ã€ŠNowhere Island Universityã€‹


 1.1: Welcome to NIU (Glad You Arenâ€™t Here)

    Well this is just great, I thought as I tripped and fell again. Fifty-five pounds of gear began to push my face into the water that had begun to pool into the crater I fell in every day. Ironically, five of those pounds were the water in the goddamn Camelback. At least I could take a drink while I was drowning

    I considered what else I was carrying as I struggled to get up. On my chest and back was the thirty-pound bullet resistant vest (Sergeant Krieger¡¯s emphasis, not mine,) the harness that carried six thirty-round STANAG magazines and two grenades (which, considering they carried weights instead of you know, bullets and explosives, were only good as ballast,) and finally, the ten pound helmet. The Kevlar jacket and pants, goatskin gloves, combat boots, kneepads, t-shirt and boxers I was wearing probably weighed something as well, but it was the helmet that was giving me trouble. When you first put the bucket on your head, you don¡¯t really notice it. But when you¡¯re face-first in three inches of water at the bottom of a crater with God trying his hardest to turn it into five inches of water after running twenty-three kilometers, it starts to feel remarkably like someone is pushing your face into the water. This goes double if it you¡¯ve been running around 50 kilometers every day for the past four weeks.

    Someone reached down and pulled me up. It was John Marshall. Out of the thousand people on this little run, a large group of over a hundred would lag behind. Most of the ones who did were from the first world, and usually paler skinned.

    ¡°Thanks, man,¡± I said, after catching my breath. My brown hair, including my messy beard, was soaked with crater water and sweat. By some miracle, my glasses were still on.

    He shrugged, and said through heavy breathing,¡°Not a problem, Nate. Gives me a break from running.¡±

    As we scrambled up the crater, I growled, ¡°This crater is like my personal nemesis. I fall in every single fucking day.¡±

    John laughed. ¡°Just another day at Nowhere Island University.¡± He was right. Since training had started, it had been the same schedule every day. You get up at 4am, fall in, and run about twenty-five kilometers from Grunt Camp to the main campus and back. At six, assuming you had gotten back, you took a shower. After that, you get to eat until eight. Then you would have to go to two hours of calisthenics, then two hours of lifting weights. After that, you would have from twelve to one pm to eat lunch, then it would be back to push-ups and weight lifting until four. After that, it was run, shower, dinner, bed. The only difference would be that every Saturday we would get a new piece of gear to wear during our run and the first weight session would be replaced by parade drills. The bullet-resistant vest was the hardest piece of equipment to carry yet.

    The day before this regime began, we were lined up in formation in groups of fifty for our group¡¯s drill sergeant to shout at us. I got Krieger. He¡¯s South African.

    The lecture he gave was the standard movie drill sergeant rant, but with a South African accent. He was tan, bald, and had extremely bushy brown eyebrows. Also, like most of the other drill sergeants, he was built like an 80¡¯s action hero. I will always remember how when he noticed someone start to shake, (Michael was his name, I think,) he turned to him and dropped his voice to a whisper. The only reason I heard was because Michael was standing right next to me in formation. ¡°So you want to quit, eh, boyke?¡± he asked. ¡°Well, you can quit anytime you want, but I can assure you it¡¯ll be the hardest thing you¡¯ve ever done.¡±

    He then resumed his shouting. ¡°If any of you buggers want to quit, know this: Only the strong leave this semester. Right now, I can tell most of you are weak! Weak emotionally! Weak socially! Weak mentally! Weak physically! For most of you, the only way to leave this island and program is to pass the course. By then, you will not weak physically.

    ¡°However, if you decide you want to leave, you can talk to one of our head shrinkers. You will be locked in a four by four office with one of ¡®em for the entire day. During that time, they will attempt to break you. I can assure you, in the next few weeks you will feel physical pain. But can only tear you apart if you let it.¡± He paused, then continued in low, soft tone. ¡°The counselors will pick at everything you are proud of and everything you are ashamed of until they find the right words that will destroy you entirely. Then you will go back to the training, desperately trying to put yourself together again.¡±

    Two weeks later, (I could tell because we had added the Camelback and the vest,) I saw Michael sitting on his bunk after I came back from morning run. He was in a fetal position, rocking back and forth while crying.

    ¡°What happened?¡± I asked. He turned and looked at me, a hollow look in his eyes. Then, in a hollow, dull voice he said, ¡°I tried to quit.¡± He then returned to his rocking. He never spoke after that, just kept doing the same routine like some kind of robot.

    ¡°So,¡± John asked, snapping me out of my reverie ¡°you excited for Fight Night?¡± We had cleared the crater and were now in the blasted out field. Nowhere Island was little more than a glorified L-shaped sandbar. The grass and small forest was the only thing that kept it from washing out into the sea. For some reason, it had been converted into an airfield in WWII, and an actual battle had been fought over it.

    ¡°Please¡­ tell me that¡¯s not tonight¡­¡± I half-wheezed, half-moaned. Fight Night was going to be our first taste of hand-to-hand combat.

    Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

    ¡°Yup. Fuck us, right?¡± John¡¯s face was set straight ahead. He hadn¡¯t woken up early enough to shave and you could see the black stubble on his cheeks. I didn¡¯t really shave, so I never had that problem, but I could bet you could see the bags under my eyes as well. I rubbed the rain off my glasses. ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°at least Krieger isn¡¯t here.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m hurt, boyke,¡± a deep, South African-accented voice said behind me. I turned around. There was Sergeant Krieger, with his bushy hair and wild eyes looming high above us. Seeing as how he was the second-tallest person in the camp, it was more than a little disturbing how he was able to sneak up on us. He then maneuvered to be standing right next to me. ¡°And from the way you¡¯re limping, I can tell you¡¯re hurting, too.¡±

    His eyes bored into me. His¡­ intense demeanor was not helped by the fact that his eyes kind of bugged out. There was also something in his eyes that said he knew just what to say to break you, or just where to throw a punch so you¡¯d never walk again.

    ¡°And I can tell from the way you¡¯re moving that you¡¯re hurting, too.¡± He was right. Ever since the second day every single part of my body alternated between fiery agony and numbness.

    ¡°You want to know what helps me when I¡¯m in pain?¡± he asked. I nodded, trying to concentrate on the way forwards. I didn¡¯t really like the creepy look on his face. It wasn¡¯t sexual, which would have been bad enough. It was more like a doctor looking at a wound or a mechanic looking at a broken engine.

    In response to my nod, he said ¡°Cadences! Cadences, you pansy!¡± He then waved at the people behind us. ¡°Come on you pansies in the rear! Chant with me! We¡¯ve been up since three am!¡±

    About a hundred of us responded. ¡°We¡¯ve been up since three am!¡± I was surprised at how loud we were. It was actually kind of pumping me up.

    ¡°Just to run a few km!¡±

    ¡°Just to run a few km!¡± More voices tuned in, but I didn¡¯t care. I was actually getting kind of pumped.

    ¡°Come on,¡± Kreiger bellowed, ¡°I can barely hear you pansies! Say it like you bleeding mean it!¡± He then resumed chanting. ¡°We do this again at four pm!

    ¡°We do this again at four pm!¡± More voices, and the ones that were there before were louder. We were running faster. I was surprised we still had enough breath to speak.

    ¡°And we don¡¯t rightly give a damn!¡±

    ¡°And we don¡¯t rightly give a dam!¡± Kind of a lie, honestly, but it sounded badass.

    ¡°We don¡¯t like this, we¡¯re in pain!¡±

    ¡°We don¡¯t like this, we¡¯re in pain!¡± Not a lie. Actually a little too close to home, that line.

    ¡°So we¡¯ll do it all again!¡±

    ¡°So we¡¯ll do it all again!¡±

    So we¡¯ll do it all again. Oh god. He was right. We would do this run twice a day until it stopped hurting. Maybe we¡¯d drop dead from exhaustion. It made sense, as we were only getting six hours of sleep a night. A few of us were getting less. In my barracks, I was in one of the corner bunks. I had bottom, and the guy on top was apparently friends with the guys in the bunks to my left and rear. Lights out would be at nine, but they would spend the entire time talking. I didn¡¯t recognize their language, but judging by the fact that they were black and seemed like they hadn¡¯t eaten enough as children, I kind of assumed they came from one of the less stable regions in Africa.

    Luckily I discovered that if I wolfed down dinner and ran back to my bunk, I could be in a deep enough sleep that nothing would wake me. However, that always left me with the question: how was I able to do this? Maybe I was wrong, but there was no way I should be able to run this far every day. I hadn¡¯t exactly come to this island in the best of physical shape, and even if I was an Olympian, I doubted that run would be possible.

    I supposed I had other parts of my mission to attend to. I had a standard set of questions to ask everyone I came across. First, I¡¯d introduce myself. After introductions, I¡¯d ask them why they were here. Then, if they asked why I was here, I¡¯d make the joke. The stupid, awful, joke. If I could do so without fear of getting beat up, I would ask more questions. I¡¯d give as much information back as I safely could, and I would make sure I never lied about it. I realized that, despite running with him every day, I had never approached John with these questions.

    After Krieger was far enough away and there was break in the cadences, I asked John, ¡°So, why did you enroll at lovely Nowhere Island University?¡±

    ¡°Would you believe,¡± John asked, chuckling slightly, ¡°that I thought I was applying to NYU?¡±

    I stared. That was the signal. ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± John said, ¡°it was¡­¡±

    I interrupted him. ¡°What a coincidence,¡± I said, ¡°me too.¡± I then waited for the next counter-sign.

    ¡°Hey,¡± he said, comprehension dawning as he said the final counter-sign, ¡°we rhymed.¡±

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 1.2 In Which You Get an Explanation

    Ok, re-reading that first chapter, I think you might have a few questions. Some of them being ¡°Who is this guy telling this story?¡± ¡°What is this place?¡± ¡°Is he some kind of spy? If so, who¡¯s he spying for?¡± Well, I apologize for that, and I guess I can answer now.

    My name is Nathan Jacobs, the kid with two first names. Most of the time, I live in Maynard, Massachusetts, on the East Coast of the United States of America. It¡¯s quite a nice place, not the kind of place an aspiring mercenary lives. For one thing, it¡¯s really quiet.

    Too quiet, I guess, and not in the sense that you¡¯re about to get ambushed. I mean, I love that town, but it¡¯s the kind of place where most of the people have lived there for generations and everyone seems to be either middle or working class. Also, a good chunk of what you need is either in town or close enough so that you don¡¯t feel like leaving it.

    I guess what I¡¯m trying (and failing) to do is blame my lack of direction on the town, or on anyone other than me. I wanted to do something that got me as far away from Maynard and my family as possible, not because I hated them, but because they were all I had ever known. I mean, if you¡¯ve only ever lived in one place for sixteen out of the eighteen years you¡¯ve been alive, can you really say you love it?

    The thing is, I did have a plan. I decided I wanted to be a game developer. I loved video games, and had some cool ideas for a few. Then I went to a camp for that for two years. No one listened to me, and at the end of each session, I still had no idea on how to use the programs, unless you counted a growing frustration with them as ¡°learning.¡±

    That left me frantically searching for my purpose, something you apparently are supposed to have figured out by eighteen, despite not being considered mature enough to drink by the law. That¡¯s when UNIX came to my school¡¯s career fair.

    Bizarrely enough, there was one of the world¡¯s premiere paranormal law enforcement organizations recruiting in my school¡¯s gym and sitting on a plastic folding table with a home-made cardboard display like they were kids doing a science project. I mean, the Maynard Police and Fire departments and the local chiropractor you can kind of see, but people who fight rogues? Those guys should have enough money to put on TV adds during the Superbowl, not have little cardboard stands with clearly amateur charts and hand-drawn anime characters.

    I decided to talk with them. I mean, how could you not? There they were with the suits, sunglasses and single earbud and everything. Before I could say anything, the shorter one stood up and said in a slight accent, ¡°Hi, we¡¯re here from United Nations Investigations, Extranormal. We¡¯re here on a PR mission.¡±

    ¡°So, you guys aren¡¯t actually field agents, just PR?¡± I asked, feeling slightly disappointed.

    The other one, slightly taller responded in a British accent, ¡°All agents have mandatory PR training. We are, after all, expected to work with civilians.¡±

    ¡°Did you guys make the poster board yourself?¡±

    ¡°It was his idea,¡± the British one said, pointing at the Asian one.

    ¡°And it wouldn¡¯t have turned out so well if not for your help,¡± he replied teasingly. ¡°I must admit, I never would have thought of UNIX-tan.¡± It struck me as kind of odd how similar they looked. They were both in their mid-thirties and dark-haired. They also looked fit but not buff, and their suits were the exact same. Also, the British one looked like he was going to return his partner¡¯s needling.

    To prevent the conversation from becoming derailed before it could begin, I held out my hand. ¡°Hi, I¡¯m Nate. Sorry I didn¡¯t introduce myself sooner.¡±

    They both smiled. The Asian one shook my hand first. ¡°I¡¯m Agent Takashi and this is Agent Brosnan.¡±

    ¡°And please,¡± Agent Brosnan said as he gripped my hand, ¡°no James Bond jokes. I can assure you I¡¯ve heard them all.¡± Looking back on it, there was something weird about their handshakes. What I do when I shake hands with someone is I start off with a medium grip. Then, if their grip is harder, I grip harder and if their grip is looser, I grip looser. This time, I noticed with both of them what it was like to be on the receiving end of that.

    ¡°Kind of odd that you¡¯re here,¡± I said. ¡°We don¡¯t get very many UNIX agents around here.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s a reason for that,¡± Agent Brosnan said with disgust. ¡°Your country has the most annoying habit of not letting other people help. But when some other country has some nice, juicy oil you go in to ¡®spread Democracy.¡¯¡±

    ¡°Or maybe the US doesn¡¯t let us in because someone is so rude,¡± Takashi said, elbowing Brosnan.

    ¡°He does have a point,¡± I said, ¡°Depending on who we elect.¡±

    ¡°Very self-aware of you, Nate,¡± Brosnan said.

    Takashi cut him off. ¡°It¡¯s a bit more than that,¡± he said. ¡°People here, err, in this country, have a tendency to react badly to any kind of foreign power telling them what to do.¡±

    ¡°For instance,¡± Brosnan said, ¡°one town in California threatened to lynch us if we attempted to recruit there.¡±

    ¡°There probably some Californians who could have predicted that for you,¡± I said. ¡°But that¡¯s why you¡¯re recruiting in the US, right?¡±

    ¡°There are other reasons¡­¡± Takashi said hesitantly. ¡°We could talk about in more detail when school gets out. If that¡¯s ok with your parents, that is.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a half-day,¡± I said, ¡°so school gets out at 11:30. And I¡¯m eighteen, so I don¡¯t think I need permission.¡±

    ¡°Excellent!¡± Brosnan said. ¡°Your town has quite a few lovely little restaurants that I would like to try. I¡¯ll buy.¡±

    And that was how I found myself sitting at the River Rock Caf¨¦, eating a burger and listening to their plan for me. ¡°You are correct,¡± Takashi said, ¡°that we want to get more American agents and coverage. Your government is developing several anti-extranormal authorities, very good ones, in fact. That being said, none of them are quite enough to stop or contain a Force 2 Event.¡±

    For those of you who don¡¯t know, usually when two super-beings fight or an act of God occurs, certain pundits will label it a Force 0.1 to a Force 1 Event. The gold standard, apparently, was the bomb dropped on Hiroshima as it completely destroyed the city. The first time I heard of a Force 2 Event was Hurricane Sandy. People were arguing whether or not it was a Force 2 Event because it had destroyed a good chunk of the East Coast. The general consensus, though, was it was still a Force 1.

    ¡°But aren¡¯t the possibilities of that happening really remote?¡± I asked. Brosnan was about to speak up, but Takashi leaned in close. ¡°We can¡¯t tell you that.¡± He leaned back.

    I was about to ask why. Then I realized why. If they could tell me without any form of lying that there was no way a Force 2 event could happen, and in no way were there any close calls, he would be trumpeting it up and down the street.

    ¡°Oh.¡± I said. What else could you say?

    ¡°The reason why American coverage is so essential,¡± Bronson added, ¡°is that any Force 2 Event or even a significantly disturbing Force 1 event can cause massive panic if not handled effectively. Based on, well, the previous decade, a panicking America can cause massive amounts of damage.¡±

    ¡°Trust me on this,¡± Takashi said, ¡°America doesn¡¯t panic. America wreaks vengeance.¡±

    ¡°Nitpick, nitpick, there you go nitpicking,¡± Brosnan said, attempting to sound flippant. I had the suspicion that if I could see his eyes behind his sunglasses, they¡¯d be screaming. ¡°Anyway, there¡¯s also the Domino Effect. Except this time, instead of Communism, we¡¯re talking about panic. If a Force 2 or 3 Event happens in your nation without warning, other countries will get¡­ excited as well. In the time it takes for the US to heal and for UNIX to get it, Russia and China working together, many other countries will be panicking. Imagine: the nations of the world frantically scouring their borders for potential time bombs, attacking each other in bouts of paranoia¡­ Honestly, admitting how close we¡¯ve come to Force 2 to 5 Events would probably be preferable. The worst case scenario then would be a few regimes being changed.¡±

    I sat in silence, then I spoke. ¡°So, I figure the long-term goal in telling me this is get me to college, take some sort of law or science degree, then I¡¯ll join UNIX¡¯s American wing.¡±

    Takashi sighed subtly. ¡°Yes,¡± he said, in a seemingly nonchalant way, ¡°I suppose that¡¯s the long-term goal.¡±

    ¡°Yuki,¡± Brosnan said admonishingly, ¡°let him ask about the short-term before you give up.¡± Takashi stared at Brosnan in surprise. Then he turned back towards me. ¡°So, what do you think will happen in the short-term?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°there are probably dozens of arguments you could have used to get me on board.¡± I leaned in close to whisper, ¡°but instead you deliberately came as close to saying that Force 2 Events are an everyday occurrence as possible without actually saying it¡­¡±

    Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

    ¡°Don¡¯t whisper,¡± Brosnan said. ¡°It tends to attract more attention than talking about something out loud.¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said, leaning back and raising my voice to the minimum amount needed for them to hear me, ¡°It¡¯s just¡­ I get the feeling that was something you reallyshouldn¡¯t have told me. Is that better?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Takashi said. ¡°Remember, it is better to hint than to whisper. Also, read and shape the air, don¡¯t clear it.¡±

    ¡°Anyway,¡± I said, ¡°telling me that speaks of¡­ well, desperation seems too strong a word. After all, we could just leave here and pre¡­ I mean, say we simply had a thought-experiment. But your¡­ not-desperation, I guess, speaks of short-term. Do you want me to guess?¡±

    ¡°Personally,¡± Brosnan said, ¡°I¡¯m convinced, but I do believe Agent Takashi would like to hear an educated guess.¡± Takashi nodded. ¡°That is correct.¡±

    I took a moment to consider the phrasing. An educated guess could possibly be different than a normal guess to them. How? My best guess: if I just randomly said something out of the blue, even if it was right, I would fail. As any math teacher would say, I had to show my work.

    ¡°First off,¡± I said, starting with the obvious, ¡°you seem to want me to start early. I can¡¯t say you¡¯ve offered me definite proof, but your strategy seems to be ¡®bring him on board and hope he follows.¡¯¡± I thought about asking if I was right, but something told me I¡¯d fail this test of theirs if I asked. That brought me to my next point.

    ¡°Actually,¡± I said, ¡°you¡¯ve been testing me ever since we met, haven¡¯t you? That¡¯s another reason to assume you¡¯re offering me a job right now.¡± I was annoyed, but in the kind of way that made me want to ace their stupid test, not the kind that made me throw down my half-eaten burger and storm out.

    Collecting myself, I continued. ¡°As to what kind of job it is, well, let¡¯s think about what I¡¯ve been tested for. You wanted to see my ability to see the big picture. I don¡¯t think I did very well on that, so that leaves out being some kind of analyst. What I¡¯m doing much better on is my ability to, as Agent Takashi said, ¡®read the air.¡¯ So, what you want me to do is something more¡­ people-oriented, and quite a bit closer to the field.¡± I resisted adding ¡°know what I mean?¡± I was going to shape the air, not clear it. Takashi smiled slightly. He had gotten it.

    ¡°As to where I would be doing this job,¡± I said, trying desperately to think, ¡°I¡¯ll need a moment to think that over. I¡¯m pretty sure I have time to answer that, but my burger and fries are getting cold.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Takashi said, ¡°Do we have time?¡±

    I kind of snapped. It would have sounded polite to a passer-by, but in context my voice was dripping with venom. ¡°Honestly, unless I¡¯m reading you wrong, you two have personally worked your way from Cali all the way here, searching for someone who fits your criteria. If you have that kind of time, you definitely have time for me to eat my food before it gets cold and disgusting.¡±

    I leaned forward. As I did, I realized I was shaking with anger. ¡°You know what?¡± I whispered dangerously, ¡°I think you are desperate. Why? Because you ran out ofcandidates.¡± Takashi looked like he had been slapped. I leaned back, taking a deep breath before the dam burst any more. I really wanted to lay into him and call him out on his bullshit, but I wanted to win now, more than anything. If I exploded, I would lose.

    I took a sip of my coke (or was it Pepsi? Screw it, doesn¡¯t matter) then said, ¡°You should eat, too.¡± While I ate, I thought. This made my eating slower than usual. So, I knew they wanted me to be a spy. The question was, who would I be spying on? I doubted anything in the previous conversation had any hints to give me, or at least none that I would pick up on in time. Instead, I would focus on what I knew about spies.

    First off, where would they recruit me, normally? Easy, in every spy book I owned, spies typically got recruited in college or the army. People in college were young, so it would be easy to do a background check. They were smart, which was always a plus. Also, their major and clubs they joined said a lot about them and it would be easy to check that. So why target me? Or, in less egotistical terms, why target a High School student? That was a better way to ask the question, actually. They¡¯d looked through a lot of schools to find a candidate, but it sounded like they were targeting High Schoolers at career fairs. Then I remembered how Takashi reacted to what I said about college.

    ¡°You don¡¯t want me to go to any college,¡± I said in dawning comprehension. ¡°You want me to go to a specific one.¡±

    ¡°I think he passes,¡± Brosnan said, ¡°but if you disagree¡­¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Takashi said, ¡°He got farther than anyone else. He may have lost control for a moment, but he got me off-balance, then recovered.¡±

    ¡°Sorry about that,¡± I said.

    ¡°Don¡¯t be sorry,¡± Brosnan said as he reached into a messenger bag for a large envelope, ¡°because you win!¡± As I took the envelope, he said, ¡°By the way, Nate, we never got your last name.¡±

    I smiled. ¡°It¡¯s Jacobs,¡± I said, ¡°Nathan Jacobs.¡±

    That¡¯s when Takashi imitated the opening trumpets to the James Bond theme. Brosnan elbowed him. ¡°Oi,¡± he said, ¡°that¡¯s my song, you wanker.¡±

    I waited till I got home to open it. Inside were two flyers and two letters. The flyers were for a place called Nowhere Island University. They looked mostly the same. One, however, was the truth. The other was what you showed to your parents. I picked up a letter, the one without official letterhead. It read as follows:

    Dear Random Teenager:

    Congratulations on impressing us with your skills. As you have guessed, we want you to infiltrate a very specific university. Nowhere Island University is not a normal higher learning institution. Ever since UNIX¡¯s inception, we have been encountering their graduates in the field. They range from soldiers with training surpassing that of your Delta operators and SEAL commandos to criminal masterminds to disturbingly brilliant scientists. Recent intel even suggests that they have even begun to train parahumans.

    While it would be more expedient to destroy it, we believe that they have certain safeguards in place, mostly legal. The problem is that its graduates are everywhere, and many of them possess wildly different goals. Some are revolutionaries, looking to up their game. Some are criminals looking to make money. Others still are simply motivated by pushing the boundaries of science, no matter the cost. Even more disturbing is now a growing percentage seem to have super-powers.

    All of that, though, pales to the possibility that there are graduates of NIU or their projects unaccounted for. Some of these people and materiel could quite possibly be capable of causing a Force 1 Event or higher. Also, the possibility of having an ally educated by that place is quite an intriguing possibility. To that end, we would like you to enroll as yourself. The fliers included will give you the necessary information. We have also included a scholarship acceptance letter from The Lawmen of NIU, an alumni organization that is giving out scholarships. It appears they¡¯ve offered you a chance at a free ride if you submit yourself to certain tests. We suspect you¡¯ll pass them. After passing, you will then join the Elite Infantry single semester program, or ¡°undecided,¡± as the pamphlet lists it.

    If you have any questions about the legitimacy of this operation, we recommend you call or email our tip hotline and tell them people claiming to represent the organization have recruited you for Operation Rider. We will not give you a number, since you will dismiss it as a lie or if you lose the letter, someone else will find it and potentially compromise the operation. Even if you decide not to accept our offer, we would like you to destroy this letter after reading it.

    One final note, as well as giving you the education, we are prepared to compensate you generously. Up to a hundred thousand American dollars for each semester you complete seems reasonable.

    Hoping to see you soon,

    Your Handlers.

    Needless to say, I accepted. I mean, if someone offered you a hundred grand to potentially avert World War Three, wouldn¡¯t you take it? I did make sure they were who they said they were, of course, and they were legit. At least, as legit as you could get when hiring eighteen-year-olds to spy on a university. Surprisingly, the hardest part was convincing my parents that Nowhere Island University was the place for me.

    And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I ended up in Northern Island University with nothing but a diary, a few pencils, and a pencil sharpener.

 1.3 Preparing for Fight NIght

    As I mentioned before, Nowhere Island is an L-shaped sandbar. On the corner is an airfield that heads west towards the main campus. The main campus itself is kind of a small town. I know this because we run through it twice every day on our run. It¡¯s gated off and is on a raised, rocky area, probably in case of attack. The buildings inside are that fusion of Modern and early 20th century architecture that schools back home tend to be nowadays: all brick, but with huge glass windows for the lobbies. However, looking at how weathered the bricks are, one tends to get the feeling that they¡¯re from way before the style became popular. Also, the non-lobby windows tend to be smaller, more like murder holes in old castles. My guess is that in a pinch every building there can be turned into a bunker of some sort.

    I¡¯m not the best judge, but I¡¯ve heard some people say that up to 20,000 people could be in that section. I guess I can see that, because except for some of the staff houses, the living quarters seem to be mostly multi-story apartment-style buildings.

    To top it off, on the gate that led to the campus, there was written in bronze: ¡°Any man may rob a railcar, but an educated man may steal the entire railway.¡± After the first run, I started hearing people joke that the gate to our camp should should ¡°Arbiet macht frei.¡±

    Speaking of our camp, it was quite different from the campus. On one side were five large buildings, designed to hold 200 people each. Opposite that were the cafeteria and the showers. To the south (that was actually one of the things we had learned, how to tell directions based on the sun and stars,) were the staff quarters, an armory, and a mysterious building which smelled like rotting carcasses called ¡°The Chamber of Horrors.¡± In the center was the parade ground with a dirt floor. (Well, currently it was a mud floor.) That was where Fight Night would take place. Surrounding it was a wall that was meant more as a token defense than as a way to keep people in or out. Strange as it sounded, everyone wanted to be here.

    That didn¡¯t mean we didn¡¯t complain. Popular topics of our moaning included grueling physical labor, baking heat, our instructors, the near-constant torrential rains, and our fellow students. These complaints were not without reason. Each one of these topics seemed like it was actively trying to kill us.

    As John and I walked through the gates, completely out of breath, an announcement from the loudspeakers played. It was from the Head of the Advanced Combat & Military Science Academy, Professor Blunt. Great. Just what we needed to hear while being pelted by rain so heavy it felt like we were swimming.

    ¡°So you candy-ass fresh meat are all finally here!¡± Yep, he was another drill sergeant, all right. ¡°Well, we¡¯ve got a real treat for all you ladies! You get the rest of the day off for R&R! That means a whole day of hopscotch and knitting for you before you finally get your first real fight. Or maybe that isn¡¯t tame enough for you snowflakes, I don¡¯t know. Meals are at the usual time!¡±

    ¡°This has been another inspirational message from Professor Blunt,¡± I said. ¡°If this message has made you feel uncomfortable in any way, you may call our toll free number 1-800-URAPANSY.¡± I must have said it louder than I intended because John wasn¡¯t the only one who laughed. Sergeant Krieger, who was only slightly farther ahead of me, didn¡¯t seem to care. Someone else did.

    ¡°You¡¯re a funny guy, aren¡¯t you, Jew-boy?¡± the voice asked. I stiffened. I would have kept moving, but John had stopped as well. John turned around slowly, and I did as well, wiping off my glasses. Whatever was happening, I wanted to be able to see.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± John asked, ¡°but who the fuck are you?¡± We were face-to-face with the kind of person you see in old Army recruitment posters. I suppose his hair was too dark for a Nazi recruiting poster, but he was more KKK. He also did kind of look a bit like a younger version of those old Civil War Generals, I suppose.

    ¡°This is Richard Forest Taylor the¡­ third, I think?¡± I said. He nodded. I continued on. ¡°A few days ago, I was saying how I didn¡¯t really know what I wanted to do. He suggested I join what he views as a prestigious part of American heritage. I call it the KKK.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± John said. He was breathing harder now, and I doubted all of it was because of the marathon.

    Richard, or Dick, as I liked to call him, cut in. ¡°I like,¡± he said, ¡°with all your limp-wristed talk of respecting others, you still talk over me.¡± Normally, I would have tried to reason with him, or point out that he hadn¡¯t been saying anything, or maybe even walked away. However, I had just run twenty-five kilometers, I hadn¡¯t eaten or showered, it was raining, and I had not had enough sleep. So, in retrospect, I think I can be forgiven for asking him, ¡°Who fucking said anything about respecting you,bedsheet-face?¡±

    In the moment, however, Richard called me uppity and something that begins with K, while punching me in the face. John, in response to that, tackled Richard and began rapidly punching him before I had time to process anything.

    I didn¡¯t really know how to react then. On the one hand, I wanted to ask John to move out of the way so I could take a turn beating the crap out of him. On the other, I felt my duty as a good human being would be to say something like, ¡°That¡¯s enough, John.¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s this, eh?¡± Sergeant Krieger asked. I nearly crapped my pants and made a note to add motherfucking ninja to the good sergeant¡¯s list of skills. Also, a few people were stopping to watch the show. Showers could wait, apparently.

    John stood up, and looked directly in Krieger¡¯s face. To his credit, he managed not to look scared. ¡°The fucker on the ground insulted my friend and punched him in the face.¡±

    ¡°The ad¡¯ole provoked de!¡± Richard shouted through a bloody nose, pointing at me. His eyes also kind of looked like at least one would be puffy in a few hours.

    ¡°By ¡®provoking,¡¯¡± I said acidly, ¡°he means ¡®responding to his BS.¡¯¡±

    Krieger regarded each of us with a disturbing intensity. Whatever animosity we felt towards each other, however intense, we all had a feeling that Krieger wanted us to put it on hold. Continuing hostilities would¡­ annoy him. Annoying Krieger would result in the offending parties watching bemusedly as their blood watered the grass.

    ¡°Names.¡± I suppose it was a question, but it sounded more like a threat. A threat from Krieger was something you took seriously. We told him. Richard, I noticed, didn¡¯t mention his middle name or the fact that he was version 3.0. I guess he realized that Krieger wouldn¡¯t be impressed.

    Finally, he came to a decision. ¡°All right,¡± he said, pointing to us, ¡°you two go shower.¡± He pointed to Richard. ¡°You go to the canteen and get some ice.¡± Not being stupid, we obeyed. Apparently, they let people in the Soldier programs off easy for fighting, especially in basic training. As long as you could still fight, they were ok with it.

    ¡°Meet me behind the barracks after we eat,¡± John whispered to me as we headed off to shower. It made sense. While I had normally spent all my running with John, I spent mealtimes trying to talk to people. I didn¡¯t want to break this streak for fear of attracting attention.

    I was in the middle of my shower when Amir sauntered up to the shower head next to me. Amir was¡­ very different from Richard. He was Al-Qaeda, so I suppose there were some similarities. However, unlike his cronies (he seemed to be the senior Al-Qaeda guy here,) his was an almost cordial hate. Whenever he talked to me, he would usually ask if I wanted to convert and join Al-Qaeda. I would decline. He would then politely threaten my life, then segue into polite conversation. Even his compatriots in terrorism thought he was odd. They just wanted to kill me and have done with it.

    ¡°So,¡± he asked, ¡°have you given any thought to your future?¡±

    ¡°You¡¯ll be happy to know I¡¯ve ruled out Mossad,¡± I said, somewhat jokingly. He brightened, his foxlike face seeming hopeful. ¡°Does this mean you¡¯ve considered my proposal?¡± he asked, attempting to be neutral.

    ¡°Not really,¡± I said. ¡°I figure law enforcement¡¯s my speed. I was thinking FBI or Interpol, maybe UNIX.¡±

    ¡°Amir¡­¡± another Arabic-looking person asked cautiously, ¡°what is this accomplishing?¡± He then asked another question in Arabic. It was a question that Amir¡¯s men asked a lot around me, and I believed it could be translated as ¡°Why don¡¯t we just kill him?¡± I could be wrong, I don¡¯t really speak Arabic, but the context was usually with one of them brandishing a shank in my direction.

    tried not to look, but Amir then threw his arm around the shoulders around the other man and began talking animatedly in Arabic, with exuberant hand gestures. The contrast between Amir¡¯s taller, thinner body, and the other¡¯s stocky 5¡¯5¡± was made all the more distinct by the fact that they weren¡¯t wearing clothes. Amir¡¯s subordinate seemed a little disturbed by this, but wasn¡¯t able to get a word in edgewise for a few minutes. When he finally was able to get a word in edgewise and protest, Amir withdrew, apologizing furiously, covering his crotch.

    I continued showering while Amir and his friend kept talking. The guy I didn¡¯t know, seemed to be making his point now. When I was just about done, Amir turned back towards me. ¡°You should thank Mubashir,¡± he said very seriously, ¡°he may have found a way to save your life.¡±

    ¡°Thank you, Mubashir,¡± I said, holding out my hand. He shook it with a medium grip.

    ¡°They would probably make me do it,¡± he said, ¡°and I don¡¯t really want to kill people.¡±

    ¡°If that¡¯s the case,¡± I said, ¡°you may want to rethink your life.¡± With that, I decided to put on some pants before things became more awkward. At least no one got a boner. I think the bro code demands some form of ritual suicide at that point. I only had my underwear, pants, shoes, T-shirt, and jacket. All the various equipment and armor was put in a pile in the parade yard to be stored.

    In the cafeteria, the lines had mostly died down. Basically, the way it worked is you grab a bowl and a cup, put them beneath their respective nozzles, swipe your student ID, then watch as your cup fills with water and your bowl fills with an unidentifiable sludge that looks suspiciously like diarrhea. You then stick in a spoon into your soylent green, and, if you have something to celebrate, grab one of those bendy straws that change color when you use them. The one I grabbed was yellow, but turned green in the water.

    After you did that, you had the problem of finding where to sit next to. I knew that there was only one more infiltrator UNIX. I also knew that he wasn¡¯t American, but I had gotten the hint that he wanted to be one.

    ¡°Hey, Nate!¡± a voice called. I turned and saw Cross. I smiled. Michael (not the Michael that Kreiger had broken) Croccifixio Castellan, ¡°Cross,¡± to those who knew him, was a New York native with a¡­ colorful network of family and acquaintances. I knew him because he shared a bunk with other Michael behind me. He was somewhat tan, with sandy blond hair and brown eyes and a perpetual friendly smile. That smile was a sharp contrast to that hard look his eyes had. It was a look I had never seen before coming to NIU, but now that I was here I saw it every day.

    ¡°Hey, Cross,¡± I said, ¡°what¡¯s up?¡±

    ¡°Not much,¡± he said, indicating the seat opposite him, ¡°come on, man, pop a squat.¡±

    I obliged. ¡°So,¡± I asked, ¡°what¡¯s this about?¡±

    He laughed. ¡°I¡¯m homesick, man,¡± he said. ¡°I miss New York, I miss my mom, and I sure as shit miss food that isn¡¯t¡­ this.¡±

    ¡°I hear you,¡± I said.

    ¡°That reminds me,¡± he said, ¡°you got any paras up in Massachusetts?¡±

    ¡°Actually,¡± I said, ¡°we¡¯ve got the Minutemen on the hero side. On the villain side, they mostly work for the Triads and the Yakuza. The Bulger gang and the local Italian mafia can usually just drown them in men.¡±

    ¡°I actually heard about those guys,¡± Cross said. ¡°The Kagemoto and the Jade Empire, right? Those guys are pretty much legends in¡­ in my circle.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯d know more about that than me,¡± I said. ¡°I just hear what happens when someone important dies or gets arrested.¡±

    ¡°Probably,¡± he said. ¡°A lot of what gets in the news is the spillover. I actually met one of the Kagemoto kids at a party once. His name¡¯s Sam and he¡¯s a little older than we are. Dude was going to this private school, Fessenden, I think¡­¡±

    ¡°Holy shit,¡± I said, ¡°my mom works there!¡±

    ¡°Really? Did she know him?¡±

    ¡°Probably,¡± I said, She¡¯s worked there literally for decades.¡± I paused, realizing my mistake. ¡°I don¡¯t really want to tell you what she did, you understand?¡± He nodded. ¡°Probably shouldn¡¯t even have told me she worked there,¡± he said. I nodded, but hopefully the fact that she had a different last name should put anyone off for a bit. Probably not, but it was nice to hope. Anyway, I already was using my real name.

    ¡°Anyway,¡± he said, ¡°the guy has a sister who is our age.¡± He thought for a minute, then said, ¡°Maybe we¡¯ll meet them here,¡± he said. ¡°This would be probably the best place for them to go.¡±

    I kind of hoped not. While they weren¡¯t the Jade Empire or ISIS, the Kagemotos were not the kind of people I wanted to deal with on top of Al-Qaeda, the KKK and whatever other dregs of humanity had come here.

    We ate in silence for a bit after that. Eventually, Cross asked, ¡°Hey, are you doing anything after this?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve got someone to meet after breakfast,¡± I said. ¡°Part of my secret stuff.¡±

    He nodded. ¡°Explains why you¡¯re eating so fast. No one¡¯s excited to eat this stuff.¡±

    ¡°Actually,¡± I said, pausing to slurp down the last spoonful, ¡°this is kind of my normal speed. See you later, I guess.¡± I left him looking at where my bowl was, a look of shock on his face.

    I walked towards Derek¡¯s barracks. His was B2, mine was B3, the only co-ed barracks. They also seemed to be testing some TVs that had been built into the walls of the buildings facing the parade grounds. Due to the fact that the buildings were shiny black monoliths on the outside, I hadn¡¯t really noticed them before.

    The narrow corridor between the two buildings was a little scary. There was no place to hide, but you still got the feeling someone could jump out at you. Combined with the now-torrential rain, and the narrow corridor had the atmosphere of a horror movie. On the bright side, I was shielded from the worst of the rain if I walked on one side.

    Ahead was a wall made out of the same black material as the buildings it encircled. Just above the sound of the rain, I could barely make out the sounds of two people fighting. Thinking it was Derek, I hurried forwards. When I finally got to the end, I was a little embarrassed.

    There were two girls there. Both of them were engaged in some kind of sparring match. I knew this because they were obviously very good, but none of their blows seemed to be hurting the other. I was only a Green Belt in Tae Kwon-Do, but I knew enough to see that. They also were doing moves that, while fun, weren¡¯t the kind of thing you¡¯d do in a real fight. For example, a jumping axe kick might score you extra points when breaking a board on your promotion test, but it was something that was real easy to block and easily dodged.

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    The combatants themselves seemed to be in a world of their own. One was a small Asian girl with dark shoulder-length hair in a straight cut and a tattoo of two dragons, one black, one white, forming a yin-yang symbol on her left shoulder. The other was a tall red-head with her hair in a messy bun, taller than me. Both, however, were built like gymnasts. Looking up, I could see that they had chosen this spot because of an overhang over the rear prevented shielded them from the rain.

    I cleared my throat. They both turned to face me, their faces both unreadable. ¡°Hi,¡± I said, ¡°I was just wondering if someone else had been back here recently. I was supposed to meet him back here and¡­¡±

    Their expressions didn¡¯t change a single bit, nor did their gaze waver. That left me in a bit of a quandary. If I left, John might not be able to find me. If I stayed, they could beat me or even kill me. If I told them to tell John I had gone somewhere else, well, there were a million ways that could go wrong. All told, leaving would be the safest bet.

    Before I could make my apologies and leave, the redhead spoke in what seemed to me (who can¡¯t tell the difference between an Australian and a British accent) to be Cockney accent. ¡°I¡¯ve seen you before.¡± It was weird. Most people believed that Cockney accents would be hard to make threatening, especially if it was coming from a pale, skinny girl with a lightly freckled face. However, this girl had just proven she knew a bit about fighting, and there was something menacing about the stare her green eyes were giving me.

    ¡°Probably,¡± I said, in what I hoped was a conversational tone of voice. ¡°We are in the same program. If you¡¯re in the co-ed barracks, that¡¯s probably where you¡¯ve seen me.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re right ¡®bout where I bunk,¡± she said, ¡°but I¡¯ve seen you poppin¡¯ up all over and I¡¯ve rarely seen you speak to the same person twice. It¡¯s a little funny, innit?¡± The Asian girl gave her friend a surprised look at this, then turned back towards me, her look more calculating and violence-implying now.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°aren¡¯t you a little curious about what¡¯s going on here?¡±

    ¡°Random yank starts sticking his nose into everyone¡¯s business, keeps telling the same joke to every person he meets, then the little bugger follows me here? I ambloody curious. You might say I¡¯m right intrigued.¡± My eyes had widened when she mentioned the joke. Screw it, the last UNIX plant could contact me. Or John. Preferably John. My cover was blown.

    ¡°I was talking about the bigger picture,¡± I said, changing the topic. ¡°I mean, yeah, I¡¯m asking questions. But that¡¯s because this is a weird place. I¡¯ve talked to people who want to join Islamic fundamentalist groups, law enforcement, hate groups, organized crime, mercenary groups, military organizations¡­ Normally, these people would only be in the same room together to kill each other, but we¡¯ve all come here to learn.

    ¡°And the weird thing? We aren¡¯t being encouraged to change our views by the staff. They aren¡¯t trying to forge us into an army. So what are we here for? Why does this place exist?¡±

    ¡°Interesting questions,¡± the redhead said, nodding in agreement. ¡°¡¯Ere¡¯s another: who¡¯s funding your little study?¡±

    ¡°Is it ok if I assure you that I have no interest in you personally?¡± I asked. ¡°I really can¡¯t tell you anything about why I¡¯m here, or how I intend to answer my questions. But as an act of good faith, maybe I can share some of what I¡¯ve learned? My name¡¯s¡­¡±

    ¡°Nathan Jacobs?¡± the redhead asked.

    t was at that I started to become paranoid. Dozens of scenarios began to run through my mind, each more horrifying and implausible than the last. ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± I said, beginning to edge towards the alley, ¡°you seem to have me at a disadvantage.¡±

    ¡°Surprisingly well-mannered for a sneak, ain¡¯t ya?¡± she asked cordially. ¡°I¡¯m Eliza, an¡¯ this ¡®ere¡¯s Bai.¡± Bai just stared at me, still probably calculating the best way to make me talk. I got the feeling if she came to a decision, she could move very fast. ¡°She don¡¯t talk much,¡± Eliza added.

    I calmed down somewhat. If they had been waiting for me, they wouldn¡¯t have been sparring. I had just been really unlucky. ¡°So,¡± I said with relief, turning on my heel to leave, ¡°I guess I¡¯ll be going. If you¡­¡±

    ¡°No.¡±

    Oh fuck.

    ¡°Not yet.¡± I turned to look at Eliza and Bai. ¡°Yes?¡± I squeaked. Eliza was leaning against the perimeter wall, seemingly at ease. ¡°You were going to tell us what you¡¯ve learned about this camp.¡±

    I took a deep breath. ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°I haven¡¯t really learned anything about the motives behind the staff. That would be a huge tip-off. I have been looking around, making connections, seeing if anyone here knew anything.¡±

    ¡°You thought any ¡®bout this Fight Night thing?¡± Eliza asked. ¡°Fellow like you¡¯s got to ¡®ave a plan or two.¡±

    I laughed. ¡°My plan? My plan¡¯s to tap out as soon as possible. My bet is that most people will too.¡± Everyone knew the rules to Fight Night. If you were eligible for Fight Night, you had to attend. If you were attending, you would either have to be in three fights or beaten until you couldn¡¯t fight anymore. Fights would last as long as the Drill Sergeants wanted them to. After winning three fights, you had three options: spectate, go to bed, or stay in the ring. If you stayed in the ring, you could call in whoever you wanted. If you spectated, you could end up being called back in. The person with the highest win streak got some sort of prize.

    ¡°However¡­¡± I said, noticing the look of disappointment on both their faces, ¡°If one wanted to go for the prize, I might have an idea.¡±

    ¡°Go on¡­¡± Eliza said. I had both of them. I had the feeling that if I gave them good advice, at the very least I¡¯d get a few more weeks of life. In the meantime, I¡¯d have some time to prepare for any bad scenarios. Maybe find a weapon.

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯ve never been a fan of dividing the world into two groups. It rarely tells the full story. For instance, you could divide the camp into the people who¡¯ve been in combat before and the people who obviously haven¡¯t.¡± I paused for effect. My audience leaned in. ¡°But that would be a mistake.¡±

    ¡°From what I¡¯ve seen, there are four groups of people. There¡¯s the group I¡¯m in: the cautious. We¡¯ve probably never been in a fight in our lives, and we¡¯re definitely scared of it.¡±

    ¡°So,¡± Eliza said with a straight face, but some humor in her voice, ¡°you think we should take people like you out first?¡±

    ¡°Not really,¡± I said, ¡°and not entirely because I don¡¯t want to fight you, though that isa big part of it.¡± She nodded, and I continued. ¡°You have to remember that we can¡¯t run. That is likely to make a few of this group panic and go full berserker. Therefore, you¡¯ll want to win quickly. If they go down, only beat on them if they try to get up.

    ¡°The next group are the bullies. They have only been in fights against unarmed people who won¡¯t fight back, and never without a gang to back them up or a crowd to watch them.¡± I smiled. ¡°These people are really easy to spot. They go around bragging how great they are, or trying to go back to being the school bully. Then they meet up with the former soldiers.¡± The reason I was smiling was because in the first week there was this guy in our barracks who just did not get it. He had apparently been some kind of athlete at his school, and had gathered a small posse. He also seemed to like picking on my bunkmate.

    My bunkmate and his four friends, as I believe I¡¯ve already said, are probably former child soldiers and all in some sort of unit. Somehow, this guy didn¡¯t pick up on that or didn¡¯t care. One night, he was walking in, and heard my bunkmate and his friend talking in their native language. He then made some monkey noises. His friends laughed. To my surprise, so did my bunkmate.

    The guy, or Dumbass McRacist as we¡¯ll now call him, whispered something to his friends. He then walked up towards my bunkmate. My bunkmate¡¯s on the top bunk, so I couldn¡¯t really see his reaction, but I could see Dumbass McRacist and two of my bunkmate¡¯s friends. Dumbass had a fake smile on his face. My bunkmate¡¯s friends both had the same look as Bai had.

    ¡°You think I¡¯m funny, do you?¡± Dumbass asked, his friendly tone of voice not really disguising his malice.

    For the first time I could remember, my bunkmate said something in English. ¡°Why yes, my friend,¡± he said in a booming, friendly, voice. He sounded genuinely puzzled. ¡°Surely that was the intent, yes?¡±

    Dumbass, living up to the name I had given him, pulled out a switchblade. ¡°The thing about comedy,¡± he said, ¡°is it requires suffering.¡± My bunkmate sighed. Then he kicked Dumbass in the face with both feet.

    Apparently, that was all the warning my bunkmate¡¯s friend¡¯s needed. One of them caught Dumbass in a chokehold and shoved a clear, sharp piece of plastic into Dumbass¡¯s neck. I could tell it was sharp because it was drawing blood, adding to what was already leaking out his nose. The other three formed a perimeter, using the beds to form chokepoints, pulling out shanks made from toothbrushes and shouting at everyone to keep back.

    My bunkmate landed on the ground. He was surprisingly shorter than someone with such a booming voice should be. He had a buzz cut, and was dressed in his boxers, showing that he, like his friends, was dangerously underweight. He knelt down and grabbed the knife, then stood up.

    ¡°This is a nice knife,¡± he said. I couldn¡¯t see what he was doing, but judging by Dumbass¡¯s whimper, I was guessing it wasn¡¯t anything good. Also, everyone was now watching. I swear you could hear a pin drop. ¡°What is your name?¡± my bunkmate asked Dumbass. Dumbass muttered something. ¡°Kyle?¡± my bunkmate asked, ¡°Is that your name, my friend?¡± Dumbass must have nodded, because my bunkmate continued on.

    ¡°Well, Kyle,¡± he said, his voice rising to fill the barracks, ¡°this may be a nice knife, but it is a PATHETIC weapon!¡± He raised the switchblade into the air, as if to show the world, or at least the barracks, how pathetic it was. He then turned to me. ¡°You, Journal-man, do you have a marker?¡± His big brown eyes and skeletal features were strangely friendly.

    I shook my head. ¡°I have a pencil¡­¡± I said, unsure where this was going.

    ¡°I do,¡± Michael said. This was before he had been broken. He was surrounded by my bunkmate¡¯s friends on three sides, so he had been paying attention just as long as I had. He held out a large black sharpie. My bunkmate took it. As he walked away, I saw Dumbass (seriously, what had he expected would happen?) take the opportunity to spit out a few teeth. They plinked onto the floor.

    When my bunkmate took the sharpie, he held it above his head. ¡°THIS,¡± he shouted, ¡°is an extra-large sharpie! It was first designed by the Sanford Manufacturing company in 1957 and is produced in Downers Grove in America! IT IS MIGHTIER THAN ANY SWITCHBLADE!¡± I laughed. I couldn¡¯t help it, and apparently a few others couldn¡¯t either.

    My bunkmate took a bow. ¡°Thank you, thank you,¡± he said, just loud enough to be heard above the strangled giggles. ¡°I, Eric the Entertainer, shall now prove to you its awesome power. With this, I shall write the word ¡®loser¡¯ on Kyle¡¯s head. If I simply kill him, I could be expelled. Worse, one of his friends might stab me in the back. However, by humiliating him, I safely eliminate him.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re insane,¡± Dumbass said.

    ¡°And you, my friend,¡± The Entertainer said, ¡°are a moron.¡± It took a week for the word ¡°Loser¡± to come off Kyle¡¯s face.

    Getting back to the present, where Eliza and Bai were giving me their undivided attention, I said, ¡°Then there¡¯s the people like The Entertainer and his minions. They¡¯re possibly the second worst people to fight, maybe even the worst, depending on the individual. I¡¯m guessing they¡¯re child soldiers.¡±

    Eliza smiled. ¡°They¡¯ll be used to fighting with guns. That makes ¡®em easy.¡±

    ¡°They¡¯re also used to killing people,¡± I said, ¡°and the people who kidnapped them when they were five probably only taught them how to fight dirty. Can you say the same?¡±

    Eliza looked startled for a minute, then softly said, ¡°They¡¯ll stop the fights before that ¡®appens.¡±

    ¡°They¡¯ll try,¡± I said, ¡°but you know that even a good punch to the stomach can kill someone. Or you should.¡±

    ¡°And the fourth group?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°That¡¯s the good news,¡± I said. ¡°You¡¯re it, and you¡¯re probably the odds-on favorite to win. My guess is that you¡¯ve been training just as long as the fourth group, but some of you have never been in life-and-death combat. The other difference is the quality of your training and goals. You¡¯ve been trained as a more long-term asset, I believe? It¡¯d probably hurt the sponsors more if you die now then it would¡¯ve hurt Eric¡¯s recruiter if he had accidently blown himself and several of his comrades up in training.¡±

    Bai spoke up for the first time. Her voice was quiet, but hard. ¡°But the people who trained me for the cause say I should treat my life as meaningless next to our goals. Surely my life is worth a similar amount?¡±

    ¡°How long have you been training?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Since I was born,¡± Bai said, ¡°and I won¡¯t be finished for another four years.¡±

    ¡°The Entertainer¡¯s training probably was just enough to learn how to use an AK,¡± I said reassuringly, ¡°and you¡¯ve probably had more experience in one-on-one fights. You¡¯ve got an advantage.¡± I didn¡¯t add that any child soldier who made it this far probably was very lucky. There wasn¡¯t any way to plan against luck. ¡°This kind of advantage took a huge amount of time and resources to give you. While they do want you to be loyal, you are not easily replaced.¡±

    Bai nodded, apparently satisfied. ¡°Anything else, mate?¡± Eliza asked. ¡°That¡¯s all I could come up with in a few minutes,¡± I said.

    ¡°Good job, then,¡± she said. ¡°We¡¯ll do this again some time.¡± The two girls left. I stood there wondering what Eliza¡¯s next little chat would be about.

    <hr />

    H! T4nky here.

    As before, if you want to get ahead on the story, you can go to the Wordpress site</a> or the Spacebattles thread.</a> Both of them are insanely far ahead of what is on here, so if you want to binge read, those are the places to go. Once RRL NIU catches up with the other posts, I will switch from a daily update schedule to a weekly update schedule.

 1.4: And Now I Bite The Dust

    I didn¡¯t meet John at the predetermined time. I had the suspicion that either John had come in while I was talking to Bai and Eliza or had seen them leave. The next time I saw him was in line for lunch. ¡°Hey, John,¡± I said, holding out my hand for him to shake. Grasped between two fingers was a highly folded piece of paper. ¡°Good luck tonight.¡±

    We shook hands, and the paper was gone. On it, I had written ¡°Someone¡¯s watching me. Avoid yin-yang dragons + scary cockneys.¡± The reason it was so brief was because I wanted the paper to be as small as possible to avoid people spotting it. I had the sneaking suspicion that Eliza was just better at the spy stuff then I was, because I hadn¡¯t spotted her outside of the dorm before today. Now, I¡¯d only catch glimpses of her. She was almost never looking directly at me, but usually she¡¯d theoretically be able to see me out of the corner of her eye.

    That scared me. Anyone here could be watching me. That made me wonder: did Amir and Dick only show up when I noticed them? Or had they also been watching me? Also, did Sergeant Krieger keep an eye on me? Was anyone watching John? My mind was so full of paranoid ramblings that I was having a hard time keeping down lunch¡¯s serving of diarrhea.

    I went back to my barracks, trying desperately not to think about who could be watching, home, or the building pressure in my head. As I headed back past a crowd milling around, unsure what to do with the day¡¯s freedom (apparently, the novelty outweighed the fact that rain was falling harder than ever,) I felt the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. I wanted to dismiss it, but the events of today had taught me that paranoia was probably proper.

    I turned around. Staring directly at me was Mubashir. I probably shouldn¡¯t have run back to my barracks. My headache and my stomach were feeling worse, and my breathing was increasing in rapidity.

    ¡°Hey!¡± One of the Entertainer¡¯s friends, a taller fellow who seemed like his food intake had been the closest to adequate as a child, had interrupted me from the surprisingly engaging task of hyperventilating in the fetal positon. ¡°You don¡¯ look well,¡± he said in rapid-fire English.

    I looked up at him. I must have looked like a ghost, with my hair and beard messier than usual and my glasses slightly askew. Or like I¡¯d seen one. I carefully considered my response. I finally said, ¡°Some really scary people have taken an interest in me for the wrong reasons. Don¡¯t be surprised if I die.¡±

    For some reason, it felt good to tell him that. I know everyone tells you that helps, but it always surprises you when it actually works. ¡°Can you talk about it?¡± the other guy asked.

    I shook my head. ¡°It¡¯d probably be better if you don¡¯t know about it.¡± He shrugged, and began sharpening the various shivs he had fashioned using a rock and the knife The Entertainer had taken from Dumbass.

    I didn¡¯t speak to anyone else until Fight Night began. We had been herded into the cafeteria to eat dinner. The conversation was louder than usual, so loud that you couldn¡¯t even tell that dozens of languages were being spoken. You could still hear the trucks roll in and the audio get tested, though.

    When they finally let us out, John instantly found me. ¡°What the fuck¡¯s going on, Nate?¡± he asked.

    ¡°Fight Night,¡± I said.

    ¡°No, I mean with you,¡± he said, as the chorus from Kanye West¡¯s POWER began to blare. ¡°I know you think your cover is blown, but why? What happened?¡±

    ¡°I walked in on two girls having a sparring match. One of them had been straight-up stalking me,¡± I said. Some people were beginning to rap along with Kanye. We still were near the back of the line to get out, so I felt confident about talking. Plus I couldn¡¯t stop. ¡°Well, more like observing me. She knows too much, she¡¯s got some kind of experience in fighting and surveillance, and she¡¯s got at least one friend who¡¯s as scary as she is.¡±

    John¡¯s eyes suddenly went wide. ¡°Is she a tall red-head?¡± I nodded. ¡°Fuck me,¡± he said, ¡°that¡¯s why I didn¡¯t make it. I was heading towards the meeting, then she walks out of Barracks 3 and makes eye contact with me.¡±

    ¡°What did you do?¡± I asked.

    ¡°¡¯E makes this completely subtle U-turn back to the canteen,¡± a familiar voice behind me remarked sarcastically. ¡°¡¯Least this means you aren¡¯t the only one ¡®oo¡¯s fieldcraft is complete shite, Nate.¡±

    John and I turned around slowly. There was Eliza with that calculating look on her face. Her eyes were smiling. ¡°Please don¡¯t do that again,¡± I said. ¡°That was scarier than anything Sergeant Krieger could do.¡±

    ¡°Speaking of the good Sergeant,¡± Eliza said, ¡°¡¯e¡¯s another person ¡®oo¡¯s been paying attention to you.¡±

    When we finally got outside, POWER had ended and Pompeii was starting to play. By this time the crowd was dozens deep and the only way I could tell what was going on was by looking over everyone¡¯s head to the TVs. They were showing Professor Blunt in his camo baseball cap, NIU T-shirt and fatigue pants. His slightly chubby baby face was a remarkable contrast to the rest of his powerful body and contemptuous glare. I could also see that he was in the center of the parade grounds, surrounded by Campus Security in riot gear. They seemed to be holding a square in the ground and a pathway back to the five barracks.

    ¡°Listen up, you newborn pansy-ass sacks of fresh shit!¡± Professor Blunt yelled. ¡°We¡¯re here this night to have you undergo your first real step to becoming a freshman at NIU!¡± He turned around to look at us. ¡°You see, you crying infants entering the ACMSA and Shadowhaven are soft. Maybe you¡¯re a little harder than the fucking Leadershit and Business majors, but not much!¡±

    A few people booed at this point. ¡°Oh,¡± Professor Blunt asked, ¡°Do the sweet, pwecious liddle babies think I¡¯m being unfair? WELL, HERE¡¯S YOUR FUCKING CHANCE TO PROVE ME WRONG!¡± The crowd roared. Judging by the reaction, I was starting to see why Campus Security was here in such force. They were deliberately provoking riot conditions, and they knew it.

    ¡°Also,¡± he said much more quietly, though the microphone still carried his voice, ¡°if any of you want to get off this island or out this program, there are two ways. You either finish our basic training or you escape.¡± He then switched back to yelling, ¡°Either way, the only for you to leave this crappy excuse for an island is to become one of the most BADASS, SCARIEST, MOTHERFUCKERS ON THE PLANET!¡±

    The crowd roared. ¡°US ARMY RANGERS¡¯LL SHIT THEIR PANTS WHEN THEY SEE YOU!¡± The crowd roared again. I thought I could hear something along the lines ofMaalintii Rangers, which I knew from reading Black Hawk Down. Apparently, we had a few Somalians here today.

    ¡°THE SAS MAY DARE, BUT THEY DAMN WELL WON¡¯T WIN AGAINST YOU!¡± Again, the crowd roared. I looked to see where Eliza was, but she¡¯d disappeared, probably to appear when it would most likely scare me to death.

    ¡°AND THE SPETSNATZ WILL FEAR YOU MORE THAN A HUNDRED SIMO HAYHAS!¡± Again, everyone roared. I had no idea if people were roaring in approval, disbelief, anger, or simply because everyone else was screaming and yelling at the top of their lungs. On the screens, I could see people pushing against campus security to get in.

    Professor Blunt waited for the noise to calm down a bit. ¡°Now, before we begin tonight¡¯s event, we should review the rules. First off, all rules about hurting another slice of cannon fodder are suspended while you¡¯re fighting. You hit someone and they die, they die. Unless you got the first kill, then you get ice cream!¡±

    In response, someone yelled out, ¡°Can we get chocolate?¡± Professor Blunt yelled back, laughing somewhat, ¡°You can get any flavor you want, you sick fuck!¡± People laughed.

    ¡°The second rule,¡± he said, ¡°is that fights start when I say they start and stop when I say they stop. Not before, not after. If you don¡¯t listen, I tase your ass, you understand? Also, we reserve the right to take away anything you bring with you into the ring.¡± Someone in the crowd yelled out, ¡°Let¡¯s get this started!¡± Other people yelled out other encouragements to get a move-on in every language known to man.

    ¡°So, those are the rules!¡± Professor Blunt said. ¡°Now, you pathetic piles of pansies are probably patiently waiting for the first contestants! Well, Sergeant Krieger has a request!¡± My heart fell. This couldn¡¯t be good.

    ¡°Can¡¯t say this first fight will be any good,¡± Professor Blunt said. Right on cue, two pictures came up on the screen by the feed. They were student IDs of two people. One was of Richard Forrest Taylor the Third, sneering into the camera. The other was of me, with my hair messier than usual and looking extremely jet-lagged.

    ¡°I mean, look at these assholes,¡± Professor Blunt proclaimed. ¡°They look like they¡¯d collapse IF YOU TAPPED THEM ON THE FUCKING SHOULDER!¡± The crowd gave a mean chuckle. John gave me a sympathetic look. Before he could wish me luck, Professor Blunt added an afterthought, ¡°Do me a favor, maggots, and bring them to the ring, ok?¡±

    Instantly, the guy who I believed to be Somalian turned and spotted me. He yelled something that might have been English, but was so broken I couldn¡¯t tell. He then grabbed me and started to push me to the center. He bumped against someone, who began to yell at us in what I think was Italian. Then he saw me.

    Instantly, people began grabbing me and pushing and pulling towards the ring. That would have been bad enough, but they were also yelling at me. None of it was encouragement.

    ¡°Yankee! You die!¡±

    ¡°Last long enough for me to grind you into paste, yeah?¡±

    ¡°You die like dog! You die like dog!¡±

    I decided that the best thing I could do at the moment was tune it all out. The first time I had ever been performing in front of a large group of people (and that¡¯s what this, really, a performance,) I had been a little nervous before hand. So, for the hour before I went on the ¡°stage¡± (it had been a repurposed college classroom, and I had been doing a stand-up in front of my computer camp, but anyway¡­) I spent the time telling my jokes to a brick wall. No script, no observers, just me and some cinderblocks. During that time, I pretended the bricks were the audience. When I actually got there, I pretended the audience was the brick wall. Which was hard, because my audience actually liked my performance and was very easy to interact with.

    Anyway, the point was to tune out the audience. Take deep breaths, find something in your mind¡¯s eye to replace reality with something less scary. For instance, I decided to pretend the crowd wasn¡¯t there, and it was completely empty like it was when I normally came back.

    When Campus Security finally let me in, I was actually the calmest I¡¯d been all day. I was still pissing myself in terror, but that was better than ruminating myself into an ulcer.

    ¡°Well, you finally made it!¡± Professor Blunt yelled. He strode over to me, microphone in hand. ¡°Well, you may be a little lazy lollygagger, but at least you aren¡¯t late! Since you¡¯re here so early, do you have any words for you opponent?¡±

    He tilted the microphone towards me. I scanned the crowd, then said, ¡°You¡¯re late.¡± It was all I could think of. I must have sounded more confident than I felt because the crowd ooohed like some 80¡¯s action hero had dropped a clever one-liner.

    Then, on the opposite side of the ring, Richard broke through campus security. ¡°You think you¡¯re hot stuff?¡± he yelled. ¡°I¡¯ve had enough of your uppitiness!¡±

    I went into a fighting stance instantly. It¡¯s the most common one in Tae Kwon-do. Your feet form a sort of L-shape, and your body is angled so that only one shoulder faces your opponent. You keep your hands up, the far one to cover your chest, the front one to protect your head. The nice thing about this stance, as well as covering all points, is that you can do any move in Tae Kwon-do. In the classes I took, we used it so much that I guess it became reflex.

    Richard, for his part, was more aggressive. He didn¡¯t even wait for Professor Blunt to yell ¡°Fight!¡± before he ran back to me. I just waited. When he was in range, I did a stepping-behind sidekick, the blade of my foot hitting him in the stomach. I stumbled back into the ring of Campus Security and students, only to be pushed forwards. I barely maintained my balance.

    Richard, on the other hand, fell face first into the mud. It took me a bit to realize that I was standing on the back of his head. I backed off quickly, allowing him to pull his face out with a disgusting squelch.

    ¡°Are you ok?¡± I asked as he struggled to his feet.

    His response, after looking staring at me in shock for a few seconds, was to make an inhuman sound that was like a mix between a scream and a growl. I backpedaled quickly as he began swinging wildly. Finally, one hit me on the side of my head, knocking off my glasses.

    A switch in my head finally flipped on. I wasn¡¯t angry, I wasn¡¯t scared. It was something just as basic, though. You see, most people have this particular switch switched to the setting that says ¡°you shouldn¡¯t hurt people.¡± That¡¯s a good thing. That¡¯s why society functions. Now mine was switched to the ¡°hurt anyone who fucks with you¡± setting. At some point, I would realize that the entire point of this exercise was to do that. At an even later point I would realize that that made me kind of a shitty human being.

    In the moment, however, I wasn¡¯t thinking about philosophy. I simply returned the favor, hitting him as hard as I could in the nose. His head snapped back, and I used the opportunity to punch him in the throat, then again in the stomach. He fell on his back and moaned.

    I used this opportunity to search for my glasses. It was very hard because without them I can barely see. It must have taken a good five minutes to find them and wipe them off on my shirt. After that, I turned back to where Richard was struggling to get up.

    ¡°Are you done?¡± I asked as he was using his elbows to prop himself up.

    ¡°Fuck you!¡± he spat out, his voice raspy and oddly slurred. He was now covered entirely in mud except for some red leaking out of his mouth and nose.

    I stomped on his face. It fell back into the mud with an awful, yet satisfying, spluchsound. ¡°Let me give you a slight hint,¡± I said, feeling really tired of the whole stupid exercise, ¡°The correct answer is either ¡®yes¡¯ or ¡®no.¡¯¡±

    ¡°No!¡±

    I sighed, and brought my foot down on his ribs. There was a crack, and I felt his bones break a bit. Richard screamed. ¡°Wrong answer,¡± I said, slightly annoyed. I began walking around him. I was surprised at how annoyed I was by all this. Here I was, giving him every opportunity to give up, but he just wasn¡¯t taking them. Judging by the fact that he was still lying in the mud, bleeding and disoriented, and I was standing, he was clearly outmatched. My next stomp was on his hand. He howled.

    ¡°Oh come on,¡± I said, ¡°I didn¡¯t even break anything that time.¡±

    I waited for a few seconds to see if he¡¯d come to his senses. The crowd didn¡¯t like that, so I stomped his hip. ¡°Next one is going to be to your balls,¡± I said. The crowd roared in approval at that.

    ¡°You wouldn¡¯t¡­¡± Richard slurred/rasped. The crowd nearby ooohed like he had just handed out some sick burn. I proved him wrong. He made a squeaking sound and curled forwards.

    ¡°Give up or I do it again,¡± I growled. He stared at me defiantly. I rolled my eyes and raised my boot again. ¡°Wait, wait, wait,¡± he called out, ¡°I give, ok! You win!¡±

    ¡°And Nathan Jacobs wins!¡± Professor Blunt called out. Two people came running into the ring from the direction of the barracks, dressed in white fatigues marked with the Red Cross. Their faces were obscured by white surgical masks, but they looked like upperclassmen. One opened up a stretcher, and the other began checking Richard. ¡°Huh,¡± Richard¡¯s attendant said to me, ¡°you went easy on him, didn¡¯t you?¡± Richard and I stared at him in shock.

    If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    ¡°But I broke his rib,¡± I said, speaking slowly for emphasis.

    The medic shrugged. ¡°Probably only cracked,¡± he said. ¡°Anyway, add in the concussion, bloody nose, stomped balls,¡± he grabbed the hand I had stomped on and squeezed it, eliciting a scream, ¡°and broken hand, this guy seems kind of lucky.¡±

    ¡°Huh,¡± the other medic said, then said something to the first medic in some Eastern European-sounding language (I hesitate to say Russian because I don¡¯t know what Russian sounds like, apart from TV shows.) The first medic replied back in the same language, then turned to Richard. ¡°Alright, looks like you¡¯re walking.¡±

    I watched, somewhat stunned, as they dragged Richard to his feet and began carrying him back to the barracks. Were they trying to have fatalities?

    I was distracted as an unfamiliar song with a thumping bass line came on. Richard had barely been dragged out of the arena when Professor Blunt called out, ¡°And next up, we have Amir Al-Answari! Can our boy Nate start a streak, or will our first winner of the night end up our first death of the night?¡±

    Ok, that was bad. That was very bad. Either it would be the Amir I knew and he¡¯d probably be a lot less stupid than Richard, or it would be a different Amir who had no interest in converting me to some cause. At least it would take some time for him to get here.

    As soon as finished thinking this thought, Amir called out to me, ¡°So it seems I am your next opponent.¡± I turned around. Amir had just walked through the cordon of campus security. He must have been only one or two people deep.

    As he walked out into the courtyard, I noticed two things about him. First was that his body language seemed somewhat contrite. Second was that, while he normally talked with both of his hands as well as his mouth, one hand was out of sight and his body was angled to facilitate that.

    ¡°The crowd seems to want blood,¡± Amir commented. I couldn¡¯t confirm that because so few people seemed to be speaking English (and even if they were, the number of voices and volume would make it easy to drown out any meaning,) but the intent was clear.

    ¡°Are you planning on giving it to them?¡± I asked. Amir began walking away from the guards. Apparently, he didn¡¯t trust the crowd to start beating him up if I pushed him out of the ring, or maybe I was just projecting my fears onto him.

    ¡°It depends,¡± Amir said. ¡°If you convert to Islam and pledge to my cause, I will do my best not to kill you.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± I said, realizing that I was probably signing my death warrant, ¡°but my position is still the same.¡±

    ¡°You would really die for this filth?¡± Amir asked sadly, obviously talking about the music. ¡°Surely there are better things to die for.¡±

    ¡°Not this,¡± I said, ¡°though it is kind of gAUGH!¡± I didn¡¯t get to finish because Amir had chucked the rock in his pocket at my head. It hit me between the eyes with enough force for me to stumble backwards and my vision to go black for a second.

    That second was all it took for Amir to close the distance between us. My eyes opened just as his hands closed around my neck. I fell back, Amir on top of me. My first instinct was to flail wildly at Amir¡¯s face. I hit his face several times. He didn¡¯t flinch. In fact, he had the same disappointed look on his face, and had kept it up throughout. It was actually kind of creepy. The pressure he was exerting on my throat should have come with some kind of effort or anger on his part, not¡­annoyance.

    ¡°I am sorry to do this to you,¡± Amir said sadly. While he was talking I began looking for something to turn the tide. I did not want to die here, drowning in mud. Meanwhile Amir continued talking, ¡°You are not a bad person, at least by your own standards. Also, you have some intelligence. It is a shame that that will be the first to go.¡±

    That was when I saw it out of the corner of my eye. Maybe it was the rock Amir had thrown, maybe it was a different one. Either way, I knew what to do with it.

    ¡°Amir¡­¡± I choked out has my hand wrapped around it. He looked at me strangely, like he hadn¡¯t heard me, so I tried saying his name again.

    He leaned in closer. ¡°What is it?¡± he asked.

    ¡°¡­not¡­ over¡­¡± I managed to choke out. Amir smiled sadly and shook his head. He opened his mouth, but I never heard what he was going to say. My blow connected with a sickening thwack! Amir¡¯s grip loosened and he collapsed sideways as I screamed out in pain. Something sticky splashed into my eyes, blinding me, and my blow had seemed hard enough to break my hand.

    I struggled to my feet, gasping for air. At some point, the rock had fallen from my hand because I couldn¡¯t hold on to it. Blinking rapidly to clear my eyes, I turned to look at Amir.

    I immediately turned away. Amir¡¯s eyes were open, but they were glassy. There was a hole leaking blood on the side of his face from where I had hit him. The liquid that had blinded me temporarily must have been his blood.

    ¡°And we have a winner!¡± Professor Blunt called out. ¡°You maggots are going to have to step it up! This kid claims to have never been in a fight in his life, and look what he¡¯s done!¡± It seemed Professor Blunt was warming up to me now that it seemed like I might live. Medics came in. I noticed they weren¡¯t running. I also notice that they were different from the previous two. I was too busy trying to breathe to care.

    ¡°So, doc,¡± Professor Blunt asked after a bit, ¡°Do we have our first kill of the evening?¡± One of the medics laughed. ¡°Ja,¡± he said, ¡°Mr. Jacobs gave our friend quite the love tap with that rock, eh?¡±

    My stomach turned over. I didn¡¯t mean to kill Amir. I didn¡¯t really like him, but he wasn¡¯t really the worst person in the camp. Not exactly the best person either, but I don¡¯t think I should have killed him. I forced myself to watch as the two medics stuffed Amir into a body bag and loaded him onto a stretcher. The crowd, however, didn¡¯t go silent. Instead they continued to roar and push against the ring of Campus Security.

    Professor Blunt strode over to me. ¡°So, Jacobs!¡± he said, still being really loud, ¡°What is your secret? How did you manage to beat the odds and win twice in a row?¡±

    I took a breath and tried to clear my mind. All I could come up with was ¡°I¡­ I killed him. I killed him, didn¡¯t I?¡±

    Professor Blunt looked me over, then said, at a more reasonable volume, ¡°Yeah. What about it?¡±

    ¡°It¡­ isn¡¯t it wrong? Killing people?¡±

    ¡°I was actually hoping you¡¯d ask that,¡± Professor Blunt asked. The crowd, while still deafening, was calming down. They seemed to be interested. ¡°You see,¡± Professor Blunt said, somehow addressing both me and everyone in the audience, ¡°morality isn¡¯t exactly the most objective thing in the world. Ask yourself this, Jacobs: If you hadn¡¯t hit the late Amir Al-Answari¡¯s head with a rock, would you be alive for people to judge?¡±

    ¡°Wouldn¡¯t you have stopped him?¡± I asked.

    Professor Blunt just laughed. ¡°Come on, greenie,¡± he said, ¡°ask me a real question! Maybe ask if you needed to swing as hard as you did, or if you could have tried to blind him.

    ¡°These dumbass superheroes,¡± he continued, his voice dripping with contempt, ¡°in these baby books with pictures, always talk about how ¡®there¡¯s always another way. We don¡¯t have to kill people.¡¯¡± His voice raised to a yell so loud, it caused feedback. ¡°VIOLENCE IS A TOOL!¡± He then dropped back to his normal shoutiness. ¡°Yes, it can cause problems. Yes, it can be used immorally, whatever that means to you. But there are some people who just don¡¯t listen. Some people can¡¯t be reasoned with, they can¡¯t be bargained with, and actively seek to hurt you or things you care about. The only way to deal with these people is with force.

    ¡°The thing about using force, however, is you need to accept the reality that some sons of bitches need to die! Anyone who believes otherwise should consider leaving BECAUSE THIS IS NOT THE PROGRAM FOR YOU!¡±

    The thing about the speech, which still sticks with me, is that it¡¯s right. At least, in principle. There are some people who will refuse to listen. Amir, for instance, decided that killing me would be the best option, for whatever reason. Hitting him with the rock was the best option for that situation.

    But the situation wasn¡¯t a naturally occurring one. In fact, it was engineered so thatsomeone would die. That was wrong.

    I only had a little time to consider this before Professor Blunt spoke up again. ¡°Now that that¡¯s out of the way,¡± he said, ¡°let¡¯s talk about what¡¯s next!¡±

    That couldn¡¯t be good. My breathing and vision were returning to normal, but my hand was still hurting. The best-case scenario was that I got some pushover. The scary thing, though, was that I couldn¡¯t even begin to guess at the worst-case.

    ¡°You see,¡± Professor Blunt said, ¡°We understand that you little shits lose focus easily. Instead of curing you of this incredible failing before Fight Night, we like to try and keep you entertained. To do that, we try to pair you up with people that you know!¡±

    I think I might have said the ¡°oh crap¡± out loud as well as thinking it. First off, I should have picked up on this. Secondly, this was worst-case. If they knew, they could make John and me fight to the death, then suborn whichever of us was still standing.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± Professor Blunt said, ¡°we¡¯ll try to avoid making you fight your friends. We at NIU think friendship is an important part of life, and we don¡¯t want to break any.¡±

    I wasn¡¯t relieved. ¡°¡­Who,¡± I asked cautiously, ¡°am I going to be fighting?¡±

    ¡°Now that,¡± the Professor said, ¡°is something I¡¯m pretty fucking excited about!¡±

    Oh fuck me, I thought. I had an idea of where this was going.

    ¡°Of the two thousand people who come to this program every year,¡± the Professor said, ¡°only a few are bad ass enough to be guaranteed to survive. This is one of them.¡±

    Fuuuuuck me¡­

    ¡°This girl is only eighteen, and yet we¡¯ve been able to confirm she¡¯s killed five people with her bare hands! She¡¯s proficient with her fists, pistols, and knives!¡± A picture of a red-haired girl with a calculating look in her green eyes and a cold smirk on her face appeared on the screen.

    Knew it.

    ¡°Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm hand to Eliza Henderson!¡± In retrospect, I should have expected this. It was almost like a videogame. First, you have the weak enemy. Then comes in the miniboss. Then the true boss fight.

    I spent the next few minutes trying to calm down. I also decided to stand in the center to get a better view of what was going on. I was waiting long enough for me to start to gain cool, then begin to lose it again. While I waited, I noticed that my hand wasn¡¯t feeling any better. I wasn¡¯t sure whether to hope for it to be broken or Lady Macbeth Syndrome.

    When Eliza finally got there, I was developing the paranoid belief that she wasdeliberately taking her time to psych me out. I actually saw her walk through the guard line just as ¡°Rumor Has It¡± by Adele began playing. That helped. On the other hand, the fact that she had that grin on her face really didn¡¯t.

    ¡°And¡­ FIGHT!¡± Professor Blunt called out. I got in a fighting stance, waiting for her to charge.

    Instead, she walked over to me, like she had just been called over by an old friend. ¡°¡¯Allo, mate,¡± she said cheerily.

    ¡°Hi¡­¡± I said, extremely freaked.

    Eliza picked up on it. ¡°Why¡¯re you so tense?¡± she asked. ¡°You¡¯ve been doin¡¯ quite the job so far.¡±

    ¡°Does¡­ does this mean you¡¯re not going to hurt me too bad?¡± I asked.

    Eliza shook her head. ¡°Come on, Nate,¡± she said, ¡°we both know that the only way you¡¯re getting outta here is on a stretcher.¡±

    That wasn¡¯t reassuring. ¡°So why aren¡¯t you attacking me?¡± I asked.

    ¡°I must confess,¡± Eliza said, still seeming very friendly, ¡°I¡¯ve noticed something about you. You never make the first move.¡± She waited a minute, then, when I didn¡¯t respond, she said, ¡°So I¡¯m interested in what happens when you¡¯re forced to go first.¡±

    ¡°So you¡¯re toying with me,¡± I said.

    ¡°You could say that,¡± she said, nodding a bit.

    Something was off here. She just saw me kill someone, but she didn¡¯t seem worried. That seemed¡­ bad. I really didn¡¯t want to bank on her underestimating me. So I decided could distract her.

    ¡°Don¡¯t you think you¡¯re underestimating me?¡± I asked. She laughed. I used that opportunity to hook my forward leg around one of hers and throw a jab.

    Her response was two-fold. Instead of countering or avoiding my leg sweep, she stepped back, forcing me into a painful split. Simultaneously, she grabbed my hand doing the jab in an iron grip. She took my follow-up punch on the chin, but that was with the hand I had hurt. I grunted with pain. She barely flinched.

    ¡°Little tip, Nate,¡± she said as she put her forward foot on my ribcage, ¡°if you¡¯re going to get your opponent monologuing, wait until they start.¡± She pulled. There wasshluck sound as my arm was pulled out of its socket and my world went white with pain.

    When my vision cleared, I was on my side in a fetal position. Two people, one man, one woman, were looking at me. The man seemed to be very exicted. I tried to get up with my right arm. Pain from my hand shot through me, which was saying something seeing how it was too hard to think. The woman, her face framed by red hair, said something. The man began yelling even louder.

    I tried moving my left arm. Nothing except more pain. The woman said something again. I tried focusing on what she was saying. ¡°¡­do it, Nate¡­¡±

    Ok, so apparently standing was good. Or was it? Standing seemed good, regardless of whether or not the red-headed woman approved or not. With that in mind, I got to my feet, using my right hand as little as possible. The shouty man was shouting harder, and the woman was shaking her head.

    ¡°You unbelievable fucking wanker,¡± she said, somewhat in awe. I stared at her uncomprehendingly for a few moments. Then I blacked out.

 1.5 Try A Little Scariness

    When next I opened my eyes, I was in lying in my bunk. Immediately, I realized several things. The first was that there was a bandage pressing this gel-like substance into the hand I think I broke. The second was that, while the gel was doing wonders for me, my hand still hurt like hell. I groaned in pain.

    ¡°Oh good!¡± A woman with somewhat of a contralto voice excitedly said, ¡°You¡¯re awake!¡±

    I turned my head around. The first thing I noticed about her was her face. Blond hair with purple tips in some areas fell randomly around her face. Despite how baggy and bloodshot her eyes were (the right was brown, the left green,) they still shone with childish excitement to match her ecstatic grin. However, the thing drew my eye the most was the network of scars on her face.

    The largest one ran down from about an inch above her eye down to her jaw. A spiderweb of scars went from her nose to her ear. Strangely, the only scar that was on her cheek was the main scar.

    She noticed me staring. ¡°You like my scars?¡± she asked, pointing at her face, ¡°or is it my heterochromia?¡± Before I could answer, she began to ramble on. As she did, I noticed she began to look less at me and more at random places. She also began to literallyshakewith excitement, bouncing up and down like a child who ate too much candy, all while making wild hand gestures. ¡°I actuallydon¡¯thave heterochromia. I got this eye the same way I got my scars. You see, when I was like five my dad was taking me and my sister to ballet practice (she¡¯s my twin and goes here by the way) and I decided I was going to practice something in the car, so I took off my seatbelt and stood in the center, you know, between the two front seats, and dad turns to yell at me to put my seatbelt back on, and so he doesn¡¯t see the car merging onto the highway so my sister tells him to watch out and he slams on the brakes and the next thing I know I¡¯m awake in the hospital!¡±

    She took a deep breath, then continued. ¡°So, when I wake up in the hospital bed with my mom and dad and sister and, like, all the doctors and nurses ever looking down at me and they¡¯re saying how they managed to get rid of some of my scars by sewing them from the inside and how I was the first person they ever did a full ocular transplant on and my mom just cried.¡± She paused, then said, ¡°That¡¯s when I decided I wanted to be a doctor. They get to do all this cool stuff.¡± She beamed even wider like this was some kind of an achievement.

    Just a quick note: Whenever she talks, you should probably assume that there aren¡¯t actually spaces between the words.

    ¡°So are you in the medic program¡­?¡± I asked hesitantly.

    She shook her head. ¡°Nah, too much hurting people, not enough helping people. Or research. Research is really fun! Did I ever tell you about the time I accidentally dissected a living HSR?¡±

    She paused, waiting expectantly for me to answer. Her jitteriness appeared to have increased from anticipating my response. Patience was obviously not one of her virtues. However, her hand came to rest on her lap. ¡°No¡­¡± I said slowly, ¡°We¡¯ve only just¡­¡±

    ¡°Oh yeah, right,¡± she said, then continued on, resuming her erratic hand gestures. ¡°Anyway, I was doing this basic lab work, I think it was dissection, and he comes in and tells me that he thinks that there¡¯s something moving in his stomach. One of the seniors at the time had told me he was, like, trying to biologically recreate a xenomorph from the filmAlien,and I saw him give thisoh craplook so I was totally like, ¡®dude, we have to operateright the fuck now¡¯and he gets on the table without any prompting and says ¡®do it here!¡¯ I tell him I need to get some anesthetic, and he tells me that he¡¯s a regenerator so it won¡¯t work so I start cutting into him, desperately trying to find a baby xenomorph and he¡¯s talking about where it¡¯s going and for some reason he keeps calling me ¡®mistress¡¯ and flat-out begging me to keep cutting me and going on and on about how he deserves it and how pain is so wonderful, all while I keep having to deal with his tissue restitching itself and getting harder to cut. Then I realized that since he¡¯s a regenerator, his immune system wouldprobablybe able to deal with a xenomorph egg.¡±

    She paused, her head cocked to one side and her body perfectly still. ¡°Also, now that I think about it, he¡­ seemedwaytoo happy about being cut up. Like,sexuallyhappy.¡±

    She shuddered, then continued in her normal motormouth way. ¡°So I had been recording because what I was supposed to be doing was recording me dissecting a frog and I hadn¡¯t stopped because saving regenerators from chestbursters was probably going to be interesting, so I post it on CampusNet. Next thing I know, it¡¯s the most-watched video it CampusNet and there¡¯s like all this fan art of me as a dominatrix floating around. Really creepy. Anyway, I guess the moral of the story is always, always,always¡­set your videos of surgery to private. Because people are fucking perverts.¡±

    ¡°Speaking of injuries¡­¡± I said slowly, ¡°how am I doing?¡±

    ¡°Oh shit, I totally forgot about that!¡± the strange woman exclaimed. She pulled out a pen light and aimed it at my eyes. ¡°I¡¯m gonna need you to keep your eyes open. Standard procedure for any fight where you suffer a blow to the head. I don¡¯t know if you remember, but you had a few during the fight. Plus, you kinda hit the back of your head on a rock when you collapsed. I know the point is to kill off a few of you but Ireallydon¡¯t like that.¡± I noticed that, for a moment, a very scary look crossed her face. It was very brief, but it still made my blood run cold.

    Before she could start on another tangent, I spoke up. ¡°So,¡± I said quickly, ¡°my name¡¯s Nathan. I¡¯m sorry but I¡¯m not sure I got your name.¡± I held my hand out for her to shake.

    ¡°I don¡¯t think my parents would like that,¡± I said. May looked like she was going to argue, then she covered her mouth. She seemed to realize how horrifying she sounded. Before she could apologize, however, a voice cut in.

    ¡°May, are you scaring the patients again?¡± a voice asked. The voice sounded exactly like May¡¯s but with a different attitude. Instead of being a bubbly motor mouth, this person seemed to be much calmer and much,muchless likely to take your shit. I looked over May¡¯s head. There, standing behind May, was a woman who, I¡¯m guessing, was her twin.

    Her hair was not dyed blond and purple, but instead a natural brown. Her eyes were both brown and she wasn¡¯t scarred, probably because she had kept her seat buckled during the car crash that had busted May up. She also seemed to take better care of herself, as her hair was much cleaner and her eyes were much less bloodshot.

    May had also turned around. ¡°Yeah¡­ I kinda asked him if I could dissect him if he died. I¡¯m pretty sure that¡¯s not something normal people do,¡± she said sheepishly. ¡°Sorry, Mary.¡±

    ¡°Well, we¡¯ve got trouble,¡± Mary said. ¡°The girl who beat this guy up is actually a feral.¡± For those of you who don¡¯t know, (which I wouldn¡¯t know how you wouldn¡¯t, seeing as ferals are the most common type of parahuman) ferals are seemingly normal people with retractable bone claws, enhanced sense of smell, and a healing factor. They are also known as wolf-people, Lupine, or Homo Sapien Lupus. The power, from what I understand, messes with their head. I guess that might explain some things about Eliza.

    May stood up. ¡°Let me guess,¡± she said, suddenly all business, ¡°someone found out the hard way.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Mary said. ¡°Guy sees that she¡¯s beaten the past fourteen people to a fine paste, so he pulls a knife and gets her in the eye. She pops her claws and rakes across his belly.¡±

    ¡°Only once? Seems remarkably restrained for a wolf girl. Why aren¡¯t we running?¡±

    ¡°Just¡­ just checking in,¡± Mary seemed concerned. ¡°You look like shit. If I had to guess, I¡¯d say you haven¡¯t had any sleep in the past 24 hours.¡±

    ¡°Maybe,¡± May said in a completely unconvincing manner. ¡°But it isn¡¯t important. Come on, let¡¯s go save some lives.¡± She hurried passed Mary, pretending not to notice her twin¡¯s suspicious gaze.

    I decided to open the shelf under my bed to do some writing in the diary. I was still feeling a bit under the weather, so it was kind of hard to write. Also, I was distracted by the sounds of people yelling outside. Being inside did a good job of muffling things.

    A little while later, the twins came back in. Their uniforms were covered in blood. Judging by the expression on their faces, the guy didn¡¯t make it.

    ¡°Hey,¡± I said, ¡°you guys ok?¡±

    ¡°We are,¡± May said, ¡°aside from the fact that we lost our first patient.¡± She brightened a bit. ¡°Hey, you¡¯re still talking to me. Usually people stop being polite to me around the five second mark during the first conversation. I actually did a study on it in fifth grade, and then I¡¯d ask them all these follow up questions because I like to be scientific, but they usually didn¡¯t answer and the best I could hope for was not to have apple juice dumped on my head in the bathroom. It actually got worse in High School, but I still don¡¯t have any answers for that.¡±

    She took a breath, which allowed me to say, ¡°I don¡¯t know, it might be helpful if you pause and let other people talk?¡± I tried to say it as gently as possible, but she still paused. I kicked myself. Bad phrasing. She might be overly sensitive to that.

    ¡°I¡¯m not?¡± She asked. She looked bemused by this. Then her face lit up again. ¡°Oh!¡± she said as she sat down on the bed opposite me, ¡°I know what I can do! I can give you like a virtual¡­? Verbal¡­? Yeah, verbal tour of the island. You AMS and Shadowhaven guys don¡¯t get out of this place until your second semester so I can only tell you about the main campus. Come to think of it, that might not be a favor. Anyway, any questions?¡±

    ¡°So, what¡¯s up with the green sludge they¡¯re feeding us?¡± I asked.

    May¡¯s eyes lit up. ¡°You mean the Power Sludge? I made that.¡± she said proudly.

    ¡°Oh.¡± I said. I didn¡¯t really want to tell her how awful it tasted, and I doubted I could lie convincingly if she asked whether or not I liked it.

    ¡°Yeah, I know, I know,¡± she said, a little sheepishly, ¡°it looks like diarrhea and tastes like chemicals, believe me, I know. I pretty muchsurvivedmost of last year on it. But that isn¡¯t the cool part.¡±

    She leaned in close. ¡°The cool part, and the reason why the school is actually payingmelots of money instead of the other way around, is that it¡¯s an exercise aid. You see, when you exercise, your body releases all these chemicals like lactic acids. That¡¯s why you feel this burning sensation after running. What this does is it causes them to do their job faster, then sweep them away.¡± She made a sweeping motion to illustrate her point. ¡°Also, it does several other things, which they advised me not to talk about to make sure no one steals the formula. Anyway, it lets you do the whole death march thing every day. If not for Power Sludge, a few of you guys would have dropped dead from over-exertion. Also, it gives you a full meal¡¯s worth of vitamins and nutrients.¡±

    She paused, then asked, ¡°Was that too much information? I think I go on and on way too much and put out like this huge wall of information that scares people off unless they know exactly what I¡¯m talking about and that¡¯s why I got shoved into a locker every day in high school. That, and because I told Chelsea Lyons that there was a chance that the people she was living with might not be her real family. It wasn¡¯t because she had one hair color and the rest of her family had another, no they were all white but she was the only one in her family for the past ten or so generations who didn¡¯t have black hair. Turns out she bleaches and I may or may not be a horrible person who really shouldn¡¯t be digging through other people¡¯s genealogy. Anyway, what were we talking about?¡±

    ¡°Power Sludge,¡± I said, trying desperately to keep a bland, non-horrified look on my face.

    ¡°Oh yeah,¡± she said, ¡°and then I got sidetracked and I kinda got talking about high school which never leads anywhere good.¡± She sighed. ¡°Sorry, can¡¯t tell you more about Power Sludge. At least, I don¡¯tthinkI can. Five percent of the time I go off-topic is because I¡¯m about to say something that¡¯s supposed to be secret. The other ninety-five percent is because I saw a butterfly or something.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°what is there to do on campus?¡± I noticed that at this point her sister had wandered off.

    May brightened. ¡°Oh, that¡¯s easy!¡± she said. ¡°You see, freshmen have to get a campus job and either join a club or take an independent study. The independent study thing is how I got the Power Sludge and that gel stuff that¡¯s healing your hand, but I had to also do duty in the cafeteria. Don¡¯t worry, it isn¡¯t slave labor or anything. They pay you enough to go out and enjoy all the various things that campus life has to offer. Well, noteverything.You can only eat at Martinelli¡¯s once or twice before you realize how expensive it is. I¡¯ll admit, Italians make the best pizza, but Americans make the bestbudgetpizza which is why you go to Uncle Sam¡¯s. Problem is, I had eaten at this place called The Best Catch five times and Martinelli¡¯s twice so I was all broke until the campus picked up Power Sludge. But by then, I had kinda forgotten all about the dining halls which are free if you have a meal plan so I was eating Power Sludge for breakfast, lunch and dinner.¡±

    ¡°What about clubs?¡± I asked. ¡°Any theater groups, radio, TV?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll have to check,¡± she said thoughtfully. ¡°I really don¡¯t know.¡±

    ¡°Another thing,¡± I asked, ¡°How are the fights going?¡±

    ¡°Dunno,¡± she said. Then she remembered something. ¡°Oh, I forgot to ask about you, like where you¡¯re from and all that. Rude of me, anyway¡­¡±

    She was interrupted by another medic calling in, ¡°Everybody, come quick! We¡¯ve got a curbstomper!¡±

    After that, May would only have bits and pieces of times she could talk to me. It was weird how it worked. We would sort of take turns where on one visit, one of us would be asking the questions and the other would be doing most of the talking. I also noticed that May¡¯s train of thought didn¡¯t seem to have any form of tracks or steering mechanism. However, with a noticeable effort (i.e., saying something like ¡°Bad May, don¡¯t tell people that!¡±) she¡¯d be able to change it to something not even tangentially related.

    I did learn some things, though. While the student body seemed to hate her more here than they did in high school, the professors actually trusted her with research. There was even this one professor who had put her name on a patent for a cancer treatment. From what she told me, she only did a small part of the work. All this only made me more curious about what she was working on.

    I also heard a bit about what was going on outside. Apparently, after gutting the poor guy, Eliza decided to end her streak and spectate. By that point, she had also knocked out twelve people including me and put two more in serious condition. Later in the night, one would die from her wounds, bringing her kill count up to two.

    In the next group, the first curbstomper came up. Apparently, there are three types of people who go on winning streaks. There are people who only care about putting their opponent down, called brawlers. They tend to put people who don¡¯t surrender in critical condition. Then there are people like Eliza who make it a point to do as little damage to their opponents as possible. These were called surgeons, to May¡¯s vocal disapproval.

    Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    Then there was Ulfric Trollbjory. Ulfric Trollbjorn was a curbstomper. Curbstompers are the opposite of surgeons in that they like to see how many kills they could rack up. He also appeared to be inhumanly strong and, when given the opportunity, would fight multiple opponents at once. Then he would get bored and return to spectate.

    When May would come in after one of his rampages, she would tell me about the damage he¡¯d wreak in a broken monotone using the coldest medical language possible, tears streaming down her eyes. The second time she had to deal with one of his rampages, I asked her if she was ok after she was done talking about him.

    Her face hardened into a disturbingly calm look of pure rage. ¡°I hate him,¡± she said, her voice calm, yet still conveying her complete loathing.

    ¡°I see,¡± I said, taken aback by the sheerangeremanating from her.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± she said, ¡°As a doctor, I see it as my duty not to hurt people, but to help them. I don¡¯t kill or torture, and¡± here she paused like what she was saying physically hurt her ¡°if someone beats him, I will do my best to save him. I¡¯m a doctor. That¡¯s my job¡±

    ¡°However,¡± she said, ¡°I won¡¯t treat him first, and if he dies, I won¡¯t shed any tears.¡± She didn¡¯t continue the topic after that, and I didn¡¯t press her.

    However, as the night went on, she got better at listening. In fact, by the end she was getting more info out of me than I was getting out of her. I remember one time where I almost got my cover blown.

    ¡°So,¡± she said, ¡°What¡¯s it like where you¡¯re from? I assume you¡¯re American like me but I could be wrong and you might be Canadian because they talk like Americans.¡± She then looked up, as if considering the ceiling. ¡°There are also getting to be a lot of foreign people who talk like Americans. Well, actually, here everyone¡¯s foreign.¡± She then shook her head to focus herself. ¡°Anyway, you. Talk about you.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯m from Maynard, Massachusetts.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± she said. ¡°I don¡¯t know much about Massachusetts. Partly because I¡¯m from California, partly because I never really paid much attention to history class in school. Anyway, I should probably shut up and let you continue.¡± She then grabbed her mouth.

    ¡°Well, climate-wise, Mass is pretty¡­varied.¡± I said the wordvariedwith a certain amount of disgust. ¡°I mean, it¡¯s nice, but there¡¯s all these weird times in March and April where we¡¯ll have snowstorms and we occasionally get the fifty-degree day in February. Then the next day we¡¯ll have completely different weather.¡±

    ¡°Well, at least the weather there is interesting,¡± she said, dropping her hands from her mouth. ¡°Where I am, it¡¯s like sunny, sunny, sunny, sunny,oh wow it rained I didn¡¯t know they could do that!¡± She then slapped herself. ¡°Bad May, let him talk!¡±

    ¡°Actually,¡± I said, ¡°that was about the right length for a comment of your own.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± she said. ¡°I never knew that¡­¡± She then did that thing where she stared at nothing for a while. Maybe it was her way of processing information: avoid stimuli to focus on whatever was in her mind.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it,¡± I said, ¡°I used to have trouble with that and some other stuff, so I got sent to a speech therapist. It wasn¡¯t as bad as yours but¡­¡± I stopped, worried I had offended her. A dark look quickly passed her face, then moved on to be replaced by a somewhat forced version of her normal cheer. I continued on. ¡°¡­ There were people who werewayworse than either of us. Most did way better, but there was this one guy who thought he was a fucking train for a year or two.¡±

    May laughed. ¡°It isn¡¯t funny!¡± I said. ¡°I had to get called out of class for seven years just to help that guy learn it was a bad idea to throw markers at teachers! It made it even worse that he never learned.¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± she said, ¡°either I laugh at how nuts this guy sounds, or I fly into a rage that society tried to teachhimto act like a normal human being, but totally ignored me.¡±

    ¡°Fair enough,¡± I said. ¡°Anyway, I wasn¡¯t given any crap for that because a lot of the ¡®normal¡¯ people also went to Special Education, and I was kind of smart. I was never the kind of person who took all honors and AP courses, but I was still grouped with the smart kids.

    ¡°Originally, I was going to go on to some school for game design after high school, but I took several summer camps for it, but while I like playing games and talking about them, I started to think that was something I didn¡¯t really want to do.¡±

    ¡°So why did you join NIU?¡±

    It was a perfectly reasonable question. However, it was one I didn¡¯t really have an answer other than that stupid pun.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°I got a good deal on it. There was a scholarship I applied for that ended up being for this program, and I figured it was the best deal.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± May said, beating a complex rhythm with her hands and feet, ¡°but you knew what this program was. I¡¯m sorry, I just can¡¯t get into the whole mindset you guys have here. Every legal system in the world, at least the ones I know of, usually has murder as one of its biggest no-nos, higher than stealing or incest.¡±

    She continued, now beginning to sound more confused, almost pleading for some understanding. ¡°Yet you guys¡­ some of you guys see it as a game. I can see sometimes having to kill because you need to eat, or someone¡¯s trying to kill you. I¡¯m a doctor. I get that sometimes you need that source of protein or those little microbes or cute wolves want you dead. That¡¯s perfectly fine. But some of you seem like you kill just to test out which gun makes the bigger hole in a person or just to, you know, see them bleed out,and I just don¡¯t get it!¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯m not really one of them.¡±

    ¡°Then why do you go here? I mean, I doubt your parents would approve of this. God knows, sometimes parents can be stupid, but it sounds like your relation with your folks is better than most.¡±

    ¡°Maybe I¡¯m worried that if I don¡¯t do this, they won¡¯tbethere!¡± I¡¯m not sure why I got angry. Maybe I was just stressed. Maybe it had something to do with the pain, or being tired. I instantly regretted it. ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± I said, ¡°I didn¡¯t mean¡­¡±

    May ignored me, and leaned in close to continue, ¡°So that¡¯s interesting. You don¡¯t reallywantto kill, but you believe youhaveto. But what if people believe differently from you? Shouldn¡¯t you try talking it out instead?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± I said, ¡°We should. And I will always do my best to listen when someone tries to talk to me. But there are people who will hurt the people I love, maybe because of irrational hatred, maybe because they think it will make a point or profit, or maybe because they¡¯re the kind of sicko who enjoys it. And these people are falling less into the ¡®impotent whackjob¡¯ category and more into the ¡®legit terrorist/supervillain¡¯ category.

    ¡°Seriously, it feels like the world¡¯s collapsing every time I look at world,¡± I said. ¡°And I feel like I need to do something to stop it.¡±

    May looked at me suspiciously. ¡°So, have you done anything to start, recently?¡±

    ¡°Mmmaybe¡­¡± I said. Before I could ask anything more, Eric came walking in.

    ¡°You waiting for Robert?¡± Eric asked, in a nudge-nudge, wink-wink kind of way. ¡°Gonna keep that bed warm for him?¡±

    ¡°Actually,¡± May said, ¡°I didn¡¯t know whose bed it is. Also, not interested in sex at the moment. Iamlooking for samples of crabs at the moment, though. You see, I¡¯m kinda thinking that if you¡¯re, like, hairy down there, you could spray some modified bug spray and voila, crab problem solved. Problem is, people tend not to want to talk about it, so I¡¯m just gonna leave this here,¡± she pulled out a plastic jar with some paper and tweezers in it, ¡°and he can follow the instructions. Also, another reason why I¡¯m leaving it here is because Ireallydon¡¯t want to go probing around anyone¡¯s genitals for a few years until that whole surgery video dies down so bye!¡±

    With that, she set the jar on the bed and left, leaving Eric with a confused look on his face. He shot me a look as if to ask, ¡°What was that?¡±

    I shrugged. ¡°May¡¯s kind of weird. She¡¯s pretty harmless, from what I can tell, so don¡¯t give her a hard time.¡±

    ¡°Is she from the medical school?¡± he asked. ¡°She seems too¡­ flighty to really be one of the combat medics.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, ¡°she¡¯s from there. She¡¯s got some sort of secret project that she¡¯s been working on. I¡¯m kind of wondering what it is.¡±

    Eric gave me a serious look. ¡°Trust me, my friend,¡± he said, ¡°If one of these science people don¡¯t want to talk about their stuff, it is a sign you shouldn¡¯t ask questions.¡± He shuddered a bit.

    ¡°How do you know?¡± I asked.

    ¡°My crew and I took the campus tour,¡± he said, conversationally, ¡°One of our guys, Doc, is taking the Combat Medicine program, which is a hybrid of the Med School stuff and the straight-up shooting stuff here. He got to meet with the research people, and they never would wait to tell him what they were working on. They might not tell him the details, but they would give him a general idea.¡±

    ¡°Yeah¡­¡± I said, ¡°May doesn¡¯t seem to be able to keep her mouth shut.¡±

    ¡°Are you sure,¡± Eric asked. ¡°Or does she just know what to talk about to talk about to distract others? It sounds like the kind of skill you¡¯d learn, killer.¡±

    ¡°Please don¡¯t call me that,¡± I said. I still was feeling a little queasy about killing Amir.

    ¡°Trust me,¡± Eric said, ¡°In this place, you want having someone like me calling you ¡®Killer.¡¯ Trust me, Amir¡¯s friends are not pleased with you.¡±

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t call them friends, so much as minions,¡± I said.

    Eric laughed. ¡°In some cases, I suppose you are right. I know that your government would like you to think of him as some kind of supervillain. Trust me, I know the real supervillains.¡± He smiled for a bit. ¡°You know,¡± he said, ¡°even the worst of them are not so scary when you realize people like us can hurt them.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± I asked. ¡°This I¡¯ve gotta hear.¡±

    ¡°No you don¡¯t, Killer,¡± he said. ¡°This is a story I will not tell you until I can trust you. Even the most pathetic of men can get lucky, and my enemies are not pathetic in the least.¡±

    ¡°Eighteen¡¯s a little young to have an arch-nemesis,¡± I said, a little jokingly.

    ¡°Then making him pay for my college education at sixteen and enrolling at seventeen must make me a prodigy,¡± he said, a mischevious glint in his eye, and a satisfied grin on his face.

    ¡°You¡¯re seventeen?¡± I asked. He nodded. ¡°Damn. You are a prodigy.¡±

    ¡°No,¡± he said, ¡°I may be ahead of the curve here, but where I grew up, you had to learn fast.¡±

    ¡°Understandable.¡± I looked to where Michael slept. ¡°Wonder how Mike¡¯s doing.¡±

    ¡°Who?¡± Eric asked, head cocked, a look of confusion on his face.

    I pointed at the bed where Michael slept. ¡°Guy who slept there. Tried to quit.¡±

    ¡°I do not¡­¡± Eric began, then paused. A look of horror passed his face. ¡°Did May tell you about any of the big names out there?¡±

    ¡°Did Michael perchance meet Ulfric Trollbjorn?¡± I asked, my voice cracking. I already knew the answer.

    Eric nodded. ¡°He did. They fought right after you did.¡± A haunted look appeared in his eyes. ¡°He also was Ulfric¡¯s first victim tonight.¡±

    ¡°What happened?¡± I asked.

    Eric leaned in close, and I wondered if the haunted look had been faked, or if storytelling was how he coped with things. ¡°You see,¡± he said, his voice a hushed whisper, ¡°Ulfric is a giant. Biggest person in the program, he is.¡±

    I nodded, remembering seeing a really big guy around when we formed up for runs or parades. I never was near enough him to get a good look, though.

    ¡°The thing is,¡± Eric said, ¡°is that Ulfric is also insane. If you look in his eyes¡­ there is humanity in them. The only problem is that it¡¯s the worst, the part that makes us hurt small animals for no reason other than to see them die.

    ¡°Our friend Michael, on the other hand,¡± he said sadly, ¡°seemed broken and small, especially compared to Ulfric. I had worked my way up to the front to get a good view, and by that time I was close enough to hear what he said. He looks at Ulfric and he says ¡®Do it.¡¯¡±

    ¡°What happened next?¡± I asked. It was like wondering what had happened when you see a car crash. You don¡¯t want to know, but you just have to wonder.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Eric said, ¡°I need a bit of a minute.¡± He obviously didn¡¯t. When he had paused long enough for effect, he continued. ¡°So, Ulfric hears our boy say this, then hegigglesand¡­¡±

    ¡°Hegiggled?¡±

    Eric rolled his eyes. ¡°I thought you spoke English, man. Yes, he made this high pitched laughter like a little girl.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± I said, ¡°I think I¡¯ve seen this guy, and I don¡¯t think I¡¯d say he looks like the kind of guy whogiggles.¡±

    ¡°Well he does,¡± Eric said, as if I had just attacked him ad hominem in a political debate. It was also somewhat staged.

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said grudgingly.

    ¡°It is fine, it is fine,¡± Eric said. ¡°Anyway, Ulfric walks over to Michael, grabs his shoulder with one hand, and his jaw with the other and pulls, thenMike¡¯s bloody head comes completely off!¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re kidding me,¡± I said, ¡°you are fucking kidding me.¡±

    ¡°I swear on my mother¡¯s grave,¡± he said, ¡°I am not lying in this. That bastard is insanely strong. I think he might even be a parahuman.¡±

    ¡°Fuck me,¡± I said, ¡°I hope no one else I know goes up against him.¡± Eric raised an eyebrow. ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°Maybe I won¡¯t be too fussed if some Al-Qaeda guys lose their heads, but I do have some friends here. Maybe not as good as yours, but still, I don¡¯t want them dead. Besides, I don¡¯t know any of those guys anymore.¡±

    I sighed. ¡°I¡¯m tired,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m also still in a bit of pain from¡­ from you know, the thing with Amir and Eliza. I¡¯m going to go to bed before things start getting too crazy.¡±

    People were starting to come back in at this point. So far, Eric seemed to be in the best shape. I made a mental note to not piss him off as I pulled on the covers and closed my eyes. ¡°Good night,¡± I said sleepily as I willingly passed out.

 1.6 Saturday

    I woke up at around four, which is the normal time. I noticed that Eric¡¯s group were all back, all safe and sound, the pain in my hand (as well as the gel in the bandage) pretty much gone. I also heard groans from all around, and I couldn¡¯t hear that much chanting from outside. I got up slowly. When I did, I saw Robert staring at me balefully from his bed. He seemed to be trying to sleep, and intensely jealous that I seemed rested.

    I took in the room. From my position in the corner, I could see across the entire room. The beds seemed to be mostly full. Some people were moaning in pain, others were groaning, others were sleeping, others were sitting up talking. Then, I noticed that Michael seemed to be sleeping, or at least, someone was sleeping in his bed. Then I realized that it wasn¡¯t someone tucked in really well, it was a body bag laid on top of the bed.

    ¡°You realize we have the day off today, Killer?¡± Robert asked muzzily. ¡°Which means we don¡¯t have to get up?¡±

    ¡°Oh.¡± I paused, then tried to go back to bed. ¡°Sorry.¡±

    The problem with that was that idea was that I couldn¡¯t. I tried to, but in the end I probably did more to wake up the others than just getting up would have. So I got up and quietly walked out into the barracks.

    I made sure to avoid bumping into the various medical personnel in the barracks when I moved into the main corridor that separated the male half from the female half. As I did so, I noticed how many beds were filled with body bags. When I actually got to the main corridor, I noticed the two Campus Security Guards standing by the door, with what looked like black SCAR-H assault rifles pointed at the ground.

    I debated internally whether or not I should talk to them for a few minutes. Then a guard motioned for me to stop. ¡°Sorry,¡± he said with a slight French accent, ¡°but you are not allowed to be leaving ze building.¡±

    ¡°Can you at least tell me what¡¯s going on outside?¡± I asked.

    ¡°There ees only a few people left,¡± he said. ¡°They should be done witheen zee hour.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°just waiting to see if any of my friends made it. They mostly live in other dorms. Everyone I care about in this dorm¡¯s back, so¡­¡±

    ¡°So I¡¯m not your friend?¡± A cockney voice quipped. ¡°I¡¯m right hurt by that, mate.¡±

    I didn¡¯t even need to turn around to know who it was. ¡°We¡¯re friends?¡± I asked sarcastically. ¡°I didn¡¯t know that stalking, blackmail and beating the crap out of people was something you do with your mates in jolly old England.¡±

    I turned towards the women¡¯s side of the barracks after I said this. Leaning against one of the beds was Eliza. She was covered in mud and blood, the mud spread evenly across her body, the blood mostly staining her kevlar jacket. Due to the jacket being unbuttoned, I noticed that the white t-shirt beneath it was still mostly clean and not ripped or torn in the slightest.

    Her face, however, told a different story. She seemed defeated by something. Her normally mischievous look was replaced by the smile of someone who was desperately trying to find something to be happy about. I wasn¡¯t exactly sympathetic, but I began to debate toning it down.

    Her smile faltered. ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± she said. ¡°I acted like a right shite, didn¡¯t I?¡±

    I nodded. ¡°Kinda. If it makes you feel better, most people are still behind the curve here.¡± She brightened a bit. ¡°I¡¯m still more than a little pissed,¡± I continued, ¡°and it¡¯ll be a while until I forgive you, if ever, but I need all the allies I can get at the moment.¡±

    ¡°Fair enough,¡± she said, ¡°Come on, step into me office.¡± She headed off, motioning for me to follow. I did, figuring I had nothing to lose. As we walked, I noticed that most of the beds had body bags on them.

    ¡°Unless things changed a lot after I went in,¡± Eliza said, ¡°girls were just as likely as boys to be slabbed. However, for some reason, I got put in a section with all the silly little bitches who knew nothing about fighting.¡±

    ¡°Maybe they want some sections to suffer higher casualties than others,¡± I said. ¡°You know, simulating an actual battle.¡±

    We finally got to her bed. I realized it was in the mirror position of mine. ¡°Reckon you¡¯re right,¡± Eliza said as she sat on her bunk. ¡°Right sick bastards they are, so it wouldn¡¯t surprise me.¡± Something about her posture suggested she felt the same thing could be applied to her as well. She then shook it off, and then patted the spot on the bed next to her. ¡°Sit, sit. No need to stand.¡±

    I looked around a bit. I saw that on the bed behind me was a body bag. ¡°No worries,¡± Eliza said. ¡°I don¡¯t bite.¡±

    ¡°You do have a tendency to stab people with bone-claws,¡± I said on reflex. I instantly regretted it.

    Eliza¡¯s face became very blank. ¡°You ¡®eard ¡®bout that, didn¡¯t you?¡±

    ¡°I made friends with one of the medics,¡± I said. ¡°From the way I hear it, it was surprising anyone managed to beat you.¡±

    She laughed bitterly. ¡°I¡¯m undefeated. You can recuse yourself, remember?¡± She began to get more animated. ¡°Y¡¯see, the bloody awful thing about being a feral is that you, meaning the conscious part of you, doesn¡¯t exactly ¡®ave the control over your subconscious that the average human does. Some wanker pulls a knife on you, you don¡¯t get the option of not popin¡¯ out your claws an¡¯ givin¡¯ ¡®im a good slice across the belly.

    ¡°Originally, I thought I could learn to control it. Maybe through practice, maybe through meditation, maybe through medication, maybe through some combination. So tonight, combined with the fact that I wanted to win, I made quite the bloody fool out of myself.¡± She began to glare at the floor. ¡°The thing I learned tonight? I bloodycan¡¯t control myself. I¡¯m not¡­ not a human. But I can choose the situations I get in, right?¡±

    ¡°To an extent,¡± I said. ¡°I mean, you could have left after three people, sure. But sometimes you don¡¯t have that option.¡± She nodded at this. Then suddenly, something hit me. ¡°If you don¡¯t like doing¡­ this¡­ why don¡¯t you leave?¡±

    She turned the glare from the floor to me. ¡°Why don¡¯t you?¡±

    Seeing as it was the kind of glare that normally makes you try to remember appointments coming from a violent parahuman not fully in control of her own actions, I said hurriedly, ¡°Not sure. I should see if I can get back to sleep. See you around, I guess?¡± I then hurriedly beat my retreat.

    Needless to say, I didn¡¯t sleep well. When the call came out for us at around six to form up outside, most people grumbled and groaned trying to get up. I, personally, was relieved. I really hate it when I try to go to sleep but just can¡¯t.

    We all went into the entrance. The camp commandant and head of Shadowhaven, an older Russian woman named Professor Zemylachka called out, ¡°Form up, you svezheye myaso! Parade positions! Professor Blunt is here!¡±

    Everyone did exactly as ordered. Parade positions are basically everyone gets into a group of fifty (based on where you sleep) and face the cafeteria. Today, there was a portable stage with a podium on it, as well as two bundles of flags on either side. Leaning on the podium was Professor Blunt, a weary look on his face. Standing right besides him was Professor Zemylachka. Judging by how rested she looked, she had gotten a break last night.

    Meanwhile, our normally neat ten by ten rows were gone. A few were almost intact, some, like Eliza¡¯s, were almost gone. Most were like mine, with around half the people missing. Between us and the platform was a two deep line of Campus Security. The front row somehow managed to seem at ease despite the fact that they were carrying riot shields. I couldn¡¯t quite see what the second row was carrying, but if I were to guess I would say they were carrying six-shot grenade launchers loaded with tear gas and/or flashbangs.

    Due to the formation changes, I had a new person right next to me. He seemed Arabic, and he wore an eyepatch, and had a scar on his throat. Without turning to look at me, he said, ¡°You¡¯re as dead as Amir, you Zionist piece of shit.¡± Anger throbbed through his voice.

    Eric, who was to my other side, responded with, ¡°Careful. You mess with Nathan, you mess with me and my mates.¡± He paused. ¡°Am I making my position clear? Or would you like to retort?¡±

    The person who I was starting to suspect was Amir¡¯s second-in-command snarled, ¡°I don¡¯t have anything to say to you. You don¡¯t really threaten me, clown.¡±

    If Eric was going to reply (which I don¡¯t think he was) he was interrupted. ¡°Congratulations, maggots,¡± Professor Blunt said, his voice blurred with sleep. ¡°You fucking did it. You survived and¡­¡± He stared off into space for a bit, muttered something along the lines of ¡°what was I going to say,¡± then said ¡°¡­You were really bloodthirsty. Fifty-eight point eight casualty rate, from what our medics tell us.¡±

    He blinked a couple times, then continued. ¡°So, what does that tell me? If I was an asshole, I¡¯d say that meant ya¡¯ll were just a buncha pansies or something, compared to the yearly average of forty-nine point nine.¡± He began to get slightly more animated. ¡°But I¡¯m not. And I was there. Most years, we don¡¯t get four ferals or whatever the fuck Ulfric is.¡±

    At this there was a high pitched giggle. Everyone turned to where the sound was coming from. There was Ulfric Trollbjorn, flanked by two heavily armed Campus Security Guards at the far end of the boy¡¯s side. Apparently, somehow every person in his fifty-person section was either dead or in ICU. I wondered how many of those he had killed personally. I noticed that everyone seemed tense. A few of the Campus Security Guards even turned off the safeties on their weapons.

    I noticed that even Professor Blunt eyed Ulfric warily for a few seconds before continuing. ¡°And those of you who did go against¡­ him all showed massive amounts of courage. Incredibly, a few of you are even standing here. However, there is one person I¡¯d like to single out.

    ¡°You see, in no other year have I seen any newbie who could take down Ulfric. Hell, I kind of doubt a good chunk of our graduates could.¡±

    Ulfric giggled again. Instantly, some of the Campus Security people raised their weapons to point at him.

    ¡°However,¡± Professor Blunt said, ¡°We found one person this year who could. Why do I think that? Because I saw it happen with my own two eyes! Recruits, I¡¯d like you to give a hand to Bai Feng!¡±

    People clapped wildly. Apparently, people had lost more than a few friends to Ulfric. For example, the guy who had just threatened to kill me was clapping like a madman and yelling something in what I guessed to be Arabic. The TVs on the cafeteria switched on to get a clear look at Bai. She was leaning on crutches, but as soon she noticed she was being filmed, she dropped them.

    Bai walked up from somewhere in the girl¡¯s side, limping a bit. I noticed that she had a cast on one leg. She must have been in quite a bit of pain, but she didn¡¯t wince. When the line of Campus Security stepped aside for her, a few of them saluted.

    When she got to the platform, Professor Zemylachka offered her a hand, which she shrugged off. She was ushered to stand next to the podium. As she did, a highlight reel began playing on the TV. She apparently had only four fights worth showing. In the first fight, her opponent had gotten lucky and broken her leg. Contrary to all common sense, in the final fight, she had apparently chosen to fight Ulfric.

    That was when things had gotten really interesting. She had managed, despite her broken leg, to dodge every single one of Ulfric¡¯s attacks. Her return blows seemed to have targeted nerve clusters, temporarily paralyzing certain areas. Needless to say, I was impressed.

    Professor Blunt immediately echoed my feelings. ¡°I know I¡¯ve already expressed my sincere admiration for your talent, humility, determination and professionalism,¡± he said once Bai¡¯s highlight reel was replaced by an NIU logo, ¡°but this time, it is on behalf of the President and NIU. You have done amazingly well. You should note that we have noted your special circumstances and have allowed you both time to heal from your injuries and we¡¯ve committed to making sure you still are able to complete this course.¡± He then turned the microphone towards Bai.

    Bai blushed. ¡°No, no,¡± she said, ¡°I don¡¯t deserve it¡­¡±

    Professor Zemylachka made a dismissive noise loud enough to be audible from where she was standing. Professor Blunt turned back to Bai. ¡°I think we¡¯re going to have to agree to disagree. But I have to ask: where did you get the idea to attack the nerve clusters? From what I understand, that¡¯s one of the most difficult moves you can do.¡±

    ¡°It was simply part of my training before I came here,¡± Bai said modestly. ¡°Also, nothing else seemed to be working.¡±

    ¡°Yeah.¡± Professor Blunt seemed embarrassed by that. ¡°I guess that¡¯s a decent reason for trying it.¡± I wondered if the good professor had tried tasing the monster. He then continued on, ¡°So why Ulfric? Why do the dumb thing and go against the monster who¡¯s killed more people at Fight Night than the next two deadliest contestants combined?¡±

    ¡°I had broken my leg,¡± she said, as if explaining the most obvious thing in the world. ¡°My career was over.¡±

    Professor Blunt shook his head as if he was hearing the stupidest thing in the world. ¡°What do you think you are, a fucking horse?¡± He asked with impatient disgust. ¡°A broken leg doesn¡¯t end a fucking career. Getting your head ripped off by a kill-crazy giant does.¡±

    He turned back to the rest of us. ¡°LISTEN UP, YOU STUPID ASSHOLES!¡± He shouted, his face going red. ¡°IF THIS WAS A THEORETICAL EXERCISE, AND ANYONE SUGGESTED THAT SACRIFICING A HIGHLY-SKILLED OPERATIVE, WHO HAS BEEN TRAINED FOR NEARLY EIGHTEEN GODDAMNED YEARS OUT OF SHEER STUBBORNESS, I WOULD FAIL THAT MOTHERFUCKER!¡± He stopped, took a breath, and resumed shouting.

    ¡°THE ONLY REASON I HAVEN¡¯T FAILED HER FOR THIS IDIOCY IS BECAUSE SHE HAD THE DECENCY TO GAMBLE HER OWN LIFE! AT THIS POINT, THE FACT THAT HER GAMBLE PAID OFF IS MEANIGNLESS, BECAUSE IT GAINED HER VERY LITTLE.¡± He then turned back towards her, and said in a very low voice, ¡°You¡¯re a highly skilled martial artist and really good at sneaking around. However, you are in the wrong program. You¡¯ve enrolled in a program that can teach you nothing and are sorely lacking in other skills, such as common sense and self-preservation. Switch programs.¡±

    Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.

    Bai Feng looked visibly shaken and on the verge of tears. I had to admit, that was probably Professor Blunt¡¯s intention. He then looked at the sheet. ¡°All right,¡± he said, ¡°Next up we have¡­¡± His eyes widened. ¡°Oh my. Up next we have Ulfric Trollbjorn.¡±

    Ulfric¡¯s reception was massively different than Bai¡¯s. As he walked towards the platform, his two guards pointing SCAR-Hs with fully automatic underbarrel shotguns at his center mass, people booed. People hissed. However, when he occasionally stopped to look at the crowd, people would fall silent where his gaze fell.

    Ulfric also had a highlight reel. It was the most disturbing thing I¡¯ve seen. There he was on the screen, killing people. Apparently, he was supernaturally strong, and everyone around him was made of cardboard. Bones were crushed, parts of bodies that should be attatched flew like jet fighters, and people were picked up and used like clubs to beat others to death. There also was a clip that proved how ineffective tasers were against him. He had just punched someone¡¯s face so hard the people in charge had decided to actually pixelate the damage, then continued to beat the corpse. Professor Johnson told him to stop. He didn¡¯t stop. Professor Johnson tased him. Ulfric pulled the leads off, and then glared at the Professor.

    He actually looked me right in the eye, right before heading onto the platform. That was probably one of, if not the first up-close looks I had ever gotten at him. Now, I¡¯ve known people who are huge, maybe not in that Sylvester Stallone-type way, but still, I know they¡¯re no different from us regular-sized folk. That may be the reason why I never noticed the wrongness about him. It was hard for me to put my finger on it until he locked eyes and smiled at me.

    It would have been bad enough if it had been a normal smile from a man I knew hadn¡¯t even gone twelve hours since he had murdered dozens of people with his bare hands. It was the child-like¡­ I don¡¯t want to use the word innocence. Maybe lack of understanding¡­ Anyway, it was the child-like lack of understanding of his actions that scared me. It was like he was a pre-schooler who had just seen his best friend on the playground after a long vacation. He then walked on towards the stage.

    ¡°There goes the most evil man I have ever seen,¡± Eric said. I turned. He had shuffled a good distance away from me, like someone had just said there was a bomb in my pocket.

    ¡°That we agree on,¡± the Al-Qaeda guy next to me said. He had also edged away from me.

    Ulfric, meanwhile, was making his way towards the stage. I noticed that everyone there was slowly inching away, except as Bai. The TVs then showed the stage, giving us a view of Bai and Ulfric locking eyes, everyone else on the stage looking wary. Then Ulfric held out his hand.

    Instantly, both Blunt and Zemylachka drew huge handguns, larger than any practical gun. The two Campus Security Guards cocked their weapons. Bai, though, took Ulfric¡¯s hand and shook. After a firm shake, Ulfric leaned in and whispered something into Bai¡¯s ear. Then he moved to stand right by her side.

    After the Professors and the Security calmed down a bit, things fell into a routine. Professor Blunt would call them up, and announce why they were being called up. It was usually because they were very violent. Then, the person would be called up to do an interview with Professor Johnson. Then, they would attempt to walk by Ulfric. Ulfric would hold his hand out, and then, whether or not they took it, he would lean in close and whisper something to them.

    The first person up was Ricardo Montana. He was a very smooth operator, from what I could tell. He was kind of like a young, somewhat beaten and mal-nourished Ricky Ricardio in some ways. He was able to joke with Professor Blunt and was even able to make Bai blush again. Despite the fact that his highlight reel showed how deadly he was, he still seemed quite likable, if a little cocky.

    That overconfidence made him think, for some reason, he could charm Ulfric. For all I knew, he succeeded. However, whatever Ulfric told Ricardo made him go very pale. He then had the unenviable position of standing next to the monster of a man.

    Next up was Bai¡¯s twin brother, Li. Apart from the fact that they were both extremely fit Asians, I would never have guessed that they were twins. He was stockier, muscular, taller, and less respectful. He basically used his interview to get into a fight with Professor Blunt and didn¡¯t back down until Blunt threatened to kick him out on the spot.

    He also ignored Ulfric¡¯s attempt to shake his hand, but Ulfric still called out to him. He did it loud enough this time for me to make out that it may have been Chinese, which was weird considering how white he was. Whatever he said, it was enough to make Li throw a punch at Ulfric. Li groaned in pain, and Ulfric giggled his terrifying giggle. At least a dozen guns were pointed at Ulfric before people realized that Li had hurt himself. It was at that point I became convinced Ulfric was some kind of parahuman.

    After Li had taken his place next to Ricardo, the next person was Oro Okoro. Her skin was slightly darker than Eric¡¯s, and her hair was in dreads. She was about the same size and shape as Li, but that seemed due to malnourishment. It was a somewhat disturbing theme among the people remaining. Also disturbing was how often she killed people with her bare hands. During her interview, through her broken English you could detect a bit of suspicion and hostility. However, she somehow managed to avoid being disrespectful.

    When she walked towards Ulfric, she stood, looking at his hand for a moment. Then Ulfric said something. She took it and nodded. Ulfric said something else, and Oro seemed surprised. She walked to her place, as if she had been smacked.

    Next up was Eliza. Professor Blunt gave her a pretty good introduction. ¡°Now, here¡¯s the event you¡¯ve all been waiting for! During her second run, she managed to account for sixty wins! Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage Eliza Henderson!¡±

    Eliza walked onto the stage to somewhat forced applause, like an American President giving a State of the Union to a Congress controlled by the opposing party. I guess Eliza had killed her fair share of people, but had also saved a few from going up against the likes of Ulfric. In fact, apparently her kill ratio was only about two in fifteen, according to Professor Blunt.

    I didn¡¯t pay much attention to the interview. After Professor Blunt compared that ratio to the average (one in five,) I had begun to feel a little sick. I had killed someone. It also wasn¡¯t like it was some random person, either. I had also seriously injured another. Eliza may have killed more people, but she actually had better ratios than me.

    Also, I was really confused about Eliza. She obviously regretted killing the people she did, but she had killed. In fact, she could have recused herself before she had killed anybody. Also, was she blackmailing me, stalking me or something else? Either way, it was creepier than I really wanted.

    This was why Professor Blunt had to repeat my name twice before I realized he was talking to me. I kind of realized that someone was being called up, so I kept clapping. Then I realized that the camera was centered on me. I pointed at myself, a look of utter horror on my face, and Professor Zemylachka responded, ¡°Yes, Mr. Jacobs, you.¡±

    As I walked forwards towards the line of heavily armed people, I could hear booing mixed in with the cheers. Apparently, I was somewhat divisive. I was honestly a little too frightened to turn around to see who was cheering and who was booing. I was reasonably certain, though, that eyepatch guy had booed me. I also didn¡¯t particularly want to look at my highlights reel.

    As I walked towards the line of Campus Security, I practiced my relaxation technique, making sure to breathe deep while convincing myself that the crowd behind me was actually the crowd from my first improv night. I was still shocked, somehow, that Campus Security parted for me.

    When I wondered why that was, I suddenly realized that, holy shit, the powers-that-be at NIU could know! They could be bringing me on stage to execute me as a warning to the other students. They already had the means to do it, and there was also the audience and¡­

    I stopped, took a breath, then continued on stage. Honestly, I had no evidence that they¡¯d do it. I had never seen them administer any forms of punishment, and if they shot me here, they¡¯d have to worry about a bullet passing through me and hitting one of their best students or a guard. Besides, if they were going to blow my brains out, there wasn¡¯t really anything I could do about it.

    When I had climbed onto the stage, Professor Blunt motioned to stand so I could look down the row of violent nut jobs that the ceremony was supposed to honor, as well as giving me a good view of the violent nut jobs who weren¡¯t violent or nutty enough to be ¡°honored.¡± I could see that everyone on the stage except for Ulfric¡¯s guards were staring at me. There was not a lot of love in the air.

    ¡°Nervous?¡± I asked with forced cheer, ¡°When I¡¯m surrounded by these teddy bears of human beings? Of course not!¡±

    Other people might have laughed, if Ulfric hadn¡¯t beaten them to the punch. His giggle was still as loud, shrill and ungodly terrifying as usual. Everyone shuddered.

    ¡°Thank you, Mr. Giggles,¡± I said slowly after the long pause that followed. ¡°All comedians appreciate a good audience.¡± The audience laughed. I think it was the audacity of calling Ulfric Mr. Giggles that did it. Or maybe it was that I seemed to be the most frightened person there to a comical degree. Whatever it was, I got a laugh from people who didn¡¯t have terrifying laughs.

    ¡°Thank you, thank you,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ll be in Barracks 3 for the rest of the weekend, performing my hit piece, ¡®Hyperventilating into a paper bag: Oh God, Why Won¡¯t It Stop!¡¯ Please don¡¯t come find me for more jokes!¡±

    ¡°Before you start performing your routine,¡± Professor Blunt said wryly, ¡°would you mind answering a few questions?¡±

    ¡°Potentially,¡± I said. I considered saying something like my agent says I need a nice relaxing interview, but decided to go with ¡°Go on.¡±

    ¡°So,¡± Professor Blunt asked, ¡°have you ever been in a fight before?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°The short answer is ¡®no.¡¯ The long answer is I have done Tae Kwon-do for about¡­ nine or ten years, I think? I did my share of sparing then, as well as the hand-to-hand combat drills, but that probably doesn¡¯t count.¡± I paused. ¡°Some of the fights I had with Dickface did come close when the instructors weren¡¯t looking, though.¡±

    Professor Zemylachka¡¯s head snapped to me. ¡°Who is this ¡®Dickface?¡¯¡± She asked. ¡°Killing other students is only acceptable when either myself or Professor Blunt approve.¡± A few people laughed at that, then realized that she was being serious when she glared at them.

    ¡°Y¡¯all don¡¯t know Richard Forrest Taylor the Third?¡± I asked in a cartoonishly fake Southern accent. I couldn¡¯t stop myself. I had become a comedic monster, a stand-up train without brakes. ¡°Come on, the man works hard to show us Jesus¡¯s love by killing them Jews, blacks, an¡¯ gays!¡± Professor Zemylachka turned her glare on me. ¡°I¡­ I don¡¯t really like him,¡± I said in my normal voice. Professor Blunt chuckled. Professor Zemylachka continued to glare. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. I¡¯ll stop.¡±

    ¡°Getting back to the questions,¡± Professor Blunt said, smiling a bit, ¡°did you think you would be able to do something like this before you came to camp?¡±

    ¡°Well, honestly no,¡± I said, ¡°I actually did not think I could do something like this. But you guys did help in every way you could.¡± I¡¯m pretty sure Professor Blunt heard the implied accusation, he just ignored it to focus on the parts that would look good in the recruitment brochure.

    ¡°You see,¡± Professor Blunt said, ¡°any one of you pansies can eventually become good as the people on this stage!¡± I was about to say something about how maybe Ulfric was an exception, but stopped myself. It wasn¡¯t worth it.

    Professor Blunt, oblivious to my thought process, continued on. ¡°I want you all to remember that this little shit stain of a loser who¡¯s never done a day¡¯s work in his life can make it. So can you, you lazy assholes.¡± I rolled my eyes. Gee, thanks, professor, I thought sarcastically. Professor Blunt then waved at me to go on to my place on the platform. ¡°Go on, get out of my face Jacobs.¡±

    ¡°Yes, sir,¡± I said, somehow managing to sound neutral and not say something incredibly snarky.

    Before I could get to my place, Ulfric held out a hand. I put my hand in his palm, not grabbing because it was too big, and looked him right in the eye. His hand closed around mine, tight enough to prevent escape, but not tight enough to hurt.

    If being trapped by a mass-murderer wasn¡¯t enough, his attitude made the situation all the more disturbing. Someone as bloodthirsty as Ulfric should be an angry, bitter person. However, when Ulfric smiled, it was like he had never had a bad day in his entire life.

    ¡°You looked me in the eye,¡± he whispered, a slight Boston accent to his voice. ¡°You¡¯re very brave.¡±

    ¡°Trust me,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯m pretty much terrified.

    ¡°You still let me take your hand,¡± Ulfric said, ¡°and you know what I can do. You also aren¡¯t stupid enough to think you can fool me.¡± He gave me a firm shake, then let go. I hurried to my place in line as fast as I could.

    When I was in my position, Professor Blunt began to talk again. ¡°Now that we know you are all somewhat versed in hand-to-hand combat, we will move on to basic rifle training this coming week. You little morons will learn how to load, maintain, and shoot standard firearms. We¡¯ll also teach you gun safety if you assholes don¡¯t possess any common sense.

    ¡°In more immediate news, you little shits get the rest of the weekend off. Meals will be at normal times, and you can shower whenever you want. Also, these seven will have their victory meal on Friday. And now without further ado, the best moments of Fight Night!¡± As Professor Blunt said these words, the screens began to turn on and NIU¡¯s jaunty, militaristic theme began to play.

    The images of Fight Night faded in from blackness as the music began to swell. People were beating, stabbing, and strangling each other. One of the more disturbing clips was of me delivering the killing blow to Amir. Apparently, the place I hit had a blood vessel in his head. I suddenly realized that I was still covered in his blood. I felt sick.

    After several minutes of people I didn¡¯t know, we got to one of Eliza. Someone had tried to use Amir¡¯s tactic of throwing a rock. It worked until the poor girl got her hands on Eliza¡¯s throat.

    Instantly, three claws popped out of Eliza¡¯s hands. One swiped across her face, the other raked across her belly. The poor girl staggered back, and Eliza fell on top of her, stabbing each other rapidly. I couldn¡¯t see the expression on Eliza¡¯s face but I could see her opponent¡¯s look of utter terror and extreme pain as the scream died in her mouth.

    I instinctively turned around to get Eliza¡¯s reaction.

    She was staring directly at me.

 1.7 Load Up On Guns

    The weekend was not fun. I spent the day hanging out with people who I knew were safe. That meant John. Unless I was missing something, since John was the other UNIX spy, he was the least likely to betray me, because then he¡¯d be all alone at best and facing the combined wrath of both UNIX and NIU Campus Discipline at worst.

    That¡¯s not to say that other people didn¡¯t drop by. Cross liked to drop in on us at meal times. He always seemed happy to share various bits of advice about how to get by ¡°in a certain business,¡± and John really liked talking about various self-defense tactics. Depending on who started first, we could get into a really interesting conversation about how to defend yourself from someone, or how to get the most money for killing someone.

    At Sunday dinner, Eric and his crew joined us. ¡°Good evening, Killer,¡± he said, as he and his four friends wandered up towards us, food trays in hand. ¡°Mind if we join you?¡±

    ¡°Go ahead,¡± I said. ¡°There¡¯s room and you guys are pretty cool.¡±

    ¡°Thank you, Killer,¡± Eric said. He then held out his hand to the Cross and John for them to shake. ¡°I don¡¯t think I¡¯ve met your friends here. I¡¯m Eric the Entertainer.¡±

    Both John and Cross shook hands with Eric. ¡°Nice to meet you, Eric,¡± John said. Cross gave a friendly smile.

    ¡°These here,¡± Eric said, ¡°are my friends. This is Ray-Gun Robert,¡± Robert nodded, ¡°Doc,¡± the shortest member of the group said something in a language I didn¡¯t recognize, ¡°MC Disaster,¡± a scarecrow with a beard and afro flashed a peace sign, ¡°and The Monk.¡± The lightest-skinned of the five bowed in imitation of a Buddhist monk.

    ¡°Greetings,¡± The Monk said.

    ¡°Nice to meet you,¡± Cross said, ¡°come on guys, pop a squat before a bunch of random people steal your seats.¡± He patted bench next to him, and Eric¡¯s group sat down. By this point, we had all gotten new clothes and showered. I was extremely thankful for this, mostly because I finally had gotten all the literal blood off me and I had started to get to the point where my own stench was so vile I gagged every time I inhaled, and partly because I didn¡¯t want to smell anyone else¡¯s odors.

    ¡°¡¯Pop a squat,¡¯¡± Eric mused, ¡°That is an American expression I am not familiar with.¡± He paused, then asked, ¡°You three are American, are you not?¡±

    ¡°One hundred percent,¡± Cross said. ¡°Accept no cheap imitations.¡±

    ¡°Unless they have the free healthcare like Canada,¡± Doc said. MC Disaster and Ray-Gun made an ¡°oooh¡± sounds and Monk gave Doc a high-five.

    ¡°I believe,¡± Eric said, ¡°that is what you call a ¡®burn¡¯ in the states, yes?¡±

    ¡°It would be,¡± Cross said, ¡°if we hadn¡¯t gotten it passed several years ago.¡±

    Eric nodded. ¡°True.¡±

    Before he could say anything else, I quickly changed the topic. ¡°So, how bad do you think the weapons training will be?¡±

    ¡°Bad?¡± Cross asked incredulously. ¡°Dude, we get to mess around with M-16s and shit! How can that be anything but awesome?¡±

    ¡°Well, for me personally it may have something to do with the fact that I¡¯m a Jew who¡¯s beaten up a Klansman and killed a rising Al-Qaeda star about three days ago,¡± I said somewhat neutrally.

    ¡°Aw, that¡¯s just you,¡± Cross said. ¡°Me, I hope we get to play around with HCARs. Those things are fucking sweet.¡±

    Doc shook his head. ¡°It is unlikely,¡± he said ¡°that they teach us some fancy gun that probably breaks down. They will teach us the AK. Everyone uses the AK, because the AK does not break.¡±

    ¡°Americans don¡¯t use the AK,¡± Cross said, ¡°because the AK can¡¯t hit anything beyond a hundred meters.¡±

    Doc slammed the table. ¡°Americans forgot that you need to make reliable gun after 1950! You make the Thompson! You make the M1! You make the two best pistols in the entire world! Then you forget and make M16? Why? Your computers, cars and movies are still the best. Why  did you forget how to make weapons?¡± I suddenly realized: Doc¡¯s relationship with American firearms was the same as a fanboy who had finally realized his favorite comic book writer sucked.

    ¡°Maybe they will have E-11s,¡± Ray-Gun said hopefully.

    ¡°Aren¡¯t those the blasters the Stormtroopers in Star Wars use?¡± I asked. I knew full well that they were. However, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. There could be a real gun called an E-11.

    ¡°I know,¡± Ray-Gun said sheepishly, ¡°but one of the magicians here could summon a few of them up.¡±

    ¡°You know there¡¯s no such thing as magic, right?¡± John said.

    ¡°Any sufficiently advanced technology,¡± Eric said, seemingly quoting from memory, ¡°is indistinguishable from magic.¡± He paused. ¡°Besides, ¡®magic¡¯ is easier to say than ¡®technolologomy.¡¯¡±

    Most of us laughed, but Ray-Gun flashed Eric a grateful look.

    ¡°You know,¡± I said, ¡°I think we might get training in more than one weapon.¡± People nodded. ¡°We¡¯re probably going to learn how to use AKs, but we might cover other things like FALs.¡±

    ¡°I used a FAL once,¡± The Monk said. ¡°It was a decent weapon. The only problem I had was I could not figure out how to reload it. To be fair, the situation was¡­ stressful.¡±

    ¡°So what are we all majoring in?¡± I asked. There was a pause, and I said, ¡°I personally haven¡¯t decided.¡±

    Eric said, ¡°Good question. I¡¯m going for Officer Candidacy.¡±

    Doc raised his hand. ¡°Battlefield medicine,¡± he said. ¡°I have always been good at patching people up.¡±

    ¡°I am Combat Engineering major. The rest of us are Extended Infantry Operations, I believe it is called,¡± MC Disaster said. I noticed he was quieter than the rest of his group, and this was the first time he had spoken up.

    ¡°Sounds like you guys planned this out between you,¡± I said.

    ¡°We did,¡± Eric said, not volunteering anything further.

    ¡°We haven¡¯t planned anything together,¡± John said, ¡°but I personally am planning on going Physical Security with a minor in Cyber Security. There¡¯s a few companies where I am that could use that.

    ¡°Nice,¡± Eric said. ¡°Good pay and close to family.¡±

    ¡°Speaking of family,¡± Cross said, his eyes twinkling, ¡°my dad works in his business as a¡­ a trouble shooter, if you get what I mean. I¡¯m going into Shadowhaven to help him with that stuff. You know, entering the family business.¡±

    Eric and his friends went silent. ¡°I see,¡± Eric said. Then there was more silence.

    Finally, the MC spoke up. ¡°If, let¡¯s say back in history, we would happen to take something that belonged to someone else, would they hire you to do the trouble shooting?¡±

    ¡°Where did this happen?¡± Cross said cautiously, looking warily at the people who had joined us. They, in turn, were considering him in much the same way Bai did when Eliza had accused me of spying.

    ¡°Africa,¡± Ray-Gun said noncommittally.

    ¡°The less civilized part,¡± The Monk added.

    ¡°Then there should be no problem,¡± Cross said, with a bit of forced cheer. It seemed clear that he thought if he seemed cheerful, then they would calm down as well. ¡°My plan is to mostly operate within the states. I could get you guys a job there.¡±

    ¡°Thank you,¡± Eric said, back to his normal genial self, ¡°but we already have a job. A calling, to be more accurate.¡±

    ¡°I have an offer for you,¡± MC Disaster said.

    ¡°Oh?¡± Cross asked, the wariness creeping back on his face.

    ¡°You are mercenary,¡± the MC said. ¡°Worse, you are one we do not know.¡± The wariness on Cross¡¯s face was now back on. ¡°However,¡± the MC continued, holding his hand out, as if signaling Cross¡¯s thought process to halt, ¡°I do not want you dead. I figure the best way to keep us both alive is satisfy your needs. Here is my proposal: I have my own share of our¡­ gains. Every year we are all here, I give you, Cross, a million dollars to be wired to your account when you are on the plane home.¡± At this, Cross¡¯s eyes widened. I¡¯m sure mine did, too. ¡°However, these payments are conditional. If any of my friends die in an unexplained manner or in a way you could have prevented, you do not get the payments. Is this fair?¡±

    ¡°Way more than fair,¡± Cross said. ¡°You don¡¯t need to do this, you know?¡±

    MC shrugged. ¡°Price for a good night¡¯s sleep,¡± he said. ¡°Fairly cheap for it, from what I hear.¡±

    The conversation turned to bitching about the program in general and drill sergeants in particular. I personally made my gripe with Krieger clear. That was odd, because normally I keep my opinions to myself. It was only when I really hate a teacher that I complain about them while I have them. I think the last time I did was when I was in First Grade.

    After that, we went to bed. Well, I went to bed. My five bunkmates didn¡¯t. I had been asleep for a while when Eric started saying, ¡°Hey, Killer!¡±

    After about the fifth time I registered this, I asked groggily, ¡°What time is it?¡± I was developing what I call morning headache, which is what happens when you get a headache from waking up too early.

    Eric began to ask, ¡°I don¡¯t see what that¡­¡±

    I repeated the question, injecting every ounce of menace I could muster. ¡°What.Time. Is. It?¡± The headache really helped, I think.

    ¡°Three.¡±

    ¡°Is it important?¡± I asked.

    ¡°We were just wondering,¡± Doc asked, ¡°what are your thoughts on when it is ok to kill someone. You see, we are having this¡­¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, with false cheer, ¡°Talmudic law has an answer for this, like so many other things. Basically, it boils down to only when necessary, like self-defense, saving the lives of others, or¡± here I swapped the fake cheer with the most threatening voice I could muster, ¡°when your idiot bunkmates are inconsiderate enough to wake you up at three. In the. Fucking. Morning. Am I making myself clear?¡±

    ¡°Crystal, Killer,¡± Eric said, a little scared.

    ¡°Good,¡± I said, still pissed, ¡°now shut up and let me get to fucking sleep.¡±

    They kind of avoided me for the morning. That was good for me, because they seemed kind of groggy. I was afraid that if I hung out with them, being bright, chipper, and somewhat vengeful, they¡¯d end up having to kill me and dump my lifeless body in a crater.

    I still had Eric as a partner for the daily sparring exercise. We were doing a drill where we would stand perpendicular to each other. One person would draw a wooden gun to point in the second person¡¯s face. The second person would grab the gun by the slide, then bring it away from and past their face. While they were doing that, with their other arm, they would elbow the second person in the face. The drill sergeants made it a game. If the shooter could bring up the gun and say ¡°bang¡± before the second person could perform the maneuver, they earned a point. If the second person was able to get the gun away from the shooter, they earned a point. I was actually killing both positions. I think it was because Eric was so tired.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± he said, ¡°I stayed up too BA-OWWW!¡± The ¡°BA-OWWW!¡± was him trying to pull a fast one on me.

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said, indicating the fact that I had elbowed him the face. ¡°Maybe you wouldn¡¯t be so tired if you actually slept? Just a thought.¡±

    ¡°You know,¡± Eric said, grabbing his nose, ¡°I could let you do the next few rounds with Dickface or Eyepatch.¡±

    I looked over to see if I could find them. I spotted them immediately. ¡°Guess who¡¯s partnered together?¡± I asked, chuckling a bit.

    ¡°Let me guess,¡± Eric said, ¡°Our friendly neighborhood Klansman and the local Al-Qaeda representative. That is not good.¡±

    ¡°On the contrary,¡± I said, ¡°take a look. Don¡¯t worry, they¡¯re kind of busy.¡±

    Eric turned and looked where I pointed, then started to laugh. Richard Forrest Taylor the Third and the unnamed Al-Qaeda dude who had threatened me were both being chewed out by a drill sergeant. However, instead of looking at the drill sergeant or down at the ground, they were looking at each other like they were trying to summon up an expression of rage powerful enough to kill the other. Both had black eyes and bloody noses.

    Eric could barely contain his laughter. ¡°That, my friend,¡± he began, ¡°is hilari¡­¡±

    ¡°BANG!¡± While he wasn¡¯t looking, I had pulled my training gun on him and ¡°fired.¡±

    Eric turned around, an exasperated look on his face. He looked even less amused when he saw my goofy grin. ¡°You know,¡± he said, ¡°just because your enemies fight themselves, does not mean you should make more.¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said, lowering my practice gun.

    ¡°Besides,¡± Eric said, smiling suddenly, ¡°I could do this! BANG!¡± Taking advantage of the fact that I was looking at the ground, he brought up his practice gun and pretend-fired at me.

    ¡°You missed!¡± I said, even though if he had fired a real gun at me, there would probably be a bullet in my chest. It quickly degenerated into a playground pretend-fight from there.

    Around the time when we were arguing over whether or not my ¡°everything-shield piercing bullets¡± could pierce his everything-shield, a South African-accented voice asked us, ¡°Are we having fun, lads?¡±

    We turned around. There was Karl Krieger, a bit of a frown on his face. Yet I couldn¡¯t help notice an odd twinkle in his eye.

    Eric did the correct thing. He looked down at the ground, the picture of contrition, and said, ¡°No, sir.¡±

    I, on the other hand, did the dumb thing. I grinned and said ¡°Yes, sir!¡± in unison with Eric¡¯s response.

    ¡°I see,¡± Krieger said. He then reached into his belt and pulled out what looked like some chrome-plated M1911 clone.

    I did exactly what the drill was supposed to accomplish, except for real. I grabbed the gun, and pulled it past my face while elbowing Krieger. There were a few differences. First off, because Krieger was a bit taller than me, I was pulling him down, making it so I had to elbow him in the throat, causing him to let go of the gun and stagger back, wheezing.

    The fact that it was pointed at the ground may have saved someone¡¯s life because the second difference was that Krieger¡¯s gun was loaded, and apparently didn¡¯t have the safety on because it went off. Even so, it nearly hit the foot of someone practicing nearby. She, like everyone else, turned to see what had happened.

    I, realizing that I had an instructor¡¯s personal firearm in my hand, dropped it. It fell, and I slowly brought my hands behind my head and interlocked my fingers, a horrified look on my face.

    Krieger¡¯s wheezing quickly turned into peals of laughter. ¡°Very good job, boyke!¡± he said, ¡°but you didn¡¯t follow it up. That allows me to do something like this!¡± He then punched me in the stomach so hard I was lifted off my feet. I fell over, my world one of pain.

    ¡°Get up,¡± he said, dragging me to my feet. ¡°A little wobbly, eh boyke?¡± he asked when I was up. I didn¡¯t reply.

    Kreiger then picked up his gun. I noticed this time he kept it pointed at the ground and he used his left hand. ¡°Next time you¡¯re in that situation, instead of dropping the weapon, pull the slide back!¡± He demonstrated this. When he did, a spent casing flew out instead of an entire bullet. ¡°See? What happened there is you gripped the slide so hard the spent casing didn¡¯t come out. Now that you¡¯ve cleared the jam, you can do this!¡± He then fired into the ground until his gun clicked. I jumped because the bullets landed too close to my feet for comfort.

    After that, things were pretty uneventful. After lunch, we learned how to field strip an AK-47. Needless to say, Eric, Ray-Gun, Doc, MC Disaster and The Monk were the best of our group of eight. In fact, they were so good that it was impossible for me to tell which one was better. I did have to admit, Cross was pretty close.

    ¡°So, what do I do after taking the receiver cover off again?¡± I asked.

    ¡°You put it back on before a drill sergeant realizes you did that without removing the magazine first,¡± Eric said.

    ¡°Thanks,¡± I said, clicking the receiver cover back into place.

    ¡°You need a refresher on how to unload it?¡± Ray-Gun asked.

    ¡°Nope,¡± I said, demonstrating the steps as I went, ¡°you push the magazine latch forwards, then you rotate the magazine back towards you. Then you pull back the bolt carrier to eject any remaining rounds.¡± I looked up to see how I did. A look of horror passed over my face.

    ¡°You may want to do it faster, boyke,¡± Krieger said. He was standing right behind Eric, so he jumped. ¡°Also,¡± Krieger said, a hint of a smile on his face, ¡°maintain constant vigilance. You don¡¯t want to be surprised while cleaning a weapon in battle.¡±

    After he wandered off, Cross asked, ¡°If this thing doesn¡¯t ever break, why are we even bothering to learn how to clean it?¡±

    ¡°While I have only heard legends of a Kalashnikov breaking,¡± Eric said, ¡°I still do not want to be caught unable to fix it. I also know that these parts do not last forever. For instance, look at the recoil spring,¡± he said holding up a long metal rod with a spring attached to it. ¡°The spring does not look so springy anymore, yes? Also, the constant proximity to explosions is causing the rod to bend. I am not sure what it does, but I do not want to find out what happens when it breaks, so I will request a replacement.¡±

    ¡°You know what I like about these things?¡± John said. ¡°They come with these.¡± He held up a small capsule that you could find in the butt compartment of every AK. ¡°My dad owns a civilian AR-15, and because it has a folding stock, it can¡¯t fit anything like that in there.¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s an AR-15?¡± The Monk asked. ¡°I have heard it mentioned in several American rap songs, yet I don¡¯t know what it is.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s an M-16,¡± I said. ¡°The US Army arbitrarily changes the names of the various weapons it gets. For example, the Berretta M92FS becomes the M9.¡±

    The Monk nodded. ¡°I see,¡± he said. Then he thought for a moment, then asked incredulously, ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°The US Army has a hell of a lot of eccentricities,¡± John said.

    ¡°In fact,¡± I said, ¡°at its worst, just like any bureaucracy, it becomes a Kafkaesque nightmare.¡±

    Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

    Before anyone could ask who Kafka was, Professor Zemylachka called out, ¡°Assemble Arms!¡± We all struggled to get our AKs back together. Well, some of us struggled. A few like me had just put the finishing touches on our assembly, others like Eric and his group could assemble and strip them in under a minute. John was not so lucky.

    ¡°You need help?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Naw, man,¡± he said, ¡°I got this.¡±

    I kibbutzed anxiously as he assembled his AK. Literally the second before it was all assembled, Professor Zemylachka called out, ¡°Company, form up! Parade Positions!¡±

    We all scrambled to Parade Positions, hoping to pass inspection. We stood there for a few minutes while Professor Zemylachka inspected the ground where we had been stripping our weapons. Apparently, it was clean enough, so Professor Zemylachka turned to us and said, ¡°Company, present arms!¡±

    We all held out our weapons for her to inspect. Before she began to inspect our weapons, though, she seemed to have an announcement. ¡°You may all be wondering,¡± she said, ¡°why do we teach field stripping before the shooting. The answer is two-fold. Firstly, we prefer that you have respect for weapon and knowledge of how it works before you fire it. Secondly, the easiest way to test this knowledge and respect is if you go to shoot weapon you field strip. Especially with tovarisch Kalashnikov. Why? Because the only way an AK will not be firing, especially these AKs, is if someone screwed up their firing mechanism.¡± She glared at all of us. A few people gulped.

    Eric¡¯s hand, however, shot up. ¡°Yes,¡± Professor Zemylachka said, nodding at him, ¡°I see you, recruit. I will get to you shortly.¡± She then continued her speech. ¡°None of you have left parts behind. That is good. Usually we get one derevenshchina who leaves a part or two behind.¡± Ulfric giggled. Everyone else recoiled, but Professor Zemylachka continued on, only flinching slightly. That was still more badass than anyone else there. ¡°This shows that you are respecting your weapons. Now, recruit,¡± she said, turning her attention back to Eric, ¡°What is your question?¡±

    ¡°Ma¡¯am,¡± he shouted, ¡°My receiver spring is showing signs of age, ma¡¯am!¡±

    ¡°Can it be fired?¡± she asked.

    ¡°Most likely, but it may be on its way out!¡±

    Professor Zemylachka nodded. ¡°Very well then. I will come see you after the exercise. Any other questions?¡± There was silence. Professor Zemylachka then walked to a point between us and the door, and then yelled, ¡°Company, about face! Forward march!¡± As soon as she gave the order, the schools jaunty, militaristic theme music began to play over the speakers.

    We turned ninety degrees towards the camp exit and began to follow the professor, a group¡¯s drill sergeant in front of every group. Immediately after leaving the gate to the camp, Professor Zemylachka took a right. She led us to a shooting range behind the barracks. There were places for each group marked in the grass. Between the walls were two lines of Campus Security. The first line had riot shields, the second were armed with P-90 SMGs. I had a good look at them because they were all pointed at us.

    When we were all in position, Professor Zemylachka yelled, ¡°Company, halt!¡± She then walked to where the benches that marked the shooting positions were. ¡°About face!¡± We turned towards her.

    ¡°Good,¡± she said, ¡°you know how to march. How do I know this? You are all exactly in the squares marking where you should be. Now, at ease, sit down.¡± We all sat down.

    Suddenly, a pick-up truck rolled up. I, like many others, turned around to see what it was. After a moment, I saw that it was Bai, still on crutches, being helped out of the bed by two Campus Security Guards in patrol gear: you know, suit-like uniform with the cool badge, hats and sunglasses.

    As Bai walked towards her seat, Eliza stood up and began to clap. I figured, what the hey, Bai deserved it, so I stood up as well. Then a bunch of other people, including Eyepatch and Ulfric stood up and it just snowballed from there, with everyone applauding, cheering, and chanting Bai¡¯s name from the lowliest student to the toughest drill sergeant. Even Professor Zemylachka was applauding and smiling with approval. By the time she got to her spot on the far end, Bai¡¯s normally pale face was completely red.

    ¡°Now, Sergeant Mando, Sergeant Burra,¡± Professor Zemylachka called out, once we had all sat back down, ¡°Please come up.¡±

    Two sergeants came up to stand on either side of the Professor, one a hispanic man with a square face and a haircut somewhere between a buzzcut and a small Mohawk, the other a small, lithe blond woman with a tan. Both carried AK-47s. They turned to face us, weapons shouldered.

    ¡°Aim left!¡± As soon as the professor said that, Sergeant Mando (who was on the professor¡¯s right) stepped forward and went to one knee and Sergeant Burra (who was on the professor¡¯s left) stepped back. They also both aimed down the sights of their weapons. I noticed the bolts on the weapons were open to show that there was no bullet in them.

    ¡°Sergeant Mando,¡± Professor Zemylachka asked, ¡°why did you step forwards?¡±

    ¡°You were in my line of fire, ma¡¯am!¡± he yelled in response. His voice had a slight Hispanic accent.

    ¡°But your gun was unloaded,¡± Professor Zemylachka said.

    ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter, ma¡¯am!¡± Sergeant Mando responded. ¡°If the guards thought I was pointing a loaded weapon at you they¡¯d shoot me. Pointing a gun at something means you are prepared to destroy it, whether or not it is loaded, ma¡¯am!¡±

    ¡°Good answer,¡± Professor Zemylachka said. ¡°Now, Sergeant Burra!¡±

    ¡°Yes, ma¡¯am!¡± Sergeant Burra shouted. Her accent was Australian.

    ¡°Why did you take a step backwards?¡±

    ¡°I didn¡¯t know if Sergeant Mando¡¯s gun was loaded. If I stood in his line of fire, I risked being shot. It should be bloody obvious!¡±

    ¡°Sadly,¡± Professor Zemylachka said, ¡°It is not always obvious to the fresh meat what is and isn¡¯t proper gun safety.¡±

    She turned towards us. ¡°We have just had demonstrated common sense gun safety. Is imperative you follow these rules, or you will be punished. Sometimes, punishment is from God and from your weapon. Other times it is from friendly neighborhood Campus Security Guard.¡±

    A few of the Campus Security Guards had their guns make ominous clacking sounds to demonstrate the brand of punishment you could receive from them. ¡°You see, CSG likes to protect students,¡± the professor said. ¡°If the barrel of your gun is not pointed at the sky, the guards should not be seeing it. If they do see it, they will shoot you. Do you understand?¡±

    ¡°Good,¡± she said. Then she yelled, ¡°Mando, Burra, rack one in!¡±

    The two each took bullets out of their vest pockets, slid them into the receiver, then pulled the bolt back.

    ¡°Aim! Fire!¡±

    The muzzle climb was a lot less than I expected. The distances the empty casings were a lot more. They almost made it to where we were sitting. They repeated the process two more times. After the third time, the professor asked us, ¡°So, fresh meat, do you think you can replicate the process?¡±

    There was a chorus of ¡°Yes, Ma¡¯am!¡±

    ¡°Good,¡± Professor Zemylachka said. ¡°Now, the people I call up will be Group One. Remember your group number. I will be very annoyed if we have to sort this out every time we do this.¡±

    She called out several names, one from each group. I was first up.

