"Hit me over the head with a chair?  Jeez man, it don't matter to me if you eat this or not.  I could take it back upstairs and run it through the blender.  Make you a nice meat milkshake.  How'd you like that?"  He put the tray down on the floor, scowling at the Spy out of the corner of his eye as he loosened the knots.

"There you are."  He picked up the tray handed it to the Spy.  "I don't think it's one of his cigarettes.  His are a different colour.  But hey if you don't want it, I'll take it.  The Sniper won't give me any of his any more.  Says I shouldn't be smokin' because I'm only a kid, but what does he know."

Unfortunately for the Spy who wasn't much in the mood for talking, the Scout was always in the mood for talking.  If he wasn't running, he was gas-bagging.  "Anyway, I kinda hope we don't find your team because it's sweet just sitting around the base.  I've organised my baseball card collection, and read some comics.  And they're paying me to do this!  It's great!"

"Cruelty.  Back when I was a kid I got my jaw broke with a baseball.  My mum was feeding me milk milkshakes for two months!  If you're bored down here you can borrow some of my Saxton Hale comics.  Do you like him?  I got #204 shipped in.  There's a great fight scene that goes on for 7 whole pages where he fights the entire city of Christchurch.  Then he gets banned from life from the country of New Zealand.  In fact, the whole second half of of the book is a bit of a downer, but the fight scene totally makes up for it."

The Scout watched the Spy eat, nervously eyeing the cigarette.  Everyone on this team was so tight.  If he had the money for cigarettes he'd be sharing them with everyone.  Or at least swapping them for favours. 

"You like the food?  Our Pyro cooks it.  He's a really good cook.  He can cook chicken and beef.  We once let the Soldier cook us dinner, and he just went out and shot a bunch of squirrels and birds and served them up to us raw.  They still had fur and feathers all over 'em."

"What?  Really?  What changed your mind?  It was the food, wasn't it.  I toldya the Pyro was a good cook.  I'll go get Remi.  And don't worry, I'll tell him you're actually a pretty cool guy," and with that he ran out of the room and disappeared around the corner.

The Spy entered just a few minutes later.  "He left you here, unattended and unrestrained?" he said more to himself than the BLU Spy.  He shook his head.  "What an imbecile."  Was he the only one on this team with any brains?  It didn't take many to kill a man.  "But since you're still here I guess you're ready to answer some questions.  I'll start with the same ones as before.  Do you really not know the whereabouts of your team, and when did they disappear?" 

"It's funny you say that, because he sure seemed to really like you.  Regardless, I promise you I took no part in selecting him to bring your meal."

The information was about as useless as he expected.   "That's what I'm asking you.  When did 'everything go quiet.'  We noticed it this morning, but I'm sure you have more reliable information.  Were they at the base last night?  Did they go missing during the night?" 

He scratched his chin.  The RED base was full of security cameras - although the feed wasn't available to them.  It was all transmitted to a remote location and monitored by a woman they all called 'The Announcer".  This woman would watch the base (seemingly for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week), and broadcast important messages - such as the location of any enemies in the base.  He'd never actually met her in person, only her assistant Miss Pauline.  "The BLU base has security cameras, right?  Perhaps we could find a recording of what happened."

The Spy sighed.  "It's the same as the set-up we've got here.  I should've expected."  Well, that ruled out the cameras.  "I'll have our Scout go out tomorrow and search for them.  It's much too late to be running that kind of mission today."  It'd be dangerous to send the kid out alone.  If the BLU team was camped out somewhere, the kid would be outnumbered if they ran into him.  If he was injured out there, they'd have no way of finding him. 

"Did your base have any vehicles?  And would they run?  Like, for example, we have a car parked in one of our warehouses.  It's rusted over and the tires are flat.  Pretty sure it doesn't run.  I've never seen one in my uh, visits to your base, but I could be mistaken."

The Spy was taken aback by his captive's question, and his attempt to worm his way out of it just made things worse.  The Spy smiled slightly but decided to not push the matter.  "I wasn't planning on sending the Medic with him, no.  The kid is the fastest one on the team.  Sending him out alone means we can cover as much distance as possible."

So they didn't have a vehicle.  That means the team didn't just decide to leave and drive away.  It didn't make any sense. If they were planning a sneak attack, surely this Spy would've known about it.  On top of that, they had no way of leaving the base.  Where the hell had they gone?

"Of course," the Spy said.  He took out his lighter and tossed it to the Spy.  Those were all his questions for now.  All his ideas had bore no fruit.  "What are we going to do with you?"  There was no way of knowing when the other team would show up again, or if they would at all.  "We can't just keep you down here."

He wasn't sure if he should believe the man.  If what he was saying was true a lot of those funny coincidences between the two teams started to make a lot of sense.  It was a nice conspiracy theory but there was no way it could be true.  He looked around.  Just like every other room in the RED base there was a security hanging in the corner.  Did they record sound?  He had no way of knowing.

He leant close to the BLU Spy, and in a whispered voice said to him "Cute story, but do you have any proof of this?  Once you start thinking about it, it doesn't really make any sense.  As a RED, I've been paid to gather intelligence on the BLU team and their holdings.  It's all part of a big corporate attack.  And I'm going to to assume for you it's the exact same with the company names reversed.  How would it make any sense for the same person to be paying two teams to be stealing information from another company they control?"

The Spy didn't say anything for a while.  He remembered the Spy mentioning the "Grinch that Stole Christmas' before.  Whether or not his story was true - he certainly seemed to believe it.  "We can go back to your base tomorrow morning and gather that information."

Until then, what could he do with the Spy?  Without his gear he was pretty useless, but he still didn't want him wandering around the base overnight.  He'd been pretty well behaved so far, but he was still on the opposite team.  "If I don't tie you up, will you stay put overnight?"  Why was he even asking this?  Who in their right mind would ever answer 'No'.  "I still can't trust a BLU in our base."