Geoff and Karl
As the dropship flew back to base, there were no words spoken. Given the situation, Karl couldn’t blame anyone. Death was something that very few of them had ever had to deal with.
“If you don’t mind me asking sir,” Artyom asked from across the cabin, “who is DeWitt?”
Karl took a deep breath, there was also that matter. It was easy to forget that no one in the squad had ever met DeWitt. That’s just what happens with people so new to the war,
“My old CO…” Karl answered bluntly.
“Your old CO?” Artyom looked puzzled, “I thought you said he died at the beginning of the war?”
“Clearly not.” Beth said from deeper in the cabin, “in fact, it seems that he’s doing pretty well for himself.”
“What makes you say that?” Artyom grumbled.
“Didn’t you see their gear? They made what we had look like scraps!”
“I guess you have a point there.”
There was a long stretch of silence. The mood for talking had very quickly left the dropship. It was Artyom who finally decided to break the silence.
“You still haven’t told us about who he is.”
“What do you mean?” Karl asked, “I already told you that he was my old CO.”
“Well yeah, that’s what he was. I want to know who he was. From what we saw, it seems that you two were somewhat close.”
“Yeah,” Karl said, with a wistful tone in his voice, “that’s what happens in war I guess. DeWitt, or as I knew him: Geoff Jordan, was the reason why all of us are even here in the first place.”
Many Years Ago
“Zoey, how many more appointments are there today?” Karl, wearing a well worn doctor’s suit, said from behind a well organized desk.
“Just one more from…” There was a small hint of anticipation in Zoey’s voice as she rustled through some papers from her own desk, “well that’s weird, I don’t recognize this name.”
“We have new patients all the time, what’s so strange about this one?”
“There are just some initials here: GJ, that mean anything to you?”
Karl immediately stood up from his chair, “What did you just say?”
“I said the initials were GJ, this guy even has a military discount.”
“Zoey, pack your things and get home, let me handle this.”
“Why? Do you know this person?” Zoey asked with some concern.
“I do.” Karl quickly strode out of his office towards the lobby, “and that’s why you need to leave.”
With a quiet understanding, Zoey saw Karl’s seriousness and immediately grabbed her things and started to follow him.
“No no,” Karl stopped her with his arm, “use the back door, I’d rather not get anyone else involved in what’s about to happen.”
Without another word Zoey left, leaving A alone in his office. With trepidation, he walked towards the waiting room.
The lights were dimmed as he opened the door. The small room was lined with a few well used seats that remained just as comfortable as when Karl had first bought this place. The walls could also use some work, but nothing a few paintings couldn’t draw attention away from. It was all an unfortunate result of how cheap it was to get the place. At least the amount of patients had been good, it wouldn’t be too much longer before they could really put in the money to fix up everything. Meanwhile, the room itself was empty save for a lone figure reclined at the other end of the room from Karl.
“Hello Karl,” the figure rose, “it’s been a while.”
“What are you doing here Geoff? “Karl wasn’t keen to match the friendly tone.
“What do you mean? Can’t an old friend come and get a checkup from the doctor?”
“We both know that you being here isn’t for an innocent reason,” Karl started, “Just tell me why you’re actually here.”
“Fine, I guess we can just skip catching up, “Geoff shrugged, “I have another job, and I need someone who I know I can trust.”
“I thought I made it clear the last time, I want to move past that part of my life. It’s not who I am anymore.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Look around us!” Karl gestured to his waiting room, full of medical accolades and ‘get well soon’ ads, “I have a life now where I only want to help people, not harm them.”
“What if the job I had did involve helping people. It’s going to be different this time.”
“Come on Geoff, I’m not sure how much you remember of the kinds of jobs we did back then. I still have nightmares about that stuff. Respectfully, I’m not sure I can really believe that.”
“I promise Karl,” Geoff held out a folder. One that wouldn’t look out of place among Karl’s other files, “I know what little that means, but I promise it is different.”
Karl remained skeptical, “What’s in that folder?”
“Details.” Geoff walked closer, folder still held out, “I’m asking you to at least look it over before rejecting it.”
“I guess you’re serious about it then.” Karl tentatively grabbed the folder, “Fine I’ll at least see what all of this is about.”