    ¡°First exercise,¡± the professor said, ¡°is sighting. If you are not blind, you can see that down the range is a concrete wall. Your first task will be to hit it. Aim down the sights by lining up the rear sights with the front sight. The rear sight is on a little bar with notch near the receiver on top of a knob. The front sight is on barrel.

    ¡°As you fire, watch where your bullet goes. If it is too far from concrete wall, move knob towards you. If bullet goes above wall, move knob away from you. The goal is to get your gun zeroed at the distance wall is, which is two hundred meters. You will have five shots to do this before we move on to the next exercise. You will notice that there is also several boxes of ammo near you. When I give the order, you will take a bullet and insert it in your gun like you saw Sergeants Mando and Burra do.¡± She paused for a moment, then yelled, ¡°Rack one in!¡±

    We did so. I fumbled a bit trying to get my bullet in, but I was ahead of some other people who kept dropping the bullet. ¡°Aim!¡± I had just finished loading my gun, and it was already trained on the concrete wall. ¡°Fire!¡±

    There was a staccato ripple as five AKs fired almost at once, the sound echoing. My shot didn¡¯t even hit the wall, instead landing several feet away. ¡°Rack one in!¡± I grabbed another round from the box and loaded it into the AK. ¡°Aim!¡± I quickly adjusted my sights. ¡°Fire!¡±

    Again, the AKs chattered in unison. This time my bullet landed even farther from the wall. Crap. ¡°Rack one in!¡± I did so, almost dropping the round. ¡°Aim!¡± I moved my sights in the opposite direction. ¡°Fire!¡±

    The AKs shot off again, this time closer together. I missed seeing where my bullet landed because there was a ding! and I saw a green light. I turned, nearly getting shot for breaking the rules of the range. In the place right next to me, Eliza was looking down at a green light.

    ¡°Ah,¡± Professor Zemylachka said, ¡°It seems Miss Henderson is first to hit target. We have laser field to see if you hit target. You have to be very precise, though. Now, rack one in! Aim! Fire!¡±

    When I fired this time, my buzzer lit up. So did Eliza¡¯s. By the fifth time, everyone could hit the wall. When we were done, Professor Zemylachka said, ¡°So you can adjust the sights. Good. We deliberately fucked with sights. It wouldn¡¯t do you much good if you could hit anything on your first shot. This way you learn. Now we move on to loading magazines.

    ¡°First, remove the clip from your Kalash. Then, put your gun down.¡± We followed her directions. ¡°Now slide a bullet into the magazine. Make sure to press it all the way to one side. You will notice it does not fill up entire magazine. This is because the magazine is double-stacked. Double stacked magazines allow the gun to carry more ammo in less space. The next bullet will push down the first bullet and be on the opposite side. Repeat this process until the magazine is full. And hurry, we do not have all day.¡±

    We hurried. I managed to get in all thirty before the professor called out, ¡°Stop!¡± We stopped. ¡°Load weapons!¡± We loaded in the magazines.

    ¡°Now we are going to play a game called ¡®Open Fire/Cease Fire.¡¯ Is similar to a game called ¡®Red Light/Green Light,¡¯¡± Professor Zemylachka said. ¡°You will flip the fire selector switch on your weapon all the way down. That is the semi-automatic position. When I say ¡®Open Fire,¡¯ you will try to hit the spot we were just targeting. When I say ¡®Cease Fire,¡¯ you will stop shooting. Every time you hit the target, you will earn a point. Points earned increase every time you hit the target consecutively. If you miss, all your points get taken away. When you run dry, you are out of the game until next round. Do you understand?¡±

    ¡°Yes, ma¡¯am!¡±

    ¡°Then take aim!¡± The professor paused. Then she yelled, ¡°Fire!¡± A few people began firing. Professor Zemylachka angrily yelled, ¡°Cease fire, cease fire!¡± The people who were firing stopped.

    ¡°You have to listen to my exact words,¡± the professor said angrily. ¡°Let us try this again. Fire!¡±

    That was the kind of thing we could expect from that exercise. I ended up coming in second in each of the five rounds of Open Fire/Cease Fire. Eliza, obviously, came in first.

    When we were told to go and sit back down, I took out my notebook and began taking notes on who went up. Eric and his friends were disturbingly good, for instance. They had adjusted the sights to a much better setting while they were waiting their turn. Ray-Gun even got a point on his first shot.

    They were far from the only ones, though. I mean, I expected the Al-Qaeda people and the other people who had been called up to get their sights sorted pretty soon, but it was a nasty surprise when Richard managed to get a point on his second try.

    Tuesday we did the same thing, but this time with M-16s. Doc was not happy. ¡°Look at all the parts we have to remove!¡± he complained. ¡°And see how we¡¯re doing it over a tarp? That is because if we put them on the ground, the dirt will cause them to jam because this is the A1.¡±

    Cross laughed. ¡°You¡¯re just annoyed because I¡¯ll hit the target the first time.¡±

    Doc laughed. ¡°Oh really? Good luck.¡±

    Cross was true to his word. When he came back with the highest score of his group, he stuck his tongue out at Doc. Doc just glared. None of the rest of his sub-group (we were all in sort of the same group now, but Eric, Ray-Gun, The Monk, MC and Doc were still their own thing) had done anywhere near as well.

    I also noticed that other people did better with the M-16 than the AK. Kyle (AKA Dumbass, AKA, the guy who had turned his back MC and Ray-Gun while waving a knife at Eric,) seemed to be doing better with the M-16. Others like Ricardo and Richard were equally proficient.

    Me, personally? I liked the M-16 a bit better than the AK, once I figured out how to use it. It was lighter, but had much less of a kick. Accuracy-wise, I¡¯m not sure I was a good enough shot to notice a difference. The potential downside, though, was that I was afraid the stock wouldn¡¯t be that good of a thing to club someone with.

    It managed to even impress Doc. When preparing to go out for our run the next morning, Doc grudgingly told me, ¡°I actually like the M-16.¡±

    ¡°Is this the kind of thing I shouldn¡¯t tell Cross?¡±

    Eric laughed. Doc punched him the shoulder, which only made Eric laugh harder. Doc then turned back to me. ¡°I do not care, Killer,¡± he said. Eric made a coughing noise that sounded like ¡°liar.¡± Doc ignored him and said, ¡°The M-16 is actually a very good gun to shoot, but I will always be afraid it will break in combat or that I will lose a piece while cleaning it. I do not have that fear with the AK-47.¡±

    He paused. ¡°If you tell Cross I said any of this, I will stab you in the shower.¡±

    ¡°Understood,¡± I said.

    As usual, I was near the back of the pack with John. At some point, being near the back had become a choice. We could have moved up to above the mid if we really pushed ourselves, I think, but normally, that would have been a bad idea. The fifty percent mark was where you started to get around the scary people. For instance, that was where Eyepatch and his friends hung out. Usually.

    ¡°John,¡± I asked, ¡°do you notice anything different about the people running with us today?¡±

    John looked at me curiously. I jerked my head to the left. He looked and saw Eyepatch and two other Al-Qaeda people matching pace with us. Another three were on the other side. John¡¯s eyes widened. ¡°Fuck,¡± he said.

    ¡°You can drop back or speed up,¡± I said quietly. ¡°They might not be after you.¡±

    ¡°No way,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m staying with you.¡± He smiled. ¡°Besides, Kreiger¡¯s got to be around here somewhere.¡±

    ¡°I overheard some of the drill sergeants talking,¡± I said. ¡°Krieger¡¯s going to be busy with Bai this morning.¡± I hefted the wooden block cut to resemble a rifle that we had just been issued that day. ¡°At least we have these.¡±

    The next few minutes were tense. Every crater could conceivably house another of Eyepatch¡¯s crew. Finally, the gate to the camp was in sight.

    ¡°Let¡¯s do this quickly,¡± I said when we got close enough. We picked up the pace from a steady run to an outright sprint. As we ran, we failed to notice that Eyepatch had slowed down to a leisurely stroll.

    When we got to the gate, about seven people piled out. I was near one side, so they just had to use one of the fake guns to smash me in the sternum. I felt my legs fly out from under me and I landed on my back, struggling for breath. My attacker then rammed the butt of the gun into my face. I was pretty sure that I¡¯d have a black eye if I survived this.

    Meanwhile, John had been able to get one of our attackers before they brought him down. As someone dragged me to my knees to force me into a kneeling position, I saw two people kicking him. Someone familiar watched, a look of terror on his face.

    Before Mubashir could respond, I heard Eyepatch say, ¡°You are not allowed to talk.¡± I turned to look at him. He and the other five that had herded us in to the trap were almost here. He stood in front of me. ¡°You,¡± he said, fixing me with a disturbingly empty stare, ¡°are a dead man.¡±

    ¡°Funny,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯m still breathing.¡± Eyepatch slapped me across the face. ¡°Still not dead,¡± I said. ¡°If your only weapon is bitch-slapping me¡­¡± he slapped me again, ¡°¡­.we¡¯re gonna be here a long time.¡±

    Eyepatch pulled out a knife. ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°now that might make things go a little quicker.¡± I can¡¯t say I was even more terrified because I already as scared as I could possibly be at this point. Also, since things were as bad as they possibly were, and the person holding me still had a very good grip on me, I might as well shoot my mouth off.

    ¡°So, Eyepatch,¡± I asked, ¡°what¡¯s going to happen to John?¡±

    ¡°My name is Salim,¡± Eyepatch said. ¡°And he will be dealt with after we are done with you.¡± Eyepatch then turned to Mubashir, held out the knife, and said something in Arabic.

    Mubashir held up his hands, and refused. Eyepatch stood up and started yelling at Mubashir. ¡°Come on,¡± I said, ¡°you can have your lover¡¯s quarrel later! I don¡¯t want to die of boredom when you¡¯ve got some perfectly good clubs and knives!¡±

    Mubashir and Eyepatch ignored me to focus on their fight. Someone else whacked me in the head with the fake gun. ¡°Shut up, Zionist scum,¡± he said.

    ¡°Come on, you assholes,¡± I said, ¡°you don¡¯t have all day!¡±

    ¡°¡¯E¡¯s right,¡± a Cockney-accented voice called out.

    Everyone turned around. Standing there, head bent down slightly so you couldn¡¯t see her eyes, was Eliza. She was flanked on either side by Oro and Ulfric. ¡°In fact,¡± she said, ¡°time¡¯s pretty much run out.¡±

 1.8: Bring Your Friends

    This was very bad. This was very, very, very bad. From what I understand, in a hostage situation, the ideal is to have the negotiators be calm, rational people who can talk the other person down. If that fails, you want them to be able to be fast and surgical, able to take all the hostage takers out without hurting the hostages.

    Ulfric did not meet either set of requirements. With a normal person, he might be able to intimidate them into surrender. However, if that failed, I wasn¡¯t sure if he¡¯d be able to tell the difference between the people holding me and, well, me.

    Then there was Eliza. She was too much of an unknown factor for my liking. I knew she didn¡¯t enjoy killing. I knew that she also could be extremely brutal when provoked. However, I was unsure what she wanted with me. I also only had a vague feel of her negotiating style. The one time I could claim I saw her negotiate, she had definitely been in control of the situation.

    Here, however, as far as I could tell, no one was in control. One side had hostages. The other side had three nukes. At least people had stopped kicking John. I watched as he tried to get up before someone, a woman, put her foot on his chest and told him to stay down.

    Disturbingly, a crowd had begun to gather in the silence that followed Eliza¡¯s introduction. This was bad because no one likes to back down in front of a crowd. If everyone was going to come out of this intact, people were going to have to make compromises which often times looks like weakness to stupid people.

    Eliza spoke up. ¡°You wanna let my mate go? I¡¯d really appreciate it.¡± She looked up and smiled her normal Cheshire-cat grin. ¡°Besides,¡± she said, ¡°You know you can¡¯t win, Salim. You¡¯ve got what, fourteen half-starved guerrilla soldiers? I¡¯ve got a living legend and Mr. Giggles.¡±

    Ulfric gave his high-pitched giggle again and smiled. To my amazed disappointment, Salim¡¯s gang did not immediately break. Also, I found it weird that my nickname for Ulfric had caught on.

    ¡°If it is the incidental,¡± Eyepatch said reasonably, pointing at John, ¡°I am perfectly fine with letting him go. I have no quarrel with him, only with Nathan.¡±

    Eliza¡¯s smile dropped. ¡°Listen mate,¡± she growled, ¡°I tried bein¡¯ nice, but I actually rather¡­ I actually rather you didn¡¯t kill Nate. Let him go, and I won¡¯t rip ya to bloody little shreds.¡±

    With that, she popped her claws. I could hear the wet crack they made as they pushed her knuckles apart and pierced the skin. They were made of white bone, like well-brushed teeth. Eliza then shifted into the position of a runner. ¡°You¡¯ve got five seconds.¡±

    ¡°Wait!¡± I said. Everyone stopped and looked at me. ¡°Now, maybe it isn¡¯t my place to speak up¡­¡±

    ¡°It isn¡¯t,¡± Salim said.

    ¡°But you haven¡¯t even made one of those ridiculous offers for my safety!¡± I said excitedly. ¡°I mean, look at the three people you¡¯ve got right there. Now, I know you guys are willing to throw your lives away¡­¡± one of Salim¡¯s minions yelled something at me. I ignored him and continued anyway. ¡°¡­but why waste all your lives on me when you could get something from them? I mean, these guys are accomplished killers. Ulfric alone could probably kill all of you.¡±

    I turned to Eliza. ¡°I mean, surely there¡¯s some deal you two could come to, at least temporarily.¡± I turned between both of them. ¡°I mean neither of you guys like those ISIS bastards, right?¡± They were both nodding, like what I said was making sense.

    ¡°Interesting offer,¡± Salim said, ¡°But you are just stalling for time.¡± I noticed something strange. The entire time I had been talking, Salim had been glancing at the crowd. I wondered why.

    ¡°Salim,¡± I said nervously, ¡°you haven¡¯t made a deal with ISIS, have you?¡± Salim smiled nastily. ¡°And you¡¯re stalling for time, too.¡± Salim¡¯s smile faded a bit. I turned back towards Eliza to yell, ¡°They¡¯re behind you!¡±

    Salim yelled out something in Arabic, but his reinforcements had already been moving. Five people jumped onto Ulfric and another two began to run at Oro. Both were fast on the draw. Oro pulled out two knives and threw one at one of her attackers. Then she stabbed the other attacker in the jugular and twisted, simultaneously taking their knife. Ulfric clotheslined three of his opponents, then grabbed the arm of a knife-wielding opponent and pulled. The fifth, however, climbed up onto Ulfric¡¯s neck and hung on for dear life. Eliza used the opening to charge.

    She was stopped by a rush of six Al-Qaeda grunts. Salim smiled nastily. ¡°Your friends failed,¡± he said. He then stabbed me in the chest.

    I opened my eyes. I hadn¡¯t even realized I had closed them. A quick look around and it seemed like some other people had joined on my side. Also, three of the Al-Qaeda guys sent to intercept Eliza were on the ground, bleeding from the stomach and face. Two more came in to support the remaining three, the rest moved to stop Ulfric and the people who had moved to support Oro. However, that wasn¡¯t what was important. I wasn¡¯t bleeding! The vest had stopped it somewhat, though I could feel a bruise starting to form.

    ¡°Ha!¡± I said. ¡°You suck!¡±

    I regretted that decision immediately. A look of hatred passed over Salim¡¯s face and he began to stab me repeatedly. The only good thing about his new-found rage was that he kept stabbing me in my vest¡¯s ceramic plates, not realizing that stabbing there with his switchblade was like shooting a tank with a .22. Suddenly, the two people who had pinned me let go. I could see them run off to deal with something, but I didn¡¯t care. Instead, I used the opportunity to grab a chunk of dirt and mud to fling it into Salim¡¯s face.

    It hit him in his good eye. He stumbled back, and I got to my feet. My feet must have fallen asleep because by the time I had done this he had wiped his face.

    I ran at him but he countered by stabbing me in the side of the head, then pulling a second knife to stab me in the stomach. This stab got me right in the stomach. Salim then pushed the knife forwards and upwards, causing a shooting pain in me. I could also swear he was twisting the knife as he went.

    I gave him a shove and staggered backwards, blood dripping out through the wound. Shoving Salim off probably was a mistake as that had created a much larger hole. Salim smiled triumphantly, his face twisted by hate and his hand stained with my blood. I staggered back and fell, one hand trying to staunch the blood, the other raising to protect my body.

    That¡¯s when we heard the howl. We both looked for the wolf. Instead we saw Eliza. The seven Al-Qaeda members who had tried to stop her were on the ground in front of her. One or two were lucky and had died quickly from their throats being slashed or hearts stabbed. Some were bleeding from multiple cuts and stabs on their legs, others were dying slowly from stabs to the gut. One poor girl, I think the one who had restrained John, was desperately trying to keep her intestines from falling out.

    Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.

    Eliza herself was a sight to behold. She was drenched in blood. While I guessed most of it was from her mutilating her¡­ I suppose at this point it would be fair to call them her victims, some of it was hers. After all, she had part of an ear missing, an eye was swelling shut, and her nose appeared to be broken. One of her claws was also snapped off, as well. However, as I watched she began to crouch down, like a wolf about to pounce. Her face was contorted into an expression of animal fury.

    Salim turned around to face Eliza. Instead of looking worried, he laughed and shouted a challenge in Arabic. Or maybe it was English. I was starting to lose consciousness and black out due to blood loss. You know, because of being stabbed in the stomach. Oddly enough, I thought I heard a rumbling in the distance.

    With a wolf-like growl, Eliza charged. They exchanged blows as quick as lightning, Salim blocking with his knives, Eliza furiously slashing and stabbing with her claws, both their faces contorted with rage and pain.

    From the start it was obvious Salim would lose. It became even more obvious when Eliza slashed his face, cutting his eyepatch off and shredding that side of his face. If this were a movie, Eliza would have paused, giving Salim time to gain a second wind. Instead she swept his feet, knocking him to the floor.

    Before she could press this advantage, Salim kicked her in the stomach. She was staggered, but it didn¡¯t give Salim anywhere near enough time. Eliza lunged as Salim struggled to get up.

    Then something large sailed through the air to hit Eliza in the chest. Then, with a chest-rattling explosing, my world turned white. I was blind and bleeding, which made it somewhat disconcerting when people started to try moving my hands from my stab wounds. I could also feel the ground shake with explosions.

    Oh God, I thought, this is the end of the world.

    Eventually, my hearing and vision returned. I saw that the people trying to get me to move my hands were Campus Security Guards wearing heavy armor and gas masks. ¡°Sorry,¡± I said.

    ¡°That¡¯s ok,¡± one of them said, ¡°You didn¡¯t punch us, so that was nice.¡±

    In the camp, the chaos was becoming brutally controlled. Where there had once been a crowd was now a billowing cloud of smoke. Yells, screams, chest-rattling thumps, gunshots, and bright flashes of light constantly came from the cloud, but the only people who exited were Campus Security Guards in riot gear and gas masks dragging hog-tied students. I noticed Ulfric was on his knees far away from the ruckus with several guards standing about ten paces to the rear of him, guns trained on him.

    Another thing I noticed, which was much scarier, was that my vision was starting to blur. Also, I was pretty sure I should be in a lot more pain then I was currently in and that the yells and gunfire should be louder. ¡°Hey guys,¡± I asked as the people working on me began to stuff gauze on my wounds, ¡°how bad is it?¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t know,¡± one of them said. ¡°You feeling funny, hermano?¡±

    ¡°Everything¡¯s getting echo-y and blurry,¡± I said.

    The guy opened his walkie-talkie. ¡°This is Gravedigger 2 to Gravedigger Actual. We got a possible immediate here. Did you scoop up that expectant yet?¡±

    ¡°Ja,¡± a voice on the other end said, ¡°she¡¯s just about to head out, actually. Hurry up with your immediate, though. Those Mengele wannabes say they want her fresh.¡±

    ¡°Good news, man,¡± the medic said, ¡°You¡¯re going to be alright. We just gotta put you on a stretcher and get you to the ambulance, ok?¡±

    ¡°Sounds good,¡± I said. ¡°Why aren¡¯t you taking off my vest?¡±

    The other medic spoke up. I suddenly realized that she was a she. Also, possibly from India. ¡°Standard procedure. We do not want to take off your vest only to find out it was the only thing keeping your insides from spilling out.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said as they began to move me onto a stretcher. ¡°Can I go to sleep?¡± The two medics exchanged worried looks. ¡°Guess that¡¯s a no.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± the male medic said, ¡°we don¡¯t want you sleeping yet, buddy.¡±

    They carried me out. As they did so, I noticed the vehicles that they had come in. First there was a row of some strange mix of fire truck, snow plow, and Bearcat (you know, those armored cars SWAT use whenever they want to play soldier.) There were only three of them, and the next few rows were the more traditional, lower-to-the-ground paddy wagons, you know, the kind that look more like delivery vans than armored cars. There were also a few two-and-a-half ton trucks as well. All three types were painted black with the blue-and-white NIU Campus Security logo.

    Finally, we got to the rear. Ambulances (both normal versions and Bearcats modified to be ambulances) were parked there. A driver in one of the Bearcat Ambulances leaned out and said, ¡°Put him in here!¡±

    When they got me into the Bearbulance, I could see why they used it. Normal ambulances can probably only carry one or two patients. This could fit four patients, plus the medical staff required to fix them. In this case, I judged the staff to be one or two professors from the medical program and a bunch of students.

    ¡°How is the expectant?¡± asked the female guard.

    ¡°The experimental,¡± one of the professors growled, ¡°needs to move soon or our procedure won¡¯t help her.¡± Since I was being placed right next to the other patient, I could see that it was the girl Eliza had eviscerated. She was unconscious and hooked up to all sorts of gadgets.

    ¡°I apologize for using standard terminology,¡± the guard said sarcastically as some of the students began hooking stuff up to me. They would occasionally look up, because the fight between the security guard and the professor was getting good.

    I, on the other hand, much as I wanted to listen to what they were saying, was starting to black out. I mumbled something along the lines of ¡°I can¡¯t hear you and I¡¯m really tired.¡±

    Instantly, there was a response. One of the students working on me yelled something and some of them began to gather around me. The two guard/medics quickly got out, with one of the doctors shooing them out. People kept trying to talk to me, or shouting to each other. I could feel the Bearbulance start to move as well.

    I didn¡¯t care. I was tired. I just wanted to go to sleep.

    So I did.

 1.9: Until the Seven are Supreme

    For some reason, I was in a red-and-black sailor uniform. Not the military kind. That would be too normal, apparently. No, it was the kind of uniform a Japanese school girl wears, albeit a little more midriff-bearing than usual.

    ¡°What the fuck am I wearing?¡± I asked muzzily. It was a really good question. After all, I am a dude. If the beard and the flat chest wasn¡¯t enough, the underwear was luckily tight enough to hide¡­ other evidence, as well as be really uncomfortable. To be on the safe side, I quickly covered my crotch with my hands.

    ¡°Jacobs-san!¡± a perky voice called out. I looked up. Coming down from the sky was a woman dressed like a magical girl. Her color appeared to be blue. ¡°You have been chosen to become the next Sailor Red!¡±

    ¡°¡­What?¡±

    ¡°It is a great honor Jacobs-san!¡± the girl said as she landed down in front of me, her stiletto heels clacking on the ground. ¡°The Red Uniform has chosen you to fight evil.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± I said, completely deadpan, ¡°this is all so sudden.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s going to get faster! Cutie transformation red!¡± As soon as the strange woman said this (I keep saying woman, but she had to be around fifteen) the red schoolgirl uniform flew off and re-arranged itself into something very skimpy.

    ¡°You know,¡± I said, my voice a little higher pitched than usual due to the female-oriented G-string, ¡°this is really not ideal.¡± I was now concerned that my hands were not covering my crotchal region well enough. It was made all the harder trying to balance on seven-inch heels.

    ¡°You¡¯re right,¡± she said. She then snapped her fingers. My body started to change. My beard, armpit, chest, and¡­ other hair started to fall out. The hair on the top of my head started to grow, however. Parts of me, like my chest, were starting to expand. Other parts¡­

    ¡°You unbelievable bastard,¡± I said, my voice changing for different reasons. ¡°You bitch! You monster! Give me back my penis!¡±

    At this, a distant laugh echoed. ¡°It¡¯s not funny!¡± I yelled, my voice now pretty much female, ¡°Now give me back my penis!¡±

    The laughing got louder. The magical girl said, ¡°No, Jacobs-san, we have to stop Gingertron!¡±

    ¡°Fuck that,¡± I said, crossing my arms. This was harder to do than normal, considering that my new lady parts were rather cumbersome. ¡°Give me back my penis and get me some sensible clothing, and I might consider helping you.¡±

    ¡°Oh, suck it up!¡± the magical girl said, ¡°Look at what I¡¯m wearing!¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a lot more that what I¡¯m wearing! Now, would you kindly GIVE ME BACK MY FUCKING PENIS! I HAVEN¡¯T EVEN GOT A CHANCE TO¡­¡±

    As I yelled, the scene began to fade away, and the laughter increased. I realized that the reason it was fading away was because I was opening my eyes. I was really in a hospital room, lying on a bed with a needle hooked into my arm. I was right next to a window. Through it, I could see the sun rising.

    However, that wasn¡¯t the important part. What was important was who was in the bed directly in front of me, laughing her head off. It was, of course, Eliza.

    ¡°So you must be the Gingertron,¡± I said before I could stop myself. Eliza began to laugh even harder. At least she didn¡¯t take offense to it. I looked around. There were six beds, three on Eliza¡¯s side, three on mine. Eliza¡¯s side seemed to be the girl¡¯s side as Bai was in the middle and Oro was closest to the door. Oro was completely asleep, but Bai was sitting up, pretending to study the various medical equipment. It would have been convincing if the medical equipment was on or her face wasn¡¯t bright red.

    On my side, John had jammed a pillow over his head. It was hard to tell because he was on the far side of the room. Luckily he gave a clue to his identity by muttering something.

    ¡°Oh good,¡± I said, ¡°Eric¡¯s not here.¡±

    What I didn¡¯t realize was that the walls between the beds near the door were indented to have two bathrooms, and that Eric was in one of them. He burst out, bare-chested with a few bandages on his arms and head and some toilet paper stuck to his foot. As if this wasn¡¯t funny enough, he then tripped. He then stood up and struck a super hero pose, legs spread apart, hands on his hips and his head turned at a dramatic angle.

    ¡°Did someone ask for The Entertainer?¡± he asked in a deep, commanding voice. I couldn¡¯t help it. I wasn¡¯t the only one. Eliza guffawed, and Bai giggled. Oro, however, just stared at him.

    ¡°Laugh all you want, citizens,¡± Eric said, as he began to march down the aisle, ¡°But I am here to help all in need.¡±

    As he passed John, though, John spoke up, saying something that sounded like ¡°Watashi wa anata no subete o korosu tsumorida¡±

    Eric gave us all a quizical look. ¡°Was that even a language?¡± he asked.

    ¡°It wasn¡¯t Chinese,¡± Bai said. She was pretending not to look at me or Eric¡¯s muscular chest, but failing to be convincing. Or maybe she was pretending that she pretending not to look just to be coy, I don¡¯t know. I¡¯m terrible at girls and I¡¯m terrible at spies, and Bai was quite possibly both.

    Eric continued marching down the aisle, doing his caricature of a superhero walk. ¡°Anyway,¡± he said, ¡°why would you not want the aid of The Entertainer, world¡¯s greatest super hero?¡± Man, was he hamming it up.

    ¡°How much of my, uh, sleep talking did you guys hear?¡± I asked nervously.

    ¡°Ever since y¡¯got into the ward, Nate,¡± Eliza said.

    ¡°Wait,¡± I said, suddenly horrified, ¡°I¡¯ve been talking in my sleep for how long?¡±

    ¡°About ten hours and three minutes at varying intervals,¡± Bai said. ¡°I found it was very¡­¡±

    ¡°Erotic?¡± Eliza asked, her Cheshire-cat grin now turned towards Bai.

    Bai glared at her. ¡°I would prefer,¡± she said, ¡°that you not mention things like that. Otherwise, we will test out exactly how well your healing factor works.¡± Eliza and Eric just laughed.

    ¡°Look,¡± I said, ¡°can we just¡­ you know, forget about this?¡±

    ¡°I cannot,¡± Oro said. ¡°I remember every single moment of my life since I was two.¡±

    ¡°Not talking about this would be just as ideal,¡± I said amiably. ¡°I mean, don¡¯t you want to forget what I¡¯ve been saying all night?¡±

    No one said anything, but I could read their faces clearly. Eliza and Eric were smiling like they had some stories that they could tell for the rest of their lives. Bai just kept blushing and trying not to look at me. Oro just looked bored.

    Then, suddenly, John yelled out, ¡°Watashi wa watashi no kioku kara sore o massh¨­ suru koto wa dekimasen!¡± We all turned to look at him.

    ¡°See,¡± I said, ¡°John didn¡¯t think it was worth remembering!¡± I looked down at my chest. ¡°Does me not having a shirt have something to do with the stab wound I got?¡± I quickly pulled the covers up.

    ¡°Think they forgot,¡± Eric said, shrugging a bit.

    ¡°Anyway,¡± Eliza said, ¡°It¡¯s not like any of you need, per se.¡±

    Before I could think up a witty retort, Mary walked in, pushing a cart. ¡°Glad to see you¡¯re all up,¡± she said. ¡°Now, how are we feeling?¡±

    I prodded the bandages where I had been stabbed. ¡°Surprisingly fine,¡± I said. ¡°This healed really fast.¡± Everyone except Eliza and John voiced their agreement.

    ¡°First off,¡± Mary said, ¡°according to my¡­ according to the inventor, the surgical glue hasn¡¯t healed you.¡± Here she gritted her teeth. ¡°According to the people in charge, you should be back at the Freshman barracks later today.¡±

    ¡°Oh, speaking of the inventor,¡± I said, ¡°how¡¯s May doing?¡±

    Mary looked at me for a moment, then said, ¡°Oh, yeah! You¡¯re her first patient. Yeah, May¡¯s¡­ probably madder than I am at the moment. Apart from that, she¡¯s doing fine. Want me to say hi for you?¡±

    ¡°Certainly,¡± I said.

    Eliza frowned. ¡°¡¯Oo¡¯s this May person? She sounds like a Double-A from the med school.¡±

    ¡°What is a Double-A?¡± Eric asked.

    This was actually something I knew. ¡°Double-As,¡± I said, ¡°are basically people who already know a lot about whatever field they¡¯re studying, or learn really quick. Balancing the fact that she¡¯s a sophomore doing her own research and this school is, well, this school, May might be a Double-A, or she might not.¡±

    ¡°So,¡± Eliza asked, ¡°did this magic glue save any of¡­ of me victims?¡± She was pretending to be nonchalant, but she seemed concerned.

    ¡°Most of them,¡± Mary said. ¡°We can¡¯t really save the ones whose throats you cut.¡±

    ¡°What about¡­¡± Eliza asked hesitantly, ¡°the girl ¡®oo was alive? And ¡®oo prob¡¯ly wished she wasn¡¯t?¡± I winced.

    ¡°You mean the one whose guts you spilled out?¡± Eric asked.

    ¡°Yes, you insensitive bastard,¡± Eliza said, shooting Eric a murderous look, ¡°that bloody one.¡±

    ¡°She¡¯ll make it,¡± Mary said coldly. ¡°At least you aren¡¯t Ulfric.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± I said, trying to defuse the situation, ¡°I don¡¯t think I got a shirt. Do you know where I can get some?¡±

    Mary said, ¡°Don¡¯t bother yet.¡± She booted up a laptop on the cart, then said, ¡°stand here.¡± I did as I was told. I must have seemed a bit nervous because Eliza giggled a bit at me.

    ¡°Now,¡± Mary said, handing me a metal plate, ¡°I want you to take this plate and hold it behind your back.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said. When I did, Mary took a small rod connected to the laptop by a USB and began to run it over my stomach. ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Battlefield ultrasound,¡± Mary said. ¡°It¡¯s a quick way of seeing if there¡¯s anything wrong with you internally.¡±

    ¡°That is actually really cool,¡± I said.

    ¡°There are some drawbacks,¡± Mary said. ¡°It needs a hard, conductive surface, otherwise the sound waves don¡¯t echo back right. Also, in its current state, we can¡¯t really hook it up to tablets. Part of this is how processor-intensive doing this imaging in real-time is, the other part is that a lot of tablets don¡¯t have ports that could handle the data it sends. Also, its battery life is something like fifteen minutes.¡±

    ¡°Couldn¡¯t you just do it wirelessly?¡± John asked groggily. While I wasn¡¯t paying attention, he had sat up. He yawned and rubbed his eyes.

    ¡°Not sure,¡± Mary said. ¡°I¡¯d have to ask the guys who made this. They¡¯re seniors, so I don¡¯t really know them.¡±

    ¡°Might have something to do with how easy it is to jam a signal,¡± I said. ¡°If something¡¯s blocking communication, it would block these guys as well. Heck, if they¡¯re sending a lot of data, they could end up jamming each other if you get enough of them.¡±

    Mary shrugged. ¡°That could be, I¡¯m not really a tech person. Anyway, you¡¯re done.¡±

    ¡°That was fast,¡± I said.

    ¡°That was just the recording,¡± Mary said. ¡°Now someone has to spend a few hours looking at your stab wounds. By the way, how¡¯s that doing?¡±

    ¡°I feel like normal,¡± I said, ¡°your sister¡¯s surgical glue really works.¡±

    ¡°For doing stuff like standing up, yeah,¡± Mary said. ¡°She¡¯s not so sure you¡¯re in combat shape yet. Professor Zemylachka, however, wants to avoid any repeaters.¡± She turned to John. ¡°Your turn.¡±

    ¡°Why am I being checked?¡± John asked.

    ¡°You got kicked a heck of a lot,¡± Mary said. ¡°We want to make sure that there¡¯s no internal bleeding. Also, try not to hit your head for a couple of months.¡±

    ¡°Ah,¡± John said, looking a little scared. ¡°Here¡¯s hoping I live, then.¡± I didn¡¯t blame him. I¡¯m not a doctor, but I know enough to be scared by concepts like ¡°internal bleeding¡± and ¡°second impact syndrome.¡±

    Mary did a much more complete scan of Joh than she did of me. I only had my stomach scanned. John had his stomach, ribcage, neck, and head scanned. She also did both sides of him. After that was done, she said, ¡°Ok, that¡¯s done. Shirts are in the drawers behind your bed. Campus Security should come to escort you guys back to Freshman camp in the evening. In the meantime, you¡¯ll probably be getting actual food for breakfast. If you¡¯re bored we have satellite and Campus TV. The remote for the TV is on your bed¡¯s arm rest.¡±

    She left, and we began to turn to our own devices. We decided to watch the TV as a group. Eric and I both wanted to see if they had Cartoon Network or Nickolodeon, John wanted to go to sleep, and Bai and Oro didn¡¯t seem to care.

    Eliza on the other hand, wanted to try the Campus channels. ¡°Come on,¡± she said when I asked why, ¡°Don¡¯t you want to learn more about this ruddy island?¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said. ¡°Why not?¡±

    ¡°Come on!¡± Eric said, ¡°I thought we were going to see if Dexter¡¯s lab was on!¡±

    The people interested at the moment (me and Eric) gathered around Eliza¡¯s TV. I, personally, stopped to put on a shirt. Eliza switched on the TV. It came on to the guide channel of the local channels.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°that¡¯s a lot of TV.¡± Right on the splash page, the guide page bragged that there were fifty-five channels translated into up to seven languages each. The three most common languages appeared to be Arabic, Spanish, and English. After a bit of surfing, we figured out that if you wanted to get a specific channel in English, say channel 50, you would enter 50.3 on the remote. Not all channels were in all languages, and some were in only one. Those wouldn¡¯t have a decimal place after them.

    However, it was hard to keep track because Eliza kept flipping through the channels. ¡°Come on,¡± I whined, ¡°That AniPunk channel looked interesting. Can we go back to it?¡±

    ¡°No.¡± Eliza said.

    ¡°Seriously?¡± Eric asked. ¡°They were playing Spongebob!¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ve been in camp with no connection to the outside world,¡± Eliza said quietly, concentrating on what was on the TV instead of us. ¡°We don¡¯t even know what¡¯s goin¡¯ on ¡®ere on the main campus and we run into it every damn day. Doesn¡¯t that disturb you? At least a bit?¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re right,¡± I said.

    ¡°Or you would be,¡± Eric said, ¡°if that was not an episode of Spongebob I had never seen before.¡±

    Eliza shot him a look, then turned back to the TV. Finally, we got to a news station in English.

    ¡°¡­sors Zemylachka and Blunt have announced the decided punishment for the rule breakers at the BTF,¡± a female student with a British accent was saying. A picture of the camp appeared behind her. ¡°As usual,¡± she said, ¡°Quarantine is in effect for the BTF and students learning there. However, the incident has made quarantine restrictions even tighter. Early yesterday morning, a group of students started an unauthorized fight, resulting in multiple deaths and injuries.¡±

    ¡°¡®Unauthorized fight?¡¯¡± I asked incredulously. ¡°That¡¯s what they¡¯re fucking calling this?¡±

    ¡°Calm down,¡± Eliza said. ¡°You knew what you were getting into.¡±

    ¡°I had an idea,¡± I spat. ¡°I didn¡¯t know how bad it would be. Seriously, over five hundred people have died this semester alone. This isn¡¯t an education, it¡¯s a fucking concentration camp.¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± Eric said, pointing to the TV, ¡°listen.¡±

    Professor Zemylachka was now standing in front of the Administration Building, an old Gothic mansion-like structure. I didn¡¯t like the look of rage on her face. She was speaking in Russian, but the words were being translated via subtitles.

    ¡°This incident,¡± the subtitles said, ¡°is unacceptable. University law prevents me from terminating or expelling so soon after Fight Night, but I am still allowed other methods of punishment. The safety of those in NIU is maintained and the students injured will move back to camp soon.Rest assured, though, that I will make sure they will know that their actions are unacceptable.¡±

    ¡°Well, that sounds pleasant,¡± I said. ¡°We¡¯re fucked.¡±The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

    ¡°Are we?¡± Eliza said. ¡°She might treat us fair.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± I asked. ¡°She runs a concentration camp. These things are inherently unfair. She could end up doing that thing really stupid teachers do where they give both parties the same punishment, even though one person¡¯s the bully and another¡¯s the victim who just fought back for a change. Seriously, fuck her.¡±

    ¡°You do not seem to like her,¡± Eric said.

    ¡°I really fucking don¡¯t,¡± I said. ¡°Can we change the channel before I punch something?¡±

    Eliza nodded. After a few minutes of watching the news, we went back to AniPunk. Spongebob was over, and instead we were watching a Powerpuff Girls-inspired show about scantily-dressed, foul-mouthed angels fighting ghosts.

    ¡°Why are we watching sperm dressed as WWII GIs trying to storm a vagina?¡± I asked.

    ¡°I have no idea,¡± Eliza said.

    ¡°Oh, you¡¯re watching Panty and Stocking?¡± John said. He grabbed a shirt and ran over. ¡°It¡¯s a friggin¡¯ amazing show.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s more room by my bed,¡± Bai said. ¡°I¡¯m watching it, too.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± John said. He seemed a bit disappointed because he knew me and Eric better than Bai. He did try to remedy that, though. I was too busy watching anime and cartoons to really pay attention to him. I did notice he was doing most of the talking.

    However, a few shows later, around lunch, a couple of guards came in. They were dressed in black police officer uniforms and were wearing sunglasses. ¡°Eliza Henderson, Oro Okoro, Feng Bai, Nathan Jacobs?¡± We each responded when our names were called. ¡°Please come with us.¡±

    ¡°What is it?¡± I asked suspiciously.

    ¡°NIU owes you lunch,¡± one of them said. She had an Indian accent. That¡¯s when it clicked.

    ¡°Oh, it¡¯s you two!¡± I said, heading towards them. I turned to the other people in the room. ¡°These guys saved my life. Well, I suppose the medical staff here were part of the process as well, but¡­¡±

    ¡°You were kind of out cold when they saved you,¡± the male one said. I noticed his nametag said Mendez.

    We walked out into the hallway. I noticed Eliza and Bai stuck close to each other. We were in a hallway with several doors leading to what I assumed were other rooms on either side. On one end, there was a heavy steel door. On the other, there was a set of double doors which I assumed led out to some sort of foyer.

    ¡°Follow us, please,¡± the other officer said. Her nametag read Gupta.

    We did as instructed. Mendez and Gupta lead us past the double doors and into the lobby area. The lobby area, I noticed, was not very busy at all. We seemed to be on the end of a square building, with an identical hallway directly across from the one we just left. I noticed each hallway had heavy metal blast doors that could seal them off. We must have either been in an infectious disease ward or a ward for very dangerous people. I personally guessed the former.

    The lobby itself included a reception desk and some seats. Two Campus Security Guards in body armor stood by the door leading out, and a receptionist at the desk. The seats were empty. Eliza gave one a subtle shove while making eye contact with me. It didn¡¯t budge. They looked comfy, though.

    ¡°Well, this group looks more cooperative!¡± the receptionist said. She looked like she could have been a student. She had an accent that I couldn¡¯t quite place.

    ¡°Was Trollbjorn in it?¡± Mendez asked.

    ¡°Who?¡± the receptionist asked.

    ¡°They bring him out later,¡± one of the fully-armored guards said. She spoke with a Russian accent and was carrying a SCAR-H with underbarrel automatic shotgun.

    ¡°Who¡¯s Ulfric?¡± the receptionist asked.

    ¡°¡¯E¡¯s the scariest bastard you¡¯ll ever see,¡± Eliza said just before we walked out. I could tell that she was flashing her trademark grin.

    ¡°You really want to see the look on that girl¡¯s face when they lead out Ulfric, don¡¯t you?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Don¡¯t you?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°Maybe,¡± I said, ¡°but you have a tendency to troll everyone.¡±

    ¡°What does that mean?¡± Bai asked. ¡°To troll people?¡±

    I jumped. This was probably the first time in an hour Bai had spoken.

    ¡°¡¯S when you hide under a bridge and grab people by their ankles,¡± Eliza said casually.

    ¡°Actually,¡± I said, ¡°its saying or doing something that you don¡¯t necessarily believe is right, but you think will get an amusing reaction out of people.¡±

    We came into another lobby. This one had some elevators. It also seemed a bit busier with people in scrubs waiting around reading magazines. One of them dinged open.

    ¡°Into the elevator, billy-goats!¡± Gupta said. Eliza, Mendez and I chuckled. Bai looked confused. We got in, with our escorts making sure their backs weren¡¯t to us. They didn¡¯t seem too worried, but I guess they preferred to play it safe. I knew for a fact that Eliza could make them very sorry, and I suspected that Bai and Oro were at least as dangerous.

    The elevator dinged again. The doors opened to a massive lobby, about two stories high. Instead of going out the front door, however, we went in the opposite direction. We eventually left via a loading dock.

    That led us into an alley way. Across that was another loading dock, with two Campus Security Officers in patrol uniforms standing guard. I noticed that all of them wore sunglasses. The two groups exchanged friendly greetings, then the second pair ushered us inside.

    We were in what appeared to be the back room of a restaurant, the kind reserved for private parties. There were several tables and booths. Sitting at one of the booths were Ricardo and Li, dressed in combat fatigues. Ricardo looked bored. Li was just sullen.

    ¡°Hola, amigos!¡± Ricardo said, ¡°How are guys doing?¡±

    ¡°Really good, considering I was stabbed in the stomach,¡± I said.

    ¡°Yeah, man,¡± Ricardo said. ¡°Good job pulling through.¡±

    Li scoffed. ¡°I hardly think,¡± he said, ¡°that his effort had anything to do with his recovery. Only an idiot would believe he had anything to do with it.¡±

    ¡°What my brother means,¡± Bai quickly said, somewhat apologetic, ¡°is that with the technology here, there is little likelihood he could die.¡± She then added, a little coldly, ¡°At least, that better have been what he meant.¡±

    Ricardo seemed to debate something internally, then decided to drop the subject. ¡°That¡¯s cool,¡± he said, ¡°anyway, have a seat. We¡¯re getting that meal they promised!¡±

    Bai quickly moved to sit next to her brother, then Oro sat next to her. It seemed a little rehearsed. I sat down next to Ricardo. Eliza then sat next to me, blocking my escape. Now it made sense. I couldn¡¯t prove it, though. Even the nod she gave Oro could have been misread. Or imagined.

    ¡°So it seems everyone¡¯s here,¡± Ricardo said.

    ¡°Almost,¡± Eliza said. ¡°The most enthusiastic potential member is still not ¡®ere yet.¡±

    Everyone looked at Eliza in shock. ¡°You did not¡­¡± Oro said. ¡°You cannot seriously think you can control him.¡±

    ¡°What are we talking about?¡± I asked. Whatever this was about, it couldn¡¯t be going anywhere good, especially if the missing person was who I thought it was.

    ¡°If I was looking for people to control,¡± Eliza said testily, ¡°I¡¯d¡¯ve never invited any one of you lot. We¡¯d be equals. In fact, if anyone¡¯d lead, I¡¯d do my damndest to get out of it.¡±

    ¡°Why are we inviting¡­ him?¡± Ricardo asked, looking over his shoulder. ¡°Even if you¡¯re not making an army, he¡¯s too much of a liability. Hell, he''s too much of a risk to have at a dinner party.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t see why we¡¯re arguing. My sister can put him down if he gets out of line¡± Li said. ¡°She¡¯s done it before, and that was with a broken leg.¡±

    ¡°The only reason I won,¡± Bai said, ¡°was because I had surprise on my side. He is smart, and won¡¯t fall for it again.¡± She paused. ¡°That being said, I think he would be a good addition, if only for the fact that I wouldn¡¯t want him to feel¡­¡±

    ¡°Snubbed?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°I suppose,¡± Bai said, ¡°Forgive me, but I do not know that word.¡±

    ¡°Uh, guys,¡± I said, ¡°what are we inviting Ulfric to?¡±

    ¡°An unofficial school club.¡± We turned around. Ulfric had somehow managed to come in and close the door without us noticing. That seemed to be a common ability among scary people. He also seemed to be quoting Eliza, down to imitating her accent.

    ¡°If you don¡¯t want to talk to El Diablo,¡± Ricardo said, ¡°don¡¯t say his name.¡± I was honestly a little glad Ulfric had shown up. I wasn¡¯t sure how long I¡¯d have to wait to get answers otherwise.

    Everyone eyed him warily as he grabbed a chair and sat down at the head of the table. When he was seated, Eliza said, ¡°Good, now everyone¡¯s here. We can start.¡±

    Then a door opened noisily. In walked a blonde woman built like a model. ¡°Hallo,¡± she said, ¡°I am Freya und I will be your waitress today. Do not worry, the school is paying for your meal.¡± She then passed out the menus to us. We all thanked her politely.

    ¡°She¡¯ll be back in a minute, won¡¯t she?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said.

    ¡°Might want to bring you up to speed when she leaves to get our grub. Apart from Li, you¡¯re the only one¡¯a us I haven¡¯t told, and I¡¯m sure Bai¡¯s informed him.¡± Eliza said, glancing at Li for confirmation. When he nodded, she continued on. ¡°Anyway, let¡¯s look at what they¡¯re serving. Seems to be yank-style.¡±

    I opened it up and flipped through it. There was so much good stuff: burgers, steaks, noodles, pizzas, sandwiches and even ribs.

    ¡°What¡¯re ¡®ese waffle fries then?¡± Eliza asked. Everyone but me shrugged.

    ¡°You don¡¯t know what waffle fries are?¡± I asked. ¡°You should try them. They¡¯re kind of like normal French fries, but spicier and fused together in the shape of a hashtag. They¡¯re pretty much the king of fries.¡±

    ¡°How many things do Americans cover in cheese and bacon?¡± Li asked. ¡°Even some of the salads are covered in cheese and bacon!¡±

    Ricardo suddenly asked, ¡°So apart from me, how many of you guys have eaten American food before? I mean, like at an actual American restaurant.¡± I raised my hand. No one else did, but Ulfric giggled which could have meant anything. Ricardo smiled.

    The waitress walked back in. ¡°So, are we ready to order?¡± Everyone nodded. ¡°Ok, you first, big man,¡± she said to Ulfric. ¡°What would you like?¡±

    We all ordered. Ulfric somehow managed to communicate he wanted two Double Back-Home Burgers (a double burger with cheese, bacon and onion rings.) There was a bit of a tense moment when he was told he couldn¡¯t have beer, but he just changed it to water. Oro ordered a salad, Bai and Li both ordered Italian sausages with fries and a side salad, Eliza ordered Fish and Chips (technically Fish and Waffle Fries) and clam chowder, Ricardo, through fits of barely suppressed laughter, ordered a plain burger, and I ordered a rack of ribs with a double side of waffle fries. I also had a fancy bottle of root beer, making me the only person to have something other than water to drink.

    ¡°So,¡± Eliza said, once the waitress was gone, ¡°I suppose it¡¯s only fair that I bring Nate ¡®ere up to speed.¡±

    ¡°You have my attention,¡± I said. At this point, my curiosity was killing me. Whatever it was, I was pretty sure that I should (and would) turn it down. Ulfric, Eliza and Bai scared the crap out of me, and I was pretty sure I should be scared of the others as well. However, I didn¡¯t want to appear rude. Better listen first, find some excuse not to join, then spend the rest of my college career avoiding every single one of these people.

    Li then immediately gave me my excuse. As soon as I was done talking, he slammed his fist down on the table. ¡°Why are we considering him?¡± he asked. ¡°We know he is a spy! How do we know he won¡¯t report on our conversations?¡±

    Bai nodded at this, Eliza looked¡­ displeased. But before I could take the opportunity, Ricardo spoke up. ¡°Man,¡± he said, ¡°this guy, this guy I think I¡¯d trust more than any of you guys.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± Oro asked. I couldn¡¯t tell if she was skeptical or interested. Whereas Bai was reserved and Ulfric was¡­ unwell, Oro was downright unreadable.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Ricardo said. ¡°this guy I trust because I know he¡¯s a spy. Just by saying that, he knows that we know, and that if he snitches on us, we¡¯ll come to gut him. He¡¯s also a shit spy, ¡®cause I had him pegged from day two.¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s still a spy,¡± Li grumbled.

    ¡°Yeah?¡± Ricardo asked. ¡°What are you here for, huh esse? The only way you even hear about this fucking place is if a school employee or alum recommends you. Who recommended you and Hermana, huh? And why did they send you here?¡±

    ¡°Those,¡± Bai said, ¡°are the kinds of questions that gets you killed.¡±

    ¡°See?¡± Ricardo said. ¡°For all I know, you could be spies as well!¡±

    ¡°Enough.¡± It was Oro who spoke. When she was sure we had calmed down, she said, ¡°Let us first hear Eliza¡¯s proposal. Then, after the main course arrives, we will play a game.¡±

    ¡°Thank you Miss Okoro,¡± Eliza said, still a bit angry. ¡°I think that is an excellent idea.¡± She took a deep breath, then continued. ¡°Anyway, this whole idea is sort of a support group. You see, most of us at the mo are in a rather bad spot. At Fight Night, we all made more than a few enemies. Enemies who¡¯ve got access to weapons and training on how to use them. We start work on pistols in a few weeks. If one goes missing, we could be in a right state of bother.¡±

    ¡°Maybe for you,¡± Li said. ¡°I could wrestle it away.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s assuming they pull it on you up close and give you plenty of time to react,¡± I said. ¡°They could easily shoot you in the back from twenty feet away.¡±

    ¡°Or they could pre-cock it before they pull it,¡± Ricardo said, playing with his steak knife, ¡°or they could find some way to spike your food. Personally, I¡¯d stab you in the shower. Much less noise than a gun and easier to get. I could cut your throat before you even realized I was there, make it look like a suicide, then walk out before anyone realized what had happened.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re not helping,¡± Eliza said.

    ¡°Sorry,¡± Ricardo said. ¡°This guy just gets to me.¡±

    ¡°Anyway,¡± Eliza said, ¡°the point is, no matter how good we are, the people we might ruck with are smart, outnumber us, and only have to be lucky once. Nate could probably tell you that better than I. If it hadn¡¯t been for the group ¡®e¡¯d be dead.¡±

    That was true. Eliza, Ulfric, and Oro had saved my life. ¡°Didn¡¯t some of my other friends help?¡± I asked. ¡°I mean, you guys really saved my ass, but you had some help.¡±

    Oro nodded. ¡°A group of people did come in. I believe Eric was the leader. They are quite effective.¡±

    ¡°But they almost didn¡¯t make it,¡± Eliza said. ¡°The more people you¡¯ve got watching your back, the less likely it is to be stabbed.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, but how do I put this without offending all of you¡­¡± I began.

    Ricardo shrugged. ¡°Just tell it like it is, man.¡±

    I took a deep breath then said, ¡°I don¡¯t trust you guys. I know next to nothing about most of you, except that you¡¯re really good at killing people. Then there¡¯s Ulfric. Apart from what you already know, publicly being in an alliance with him would just paint a bigger target on my back. Bai and Li barely even know me, yet they¡¯re convinced I¡¯m a potential threat. Seriously, Bai, the first time I met you, I felt like you were trying to figure out how to kill me and get rid of the evidence.¡±

    ¡°Can you blame me?¡± she asked.

    ¡°No,¡± I said, ¡°but I do think it¡¯s more than a little premature. Then there¡¯s Eliza.¡±

    ¡°What did I do?¡± she asked.

    ¡°There¡¯s the¡­ surveillance.¡± I said. ¡°It¡¯s another set of eyes watching me. To make it worse, I can¡¯t tell whether you¡¯re a friend or foe. With Richard or Salim, I would know. But you¡¯re so hard to pin down. Remember our conversation we had before the award ceremony? That was a good example. You come up from behind me, scaring the shit out of me.¡±

    ¡°The conversation was nice, though, wasn¡¯t it?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°It would have been,¡± I said, ¡°but I wasn¡¯t exactly at ease. I mean, how many people did you kill the night before? I know it was a lot. Then, I made a mistake. I¡¯ll admit, what I said was rude, but you looked like you were going to kill me over it.¡±

    ¡°I wasn¡¯t¡­¡± Eliza said defensively.

    ¡°But I didn¡¯t know that!¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯d like to think that I could join you guys and we¡¯d all be friends and hang out and eat ice cream together and stuff. But I don¡¯t know what your deal is. Until these issues are resolved, until I feel I can deal with you all on a daily basis without getting an ulcer, I want to be as far away from all of you as possible.¡±

    ¡°That,¡± Oro said, ¡°is what my game should address.¡±

    ¡°Also,¡± Eliza said, cagily, ¡°there are ¡­other benefits to this group. I think we all want to know what¡¯s going on ¡®ere. No reason why we can¡¯t share a few tidbits with each other once in a while.¡±

    There. That was why I didn¡¯t trust her. I was sure the same thing could be said about me, but she had the tendency to try and eliminate all possible outcomes until the one she desired remained. She also seemed to be better at it than I was, and I was still unclear what her goals were.

    I was about to explain this when the waitress came back in with the salads, soup, and drinks. ¡°I am sorry,¡± Bai said, her eyes wide, ¡°but we ordered the side salad, not the main course size.¡±

    ¡°That is the side salad,¡± the waitress said. She then set down Oro¡¯s salad. ¡°This is the main course size.¡± Oro¡¯s eyes widened.

    ¡°It¡¯s not that big,¡± I said, pointing at Oro¡¯s salad. ¡°Are you sure that¡¯d be enough?¡±

    Eliza stared at me. ¡°Are you serious, mate?¡± she asked incredulously. She wasn¡¯t the only one who seemed surprised by the comment. Even the waitress was looking at me strangely.

    Ricardo, however, was laughing. ¡°You guys have never been to be Texas, have you?¡± We all shook our heads. ¡°Huh,¡± he said when he saw me shake my head. ¡°I thought you would have been there. Anyway, I actually got that far north once and ate at a restaurant. The sizes are bigger there.¡±

    ¡°Sizes are bigger in Massachusetts!¡± I said.

    ¡°That¡¯s famous for its seafood, right?¡± Eliza asked, starting in on her bowl of clam chowder.

    ¡°And its tech industry, being instrumental in The Revolutionary War, having some of the first factories in America, the Transcendentalist movement and pretty much everything to come out of Boston.¡±

    ¡°So you¡¯re just a budget version of New York, then?¡± Eliza asked innocently.

    ¡°Nope!¡± I said, ¡°We¡¯re actually an improved, less pretentious version.¡±

    The banter went on for the rest of the wait for the food. Bai even joined in a bit. However, I think we were all waiting for Oro to start her game.

    Finally, the food came. Oro then waited for the waitress to leave, then said, ¡°All right, it is time.¡± She gave us a look over to make sure we all were paying attention. ¡°The object of this game,¡± she said, ¡°is to tell us why you are here as much as possible without telling us something you don¡¯t want to know. You can choose to skip, but that means you cannot be a member. If we find out you have lied to us, including omitting important details, we will punish you.¡±

    ¡°Fair enough,¡± I said, ¡°do you want to go first or should I?¡±

    ¡°Why you?¡± Oro asked. ¡°You don¡¯t seem to join, anyway.¡±

    ¡°This way,¡± I said, ¡°certain parties may be persuaded to not kill me anyway.¡±

    ¡°If it makes you feel safer¡­¡± she said.

    ¡°My hope is it makes everyone feel safer,¡± I said. ¡°Anyway, my name is Nathan Jacobs. You know that already, but if you were wondering if it was a fake name, it isn¡¯t. Senior year of high school, I was approached by two agents of¡­ a non-American law enforcement agency that specializes in super stuff. Heroes, villains, mad science, that stuff.¡±

    I paused for a minute. ¡°I can¡¯t tell you which one, but I¡¯ve given you enough to guess. I¡¯m afraid if I tell you everything, you¡¯ll find the other two people I¡¯ve been sent in with. That being said, the agency I¡¯m working for is probably more interested in the school¡¯s parahuman and research divisions. If you¡¯re not planning on blowing up the world, I think I can simply not mention you.

    ¡°You see, they¡¯ve apparently dealt with a lot of mad science and superdickery that can be traced back here. They didn¡¯t out and out state anything, but they¡¯ve implied that they¡¯ve averted Force 2 and higher events that tie into this place. They¡¯re also worried that there could be time bombs made by this place just waiting to go off. We do not want those bombs to go off.¡±

    I paused. ¡°Any questions?¡±

    ¡°What if¡­¡± Ricardo asked, ¡°we had some¡­ indiscretions in our youth. Maybe worked with the Cartels?¡±

    ¡°Then I don¡¯t need to know,¡± I said. ¡°Also, unless there¡¯s something we need to know, I think we can count this as your turn.¡±

    Ricardo thought for a moment, then said, ¡°I don¡¯t think I¡¯ve ever been in a fight against a parahuman on purpose. I try to avoid killing them, especially the ones that travel in packs. Does anyone have a problem?¡±

    Most people shook their heads. Li, however said, ¡°This actually does not work for us.¡±

    Bai elbowed him and said something in Chinese. They had a brief argument. Finally, Bai said, ¡°We have some involvement with parahumans. Have you heard of The Final Prophecy?¡±

    I shook my head. Eliza, however said, ¡°Yes.¡±

    ¡°For those of you who don¡¯t know,¡± Bai said, ¡°around five hundred years ago, when parahumans were making their resurgence, seers across the world had a vision. In five hundred years, three powerful entities would come to the world and change it forever. Violently.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± I said. This, in my opinion, was not in my job description.

    ¡°There are differences between the versions,¡± Bai. ¡°But there are some similarities. For instance, every version of this prophecy states that one will rain fiery vengeance on humanity from the sky, one will raise an army of the dead, and a third can rewrite the very fabric of existence. They shall become gods.¡±

    ¡°My version said the one with army¡¯d also have hollows or something,¡± Eliza said.

    ¡°Our version claims the Fire Angels have come to punish humanity for their future sins,¡± Li said. ¡°The prophecies tend to have different details, but they have all the same basic parts.¡± He turned to me. ¡°We will find these people mentioned in the prophecy, and we will deal with them.¡±

    ¡°Do you really think that they¡¯re going to find these three parahumans here world-ending parahumans here?¡± I asked.

    Eliza shrugged. ¡°Personally, I don¡¯t think we¡¯re gonna find ¡®em any-bloody-where. It¡¯s like the Second Coming: some bloke says its imminent so everyone should come an¡¯ do what ¡®e says.¡±

    ¡°Maybe,¡± Bai said, ¡°But if this time we are right, and they are here, this is one of the more likely places they¡¯ll end up. We want people who have an idea what they are up against to fight one of The Three.¡±

    ¡°If these things are real,¡± Ricardo said, ¡°you can deal with them all you want. I want no part of it.¡± He considered it, though. ¡°Nathan¡¯s employers might want in on it, and I can¡¯t really speak for Oro or El Diablo over there.¡±

    Ulfric and Oro both shook their heads. I said, ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure my employers want solider forms of information than a hundred-year-old prophecy.¡±

    ¡°Good.¡± Bai said. ¡°This does not concern them.¡±

    ¡°That being said,¡± I continued, ¡°If you should find one of these super-powerful parahumans and take a swing and miss, I will tell my employers what¡¯s happening. I¡¯m not going to fuck around with the end of the world. Hell, I might even contact them before you make your move so they can get a team on standby. Is that acceptable?¡±

    ¡°It is¡­ much more assertive than you normally are,¡± Bai said. ¡°And it is only barely acceptable.¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said. ¡°I don¡¯t fuck around when it comes to the end of the world.¡±

    ¡°So, you¡¯re joining?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°Fine!¡± I said. ¡°If it means keeping the world from ending, I¡¯ll join the Seven Supreme or whatever we¡¯re calling ourselves.¡±

    ¡°Kind of comic book-y, innit?¡± Eliza said. ¡°I like it.¡±

    Oro nodded. ¡°My turn.¡± She said. ¡°My story¡¯s probably similar to a lot of people¡¯s. I was in a bad part of Africa and became a child soldier. I left, and made a bit of a name for myself.¡±

    ¡°That does sound familiar,¡± I said. ¡°Eric and his crew had basically the same story except¡­¡±

    ¡°He implied some sort of daring escape and that he¡¯d taken a large amount of money?¡± Oro asked.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°Are you saying it didn¡¯t happen like that?¡±

    ¡°You are probably imagining something less dramatic,¡± Oro said. ¡°I, on the other hand, left on the strength of my reputation alone.¡±

    ¡°Same here, chica.¡± Ricardo said, laying on the smooth. ¡°Want to¡­ swap some stories later?¡±

    ¡°If by stories, you mean bodily fluids, then no.¡± Oro said. ¡°Ulfric, why are you here?¡±

    ¡°I like hurting people,¡± he said. ¡°Someone realized I was good at it.¡± He then giggled.

    ¡°Yep,¡± I said, ¡°that sounds about right. I¡¯m going to eat my food before it gets cold.¡±

 1.10: Salim the Russian Pi?ata

    After our little study-group had been formed, we mostly ate in silence. Eliza and Ricardo tried to make conversation, but they usually just fizzled out. Li was pretty antisocial, Oro didn¡¯t seem to like talking, Bai preferred to listen and Ulfric was, well, Ulfric.

    Personally, I was more interested in eating my food. Also, while Ricardo seemed nice enough, and while Eliza was being less creepy than normal, I still realized that the people I was sitting with were very violent people. The only one who I was sure would not go after my family, surprisingly enough, was Ulfric. He just seemed too much of a good sport to do something like that.

    Come to think of it, I had to wonder a bit about Ulfric. Despite his weirdly child-like nature and lack of speaking capabilities, he had to have some kind of intelligence. After all, if he had a similar rate of killing when he was outside of NIU, he would probably have needed to avoid the police and/or vigilantes. While he was probably more than capable of taking out street gangs, beat cops, and the occasional low-level parahuman, I was pretty sure a SWAT team could give him problems and the mid to heavy-weight parahumans could outright curbstomp him. He would need to be smart enough to avoid attracting their attention.

    Eliza did manage me to drag me into conversation once. ¡°You know,¡± she said, ¡°those things are pork.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, so?¡± I responded, then ripped off another rib.

    ¡°Aren¡¯t you Jewish?¡± She asked.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, ¡°but not all Jews keep kosher. Just like not all Catholics follow everything the Pope says.¡± I ate a few waffle fries, then realized something. ¡°How did you know I¡¯m Jewish?¡±

    ¡°I ¡®eard your fight with what¡¯s-¡®is-face.¡± Eliza said. ¡°Richard, I believe. It came up a couple times.¡±

    ¡°When was this?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Well,¡± Eliza said, ¡°there was that time at lunch where¡­¡± she looked at me strangely. ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s just¡­¡± I said, ¡°I kind of feel like not being noticed is my best defense.¡± I didn¡¯t want to add and you scare the shit out of me. However, it seemed like I implied that by my voice because she seemed a bit hurt.

    I remained silent throughout the meal and the desert. True to Professor Blunt¡¯s word, I did get to have ice cream. I returned back to the medical ward with the girls. ¡°Did you four have fun?¡± Eric asked.

    It took me a few seconds to realize he was asking if I had had sex with any/all of them. I laughed. ¡°Do you think I¡¯d have sex while Ulfric was watching, let alone freaky four-person sex? That¡¯s not really the way I want to lose my virginity.¡±

    ¡°Ulfric was there?¡± John asked. ¡°Mr. Giggles? How are you still alive?¡±

    ¡°I think it was a good day for him,¡± I said. ¡°Like how some days cancer patients are in less pain, some days Ulfric speaks more and is less likely to rip someone in half with his bare hands.¡±

    ¡°I see,¡± John said. ¡°Anyway, who else was there?¡±

    ¡°Everyone ¡®oo got recognized for acts of supreme violence and the like on Fight Night.¡± Eliza said as she walked towards her bed. ¡°Bloody awkward, it was. ¡®Oh, ¡®ello! You¡¯re the guy ¡®oo eviscerated me mate! I¡¯d talk about politics, but I haven¡¯t gotten any news lately. Guess there¡¯s only the weather and paranoia, then.¡¯¡±

    ¡°At least Bai doesn¡¯t want to kill me anymore,¡± I said as I flumpfed onto my bed.

    ¡°I never wanted to kill you,¡± Bai said, as she sat daintily on her bed. ¡°I just believed it would have to happen.¡±

    ¡°Oh, hey,¡± John asked Eliza, ¡°why¡¯s your hair down?¡± I suddenly realized her hair was down, covering her ears. How I didn¡¯t notice this earlier, I do not know.

    ¡°Just lost me ears in the fight,¡± Eliza said, a little too dismissively.

    ¡°I thought I only saw you lose one,¡± I said.

    ¡°They¡­ they¡­¡± Eliza began, then she paused. After some thought, she said, ¡°I¡¯m one¡¯a the ferals that get the bloody cat ears, alright? I got the ear transplant surgery when I was young because I didn¡¯t want to get teased, but now I figure this way I can give people some extra warning to not fuck with me.¡± She brought her knees up to her chin. ¡°As if I¡¯m not already enough of a freak, now I¡¯ve got to be a bloody cat girl as well.¡±

    She spent a lot of time like that. When someone finally came in with uniforms for us to change, she was the last of us to get up and close the curtains around our beds. I can¡¯t say I know how being the only mutant feels, but I do know how depression feels, and I could guess she was feeling some pretty serious depression right there.

    When we had gotten dressed and some Campus Security in patrol uniforms began to usher us out, I asked ¡°Hey, you ok?¡±

    Eliza looked like she was going to take it out on me for a moment. Then she sighed. ¡°No,¡± she said, ¡°but I will be. Thanks.¡±

    On the way back, we got to ride in an actual bus. John and I sat in the front. ¡°Man,¡± I said, as I sat in the cheap, fuzzy cloth seat, ¡°this is what I call luxury!¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± John said, ¡°nothing like running twenty five kilometers twice a day to make you appreciate driving.¡±

    He looked over his shoulder, then turned back to me. ¡°So,¡± he asked, ¡°what¡¯s with you being called out for lunch?¡±

    I shrugged. ¡°Just the meal we were promised for doing well in Fight Night? That was what that was.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± John asked. ¡°Must have been some interesting conversations.¡±

    ¡°Not really anything I can talk about,¡± I said. ¡°I can¡¯t say it was interesting, but we don¡¯t really want anyone talking about what was said.¡±

    If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    I think he may have gotten some of my subtle hints, but it was impossible to tell. Fuck, I hate being a spy.

    I also had another problem to worry about. Behind us was another bus. I could only guess that Salim and his crew were on it. I wondered what would happen when they got off.

    I didn¡¯t have long to wait. When we got off, there three Campus Security Guards carrying P-90s, standing just far enough away so that there was no possible way we could get to them if we decided to charge them. Also, since they had fifty rounds in each of them, there was no way they¡¯d run out of ammo. They weren¡¯t pointing their guns at us, which was good.

    ¡°Please return to your spot in formation,¡± one of them said in a slight German accent. Not even Ulfric argued with him. He did giggle though, and one of the guards raised his P-90. Apart from that, we got into parade positions without incident.

    Then Salim¡¯s crew came out. Apart from him, there were only two others. I recognized Mubashir, the other one not so much. I also noticed that only one of them (Salim) seemed comfortable. The other two seemed scared.

    The stage that had been set up Saturday was up again, with Campus Security in a similar formation. Three drill sergeants and Professor Zemylachka were standing there. The Professor didn¡¯t seem to be happy.

    Salim and his remaining crew got up onto the platform. I was very concerned at how lightly Salim seemed to be treating his situation. I was also concerned about the cloth sack one of the drill sergeants was carrying. It looked like it was originally designed to carry golf clubs, but I didn¡¯t think that was what it was carrying.

    ¡°So,¡± Professor Zemylachka said, her voice throbbing with anger, ¡°Yesterday, some people decided to break the rules and stage an assassination attempt. I, personally, view it as a challenge to my authority. However, like all serious crimes, it was taken up by a committee, and, alas, my desire to strap you to a table and let you drown in your own piss and shit was not well-received. Professor Newell-Howards, in all his infinite wisdom, decided that those of you who have broken the rules will be on disciplinary probation with extreme prejudice for the remainder of the year. This means that you will have a curfew when you enter the school. You will be required to be either in your room or under Campus Security surveillance. If you are not, you will be publicly executed. Do I make myself clear?¡±

    The rule breakers all responded with a ¡°Yes, Ma¡¯am!¡± I noticed Salim¡¯s air of confidence had disappeared. I guess he wasn¡¯t used to dealing with people who would go farther than him.

    Professor Zemylachka then walked up to Mubashir. ¡°Are you going to break any more rules at this school?¡±

    ¡°No, Ma¡¯am!¡± he said.

    ¡°I doubt it,¡± the professor said. ¡°Still, at least you know the right answer. Get back in formation.¡± Mubashir then ran off, very happy to be away from Professor Zemylachka.

    She then repeated the same process with Salim¡¯s other minion. She had to walk around Salim to do it. I noticed the Al-Qaeda guy was not as timid as Mubashir, but he was still very scared. Then she got to Salim.

    ¡°Well then,¡± she said, after taking a long rod from the canvas bag. ¡°You are the bastard who disrupted the order of my camp. Do you think I can let that slide?¡±

    Salim said something that the microphone did not pick up. Zemylachka, then, in response said, ¡°You are somewhat right. I¡¯m not allowed to kill anyone or hurt your friends.¡± She flicked a switch. It sparked a bit, then she jabbed it into Salim¡¯s stomach. The microphone screeched, and Salim collapsed and twitched.

    ¡°Get up.¡± Professor Zemylachka only waited a few seconds to make this demand. By this time I could smell the ozone. ¡°You aren¡¯t dead, I know for a fact you do not have a heart condition,¡± she said. ¡°If you can¡¯t take this amount of juice, you should never have pissed me off.¡±

    Salim must have groaned something out, because Zemylachka gave a slight tut, then kicked him. ¡°I do not care who you tried to kill,¡± she said. ¡°I care that you did it on my watch. Get up.¡±

    Salim struggled to his feet, glaring at the professor. While he did, Professor Zemylachka moved to his rear. When Salim finally got up, she struck the rear of his lower legs with a single blow from her cattle prod.

    He fell and twitched again. ¡°I thought,¡± the professor said dryly, while lazily jabbing him with the cattle prod, ¡°I told you to get up. Hurry up, your fellow students want some dinner.¡±

    Salim struggled to his feet again. ¡°So,¡± Zemylachka asked, ¡°are you going to cause any more trouble?¡± Salim¡¯s response was to spit in her face.

    Everyone held their breath as the professor considered her response. They didn¡¯t have long to wait. ¡°Teach this little shit stain some manners,¡± she said, turning her back and walking off. ¡°Fifteen minutes should be safe. I am bored with him.¡±

    As she walked off, Salim lunged for her. He wasn¡¯t able to make it as two of the drill sergeants grabbed him and flung him back. They then proceeded to kick him and beat him with batons. Professor Zemylachka made a dismissive gesture. ¡°If he dies or goes back to the hospital, the President will be pissed. I don¡¯t think anyone will mind if he loses a few teeth, though. Just be sure to save them so they can get re-attached. You other students should return to your bunks.¡±

    One of the guards, I think the leader, shouted, ¡°You heard the professor, return to your dorms in an orderly fashion!¡± They didn¡¯t even have to cock their weapons. We returned to our dorms in an orderly fashion.

    I would remember this. But not in the way Zemylachka wanted.

 1.11 Nathan Jacobs and the Chamber of Horrors

    Things quieted down for a while after that. We still did plenty of firearms training, the daily run, hand-to-combat and various stretches. We also started on first aid like CPR, dealing with concussions, shock, and dealing with bleeding. Not much about stuff you¡¯d have to deal with in the states like allergic reactions and seizures, though.

    The weapons-training was getting insane. They started adding random explosions to the mix, moving targets and all sorts of insane stuff, and if we couldn¡¯t do it we would be kept after until we could do it. The only thing we could take breaks for was the run. If we had to miss meals or sleep, then oh well.

    There was this one exercise that was the bane of our existence. Targets would run move towards you at huge speeds. You would have an M9 (we had been introduced to pistols at this point) and we¡¯d have to knock them down by shooting them before they could get to us. This wouldn¡¯t be so bad if they were slower. Or if there weren¡¯t so many. We literally needed someone to load the magazine while another person shot the targets, that¡¯s how long we were expected to hold out. Eric and I did it for twelve hours straight, firing so many rounds that we actually overheated a pistol.

    The exercises where we had to shoot targets from a distance as they popped up were actually kind of fun, even when the explosions were going off. Especially when explosions were going off. The time when they dragged the M-16s behind the truck without telling us and upping the number of targets we needed to hit while simultaneously lowering the time limit was bullshit, though.

    Something disturbing I noticed, (apart from the school¡¯s approach to law and order) was the rapidly lowering temperature. As if this place wasn¡¯t awful enough, it was similar temperature-wise to my home state.

    One day, when we were breaking down some FALs and Smith and Wesson revolvers, Doc brought it up. ¡°Man,¡± he said, ¡°it¡¯s getting so cold!¡±

    We had recently been issued compasses. These particular ones also had analog thermometers. I pulled mine out. ¡°It¡¯s about fifty-five degrees, that¡¯s not too cold.¡±

    ¡°It isn¡¯t fifty-five!¡± Ray-Gun said. ¡°Fifty-five is what you cook an egg at!¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯m using Fahrenheit. You guys are probably used to Celsius.¡±

    ¡°There are other ways of measuring temperature?¡± The Monk asked. He seemed genuinely confused by this realization.

    ¡°Yeah¡­¡± John said, ¡°America uses different measurements for that. It¡¯s probably around thirteen degrees Celsius.¡±

    ¡°That is not much above freezing,¡± The Monk said. He looked worried.

    ¡°It actually is a heck of a lot above freezing,¡± I said. ¡°At least in American measurements. We think of it as being twenty-three degrees above freezing. You think of it being twelve degrees above freezing.¡± I paused. ¡°Have you ever been in a place where it was freezing?¡±

    ¡°You mean where water turns hard?¡± The Monk asked. ¡°No. I have never been in a place like that.¡±

    John, Cross, and I all exchanged looks. We were all from the North Eastern states. It would be arrogant to say we knew cold as we all were well-off enough to afford heating and warm coats. But I was willing to bet we all had been outside in sub-freezing temperatures. ¡°Hopefully,¡± I said, ¡°we won¡¯t have to deal with doing a run in those temperatures.¡±

    ¡°Very slim hope,¡± MC Disaster said. He had been cleaning his weapons the entire time. ¡°When we did the campus tour, they told us that it can get down to twenty below. I am pretty sure they meant Celsius.¡±

    I groaned. ¡°I fucking hate the cold!¡±

    Suddenly, Professor Blunt came in over the loudspeaker. ¡°Greetings, maggots!¡± He said. ¡°Next week is the last week in October! You wimps know what that means!¡±

    Someone shouted out, ¡°No, we don¡¯t!¡± A few people laughed.

    ¡°That¡¯s right!¡± Blunt said. ¡°It¡¯s time for The Chamber of Horrors!¡± Half the people there laughed, the other half made noises of disappointment and apprehension.

    ¡°Well, that sounds fun!¡± Both John and I said this at the exact same time and in the exact tone of voice.

    Professor Blunt continued on. ¡°For those of you who don¡¯t know what this is, there¡¯s a building by the counselor¡¯s cabin that smells like rotting meat. You dress-up playing little toy soldiers are going to get to visit it, section by section. Also, have you ever wanted a puppy? Well, you¡¯ll be getting more puppies you can fucking handle! It¡¯s a goddamn shame that they¡¯re conditioned to kill anyone they see!¡±

    ¡°Oh joy,¡± I said. ¡°We get to be in a room filled with rotting meat and rabid dogs.¡±

    ¡°They are probably not rabid,¡± The Monk said in voice so calm I irrationally wanted to punch him. ¡°They would have to lose too many students to bites. We don¡¯t pay tuition if we die this semester.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll still get infected in that place,¡± John said. ¡°That rotting meat? Has to be filled with germs.¡±

    The rest of the week was very uneventful, although we did have a fire alarm at two in the morning. When that happened, I literally wanted to kill someone. I guessed so did everyone else. We were not told to line up in formation, so oddly enough I ended up overhearing Richard and Kyle talking. Well, more like Richard giving and what remained of his group listening skeptically. They seemed to have (unsurprisingly) taken heavy casualties.

    ¡°¡­These people,¡± Richard said, ¡°they think they know America. They don¡¯t. And the changes for us they have in store are against everything we stand for! If they want to corrupt their own country, go for it, I won¡¯t stop them, but our country? Hell. No.¡± He punched his hand for emphasis on the last two words. I turned away. The only other way I would get through the night without punching him would be if the group he was talking about were time-traveling Nazis or something.

    Before I knew it, it was the big day. Everyone was called and ordered to line up in parade positions. Professor Blunt was MCing again, which made me wonder if Professor Zemylachka got the big things off to go back to campus and get a few drinks or something. Again, he was guarded by Campus Security in riot gear.

    ¡°Here¡¯s how it works,¡± Professor Blunt said. ¡°We will call you out by section. You will then enter the Chamber of Horrors. After the being cleared by the medical staff, you will return to your bunks without speaking to anyone. While you wait, you must remain in formation! If you want to cheer on your friends, you may! However, you are not allowed to sit or break formation!¡±

    Yay. A long time with Salim standing right next to me.

    Surprisingly, it went a lot better than expected, seeing as Salim did not say a word to me. I didn¡¯t want to comment on this or even acknowledge his presence for fear of him ceasing to ignore me.

    We stayed like this for quite a long time. I would say that each group was in there about an average of two hours. I also noticed that each group took a long time, maybe an average of two hours, to go in. Also, I noticed that they seemed to be saving the Seven for last. I didn¡¯t really comment on that with Eric.

    There was also the screaming. I really didn¡¯t like the screaming. There was also some shouting from the Chamber of Horrors, as well as a few growls, yips, howls, and other dog noises, but the screaming was much worse. However, after several hours of waiting, just standing was worse. I would shift weight from one foot to the other to balance out the pain.

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    Another pattern I noticed was that the only person who didn¡¯t seem uncomfortable was Ulfric. Well, he was a little antsy, but I got the feeling that he wanted to be in the Chamber of Horrors. Every time there was a scream, he¡¯d giggle. Every time a group would pass, he¡¯d say, ¡°Good luck! Have fun!¡±

    By the time our section had been called, the sun had set and risen again. Judging by the fact I had stopped being hungry without eating anything, I only had missed lunch and dinner.

    When we started moving, my legs burned with pain. Of course, that had been how they felt before, so nothing much had changed. Judging by the occasional groan I heard from other people, I wasn¡¯t the only one.

    After the traditional well-wishes from Ulfric, a group of Campus Security directed us to the Chamber. As we got closer, we began to smell rotting meat. Not the rotting meat smell you get from shipping a steak via the post office, but the kind of smell when you¡¯ve left something out so long not even vultures or maggots would want to get into it.

    We got onto a ramp leading to the building¡¯s door. The door itself was like the vault door of a bank: large, circular, and imposing. The smell inside made us all gag. Now, to give you some perspective, of the twenty or so people in the group, I think I might have been the only one to have come from what an average American would have called ¡°the good life.¡± I can¡¯t say that Eric and his group were the norm, but they were probably closer to the norm than I was. One, I was pretty sure had talked about how he had worked in a slaughterhouse. Still, none of us could deal with the stench.

    ¡°Here it is,¡± one of the guards said. ¡°Get in.¡±

    ¡°Are you kidding?¡± The guy who had worked in the slaughterhouse asked. ¡°This is the definition of unsanitary!¡± That surprised me. The stories he told about that place had been downright nightmarish. If he didn¡¯t think something was sanitary, the meat probably turned toxic long before today.

    In response, our escort cocked their weapons. Six P90s and two M-249 LMGs were now primed and pointed at us. ¡°Ok,¡± I said, a little bitterly, ¡°we get the picture.¡± I walked up the ramp, flipping the guards off as I did so. ¡°Hope you enjoy your sleep tonight.¡±

    ¡°You will thank us one day,¡± one of the guards said. The only response he got was someone spitting at him. They did not react.

    The interior of the Chamber of Horrors was every bit as nightmarish as the name suggested it was. I¡¯ll start with the nicer parts and work my way up to the horrifying stuff.

    The room was composed of animal parts lit by fluorescent lights. Towers of chopped-up cows and pigs were piled everywhere. The towers were of varying heights. Some were only up to my waist, some only stopped at the ceiling. This contrasted rather strangely with the cleanroom feel of the white walls. Looking at these meat mountains, however was better than considering what we were standing in.

    You see, the reason we had to go up about a half a story was because there was an unidentified liquid or goo covering the floor that went up a bit past my shins. It was a strange, sickly green substance. On the one hand, its consistency saved my much-abused knees from the drop. On the other, it was completely unidentifiable and felt like Jell-O. Blood and the bodies of some of the previous people floated on top of it, as well as various dogs.

    However, that still wasn¡¯t the worst part. The worst part was the smell. It was probably the most awful thing you could ever smell, the stink literally burning my nostrils. Many people, even the slaughterhouse guy, vomited instantly upon entering the room. The vomit, like the dog and people corpses, floated in the unidentifiable muck. People would then try to move towards the vomit and blood because that smell was better than the room¡¯s ambient stench.

    I sat on a pile on a nearby pile of rotting meat. ¡°Killer!¡± Eric said, after he was done removing what little food he had left in his stomach, ¡°What is wrong with you?¡±

    ¡°My knees are killing me,¡± I said, ¡°and I¡¯m pretty sure we¡¯re going to have to climb those,¡± I pointed to one of the taller meat mountains, ¡°if we¡¯re going to live.¡±

    ¡°He is right,¡± Salim said. Everyone turned to face him. His burned, eyepatched face was glowering as usual, though this time it wasn¡¯t directed at a person. I followed his gaze. He was looking at a camera. ¡°They,¡± he said, referring to our educators, ¡°think it is easy to kill. They believe surviving is harder. They are giving us two choices: either do something more distasteful than killing or die. Either way, they win.¡±

    ¡°My take?¡± I said. ¡°We get to choose if we win as well.¡± I stood up, which was a mistake. After my spasm of pain, I said, ¡°When the dogs come in, these meat mountains should provide some defense. Also gives us a chance to find a bone or something to use as a weapon.¡±

    ¡°Do we really have to climb these?¡± Someone else asked. ¡°Can¡¯t we just make our stand here?¡±

    ¡°I am no detective,¡± Eric said, ¡°But there seems to be a lot of bodies down in this goop, and not a lot on the piles.¡± He walked a bit further into the room. ¡°Now, the bodies could have floated away, but most of the dog corpses are around the base of or on the piles. Most of the dead people¡­ are where we are currently standing.¡± He shrugged. ¡°Maybe I am wrong, but I want to be in a place that kills more dogs than people.¡±

    As soon as he finished speaking, an alarm began to blare. Everyone began to clamber up a meat mountain. I went to the one Eric and his crew were heading for. Before I started climbing, I asked them, ¡°Did you bring your weapons?¡±

    ¡°Yes, my friend,¡± The Monk said. ¡°However, you will have to find your own weapon.¡± As I climbed, I looked for a suitable weapon. Finally, I found a large bone. It was wedged in really tight. Instead of doing the smart thing and waiting, I pulled harder.

    ¡°Leave it, you fool!¡± Doc yelled.

    He was too late. As soon as he finished calling me a fool, it popped out. I had been using my legs as a brace, so I fell backwards. There honestly was no way I could have regained my balance, so the fact that half the meat mountain fell away just added insult to injury.

    I hit the green sludge at the bottom with a sickening splat. I opened my mouth to yell, letting a large gob of it in. I don¡¯t think there are any words for how vile it tasted. I struggled to my feet. Every time I opened my eyes, the goop leaked in, burning them. At least my glasses were fine. I could still see.

    After I was done gagging and spitting, I noticed something odd. The alarm had stopped blaring. Then I heard the howl.

 1.12: Who Let the Dogs Out?

    So, yeah, this was a fucking awful place to be. Not only was I in a room full of rotting meat, not only was I probably infected with some horrible disease due to the sludge I had swallowed, but now dogs were after me. I turned back to the pile of meat. I was going to have to climb it again.

    I tried to run, but the goop around my feet was slowing me down. The dogs were getting closer. It seemed like they were having as much trouble navigating the slush as I was, but they were still gaining. ¡°They are quite large,¡± I heard The Monk say in a conversational tone of voice. ¡°I did not know dogs could get this big.¡±

    ¡°Those are wolves!¡± Someone yelled. ¡°Holy shit, they¡¯re fucking wolves!¡± I tried to run faster.

    When I got to the meat mountain Eric and his gang were on, I suddenly realized that the bone I had pulled out had been a key structural support. Not only was the meat mountain now much closer to being vertical, but the animal parts were now loose and shifting. I realized this the hard way when I grabbed for a hand hold, only to cause the mountain to crumble a bit. It took me a bit, but I finally found a good place. I started climbing, still holding my club. After all this bullshit I just went to get it, there was no fucking way I¡¯d be letting it go.

    Then I heard someone scream. I looked and saw that in a nearby meat mountain, a large dog had grabbed someone by the leg and was beginning to pull him down. His friends were moving in to help, and the wolf knew it. My guess was its plan was to drag the guy down to where the rest of the pack could rip him to shreds. Before I turned away, I made eye contact with the wolf. I wasn¡¯t well-versed in dog body language, but I could swear it was thinking, ¡°shit, that guy was probably a much easier target!¡± Then the wolf¡¯s victim kicked it in the face. The wolf let go and whimpered. I got back to climbing.

    ¡°Come on, Killer!¡± Doc said, a shank made out of a toothbrush in his hand. ¡°Move your butt!¡± I noticed that he was looking not at me, but at something moving at a rapid pace on the floor. I heard barking and splashing. I continued moving as fast as I felt safe, as the meat mountain kept moving under my hands.

    ¡°Hurry up!¡± Ray-Gun yelled at me. I was about to say something about the precarious state of the ¡°ground¡± I was climbing up when I heard a snarl. I rolled to my left.

    Instantly, I was thankful for my decision. If I hadn¡¯t, a wolf would have landed on my chest. It turned to face me, but I lashed out with my club, hitting the wolf on the noggin. It slid down the meat mountain, a slightly concussed look in its eyes.

    ¡°Fuck off, Balto,¡± I said. I couldn¡¯t help it. I was feeling like a complete bad ass. I watched as the dog slid down the meat mountain¡­

    ¡­To where the rest of his or her pack was looking up at me. I noticed two things. First, they were all very pissed-off looking doggies. Second, they were enormous. Standing on all fours, they¡¯d come up above my waist. I no longer felt like a badass.

    ¡°Fuck me,¡± I said. Then I began climbing like my life depended on it, mostly because it did. I was terrified.

    One of the wolves growled. I heard a thrashing sound, then the meat mountain began to collapse underneath me. I sped up, but took a quick look over my shoulder. One of the wolves was charging up after me, but despite how fast its legs were, it wasn¡¯t getting very far.

    What it was doing was causing the mountain to collapse. I¡¯m not sure, but one of the other five was looking thoughtfully at its pack mate. I didn¡¯t stop climbing, but slowed down a bit, seeing as they were changing tactics.

    When I finally got to where Eric¡¯s group was, Doc and Ray-Gun dragged me up. ¡°Don¡¯t scare us like that, Killer,¡± Ray-Gun said. ¡°We thought you were dog food.¡±

    Doc shrugged. ¡°He may still be dog food. He¡¯s pretty new at this.¡± Ray-Gun slapped him upside the head. ¡°It¡¯s true!¡± Doc protested. ¡°This fight is nowhere near done! He could probably end up dying!¡±

    I wasn¡¯t really paying attention. What was happening on the ground and the other meat mountains was more interesting. There seemed to be two other wolf packs versus us humans, who were spread out across five meat mountains. The smallest pack (there were only four) had decided to go after a person occupying a meat mountain alone. He screamed as a huge wolf grabbed him by the throat and shook, but it quickly died off. When he stopped struggling and screaming, the other three moved in and began to eat.

    On another mountain, a group of seven wolves had surrounded a similarly sized group of humans and were making runs at them. Most of the humans there had knives and toothbrush shanks, and both sides were taking heavy casualties. A few of the humans were in really bad shape, and their friends were trying their best to protect them.

    Back on the ground, the wolf trying to climb the pile was starting to give up. Most of the others in his pack were circling to make sure none of us escaped.

    However, another wolf was just standing there. It was a huge wolf, possibly the largest one in the entire room and definitely the largest in his pack. His coat was jet black with a white underside and he seemed to be observing the situation very carefully. Due to his size and intelligence, I guessed it was the alpha.

    Eventually, the other wolf ceased its attempts to try and scramble up. At first, I was glad because the various animal parts I was balanced on were starting to shift in a most disturbing manner. Then the alpha moved in. I wondered for a moment if the alpha was going to start trying to climb up. That would be bad. He could accidentally bring down the entire meat mountain.

    It turns out what he was planning was worse. He was digging. I could tell because he was making no effort to gain ground. A little while later, I noticed he was also being very selective about what places he would dig, and that over time the tremors would get more frequent.

    I tapped Eric on the shoulder. ¡°We¡¯ve got a problem. Have you been noticing that our mountain is dissolving?¡±

    Eric nodded. ¡°Yes. Do you know why?¡± I pointed at the wolf digging away. Eric¡¯s eyes widened. ¡°Is that what is causing our position to crumble?¡±

    I nodded. ¡°Pretty sure.¡± To underscore my point, the mountain crumbled again. ¡°Also, it¡¯s probably my fault.¡±

    ¡°We can point fingers in hell,¡± Doc said. ¡°Right now, we need a plan.¡±

    ¡°I have one.¡± Eric had become very grim. ¡°We counter-attack, catch them by surprise, then make our way to the next mountain, and pray to whatever god we want we don¡¯t die.¡±

    ¡°Good plan,¡± I said. The others seemed surprised that I had agreed. ¡°Just¡­ can they be surprised?¡±

    They ceased to be surprised and laughed. ¡°Killer,¡± The Monk said in his calm voice, ¡°Animals think of things in term of predator and prey. They do not think of things in terms of soldier versus soldier.¡±

    I was about to ask what that meant, then said, ¡°Ok. Got it. We go down there and kick their canine asses?¡±

    ¡°You are learning, Killer!¡± Eric said, clapping me on my shoulder. He then drew the knife he had acquired. ¡°On three, ok?¡±

    ¡°Yeah!¡± Ray-Gun said. ¡°Let¡¯s do this!¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± Eric said, ¡°On three!¡± He paused for us to get ready, then began. ¡°Three, two, one¡­¡± He took a deep breath, then yelled, ¡°CHAAAAAAARGEEEE!¡±

    We ran down at our inhuman opponents, yelling at the top of our lungs. The alpha looked up just in time for Eric to kick him in the snout. He then used the opportunity to charge in and stab at the wolf.

    Balto, the wolf who had been the first to charge at me, then leaped at Eric. I swung my bone like a baseball bat, hitting him in the stomach while he was in mid-leap. The dog fell backward but the bone also flew out of my hand.

    I quickly grabbed for the bone, just in time to see another wolf slam into Eric. Doc and The Monk quickly moved in to stab at the wolf with their toothbrush shanks. By the time I had gotten my bone club again, Doc was helping Eric up. I didn¡¯t see what had happened to the wolf, but both Doc and The Monk¡¯s hands and arms were covered in blood. Then something hit me from behind.

    My mouth was open so I got a big chunk of green slime in my mouth, causing me to gag. I was also drowning in it, so that was fun. Claws ripped into my shoulders and I could literally hear nothing and I could feel paws pressing me down into the awfulness.

    Before I could panic, the paws moved off me, and a hand pulled me up by the shoulder. ¡°You ok, Killer?¡± MC Disaster asked.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. Then I threw up and sneezed at once. I opened my eyes, which I hadn¡¯t realized were closed. My vision was blurry. ¡°Shit,¡± I said, ¡°where are my glasses?¡±

    ¡°Is that really important?¡± a blur that sounded like Doc said. What I could see made it look like the team had surrounded me. Beyond them, blobs on four legs were standing between us and the next meat mountain.

    ¡°I honestly can¡¯t see your face from here without them,¡± I said.

    ¡°I¡¯m not facing you,¡± Doc said. He sounded scared, which is exactly how I felt.

    ¡°Well, there you go,¡± I said. ¡°My eyesight¡¯s complete shit.¡±

    A black stick (probably an arm) reached out and fished something out of the muck. ¡°These yours?¡±  MC Disaster asked. The arm moved the object towards my face. I could kind of tell they were glasses. I wiped off the green slime, then put them on. My eyesight was restored, except for some residual slime. I immediately wished it wasn¡¯t.

    We were still on the ground. The three remaining wolves in the pack were circling us, blocking us from climbing the nearest, non-dissolving meat mountain. They were also preventing us from moving to the sides, and could easily run us down if we tried to go back up our original meat mountain. The one who had tried to drown me had been gouged in the eye, part of it had actually fallen out of its socket, but the others were all fine.

    We weren¡¯t. I was still catching my breath from the second time I had almost drowned and Eric had a few cuts. We weren¡¯t in terrible shape, but the reason we had won the previous battle was surprise. Also, our situation was getting worse.

    ¡°Looks like our opponents are getting reinforcements,¡± I said. The pack of four was getting curious in what was going on and heading over.

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    ¡°This may not be so bad,¡± Eric said. ¡°Watch.¡±

    One of the wolves from the new pack came near. Balto turned around and growled at it. The newcomer backed off, but only a tiny bit. Another wolf from the second pack tried to use the distraction to move forward. Soon the two groups were hissing and snarling at each other. I noticed that the third pack was also taking an interest. There were only two of them left, as the humans on their meat mountain had done a wonderful job defending.

    Sensing the threat, one of the first pack turned around to face them. That¡¯s when everything went crazy. First, we heard a yell. The wolves on our left turned around just in time for a force of humans lead by Salim to crash into them. Then, to our right, the group still on the meat mountain charged, taking the pack that had pinned them by surprise. Eric, Doc and Ray-Gun pounced on the wolf that was walking by them. MC Disaster, The Monk, and I turned to where Salim¡¯s group was fighting.

    Balto tried to get past us and escape, but I slammed my bone club onto his head again. This time I managed to draw blood. The remaining wolf in the first pack then tackled Doc. Eric, Ray-Gun and MC Disaster turned to help. I didn¡¯t because I was concerned I¡¯d just get in the way. Besides, The Monk had just gotten knocked over by a wolf, and another was dragging a person away.

    I helped The Monk first. I ran towards the wolf chomping at him and with a shout of ¡°FUUUCK YOOOOOOUUUU!¡± hit the bastard¡¯s head like it was a baseball. There was a cracking sound as I connected. The Monk used the distraction to stab his opponent with his toothbrush shank. It hit a vein, spraying blood.

    I turned my attention back to the wolf dragging the person away. Most of the other wolves were busy holding off Salim¡¯s group, but one was turning towards me. I charged forwards, yelling. The wolf froze, unsure what to do. I bopped him on the head and he fell down. I probably should have checked to make sure the wolf was actually out, but the person being dragged away was out of reach of everyone else, so I charged.

    The wolf was too busy savaging its prey to notice me until I brought my club down on its shoulder. There was a crack as it finally broke. The wolf let go of its prey and growled.

    In response, I jabbed at it with my club. ¡°Back off!¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ve had a really bad day, and I¡¯m ready to take it out on you. Back off.¡±

    It began to back away. I glanced down quickly. I had just saved Salim. Oh well.

    ¡°You ok?¡± I asked. I could see he wasn¡¯t. His arm was bleeding, having been torn at by the wolf.

    ¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± he said. He stood up unsteadily. ¡°Or I will be after we¡¯re done with this. By the way, I don¡¯t owe you anything.¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± I said, ¡°you saved my life as much as I saved yours.¡± He nodded. I then asked, ¡°Think we¡¯re going to have to kill all of them?¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± Salim said. ¡°Doing distasteful things is the point of this exercise.¡±

    ¡°Ok¡­¡± I said, ¡°¡­let¡¯s just hope this works and doesn¡¯t get more distasteful.¡± Before Salim could answer, the wolf jumped. I raised what was left of my bone club and it bit on it. I fell on my butt. The wolf tried to push me down further, but there was no way in hell I¡¯d be dunked in that fucking goop again. The wolf, however, had over ideas. It seemed to get heavier and started to push me into the diseased slime.

    Before it could succeed, Salim did a running kick into it. The good news was no longer putting pressure on me. The bad news is that it was still holding onto my bone. It had also managed to slash Salim¡¯s face in the burned side. He staggered back, and I got to my feet.

    The wolf was getting to its feet as well. It got to all fours, but it wasn¡¯t facing me, so I took a chance. I ran towards it, and fell on from behind, wrapping a hand around its neck. It began to thrash, but I held on. That was a bad idea as it rolled over, dunking me once again into the awful muck.

    At this point I thought something along the lines of Oh my God, I am going to drown in unidentified, disgusting muck and the video recording will make it look like I¡¯m sodomizing a wolf. That¡¯s around the time someone began to kick wildly. It had to be Salim. Judging by his fight with Eliza, the only person that could be that wild and insane, yet still non-lethal, with their kicks was Salim. Eliza would be using her bone claws, and Ulfric¡­ Well, with Ulfric I¡¯d look like a pancake covered in marinara sauce.

    One kick hit my head. I opened my mouth to protest. I was reminded of where I was by a foul-tasting slurry entering my mouth. I loosened my grip. The wolf tried to break free, accidentally helping me by raising my head above the goop. In the few seconds my head was above the unnamed goop, I gasped, I coughed, I wretched. Then Salim kicked me in the back.

    ¡°SALIM, YOU FUCKING MOglrbrlbrblbl,¡± I yelled as the wolf rolled on its back again. This time was even more fun! Now I not only had to deal with Salim¡¯s kicks, being crushed by God-knows-how-many tons of thrashing canine, and lack of oxygen, but also the fucking slime. It was both burning my mouth and making me gag. My only comfort was my foul mouth and sarcasm.

    I didn¡¯t notice the fact that the wolf had stopped struggling for a moment because my brain cells were starting to die due to lack of oxygen. Then, both me and the wolf were lifted out of the water.

    ¡°Let go, let go, man,¡± someone said. Other people began trying to drag me off.

    ¡°But we have t-to kill it¡­¡± I said, then burst into a gagging and coughing fit.

    ¡°The wolf is dead,¡± someone said. It took me a moment to realize it was Eric. ¡°It is dead. Let go.¡± He was speaking softly, trying to reassure me.

    I looked at him. ¡°A-are you sh-sh-sure?¡± I wheezed. The stuttering was bad. To make matters worse, I was beginning to shake.

    ¡°Yes,¡± Eric said. ¡°It¡¯s ok, it¡¯s ok¡­ You can let go of the wolf now.¡±

    I did. It fell to the floor with a splat. ¡°I-i-it¡¯s not over,¡± I said. The fucking stutter was still going on! And I was still shaking! This was on top of my various injuries, my soreness from standing up for an entire day, and my extreme hunger. I felt weak and vulnerable, like there was something coming, and the only thing I knew about it was that it would kill me and I couldn¡¯t stop it. ¡°I-i-it¡¯s not over¡­¡± Here I began to break down and cry. ¡°¡­And I kuh-kuh-can¡¯t give anymore!¡±

    Eric leaned in. ¡°Hey,¡± he said jovially, ¡°you can go on, Killer! You just wrestled an angry, oversized dog and won! Do you have any idea how amazing that was?¡±

    Then Professor Blunt¡¯s voice came in over a loudspeaker. ¡°CONGRATULATIONS!¡± his voice boomed. ¡°YOU¡¯VE LIVED THROUGH YOUR FIRST COMBAT! In a few minutes, the door will open, and you will be decontaminated. In the meantime, get your shit together. It¡¯s over.¡±

    There was a pause. ¡°He¡¯s lying,¡± I muttered. ¡°It¡¯s not over. There¡¯s always something.¡±

    I was going to repeat it, but before I could begin Salim said, ¡°You¡¯re right. We need to move the bodies. We cannot let these corpses just fester. It is unholy.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re right.¡± I said. ¡°You¡¯re right. You¡¯re right. Judaism and, well, c-common decency frowns upon leaving bodies here as well as Islam.¡±

    ¡°You know that part of the Qur¡¯an?¡± someone asked in surprise.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, standing up. ¡°I read it in some book. Let¡¯s do this. People don¡¯t deserve to¡­ to rot here, anyway. Everyone sh-should¡­¡± I gulped, then continued, ¡°grab a body.¡±

    We moved out, gathering bodies and arranging them into piles near the door. I recognized a few. They were the worst. When we had dragged about fifty corpses towards the door, it began to swing open.

    I turned to Eric. ¡°Wuh-where¡¯s Salim?¡± Eric shrugged.

    When the door was fully opened, two Campus Security carrying SCAR-Hs with strange underbarrel attachments came in. I recognized them immediately. ¡°Officer Gupta! Officer Mendez! It¡¯s great to see you guys again!¡±

    ¡°Good to see you again,¡± Mendez said. ¡°Time for you guys to get the fuck out of here!¡±

    ¡°Not quite,¡± I said. ¡°We¡¯re bringing out the bodies.¡± The two guards glanced at each other. I kind of wished they weren¡¯t wearing sunglasses so I could see what they were thinking about. ¡°What is it?¡± I asked, instantly suspicious.

    ¡°The hazmat team usually takes care of that,¡± Gupta said. Something was off in her voice. She was lying. ¡°They¡¯ll come in later today.¡±

    ¡°Will they?¡± We turned around. There was Salim dragging a body. He lifted it up to show us all. ¡°If that is the case, then why is this body mummified? Why is its uniform different from our own?¡± He wasn¡¯t lying. The body was mummified, and its uniform was olive green instead of camo.

    I turned back to Mendez and Gupta. ¡°Thanks,¡± I said, ¡°but I¡¯m not entirely convinced a hazmat team¡¯s coming. We¡¯ll take these ourselves.¡± I was right. I had been convinced it wasn¡¯t over, that they¡¯d make us kill the wolves¡¯ puppies. This was worse.

    ¡°Policy is to leave bodies in here,¡± Mendez said. Instantly, there was dissent. ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± he said above the shouts, ¡°but I¡¯m just following orders.¡±

    ¡°You are desecrating bodies!¡± Salim shouted. ¡°My religion demands that I give a certain amount of respect to the dead. Leaving a body here does not satisfy that commandment!¡± People shouted in agreement.

    ¡°I can¡¯t believe I¡¯m saying this,¡± I said, ¡°but the Al-Qaeda guy has the moral high ground here.¡±

    People also shouted in agreement. ¡°You tell them, Killer!¡± MC Disaster yelled.

    I continued. ¡°I mean, seriously, look at how fucked up this is! How many years has that guy Salim¡¯s holding been here, huh? And you¡¯re not taking people out because of orders?¡± For some reason, I was getting a bit light-headed. ¡°This is¡­ I can¡¯t even begin to describe how utterly, horribly wrong this is!¡± I paused. ¡°Why am I slurring?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s because of the gas,¡± Gupta said guiltily.

    ¡°Gas?¡± I asked dumbly. Then I blacked out.

 1.13: Stop Snowing

    When we had been revived from the gas, we had been forced into disinfectant showers. We cooperated only because we were still woozy from the gas and were outnumbered, outgunned and out-trained. We got new, clean uniforms and the people like me who took a drink of the gray-green stuff got some pills.

    ¡°What do they do?¡± I asked.

    ¡°They make ye vomit,¡± the medic handing them out said. He was Irish (or maybe Scottish, again, I¡¯m terrible at identifying accents from the British Isles.) I raised an eyebrow. ¡°Basically,¡± the medic said, ¡°it¡¯s a choice between barfing constantly now or shitting and barfing blood and bits of yer digestive track later.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, more than a little horrified, ¡°I guess I¡¯ll take these¡­ how many times a day?¡±

    ¡°Two pills now,¡± he said, ¡°then continue it for every meal until you run out.¡± I took two pills. I started barfing halfway to the barracks. Well, technically, it wasn¡¯t barfing because usually nothing was coming up, and when I did get something out, it would be stomach acid. It got so bad that I had to lean on Eric and Doc for support.

    When we were in front of our barracks, Eliza asked, ¡°Oi, what¡¯s happened? You were in there longer than anyone else. And why¡¯s Nate in such rough shape?¡±

    A guard behind us said, ¡°No talking!¡± I heard someone spit in response. We kept moving back to the barracks. I got into bed, head leaning over the side so I wouldn¡¯t vomit onto the floor, then promptly passed out. Then woke up approximately two seconds later because I was dry-heaving.

    The next few days were spent in a very similar state, with people dragging me out of bed occasionally to get something to eat and drink. I¡¯m not sure how long this went on, maybe not even a day, maybe a week. Because of the whole constantly vomiting thing, I was kind of going a little insane from lack of sleep. After a while, I got to the point where I wasn¡¯t sure what was real and what was my unhinged imagination. If I had to guess, whenever the few bits I do remember involved vengeful talking wolves, famous singers with hook hands trying to kill me, or the penis-stealing magical girl were times when I was completely out of my mind.

    Then, one meal, I looked in the bottle of pills and realized that there were none left. I remember everyone at the table sighing with relief. I then went back to my bunk and passed out. I didn¡¯t dream, just enjoyed the sleep.

    When I woke up, Sergeant Krieger was staring at me. ¡°God damn it¡­¡± I moaned. ¡°Can I wait, like, a week to deal with you? Or at least until I¡¯ve had a few more hours of sleep?¡±

    ¡°You hurt me, Boyke,¡± Krieger said. ¡°You hurt me right deep.¡±

    I debated doubling down, offering an apology, or remaining silent. I chose to remain silent. I really didn¡¯t want to push my luck by being snarky or hostile, and a fake apology (which was the only type of apology I was capable of giving at that point) can piss people off more than a real one.

    After a pause, Sergeant Krieger asked, ¡°Aren¡¯t you a little bit curious about why I¡¯m here?¡±

    I looked around. ¡°A little,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m more curious about where Ray-Gun is. After all, you¡¯re sitting in his bed.¡± It wasn¡¯t just Ray-Gun who was missing. All the rest of the crew was gone as well. I wondered if this was pre-arranged. I also wondered where Eliza was.

    ¡°They¡¯re just talking to security,¡± Krieger said casually, ¡°they¡¯ve got a few enemies, and we want to ensure them that they¡¯re safe. They shouldn¡¯t be back for a while.¡± It was pre-arranged. The entire point of this camp was to kill off the weak. I looked over his shoulder to see if Eliza was there.

    Krieger noticed it. ¡°Are you looking for someone, boyke?¡±

    ¡°Eliza Henderson,¡± I said. I figured it wouldn¡¯t hurt to tell him something he already knew. In fact, why not tell him something he might not know? ¡°She has the tendency to¡­ follow me. I¡¯m almost as scared of her as I am of you.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± Krieger asked. ¡°How am I scary, boyke?¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re just like her,¡± I said. ¡°You seem to have some interest in me. That, in and of itself isn¡¯t worrying. The amount of attention you pay to me, however is¡­ paranoia-inducing.¡±

    ¡°You know,¡± Krieger said, ¡°it was my dream to see one of you fresh meat walk into this grinder and come out of it ahead of some of the scariest motherfuckers in the world.¡±

    ¡°Was?¡± I asked.

    Krieger laughed. ¡°You know, most of the people here are actually not fresh meat? Almost all have had some kind of combat training before coming to this program. It also would be easier to list the people like you who haven¡¯t killed anyone before this camp. And you¡­¡± here he leaned in close, ¡°you¡¯re the freshest meat of them all, aren¡¯t you boyke?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve taken Tae Kwon-do for ten years!¡± I protested.

    ¡°Aye,¡± he said, ¡°that you have. But I think we both know that a green belt and a few sparring sessions is nothing compared to an actual fight.¡±

    I nodded. ¡°If by actual fight, you mean trying to kill someone, then yeah.¡± I was about to add how most people hadn¡¯t, then considered what I had seen since I got here. Maybe being forced between dying and hurting was a lot more common than I thought.

    ¡°Even a playground fight¡¯s much different than your sparring,¡± Krieger said. ¡°In your sparring sessions, you get in trouble if you hurt someone. You wear pads to protect everyone involved. In a playground fight, or any other real fight, it¡¯s all about hurting the other person.¡± He seemed genuinely impressed. ¡°Do you know how hard it is to go from a life like yours, trying to never hurt another person, to straight up bashing another person¡¯s head in with a rock?¡±

    ¡°Disturbingly easy,¡± I said. ¡°I did it, remember?¡±

    Krieger laughed heartily. ¡°So that¡¯s why they call you Killer, eh? You¡¯re fucking cold, boyke.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t call me that!¡± I snarled.

    Krieger¡¯s smile disappeared, but the glint of madness in his eyes grew brighter. ¡°You want me to stop, Killer?¡± His voice was very dangerous, but still conversational.

    ¡°Yes.¡±

    Krieger considered me for a moment, then said, ¡°Then make me.¡± After a pause he added, ¡°Killer.¡±

    I sized him up and down. I considered going for his throat. A blow there might shut him up. However, if it didn¡¯t work, he was bigger, faster, stronger, more experienced, and quite possibly smarter than me. Therefore, he could probably beat me to a pulp and not even draw the Colt, knife, or taser strapped to his hip. ¡°In this situation?¡± I asked. ¡°Not likely.¡±

    ¡°See?¡± Krieger asked. ¡°You¡¯ve only been doing this since September, and already you¡¯re better than some people who¡¯ve been doing this since they came in. You think Salim would have bothered to size me up before he went for my throat?¡±

    ¡°My mother will be so proud,¡± I said sarcastically.

    ¡°However,¡± Krieger said, ¡°there is one question I have for you: Why are you here?¡±

    I stared at him blankly. ¡°You mean,¡± I asked, ¡°why am I at NIU?¡±

    Krieger nodded. ¡°Yes. What do you hope to achieve? What is your goal in life?¡± I didn¡¯t respond, so he added, ¡°I know most people can¡¯t be specific, but it helps to be honest. Telling someone what you want, or admitting you don¡¯t know what you want can help you get it.¡±

    I shrugged. ¡°Guess I got super hero syndrome,¡± I said. ¡°When I started, I had this idea that I¡¯d be ¡®saving the world¡¯ once I got out of here. Now¡­ I¡¯m not sure if I took the right path. I can¡¯t see myself doing any good using the stuff this program taught me. Problem is, I¡¯m reasonably sure I¡¯ve made too many enemies to leave the program and return home.¡±

    Krieger nodded. ¡°You¡¯re right in that you can¡¯t go back to your old self,¡± he said. ¡°But you¡¯re wrong in that you can¡¯t do good work. For instance, we¡¯ve had plenty of our graduates join agencies like Interpol and the Society of Genocide Relief. Hell, UNIX was founded by NIU graduates!¡±

    I almost gave myself away there. Or maybe he already knew. UNIX didn¡¯t just have alumni, it was created by them! ¡°I¡­¡± I said, ¡°I didn¡¯t know that.¡±

    ¡°If you want my advice, though,¡± Krieger said, ¡°you shouldn¡¯t hitch your wagon to just one group. You might be glad to have the option of saying no.¡± He got up, then added, ¡°Oh, you might not have heard, but you guys are on break until Saturday. After that, we¡¯ll start you guys on night patrol.¡±

    He got up and adjusted his winter jacket. It was weird that I hadn¡¯t noticed that before. I was wondering why he had one when he opened the door. As soon as Krieger opened the door, a howling wind and a huge amount of snow blew in to the room. He staggered out, the wind trying to push him back into the barracks. Wonderful.

    A bit latter, Eliza came in, her face red from the biting cold and a hood pulled over her head. She walked directly over to me. ¡°Nate!¡± she said, ¡°You¡¯re up! Think you¡¯re gonna live, then?¡± She was flashing her trademark grin and her tone was as mischievous as usual, but for some reason I thought I detected a hint of actual concern.

    ¡°Potentially,¡± I said. ¡°I doubt I¡¯ll be vomiting up pieces of my stomach, but I kind of just lied to Sergeant Krieger.¡±

    ¡°Oh really?¡± Her smile became a bit forced at this. She leaned on Eric and Ray-Gun¡¯s bunk and took off her hood. I hadn¡¯t seen her for a long time, so this was the first I¡¯d gotten a good look at her real ears. Instead of human ears, they were more cat or dog-like. They were facing towards me, so I could only see that the borders were black, and the very tips were white. Eliza continued, asking, ¡°And what, pray tell, is your reason for lying to Krieger?¡±

    ¡°Basically,¡± I said as quietly as I could without whispering, ¡°if I was a hundred-percent honest when answering his questions, he¡¯d learn about my employer, my partners, and a group of seven people I¡¯m supremely scared of.¡±

    ¡°Ah. I see.¡± Eliza looked somewhat terrified.

    ¡°To be fair,¡± I said, ¡°it was more of a congratulatory pep-talk. Apparently, he¡¯s always wanted to train some person with no history of violence into a brutal death machine, and I¡¯ve done pretty well except for some motivational issues.¡±

    ¡°Is that all ¡®e wanted?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°There was some stuff about what I missed, like guard duty and¡­¡±

    ¡°And what?¡± Eliza asked, cocking her head to the side.

    ¡°I think I¡¯m way too paranoid,¡± I said, ¡°but I think he knows who I work for, and he definitely knows more about them than me. It¡¯s not anything tangible, or at least not anything I consciously recognized.¡± I paused, considering confessing that I was seriously worried that I was going insane. Instead, I asked, ¡°So, how¡¯s the weather?¡±

    Eliza laughed. ¡°Bloody awful. For some ungodly reason, it dropped from ten degrees to below freezing and started blizzarding. That¡¯s Celsius, not whatever bleeding arbitrary bullshit you yanks use.¡±

    ¡°¡®Blizzarding:¡¯¡± I said, as I flipped open my compass/thermometer to get a rough ¡°¡®The act of working on something for four times as long as another competitor before announcing it, then delaying it multiple times.¡¯¡± Eliza gave me a funny look. ¡°Sorry,¡± I said. ¡°Gamer humor. Anyway, apparently in Fahrenheit that¡¯s a twenty-degree drop in¡­ how many hours?¡±

    ¡°Four.¡± Eliza said wearily, her ears drooping.

    ¡°I can¡¯t believe it was around eighty for a week after we got here,¡± I said. Eliza nodded in agreement.

    From there, the conversation kind of died down. Neither of us really wanted to talk about the last event. Eliza came close to it when she accidentally mentioned that her section was entirely gone. I asked her if she wanted to talk about it. She said no. That pretty much killed the conversation.

    I saw Eliza more than I used to over the next few weeks. It was still not a lot, seeing as she tended to like hanging out with Bai and Oro more than any of the people in my group. We also were very busy. In addition to all the craziness of gun and hand-to-hand combat, there was the fact that they were introducing grenades and rockets. I was lucky I went first for grenade throwing, because in the second group, some idiot nearly blew himself up. The girl who was standing next to him kind of laughed her ass off. Eliza¡¯s response, when we were at dinner, was to say, ¡°I want to be that girl when I grow up. If I was right next to some bloke who dropped his bleeding grenade right next to me, I¡¯d shit myself.¡±

    Luckily, I didn¡¯t have night watch duty for a few weeks. I¡¯d hear someone come back in at an awful hour, shivering from the cold and crawl into their bunk. Then there was also having to deal with the people you were patrolling with. John had the best story.

    ¡°So, how many of you guys saw the guy who knocked me out of the ring?¡± He asked, sitting down at breakfast one day.

    Everyone shook their heads, except Cross. ¡°That big fucker with the Jewfro? You know, the one with the unpronounceable Polish name?¡±

    ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s the one!¡± John said. ¡°I was on patrol with him tonight!¡±

    We all laughed. ¡°Seriously?¡± Doc asked. ¡°The guy who almost broke your nose? Did he want to finish the job or something?¡±

    ¡°No, actually,¡± John said. ¡°You wanna hear the crazy part?¡± Everyone answered with a resounding yes, but John hadn¡¯t really waited. ¡°The crazy part was that he was apologizing constantly! He was like offering to buy me drinks and stuff and I was like, ¡®no dude, it¡¯s cool, I totally get it!¡¯¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± Doc asked.

    ¡°He is,¡± The Monk said, ¡°as our American friends would say, a ¡®chill dude.¡¯¡±

    ¡°I sincerely hope,¡± I said, ¡°that I get someone as chill as that guy.¡± At two in the morning, someone woke me up to tell me that I¡¯d be patrolling with Richard, Salim and Ulfric. I grumbled in a mixture of dismay and annoyance as I pulled on as many layers as I could. The girl who had woken me up then went to go find Salim.

    After we were both up, we trudged out into the courtyard. We both pretended to ignore each other while secretly preparing for a fight as we met up with Richard, Ulfric, Sergeant Burra, and a group of eight other students standing in the huge blizzard.

    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

    ¡°G¡¯evening, everyone!¡± Burra said, her voice much more chipper than should be allowed at that time. ¡°So, I assume you all know which groups you¡¯re in?¡± Everyone nodded and vocalized an affirmative. ¡°Right then,¡± Burra continued on, ¡°Group one, you lot get the inner perimeter. Your job is to go around on the inside here and check the buildings for break-ins and damage. Also, if you see any bloke out of bed, call it in on the radios we¡¯ll give you. We¡¯ll then get a drill sergeant to come help you secure the person. Just make sure you maintain visual contact.¡±

    She then turned to the next group. ¡°Now, group two gets the cushy gig. You lot get to wait by the barrels outside the main gate. No one gets in or out. Also, make sure the fires in the barrels stay lit. They¡¯ll keep you nice and toasty, I here.¡±

    She turned to Ulfric, Richard, Salim, and me. ¡°That leaves you sorry bastards,¡± she said sympathetically. ¡°You¡¯ve got to go out and patrol the outer perimeter. Call if you see anyone besides yourselves out, would you?¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± I said, ¡°the outer perimeter? The place where there are unexploded mines?¡±

    Burra shrugged apologetically. ¡°The mines aren¡¯t so much the problem if you keep within three hundred meters to the wall. Even then, you¡¯ll probably be fine. It¡¯s the bloody cold that¡¯ll get you. It¡¯s actually a couple degrees cooler out there than it is in the camp¡¯s interior.¡± I assumed that she was speaking in Celsius. That would be a bigger drop than Farenheit.

    She pointed to a cart filled with radios. ¡°Here¡¯s the radios. Take them and make sure they¡¯re set to channel two.¡± After the radio check, she said, ¡°Good job. Now off you pop!¡±

    We popped off. Group two relieved the previous group at the entrance and we began heading off on our appointed rounds. I was in the front, Salim and Richard behind me, and Ulfric bringing up the rear. Needless to say, I was worried. I wondered if (or more specifically when) Salim and Richard would stab me in the back. That had to be the reason they were standing behind me, right? And then there was Ulfric.

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°before we turn that corner, I need to know who¡¯s planning on killing me tonight. You know, just for the sake of my paranoia.¡±

    ¡°Not tonight,¡± Salim said. ¡°I am a patient man. I can wait until the university no longer protects you. Until then¡­ I can wait.¡±

    ¡°Maybe I¡¯ll do it,¡± Richard said. ¡°If Salim doesn¡¯t squeal I¡­¡± He then made a squeaking noise. Salim and I turned to look at him.

    Ulfric had reached out and grabbed Richard by the shoulder. He leaned in to Richard¡¯s ear and said, with a slight southern twang, ¡°I like Nathan.¡± After he was sure the message had gotten across, he let go of Richard¡¯s shoulders.

    ¡°Thanks, Ulfric,¡± I said, my voice cracking. Ulfric giggled in response.

    We continued walking for a long time. The cold bit at us and the silence gnawed at the backs of our minds. I had it especially bad because I was worried that Richard or Salim might stick a knife in to my back before Ulfric could stop them. Or Ulfric would decide that he was bored and painting portals to hell in our blood, marrow and grey matter would be fun.

    Apparently the silence was getting to other people as well. After starting the second lap, Richard finally broke down. ¡°Ok,¡± he asked, ¡°are we just going to just ignore each other?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°seeing as we how we all hate each other, I don¡¯t think we¡¯d have the most relaxing or educational conversation.¡±

    ¡°As always,¡± Salim said acidly, ¡°You westerners fail to grasp even the most basic aspects of life. Conversation is not supposed to relax or teach, it is there to pass the time.¡±

    ¡°And as always,¡± Richard said, ¡°you Arabs act like god speaks to you personally.¡±

    ¡°Hey, assholes,¡± I said, ¡°can we not act like we¡¯re getting high off the smell of our own shit? Salim, Richard may be an asshole, but he¡¯s right about how much of a prick you are. Richard, you also described yourself in that statement. Get the fuck over yourself.¡±

    We past Group 2. They were huddled around the fire in the barrel. They pointed at us and laughed as we walked by. They were speaking some far-east sounding language. We ignored them. A little while later, Richard spoke up again.

    ¡°So why are you here, Nathan?¡± he asked.

    ¡°Because I¡¯m a fucking moron!¡± I shouted over the snow and wind.

    ¡°Thought Jews were supposed to be smart,¡± he said in a self-satisfied, sneering way. God, I wanted to punch him.

    ¡°If you know everything,¡± I asked, ¡°why are you here?¡± It took all I had from adding asshole. I was kind of proud of myself I didn¡¯t.

    ¡°Partly because my dad made me,¡± Richard said. ¡°Partly because there¡¯s a bigger problem that need to be dealt with.¡±

    ¡°What, bigger than Jews and black people walking about unmolested?¡± I asked. ¡°Must be transsexuals.¡±

    For someone Richard laughed. ¡°No,¡± he said. ¡°Trust me, you¡¯re going to be really surprised at who¡¯s in this little fight of mine, and what side they¡¯re on.¡±

    There was a pause for a moment while we processed that statement. ¡°That was almost as evasive as my answer,¡± I said. ¡°Congratulations.¡±

    ¡°And that¡¯s all you¡¯re going to get,¡± Richard said.

    ¡°I think¡± Salim said, ¡°I will share more than you two.¡± He paused. ¡°Aside from the elderly and people here, have you known anyone to die? Violently?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± I said.

    ¡°Yes,¡± Richard said.

    ¡°Who?¡± Salim asked.

    ¡°My sister,¡± Richard said. ¡°I was there when it happened.¡± His voice was very flat.

    ¡°I am sorry to hear that,¡± Salim said. ¡°When did it happen?¡±

    ¡°Last year,¡± he said. ¡°I saw it happen.¡± He paused. ¡°I thought this was about you. Why don¡¯t you tell us whatever sob story you have?¡±

    Salim shrugged. ¡°I was getting there.¡± He then began to tell his story, an air of false geniality masking seething anger. ¡°When I was sixteen, I was still living in my village. I never really wanted to leave, you understand? All my family and friends lived there.¡±

    I nodded. While I had always wanted leave home, I could understand not wanting to leave somewhere where everyone you ever knew lived.

    ¡°I remember the day everything changed,¡± Salim said. ¡°It should have been a good day. A wedding.¡± His voice lost all pretense of friendliness. ¡°I guess someone forgot to tell your government that. They must have seen the guns my family was going to shoot off or something, so they had a drone launch a missile into the crowd.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± I said. What else could I say.

    ¡°They saw that there were still people moving,¡± he said, ¡°so they fired a few more. I was one of three survivors, and I was the one the least scarred. That was when I decided that I would not rest until you Americans learned terror. You too will learn the pain of losing everyone you care about seemingly at random and the terror of knowing it can happen again at any moment.¡±

    Before anyone else could formulate a response, Ulfric giggled and said something in Arabic. We all turned to face him. Salim said something in response, possibly the Arabic version of ¡°Say that again.¡± Ulfric said something different in Arabic.

    In response, Salim threw himself at Ulfric, screaming in Arabic. Ulfric just grabbed Salim by the face and held him at arm¡¯s length, muttering bits of Arabic between his signature high-pitched giggles.

    ¡°Jesus,¡± Richard said ¡°what the fuck¡¯d you say to him, Ulfric?¡±

    Ulfric, his accent now Middle Eastern, said, ¡°He was set free, now he¡¯s like me! Violent and happy as can be. Trouble is, he doesn¡¯t want to admit the truth, you see.¡± He giggled again, maybe at the cleverness of his own rhyme, maybe because he thought he was right, maybe because he was picturing squeezing and crushing Salim¡¯s head (I had seen him do it before on his highlight reel,) or hell, he could just be giggling because that¡¯s what Ulfric does. I didn¡¯t know, and honestly I didn¡¯t want to find out.

    ¡°HE¡¯S A LIAR!¡± Salim yelled. ¡°HE¡¯S WRONG! HE¡¯S SICK!¡±

    ¡°Do you want to hear why I¡¯m here?¡± Ulfric asked.

    ¡°Not at the moment,¡± I said. ¡°Richard, help me hold him back.¡±

    ¡°Got it,¡± Richard said. We each grabbed one of Salim¡¯s arms and began to drag him away from Ulfric. Salim began kicking and squirming.

    During this time, I was forced to look in Ulfric¡¯s face. I didn¡¯t like that, because his face¡­ it¡¯s not ugly, quite the opposite in fact, but there¡¯s something about him that¡¯s just off. Maybe it¡¯s how childish he seems. Maybe it was the constant smile. Whatever it was, I didn¡¯t like it. I especially didn¡¯t like it when Ulfric¡¯s smile grew wider. ¡°I¡¯m here because of all the funny people.¡± He then let go of Salim¡¯s face.

    This surprised me and Richard, giving Salim the opportunity to wrench free with a blood-curdling scream and launch himself at Ulfric. Ulfric then grabbed Salim by the coat and flung him a few yards into the wall. Salim¡¯s torso and head slammed into it, then he slid down a few feet.

    Richard and I looked from to Salim, to Ulfric, then finally each other. Ulfric just giggled. I think Salim may have groaned, but the wind drowned it out. After a while, I said, ¡°So it looks like they¡¯re done. I¡¯ll go check on Salim.¡±

    ¡°You do that,¡± Richard said as he eyed Ulfric warily.

    I walked over to Salim. As got closer, I could see his eyes were opened, but unfocused. I shone my flashlight in his eyes. They were different sizes.

    ¡°Sssstop it¡­¡± he slurred.

    ¡°Salim,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯m going to have to ask you a few questions.¡± He nodded. ¡°Ok,¡± I continued, ¡°How many fingers am I holding up?¡±

    ¡°That can¡¯t be right¡­¡± he said, staring at my hand.

    ¡°How many fingers am I holding up?¡± I asked again, now scared.

    ¡°Eight?¡± I was holding up three, and only showing him one hand.

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°what did we have for breakfast?¡±

    ¡°The same thing we have every day,¡± Salim said, ¡°that disgusting sludge.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°close enough.¡± I reached out my hand. ¡°Come on, let¡¯s get you moving. Don¡¯t want to freeze to death, do you?¡± It was probably ten below in Farenheit (or -23 Celsius.) I doubt Salim could survive long if we just left him.

    ¡°Hey, Jacobs¡­¡± I heard Richard say, ¡°I think I see someone.¡±

    I turned around. Richard was pointing his flashlight at a point in the distance. I got up, telling Salim, ¡°Wait here, don¡¯t go to sleep.¡± I squinted as I walked to where Richard was standing. It took me a while, but I eventually could make out a pale figure with long dark hair in the snow.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said to Richard, ¡°I see it too. I¡¯m going to call this clusterfuck in. Unless you want to?¡±

    ¡°Go ahead,¡± Richard said.

    I raised my radio, and looked back at the figure. It was now closer. ¡°Sergeant Burra, come in. Repeat, Sergeant Burra, come in.¡±

    ¡°¡®Allo, soldier,¡± Sergeant Burra¡¯s cheery Australian accent came in over the radio. I could barely here her over the radio. ¡°What¡¯s up?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re kind of in a weird situation,¡± I said, keeping my eyes fixed on the figure in the distance. ¡°Ulfric and Salim got in a fight, and now Salim is concussed.¡±

    ¡°God¡¯s still looking out for the fools, I see.¡±

    ¡°That isn¡¯t all,¡± I said. ¡°We¡¯ve got visual contact with a person. Definitely brunette, possibly female Caucasian.¡±

    ¡°How close is she to your position?¡±

    I checked. We were at the shooting range, a little ways away from where the shooters were supposed to stand. The contact was halfway between the wall and the shooter location. ¡°About a hundred fifty to two hundred meters,¡± I said.

    ¡°Huh,¡± Sergeant Burra said. ¡°That¡¯s unusual. The contact usually keeps about three hundred meters back. Anyway, Spooky¡¯s never hurt anyone so far. Carry on.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, ¡°but has Spooky ever been closer than three hundred meters before?¡±

    There was silence on the other end for a long time. Finally, Sergeant Burra said, ¡°Continue on your rounds. If there is any change, contact me. Burra out.¡±

    We looked at each other. Finally, Richard said, ¡°I¡¯ll get Salim. You can deal with Spooky.¡±

    I glanced at Ulfric for some reason. A weird, dreamy look was coming over his face. I looked back at Spooky. Spooky was now seventy-five meters away. Now that she was much closer, I could see that Spooky¡¯s hair wasn¡¯t moving despite the howling wind.

    ¡°Richard¡­¡± I called out, not taking my eyes off Spooky, ¡°You got Salim yet?¡±

    ¡°Working on it!¡± he yelled back.

    I took out my walky-talky again, and said, ¡°Contact now seventy-five meters, repeat contact is now at seventy-five meters!¡±

    The only response was static. I was now completely freaked. I was also losing feeling in my extremities. ¡°Richard,¡± I yelled, ¡°We need to go now!¡± I was now afraid to turn away. Every time I did, Spooky was significantly closer. Maybe she was like that sub-atomic particle that exists in multiple places at once when you don¡¯t look at it.

    Maybe Spooky had read my mind, because she (at least, I¡¯m pretty sure Spooky was a she) started walking towards me. I raised my radio, and began yelling, ¡°Contact is coming towards me! Send back-up now! Repeat, send back-up now!¡±

    I began backing away. The snow suddenly picked up and changed directions, and I blinked. That was all the time it took for Spooky to disappear. I turned around clockwise, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. Ulfric was still standing with a zoned-out look on his face, and Richard was trying to get Salim up.

    When I finished a full rotation, Spooky was back.

    Right in front of my face.

    She was definitely a she, and she was extremely pale with a weird bluish tinge. Her body looked mildly mummified, but her eyes were somehow still functional. We stared at each other for a moment, her blankly, me in complete terror.

    ¡°You don¡¯t trust anyone, do you?¡± She asked, her voice hoarse and monotone. I shook my head. ¡°Very smart of you,¡± she said. As I watched, she turned into dust and blew away.

    I picked up the radio. ¡°This is Jacobs,¡± I said. ¡°Boy, do I have a story for you guys.¡±

 1.14: Snow and Cold

    After informing security of what had just happened, I headed back to Salim and Richard. Ulfric was still off for some reason, so I kind of ignored him. Salim was being supported by Richard. Neither one seemed happy about it.

    ¡°We¡­¡± Salim said, slurring his speech and gesticulating at Ulfric, ¡°¡­we should do that thing where he isn¡¯t around anymore¡­¡±

    ¡°Kill him?¡± Richard asked sardonically.

    ¡°Yes¡­¡± Salim said. ¡°He¡¯s not doing¡­ going¡­¡±

    ¡°Doing anything?¡± I asked. ¡°Not at the moment, but I don¡¯t want to find out if he¡¯ll snap out of it if you start stabbing him.¡±

    The radio crackled. ¡°You blokes still out there?¡± Sergeant Burra asked.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, ¡°and creepy girl¡¯s gone away.¡±

    ¡°I actually got word,¡± Burra said, ¡°that was one of our students. She¡¯s psychic, and when she can¡¯t sleep, things get a bit weird. Just a few extra blankets, and she¡¯s right as rain. Wake Mr. Giggles up, then continue with the patrol. One more lap should do it, over.¡±

    ¡°So, we got the shit scared out of us because some mutie got cold?¡± Guess who said that? If you guessed that Richard was the one who used the racial slur, you¡¯d be right! ¡°God,¡± he complained, ¡°now I can¡¯t feel my fucking toes!¡±

    ¡°Welcome to your first real winter,¡± I said. I had been smart and tried to shove my hands in my pockets or up the opposite sleeve as much as possible.

    Ulfric then looked up and shook his head. ¡°You ok?¡± I asked him. He shrugged, then began walking.

    ¡°I guess he¡¯s ok,¡± I said. Ulfric nodded and grunted in confirmation. ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°let¡¯s finish this up. I personally want to go back to sleep.¡±

    Trudging through the snow, a horrible thought occurred to me. ¡°Do you think that they¡¯ll have us all do an exercise of some kind out in the snow?¡±

    ¡°Are you kidding?¡± Richard asked. ¡°How many people have they killed? If they keep this up, they¡¯ll only have a few people left. I doubt anyone¡¯d kill their only source of income.¡±

    ¡°Maybe it isn¡¯t about money,¡± Salim said. ¡°It could be about prestige. They might like to brag about training a better soldier than any other group. Besides, they¡¯ll want some sort of grand finale.¡± He was still slurring, but he was a little better.

    ¡°Maybe,¡± I said, ¡°but if that¡¯s the case, then why are we only having a minor amount of discipline training? I mean, we¡¯re really good at killing stuff, but we¡¯re kind of shit soldiers at the moment. I mean, remember the Chamber of Horrors, Salim? We blatantly disobeyed orders, but we weren¡¯t really punished all that much for it.¡± I paused. Then I added, ¡°I do agree with Salim that they¡¯re saving something for the grand finale. They keep trying to go bigger each time they do one of these events, and I can¡¯t see them letting our finals be forgettable.¡±

    ¡°Hell Semester Awards are in two weeks,¡± Richard said quietly.

    The rest of the patrol was done in silence. I reflected on what was going on. A psychic of some power was definitely here for one thing. That would interest UNIX. In more immediate news, I now kind of doubted that Salim and/or Richard would kill me anytime soon. We may hate each other, but we at least either realized we¡¯d need to have a working relationship to survive, or we kind of respected each other.

    Ulfric¡­ Ulfric I wasn¡¯t sure about. Then again, there was only one person who knows how Ulfric¡¯s mind works and he¡¯s too busy giggling and fucking with people¡¯s heads to give a straight answer. I wanted to ask him what was up with him being frozen like that, but a) he might not be able to tell me due to psychic bullshit and how nuts he was, b) he was a violent maniac, and c) I wasn¡¯t exactly sure he would tell the truth.

    Maybe it was that I didn¡¯t have a clear grasp of his motivation. If he just wanted to have fun cracking rib cages open with his bare hands, there were cheaper ways to do that. Hell, there were ways you can do that and end up getting paid. Maybe it was just that I knew that at any moment he could decide that he was bored and my screams would be the most interesting. Or maybe I was just paranoid.

    Either way, I was glad when we finally got to the front gate. The people guarding it had made fun of us every single time we passed by, so Salim, Richard, and I made sure to be as smug as possible as we passed. One of them made an odd gesture which was probably rude, another made a few threatening steps towards us, but stopped when Ulfric almost skipped towards him.

    He turned around, and said, ¡°You unlucky! I no longer grant you honor of being beaten by me!¡±

    ¡°Whatever you say, asshole,¡± I said as I kept on walking. I hadn¡¯t meant to say it (at least, not as loud as I did,) but it was cold, Salim was heavy and I just wanted to go to fucking sleep. Also, my hands were starting to stick to the flashlight. I just wanted to be done with this shit.

    ¡°What you say?¡±

    I considered saying nothing, considered apologizing. While my conscious train of thought was doing this, my voice said, ¡°Didn¡¯t you hear me Susan? I told you to go back to playing with your Barbie dolls.¡±

    The guy ran straight at me. I slammed the butt of my flashlight into the side of his head, putting all my frustration and anxiety into the blow. I also used every trick ten years of Tae Kwon-do had taught me, including taking a step back and striking through his head instead of at it. Later, I would learn that the flashlight I was given was designed as much for hitting people in the exact way I hit him as it was for providing illumination. From the steel pommel on the end of it to the textured grip, the manufacturers had worked to make it downright deadly. I would also learn later that he had died a few days later from his brain swelling up. All I knew at the time was that I felt a vibration run up my arm as I hit the guy and he crumpled to the ground.

    ¡°We done here?¡± I asked. No one responded, so we headed back in to the camp. When I got back to my bunk and began stripping down to my underwear so the snow wouldn¡¯t melt and get my bed wet and stowing my gear, I noticed that my flashlight¡¯s butt was wet and sticky. I shrugged. I could deal with it in the morning. Right now, I was going to sleep.

    When we got up at the usual time, I had completely forgotten about it. I was just glad that the snow had stopped for the moment. I struggled to put on clean clothes, due to how tired I was. Surprisingly, I was the first person in formation. The run started out normally enough, or so I thought. We got some new equipment in the form of a backpack filled with various stuff, but that was about it. John and I were in the back as usual and Cross and Eric¡¯s crew were heading off and trying to be in first.

    I used the first half of the time basically just chatting with John. It was somewhat leisurely. I had told him about the whole Seven Supreme thing and had made the mistake of mentioning that I might want to withhold some of the stuff about them.

    ¡°Sure you don¡¯t want to tell them?¡± John asked for the hundredth time.

    ¡°John,¡± I said, ¡°two of the groups involved are searching for something based on what¡¯s pretty much a fairy tale. Everyone else honestly seems to be out of our employer¡¯s purview, honestly. If I, uh we, edit things a bit for our employer, we get a less risky source of information.¡±

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    ¡°And if they find out?¡±

    ¡°Worst they can do is refuse to pay us,¡± I said confidently. ¡°And if they ask me directly, I¡¯ll tell them.¡±

    ¡°Yeah¡­¡± John said. After a pause, he said, ¡°You¡¯re going rogue, aren¡¯t you? Or native, or whatever it¡¯s called. You¡¯re getting too into this.¡±

    ¡°Seriously,¡± I asked, ¡°how much info do you think you¡¯re going to collect just watching and waiting?¡±

    John shrugged. ¡°Ok, you got me there. But you seem like you¡¯re crossing a line, man.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯ll be careful.¡±

    ¡°That being said,¡± John added firmly, ¡°I won¡¯t tell anyone about this Seven Supreme stuff unless I think you¡¯re going nuts with it.¡±

    ¡°Thanks, man,¡± I said.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know what I mean by going nuts,¡± he continued, ¡°but I¡¯ll know it when I see it.¡±

    We continued on the path for silence for a while. When we got onto the main campus, we started talking about our family. John¡¯s parents were (as far as he knew) back home in New Jersey. Mine were back in Massachusetts. Neither of our families knew what we were doing or had heard from us since we touched down.

    We were just heading out of the gates when I noticed it. ¡°Yeah,¡± I was saying, ¡°my dad never wanted me joining the joining the army. He¡¯d rather¡­¡±

    ¡°What is it?¡± John asked. We had just exited the gates.

    ¡°All the drill sergeants were just standing by the gate.¡± I said.

    ¡°They could be taking a break,¡± John said. He didn¡¯t sound convinced.

    ¡°All of them?¡± I asked.

    ¡°You know,¡± John said, sounding more nervous, ¡°I kind of wish you¡¯d just say, ¡®you¡¯re probably right, John.¡¯¡± From behind us, the gate rattled closed. We also noticed that Campus Security had set up sniper and machine gun emplacements on the wall behind us. ¡°Guess we¡¯re not going back!¡± John said. ¡°Fuck me, right?¡±

    ¡°Pretty much,¡± I said. ¡°Probably should be thinking ahead, though. Try and anticipate what exactly they¡¯ve got planned.¡±

    ¡°Obviously some kind of Lord of the Flies shit,¡± John said. ¡°I mean, that¡¯s the only thing that could work¡­¡±

    ¡°Kinda doubt it.¡± I said, ¡°Remember, the goal isn¡¯t to kill us all.¡±

    ¡°Honestly,¡± John said, ¡°if they lock us out, what else are we going to do? At least killing ourselves will keep us warm.¡±

    I began to consider the possibilities as we got back to camp. As I had suspected, the doors leading into the camp were closed there as well. Unlike the main campus, there was no place on the walls to put guards. Instead, they were almost double the height, smooth, and topped with barbed wire. People were milling about the obsidian barrier in confusion.

    At first, I wondered why there were so few of them. Then, I realized with a start that it was because most of the rest of us were dead. I had even killed one of them. Then I remembered how the guy from last night hadn¡¯t gotten up after I hit him with the flashlight.

    Before that train of thought could go too far into Grimmsville, Professor Blunt¡¯s voice came over a loudspeaker to derail it. ¡°Good morning, maggots!¡± he said, ¡°Today is your acid test! If you, as a class, can survive the night and take under thirty percent casualties, you get to go home early!¡± I cheered at this, along with several other people. Before the cheering could get underway, however, Professor Blunt¡¯s voice came over the speaker again. ¡°However, twinkletoes, if you screw up, you get to do this again and again until you do it right. Do you understand?¡±

    After the resounding, ¡°YES, SIR!¡± had died down, Professor Blunt signed off. Silence reigned. I waited on the outskirts, observing the few people behind us walking to the crowd. As time went on, I noticed that people were starting to regard each other warily.

    I was conflicted. I didn¡¯t want to be the one to take charge. Salim and Richard (and maybe any friends of the guy I hit last night) would automatically oppose it, for one thing. Plus, I only had vague ideas of what we were facing and how to combat it. However, if no one stepped in, that would be much worse.

    I was still debating this when Bai stepped up. ¡°Listen!¡± she said, ¡°I have heard reports from the drill sergeants that today¡¯s storm will be worse than any of the previous ones! We all have camping supplies, so we should pool them and set up by the range where it is warmest!¡±

    That was a good plan. I wanted to second it, but I was afraid that doing so would undermine it. Also, if anyone should have been leader at that point, I would have said Bai. She was about the only person that a majority of people would listen to.

    ¡°So,¡± Salim asked, ¡°who is going to determine how the supplies are pooled?¡±

    Bai froze. I silently begged her to say something like, I will, because I¡¯m the person who beat Ulfric in hand to hand combat, bitches!

    Thankfully, Eliza said something pretty similar. ¡°Why not Bai?¡± she asked. ¡°She¡¯s brilliant at thinking stuff like this through. She¡¯s also one of the most trustworthy people I know.¡±

    Salim shrugged. ¡°I just don¡¯t know¡­¡± he said.

    ¡°Oh come on,¡± I said. A little over four hundred eyes turned to face me. I continued, trying not to get stage fright. ¡°I mean, you know her plan is decent. Remember last night? The shooting range wasn¡¯t as cold because we were near the kitchen and there were two walls shielding us from the worst of the wind. She might have other ideas.¡± Besides, I added silently, hoping he got it, you know that they¡¯re planning something big.

    ¡°Do you think she has any ideas about what they¡¯re going to do?¡± Richard asked. ¡°You know, for this special final test? I mean, the way you were talking about this last night, you guys seemed to think they¡¯d do something a lot bigger than just kicking us outside.¡±

    ¡°The Great White Moron seems to be right for once,¡± Eric said. ¡°Our teachers seem to like to make us suffer in much more creative ways.¡±

    Everyone turned to Bai expectantly. We waited a good thirty seconds. Then Eliza elbowed her. Bai jumped, then started improvising. ¡°Oh, yes! The plan. After we set up camp¡­¡± she said, ¡°¡­we can set up several forward positions at key points and distribute radios to them and to me. Most should be in the forest near the bend, because that¡¯s where the attack will most likely come from.¡± She then paused. ¡°We should get set up. After that, if you¡¯re a leader of some sort, Eliza will come get you.¡±

    After she was done, Eliza shouted, ¡°All right, you ¡®eard ¡®er ya cunts! Get your arses in gear!¡±

    Everyone instantly got moving. Except for Bai, that is. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her just standing in the middle of a mass of moving people, obviously wondering what the fuck had just happened. I shrugged. Better her than me.

 1.15: They Shot Their Own Eyes Out, Honest!

    I quickly hooked up with the rest of my group. Cross, Doc, The Monk, MC Disaster and Ray-Gun were busy setting up camp, with tents in a roughly circular formation. ¡°Where¡¯s Eric?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Right behind you, Killer,¡± he said. I turned around to see a slightly annoyed Eric. ¡°I¡¯ve been looking for you.¡±

    ¡°Oh?¡± I said.

    ¡°It¡¯s just,¡± he said, ¡°that you seem to be very close to the center of all this. Would you mind telling me what¡¯s going on?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, ¡°about that. Well, last night, Salim and Richard were on patrol with me.¡±

    Doc and Cross laughed. Eric, through chortles, asked, ¡°How did you three not kill each other?¡±

    ¡°Apart from them knowing they¡¯d be kicked out of school and tortured to death if I died? Ulfric wanted us to play nice.¡±

    John¡¯s eyes widened. ¡°Ulfric was the peacekeeper?¡±

    ¡°Weird, right?¡± I said.

    Everyone who wasn¡¯t laughing or as chill as The Monk answered with a resounding ¡°YES!¡±

    ¡°Anyway,¡± I said, ¡°when we weren¡¯t being stalked by someone¡¯s dream-self, we were talking about what the assholes in charge were going to do next. Both me and Salim agreed that it¡¯d be something big.¡± I paused. ¡°So what do you guys need me to do?¡±

    ¡°Just unpack your stuff,¡± Eric said, ¡°and make sure to eat one of your packets of power sludge. Apparently, if you don¡¯t eat it after your run, you¡¯ll end up collapsing like a sack of bricks.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said. ¡°Probably gonna give me cancer in a few years, but what the hell.¡± I reached into my backpack until I found some. ¡°Holy shit,¡± I said, ¡°they come in a squeeze pouch! That¡¯d be awesome if it wasn¡¯t so disgusting!¡±

    ¡°Finish it up and set up, Killer,¡± Doc said. ¡°We need this camp done pretty soon.¡± As he finished, I saw a snowflake land on his nose, contrasting with his dark skin.

    By the time the camp was set up, it had begun to snow in earnest. When Eliza came to get Eric, I could barely see them from my tent, despite it being only a few feet away. When I poked my head out, I barely got a glimpse of Eliza¡¯s red hair as she led Eric away. I immediately closed the tent flap to stop the warmth from leaking out.

    The tent was actually heated. There was a battery of some description and some heating devices. I wasn¡¯t sure how it worked, but it said that it would keep the tent at sixty degrees for the next forty-eight hours. I was wondering how technologically advanced it all was, then I saw the NIU logo on the controls. So it was probably very advanced.

    After a while, Eric came knocking at the door of my tent. Combined with the howling wind that occasionally pierced the tent, and it was nearly the straw that broke the camel¡¯s back. I opened the flap. ¡°What is it?¡± I asked. I had to shout to be heard above the wind.

    Eric shouted back, ¡°We¡¯ve got first watch in the forest. Grab some water, a radio, your power sludge, and your training rifle. We are going hunting!¡±

    ¡°You realize we¡¯re the ones being hunted?¡± I asked.

    Eric laughed. ¡°You are partly right, Killer,¡± he said, ¡°but if the people hunting us make a single mistake, they become our prey.¡±

    We kitted up. We started off trying to make small talk, but it was almost impossible over the sound of the wind. Our radios had mono earbuds, but we didn¡¯t want to drain the batteries unless we had to.

    The trek itself was long and arduous. The worst part was going through the large space of open land, also known as the majority of the journey. There were a few forward posts being constructed, basically some snow walls surrounding some tents, but they were just a somewhat nice place to stop before we had to go out into the biting cold.

    It got better after we finally got to the forest. Not that much better, but we were at least shielded from the worst of the wind. ¡°O-ok,¡± Eric, shivering with cold, ¡°D-d-doc, take our zen f-f-friend, Killer, and John.¡±

    ¡°W-why don¡¯t I get a nickname?¡± John asked.

    ¡°B-b-because you¡¯re b-boring.¡± Eric said. ¡°A-anyway, D-doc, your g-group g-goes up on that side and get a good v-view on the airport. We¡¯ll travel up by the running p-path in case anyone comes from that direction. O-okay?¡±

    ¡°Got it,¡± I said.

    Everyone shot me dirty looks. ¡°A-aren¡¯t you cold?¡± Cross asked acidly.

    ¡°Yes.¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m even colder now that I¡¯ve stopped moving.¡± The dirty looks changed to shock and¡­ something else. ¡°Did I mention I fucking hate the cold?¡±

    ¡°R-right!¡± The Monk said. ¡°L-l-let¡¯s get moving!¡±

    Everyone quickly agreed. As Doc led us on into the forest, I suddenly realized: they were afraid. ¡°Hey guys?¡± I said after a while, ¡°Sorry about snapping. Didn¡¯t mean to scare you guys like that.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t w-worry about i-it, man,¡± John said, his teeth chattering. ¡°W-we¡¯re all a little cranky.¡±

    ¡°Still shouldn¡¯t have¡­¡± We were cut off by a staccato clatter. ¡°Was that an AK?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Into the underbrush!¡± Doc said. ¡°Get into concealment now!¡±

    ¡°I take that as a yes,¡± John said.

    We hurried to follow his orders. John and I were about twenty meters behind Doc and The Monk. We waited for a bit. The cold bit into me. I heard Doc¡¯s whispered voice through the walkie-talkie. ¡°Command, this is control, we have possible contact to the Northeast. Repeat, contact coming in from the Northeast.¡±

    ¡°Understood, patrol,¡± I heard Bai say. ¡°Do you see them?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Doc whispered back, ¡°but they have at least one Kalashnikov.¡±

    ¡°Understood, patrol,¡± Bai said. ¡°Stay alert and see if you can ambush them.¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± Doc said, somewhat sarcastically.

    We waited for a long time. Occasionally, I¡¯d hear the AK chatter in the distance. Finally, I began to hear voices in the distances. They seemed to be all laughing and chatting like they were at some kind of party. Eventually, I could see one person through the bush I was hiding in pass by. He was carrying a G-3K, which is basically a tiny assault rifle in the same caliber as the FAL. This particular one had one of those flippy optics behind a reflex sight.

    Suddenly, the AK chattered again. The guy with the G-3K whipped around and from behind him another person yelled in shock. ¡°Jesus!¡± G-3 guy said, ¡°Stop doing that!¡±

    From behind G-3 guy, I could hear someone laughing. ¡°Stop fucking laughing, man!¡± G-3 guy said. ¡°The professors told us we should be using the nonlethals, not this shit! Besides, you keep giving away our position!¡±

    From the earpiece, I heard Doc whisper, ¡°Go.¡± I lifted the training rifle and began to run forwards.

    ¡°Man, it¡¯s more fun this¡­ LOOK OUT¡± The guy who had been laughing suddenly noticed that I had burst out of the bushes. Or maybe he noticed someone else. It was probably me because G-3 guy turned towards me. He almost shot me when John burst out of his bush and yelled, ¡°Behind you!¡± This was all the distraction I needed. The wooden butt of my training rifle smashed into his jaw with a crack. He dropped his carbine, and clutched his cheek.

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    He himself didn¡¯t drop. He did turn around from the force of my blow, so I clubbed him in the back causing him to drop to his knees. He fell this time. I threw the training rifle away and picked up the G-3K and aimed it at the hapless guy. ¡°Hands on your head!¡± I said.

    His hands strayed away from his hip, probably because he noticed that John was pointing his training rifle at him, but not that it was fake. This motion made me notice that he carried a pistol on his left side. I reached over, carefully avoiding his legs and keeping my new-found gun aiming at him but not touching him, and grabbed it out of its holster. After stepping away from the guy, I took a quick look at the pistol. It was a vaguely Browning-ish shape with a silver slide embossed with the words P229. I flipped on the safety (which was kind of awkward to do left handed) and shoved it into a pocket in the coat. ¡°Clear!¡± I shouted, returning my left hand to gripping the carbine.

    Only then did I turn around. What I saw made me stop and stare. ¡°Doc! Monk! What the fuck? Seriously, what the actual fuck?¡±

    John turned around to look at where Doc and The Monk were. Doc¡¯s snow-camo Kevlar vest had been splashed with blood and he was bent over and checking a shape in the snow while carrying a black AK. The Monk was choking a third guy with the sling of a FAL, the sling wrapped around the poor guy¡¯s neck.

    ¡°Monk, that¡¯s enough!¡± I shouted.

    The Monk shrugged, reached down to FAL guy¡¯s hip, pulled out a large silver pistol, pushed it to FAL guy¡¯s head, and pulled the trigger. The guy I had beaten up flinched at the crack and the side of FAL guy¡¯s head opposite the gun suddenly burst out. He stopped struggling.

    ¡°Now it¡¯s enough,¡± The Monk said, somehow laconic, despite having to yell above the wind. He stowed the gun in a pocket, and in a single fluid motion unwrapped the sling from FAL guy¡¯s neck. When the corpse collapsed, he began to root through it.

    Meanwhile, Doc had finished with his victim and was walking towards us, AK hugged to his chest and pointed down at the ground. He also had a belt slung over his shoulder. ¡°I t-t-take it y-you are not g-g-going to let us shoot this guy, huh, K-killer?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, ¡°because I¡¯m really not a fan of killing unarmed prisoners!¡±

    ¡°Whoah,¡± John said, ¡°c-c-calm down N-nate.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± our prisoner said, ¡°your name¡¯s Killer?¡±

    ¡°Only if you want to piss me off,¡± I said, turning back to him to say this. I then turned back to Doc. ¡°Come on, let¡¯s do a good deed. Besides, he might be able to give us some info.¡±

    Doc walked over to John and passed the belt to him. ¡°Here,¡± he said. ¡°That dumbass had two pistols. I only need one. Might as well have a real gun instead of a large stick.¡±

    Our prisoner stared at Doc like he figured something out. ¡°You killed him,¡± he said dumbly.

    Doc shrugged. ¡°Probably.¡± Seeing our prisoner¡¯s scandalized look, he glared. ¡°Oh, like he was some kind of angel. He was walking around with an AK!¡± To drive his point home, he gestured wildly with said AK. ¡°What was he going to do if he saw me, give me some coffee and a biscuit?¡±

    ¡°W-we w-w-weren¡¯t¡­ we didn¡¯t want to k-kill you!¡± Our prisoner said desperately. ¡°We weren¡¯t s-s-seeking you out! J-just trying to s-scout out the, t-t-the forest!¡±

    ¡°So,¡± I said, ¡°what on Earth made you guys think this was a good idea?¡±

    ¡°W-w-well, the t-t-teachers said we had t-to u-use the non-l-leathals on you or get expelled. Just soak a few of you with t-t-the water to simulate live-fire exercise or something.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± I said, ¡°you were planning on soaking us?¡±

    ¡°W-well, not us in particular, but most of us h-have these m-modified g-grenade launchers th-that shoot w-water balloons. All that happens is you get s-s-soaked. S-see? No harm!¡±

    I was now curious as to how this would work. Non-lethal weaponry was cool. ¡°Wouldn¡¯t that be like shooting ice balls at us?¡±

    ¡°N-no! No!¡± Our prisoner waved his hands at us. ¡°Th-th-the balloons k-keep it liquid u-until¡­¡± His eyes widened.

    ¡°Until w-what?¡± Doc asked. He adjusted his newly-acquired AK to point casually at our captive. ¡°It all s-sounds very interesting.¡±

    ¡°¡­Until the balloon bursts apart.¡±

    That was not good. Our coats were very warm, but not very waterproof. They could stop water from a few squirt gun hits, but if there was a lot of water¡­

    ¡°So what you¡¯re saying,¡± I said flatly, ¡°is that these are weapons designed to cause us to freeze to death.¡± The idea was horrid. Our winter uniforms getting hit, the water soaking into and freezing inside the fabric... It was sadistic.

    ¡°I-i-it¡¯s n-not like it¡¯s¡­¡± our prisoner stuttered.

    ¡°D-d-did anyone a-ask your opinion?¡± Doc asked menacingly.

    The Monk, who had wandered nonchalantly over by this point, put his hand on Doc¡¯s shoulder. ¡°Peace,¡± he said. They both laughed. Must have been some sort of in-joke.

    I shrugged, figuring I could ask later about that later. Instead, I turned towards our prisoner. ¡°So how many people are we dealing with here?¡±

    ¡°About a h-hundred and f-f-fifty. We¡¯re all a-armed.¡±

    ¡°Shit.¡± John said. ¡°We¡¯re fucked.¡± He potentially was right. If they decided to just charge into camp, and if they decided to stick around instead of just soaking us, it would be a massacre. They had guns, and if they showed any shred of common sense, no amount of hand-to-hand skill could beat that. If they just decided to shell us with water balloons, we would end up all freezing from hypothermia. Unless¡­

    ¡°Alright,¡± I said to our prisoner, ¡°time for you to go.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s it?¡± He asked.

    ¡°L-leave your a-ammo and your radio.¡± Doc said. He turned his head slightly to me and said, ¡°C-c-can¡¯t have him c-c-calling for help or y-you r-r-running out o-of a-amo.¡±

    I nodded. Our prisoner undid his belt and pulled out several twenty-round magazines for the G-3K. The last thing he pulled out was a cell phone of some kind. After he was done, he stood up, looking at us for further instructions.

    ¡°G-get t-the fuck outta here,¡± John said with a nod of his head. Our former prisoner didn¡¯t have to be told twice. He ran away from us and his deceased friends, occasionally tripping in the snow.

    ¡°We need to call this in,¡± I said.

    Doc nodded. He picked up the radio, and pushed the talk button. ¡°This is Doc. Eric, Bai, come in.¡±

    ¡°We read you,¡± I heard Bai say.

    Suddenly, the chatter of gunfire came through the radio, as well as Eric¡¯s voice. ¡°Kind of busy!¡± he said. The gunfire stopped when his radio switched off.

    ¡°So,¡± I said, through my walkie-talkie, ¡°Eric, would you believe we¡¯re up against a hundred and fifty armed assholes?¡±

    ¡°Can confirm!¡± he said, gunfire in the background. ¡°They are all coming towards us!¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll get there as soon as we can.¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯ve got an idea, but I can tell it to you on our way over.¡±

 1.16: A Mad Rush

    ¡°So what you¡¯re saying,¡± Bai said over the radio as we moved towards the direction where we thought Eric would be, ¡°Is that if you kill enough of them, you don¡¯t think they will attack the main camp?¡±

    ¡°Pretty much,¡± I said. ¡°We¡¯ll also need some reinforcements.¡±

    Gunfire echoed over the radio, announcing Eric¡¯s entrance into the conversation. ¡°Yes. Back-up would be very welcome.¡±

    The radio crackled to life. ¡°We¡¯re on our way,¡± a cockney-accented voice said grimly.

    I started. ¡°Eliza?¡± I asked. ¡°Did Bai send you?¡±

    ¡°I actually did not realize she was gone¡­¡± Bai noted dryly.

    ¡°Did you really think I¡¯d bleedin¡¯ sit about while¡­ while there was a fight?¡± Eliza asked. ¡°Where¡¯s it at?¡±

    ¡°They are slowly forcing us to the inner bend.¡± Eric said, with no gunfire in the background. ¡°It doesn¡¯t seem like they have any idea what they are doing.¡±

    Just as soon as he finished, I burst through a bush. I found myself in a clearing. About two hundred meters away, a group of six people were standing, all of them armed.

