Chapter 87: Mentor and Mentee

Rick led Angela to his corner of the office where his desk was. However, instead of sitting down in his chair, he walked her to the desk facing it. Usually it was a disorganized mess but someone had cleaned it up. It was now, not tidy but actually bare minus the computer screen, mouse and keyboard. Not a surprise since its previous owner didn’t need the space anymore.

“That’s your work desk.” He pulled the chair for her to sit down.

Angela’s attention was caught by something shiny under the screen. Reaching for it with her hand, it was revealed to be a tube of lipstick. She gave Rick a glance when he picked it up.

“It belonged to the bitch who had the desk before. Don’t worry about it.” He tossed it to the garbage can at the other side of the office and scored.

“What happened to her if I may ask?”

“I shot her twice and she had a stroke. Been in a coma ever since.” He replied non-chalantly, crouching down to power up the computer. When he noticed the worrying look Angela was giving him when he straightened up he explained himself. “She was a mole working for Lansdale.”

“Oh!” Angela’s expression immediately changed. “Not a big loss then?”

“Nope. Anyways,” Since the computer was booting, Rick made a proper introduction. “As you know, I’m Rick Wald and I’ll be your partner slash trainer until you can handle the field on your own. Welcome to the BSAA where the pay is good, the medical care is excellent and the life expectancy is around thirty two.”

She grimaced at the last part. “Thirty two?”

“Yes. The highest cause of death is incompetence, bad luck or because you’re piloting a helicopter.”

Angella blinked. “A helicopter? How is that dangerous? Do incidents happen often?”

“Oh, yes.” Rick nodded. “But that’s something we’ll see when I’ll teach you about what to do and not do to survive. Why you decided to join after the experience you had is beyond me but I hope you don’t come to regret it.”

“I wanted to make a difference.” She revealed. “No matter how small. High class criminals or regular terrorists are easy to handle but bio-terrorism? I saw how one infected person could lead to many others in Harvardville. It’s more important to fight this. Beside… After what my brother did—” Her face looked both guilty and mournful.

“Don’t.” Rick interrupted her. “Guilt will burn you out faster than anything in this job. The first thing to accept is that you will not save everyone. You may even lose more people than you will save. Guilt will pile up and nothing good will come out of it. What you brother did was not your fault. He made choices and their consequences were entirely on his shoulders. Guilt will make you reckless and being reckless is a sure way to die. If your brother is important to you and your motivation then I’d advise instead of guilt to fight so no one else would go through what he’s gone through and do the things he did in answer.”

Angella considered his words carefully for a moment then slowly nodded. “I… It won’t be easy but I’ll try. It’s more positive, I admit.” Her smile was small but genuine.

“Positive thinking in a moment of intense stress and in a dire situation plays a lot to your odds to survive.” Rick shared, then, seeing the computer Ready, he pointed at it with his finger. “You’ll learn very fast that the BSAA is a paperwork nightmare. Everything has a form, requires form or needs a form to be written for.”

That made her chuckle. “I’m well used to that. It’s the same in the police and the SRT and I suppose any law enforcement agency.”

“We do need to give jobs to people who can’t go on the field.” Rick joked but his face was his usual stoic.

“That is true.”

“Alright. Let’s start with the most important program on this.” He pointed at the logo of the BSAA serving as an icon and invited her to click on it. When she did, a new window opened. “This is the homepage of the BSAA’s network. Here is displayed the news. Not civilian news but our types of news.”

Angela had a look and she could see the arrest of Morgan Lansdale, the abolition of the FBC making the ‘headlines’. Out of curiosity she clicked on it and a new page gave her an article about it. It wasn’t quite one however. It was more of a report of the events and at the end of it were links to other reports written by field agents about it.

“The news is written by…” He thought about it for a moment but didn’t know so rolled with it. “Someone who compiles every report about an incident. It’s a way for us to always be informed quickly of what has happened around the globe. It’s to allow us to search and share information faster. Agents in China could have encountered a situation that may have happened in Brazil for example.”

The new recruit understood immediately. “Instead of having a single lead or none, they can read the reports to extend their search, knowledge and to warn others.”

