Frances Ardmore - Tumblr Posts

oh nooo Spidey's in trouble now 😭

Merciless, part 3

Part 1, Part 2, AO3 link (incomplete)

Fireworks fizzed and soared inside Mercer’s chest as he put the phone down. He had not expected that, especially so soon after Ardmore’s reassurances that Quaritch would need to be pacified. He tried to calm his thumping heartbeat, but it was no mean feat. The boy…. The boy, all to himself! Finally, a chance to prove himself after the catastrophic embarrassment that was TAP’s ending. 

No more mindless overseeing of drilling operations. He’d be heading back to the base in the Western Frontier in two days, taking the kid with him. Thoughts about preparing the base and the medical team swirled around him as he anxiously bounced his pen against the file he was reading. It would be more difficult this time, having only one subject and without his second in command. He pushed away the thoughts of Alma Cortez before he could start to dwell on them. 

“Do you think he wants to know you like, at all?” Fike asked, ever sensitive. 

“Hell if I know Fike.”

“As if he was with Sully’s kids,” interjected Zdinarsk, who was leaning casually against a wooden pillar. The squad was supposed to be enjoying their downtime, but instead felt it necessary to congregate around the Colonel and air all their questions that unfortunately Quaritch couldn’t answer. “What are the goddamn chances of that?”

“D’you think Sully like… adopted him?”

“Shut up Fike!” Brown grunted. 

“They definitely got their claws in deep,” Z-dog mused, shaking her head. 

“Yeah, well,” Quaritch felt his voice darken. “We’ll see if there ain’t anything we can do about that.”

“What are you gonna do with him?” asked Ja. 

“It’s not up to me. We can probably help each other out, but Ardmore’s calling the shots.”

“Do you think he’ll open up to you?” questioned Lyle, who was resting his elbows on his knees, a look of great concentration on his face. 

Quaritch let out a long sigh. “Maybe. Given time.”

They both knew that time wasn’t something they had endless amounts of. 

“I better go check on him,” Quaritch said suddenly. Ardmore had had him in that machine again today. The kid obviously hadn’t revealed anything new because there was no way the squad would be sitting around on their asses if he had. Something deep down was starting to worry Quaritch though. If yesterday’s efforts were anything to go by, the boy - Spider - wasn’t giving up soon. Quaritch had to hand it to Spider, he admired the shit out of him for that. But he knew they were entering dangerous territory with Ardmore. There was only so much crap she’d take before cutting her losses with the kid, and now that Mercer was snooping around, an uncomfortable feeling was starting to settle in his bones. 

“Do you want me to come with you?” Lyle offered.

Quaritch waved him off, heaving himself to his feet and making the journey across the city’s vast compound. 

Fifteen minutes later, his heavy boots were thudding down the familiar row of cells, approaching the one his boy was in. His heart was starting to thunder in his chest; he didn’t know why the kid had such an effect on him, and he didn’t like it one bit. As he got to the right cell, the first thing that struck him was that Spider’s name was missing from the electronic display. Quaritch frowned, stepping forward to see inside. 

What he saw made his heart stop for a second. 

It was empty. 

The cell was empty; vacant and unoccupied. 

Something was wrong, he knew it. If Spider was still being interrogated then his name would still be on the door. In fact, there was nothing left of Spider’s presence here at all. The fucking cleaners had been in and all. 

Where was Spider?

Without wasting a second, he barged into the adjacent observation room, only to find it empty as well. His heart in his mouth, he sprinted back down the long corridor and made it to the command centre in record time. 

“Colonel-“ one of the clerks stuttered upon seeing him. 

He was quickly silenced by Quaritch’s glare of fury and no one else dared say a thing as he found the door to Ardmore’s office and flung it open without so much as a knock. 

“Where is he?” he demanded, upon seeing the General sat calmly at her desk, glasses on and reading a file. 

“Colonel,” she said, looking completely unsurprised to see him. 

“Don’t play with me Ardmore. Where’s Spider?” 

Lesser men that Ardmore would have cowered under the glare Quaritch cast at her. 

“He was becoming… a distraction. He’s been removed from Bridgehead while you focus on your mission.”

Quaritch was ready to pick her up by the front of her uniform and slam her so hard down on the desk that she’d be forced to answer. His fingers twitched. His lip curled up into the beginning of an animalistic snarl. 

“Once your mission is completed, the boy will be returned to base. Your mission last week cost us dearly. Four recombinants dead in less than twenty minutes. Billions of dollars down the drain.” She rose to her feet, and although she didn’t nearly compare to Quaritch in height, he could feel her power. She stepped around the desk, silently letting him know that she wasn’t afraid of him. “You want that boy? Bring me Jake Sully.”