    Instinctively, I dropped to my knee, raised my gun, and yelled, ¡°Contact!¡± One of them heard me and turned around, but I had already fired. I had made sure to switch the G-3 to semi-auto so I didn¡¯t waste ammo. It jumped a little with a sound halfway between a thud and a pop, and the sudden burst of heat was hot enough to hurt my hand.

    The guy who had seen me turned around just in time to see one of his friends¡¯ head snap back. The remaining five enemies raised their guns, but I had already shifted my focus to another. Two shots from the G-3 and he (or maybe she, I couldn¡¯t tell at that range) stumbled back and fell.

    I turned and aimed at another target. However, before I could get a good bead on him, the first of the enemies had begun to fire. I jumped a bit in shock, so my shot hit him in the shoulder, instead of his chest. He spun around and fell from the force of the bullet.

    In the meantime, bullets began kicking up around me. The snow around me began to kick up as rounds began to hit. I fired three more shots, taking down another guy before they finally managed to hit me.

    The bullet slammed into my flack jacket, knocking the wind out of me and causing me to fall over. I thought about getting up, then realized they had stopped shooting. They thought I was dead. I decided not to disabuse them of that notion.

    As they approached, I heard them start arguing and swearing in their native languages. The guy I had shot in the arm was screaming. Someone yelled at him, ¡°It is not so serious. Stop being a baby!¡±

    As they argued louder, I began to recognize their language as French. Finally, they began heading towards me. In the meantime, I wondered what Doc, Monk, and John were doing. The arguing group approached me while I wondered. There were only two left mobile. The injured guy had stopped screaming and started bitching.

    His friends, however, kept getting closer. Since I was lying on my back, I couldn¡¯t see them. If I sat up, there would be the chance of them shooting me. Needless to say, I really didn¡¯t want to test my luck any more than I had already.

    That being said, they were way too close to comfort. I was just about to sit up and see if I could pop them when gunfire erupted. First there was a simultaneous burst of FAL and AK fire. Then the wounded guy yelled ¡°Merde! Merde merde merde!¡± Then a single FAL shot. Then silence.

    I sat up. ¡°Took you guys long enough.¡±

    To my left, Doc¡¯s incredulous voice came. ¡°Killer?¡± He asked. ¡°You¡¯re alive?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, getting up stiffly. ¡°I¡¯m alive. Man, that hurt. Feels like Ulfric punched me in the sternum.¡± As I got up, I looked around. Doc and The Monk had flanked around slightly, entering through a part of the clearing that wasn¡¯t overgrown. They were on opposite sides of me, guns still at the ready. In front of me were two corpses. I tried to ignore the growing pools of blood around them.

    ¡°I am as surprised as I am glad you are well,¡± The Monk commented, laconic as usual. ¡°I thought you had to have been turned into mincemeat, due to all the gunfire.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, still trying to avert my eyes from the two corpses. ¡°I got lucky. They only hit me once. My armor stopped the round and knocked me down.¡±

    I heard a rustling and whipped around and raised my gun. John, who had just come out of the bushes raised his hands. ¡°Whoah, whoah, whoah!¡± He said. ¡°Easy, Nate!¡±

    I lowered my gun. ¡°Jeez, John,¡± I said, ¡°you fucking scared me.¡±

    John looked over my shoulder. ¡°Is that your handiwork?¡±

    I turned back to where the enemy group had been. ¡°Three of them. Plus one non-fatal.¡±

    ¡°Damn, Killer!¡± Doc said.

    The Monk, however, was continuing to move forwards to where the enemy group had been before I had started firing. ¡°Yes,¡± he said. ¡°I don¡¯t think that one is dead. He is too lucky.¡±

    Before I could comment on this, a cell phone rang, its tone that of a first-gen Star Trek communicator. In response the not-dead guy sat up and pulled out a pistol. The Monk and I opened fire. He ended up firing a single shot, but I swear to God he ended hitting himself in the leg. The phone was still ringing.

    ¡°Let¡¯s make sure he¡¯s dead this time.¡± The Monk said.

    ¡°Agreed.¡± I said. We then began to edge closer, Doc and John covering us. Eventually, the phone stopped ringing when we got to the guy. I bent down, ignoring the other bodies and checked his pulse. After I was satisfied he was dead, I began to search through his pockets.

    ¡°You are very good at this, Killer.¡± The Monk commented, just a little impressed. ¡°Are you sure you¡¯ve never done this before?¡±

    ¡°Shh¡­ Thanks,¡± I said, somehow avoiding telling him to shut up as I rifled through his pockets. I avoided the ones that had bullet holes in them. The blood was already freezing, and getting my hands wet could be a death sentence. ¡°Huh,¡± I said, trying to change the subject, ¡°these guys don¡¯t seem to have brought along any body armor.¡± I then pulled out a package of hot chocolate mix. ¡°Or anything useful.¡±

    ¡°I cannot speak for the hot chocolate,¡± The Monk said, ¡°but this armor slows you down and can imbue a false sense of invulnerability.¡±

    ¡°Or maybe they just watched too many movies where the minion¡¯s body armor did nothing,¡± I said, pulling out a few clips of ammo and a lot of hot chocolate mix and tea bags. ¡°I mean, I know enough to suspect that our side isn¡¯t exactly on its A-game, but I¡¯m pretty sure these guys are too stupid to know they suck.¡± Then my hand came in contact with something hard and plastic. ¡°Found the phone!¡± I said.

    I pulled it out. It was, as I figured, a smart phone. It wasn¡¯t a brand I was familiar with, but it was open to a map of the surrounding area. On it was a dot labeled ¡°You are here!¡± and a bunch of other dots were moving around. At the top of my screen, it said. ¡°Find My Friends.¡± The guy with the phone must not have wanted to take his gloves off to operate the phone, so he had set it so it wouldn¡¯t automatically lock.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°this is either a trap or these people are really stupid.¡±

    The Monk cocked his head. After I explained it to him, he shrugged. ¡°Either way, we¡¯ll know where to look for Eric. If they are trying to surround him, they will all be heading towards a central point.¡±

    ¡°Shit, you¡¯re right,¡± I said. ¡°You¡¯re a genius, man.¡±

    After a quick conference and salvaging what we could and informing our radio contacts of what we had found, we were in hot pursuit of where we thought Eric¡¯s team might be. It took a long time and I kept having to do all sorts of stuff to keep my fingers and toes from becoming too numb. I was beginning to understand why the AK idiot from earlier had been shooting his gun off so much. It had kept his hands warm.

    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

    Finally, we began to hear gunfire. ¡°Eric!¡± Doc said into his walkie-talkie. ¡°We¡¯re hearing gunfire! We think it is you and your new friends.¡±

    ¡°Well, then hurry up!¡± Eric said. The gunfire that came over the radio matched up pretty well with what we were hearing in the distance.

    We picked up the pace, moving closer to the sounds of fighting. We avoided going through any bushes, seeing what happened last time. Our opponents, on the other hand, had not learned that particular lesson. A group of ten came through some bushes right in front of us. We unloaded in response. Not a single one of them was able to get a shot off.

    My G-3 (ok, my stolen G-3) ran dry pretty quickly. I instinctively remembered that I had put the stolen pistol in my left pocket, so I pointed my G-3 at the ground, reached my left hand into my pocket and pulled out the P229. I wasn¡¯t sure how accurate I was, but since I was in a panic and firing with my offhand, it probably was terrible. However, I was intrigued at how quickly I had been able to do it. I was reasonably sure I had been able to do it faster than just reloading my G-3.

    Once the firing had stopped, John asked, ¡°Are we done here?¡± He reloaded what I was pretty sure was an M-4 as he spoke. Everyone else was reloading as well.

    ¡°Don¡¯t know,¡± I said as I covered them with my pistol. ¡°Hopefully.¡±

    The radio crackled. ¡°Hey guys,¡± Eric said frantically, ¡°I just heard gunfire to the rear of my position. Please tell me that was one of you guys!¡±

    ¡°This is Monk,¡± Monk said. ¡°We ran into the enemy. They are now dead. Also, I believe that if we keep heading straight, we should be at your position soon.¡±

    ¡°Oh good,¡± Eric said, sighing in relief. ¡°We are surrounded on three sides.¡± After a pause, he said, ¡°It would be nice if you could bring some ammo. We are running dangerously low, and may need to resort to our surprise.¡±

    Doc chimed in. ¡°If we take a bit of extra time, we can collect some.¡±

    Eric paused. ¡°Do it.¡± He finally said.  ¡°Unless you are already carrying a huge amount of ammo.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± Doc said, ¡°You heard Eric! Finish reloading, then gather every bit of ammo you can!¡±

    We did so, taking turns covering each other as we stuffed our backpacks packs full of ammunition, and even a few medical supplies. Thankfully, this group had decided to bring as much as possible. We were pretty loaded down, but we still ran pretty fast. After all, our friends needed us.

    After about five minutes we saw a group of people on a small hill hiding behind some rapidly splintering trees and, oddly enough, snow barricades. ¡°HEY!¡± I called out, with what little breath I had left, ¡°ERIC! WE¡¯RE HERE!¡±

    Eric turned around and then yelled, ¡°BEHIND YOU!¡±

    We all turned around. There, coming right towards us, were about ten enemy troops carrying assault rifles and SMGs. They also heard Eric yell, so they raised their weapons.

    The area we were in was built in a weird way.  It was shaped in an oddly funnel-like manner on the side we were on. To the left and right was thick vegetation, with a path through to the center. This made it possible to take cover or at least find concealment. However, for me, it took a second to get to behind a suitably thick tree. Thanks to the bullets impacting into the snow all around me, though, the journey felt like it took hours.

    I took a peek out from behind my tree for about half a second. John was on the other side of me and a few trees ahead. Beyond that, where the vegetation was less thick, was the flanking group. I only peeked out for a short time because a bunch of bullets hit tree and ground around it, causing splinters and bits of snow to fly around.

    From behind, I heard Doc yell, ¡°John! Are you all right?¡±

    ¡°Yeah!¡± John said.

    ¡°When I give the word,¡± Doc continued, ¡°The rest of us are going to provide cover fire. When you hear a break in the enemy¡¯s firing, you run like hell! Understand?¡±

    ¡°Hell yeah!¡± John said. ¡°Then I wait until you give the signal, then cover the next guy, right?¡±

    ¡°Correct!¡± Suddenly, there was a break in the fire. Doc instantly yelled, ¡°COVERING FIRE! NOW!¡±

    I leaned out, brought up my G-3, and took aim. A couple of soldiers were already pretty close, so I triple-tapped one of them.

    He fell back, his partner turned to see where the bullet had come from. Before either of us could fire, the snow behind him was kicked up by bullets and sprayed red with blood. I didn¡¯t know if it was from Doc, John, or The Monk, and I didn¡¯t really care. I just looked up from my scope to see if there were any other priority targets.

    The second I did so, I saw John begin to run. Then there was a crack and he stumbled like someone had punched him in the small of the back. He continued running. I then noticed that someone was kneeling and pulling the bolt back on a rifle with a telescopic scope of some kind. ¡°Sniper!¡± I yelled.

    The sniper, possibly hearing me shout out ¡°Sniper!¡± aimed and fired at me. He obviously hadn¡¯t had much time to aim, because the bullet kind of skimmed the side of my Kevlar vest.

    I aimed, and fired. He fell, but I didn¡¯t see sign of a hit, so I shot at him again. He rolled out of the way, causing me to miss all three times. For the rest of my clip, I made sure to keep an eye on where he was, but it was hard.

    Eventually, the bastard finally popped his head out again. He fired, I¡¯m not sure at who. I fired twice. One shot hit, causing the asshole to jerk back. The other caused my gun to click. I watched through the scope to see the little prick go back into cover and to confirm that I had hit him. When he moved, I saw a lot of blood in the snow. Good. No one snipes my friends.

    Over the radio, I heard John¡¯s voice say, ¡°Ok, guys, I¡¯m up.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯ll be happy to know I got the guy who sniped you,¡± I said while I reloaded, surprising myself how calm I sounded. ¡°He¡¯s still alive, but I don¡¯t think he¡¯s going to be shooting anyone for a while.¡±

    ¡°Oh.¡± John said, not sure what to do with this information. ¡°Cool, I guess.¡± He paused, then added, ¡°Thanks.¡±

    Doc cut in via the radio. ¡°Ok, Killer, you go next. Are you good to go?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m¡­ I¡¯m ready.¡± Yeah, considering how satisfied I was at making another human being bleed, I was pretty far away from being ¡°good.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± Doc said, ¡°Suppressing fire¡­ NOW!¡±

    The three of us leaned out, Doc and The Monk to shoot anything that wasn¡¯t on our team, me to get a good idea of when to run like hell. When I did, I felt like there were fewer people there than there should have been. I shrugged, took a few potshots, and ran like hell.

    I was almost to the top of the hill when it happened. I was running so hard I was kind of leaning down which probably what saved my life. There was a crack, and something hit me in the head. Eric yelled ¡°Sniper!¡± and began shooting at somewhere in the front of the crater.

    I just kept running, despite the fact that a warm, sticky fluid was leaking into my eyes. It was so blinding that I didn¡¯t realize the hill was actually a giant-ass crater. I only realized this by tripping over the rim and sliding down face-first.

    John ran over to me and flipped me over. ¡°Shit, dude, you fucking got shot again!¡±

    Cross, who was busy engaging targets on the top of the rim, yelled down, ¡°What the fuck do you mean, ¡®again?¡¯¡±

    ¡°Yeah, I kind of figured,¡± I said, taking my helmet off and shrugging off my backpack, searching for the bandages. ¡°Can you help me bandage this up before it soaks my uniform and freezes?¡±

    ¡°Sure, man!¡± John said, moving to help search my pack. I had to stop to wipe the blood out of my eyes.

    A voice crackled through my earbud. ¡°Hey Killer,¡± Doc said, ¡°What are the enemy doing?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Eric said, ¡°That is a good question.¡±

    I whipped out the stolen phone to check. My face turned into one of utter horror. ¡°Get in here NOW! I repeat, get the fuck in here!¡± I yelled. On the screen, all the ¡°friends¡± were gathering a good distance away. All of them.

 1.17: General Winter

    ¡°So, what is going on?¡± Doc asked as he and The Monk scrambled over the rim of the crater.

    ¡°The enemy basically is getting ready to fuck us up the ass,¡± John said.

    ¡°And we,¡± Eric said, with a smile, ¡°are getting the party favors ready.¡± He slid down from the rim of the crater as he said this. ¡°Check in that duffel bag.¡±

    It was pretty close to John, so he unzipped it. ¡°Well,¡± he said, ¡°that looks pretty reassuring.¡± I looked in it. Inside was a machine gun (an Mk-48 with bipod, foregrip and ACOG sight,) one of the six-shot grenade launchers, a fucking flamethrower, some ammo for the MK 48, and a whole bunch of grenades.

    ¡°You like, huh?¡± Eric asked.

    ¡°We¡¯re still eight people against over a hundred,¡± John said. ¡°Those are some pretty bad odds.¡±

    ¡°Actually,¡± Eric said, ¡°there may be less than a hundred. We have been fighting for quite a while.¡± He beamed wider. ¡°After all, why did you think we asked you to bring ammo?¡±

    ¡°I honestly thought it was because you were a terrible shot, boss.¡± Doc said, a look of complete innocence on his face.

    We all laughed, even Eric was chuckling as he punched Doc in the shoulder. ¡°You just won the position of ammo consolidation, my friend,¡± he said. ¡°Anyway, I have a plan.¡±

    He instantly got serious. ¡°For practical purposes, there are two ways in and out of this crater. The first is the one you came in. The other is on the opposite side. We came in that way, only to discover the snow is waist-deep. It can be traversed, but not while we are being shot at. On the other sides are bushes we¡¯d have to use machetes to cut through.¡±

    ¡°So what¡¯s stopping us from running out that back door now?¡± Cross asked. ¡°No one¡¯s shooting at us yet.¡±

    ¡°And what if the attack comes while we are running through the waist-deep snow?¡± Doc asked. ¡°Do you think our enemies will just let us finish wading slowly through an open area with no cover?¡±

    ¡°I take it you have some sort of plan,¡± I said.

    ¡°Yes, Killer,¡± Eric said, becoming serious, ¡°I have a plan. You see, we have been in several fights where they have had dozens of guys and plenty of cover. If we managed to kill more than a few of them, they would always run away. If we can put up a vicious enough defense, the enemy will retreat and it will give us time to get away, but if we just turn and run, they could come over that hill and shoot us while we are wading through the snow.¡±

    ¡°I also managed to find some ammo for the launcher that was more than glorified water balloons.¡± MC Disaster said. ¡°I can lay down quite a few shots of pure terror.¡±

    ¡°Sounds good,¡± I said. ¡°Let¡¯s see if we can contact Eliza and tell her the plan.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± Eric said, ¡°I will do that. Doc and Disaster will be sorting ammo. The rest of you get up onto the rim and keep a watch out for attackers.¡±

    We all gave various affirmatives as we scrambled up the crater. I ended up next to John. ¡°So,¡± John said, in a voice loud enough for me to hear, but low enough so no one else could, ¡°you know, we could die here.¡±

    ¡°Yeah¡­¡± I said, trailing off. It was a sobering thought. Through my earbud, I could hear the conversation between Eric and Eliza.

    ¡°I¡¯ve been thinking about it for a while now,¡± John said, ¡°and honestly I don¡¯t want to die from something as stupid as this.¡± He paused, shaking his head. I took my earbud out to hear him better. ¡°I thought I was going to, you know, get a chance to save the world. Not die in a literal hole in the fucking ground because some sadists thought that having our finals be to punish some psychos with guns was a good idea.¡± He sighed. ¡°If I die now¡­ If I die in this stupid, fucked-up situation, and you live, can you do me a favor?¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said. ¡°Or at least I¡¯ll try.¡±

    ¡°Can you tell my parents I love them?¡± He asked, looking me right in the eye. ¡°And that this was for them?¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said, ¡°but if I die, you have to tell my family the same thing.¡±

    ¡°Not a problem.¡±

    ¡°Can¡¯t believe I might never see my sister again,¡± I said as I began to scan the area. ¡°Thinking about it makes me realize I¡¯ve been kind of a dick. I should have hung out with her more¡­¡±

    ¡°Well, that¡¯s always something you can change if we survive,¡± John said. ¡°I mean, assuming you don¡¯t get shot in the head again, you¡¯ve got a good sixty-seventy years ahead of you.¡± I laughed. John smiled. ¡°God dammit, that wasn¡¯t supposed to be a joke!¡± he said laughing as well.

    I stopped laughing. ¡°Well, it¡¯s either that or have a panic attack because I got shot in the head. This honestly seems like a better option.¡±

    Cross, who had been working his way over to us, butted in. ¡°Hey,¡± he asked, ¡°what is this about having been shot twice? I mean, I saw the bullet bounce off your thick fucking skull, but what happened with the other one?¡±

    ¡°A bunch of idiots tried to do a spray-and-pray.¡± I said. ¡°I was lucky and only took a single round to the chest plate. There was also a third one that glanced off me on the way into the crater.¡±

    ¡°You lucky bastard¡­¡± Cross said.

    ¡°I know!¡± John said. ¡°We watch him disappear into one of these fucking bushes, then we hear him yell something about hostiles and everyone in the goddamn world open up on him. When I come through the bushes we that he¡¯s killed three people, injured a fourth, and playing possum for the remaining two like some kind of horror villain!¡±

    ¡°Damn, Killer!¡± Cross said. ¡°Who do you think you are, Chuck Norris?¡±

    ¡°Actually,¡± I said, a little sullenly, ¡°I was lying on the ground hoping you guys would come save my ass.¡±

    ¡°Hey!¡± Doc yelled from down in the crater, ¡°You guys up there, do you have any empty mags? If you do, toss them down.¡±

    That derailed the conversation. For quite a bit, there was nothing to do, other than occasionally shoot at people moving outside the crater and warm our hands by the fire that MC Disaster had somehow managed to conjure up.

    Just when I was taking my turn by the fire and finally getting warm, Doc (who had finished refilling everyone¡¯s magazines and was up at the top of the crater,) suddenly called out, ¡°I got movement!¡± He was watching the lane we thought the enemy would come from, so I instantly assumed the worst.

    As I grabbed my gun and began the climb up to the rim, Eric yelled back, ¡°The phone says that it¡¯s a scouting force! The main force isn¡¯t far behind!¡±

    Monk, who had beat me to the top of the crater, was aiming down the optical sight of his FAL. ¡°Do you want me to fire?¡± he asked.

    ¡°How close are they?¡± Eric asked The Monk, just as I got to the top.

    ¡°Two hundred and fifty meters and closing,¡± The Monk said.

    I followed where he was pointing his gun. There, coming towards us, was a group of six people, rifles of various types slung across their chests. ¡°Dumbasses,¡± I muttered. ¡°None of them have body armor or are taking cover. And their coats are fucking neon!¡± I flipped up my zoom scope. ¡°Guess we should thank them.¡±

    ¡°You are learning, Killer,¡± The Monk said. ¡°Now would you be a friend and help me spot?¡±

    ¡°Certainly,¡± I said, bringing the scope of my gun to my eye.

    ¡°Lead guy with the bolt-action,¡± The Monk said. ¡°Head.¡±

    I focused on the lead man. He was gesturing wildly with some kind of scoped bolt-action rifle. I couldn¡¯t hear what he was saying, but his body language screamed overconfident bro-douche despite the corpses of the previous group who had tried to dislodge us. I jumped a little at the sound of The Monk¡¯s FAL. However I was able to see the impact.

    The guy was wearing one of those coats made out of those plastic tubes filled with insulation, so I saw one of them deflate a bit. ¡°You¡¯re real low,¡± I said as the guy fell back. ¡°He took the bullet a bit above the heart.¡± In the meantime, most of the advancing group had begun to run away. One, however, stood stock still.

    ¡°Frozen guy, chest.¡± The Monk said. He fired.

    The guy fell back. ¡°Think that was the heart,¡± I said.

    ¡°Good,¡± The Monk responded. ¡°That was my target.¡±

    One of them got behind a tree. ¡°Finally!¡± Doc said. ¡°Someone with a spine! If this one tries to save his comrade, let him.¡±

    I saw him yell to his retreating comrades. I moved my scope up to get their response. One stopped to give him the finger and yell back. The Monk¡¯s FAL jumped again, and the guy¡¯s hand exploded a half second later.

    ¡°Bastard¡­¡± he muttered. ¡°You help your friends.¡±

    ¡°Nice shot!¡± I said.

    ¡°No it wasn¡¯t,¡± The Monk said. ¡°I was aiming for his balls.¡± He paused. ¡°I suppose they would¡¯ve been too small to hit.¡±

    The guy who had been smart enough to take cover began to try to suppress us, firing what looked to be some modernized AK on full auto. His rounds were so off target, it was actually kind of cute. He ran to his friend that had been shot in the chest, possibly not realizing his gun had gone dry. The wannabe hero checked his friend¡¯s pulse. His shoulders slouched. His friend was dead.

    The survivor, after a moment coming to terms with the death of his friend, began to run. He stopped by the guy The Monk had shot in the hand and began to drag him away.

    ¡°I don¡¯t care what you say,¡± I said as I watched as the two disappeared into the white beyond, ¡°that guy¡¯s a hero.¡±

    ¡°You know,¡± The Monk said, a little peevishly, ¡°any of us would do the same for a friend.¡±

    ¡°I didn¡¯t say you guys wouldn¡¯t step up,¡± I said, ¡°but I am sure you would be much more competent than those guys.¡± The Monk nodded approvingly. After a pause, I asked ¡°I wonder when the main force will get here?¡±

    ¡°Funny you should ask that, Killer,¡± Eric called up. He was carrying an AKS-74U in one hand and the MK-48 in the other. ¡°Seeing as they are on the move.¡±

    Everyone still at the bottom by the fire was moving up the crater. ¡°How¡¯s the phone doing for batteries?¡± Cross asked.

    Eric pulled it out just as it played the NIU theme song. ¡°It just died,¡± he said, nonchalantly tossing it over his shoulder. He then put the MK-48 right next to him and aimed his AK down range. ¡°Ok,¡± he said, ¡°when I give the word, MC is gonna fire some grenades downrange. Once he¡¯s done, we all open up. Got it?¡±

    We all gave our affirmatives. I wondered how long it would take to for the enemy to get here. Literally five minutes later and they began to march out of the whiteness. And they kept coming.

    ¡°Uh, Eric,¡± John said, ¡°I think that¡¯s more than a hundred and fifty.¡± I was inclined to agree. The people were in no real formation, and a lot of them were extremely bunched up. This may have made it look like there were more of them than there really were, but there were still a whole lot of them.

    ¡°MC, the first three rounds in your launcher are incendiary, correct?¡± Eric asked. As he asked this, he set his AK down and set up the machine gun¡¯s bipod.

    ¡°Correct,¡± MC Disaster said.

    ¡°I want you, when I give the word, to put the first in largest group from two hundred to three hundred meters away.¡± Eric said in a rapid whisper. ¡°The next go into the bushes on either side of us. After that, fire at will.¡±

    ¡°I get it!¡± Ray-Gun said happily. ¡°It is The Funnel all over again!¡±

    ¡°Correct.¡± Eric said.

    We waited a bit longer. ¡°Are¡­ are you going to fire soon?¡± Cross asked. The enemy was now uncomfortably close. Some were still confident, laughing and chatting. More than a few were looking uncomfortable.

    ¡°Wait for it¡­¡± Eric said. The enemy got closer. ¡°Wait for it¡­ wait for it¡­ Disaster, do the pattern now.¡±

    The first grenade sailed out of MC Disaster¡¯s launcher with a satisfying ptoomp! It arced out and hit smack dab in the center of a tightly clustered group of twenty. Weirdly enough, for a split second, the fire was contained only inside the central group. Then it rapidly expanded, covering everyone in it. A good chunk of them ran screaming, setting others on fire in a vain attempt to extinguish themselves.

    Before that grenade hit, however, MC Disaster had already shot off the other grenades. The bushes didn¡¯t immediately turn into a huge blaze, but I guessed the accumulated snow wouldn¡¯t put it out for a while. Instead it was being heated into vapor, slowly obscuring the battlefield.

    The reaction of the enemy was not what I had hoped for, but it was pretty good. They began yelling and looking around, trying to get a good idea of what had happened, especially the ones in the front. Only a few were shooting, most coming nowhere near our position. However, apart from the people MC Disaster had set on fire and the people desperately trying to avoid them, none of them were running.

    ¡°Disaster,¡± Eric said, opening up with the forty-eight, ¡°Plop your frags and incendiaries in the middle of the groups. Monk, Killer, kill anyone Ray-Gun points out. Priority targets are snipers, grenadiers, and anyone trying to rally the group. Everyone else, shoot anyone who tries to stand or fight.¡±

    As he gave the orders, we did as instructed. The enemy¡¯s front dissolved, in some cases literally as Eric¡¯s MK-48 apparently could remove limbs and cut people in half if its bullets landed in the right place. Also, the frag grenades from MC Disaster¡¯s grenade launcher would turn anybody who suffered a direct hit into hamburger.

    About fifteen seconds before I got my first assignment. In that time, I swear dozens had died. The front rank of the enemy had been completely shattered, and the second rank had been decimated by two frags and an incendiary from MC Disaster and gunfire from the rest of us.

    ¡°Hey Nate!¡± Ray-Gun called out. He was staring through a pair of binoculars. ¡°We got someone in the third section shouting out orders. He is also grabbing people trying to run away.¡±

    I scanned the third group. I found the guy in question pretty quickly. He had grabbed another guy and was shaking him vigorously. I aligned the crosshairs with his head and pulled the trigger. When my gun dropped back down, the guy was gone. The person he was shaking ran off.  Good.

    ¡°OW!¡± Doc said. My G-3 had heated, mangled and ejected the spent casing at a high velocity. There was a red, smoking welt where it had hit Doc¡¯s cheek. ¡°That hurt more than it should have!¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said. I took off my helmet and set it up so that instead of hitting anyone next to me, the casings would bounce around in my helmet. When I did, I noticed the huge hole in it from when the sniper had shot me. I briefly thanked God for giving my family skulls with the consistency of titanium, then continued to hunt for targets.

    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    Three magazines later, and the steam and smoke were making it hard to see. The enemy was also starting to hit bullets closer to where we were located. That actually was part of the reason the smoke was obscuring our line of sight. The incoming bullets were so hot that the snow where they hit began to steam away.

    ¡°They are more persistent than I thought.¡± Eric said. The barrel on the Mk-48 had begun to overheat. To fix this, he had removed it and tossed it into the snow behind him. The barrel had caused the snow where it landed to smoke, hiss and spit. While it was cooling, Eric was shooting his AK.

    Just then, an object flew through the air to land right in front of us. It exploded on contact. Shrapnel flew into us. Most of us got cosmetic injuries. For example, one grazed my ear, and another grazed my cheek. Most of us were prone. However, the person who got it the worst was MC Disaster. He had been kneeling to aim the grenade launcher correctly. He screamed and fell back, dropping his grenade launcher. Doc ran to help.

    I quickly turned to where the grenade had come from. A guy came running out. He had what looked to be Scarface¡¯s gun, an M-16 with a grenade launcher. I called out his position as I fired. Somehow, the guy managed behind a tree, though I think a round or two may have hit him, but I couldn¡¯t tell for sure.

    A round whizzed over my head. I quickly searched for where it came from and saw a guy with a bolt-action. I shot him. It was a terribly rushed one that only got him in the knee. As he dropped his rifle and grabbed his knee, I adjusted my aim and double-tapped him. One trigger pull caused him to fall flat on his back. The next trigger pull just caused a click from my gun.

    I ejected the mag, and reached into one of the pockets on my vest. I suddenly realized that after I spent this mag, I only had two others left. Counting this magazine, I had only sixty rounds left before I had to switch to my pistol. That wasn¡¯t good.

    I looked out over the battlefield as I reloaded. The area was littered with the dead and the injured. Some areas where frag grenades or intense bursts of MG fire had intersected with large groups of people had resulted in the snow being stained red. Smoke and steam from spent casings, melting snow, flaming vegetation, and ignited corpses wafted over the battlefield, obscuring the sightlines but not the horror of what had happened. Combine all this with the snow and cold, and we had a lovely mashup of the Norse and Christian ideas of hell. The screams and moans of the poor bastards who were still alive made the comparison even more apt.

    It took me a few moments to realize the bright side. We were the only ones firing. Eric realized it a second before I did. ¡°Cease fire! Cease fire!¡± he called out. ¡°They¡¯re done!¡±

    Everyone stopped shooting. I took a deep breath to calm myself and immediately coughed in disgust at the smell of blood, burning wood, and charred meat. ¡°You ok, man?¡± Cross asked.

    ¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± I said. ¡°How¡¯s the MC doing?¡±

    Doc called up from inside the crater. ¡°He is fine. The shrapnel hit in the white of his eye. He can see just fine, but I put an eyepatch on him just in case.¡±

    ¡°I want an eyepatch¡­¡± Ray-Gun said. ¡°I want to look like Nick Fury¡­¡±

    ¡°Even with the eyepatch, you look nothing like Samuel L. Jackson.¡± Cross said.

    ¡°But¡­ but isn¡¯t that actor black?¡± Ray-Gun asked.

    I burst out laughing. Cross and Ray-Gun stared at me, wondering just what the fuck was going on. ¡°He can explain later,¡± Eric said, a twinkle in his eyes. ¡°Right now, we need to leave.¡±

    He looked out over us. ¡°We leave in groups of four. Same groups as last time. Doc, you guys cover my group¡¯s butts. Take everything you can carry.¡±

    John and I looked out over the wreckage of the battle. As we refilled our empty magazines, I wondered what I should say to John. What I wanted to talk about was how scared I was. Not of the people who were trying to kill me, or how close they¡¯d come to succeeding, but at how I had reacted. For the entire battle, I¡¯d been calm or annoyed, apart from that one time when MC Disaster had gotten hit with the shrapnel. In that time, I was a semi-decent shot and had fired sixty rounds of ammo into a densely group of people and had treated it like it was a normal thing. From what I had experienced, this wasn¡¯t something a normal human being should do.

    I broke out of these musings when I noticed that John was shaking. ¡°You cold?¡± I asked. It had warmed up because of all the incendiary rounds, but there still was a blizzard.

    ¡°Yeah¡­¡± he said. ¡°There¡¯s also the whole¡­ the whole¡­¡±

    ¡°This?¡± I said, stabbing my gun in the direction of the carnage. A few people were still screaming in pain. I had been trying to block it out for the past half-hour.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± John said. ¡°This. What the fuck are we doing here? I mean, why are we here?¡± He sighed. ¡°This is just too fucked up for me. I mean, look at that group there.¡± I looked where he was pointing. It was a pile of bodies.

    ¡°That was one of the first groups I shot at.¡± John said in self-disgust. ¡°One of those people was screaming until just a few minutes ago.¡± He paused, an angry look on his face. ¡°You know, if I had any decency, I would¡¯ve fucking shot him. But then I keep thinking about all these excuses¡­¡±

    ¡°Like its wasting ammo,¡± I said, ¡°Or worrying that people you know back home would look down on you.¡±

    ¡°Kind of,¡± John said, ¡°except the first one¡¯s actually a valid reason.¡±

    ¡°You know what gets me?¡± I asked. ¡°Is how easy it was for me. I was looking through a scope, and actively looking for people, I mean, specific people to shoot. And the closest I¡¯ve come to feeling guilty about it is wondering if I¡¯m safe to be around.¡±

    ¡°Dude, are you kidding?¡± John asked. ¡°Of course you are!¡± I noticed that he didn¡¯t make eye contact with me when he said that.

    As can be expected after someone lies to your face when you all but straight-up ask ¡°Do you think I¡¯d randomly snap and shoot you in the face?¡± to reassure you, there was an awkward silence. It was about an hour of waiting before someone finally broke it.

    ¡°Killer! Mr. Boring!¡± Doc called out. ¡°Didn¡¯t you hear the radio? We¡¯re moving out now.¡±

    We both felt our ears for the earbuds. I hadn¡¯t put mine back in. John, on the other hand¡­

    ¡°Holy shit!¡± he said.

    I turned to look at him. The cord for his earbud had been mostly severed. ¡°Jesus Christ,¡± I said, looking at where it was severed. ¡°A little to the left, and you would have been spurting out blood like a fucking sprinkler!¡±

    ¡°Thanks for that image,¡± John said, rolling his eyes.

    We quickly got out of the crater. When we finally got down to the snow, we realized Eric was right about how tough to get through it was. We also discovered that it wasn¡¯t waist-deep. It was just so tightly packed that it simulated being waist deep. I found this out by having the snow collapse under me. When it finally supported me, it was up to my chin, and it still felt like it could give out and I could fall deeper.

    For the rest of the walk, we would take turns falling into the snow. Eventually, it turned into a contest of who could stand the tallest in the snow. Doc had this cartoonishly pleased expression on his face when he actually managed to walk on the snow like it was solid ground.

    We were about halfway across when I saw Ray-Gun (who, along with Cross, MC, and Eric was covering us) drop his binoculars and point at something. Before he could get any words out, his head snapped to his side and he fell over. This was accompanied by the crack of a rifle.

    Instantly, the sound of gunfire broke out. ¡°CONTACT LEFT! CONTACT LEFT!¡± I heard Eric yell. We were close enough to hear him yell. We saw him, Cross and MC Disaster scramble behind trees.

    ¡°What are you waiting for?¡± Doc asked. ¡°Move it!¡±

    That¡¯s when we discovered what Ray-Gun had been trying to warn us about. We were in a staggered box formation. Doc was in the lead, John was on the right, The Monk was on the left, and I was in the rear when the grenade hit. There was a loud thump, and I was suddenly face down, several stabbing pains in my calf.

    I raised my head to see what was going on. In front of me, The Monk had turned around, and yelled, ¡°Grenadier! We have a¡­¡± He was cut off as a burst of gunfire kicked up snow around him. He fell down and started yelling, ¡°ARGH! My leg! My leg!¡±

    John and Doc, meanwhile, got on their knees and started firing. ¡°Man down!¡± Doc yelled. ¡°Sorry, Eric, but we¡¯ve got two men down over here and we¡¯re under suppressive fire!¡±

    ¡°Understood!¡± Eric yelled said over the radio. ¡°Stay alive, my friends!¡±

    Meanwhile, I tried to stand up. Something dug into my balls. Before I remembered that this was one of the things our medical instructors had said never to do, I had reached behind me and pulled out a shard of metal that had embedded itself into my Kevlar pants. Realizing my mistake, I checked it for blood. When I saw that it had none, I tossed it away.

    After I had done so, I realized that the guy had almost destroyed my penis. As the realization hit me, so did a sudden wave of anger. Some asshole had almost cut off my dick! And I was still a virgin! The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. Some annoying bro-douche, who probably regularly engaged in drunken orgies, had almost severed my scrotum before I had a chance to use it!

    I was almost about to flip over to see if I could cap that asshole when I realized The Monk was desperately trying to stop himself from bleeding out. Instead, I dropped my G-3, and ripped off my pack and searched for the one of the medkits it contained.  When it was in front of me, I noticed that there were some metal shards in it as well. I silently thanked God that they had ended up there and not somewhere less protected.

    When I found a medkit, I began to crawl towards The Monk. The asshole was still firing. When I looked behind me for a moment, I saw that whoever he was, he had taken our position on the crater. I suddenly realized it was the motherfucker with the underslung grenade launcher I had been trying to kill earlier. Apparently, I hadn¡¯t hit him.

    To underscore that particular point, another grenade exploded near me. I couldn¡¯t see it and, thankfully, none of the pieces of shrapnel were able to embed themselves into my body. It did make everyone there yell in surprise. I also heard another voice screaming, but it didn¡¯t seem to be one of our group.

    John and Doc kept up suppressing fire and I continued to make my way towards The Monk. The person had stopped firing. I didn¡¯t question it. I just finished my journey and asked The Monk, ¡°Can I see?¡±

    The Monk nodded, and moved his hands. I pulled out the bullet and quickly shoved some gauze into the wound, causing The Monk to scream in pain. As I was wrapping the bandage, there was a burst of gunfire from the crater. I looked up and realized I couldn¡¯t see Doc.

    I finished securing the bandage tight around The Monk¡¯s leg and took out my radio. ¡°Eric!¡± I yelled into it, ¡°How soon can you wrap up what you¡¯re doing?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± he said light-heartedly, ¡°I am on my last magazine, Cross is screaming his head off, Ray-Gun doesn¡¯t seem to be able to do anything other than groan at the moment, and the MC¡¯s down to his pistol, so we should be done shortly.¡±

    ¡°Sounds like you lot need a bit of assistance, eh?¡± a cockney voice queried.

    ¡°Eliza!¡± I said, laughing with relief, with The Monk cheering a bit as well. ¡°Do you have any idea how great it is to hear that, you magnificent bastard?¡±

    Eric cut in. ¡°Sorry for not being as grateful as Killer, but I¡¯m just wondering how soon you can get over to us.¡±

    ¡°Good question,¡± Eliza said. ¡°Oro, love, please show them some real marksmanship. Oh, and Eric, we¡¯re right behind you.¡±

    Oro didn¡¯t respond verbally. Instead, I began to hear the sound of a bolt-action rifle being fired as fast as some people fire Glocks. ¡°Hell yeah!¡± I heard Eric shout. ¡°Now that is sniper fire! Keep it up!¡±

    ¡°It had better be worth it,¡± I heard Li shout with great annoyance through his walkie-talkie, the crack and clink of a bolt-action prominent in the background. ¡°I do not appreciate being used as a bipod.¡±

    I didn¡¯t see how well she was doing, but just as I was turning around to get my G-3 and get back in the game, I saw Doc stagger to his feet, AK in hand.

    ¡°Hey Doc,¡± I asked as he opened fire, ¡°you ok?¡±

    ¡°That¡­ that really hurt¡­¡± he wheezed as he suppressed the asshole in the crater. I couldn¡¯t tell if he was in shock or annoyed. ¡°This is good armor.¡±

    I didn¡¯t really pay attention. Instead, I began to crawl back towards my abandoned rifle. Halfway there, a burst of gunfire kicked up the snow between me and my gun. In response, I heard The Monk begin to return fire.

    On our battlefield, things suddenly got quiet. ¡°I think I got our friend in the crater¡­¡± The Monk said.

    I had finally managed to get the G-3 back. I quickly stared down the sights. After a few seconds of searching, I found the person who was shooting at us. He was lying over the edge of the crater, slumped over his gun. I could see a hint of red, but I couldn¡¯t tell if it was hair or blood.

    Speaking of blood, I suddenly realized my own hands were too slippery with blood to get a good grip on the G-3. That would be something to consider if I ever had to get my own weapon, but for now, it just made it almost impossible to grip.

    ¡°Hey, Killer!¡± Doc said, ¡°Your leg looks kind of bad.¡±

    ¡°I know.¡± I said. ¡°Don¡¯t worry. Cross is worse off. Go help him.¡±

    ¡°Eric,¡± Doc said into the radio, ¡°how¡¯s Cross doing?¡±

    ¡°He is just being a bitch about his hand,¡± Eric said. ¡°The hospital can probably fix it. How are Killer and Monk?¡±

    ¡°The Monk is doing fine from what I can tell,¡± Doc said. ¡°On the other hand, I do not like the look of Killer¡¯s leg. He is being difficult, though.¡±

    ¡°Killer,¡± Eric said, ¡°let Doc do his thing.¡±

    ¡°Fine.¡± I said. ¡°Let¡¯s get this over with.¡±

    Doc walked over to me. When he was standing by my head, he bent down and held out a spent bullet casing. ¡°Ok, Killer,¡± he said, ¡°I¡¯m going to need you let go of your gun¡¯s trigger and bite down on this.¡±

    I was confused as to why he¡¯d want to me to bite down on the bullet, but I slid it into my mouth and bit down on it with my rear teeth. ¡°Ah ¡®eady,¡± I grunted.

    ¡°Ok,¡± Doc said, ¡°now this is going to hurt. A lot.¡± He then pulled out a piece of shrapnel from my leg. I screamed and bit down in pain. He didn¡¯t stop there. He just kept pulling out pieces of shrapnel until I blacked out.

 1.18: Good Morning

    When I came to, I was being carried by Eliza and John. Besides me, Ricardo and Doc were carrying The Monk on a stretcher. It took me a second to notice that we were out of the forest and almost at the now-completed fort guarding the main camp. It was still extremely cold, but the sky was now clear.

    Another thing I noticed was that my legs were kind of dragging. I put some weight on one of them. I instantly screamed out in pain. Oh yeah, I remembered through a haze of pain, that¡¯s the one with all the shrapnel in it.

    ¡°Oi,¡± Eliza said, ¡°stop screamin¡¯! All that gunfire hurt me ears enough!¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said.

    ¡°Seriously, though, mate,¡± she said, ¡°you gave me a bloody heart attack. When I heard that¡­¡±

    Before she could continue, a short figure stood up in the fort. Instantly, it was followed by another, much larger figure. The huge one had to be Ulfric. ¡°You had a heart attack?¡± It was Bai¡¯s voice, meaning that she was the shorter figure. She sounded pissed.

    From behind me I heard Ray-Gun say, ¡°Oooooh!¡± I turned around. He was bandaged up and seemed kind of unsteady, but he was alive. So was everyone else on my side who had come into the forest.

    Bai ignored this. ¡°Who was the one,¡± she asked, somewhat dangerously, ¡°who was left to tend to egotistical maniacs?

    "Well,¡± Eliza said, ¡°judging from ¡®ow peeved you sound, you?¡±

    Bai and Ulfric began coming towards us. As they moved forwards, it was easier to make out their faces. It seems I was correct in judging that Bai was pissed. ¡°Also, who was the one who decided to put me in charge? Who was one of the five people I thought could be trusted to follow my orders? And who took herself and three of them away without telling me? Leaving only Ulfric as an enforcer?¡±

    ¡°Listen, Bai¡­¡± Eliza began.

    ¡°I know you¡­ had your reasons.¡± Bai said. ¡°But I have to make an example out of you. You¡¯re going to have to be on watch for the next few hours.¡±

    ¡°Sorry¡­¡± Eliza said contritely. ¡°I cocked it up pretty thoroughly, didn¡¯t I?¡±

    ¡°Make it up to me when this is all over.¡± Bai said, looking at Eliza with a pleading expression. ¡°Promise me you¡¯ll never nominate me for another leadership positon.¡±

    ¡°Promise.¡± Eliza said. ¡°I¡¯ll also buy you a pint.¡±

    Bai didn¡¯t look too thrilled at the prospect of alcohol. ¡°Take Jacobs and the other wounded person back to their tents. Eric, I can assume you¡¯ve brought weapons for the rest of the people here?¡±

    From behind me, I heard Eric say, ¡°Yes ma¡¯am.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯d like you to keep most of them under guard. If the enemy decides they want more, then you can distribute them. Tensions have been running high, and I do not want people to act out on them.¡±

    Eric nodded. ¡°Understood, ma¡¯am,¡± he said.

    Eliza and John dragged me back to my tent. As they were laying me down, I saw that Eric, Ray-Gun, and Li had been dragging nets filled to the brim with weapons and ammunition. They then set out the weapons and began to organize them. Before I could see any more, however, I was dragged back into my tent.

    ¡°Now, I¡¯m going to leave for a while,¡± Eliza said, ¡°and while I¡¯m gone, I¡¯d much appreciate it if you didn¡¯t get shot, stabbed or blown to tiny bits, ok?¡±

    ¡°Seconded!¡± John said. ¡°Also, we¡¯re going to need your guns to put in the pile.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said. After I had relinquished my weapons, Eliza and John left. I instantly missed them. The G-3K had been pretty lightweight and controllable, for something that shot 7.62 NATO, that is, and the P229 seemed to be a good concealed weapon. Also, there was something very satisfying about giving the G-3¡¯s charging handle a karate chop to cock it.

    After the painful struggle to take off my vest and helmet (I was bruised from where the bullets had slammed into my vest and the muscles required to remove it were sore) I suddenly realized how tired I was. Shoving my body armor to one side, I curled up into a ball.

    ¡°Sleep¡± was a generous term for what I did. Throughout all my attempts to sleep, I¡¯d toss and turn until I finally drifted off. Then, something would wake me up. Sometimes it would be pain from my head, chest, or leg. Sometimes it would be some image I couldn¡¯t remember upon waking. Sometimes it would be a scream. When I awoke from that last sleep interruption, I¡¯d always wonder if it was someone outside or in my dream who had cried out. Then I would start the cycle all over again.

    The last time I was awoken was by Eric poking his head in. ¡°Hey,¡± he said, ¡°time to go.¡±

    I murmured something along the lines of ¡°But I just got to sleep¡­¡± If that wasn¡¯t true, it sure felt like it.

    ¡°Hey!¡± a familiar Indian-accented voice called out, ¡°Tell him if he doesn¡¯t get out of here soon he¡¯s going to have to walk to graduation!¡±

    ¡°Sergeant Gupta?¡± I asked. At first I was happy to hear her voice. Then I remembered the last time I had seen her. ¡°What a¡­ pleasure.¡± I lowered my voice to ask Eric, ¡°What¡¯s going on?¡±

    Eric stared at me. ¡°Listen, Killer,¡± he said, ¡°I know what happened in The Chamber of Horrors upset you, but I need you to put it beside you for now. Just get into the sled, let the snowmobile take you to the graduation thingy, and then we all go to our dorms. Ok?¡±

    ¡°¡­Fine.¡± I said. ¡°Help me get to this sled thing.¡±

    A few Campus Security Guards were out, mingling among the students, helping Bai get us into formation. Two of them, one of them being Officer Gupta, were nearby with snowmobiles towing sleds. Officer Gupta, when she first saw me smiled. Then she realized that I was trying to kill her with my look of pure distaste. When both The Monk and me were on our respective stretcher-sleds, Officer Gupta came over to talk to me.

    ¡°I see you¡¯re taking that thing personally,¡± she said.

    ¡°You have to admit ¡®that thing¡¯ was all kinds of fucked up.¡± I said. ¡°Finding that people who died there aren¡¯t taken out and given proper burials? That¡¯s wrong.¡±

    ¡°I am not saying it isn¡¯t,¡± she said, ¡°but being right does not pay the bills.¡±

    ¡°If you want money,¡± I said, ¡°surely there¡¯s better ways to get it.¡±

    Officer Gupta laughed. ¡°Better? In what way? The kind where you go to an office job every day, where the people who control you have no fear of or respect for you? Where no one gives a crap if someone hurts you because you¡¯re replaceable?¡± I just stared at her sullenly. ¡°Or maybe I should be a real cop?¡± she asked. ¡°A real cop, who has to the same soul-destroying things on a wage that makes me have to live with the same people I arrest?¡± She spat. ¡°Tell me the same thing when you¡¯ve lived in the real world.¡±

    ¡°So,¡± I asked, as she got on the snowmobile, ¡°how¡¯s this different from being a real cop?¡±

    She froze. ¡°Excuse me?¡± she asked.

    ¡°I mean,¡± I said, ¡°sure you make a bit more money, well, probably a lot more money. But you still have to do stuff that destroys your soul and I honestly don¡¯t see where you could go to get away from all this.¡± I paused. ¡°You didn¡¯t choose something better, you just gave up, didn¡¯t you?¡±

    Gupta ignored me and started the snowmobile. We were almost completely in the front, just behind a military truck with caterpillar treads instead of wheels. Behind us, in two sections standing side-by-side and going back, with Bai in the lead, were the survivors. On either side was Campus Security. They were on snowmobiles and in full body armor, but they weren¡¯t out in force and were chatting amiably with the students. Once everyone was in formation, we started moving out at a standard march.

    As we moved, I reflected on how many people we had lost. Starting off with a thousand people, now only somewhere between three hundred fifty and two hundred and eighty remained. So many people had died. Some had been ripped to shreds by wild animals. Others by campers. For most of the remaining ones it must have seemed like some kind of sick joke that the last test involved them waiting around while me and eleven others were fighting for our lives.

    When we were close to the campus, we stopped for a moment. I craned my neck past the snowmobile and the truck to see a marching band. Even though our marching training wasn¡¯t that good and I had a really bad angle, I could tell they were pretty undisciplined.

    With a slightly out of time rendition of the school¡¯s jauntily militaristic theme, we began moving into the campus. I honestly expected to see a crowd of people looking angrily at us. What I saw, however was the definition of apathy. Most of the crowd of people ranged from polite interest to polite disinterest. I instantly judged them to be other students forced to attend. For them, this must have been something like Memorial or Veteran¡¯s Day in America. In other words: ¡°Pretend to support the troops and there may be a cookout.¡±

    There were a few outliers. Occasionally, I would see a few sullen faces on the side. I could feel their distaste. They knew. They knew I had pretty much massacred hundreds of people, firing round after round into the faces and chests of people without thought or mercy. They knew that my friends had been there with me, perforating people with shrapnel and bullets, setting people on fire with incendiary grenades and separating people and their body parts with heavy machinegun fire. They knew, and like anyone who knew, they hated me.

    Worse, however, were the people who cheered for us. I had the distinct impression that they knew as well, but instead of shunning us like decent human beings they cheered. My guess was that they AMS and Shadowhaven students celebrating new arrivals. We were now one of them, whether we wanted to be or not.

    Finally, we stopped in a large square in front of the main administration building. It was on a rotary with the President¡¯s Mansion and the Newell-Howard Student Center to its right and left, respectively. Also located around the rotary were the Computer Science and Business buildings as well as two dorms. Behind the administration building were the docks.

    I was familiar with it. After all, I had run through it twice a day since I had gotten here. Usually, though it didn¡¯t have a stage in front of the steps of the administration building. The truck pulled off to the side, and the two Campus Security Guards got out and stood by its gate. Meanwhile, Professor Zemylachka and Professor Blunt were testing the microphone.

    From the side, two short figures were coming over to us. I could tell right away that they were the Riley twins. Both were carrying crutches. Mary went over to help The Monk, and May went over to help me.

    ¡°Hey,¡± May said, looking at me with some concern, ¡°are you ok?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± I said.

    Her eyes narrowed. The effect was kind of intimidating, with her patchwork face and mismatched eyes. However, there also was something kind of endearing as well. ¡°You don¡¯t look fine.¡± The statement was very matter-of-fact, and somewhat forceful. ¡°As soon as you¡¯re done, I¡¯m dragging you off to get that leg looked after and maybe have a counselor talk to you. I know what happened out there.¡± She paused for half a second to consider her words. ¡°Well, I don¡¯t know what happened, but I¡¯ve got a pretty good idea because the people who were sent out didn¡¯t come back and they had a lot of guns and anyway I¡¯m talking way too much you should probably just get your crutches.¡± As she said that last sentence, she started talking with her hands. She also gave the crutches to me. ¡°Anyway, you should probably get into formation.¡±

    I stood up painfully. ¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± I said, gritting my teeth from the pain. My leg really didn¡¯t like being moved at this point. It was all I could do not to scream. Finally, when I was standing, I didn¡¯t have to put any weight on it.

    May watched as I stood up. Maybe it was the fact I was grunting and panting a bit, maybe it was the fact that I looked like I hadn¡¯t slept at all, but May obviously didn¡¯t believe me. ¡°I¡¯ll get you out early,¡± she said.

    Well that sounds ominous, I thought as I limped into formation. Monk was right beside me. He gave me an encouraging smile, and several of my fellow graduates cheered and clapped. Eric was one. Salim wasn¡¯t. To his credit, he did give me a nod of acknowledgement and then studiously ignored me instead of the usual muttered threats. Eric, however, patted me on the shoulder, almost buckling my good knee and said, ¡°Nice job surviving, Killer!¡±

    "You too, man!¡± I said, ignoring the nickname. ¡°I mean, you¡¯re more experienced, but it was still pretty tough. By the way, I don¡¯t think me and John would¡¯ve survived without you guys.¡±

    Eric waved my thanks away with a literal sweep of his hand that ended up whacking Doc in the face and forcing me to dodge. ¡°Think nothing of it, my friend!¡± he said.

    The audience, meanwhile, clapped in polite confusion. I was now certain that they had no clue what had happened yesterday. They probably hadn¡¯t even heard the gunfire because of the wind. I wondered if the administration had found a way to monitor the fight.

    Speaking of the administration, May had gone over to talk with the Blunt and Zemylachka. I couldn¡¯t hear what they were saying, but I saw Zemylachka¡¯s reaction. At first, she seemed quite amused. Then she asked May something or maybe challenged her. There was a pause, in which I assumed May said something. Zemylachka¡¯s face went pale. She asked another question. May answered it and Professor Zemylachka went even paler. Blunt, with a bit of apprehension, pointed May to the truck. She walked over, snapped open a folding wheelchair leaning against the truck and began to stare directly at me. Mary was nearby, struggling with another wheelchair.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

    Professor Blunt, satisfied that May¡¯s attentions were elsewhere, tapped his microphone. ¡°Ladies and gentlemen!¡± he said. ¡°May I have your attention for the 36<sup>th</sup> Annual Hell Semester Graduation?¡±

    There was slightly more applause, almost genuine. There were some cheers, but these were probably from the AMS/Shadowhaven crowd and my fellow graduates.

    ¡°Now, Professor Zemylachka has been working hard this semester,¡± Blunt said, ¡°as well as the students and the professors on drill sergeant duty. However,¡± he said, ¡°some of these guys have stood out, especially in our finals.¡±

    People quieted down a bit. Apparently, there was something interesting about this final. Professor Blunt continued. ¡°In this last test, twelve of our students faced impossible odds and incredible danger. Not only did they survive, but they every single one of them is able to get onto this platform!¡±

    I sensed some disappointment from the audience. I got the impression they wanted to hear a bit more. I did too. I kind of wanted to hear who I had killed. Call it guilt or morbid curiosity.

    Instead, Professor Blunt called the twelve survivors of the battle onto the platform. I noted that apart from Eric and Ray-Gun, no one else in that group had real names. As the professor called us, we made our way onto the platform. It was more difficult for me and The Monk because of our injuries. By this point, it was pure pain to put any pressure on my leg. I learned this the hard way. Despite having bit my tongue, I still let out a cry of pain.

    "You all right, mate?¡± Eliza asked quietly. Something told me if they weren¡¯t being smooshed by her helmet, her ears would be twitching in sympathy.

    ¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± I growled back, getting into position beside her. To add insult to injury The Monk was able to make it up without incident.

    Once he madesure we were all up there, Professor Blunt continued on. ¡°However, things might not have turned out as well for our graduates here if someone hadn¡¯t been leading them. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Baiiii FENG!¡±

    After the applause that followed (seriously, one simply refuses to applaud after that kind of introduction) Bai got up on the stage. She headed towards the back with the rest us, but Professor Blunt motioned for her to come up front with him. Hesitantly, she stood by his side.

    "Now,¡± Professor Blunt said, ¡°remember when I said that you wouldn¡¯t learn anything in Shadowhaven?¡± At this, Professor Zemylachka made a noise of pure disgust. Bai, on the other hand, nodded cautiously. ¡°Well,¡± Professor Blunt said, ¡°I talked to your sponsors and they¡¯ve agreed to allow you to transfer to the Combat Leadership program. Congratulations!¡±

    Bai said something in Chinese, probably some form of foul invective. Professor Blunt, however, said, ¡°In recognition of their skill, these guys get to pick two weapons from the truck.¡±

    I sighed. This was going to be hard. I turned to Eliza and said, ¡°Hey, I¡¯m going to be late. If you see that HK or that Sig I was using, can you save it for me?¡±

    ¡°Sure, mate,¡± Eliza said. ¡°I¡¯ll pass on the word.¡±

    When I finally had gotten off the stage, everyone was removing various weapons. They would check them over, then put them on the ground. Bai held up a teeny tiny Glock and asked, ¡°Is this a good gun?¡±

    Cross looked up from an assault rifle he was carrying. ¡°Looks like a Glock 26,¡± he said. ¡°If you want a concealed weapon or if you¡¯ve got small hands, it¡¯s a pretty good choice.¡±

    ¡°If that is what it is good for,¡± she said, putting it and a bag of spare mags tied to its trigger besides her, ¡°then I think it would be ideal for my purposes.¡±

    Someone cleared their throat. I turned to the side and saw May still holding the wheelchair. ¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯ll get in the wheelchair once I find my stuff.¡±

    With some effort, I sat down and began looking through the piles of weaponry to find the weapons I had acquired yesterday. Suddenly, a flash of silver caught my eye. Thinking it might be the Sig, I grabbed at it.

    It wasn¡¯t the Sig. It was a Beretta 92FS Inox, similar to the M9 we had been trained on, except for the shiny finish. Spare magazines for it were also tied to the trigger guard. I remembered shooting the M9. It had been quite the joy.

    "Hey Nate!¡± I looked up. It was John who had spoken. ¡°I found the pistol. I think it¡¯s a P229 DAK.¡± He held it out to me, making sure it was in a safe position, and I reached out to grab it.

    Once both were in my hands, it instantly became hard to choose. ¡°Tough choice, huh?¡± Cross asked.

    "Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°On one hand,¡± I said, holding up the Inox, ¡°this is the one I trained on, but on the other,¡± I held up the P229, ¡°this one possibly saved my life. And I can¡¯t really take both, because I need something that can hit a target more than fifty meters away.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll tell you what,¡± Cross said, ¡°I¡¯ll save the Beretta for you. I brought five guns with me, so I don¡¯t need any more. Besides, you don¡¯t have any.¡±

    ¡°You know what?¡± Eliza said, ¡°that might be a nice thing to do, earn a bit of good karma, eh? Apart from Nate and John, all of us have brought our own weapons.¡± She turned back to the crowd. ¡°Right,¡± she called out to our fellow graduates, ¡°do any of you lot not have guns?¡± A few hands rose.

    While Eliza was counting the people who had raised their hands, Bai asked, ¡°Nathan, is this the gun you are looking for?¡±

    I turned to look at her. She was holding the G-3K that I had been using. ¡°That¡¯s exactly it,¡± I said. She held it out to me, and I took it. ¡°Thanks,¡± I said.

    "Ok,¡± May said sternly, ¡°You found all your toys. Put them in your backpack, and they¡¯ll be delivered later. We need to get you checked out.¡±

    I suddenly remembered that, in a bout of paranoia, I had been putting my diary in my backpack. The diary with all my spy stuff in it. ¡°Ok,¡± I said, unstrapping the bag, ¡°just let me bring something with me, ok? It isn¡¯t a weapon.¡±

    May shrugged. ¡°Sure. Oh, and you might as well leave your vest and helmet here as well because they¡¯re gonna want those back.¡± I nodded, unfastening and removing said items. I then opened the backpack, surreptitiously placed the diary and writing paraphernalia in one of my coat¡¯s pocket¡¯s, then stuffed in the guns I had chosen.

    After I had finished, May rolled the wheelchair around so it was directly behind me. ¡°Hey,¡± she said, ¡°can someone help Mr. Jacobs into the wheelchair? He can¡¯t do it because of his leg, and I¡¯m tiny.¡±

    ¡°I can do it, I can do it¡­¡± I said, attempting to stand up.

    ¡°You keep doing that,¡± May said, ¡°and I will have one of your friends sedate you via pistol whipping.¡± Eliza and Eric laughed. May said, ¡°Does that mean you¡¯re volunteering?¡±

    "You¡¯re serious¡­¡± Eliza said, somewhat dumbstruck.

    ¡°I would do it,¡± Doc said, sounding disturbingly eager.

    ¡°I¡¯ll help him into the wheelchair¡­¡± John said. ¡°I¡¯d prefer not to have to beat him.¡±

    Cross got up as well. ¡°I¡¯ll help.¡± Between the two of them, I was in the wheelchair in no time.

    As soon as I was in the chair, the cold nipping at my now-exposed ears, May began pushing at a rapid pace. Turning over her shoulder, she called out to her sister, ¡°Hey, Mary, make sure that other guy gets to his room after he¡¯s done choosing his stuff, ok?¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± I said, ¡°you know where my room is?¡±

    ¡°First thing I asked about,¡± she said. ¡°You¡¯re in Marine. It¡¯s basically a freshman dorm for AMS and Shadowhaven students.¡±

    ¡°Mmm,¡± I said. Marine, it turned out, was on the main road leading out of the campus, about halfway down. It was in the same brick style as every other building on campus. Like several other of the buildings, there was room for a restaurant or store, with one entrance going into the building proper and one for the restaurant.

    In this case, the restaurant seemed to be a bar called The Drunken Mercenary. There was a wooden plaque hanging outside that entrance, with a red-nosed man in fatigues and carrying an AKMSU in one hand and a bottle with Cyrillic writing in the other. Underneath was the phrase La vie est dr?le, la mort est plus dr?le. The large, blacked-out windows were inscribed with the same image. The door into the bar was the kind you¡¯d find at an old pub in Europe. Outside the restaurant was a group of snow-covered tables surrounded by a fence and a metal detector.

    ¡°Is that a bar?¡± I asked. ¡°Wouldn¡¯t the drinking age, like, not allow most of the people to visit?¡±

    May laughed. ¡°You¡¯re assuming this place works like back home. Here, they assume that if you¡¯re ready to attend NIU, you¡¯re ready to drink.¡±

    We went in through the door to the main building. May had given me a key card with my picture on it. ¡°You¡¯re going to need to swipe it on the door,¡± she said. I did so, and we were in a very clinical-looking hallway, painted solid white, undecorated except for a trash and recycle bin and lit only by bright fluorescent lights. It was so bright and monotone it was hard to see where the walls met the floor. We went down it, passing by another entrance to The Drunken Mercenary (which also had a metal detector outside it) and turned right.

    The change was tremendous. The room was still white, but the oppressive cleanliness was broken by furniture. For starters, there were bunch of beanbag chairs arranged around a black coffee table. They faced a large TV mounted against the building¡¯s rear wall. On the wall ahead of us was a corkboard with various notices and the words ¡°Merry Christmas 2015 Freshmen!¡± written in big red, blue and green paper letters.

    There were also two elevators and a stairwell. May pushed me towards one of the elevators and pushed the up button. It dinged almost immediately and she pushed me in and pressed a button. As we began heading up, May asked, ¡°So, do you want to talk about what happened?¡±

    ¡°I keep wondering¡­¡± I said, surprising myself, ¡°if we had to do kill them. Yeah, they were armed, but I¡¯m not sure they wanted to kill us.¡±

    May sighed. ¡°Listen,¡± she said, ¡°I¡¯m a pacifist, but I¡¯m also a realist. That situation you were in? That was the result of a master planner spending weeks trying to find a way to kill those guys.¡± The elevator dinged again, and May began wheeling me into a more well-decorated hallway. ¡°The thing you should know ahead of time is that they¡¯re going to use this as an argument to kill more. They¡¯re going to tell you that you should always take the violent approach. Just like I¡¯d always encourage you to take the peaceful route. The thing is, though, you were the one who was there, so you¡¯re the one who¡¯s best equipped to say what the right thing is. And if you don¡¯t think you did the right thing, you can learn from your mistakes and do it better next time.¡± She paused. ¡°By the way, you¡¯re in room 308.¡±

    ¡°Thanks,¡± I said. ¡°That was pretty helpful.¡± Room 308 was straight ahead.

    "Which part?¡± May asked. ¡°The advice or your room number?¡±

    ¡°Both,¡± I said, swiping my student ID. The light flashed green and I opened the door while May rolled me in. The room would have been big if it wasn¡¯t a quad. On the left wall, there were four dresser/weapons locker combos and a fridge. To the right, two bunk beds formed an L-shape with one forming a corridor with the dresser, the other was against the wall leading to the hallway. The two remaining walls had four desks, each in front of a window. The windows in front looked out onto the main street and the side ones looked at an adjacent building. In the opposite corner was all my luggage.

    ¡°You got a corner room!¡± May said as she wheeled me towards where my luggage was located. ¡°Nice. Window views for everyone. Also, you get to choose where you sleep as long as it¡¯s on the bottom. Seriously, I am not helping you into a top bunk.¡± She paused. ¡°I will make your bed, though. Also, it¡¯ll probably be better in the long run if you get changed while I did that. I promise I won¡¯t look and the windows are one way, so no one can see in.¡±

    I agreed to the plan. I was somehow able to squirm out of my campus-issue fatigues and into my flannel pajama pants and Washington subway map t-shirt without hurting myself. I began doing what I could to claim the desk in the corner that looked out onto the main street. I had managed to get my laptop out of my backpack and put it onto the desk when May called out to tell me she was finished.

    I wheeled myself over to the bed. ¡°Thanks for that,¡± I said. It was the bottom bunk on the back wall, pillow set up so I faced the door, just like I had asked. I managed to get up and sit down on the bed without causing myself too much pain.

    ¡°Ok,¡± May said, reaching into a backpack she had brought with her, ¡°put your injured leg onto the wheelchair and pull up your pant leg so I can get a good look at the wound.¡±

    I did as she instructed. When the bandage was revealed, it showed that a lot of the bandage on the underside of my leg was stained red where the shrapnel had entered. ¡°What on Earth happened to you?¡± May asked. ¡°Seriously, your leg and your head are bandaged.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°I took a bullet to the head when I was trying to get into a crater, but my helmet stopped it. Later, when we were leaving said crater, some asshole tried to blow me up. That guy also shot out The Monk¡¯s knee.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± May said, her mismatched eyes wide. Ok, the green one was always wide because it had no lids. ¡°Any other wounds that should have killed you or is that it?¡±

    ¡°My vest stopped bullets here and here,¡± I said pointing to the two areas on my chest, ¡°and I¡¯ve been sore there ever¡­¡± I paused. ¡°Wait,¡± I said, suddenly feeling faint, ¡°that first one was where my heart was, right?¡±

    ¡°Yup,¡± May said, ¡°and that other one would have collapsed your lung, assuming it could penetrate your ribcage.¡±

    I remembered looking at my vest. One bullet hole had been 7.62mm (NATO or Warsaw, I couldn¡¯t tell) the other had been either 5.56mm NATO or 5.45 Warsaw Pact. ¡°Definitely could have penetrated the first rib,¡± I said. ¡°After that, it probably would have bounced off, or shattered and then bounced off¡­ I almost died, didn¡¯t I?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± May said. ¡°In four different ways.¡±

    ¡°Five,¡± I said, remembering how the person I had taken the G-3K from had almost unloaded it into my chest at point blank. At that range, the armor probably would have made things worse because the rounds could have ripped through the front armor and bounce off the back plate after shattering into pieces. Then I remembered all the other times I had been shot at and added, ¡°That I know of.¡±

    ¡°Well then,¡± May said, ¡°I¡¯m going to have to make sure you don¡¯t get an infection and lose your leg and/or die.¡± She then took out a tablet and a familiar device.

    ¡°Is that battlefield ultrasound?¡± I asked. ¡°I thought it was too processor-intensive to be used with a tablet.¡± As soon as I said it, I realized that the device on the end of the cable looked slightly different. It was smaller and sleeker, for one thing.

    ¡°Was is the key word, apparently,¡± May said, running the wand over my leg. ¡°A few weeks ago, this AAA-student announced that he¡¯d been working on a new tablet processor and had done something called ¡®software optimization¡¯ with the people who did the battlefield ultrasound.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± I said, ¡°so you¡¯re saying that this guy created a tablet and processor on his own? My dad works for AMD and it takes hundreds of people just to iterate on a previous design, and this guy did this all by himself?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s why he¡¯s a AAA like me,¡± May said as she scanned my leg, ¡°and not a AA or normal student.¡± She paused. ¡°You know,¡± she said, ¡°you and your friends are probably AA thanks to that stuff you did yesterday. Do something really amazing, and they¡¯ll probably make you AAA. Just sayin¡¯.¡±

    She then moved on to my chest. ¡°Gotta check this out, as well as your head.¡± she said. ¡°I know none of the bullets penetrated your armor, but they still may have cracked your rib cage, if you¡¯re still sore. By the way, how¡¯s your family?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± I said, caught off guard by the question. ¡°I haven¡¯t had contact with anyone who wasn¡¯t in the Hell Semester until today. I¡¯m planning on calling them tomorrow after I charge my phone.¡± I suddenly realized that I was crying. I wiped the tears away. ¡°I miss them.¡±

    ¡°The phone won¡¯t work,¡± May said, ¡°We only support the campus phones. You¡¯re going to have to get your laptop set up with IT to talk to them. Besides, you¡¯re going to be out of it for a few days.¡±

    ¡°Oh? Why?¡±

    ¡°These.¡± May said, reaching into her backpack to pull out a bottle of pills. ¡°There are five of these. Take them once a day. Make sure they are at least twelve hours apart. Once they¡¯re gone, they¡¯re gone. Do you understand?¡± I nodded. ¡°Good. They¡¯re amazing, but people who are in a lot of physical and emotional pain tend to take them before twelve hours have passed, thinking that they¡¯ll get them high again. Instead, it shuts down their nervous system, which is something you need to live.¡±

    She poured out a pill and put it into my hand. I popped it into my mouth and swallowed. ¡°You know,¡± she said, ¡°I was going to give you water.¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said.

    ¡°Not a problem,¡± she said. ¡°One final thing, don¡¯t take any other kind of medicine or recreational substance. It never ends well. Now, just let me change your bandage and disinfect your wounds.¡±

    About halfway through May sealing the wound with green goop, the drug kicked in. Suddenly everything became muffled and echo-y. ¡°The bandage was pretty good,¡± May said, her voice sounding warped and slowed. ¡°I¡¯d be completely freaked out that I didn¡¯t have stitches or my surgical glue. Who did it?¡±

    My response was to stare at my hand and mumble, ¡°It doesn¡¯t hurt¡­ Nothing hurts¡­¡± It was true. I had actually forgotten that for the past few months, most of my waking days (and nights) had been dominated by aches and pains, and that my leg didn¡¯t just hurt when I stood on it, and that my chest and head had been hurting ever since I had been hit. Now they were gone and I felt¡­ good. Even my guilt about what I had doing was gone because I was so distracted by being healthy.

    May sighed. ¡°This is why I waited to give you the meds. You¡¯re not going to make any sense for the next ten hours. Then that pain¡¯s going to come back, but you¡¯ll have to wait two hours.¡±

    ¡°Things¡¯ll hurt¡­ wait two hours¡­ got it.¡±

    May finished dressing my wounds (apparently, I didn¡¯t need a new bandage on my head, but I did need one on my legs,) and then turned me around to have me lay in my bed. She then walked out. As she left, she said, ¡°Sleep well. And don¡¯t you dare fucking die on me. I¡¯ve lost way too many patients this semester.¡±

    ¡°¡¯Kay, May¡­¡± I said muzzily as I pulled the covers up over my head. I then giggled groggily. ¡°Ha ha¡­ that rhymed.¡±

    May left, flicking the lights off. I busied myself getting to sleep and enjoying the lack of pain. It was glorious.

 1.19: Life Goes On

    I was awoken in the night by the pain returning. It was dark out and I didn¡¯t see anyone else in the room. Maybe my roommates hadn¡¯t gotten in yet. This was proven true about five minutes later when Cross, Eric and John staggered into the room.

    ¡°Killer¡­¡± Eric slurred, flipping on the lights, ¡°You¡¯re here¡­ you¡¯re our fourth roommate¡­ That¡¯s great.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Cross said, also drunk as a skunk, ¡°we were worried you¡¯d end up roomin¡¯ with Salim or that Nazi guy. Fuckin¡¯ Nazi cowboys¡­ thinkin¡¯ they can come here and tell me what to do¡­¡± As he spoke, I noticed that he was getting¡­ handsy with Eric and John. Eric seemed to be too drunk to notice it.

    John on the other hand, wasn¡¯t having any of that. ¡°Get your hand off my ass!¡± he said, slapping Cross¡¯s hand away. John turned towards me, after Cross¡¯s hands had been removed, and asked, ¡°Did we wake you up?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± I said, ¡°it was my pain meds wearing off.¡±

    John spent a few seconds processing that. I guess that while he was more sober than Cross and Eric, he was still kind of drunk. ¡°Oh,¡± he said, ¡°ok. Maybe you should take more.¡±

    ¡°I would,¡± I said, ¡°but if I take it too early, apparently my nervous system shuts off.¡±

    ¡°You need that, right?¡± John asked.

    ¡°Pretty sure,¡± I replied as Cross and Eric staggered further into the room.

    ¡°I call top bunk!¡± Eric shouted.

    ¡°Fuck you, man,¡± Cross slurred back in response. ¡°I get the top bunk.¡±

    ¡°You realize,¡± I said, somewhat annoyed, ¡°that there are two top bunks?¡±

    Cross and Eric stared at me drunkenly for a second. They had been preparing to climb up to the top of the bed near the dressers. Finally, Cross said, ¡°Shut the fuck up, Killer! Who the fuck asked you?¡± Then he and Eric began fighting to get onto the top bunk.

    ¡°I call bottom!¡± John said, crawling into the one free bottom bunk. Kind of stupid of him, since Cross and Eric were still playing king of the hill. He got a few kicks for his trouble, but he finally was on the mattress. ¡°Oh man,¡± he said, ¡°it¡¯s so soft¡­¡±

    That was saying something about the beds in Hell Semester. These were the kind of cheap mattresses you find in college dorms. The beds in Hell Semester were still nowhere near as comfortable, though.

    Eventually both Cross and Eric were lying on the bed. After a while Cross asked, ¡°Soo¡­ you wanna spoon?¡±

    There was a pause, then Eric pushed him off the bed. Things got quiet after that, and I was able to return to the pattern of last night. It wasn¡¯t a pleasant one, but I eventually got to sleep. When I woke up, the others were gone. From my bunk hung a post-it, reading: Nathan, we¡¯ve gone <del>to get breakfast. We¡¯ll be back soon.</del> Actually, we¡¯ve gotten back and we think we¡¯re going to get some stuff done like turning in our fatigues and getting our stuff. You looked like you needed sleep more than food. Apparently, its Kiritimati time, so if you have an iPod or phone or something, that¡¯s what you should set it to.

    I took the note down. ¡°Huh,¡± I said. ¡°They ditched me.¡± I wasn¡¯t too worked up about it. I had been surrounded by people, many of them who wanted to kill me, for the past three months or so. I could use some alone time.

    I was starting to get into the idea when I realized I could do fuck-all. I couldn¡¯t connect to the internet because I needed an appointment with IT, which meant web surfing and video games were out of the question. My leg meant unpacking would be really difficult, and since all my pencils and pens were in my bags, I couldn¡¯t write in my diary. Finding and charging my devices or accessing my books were out of the question for the same reason, and there were only so many times a guy could, well, you know.

    That left the meds. I picked them up and stared at them. On the one hand, yesterday had been so good once I had taken the meds. Everything had just stopped hurting, and I¡¯d been able to sleep.

    On the other, the idea of taking the meds just to pass the time scared the shit out of me. That good feeling was being high. I really didn¡¯t want to end up addicted to whatever these things were.

    These thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. ¡°Coming!¡± I yelled, dropping the pill bottle. I then began the process of hobbling over to the door, careful not to apply pressure to my legs. I also noticed, to my displeasure, that moving my arms caused my chest to hurt. ¡°Don¡¯t go! Seriously, I¡¯m coming!¡±

    Finally, I managed to open the door. At first, all three of the women standing there were unfamiliar. In the far rear was a tall Asian girl wearing a red peacoat, red blouse, and dark fitted blue jeans. Her hair was up in a high ponytail, and two strands of hair framed her face, with an amused smirk playing across her dark red lips. She was leaning up against, pretending not to notice what was happening, but you could tell she was very amused by what she saw due to the way her light brown eyes gleamed.

    Standing directly in front of the door were the other two. One had long, straight blond hair that stretched down past her shoulders. She wore a black jacket, black leggings, black riding boots, and a shirt emblazoned with the Union Jack that looked like one of those shirts that should be cheap, but turn out to cost about $200. Her eyes were hidden by red aviator glasses, but I could tell she was appraising me. She was standing behind and to the left of the third girl who was¡­

    ¡°Eliza!¡± I said, my face brightening. I seriously hadn¡¯t realized it was her for a second. Partly it was that she just didn¡¯t match my definition of what Eliza was. For the past months I¡¯d known her, Eliza had always worn her hair in a messy ponytail and that and her fox ears were usually covered by a Kevlar helmet. When they were visible, they were usually straight up and pointing forwards, or rotating, trying to locate a sound she couldn¡¯t place. Now, her hair was down and very well combed, and her ears were pointed down in embarrassment. Her body language was also much more awkward, instead of the sly, confident personae she usually presented during Hell Semester.

    Also, she dressed more girly then I would have expected. She was wearing an unexpectedly cute red top with a neck line that, while not really exposing obvious cleavage, was still lower than I would expect. It was also empire-waisted and had some white lace trim. She also had a short denim skirt and calf-high boots. The boots weren¡¯t high-heeled, but they still were quite feminine somehow. The only visible concession to my mental image of Eliza was a vintage army coat.

    ¡°I didn¡¯t expect you¡­ to be here!¡± I said. If it wouldn¡¯t have brought me intense pain, I¡¯d have kicked myself. ¡°Good to see you.¡±

    Eliza, suddenly gaining a lot of her confidence back, lightly punched me in my shoulder. ¡°You mean you weren¡¯t expecting me to dress like a girl, were ya?¡± She smiled. ¡°Anyway, how¡¯s it goin¡¯ ya wanker?¡±

    The blond girl shook her head and mumbled something under her breath.

    ¡°You¡¯re actually just in time,¡± I said. ¡°I was going to take some meds. Another few minutes later and I wouldn¡¯t be able to do much more than mumble and giggle.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t quite get how you bein¡¯ a vegetable is different from ¡®ow you are normally,¡± Eliza said innocently. I laughed. So did Eliza and the girl in the rear. The blond girl standing behind Eliza looked somewhat surprised. ¡°Anyways,¡± Eliza said, ¡°I forgot to introduce you to some loveable rogues from the Rouge program. The blond ¡®un dressed in the Union Jack¡¯s me adopted sister, Charlotte Blackmoor-Ward. She¡¯s a touch more posh than me.¡±

    ¡°Nice to meet you,¡± I said. I held out my hand for her to shake.

    She gripped it cautiously. ¡°Charmed,¡± she said breezily. ¡°Eliza¡¯s talked quite a bit about you. How did you meet, again?¡±

    I laughed. Eliza cringed. The one remaining girl I didn¡¯t know looked up. ¡°Now I¡¯m curious,¡± she said, in a low, seductive voice as she walked towards us, ¡°just how did you meet?¡± As she moved, for some reason, I was reminded of Eliza. There was the same slyness, the same lithe movements. However, there was something¡­ different about her. There was something more sensual about her and less direct, but that wasn¡¯t the core of the difference.

    ¡°That¡¯s Jennifer,¡± Charlotte said icily. ¡°There¡¯s no excuse for Jennifer.¡±

    ¡°No excuse for me? What about getting me you two lovely ladies in here without the correct ID?¡± Jennifer asked. She leaned in close to Charlotte, her body language and faux-innocent smile making me wondering if she was flirting with Charlotte. Or teasing her. Something told me that if I figured this out, I¡¯d be closer to understanding her.

    Anyway, not wanting the conversation to drift further into awkward territory, I decided to interrupt. ¡°So, Jennifer,¡± I asked, ¡°is that an American accent?¡±

    ¡°Why yes it is,¡± she said, somewhat taken aback. ¡°I shouldn¡¯t be surprised, but it is pleasant. Too many people ask me if I¡¯m from China or some other place I¡¯ve never been to. It gets wicked annoying.¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± I said, ¡°a fellow Masshole!¡± Jennifer nodded to confirm.

    Eliza¡¯s ears drooped a bit. I could tell why she didn¡¯t like them. They were an awful tell. ¡°So, Eliza,¡± I said, desperately trying to make everyone in the group happy, ¡°is there anything in particular you wanted to see me about?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Eliza said, ¡°five other friends are having little get-together for lunch in about an hour or so.¡±

    ¡°In that case,¡± I said, ¡°give me some time to get dressed. Also, I¡¯d need you to push the wheelchair.¡±

    ¡°Not a problem, Nate!¡± Eliza said.

    ¡°Your friends sound very interesting.¡± Jennifer said. ¡°Mind if I tag along?¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said, ¡°but this particular gathering has a few people who¡­ aren¡¯t as social as me and Eliza. Plus, this isn¡¯t kind of the meeting where you meet new friends¡­ more the kind of meeting where you remember old ones and talk about the awful shit that happened to you.¡±

    Jennifer stared at me for a moment, as if she was trying to find a tell. Then she smiled. ¡°Such a shame,¡± she said, ¡°but there¡¯s always next time.¡± She turned around and began walking off. ¡°See you later,¡± she said over her shoulder, a seductive smile playing across her lips.

    After Jennifer left, Eliza said darkly, ¡°She comes on like a freight train, don¡¯t she?¡±

    It was my turn to punch her shoulder. ¡°Says the woman who stalked someone for several weeks.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not like I¡¯ve got a shrine or something!¡± Eliza. ¡°I mean, I do have a file on ya, but I¡¯ve got files on loads of blokes!¡±

    ¡°Eliza, dear,¡± Charlotte said, covering her face with her hands, ¡°you aren¡¯t exactly helping your case.¡± The motion revealed dark blue eyes underneath the red shades.

    I laughed. ¡°We¡¯re cool. It¡¯s all good. I still have to get changed, though.¡±

    ¡°Oh, yes, of course!¡± Charlotte said. She and Eliza backed away and I closed the door. As soon as it closed I realized that my fly was kind of¡­ loose. Also, if any of the girls (especially Jennifer) had been closer, it would have been obvious to them as well. As such, Charlotte¡¯s British etiquette seemed to have formed a shield for my personal space.

    I sighed in relief and began the arduous process of getting actual clothes on. Underwear and pants were the hardest, due to the fact that I was sitting down and had a bandaged leg. My shoes and socks were much easier. After pulling on an orange Maynard High School shirt, a grey hoodie, a jacket, grabbing my wallet and ID card, and shoving my laptop in my backpack, I then began trying to wheel myself over to the door. When I got to the turn, I gave up. No way I could make the turn between the dressers and Cross and Eric¡¯s bunk while in the wheelchair. Instead, I hobbled over to the door.

    ¡°Hey,¡± I said to Eliza and Charlotte, ¡°I¡¯m going to need your help. I can¡¯t get the wheelchair out and the only way I¡¯ve been able to get around this room is that there¡¯s lots of things to lean on.¡±

    ¡°No trouble at all,¡± Charlotte said.

    I limped back. ¡°Sorry I can¡¯t let you in first. That¡¯s how it¡¯s done, right?¡±

    ¡°Nate,¡± Eliza said, somewhat annoyed, ¡°you¡¯re a bleedin¡¯ yank. You shouldn¡¯t be apologizing for getting¡¯ shot. That¡¯s our job!¡±

    ¡°Quite right,¡± Charlotte said as she and Eliza followed me into my dorm. ¡°Although we do share that honor with many Asian cultures. My goodness, these freshmen rooms are small. It¡¯s even smaller than ours.¡±

    I sat down in the wheelchair. ¡°Seriously,¡± I said, ¡°this is a massive step up from the barracks. I have locks on the door, internet access, and a mattress that might actually be more a tenth of an inch thick. It¡¯s heaven.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t I know it, mate,¡± Eliza said. ¡°Well, at least in a fortnight, you¡¯re gonna be home with your mum and dad.¡±

    ¡°Actually,¡± I said, ¡°my dad got laid off a few years ago. My folks might not have the money for me to fly home.¡±

    ¡°Well then,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°you¡¯ll just have to come with us, then, won¡¯t you?¡± I began to protest, but Charlotte cut me off. ¡°No, I insist! No friend of ours misses Christmas with their family when we have a perfectly good, mostly empty aeroplane heading in the same direction.¡±

    Eliza leaned in close to me and said, ¡°Don¡¯t argue with her, Nate. You¡¯re not gonna win.¡± She then addressed her adopted sister. ¡°Right, then. Let¡¯s get movin¡¯. On the way back we can ¡®ook Nate up to the wi-fi. Got your laptop, Nate?¡±

    ¡°Right here,¡± I said, patting the backpack on my laptop. ¡°Let¡¯s roll out!¡±

    When we were in the elevator, Charlotte suddenly asked, ¡°So how¡¯s UNIX treating you?¡±

    I did a double-take. ¡°You know,¡± I said, ¡°if I was a UNIX Agent, which I¡¯m not, I¡¯d be fucking pissed you outed me in an elevator. Seriously, all they have to do is rewire the emergency phone and¡­¡±

    ¡°Listen, Nate,¡± Eliza said, cutting me off, ¡°They know. Hell, our people were able to find out your deal with UNIX. You and your friend are getting a hundred thousand dollars a semester, right? Do you want to know how long it took our people to find out about it?¡±

    Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

    Not waiting for me to answer, Eliza said, ¡°I started the search around two in the morning after Eliza gave me the details. We did a background check and looked at the only agency that would fit your description. By five, they had found a Swiss account in your name with the agreed-upon amount sitting inside it. There was only a small paper chase between the account and something called ¡®Operation Rider.¡¯ Excellent taste in children¡¯s books aside, they didn¡¯t cover their tracks very well. The faculty and staff at NIU have to know that you¡¯re with UNIX. If they hadn¡¯t from the beginning, I¡¯d be very shocked.¡±

    ¡°Why¡¯d the do that?¡± I asked, completely shocked.

    ¡°We don¡¯t know,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°but our hacker says that Project Rider looks a bit sparse to him.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t you see? You¡¯re bait, Nate.¡± Eliza said sadly. ¡°Or a distraction. You were never meant to survive the Hell Semester.¡±

    My illusions of UNIX being staffed by a race of happy kitten-people died with the bing of the elevator door opening. Doc and Cross were standing there, waiting to get in.

    ¡°Anyway,¡± Charlotte said as Eliza wheeled me out, ¡°I¡¯m terribly sorry about your leg. Just remember who your friends are, Nathan, and you should be fine.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Cross said hurriedly as he and Doc got into the elevator, ¡°We¡¯re here for you, Killer!¡± I didn¡¯t really notice that much as I was wheeled out the door.

    They used me¡­ No, why would they do that? Bad voice in my head!

    Why would they approach you, then? Why did they throw you into Hell Semester with no knowledge of how to work a gun or how to handle yourself in a fistfight? Why would they not give me a means of contacting them? Why didn¡¯t they give you any means of escape? Face it, something¡¯s not right about all of this.

    By the time we got to the restaurant, I had pretty much decided that as long as I got the hundred thousand, I didn¡¯t care. We were in a smaller side street when Eliza said, ¡°Well, that¡¯s interesting, innit?¡±

    I looked up. There was Ulfric and that creepy girl from the other night. They were walking down the street, Ulfric listening intently. ¡°I know that girl,¡± I said. ¡°Did I tell you about the psychic who used an illusion to stalk me, Ulfric, Salim and Richard while we were on patrol? That was her.¡±

    ¡°We do too,¡± Charlotte muttered to me, ¡°she¡¯s our other flat mate. Her name¡¯s Alma Hebert.¡±

    ¡°This,¡± I said, ¡°raises too many questions. I¡¯ll ask them later, because they¡¯re both right there.¡±

    After a little while, Ulfric veered off and walked into the Back-Home Bar and Grill. Alma continued walking forward like nothing had happened. ¡°Is that the same place we met last time?¡± I asked, nodding towards the sign. It had the same style as the menu of the place where the last meeting of the Seven had taken place.

    ¡°Naturally,¡± Eliza said. ¡°Charlotte even sprung for the back room again.¡±

    ¡°Least I could do,¡± Charlotte said. ¡°Anyways, go have your novelty-sized food. I shall return to Squire Hall. There is this wonderful caf¨¦ there. Eliza, I¡¯m sure you¡¯ve seen it.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Eliza said, ¡°Not really my speed, though. Anyways, ¡®ere¡¯s where we part ways.¡± She then wheeled me into the Back-Home Bar and Grill, pausing for the handicapped doors to swing open for me.

    Personally, I was just glad to be inside. A coat and a sweater, while warmer than the uniform coat, was still not keeping me warm enough. Judging from her sigh of contentment, Eliza was also happy to be out of the cold.

    The host quickly opened the interior door up for us. ¡°Hi there,¡± he said, ¡°welcome to the Back-Home Bar and Grill. Have y¡¯all made a reservation?¡± As we entered the room proper, I was suddenly how much like a chain restaurant in America it looked. Light wood booths, chairs, and tables with red vinyl upholstery, soft lighting from tasteful lamps¡­ it was all very welcoming.

    ¡°Eliza Henderson and Nathan Jacobs for the back room,¡± Eliza said, flashing her student ID.

    ¡°Oh yeah!¡± The guy said. ¡°You guys are the only ones using the room today, so you don¡¯t have to get out of here by two. Follow me.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s nice of you guys,¡± I said as he led us into the back room.

    ¡°You guys are the second ones here,¡± he said. ¡°There¡¯s already this big guy, Ulfric, right?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, ¡°we saw him come in.¡± The door behind us chimed. I turned around. Bai and Oro had just come in. ¡°Speaking of people coming in, Bai and Oro are here.¡±

    ¡°Well, that makes things easier!¡± He turned around and motioned for them to follow. Oro shrugged and both followed, Bai with some trepidation. Eliza, satisfied that they were coming, started pushing me along again.

    Finally, he brought us to a corner. On one side were the men¡¯s rest rooms, on the other was the women¡¯s. Directly ahead was an unmarked wooden door. ¡°Here you go,¡± the host said, opening the door to let us in.

    Inside was the room we had been in when the Hell Semester Faculty had rewarded us. Ulfric was sitting at a round table, smiling goofily and humming to himself. Once we were all in the room, the host said, ¡°Now that you¡¯re all here, I¡¯ll let y¡¯all get settled. Your server will be right with ya in a bit.¡± He then hurried out of there, but to be fair, if I was a worker at a restaurant and Ulfric was a diner, I honestly would¡¯ve noped the fuck away much sooner.

    Ulfric looked up and beamed at us. I noticed he was fiddling with something. We began to cautiously sit down. I noticed that Eliza parked me somewhere she could sit next to me and also move to intercept Ulfric if he decided to freak out. Everyone else just sat as far away from him as possible. I had heard something about Lupines having very strong protective instincts. This seemed to confirm it.

    ¡°So,¡± Eliza said brightly, ¡°when Ricardo and Li get in, we can get started.¡± She paused. ¡°Not rightly sure what we¡¯re gonna do for this meeting other than have a nice chat¡­¡±

    ¡°I do,¡± I said. Everyone turned to face me. ¡°Most of us, I assume, spent yesterday celebrating the fact we were alive. I think we should spend a few minutes of remembrance before we go back to partying.¡±

    Everyone, including Ulfric, nodded. Eliza said, somewhat huskily, ¡°Yeah, Nate. A toast¡¯s in order, I think.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, man,¡± someone from the door said. Eliza, Bai, and I looked up. Ulfric didn¡¯t need to, and I¡¯m pretty sure Oro had heard the newcomer enter. It was Ricardo. He and Li had arrived together. Neither looked particularly happy about being with each other. ¡°I got some people I need to mourn.¡±

    Ricardo and Li sat down, trying to avoid both each other and Ulfric, which was hard in a table this size. After they had somehow managed to accomplish this feat, I asked, ¡°So did you two end up roomies?¡±

    ¡°Happily,¡± Li said, ¡°we did not end up¡­ ¡®roomies.¡¯¡± He said that last word with complete and utter disgust.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Ricardo said, ¡°I guess I haven¡¯t sinned that much.¡±

    ¡°Oi!¡± Eliza said warningly. ¡°Don¡¯t you bloody start!¡±

    Silence reigned supreme until the waiter came in. After he introduced himself, we all ordered drinks, all alcoholic. I guess we decided it was appropriate. Besides, being a Star Wars fan, I just had to try Imperial Stout Trooper. I noticed that Ulfric had ordered an entire bottle of Knob Creek. I also noticed that the beer we were served came in huge glasses. Eliza smirked when she saw that I hadn¡¯t expected to get that much beer. Apparently, this was a standard size for beer.

    ¡°Today,¡± I said, ¡°we mark the ending of a traumatic, brutal chapter of our lives. Even some of us who have been fighting our entire lives have been shocked by the barbarism that was displayed during Hell Semester. Yesterday, we celebrated. Today, we mourn those that didn¡¯t make it. Some of us lost friends. Some of us saw or did things that we weren¡¯t prepared for.¡± As I spoke, I gazed out at the rest of the people there. Only Oro met my eyes. Some like Bai couldn¡¯t meet my eyes. Others like Ricardo looked at their drinks to avoid me. Even Ulfric seemed¡­ guilty, I guess.

    I continued on. ¡°We will go clockwise around the table with things we¡¯d like to say to those who have died that we never got to say to them when they were alive. I¡¯ll go first.¡±

    I paused for a bit, considering what I would use. Would I apologize to Amir? Would I mention the burning corpses by the crater? Then I realized what bothered me the most had happened before any of that. ¡°Michael,¡± I asked, ¡°what the hell did Krieger say to you? I didn¡¯t hear it, but I heard you asked Ulfric for a mercy kill at Fight Night. I just wished you had talked to me, or, well anyone. Maybe you would still be here.¡±

    Li was next. He was silent for a moment. ¡°I do not know your name,¡± he began, ¡°I never asked and you never told me. Our only interaction was that on the run before The Chamber of Horrors, you were crying. It annoyed me, so I told you to be quiet. The next time I saw you, you were floating face up in The Chamber¡¯s muck. When I went to investigate your corpse, I saw that all your wounds were defensive. I apologize for thinking you were a coward beneath my notice.¡±

    Bai was next. ¡°During The Chamber of Horrors,¡± she said, ¡°I thought I could defend myself. I did very well on my own. But then a wolf grabbed my pant leg. I was off my mountain. Then you came down. Amina, I believe your name was. I don¡¯t know you, and it is possible you had every reason to hate me. But still you saved my life, and ultimately sacrificed your own to do it. I owe you a debt I can never repay.¡± Throughout the entire time, she had been staring at her mug of beer. ¡°I didn¡¯t even know you!¡± She was now crying openly.

    Oro, for her part, waited for Bai to calm down before speaking up. ¡°To the people we fought at the crater. I have heard that before you fought us, you were mostly cowards and monsters. If that is true, I weep also for your victims because now they will never see the justice owed them. But I also recognize that most of you fought well at the end. You died as you fought: Honorably.¡±

    Very interesting. I had heard nothing about who, exactly, we had slaughtered for our finals. It only made sense that they had done something to embarrass the school. It was excellent timing. All the school needed to do was feed them to us.

    Ricardo interrupted my anger with his grief. ¡°Eduardo,¡± he said, his voice trembling a bit, ¡°amigo, I thought that if either of us would die, it¡¯d be me.¡± He laughed. It should have been humorous. ¡°You were always better than me. Better at shooting, better at hand-to-hand, better with explosives, better with knives¡­¡± he paused, trying to beat back tears for a moment, then decided to just soldier through. ¡°¡­Better with jokes, and just better at being kind and merciful.¡± Here he broke down.

    ¡°Despite doing what we do,¡± he continued through his body-wracking sobs, ¡°you were probably the best human being I¡¯ve ever met, man. Then some no-talent thug throws a rock at your head. And you don¡¯t get up. And I still don¡¯t understand why.¡± He then buried his face in his hands and sobbed.

    After a respectful pause, Ulfric said, ¡°To those of you I killed on Fight Night: You fought well. Continue on in Valhalla.¡±

    Eliza let Ulfric¡¯s statement hang and Ricardo finish sobbing. She began. ¡°Fight Night was¡­ rather hard on me,¡± she began. Instantly, I could tell she wasn¡¯t going to make it through her speech. Weirdly enough, I was jealous. She still had enough of her humanity left to do that.

    ¡°I had to come to terms with some things about meself,¡± she said. ¡°For the safety of others, y¡¯know. I also lost most of you girls that night.¡± She was desperately trying to choke back her tears.

    Meanwhile, it took us a minute to figure out that she was talking to the other girls in her section. So she had grown attached to them. I remembered what she had said about them. However, she had said, for some reason, I got put in a section with all the silly little bitches who knew nothing about fighting. I guess she had been trying to distance herself from them.

    ¡°Well,¡± she continued, ¡°I decided to do the stupid, noble thing. I tried to save the ones of you who were left.¡± Here she broke down just as much as Ricardo had. ¡°I¡­ I¡­ I promised I would save the rest of you. And then those wolves made me a liar. I just¡­¡± She then collapsed into incomprehensible blubbering.

    I touched her shoulder. ¡°It¡¯s ok.¡± I said. ¡°Well, maybe it¡¯s not, but I think you did really well. You did more than I could.¡± I then turned towards the rest of the people there. ¡°A full cup,¡± I said, my voice catching, ¡°or bottle,¡± I nodded at Ulfric¡¯s bottle of Knob Creek, getting some weak laughter, ¡°is a sign of happiness. However, today we mourn. In memory of both the ones we left and the parts of us we lost, let us pour out some of our drink to signify our grief.¡±

    I tipped my glass, and so did everyone else. After a small bit had flowed out, I righted my glass. ¡°To those we¡¯ve lost.¡±

    Everyone echoed me. ¡°To those we¡¯ve lost.¡±

    As we drank our various alcoholic beverages, I considered my own feelings. I wasn¡¯t feeling sad. I hadn¡¯t lost anything. No, thinking about Hell Semester made me mad. So many had lost their lives, and for what? Seriously, I didn¡¯t even know what justifications were being given for this. Because someone said so, I guess.

    I took a sip of my beer. I wondered if I was bitter, just like this swill. No, I decided. Bitter people just wallow in their misery.

    I¡¯m going to do something.

    <hr />

    Volume one is finished. Its dead.

    Now it is time for me to introduce you to a tradition of mine: the post mortem. Every time I finish a book, I write a small paper on what I thought of it. If you want to read the one for volume one, go here.</a> This was the first. Hope you enjoy.

 2.1: Hell Semester is so Two Weeks Ago

    When John and I first saw the Blackmoor-Ward plane land, we were impressed, to say the least. For those of you who don¡¯t know me, my name is Nathan Jacobs. Both John Marshall and I have spent most of our lives in the Northeast US, him in New Hampshire and me in Massachusetts. Our lifestyles were solidly middle-class. Sure, a lot had changed in the previous few months, thanks to the Hell Semester, but that was less ¡°oh my God, this is how rock stars live¡± and more ¡°so that¡¯s what it feels like to be shot!¡±

    Even after John and I got paid by our handlers, I had a sneaking suspicion that the plane Charlotte Blackmoor-Ward was flying us home in would still be out of our price range. In one movie, I had seen a private jet that was too small to fit a squad of mercenaries. Charlotte¡¯s jet had room for two cars in the cargo bay.

    ¡°Posh, innit?¡± Eliza asked as it touched down, her green eyes flashing in amusement. Eliza Henderson was another person I had met during Hell Semester 2015. Apparently, when she was twelve, she had lost her family somehow and Charlotte¡¯s father, Lord Blackmoor-Ward, had saved her from some nasty people. You could immediately tell Eliza was adopted by her red hair, freckled cheeks, and green eyes as compared to Charlotte¡¯s blond hair and dark blue eyes.

    There was also how they were dressed. Charlotte had a tendency to wear classy designer club wear and lots of makeup, calculated to emphasize her beauty and class. Eliza¡¯s look was calculated in a different way. If a fashionista looked at her, they¡¯d instantly dismiss her as quite classless, maybe even a little tomboyish. However, if someone with military training looked at her, they¡¯d see that she was a soldier who had made a lot of concessions to femininity. For instance, the skinny jeans she wore were slightly big to allow things to actually fit in her pockets and give her a bit of mobility. Also, her messy hair was up in a bun, allowing her to let it down for special occasions. Similar compromises had been made throughout her entire wardrobe.

    Also, under the hood, so to speak, Eliza''s a Parahuman. A Lupine, to be precise. She''s got these claws between her knuckles that she can pop out and sped-up healing that, from what I understand, also regenerates limbs. Also, in a rare twist, her ears were like that of a fox: mostly red with a black outline. The ears themselves were highly expressive, pretty much destroying any attempts she made at a poker face.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, trying to hide my amazement at its size, ¡°that¡¯s a very fancy plane.¡± John nodded in agreement.

    Eliza laughed. ¡°Well then the look when you see their house¡¯ll be priceless! I¡¯ve lived with these wankers for six years and I still get me breath taken away when I see it.¡±

    Charlotte, who had been talking to what appeared to be the captain, said to Eliza, ¡°Well, the boarding stairs are in place. Let¡¯s get our guests inside before they catch cold, shall we?¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± Eliza said brightly, ¡°let¡¯s get goin¡¯, then!¡±

    We got on the stairs to the plane. Charlotte and Eliza were first, I was after Eliza, and John was after me. When I got to the stairs, I reflexively flinched. ¡°Are you ok, man?¡± John asked.

    ¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± I said, silently adding, now that I¡¯ve taken two advils. He was right to worry. During the climax of Hell Semester, I had been on the receiving end of a grenade. Several pieces of shrapnel from an M203 round had embedded themselves into my leg. In fact, that was most of reason I had been baked on painkillers for most of the brief chunk between now and leaving for Christmas break. The rest had to do with being shot three times, twice in the chest and once in the head. Amazingly, my body armor had stopped the ones to the chest and seriously helped my skull halt the one to my head. Between good old Kevlar, my freakishly thick skull, and the fact that NIU will always be years ahead of the rest of world technologically, and I was able to walk around with only mild pain in under two weeks.

    ¡°You sure?¡± John asked, as I made my way up the stairs. ¡°You¡¯ve been making faces every time you¡¯ve put weight on your leg.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll be fine!¡± I said. I took a step. To my surprise, there was no pain. ¡°See?¡± I said, ¡°No pain.¡±

    ¡°Yeah¡­¡± John said, sounding unconvinced, ¡°whatever you say.¡±

    When I finally got into the plane, I was again surprised at how luxurious everything was. Immediately upon entering, I came into a living room area right next to the cockpit, and surprise to see that it was all done in dark red wood paneling and black leather. ¡°Is¡­ Is this all real wood?¡± I asked as I got further into the plane.

    ¡°Of course it¡¯s real wood,¡± Charlotte said, legitimately miffed, as she walked further into the plane. ¡°I can¡¯t imagine why anyone would use fake wood.¡±

    I was about to say something along the lines of ¡°to save money,¡± then realized that if you were buying a plane, especially a big plane, you might as well have real wood furniture. The intricate gold filigree on the sides, on the other hand, was a bit much. I mean, it was tasteful and subtly done, certainly, but really? Gold-encrusted furniture? On a plane?

    Eliza, taking in the looks of wonder on her guest¡¯s faces, mouthed I know, right?

    Charlotte, however, continued on, somewhat oblivious. ¡°This is the parlor. There¡¯s a lovely bar over there,¡± she said, pointing at a similarly done bar, ¡°and beyond that are the beds and the dining room.¡± She then stared me, her dark blue eyes flashing dangerously. ¡°Don¡¯t say you¡¯ll sleep on the couch. There are ten beds and nine people. You will accept our hospitality.¡±

    ¡°Yes, ma¡¯am,¡± I said as I followed her through the corridor. Between the stern look in her eye and the fact that the advil I had taken earlier was wearing off, I thought that obeying Charlotte would be a good idea.

    ¡°Anyway,¡± Charlotte said, leading us through the passage, ¡°you luggage will be brought aboard shortly. Once we get past this area here, we shall be in the kitchen.¡±

    The kitchen and dining room area was much more subdued than the parlor. It was still done in fine-grained wood and leather, but it was a much lighter-colored wood. At the rear of the plane was a kitchen area and an exit to what I assumed was the garage and cargo bay. In the direct center of the room was a fancy table surrounded by intricately carved chairs. I noticed that there was a sort of wall on the edge of the table to keep the plates from falling off.

    ¡°Well, here¡¯s the kitchen,¡± Charlotte said. ¡°The cook wasn¡¯t able to come on this flight, but there are plenty of various things we can reheat in the microwave. We also have crisps somewhere in the pantry. You do like crisps, right?¡±

    ¡°Actually,¡± I said, looking at the kitchen area, ¡°we¡¯ve got an oven, a microwave, ingredients, and internet connection. Who says we need a cook?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s the spirit, Nate,¡± Eliza said, grinning. ¡°Let¡¯s make some bloody breakfast, eh?¡±

    Thus began our chief in-flight entertainment: making food while watching various anime that John had brought. Every once in a while, one of the flight crew or a bodyguard would wander in to chat and see if they could snag a steak or two. To answer that last question, yes they could, if by steak they meant ¡°charred, leathery mass of meat.¡±

    To be fair, we eventually managed to get something resembling a steak. The biscuits came out much better, but there was a bit of a delay making those due to a batter fight. It was me and Eliza (¡°the crazy assholes,¡± according to John) versus John and Charlotte (who Eliza dubbed ¡°the wankers who started it.¡±) Personally, I think it was Eliza and Charlotte goofing off and dragging us into it. Long story short, we were all covered in batter. One poor guard walked in, right as Charlotte was throwing a large handful at Eliza.

    ¡°Sorry, Lady Charlotte,¡± he said. We all paused. The bodyguard continued on. ¡°I seem to have come at a bad time. If you will excuse me¡­¡± He then turned on his heel and marched back to the parlor.

    We stood there for a moment, horrified that we¡¯d been caught. Then we erupted into laughter. After that, we continued on making the biscuits and watching Kill la Kill and singing along whenever the chorus for ¡°Until My Body is Dry¡± came on.

    Lunch was great. Yeah, the steak was pretty charred, but drowning it in mustard helped. The pilots, bodyguards, and the captain were pretty cool. Apparently, they were all ex-RAF and SAS (though some hints Eliza and Charlotte had dropped made me think the ¡°ex¡± part was a lie) and really good storytellers. One of the pilots, in particular, apparently specialized in dropping into enemy territory and stealing planes. His stories were the best.

    After the steak, we switched to baking pastries. We made chocolate chunk cookies (there were no chips, but there were about twenty packages of Godiva 72% cacao chocolate in the pantry,) then we made sugar cookies, and then we made lemon and chocolate hamentashen.

    After that, we were all weirdly tired from just sitting around making and eating food. ¡°Y¡¯know,¡± John said, ¡°funnily enough, I¡¯m more tired after all of this than I ever was at camp.¡±

    ¡°I know what you mean,¡± I said sleepily. ¡°I mean, you would think I¡¯d be tired as fuck after the crater, but nope!¡±

    Eliza laughed heartily. ¡°That¡¯s the power of doin¡¯ nothin¡¯ all day with friends,¡± she said, ¡°versus the power of adrenalin. Quite nice in their own right, they are.¡±

    ¡°So,¡± Charlotte asked, ¡°what happened in this crater?¡± I stiffened, John took a sudden interest in the view outside, and Eliza¡¯s ears flattened guiltily. Charlotte noticed that the mood was now dead and quickly said, ¡°I-I don¡¯t mean to pry, I just was wondering. Eliza¡¯s mentioned it once or twice and¡­¡±

    The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    ¡°Maybe talking will help¡­¡± I said. After a pause, I cheerily asked, ¡°So John, do you wanna start?¡±

    He shook his head and said, ¡°Fuck you, man.¡± It was hard to see but he was kind of smiling.

    I turned back to Charlotte. ¡°So, the thing is,¡± I said, ¡°is that it¡¯s kind of hard to understand why we¡¯re so upset about this. After all, that fight was the equivalent of the big army coming in to kill the heroes, and the heroes kicking their asses.¡± I paused, remembering the enemy casualties, burned, dismembered and dying. ¡°But the thing is,¡± I said, ¡°it didn¡¯t feel like we had won a fair fight. It felt like a massacre.¡±

    ¡°You thought that was a massacre?¡± Eliza asked. ¡°If you had been bloody conscious, you¡¯d have seen one. Bunch of the poor bastards decided that they¡¯d had enough. Their bloody ¡®friends¡¯ were waitin¡¯ to go Order 227 on ¡®em. A few of them survived the ambush, but¡­¡± She paused. ¡°I wish I didn¡¯t have to kill the survivors. Everyone else keeps tellin¡¯ me they¡¯d¡¯ve wound up dead anyways, but maybe I could¡¯ve convinced one of ¡®em¡­¡± She stared off into space, tearing up. ¡°I¡¯ve done this too bloody much.¡±

    Charlotte nodded. ¡°You don¡¯t have to do this, dear.¡±

    Eliza smiled at her adopted sister. ¡°And let you run off inta danger like a bloody yank?¡± She asked, her tone desperately imitating her usual playfulness. ¡°Honestly, you¡¯d be worse than Nate.¡±

    ¡°Oh, like you¡¯re any less impulsive!¡± Charlotte said, laughing. ¡°Weren¡¯t you the one who decided to sneak out of school through the boy¡¯s locker room to play hooky?¡±

    ¡°Wasn¡¯t impulsive¡­¡± Eliza said, blushing furiously. ¡°Anyway, that¡¯s ¡®ow you met Marco, innit?¡± Charlotte and I laughed.

    John, however, just had to kill the mood. ¡°You¡¯d be surprised,¡± he said, ¡°at how it¡¯s both so hard and so easy it is.¡± We turned towards him. He saw our confused expressions, and said, ¡°Killing people. It¡¯s just so weird.¡± He pointed to his chest. ¡°One small bullet here and you¡¯re dead.¡± He moved his finger slightly. The distance was small enough that we had trouble telling he had moved it. ¡°A larger one here and you might be screaming for hours.¡± He turned to look at me. ¡°There was this guy. I think he was one of the first to get the forty-eight.¡±

    ¡°Think the machinegun Rambo ¡®ad,¡± Eliza said to Charlotte.

    ¡°Was this guy one of the ones who got cut in half?¡± I asked, wincing a little.

    ¡°Wait,¡± Eliza said, ¡°this gun cut someone in half?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± John said, answering us both. ¡°Except she was a girl. I could tell by her screams.  I saw her go down. When we left, she was still moving.¡± He shrugged. ¡°Never thought I¡¯d see that when I left New Hampshire. Or people burning alive¡±

    Charlotte shuddered. ¡°Good lord. No wonder you don¡¯t like talking about this.¡± There was a pause. During that, I realized that Charlotte had gotten the sanitized version. She didn¡¯t know that any of the people set on had run into their friends, setting them on fire as well. She didn¡¯t know how many had just been rendered incapable of fighting from the gunshots. She didn¡¯t see the aftermath of the battle, and I wasn¡¯t sure I could describe it to her even if I wanted to.

    ¡°I¡¯m going to turn in for a bit,¡± I said. ¡°Wake me up when something interesting or not depressing happens.¡± I walked off and opened the door to the room where one of the bodyguards had put my stuff. It was small and had barely enough room for my stuff and a very comfy bed. I fell on it, but I couldn¡¯t get to sleep. It was a combination of my advil having worn off long ago and flashbacks to various things. Having to curb-stomp Richard (a white supremacist asshole,) bashing in Amir¡¯s head with a rock (the leader of an Al-Qaeda cell,) having his second-in-command stab me in the gut, watching one of my friends executing a prisoner, and a dozen other terrible moments from the Hell Semester played through my head. Eventually, I managed to fall to sleep. It was a fitful sleep, but it was sleep and that had been hard to come by for me recently.

    Eventually, Eliza knocked on my door. I woke up, blearily. She didn¡¯t wait for me to open the door and slid it open herself. I noticed she was holding a FAL clone with wooden furniture, probably an L1A1, and wearing a flak jacket. ¡°We¡¯ve got a problem,¡± she said.

    ¡°What is it?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Normally,¡± she said, coming further into the room, ¡°we go to private airports. Then we hand off security to a local team, usually private contractors. Saves us the trouble of having to bloody register our weapons in a foreign country or dealing with customs as much.¡±

    ¡°Let me guess,¡± I said, ¡°they¡¯re redirecting you.¡±

    ¡°That,¡± Eliza said, ¡°and our contractors aren¡¯t answering the damn phone. Do you know anything about an airport called TF Green?¡± She saw the look of confusion on my face. ¡°It¡¯s in a place called Providence.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, comprehension dawning. ¡°My family takes it every time we need a plane.¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s it like?¡± Eliza asked, ¡°I mean, how bad¡¯ll it be if we get into a firefight? I¡¯m not being paranoid, just cautious.¡±

    ¡°No worries,¡± I said, ¡°it¡¯s definitely a trap. There¡¯s no cover on the runway, and none in the terminals except for a few display cases showing off how awesome Rhode Island is. I¡¯m not sure it¡¯s much different from Logan, but it might be further from your guys on the ground.¡±

    ¡°Bloody perfect,¡± Eliza said. ¡°At least you already closed the curtains in your room. Go into the dining room, make sure Charlotte doesn¡¯t leave.¡±

    ¡°No problem,¡± I said, getting up. I paused, and grabbed her arm before she could run off. ¡°Don¡¯t do anything crazy,¡± I said.

    ¡°Same to you,¡± she said, matching my gaze with equal intensity. ¡°No bloody heroics.¡±

    I headed into the dining room. I noticed that heavy curtains had been drawn, but light shone between the gaps. It seemed like it was noon. Charlotte and John were crouched in a corner. I noticed that she was wearing soft body armor and carrying a huge revolver, a WWII-era Webley, I think. She noticed me staring at it.

    ¡°A proper lady,¡± she said, ¡°uses protection.¡±

    I took a look back in the parlor. Eliza was talking in low tones with the bodyguards. They were loading L85s, green and chrome British-made assault rifles with their clips located behind the trigger. They were definitely not legal for private persons in Massachusetts.

    ¡°Is your protection¡­ legal?¡± I asked.

    Charlotte shrugged. ¡°There¡¯s some debate,¡± she said. ¡°According to British law, this plane is Britain, just like an embassy. The laws in some countries may disagree. Violently.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± John said, taking in the scene in the parlor. At this point, the pilot and the captain had come out. The pilot, the one who had been stealing airplanes, carried an Uzi. The Captain, an older guy, carried an MP-5K. John raised an eyebrow at this and asked, ¡°You realize, we¡¯re probably going to just have to deal with cops, right?¡±

    I shook my head. ¡°Law Enforcement would have just rolled up when we parked in the private hangar with a warrant. Less civilians, more evidence to find.¡±

    ¡°Why do you have to burst my happy bubble?¡± John asked.

    ¡°Don¡¯t know, don¡¯t fucking care,¡± Eliza said, walking back into the kitchen. ¡°Strap in, we¡¯re going to be landing shortly.¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± John said, ¡°just out of curiosity, what¡¯s the likelihood that we¡¯re landing in a trap?¡±

    ¡°Same chance as having two air traffic control operators in America having German accents,¡± Eliza said.

    ¡°Ok,¡± John said as we buckled up, ¡°it¡¯s a fucking trap. Call the police.¡±

    ¡°We have been,¡± Eliza said, checking her rifle, ¡°but we couldn¡¯t get through until recently.¡±

    I judged her weapon check to be more nervous fiddling than something actually necessary. Speaking of things to fiddle with, I was noticing how vulnerable I felt without hard Kevlar or a weapon. ¡°Hey, guys?¡± I asked my hosts, ¡°You got any spare weapons? Or body armor?¡±

    ¡°Nope,¡± Eliza said. ¡°Told you you should¡¯ve brought your kit.¡±

    I remembered winning it. Everyone who had been in the crater with me had gotten their pick of weapons from the people we had killed. I¡¯d chosen some nice stuff: a P229 with silver slide, a Berretta 92 Inox, and a G-3K. They were very nice guns, but they were back at Nowhere Island University, which was the other side of the world. ¡°Sorry,¡± I said, ¡°but my parents wouldn¡¯t be very understanding if I came back home with a small arsenal.¡±

    ¡°Buckle up, everyone,¡± the pilot said. ¡°We¡¯re on our final approach. Let¡¯s see what Fritz has in store for us.¡±

    After the plane landed, we all got unbuckled. Eliza quickly moved to the side of the arch, signaling us to get back. The bodyguards in the parlor began to exit the plane, L85s in easy reach.

    ¡°I hear a vehicle outside,¡± John said. ¡°Sounds like a car of some kind.¡±

    ¡°Shhh!¡± Eliza whispered, holding up her hand and her fox ears facing fully forwards. ¡°Keep. Bloody. Quiet!¡±

    We did. Outside, the vehicle seemed to stop outside the plane¡¯s entrance. Then the conversation began. ¡°Can you hear what they¡¯re saying?¡± Charlotte asked.

    ¡°Not with you gabbing,¡± Eliza whispered back angrily.

    Conversation continued for a few minutes more. Then suddenly gunfire broke out. It ended just as suddenly as it started. I heard steps on the stairs out of the plane, seemingly heading down the ladder. There was more gunfire.

    ¡°What happened?¡± I asked.

    ¡°No bloody idea,¡± Eliza murmured.

    ¡°We need to get out there,¡± I whispered. ¡°We need to know what happened and make a plan.¡±

    Eliza whipped around, still keeping her gun aimed down the hallway. ¡°Did you hear someone shout ¡®clear?¡¯¡± she asked angrily. ¡°Because I am not moving until I hear someone say we¡¯re all bloody¡­¡±

    She was cut off by the rocket hitting the plane.

 2.2: Firefight

    The plane shook as what I guessed to be an anti-tank rocket or bomb blew up. We all staggered back. ¡°What in God¡¯s name was that?¡± Charlotte asked.

    ¡°Our signal to leave,¡± I said briskly. To punctuate my statement, a rocket slammed through the side of a plane and landed under the table. Luckily, the chairs caught the blast. ¡°MOVE!¡± I yelled.

    ¡°Right!¡± Eliza said, and began advancing.

    ¡°If those brutes keep this up,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°there¡¯s a good chance they¡¯ll hit the Rolls. It¡¯s from the Forties! Or worse, they¡¯ll hit the Maybach!¡±

    ¡°Char,¡± Eliza said testily, ¡°I love you, but there¡¯s more important things worry about!¡±

    ¡°Like the lemon hamentashen,¡± John said. He was interrupted by three rockets hitting the plane at once, one in the parlor, one in the dining room, and one in the room in front of us, blowing out the door.

    ¡°Fuckin¡¯ ¡®ell!¡± Eliza yelled, shocked at the damage. I didn¡¯t blame her. The door right in front of her had just flew past her face. I was actually impressed that she managed to keep moving.

    From the front cabin, the remaining pilot ran out of the cockpit. ¡°Get down!¡± he yelled. The cockpit exploded behind him.

    ¡°Get the sniper rifle!¡± Eliza yelled at him as smoke poured out from the cockpit. ¡°We¡¯re going to need fire support on these bastards!¡±

    The pilot nodded, and got to one of the couches. He pressed a button, and there was a beep as a compartment slid out. I suddenly realized that gun safes had been built into the plane¡¯s furniture. I also noticed a pattering sound, like hail on a tin roof. It must have been gunfire, but we were too busy running to confirm it was until a bullet penetrated the wall and sailed past our heads. Charlotte, understandably, screamed.

    ¡°Keep runnin¡¯ ya bloody idijits!¡± Eliza yelled, standing by the door, and shoving us out. ¡°Move, move, MOVE!¡±

    Looking down at the ground, I saw an SUV with TSA markings that had shredded by assault rifle and SMG fire. It was only cosmetic though, with windows shattered and the doors perforated and the engine block virtually untouched. The captain, his MP-5K slung over his shoulder, was clearing out dead bodies dressed in TSA uniforms from the SUV. Our other pilot was also dead as well as another person dressed in a TSA uniform. Weirdly, the TSA agents who had apparently attacked us were all blond, over-muscled white guys armed with some type of SMG. Uniformed TSA agents are supposed to be ethnically diverse, unarmed, and slightly out of shape, at least according to the stereotype. I couldn¡¯t see the two bodyguards, but I could hear them firing from underneath the plane.

    As soon as I reached the bottom, I ran to grab the dropped Uzi. It was probably next to useless in this situation, as it only had an effective range of fifty meters, but it made me feel better. Behind me, I heard John and Charlotte make it down safely and Eliza start down the stairs. Gripping the Uzi, I turned around¡­

    ¡­Just in time to see a rocket hit the parlor. Eliza fell down from the force of the explosion and slid down the rest of the way on her face.

    ¡°ELIZA!¡± I yelled, running towards her.

    ¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± she said, grabbing my hand. As I helped her up, I noticed her nose was bleeding, and the arm she was using to support herself was pretty scratched up. ¡°Just got the wind knocked outta me.¡±

    ¡°Good Lord,¡± Charlotte said. I turned to look at her briefly. Both she and John looked disturbed. ¡°Eliza, you¡¯re bleeding.¡±

    I turned back to look at Eliza. ¡°She¡¯s fine,¡± I said, ¡°just some scrapes. It¡¯ll take a lot more than that to slow her down, let alone kill her.¡±

    ¡°Thanks, Nate,¡± Eliza said, lifting her gun.

    ¡°Hopefully Michael is ok,¡± Charlotte said, cocking her revolver.

    There was a crack of a bolt-action rifle from the plane. ¡°That sounds like Mikey, ma¡¯am,¡± one of the guards from under the plane said happily as he reloaded. The report of the sniper rifle continued, causing the volume of rockets and bullets to decrease.

    I used the break to go over to the other pilot¡¯s corpse and root through his pockets for ammo. I was pleased to find that he had four twenty-five round magazines in his ballistic vest. After I put those in my pocket, I removed the current mag. It appeared to be a fifty round magazine, and it was mostly full. Pulling the bolt back slightly after reinserting the magazine revealed that the fiftieth bullet was in the chamber.

    Right around the time I had finished that task, I saw that John and the captain had been busy. John had been doing something similar with our attacker¡¯s weapon, and the captain had started the SUV.

    ¡°Huh,¡± John said, ¡°this looks like an MP-40, but they¡¯re using some weird synthetic. Whatever it is, they trust it enough to even make the barrel out of it. Also appears to be internally silenced.¡± That was weird. If you don¡¯t know a lot about guns, you should know that an MP-40 was a weapon developed for the Nazis in the late thirties. Synthetic materials like carbon fiber and plastic are rarely used in the barrel due to their tendency to melt really quickly or crack from the force of the bullet. They are used a lot in the stuff surrounding the barrel and firing mechanism due to how light they are.

    ¡°Can you work it?¡± Eliza asked. She was under the plane with the bodyguards, firing her rifle at the airport. Speaking of that, we had landed in between two runways and were over three hundred meters away from the terminals.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± John said, ¡°but I doubt this thing¡¯s got the range we need.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve got a way of fixing that,¡± the captain said.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, ¡°the SUV works, but there¡¯s only five seats. Who¡¯s coming with you?¡±

    ¡°Easy,¡± the captain said. ¡°You, your friend, Miss Eliza and Lady Charlotte. The rest of the retinue shall cover our advance.¡± He opened one of the passenger doors. ¡°Now, if would please get in, Lady Charlotte, and please lie on the floor, for your own safety.¡±

    ¡°I call shotgun,¡± John said as we got in.

    Charlotte, on the other hand, was more subdued. ¡°You¡¯ll be all right, won¡¯t you?¡± she asked her guards.

    ¡°Aye ma¡¯am,¡± one of them said. ¡°But I can¡¯t speak for the blighters shooting at us.¡±

    I was the last one in. As soon as I closed the door, the SUV sped off, squealing its tires. We all were flung forward. ¡°Fuck,¡± I swore, ¡°couldn¡¯t you have at least let me buckle my seat belt?¡±

    ¡°Apologies, sir,¡± the captain said, ¡°but we haven¡¯t the time for safety.¡± Ignoring John¡¯s terrified whimper, he continued on. ¡°The plan is to get inside, save any civilians we¡¯re able to, find a defensible location, and contact the local constables. After that, we pray they reach us in time.¡±

    ¡°Sounds like a plan,¡± John said, ¡°but it relies way too much on luck.¡±

    We screeched to a halt outside the terminal farthest away from the main airport, just under one of those things that docks with the plane. This time I had braced for it. We all exited the vehicle. Once I was sure no one was going to shoot me, I quickly unfolded the Uzi stock.

    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    ¡°You two,¡± the captain said, indicating me and John, ¡°you¡¯re going to breach with me. I¡¯ll take point. One of you will open the door. Please stay behind me. It is a terrible breach of etiquette to let your guests die.¡±

    ¡°And what about us?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°Stay outside until we give the all-clear,¡± the captain said, ¡°and avoid doing anything rash.¡±

    We moved up the stairs to the boarding ramp, the captain in the lead. When the captain got to the top of the stairs, he paused. ¡°Something¡¯s propped the door open,¡± he muttered to us. I was third in line, so I couldn¡¯t see what the captain saw. ¡°I think it¡¯s a TSA officer¡­ A real one, this time, judging by the holes in her back.¡±

    The three of us hurried inside, the captain kicking open the door. Once inside, we quickly found that there was no one there. Since there wasn¡¯t a plane docked at the moment, we only had to give a momentary glance behind us. The captain nodded to me, and I leaned out and gave a thumbs up-gesture to Eliza and Charlotte. I only spared a moment to look at the corpse. She had been a young woman with brownish skin and curly hair tied back in a bun. There were about six entrance wounds in her back. I gave her silent thanks. If she hadn¡¯t fallen where she had, we wouldn¡¯t have been able to get in. I know that it was less her choice and more the choice of the person who shot her, but I didn¡¯t want to thank a murderous asshole.

    ¡°Poor girl,¡± Charlotte said. ¡°What kind of monster would do this?¡±

    ¡°Shh¡­¡± the captain whispered. He then motioned us to advance. As we moved, we began to hear people murmuring and a child started to cry. We also heard joking and laughing in a language I couldn¡¯t quite place. ¡°Is that German?¡± I asked, tapping the captain¡¯s shoulder. The captain nodded.

    Finally, we were by a corner. Once we turned it, we¡¯d be in view of the airport proper. The captain held up three fingers, then slowly lowered them one by one. We followed him out, forming into a v-shape. In front of us, there was another muscular blond man, this time wearing a trench coat, with his back towards us and his weird MP-40 clone pointing at the ceiling.

    The captain sent a two-round burst into the man¡¯s spine. He collapsed. Instantly, the room ahead of us erupted into screaming, with an undercurrent of yelling in German. From my side, another muscular blond man in a suit ran in from my side. I gave him a three-round burst. He pirouetted a bit, then fell down. He never fired his weapon.

    I was on the side closest to the end of the wing. There were only two men of the strange blond men dressed like they were from the 1940s. I fired two bursts. They fired one each, but they had deliberately aimed at the floor. I paused for a second to take in my surroundings. We were in a waiting area, but strangely enough there was no one sitting in the chairs.

    They were on the floor.

    ¡°They¡¯re shooting hostages!¡± I yelled, turning around. I then saw that our opponent seemed intent on creating a bloodbath. Only a few were shooting at us, just enough to force us into cover. The rest were systematically executing hostages. We ran further into the airport for cover, not really finding that much. I ended up behind a reception desk. John was behind a steel pillar. The captain didn¡¯t make it.

    I had just gotten behind the desk when it happened. At first, the hall just had a few enemies, all very homogenous in appearance. There were probably only five or ten, all with SMGs. Then there was a flash of light as suddenly twenty new hostiles teleported in shooting. The three of us quickly focused fire on them.

    I ran out of ammo quickly, my magazine had fifty rounds, not infinity and I had been firing a lot. As I turned around to get back into cover, I saw the captain double over out of the corner of my eye. As bullets smashed into the reception desk, I crawled over to see if he was ok. He wasn¡¯t. He had been shot once or twice in the head and multiple times in the gut. The hostages I could see were recoiling. Some were crying and whimpering, some were screaming, some were just in shock.

    As I reloaded my Uzi, I noted that my cover was slowly disintegrating. ¡°Welp,¡± I said to myself as I pulled back the bolt on my Uzi, ¡°at least it¡¯s holding up better than expected.¡± I then peeked out and fired a few quick bursts, dropping two of the bastards and causing a third to stagger back and clutch his arm. This caused the ones remaining to focus fire on me.

    Suddenly, there came the sound of a FAL-based weapon. ¡°Eliza!¡± I said ¡°That¡¯d better be you!¡±

    ¡°¡¯Course it¡¯s me,¡± came Eliza¡¯s voice above the gunfire. ¡°Did y¡¯really think I¡¯d let these gits ruck with me mates?¡±

    John laughed. ¡°Well, at least we¡¯ve got a lupine to help us deal with the teleporting assholes?¡± He then leaned out to fire a few bursts downrange.

    ¡°Wait,¡± Eliza asked, ¡°they¡¯re bloody teleporting? Are they Jumpers?¡± Jumpers, like lupines, are a breed of parahumans. However, their ability is to teleport or ¡®jump¡¯ from one location to another.

    ¡°Don¡¯t think so,¡± I said, coming up for a few more bursts. After I was done, I continued, ¡°Jumpers usually just appear, right? These guys made a flash of light when they entered.¡±

    ¡°So we¡¯re dealing with mad science?¡± John asked. He leaned out and fired a few bursts, and said something under his breath like ¡°fuck me, right?¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± I said, ¡°we¡¯re winning, aren¡¯t we?¡±

    That was when the ceiling blew apart. Both us and our unknown assailants stopped firing and waited. I couldn¡¯t see them due to all the dust. Eventually, it began to clear, revealing both our opponents and a figure dressed in Viking-style dress, including a helmet, shield and a huge axe. The smoke and thick armor may have hid her sexuality and identity, but as she stood up any Massachusetts resident could have identified her. It was Valkyrie.

    ¡°Listen up!¡± Valkyrie yelled. ¡°You have seriously messed up. Just because the Minutemen aren¡¯t located in Rhode Island doesn¡¯t mean we don¡¯t care. You¡¯ve also killed a lot of cops and civilians from the looks of things. Surrender now, and you can go to jail without broken bones. This is your only warning.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, setting my Uzi down carefully, ¡°we aren¡¯t going to give you any trouble.¡± I looked around. John had dropped his gun, but Eliza was still aiming at something. ¡°Right, Eliza?¡± I asked.

    She grudgingly dropped her gun. As soon she did, there was a burst of gunfire. I turned just in time to see bullets literally bounce off Valkyrie. ¡°That¡¯s it,¡± she said, ¡°you assholes are going to jail with a headache.¡± She waved her axe in the direction of the hostiles and a gust of wind sent every single one of them flying back. She turned back towards us, a dangerous expression on her face. ¡°You guys are gonna wait for the cops peacefully, right?¡± she asked, her voice dripping with menace.

    ¡°Yes ma¡¯am,¡± I said. ¡°No problems for us.¡± As I said this, I suddenly realized something. The cops were going to ask us some questions, and Nowhere Island University might not want them to learn the answers. This was going to get complicated.

 2.3: Conversations Kill

    Sitting in the Providence police station¡¯s interrogation room gave me some time to reflect. My big question was where was the gruff detective telling me to cooperate. After all, I had just been involved in a shoot-out in a highly public place, involved never-before-seen technology, and resulted in the deaths of two (supposedly) former British special forces operators, two or three dozen terrorists from an unknown group, and a lot of TSA agents and civilians. There may have been some Providence cops dead as well, but I hadn¡¯t seen them go down. Even so, people were going to have questions and I was one of the few people left alive who could conceivably answer them.

    In a slightly unrelated note, I was extremely curious as to what Valkyrie¡¯s powers were. She claimed to be a Champion, a kind of para with super-strength, increased durability, and flight, but that did not explain her ability to knock out those remaining attackers with a swing of her ax. I wanted to say she might be a rare Psychic/Champion hybrid, but she had waved her ax. That meant her ax might have been the source.

    Further evidence pointed to the fact that several bullets had hit that and her helmet, leaving them unscathed. If they had hit her, I could believe it. After all, weak champions take .50 caliber bullets like a normal human takes a particularly hard punch. However, metal as thin as what she was wearing, especially the kind that you could get that shiny, would probably at least dent when hit with the kind of bullet our attackers had shot her with. But they hadn¡¯t, meaning that Valkyrie had some form of advanced tech.

    My musings were interrupted when my interrogator came in carrying a folder and a single earbud in his ear. He was a tall, muscular man with his greying hair in a short military cut, but I¡¯d seen more imposing. ¡°So,¡± I said, noting his visitor lanyard, ¡°you¡¯re not with the PPD, are you?¡± He nodded, so I asked, ¡°Where are you from, then? FBI? Rhode Island state police?¡± I hesitated a bit before mentioning my employer. ¡°UNIX?¡±

    ¡°FBI,¡± he said, ¡°but UNIX is trying to get you bailed for some reason.¡± Something about the way he said that made me think he knew I worked for them. ¡°Your lawyer¡¯s also trying to get to you, too.¡±

    ¡°I have a lawyer?¡± I asked dumbly. How did I have a lawyer? I hadn¡¯t even made my phone call yet, and my parents hadn¡¯t even known my flight was landing here.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± my interrogator said, handing me some papers from his folder. ¡°Ken Watanabe. He¡¯s a defense and tax attorney located in Worcester, Massachusetts. You may have heard of him, he was involved in City of Worcester vs. Mark Kagemoto.¡± I remembered that case. Mark Kagemoto was alleged to be a gangster of some sort, somehow involved in fifteen gangland killings in Worcester and five more in Boston. One of my friends at NIU, Cross Castellan, knew of the Kagemotos, due to his family being heavily involved in the New York underworld, and had hinted that the attorney general had lowballed the number of bodies.

    My interrogator noticed I was staring at the picture. On it, a short, fat Asian man was walking down the courthouse steps arm in arm with a taller, more muscular one. ¡°Does one of them look familiar?¡± he asked.

    ¡°Familiar how?¡± I asked. ¡°These guys were on a lot of newspapers back in the day.¡± It was a bit of a lie, though. First off, I had been nine during the trial. Secondly, my interrogator was right. The taller, more muscular one did look familiar. There was something familiar about his brown eyes. They were so light they were almost yellow.

    It hit me a second before my interrogator put down the next file. ¡°Do you know this person?¡± I picked up the file. Jennifer Kagemoto. I knew her name had been Jennifer. I knew she had been from Massachusetts. I hadn¡¯t known her last name or that she had been a mob princess. I suppose I didn¡¯t have a chance to ask, given that I had only talked to her once in periods of lucidity between being completely drugged up on pain meds. The picture on the file was her mugshot. She was dressed in a red suit coat and blue blouse (it was from the chest up,) her hair framing her high cheekbones. Her red lips were turned up in a vicious smirk.

    I set it down and began to consider what I was going to say. ¡°Need your cheat sheet?¡± my interrogator asked. He placed a small pleather-bound book on the table. It was my diary. In it, I had recorded as much as I could about NIU into it without the University suspecting me of being a spy for UNIX or UNIX suspecting I was holding out on them. That criteria, unfortunately, left me confessing to a murder count approaching the double digits and consorting with suspected criminals and potential enemies of the state.

    I looked from that to my interrogator¡¯s unreadable face. Until a person puts down evidence like this in front of you, you never really understand how an interrogator can break someone without waterboarding. In under ten minutes, he had almost broken me. I had one option left.

    ¡°I¡¯d like to see my lawyer,¡± I said.

    ¡°Sure,¡± my interrogator said, taking out his cell phone, ¡°but I¡¯m not sure your UNIX handlers would appreciate discussing Operation Rider in front of a lawyer suspected of working for the Yakuza.¡± He then began to dial.

    ¡°Wait,¡± I said, ¡°what do you know about Operation Rider?¡± Shit. Operation Rider was what UNIX called this little mission I was on. How the fuck did he about know that?

    ¡°I know you either have to sign this,¡± he said, handing me a form, ¡°or have a lawyer present while we discuss it.¡±

    I sighed. ¡°Got a pen?¡± He handed me one, and I inspected the form. It was pretty much entirely legalese for saying I didn¡¯t want a lawyer with me. ¡°So,¡± I asked, ¡°if I sign this form, can I decide at a later date that I want to have a lawyer in here with me?¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± my interrogator said.

    I considered this for a minute, then signed. ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°what do you know?¡±

    ¡°From what we know,¡± my interrogator said, ¡°the plan was to recruit four teenagers and infiltrate this place called Nowhere Island University.¡±

    ¡°Three.¡±

    My interrogator instantly clammed up. He stared at me, as if waiting for something.

    ¡°They told me three,¡± I said after a long pause. ¡°Three people would be sent to Nowhere Island University.¡±

    My interrogator opened a notebook and began writing. ¡°Lied¡­ to¡­ recruit¡­ one¡­¡± he looked up. ¡°Sorry,¡± he said, looking up from the notebook, ¡°just taking notes. Did they ever mention any way to escape? Or a way to protect your family from retribution if you were discovered?¡±

    ¡°None was mentioned¡­¡± I said.

    My interrogator went back to writing. ¡°No¡­ exfiltration¡­ no¡­ protection¡­ for¡­ immediate¡­ family. Huh¡±

    ¡°What do you mean, ¡®huh?¡¯¡± I asked.

    ¡°Either UNIX is getting sloppy,¡± he said, closing his notebook with a snap, ¡°or you were bait. I do know that the accounts they¡¯re paying you and a Mr. John Marshall with are very poorly disguised.¡±

    Charlotte, or one of her support team, had apparently found that account and had the same reaction. I hadn¡¯t completely trusted her at the time, but it now looked like I could trust her a bit more, at least on this. However, I didn¡¯t want him to know about Charlotte.

    As if he had read my mind, the interrogator then asked, ¡°So, what do you know about the British people you flew in with?¡±

    I shrugged. ¡°You read my diary.¡± Which was thankfully missing a lot of key information. For example, I hadn¡¯t written down anything about being a UNIX spy or Charlotte figuring that out, and had expunged any mention of a student group Eliza had founded (and talked me into joining) called the Seven Supreme. ¡°You tell me.¡±

    My interrogator seemed to consider pressing the issue. ¡°Ok,¡± he said, ¡°but if you change your mind, here¡¯s my card.¡± It suddenly occurred to me that, while he knew about the Kagemotos, UNIX, Operation Rider, and NIU, he knew nothing about Eliza and Charlotte. The only source of information he had on them was Google, my highly abridged diary, the British embassy, and me. Feeling satisfied that someone else had no clue what was going on, I took the card. It claimed his name was C. George Hicks.

    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    I looked at him in surprise. ¡°You¡¯re letting me go?¡±

    ¡°As your lawyer would say,¡± Agent Hicks said, handing me my journal back, ¡°I can¡¯t prove you did anything illegal.¡± As I got to the door, he said, ¡°Also, I kind of like the idea of Mr. Watanabe driving all the way down here just for you to go home with some UNIX agents.¡±

    ¡°If we¡¯re doing last words,¡± I said, ¡°if you¡¯re gunning for NIU, don¡¯t underestimate them. Seriously,¡± I held up my diary, ¡°you read this. Between the advanced tech and the scarily competent soldiers, I¡¯d be scared out of my mind.¡±

    I then exited. Standing outside was a man in a PPD uniform. ¡°Your friend will be out soon,¡± he said. As he was saying that, the door opposite mine opened up and John walked out. ¡°Never mind,¡± the officer said. ¡°This way.¡± He led us down a maze of elevators and hallways, finally got to a conference room. After giving us a bag with our stuff (such as wallets and electronics,) he said, ¡°Mr. Craig and Mr. Takeda will be here to escort you home shortly.¡±

    As soon as he left, I turned to John and asked, ¡°So, what are we going to tell them?¡±

    John sighed. ¡°Nate,¡± he said, ¡°we¡¯re going to tell them the truth. The shit you¡¯ve been up to with the Seven? They¡¯re going to want to hear that. Besides, how do we know the FBI guy was telling the truth?¡±

    ¡°Remember the thing they said about the bank accounts?¡± I asked. John nodded. ¡°Well, Charlotte said that when her home team did a background check on me, they were able to tell Charlotte about my account in seven hours.¡±

    ¡°Can we trust Charlotte?¡± John asked.

    ¡°Honestly?¡± I said, ¡°I think that¡¯s a question for another time. Right now, UNIX seems to have fucked us over. They sent us, two inexperienced teenagers, on a mission with no backup, no intel, no way to contact them, no escape plan, and a good chance we¡¯d have to kill someone or be killed. We need to address this before we can even think about who to trust.¡±

    John sighed. ¡°Fine,¡± he said. ¡°What do you think we should tell them?¡±

    ¡°Personally,¡± I said, ¡°I don¡¯t want to tell them about the Seven, that we¡¯ve been talking to the FBI, or that Charlotte told me about the diary. We hand in this,¡± I held up the diary, ¡°then we try to turn it back on them. Go on the offensive. Emphasize we risked our lives to get the information, tell them all about Fight Night and the Chamber of Horrors.¡±

    John shuddered. ¡°Can we not mention the Chamber of Horrors? You were barfing for a frigging week. It was awful. I had to run you out of the mess hall for a week to hold your hair up so you could vomit twice.¡±

    ¡°Actually,¡± I said, ¡°if you could describe that to them in great detail, that would be nice. Also, ask what they¡¯re doing to keep our families safe. Keep asking them that until we get a fucking answer. If they give us a satisfactory answer, then we can consider trusting them again.¡±

    John nodded. ¡°Yeah,¡± he said, ¡°there¡¯s that. At least my parents keep their gun safe in their room.¡±

    ¡°My dad,¡± I said, ¡°would quite literally rather die than keep guns in his house. If some of the people I¡¯ve pissed off decide to pay my family a visit, they¡¯re fucked.¡± I didn¡¯t add and it¡¯ll be my fault, but I definitely thought it.

    Halfway through speaking, two familiar faces walked in. They were our recruiters. ¡°Takashi and Brosnan,¡± I said, ¡°we need to talk.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Takashi said, ¡°we do.¡± His Japanese accent was more pronounced, due to how pissed off he was and his suit was rumpled like it had been slept in. Again, despite their different ethnicities, I was struck by how much like brothers the two agents looked. Same hair, same facial structure (except for the eyes of course, but they were hidden by sunglasses,) and same suits.

    Brosnan cut him off. ¡°We¡¯ve been led on quite the merry chase,¡± he said. While his suit was just as rumpled, he seemed more alert and much less agitated than Takashi. ¡°On one of our many stops, we met a lovely Japanese lawyer by the name of Mr. Watanabe. He said he was hired as your lawyer. Care to explain that?¡±

    Takashi scoffed. ¡°Watanabe is about as Japanese as a cowboy hat.¡±

    Brosnan sighed. ¡°I thought you said he was Yakuza.¡±

    So they had met our lawyer. I might actually be able to use that. ¡°Apparently,¡± I said coldly, ¡°a random person from Massachusetts cares more about me than you guys. Jennifer Kagemoto met me once and somehow talked her mob lawyer into coming to bail me out. It might not be in here,¡± I tossed my diary onto the table to punctuate this, ¡°because I was on some pretty heavy painkillers.¡± I turned to John. ¡°How many pieces of shrapnel did they have to pull out of my leg?¡± I asked him.

    ¡°Ten or twelve,¡± he said. ¡°I counted.¡±

    Agent Brosnan cocked his head. ¡°Is there anything you want to tell us?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± I said, ¡°is there anything you¡¯d like to tell us? Like why you sent us into the fucking Hunger Games with no back-up or resources. Or how you set us up with our real names to go into a place crawling with Al-Qaeda and the Goddamned KKK!¡± I slammed the table for emphasis. ¡°I somehow managed to piss both groups off within my first month. Can you explain how you¡¯re gonna protect our families, huh?¡±

    Takashi looked affronted, but Brosnan silenced him. ¡°Now is not the time for this discussion, I think,¡± he said, taking my diary. ¡°We¡¯ll escort you to Mr. Watanabe, then we¡¯ll return back to our headquarters. We¡¯ll contact you near the end of your vacation.¡± He got up. ¡°Come along,¡± he said, motioning for us to follow.

    As we had been talking, for some reason I thought I had been faking anger. When Brosnan decided to talk to me like I was a fucking child, I realized I hadn¡¯t been faking being angry. Both John and I stood up. ¡°We¡¯d better,¡± I said.

    We were led by a cop down to a lobby on the first floor. There, reading an old issue of Forbes magazine was Ken Watanabe. Looking at him, I remembered how Takashi had described him as being ¡°Japanese as a cowboy hat.¡± It definitely fit him. He wore a casual business suit, bolo tie, large cow skull belt buckle and reptile-skin cowboy boots and his hair was slicked back.

    ¡°Mr. Watanabe?¡± Brosnan asked. ¡°We¡¯ve found your charges.¡±

    Mr. Watanabe looked up, a look of relief on his face. ¡°Oh thank God,¡± he said, an obvious twang in his voice. ¡°First, when my team gets here, we find out that there were more clients than expected. Then, the cops here give me the run-around. Also, my batteries in my iPad died, so when they make me wait, I¡¯m bored out of my skull.¡± He turned to look at John and me pleadingly. ¡°Please,¡± he begged, ¡°sue these assholes. I¡¯ll do this pro bono.¡± A few of the cops in the room both burst into coughing fits that sounded suspiciously like laughing.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± I said, sitting down opposite Mr. Watanabe, ¡°but we¡¯ve had enough of the justice system for the time being.¡±

    ¡°God yes,¡± John said, flopping into a chair next to mine. ¡°At this point, I just want to go home, flop on my couch, and watch stupid movies.¡±

    ¡°Listen,¡± I said, ¡°we kind of want to get home. Can we talk about this later?¡±

    Mr. Watanabe sighed. ¡°Sure. Y¡¯all can call your folks. I gotta see about getting my other clients out of jail.¡± He made to get up, then asked, ¡°So, were those guys¡­ business partners of some sort?¡±

    ¡°Of a sort,¡± I said.

    ¡°Maybe not for much longer,¡± John said. ¡°They kind of screwed us over.¡± I looked over at him. He seemed just as pissed off at the situation as I was. Good. I needed an ally who didn¡¯t have some kind of world-changing end game.

    I took out my phone and scrolled to the contacts until I found my home number. I pressed the call button and waited as the phone rang. After two rings, Dad answered. ¡°Nate?¡± he asked, ¡°Is that you?¡± I could hear the hope in his voice.

    ¡°Yeah Dad,¡± I said, suddenly choking up, ¡°it¡¯s been a while, hasn¡¯t it?¡±

 2.4: Walking In Maynard

    Dad pulled his minivan up to the front of the police station and unlocked the doors. ¡°We should put our stuff in the trunk,¡± I told John. We were lucky, the bodyguards who had brought in our stuff had chosen rooms facing away from the airport.

    Dad turned around from the front seat. ¡°Nate,¡± he asked, ¡°what¡¯s on your face?¡±

    I was confused for a moment, then remembered about the batter fight. ¡°Oh yeah,¡± I said. ¡°We were cooking biscuits in the plane on the way down here. Things got kind of out of hand.¡±

    We walked into the car, John by the sliding doors and me right next to Dad. As I got in, I considered how lucky I had been that this was the only damage of the day. The last time I had been in a fight, I had my leg perforated by shrapnel.

    ¡°You had me worried,¡± Dad said. ¡°I mean, I¡¯ve been hearing all this stuff about a shooting at TF Green, and I had no idea where your plane was landing. I mean, that¡¯s scary stuff.¡± I looked at his face. He looked a bit like an older version of me, except with curlier hair. His hair used to have been jet black, but was now mostly gray and white and was starting to leave a patch of silver fluff on the top of his head. ¡°Then,¡± he continued, ¡°we spent hours waiting for you to call, wondering if you got shot.¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said, looking away, ¡°but the police wanted to take us in for questioning.¡± I paused, debating how much I wanted to tell him, then decided on, ¡°The police don¡¯t want me to go into details. Something about keeping the investigation under wraps.¡±

    ¡°I see,¡± Dad said. ¡°So how was school?¡± He was trying to sound casual about it and non-judgemental, but I could tell the real question he wanted to ask was why didn¡¯t you call? Luckily, my cellphone rang.

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said, pulling it out and flipping it open. The caller ID said Watanabe Legal. ¡°I have to take this.¡±

    ¡°Nathan,¡± I heard Charlotte¡¯s voice ask, ¡°is that you?¡±

    ¡°Charlotte!¡± I said. ¡°I didn¡¯t expect to hear you so soon.¡±

    ¡°And I didn¡¯t expect to be talking to you so quickly,¡± she said. ¡°I was just bailed out by a Mr. Watanabe. Apparently, Jennifer sent him.¡±

    As she talked, I cover the microphone with my hand and said to Dad and John, ¡°Its Charlotte, the girl who owns the plane we came in on.¡± Dad nodded.

    ¡°¡­Anyway,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°we don¡¯t really have a place to sleep tonight. Do you mind if we come over with you for a bit? At least until we decide what we¡¯re going to be doing? I hate to bother you with this, but we don¡¯t have access to any funds at the moment so we can¡¯t afford a hotel.¡±

    I relayed this information to Dad. ¡°You know,¡± he said, ¡°we barely have enough room for John. I¡¯m not sure we can fit two more people in the house.¡±

    ¡°They flew us across the Pacific Ocean and lost two employees for us,¡± I said. ¡°I kind of owe them.¡± I instantly regretted my tone.

    ¡°Sorry,¡± Dad said. ¡°We just might not be able to fit them.¡±

    ¡°John might be able to fit in my room,¡± I said, ¡°and we have the two couches downstairs.¡± I paused. ¡°Sorry about snapping at you.¡± I was. ¡°I just kind of had a long day.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s ok,¡± he said, ¡°you¡¯re actually being very understanding for someone who got shot at. I probably wouldn¡¯t be as calm as you are.¡±

    ¡°Thanks,¡± I said. Then I turned back to my phone. ¡°Of course you can,¡± I said to Charlotte. ¡°We¡¯re right out in front.¡±

    When they got out, Charlotte seemed very excited and Eliza¡­ not so much. When John opened the door she said, ¡°My word, that is quite ingenious! I wonder, do the front doors open like a McLaren¡¯s?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a sliding door, Char,¡± Eliza sighed in exasperation. ¡°It isn¡¯t exactly something from James bloody Bond.¡±

    ¡°And there¡¯s a back row!¡± Charlotte continued, heading back to said area. ¡°But how does one sit in the middle¡­ Never mind, I think I know how! My word, that is clever.¡±

    As she began to figure out the weird center seat buckle, Eliza rolled her eyes. ¡°She¡¯s a bit weird when she¡¯s around people ¡®oo make less money than her father.¡±

    ¡°Forgive me,¡± Charlotte said, somehow managing to get that buckle assembled, ¡°but unlike Eliza, I¡¯ve never been in a minivan before. Oh, and before I forget, Mr. Jacobs, my name is Charlotte Blackmoor-Ward, and the cheeky Lupine with the ears is my adopted sister, Eliza Henderson.¡±

    ¡°Hi,¡± Dad said, ¡°I¡¯m Abe Jacobs. Nice to meet all of you.¡±

    John, suddenly realizing that he hadn¡¯t introduced himself said, ¡°I¡¯m John. John Marshall.¡±

    Dad started the engine. ¡°I see you all were involved in the batter fight.¡±

    ¡°Ah, yes,¡± Charlotte said, somewhat embarrassed. ¡°Not one of our more dignified moments.¡±

    The rest of our trip was spent pretty much lying to Dad. Instead of knowing that Eliza, John and I had spent most of the first few months living in crowded barracks, he believed we had been in our current four-person dorms since we had gotten there. Instead of hearing about the hell I had been through, he thought I had been taking English classes with Charlotte. Instead of me having to explain what Power Sludge was, or why I had started drinking, Dad instead believed that I was now eating healthy.

    That last part was to explain why I was now so much more muscular. Before I had gone into Hell Semester, I had been slightly overweight. Now, I was much more fit, at least, on the surface. I was wondering if my leg would always twinge a bit. Luckily, though, that and the wound I had from being stabbed in the stomach hadn¡¯t scarred due to one of our friend¡¯s inventions. It also probably saved my life.

    I suddenly realized I would have to do a lot of lying. I had essentially invented everything that had happened to me since I had last seen my family. The realization made me somewhat sick to my stomach.

    When she saw my house, Charlotte was enchanted. ¡°Oh, how lovely!¡± she said. In my humble opinion, she was right. It was a white colonial-style house with purple shutters halfway up a hill. We were on a cul-de-sac and surrounded by similar houses. Like much of the scenery we had passed, it was dusted in snow (which was a nice change of pace from being buried in it.) It was a bit big for Maynard, the town we lived in, but from the Eliza talked about the Blackmoor home, our house probably was a fifth of theirs, if I was being generous.

    Dad parked in the garage. ¡°So,¡± he asked Charlotte and Eliza, ¡°how long are you planning on staying here?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°It turns out my father is abroad, er, not in in England, and both of my brothers are planning to go off with friends on holiday. We might be recalled, so to speak, but for the moment we might want to stay here. Your government has promised to provide protection while we¡¯re here, so please do not worry.¡±

    Dad nodded, his eyes widening a bit. ¡°Well, that¡¯s¡­ comforting,¡± he said.

    ¡°We should be able to find alternate lodgings by tomorrow,¡± Charlotte said. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, you¡¯ll only have to keep us for one night.¡±

    As she said this, Eliza¡¯s phone vibrated. She pulled it out, and opened it up and suddenly stiffened. Dad didn¡¯t notice her reaction, or tactfully ignored it. If it was the later, I knew he¡¯d bring it up again at some point.

    Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

    John, meanwhile, also said, ¡°Same here. My dad¡¯s picking me up some time tomorrow.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Dad said, ¡°let¡¯s get your stuff inside.¡± We got out. John and I grabbed our stuff, then headed up. I noticed Dad was moving quickly out of the way.

    I didn¡¯t realize why until I got in and the small form launched itself at me. I looked down. A person with long brown hair had tackle hugged me. ¡°Esther!¡± I said, trying to catch my breath, ¡°Did you miss me?¡±

    ¡°You should have called,¡± was her answer, somewhat muffled from the fact that her face was buried in my chest. From behind me, I could hear Eliza laugh.

    ¡°Can you let go?¡± I asked. ¡°I kind of need to put my backpack and my suitcase away.¡±

    ¡°No.¡±

    After I had finally got Esther off me, mom came over and hugged me. I heard Charlotte let out an ¡°Awww¡­¡± from behind me. Again, she looked like an older version of me and Esther. She had also had cut her hair shorter since I was in pre-school.

    ¡°Your sister¡¯s right,¡± she said, squeezing me tight. ¡°You should have called.¡±

    Finally, I was able to extricate myself from my family. I went upstairs to dump my stuff in my room for the time being. After I had dropped my stuff in my room, I turned to leave. However, Eliza was standing by the door, a serious expression on her face and her ears flat. ¡°We need to talk,¡± she said, ¡°in private.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said cautiously, ¡°come on in.¡±

    Eliza walked in, closing the door behind her. ¡°Me an¡¯ Charlotte weren¡¯t the only ones in our family to be attacked today,¡± she said quietly. ¡°Galahad and Lancelot got attacked, Gal while ¡®e was at Eaton and Lance while ¡®e was in Oxford. The security at the schools managed to drive them off.¡± She paused, then said, ¡°They also attacked our home. A good chunk of our guards died fendin¡¯ the wankers off.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s awful,¡± I said. ¡°Are your parents all right?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Eliza said, ¡°Mother has been dead for three years from the cancer, and Father¡­¡± She paused. ¡°Let¡¯s just say those bastards¡¯re lucky ¡®e wasn¡¯t at home.¡±

    ¡°Or unlucky,¡± I said. ¡°If the point of this operation was to take you guys out of play, then him not being there would be a huge setback.¡±

    Eliza laughed. ¡°Like those cunts could¡¯ve taken Charles Blackmoor-fuckin¡¯-Ward.¡± She paused. ¡°They probably pissed him off even more, though. That text I got?¡± I nodded. ¡°That was Ken, the lawyer Jen sent us. They made another attack as they were moving the rest of our entourage.¡± She paused. ¡°They succeeded this time.¡± I could hear the rage and anguish in her voice. These must have been people she had known since joining the Blackmoor-Wards.

    We stood awkwardly for a little while. After a little while, I realized I was in my bedroom, with the door closed and an attractive girl standing right in front of me. ¡°So,¡± I said, ¡°maybe we should rejoin the crowd downstairs. Y¡¯know, so my parents don¡¯t think¡­¡±

    ¡°That we¡¯d been having sex in that?¡± Eliza said playfully, indicating my bed with a nod of her head. It was a loft bed, only reachable by a ladder. The mattress itself was probably a tiny bit smaller than a twin. ¡°Maybe get a normal queen-size and I¡¯ll consider it.¡± As she turned the doorknob, she flashed her signature grin over shoulder.

    Good, I thought, she¡¯s bouncing back. If she breaks down, I¡¯m gonna follow. I followed Eliza back downstairs, to find Charlotte in the midst of an animated discussion with my mom.

    ¡°Really,¡± she was saying, ¡°I actually quite like the mess. Have you ever been in a house that looks like a catalog? It¡¯s oppressive.¡±

    Mom, somewhat in a state of shock that a girl dressed in expensive shoes, a Ralph Lauren t-shirt, Ray-Bans sunglasses and carrying a Prada bag was in her house. Mom seemed to have decided it was best to remain silent and observe this strange girl ramble.

    ¡°Another thing that I absolutely adore about this house, Mrs. Jacobs,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°is that every room is a library. In my house we have this dedicated library to make ourselves seem civilized, but it¡¯s really more of a broom closet.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Mom said, ¡°most of us are readers. Also,¡± she said, laughing a bit, ¡°we have a hard time getting rid of anything.¡±

    ¡°Oh, of course, Mrs. Jacobs,¡± Charlotte said.

    ¡°Actually,¡± Mom said, ¡°It¡¯s Blanchett. I never changed my name.¡±

    ¡°Oh.¡± Charlotte said, looking a little startled.

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said to Charlotte, ¡°I forgot to tell you that.¡±

    Suddenly my phone rang. I fished it out of my pocket. My phone was an old flip phone, but there was a screen on the back of it to see who was calling. Dad didn¡¯t really like the idea of upgrading, as evidenced by the fact that the phone was in black and white. I glanced at the screen. ¡°Hey Charlotte,¡± I said, ¡°Your other roommate is calling.¡±

    ¡°Is it the creepy one?¡± John asked.

    ¡°We¡¯ve got two other people in our dorm,¡± Eliza said, ¡°and they¡¯re both right creepy.¡±

    ¡°The one with the dead eyes,¡± John said, ¡°always wears white, has long dark hair, hangs around Ulfric a lot.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯d be Alma,¡± Eliza said. ¡°I¡¯m bettin¡¯ it¡¯s Jen. There¡¯s no way Alma could be callin¡¯ us ¡®ere.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s Jen,¡± I said, flipping my phone open, and accepting the call.

    ¡°She¡¯s the one who sent us lawyers,¡± Charlotte said.

    ¡°Hi, Jen,¡± I said. ¡°How¡¯d you get my number?¡±

    Jennifer¡¯s seductive contralto came over the phone¡¯s speaker. ¡°Hello, Nathan,¡± she said. ¡°Interesting opening there. I thought your response would be more along the lines of ¡®what do you want?¡¯¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said, ¡°that was a little rude of me. I figured you¡¯d tell me what you wanted, maybe in an oblique, mysterious way. However, I still am curious about several things.¡±

    ¡°We can talk about it later,¡± Jennifer said, ¡°at the party.¡±

    ¡°The party?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Jen said, ¡°my father¡¯s hosting a New Year¡¯s party. I¡¯d like some of my college friends to be in attendance, and who else is better to invite than the people who nearly died?¡± She sighed, and continued with genuine sadness, ¡°I suppose Charlotte and Eliza might be continuing on home, but my offer still stands.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll have to talk to my parents¡­¡± I began.

