Fahey walked in. He looked at her for a moment, studying her features. She looked tired, but did not allow any sign of what she was feeling show on her face. When he indicated she should sit, she slumped into the chair.

"Sergeant First Class Fahey," he said, "I'd first like to offer my thanks, and those of the Commander, for the excellent service you rendered during the attack." She nodded, her body language showing discomfort at the praise, the first emotional response she'd shown. When she didn't speak, he continued. "I'd like you to tell me what you remember from the attack."

She delivered a crisp, accurate narrative, from her arrival in Delta section with some of the base defense personnel until they'd finally declared the All-Clear. Only briefly when she described de Matos' death did her voice break for even a moment.

"Staff Sergeant de Matos was a friend of yours, wasn't she?" Bradford asked quietly.

"Yes, Sir." The brief flash of emotion from earlier was well hidden this time. This time, he was the one to sit quietly, and she was the one to finally break silence. "She was a friend, and a damned good medic, Sir. Didn't know the others that well, though, the Lieutenant, and Parsons. The security personnel who came in with me, Liles and Walters seemed like good troops. Obeyed orders." Her litany finally stopped, and she looked around the room, her posture speaking frustration. "Do you need anything else, Sir?"

"Unless you've remembered anything else to add to your report, that will be all, Sergeant." Immediately, Fahey got up and moved to the door. When she opened the door she suddenly stopped and he heard a sharply indrawn breath. Bradford jerked his head over his shoulder, his instincts keyed, but he only saw the next interviewee waiting, and it was she that had made Fahey stop in her tracks. Sergeant First Class Lieselotte Faber barely looked like the confident young woman Bradford had frequently seen around HQ. She stepped aside wordlessly and let SFC Fahey exit, then glanced in at him. Bradford stifled a sigh and nodded to her unspoken question, gesturing her to sit immediately.

"Sergeant Faber," he began as soon as she sat down listlessly. He was ready to launch into the now rote interview, but instead, he clicked the recording device off, and asked a different question. "How are you doing?"

"Sir?" she blinked and her eyes focused on his. He could see that they were red, and he had no doubt she'd been crying recently. "I am fit for combat, Sir." There was an edge to her answer, challenging him to disagree with her.

"That's not what I'm asking," he replied gently. "How are you doing? I know that Sergeant de Matos was important to you."

"Monica."

"Sorry, that Monica was important to you," he corrected.

"I will survive," she replied, her tone studiously devoid of emotion. "I will keep fighting, keep killing those bastards." The German woman looked up, meeting his eyes for the first time. "For her." her voice broke on those last words, and she dropped her eyes again, but not before he could see the sheen of fresh tears.

Bradford made a decision then, one he hoped he would not regret. He scribbled a note on the tablet "SFC Faber - Recommend immediate return to duty status." He looked up at her, and nodded, once. "I'll see to it you get your chance to do that."

"Thank you, Sir," she replied, real gratitude warring with the grief and anger in her voice. Bradford nodded again, and clicked the recording device back on. "Sergeant First Class Faber, I'd like you to tell me everything you remember about the attack. Start at the beginning, go slowly, try to remember it all."

It was a rough interview, but they got through it, even though she was shaking by the end. When the door opened, he saw SFC Fahey and SFC Colman standing outside, and they immediately took the German sniper into their arms as the door closed.

Was it all worth it? Bradford wondered. With the X-Rays launching such an attack, there was no way of knowing if they could even be beaten. Was the loss of loved ones, friends, teammates worth it? He sighed and rubbed his temples as the ever-present headache of the last several days began to throb in earnest; not even half-way through the interviews for the day. The only way to know the value of what they did would be to finish it, one way or the other. It would be the worst sort of insult to the many men and women who'd given their lives before now to do anything less.

The knock on the door signaled another interview, and Bradford squared his shoulders. There was work to be done, and there was no one else to do it.

Technical Difficulties (22 MAY 2016)

"Hey, Pidge," IO Pidgeon turned around, minimizing the screen he'd been working on as he did. Everyone here was cleared at the highest level, but old habits die hard. He recognized the speaker as Technical Officer Jessup, one of the InfoTech guys responsible for the massive computer systems that allowed XCOM to function.

"Jessup," he said. "What's up?"

"You got a few minutes? I want to run something by you." Pidgeon raised an eyebrow. He only knew Jessup casually, but he seemed competent and confident. This reticence wasn't his normal style.

