The Hawaiian Special Forces

Chapter 24

Aoloa sat in his cell, fuming. This is SO not the way I was planning on this working out. How are we going to get out of this? Hokulani was in the cell across from him. Both were maintaining radio silence to avoid being spied on.

It's been three hours. Now what? He was starting to doze on the metal cot when a door at the floor opened and a plastic tray was slipped in. Aoloa stared at its contents blankly. What the...? A tube of something on bread, and a cardboard container of something...

Getting down on the ground, he sniffed at the tube. It didn't smell like anything he'd thought of as food. Tentatively, he bit into the tube thing. It's mush! And salty! Setting it aside, he choked down the white bread while examining the cardboard.

There were various markings in German, but he wasn't familiar with the language. Poking it with a claw, a white liquid began to dribble out. Licking at it carefully, he was rewarded with something cool that had a flavor vaguely resembling milk. Why would someone give water milk flavoring?

Despite his misgivings he drank the liquid and ate the bread. The tube was not something he'd eat without being assured of what it actually was. With that done, he lay down on the bed and tried to get some sleep.

He was awakened several hours later by the sound of heavy metal footsteps in the hallway. A massive cyborg opened both their cells and pulled them out, dragging them down the hallway by the scruff. Both of them managed to keep their feet under them and avoid too much distress.

After going down a couple hallways, they were deposited in a room together and the door closed behind them. A hologram of a human woman appeared before them. "Sprechen sie Deutsche?"

Aoloa frowned slightly. They'd gotten so used to speaking via their comms system, that they hadn't attempted to vocalize in a few months. His elongated jaws interfered, but he did a passable job of saying, "I don't understand what you're saying."

The hologram frowned. "English, then. Who sent you?"

Hokulani glanced at him nervously, but he went ahead and answered, "Nobody. We're just trying to get to Switzerland, and were afraid any route not through Germany would be blocked."

"So you admit you breeched the barricade?" He nodded. "And you were spying on our cyborgs' communications systems."

"Only once they started chasing us, in an effort to get away. We just wanted to reach the Swiss border."

The hologram appeared to interact with some equipment that wasn't visible to them, a stern expression on her face. "You are military personnel. You have military grade modifications and cybernetics. Now, who sent you?"

"We are officially dead. I was supposed to have died in an 'accident' on a mission. Our team mates conspired to save me, and she," he nodded to Hokulani, "had to 'die' with me to maintain cover. With that said, one or more agencies has been tracking us via satellite. We posted a video as UPSInsider98 and UPSOutsider98 revealing that there are genetically modified humans out there."

She looked away from them again, clearly working at a computer they couldn't see. After a bit, she looked at them more thoughtfully. "How can you prove this was you?"

"We have the raw footage. We have the tactical analysis that goes with it. More importantly, we can provide you with the precise GPS coordinates for where it happened. 47.159592 by 10.555138."

She went back to her computer, working again. This time, she nodded slightly, if begrudgingly. "This corresponds with other information we have. Okay, so it was you. Why is the United Pacific States so keen to get you?"

Aoloa glanced at Hokulani. When she didn't offer anything, he volunteered, "They made us. They tried to unmake us."

"So you are UPS military hardware." Aoloa simply nodded. "And you 'just want to go to Switzerland'?" He nodded again. "Why?"

"They're neutral. We figured we stood a decent chance of being safe and relatively unmolested there."

"So you want to station yourselves clandestinely in the center of Europe, in a neutral state, and I'm supposed to just accept that?"

"If I were you, I probably wouldn't," he admitted.

"Let's start with why they wanted to kill you," she stated, sitting down in a chair that wasn't being broadcast as part of the hologram.

Thus began a very long recitation of their adventures, to date. Their interrogator didn't interrupt, merely listened as they explained how they had gone from happy and nearly human, to running from German cyborgs.