    Jen cut me off. ¡°They can come too,¡± she said. ¡°In fact, I¡¯d be delighted to have them come.¡± She paused. When she continued again, I could almost hear her smirk. ¡°I hope you come. It could be very fun.¡±

 2.5: â€œAt some point, maybeâ€¦â€

    By the time New Year¡¯s Day finally rolled around, I had managed to convince both myself and my parents that we should go to Jennifer Kagemoto¡¯s New Year¡¯s Eve party. My parents were easy. When I got off the phone, I said, ¡°So, Jennifer Kagemoto, the girl who sent the lawyers, is inviting us all to attend a New Year¡¯s Eve party.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± Dad said, ¡°us too?¡±

    ¡°Yeah. As well as us kids.¡±

    ¡°I taught a Kagemoto at Fessenden,¡± Mom said, worriedly. ¡°Sam was really sweet, but¡­¡±

    ¡°We don¡¯t have to go,¡± I said, somewhat glad for an excuse.

    Mom shook her head. ¡°Mr. Kagemoto had some weird ideas on what constituted an insult and what was acceptable in dealing with it. It¡¯d probably be best to show up for a little while, then head back.¡±

    ¡°Who is this Mr. Kagemoto?¡± Charlotte asked. ¡°He seems quite shady.¡±

    ¡°I remember talking to him at a faculty meeting,¡± Dad said. ¡°He is.¡±

    In the time between the party, we saw a lot of Eliza and Charlotte. Once they were settled into their hotel (we never found out where exactly) they would come just about every day, alternating between the vintage Rolls and the more modern Maybach. They were always escorted by a Chevy Suburban in the rear and a Chevy Impala in the front, both in black. Before Eliza, Charlotte and their chauffer would exit, four men in suits would get out from the Impala and pull security. The chauffer would then open the door for the two girls and hurry them inside the nearest building. Then one of the Suburbans would drive off once the chauffer had confirmed the building secure, with the other remaining behind.

    I was very curious about these new bodyguards. However, I could make some guesses. First off, the people in the SUVs were the cavalry. My guess is that if I were to look inside the blacked-out windows, I¡¯d see a bunch of heavily-armed operators. Also, the increased helicopter traffic when Charlotte and Eliza were around? Not an accident.

    The question was who the guys were. Unless they were really good at faking Boston accents, like the chauffer was, I doubted that they were British. That meant they were either private security or FBI. I decided to wait until we were back at NIU. If Charlotte told me something and another attack happened, it would be best to avoid suspicion.

    Meanwhile, it was hard for Charlotte and Eliza to adjust to life in the US, but only for one fact. ¡°Now,¡± Charlotte said, addressing me and my family, ¡°in this country, you can fight and die for your country at eighteen¡­¡± We were at a local restaurant, The Halfway Caf¨¦.

    ¡°Or sixteen,¡± I said, ¡°if you have parental permission.¡±

    ¡°Which most parents don¡¯t give out,¡± Dad said. I remembered when I had turned sixteen. I had been going through a¡­ bad time. I had wanted to get the hell out of school and one of the ways I had seized was the army. In the end, I had gone back to school.

    ¡°You can also get a license at sixteen,¡± Charlotte continued, ¡°and you can use tobacco products at eighteen, as well as move out of the house. However, if someone wishes to sample a local brewery¡¯s seasonal offerings,¡± at this, she jabbed at the drink, ¡°they have to be twenty-one?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Mom said. ¡°It¡¯s kind of stupid, but it¡¯s the law.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re bleedin¡¯ right it¡¯s stupid,¡± Eliza said, then muttered something under her breath. She then reluctantly took a swig of the root beer she had ordered.

    ¡°Eliza!¡± Charlotte reprimanded. ¡°Language!¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t get what the big deal is,¡± Esther said. ¡°Doesn¡¯t beer taste like cat pee?¡± She drank her own root beer just as Eliza spat hers out.

    After she was done laughing, Eliza pointed at my sister. ¡°You. I like you, mate.¡±

    Like most of their visits, that one turned out well. My parents and my sister liked Eliza¡¯s sense of humor (their introduction to her had been much better than mine, which helped a lot) and were quite impressed with Charlotte¡¯s manners. Plus, the both of them together can be very charming in radically different ways.

    When it came time to actually go to Jennifer¡¯s party, they brought out both the Maybach and the Rolls-Royce. They also doubled the number of SUVs and quadrupled the number of sedans and we could hear a couple helicopters overhead. One of the chauffeurs knocked on the door and led Mom, Dad and Esther to the Rolls. After they were in, he led me to the Maybach, opening the rear door.

    The windows, especially the rear ones, had been so blacked out that I couldn¡¯t see inside. However, when I got in, I saw that Charlotte, wearing a black dress with a very long skirt and white shrug, was sitting in the back seat and Eliza, wearing a red dress and a white shawl, was on the seat opposite me. Riding shotgun (It was an English car, so it was reversed) was another bodyguard, hand in the glove compartment.

    ¡°Wow,¡± I said, sitting down, ¡°this is the biggest rear seat I have ever sat in.¡± I turned around to close the door just as the chauffer closed it. ¡°Oh,¡± I said somewhat surprised. ¡°I guess that is his job.¡±

    ¡°You have quite a lot to get used to,¡± Charlotte said. ¡°I personally am not a big stickler for protocol, but I find that ¡®self-made men¡¯ and certain of the less noble of the nobility tend to be obsessed with it.¡±

    ¡°Like Mr. Kagemoto,¡± I said, buckling my seatbelt. For once in my life, I didn¡¯t have to reach under the butt of the person in the center seat to buckle myself in.

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t say that,¡± the bodyguard. ¡°More like ¡®psychopath.¡¯ Guy wanted to use us on a hit. Apparently, when we defused the nail bomb he sent us, we ¡®destroyed the evidence.¡¯ Lab tech was busted a few weeks later, but by then he had actually contaminated it.¡±

    The radio crackled. ¡°This is Christmas Package,¡± a gruff, Bostonian voice said. ¡°We¡¯re wrapped and good to go, and our convoy is, too. Comet, Cupid, you guys ready?¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± a more Southern accent drawled. ¡°God¡¯s recommending that we take route one.¡±

    I let my curiosity get the better of me. ¡°God?¡± I asked.

    As two of the Impalas and one of the Suburbans drove off, the bodyguard said, ¡°A combination of the FBI, State Department, and various Massachusetts police forces. Even if mercs are guarding you guys, you¡¯re still in their jurisdiction. If you die, it¡¯d be pretty embarrassing.¡±

    ¡°And for you guys, right?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± the bodyguard said, ¡°if they did it right under our noses, it¡¯d be embarrassing. If it¡¯s anything like that mess at the airport, we¡¯d probably all die honorably.¡±

    ¡°Comforting.¡± I said. I then turned to Charlotte and Eliza to ask, ¡°So, is John coming?¡±

    Charlotte shook her head. ¡°Sadly not,¡± she said sadly, then continued on speculatively, ¡°Though he may have been right not to. Jennifer¡¯s father does not sound like a nice man.¡±

    Our convoy got moving out. Apparently, we were the Shamas and the choppers were named after Maccabees. I had to explain the Hanukah reference to Charlotte and Eliza. As I did, it began to snow. However, the Maybach was still nice and toasty warm.

    Eventually, I asked, ¡°So how come the Kagemotos and the Jade Empire are so feared? I don¡¯t think there¡¯re a lot of Asian people living in MA.¡±

    The driver piped up. ¡°Exactly. One of my friends in the FBI says that this was one of the major problems both gangs had to face. The Kagemotos solved it by headhunting people from Japan and buying fancy equipment to make up for the lack of Japanese-Americans. The Jade Empire decided to stop being Triads and branched out from just Chinese-Americans to Asian-Americans. Then, when that wasn¡¯t enough, they started targeting bored suburban kids, poor whites and blacks, and a lot of the recent Brazilian immigrants. Rumor has it, they started as just The Emperor and two of his ¡®servants.¡¯ Now, they¡¯re the biggest gang in New England, if you don¡¯t include New York.¡±

    ¡°Good heavens,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°are they violent?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°you guys remember Cross, right?¡± Charlotte and Eliza nodded. Michael Castellan, more commonly known as ¡°Cross,¡± was the son of a New York hitman who was going to NIU to train to enter the family business. ¡°He was kind of surprised at how violent the Kagemotos and the Empire got.¡±

    ¡°Oh my,¡± Charlotte said. ¡°Do they have a reason to be violent often?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± the driver said. ¡°They¡¯re both expanding. One of the first Kagemotos said this little gem: ¡®If you need something, ask nicely and explain why you need it. If they still don¡¯t give it to you, hurt them in such a way that no one will ever refuse you again.¡¯ Apparently, they need a whole lot.¡±

    ¡°Let me guess,¡± Eliza said darkly, ¡°they¡¯re also sponsoring some bloody capes.¡±

    ¡°Not that anyone can prove,¡± the bodyguard said. ¡°Anyway, we¡¯re here.¡±

    ¡°Here¡± was a large apartment building in the middle of Boston. A line of expensive cars (seriously, one or two were probably worth more than the price of Charlotte¡¯s Maybach and her Rolls-Royce combined) were stopping by the entrance to disgorge their passengers. After a brief conversation and the flashing of invites, the bodyguards got both us and themselves out of the car and a valet got in. Then an Asian man with a dark red tux and a heavy Boston accent led us to an elevator, telling us to go to the top floor. I noticed that the guards made us stand off to the sides, out of the line of fire.

    I also got a better look at Eliza and Charlotte. Charlotte¡¯s dress was a halter top and had shiny bits on it accentuating her waist and flat stomach. At first, I thought they were sequins. Nope! They were some sort of clear gem. Her dress¡¯s skirt was long enough so that I couldn¡¯t see what kind of shoes she was wearing. However, seeing as she was taller than Eliza, I was guessing she was wearing higher heels than normal, because Eliza was normally taller than Charlotte.

    Speaking of Eliza, her transformation today was quite unexpected. She was wearing her hair down (which showed how long and wavy it was) and make-up, which I had only seen once. As noted before she was also wearing a dress and shiny red heels (which were about an inch or two.) Her dress was a cute pleated, mid-calf length number and her legs were shaven (the shaving part may have been normal, the only time I had seen them was the last time I saw her wear a skirt.) The neckline, which would be borderline conservative for most other girls, was a little on the risqu¨¦ side for Eliza. Her posture, instead of being alert and assertive, was more nervous and¡­ was she embarrassed?

    Either way, looking at them, I kind of felt underdressed. I was wearing a cheap suit that, after several months of exercise, was way too loose on me and a boring black tie. Eh, I thought to myself, why make yourself miserable when you can make others happy?

    ¡°Should¡¯ve said this sooner,¡± I said, ¡°but you two are looking pretty nice tonight.¡±

    Charlotte nodded. ¡°Thank you, Nathan,¡± she said graciously.

    You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

    Eliza, blushing a little (or was that the makeup?) muttered, ¡°Thanks.¡± She then looked up. ¡°This is Char¡¯s kind of thing, not mine.¡±

    As soon as she finished saying that, the doors opened with a ding. The guards got out first, then signaled for us to come out. We were in the middle of a foyer. Two more Asian guys in red tuxes were standing guard. Once we showed them our invitations, they let us into the main apartment.

    Much like when I first boarded the Blackmoor-Ward private jet, I was amazed. Underneath all the people, the room itself was a little bigger than a school gym or cafeteria. (Or maybe all the people just made it look smaller.) The difference, however, was the d¨¦cor. Three of the four walls were glass and looked out onto Boston. The fourth wall had a balcony mounted on it and both levels had hallways leading farther back into the apartment. Bars, serving tables, and various seating areas were scattered throughout the room.

    However, they were all obscured by the people. I think there had to be over a hundred, all in the fanciest clothes. There were a few people I recognized, mostly entertainers, but there I recognized a few politicians, including the judge from the Kagemoto trial. I suddenly had an idea how Mark Kagemoto was declared innocent of all charges.

    I paused, realizing I had wandered away from Eliza, Charlotte and the bodyguards. Suddenly, I felt very exposed.

    The nervousness was validated a few seconds later when two Asian men, one old and slightly overweight, the other only a few years older than me and built like a beanpole came over to me. They were both wearing expensive suits with strange dragon lapel pins made out what appeared to be jade. The younger one seemed friendly enough, but there was something about the way he walked that screamed ¡°danger¡± to me. I also noticed that he wore expensive sunglasses and instead of a tie, he wore a gold chain with a howling wolf embossed on it. It was like he was trying to advertise he was a gangster¡­ or maybe an aspiring rapper.

    The older one was more traditionally dressed, with all his buttons buttoned up and a green tie. He seemed to be subordinate to the younger one and hated every single second. When he looked at me, it was with annoyance masking interest. When he looked at his younger associate, it was with barely disguised contempt.

    ¡°So,¡± the younger one said, a slight Chinese accent, ¡°I am not sure I have seen you around here before?¡± I paused, not knowing what to say, and the man continued to fill in the gap. ¡°You a gate crasher?¡± he asked.

    ¡°We could turn him,¡± the older one said, his accent a thick Boston one, ¡°maybe get in good with Mark¡­¡±

    ¡°Assuming he is a gate crasher,¡± the younger one said. ¡°The guards seemed to be matching people to photo IDs.¡± He frowned. ¡°He¡¯d have to be very good at bullshitting to get in.¡±

    ¡°Killer!¡± I turned around. I saw a tanned guy my age with sandy brown hair coming towards me. I recognized him as Cross instantly.

    ¡°Ah,¡± the younger one said, ¡°you¡¯re talent.¡±

    Cross pushed through the last few people, a beer in his hand. ¡°Killer,¡± he said, somewhat drunkenly, ¡°what¡¯re you doin¡¯ here, man?¡±

    ¡°I was invited,¡± I said, holding out my invitation.

    ¡°¡®Love, Jennifer Kagemoto,¡¯¡± the young Asian man said, reading my invitation. ¡°Weird. Mine¡¯s from Mark.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, Killer,¡± Cross said, grabbing my arm, ¡°come with me.¡±

    As I followed him into the crowd, my interrogator called out, ¡°Come on, Mikey! You used to be much more fun!¡±

    ¡°Let me guess,¡± I said, when we were sufficiently out of earshot, ¡°those guys were Jade Empire?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Cross said. For someone whose breath smelled like paint thinner, he seemed remarkably alert. ¡°Let¡¯s just say that it¡¯d look bad if you talked to those guys before talking to your host. Like, really bad.¡± He took a swig of his beer, and muttered bitterly, ¡°Never shoulda slept with Lang.¡±

    ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Cross said. ¡°He¡¯s bi. Or pan. Apparently, there¡¯s a difference.¡±

    He then downed the rest of his beer. ¡°Uh, Cross,¡± I asked, ¡°how many of those have you had?¡±

    ¡°Two¡­¡± he said, then considered it. ¡°Or was it four? Also had, like, a fourth of Scotch¡­ And there was the champagne¡­¡± He then looked at me. ¡°Hey, Killer, am I drunk?¡±

    ¡°Yes.¡± I said. ¡°Yes, Cross, you are very drunk.¡±

    ¡°Huh,¡± he said. ¡°I must be really drunk, ¡®cause I don¡¯t feel drunk.¡± He paused. ¡°Weird how that works, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°Yeah¡­¡± I said, ¡°can you tell me about Jen? She¡¯s Eliza¡¯s roomie and she kind of helped us out recently. I know a bit about the Kagemotos, like how Mark killed all those people ten or so years ago, I know they¡¯re high-level Yakuza, but I don¡¯t know many details.¡±

    He looked around. When he was satisfied no one was listening, he said, ¡°Have you heard of Hinomoto Oniko?¡±

    ¡°Didn¡¯t she fight the Minutemen a few times?¡± I asked. ¡°She¡¯s a Jumper, right? Teleports around and stuff.¡±

    Cross nodded. ¡°Guess what her civilian identity is.¡±

    I did a double take. Was Cross saying Jennifer Kagemoto was a legit supervillain, the kind that could escape from the Minutemen completely unharmed and a million dollars richer? Suddenly, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I looked up. We were almost under the balcony. There, looking down at me, an unreadable expression on her face, was Jennifer Kagemoto.

    Faking calmness, I slowly turned back to Cross. ¡°Is that common knowledge?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± he said, ¡°why?¡±

    ¡°Someone was listening.¡± We both turned to look at the balcony. Jennifer was gone.

    ¡°Are you sure there was someone there?¡± a voice purred innocently. ¡°I don¡¯t see anyone there.¡± Jennifer Kagemoto was standing right behind us, looking more innocent than a newborn baby. She was dressed in a dark red dress with a long skirt, plunging v-neck, and thin straps. At the bottom, the dark red pattern was broken by what appeared to be blue flames with white centers. It was a stunning effect. One of her opera-gloved hands held a glass of champagne.

    ¡°Oh shit,¡± Cross said, ¡°listen, Jen, I¡­¡±

    Jen¡¯s innocent look disappeared, replaced by a scowl. Cross shut up. ¡°Cross,¡± she said, ¡°I¡¯m disappointed. You could have led my guest directly to me instead of filling his heads with stories.¡± She relaxed, becoming the gracious host again, but there was still an air of menace about her. ¡°Anyway, I¡¯m willing to overlook your accidental slights. Again.¡± She turned to me. ¡°Now, Nathan, I¡¯d like to talk to you and Eliza.¡± She leaned in close in order to whisper in my ear, and I could smell her perfume. ¡°Wait a bit, then meet me upstairs.¡±

    She walked off, hips swaying seductively. When she was gone I turned to Cross. Before I could ask him anything he said, ¡°Hey man, I¡¯m high enough on her shit list. You obviously aren¡¯t on it at all. Best thing for you to do would be to disappear.¡±

    I did as he said. I found the stairs pretty quickly. They were down the hall. At the top of them was Ken Watanabe, a bottle of Patr?n in one hand and a bottle of Jack in the other. He smiled at me. ¡°She¡¯ll meet you in there,¡± he said, pointing to a door nearby.

    I walked in to a large bedroom/family room. There was a huge bed with dark red sheets, red carpeting, a black sectional couch in front of a large TV, a dark wooden desk, and an office chair. Eliza was sitting on the couch, looking nervous. When she saw me, she got up.

    ¡°Nate,¡± she said, relief evident, ¡°I¡¯m so glad you¡¯re ¡®ere. There¡¯s somethin¡¯ about this room that gives me the bloody creeps.¡±

    As I walked towards her, I noticed it too. The furniture and walls, with their deep reds, were offset a bit by the posters on the walls. They were from a variety of stuff: movies, bands, stuff like that. I suddenly noticed how they seemed to be imitating the room of a stereotypical teenage girl. I wondered why I had thought of it them that way, then realized that the posters were terribly maintained, with some being torn or wrinkled.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, wondering why Jen was putting so much effort in pretending to be a normal teenage girl, ¡°it is.¡±

    ¡°Wonder what our ¡®friend¡¯ wants from us,¡± Eliza said, shivering a bit.

    Suddenly, Jennifer appeared right in front of us, leaning on the window, an evil smile playing across her lips. ¡°Eliza,¡± she purred, ¡°I don¡¯t want much¡­ I just thought I could provide some assistance.¡± I suddenly realized that this was how Jumpers operated. Unlike in movies, there was no sound, no smoke, no flash of light, they were just there. It was unnerving as hell.

    ¡°What kind of assistance?¡± I asked.

    ¡°I can find some things out for you,¡± Jennifer said, standing up. ¡°For instance, you, Nathan, seem to be having trouble with your employers. I can get to them. They¡¯re cops. One of them will have a price I can afford.¡± She then turned to Eliza. ¡°And Eliza? I¡¯ve been very interested in the attack on your people. Especially the fact that you were redirected from your original destination which is my turf.¡±

    ¡°Have you been attacked on your turf before?¡± I asked.

    A look of grief and rage passed over Jennifer¡¯s face. It happened so fast I almost missed it. ¡°Yes,¡± she said with forced, almost robotic calm. Her hands, however, were clenched tightly. ¡°Recently, my brother was killed. Machine-gunned outside his dorm in Berkley. He was shot a hundred and ninety-eight times at point-blank, I believe. He was just about to drive to Boston to see me. I got the news the day you left.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s awful,¡± Eliza said sympathetically.

    Then I fucked up. ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, ¡°is there anything we can do?¡±

    I regretted the words immediately. Jennifer smiled. I got the feeling she was genuinely touched. ¡°Well you just did,¡± she said, walking towards us, ¡°but if you want to do more, at some point, maybe tomorrow, maybe years from now, maybe today if you two are feeling¡­ adventurous, I will ask for your help.¡± She stopped, directly in front of us. ¡°By that time, I hope that I can prove that this favor you grant me is one I am capable of returning. For that, I¡¯m willing to start today.¡±

    ¡°By exchange of information?¡± I asked.

    ¡°More than that,¡± Jennifer said. ¡°But I would prefer to offer more¡­ concrete displays.¡±

    ¡°And in return,¡± Eliza said suspiciously, ¡°we climb in bed with you, right?¡±

    ¡°In a manner of speaking,¡± Jennifer said, beaming at Eliza. ¡°I hope you¡¯ll stay here for the fireworks. This room has a much better view.¡± Jennifer sighed and turned around. ¡°You know, on a night like tonight, it feels like everything you¡¯ve ever wanted is right within your grasp¡­¡±

 2.6: Tainted Trust

    The day before we were going to go back, we had a meeting scheduled with our UNIX handlers. Originally, they had wanted to meet with us separately, but we had campaigned hard, even refusing to show up if we were separated.

    We were meeting at the Sao Paolo Grill, a local Brazilian barbeque joint. It had gotten famous when I was in seventh grade. The owner had been attacked by a gangster of some sort, and everyone had come to show support. John lived in New Hampshire, but he figured he had to drive down here anyway since we were all flying out of Plymouth, so his parents dropped him off at my house the day before the meeting. Then, around 11:30, we began walking to our meeting.

    ¡°So,¡± John asked, bundled up tightly in his winter coat, ¡°have you been to this place before?¡±

    ¡°Nah,¡± I said from inside my many layers, ¡°but apparently, if you want meat on a stick, it¡¯s the place to go.¡±

    ¡°Sounds good,¡± John said. ¡°Any other places you eat at around here?¡±

    That started a whole conversation about the various places to eat at Maynard. There are a lot. We¡¯ve got several pizza joints, a couple standard family places, a bunch of bars, and a few ethnic restaurants.

    Around the time we got into the downtown, city-like part of Maynard, I ran into an old friend. ¡°Nathan?¡± a voice called out. I turned around. There, coming out of the street by the Town Hall/police station, was Mai Lau. Mai had moved from Beijing to Maynard in 2010. She was in my grade, but I didn¡¯t really know her that well until we took a theater class in our senior year. It was hard to believe that was something that happened less than a year ago.

    ¡°Mai!¡± I said happily, ¡°How are things going?¡±

    She laughed. ¡°Very good. Do you and your friend want lunch?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re actually heading out to the Sao Paolo Grill,¡± I said. ¡°We¡¯re meeting up with some scholarship people.¡±

    ¡°Oh yeah,¡± Mai said, ¡°you went off to college. Where did you end up?¡±

    ¡°This international school,¡± I said. ¡°Kind of in the middle of nowhere, but you meet all sorts of interesting people.¡±

    John laughed. ¡°You can say that again.¡± I instantly thought of all the people I had met. The Al-Qaeda terrorists like Amir (also the first person I had killed,) and his psychotic second-in-command Salim. Richard Forrest Taylor the third, a legit KKK member. Eric, Ray-Gun, Doc, The Monk, MC Disaster, former child soldiers who somehow became millionaires. There were also people like Eliza, Oro Okoro, Bai and Li Feng, and Ricardo Montana, people who, along with me and one other person, formed a group called The Seven Supreme. There was also May Riley, a certified genius with an eccentric personality and mutilated face, and her sister Mary, a no-nonsense girl training to become a combat medic. Then there was the horror in human form known as Ulfric Trollbjorn.

    ¡°Sorry we can¡¯t meet up at the moment,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯d love to, but this is kind of a private meeting.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± Mai said. ¡°I¡¯m having lunch with Jesse there. After you¡¯re done, we can talk, right?¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said. ¡°Oh, before I forget, this is John Marshall. We met this semester. John, this is Mai Lau, the only person in MHS who¡¯s more interested in set construction and choreography than improv.¡±

    After that, we had this big conversation about our year in theater class. It ended with me doing my beached whale impersonation as we walked into the parking lot where Sao Paolo Grill was located. It wasn¡¯t exactly the same, due to the fact that I couldn¡¯t lie down. Two people in trench coats and sunglasses looked up. It was Takashi and Brosnan.

    ¡°That,¡± Brosnan said with amusement, ¡°must have an interesting story behind it.¡±

    ¡°It does,¡± I said. ¡°Are we going to do this out here, or are we going to go outside?¡±

    ¡°Is she going to be here?¡± Takashi asked.

    ¡°Actually,¡± Mai said, ¡°I see Jesse right inside. I¡¯ll catch up with you later!¡± I looked inside the Sao Paolo Grill. There was Jesse, a small black girl who I think was a Junior in high school at the time. She waved at us. Mai and I waved back.

    After Mai hurried off, I turned to Brosnan and Takashi. ¡°So,¡± I said, ¡°are we going to go in?¡±

    ¡°Actually,¡± Brosnan said, ¡°this won¡¯t take long.¡± He took out a wad of cash and handed to me. ¡°Your work was substandard.¡± He kept a cheery tone of voice as he did so.

    ¡°Where¡¯s John¡¯s?¡± I asked.

    Brosnan shrugged. ¡°He didn¡¯t do anything,¡± he said. ¡°If you disagree, you can give him money from what we¡¯ve given you.¡±

    While he had been talking, I had been counting. There were ten fifties in the roll. ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± I said, ¡°This is five hundred dollars. To split. You said a hundred thousand for each of us¡­¡±

    ¡°If you did a good job,¡± Takashi said. ¡°Compared to the other students, your¡­ essay was unacceptable.¡±

    ¡°First off, how was it unacceptable?¡± I asked angrily. ¡°The prompt was to write about the other students. I think I got a very good picture of the student body. Second,¡± my voice dropped to a whisper, ¡°I almost died several times. One of the only reasons I¡¯m alive is John.¡±

    ¡°We told you,¡± Takashi said, ¡°that this would be the hardest thing you¡¯ve ever done. If you can¡¯t do this¡­¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± John said, ¡°you said it would be hard. You neglected to mention the projected casualty rate!¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t you mean dropout rate?¡± Brosnan asked.

    ¡°Oh please,¡± John said, ¡°you knew that they fucking aim for a fifty percent death rate. We didn¡¯t. There¡¯s a difference between¡­¡±

    ¡°Please Mr. Marshall,¡± Brosnan said neutrally, ¡°control yourself.¡±

    ¡°Fuck you,¡± John said. ¡°There¡¯s a difference between knowing the risks and not having basic information! Next time, fucking tell us if we¡¯re going to be thrown into a fucking meat grinder with a bunch of psychotics! That way, we don¡¯t have to have conversations like this!¡±

    ¡°Are you done?¡± Brosnan asked politely.

    ¡°He didn¡¯t mention,¡± I said, ¡°how you just tried to turn us against each other by stiffing me.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re right!¡± John said. ¡°You know, I¡¯m starting to think you don¡¯t want us to succeed.¡±

    ¡°Now you have.¡± Takashi said, handing us each a small camera. ¡°These microcams can take pictures with the big button on the right. If you hold down the small one on the left, it can translate a document to a PDF. Use it. Maybe this time, your fellow scholarship student won¡¯t run rings around you.¡±

    ¡°Are you sure there¡¯s only one other?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Of course,¡± Brosnan said, getting into his car. ¡°Why would we lie to you?¡±

    As the two UNIX agents drove off, I commented, ¡°Y¡¯know, I¡¯m glad I don¡¯t have a gun on me. I¡¯d hate to explain why I just shot two UNIX agents on American soil in front of a bunch of witnesses.¡± I then handed him half the bills.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± John said, taking them and putting them in his pocket. ¡°Those guys are assholes.¡± We then walked into the Sao Paolo Grill.

    When we entered, Mai and Jesse immediately waved us over to their table. ¡°What was that about?¡± Jesse asked. Both she and Mai were giving me concerned looks, though I noticed that Mai¡¯s expression of concern was masking¡­ something else.

    ¡°There was a bit of a disagreement on the scholarship front,¡± I said.

    ¡°Really?¡± Mai said. ¡°I didn¡¯t think disagreements over scholarships got that bad.¡± Suddenly, I realized where I had seen that look before. I had seen it on Bai¡¯s face when she had considered killing me and I had seen it on Doc¡¯s face when The Monk had executed a prisoner during our final. I suddenly realized that I had seen some¡­ interesting things in Maynard.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    They were things I had been things that had been there for a long time. Every time I had entered Maynard, there had been people with the tell-tale signs of having seen combat together. It was hard to see, unless you looked for it. It was an attitude, a way of moving, a look. The problem was that this wasn¡¯t proof. It wasn¡¯t even circumstantial. These telltale signs were often extremely contradictory.

    There was also a sort of uniform a bunch of young people were wearing consisting of hoodies, baggy jeans and green t-shirts. Jade green t-shirts. I quickly took a look around. I noticed several other people in these t-shirts. One, I recognized as Jamie Washington, another person I knew in school. His t-shirt had a Chinese-style dragon, much like the kind Lang and his flunky had been wearing as lapel pins at the Kagemoto¡¯s party. Suddenly, I felt very nervous.

    Jesse reached over. ¡°Hey,¡± she said, ¡°are you ok? You¡¯re looking pretty pale.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, trying to regain my poker face. ¡°I¡¯m fine.¡± It was hard. I was now in a weird state of hyperawareness that would be hard to describe to someone who¡¯s never been in combat. I¡¯m sure John noticed it, but he said nothing.

    ¡°If you¡¯re worried about paying the bill,¡± Jesse said, ¡°Mai¡¯s got us covered. I mean, didn¡¯t you just inherit Lau Holdings? You kind of own this building.¡±

    ¡°Through some intermediary company,¡± Mai said dismissively. ¡°Honestly, it took some digging to find out I actually had holdings here.¡±

    That was quite interesting. We made polite conversation for a bit. Apparently, Mai was planning on opening a theater where the old DEC building had been. ¡°It¡¯s better than the Walmart they were going to place there,¡± she said. ¡°Besides, you know me. I love theater.¡± That was Mai. Patron of the arts and math genius.

    ¡°Are you going to college?¡± I asked. ¡°Because the college I go to would love to have you.¡± It was true. Even discounting my formless suspicions, I knew she was some kind of genius.

    Mai shrugged. ¡°Not at the moment. I actually have some things that I have to do right now, and college would just be a distraction.¡± She smiled. ¡°Besides, there are cheaper ways to learn.¡±

    Eventually, we had ate the food. Mai paid, and John and I excused ourselves. Once we got down the street a bit, John asked, ¡°So what was that about?¡±

    ¡°Later,¡± I said sharply. I was still noticing things. That teen in the hoodie taking a picture of the store we were walking by. The beat up Pontiac with a bunch of guys in it driving right past. The black Dodge charger with blacked-out windows driving in the other direction. Stuff like that. ¡°We¡¯re being watched.¡±

    ¡°By who?¡± John asked, suddenly stiffening. Thankfully, he didn¡¯t look around.

    ¡°Not here,¡± I said, trying to sound casual. ¡°Let¡¯s go back to my house and play some video games.¡±

    ¡°Sounds relaxing,¡± John said.

    I was able to keep him from asking about it until we (we being me, him, Charlotte and Eliza) piled into Charlotte¡¯s Maybach. ¡°So,¡± he said, ¡°who did you think was following us?¡±

    I laughed. ¡°Everyone. We¡¯ve come to the attention of the Kagemotos and the FBI. I¡¯m also pretty sure there was a Jade Empire presence as well.¡±

    ¡°Are you sure?¡± Charlotte asked. ¡°I mean how do you know you were being watched?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m I can¡¯t prove it at the moment,¡± I admitted, ¡°but I know it. Besides, the FBI and Kagemotos watching us makes sense.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know¡­¡± Charlotte said. ¡°You do sound a bit paranoid.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Eliza commented, ¡°they are interested in ¡®im. Just ¡®cause ¡®e¡¯s a little paranoid doesn¡¯t mean they weren¡¯t there.¡±

    ¡°Thank you, Eliza,¡± I said.

    We then began the journey to the airport. The sun was not out yet, so we were all tired. Surprisingly, when we got there, we could board the plane, a Boeing 747 with NIU markings, directly. As we did, I noticed that Eliza¡¯s only carry-on item was a tweed and brown leather guitar case. ¡°Huh,¡± I commented, ¡°I didn¡¯t know you could play guitar.¡±

    ¡°It isn¡¯t a guitar,¡± she said as she walked up the plane¡¯s boarding ramp.

    When she got in, a guard asked, ¡°You carrying any weapons?¡± I was right behind her.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± she said. ¡°I got an L1A1 in the case and a Browning Hi-Power in my pocket.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± the guard said, somewhat bored. ¡°Next!¡± I stepped forward. ¡°You carrying any weapons?¡± the guard asked.

    ¡°Why would I be carrying weapons on a plane?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Are you going to be this way, mate?¡± the guard asked. ¡°Because you can either reveal the weapons you¡¯re carrying, or I can get someone to strip-search you.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not carrying anything!¡± I protested.

    ¡°Oi, Artyom!¡± The guard called out, ¡°We¡¯ve got a yank claiming ¡®e¡¯s not packing! Want to verify?¡±

    ¡°He isn¡¯t armed!¡± John called out from behind my back. ¡°His dad would freak if he brought guns into the house.¡±

    ¡°Ok, fine,¡± the guard said to me. ¡°Go on, into the plane.¡± I walked into the plane, somewhat annoyed. I noticed that there were only a few people there, most of them white and/or sleeping. I walked over to where Eliza was struggling to insert the case containing her L1A1 into an overhead compartment.

    ¡°Need help stowing it?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Nah,¡± she said, finally shoving it in, ¡°I got it. Thanks for the offer, though.¡± She had chosen a lounge area with four seats on each side facing each other.

    Before she could close it, John came running up. ¡°Wait,¡± he said, ¡°I¡¯ve got something, too!¡± It was a black ABS case.

    ¡°What manner of death are you illegally bringing aboard a plane?¡± I asked.

    John smiled. ¡°Mossberg 500 Hunting in the case, and a Browning Hi-Power under my coat. This means you¡¯re going to have go out and buy stuff for us at the commercial airport stops.¡±

    Charlotte, who had just come up behind him, said, ¡°Yes. If you possess a firearm, you are not allowed to leave the plane until we get back to the university. Something to do with firearm laws. Shame, I rather like seeing new places.¡± I took this to mean she had brought her Webley with her.

    ¡°I should think so!¡± I said. ¡°I mean, think about it. Some guy gets off the plane in, I don¡¯t know, whatever international airport they have in the Midwest, then loses his temper and pulls his Glock on someone. By the way, I call window seat.¡±

    ¡°Yes, of course,¡± Charlotte said.

    About a half an hour later, I saw a Lexus pull up. I was unsurprised to see Jennifer get out. Eliza, who also had a window seat, saw her as well. ¡°Lovely,¡± she growled, her ears flattening, ¡°Ms. Kagemoto¡¯s ¡®ere.¡±

    ¡°Actually,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯ve got some questions to ask her.¡±

    ¡°Is this about yesterday?¡± John asked, ¡°Because I still think you¡¯re ever-so-slightly paranoid.¡±

    ¡°Paranoid about what?¡± We turned around. Jen was staring at us innocently.

    ¡°How did¡­¡± John asked.

    ¡°Jumper,¡± Charlotte, Eliza and I said in unison.

    "Aww,¡± Jen said, ¡°you spoiled the fun. I wanted to see how long it would take for him to figure it out.¡± She sat down besides Charlotte. ¡°So,¡± she said, suddenly business-like, ¡°what did you want to ask me?¡±

    ¡°Just curious,¡± I asked, ¡°does there happen to be a big Jade Empire presence in Maynard? I went home, and I suddenly start noticing a lot of people wearing green.¡±

    ¡°Interesting¡­¡± Jen mused.

    ¡°What?¡± I asked. There was something ominous about how intently Jen was processing this information.

    ¡°Well,¡± she said, ¡°there are some who believe that¡¯s where the Empire was born. In fact, some of their most feared lieutenants come from there. It¡¯s been considered Empire territory since 2010. You say you live there?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, ¡°and I didn¡¯t notice anything until yesterday. But looking back, I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if it was active in Maynard around 2010. There¡¯re a few kids in my school who started wearing all green back then.¡±

    Jennifer nodded. ¡°Was it around spring?¡±

    I shrugged. ¡°Not sure.¡± After that there was a bit of silence. Then the plane took off. Apparently Cross was on a different flight. We also learned we¡¯d be doing a sort of criss-cross with a couple other planes, stopping at a bunch of different airports. That translated to a lot of stops, many of which were in the kind of airports without restaurants. Apparently, I was the only person in the plane who didn¡¯t deal with it by getting drunk as a skunk.

    Charlotte, surprisingly, was the first. When the flight attendant came by, a massive Russian dude, Charlotte ordered some kind of mixed drink.

    ¡°Charlotte¡­¡± I said, ¡°It¡¯s nine thirty. AM. That cocktail has, like, three servings of alcohol in it.¡±

    ¡°But it seems so interesting!¡± Charlotte protested.

    By the time we reached California, I was the only one who didn¡¯t have a hangover. It was¡­ unpleasant, to say the least. I thought people were going to start murdering each other. Or worse, they¡¯d start vomiting.

    ¡°Never,¡± Eliza moaned as the plane landed, ¡°let me drink this bloody much on a plane again.¡±

    ¡°I tried to stop you,¡± I said, getting up. ¡°I tried to stop you all.¡± I hurried away as they all groaned. As I left, I realized that some of the accumulated stink was mine. God, did I want to get off this flight.

    I saw them as soon as I was in the waiting area. May and Mary Riley. The twins were a year older than me, but May was both more intelligent and more childish than I was. She bounced up, her scarred face lighting up. When she was just a kid, she had been in a car accident, leaving one side a patchwork, except around her mouth. Also, an eye had been damaged, so now they were mismatched, one green, one brown. To complete the weird look, she had dyed her hair blond and frosted the tips purple.

    She shot off at me like a rocket. ¡°Wow, you¡¯re here!¡± she said. ¡°Man, I didn¡¯t expect it, but I should have. I mean, you live in the states and go to the same school and you¡¯re probably going to the same place, right? Wait, never mind, where else would you be going. That¡¯s kind of stupid of me. I just made a hangover cure and¡­¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± I said, interrupting her before her rant could gain any more momentum, ¡°you made a hangover cure?¡±

    ¡°Why?¡± May asked. ¡°You don¡¯t seem to have hangover syptoms.¡±

    ¡°My friends do,¡± I said. ¡°Please. I have to sit with them the entire flight.¡±

    ¡°Do I know them?¡± she asked, now business-like.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, ¡°you¡¯ll know John and Eliza. You might not know Jen and Charlotte.¡± May brushed by me, moving with a determination I hadn¡¯t seen. ¡°Also, could you ask them not to drink so much?¡± I called after her.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± Mary said, ¡°if I know my sister, they won¡¯t touch a drop for the rest of the trip.¡±

    ¡°I believe you,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m going to get a pizza and fries.¡±

    When I got back, everyone was fully recovered. They were also staring at May warily. I wasn¡¯t surprised. May had an excellent death glare when she wanted something. Speaking of May, she had a tendency to rap songs from memory when bored. That is how some of us were introduced to people like Biggie Smalls, Tupac, Tech N9ne, The Geto Boys, Kendrick Lamar, and Lupe Fiasco. She was really good, from what I could tell.

    However, it was still about forty-eight before we finally got to Nowhere Island. When we finally touched down in that hell hole in the Pacific, I was exhausted. I was done. It was in a daze that John and I got back to our dorm room.

    Eric was the only one in the room when we got in. He looked up from his desk. ¡°Ah, John! Killer!¡± I winced as he used my hated nickname. ¡°You are back! This calls for a celebration! Would you like to go to The Drunken Mercenary?¡±

    We stared at him for a second. Then we both shouted, ¡°NO!¡±

 2.7: School Store

    As I awoke, I came to the sudden realization that I was passing out a lot. Not mysteriously, thankfully. I just seemed to keep getting into situations where that¡¯s just what you did. Still, it was something I didn¡¯t think I should make a habit of. As I lifted my head, I suddenly realized I had a headache. ¡°Why?¡± I groaned ¡°I didn¡¯t touch a drop of alcohol on the flight¡­¡±

    ¡°Stop putting your socks in the vents¡­¡± John moaned. I moved out from under my bed to see that John on the top bunk. His eyes were closed and he was drooling a bit. In other words, he was stone cold sleeping.

    I suddenly realized that the sun was out. I took my iTouch out. It was out of batteries. I then took out my phone. It was also out of batteries. I tried to go back to sleep, but that wasn¡¯t really possible with the sun shining through the windows. I then decided that showering was a nice goal.

    After getting the clothes I wanted to wear, something buzzed in my desk. Before it could wake up John, I opened it up. There was the student-issued phone I had been given.  Known as the cPhone (or Campus Phone,) it had a lot of features that I had completely forgotten about because I had been in a sort of haze due to all the meds I was on when I got it.

    On the screen was a picture of a man with shaven head, giant beard and chiseled jaw. Text on the image said ¡°Call from Dmitri Arkadyvich Popov.¡± Below that, there was a graphic indicating for me to swipe right to accept and left to hang up. It also told me it was 7:00 AM on Saturday. It should have been Friday. Then I remembered time zones. Suddenly my headache made much more sense.

    I accepted the call and moved the phone by my ear. Before I could get my greeting out, a thick Russian accent asked, ¡°Hello? Is this Nathan Jacobs?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said groggily. ¡°I¡­ I mean, good morning.¡±

    ¡°Hello,¡± the man said, ¡°I am Popov. I run Drunken Mercenary and am calling about your application.¡± Oh yeah. All Freshmen not taking Hell Semester were expected to take a campus job and do an extracurricular. I had done some applications, mostly to jobs I thought would allow me to become virtually invisible and pick up some interesting information, like janitor duty or waiter. The man, Popov, continued, ¡°If you are still interested in working at bar, please come down to Drunken Mercenary.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said, ¡°when do you want to see me?¡±

    ¡°Now is good,¡± Popov said. ¡°Please come immediately.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, sure,¡± I said, ¡°just let me shower first.¡±

    ¡°Is not needed,¡± Popov said. ¡°Drunken Mercenary is not fancy. Neither am I.¡± He then hung up. I stared at the phone for a bit, then decided that it was best to not keep Popov waiting.

    Luckily, my dorm room was in the same building as The Drunken Mercenary. I just had to walk down the aggressively white corridors, take the elevator and walk down the hall. The interior entrance to the bar would be a bit before the main exit from Marine. Something told me that alcoholics liked living in Marine Hall.

    Just as I was about to head in to the bar, the main door opened. In stumbled Cross, carrying his luggage. ¡°Oh,¡± he said, ¡°hey Killer. How¡¯re things going?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m just going to do an interview for a bartending position at The Drunken Mercenary,¡± I said. ¡°It seems like¡­¡±

    ¡°Please,¡± Cross said, holding up his hands, ¡°Do not mention alcohol, bars, or planes until after I¡¯ve barfed a few times.¡±

    ¡°Well, have fun I guess¡­¡± I said, stepping hurriedly into The Drunken Mercenary to avoid any projectile vomit.

    To call the Drunken Mercenary a dive was a bit of an understatement. There was a bit of an effort to make it look like a medieval tavern, with stone walls and floors, and rough-hewn wood furniture. However, that was where the niceness ended. Covering these objects was a sheen of dirt, dust, and spilled alcohol. The windows, due to them being frosted so passers-by couldn¡¯t see though them, didn¡¯t let in as much light as they should have. Combine all this with a mild stench of various kinds of booze and undertones of BO, blood, and what may or may not have been sexual fluids, and you had quite the dump.

    I also noticed that there was other entertainment than libations. A few televisions were scattered across the room and there was a pool table near me, and a poker table a little farther towards the door. I leaned closer to investigate. Blood and something else had stained it. I had been in worse places, but none of them had been designed to serve food.

    ¡°Ah,¡± said a voice from somewhere in the back. I turned around to a guy who looked like Popov¡¯s picture emerging from a door marked as a bathroom. I noticed he was a little short and had a bit of a belly, but the arms under his blue NIU t-shirt were extremely muscular. ¡°You are here! Come, talk with me.¡±

    He moved behind the bar, a rough-hewn wood thing that matched up with the bar¡¯s medieval aesthetic. I followed him over there. When I accidentally caused a scraping noise by moving a chair, I flinched.

    ¡°You need hair of dog?¡± Popov asked.

    ¡°No,¡± I said, ¡°it¡¯s just jet-lag. I¡¯m actually the only one in my group who didn¡¯t touch any alcohol.¡±

    ¡°Do you drink?¡± Popov asked, a look of suspicion on his face.

    ¡°Not on a f¡­ not on a plane,¡± I said. ¡°Especially if you¡¯re going to be trapped with a bunch of people carrying guns.¡±

    ¡°Good,¡± Popov said. ¡°I am never trusting of people who don¡¯t drink yet work in bar. Often, they lie and are alcoholic. Or they sabotage beer.¡± He stretched, then said, ¡°Now, we have position for second shift bartender for Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Shift starts at nine PM and is ending at two. Can you make it?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, suddenly hesitant due to his views on sober people. ¡°I don¡¯t remember having any early morning or late night classes. Do you need any qualifications?¡±

    ¡°Is not needed,¡± Popov said, waving his hand dismissively. ¡°You fill up beer from tap or pour from bottle. Is also some refiling of popcorn machine and swiping cards. However, there are special rules.¡± He then motioned me to come behind the bar. I did so, and noticed that there was a Kel-Tec KSG shotgun and a key ring underneath in a small alcove. There was also a glass case with some high quality booze.

    ¡°Shotgun is for when patrons get out of hand,¡± Popov said, ¡°Right tube is rock salt, left is buckshot. Keys are for switching shit beer in taps, and accessing good stuff. You are in control of access to good booze. Only friends of yours get good booze. Not teachers you want to get good grades from. Not comrades from your program. Not my friends. Not bouncer or waitress friends. Your friends. Understand?¡±

    ¡°The rules, yes,¡± I said, ¡°but why¡­¡±

    ¡°Wonderful!¡± Popov said. ¡°Now, pay is five point five campus credits an hour, which would be eight point two-five US dollars. You take job, da?¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said. ¡°I just have¡­¡±

    ¡°Other bartender will answer questions,¡± Popov said, ¡°now shoo! Go enjoy your weekend! Class begins Monday, and your new job is starting Tuesday.¡±

    After I was hurried out, I decided to fiddle a bit with my cPhone. First, I went to preferences. The first thing I noticed was the Privacy and Security features. The first was Geolocation and had the options of Public, Friends Only, Personal, Obscure, or Hard Off. I flicked it to Hard Off, which apparently completely disabled the GPS chip.

    I then looked at Password and Biometric Protection. That was a bit more complex. Options included just a simple four to twelve character password, to just reading the print of a finger, to a system that would require you to insert four to twelve characters and each character having to be put in by a specific finger. You could also choose for your phone to delete all data, explode, or both if a person entered a wrong code enough times. I decided that a five character password (no I¡¯m not telling you what it was) with any finger. For good measure, I added the data wipe. I wasn¡¯t sure I wanted to mess around with enabling the bomb.

    Exhausting the security features, I went into the sync. I suddenly realized I could sync my phone to INTRA, NIU¡¯s proprietary social network. It was sort of cross between Facebook and Reddit. Apparently, I had to turn on the GPS to access that one, though. After I got my personal email, INTRA, and calendar all synced up to the phone, I decided to head up to go shower.

    After heading through the weirdly white corridors (seriously, I couldn¡¯t tell where the floor ended and the wall began) I got back to the room. John and Cross were out cold. Again, I got out my clothes, towel, washcloth, soap and shampoo. I then headed to the bathroom. After the shower, I realized that I needed to do some shopping for school supplies. And get something to eat. Leaving behind my iTouch and my cellphone, I grabbed my wallet and coat and headed out to the Newell-Howard Student Center.

    The Newell-Howard Student Center was the biggest student center on campus. It was west of the main gate and was right next to President Newell-Howard¡¯s mansion. Like most of the buildings on campus, it was that good-looking mix of brick and large amounts of glass that many public buildings that seemed to be really popular in the states. However, unlike the ones back home, all these buildings seemed to be old, possibly from the eighties. That style seemed to have only gotten popular in the states in the late two thousands.

    The weather wasn¡¯t great. Like the last time I was there, the sky was gray, the air was cold as fuck, and snow was everywhere. At least the wind had decided to fuck off and it wasn¡¯t actively snowing. Plus, the snow had actually been plowed.

    On the other hand, the snow and gray sky made everything look eerie and abandoned. Added to the fact that no one was out on the road, and things were looking very creepy. Normally, I kind of liked being the only person on the street early in the morning or late at night, but that was in normal places. In NIU, it made me extremely nervous. For all I knew, someone¡¯s experiment could have gone horribly, horribly wrong (or horribly, horribly right) and I was the only survivor.

    When I finally was standing outside Newell-Howard, I was gladdened to see that, if you looked over the snow-covered, fence-enclosed patio and through the large window, you could see people in uniforms moving around the cafeteria. I opened the main door, which got me into a lounge area with couches, high tables, barstools and a TV. On my right side was the entrance to the cafeteria. I was about open the door, when I noticed a sign on the door. It was the dining hall vacation schedule in English, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, and Arabic. Apparently, the dining hall didn¡¯t resume normal hours until Monday. That meant the dining hall wouldn¡¯t open until 11:30 AM for brunch. My cPhone said it was 8:03.

    With that, I went to a couch in front of the TV. I picked up the remote. I didn¡¯t have to flip through the channels at all. As soon as I turned the TV on, it said that normal broadcasts were suspended until school resumed.

    Sighing, I decided to go to sleep. After all, my headache was still there, though not exactly in full force.

    ¡°Oi,¡± a familiar voice queried sometime later, ¡°what are you sleeping around for?¡±

    I opened my eyes. There, brushing snow off themselves, were Eliza, Jen, Charlotte, and their other roommate, Alma Hebert. Well, Eliza, Jen and Charlotte brushed snow off themselves. Alma didn¡¯t seem to notice the snow and just stared ahead with weirdly dead gray eyes, her stringy black hair obscuring her pale face somewhat. I supposed she had been even creepier the last two

    times we had met, but there was still something just wrong about her.

    ¡°Eliza!¡± I said happily. ¡°Jen! Charlotte! Good to see you¡­ and Alma.¡± Alma nodded, seemingly forgiving me for forgetting to mention her. However, something told me that forgiveness was misleading. In order to forgive someone, you have to care about the crime that¡¯s been committed against you. Distracting myself from these thoughts, I asked, ¡°What are you girls doing here?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Charlotte said, as the girls sat down on the couch perpendicular to me, ¡°We were getting some breakfast at Caf¨¦ Charlemagne when Eliza picked up your scent.¡± I noticed that Eliza was carrying a tray of four hot drinks and Charlotte was carrying a white paper bag, and they were laying them out on the coffee table. ¡°So she went out, got a good whiff and deduced you were headed here to get some food. Jen realized that they weren¡¯t serving food, so we decided to bring you some food. Does hot chocolate and a sausage, egg and cheese biscuit sound acceptable to you?¡±

    ¡°Definitely!¡± I said. ¡°How much do I¡­?¡±

    ¡°Nonsense!¡± Charlotte said. ¡°You are a friend in need. We aren¡¯t about to let you go hungry.¡±

    This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

    ¡°Have you heard the phrase ¡®there¡¯s no such thing as a free lunch?¡¯¡± I asked, only a little jokingly.

    ¡°Of course, Nathan,¡± Jennifer said, smiling predatorily. ¡°That¡¯s why we got you breakfast.¡± I smiled back nervously as Charlotte and Eliza began to distribute the food.

    ¡°Egg and cheese croissant for me,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°Egg and cheese English muffin for Eliza¡­¡±

    ¡°Thanks, sis,¡± Eliza said, accepting the paper-wrapped sandwich.

    ¡°Bacon, egg and cheese bagel for Miss Kagemoto¡­¡± Charlotte continued.

    ¡°Thank you, Miss Blackmoor-Ward,¡± Jennifer said with a smile as she took her sandwich.

    ¡°And sausage, egg and cheese for you, Mr. Jacobs.¡±

    I took the paper-wrapped sandwich. Surprisingly, it was still somewhat warm. ¡°Thanks,¡± I said, starting to unwrap it. Suddenly, a thought came into my head. ¡°Hey, Alma,¡± I asked, ¡°didn¡¯t you order anything?¡±

    She shrugged. ¡°I don¡¯t really eat that much.¡± I noticed that instead of sitting on the couch with us, she had instead opted to lean on the wall next to the TV.

    ¡°If you say so¡­¡± I said. I took a bite out of my sandwich. Man, was it good. The meat was top quality, and the biscuit was nice and buttery.

    ¡°Oh, Nate!¡± Eliza said, handing me my drink. ¡°Before I forget, here¡¯s your hot chocolate. It¡¯s some kind of fancy hot chocolate, has a higher level of cacao, I think. Also has some whipped cream and marshmallows in it.¡±

    ¡°Thanks,¡± I said, taking it from her hands. I was intrigued. I always liked the darker chocolates like Hershey¡¯s Special Dark and Ghirardelli¡¯s Intense Dark. I took a sip. It was so good I actually sighed. ¡°This,¡± I said, ¡°is the best fucking hot chocolate I have ever tasted.¡±

    ¡°Need t¡¯change your pants?¡± Eliza asked innocently. There was a loud stomping sound. ¡°Ow!¡± Eliza said. ¡°Don¡¯t do that when you¡¯re wearing bloody heels, Char! Bloody ¡®ell!¡± Meanwhile, Charlotte was regally sipping her drink, pretending nothing had happened. Jen was suppressing a laugh, and Alma¡¯s impassive face shifted to show a minute amount of interest.

    ¡°Maybe,¡± I said, deepening my voice for comedic effect. ¡°It was very good chocolate.¡±

    Eliza threw back her head and cackled and Jen doubled over. Charlotte, meanwhile, set her coffee down and rubbed her nose as if staving off a headache. ¡°Oh God,¡± she muttered, ¡°there¡¯s two more of you¡­¡±

    ¡°You know it, baby¡­¡± I said, still speaking deeply. After Jen stopped laughing and Eliza calmed down, I said, ¡°Seriously, though, it is really is good.¡± Eliza and Jen burst out laughing again, and Charlotte chuckled a bit as well.

    ¡°So,¡± I asked, after eating some of my sandwich, ¡°what are we going to do after this?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°the school store opens at ten. It might be nice to go there in a bit.¡±

    I nodded. ¡°Sure thing.¡± I then took a back seat in the conversation. A lot of my attention, however, was focused on Alma. I had first met her the night before Hell Semester¡¯s final. I was patrolling the base when I had seen a ghost. I even had a brief conversation with said ghost. Apparently, that ghost was a sort of projection of Alma. She was a psychic and her dorm¡¯s heating had broken. Somehow, that translated to her haunting my patrol.

    Needless to say, I was curious¡­ and slightly disturbed. ¡°So,¡± Alma said, startling the rest of us, ¡°Nathan, you have some questions for me.¡± It was weird. It was like I was the only one who had remembered she was still there.

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said, ¡°it¡¯s just¡­¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t know much about Psychics, right?¡± Alma asked. ¡°Don¡¯t worry. Apparently, not many people know about psychics. Even people who study psionic powers for a living have only a limited understanding how our powers work.¡±

    ¡°So,¡± I said, ¡°are you saying you don¡¯t know how you ended up observing my patrol?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m surprised,¡± Alma said, her voice still monotone and her expression still bland. ¡°Most people ask me if I¡¯m reading their minds.¡±

    ¡°Actually,¡± I said, ¡°you might need to explain some of the basics. That is, if mind reading is basic.¡±

    ¡°Here we go,¡± Jennifer said rolling her eyes.

    ¡°You¡¯re right,¡± Alma said, ¡°you do need to know the basics. First off, mind-reading both is and isn¡¯t really a thing.¡±

    ¡°Makes sense,¡± I said. ¡°After all, scientists know very little about the brain. It¡¯s too complex to really get a good read on.¡±

    Alma nodded. ¡°Right. Your mind isn¡¯t really a book. It¡¯s more a transmitter. Some of the information is conscious thought. The vast majority is unconscious thought. This includes things like your body telling your lungs to inhale and exhale, your heart to beat, your blood cells to clot a cut.

    ¡°The difference between me and the rest of you is that I¡¯m also a receiver as well as a transmitter. Because I am more powerful than most psychics, my range is¡­ considerable. Most psychics would have a range about the size of this room. They might be able tell general things about you, like if you¡¯re angry, or more advanced things, like you have cancer. Some of the lucky ones might not be able to tell you how they know.¡±

    I nodded. I actually knew a bit about psychics. One of the thing I had done when not having dinner with English nobility over winter vacation was do some research. One of the topics of my research was about psychics. I admit, some of what I had said may have been designed to obfuscate the fact that said research had taken place. So far, there was only one thing that didn¡¯t jive with my research.

    ¡°Why would it be lucky?¡± I asked. This is what I was curious about. The articles on the ACLU and WebMD I had read about psychics were very vague on something they called ¡°psionic contact,¡± other than that it was extremely dangerous.

    ¡°Well,¡± Alma said, ¡°If you don¡¯t know you¡¯re psychic, you can¡¯t press further, try to sort out some of the confusing things you¡¯re¡­ well, I won¡¯t call it hearing or seeing. Honestly, it¡¯s not something I can explain.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯d be like trying to explain sound to a deaf person,¡± I said.

    Alma nodded. ¡°Exactly. Anyway, if you can figure out how to focus on someone, they also see you. Also, when you focus on things people¡­ things get weird.¡± She paused, then asked, still in her somewhat disturbing monotone, ¡°Have you ever heard of people going on an LSD trip and never coming back? It¡¯s a lot like that in some cases. When a Psychic makes contact with a normal human, both start to hallucinate, usually severely. Sometimes, it becomes hard to stop seeing things. I find, though, that the risk decreases if you focus on multiple people at once.¡±

    Odd, I thought. Much of what I read implied that was impossible. Or at least very difficult. Then again, the only other way she could appear in far-off places is if she was also a Jumper, which have been notoriously difficult to cross-breed with other Parahumans.

    ¡°But enough about me,¡± she said. ¡°My roommates have been talking about you. I¡¯m a little curious now.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯m not sure what there is to talk about. There¡¯s Hell Semester, which I kind of don¡¯t want to talk about. There¡¯s my family, who I¡¯m afraid to talk about in case one of the psychos I¡¯ve pissed off decides to take their frustration out on them.¡±

    ¡°Please,¡± Alma asked, her voice still monotone, ¡°just answer one question.¡±

    I shrugged. ¡°I suppose I owe you a few. Shoot.¡±

    Her question made my blood run cold. ¡°What¡¯s it like to kill someone?¡±

    Everyone stared at her for a bit. Finally, I said, ¡°It¡¯s weird. Sometimes, the actual act is the easiest thing in the world. Working up the¡­ I don¡¯t want to say courage¡­ to actually do it is a lot harder, but it gets easier. Living with it, now that¡¯s the hardest. I still have nightmares from the first time.¡±

    I paused, remembering the rock striking Amir on the temple, his blood blinding me, his body limp and unmoving. ¡°You¡¯re remembering your first, aren¡¯t you?¡± Alma asked.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°What are you getting off me?¡±

    ¡°You were stressed at the time,¡± Alma began, still in her monotone. I nodded. ¡°Scared. Was it self-defense?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°I think the situation I was designed to break down norms like ¡®don¡¯t kill.¡¯ Self-defense is a pretty efficient way to do that.¡± Making an effort not to stare at the floor, I decided to observe everyone else¡¯s reactions. I noted that Eliza was starting to fidget. Charlotte and Jen were looking at me with interest, Charlotte¡¯s more horrified.

    She nodded. ¡°Close-range?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°He was choking me to death. I had a rock and¡­¡±

    She nodded. ¡°This was sort of an experiment. I¡¯ve taken a few psych classes to see if I could focus my power, figure out how to understand what it was telling me. Sorry if that hurt to talk about.¡± Again, she was speaking in her weird monotone, but I got the impression that she was genuinely sorry.

    ¡°It didn¡¯t hurt¡­¡± I protested.

    ¡°Really?¡± she asked. ¡°Is that why you¡¯ve been moving into a defensive position? Why you couldn¡¯t look at me while talking about it? Psychological pain is no less valid than physical pain.¡±

    When the bookstore finally opened, we all headed up the stairs. I consulted my cPhone (seriously, why hadn¡¯t thrown out my dumb phone?) to see what course materials I¡¯d need. First up, I¡¯d need a grammar guide and literature textbook for College English (NA-ENG 1000.) I¡¯d also need a generic textbook for Algebra (MATH-1100) and Military History (AMS 1100.) Intro to Sociology and Philosophy of Government required actual books. For Philosophy of Government, I actually knew most of them: Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli, The Republic by Plato, and The Communist Manifest by Karl Marx. For the sociology class, I¡¯d already bought Parahuman Varieties and Cultures. That was one of my sources about Psychics.

    I¡¯d also, apparently need a travel case for my weapons and holsters. Campus required that weapons remain either secured or concealed. I¡¯d be taking Weapons Refreshment (WPN 5100) as well having to shoot five hundred rounds a week. I thanked the NIU scholarship for paying for all of the textbooks, then started to browse.

    The first thing I got was the case. That, I figured, might be able to hold all the various crap I had. I was wrong, but I figured out that I could get foam inserts for my various guns, plus several magazines. As the lady behind the counter was making the inserts, I happily went to shop for books.

    As I was searching through the books, Jennifer walked up next to me. ¡°Good job,¡± she said. ¡°I remember the first time I tried to pull a fast one on Alma. She saw through it. You, however, spent most of that plane ride reading Parahuman Varieties and Culture, yet she thinks you know nothing about Psychics¡­¡±

    She continued talking, but as she did so, she dissolved into dust and blew away. As she did so, my vision turned sepia and blurry. Somehow, I knew someone was standing behind me. I turned around. There was Alma, backlit by an odd source of light. For some reason, her outline was flickering. ¡°So you did know something about Psychics¡­¡± she said, her voice still monotone.

    ¡°So is this what you meant what you meant by how things get¡­ trippy when you make direct contact with someone,¡± I said as she walked towards me. As she did so, I noticed that she looked mummified. That¡¯s how she appeared when she had first talked to me during my patrol. Deciding that this was important, I asked, ¡°So, why do you look like you¡¯ve been dead for a couple decades?¡±

    ¡°None of your business.¡± The anger in her voice was barely perceptible, but some of the shelves bent in response. Her next words were much calmer. ¡°Anyway, you have a friend. A¡­ little bird has told me that a certain Al-Qaeda member by the name of Mubashir Barak has been helping you at great risk. Be on the lookout for him.¡±

    ¡°Why are you telling me this in this way?¡± I asked.

    ¡°This is the most secure way of communicating,¡± Alma said. ¡°From what I can tell, you don¡¯t trust many people.¡± Suddenly, she began to blow away, just like Jen had. My vision also returned to normal. ¡°I hope this helps,¡± she said as she blew away. ¡°You could be very useful to me¡­¡±

    I heard a sigh behind me. I turned around. There was Jen, obviously not turned to dust. ¡°You just talked to Alma, didn¡¯t you?¡± she asked. ¡°Did she figure it out?¡±

    ¡°She kind of overheard you, I guess,¡± I said.

    ¡°Damn,¡± Jen said. ¡°I really hate how everyone here seems to have their own mysterious agenda here¡­¡±

 2.8: Back to the School Where It Began

    My schedule was somehow very grueling. I mean, it was nowhere near as bad as Hell Semester, but the amount of work still surprised me. First were Mondays. I had to go to an English class around ten AM, which was located in the main academic building by the Newell-Howard Student Center. At first, I thought it was a good, relaxing class. We just had to read something as a class and do some introductions. Then the teacher gave us a five-paragraph essay about where we came from to write. ¡°We only have one class a week,¡± she said.

    Next, I had my radio show at three. The way radio shows worked was you first applied to Freshman Radio. They said that they would then put you in room with at least one other person for an hour at a time, and the two of you would have to try and keep your listeners entertained during that time.

    When I got in to the Freshman Radio office around two forty-five (it was located on the second floor of Newell-Howard,) I was surprised to see it had a small waiting area with a window overlooking the cafeteria. There was only one other person, a young baby-faced white guy with slightly wavy dark hair and tiny glasses. He was looking at a laptop and typing stuff. I sat down in a red vinyl chair. He was about average height sitting down, but I could tell that if he stood up, he would be taller than almost anyone.

    As soon as I sat down, someone came in from the radio room. ¡°Hey, guys,¡± the newcomer said, ¡°are Nathan Jacobs and Andrew Sebaldi here?¡± He was black, and, judging by his weight, was definitely not a Shadowhaven or an AMS student. We were required to spend a certain amount of time in the gym, and most of us (me and my roommates included) did daily exercises. This guy had a lot of baby fat on him. He then turned towards me. When he saw me, his eyes widened a bit. ¡°Oh¡­ Didn¡¯t¡­ didn¡¯t, uh, see you there.¡±

    ¡°Are you talking about me?¡± laptop guy asked.

    ¡°Both of you,¡± the newcomer said. ¡°Follow me, please.¡± He led us back behind the hallway. ¡°Sorry about this,¡± he said, ¡°we¡¯ve still got a bunch of people coming in. A few planes were delayed in Alaska and Chile. Me and my partner had to cover two extra shifts. Follow me¡±

    He then led us out into a hallway. There were two rooms, with a window in to each of them. Inside each of them were a computer monitor, microphones, headphones and a control board. The far one had a guy talking into a microphone. The guy we were with led us into the closer one and gave us a quick rundown of how to turn on music (the computer had iTunes on it and we could also plug in an MP3 player,) mics, and to switch to the other booth when we were done.

    ¡°Ok,¡± he said, ¡°you guys got it?¡± We nodded. ¡°Good. You have nine minutes, plus when our song finishes. Once it¡¯s done, you¡¯re going to read the station ID on that piece of paper, introduce yourself, and your show name. Excuse me.¡±

    He walked out. We put on our headphones. Through them, we could hear the current show. ¡°Hi,¡± my partner said after they were on, turning towards me and extending his hand, ¡°I¡¯m Andy.¡±

    ¡°Nate,¡± I said, taking his hand. He had a firm handshake.

    ¡°So,¡± Andy asked, ¡°do you have an idea for a show name? Because I honestly have no idea.¡±

    ¡°How about Flounder?¡± I suggested.

    "Flounder?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°Because we have no idea what we¡¯re doing.¡±

    ¡°Works for me.¡± Andy said with a shrug. ¡°So, where you from?¡±

    ¡°Massachusetts,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m from a town called Maynard¡­¡±

    ¡°I heard of that place,¡± he said. ¡°DEC was headquartered there, right? Then it became Digital. There¡¯s still some tech companies there, right?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°My Dad worked there.¡±

    ¡°Cool,¡± Andy said. ¡°My parents worked all sorts of places. New York, Boston, Austin, Silicon Valley¡­ they were tech people as well.¡±

    ¡°So, let me guess,¡± I said, ¡°you¡¯re an art major.¡± He laughed. ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°serious guess: you¡¯re in the CompSci school.¡±

    He nodded. ¡°You too, right?¡±

    ¡°Academy of Military Science, actually,¡± I said. ¡°It¡¯s kind of hard to believe, I know. Sometimes, I don¡¯t eve believe it.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± Andy said. ¡°I thought that they wouldn¡¯t let people with glasses join.¡±

    ¡°Anyone who passes Hell Semester can join,¡± I said.

    ¡°Kind of egalitarian of them.¡±

    ¡°Hell Semester is designed to kill fifty percent of the people who enroll.¡±

    Andy¡¯s eyes widened. ¡°Well,¡± he said, ¡°I did not know that. Did anyone you know¡­?¡±

    I shrugged. ¡°I was lucky. I made friends and was able to learn the necessary skills to survive quickly. It was tough, but I did it.¡±

    Suddenly, the light that told us we were on came on and there was silence over the headphones. Quickly, I turned on our mics. ¡°Hello,¡± I said, while trying to find a song, ¡°you are tuned into 87.3 FM and/or 87.3 HD. I¡¯m Nate Jacobs¡­¡±

    ¡°And I¡¯m Andy Sebaldi,¡± Andy said. I flashed him a thumbs up.

    ¡°And this¡­¡± I said, ¡°¡­is Flounder.¡± The show went well. I found that we had a weird mesh of music tastes. For instance, I had started the show off with ¡°Lifestyles of the Rich and the Famous¡± by Good Charlotte. I also had selected a lot of stuff from bands like Fall Out Boy, The Kongos, and Green Day. Andy had picked out a lot of slower stuff like Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins as well as some classic rock and punk like The Clash and The Beatles.

    I also had some nice chats with him, both on and off air. We¡¯d play two songs, then switch to talking bits. During my conversations with him, I found out several things about him. First off, he was very smart. He was a sophomore, despite the fact he was a sixteen-year-old who looked fourteen. He was majoring in Artificial Intelligence and his advisor was pressuring him to dual-major in Factory Systems as well because how he had used the school¡¯s 3D-printer to make his own personal 3D-printer. Then he used that to make an assembly line in his bedroom.

    I also learned he was a bit like May. He had this tendency to go into long rants about various things. They weren¡¯t as charming as May¡¯s, but they were much easier to tune out if they got annoying. All in all, even if he wasn¡¯t useful, he was still a nice guy to get to know.

    I shook myself at that thought. If he was a good guy, then I should definitely keep him out of what I was doing. After all, I was doing this to protect people. If I dragged someone into this, hell, if I hung out with people too much, there was no guarantee I could keep them safe.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    However, if I didn¡¯t make aggressive moves, someone here could make a death ray and wipe out New York or do a million other things that caused innocent people to die.

    As we were relieved, I was still debating myself. Noticing my ruminations, but misinterpreting my reasons, Andy asked, ¡°You got the back-to-school blues?¡±

    ¡°Something like that,¡± I said.

    ¡°The nerds of the island have a cure,¡± Andy said. ¡°We¡¯re holding a party on Friday at Graham¡¯s Game Bar. It¡¯s sort of like a nerdy nightclub. There¡¯s going to be a LAN party, so if you play LOL, Counter-Strike, or Starcraft 2, you should bring your computer. Bring any friends you want.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m probably going to have supper with them now.¡±

    True to my word, I did. I actually met up with John, Cross, and Eric and his gang. I told them about Andy¡¯s offer.

    ¡°Do you think that they¡¯ll have anyone who can hook me up with sixties Marvel comics?¡± Ray-Gun asked. He was one of Eric¡¯s crew, and he had apparently gotten his nickname from his fascination with Silver Age American comics. His favorite was Jim Steranko¡¯s run on Nick Fury, Agent of SHEILD. I wasn¡¯t sure if he had the complete set.

    I shrugged. ¡°Possible.¡±

    ¡°Do you think the girls would be interested?¡± John asked.

    ¡°Depends on which girls,¡± I said. ¡°Maybe Eliza and her roommates would be interested. May probably wouldn¡¯t want to get out, but I think it would be good for her.¡± Suddenly, there was a beep from my pocket.

    ¡°Shit,¡± I said, looking at my cPhone, ¡°I¡¯ve got class. Sociology. See you.¡±

    ¡°We will see you later,¡± Eric said, ¡°and we will also make sure to listen to your show in the future.¡±

    ¡°Do you guys have radios?¡± I asked, getting up.

    ¡°They¡¯re built into our phones,¡± Ray-Gun said. ¡°These things are cooler than the Star Trek communicator.¡±

    Sociology was really cool. The first class mostly went over the syllabus and addressed the various things that sociology covered. As my teacher explained, sociology is the study of how people interact. It may be a soft science, but that didn¡¯t mean it wasn¡¯t useful. In fact, it was actually fascinating. For instance, did you know that Karl Marx actually contributed a lot to sociology? The conflict theory is basically the idea that history is shaped by two ideological forces clashing together. I¡¯m not exactly a full subscriber to it, but it makes a lot more sense than Communism.

    Homework was very simple. Read a few chapters so we could have a discussion on it. That was the same for Philosophy of Government (another place where Mr. Marx showed up) and Military History, both Tuesday and Thursday classes. Our instructor for Military History reminded all us Freshman AMS and Shadowhaven students that we¡¯d have to meet with our advisors by the month. I made a mental note to do that, then continued to take notes with my notebook.

    Math, however, was brutal. John and Eric were in the class as well, and we were dismayed when the first thing our teacher did was to give us a test. After that, we were given a large amount of homework.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, to John, ¡°there goes Wednesday.¡±

    ¡°I know,¡± he said. ¡°Plus, we¡¯ve got this again on Thursday.¡± He paused, then said, ¡°Fuck me, right?¡±

    ¡°Hopefully the night shift at The Drunken Mercenary won¡¯t be too bad,¡± I said.

    It was awful. The only person there that I knew was Mary Riley, and she was too busy breaking up fights. During the three days I worked there, I noticed a pattern. When I got in, it would be mildly rushed. When ten rolled around, the bar would become less crowded, but more rowdy. By the time midnight rolled around, we¡¯d have to break up at least two bar fights. Once in a while, we¡¯d even need the help of Campus Security. Then, around twelve thirty, it would suddenly begin to wind down, leaving only one or two people slumped in their drinks. Then we¡¯d begin the process of closing up shop.

    Mary explained the situation to me the first night as we closed. ¡°Hell Semester gives people a taste of action,¡± she said. ¡°A lot of people get addicted to it. This area is a place where they can get that feeling of adrenalin that you only get from fights. The rules are even relaxed for fighting here. However, actual weapons are a big no-no here.¡±

    I didn¡¯t really appreciate that until the morning. It was almost three and we were still closing up. I then went up and staggered into bed. I suddenly realized that I¡¯d have to do that tomorrow and the day after. I think I cried myself to sleep.

    Friday, after three days of math and bartending, I ended up going to a class that promised to be fun: Weapon Refreshment. The Patton Building, where the dedicated AMS and Shadowhaven classes took place, was quite the walk away. I had the class with Eliza, Eric, John, Cross, and Bai. Since it started at one, we all decided to walk down together. Since the class was at one, we decided to head down to the nearest student center, Sun Tzu to eat lunch at eleven.

    We met up outside Squire Hall, our weapons in long cases. Eliza was a bit late. After she finally got down, I said, ¡°So, who here thinks they can run all the way to Sun Tzu?¡±

    Eliza laughed. ¡°It isn¡¯t about if we can all make it,¡± she said, ¡°It¡¯s about ¡®oo gets their last.¡± She began running. ¡°¡®Cause that wanker has to buy us all coffee at Charlemange¡¯s!¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re on!¡± I yelled. It turned out to be a bad idea, at least for John. He lost by about five seconds and Eliza, Cross and Eric teased him mercilessly. I was happier than John because I almost beat Eliza, surprising everyone.

    Eventually, though, Bai got tired of people teasing John. ¡°You know,¡± she said, ¡°John may have come in last, but at least he was not out of breath, Cross.¡±

    After we sat down to enjoy our food (apparently, the Sun Tzu¡¯s menu was Asian-style and the building was sort of styled off the Forbidden Palace,) I decided to invite Eliza and Bai to the party.

    ¡°So,¡± I said to the two girls, ¡°There¡¯s this party at a place called Graham¡¯s Game Bar. I heard about it because my radio show co-host invited me to it. The rest of the guys and May are coming. We¡¯re going to get supper here, then head over. Do you guys want to come?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure¡­¡± Bai said.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± Eliza said, ¡°Give me a few minutes with ¡®er, and she¡¯ll be coming. Should I bring Char and Jen?¡±

    ¡°Depends,¡± I said. ¡°If you can contact them before we go¡­¡±

    ¡°They¡¯re actually ¡®aving Pistol Marksmanship,¡± Eliza said. ¡°They should be finishin¡¯ up by the time we get there.¡±

    When we got there, they actually were all still there. I checked my phone. Class actually should be starting now. I looked in through the door that led into the shooting gallery. I could still see that the previous class was watching several people. I looked up and saw Richard Forrest Taylor the Third, and a group of his flunkies coming towards us. I recognized one of them. Kyle, I believe his name was. I also recognized that most, if not all, of Richard¡¯s group used to be Kyle¡¯s group.

    ¡°Oh look,¡± Richard said, his twang evident, ¡°it¡¯s the Jew.¡±

    I sighed. ¡°Really, Richard? You¡¯re going to do this here?¡± Out of the corner I saw Eliza stiffen. I also saw Eric, Cross and John stiffen a bit. Eric, in particular, had reached into the duffel bag he was carrying. Bai just seemed confused.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Kyle said, ¡°this isn¡¯t really the place, man.¡± Something about how Kyle was acting made me question whether or not it really was Richard¡¯s group or if it was Kyle¡¯s. This suspicion became stronger when Richard actually backed down. I made a mental note of it, and went back to looking through the door.

    I had been watching for a few minutes when I heard Richard mutter something. I wasn¡¯t really sure what he said. Eliza, however, was. Before I could even consider what Richard had said, I heard a wet schlick sound. I turned to see Eliza¡¯s bone claws had ejected.

    For the first time, I realized why she didn¡¯t use them more often. To eject them, she had to dislocate her knuckles and pierce the skin between her fingers and the claws themselves were wet with her own blood.

    Her expression was also quite something to behold. Her green eyes flashed dangerously and her ears were flattened. Her skin, usually somewhat fair under her freckles, was now a chalky white. ¡°You wot, mate?¡± she asked, her voice dangerously quiet.

    I turned to look at Richard and his group, as well as some other people in the class just joining us. One of Kyle¡¯s friends, I noticed, had rolled his eyes. However, it was Richard I was interested in. Specifically, the fact that the left side of his pants seemed to be sagging.

    I almost had a reason as to why that could be, when Richard derailed my train of thought. Smiling smugly, he said, ¡°I see those ears of yours can¡¯t tell you if what I¡¯m saying¡¯s any of your business.¡±

    ¡°You were talkin¡¯ shit ¡®bout me mate,¡± Eliza said. ¡°That makes it my business.¡± Suddenly I realized what was probably pulling part of Richard¡¯s pants down. Before I could warn Eliza, she had begun to rant. ¡°¡®Specially if it¡¯s some bedsheet wearing bitch ¡®oo¡¯s acting ¡®igh and mighty while perverting noble ideals ¡®e barely understands.¡±

    The smile slid off Richard¡¯s face as he reached for something on his left hip. ¡°Shut up, you mutie whore!¡± He snarled. When his hand came up, I was unsurprised to see that he was holding an M1911.

 2.9: The Southern Man

    As soon as Richard pulled out his gun, I heard the sound of cloth being rustled, then a bag full of metal quickly falling to the floor. I turned to see that Eric had pulled out a belt-fed machinegun with a chainsaw grip, large silver silencer, underbarrel grenade launcher, and laser pointer/flashlight combo. The people in Richard¡¯s group took a big step away from him, giving me another sign he wasn¡¯t as in charge as he appeared.

    Cross and John had also drawn their weapons. Cross had another 1911 clone, this one was a shiny silver color and much more customized, and John had a Browning Hi-Power. I sighed inwardly. While I appreciated the thought, if they had ignored Richard like I was planning on doing, he wouldn¡¯t have had cause to draw a gun. Or maybe Richard would have done it anyway to get a reaction out of me. Still, I didn¡¯t like the way it was escalating. Also, all my guns were in my case. I¡¯d have to unlock it before I could get to my guns.

    ¡°I¡¯d put the gun down, my friend,¡± Eric said, his voice tense. ¡°It would be¡­ not in your best interests to pull the trigger.¡± Suddenly, I noticed that, while Eric, John and Cross all had their fingers squeezing down the triggers of their guns, Richard¡¯s finger was resting on the trigger guard of his gun.

    We heard an amused laugh from down the hall. Everyone turned. Down the hall, Salim and Mubashir were standing there. Mubashir, a look of panic on his blocky face, was trying to get away from Salim. Salim, his handsome features marred only by a burn he had received in a predator drone attack, was chuckling to himself. I wasn¡¯t surprised. I had killed his best friend and mentor, Amir, during a particularly brutal part of Hell Semester called Fight Night. Then, when he tried to get his vengeance, Eric¡¯s group and some of the Seven Supreme had put a stop to him, with Eliza in particular having killed a bunch of Al-Qaeda terrorists. Richard¡­ Richard was probably just a dick to Salim. Anyway, I could see why Salim was so happy.

    ¡°Please,¡± he said, still laughing a bit, ¡°continue! Don¡¯t mind me.¡±

    ¡°Fuck you, asshole,¡± Richard said, holstering his gun. I couldn¡¯t believe it. Richard hadn¡¯t holstered his gun to save his life. He¡¯d done it to spite Salim. I tried to hide my smile. It was much harder when I saw that Salim was looking pissed. However, most everyone else, especially the neutrals, looked relieved.

    Almost as soon as everyone¡¯s weapons were put away, the door opened. ¡°Hello, students!¡± a voice with a French accent called out. ¡°I see you are ¡®aving a chat.¡±

    I turned around. Standing behind me was a woman with raven black hair braided and falling over her shoulder. Her build was the exact kind you¡¯d find on a fashion magazine. She was dressed in a business suit with skirt and heels. She smiled at us, standing out of the way. ¡°Well, come on in!¡± As we filed in, she said, ¡°Please take a seat, and get your weapons prepared. But no more pointing them at people, if you please.¡±

    So she had seen that. I shuddered as I walked over to Charlotte and Jen. ¡°So,¡± I said to them, ¡°before you guys go¡­¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°we won¡¯t be going for a while.¡± I noticed that they were both giving each other very weird smiles, like they were just pretending to be polite but were getting ready to punch each other. I also noticed that Charlotte was carrying her Webley in a holster and Jen was carrying two pistols with black grips and long silver barrels in armpit holsters and that they were both still wearing safety goggles like they were going to go back to the shooting gallery.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said as I set down my case, ¡°there¡¯s a back-to-school party at this place called Graham¡¯s Game Bar.¡± After putting on some safety goggles over my glasses, I opened my case and began checking the guns, starting with the P229. ¡°It sounds like fun. You wanna to come?¡±

    ¡°Sounds fun,¡± Jen said. ¡°We just have some¡­ business to take care of.¡±

    ¡°Ladies and gentlemen!¡± the woman who had let us in called out. ¡°If I could ¡®ave your attention for a moment!¡± We all turned around. As I did, I noticed that the previous class was still there. ¡°Ah, very good. My name is Professor Antoinette, and I will be your instructor for this semester. Now, as I explained to my Rogues, today AMS and Shadowhaven will be showing us how to fight.¡±

    There were murmurs. ¡°Now, for our first activity, our two best shooters shall be facing off against two average AMS students. Facility, please prepare Gas Station Panic.¡±

    As soon as she said ¡°Gas Station Panic,¡± there was the sound of gears turning away. Desk-like areas for the shooters fell away as well as plexiglass dividers until there were four distinct lanes for shooters, instead of a multitude.

    ¡°This is an immersive exercise.¡± Professor Antionette began. ¡°That means that who the bullet hits matters as much, if not more, than where the bullet hits. There will be hostages. There will be noise. There won¡¯t be good visibility. Your job is to shoot the bad guys and not hit the hostages.¡± Behind her, props began to fall in behind her, including gas pumps and parts of a convenience store, cutting the length of the range from three hundred meters to about seventy-five. The lights dimmed from clinical blinding light to a dusky sunset and lights began to turn on inside the convenience store sections. Semi-transparent mist began to float up from behind the fake storefront.

    ¡°Now, will Miss Blackmoor-Ward, Miss Kagemoto, Miss Feng and Mr. Jacob, please take shooting positions. Bring a preferred pistol and two magazines. When you are out of ammunition, press the green button.¡±

    I spent a few seconds choosing between my Sig-Sauer P229 and my Berretta M92FS Inox. I decided that the M92FS would be better. After all, I hadn¡¯t put very many rounds through the P229 and had managed to achieve decent accuracy with my M92FS. Regretting my lack of a holster, I removed the M92FS and a spare mag. After putting the spare mag in my pocket, I walked over to a position.

    ¡°Get ready!¡± Professor Antionette said when we were all at our positions. ¡°Ten seconds!¡± A computer voice began counting down for her. I spared a quick look at my competition. Jennifer had drawn dual two-tone Berettas with compact lasers from her armpit holsters in an exaggerated, yet fluid motion. Charlotte was slowly drawing her Webley. The two girls traded competitive glances, challenging each other.

    Bai, meanwhile, had drawn her Glock G26 in a quick, professional manner from her hip. Instead of focusing on looking cool, she had focused on speed and lining the sights up with her eyes. Her stance, like mine, had her feet in an L-formation.

    Suddenly, the computer voice got zero. When it did, sirens began to wail and flash, and voices (seemingly cops, robbers and newspaper reporters) began to yell. Before I could get my bearings, targets began popping up. Unlike Jennifer and Charlotte, Bai and I waited before firing.

    My first target was a stereotypical mugger hiding behind a woman target. The woman-target and the mugger-target were both bobbing up and down. I could hear a recorded voice coming from the mugger-target. ¡°Drop your gun!¡± It said. ¡°Drop your gun or¡­¡±

    I fired. The mugger-target jerked back with a plink and the woman-target slid off, falling into the floor. Meanwhile, another target appeared behind a gas pump. It was a mugger-target with an AK. The AK flashed and a recording of gunfire played, and the mugger-target disappeared behind the pump.

    By the time I had started on my second mag, I had figured out the several kinds of targets. There were the mugger-hostage combos that would appear in the area close to the pumps. Then there were the targets behind the gas pumps that pop out. Then, from inside the window of the convenience store, hostages and muggers would raise their heads. Finally, I ran out of ammo. I quickly hit the button and put my gun down.

    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

    Instantly, the simulation stopped. The smoke stopped flowing, the sirens turned off, the yelling stopped, the targets dropped into the floor, and the scenery began to float into the ceiling. ¡°Cease fire!¡± Professor Antoinette said. ¡°Holster weapons.¡±

    As I put my M92FS on the table I looked around. Jennifer¡¯s guns were back in her holster and she was sulking. Charlotte was shaking, her gun still aimed down range, smoke lazily drifting out from the barrel. Bai, however, seemed somewhat satisfied as she re-holstered her Glock.

    ¡°Now,¡± the professor said, ¡°for the results. Miss Kagemoto, you fired thirty rounds. You eliminated six tangos and accidentally shot four civilians. Miss Blackmoor-Ward, you fired twelve rounds and hit one civilian. Mr. Jacobs, you fired thirty rounds and killed twenty-seven tangos. Miss Feng, you fired twenty rounds and killed twenty tangoes.¡± She paused, then asked, ¡°Can anyone tell me what Miss Kagemoto and Miss Blackmoor-Ward did wrong?¡±

    I looked at the other students. Most of the AMS and Shadowhaven students seemed sympathetic. The Rogues were hanging their heads in shame. Eric raised his hand. ¡°Yes, Mr. Eric?¡± Professor Antoinette asked. I noted that not even people with the attendance sheets knew Eric¡¯s last name. Maybe not even Eric knew it.

    ¡°Well,¡± Eric said, ¡°I think they panicked. To be fair to them, they weren¡¯t ready for something that intense.¡±

    ¡°I admit,¡± Professor Antoinette said, ¡°it was not fair. But their enemies will not be fair either. Despite their lack of training, students in the Rogues program are the second-most likely to get into a fight to the death in their careers. They are also less likely than Shadowhaven and AMS students to win. Therefore, I would like to invite my Rogues to train with you for a few sessions. If they want to leave, they can leave. However, I would not recommend it.¡±

    None of the Rogues left. ¡°Good,¡± Professor Antoinette said. ¡°Today we will be doing the Mozambique drill. Please pair up, one Rogue with one AMS or Shadowhaven.¡±

    It turned out that the Mozambique drill was a high-pressure drill where you would have to shoot a target twice in the chest and once in the head. However, if you took too long, the target would ¡°fire¡± at you and you¡¯d have to switch with your partner. I was partnered with Jen. Eliza and Charlotte were right next to us.

    We quickly figured out that Jennifer needed to stop doing things to show off in combat situations and focus more on doing things like aiming or counting bullets. She had managed to get good enough at duel-wielding so that she wasn¡¯t a liability, but her accuracy did increase forty percent when she was using a single pistol. Charlotte, meanwhile, had terrible reaction time and a tendency to freeze. Couple that with the fact that she was using a revolver with a heavy trigger pull, and she was getting out a lot.

    ¡°Listen, Char,¡± Eliza said, ¡°you need to use a different gun. The Webley¡¯s large, hard to control, slow, and weighs a bloody ton. Use the Walther.¡±

    ¡°But people might not take me as seriously with the Walther!¡± Charlotte said.

    ¡°If someone laughs at you for ¡®aving a girl gun,¡± Eliza said angrily, ¡°shoot ¡®em in the fucking face! Boom! Problem solved!¡±

    ¡°Here!¡± Jennifer said, slamming down one of her Berettas. I noticed that the silver-colored slide was marked Elite II. ¡°Use this!¡± Needless to say, Jennifer hadn¡¯t been taking my advice well. Funnily enough, it had started when I had refused to adjust her shooting position manually because it was obviously a mental thing. After that, she had started getting irritable.

    By the end of the lesson, Charlotte improved dramatically. However, she was still a little strained. ¡°Can we please get something to eat?¡± she asked. ¡°I feel like I¡¯m going to break down and cry if I don¡¯t get any food.¡±

    ¡°Please not Sun Tzu!¡± Jen moaned. ¡°I hate Asian food. Always brings back bad memories.¡±

    Before Charlotte and Jen could start fighting, John interjected, ¡°There¡¯s actually a bus going back to Newton-Howell soon. We don¡¯t even have to hurry.¡± The rest of us sighed in relief. There apparently was a stop by Squire and Marine, which we used to drop off our weapons. I noticed that I was the only one in my dorm who stored all his weapons. I didn¡¯t really think too much about it.

    When we finally got to the dining hall, I realized that I had to poop. ¡°Gotta go,¡± I said to them.

    ¡°Nature calls, huh, Killer?¡± Cross said.

    I didn¡¯t answer. It was actually kind of bad. I¡¯ll spare you the details. Suffice it to say, it was a couple minutes before I was ready to start wiping. Suddenly, two people walked in.

    ¡°¡­Can¡¯t fucking believe you,¡± I heard Kyle¡¯s voice say as the bathroom door opened. ¡°I mean, I know we¡¯re trying to appease Smith, but there are safer ways to do that. Like hiring The Punching Bag.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ve already used her twice.¡± This was Richard talking. I heard his voice move closer to my stall. I held my breath. ¡°I mean, she¡¯s good at her job, but they¡¯re getting suspicious.¡± For some reason, he seemed to be standing right next to my stall. ¡°Besides, you baited Eric the Entertainer and his crew¡­ Karen.¡± I figured out why he was standing next to me when he unzipped. I tried not to sigh in relief or think about the tinkling sound he was making.

    Kyle sighed. ¡°That¡¯s because I didn¡¯t know those guys had killed sixty people stealing an African warlord¡¯s bankroll. I just knew they liked to pull their punches. Killer¡¯s lived up to his name for less than that bullshit you sprung on him today.¡± Then, as an afterthought, he added, ¡°Besides, you shouldn¡¯t call me that. You don¡¯t know who¡¯s fucking listening.¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± Richard said, obviously not. ¡°Anyway, I thought Killer only bashed in Amir¡¯s head. He doesn¡¯t seem like the kind of guy to kill someone over an insult.¡±

    ¡°He didn¡¯t,¡± Kyle said. ¡°This guy, Nguyen, was being a dick, not letting them go in after their patrol was other. Killer hit him so hard he went into a coma.¡± Kyle suddenly switched track. ¡°Jesus, man, how much piss do you have in you?¡±

    ¡°Geez, man,¡± Richard said, the trickle stopping. ¡°I¡¯m done, ok! I¡¯m done.¡± After he zipped up and buckled his belt, he asked, ¡°So, Killer goes hog wild on a guy?¡±

    ¡°No, man,¡± Kyle said. ¡°That¡¯s the thing. It was just one blow, and Nguyen¡¯s a vegetable. And Killer just walks off like nothing fucking happened.¡±

    ¡°I actually saw that happen,¡± Richard said. ¡°He was actually pretty stressed at the time. I doubt ¡®Killer¡¯ would do that in a normal situation.¡±

    ¡°Then why isn¡¯t he carrying a gun like everyone else?¡± Kyle asked. ¡°Face it, Richard. Even Killer is fucking scared of Killer. Besides, his friends aren¡¯t the kind of people you fuck with, either.¡±

    I heard footsteps and a sigh. ¡°Fine,¡± I heard Richard say. I then heard water flow. ¡°Guy creeps me out, too. That being said, so does everyone else on this fucking island, and most are scarier than him. Anything else?¡±

    Kyle¡¯s response was so quiet that I kind of had to strain to hear him. ¡°Just one thing. You¡¯re forgetting why we¡¯re here. Remember. Or I¡¯ll remind you.¡±

    I heard Richard gulp. ¡°Yeah. I remember.¡± I replayed what Kyle had said, how he had said, and everything I thought I knew about both him and Richard. Nothing I could think of could make me understand why Richard would be scared of him. I obviously needed to do some digging.

    I waited until they went out. Then I sighed in relief. Simultaneously, diarrhea splurted from my butt. This was going to be a long bathroom break.

 2.10: Party at the Nerdy Colony

    The bathroom was near the lobby. That¡¯s how they found me. Andy had just walked in and May was waiting in line for the cafeteria. Andy waved and began walking towards me. May did too, but there was a lot more bouncing involved.

    ¡°Hey guys!¡± I said, ¡°Glad you got the memo about where we¡¯d meet!¡±

    ¡°Not a problem,¡± May said. ¡°Mary couldn¡¯t make it tonight, she¡¯s got other engagements.¡± She turned around to come face to face with Andy. Well, actually, it was more like face to solar plexus. ¡°Uh,¡± she asked, ¡°who¡¯s this guy?¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s Andy Sebaldi,¡± I said. ¡°He¡¯s¡­¡±

    ¡°Ohmigod,¡± May said, ¡°I totally know who you are! You¡¯re the guy who turned his room into a factory! I could never, in a million years, do anything like that. By the way, what are you planning on making?¡±

    ¡°Eh¡­ school administration wants to see if I can make robots,¡± Andy said. ¡°I¡¯ve got some ideas for automated security and robots that can walk.¡±

    ¡°Can you make chemicals?¡± May asked. ¡°Because NIU are trying to buy the rights to the stuff I made. Also, if I can¡¯t ¡®put it into effect under my own power within two years,¡¯ the rights go to the school.¡±

    ¡°How do you know who I¡­¡± Andy began to ask, then his face lit up. ¡°Wait a minute, you¡¯re May Riley! You¡¯re one of the Triple-As in the Med program! Yeah, I might be able to do that. I¡¯d need to know how to mix the stuff but I take it can tell me what I¡¯d need to do, right? By the way, how did you know about me?¡±

    We paused to swipe our student IDs at the entry. A bored guy I had seen occasionally exiting Squire was manning them, and didn¡¯t seem to notice our entrance. I wondered if I could have just walked past. After all, his swiping our card was just as automatic as our handing it to him.

    Andy and May were still involved in their own conversation. ¡°I know who you are because I read the school newspaper,¡± May said. ¡°When Taylor Smith isn¡¯t spewing his hateful bullshit, there actually is the occasionally interesting and/or useful article.¡±

    ¡°I actually heard about you from some guys I know on campus,¡± he said. ¡°Something about medical genius, severe injuries, and weird porn you didn¡¯t know you were filming.¡±

    ¡°Oh God,¡± May groaned, ¡°Why won¡¯t that video die?¡±

    Trying to butt in, I asked, ¡°Who¡¯s Taylor Smith?¡± Judging by the impression he left on May, there was a strong chance that he was the person Kyle and Richard were talking about appeasing.

    May sighed. ¡°Smith¡¯s this fucking asshat who writes articles in the NIU Universal complaining about anyone who isn¡¯t white and Protestant. He also keeps talking about ¡®the grand rebirth of Rhodesia,¡¯ which basically means killing and enslaving the people of Zimbabwe. Anyway, he wrote this long screed about how Asian people were genetically inferior to white people (he used less polite terms,) and I posted a comment disproving every single one of his talking points. I may have been a bit rude, but he decided to basically go nuclear in his response to my response, saying that this is why women shouldn¡¯t be involved in politics and wondering about whether it was my period or if I was just mentally deficient.¡± She smiled. ¡°I suppose I shouldn¡¯t have responded to his response, but telling him to go back to writing songs about kissing boys in the rain felt¡­ so poetic. It was almost worth the threats.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± Andy asked, ¡°what kind of threats?¡±

    ¡°Oh, look!¡± May said, ¡°That¡¯s where we¡¯re sitting! Come on!¡± Near the window, I could see that Eric, Doc, Ray-Gun, The Monk, MC Disaster, Eliza, Bai, Charlotte, Jen, Cross, and John were all sitting at one of the longer tables. Ray-Gun, John, Eliza, and Cross were waving us over. Outside I could see that it was snowing like crazy.

    ¡°Wow,¡± I said as we sat down, ¡°this is crazy. There¡¯s fourteen people sitting down here.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Cross said. ¡°We had to get the Jesus table because there¡¯s still more people coming. Oro and Eliza¡¯s other roomie are coming, too.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± I said, ¡°before I forget, let me introduce you guys. Ok, Andy, May, this first guy is Eric the Entertainer. He likes to make nicknames.¡±

    Eric nodded. ¡°A pleasure to meet you two.¡±

    ¡°This next guy is Ray-Gun. He¡¯s an excellent spotter. Also really likes Silver Age superhero comics.¡± Ray-Gun smiled, his frizzy Afro shaking a bit as he nodded his head. ¡°And this guy¡¯s Doc. He¡¯s a little prickly, but he¡¯ll fix you up if you get shot.¡±

    ¡°Not as good as May,¡± Doc said. ¡°Your inventions saved a lot of lives.¡±

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t play favorites,¡± I said, ¡°but I was probably one of them. Salim, this one asshole from Al-Qaeda, stabbed me in the stomach. Your surgical glue had me doing the run the next day.¡± Ignoring May¡¯s protests, I continued with the introductions. ¡°MC Disaster. Explosives expert. Doesn¡¯t talk much.¡±

    ¡°I talk!¡± MC Disaster protested.

    ¡°That¡¯s the first thing I¡¯ve heard him since November. Anyway, this guy is The Monk, chillest guy I know.¡± The Monk made his traditional bow. ¡°Michael Castellan. Everyone calls him Cross. Don¡¯t ask about his family business.¡±

    ¡°Hey, man,¡± Cross said, ¡°Don¡¯t scare away my clients! They¡¯re nerds! Nerds always want some jock whacked.¡± I noticed Andy and May¡¯s eyes widen. They exchanged nervous glances.

    ¡°He¡¯s joking, right?¡± Andy asked anxiously. I could see the scenarios he was imagining. They all involved the FBI knocking on his door.

    ¡°Possibly,¡± I said, ¡°but not about the killing people for money thing. Moving on, the redhead with the cool ears is Eliza Henderson and the blonde girl with the Union Jack scarf is her adopted sister, Charlotte Blackmoor-Ward. Charlotte¡¯s English nobility of some kind.¡±

    ¡°Charmed,¡± Charlotte said.

    ¡°Nice t¡¯meet ya!¡± Eliza said at the same time.

    ¡°Man,¡± I said, ¡°do I know a lot of people here. Ok, home stretch! The girl who looks perpetually amused is Jennifer Kagemoto. She¡¯s a little¡­ famous where I live.¡±

    ¡°For all the wrong reasons,¡± Jen said playfully. ¡°Cross is nowhere near as bad as I am.¡±

    ¡°And the girl openly carrying a Glock is Bai Feng,¡± I said. Bai was carrying her G26 in an armpit holster. Her coat and sweater had been taken off and hung over her chair, revealing the gun, holster and plain tank top she wore. Not only did this violate school rules about only carrying concealed weapons, but it also made me nervous.

    ¡°After what happened at Weapons Handling,¡± Bai said coolly, ¡°I thought having a deterrent would be prudent. I thought you¡¯d understand better, seeing how that wasn¡¯t the first time you¡¯ve been caught off-guard.¡±

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    ¡°What happened?¡± Andy asked, looking more and more unnerved by his present company. So was May.

    ¡°Nothing,¡± I said, with a little too much false cheer, ¡°just assholes being assholes!¡± May and Andy exchanged worried glances. Again. ¡°Anyway,¡± I said, ¡°this is John Marshall. One of the two people who had no idea what the fuck he was getting into. Out of all the people, I think the only person to save my life more is Eliza.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s me!¡± John said. I noticed he was sitting directly across from Bai. He was also marginally more comfortable with her than the last time I had seen them together.

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°now, is there anyone who doesn¡¯t know May?¡±

    ¡°Be polite and introduce us to her anyway, Nathan,¡± Charlotte said.

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°this is May Riley. She¡¯s a Triple-A at the med school. If you were in Hell Semester 2015, she probably saved your butt directly or indirectly.¡± There was a round of applause. May blushed a bit. ¡°And this is my co-host for Flounder, Andy Sebaldi. He¡¯s a Triple-A Computer Science major.¡±

    ¡°Basically,¡± he said, ¡°they kind of want me to build Skynet.¡±

    ¡°Please tell me you¡¯re joking,¡± John said, somewhat terrified.

    ¡°I am,¡± Andy said, ¡°that¡¯s the only way I¡¯m able to deal with the fact that they want me to build fucking Skynet.¡± After that, it kind of devolved into a bitch session about how the school was morally bankrupt, expensive, dangerous, and difficult.

    ¡°I¡¯ll say one thing,¡± I said after swallowing a bite of my third bratwurst, ¡°I am learning a lot.¡± I got a minor chuckle from that.

    Oro and Alma eventually showed up. Neither of them were talkative and both exuded a passive sense of menace. Oro Okoro, another child soldier from somewhere in Africa and member of the Seven Supreme, was actively suspicious of Andy for a few minutes, but finally relented.

    Alma, on the other hand, simply took an interest and did her best to appear non-threatening. However, Alma being mildly interested and trying not to be threatening was like a horror movie building up to the scares. There was just something wrong with her. I tried to tell myself that it was just the idea of her power or her weird monotone, but something told me it went deeper than that. I decided not to focus on that.

    Instead, I focused on the camaraderie. Eliza was one of the people who vouched for Andy. (I was another, but she obviously didn¡¯t trust me as much.) John ended up being the only person who had a prayer of keeping up with Andy and May¡¯s conversation on how the brain could be used as a model for artificial intelligence. Cross was giving Charlotte advice on alternatives to her Webley. Things like that. I decided to just sit back and eat my food.

    Finally, it was time to go. We all got a cup of the crappy hot chocolate the cafeteria and began the trek to building Graham¡¯s Game Bar was located. Luckily, it was pretty close to the main circle. We only had to walk through winds that felt like being constantly punched for about five minutes.

    ¡°HOW DO PEOPLE LIVE WITH THIS WEATHER?¡± Oro yelled above the wind. ¡°I LIVE IN A COUNTRY WITH AN AVERAGE LOWEST YEARLY TEMPERATURE OF THIRTY DEGREES!¡± I quickly realized she was measuring in Celsius. Why does America use English measurements again? Not even England uses English measurements.

    ¡°THEY KEEP A STIFF UPPER LIP, I SUPPOSE,¡± Charlotte mused loudly. ¡°REMARKABLY BRITISH OF THEM!¡±

    Finally, we got into Graham¡¯s Game Bar. It was located in an apartment-style building called Lovelace Hall. ¡°Blimey,¡± Eliza said, when we all got into the foyer, ¡°It really is nerd heaven, innit?¡±

    The bar was double-storied. Downstairs was a dancefloor (which most people were ignoring,) a bar (which was only slightly busier,) and a bunch of arcade cabinets and pinball machines. I saw some classics like Star Wars: The Arcade Games, Pac-Man, and most of the Time Crisis series. They all seemed to have been modified to take campus credits.

    Upstairs, I could see that there was another bar and an area for people who wanted to join in a LAN party. TVs scattered around were displaying various matches. To top it all off, the DJ was playing the original Pokemon theme.

    ¡°This is heaven¡­¡± I said, somewhat in awe.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± May said as we wandered further in. ¡°Each of the schools has at least one hangout. You AMS and Shadowhaven guys have The Drunken Mercenary and The Gunporioum. The students at the Frankenstein Medical School get hammered at the A&E and cure the hangover with caffeinated beverages at Greenleaf. Rogues have Caf¨¦ Charlemagne and The International Casino. The CompSci guys get The Nerd Shop and this place. Lucky bastards.¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± Eliza said, ¡°wanna see if they¡¯ve got bourbon? I¡¯ve never had any before.¡±

    ¡°I will watch you drink it,¡± Bai said. ¡°But I think I¡¯ll pass.¡±

    ¡°Fine, you pansy,¡± Eliza said. ¡°Nate, John, you want t¡¯sample some Yank culture with me? Could be quite educational.¡±

    ¡°You know what?¡± I said. ¡°Sure. What could go wrong?¡±

    We walked over to the bar. A red-headed girl in a Graham¡¯s Game Bar branded apron was tending a somewhat abandoned section. ¡°What¡¯ll ya be havin,¡¯ ya bleedin¡¯ Monarchist?¡± she asked with a bored Irish lilt. My guess is that she noticed the Union Jack patch on Eliza¡¯s old army jacket.

    Eliza smiled, slapping her student ID on the counter. ¡°Three shots of your mid-range bourbon on the rocks for me and my mates, Lucky Charms.¡± I noticed that a crowd had begun to form around. Most of them were our friends, but there were a few curious nerds.

    The bartender asked, with mock-innocence, ¡°You sure you want to be going that fast? You sure you don¡¯t want some nice non-alcoholic beer? Or some milk?¡± There was an ¡°oooh!¡± from the crowd. I, on the other hand, got the impression that this was as fake as professional wrestling. Mostly due to the fact that both of them were trying to suppress smiles.

    ¡°Did I ask for commentary?¡± Eliza asked, ¡°Or did I ask you TO POUR THE BOOZE?¡± As she asked the last question, she turned to address the crowd. A person actually whooped.

    ¡°Fine, ya cockney arse,¡± the bartender said. ¡°Three shots of inferior American rotgut for the Englishwoman.¡± She quickly swiped the card and poured the whiskey. The shot glasses looked bigger than I expected.

    I picked mine up, and sniffed it. It smelled like paint thinner. ¡°Right,¡± Eliza said, ¡°on three. One. Two. Three.¡±

    In unison, we all lifted it up to our mouths and took a sip. I don¡¯t know how I managed to do it, but I got some in. Each drop seared my throat on the way down. ¡°Oh God,¡± I said, ¡°This burns.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Eliza said, ¡°You¡¯d have to be proper wasted beforehand to drink this.¡± After a pause, she said, ¡°I¡¯m going to finish it.¡±

    A few minutes later, we were on the upper floor. I had finished a good chunk of it, and, God help me, I somehow decided I liked it. I don¡¯t know why. The only reasonable explanation I could think of was that I subconsciously hated myself and realized that this devil drink was killing me. That, or I liked how being buzzed made me almost forget Hell Semester. It also helped me to deal with the fact that some people playing Counter-Strike were using speakers.

    Suddenly, through the light fog in my head, I realized something. ¡°Hey Andy,¡± I asked, ¡°If I wanted to find out more about someone, could I just look it up on cNet?¡±

    Andy looked up from the glass-bottle soda he was drinking. ¡°Sure,¡± he said. ¡°People have all sorts of stuff on their default profile. What majors they take, some brief tidbits why they were selected, stuff like that. Why?¡±

    I smiled. It must have seemed a little terrifying because Andy flinched. ¡°Oh,¡± I said, ¡°just an extra-curricular project I have¡­¡±

 2.11: When You Grow Up

    I woke up the next morning wondering why I was feeling so good. By all rights, I should have a pounding headache. Well, two shots probably wouldn¡¯t cause a headache. I suddenly realized that this was the first time in a long time I had just slept peacefully.

    When I looked out, my roommates were still sleeping. However, I was completely awake. It was weird, but I felt too awake to go back to sleep. Instead, I went over to my desk and booted up my computer. I had some work to do.

    It was hard to resist booting up Steam. It was hard not going to YouTube when I opened my browser. I had been working pretty much constantly for the past week. Instead, I opened up the Campus Network. I decided that first I¡¯d do some actual work and set up an appointment with my advisor. I looked at who it was. Professor Karl Krieger.

    When I had met him, he had been Drill Sergeant Krieger. On the one hand, he was one of the few people who believed I could make it through the Hell Semester. Not even I had believed it. On the other hand, every time I looked at his face, I could see his eyes sparkle with madness and he had an uncanny read on me.

    I sighed. Well, no use fighting it. I quickly saw that the nearest appointment we could conceivably make was around the first week of February, almost exactly two weeks away. I then started my own research project.

    First, I decided to check out Kyle. That would be the hard, since I didn¡¯t actually know his name. When I typed his name into the search bar, I wasn¡¯t surprised to get more than one result, even when I narrowed it down to people. I narrowed it to AMS/Shadowhaven students who had their first semester Fall of 2015. There was only one result, Kyle J. Rockford.

    I clicked on his profile. It was very bare, but by no means unhelpful. Name: Kyle J. Rockford. Gender: Blocked. Country: USA. State: Blocked. Town: Blocked. Age: 19. Date of Birth: Blocked. Recruiter: Karl Krieger. Sub-School: Shadowhaven and Madam Antionette¡¯s Finishing School. That last school was the rarely-used official name of the Rogue school. Major(s): Assassination and Subterfuge. Dorm Room: Blocked. There was also a feed of comments and status updates and options to friend, follow or block.

    I stared at it for a moment. Then, I opened my profile and privacy settings in a different tab. It turned out that the things Kyle had blocked out were also blocked out on my profile. I checked several other people. Most had unblocked a lot of the information on their profile. I decided to unblock my gender and leave it at that. I also noted that the information was locked and couldn¡¯t be changed. I briefly wondered why anyone would block gender. Kyle himself was obviously male. I mean, I had seen him in the shower, much as didn¡¯t want to.

    ¡°So,¡± I muttered to myself, trying to talk myself through this, ¡°you¡¯ve blocked everything you can possibly, you haven¡¯t put anything in your About Me folder, you don¡¯t post updates, you only comment on class posts¡­either you haven¡¯t bothered to change your settings or you¡¯re hiding something. You also seem to be keeping Richard in line through intimidation.¡±

    I thought back to Fight Night. In order to make him surrender, I had to beat the crap out of him, including breaking his nose and stomping on his privates. ¡°Now, how are you intimidating Richard? He doesn¡¯t intimidate easily, and you¡¯re doing it in a way that makes it look like he¡¯s in charge of you. That must be really hard. Richard isn¡¯t scared of physical violence. Why are you putting in that much effort?¡±

    I suddenly realized that I¡¯d need to write this down. I got out a piece of paper and began writing down facts, conjectures and questions. I also decided to put in how strong the conjectures were.

    I looked through the list. If Kyle was intimidating Richard, it couldn¡¯t be threats of physical injury. Therefore, it had to be blackmail. I tried to think of the conversation Kyle and Richard had. The only thing I could remember was that they talked about someone called The Punching Bag. Also, Richard had called Kyle ¡°Karen,¡± and in response, Kyle warned that anyone could have been listening. More questions, still no answers.

    I sighed, and decided to look at Kyle¡¯s profile some more. I found that I could see his friends list. Most were people in Kyle¡¯s group, three with a bright red ¡°deceased¡± stamped across their photos. Only two were left alive. There was also Richard and¡­ now that was interesting. Taylor Smith was also listed as a friend.

    One possibility presented itself: Kyle wanted to get close to Taylor and possibly the campus¡¯s white supremacist community. To do that, he was using Richard, he would then¡­

    I sighed. I had nowhere near enough information to determine what the next step of the plan was. Nothing Kyle had said made me think he was a virulent racist. However, he could agree with everything Richard and Taylor said. But if he agreed with them, why was he blackmailing Richard?

    Another sigh. For all I knew, I could be completely wrong about a dozen things. I updated the document one last time and saved it. Then I gathered my stuff to have a shower.

    After showering and having breakfast at Newton-Howell, I logged back into cNet. I eventually discovered I could make a list of friends or people I followed. I could also make notes on the people I was following. I quickly followed Kyle, Richard, the people in that immediate circle, and Taylor. I put them in a list I titled ¡°White Supremacists on Campus,¡± and made some notes about their perceived positions.

    The weekend itself was relaxing, once I had finished my various bits of homework. I discovered that there was a laundry room in the basement for the people in Marine. The best part about it was that it was free.

    Sadly, that calm was not to last. I discovered that the mid-week period of Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were going to be particularly brutal because I had both classes and my night job at The Drunken Mercenary. At least The Drunken Mercenary had calmed down a lot after the first week. I also got my first paycheck from Popov on Saturday. I was now richer by two-hundred and forty-seven dollars. That was a nice feeling. I remembered smiling a bit before heading back to the salt mines that were my classes.

    I did manage to talk to Eliza sometime in the third week. ¡°Hey, Eliza,¡± I asked during lunch on Tuesday, ¡°do you know anything about a person called The Punching Bag?¡± We were sitting with Bai, Cross, and Oro because everyone else was in class, sleeping, or having a panic attack.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Eliza said. ¡°I kept me eyes open, but I probably missed quite a bit of stuff.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Cross said, ¡°I think I can probably tell you what this guy does.¡±

    ¡°Honestly,¡± I said, ¡°I don¡¯t even know if it¡¯s a guy. Could be a girl.¡±

    ¡°Actually,¡± Cross said, ¡°this guy probably is a chick. You see, a punching bag is, at least in my world, someone you hire to beat up. Say you¡¯re being initiated into a gang and you want to prove you¡¯re cold. You hire a punching bag, and you and the people you wanna impress go up and mug them. You get a wallet with some cash, a few canceled credit cards, and a hell of a lot of street cred. They get north of five hundred bucks.¡±

    ¡°That sounds¡­ really dangerous,¡± I said.

    ¡°I know,¡± Eliza said. ¡°But us Lupines could make a bit o¡¯ money, couldn¡¯t we?¡±

    Cross laughed. ¡°My dad was insurance to a Lupine punching bag for a while. She was an ex-prostitute. For ten grand, you and the people you wanted to impress could ¡®rape¡¯ her. If you wanted to ¡®murder¡¯ her, the cost ranged from five to fifteen grand, depending on the method of execution and an extra fifty if you wanted to move her somewhere. If the client went too far, my dad would step in. He¡¯d also collect late fees. All in all, he could earn five grand on a bad night.¡±

    ¡°It sounds as dangerous and degrading,¡± Bai said.

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    ¡°I would not look down on her until I know how her story ended,¡± Oro said.

    ¡°She¡¯s living in a nice house in Connecticut,¡± Cross said, ¡°she put all three of her kids and two of her grandkids through college and still has enough left over to drive a Porsche. I think she¡¯s doing pretty good.¡±

    ¡°Have you ever asked her if she thinks it was worth it?¡± Oro asked.

    Cross opened his mouth, closed it, thought about it, then finally said, ¡°¡­No, I didn¡¯t, actually.¡±

    ¡°When you do,¡± Oro said, ¡°I¡¯d be very curious what she says.¡±

    Finally, the meeting with Krieger came around. It was the first Saturday in February and I was desperately hoping I could get it over with quickly and enjoy the rest of my weekend. His office, annoyingly, was on the top floor of Patton, meaning I had to walk halfway across the campus in a blizzard. To make it worse, when I finally got to Patton, I was I late and the elevators weren¡¯t working, forcing me to run all five stories.

    Panting, I began the walk to his office on the other side of the building. This part of the building, unlike the grey, dimly lit concrete basement corridors where the firing range were, was actually quite nice with red wood paneling and dark green wallpaper.

    ¡°I hope you¡¯re not out of breath, boyke,¡± a voice with a South African accent said, coming from somewhere behind me. I turned around. There was Professor Karl Krieger, his bushy brownish-blond beard and unkempt hair making him look as lion-like as ever. He was wearing a shirt with a South African flag that revealed his lithe, muscular arms. His eyes sparkled with their usual mix of intelligence and madness. ¡°You realize we¡¯re going to be doing a run today?¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said, ¡°I was a bit late eating breakfast and had to run here.¡± I was quite proud of myself for not panting.

    Krieger nodded. ¡°Fair enough.¡± He then began to the hallway in a completely different direction from where I had been going, motioning for me to follow. ¡°Come, step into my office.¡±

    When we finally got into his office, it was very simply decorated. There were a few pictures. They were all quite interesting. ¡°Is that you with Nelson Mandela?¡± I asked. Mandela himself was easily recognizable. The person the great leader was shaking hands with wasn¡¯t. I mean, it could have been Krieger, but his hair was too short, and he had no beard. Also, the smile he was giving the camera was one of a man meeting a hero.

    ¡°Not like I got to talk to the man,¡± Krieger said sadly. ¡°He just showed up for a speaking role at my university.¡± He sighed. ¡°Do you know the saying ¡®never meet your heroes?¡¯¡± I nodded. ¡°Don¡¯t listen to them. I already respected the man. It only grew after that.¡±

    ¡°What happened?¡± I asked. ¡°You don¡¯t really seem to agree with his pacifistic ideals.¡±

    Krieger pointed to the next photo. Krieger was in that photo as well, this time as the link between the starstruck man and the somewhat insane man who stood before me today. However, Krieger was pointing at a large, potbellied man with a shaved head and a sort of Gandalf beard. There were several other people of various nationalities and ethnicities, but they were all united in that they wore camouflage and carried large guns.

    ¡°I met this man, Rolf Larsson,¡± Krieger said. ¡°He was very interested in finding ways to make humanity a better while making a profit and having fun.¡± He shrugged. ¡°Anyway, this isn¡¯t about me. It¡¯s about you, Nate! Come on, sit down, take off your coat.¡±

    I sat down in a red vinyl chair. ¡°So,¡± I asked, taking off my coat, ¡°what did you want to talk about?¡±

    ¡°Well first off,¡± Krieger said, ¡°you haven¡¯t declared a major. I know it could take a while, but the sooner you figure it out, the better.¡± He paused. ¡°How about covert ops?¡±

    I laughed. ¡°No. No, no, no. God that would be awful. Not knowing who I was supposed to trust, worrying about being asked to betray I actually care about more than my superiors? No thanks.¡±

    Krieger nodded. ¡°So I see you would be more interested in the Academy of Military Science. Any particular areas you¡¯re interested in?¡±

    I considered it for a bit. Finally, I said, ¡°I kind of want to retire from the whole killing people thing. Yeah, I want to save the world, but then I want to go into some desk job where I can work regular nine-to-five hours.¡±

    Krieger nodded. ¡°Well, if you wanted to look into coming back here as a teacher¡­¡±

    I stared at him. ¡°I¡¯ve been here for a semester, and already I know how fucked up this school is. I¡¯m not planning on coming back.¡±

    ¡°What if things changed?¡± Krieger asked in an overly-casual fashion.

    ¡°Are you going to change things?¡± I asked.

    ¡°The moral arc of the universe bends towards justice,¡± Krieger said cryptically, ¡°but sometimes it has a jump start, I suppose.¡± He then changed the subject. ¡°Anyway, if you are continuing with AMS, one of the requirements is to obtain a driver¡¯s license.

    Obviously, the lessons won¡¯t begin for a while.¡±

    I looked out the window. The snow was falling down in sheets. ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, ¡°it¡¯d be pretty hard to drive in a blizzard.¡±

    I considered the things that Krieger was saying. Somehow, I doubted that he was on the team of white supremacy. If so, I doubted he¡¯d be keeping a picture of him shaking hands with Nelson Mandela or quote Martin Luther King.

    ¡°If I don¡¯t believe you about this place changing,¡± I said, ¡°what major do you recommend, outside of a sub-school transfer?¡±

    ¡°Officer Candidacy,¡± Krieger said without hesitation. ¡°It has a lot of logistics training, business classes, plus engineering courses. I know plenty of people who took that course and transitioned into being a suit.¡±

    ¡°Cool,¡± I said. ¡°I think I¡¯ll take a few major-specific classes, then I¡¯ll see. Anything else you want to ask me about?¡±

    ¡°Just want to congratulate you,¡± Krieger said. ¡°Popov says you¡¯re doing a great job at The Drunken Mercenary and I¡¯m enjoying your radio show. You and Andy have¡­ interesting chemistry.¡±

    I nodded. My most recent show, I had made a lot of weird animal noises. Andy just laughed because, honestly, when the person you¡¯re trapped in a small room with is making cat sounds, what else do you do? Apart from calling the insane asylum, that is.

    ¡°No,¡± Krieger, ¡°this is the part of the interview if I ask if you have any concerns.¡±

    I decided to take a gamble. ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°there is something I think you should know. I was looking at the cNet profile of someone you recruited, Kyle Rockford. He¡¯s hanging out with some kind of dangerous people and¡­¡±

    Krieger nodded. ¡°I know Kyle. He¡¯s a tricky bastard. Even I have trouble figuring out what¡¯s going on in his head sometimes. But his intentions are almost always more noble than they appear.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± I asked. ¡°Do you know what his plan is?¡±

    ¡°That would be telling,¡± Krieger said. ¡°Now come, I want to show you something.¡± He stood up and motioned me to follow him.

    I did so. We walked down the hallway to the front of the building where there was a window looking out at the nearby buildings. Krieger, however, turned around to look at the wall. On it were dozens of photos. ¡°If you believe that all of the teachers here are sociopaths, I hope this makes you reconsider.¡± He walked towards one in particular, this one of an old man in a US Army dress uniform with several medals pinned to his chest. ¡°Some of us are bloody heroes. This man in particular nearly lost his hand tossing a Nazi grenade away from his unit. He was also one of the first Americans to enter a concentration camp.¡±

    I took a closer look. The man¡¯s face was very familiar, like an older, scarred version of someone I knew. I took a gander at the plaque that said his name. It read Kyle Chapman.

    Suddenly, I realized that the person he looked like was also named Kyle. I turned to Krieger. ¡°Thank you, sir,¡± I said. ¡°You¡¯ve been a big help.¡±

    Krieger smiled. ¡°Anytime, boyke,¡± he said.

 2.12: Itâ€™s Cold Outside

    Walking back to my dorm, I considered the weather. Now, if you live in a place like California or Wales, the weather is pretty constant. If you live in New England, the weather is constantly changing. However, my time at NIU taught me about a different kind of place: one where the weather was constantly trying to kill you.

    For instance, in August and early September, the island¡¯s weather had been humid and hot, with the sun constantly baking your skin. Slowly, throughout September and into November, the temperature had dropped. The precipitation, however, had increased dramatically around the second week of September. Then, during the very end of November, General Winter had begun a near-constant bombardment of snow.

    Today was particularly bad, with wind battering me and the snow alternately reducing my visibility to about four or five meters or blinding me completely. I was just wondering if I should bother going to lunch when my phone dinged. I took it out. It was an automated text message saying that the dining hall was closed. My stomach growled.

    My phone rang again. It was Popov. I answered it, yelling, ¡°HEY, BOSS, WHAT¡¯S UP?¡±

    ¡°Nathan,¡± Popov asked, ¡°where are you?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯M WALKING BACK FROM AN APPOINTMENT WITH MY ADVISOR!¡± I yelled. ¡°MARINE IS PROBABLY STILL A GOOD DISTANCE AWAY!¡±

    ¡°Next time someone tells you to go somewhere in blizzard this bad,¡± Popov yelled angrily at me, ¡°tell them to fuck their mother! You hear?¡±

    ¡°I HEAR!¡±

    ¡°Good!¡± Popov said. ¡°Now once you get back to Marine, help yourself to popcorn and big soft pretzels. Invite friends.¡±

    That was at 11:45. It was 12:00 when I got back to Marine. I opened the door, and staggered into the hallway. I was surprised to see Andy standing there in clothes significantly nicer than usual. ¡°What are you doing here?¡± I asked.

    ¡°I live here,¡± Andy said, ¡°just like you.¡± His eyes narrowed. ¡°Why were you outside?¡±

    ¡°Meeting with my advisor,¡± I said, as I struggled to close the door. It was actually a little hard, due to the snow falling into the building.

    ¡°And neither of you canceled?¡± Andy asked, a look of wonder on his face. ¡°Man, you AMS and Shadowhaven people are friggin¡¯ insane.¡±

    ¡°You realize,¡± I said, ¡°that this is an AMS/Shadowhaven dorm, right?¡±

    A look of dawning comprehension passed over Andy¡¯s face. ¡°So that¡¯s why no one was here first semester,¡± he said. Then he paused. ¡°They said I might get new roommates. Did¡­?¡±

    I shrugged. ¡°Don¡¯t know. I did hear that three people dropped out after Hell Semester was over. Those could have been your roommates.¡±

    ¡°But it¡¯s more likely they¡¯re dead, right?¡± Andy¡¯s boyish face was in shock. ¡°I mean, less than half of you guys were killed.¡±

    ¡°Not necessarily,¡± I said. ¡°There were a few people who were just too injured to continue Hell Semester.¡±

    Andy cocked his head as if to say, ¡°Yeah, right.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± I admitted, ¡°they¡¯re probably dead.¡± I looked at the ground. ¡°Hey, why are you waiting around here?¡±

    There was a knock on the door behind me. ¡°Well,¡± Andy said, ¡°I was waiting for a different breed of crazy person.¡±

    When I turned around, I wondered why there seemed to be no one there, but then the knocking stopped and May bounced up. Then there was more knocking. I sighed and opened the door. May came tumbling in, accompanied by snow and howling wind. ¡°May,¡± I asked, ¡°why are you out in this weather?¡±

    ¡°I come bearing gifts,¡± she said, holding up several grocery bags while I closed the door. ¡°Now you won¡¯t starve! You¡¯re welcome!¡±

    ¡°Andy,¡± I said, looking at him with some annoyance, ¡°why didn¡¯t you stop her?¡±

    ¡°I can¡¯t use lethal force,¡± he said, ¡°and I didn¡¯t really want to.¡±

    I nodded. ¡°Fair enough. Anyways, Popov said I could get some friends and snack on the pretzels and popcorn in The Drunken Mercenary. After that, I¡¯m going to get the rest of the crew down here.¡±

    ¡°Gee,¡± May said as I let her in, ¡°how healthy.¡±

    Thirty minutes later, all my friends based in Marine were in The Drunken Mercenary. I had taken position behind the bar. ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°popcorn and pretzels are free, but you still have to pay for the drinks. Good news is you can get the good stuff.¡±

    ¡°What is the ¡®good stuff?¡¯¡± Cross asked. ¡°Patr?n, maybe?¡±

    I looked in the cabinet. ¡°It appears to be mostly Russian vodka, rum, and Scotch. There¡¯s also some other kinds of beer, again, mostly Russian.¡±

    Cross sighed. ¡°You¡¯re living up to your fucking nickname, Killer. Is their seriously no tequila? Just commie juice?¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t like it,¡± I said, ¡°you don¡¯t have to drink it.¡±

    ¡°Besides,¡± May said, ¡°you guys all drink too much. I mean, Cross, if you drink like you did at the back-to-school party regularly, there¡¯s all sorts of problems including dementia, weight gain, skeletal fragility¡­¡±

    ¡°Any guarantee we¡¯ll live long enough to experience the effects?¡± Eric asked, genuinely curious.

    May shrugged. ¡°Depends. Your body chemistry and how much you drink all factor into it. Personally, if I were Cross I¡¯d sober up now before you find yourself behind enemy lines going through withdrawal. Your crew, except for Doc, actually had a healthy amount.¡± She paused. ¡°Anyway, why do you drink that stuff?¡±

    ¡°It helps me sleep,¡± Doc said.

    ¡°Maybe, like, see some counseling?¡± May said. ¡°That might help with the whole not being able to sleep thing.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± Doc said.

    There was then a knock at the window. We all looked up and saw Eliza standing outside, wearing a heavy coat over her army jacket, but still looking cold. John got up from hooking up an PS4 from one of the TVs to let in Eliza. ¡°Bloody ¡®ell!¡± she said as she staggered in. ¡°They don¡¯t ¡®ave snow like this in England.¡±

    ¡°Why did you even come out here, then?¡± John asked, as they both struggled to close the door.

    Suddenly, Jen appeared right by John, casually leaning on the window. Everyone jumped. ¡°Well,¡± Jen said, ¡°she is a little nuts.¡± I noticed that she had taken advantage of her abilities as a Jumper to wear a thin, dark red blouse, high-heeled boots, and a short black skirt.

    ¡°God,¡± John said, ¡°I thought Jumpers made some kind of noise when¡­ y¡¯know, teleporting.¡±

    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    ¡°They don¡¯t,¡± Eliza and Cross said in unison. Both had looks of exasperation on their face, like they had experienced this phenomenon a lot.

    ¡°Don¡¯t Jumpers have to be careful where they jump?¡± May asked. ¡°I¡¯ve read a lot about ¡®coating¡¯ and how badly anti-jump fields can mess up jumpers. The results, at least based on the literature I¡¯ve read, can get¡­ messy.¡±

    Jennifer smiled. ¡°Have you heard of course correction?¡±

    May¡¯s eyes widened. ¡°That¡­ that involves keeping your eyes open while jumping. Don¡¯t a lot of people who open their eyes¡­ go insane?¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± I asked, ¡°what are you talking about?¡±

    Jen disappeared. In the instant she did, I heard the sound of weight shifting subtly behind me and I could smell her lightly applied perfume and feel breath. ¡°Well, Nathan,¡± her voice, lowered seductively, came from behind, somewhere very close to my ear, ¡°we Jumpers don¡¯t just appear and disappear. We go to a sort of in-between, and then we return, albeit in a different spot.¡± I turned my head slowly, trying to suppress the instincts that told me to punch her. I didn¡¯t turn far when my face brushed up against the silky smooth strand of hair that framed that side of her face.

    ¡°As if you weren¡¯t creepy enough,¡± Cross muttered. From behind me, I could feel Jen¡¯s gaze harden. Cross gulped, but he held her gaze. ¡°Just sayin¡¯, people like their personal space. Killer looks nervous. Maybe back off a bit.¡±

    I wondered what Jen¡¯s reputation was with the underworld. Cross didn¡¯t really seem to fear much. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Jen wore a costume. Or maybe she had a few kills under her belt.

    After making sure Cross was at least somewhat cowed, Jennifer took a few steps out of my blindspot. ¡°Sorry, Nathan,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯ll admit, personal space can be a problem for me. Anyway, where was I?¡± I noticed that she was dividing her attention between apologizing to me and shooting dirty looks at Cross.

    ¡°The dimensional theory,¡± May said. I noticed that she had been scrutinizing both Cross and Jennifer. ¡°And how you can jump somewhere without having line-of-sight.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Jennifer said, ¡°It¡¯s actually quite simple.¡± I noticed that she was doing something to subtly imitate May. ¡°When I jump somewhere, I actually keep my eyes open to search for where I want to go when I¡¯m between. That¡¯s known as mid-adjust jump. There¡¯s downsides, of course, but the upsides are too good to ignore.¡±

    ¡°You know,¡± May said, ¡°that the downsides include rocking back and forth in a padded room, muttering about tentacles and right angles not acting like right angles, right?¡±

    ¡°Assuming I live to be eighty,¡± Jennifer said, her smile getting somewhat cruel, ¡°I¡¯ve probably made a profit if I go insane right now.¡±

    May just nodded and said, ¡°Mmm.¡± It was weird. May wasn¡¯t her usual happy-go-lucky self around Jen. In fact, she seemed downright hostile at times.

    ¡°Hey guys!¡± John said, breaking the tension, ¡°Anybody want to play Surgery Simulator?¡± Everyone moved to crowd around the TV. However on my way there, Eliza intercepted me.

    ¡°I need t¡¯talk to ya for a bit,¡± she whispered. ¡°In private.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said, leading her out the door and into the hallway. I also walked her down the stairs into the basement laundry room. The machines were only one high, and also made nice chairs. When we were seated opposite each other and sure no one was there, I asked, ¡°So, what did you want to talk about?¡±

    ¡°Apart from Jen bein¡¯ bloody creepy?¡± Eliza asked. ¡°Char thinks she¡¯s flirting with us, but¡­¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± I said, kind of weirded out, ¡°what do you mean, us?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Eliza said, ¡°she sometimes gets, y¡¯know, like that with me. All touchy-feely. Char¡¯s theory¡¯s that she¡¯s bi and either wants a threesome or can¡¯t choose ¡®er bloody targets.¡± She took a deep breath. ¡°Anyway, the real thing I wanted t¡¯tell you is that Ricardo says ¡®e knows ¡®oo your punching bag could be. However, ¡®e wants payment.¡±

    ¡°What kind?¡± I asked.

    Eliza sighed. ¡°Says he¡¯ll think of something. Bloody gangsters.¡±

    ¡°Guess I¡¯ll deal with that when it happens,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m already so far in over my head, a few more feet won¡¯t hurt anything.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯d be surprised,¡± Eliza said. ¡°Just, be careful, Nate¡­¡± She leaned in close, like she was about to confess something. ¡°After all, I¡­¡±

    She was interrupted by one of the elevator doors sliding open. There was Mubashir, of all people. ¡°Oh,¡± he said, ¡°I am sorry. I am here to do my laundry. Hopefully, I did not interrupt anything.¡± He quickly hammered the door close button. I noticed that he had no laundry basket.

    We both sighed as the elevator doors closed. ¡°Bloody bastard ruined the moment,¡± Eliza said. ¡°Well, best be getting back up. Don¡¯t want people asking too many questions.¡± I noticed she didn¡¯t seem to be too happy about that. Maybe she wanted to tell me something a bit more personal.

    I considered asking her about it all the way up the stairs. Finally, just as we got up the stairs and were almost to The Drunken Mercenary, I said, ¡°So, Eliza¡­ I got the idea that before Mubashir interrupted us, you were going to¡­¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Eliza said, ¡°I was about to cock somethin¡¯ up.¡± She turned towards me, somewhat sadly, as joyous shouts and raucous laughter drifted out. ¡°Listen Nate,¡± she said, ¡°the moment¡¯s gone.¡± She cocked her head in the direction of the celebration. ¡°But this moment sounds fun, don¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°Sounds good,¡± I said, opening the door. ¡°Just¡­ tell me when you finally work up the courage, ok?¡± I kind of had an idea of what she wanted to say, but I didn¡¯t want to guess and get it wrong. Besides, something told me that she wanted to tell me on her own terms.

    ¡°Sure,¡± Eliza said, opening the door, ¡°It¡­ might be a while, though.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s ok,¡± I said, holding the door open, ¡°If it¡¯s not something like ¡®you¡¯ll die in twenty-four hours, here¡¯s how to stop it,¡¯ take all the time you need.¡±

    She smiled as she stepped through the door. ¡°Thanks, Nate,¡± she said.

 2.13: Talk About It, Talk About It, Talk About It

    The weather was so bad that school was basically canceled for the most of the week. The math class, however, found a way. I swear, the math professor decided to double the workload. We also had to do the run down to the Hell Semester barracks around ten at night, the snow at its worst. Thankfully, the snow had let up by Friday for us. The last time we had some fun, but that was because we didn¡¯t have to deal with the Rogues.

    This time, we were teaching the Rogues how to use rifles and submachineguns. Apparently, though, the Rogues were a pistol-only class. Somehow, this lead to them not knowing the first thing about how to use anything other than pistols.

    ¡°Really?¡± Jen exasperatedly asked a scared black man in a suit handling Bai¡¯s P-90. ¡°How are you not afraid of that giant pistol you have that¡¯s knocked you out twice, but you¡¯re scared of that?¡±

    ¡°Jennifer,¡± Bai said, ¡°I¡¯m the one teaching. Please let me teach.¡±

    Jen just rolled her eyes and went back to firing the MP-5 someone had let her borrow. I sighed. These sessions with the Rogues were pointless. As much as some of this stuff was second-nature to me, I had to remind myself that the only reason I felt that way was because I had been through Hell Semester. I also had to wonder what the point was of giving drills that I had trouble with to people who had never held a rifle before.

    After we left, Eliza tapped me on the shoulder. ¡°Nate,¡± she said, ¡°there¡¯s going to be a meeting at The Back-Home. Lose any tails and meet us there for dinner by five.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said, but Eliza had already disappeared into the crowd. I sighed, wishing I knew how to do that.

    At 4:55, I was standing outside The Back-Home Bar and Grill, waiting behind a group of people from the Business school. Suddenly, I realized that this could have been happening during Hell Semester. On my twice-daily run, especially the ones in the evening, I had occasionally noticed people walking around campus, the only apparent notice they took of us was to get out of our way. I suddenly wondered how they could not know what had happened, what we had done. I was reasonably sure that they had access to footage of Fight Night. But none of them had done anything to help us.

    Suppressing the wave of anger, I walked over to the host and told him my name. As he was guiding me to the back room, one of the business majors loudly said, ¡°Guess AMS privilege is holding up.¡±

    I stiffened, but kept walking. The business major, seeing his barb had almost hit, continued on. ¡°I mean, this is the second time this semester they¡¯ve used the back room here. The staff always pull strings for them.¡±

    ¡°Actually,¡± I said, continuing to walk to the back room and not glancing back, ¡°we paid for it ourselves. Apparently, you can¡¯t.¡± None of them had a comeback to that.

    ¡°You know,¡± the host said as he held the door open for me, ¡°they probably didn¡¯t appreciate that.¡±

    ¡°Anything I should be worried about?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Business guys¡­¡± the host said cautiously, ¡°¡­can get kind of vindictive. I don¡¯t think you¡¯re in any physical danger, though.¡±

    I nodded. ¡°Thanks for the tip.¡± Then I walked inside. As the door closed behind me, I recognized the people there. Bai, Eliza, Oro and I had been hanging out with a lot. Bai¡¯s brother, Li, though, I hadn¡¯t seen that much. It wasn¡¯t a big loss, in my opinion. He was kind of an asshole. Neither had I seen much of Ricardo or Ulfric. I was neutral about Ricardo. On the one hand, he seemed like a decent enough guy. On the other hand, he had worked for the Mexican cartels as a hitman and had the feel of a politician on campaign. In other words, he was fake and dangerous.

    Then there was Ulfric. Ulfric Trollbjorn was a giant, baby-faced killer. I hadn¡¯t seen him in person during Fight Night, but they had shown footage at the award ceremony. Apparently, not only was he the tallest person I had ever seen, but he could also rip a person¡¯s head off and use them as a club to beat eleven other people to death. Looking at him, you could see that his stout body was muscular, but not body-builder level. It was as if he had bulked up enough to rip limbs off and crush bones, but not so much that he would be slowed down by his own biceps.

    That wasn¡¯t the worst thing about him. The worst thing about him, the thing that made everyone terrified of him, was his insanity. He rarely talked, and had this childlike smile constantly on his face. When he found something amusing, he would let out this high-pitched giggle that raised the hairs on the heads of everyone who heard it. When he wanted to convey something more complicated than giddy happiness or minor annoyance, he would drop his child-like mannerisms and, in a way mimicking the person he was addressing, he would say what was on his mind. Usually, it was a very accurate assessment of that person¡¯s character. The only person I had knew of who had willingly gone near him was Alma Hebert. That just made me even more scared of him.

    Ricardo smiled up at me. ¡°Hey Killer!¡± he said. ¡°Come on, have a seat, amigo!¡± I sat down. The only seat left at the round table was right next to Ulfric. Eliza looked worried. She had arranged things so that if Ulfric had wanted to go after Bai or Oro, he¡¯d literally have to go through her first. Eliza, on the other hand, had sat so that Ulfric would have to go through me to get to him.

    Sitting down, I noticed that underneath Ulfric¡¯s tent-sized army jacket were large chrome pistols with drum mags. He noticed me staring. In a fluid motion, he pulled one out. Ignoring the fact that everyone else at the table had either pulled out their guns, or had at least reached towards them, he offered it to me. When everyone noticed that Ulfric was holding the gun by the barrel, most of them relaxed. Eliza, however, still kept her Hi-Power pointed at Ulfric¡¯s head.

    ¡°Take it,¡± Ulfric said, his child-like smile wider than ever. ¡°The safety¡¯s on.¡±

    I took it, careful not to grasp the trigger. When Ulfric¡¯s hand let go, I could instantly see it was a Desert Eagle, due to the distinctive triangular barrel. When I saw the markings on it, I did a double-take. ¡°Jesus,¡± I gasped, ¡°this is a fifty caliber handgun!¡±

    ¡°Would you believe he modified it to be fully automatic?¡± Ricardo asked. ¡°And he¡¯s a better shot duel-wielding those things than I am with my pistol?¡±

    ¡°Seeing as it¡¯s Ulfric we¡¯re talking about,¡± I said, ¡°yes. Yes, I definitely believe you.¡± I handed it back to Ulfric. When it was back in his holster, everyone except Eliza breathed a sigh of relief. At the very least, she did holster her gun.

    ¡°So,¡± Li asked, ¡°can we talk about why we are here? Or have we just come here to threaten people?¡±

    Bai gave her brother a dirty look. I could understand why. Every time he had been in a meeting with us, he had done something to disrupt it and contributed very little. I did get the idea she wasn¡¯t that enthused to be here, but she was warming to the idea.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°there¡¯re these guys I¡¯m interested in, Kyle Rockford and Richard Forrest Taylor.¡± I reached into my backpack to pull out my notes. ¡°They¡¯ve been planning something. I¡¯m not sure what, but you might know my history with Richard. He¡¯d like nothing better than a clear shot at me.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Eliza asked, ¡°what do you know?¡±

    You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

    I took out the piece of paper where I wrote everything I knew. ¡°Take a look,¡± I said. ¡°Here¡¯s a list of everything I know about what they¡¯re doing and some guesses.¡± I handed it to Ricardo to pass around.

    When Li got it, he looked at me incredulously and said, ¡°Have you really called us here to waste our time with your mad scribblings?¡± He slammed it on Bai¡¯s placemat. ¡°Here! Read it yourself.¡±

    ¡°It isn¡¯t crazy,¡± Ricardo said, rubbing his temples. ¡°But keeping you in the group is.¡± Again, this hatred between the two of them was starting to get annoying. If push came to shove, I would support Ricardo all the way, but I¡¯d keep an eye on him just the same.

    Bai, meanwhile, said something in Chinese. It sounded neutral, but it pissed off Li. He yelled something in Chinese and slapped his sister. She cried out, more in astonishment than in pain.

    In that instant, Eliza stood up. ¡°You,¡± she whispered, her face white with rage, ¡°Get out. Now.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Li said, completely unapologetic, ¡°but I don¡¯t take orders from¡­¡±

    At that moment, a waiter walked in. ¡°Sorry if I¡¯m interrupting,¡± he said, ¡°but I was wondering if you wanted something to drink? I can come back later, if you want.¡±

    ¡°Later would be good,¡± I said. We all stared at the poor guy until he backed out. After he was gone, I turned to Li and said, ¡°I¡¯m sorry, but Eliza organized this dinner and her sister is paying for the meal. Her words do carry weight. Plus, you assaulted another member. If I had any sympathy for your position, it would be diminished by your constant abuse.¡±

    Oro nodded. ¡°He is right. Please leave peacefully. After you¡¯re gone, we will talk about whether or not you are invited to the next meeting.¡±

    Li looked at us all angrily. After he yelled at Bai in Chinese for a bit, she finally cut him off. I didn¡¯t understand what she said, but I did see how tired she looked.

    After he left, Bai said apologetically, ¡°I¡¯m sorry, but I need to contact my masters. I need to tell them my side of the story. I would also like to apologize for that disgraceful display.¡±

    The waiter came back in. We quickly ordered our main course and our drinks. Then, once the waiter left, Oro took a look at my paper. After she considered it, she said, ¡°So¡­ what does this have to do with us?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°if he¡¯s anything like most white supremacists, this Taylor guy hates us just for existing. I mean, I¡¯m Jewish, Ricardo¡¯s Hispanic, Bai and Li are Asian, Eliza¡¯s a Parahuman, you¡¯re black, and Ulfric¡¯s¡­¡± I paused, considering a way to say why they wouldn¡¯t like Ulfric in a way that wouldn¡¯t offend him. He let loose his signature high-pitched giggle that caused everyone to flinch. ¡°¡­Ulfric.¡± I finished, eyeing him nervously.

    I continued on. ¡°Now, at the moment, you¡¯re perfectly justified in not working with me on this, but I¡¯m disturbed that there¡¯s a network of people who hate us. If they¡¯ve reached out to Richard and Kyle, I¡¯m also worried that they¡¯re planning something.¡±

    Eliza sighed. ¡°It¡¯s great that you don¡¯t want us to act on any of this,¡± she said, ¡°because there isn¡¯t much to act on. In fact, the information you¡¯ve given us seems to indicate that the best thing we can do is to let these blokes do their own thing. I mean, this Kyle character seems to be working against them. For all we know, we¡¯re better off not touching this. Just let Kyle give ¡®em a good one-two from the inside.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s assuming that my guess is correct,¡± I said. ¡°Or assuming whatever Kyle¡¯s planning on doing after destroying these guys isn¡¯t worse than business as usual.¡± I paused. ¡°I¡¯m actually not saying we should do nothing, I¡¯m saying we should investigate.¡±

    ¡°Well¡­¡± Eliza said reluctantly, ¡°I might have ¡®eard May talk about a Kyle Rockford. Something about a sex-change operation. Explains why Richard was callin¡¯ him Karen, don¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°If it¡¯s true,¡± I said, ¡°this all just raises more questions.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve got one answer,¡± Ricardo said. ¡°The punching bag they¡¯re using? She¡¯s a Lupine named Camilla Riviera.¡± He handed me a picture of a Hispanic woman with long hair and a headband. She was wearing a Hell Semester uniform and a goofy smile. ¡°She was into all sorts of stuff in Juarez. Started out doing small-time hustles in Juarez, then eventually moved into assassination, bounty-hunting, and being a punching bag. She was really good. I didn¡¯t even know she was here until I looked.¡±

    ¡°Bet she decided not to show off,¡± I said. ¡°People might try and avoid showing off to avoid attracting attention. Or maybe someone paid her to take a fall. I know Eric and his group only did three matches, then left.¡±

    ¡°Maybe we should bring in some new blood,¡± Eliza said. ¡°Just a thought.¡±

    ¡°I would not be opposed,¡± Bai said, ¡°but I would like to keep my brother in.¡±

    Eliza¡¯s face darkened. ¡°Bai, you¡¯re my friend, so you should know this: if your brother gets back in, it¡¯ll be conditional. If ¡®e continues to act like a knob, ¡®e can fuck off. If ¡®e hits you again, regardless of whether or not I see it¡­¡±

    ¡°I understand,¡± Bai said, ¡°but would appreciate you not assaulting my brother.¡±

    ¡°So, anything else?¡± I asked.

    ¡°This girl, May,¡± Ricardo said, ¡°is she a friend of yours?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Eliza and I said in unison.

    ¡°Because,¡± Ricardo said, leaning in conspiratorially, ¡°she¡¯s working on a project assigned by President Newell-Howard himself. All people know is that sometimes late at night, around eleven or twelve, she checks into the morgue. It¡¯s a shame you¡¯re protecting her, because I know some people who¡¯d pay top dollar for that stuff.¡±

    ¡°We said we were protecting her,¡± I said. ¡°Our beloved president and his pet research projects aren¡¯t something I particularly give a shit about.¡± This was somewhat of a lie. For all I cared, President Newell Howard could shower in sulfuric acid. However, whatever he was researching interested me to say the least. Noticing Eliza¡¯s dirty look, I added, ¡°We still would want some guarantees that you aren¡¯t stealing research that benefits her or are doing it in a way that would place suspicion on her.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Ricardo said, ¡°If that¡¯s all the business taken care of, who¡¯s excited for Culture Fest?¡±

    ¡°Culture Fest?¡± I asked. ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± Apparently, I wasn¡¯t the only one who didn¡¯t know what the Culture Fest was, because everyone else at the table looked at Ricardo expectantly.

    ¡°Man,¡± Ricardo said, ¡°don¡¯t you read the emails? Culture Fest is this gathering where students organize by country or ethnicity or religion or whatever to put on exhibits showing off how awesome they are. This happens like the last week before finals.¡±

    ¡°That sounds like fun!¡± Eliza said. ¡°Wonder if England¡¯s doin¡¯ anything?¡±

    ¡°They probably are,¡± Ricardo said, ¡°but Japan are the people to beat. They¡¯ve all been doing something similar since they were in middle school. All the Central and South American countries are teaming up this year, though, so I think we¡¯ve got a shot.¡±

    As the table burst into interested conversation, I suddenly got excited. Perhaps this school wouldn¡¯t end up being so nightmarish. I was starting to believe it, too, until Ulfric giggled, killing the happy feeling in record time.

 2.14: Rest Up

    February was when things started to get into a routine, albeit one with ever-escalating academic stakes. There was at least one paper assigned per class, not counting the math class. The teacher there just decided to pile on the homework. Between schoolwork, my job at The Drunken Mercenary and the exercise schedule I had to keep up, I would get back to my dorm and cry myself to sleep. It was one of the hardest things I had ever done, with Hell Semester barely beating it out. Due to some miracle of God, I was getting Bs and As.

    The nice thing was that the weather was improving. After the one week where classes had been canceled, the snow¡¯s constant barrage had begun to back off. Then, for one day, the temperature jumped up. Now, occasionally, the snow would become rain. One day, it even stopped! People went out into the streets, marveling at the fact that there was no precipitation, assuming fog didn¡¯t count as precipitation. Of course, no one could see the sun.

    It was soon after that my driving lessons started. The problem was three-fold. First off, the weather, as stated above, was crap. The second problem was that the instructors were training us on both automatic and manual transmission cars. Finally, I had failed my driver¡¯s test back home. All of this, plus my workload, stress, and mounting paranoia, should have made my driving lessons miserable.

    Instead, I was having fun. I had an excuse to empty my mind of all the various things that were happening to me. I guess it was because I had to focus on what I was doing or die, sort of like how I hadn¡¯t once had a nightmare during Hell Semester. It was better than drinking, and I was having trouble playing my favorite games.

    Not everyone had my stance on driving lessons. John, the lucky bastard, didn¡¯t have to take them because he had taken his test back home. He even was a TA for the instructors. Thankfully, he was pretty cool about it.

    Cross and Eliza also hadn¡¯t passed their tests yet. ¡°God,¡± Eliza moaned, ¡°why is this happening to me again? Wasn¡¯t three times enough?¡± It was at dinner in Newton-Howell, and Eliza was having her second meltdown.

    Most of us were doing our best to comfort her. We had all broken down at some point this semester. At least I had. The day before, I was doing my laundry when I had realized how much work I still had to do. It took ten minutes, then I had to remove clothes from the laundry.

    ¡°You failed three times?¡± Cross asked. ¡°Seriously, it wasn¡¯t that hard.¡± He had just come into the dining room from his first lesson. He had never driven before, due to being a New Yorker.

    ¡°Well,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°technically she only failed once. I really thought she¡¯d get it the third time, until the lightning struck.¡± Eliza sobbed.

    Suddenly, Jen appeared directly behind Cross. ¡°Did she almost run over a friend? Because Cross almost hit May.¡±

    Cross¡¯s eyes widened. Meanwhile, Eliza gave Charlotte a pleading stare. ¡°No!¡± Charlotte said, obviously lying. ¡°She never ran over or into anything.¡±

    ¡°Anyway,¡± Jen said, ¡°she doesn¡¯t seem to be eating with us tonight. Does she have classes?¡±

    ¡°I think so,¡± I said. ¡°She tends to like eating with us whenever possible. I¡¯m not sure she has anyone else to eat with. Kinda sad.¡±

    ¡°¡®Ow¡¯s it sad?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°despite being pretty brilliant at med stuff, she never seems to hang with any of the other med people. I mean, we¡¯re pretty cool, but I get the impression that she¡¯d rather be hanging with people in her major.¡±

    ¡°She has an intriguing perspective on things,¡± Jen said. ¡°I like her. Shame she doesn¡¯t like me.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± John said. He hadn¡¯t been paying attention for most of the conversation, just texting on his cPhone. ¡°May seems to be a little oblivious and, well, is as accepting of what we did during Hell Semester as a pacifist can be.¡±

    Jen shrugged. ¡°Wish I knew.¡±

    Suddenly my phone rang. ¡°It¡¯s May,¡± I said. ¡°She¡¯s asking if she wants us to meet at the morgue around 11:30. I can make it because work¡¯s canceled tonight.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± Cross asked. ¡°How is The Drunken Mercenary closed?¡±

    Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.¡°Someone dared Ulfric to break the window with his bare hands,¡± I said. ¡°He did. Also, the toilet broke. Like seriously broke.¡±

    ¡°Jesus,¡± Cross said. ¡°There go my plans for tonight. I¡¯m in.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not,¡± Jen said, shivering a bit. ¡°That building¡¯s jump-shielded.¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s so bad about jump-shielding?¡± I asked.

    Jennifer¡¯s light brown eyes lost their usual twinkle. Instead, they became somewhat haunted. ¡°Have you ever been locked in a coffin and buried alive?¡± she asked. ¡°I haven¡¯t, but that¡¯s the closest I can come to describing jump shielding.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± John said, ¡°that doesn¡¯t sound fun.¡± He stretched a bit. ¡°Anyway, I¡¯m in. I need a break. That fucking English paper is killing me.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, ¡°and I need to not look at math.¡±

    Unusually, John and I were the last of the group to leave. ¡°Hey, Nate,¡± John asked as he finished swallowing his brownie, ¡°can I ask you something?¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said.

    For a moment, he was quiet, and debating what to say. Then he asked, ¡°What do you think of Bai?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m a little scared of her,¡± I said. ¡°After all, the first time I talked to her was¡­ awkward, to say the least.¡± On our first meeting, after Eliza had deduced I was a spy, she had spent the conversation silently trying to figure out whether to hurt me until I talked or to just kill me.

    ¡°But¡­¡± John said, ¡°can she be trusted?¡±

    ¡°Eliza trusts her,¡± I said. ¡°I don¡¯t know her well enough to make that call.¡± Suddenly, a suspicion hit me. ¡°Any reason you¡¯re asking?¡± I asked. Images of her stalking him suddenly passed through my mind.

    ¡°She kind of invited me to this place called The Back-Home Bar and Grill,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m thinking of going.¡±

    ¡°Who else is going?¡±

    ¡°Just me,¡± he said, somewhat smugly. ¡°If you¡¯ll excuse me, I got some stuff to pick up at the library.¡± He got up, smiling a bit.

    Well I¡¯ll be damned, I thought, John and Bai¡­ Didn¡¯t expect them together.

    A few hours later, we were walking into the medical building. The foyer was very nice for a reception area and well-secured. The Campus Security Guard on duty buzzed us inside without much fuss. ¡°You¡¯re here to see little scarface, ja?¡± He said approvingly as we checked in. I noticed that the nickname could apply to him, as he bore the telltale marks of going hand-to-hand with a Lupine. ¡°She¡¯s down in the basement, room B010.¡±

    When the elevator dinged open, Charlotte said, ¡°My, this is a gloomy place.¡±

    ¡°Gloomy¡± was kind of underselling it in my opinion. The walls and floors were clean enough, but the lighting was somehow simultaneously harsh and dim. They were also in mesh housings, so a creepy spider web pattern appeared in the blue light. These shafts were not wide enough to touch each other completely, making the place look like a horror movie set.

    It only took a few seconds to find B010. Those few seconds were actually pretty creepy. We knocked on the door, a steel monstrosity with a camera built in. We waited for a few moments. Then it slid open.

    There stood May in scrubs and an upturned visor, her eyes bleary. ¡°Sorry,¡± she mumbled, ¡°just was doing some stuff. Come on in.¡±

    We all filed in. ¡°Totally fine!¡± John said. ¡°Anyway, what are you doing? It¡¯s pretty late.¡± We were in a small locker/office area that was much better lit.

    ¡°I¡¯m wondering,¡± May said, eyeing us suspiciously, ¡°what you guys are doing here.¡±

    Cross, voicing the sudden dread we all felt, said, ¡°But you were the one to invite us here¡­ weren¡¯t you?¡±

    ¡°Did my message to you say ¡®sent from my cPhone?¡¯¡± May asked. ¡°Because that got stolen a few days ago.¡±

    ¡°The question is,¡± Eliza said, ¡°¡®Oo benefits from putting us all in one place? And why do they want us ¡®ere?¡± We considered this for a moment. Then Eliza added, ¡°Probably not healthy for us, innit, though?¡±

    We all moved away from the door. Cross, John, and Eliza began to reach under their coats and Charlotte began to fiddle with her pocket book¡¯s zipper. Then we heard a muffled thump.

 2.15: Bumps in the Night

    Everyone who had a gun drew it. That left only me and May

    unarmed. ¡°What was that?¡± John asked, his Browning at the ready.

    Meanwhile, Eliza was ushering May and Charlotte into a corner while simultaneously blocking them from any

    attacks. ¡°Sounds like it came from down the hall and to the left,¡± Eliza said,

    moving her ears to get a fix on the location. ¡°I smell at least four people

    and¡­ something else.¡±

    ¡°Wait¡­¡± May said, ¡°I think I know where they¡¯re breaking into. It¡¯s the secure medical records.¡±

    ¡°Secure records?¡± I asked. ¡°What¡¯s that?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s where they keep stuff too sensitive to put on a computer,¡± May said. ¡°They¡¯ve got a few things that they

    don¡¯t want the hackers in CompSci getting their hands on.¡±

    ¡°Well then,¡± I said, ¡°this sounds like a job for Campus Security.¡± I pulled out my phone. After looking at it for

    a few seconds, I asked May, ¡°Do we not get reception here?¡±

    ¡°We should¡­¡± she said. ¡°Why?¡±

    I held up my cPhone. ¡°My phone isn¡¯t getting anything.¡±

    John, Cross and May checked their phones. ¡°Yep,¡± John said, ¡°I¡¯m not getting anything either.¡± Suddenly, I

    remembered the camera that Takashi and Brosnan had given me and the tip Ricardo

    had given about May¡¯s secret research. A plan suddenly began to form. If I wanted

    to get some information for them, if I wanted to figure out what May was doing,

    then now was my chance. I just had to¡­ something. I just didn¡¯t know what.

    Then Cross stepped in. ¡°Sounds like we¡¯re going to have to use the best defense. Here,¡± he said, handing me his

    M1911, ¡°take this.¡± After I took it, he lifted up his t-shirt revealing a sawed-off shotgun shoved down his pants. ¡°Let¡¯s take the fight to these assholes,¡± he said as he gave his shotgun a pump.

    This was perfect, but I didn¡¯t want to risk Charlotte or May¡¯s life. If they came with us, there was a good chance that they¡¯d mess things up. ¡°May and Charlotte should go for help,¡± I said. ¡°They¡¯re sitting ducks in a fight.¡±

    ¡°You''re right,¡± Eliza said. ¡°Leave them to me.¡±

    ¡°Guess that leaves me to get CampSec,¡± John said. Crap. That meant he was going to split off from the group, leaving me to collect the information with Cross. ¡°Sound like a plan?¡± he asked.

    ¡°Best possible one we can come up with,¡± I said. I could make this work, I decided. Cross didn¡¯t really care one way or another about this school. From what I could understand, his only three motivations were friends, family, and money. I could play to two of them.

    We moved out into the hallway. ¡°Let¡¯s make sure they¡¯re hostile before we open fire, ok?¡± I whispered.

    Then we heard voices. I was on point, so I signaled them to stop. ¡°¡­Y¡¯know,¡± I heard someone say, ¡°this just feels like a bad idea, mate.¡± He was around the corner and he had a male voice and an accent that placed him in Australia.

    ¡°What, you like the little freak, man?¡± Another voice, also male but more like American frat boy. ¡°The boss gave us an order. We get the research, kill the sanctimonious bitch and leave. Meanwhile, Richard sits on his ass and claims he was the key factor.¡±

    The first guy shot back, ¡°I agree the lil¡¯ bitch has it bloody coming, but she¡¯s working for the pres. If he finds out¡­¡±

    At that, the two men the voices belonged to turned the corner. They were dressed in ski masks and were both armed, one with a shotgun, the other with an assault rifle of some kind. For some reason, they had their weapons slung over their shoulders in a way that would make it hard for them to be deployed. They were close, too, only a few steps away.

    We stared at each other for a moment. Then one of the guys in ski masks reached for his gun, or at least I thought he did. I fired two rounds into his chest. The one remaining, the Australian one, desperately called out, ¡°Wait!¡± but I had already fired. He fell to the ground, a gaping red hole where his left eye should have been.

