Fic, Silk and Steel, Part 42, AU, 18
Sep. 9th, 2009 08:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fredbassettTitle : Silk and Steel, Part 42
Authors : fredbassett & munchkinofdoom
Fandom : Primeval
Characters : Lester, Ryan, Becker, Cutter, Connor, Abby, Lacey, Annie Morris
Rating : 18
Disclaimer : Not ours, no money made, don’t sue
Spoilers : None
Summary : The team returns to the ARC in the aftermath of a major incident.
A/N : Slave!fic.
The slam of the car door echoed like a gun shot around the cavernous underground garage. Ryan threw his rifle at the nearest soldier and ordered, “Clean it and check it back in,” before striding through the double doors and across the floor of the atrium.
White-coated, collared technicians flinched away from the black-clad soldiers streaming back into the building.
With Becker at his heels, Ryan headed up the ramp without sparing a glance for any onlookers.
Lester’s secretary met them at the door of the outer office. “Go straight in, Captains, he’s expecting you.”
Even so, Ryan paused on the threshold and knocked on the open door.
Sir James Lester was leaning on the desk, the phone pressed to one ear, while the fingers of his other hand drummed restlessly on the smoked glass top. “Yes, Prime Minister.” The words were dry and emotionless. He looked up and waved the soldiers in with an imperious gesture.
Ryan advanced into the room, taking in the strained look on the other man’s face and the scatter of papers strewn across the usually immaculate desk, and sank to both knees, head bowed. At his side, Becker followed suit.
Moments later, without Lester saying another word, Ryan heard the handset slamming back down and a mutter of, “Fuck you, Prime Minister.”
The soldier kept his eyes fixed on the floor.
“Report, Captain Ryan.”
* * * * *
Private Tanya Lacey had known worse days, but off-hand, she couldn’t remember when. Even the recent attack on the ARC paled into insignificance beside some of the sights she’d had the misfortune to witness today.
She looked wearily into the rear view mirror of the Range Rover, as she brought the vehicle to a halt in the undercover ARC garage and turned off the ignition
Her two charges, Connor Temple and Abby Maitland, leaned resignedly against each other in the back seat, seeming to need the support of each other without even being aware of it. Their faces, what she could see of them beneath the liberal spattering of dried blood, were pale and drawn. There would be nightmares tonight, Lacey was certain of that. She would almost certainly have a few bad dreams of her own when she finally got the luxury of some sleep.
Determinedly damping down her own distress at the day's catastrophic events, Lacey climbed out of the front seat and opened the rear door. As she did so, her attention was drawn to the sharp noise of car doors slamming shut. Looking up, Lacey caught sight of her commanding officer, Captain Ryan, with Becker, the new captain, at his side, both men striding purposefully through the huge internal garage doors into the atrium beyond. More car doors slammed around her. Professor Cutter and Stephen Hart were already half-way across the dimly-lit tarmac, Stephen a bare step behind the professor and seemingly still on guard, his eyes quartering the area relentlessly, hesitating only a moment to meet Jon Lyle's gaze and exchange a brief nod, before hurrying on to catch up with Cutter.
A soft cough from across the top of the Range Rover drew Lacey's attention back to her own concerns. Turning around, she was met by Lieutenant Dave Owen's silent regard. She gave a single nod in acknowledgement of his presence and started to lean down into the back of the car.
"Lacey!" Ditzy called.
"Hm?" Looking back over the top of the car, Lacey raised one eyebrow in enquiry.
"I'll be in the infirmary if you need me. Just yell." He tapped his radio once, then nodded and headed off after the stragglers, stopping to check on Kermit, who was bleeding from a long, jagged tear that meandered from above his collarbone down almost to his left elbow, the sleeve of his black jacket hanging in shreds around the hastily bandaged injury.
Lacey sighed. How the hell they'd managed to avoid any fatalities within their own ranks that day, she had no idea. Their luck had certainly held out, but she had a sinking feeling that such good fortune couldn't be counted on for much longer. They had been far too lucky for far too long. And that precious commodity was bound to start running out soon.
Shaking off the fleeting feeling of something walking over her grave, she reached back into the car, gently brushing Abby's blood-encrusted cheek with her fingers.
