Trinity

Chosen

After he apologized for breaking his promise, Quaritch's mind wandered. He heard Mansk say something, but the words didn't really register. Something about breaking promises, but he wasn't sure. He was content to just relax and wait for him to finish coming down from what happened. Eventually, Mansk appeared to calm down, his breathing was much closer to normal, and he didn't seem as tense.

"What triggered it?" Quaritch asked, if there was something he could do to help prevent it from happening, he would.

"Domino effect, just kept piling up. I was too deep in my damn head to realize what was happening until it was too late." Fair enough. That's usually what happened to Tenera as well. It built up until it exploded.

"If you're up for it, we should head back. Don't need those morons sending out a search party." Quaritch leaned over to grab Mansk's discarded jacket and gloves. When he attempted to take them, Quaritch shook his head and only handed him the gloves. "No jacket."

His declaration was firm, and Mansk nodded in acceptance. It was too hot for it and since it triggered him earlier, it would probably trigger him again.

"Blue One, this is Warforged, over." The hell did Wainfleet want? Mansk's ears swiveled towards his jacket, his comms unit and earpiece were in the pocket.

"Go ahead, Warforged." Quaritch answered and handed the jacket over to Mansk, trusting that he wouldn't put it on.

"Menace and I are inbound to your location, we've got hostiles."

Both men immediately looked at each other with widening eyes.

"How many?"

"We don't – Fuck!"

"Warforged? Do you copy?"

"Taken fire, looks to be a dart." They immediately sprinted back down the river.

"What's your pos, over?"

"11 minutes down river, tranquilizer."

"Warforged?" Quaritch repeated it a few more times with no answer. He snarled in frustration and ordered the others to grab Mansk's gear and meet them halfway.

=-=

"Pull up her tracker." The Colonel ordered as they met up and Lopez handed over Mansk's gear with a huff.

"How the hell do you carry that shit like it's nothing all the time?" He rolled his shoulders and stretched his back in discomfort.

"Used to it." He quickly shouldered and adjusted the straps to the gunner backpack with ease as Lopez stared. Mansk locked the bolt, popped the feed tray cover, and examined the belt. Satisfied, he dropped the tray cover back in place with a satisfying metallic clink and waited for orders. Mansk shrugged his shoulders before Lopez finally stopped staring at how easily he put everything on.

"Signal's about five klicks to the north." Z-dog handed the datapad over to Quaritch, and he looked over to the kid.

"What's over there?" Spider rolled his eyes and grabbed the datapad so he could see where 'over there' was. Mansk didn't like how the kid's eyes narrowed in confusion.

"Nothing that we know of; we've been incredibly careful where we take you assholes. Avoiding villages and their usual hunting grounds. What the hell happened?"

"Wainfleet said it was a tranq dart before the line went dead." Spider's head popped up from the datapad and he stared at Quaritch like he'd misheard.

"Did you say dart?"