Fear Itself

When I visited the base a couple days later, everything was normal. Avery was waiting for me at 7:30 AM on the dot. I rushed out the door the second my father’s car rounded the corner up the street, and with my backpack in tow, Avery and I took our usual walk down to the underground. We talked about the usual things—well, I asked him a whole lot of questions about his life, and he either didn’t answer or just grunted. He had to leave almost as soon as he dropped me off. I never knew what he was doing when he left like that, but I had learned not to question, or rather, not to bother asking. I knew he wasn’t going to tell me anyway.

From the room, however, which was usually quiet, I could hear bickering from just outside, from what sounded like the infamous meeting table. I heard three British accents and one Irish, all arguing incessantly, about what I didn’t know, but my curiosity was practically clawing at the door and forcing me to push it open.

“That display was absolutely abysmal,” Alex commented with obvious disdain in his voice. This wasn’t strange; Alex always seemed irritated. I would be irritated too if I inherited eyebrows like his. “25 people died in there, in a supposedly controlled riot.”

“Don’t look at me,” Dean quickly interjected to proclaim his innocence. “I’m not the one who called the militia in there. That would be Dallas Faust and the League, so you can thank them.”

“Yeah, but Faust wasn’t the one who decided to blow up the assembly line for kicks in the middle of the mission. You know, reports say another 25 got wounded in that blast?” Alex remarked. I inched closer, still staying in the shade and comfort of the wall. I was only close enough to see the four of them gathered around a table. Alex’s back was to me, Harley and Sam offered profile views, and I could see Dean head on, dressed in his fancy, blue and gold uniform.

“Sometimes a distraction is necessary,” Harley jumped in, coming to Dean’s defense.

“Thank you,” Dean commented, literally reaching across the table to motion at Harley. “Somebody here has some sense.”

“But that blast was useless! You didn’t accomplish anything except some pretty lights and a whole lot of fire!” Alex shouted. “It was supposed to controlled. You made it chaotic.”

“Alex, you’re the newest one here, why do we even let you talk?” Dean scoffed, grinning.

“But he’s right, Dean,” Sam stammered. “You didn’t stick to the plan at all.”

“You act like that’s news,” Harley laughed mockingly, sinking back in her chair a bit, relaxing. “Dean never follows the plan. I don’t know why you don’t just account for that in the first place.”

“Well, it’s a little hard to account for somebody so incredibly unaccountable, so…” Sam’s voice trailed off, and his eyes drifted down to a note pad in front of him upon which he scribbled vigorously.

“You know, Sam, we are brothers. You could at least pretend to like me once in awhile,” Dean huffed.

Sam rolled his eyes. “I do like you. I just don’t like your behavior.”

Dean laughed, about to retorted, when his eyes happened to glance in my direction. Our gazes met, and I wanted so badly to jump back into my room and act like I hadn’t seen any of it because just as soon as the smile widened on Dean’s face, everybody turned their heads in my direction, but none of them said a word except Dean. “Blondie!” he exclaimed. “How nice of you to join us! Why don’t you pull up a chair?” I shook my head immediately. I really just wanted to go back in the room.

“No,” Alex said, snapping his head back to Dean. “No, she has no idea what she’s doing.”

“Excuse you,” Harley interjected, reaching across and punching him in the shoulder. “I’ve been training her weekly.”

“Not what I meant,” Alex grumbled, crossing his arms and looking away from her.

“Seriously, Blondie,” Dean called to me over the arguing. “Take a seat!” He leaned back and grabbed a nearby chair, swinging it between him and Sam. Sam just sighed and dropped his head. “Come on,” he told me again, waving me over. At this point, I almost felt too pressured not to, so I did. I sat between the Cassidy Brothers, right across from Alex, who was glowering in my direction. I think that if looks could kill, I would have dropped dead. “Knock it off, Eyebrows,” Dean scolded. “You’ve only been here for five months. We just happen to like you.”

“He’s also really smart,” Sam muttered to Dean.

“Like I said, we like him,” Dean shot back, then gave Alex a sickeningly sweet smile. Alex just rolled his eyes and huffed, no longer looking at me. “And I like Blondie,” he added. “So Blondie gets to sit.”

I could have laughed. Oh, how the tables had turned. Here sat Alex, no longer on top, suddenly miffed that he was going to have sit at a table and actually converse with me. Not that I knew what they were talking about. “So, what are we talking about?” I asked.

“Dean’s failed mission at the Liberty Brand Factory,” Alex mumbled.

“It wasn’t failed,” Dean retorted, leaning forward over the table. “Eyebrows, you and I both know that mission was meant to stir up some chaos. It just ended up that some people got hurt, but that’s life. You can’t start a revolution without a few casualties in the process?”

“You mean like 25—“ Alex began to argue, but Sam stopped him.

“He’s right, Dean. You know that Dad’s work revolved around nobody getting hurt,” Sam told him, looking at his younger brother earnestly.

“This isn’t Dad’s movement, now is it, Sam?” Dean asked, leaning forward to stare at Sam, who quickly looked away. “That’s what I thought.” There a pause, and an awkward, tense silence hung over the table for a moment. “So, Blondie, what happened was, I led a small task force into the Liberty Brand factory in an attempt to quell some kind of a riot, and we did—“

“Why do you need a riot?” I asked him, looking quite confused.

“Well, without the support of the masses, we don’t really have much of a battle,” Dean explained. “If the masses are angry, then the League really doesn’t have much support, so naturally, we were trying to get them riled up by telling them that the League was going to lower their wages, which worked. It was a lie, but it worked. Sort of. You know, they got angry… but they didn’t really start attacking the militia, they just kind of started attacking each other…” Dean’s voice trailed off in thought.

“That’s because they’re all drug-addled loonies,” Alex laughed sarcastically, shaking his head. “You might get them angry at the League for a hot minute, but it’s not real anger.” Harley nodded in agreement, drumming her fingertips against the surface of the table.

“Well, okay,” I spoke up finally, softly at first. Everyone was staring at me. “So it sounds like what you need is real, unbridled rage, right? Rage aimed at the League, preferably, I suppose.” I paused and glanced around at the others gathered around the table. “Is there any place full of brazen souls who are pissed off at the government?”

There was a very long pause this time, and everyone had looks of concentration fixed on their face. It was like this for a moment or two before the brothers looked to each other and in unison, shouted, “The Atlantis Testing Facility!”

“Bloody hell!” Dean exclaimed. “The testing facility!”

“What’s that?” I asked, trying to turn my head between Dean and Sam so quickly I thought it might just roll straight off my shoulders.

“The Atlantis Testing Facility is where the League takes criminals—well, only certain criminals, ones that they think are “suitable”—and basically… well, they experiment on them,” Sam explained, rising from his chair to give Dean a high-five. “It’s nothing crazy, just Charles Windsor, um, the Head of Medicine, running tests and using injections… honestly, nobody quite knows what he does in that place, but the people who come out of there, if they come out of there, are a rather angry bunch. You wouldn’t wanna get in the way of that lot in a fire fight. They’ll trample you down on their way to cutting off the heads of Board Members.”

“This is perfect,” Dean said breathlessly, still obviously overjoyed with the thought. He reached a hand down and mussed up my hair. “Blondie, I could kiss you right now!” he laughed. Then, he looked at Sam with a rather serious look on his face. “To the office, we’ve got things to discuss!”

Everyone began to rise from the table and head for the office, so I followed suit. I was last in line to get in, but just as I was about to entered, Alex turned in the doorway and blocked my path. “Not you,” he sneered before closing the door in my face.

“Arsehole,” I muttered, kicking the bottom of the door one time before walking away in defeat.