In a training room inside Facility:Null stands Sawyer Ambrose and Claudia Weslie. Claudia, who had now just been undergoing training to join Sawyer's unit 24, perks up seeing him enter the room.
"Tessa's already left?" Asks the young commander.
"Uh, yeah."
Sawyer looks around the room for signs of past activity, trying to gauge Claudia's effort over the past few days.
"How's training going?"
"Well I've learned how to use a gun… and I've been training self-defense since I was a teenager, so I already know a thing or two." She answers less reluctantly than before, attempting to hide her displeasement caused by the fact these people are forcing her to be a soldier for their company.
"That's good, 'cause we're leaving. A cryptid's been found and I want you to be there."
"A-a mission, already?"
"Only something minor. However, I want you to become desensitised to anomalies. We'll start small, but soon you'll be on a real mission, and I don't want you freezing up from shock - no matter what you see."
At that moment a woman, her curly brown hair being a striking feature of hers, enters the training grounds. The woman was evidently a senior researcher sporting the facility's classic white lab coat, and several paper notes clutched in her hand by her side.
Making her way to speak to Sawyer, she stops in her tracks in front of the two upon noticing Claudia.
"Is it alright that she's here?" The woman asks.
Claudia looks at Sawyer with a puzzled look, then back at the woman. "What is she talking about…?"
Sawyer bears a tired expression, then, out of nowhere, grabs Claudia's forearm and lifts it up for the senior researcher to see.
"She already knows."
"H-hey, what are you doing? Let go!" Claudia struggles, but to no avail.
"Your wrist was injured, wasn't it?" He deducts, clearly having more to say.
"How did you know?..."
"Small spatter of blood still in your shirt. I'm guessing you injured yourself from handling a blade, or from being unprepared for the recoil of a firearm. But it healed, didn't it?"
A guilty look washed over Claudia's face.
Sawyer continues. "I get why you hid it, I do. If by chance we were mistaken and you hadn't been affected by an anomaly, then we could let you go. That would have been your train of thought."
"But… but you said you didn't know what was wrong with me." By now, Sawyer has let go of her.
"I lied." He unapologetically admits.
"What?" Claudia's face is slightly overshadowed by distraught.
"I didn't. But I had somebody find Professor Lavender's file on you."
The researcher lady chimes in. "Well, it wasn't easy."
"So, what does it say?" Claudia expectantly asks the researcher.
Sawyer gives the lady the go-ahead to say it in front of Claudia.
"To be brief - when our 'John Doe' cryptid was tracked all the way to the United Kingdom, you were all that they found. A disfigured mess on the shore of a river. The unit that had gone abroad had no choice but to bring you in. Professor Lavender had discovered that you had been altered in a way by the cryptid - possibly, it had died after dragging you to that river. After which it left a piece of itself in you by coincidence."
Claudia takes in this new bundle of information. Her skin crawls thinking about some disgusting amalgamation flesh rooted inside her body and keeping her in one piece - so that it too can live. Though, death for a cryptid was never explicitly explained to Claudia. It seems like when a cryptid is 'killed' by field operators and brought back to the facility, it is then put back together and eventually heals itself to at least a once-again sentient state - though, by that point it has been properly contained already. From Sawyer's near three years of experience - he would deduct that destruction of a cryptid, especially its head or center, is what would typically mean death to such unnatural entities - if not tampered with afterwards, of course.
"The cryptid's nerves, or parts, or whatever - cryptid bodies work on a random, nonsensical biological structure so we have no idea what it is - are still inside Claudia, and still working on impulse. The severed nervous system does its best to keep the host to protect itself by dragging anything that was lost from her body back. If Claudia's body is forced to recreate a large part of herself from scratch… Well, it'll work, but it may happen in a violent outburst, twisting that part of her body into something volatile while it heals her. "Heal" is an optimistic way of putting it."
Sawyer stops the researcher, silently deciding that this has been enough information for one day.
"Alright. Thank you, Professor Mayer."
Making sure she isn't in a trance, Sawyer turns to Claudia and ensures that she understands her situation.
"Did you catch all of that?"
Her eyes flicker back to Sawyer as she nods. "Yeah."
"Good."
Professor Mayer heads out to leave the room, but is halted by a question coming from Claudia.
"Have they found him yet? The man who freed me."
Mayer turns her head back to answer before leaving, "No, not yet."