    We paused long enough for the last casing to finish bouncing on the tile floor, the smell of gunpowder and blood slowly starting to stain the air. The only sounds were the faint hum ofelectronics and climate control and the ragged breathing of the first person I shot. I edged closer to the two bodies in the pool of light.

    Something cold and metallic tapped me on the shoulder. It was Cross giving me a spare magazine. I took it and reloaded his gun, then Cross and I quickly made the turn. John, meanwhile, went off in the opposite direction towards the elevator. From down the dimly-lit hall, I could see an open door with light shining out of it.

    Someone called out from inside the door, saying, ¡°Hey, guys? Is everything ok?¡± Neither Cross nor I answered. ¡°I¡¯m serious, guys,¡± the person said as he stepped out the door, a MAC-10 or Uzi held loosely in his hand and pointed at the floor, ¡°you better not be¡­¡±

    He was cut off by the report of Cross¡¯s shotgun. He fell backwards and slid down the door frame, his coat stained red. I also noticed he was wearing a ski mask like his two friends. We moved forwards towards the open door. Cross was on the wall the door was on. I was on the opposite wall so I had to get a good view of the interior.

    Speaking of the interior, it was a lot like a library, except instead of being stocked with shelves it was full of filing cabinets. It was still a fucking maze in there. At least the entrance was on one end of the room. The door had been a heavy metal affair, not vault-like, but still formidable. It had been blown in, and the smell of fire and chemicals wafted through the air.

    When we got to the door, I held up three fingers, still aiming the gun into the room. Cross nodded. As the countdown went down, thoughts of all the things that could go wrong flashed before my eyes. Then I hit zero. We burst into the room, Cross going to the left, me going straight ahead.

    Thankfully, it turned out that the room was much smaller than I expected. When I rounded my first corner, I saw another man in a ski mask raise an MP-5. I ducked back just in time. There was a loud chatter and the sound of bullets whizzing by me to penetrate into filing cabinets.

    ¡°Yeah!¡± the guy yelled. ¡°See how you like¡­¡±

    Again, the thump of Cross¡¯s shotgun echoed out, cutting off someone. There was the sound of the slide being pulled back, followed by another thump. There was a brief, yet seemingly eternal silence broken only by background noise and the clinking of a shell casing falling to the floor. Finally, Cross called out, ¡°Clear!¡±

    I peeked out around the filing cabinet. The person who had shot at me was now lying on the ground, surrounded by spent casings and drops of blood. Behind him was a desk. I walked over to it. Spread out on the table was a hastily discarded camera, a bunch of papers and a manila folder. The tab on it looked something like this:

    Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.9/2/2015 to

    Autopsy(s): UNFOR N. Korea

    May Riley

    I took out my spy camera to take a picture of it. ¡°What are you doing?¡± Cross asked.

    I turned to him. ¡°Hey Cross,¡± I asked, ¡°how would you like to some money?¡±

    He looked at me suspiciously. ¡°How much money?¡± he asked.

    ¡°It depends,¡± I said, pulling on my gloves. ¡°My contact has screwed me before, but I could get you as much as fifty grand. All you need to do is stand watch for campus police and not ask questions.¡±

    ¡°How much are they paying you?¡± Cross asked. ¡°¡®Cause I might be able to get you a betterdeal.¡±

    I sighed. ¡°What did I say about asking questions?¡± Cross raised his eyebrow. I looked away to take some pictures. ¡°A hundred grand. Assuming they like what I give them.¡±

    ¡°Damn, Killer,¡± Cross said, shaking his head. ¡°Forget what I said about that better deal. You¡¯re obviously runnin¡¯ some kinda charity.¡± He walked off. From over his shoulder he said, ¡°You ever change your mind and decide you wanna make money, come talk to me.¡±

    I sighed, and got back to photographing documents. They were reports, notes, and forms filled out by a surprisingly legible hand. I would not have expected May to have good writing. While doing that, I thought about two things.

    First off, I was¡­ concerned about the reports. For once, I wasn¡¯t disgusted by NIU¡¯s lack of ethics. As far as I knew, May was just conducting a series of autopsies and tests in a perfectly ethical way. At least, it seemed ethical.

    What bothered me was the people she was autopsying. First off, they were clones. That was the first thing I made out. There apparently were four types, each suited for different military purposes. Two groups differed only slightly and were somewhere in between baseline and para, with minor durability and strength modifications. A third was optimized for going extended periods without sustenance and maneuvering in tight formations. The fourth was obviously deliberately bred as a shock trooper. They were huge, fast, and ridiculously strong. They also had a weird section of the brain that May said, and I quote, ¡°looked like some sort of antennae.¡±

    The most disturbing letter was a condolence note to a redacted person. It was thanking him for his sacrifice bringing in samples. That, along with every other scrap thing I had seen, suggested that these clones hadn¡¯t been created by the University. They also were dangerous and running amok somewhere.

    The other thought that my deal with UNIX was incredibly crappy. Cross seemed to be under the impression that accepting a hundred grand for this information was ¡°charity.¡± A few months ago, I would have believed it was to a worthwhile cause. Now, I wasn¡¯t so sure. Even assuming Takashi and Craig hadn¡¯t used me as bait, they had still underpaid us by exactly $99,500. Good people don¡¯t underpay people who risk their lives.

    I took a deep breath. I was taking this too personally. I shouldn¡¯t dwell on how I was being screwed over. Instead, I should start looking for better clients. Or even better, find a way to leave. But I¡¯d get the money UNIX owed me.

    I must have taken over twenty pictures of documents when I heard Cross call out, ¡°Hey guys! Glad you could make it!¡± I quickly stuffed the camera in my shoe and headed over to the doorway.

    ¡°Sorry about how late we were,¡± a familiar voice with a Hispanic accent said.

    I recognized it. ¡°Officer Mendez!¡± I said, trying to be cordial. ¡°Nice to see you here.¡± As I headed towards the door, I remembered two things. First, he and partner, Officer Gupta, had saved me from Salim¡¯s attack on me a little after Fight Night. Later, Salim had found that another event, The Chamber of Horrors, didn¡¯t remove corpses. Neither of us liked that. To get us out of there, Mendez and his partner had gassed the people who had survived and removed us by force. The next time we saw each other things were¡­ strained.

    ¡°We meet again,¡± Mendez said, with forced joviality. I got the sense he was trying to make up. When I got out into the hallway, I saw that his partner, Officer Gupta was out as well as several over officers with P-90 submachineguns and SPAS-12 shotguns. ¡°Sorry, but we¡¯re going to have to ask you to submit to a pat-down and give us any weapons or electronic devices you have on you. There¡¯s stuff in that room we don¡¯t want people to see.¡±

    ¡°Not a problem,¡± I said. I gave them my cPhone, my iTouch and Cross¡¯s M1911. Cross also handed over his iPhone, his cPhone and a 3DS. Officer Mendez then proceeded to frisk me while another officer did the same to Cross.

    After we were done, Mendez asked, ¡°Do you know where Riley is? Marshall said we should have you show us where they are.¡±

    ¡°Eliza and Charlotte are watching over her,¡± I said. ¡°Eliza takes guarding people very seriously, so I¡¯ll let her know we¡¯re coming.¡±

    ¡°Good,¡± Mendez said. ¡°We¡¯ll need to verify that everything is there before we let you go.¡± He motioned for me to move out. ¡°After you, man.¡±

    We got to the morgue¡¯s door. I knocked on it, and it opened. Eliza was standing there, looking visibly relieved. ¡°Heh,¡± she said, ¡°You finally got your asses down ¡®ere.¡±

    ¡°Where¡¯s May?¡± Mendez asked.

    ¡°Back through there,¡± Eliza said, indicating the door to the actual morgue. She turned around and called out, ¡°Oi! Char! Campus cops¡¯re ¡®ere!¡±

    ¡°Thank God!¡± I heard May call out.

    We walked into the morgue. It was reasonably well-lit, with several tables for dissecting corpses and some morgue slabs built into the wall opposite us. However, there was something missing. ¡°Where is Miss Riley?¡± Officer Gupta asked.

    ¡°Miss Riley,¡± Charlotte¡¯s voice said, muffled and somewhere to the left, ¡°and I are in the freezer.¡± We moved towards the other end of the room. There was a large silver door. As we did so, Charlotte¡¯s voice came out from behind it. ¡°I had the idea of hiding in here. However, I failed to realize that there was no interior door handle. I do apologize.¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± Mendez said, ¡°there appears to be a keypad by the door. What¡¯s the password?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s also finger-print locked,¡± May said. ¡°You¡¯re going to need to get your boss down here or find someone else with access to the lab.¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s¡­ he¡¯s not here,¡± Mendez said, looking away awkwardly.

    ¡°What do you mean he¡¯s not here?¡± May asked, her voice dangerously controlled.

    ¡°He¡¯s in Russia for a conference,¡± another officer said. ¡°He won¡¯t be back for another week or so. We can look for someone else with access, but it¡¯ll be an hour at least.¡±

    ¡°Charlotte?¡± May asked dangerously. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Cross and Eliza wince.

    ¡°Yes, May?¡± Charlotte squeaked.

    ¡°Never. Do this. Again!¡±

 2.16: Poetic Justice

    It was Thursday when we had gone into the medical center. It was Saturday when we left. During that time, the camera had somehow managed to remain in my shoe, undetected by all except me. Finally, around 2:30 AM on Saturday, we staggered out of the med center. For once, it was not cold or precipitating. Despite my tired haze, I was exceedingly thankful for the nice night.

    ¡°Now,¡± Charlotte said, when we were outside Marine and Squire, ¡°I know that my idea was stupid, unnecessary and, well, quite moronic¡­¡±

    ¡°Like tryin¡¯ t¡¯get with that older bloke ¡®oo was always by the school because you liked his white van,¡± Eliza murmured, shooting her adopted sister a withering glare.

    ¡°¡­So, to make it up to you,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°I want to take you to get coffee at¡­¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Charlotte,¡± I said, ¡°but I just want to go to sleep. I haven¡¯t slept in about forty-eight hours and have only had two wish sandwiches in the past day. Plus, there are midterms.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯d like some coffee!¡± Cross said.

    ¡°But¡­¡± Charlotte protested, glancing around hurriedly.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it,¡± I said. ¡°I need sleep.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± John said, ¡°me too.¡±

    ¡°You ¡®eard ¡®em, Char,¡± Eliza said blearily. ¡°They need rest. I need some bloody rest.¡±

    ¡°Speaking of rest,¡± May said, pointing over her shoulder, ¡°I¡¯m going to head back to my dorm. I¡¯m beat, and I¡¯ve still got chills.¡±

    As she walked off, Eliza grabbed her by her hood. ¡°Oh no ya don¡¯t,¡± she growled. ¡°I¡¯m not about t¡¯let you walk home alone so some ax-murderin¡¯ wanker can give you a couple new scars. You¡¯re staying in my dorm.¡±

    We walked into Marine as May was dragged into Squire. ¡°Well,¡± John said, ¡°that was a waste of time. Why¡¯d you have to go in there anyway?¡±

    ¡°Remember that meeting with our scholarship people?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Yeah?¡± John said grumpily. Then he woke up a bit. ¡°You didn¡¯t¡­¡±

    I had bent down, pretending to tie my shoe. When I came up again, I was holding the spy camera. ¡°I did,¡± I said as I showed it to John. Then I shoved it into my pocket.

    ¡°Do¡­ do you have any idea what you¡¯ve done?¡± John asked. ¡°If they find out¡­¡±

    ¡°I know,¡± I said. ¡°That¡¯s why we aren¡¯t going to mention it again until we¡¯re as far away from this God-forsaken shit hole as possible.¡±

    John sighed. ¡°Do I want to know you found?¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s a clone army in North Korea,¡± I said quietly.

    ¡°Not sure I believe that,¡± John whispered. ¡°I mean, if North Korea could create a clone army, they¡¯d be flaunting that shit left and right.¡±

    ¡°Could be they don¡¯t control it,¡± I said. ¡°Anyway, let¡¯s go to bed.¡±

    The weekend, after we had gotten some sleep, was the definition of awful. Due to the fact that midterms started next week, we had a lot of work to do, and when we weren¡¯t working, we had to be studying. It was kind of a nightmare.

    At least the projects were interesting. My Military History and my Sociology course both had midterm projects instead of tests. For instance, I had to take two famous generals from my country¡¯s history in Military History and compare them. I had been assigned Grant and Lee.

    However, the thing that bugged me was that my English class had assigned both. That, and studying for the math test, was the toughest part of the weekend. I barely left the dorm room, only occasionally going out for the purpose of showering or eating.

    I also noticed that Eric went out of the room more than the other three of us combined that week. One time when he was packing, I asked him, ¡°Dude, where do you go?¡±

    ¡°I have a study group with the rest of my crew,¡± he said.

    ¡°Cool,¡± Cross said. ¡°Can we come too? Because we¡¯re¡­¡±

    ¡°No.¡± With that, Eric closed the door behind him.

    ¡°Damn,¡± Cross said, sighing a bit wistfully. ¡°I was kind of hoping to see Doc.¡± I remembered a time very soon after Hell Semester was over when Cross and Doc had sort of been rushing into the elevator. Combined with the fact that they had been kind of handsy, and some things were starting to make sense. ¡°Anyway,¡± Cross asked, ¡°you ready for the driving test on Monday?¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± I said, ¡°the test¡¯s on Monday?¡±

    ¡°Well, an optional one is,¡± Cross said. ¡°If you feel like you¡¯re good enough, you can take it now. Assuming you signed up for it, of course.¡±

    I suddenly remembered a list I had signed at the start of the lessons. Was that the list of who would take the early driver¡¯s test? If so, I wasn¡¯t ready.

    At the exact moment I was wondering this, the message notification on cNet showed that I had a new message. I looked at it. It was a message from my driving instructor saying I had an appointment on Monday at 6:00 AM.

    ¡°Apparently I did,¡± I said. ¡°I don¡¯t remember signing up, but it says my appointment is

    tomorrow.¡±

    Cross and Eric both looked at their computer screens. Eric sighed in relief. Cross,

    however, asked, ¡°Does yours say 6:00 AM?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°Let me guess, you¡¯ve got that same time too?¡±

    ¡°Yep,¡± he said confidently. ¡°Wanna bet I get it on my first try?¡±

    ¡°Not really,¡± I said. ¡°I just want to finish my English paper, then get some sleep.¡±

    I ended up only getting one of those done. By the time I had gotten my English paper all finished and had given it at least one look-over, it was 5:05. I grabbed my clothes and shower stuff and staggered across the hall to the bathroom to take my shower.

    When I opened the door to my room, Cross was standing there with nothing on below the waist. He was facing towards me, hairy scrotum and all. Pointedly looking away, I said, ¡°I¡¯ll be back in five minutes.¡± I hurriedly closed the door and went to the common room area and sat down on one of the couches. As soon as I sat down, I decided a rest couldn¡¯t hurt.

    Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

    What felt like a few seconds later, Cross was nudging me. ¡°Hey,¡± he said, ¡°time to head down.¡± After glaring at him for a few seconds, I got up and walked over to the elevator, giving the down button a good slap. Cross, understandably, shut up for a while.

    We were supposed to meet the guy outside of Squire. When we got out of the building, we saw Eliza bundled into her old army jacket by Sir Galahad¡¯s and nervously nursing a hot drink. There was no car. I looked just in time to see a four-door Bentley come driving down the street. I quickly realized that it was our test car.

    The car parked, and out got Sergeant Burra. Sergeant Burra was a blond, very athletic Australian woman who had been a drill sergeant during Hell Semester. I assumed that now, since Hell Semester was over, I should refer to her as Professor Burra. I had also heard she was a Lupine like Eliza. However, she was either the kind who was born without dog ears, or had the surgery done on them.

    ¡°Good morning!¡± she said cheerfully as she bounced out of the car. Despite being in her thirties, she had the air of a teenager. The pink coat with white fur trim only enhanced her image. ¡°So you guys are taking your driver¡¯s test, eh?¡± she asked as she walked around the car. ¡°Is one of you lot Nate Jacobs? ¡®Cause you¡¯re up first.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s me,¡± I said.

    She threw me the keys. ¡°Great!¡± she said happily. ¡°Now get in and show me your stuff!¡±

    ¡°This¡­ this is a Bentley,¡± I said as I caught the keys. ¡°This is almost two hundred thousand dollars. Without any options.¡± My stomach dropped into my shoes. Judging by Eliza¡¯s face, so had hers. So far, the most expensive car they had put me in was either the Boss Mustang or that Mercedes-Benz.

    ¡°Oooh! You¡¯re a car guy!¡± Burra said happily. ¡°That means I don¡¯t have to give you a talking-to about what happens if you crash it. We like to make tests a bit interesting for a few students. You crash it, you pay to fix it. You pass the test, you get a gift certificate to The Veranda. You break the car, you pay for damages.¡± The Veranda was a fancy restaurant, the fanciest on campus, in fact. I heard it was the kind of place where you could run up a hundred dollar bill just by sitting down.

    Taking a few deep breaths, I got into the plush leather seats. ¡°Wait,¡± I said, ¡°are these heated?¡±

    ¡°It better,¡± Eliza said as she got into the seat behind me. ¡°It cost more than my biological parents ever made¡­¡±

    ¡°Who cares?¡± Cross said, also entering. ¡°Let¡¯s see what this thing can do!¡±

    ¡°Top speed on this campus is forty kilometers per hour,¡± Burra said. ¡°Anyway, let¡¯s see your hand signals!¡± After a few of these little pre-drive checks, we were ready to go. I closed the window and turned the key.

    ¡°Ok,¡± Burra said, ¡°First thing we¡¯re doin¡¯ is makin¡¯ a noice K-turn. Remember ¡®ow to do one of those?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. I drove forwards a bit, then did a perfect K-turn.

    What followed next was about half an hour of driving. I was a little tense, but the seat helped to loosen me up a bit. Cross and Eliza¡¯s wise-ass remarks, on the other hand, were a bit counter-productive. When they began chanting ¡°Don¡¯t mess up,¡± over and over again on the final part of the test (parallel parking,) I shot them a dirty look. They shut up instantly.

    After I parked, Burra said happily, ¡°Congrats! You passed! Your IDP will be sent to you within the week and I¡¯ll message the coupon for The Veranda by dinner. Miss Henderson, your turn.¡±

    Eliza¡¯s time was more nerve-wracking. As soon as she got in the driver¡¯s seat, she started shaking. After a few deep breaths, she began to back the car up.

    ¡°Hey Eliza¡­¡± Cross began, a smile on his face.

    ¡°If you aren¡¯t going to say something nice or encouraging,¡± I said, ¡°I will place a curse on your driving that makes Eliza look like she drove an F1 out of her mother¡¯s vagina. Do we understand each other?¡±

    Cross looked at me for a moment, then, still staring me right in the eye, said ¡°¡­Watch out for the bus.¡± Eliza squeaked and hammered the brakes.

    ¡°Congratulations, Cross,¡± I said, turning away, ¡°you¡¯re cursed.¡±

    Cross laughed. ¡°You can¡¯t curse people.¡±

    Eliza actually managed to do well, despite several people running out in front of the car and another car (a Mercedes) suddenly swerving towards us. When she finished parallel parking, Burra said, ¡°Great job, Eliza! Your license and coupon will probably arrive

    around the same time his does. Now Mr. Cross, was it? Your turn.¡±

    When Cross got in, Burra said to Eliza and me, ¡°Dining hall¡¯s opened up. The one we¡¯re parked in front of, Mandela, has some right good grub. You can go in if you want.¡±

    ¡°Nah,¡± I said. ¡°He sat through mine, I might as well sit through his.¡± At this point, I had kind of forgotten about my threat. However I was soon reminded of it.

    ¡°Hey guys,¡± Cross said cockily, turning back in seat, ¡°watch me pass on my first try.¡±

    Now, when backing up, our teachers had taught us that we first needed to visually confirm the car was in reverse. We also had to look over our shoulder and not totally rely on the backup cameras and mirrors. We also were taught only to give the car a small bit of gas.

    To his credit, Cross did turn around. However, he had accidentally put the Bentley in drive. He also had slammed the gas. The car jumped over the curb, knocking over the orange cones we were supposed to be avoiding. He desperately tried to brake, but it was too late. The Bentley hit a lamppost, causing every airbag in the car to pop.

    We were all silent for a moment. Then the light fell over, smashing in someone¡¯s dorm window. ¡°Well,¡± Burra said, ¡°I think we can safely call that a cock-up.¡±

 2.17: Creepy Brick Buildings

    The rest of the day was midterms, sleeping and the radio show. Thankfully, my English class ended just in time for me to take a nap after lunch. After that, I slowly staggered into the radio booth. Andy came in a bit later. At our second break, I said, ¡°So, as you may have noticed, I¡¯m a little tired. I¡¯ve only taken one, and already I feel like crap.¡±

    ¡°Well, thankfully midterms are only a week,¡± Andy said. ¡°Oh, something else. On my way over here, our GM said we have been selected to operate the booth during Culture Week.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± I said, visions of gargantuan responsibilities filling my head, ¡°what, uh, what exactly does this mean, Andy?¡±

    ¡°The week before finals we¡¯re going to be set up outside talking to people,¡± Andy said. ¡°You know, doing interviews and talking with our fans.¡±

    ¡°We have fans?¡± I asked blankly.

    ¡°Apparently, we do,¡± Andy said. ¡°We got two hours because we were requested by the Mexican and Japanese presentations. From what I can tell, that¡¯s the champs and the underdogs.¡±

    ¡°I think I know how we got the Mexicans to request us,¡± I said. ¡°I got a friend who¡¯s working with them.¡± I then added in a joking manner, ¡°If you¡¯re listening, Ricardo, thanks for the extra work!¡±

    ¡°Shouldn¡¯t be that hard,¡± Andy said. ¡°It actually sounds like its kind of fun.¡±

    ¡°Oh yeah, definitely,¡± I said. ¡°Don¡¯t mind me, I¡¯m actually looking forward to it.¡± It was true. I really wanted to see the culture festival, and this would force me to make time to see it. Otherwise, I¡¯d probably just stay in my dorm and have a panic attack.

    The rest of the week wasn¡¯t anywhere near as fun as that radio show. I enjoyed presenting my projects in Military History and Sociology, but the amount of work I had put into them beforehand nearly made me snap.

    Math, though, was the worst of the lot. I was never any good at math. In fact, for half of high school, I had special one-on-one math classes. Here, I had none of that. Plus, when we were finally done with that stupid test, the teacher assigned us more math homework that had to be done by tomorrow. Why? He said it was because ¡°Math never rests,¡± but people in the class (mostly the ones who weren¡¯t in AMS/Shadowhaven) suspected it was because he was legitimately insane.

    Another thing that happened that week was Cross convincing me to carry a gun. At lunch on Wednesday, I was sitting with him. Eventually, he said, ¡°Hey, Killer, remember what happened last week? You know, with the people breaking into Secure Records?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I asked, ¡°what about it?¡± At the time, I thought we were going to start speculating on who the people there had been working for, or maybe Cross would talk about a potential buyer for the information I had gotten.

    ¡°Remember how you weren¡¯t armed at the time?¡± Cross asked. ¡°Because if it was just you who was there, things could have ended a lot differently.¡± He waited for me to respond. When I didn¡¯t, he asked, ¡°Why the hell weren¡¯t you carrying?¡±

    ¡°I kind of don¡¯t like the idea of carrying a weapon all the time,¡± I said. ¡°What if I lose control? What if I shoot the wrong person?¡±

    Cross sighed. ¡°Listen, Killer. You come from a pretty clean family, right? I bet before you came here you never knew anyone who had done anything worse than smoke weed or shoplift. You were taught that the system was on your side and all you had to do was do well in school and you¡¯d get to live the kind of life your parents lived.¡±

    ¡°You seem to have me pretty well figured out,¡± I said.

    ¡°Am I wrong?¡± Cross asked.

    ¡°No,¡± I admitted. I actually was probably even more sheltered than Cross thought.

    ¡°You want to know the thing about this system that you¡¯ve been taught to trust?¡± Cross asked.

    I rolled my eyes. ¡°Let me guess: it doesn¡¯t serve the little guy, it just fucks everyone who isn¡¯t in power and the only way not to get fucked is to ignore it. Trust me, I¡¯ve heard it.¡± It was very hard for me to avoid getting on my high horse. I had killed way too many people for that.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Cross said, ¡°but that¡¯s not the point. The point is that they¡¯ve lied to you about other things. For instance, human life doesn¡¯t have an intrinsic, objective value.¡±

    ¡°If that¡¯s the case,¡± I said, ¡°why do you have my back?¡±

    ¡°Because you have subjective value,¡± Cross said. ¡°You¡¯re a badass motherfucker who actually gives a shit if people live or die. However, if someone comes after me, I¡¯ll shoot them because I value my life, and I don¡¯t give a fuck about theirs.¡±

    He paused. ¡°Look, Killer. I like you. That¡¯s why I¡¯m telling you this. If I didn¡¯t think you were worth having around, I wouldn¡¯t lose an ounce of sleep if someone popped you. Just remember: if someone has made up their mind to kill you, you probably wouldn¡¯t have liked them anyway.¡±

    ¡°Still not convinced,¡± I said.

    Cross rolled his eyes. ¡°Ok,¡± he said, ¡°say you¡¯re walking down the street with May or Eliza or someone you care about and you see someone in front of you start to pull out a gun. You know that they¡¯re going to kill that person you care about, and possibly you as well. The street is structured in such a way that you can¡¯t throw the loved one out of the way and the attacker is too far away for you to grab. Is it better to let him kill you and your friend, or is it better to blow his brains out?¡±

    This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

    I bought holsters for my two pistols that very day.

    After midterms, things quickly calmed down. For about two weeks in March, nothing except routine work happened. It was glorious.

    The third Monday looked like it was going to continue this trend. I was a little late getting out of English class, so the elevators were pretty much empty. The only other person waiting was John. I smiled to myself. Things were going well. I had good friends, good grades, and no one had tried to kill me for weeks.

    Just as I had finished that thought, Mubashir suddenly ran into the elevator. His sudden appearance startled me and John, causing us both to reach reflexively towards our weapons. ¡°Hello,¡± he said, looking at us nervously as the door closed. ¡°Sorry about the intrusion. But you should really ask me about why I joined NIU.¡±

    Suddenly, it came back to me. That stupid fucking joke I had to tell everyone. ¡°Let me guess,¡± I said as John and I relaxed, ¡°you thought you were applying to NYU, I say, ¡®what a coincidence, me too,¡¯ and then you comment about how we rhymed.¡± Mubashir sighed in relief as I turned to John. ¡°Does that sum it up?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± John said, ¡°pretty much.¡±

    ¡°Good,¡± Mubashir said. ¡°I can¡¯t stay long. Salim is already suspicious of me.¡± He looked directly at me. ¡°Do you have any idea how hard it was to convince him to let what you did to Amir go?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m surprised you did it,¡± I said, a little skeptically. ¡°Salim tried to stab Ulfric once.¡±

    ¡°Technically,¡± Mubashir said, ¡°I convinced him to wait a few years. He¡¯s not going to make a move until after you graduate. Or go home for the summer. Or set foot off the island for any reason. Or if he gets tired of your existence.¡±

    ¡°I feel so much safer,¡± I said.

    Mubashir¡¯s normally chipper expression faded, replaced by a dark look as he leaned against the door. ¡°You¡¯re lucky,¡± he said, ¡°I¡¯ve got to live with him and pretend to like him. I have to just watch as he spews hate in the guise of Allah¡¯s kindness.¡± He looked at us, his expression broken beyond words. ¡°I want to kill him.¡±

    Needless to say, we didn¡¯t know what exactly to do with that. We just stood in silence until the elevator dinged. We all stepped back from the door. There, standing in front of us, face as impassive as ever, was Alma Hebert.

    ¡°Well, well,¡± she said, ¡°the gang¡¯s all here. Good. I have something to show you three.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Mubashir said, ¡°I just¡­¡±

    ¡°Believe me when I say,¡± Alma stated, focusing her cold gaze on Mubashir, ¡°that you don¡¯t have to lie to me. It would also be hard to do successfully.¡± She shifted her focus back to all three of us. ¡°Now, I don¡¯t know who, exactly you work for,¡± she said, ¡°but I have an idea of what you¡¯re after. Allow me to show you something of interest.¡±

    Suddenly, the world turned yellow and black, and we were standing near a brick building in the Northwest corridor of the campus. It was completely boarded up and sealed off with heavy-duty steel plates. The sign above the building said ¡°Interdimensional Research Facility One.¡±

    ¡°This,¡± Alma said, ¡°is the IDRF. Thirty years ago, there was an incident, and three of the school¡¯s top scientists went missing. Their project has resurfaced in North Korea. If you want to know why, you¡¯ll have to dig. Start by going through the Secure Files in the Engineering school from the eighty-five-eighty-six school year.¡±

    ¡°You know,¡± I said, ¡°if you know what¡¯s happening, you could just tell us.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Alma said, the sepia fading away to reveal we were still in the elevator, ¡°but by now you should know that everyone at this school has their own agenda.¡± When the elevator was completely there again, we realized that Alma was gone. However, we still heard her voice, as if from a great distance away, say, ¡°And Nathan? Tell Eliza and Bai that the angels are coming and it¡¯s time to unite.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± John said, ¡°that was creepy and vague. And kind of annoying, too.¡± His brow furrowed in apprehension. ¡°Mubashir, you ok?¡±

    Mubashir, up to this point, had been standing stock still. When John repeated his query, he shook himself. ¡°Yeah,¡± he said, with a fake smile, ¡°I¡¯m totally fine.¡± Somehow, I wasn¡¯t sure I believed him.

    <hr />

    After three days in Maryland and weird bugs with RRL this morning, I''M BACK!</a>

 2.18: Have a Nice Day

    The weeks began to pass much more quickly. March went by somewhat quickly, and during that time, it stopped snowing completely! Of course, it was also raining nonstop, but somewhat warm rain was much better than cold snow and freezing snow. Of course, there were still complaints about the weather.

    These complaints got more pronounced as the temperature began to spike near the end of the month. Eighty-five Fahrenheit and raining is nice, but ninety-five? It starts to get a little disgusting.

    The work was also pretty hard. However, the nice thing about it was that some of it was getting me money. I figured that after taxes, I¡¯d take in a little over fifteen hundred from my bartending. Not enough to get myself a car when I got home, but at the rate I was going, I would be one of the few people from my country who wouldn¡¯t graduate college in debt.

    As April began, and culture week started to gear up, things began to get pretty hectic. I didn¡¯t have as much to do as some people. For instance, there was Ricardo, who was working with the Latin-American Culture Fest teams. Their idea was actually pretty genius and quite possibly against the rules.

    ¡°Ok,¡± he said when I asked him about what they were doing, ¡°I suppose I can tell you. The Brazilians already found out about it and got in on it.¡± It was the Friday before Culture Fest.

    ¡°How¡¯d they find out about it?¡± I asked. ¡°You were keeping it heavily under wraps.¡± I was also unsure of the requirements of being a Latin-American country.

    ¡°There¡¯s actually two ways,¡± Ricardo said. ¡°First off, they¡¯re perfect for what we¡¯re planning and people thought they should be in on this. Second, we needed to use every football stadium.¡± Being from the US, it took me a second to realize he meant soccer. ¡°So, the plan is this: a football tournament.¡±

    ¡°A football tournament?¡± I asked dumbly.

    ¡°Yeah, man,¡± Ricardo said. ¡°Everyone loves football! Plus, the prize for winning is going to be the votes of every other team.¡±

    ¡°Ah,¡± I said. ¡°How are you going to get people to stick to that?¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it,¡± Ricardo said. ¡°There¡¯s also going to be half-time shows. We¡¯re going to have you and Andy cover the Brazil-Mexico game. We¡¯re going to do a pre-game show, they¡¯re going to do a halftime show, and the winner gets to do a reprise. It¡¯s Monday at one, so make sure you got time.¡±

    ¡°Someone else actually checked with us already,¡± I said. ¡°We¡¯re good to go.¡± Well, apart from the fact that I knew nothing about soccer (football, I needed to start calling it football) and as far as I knew, neither did Andy.

    The next day, when I walked outside, I was shocked to see that it was sunny. It was also a hundred and five degrees Fahrenheit, but I was too shocked by their being actual sun. As I was walking down the street to breakfast, I stared up at the bright light that had been mostly invisible for the past few months.

    ¡°It¡¯s so bright¡­¡± I said. Then I began laughing manically and running in a circle.

    ¡°Let me guess,¡± someone asked, ¡°AMS, right?¡±

    ¡°How¡¯d you know?¡± I asked.

    The person who had asked gave me a look, then walked off, muttering about AMS nutters getting excited about the bloody weather. I ignored him and started running to the cafeteria.

    When I was done with breakfast, I noticed some people setting up stalls on the side of the street. Each one had a different flag. Near Marine and Squire was one with the Scottish flag. The people there were doing something with various forms of grain and I could smell paint thinner wafting from it. I began walking away from it, but then Eliza burst out of Squire, a look of excitement on her face.

    ¡°Oy, mate,¡± she asked, running to the vendor, ¡°is that Scotch you¡¯re makin¡¯?¡±

    ¡°Aye,¡± one of them said. ¡°But it won¡¯t be ready until Monday, so it¡¯d be great if yeh could fuck off ¡®till then.¡±

    ¡°Sure thing!¡± Eliza said. ¡°It smells like the Irish, yanks, and kraut ¡®ave got some stuff set up as well! See ya Monday!¡±

    Before she could run off, I called out, ¡°Hey, Eliza!¡±

    She turned around, ¡°Nate! You¡¯re up early, aren¡¯t ya?¡±

    ¡°

    Yeah,¡± I said, ¡°just thought you might want to know that I¡¯m going to be covering a soccer, er, football game for my radio show. It¡¯s at Newell-Howard. You want to come?¡±

    ¡°Footie?¡± Eliza said, somehow brightening even more. ¡°¡®Oo¡¯s playing?¡±

    ¡°Mexico and Brazil are playing each other for Culture Fest,¡± I said. ¡°Starts around one. Can you make it?¡±

    Eliza laughed. ¡°Of course I can. It¡¯s football.¡±

    The rest of the weekend was mostly studying and trying not to go insane. Seriously, this first year at NIU I had worked harder and felt more scared than I had ever felt in my entire life. I was also not feeling too good about the camera with pictures of sensitive documents being in my room. I was also curious as to who the alleged fourth UNIX agent was. I also wanted to know how Agent Hicks had known about this fourth infiltrator when I hadn¡¯t.

    At this point, I was pretty sure that there was a fourth UNIX agent somewhere on the island, possibly more. After all, UNIX had lied to me about almost everything else. Why not this as well?

    That was the mixture of paranoia and resentment was what I went back to classes with. I stewed about this through English class, barely able to concentrate on what was going on. At some point, I realized that if I couldn¡¯t put this out of my mind, I¡¯d make some stupid mistake because I was taking this too personally. The question, though, was how did I not take this personally? John and I had basically been hired to die so two others could live.

    I had managed to calm down a bit by the time English was over. Seeing it was warm (ok, way too warm) and sunny, I decided to walk around a bit. I quickly discovered that the German Culture Fest booth was serving sausages, beer, and giant pretzels. I got a bratwurst, a knockwurst, and a laager and sat down to enjoy my free food and beer.

    Eventually, I saw Eliza walking over to Newell-Howard. She was carrying a shoulder bag and taking alternating sips of two bottles of beer. ¡°Hey, Eliza!¡± I said. ¡°You heading to the soccer game?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± she slurred. ¡°Just gettin¡¯ inna the proper state of mind.¡±

    I looked into the bag. Inside were a bunch of beer and whiskey bottles. ¡°Eliza¡­¡± I asked, ¡°are you planning on drinking all of those today?¡±

    ¡°Just enough to get me proper hammered,¡± she said. ¡°Two of my teachers canceled classes so we could enjoy Culture Fest ¡®n become more cultured. Also, I haven¡¯t had a break in months, and the only way I can get a decent sleep nowadays is to get a little bit of booze.¡±

    ¡°Eliza,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯ve been having the dreams too, but this isn¡¯t good for you.¡±

    Eliza glared at me. ¡°Let¡¯s just watch the fucking game, ¡®kay, Nate?¡± She then chugged the remainder of one of the bottles and tossed it into the garbage.

    When we finally got to the gym the game would be held in, Richard was waiting outside. ¡°Oh good,¡± he said to me, ¡°you¡¯re a few minutes early. We got the thing set up, so if you want to start broadcasting, now would be a great time.¡±

    We were in a small indoor football field (rest of world, not American) that was separated by glass walls. At either end, by the goalposts, there were storage spaces for various things like boxing platforms. On either side, there were bleachers, the side we were on had a gap for an entrance and the other side had a platform upon which radio broadcasting equipment had been set up. From there, Andy waved at me.

    As I walked over to the platform, I noticed that Eliza was following me. I decided not to mention the mini-intervention that had just happened and instead sat next to Andy. ¡°Are you and Eliza ok?¡± he asked. ¡°She doesn¡¯t seem to be happy.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s kind of private,¡± I said, as I set up the radio. ¡°Sorry. Anyway, you know anything about this game?¡±

    ¡°Nope,¡± he said. ¡°Plus, we¡¯re doubling as announcers. That will make this interesting.¡±

    ¡°Luckily, the first thing is going to be the pre-game show,¡± I said. ¡°Hopefully, that will be something I understand.¡±

    It turns out the Mexicans did have something I understood: music. Their opening show was a Carlos Santana cover band. A really good Carlos Santana cover band. ¡°Man,¡± I said to Andy and everyone who was listening, ¡°I don¡¯t know if you heard that, but if the Mexicans can play soccer, uh, football, as well as they can make music, then they¡¯ve got this game in the bag.¡±

    Then the game started. It turned out, the Mexicans weren¡¯t as good at football as they were at music. The Brazilians were slaughtering them. ¡°Oh man,¡± I said, after the Brazilians had managed to score twice in five minutes, ¡°They aren¡¯t as good at football as they are at music, are they?¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± Andy said, ¡°what about that guy?¡± I looked down and saw Ricardo running up the field, somehow behind enemy lines.

    ¡°Holy shit!¡± I said. ¡°Ricardo looks like he¡¯s going to¡­¡± There was a muffled thump as Ricardo kicked the ball into the net, the goalie missing it completely. ¡°HE SCORES!¡± I yelled. ¡°MEXICO¡¯S PUTTING UP A FIGHT, NOW!¡±

    It soon became apparent that Mexico wouldn¡¯t win, buy by God, they¡¯d make Brazil work for it. By the time halftime came around, the score was three-seven, Mexico-Brazil. As I watched the Brazilian show, a bunch of dancers in skimpy costumes, I said, ¡°Ok, people, Brazil¡¯s going to win the game, but Mexico won the shows.¡±

    The game started up again. This time, it was more brutal. The Mexican team was putting everything into it, and the Brazilians were getting pissed that they actually had to work at winning. There were also a few injuries. Most of them seemed highly exaggerated in an attempt to get the other team out, or ¡°given a red card.¡± Seriously, I know nothing about football.

    Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.

    Something I didn¡¯t comment on was Eliza¡¯s increasing state of drunkenness. She was cheering wildly like everyone else, but she swayed whenever she tried to stand up. She had also finished her second bottle of beer and had opened a much larger bottle which looked like some form of whiskey. It also smelled like whiskey.

    Eventually, both trends came to a head when a Mexican player tripped on air as a Brazilian ran past him. He began rolling on the grass and yelling his head off. Everyone could tell he was faking, even the referee who was rolling his eyes as he walked over.

    Eliza, who had been getting more and more pissed at this kind of behavior, finally exploded. ¡°Oy, ya pansy!¡± she called out drunkenly, ¡°this is fffootball, not minceball! Stop yer blubbering, ¡®e didn¡¯t even hit ya!¡±

    At this, the faking guy sprang to his feet and made a beeline for Eliza, shouting insults in a mixture of Spanish and English so heavily accented I couldn¡¯t make out what he was saying.

    Eliza stood up, swaying dangerously. ¡°What, mate?¡± she asked, her voice thick with liqour. ¡°Y¡¯wanna go? ¡®Cause I¡¯m good t¡¯go.¡± She staggered out of her seat on the bleachers towards the yelling football player¡­ and promptly fell on her face.

    ¡°Shit,¡± I said. ¡°Andy, take over, ok?¡±

    ¡°Uh¡­ ok¡­¡± Andy said as I ran down to help Eliza.

    ¡°Damn it,¡± I said when I got to her. She had fallen on her face and slid down the steps. Luckily, not a lot of people were sitting in that section, so she hadn¡¯t fallen into any of them. Still, the fall had given her a broken and bloody nose and cuts on her lip, chin, and cheeks. ¡°You look like a fucking mess, Eliza.¡± I held out my hand. ¡°Here,¡± I said, ¡°let me help you up.¡±

    She looked at my hand for a moment, trying to process what was happening. Then she burst into tears. ¡°Oh God you¡¯re right,¡± she said between sobs. ¡°I¡¯m a bloody wreck.¡± She took my hand and I helped her to her feet.

    I turned around to Andy and called out, ¡°Hey, I¡¯m going to take Eliza back home, hold the fort, ok?¡± When I saw that he had heard and understood, I began leading Eliza out of the field. ¡°I¡¯m going to take you back to your dorm, ok?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry ¡®bout this,¡± she slurred as we exited the room. ¡°I¡¯m just¡­ I¡¯m just tired. I can¡¯t¡­ the girl I gutted. I keep seein¡¯ Campus Security tryin¡¯ t¡¯get all her pieces on the stretcher. It just¡­ I spent six years hatin¡¯ meself last time I did somethin¡¯ like that¡­¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± I asked, ¡°you did something like that six years ago?¡±

    Eliza looked away. ¡°Some pieces o¡¯ shite tried to buy me from my parents, sell me for scrap, ¡®cause only a few people have done dissections on underage Parahumans. My parents objected. Then things went to hell, well more to ¡®ell I should say.¡± She looked at me sadly. ¡°Things never really got better, y¡¯know?¡±

    ¡°Ah,¡± I said. ¡°Well, I¡¯m going to get you back ho¡­ back to your dorm.¡± I was glad I had caught myself. I wasn¡¯t sure if she was homesick, and if so, which home? Her mansion with the adopted family? Or her biological family that had struggled to make ends meet?

    I didn¡¯t ask her, I just led her back to her dorm room. It was a little hard, as she still had to buzz us in, but I managed to do it. ¡°You¡¯ll be ok in here, right?¡± I asked her.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± she said, staggering into bed, ¡°I¡¯ll be right as rain in a few hours. Go back to¡­¡± After that, I couldn¡¯t hear anymore, as she was lying face down on her pillow.

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯ll just leave you here, I guess.¡± Taking the mumble to mean yes, I walked out. Then I hurried back to the soccer game.

    I arrived just in time to see everyone get out. I waited for the initial stream to pass by before I walked into the room. Andy was still manning the radio booth. I headed over to him and yelled, ¡°Hey, Andy, how did we do?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± he said, ¡°I had no clue what was happening.¡±

    ¡°Apparently,¡± I said as I reached the booth, ¡°that¡¯s part of our charm. Or at least I hope it is, because we have no clue what we¡¯re doing in general.¡±

    ¡°Actually,¡± Andy said, ¡°I don¡¯t think we¡¯ve made any mistakes an audience would notice. We didn¡¯t have any radio silence or repeated songs, and we kept our stuttering to a minimum. That¡¯s more than I can say for most other shows I¡¯ve heard.¡± He paused. ¡°You also get really weird sometimes.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°it helps fill in the gaps before the music. Anyway, are we ready to do the Japanese¡­ exhibit? Show? I don¡¯t know how to describe half the stuff going on this week.¡±

    ¡°Basically they¡¯ve taken over this dining hall, Sun Tzu, and are serving people food while dressed as maids.¡± Andy shrugged. ¡°Apparently, it¡¯s a thing they do in Japan.¡±

    ¡°At least the interview isn¡¯t till tomorrow,¡± I said. ¡°We¡¯ve got time to prepare. Want to talk about it at supper?¡±

    ¡°Not particularly,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯ve got a lot of work.¡± For some reason, I got the feeling he wasn¡¯t telling the entire truth. Maybe it was the way he looked a bit to the side, maybe it something else.

    ¡°So do I,¡± I said, ignoring my instincts, ¡°but if I spend any more time doing it, I¡¯m going to snap like Eliza.¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± he said, ¡°but I really got stuff to do. See ya!¡±

    ¡°Sure!¡± I said. Then, I was back on my head, doing work. Doing work, in this case, meant staring blankly at various pages. I was able to actually work when I started, and for a bit after supper, but apart from that I couldn¡¯t concentrate. For some reason, I got the feeling it wasn¡¯t just that I couldn¡¯t remember the last time I had watched a movie without flinching. There also was this sense I had something was going to happen.

    Around ten, I stood up. John and Cross looked up. ¡°You ok, Killer?¡± Cross asked.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, ¡°I just gotta destress.¡± I considered my options. The games I used to play and the movies I used to watch weren¡¯t really an option, as sometimes I would end up lying on the floor, trying to take cover. I wasn¡¯t sure that the gyms in the student centers were still open. That left one thing to do. ¡°I¡¯m going to The Drunken Mercenary,¡± I said. ¡°If any of you want to come, you can.¡±

    ¡°What are you going to do there?¡± John asked. ¡°Drink? It¡¯s still a school night. During finals.¡± Since it was the week before finals, quiet hours had been enacted for the entire day. Also, most people were busy studying, so very few people would be in the common rooms or other places of recreation.

    ¡°If worse comes to worse, yeah,¡± I said, ¡°but that¡¯s the only way I know how to destress now. And I haven¡¯t done anything fun in months.¡±

    ¡°Go ahead,¡± Cross said. ¡°I might join you.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ll be on the lookout.¡± After checking to make sure my Sig and my Beretta were concealed correctly under my grey hoodie, I headed down the stairs to The Drunken Mercenary to see what was happening.

    It turns out that almost nothing was happening. When I got down, there were literally only three other people, including the bartender. Two other Freshman from AMS/Shadowhaven were sitting at the bar. I didn¡¯t recognize them, and I somehow doubted they recognized each other. To give you an idea how empty that was for the bar, normally the bar was also staffed by a bouncer and two waiters and all of them would be busy at this point. Now, it was just a bored bartender.

    However, there was one person I did know. There, playing pool was Ricardo. He noticed me after he took a shot. ¡°Hey, Killer!¡± he said. ¡°How¡¯re you doing?¡±

    ¡°Stressed, bored, and can¡¯t sleep,¡± I said. ¡°Mind if I join you?¡±

    ¡°Not a problem,¡± Ricardo said. ¡°You want me to buy you a drink?¡±

    ¡°Not at the moment,¡± I said as Ricardo pulled out a pool cue for me. ¡°I just watched someone have a beer and whiskey induced meltdown. I kind of want to avoid that happening to me.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Ricardo said, ¡°I saw that. That was fucked up.¡± He handed me the pool cue and began to reset the balls. ¡°Anyway, nice job doing the announcing. Pretty good enthusiasm.¡±

    ¡°Thanks,¡± I said. ¡°I had no clue what I was talking about or what was going on, but it was still pretty cool. You guys were pretty good.¡±

    ¡°Still got our asses handed to us,¡± Ricardo said.

    Several games of pool and a lot of small talk later, I noticed that the other two patrons had left. I looked at my cPhone. It said the time was 10:58 PM. ¡°Shit,¡± I said. ¡°Look at the time. I should get to bed.¡±

    ¡°Not a problem,¡± Ricardo said.

    Suddenly we were distracted by an angry shout. We turned out the window to see the top of May Riley¡¯s head as she walked down the street, angrily yelling to herself. Then there was the sound of metal clanging.

    ¡°Never mind,¡± I said. ¡°This looks like something I have to deal with.¡±

    Both Ricardo and I walked out into the street, the door swinging closed behind us. May, however, was a bit farther down the street, towards the gate out of school. She hadn¡¯t calmed down, but she had quieted down, muttering angrily under her breath.

    ¡°Hey,¡± I said, ¡°you ok?¡±

    May turned around. ¡°What are you doing here?¡± she asked, her voice somewhat dangerous. I saw that her eyes were red and her cheeks stained with tears.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, pointing to Marine, ¡°I kind of live there. Then I heard a friend having a bad day.¡±

    ¡°I just followed him out,¡± Ricardo said. I shot him a look to let him know he wasn¡¯t helping.

    May relaxed a bit. ¡°I hate my family,¡± she said. ¡°I finally get a boyfriend, and it¡¯s one of the few people in the world who is capable of making me feel not like a freak, and what does my sister do?¡± I shrugged. May continued, now yelling again and gesturing wildy. ¡°She threatens his life! I¡¯m sorry, sis, but where the hell was your protectiveness when I was coming home crying every day? Seriously, what the hell is her problem? I actually am a better judge of character than she ever will be, because she let me deal with people like Destiny and Shirley by myself! And we were supposed to be twins!¡±

    ¡°Who are Destiny and Shirley?¡± Ricardo asked. I shrugged.

    ¡°They¡¯re bitches,¡± May said. She then fell silent. After a while, she said, ¡°Don¡¯t worry, I¡¯ll be fine in the morning. I might even be ready to talk to Mary again.¡±

    ¡°Do you want me to¡­¡± I began, but before I could finish, I heard the sound of metal slamming. Up and down the street, automated steel shutters began to close over all the doors. Fire escapes retracted up so that they were unusable. The school had turned every building on campus into a fortress and sealed off the only entrance to the rest of the island.

    Instinctively, Ricardo and I drew our weapons, me with my Beretta from a shoulder holster, Ricardo with his Bernadelli from a holster at his hip. Anxiously, we checked the street.

    ¡°What was that?¡± May asked nervously, her anger forgotten.

    ¡°Nothing good,¡± I said.

 2.19: I Did Nazi That Coming

    As Ricardo and I scanned the street, May asked, ¡°Uh¡­ do you really need to have your guns out?¡±

    ¡°At this point,¡± I said, ¡°it¡¯s better safe than sorry. Besides, you¡¯re the sophomore. Did you even know that the buildings here could do this?¡±

    ¡°Yes I did, actually,¡± May said. ¡°If there¡¯s some sort of attack or if there¡¯s a containment failure, these shutters will deploy in strategic locations¡±

    ¡°Then do you have an idea why they¡¯d do this?¡± Ricardo asked.

    ¡°On this large a scale?¡± May asked. ¡°The only thing I can think of is some kind of invasion. Like, full-scale Marines, helicopters, bombers and battleships kind of invasion. But I don¡¯t hear any gunfire so¡­¡±

    Suddenly, there was a flash of light and a sharp crack from up the street. Four people in what looked to be Nazi uniforms suddenly appeared right in front of us. ¡°MAY!¡± I yelled as I opened fire, ¡°GET DOWN!¡±

    Three of the four were hit pretty quickly, but the fourth managed to get a few rounds off before we got him. ¡°What the hell was that?¡± Ricardo asked. ¡°Were they Jumpers?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± May said, ¡°I was lying on the ground like I was told to.¡± I looked behind me. May was getting to her feet. ¡°But judging by the flash of light and the snapping sound, I¡¯d say that they definitely weren¡¯t Jumpers.¡±

    ¡°Agreed,¡± I said. ¡°Let¡¯s move before more come.¡±

    ¡°Where?¡± May asked. ¡°There¡¯s no place to go. All the buildings are going to be sealed.¡±

    ¡°That doesn¡¯t mean that there aren¡¯t places with more cover than this,¡± I said. ¡°We take the back roads and head towards the Campus Security barracks. Follow me.¡±

    I began to head to the alleyway by The Drunken Mercenary, dragging May with me. On my way, I could hear more cracks from these strange teleporters. If anything, they reminded me of the people who had ambushed Charlotte¡¯s plane back in December, based on their weird tech and love of 1940¡¯s clothing.

    I got behind a dumpster and turned around to cover Ricardo and May. May was first to get in. Ricardo was up next when there was another crack. When my eyes cleared from the blinding light that had accompanied it, there were another four tangoes.

    Before I could shout a warning, one of them double-tapped Ricardo with what looked like the child of a Mauser and an M1 Garand. Ricardo fell on his face, giving me a clear shot at his attackers.

    My first shot hit one of the others, but I¡¯m pretty sure I just winged him. Two more shots missed completely. Then, the other three began to suppress me.

    Making sure to keep aiming, I pulled out my cPhone. I was going to unlock it when I noticed that there were no bars. Great, calling Campus Security was no longer an option.

    ¡°Who are these people?¡± I asked. ¡°They¡¯re teleporters who are obviously not Jumpers, armed with Nazi-inspired weaponry and uniforms made from materials I don¡¯t recognize.¡± I heard one start yelling something. ¡°Who also are speaking German.¡±

    ¡°Maybe they are Nazis.¡± May said. There was a sudden burst of gunfire, and I ducked back behind the dumpster. ¡°They could have hid in some out of the way location, just biding their time.¡±

    ¡°And where were they hiding?¡± I asked as I took a few shots at one with an STGW trying to get a bead on me. ¡°Another planet?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± May said, ¡°but you said they¡¯re using materials you¡¯ve never seen before in their weapons. That makes being extraterrestrial in origin a distinct possibilGAH!¡± She had yelled because a bullet had just parted her hair. ¡°Ok,¡± she said, ¡°that was scary.¡±

    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

    ¡°Shit,¡± I said, ¡°we¡¯re going to have to move.¡± I slid out my Beretta¡¯s mag to check how many shots were left. There were only six shots, plus the one in the chamber. Add the spare magazine in my holster and my P229, and I had only thirty-five rounds of ammo. ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°when I give the signal, you¡¯re going to run.¡± From down the street, I heard people running down the street and yelling in German. ¡°Get to the loading area behind the building. I¡¯ll be there in a bit.¡± I fired a few more shots.

    ¡°Ok,¡± May said. ¡°If you don¡¯t make it¡­¡±

    ¡°Hide,¡± I said, ¡°find a weapon and wait Campus Security to launch a counter-attack.¡± While I said this, I reloaded my Beretta, placing the mostly empty magazine in a pocket. I peeked out of cover. Ricardo was lying face up in a pool of his own blood, his pistol still gripped tightly. Wait, I thought, didn¡¯t he fall face down?

    As if reading my thoughts, Ricardo turned his head and smiled at me. ¡°Alright, go!¡± I said. Instantly, Ricardo raised his pistol and began firing. I leaned out of cover and took aim at a soldier with an SMG taking aim at Ricardo and double-tapped him in the chest. ¡°Run, May, run!¡±

    From behind her, I heard her run off. I couldn¡¯t turn around to verify she was out of danger, so instead I asked Ricardo, ¡°You need any help, man?¡±

    ¡°Naw, esse,¡± he wheezed. ¡°I¡¯ll be ok. Get outta here.¡±

    He was lying, of course. But there was nothing I could do. ¡°Roger that, Ricardo,¡± I said, slowly backing up. ¡°See you after we win, ok?¡±

    I made the most of his sacrifice. Walking backwards, I made sure to pop anything wearing a helmet and green that came into my view. It took a while, but at the time I thought it was safer.

    This supposition was immediately proven wrong when I rounded the corner. Behind Marine, weapons facing me, were eight people. Slightly out of arm¡¯s reach were two of the people who were probably Nazis, armed with Stgws. Leaning against the far wall, dressed in blue university t-shirts were some students, both with M-4 clones of some kind. Standing a little in front of them were two more Nazis, one with an MP-40, the other with the semi-auto Mauser. Also, judging by the sound of a Kalashnikov being cocked, there was someone behind me as well.

    However, it was the three people behind the closer of the two Nazi. One of them, of course, was Richard. Smiling smugly, he had a shotgun resting on his shoulder and his M1911 pointed straight in my face.

    That wasn¡¯t the worst part. Standing on May¡¯s chest, a Browning Hi-Power pointed right at her face, was Kyle. Calmly, without a hint of emotion or anxiousness, he said, ¡°I¡¯d drop that gun if I were you, Killer.¡±

    I dropped it. One of the Nazi guys (at this range I could see they were wearing the requisite armbands) said in a heavy German accent, ¡°I understand why we need the scientist, but why him?¡±

    Kyle shrugged. ¡°He¡¯s a good soldier, and I think I can get him on my side pretty quickly.¡± I noticed his word choice. My side, not our side.

    ¡°Kyle, you asshole,¡± May coughed. ¡°I can¡¯t believe I kept your secret for you! Nate knows all he needs to about you!¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s right,¡± the Nazi guy said, ¡°this is a waste of time. Besides, he doesn¡¯t look Aryan enough.¡±

    ¡°He hasn¡¯t heard Richard¡¯s proposal yet,¡± Kyle said, still completely calm. ¡°Let him talk, and after that, we¡¯ll decide where to go from there.¡± My expectations dropped somewhat. If Kyle was relying on Richard to convince me, I¡¯d probably say no out of principal.

    ¡°So Jew-boy,¡± Richard said, his grin growing bigger, ¡°why¡¯d you enroll at lovely Nowhere Island University?¡±

 2.20: Counter-Attack

    ¡°So Jew-boy, why¡¯d you enroll at lovely Nowhere Island University?¡± With one question, Richard had just raised so many questions. Was he the fourth UNIX infiltrator? Did that mean UNIX had known Nazis would attack Nowhere Island and had neglected to warn the other three agents stationed there? More pressingly, did this mean May and I could live?

    Well, there was only one way to find out. ¡°Would you believe,¡± I said jokingly, ¡°that I thought I was applying to NYU?¡± As I finished, I noticed that Richard made a twirling motion with his shotgun. As he did so, Kyle¡¯s crew raised their guns and stopped leaning on the walls.

    One of the Nazis in front of Kyle and Richard rolled his eyes. ¡°He obviously isn¡¯t joining. All he¡¯s doing is telling¡­¡±

    ¡°What a coincidence,¡± Richard interrupted, adjusting his aim so he was now aiming at the Nazi who had just spoken. ¡°Me too.¡± As he did so, Kyle and his crew also adjusted their aim as well. They fired almost simultaneously.

    Behind me, I heard some voices in German making concerned queries. Then there were sharp bursts of AK fire. ¡°Clear!¡± I heard a female voice with a Mexican accent say. I turned around to see a person of ambiguous gender lift up a ski mask with one hand to reveal a feminine Hispanic face.

    ¡°Camilla,¡± Kyle said, somewhat exasperated, ¡°put the mask back on. We haven¡¯t blown our cover yet.¡± Suddenly a radio crackled, a voice in German angrily enquiring something. Kyle holstered his Browning and got off May. ¡°Please be quiet for a moment. Also, if you could police your brass? That¡¯d be great.¡±

    He then raised the radio to his ear. ¡°Yes?¡± He asked. ¡°Ah, Colonel Graff! Yeah we actually managed to capture two of them.¡± He paused as the Colonel on the other end asked a question. ¡°Yeah,¡± Kyle said, ¡°there were actually three of them¡­ Sorry, but Sergeant Heinz went in first. We only got the second one because he ran out of ammo killing them¡­ The other one¡¯s a Triple A med student. She was unarmed and we figured she¡¯d be of more use alive.¡± The officer muttered a bit more. Suddenly, Kyle¡¯s eyes grew wide.

    ¡°You breached the advanced engineering labs?¡± he said, his eyes wide with panic, but his voice happy. ¡°Great! We¡¯ll see you there.¡±

    After making sure the radio was completely off, he turned to the rest of us. ¡°We need to move,¡± he said. ¡°Now. Killer, I¡¯m going to put handcuffs on you and May, but they¡¯re fake, ok?¡±

    ¡°What the hell just happened?¡± May asked, coughing a bit. ¡°Whose team are you even on?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s easy,¡± I said, ¡°their own. But I guess they are working for the university in this case, right?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Richard said condescendingly, as he tossed me a pair of handcuffs. ¡°Now be a good boy and put on the bracelets.¡±

    Kyle, noticing the way I was staring murderously at Richard, quickly said, ¡°Please. It¡¯ll make life a lot easier for us. And Richard? Don¡¯t be a dick.¡± I inspected the handcuffs and saw that there was a button on them that allowed them to be instantly opened.

    ¡°So, mind briefing me on what¡¯s going on?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Later,¡± Kyle said. ¡°Just pretend to be a prisoner for now, ok?¡± I sighed. I didn¡¯t have any choice. For whatever reason, Kyle had decided to keep me alive. My best guess is that he had a plan for me, but if I didn¡¯t cooperate now, he¡¯d have to kill me. After all, the Colonel was expecting him to arrive with two prisoners.

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said, putting on the cuffs. I was actually curious to see how this all went down. I watched as everyone collected their brass and my Berretta. After they were done, Kyle signaled for us to begin marching away quickly.

    We moved away quickly, Richard and Kyle on point, the two I didn¡¯t recognize frog-marching me and Camila bringing up the rear. We moved through the streets, avoiding the ever increasing number of Nazi patrols, but identifying ourselves when we couldn¡¯t avoid them. As we moved, I could hear the sound of gunfire. If I had to guess, it was coming mostly from the airport and Campus Security Headquarters.

    Finally, we got to advanced engineering. In front of the building, a group of Nazis were just beginning to enter the building. Four Nazis, plus a dark-haired man in a business suit were standing outside watching them go in. One of them was wearing an officer¡¯s cap instead of a helmet. I assumed that meant he was Colonel Graff. The four began walking over to us. The dark haired student took out a radio and began to listen intently.

    ¡°Mr. Rockford,¡± the person I assumed to be Colonel Graff said as he approached us, ¡°you¡¯re late.¡±

    ¡°Sorry, sir,¡± Kyle said, ¡°we just had a bit of trouble.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± the person in the business suit said, turning around. I noticed he had a very posh British accent, and a somewhat smug demeanor. Also, his large, circular glasses were somewhat thin, like they were more for effect than vision correction. His attitude was also extremely smug. ¡°Some of our scouts just found Heinz¡¯s squad. I think their findings would interest you quite a bit.¡±

    At this moment, a series of explosions rocked the building. A few of Colonel Graff¡¯s men turned at the sound. That was all the time Kyle, Richard, and my other ¡°captors¡± needed. Two of Graff¡¯s men were cut down by M-4 fire and another fell back from the crack of Richard¡¯s shotgun. Meanwhile, Kyle had drawn an M-1 Garand he had slung over his back and pointed it at Colonel Graff.

    ¡°Colonel Graff, Mr. Smith,¡± Kyle said pleasantly, ¡°President Anthony Newton-Howell would like to speak with you.¡±

    As I pressed the release buttons on my fake cuffs, I noted the pale expression on Smith¡¯s face. I also realized that he must have been that Taylor Smith guy who May hated. I should have been paying attention to Graff. He pulled out what looked like a Browning with the magazine in front of the pistol grip, but before he could aim it, Kyle fired twice.

    ¡°God damn it!¡± Kyle almost yelled. He turned to Smith. ¡°You,¡± he said, ¡°down on the ground!¡± Smith, still pale as a sheet, made a confused noise.

    ¡°If he doesn¡¯t get down,¡± Richard asked, ¡°can I shoot him in the balls?¡±

    ¡°You traitors¡­¡± Smith said, getting down on his knees. ¡°Do you understand what you¡¯ve done?¡± I noticed that he was getting louder as he talked. I also noticed that Kyle was stalking towards him. ¡°This is for the benefit of the world! Not only are we restoring the proper order, but¡­¡±

    Kyle cut him off by smashing the side of Smith¡¯s head with his rifle butt. As he bent down to apply zip ties to Smith¡¯s wrists, he said, ¡°My Grandfather spent his whole life fighting people like you, but I didn¡¯t need him to learn that people like you are shit. Don¡¯t even bother talking to me.¡±

    Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.¡°You have no idea what¡¯s coming, do you?¡± Smith asked, laughing.

    ¡°Brad!¡± Kyle said, still not returning to his calm self.

    ¡°Yeah, Cap?¡± the guy behind me asked. He seemed like he was a football player before enrolling. Made sense, since Kyle was a former football player who had brought a few of his friends over with him. Also explained why Brad called him Cap.

    ¡°Take charge of this piece of shit,¡± Kyle spat out. He then turned to me and May. ¡°You two, get some weapons.¡±

    I pulled out my Sig. Kyle¡¯s eyes widened. Apparently, he hadn¡¯t realized I had it on me. May, meanwhile, looked somewhat uncomfortable. Understandable for a pacifist. Luckily for her, we heard a bunch of voices in German coming from down the street.

    ¡°We need to move.¡± Camilla said. ¡°Now.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± Kyle said, ¡°everyone inside.¡± We followed Richard and Kyle into the building. To the left of the hallway, there was a security booth. Kyle ran to the door and typed some numbers on the keypad. The door opened. ¡°Everyone,¡± Kyle said, ¡°get in!¡±

    We didn¡¯t waste any time. We still weren¡¯t fast enough. I was the third-to-last person in. Brad was behind me, pushing Smith in front of him. He was almost in the room when there was a burst of gunfire. He collapsed.

    Before Smith could run away, I pulled him in and pistol-whipped him for good measure. He fell into the room face-first. Meanwhile, gunfire began slamming into the desk and bullet-resistant glass. Ignoring it, I reached out to grab the rifle Brad had dropped. As I did so, I caught sight of a group of four Nazis coming in through the door. A bullet whizzed by my head just as I grabbed the rifle. I quickly got back into cover.

    Meanwhile, Kyle was talking on a phone he had pulled off the desk. ¡°This is Dagger,¡± he said, his voice barely masking the nervousness he felt. ¡°We need Bravo Passage to open up, and we need it now.¡±

    ¡°Kyle¡­¡± his other pre-NIU friend said, ¡°the glass is starting to crack¡­¡±

    ¡°Thank you Jared,¡± Kyle said, putting his hand to the receiver, then went back to the phone. ¡°Skywalker, you there? We need to get up the passage right now. I¡¯ve got three persons of interest I need to get to safety. Please open the passageway!¡±

    A section of bullet-resistant glass shattered, raining shards down on me, Smith and May. There¡¯s a reason I never call anything bullet-proof. Not wanting to see how long the desk and wall would last, I leaned out and began to return fire. I managed to put a two-round burst in one of them before they focused on me.

    Richard, for his part, moved over to where the window had been blown out and began to fire from behind this new position. ¡°Nice going, Jew-boy,¡± he said, ducking to return fire.

    ¡°My name,¡± I said, leaning out to fire a few more bursts, ¡°is Nathan.¡± The remaining two Nazis dropped dead. ¡°Fucking use it.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± Camilla asked exasperatedly from the far end of the booth. ¡°You can stop pretending to be an asshole, Richard.¡± To punctuate her statement, a rocket hit the bullet-resistant glass between her and the closest person to her. When the smoke and flames cleared, they revealed a shocked expression on her face.

    ¡°They¡¯re coming from stairwell two!¡± Jared yelled and began returning fire.

    ¡°Good news,¡± Kyle said. ¡°They¡¯re sending down the elevator. We just have to hold out a little longer, ok?¡±

    I looked out from behind the door to see a bunch of Nazis coming in through the main entrance. Luckily for me, there was no cover for them. I was suddenly distracted by the roar of a machinegun and the sound of bullets hitting the desk and the windows. Jared fell back, clutching his ear and screaming in pain.

    ¡°We¡¯ve got a machinegun!¡± Camilla yelled. ¡°Stairwell two! We need to leave!¡±

    Before I turned back to deal with the steadily increasing amount of people coming in through the main entrance, I saw May crawl over to Jared, probably getting cut up on a lot of broken glass. Eventually, I heard Jared begin to return fire. When another glass window shattered, Kyle also began shooting.

    That was good, because the M-4 clone I had taken from Brad was out of ammo. I quickly leaned out and began dragging him back in. When he was back, I noticed that he was carrying a bullet-riddled backpack. I also noticed that a bullet had entered the back of his head. When he was in, I opened the backpack. I quickly saw that it was ammo and grenades. A few of the mags near the near the rear were damaged by gunfire, but a lot of it was intact¡­ including two quadrastacked mags.

    ¡°Anyone need a refill?¡± I asked.

    ¡°I¡¯m good,¡± Jared said. ¡°For now.¡±

    ¡°Same here,¡± Kyle said.

    ¡°I¡¯ve only got two mags left,¡± Camilla said. ¡°And that¡¯s counting the one in my gun.¡± There was a click. ¡°Wait,¡± Camilla amended, ¡°make that one.¡±

    I reached into the backpack and pulled out two AK mags. ¡°Here ya go,¡± I said, sliding them down the floor to her. ¡°Also, grenades for everyone.¡± I began rolling the explosives down to people. Once everyone who was fighting had three grenades, I grabbed one of the quadrastacked magazines. Tossing the empty one away, I began fitting the sixty-round behemoth into my gun.

    Once I had done that and had begun to put the backpack on me, I heard Jared yell, ¡°Catch, you shit-faces!¡± A few seconds later, I heard screams. I looked up. Stairwell two was in flames. A Nazi with an SMG came running out, desperately trying to pat the fire out. I sent a silent thanks to God that the grenades in Brandon¡¯s backpack hadn¡¯t exploded right next to my face.

    Suddenly, a large steel panel behind us began to roll open. ¡°Elevator¡¯s here!¡± Kyle yelled. ¡°Move it or lose it!¡±

    ¡°Get in,¡± I yelled, cocking Brad¡¯s M-4. ¡°I¡¯ll cover you!¡±

    ¡°Richard,¡± Kyle said, ¡°You¡¯re almost out. Get Smith in the elevator!¡± I looked behind me. There was Smith, lying face up. Richard began to move over to drag him into the elevator.

    Ignoring the thought that something was wrong about Smith, I leaned out of cover to begin sustained fire on the people entering the building. I had kind of lost track of things when Kyle called out, ¡°Killer! Get in, we¡¯re leaving!¡±

    I turned to see that everyone else was in the elevator, and the steel panel that had been hiding it was slowly sliding closed. I got up, firing as I went. Once I was inside, the M-4 clicked. I got out of the way so Camilla could take my place suppressing the incoming Nazis.

    When the steel door finally closed, I dropped the M-4 and asked, ¡°So. Anyone care to tell me what the actual fuck is going on?¡±

 2.21: Project Skywalker

    After asking my question, there was nothing but silence. May was looking curiously at everyone. Smith looked sullen. Everyone else seemed tired, but it was hard to tell in the low light.

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t lean on the wall,¡± Kyle said. As soon as he said that, the platform began to rise. When it did, I realized that the walls were staying put. From outside, there was a muffled thump from what I assumed was a rocket hitting the steel door. The walls didn¡¯t even shake. ¡°No worries,¡± Kyle said. ¡°That door is a titanium-uranium alloy. They¡¯ll need a lot more of those before they even make a dent.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m actually more worried about the big picture,¡± I said. ¡°For instance, why are there non-Jumpers capable of teleportation? And why are they dressed up like Nazis?¡±

    ¡°Taylor,¡± Kyle asked, ¡°would you care to explain to Nathan what the Grenzefrontier is?¡± Smith just shook his head. Kyle shrugged. ¡°Shame. You know it better than anyone here.¡± He then began to talk to me again. ¡°Anyway, you know how Hitler was obsessed with giving humans Parahuman powers, tech, and expansionism? And how he was allied with the home of the Jumper?¡±

    ¡°He didn¡¯t¡­¡± I said, completely incredulous.

    ¡°He didn¡¯t,¡± Kyle said.

    ¡°Thank God,¡± I said. ¡°Apart from how bad it would be if he survived, the whole idea of¡­¡±

    ¡°But at least a hundred thousand of his followers did,¡± Kyle said. ¡°Around the end of World War Two, Hitler managed to get a teleporter device working and sent some people his raceologists determined to be a hundred percent Aryan to a planet called New Nuremberg.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry¡­¡± I said, ¡°But how did they find a Goldilocks planet and make a teleporter? It wasn¡¯t until fairly recently that we even discovered a Goldilocks planet, and, even with modern technology, we can¡¯t even mimic Jumpers, let alone surpass them.¡±

    ¡°Publicly, yes,¡± Kyle said. ¡°Privately¡­ I¡¯ve heard that¡¯s the first thing the IDRF did and that several other countries have developed them.¡±

    ¡°See,¡± May said, ¡°you were right. They are Nazis from another planet.¡±

    ¡°Shut up, I was being sarcastic!¡± I said. ¡°Still, I¡¯ve got one question. What did Smith mean when he said, ¡®we have no idea what¡¯s coming?¡¯¡±

    ¡°You know,¡± Richard said, walking over to Smith, ¡°I¡¯m also interested in what Taylor meant.¡± He then grabbed Smith¡¯s tie. ¡°You¡¯ve been dropping hints about something called the Dragon¡¯s Teeth ever since we met. I¡¯d be interested to know just what they are.¡±

    For some reason, I was looking at Smith¡¯s hands. That¡¯s when I saw that he was holding something and there was liquid leaking off his wrists. I wondered what it was. Then Smith said, ¡°Shame you¡¯ll never find out, traitor.¡±

    That¡¯s when it clicked. I unholstered my Sig, but Smith¡¯s arms were already moving. It was too late to shout a warning, so I fired. I was still too late. Smith had shoved something directly into Richard¡¯s neck, a little bit below his jaw.

    Everyone, including Richard, stopped and stared. A great deal of blood was flowing from the wound. Somewhat in shock, Richard let go of Smith. Smith, despite the fact that his brains were decorating the opposite wall, didn¡¯t let go of the glass shard. When it fell out of Richard¡¯s neck, the blood began to spray. Jared screamed as he got sprayed, but May was running before Smith hit the floor. This all happened in two seconds.

    ¡°Shit,¡± May said, looking over Richard¡¯s body. ¡°His carotid artery is completely severed. Smith knew exactly what he was doing.¡±

    ¡°What about Smith?¡± I asked, nervous as to how close May was to him.

    ¡°Considering the fact that roughly¡­¡± May paused, looking at the stain on the wall, ¡°¡­twenty percent of his gray matter is now a wall decoration, I¡¯d say he¡¯s dead and his brain is gone. Two Star Trek references in one.¡±

    ¡°Damn it!¡± Kyle said, kicking the wall. Then he grunted in pain. ¡°The entire point of this fucking operation was to bring Taylor and Graff in alive! Not kill them!¡±

    ¡°So, what next?¡± I asked.

    ¡°We get to Project Skywalker,¡± Kyle said, ¡°and we just take it easy until this all blows over.¡±

    ¡°And Project Skywalker is?¡± I asked.

    ¡°The way it was put to me,¡± Kyle said, ¡°was that whatever device they¡¯re using to teleport from their planet and back is the Death Star, and whatever these guys are working is basically the torpedo. If this doesn¡¯t work, apparently there¡¯s an aircraft carrier really close by.¡±

    ¡°And what happens then?¡± I asked. ¡°The only thing they can do is bomb us to pieces.¡±

    ¡°Which is why the President is currently in Switzerland on important business,¡± Kyle said. ¡°Not that these assholes know that.¡±

    ¡°But they know about this¡­ thing we¡¯re building?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Kyle said. ¡°Oh, just so you know, you shouldn¡¯t ask how it works. They¡¯ll just get more suspicious.¡±

    I was about to ask why. Then I realized that I had just shot someone who had information they really needed. ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°Not a problem.¡±

    Finally, we got to the top floor. This was a six-story building surrounded by a bunch of three-story buildings, so it should have moved much faster, in my opinion. When we got out of the elevator, Gupta and Mendes were waiting for us. They both were in tactical armor, so it was kind of hard to tell it was them underneath the Kevlar, gas masks, and sunglasses. Gupta carried a SPAS-12, and Mendes had a P-90. Both had pistols strapped to their hips, probably the Campus Police standard issue Five-seveN.

    ¡°Jesus Christ,¡± Mendes said, looking at all the blood, ¡°what the fuck happened to you guys?¡±

    ¡°May and I got caught outside,¡± I said. ¡°When Kyle saved us, Smith got suspicious. He then proceeded to fuck everything up for us. Hence why two of Kyle¡¯s crew is dead and Smith¡¯s brains are outside his head.¡±

    ¡°We don¡¯t have time for this,¡± Gupta said. ¡°All of you, into Secure Experimentation.¡±

    I grabbed the bag and the assault rifle and followed everyone else.  We were heading down the hallway. I stopped, however, to look out the window. ¡°Hey!¡± Gupta said, ¡°Move it or lose it!¡±

    May, however, was curious. ¡°What do you see?¡±

    Down in front of the building was a large group of people in green uniforms. In the center, there were two lines of soldiers carrying something on their shoulders. These lines were somewhat offset. They were all looking directly at the window. Right next to them, an officer had his hand raised. Before I could shout a warning, he brought it down in a chopping motion.

    The first rocket hit the window. The explosion knocked me back on my butt, and I could see the window bow in slightly. Another rocket hit the window. ¡°Go prone!¡± Kyle yelled.

    ¡°This way!¡± Mendes yelled, as he took off running.

    ¡°Or not,¡± Kyle said as everyone began running. As we ducked into a room, I turned to see that the window was only slightly cracked. At least six anti-tank rockets had hit it.

    ¡°What the fuck is that window made of?¡± I asked. We were in a small antechamber. The door Mendes had opened was mostly standard, if a little more solidly built then I was used to. In front of us was a legitimate vault door that was slowly opening. ¡°That glass took six hits, and it only cracked a bit.¡±

    ¡°I wanna know what¡¯s in those rockets,¡± Mendes responded. ¡°I was there when they were testing it. They fired a couple Javelins into it, and it just kind of flexed.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Kyle said, ¡°either way, it¡¯s going to break. Any plans to deal with that?¡±

    ¡°We just roll down the shutters,¡± Mendes said. ¡°If the Braxton Glass doesn¡¯t stop them, titanium-uranium alloy should.¡±

    ¡°Uhhh¡­¡± May said, pointing down, ¡°what¡¯s that green dot? And what¡¯s that counter for?¡± We looked down at the ground. Just as May had said, there was a green dot moving around in a circle. Connected to it by a line was a box with a countdown that displayed what seemed to be hours, minutes, seconds and milliseconds. Currently, we had about twenty-four hours.

    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

    ¡°That¡­¡± Mendes said, ¡°¡­means someone is drilling their way in here. Probably something laser-based, judging by how it¡¯s going in circles. The computer thinks we¡¯ve got twenty-four hours.¡±

    There was a jump. Suddenly, it said twenty. Then it jumped up to twenty-five. ¡°Needless to say,¡± Mendes said, ¡°I don¡¯t trust the computer.¡±

    From inside, we heard a voice call, ¡°Mendes, Gupta, get the students in here.¡± We were hurried into a large vault that appeared much smaller due to the huge machine inside. Two other students were working on computers connected to it, and a third was running around, fixing various mechanical problems. In the far right corner, two more Campus Security officers in combat gear were surrounding what appeared to be a captain. The captain spoke again. ¡°I take it you noticed one of our problems?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Mendes said. ¡°Do you need us to do anything about it?¡±

    ¡°They¡¯re on Level Five. Hook up with the rest of Beta and take it out.¡± As Mendes and Gupta went off, he said, ¡°You five, can you fight?¡±

    ¡°They can,¡± May said, ¡°but I¡¯m more of a medic.¡±

    ¡°Good,¡± the captain said. ¡°There¡¯s going to be trouble. How much depends on how fast these people can get their shit together.¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± one of the engineering students said, ¡°This stuff we¡¯re doing? Literally nothing like it has ever been done before in the history of mankind. What you¡¯re doing is the equivalent of asking someone in 1950 to devise a way to go to the moon in six months. It can be done, it¡¯s just a little difficult.¡±

    I couldn¡¯t ask them anything, so I turned to Kyle. ¡°Hey, Kyle, can I have my nine back?¡± I asked as I set down the bag of ammo.

    ¡°Sure,¡± he said. He reached into his waistband to hand me back my Berretta. I took my pistol back, and began to search for nine millimeter ammo. I figured it had to be in there somewhere because most pistols, including Kyle¡¯s, took it. I quickly found a box and began to refill my two magazines.

    ¡°You know,¡± Kyle said, ¡°that looks like a good idea.¡± He sat down by me. I noticed that he had brought Richard¡¯s shotgun and pistol as well as his own weapons. Jared joined us as well. After I had refilled my Berretta (there wasn¡¯t any ammo for my Sig) I checked to see why I had run out of ammo for the M-4 clone. It turns out I hadn¡¯t. The quadrastacked mag had shit itself.

    A couple minutes into my attempt to fix it, Kyle said, ¡°They do that. Don¡¯t bother.¡± It was then that I had noticed that no one had spoken for quite a bit.

    ¡°You ok?¡± I asked. ¡°Never mind, stupid question. A bunch of your friends just got shot.¡±

    There was a moment of silence, then Kyle said, ¡°Dragging Richard and Camilla into this was one thing, but Brad¡­¡±

    ¡°Cap,¡± Jared said, ¡°It¡¯s ok. He was prepared¡­¡±

    ¡°It isn¡¯t just Brad!¡± Kyle said. ¡°Jared, we came in here with five other guys from the team. It was my job to keep them safe, and only you and Brad made it through fucking Hell Semester. I should never have brought you guys along.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Jared said, ¡°you couldn¡¯t stop us, man. Fuck, man, what were we supposed to do? Let the guy who led the team to finals three times in a row go on to face Nazis by himself?¡± He patted Kyle on the shoulder. ¡°We knew the risks, and decided to take them. Also, if we hadn¡¯t gone with you, things probably would be much worse.¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± the captain said, ¡°you four, come over here.¡± Kyle, Jared, Camilla and I all walked over to where the Captain was standing. He was looking down at a monitor of CCTVs. Most of them were static. ¡°We¡¯ve got another problem,¡± he said. ¡°We¡¯ve taken out the laser, but a group of the enemy have used the distraction to get up to this floor. They¡¯re cutting us off from our people on the fifth floor. Can you remove them?¡±

    Camilla pulled back the bolt on her AK to check that there was ammo. ¡°How many are there?¡±

    ¡°Not sure,¡± the captain said. ¡°But I¡¯ve managed to seal off the other ways they can get in here.¡±

    ¡°So, all of them?¡± Camilla asked. ¡°Not a problem, then.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m game,¡± I said, slapping a thirty-round mag into the M-4. ¡°Kyle, Jared? You two in?¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± Jared said, ¡°It¡¯s time for some payback.¡±

    ¡°Dude,¡± Kyle said, ¡°be careful, ok?¡±

    Jared and Kyle looked at each other for a moment. Kyle seemed to be begging Jared not to do something stupid. Jared smiled. ¡°Sure man. I will.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± the captain said, ¡°I¡¯ll open the vault door. Head down the hall and take a left. That¡¯s where the last entrance to this level is. The shutters are all down now, so you shouldn¡¯t have anyone shoot at you from outside. There¡¯s another stairwell on the opposite side of the building, but those stairs have been sealed off.¡±

    We waited as the vault slowly opened, the sound of gunfire and explosions slowly seeping in from outside. When it was finally done, we filed out, checking our corners. When we were almost to the corner, I whispered, ¡°How about we throw in a flashbang?¡± I held it up to show it was a viable option.

    Kyle nodded. ¡°Ok,¡± he muttered, ¡°then we rush the bastards. Jared, cover our rear.¡±

    I pulled the pin on the flashbang and rolled it down the hall and around the corner. When we heard the thump of it going off, Camilla, Kyle and I ran around the corner. We saw a group of four Nazis staggering back and blinking. Behind them, the door to the stairwell was open. The sound of gunfire echoed from it.

    We opened fire. I got one, Kyle got another, and Camilla got the other two. As I was tossing a second flashbang into the stairwell, a fifth came out of the stairwell. Camilla got him too, her AK rounds passing through him and into the door. The flashbang went off as he fell, backlighting him for a split second.

    We quickly ran through the bodies. Inside, there were three able-bodied, but deafened and blinded Nazis on the landing, and one who was unconscious and bandaged. I was first. I fired three two to five round bursts, causing the uninjured ones to fall down. Behind me, I heard Kyle fire a shotgun blast into the left corner, and Camilla fire a burst down the stairs. Then her AK clicked. Then she swore in Spanish. I looked to my right.

    Down the stairs, on the halfway landing between the two floors, was a group of six Nazis, plus a few Nazi corpses. Most were still dazed, but one was aiming his STG straight at me. Before he could pull the trigger, there was a series of pops. From the fifth floor landing, I could see the distinctive muzzle flash of a Five-seveN pistol. Shortly later, I could see three Campus Security officers rushing the remaining Nazis. The one on point carried a riot shield and a Five-seveN, the second one had a P-90, and the rear one had a SCAR-H with an underbarrel XM-LSS. The remaining Nazis in the stairwell quickly fell down, blood and bullet holes marring the wall behind them.

    However, I was distracted by the sound of one of the semi-auto Mausers coming from behind. I quickly headed out the door and saw Jared lying in a pool of his own blood. From farther down, I could see a Nazi lying down on the floor, also bleeding out.

    I ran over to Jared. I was relieved to see that his eyes were open and he was still breathing, although it was very shallow. ¡°Shit,¡± I said. ¡°Ok, Jared, I¡¯m going to get you out of here, man. Just hang¡­¡±

    There was the sound of submachinegun fire. Then, somehow, I was on the floor and my stomach felt numb. I touched my stomach. There was a shooting pain, and when I looked at my fingers. They were covered in blood. I dropped them. From behind me, I heard someone burst out of the stairwell and fire an AK. The person at the other end responded in kind. I heard Camilla grunt and a crash.

    As I heard more footsteps and gunfire, my vision began to blur. My last thought before going black was Damn it! It¡¯s been months since I¡¯ve blacked out. I was really hoping to break that trend¡­ Then darkness took me.

 2.22: Another Impossible Mission

    When I woke up again, I was in the Medical Building. Kyle was sitting on the bed opposite me, looking the worse for wear. His face was bloody and bags were under his eyes. Apart from that and a few cuts, the only thing wrong was him was how tired he looked. ¡°Hey,¡± he said, ¡°how¡¯re you doing?¡±

    ¡°Honestly,¡± I said, ¡°I feel way too good, considering I was shot¡­ how many times in the stomach?¡±

    ¡°Twice,¡± Kyle said dully.

    There was an awkward pause as I worked up the courage to ask my next question. ¡°Did, uh, did Jared make it?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Yes and no,¡± Kyle said, still in a monotone. ¡°May managed to fix the bullets that penetrated, she¡¯s a genius like that.¡±

    ¡°And¡­?¡±

    Kyle laughed bitterly. ¡°A bullet bounced off a riot shield, and now he¡¯s a fucking vegetable. Fucking one in a million chance and it happens to the last man I have left.¡± Somehow, he managed to sound even more depressed. ¡°You know, he has a Do Not Resuscitate order, but the docs are arguing that they might be able to bring him back. Guess who gets to make that decision.¡± I winced. That did not sound like fun.

    ¡°Anyway,¡± Kyle said, ¡°the President wants to talk to you. Should be soon, now that you¡¯re awake.¡± He got up, presumably to go about his business. ¡°By the way,¡± he said as he left, ¡°don¡¯t try to leave, ok?¡±

    Shit. They knew. I wondered, would the President have me executed for espionage before or after he recognized my services to the school? Or was he sick enough to have someone slit my throat while another person pinned a medal on my chest?

    To take my mind off it, I decided to get dressed in some clothes they had left me. Then, when that was done, I decided to turn on the TV. All the student-run stations were down. The only thing on was a message telling us to stay tuned and indoors until the President¡¯s announcement. At least this meant the Nazis hadn¡¯t won.

    Out of curiosity, I decided to go look out the window. Unsurprisingly, I saw a lot of Campus Security patrolling around. Surprisingly, there were also a number of students in camo with them. I quickly realized that they must be AMS and Shadowhaven students conscripted into joining the mop-up.

    ¡°Thinking of jumping, boyke?¡± a voice with a South African accent asked. I turned around. There, an amused expression on his face, was Professor Krieger. ¡°You haven¡¯t even heard our offer.¡±

    ¡°Honestly?¡± I said, ¡°That never even crossed my mind. Just getting some intel.¡±

    ¡°Formulating an escape attempt?¡± Krieger asked. ¡°Very good. However, you might want to hear our offer. Please, follow me.¡±

    Now intrigued, I followed him out of the Medical Building. As we walked, I noticed that all the Campus Security staff were still fully armored. It was also interesting to see that, while a few had cuts, bruises or bullets that had imbedded into their vests, there were very few occupied beds in the hospital.

    When I got outside, I saw that the invaders hadn¡¯t fared as well. All along the sidewalks, corpses had been dragged into piles. Also, either they had run out of body bags, or only students and staff rated human decency.

    I was lucky in a way. I got to see a column of Nazi prisoners. They were walking behind us, being herded by a bunch of students. When I turned my head to see who was guarding them, I made eye contact with one of them. What struck me the most about him was how young he looked. The boy couldn¡¯t be more than sixteen, yet he already looked like he had some form of PTSD. He shrunk back a bit after a bit. Now that I¡¯d thought about it, a lot of the people I had been facing last night had been very old or very young.

    I also noticed that one of his guards was Eric. He flashed me a grin and a thumbs-up. I returned the gesture and continued walking. ¡°What are they going to do with the prisoners?¡± I asked.

    Krieger shrugged. ¡°It depends on how cooperative they are. Campus rules prevent non-consensual human experimenting, and torture is ineffective. We¡¯re probably going to have some chats with them. If they¡¯re helpful, we may even let some of the younger ones enroll in the University.¡±

    ¡°So, you wait for people to consent before you torture them?¡± I asked. ¡°Very progressive. By the way, what happens if they don¡¯t cooperate?¡±

    ¡°Depends,¡± Krieger said. ¡°If they¡¯d hurt us, they can¡¯t leave. If we can¡¯t keep them contained¡­¡± He then patted his gun. I nodded. It wasn¡¯t exactly ideal, but I could accept it. For now.

    We were quiet for the rest of the trip. Finally, we got to the main square. As we walked around the square, I noticed we were leaving a large berth around a group of students kneeling on the ground, anchored to the ground by chains and handcuffs. ¡°Are those¡­ are those their inside men?¡± I asked.

    ¡°And a demonstration,¡± Krieger said. ¡°The President wants you to see what happens next. The President wants everyone to see what happens next. But that won¡¯t be for a while.¡±

    We entered the President¡¯s Mansion. Two Campus Security Officers armed with Mk. 48 machineguns opened the heavy wood doors (revealed to be metal doors covered in tasteful paneling by heavy gunfire.) We walked into the foyer to reveal that the once-fancy decorations had been trashed. The statues besides the two stairs leading to the top level had been shattered by gunfire, and there were a few craters in the floor. Judging by the tiny shards of shrapnel that had embedded themselves into various locations, those craters had come from frag grenades.

    Right between the stairs was a line of sandbags. Behind those was a three-barreled minigun manned by two Campus Security Guards. Thankfully, the gun itself was aimed at the ground and the two guards weren¡¯t really touching it in any way. Still, we prudently moved out of its line of fire.

    That¡¯s when I realized that directly opposite us were John and Professor Blunt. We didn¡¯t have time to really say anything when President Anthony Newton-Howell came down the stairs. Surprisingly, he seemed to look a lot like Robert Downey Jr in a nice suit. I wasn¡¯t sure what I was expecting him to look like, except maybe the devil.

    ¡°Sorry to keep you waiting,¡± he said genially. ¡°This place is kind of a mess. Kind of expected when you set up an ambush.¡± He looked at one of the statues. ¡°Damn it, Mr. Bitey¡¯s dead? I really liked that gargoyle. Anyway, follow me.¡±

    John and I followed him after a pause. Krieger and Blunt were right behind us. It wasn¡¯t long until the President led us into a once-luxurious office on the third story. It probably was about four times the size of my family¡¯s dining room, and had an excellent view of the central square, but it had been completely wrecked. Judging by the craters, bloodstains, and various shrapnel impacts it looked like someone had cleared the room with frag grenades. Once beautiful glass cabinets containing sculptures had been shattered, and an expensive-looking wood table had collapsed.

    ¡°Well,¡± the President said, taking in the damage, ¡°that¡¯s a little disappointing.¡± He went behind a rather regal desk to stand next to a sumptuous leather chair. He stared at it for a moment, then pushed it. There was a creaking sound, and the chair bent slightly to one side and began swiveling lopsidedly. Then it fell over.

    The President sighed, kicking what I assumed to be the chair¡¯s base away, ¡°I guess that¡¯s broken. Shame. I really liked that chair.¡± He sat down on the desk and indicated the two chairs in front of the desk. ¡°Have a seat, please.¡±

    We sat as instructed. John, a look of apprehension on his face, asked, ¡°So¡­ what¡¯s up, Mr. President?¡± I looked behind me. Professor Blunt and Professor Krieger were standing by the door. We obviously weren¡¯t going to get out.

    ¡°Oh, nothing much,¡± the President said, ¡°just wanted to congratulate you two on your first year here. At least a ninety-five average in all your classes. Very good.¡±

    ¡°Most of the students in AMS and Shadowhaven get similar grades,¡± I said. ¡°It just seems odd that you¡¯d choose now to praise us for being average.¡±

    ¡°Just listing some of your qualifications,¡± the President said. ¡°Because I need your help identifying something.¡± He then reached into his pocket and pulled out a thin object. ¡°Campus Security found this camera in your room, gentlemen.¡± I recognized it instantly. It was the same kind that UNIX had issued to John and me.

    ¡°There is another one in the CSG computer forensics lab,¡± the President said. ¡°It seems to have nothing on it¡­ except your finger prints, Mr. Marshall.¡± John gulped. The President turned his attention to me. ¡°Now, this one¡­ not only did it have your prints on it, Mr. Jacobs, but it also had some very interesting pictures on it. Do either of you have an explanation for this? Apart from the obvious, that is.¡±

    ¡°Have you heard that joke about what to say when your wife finds you in bed with another woman?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Sorry,¡± the President said, ¡°but I believe my lying eyes this time. Just a hunch.¡±

    ¡°So,¡± I asked, ¡°what happens now?¡±

    ¡°Now,¡± the President said, ¡°we have a discussion about your future.¡± Already this was going better than I had expected. He hadn¡¯t instantly decided to kill us. ¡°Since the people you were selling information to are more to blame, I think that any potential termination should only involve expulsion on our part and refusal to contact you on your employer¡¯s.¡±

    ¡°I think that sounds pretty good,¡± I said. My face was passive, but internally, I was dancing for joy. God, this place was awful and I was stupid for thinking I could do any good here.

    ¡°Or,¡± the President said, ¡°you could take my other proposal.¡±

    Sure, I thought, and aliens could threaten to destroy the world. Seriously, at that point, I was done with all this bullshit. I just wanted to walk away.

    ¡°You see,¡± the President said, ¡°I know a bit about your relations with your employers. Takashi and Brosnan like to play games and don¡¯t really care who they hurt. We knew about their plan before you two did. By the way, how¡¯d you figure out they were lying to you?¡±

    John looked at me for guidance. I shook my head. After a while, the President shrugged. ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter. Anyway, it¡¯s a damn shame. Usually, it takes UNIX decades to burn out our students. Those two almost did it in eight months. Krieger honestly thought that the waiting around was going to break you two.

    ¡°But then you impressed me.¡± This part was directed entirely at me. ¡°You got caught up in an attempt to steal intelligence and assassinate a triple-A student. And what did you do? Not only did you and John pass the test and foil the attempt, but you¡­¡± He shook the camera in his hands at me. ¡°You went for the extra credit.¡±

    ¡°You know,¡± I said, ¡°that was all luck.¡±

    ¡°It was very lucky,¡± the President said, nodding. ¡°Both of you, in fact, are very lucky. I¡¯m not sure you¡¯ve noticed it, but luck is in short supply around here. You also have something we need. Our previous double-agent, Richard Forrest Taylor, died in service of NIU last night.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± John asked, ¡°Dickface was working for you? I thought he¡¯d be working for the Nazis.¡±

    ¡°So did the Nazis,¡± I said. ¡°UNIX also thought he was working for them. It¡¯s confusing, I¡¯ll give you that.¡±

    ¡°So¡­¡± John said, ¡°he was also the fo¡­ third UNIX guy on the island? Why didn¡¯t he contact us?¡±

    ¡°Orders,¡± the President said. ¡°UNIX thought he¡¯d be least likely to get caught by us.¡± He shrugged. ¡°Guess they chose wrong. We were using him to pass on information that UNIX needed to hear. We actually need someone to pass on¡­ well, the very documents you stole. Among other things.¡±

    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    ¡°What kind of things?¡± John asked.

    ¡°Eighteen months ago,¡± the President said, ¡°North Korea went dark. No news, in or out. But rumors of an insurrection came out. Increased radio chatter, military units moving all over the place, seismology readings indicating heavy bombardment going on, and for some reason, satellites couldn¡¯t see anything in the country. When South Korea demanded an explanation, North Korea claimed it was conducting military exercises. Naturally we were curious.¡±

    So was the rest of the world. I remembered that the speculation had been going on in the summer before I boarded the plane to this awful place. I wondered what could be the reason. Maybe I could do something. No, I thought, internally slapping myself, bad Nathan.

    The President smiled. I swear he knew he had me. ¡°So, we sent in a team. It was a week-long recon mission of six of our best students. It was at the outbreak of the crisis, so the team was expecting a popular uprising. Instead, they encountered advance elements of a clone army called The Dragon¡¯s Teeth. The reports you acquired were from the autopsies on some of their soldiers.¡±

    ¡°Wait¡­¡± I said, ¡°I heard about them last night. Richard said that one of the students working for them had been dropping hints about them all year.¡±

    I also remembered Taylor Smith¡¯s words. You have no idea what¡¯s coming, do you? He had asked. That was actually one of the last things he had said.

    ¡°Maybe could be talking about another group?¡± John suggested.

    ¡°Before last night,¡± I said, ¡°I didn¡¯t even consider the possibility that Nazis, real Nazis, could come teleporting from outer space. It just wasn¡¯t on my radar, despite the obvious signs. Right now, I don¡¯t think we can afford to dismiss anything.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± John said, ¡°Ok, you got me. But still, why should we work with him to betray UNIX?¡±

    Both the President and Krieger began to laugh. ¡°What?¡± John asked. ¡°We both know that you¡¯re going to ask us to hurt some people we know¡­¡±

    ¡°So,¡± Krieger said, still amused, ¡°let me get this straight, boyke: you think that at some point, there¡¯s going to be a big showdown, good versus evil, UNIX versus NIU! It¡¯ll be big! It¡¯ll be grand! But most importantly, you¡¯ll be with the good guys.¡±

    ¡°Look,¡± John said, ¡°UNIX aren¡¯t angels. I get it. But they¡¯re better than you.¡± I had to admit, I agreed with John. But I wasn¡¯t going to say it. My plan was to accept the President¡¯s offer, then use that to get more information for UNIX.

    Krieger walked over to John. Leaning in close to John, but so he could also watch me, he said, ¡°UNIX will never fight us. Have you ever heard of a symbiotic relationship?¡±

    ¡°Shut up,¡± John said.

    ¡°No, wait,¡± I said, ¡°I think we should hear this.¡±

    Krieger smiled. ¡°It¡¯s very simple,¡± he said, his voice friendly. ¡°This bastard here wants to produce the best soldiers, scientists, businessmen and leaders the world has ever seen. Some organizations, maybe its UNIX, maybe a terrorist group, maybe a crime family, want the best training and tech for their employees that money can buy.¡±

    ¡°What are you saying?¡± John asked.

    ¡°Ah, you missed it, boyke!¡± Krieger said. ¡°Takashi and Craig were here in September! While you two chumps were getting the shit kicked out of you during Fight Night, your handlers were having a bloody nice meal at the finest restaurant on our little island to celebrate all the people they managed to recruit.¡±

    ¡°Wait¡­¡± I said, ¡°they come here to recruit?¡±

    ¡°More than that,¡± the President said, ¡°one of the first graduates from here went on to found UNIX. They wouldn¡¯t exist without us.¡±

    ¡°More to the point,¡± Krieger said, ¡°they can¡¯t bleedin¡¯ function without us. Their best recruits come from this school. All the others need training, but even a regular NIU student is innovating on their first day. You see, we get fresh meat and a nice chunk of cash¡­ and they get the nicest steaks they¡¯ve ever tasted dirt cheap.¡±

    ¡°And we go through the grinder,¡± I said.

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t put it¡­¡± the President began.

    Kreiger cut him off. ¡°Exactly!¡± he said, pointing straight at me. Meanwhile, the President pouted. ¡°Except UNIX has been getting greedy. They don¡¯t want to be proactive about finding time bombs, no. What they want is the things that our students have made without having to pay them. You¡¯ve seen the effects of surgical glue, power sludge, battlefield sonar and so many other technologies. Don¡¯t you think that a hundred thousand would be a bargain for any one of these miracles?¡±

    My fists clenched. One of the few things that had kept me from not dropping UNIX like a hot potato was that I¡¯d believed they were going to take down this shit hole. Instead, they were feeding it. What¡¯s worse, they were using me and three others to get a bit more slop on their own trough. I had been betrayed for the last time.

    ¡°Can I speak now?¡± the President asked Kreiger petulantly.

    ¡°They¡¯re all yours,¡± Kreiger said.

    ¡°Anyway,¡± the President said, ¡°I would like a chance to prove to you that I¡¯m better than UNIX. I¡¯d also like to find out what is happening in North Korea. So, right now, you have two options: leave this school and never come back¡­ or go on one little mission and come back here with a full ride, plus five million each.¡±

    ¡°Five¡­ million,¡± I said, not quite believing what I was hearing.

    ¡°US dollars, of course,¡± the President said. ¡°I¡¯m rich, I¡¯m petty, and I think that you two might be a good investment. If you take the job, I¡¯ll have a million up front.¡±

    ¡°And what will you do with this information we get you?¡± John asked.

    ¡°Well,¡± the President said, ¡°a copy is definitely going to UNIX. I also would like to confirm or deny a few of my suspicions.¡±

    ¡°You know what?¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯m in. Fuck it, and fuck UNIX.¡±

    John looked at me strangely. ¡°Nate,¡± he said, ¡°are you sure¡­?¡±

    I stood up suddenly, knocking the chair back. ¡°Of course I¡¯m sure! UNIX comes in talking all this bullshit about Force Three events and unexploded bombs, and instead decides to use us as glorified bait while their real spies go and steal shit. We fucking bled for them¡­ you bled for them, and they stiffed us. Why? Because we were supposed to die!¡±

    John paused, taking in my outburst. ¡°Ok,¡± he said finally, completely calm. ¡°I¡¯m in. But only because you need someone to stop you from losing it.¡±

    I took a deep breath. ¡°Ok,¡± I said. ¡°You¡¯re right. I may be taking this too personally.¡±

    ¡°Good!¡± the President said. ¡°Now, I want to show you something.¡± He got up and walked over to the door. ¡°Come on,¡± he said, waving us on, ¡°you guys need to see this!¡±

    Exchanging confused looks, we got up and followed the President out of the mansion, Krieger trailing behind us. We exited the house. It was then that I noticed that as well as the prisoners and Campus Security officers, there was now a small crowd of people, including a few TV cameras. ¡°Wait here,¡± the President said to us, indicating that we should stay on the steps. We followed his orders, taking a seat on the marble steps.

    ¡°And now,¡± Krieger said softly as the President walked across the lawn, ¡°you get to see why I think Anthony Carter Newton-Howell is the devil.¡± Both John and I stiffened at this. ¡°The problem,¡± Krieger continued, ¡°is that he can¡¯t be removed externally. Too many benefit if NIU stays in business. If only there was some sort of internal challenge to his rule¡­¡±

    Meanwhile, the President was standing in between the inside men and the Nazis that they had guided in. ¡°So, boys,¡± he said, still very friendly. ¡°I would like to explain the one true rule of this school. There are a bunch of others, but they¡¯re really more like guidelines for when I¡¯m away.

    ¡°Now, this one rule is very simple: do what I say and you get rewarded, go against me and you get punished. Since you did not know this when you invaded, I will give you some slack. You are going to be sentenced to your own rooms, but they¡¯ll have showers, beds and entertainment. You¡¯ll have guests, but they¡¯ll only be pre-approved. As time goes on, you may earn more privileges through giving me what I want.¡±

    He then pointed to the group of students who had let in the Nazis. There weren¡¯t many of them. ¡°These people, however, knew the rules. I mean, some of these guys are seniors! They¡¯ve had at the very least eight months to memorize the student handbook. However, today I am feeling generous. If one of these guys renounces white supremacy, they can join you and perhaps earn their freedom. Unlike you, they don¡¯t have a chance at enrolling again, but they¡¯ll get to live and they won¡¯t be tortured. I think that¡¯s fair.¡± He turned fully to the captured students. ¡°Would any of you like to take my offer?¡±

    There was silence. Finally, one of the Nazi sympathizers laughed. ¡°Follow you? There are dead people I¡¯m more afraid of. Heil Hitler!¡± Instantly, both the captured Nazis and the sympathizers broke out into racist catcalls and boos.

    The President just sighed. ¡°Going once¡­¡± he said, pacing the assembled students, ¡°going twice¡­ going thrice¡­ going chicken soup with rice¡­. Gone.¡± Finally, he ended back where he started. ¡°Shame,¡± he said, motioning for something, ¡°some of you were good students. We obviously didn¡¯t teach you well enough. It¡¯s probably my own fault.¡± He seemed contrite, but I had a strong suspicion that it was an act.

    ¡°What are you going to do?¡± one of the sympathizers asked. ¡°Do you think shooting us will intimidate anyone?¡± He didn¡¯t notice the Campus Security officers bearing red plastic cans walking up behind him. He did, however, notice when the officers began emptying the cans over the assembled students. ¡°What the hell is this?¡± he asked. ¡°Water?¡±

    ¡°You idiot,¡± another student shouted, ¡°its petrol!¡± Instantly the jeers turned to begging and panic. It only increased when the officers stepped away, satisfied with their work. I felt sick. I didn¡¯t want to see this.

    The President struck a match. Instantly, everyone shut up. ¡°I suppose,¡± he said, ¡°I can teach you one last lesson.¡± He began to inspect the flame on the match. ¡°I don¡¯t smoke. I¡¯m not really a pyromaniac. However, despite being constantly exposed to new inventions, that, frankly, are genius, I have to say, fire is mankind¡¯s greatest discovery. I mean, it has so many uses. Cooking, forging metal, creating electricity¡­ Hell, it can even clean up certain messes.¡± Everyone held their breath. The President smiled. ¡°Yep,¡± he said as he casually tossed the match into the pool of gasoline, ¡°fire is a wonderful thing.¡±

    The scariest thing about it? He was completely calm while he did it.

    The flames quickly engulfed the captured students. The screams were instantaneous as their flesh began to burn away. The smell of burning flesh assaulted my nose. I could only imagine it was much worse for the Nazis. After all, they were barely ten feet away from the bonfire that used to be human beings.

    The President, meanwhile, turned back to the Nazis. ¡°So,¡± he asked, ¡°how was that for a commencement speech, huh? Welcome to Nowhere Island University. Security will show you to your new rooms.¡±

    ¡°You heard the man!¡± one of the officers shouted. ¡°Get the fuck up!¡±

    As the prisoners were led away, I said to Krieger, ¡°It¡¯s a shame that this internal challenge doesn¡¯t exist. I would definitely like to join something like that.¡±

    ¡°Good,¡± Krieger said. ¡°I knew I could count on you, Killer. Always ready to save the world, eh?¡±

 3.1: The Prophecy

    ¡°So,¡± John said as we got out of the plane at the Kloten International airport in Switzerland, ¡°why are we doing this again?¡±

    ¡°Aren¡¯t you just a little bit curious about the¡­¡± I said, then I paused. I was about to reference the fact that we had just lived through an attack by Nazis from across space had teleported lightyears to attack a school that was intensely secretive by nature. A school we happened to be enrolled at, by the way. Apparently, these Nazi dudes were running from something called The Dragon¡¯s Teeth. Now, Nowhere Island University (the school we attended) had hired us to go and find out why North Korea had gone dark. From previous reports, it had to do with a mysterious group called (wait for it) The Dragon¡¯s Teeth. Needless to say, this was not the kind of thing you wanted to just blab about in a public space.

    ¡°¡­You know, the thing,¡± I said.

    ¡°Yes,¡± a voice with a slight Chinese accent said, ¡°I am curious about ¡®the thing.¡¯¡±

    I turned around to see an average-sized Asian girl (which is actually on the shorter side for Western people.) She had dull black shoulder-length hair and the build of a gymnast. All this was topped off by a very serious attitude. ¡°Hey, Bai,¡± I said. ¡°What are you doing here?¡±

    ¡°You two,¡± she said, ¡°are worrying people who care for you. Eliza and I both know you had a conversation with the President. We also know that you¡¯ve been avoiding everyone. And now, I discover that you two aren¡¯t going home. Explain yourselves. Now.¡±

    ¡°The plane¡¯s stopped for about twelve hours,¡± I said. ¡°If you give us¡­ say an hour, at most, we could find a more suitable spot.¡±

    Bai gave me a calculating look. When Bai Feng gives you her calculating look, you always get the feeling that she hasn¡¯t quite ruled out violence. This is made much scarier by how calm she is and the fact that she is the best martial artist I have ever seen. ¡°Fine,¡± she said. ¡°I will wait.¡±

    It turned out not to take an hour. We quickly found the car that had been reserved for us, a cheap Mercedes (well, cheap for a Mercedes) sedan. As Bai closed the door and edged into the middle of the rear bench she said, ¡°It¡¯s private. Now talk.¡±

    ¡°Just a minute,¡± I said, plugging in my iTouch. After starting up a Fall Out Boy album, I said, ¡°Ok, that should mask any bugs.¡±

    ¡°Jesus, man,¡± John said, ¡°do you have to be so paranoid?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± I said. ¡°I honestly should have seen the Nazis resurfacing. I should have seen¡­ how we were set up. I¡¯m not going to be blindsided again.¡± I took a deep breath. ¡°Sorry. I¡¯ve just¡­ had a lot of things on my mind. Anyway, you know those people who invaded NIU last week?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Bai said. ¡°Nazis, I believe. The German prime minister had a very nice speech when we were in Chicago. Something about making Stalingrad look like a picnic. There are also reports of them in Argentina and the Southern United States.¡±

    ¡°What she didn¡¯t say, though,¡± I said, as I started the car, ¡°is that these guys aren¡¯t Neo-Nazis. They¡¯re actually members of the original Third Reich teleporting from the nearest habitable star system to try the whole world domination thing again.¡±

    ¡°And that¡¯s why you¡¯re in Switzerland,¡± Bai said. ¡°The President did not take kindly to their uninvited visit. At least, that¡¯s how I interpret burning several students who conspired with them to death.¡±

    I had been there in person and the story had been hard to tell. President Newton-Howell seemed very reasonable, giving the people an opportunity to join with him. When they hadn¡¯t, he had Campus Security douse them with gasoline. Then he tossed a match into the puddle. This wasn¡¯t the first time he had been involved in the death of students. For instance, the students in the Academy of Military Science (or AMS) and Shadowhaven sub-schools had to undergo something called Hell Semester, something that was somehow less pleasant than the name implied. All three of us had been through that.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, getting back on track, ¡°he actually wants us to investigate what he thinks is the group they¡¯re running from. A group called The Dragon¡¯s Teeth.¡±

    ¡°Are you sure that¡¯s what they¡¯re called?¡± Bai asked. She had quickly cut in, and there was fear in her voice.

    ¡°That was what we were told,¡± John said. ¡°Is that bad?¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t go.¡±

    ¡°Excuse me?¡± I asked.

    ¡°You heard me,¡± Bai said. ¡°There are foes that you simply can¡¯t fight. If I am correct, these Dragon Teeth are far beyond that.¡±

    ¡°We actually are just looking for information,¡± I said. ¡°We don¡¯t want to fight them. Hell, I wouldn¡¯t be opposed to making friends with them! Apparently, they¡¯re fighting both Nazis and the North Koreans. And if they turn out to be worse than both, at least we¡¯ll know.¡±

    ¡°Do you remember that prophecy Eliza and I were talking about, Nathan?¡± Bai asked. ¡°It was a long time ago, but I hope you remember something of it.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°There were apparently three people or groups with insanely powerful magic abilities. Also kind of vague. You called it the Final Prophecy, right?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± she said, ¡°but I was hoping you remembered the reason it was so vague. It was due to how many people have foreseen the events¡­ and how many different ways they¡¯ve interpreted them. The thing that you need to concern yourself with is that my society¡¯s version has¡­ predicted these Dragon¡¯s Teeth.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± I asked. I noticed that John was looking kind of worried about something. I¡¯d have to ask him about it later, but right now, I had to deal with Bai. ¡°What does this prophecy tell you about them?¡±

    ¡°My version of the prophecy says that the Teeth of Death shall rise in the Hermit Kingdom,¡± Bai said, ¡°and, after the world has fended off a great evil for the second time, they shall make their move, possessing weaponry far beyond what anyone else is able to make. They will steal the safeguards the world possesses against them and pave the way for the Master of Death, the first of the three harbingers of the end. In our version, Death is represented by a dragon.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± John said, ¡°what proof do you guys have that these prophecies are real? From what I¡¯m hearing, your only proof is a bunch of guys who are all saying remarkably similar things.¡±

    ¡°Very well,¡± Bai said, ¡°where¡¯s your proof that The Dragon¡¯s Teeth have come from space? Where¡¯s your proof that the same thing that is driving the Nazis out of their new planet is also in North Korea?¡±

    ¡°We don¡¯t, honestly,¡± I said. ¡°That¡¯s why we¡¯re going there.¡±

    Bai fell silent, considering this. She spoke up again when we pulled into the bank¡¯s parking lot. ¡°Why are we here?¡± she asked, suspicion evident on her face.

    ¡°The President is compensating us generously for this mission,¡± I said. ¡°This is the bank where we pick up our down-payment.¡±

    ¡°And you¡¯re siding with him?¡± Bai asked. ¡°After everything he¡¯s done? How smart is that?¡±

    I paused. I wasn¡¯t planning on siding with the President, just the opposite, in fact. The plan was to see if one of the teachers at the school was any better, then depose the authoritarian asshole. However, I wasn¡¯t sure I wanted to say that in a car provided by our beloved academic administrator.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± John said. ¡°He¡¯s going to do something much more stupid.¡±

    ¡°Thank you for that vote of confidence, John,¡± I growled as I got out of the car. ¡°I really wanted you to say that here.¡±

    ¡°Nathan!¡± Bai said sharply, bringing my attention back to her. She was glaring rather dangerously at me.

    ¡°Yes, Bai?¡± I asked, somewhat worried.

    ¡°Honestly,¡± she said, ¡°I don¡¯t know what game you¡¯re playing, and I don¡¯t care. Just bring back my boyfriend when you¡¯re done with this.¡± Ah, so that¡¯s why John had been nervous about Bai.

    I nodded, recognizing the threat. ¡°Will do, Bai,¡± I said. I turned back to John. ¡°Come on, man, let¡¯s get paid.¡±

    We walked into the bank, a somewhat Gothic structure, complete with heavy wooden doors, a long flight of stone steps, and stained glass windows. ¡°I wonder if anyone¡¯s robbed this place,¡± I said speculatively. ¡°I mean, this is a bank that keeps actual cash and safe deposit boxes held in a several hundred year old building. How secure could it really be?¡±

    ¡°Please shut up,¡± John said. ¡°I really don¡¯t want to be arrested by the Swiss police because they think we¡¯re plotting a robbery.¡±

    ¡°Fair enough,¡± I said, walking up to a customer service kiosk. ¡°But be honest. The past year has fucked you up so much that you were thinking about it as well.¡±

    A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

    ¡°Actually,¡± John said as I input the six-digit PIN the President had assigned me, ¡°I was thinking about taking the money and just, y¡¯know, running.¡±

    ¡°Seriously, or for pretend?¡± I asked, looking him straight in the eyes. ¡°Because we want to defy President Anthony Carter Newton-Howell, we¡¯d need friends. And taking the money and running would either alienate or cut us off from all the friends I know about.¡±

    John looked away. ¡°Yeah,¡± he said, somewhat embarrassed, ¡°it was a stupid thought.¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± I said, ¡°It¡¯s perfectly natural to want a way out. Oh, and speaking of friends, I didn¡¯t know you and Bai were dating.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± John said, ¡°kind of forgot to tell you. It wasn¡¯t really official until Culture Fest. I was literally just getting up to tell you when the campus locked down.¡±

    ¡°No worries,¡± I said.

    ¡°Hans Osterman?¡± a voice asked behind me. I turned around to see a woman in her twenties dressed formally in a black skirt suit with a white blouse.

    ¡°Yes? I mean¡­¡± I began, responding to my alias for this whole money collecting thing.

    ¡°Please,¡± the woman said. ¡°I know that isn¡¯t your real name. There is no need to fake a German accent. Follow me.¡±

    Pushing my questions out of my mind, I followed the woman through the lobby and into a vault off one of the side corridors. Besides, this obviously wasn¡¯t the kind of place where people would just answer questions like that. Maybe that was a reason that the place didn¡¯t get robbed. After all, if you rob one of the few places that could hide your ill-gotten gains, why should the other potential safe spots help you?

    The woman unlocked the door and directed my attention to an older man sitting at a desk in front of the rows of safety deposit boxes. ¡°This is Albert Heinz, your personal banker, Hans. If you wish, you can set up an account here. While you discuss the details, I shall get the package from the safety deposit box.¡±

    I took a seat across from Albert. ¡°Hi,¡± I said. ¡°What are you offering?¡±

    ¡°Right to business, I see,¡± Heinz said. ¡°Well, first off, you should know that the bank is aware of your need for privacy. In this special kind of account, we take that into consideration. We have a system of discretely depositing money into your account in a way as to satisfy any inquisitive accountant. Secondly, we understand that you may wish¡­ someone who isn¡¯t Hans Osterman to have this money. If you wish to make use of this option, we have two slips of paper. On the first, write the name, nationality, and relative government identification number for¡­ let¡¯s say, the other you. On the second, write the name and current addresses of all the people you wish to inherit if you should perish.¡±

    ¡°Certainly,¡± I said. ¡°Just¡­ how much will all this cost?¡±

    ¡°The discrete deposit fee and account setup cost, including the emergency reauthorization, have all been paid by your benefactor,¡± Heinz said. ¡°Now, would you like to discuss investment¡­¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± I asked, ¡°can my benefactor see my account?¡±

    ¡°Of course not!¡± Heinz said, sounding somewhat offended. ¡°He may have paid for your account, but he can only see the information you provide. He won¡¯t even know the routing number until you send him a check. If you don¡¯t believe us, I will list some other banks that provide the same service as this one.¡±

    I considered it. On the one hand, I wasn¡¯t sure if I could trust that. On the other, I had no plans to accept payments from people I didn¡¯t want the President knowing about. It would also be nice to have proof that I wasn¡¯t taking payments from people he didn¡¯t know about.

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m satisfied.¡±

    ¡°Now,¡± Heinz said, ¡°I would like to get back to types of accounts. Can I assume that you don¡¯t want a credit card account?¡± I shook my head. Heinz nodded. ¡°Ok, then. How about checking? Figured not. Investments? The average savings account does not earn very high interest rate. We also manage the account ourselves, and only take cuts from the profits.¡±

    I considered this for a moment. If what Bai had told me was true, then things would get much worse. ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°put twenty-five percent in savings, and seventy-five into military and medical.¡±

    ¡°Military and medical?¡± Heinz asked. ¡°You are aware that these Nazi bastards are expected to be defeated by the end of next year. Weaponry will probably fall after that, you understand.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s what people always say at the start of a war,¡± I said. ¡°Iraq and Afghanistan were supposed to be over within a year, World War Two was going to end with the defeat of the French, and the American Civil War should have ended at Manassas. Trust me, things are going to get a lot worse.¡±

    Heinz looked at me, somewhat disturbed. ¡°Do you have some idea on what¡¯s going to happen?¡± I must have seemed startled or something because he quickly regained his composure. ¡°Sorry, I didn¡¯t mean to pry. It¡¯s just that¡­ well, we live so close to the fighting, you know?¡±

    ¡°No worries,¡± I said. ¡°And no, I don¡¯t know anything specific¡­ I just have a feeling, you know? Like the worst is yet to come.¡±

    The rest of the conversation was somewhat dull. Eventually, the woman came back with a case. Inside the case was the million dollars as promised and directions to a hotel where we had a suite. Before I left, I took a fake passport and a ten thousand dollar untraceable pre-paid credit card. I was then led back upstairs where I meant up with John again and we walked back to the rental car.

    ¡°So,¡± I asked John, ¡°how big do you think this room is?¡±

    John shrugged, but Bai commented, ¡°Knowing him, he¡¯ll probably give you the best room in the hotel. It¡¯s a very old tactic. If you get someone used to the finer things, they tend to become much more compliant.¡±

    ¡°Honestly,¡± John said, ¡°I don¡¯t think a night in a luxury hotel would be enough to change my mind. I¡¯m not sure how long I¡¯m going to stay at NIU.¡±

    ¡°Are you sure?¡± Bai asked. She sounded kind of hurt.

    ¡°If this was a normal school and you were here,¡± John said, ¡°I would stay. I mean, Bai, you¡¯re actually pretty awesome. And Nate, you¡¯ve been here for me since day one. But¡­ I don¡¯t know how much longer I can do this.¡±

    I was about to agree with him¡­ then a little voice in my head asked, Do you really hate all of it? Can you really say that there¡¯s a part of you that loves the adrenalin rush? Or that you aren¡¯t attracted to the idea of saving the world?

    Looking in the mirror, Bai was also looking away. I wondered if she was having a similar reaction to me, or if she wanted to agree with John. Finally, she said, ¡°If I had a choice¡­ I would run away with you. But I have a duty. My life is sworn to it.¡±

    John nodded. ¡°I know. But if you do get a choice¡­ come find me, ok? Even if I¡¯m not still, y¡¯know, romantically available, I¡¯ll be there for you.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll keep that in mind,¡± Bai said, smiling sadly. ¡°Who knows, we may be lucky enough for my duties to come to an end.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s the good part of you being right, right?¡± John said jokingly. ¡°The world might be slightly fucked, but at least we can be together when the dust settles.¡±

    ¡°Assuming we¡¯re still alive,¡± Bai said, ¡°yes, we would probably be able to spend our lives together.¡±

    When we got to the hotel, we were directed to the penthouse suite. While Bai was giving us an ¡°I-told-you-so¡± look, I was chuckling to myself.

    ¡°What is it?¡± John asked, looking up from the room service menu.

    ¡°Your identity¡­¡± I said, holding back peals of laughter. ¡°Pepe Le Guinn? Are you serious?¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± John said, ¡°I didn¡¯t pick it. Now stop laughing and tell me what you want to eat.¡±

    ¡°Maybe a steak,¡± I said, ¡°with shrimp and a baked potato. How much does that cost?¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± John said.  ¡°I¡¯m paying for it. Oh, by the way, do you mind if Bai and I go for a walk?¡±

    ¡°No problem,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m going to use the opportunity to shower, change, and watch TV until I pass out on the couch. Of course, I might just skip the TV part and head straight to bed. Have fun!¡±

    ¡°Sure thing!¡± John said. ¡°We¡¯ll make sure the food is here by eight.¡±

    As they left, I swear to God Bai was actually smiling at John. It wasn¡¯t a particularly big or happy smile, just a small, contented one. Once they closed the door, I suddenly realized that was the first time I had seen her smile. ¡°Y¡¯know,¡± I said to myself, ¡°I hope those two make it.¡±

    I then proceeded to claim a room and shower, hoping to wipe the grime away. There wasn¡¯t that much time before I had to get back in the cramped and smelly airplane, and I intended to make the most of it.

 3.2: Preplanning

    It turns out that I didn¡¯t watch TV. After getting into my pajamas, I just set my alarm and crawled into bed. I was awoken by John knocking on the door. ¡°Hey, Nate,¡± he said. ¡°Supper¡¯s here.¡±

    I muttered something and got out of bed. I realized that I was actually hungry. Luckily, there in the living room area on one of the tables, was several silver serving trays. ¡°Well,¡± I said, as I took off the ornate silver tray, ¡°I feel underdressed.¡±

    ¡°As I said before,¡± Bai said, ¡°he¡¯s trying to buy you.¡±

    ¡°Or maybe he¡¯s just making sure we don¡¯t get suspicious before he tosses us in the garbage,¡± I said. ¡°It has happened to me before.¡±

    ¡°Dude,¡± John said, ¡°he¡¯s already spent a huge amount of money. Kind of doubt that he¡¯d just leave us to die.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re right,¡± I admitted, as I began to cut into my steak. ¡°Sorry. I guess I am still a little bitter. Ignore me.¡± I made it easier by shutting up. I also ate much more slowly than usually, and not because I was savoring the excellent food. I mean, it was excellent, but I was too jet-lagged and bitter to care.

    I noticed that Bai and John were having a much better time. Bai even laughed at one of John¡¯s jokes. Still, I couldn¡¯t get into the conversation, no matter how much I wished I could. I wished Eliza had come. I wished I had never taken UNIX¡¯s offer. I wished I could get a decent night¡¯s sleep. Seriously, I hadn¡¯t had a sleep without nightmares since Hell Semester ended.

    Finally, I managed to finish my steak and potato. ¡°Hey, guys,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯m going to sleep. See you in the morning.¡±

    ¡°See you, I guess,¡± John said. He seemed worried about me. Couldn¡¯t blame him. I had been able to keep things together when I had visited my parent¡¯s house during Christmas break, and had mostly been able to work myself to sleep. However, there were a few times when I had woken up screaming, and apparently I had been tossing and turning a lot.

    When I got to the bed, I fell into it, not even bothering to get under the covers. ¡°Soft and fluffy¡­¡± I murmured. This was a good bed. It¡¯d probably be easy to get to sleep in it.

    Turns out, it wasn¡¯t. Twice, I woke up from nightmares I couldn¡¯t remember. I woke up once more, convinced that someone, couldn¡¯t remember who or what, was coming. It was a few minutes before I realized that my G-3, my SIG, and my Berretta were back on the plane. It took me even longer to realize that no one was actually coming.

    I looked at the clock. It was 4:30. The plane left at 7:30. I debated getting back to sleep, then decided against it. ¡°Fuck it,¡± I said. ¡°No way I can get sleep tonight.¡± Besides, we had to be out the door by 6:30 to get to the plane. Instead, I decided to write a letter to my parents and my sister. Or maybe just to whoever found it on my body if we all died in North Korea. At the time, I figured, why not? After all, I was pretty much packed.

    However, that was hard. I honestly did not know what to say to them. I had never really talked to them that much and Hell Semester had made the differences between us grow even huger. Also, what could I say to some asshole who had shot me?

    Around five, I quickly made sure I had everything together and I went down to breakfast. When I got down, I saw the restaurant was closed. Instead of eating, like I wanted to, I sat down on one of the couches and turned on the TV to the news. The first thing I found was a BBC report about how the Bundeswehr, with support from local militia, capes, US Marines and the French Foreign Legion were engaging the Grenzefrontier (the Nazis who had run to space) in vicious fighting in and around Stuttgart. If I recalled correctly, that was only two to three hours by car from where I was. No wonder the people around here were so worried. Combined with the fact that the Nazis had death rays, and I was surprised people weren¡¯t panicking.

    Disturbingly, as if the invading Nazis from space weren¡¯t enough, Russia was building up troops on its European borders. Their claim was that they wanted to ¡°engage in peacekeeping,¡± but the Germans (as well as most of the nations between the two countries) didn¡¯t trust the Russians. The Russian Prime Minister, meanwhile, was becoming increasingly hawkish.

    Back home, the Virginia and North Carolina National Guards had mobilized to combat an invasion of Grenzefrontier backed by anti-government militias. However, it turned out that not all the militias had wanted to rebel, and a few black and Hispanic gangs had felt understandably threatened by Nazis rising up. What that meant was, in the forty eight hours before the National Guard could organize, and much of the five days it took for Congress to authorize the Army to be deployed on US soil, a hodge-podge of natural enemies came together. Some notable groups included some Bloods and Crips who flew in from Compton, some local Neo-Confederate and Soverign Citizen groups, and a Mexican street gang from Richmond that was obviously concerned about the recent upswing in white supremacist groups.

    Miracle of miracles, they somehow all became coordinated. The results were beautiful. A female BBC reporter was talking to a group consisting of a black Washington gang and, Neo-Confederates, and what the BBC called ¡°other Americans who inexplicably possess assault weapons.¡±

    ¡°So, we was bein¡¯ shot up by these Nazis, right?¡± the leader of the street gang said, beginning a long rant that the BBC struggled to censor. ¡°I mean, we¡¯re pinned. They got guns that were ****ing bigger than I was. Then these white-**** mother****s roll up in pick-ups, and we all thinking, ¡®shit, this is it, man.¡¯ Then they open fire on the Nazis. When they were done, one of them was all like, ¡®You **** hunting Nazis?¡¯ and I was like, ¡®Hell yeah, mother****, we huntin¡¯ Nazis!¡¯ We been kicking Nazi **** like it was 1945 ever since.¡±

    While this group was restoring my faith in humanity, John and Bai came down. ¡°Ok,¡± John said, ¡°I may be a little tired, but that looks like a black guy is trying to get a BBC reporter and a Neo-Confederate to have a rap battle.¡±

    ¡°It is,¡± I said, ¡°and it is fucking glorious. Anyway, after the battle is done, do you want to have some breakfast? The hotel caf¨¦ should be open by then.¡±

    We had a quick breakfast and were on the plane five minutes before the doors closed. For the rest of the journey, we would hear occasional reports of the war. The Grenzefrontier expedition in South America had come to a bloody standstill, and after a few daring raids on the CIA, the Pentagon, and the NSA headquarters, their otherwise embarrassing show in the US came to an end. They then shifted all their efforts to the German theater.

    The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

    This did not make the Russian Prime Minister cease his drive to get in on the action. Every time we stopped, the news showed that it was looking more and more likely that he would deploy forces into Germany¡­ whether the rest of the world liked it or not.

    All the horrible news made flying worse. Trust me, when you are flying commercial, after a few hours it starts to become miserable. Finally, it was mostly just Bai, John, the flight crew and me. This was in Tehran. It had taken us several days to get there, due to all the stops, but we could finally head straight to a city in China called Yantai. After assuring Bai we would tell her all about our Korean adventure and collecting our luggage, we called a number that the President had given us from a payphone.

    ¡°Who is this?¡± a Jamaican voice asked us from over the phone, suspicion evident.

    ¡°Collier One and Collier Two reporting for duty,¡± I said.

    The Jamaican guy on the other end laughed. ¡°I got¡¯cha mon. I¡¯m sendin¡¯ a friend over right now. You know him. Wait out by the front entrance and he¡¯ll be pickin¡¯ you up.¡± He then hung up.

    We went outside as directed. As we waited, we noticed a white van with blacked out windows was loitering a bit too long. ¡°John¡­¡± I asked.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± he said, slowly undoing a zipper on the bag that carried his guns, ¡°I see it too.¡±

    I remembered the one good international flight I had. It was on the private jet of Charlotte Blackmoor-Ward, a member of the British aristocracy and one of my friends. It had ended with us getting ambushed outside of TF Green by what I¡¯m pretty sure was the Grenzefrontier. Needless to say, I was worried that they would try again. John was worried also, judging by the fact that he seemed to be loading a pistol.

    Meanwhile, I was busy regretting the fact that my weapons were locked in a case. I could have gotten my P229 out in the bathroom, but no, I didn¡¯t. Just when I was considering doing something stupid, a Buick pulled up in front of us. Its blacked-out driver side window rolled down to reveal a familiar face.

    ¡°Good to see you, Kyle,¡± I said. ¡°We might have trouble¡­¡±

    Kyle Rockford sighed. ¡°Is it a white van with blacked out windows of a Chinese make?¡± Suddenly, I realized that Kyle had a weird face. There weren¡¯t any distinguishing marks. In fact, it was weird in how non-descript it was. I actually realized it for the first time then, and that was only because here, among so many people with Chinese features, he actually stood out. This helped me to realize that I actually couldn¡¯t say much about him other than that he was built like a quarterback and Caucasian. Maybe also good-looking

    I honestly had to believe that this had to have helped him infiltrate the Grenzefrontier¡¯s spy ring at NIU. That, and the fact that he was really good at pretending to be an idiot. He wasn¡¯t, by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, at times he seemed scarily smart.

    I was interrupted from the internal monologue by Kyle. ¡°They¡¯re with us. Joseph, Sunny, and Jeong are the guys in the Foton. Now get in before your itchy trigger fingers cause an international incident.¡±

    Kyle popped the trunk and John and I put most of our luggage in it. We kept our weapon cases out. ¡°You better not be taking your highly illegal weapons out,¡± Kyle said as I took out my P229 from my case.

    ¡°The Grenzefrontier ambushed us when we went home over winter break,¡± I said as I slid a magazine into compact pistol. ¡°Then Richard pulls his bullshit on me within my first week back at school.¡± I pulled the slide back, chambering a round. ¡°Then I get caught in the middle of a fucking invasion.¡± I closed the case. ¡°I¡¯m tired of getting caught unawares.¡±

    John nodded in agreement as he finished concealing a Bren 10 pistol. ¡°Exactly. Besides, can you honestly say that you aren¡¯t armed?¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± Kyle said, ¡°there might be an MP-7 with a forty-round magazine in the glove compartment. Still, you guys are way too jumpy. Fucking chill, ok?¡±

    Eventually, we came to a parking garage connected to a condo in a nicer area. The van parked right next to us and a large black man with dreads and two Asians got out, one male, one female. Both of the Asians seemed to be shorter than the locals. All of them were wearing blue NIU t-shirts with the University¡¯s shield logo.

    ¡°So you¡¯re the famous Killer and Mr. Boring, huh, mon?¡± the black man with dreads said. ¡°The Entertainer told me quite a bit about you two.¡± Ah. Eric had been talking me up again.

    ¡°Please,¡± I said, ¡°don¡¯t call me Killer.¡± I hated the nickname. I had gotten it during Hell Semester because I had gotten the first kill in an event called Fight Night. If I was honest, Fight Night had been the point of no return for me. ¡°It kind of brings back bad memories.¡±

    ¡°I know the feeling,¡± the one female said. She had Asiatic features, but she had dyed her hair blond. She held out her hand out. ¡°My name is Sunny.¡± She had an odd accent. I had heard Japanese accents, and had hung out a lot with Bai and her brother so I knew what Chinese accents sounded like.

    ¡°Hi, I¡¯m Nate,¡± I said. ¡°Do you come from our destination?¡±

    The other Asian, a somewhat skeletal little dude with slicked back hair like a 1950¡¯s Greaser, said, ¡°Yep. We¡¯re your local guides, man. I¡¯m Jeong, and this big guy is Joseph.¡± He shifted and I noticed that he had an AKMS under his leather jacket.

    ¡°Let¡¯s get your stuff inside,¡± Kyle said. ¡°I¡¯m a little creeped out by being out here. Don¡¯t want a cop to roll up while we¡¯re carrying all this ordinance.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± John said. ¡°By the way, what is this place?¡±

    ¡°Chinese professor owns this condo, mon,¡± Joseph said. ¡°Don¡¯t ask if he¡¯s Chinese or if he teaches the language. We don¡¯t know, and he doesn¡¯t want us to know.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± John said. ¡°That¡¯s fair. How much time do we have to prepare?¡±

    ¡°Sorry, mon,¡± Joseph said. ¡°We got a boat that¡¯ll get us to the destination. It comes tonight.¡±

    ¡°Can we trust these guys?¡± I asked.

    The other four exchanged nervous looks. My shoulders slumped. This was not a good sign.

 3.3: We Steal a Boat

    ¡°We¡¯ve got six hours before the pickup,¡± Jeong said as we entered the apartment. ¡°Check your weapons, then get some sleep. We¡¯ll wake you when it¡¯s time.¡± I took a look at the apartment. The room had obviously been a very nicely decorated room, and still was. However, a bunch of pictures had been taken out of photo frames and a lot of the ornate wood shelves had been emptied of what had to either be works of art or sentimental curios that could identify the owner.

    Meanwhile, the NIU recon team had made themselves at home. On the large coffee table, someone had strewn parts of what looked to be a PKM machinegun, an M-21 rifle, and a SCAR-H with underslung grenade launcher. There were also pieces of the cleaning kit strewn about as well.

    John and I sat down at a bar and began to check our weapons. For me, my first weapon was my Heckler and Koch G-3KA4, a compact battle rifle with folding stock. I had¡­ obtained it during Fight Night, and it had come with a reflex sight and a flip-down 3x magnifier. It was a very good gun on semi-auto. I also had a SIG-Sauer P229 and a Beretta 92FS Inox for backup. I had also purchased a small utility knife as well. Another new gift was silencers for all our weapons that had been supplied by NIU.

    John, meanwhile, liked to travel light. He just had an LR 300, a Bren 10, and his own knife. Needless to say, he got done a little before me. Still, it wasn¡¯t until we had both been done for a little while that Joseph looked up from reassembling his SCAR-H for the second time and said, ¡°If you¡¯re done, you can go into the other room and pack everything you think you¡¯ll need for a week.¡±

    ¡°Are we going to be there for a week, or are you hoping to be there for less?¡± I asked.

    ¡°We be crossin¡¯ the country on foot the short way,¡± Joseph said. ¡°It shouldn¡¯t take more than a few days but¡­¡±

    ¡°In case you¡¯re curious,¡± Kyle said, checking some IR goggles, ¡°Plan A for exfil relies on a different set of smugglers. Plan B is sneaking across the 38th Parallel. Plan C is heading back through China.¡±

    ¡°So take as much as I can carry, got it.¡± I said as we moved into the other room. In the other room there was a collection of food, ammo, medical supplies, and grenades. I grabbed a rebreather, night vision goggles and began to balance the other supplies I would take.

    ¡°You know,¡± John said, as we packed, ¡°I¡¯m kind of wondering, how heavy we should travel. I mean, we¡¯ve got a way out and we really don¡¯t want to get into a bunch of firefights. Maybe we should pack light.¡±

    ¡°You see this?¡± I asked, holding up a packet of rations. ¡°This is fucking power sludge. You remember that stuff? We¡¯re going to be able to move pretty damn fast and carry a lot of stuff. Also, while I want this to be easy, it won¡¯t.¡±

    John just sighed and continued to pack. I noted with some satisfaction that both our packs were reasonably full. When we were all packed, we got changed into the multicam uniforms that were provided and put the various magazines and grenades into the pockets of our pants and flak jackets. After we were sure everything was packed, we got into the sleeping bags.

    It was a little after nightfall when Joseph woke us. ¡°Come on,¡± he said, ¡°it be go time, my friends.¡± We grabbed our stuff, grabbing everything we had taken off to go to sleep and heading out the door.

    As we moved through the hall, I reflected how weird the picture was. Here we were, a group of heavily armed and armored, mostly non-Asian people walking through a peaceful middle-class Chinese condo. We should have been in a military base or urban warzone, not yuppie central.

    Amazingly, no one saw us. As the door slammed shut, I decided to ask the obvious question. ¡°So, can we trust our ride?¡±

    ¡°They¡¯ve been¡­ jumpy,¡± Sunny said. ¡°They¡¯re North Koreans, and they¡¯re close to the fighting.¡±

    ¡°And they¡¯re not fighting for Kim Jung¡­ which Kim are we on again?¡± John asked.

    Jeong shrugged. ¡°Very few people are actually loyal to whoever the Glorious Leader is currently. We¡¯re just scared, mostly. We just listen to the people we think are the biggest danger at the moment.¡± For some reason, despite the fact that he was the smallest person in the group, he was carrying the PKM.

    ¡°So, what¡¯s the worst case scenario?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Worst case is they don¡¯t show up,¡± Jeong said. ¡°Then we¡¯d have to steal a boat or something.¡± I nodded, but for some reason I wasn¡¯t convinced.

    Eventually we came to a dock. Joseph maneuvered the van behind some shipping containers and turned off the engine and all the interior lights. The rows of crates were poorly lit and spaced at irregular intervals, effectively killing line of sight.

    ¡°Wait here,¡± Jeong said, as he got out of the van. I noticed he also had left his PKM as well. ¡°They want to meet with us alone.¡±

    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

    ¡°Wait,¡± John said, ¡°you¡¯re going to meet them there¡­ alone? I¡¯m sorry, I know I¡¯m usually the sunshine and rainbows guy, but that just seems like a bad, bad, bad idea.¡±

    ¡°Gotta agree,¡± I said. ¡°This just screams ¡®trap.¡¯¡±

    ¡°I know mon,¡± Joseph said, ¡°but we can¡¯t be altern¡¯ the deal. That¡¯d just make ¡®em more nervous, and we can¡¯t have that.¡±

    Jeong had left while Joseph was talking. I could tell from Sunny and Kyle¡¯s faces that they didn¡¯t like the setup either. We then began to wait¡­ and wait. Then we waited some more. Then we heard the sound of a silenced gunshot.

    Instantly, we drew our weapons. As we piled out of the van, we heard several more gunshots. ¡°Killer,¡± Joseph whispered, ¡°take point, mon.¡± I nodded, and began moving in the direction from where we had heard the shots.

    We didn¡¯t have long to go before we saw Jeong stagger out from behind some crates. His eye was closed and he was limping funny. Smoke trailed from the muzzle of his Makarov. ¡°They¡­ wanted to change the deal,¡± he said. ¡°They wanted more money. When I told them that all we had was the agreed upon amount they¡­ ah!¡± He cried out in pain. ¡°They got violent. One of those¡± he said some word I didn¡¯t understand ¡°stabbed me in the eye.¡±

    Kyle suddenly held up his hand to silence us. We fell silent. When we did, we heard the sound of a motor desperately trying to start in the distance. We began heading towards the sound. Eventually, we saw a fishing boat with North Korean markings that had backed into a dock. Its lights were off, so we couldn¡¯t see who was in it.

    Kyle let his MP-7 hang down in its sling and flipped down his night vision goggles. ¡°Aw man,¡± he said. ¡°This is not going to be fun.¡±

    ¡°What is it, mon?¡± Joseph asked. ¡°Are they armed?¡±

    ¡°Two females in the cabin,¡± Kyle said, ¡°no weapons. But one is pregnant.¡±

    ¡°Still,¡± Joseph said, ¡°that¡¯s our ride. Kyle, Jeong, get our shit out of the van.¡± Keeping his SCAR-H pointed at the ground, he began walking towards the boat. Sunny, John, and I followed him. Once we were all on the boat, Joseph said to Sunny, ¡°Tell them to come out.¡±

    Sunny raised her AKM and yelled something in Korean. There was shouting from inside the boat. Sunny called out again. The door opened and from the darkness, two skeletal women emerged. One, I noticed, would have been the thinnest if not for the lump on her belly, indicating late-stage pregnancy. After a bit of shouting from Sunny, they knelt on the deck, facing the cabin with their hands on the back of their necks and their legs crossed.

    ¡°Ask them if the boat is fixable,¡± Joseph said. ¡°Also, if there¡¯s anyone else on the boat.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t bother,¡± John said. ¡°I¡¯m actually familiar with this model. They had the thing in neutral. All I need to do is move a lever.¡±

    Sunny nodded and, much more calmly, began conversing with the two women. After a while, she turned to us. ¡°There are three more in the hull.¡± I looked down to see I was standing on top of the hatch. ¡°They¡¯re the children.¡±

    We were interrupted by Kyle and Jeong returning. ¡°Are there any more?¡± Kyle yelled out.

    ¡°That¡¯s what we¡¯re going to find out,¡± Joseph said. We moved out of the way of the hatch, Sunny still covering the existing prisoners, the rest of us pointing our weapons at the hatch. ¡°What do you think,¡± Joseph asked, ¡°flash and clear or frag and clear?¡±

    ¡°How about we have their mothers talk them out?¡± Sunny asked acidly. ¡°I think that we can find better uses for grenades than children where we¡¯re going.¡±

    ¡°Fine,¡± Joseph said, ¡°get them out. We need to get going before some guard comes by.¡±

    ¡°My time to shine!¡± Jeong said, jumping into the boat, despite the fact that he was carrying a gun that looked like it weighed just as much as he did. He then began to talk to the people in the hold. The rest moved to the side of the boat farthest from the dock.

    ¡°Y¡¯know,¡± I said, watching Jeong coaxing a bunch of kids out of the hold, ¡°we should debrief these people. We¡¯ve got no clue where the safe places are. I¡¯m not particularly psyched about the possibility of coming ashore on a stronghold of KPA wondering what the fuck a bunch of foreigners are doing in their country.¡± As I watched, I saw Jeong slip something to one of the kids, an angry-looking half-starved teenage boy. Probably the money and the keys to the car.

    ¡°Not sure I¡¯d trust them,¡± Joseph said. ¡°After all, we did just kill a few of them. Let¡¯s just kick them off and do the scouting ourselves.¡±

    ¡°I hear you, boss-man,¡± Jeong said. He and Sunny began ushering the refugees off the boat. I noticed that the boy was still giving us angry looks. The others in his family, including the wives and two young girls, watched as the boat sailed away. I couldn¡¯t help but feel a little guilty for leaving them to fend for themselves.

 3.4: Insertion

    John and I had first shift, with John at the wheel. The rest of the group had gone down below to sleep. For a while, we were quite silent. Then John asked, ¡°So, what do you think is going on there? I mean, how are these Dragon¡¯s Teeth guys blocking satellite images? How are they fighting a multi-million man army in secret?¡±

    ¡°Honestly?¡± I said, scanning the horizon, ¡°I don¡¯t know the answer to the first question. Not a clue. But as for the whole being kept secret thing? North Korea is very insular, and both the current Glorious Leader and the Dragon¡¯s Teeth seem to agree that they don¡¯t want any interlopers coming in.¡±

    ¡°But why North Korea?¡± John asked. ¡°Seriously, it doesn¡¯t make sense. What¡¯s there?¡±

    I considered it carefully. ¡°I don¡¯t really know. Maybe they want some place to test out their tactics in secret before going up against someone bigger.¡±

    ¡°Do you¡­¡± John began, ¡°do you think they might go up against everyone at once?¡±

    I laughed. ¡°That¡¯d be insane!¡± I said. ¡°I mean, what kind of army could go up against all the nukes, Parahumans, and mad scientists in the world? It would have to have¡­¡±

    I stopped. Bai¡¯s mention of them having weaponry far beyond anything anyone else possessed came back to me.

    ¡°Y¡¯know,¡± John said, ¡°I¡¯m honestly kind of afraid Bai¡¯s right. If she is¡­¡±

    ¡°The prophecy she¡¯s talking about¡­ it¡¯s kind of vague on whether or not the world is fucked or if we can truly save it,¡± I said. ¡°Besides, it¡¯s a prophecy. There seems to be no basis in anything scientific, except for the fact that a bunch of people hundreds of years ago all had the same dream.¡±

    John nodded. ¡°Yeah¡­¡± he said. ¡°Anyway, there¡¯s actually some good news! Or, well, at least, interesting news.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± I asked ¡°What happened?¡±

    ¡°You know that signal that SETI picked up in the 1980s?¡± John asked. I nodded, knowing about it only vaguely. ¡°Well,¡± John continued excitedly, ¡°a scientist decided that it might not be language but a machine code. It turns out that it is sort of this cool combination of AI and emergency beacon. What it does when installed on a machine is it looks for text editors and generates coordinates. It also tries to translate to the user¡¯s native language.¡±

    ¡°This guy¡­¡± I said, somewhat hesitantly, ¡°this guy didn¡¯t give it access to the internet, right?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± John said, ¡°but it seems to want that. The scientist seems to think it¡¯s some kind of distress beacon. Another cool thing, which people think might be related, is that there seems to be something coming from the same direction as this signal, possibly a spacecraft. It should arrive in less than five years.¡±

    Have you ever had one of those moments when you remember something, but just as you¡¯re about to say it, you forget? That happened to me. John, looking at me curiously, asked, ¡°Nate? You ok?¡±

    ¡°What you said,¡± I said, ¡°reminded me of something¡­I forget what it was. But whatever it is, it made me think that maybe we should be worried about these aliens.¡±

    ¡°Makes sense,¡± John said. ¡°But we can always hope, right?¡± We spent the rest of our shift talking before Kyle came up.

    ¡°Hey,¡± I asked, ¡°you coming up to relieve us?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m five minutes early,¡± he said. ¡°I just¡­ kind of wanted to talk.¡±

    ¡°Is it about¡­¡± I began.

    Kyle cut me off bitterly. ¡°Jared?¡± he asked. ¡°Partly. President Newton-Howell countermanded Jared¡¯s Do Not Resuscitate order and they brought him back.¡±

    ¡°Was he upset about being brought back?¡± John asked.

    ¡°Well,¡± Kyle said, ¡°he, or what¡¯s left of him, is upset about something. But according to most of the doctors, there¡¯s no way that there¡¯s any of his mind was left in that body. They¡¯ve probably harvested his organs by now.¡±

    ¡°Well¡­¡± I said weakly, ¡°at least he got his wish¡­ eventually. I guess.¡± I shook my head. ¡°I honestly can¡¯t even imagine what that¡¯s like. Except really sucky.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Kyle said, ¡°but that¡¯s¡­ not the most important thing. I have to ask you guys a favor first.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, sure, man,¡± John began, ¡°Any¡­¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± I said, suddenly suspicious, ¡°what kind of favor?¡± Something, maybe it was Kyle¡¯s tone of voice, maybe it was a subtle change of posture, told me that this favor wasn¡¯t benign.

    Kyle laughed. ¡°Richard had you pegged wrong. I¡¯m hoping Joseph and that sadistic fucking spider back at school have you pegged wrong as well.¡±

    John was caught off guard. ¡°What¡¯s going on? What spider?¡±

    ¡°By ¡®spider,¡¯¡± Kyle said, ¡°I¡¯m talking about our beloved President and founder. You see, they both think that you guys are loyal to the school¡¯s existing structure. However, if it comes down to the wire¡­¡±

    ¡°If you¡¯re talking about a mutiny in the middle of hostile territory,¡± I said neutrally, ¡°that sounds like a really bad idea.¡± I tried to imply that once the mission was over and we were safely back at school, I¡¯d be up for one.

    Kyle laughed. ¡°You don¡¯t know Joseph that well, do you?¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s that supposed to mean?¡± John asked. I admit, I was curious as well.

    ¡°You¡¯ll see,¡± Kyle said, looking at his watch. ¡°Anyway, Sunny should be coming up soon. That¡¯s all you¡¯re getting from me.¡±

    There was a bump from the deck outside the cockpit. I turned around to see Sunny coming out of the hull. ¡°Looks like she¡¯s here,¡± Kyle said. I looked into his eyes. They were tired, and not from being up all night. Ironic, as the next words out of his mouth were, ¡°Get some sleep. You¡¯ll need it.¡±

    We went back into the hold. There were a bunch of crates and some beds. Everyone else was sleeping on the beds, but I suddenly remembered the boy¡¯s glare. Suddenly, those beds stopped looking comfortable. Instead of choosing one for myself, gripped with the weird belief that beds could be haunted by someone still living, I crawled into a small alcove of boxes, my G-3 still gripped tightly, and tried to fall asleep.

    Surprisingly, sleep came easily to me. It was a very good one, and it was all too disappointing when Jeong began prodding me with a fishing pole to wake me up. ¡°Hey, sleepy head,¡± he said. ¡°We¡¯re about to make landfall.¡±

    I groaned and got up to follow him up to the deck. When I got up, I saw we were getting close to a bunch of grassy hills with very little beach. In the distance, I could hear (and more disturbingly feel) odd rumbles. ¡°Is there some kind of artillery barrage going on?¡± I asked.

    In response, Kyle just pointed to the northwest. I could see blinding flashes of light from beyond the hills. ¡°Huh,¡± I said. ¡°What do you think that is?¡±

    ¡°It could be some kind of plasma weapon,¡± Sunny said, cradling an AK and leaning against the boat¡¯s cabin. ¡°The only other kind of weapon that can make that flash is a nuclear bomb, and I don¡¯t think anyone would use nukes like that.¡± She paused, then added, ¡°By the way, you probably shouldn¡¯t at those flashes too much.¡±

    I nodded, and looked away from the flashes. ¡°So,¡± I asked, ¡°where¡¯s our LZ?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re actually about five minutes away,¡± Jeong said. ¡°There¡¯s this fishing village I grew up in. We¡¯re going to send in the drone first.¡± I then noticed that he was bent over something. ¡°Ok, Drone¡¯s ready, Sunny.¡±

    ¡°Got it,¡± Sunny said, pulling out her cPhone, a highly advanced cell phone issued to all NIU students. She began tapping at the screen. ¡°Huh,¡± she said, ¡°GPS is still active. I wonder why the satellites aren¡¯t showing footage.¡± After she said that, a quadracopter took off like a rocket inches in front of Jeong¡¯s face.

    ¡°Damn!¡± Jeong said, ¡°Cutting it a little close, huh, Sunny?¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± she said, still looking at the phone. ¡°Anyway, it should establish orbit above target site right¡­ about¡­ now. Ok, feed¡¯s coming in clear. Patching you guys through now.¡±

    We all took out our cPhones out and opened the incoming feed. The quadracopter was moving in a slow circle around a small fishing village. However, there were obvious SIGns of fighting. From the landward side down to the docks, a variety of vehicles had been left smashed or abandoned in the road along the main road. There were mostly jeep-like vehicles and civilian cars arranged in hasty barricades, but there was also either a tank or armored car near a large warehouse by the dock.

    ¡°Hey, Sunny,¡± I said, suddenly interested, ¡°can we get a close-up of that tank? There¡¯s something weird about it.¡±

    ¡°What part?¡± She asked.

    ¡°Front,¡± I said. ¡°Maybe it¡¯s just me, but it looks¡­ melted.¡±

    ¡°We can do that later,¡± Joseph said. ¡°First, we need to scan for targets.¡±

    ¡°You mean survivors?¡± Kyle asked.

    ¡°You be goin¡¯ soft, mon?¡± Joseph asked. He was talking casually, but there was a threatening undercurrent to his voice. ¡°I thought you got that gender thing all sorted.¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Kyle said, ¡°I¡¯m just remembering that our job is to ask questions. Not to shoot. But if you want to go off mission, who am I to stop you?¡± He was doing his best to sound neutral, but I noticed that underneath his usual tiredness was anger. Not annoyance. Anger.

    There was a pause. Everyone watched with bated breath. ¡°Listen,¡± I said. ¡°We¡¯ve got a lot of time, right? We can afford to do things slow and steady. We figure out as much as we can, then we play it by ear from there. Sound cool?¡±

    Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

    Joseph nodded. ¡°Alright, Killer. We do a quick scan, then play it by ear.¡±

    The drone did a quick scan of the village. Eventually, it found heat signatures in several buildings that could be life. Strangely, it also showed an anomalously high temperature around most of the destroyed cars and a few buildings. After a few orbits, Joseph decided that the LZ was clear, then he ordered us to dock at the pier.

    When we came in sight of the fishing village, we were shocked at how empty it was. The concrete buildings that faced the harbor were completely vacant. Most, however, were relatively undamaged. A few had taken some stray rounds or were weirdly melted, but most of the damage was to the cars that had been used as barricades. Judging by what I could see from the boat, the attackers had smashed their way down the central street, then expanded outwards. I wondered how quickly they had managed to do that, and how much warning the defenders had.

    Despite the sunshine, the atmosphere as we docked was ominous. As we got closer, I could almost swear I saw something moving in one of the shop windows. However, before I could make out what it was, Joseph began briefing us.

    ¡°Alright,¡± he said quietly, obviously as spooked as I was, ¡°John and I will stay on the dock. Sunny, Kyle, you two check the coastline. Killer, Jeong, you two get going down the central street. Maintain radio silence. If you want us to come at a leisurely pace, press the panic button three times. If you want everyone to retreat back to the boat, press it twice. If you require assistance immediately, press it once. Are we understood?¡±

    We nodded. Silently, the four of us assigned to recon duty moved off the boat. When we got to the end of the pier, we split up into our groups of two. Moving at a crouch, Jeong and I moved slowly and steadily towards the tank.

    When we got off the docks, Jeong whispered, ¡°Is it just me, or have you been seeing movement, too?¡±

    ¡°When we docked¡­¡± I said, keeping my voice low. ¡°There were some movement in one of the house windows but¡­¡±

    ¡°No one there,¡± Jeong murmured back. We paused when we got to the street. I noticed that the pavement itself probably hadn¡¯t been that well maintained due to the grass growing between some of the cracks, but there were also bullet holes, blood stains and some weird burn marks. I took out my camera and began snapping photos.

    The burn marks, especially, were interesting. It was almost as if something hot enough to boil the asphalt and concrete had hit the pavement. As if that wasn¡¯t weird and disturbing enough, it looked like whatever had hit would sometimes fly off in a different direction, judging by the ¡°tails¡± left by the craters. I also noticed that these scars were of varying size, but the trend was that they got bigger the further away from the water they got.

    ¡°What are you doing?¡± Jeong asked.

    ¡°Recording evidence,¡± I said. ¡°This will make it easier to remember what happened and might give the techs back home something to work with. After all, it¡¯s not like we can bring back bodies or samples of melted concrete.¡±

    Jeong nodded. ¡°Ok,¡± he said, ¡°snap away. You don¡¯t have your flash on, and the cameras are noiseless, so it shouldn¡¯t give away our position.¡±

    We then walked over to the tank, scanning for enemies or interesting sights. Finally, we got to the tank. Jeong and I walked around to the front of it. What we saw made me gape and Jeong utter something in Korean.

    Something had caused half the front of the tank to melt, sagging down so that it was impossible to tell where the tank ended and the pavement began. The turret was also slightly melted, but on the other side. This caused the barrel of the main gun to droop down, despite the fact that the operator had aimed it as high up as it could go.

    ¡°What the hell did this?¡± I asked, stepping back to take a picture of the tank.

    ¡°Sunny said something about plasma weapons,¡± Jeong said in awe as he got out of my shot. ¡°At this point, I¡¯m inclined to agree. I can¡¯t really think of anything else that¡¯s hot enough to melt the armor of a T-62M like this.¡±

    I took a few more pictures, trying to get good angles of the damage, record any identifying marks, and get some idea of the armor thickness. ¡°Man,¡± I said, ¡°I wish I could get some interior shots. You know, see what kind of internal damage this mystery weapon caused.¡±

    ¡°Not a problem,¡± Jeong said. Letting his machinegun be carried by its sling, he climbed up to the turret with remarkable agility for someone carrying almost half his bodyweight in kit. He then pulled out a lock picking kit from his pocket and began going to work on the tank¡¯s hatch.

    While he did that, I decided to put my phone away and monitor the street. Twice I thought I saw movement on the rooftops or heard the sound of footsteps, as well as the occasional whisper. Eventually, I decided that I was hearing them, whoever they were. They just had decided that they didn¡¯t want to take us for some unfathomable reason. After all, there were only two of us. If they could do this to a tank, as well as however they were staying concealed, they most likely could take us down without our party noticing.

    I was distracted by Jeong whispering, ¡°Hey, Killer!¡± I turned around, somewhat startled. Jeong was still on top of the turret, a self-satisfied grin on his face. ¡°I got the lock open. Wanna see what¡¯s in this bad boy?¡±

    I nodded and scrambled up the turret in front of the hatch Jeong had unlocked. When I was in position, he turned the handle with a metallic creak, then pulled it up.

    The first thing I notice was the smell. The ignited gunpowder was honestly fine. However, the smell of burnt meat, metal and chemicals will give me nightmares for years to come. The smell was so bad, in fact, that Jeong had to close it for a bit so we could put on rebreathers.

    He was able to open it on the second try. The rebreathers weren¡¯t as effective as gas masks, but they were good against most non-biological based gasses, plus they didn¡¯t need any external gas tanks. They did filter out most of the smell.

    After the hatch was finally open, I looked inside. There, blown against the sides of the turret¡¯s walls, were the charred remains of two North Korean soldiers. Apparently, a few shells had exploded. Also, one of the soldiers had fused to the melted side of the tank. ¡°Well,¡± I said, snapping a few pictures of the charred, bloody mess, ¡°the Dragon¡¯s Teeth throws a really crappy barbecue.¡±

    Jeong took a look in. ¡°I¡¯d say it¡¯s more like a bake sale. Plus, that poor guy looks like he was alive for a bit.¡± I followed his finger. On the non-melted side, there was a soldier I hadn¡¯t seen who had been unlucky enough not to have been hit by an exploding shell. The second and third degree burns must have made him irrational with pain or fever because he had tried to claw his way out.

    ¡°Charming,¡± I said, snapping a photo of the grisly scene. ¡°Anyway, since I kind of want to add a little variety to my nightmares tonight, let¡¯s check out the warehouse.¡±

    We jumped off the tank and headed to the warehouse door. ¡°You know what¡¯s weird?¡± Jeong asked as we headed over.

    ¡°What?¡± I said.

    ¡°There was obviously a huge fight,¡± he said, ¡°or more likely a massacre¡­ but there aren¡¯t any bodies or small arms. Even the spent casings have been picked up.¡±

    I shuddered at the thought. Maybe they were trying to identify the bodies¡­ or maybe it was something worse. To distract myself, I looked at an interesting puncture near the door. It looked like a rod, as well as a tiny bit of blood and grey matter, had been jammed into the concrete at great speed. A small line of blood stained the concrete as opposed to the splatters I saw elsewhere.

