The Grey Chronicles Part One: New Declaration of An Old War

Chapter 30: Old Scars Reopened.

The Rapture, slipspace portal en route to Onyx Eight, June of 8096 AL.

Alex sat in a chair across from his friend, watching him sleep. The doctor had kept him in a drug induced coma for the past three days, they would be waking him up in an hour. They were three hours away from Onyx Eight, and the hope was that he had calmed down enough that when they brought him out of his coma, whatever stressor had caused his PTSD attack would have passed.

He watched his chest rise and fall, heard his steady breath keeping time. His eyes had massive bags under them, and Alex had a hard time believing such a man could be kept under by any amount of drugs. Briarios seemed so invincible, like nothing could touch him, like nothing fazed him. Alex reached out a hand, taking his friend's. He examined the lines on Briarios' hand, and noticed that his forearm was bandaged, which he found odd; he hadn't noticed any wounds before, though Briarios normally wore long sleeves. His curiosity got the better of him, and Alex peeled back the bandages. What he found underneath left him equal parts horrified and confused.

Dozens of thin, long scars crisscrossed his arm, filling the space from his elbow to his wrist. Alex couldn't believe what he was seeing, he cupped his hand over his mouth. Some were months old, thin white lines where the cut had been. Others were fresh, red and irritated, only a few days old. A voice spoke behind him, breaking the silence in the room.

"Before you ask, yes, he did it to himself," Octavian said, stepping into the room and standing beside Alex's chair.

"Why?" Alex asked, "He seems so strong."

"He seems invulnerable because nothing can hurt him," Octavian said quietly, "At least, nothing can hurt him as badly as he hurts himself. When you've been through the kind of fucked up shit he has, it's understandable. Not okay, but understandable."

"Why does he do it?" Alex asked, his horror subsiding slightly.

"To distract himself. Do you remember the raid on Calx Urbs? I know your company was in charge of clearing out the tunnels under the complex, I'm sure you do, I've read the reports," Octavian said, sitting in a chair across from Alex. Alex nodded, and Octavian continued, "He was a part of the advanced strike team, a single battalion that went in before the rest of the force arrived. Korana wasn't thinking clearly, Salem was one of the prisoners we were sent to rescue. She launched the attack without reinforcements, and the entire battalion was wiped out."

Alex nodded, looking Octavian in the eyes and listening intently.

"Briarios, Korana, and Orion, Briarios' husband, led two companies of SHOK marines in to find the prisoners while the rest of the battalion searched for the R&D lab," Octavian said, looking at the floor, "But the prisoners had already escaped. Salem killed the guards while he was being interrogated and took their keycards, then he opened the prison gates and led the prisoners to the armory. They tried to march out through the vehicle depot, but for some reason an experimental bomb detonated inside the lab. It destroyed sensitive data, but also killed two companies of marines who were inside."

Octavian sighed, and switched his gaze to Briarios, "The blast cracked open the containment cell holding nearly every parasite in the base. The Stonehaaryn scientists had been working on making a monster that looked like a dragon, just to scare the piss out of us. It decided to crawl out of its cage and make the vehicle depot into a nest, so when the prisoners tried to escape through it..."

"They ran into what they thought was a dragon," Alex said quietly, "How many people died?"

"All but three of them," Octavian said grimly, "Briarios led his companies into the vehicle depot and attacked the monster, but it had laid eggs. The eggs hatched, and the prisoners ran up a tunnel leading to the surface. The marines followed them, but they were stuck fighting off the drakes. When the prisoners reached the surface, they ran right into a trap the Stonehaaryns had set. Plasma cannons tore them to pieces, only two of them survived by playing dead. Salem was the only other survivor out of two hundred prisoners."