A simple answer, not wanting to go into detail. Sawyer too had suspected that Claudia's interest in the impending capture of Morris Lavender was one last grasp at freedom. But that small hope dwindled out like the small fire it was. Claudia didn't struggle or argue further, she was now ready to be the soldier that Sawyer, although not wishing for it personally, understood she needed to be - at least for the time being.
Sawyer then switches to converse with Dawn over his radio chip on his collar.
"Dawn, get my unit ready to head out."
Claudia perks up in interest, which Sawyer notices and simply says to her, "You're gonna come meet your colleagues."
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"Hey."
Vincent Campbell's personal guard speaks up once more, raising his voice, as the researcher continues to walk past him into Campbell's office despite the guard's attempts to halt her.
"Hey! Don't walk any further, the director is-"
A voice cuts off the guard from inside the office.
"It's alright, let her in." Campbell's voice reaches the guard, and with the director's expressed permission, he lets the researcher into the office.
Campbell looks up from his desk, meeting eyes with the woman who had essentially barged into his room.
"To what do I owe the pleasure, Samantha?"
She doesn't even so much as acknowledge his greeting before snapping into her topic of conversation.
"Are you trying to kill Ambrose?"
Campbell squints his eyes at the arbitrary accusation.
"Excuse me?"
Though she didn't mean that Campbell is literally trying to purposefully endanger Sawyer's life, more so a rhetorical question which she came in with to begin their conversation, Samantha Mayer proceeds to expand further on the topic at hand presented by her non-literal question.
"The mission in which the Ent was found."
The director adjusts his sleek glasses.
"What about it? I don't understand your concerns regarding it, the mission had minimal casualties and was swiftly contained."
"You sent him out to deal with a Magper level threat, which a couple of unstable rookies no less."
"First of all, nobody had a clue that the sapling was capable of all of that. I sent him out there to investigate an anomaly I believed to be of little harm."
"It was still a confirmed entity, Vincent. You sent him there with no backup, like it was some sort of test where he either passes or doesn't come back alive."
The director stands up, firmly making his point. "I'd like you to address me as "Director", Miss Mayer. And no, I wouldn't send Sawyer on a suicide mission for my own viewing pleasure. He is capable of far more than you understand."
"I just hope you don't see him as some unbreakable toy of yours, apathy has never really been your strong suit."
He inches closer to her in a reassuring manner. "Ever since Sawyer Ambrose joined us, the facility has seen its highest mission success rate in over 30 years, and our field operator casualty rates at the lowest since the very inception of our institution. The statistics don't lie. And I am trying to do my very best for him in my time as the director, it's why I'm giving him so much freedom, and why I'm giving him the experimental unit."
Campbell attempts to look slightly less stern than his usual default demeanor. "Thank you for consulting me with your concerns - that's how I'd like it to be done at the facility, if we have any troubles amongst the faculty - we talk them out and I listen. And thank you for taking interest in my soldiers, although I doubt the young man would be happy that anybody is doubting him, nonetheless. Now, if you would be so kind, I have things to attend to."
She nods, stealing a glance at his half eaten burrito before heading out of his office.
"Alright. Enjoy your lunch, sir." Though her earlier words were spoken in disregard for status due to the two of them being long-time acquaintances judging by their first name basis, her parting words to him were said with genuine respect.
—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Want a smoke?"
At the outside vehicle parking lot of the facility stand Lex, Jericho, Richard and Dawn - patiently awaiting Sawyer's arrival.
In response to Lex offering a cigarette to the others, Dawn and Jericho gladly accept and join him for a smoke while waiting - using his lighter to light their cigarettes. Richard, however, gives a quick head shake, at which Lex says, "Suit yourself."
In the outdoors concrete-floored premises of Facility:Null, it was a relatively calm work day. As Dawn had gathered the men of unit 24 outside, all they had really seen was a few delivery trucks coming into the installation and regular equipment checkups done by engineers. Most of the aircrafts and personnel carriers had been stationary all day, and no researcher or administrator was rummaging around the facility in a panic.
This, of course, wasn't out of the ordinary. Despite that, such an ordinary, chaosless day made Dawn uneasy - considering Professor Lavender, a domestic murderer that had served her workplace many years before she was even hired, and a man with the mental state of a bomb fuse, was still out there, and doing God knows what at that. She hoped that Director Campbell truly was doing everything in his might to track down Lavender and help soothe the angst of his employees, but her mind was diverted from those thoughts when Sawyer had emerged from the facility's exit, a girl - unfamiliar to the other men - by his side.