2012/7b.plaintext

   1 Of course the Fabulists were lucky that I had chosen the wrong confidante and, sensing the danger they were in, Valentine and Proteus knew immediately how to diffuse it. They arranged for you to be kidnapped from the trenches and smuggled back to the border under cover of a gas attack. I have never been able to forgive myself for the fact that my enemies chose to attack me by attacking you. Nor can I stop thinking about all those other young men in your regiment wounded or killed by their own side in order to stop me.
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   3 I received an official telegram telling me that your corps had been attacked at dawn and that you were missing and presumed dead. It was accompanied by a separate message from Valentine and Proteus telling me that you were alive, but my joy was short lived as I read on: they had arranged matters so that you could easily be found and they planned to brand you as a deserter. I was already convinced of their skills in deception and persuasion, and this threat filled me again with fear for you. The memory of the execution I had witnessed was still fresh in my mind and I could not bear the thought that you might suffer the same fate.
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   5 My only hope was to find you before they could fulfill their threat and I travelled that night to the Front in the hope of finding a clue to your location. Arriving at the Field Hospital I interrogated every conscious man I could find, but it was one of the nurses, almost too tired to speak, who set me on the path to finding you. She recalled you crashing into the tent carrying a mortally wounded companion and had treated you for shock and burns. You ignored her pleas to stay insisting that there were others who needed your help, and staggered off into the fog risking everything to save your men.
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   7 Even in that chaos the military police kept a close eye on troop movements and when I showed them my VERONA credentials they told me that men matching the description of Valentine and Proteus had been in the neighbourhood. Still unsure who to trust I searched for you alone in every abandoned building I could find, and three days later I found you, bandaged and unconscious, in a farmhouse in the woods to the south of the line. You had been badly burned by the gas, and I think you had been drugged by my tormenters. Perhaps they were showing a glimmer of empathy for your suffering, but it was more likely to have been a method to prevent your escape.
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   9 I hoisted you onto my shoulders and walked fifteen miles back to the Field Hospital, where I left you in the care of the Nurse, Miss Brittain, and left to confront the conspirators, not yet aware of the full depth of their treachery.