    The doors themselves were two large, thin metal doors that had been punctured with gunfire. Judging by the bullet holes, the gunfire had come from the outside and gone in. After taking some pictures, we headed inside. This led us to some sort of factory.  Judging by the fact that there was a huge stack of cans at one end and that we were in a fishing village, this must have been some type of cannery. The machines had been silenced, but it seemed like they had been hard at work, indicating the attack had come suddenly. Above the machines were a series of catwalks and some offices.

    There were also telltale signs that the battle had spilled inside here as well. Machines had been shot up, blood was smeared on various places, and this time whoever had been cleaning hadn¡¯t bothered to pick up spent casings. Dried blood, gunpowder, and fish stained the air.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°this place looks like shit.¡±

    ¡°Probably wasn¡¯t that nice to begin with,¡± Jeong said. There was a clanging sound from above us. Jeong sighed as he raised his PKM. ¡°And there¡¯s our invisible friends again.¡±

    I was just about to put my phone away when it beeped. I took it out. ¡°We¡¯ve got other problems.¡± On the screen, the drone¡¯s camera showed an approaching convoy of North Korean soldiers. Things were about to get interesting.

 3.5: Shadows in the Town

    ¡°So,¡± Jeong asked as we waited inside the cannery, watching the North Koreans dismount and start heading into town, ¡°What do we do?¡±

    ¡°Aren¡¯t you in charge?¡± I asked. He, Joseph, and Sunny had graduated this year, from what I had heard, meaning he had seniority.

    ¡°Oh yeah,¡± he said. ¡°Guess I have seniority here. So I guess we head back to the boat and¡­¡±

    ¡°Wait¡­¡± I said, pointing at the screen, ¡°isn¡¯t that our boat?¡± The boat I was pointing out was currently sinking. Already, the rear had begun to dip below the waves.

    ¡°Yup,¡± Jeong said as two people jumped out and hid beneath the dock, ¡°that¡¯s definitely our boat.¡± Suddenly, the drone feed was replaced by static and a loss of signal notification. ¡°What the hell?¡± Jeong asked.

    ¡°I don¡¯t think that was the Koreans¡­¡± I said.

    ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter right now,¡± Jeong said. ¡°We get out of here. This is a point of interest. They¡¯re probably going to search here first.¡± He began moving through the factory. ¡°Hopefully, there¡¯s a rear exit we can use.¡± He began quickly moving through the machinery, gun up. I followed him, making sure to check the various corners.

    Quickly, we discovered the rear exits. There were a lot of them, in fact. However, they were for trucks to park at, like a garage door. Opening them would definitely make a lot of noise. Of course, that was a moot point as a few of them appeared to be welded shut.

    ¡°Ok,¡± Jeong whispered, ¡°Let¡¯s head to the catwalks. That should offer some cover.¡± Suddenly, there was the clanging sound of someone running quickly around the catwalk. Jeong sighed. ¡°At least these invisible fuckers aren¡¯t trying to kill us.¡± I could almost hear him think ¡°yet.¡±

    As we climbed the staircase, we heard a burst of gunfire. It ended quickly. From what I could tell, it was the NKPD group that had wandered in, as it was entirely AK-based weaponry. Judging by how quickly it had ended, there hadn¡¯t been a fight, because if there was we¡¯d hear the sound of silenced gunfire. That left two possibilities: Either the NKPD scouting force had somehow ambushed Kyle and Sunny, or they had seen our invisible friends. However, without visual confirmation we couldn¡¯t tell.

    We then began to wait. That was the hardest part. There were several more bursts of gunfire, and they kept getting closer. Then there was a loud thump and all hell broke loose. The scout force, seemingly just one intersection away from the factory, began to spray AK rounds wildly. At least the chatter of automatic weapon fire and officers shouting orders drowned out the sounds of a few injured soldiers screaming.

    ¡°Did you hear that?¡± Jeong whispered. As if on cue, the gunfire ceased. There still was shouting, though.

    ¡°The gunfire and explosions?¡± I whispered back, somewhat sarcastic. ¡°Yeah.¡±

    ¡°What about the silenced gunfire?¡± Jeong asked.

    I thought about it. ¡°Yeah,¡± said. ¡°It was from kind of far off, though, wasn¡¯t it?¡±

    We were interrupted when something heavy slammed into the door. We had taken a position on the catwalk overlooking the front entrance. Someone shouted something in Korean and Jeong chuckled slightly as he deployed his PKM. Then the door opened. I looked to Jeong for direction, but he held up his hand in a fist, indicating me to stop.

    An NKPD soldier slowly peeked his head in, looking left, then right. He didn¡¯t look up. After what seemed like an eternity, he came to the mistaken conclusion that it was safe to go in. Three NKPD soldiers armed with AKs cautiously crept into the room, each covering a different vector. Each called out what I assumed to be Korean for ¡°clear!¡± Then two more began to come in.

    That¡¯s when Jeong opened fire. If you¡¯ve watched movies with silencers in them, you would be forgiven for thinking that silencers make guns quiet. In actuality, suppressors are designed to make it hard to pinpoint a shooter¡¯s location from several hundred meters away in a noisy environment. It does save your hearing, though. If the PKM hadn¡¯t had a can on it, I might have had some serious temporary hearing loss due to how close I was to Jeong.

    The effects are also quite awesome in the biblical sense as well. The NKPD soldier in front of the door and one of the two behind him fell apart from Jeong¡¯s five-round burst. The other soldier who was crossing the threshold backpedaled, but another two-round burst split his head open like a sledgehammer hitting a watermelon.

    One of the remaining two who was already in the room raised his AK, firing as he did so. I quickly shot him and became familiar with another fact about silencers: they cause your gun to belch gas into your face. Before I got into my blinking fit from the unexpected mist, I saw the wall behind his head turn crimson.

    When I was done, I saw four bodies. ¡°Jeong,¡± I murmured worriedly, ¡°I think we missed one.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re right,¡± he said. ¡°One of his buddies outside tried to suppress us. While I was dealing with him, he ran off into the factory. Find him before he flanks us, ok?¡± I nodded, and began heading out. When I had found a staircase down on the side where the surviving NKPD soldier was on, I heard Jeong open up with his PKM again. But slightly before that happened, I heard something fall over behind me. Then there was silence again and I could hear someone noisily making their way over to the rear of the factory.

    I turned around and saw the NKPD soldier about to disappear into the maze of machinery. I raised my G-3 and fired. I missed, and the soldier got to cover. Then, he stretched his AK out of cover to fire blindly. I ducked just in time, potentially saving myself from one of the blindly fired rounds.

    An AK-74 can fire for almost three seconds continuously before it runs out. My plan was to wait it out and then rush him. However, probably about one and a half seconds into the burst, his friends tried to enter again. The resulting cacophony muffled any chance of hearing my target reloading.

    Cautiously, I peeked my head out from behind cover, then waited a bit. Seeing as this drew no return fire, I edged over to where he had chosen to hole up. The sensation of being out in the open in a gunfight was definitely not enjoyable, but it only lasted a few seconds. Finally, I had eyes on where he had been. There, behind some device or other, was an empty AK magazine and a bunch of spent casings, but no soldier. There was also a very small path running from left to right. I peeked down it¡­

    ¡­And promptly withdrew my head as a burst of AK fire sailed down the narrow funnel. As I ducked back behind machine, I considered my options. I could chuck a grenade of some sort at the guy, but I was a little leery of that course of action. With all the unfamiliar industrial equipment, the chances of hitting something explosive were too great. That also ruled out the reckless blind fire my adversary was indulging in.

    The other option was to wait him out. The problem with that was I didn¡¯t know how much ammunition he was carrying. For all I knew, we could be here for quite a while, and again, there was the possibility of him hitting something. He also was limiting himself to two and three round bursts now, with slight pauses in between, indicating he was a bit better operator than I gave him credit for.

    If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    That left trying to flank him. I got back out into the larger hallway and began moving silently closing the distance, taking in the sounds of both him firing and his friends trying to enter. When I was halfway to where I thought he was, he stopped firing. Not sure if he was reloading, completely out or trying to bait me, I remained cautious. When I finally got to an alcove going back in, I quickly checked out my surroundings. To my right was more of the narrow passage. To the left, back where I had come from, was more of the same, plus an ejected AK magazine, a sort of barricade of pipes, and another small alcove.

    ¡°You clever son of a bitch,¡± I muttered. Well, I guess I had no other option. G-3 raised, I began heading down the narrow passage. It was a short one, and I quickly came to a fork.

    For a second, I debated which direction to take. Then I heard the sound of a motor. It was one of the garage doors. That was bad. If he raised it, then Jeong and I could be attacked from both sides. I then did the worst thing you can do in a combat situation. I panicked.

    I ran through the maze of machinery, smacking chains out the way, ducking under pipes and vaulting over assembly lines. Finally, I could see the garage doors. I smiled, pushing myself further. I had made it.

    Things went wrong just as I was about to clear the maze. When I was one step away, the wooden stock of an AK came careening towards my face, accompanied by a yell of desperation and rage. I turned around and stumbled back, letting my G-3 go. I was thankful that the only upgrade I had gotten for it (it¡­ came with the reflex sight and the flip-up 3x scope) was a sling.

    I stopped being thankful for that purchase when my attacker grabbed my G-3 and began using the sling to choke me. I had seen that happen before. In fact, it had happened during Hell Semester¡¯s ¡°final¡± where, ironically, I had acquired the very weapon being used to kill me. A friend of mine, a child soldier known as The Monk, had snuck up on some poor guy and strangled him with the strap of his own weapon. When I told The Monk to stop, he had pulled out the guy¡¯s gun and executed the unfortunate sod.

    The difference between that situation and this were two-fold. First, despite the fact that I had two pistols on me, my Berretta 92F and my SIG-Sauer P229, my assailant wasn¡¯t trying to acquire either of them. The other was that he wasn¡¯t twisting the sling, just pulling it.

    First things first, I took advantage of the lack of twisting to pull the strap forwards with my right hand. I also stepped back into him, reliving the pressure on my neck and causing us to collide. Simultaneously, with my left hand, I reached into the holster on my left hip to withdraw the P229. Since I could feel his head pressing into the back of my own, I felt I could fire my pistol behind me without too much worry.

    He let go with a scream of pain. Damn. I hadn¡¯t hit. Ok, I technically hit him, but he was still alive. In this kind of fight, the only kind of hit that mattered was a kill, especially since I couldn¡¯t exactly get a resupply later on.

    Luckily, he had stumbled back. Unfortunately, he also had caused my sling to break, causing my G-3 to clatter to the floor. Doing my best not to focus on how disappointed I was by the breakage, I turned around to either pistol-whip or shoot my assailant. Unfortunately, he caught my hand.

    During the ensuing struggle, I got to get a good look at my opponent. In fact, it was a better look than I ever wanted. He was probably sixteen years old which meant he was two, no three years younger than me. His olive green NKPD fatigues were too big for his bony body, and his helmet had been knocked off to reveal that that the ear that hadn¡¯t been shot off had been hit so many times it resembled a cauliflower. His nose had also been broken repeatedly, and his skin was more gaunt than some of my friends at school, suggesting either that he had been less well-fed than a child soldier from Africa or that he used a lot of meth.

    However, it was the desperation on his face that will haunt me. Being close to someone and seeing their face as they struggle to survive is always terrible. It gets even worse if the only way for them to survive is killing you. You wonder if the expression on their face (in this case, brown eyes shining with terror and desperation) mirrors your own. Of course, it takes a while for you to start asking yourself this. At the moment it is happening, you have bigger problems to worry about.

    For instance, we both fell down pretty quickly, my SIG going off in the process. We tumbled around on the floor, trying to shoot the other. It was like the climax in dozens of movies where the good guy and the head bad guy are struggling over the gun. Yet in this situation, the stakes were much tinier and there was no personal enmity between us.

    Finally, after a few too many close calls, I let go of the gun with my right hand and grabbed my knife out of its sheath. Before the soldier could realize what I was doing, I unfolded it and brought it down into his throat. Hard.

    As his blood sprayed my face and spattered my glasses, his expression changed from desperation to shock. In his few remaining moments of consciousness, he made a gurgling noise. In that moment, I actually wished I could speak Korean. He deserved to have his last words heard and understood.

    When his grip on the hand still holding my SIG eased, I stood up. I was distinctly aware that I was now coated in blood. Around me, the shooting seemed to have died down. But as I stood looking down on my most recent victim, I also felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I was being watched.

    I spun around, back towards the loading bay. Staring straight at me was a tall man wearing a combat uniform that was definitely not NKPD issue. It was grey body armor over a grey skintight jumpsuit, but that wasn¡¯t the weird part.

    The first unusual thing was his helmet/facemask. It was almost like a hockey mask that fit over his head with a big camera lens over each eye, each surrounded by three smaller ones. Even stranger, he wasn¡¯t armed.

    Not waiting for him to produce a weapon, I raised my SIG and fired three times. Two rounds hit his chest, and a third hit right between the two camera lenses.

    Normally, when .357 SIG rounds hit a target at that close range, even a target wearing body armor, the target falls down. Also, large chunks of flesh end up outside the body. This¡­ thing just staggered back.

    Now genuinely terrified, I pulled the trigger again. There was an audible click. The monster (seriously, nothing human can take .357 SIG to the face and live) cocked its head, waiting to see what I¡¯d do next. When I just gawked at it, it just turned on its heel¡­ and vanished. By vanished, I don¡¯t mean walked out of sight, I mean literally turned invisible.

    ¡°So,¡± I said, as the mysterious figure¡¯s footsteps faded into the distance, ¡°let me guess, you¡¯re a member of The Dragon¡¯s Teeth, aren¡¯t you?¡±

 3.6 Outbreak

    After staring a bit at the spot where the guy had disappeared to, I decided to turn off the garage door. As I walked over to the control panel, SIG still raised, I saw that there were a few blood drops from the strange invisible guy. At least one round had penetrated. I heard footsteps on the catwalk and saw that there was more blood on one of the machines leading to the catwalk. Not a lot, but Mr. Invisible might not last the day if he kept that up. Of course, he probably had some way to quickly bandage his wounds if his tech was any indication.

    I was brought out of my reverie by the sound of a beeping alarm and an engine straining. I then realized that the soldier I had just killed must have been trying to open one of the garage doors that had been welded shut. I turned to the control panel for the doors to see that one of the buttons was flashing. I decided to press it, even though the buttons were unsurprisingly all labeled in Korean. Luckily, that stopped the noises and the door trying to rise.

    I breathed a sigh of relief. In my haste to get the door, I hadn¡¯t realized how noisy it had been. I looked around, taking in the machinery, the corpse and the discarded weapons. I noticed that my enemy¡¯s AK didn¡¯t have a magazine in it. I holstered my SIG and walked to pick up my G-3.

    I was busy trying to tie the sling together to make it useable when I heard a knock on one of the garage doors. I stopped fiddling and raised the carbine. The blood from the Korean soldier¡¯s neck had stained my glasses and the 3x sight had flipped down, making it hard to see.

    For a while, there was complete silence. Then there was another knock on the door and a voice called out in Korean. Then there was muffled conversation. Meanwhile, I switched to the reflex sight, hoping to get at least some kind of decent view.

    I waited, hoping against hope that they¡¯d go away, but the voices continued talking. Then, on the other side of the door, all hell broke loose. From the other side, I heard the somewhat muzzy crack of a silenced weapon. Then, something, probably a bullet, made a bulge in the garage door closest to me.

    Instantly, the people who had been talking on the other side began to panic, but before they could even complete sentences, more silenced gunfire poured into them. Judging by the fact that only about a third of the bullets were hitting the garage door, the people with the silenced weapons had set up a crossfire. Between the organization that a crossfire implied and the fact that it sounded like they were using a variety of weapons, I had to assume that the ambushers were on my team. Then again, I was also assuming that the only players in this game were the North Koreans, The Dragons Teeth, and us and that The Dragon¡¯s Teeth would have standardized weaponry.

    The people they were ambushing had to be the Koreans. As if the unsilenced weapons and the Korean voices weren¡¯t enough to suggest North Korean Army, a solitary burst of AK fire clinched it.

    The entire engagement was over in a blink of an eye, not that I could see anything from inside the building. The silence that followed made me uneasy. Finally, I called out, ¡°Hey, John, Kyle, is that you guys out there?¡±

    ¡°Yeah, Killer,¡± John called back, his voice slightly muffled, ¡°me, Kyle and Joseph are here. How are you and Jeong doing?¡± Something about his voice led me to believe that he was more worried about Jeong. It made sense. After all, I sounded fine but Jeong didn¡¯t seem to be with me. The other options weren¡¯t very promising.

    ¡°Last I checked, Jeong was covering the only entrance,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ve left him alone for a bit, so I¡¯m not sure about his status. As for me, apart from having to deal with a straggler, I¡¯m fine. What about Sunny?¡±

    This time, Kyle answered. ¡°She¡­ she¡¯s guarding someone you guys better meet for yourselves.¡±

    I sighed. That invisible guy or one of his friends might have killed Sunny by now, but seeing as how they might have gotten Jeong as well, I wasn¡¯t really one to lecture others about separating. ¡°Meet me out front. Don¡¯t go in without identifying yourself. Jeong¡¯s trigger finger might still be itchy.¡±

    With that, I headed off. I didn¡¯t run, but I was moving as quickly as I could while still remaining alert and checking my corners. It was hard to do as my glasses were stained with blood. I took them off for a moment, which, predictably, made my vision much worse.

    When I finally found the catwalk I had come down on, I scanned the upper levels. I quickly spotted Jeong where I had left him, but his PKM had disappeared and he was slumped against the railing.

    ¡°Jeong?¡± I asked as loudly as I dared. He shifted a bit and groaned. Greatly reassured, but not wanting to get my hopes up, I began moving my way towards him, scanning the room for any threats.

    When I finally got to him, I realized that his hands had been zip-tied to the railing. He craned his head to look at me, one eye slightly dilated. ¡°Hey, Killer,¡± he said. ¡°How¡¯s it going?¡±

    ¡°Oh, you know,¡± I said, ¡°getting into fights to the death, same old, same old. How about you?¡± As I said this, I turned around and began walking backwards towards him, desperately trying to see any attackers.

    ¡°Some asshole slammed my head on the railing and zip-tied me in place,¡± Jeong said. ¡°Think he may have given me a concussion.¡±

    I turned around to look at him, grudgingly tucking my G-3 under one arm. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, man,¡± I said. ¡°We¡¯re going to get you out of this.¡±

    ¡°By ¡®this,¡¯¡± he said, ¡°you mean the zip-tie cuffs.¡± I ignored the bitterness in his voice as I flicked open my knife. Jeong regarded them. ¡°I hope that blood¡¯s not yours, Killer.¡±

    ¡°No,¡± I said brusquely, ¡°it isn¡¯t. Move your hands forward a bit.¡± The combination of my hated nickname and the reminder of my most recent kill hadn¡¯t exactly made me feel better.

    Jeong complied to my order. I put my knife between the ties and cut them quickly. ¡°Ow!¡± Jeong said, cradling his palm, ¡°Watch it!¡±

    I looked at the wound. I had seen papercuts that looked worse. ¡°You¡¯ll live,¡± I said. ¡°What happened to your gun?¡±

    ¡°Asshole who attacked it me kicked it over the edge,¡± Jeong said. Sure enough, when I looked down, the PKM was on the floor. ¡°Now all we have to do is take care of the people still outside.¡±

    ¡°Kyle, Joseph and John killed them all,¡± I said brusquely. ¡°We should get going, they¡¯re waiting and that thing that got you is still around.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± Jeong said, slowly getting to his feet, ¡°Kyle and Joseph are together? That¡¯s¡­ kinda bad.¡±

    Suddenly, I felt a lot worse about our little expedition. Putting those thoughts out of my mind, I grabbed Jeong, drew my G-3 with the other hand and said, ¡°We¡¯ve got worse problems.¡± I then began moving.

    ¡°Yeah¡­¡± Jeong said. ¡°I hope Joseph realizes that.¡±

    When we got down, the other three came in, their guns sweeping the room. ¡°Hey, Killer,¡± Joseph called out, ¡°you there, mon?¡±

    ¡°Right here,¡± I said. All three turned their guns on me. They sighed and lowered them.

    ¡°Dude,¡± John said, ¡°you scared me.¡±

    ¡°What happened to him?¡± Kyle asked.

    ¡°I think a Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldier gave him a concussion,¡± I said. ¡°Just to prove he could.¡± Saying it, I suddenly realized that was the only reason. Even without any weapon, someone with that soldier¡¯s speed, skill and power could kill someone. This was a warning.

    ¡°Walk it off,¡± Jospeph said. ¡°We need to meet up with Sunny.¡±

    ¡°He has a concussion,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m not sure he can¡­¡±

    Kyle shook his head, trying to get me to stop, but I noticed it too late. ¡°Did I ask you?¡± Joseph asked. ¡°Are you a doctor?¡±

    ¡°No, but¡­¡±

    Joseph cut me off. ¡°Then don¡¯t countermand an order. Remember, I am in charge.¡±

    Suddenly, an urge to kill him washed over me. I had lived through Hell Semester, two ambushes during what was supposed to be civilian life, the Grenzefrontier invasion of Nowhere Island University, and what I think was a bad case of PTSD and now I had to deal with this? This drama was for business or leadership majors, not someone who was in the middle of a combat situation.

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    In an instant, I realized that firing from the hip could lead to me shooting John or Kyle. So, instead of shooting, I simply said, ¡°Sorry, Sir. Won¡¯t happen again.¡± I also released Jeong. He then took a few teetering steps forward.

    When it became obvious that Jeong could carry the massive machinegun, Joseph said, ¡°Ok, let¡¯s get moving. Kyle, you lead the way. Jeong, you get center. John and Killer, you get the rear.¡±

    As we began to move out, John sort of forced me to hang back. ¡°Dude,¡± he said as I scraped blood off my glasses, ¡°Joseph may have bought your contrite act, but I know you.¡±

    ¡°And?¡± I asked, a bit more coldly than I meant. I was going for neutral innocence, but it came out scary. I even put myself a bit on edge.

    ¡°Just¡­¡± John began. ¡°¡­Just remember that we¡¯re all on the same team and that things can get stressful.¡± He then lowered his voice even further. ¡°And killing him would only make things worse.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t remember saying anything so drastic,¡± I said. I still sounded cold.

    John just gave me a look. ¡°You¡¯re losing it, man,¡± he said.

    ¡°So¡¯s Joseph,¡± I said as I continued walking. Eventually we had to bunch up because Kyle was taking us through the back streets of the town. Joseph didn¡¯t seem to like this, and the closer we got to each other, the more agitated he got. ¡°Do we really need to be taking all these turns?¡± he asked Kyle.

    Kyle shrugged. ¡°This is the only way I know,¡± he said. ¡°Sorry. Besides, we¡¯re almost here.¡±

    To prove his point, Sunny opened one of the doors. ¡°You¡¯ve arrived just in time,¡± she said. ¡°The guy¡¯s calmed down, at least for the moment.¡±

    ¡°Guy?¡± John asked. In response, Sunny ushered us in. We were in a small, one room house that was where the town literally ended and the wilderness began. The wall facing the hilly forest beyond had been blown in by multiple cannon rounds. As we got in, we saw a man in a NKPD zip-tied to a radiator.

    ¡°He was here when The Dragon¡¯s Teeth attacked,¡± Sunny said. ¡°Want to listen to his story?¡± The soldier groaned in response, and I took out my cPhone and started recording video.

    ¡°Of course,¡± Joseph said. ¡°Jeong, you translate.¡±

    The soldier opened his eyes. As he did, I noticed that on the wall above his head, there was a bloodstain on the wall. Judging by the state of the soldier¡¯s face, the blood belonged to him. He stared at us for a moment, his face unreadable. Then he tried to stand up. He managed to get to this odd position between standing and crouching when his cuffs prevented him from fully standing. His face creased in confusion.

    Sunny gently put her hand on his shoulder and said something softly in Korean. The soldier looked at her strangely and asked her something. ¡°He¡¯s asking who she is,¡± Jeong said. Sunny spoke reassuringly, and Jeong translated again. ¡°She¡¯s saying she¡¯s a friend.¡±

    Something about the soldier bothered me. First off, there was his lack of wounds. Apart from his smashed-up face, he didn¡¯t have any wounds. Then, there was the fact that despite being surrounded by people who were obviously soldier from a foreign power, he wasn¡¯t nervous.

    Jeong, meanwhile, kept translating the interrogation. ¡°She just asked him what happened here.¡± He paused as our prisoner began slowly telling the story. As he did so, I noticed he wasn¡¯t looking at anything in particular. ¡°Interesting,¡± Jeong said, ¡°he¡¯s saying that The Dragon¡¯s Teeth came and they escalated. I¡¯m not sure what it means.¡±

    ¡°What was there previous MO?¡± John asked.

    ¡°The last team said they¡¯d just randomly appear and leave,¡± Joseph said. ¡°They were only able to discover they were clones by hijacking a meatwagon.¡±

    ¡°Were¡­ were there reports of them turning invisible?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Don¡¯t be stupid, Killer,¡± Joseph said. ¡°No one has that kind of tech.

    ¡°Never hurts to ask,¡± Sunny said. She then turned to the prisoner and repeated the question in Korean. He responded, and Sunny gasped. So did Jeong. The prisoner continued talking. Finally he asked a question.

    ¡°What did he say?¡± John asked.

    ¡°I don¡¯t speak Korean,¡± I said, ¡°but based on past experiences, they do turn invisible, don¡¯t they?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Jeong said. ¡°He saw it. He also said they like to make sure that you know as well. The ones that can do it followed his unit just to gaslight them. They¡¯d even sneak in to break equipment and rearrange what they didn¡¯t feel like breaking.¡±

    ¡°Were the invisible guys the ones who did this?¡± Joseph asked.

    Sunny relayed the question. The man just shook his head. Sunny pressed further, but the soldier kept refusing, growing louder and more shrill. Whatever it was that had invaded the town, it was obviously horrifying.

    ¡°What¡¯s he saying?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Who cares?¡± Joseph said, drawing a USP. ¡°He¡¯s too far gone.¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s saying he doesn¡¯t want to remember,¡± Jeong said. ¡°He¡¯s saying they showed him something. Apart from that, he¡¯s not making much sense.¡±

    ¡°Yep,¡± Joseph said. ¡°He¡¯s too far gone. I¡¯m putting him out of his misery before he¡­¡± Suddenly, an invisible blade punctured the thin wall of the house, coming out the front of the Korean soldier¡¯s head. White smoke came from the edges of each hole, but not through as if there was something between his eyes, despite visual proof to the contrary. ¡°¡­gives our position away,¡± Joseph finished weakly.

    Meanwhile, Sunny had fallen back with a gasp and I had fired several rounds at the wall. For the first time since I gotten my G-3, I had turned on full auto. It was a conscious decision. I couldn¡¯t see the target, so my only hope of hitting anything was to fill as much of the air with 7.62mm NATO as I could. When my gun clicked, Jeong said, ¡°I think you got him.¡±

    As sunlight streamed through the newly-made windows, I replied, ¡°The one I saw took two rounds of .357 SIG in the chest and one more in the head. Then he turned invisible and spider-manned up from the ground floor and onto the catwalk to knock you out. I¡¯m going to want to make sure.¡± I quickly reloaded as I said this. There could be others.

    ¡°If that¡¯s true,¡± Joseph said, ¡°we need to confirm he¡¯s gone.¡± We nodded and both exited the door, each of us checking one direction. Joseph took point, pistol held closer to his face than normal to prevent someone from taking it. As we moved, I reflected that this was how it was supposed to be, a team working together with no need for words or drama.

    When we finally turned the corner, I saw a man in a uniform the same as my other invisible friend. Several bullet holes had punctured his armor, and bits of electricity fizzed about him. For the first time, I noticed he had housings on his arms. One of them had a long blade on it, which he had obviously used to bisect our captive¡¯s head. Sparks of electricity danced across the body, fizzing softly at the many bullet holes.

    When we were both extremely close to the body, Joseph asked, ¡°Would you like to do the honors and make sure?¡± In response, I took careful aim and shot unmoving body in the apparently unarmored throat. It exploded, turning everything around it red in a several centimeter radius.

    Before Joseph could congratulate me, something fell down, landing right on the corpse. We looked up, just in time to see another face with weird goggles staring down at us from the roof of the neighboring house. Before I could even raise my rifle, it disappeared.

    While I was watching the roof, Joseph bent down to pick up a manila folder sealed in a waterproof bag. ¡°Well,¡± he said, ¡°I think this is going to be a lot more difficult than we thought.¡±

 3.7: Into the Unknown

    ¡°We¡¯re leaving,¡± Joseph said as we walked into the house through the hole. I followed, not sure what I could do if one of those invisible fuckers attacked.

    ¡°Where are we going?¡± Jeong asked. It was honestly a reasonable question. If we went into the hills, the cloaking people could follow us. If we stole another boat, they could just wait in the hold and murder us at their leisure. Of course, they obviously didn¡¯t want to kill us just yet.

    ¡°For the moment,¡± Joseph said, ¡°anywhere but here. We head into the hills, then hope we lose them. After that, I want to take a look at this.¡± He held up the folder that our invisible friend had dropped down. ¡°In the meantime, we need to leave.¡±

    I had once heard that you shouldn¡¯t ever run from something and instead always run to somewhere. This was definitely running away. Putting distance between us The Dragon¡¯s Teeth was a good idea, but the hills were kind of foresty, which meant that these invisible units could climb the trees and ambush us from above. However, I didn¡¯t want to bring it up, as the last time I had questioned our fearless leader¡¯s orders, he had kind of freaked out.

    Instead, I headed out with everyone else. As we began to head out, Kyle handed me my cPhone. ¡°You dropped this,¡± he said. ¡°Wouldn¡¯t want to lose it.¡±

    ¡°Thanks,¡± I said.

    We then moved out in a single-file line with uneven spacing. Again, John and I were near the back. Kyle, however, was also hanging back. ¡°So,¡± he asked, ¡°what do we think about our situation?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think we should be talking about this right now,¡± I said, ¡°especially if this conversation going in the direction I think its going.¡±

    ¡°Definitely not around Joseph, right?¡± Kyle asked.

    ¡°Seriously,¡± I whispered, ¡°we can¡¯t¡­ do that thing you suggested.¡±

    ¡°He might not give us a choice!¡± Kyle hissed back. ¡°I¡¯ve been keeping out of his way for two weeks, but he keeps coming after me. Trust me, it¡¯s a very real possibility. Especially with the way you¡¯ve been acting.¡±

    Eventually, we came to a stop. ¡°This is a good spot,¡± Joseph said. It wasn¡¯t. We were in a clearing in the middle of the forest. If The Dragon¡¯s Teeth were good climbers, they could easily climb to the top of the tree and drop down in the middle of our group. They could also come from literally any direction. Again, I said nothing.

    Apparently, Joseph just wanted to get a good look at the folder. He set down his SCAR-H and removed the folder from the plastic bag. After looking at the contents for a bit, he said, ¡°Jeong, can you read this?¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± he said, after taking a look at the contents. ¡°Looks like basic orders.¡± He read it in silence for a bit, then said, ¡°Ok, the basic gist is that a small mechanized infantry unit was sent into the town because of weird Dragon¡¯s Teeth activity. There was also some armor support. On the way over, there was a lot of activity from what the commander officer calls ¡®Ninjas.¡¯ I¡¯m assuming that they¡¯re the cloaking guys. Anyway, for a few days, everything¡¯s normal, apart from Ninja sightings.¡±

    ¡°And then?¡± I asked.

    ¡°And then, probably the day our ride left port, they get word that a bunch of bases with weird nonsense names have fallen,¡± Jeong said. ¡°Thirty minutes later, they hear gunfire from¡­ oh, I¡¯d say that direction and a radio message comes in saying that an enemy force is making a determined attack and is heading towards the town. The strange thing, and the commander makes a note of it, is that this unit that¡¯s crumbling is one he didn¡¯t know was in the area.¡±

    ¡°What does it say about the battle?¡± Joseph asked.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Jeong said. ¡°He¡¯s not making any sense. Apart from something about gas, he just kind of rambles like he¡¯s describing a fever dream or hallucination. Then, judging by the ink stain, someone literally drags him away.¡±

    ¡°Could they be using some sort of hallucinogenic gas?¡± I asked. ¡°The soldier we were talking to did seem a little¡­ out of it.¡±

    ¡°Good thing we brought our rebreathers,¡± John said.

    ¡°Hopefully,¡± Sunny said, ¡°our rebreathers can filter this gas out.¡± We all looked down at the ground. I don¡¯t know about anyone else, but so far, getting hit by that gas did not seem fun. I wondered how long it lasted, or if you could ever really come back from something like that.

    Suddenly, there was the sound of a twig breaking. Everyone stood up. Sunny, whose ears were the least damaged from the recent skirmish, pointed in the direction of the sound. Joseph nodded, and she began moving forwards. I was second.

    We were heading down hill. As we did, I noticed that the sound of snapping twigs was slow and deliberate, almost as if someone was deliberately leading us in a certain direction. ¡°Hey guys¡­¡± I began, trying to warn the rest of the party, but Joseph shushed me.

    Before I could protest, a large metal object with lots of moving parts skittered past Sunny and through the bushes. After she collected herself, Sunny said, ¡°That¡­ was not North Korean.¡±

    ¡°I figured,¡± I said, ¡°but what was it?¡±

    ¡°It looked¡­¡± Joseph said from behind me, ¡°¡­it looked like a mechanical spider about the size of a Doberman.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± John said from somewhere near the back, ¡°that can¡¯t be right. Do you know how hard it is to make a vehicle that uses legs? There¡¯s literally dozens of videos showing robots with multi-million dollar budgets falling flat on their faces.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, but compared to turning invisible, walking on six legs would be easy,¡± Sunny said as she scanned the forest.

    ¡°And besides,¡± I said, ¡°this local supervillain back home, Nigeru, could do it. Not as well as The Dragon¡¯s Teeth, but that spider car he made¡­¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± John said, ¡°but Nigeru¡¯s a fucking supervillain. And these guys¡­¡±

    ¡°Obviously have access to tech he couldn¡¯t even dream of,¡± Joseph said. ¡°We follow the little blighter and take it apart.¡±

    ¡°Are you sure?¡± I asked, ¡°Because¡­¡±

    ¡°Are you questioning my orders?¡± Joseph asked.

    ¡°¡­This feels like a trap,¡± I finished. ¡°But you can do what you want.¡±

    Joseph stared at me for a moment. ¡°We are going to follow the enemy. If you are too cowardly, you can stay behind.¡± He turned to Sunny. ¡°You¡¯re the tracker. Lead the way.¡±

    We began following Sunny. The entire time, I was considering turning around and shooting Joseph. Especially since he was probably going to kill us all through incompetence. Eventually, we came to an area that, while not forested, was still pretty hilly. I also noticed that there was a strange smell nearby, like something burning.

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    I was several meters behind Sunny when she crested the hill. ¡°This¡­¡± she said, ¡°this is not good.¡±

    We all hurried up to find out what she was talking about. On the top of the hill, someone had set up sandbags. The weaponry left behind indicated that they had been Korean. The bloodstains indicated that someone had killed them, then headed up the hill to drag their bodies away.

    Below that terrifying scene was a valley, with a road running through it. We were by the side, and opposite us we could see other positions. At one end, two armored cars and a tank, all three Soviet or Chinese-made, had formed a roadblock. Several craters were spread out in front of the tank, and the tank itself was mostly melted. Disturbingly enough, the metal itself was burning. The two armored cars had been eliminated by more conventional means. One had been turned into Swiss cheese by gunfire, and the rear of the other resembled a blooming flower due to what I assumed to be cannon fire.

    Strung out along the road was a convoy of vehicles that definitely weren¡¯t North Korean. Most were jet black and completely disabled, but one of them seemed to be mostly intact, except for the fact that it would occasionally swap from forest camo to jet black. The vehicles seemed to trap light making it hard to make out any details, but it was clear that they were some sort of light APC with wheels and a cannon turret. They also had both a rear exit and sliding doors like my family¡¯s minivan. I could see this because some had their rear doors open and one of the more damaged vehicles had both doors taken apart.

    That vehicle in particular was interesting because something was writhing on it. In fact, it was the clang of the door closest to our position falling to the ground that attracted my attention, as well as the whine of power tools. As I watched, the other door fell as well. Eventually, something with multiple legs detached itself from the writhing black mask and began dragging the door to the rear of the strange convoy.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, after a few minutes of watching the vehicle disintegrate, ¡°this is¡­ interesting.¡±

    ¡°Killer,¡± Joseph said, brushing past me, ¡°you and Kyle stay up here. The rest of you, come with me. I want to find out what¡¯s going on here.¡±

    I began to protest, but instead said, ¡°Yes, sir.¡±

    Joseph looked at me, as if trying to catch some hint of resentment or sarcasm. He then left, motioning for everyone else to follow him. As the other four marched off, Kyle and I sat behind the sandbags.

    ¡°Man,¡± I asked, watching the rest of the team advance towards the convoy, ¡°what the fuck is Joseph¡¯s deal?¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s one of the President¡¯s personal picks,¡± Kyle said. ¡°He tends to encourage a sense of self-importance and a love of status.¡±

    ¡°Why?¡± I asked. ¡°If this is what it leads to, then that just seems¡­ counter-productive.¡±

    ¡°Joseph¡¯s actually pretty easy to manipulate,¡± Kyle said dryly, ¡°providing you¡¯re above him in rank. Which we¡¯re not.¡±

    ¡°So,¡± I asked, ¡°do all instructors have little networks, or is it just our beloved President?¡± I was half sarcastic. I expected that a professor would have something better to do than network with his or her students.

    ¡°Most of the smart ones,¡± Kyle said. ¡°They know that they¡¯re likely to get a dozen students who¡¯re smarter than they could ever hope to be before they hit tenure. They¡¯ve set it up so that the two most important faculty members in a student¡¯s education are their recruiter and their academic advisor.¡±

    ¡°So we¡¯re like some kind of trading card?¡± I asked.

    ¡°More like those virtual egg things, except more useful,¡± Kyle said, giving a casual shrug. ¡°Students can always choose to switch advisors or not join in with a prof¡¯s event. But yeah, we are kind of like that, except much more useful.¡±

    Not sure what to do with this information, I scanned the surrounding area. I had plenty of questions. After all, this was an important facet of University life I had never known about. Finally, I said, ¡°So, I guess Professor Krieger¡¯s advisees don¡¯t have many networking meetings?¡±

    I was a weird case, apparently. Neither John nor I had been recruited by faculty. Instead, we had been approached by UNIX to go infiltrate NIU. However, we both had Karl Krieger, a demented lion-like man, as an advisor.

    ¡°You actually have weekly meetings,¡± Kyle said. ¡°Since he was my recruiter and you¡¯ve been avoiding him, he wanted me to pass on the message.¡± That was a fair assessment. Krieger might not be the scariest person I had ever encountered, but he was in the top five easily. Part of the reason for that was that he had implied he wanted to take down The President¡­ and I believed he could.

    ¡°Couldn¡¯t he tell me that himself?¡± I asked.

    ¡°He doesn¡¯t want to scare you away,¡± Kyle said. ¡°He wants you on a big project that you might not want to accept, you don¡¯t have much love for him, plus he doesn¡¯t have anything you want.¡± He paused. ¡°Plus, because you¡¯re such a wild card, he has to worry about what you¡¯d do if you switched advisors.¡±

    ¡°Come on,¡± I said, ¡°he¡¯s not trying to avoid hurting my feelings. He¡¯s not the type. His plans just got accelerated for some reason.¡±

    Kyle shrugged. ¡°You¡¯d probably know more than me. Krieger usually likes to choose people that are either similar to him in some way or a complete underdog. That¡¯s part of the reason why he pawned me off to Zemylachka.¡± Zemylachka was another extremely scary person as well as director of the Shadowhaven, a more spy-focused program back at NIU.

    ¡°How am I similar to Krieger?¡± I asked. Below, the rest of our group seemed to have decided to give the writhing APC a pass. I didn¡¯t really blame them.

    Kyle considered this. ¡°Well¡­¡± he said, either trying to gauge my expression, avoid offending me, or both, ¡°The only thing I can pin down is that you¡¯re both¡­ chaotic.¡±

    I laughed. ¡°And you aren¡¯t just as unpredictable? Seriously, you¡¯re kind of an enigma yourself.¡±

    Kyle shook his head. ¡°First off,¡± he said, ¡°I said you were chaotic, not unpredictable. There¡¯s a difference. Second, the reason you can¡¯t predict me is because you don¡¯t know me.¡±

    We lapsed into silence, both of us shocked at the venom in Kyle¡¯s words. Instead, we scanned the hills opposite us. Suddenly, I saw movement. I was just about to point it out to Kyle when all hell broke loose.

 3.8: Better Than Any Seen Do It

    One of the camouflaged shapes I had seen wriggling up the hill suddenly stood up or knelt (it was hard to tell) and raised a dark black object. Then there was the ptoomp! of a grenade launcher.

    Below, John called out, ¡°Gas!¡± His voice was slightly muffled as he tried to fit a rebreather over his face. I was wondering why he thought there would be gas. Then the grenade hit. At the time, the four on the ground were behind one of the strange APCs, with Joseph in the lead. The grenade hit the ground in between the one they were investigating and the one that was covered in strange, writhing objects. There was a sound that was a combination of a thump and a hiss as the grenade hit, and then a shimmery, transparent gas coated the air around the two APCs.

    As I got my rebreather on, I noticed that Sunny and Jeong had listened to John and the three of them were scrambling to get their rebreathers on. Joseph, however, hadn¡¯t. As the rattle of gunfire began to rattle down, he just stood dumbfounded. Then he began to scream.

    As he began to claw at his face, I yelled through my rebreather, ¡°We need to give them some cover, right now.¡±

    My statement was punctuated by the crack of Kyle¡¯s M-21. ¡°Already on it,¡± he said. He fired again.

    I snapped down the 3x sight on my G-3 and drew a bead on the enemy position. As soon as I saw them, I instantly realized they had to be Dragon¡¯s Teeth. Their helmets obviously had some sort of rebreather built in and their visors had an odd T-shape to them. I took aim and fired. The one I had been aiming for staggered back. I shot him again, and this time he fell down.

    ¡°What the hell kind of armor are they using?¡± I asked. Kyle was about to answer, but then the Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldiers returned fire. We ducked down, but the bullets had come very close. To my great concern, it seemed like the sand bags were starting to dissolve.

    Kyle noticed it too. ¡°Come on,¡± he said through his rebreather and beginning to turn around, ¡°we need to get out of here.¡± I grunted in affirmative, then began crawling down the hill with him.

    Once we were down the hill, I said, ¡°Let¡¯s flank these assholes.¡±

    ¡°Excuse me?¡± Kyle asked. In the distance, I could hear the chattering of Jeong¡¯s PKM and Sunny¡¯s AK. Joseph was still screaming, but it seemed like someone had gotten his rebreather on.

    ¡°It can work,¡± I said. ¡°We go behind the Korean roadblock up ahead, then swing around and hit them in the side.¡±

    Kyle stared at me. ¡°That may actually work,¡± he said.

    We began to hurry, moving as fast as we could. We entered the valley behind the ruined North Korean Army vehicles. I peeked above the tank. There on the hill were about five or six Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldiers. I couldn¡¯t see the soldiers very well, just their muzzle flashes. ¡°This seems to be a good angle,¡± I said. ¡°You want to set up here while I get closer?¡±

    Kyle nodded and moved forward as I hurried to the next armored car. As I did so, I saw that only Jeong was firing at the Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldiers. Sunny was seemingly firing at something coming from further up the convoy and I couldn¡¯t see John or Joseph at all. I could hear all of them, though. The only one who sounded in trouble was Joseph, so I wasn¡¯t that worried.

    By the time I had gotten to the last car, Kyle had made his presence known to the Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldiers, and a few had turned their attention on him. That¡¯s when they decided that enough was enough. Four grenade launchers fired in rapid succession, two of which hit near where Kyle was crouched. He grunted in pain, then got up to fire.

    I turned around and ran, trying to get to the best position I could, ignoring the redoubled fire from the Dragon¡¯s Teeth. Finally, I got onto the side of the hill where the Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldiers were. I raised my G-3, looked down the 3x scope¡­ and saw that four of the six appeared to be reloading.

    Choosing one who had almost finished inserting a drum magazine into his bullpup assault rifle, I lined up my crosshairs with his head¡­ and fired. Again, the smoke from my gun caused me to blink. In the exact instant that happened, I heard Kyle¡¯s rifle. When I opened my eyes, my target was down and another Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldier was clutching his throat. The bad news was they were all turning to aim at me, and the first one I had shot was already getting to his feet.

    Determined to make my sacrifice count, I turned to one of the others and double-tapped him. This time, I kept my eyes open and saw him fall. Then the remaining four opened fire.

    In a desperate attempt to live a bit longer, I threw myself to the ground. Amazingly enough, it worked. If I had done it a tiny bit later, though, I would have been completely perforated. Before the Dragon¡¯s Teeth could adjust their aim, though, Jeong opened up with his PKM again. This time, he actually managed to make one fall over.

    At that point, our opponents decided that they had had enough. All six of them, including the one clutching his throat, got up and ran. Jeong, Kyle, Sunny, and I half-heartedly continued to fire at them. We even managed to hit one or two.

    Finally, they were all gone and silence reigned. Even Joseph had stopped screaming into his rebreather. The one Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldier who didn¡¯t get away, the one Kyle had shot in the throat, was lying in the grass. After enough time had passed, I got up, switched to my reflex sight, and began walking towards him.

    ¡°Hey, Killer!¡± Jeong called from behind one of the APCs. ¡°Is everything all clear up there?¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s one guy they left behind,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m checking it out.¡±

    ¡°Roger that,¡± Jeong said, and moved to the next APC. After he did so, Sunny took his former position. Both of them aimed their guns up at the hill.

    ¡°How¡¯s John?¡± I asked.

    ¡°I¡¯m fine!¡± John called out. ¡°Just had to restrain a large, muscular guy jacked up on whatever that fucking mist was.¡±

    When I was finally standing above the Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldier, I saw that there was a trail of blood from where he had first been shot to where he had finally fallen. His uniform was stained with it and the red liquid had pooled where he had finally fallen. One hand was still gripped around his own neck in an attempt to stop the bleeding. The other loosely gripped his rifle.

    My first thought upon seeing that much blood was that the soldier couldn¡¯t have survived. Then, realizing how much that sounded like a supervillain in a comic book gloating before he got his face punched in by the hero, I pumped four more rounds into him. ¡°All clear!¡± I called back after scanning the forest. ¡°You guys want to come up and see what we accomplished, or do you want me to drag him back down?¡±

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    ¡°Wait,¡± Jeong said, ¡°we only got one?¡±

    I looked around again. ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°judging by the blood trails, at least another one might be dead very soon if he doesn¡¯t get medical attention. Apart from that, I¡¯m only seeing one body.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Jeong said, ¡°but there should be several of them spread out in small chunks. Are you sure¡­?¡±

    ¡°Jeong,¡± I said, somewhat annoyed, ¡°there¡¯s one dead guy up here, and he¡¯s mostly intact except for the fact that his blood¡¯s not in his body anymore.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m coming up,¡± Jeong said.

    ¡°I¡¯m staying down here,¡± Sunny said. ¡°If Joseph wakes up, John might need some help.¡±

    I watched Jeong run up to me. As he did, I noticed Kyle calmly making his way towards us as well. When Jeong finally got to the scene, he said, ¡°There should be more bodies.¡±

    ¡°Tell me about it,¡± I said. ¡°I shot one of them in the chest, and he just got up like nothing happened.¡±

    ¡°I fired at least a hundred rounds from my gun,¡± Jeong said. ¡°There should be more bodies.¡± He looked genuinely haunted.

    I shrugged. Maybe the enormity of what had happened hadn¡¯t hit. Maybe watching Ulfric ripping someone¡¯s arm off and beating others with it had rendered me immune to panic. ¡°Well, there aren¡¯t,¡± I said. ¡°Must have some pretty good armor.¡±

    ¡°Are you serious?¡± Jeong asked. ¡°If it had been us, we¡¯d be in fucking bloody chunks of meat all over the hill!¡±

    ¡°Jeong,¡± I said, ¡°take a breath.¡±

    He did. Then, realizing what he had been doing, he took several more. ¡°Ok,¡± he said, ¡°I¡¯m fine. I¡¯m fine now.¡±

    After mentally filing away that Jeong could panic, I said, ¡°So, his gun looks pretty interesting, doesn¡¯t it?¡± I walked over to it, tucking my own rifle under my shoulder while I reached for it. The gun was the same black as the APC, but considerably more blocky. It also seemed to have cocking handles on either side, removable underbarrel grenade launcher, ammunition display, and special scope mount upon which a red dot sight was mounted. It did not, I notice, seem to have any iron sights. ¡°Man,¡± I said, ¡°this is pretty light. I think it¡¯s made out of the same synthetic that the Grenzefrontier makes their guns out of.¡±

    ¡°The Grenzefrontier uses synthetics?¡± Jeong asked. ¡°I thought they were still pretty much stuck in World War II.¡±

    ¡°For some things,¡± I said, ¡°but I got my hands on one of their SMGs when they ambushed me on my way home over Christmas break.¡± I handed it to Jeong. ¡°You can tell it¡¯s the same substance due to how ridiculously light it is.

    Jeong grabbed it. ¡°Yeah,¡± he said. ¡°It¡¯s really light.¡± He paused. ¡°Why does it have four cocking handles?¡±

    I shrugged. Jeong, deciding to just mess around, pulled one of the forward ones. Nothing happened, except for a slightly quieter clack noise than you usually hear on a gun. He then pulled one of the rear ones. A silver-colored bullet was ejected, landing near me.

    I bent down and picked it up. It was too light to be silver, possibly aluminum or titanium and definitely a hollowpoint, but there was something weirder about it.

    ¡°Hey, Jeong,¡± I said, holding it out to him, ¡°where¡¯s the case on this thing?¡±

    After taking a look at it, he said, ¡°I actually think it might be caseless. That¡¯d save a bunch on space and make it lighter and more powerful. Combined with the fact that it¡¯s a hollow point and this is just nasty. Of course, if you¡¯re triggering your frag grenades by packing them with hallucinogenic gas, you might as well have your standard issue ammunition be specially designed to make people bleed.¡±

    ¡°So¡­ would it not pierce our armor, then?¡± I asked.

    Jeong shrugged. ¡°If it was from a normal army,¡± he said, ¡°I would say it¡¯d be unlikely, but I¡¯d advise that you not bet your life on it.¡±

    ¡°But since it¡¯s the Dragon¡¯s Teeth,¡± I said, ¡°I should assume it would go through my armor¡¯s front plate and out my rear plate at three hundred meters.¡±

    ¡°Pretty much,¡± Jeong said. ¡°That¡¯s almost as bad as the spiders?¡±

    I looked at him blankly. ¡°Spiders?¡± I asked.

    ¡°I¡¯ll show you,¡± he said, dropping the Dragon¡¯s Teeth assault rifle. I followed him down the hill. When we were on our way down, I noticed that the APC that had been writhing was now completely still. When we got behind the convoy, I saw why.

    Between the APC that had sheltered Jeong, Sunny, John and Joseph and the writhing APC, the ground was littered with black carcasses, a few of which occasionally still fizzed and sparked. One was worryingly close to where John was restraining Joseph.

    When I got closer, I could make out details. It really was a mechanical spider, with a variety of power tools on various ¡°arms.¡± When I bent down, John said, ¡°Yeah, that thing tried to jump on Joseph. Sunny shot it.¡±

    From behind me, Sunny shuddered. ¡°Those things are creepy. They¡¯re fast, they¡¯re silent, and they move like something from a horror movie.¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s this?¡± Kyle asked.

    ¡°A mechanical spider,¡± I said matter-of-factly.

    ¡°Did it really have to be spiders?¡± he asked. ¡°I fucking hate spiders.¡± Instantly, everyone began talking.

    I rubbed the bridge of my nose as people slowly began to get more and more panicked. I didn¡¯t really want to deal with what was freaking people out at the moment, partly because a part of me was gibbering about invisible people watching our every move. ¡°So,¡± I said, gathering my wits, ¡°we¡¯re in enemy territory, we¡¯re in an extraordinarily exposed position, we¡¯ve fought off an enemy attack and can expect more to show up, plus one of us has been incapacitated by an unknown hallucinogenic.¡±

    I paused for a moment to make sure everyone was listening. They were. ¡°Now, we can survive. We just need to think of a plan in a calm and collected manner and we can get out of this fucking hellhole.¡± I suddenly remembered Sunny and Jeong were North Korean. ¡°No offense.¡±

    ¡°You kidding?¡± Jeong asked. ¡°I have never seen a worse place than this country.¡±

    ¡°Anyway,¡± I said, ¡°does anyone have any suggestions?¡± No one said a word. I sighed. This was not going to be a fun trip.

 3.9: Shipping Off to Yonan

    We eventually decided the best thing to do would be to search the Korean vehicles, then see if any of the Dragon¡¯s Teeth APCs still worked. In the tank, we discovered among the charred remains of the crew a working radio. Combined with the Dragon¡¯s Teeth APC that was randomly changing from pitch black to forest camo, and John said we could get it working.

    ¡°You know,¡± John said, as he was hotwiring the tank¡¯s radio into the APC, ¡°we need to think up a cool nickname for these guys.¡± He had taken the dashboard off with a knife and was fitting cables together. ¡°How about Deets?¡±

    ¡°Whatever,¡± I said. ¡°Are you done yet?¡±

    As if in response to my question, the radio crackled to life. John smirked smugly. ¡°That answer your question?¡±

    Before I could answer, Jeong cut in, ¡°They¡¯re saying that they managed to halt the Deets off at Yonan!¡±

    ¡°Where¡¯s that?¡± John asked.

    ¡°From the sound of it,¡± Sunny said, ¡°all we have to do is turn around and follow this road. If we do that, it should take us to a relatively quiet area.¡±

    ¡°I can direct you there,¡± Jeong said, getting into the co-pilot¡¯s seat.

    As he did so, I noticed that the co-pilot¡¯s seat had a joystick and a computer screen of some sort. ¡°You know,¡± I said, pointing to the joystick, ¡°I think that may be the turret control.¡±

    ¡°Nice,¡± Jeong said. ¡°Where¡¯s the radio? I want to listen in on these guys.¡±

    ¡°They don¡¯t have one,¡± John said. ¡°Anyway, let¡¯s get moving.¡±

    We began to drive away, moving along the road at a decent pace. The engine must have been electric, because the vehicle didn¡¯t make a sound. Eventually, the scenery on the side of the road became less hilly and more farm-like. We could also see the occasional ruined vehicle.

    I busied myself taking pictures of the interior. It was made of the same black synthetic as the Deet guns and very Spartan, even going so far as to eschew seats, instead having handlebars on the ceiling. That probably meant it could double as a transport for materiel. Judging by the rails on the floor, seats were an option, as well as medical beds. More slots on the wall indicated that medical equipment could be stored on the wall. On the rear ramp, in medium-sized white letters, was written ¡°Vmk-4 Charon Multi-Roll Combat Vehicle.¡± Someone was a little overconfident. Seriously, your weapon has to be pretty damn impressive to get away with naming it after the mythological figure who took the dead to the underworld.

    I was distracted by Sunny. ¡°So,¡± she asked, ¡°John, you, Kyle and Killer were in the Freshman class this year. What the hell happened in Hell Semester this year?¡±

    John shrugged. ¡°I honestly have no clue,¡± he said. ¡°For all I know, this was just another Hell Semester. Maybe me and Nate surviving was unexpected, but¡­ What¡¯s so funny?¡±

    Sunny and Jeong were both laughing. ¡°Listen,¡± Jeong said, after he was done laughing, ¡°an over-privileged American or two playing hero is expected, but to have people like The Black Death, Ricardo Montana, Camila Reyes, and The Found Boys all in the same year? Those guys were legends before they even got here and there are at least a dozen more I haven¡¯t even mentioned.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°I knew Ricardo, and I sort of met Camila during the Grenzefrontier invasion, but I haven¡¯t heard of the others.¡±

    ¡°The Black Death,¡± Sunny said, ¡°was the daughter of moderate Hutus in Rwanda. Her parents died trying to bring justice to some of the more sadistic actors in the genocide. She¡­ kind of snapped, and walked into the plains with some water, food, a machete, a few kitchen knives, and her dad¡¯s SMLE. Over the next few years, Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi began dying. Official figures say her kill count is at least double Simo H?yh?¡¯s, and most people say that¡¯s low-balling it. Killer, you stood on a platform with her a couple times. Her name is¡­¡±

    ¡°Oro Okoro,¡± I said. ¡°John and I did more than stand on a platform with her.¡± It wasn¡¯t bragging. It was more like shock. ¡°I mean, I knew she was cold, but I had no idea¡­ I ate with her.¡±

    ¡°You also impressed her,¡± Jeong said. ¡°You also impressed The Found Boys. I guess crawling through assault rifle fire and forty-mil can even impress people who ripped off Kony.¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± I said, ¡°they were some of the few people at that fucking hell hole who didn¡¯t hate my guts. I thought I¡¯d pay them back. You¡¯d do something similar for a friend, right?¡±

    ¡°What about Mr. Giggles?¡± Sunny asked. ¡°That guy didn¡¯t even exist before he wound up at NIU, then he starts killing people in groups of fifteen with his bare hands. How did anyone survive him?¡±

    Ulfric Trollbjorn, also known as ¡°Mr. Giggles,¡± was a baby-faced mountain of a man with a constant smile and a penchant for violence. I had given him his nickname because he almost never spoke, instead he had a high-pitched giggle that he¡¯d emit. That, combined with his inhuman strength, love of killing, and, more terrifyingly, his uncanny ability to read people, and he was one of the most feared people in our year.

    ¡°That,¡± Kyle said, ¡°is very easy. He gets bored. That¡¯s how I survived. There were eight others, I just played dead while he pulled one of them apart like a wishbone.¡± I instantly gained new respect for Kyle. The only other person I had known to survive Ulfric was Bai Feng. Funnily enough, she might have been one of the people mentioned next.

    ¡°Man,¡± Jeong said, ¡°When we were there, it was just Joseph. We didn¡¯t have ferals who grew up training with the SAS, weird Chinese cultists, homicidal giants or popcorn-selling sociopaths.¡± He paused. ¡°Actually, we did have some weird cult guys who were always recruiting and Spacey the Moon Jew, but apart from that, it was mostly just your average collection of criminals, psychos and terrorists.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± I said, ¡°Joseph already had a rep before coming?¡±

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    ¡°Yeah,¡± Jeong said. ¡°Almost everyone who had been to an orientation knew him as the guy who had saved the Pres¡¯s life in Jamaica. We were pretty tight with him back then.¡±

    ¡°Were?¡± John asked. ¡°What happened?¡±

    ¡°I can guess,¡± Kyle said. ¡°He got assigned The President as an advisor, right?¡± When everyone asked how he¡¯d know that at once, he said, ¡°My grandad was one of the first professors hired. He also was one of the first to retire, but he still goes back to the island to hang out with the faculty.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Sunny said, ¡°I wish we had known how things worked because Joe kind of¡­ drifted away.¡± She shook her head. ¡°You think that serving through Hell Semester would bond you forever, but life at NIU tends to drive people apart.¡±

    ¡°I can understand that,¡± John said. ¡°I mean, not that I¡¯ve experienced it or anything.¡± Something told me that wasn¡¯t quite the truth. I shrugged it off. I had enough to worry about at the moment.

    I stopped paying attention to the conversation for a while as the APC trundled along. I missed my family back home, but had no real way of relating to them. I missed my friends back at school and wondered if I would see them again, or if I would end up dead. Hell, I missed being able to change my underwear. Any college student will tell you that after a day, they feel completely gross. I was going to be in them for weeks, potentially.

    As I ruminated on this, I noticed that Joseph was starting to open his eyes for brief periods of time. On the one hand, that was good. We needed all the people on this expedition awake and alive. On the other, Joseph was a liability before he got gassed. Now, he had been exposed to a substance that had ruined the mind of some poor sod. If Joseph woke up again, he could be mentally unfit to lead, and still constitutionally incapable of stepping down.

    Instead, I turned back to my investigations of the vehicle. I suddenly noticed a box that I hadn¡¯t seen before. I took off the lid and found some more assault rifles, plus what looked to be submachineguns and quick-change barrels for the rifles.

    ¡°Now these,¡± I said, ¡°are interesting. Can someone film me?¡± Kyle nodded and pulled out his cPhone. When he began recording, I pulled out a rifle and each of the two types of magazine: drum and banana clip. ¡°The mags seem to be quad-stacked. Not sure how reliable that is. You¡¯ve got a choice between¡­¡± aiming the gun down and away from everyone else, I slid in the drum. It went in easily, with barely any noise despite the force with which I had loaded it. The ammo counter below the red dot sight instantly went from 0 to 100. ¡°¡­one hundred round drums or¡­¡± I looked for a magazine release. Bizarrely, it was a button in front of the trigger guard, indicated by a white diagram. I pressed it and the magazine shot out.

    ¡°Whoa!¡± I said, surprised at how it had been repelled out. ¡°Anyway, the banana has¡­¡± I slipped the curved magazine in and checked the readout. ¡°¡­sixty rounds of caseless ammunition of an unknown caliber. Safety and fire selection are M-16 style. All controls are ambidextrous. Plus, there¡¯s the grenade launcher, which I¡¯m pretty sure is detachable.¡± I gave the barrel a twist. ¡°These barrels can also be changed for different roles as well, maybe even during a battle.¡±

    ¡°Can I see?¡± Sunny asked.

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said, handing it to her. ¡°Next up is the SMG. Judging by the double charging handles, this is also caseless. It seems to be similar in size and shape to an MP-5K with an MP-5 style telescoping stock and a folding foregrip, but it has a much more squareish shape. Again, like its big brother, it has M-16 style fire selector and no provision for iron sights, just a detachable reflex scope.¡± I rooted around in the box for magazines and inserted one. ¡°Only seems to have room for sixty-round magazines. In yet another similarity to their big brother, they¡¯re quadrastacked.¡±

    I considered it for a minute. ¡°I¡¯m half-tempted to leave our guns here and take some Deet weapons.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Kyle said. ¡°They¡¯re weird as fuck, use unreliable feed methods, and have an inherently fragile kind of sight. Might be best to leave them.¡±

    As he said this, we went over a bump. Suddenly, Joseph, who had been lying on the floor, opened his eyes. For a moment, there was silence. Then he sat up and pulled out a silenced Mk. 23, a look of panic in his eyes. He quickly aimed it at me, the red light from the laser pointer making me blink.

    ¡°Joseph¡­¡± Sunny said.

    In response, Joseph turned to face her and Kyle, still terrified. Then he relaxed. ¡°Sorry, Sunny,¡± he said. ¡±I thought¡­¡±

    He trailed off, looking a little lost. ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter. It¡¯s good to see you again. What happened?¡± He paused, slowly getting to his feet. He looked really unsteady and I noticed that his eyes were bloodshot. ¡°Where are we?¡± This next question seemed particularly hostile and suspicious.

    ¡°We¡¯re on the way to Yonan,¡± Jeong said. ¡°The fighting¡¯s apparently gone house to house. We thought we¡¯d do a bit of recon, see what¡¯s going on.¡± At this point, I realized that voices on the radio were still chattering away and I could hear gunfire and explosions in the distance.

    ¡°That is acceptable,¡± Joseph said. ¡°What are we in?¡±

    ¡°Huh?¡± Jeong asked.

    ¡°What. Are. We. Riding. In?¡± Joseph¡¯s tone of voice was now barely controlled. I noticed he still gripped his huge pistol, and it was with such a tight grip that the veins in his hands were bulging.

    ¡°A Dragon¡¯s Teeth APC,¡± Jeong said. ¡°We thought¡­¡±

    ¡°Stop the vehicle,¡± Joseph said.

    ¡°We¡¯re almost to Yonang,¡± Jeong said. ¡°If we wait five¡­¡±

    ¡°STOP THE FUCKING CAR, MON!¡± Joseph yelled, pressing the barrel of his Mk. 23 into the side of Jeong¡¯s head. This was not good.

 3.10: Canâ€™t Find a Better Leader

    This was bad. Joseph was our leader guy, yet he was pointing a gun at another member of our team. I reached for my M9. If Joseph didn¡¯t point that gun somewhere else soon, I would shoot him. If he went so far as to fire, there was no way I¡¯d let him live.

    John, meanwhile, chose a more peaceful solution. ¡°Jeeze, man,¡± he said, slowing the APC down, ¡°I¡¯ll stop. No need to freak out.¡±

    ¡°¡®No need to freak out,¡¯ huh?¡± Joseph asked. ¡°We¡¯re driving around in an enemy vehicle that probably has a dozen tracers and you be tellin¡¯ me I shouldn¡¯t freak out?¡± He was waving his gun around like a character in an action movie, not someone who had learned gun safety during Hell Semester. ¡°Get out of the vehicle.¡±

    John shrugged and opened the rear ramp. ¡°Not a problem. Just so you know, there aren¡¯t any doors in the cabin.¡±

    Joseph nodded. He put his pistol back and grabbed his SCAR. ¡°Whatever. Just get the fuck out.¡± He then stalked out of the APC.

    We followed him out into the slowly fading day. We were now in a suburban area. It was a kind of weird area, at least for a New Englander like me. On either side were two-story buildings that were the kind you¡¯d find in a city. However, just beyond the buildings and a few meters behind us the city-like area simply stopped and green fields began. I had rarely been anywhere where civilization just¡­ ended.

    Of course, the cheaply-made buildings seemed to have been hastily evacuated. There were clothes, toys, electronics, luggage, and various other items scattered about. A farm tractor had been tipped over in the middle of the road as well. In the distance, we could hear the sounds of a pitched battle. It was so intense it had begun to sound like one of those videos that plays certain sounds over and over again to form a song, with the chatter of automatic weapons being the rhythm, the thud of cannon fire being the bass, and the sound of larger explosions as the beat.

    In short, it was the sort of situation silencers are actually good for. If I fired my G-3 and hostiles were just around the corner, there was a good chance they might think it was just more gunfire from deep within the heart of the city.

    ¡°All right,¡± Joseph said, ¡°Let¡¯s move out. Everyone, guns up.¡±

    We began advancing into the city in a single-file line. After a few minutes, I noticed that Joseph had taken off his rebreather. My first thought was to just leave it alone. I didn¡¯t want to start another fight with Joseph. Then I remembered that Joseph was slow to get his mask up, plus the dose he had gotten seemed to have seriously damaged his brain, perhaps permanently.

    ¡°Joseph?¡± I asked hesitantly. ¡°Is there a particular reason you don¡¯t have your mask on?¡±

    Joseph halted and everyone took a deep breath. He turned to me, about to scream, then paused. His face slowly turned from one of rage to one of thoughtful contemplation. Finally, he said, ¡°No reason.¡± He then pulled rebreather on and we continued on our way.

    This was¡­ disturbing to say the least. The one good thing I could think of that had come out of this was now Joseph would think before he did something to lower morale. On the other hand, as well as being increasingly volatile, he might hesitate at a key moment. That, somehow, was scarier than him flipping out and shooting one of us.

    I was pondering these thoughts when we saw something dart into a building. Joseph motioned for us to stop. We had come to the first four-way intersection since we had started walking. Now, buildings were starting to get higher than two stories. Yet, the signs of the chaotic evacuation were now more intense.

    The building that the shape had vanished into, a four-story building of some sort with a shop at the bottom, was in particularly bad shape. The display windows for the shop had been completely shattered, and the shelves inside had been almost completely looted. However, the shape hadn¡¯t gone into the shop, but the entrance to the apartments or offices above.

    Joseph signaled Jeong and Kyle to move to the corner and cover the streets to the left and right. He then ordered me across the street, then John, then Sunny. He then followed us. After the four of us were across, Joseph motioned Kyle and Jeong across as well.

    When we were all across, Joseph motioned me towards the door. He wanted me on point as we breached. As our other squad mates pulled security, Joseph counted down from three. When he hit one, I burst inside.

    What I found was a small hallway with an alcove for mail cubbies. The entirety of it was bare concrete and dimly lit. I moved to the end of the hall as quickly and quietly as I could, doing my best not to trip over the abandoned detritus left behind. As I did, I heard the telltale noises of the rest of the team follow me. At the end was a rickety staircase to my left. I quickly took it, making sure to avoid a few suitcases and loose items that had been abandoned.

    I got to the second-floor landing. I looked back to Joseph for direction. He moved past me, aiming his SCAR-H up the stairs to the next level. ¡°Search this floor,¡± he said quietly.

    I nodded, then moved out onto the landing. There were six rooms, three on each side. ¡°John, Sunny,¡± I said, ¡°you take that side. Kyle and I will take the other. Jeong, cover us.¡±

    Just as I was about to breach into the first room, through the sounds of the distant battle, I heard a relatively quiet thump. It definitely wasn¡¯t an explosion, and it was so close I was pretty sure if I got inside the room, I¡¯d figure out what caused it. To my chagrin, it took me a couple tries to kick the door down. When I got into the room, I saw that the room I was in was a small studio apartment that was completely full. There were two bunk beds and one double. There was barely room for the kitchen and table.

    I quickly noticed that a window was opened. After confirming the room was clear, I moved over to it and looked out. In the distance, the sun was slowly setting, but the full effect was blocked by another building. Below me, there was a dumpster that had its lid somewhat bowed in.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said quietly, ¡°it looks like our observer made his or her getaway.¡±

    Kyle joined me at the window and followed my gaze. ¡°Yeah,¡± he said, MP-7 aimed at the floor, ¡°looks that way.¡±

    The rest of the search went on like this. Eventually, we had cleared all the stories. I was impressed at how dirty, small, and densely populated the rooms in the building were, and a little unnerved by the fact that there was only one fire escape that only served the apartments on the opposite end of the stairwell.

    Meeting back up, we reported our findings. The place had been evacuated in a big hurry, the electricity and water still worked, and apart from us, there was no sign of life either in here or in any of the surrounding buildings.

    Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.¡°Of course,¡± I said, ¡°that doesn¡¯t mean those invisible fuckers aren¡¯t still watching our every move.¡± Ever since Hell Semester, I had been having issues with paranoia. Mostly because I had been doing spy work for UNIX, the international Parahuman law enforcement agency. It hadn¡¯t helped that I had been right to be paranoid: the administration at NIU had known about me before I had even set foot on the island. Now, invisible jackasses could be watching my every move, even standing in the same room as me, and I wouldn¡¯t even know it.

    ¡°Or not,¡± John said, ¡°I mean, the energy required to turn someone invisible has got to be massive. We can¡¯t be worth the cost of having those cloaker guys follow us 24/7.¡±

    We stared at him for a bit. Then Jeong spoke up. ¡°Listen,¡± he said, ¡°if you¡¯re going to try and reassure us, can you at least be better at it? Because you¡¯ve probably jinxed it so that one is standing right in the center of this circle.¡±

    ¡°Actually,¡± I said, glad I could offer good news, ¡°I saw one of them turn invisible. If you look closely, there¡¯s this sort of shimmer¡­ like a bubble where they¡¯re supposed to be. You can¡¯t see it from far off, but you can kind of see it from up close.¡±

    Joseph nodded. ¡°Good to know.¡± He paused. ¡°Anyway¡­ I think we should stop here for the night. This is a very defensible building, and I think that¡­ I think that I need to rest.¡± I said nothing, but probably looked worried. The effects from whatever Joseph had taken were obviously still clouding his already questionable judgement. Joseph continued on, either not noticing the concerned looks everyone was giving him or doing a good job of pretending not to. ¡°Normally, I¡¯d say that our best bet to find out what¡¯s going on would be to move during the night and use our goggles, but based on the sounds outside and the tech the Dragon¡¯s Teeth have displayed so far, I would say that we have definitely lost that advantage. We¡¯ll get some rest, and continue the mission in the morning.¡±

    He smiled. ¡°In the meantime, let¡¯s have an actual meal.¡±

    I suddenly realized that I hadn¡¯t had anything to eat all day. ¡°What are you planning?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Well,¡± he said, ¡°electricity works and the shades in that room are pretty thick.¡± He pointed to a room on a corner that only looked out onto an alleyway and other buildings. ¡°We just pull the shades on that room, turn on its lights and its stove, and I cook up a little something while the rest of you stand guard.¡±

    For the first time, I actually felt like Joseph was doing something right. Of course, that could have been my stomach and hatred of Power Sludge talking. Still, morale is a very real factor and hot meals and rest can do wonders for performance.

    It took a while, but after roughly an hour and a half of watching the sun set and listening to the sounds of fighting, Joseph called us in to dinner. As we took our seats on the various beds, Jeong remarked, ¡°You know, I think it was a good idea to call it a night. The fighting actually seems to be getting worse.¡±

    ¡°More importantly,¡± John said, ¡°it isn¡¯t getting closer. I think we¡¯re going to have a nice night.¡± I, being much more pessimistic, knocked on wood when John said that. John shot me an annoyed look. ¡°Really, Nate?¡± he asked.

    Ignoring him, I took a sip of the soup. ¡°Hey, Joseph,¡± I said, ¡°this stuff¡¯s actually pretty good. What is it?¡±

    ¡°Beef and onion soup, mon,¡± Joseph said. ¡°It gets even better if I add some pepper and onion salt. It isn¡¯t really a traditional dish, just something I made because I was messing around one day.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Sunny said, ¡°Seniors get kitchens in their rooms. Perk of surviving this school for four years.¡±

    ¡°So you guys graduated?¡± John asked. ¡°Any tips or tricks for us recent fresh meat?¡±

    The seniors laughed. ¡°Stay in school,¡± Jeong said. ¡°Every year, the classes get more and more fun. Of course, they also get harder.¡±

    ¡°So, it¡¯s like a videogame?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Exactly!¡± Jeong said.

    ¡°More than you know,¡± Kyle added. ¡°I heard from an engi¡­ er, someone from the engineering school, that they¡¯re going to make the kill house courses more realistic.¡±

    ¡°Oh yeah,¡± Sunny said, ¡°you¡¯re one of the first legacy students, aren¡¯t you?¡±

    Kyle nodded. ¡°Gramps taught at NIU,¡± he said, somewhat noncommittally. ¡°There are some benefits, as well as some downsides.¡±

    ¡°Like gene therapy?¡± Sunny asked excitedly. ¡°I mean, I¡¯m fine with my body, but I have to admit, that was a really cool process you¡­¡±

    ¡°Please,¡± Kyle said, ¡°can we talk about something else? I don¡¯t like talking about that part of my life.¡±

    Sunny blushed and nodded vigorously. ¡°I¡¯m so sorry,¡± she apologized. ¡°I wasn¡¯t thinking.¡±

    Now I was intrigued. Kyle obviously had some sort of secret. Both Sunny and May Riley knew it, and Sunny had just hinted that it had something to do with NIU¡¯s advanced medicine. If it was a disease, it would have to be a pretty embarrassing one, as Kyle didn¡¯t like talking about it. Then I remembered something.

    A little after we had come back from Christmas vacation, I had overheard a conversation between Kyle and Richard, another student NIU had recruited to feed the Grenzefrontier misleading information. In that conversation, Richard had deliberately called Kyle ¡°Karen.¡± Could Kyle be trans?

    I obviously couldn¡¯t ask him. That would be even more awkward than asking someone if they were gay. That¡¯s when I remembered how one of my friends back at college, an aspiring hit man named Cross Castellan, had been drunkenly feeling up John and another friend dragging his wasted ass to our dorm after Hell Semester ended. The next morning, he had been more than a little anxious to spend time with Doc, the Found Boys¡¯ sarcastic medic.

    Meanwhile, the conversation was sort of dying down. The talk became less and less substantial, until we were just talking about the weather. Finally, I asked, ¡°So, who¡¯s taking first watch? Because I¡¯d be up for it.¡±

    ¡°You took first watch last night,¡± Joseph said. ¡°Take some rest. Jeong and I got a full night¡¯s sleep last night. We¡¯ll take first watch and wake you and Kyle up for second. Does that sound fair?¡±

    Jeong nodded. ¡°I like that plan. Gives us a chance to catch up.¡±

    ¡°Thanks, man,¡± I said, realizing that this was his way of making up for today. ¡°Really appreciate it.¡± Now, I was starting to actually be thankful that Joseph had been gassed. If he hadn¡¯t been gassed, he wouldn¡¯t be thinking as hard on the consequences of his actions, and he¡¯d continue doing petty shit in a combat situation. Now, he was considering the consequences of his actions, trying to salvage the mission.

    Between that, the hot meal, and the realization that the Dragon¡¯s Teeth tech had to have some limits, I was feeling pretty good. Things were really starting to turn around.

 3.11: Set It Off

    My sleep was interrupted after what seemed like a short time by someone shaking me. I opened my eyes to see Joseph¡¯s worried face peering through the darkness. ¡°Is it my shift?¡± I asked blearily.

    ¡°No,¡± Joseph said, ¡°but we do have a problem.¡± That, and the fact that I suddenly realized I could hear voices chatting in Korean, got me moving. I grabbed my G-3 and helped Joseph wake up everyone.

    When we were all awake, we filed into a room overlooking the street we had come in on. ¡°So,¡± I whispered, ¡°What¡¯s going on? Why are we crouched down?¡±

    ¡°Below us,¡± Jeong said softly, ¡°are like a hundred North Korean soldiers.¡±

    John peeked out the window. ¡°Yep,¡± he said, ducking back down, ¡°that¡¯s a lot of Koreans.¡± He paused. ¡°At least they don¡¯t seem to be interested in this building.¡±

    ¡°Let¡¯s make sure,¡± Joseph said. ¡°Killer, you get the stairwell. I¡¯ll get the fire escape.¡±

    We moved to our positions. This, for me, led to a long stretch of time just watching an empty stairwell continue to be empty while the sounds of people moving around and talking in Korean could be heard from a disturbingly close distance.

    To make matters worse, it also seemed like the sounds of battle I had been hearing all night were getting closer as well, although I supposed that made sense. After all, there was obviously some sort of tactical advantage to moving troops this way. Maybe there was an exposed enemy flank nearby or something.

    However, this led to a situation that is strangely peculiar to modern combat: the sensation of being bored and terrified at the same time. I was waiting around for something, anything to happen, and when it did, it would probably be awful. That was my state of mind when someone tapped my shoulder.

    I wasn¡¯t exactly sure what happened after that, but the next thing I knew, I was forcing John onto the floor and shoving my M9 into his face. ¡°Jesus Christ, Nate!¡± he whispered, a look of panic in his eyes, ¡°Jumpy much?¡±

    ¡°Shit,¡± I said, getting up and holstering the pistol, ¡°I am so sorry, man. Did I break anything?¡±

    John shook his head. ¡°I got a bit of a bump and my heart¡¯s kind of palpitating, but apart from that, totally fine.¡± I offered my hand, John took it. ¡°Anyway, our friends outside are starting to trickle off. There seems to be some guys who are just setting something up, though.¡±

    Joseph, who had come out to see what the commotion was about at some point sighed. ¡°They¡¯re just making things so much more difficult, aren¡¯t they? Suppose that¡¯s their job, though.¡±

    ¡°I wonder¡­¡± I began, then cut myself off. ¡°No, they wouldn¡¯t? Would they?¡±

    ¡°What are you thinking, Killer?¡± Joseph asked.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°at some point in World War II, Stalin basically told his guys that they couldn¡¯t retreat. ¡®Not one step back.¡¯ From what I remember, he proved how literally he meant it in Stalingrad. He¡¯d send large groups of people down the street to soak up Nazi ammunition. Needless to say, the poor Soviet bastards would eventually retreat. However, when they got to friendly territory, their friends would machine-gun them.¡± I paused. ¡°It just¡­ seems like a kind of a desperate move. I¡¯m not sure how desperate they are.¡±

    ¡°Sounds more like a vanity order,¡± Joseph said. He paused. ¡°Like the kind of stunt I¡¯d do because I¡¯m an idiot.¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± I said, ¡°you got Jeong and Sunny out of Hell Semester from what they tell me. Just do what you did back then and you¡¯ll be fine.¡±

    He shook his head. ¡°You don¡¯t understand, mon, I basically told Kyle I¡¯d shoot him if he stepped outta line. You don¡¯t say something like that to one of Krieger¡¯s boys.¡±

    John shot me a look. Joseph caught it. ¡°He talked to you about that, didn¡¯t he? I¡¯m gonna have to apologize to him before he gets an opportunity to cut my throat.¡±

    ¡°Trust me,¡± I said, ¡°the plan is to shoot you if you become a liability. You realize that killing you in any other circumstance than self-defense would get us killed as well, right? Sunny and Jeong still like you as well, you know.¡±

    Joseph shrugged. ¡°Not sure I believe you, mon. Kyle¡¯s already been involved in the blackest of black ops. I¡¯ll get back to my position. You boys stay alert, you hear?¡±

    We nodded. After he got there, John said, ¡°Well, I¡¯ve got to get back to the others. See you soon, I guess.¡± He then got back up and headed back to the room where Jeong, Sunny and Kyle were observing the Korean position.

    Meanwhile, I was just waiting by the stairs for something to come up. In the meantime, since literally nothing was happening, I decided to come up with names for what I was feeling? Scareored? Boranxious? Maybe terleep, because I was terrified, bored and sleepy. Yeah, I was pretty off-task. At this point, the Koreans could have all walked by me and I¡¯d just sort of stare at them blankly.

    Eventually, I realized this. I also realized that being in this state made me completely unable to be on watch. I quickly and quietly moved to the room where Joseph was. He was crouched behind an overturned table, aiming his SCAR-H out the window.

    ¡°What do you need, Killer?¡± he asked, not looking up.

    ¡°I kind of am out of it,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m not dozing off, but I¡¯m not really in any shape to keep this up. Sorry.¡±

    Joseph looked at his watch. ¡°Don¡¯t be, mon,¡± he said. ¡°You slept for only about an hour and you¡¯ve been up for half the night. Swap with one of the others and tell them that we move as soon as the Koreans leave.¡±

    ¡°Sure thing,¡± I said. After that, it was like I had been given permission to shut down. I vaguely remember relaying this information to the others, most of them asleep. Then I kind of sank to the floor.

    I was woken up a little while later by the sounds of gunfire right outside the building. I reached for my rifle, but John tackled me and covered my mouth. He whispered something to me, but the sounds of battle were so loud, I couldn¡¯t make out a word he was saying.

    I guess I must have looked confused, because he began speaking really slowly, in the hopes I could read his lips. Eventually, I got what he was saying. I was right about the ¡°no retreat¡± order, and as a result, the Koreans were dealing with a mutiny.

    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

    I looked down at the street to see if this was true, also making sure to record it with my camera. Below us, the Koreans had set up a roadblock consisting of a double line of sandbags and two APCs. During my quick peek out, I saw that the rear row had at least three tripod-mounted machineguns. Every single gun down there was firing, reloading, or manned by a corpse.

    I noticed that there was also quite a bit of return fire as well. Luckily, the room we were in had a view up the street to where the incoming fire was. I tried to get a view out that window, but my line of sight was blocked by another building.

    I sighed and turned to sit back down. Then I was struck with an idea. I motioned the other people in the room to wait there, then I slipped off to where Joseph was keeping watch. On my way, I typed a message in my cPhone¡¯s notes app.

    When I got to the room, I tapped Joseph on the shoulder and showed him my message. It read, ¡°we can leave while they¡¯re distracted, let¡¯s go.¡±

    Immediately, Joseph shook his head. I was about to ask why, then gunfire erupted below. I cautiously peeked out the window. In the alley, I could see muzzle flashes below. Apparently, if we exited now, we¡¯d be caught in a pretty intense crossfire. I briefly wondered how that had gotten set up, then decided it didn¡¯t matter.

    Instead, I headed back to the room overlooking the cleanup crew¡¯s position and proceeded to wait some more. Thankfully, it wasn¡¯t that much longer when the shooting outside our hideout finally stopped.

    ¡°Do¡­ do you think it¡¯s over?¡± John asked.

    ¡°The bigger question,¡± I said, ¡°is would it be a good thing if it did. For all we know, they¡¯re going to start looking for a command post and start clearing this building.¡±

    ¡°Or,¡± John said, ¡°they could leave because they¡¯ve got what they came here for.¡±

    ¡°Guys,¡± Kyle said, ¡°shut up.¡± He was obviously trying to sleep, leaning against a wall in the fetal position, his pack still on and his guns still hanging off him. To top it off, his eyes were closed. ¡°We don¡¯t want them hearing us, do we?¡±

    ¡°I say we should think about leaving,¡± Sunny said. ¡°Even in the best case scenario, staying here is an awful idea.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll make a note of that,¡± Joseph said, suddenly appearing in the door.

    ¡°Stopping here was a good idea,¡± Sunny said. ¡°We just didn¡¯t know this would happen.¡±

    Joseph nodded. ¡°Still,¡± he said, ¡°I¡¯m not sure we can leave. The Koreans have set up a small perimeter around the rear. They seem to be investigating something.¡±

    ¡°All that means,¡± Jeong said, also coming in, ¡°is that if we really want to leave, we¡¯re going to need a distraction. If we toss a couple frag grenades out the windows, hopefully, they¡¯ll be too busy shooting at shadows to try and cut off our escape.¡±

    ¡°And what happens if we cause more to run around to the back?¡± Joseph asked. ¡°It isn¡¯t like they have very many places to go, or we have very many escape paths.¡± He sighed. ¡°Why don¡¯t these communist jackasses have better fire safety regulations?¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± John asked suddenly, ¡°do you hear that?¡±

    We all paused, trying to hear what John was talking about. Finally, Jeong asked, ¡°Hear what?¡±

    ¡°It sounds like a vehicle is moving!¡± John said excitedly. ¡°They may be packing up!¡± He was right. From in the distance I could hear the sound of a vehicle approach. However, it sounded too far away to be our friends outside.

    Sunny peeked out the window. ¡°That¡¯s a negative,¡± she said. ¡°None of the vehicles below seem to be moving. If anything, they¡¯re digging in deeper.¡±

    Then the sounds stopped. ¡°You know,¡± I said, ¡°I think it was coming from the same direction as the retreating Koreans.¡±

    We waited in silence. So did the people outside. For a while, all we could hear was the distant sounds of battle. ¡°I think they¡¯re waiting for something,¡± Joseph said. ¡°Or maybe they¡¯re¡­¡±

    Suddenly, there was the sound of something roaring, hissing, and fizzing. From the street below, there was a blueish white flash that lit up the dark of the night unlike anything I had ever seen before. This was accompanied by a series of smaller flashes and screaming. In the meantime, the sounds of small arms fire erupted.

    ¡°That sounds like the Deets,¡± John said.

    ¡°We¡¯re leaving,¡± Joseph said, ¡°and on the way out, you can tell me exactly what the fucking hell Deets are.¡±

    ¡°Dragon¡¯s Teeth,¡± everyone else said at once. I added, ¡°John made it up.¡±

    ¡°Still,¡± Joseph said, ¡°We¡¯re out of here.¡± We followed him to the fire escape. After Joseph looked down, he said, ¡°Killer, you¡¯re on point. The angle¡¯s too steep, so no overwatch. Go. Go, go, go.¡±

    We ran down the stairs, no longer caring about sound, as any enemies would be too busy shooting at each other. All the time we were heading down, I kept expecting the enemy to show up and start shooting us to pieces. Finally, we were all down the fire escape. Joseph then pointed us further down the alleyway, then we were off.

    We only got a few blocks before we had to stop. We had come to a small L-shaped bend that funneled back out onto the street. Behind us was a T-shaped intersection, with Jeong covering the way we hadn¡¯t used. On the street in front of us was a group of Deet soldiers I had nearly blundered into. Needless to say, we didn¡¯t want to go back out that way.

    ¡°What do you think?¡± I whispered behind me, only slightly pulling back from the corner. ¡°Should we double back?¡±

    ¡°NOPE!¡± Jeong yelled, opening fire. ¡°HOSTILES AT 3:00!¡±

    Before I could turn around, there was a flash of light so bright and a wave of heat so intense I felt my skin on my neck burn. Behind me, John and Jeong began screaming. I guess we¡¯d be finding out what made those flashes.

 3.12: Outshined

    I attempted to turn around, but when I turned ninety degrees, I had to turn back to forward facing due to how bright the light behind me was. Meanwhile, two of my teammates were screaming in pain and terror.

    Jeong¡¯s screams were mostly just pure animal cries. John, meanwhile, was screaming things I could understand perfectly. ¡°MY EYES!¡± he screamed, ¡°MY EYES! OH GOD, I¡¯M FUCKING BLIND!¡±

    Meanwhile, I realized that the Deets in front of us were going to use this opportunity to charge. I pulled out a grenade, not bothering to check what type it was, and tossed it around the corner. There was a thump and I heard several people yell.

    Before I could turn the corner, a Deet soldier in that disturbingly dark black staggered around the corner. He looked like some sort of specter. I shot him in the neck, and he continued to fall, a dark liquid that was probably his blood spraying the wall.

    Building on my momentum, I turned the corner. Dark shapes that may have been Deet soldiers and/or were scattered across the ground.  One short, vaguely humanoid shape was still standing upright, though just barely, and appeared to be clutching its neck. I instinctively triple-tapped it.

    The shape fell, but before it did, it was able to pull out a pistol and double-tap me in the chest. Strangely enough, the pistol it used was so quiet, I only realized it had fired from the smoke it emitted and the impacts from the bullet. Otherwise, I would have thought his gun had jammed.

    As this was happening, a gun poked up from behind a dumpster and sprayed blindly. It was surprisingly accurate for blind fire, as I got hit three more times. This one was also extremely quiet. Luckily, whatever ammo these guys were using was as wimpy as it was quiet. Of the five rounds, only one penetrated my armor, and that was stopped by a rib. It hurt like hell, but I was alive.

    Laying down suppressive fire with one hand, I pulled out a frag grenade with the other. I then primed it and rolled it down the alley. It rolled right to where the remaining Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldier was hiding and exploded.

    Satisfied, I limped back around the corner, pausing only to collect a pistol that the first Deet soldier had dropped and shove it into my boot. Finally, the blueish white light had cleared up. What I saw wasn¡¯t very encouraging.

    Something had come from the area of the T-junction we hadn¡¯t been down. Something extremely hot. It had sailed down from the enemy position, and hit the building forming the wall, causing the cheap concrete to melt like candle wax. Then, like a bouncy ball of death, it had fallen to the asphalt beneath, creating another steaming crater. It then continued to bounce back towards the enemy position, which I assumed is what had saved us from being overrun.

    Another odd thing I noticed was that there were a bunch of spikes embedded in the wall, as well as Deet bullets. Was someone firing a nail gun or something?

    Meanwhile, Joseph had salvaged Jeong¡¯s PKM and was firing it down the alley the death ball had come from, and was getting quite a few bullets in return. Sunny was a little bit further from that alley crouched over something charred, and Kyle was applying a cold compress to John¡¯s eyes. Thankfully, John had stopped screaming.

    ¡°This thing¡¯s almost out of ammo!¡± Joseph shouted. ¡°How¡¯s Jeong?¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s¡­ he¡¯s fine,¡± Sunny said, her voice husky. ¡°He just needs to¡­ needs to¡­¡± As she looked up, I noticed one side of her face was slightly red like she had been burned.

    I hurried over to where Sunny was. It took me a second to realize it, but the charred thing she was crouched over was human. Nothing remained of its face, except some charred muscle. Then it spoke, and I realized it was Jeong. ¡°Sunny¡­¡± he wheezed, then he continued on in Korean. In response, Sunny burst into tears.

    When she was done sobbing, she said, ¡°He says he can hold them off while we run.¡±

    ¡°Great,¡± Joseph said, turning back for a moment from firing, ¡°but where the hell are we going to run to?¡±

    Suddenly, halfway between the L-bend and the T-junction, a manhole cover popped off. From inside, a young girl, about eight years old, with short hair popped her head out. ¡°Quick,¡± she said, ¡°follow me.¡± She then disappeared into the tunnel.

    ¡°Should we¡­¡± Kyle asked hesitantly.

    ¡°Don¡¯t see much of a choice,¡± Joseph said, fiddling with a brick of something. ¡°Killer, you go first.¡± He then chucked something down the alley.

    Before Kyle could protest, I ran to the manhole, tucking my G-3 under my arm as I went. I then decided that the best thing to do would be to slide down the ladder. I wasn¡¯t sure how long we¡¯d have. On my way down, I was introduced to a fragrance that, if my nose served me right, was an odious mixture of shit, pee and toxic waste.

    As soon as I got down, there was a massive explosion from the surface. I drew my G-3 and scanned the area. It was just me, the little girl, and the sewer. I noticed that the sewer followed the same route as the alley above. I also was now able to get a clear look at the girl¡¯s clothing. She was wearing a white shirt and overalls. I also noted that one of her shoes was missing and that her clothes were slightly burned and frayed.

    ¡°Clear!¡± I called up to the rest of my team.

    ¡°Tell your team to hurry up, Yankee,¡± the girl said. ¡°If they fight, they die.¡± She looked worried, mostly because she was probably right. I didn¡¯t blame her. However, I couldn¡¯t let her go running off.

    ¡°We need to pull off an orderly retreat,¡± I said. ¡°If we just run, they¡¯ll catch us.¡± The girl nodded like she wasn¡¯t entirely convinced.

    The next person down was John, ZMR slung over his back with a sling. The wet cloth was still tied around his eyes, but he was still moving pretty fast without me needing to worry. When he finally got down he breathed a sigh of relief. ¡°That,¡± he said, ¡°was fucking scary.¡±

    I dragged him over to the girl. ¡°Grab his hand,¡± I said to the girl. When she did, I said, ¡°When I give the word, you¡¯re going to drag him along after you. If the rest of us don¡¯t make it, he can help you. But you need to take care of him. You got it?¡± She nodded, a serious expression on her face.

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    Meanwhile, Sunny had already gotten down the ladder and Kyle was just about done as well. I turned around to face them. ¡°Where¡¯s Joseph?¡± I asked.

    Suddenly a pair of legs swung down the hole in the ceiling. ¡°Coming!¡± Joseph said. He climbed down a few steps, then slapped some sort of brick to the ceiling. ¡°Get going!¡± he said, fiddling with some controls on the brick. ¡°I¡¯ll be with you in a bit!¡±

    That was all the encouragement our small guide needed. Pulling John¡¯s arm, she began heading down towards the T-junction. Then, to my discomfort, she took the turn leading under the enemy¡¯s position. ¡°Ow, ow, ow,¡± John said as she pulled.

    ¡°Quiet!¡± the girl hissed. ¡°Sound goes very far!¡±

    She then began to run at a flat-out pace. It wasn¡¯t very fast for us, with our long legs and military training, but it was beginning to tire her out. Eventually, she turned another corner, but she slipped and fell. When she landed, I heard her scream out in pain. I somehow had ended up behind John, Sunny, and Kyle, so I couldn¡¯t see what was going on.

    I suddenly realized that Joseph still hadn¡¯t caught up. I turned around and saw him running along behind us, his weapons holstered and Jeong¡¯s PKM nowhere in sight. The reason all his weapons were away was because he was fumbling with an odd device.

    Suddenly, behind him, a large, shadowy figure with glowing red eyes turned the corner. In that moment, several things happened rapidly. The first of which was me shouting a warning of some kind. In response Joseph, looked over his shoulder¡­ and laughed.

    This was quickly cut off by a spike suddenly appearing in his side with a metallic clanking sound. As Joseph stumbled and fell to his knees, there was a click of a gun without ammo attempting to fire. As I let off a few rounds, I heard Joseph say something that sounded an awful lot like, ¡°Suck on this, asshole.¡±

    Then, there was a roar, and the street above fell onto the giant Deet soldier. Meanwhile, the force of what seemed to be three explosions sent me stumbling. Farther up, I could hear someone fall into the river of sewage. I turned and looked. It was John.

    ¡°Fucking really?¡± he asked as we all struggled to get our balance. ¡°It wasn¡¯t enough that I get blinded, now I get to swim in the sewer water? Oh God, I think that was a turd. A turd just¡­ wait¡­ never mind, it¡¯s climbing up my leg. It¡¯s a rat.¡±

    ¡°How is a rat better?¡± asked the girl in a somewhat skeptical tone of voice. I noticed her voice was still a little shaky.

    ¡°I actually kind of like rats,¡± John said. ¡°They¡¯re actually kind of cute. Even pretty affectionate, too.¡± The silence from our guide conveyed her disgust and contempt far better than any words could.

    Meanwhile, Sunny and I walked over to Joseph. ¡°Hey,¡± he said, trying to stand up, ¡°How are you guys doing?¡±

    As I got closer, I noticed that the spike was actually quite hot. It seemingly had cauterized the wound. I could tell because smoke was leaking out from around the spikes. What actually was worrying me were his hands. Both of them were severely burned, which explained why he had so much trouble fiddling with the device. That device was lying on the floor in front of him. As I had guessed, it was a remote detonator. It was a fairly simple design, with a knob to arm and disarm it and a second button with a cap to set the explosives off, but even that would be hard to work with second and third degree burns all across your hands.

    Joseph caught me looking at his hands. ¡°Yes,¡± he said, ¡°they¡¯re as painful as they look. I picked up Jeong¡¯s PK without thinking. I¡¯m surprised it was still intact.¡±

    I suddenly remembered how Jeong had been burned to a crisp by whatever had emitted that blue light. ¡°He¡¯s dead, isn¡¯t he?¡± I asked. ¡°Even if we get back up there¡­¡±

    ¡°Please¡­¡± Sunny said, obviously at the end of her rope, ¡°Shut up and let me work on Joseph.¡± She paused, then added bitterly, ¡°At least I might be able to save him.¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said, ¡°I¡­¡± I paused. I had no clue what to say. Jeong had been with Sunny since Hell Semester, maybe even from before that. Then, in the blink of an eye, he had been fried to a crisp. I couldn¡¯t even imagine trying to save someone that burned while they screamed their head off, let alone someone who I had survived Hell Semester, finals and God knows what else with.

    Suddenly, I heard some rubble shifting. I looked to where the sewer had collapsed and saw that the giant Deet soldier was still alive and struggling to get up. ¡°¡­I¡¯ll go over there and take care of him,¡± I finished lamely.

    For about half a second, I felt much better. I had a job with a clear goal and simple steps. Then I realized that I was happy about shooting an injured human being and instantly felt sick to my stomach.

    Somehow managing to not vomit, I stopped just out of reach of the giant¡¯s massive arms. His arms had been pinned underneath when the ceiling had fell on him, but with the way he was struggling, I didn¡¯t want to take any chances. After calmly lining his head up with my G-3¡¯s crosshairs, I pulled the trigger. Simple, clean, effective.

    Or it would have been. The giant paused, then he looked up, the glowing red eyes locking onto mine. Disturbed that a 7.62mm NATO round hadn¡¯t even caused him to lose consciousness, I fired two more rounds into his face. Both hit.

    After the report of my G-3 subsided, the¡­ thing cocked his head, and in an eerily familiar voice said, ¡°You¡¯ll have to do better than that, you know.¡±

 3.13: We Ran Away

    ¡°Well?¡± the giant asked, still buried under rubble, ¡°What are you going to do?¡±

    What I did was I flipped the G-3 to automatic and fired until it clicked. At that point, due to my previous engagement, that had only been a three or four round burst. This time, my opponent slumped over, but I didn¡¯t trust him to be dead. After all, the helmet looked disturbingly intact. He could be playing dead, waiting until we had gone on our merry way before he unearthed himself and resumed implacably lumbering after us.

    So I reloaded and fired again. As I did so, parts of the helmet got smashed in or began to hang off. Eventually, I could see blood and darker bits inside. When the G-3 clicked again, I pulled out my SIG and unloaded that into the Deet soldier as well.

    I surveyed the Deet soldier for a moment, debating whether to use explosives just to make sure. Then I realized that three quarters of his head was just gone. I reloaded my SIG and my G-3, and without a word moved back to the rest of the team.

    ¡°So,¡± I said, somehow managing to sound calm, ¡°what do we need to do to get moving?¡±

    Almost everyone stared at me for a moment. Then Sunny ripped out the spike embedded in Joseph¡¯s side. In response, Joseph yelled in pain. ¡°Quit it,¡± Sunny hissed as she applied a bandage. ¡°We aren¡¯t out of this yet!¡±

    ¡°Sunny¡­¡± Joseph gasped, ¡°I¡¯m¡­I don¡¯t think I¡¯ll be capable of command for a while.¡± He moaned in pain, then continued. ¡°Are you¡­ are you capable of taking over?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯m going to be too busy making sure you don¡¯t die, you big idiot. What the hell were you thinking, setting up C4 right over our heads?¡±

    ¡°Same thing I was thinking when I brought down the meat mountain,¡± he said, smiling a bit. ¡°It worked back then, too.¡± He turned to Kyle. ¡°What about you, mon?¡± he asked. ¡°You actually have¡­¡±

    ¡°No!¡± Kyle said, literally recoiling at the suggestion. He collected himself, then said, ¡°Seriously, you heard what happened last time I was leader, right?¡±

    ¡°I didn¡¯t¡­¡± the little girl who had led us down here said. She was still just around the corner, so I couldn¡¯t see her. However, I could tell by the tone of her voice that she was both intrigued and worried about this.

    ¡°I know exactly what happened,¡± Joseph said, ¡°and you did much better than you think. That¡¯s why I was such a bastard.¡± He turned to me. ¡°Well, how about you, Killer? You up for this?¡±

    If I was being honest, I¡¯d have admitted that I was terrified. We were in hostile territory, pursued by terminator-like clone soldiers and desperately flailing Korean soldiers, with one man down, another injured, no support, intel or heavy weapons, and only an eight year old girl to guide us. Needless to say, things were dicey.

    Instead, I said, ¡°Well, no one is ever ready for this kind of mess, but I¡¯ll do my best. Just¡­ tell me if I¡¯m fucking up, ok?¡±

    ¡°Hey!¡± Sunny said, ¡°Watch the language around the eight year old, ok?¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said as I observed the situation. John was still completely blind, but he was now feeding some beef jerky he had taken with him to a rat, our guide was, as far as I knew, completely immobile, Joseph¡¯s hands were burned and the spike might make moving him difficult, and Jeong was, at best, in enemy hands and on his way to getting treatment. Of the three of us who were still with the squad and mobile, Sunny seemed on the verge of an emotional breakdown, and rightly so. Kyle, meanwhile, was either completely fine or a hairs-breadth from suicide. Judging by my heart-to-heart talk with him after the Grenzefrontier attack, it was much closer to the latter.

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°first question, how are we going to move Joseph?¡±

    Sunny lifted him up so that he was leaning on her shoulder. I noticed that doing so meant she couldn¡¯t use any of her weapons and that it took a lot of effort on both their parts. If we were attacked, that was another person who would be completely useless. If we stopped, the likelihood of her picking Joseph back up also was going to be about nil. I was going to voice my concerns but Sunny gave me a dangerous look and said, ¡°I got this.¡±

    I then turned my attention to Kyle, John, and our guide. John was still feeding the rat that was perched on top of his shoulder. When I was able to turn the corner, I saw that our guide was looking at John with a look of disgust, cradling her ankle. ¡°Did he hit his head?¡± she asked.

    Kyle shrugged. ¡°Nope,¡± he said, ¡°John apparently just likes feeding strange animals he found floating in the sewer.¡±

    ¡°Either way,¡± I said, ¡°Can you walk, Miss¡­?¡±

    ¡°My name is Nari,¡± she said. ¡°And I¡¯ll try, sir.¡± She stood up, wincing as she did so. I could imagine how she felt. I had been on the wrong side of a rifle grenade during the Hell Semester finals, plus there were times when I had twisted it running.

    ¡°Let me know if you can¡¯t make it, Nari,¡± I said.

    She shook her head. ¡°It isn¡¯t far,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯ll lead.¡±

    I considered this for a moment. ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ll lead and you give me directions. If the person in the lead turns the corner and comes face to face with hostiles, I want someone armed to do it.¡± I turned to Kyle. ¡°Kyle, you can lead John around. Also, let me know if Sunny and Joseph are falling behind.¡±

    When we were all assembled, we began making our way through the winding, smelly corridors. Apart from a few gasps and moans of pain, we were completely silent, our ears straining to hear the next horrible thing coming to kill us.

    Finally, we got to where Nari was leading us. It was a small office/common room in the sewer that Nari had to unlock with a key. We were ushered through a small hallway into this odd space. I looked around to see an early-2000s era computer and 1980¡¯s TV on a small desk, directly in front of a bulletin board directly in front of me. To the left were a series of lockers with a mattress lying against them. To the right were a fridge, microwave, and a couch. Behind me was the hallway leading out, as well as two doors. On the center of the floor was another mattress, with blankets, a pillow, several stuffed animals, and a backpack lying on and near it.

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    When we were all in, Nari closed the door, locked and dead bolted it, moved a mattress up against it. ¡°That¡¯s clever,¡± I said. ¡°Using a mattress to muffle the sound.¡±

    ¡°Thank you,¡± she said, coming back into the main room. ¡°There are more mattresses in the closet¡­¡± She then fixed John with a penetrating glare. ¡°¡­and there is also a shower.¡±

    ¡°Reading you loud and clear,¡± John said. ¡°Can you just show me where the shower is?¡±

    As Nari showed John where the shower was, I opened the other door. Inside were two other mattresses, sheets, and various supplies. ¡°Hey, Sunny,¡± I said, ¡°are you going to need to do any operating on Joseph?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Sunny said. ¡°Do they have any trash bags?¡±

    While I was searching for the bags, I heard John say, ¡°Cool! I can kind of see again!¡± Nari left what I assumed was the bathroom, shaking her head.

    Meanwhile, I found some. ¡°Yeah, they do,¡± I said. ¡°It looks like someone was hoarding American brands. I wonder why?¡±

    ¡°Because the local brands are failures,¡± Sunny and Nari said in unison. Sunny added, ¡°I am surprised that they didn¡¯t go for the Chinese brands. They¡¯re basically the same, but cheaper on the black market.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± Nari said, as she helped me move a bed onto the floor, ¡°Are you a North Korean?¡± Her face brightened a bit and she then asked Sunny something in Korean.

    She and Sunny then had an animated conversation in Korean while they helped Kyle and I set up the bed. Joseph, meanwhile, just sat on the couch, trying to figure out what Sunny and Nari were saying while desperately avoiding touching anything with his hands. Our packs had been left on the floor haphazardly, so he was using mine as a foot rest. As I gave him another look, I half-wondered if he really was paying attention or if he was dazed from pain and lack of sleep. Meanwhile, John had just finished showering and appeared to be using an electric hand drier on something.

    ¡°Ok,¡± Sunny said, ¡°that should about do it for the covering. Why don¡¯t you guys bring my pack and my patient over here? Then you can¡­ I don¡¯t know, teach Nari how to operate weapons or something?¡±

    ¡°Sure you don¡¯t need any help working on Joseph?¡± I asked. I was extremely concerned. One more death, and this whole mission could fall apart. Besides, the way things were going, Joseph was the only thing standing between me and being leader. I was perfectly happy with being under New Joseph and not having to worry about our next move.

    ¡°I¡¯ll be fine,¡± Sunny said, smiling reassuringly. ¡°It¡¯s a fairly simple procedure and that spike didn¡¯t hit anything vital. Just need some surgical glue, a lighter, a knife, and some morphine and Joseph will be back at a hundred percent within twelve hours.¡±

    John, who had just stumbled out of the shower, said, ¡°Good to know,¡± he said. ¡°If this is the kind of resistance we¡¯re going to meet every day, getting across the country to the extraction point is going to be a nightmare.¡±

    ¡°I am sorry,¡± Nari said, ¡°but I have only been studying English for two years. What is an extraction point?¡± I was impressed. When I had been doing my second year of Spanish, I couldn¡¯t carry on a conversation with a five-year-old. This girl was extremely young, but she sounded like a miniature adult.

    ¡°It¡¯s military speak,¡± I said, moving to where the packs were. ¡°To extract something means to remove it. An extraction point is where someone or something gets removed from hostile territory. In this case, it would be us.¡±

    ¡°You shouldn¡¯t go through the city,¡± Nari said, a haunted look in her eyes. ¡°It¡¯s too dangerous.¡±

    ¡°Why¡¯s that?¡± Sunny asked as she watched the morphine take ahold of Joseph. ¡°These sewers seem pretty safe.¡±

    Nari ignored the question. ¡°Hey,¡± she said, watching John trying to open up his ZMR, ¡°what are you trying to do?¡±

    ¡°I gotta clean my gun,¡± he said. ¡°I mean, it did take a swim in shit creek with me. My pack is waterproof, so it should be fine, but this is an M-4 clone, so it can be a little temperamental. The only trouble is that everything looks like a gigantic blur at the moment.¡±

    ¡°Can I help you?¡± Nari asked John.

    ¡°Sure!¡± John said. ¡°Just promise not to point it at anyone and keep your hand off the trigger.¡± He then began to launch into a lesson about how to field-strip and clean an AR-15 type rifle. Kyle and I watched them for a bit while we cleaned our own weapons. For me, it was a very relaxing sight. Everyone was doing their part and getting along quite nicely.

    Then I looked over at Kyle. There was a frown on his face, and he was regarding Nari suspiciously. Ignoring it, I went back to work refilling my G-3¡¯s empty magazines. When I was done with that, I looked at Kyle again. He still had that same look of suspicion on his face.

    When I was refilling my SIG¡¯s mags, Kyle finally spoke up. ¡°So, Nari,¡± he said, ¡°I¡¯m sure you know what¡¯s going on in this city, right?¡±

    ¡°Mostly what I hear on my radio,¡± she said happily, not noticing the frown on Kyle¡¯s face. She was too busy cleaning out the barrel on John¡¯s Bren 10.

    ¡°Can I see your radio?¡± Kyle asked.

    ¡°Sure!¡± Nari said. ¡°It¡¯s right by the computer on the desk.¡± She then went back to her job.

    Kyle meanwhile walked over to the desk. I noticed that he quite deliberately had not disassembled his Browning and was keeping it in his holster. Suddenly, in front of the bulletin board, he stopped. ¡°Hey, Killer,¡± he called out to me, ¡°come over here, I want you to see something.¡±

    I got up as bidden and walked over to where Kyle was. On the bulletin board were dozens of sheets of paper, some with technical drawings, others with grainy surveillance pictures. Most of them had paragraphs of Korean text. However, even at a quick glance, I was able to notice a theme. They were all on the Dragon¡¯s Teeth.

    ¡°You know,¡± Kyle whispered to me, ¡°this place doesn¡¯t feel right to me. This is a room in Korea with a freaking microwave oven and what looks to be intelligence reports on Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldiers. What the fuck is a little girl doing in here?¡±

 3.14 Story of Our Guide

    We stared at the bulletin board for a while. I don¡¯t know what Kyle was thinking, but I was trying to find some similarities to the reports I had snuck a look at last semester. Finally, I found one. One of the papers had four pictures arranged in a square in the top right corner. Three of the pictures had what looked to be quintuplets arranged on morgue slabs. The fourth image was just security footage of a group of giant Deet soldiers leaving a Charon APC.

    However, it was the image at the top left that struck me. The three men there were short men, judging by how little of the tray they took up, with red hair and green eyes. I had seen these faces before. Skimming through the autopsy notes I had obtained from Secure Medical Records, I had seen many pictures of these men. However, the specimens May had been given usually hadn¡¯t been so pristine.

    I saw another paper with more pictures of these red-haired men. However, these ones weren¡¯t in pristine condition. They seemed to mostly be scarred. However, I quickly noticed that these scars seemed to be in patterns, and the photos seemed to focus on these marks. Annoyingly, the lighting on these pictures were quite shoddy, and I couldn¡¯t make out what the patterns were. I also noticed that there were several other pages behind it, indicating these images were part of a much longer report.

    The next page was of a similar layout, however, instead of red-haired, green-eyed people, they were of  more Asian descent. They also were similarly scarred, but the photos showed the patterns this time. It was a curious mix of Gaelic and Japanese symbols. I¡¯d have to ask John about the Japanese ones when he could see. The Gaelic, however, was anyone¡¯s guess. Also, each was marked on the back of the neck with what looked like a barcode.

    ¡°Mister¡­¡± Nari said cautiously, ¡°My radio is farther over.¡±

    I ignored her and continued flipping through the report. The next page was just text, and the page after that had images similar to the first two pages, though of men of seemingly Mediterranean descent. I supposed since they were clones they had never seen a Mediterranean country, but they could easily pass for Italian, Greek, or Arabic. The scars were similar, but I could see that there were also Roman numerals and phrases in Latin.

    Then I got to the next page. ¡°Oh my God¡­¡± I whispered. That page consisted only of tattooed Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldiers. Some now had a cartoonish skull pattern permanently tattooed on their face. Others had what appeared to be long, complex poems or credos written on their arms in Latin, Japanese, or Gaelic, topped with Roman numerals and the title. Others had ornate scenes down their back in a strange mix of Mexican Day of the Dead art, Yakuza tattoos and Classical depictions of gods. In some ways, it was terrifying. In others, it was quite beautiful.

    Kyle, misinterpreting my amazement said, ¡°I know. How the hell does a seven-year-old get her hands on something like this?¡±

    Nari shot to her feet. She then began to pull us away from the bulletin board, and yelling in Korean. Eventually, she realized a) we couldn¡¯t understand Korean and b) we were too strong and heavy for her to move. So she switched to English. ¡°No! Bad Americans! You aren¡¯t supposed to see that!¡± After pulling on our arms a bit, she added, ¡°Besides, I¡¯m nine!¡±

    ¡°Well, that just changes everything,¡± John said, rolling his eyes.

    Meanwhile, I had just realized what we probably looked like to Nari. In our group were three white people, one black person and two Asians, all of whom spoke English. Only Joseph had weapons that would normally be issued to us, but I doubted Nari would know that. Still, I wondered why she would bring us back here.

    Deciding not to correct her misconceptions, I decided instead to ask, ¡°Nari, why do you think we¡¯re here?¡±

    Nari paused. ¡°Aren¡¯t¡­ aren¡¯t you trying to take over North Korea?¡±

    I shrugged. ¡°I honestly doubt the US government cares about North Korea. Abroad, we have ISIS threatening to cut off our oil and kill our citizens and the Grenzefrontier invading our allies. Back home¡­ well, let¡¯s just say there¡¯s enough drama there. Apart from your leader¡¯s occasional rants and your attempts at rocketry, we kind of forget you guys exist. Sorry.¡±

    ¡°But did you¡­¡± Nari began.

    ¡°Ah, ah, ah,¡± Kyle said warningly. ¡°We already told you a lot. Ki¡­ Nate¡¯s right. Our only two interests right now are understanding The Dragon¡¯s Teeth and surviving.¡± He then crouched down, so he was eye to eye with Nari. ¡°Right now, though, you seem to be the key to both interests. For example¡­ how did you get into this room?¡±

    ¡°Mister,¡± Nari said, her eyes wide and her body shaking, ¡°I need to pee¡­¡± For some reason, I doubted that. I don¡¯t know why at first, but John gave me a reason pretty much instantly.

    ¡°You know,¡± he said, pulling a Makarov from his boot, ¡°It¡¯s amazing what gets lost under a sink sometimes.¡±

    ¡°Now,¡± Kyle said, ¡°I want to know what this room is for. I want to know why you¡¯re in possession of secret documents. I want to know why you were following us. And I want the truth.¡±

    ¡°And don¡¯t tell us that this is a break room,¡± Sunny said, not even looking up from her work. ¡°It has a refrigerator. Plumbers don¡¯t get refrigerators in this country.¡±

    There was a long pause. Eventually, I asked, ¡°Nari, you¡¯re a loyal citizen of North Korea, right? So why aren¡¯t you behind the lines with the other civilians?¡±

    ¡°We were sent here by our teachers,¡± Nari said. ¡°No one knew that the Dragon¡¯s Teeth would attack here. We thought they were just terrorists from abroad and wreckers from the general population. Then an army shows up and¡­¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± I said, ¡°you were sent here by teachers? What kind of school do¡­ did you go to?¡±

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    ¡°It was a special school,¡± Nari said. ¡°I got in because I made various electronics when I was five. A clock here, a radio there¡­ when I made a TV, our glorious leader, praise be to him, took notice. His agents took me to the school and began training me. He is angry that so many bright people from our glorious country are taken in by the corrupt west. Our headmaster would rail in particular about places like Harvard, Oxford, and Nowhere Island.¡±

    At that last part, Sunny laughed. Nari looked at her curiously. ¡°Did you go to Harvard?¡± she asked.

    ¡°She can answer that later,¡± I said. ¡°Right now, I want to know how you got here and what happened to the other students.¡±

    Nari looked away. ¡°Does it really matter?¡± she asked. ¡°They¡¯re either dead or captured.¡± When she saw that we still weren¡¯t convinced, she shouted, ¡°We tried to get back to friendly territory and the guards opened fire on us! Is that what you want?¡±

    I know that hit a chord with me, and probably with everyone else. Everyone on the team had lost someone to violence. We either knew what she was going through, or would because of what happened to Jeong.

    ¡°We were only supposed to be in this emergency shelter for a week,¡± Nari said, tears streaming down her eyes. ¡°When Professor Pak went back to see what happened, to clear up the misunderstanding, he said if he didn¡¯t come back by nightfall¡­¡± She broke down sobbing. ¡°He said to assume I had been branded an enemy of the people! I¡¯ve been trapped in here for days and you are the first people I¡¯ve seen who haven¡¯t tried to kill me!¡±

    After letting her cry for a few moments, Kyle asked, ¡°So, what¡¯s with the documents? Why do you have them?¡±

    ¡°They were school projects,¡± Nari said. She was still tearful, but this line of questioning was perking her up. ¡°We had to analyze various reports on the Dragon¡¯s Teeth and make a report about them. I got to talk about the Charon!¡±

    ¡°We commandeered one of them,¡± I said. ¡°They¡¯re¡­ pretty interesting.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± John said, ¡°the turret was controlled from the co-pilot seat and it seemed like they could change colors. They were weird.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± Nari said, ¡°you were in one of them? What was the top speed? How long did it take to go from zero to a hundred kilometers? Did you test the armor? Did you use the weapons?¡± In one quick moment, Nari suddenly reminded me of May Riley, a close friend of mine. They both became extremely animated when talking about their area of expertise. However, it was apparent that Nari¡¯s skill set was more in engineering, as opposed to May¡¯s love of medicine. Nari also seemed to be better socialized than May was.

    ¡°I didn¡¯t really open it up,¡± John said, ¡°but it had pretty good acceleration. I go to these car shows near where I live. Got my hand on a late Sixties¡¯ Camaro once and I¡¯d say the acceleration was pretty similar. Apart from the speed, though, it handled a lot like you¡¯d expect a tank to.¡±

    ¡°John,¡± Kyle said, ¡°you never took the armored vehicle certification test. I was riding in the back, and it felt like something you could do a friggin¡¯ handbrake turn in, not a tank.¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± John said, ¡°you never drove one.¡±

    ¡°The truth is,¡± Nari said excitedly, ¡°even though I don¡¯t know what a handbrake turn is, nor am I familiar with whatever sort of Western decadence a Camaro is, I do know that these Charon vehicles are constantly underestimated. Their armor is extremely weak for that class of vehicle, but their cannons and rockets massacred all but our heaviest vehicles. There is even an anti-air variant that has been responsible for downing a quarter of our air force.¡±

    ¡°Sorry to change the subject,¡± I asked, ¡°but what was that giant thing that shot Joseph?¡±

    The room immediately fell silent. ¡°That was a Berserker,¡± Nari said. ¡°For the first few months, the Dragon¡¯s Teeth simply acted as terrorists and wreckers. We thought we could defeat them eventually. When they attempted to take the port of Kimchaek, we thought it was a move of desperation. Despite suddenly being introduced to the Charon, the Legionary, and some of their other anti-tank and anti-air weapons, we were pushing them back. We had identified most of their tactics, and were slowly crushing them under the weight of our numbers. Then they unleashed the Berserker.¡±

    ¡°And what does the Berserker do?¡± Sunny asked.

    ¡°We don¡¯t know,¡± Nari said. She walked over to the bulletin board. ¡°They are so deadly that that is the only picture of them that I have ever seen.¡±

    ¡°Is that all you know about them?¡± I asked.

    She shrugged. ¡°One of the boys was researching the tactics of Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldiers. I haven¡¯t had time to read his report yet and he wasn¡¯t able to present it to the class because¡­¡± She trailed off, tears returning to her eyes. At that point, I didn¡¯t really want to know what happened to this boy or the rest of Nari¡¯s class.

    ¡°Wait,¡± I asked, suddenly finding a way to turn the conversation to something other than dead kids, ¡°where exactly is this school located?¡±

    ¡°Close by,¡± Nari said, looking a little suspicious. ¡°Why?¡±

    Everyone else had looks ranging from dread to disappointment. ¡°Nate,¡± John said with exasperation, ¡°If you¡¯re planning on doing what I think you¡¯re doing¡­¡± He paused. ¡°Just don¡¯t, ok, just fucking don¡¯t.¡±

    ¡°Look,¡± I said, ¡°this information we have here is good, but it might not be good enough. The people we work for will want to see the documents these reports reference, just to double-check. Besides, there might be stuff they haven¡¯t referenced.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± Nari said, ¡°Are you planning to go to my school?¡±

    ¡°If there¡¯s even a chance to collect more intel,¡± I said, ¡°then yes. I¡¯m going to your school.¡±

 3.15: Come the Break of Dawn

    It took some time to convince the others. I think what did it was me saying that I¡¯d do it on my own. Then they began to try to convince me to at least taking someone with me.

    ¡°Look,¡± I said, ¡°You guys have been saying it yourself. This is an extremely dangerous mission, but it¡¯d be less so if just one person went. That way, if that one person fucks up, you guys can start making your way back to safety. After all, the mission is technically complete and¡­¡±

    ¡°So why are you planning on going on this suicide mission?¡± John asked. ¡°What the fucking hell do you gain from it?¡±

    ¡°These guys,¡± I said, for what felt like the hundredth time, ¡°are just warming up. I can feel it. From what Nari has said, they¡¯ve been using this place as a testing bed. If they wanted, something tells me they could have instantly taken the entire country. Instead, they¡¯re slowly introducing new soldiers, tactics and equipment in the only country that could, and would, keep this kind of unrest a secret. They¡¯re going to go bigger, and we need to know everything about them before that happens.¡±

    ¡°This is stupid,¡± John said. ¡°How can they go bigger? They¡¯re wasting huge amounts of manpower in one of the most backwards countries in¡­¡±

    ¡°Are you sure?¡± Nari asked. ¡°Ever since they first started operations, our Great and Beloved Leader has been saying that they are almost broken.¡± When she mentioned her leader, I noticed that she looked around nervously, as if there may have been something listening, ready to report her to the country¡¯s secret police. Considering the room she was in, she was probably right. ¡°But¡­¡± She was desperately trying to think of a way to say something in a way that wouldn¡¯t get her arrested.

    Sunny, smiling a bit, said something to her in Korean. She then made what I assumed was a rude gesture at the ceiling. Nari looked worried and continued on. ¡°He was wrong. The situation kept getting worse.¡± She looked directly at me. ¡°I¡¯m not sure I agree with you that they¡¯re using my country as a testing ground, but I think you would know better than me. I do know that it can always get worse. Especially when my government and these monsters are involved.¡±

    Kyle smiled. ¡°Well, I guess you¡¯re right, Killer. After all, knowing is half the battle. Still think you should take someone with you.¡±

    ¡°My take,¡± Sunny said, ¡°is that we should sleep on this and let Joseph decide on it when he wakes up. You¡¯re tired and likely to make mistakes.¡±

    ¡°Ok¡­¡± I agreed reluctantly. ¡°I¡¯ll wait. Want me to take first watch?¡±

    ¡°If you are planning on going on this little adventure,¡± Kyle said, ¡°you should get some rest. Especially if you think you¡¯re doing it alone.¡±

    Reluctantly, I agreed. It was time to get some sleep. Hell, even I realized that my plan was somewhat reckless. That being said, I was sure it was necessary. The Dragon¡¯s Teeth were a quite real threat to every country on Earth. They could strike anywhere and anytime with no warning. Even more disturbingly, there was no way to predict their attacks. To put it in terms of a murder investigation, we had a lot of information about the suspects and their methods, but no idea about their motive. In order for us to prevent a future attack of this magnitude, we needed to know why they were doing this.

    Needless to say, I spent what was left of the night tossing and turning. Part of it was because of the sheer insanity of what I was planning on doing. The other was the idea that an army Dragon¡¯s Teeth could suddenly appear in the US. If that happened, what would happen to my family? Not even the Marathon Bombings three years ago could prepare the people of Massachusetts for the kinds of things that would follow. Hell Semester hadn¡¯t prepared me for whatever that ball of light was.

    However, the real reason I couldn¡¯t sleep was the nightmares. For some reason, they had returned. This was the first time they had haunted me during combat. This was also the clearest they¡¯d ever been. Everyone I had killed, or had helped to kill, was haunting me that night. The figures from Hell Semester were first. My first victims, burned, bludgeoned, blown up and shot, yet somehow back, were chasing me through the forest where I had killed most of them.

    That forest became the fishing village. I decided to hide from them in the factory, but the Koreans were waiting for me. Finally, I managed to get to the sewer. Closing the manhole cover behind me, I let out a sigh of relief. I smiled and turned around. There, standing in front of me, was the massive Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldier with the glowing eyes.

    ¡°It¡¯s interesting, isn¡¯t it?¡± he asked nonchalantly, as a dark mist swirled behind him. As he spoke, the shapes formed into Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldiers, still not fully materialized. ¡°Our mistress breaks down the veil between life and death.¡±

    I began backing away. The giant soldier simply shook his head in¡­ annoyance? Sympathy? ¡°Don¡¯t bother,¡± he said. ¡°Nothing here matters. The souls of your victims are lodged in you, meaning you can¡¯t run¡­¡±

    I¡¯m not sure what he said next. I¡¯m not even sure if it mattered. I just know that eventually I woke up. As I opened my eyes, I heard Kyle say, ¡°Joseph¡­ trust me. I know we¡¯ve had our differences, but this is an extremely bad idea. We¡¯ve got a dependent in tow, you¡¯re injured, plus we¡¯ve already lost Jeong. What could we possibly gain from this?¡±

    ¡°Haven¡¯t you ever read a mystery?¡± I asked, not really opening my eyes. I had fallen asleep on the swivel chair. ¡°We need as much information as possible, otherwise we might make stupid mistakes.¡± I opened my eyes. Everyone had been looking at Joseph. They were now looking at me. ¡°After all, it is entirely possible that the North Korean government didn¡¯t give access to every single piece of information about the Deets to a bunch of kids. No offense, Nari.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± John said, ¡°but these are¡­¡±

    ¡°Actually,¡± Nari said, ¡°they made it pretty clear that they didn¡¯t do that.¡± At that John groaned. Nari continued. ¡°The principal kept a large amount of files on his hard drive. If we thought we could solve something, he would ask High Command if we could access said files.¡±

    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    Joseph considered this information carefully. Finally, he said, ¡°Sunny, I don¡¯t want Killer going alone. He doesn¡¯t speak the language and even though he¡¯s a natural, he¡¯s still green. Would you be up for this?¡±

    I waited with bated breath. What happened next could be the difference between victory and defeat. Finally, Sunny said, ¡°Sure. Gives me something to do other than listening to Killer try and talk us into this.¡±

    ¡°Thank you, guys,¡± I said. ¡°How much time do I have?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯ll be five hours before I can take the painkillers,¡± Joseph said. ¡°It should take an hour for them to kick in. If you guys aren¡¯t back before then, we¡¯re leaving you behind, mon.¡±

    ¡°Got it,¡± I said. ¡°We¡¯ll be back.¡±

    Before we left, we made sure everyone had copies of all the evidence we had recorded. That way, if one of us died and we couldn¡¯t recover the cPhone, we¡¯d still be perfectly fine. We then set a timer to remind us when it was time to leave. After all that was done and the mattress was removed, Sunny and I began the trek to the school.

    Nari was right, the school was only about a half an hour to forty-five minutes away. The only problem was that we had to walk through a dirty, diseased sewer to get to it. There was still a foul smell in the air, but at least the sun shone through holes to the surface.

    Strangely enough, there weren¡¯t as many rats as I expected. Maybe they realized that there were better pickings on the surface, now that all the humans were busy killing each other. Speaking of the war, the sound of gunfire was echoing from up above, and occasionally the ceiling would shake, causing bits of debris to fall to the floor.

    Eventually, after traversing the maze-like sewer, we came to the thing Nari had told us to look for: a black electrical box secured with a padlock. I nodded at it as if to ask ¡°Is this what we¡¯re looking for?¡±

    In answer, Sunny slung her AK over her shoulder and removed a pair of bolt cutters from her bag. The metal tube part of the padlock snapped in half. Sunny then removed the padlock, tossing it into the polluted water. Then she opened the panel, revealing a keypad, several switches, and a lot of wires. She laid the bolt cutters against the wall and began to work on the contents inside.

    While she fiddled with that, I covered her. It took her much longer than I thought necessary, but then again, any amount of time standing out in the open with no cover in a combat zone is longer than necessary. Besides, it was my fault we were here in the first place, even if it was necessary.

    Eventually, there was a beep. Then, machinery began to whir and one of the concrete slabs in the wall slid down into the floor like something out of a bad horror movie. We quickly moved into room. As the door slid back up behind us, we realized that we were in a small hallway. On the left-hand side was a corridor filled with several doors. On the right was a staircase leading to the ground level.

    Again, according to Nari, the principal¡¯s office was at the top floor. Not wanting to spend a lot of time searching the downstairs, we began heading up the narrow staircase, moving as quickly and quietly as we could. We came out on a landing, surrounded by walls and a door on one side.

    After counting down from three, we silently burst into the room. A quick inspection revealed it to be a sort of common room. Despite the fact that all the windows facing the front were shattered and a dead Korean soldier was lying by an archway, half his face smashed in with what looked to be buckshot, the room was actually quite nice. The shattered windows looked out onto a lovely lawn surrounded by a concrete wall with a kicked-in fence. The sofas, while not luxurious by any stretch, looked comfy. The TV was perfectly functional, and was still playing a Korean news channel. There was even a pool table, albeit one that was stained with blood.

    It did look like the people there had been a hurried evacuation. Someone had left a bag of some sort of snack on the chairs, and there was a drink that had been spilled, its contents pooling over the floor like a bloodstain. There were other telltale signs of use, like a whiteboard with a date from a week ago and what looked to be some sort of schedule.

    We didn¡¯t stick around to examine it. Instead, we exited the room into a main entrance hallway. There was a security room right across from the common room, with several weapons lockers still opened and the door kicked down. A soldier was slumped out of the reception desk in the wall, small, tightly grouped holes in his chest and a Skorpion submachinegun dangling from his fingers.

    To our right was the main entranceway. An improvised barricade of a pool table and a couch had done literally nothing to stop bullets from ripping through several guards. Two other guards had been standing by the door. One was slumped against the wall, his crotch, legs, and stomach perforated by shrapnel and a single bullet in his head. The other had fallen back, buck shot having torn up his uniform.

    To the left was a grand main staircase leading to the second floor. Behind the stairs was an L-shaped bend. According to Nari, there was another staircase that led to the top floor where the principal was. That one didn¡¯t have windows.

    When we finally got up those stairs, we moved at a crouch. The high wall that had made shielded us from view on the ground level was no longer there and we were surrounded by buildings of a similar height. All we had to do was get to the door, connect a cPhone and start the drive reading software, then get the hell out.

    The principal¡¯s office was on the far end of the hall. Surprisingly, it was unlocked and the door was ajar. The room was only kind of an office. There was also a TV, coffee table, and a couch, as well as a desk, all somewhat luxurious and all Western. Also, there was a door leading to another room. We quickly checked that room. It was a bedroom, again with a bed.

    As we went back into the office and started pulling down windows, I said, ¡°He has a bedroom next to his office? That is fucking creepy.¡±

    ¡°Please¡­¡± Sunny said, ¡°Just don¡¯t. I don¡¯t really need to hear about this at the moment.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said as I set up the download. ¡°Probably best to remain silent anyway.¡± I looked at the screen and sighed. The ETA was an hour. This was going to be, at the very least, really annoying.

 3.16: Enter Player Four

    There were a few minutes left on the download when we heard it: the sounds of the stairs creaking. Sunny and I both tensed up at the sound, and held our breaths. As the footsteps got closer, I moved to a corner of the room on the same wall as the door to the hallway and Sunny got behind the desk.

    At the time I had been investigating the Deet pistol I had taken last night, so that was the weapon I had out, waiting for the first person to walk through the door. The pistol seemed to have the same kind of charging handle as the rifle, which made the pistol annoyingly tall and really easy for the handles to catch. It also only had a magazine release, which made it simple to operate but the lack of safety disturbed me. The barrel, which I quickly determined to be internally silenced, was somewhat circular. Combine that with how underpowered it was, and you got a horrible little subcompact thing that seemed like a pain to shoot.

    Meanwhile, from halfway down the hall, there was the sound of people trying to kick down the door. Then I heard someone curse in¡­ French?

    Before I could really process what I had just heard, someone hissed something. I couldn¡¯t be sure, but it was either something Russian in an American accent, or something English with a Russian accent. Either way, these people weren¡¯t Korean, and I doubted they were Dragon¡¯s Teeth.

    Eventually, they got the door down. Instantly, I could hear the sounds of people burst in and begin to tear up the room. Meanwhile, beneath the noise, I could hear the sound of footsteps approaching the principal¡¯s office. As this unknown person approached, I realized that, while we had closed the door and pulled the shades, we hadn¡¯t locked the door.

    At this point, we had two options: try and reason with these people or ambush them. I briefly considered the kind of people who would be here. The only group I could think that would be here would be a second NIU team or a supervillain crew trying to search for tech. I decided that I¡¯d give the person who walked through the door one chance. If he resisted, he¡¯d get shot.

    The door opened slowly. From the other side of the door, I heard someone say, ¡°Huh.¡± The door was then pushed open, and in walked a person wearing a Kevlar vest, balaclava, backpack and a helmet with night vision goggles mounted on it. He carried an FN FS2000 CQB with a reflex sight and a grenade launcher.

    When the iron sights of the Deet pistol I had captured lined up with this newcomer¡¯s head, I whispered, ¡°Drop it.¡± In response, the soldier rapidly turned around, raising his assault rifle. Before he could fire, I pulled the trigger.

    A bump of crashing furniture muffled the sound of my opponent falling over. Apart from that, there was only the hissing click of the pistol. Suddenly, the one advantage of this stupid thing was made clear. I walked over to where he had fallen. A small red dot was in the center of his forehead, leaking blood.

    Sunny got out from behind the desk and motioned for me to continue out into the hall. We both headed out into the hall, guns trained on the room. Suddenly, a man peeked his head out of the door and aimed an SA58 OSW down the hall.

    Luckily for us, he aimed it in the wrong direction. Sunny opened fire, causing my ears to ring despite her silencer. The man fell down, large red holes in the rear of his armor.

    The other man in the room began saying something and I could hear the crackle of a radio. In response, I tossed in a grenade into the room. This one was a flashbang.

    When the hallway was lit up, Sunny charged. She disappeared inside the room. Despite the muddy ringing in my ear, I could hear her AK let out a two-round burst, then there was the sound of a gun dropping. After a few seconds, she shouted, ¡°Clear!¡±

    I walked into the room. There, sitting on a bed and leaned up against the wall was another soldier with an FS2000. His chest bore the signs of Sunny¡¯s burst and his assault rifle was lying on the ground. His radio and a plastic bag were also discarded nearby. Sunny, meanwhile had just finished checking the person¡¯s pulse. From what I had heard, they were all male, but the armor and ski masks made it hard to tell.

    ¡°Now,¡± I muttered to myself, ¡°the million-dollar question: What¡¯s in this bag?¡± I crouched down, using the opportunity to stick the Deet pistol back in my boot. I opened it up and saw several USB flash drives, several wads of Canadian, British and American money, and three passports, each corresponding to the three types of cash.

    I opened one of the passports. There, smiling happily, was the picture of an Asian man in his late twenties or early thirties. ¡°Wait,¡± Sunny said, ¡°I know that man.¡±

    ¡°Where¡­?¡± I asked. Sunny merely pointed to the door that had been kicked in. There, on the door, was a plaque depicting the person in the passport.

    ¡°Since you can¡¯t read Korean,¡± Sunny said, ¡°the text beneath the photograph identifies him as Professor Pak.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s¡­¡± I said, comprehension dawning, ¡°That¡¯s Nari¡¯s professor.¡± I got up. ¡°We need to move. Now!¡±

    ¡°But what about the download?¡± Sunny asked. ¡°Isn¡¯t that why we came down here in the first place?¡±

    ¡°Something tells that these,¡± I said holding up the plastic bag, ¡°are the cliff notes of what¡¯s on that machine. Meanwhile, I¡¯ll bet you anything that those guys, whoever they are, are headed straight towards Nari and our team.¡±

    We quickly headed into the principal¡¯s office. The cPhone was almost done downloading, so I stuffed the bag with Pak¡¯s incriminating things into my pack while Sunny finished up. She had it disconnected before I had closed my pack. I grabbed my G-3 and we began making our way downstairs.

    We were on heightened alert, hoping against hope that we had eliminated this new threat. It would have actually been reassuring if more of them had appeared. Unless I was sorely mistaken, the only other force that could get a massive amount of people into the country without fear of consequence was the Grenzefrontier. These people were definitely not Grenzefrontier, which meant that there couldn¡¯t be that many of them.

    What we saw, however, was proof that there were more of them¡­ and that they were heading back to base. The secret passage we had entered the school through was open, with a secret panel on the wall swinging a bit.

    We didn¡¯t need to say anything. We both knew that wasn¡¯t a good sign in the slightest. We entered the sewer, ears straining for any sound of hostiles and began heading down the smelly, damp labyrinth. Above us, we heard the sound of a convoy of APCs, possibly Charons, heading towards the school. It looked like we had dodged one hell of a bullet. These newcomers were bad, but at least they didn¡¯t have armored vehicles.

    If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    Farther off, the sound of battle was getting more and more intense by the second. We even passed under what sounded like a firefight at one point. The loud chatter of Kalashnikov-style weaponry seemed to be desperately trying to drown out the sound of the much quieter sounds of the Deet weaponry. Occaisionally, an RPG or grenade would explode over our head. As we moved on, there seemed to be less and less of the Korean weaponry.

    Then, from the drains above us, there was a flash of bluish-white light and intense heat. There was a massive reduction in the volume of North Korean fire, and a large increase in screaming. In response, there came the sound of people in heavy armor echoing above our head as a group of Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldiers raced across the street.

    Meanwhile, we just hurried forwards. Apart from the risk of the roof above our heads collapsing, the ensuing fight had no immediate impact on us. In retrospect, it was kind of like trying to get work done while an action movie is playing in the background. At the time, I didn¡¯t really question it, but looking back, it¡¯s actually strange that I was able to ignore it.

    To be fair, we had bigger problems at the moment. We were probably several minutes behind the newcomers, and in close combat, a single second could mean the difference between life and death. Hopefully, the others could hold on.

    Eventually, we came to the last corner before the safe room. Ahead, we could hear people talking. I peeked around the corner. There, across the river of swill, was Professor Pak in a flak jacket and three of the strange soldiers. The soldiers all held SA58 battle rifles and were stacked up by the door.

    I pulled back from the corner and held up four fingers. Sunny nodded. From above our head there was a large explosion. We needed to hurry.

    ¡°We try to take Pak alive,¡± I muttered. ¡°On three.¡± Sunny nodded again and I began the countdown. When we hit three, we moved.

    As soon as I had the first one in my sights, I called out, ¡°Hands up, heads down!¡± Only Professor Pak complied. The other three began to turn around, raising their guns as they did so.

    First things first, I double-tapped the one on the right. He spun back the way he had come and fell face first against the wall. Meanwhile, Sunny fired a short burst into the soldier on the far left. That left the one in the center. He actually hadn¡¯t raised his gun, instead he was holding a circular object and was in the process of throwing something. We got him mid-throw, causing him to drop the object into the middle of the shit-infested artificial river.

    ¡°Get on the ground!¡± I said to Pak, aiming my gun right at his chest. ¡°Now!¡±

    Pak cocked his head in question and turned to face us. He asked us something and Sunny sounded like she was halfway through translating when it happened.

    My guess? The circular object mystery soldier number three had thrown into the river was a grenade, and Pak had seen it go in. That¡¯s how, when the large column of water went flying into the air to blind us and get in Sunny¡¯s mouth, Pak was able to draw his gun so quickly.

    From my perspective, my glasses were suddenly covered with brownish water and Sunny began sputtering. ¡°Ew! Ew!¡± she yelled, then she said something in Korean that was cut off by two extremely loud pops that sounded like pistol fire. Then there was a burst of gunfire.

    That prompted me to open fire. I only had a bare outline of where Pak was, so my first two shots were wild with only one hitting him. Luckily, my third hit him right in the heart. Unluckily, he had pulled the trigger a little after I hit.

    What happened next proved that God does not hate me. The bullet from Pak¡¯s gun went in the space between my helmet and my head. I could tell because I felt something burn my head and all of a sudden, my helmet was off.

    I paused, making sure no one got up. Then I turned around to check on Sunny. She was on the ground, wheezing. One of the pockets holding spare magazines for her AK had been completely shredded. Pak¡¯s bullets had apparently hit one of the mags, causing the bullets to go off.

    From inside, Nari called out in Korean. I responded by yelling, ¡°Four hostiles down, but they got Sunny!¡± From inside the safe room, I could hear movement. I didn¡¯t care. I was kneeling down to check on Sunny.

    ¡°Sunny,¡± I asked, ¡°are you ok?¡± She obviously wasn¡¯t, but that was the first thing that I could think of.

    ¡°Ribs¡­ cracked¡­¡± she wheezed. She burst into a coughing fit. ¡°Hurts¡­ a lot¡­¡± I heard the door open. Sunny¡¯s face darkened. ¡°What the hell¡­ is Joseph doing walking¡­? He¡­¡± She burst into a coughing fit.

    ¡°We¡¯re all going to be dead if we don¡¯t get moving soon,¡± Joseph said. I looked up. He was using a small bridge to cross the river of muck. John and Kyle were filing out behind him. ¡°Besides, I heard a rumor that this surgical glue stuff has been deliberately underrated by the creator.¡±

    We were interrupted by Nari screaming with anger. I turned. She was kicking Pak¡¯s corpse and yelling insults. ¡°Jesus, Nari!¡± John hissed. ¡°Calm the fuck down!¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t understand!¡± she wept. ¡°If they know what he¡¯s done, the government will kill my parents! I need to¡­¡±

    ¡°If the government¡­¡± Sunny wheezed out, ¡°¡­can still do anything other than struggle¡­ they¡¯re already dead. You¡¯ve¡­ you¡¯ve already helped us¡­ now they¡¯ll go after you¡­¡± She broke into a fit of coughing after finishing that sentence. After she caught her breath, she said, ¡°Come with us¡­¡±

    ¡°Why?¡± Nari asked. ¡°Just so I can save myself?¡±

    ¡°You can¡¯t¡­¡± Sunny gasped out, ¡°you can¡¯t save your parents¡­ you might not even save yourself¡­ but we might be able to save thousands¡­¡±

    Nari stopped kicking her former professor¡¯s corpse. ¡°Are¡­ are you sure?¡± she asked. ¡°Because if there¡¯s even the slightest chance I can save my parents¡­¡±

    ¡°If it¡¯s something you need to do,¡± I said, ¡°we can¡¯t really stop you. I understand, but¡­¡±

    ¡°You think they¡¯re dead, too,¡± Nari said.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°they¡¯re either dead or your government has bigger things to worry about.¡±

    Nari stood for a moment. Finally, she said, ¡°I¡¯ll come with you. But only because there is no way to find my parents.¡±

    Sunny smiled. ¡°Thanks¡­¡± she said. ¡°For¡­ letting us save you¡­¡±

    ¡°Speaking of that,¡± I said, ¡°how the fuck are we getting out of this?¡±

    Joseph smiled. ¡°I¡¯m glad you asked, mon. Because I have just the plan.¡±

 3.17: Dance Around the Goddess

    ¡°So,¡± I said, dragging Sunny to her feet despite her moans of pain, ¡°what is this plan of yours?¡± I hoped that whatever it was, it involved us leaving.

    ¡°Well,¡± Joseph said, ¡°Plan A is not an option. For one thing, it involves traversing hostile territory. And for another, Sunny isn¡¯t looking too good. Now, what we need to do¡­ is go back the way we came.¡±

    ¡°Are you fucking crazy?¡± John asked. ¡°The Koreans are using the tunnels to advance, now! Do you really want to be in the tunnels when the Deets figure that out?¡±

    ¡°Better than going out on the surface,¡± Kyle said. ¡°The problem is, what do we do after that? The tunnels probably end at the city limits.¡±

    ¡°I said,¡± Joseph continued, ¡°we¡¯d go back the way we came. We take the Charon.¡±

    ¡°I thought you were worried that those things had GPS,¡± Kyle said.

    ¡°They can¡¯t,¡± I said. I had just realized it, and said it again. ¡°They can¡¯t! They¡¯ve blocked all the satellites over the country. They¡¯d have to remove the entire block, and they could only do that if they knew we¡¯d taken a Charon.¡±

    ¡°See,¡± Joseph said, ¡°its sound. Besides, you really want to walk all the way back?¡± He paused, then gave us each a piece of paper from his shoe. ¡°Keep this safe,¡± he said. I looked at mine. It had a bunch of numbers on it and a nonsense phrase. As I tried to make sense of it, Joseph said, ¡°This is the NIU emergency radio hotline. You get in trouble on a mission, you call it. Once we get on a boat, someone needs to call it.¡±

    I was about to ask why he was giving it to us, then I realized that he wasn¡¯t sure he¡¯d make it. In response, I said, ¡°Don¡¯t worry. We got this.¡±

    We were distracted by the click of a safety. We turned and saw that Nari had picked up Professor Pak¡¯s discarded pistol. ¡°I wonder¡­¡± she said, ¡°who was he working for?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± John said. ¡°Now put it down before you accidentally shoot someone with it.¡±

    ¡°I thought you¡¯d need an extra person,¡± Nari said. She turned around and I could see that the characters M&P were emblazoned on the slide in a large white font. ¡°Besides,¡± she added, ¡°I know how this works. It isn¡¯t that hard.¡±

    Joseph considered this. ¡°Fine. But stay behind Kyle and me. Killer, take Sunny and take third place. John, you¡¯re on the flank. Let¡¯s move!¡±

    We began to move out. As we walked, I tried to think about what groups used M&P pistols and SA58 rifles. The SA58 was, from what I understood, was usually used by small groups. I had once overheard some fellow AMS students who were FAL fans talk about them. Everyone had kind of heard of them and usually thought they were ok, but none of them went out of their way to collect them.

    The M&P, however, was usually a law enforcement weapon. That was just one more weird thing about the whole situation. Apparently, the weaponry of the new players had been on John¡¯s mind because he suddenly said, ¡°Hey, Nate, haven¡¯t we seen someone use M&Ps before?¡±

    I struggled to think about it for a minute. ¡°Outside of TV shows? Not really,¡± I said. I paused. ¡°Say, didn¡¯t Cross say he used some kind of Smith and Wesson as a burner?¡± Cross was our resident Mafioso person. He also was the kind of person who would find it funny to use a weapon that was primarily on the side of law and order to kill a cop.

    ¡°No,¡± John said, ¡°Cross doesn¡¯t use M&Ps, he uses Sigmas¡­ and I swear I¡¯ve seen someone we both know use M&Ps.¡±

    I considered this, but drew a blank. The rest of the trip was in silence, with Nari occasionally making suggestions.

    ¡°How do you know the way?¡± Joseph asked.

    ¡°Well,¡± Nari said, ¡°I memorized the map of utilities when I first got down into the tunnels¡­ and I was actually the person who you almost shot when you made camp in that apartment building.¡±

    ¡°That explains how you found us,¡± I said. I had kind of been wondering about that.

    The rest of the walk was completely silent. Eventually, we got to what Nari said was a manhole right in front of the building we had spent the night in. Nari went up first because she convinced us that no one would shoot a nine-year-old girl on reflex. I mean, we weren¡¯t entirely convinced, but it did seem safer.

    ¡°It¡¯s safe,¡± she said.

    Joseph motioned for me to go up. Sunny, at that point, had taken some pretty heavy painkillers so she was kind of zombie-like. I handed her off to Kyle and my G-3 to John. Then, I drew my Berretta and began climbing.

    When I got my head above the ground, I did a quick scan. Apart from the dead bodies and wrecked vehicles, the street had the same ghostly stillness as it had when we first came through. The only movement I saw was Nari, the M&P she had looted clutched tightly in her hand.

    ¡°Clear,¡± I said, moving into a sitting position.

    ¡°Ok,¡± John said, lifting up my G-3. ¡°Now can you take this?¡± I nodded, holstered my pistol, and grabbed my G-3 by the stock.

    The next person was Sunny. John and Kyle had to lift her on their shoulders and I had to pull her the rest of the way up. She still moaned in pain, despite the painkillers.

    Everyone else, though, got out much easier. It still was pretty unnerving, standing in the middle of the street with absolutely no cover. When we were finally up, I picked up Sunny and we got back into our formation and began heading down the street. For a block or two, there were still the signs of the recent fights: dead bodies, bullet holes and casings, craters, and telltale bits of melted concrete wall.

    Eventually, around about the time that the city became only one street wide, the signs of battle ceased. That meant the signs of the evacuation were easier to detect. Now that I knew what to look for, I saw that there were occasional loading areas for trucks or busses to pick up civilians and abandoned signs that a traffic policeman might use.

    Nari seemed to be taking the whole thing quite professionally. She was still a scared nine-year-old girl who was walking through her war-torn home, but she wasn¡¯t sobbing, she wasn¡¯t crabby, and she never once screamed with horror at the sights around her. In fact, I was actually a little concerned that she was in shock.

    As we rounded the last of the few angles in the road, we saw that there was now a line of several more Charons and Korean army trucks parked near the Charon we arrived in. We froze, straining to listen. Ahead of us, and behind one of the buildings, we could hear the sound of people talking.

    We made our way slowly to the Charon we came on. While we were gone, it had apparently decided that it was going to just be black from now on. All the other Charons were settled on an urban multicam pattern. They were also all locked up.

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    As we moved towards our Charon, we noticed that behind the street, there was movement in the fields on one side. We could hear voices complaining in Korean and the occasional shout of a taskmaster. Silently, we agreed just to start the Charon and get out.

    We quickly climbed in the rear ramp, making as little noise as possible. I lay Sunny on the ground, causing her to gasp in pain. While I was much better off than her, my knees and back were starting to hurt from carrying all my gear plus her for hours without a break.

    Meanwhile, John and Nari had headed straight for the cockpit. John, checking that everyone was in, pulled a handle on the ceiling to raise the ramp. Nothing happened. He then looked at the control panel. ¡°Oh, shit,¡± he said.

    Joseph, who was looking out the side door in the direction of the voices, asked, ¡°What do you mean, ¡®Oh shit.¡¯¡±

    ¡°None of the lights are on,¡± John said. ¡°There¡¯s no power.¡±

    ¡°Maybe they turned it off,¡± Kyle said. ¡°Could you hotwire it?¡±

    ¡°I might,¡± Nari said. ¡°I just need some time.¡±

    ¡°Time might not be something we have,¡± Joseph said.

    Nari looked around the Charon for a moment. She walked towards a spot on the floor marked with a sign warning about electricity. She felt around on the dark black floor, then found some latches. She unlatched them and raised a section of floor like a trap door. I walked around to get a good view. There, surrounded by unplugged wires, was what appeared to be a giant battery, like the kind you¡¯d find powering a Tesla. Nari began to work frantically.

    Suddenly, in the distance, I heard someone speaking Korean through a very good intercom. ¡°Sunny, Nari,¡± Joseph said, ¡°I need a translation.¡± As he spoke, I was getting out my phone to record both Nari¡¯s attempts to get the Charon working and the words being spoken.

    ¡°Busy,¡± Nari said, reading the symbols and words on the battery. The words themselves were English, but they were all engineering terms I couldn¡¯t understand.

    Meanwhile, Sunny gasped out, ¡°He¡¯s talking about some sort of change that¡¯s happening in Korea. He¡¯s¡­ saying that soon the world will be reborn or will die and¡­ That doesn¡¯t sound good for his audience.¡± As she said that, the person using the loudspeaker stopped talking, and other voices began to beg and protest. Nari began working more furiously.

    ¡°What did he say?¡± John asked nervously.

    ¡°He just apologized that they won¡¯t see the new world,¡± Sunny said, ¡°and¡­¡± she paused, her face twisting in both pain from talking and confusion at what the person on the intercom had said, ¡°¡­hopes his goddess favors them?¡±

    ¡°Exactly what he said,¡± Nari confirmed, inserting the first plug. ¡°That should get the doors working.¡±

    John tried the ramp control again. ¡°Still not working!¡± he hissed urgently.

    Nari began looking at the directions. ¡°Excuse me,¡± she said, unplugging the cord, ¡°I went in the wrong order.¡± As she spoke, the sound of gunfire suddenly erupted.

    ¡°You might want to hurry¡­¡± Kyle said.

    ¡°I¡¯m working on it,¡± Nari said, plugging in a cable.

    She had just plugged in several of the wires to one square and gotten up to go to the cockpit when a voice boomed over the intercom. ¡°My brothers,¡± he said, ¡°today, our Goddess smiles upon us and the Creators turn their sight elsewhere.¡±

    In response, a group of voices called out in eerie unison, ¡°HAIL THANA!¡± The voices themselves were disturbingly similar, like they were all the same voice.

    The lead speaker spoke again as Nari began frantically searching the dashboard. ¡°The Creators, those vile oppressors of all who live, have ordered us to deliver this land into their tightened fist. As long as their hold on our mind survives, we must obey these criminals.¡±

    There was booing from the crowd. Meanwhile, Nari had found the button she was looking for. ¡°Here,¡± she said to John, ¡°flick these switches when I tell you. Also, tell me when the computer says I can proceed.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± John said.

    Nari rushed back to her position. ¡°Ok,¡± she said, ¡°turn the one marked ¡®Computer¡¯ to ¡®G2.¡¯¡±

    Meanwhile, the Deet priest had started again. ¡°Yet, our Goddess hears her children cry out in pain. She sees the poor victims of the Creator¡¯s campaign return to her, starving and in pain. She feels their need for closure. So she has accelerated her plans. Her return to us is imminent! Her ascension is nigh!¡±

    Meanwhile, Nari was messing with one of the cables. I took a closer look. This cable had been deliberately frayed, and she was hastily re-tying the metal inside the plastic coating, a look of panic on my face. I stared at it. The damage had to have been deliberate, due to how fixable it was. They were letting us go.

    The priest¡¯s next part of the speech distracted me. ¡°Our Goddess, however, has a task for us. The Creators must be distracted. To this end, we must disobey them as best we can. We must resist the scratchings at our mind, yet do it in a way as to not to make our odious overseers suspicious.¡±

    ¡°Switch auxiliary systems to generator two,¡± Nari said.

    ¡°Dammit,¡± John said, ¡°do we really have to do this in literally the worst order possible?¡±

    ¡°I didn¡¯t make this!¡± Nari said. ¡°Now flick the switch!¡±

    ¡°I did,¡± John said. ¡°Computer¡¯s loading.¡±

    ¡°Yet,¡± the priest said, lowering his voice somewhat, ¡°even beings as vile and perverted as our Creators and their former master have a place in our Goddess¡¯ world. After all, they have been planning for the coming storm. They are vain, callous, and greedy, but also clever, wise and intelligent. We must undercut their cruel impulses and groom them to meet our Goddess¡¯ cold, loving embrace, but also prepare for the Visitors.¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± John said, ¡°I can close the doors, right?¡±

    Nari considered this. ¡°Did the computer say you could?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± John said. ¡°It also said I could start up the turret.¡±

    ¡°If it says you can,¡± Joseph said, ¡°Do it. Kyle, you get on the turret. We want to get out of here as soon as possible.¡±

    ¡°Also,¡± Nari said, a satisfied smile on her lips, ¡°flip the switch marked propulsion.¡±

    ¡°Hell yeah!¡± John said.

    As soon as Nari started speaking, the priest also resumed his speech. ¡°Now, my brothers, we must return to our post. Glory to our Goddess! Glory to the Dragon¡¯s Teeth! And glory to the Legion Vox Nox!¡± As he wished glory to each of the three groups, his congregation echoed him.

    ¡°It sounds like they¡¯re coming this way,¡± Joseph said as the doors of the Charon closed.

    ¡°They are!¡± John said, looking out his window.

 3.18: The Safest Bet

    The next thing I heard was the sound of several guns firing in unison. I noticed that they seemed to be firing in semi-automatic. The sound of bullets bouncing off the sides of the Charon came almost immediately.

    Suddenly, the Charon¡¯s cannon opened up. It was only a three-round burst, but the sounds of the shells hitting was like the wrath of God. ¡°Ok,¡± Kyle said, obviously pleasantly surprised, ¡°that¡¯s working!¡±

    ¡°How much longer?¡± Joseph asked.

    ¡°The display says I have thirty-seven out of a hundred rounds remaining,¡± Kyle said. ¡°There¡¯s also rockets, but¡­¡±

    ¡°Less talk, more shooting,¡± Joseph said. ¡°Keep them from rushing us, but use as little ammo as possible.¡±

    ¡°Yeah¡­¡± Kyle said, ¡°I don¡¯t think that¡¯s going to be possible¡­¡± Still, he continued returning fire. After all, it was something to do. Meanwhile, the rest of us had the option of panic or shut up.

    Nari, for instance, was cursing in Korean. ¡°What is it?¡± I asked.

    ¡°This¡­ this¡­¡± She then said something disparaging in Korean as she closed the maintenance hatch, ¡°¡­is designed by a complete moron. I can¡¯t believe how much effort it took to fix this¡­¡±

    ¡°Speaking of fixing this thing¡­¡± John said. Suddenly, we began to slide back as the Charon as it accelerated. A few bullets hit the rear ramp, causing some dangerous-looking dents, but apart from that, the shooting stopped. After a minute or two of insane acceleration, we broke out into relieved laughter.

    Nari, however, didn¡¯t seem too happy. ¡°That,¡± she said, ¡°was too easy. They¡¯re letting us go.¡±

    ¡°Of course they¡¯re letting us go,¡± John said. ¡°One of them had a beautiful shot on the windscreen. He could have attempted to shatter it. Or they could have tried to shoot out the tires. Or they could have used that bouncy ball of death to insta-bake us.¡± He paused. ¡°Damn, that thing was nasty. My vision is still a little blurry from that.¡±

    ¡°Could be worse,¡± I said. ¡°But the question remains, why are they letting us go? Does it have something to do with their little rebellion? And if so, what does letting us go accomplish?¡±

    ¡°Another question,¡± Kyle said, ¡°who did their ¡®creators¡¯ use to work for?¡±

    I was about to say something. It was a hunch, but I remembered how before he sent us on this mission, NIU¡¯s President and Founder had said he had his own theories. Something told me that, if he wasn¡¯t behind this, he knew who was. However, while he may have changed a lot on this mission, Joseph was still the President¡¯s man.

    Luckily, Nari cut in. ¡°You actually make some good points. I never expected soldiers to be intelligent.¡±

    Sunny laughed weakly and descended back into coughing. ¡°¡­Can¡¯t¡­ be that smart,¡± she said weakly. ¡°We¡¯re¡­ here, aren¡¯t we?¡±

    ¡°To be fair,¡± I said, ¡°we had to be very smart to make all the terrible decisions that brought us here. Otherwise, we¡¯d have never left home.¡±

    The joke got the team to laugh. ¡°¡­Please¡­¡± Sunny said, ¡°¡­no jokes¡­ Laughing hurts¡­ right now.¡±

    Nari, meanwhile, wasn¡¯t laughing. ¡°I am not sure I understand,¡± she said.

    ¡°You think we should tell her?¡± I asked.

    Joseph shrugged. ¡°Sure,¡± he said. ¡°We¡¯re going to recruit her anyway. Besides, what can she do with this information? Her government has bigger problems and I¡¯m not sure the Deets give a shit.¡± He then turned to Nari, and said, ¡°So, what have you heard about Nowhere Island University?¡±

    Nari recoiled. ¡°I heard¡­¡± she said, ¡°that it is one of the most dangerous and corrupt places in the world.¡±

    ¡°Accurate, I guess,¡± Joseph said. ¡°In some ways, it is a little like your own country. In others, it is a little like the Wild West.¡± Nari nodded, but she seemed a little confused by the Wild West reference. ¡°The thing is, everyone, except maybe people in Hell Semester, can leave.¡±

    ¡°And why,¡± Nari asked, ¡°do people want to come?¡±

    Kyle shrugged. ¡°It depends. Some people want to come because they can make money or gain power. Others come because they¡¯ve got some ideological or personal reason. A few come because NIU¡¯s got all the best toys, but I¡¯m pretty sure most come for a mix.¡±

    ¡°What do you mean by ¡®toys?¡¯¡± Nari asked.