"We're here, Abs," the soldier whispered, allowing herself a small, reassuring smile as Abby met her gaze. The blonde girl's eyes were shadowed, and she was desperately blinking back tears. She had been doing that all the way back from the charnel house masquerading as a school that they'd left behind them. Her distress had been obvious every time Lacey had checked behind her in the rear view mirror.
Abby turned quickly, giving Connor's shoulder a shake. Lacey reached across the girl to place a steadying hand on the lad's arm as he suddenly jerked upright, his eyes staring frantically around the darkened garage.
"It's alright, Conn," Lacey told. "We're safe in the ARC. Let's get you both inside and cleaned up, and then I'll drive the pair of you home. You want me to stay over tonight if I can square it with the boss?"
With a grateful look, her two charges hauled themselves wearily out of the vehicle, gratefully taking Lacey's hand in support. Stepping back, she steadied them on their feet and then, placing an arm gently around each of them, Lacey slowly escorted Connor and Abby across the now deserted garage.
Time to get her two geeks cleaned up.
* * * * *
“It was a fucking shambles before we even got there,” Ryan declared, settling back on his heels, but remaining on his knees, not wishing to take any chances with Lester in this sort of mood. “The bloody things were all over the place. The anomaly was slap bang in the middle of one of the sports pitches. There were dead kids everywhere. Screaming teachers, hysterical parents, and the press were already on the scene.”
His voice low and as emotionless as he could make it, Ryan continued to describe the scene. On the occasions when he hesitated, Becker took up the story. Together, the two soldiers recounted the carnage visited on the unsuspecting competitors and spectators at the Sports Day. Fifteen children and four adults dead, five more kids seriously injured, one of whom would almost certainly lose an arm. One teacher had serious facial injuries and three parents were probably in intensive care by now.
“The Saudi Ambassador has just died,” said Lester, flatly.
Ryan looked up, eyes widening in shock. The man had been both brave and resourceful, saving at least three children single-handedly. Ryan had hoped he might have survived. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“Not as bloody sorry as I am,” snapped Lester, standing up and starting to pace. “What the hell were those fucking things?”
“Phorusrhacus,” replied a voice from the doorway, “otherwise known as Terror Birds. Early Miocene, about 25 million years ago. Ruthless predators.”
“Spare me the lecture, Professor,” sighed Lester. “Why didn’t we know about the anomaly immediately it opened? I thought we’d gone past the stage of snooping on the Emergency Bands for information?”
“The Detection Device must have malfunctioned, but Connor’s back-up systems worked. We did all we could, man!”
The crack of Lester’s palm hitting the glass of the desk echoed like a gunshot around the room. “It wasn’t enough, Cutter! The press are having a field day! There are photographs all over the internet and the Prime Minister wants my head on a plate. It wasn’t some inner city comprehensive, you know, it was Dulwich bloody College!”
And that was the essence of the problem, thought Ryan, as he listened to Lester and Cutter wrangle over response times. The children who’d died had parents who were either rich, famous or both, parents who were almost certainly articulate, with friends in high places. Not parents who could be brow-beaten into silence, and certainly not parents who could just vanish without trace.
The Terror Birds had emerged from an anomaly in the middle of a game of football. Several of the terrified thirteen year olds had almost immediately fallen prey to the predators' massively powerful, hooked beaks. By the time Ryan and Becker had arrived with their teams, the majority of the damage had already been done, and it would be a long time before the two soldiers would forget the sight of the huge birds slashing at the bodies of their victims, tearing flesh from bone, holding the bodies down with one strong, sharp-clawed foot while they ripped at the corpses with their beaks. The birds, as tall as an adult human, had been fast and devastatingly strong, charging across the playing fields on stout, heavily muscled legs.
Ryan couldn’t begin to imagine how Jenny Lewis was even going to begin to contain a disaster of this magnitude, and from the sound of the argument raging in front of him, neither could Lester.
The two soldiers kept their heads down, quite literally, and waited for the angry words to peter out.
“Oh get up, the pair of you,” snapped Lester, eventually. “Did you take any casualties amongst your men, Ryan?”
The Special Forces captain shook his head, privately thinking that the lack of a blood sacrifice to appease Lester’s political lords and masters probably wouldn’t help matters.
* * * * *
By the time Lacey had got Abby and Connor through the atrium, along the ground floor corridor, up the end stairs and down the first floor corridor, she was beginning to wonder if it might have been a better idea to have simply turned the Range Rover around and taken them straight home to Abby's flat. That way, there would only have been one flight of stairs to contend with, and a bed awaiting them at the top. She could probably have got away with just wiping their faces down and leaving them to sleep. Again.
