Day 5 Afternoon

Amelia woke up with a shock and a weird sense of urgency. Shifting gingerly in the bed, she groaned again, as the pain caught her by surprise. "Why the hell is that still so damn painful?" She muttered out loud to no one in particular.

"Maybe because you got shot twice this last time," Sydney stated in her calm, matter-of-fact way. She looked over at Amelia and smiled. "Outside of that pain from waking up, how are you feeling?"

"Better. I'm getting stronger, or at least it feels that way."

"Which is a good thing," Sydney said, with a bright, cheerful smile, "since we still have a lot of our own headaches here to deal with."

"Yeah, maybe," Amelia muttered. "I'm not sure what all this base chaos is about though, so it'll be good if Mountain can go find somebody else to hassle."

Looking at her carefully, Sydney offered, "If you aren't comfortable talking to Mountain, I'm sure I can put a stop to it."

"No, it's not that I'm bothered by it. Sure, it's not pretty, and the fear is always that I've missed something, that I've forgotten something, or that something in my brain hasn't jelled as it should," she admitted, with fear poking at her, "and that's very disconcerting for me. I don't want to think that I know something and can't remember and then have someone else get hurt."

"I get it," Sydney agreed. "However, the bottom line is that, what somebody can know, they know, and what they can't know, they don't. And usually people don't understand that some seemingly unrelated or unimportant little tidbit of information can be very important."

"Oh, I hear you," she said, "but you're not making me feel any better."

Sydney laughed. "Sorry about that, but it is one of the more frustrating aspects of life."

As Amelia lay there, she whispered, "Sydney,… any chance of a coffee?"

That made Sydney smile. She checked her watch. "Maybe so, but I don't want to leave you alone."

"I'm hardly alone, am I?" she asked, with a grin. "How many people are around this place?"

"Thousands." When Amelia's gaze widened, Sydney laughed heartily. "Kidding," she said, with a smile. "In the low thirties, though it varies when we have anybody here delivering supplies and whatnot."

Amelia nodded. "Right, so, what are the chances of anybody coming in here and attacking me, particularly if they don't know whether I'm even alone or not?"

"So far," Sydney began carefully, so as not to alarm Amelia, "we haven't left you alone at all, so you tell me." She hesitated, but then Magnus popped in through the door.

Sydney looked at him with relief, and he smiled that brilliant smile of his. "Your timing is impeccable. Do you think you could sit with her long enough for me to go grab coffee?"

"Sure," he replied, with a smile, as he walked closer to Amelia.

Staring up at him, Amelia smiled. "Sorry, I was hoping for a coffee, but I didn't realize I needed a nursemaid the whole time. This is a bit too much."

"It's all about keeping you safe."

"I still don't understand why anybody would care about hurting me though."

"You've been shot three times on two different days," he noted, "so it doesn't matter if you understand the shooter's motivation or not. We'll do everything we can to keep you safe, whether you want it or not."

"Of course I want to stay safe," she stated, giving him a hooded gaze. "Why would you even suggest otherwise?"

He shook his head. "I'm not suggesting otherwise, but I've seen a lot of things, while I've been up here, and a lot of things in my life. Sometimes you realize everything isn't always the way it appears."

She nodded. "I can agree with that.… And, sure as hell, whatever is going on in this place doesn't appear to be what it seems either."

He gave her a ghost of a smile. "We are working on it."

"Maybe you can work on it a tad bit… faster, harder?"

"If we could, we would," he stated, "and, as you've seen yourself, we're still looking for information."

"I still don't believe Chef did it," Amelia declared abruptly, her mind caught on the thought that the kind and compassionate chef could be responsible for all the chaos at this base.

"Excuse me?"

"Elijah.… He can't possibly be responsible for this mess."

"No? I gather that is your opinion, and it is one that is shared by many," he admitted. "However, Elijah's not talking, and, if he won't talk, he's not helping his case or ours."

