When Henry woke up, he found himself lying beneath a tent in a field hospital. His comrades from the mutant battalion lay beside him. Some were missing arms or legs, some had suffered severe burns, and others were covered in frostbite.
"Sleep well, mutant?" asked a military doctor in an extremely disdainful tone. "If you're awake, go report to battalion headquarters yourself."
Henry struggled to sit up. His head felt like a complete mess. He sat on the edge of the bed, intending to wait for his headache to ease, but a nurse soon arrived carrying a new patient on a stretcher and prepared to place him on Henry's bed.
Henry had no choice but to stand and retreat several steps.
"Heh, and this is supposed to be a mutant who's impervious to blades and bullets," the male nurse said sarcastically as he insisted on putting the patient down. He did not care in the slightest whether anyone heard him.
Henry had no desire to start an argument, so he simply left.
He noticed that the wounded being brought in were not all mutants. There were also large numbers of ordinary soldiers.
According to Henry's memories from before he crossed over, this war should have been one in which the Allied forces easily secured victory. Yet something seemed to have gone wrong.
The force with which Iraq had fought back far exceeded anyone's expectations.
Henry had no intention of following the doctor's instructions and reporting to regimental headquarters.
Even though Frank's platoon had been wiped out and the commander of Dog Company had turned to ash right before his eyes, the first place he should report to was the headquarters of the mutant battalion. There was no reason to skip several levels of command and go straight to regimental headquarters.
Of course, there was one possibility: the mutant battalion might have been wiped out as well, leaving him no choice but to report to the regiment.
But before confirming that possibility, Henry decided to look for his own battalion headquarters.
"Henry Brown?"
Two military police officers approached him, interrupting his thoughts.
"Yes, sir."
"Come with us. You need to report what happened before you lost consciousness."
"Yes, sir."
Henry followed the two military police officers without suspicion. As a U.S. Marine, he could also say that he had no other choice when confronted by military police. All he could do was cooperate.
The place they brought him to was indeed the temporary station of some unit.
However, Henry could not tell which unit it belonged to, because there was no signboard or other identifying mark.
He was led inside and seated in a room resembling an interrogation chamber.
It had to be said that when it came to creating psychological pressure for someone being questioned, the Americans were rather rigid and predictable. There was nothing particularly innovative about it.
Still, sitting in that room gave Henry a distinctly ominous feeling.
The only reasons he did not immediately consider escaping were that the military police had not stayed behind and that he had not been handcuffed.
There were no arrangements resembling a two-way mirror, either. It seemed that things had not yet reached the point of utter hopelessness.
Before long, a white lieutenant entered with a cigarette hanging from his mouth.
"Marine private first class, Henry Brown?"
"Yes, sir!"
Henry sprang to his feet, stood at attention, and answered loudly.
"At ease. Sit down, soldier."
The lieutenant walked directly to the seat opposite Henry and sat down.
"Please describe everything that happened before you lost consciousness."
"Everything, sir? Where should I begin?"
"That's up to you, soldier. Start wherever you think we need to know."
The white lieutenant opened a blank notebook in front of himself. He also took out a tape recorder and began recording.
First, he recorded the introduction.
"This is Lieutenant Richard Anders of the United States Naval Intelligence. This is the first interrogation of Private First Class Henry Brown concerning the mutant battalion's assault on Tallil Air Base on March twenty-third. The current date is the twenty-fifth, and the time is 4:14 p.m."
Henry had never expected to join the military, so he had never studied military procedures in any depth.
Seeing that the lieutenant's process seemed fairly ordinary—there were no signs of being strapped to a torture chair or subjected to pepper spray the moment he entered—Henry obediently cooperated and reported what had happened.
Perhaps this was simply how the military recorded soldiers' combat reports.
That was what the somewhat guilty Henry thought to himself.
Since he did not know the current time, he began with the fact that the First Marine Expeditionary Force had been ordered to attack Nasiriyah, while the mutant battalion, which had not received a mission, had managed to secure the assignment of attacking Tallil Air Base.
At several important points, Henry also provided approximate times.
The white lieutenant responsible for recording the account would occasionally stop writing and ask about details he considered important.
"Stop. You just said that you encountered 'the Mandarin' at the airport. Did he admit to being the Mandarin?"
