inFamous: Red Star

Chapter 6

Three months passed, with the cadets under intensive care for the most of two months, in the aftermath there was only six cadets left; Katya, Sofya, Zakhar, Isaak, Elena and Zoey.
The survivors quite often found themselves with company from the paras or their fellow cadets from different companies whenever there was a quiet day, today happened to be one of those days were they had the paras company, with Stepochkin being almost constantly by Zoey's side.

A lot had changed beyond the hospital walls separating the heavily protected, international zone ran by the red cross and the UN's prized peacekeepers, and the French war zone of a city. Not only had the armies managed to get a hold in the land, but they had got the First Sons on the run and going into hiding until they needed to strike, causing the unified fighting force active in Paris to impose a curfew and checkpoints covering the busier areas of the city during the day whilst the special forces active in the Paris campaign would kick the doors in of anyone they suspected overnight, until a few weeks ago when the uniforms being worn by the soldiers performing the searches and raids slowly began to be phased out from the diverse colours of the camos of countries from around the world all unified with one common goal, to the black and yellow now famous across America for belonging to the Department of Unified Protection, now the majority of duties had been handed over to the newly formed French DUP but the government had insisted on the militaries staying, clearly favouring the ranks of the Spetsnaz, SEALs and the SAS being on call for if things went wrong rather than leaving the fate of the city to some transfers from the ranks of the French armed forces, with the majority being light infantry.
All this meant was that the Russian forces, cadets, paras and everyone else alike, suddenly had a lot more down time than in any other campaign, meaning that Stepochkin was spending more and more time making sure that his adoptive daughter recovered well throughout his almost constant visits to the hospital.

Zoey sat with her dad in the lounge for her wing of the monumental facility, looking around at the other people sat in there reading the news from their own local papers or the likes, she couldn't help but feel out of place, scarcely surrounded by men and women from around the world, all covered in their own battle scars from engagements and the now feared artillery strikes, yet never again using the gas unleashed on the cadets, instead using cluster rounds and napalm rounds out of anything ranging from Chinese made artillery vehicles to make shift mortars in a similar fashion to the ones famously used by the IRA. Zoey looked around the lounge, searching for anyone else she knew, yet despite having been hospitalised for a quarter of a year and having had the chance to touch up on her English through the few wounded soldiers who understood it, the peacekeepers or the volunteer doctors from the red cross.
"Dad, when will we get to go home? like home home, not just back to Russia again, I miss mom, she stopped writing to me a few months ago and she never answers my calls." Zoey sighed as she looked towards Stepochkin,
"Soon Zo, you know she misses you too." Stepochkin said with empathy, as he looked to see Zoey gazing at nothing in particular,
"Stepochkin, bring your daughter back here, those Yankee's want her to redo her tests for some kind of papers." Could be heard being shouted from the door to the ward Zoey was being held in, Zoey groaned in annoyance as she pushed herself up using the chair as support before her dad put an arm around her back and under her far arm from him.
Zoey limped with the support of her dad to her ward and followed one of the DUP medic's through to an examination room, to find the other five waiting for them, in front of them was a one large computer and six little devices that looked kind of like radios, linked to the machine by cords
The DUP's started talking among themselves as they started up the machine but none of the cadets being able to understand thanks to the language barrier between French and Russian, it only took a few minutes before the French DUP's finished with the machine,
"Do any of you speak French?" One of the medics struggled to say, clearly not being all that fluent, and to her annoyance, only received no's and shaking heads, "What about American?" she asked, she could be heard breathing a sigh of relief as Zoey nodded while chuckling to herself "What about American? That must take some ascended level of ego." Zoey chuckled as she swapped to speaking English to receive both surprised and confused looks from the other survivors of Delta company, not expecting for Zoey to have managed to relearn and learn more English to the point she was fluent in it again after so long of not needing it.
"What? we've been here so long and I got bored, thought I'd try talk to a few of the guys around here." Zoey explained as she simply brushed it off as nothing, leaving the medic confused as to what was being said, "I'll translate for you." Zoey simply said noticing the medics look,
"Great, well what we're going to be doing here is scanning you with our new device on your necks to check for the biological traits which make a bioterrorist but since this is relatively new technology and we don't particularly trust it in its current form, we're still going to do blood checks." The medic explained simply,
"Right, what she said was she's going to use us for lab rats for some new machine that they don't trust, and they'll take even more of our blood." Zoey smirked to receive simply a sigh from her dad as the other cadets chuckled slightly,
"Really Zoey?" Stepochkin sighed looking at his daughter, struggling to hold herself back from laughing, the medic looked over at Zoey curiously, why would a Russian girl have an English name?
"What's the story behind your name then Zoey?" The doctor asked as she strapped one of the devices round Zoey's neck and tightening a tourniquet around her arm,
"My mom chose it." Zoey whimpered, suddenly seeming more distant and spaced out as a needle was plunged into her arm and blood was pulled out, before the medic worked her way down the line, repeating the process with the five others.