She went quiet for a moment, then spoke. "So, who's he protecting then?" Startled, he looked at her, and she shrugged. "There's no other reason for him to stay quiet. Somebody close to him must be responsible, and he's either trying to muddy the waters and keep you guys confused or trying to give the other guy a chance to step up and to do the right thing. Whether that other guy does it or not is hard to predict."

Magnus nodded thoughtfully, as he sat here. "Interesting analysis."

"Not an analysis," Amelia corrected. "Just human nature."

"Do you have a lot of experience in that?" he asked her, with a wry look.

"Have you ever worked in academics?" she asked, with a laugh. "Every individual industry has its own issues," she stated, with a deep sigh, "but academia?… Now that is a world unto itself."

He shrugged. "Can't say I've ever had any exposure to it."

"No higher education?"

"Went straight into the military at a young age," he shared, with a broad grin. "No regrets there."

"And this base has all different branches of the services, doesn't it?"

"It does, but not just the United States is represented here. We have multiple countries involved. I did mention that earlier, but you may have been a little woozy at the time. So, yeah, not just the US military is here."

"Which confuses the issue, since I'm sure you can't get background information on people because of that. Is that an issue?"

"I'm not sure that we can't get it. I'm just not sure that we would get as much detail as we would like."

She didn't say anything to that and gave him a hooded glance, wondering what access to information they had and whether it even mattered. "He could just be a serial killer," she stated bluntly, "somebody who takes great delight in causing chaos and confusion and hurting people."

"Maybe, but why? What would this person be like?"

"If they're in the military, you would know better than I do that there are all kinds of opportunities to curb the cravings," she pointed out. "And, if somebody is being kept out of a certain part of it, they don't have access."

"Sure, but that's like saying people can go off half-cocked and cause all kinds of chaos, and that's not true, not on a military base. We have rules and a code of conduct to follow. A person like that would stick out immediately."

"Not completely true, as aren't you all trained to be killers?" she argued. "Yet also not wrong." He glared at her, and she raised her hands in peace. "I get it. You don't want to think that anybody in your profession, in this world that you absolutely love, would do something like that. And I'm not sure that they would. What I am saying is that it's a potential breeding ground for somebody along that line."

Amelia then sighed and added, "Like child predators who put themselves in a position where they can absolutely take advantage of children for their little perverse hobbies—for example, to become a social worker. Those kids have absolutely nobody to protect them from a predator, if that person already knows how to work the system and how to get himself into a place where he can do maximum damage. Not because he wants to do maximum damage,… but because he wants maximum pleasure for himself. And, in a lot of cases, the predators don't even think about it. It's almost instinctive to put themselves into those kinds of scenarios. It's an awful thing to contemplate, I know… and bad news for everybody."

"Absolutely, but it doesn't change the fact that, when it comes to predators, they need to have that fix, and yet nobody here," he pointed out, "is getting a regular fix."

"And maybe that's because other people have done something to overturn or interrupt his efforts," she pointed out. "Maybe this is, in a way, so much more complicated, and yet that complication could be a whole lot easier."

He blinked at her in confusion.

She shrugged. "I think, at the end of the day, the answer will be simple, but you're not there yet."

"I'm not there at all," he grumbled, frowning at her. "None of us are there yet, and honestly we were really hoping that you would have some answers."

"I'm not sure why I would have had answers. I've been out in the wilds." She glared at him. "Why would you suggest that?"

"Because you saved Teegan."

"I did, and I tried to save the other one too.… That didn't work out so well for him."

"And we're sorry about Yegorahn's death too," he told her. "You did your best, and all that effort may well have put you on somebody's shit list."

"May have?" She turned with a wry look in his direction. "How about definitely did? Or am I delusional to think so? Do you guys go around shooting random people for fun?"

"Can I presume that's what you're thinking?"

"Somebody may have been doing this for a while."

"That doesn't mean that they've been active the whole time, and, for all you know, they've killed in the past, and, for whatever reason, stopped for a time. Sometimes it happens like that, even with prolific serial killers." Magnus grabbed a pad of paper and a pen off the doc's desk, then sat down and started writing notes.