"No, sir. After we heard explosions at the airport, Second Lieutenant Frank Castle, our platoon leader, gave us a temporary briefing on the attack. He said that we were suspected of having encountered militants led by 'the Mandarin.'"
Henry was very careful not to mention the name Xu Wenwu or the words Ten Rings.
No one had brought them up.
That was information he should not have known, and he had no way to explain where it had come from.
As a man who had already been summoned several times by the FBI in Los Angeles for questioning, Henry naturally knew better than to make such a mistake.
"What happened to Second Lieutenant Castle?"
"He was killed in action during the airport battle that followed. But that can be confirmed by the survivors from our platoon. They all heard the same briefing."
"Good. Continue."
What followed was practically a scene from a science-fiction movie.
The Mandarin appeared and used the Ten Rings to slaughter the mutant battalion from top to bottom, leaving them utterly destroyed.
Henry had retaliated by using a cluster of grenades, but since he had been unconscious afterward, he had no idea whether the attack had actually accomplished anything.
"Can anyone confirm that you launched an attack against the Mandarin at the end?"
"I don't know, sir. I acted alone. I don't know whether there were any surviving witnesses nearby."
After Henry finished describing everything that had happened, the white lieutenant stubbed out his third cigarette.
He looked down at the record he had written.
"So, do you have any explanation for your own act of desertion?"
Here it was—the real purpose of the interrogation.
Henry's expression fell, and his tone became extremely cold.
"Sir, please define what you mean by 'desertion.'"
The white lieutenant paid no attention to the change in Henry's tone. He continued speaking in the same calm manner.
"Under Article Eighty-Five of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, desertion is committed when any member of the armed forces—
"First, without authorization, leaves or remains absent from their unit, organization, or place of duty with the intent to remain away permanently;
"Second, leaves their unit, organization, or place of duty with the intent to avoid hazardous duty or shirk important service; or
"Third, without having been formally separated from one branch of the armed forces, enlists in or accepts an appointment in the same or another branch without fully disclosing the fact that they have not been formally separated, or joins any foreign armed force without authorization from the United States.
"Any of these constitutes desertion.
"You left the airport, where you were supposed to be fighting—the combat position of Third Platoon, D Company. What do you have to say about that?"
Henry replied coldly, "Because my mutant ability makes me impervious to blades and bullets, Second Lieutenant Frank Castle once instructed me that if the unit I was with became trapped and overwhelmed by the enemy, my first priority was to break out and report to my superior officer.
"Given the situation at the time, I chose to break out and report to the company commander that Frank's platoon had suffered catastrophic losses.
"But Dog Company's command post had also been destroyed, and the entire mutant battalion was under attack. What other choice did I have?
"According to your interpretation, I should have stayed at the airport and continued fighting. Since I can't be killed, I would have had to keep fighting until I ran out of ammunition and supplies, then surrender and become a prisoner of war before I could avoid being classified as a deserter.
"Is that what you mean?"
The white lieutenant raised both hands in front of himself, as though trying to calm Henry down.
"Hey, take it easy, soldier. I'm not accusing anyone of anything. I'm only investigating the truth."
"Investigating the truth?"
There was a trace of anger in Henry's voice, but he remained highly restrained, sitting in his chair without making any aggressive movements.
However, Henry keeping his composure did not mean the other man intended to let him remain calm.
The white lieutenant suddenly slammed his fists against the table several times. Then he shouted loudly, "Don't attack me, soldier! Military police! Military police! Get in here and arrest him!"
Damn it. I fell for it!
That thought flashed through Henry's mind.
The military police stationed outside the door charged into the interrogation room as though they had been waiting for this moment.
The two burly men did not ask a single question. They forced the man sitting upright in his chair to the floor and twisted his arms behind his back.
Henry wanted to argue his case, but he could not.
One of the military police officers took out a cloth and pressed it firmly over Henry's mouth and nose.
That strange, sickly sweet smell…
Chloroform.
A chemical solvent that could be used as an anesthetic at high concentrations, its effects were not like those depicted in movies or television dramas. Simply covering someone's mouth and nose with it for a few seconds would not make them instantly unconscious.
But Henry had lost his superhuman strength. He was inevitably restrained, and he continued inhaling the chloroform gas for more than ten minutes.
No matter how strong his willpower was, at that point he could only obey the limits of human physiology.
He lost consciousness.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For 40 advanced chapters, visit my Patreon:
Patreon - Twilight_scribe1
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~