Instead, with the women’s showers almost within reach, and the men's showers just a little further along, Abby and Connor were clearly flagging, leaning more and more heavily on Lacey with each laboured step. The soldier's attention was so focussed on keeping her charges upright that Lacey barely saw the boots in front of her before she almost fell over them.
Her eyes flew upward, taking in the military uniform and officer's insignia, before she came face to face with Captain Thomson. An exceedingly angry Captain Thomson.
"Sir?" Lacey said, nervously. The man had already been in the ARC long enough to have acquired a certain reputation, even if only half of the rumours were true.
"Temple, come with me. Now," demanded Thomson. The captain spared a cold glance for Lacey before striding back along the corridor, heading for the open door of the Punishment Room. His pitbull of a sergeant pulled Connor out of Lacey's grasp and began to drag him back along the corridor by the scruff of his neck. Lacey swung around in shock, making Abby stagger unsteadily as her support disappeared. With a growing sense of horror, the soldier watched her young charge hauled unceremoniously into the hated torture chamber.
Shocked into indecision, Lacey turned back to Abby, even as every instinct screamed at her to protect Connor. Then a gasp from behind Abby caught Lacey's attention. Looking up, she met Professor Annie Morris's stunned expression.
She would have to do.
"Professor, get Lester. Now, please. I can't… I have to go…" then Private Tanya Lacey turned and ran.
* * * * *
The sound of heeled shoes, rapidly approaching the outer office, drew Ryan’s attention. He turned his head to see the recently appointed Head of Physics approaching, a determined look in her calm, blue eyes.
“I’m afraid Sir James cannot be disturbed, Professor Morris,” declared Lorraine, in a voice clearly designed to attract her boss’s attention. “Can I assist you?”
“Only if you’re capable of calling Captain Thomson and his thugs to order, dear,” replied Annie Morris, in equally carrying tones. “He’s taking Connor Temple to the Punishment Room.”
Cutter’s head whipped around, his eyes shocked. “He’s doing what?”
“He said he told Connor that fixing the ADD was the highest priority. He appears to be of the opinion that his orders have not been followed.”
“Which is true,” snapped Lester. “Temple reported to me last night that the Detector had been restored to full functionality.”
“He checked and rechecked every single circuit and connection ten times over, James,” said Annie. “Whatever went wrong is not Connor’s fault.”
“You have a touching faith in the boy’s abilities,” said Lester. “But the fact remains that his machine failed to sound the alarm. Therefore, clearly someone was at fault.”
“And flogging him will help matters how, dear?” said Annie, fixing Lester with a stare that would have sent most people running for the hills.
Nick Cutter gave a disgusted snort and turned on his heel. Ryan made eye contact with Becker and gave a brief nod in the direction of the doorway. Becker moved smoothly to block Cutter’s exit.
“Move yourself,” demanded Cutter, the ‘r’ rolling like approaching thunder. “If he won’t stop this, I will.”
Becker didn’t move, but his right hand did slide down to rest on the butt of his pistol.
“Don’t be a bloody fool, Cutter!” Lester’s voice carried enough authority to stop the angry academic before he had time to try and take a swing with his fist at the soldier. “You’ll only play straight into their hands, and we’ve given anyone trying to muscle in on this project enough hostages to fortune already today. Leave Thomson to Ryan. It’s your job to get a report on this bloody debacle on my desk within the hour. The PM wants to see me by the end of the day, and I need enough to convince him that you were facing a cross between King Kong and Godzilla, and not just a bunch of over-sized ostriches with a grudge against humanity.
“Do the report, Professor, and make it a good one! Becker, ensure Professor Cutter isn’t disturbed. Captain Ryan, tell Thomson that much as I applaud his zeal, I need Mr Temple in one piece. I want that Detection Device back in working order before I leave here. And more to the point, I want to know what went wrong! Do I make myself clear?”
Ryan came smoothly to attention and snapped off a perfect salute. “Perfectly clear, master.”
Becker followed suit, shooting Cutter a stare which told the other man, without the need for words, that now was not a good time to pick a fight.
For once in his life, Nick Cutter chose the sensible course of action, and let his clenched fists drop to his sides.
