Chapter 4: The Giant Detained
The deep, post-coital warmth was the last thing Buck remembered before sleep took him, his breaths settling into a rhythm that stirred the trees like a gentle breeze. The three small, sticky forms slept nestled in the hollow of his collarbone, tiny chests rising and falling against his skin.
He awoke to searing pain and deafening noise.
Something thick and metallic-bit deep into the flesh of his wrists, his ankles, his throat. He roared, a sound of pure surprise that shook the ground, and tried to sit up. Heavy-duty steel cables, each as thick as a mature tree trunk, snapped taut against his strength, anchoring him to the earth. They were bolted into the bedrock, a spiderweb of restraints laid while he slept. Helicopters churned the air above him, their spotlights blinding, washing the clearing in sterile white.
"Steady! He's awake!" a voice barked through a megaphone.
Small figures in camouflage swarmed over him like ants. He felt their hands, their tools. Then he felt the worst thing: the delicate, scrambling weight of his boyfriends being plucked from his skin.
"No!" he bellowed, straining against the cables. The metal groaned but held. He saw them—Finn, Tommy, Jesse—blind and confused in the spotlights, being hustled by soldiers in full combat gear. They were pushed, none too gently, into the back of a waiting armored truck. The rear doors slammed shut with a final, metallic clang that hit Buck harder than any cable.
"Please," Buck's voice boomed, raw with panic. He stopped struggling, forcing calm into his tone. "Don't hurt them. They haven't done anything. I haven't done anything. I don't want to cause any harm."
A man stepped into the light below Buck's massive, prone head. He wore a colonel's insignia and a smile that didn't touch his eyes. He didn't need a megaphone; Buck could hear him just fine.
"Not trying to cause harm?" the Colonel called up, his laugh a short, sharp bark. "Son, look at yourself. With your size, causing harm is all you can do. It's a simple matter of physics."
Buck’s jaw tightened. He took a slow, shuddering breath, the air whistling past his teeth. "Just let my friends go. We can talk."
The Colonel turned to a subordinate. "Get that transport rolling. I want those three in separate interrogation rooms at Site Bravo in forty minutes. They’re complicit. They might need some… persuasion to explain what this thing is."
A cold dread poured into Buck’s gut. He saw the truck’s brake lights flare red as it began to bump its way down the rough path away from the clearing. They were taking them away. To rough them up.
The fear curdled, transforming in the furnace of his chest. It became something else. Something hot and dense and furious.
He stopped breathing.
The cables screamed as his muscles bunched. Every tendon in his body stood out like steel ropes. The Colonel’s smug smile finally slipped. With a series of cracks that echoed like cannon fire, the anchored bolts sheared from the bedrock. Buck sat up, the cables slithering off him like dead snakes.
He didn't swing. He didn't stomp. He simply stood, a mountain reclaiming its height, turning to face the ring of soldiers and vehicles. "Bring. Them. Back."
The response was instant. Muzzle flashes erupted from a hundred points below. A stinging, metallic rain pattered against his skin, his chest, his thighs. He looked down. The bullets flattened against him, harmless as hailstones, tinkling as they fell to the crushed earth at his feet.
He felt a profound, surreal pity for them. "I'm trying to be gentle," his voice rolled over the clearing, drowning out the gunfire. "You're making it very, very hard."
A helicopter, emboldened, swooped lower. A mounted gun on its side chattered, stitching a line of fire across his shoulder. It tickled. It also broke the last fragile dam inside him.
His hand moved with a speed that belied his size. A casual, almost dismissive backhand swipe. The rotor blades disintegrated against his palm in a shower of shredded composite. The helicopter spun, a dying metal insect, and crashed into the tree line with a fuel-fed whoomph that lit the pines in orange.
Silence, for a heartbeat, except for the crackle of flames.
"I'm tired of playing nice," Buck said, the heat of the fire reflecting in his eyes. "You want me to be nice? You stop. Now."
The Colonel’s voice, high with fury and adrenaline, screeched from a radio. "All units! Harder! Bring this thing down!"
They asked for this.
The thought was clear and cold in his mind. It was their choice. They took his guys. They kept shooting.
He took a step forward. It wasn't a careful, gardening step. It was a decisive, crushing stride. His foot came down on a personnel carrier. The metal roof caved; the rubber tires blew. The screams from inside were short-lived, muffled by tons of flesh and steel.
A wave of shame followed the crunch, then was scorched away by a surge of exhilarating power. He was good at this. Terribly, efficiently good. His body was the ultimate weapon, and every movement was devastating. A swipe of his hand cleared a gun emplacement, sending men and sandbags flying through the air like ragdolls. He kicked a light armored vehicle, sending it tumbling end over end into a cluster of soldiers.
He didn’t roar. He worked in grim, focused silence, a craftsman of ruin. The enjoyment was a secret, sickening thrill in his veins, a dark cousin to the pleasure he’d felt crushing the cabin. This was what Finn had seen. This was the monster. And it was winning.
He was ankle-deep in chaos when he felt the new sting. Not a bullet. A sharp, deep puncture in the side of his neck, followed by a spreading, icy numbness.
He slapped a hand to the spot, his fingers closing around the shattered remains of a high-caliber tranquilizer dart the size of a telephone pole. He wobbled. The world tilted, the flames and running figures blurring into streaks of light.
His colossal legs buckled. The earth rose to meet him with a ground-quaking finality. Through dimming vision, he saw the Colonel approach again, standing near his fallen head.
"Remarkable," the Colonel said, his voice fading in and out. "Pure tensile strength off the charts. Collateral damage acceptable. Package is secured for transport. Get the heavy lifters in here. We have a lot of tests to run."
The blackness that swallowed Buck was absolute, and filled not with dreams, but with the fading, echoing sounds of screaming metal and the memory of three tiny, stolen forms.