She laughed. "Oh, come on. I'm sure you guys have shrinks and psychologists all over this."

"We do, and we don't," he said. "We're keeping our investigation fairly low-key at the moment."

"Why? So more people can get killed?" She made no effort to minimize the bluntness of her tone.

He didn't even bother looking up, just continued to write.

When the door to the clinic opened, and Sydney walked back in again, Amelia saw two cups of coffee and sighed happily. "It's funny how the simple things in life can have so much more meaning, especially when doing without."

"The simple things in life are important," Sydney claimed, as she walked over, "particularly when you need a lift mentally, just for healing."

"And yet I'm alive," she noted, "so I shouldn't need anything."

Sydney gave her a wry look. "When you feel as if you have a perfect life, you can tell the rest of us how that works," she teased, with a cheerful glance over at Magnus. "Did you come up with something useful to help him out?"

"I don't think so," Amelia replied. "I think he's writing notes to confuse me."

Magnus gave a shout of laughter, as he stood up, then walked toward them and gave Sydney a hug and a kiss on the top of her head. "I'll be back later." And, with that, he quickly turned.

"Wait," Sydney called out. "You didn't tell me why you came in the first place."

"Doesn't matter," he said, as he kept on going. "Things have changed." And, with that, he was gone.

Sydney slowly turned and frowned at Amelia, carefully watching her. "Do you know what that was all about?"

"No idea," she said honestly. "Hopefully something in our conversation triggered him and made sense to him somehow." She was raw and blunt in her speech now, a feature becoming more and more prominent, as she healed. "There isn't much I can do to help. This is all way beyond me."

"Unfortunately," Sydney added, "it's way beyond most of us."

*

Mountain listened toMagnus, as he relayed the conversation he'd just had with Amelia about serial killers and covering for somebody, and together they contemplated these newest theories. Finally Mountain said, "In a way that does fit. Chef is covering for somebody."

"I know, and, as soon as she mentioned it, I started to put the pieces together, but still we don't know an awful lot."

"And it's the part that we don't know that'll bring this to a complete stop, if we can't get some proof or a confession going."

"So, then we have to look at why that could be." Mountain sat here for a long time, Magnus quiet beside him, both of them letting this new avenue and the latest information roll around in their heads.

Magnus looked over at him and spoke in a careful tone. "The best way might be to trap our suspect in some way."

"Yeah, but that's not likely to happen, and that won't be something that would hold up in court."

"In this case, it won't be a normal court of law."

"I know, but, in that sense alone, it'll be even more of an issue that we need to be extra careful about."

Mountain put his fingers on the notepad for a long time and then said, "I'll go confirm a few things with Amelia." He stood up, still frowning. "How did she look, by the way?"

"Better, much better," Magnus said, with a smile. "Seems she'll pull through this just fine."

Mountain smiled. "That would be nice. She's been a pretty tough cookie, up until now."

"You're the one keeping track of her. Have you told her that?"

He shook his head. "No, not really. I may have been keeping track of her, but she did lose me a couple times, much to my dismay."

"You've also been keeping track of her for other reasons. Maybe you should bring that up too," Magnus suggested. "I'm not sure she would be against it."

"Doesn't matter if she's against it or not," Mountain snapped, his tone harsh as he glared at Magnus. "That is definitely not anything I'm planning on dealing with right now."

"Of course not," Magnus noted, with an eye roll. "You've always got to go above and beyond."

Mountain eyed him wryly. "No, but I don't want to confuse the issue, not when we have so many people who have been hurt by this."

"And, if we don't put a stop to it, where will it end?"

"That's why we have to look for more history."

"Should we bring Mason in on it?"

"Yeah, I think I'll call him now," Mountain replied. "He's our best shot at finding some history covering many, many years. If there is any, that information would be very helpful—if we could come up with it, especially some related history we could use to force the issue."