This was one report that their lives really might depend on. Ryan hoped the professor would indeed make it a good one.
Authors : fredbassett & munchkinofdoom
Fandom : Primeval
Characters : Lester, Ryan, Becker, Cutter, Connor, Abby, Lacey, Annie Morris
Rating : 18
Disclaimer : Not ours, no money made, don’t sue
Spoilers : None
Summary : The team returns to the ARC in the aftermath of a major incident.
A/N : Slave!fic.
The slam of the car door echoed like a gun shot around the cavernous underground garage. Ryan threw his rifle at the nearest soldier and ordered, “Clean it and check it back in,” before striding through the double doors and across the floor of the atrium.
White-coated, collared technicians flinched away from the black-clad soldiers streaming back into the building.
With Becker at his heels, Ryan headed up the ramp without sparing a glance for any onlookers.
Lester’s secretary met them at the door of the outer office. “Go straight in, Captains, he’s expecting you.”
Even so, Ryan paused on the threshold and knocked on the open door.
Sir James Lester was leaning on the desk, the phone pressed to one ear, while the fingers of his other hand drummed restlessly on the smoked glass top. “Yes, Prime Minister.” The words were dry and emotionless. He looked up and waved the soldiers in with an imperious gesture.
Ryan advanced into the room, taking in the strained look on the other man’s face and the scatter of papers strewn across the usually immaculate desk, and sank to both knees, head bowed. At his side, Becker followed suit.
Moments later, without Lester saying another word, Ryan heard the handset slamming back down and a mutter of, “Fuck you, Prime Minister.”
The soldier kept his eyes fixed on the floor.
“Report, Captain Ryan.”
* * * * *
Private Tanya Lacey had known worse days, but off-hand, she couldn’t remember when. Even the recent attack on the ARC paled into insignificance beside some of the sights she’d had the misfortune to witness today.
She looked wearily into the rear view mirror of the Range Rover, as she brought the vehicle to a halt in the undercover ARC garage and turned off the ignition
Her two charges, Connor Temple and Abby Maitland, leaned resignedly against each other in the back seat, seeming to need the support of each other without even being aware of it. Their faces, what she could see of them beneath the liberal spattering of dried blood, were pale and drawn. There would be nightmares tonight, Lacey was certain of that. She would almost certainly have a few bad dreams of her own when she finally got the luxury of some sleep.
Determinedly damping down her own distress at the day's catastrophic events, Lacey climbed out of the front seat and opened the rear door. As she did so, her attention was drawn to the sharp noise of car doors slamming shut. Looking up, Lacey caught sight of her commanding officer, Captain Ryan, with Becker, the new captain, at his side, both men striding purposefully through the huge internal garage doors into the atrium beyond. More car doors slammed around her. Professor Cutter and Stephen Hart were already half-way across the dimly-lit tarmac, Stephen a bare step behind the professor and seemingly still on guard, his eyes quartering the area relentlessly, hesitating only a moment to meet Jon Lyle's gaze and exchange a brief nod, before hurrying on to catch up with Cutter.
A soft cough from across the top of the Range Rover drew Lacey's attention back to her own concerns. Turning around, she was met by Lieutenant Dave Owen's silent regard. She gave a single nod in acknowledgement of his presence and started to lean down into the back of the car.
"Lacey!" Ditzy called.
"Hm?" Looking back over the top of the car, Lacey raised one eyebrow in enquiry.
"I'll be in the infirmary if you need me. Just yell." He tapped his radio once, then nodded and headed off after the stragglers, stopping to check on Kermit, who was bleeding from a long, jagged tear that meandered from above his collarbone down almost to his left elbow, the sleeve of his black jacket hanging in shreds around the hastily bandaged injury.
Lacey sighed. How the hell they'd managed to avoid any fatalities within their own ranks that day, she had no idea. Their luck had certainly held out, but she had a sinking feeling that such good fortune couldn't be counted on for much longer. They had been far too lucky for far too long. And that precious commodity was bound to start running out soon.
Shaking off the fleeting feeling of something walking over her grave, she reached back into the car, gently brushing Abby's blood-encrusted cheek with her fingers.
"We're here, Abs," the soldier whispered, allowing herself a small, reassuring smile as Abby met her gaze. The blonde girl's eyes were shadowed, and she was desperately blinking back tears. She had been doing that all the way back from the charnel house masquerading as a school that they'd left behind them. Her distress had been obvious every time Lacey had checked behind her in the rear view mirror.
