(( Unless Wolf had something more planned, I think I can continue now... ))

The elevator finally reaches the second floor and opens up, letting Wraith step out and walk down the hall towards the mess hall. He scratches at an itch behind his ear as he steps into the room, a boisterous cafeteria loaded with hungry Cyber Force troops from various teams and departments. Some of them glance at him as he enters, but mostly it's just another day at the office for everyone.

He makes a beeline straight over to the chefs and asks for a plate full of eggs, bacon, and sausage, with orange juice and biscuits on the side. Taking it with a big smile on his face, he slumps down in a random empty chair and starts to enjoy his food.

OOC: *cough* Um...you do realize that makes no sense, right? Shouldn't you answer your commanding officer's question?

OOC: Okay, the superfluous Q&A posts can go now that I finished the editing. And I decided my last part had to stand alone.

BIC:

Wolf stared at the wall for a second. Hmm...I think that went well. Could've gone worse. At least he was up front about it, and if he really hasn't done any in the past 3 months, then it isn't as big a deal as either myself or Doc thought.

After checking his notes for court, he decided to go have breakfast.

No sense in trying to fight corruption on an empty stomach.

Angel walked into the cafeteria, forcing his eyes open and closed, and rubbing his temples.

A few people looked. Most sighed and shook their heads. Angel hadn't bothered to stop at his room to grab a shirt.

He went up to the chefs, and mumbled something they thought meant "Usual."

This turned out to be a stack of five slices of french-toast, three potato pancakes, and five sausage links. Oh, and Skim Milk.

Angel took the meal with a mumbled thanks, walked over, and sat down opposite Wraith. "I strongly suspect it would've been a hell of a night, if I could remember it."

He then began the long process of buttering the french-toast, getting it all cut up, then putting syrup on, and then finally eating it.

While all the time Wraith says to him, "It was. You got in some fight with these bunch'a frat boys."

Devin woke, heart pounding so hard it felt like his entire chest was shaking. Snapping upright, he glanced around the... hotel room?

No, he thought. These are my quarters now. Wolf showed them to me last night.

It still took him a while to get used to the idea that he'd be living in comparative luxury for the duration of his posting. He ran his fingers over the beds, feeling the rich, smooth material that would rival any five star hotel. The room was cool, though not cold, and... was that Bombay Sapphire on the table?

Devin chuckled to himself as he approached the bottle of blue liquid with all the subtlety of a virgin stampeding towards his lover's bra strap.

"We never had it this good back in the Cell..."

The Cell.

Devin froze in mid-pour, as the past wrapped its steely embrace around the neck of the present in a sleeper hold, forcing the latter down into the back of his mind, and rearing before him as the memories came once again...

***

Cold. Dark. Empty. Fitting words to describe the storeroom where it would end. Around him, the bodies of Red Cell lay like discarded rag dolls, useless now that the lives they had housed were terminated. They had weapons in their hands, some with smoke curling from the still-hot barrels, implying that they had gone down fighting, but oddly enough, their faces had the traces of a timeless, peaceful smile on them. But not all the bodies were as dead as those.

Devin loomed over a man. Or at least, it was supposed to be a man. His face had been smashed in by multiple instances of brute force trauma, as the bloody headprints on the nearby wall could attest. Miraculously, he wsn't dead yet... though judging from the rapidity of the breathing, that could change at any moment.

Devin was panting, a bloody gash running diagonally down his chest as he picked up a pistol and cocked it. Subconsciously, he knew it was a simple M64 stealth pistol, but his conscious mind was busy telling every other thought in his mind to sit down and shut the hell up. Amazingly, the ruined mouth moved, and its voice was surprisingly clear, although the visual effect of seeing it come from a ruined welter of gore was rather... disconcerting.

"Devin... you were always the best of them, even better than Johnny... join me. This mere flesh wound is nothing. Forget Red Cell - they were expendable - a test I amde for you... and which you passed with flying colours. I can make you like this, the best of them all. You are a master soldier, I am the master planner. Surely there must be some arrangement-"

"No."

"What? What are you saying? What are you talking about?"

Devin pulled the slide back with his wrist, letting the heeel of his palm catch the rear sight as he let go and felt the weapon push a round home into the chamber.

"Devin! Reconsider! We are far better than these humans! Both of us, we are the pioneers of a new age! We are above them, better than those scum-"

"You don't understand, Johnny."

The pistol levelled with the battered face.

"We're all scum."

Silenced as it was, the pistol still managed to bring forth a miniature fountain of cerebral matter as the three shots drilled through Johnny's head. There was a wet, squelching sound as the man's body hit the ground with a gut-churning splat.

Devin let out the breath he had been unconsciously holding.

Finally, it's over.

He looked around the room. Kylie, Damon, Rick, and Johnny. Dead, all of them, to the last man.

The thought struck him with sobering clarity that he was indeed the last surviving member of Red Cell.

***

... And indeed he was. Devin stared down at his glass of Bombay, the downed the thing in one gulp.

Maybe, if he had enough, he could forget it for good...

Wolf entered the cafeteria, got himself some scrambled eggs, bacon, and coffee and sat down with Wraith and Angel. He picked up the last bit of their conversation, starting with Wraith talking about how Angel had jumped the frat guys from UCLA at the bar.

"Yeah, that was some fight," he said to Angel. "I forget exactly how it started...I just know that they made a mistake in picking the fight. At first you were holding your own, then they got some sober reinforcements. So naturally we had to step in and give you a hand. Needless to say, there was a pile of dazed frat guys facedown in the gutter when all was said and done."

he pointed to Angel's black eye. "The guy who gave you that is still in the ICU. They're reattaching his arm. You kinda almost ripped it off." he grinned slightly. "His fault really."

Wolf looked up for a second and saw Kaitlin make her way over to the table with a tray of pancakes. Her eyes were half-closed now, but she seemed to be able to see fine.

"Any of you know where this came from?" she asked as she showed them her right arm. There was a gauze bandage wrapped around her wrist

Wolf thought for a second. "Um...I think it's from when one of the UCLA drunks managed to slice you with a broken bottle."

"Oh...what happened to the bastard that did it?"

"Well...after you broke his jaw, I might have accidentally shattered his right arm...and then stabbed him 4 times in the left arm with a dart...and then thrown him out the door...where he broke his nose on the sidewalk."

"Accidentally?"

"Yeah...I was trying to break his neck." he said with a slight smirk.

Wraith chuckles. "Damn, that was some bar fight."

"So...does anyone else feel the slightest bit guilty for using our superior training to completely beat down some inebriated punks for no apparent reason? Or for getting away from it scot-free?"

There was an odd silence.

"Thought not. Damn my morals."

"What morals? You ripped his damn arm off!" Wraith laughs.