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Gdynia, Trójmiasto, Poland
Price checked his watch and the address that he had written down on a scrap of paper. It was a little after 9:30 at night, and the apartment building in front of him appeared to match the intel Laswell had provided on where he could find his target. He entered the building and began to work his way up to the apartment that held the man he was looking for.
—-
Sobiesław was in a half-asleep stupor on the couch, the bottle he had been pulling from hanging loosely between his fingers. It was a state he found himself in more often than not these days, after being medically discharged from GROM and the disastrous month he had spent trying to live with his parents while he figured out what to do next with his life. He still hadn't come up with a plan, and was beginning to resign himself to the idea that drinking his days away in this shitty little apartment was going to become a long-term lifestyle.
The knock on the door almost made him drop the bottle. Since the day he had moved in here, he had not had a single person knock on his door besides delivery people. Perhaps he had ordered something in the browned-out state he chose to spend his days in and didn't remember. His stomach rumbled at the thought of getting some actual food, so he got up to answer the door, grabbing his wallet as he did so.
—-
The first thing that hit Price when the door opened was the smell. His nose stung at the odor that seemed to blow out from behind the door. His eyes adjusted and he finally got a better look at the man in the doorway. The photos of the man in his file had shown a sharp-eyed professional, one who had earned both his place in an elite squad and the respect of his teammates. The man standing before him, shirtless and staring with bloodshot eyes seemed like a completely different person.
The other man shifted slightly, tensing as he blinked away the harsh lights of the hallway and tried to focus on the stranger before him. A shape moving behind the man in the darkness let Price know Laswell’s intel had been correct.
"Mr. Kościuszko, my name is John Price. Do you mind if I come in?" Price pronounced his name with the tone of a man who was trying his best, but didn't really know what he was doing. He gave a smile that crinkled his eyes but didn't do much to conceal the danger that lurked under the surface.
Sobiesław hadn't been out of the service long enough to not be able to recognize a military man standing before him. He placed the accent as British. The confusion was leaving his brain and getting replaced by adrenaline. If any military was at his door that couldn't be good news. He still remembered the weeks leading up to his discharge with too much clarity. On the worst nights, he still expected to find himself waking up back in the quarantine room they had imprisoned him in before his discharge.
He hadn't even disengaged the door chain lock yet so he made a move to slam the door. This Price man was fast though, and managed to wedge his foot in the gap and grip the door with his hand, stopping it without breaking a sweat as Sobie still struggled to close it on him.
"I just want to talk, Gromsko.”
“Ty cholerny dupku, don’t call me that!” Sobie kept pushing, kicking at the man’s foot to try and get him to give up.
“I have some information that might interest you." The smell of burning paint finally hit Sobie's nose. He looked up and saw that the door was getting singed where Price's hand was. Heat was rolling off the man’s fingers and bubbling the paint around them. It was clearly just a small hint at what the man in the hallway was capable of.
Sobie let out a sigh. "Okay, just. Hang on."
Price let go of the door and removed his foot. Sobie disengaged the chain and opened the door more fully, practically yanking Price inside before slamming the door and fiddling with the three locks he had installed. Once the locks were engaged and he felt slightly more secure in his own apartment, Sobie flipped the lightswitch and turned to face the strange man, who was standing in the middle of the living room and looking around at the messy space.
This was the first time since he had moved in that someone had stepped across the threshold, and it made him realize just how bad things had become. There was a layer of dust and grime coating every surface. A completely filled trash bag laid in the corner, some feathers poking out of the top. The rooms were pretty much all connected to each other, so it was easy to see that most surfaces from the kitchen table to the countertop were covered in old takeout containers, empty bottles and drink cans, and piles of mail that were mostly unopened. Price looked at it all with a keen eye, and finally turned his gaze to Sobie, looking the man before him up and down. In the better lighting, the former operator looked even worse than he had when Price was standing in the hallway.
Price decided to get right down to business. "I heard you're a medic, and that you have recently left your unit. I'm in need of a man of your skills."
Sobie scoffed at his words. "I was a medic. Did you look through my files?" He didn't know how the man before him could have gotten access to them, but he got the feeling that there was more going on behind the scenes than he could ever begin to know.
Price simply smiled at his suspicion. "I have my ways of getting information."
The reminder of what he had lost was turning Sobie's emotions from trepidation and suspicion to anger. "Well if your ways were correct, you would see that I am no longer fit for service." He didn't bother to gesture at the giant wings that had started growing out of his back, the source of all of his current woes. He didn't need to do anything to make the eyesores any more obvious than they already were. The last time they had been measured was just before he had been formally discharged. The wingspan had been recorded in his file at 6 feet from tip to tip. It had only gotten worse from there. Sobie didn't have a way to measure them himself, but they were easily more than double that at this point. "I can't even fly. I'm completely useless, I have nothing I can offer you."
He had nothing to offer anyone at this rate. He couldn't even find a civilian job, and had given up after three months of getting doors slammed in his face whenever he tried. Price gave another infuriating know-it-all smile at that.
"Now, we both know that's not true." He pulled a cigar out of a pouch in his coat and wiggled it at him. "Do you mind?"
Sobie shrugged, and Price held the cigar up to his lips. Snapping his fingers, a small flame was produced to light it.
Price took a drag as he shook his fingers to put them out before continuing his pitch. "War is changing, and we need soldiers who can adapt. You aren't the only one who has been affected by the things that are happening these days. The threats that stand against us aren't going to play by the rules. I'm putting together a team that treats these powers or mutations or whatever you call them as the weapons that they can be, and not weaknesses."
It took a moment for the words to sink in for Sobiesław. He wasn't stupid, he knew that mutanci were popping up every day. No one knew how or why, but every once in a while someone in the world would wake up with an ability that science couldn't explain. There were bound to be other soldiers across the planet who had ended up becoming mutates. It wasn't a very common occurrence. He had just been unlucky enough to become one of the dziwadła with a problem he couldn't hide, and it cost him everything that he had worked for. How could he be anything but a liability on the field at this point? Price could apparently create and manipulate fire based on the small demonstrations he had given. Sobie was just a man with wings that didn't even work.
Price continued to talk. "I need a medic, but more than that I need soldiers with the training and experience to go out into the field and do what has to be done." He took another drag of his cigar to let his words settle in.
"Gromsko, are you willing to get back in the fight?"