Inferno

17 - Shattered Glass and Trust

-he opened his eyes, only to close them again as he recoiled from the brightness of the lights around him.

"Oi! Rise and shine, eh?"

Upon hearing that familiar voice, he forced his eyelids open to confirm with his sight what he heard. Indeed, it was none other than Blisk in front of him. The mercenary was looking down at Tobias with an grin of begrudging respect on his face. He looked to his left and right to see that he was kneeling on the ground with a rifleman flanking either side of him.

A flash of pain in his head, and various images flickered through his mind. Images that didn't make sense in any context he knew. There was a cold sensation like liquid mercury behind his eyes, like-

"Can you hear me? You in there?"

He blinked a few times to try and quell the flow of pictures and thoughts, and focused on Blisk, causing the man to nod approvingly. "There we go, I can see you're paying attention now."

They weren't in the ruins of that place anymore, with the large rings. They were in some kind of command room. A large observation window could be seen behind Blisk, and it allowed him to see that the room was pretty high off the ground. It resided on one end of a large octagonal shaped complex, with a massive similarly shaped trench surrounding the complex itself.

Blisk followed his gaze out the window. "Pretty nice view, eh? Welcome to the main IMC facility on Erebus. Pretty much right in the arctic circle, but the field generators in those trenches keep the snow from getting to be too much. Blizzard outside the bubble, a light snowfall inside." He threw his hands behind his back, and made them grip each other in a thoughtful sort of stance before turning back to look at Tobias.

"I've got to hand it to you; I'm even more impressed than I was when we first met. I didn't think there was any way someone could have survived the fall you took, let alone brave the storm and ice, then live to tell the tale."

Tobias glared at him. "How did I get here?"

The mercenary nodded at his question. "Well, see we discovered that site we found you at a long time ago. It's a very important one to us, but we never could glean anything besides a plan from it. As of a few hours ago, our monitors all suddenly light up and say that they've detected a massive energy reading at the excavation site. I don't think you realize exactly what you did, but something that powerful could have blown the planet up. Probably could have blown the solar system up, though I haven't confirmed that with any numbers." He grinned. "So of course we went investigating, and found you twitching on the observation platform. Brought you back here for analysis, and... would you look at that."

Reaching one hand into a pouch, he pulled out the orb that Tobias had held earlier. But now, instead of humming and glowing, it was completely dead, a lifeless ball. "Eggheads said that they've been trying to remove this thing for years, never had any luck. It was quantum locked or something. I guess you got it on the first try, eh? It would seem that it likes you."

He tossed it out to Tobias, who reflexively reached out and caught it. Realizing his mistake, he looked down in fear, but the orb fortunately remained dull. Blisk made a 'tsk' of disappointment.

"I didn't think that would work, but figured it was worth a try." He looked out the window again before focusing his full attention on Tobias.

"So here's the deal, Four; that bounty on your head technically doesn't exist anymore, now that everyone thought you were dead. I even got a bit of compensation for it. So I don't really have any desire to kill you." He chuckled at the surprised look on Tobias' face. "Weren't expecting that, I see. Well, it's the truth. I know exactly how skilled you are by how big of a pain you've been to deal with. And my team needs that, people skilled like you."