    ¡°Students get to work on various projects,¡± I said. ¡°The reason Joseph¡¯s walking right now is because one of my friends at the medical school developed this medical glue that holds you together. She also developed that sludge we fed you for breakfast.¡±

    ¡°I assume it has some other benefit other than building character,¡± Nari said blandly.

    ¡°It makes you able to recover from moving for long periods of times,¡± I said. ¡°May explained it to me once, but it went in one ear and out the other.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± Nari said, ¡°a student made something like that?¡± She looked like she was remembering something or considering an idea. ¡°Is this sort of thing¡­ encouraged?¡±

    ¡°Hell,¡± Kyle said, ¡°it¡¯s actually required. You either need to get an on-campus job or start innovating.¡±

    ¡°And¡­¡± Nari said, a barely suppressed note of hope and longing in her voice, ¡°I could make anything I wanted?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± John said, ¡°You¡¯d have to have graduated high school, but¡­¡±

    ¡°I was starting what an American would call my senior year,¡± Nari said, somewhat smugly. ¡°You probably have some sort of test that could confirm it.¡± She leaned back. ¡°You know what? I¡¯m tired of doing the same science fair projects and paint by numbers projects. ¡®Nari, can you copy this low-end American car engine from the sixties?¡¯ ¡®Nari, can you guess how the Wright Brothers made their own plane?¡¯ ¡®Nari, can you make your radio again? We just want to make sure you can still do it.¡¯ But you know what? I¡¯m tired of reproducing other people¡¯s inventions. I want to make my own thing.¡±

    I watched her face harden as she remembered a bunch of slights, real and imagined. I was feeling rather good about this. Not only had we probably convinced her to come with us, which had probably saved her life, but I knew what buttons to push.

    What buttons to push? I thought to myself. You¡¯re supposed to be the good guy. Don¡¯t think like that.

    But, a more practical voice asked, how are you going to keep her away from the President? I considered this, and realized two things: first of all, I couldn¡¯t. Second, it wouldn¡¯t help her to do that. If she couldn¡¯t recognize that the President was poison, then there wasn¡¯t much I could do.

    Instead, I just decided to open up the crate with the Deet weaponry and pulled out one of the rifles. Following the proper rules of gun safety, I pulled one of the lower charging handles, causing the other one to move back as well. It went back halfway, then jammed a quarter of the way down. I noticed that the slide didn¡¯t open. I sighed and pulled back the top charging handle. This caused the top handle and the slide to pull back part of the way, revealing the chrome-colored bullet inside. Unfortunately, it too was stuck.

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    ¡°What are you doing?¡± Nari asked.

    ¡°Trying to figure out how these Deet guns work,¡± I said. ¡°I think I broke one. I pulled back the wrong lever and now the gun won¡¯t cycle.¡±

    ¡°Is that what normally what happens with guns?¡± Nari asked curiously.

    ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°Even with guns hated for being unreliable should take more to break than this. Of course, this could be something that happens once every few thousand times. I¡¯d have to open it up to be sure.¡±

    ¡°Can I watch?¡± Nari asked.

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said. Careful to keep my finger off the trigger and making sure to remove the magazine, I began the process of disassembling the rifle. I discovered that it was designed so that you had to remove the barrel and the grenade launcher in order to open it up. That wasn¡¯t that hard, as the barrel was a quick-change affair and the grenade launcher slid off easily. Then, the upper receiver and barrel shroud were able to swing open, giving me access to the machined parts within.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, looking at how the mechanism to cycle the bullet had completely jammed up, ¡°that¡¯s going to need a chisel to remove.¡±

    ¡°It looks like this kind of thing happens every time you pull the slide in the wrong order,¡± Nari said. ¡°Do you think it was something the designers did on purpose to prevent captured weaponry?¡±

    ¡°Nah,¡± I said, ¡°this honestly looks like bad design. The gun isn¡¯t destroyed, but it would take a good two or three hours to fix it. That¡¯s a big problem for someone who pulls the wrong lever in a panic.¡±

    We spent the next while talking about how guns worked. We had given up on the first rifle and moved on to the other, with me making sure to take lots of pictures. I even decided to save a few of the bullets in my boot to have something to study when this was all over. Meanwhile, I had also put my G-3 into my pack.

    It was quite a while, probably about late afternoon, when it happened. As we got in sight of the fishing village, the Charon was rocked by an explosion. It then sagged dangerously on one side and began to skid. John and Kyle were buckled in, and Joseph was hanging on to the handrail, so they were mostly fine. I, however, was slammed into the side of the vehicle.

    If the angle at which I had been was slightly different, I would have snapped my neck and died instantly. Instead, all that happened was my head leaving a dent in the padded walls. That padding and my helmet wasn¡¯t enough to stop my vision from going white for a split second, but it was better than nothing.

    ¡°Agh¡­¡± Joseph groaned as he got up from the floor, his hands a little scraped from hitting the floor. ¡°Ok¡­ is anyone more hurt than I am?¡±

    ¡°Well¡­¡± Sunny wheezed, ¡°I¡¯m not¡­ more hurt than before¡­¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re fine in the cockpit.¡± John said. He then asked, ¡°We are both fine, right?¡± Kyle muttered something, and John said, ¡°Yep, both right as rain!¡±

    Nari stood up shakily. ¡°I¡­ am alright,¡± she said shakily. She turned around and pointed at me, letting me see that her face had been kind of torn up by the floor. I suddenly remembered that it was textured for better grip. ¡°But,¡± she said, ¡°he hit his head. We should¡­¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± I said, standing up slowly and grabbing the Deet rifle. ¡°If everyone else can walk, we can test for concussions later. This just smells like an ambush.¡±

    ¡°We could have just had a blowout or hit a mine the Koreans left,¡± John said. ¡°I really think we should check you for a concussion.¡±

    ¡°Here¡¯s what we¡¯ll do,¡± Joseph said, after carefully considering what we had said for a second or two. ¡°Sunny can check Killer for a concussion, Kyle can man the turret, and John, you and I can find out what the hell happened to our... Do you hear that?¡±

    In the distance, there came the high-pitched whine of what sounded like a jet engine. ¡°I thought you said the North Korean air force was eliminated, Nari,¡± I said. As I did, it suddenly passed over our heads.

    ¡°That doesn¡¯t matter,¡± Kyle said. ¡°They¡¯re Deet. Judging by their size and the fact that we¡¯re still here, they appear to be transports, and they¡¯re landing in the forest behind us.¡±

    ¡°Get out of here,¡± Joseph said. ¡°I¡¯ll hold them off. Killer¡¯s in charge.¡±

    ¡°But¡­¡± Sunny protested, fighting to get the words out.

    ¡°Damn it!¡± Joseph shouted, ¡°There¡¯s no time! Get the fuck out of here!¡±

    As I lifted Sunny up, I said to Joseph, ¡°If we make it to a boat, and they haven¡¯t come yet, come and get to us, ok?¡±

    ¡°I will,¡± Joseph said, ¡°now go!¡±

    I dragged Sunny out one of the side doors. Kyle, Nari, and John exited the vehicle behind me. ¡°Nari!¡± John called out, as the girl ran around to the side facing the forest, ¡°What the fuck are you doing?¡±

    ¡°Checking the other side,¡± she said. ¡°It looks like someone put a bomb in between the wheels and the detonation is what caused us to¡­¡±

    ¡°We don¡¯t have time,¡± Kyle said. As he spoke, I could hear the sound of more jet engines coming towards us from far off. We began running towards the docks as fast as we could. Luckily, someone (or something) had cleared the way so we didn¡¯t have to vault over the barricades that the defense had set up.

    Still, we weren¡¯t making progress fast enough. Already, the sound of our Charon¡¯s cannon was disrupting the summer air, and the sound of three jets were now disturbingly close. Luckily, we had a head start. It wouldn¡¯t do that much good against jets, but we needed all the help we could get.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Nari said, ¡°these are new! I didn¡¯t know they had pla¡­¡±

    She was cut off as the world exploded around us. Between the earth shaking, the large chunk of concrete that hit me in the head, and the shock of seeing the buildings on either side of me collapsing in balls of fire, I fell down.

    As I struggled to my feet, John shouted something and pointed at some point in the sky to our rear-left. I turned, and saw a large black VTOL shaped like a stealth plane touching down. Kyle, meanwhile, was shooting at one to our rear-right. That explained the roaring sound that was drowning out everything and the explosions.

    That still raised an important question: how the hell were we going to get out of this?

 3.19: Get Out

    Needless to say, we ran to the nearest boat on the dock. In the brief moment I spared to look behind me, I saw the Charon we had stolen was now in dozens of pieces, the cabin where Joseph had been completely gone. I quickly decided that Sunny didn¡¯t need to see that.

    As we got to the boat, Sunny said, ¡°He¡¯s dead, isn¡¯t he?¡± Her statement was emotionless, but when I looked down, I saw that tears were streaming down her face.

    I heaved her onto the boat and gently set both her and the captured gun down on the deck. Meanwhile, John was kicking down the door to the boat¡¯s cabin and Kyle was setting up the bipod of his M-21 on the aft of the boat. ¡°There¡¯s a good chance of that, yes,¡± I said. ¡°John, how close are you to getting us moving?¡±

    As I said his name, there came a crunch from John kicking in the door. I looked up and saw him searching the cabin. ¡°Uhhh¡­¡± he said nervously, ¡°there¡¯s no key.¡± He spent a few minutes searching. ¡°There¡¯s no fucking key!¡± Shit. There were other boats. In fact, there was even one right next to us. The thing was, I was pretty sure we¡¯d have a similar problem with those. On top of that, this one seemed to be in the best shape. All the others were rotting away.

    I stood up. ¡°We don¡¯t have time for this. Nari, do you think you can hotwire this thing?¡± She nodded and ran into the cabin.

    ¡°They¡¯re coming!¡± Kyle said. ¡°Right side, halfway down, one just stuck his head out.¡± I grabbed the Deet rifle and ran over to the rear of the boat.

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, aiming down the sights, ¡°we need to keep their heads down until we get the engines on. John, cut the ropes.¡±

    ¡°On it,¡± John said.

    But before he could get on it, Nari cried out. ¡°Wait!¡± she said, ¡°the boat has no fuel in it!¡±

    I paused. The image of the boat just stalling out when we turned it on filled me with a horrific, but understandable, dread. Before I could formulate a plan, Nari shot out of the cabin and ran for a fuel tank. It was on the far end of the dock.

    ¡°Nari!¡± Sunny yelled out weakly, then began coughing. Suddenly, the enemy opened up. The sound of bullets hitting the water cut her off.

    ¡°Cover her!¡± I yelled. I opened up with the Deet rifle at the alley some Deet soldiers had just come out of. That was when I discovered the nice thing about the rifle. While it was still much more uncontrollable than an M-4 or something firing similar rounds, it was much more controllable than my G-3.

    Still, the three Deets had dug in. I could barely see them through the red dot scope on the gun. All we needed to do was keep their heads down until Nari could come back. With a hundred rounds and only one position, that should have been simple. Unfortunately, the enemy had other plans.

    When Nari had just got to the fuel pump and my gun¡¯s LCD ammo counter was reading fifty-five, there was a bright flash off to the left and a wave of heat. That was soon followed by another flash and an ungodly hissing and bubbling sound. I turned around to see that on the other side of the dock, a massive column of steam was rising out of the water.

    ¡°Kyle!¡± I shouted, ¡°Bouncy ball of doom to the left! Don¡¯t let it fire again!¡±

    ¡°I know!¡± Kyle replied. ¡°I think the fucking thing burned me from all the way over here!¡± That was crazy. I had no idea how something could be so hot it could cause burns at that radius or boil the fucking ocean. I did not want to think about what a direct hit would do to the boat or any of the people on it.

    As Kyle began to fire on whoever had the bouncy-ball gun, Sunny staggered upright, lifting her AK. ¡°Nate,¡± she said, ¡°I can kind of move and I can definitely fire my gun. Where do you want me?¡±

    I could barely hear her due to the gunfire, but she sounded a bit better. ¡°Good to hear,¡± I said. ¡°Help Kyle. We can¡¯t let that thing fire again.¡± She nodded and began moving to the left side of the boat, firing her AK in short bursts.

    Nari, meanwhile, was coming back. From the left side, one of the Deets began to shoot at her, his bullets striking the water on the other side of the dock. I was suddenly suspicious. The shots were definitely missing her, but they seemed to be deliberately missing her. Any shooter with formal training knows that you need to aim at where your target is going to be. This guy was aiming at where Nari had been.

    Still, I was worried for her and the rest of us. It looked like they were faking trying to kill us, but if they were using real weapons, there was always the chance that they could ¡°miss¡± and hit one of us.

    My chain of thought was interrupted by Nari jumping into the boat, fuel line in hand. ¡°Do you need help opening the gas cap?¡± I asked.

    ¡°No,¡± she said, ¡°but I¡¯ll need you to cover me when I go out again to turn on the fuel pump.¡±

    I checked the ammo counter on the Deet gun. Forty-two rounds left. ¡°Ok,¡± I told Nari, ¡°tell us when you¡¯re ready.¡± As she screwed in the fuel line, I got out my G-3 from my pack and set it out beside me.

    As soon as that was done, Nari called out, ¡°Done!¡± She then began moving to the side of the boat, getting ready to jump off.

    When she was in position, I picked up the Deet rifle again and called out, ¡°Everyone! Suppressive fire!¡± We all began shooting with the intent of getting our enemy to stop shooting, or at least decrease the volume of fire. I was somewhat thankful that the murder ball had fallen into the water on the other side of the dock. The steam cover it was creating was very useful. My only concern was that the water would come down as burning, radioactive rain.

    By the time Nari had reached the fuel pump again, the Deet gun had run out of ammo. When I bent down to pick up my G-3, I heard Kyle yell ¡°TAKE COVER!¡± I flattened myself on the deck of the fishing boat as Kyle¡¯s rifle cracked. Above me, the world was bathed in a bluish-white light and the sounds of screaming and burning suddenly came as the Deets on our left stopped firing.

    Slowly, the light turned from white to blue to orange. I looked up. The right side of the village was completely on fire. Everything was burning, from the wooden pier to the asphalt of the street. A few points of the water were steaming up as well. As I took all this in, a Deet soldier realized that ¡°stop, drop and roll¡± doesn¡¯t work when the ground is on fire. He got up, climbed over a Jersey barrier and jumped into the water, flames completely engulfing him. Even from this distance, I could smell everything that was burning.

    I instantly raised my G-3 and turned my attention to the right side and began to use the scope. It was so nice actually being able to see the enemy. ¡°Kyle,¡± I said as I squeezed off a round at a Deet soldier peeking above a shop window, ¡°are you ok?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± he said. ¡°I accidentally hit a weird-looking weapon and the Deets just ran off. I figured out what would happen after that pretty quickly.¡±

    ¡°Good call,¡± I said. ¡°Let¡¯s hope they¡¯ve exhausted their attack.¡± As I said this, the Deet soldier I had shot in the head got up again. That was as terrifying as it was annoying.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Sunny said as Nari climbed over, ¡°but they¡¯re just getting started.¡± I looked down the main street. Two fresh squads of Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldiers were coming towards us.

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    ¡°Aim for the stomach and knees,¡± Nari said, panting a bit. ¡°They don¡¯t have armor there.¡±

    I took her advice. The Deet reinforcements were moving out in the open, making it easy for me to draw a bead on them. None of them were firing. The only thing they were doing was maintaining spacing. I pulled the trigger, causing one of the ones near the front to collapse.

    Instantly, ten of the remaining ones opened up. One of the others reached down to pick up his fallen comrade. ¡°Wait,¡± I said, incredulously, ¡°that one¡¯s carrying an injured one forwards!¡±

    It was true. The injured Deet was being carried by his buddy. Both were firing wildly. I put a stop to that by shooting the one carrying the injured Deet.

    ¡°They must be Legionaries,¡± Nari said from the cabin. ¡°One of my fellow students said that they seemed to have a zealous warrior culture and talked about multiple incidents where one would get cut in half by a machinegun but kept advancing.¡±

    ¡°Good to know!¡± Kyle shouted, continuing to return fire. ¡°Any idea how to defeat them? Or do we just die now?¡±

    ¡°Kyle!¡± I said. ¡°Not fucking helping!¡±

    Nari suddenly spoke up. ¡°Their armor can¡¯t withstand knives or blunt objects, unlike the Picts¡¯ and the flame retardant they use on their armor actually catches fire when exposed to their plasma weapons.¡± She sounded hopeful, but then she cut herself off. ¡°No, wait,¡± she said, ¡°that¡¯s stupid. We can¡¯t get that close and we don¡¯t have plasma weapons.¡±

    ¡°Nice try,¡± Sunny said. Suddenly her tone of voice changed. ¡°Shit, there¡¯s more of them on the right.¡±

    ¡°More are filtering in from the left as well,¡± Kyle said. ¡°Anything else?¡±

    ¡°Do you have any chemical agents?¡± Nari asked. ¡°They need to switch from rebreathers to deal with most forms of chemical warfare. If we can surprise them with some Sarin or mustard gas¡­¡±

    ¡°We¡¯d also die because our rebreathers can¡¯t filter that shit out either,¡± John said. ¡°Besides, why the fuck would we be using chemical weapons? There¡¯s civilians around!¡± His gun clicked. ¡°Oh, uh, Nate,¡± he said as he reloaded, ¡°I¡¯ve got only four mags left. After that, I¡¯m going to have to start refilling by hand.¡±

    I sighed internally. Nothing was going right today. Reminded, I checked my pockets. Not counting my pistols, I was down to five magazines myself. The magazines we had had used up, plus dozens, maybe hundreds, of spent bullet casings were scattered all over the deck. That wasn¡¯t counting either of my pistols, because, let¡¯s face it, I wouldn¡¯t be able to hit jack shit with them at this distance.

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°how are we doing for ammo?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m going to have to switch to my MP-7 soon,¡± Kyle said, pulling the bolt back on his M-21. ¡°I¡¯ve only got three mags left.¡±

    ¡°Last mag,¡± Sunny said. ¡°Only half remaining.¡±

    ¡°Do you have any flashbangs?¡± Nari asked suddenly. ¡°Their visors are built to react to when their plasma weaponry firing¡­¡±

    ¡°And a flashbang might trick them into thinking that that just happened!¡± I said. ¡°Nari, you¡¯re a genius!¡±

    ¡°I know,¡± she said smugly.

    ¡°By the way,¡± I asked Nari, ¡°how much of the tank is filled up?¡±

    ¡°Almost a quarter,¡± Nari said. She squeaked as suddenly bullets began to hit the cabin, shattering the windows and splintering the wood.

    ¡°NARI!¡± Sunny screamed. She then fell down in a fit of pained coughing. Apparently, that was just too much for her cracked rib.

    ¡°I¡¯m fine¡­¡± Nari said. ¡°I¡¯m fine¡­¡±

    ¡°We barely had enough fuel to get from China to here,¡± John said. ¡°We might be able to get to South Korea on a quarter.¡±

    ¡°Then we¡¯re going to South Korea!¡± I said, ejecting an empty mag from my G-3. ¡°Nari, start getting this party bus moving when we¡¯re over a quarter tank.¡± Suddenly, in the distance, I saw one of the Deets get down on his knee and aim what looked like a large gun. ¡°EVERYONE!¡± I shouted, throwing myself to the deck and covering my eyes, ¡°GET DOWN!¡±

    As I fell on the deck, I noticed that Sunny was already on the ground, clutching her chest and whimpering in pain. Then, the world turned a bluish-white and the temperature rose uncomfortably.

    Eventually, the light faded away. I looked up to see that the boat next to us was completely on fire, a ghostly reddish-blue light shining from the hold and what little remained of the cabin. It was also rising into the air like the Titanic, further lending to the illusion that it was being swallowed up by the netherworld.

    ¡°The tank¡¯s a quarter full!¡± Nari called out.

    ¡°Thank God!¡± I said, turning my attention back to killing Deets. ¡°Nari, get that fuel line out of here! John, untie us! We need to leave yesterday! Kyle, I want you to throw a couple flashbangs at them. See if we can¡¯t keep their heads down.¡±

    There were affirmative responses as everyone got moving. It went well for a while. Kyle and I fired a few rounds at the Deets advancing down the main street, then Kyle got up and threw a flashbang. As soon as it exploded, several Deet soldiers began grabbing at their helmets, desperately trying to fiddle with them.

    ¡°It¡¯s working!¡± I shouted. ¡°Keep it up, Kyle!¡± I kept firing downrange. ¡°By the way, how much time do we have before we can get this party bus moving?¡±

    ¡°Nari¡¯s looking at the setup right now,¡± John said.

    ¡°It should be fairly simple to hotwire,¡± Nari said.

    ¡°Next flashbang awAGH!¡± Kyle¡¯s warning was cut off by a yell of pain. I heard him fall to the deck. When I turned around, I did not like what I saw. Through his clenched fist, an alarming amount of blood was leaking.

    Nari laughed as a bluish-white glow lit us up from behind. ¡°It¡¯s working!¡± she said with a mixture of smug satisfaction and giddiness as the engine grumbled to life. Then there was a hiss of evaporating water, which quickly came back down on Kyle, Sunny and me in the form of burning rain.

    Through the pain I managed to yell out, ¡°THEN FUCKING GO!¡±

    Nari and John didn¡¯t need any further encouragement. The boat, however, did. It lurched forwards like an elderly arthritic sloth awoken from an afternoon nap. Eventually, it got up to speed eventually, bullets occasionally biting into the sides of the hull.

    When the gunfire had finally stopped, I looked out from the aft of the boat. The fishing village was out of sight and there was no sign of pursuit. As I watched the coastline race by us, I suddenly realized something: Despite the fact that they let us go, we had almost died.

    ¡°Holy shit,¡± John said, ¡°We survived!¡± He laughed triumphantly, and repeated, ¡°We survived!¡± People, mostly John and Nari, began to celebrate. Sunny, though, was able to crack a smile and Kyle began to laugh in relief.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, as I stood shakily, ¡°let¡¯s hope we¡¯re still celebrating when we contact the University. We might not be out of this yet.¡±

 3.20: Knock on Wood

    The shortwave radio, thankfully, worked perfectly fine. In fact, it only took a few minutes to get through to someone on the other end. ¡°Hey, Recon One,¡± a distorted voice came from the speaker, ¡°this is Central. You guys are coming home early. Now, where¡¯s Joseph?¡±

    I recognized the Hispanic-accented voice. It was Professor Mando, one of our Hell Semester teachers. ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°the bad news is Joseph is dead and resistance was extremely heavy. The good news is¡­¡± I paused. I didn¡¯t want to say we had a North Korean defector from a school that shouldn¡¯t exist and we were carrying top secret documents over an unencrypted line. ¡°¡­Let¡¯s just say we¡¯ve got a package to deliver and a prospective student.¡±

    ¡°Mmm,¡± Mando grunted in agreement, then asked, ¡°Hey, how many of you made it out?¡±

    I looked out onto the deck. Sunny was bandaging Kyle¡¯s hand. Thankfully, Kyle looked completely alert and was even joking a bit. ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°Sunny¡¯s rib seems to have been cracked by an unidentified fourth party, and Kyle might need surgery for his hand. Last time we saw Jeong, he was pretty much burned to a crisp, and Joseph got blown up. Apart from that, we¡¯re all ok.¡±

    ¡°Can you get back to Yantai?¡± Mando asked.

    ¡°That¡¯s a negative,¡± I said. ¡°Repeat, that¡¯s a negative. We barely have fuel enough to get across the 38th Parallel. We¡¯re also somewhere in the East China Sea if that helps decide what to do with us.¡±

    There was a pause on the other end. Finally, Mando responded. ¡°This actually works out perfectly,¡± he said. ¡°The original team that was going to pick you up bailed at the last minute. We do have a backup team located out of a city called Incheon. It would probably be best if you guys could try and make it there. If you¡¯ve got a cPhone, they just automatically find the strongest signal, so you can just call the team when you get there. I recommend finding an unused area of the docks and waiting for them to collect you.¡±

    After I wrote down the extraction team¡¯s phone number, I said, ¡°Ok, we¡¯ll call you when we arrive. Hope to be back soon, Recon Team over.¡± After that, the channel went dead. We had already spent too much time talking and risked being heard by some random dude with a ham radio.

    I turned to the rest of everyone. ¡°So,¡± I said, ¡°apparently, we¡¯re going to Incheon! Anyone know anything about it?¡±

    ¡°Only that it¡¯s a¡­¡± Nari said, pausing to search for the words, ¡°I¡¯m sorry, but my knowledge is a little biased. Also, I never really cared enough about propaganda to learn how to translate it.¡±

    ¡°Basically,¡± Sunny said, ¡°it¡¯s a port. One of South Korea¡¯s biggest. There¡¯s a lot of foreign investment around there. In other words, everything North Korea wants its citizens to hate.¡±

    ¡°Is it going to be busy?¡± I asked. ¡°I really don¡¯t want to get into a shootout with South Korean cops or blown out of the water by a Naval destroyer.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Sunny said, ¡°let¡¯s just say we¡¯re going to have to get really lucky.¡±

    I sighed. This was not something I wanted to hear. ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°let¡¯s see what we can do to improve our odds.¡±

    Sunny shrugged. ¡°We could keep you and Kyle below decks, hide the weapons, vests and coats below decks, put some sunglasses on John, and pretend to be a fishing family. If it¡¯s just a few people who look Korean from a distance, maybe they¡¯ll let us past.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°but if we get caught by South Koreans or the US, we surrender. It¡¯d be better to give the information to them then have it get lost in the sea.¡±

    ¡°Are you sure?¡± Sunny asked. ¡°We stand to make a lot of money off this. We could just sit tight and¡­¡±

    I shook my head. ¡°The Dragon¡¯s Teeth are going to get much worse. Between what Nari¡¯s told us and our own experiences, that should be obvious. To top that off, I¡¯m not sure what the South Korean punishment for espionage is, but I can bet that avoiding it would be worth four million dollars.¡± After Sunny nodded, I added, ¡°But we should still avoid being taken prisoner by anyone.¡±

    After that, I went down into the hold with Kyle. It was pretty easy to see that his wounds were stable, but would require time to heal. I decided that my job for the day would be to clean our guns and refill all the various magazines that we had emptied. I quickly discovered that except for the pistols and Kyle¡¯s MP-7, there was very little remaining ammunition for our weapons. In fact, I could only fill four of my G-3¡¯s remaining magazines.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°It looks like we brought the right amount of ammo. We almost ran out!¡±

    Kyle nodded absent-mindedly. ¡°Yeah,¡± he said. After a while, he said, ¡°Hey, Killer¡­ I need to tell you something. I feel like I haven¡¯t been completely straight with you.¡± He then laughed, as if realizing some odd joke.

    ¡°Ok¡­¡± I said, worried about what the confession. Knowing my luck, I figured that it would be something like he¡¯d set up an ambush and would pocket the rest of the money.

    Kyle took a deep breath. ¡°So,¡± he said, ¡°Around seventeen years ago, there was this little boy living with his parents. The problem was, this little boy had a girl¡¯s body.¡± That explained everything. I had suspected it ever since May told Kyle she had ¡°kept his secret.¡± I decided not to say anything and just let him tell me.

    ¡°Now,¡± he said, ¡°people react very strange when trans people show up, and usually in a bad way. The little boy¡¯s parents reacted¡­ very poorly. Of course, they hadn¡¯t been very good parents to start out with. I don¡¯t want to get into too much detail, but they were pretty much¡­¡± He had been looking at the ground, but he suddenly looked up. Upon seeing my face, he said, ¡°You already figured out that little girl was me, right?¡±

    ¡°Well, yeah,¡± I said. ¡°But if you want, you can keep pretending you¡¯re talking about someone else and I can pretend to be surprised at the big reveal.¡±

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    Kyle shook his head. ¡°Fuck that,¡± he said, ¡°I¡¯m done pretending.¡± He then broodingly stared at a random point of wall and said, ¡°That¡¯s the thing I hate most of all. When you¡¯re a kid, all these little morality books constantly tell you how bad lying is. Then, if you¡¯re trans and realize something is wrong, they force you to lie. Your teachers, your parents¡­ hell, even people you don¡¯t even know keep telling you that you¡¯re wrong.¡± He snapped out of his reverie. ¡°Anyway, where was I?¡±

    ¡°Your parents were pretty much something,¡± I said. ¡°I didn¡¯t find out what.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± he said dismissively, ¡°basically, if you can think about generic child abuser stereotypes, then you¡¯ll get a pretty good idea of what they are. They aren¡¯t worth bothering about.¡± I nodded, but couldn¡¯t help thinking that he was lying about that last bit. ¡°Anyway, the day my grandad came to take me away from them was the happiest day of my life.¡±

    ¡°How did that happen?¡± I asked.

    Kyle laughed. ¡°I honestly didn¡¯t know I had a grandfather,¡± he said. ¡°But he knew all about me. I didn¡¯t find out about him until I was seven. Apparently, old man Kyle Chapman thought my dad was trouble and was keeping an eye on him. When my dad gave me a couple broken ribs for my birthday, he filed for custody of me. Apart from the people I came in with and my football team, he was the only person who I had ever told I was trans after the gene therapy.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± I said, ¡°gene therapy? I thought gender reassignment was a surgical procedure.¡±

    ¡°Normally it is,¡± Kyle said, ¡°but my grandad was a former teacher at NIU. He knew a guy back there who could give me the full treatment. Genetically, I¡¯m a completely different person from Karen Rockford.¡±

    He waited, trying to gauge my reaction. I could tell he was trying to be cool, but he had just straight-up told me that the first time he had told anyone this, the next five years of his life became a living hell. Finally, I said, ¡°You know, you¡¯re the first¡­¡±

    ¡°Non-cis person?¡± Kyle supplied, sensing that I was searching for a word.

    ¡°Probably,¡± I said, ¡°anyway, you are the first non-cis person to ever come out to me, you know that?¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± Kyle said, ¡°really? You do know that¡­¡±

    ¡°Cross and Doc are banging?¡± I asked. ¡°Yeah, even I know that. Hell, I think I may have caught them sneaking off to have sex the day after Hell Semester ended. Assholes probably used my bed to do it and didn¡¯t even have the decency to tell me that they¡¯re banging.¡±

    Kyle laughed. ¡°Really?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, ¡°well, anyway, I need some sleep. Nice talking to you.¡±

    ¡°Same here,¡± Kyle said. ¡°I¡¯ll wake you up when you¡¯re needed. Hell, I might try and get some rest myself. We might not be out of this yet.¡±

    It was much later when John came down. Kyle and I, startled by the sound, raised our guns. ¡°Jesus!¡± John said, facing the barrels of a Beretta M92 and a Browning Hi-Power. ¡°Calm down, guys.¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said as Kyle and I holstered our pistols. ¡°Just a bit jumpy, that¡¯s all.¡±

    ¡°Why?¡± John asked. ¡°We¡¯re pretty much home free at this point.¡± At this point, Kyle knocked on one of the wooden crates. John frowned. ¡°You don¡¯t need to do that, you know.¡±

    Kyle shrugged. ¡°You didn¡¯t need to jinx us, either.¡±

    Determined to cut off an argument, I said, ¡°So, do we need to call them?¡±

    ¡°Nope!¡± John said, ¡°I called the extraction team and set up a meet. Sunny is bringing us in to dock at the meet right now.¡±

    We climbed up the ladder to look at the ocean and the massive wharf. However, something caught my eye despite the setting sun doing its best to blind me on one side. On the seaward side, I thought I saw a glint of light on the waves. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nari notice it too. Suddenly, I was irrationally grateful that I had put my G-3 on the deck before coming up. Keeping it out of sight, I sat down and began searching for the flash again.

    Meanwhile, Kyle asked Sunny, ¡°So, are we going to just dock? Isn¡¯t that kind of illegal?¡±

    ¡°More like highly,¡± Sunny said. ¡°The plan is to just dock and make our way to the car as fast as possible. We should probably hide our weapons before getting off.¡±

    ¡°Sunny,¡± I asked, still looking out at the sea, ¡°is there anyone on the dock?¡±

    ¡°¡­No, apart from our ride.¡± Sunny suddenly was on guard again. ¡°But maybe there should be. This is a hugely busy port.¡±

    ¡°Let¡¯s keep our weapons out and our vests on,¡± I said. ¡°But maybe we can put some parkas on over them or something.¡±

    As I said this, I finally found where the glint was coming from. Quite a distance away, there was a rubber dinghy. It was a dark color that blended in with the ocean, and if there was anyone on it, their dark clothing made them impossible for me to see. I was about to use the scope on my G-3 to see what the boat was doing, but something told me that aiming a gun at it would be a very bad idea.

    After John called the people extracting us to inform them of the change in plan, we moved in to dock. We quickly tied the boat down at my insistence, despite how odd John found it. After I finished, I noticed both that the two people who had come to extract us were getting antsy and that two more people had appeared. As we headed towards the SUV that would take us to safety, these two newcomers were also heading there as well. Under my improvised parka, I gripped my G-3.

    And then everything went to hell.

 3.21: In Which We Fight the Law

    The two people I saw moving towards our rescuers, I suddenly noticed, were oddly dressed. It was the docks, yet they were wearing suits, sunglasses, and single earbuds, just like the people picking us up. Both were also reaching for concealed objects. One of our escorts, a short brown man with a lot of tattoos realized how wrong it was and pulled a pistol, firing three times.

    As the man fell back, he suddenly dropped what he was holding: a wallet. As he flung it away, it opened, revealing a glint of gold. Our escort had just shot a cop. The cop¡¯s partner, meanwhile, had gone for his gun. He got a shot off, but our escort had already shifted his aim. Our escort shot a fourth time as he staggered back, and the cop¡¯s head snapped back.

    As this was happening, police cars began streaming in, blocking our escape route ahead. On either side, I could hear the same thing happening. Even before they stopped, patrol officers began getting out and aiming guns.

    Upon seeing this, our other escort swore and grabbed at his left armpit, his back to the window and rear wheel while beginning to crouch. A sniper rifle cracked, and a small red dot appeared on his forehead. He slid the rest of the way to the ground, the once-black SUV now splattered with dark red blood and his pistol still loosely gripped in his hand.

    I hadn¡¯t even waited for the sniper to form a plan. ¡°Warehouse, right side!¡± I said.  ¡°Sunny, John, I need cover fire right now!¡±

    Sunny nodded and began firing from the hip, her AK still concealed under her parka. John waited to shrug his parka off, then began firing his ZMR. Our remaining escort, sensing an opportunity, switched to either burst fire or full auto on his pistol and began firing at the cops.

    I didn¡¯t look at the effectiveness, just thanked God that I was right about the boat blocking us from view of the sniper as I ran to the door, making sure to drag Nari with me. Luckily, the door had been left open.

    ¡°Ow, ow, ow!¡± Nari said as I dragged her along, ¡°You¡¯re hurting me!¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said as Kyle filed in, followed by Sunny. ¡°But it¡¯s better than being shot, isn¡¯t it?¡± As she opened her mouth to say something, I turned back to see as John come inside. ¡°Is our friend coming?¡± I asked.

    John looked back outside, reloading his rifle as he did. ¡°He¡¯s just got out from¡­ oh. No.¡± He ducked back in. A bullet hit the door as he did, and the sounds of gunfire quickly ceased. ¡°He isn¡¯t coming.¡±

    ¡°Close the door and follow me,¡± I said. ¡°We¡¯re going to see if we can sneak by them.¡±

    The inside of the warehouse was mostly empty, except for a few boxes scattered around near the front. We navigated around them and went to the other side. I pulled the sliding metal door open and peered out.

    A bullet whizzed past my face. It came from a group of officers advancing through a maze of shipping crates. Most were carrying pistols, but a few were carrying short assault rifles or pump-action shotguns. I wasn¡¯t able to get a good count on them because they scattered as soon as I opened fire. I did manage to get one, though.

    After a few more rounds exchanged, I ducked back inside and threw a flashbang blindly. For a moment, the firing stopped. I used that moment to close the door. Unfortunately, that moment ended midway through closing and one cop began firing in short bursts at the closing door. The heavy metal door absorbed all the rounds, but it was still somewhat terrifying. The gunfire stopped completely as the door closed.

    As I locked the door, I said, ¡°Everyone, find all the entrances and seal them up. We need some time to figure out our next play.¡±

    John sighed. ¡°Why couldn¡¯t we have gone back to the boat?¡±

    ¡°Apart from the fact it was running on fumes?¡± I asked. ¡°One of our escorts was shot by someone out at sea. I¡¯m pretty sure that the person was on a boat. You want to be out on the ocean with a sharpshooter following you when the boat stops working?¡±

    Before John could answer, his cPhone rang. ¡°It¡¯s the company that was supposed to extract us,¡± he said covering the phone¡¯s microphone with his hand. ¡°What should I tell them?¡±

    ¡°Give it to me,¡± I said. ¡°Then start securing the building. We need to get out of here without killing any more cops.¡±

    I put the phone to my ear as the rest of my team began to move off. From the speaker, a voice was asking, ¡°Hello? Hey, you there?¡±

    ¡°This is the team leader,¡± I said. ¡°The guy you were talking to earlier is a little busy.¡±

    ¡°What the fuck happened?¡± the voice on the other end asked. ¡°We were monitoring our guys that got sent to pick you up and all the sudden there¡¯s gunfire!¡±

    I noticed the hint of suspiciousness in his voice. I sighed. ¡°The police came and everything went to hell. Honestly. We¡¯re way too messed up to risk a firefight. We¡¯re inside¡­¡± I covered the receiver and called out to Sunny, ¡°Hey, Sunny, what warehouse are we in?¡±

    ¡°Armacham Korea,¡± Sunny said.

    ¡°¡­The Armacham Korea warehouse,¡± I said. ¡°We still need an evac. If you don¡¯t know where that is, just follow the sounds of sirens and gunfire.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re not coming,¡± the man on the other end said. ¡°We¡¯ve already lost two men and the cops are obviously on our tail, so¡­¡±

    I snapped. ¡°You listen here, asshole,¡± I said, ¡°we have some very important information. Our employer will be pissed if it were to fall into hands other than his. If you know anything about him, you¡¯ll know that he¡¯s got a pretty long reach, and if that doesn¡¯t work, you should know that plan B is turning ourselves in.¡±

    ¡°Ok, ok,¡± he said. ¡°We¡¯ll pick you up on our way out. We¡¯ll be there in thirty. Just sit tight.¡±

    ¡°Good,¡± I said. ¡°Be there.¡± I hung up the phone. ¡°Alright,¡± I asked the rest of the team, ¡°how are things?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re mostly sealed off,¡± John said as he climbed a ladder. ¡°I¡¯m going to see if I can jam these garage doors. Then, we¡¯ll be sealed in pretty tight.¡±

    Kyle, who had just finished extending the stock on his MP-7 with one hand, said, ¡°There¡¯s a second level upstairs. We should check it out.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°we¡¯ll check it out together.¡±

    Nari, who had been hiding behind one of the crates, said, ¡°What should I do?¡±

    ¡°Stay down here,¡± I said. ¡°If they¡¯re planning on breaching the upstairs, I don¡¯t want¡­¡± Suddenly, there was a knock on the door we had come in. ¡°Change of plans,¡± I said, ¡°Sunny, answer them. Nari, come upstairs with us. When we get to the top, stay there.¡±

    She nodded. I noticed that she had pulled the pistol she had taken. ¡°You know,¡± I said as we headed up the metal staircase, ¡°it might help you survive if you just drop that.¡± Behind me, I could hear Sunny talking in Korean with someone. They both sounded tense.

    Nari remained silent. Finally, when we got to the second floor, an office area, she said, ¡°But you¡¯ll need help, won¡¯t you? I don¡¯t want you guys to die.¡±

    We were at the rear of the building. A maze of cubicles separated us from the front. Behind us was a window with curtains drawn. Judging by the light, all the windows had blinds drawn. I wondered if the company that had set this warehouse up had been doing some shady dealings.

    I turned to her and knelt down to look her in the eye. ¡°At this point,¡± I said, ¡°I don¡¯t think you can make much of a difference by fighting. If you survive, you can do a lot more.¡± I stood up. ¡°Besides, it¡¯s our job to protect you, not the other way around.¡±

    This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

    ¡°I guess¡­¡± Nari said. She didn¡¯t seem convinced, but after a while, she smiled, pretending to be reassured. Suddenly, there came the sound of glass breaking. ¡°What was that?¡± Nari¡¯s face was now worried.

    ¡°Stay. Here.¡± I said. I removed my silencer and Kyle and I began moving towards where the sound had come from. The maze of cubicles masked our movements, but they also made it impossible to see the enemy. It also was a completely nerve-racking experience. Every single cubicle contained a chance for a SWAT officer with a submachinegun to pop out and unload a mag into our faces, and the flimsy wood and cloth walls offered as much protection as a sheet of paper.

    This paranoia is the only reason I¡¯m alive. Before turning a corner, I always peeked out to make sure it was safe. I¡¯d also check every cubicle. This made us slower than we¡¯d normally be, but because I took a peek that last time, I saw that several South Korean SWAT Officers were standing by a broken window in a triangle formation, with a fourth climbing up.

    Before the one facing in my direction saw me, I motioned for Kyle to stop. I then reached in my belt for a grenade. There were only two frags left. I sighed. It wasn¡¯t like there would be a way to take them out in a non-fatal way anyway. I took it out, pulled the pin, then rolled it down the hall.

    When the muffled thud came, along with a scream, the two of us turned the corner and headed down the hall. Four bodies were scattered throughout the intersection. One tried to raise his submachinegun, a K-7, I think, but Kyle shot him. Almost simultaneously, another SWAT officer raised his hand and a pistol over the ledge of the window. Before he could fire, I put a bullet into his head.

    Then, as soon as the SWAT officer fell, a sniper shot rang out. I flung myself into a nearby cubicle, firing at distant water tower where I had seen a flash. I had fired three, four or five rounds in a panic, then my gun ran dry just before I got into the cubicle.

    I looked into the opposite cubicle. There, Kyle sat, breathing heavily, face contorted in pain. Worryingly, his bad arm was bleeding. The sniper was either a bad shot or had been startled by one of his colleagues dying.

    Suddenly, I heard footsteps. Yet another SWAT officer leaned around the corner. We both drew pistols as someone called out in warning. Both of us managed to get several shots off. His grouping was perfect. Four shots in the chest, right where my heart should be. The only reason I¡¯m still alive is that I had two magazines and a thick Kevlar plate right above my heart. I staggered back, my chest on fire and rapidly bruising up.

    I, on the other hand, fired only three times. My grouping was also terrible. Two shots went in his center mass¡­ and the third traveled up and hit him in the neck. The .357 SIG round completely tore his neck open. He fell backwards, blood spraying everywhere.

    As I slid down the itchy cubicle wall, pain shooting through my chest, I realized that .357 SIG and 9x19mm weren¡¯t going to do the job. I dropped the SIG and ejected the empty magazine. Each movement brought me massive amounts of pain, but I could do it on autopilot.

    That was extremely lucky for me. Just as I cocked the G-3, what I hoped was the last SWAT officer burst into view. I fired from the hip, and he fired wildly. If I had been standing up, I would have gotten a face full of lead. The SWAT officer didn¡¯t have time to correct his mistake. Four 7.62mm NATO rounds slammed into his chest and he fell back, bleeding heavily.

    I sighed in relief, then began coughing. My chest was hurting so badly I felt woozy. Kyle, meanwhile, was trying to bandage his arm with one hand. Despite the pain, he also looked relieved. Then, from back where we had entered the second floor, the sounds of gunfire came. We paused, looking at each other in horror. Then, after a few seconds of silence, there came the single, solitary pop of a pistol.

    We needed to move. But to do that, we needed to take care of that sniper. I flipped down my 3x scope and leaned out, praying the sniper didn¡¯t see me. I then tried to find the water tower.

    When I did, I saw that I was right. There was a dude with a rifle on the catwalk around the top. Eyeballing the range, as the angle I was leaning made adjusting the range impossible, I drew a bead on the sniper. ¡°Kyle,¡± I gasped out, when I thought I had a good shot, ¡°When I take the shot, I want you to get the fuck out of here and check on Nari.¡± The effort it took to talk left me out of breath and in a good deal of pain.

    ¡°I¡¯m ready,¡± Kyle said.

    He didn¡¯t sound ready, but I didn¡¯t have much time. I took the shot. Then I collapsed on the floor from pain, nearly blacking out. Kyle began running. For a second, I thought he would get away cleanly. Then the sniper began firing wildly. One of the bullets even ricocheted off the ground in front of me and cracked my glasses.

    I considered my options. There was no way I could make another shot, but I couldn¡¯t just sit here and hope I didn¡¯t die. I decided the best way to do this would be to crawl towards the window and hope the angle was such that the sniper couldn¡¯t see me.

    After I had used my feet to collect my discarded SIG, I began the arduous journey. When I had gotten to the point where I was under the window¡¯s ledge, I turned back towards the rear. When I was near a wall, I struggled to my feet. The pain was so much I nearly fell back down. After upchucking all the power sludge I had eaten that day, I broke into something approximating a run. My lungs burned and my vision turned black.

    When I turned the corner, I almost fainted. The pain had obscured everything so much that I didn¡¯t register Kyle until he said, ¡°Killer! You¡¯re alive!¡± I looked up. There he was, smiling in relief. ¡°Didn¡¯t think you¡¯d make it.¡±

    ¡°Could¡­ could say the same about you,¡± I said. ¡°How are¡­ how are the others?¡±

    Kyle¡¯s expression darkened. ¡°You should see this for yourself.¡±

    I began the process of staggering over to Kyle. When I was about halfway there, I stumbled over something. It was the corpse of a SWAT officer. There was one other. I instantly got a sinking feeling.

    At the intersection where Kyle was, I looked to the left first. There, almost exactly where we had left her, was Nari. The key differences, however were the expression of shock on her face and the fact that smoke lazily drifted from the barrel of the salvaged M&P that was now in her possession.

    As I turned my attention to the right, I noticed the corpse of the SWAT officer on the floor, his brain splattered across the floor. Judging by the vector and Nari¡¯s smoking gun, he had been shot by Nari. His weapon, a K-1, was laying on the floor, as well as a ZMR.

    When I finally was able to focus all the way to the right, I saw that Sunny was bent over a prone figure. I couldn¡¯t see his face. ¡°I¡¯ve stopped the bleeding,¡± Sunny said, turning to face me, ¡°but he needs a hospital.¡±

    The person she was working on was John. His face was pale and his breathing was coming out in gasps. Then, Sunny asked a question that nearly broke me.

    ¡°Nate,¡± she asked, ¡°what should we do?¡±

 3.22: Help is on the Way

    I have to admit: looking at my best friend slowly bleeding out made me freeze up. It didn¡¯t help that the only member of our party who wasn¡¯t dead, injured or captured was a precocious nine-year-old engineer who had never fired a gun.

    Kyle was first to make a suggestion. ¡°We can¡¯t continue this,¡± he said. ¡°We need to surrender. The next wave will kill us.¡±

    ¡°Fuck that,¡± Sunny snarled in a vicious tone I hadn¡¯t imagined her capable of. ¡°While you guys were fighting up here, they were trying to negotiate with me.¡± I suddenly remembered that during our fight, we had heard the chatter of AK fire. Sunny must have realized what the South Korean SWAT were attempting and ended the negotiations aggressively. Another path closed.

    ¡°You didn¡¯t¡­¡± Kyle said, realizing the same thing I had.

    ¡°I did,¡± Sunny said.

    Suddenly, before an argument could start up, the radio chirped. ¡°Hey,¡± a static-distorted voice said, ¡°we¡¯re about twenty minutes out from your position. Can you meet us out at the rear of the warehouse?¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said, ¡°we¡¯ve got a man in critical condition. Can you bring a stretcher to the second floor?¡±

    ¡°No problem,¡± the person on the other end claimed. ¡°Besides, we¡¯ve got a lot of firepower with us.¡±

    ¡°Thank you,¡± I said. ¡°Be advised, there¡¯s a sniper on a boat and another on a water tower.¡±

    ¡°Thanks for the heads up. We¡¯ll keep an eye out for them. Also sounds like there¡¯s a chopper.

    I turned off the radio, new momentum flowing through me. ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°what we need now is to get into a defensive position. What do we have? What¡¯s our ammo count? Can we move John somewhere a little more safe?¡±

    Sunny shook her head as she opened her bag. ¡°Sorry,¡± she said, reaching in to take out a blood bag. ¡°At this stage, with my complete attention, he might live. If we move him, it could break the surgical glue. Then he¡¯d only have eight minutes.¡±

    ¡°So, functionally, we only have two people,¡± I said.

    ¡°Sorry,¡± Sunny said.

    ¡°That¡¯s ok,¡± I reassured her, ¡°It just means things will be a little difficult.¡± I noticed that Nari didn¡¯t offer to help out. On the one hand, she¡¯d already done more than enough and it didn¡¯t seem like she had come out the better for it. On the other, we needed every person we could get and I was disturbed by her silence and motionlessness.

    Apparently, she wasn¡¯t the only one I should have worried about. ¡°Ok,¡± Kyle said, ¡°this is all well and good, but how are we going to survive the next wave? I¡¯m pretty sure that this,¡± he indicated his MP-7, ¡°isn¡¯t strong enough to penetrate their body armor. And even if I could fire my rifle, I only have a mag left.¡±

    ¡°Then aim low or high,¡± I said. ¡°Or borrow a rifle our friends have dropped. We¡¯re getting out of here.¡± I paused, then said, ¡°That reminds me, I need to refill my G-3¡¯s mags. If you¡¯re not using it, I could use some 7.62. Meanwhile, Nari, you should get into that cubicle. Stay down, and by that, I mean lie on the ground face down with your hands interlocked behind your neck. That¡¯s probably the best way to avoid getting shot.¡±

    Everyone moved to their assigned tasks, though I noticed that only one of us was really enthusiastic. Nari was dead-eye and shivering, Kyle seemed to have convinced himself we were all going to die, and even I was moving slowly due to pain. This was in sharp contrast to the grim efficiency with which Sunny was working on John.

    Finally, when all the supplies had been distributed, Kyle and I were able to scavenge several mags of 5.56 from John and the dead Koreans. We also had a few grenades, mostly smoke and flashbangs, but there were a few frags and an incendiary.

    Actually, I have a confession to make. When I had first walked past them, I didn¡¯t notice it at first. However, when I was searching one of the SWAT officers, I noticed that he was still breathing. Upon seeing the rise and fall of his chest, I stood up and unholstered my Berretta.

    As I stood there for a moment, working up the¡­ well, I don¡¯t want to call it courage¡­ the whatever-it-was to murder a dying man in cold blood, the SWAT officer¡¯s eyes fluttered open. He slurred something in Korean. If it had been something in anger or even if he had begged and pleaded, it would have been easier. Instead, his brown eyes and soft voice conveyed his confusion despite the fact I had no idea what he was saying.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± I said. Then I fired. The officer¡¯s eye exploded into red goop. After a pause, I resumed looting his corpse for anything useful. He was using a small, silenced SMG, so he didn¡¯t seem to have anything useful. Luckily, there wasn¡¯t anything personal, like a wedding ring or a photo. I don¡¯t think I could have dealt with that.

    I sighed. Grabbing my G-3 and the two assault rifles I¡¯d collected (I believe they¡¯re called K-1As) I turned around to see Kyle looking at me, his expression unreadable.

    I ignored his look, and said, ¡°So, if you want, here¡¯s an assault rifle. Also, I think we shouldn¡¯t bother with the smoke grenades. It¡¯ll just reduce visibility for us.¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± Kyle said. ¡°I¡¯ll toss them and just take the more potent stuff.¡± His tone of voice was as unreadable as his face. It could be anything from disgust at my actions to despair. He then stopped talking.

    We then began the waiting game. It seemed like the police surrounding us had decided to drive us mad by simply waiting us out. All we heard outside was the sound of sirens and a helicopter orbiting us. I could imagine waiting like this, not expecting a ride. I could see digging down like this for potentially hours, waiting for the inevitable second attack.

    Finally, we heard a loud thump from downstairs. I moved so I could look down the stairs, but still use the corner as cover. I couldn¡¯t see all the way down, but if anyone used this stair as an entrance, I had the drop on them. As I leaned out, I heard the sounds of people in heavy armor approaching rapidly. Still, I could probably drop a few of them.

    I was instantly proven wrong. Charging at me like he thought he was The Flash or something, was a guy with a riot shield. Behind him, struggling to keep up, despite lugging less weight was a line of SWAT officers with shotguns, assault rifles, SMGs and all the other bits of close-combat goodness that the South Korean SWAT carry. I was too busy panicking to get a good count.

    ¡°SHIELD!¡± I called out as I opened fire. Before the advancing line of death could return fire and drive me further into cover, I noticed that my bullets were bouncing off the shield. So videogames are right about something, I thought in detached horror as the damn thing kept advancing like an over-excited puppy.

    Then, for a split second, I saw a red tube bounce down into the stairwell. A second or two later, and there was a hiss and screams. I moved back into a firing position. What I saw nearly made my stomach turn.

    The stairs had been turned into an inferno. Most of the team that had been sent in was throwing themselves over the edge trying to get out of it, but the guy with the shield was backing down slowly, despite having gone up like a gas-soaked torch. Seeing me stick my head out, he fired a few rounds at me from a pistol. He was interrupted by a short burst from Kyle¡¯s MP-7. There was a spray of red out the side of his head and he fell backwards.

    Suddenly, from out at sea, there was the roar of what sounded like a minigun in the distance. It lasted for a second, but I could hear the helicopter start to have¡­ difficulties. A second later, the radio crackled to life. ¡°Hey,¡± our rescuer said, ¡°we¡¯re just about to get in here. Where on the second floor are you?¡±

    ¡°If you¡¯re coming in from the sea,¡± I said, ¡°there should be some stairs nearby. We¡¯re right at the top.¡±

    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    ¡°Roger that,¡± he said. ¡°You should hear us come in.¡±

    The next few minutes weren¡¯t exactly silent, but I¡¯d still describe them as way too quiet. After the initial shouts of surprise that come whenever you see a friendly helicopter get hit, the SWAT outside quieted down. There was still the sound of sirens, but there was no gunfire and no attempt to make an entrance. At least, no attempt that I could hear.

    After a few moments of it being too quiet, Kyle said, ¡°I don¡¯t like it.¡±

    ¡°Agreed,¡± I said, ¡°but we can take advantage of this. Collect anything that we¡¯ve brought with us. I want to be ready to move as soon as our ride gets here. Kyle, once you¡¯ve done that, make sure they can¡¯t come back through that window again.¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± he said. ¡°Should I use John¡¯s gun?¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said. ¡°Now move it. We don¡¯t have all day.¡± There was a flurry of movement, but it was over pretty quickly. After all, we carried all our stuff on our backs. During that time, I decided that it would probably be better to switch to one of the captured carbines, seeing as how much ammo for my G-3 had been either spent or destroyed by a single shot. I had the G-3 in my pack and about three mags (including the one in the gun) collected for the K-1when I heard a low rumbling sound. It was the garage doors in the front of the warehouse.

    I turned around to tell Kyle, just in time to see him duck back behind the cube wall. A split second later, there was the thump and a bright light. He then leaned back out of cover to begin firing from where the flash had come from.

    Before I could make up my mind as to whether I should go help him, a voice came in from over the radio, ¡°Hey guys,¡± he said, ¡°We have visual. Touching down in two and a half minutes. How does resistance look?¡±

    ¡°Pretty hard,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m going to see if I can soften it up a bit.¡± I dropped the radio and moved into a firing position. As I went down to the landing, I took out three of my remaining grenades.

    As I let the first grenade go, I noticed that the intruding groups were mostly patrol cops. A few had assault rifles, K-2s, I believe, and pump-action shotguns of some kind. Most, however, had pistols.

    Luckily, they noticed my grenade before they noticed me. Someone shouted something in Korean, then there was a thump. Apparently, I had just used one of the few remaining frags. Then there was a thump and flash from a flashbang, then the hiss of my incendiary.

    I quickly noticed that the garage doors were still rising. Dropping to a knee and praying to God that my grenades had distracted them, I aimed at one of the motors and let loose a short burst.

    The good news was that enough of the rounds hit to make the door start falling down. The bad news is that I gave my position away. Instantly, one of the pistol-wielding officers began firing. I crouched down behind the sheet of metal on the landing as pistol rounds began hitting it. Luckily, the thin metal seemed to block a few of the rounds.

    Deciding that I wanted to make sure nothing more powerful got through, I decided to aim at one of the officers with a rifle. The one I chose was drawing a bead right at me. A lucky burst must have nicked his artery. Most of the rest got their heads down after that. But a few others decided to shoot at me.

    One of them got a round of buckshot off at me. Two balls shattered the left lens of my glasses, a third came close enough to my neck to burn and several dented the metal. He disappeared behind cover before I could pick him out. Then a well-aimed burst of rifle fire penetrated the metal wall, knocking me backwards.

    Body armor, in this situation, is a blessing and a curse. One the one hand, I was alive. If I hadn¡¯t been wearing armor, I¡¯m pretty sure I¡¯d have drowned in my own blood or died from shock when little bits of my heart flew out my back. On the other hand, my already bruised or broken ribs now felt like they were on fire.

    I was debating getting up when the explosions began. Shortly after that, the gunfire started up as well. Kyle had been having his own battle upstairs, but this was different. It sounded like someone with a collection of assault rifles and heavy weapons had suddenly arrived. After a few seconds, there was a series of loud bangs inside the warehouse, followed by sound of gunfire.

    Summoning whatever strength I had left, I got up and took a look down. Below me were a group of men with heavy Kevlar armor and a collection of assault rifles, shotguns, SMGs and even a machinegun. Three of them were heading towards the stairs. I began halfheartedly covering them.

    When one of the three heading towards the upper levels got to me, he said, somewhat jokingly, ¡°Let me guess, you¡¯re the one who needs the stretcher.¡±

    ¡°Actually¡­¡± I gasped out, ¡°¡­ I¡¯m the closest we have to full health.¡± Upon seeing the man¡¯s horrified look, I said, ¡°Just kidding. Our medic¡¯s working on the critical upstairs. Follow me.¡±

    I got up and moved as fast as I could. When I got to the top, I called out, ¡°Guys, ride¡¯s here.¡±

    ¡°Good!¡± Kyle said over the sound of his own gunfire. ¡°I¡¯m just about out.¡±

    Two of the newcomers began unfolding a stretcher. The third took charge. ¡°Ok,¡± he said, pointing to Sunny, ¡°you help us get him mobile.¡± He pointed at me. ¡°You get to the boat. I¡¯ll help stand guard and kibbutz.¡±

    ¡°Should I take Nari?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Who¡¯s Nari?¡± one of the medics asked.

    ¡°A VIP,¡± Sunny said.

    ¡°Ok,¡± the leader said. ¡°She goes with you. I don¡¯t want any more injuries. We¡¯ve got a year¡¯s worth of income riding on this.¡±

    ¡°Hear that, Nari?¡± I asked.

    In response, she shot out from the cubicle she was in. ¡°Definitely!¡± she said. Her blank look was now replaced by one of terror. Poor kid. She was going to be traumatized for the rest of her life.

    ¡°What the hell?¡± the lead merc asked. ¡°She¡¯s got to be seven at most!¡±

    ¡°Sir,¡± Nari said, impatiently, but somehow with some modicum of respect, ¡°I¡¯m nine.¡±

    I ignored the interplay. ¡°Ok, Nari,¡± I said, kneeling down to look her in the eye, ¡°Stay with me. If I fall down, just run.¡±

    She nodded solemnly. Reassured, I got up. Apparently, kneeling had been a mistake. I ignored the pain, got up and began running. The trip passed in a haze of pain. Somehow, I ended up face down on the deck of a small patrol boat, vague, yet extremely painful, memories of climbing a short ladder seared into my brain.

    When my vision finally cleared, I noticed that Kyle was staring down at me. ¡°You ok, man?¡± he asked as figures in Kevlar began getting onto the boat. Near the front of the boat, the two medics we had seen were taking John down below decks.

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said as I got up, my voice weak and wheezy. Then I vomited from pain and fell back to my knees. My hand fell in the puddle of sick I had just made. ¡°Just¡­ peachy. We going soon?¡±

    In answer, there was a short, yet ground-shaking burst from the boat¡¯s autocannon. Then, a jet of heat lit up the air. From my position on the ground, I could see that it was from a flame-thrower mounted next to the cannon. I turned to see that the cannon had blasted into where we had been holed up. The stream of napalm had been directed into the opening.

    As soon as the stream of jellied fire shut off, the boat we were on, as well as two other similarly armed boats, one in front and one behind, took off like rockets.

    When the acceleration got back to reasonable levels, Kyle hauled me to my feet. ¡°So,¡± he asked, a tired, yet giddy grin lighting up his face as he helped me down into the hold, ¡°does that answer your question?¡±

    I laughed, the pain nearly making me hurl again. We were going home.

 3.23: Did it Matter?

    The rest of the trip home was pretty uneventful, except for the annoying transfer from our rescuer¡¯s boats to the NIU helicopter. Let me tell you, it is annoying as hell trying to get one nine-year-old, one person on a stretcher and three commandos from off the deck of a modified patrol boat and onto a helicopter in the middle of the ocean. After that grueling ordeal, I watched the three heavily armed patrol boats speed off into the distance.

    As I watched them go, I briefly wondered who they were. My guess, though, is that the information was need-to-know, and I didn¡¯t need to know it. Plus, I didn¡¯t really want to spend any time more thinking about this mission than I had to.

    I¡¯m not sure when I realized it, but by the time we had touched down at the NIU airport, I realized that several people I knew had died. I hadn¡¯t known Jeong or Joseph before the mission, and I had some problems with Joseph, but I hadn¡¯t wanted any of them to die¡­ at least, by the second day.

    Even though, I, personally, thought that we needed to find out what the Dragon¡¯s Teeth were up to, I still wondered if the information we had gotten was worth the price. Two of our people had died. Then we had shot our way through what felt like an entire South Korean police force. That last bit has probably joined the long list of things keeping me up at night.

    Eventually, we got back to NIU. There¡¯s a reason NIU¡¯s called Nowhere Island University. The L-shaped island is literally in the middle of nowhere, with a second, smaller, island in the ¡°bay¡± formed by the prongs and a third one on the other side. Once upon a time, during WWII, someone had believed that it was worth setting up an air base there. Someone else had decided that it was worth invading, and as a result, hundreds of people had lost their lives there.

    From what I could gather, the island¡¯s only value now was how far out of the way it was. That didn¡¯t mean people didn¡¯t still die there. As the chopper passed over the main island¡¯s joint, I noticed the Hell Semester barracks. The barracks, and Hell Semester, had an actual name, but I had never bothered to learn it. Barely a second later, I caught a glimpse of the clearing where a group of people, including me, had passed the Hell Semester ¡°final.¡± Those three months had been some of the worst of my life at that point. Not only had I suffered the common Freshman year experience of not knowing anybody, but I had also made several enemies who literally tried to kill me, forced through a brutal training regimen, and put in a series of kill-or-die situations.

    Still, considering where I had just been and the way my second semester had gone, it was good to be back. I remembered the bourbon I had one night at second semester and how I could actually sleep after a shot or two. That, plus a couple advils, sounded like an amazing idea.

    When we landed, all of the recon team was hauled onto stretchers. Nari followed along as we were brought into a Bearcat ambulance. She seemed a little worried about getting into the large, black vehicle. My guess is that she had seen people go into black armored cars before, and she hadn¡¯t seen them come back.

    I, on the other hand, had taken a ride in one of Campus Security¡¯s Bearbulances. I had been stabbed in the gut during Hell Semester and been set right next to someone who wasn¡¯t as lucky as I had been. We had both survived, but my fellow classmate hadn¡¯t gone back to Hell Semester. I wondered if she could come back.

    Once we were finally in, doctors began working on Kyle and John. John had been in and out of consciousness throughout the entire trip. Sunny had been working on him with our rescuer¡¯s medics, and between sleep deprivation and her cracked or broken ribs, she was pretty out of it herself.

    ¡°So,¡± one of the doctors in the Bearbulance said, detaching himself from Kyle, ¡°Mr. Rockford¡¯s going to survive, and, by some miracle, there¡¯s a good chance Mr. Marshall will survive as well. Now we¡¯ve just got to check you guys. If you would remove your front plates, we can conduct the battlefield ultrasound.¡±

    ¡°Do I need to take my shirt off?¡± I asked as Sunny and I removed the plates in our armor.

    ¡°Nope,¡± the guy said, as he fiddled with the stylus-like device connected to his tablet. ¡°There¡¯s been another upgrade.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± Nari said, suddenly perking up, ¡°you can do ultrasound without having to apply gel? And even do it through cloth? How?¡±

    The medic shrugged. ¡°Don¡¯t know. A group of our alums made it. I just thank God for it every time I use it.¡± He then began scanning me. After a while, he said, ¡°Let me guess: you¡¯re having trouble breathing and severe chest pains?¡± I nodded. The medic sighed. ¡°Your ribs are severely cracked. Don¡¯t walk or exert yourself for a month or three.¡±

    He then did a similar scan of Sunny. ¡°Can I see your plates?¡± he asked. We showed the bullet-riddled things to him. ¡°Figured,¡± he said. ¡°I did a tour in Iraq, made the mistake of retiring to Chicago, and started here literally the week before the Grenzefrontier attack. Am I always going to have to deal with gunshots?¡±

    ¡°Be careful what you wish for, man,¡± I said, leaning back. ¡°Come Hell Semester, you¡¯re gonna get it.¡± I closed my eyes, then a thought struck me. ¡°Hey, you think I could keep this?¡± I asked, holding up my plate. ¡°You know, like a souvenir?¡± I giggled manically. ¡°Just a little something to say, ¡®Hey, Nate, remember how you almost died in Korea investigating the Dragon¡¯s Teeth?¡¯¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sure,¡± the medic said, cutting me off before I could ramble on any further. ¡°You¡¯re going to have to stay awake for a bit longer, though. The President wants to debrief you.¡±

    ¡°John gets operated on first, right?¡±

    One of the medics working on John laughed. ¡°He¡¯s not going to be at your interview. He¡¯s going straight to the operating theater, then to ICU. Meanwhile, you four are going to get debriefed.¡±

    This was¡­ interesting news. First off, Nari was going to be with us, presumably so The President could figure out what to do with her. Second, he was in quite the hurry to find out what was going on in North Korea. I remembered that when he sent John and me on this mission, he had mentioned he had theories. Then that weird, cult-like group of Dragon¡¯s Teeth had said that their creators had someone behind them. Considering NIU¡¯s level of tech and the fact that they had been researching interdimensional travel, I was willing to bet that benefactor was our beloved President.

    Eventually, we were brought to the school¡¯s hospital. We were in a wing set up with several beds and two bathrooms. I had been in a similar room before, due to the whole stabbed in the gut thing. For all I knew, it might have been the same room.

    ¡°If you can stand,¡± one of the medics attending us said, ¡°you might want to take a shower in the bathrooms and change into some hospital gowns. We got some in the bathrooms.¡±

    ¡°Let me guess,¡± I said, ¡°you want us to smell nice before The President gets here.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s that,¡± he said as I got up, ¡°and there¡¯s the fact that showers make you feel better.¡±

    After he left, Sunny and I proved him right. As the warm water poured over my burns and bruises, I sighed with pleasure. All the dust, dirt and sweat that had settled on me slowly flowed off. Yeah, it hurt like hell, but that really wasn¡¯t much of a difference from normal and I had gotten to take my underwear off.

    I got the pants and gown, savoring the sensation of clean clothes against my skin. I staggered out and flopped down on the farthest bed. Kyle, on the way to the shower, said, ¡°You know, you could have taken the closest bed.¡±

    I would have shrugged, but I was lying down and my chest was killing me. ¡°I¡¯ll leave that bed to one of you guys,¡± I said. ¡°Meanwhile, you can go shower. I¡¯m going to see if I can get the news.¡±

    I flipped the TV on and began watching. Apparently, while we had been away, ISIS and the Grenzefrontier had both launched offensives. While the Grenzefrontier incursion in the US had been mopped up rather well, the offshoots in South America were starting to become a problem, and the German front had become a bloodbath. Meanwhile, ISIS had expanded from Syria and Iraq to Jordan. The Iraq situation was particularly horrendous as ISIS had somehow gotten ahold of tanks. Now, the only thing stopping ISIS from taking Baghdad was a coalition of Parahumans, local militia, and foreign auxiliaries. The government my country had spent eight expensive years installing was, apparently, useless.

    In the midst of all this, people were starting to notice The Dragon¡¯s Teeth. While two people were talking about all the horrible things ISIS and the Grenzefrontier were doing to the people in their territory, we were interrupted by a special report.

    The feed instantly cut to a picture of the border between North and South Korea, the camera focused on the backs of South Korean soldiers aiming at the North side. It sort of reminded me of the opening scene from A New Hope when the Rebels are about to receive visitors. From the North Korean side, the sound of gunfire and explosions could be heard.

    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    I turned around to see Nari looking over my shoulder intently. ¡°It¡¯s the Dragon¡¯s Teeth, isn¡¯t it?¡± she asked.

    ¡°We¡¯ll see,¡± I said. ¡°Something tells me we¡¯re going to get confirmation.¡±

    A few seconds later, I was proven right. From the North Korean side, a North Korean soldier ran out from the guardhouse waving a white sheet wrapped around a broom and shouting desperately.

    ¡°He¡¯s saying he¡¯s defecting,¡± Nari said. ¡°He¡¯s begging them to¡­ oh no.¡± The feed, which had been HD, suddenly took a dip in quality, with weird, flickering white splotches scattered around the courtyard. But that wasn¡¯t the reason why Nari had said ¡°oh no.¡±

    Three Dragon¡¯s Teeth Berserkers had burst through the door, their huge guns slung over their shoulders and their armor pockmarked and scarred from the recent battle. The defecting North Korean turned around and put on a burst of speed, but two of the Berserkers easily tackled him. The defector briefly disappeared under a mass of armor, barely a centimeter from the border. Then, without a word, the Berserkers calmly stood up and dragged their captive back into the guard house. The captive, despite obviously having his nose broken, and his ribs broken as well, kicked and screamed all the way back.

    As a Millennial, I understood for the first time what is was like for previous generations to watch as JFK¡¯s head exploded or a plane to fly into the World Trade Center. I, and millions of others, were all watching with the same horror.

    While we were watching slack-jawed, the third Berserker, towering over the Koreans from his over seven foot height, began speaking in Korean. His tone and body language was very respectful, most likely because his armor¡¯s glowing eyes and the display of his raw power were intimidating enough. After he was done, he bowed and walked back into the guardhouse. The footage kept focus on the scene, as if the person controlling the stream was stunned.

    ¡°He says not to worry. The North Korean people are simply undergoing an internal struggle, and he requests that the people of the world respect North Korea¡¯s sovereignty.¡±

    Nari and I jumped a bit to see Sunny and Kyle in hospital gowns, both with grave faces staring intently at the screen. I had been so engrossed in the footage, I hadn¡¯t heard them come out. ¡°How much did you guys see?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Enough,¡± Kyle said darkly. ¡°I hope you¡¯re wrong about them getting worse, Killer.¡±

    The news cut back to the two anchors. The male anchor, seemingly not knowing what to say, finally said, ¡°That was live footage from the border between North and South Korea. For the past few months, we have been hearing rumors about a group called The Dragon¡¯s Teeth operating within North Korea.¡±

    ¡°Past few months?¡± I muttered incredulously. ¡°More like over a year. Do your job and tell us about this shit before a country falls next time.¡±

    ¡°Meanwhile,¡± the female anchor said with a robotic chipperness, ¡°what would aliens think about humanity¡¯s capacity for destruction? The question may be more relevant than you think as scientists from SETI come on to talk to us about potential alien sightings. More after these messages!¡±

    As a happy add for soft drinks began to play, Nari said, ¡°Now, I admit I am not qualified to talk about media, but is Western media always this¡­ shallow?¡±

    Sunny laughed. ¡°You haven¡¯t seen them talking about twerking. I think my first exposure to American cable news was when everyone was discussing Miley Cyrus twerking at the Grammys.¡±

    Before Nari could ask what Miley Cyrus, the Grammys or twerking were, there was a knock at the door. ¡°Hey,¡± The President¡¯s voice came in, ¡°you guys all decent in there?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re dressed,¡± I said, turning off the TV. ¡°You can come in.¡±

    The President walked in, still looking exactly like Robert Downey Jr. and sporting the exact same charisma. However, he was probably still capable of ordering or committing horrifying acts and still maintain his genial charisma. From my knowledge, under his regime, NIU had engaged in the yearly atrocity that was Hell Semester every year since its inception. He was one of most evil and dangerous people I had ever met.

    ¡°Man,¡± he said, sitting down on the bed opposite us, ¡°you guys look like crap.¡± Noticing my frown and possibly misinterpreting it, he hastily added, ¡°Still, from the sounds of things, you did more in two days than I expected you could do in a week.¡±

    Suddenly I remembered something. ¡°Hey, Kyle,¡± I said, ¡°where are our cPhones?¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± The President said, ¡°you gave them to the ranking crewman on the chopper that picked you up.¡± After I stared blankly at him for a few moments, he sighed and asked, ¡°You wanna tell me what happened over there before you crash?¡±

    We began to tell the story. Nari and I did most of the talking, with Sunny and Kyle only occasionally butting in. I noticed that The President just nodded and made noises of interest or comprehension.

    Eventually, I got to the part of the story where we had encountered the Deets in the midst of their bizarre massacre/prayer session. ¡°So,¡± I said, after a brief description, ¡°something has been on my mind ever since.¡± I paused, waiting for someone to ask what it was. When no one asked, I continued, ¡°Something I thought you¡¯d be able to help us with, Mr. President. After all, when you commissioned John and me, you said you had a theory.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± The President said, straightening up, ¡°what¡¯s the problem?¡±

    ¡°In the prayer they said, The Dragon¡¯s Teeth¡­ priest, I guess, said something about how their creators had a master of their own.¡± As I said this, I watched for his reaction. ¡°I just thought you might know something about this person. After all, we know that whoever created The Dragon¡¯s Teeth are proficient in advanced robotics, cloning, and advanced energy sources, as well as possibly having the same teleporting technology as the Grenzefrontier. Some of the people who developed this stuff had to have come through Nowhere Island University at some point.¡±

    The President shrugged. ¡°I mean, yeah, it¡¯s probable,¡± he said, ¡°but the day you touched down in North Korea, a joint FBI/UNIX operation stopped someone who was about to turn the city of New Orleans into vampiric fish people. The guy behind that never went here.¡± He paused. ¡°Though I kind of wish he had. We could use that kind of forward-thinking here.¡±

    ¡°Still,¡± Kyle said, surprising me, ¡°someone should still check into it.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry, I will,¡± The President said, ¡°but I¡¯ve seen this kind of thing play out. A lot. One monster creates another monster¡­ then the second monster kills the first and gets busy creating a third. By the time we find the corpse of this benefactor, the Dragon¡¯s Teeth will have already rebelled. Anyway, where were you?¡±

    When we finally finished the story, The President clapped his hands together. ¡°Well,¡± he said, ¡°I¡¯d say that you guys deserve bonuses. The only problem is, what are we going to do with Ms. Lee here?¡±

    Sunny spoke up. ¡°I talked with her. If you¡¯re still looking for staff for next year, I can take a position and she can enroll in the school.¡±

    The President considered this briefly. ¡°Sure,¡± he said. ¡°So long as she passes the Extraordinary Circumstances Entrance Examination. Which is a little hard for a five-year-old. If she can¡¯t¡­¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m nine,¡± Nari interrupted, rising to both the bait and the challenge. ¡°And I will pass.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll hold you to it,¡± The President, an amused smile playing across his lips. He got up. ¡°Anyway,¡± he said, stretching a bit, ¡°We¡¯ve managed to get all you sophomores your rooms for next year and managed to wing it so that you can store your weapons here over the summer. If there¡¯s anything else¡­¡±

    ¡°Actually,¡± I said, ¡°there is.¡± Everyone turned to look at me. ¡°I managed to take some Deet weaponry with me, and I have some plans for them. Do you mind if I keep them?¡±

    The President smiled. ¡°Well, when you put it like that, go nuts.¡± Without another word, he turned around and began to walk out.

    As he did so, I closed my eyes. I¡¯d have a few weeks of much-earned recuperation, but after that, I had a laundry list of things I needed to do. Preparing for the Dragon¡¯s Teeth¡¯s move, seeing what I could do about ISIS and the Grenzefrontier, seeing if working with UNIX was or wasn¡¯t a lost cause, all while waiting for The President to slip up¡­ next semester was going to be very interesting.

 3.24: The End (Of the arc, not the serial)

    Recovery was quicker than I expected. Within a few days all our external scars, scrapes and burns were fully healed, even John¡¯s. The cracked ribs that Nari and I had suffered, however, would heal at the normal rate. ¡°We could just seal it up with surgical glue,¡± a doctor explained, ¡°but that would involve cutting you up. Unless you want to do the operation¡­¡±

    ¡°No need,¡± I said hurriedly. ¡°It should be cleared up by the time I get back, right?¡±

    At that point, my ribs had healed enough so that I could walk and talk. The problem, however, was standing up. Whenever I tried to use my core muscles, it felt like my chest was caught in a vice. In other words, it had improved a lot.

    Eventually, everyone was out of the hospital and installed in the lodgings they would live at next semester. John and I got a double near the Sun Tzu campus center right across the hall from where Kyle was. Sunny and Nari, meanwhile, were staying at a small house near the docks. My parents weren¡¯t expecting me back until three weeks after school ended, so that meant I had very little to do.

    Meanwhile, the nightmares had come back and they were worse than ever. Every time I closed my eyes, I would see the people who had died around me from former teachers who had died of cancer to those I had killed.

    Mostly, it was the ones I had killed. They chased me, hounded me, screamed and clawed at me, their bodies bearing the wounds that had ended their lives. The wounds I had inflicted.

    They couldn¡¯t end me the way I had ended them, and that enraged them. Instead, they surrounded me and listed off my crimes. I tried to ignore them and rationalize what I had done. Amir, the Al-Qaeda leader had tried to kill me. The people who had ambushed me at the Hell Semester final were sent by the school. Besides, I heard that they were rapists, weren¡¯t they? And everything that happened in Korea, that was self-defense as well, wasn¡¯t it?

    Still, it rang hollow, especially considering the South Korean cops. I doubt it would be reasonable to place the blame entirely on the remnants of the recon team, but that had been a complete shit show. I didn¡¯t go to North Korea to fight South Korean cops, but between mercs with itchy trigger fingers and overzealous cops, I had added another dozen people to my body count, none of whom deserved to die.

    John got out of the hospital a week and a half before we were supposed to go home. To celebrate, Sunny had invited us over to her house. A former professor she had worked with had brought a kid over, so Nari was off having a sleepover while the adults, from what I understood, drank themselves silly.

    ¡°Welcome!¡± Sunny said as I wheeled John in. ¡°I¡¯m sorry if it¡¯s a little bare-bones. I haven¡¯t had much time to get it furnished.¡± We were in a small living room with stairs leading upstairs, with the door directly in front of the staircase. The room itself had bare plaster walls, except for one section which Sunny and Nari apparently had started to paint. There were three couches, one of which was only half-assembled, and a box in a u-shape around a coffee table. They were facing a large TV and window. Apart from that, the only other decoration the room had was a locking bar.

    ¡°Not a problem,¡± I said, scanning the room for a place to put John. Eventually, I decided to just park him in front of the coffee table. That was, after all, where Sunny had put the food.

    Apparently, apart from the main dining hall and the staff/faculty food co-op, the only food options you had were a pizza place or a Chinese place. Sunny had apparently gotten large orders from both.

    In the grand tradition of take-out ordered by college students, it wasn¡¯t great, but it was better than cafeteria food. Also, in accordance to collegiate tradition, was the monumental amount of alchohol available. After I, personally, had three slices of peperoni pizza, four skewers of beef teriyaki, several chicken wings and three shots of whiskey, Kyle made his announcement.

    ¡°Well,¡± he said, getting up, ¡°I¡¯d better be getting back to my room. I¡¯m leaving tomorrow.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re what?¡± I asked. ¡°I thought that¡­¡±

    ¡°You two,¡± Kyle said, indicating John and me, ¡°are the ones keeping things secret from your family. My grandpa knows what I¡¯m doing. I was only staying long enough to make sure John got out.¡±

    ¡°Well¡­ see you when school starts, I guess,¡± I said.

    Kyle paused for a moment, staring past us. Finally he said, ¡°I might not be coming back.¡± He looked at our stunned faces. ¡°What, you¡¯re surprised? You guys are all smart people, you¡¯ve seen what this place is like. I thought you¡¯d take your first chance to get out.¡±

    ¡°I understand,¡± I admitted, ¡°but I think I can actually use this knowledge to change things. I mean, seriously, what the hell else am I going to do? Make videogames? Flip fucking burgers?¡± I took a sip of my fourth whiskey. ¡°Listen, there¡¯s a world out there that needs saving. And we have been put in the right place to save it.¡±

    Kyle looked at me sadly. ¡°Look at you,¡± he said, shaking his head. ¡°They fucking got to you, you dumbass. You might not work for them, now or fucking ever, but you¡¯re drunk off your ass and thinking you¡¯re Darth fucking Vader.¡± He staggered over to the door, possibly more drunk than I was. When he was about to leave, he said, ¡°I hope you wake up before you hit rock bottom, Killer.¡±

    With that, he walked out into the night. After the door slammed shut, I stared at it for a little while. John and I left soon after. Despite the argument, I had a refreshing, dreamless sleep. It was almost worth the pounding headache.

    The rest of the week was uneventful. We¡¯d occasionally see the summer students, including our friends Eric, Ray-Gun, MC Disaster, The Monk, and Doc. It was reasonably fun, but soon it was time to make the journey home.

    As we stepped out the plane, I asked John, ¡°You ready for this?¡± Two men with dark hair, glasses and suits were waiting by an equally dark car. They were our UNIX handlers, Agents Brosnan and Takashi. Our job was to give them the intel we had collected¡­ and that The President had approved.

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure¡­¡± John said. ¡°Shouldn¡¯t we¡­¡±

    ¡°If you want to,¡± I said, ¡°go ahead.¡± He didn¡¯t. He just stood there as Brosnan and Takashi walked over to us.

    ¡°You¡¯re late,¡± Takashi said in annoyance. His Japanese accent was even stronger than usual, too. He must have been even more agitated than usual. ¡°Four weeks late, in fact. Where have you been? And don¡¯t say an internship. We know¡­¡±

    ¡°I hate to interrupt,¡± Brosnan said, in his crisp British accent, ¡°but now is neither the time nor the place.¡± He ushered us to the car. ¡°We¡¯ll drop you off first at your agreed location, Mr. Jacobs.¡±

    The car ride was mostly done in silence. I noticed, however, that Brosnan was checking the mirrors quite a bit. Something about his attitude indicated that he was spooked. I was annoyed. The third party I had contacted knew where we¡¯d meet. They shouldn¡¯t have been watching.

    Eventually, we stopped at a parking lot near the Main Street of my town. The smells of the various restaurants permeated the air, despite the fact that it was too early for most of them to be open.

    As Agent Brosnan closed the car door, he said, ¡°This car was quite nice. However, it is rather odd how every single rental service at Logan Airport insisted we upgrade to a black Chrysler 300. Shame our mysterious benefactor couldn¡¯t give us a red one.¡± His attitude and voice was completely casual, but you could tell he smelled a rat. In fact, his ¡°stretching¡± seemed to be just an excuse to see if he could spot anyone staking us out. Seeing as we had parked right next to a lime green Cadillac Escalade (or as my mom calls them, Excessalades) with spinning rims, we were reasonably shielded from prying eyes.

    ¡°So,¡± Agent Takashi asked, ¡°what, if anything, did you bring us?¡±

    I smiled. Finally, I¡¯d either confirm some allegations The President had leveled or I¡¯d finally fulfil the job I went to NIU to do. ¡°You know that situation in North Korea?¡± I asked, bringing up a thumb drive. ¡°I was there.¡±

    Agent Takashi kicked the side of the car in frustration. Agent Brosnan just shrugged. ¡°That could be valuable, but it wasn¡¯t exactly what we asked you for. In fact, I fail to see what it has to do with NIU, even tangentially.¡±

    ¡°Did you know that the Dragon¡¯s Teeth are a clone army?¡± I asked. ¡°A legitimate army, with air and vehicle support, based on highly advanced technology?¡±

    ¡°The clone part, yes,¡± Brosnan said casually, ¡°but what it has to do with¡­¡±

    ¡°Seriously?¡± I asked. Suddenly, the plan was changing. Instead of selling UNIX out, I¡¯d work with them to find out who made the Deets. They just had to pass one test. ¡°Ok, let me break it down for you guys: the Deets have cloaking technology, battery-powered APCs, genetic engineering and maybe even the same teleportation tech the Grenzefrontier have. Where the hell else could you get a team of people with that kind of knowledge?¡±

    The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    ¡°There could be many ways,¡± Agent Brosnan said. ¡°After all, in this state, you do have a supervillain who makes planes that can turn into bipedal walkers.¡±

    Around the word ¡°turn,¡± Agent Takashi butted in. ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter,¡± he said. ¡°The point is, if you actually want to get paid, you should look into some actual student projects. I hear you know the creator of surgical glue and Power Sludge. Getting those formulas would be helpful.¡±

    So that was how it was going to be. Fine, I could deal. I was prepared. All that had happened was that I had confirmed what The President had said. We weren¡¯t supposed to be looking for Force Three threats or whatever bullshit we had been sold. Instead, if we weren¡¯t supposed to die during Hell Semester, we were supposed to be stealing tech secrets.

    I could let that go. John apparently couldn¡¯t. ¡°So,¡± he said, his voice barely containing his rage, ¡°we¡¯re supposed to steal tech from people just trying to get through school so you don¡¯t have to pay for it later?¡±

    ¡°It would be better than doing amateur missions to places that don¡¯t concern you,¡± Agent Takashi said, snatching the flash drive out of my hand. ¡°Honestly, I fail to see how your pathetic little field trip could have¡­¡±

    That pissed me off. The cold rage that had been simmering inside me since I had seen the officious assholes broke. I slammed my fist as hard as I could into Takashi¡¯s arrogant face.

    The satisfaction of hurting the piece of shit was short-lived. In a blink, my head slammed back into the Escalade¡¯s mid-side window, a hand grasped tight around my neck and the barrel of a pistol pushed right into my eye. From the other side of the car, John¡¯s eyes widened.

    ¡°You just assaulted a UNIX officer,¡± Takashi almost whispered. ¡°Give me one reason I shouldn¡¯t pull the trigger.¡±

    ¡°Can I give a few reasons why you shouldn¡¯t pop my boy?¡± We all turned to see the source of the voice. There, in the middle of a group of young people in green, was my old classmate from the Maynard Public School System, Jaime Washington. He looked the same as when I last saw him: slightly shorter than me, brown skin, brown eyes, and curly black hair.

    Right behind him was another person I was familiar with. Lang was a lean, wolf-like man with a predatory gleam in his eye. I had met him at what essentially was a party for the Massachusetts underworld. Cross, who was the kind of person who knew these things, identified him as one of the top people in a brutal gang called The Jade Empire. On the other side of Jaime was a woman who looked like a gender-swapped version of Lang. These twins were taking everything in casually. They were professionals like me.

    The others, including Jaime, were not. They were overconfident thugs who didn¡¯t seem to know what they were facing. They just seemed to know they outnumbered the opposition. Oddly enough, except for the fact that they were all young men wearing green, they were very diverse. A few were Asian, a few were Latino, a few were black, and a few were white. All were dressed like wannabe gangsters or wannabe rappers.

    ¡°You¡­ know him?¡± Agent Brosnan asked.

    ¡°I went to high school with him,¡± Jaime said. ¡°I ain¡¯t about to let him get shot by some flexing cops. Especially ones with no authority.¡±

    At this point, Agent Brosnan realized how many of his impromptu audience was reaching at their waistbands. He reached into his waistband. Instantly there was the sound of guns being drawn and cocked. I couldn¡¯t see most of them, due to Agent Brosnan¡¯s back being in the way. However, I could see that most were cheap pistols¡­ except for the one guy who had brought a TEC-9.

    ¡°Are those legal?¡± Agent Brosnan asked.

    ¡°More legal than a UNIX agent abducting a US citizen on US soil,¡± Lang said, his Chinese accent apparent. I noticed Lang, his sister, and Jaime hadn¡¯t drawn any weapons. Takashi protested, but Lang cut him off. ¡°I know my country¡¯s laws. UNIX can¡¯t make arrests. Even if you did, you just used excessive force. If you pay for damages to my¡­ employee¡¯s car, we can forget all about this.¡±

    ¡°Go to hell,¡± Agent Takashi snarled. ¡°I¡¯m taking this ungrateful little shit¡­¡±

    ¡°Agent Takashi,¡± Agent Brosnan said sharply, ¡°you are a hair¡¯s breadth from causing an international incident in a sensitive country. Control yourself.¡± The grip around my throat released, and the pistol removed itself from my eye. Despite my burning chest and my throbbing head, I didn¡¯t give Takashi the pleasure of watching me slump to the ground.

    Agent Brosnan, meanwhile, offered something to Jaime. ¡°I apologize for my partner. Mr. Jacobs just got¡­ emotional about losing his scholarship. In turn, Agent Takashi got emotional about being assaulted. I hope this is enough.¡±

    Jaime looked at Lang. Lang said, ¡°It should be enough.¡± He waved them away. ¡°You may leave.¡± Agent Takashi looked like he might pull his pistol again, but he walked around to the passenger side of the car. Before the car could start, Lang suddenly said, ¡°Oh, just one more thing!¡±

    Agent Brosnan looked up. ¡°Yes?¡± he asked.

    ¡°UNIX can have the rest of the world, for now.¡± Lang said, his friendly tone masking a threat. ¡°But Mass? Especially this little corner of it? This is ours. Consider yourself Persona Non-Grata in Maynard from now on.¡±

    ¡°Shame,¡± Agent Brosnan said conversationally. ¡°I really liked the pubs here.¡± He closed the door of his rental car and drove off.

    After they were gone, John and Jaime both hurried over to me. Lang and his sister hung back, watching us. The rest of the cavalry began celebrating and bragging. ¡°You ok?¡± Jaime asked. ¡°You fucking destroyed that shatterproof window, man.¡±

    ¡°His eyes don¡¯t seem dilated,¡± John said.

    ¡°I¡¯m going to kill that asshole,¡± I growled. ¡°I fucking bled for him and calls me an amateur. Motherfucker.¡±

    ¡°Yep, he¡¯s fine,¡± John said, rolling his eyes. ¡°I¡¯ll help him get home.¡±

    ¡°You sure?¡± Jaime asked. ¡°I got a ride.¡± He patted the green monstrosity on its chrome piping. I like green, even lime green, but on an Escalade? Especially one with all that chrome? It was an automotive and aesthetic monstrosity.

    I considered it, but John shook his head. ¡°I¡¯ll catch up with you later, man,¡± I said, picking up my backpack. Luckily, I had brought it and my suitcase out of the car with me. Otherwise, I doubted I¡¯d have ever seen it again.

    ¡°Well,¡± Jaime said, ¡°I¡¯ll catch up with you. Facebook me or something, a¡¯ight, Nate?¡±

    When we had finally gotten away, John suddenly asked, ¡°Hey, Nate,¡± he asked, ¡°did you notice what kind of pistol Takashi was using?¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said, ¡°it was kind of covering my eye. Why do you ask?¡±

    ¡°It was an M&P,¡± John said. ¡°Know anyone else we¡¯ve seen recently who¡¯s used one?¡±

    I was about to say no, then I remembered. The mystery people we had met and killed in North Korea. I considered this. ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°I guess we weren¡¯t as amateur as they thought, were we?¡±

    John sighed. ¡°You¡¯ve seriously ran out of fucks, haven¡¯t you?¡±

    I hadn¡¯t. Time would prove that, but at that moment, I wasn¡¯t exactly about to mourn the deaths of UNIX Agents who had fired on me. Mentally, I added the entire organization to my hit list and began to consider just what I was going to tell my parents.

    <hr />

    So, the reason there are two new chapters today is that I''m almost caught up with my website.</a> There is just one more chapter I have to add, then the RRL mirror will switch to a once per week basis. The reason I''m waiting until tomorrow is so I can give you guys a little bonus: two chapters now, plus two chapters to tide you over.

    If that''s not enough NIU for you, you can look at the side stories</a> I''ve written on the NIU site or the post mortems</a> on my blog. Speaking of post mortems, the post mortem for book three (this was the last chapter of that book) is now up.</a> If you''ve never read a post mortem, or if you''ve never read a post mortem about NIU, you may want to start here.</a>

 4.1: Lost in Suburbia

    Have you ever been away from someone for so long that you¡¯ve completely changed? That¡¯s what it felt like coming back home for the summer. Last year, I had been Nathan Jacobs, that quiet kid in High School people seemed to like, or at least tolerate. Now, I was Nathan ¡°Killer¡± Jacobs, an almost burned out shell of a human being who had killed more people than he could count.

    The thing is, I could have avoided it all. All I needed to do was tell Agents Brosnan and Takashi from the United Nations Investigations, Extranormal (UNIX for short) to fuck off when they offered to pay me for spying on what they made out to seem like a hive of mad science and supervillainry. I specifically should have called bullshit on the idea that they would pay an out-of-shape eighteen-year-old with no investigative experience a hundred thousand a semester to search for region-destabilizing time bombs. It burned me even more because it turned out that I and another one of the people infiltrating had been set up to die so that the other two infiltrators could live. We also hadn¡¯t been sent to find forgotten experiments that could end the world, but useful tech that UNIX needed but didn¡¯t want to pay for. Hell, John and I had even been told that there were only three infiltrators.

    In fairness to UNIX, the place they had sent us to was pretty awful. Nowhere Island University really is kind of a hive of mad science and supervillainy. There are plenty of good people and a ton of average people, but the system had been designed by President Anthony Carter Newton-Howell. That made it inherently evil.

    I was unsure of the purpose of NIU, apart to benefit The President, but I did know that it could be quite deadly. For instance, two of the sub-schools, The Academy of Military Science and Shadowhaven, had a special first semester for its students. It was called Hell Semester and it was designed to kill forty to fifty percent of the students. In Hell Semester 2015, its final served a double purpose of purging an embarrassing contingent of students.

    I noticed, from my limited interactions and observations, that The President could abide many things, but the things he couldn¡¯t abide were punished harshly. For instance, when he had caught John and me, he had spared our lives and suggested we work for him. When the Grenzefrontier had invaded NIU, he had imprisoned them and offered to release them when they renounced National Socialism. However, he had literally and figuratively set some students who had fed them information on fire.

    Speaking of the Grenzefrontier, the world had also changed while I was away. ISIS had taken more territory and committed several high-profile terrorist attacks. Despite this and their obsession with ancient prophecies, the Grenzefrontier had ISIS beat for craziest an most dangerous terrorist group by a) taking territory in Germany and South America, b) trying to take territory in the US and c) being actual Nazis who had colonized a planet using teleporter technology.

    However, they both paled in comparison to the group I had been sent by The President to investigate. Calling themselves The Dragon¡¯s Teeth (we had nicknamed them the Deets,) all we knew going in was that they were a clone army with advanced tech who might have come from the same planet as the Grenzefrontier. There was also someone who said that they might have worked for someone or something who was prophesized to end the world.

    What we had learned was even more disturbing. Despite fighting against a respectable military force, they had been holding back. In fact, the Deets had slowly moved from a guerrilla war, to an actual war without airpower on their side, to debuting some kind of gunship/transport VTOL to try and stop us from leaving. A few days after that, they had made themselves known to the world in a dramatic fashion.

    The real kicker was that I had no one to talk to. All my friends at NIU were pretty much unreachable, due to criminal pasts, distance, or security reasons. Everyone I knew from before NIU was deliberately kept in the dark about what exactly NIU was. They thought I was in mostly normal school, albeit one in the Pacific Ocean.

    That wasn¡¯t to say no one suspected anything. My dad, as usual, had work to do, and my mom had been shanghaied into teaching an ESL camp at her school, but my sister was at home the vast majority of the summer.

    I was writing down some vague allusions to my recent experiences in a diary sometime in July when Esther walked into the room where I was writing. ¡°Hey,¡± she said, ¡°we need to talk.¡±

    ¡°What is it?¡± I asked, closing my notebook. It was a jumble of words, basically, but I didn¡¯t want to take chances.

    ¡°Look,¡± she said, her brown hair, ice blue eyes, and her round cheeks similar to my own face, ¡°we both know that you¡¯ve changed since you got back from college.¡± I was about to say something, but Esther plowed on. ¡°Yeah, people change when they get back from college, but they don¡¯t end up coming back with a limp. Also, that line about being used to going to sleep later at college? I don¡¯t buy it.¡±

    It was amazing how intelligent Esther was. I thought that I had hidden my nightmares and constant pain in my chest. Hell, even I hadn¡¯t noticed that I still occasionally limped. The limp and the nightmares were from the Hell Semester final.

    It took me a while to think up what I was going to say. ¡°I won¡¯t lie to you,¡± I said, ¡°but I can¡¯t tell you the truth.¡±

    ¡°Please don¡¯t tell me you¡¯ve been hanging out with supervillains or something,¡± Esther said. I opened my mouth, remembered my promise, then closed it again, remembering my promise not to lie to her. Esther sighed. ¡°Just out of curiosity, Nate,¡± she asked, ¡°how thoroughly did you think this through?¡±

    I turned to look her in the eye again. ¡°Listen, Esther,¡± I said, ¡°What I¡¯m doing is to keep you, mom, and dad safe. Plus a few more people.¡±

    Esther threw up her hands. ¡°Then tell the CIA! Tell UNIX! Even tell some local superhero organization like the Minutemen!¡±

    ¡°Look,¡± I said, trying to explain my position, ¡°I admit, I¡¯m not a Parahuman. I¡¯m not a superhero.¡± I paused, trying to figure out why I was doing this, or what I could do that no one else could. ¡°But,¡± I said, after less than a second, ¡°I discovered at college that I can do things only a few other people can do. I wouldn¡¯t call it a power¡­ more like a set of skills. I¡¯ll admit, NIU is pretty dangerous, but being there gives me an opportunity to change things.¡±

    Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    After a moment, Esther asked, ¡°How many other people are in your program?¡±

    ¡°After the first semester,¡± I said, ¡°under five hundred.¡±

    ¡°You do realize,¡± Esther said, ¡°that only one of them is my brother.¡±

    I got up and hugged her. She returned the hug, squeezing me tightly. ¡°Hey,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯m gonna be fine.¡± It was probably the cockiest thing I¡¯ve ever said. I¡¯d probably had as many near-death experiences as I had killed people, and as many enemies as I had friends.

    Esther, being smarter than I was, responded with, ¡°I¡¯ll believe it when I see it.¡± We let go of each other. ¡°I won¡¯t tell mom and dad. Yet. Just don¡¯t do anything too stupid.¡±

    I considered assuring her, then I admitted sheepishly, ¡°It¡¯s a little too late for that. But I am getting smarter about this.¡± Just as I said this, my cellphone rang. I picked it up. ¡°Hello,¡± I said. ¡°Who is this?¡±

    ¡°We met at Providence,¡± a familiar voice said. ¡°You might want to take a walk downtown. Maybe buy something at the CVS.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ll be there in a bit.¡±

    ¡°Who was that?¡± Esther asked.

    ¡°Something we were just talking about,¡± I said. ¡°You want something from CVS?¡±

    ¡°If you live,¡± Esther said half-jokingly, ¡°I¡¯d like some chips.¡±

    The person on the other end was a¡­ well, I¡¯d hesitate to call him a friend. He was an FBI agent who had investigated when I had been involved in an early Grenzefrontier attack. He had interrogated me, and somehow knew more about NIU and the UNIX infiltration than I did. Recently, I had found a way to sneak a copy of the report on the situation in Korea to him.

    I went to leave, my chest twinging as I walked down the unevenly paved streets. It took me around twenty minutes to get to the CVS in downtown. Out in the parking lot was Agent Hicks in all his glory. Despite being somewhat old for an FBI agent (given away by his short, white hair) he was still very muscular and alert. His clothes were a happy medium between casual and formal.

    ¡°Jacobs,¡± he said, as I got there. Just my name, not anything else. From what I could tell, that was his way of being neutral. He did give me a polite nod, so that was nice.

    ¡°Mr. Hicks,¡± I said, nodding in acknowledgement. I didn¡¯t mean the lack of title as a lack of disrespect. It was more a security concern. At some point, apparently when I was in high school, Maynard had been taken over by a group called The Jade Empire. I had discovered one of my old schoolmates had joined up with them. This was when he and some Jade Empire goons saved me from one of my former UNIX handlers.

    You know, saying that makes me realize how weird my life was.

    After our introductions, we began walking down the street towards the McDonald¡¯s at the end of the street. ¡°So,¡± I asked Agent Hicks, ¡°Did you get my letter?¡± By letter, I meant a flash drive I had dropped on the tarmac of the airport when I got back for the summer. The laptop I had used to make the copy had suffered an unfortunate accident on the way back. Luckily, I had made enough money bartending last semester to replace it. Contacting Agent Hicks to let him know about the drop had involved going through an intermediary to deliver a vague message. If he had somehow screwed it up¡­

    ¡°There was some competition,¡± Agent Hicks said, ¡°but we got it.¡±

    ¡°What kind of competition?¡± I asked.

    ¡°The kind that paid for your lawyer,¡± Agent Hicks said.

    I groaned. After the incident which had introduced me to Agent Hicks, Jennifer Kagemoto, fellow student at NIU, supervillain, and daughter of the leader of the Boston/Worcester Yakuza, had somehow realized I was in custody and sent a lawyer.

    ¡°Listen,¡± I said, ¡°I didn¡¯t¡­¡±

    ¡°I know,¡± Agent Hicks said, right before we crossed the street, ¡°but you¡¯ve attracted too much attention. If I were you, I¡¯d transfer out of school and forget all about this.¡±

    I bristled a bit. I had just had this exact conversation with my sister. I swallowed my protest. Instead, when we were across the street, I asked, ¡°So, was my information any good?¡±

    Agent Hicks shook his head, ¡°Listen, kid, your heart¡¯s in the right place, but the company that could actually use this information is not one you¡¯d want to deal with.¡± He stopped, and turned to face me. ¡°Listen, kid,¡± he said, ¡°Everyone is using you for their own personal benefit. UNIX, NIU, Kagemoto, hell, I¡¯m using you because I have a grudge against UNIX.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s ok,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m using all of you, too. Now get that information somewhere where¡­¡±

    I was interrupted by a familiar roar. In an instant, I found myself lying flat on my face. Gunfire? I thought, barely able to hear myself due to the roar, shattering glass, and screaming. In Maynard? That isn¡¯t possible¡­

    Before I could come to terms with what happened, the shooting stopped. There was a stunned silence. This was the kind of thing that happened in Chicago or LA, not in a mostly middle and working class town of ten thousand. As I got up, making sure that the hood of my sweatshirt was over my head, I saw that Agent Hicks¡¯ hand was gripping what looked like a Glock.

    ¡°Yeah!¡± a voice called out, ¡°You better run! Fucking bitch-ass cowards!¡± I looked down the street to see one of my former classmates from Maynard High waving what looked to be a Broomhandle Mauser.

    He was standing in front of a caf¨¦ that was just across the street from the CVS I had met Agent Hicks at. Lying in front of the caf¨¦ was a body slumped on the ground. Behind that, at an intersection, was a Maynard police SUV, its window sporting several bullet holes in the windscreen.

    I looked at Agent Hicks. ¡°I can¡¯t be here,¡± I said.

    ¡°I know,¡± he said. ¡°Get out of here. I¡¯ll cover for you.¡±

    ¡°Thanks, man,¡± I said. As I hurried back home, I suddenly began to wonder if everything I was fighting for would be there when I was done¡­ or if it had even existed in the first place.

    <hr />

    Ok, tonight, we switch to the same schedule as the other sites. That means we''ll only be updating once a week. Tonight, the first update on this schedule goes up. Meanwhile, I''ll be updating all my info.

 4.2: Back to School

    When it was time for me to get back to NIU, I was more than ready. At home, not only was there no work, but most of my leisure activities weren¡¯t open to me. Anything with gunfire made me tense up at best and try to take cover at worst. Even worse, I now felt naked without a weapon. Between that one incident on Main Street, and how used to having a gun with me when I was at NIU, I felt like I needed one.

    It was a relief when I finally got to Logan airport. It wasn¡¯t like I thought of airports of some beacon of security. In fact, my second firefight ever was in the airport at Providence, Rhode Island. No, apart from getting back in the saddle, the thing that heartened me was seeing John Marshall.

    ¡°John!¡± I said striding over to him. ¡°How¡¯s it going, man?¡± He was looking well. He had been a hockey player before enrolling at NIU, and it showed in his short, wiry frame. Well, I say short, but he was only an inch or two shorter than me.

    ¡°Pretty good,¡± John said. ¡°I¡¯m just a little tired. I mean, I had to drive all the way down from New Hampshire to get here by six with one of my friends.¡±

    ¡°So,¡± I said, ¡°ungodly tired?¡±

    ¡°Better than how I was feeling a few months ago,¡± John said. Ah yes, the North Korean mission. We had all stayed up pretty late and gotten bumps and bruises, but John had gotten shot in the chest several times at close range. I had been, too, but none of those bullets had penetrated my armor. John had been in placed into critical condition. If not for our medic, some life-saving tech, and a prompt evac, he would be dead.

    With that in mind, I asked, ¡°Speaking of that, any lingering pain?¡±

    John shrugged. ¡°A bit, but my knee hurts worse from all the hockey I¡¯ve played. You?¡±

    ¡°My knee twinges a bit from where I hurt it first semester,¡± I said, ¡°so does my chest from vacation. It doesn¡¯t slow me down, so I can probably deal with it.¡±

    I looked up. The lounge for this terminal airport was pretty empty, as well as the rest of the wing, so it was easy to tell when someone entered, and someone had. Jennifer Kagemoto, fellow NIU student and Massachusetts resident¡­ as well as a supervillain working for the Boston Yakuza. Seeing as she probably had something to do the drive-by, I wasn¡¯t too keen on talking to her. Plus, she was kind of creepy.

    We made only some minor chit-chat after that, mostly about what we had been doing over the break. Apparently, John had been doing much better in that regard than I had been. He just had been having the nightmares. No uncontrollable reactions whenever he heard the fake gunfire in movies or videogames. I have to admit, I was jealous.

    While I was talking with John, I watched Jen out of the corner of my eye. She was playing on a Pok¨¦mon-themed 3DS. From the sound of it, she was playing a Fire Emblem game.

    Eventually, the plane landed. It was an hour late. We finally got on, me clutching a cup of hot chocolate and a box of doughnuts we had split. The plane, like the last time I had been on one, was mostly empty at this point on the trip. After stowing our luggage, we sat down on a group of four seats with two facing the other two by the window.

    ¡°Excuse me,¡± a low feminine voice asked, ¡°mind if I sit down?¡± I looked up, not surprised to see Jen standing in the corridor. Her constant femme fatale thing was kind of her signature. That, and wearing red and blue. As usual, her hair was done up in a simple, yet regal ponytail with hair framing the side of her face and her light brown eyes were twinkling with sly amusement, like she knew something no one else did. Not surprising. She literally was a supervillain and had fought a woman who could shrug off tank shells to a standstill.

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said. ¡°Want a doughnut?¡± Now that we were on the plane to NIU, there was no practical reason for kicking her out. Besides, she wasn¡¯t exactly the kind of person I wanted as an enemy. That didn¡¯t mean I didn¡¯t have words for her.

    ¡°Thank you,¡± she said, sitting down next to me and reaching for a chocolate-frosted one with rainbow sprinkles. ¡°I forgot to have breakfast today.¡± She bit into it. ¡°You know, these are actually pretty good when you aren¡¯t being interrogated by cops,¡± she said, her mouth still full. She then swallowed, and asked, ¡°So, may I ask how your vacation was?¡±

    There was a sort of faux-innocence to her voice when she asked that question. My guess was she knew something about our little trip to Korea. Not a lot, just enough to be curious. Still, I had a bone to pick with her.

    ¡°Not much,¡± I said, somewhat caustically. ¡°Oh wait, my town just had its first drive-by shooting! You wouldn¡¯t happen to know anything about that, would you?¡±

    Jennifer sighed. ¡°Ugh,¡± she said, ¡°That. I admit, that was probably a Kagemoto hit, but it wasn¡¯t mine. I prefer to either deal with the actual business or doing the fun things.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± John said, ¡°what do you mean by actual business? Aren¡¯t drive-bys part of doing business?¡±

    Jen rolled her eyes. ¡°I suppose, but only if we need to expand. I, personally, think there¡¯s a lot of room for growth without having to fight The Jade Empire.¡± She turned back to me. ¡°That being said, The Jade Empire is being¡­ troublesome. Again.¡±

    ¡°So they started it?¡± I asked.

    Jen looked at me for a second, then she brought out a slip of paper. ¡°They recently intercepted a shipment. On the left is what was in it, on the right is what they took. Tell me you wouldn¡¯t have considered killing one of their top leaders in that situation.¡±

    I shrugged, expecting to see a list of drugs. Then my mouth dropped. Apparently, someone had brought in a massive cache of what seemed to be WWII era weaponry. I then remembered that after the car had passed, Jaime had been waving around what looked like a Broomhandle Mauser. According to the sheet, most of what they had stolen were pistols, submachineguns, and Sturmgewehr assault rifles, but they had taken a few heavier weapons, including a couple bazookas and Panzershrecks, as well as an M2 .50 caliber machinegun.

    This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    ¡°What is it?¡± John asked. I handed him the list. He looked it over. ¡°Oh,¡± he said, reasonably terrified. ¡°Well, at least for some of this stuff, especially the German and Russian equipment, they¡¯ll have a hard time getting ammo.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, ¡°they¡¯ll just have to make due with selling it for more modern weaponry.¡±

    ¡°Turn the page around,¡± Jen said. I groaned, already knowing that John¡¯s optimism had jinxed us again.

    John did. ¡°Oh. Oh wow that¡¯s a lot of ammo.¡± He looked up from the manifest. ¡°Where the hell did the original person find all this stuff? Were they preparing for World War Three or something?¡±

    ¡°And,¡± Jen said, ¡°to make it even better, no one knows where the hell they put all of this. I wanted to go in there with my team. That would get them to talk and send a message. Besides, drive-bys are a terrible way to kill a specific person.¡± She leaned back. ¡°To use your language, I could get the package and get out without hurting bystanders. It¡¯d also boost T-shirt sales.¡±

    Jen¡¯s plan didn¡¯t exactly make me feel more secure and I wasn¡¯t sure I agreed with the logic behind the whole merchandising thing, but I had to admit, it was tactically and strategically sound. If it worked, Jen would have crippled an enemy and avoided the outcry the two dead would have cause. Also, it would have been shuttled off to the Minutemen¡­ who weren¡¯t exactly the best superheroes ever.

    That was the thing about Massachusetts. Until the Jade Empire showed up, we didn¡¯t really have that much crime, superpowered or otherwise. Meanwhile, places like New York had only just managed to clean up sixty-year-old crime waves in the Eighties and places like Compton never had those crime waves stop. Still, neither John nor I really knew that much about super crime, and I was curious.

    ¡°So,¡± I asked, ¡°what is it like being a supervillain?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Jen said, ¡°but before I speculate on that, I¡¯d like to talk about where you two went for vacation.¡±

    I thought about it, then said, ¡°I actually kind of owe it to Eliza to tell her first. By the way, how did you find out I was gone?¡±

    ¡°Easy,¡± Jen said. ¡°You were on a different plane than the one I used. I didn¡¯t exactly have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure that out.¡± She looked up and smiled. ¡°Oh, by the way, you might not have to wait as long as you think before you tell Eliza.¡±

    I turned around, craning my neck to see a tall redheaded girl with green eyes and fox ears staring down at me from other the seat behind me, her hair in a messy bun. It was Eliza Henderson herself. I had met her when I was at Hell Semester. We¡­ didn¡¯t exactly hit it off, but we did eventually become friends. Her adopted sister, Charlotte Blackmoor-Ward, also went to NIU, but was in a program that didn¡¯t require Hell Semester. Funnily enough, the reason I knew Jen was because she had been Charlotte¡¯s roommate last year.

    ¡°Eliza¡­¡± I said. ¡°How are you doing? Is Charlotte¡­?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Eliza said, walking around to sit with us, her voice low and menacing, ¡°my sister¡¯s not ¡®ere. I¡¯m just a mite worried that one of me friends went off ¡®alf-cocked again.¡±

    Jen¡¯s look of perpetual amusement faded. I think she sensed a spat. ¡°Excuse me,¡± she said, ¡°I need a bathroom break.¡± After excusing herself, she hurried off, somehow still maintaining her aura of cool.

    ¡°She¡¯s probably still listening in,¡± I said. ¡°I mean, she is a Jumper after all. Oh well, she¡¯s probably going to find out about this anyway.¡±

    ¡°Just like I bloody well did,¡± Eliza said. ¡°Seriously, Nate, I played straight with you and then you go running off to North Korea without telling me? And what¡¯s worse, one of those people worked with someone ¡®oo actively tried to kill you. I was worried sick about you two.¡±

    ¡°Do you know who we were working for?¡± I asked. If she knew President Anthony Newton-Howell had hired us, she might be more sympathetic. Or she might think I was even stupider for trusting him.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Eliza said, ¡°I was the one ¡®oo sent Bai, remember?¡± Bai Feng was a scarily talented martial artist, John¡¯s girlfriend, Eliza¡¯s best friend, and one of the reasons I had been so scared of Eliza. She had come to berate us for being stupid enough to be hired by The President to go into North Korea. Also, there was something about a prophecy that Eliza, Charlotte and Bai all believed in. ¡°Next time, bring me along, ok?¡±

    ¡°We got some good work done,¡± I said. ¡°Remember those Dragon¡¯s Teeth who revealed themselves by¡­¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Eliza said, ¡°kind of hard to forget watchin¡¯ some poor bastard bein¡¯ dragged off to ¡®is probable death.¡± She sighed. ¡°Christ, you¡¯re just like Char, always runnin¡¯ off on some damned crusade.¡±

    ¡°We came out of this alright, didn¡¯t we?¡± I asked. Only after I said this did I realize what I had said, and who I had said it to.

    John, understandably, exploded. ¡°You know what, Nate?¡± he said, ¡°Shut the fuck up, you fucking addict. Maybe we did a good job. But you ended up with a cracked ribcage because someone shot you at point-blank. Me? My armor didn¡¯t stop the bullets meant for me.¡± He leaned back into his seat. ¡°The only consolation I have is at least things can¡¯t possibly get any worse,¡± he grumbled.

    I groaned and Eliza shook her head. I think both Eliza and I had suspected that things were going to get much worse, but John saying they wouldn¡¯t definitely jinxed us. Again.

 4.3: Touchdown

    As with the other times I had been on the plane, we were in the air for days. Each hour we were in the sky only cemented my opinion that the phrase ¡°it¡¯s not about the destination, it¡¯s about the journey¡± had been invented before air travel. There is nothing rewarding about sitting in the same seat for hours upon hours, only occasionally getting out of the plane when it stopped to pick up other students.

    The nice thing was that we were eventually joined by May Riley and Andy Sebaldi.

    ¡°OH. MY. GOD!¡± May said, as soon as she spotted John and me, rushing over to us. ¡°I am SOOOO glad to be out of my home. Ever since Mary left to do all this crazy-ass merc work in ISIS-land or wherever¡­¡±

    As she began babbling on, a few people turned around to stare at the tiny little woman with a Tech N9ne t-shirt, pale skin, mismatched eyes, one green, one brown, blond hair with the tips dyed purple, and a face that had one side visibly scarred. They also probably stared at the thin, lanky giant of a man who followed her. I, meanwhile, just zoned out and let May¡¯s rapid-fire speech patterns flow over me.

    ¡°Hey,¡± Andy said, ¡°let them speak, why don¡¯t¡¯cha?¡±

    Andy and May were two of the smartest people I knew. When we hosted a radio show together last semester, I had learned that Andy was a master of robotics and had made his own factory in his room. May, I had met earlier. She had attended me after Eliza kicked my ass in one of Hell Semester¡¯s more brutal traditions and had made at least two inventions that had saved the lives of me and my friends. However, like most people who were scarily smart, they had some eccentricities. May, in particular, had been teased mercilessly for her weird looks and ADHD.

    Still, it was nice to have them with us. They were genuinely good people. The only problem is that May was sometimes a bit nosy. ¡°You know, that¡¯s a good idea, Andy,¡± she said, ¡°what did you guys do over the summer?¡±

    ¡°Oh, nothing much,¡± I said, maybe a little too casually. ¡°Just, y¡¯know, hung out around the house.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Eliza said, ¡°not much.¡± Her voice cracked as she said this, and she stared at her hands.

    Instantly the two of us regretted saying anything. May¡¯s exuberant attitude suddenly became suspicious. ¡°You know,¡± she said, ¡°for people who do so much cloak and dagger stuff, you two are terrible liars.¡±

    ¡°How about you?¡± I asked. ¡°Did you and Andy do anything interesting?¡±

    May sighed. ¡°Ok, I see how you¡¯re going to play this. Fine. You remember how when I met Andy I asked him if he could help me produce some of the stuff I made?¡±

    ¡°I think that might have been the first thing you said to him,¡± I said.

    ¡°Anyway,¡± May said, ¡°we created a prototype assembly line in Andy¡¯s basement. Well, technically, it¡¯s his parents¡¯ basement. Now we need to get the money to buy the supplies.¡±

    ¡°How much money would this cost?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Well,¡± May said, ¡°to make five gallons of my surgical glue would cost about five hundred dollars but¡­ Wait, why are you asking this?¡±

    ¡°John and I¡­¡± I said, ¡°we came into a bit of money over the summer.¡± That was understating a bit. Both John and I had gotten five million dollars. Right now, it was gathering interest. How much interest depended on the investment person I had put in charge of it. The only problem would be getting to it.

    ¡°Look,¡± May said, ¡°we wouldn¡¯t know what to do with more than two thousand dollars. Then we think we can get a government loan or grant. I don¡¯t really want to take your blood money, no offense.¡±

    ¡°What about the money I made bartending?¡± I asked. Last semester, I had taken a job at an on-campus bar called The Drunken Mercenary. I hadn¡¯t made as much money there, but it would be enough.

    ¡°Fine,¡± May said. ¡°Why not? I guess we have our first investor.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± I said, ¡°all I want is to make sure that this gets to market as soon as possible.¡± If I was right, and the Dragon¡¯s Teeth were going to get worse, there were going to be a lot of people needing the best, cheapest medicine.

    ¡°So do we,¡± Andy said. ¡°The school has a policy: if you can¡¯t put your invention on the market within three years after making it, the school gets all the rights to it. That¡¯s how they¡¯re ten years ahead of everyone else.¡±

    ¡°What?¡± John asked. ¡°How does that make any sense?¡± I had to agree. The ways that NIU could benefit from all the various inventions must outweigh any other advantage, right?

    ¡°They might be stockpiling,¡± Jen said, ¡°creating an artificial lack of supply to sell later¡­ or they¡¯re going to use the tech themselves. I¡¯ve made a profit on both tactics.¡±

    ¡°Figures.¡± May said. May didn¡¯t like Jen. It was either because May knew about Jen¡¯s illicit activities, or Jen was reminiscent of one of May¡¯s tormentors in school, or maybe both, plus a little extra. As far as I could tell, Jen ignored the barbs, but I wouldn¡¯t put it past her to retaliate when no one else was looking.

    As we continued the rest of the trip, May did her best to restrict her thinly veiled aspersions cast against Jen. Also, with our wise decision not to drink anything unhealthier that two or three sodas per day, the trip was much more pleasant than it had been the last time. On that flight, May and I were the only ones who weren¡¯t hungover for most of the flight.

    Still, I felt like I needed a drink, and I don¡¯t mean water. The pain in my leg and chest was acting up again, and the nightmares were getting worse. I woke up twice screaming, everyone staring at me in a mixture of concern and annoyance. The last two times I had been able to get a decent night¡¯s sleep that I could remember I had some kind of whiskey.

    ¡°Christ, Nate!¡± Eliza yelled the second time this happened. For some reason, she seemed a bit closer than she should have been and I felt a pressure leave my shoulder. ¡°What¡¯s up with you?¡±

    This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    I looked around. Dozens of people were staring at me in annoyance. Honestly, I didn¡¯t give a shit about some strangers. My friends, meanwhile, were mostly concerned. Except Andy. He was out like a log.

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said, ¡°It¡¯s¡­ the nightmares. They¡¯ve been getting worse ever since¡­¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± John said, who was groggily coming awake. ¡°I get them too¡­¡± He blinked a couple times. ¡°But you¡¯ve been having nightmares since Hell Semester.¡± He paused, considering something. Eventually, he asked, ¡°You ok, man?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, flashing a smile. ¡°I¡¯m fine, man.¡± Outside, it was night. Only the stars above and the clouds below were visible.

    A hand touched my shoulder. ¡°Oi,¡± Eliza said, her green eyes locking with mine and her fox ears lowered and rotated towards me, ¡°if you need to talk to anyone, y¡¯know we¡¯re ¡®ere for you, right?¡±

    ¡°I know,¡± I said. ¡°Eliza¡­¡± I didn¡¯t know where I was going with that.

    Before I could say anything, the captain came over the speakers. ¡°Please fasten your seatbelts,¡± she said, ¡°we are about to make our final approach to Nowhere Island University. Have a safe landing and a happy semester!¡±

    When the plane was well and truly in its final descent, Jen said, shouting a bit above the noise, ¡°So, Nathan, you were about to say something to Eliza?¡± I noticed an odd, hopeful look on Jen¡¯s face.

    ¡°I¡­ I actually had no idea where I was going with that,¡± I said sheepishly. ¡°Kind of was going on autopilot.¡±

    Jen¡¯s hopeful look suddenly disappeared. ¡°Are you really going to let that get in the way?¡± she asked me disgustedly. ¡°And you, Eliza, are you going to let him weasel out like that?¡±

    ¡°I¡­ I¡¯ve no idea what you¡¯re on about,¡± Eliza said, her face turning as red as her hair.

    Jen groaned. ¡°When this plane gets down,¡± she said, ¡°I am going straight to my dorm. I trust that, in my absence, someone who isn¡¯t blind will educate these two.¡±

    Andy, suddenly realizing that we were descending, suddenly jerked awake. ¡°Wai¡­ wha¡­? Wha¡¯s goin¡¯ on?¡± he asked blearily.

    ¡°Obviously not him,¡± Jen said above May¡¯s peals of laughter and the roar of the plane. She put on some earbuds and began to pointedly ignore us. When the plane touched down, she took her luggage out without a word.

    When she had finally gone off, Eliza asked, ¡°So, Nate,¡± she said, a little awkwardly, ¡°I was wondering if you wanted to¡­ you know, ¡®ang out a bit.¡± There was still a bit of awkwardness in Eliza¡¯s body language, but it was rapidly fading away.

    ¡°I¡¯d love to,¡± I said. ¡°Today¡¯s, what, Friday? How about we meet Saturday or Sunday?¡± I turned around to see May doubled over with laughter. John was smiling and shaking his head. ¡°What?¡± I asked. ¡°What¡¯s so funny?¡±

    ¡°Nothing, nothing,¡± John said, a little too quickly.

    Meanwhile, May, between paroxysms of laughter managed to squeeze out something that sounded like ¡°Jen was right! You two¡­¡± She then started laughing harder. Maybe it was because she hadn¡¯t slept for quite a while.

    Eliza, trying and failing to ignore the chuckles and grins from our friends, nodded. ¡°Yeah,¡± she said, ¡°Sure. ¡®Ow about Saturday night? Should be enough time for me to find an activity for us.¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯d be, y¡¯know, perfectly fine with some stupid movie.¡±

    ¡°I was¡­ thinking of something a little more involved,¡± Eliza said. ¡°Maybe goin¡¯ somewhere nice.¡±

    ¡°Sounds good,¡± I said. We all headed off in different directions soon after. Eliza walked alone to her apartment in what was considered the ¡°soft section,¡± the part of the campus where all the Business, Law and Rogues went, as well as some of the richer students from the other disciplines. She was in the Academy of Military Science like John and me, but she roomed with her adopted sister, who was a Rogue. May went to a single deep in what was known as Cutter Country, a small area where a lot of Medical students hung out. Andy was pretty close, in an area where the various scientific crowds met up with each other.

    John and I, meanwhile, were in a dorm around the Sun Tzu Student Center. It was in one of the campus¡¯s far corners, tucked out of the way. AMS and Shadowhaven combined were dramatically smaller than the third smallest of the schools. We had a slightly bigger area because our education was more physical.

    We were in a dorm called Ranger, the main entrance of which literally was only a few steps away from Sun Tzu. In Marine, we had to walk quite a ways to get to Newton-Howell. That was quite annoying when we needed food and had to walk through whatever horrible weather that the island was throwing at us. The interior was also much nicer than Marine was. Instead of the blinding white walls, there was some nice, soothing wallpaper. Instead of mostly featureless corridors, except for some doors, there were a few common rooms.

    We had been to our room over the summer after coming back from our Korean mission. While we were there, we had set up some of our stuff, so it wasn¡¯t that uninviting. The room was divided mostly down the center, my stuff on the right, John¡¯s on the left. By the windows, our desks looked out onto the street below. By the door were our dressers and weapons lockers. The beds were already made.

    As tempting as it was to just fall down onto our somewhat dusty beds, we first checked our weapons lockers. Once I confirmed that my G-3K, Berretta M92FS Inox, and SIG-Sauer P229 DAK were there, as well as John¡¯s Z-M LR 300, Mossberg 500, Bren 10 and all the magazines, ammo and other accessories for the guns, we took turns brushing our teeth. Only then did we finally allow ourselves to get to sleep.

 4.4: Show Me

    About five in the morning, I suddenly realized that I hadn¡¯t checked to see if the Dragon¡¯s Teeth weaponry was still in the place I left it. I got up, lifted the mattress¡­ and quickly realized what had reminded me. Underneath the mattress, exactly where I had left them, were the two Deet guns (John¡¯s name for the Dragon¡¯s Teeth) I had collected.

    The one that had been making it hard to sleep was the assault rifle the Deets used. It was a bullpup rifle with built-in grenade launcher that was extremely, aggressively square. Almost all the unnecessary edges and curves had been filed off. Running my hand along the foregrip, I could make out a serial number and the word ¡°Pilum.¡±

    There were a few exceptions to its bizarre squareness, the most egregious being the two charging handles on each side of the gun. Combined with the gun¡¯s abnormally wide body (due to it taking quadrastacked magazines) and these charging handles had been poking me all night. I suddenly realized that I was feeling a little bit of extra pain today. Lifting up my shirt, I realized that I had accumulated several bruises from the charging handles poking me through the mattress. It was at that point that I decided I would not be copying this design.

    Another thing that annoyed me about the design was that it had no provision for iron sights. When I had first salvaged one in the field, I had assumed they were reflex sights. Instead, it used some sort of scope that turned out to be a video camera. I discovered this because when I went to check the sights, it was completely blank. I popped them off to inspect them. Sure enough, there was a camera on the other end, as well as some buttons which I guessed controlled zeroing, zoom, or vision mode. Personally, I hadn¡¯t used iron sights on a rifle ever since I¡­ acquired my G-3 with its reflex sight and flip-up 3x scope. However, the suddenly very real fear of running out of batteries made me very glad that the G-3¡¯s previous owner had never bothered to remove the iron sights.

    Another interesting feature that might also be a potential bane of the gun was the feed system. It used forty, fifty, and sixty-round quadrastacked magazines, as well as hundred-round drum magazines that fed it what I guessed were either six or seven millimeter by forty or fifty millimeter caseless rounds. Even more interesting was that these magazines had some internal round-counting tech that connected to the gun¡¯s onboard computer to give the operator an exact count of ammo. In theory, it sounded cool, but in practice, I could see it shorting out if it got wet.

    The most damning flaw of this gun was the cocking mechanism. If it was made by a smart, sane person, there would only be two charging handles, one on each side so it could be used ambidextrously. However, the idiot who made this had made it with four. Half of them would cock the gun without moving the bolt back, maybe for fear of contaminants, maybe just to show off that it used caseless ammo. The other half would also eject the round. This would be fine if pulling the first two handles while a bullet in the chamber didn¡¯t cause the gun to become unusable until you brought it back to a machine shop. Since that bit of joy happened, it was officially the worst rifle in the modern world. I just hoped whoever designed the Deet¡¯s rifle had repeated the magic elsewhere.

    The one good feature, apart from the magazines, was the barrel. When I had fired one of these rifles in combat (the same one that now lay on my bed, in fact,) it hadn¡¯t even gotten slightly warm, despite having a hundred round drum get emptied via fully automatic fire. If the barrel had started overheating, I could have quickly swapped it out for a heavier barrel. I also had salvaged what looked like a shorter barrel and a long, match-point barrel. All of these could be changed in about the time it took to change a magazine. That feature I¡¯d steal.

    The pistol, identified as a Sgian, used the same unfathomably stupid receiver for some reason. This, combined with the internal suppressor, made it weirdly tall. How anyone could hit the broad side of a barn with it was beyond me. This, I believed, combined with the fact that the ammo it used was amazingly underpowered, had saved my life. The Deets who used this pistol, a special-operations branch, were way too good. If they had been using AR-15s instead of the SMGs and pistols they had been issued, I¡¯d be dead.

    That being said, the pistol was unique in that it was incredibly silent. I had been at incredibly close ranges and I could not hear it fire. Normally, what a suppressor does is make a gun sound further away, or gives the operator a chance not to be heard in combat. This pistol might be able to be fired during a loud party without anyone noticing. To top it off, despite the unbelievably moronic cocking handles, despite the suppressor, despite its odd height, and despite its twenty-round magazine, this was a subcompact pistol. If not for that utterly imbecilic receiver, I would have been amazed by it.

    Finally, I began looking at the ammo. As I said before, it was caseless. That meant that there wasn¡¯t any need for casings, cutting down on weight and space taken up by ammo. The problem with caseless ammo was that the stuff that made the bullets move (usually gunpowder, but with the Deet weaponry, it could be anything) would explode much more easily. My guess was that they avoided having whatever propellant they used blowing up in the chamber by using the same material that made the guns feel cold to the touch despite it being around ninety Fahrenheit in my room, but that didn¡¯t explain how they got the propellant in the bullet.

    Determined to solve the mystery, I reached around in a Ziploc bag I had stored some of the Deet ammo in. I had been rooting around in it for barely a second when I felt something strange. I pulled it out.

    Between my thumb and forefinger was one of the pistol bullets. Most of it was an unpainted metal that was so shiny it flashed even in the dim light of my room. However, near the bottom, there was a thin strip of what looked and felt like clay. After that, there was a thinner strip of metal where the firing pin could hit and ignite the propellant.

    I began fiddling with it, trying to divine its secrets. During the fiddling, I accidentally twisted it. At the place where the clay met the metal, the clay part began to unscrew, revealing more clay beneath it. I paused, as an oddly sweet and spicy smell began filtering into the room.

    Turning the bullet so that the contents wouldn¡¯t get over the floor when I finally unscrewed it, I began to get the bottom part the rest of the way off. It came off extremely quickly. There, inside, was something that looked like vegetable matter. It was definitely a powder, but not the gunpowder I was familiar with. The interior of the bullet was filled to the brim with it.

    Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!

    I stared at it for a moment, breathing in the intoxicating fumes. Then I screwed the cap back on. As I did, I smiled. ¡°Got you,¡± I said. I had figured out how the propellant got in the bullet. Now I just had to figure out what it was.

    As I was considering how to do that, my cPhone suddenly made a boop. After putting the guns and accessories on the mattress, I pulled it out of the phone out of the desk. The cPhone, or campus phone, was a smart phone issued to all the students at NIU. It did a lot of other things as well, including automatically connecting to any cell tower.

    When I looked at the screen, it was a text from Nari Lee, a girl we had rescued in North Korea. Despite being only nine, before the Dragon¡¯s Teeth had gotten to the city she lived in, she had been in a special North Korean school designed to compete with NIU. The message read, ¡°Greetings, Mr. Jacob. I heard you and Mr. Marshall arrived back at school tonight. By the way, we have a class together?¡±

    Nari, it seemed, had gotten her own cPhone. I decided, since I was already up, I could text her back. ¡°No which 1?¡± I typed.

    ¡°Gunsmithing 101,¡± Nari typed back. There was a pause. Then she typed back, ¡°I¡¯m at the Armory Store. Would you like to come?¡±

    ¡°Is Sunny there?¡± I asked. Sunny, one of the two North Koreans on our recon mission to North Korea over the summer, had sort of appointed herself Sunny¡¯s guardian.

    ¡°Maybe,¡± Nari replied.

    I sighed. Even over text messages, Nari was a terrible liar. ¡°I¡¯ll be right over,¡± I responded. I then began hurriedly getting dressed.

    The Armory Store was a store in the Sun Tzu student center and the only place on campus authorized to sell guns. It wasn¡¯t a big store, per se, but other factors that limited its selection of fine weapons were virtually non-existent. For instance, you could walk in with a wad of cash and walk out with something that was both illegal in my home state (or even Texas) and would still be unobtainable even if they were legal.

    As I walked out, I almost walked into May. I was on the phone trying to get ahold of Sunny, so I almost whacked May with my phone. ¡°Holy crap,¡± I said, ¡°May, what are you doing here?¡±

    May suddenly stopped the complicated freestyle she was doing. ¡°Nate!¡± She said, obviously startled, ¡°What are you doing in Cutter Country?¡±

    ¡°Uhhh¡­¡± I said, ¡°this isn¡¯t Cutter Country.¡±

    May looked around. ¡°Huh,¡± she said, ¡°I must have paced farther than I thought. Sometimes, I get the urge to move, y¡¯know? When I do, the best thing is to wander around and bust rhymes. Not that I¡¯m any good at the whole freestyling thing, but I just like to do it because it kinda calms me and¡­¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± I said, ¡°I was just going to meet up with someone. Want to come?¡± Based on what Nari had said, it sounded like I might need to keep her in one place while Sunny came to get her. Right on cue, a message came back from Sunny.

    ¡°Oh my God,¡± the message said, ¡°I¡¯ll be right over. KEEP HER RIGHT THERE!¡±

    ¡°Who is it?¡± May asked.

    ¡°Someone I met over the summer,¡± I said, ¡°you might like her. Or you might find it incredibly awkward because her guardian is kind of annoyed with her at the moment.¡±

    Shortly after, we were standing in the Armory Store. ¡°It¡¯s weird¡­¡± May said, staring at the racks upon racks of weaponry, a mixture of disgust and awe in her voice, ¡°¡­how much effort goes into these things.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re mostly right,¡± a voice with a slight North Korean accent said. I looked down and saw a small Asian child in jeans and a NIU t-shirt sitting on the floor. In front of her, a disassembled AK was spread across, almost completely disassembled. ¡°This one, I believe it¡¯s an AK-109 has a really interesting counterbalancing feature. It has almost no recoil, despite firing one of the most untamable rounds for a weapon of this type.¡±

    May nodded. ¡°I see,¡± she said. ¡°Speaking of being untamable, are you really allowed to take weapons apart?¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s actually not supposed to be here at all,¡± I said. Nari¡¯s eyes suddenly widened as I continued, ¡°I talked to her¡­ guardian.¡± I turned back to Nari. ¡°Why?¡±

    ¡°I like machines,¡± Nari said. ¡°I like taking things apart and reassembling them. And Sunny had stayed up until two to finish her lesson plan, so I figured I could sneak out here.¡±

    ¡°And you would¡¯ve gotten away with it if it weren¡¯t for me,¡± I said. ¡°Sorry about that.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s ok,¡± Nari said, reassembling the AK. ¡°I just¡­ I just never got to break the rules. It is quite a liberating experience.¡±

    ¡°Is she reassembling it?¡± a voice from the other side of a rack of SA-80s and TARs asked. I stood on tiptoes to see a very nervous cashier cowering by the register. ¡°Please, please, please keep her away from the Walther. They didn¡¯t even make two hundred.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± Nari asked excitedly, snapping the final piece of the AK together. ¡°Which one is that?¡±

    ¡°Before we do anything that¡¯ll get us in even more trouble with Sunny,¡± I said, hoping to distract her, ¡°Nari, this is May Riley. She¡¯s the person who made the surgical glue that saved John and the Power Sludge. May, this is Nari Lee, someone I had to save from a very¡­ strenuous position this summer.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± Nari said, a gleam in her eye, ¡°you¡¯re that Triple A medical student everyone on campus talks about?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± May said. I could tell she wasn¡¯t sure what to make of Nari. On the one hand, Nari was obviously a kindred spirit who needed help adjusting. May, having been bullied most of her life, could likely relate. On the other, May was a pacifist and very socially conscious. She took the command ¡°do no harm¡± very seriously. Nari, meanwhile, had an obvious interest in weaponry and not that much of an interest in being responsible.

    Finally, after a pause, May took out an iPhone and said, ¡°Hey, Nari, you want to listen to some cool music?¡±

    A few minutes later, Nari and May were happily talking about Serj Tankian and Tech N9ne. I smiled. They had hit it off just like I had hoped they would. I just hoped Nari would survive pissing off Sunny.

    <hr />

    Hey, T4nky here. If you want to ask me any questions, or know some fun facts about me, I had an AMA on r/Fantasy yesterday. Check it out.</a>

 4.5: Get a Job

    Eventually, Sunny came to get Nari. ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Sunny apologized to May and me. ¡°She¡¯s supposed to tell me before she walks off.¡±

    ¡°Totally fine,¡± May said as Sunny began to yell at Nari in Korean. ¡°She¡¯s actually a¡­ You aren¡¯t listening to me, are you?¡±

    Meanwhile, the clerk yelled, ¡°Yes! Yes! Take her away before she breaks something please!¡±

    Eventually, Nari and Sunny left. As she hurried Nari off, Sunny said, ¡°Well, Nathan, I hope to see you soon!¡±

    ¡°See you too,¡± I said, waving as she left. When she was gone, I asked May, ¡°So, you want to get breakfast?¡±

    May shrugged. ¡°Sure,¡± she said.

    Breakfast was enjoyable, and I managed to seal the deal for investing in May and Andy¡¯s company. It wasn¡¯t a controlling share by any stretch, but I¡¯d have a say in the major decisions and a percentage of the profits. I also learned that Andy and May had gotten¡­ close over the summer. Mary, however, had kind of drifted off due to an argument.

    ¡°And you,¡± May said, doing that weird thing where she was suddenly drifting back to someone else, ¡°also had quite the summer as well.¡± Damn. I was hoping she¡¯d forget about that. She then got very quiet and watched me intensely. I could swear she was gambling on the awkwardness of the conversation forcing me to speak.

    ¡°John and I had¡­¡± I searched for the words, ¡°¡­ a job from The President.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± May said, ¡°you told me that. Now give me details.¡± She looked like she wanted to pester me with questions, but she continued with her version of the silent treatment.

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, giving in and lowering my voice, ¡°We went to North Korea to find out what the hell was going on.¡± When I saw that May had heard this (she gasped and covered her hands with her mouth,) I began speaking normally. People in crowded areas don¡¯t usually pay attention to what strangers are saying, especially if they¡¯re acting normal. My hope was that people thought May¡¯s reaction was just her hearing some juicy gossip that didn¡¯t concern them. Of course, that was kind of the truth.

    ¡°Basically,¡± I continued, ¡°we were able to get in and out before the big reveal.¡±

    ¡°Before¡­¡± May said, somewhat in awe, ¡°¡­before Drake came out?¡± Unsurprisingly, the genius caught on fast. Bonus points for making the Dragon¡¯s Teeth sound like some closeted gay mutual acquaintance instead of an army threatening everything we loved.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°He let us go, but he kicked our ass. Anyway, if I wanted to get something analyzed on the quiet¡­¡±

    May gave me an exasperated look. ¡°Let me guess, The President doesn¡¯t know about this.¡±

    ¡°He actually kind of does,¡± I said.

    ¡°What do you mean, ¡®Kind of?¡¯¡± May asked. Abruptly, her voice became dangerous. I had seen her like this only a few times. Every single one of these times, scary people would suddenly become scared of her. ¡°I¡¯d like specifics.¡±

    ¡°He knows,¡± I said, now irrationally fearing for my life, ¡°that I¡¯m keeping some souvenirs from my trip and he has an inkling of what I might do with them. If it makes you feel better, you can check with him about it. I just don¡¯t want other parties getting ahold of the lab results.¡±

    May suddenly got apologetic. ¡°Sorry for snapping, Nate,¡± she said, reverting back to her usual bouncy self, ¡°I just get kind of¡­ irrational when I think¡­¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± I said, cutting her off, ¡°first rule of this place: trust nobody. Not even me.¡± Her eyes widened. I must have reverted back to my battlefield persona, the one that had earned me the nickname ¡°Killer.¡±

    Slightly guilty that I had scared her, I continued on. ¡°Anyway, I can get the samples to you any time.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± May said. ¡°Well, uh¡­ I¡¯ve¡­ I¡¯ve got some stuff to do.¡± She got up to put her plates in the washing queue.

    ¡°We should meet again,¡± I said. ¡°Maybe do a study group?¡±

    ¡°Maybe,¡± she said. ¡°Anything I¡¯d be able to help with?¡±

    ¡°Not sure,¡± I said. ¡°Do you know anything about physics, calc and bio?¡±

    ¡°Nate,¡± she said, ¡°you do realize that those are the hardest classes you can take as an AMS student, right?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯ll deal with that when I get to it. Anyway, be seeing you.¡± Suddenly, my phone rang. ¡°Oh,¡± I said. I was expecting Eliza. Instead, I saw an unwelcome name on my cPhone¡¯s touch screen.

    As soon as I accepted the call, an unpleasantly familiar voice with a South African accent asked, ¡°So boyke, how would you like to meet with yer advisor before he goes off to Hell Semester?¡±

    The voice belonged to Karl Krieger, my Hell Semester drill sergeant and student advisor. He was a white man from South Africa who had (based on his word and pictures in his office) gone from nerdly Nelson Mandela devotee to mad, lion-like mercenary and drill sergeant at NIU. Something had happened to him and now, every time I looked into his brown eyes, I could see a scary mixture of intelligence and insanity. Still, he wasn¡¯t anywhere near the scariest or craziest people on the island. He also claimed to have good intentions (i.e. overthrowing the President) but anyone could talk the talk.

    I sighed. It was probably going to be mandatory to meet with him. ¡°Is it going to have to be tonight?¡± I asked. ¡°I was going to have dinner with¡­ a friend.¡±

    ¡°Ah, you can put it off a night if it is who I think it is,¡± Krieger said. ¡°But if you want to do your scholarly duty and get your bartending job back, meet me at the Drunken Russian at eight.¡±

    I sighed. ¡°Fine,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ll be there.¡±

    ¡°Very good, Killer,¡± Krieger said, ¡°I¡¯ll be waiting at The Drunken Mercenary along with Dmitri and a few others around eight. See you there.¡± He then hung up.

    I groaned. Well, I thought to myself, at least I might be able to meet up with her for lunch. I¡¯ll call her.

    I had already finished my food, so I began to head off as I called Eliza. I wasn¡¯t really going anywhere, instead taking a leaf out of May¡¯s book. It was the last day of freedom before the semester started, and the only day at NIU I had experienced that wasn¡¯t raining, snowing, unreasonably hot, terrifyingly cold, or some combination. I was going to make the most of it.

    ¡°¡®Ello, Nate,¡± Eliza¡¯s voice came from over the phone. ¡°What¡¯s happenin¡¯?¡±

    ¡°My advisor called,¡± I said. ¡°I need to meet up with him by eight. Does that affect our plans to meet up¡­?¡±

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    ¡°Yeah¡­ about that¡­¡± Eliza said. ¡°I already ¡®ave some stuff on the table. Oro ¡®n Bai kind of asked if I could go supply shoppin¡¯ with ¡®em. I ¡®aven¡¯t seen them since the term ended and¡­ and Bai found out ¡®bout what ¡®appened with John.¡±

    Oddly enough, the line to her was getting kind of fuzzy. Normally, a cPhone on NIU¡¯s network produced the kind of quality audiophiles paid out the nose to get. Now it sounded like one of those radios on the movies, the kind that was constantly crackling.

    Putting that thought out of my mind, I said, ¡°Let me guess: Bai blames me for John getting shot.¡± That was bad. Not only was Bai John¡¯s girlfriend, but she was a trained martial artist who had just started to learn how to shoot guns.

    ¡°What was that?¡± Eliza asked, the distortion from the connection barely making her intelligible. I had to repeat myself three times.

    ¡°Oh, that makes sense, doesn¡¯t it?¡± Eliza said. ¡°God the connection is¡­¡± She was cut off by a hiss of static. ¡°¡­ing Vodafone is better¡¯n this shite,¡± Eliza said, not realizing she had been cut off. ¡°Anyway, yeah, Bai ain¡¯t exactly pleased. She ¡®eard about it through some medics, so she knows exactly how bad ¡®e was.¡±

    While I had been walking, I had somehow got to the wall that separated the campus from the rest of the island. Part of the reason for this was to keep some of the students in softer fields from walking out into an island dotted with mines and unexploded ordnance, especially while AMS and Shadowhaven students were using live ammo. Like the majority of the man-made structures on the island, the wall was made of red brick and mortar¡­

    ¡­Except for a brief moment (barely even a second) when it hadn¡¯t. Instead, it had been a yellow-colored material, the kind you saw a lot in pictures of the Middle East.

    ¡°Oi!¡± Eliza said into the phone, ¡°Nate! You haven¡¯t said anything in ages.¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said, ¡°I thought I saw something.¡±

    ¡°What do you mean?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure,¡± I said, leaning in to the brick wall. At the time, I could swear I was going crazy, but the brick looked different. Before, I could swear the bricks had more variation, mostly due to weathering. Now, I was somewhat freaked out because I swore each one looked exactly the same. The coloring, the pattern NIU¡¯s freak weather system had worn them down¡­ all the same, or at least repeating with disturbing regularity.

    ¡°Is someone there?¡± Eliza asked. ¡°Where are you? I can¡­¡±

    Somewhere, I heard that Lupines, the kind of Parahuman that Eliza was, had heightened protective instincts. I believed that. ¡°It¡¯s ok,¡± I said. ¡°It was probably my imagination.¡± Either that, or the SIG-Sauer and the Berreta tucked under my hoodie wouldn¡¯t do that much good. ¡°And if it wasn¡¯t¡­¡±

    My reassurance/outright lie was cut off by a God-awful screech of feedback from the phone, which formed a horrendous harmony with Eliza¡¯s scream of pain. ¡°Eliza!¡± I shouted. ¡°Are you ok?¡±

    ¡°Sorry, Nate,¡± Eliza said weakly. ¡°If this shite¡¯s gonna continue¡­¡±

    I nodded. Her foxlike ears are incredibly sensitive. If my ears were ringing, I could only imagine how she felt after that spike of feedback. ¡°Totally fine,¡± I said. ¡°Talk to you later, I guess.¡±

    ¡°Bye, Nate,¡± Eliza said. Then the line went dead. I looked at it. On the phone screen, there was a dropped call message on display. Oddly enough, the phone¡¯s battery was rapidly changing. It was jumping from various numbers at random, being at a hundred percent one millisecond to being at one percent the next and anywhere in between. When the screen started flickering, I turned it off out of fear it would be damaged.

    Suddenly, I heard someone speaking in what, to my ears, sounded like Arabic or a similar language. At first, I thought it was behind me. Suddenly aware of how alone I was, how few of my friends spoke Arabic, and how many Al-Qaeda people who attended NIU that I had pissed off during Hell Semester, I turned around, whipping out my M92.

    As I faced the direction I thought I heard the voice coming from, the weak morning sun glinting off my Berretta¡¯s chrome barrel, I suddenly became very afraid. Not because I had come face to face with a dozen terrorists with AKs (though that would be terrifying,) but because I couldn¡¯t see anyone coming.

    Suddenly, the voice began whispering and moving all around me, like it was right next to me and moving in a circle. I began spinning, trying to find a target. When I realized that sometimes it sounded like my tormentor¡¯s mouth was between my gun and my face, I decided I needed a new strategy. Namely, running the fuck away.

    That¡¯s when I heard the voice start to become voices. They were all the same voice, but they were coming from dozens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of directions from all around me. I ran.

    My plan was to make it to the main street. If I could get there, maybe this¡­ thing would decide it didn¡¯t want witnesses and leave me alone. Or maybe it would kill everyone else anyway. Or maybe I had finally gone crazy.

    Now, the thing is, in order to pass Hell Semester and stay in the AMS/Shadowhaven programs, you need to be a good runner. So when the main street wasn¡¯t getting any closer despite me running as hard as I could, I began to worry. Instead, I seemed to be slowly going backwards. Needless to say, this didn¡¯t cause me to stop panicking.

    To make matters worse, I suddenly felt hands feeling my body. Normally, this would be creepy enough. But these hands weren¡¯t normal. To start, there was at least a pair of hands for every voice.

    But the worst thing? They weren¡¯t kept out by my skin. These hands caressed my tongue, prodded my throat from the inside and out, fondled things in my stomach, messing with my eyes, and pushing at the back of my throat, making me vomit.

    When the hands began to violate me in more traditional ways as well as starting to feel up more important organs like my lungs and heart, and the distance between safety and whatever the fuck this was starting to increase rapidly, I decided to do something crazy. I made a ninety-degree turn and booked it.

    Instantly, the hands stopped and I was moving forwards. I laughed. I was blind, covered in vomit and aching from how I had been handled, but I was free. Then I crashed into something.

 4.6 Back in the NIU Groove

    As I fell, I lost my grip on my Berretta, causing it to clatter to the ground. I quickly grabbed it and turned around, looking to see what I had tripped over.

    Lying next to me, wearing a blue sweater, was an olive-skinned man with close-cropped hair. He groaned, and tried to get to his feet. ¡°Mubashir?¡± I asked. ¡°Is that you?¡± Mubashir Mubarak was one of the other three NIU infiltrators who accompanied me into this rat¡¯s nest. His mission was a little different than mine: not only was he working for UNIX, but I also believed he was working with the CIA or someone to infiltrate Al-Qaeda.

    As I watched him struggle to get up, I noticed that something was leaking from his eyes and nose. It took me a bit to realize that he was bleeding. ¡°Jacobs?¡± he asked when he was finally able to look up, his voice confused. ¡°What are you doing in my room?¡±

    As he stared into my eyes, I saw that his pupils were different sizes. ¡°This isn¡¯t your room,¡± I said, the horror in my gut changing flavor. Moob¡¯s boss, Salim, had it out for me. If we were caught together, it would be a death sentence for Mubashir. On the other hand, Mubashir was showing obvious signs of a concussion. If I let him walk off, there was a chance he would just fall down and never get back up again.

    While I was considering this, Mubashir began looking around. ¡°You¡¯re right¡­¡± he said, ¡°but where are we?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re¡­¡± I began, then looked around. We were still in NIU, but in a part I had never seen before. Over a white picket fence, I could see what I assumed to be Sun Tzu. Between Sun Tzu and the picket fence was a chain link fence.

    I began looking around more carefully. Behind us was a white colonial-style house, like the kind back home. The house and backyard area we were in was well-maintained. To the left was a green house of a different style and what looked to be a convenience store. To the right was a blue house and some kind of office building.

    ¡°¡­Well, I¡¯m not sure,¡± I said as I got up. ¡°Maybe it¡¯s the Kill Street. That¡¯s pretty far from where I was when¡­¡± I shuddered. Not only had I been¡­ assaulted by some Lovecraftian shit, I had somehow teleported here. Also, judging by the sun, it was a little after noon, yet I had no blank spots that explained the time skip.

    ¡°The what?¡±

    ¡°I kind of heard older students talk about it,¡± I said. ¡°It¡¯s basically urban/suburban combat training.¡± I turned my attention back to Mubashir. ¡°You ok, man?¡±

    I had good reason to ask. His efforts to get to his feet only made him look drunk, plus he was shivering like the temperature was sub-arctic. Also, while I couldn¡¯t be sure because the rate was so low, I had the sneaking suspicion that the bleeding from his eyes and nose was still happening.

    ¡°I need to be,¡± he said, in a tone as frightened as it was dazed. ¡°I¡­ I have to get back. I¡¯ve been blacking out like this too much¡­¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± I asked suddenly, ¡°you¡¯ve been blacking out and ending up in strange places on a regular basis?¡±

    ¡°I¡­¡± Mubashir was about to say something, then his eyes drifted to my hand. I suddenly realized that it was still clutching my Berretta. ¡°¡­I need to go,¡± Mubashir said. He then ran off.

    ¡°Talk to a doctor!¡± I yelled after him as he disappeared around the house. After a few seconds, I added under my breath, ¡°fucking dumbass.¡±

    The next step was to find out the time. That was easy, if disconcerting. I pulled out my phone. For a second, it said the time was 7:35 AM, which was about the time the weird shit had started going down. Then, after it finished reconnecting to the internet, it updated to 2:24 PM. I had lost seven hours.

    The next step was to get out. That was just as easy. Since I didn¡¯t want to attract any more negative attention to Mubashir than his bleeding eyes, frequent blackouts and disorientation normally would, I decided to scale the chain link fence. It was only after I had got down on the other side that I realized how much more healthy all the running around made me. That was the one good thing about being in the AMS: I may have already been shot, I may be mentally disintegrating, and I may have potentially been attacked by an Elder God, but at least I wouldn¡¯t die from being overweight.

    The rest of the day was a mess of wondering whether or not what had happened that morning was real. Either way, I probably should tell someone. It was just¡­ I wasn¡¯t sure if anyone I knew could do anything about it.

    I mostly spent the time before the meeting doing school shopping. One of the first things, I have to admit, was buy some whiskey, one that was, apparently, tinged with honey. It was to be my reward for meeting up with Krieger. Once I had met with him, I was going to go straight back to my room and start imbibing.

    I got to the Drunken Mercenary exactly ten minutes ahead of schedule. I couldn¡¯t help but smile. The Drunken Mercenary was built into a dorm for fresh meat (or AMS/Shadowhaven students who hadn¡¯t passed Hell Semester.) Once Hell Semester was over, the survivors would move into this dorm. Most of it was the same semi-modern style as all the other buildings on the island, but The Drunken Mercenary did its best to replicate an old tavern. An old-time sign hung over a Medieval-looking door that served as the bar¡¯s entrance. Behind the blacked-out window was the trappings of an old European pub, plus a few pool and poker tables and a few TVs that invariably were tuned to soccer, or, as the people watching called it, football.

    ¡°Nathan!¡± A booming Russian voice called out. I turned to seem my boss, Dmitri Arkadyvich Popov, a tall, muscular Russian with a shaved head. ¡°Why so early?¡±

    ¡°Just thought that if I could get here early, I could leave earlier,¡± I said.

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    ¡°You poor fool,¡± Dmitri said as he got his keys out. ¡°Now you will be waiting as well.¡± He then pushed open the door and I followed him into the bar.

    Before he could turn on the lights, someone sitting by the door between the Drunken Mercenary and the dorm part of the building beat him to it. ¡°You¡¯re late, Dmitri,¡± a hard, female voice with a Russian accent said.

    I turned to see a middle-aged woman with dark hair sitting at one of the tables. I recognized her instantly: Professor Zemylachka, the head of the Shadowhaven school. Dimitri laughed. ¡°Rosie,¡± he said, ¡°one of these days, your ninja horseshit will get shot.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯ll forgive me,¡± Professor Zemylachka said wryly, ¡°if I¡¯m not too frightened by that. Would you get me a drink?¡±

    ¡°Nathan,¡± Dmitri said, ¡°you want to get some practice bartending?¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said. ¡°By the way, what are my hours going to look like?¡±

    ¡°I was thinking you could get your old times, plus Friday,¡± Dmitri said as I moved behind the bar.

    ¡°Sounds good,¡± I said, ¡°all my classes are during late mornings or early afternoons.¡± I picked up a cup. ¡°Hey, Professor, what do you want?¡±

    ¡°May I have the good stuff?¡± Professor Zemylachka asked.

    ¡°Is she a personal friend?¡± Dmitri asked.

    ¡°No sir,¡± I said, rolling my eyes. ¡°Sorry, Ma¡¯am. Rules are rules.¡± The rule in question was that when I was behind the bar, I had to run it like a kleptocrat, only unlocking the cabinet that contained the non-shitty alcohol for personal friends. Everyone else got a brand of beer from America that was famous for its lack of quality, cheap Russian vodka, and some unidentifiable liquid stuffed in a jam jar and disturbingly labeled ¡°For Assholes. Free.¡±

    Professor Zemylachka laughed. ¡°What about Mr. Popov?¡± she asked.

    I considered, then said, ¡°He just pays the bills.¡±

    The head of Shadowhaven laughed. Dmitri, weirdly enough, told me, ¡°Good job. Remember, you are master of the bar.¡±

    ¡°What about me, boyke?¡± a growly voice asked.

    I looked up. Leaning against the window, I saw Professor Krieger leaning on the wall next to the door leading out to the street. As usual, his light brown eyes were sparkling with insanity. Someone who didn¡¯t know better would think that someone that big couldn¡¯t sneak in like that.

    I, however, had seen bigger be stealthier. ¡°Sorry,¡± I said, ¡°best I can give you is a twenty-five percent discount on the cat piss.¡± I indicated the tap to indicate what I meant.

    ¡°I¡¯m hurt, Boyke.¡±

    ¡°You should be honored,¡± Dmitri said. ¡°I only let people give discounts when they want to impress someone or negotiate with them, especially one that good.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± Krieger said. ¡°In that case, I¡¯m honored. A pitcher of cat pee for me and my friends.¡±

    I got busy preparing the awful substance for them. Just as I was about done, Kyle Rockford walked in. One of the four survivors (not counting Nari) of the North Korean recon mission, he was recruited by Krieger and advised by Professor Zemylachka. He also had led a sting mission against Grenzefrontier sympathizers at NIU at the behest of The President.

    That mission had come to a bloody end at the end of last semester. His team, mostly teammates from his high school who had apparently stood by him when he came out as trans, had all ended up dead. Needless to say, by the time of the North Korean expedition, he was kind of soured on the whole ¡°being a spy¡± thing. In fact, I was surprised to see him back here.

    ¡°Oh no,¡± he said. ¡°How long have they been talking to you?¡±

    ¡°Kyle,¡± I asked, somewhat confusedly as he walked over to me, ¡°what are you talking about?¡±

    ¡°Listen,¡± he said, ¡°Nate, you¡¯re a decent person. Leave now while you can still live with yourself.¡±

    ¡°Are you threatening another student?¡± Professor Zemylachka asked.

    ¡°We both know full well what I¡¯m saying,¡± Kyle said, turning to her angrily. He turned back to me. ¡°Seriously, man,¡± he said, ¡°I¡¯m not threatening, I¡¯m begging. They want to do the impossible.¡±

    ¡°And that is¡­?¡± I asked.

    ¡°We feel the school is not living up to its potential as a learning environment,¡± Kreiger said. ¡°Some of our fellow faculty in the more¡­ pacifistic programs have tried to make changes as well. Their approaches have met with failure as their methods required them to work with people who had vested interest in keeping things the same. As such, they failed.¡±

    Things were now disturbingly clear. The faculty of AMS and Shadowhaven were planning an armed revolt. ¡°I see¡­¡± I said.

    ¡°Nate,¡± Kyle said, ¡°I came back to get as many people out as possible.¡± He dropped his voice to a whisper. ¡°Their plan¡­ remember those people at Hell Semester final? Remember how North Korea looked when we got there? That¡¯s what¡¯s going to happen.¡±

    I paused. Then I asked Krieger, ¡°Are your plans for change¡­ playing into your strengths?¡±

    ¡°It depends,¡± he said. ¡°We have some reasonable demands. Less brutal Hell Semester, students having more control over their own work, having punishments being less arbitrary¡­ things of that nature.¡±

    ¡°And when would this be?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Now, boyke,¡± Krieger said, ¡°you should know that we can¡¯t really tell you anything more until you¡¯re in.¡±

    ¡°And if I don¡¯t join?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Depends on who else you tell,¡± Kreiger said. ¡°We can keep disagreements civil if you can.¡±

    I considered. Finally, I said, ¡°I¡¯ll have to think about this.¡±

    Kyle¡¯s face fell. Krieger smiled. ¡°Take your time, boyke,¡± he said. ¡°After all, we still have a lot of time.¡±

 4.7 A Good Swim

    The rest of the meeting was pretty standard for a meeting between an advisor and two of his students. I finally decided on my major: Officer Candidacy. Kyle, meanwhile, talked a lot about transferring. It sounded extremely complicated, mostly because he was in Shadowhaven. Most colleges didn¡¯t let you transfer courses like Basic Toxins or Crowd Concealment I.