As soon as the machine had finished scanning them, all six results came up with alerts that made the DUP troops hastily aim their rifles in a panic for Stepochkin to draw his pistol, leaving him in a Mexican stand off as the teen soldiers looked in shock at the previously neutral soldiers now threatening to be their demise,
"We need help in here!" Zoey shouted in a panic, almost instantly the door flew open and ten more men from Stepochkin's squadron breached the room and set their rifle sights on the French troops, now clearly outnumbering them,
"Nobody needs to get hurt here, c'mon, we were fine a few minutes ago." Zoey said in a panic,
"That was before we found out all of you are god damn bio terrorists, and you know that we're holding our ground, I'm sure those Peacekeeper's will love to hear your story." The medic said trying to mask the fear in her voice unsuccessfully,
"What? We are not god damn terrorists, we were tested as clean before we deployed, the tests are wrong, you said you don't trust the machine yourself, what's the blood for?" Zoey replied with her own tone of fear in her voice as she tried to reason with the now hostile soldiers,
"Fine, but we'll be issuing an order to arrest all of you until the results come back and if they come back positive and you were lying, it won't be pretty." The medic responded trying to sound threatening.

It took another four weeks before the results came back, the medic walked in on the six cadets and their new twenty strong garrison, placed there much to the distaste of the DUP, peacekeepers and Red Cross. All the Russians turned to look at the French medic, dog tags hanging out around her neck reading 'Violette Laurens',
"There's good news and bad news." She announced once the room had fallen silent, "The good news is none of them are fully bioterrorists." She declared to here cheers from across the room, all soldiers who were willing to start world war three before they'd surrender the survivors, "The bad news is the reason why I'm not wearing a camera today..." Violette stated nervosly as the room fell silent again as no one was sure who to take what she just said, "We've looked at the blood samples and they are like nothing either us or the Americans have ever seen before, we believe the gas wasn't meant to kill them, it's rewriting their DNA, slowly turning them into bioterrorists, it's why they're so weak at the minute, their energy is being focused on changing them into conduits, we weren't stopping the effects, we were only speeding it up." She continued nervously as Zoey started hyperventilating, tipping over the verge of a panic attack, it only took a few more seconds before Zoey broke completely, reaching for the nearest rifle on the table by her before turning off the safety and pressing it against the bottom of her head,
"I'll never turn into one of them, should that mean my death then so be it." Zoey cried before she squeezed the trigger, yet to her dismay all that happened was the distinct clicking sound, she'd grabbed an empty rifle, "Fuck." Was all she muttered before being tackled to the floor by a mixture of soldiers from the VDV's and FSB's Spetsnaz units,
"What just happened?" Violette asked one of the MP's closest to her,
"Another suicide attempt to one of the cadets name." The MP sighed as the paras and MP's started to get off Zoey before restraining her hands in cuffs, her face covered in tears as she weeped on with no sign of stopping, wishing the gun would have fired, she was in enough of a state having gone back to a land controlled by the terrorists which turned her life on it's head, never mind being told that all the agony she had been going through for the last four months was slowly turning her into one of the only things she feared.