"Sure," he replied. "I need a break from staring at these IMINT reports anyway." He stood and stretched, feeling several pops in his back as he did so.

"Good. It's on my console, down in the server room." Jessup turned and lead the way, with Pidgeon following. It took them a little while, and one lift trip, down to the datacenter behind the research labs. The temperature dropped dramatically as soon as they stepped inside, and IO Pidgeon was happy for the sweater that was part of their regular uniform. Jessup didn't seem to mind, but it was probably a bit colder in England than it was in Australia.

"Here we are," Jessup said, sliding into a seat. "Pull up a chair." he gestured toward a rolling chair at one of the nearby empty consoles. Pidgeon pulled it over and dropped into it, as Jessup logged into the console, then pulled up another screen and logged in again. Pidgeon leaned forward, trying to figure out what he was looking at.

"This is the security log aggregator," Jessup said by way of explanation. "With such a large datacenter, it's best to have a centralized collection of the logs. It makes it easier to detect problems on a larger scale than a single device. It allows us to know when anyone tries to access a flagged site on the internet, for example." Pidgeon blinked, and Jessup paused to smirk at him before continuing. "Yes, I am talking about what you think I am. But that's not why I brought you down here."

"So, what is it?" IO Pidgeon asked. He continued to stare at the lines and lines of text, each composed of seeming gibberish. But finding patterns in chaos was what he did, and he was good at his job. He didn't always have to understand it to find something useful.

"I'm..." Jessup's confident explanation faltered again, and Pidgeon glanced at him. "I'm not sure. It's a feeling, really. Nothing at all that I can point to and call a problem. None of the heuristic scanners are throwing any flags, either. But something is..." he paused again, then shook his head. "Off. Something is definitely off, and it's literally keeping me up nights. It's been a week or so."

"And you're hoping I can spot something?" Pidgeon asked, his eyes back on the screen.

"Yeah. My mate Colman said that's what you intel guys do. She did some Ops time when she first joined the British Army, worked with some of your peers. She said it was bloody amazing how you could take a bunch of barely related images and garbled radio transmissions and turn it into actionable information."

"Yeah," Pidgeon said with a grin. "Never challenge a Secret Squirrel to a game of Twenty Questions or Tetris."

"Secret Squirrel?" Jessup said the phrase slowly, as though testing how it tasted.

"American slang for intel geeks," Pidgeon explained. "I liked it, so I use it when I get a chance."

"I see," the technician replied with a small smile. It was clear that he was still worried about the problem, so Pidgeon turned back to the screen.

"You can sort and filter this list?" he asked. When Jessup nodded, he continued. "Show me. Also, if you can explain what these icons mean, that'll help in detecting any patterns."

They sat there for an hour then two and three, looking at the data in various ways, sorting by date, type, system. Eventually, a couple of Jessup's colleagues joined in, and they combined the data with a network diagram. Pidgeon knew he'd never understand the depth of what these guys did on a daily basis, but he began to be sure that Jessup was correct. Something was definitely "Off". He felt that he was starting to get somewhere, and he could tell by the furrowed brows of the technical staff that they thought so too.

Just then, the intercom chirped, and a second later, Bradford's voice filled the datacenter.

"IT Staff, is Intelligence Officer Pidgeon down there in the datacenter?"

"Sir," IO Pidgeon spoke up. "I'm here, yes."

"We're changing the Watch in thirty minutes, and I still don't have your INTSUM. What are you doing?" Bradford's voice was definitely annoyed. IO Pidgeon glanced at the clock. He'd completely lost track of time.

"Shit," he muttered, then spoke up. "Sir, I'll be right up to explain in person. Something is going on, and I think it's important." Jessup stood up immediately, falling in at Pidgeon's heels, as they hurried out of the datacenter.

Bradford was waiting, arms crossed when they reached Mission Control. He didn't say a word as IO Pidgeon reported, just lifted an eyebrow. Pidgeon swallowed heavily, then started talking.

"Sir," he began, "TO Jessup came to me this morning, asking me to give him my take on a nebulous issue he'd noted in the security logs." Bradford's expression became a bit stonier, so Pidgeon decided to cut to the chase. "After looking it over and consulting with the Technical Control team, there is definitely something going on, something not good. I think..." he stopped, not really wanting to say the words. He glanced at TO Jessup, standing quietly, ready to give support, and got the nod.

"Sir, I think our systems have been compromised."

"What?" Bradford erupted. He obviously hadn't been expecting that. "What do you mean, compromised? How? By who?"

