Revelations

by elfin

Revelations
by elfin
 

Bester crouched by the seated form of his captive audience.

“I’m going to release you, Mr Garibaldi.  Little by little, piece by piece.”

Very carefully, the Bester stepped into Michael’s mind, a mind he knew now better than any other.

Holding Garibaldi quiet with a simple direct command, that would remain until he was done, the Psi Cop starting undoing the maze of blocks in the complex human mind.

He unlocked the first door, allowing Garibaldi to once again realise his past.  His past as it had been before the Psi Corp had coloured it to fit their own requirements.

Smiling into the eyes of Jeff Sinclair as the man’s lips touched his own….
Pain like ice against his spine, searing along his nerves….
Opening his eyes to see Susan, Stephen and a stranger….
Playing with a PPG, looking up as Sheridan walked into his quarters….
Grappling the captain’s ship, pulling it to safety….
Waking to find grey eyes dancing inches above him, lifting his head to kiss full lips….
Fighting, men all around him, dropping, dying….
Watching Sheridan walk away, knowing he was leaving the station to die….

“You were doing so well, Mr Garibaldi.  We were so proud of how you wormed your way in to William Edgars’ life, into his… inner sanctum as it were.”

With a small shove, Bester broke the barriers he himself had erected around the personality traits of his very special victim, the traits they had needed to bury.

Love, desire pulsing through him like gentle flames….
Fear, terror, as the agony flared up against the certain, terrible knowledge of betrayal by his own….
Confusion at not seeing Jeff at his bedside when he opened his eyes….
Sorrow, grief at Jeff’s leaving.  A sinking loneliness, the need to end it all….
Brief terror, his heart racing as he aimed the grapples and reached for his captain….
Warm feelings of love, want and need.  Morning’s desire waking inside him as John leaned over him and kissed him….
The terrible sounds of gunfire, of the cries of dying men and the stench of frying flesh….
Watching his lover walk away with his dead wife, knowing, his heart breaking, that John was leaving the station to die….

“You did exactly what we’d expected… you turned your back on every friend you had.  That was never the plan… but you were perfect.”
 

Glancing away for a moment, Bester took a deep breath before he removed his glove and placed his bare hand against this side of Michael’s face, the man’s stubble of beard rough on the palm of his hand.

“Remember, Mr Garibaldi….  Remember what we did to you when you were taken from Babylon 5, after Sheridan died at Z’Ha’Dum….”

…grey clouds and muffled words gave way to images and sensations….  A concrete, circular room.  A metal chair.  Gas….  The sickening sweet smell that always followed, that hung in the air almost as intoxicating as the gas itself.

…A hard surface.  Restraining leather straps.  Psi Cops standing around him.  Telling him things.  Burrowing into his mind like some warren.  Making it impossible to think, to breathe….

…Shadows everywhere, surrounding the station.  Starfurys launching into an impossible battle.  The black of the ships against the bright stars of space.

…John… handing him a data pad.  Instructions that were surely the last he would ever give.  The sadness in his eyes, the desperate need to live….

Bester smiled, his eyes slipping closed.  “Good, Mr Garibaldi.  That’s good.  Now… come forward, remember everything in the context of how you used to be.  Break the programming we put in place and come back to me.”

The memories came fast, one on the heel of the next.

…John returning from Z’Ha’Dum alive!  Arguments, rows.  Lorien being everywhere.  In the Zocalo – the fight.  Hitting John.  Stupid, with all the Security men around.  Quitting, the hurt in his captain’s eyes.

…Lise.  Edgars.  A drug for telepaths.

…A sting.  A dark bar.  Lies.  John sitting… pressing his hand firmly onto the other man’s.  Seeing the tranq there… working quickly.  John standing.  Men surrounding him.  The fight that ensued… John’s struggle to win despite the sedative… John falling under the blows… lying unconscious as the beating continued.

Laughter.  He could hear laughter.  And he realised that it was his own.

‘Nooooooo!’

The scream drove through Bester’s mind.

“Mr Garibaldi!”  He withdrew his hand, keeping the firm command in Michael’s mind.  “If you’re going to scream, please… do it out loud.”

He chuckled at his own joke.  “You remember the bar on Mars.  You remember betraying John Sheridan.”

Bester felt his victim’s struggles, his pain and desperation.  It was almost turning him on.

“Do you want to know what happened after you left him unconscious on the floor of that bar?”

No.  Garibaldi definitely didn’t want to.

A smile curled Bester’s lips.  “They dragged him out to a transport and threw him in the back.  I doubt he’s been that comfortable since.”

Michael’s eyes were alive with the cries of his mind.  Bester ignored them.