“I appreciate it. When you make your decision, the number on my patient file should still be active for another week. After that, if you haven’t contacted me I’ll assume you’re not coming.”
Having delivered his message, Geoff finally left. Karl immediately went back to his desk. The folder remained in his view, beckoning Karl to open it. He tried to distract himself by doing some more work, but it was clear that he wouldn’t be getting anything done for the rest of the night. Karl wrestled with why Goeff would even try to contact him for this job, it just didn’t make any sense.
The folder remained unopened for almost two full days before Karl finally pulled it from an inconspicuous spot in his desk’s personal file cabinet. He had buried it there in the hopes that it would somehow disappear, but it was never going to be that easy. Karl had tried to keep things business as usual, but the memory of the conversation he had with Geoff continued to weigh heavily on him.
It was well past closing time, Karl made sure that Zoey had already left before finally opening the folder. Inside, he found a lot of the normal things he had expected: run of the mill reports, quartermaster inventories, and casualty counts. The only thing missing really was almost all information from the included mission briefings. They were so covered in black ink that they might as well have not been included. This annoying lack of information carried over to the other files, giving Karl absolutely no information as to what any of this equipment was ever going to be used for. It definitely began to annoy Karl the harder he looked. Why would Geoff give him something so vague? It also made him more curious than he would’ve liked to admit. Even more so after what Geoff had said about the nature of these missions. Surely he wouldn’t have put so much effort into trying to convince Karl if these were just normal missions against regular people.
Another four days passed and soon it was the last night before Geoff’s number would deactivate. Karl sat in the same position that he had been finding himself past closing time every night throughout the week. He held the patient file with the phone number in one hand with the collection of files in the other. With a huge sigh, he set down the files and prepared to dial the number into his phone.
“What are you up to?” Hearing Zoey’s curious voice from behind immediately brought Karl back to reality.
“Gah!” Karl quickly shuffled around the folders on his desk to hide Goeff’s files, “What are you still doing here Zoey?”
“I believe I was the first one to ask that question.” She strode to the front of Karl’s desk, “But if you must know, I left my sunglasses when I left.”
Karl tried to make his desk a little more tidy as she picked up the pair from her desk, “Well, now that you have those again, you head home now?”
“Not before you tell me why you don’t want me poking around in your business.”
“Uh…” Karl did his best to not show how flustered he was, but clearly he needed to work on his acting skills.
“I know you removed your ‘friend’s’ file from the system and this definitely has not been the first time this week where you stayed behind to work on a ‘special’ project.” She walked back to Karl’s desk and stood over him, “Just tell me what’s going on and if I can help.”
“I said this last time,” Karl put an edge on his voice, one that was sharper than he intended, “I don’t want you getting involved in this, especially because it deals directly with my past.”
“But-” Zoey started.
“No buts!” Karl didn’t realize he had raised his voice until he had already said it. Never in their five years of working together had he yelled at Zoey in the way he just did. He didn’t like the place that this conversation was going and was silently praying that she would just leave.
“Fine…” Zoey barely held back tears as she turned towards the door, “I see how it is.”
Karl wanted to apologize, but the phone number in front of him took precedence over anything else at the moment. Unfortunately, he would have to fix it later. He promised himself as he began to dial the number into his phone. Each button press was a step towards the point of no return. The high pitched number tones rang coldly through the air as each button press gave more resistance than the last. Soon enough he had inputted the last digit and his finger now rested above the call button. The last one he needed to press to accept Geoff’s offer. Karl’s finger started shaking. It was taking more willpower than he would’ve liked to actually follow through with this. He had already made it to this point so why was it so hard? Was he really about to go back to a life that he had spent so much time trying to forget about? Could he really trust Geoff to have been genuine in saying that this would be something different.
For Karl, there was only one way to find out.
Reaching that conclusion, his finger finally was able to close the distance to the call button. Karl wasn’t sure how long he would have to wait for Geoff to pick up, or if he would even pick up. To his relief, the answer was almost immediate.
“I was wondering when I’d be getting this call.” Geoff’s upbeat voice greeted Karl.
“I’m in Geoff, but you need to promise me one thing.”
“Anything.”
“This time we’ll actually be the good guys. If we’re gonna do this, we're gonna do it right.”
“As long as we’re in it together, we’ll always do the right thing…”
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