"Sir," interjected TO Jessup. "We're still investigating. Whoever it is, they're good. Really, really good. They've covered their tracks well, which is why I asked IO Pidgeon to take a look."

"Can you tell me anything useful, right now?" Bradford was furious, but the anger was no longer directed at them.

"It appears as though the infiltrator has set up a redirection proxy in one of the edge routers, and is using that as a staging point for their attack. There have been several malformed packets in traffic going to and from-" Jessup cut off, as Bradford raised a curt hand.

"Stop. Try to explain it in simpler terms. I respect your expertise, and I don't have time to learn to speak your language."

"Sir," Pidgeon broke in, "Basically, the threat appears to be coming from outside, and they're tampering with our transmissions going to and from the Nations Bank." He glanced at Jessup again, who nodded in confirmation.

"The Nations..." Bradford turned and dashed across Mission Control, toward the Commander's office.

-

"You mean to tell me that we've lost everything?" Bradford was on the phone after his brief consultation with the Commander. "I don't care what the records show," his voice was barely containing his fury. "This is unacceptable. We trusted you-" he stopped, fuming while the voice on the other end of the line made some excuse or other. "Fine. We will be taking this issue to the oversight committee." He shoved the phone into the receiver hard than necessary, and turned to IO Pidgeon. "Contact the Council, immediately. Tell them that XCOM is requesting a full emergency hearing. Something has to be done about this, now."

"Right away, sir," Pidgeon turned, just in time to find one of the comms officers approaching. "What is it?"

"The Council," he said. "They're calling an emergency hearing with XCOM. They're on the line in the Situation Room."

Gallows Humor (27 APR 2016)

The medical bay was pretty full, but most of the personnel present were visitors, not patients. That was something to be thankful for, Bradford reflected. Four injured, plus CPL Makhandule admitted for enforced bedrest, after her collapse. The Commander hadn't wanted to send her back out again, but without knowing what they'd be facing, he'd wanted the best he had available, and she was the best Rocketeer they had. She'd more than earned her corporal stripes. Bradford stood off to the side of the doorway, watching the buzzing activity for a bit longer before he turned to go.

IO Pidgeon leaned back in his chair, smiling. Ward was so wrapped up he could barely move, and he was still cracking jokes. Pidgeon had come to ghost-write a letter to Mike, since Ward wouldn't be holding a pen for another couple of weeks, and he wasn't entirely sure that the things Ward was dictating weren't at least partially to make him blush.

"Sign it," Parsons paused, considering. "With burning passion and dreams of-"

"Ward!" Pidgeon exclaimed, dropping the pen, "I'm not writing that! You wait until you can write your own smut." Parsons laughed, and tried to raise an apologetic hand.

"I'm kidding," he after the laughter had died off into a series of wheezing coughs. "Sign it, 'With all my love, W', then a couple Xs and Os." Pidgeon rolled his eyes and jotted it down.

"There," he replied, carefully tearing the pages out of the notepad. " You want to proofread?"

"Nah, I trust you, mate," Parsons replied. "Thanks a bunch for doing this. Mike would probably flip if he didn't get a letter this week, so soon after we got permission to start sending mail."

"It's no problem," Pidgeon said, carefully folding the paper to fit an envelope. "So, hey, I have a question."

"Shoot."

"After the mission, I heard several of the others referring to you as Shroud?"

"That's... not a question, mate." Parsons replied after a brief pause. "You want to know why?"

"Yeah."

"Mak tells me it was because my shots just seemed to come out of the darkness, during the last mission. I was on the rooftop, overwatching the battle, with my marksman rifle."

"So, shroud?"

"Yeah," Parsons confirmed, then chuckled. "Course, that's not what Faber tells me."

"What'd she say?" Pidgeon inquired, raising a brow.

"She said it was because they were pretty sure I was dead, when they got me onto the Skyranger," Parsons said with a grin. "Said I was ready for a burial shroud."

"That's horrible!" Pidgeon's eyes widened. "Why would she say something like that?"

"Relax, mate," Parsons returned. "It's just the sort of jokes you make in that sort of situation. It's called gallows humor, and it has a history going back all the way."

"Why?"

"Cause you might die any time you go out," Parsons explained, picking his words carefully, the smile gone from his face. "You can't just stare that in the face without blinking. So, you joke. The jokes may never be funny for anyone who hasn't been there, but they're a damned sight funnier than dwelling on death and pain all the time."

"I guess I can understand that," Pidgeon replied.