Abby turned quickly, giving Connor's shoulder a shake. Lacey reached across the girl to place a steadying hand on the lad's arm as he suddenly jerked upright, his eyes staring frantically around the darkened garage.
"It's alright, Conn," Lacey told. "We're safe in the ARC. Let's get you both inside and cleaned up, and then I'll drive the pair of you home. You want me to stay over tonight if I can square it with the boss?"
With a grateful look, her two charges hauled themselves wearily out of the vehicle, gratefully taking Lacey's hand in support. Stepping back, she steadied them on their feet and then, placing an arm gently around each of them, Lacey slowly escorted Connor and Abby across the now deserted garage.
Time to get her two geeks cleaned up.
* * * * *
“It was a fucking shambles before we even got there,” Ryan declared, settling back on his heels, but remaining on his knees, not wishing to take any chances with Lester in this sort of mood. “The bloody things were all over the place. The anomaly was slap bang in the middle of one of the sports pitches. There were dead kids everywhere. Screaming teachers, hysterical parents, and the press were already on the scene.”
His voice low and as emotionless as he could make it, Ryan continued to describe the scene. On the occasions when he hesitated, Becker took up the story. Together, the two soldiers recounted the carnage visited on the unsuspecting competitors and spectators at the Sports Day. Fifteen children and four adults dead, five more kids seriously injured, one of whom would almost certainly lose an arm. One teacher had serious facial injuries and three parents were probably in intensive care by now.
“The Saudi Ambassador has just died,” said Lester, flatly.
Ryan looked up, eyes widening in shock. The man had been both brave and resourceful, saving at least three children single-handedly. Ryan had hoped he might have survived. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“Not as bloody sorry as I am,” snapped Lester, standing up and starting to pace. “What the hell were those fucking things?”
“Phorusrhacus,” replied a voice from the doorway, “otherwise known as Terror Birds. Early Miocene, about 25 million years ago. Ruthless predators.”
“Spare me the lecture, Professor,” sighed Lester. “Why didn’t we know about the anomaly immediately it opened? I thought we’d gone past the stage of snooping on the Emergency Bands for information?”
“The Detection Device must have malfunctioned, but Connor’s back-up systems worked. We did all we could, man!”
The crack of Lester’s palm hitting the glass of the desk echoed like a gunshot around the room. “It wasn’t enough, Cutter! The press are having a field day! There are photographs all over the internet and the Prime Minister wants my head on a plate. It wasn’t some inner city comprehensive, you know, it was Dulwich bloody College!”
And that was the essence of the problem, thought Ryan, as he listened to Lester and Cutter wrangle over response times. The children who’d died had parents who were either rich, famous or both, parents who were almost certainly articulate, with friends in high places. Not parents who could be brow-beaten into silence, and certainly not parents who could just vanish without trace.
The Terror Birds had emerged from an anomaly in the middle of a game of football. Several of the terrified thirteen year olds had almost immediately fallen prey to the predators' massively powerful, hooked beaks. By the time Ryan and Becker had arrived with their teams, the majority of the damage had already been done, and it would be a long time before the two soldiers would forget the sight of the huge birds slashing at the bodies of their victims, tearing flesh from bone, holding the bodies down with one strong, sharp-clawed foot while they ripped at the corpses with their beaks. The birds, as tall as an adult human, had been fast and devastatingly strong, charging across the playing fields on stout, heavily muscled legs.
Ryan couldn’t begin to imagine how Jenny Lewis was even going to begin to contain a disaster of this magnitude, and from the sound of the argument raging in front of him, neither could Lester.
The two soldiers kept their heads down, quite literally, and waited for the angry words to peter out.
“Oh get up, the pair of you,” snapped Lester, eventually. “Did you take any casualties amongst your men, Ryan?”
The Special Forces captain shook his head, privately thinking that the lack of a blood sacrifice to appease Lester’s political lords and masters probably wouldn’t help matters.
* * * * *
By the time Lacey had got Abby and Connor through the atrium, along the ground floor corridor, up the end stairs and down the first floor corridor, she was beginning to wonder if it might have been a better idea to have simply turned the Range Rover around and taken them straight home to Abby's flat. That way, there would only have been one flight of stairs to contend with, and a bed awaiting them at the top. She could probably have got away with just wiping their faces down and leaving them to sleep. Again.
