Smoky nights (Reaper 76)

Several Minutes Earlier...

As Jack and Jesse got closer to Moira's lab, Jack's mind rushed with a million different reasons Gabriel could be doing whatever the hell he was doing on the launch pads a minute ago. To him there was no rational solution, other than that Gabriel had had some giant secret for the past year. Now that Jack had thought back on it, there were definitely some times when Gabriel had little events like the one going on right now outside, just a lot less extreme.

Finally they reached the end of some empty hallway and Jesse stopped in front of the door, quickly punching in a code on the pad-lock while covering it with his hand so that Jack couldn't see it. When he noticed that Jack was glaring over his shoulder he looked up with an awkward grin and opened the door.

"After you, commander," he joked, holding the door open for Jack.

"Jesus fuck..." Jack muttered as he glanced around the room in curious horror.

"Yeah, it's like that when you first walk in," Jesse said as he turned on the lights and walked over to a nearby filing cabinet. "You get used to it."

"It's awful..." he trailed off as he began walking around. Moira's desk was filled with odd tools and contraptions he had never seen before, most of them sharp and threatening. A table in the middle of the room held strange chemistry sets and burners, test tubes and beakers sitting out with purple and golden liquids flowing through. A shelf on the wall had something square hiding under a white sheet with red stains on it. Jack looked away with a shiver.

"So, I'm guessing you wanna know whats up with Reyes?" Jesse asked casually as he shuffled through Moira's files.

"Why are you guys all so cool with all this?" Jack asked. When Jesse smirked up at him he continued, "Are you going to tell me or not?"

"Yeah, sure," McCree said as he pulled out a set of files from the cabinet and set them on the table before searching through them. "You might wanna sit down for all this, it's kinda 'lot."

"I'd really rather not," Jack said, cringing away from the idea of touching anything in the lab.

"Suit yourself, then," McCree said as he finally found the file he needed and moved to put the rest back. "Shit, I'm not really so sure I know where to start. Uh, okay. So, basically, Reyes is rapidly decaying and regenerating all the time, which sounds really bad at first but I assure you, its really not all that awful. I mean, yeah, it's pretty fucked up on a bunch of levels, but he can recover a lot faster with wounds on the battlefield and shit. But I mean, shit like this happens a lot, just not usually as extreme, ya know?"

"This is a common occurrence?" Jack asked in shock.

"Well, no. Not really. I mean, it's happened enough that we know what to do to fix it before too much harm is done." McCree said as he closed the filing cabinet and stood up to face the commander. He hesitated, knowing that he hadn't even told Morrison half the story and his face was already growing paler. "Look, Reyes is- for the most part- alright. I mean- Okay, okay, look. I don't really know how to tell you this but I'm sure as hell Reyes probably won't tell you, or at least tell you the whole story, so here it goes."

"I think it was about a year ago, right?" he continued. "Yeah. So about a year and a half ago Moira starting bugging me about some genetic enhancement and Reyes told her to buzz off, and she did for a bit but I guess she had started bugging him about it cause about a month or two later he sits me down and says he gotta tell me something and I can't tell anyone- so I guess I'm kinda shit at keeping that promise, fuck- anyways he tells me that for the next few missions he is gonna be testing some new thing for Moira or something."