“When they got him to the interrogation centre, they waited until he regained consciousness.  He was cuffed and blindfolded, thrown in a cold, dark room and left.  And then he woke up.  They went in, a group of them, and started to beat him and kick him.  The tranq that you gave him had weakened him considerably and he was… easily subdued.”

//You bastard!//  Bester was momentarily startled by the voice speaking directly in to his mind.  //Subdued?  He was subdued in that bar you bastard!//

Shock aside, Bester smiled.  “So… connected like this, you can speak to me.  Good….  I can hear your pain, your screams….”  He took a deep breath.  “Subdued, then, is the wrong word.  Beaten to the edge of consciousness.  There, that’s better.  More accurate too.”

//You’re a dead man.//

Bester chuckled.  “No.  You’re mistaking me for someone else… John Sheridan, perhaps.  Although, I doubt he’s dead yet.  They are… quite skilled, Clarke’s agents.  I imagine they can keep a man alive for months, maybe even years.  In agony, screaming in silence.  They’ve done many things to your captain since his capture.  Now and again, I sit and watch.  Once, they let me be there during one of the interrogation cycles.  Not that he knew I was there.”

Bester closed his eyes, savouring the memory, passing it to Michael in glorious Technicolor.

“He was made to think I was you.”

Michael’s fury burned into his mind, causing him to wince.

“You chose well.  He’s a strong man, I’ve always thought.  They’ve deprived him of sleep, playing loud noises into his cell or shining a light into his eyes.  They’ve battered him senseless, cut his feet and broken his fingers.  They interrogate him and when he doesn’t give them what he wants, they send in a group of men to attack him.  One – ‘Banger’ – had to be stopped because he liked to grab the prisoner by the hair on his head,” Bester reached around to the back of his own head, as if to demonstrate, “and smash his face against the floor.”

//Shut the FUCK up!//

“Mr Garibaldi!  Language!  I’m talking here.”  Bester frowned for a moment.  “Now, where was I?….  Ah yes.  You know, I heard your ISN reported that he was being treated well.  Astounding, the lies reporters tell.  There are very few people who I know have been treated worse.  They have such crude methods, yet so entertaining.  They starved him, then poisoned what little food they gave him.”

Bester stroked Michael’s cheek with his fingertips.  “It was… touching to see a once great soldier throwing up all over himself.  If only his followers, those who believed in him, could see him now.  I believe they’d broadcast it if they weren’t so worried that it would be against their own best interests.”

It was becoming difficult now to keep Michael from tearing through his mind with his murderous thoughts.

“Three days ago, Mr Garibaldi, they added a new tactic.”

Bester stopped talking then.  Instead of describing Sheridan’s rape, he slammed the scene into Michael’s mind.  He had to push passed the screams and shouts of his prisoner, but in the end Garibaldi couldn’t close his eyes against the images of his lover, bound and gagged on the floor of his cell.  With the hands of one of Clarke’s agents around his throat and the cock of another pounding into his ass.

Michael was suddenly an impossible pressure in Bester’s mind, like a timebomb on the brink of explosion.

He’d run out of time.  Bester dropped his hand and released the command from Michael’s mind.  In a moment, he’d let go.
 

Michael was lightening fast.  Bester had barely picked up the thought as Garibaldi grabbed the PPG from his holster and stood, barrelling into Bester and hurling them both back against the stone wall some four feet behind the Psi Cop.

In the next instant, he had the PPG pressed hard against Bester’s temple.  The dark eyes didn’t even blink.

“Mr Garibaldi… Michael….”  He moved his head side to side minutely.  “You don’t want to shoot me.”

“Why not, you son-of-a-bitch?”  Michael’s voice was rough, every word scraping the raw wounds in his mind.

“You betrayed your best friend, your… lover.”  A small smile touched Bester’s lips.  “He’s in the hands of Clarke’s men now.  He doesn’t have much time left but I’m sure he’ll be thinking of you when the toxins they’ve been feeding him finally destroy his internal organs… and he drowns in his own blood.”

Anger, rage, and the worst sorrow he’d ever felt cascaded up from Michael’s heart and seeing that, Bester continued.

“He has you to thank for his current situation.  The last time I saw him, they were putting images into his mind, making him believe he was safe aboard Babylon 5, trying to get him to give up names of people high in the resistance.  When they pulled the images from his mind, when he realised he was still in custody, he made a sound… like a cross between a scream, and a sob.  And it didn’t stop.  It peeled out into the dank room until they pushed a ball-gag down his throat.”

Bester heard the whine of the PPG powering up.  Playtime was over for now.
 

fin

elfin