Instead, with the women’s showers almost within reach, and the men's showers just a little further along, Abby and Connor were clearly flagging, leaning more and more heavily on Lacey with each laboured step. The soldier's attention was so focussed on keeping her charges upright that Lacey barely saw the boots in front of her before she almost fell over them.
Her eyes flew upward, taking in the military uniform and officer's insignia, before she came face to face with Captain Thomson. An exceedingly angry Captain Thomson.
"Sir?" Lacey said, nervously. The man had already been in the ARC long enough to have acquired a certain reputation, even if only half of the rumours were true.
"Temple, come with me. Now," demanded Thomson. The captain spared a cold glance for Lacey before striding back along the corridor, heading for the open door of the Punishment Room. His pitbull of a sergeant pulled Connor out of Lacey's grasp and began to drag him back along the corridor by the scruff of his neck. Lacey swung around in shock, making Abby stagger unsteadily as her support disappeared. With a growing sense of horror, the soldier watched her young charge hauled unceremoniously into the hated torture chamber.
Shocked into indecision, Lacey turned back to Abby, even as every instinct screamed at her to protect Connor. Then a gasp from behind Abby caught Lacey's attention. Looking up, she met Professor Annie Morris's stunned expression.
She would have to do.
"Professor, get Lester. Now, please. I can't… I have to go…" then Private Tanya Lacey turned and ran.
* * * * *
The sound of heeled shoes, rapidly approaching the outer office, drew Ryan’s attention. He turned his head to see the recently appointed Head of Physics approaching, a determined look in her calm, blue eyes.
“I’m afraid Sir James cannot be disturbed, Professor Morris,” declared Lorraine, in a voice clearly designed to attract her boss’s attention. “Can I assist you?”
“Only if you’re capable of calling Captain Thomson and his thugs to order, dear,” replied Annie Morris, in equally carrying tones. “He’s taking Connor Temple to the Punishment Room.”
Cutter’s head whipped around, his eyes shocked. “He’s doing what?”
“He said he told Connor that fixing the ADD was the highest priority. He appears to be of the opinion that his orders have not been followed.”
“Which is true,” snapped Lester. “Temple reported to me last night that the Detector had been restored to full functionality.”
“He checked and rechecked every single circuit and connection ten times over, James,” said Annie. “Whatever went wrong is not Connor’s fault.”
“You have a touching faith in the boy’s abilities,” said Lester. “But the fact remains that his machine failed to sound the alarm. Therefore, clearly someone was at fault.”
“And flogging him will help matters how, dear?” said Annie, fixing Lester with a stare that would have sent most people running for the hills.
Nick Cutter gave a disgusted snort and turned on his heel. Ryan made eye contact with Becker and gave a brief nod in the direction of the doorway. Becker moved smoothly to block Cutter’s exit.
“Move yourself,” demanded Cutter, the ‘r’ rolling like approaching thunder. “If he won’t stop this, I will.”
Becker didn’t move, but his right hand did slide down to rest on the butt of his pistol.
“Don’t be a bloody fool, Cutter!” Lester’s voice carried enough authority to stop the angry academic before he had time to try and take a swing with his fist at the soldier. “You’ll only play straight into their hands, and we’ve given anyone trying to muscle in on this project enough hostages to fortune already today. Leave Thomson to Ryan. It’s your job to get a report on this bloody debacle on my desk within the hour. The PM wants to see me by the end of the day, and I need enough to convince him that you were facing a cross between King Kong and Godzilla, and not just a bunch of over-sized ostriches with a grudge against humanity.
“Do the report, Professor, and make it a good one! Becker, ensure Professor Cutter isn’t disturbed. Captain Ryan, tell Thomson that much as I applaud his zeal, I need Mr Temple in one piece. I want that Detection Device back in working order before I leave here. And more to the point, I want to know what went wrong! Do I make myself clear?”
Ryan came smoothly to attention and snapped off a perfect salute. “Perfectly clear, master.”
Becker followed suit, shooting Cutter a stare which told the other man, without the need for words, that now was not a good time to pick a fight.
For once in his life, Nick Cutter chose the sensible course of action, and let his clenched fists drop to his sides.
This was one report that their lives really might depend on. Ryan hoped the professor would indeed make it a good one.