"Yeah, good luck with that," Magnus said. "I'll head out to check on supplies and Joe again. Hopefully he's doing better. Sandrine mentioned he's quite the sneak these days, and Sydney let it slip that he came in to get some medication. Painkillers that came in a little bit ago, I guess?"

"Sounds as if you're really worried about Joe."

"I think we all are. And what about that new investigator, Samson?" Magnus asked, turning to look at Mountain. "Something's very odd about him."

Mountain nodded. "Yeah, he's on my radar too."

"But he wasn't even here before, so he can't be involved."

"Maybe he's not involved in that way, but I highly suspect he's got more going on behind the scenes than he's letting on."

"Was he here earlier?" Magnus asked in confusion. "Because, if he wasn't, no way he's involved."

"I don't think he was. However, somebody outside could easily have been involved," Mountain pointed out. "We're already looking for a connection from way before all this training session started, so that isn't such a farfetched idea. We can't ever lose track of the fact that somebody could be pulling strings from afar."

Magnus slowly nodded. "I hadn't really made that leap myself," he admitted, "but you're right. It wouldn't take a whole lot to finesse this from another location, particularly if they'd been in direct contact."

"And, when we talk about direct contact, we don't have any right to check who's been in contact with whom," he shared. "Unfortunately that won't go over well, if we start ripping apart phone records."

"We can do it if we have probable cause," he stated, looking at Mountain carefully. "Yet it didn't help with Eric's phone. Either he had just wiped it before he came to the base to kill one of us or it died or it was wet in the snow too long or something else."

"Right, and we may be close, but we're not quite there yet. Which is why I need to get going, so I can talk to Amelia, Samson, and Mason."

Mountain went to the medical clinic first, wondering how much to say to Amelia, but, when he saw her, he winced to see how quiet and bruised and lonely she looked. "Hey," he said, his voice gentle, as he walked in. "How are you feeling?"

She glanced at him and then looked away. "I'm fine." She gave a careless wave. "Magnus was just here. Are you the next bodyguard?"

He snorted. "I don't make a very good bodyguard."

She gave him a small smile. "I highly suspect you're better trained than all of them."

He shook his head. "No, that's not true. I may just have some uglier experience in some ways."

"I can see that," she noted, "but you're also the one who's here, still hoping I've got answers, right?"

"Of course, and I'm still not convinced that you don't."

Surprised, she looked at him and slowly shook her head. "If you're putting all your hopes into the basket with my name on it," she stated, "you're completely wrong and will be very disappointed."

He smiled. "Maybe.… Been there, done that," he said in a nonchalant tone. "I'm not exactly looking for perfection, but any steps in the right direction would help."

"But I don't know anything."

He sat down across from her, then watched as she picked up the fresh coffee he had brought and had several sips. She was using it to shield her face, something to hide behind, and he understood that because something was going on with her that he still didn't understand. Something was going on, and she was keeping it from him. That was starting to piss him off. But getting pissed off and going in like Godzilla, smashing the very pieces he needed, wouldn't help either. Not when it was obvious that she was already wary.

Finally, as Sydney worked in the corner of the clinic, Mountain decided to be as blunt as Amelia was. He had to try. "Amelia, why did you avoid me all those times out in the great grand north?"

She looked at him from behind her cup, her gaze hooded, and half smiled. "How do you know it was me who was avoiding you?"

"Because I could track you quite easily, but it was also obvious that you were trying to avoid me."

Looking at him in surprise, she asked, "Do you think I don't have a reason? Good God, look at what happened when I couldn't avoid you."

He frowned. "You thought I was the one shooting you?"

She shook her head. "No, never. It wasn't that big of a person, and I, for damn sure, wouldn't be talking to you if I had any such suspicion."

"Ah, so, for once, my size is a good thing."

"I don't know if it's ever a good thing," she conceded in a careful tone, her gaze still on her coffee. "This world isn't built for people who are different, who are better, bigger, faster,… smarter. It's built for the average person, and the minute you're beyond that, life gets a little hard."

He stared at her for a long moment. "Can you tell me in what way you have experienced that firsthand?"