“Yes.” Rick nodded. “We don’t compartmentalize things. Despite the BSAA having a branch on every continent, bio-terrorism is not limited by borders. Limiting access to information is counter productive. We’re global for a reason. Anyways… The articles are written by people who read the report of each agent having been involved. They pick the important parts and give… an overview of sorts. If you want to know more, for example about the BOW one agent encountered, it won’t be in the article but will be in the personal report. That’s why it’s called ‘news’ instead of ‘report.’

“Your report is missing.” Angela pointed out. “From what I heard around this morning, you were among the agents who stopped Lansdale.”

“I was. Once I write my report a link to it will be added at the end of the article which may or may not be modified if anything I said is something that the other agents had not encountered. Which brings me to the next point: How and where do you write your report?”

Angela simply moved the cursor to the big blue tab with the word ‘Report’ written in white on top of the window. A new page opened with a few small text fields and a very big one under them.

“Not difficult to understand,” Rick started with. “Name, Last Name, ID Badge, the branch of the BSAA you are working at, the part of the world your investigation started then led you too. You can add as many as you want and it must be in order.” He clarified the last part. “Finally the case number. Once that’s done, you type your report. There is no imposed way to write it but I’m partial to making a timeline in bullet points and if there is a need for clarification, I put a number at the end of the point and develop later down.”

“Straight to the information and if you want details you can look down for them while everything stays organized and clean.” Angela remarked, liking the idea very much.

“Yes. I don’t want to read a wall of text to learn something that can be said in a single line.”

“Once I’m done, I click on the send button and that’s it?”

“Yes. Your report will be read by a higher up and archived if it’s good enough. If not, you'll be notified to do it again. Now here is the tricky part. You need to use a specific vocabulary. Not new to you, I’m sure.”

“No.” Angela gave him a shake of the head. “It’s the vocabulary that is new, I suppose?”

“You’re correct. Your first task is to write your report about the Harvardville Airport outbreak from the moment you were called up, to the moment you left with Leon to investigate, while using the proper terms. The infected we encountered are, without surprises, called zombies. It’s their proper designation. If you don't know or remember the name, we have a… bestiary with pictures or drawings you can look at to get it. If it’s a new variant, you just say ‘new BOW’. If you don’t know what it is but know it’s a BOW, like… claw marks on the wall, you write ‘unknown’.

Some BOW have multiple variants. The zombie for example has two: the Crimson head and the Pale head. Sometimes it’s easy to distinguish them, sometimes it isn’t so you just write the species and warn that you weren't able to accurately determine the variants.”

Angela got curious. “Does that happen often?”

Rick nodded. “Hunters have no less than eight variants that we currently know of and are really popular with bio-terrorists. Some are easily distinguishable, some aren’t. The sweeper for example, looks exactly the same as a regular hunter but their claws are red.”

“I’ll have to learn all of them.” She stated.

“Preferably. Not knowing what you’re dealing with increases the odds of you dying drastically. Now go on with it. I’ll write my own in the meantime. Once you’re done, we’re going to the armory.”

Angela was taken by surprise. “We’re already shooting?”

“No, but we can afterwards. We’re visiting the armory so you can familiarize yourself with the basic gear you’ll have on the field and I’ll teach you what’s better to use and what not to use. The more you learn about the different BOW the more weapons we’ll see. Since you’re already familiar with the zombies, we’ll see what works the best with them.”

With that said. Rick walked around the table to get to his own desk. The first thing he did was to look up the Case number for the Harvardville’s outbreak and send it to Angela through the integrated chat of the program.

“Thank you!”

Next, he started writing his own report about the whole ordeal on the Queen Zenobia and after reading Jill’s. He was a bit in a pickle because he had been knocked out for eight hours and he needed to fill that missing time with something. There was no way his infection by the T-Abyss and his time fighting it while sleeping could be divulged.

Rick thought about it for a while and considered his options. There weren’t many, he knew. Only one of them would help but it meant trusting O’Brian. Not agonizing over it, he stood up and went to his boss’ office. Knocking was forgone, Rick went straight inside, closed and locked the door behind him and took a seat right in front of the man, who had stopped typing on his computer and looked at him in silence.

“I need your help with my Queen Zenobia report.” Rick went straight to the point.

O’Brian’s face was unmoved and serious. “I’m guessing it’s about you missing for eight hours and not actually writing it.”

Rick nodded. “I spent them… sleeping off the T-Abyss.”

