Ridge realistically could have pressed harder on Becke with his questioning, but to be realistic, Ridge felt he could take his time with this. After all, if it really was a spy for the fungi, then it wouldn't get much information out anyway from being trapped in a cell, and perhaps this could be a good opportunity to study a living, breathing one if Lind was right.
After leaving the jail cell, he found everyone who had left early waiting for him outside. Nodding to them, he turned to the soldiers who had followed along, "Guard this room, make sure no one goes in or out without my permission."
"Yes, sir," they both saluted before taking their places on either side of the door. Ridge wasn't sure if there were some other kind of abilities that Becke had, so he wanted to just make sure some soldiers were nearby to prevent anything unfortunate from happening. Not to mention Reno was quite close to Becke, so she had a high chance of attempting to break him out if she was found to be perfectly normal.
He waved the others over and walked with them through the hallways of the base rather than having a specific meeting place. "I want you guys to move the stockpile from the cafeteria; although we have Becke captured, if somehow the enemy gets knowledge about the importance of our food, I imagine that will be their first target. Those things never seem to die, so I suspect they are just biding their time before attacking."
"Is it really such a good idea to keep around, though, especially if we know he is infected? We barely know their abilities as it is, so I'm not too sure about this," Yayha hesitantly spoke.
"I understand the hesitation on what to do with him since he is or was one of us before, and he seems to still have his memory intact, but I also agree with Yayha here; I don't see any great benefits to leaving him alive pretty much," George added.
Caroline stayed silent, merely listening to the conversation between the group.
"The point of leaving him alive is for multiple reasons, the first being research potential. It's not every day that we can get a live specimen of these fungi that hasn't wilted from being killed, and by studying him, perhaps we can glean some of their capabilities." Ridge paused.
"The second point is that if he does indeed have some kind of ability allowing him to transmit information without us knowing, then there's a chance we could perhaps use the storage room as an example for a trap. At the very least, it can be used as a distraction for them," he continued before going silent once more.
"I agree with the decision for now, but we should just study him as much as we can as fast as we can so we can get rid of him. The longer we hold him, the higher the chance there is of something going wrong, I feel," Caroline chimed in.
Agreeing with her by nodding his head, Ridge continued walking.
"The problem as well with the moving the food thing is that the only place we can put it is the ship again. We have no spare rooms here in the main building, and even if we just build out a separate building or something like that for the food, it wouldn't be very hard to find out about it, since we will be constantly moving in and out with supplies," Yayha said.
"Hmm, that's a good point. We still need to move, so for now just move the food to the ship. Keep about a week's worth within the cafeteria storage room, though, so we only need to move things weekly," Ridge replied thoughtfully.
"Got it, I think that'll work for now. I'll get right to it," he said before leaving the group.
"How are those designs for the expansion coming along as well? I believe I had that conversation with both of you, right?" Ridge said while talking to Caroline and George.
"Uh, I think you did say something along those lines to me, though I haven't drawn up any blueprints of any kind really," Caroline replied.
"I also don't remember if you had this conversation with me; I do know someone had mentioned at some point that we should essentially build out housing for the soldiers since they were all just sleeping in two rooms," George added.
"Well, if you haven't heard it, now you have. Caroline, I'd like you to get on that as quickly as possible. Gather the engineers that aren't busy and draw up some blueprints so we can put expansion on the agenda. I want to continue scouting south eventually at some point in the near future; however, with this situation popping up, I think it would be best for me to stay here for now so expansion would be a great time consumer while Lind finishes up her testing on Reno and Becke," Ridge elaborated.
"Got it, I will go and do that now. Keep in touch," she stated before leaving.
As the two walked down the hall, Ridge was just about to speak when he was interrupted by a chime from his wrist panel.
Stopping, he looked down and saw it came from Lind. 'The tests for Reno came back normal. What do you want to do with her now? She is very restless.'
Rubbing his chin, which had grown out a tiny bit of stubble recently, Ridge gave it some thought before replying, 'We'll head down there now, and I can break the news to her.'
Another quick chime sounded out, 'Understood, will let her know you're coming.'
"We're gonna head to the clinic and pick up Reno to let her know what's going on with her commander. Since the others are busy, it'll just be the two of us," Ridge let George know.
"No problem, if she's normal, then I think we can handle her easily," he joked.
Chuckling while shaking his head, the two of them made their way over to the clinic. Since the base wasn't massive, they had made it in just a few minutes and walked in on Reno restlessly pacing back and forth throughout the room, while Lind was doing the usual.
Hearing the door open and seeing him, Reno walked up quickly, fuming. "Well? What's going on here?"
"Whoa, whoa, calm down. I came over here to tell you personally," Ridge said with his hands up.
Letting out a grunt of frustration, "Well, go on then."
"The reason why both you and Becke have been held up for so long in this clinic is for two reasons. The first is to keep both of you in one place, and the second is to test you. You see, Becke has been monitored since he got here by Dr. Lind, and she noticed quite quickly that his brain had been showing unnatural activity. Which isn't entirely impossible for a coma patient, but at the levels he was showing? It was essentially like he was awake.
Rewind to a few days ago, when he first woke up, she took some more tests, one of those being bloodwork. In his blood, she found something unnatural, something that could perhaps be fungus-related. Furthermore, she also noticed that his muscles, which should have been completely atrophied during his two-week-long coma, recovered extremely quickly and once again unnaturally.
So, long story short, after letting me know about this, I had a jail built out during the time you were stalled here by Dr. Lind, and currently Becke is being held there for more testing and, essentially, to be honest with you, as a human subject to be researched," He explained.
"I- well- I don't know what to say, what about me?" Reno said with some difficulty.
"Yeah, well, after the testing, we managed to clear your name, so you're free to move around the base as usual, just not free to see Becke," Ridge said sternly.
Speechless, Reno could only nod before walking out, seemingly deep in her emotions. Ridge didn't stop her from going. So long as the guards were at the doorway, he wasn't too worried that she would go straight to Becke.
Releasing a breath, he looked over to Lind, who was watching. "That went swimmingly."
Letting out a chuckle, she smiled, " The best-case scenario is she simply accepts the current circumstances after some time."
"Time will tell indeed. I want you to focus all your attention on researching whatever it is you can with Becke. We don't want to keep him around for long, just in case," Ridge said.
"No problem, I'll get started right away, and if anything comes up interesting, I'll be sure to message you as usual," Lind replied while grabbing some tools around the clinic and putting them into a bag.
Nodding, he left the room with George in tow, who had been quiet the entire time.
"You can go back to running the drills with the soldiers for now, George. Once we get the blueprints, we'll have some more work to do," he said as they walked out.
"Okay, I'll leave you to it, I guess," George saluted.
Returning his salute, Ridge went to help move the food and survey the base's land to map out in his mind what buildings could be built.