Quaritch’s mind was racing at a hundred miles an hour. He could attack her right now. He could kill her, even. Force her to give the kid back. But what would that do? Get him court-martialed and risk the RDA taking it out on Spider. He dominated her physically - he was so ready to use his strength - but logistically, she had him by the balls. If he attacked her now, he’d probably never see Spider again. 

She was asking him to catch Jake Sully. He could do that. He was capable. This is what he wanted. His chest heaved with the effort of not reacting. 

The seconds ticked by, and eventually he levelled his voice enough to reply. “Where. Is. The boy?”

Ardmore raised her chin, eyes narrowing slightly. Still, she showed no signs of fear. 

“He’s being taken to a separate base. One of our facilities close to the Western Frontier.”

The next word felt like poison on his lips. “Mercer?”

She nodded, sending Quaritch’s heart plummeting a hundred miles into the floor. 

He had to reason with her. “The kid knows where Sully is. How can I find him without the boy?”

“The boy won’t talk. You and I have both seen it. You’ll have to think of other means. I have two samsons with pilots at your disposal, ready and waiting. I suggest you get out to Sully's last known location, and track him back from there. I’m sure you’ll come up with something.”

Fury and fear were coursing through Quaritch’s veins in equal measure. He was frozen, trying to work out what to do. What was the best thing for Spider? What was the best thing for himself and his squad? 

Ardmore smiled up at him, before sighing and moving back around the desk to take her seat. “I’m sorry it’s come to this, Colonel. But rest assured that as soon as Jake Sully is off the playing field we can talk about the boy.”

“You know what Mercer will do to him?”

She registered the tone of his voice, and levelled him with a flat look. “That is no longer your concern.”

*********

Spider hissed as he was shoved into a new, whiter cell. “How long you gonna leave me in this one for then?” he jeered as the two soldiers who’d marched him in retreated. He was putting on a show, but inside he was scared. He thought he’d had the worst of the RDA’s treatment when they strapped him into that demon machine for the third time. Now, he’d been flown leagues across Pandora with no explanation of where they were going or why. They had touched down in the forest, which explained why Spider was now nursing a sprained wrist from attempting to run, but he’d been wrestled inside a much stranger, more clinical appearing base than anywhere he’d seen at Bridgehead. He supposed he should be thankful they hadn’t taken him out here to shoot him. Everyone they passed inside wore labcoats and carried holotablets around their necks, pressing themselves back against the walls in alarm when Spider and his entourage passed. In some of the rooms there looked like machines Spider had just been strapped to. In others, tanks and botanicals. He recognised the deadly Txumtsä’wll plant growing in a sealed terrarium and wondered what the hell the RDA was doing with a plant so toxic it could take out any Na’vi with just a single drop of poison. 

“Don’t touch me, asshole!” he hissed at the soldier who pushed him on. 

The whole place felt different to Bridgehead in a very non-reassuring way. He leaned his head back against the confines of his latest prison, closing his eyes and trying to lock out the harshness of the overhead lights.

Even the brightest optimist could tell this little outing wasn’t for a release party. And where was Quaritch in all this? Spider hadn’t seen him since he’d thrown Mercer out of the holding cells. For whatever reason, his father’s clone had been furious and refused to explain why. Spider thought back over his conversation with the strange Mercer figure. He hadn’t thought anything of it at the time - plenty of sky people had oggled him since he arrived - but now he wondered if that conversation didn’t have anything to do with his current predicament. 

If you’re not going to talk, then you’re useless to him and them. They won’t keep you around for long.

The crisp-shirted RDA schmuck had also been keen to impress upon Spider that unless he gave them what they wanted, Quaritch would have no choice but to ‘terminate’ him. Was he here under Quaritch’s orders?

After a short while of waiting anxiously, the sound of footsteps outside the glass door alerted Spider to another’s presence. He jumped to his feet immediately. There, just as he had suspected, was the well dressed, oily haired RDA leader who’d visited him yesterday. 

“Hello Miles.”

“Why are we here? Where is this?” He took a step closer to the glass, his body pumping with adrenaline. 

John Mercer smiled in that ugly way of his. In all of Spider's life, he had never seen a smile as chilling as Mercer’s. 

“We are in a facility to the West of Bridgehead. Fifty clicks away from the city.”

Spider blanched - he couldn’t help himself. Fifty clicks? That was over a week away on foot. 

“I’m waiting for the why,” Spider stressed. 

“Welcome to Kinglor Base, Miles. This is a specialist facility built purely for scientific research. You may have seen some of our tech on the way in.”

“Research on what?” Spider hissed. A sinking feeling was making its way through his stomach, clenching his intestines in a tight, cold fist. 

Mercer looked at him like he couldn’t wait to answer. Like he was feeding off Spider’s fear. “On you.”