“Sleeping… off?” The director of the BSAA didn’t need to ask for clarification. Not with Rick who was always blunt with his words. He needed to know more about the how and why however.

“When we fought the huge Ooze variant in the Promenade, the key to the Emergency Communication room was shot as a result of the explosion of the gas tank. It hit my back and pierced my skin. I got infected with the virus then. My body started fighting it off aggressively and I had no choice than to lay down and rest.”

“So you really are part of the 10%. You’re immune to the T-virus and apparently to any variant of it.” O’Brian had wanted this conversation for months. To ask the questions about the report he read be they official, unofficial, above and under the table.

Rick shook his head to deny the statement. “No. Being immune means still having the virus inside your body. This is not my case. I’m unique.”

For the next ten minutes, Rick explains his condition. The multiple infections he had gone through, how his body reacted to each of them and the consequences and changes which happened as a result. The tests he had undergone to test his limits during the military and what he could do now.

At the end of it. O’Brian opened his drawer and pulled out an ashtray and a pack of cigarettes. He put one death stick into his mouth, lit it and began smoking in silence. His mind was making sense of what he had just learned. Most of his questions had been answered even though he hadn’t expected those answers. More than that new questions came to him.

“I suppose there is something wrong with your blood or we’d be swimming in vaccines for every single virus in the world.”

Rick nodded slowly. “Yeah. It kills everything. A transfusion of it? You die painfully. It was studied extensively however and the results were discreetly given to WilPharma to create a T-virus vaccine from the data.”

The name of the now struggling and soon to be bankrupt company being brought up was an opportunity O’Brian didn’t miss. “Your fight with G?”

Doing his very best to not wince, Rick answered. “I nearly burnt to a crisp from the purge, healed, found myself in my birthday suit and engaged it in a fist fight afterwards. You can ask Miller, she witnessed it all, although keep in mind...”

“It was her brother. Sore subject.” Clive dismissed with a wave of his hand. He could barely believe what he heard. “You fought G with your fists…”

“I wasn’t going to win that fight any time soon since it’s a G but I stalled it enough.” Rick shrugged. “It was in early mutation so I could keep up, things became complicated when he sprouted dozens of tentacles to deal with my speed.”

O’Brian scratched his head, trying to process everything while not imagining, Rick with his dick swinging freely around while fighting for his life against the one BOW with the highest threat in their database.

“Dr. Scott?”

“Annette knows about my condition.” Rick confirmed the unasked question. “So does Jill, Rachel and in some measure Chris and now you. I’d prefer it that w— Oh there is Miller too. But she knows the consequences of leaking the information.”

“The mandatory checkups. That’s why you recommended her.” O’Brian sighed. He had recruited Rebecca Chambers partly because she was a former STARS, very talented in her field but also because she could be trusted with Rick’s situation. As it turned out Rick didn’t trust her with that information.

“Yes. I have nothing against Becca but the less people are in the know the better it is and not just for me. My blood…”

“Could be used nefariously.” Clive sighed but the idea terrified him. “There won’t be any paper or digital trail but I want to be apprised of your condition. Fully. As for your report about the Queen Zenobia… Just say you fought a BOW and got knocked out. I’ll check with Foley to make sure everything is in order. I also want an unfiltered verbal report if you found yourself in a similar situation.”

“Got it, sir.”

Rick stood up, the conversation being over. He knew trusting O’Brian was a gamble but not a very bad one. The man may be on his ass often but he was loyal and protective of his agents. He knew when to keep quiet about things.

When he returned to his desk, he got a glimpse of Angela’s screen. She was looking at the bestiary. To be more specific she was looking at the G-virus page. It was obvious she wanted to know more about what her brother had turned into and the sketches he had given of William’s Birkin many mutations were not very pretty to watch. Especially since Rick wasn’t an artist, far from it.

“Done with your task?” His words took her by surprise and made her body jolt. He didn’t stop to stand behind or next to her and simply went back to his desk.

“I did. I was looking at the bestiary.”

“Good. Be thorough, some agents just have a glimpse, learn what they think they need and get themselves killed because they weren’t prepared accordingly. Now, give me a minute to finish my own report and we’re going to the armory. Brush up on the zombies and its variants. G is for another time.”

Wincing at being caught, Angela nodded and pulled up the Zombies pages. Rick did quick work on his report and sent a message to Annette to tell her to expect him in the two hours for a check up.