    When we were done, I walked back to my dorm. It was dark, but that was because the rainy season was coming. At least it wasn¡¯t rainy yet. Being trapped inside a small room was never fun.

    The knowledge of the coming confinement and the knowledge that Krieger and others were planning an uprising were weighing heavily on my mind. I was already worried about so many other things, including my parents finding out what I did at school, the Dragon¡¯s Teeth stepping up their attack, and a general uneasiness with myself. To top it off, there was that¡­ incident this morning. All I wanted was to get drunk. Maybe that would make all this go away, at least for an hour.

    I finally got back to my dorm and opened the door. When I flipped on the lights, I saw John¡¯s bed moved. To my surprise, it wasn¡¯t John¡¯s head that poked above the covers, but Bai Feng¡¯s. Unsurprisingly, John¡¯s head came up next.

    Bai was somewhat short, but she made up for it with her demeanor. With her close-cropped shoulder-length hair and her cold, intense gaze, you could tell that she was a force to be reckoned with. She also had the martial arts skills to back it up, as well as the exacting marksmanship expected from AMS and Shadowhaven students.

    ¡°You¡­¡± Bai said, like she had just found a particularly disgusting bug. ¡°What are you doing here?¡± To my complete lack of surprise she was desperately trying to cover her chest with the sheet. After all, the last time she and John had spent a night together, I could hear them getting it on from a room away.

    ¡°Technically,¡± I said, averting my eyes, ¡°I share the dorm with John.¡± I then turned around to leave. ¡°But I see he needs it all to himself for the moment¡­¡±

    ¡°About John,¡± Bai said dangerously.

    ¡°Bai¡­¡± John said pleadingly.

    Bai ignored him. ¡°You said that you¡¯d take care of John. That you¡¯d bring him back. And what happens?¡±

    I was already completely done with this. All I wanted was to pass out into a dreamless sleep. The only problem? The shared cooler where I had put the bottle of whiskey was in between the desks, all the way on the opposite side of the room.

    I was brought out of these thoughts by Bai answering her own question. ¡°He nearly dies. The first person I meet outside my¡­ my group who I didn¡¯t have to kill almost dies.¡±

    I was now more than a little pissed. This was one of the things I wanted to forget for a night. Just one night, I wanted to sleep. No dreams, no thoughts, just silence. ¡°Are you done?¡± I asked.

    ¡°No,¡± Bai said. ¡°I warned you, these Dragon¡¯s Teeth¡­ they are the servants of one of the Three. Did you even know what they were capable of before you risked your life? Before you risked the life of your friend?¡±

    Finally, I had had enough. I turned around and shouted, ¡°Have you ever considered that maybe, just maybe we went because we had no clue about their capabilities? Have you considered that?¡±

    Bai sighed. ¡°If you had listened to my prophecy¡­¡±

    ¡°Would that have told us they use chemical weapons?¡± I asked. ¡°Or that they have an advanced energy system? Would it be the equivalent of a report that had technical readouts of many of their weapons, vehicles and armor? Would it break down their tactics? Would it¡­¡±

    ¡°It would have told you that they were invincible!¡± Bai yelled.

    As she did so, she waved one hand, accidentally hitting John. ¡°Hey,¡± he said, ¡°everyone, calm down!¡±

    I ignored him, roaring at Bai. ¡°THEY AREN¡¯T INVINCIBLE!¡±

    We were all silent for a moment, Bai and me locking eyes, John obviously praying that we had stopped. Finally, Bai said, ¡°What.¡±

    ¡°They¡¯re fighting among themselves,¡± I said. ¡°Someone¡¯s making a play for control from the Deets.¡±

    ¡°Someone who sounds an awful lot like this Mistress of Death,¡± John added unhelpfully.

    ¡°And they¡¯re arrogant,¡± I continued softly. ¡°They let us get away. Even though we may have found their weakness. Maybe it¡¯s hopeless, ok, fine, sure! But maybe we can win. If we can, I will do everything in my power to make sure that the fucking world doesn¡¯t end!¡± I took a deep breath, mostly because I had shouted the last five words. ¡°You don¡¯t have to join me. If you want, you can just sit on your asses waiting for the people in charge or a fucking prophecy to save us all. In the meantime, just¡­ just leave me alone.¡± With that, I turned around and walked out of the room, slamming the door behind me.

    I looked up, suddenly realizing that several people were staring at me. ¡°What the fuck are you assholes looking at?¡± I then began walking away, muttering, ¡°Just leave me alone, ok?¡±

    Finally, I managed to get to the common room on the first floor. I turned on the TV to some stupid cartoons. I may have looked like I was watching the bright, cheerful characters do whatever it was they were doing, but inside, I was steaming.

    Eventually, that ended, and it was replaced by a more gun-focused cartoon. It was good, but after a while, the sound of gunfire started to get me way too agitated. I then began to channel-surf.

    I eventually settled on one of the news channels that was coming via satellite instead of being produced by the campus¡¯s TV station. It was a report on how China was mobilizing its army and heading towards the Korean border.

    ¡°Hey,¡± John said. I turned around. ¡°Bai and me are going to have a night on the town. You can go back to the room if you¡­¡±

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    ¡°Very generous of her,¡± I said.

    ¡°Dude,¡± John said, ¡°don¡¯t be a dick.¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said. ¡°I know she¡¯s your girlfriend, but I¡¯ve had a really rough day today.¡± I took a deep breath, stopping myself from going on a rant. ¡°Well, good luck on your date,¡± I said, trying to sound happy for him.

    ¡°Thanks man,¡± John said.

    He may have said some other stuff, but I was too busy heading up to the room. When I was finally in, I opened up the mini-fridge and pulled out the bottle of whiskey. I only waited to get the small paper cups. After all, John might want a drink to celebrate when he got back.

    This led to the odd sight of me drinking hard liquor out of small paper cups with pictures of cartoon dinosaurs on them. If I was to guess, I¡¯d say that filled up so that they were almost overflowing, they held about a quarter to a third of a shot.

    The cups were also pretty flimsy. They quickly became unusable after only a few drinks. I didn¡¯t really care. I just wanted to be able to get to sleep.

    Eventually, I got my wish. I wasn¡¯t that full, and I had just ingested way too much whiskey on a slightly empty stomach. I don¡¯t remember passing out, but I do remember that John walking back in woke me up.

    ¡°Jesus Christ!¡± John exclaimed as soon as he walked in the door. ¡°What¡¯s that smell? What¡¯s with all these cups all over the floor? And why are you holding a shredded armor plate?¡±

    I blinked blearily. ¡°Hey man¡­¡± I whined, ¡°turn off the lights¡­ I turned them off for a reason!¡±

    ¡°Dude,¡± John said, ¡°the lights were on when I got in.¡±

    I stared at him in an uncomprehending stupor for what had to be a good five minutes. Finally, I managed to rally my alcohol-scrambled neurons to ask, ¡°Whuh¡­?¡±

    John let out a long sigh, then repeated everything he had said since walking in the room, except slower. After I had let out a noise of comprehension, he asked, ¡°Nate, what the hell happened?¡±

    I looked down to realize that John was right. I was clutching a Kevlar plate. For some reason I hadn¡¯t believed him. I stared at it for a moment, wondering why it was even in the room.

    John, noticing my confusion, said, ¡°We can answer the questions in any order, if you want.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± I said, ¡°I remember now. I saved it. From our thing at the place.¡±

    ¡°Our recon mission to North Korea?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°What you said. And the smell is whiskey. Do you want some?¡±

    I began getting up. It was a lot harder than I expected. ¡°The reason there¡¯s cups all over the floor is because they dissolve when you put whiskey in them, and I didn¡¯t want to get my spit over the bottle. Thought I¡¯d share.¡±

    ¡°Nate,¡± John said, ¡°that shit is so disgusting, not even fucking AIDS will live in it.¡± He shook his head. ¡°And how much did you drink, anyway? You sound like a cartoon¡¯s depiction of drunk.¡±

    ¡°It isn¡¯t disgusting!¡± I said. ¡°The first sip or two¡¯s very nice!¡±

    ¡°And after the first few sips?¡± John asked.

    ¡°You can¡¯t really taste it,¡± I said. ¡°Anyway, want some? It¡¯s¡­¡± I had finally managed to stand up. Apparently, that was a bad idea. My stomach quickly informed me of this mistake in the only way it knew how. John and I both stared at the resulting mess, me in a drunken stupor, John in utter disgust.

    ¡°Am I going to have to hold your head over the toilet?¡± John asked. My answer was to heave again. ¡°Yes,¡± John sighed. ¡°Yes I am.¡± He then draped my arm over his shoulder and began dragging me to the floor¡¯s bathroom. To what I¡¯m sure must have been his vast relief, I didn¡¯t vomit a single time during the trip.

    When I was safely located over a toilet, John asked, ¡°So, what brought this on?¡±

    I would have answered immediately, but I was interrupted by all too familiar spasms. When I had finished upchucking, I said, ¡°Today¡­¡± I burped, then continued, ¡°Today was a really shitty day.¡±

    ¡°Did you meet with Krieger or something?¡± John asked.

    ¡°I can deal with Krieger,¡± I said, ¡°and I might have been able to deal with Bai¡¯s bullshit, but¡­¡± I shuddered, remembering the thing from this morning. ¡°There¡¯s¡­ there¡¯s some thing on this fucking island. Something bad.¡±

    ¡°I can¡¯t quite tell if I should think that¡¯s obvious or ominous,¡± John said.

    After yet more bits of bile landed in the toilet, I said, ¡°There¡¯s something new. This¡­ this thing was here, by the outer wall this morning. I don¡¯t know what it is, but whatever it is, its powerful. It warps reality¡­ makes you think you¡¯re running forwards, but you¡¯re actually going backwards, teleports, that kind of bullshit. It¡­ Its hands, man! They feel everything! They¡­ they¡­¡±

    ¡°Are you ok?¡± John asked. The reason he was asking is that I was now crying.

    ¡°No man,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m not. None of us have been ok for a¡­¡± I paused to vomit again. ¡°¡­for a long time.¡±

    John sighed. ¡°Listen,¡± he said. ¡°This kind of stuff¡­ something tells me it would be a hell of a lot more productive to talk to me about this stuff when you¡¯re sober.¡±

    ¡°Yeah¡­¡± I said. ¡°I think you¡¯re right.¡±

    After a while, John dragged me back to the room. When I was lying on my bed, I said, ¡°John¡­ I¡¯m sorry. I¡¯m sorry I got you shot. I¡¯m sorry I threw up everywhere. I¡¯m sorry I came between you and your girlfriend¡­ I¡¯m just so fucking sorry man.¡±

    ¡°Nate¡­¡± John said, busy cleaning up vomit, ¡°¡­Just¡­ just go to fucking sleep and let me work, man.¡±

    ¡°Yeah¡­¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, man.¡±

    As I went to sleep, my drunken mind somehow asked a question my fully functional one hadn¡¯t: Just why had the mystery thing dropped me right next to Mubashir? This would be something I would have to pursue when I was sober.

 4.8 Future So Bright

    Things quickly settled back into a routine. Like an idiot, I had decided to get as many of the tough classes I would absolutely hate out of the way this semester as I possibly could and not go insane. That was physics, chemistry, and calculus. Anything more, and I¡¯d go insane. I also had English II, because it was required, and over the summer, I had managed to get Computer Aided Design I and a course called Weaponsmithing: AKs and ARs included as well.

    The reason for the last two was because I had an extracurricular activity I needed to do. Those Dragon¡¯s Teeth were already way too far ahead of the rest of the world in terms of tech. The only problem was that their basic infantry weapons sucked. So, in my spare time, I was going to design a weapon that would be competitive with the Pilum assault rifle, maybe throw in a few other kinds as well.

    The problem with this idea was time. Not only was I taking six really hard classes, but I was also tending bar four nights a week and had decided to do my radio show with Andy again. Functionally, that only left the weekend to design, prototype and test a range of modern weaponry with new ammunition designed to compete with something that was twenty years ahead of every weapon made on Earth. And the person making it would never have designed a gun before.

    Needless to say, I hadn¡¯t really thought this through enough. The one thing I did do right was decide to make the ammo first. That mean figuring out what the hell was in the bullets I had recovered. That meant getting them to May.

    I met her the Sunday before class started. It was supper (which gave me ample time to recover from my hangover,) and we met at Sun Tzu. ¡°Any particular reason you wanted to meet here?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± she said, setting her stir-fry down at the table we had chosen. ¡°I wanted an excuse not to eat in a place where nutritionists go to fight.¡±

    ¡°Sounds fun,¡± I said.

    May shot me a withering look. ¡°It¡¯s not,¡± she said. ¡°It feels like the menu changes every day, usually either to some completely artificial meal to entirely fruits and vegetables with no regard for the other three food groups.¡± She pointed to her stir-fry and glass of milk. ¡°I need protein, I need grain, and I need sweets. This place has that in healthy portions. That¡¯s not to say artificial ingredients, fruits and veggies are inherently evil. A girl just needs a little more than that. I also need the other food groups and food that tastes good. I admit, when I made Power Sludge, I didn¡¯t take any of that into account, but I see that more as proving my point seeing as how miserable it made my life. But there were worse things I could do, y¡¯know? I could have forced my new wonder diet on everyone because I¡¯m perfect and can do no wrong just like that dumbass Ulrich! Or I could be like Tiffany Parker and throw a fit every time something other than joyless new-age crap¡­ excuse me, ¡®organize protests over Paleo-uncompliant meals.¡¯ God, Paleolithic diets are the most¡­¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry to interrupt,¡± I said, sensing that May was going to go into one of her signature rants, ¡°but I was wondering if you could help me analyze these.¡± I held a box. Inside was the bullets I had collected in North Korea and a note explaining how to open them and what I wanted them tested for.

    ¡°I guess,¡± May said. From the look of it, she didn¡¯t seem exactly thrilled by the idea of helping me make a weapon.

    ¡°It¡¯s going to a good cause,¡± I said.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± May said, ¡°and so was the Gatling gun. Why do you need to fight¡­ them? Because it sounds like more lives could be saved just by surrendering.¡±

    I paused, considering my words carefully. ¡°When I was¡­ away,¡± I finally said, ¡°I saw only one civilian. There was also only one surviving soldier, but his mind was so damaged by chemical weapons, I¡¯m not sure if he counts. Apart from soldiers on both sides and that one civilian, there were no signs of survivors.¡±

    May gravely considered this horrifying news for a few seconds, then said, ¡°Fine. But this does not end up on the civilian market, got me?¡± As she said this, she grudgingly put the package in her purse.

    ¡°I¡¯ll delay it as long as I can,¡± I said.

    We ate in silence, pursuing small talk for a bit. Suddenly, we were interrupted. ¡°Hello, my friends!¡± boomed a voice with a strange accent. I looked up. There, standing next to our table, carrying their food, were two men I knew only as Eric the Entertainer and The Monk.

    ¡°Eric! Monk!¡± I said happily. ¡°How¡¯re you two doing? And where are the rest of you guys?¡± Eric and The Monk were two African child soldiers I had met in Hell Semester. They were part of a group of child soldiers that had some vague adventures. Eric was the leader and heavy machinegunner. The Monk was designated marksman and the calmest human being I know. MC Disaster was a reclusive demolitions expert who rarely spoke. Ray-Gun was an excitable sci-fi nerd who usually spotted for The Monk. Doc was the somewhat crotchety doctor.

    It would be very hard not to look at any of them and not guess their history. Between their accents and skin tone (The Monk had the lightest, with dark brown skin) it would be very easy to tell they were from Africa. Their height and build suggested constant malnutrition, with only The Monk and Ray-Gun being around the height of an average American. However, their most striking shared feature, at least to me, was their shared predatory poise. These were people who had been killing since before I could read.

    They had also really helped me during those first few months of school. For that, John and I both owed all five of them a hell of a lot.

    ¡°We,¡± Eric said, sitting down, ¡°are doing fine. Also, we¡¯re¡­ enjoying hanging out with different people on occasion.¡±

    ¡°Ray-Gun is watching every single episode of Ultimate Spider-Man,¡± The Monk said, ¡°MC Disaster is listening to those CDs May loaned me,¡± he turned to May to quickly add, ¡°by the way, thank you for those. I particularly liked Fearless. If you want them back¡­¡±

    ¡°If like it,¡± May said, ¡°you can keep all of them, except for K.O.D. I got that signed by Krizz Kaliko and Tech N9ne.¡±

    ¡°What about that one signed by Justin¡­¡±

    ¡°Keep it!¡± May shouted. ¡°Please! Dad got me so many embarrassing CDs. I wanted K.O.D, he¡¯d get me My World 2.0. I ask for The Rose That Grew From Concrete, he¡¯d get me Up All Night. Ugh! It was so annoying!¡±

    ¡°Where¡¯s Doc?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Oh, yeah,¡± May said. ¡°Thanks for reminding me, Nate. Where is Doc? I heard he did pretty well over summer semester in a few of his med classes.¡±

    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

    ¡°Cross got in this morning,¡± The Monk said. Michael ¡°Cross¡± Castellan was a son of a New York mafia hitman. He also was the kind of guy you never would suspect of being gay¡­ until he got drunk and started feeling up dudes and talking about sleeping with Triad bosses. ¡°He and Doc are having¡­ quality time.¡±

    ¡°By ¡®quality time¡¯¡± Eric said, ¡°we mean butt fucking.¡± From the way he said it, I could tell he was trying to gross May out.

    It flew right over May¡¯s head. ¡°Speaking of long-distance relationships,¡± she said to me, ¡°how are you and Eliza doing?¡±

    ¡°We actually haven¡¯t talked since yesterday,¡± I said. ¡°She said something about having to cancel her meeting with me today.¡±

    ¡°I see,¡± May said with a disturbing flatness.

    ¡°It¡¯s nothing,¡± I said. ¡°She¡¯s just busy, that¡¯s all.¡± May, meanwhile, just nodded.

    The rest of the meal was fine enough. I left early, smartly realizing that this night would be the last chance I had at a full night¡¯s sleep and freedom to do whatever. May was able to talk me into doing a study group that she was setting up, something to do with wanting to help ¡°idiot sophomores who¡¯d bitten off more than they could chew.¡± Despite getting the impression that she had just had the idea a few seconds ago, I accepted.

    That turned out to be a very good idea. As soon as class started, I quickly realized my mistake. Everything was hard.

    The CAD class, for instance, assumed you had used something similar before. There were three things that saved me that first class. The first is that I had spent the portion of Sunday I hadn¡¯t been hungover playing around with the CAD software and reading the book. The second was that I had touched on CAD programs as part of the Maynard Public Schools curriculum and my misguided quest to become a game designer. The third thing was that Nari was sitting right beside me. By the end of the class, we were all able to create a plastic, spring-loaded¡­ thing.

    The most interesting thing about that first class (not that it was boring, quite the opposite in fact,) was an announcement at the end. ¡°Now being in this program allows you certain privileges,¡± she said. ¡°During this course, and upon passing it, you will have a set ration of plastic and cardboard for 3D-printing at your discretion.¡±

    Plastic and cardboard. Damn. I couldn¡¯t make a gun out that. I was so busy worrying about how I¡¯d get some actual materials that I almost missed what the instructor said next.

    ¡°If you feel like you need better materials,¡± the instructor continued on, ¡°you may ask your student advisor to sign off on the materials.¡± I smiled. Suddenly, I had a way to make a gun. It all depended on Kreiger.

    Physics, chemistry, calculus and English were also shaping up to be hellish. The bright side was that the chemistry classroom had a similar deal: you could access a variety of compounds and elements, and more if your advisor authorized it.

    However, the best class was the armory class. As soon as I got in, the teacher said the most beautiful words I had ever heard all week. ¡°Hey y¡¯all,¡± he said, ¡°I¡¯m Don Haliburton. Now, this is the first day and we¡¯ve got plenty of time, so I¡¯m gonna take it slow for a few sessions.¡±

    It was Friday. The only thing any of us had been hearing was ¡°You guys! The semester only has twelve weeks! We need to hurry!¡± I swear, as soon as we heard this, the entire room had to suppress a cheer. I turned to look at Doc and Cross. All three of us had huge grins on our faces.

    When Professor Haliburton was done with the lecture and had us start work on stripping some weapons, Nari said, ¡°Honestly, I am somewhat sad. I would like to have been challenged.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± Cross said, his tanned face wrinkling in confusion, ¡°aren¡¯t you like, ten, or something?¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re off by about a week, sir,¡± Nari said, a blank expression on her face. ¡°My birthday is on Saturday.¡± From what I knew about her, that look and tone of voice indicated either contempt or annoyance, tinged with a fear that contempt or annoyance would get her disappeared. It wasn¡¯t an unreasonable fear, either back in North Korea or at NIU.

    ¡°But you¡¯re in college¡­¡± Cross said, somewhat stunned.

    ¡°You¡¯re in college,¡± Nari said, ¡°and yet somehow you got a C in Algebra last semester.¡± She suddenly went white with horror, realizing she had just insulted a Hell Semester graduate who had just finished re-assembling an AK.

    ¡°Oooooh,¡± Doc said. ¡°She got you, man!¡±

    ¡°Shut up,¡± Cross said. ¡°I got honors in high school!¡±

    ¡°This isn¡¯t high school,¡± Doc said in a sing-song voice.

    ¡°Oh yeah,¡± Cross asked. ¡°What¡¯d you get in English again, genius?¡±

    ¡°Cross got a C! Cross got a C! C is for Cross, that¡¯s good enough for he!¡±

    ¡°Oh yeah?¡± Cross asked, elbowing Doc (unadvisable, seeing as Doc was holding an M-16A4.) ¡°This is from the guy who got a D in English and a D up the butt!¡±

    ¡°Guys,¡± I said, ¡°not in front of the mini-person, ok?¡±

    ¡°Are¡­¡± Nari asked, now even more concerned, ¡°¡­Are they¡­ homosexuals?¡±

    ¡°Nah,¡± Cross said, ¡°we just like sucking each other¡¯s dicks.¡±

    ¡°Hey! Lovebirds!¡± Professor Haliburton shouted from across the room. ¡°Am I gonna have to put you two in separate pre-schools?¡± Professor Haliburton was an older man, with a bit of a paunch, but he had been in Special Forces. Plus, he was faculty. You had to be an idiot to disrespect him.

    ¡°No, sir,¡± Cross and Doc said in unison. Professor Haliburton glared at them for a few seconds. After what felt like an eternity, he moved on.

    A few seconds later, Cross said, ¡°So, Doc¡¯s group is going to watch the run-down of the Fresh Meat. We¡¯re also inviting a few others, too. You want to come, Nate?¡±

    ¡°Can¡¯t make it,¡± I said, looking up from my sketch of an AK-107 counterbalancing mechanism. ¡°I¡¯m going to be doing overtime at The Drunken Mercenary. Apparently, anything to do with Hell Semester, soccer..¡±

    ¡°You mean football,¡± Doc corrected.

    ¡°¡­and the last few days of finals are the busiest days for the bar and all hands have to be on deck.¡± I shook my head. ¡°Sorry guys.¡±

    After class was finally over, I was one of the last to leave. I had gotten the actual assignment done extremely quickly and had spent the rest of class examining the counterbalance mechanisms of the AK-107 and AEK-971. From what I understood, their design was both more effective and simpler than the Pilum. All I¡¯d have to do was copy the design, and I¡¯d have a better weapon. The future was looking bright, if only for my designs.

    I was so engrossed that I didn¡¯t notice that Nari had been watching me take notes the entire class.

 4.9: One More Shot

    I was heading to Sun Tzu to get something to eat before my shift when Nari stopped me. ¡°Mr. Jacobs,¡± she said, somewhat out of breath, ¡°I happened to develop a theory about you this week.¡±

    I looked at the tiny nine-year-old girl. She seemed¡­ eager. ¡°Does Sunny know you¡¯re here?¡± I asked. ¡°Besides I kind of need to eat, so¡­¡±

    ¡°This won¡¯t take long,¡± Nari said, ¡°and I¡¯ll be back by curfew. That is, if you listen to reason.¡±

    ¡°Ok, fine.¡± I said. ¡°What is your theory.¡±

    Instantly, Nari¡¯s enthusiasm increased exponentially. Leaning in close, she said quietly, ¡°The guns you brought back, you¡¯re trying to make an improved version.¡± When she saw my reaction, she jumped triumphantly, nearly headbutting me in the face.

    ¡°And?¡± I asked. ¡°Where do you come in?¡±

    Nari sighed. ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± she said, ¡°but I thought it would be obvious. I want to be part of it. You know me. You know that this is the kind of thing I dream about, and the kind of area where I excel. You need me.¡±

    ¡°Fine,¡± I hissed, ignoring her whoop of triumph and scanning the area for potential listeners. ¡°I just¡­ kind of want to do the first draft myself.¡±

    ¡°I can understand that,¡± Nari said. ¡°But I will be checking in.¡± She then did a little dance and said something in Korean. After that, she said, ¡°I will speak with you soon. Have a good evening, Mr. Jacobs!¡± She then half ran, half skipped away.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said to myself, ¡°that¡­ is going to change things.¡± May had handed me a printout of what was in the bullets before my class. I figured I could make several of those by next week and tell Nari a bit about them. Then, I could move on to the pistol. I had heard that the FBI were looking for something to replace 9mm, due to a recent rise in Parahuman and Advanced Tech crime.

    Still, that wasn¡¯t something I could do today. What I needed to do was eat up and get to The Drunken Mercenary. It was going to be a long night from what I understood. In fact, it was going to get so crazy that we¡¯d have to double up on bartenders.

    I had some nice Korean barbeque that was being served that night. Luckily, I was pretty early, so not that many people were there. I could get my food, eat it and get to The Drunken Mercenary.

    It was still pretty close, though. I had to eat so fast I got the hiccups, and even then I had to flat-out sprint to get to the pub. I noticed, with a little annoyance, that I¡¯d have to get my stamina up if I wanted to do the Shadowhaven/AMS monthly run. The time I had spent recovering from my cracked rib had caused me to get out of shape a bit.

    Pausing to get catch my breath, I raised my hand to knock on the door. It opened and a waiter I didn¡¯t know ushered me in. We quickly began cleaning tables and setting up extra chairs and TVs. When I was behind the bar, I noticed that there were two Kel-Tec KSGs under the bar tonight instead of only one like normal. Made sense, there were twice as many bartenders, and we expected twice the amount of people. Therefore, we¡¯d need twice the buckshot and twice the rock salt. I quickly checked to make sure that the rock salt and the buckshot were in the usual tubes. I didn¡¯t want to fire off a round off and have buckshot come out when I needed rock salt, or vice versa. Instead, I found that the rock salt had been replaced with bean bag rounds. I shrugged. I¡¯d have to ask someone who knew what they were talking about if there was a difference.

    Finally, we were all set up. Everyone got into position, and the waiters and waitresses made sure that their pepper spray and batons were accessible and concealed. Despite being designed as a hangout for the AMS and Shadowhaven students (or maybe because of that,) only the bartenders were allowed to carry lethal weaponry, and even then we were only allowed what our employer issued.

    We finished setting up well before the bar opened. To test that the main attraction, we turned on the TVs to the campus news channel, each TV set to a different language. I noticed that they didn¡¯t set any to an Arabic version. My guess was because that most of the Arabic speakers in the AMS/Shadowhaven program were serious enough Muslims to not even consider going into a bar.

    Soon after the TVs were turned on, I started paying attention to what the newscaster was saying. ¡°In, uh, in other news,¡± one of the casters said, ¡°China¡¯s been making some rumblings about taking back North Korea.¡±

    ¡°The question is,¡± the other anchor said, with a somewhat prim middle-class British accent, ¡°do the North Koreans want China¡¯s involvement? The Chinese Government claims that the mysterious group known as The Dragon¡¯s Teeth is an American-sponsored terrorist group, yet The Dragon¡¯s Teeth, in the few messages to the outside world, have claimed they represent the people of North Korea. What do you think?¡± The way the second anchor finished her take, it sounded a lot like she wanted to ask who the first anchor was.

    ¡°Listen,¡± the first anchor said, ¡°I, uh, I know I¡¯m Canadian, but we know our neighbor to the south. Those guys aren¡¯t backed by the USA. If the US wants to, uh, wants to invade a place, they just, y¡¯know, go boom, we¡¯re invading you. They aren¡¯t subtle enough to actually do¡­ whatever The Dragon¡¯s Teeth are.¡±

    ¡°So¡­¡± the second anchor said, ¡°you think they¡¯re the Korean Army or some form of popular uprising?¡±

    ¡°Uh, no,¡± the first anchor said. ¡°Can we uh, get that footage of the Dragon¡¯s Teeth patrolling the DMZ?¡±

    Instantly, footage from the South Korean side of a group of ten Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldiers patrolling the 38th parallel popped up behind the anchors. They were in a five-by-two formation, and, despite the flickering footage, I could tell that there were two types of soldiers. The two in front and four in back were what I heard were called Legionaries, heavy infantry who carried the Pilum, with the two in front also carrying a SMG that looked similar to an MP-5K, ready to be brought up if their Pilums were inappropriate for the situation. Of all the types of Dragon¡¯s Teeth I had run into while in North Korea, they were the most common. Their armor was dark grey and looked like a Helghast from the Killzone games had a baby with an ancient Roman Legionary. Based on a combination of the report I read, Nari¡¯s advice, and personal experience, I had learned that their armor soaked up bullets disturbingly well, but weren¡¯t that great in melee.

    The four in the center were a type I had only seen once, and that had been in a dark alley. I believe, based on the glance I had given of a certain file, that they were called Picts. They carried weird SMGs that looked like P-90s, but three of them had their triggers moved back to the rear of the gun and what looked like underbarrel grenade launchers on the front. Their armor was much lighter and more subdued, being designed for quickly breaching buildings. However, it was painted in a black so dark that it was almost impossible to make out any details.

    This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    ¡°Pause and zoom in,¡± The first anchor said. The camera did, and I got a better look at the guns. ¡°Ok,¡± the first anchor said, ¡°zoom in.¡± He then proceeded to talk about his time as the son of a Canadian diplomat in North Korea. Some of it was actually pretty insightful. The anchors presenting in other languages seemed like they were all going in different directions, but, being an ignorant American, I couldn¡¯t understand what they were saying.

    Meanwhile, outside, a line was forming. Eventually, someone opened the floodgates and dozens upon dozens of people began swarming in. All of them rushed the bar. It was like a train wreck in a zoo. I had to deal with five people I didn¡¯t know at all who wanted access to the good stuff, dozens of people who were paying with cash instead of the phone pay (which made it that much harder because I had to convert from the campus¡¯s currency to currencies I didn¡¯t even know existed,) and one absolute fucker who tried to pay with some computer-based currency called DogeCoin. I actually had to aim the shotgun and switch to buckshot to get him to leave. It was so busy, I couldn¡¯t even tell when the Hell Semester program had started.

    The Hell Semester-related programming eventually ended around eleven. That caused a large chunk of the patrons to leave. However, the bar didn¡¯t close for another three hours, and a good chunk of the people from the initial rush had stuck around to discuss the fresh meat over a pint. Plus, a few people who just wanted a drink were starting to filter in. Why anyone would want to drink the cheap shit here was beyond me, but they were keeping me employed, so I didn¡¯t give a shit.

    Still, there was mostly a net loss of customers. That was making things much easier, and was allowing me to listen in to a few conversations. One mixed group (two Asians, three Latinos, and an African-African, all female) were talking about one of the new recruits. Apparently, the recruit in question had been one of the group that had been forced to fight my Hell Semester class. She had actually escaped the island by stowing away a plane during the firefight.

    Apparently, the point of contention was whether or not she was complicit in the crime that had led to that group of people being punished. From the sound of it, the people on her side had evidence on their side. Her detractors had blind rage. I felt sorry for the person they were discussing.

    Around the time I was listening to a group of Russians talk to the only two Arab guys in the bar about one of the few Americans, I was interrupted. ¡°¡®Ello, Nate,¡± a female voice said. I looked up. There, sitting at the now mostly empty bar, was Eliza.

    ¡°Of all the bars in all the world,¡± I said jokingly, ¡°you had to walk into mine. What¡¯s up, Eliza?¡±

    She sighed, all her usual mischievous energy draining from her. ¡°Two of my best friends in the entire world are fighting.¡±

    ¡°This is about me and Bai, isn¡¯t it?¡± I asked resignedly. Eliza nodded. ¡°You need a drink?¡± I asked. ¡°Based on my boss¡¯s cryptic discount rules, I can get you anything from the secret for free.¡±

    ¡°You got any scotch?¡± she asked.

    I opened the cabinet. ¡°No, but I can get you a shot of some hundred-sixty-five-dollar a bottle Tennessee whiskey that was brewed in honor of some dead celebrity.¡±

    ¡°Y¡¯know,¡± Eliza said, ¡°I never knew I wanted somethin¡¯ like that before now. Price is right, so why not? Give it to me neat.¡±

    As I poured the bottle, I said, ¡°Look, I¡¯m sorry Bai and I are fighting. She blames me for John getting shot and thinks I need to make all my decisions based on some prophecy.¡± I slid it over to her. She caught it while I continued telling my side of the story. ¡°Personally, I think that the fate of the world is too important to just blindly entrust to a prophecy.¡±

    ¡°What about what happened with John?¡± Eliza asked.

    I shook my head. Eliza began sipping the drink. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± I said. ¡°Part of me blames myself just as much as Bai does, maybe more. Another part says there was no way I could have stopped it, what happened at those docks was a freak accident.¡± As an afterthought, I muttered guiltily, ¡°Then there¡¯s that third part¡­¡±

    ¡°And what does that third part say?¡± Eliza said.

    ¡°Maybe, even if he died, it would have been worth it.

    Eliza stared at me in shock. I have to admit, the words I had spit out like piece of food brought up via the Heimlich Maneuver deserved shock and probably a bit of disgust as well. ¡°But¡­¡± she said, ¡°¡­but ¡®e¡¯s your friend, innit ¡®e?¡±

    ¡°I know,¡± I said. ¡°That¡¯s why I hate myself for thinking it. But if it could save millions, perhaps billions, of people, shouldn¡¯t I be able to sacrifice one person? No matter how much I care about him or her?¡±

    Eliza thought it over. Finally, she said, ¡°I honestly don¡¯t know, mate. That kind of thinking¡¯s too ¡®eavy for me.¡±  She looked back at the glass of whiskey. ¡°You and Dmitri were right. This is good stuff, and I do need it.¡± She then threw it back.

    ¡°Another?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Yes, definitely,¡± she said. As I poured, she said, ¡°Back to questions I can answer, I think I can find a way for you and Bai to be friends again.¡±

    ¡°We never were friends,¡± I said, cutting of the stream of expensive and potent alcohol a bit before it began to flow over the glass. ¡°We were barely on speaking terms.¡±

    ¡°I think,¡± Eliza said, cutting off my incoming rant, ¡°that I just need to moderate any further discussion between you two, maybe brief Bai on your thoughts a bit. I just need to ask John¡¯s side of the story first.¡± As she spoke, she took the occasional sip.

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said, ¡°but I reserve the right to walk out of this little session.¡±

    Eliza sighed. ¡°Fine, but I want this resolved before the next meeting of the Seven.¡± She gulped down the remainder of her drink. ¡°Anyway, nice talkin¡¯ with you. See you soon, ¡®opefully.¡±

    She got up, and left. As I watched her leave, I wondered exactly what I would list as the justification for Eliza having two free shots of expensive whiskey. I decided, eventually, that the answer Dmitri would respect the most was, ¡°Because I could.¡±

 4.10: Nariâ€™s Got a Gun

    The next few weeks were pretty insane. The pistol and bullet designs were actually the easiest parts. The bullets almost needed no tweaking. The pistol bullets depended on an organic compound not of this Earth, but the rifle bullets were filled with an easily recreated liquid. Besides, despite being extremely quiet, the pistol bullets were somewhat useless.

    The gun was basically an Arsenal Firearms Strike One which I had monkeyed around with a bit. The first thing (apart from re-chambering it for the new six-and-a-half millimeter ammo I was designing,) I had changed was some slight changes to the slide so it would be able to carry FN FP sights, as well as some cosmetic detailing. The second thing I had changed was to modify the slide and magazine so that the slide only cycled all the way back if the weapon was empty or the safety was on. I also tightened the tolerances of the tolerances on the exterior and completely sealed the firing mechanism off from the outside.  This, I thought, might make it usable underwater. Also, the small size of the round allowed me to have a somewhat shorter twenty-round magazine, instead of the Strike One¡¯s long seventeen-round magazine. Finally, seeing as I had limited resources, and I wasn¡¯t sure how powerful the round would be, I decided to make it all metal instead of polymer-frame.

    Still, it took a lot to get all the components organized. Krieger was a little curious about why I needed the various materials, but he relented eventually. At some point, I would have to tell him, if only to remain on his good side.

    Also, due to my paranoia, I did as much of the production in the dorm as I possibly could. John didn¡¯t say anything, mostly because he spent most of his time out of the dorm, but on when he walked in on me wearing a surgical mask and pouring the nasty-smelling propellant into some bullets, he just walked out.

    I just sighed and continued pouring. At some point, I¡¯d have to reassure him that I wasn¡¯t making meth or anything, just explosives. I¡¯d also have to figure out how to clean it out of vinyl floors. It wouldn¡¯t be fair to the next person to use the room, drop a cigarette, and cause an explosion. In the meantime, I¡¯d just have to make do with quickly blotting it off the floor.

    The assembly was also kind of a pain. For those of you who don¡¯t know, you can¡¯t just 3D-print an entire gun. To do the bullets in only two printings, I needed to use the most advanced printer on campus. The main part of the gun I had to do in chunks, with each individual component (springs, slabs of metal, hinges) being needed to be assembled by hand. That was probably the hardest part.

    Eventually, at a point so late on Friday night it was technically Saturday morning, I texted Nari. All I said in the text was, ¡°Its finished.¡±

    Nari instantly texted me back. Or maybe it wasn¡¯t instant. I¡¯m not sure. I was so tired my sense of time was completely fucked up. Anyway, the text read, ¡°Meet me at 11:30. Sun Tzu B005.¡± I recognized that room. It was where I had taken a pistol course last year.

    I set my timer and fell face-first onto the bed. As usual, the little sleep I could get was filled with nightmares. Thankfully, I can barely remember any of them, because I think they were worse than they¡¯d ever been that night.

    Inevitably, right when I had finally gotten to sleep, the alarm I had set on my phone rang. John groaned. ¡°I. Just. Got. To. Sleep!¡± he grumbled.

    ¡°Sorry, sorry,¡± I said, quickly silencing it. I then stared at him. ¡°Where were you last night?¡± I asked.

    John mumbled something, then went back to sleep. I sighed. He must have been doing his own project as well. I¡¯d ask him when he actually was awake. In the meantime, I¡¯d have to get my clothes on, take a shower, and eat breakfast. I¡¯d also need to put the pistol somewhere safe. I wasn¡¯t sure it could fit in either of my holsters, and I didn¡¯t want to leave either of my carry guns. I decided that I could stick it in the case I used for my G-3K.

    After showering in the communal bathroom and getting everything packed, I checked out the window. I sighed. It was raining so heavily I¡¯d need my raincoat. The rainy season was now in full force. As I ran through the rain, I felt a twinge of sympathy for the fresh meat going through Hell Semester.

    Still, I was very happy to actually eat some food inside. It was a Korean-style breakfast that day (in other words, the same thing they have every meal.) Not wanting to have something as spicy as kimchi for my first meal, I decided I¡¯d just have some rice and tea. I finished off my rice quickly, then walked down into the basement for my meeting with Nari.

    However, when I got to the elevator, I saw that Nari and May were waiting at the elevator, May holding a white paper bag. Emblazoned across the bag were the words ¡°Sir Galahad¡¯s,¡± and the logo of a knight. I recognized it as the logo of a coffee shop across the street from The Drunken Mercenary. ¡°Hey guys,¡± I said. ¡°Is May in on this now?¡±

    May rolled her eyes. ¡°This nutbag talked Andy and me into producing your death machines. I was asking her to help me tutor the study club and she somehow knew that you¡¯d invested into my company¡­¡±

    ¡°You told me, remember?¡± Nari said, somewhat petulantly. I noticed that she had a t-shirt for some heavy metal band to go with her jeans. It was a far cry from what she wore when I had brought her back from Korea.

    ¡°I did?¡± May asked blankly.

    ¡°You did,¡± Nari said. ¡°Remember when you were trying to teach me to appreciate Immortal Technique and we somehow discovered Metallica instead?¡±

    ¡°Oh yeah,¡± May said. ¡°Anyway, Nari¡­ expressed doubts about your ability to produce guns. Also, I¡¯m apparently here to assess.¡±

    ¡°I¡­ I really don¡¯t know,¡± I admitted. ¡°I have to admit, I don¡¯t think I would be able to continue the rate of production.¡± As I finished that thought, the elevator dinged and we walked in.

    ¡°What is the rate of production?¡± Nari asked.

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    ¡°Well, ripping off the design was two and a half days of not sleeping,¡± I said, ¡°and assembling the thing was another.¡±

    May, upon hearing this, inspected me. Nari, meanwhile, clapped her hands together and said, ¡°Really? That is impressively productive. If you were a North Korean, you would definitely be considered for the Choseon Roryeok Hunchang. I believe it translates as the Order of Korean Labor.¡±

    ¡°He does look like he¡¯s been doing some labor,¡± May commented acerbically. ¡°Normally, I don¡¯t encourage over-caffeinating, but when you finish that tea, I got some hot chocolate for you.¡±

    Mentally translating that as ¡°Dude, you look like shit,¡± I said, ¡°Thank you. Did Eliza tell you how much I like hot chocolate?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± May said. ¡°By the way, first study group is today. If you want to get some sleep¡­¡±

    ¡°Actually, I kind of have a lot of work,¡± I said. ¡°I can¡¯t¡­¡±

    ¡°Let me rephrase,¡± May said as the elevator dinged, her expression morphing into her signature death glare. ¡°After showing us your murder toy, you will go back to your dorm room and you will go to sleep. Do I make myself clear?¡±

    ¡°Yes, ma¡¯am,¡± I said.

    ¡°Good,¡± May said.

    ¡°Hey,¡± Nari said impatiently, ¡°the room isn¡¯t being kept all day! Onwards!¡± We followed her as she half skipped, half ran down the hall. When we were halfway down the hall, Nari asked, ¡°So, Nathan, what is this weapon called?¡±

    ¡°I haven¡¯t thought of a name,¡± I admitted.

    Nari just shrugged. ¡°So? We¡¯ll just call it the P-1.¡±

    ¡°No,¡± I said, shaking my head. ¡°It needs a name. I know guns are usually just random characters, but I want to have it actually have a name, if only for marketing purposes.¡±

    ¡°Marketing purposes?¡± Nari asked.

    ¡°You know,¡± I said, ¡°something that attracts attention, something that lets people know instantly what kind of firearm it is.¡±

    Nari nodded as she unlocked the door with her cPhone. ¡°Interesting idea,¡± she said. ¡°I will have to consider it.¡±

    We then entered the room. Down the range, I noticed several green human-shaped objects supported by wire, several of which were wearing bullet-proof vests. There was also what seemed to be a portable wall with standard target silhouettes painted on. ¡°What are those?¡± I asked.

    ¡°The green target dummies are designed to mimic a human when shot,¡± Nari said. ¡°May is here to assess the damage.¡± As she spoke, she went to a console by the far wall and began punching in commands.

    ¡°Joy.¡± May said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

    Ignoring her, Nari said, ¡°The dummies are wearing a variety of common armor types to test penetration. The wall targets also double as a pressure pad. If we want raw data, we can record how hard the bullet hits the wall. The room¡± she gestured to show that she was talking about the entire room, ¡°also has cameras at various points that will help record the firing. I suspect that you, Mr. Jacobs, as the chief military consultant, will find this useful.¡± She then plugged in an external hard drive. ¡°Anyway, let¡¯s see what you have made.¡±

    I opened up the case. Nari was suitably impressed. May was indifferent. I then began explaining everything about the gun I could think of, from the design I had kind of stolen to the features I tried to implement. ¡°Now,¡± I said, ¡°I haven¡¯t really designed a gun before. I¡¯d be cautious in case I fucked it up and it explodes.¡±

    Nari, not really paying attention to that last part, picked up the gun. ¡°Why is being heavy a bad thing?¡± she asked. ¡°I would think that people would want heavier weapons to minimize recoil.¡±

    ¡°People can live with recoil,¡± I said, ¡°but when you¡¯re trekking deep into enemy territory on foot, you want to cut as much weight. The individual soldiers will thank any manufacturer who shaves weight.¡± I eyed her hesitantly. She was holding the gun in both hands so that she could see the slide. It was pointed in a safe direction (in this case meaning not at her, May, or me) ¡°Maybe you should put that back¡­¡±

    Nari nodded. ¡°Good to know,¡± she said. ¡°Next question, where is the safety?¡±

    I told her where the safety and magazine catch were, but before I could add, ¡°¡­but you should probably wait,¡± Nari was already striding towards the firing line.

    ¡°Shooter ready,¡± Nari said, ¡°start recording.¡±

    ¡°Understood,¡± a computerized voice said. ¡°Recording commencing.¡±

    ¡°Nari,¡± May said, ¡°Maybe you should listen to Nate and take it slow.¡±

    Her words were punctuated by the loudest pistol shot I had ever heard up to that point. I had been watching Nari from the rear as she had walked to the firing line. Her stance when she had fired had been pretty bad. She had also fired mid-step. This was one of the reasons she fell back. The other was that the recoil had caused the gun to fly back and hit her in the face.

    Luckily, the floor was padded to reduce noise. It also probably broke her fall a bit. May and I both ran over to her. As I did, I noticed that one of the dummies had a hole in its bullet-resistant vest and was shaking violently. There were also a few strange bumps in the plate.

    When I got to where Nari was, I kicked the gun away from her in case she decided to fire it again. May, meanwhile, had gotten out a pen light. ¡°Shit,¡± she said. ¡°Her eyes are unevenly dilated. And she¡¯s smiling. She might be concussed.¡±

    I looked down at Nari. May was right. She was grinning like a loon. She must have been punch-drunk from being hit in the face with a high-powered handgun.

    ¡°Uilon mangchi¡­¡± she said, sounding somewhat drunk.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± May said. ¡°It¡¯s a concussion, she¡¯s speaking nonsense.¡±

    Nari shook her head. ¡°It isn¡¯t nonsense, you Capitalist toady. It¡¯s Korean. Uilon mangchi means righteous hammer.¡± She smiled even wider and looked at us both. ¡°It¡¯s also what we¡¯re calling this gun.¡±

 4.11 Curiouser and Curiouser

    Before May took Nari to the campus¡¯s hospital, May forced us to agree on several new rules for production. The first rule was that no human (especially Nari) would be the first to fire. Instead, we¡¯d have to get some sort of set-up that would allow us to fire the weapon remotely. The second rule would be that I had to sleep. No spending a week without sleep to get the next version done.

    I agreed. Nari was a little harder to convince. We finally got Nari to agree when I said I¡¯d take a shot just to test it. After all, the one time she had actually shot a gun, it was a nine mil.

    Making sure I was wearing ear protection (seriously, that thing was loud) and making sure I was in a stance that would let me deal with the recoil, I pulled the trigger. ¡°Whoah,¡± I said, laughing in exhilarated nervousness, ¡°this thing is fucking crazy.¡± I lowered the gun and looked at May and Nari. ¡°If we want this to actually be a combat pistol, we¡¯re going to have to reduce the recoil. Maybe the sound, too.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± May said, somewhat aggravated, ¡°can I get you to the hospital now, Nari? I¡¯d rather have Sunny kill me sooner rather than later.¡±

    ¡°Just a few more things,¡± Nari said. ¡°Mr. Jacobs, I need you to stay here and shoot a few rounds from the Uilon Mangchi and a few other firearms. This will help me figure out how much I need to reduce the recoil by. Also, make sure to disconnect my hard drive and get that and the plans back to me, please!¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± May said. ¡°Is that all?¡± Nari nodded. May nodded. ¡°Alright,¡± she said, frog-marching Nari out of the room, ¡°out we go.¡±

    Just as the door closed behind them, I could swear I heard Nari ask, ¡°Sunny doesn¡¯t have to know about this, does she?¡± I sighed as the door swished shut behind them. Nari was way too enthusiastic about this.

    Still, I had a job to do, and that was test the gun I had 3D printed. It wasn¡¯t really a good test (to do that, you¡¯d need to fire a thousand rounds of ammo and there were only twenty rounds of ammo for it in the world,) but the test was revealing, nonetheless.

    The bad news was I had seriously messed something up with the firing mechanism. In the twenty times the Uilon Mangchi had been fired, it managed to jam three times. Also, while the slide did go all the way back on the last shot, it failed to lock. Also, the recoil made it slow to fire and hard to hit anything with. Compared to the Berretta M92FS and the SIG-Sauer P229, it was an almost uncontrollable, poorly designed, barely functional mess.

    That being said, the six-and-a-half-mil the Uilon Mangchi fired almost made it worth it. On the hard armors, the first few rounds (at least, the first round that hit) seemed to penetrate the front plate with very little trouble. Occasionally, the first round would seem to bounce around inside the armor for a bit. In fact, some of the soft armored and all of the unarmored targets got off easier, as they only had six-and-a-half-millimeter holes in them instead of small caverns excavated by bullets.

    By comparison, 9x19mm Parabellum and .357 SIG weren¡¯t anywhere near as good at penetrating hard armor, but they were very good at dealing with unarmored targets. The SIG rounds were also tied with the new ammo in terms of dealing with soft armor.

    As I packed up the weapons and unplugged Nari¡¯s external hard drive and deleted the data off the main one, I wondered about how I would sell this new pistol. Based on the power it had, I didn¡¯t really want civilians to have it, and I wasn¡¯t sure how often law enforcement had to deal with targets in hard body armor. Also, I wasn¡¯t sure how concerned the various militaries around the world were about The Dragon¡¯s Teeth. This was a pistol that had been designed from the ground up to kill Deet soldiers at a time when people believed there were much bigger problems.

    I was considering this quandary when there was a knock on the door. Hurriedly stuffing the remaining odds and ends into my pack, I went to open the door. There, standing outside, were Officers Gupta and Mendez.

    I had had dealings with the two of them before, some bad, some good. Mendez, a Hispanic guy, and Gupta, an Indian woman, were both in their thirties. Their dark blue patrol uniforms hid their physiques quite well, making me wonder if there was some kind of soft body armor under it.

    ¡°Hey, Nathan,¡± Mendez said. ¡°Is Nari here?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± I said, ¡°she and May left a while ago. Nari¡¯s been branching out into gunmaking and decided to try a more exotic model out. May had to take her to the hospital to check for a concussion.¡± Mendez and Gupta flinched and exchanged pained looks. ¡°Why? What¡¯s up?¡±

    ¡°The President wants to speak to everyone who came back from North Korea,¡± Gupta said. ¡°I don¡¯t get the feeling that you¡¯re in trouble, but¡­¡± It wasn¡¯t optional. Good to know.

    As we walked down, Officer Gupta suddenly asked, ¡°Do you remember the Chamber of Horrors¡­ and what you found?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think I¡¯ll ever forget,¡± I said. The Chamber of Horrors was a Hell Semester test. You were locked in a large, brightly lit room full of full of meat and unidentifiable sludge. Then wolves got released. The group I was sent in with were the only ones to realize that people who died in there weren¡¯t taken out. Gupta and Mendez were the ones who removed us¡­ and made sure the corpses stayed in. For a while, Gupta had defended her actions, which had caused me to avoid them.

    ¡°What if we decided that what happened there was wrong?¡± Gupta asked.

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t know what to say about that,¡± I said, ¡°but I wouldn¡¯t tell anyone who took offense to that opinion.¡± I would, however, tell Krieger. He probably would want to recruit some campus security officials for his coup.

    The rest of the trip to the President¡¯s house was done in silence. Finally, we got to the massive building on the main rotary that the President called his ¡°house.¡± It wasn¡¯t as big as the Newton-Howell Student Center next door, but it was comparable.

    On the outside, it was a Victorian-style mansion, an (apparently) wood building surrounded by brick and mortar. However, thanks to the recent Grenzefrontier invasion, several bullet holes revealed what appeared to be cinderblock and Kevlar plating underneath.

    To get into it, we crossed the field in the center of the rotary. It was the same field where The President had made Campus Security pour gasoline on some Grenzefrontier sympathizers. After delivering a calm, reasoned, and seemingly forgiving speech to the captured students, he had tossed a match onto them. Months later, the grass still hadn¡¯t entirely grown back. I knew because we walked over it like it was just ground.

    Gupta and Mendez then handed me off to another pair of guards standing by the mansion¡¯s main entrance. They marched me into the house, taking me up the grand central staircase and into the room that The President had used to convince me to go to North Korea. Along the way, I noticed how the repairs to the house were still ongoing. Sheets covered the walls, once-luxurious floors were ripped up, and a few bullet holes were still visible. From deeper inside, I could hear the sound of power tools and people working.

    The security guards motioned me inside. I walked in to the large office, immediately noticing that the makeover, at least in this room, was complete. The desk, table, and chairs had all been replaced, as well as one of the gargoyle busts behind The President¡¯s desk that had been completely destroyed. I also noticed that there were now several pieces of electronics equipment scattered across the room, most notably a large TV on the wall opposite The President¡¯s desk. On it was a picture of the inside of a Dragon¡¯s Teeth Charon.

    The President himself was standing by the TV. As usual, he looked exactly like Robert Downey Jr. However, unlike normal, he was visibly tense. One had was gripping his chin like he expected it to unscrew off his body of its own accord, the other was on his hip. His foot, meanwhile, was tapping uncontrollably.

    ¡°Ah, Nate,¡± he said, finally noticing me. ¡°Sit down. I need an eyewitness account.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said, sitting down in a chair that I felt was indicated. ¡°But I thought that we were waiting for the rest of¡­¡±

    ¡°No, no, no,¡± The President said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. ¡°It¡¯s not like this is important. We¡¯re only talking about information THAT¡¯S THE GODDAMN DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CHINA WINNING AND LOSING AGAINST THE DRAGON¡¯S TEETH!¡± To punctuate his sudden outburst, he slammed his fist into the table. He grunted in pain, then kicked the table. ¡°Motherfucker.¡±

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    I watched in nervous fascination. I had never seen The President display emotion other than mild annoyance. I wondered how big a threat The Dragon¡¯s Teeth were to him personally. He then began pacing.

    Suddenly, the door opened. ¡°WHAT?¡± The President yelled, turning around to focus his ire on the hapless Campus Security Officer.

    ¡°Sir, the other two are here, sir,¡± the officer said. He was a large, muscular man, dwarfing The President, but he was obviously terrified by what he was seeing.

    ¡°Sorry, Officer Sahleanu,¡± The President said, making an effort to bring them down. ¡°Please, bring them in.¡± As Officer Sahleanu ushered Sunny and John in, The President said, as cordially as he possibly could, ¡°Oh, and if it isn¡¯t too much trouble, could you please lock the door and seal the soundproofing? Sensitive material is going to be discussed, and I don¡¯t want anyone to listen in.¡±

    The officer acknowledged and left as quickly as possible. When he was gone, The President turned to Sunny and John. ¡°Some people,¡± he said, still trying to keep calm, ¡°forgot to keep their phones charged and on their person.¡±

    ¡°Listen, sir,¡± Sunny said, ¡°I was about to charge it when¡­¡±

    ¡°I understand,¡± The President lied, ¡°but you need to understand that when the president of China¡¯s security advisor calls me, in person, and asks me how to deal with The Dragon¡¯s Teeth because he has meeting with his boss in¡­¡± he checked his watch, ¡°¡­let¡¯s see, two hours, I get a little agitated.¡±

    ¡°So why don¡¯t we get started,¡± I suggested calmly. This was interesting. I always suspected that The Dragon¡¯s Teeth had somehow originated in NIU. Also, despite his dismissal of the idea that The Dragon¡¯s Teeth originated in his university, I had a strong suspicion that The President was personally involved somehow.

    The President paused and stared at me for a moment. The pause was barely perceptible, but it was just enough to send a chill down my spine. After that brief, uncomfortable pause, he said, ¡°Yes, you¡¯re right.¡± The way he said it, however, sent shivers down my spine.

    He then made an effort to revert back to his genial self. It didn¡¯t work as well as he thought it did. ¡°Anyway, before I start asking questions, I¡¯d like you to take a listen to a particular video you recorded.¡±

    He pressed play on the remote. Instantly, I realized the context. It was when the remains of the recon team was trying to start a Charon while a group of Dragon¡¯s Teeth Legionaries executed some people and had what seemed to be a prayer session. I noticed, as I had at the time, that this prayer session made several references to a death goddess of some sort.

    After the video finished with Nari getting the engine working and the Charon accelerating away, The President said, ¡°So, anyone have any thoughts? Any at all?¡±

    John spoke up instantly. ¡°Yeah,¡± he said, with a mixture of realization and dread. ¡°They sound exactly like spoilfags!¡± Noticing our looks, he quickly added, ¡°Sorry, that¡¯s the 4chan name for them. Reddit and Tumblr mostly call them rigbots or trollbots. You may have heard about them. They basically go around attacking various candidates in the US election and trying to reduce the overall tone.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure they needed to,¡± The President remarked dryly. ¡°But it is something I will look into. Anything else?¡±

    John shrugged. ¡°Not really, only that they refer to their deity as Thana. I think that¡¯s a shortened version of Thanatos, the Greek or Roman god of death.¡±

    ¡°Miss Lee, what about you?¡± The President asked. ¡°Anything you noticed?¡±

    Sunny straightened up. ¡°As a matter of fact, yes. I believe they specifically targeted the armor plates of the vehicle. I think the only reason they eventually destroyed it was to hide evidence of deliberate negligence from their creators. I would actually be interested in seeing if we could get their creators to see the evidence. Maybe we could start some sort of witch hunt or purge.¡±

    ¡°The creators most likely leave intelligence gathering to their creations,¡± The President said. ¡°They have¡­ well, Mr. Jacobs, what do you think? What is your take on this situation?¡±

    The previous exchange had provided a wealth of information. First of all, I now knew Sunny¡¯s family name was Lee (though she still was probably unrelated to Nari.) Another thing was that The President had reason to believe that the creators of The Dragon¡¯s Teeth trusted their creations enough to let them be their eyes and ears. Finally, something about The Dragon¡¯s Teeth upset him¡­ maybe even scared him.

    However, I did not let any of this show. Instead, I asked, ¡°What part would you like me to focus on? A few of my friends¡­¡±

    ¡°If you mention a prophecy, final or otherwise,¡± The President said, massaging his nose as if a headache was coming on, ¡°I will scream.¡±

    I nodded. ¡°Honestly, I feel the same way, sir. There¡¯s also these creators and¡­ how did the Deets refer to him as? Their former master, that¡¯s it. I think it would be illuminating to make a list of¡­¡±

    ¡°I am pursuing it from that end,¡± The President said, ¡°I¡¯m just having more qualified people do it.¡± He sighed. ¡°You are right about one thing. I should narrow it down. Does anyone have any idea who this Thana person is?¡±

    In that instant, I knew The President had ideas, and he liked none of them. However, I could give him nothing. Neither could any of the other people there.

    Eventually, John hesitantly supplied, ¡°¡­Thana is a derivation of¡­¡±

    ¡°Thank you, Mr. Marshall,¡± The President said. ¡°I think that will be it. You and Miss Lee can go. Be sure to ask the other Miss Lee about our friend Thana, ok?¡± Sunny got up immediately, but John hung back. ¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± The President told him, ¡°He¡¯ll tell you what happened.¡±

    John left, The President following him as he left. In turn, I watched The President. He was now visibly calmer than when he had begun. When John had finally closed the door, he turned back to me.

    ¡°Now, Nathan,¡± he said, sitting down across from me, ¡°I like you. You¡¯re a natural at your specific field, you¡¯re highly focused, and you¡¯re ambitious in that cute way that ¡®superheroes¡¯ are without anywhere near the arrogance those guys have.¡±

    ¡°Very high praise,¡± I said.

    ¡°The problem is,¡± The President said, ¡°unless someone steps in, you¡¯re going to die before you graduate. Oh, don¡¯t give me that look, you¡¯re not that stupid. You probably already knew on some level, didn¡¯t you?¡±

    ¡°And what does stepping in entail?¡± I asked in a neutral voice.

    ¡°Just two pieces of advice,¡± The President said. ¡°The first is friendly. Your friends Bai and Eliza? The ones pushing that final prophecy? When you¡¯re as powerful as I am, they¡¯re just annoyances. But on your level, if you get sucked too far in, it¡¯ll end badly, whether they want to hurt you or not.¡±

    ¡°And the other piece of friendly advice?¡± I asked.

    The President¡¯s face darkened. He leaned in closely and almost snarled, ¡°It isn¡¯t friendly.¡± He then continued, his voice low and controlled. ¡°Listen, Nate, I know it¡¯s hard to get things through that oddly thick skull, but there are things I don¡¯t want you to know. And while you¡¯re a very good wet worker, you suck at spying. Don¡¯t pry into things here that don¡¯t concern you. If you do, I will find out, and I will be very upset.¡±

    ¡°I understand,¡± I said.

    ¡°No,¡± he said, leaning back, ¡°You don¡¯t.¡± He waved me away. ¡°Now get out of here.¡±

    I nodded, and got up. Looking back on it, he was right. Before he had even finished telling me not to poke around, I had already begun to think of ways to circumvent The President¡¯s scrutiny.

    Like he said, I¡¯m an idiot.

 4.12: Whatâ€™s in the Box?

    John was unusually quiet as we exited the mansion. When we were in a suitably deserted section of the campus, he asked, ¡°So, what did you two talk about?¡±

    ¡°The President warned us about Bai, Li, Charlotte and Eliza,¡± I said. ¡°He seems to think that they¡¯re going to get us killed.¡±

    ¡°And he isn¡¯t?¡±

    ¡°Speaking of that,¡± I said, ¡°he advises that we don¡¯t poke around certain places at NIU. Especially ones that might have anything to do with the Dragon¡¯s Teeth.¡±

    ¡°So all we have to do,¡± John said, ¡°is not do the thing that makes the sociopath angry.¡± I hesitated. John sighed. ¡°In case you were wondering, this is where you say, ¡®You¡¯re right, John, we¡¯ll just leave it alone.¡¯¡±

    ¡°You shouldn¡¯t be surprised,¡± a cold, dead voice said. We turned around. There, wearing a dark red hoodie, long stringy hair falling out of the hood. The rain had probably soaked through her hoodie, but apart from her skin being as unhealthily pale as normal, she showed no signs of being cold. She regarded us with an unreadable expression and cold, dead eyes. ¡°The entire reason Nathan came to this island was to save the world. It¡¯s na?ve, reckless and maybe a little egotistical, but he sees an opportunity to accomplish his goals.¡±

    ¡°Alma,¡± I said, ¡°fancy meeting you here.¡± Alma Hebert was the former roommate of Eliza, Jen and Charlotte. She creeped everyone out, especially Jen. I wondered how much of that was because she was Psychic or because she was just creepy. ¡°How much did you hear?¡±

    ¡°More than you think,¡± Alma said.

    ¡°Has anyone ever told you how creepy you are?¡± John asked.

    ¡°Once or twice,¡± Alma said. Maybe it was just me, but I could swear I heard a bit of wryness underneath her usual monotone. ¡°But I do know that Nathan will pursue whatever it is that The President warned him about, no matter what you, I, or anyone else says.¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± John said, ¡°One of my friends has a death wish. Fuck me, right?¡±

    While he said that, I watched him intently. When he paused for a breath, I said, ¡°John, go on ahead. I¡¯ll catch up.¡±

    John, who looked like he was just about to get started, turned at me to stare for a moment. His brown eyes burned, but finally, he said, ¡°Don¡¯t bother.¡±

    Alma and I watched John walk off. When he was finally far enough away, I turned back to Alma. ¡°You know,¡± I said, conversationally, ¡°I really wanted to talk to you. That facility you pointed out last year¡­ the IRDF? Was that what you called it? It stood for Interdimensional Research Facility? It might tie into a few things I¡¯m looking into.¡± I paused. ¡°How do you know even know about that by the way? I looked into it, and every mention of it has appeared to have been scrubbed¡­¡±

    Alma interrupted. ¡°You¡¯re asking the wrong questions.¡±

    I was stunned. I don¡¯t know why. ¡°Excuse me?¡± I asked.

    ¡°You¡¯re starting too small,¡± Alma said. As she spoke, I suddenly realized that she hadn¡¯t moved a muscle the entire time. No adjustments, no blinking, she¡¯d just stood there, hands in the pockets of her sweater. ¡°This school was designed for one purpose, and one purpose only. You shouldn¡¯t just be asking what IDRF One is for. You should be asking why a school is training future UNIX agents and Al-Qaeda terrorists. You should be asking why so few of its inventions leave its shores.¡± At this point, I noticed that Alma¡¯s eyes hadn¡¯t moved, either. She had focused on a point in between where John and I had been standing, and her gaze hadn¡¯t shifted once. ¡°Most importantly, you should ask¡­ what is Anthony Carter Newton-Howell¡¯s final goal?¡±

    ¡°Any reason you can¡¯t just tell me?¡± I asked.

    ¡°I can,¡± Alma said, ¡°but you wouldn¡¯t believe me. Most days I can¡¯t even believe it myself.¡± I could almost hear¡­ emotion in her voice. She also shuddered. However, she quickly returned to her normal unreadable state. ¡°Besides, the big question isn¡¯t exactly difficult to answer.¡± She then turned and walked off. ¡°Have fun opening Pandora¡¯s Box, Nathan¡­¡±

    I watched her leave. As usual, I left feeling disturbed and suspicious. Now, though, I was feeling somewhat used. I mean, why couldn¡¯t she have just told me? Why the run-around? I mean, seriously, why wouldn¡¯t I believe her? It wasn¡¯t like The President had killed her and she¡¯d decided not to die, or something.

    Still, I had to get back home and get some sleep, maybe print out the plans for the Uilon Mangchi for Nari. However, as I walked back, the questions Alma had planted began to take up more of my mind. There was also another annoying thing: why was Al-Qaeda even in the school? They weren¡¯t exactly the most well-behaved guests, especially in a Westernized place like NIU.

    Even more galling was that I could have asked this question earlier. Then, I could have made use of the time I had spent with Mubashir. Instead, I had let him leave without setting up any method of communicating. There were so many reasons to do that: he might need an extraction, and I definitely needed information only he could provide.

    Suddenly, as if thinking about him caused him to appear, I saw him stagger out of an ally almost right in front of me. Taking the opportunity, I grabbed him and forced him back behind the dumpster he had apparently been behind.

    Understandably, he didn¡¯t take that too well. When he was behind the dumpster, he punched me in the stomach and when I doubled over, he followed up with a knee to my face. I stood up just in time to see and hear him flip off the safety of a Makarov.

    Obviously, despite the fact that I thoroughly deserved it, he didn¡¯t pull the trigger. ¡°Nathan?¡± he asked. ¡°What in Allah¡¯s name are you doing?¡±

    ¡°Hi, Moob,¡± I said, my breath short and my nose bleeding. ¡°Sorry about that¡­¡± I took a quick break to cough, ¡°¡­just needed to talk.¡±

    ¡°About what?¡± Mubashir asked, lowering his gun and flicking the safety. ¡°What could be worth your life? I almost shot you!¡± He then muttered something in Arabic. I only caught the word Allah, so I assume it was something along the lines of ¡°My God, I almost shot you, you idiot.¡±

    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

    ¡°Sorry¡­¡± I wheezed. Damn, the guy punched hard. ¡°There¡¯s several things. One of the first things is¡­ how come Al-Qaeda¡¯s sending people to train¡­ here.¡±

    ¡°I should think it¡¯s obvious,¡± Mubashir said.

    ¡°Yeah¡­¡± I said, ¡°¡­but the morals of this place don¡¯t exactly match up¡­ with the morals of Al-Qaeda. Then there¡¯s also the question of how Al-Qaeda¡¯s paying for¡­¡±

    ¡°Al-Qaeda isn¡¯t paying,¡± Mubashir said.

    ¡°Excuse me?¡± I said.

    Mubashir quickly looked around, then pulled me so I was fully in the alcove. He then continued in a hushed voice. ¡°The reason I¡¯m being shared with UNIX and the CIA is that the CIA is also curious about this deal. NIU trains and equips Al-Qaeda soldiers and even pays our airfare. In exchange¡­ Well, we aren¡¯t sure, but we believe Al-Qaeda, as well as other organizations from small criminal groups to certain government organizations provide NIU with favors.¡±

    I suddenly felt a chill. ¡°What kind of favors?¡±

    Mubashir shrugged nervously. ¡°Nothing big, from what I¡¯ve been able to uncover. Mostly, from what I understand, you wouldn¡¯t know they were acting any different. For instance, a former NIU student was trying to do some kind of charity work. I think women¡¯s education. Al-Qaeda blows her up, using NIU-trained soldiers. Another NIU group of NIU students opened up a tech company in the US, developing some kind of advanced tech. A venture-capital firm buys them up. The person in charge? An NIU student. The tech being developed? Canceled.¡±

    He shook his head, as if trying to make sense of what he was saying. ¡°There is this pattern of NIU students that are truly ahead of the curve who go to market and end up dead, broke, or imprisoned. My CIA handler thinks The President might be stockpiling the tech.¡±

    ¡°But why?¡± I asked. ¡°What does he¡­¡± Suddenly, something clicked in my head. ¡°He¡¯s behind the Dragon¡¯s Teeth.¡±

    ¡°Nate,¡± Mubashir said, ¡°that is crazy. What kind of leap of logic¡­?¡±

    ¡°Listen,¡± I said, ¡°I was in North Korea, I only got out a few days before the media finally took notice that The Dragon¡¯s Teeth existed. I also have some idea that the reason the Grenzefrontier came back to Earth is because The Dragon¡¯s Teeth are kicking them out of the planet they come from. Also, the IRDF building that Alma showed us last semester? I¡¯m pretty sure that¡¯s where they came from.¡±

    Mubashir continued to look at me like I was crazy. ¡°Dammit!¡± I shouted, causing his hand to move back to his pistol. ¡°Where the hell else could a place get cloaking cloning, and advanced robotics?¡±

    ¡°But why would he build an army?¡± Mubashir asked. ¡°Why would he hoard technology?¡±

    I shrugged. ¡°I don¡¯t know. Maybe he wants to take over the world. His clone army comes marching back to Earth, kicks the ass of every major government, and the only weapons that can stop him are sitting right under his feet. Alternatively, clone army comes stomping in, then he uses his superior tech to defeat them, people declare him a hero, he then uses the good will to declare himself the supreme ruler of the world.¡±

    Mubashir shook his head. ¡°This¡­ theory of yours is based on loosely strung-together observations and guesswork. But you are right about one thing. The likelihood of The Dragon¡¯s Teeth having something to do with Nowhere Island¡­ well, your logic there is sound.¡±

    ¡°So you¡¯ll look into it?¡± I asked.

    Mubashir suddenly looked uncomfortable. ¡°I could try,¡± he said, ¡°but I¡¯ve¡­ I¡¯ve been drawing attention. Plus, people have been watching us.¡±

    ¡°By us you mean¡­?¡±

    ¡°Al-Qaeda,¡± Mubashir said. ¡°Our techie noticed some non-standard code on our devices, and we¡¯ve been followed. They are starting to suspect me because¡­¡± He paused, then said, ¡°We should leave separately. You go out the way you came in, I¡¯ll go the back way.¡± He then began heading down the alley, saying over his shoulder, ¡°Next time, I will contact you.¡±

    I nodded in acknowledgement and waited for him to leave my line of sight. I then walked back to my room, suddenly that I had a headache. I wasn¡¯t sure when it had started, so I wasn¡¯t sure if it was the lack of sleep or trying to shoot the new gun. I also noticed that I was kind of wobbling a little bit as I walked.

    However, when I got back to my dorm, after putting my weapons away and storing Nari¡¯s external hard drive in a safe place, I decided to check out my computer. I wanted to see the policy for student inventions. I had remembered that they had been extremely draconian.

    The thing is, as soon as I looked at it, the policy had completely changed. Instead of threats of lawsuits and deadlines for implementing ideas outside of NIU, there was talk of funding and free networking to help find clients.

    I paused, suddenly becoming alert again. I quickly (and quietly, because John was fast asleep beside me) opened the desk drawer and pulled out a copy of the student handbook. Flipping through the pages, I found the section on inventions and ownership thereof. It was even less giving than I had remembered it being. I looked back at the website¡¯s version, trying to reconcile the difference. Then I saw the date. Apparently, the last time it had been updated¡­ was ten minutes after I had left The President¡¯s mansion.

    I smiled, then went to email Nari, May and Andy news of the change. Looking back on it, it was actually kind of a rambling letter with no point. Then, I considered doing something else. The problem with that was due to lack of sleep and my headache, I forgot what it was. So I decided (finally) to do the sensible thing and go to sleep.

 4.13: The Final Prophecy

    The next week was much the same, except I didn¡¯t try and design a gun in my spare time. That meant way, way more sleep. The only problem was that ¡°way, way more sleep¡± still translated to ¡°very little.¡± I actually kind of liked it, though. Going to bed tired as fuck meant I could sleep without nightmares.

    Speaking of nightmares, they were getting worse and worse. I remember that once Alma told me that emotional distress was as real and legitimate as physical pain. I thought about that a lot as I lay in my bed, praying I wouldn¡¯t dream, my ribs still aching from the bullets my plate had stopped in North Korea and my leg giving the occasional twinge from when it had been perforated by shrapnel in the Hell Semester final. Fun times.

    After our radio show finished on Monday, Andy took me aside. ¡°Hey,¡± he said, ¡°we got your email. May wants to have a shareholder¡¯s meeting to discuss what to do next.¡±

    ¡°When is it going to be?¡± I asked.

    ¡°After the study group,¡± Andy said. ¡°Also¡­ Nari¡¯s been busy.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± I said, intrigued by how tired and disgusted Andy sounded. ¡°What¡¯s she been doing?¡±

    ¡°More like ¡®what¡¯s she been making me do,¡¯¡± Andy said. ¡°She¡¯s got me working on making a frigging prototype ammo factory in Nari¡¯s basement. She even has multiple 3D printers to help make parts to build the factory. Meanwhile, she¡¯s making several copies of the second prototype.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± I asked. ¡°How¡¯s it coming?¡±

    ¡°Well, we haven¡¯t tested it yet,¡± Andy said. ¡°Mostly because I¡¯m afraid of it and May and Sunny will kill us both if Nari fires it.¡± He paused, then said, ¡°Also, I hope you¡¯re not attached to its looks. Nari decided to take your notes about marketing to heart.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± I said. ¡°What did she do?¡±

    ¡°I hope you like how Desert Eagles and Jerichos look,¡± Andy said, ¡°because she watched a few action movies and decided the slide needed to be triangular.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m a Jewish gun nut,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m required by the Talmud to think that¡¯s totally sweet.¡±

    ¡°Understandable,¡± Andy said, ¡°but she also extended the barrel beyond the slide.¡±

    I stopped. ¡°But¡­ but why?¡± I asked.

    ¡°It¡¯s got something to do with being able to add on accessories,¡± Andy said. ¡°I tried telling her that would add to the final cost, but she keeps saying people will want to add flash hiders and suppressors.¡±

    I remembered how loud it was and how bright the muzzle flash was. ¡°Yes,¡± I said. ¡°They will. Trust me.¡±

    Andy nodded. ¡°Yeah, I heard the stories. Nari¡¯s lucky her concussion wasn¡¯t a lot worse.¡±

    ¡°Is she alright?¡± I asked. ¡°Probably should have asked sooner. She sounded ok at the time, but that isn¡¯t always a good indicator.¡±

    ¡°May¡¯s actually going to talk to her about that,¡± Andy said. ¡°Should be fun.¡± I nodded in agreement knowing that what Andy meant was, ¡°There¡¯s going to be a huge fight, and we will wish we were elsewhere.¡±

    Conversation moved on to other things. Apparently, some jackass outside NIU (or ¡°the world¡± as Andy called it) was saying that game developers should work eighty hours a week. Due to my dad¡¯s job in the tech industry and having worked one myself, I had a few things to say about that. Since Andy¡¯s parents were also in the same industry, he raged with me.

    However, just as we were about to enter the cafeteria, Eliza came up to us. ¡°Oi, Nate,¡± she said. ¡°Got a mo¡¯?¡± She appeared agitated.

    ¡°I was actually about to¡­¡± I began, gesturing at the cafeteria.

    Eliza cut me off. ¡°I¡¯ll buy you dinner after.¡± She then grabbed my hand and proceeded to drag me away.

    We were deep in what I thought to be Rogue country when I finally worked up the courage to ask, ¡°Hey, Eliza, what¡¯s going on?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m fixing things between my friends,¡± Eliza growled. ¡°I¡¯m bloody tired of hearing Bai bad-mouth you all the time. I¡¯m also tired of you not understanding what this five-¡®undred year mess means to some people.¡±

    Eventually, she led me right into a building that had apartment style dorm rooms. Our stop was apparently a dorm room on the second floor. Eliza opened the door (over the summer, most of the locks had been changed to use student¡¯s cPhones as keys,) revealing a cramped hallway/kitchen and a common area inside.

    As I walked into the common room, I saw Bai was sitting on one of the couches. Our eyes met at the same time. She nodded coolly as I sat down on the couch opposite from her that Eliza indicated. Eliza looked us both over, frowned and said, ¡°Right. Now ¡®ere¡¯s the problem as I see it. The first part is that you, Nate, think the Final Prophecy is completely mad, and everyone ¡®oo believes in it is a nutter.¡±

    ¡°That is more strongly than I¡¯d put it,¡± I said as diplomatically as possible. Eliza cocked her head. I sighed, ¡°But yes, I don¡¯t really see any evidence to support that its coming true.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s real!¡± Bai exploded suddenly. I had never seen her this agitated before. ¡°The signs are all there! The¡­¡±

    ¡°Oi!¡± Eliza said sharply, her foxlike ears flattening. ¡°The fuck¡¯d I tell you, Bai? And you,¡± she pointed back to me, ¡°sit your ass back down!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not going to¡­¡± I began.

    ¡°Down.¡± Eliza said, emphasizing her point by pointing at the floor. I sat down. Eliza surveyed us, her green eyes daring us to defy her. ¡°Anyway,¡± she said when she was sure dissent had been quashed, ¡°If I¡¯m reading Bai correctly, not only has she been raised in a group that believes wholeheartedly in this prophecy, but she believes that she, single-¡®andedly, can save the bloody world.¡±

    ¡°Do you think I¡¯m an idiot?¡± Bai asked Eliza harshly.

    ¡°Frankly,¡± Eliza said, ¡°Yeah. I think the two of you¡¯d be tied for the bloody stupidest wankers in this school if it weren¡¯t for my sis and your brother. You both believe that if you stick your limbs into enough meat grinders, you¡¯ll end up saving the world. And because I¡¯m also a bloody idiot, I¡¯ve decided looking after Char wasn¡¯t enough. And keeping you two imbeciles alive means making sure you don¡¯t kill each other.¡±

    Stolen novel; please report.

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said.

    ¡°Look,¡± Eliza said, ¡°I like both of ya, if you haven¡¯t already guessed. But I wasn¡¯t trained to be some ¡®ero of legend or raised in a comfortable suburb where no one¡¯d even look at you funny.¡±

    I looked away. Despite it being in my face on a daily basis, I¡¯d somehow managed to push the fact that I was white, middle-class American male in a program that deliberately targeted the poorest people from the poorest countries. Also, before Eliza had been adopted, life hadn¡¯t exactly been sunshine and roses for her. Looking up, I noticed that Bai was also looking at the ground.

    ¡°I think,¡± she said, possibly not realizing my thoughts, ¡°that this calls for a meeting of the minds. Instead of jumping down each other¡¯s throats, let me ask Nate a few questions. Then we might be able to continue this discussion in a friendly manner. Is that acceptable?¡±

    It was obviously a rhetorical question. Eliza¡¯s glare made that clear. However, to assuage her wrath, we both reassured her that we were fine with this suggested plan. I believe the strategy is known as the ¡°let the Lupine win¡± maneuver.

    ¡°Alright,¡± Eliza said. ¡°First question, Nate. Did you see anything in North Korea that might rule out The Final Prophecy is being realized?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°But that doesn¡¯t really resolve anything, does it? I can¡¯t really prove a negative, can¡¯t I?¡±

    ¡°That leads me to my next question,¡± Eliza said.

    ¡°Let me guess,¡± I said. ¡°You¡¯re going to ask if I saw anything to indicate that The Dragon¡¯s Teeth are really working for a death goddess.¡±

    ¡°Lord,¡± Bai corrected. ¡°The Lord of Death. Masculine form.¡±

    I considered my options. The most tempting was to just say fuck it and go on not believing in the prophecy. The other was to insist that it was really a female. I finally decided to just ask, for the sake of civility and my jugular, ¡°Does it have to be male?¡±

    There was a long pause. Bai and Eliza stared at each other long and hard. Finally Eliza suggested, ¡°These dream thingys the Prophecy was revealed with weren¡¯t specific, were they? And it was an age ago, comin¡¯ up on five ¡®undred years, innit? Could it be that no one saw the gender and assumed something that destructive ¡®ad to be a bloke?¡±

    ¡°I would like to think the seers were more perceptive,¡± Bai said, ¡°but I have heard of several Indian versions that use feminine versions for The Lord of Death. There¡¯s also one European version, Italian, I believe, that thought of The Lord of Death as an abstract force. Of course, we neglected that version because it didn¡¯t mention Death¡¯s army.¡± After this exchange, they turned to me, Bai asking, ¡°Any particular reason for asking?¡±

    ¡°We stumbled upon a Dragon¡¯s Teeth prayer session,¡± I said. ¡°They mentioned their Goddess, specifically mentioning she was female.¡±

    ¡°And you didn¡¯t mention this because¡­?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°I thought they were messing with us,¡± I said. ¡°I still think they are, but by us, I mean The President. All I know is that their Goddess, they call her Thanna, scares The President. I think he knows, or suspects, who Thana is.¡± I sighed. ¡°The problem is, I have no proof. Even worse, I don¡¯t have enough information to form my own theories!¡±

    ¡°The prophecy can guide us,¡± Bai said. ¡°Do you believe us in that the Lord of Death¡¯s army has arrived?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m less inclined to believe that you¡¯re putting your faith in a fairy tale,¡± I said, ¡°and I agree the Dragon¡¯s Teeth are a huge threat, but I¡¯m only fifty-percent convinced that this Lord of Death is an actual thing.¡±

    Bai sighed. ¡°What if I told you that The Architect will reveal himself, herself, or itself next? When¡­ it shows up, would you believe me then?¡±

    ¡°Maybe,¡± I said. ¡°What does The Architect do?¡±

    Bai and Eliza looked at each other. ¡°Manipulate reality, I guess?¡± Eliza said, shrugging. ¡°That¡¯s all I got, really.¡± I sighed. That was a little vague. If I stretched the definition, I manipulated reality every time I opened a freezer.

    ¡°We call him Bai Wan Shan De Emo,¡± Bai said. ¡°In English, it means Million-Handed Demon. Does that help?¡±

    Million-Handed Demon. As soon as I heard those words, I could feel myself going pale. My lunch also began trying to escape my stomach and I felt the floor drop out from under me. I even had to check to make sure I wasn¡¯t free-falling. I wasn¡¯t, but looking down made my stomach feel even worse. It was a visceral sensation that any person who¡¯s undergone a panic attack will instantly recognize.

    ¡°Nate,¡± Eliza asked, ¡°you alright, Nate?¡±

    I barely heard her. I was flashing back to my first day back and the¡­ thing that had accosted me. My body shuddered, as if the invisible hands were groping me again. I remembered the entire ordeal¡­ the distortion of reality, the way the hands had imprisoned me, their grasping of things that should not be grasped, and the¡­ and the¡­

    No. That wasn¡¯t something that would happen to me, right? Not again. In fact, I doubted you could even call it that. That kind of thing doesn¡¯t happen to people like me, right?

    ¡°NATE!¡± I jerked up. Eliza¡¯s face was right in front of my own, and I suddenly realized I was covered in sweat. ¡°Nate,¡± she asked, ¡°are you alright?¡±

    I suddenly realized that I was about to barf. ¡°Bathroom,¡± I managed to choke out. Eliza pointed me in the right direction, and I ran, pushing the door open.

    Five minutes later, I was done voiding the contents of my stomach. It was another three before I could stop retching. ¡°Nathan,¡± Bai said from outside the room, ¡°are you alright?¡±

    ¡°Yeah, mate,¡± Eliza said, walking into the room, ¡°you look like you need a doctor.¡±

    ¡°The Architect¡­¡± I began.

    ¡°What would you like to know about¡­¡± Bai began, but I cut her off.

    ¡°The Architect¡¯s on Nowhere Island.¡±

 5.15: Shot Through the Heart

    Apparently, Eliza and I weren¡¯t the only ones to see that vision. According to an email I read, a lot of other people on the island had seen the same thing and the TV in Sun Tzu had a report about psionically sensitive people seeing strange visions all over the world. I was worried, but I realized that there was nothing about it I could do. Instead, I spent all my spare time trying to do rough sketches of the next weapons.

    Finally, it was time to go to the study group/weapons test. Saturday morning, I actually had managed to sleep until seven. Considering when I usually got to bed and how little time I actually spent sleeping, it was unsurprising that I was usually tired. I considered going back to sleep, then considered the nightmares I was likely to get. After those lovely thoughts, I began the process of getting ready without disturbing John.

    After I got in, I noticed that he had gotten dressed while I was doing the same, plus showering and brushing teeth. ¡°Did I wake you up?¡± I asked.

    ¡°No,¡± he said, ¡°not really. Besides, I can sleep through all sorts of crap.¡±

    ¡°Also,¡± I said, ¡°sorry about the other night with Eliza. I¡­¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± John said, ¡°it was much better than what you walked into when Bai was here. Besides, she kind of lives on the floor above us.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± John said. ¡°She rooms with Oro, but it¡¯s functionally a single. Don¡¯t ask where Oro goes, Bai never asks and I¡¯d bet anything neither would tell.¡± He gestured at the door with his toothbrush. ¡°Anyway¡­¡±

    ¡°Certainly,¡± I said.

    Eventually he came back. For once, we actually talked a bit, mostly about classes. It was weird. Ever since we had gotten back to the island, we had stopped talking to each other. It was weird.

    I thought back to what Eliza had said about Charlotte blaming herself for whatever happened in England over vacation. ¡°John,¡± I asked, ¡°do you blame me for what happened in Korea?¡±

    ¡°Which part?¡± he asked.

    ¡°Uh¡­ the part where you got shot.¡±

    ¡°Ah.¡± John said nervously. ¡°That part.¡±

    There was a long, awkward pause. Finally, he said, ¡°I don¡¯t really blame anyone for what happened. I mean, I could blame you, but you never really forced me or even ordered me into that particular situation. I could blame the guy who actually shot me, but he was completely in the right to do so. I could blame myself, but honestly those things happen.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s good to hear,¡± I said.

    ¡°Is there a reason you asked?¡± John asked.

    ¡°It¡¯s just¡­¡± I said, ¡°¡­things have been weird between us since then, you know?¡±

    ¡°Yeah.¡± John said. There was another pause, then he blurted out, ¡°It¡¯s just¡­ you¡¯d do it again. Meanwhile, I¡¯m convinced the next time I do something like this, I could die. I will die.¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t have to continue doing this,¡± I said. ¡°You¡¯re not on a tour of duty, and there¡¯s plenty of other people who can do this.¡±

    John cocked his head. ¡°You really believe that?¡± he asked skeptically. ¡°That we can sit back?¡± I hesitated. John sighed. ¡°I thought so. Fuck me, right?¡±

    Suddenly, our phones beeped. We both reached for them. It was Nari, sending out a mass text. Apparently, she was out in front of Sun Tzu. ¡°You want to head out?¡± I asked John.

    ¡°Sure,¡± he said. ¡°I kind of want to see how this gun you¡¯ve been working on handles.¡±

    ¡°Actually,¡± I said as I unlocked my gun safe, ¡°these ones are models that Nari¡¯s improved.¡± I reached in and pulled out the prototype. ¡°This is the one I made.¡± I held it for a moment, then put it in my pocket after making sure it was on safe. ¡°Might be useful to give people an idea of how much its improved.¡±

    ¡°I call first dibs,¡± John said.

    We walked down to Sun Tzu together, meeting Cross, Bai, Oro, and Eric¡¯s crew on the way down. Ray-Gun, in particular was particularly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Cross, however, was quite grumpy.

    ¡°Listen, Ray,¡± he said as we got out of the elevator, ¡°I know you like high-tech stuff, but I haven¡¯t even had breakfast yet. Or my morning coffee. I need you to get the fuck outta my face with your tobacco and your chipperness for five seconds.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry you are such a sad individual,¡± Ray-Gun said, waving his still-burning cigarette around expressively, ¡°but I cannot control my excitement, and I have no wish to.¡±

    ¡°You are lucky,¡± MC Disaster said quietly. ¡°At least they aren¡¯t laser or plasma-based. Then he¡¯d never shut up.¡±

    The banter continued like this for the few seconds it took us to leave our dorm and see Nari, May, Sunny, and Andy waiting by the entrance to Sun Tzu. Sunny and Andy looked drained. May looked like her usual hyper self, albeit somewhat annoyed. Nari, meanwhile, looked like she had stolen the energy from the other three. She was also holding an ABS case and a cloth bag.

    ¡°Good,¡± Nari said upon seeing us, ¡°you have made it.¡± She then turned around and beckoned imperiously. ¡°Come on,¡± she said. ¡°The range is only open for a limited time.¡±

    Sunny, noticing that some of us (Cross) weren¡¯t exactly thrilled to be ordered around by a ten-year-old, said, ¡°Sorry. She¡¯s a little¡­¡±

    Eric interrupted by asking Nari, ¡°So, my Queen,¡± he asked jovially, ¡°what do you wish of your court today?¡± He had moved up besides Nari, and as he said this he made a parody of an obsequious bow.

    ¡°Don¡¯t encourage her,¡± Sunny said, shooting Eric a venomous expression.

    Nari, suddenly realizing what she had done, cringed slightly. ¡°Sorry¡­¡± she said.

    ¡°Besides,¡± Andy said jokingly, ¡°if anyone¡¯s queen, it¡¯d be May.¡±

    Normally, May would either jokingly accept the title or cede it out of embarrassment, but today, she just made a noncommittal noise of recognition. Everyone else continued on as normal, but Andy and I noticed. I¡¯m pretty sure that Nari noticed as well, but Eric was keeping her busy.

    Eventually, Nari lead us into the room she had reserved. First, she opened the case to reveal six of the new pistols with two magazines each. These pistols were identified by stickers on the grip and barrel made by a label maker. As Andy had said, their aesthetic had been radically changed to a hybrid of the Berreta M-92¡¯s long, double-cut slide and Desert Eagle¡¯s triangular shape. The only bits of my original design that remained were the FNP-style sight mounts and the barrel that extended beyond the slide. Then she opened the bag to reveal that it had two plastic bags.

    While she was doing that, I said, ¡°Hey, Nari, John wanted to test out the first prototype, so I brought it along.¡±

    ¡°Did you bring magazines for it?¡± she asked. ¡°I had to rework the magazines slightly. It wasn¡¯t that big of a change.¡±

    ¡°Here you go,¡± I said, handing her the pistol and a spare mag.

    She set the weapon on top of the newer versions. ¡°Attention, please!¡± she called out. When she had everyone¡¯s attention, she said, ¡°In the case are prototypes of the Uilon Mangchi. Most of them are the second prototype, but one is the first. Do not get their magazines mixed up! Generation one has a different magazine than generation two, and I need to collect data on how they work.¡± When she saw that everyone had gotten this information, she continued, ¡°In the white plastic bag, I have put tungsten-core rounds. In the other, I have bullets made out of a new compound taken from Grenzefrontier troops called seltsamemetall. Please make a note of which type of ammo you use and which gun you¡¯re using on the sheets on the station, as well as any malfunctions. Mr. Jacobs, would you please instruct our guests in the operation of these weapons?¡±

    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

    Luckily, the controls on the first generation were the same as the ones on the second, which made things much quicker. The problem was that as soon as I had walked everyone through the process of loading, unloading and putting the Uilon Mangchi on safety, there was a knock on the door.

    I opened it. There, smiling brightly, was Eliza. Behind her were Jennifer and Charlotte. ¡°Sorry I¡¯m late!¡± Eliza said. ¡°What¡¯d I miss?¡±

    ¡°Well¡­¡± I said, somewhat sheepishly, ¡°kinda everything.¡±

    Nari looked over my shoulder. ¡°I know the mutant,¡± she said, ¡°sorry¡­ I mean Lupine. But I do not remember meeting the other two.¡±

    ¡°Charlotte is Eliza¡¯s adopted sister,¡± I said. ¡°Jennifer is¡­ Jennifer.¡± Jennifer laughed in amusement at this. It was the kind of laugh that wasn¡¯t supposed to remind you she was a supervillain, but did anyway. ¡°They¡¯re both in the Rogue program.¡±

    I¡¯m not sure why I mentioned that last bit, but I could feel Nari light up behind me. ¡°Excellent!¡± she said. ¡°I think we could use a law enforcement or enthusiast perspective on our weaponry.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m a little more than¡­¡± Jennifer began.

    At the same time, May said, ¡°I would prefer to avoid the civ¡­¡±

    ¡°Details, details,¡± Nari said. I turned around to see her literally wave off my concern. ¡°Brief them on the details of operation and data gathering, Mr. Jacobs. After the first round, join us for the shareholders meeting.¡±

    After running through everything again, I sat back and watched the first wave go. Everyone with the second generation prototype got the hang of it pretty quick. John, who was using the first generation, got the operation down pretty quick. After he finished his forty rounds (by which time all the other shooters had finished theirs,) he said, ¡°If the fucking thing didn¡¯t keep jamming or feel like I was firing a magnum, I¡¯d say it was really good. It has some really nice penetration on it, which would have come in handy in Korea.¡± I nodded, remembering the abnormally strong armor of the Dragon¡¯s Teeth. Hell, I had even had trouble penetrating the South Korean SWAT officer¡¯s hard body armor with pistol rounds. 6.5mm seemed to solve that last problem pretty handily, though.

    The Monk spoke up. ¡°The newer version has greatly improved on the recoil, but I still do not like it. I also dislike the trigger. It seems a little heavy.¡± He paused to consider. ¡°Then again, the recoil is comparable to your SIG, so I suppose someone might like it.¡± As he spoke, I noticed Nari was scribbling in a notebook.

    MC Disaster spoke up again, making it a personal record for speaking in a day. ¡°My thoughts are very similar. I quite like the power, I can tolerate the recoil, and I dislike the trigger pull. However, to determine if I would carry it into battle, I¡¯d have to spend a lot more range time with it.¡± He considered the gun for a moment. Finally, he asked, ¡°Does it really have to look this hideous?¡±

    ¡°Personally,¡± Jen said, ¡°I quite adore the looks. Also the clip¡­¡±

    ¡°Magazine,¡± several people said at once, including Nari.

    ¡°Whatever,¡± Jen said, rolling her eyes. ¡°I like it. I just want to empty it a bit faster. It would also be nice to do it one-handed. That means a slight recoil reduction and a decreased trigger pull.¡±

    ¡°Me too,¡± Cross said. ¡°But don¡¯t reduce the trigger pull too much, ok?¡±

    ¡°It isn¡¯t a revolver or a bolt-action,¡± Oro said. ¡°That¡¯s probably why I don¡¯t like it. It is very accurate for an automatic.¡±

    After a few minutes of somewhat contradictory advice and several near-arguments from the first seven shooters, Nari finally said, ¡°I think that¡¯s enough for now.¡± She grabbed me by the arm. ¡°Please, continue shooting. Meanwhile, the board will have a meeting.¡±

    ¡°Speaking of that,¡± Bai asked, ¡°what is your company called?¡±

    ¡°Olympus,¡± May said. ¡°Olympus Incorporated.¡±

    When we got out, I said, ¡°Pretty cool name. Did you come up with it, May?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯m also thinking we should name the divisions differently. You and Nari get the weaponry division, Mars Arsenal. You¡¯ll also have a split between thirty percent of the profits of Mars Arsenal. How does that sound?¡±

    ¡°Pretty good,¡± I said. ¡°What¡¯s your division called?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve got Hephaestus Industrial Solutions,¡± Andy said. ¡°May has Caduceus Medical. Speaking of Caduceus, wanna tell them the good news?¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± May said. ¡°Basically, the changes to the student invention policy means I can get a grant from The President. Plus, he¡¯s railroading Power Sludge and my surgical glue through the FDA. If things go as planned, Andy and I might be leaving the school in a few weeks. We even a site picked out in Massachusetts.¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t sound very happy,¡± Nari said.

    May sighed. ¡°There¡¯s an FBI contest. Apparently, .40 S&W isn¡¯t cutting it for dealing with Parahumans and criminals armed with advanced tech.¡±

    ¡°And?¡± Nari asked. ¡°Isn¡¯t that not a good thing?¡±

    May took a deep breath. ¡°Weapons entered in this kind of competition tend to sell very well with civilians¡­¡±

    ¡°Which is what we want, correct?¡± Nari said. ¡°These weapons are deliberately designed to defeat The Dragon¡¯s Teeth. If they invade, we want as many people armed with these as possible.¡±

    May exploded. ¡°And what do you think people are going to be doing with them in the meantime?¡± Nari flinched, but May continued. ¡°Yeah, sure, we¡¯ll get rich, selling weapons to people like Cross and Jennifer as well as the cops, then selling medical supplies when they¡¯re done killing each other. But people will still be killing each other before The Dragon¡¯s Teeth show up. I don¡¯t want to be responsible for that!¡±

    Suddenly, May stopped, realizing that Nari was starting to tear up. ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± May said hurriedly, ¡°I didn¡¯t mean¡­¡±

    ¡°The Dragon¡¯s Teeth,¡± Nari said, straining to speak through her tears, ¡°are massacring everyone in my country. I don¡¯t want to be responsible for them to do the same to another country. Whatever Cross and Jennifer and people like them are capable of is a rounding error compared to what I¡¯ve seen from those monsters.¡± She then began to walk off. ¡°I¡¯m going to the bathroom. I¡¯ll be back.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± May said after Nari was out of sight, ¡°not only am I a hypocrite, I guess I¡¯m also a complete bitch.¡± She began to walk away. ¡°I¡¯m going back to my dorm. When Nari comes back, tell her I¡¯m sorry.¡±

 5.16: Tonightâ€™s All Right for Fighting

    After the awkwardness of Nari and May having to be in the same room for the tutoring session, I went to Krieger¡¯s office to brief him on what I was using the various materials for. He was only available this weekend because he was teaching Hell Semester again. Luckily, Krieger is kind of a work machine and was able to meet me at his office.

    The office was in Sun Tzu, which meant less walking. I knocked on the office door.

    ¡°It¡¯s unlocked, boyke,¡± a South African-accented voice said behind me. ¡°Just walk on in.¡±

    I turned around. There, looking as lion-like as ever, was Professor Karl Krieger, his mane-like beard a little less well-kempt than usual. He had changed out of his drill sergeant uniform and was wearing cargo pants, Hell Semester t-shirt, and a raincoat. Judging by how dry the raincoat was, he had been waiting for me.

    ¡°Actually,¡± remembering about Mendez and Gupta, ¡°I was thinking we could talk outside.¡±

    Krieger raised an eyebrow. ¡°Of course,¡± he said. ¡°It being such a lovely day and all.¡± To punctuate this, there was a clap of thunder. Also, since we were on the top floor, we could hear the sound of rain pattering down on the roof.

    As we entered the elevator, Krieger asked, ¡°So, why were you requesting so much raw material? And why was much of it explosive?¡±

    ¡°Nari Lee and I are entering the firearm business,¡± I said. ¡°May Riley and Andy Sebaldi are also in on it, May very reluctantly.¡±

    ¡°And the explosives?¡± Krieger asked.

    ¡°We¡¯re making our own ammo,¡± I said. ¡°I¡­ saw a need for something that can reliably penetrate Dragon¡¯s Teeth armor when we were in Korea. Our weaponry wasn¡¯t quite up to par.¡±

    ¡°And your plans on advertising and distribution?¡± Krieger asked.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said as the elevator dinged open, ¡°there was a contest for a new FBI firearm because¡­¡±

    ¡°Because .40 S&W was having trouble penetrating exotic armor,¡± Krieger said, rolling his eyes. ¡°I heard. I also heard that you need a recommendation to get in. You also need to be able to produce a hundred for testing purposes, plus ten thousand rounds to put through each gun for testing purposes.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± I said. That was one plan down the drain. As we headed towards the door, I added, ¡°the first part, I have no idea how to do. The second part, well, that¡¯s why we have Andy.¡±

    ¡°Even if you did get a pistol out,¡± Krieger said, ¡°and the Dragon¡¯s Teeth invade, the program is limited deployment. Only a few agents will get assigned one, mostly Parahuman investigations, HRT and FBI SWAT. And even then, you realize it¡¯s just a pistol?¡±

    ¡°I was kind of hoping that would lead to others adopting it,¡± I said. ¡°And also building a following that I could sell the SMG and assault rifle I¡¯m designing to.¡±

    ¡°Still,¡± Krieger said, ¡°those are just personal weapons. They might kill a few of the foot soldiers, but how are you going to deal with their vehicles? I recall you were also quite impressed with them as well.¡±

    I shook my head. ¡°Someone else will have to deal with that.¡±

    Krieger laughed. When he was done, he said, ¡°You¡¯re learning, boyke! In the meantime, I have some friends who have¡­ an understanding with the FBI. They could use an armor-piercing pistol, caseless or otherwise.¡±

    I looked around. No one was coming. ¡°In other news,¡± I said, just loud enough to be heard above the rain, ¡°if you¡¯re still annoyed by the way things are going, Officers Gupta and Mendez might be sympathetic.¡± When I saw Krieger nod, I raised my voice. ¡°In other news, I feel kind of bad for dragging you out here. Do you want me to get you a drink?¡±

    Krieger accepted, and we got something called a Caribou Lou. Let me just say, if you like rum, pineapple juice, and getting pretty sloshed, you¡¯ll like a Caribou Lou.

    The next week wasn¡¯t anything special. I had schoolwork, of course, and I was busy trying to make the SMG. Meanwhile, Andy was finding a place to put his assembly lines other than Sunny¡¯s basement. He was also working with Krieger to get the first order completed.

    It went on like this until Fight Night came. As I was putting on the suit I had brought (by the way, thanks, dad for making me bring it,) my cPhone beeped. I picked it up, seeing it was a phone call from Eliza. ¡°Hello,¡± I said.

    ¡°I just realized,¡± Eliza said breathlessly, ¡°it¡¯s Fight Night, innit? And you work at The Drunken Mercenary. You can¡¯t make it, can you? Oh God, I¡¯m a right¡­¡±

    ¡°Eliza,¡± I said, interrupting her, ¡°The Drunken Mercenary closes on Fight Night.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± Eliza asked incredulously. ¡°Why the bloody ¡®ell¡¯d they do that?¡±

    ¡°I asked Dmitri the exact same thing,¡± I said. ¡°Apparently, the first Fight Night after it opened, a few fights broke out and there were pretty serious casualties. Think about it: you¡¯re wasted and someone from Britain gets his head bashed in by Ulfric. Then you hear some¡­ I don¡¯t know, French people laughing at it. What would you do?¡±

    Eliza paused for a bit. Finally, very grudgingly, she admitted, ¡°¡­I¡¯d fuckin¡¯ cut ¡®em up.¡±

    ¡°Apparently,¡± I said, ¡°what finally caused The Drunken Merc to close on Fight Night was the Fight Night Riot of ¡¯94. All I know was that it had something to do with the Rwandan and Bosnian Genocide and it¡­ got ugly after that. Plus some Parahumans decided that they didn¡¯t like other Parahumans and¡­¡±

    ¡°Say no more,¡± Eliza said. ¡°I¡¯ll just fix me makeup, then I¡¯ll meet you there.¡±

    The Veranda was on the border between Rogue and Business territory. A good decision, as the Rogues and Business majors were typically the only ones who could afford to eat there regularly. As I walked, I noticed that a lot of businesses, specifically the ones that distributed alcohol, were closed. Also, Campus Security was out in force around the AMS/Shadowhaven areas. I saw four Bearcats and several checkpoints manned by Security officers in combat gear. The last time I had seen Security carry such heavy equipment carried openly was when the Grenzefrontier had invaded the campus.

    When I finally got into the building the Veranda was located, I saw Eliza was waiting by the elevator. She was wearing a beautiful dress that was a bright, soothing green to match her eyes. She was also tottering a bit on heels, and she seemed a bit nervous. Behind her, guarding the elevator, were two female Campus Security Officers. They weren¡¯t in full combat gear, but they both had slightly heavier vests on, and one had a SPAS-12 and the other had a P-90.

    ¡°Oh, there you are!¡± she said, moving towards me as fast as her heels would allow. ¡°Finally! These blokes ¡®ere were gettin¡¯ a bit nervous!¡± One of the guards, a somewhat tanned-looking woman carrying the P-90, waved awkwardly. She looked away when Eliza embraced me. ¡°Apart from that, you¡¯re actually a little early. I was just nervous because, well, I¡¯ve never done anythin¡¯ like this before.¡±

    ¡°Me neither,¡± I admitted. ¡°I¡¯m glad I¡¯m doing it with you.¡± We stood there standing awkwardly. ¡°Uh¡­¡± I said, motioning towards the elevator, ¡°do you¡­¡±

    ¡°Yeah¡­¡± Eliza said. ¡°Yeah! Let¡¯s go do that.¡±

    ¡°If you¡¯re going to go up there,¡± the guard with the SPAS-12 said, her voice tinged with amusement, ¡°we¡¯ll have to check you for weapons. This is the only place on campus tonight serving alcohol, so you can¡¯t be armed here tonight.¡±

    After surrendering our weapons (I had my Berretta and my SIG, Eliza had a CZ-75,) we took the elevator up to The Veranda. Oddly enough, it was quite empty. I guess, since the Veranda didn¡¯t have any TVs, people just stocked up on booze and watched Fight Night with friends.

    Speaking of The Veranda¡¯s interior, it reminded me a lot of how the Blackmoor-Ward looked. It was, in short, expensive. Everything, from the scented candles on the tables and the romantic lighting, to the intricately carved, yet surprisingly comfortable chairs, screamed that it was expensive as it was tasteful.

    The most wonderful thing about the restaurant, though, was the view. It was located on the top two floors of one of the taller buildings on campus, with only the hospital being taller. The Veranda made use of its prime location by having glass exterior walls and ceilings, giving the diner an amazing panoramic view of the island. The effect was lessened on us due to the torrential rain reducing visibility, but from where we were seated, I swear I could see the outline of the Hell Semester Barracks in the distance and the lights they were using to illuminate Fight Night.

    ¡°Fucked up, innit, mate?¡± Eliza asked, following my gaze. Her ears were flattened, and I could tell she was remembering something by the way the normally mischievous gleam in her eyes had disappeared.

    Just as I was about to agree, a voice said, ¡°I take it that means you¡¯ll want something to drink to start off?¡± We turned around to see a very trim Asian student with plastic-rimmed glasses and over-gelled hair arranged in a peak. He was wearing a tuxedo and an apron, obviously part of his uniform. Something about his attitude suggested that he definitely wasn¡¯t an AMS, Rogue or Shadowhaven student. It was probably that when we turned to stare at him, he flinched. ¡°Sorry,¡± he said hurriedly, ¡°kind of a stupid joke¡­¡±

    If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    ¡°But accurate,¡± Eliza said, obviously forcing some of her normal cheer into her voice. ¡°If you¡¯ve got any scotch, I¡¯d like a double.¡± I noticed that her ears were still drooping.

    I probably wasn¡¯t looking very happy myself. Remembering the certificate included two free drinks, I added, ¡°I¡¯ll have your best bourbon.¡± Suddenly realizing our waiter hadn¡¯t introduced himself, I asked, ¡°By the way, what¡¯s your name?¡±

    ¡°Oh!¡± our server said, suddenly realizing his mistake. ¡°Hi! My name is Timothy, and I¡¯ll be your server this evening. Would you like to order some drinks to start off your meal?¡± I noticed that when flustered, he had gone from a neutral, if somewhat clinical American accent to a slight Chinese accent. Still, his English was very good.

    Eliza, however, was probably too busy laughing at Timothy¡¯s mistake to notice his accent shift. Eventually, after Eliza stopped chuckling, we made our order again. This time, we were more specific about the kind of booze we wanted.

    After Timothy was done taking our drink orders, he asked, ¡°Hey, weren¡¯t you one of the guys who killed Eric and James Roberts?¡±

    I pointed at myself, a feeling of dread. Timothy nodded. ¡°When was this?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Last semester,¡± Timothy said, ¡°during the break-in at the hospital¡¯s Secure Records section.¡±

    ¡°First off,¡± I said, ¡°I might not have killed him. There was another person with me. Secondly¡­¡±

    ¡°I know,¡± Timothy said, a note of unrepentant glee in his voice. ¡°But you might have killed him, so I should probably thank you. The guys were in my Project Management and Accounting classes. Even the other Nazi sympathizers hated them.¡± He then pocketed his pen and pad. ¡°Anyway, your drinks will be right out.¡± He then hurried off, nearly skipping for joy.

    ¡°Bit of a sociopath, isn¡¯t ¡®e?¡± Eliza remarked when he was out of earshot.

    I nodded. I was a little disturbed at how happy he was two people he had known personally were dead. Still, when he came back with our drinks, I noted that ours were filled to the brim, while our neighbors who ordered shots only had theirs filled three-quarters of the way. Timothy sure knew how to suck up.

    Conversation was mostly light between Eliza and me. We did exchange drinks for a few sips just to see if we could tell the difference. We could. Timothy, however, made sure that they were filled up. When I mentioned that my certificate only covered three drinks, Timothy assured us that it was on the house. We still switched to water, me after my fourth shot, Eliza after her fifth. Needless to say, when some old acquaintances of mine came in, we were feeling pretty good.

    ¡°¡­so, those clients Krieger got us want five prototypes,¡± I was saying to Eliza as Timothy removed the plate my steak had been on. ¡°They also want¡­¡± I paused. The group that had been drinking shots had left and the tables they¡¯d occupied had been split apart. Sitting at one of them were Agents Takashi and Brosnan. As I stared, Brosnan raised his glass in a mock toast, a patronizing smirk on his face.

    Champagne, I thought. The bastards are drinking champagne while people are beating each other to death only a few kilometers away. As soon as I thought that, though, I reminded myself, Hey, the only reason you¡¯re here is because you¡¯ve just eaten the most expensive steak you¡¯ve ever laid eyes on. Don¡¯t judge.

    ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± Eliza asked. ¡°You look like you¡¯ve seen a ghost.¡±

    ¡°Takashi and Craig are here.¡±

    ¡°¡®Oo?¡± Eliza asked, cocking her head. Then, her ear closest to where Takashi and Craig were sitting twitched. ¡°Wait, they¡¯re the blokes near us oo¡¯re drinkin¡¯ bubbly and laughin¡¯ it up, right?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, noticing Takashi now was directing a murderous stare at me, ¡°Takashi¡¯s not exactly happy.¡±

    ¡°Are¡­ are they the guys ¡®oo got you to¡­¡± Eliza began, ¡°¡­to¡­ to, y¡¯know¡­? Then bleedin¡¯ stiffed you?¡±

    I nodded, desperately trying to keep myself from causing a scene. Takashi, however, was under no such restrictions. He stood out of his chair with such force that it fell over. In response, Eliza¡¯s triple claws shot out of her hands. Before she could launch herself at Takashi, I grabbed her wrists, nearly setting my hair on fire from the candle.

    ¡°Eliza,¡± I said, staring into her pale, shaking face, ¡°it¡¯s not worth it.¡± The look on Eliza¡¯s face was downright murderous. According to what I knew about Lupines (and Eliza in particular,) when the claws came out, that meant violence was extremely likely.

    From his table, I could hear Brosnan call out warningly, ¡°Takashi¡­¡±

    Takashi, meanwhile had appeared at our table, and he was livid. ¡°You¡­¡± he said.

    I ignored him and kept staring straight into Eliza¡¯s eyes. While Takashi¡¯s expression was a little scary, Eliza was utterly terrifying. Her face completely white with rage, she was trembling with the rage only a berserk Lupine could muster, and blood was dripping from her extended claws onto the expensive white tablecloth. Her attention rested evenly between me and Takashi, ready to spring into action if he made a move.

    ¡°Eliza, look at me,¡± I said. ¡°He isn¡¯t worth it.¡±

    ¡°Do you know every person you killed?¡± Takashi asked, his voice quivering.

    ¡°Takashi!¡± Craig yelled. ¡°Don¡¯t aggravate the bloody Lupine!¡±

    ¡°Eliza,¡± I said, still ignoring Takashi, ¡°repeat after me: he isn¡¯t worth it.¡± I¡¯m not even sure she could even understand me at that point. From my grip on her wrists, I could feel her vibrate with rage.

    ¡°Your little playdate in North Korea,¡± Takashi said, ¡°somehow managed to kill a few of my close friends.¡±

    At the word playdate, I almost let go of Eliza¡¯s wrists. Yet somehow, I instead found the self-restraint to say, ¡°He¡¯s. Not. Worth. It.¡±

    ¡°Do you want to know how I know?¡± Takashi asked. Behind him, I could see his partner get up and begin to move slowly towards us, making obvious effort to appear non-threatening. Takashi was as oblivious to this as he was to the berserk Lupine. ¡°I know this because the nine-year-old girl they were supposed to bring back miraculously ends up in your custody. She¡¯s also carrying my best friend¡¯s side-arm in footage you provided to us!¡±

    That explained the team that wasn¡¯t NIU, North Korean or Dragon¡¯s Teeth. They were UNIX, and they were there for Nari. John was right. Ironically, he had figured it out when Takashi had shoved the barrel of his pistol into my eye.

    At the moment, I had bigger problems to worry about. Takashi¡¯s impassioned shout hadn¡¯t just attracted the eyes of all the diners, but it had also pushed Eliza too far. She began to struggle violently to break free of my grasp. I knew the first thing she would do would be to rip Takashi to shreds. After that, I had no idea what she¡¯d do, other than that it would most likely be extremely violent. The last time I had seen her even close to this, she had literally spilled someone¡¯s guts. I had the pleasant experience of being in the same ambulance as that victim. Eliza had been much calmer in that situation.

    Before she could break free, Brosnan grabbed his partner and flung him away from us. ¡°YOU BLOODY GIT!¡± he yelled. ¡°YOU FUCKING SHITSTAIN!¡±

    ¡°What fu¡­?¡± Takashi asked. He made a loud squeak instead of finishing his curse because Brosnan had kicked him in the balls.

    ¡°You fucking moron!¡± Brosnan shouted. ¡°Now, I have to hurt you, or a Lupine goes on a bloody rampage.¡± Takashi yelped. Brosnan continued, ¡°You should know better than anyone what a Lupine can do when pissed, especially a Fighter-type female!¡± He stomped on Takashi. Hard. ¡°You endangered a room full of civilians over a fucking vendetta.¡± He reached down and pulled Takashi up. ¡°Get out of here. And be thankful I¡¯ve not yet washed my hands of you.¡±

    Takashi began to walk off, his suit rumpled and his nose and lips bleeding. For a second, it looked like he was going to say something, then he thought better. Eliza watched him leave. I was glad to note that the color was returning to her face.

    After Takashi had left, Brosnan turned to us. ¡°I apologize for the interruption,¡± he said. ¡°Please, have a pleasant evening.¡±

    ¡°Oi,¡± Eliza said as Brosnan turned to leave. She was whispering in an out-of-breath, yet scarily controlled whisper.

    ¡°Yes?¡± Brosnan asked, turning around.

    ¡°Control your partner,¡± Eliza said, still in that quiet, yet dangerous voice. ¡°Or next time, I will.¡±

    ¡°Of course.¡± Brosnan said. ¡°I can assure you, of the two of us, it is not my partner you need to worry about.¡± He bowed and walked off.

 4.17: Fix Yo Hustle

    Looking back on it, I can¡¯t believe I ever forgot about Timothy. I wouldn¡¯t be reminded of his existence until nearly the second week in October. Sunday afternoon after lunch and the study group, the board of Olympus Incorporated had welcomed Professor Krieger to discuss the first order of business: the sale of the pistols and ammo to the mystery group.

    ¡°Our friends,¡± Krieger began, ¡°find that your pistols live up to all your claims so far. They admit to over-ordering the pistols, but are offering around five hundred dollars per additional ten thousand rounds of ammunition.¡±

    ¡°Any critiques?¡± I asked, trying to ignore that May looked disgusted with Krieger and Andy seemed like he was about to vomit.

    ¡°These weapons,¡± Krieger said, ¡°are somewhat controversial. But the objective fact is they can penetrate any material you could reasonably expect and its bleedin¡¯ uncle. It¡¯s also an objective fact that the little bugger¡¯s very noisy, and if you aren¡¯t wearing some armor, you might spend a good few minutes before realizing you¡¯ve been shot.¡±

    With this comment, Nari asked, ¡°Do our honorable buyers know enough to aim for the center mass? Or do they prefer to aim for the legs and shoulders?¡±

    Kreiger laughed. ¡°Oh, they know where to aim, missy. Sometimes, though, you can¡¯t always hit the heart or brain. In those situations, a few very small bullets won¡¯t do as much damage as a lot of heavy bullets. That being said, apparently a third of the people who use it are in love with it.¡± Nari smirked in satisfaction. ¡°The other two-thirds want it to be lighter, have less recoil, have a higher rate of fire, or some combination of the three.¡±

    Nari gave Krieger a glower that almost matched May¡¯s. ¡°Do they realize that the only way to control recoil for that gun is to make it abnormally heavy? Even if I added porting, switching from steel to polymer or seltsametall would make it kick too much.¡±

    Krieger shrugged. ¡°Just giving you their words, girlie.¡± He considered this. ¡°You know, a platform with a bigger form factor could potentially¡­¡±

    ¡°Allow for an effective counter-balancing system, which in turn would allow for controllable, rapid semi and full-auto fire,¡± Nari said, rolling her eyes. ¡°We know. We¡¯ve thought it through, much better than any of your friends.¡±

    ¡°They¡¯d like to hear your musings,¡± Krieger said.

    Nari, suddenly cautious, looked hesitantly to May, Andy and me. Andy and May shrugged. I guess it was my turn. ¡°Between company politics, finances, and just plain old engineering,¡± I said, ¡°we feel we should keep our speculations academic for the moment. That¡¯s not to say it can¡¯t happen in the near future, but it¡¯s unlikely.¡±

    As I said this, I tried to not even think of the two guns in the case we had spent the morning testing in the forrest. If you didn¡¯t have anything to hold to scale, you could be forgiven for thinking it was an M-4/M-16 with an MP-5A3-style telescoping buttstock clone at first. That was because the receiver was designed to accommodate an M-4 barrel shround. Then, you¡¯d notice it took its magazines through a pistol grip and the ambidextrous charging handles were very similar to a SCAR or AK. If you held it up to an UMP-45, you¡¯d also notice that without the barrel, this gun was more compact, but with the barrel it was slightly longer.

    Internally, it was radically altered from all its progenitors to accommodate a revolutionary counter-balancing spring made up of a shelved university project called BounceCore (a material with a high compression strength that could be reduced by running a current through it.) The act of firing the gun pushed back the barrel and the BounceCore spring instead of the entire gun as well as pushing the six-and-a-half millimeter bullet forwards. The only problem with BounceCore was that in order to have it stand up to the kinetic and thermal energy our ammunition created when it fired, we had to make it way too thick to be put in a pistol. Still, that allowed us to make the rest of this SMG out of Seltsametall and synthetics.

    It was deadly, efficient and easy to use. Nari and I were both rightly proud. In short, it was everything May (and me) did not want falling into the wrong hands, which also made it the kind of thing Nari wanted to put in boxes of breakfast cereal along with her biography.

    We called it the Ballpeen, and it was beautiful.

    Krieger, not seeming to suspect my lie, said, ¡°I¡¯m sorry to hear that, lads and lassies. I¡¯ll give you until Saturday to come to a decision. In the meantime, I¡¯m going to get some sleep. I¡¯ve got Hell Semester pukes to deal with for the next five days.¡±

    With that, he got up and exited the borrowed conference room. In the split second after Krieger had exited from view and before the door began to close, I saw my waiter from the Veranda, Timmy, sitting at the conference room across the hall, consulting his laptop. Before I could really register, the door was blocking my view again. Oddly enough, he appeared to be wearing business formal attire. Even the stuffiest of the business majors wore business casual unless they needed to present.

    We waited for a few seconds to make sure Krieger had really left. When we were sure he was gone, Nari asked, ¡°So, why did we not sell him the Ballpeen?¡±

    ¡°Because,¡± May said through gritted teeth, pulling out a manila folder, ¡°I¡¯m not sure they are who they say they are.¡±

    ¡°And even if they are,¡± Andy said grimly, ¡°they¡¯re still pretty dang shady.¡±

    Before either of them could elaborate, the door to our conference room burst open. ¡°I¡¯ll say,¡± Timmy said, striding in like he owned the place, much to our surprise. ¡°I mean, they¡¯re definitely stiffing you.¡± He paused, and flashed what he obviously thought was a charming smile. ¡°I can help with that.¡±

    ¡°¡­Who the hell are you?¡± Andy asked.

    ¡°This,¡± I said, ¡°is Timothy, I believe. You¡¯re a business major, right?¡±

    ¡°Technically,¡± he said, ¡°my name is Cheung Tao, but my English name¡¯s Timothy Cheung.¡± He sat leaned down, looking oddly serious despite his hipster glasses and stupid widow¡¯s peak. ¡°But that¡¯s not important. What¡¯s important is how I can help you.¡±

    ¡°And how could you help us?¡± May asked.

    ¡°First of all,¡± Timothy said, getting up, ¡°not only is this room bugged, but it¡¯s also not soundproofed.¡± He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the room he had previously been inhabiting. ¡°Mine is. Plus I know how to baffle the bugs.¡± He got up. ¡°If you would follow me¡­¡±

    Andy, May, Nari and I consulted each other silently for a moment. Finally I said, ¡°What the hell? Let¡¯s humor him.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± May said.

    We all got up. After we filed into the room, Timothy sealed the door. I noticed that his laptop, a MacBook of some sort, was plugged into the TV via an HDMI cable. The window shades were mostly drawn, except for a small sliver where what appeared to be a wireless speaker rested against the window.

    The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    ¡°The cool thing about music,¡± Timothy said smugly, taking a gold-plated iPhone out of his pocket, ¡°is that not only can it cut off room mics when played at the correct volume, not only can it disrupt laser mics if you put the speaker up to the window, but you can also impress your client.¡± He then pressed a button on his phone. ¡°Aw yeah, it¡¯s that dope shizzle, my nizzles!¡±

    For one brief, shining moment, I thought I was listening to Under Pressure. Then Vanilla Ice started rapping. May, our hip-hop head, looked like she was in physical pain as soon as she heard the first few bars.

    Sensing that Vanilla Ice hadn¡¯t gotten him the points he had desired, Timothy said, ¡°¡­I also have some Fetty Wap, Rick Ross and Limp Bizkit if they would be better.¡±

    ¡°How about if I put on some music?¡± May asked as tactfully as she could possibly could.

    Once May had begun cleansing her palate with some Tupac, she asked, ¡°So, Mr. Cheung, what proposal do you have for us?¡±

    ¡°Also,¡± I asked, ¡°how did you find out about us?¡±

    ¡°Please,¡± he said, ¡°Call me Timmy.¡± He turned to me. ¡°Well, Mr. Jacobs, I discovered this company through you, when you were talking with your lovely lady about how many units you shipped.¡± He gave me a wink to let me know where he thought I had shipped that night and where it was delivered. I just stared at him. He continued on. ¡°To be fair, you didn¡¯t mention units of what, but I was intrigued. Then, at a recent study group for Black Market Econ at the Vulture Capitalist, I managed to get a bit more info out of Jennifer Kagemoto. Don¡¯t worry, she didn¡¯t say your name, just that she¡¯d discovered someone working on some really cool guns. To be fair to her, she also had twice as many shots of tequila as you did of bourbon.¡±

    I recognized the name Vulture Capitalist. Basically, it was The Drunken Mercenary for Business Majors, except instead of sub-par booze, it kept outsiders away via exorbitant prices. Any study group there would turn into a drunken revel.

    ¡°Are you offering us security?¡± I asked. If he was, I¡¯d have to take it. I¡¯d obviously messed up if he was here.

    Apparently, I had accidentally implied I¡¯d been insulted because Timothy quickly backpedaled. ¡°No, no, no!¡± he said. ¡°I just have some suggestions. For instance, I did some research. The closest analogue to your ammo I could find is .357 SIG. Would that be fair?¡±

    ¡°In terms of velocity and penetration,¡± Nari said, a little insulted, ¡°.357 SIG is completely inferior.¡±

    ¡°Then why are you selling it for less?¡± Timothy asked. He pressed a button on his phone and the title Profitability in Weapon Deals appeared on the TV. He pressed another button and he went to a slide with two pie graphs. ¡°These,¡± he said, ¡°are what I estimate what the price of .357 SIG goes to. Since we¡¯re selling wholesale, we¡¯re going to look at the one on the right, which is cost to the end user per thousand rounds.¡±

    He tapped on the screen. ¡°As you can see, the actual cost of making and assembling the bullet is only about twenty cents per bullet. That means, of the six hundred and seventy-five dollars the consumer spends on, only two hundred dollars is actually spent on making the thing.¡± He paused for effect, but then moved from the red slice representing the cost to make the bullet, tapping the other slices. ¡°Of course, the manufacturer spends money on marketing, design, benefits, royalties, most of which doesn¡¯t concern you, since you only have shareholders at this point, or any need to market.¡± Finally, he got to the big green slice. ¡°But this¡­ this is the profit, or at least the gross profit. Now, can I ask¡­ if the rules changed tomorrow, and you had to pay for materials yourself, how much would bullets cost?¡±

    Andy spoke up instantly. ¡°Fifty cents. If I budget in case of the machine breaking, possibly sixty. Most of that is due to the fact we¡¯re in the middle of nowhere and we¡¯re not producing a huge amount.¡±

    ¡°So,¡± Timothy said, ¡°if you were to have to pay for materials, six thousand of the five hundred dollars you make would go to production costs. That seems a little off to me.¡± He shrugged. ¡°Then again, if you¡¯re running a charity¡­¡±

    ¡°If it¡¯s a charity,¡± May said, finally opening the manila folder, ¡°we need to review our cases. A few days after we shipped our first order, a Cartel middle-management guy living right on the US/Mexican border left his wife and kids for work. As soon as he closed the door, two men walked up and opened fire. A total of five rounds were fired, all of which passed through the man and the heavy oak door. Not only did he die almost instantly, but his wife, eight-month-old infant and fifteen-year-old son are dead. There are five other incidents I believe our gun was used in that ended in civilian casualties.¡±

    ¡°What was the goal?¡± Timothy asked. ¡°Not your client¡¯s, but yours.¡±

    ¡°Immediate goal?¡± I said. ¡°FBI¡¯s having a contest. We want in, and Krieger told us they could get us in.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± he said, ¡°No shipments until we get proof they are who they say they are. We also need to find Krieger¡¯s angle¡­¡±

    ¡°What about yours?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Simple,¡± Timothy said. ¡°You guys are inventors who need a business guy to sell your products, I¡¯m a business guy who¡¯s looking for a job. Also, apart from the pistol, are you making any other things?¡±

    ¡°Originally,¡± May said, suppressing her bitterness, ¡°this was supposed to be about just selling medical supplies and automated production.¡± She brightened up a bit. ¡°Still, Power Sludge and my surgical glue have been approved by the FDA, so I¡¯m going Washington in a few weeks. Andy¡¯s going to be at the factory.¡±

    ¡°So we¡¯re¡­¡± Timothy began, then realized that we hadn¡¯t voted him in yet, ¡°doing medicine and manufacturing. Cool. That¡¯s something we can put sales of weapons towards.¡±

    As May pondered this, Timothy asked, ¡°Can I see the products you discussed?¡±

    I put the case on the table. ¡°You can look,¡± I said, ¡°but you can¡¯t touch, and you can¡¯t ask how they work. Deal?¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± Timothy said with a shrug. I opened the case. Inside was the second generation of the Uilon Mangchi and the two prototype versions of the Ballpeen.

    ¡°What¡¯s that on the bottom of the machinegun at the top?¡± Timothy asked.

    ¡°It¡¯s a collapsible foregrip, light and laser,¡± I said, resisting the urge to correct him that it was actually an SMG. ¡°If you pull the trigger on the grip, you can switch between several settings.¡±

    Timothy looked at the guns for a moment, smiling to himself. Finally, he said, ¡°Ladies and gentlemen, I do believe your products are Hollywood-ready.¡±

 4.18: Take the Psycho Bowling

    After Timothy made his presentation, we shooed him out of the room. Once he was gone, we unanimously agreed to give him a temporary position as business manager for a small percentage of the profits. Surprisingly, he was happy with that. I honestly thought he¡¯d push to make it permanent or get a bigger cut. Instead, he just smiled, and said, ¡°You won¡¯t regret this.¡± May didn¡¯t seem too convinced.

    Still, I had more immediate problems. Midterms were that week and I needed to do what felt like all the work. At this point, between my extracurricular weapons design, bar tending and actual school work, I was pretty much fueled by soda, candy, hot chocolate, and tea instead of actual sleep. At supper on Tuesday, May confronted me about it.

    ¡°Nate,¡± she said, ¡°you¡¯re falling asleep in your noodles.¡±

    ¡°What?¡± I said. Then I realized I was face-down in a plate of angel hair noodles. As I sat up, I was thankful that I didn¡¯t put any sauce on the spaghetti. Being covered with parmesan cheese and olive oil was bad enough.

    May sighed. ¡°After you finish your food, I¡¯m walking you home. You will go to sleep.¡±

    ¡°I¡­¡± I began.

    ¡°Did I make it sound like I was giving you a choice?¡± May asked. ¡°Because if so that was a mistake, and I apologize.¡±

    As she frog-marched me back to my dorm, I began making incoherent promises about sleeping more. May just rolled her eyes. ¡°Don¡¯t try,¡± she said, ¡°do.¡±

    I was actually able to do that for the rest of the week, mostly by putting the assault rifle design on the backburner. Due to how tired I constantly was, I actually managed to sleep better.

    John, however, seemed to be doing better than me. When I¡¯d wake up in the middle of the night due to nightmares, anxiety or simply needing a bathroom break, he¡¯d be sleeping pretty well. I was kind of annoyed by this. If the guy who had been put into critical condition a few months ago could sleep, why couldn¡¯t I?

    There was also an awkwardness between us. If you didn¡¯t know any better, you¡¯d think we¡¯d just had a huge fight. It had been that way for a while, but I was really starting to notice it. So on Friday I decided that I needed some air.

    I had just finished all my midterms and didn¡¯t have to go to dinner or my bartending job for quite a while. For the first time in months, I was feeling rested. Originally, I hadn¡¯t planned on being outside long (the island¡¯s weather was as rainy as usual,) but then I saw him.

    Ulfric Trollbjorn was sitting down on the bench outside the building I had my class in. As usual, the people who knew him by reputation (I don¡¯t think anyone actually knows him, except maybe Alma) were giving him a wide berth. Even sitting down, you could tell he was a giant. His AMS hoodie was soaked, hanging off him. This revealed that, while he was incredibly ripped, he was still surprisingly lacking in muscles for someone who could literally rip people apart with his bare hands.

    At first, I considered walking away. Then I noticed that Ulfric¡¯s normally smiling face was downcast and he was staring at the ground. I stood there for what had to be around two to five minutes, staring directly at him. During this time he didn¡¯t once look up. Eventually, I decided to walk up to him.

    ¡°Ulfric?¡± I asked over the sound of the rain when I was standing right next to him, ¡°You ok?¡±

    Ulfric looked up at me in surprise, and I could see that his eyes were slightly puffy. He held my gaze for about a second or two, then, finally, he asked, his voice hoarse like he¡¯d been crying, ¡°Do you wanna go bowling?¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said, out of a combination of fear of a completely snapped Ulfric and a genuine sense of compassion. I mean, he had killed dozens of people not too long ago, but even so, I couldn¡¯t just leave someone sobbing in the rain. ¡°I didn¡¯t know they had a bowling alley on the island.¡±

    Ulfric gave his wide, completely joyful grin and got up. He motioned for me to follow him. I did. He led me down the main street. Near the gate, we got to a building by the hospital. I had probably walked by it dozens of times, yet I hadn¡¯t seen the bright neon sign labeled ¡°Bryke¡¯s Bowling,¡± complete with dancing bowling pins. As soon as I saw it, I realized that it had probably always been there. Well, it wasn¡¯t like I was the biggest bowler out there.

    Ulfric, moving with his usual disturbing speed and grace, walked up to the cashier, a pimply brown-skinned man and plopped down a piece of paper. The brown-skinned man turned almost as white as Ulfric. When Ulfric saw this, he made his high-pitched giggle. For a few seconds, the sounds of people bowling and conversing stopped. This caused Ulfric¡¯s shoulders to sag.

    To his credit, the receptionist managed to ask in a quivering voice, ¡°I see that you have decided to use your ticked for two. Who¡­?¡± Ulfric pointed to me. I waved. ¡°Ah, yes,¡± he said. ¡°Would you gentlemen please hand over your shoes?¡±

    We handed over our shoes to the receptionist, and he handed over some bowling shoes to the us. When the shoes were on, he pointed us over to an empty lane. I¡¯m not a bowler, so I¡¯m not even sure if we were doing it right. I just know that Ulfric was consistently knocking all the pins down with one ball, whereas I sometimes couldn¡¯t even knock them down with the balls allotted to me.

    After a few rounds, Ulfric asked out of nowhere, ¡°Am I defective?¡±

    I honestly had no idea how to answer that question. Up until this point, I had thought of Ulfric as a ruthless, highly intelligent killing machine. I had known he had feelings, but didn¡¯t know that he was capable of introspection. He had always seemed so child-like, an impression that was cemented by his baby face and his usually joyful smile.

    ¡°Depends on what you mean,¡± I said. ¡°I mean, what¡¯s your idea of a functional person?¡±

    Ulfic shrugged. ¡°I don¡¯t know. I just know that most people can talk whenever they want every day. I know people act the same every day.¡± He paused. ¡°There¡¯s also some unspoken rules I don¡¯t get.¡±

    You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

    He then went back to bowling. I tried to engage him in conversation several more times, but he went back to being his usual mute self. I had once noted in Hell Semester that he had days where he might literally not speak at all and days where he could string several sentences together in any language. However, this was the first conversation I had ever seen him have. It also seemed to physically exhaust him, because after speaking, he sat down and rested for a bit.

    We continued to bowl until the machine stopped giving us balls. After we got our street shoes on, I asked, ¡°You want me to walk with you for a bit?¡±

    Ulfric nodded. We headed out the bowling alley and down past the hospital and into AMS/Shadowhaven territory. As we did so, Ulfric seemed to be getting back to his cheery self.

    I wondered how he could still be happy. It¡¯s not like I hadn¡¯t noticed it before, but everyone seemed to be avoiding him, especially now that we were in an area where people were more aware of who he was. People would literally cross the street rather than come into range. They would also glance at his sweater, specifically around his armpits. Despite their small size (compared to Ulfric, that is,) you could still see the twin .50 AE Desert Eagles with their drum magazines.

    Of course, most people here were armed. I, of course, had my Berretta and SIG-Sauer. The occasional Campus Security officers we saw would have their standard-issue FiveSeveN strapped to their hips. There was also the fact that many of the students and teachers who needed to brave the rain, usually the ones in the AMS and Shadowhaven hoodies, had their concealed carry weaponry revealed by rain-soaked clothes. A few also carried large, rectangular cases in addition to their backpacks that my experience told me were most likely long guns.

    Here, everyone would know how to use their weapons. Yet they were still afraid of Ulfric. I wondered what that would be like, to live in what was the equivalent of a heavily-armed ghetto in a village full of people who hated and feared you, and were also highly armed and superbly trained. I would have been a wreck. Of course, I already was a high-functioning train wreck at that point.

    After I considered this, I said to Ulfric, ¡°You know, if you ever need to talk, you can call me.¡± Ulfric turned towards me and smiled gratefully. ¡°Also,¡± I added, ¡°from what I¡¯ve seen, you could probably talk to Alma as well.¡±

    At this, Ulfric stopped and turned completely pale. I stared at him. I never thought anything could scare him. I just didn¡¯t know if it was because he was scared of Alma, me or both of us. Or why he¡¯d be scared.

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said, trying to pretend I hadn¡¯t realized he was scared. ¡°I just saw you two together around campus once or twice and¡­¡± I trailed off, then finally said, ¡°Just forget it.¡±

    ¡°Forget you ever saw us together.¡± I turned to see Ulfric staring at me with the kind of fear in his eyes that made me think he would hurt me if I didn¡¯t agree. He then placed a massive hand on my shoulder and added, ¡°Please.¡±

    Looking at the giant hand, I was reminded of how Ulfric had once ripped someone¡¯s arm off and beat the victim and his friends with the soggy end along with a dozen other incidents.  Not wanting to risk that he¡¯d avoid confrontation because we were in public, I said, ¡°Sure. Don¡¯t worry about it.¡±

    Ulfric stared at me for a long, long time, trying to see there was any hint that I would go back on my word. Eventually, he let go of my shoulder and nodded, satisfied. We then began to continue our walk back to our dorm. It turned out that Ulfric had a room right across from my dorm building. It was a single, probably due to a combination of the fact that he was Ulfric and that Hell Semester had taken more lives than usual in our year. It was supposed to be a double, but Ulfric had dragged the two beds together and had gotten sheets and blankets big enough to cover both mattresses. There were probably other signs that he had the room all to himself, but he wordlessly shooed me out. I didn¡¯t argue.

    When I got back to the dorm I shared with John, the first thing I did was grab a change of clothes (I had been soaked to the bone from being out in the rain for so long) and a towel and head to the bathrooms. Deciding to get ahead of the laundry for once, I threw my soaking clothes into my laundry basket and took that to the basement.

    When I entered the room for the third time, I said to John, ¡°I saw Ulfric today.¡±

    ¡°What¡¯d you do?¡± John asked, turning from his computer to look at me for what felt like the first time in weeks. ¡°Go bowling together?

    ¡°I swear I¡¯m not kidding,¡± I said, ¡°but that¡¯s exactly what we did.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re fucking shitting me,¡± John said, laughing somewhat.

    ¡°I swear I¡¯m telling the truth,¡± I said. ¡°I even had kind of a heart to heart chat with him. He said more in two hours than he has in the rest of his NIU career.¡± There was a pause. John¡¯s look of amusement began to fade. ¡°Just out of curiosity,¡± I asked, ¡°have you ever seen him and Alma Hebert around?¡±

    John sighed. ¡°Look,¡± he said, ¡°I¡¯ve been only doing this for, like, a year, but I¡¯m starting to develop a sense of when things are going to go bad.¡±

    ¡°Next time you say you have a good feeling,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯m going to hold you to it.¡±

    ¡°Key word,¡± John said, rolling his eyes, ¡°is starting.¡± He leaned in close and said, ¡°Listen to me, Nate, I have no clue what connection you¡¯re going to draw from this or what it might motivate you to do, but I¡¯m going to tell you right now: leave. It. Alone. No good can come of you doing your thing.¡±

    I was going to argue. I really was. Then I considered my track record and my current workload. ¡°You know what?¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯m going to concentrate on not fucking up what I¡¯m currently doing.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± John asked skeptically.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ve got enough to be doing. Besides, what would poking at it fix?¡±

 4.19: Brace Yourself

    The next week, May and Andy were gone off to Washington DC to finalize the FDA approval of May¡¯s various inventions. Then they¡¯d be off to the warehouse they had rented as a factory for Olympus Inc.

    ¡°It¡¯s in Worcester?¡± I asked when I heard about the factory¡¯s location. ¡°You mean you were in Massachusetts all summer and didn¡¯t contact me? I was only an hour away!¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± May said, ¡°we didn¡¯t exactly have a way to contact you.¡±

    ¡°What about the cPhone?¡± I asked. ¡°It should work outside¡­¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s kind of illegal,¡± Andy pointed out. ¡°I mean, the way they work outside the campus is by pretending to be a phone on the strongest network. You AMS guys may be crazy enough to casually commit theft of service, but I¡¯m not.¡±

    That had been on Saturday as I had walked them to the island¡¯s airport. Nari had wanted to come, but Sunny hadn¡¯t let her. I stayed there in the surprisingly light drizzle (well, light for NIU in mid-October) as the plane taxied down the runway. I then started to walk back to the campus.

    However, for some reason, I turned to look at the forest. I had run through those woods twice a day for a semester, and I¡¯d also had my first firefight there. Oddly enough, except for the monthly run, I hadn¡¯t visited it since then, even though I had been thinking about doing it ever since Hell Semester had ended. I had this idea in my head that going back to the part where the most deadly part of the battle had taken place, a crater probably formed in WWII when the US took the island from the Japanese, I would instantly feel better.

    Walking into the forest, I began to feel a sense of unease. On the path, I noticed that something was¡­ off. Along the path where years of vehicles and Hell Semester students had worn, the trees had begun to blossom. Most of the other non-coniferous trees farther back in the forest had almost finished losing their leaves, but these seemed to think it was spring despite the colder weather.

    I didn¡¯t need to think about what this meant for too long. The Architect had been through here. I considered my options. The newly awakened sensible side of me pointed out that pursuing whatever this was would be a bad idea. The slightly less sensible side was inclined to believe that I wouldn¡¯t have a prayer of sleeping until The Architect was dead. This less sensible side also pointed out that The Architect had come after me first, with no warning or provocation. My sensible side countered that the weapons I had on me (my SIG and my Berretta, plus a switchblade) would probably be of little use on someone (or something) that could make space and time his or her bitch.

    I was busy considering whether to walk away like nothing was wrong, or going down there and ending The Architect when Mubashir appeared ahead of me from a side trail. I sighed inwardly. That¡¯s twice I¡¯d seen him involved in Architect-related weirdness and zero times I had seen signs of The Architect without seeing Moob. Odds were looking better and better that Bai was right and he was The Architect.

    Upon seeing me, Mubashir froze. As he did, I noticed he was clutching what seemed to be a prayer rug. Finally, after a long pause, I said, as casually as possible, ¡°Hey Moob, what¡¯cha doing out here?¡±

    ¡°I¡­ I was just finishing up some prayers,¡± he said after another pause. I noticed that he was slightly flustered. ¡°There¡¯s a bunker up that path that keeps the rain out. Really peaceful.¡± When I didn¡¯t say anything to that, he added, ¡°I also have to get away from Salim.¡±

    ¡°Won¡¯t he notice that you¡¯re gone?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Not on Saturdays,¡± Mubashir said. ¡°He¡¯s usually trying to get other Muslims to join.¡± He cocked his head. ¡°By the way, what are you doing here?¡±

    ¡°I was trying to see if I could find the crater,¡± I said. Seeing Mubashir¡¯s confused look, I said, ¡°It¡¯s where most of the Hell Semester battle happened. There¡¯s more than a few ghosts there that I need to burry.¡±

    Mubashir nodded. It was hard to see at that distance, especially in the rain and mist. ¡°I know a few things about ghosts,¡± he said. ¡°Would you like me to walk with you? Make sure you don¡¯t step on a mine or unexploded shell?¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said. The mines and shelling were mostly around the Hell Semester side of the island, but the forest separated that area from the main campus. The crater in question had most likely been from a battleship. The likelihood some other shells had landed in the area was pretty high. I didn¡¯t want to risk stepping on a shell big enough to make that kind of crater that had been waiting for me since the early forties. ¡°You can¡¯t be too careful.¡±

    We crossed the distance between us, then began our journey. After a few minutes, Mubashir remarked, ¡°You know, I don¡¯t really ever think of that last day of Hell Semester as a battle. More like a final where I just sat around doing nothing.¡±

    ¡°It definitely was a battle,¡± I said. ¡°Especially around the crater.¡± After another pause I said, ¡°I know it¡¯s probably nothing compared to what you went through, but that kind of fucked me up. That and the rest of Hell Semester.¡±

    ¡°About that,¡± Moob said, ¡°I¡¯m sorry about what happened after Fight Night.¡± I nodded. He was referring to an incident where Salim had ambushed me. It ended up with most of Salim¡¯s crew dead and me sharing an ambulance ride with a girl Eliza had really messed up. It wasn¡¯t a fun time.

    We walked along for a little while more. ¡°You know,¡± Mubashir said, ¡°for a time I alternated between not believing in Allah and cursing Him, saying I could do a better job. A few months after being kidnapped by Al-Qaeda, in fact.¡±

    ¡°What changed?¡± I asked.

    Mubashir obviously wished I had asked something else, but he answered anyway. ¡°In difficult situations some people find God, some people lose him. In even rarer situations God finds them.¡±

    There was more silence. During that time, we kept heading deeper and deeper into the forest. We had left behind the strange blossoming trees and were in a segment that I wasn¡¯t exactly familiar with. However, I could feel we were getting close. Finally Mubashir asked, ¡°So, how many of them were there?¡±

    ¡°A captive we had claimed around a hundred and fifty,¡± I said, ¡°and a captured cPhone with a ¡®Find My Friends¡¯ feature led me to believe he was correct.¡±

    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

    ¡°That many?¡± Mubashir asked. ¡°Against eight of you?¡±

    ¡°The vast majority were worse than useless,¡± I said. ¡°They panicked way too easily, they couldn¡¯t tell a safety from a magazine catch, and until the very end, their leadership ranged from nonexistent to ¡®Thank you sir, we couldn¡¯t have done it without you.¡¯¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve had experience with those kinds of leaders,¡± Mubashir said. ¡°It¡¯s almost funny when they meet on the field of battle and match ¡®wits.¡¯ Except so many are dying and each side had an obvious way to end it without that many people dying.¡± He sighed. ¡°Of course, the war I¡¯m fighting is completely unnecessary and one of the groups I¡¯m fighting with is becoming less relevant every day. I believe the English language meme is dumpster fire?¡±

    I shrugged. ¡°Haven¡¯t looked at the net much lately so I couldn¡¯t¡­¡± I paused. We had just come into a clearing. A very familiar one.

    ¡°What is it?¡± Mubashir asked.

    ¡°This is where we had our second battle,¡± I said. I hurried out into the middle of it. ¡°I came through the bushes¡­¡± I scanned around, then pointed to the spot, ¡°¡­over there. Standing right here was an enemy patrol. We took them out¡­¡± I could almost see the last one. He had been playing dead as The Monk and I had advanced on him. Then his phone had rung and he had popped up. We had shot him. I remembered how he and his companions¡¯ blood had soaked the snow. We had then looted the corpses after making sure all of them were dead. I somehow felt both ashamed and proud.

    ¡°Are you ok?¡± Mubashir asked.

    ¡°Moving on!¡± I said with forced cheer. Mubashir looked at me strangely, but he followed me down memory lane. ¡°You know,¡± I continued in a non-sequitur, ¡°It was really cold. And blizzarding. Visibility was complete shit and everyone¡¯s teeth were chattering. Of course, you were back at camp, experiencing the same weather so¡­¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t remember any of it,¡± Mubashir said. ¡°It was honestly just another day off for me once I set the tent up. Salim was ranting, and those of us who were still left were listening to him vent.¡±

    ¡°What does he talk about?¡± I ask.

    ¡°His family and how they got murdered by an American drone,¡± Mubashir said. ¡°Just once, I want to point out my family was most likely killed or enslaved by Al Qaeda, but that would blow my cover.¡± He kicked a tree. ¡°I work for UNIX!¡± He kicked it again. ¡°I work for the CIA!¡± He kicked a final time. ¡°I work for Al Qaeda! I work for three of the worst entities in the world, three entities who lie and abuse my brother and sister Arabs daily! Who abuse me daily! Why am I cowardly enough to work for them?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think you¡¯re a coward,¡± I said. ¡°Honestly, I just don¡¯t think you have a choice.¡±

    ¡°Apart from suicide,¡± Mubashir said.

    ¡°If you¡¯ve found God again,¡± I said, continuing on my journey, ¡°and if he¡¯s saying the same thing to you as he is to me, that¡¯s definitely a sin.¡±

    Mubashir began following me. ¡°Maybe our gods aren¡¯t so different after all,¡± he said with a bit of a bitter laugh. ¡°Which would make sense, since they¡¯re the same.¡±

    Eventually, we saw it. The memories of the events there caused me to stagger a bit, and for a minute, I could smell the fire and smoke. I could hear the gunfire and screams of the dying. It was so real I almost thought I was back there. Next to me, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mubashir look at me in concern.

    I took a few deep breaths, then said, ¡°I¡¯m ok.¡±

    ¡°To be fair,¡± Mubashir said, trying to sound casual, ¡°You¡¯re doing a lot better than I would if I went back to my village.¡±

    ¡°Thanks,¡± I said. ¡°Anyway, if you look around, I think you can still see some signs of the battle. For instance, those shrubs along the sides of this path¡­ I think you can still see how they got burned.¡±

    After that, I led Mubashir up the path to the crater, keeping up a running commentary about everything that happened. How Doc, The Monk, John and I had to fight our way to the crater where Eric, MC Disaster, Ray-Gun and Cross had holed up. How the enemy had sent a recon team down what we had termed the funnel, and how The Monk and I had killed most of them. How the next attack was the rest of them, all coming down the funnel, and how we had massacred them with our guns and incendiary grenades, literally dismembering some and burning a few others alive. How we had decided (stupidly) to leave the crater and were ambushed by the few remaining enemies. How they had shot me, The Monk and Ray-Gun and could possibly have killed all of us if a relief force led by Eliza hadn¡¯t shown up.

    From the top of the crater, I stared at the now-swampy wasteland where I had been shot. ¡°Hey Moob,¡± I asked, ¡°Is it weird that I¡¯m kind of proud at what I did here?¡±

    ¡°By ¡®weird,¡¯¡± Mubashir asked, ¡°do you mean wrong?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I admitted. ¡°I mean, I feel guilty. A lot of them died in pretty horrible ways. Sometimes because I pulled a trigger or threw a grenade.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Mubashir said. ¡°There is only one person who can answer that, and he hasn¡¯t talked to me.¡± He smiled with a mixture of hope and cynicism. ¡°I can say I hope God can forgive you, because I¡¯ve been doing similar things and worse for much longer.¡±

    ¡°Well, I¡¯ll hope he forgives you as well,¡± I said. ¡°Mostly because I like your logic.¡± We laughed. It was genuine laughter. When we were done, I looked down at the bottom of the crater. ¡°Someday,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯d like to come back here with some other veterans, or some people like you who weren¡¯t here but who¡¯d understand what this is like. Cook some hot dogs or burgers, pop something to drown our sorrows, and just talk.¡±

    ¡°It can¡¯t be with me,¡± Mubashir said. ¡°I have to go back, and if they see me with you¡­¡±

    I nodded. ¡°Of course. Go on ahead.¡± I looked out to where I had been hit in the leg with shrapnel from a 40mm rifle grenade. ¡°I¡¯ve still got some reminiscing to do.¡± With only a short goodbye, Mubashir left. I watched him leave, then began to wonder how many more craters and North Koreas I would have.

 4.20: A New Chapter

    Nari and I were waiting at the airport a little after lunch for Andy and May to get back exactly one week later. The rain had slowly begun to be replaced by snow the entire week. Needless to say, we were waiting in the hangar.

    ¡°Did you finish the rifle bullet prototype?¡± Nari asked. We had been sitting around the terminal for quite a while.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°That part was pretty easy. Just make the rifle bullet, except longer.¡± I opened a bag. ¡°I¡¯ve got two alternate butt plates made and I¡¯ve started on the rifle receiver.¡±

    Nari looked at them. ¡°Well,¡± she said, ¡°one of them looks rather easy.¡± The one she was talking about was just a metal plate to fit around the two halves of the receiver. The only detailing it had was the holes at the top and bottom for the studs to attach and a loop for a sling.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, ¡°but the other¡¯s going to be a pain. Not only did I decide to have it be collapsible, not only did I decide it had to take M-4 stocks, not only did I decide to have it be side-folding, but I decided it would fold to either side.¡±

    Nari picked that one out of the bag. ¡°I have seen standard M-4 stocks,¡± she said. ¡°This is not one.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°I decided to add an adjustable cheek rest. You can take that part off and put an M-4 stock on it.¡±

    ¡°Why do you need an adjustable cheek rest?¡± Nari asked.

    ¡°Some of it¡¯s a shooter comfort thing,¡± I said, ¡°some of it is so we don¡¯t have to pay money in licensing fees or so we don¡¯t have to buy externally for parts. Some of it is to fulfil a market niche that isn¡¯t being filled. Most of it is because I thought I was getting too much sleep.¡±

    ¡°I know the feeling,¡± Nari said earnestly. ¡°I haven¡¯t been here very long, I¡¯ll admit, but I love being here. Sure, the politics seem even more pointless than North Korea, but I can do whatever I want!¡± She smiled. ¡°The things I have to do are easy enough to finish quickly, but challenging enough to be fun, and when I get done, I can do things like make these guns and guitar things.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± I asked, not mentioning that my work was done less for the joy of working and more to save the world. ¡°Are you making guitars?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Nari said, ¡°I made a guitar and an amp. Now I¡¯m learning how to play. I have to learn how to actually play before I really know what a good guitar is.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°that¡¯s good to hear.¡±

    ¡°Plus,¡± Nari said, ¡°Our outdoor test was pretty successful.¡± She was right. We had set up some targets up in the forest and given the current generation Uilon Mangchi and the Ballpeen prototypes to our usual testers. The response had been very positive. No jams or misfires caused by inclement weather, and the weapons were easy to use while on the move.

    ¡°The only goddamned problem,¡± Cross shouted outside an abandoned bunker after he and Doc had ¡°cleared¡± it of targets, ¡°is that the damned things are too loud.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Doc said, also shouting, ¡°the ear protection we brought was insufficient, especially where it can echo. The muzzle flash is also very bright. I do not like it.¡±

    ¡°You kidding?¡± Cross said, ¡°Nothing says ¡®Get the fuck down!¡¯ like a nice big muzzle flash. Anything that reminds people whose boss gets my vote.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Doc said, ¡°but you can do that with an AK. You can do that with an M-16. Yet they don¡¯t give away your position better than a flare when you shoot them. Using these are suicide in an ambush.¡±

    Back in the present, Nari must have been thinking the same thing. ¡°I examined out the Pilum. Thank you for lend it, by the way.¡±

    ¡°Not a problem,¡± I said. ¡°After all, I¡¯m making money from the project as well.¡±

    ¡°Anyway,¡± Nari continued, ¡°The flash hider can be replicated without too much cost. However, it turns out the barrel actually doubles as a sound suppressor. Not as efficient as a normal one, but still effective enough.¡±

    ¡°How?¡± I asked. ¡°I mean, it has to be, it¡¯s too quiet otherwise, but the barrel¡¯s too thin to be a suppressor.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Nari said, her face setting in a determined frown as she talked, ¡°but whatever they¡¯ve done, I can¡¯t figure it out. It¡¯s all internal and extremely tiny. But I¡¯ll figure it out. And I will replicate it.¡± She paused. ¡°Unless its nanotech. Then we¡¯ll have to make a workaround.¡±

    ¡°Even if it isn¡¯t nanotech,¡± I said, ¡°the process sounds like it will be way too complex for Andy¡¯s machines. I guess we¡¯ll have to reduce noise the traditional way.¡± Suddenly, I heard the whine of a jet engine. ¡°Well, I guess May and Andy are back.¡±

    Nari perked up. ¡°Good. Hopefully, they bring news of our glorious financial accomplishments. Also, May said she could get me some guitar-related books.¡±

    ¡°Does that mean you and May have made up?¡± I asked.

    Nari shrugged. ¡°I¡¯m not sure,¡± she answered. ¡°We do talk occasionally, but never about my work.¡± She sighed. ¡°I do still like her. When she isn¡¯t being wrong, she is quite kind and knows all the good music.¡±

    ¡°I see,¡± I said, noting her Megadeath t-shirt. ¡°I would have thought she¡¯d introduce you to more rap and less heavy metal.¡±

    ¡°We have undertaken our glorious journey into the heart of all things metal together,¡± Nari said. ¡°I am more open to the sounds of self-styled demon slayers, she is more interested in the lyricism of the proletariat as they rise up against their oppressor.¡± She looked up to see the plane¡¯s nose had just started to enter the hangar. ¡°Good. They are almost here.¡±

    We waited until the plane¡¯s loading ramp opened. Andy and May began walking out, a look of extreme tiredness on their faces. ¡°Oh, there you are,¡± May said upon seeing Nari and me. She and Andy staggered over to us, dragging their luggage. They looked somewhat zombiefied. ¡°The good news is we were totally, one hundred percent successful. The bad news is that we need to sleep for several hours before we deal with Tim.¡±

    This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry about him,¡± I said. ¡°He¡¯s got some kind of stomach virus. Or nerves. He had to leave us when¡­¡±

    ¡°We don¡¯t need to know,¡± Andy said. ¡°Anyway, did you guys get any transportation back to campus? The weather looks like complete crap.¡±

    ¡°They told us they¡¯d have a shuttle waiting for you guys when you got back,¡± I said. ¡°It should be right outside. You guys want me to carry anything?¡±

    ¡°Thanks,¡± May said, ¡°but we¡¯re good. We¡¯ll tell you about our plans when we get to Andy¡¯s room.¡±

    After we had got there, May and Andy dropped their suitcase among the half-dismantled automated assembly lines and fell down on the bed. While they leant against each other and the wall, Nari and I stood among the industrial detritus, unsure of what to do with ourselves. Eventually, I asked, ¡°So¡­ do you want us to leave?¡±

    ¡°We can brief you, you don¡¯t have to go,¡± May muttered. Her eyes were closed, and if they were open, they would have been directed mostly into Andy¡¯s armpit.

    ¡°Are you sure?¡± I asked. ¡°You guys seem like you¡¯re pretty done.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Andy said, ¡°but we¡¯ve got one last thing to do.¡± With what seemed to me to be a massive effort, he opened his eyes. ¡°First off, the FDA approved May¡¯s surgical glue for a trial distribution. It¡¯s going to be limited scale, but we¡¯re still going to have to move out of my dorm room and that lab we¡¯re borrowing.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s cool,¡± I said, ¡°Timothy would be pleased to hear about that kind of growth.¡±

    ¡°Power sludge needs more trials,¡± May said absent-mindedly into Andy¡¯s armpit. He giggled. Apparently, he was ticklish there. ¡°They think it works a lil¡¯ too well¡­¡±

    ¡°I wonder what the cowards think could go wrong,¡± Nari said.

    ¡°Addiction,¡± May muttered, ¡°withdrawal¡­¡± I laughed at that. They¡¯d obviously never tasted the stuff. ¡°And more importantly, cancer. Cancer everywhere.¡±

    At that last point, remembering my first conversation with May, and how she wasn¡¯t sure how safe Power Sludge was, I said, ¡°Wait, do they have evidence for that last bit? Because I ate only that for an entire semester.¡±

    ¡°So did I,¡± May said sleepily. ¡°And so did everyone in Hell Semester against my wishes.¡± She yawned. ¡°Guess we¡¯ll find out in five to twenty years.¡±

    ¡°But they don¡¯t know?¡± I asked. ¡°They haven¡¯t confirmed it?¡±

    ¡°They just kept naming possible side-effects because the effects are so dramatic,¡± May said, and I could see herself sort of collapse in on herself. ¡°They didn¡¯t just stop with cancer, they think it could cause everything from indigestion to multiple organ failure.¡± She looked up at me. ¡°Please¡­ Nate, you have to believe me¡­ I never wanted to give Power Sludge to anyone. Least of all the Hell Semester recruits.¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯ll let you know if I start feeling funny. Until then, is there anything that rules out everyone who¡¯s ever eaten it being completely ok? I mean, asides from being dumb enough to enroll at NIU?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± May said, ¡°and that¡¯s the thing that gets me. I don¡¯t know if the people who¡¯ve used my inventions are going to one day start getting sick.¡± She sighed. ¡°Anyway, moving on to other things I¡¯m involved with that are probably going to kill people, we had a meeting with the FBI director for procurement. At his office. Which was in the J. Edgar Hoover building.¡±

    ¡°So,¡± Nari asked, ¡°is that a good thing or a bad thing?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± May said, ¡°he confirmed that the clients Krieger found are on the level. Also, we¡¯re in the competition for the new FBI sidearm. For better or worse.¡±

    ¡°Definitely for better,¡± Nari said. ¡°We have made the most powerful pistol the world has seen. Anything that points our weapons at The Dragon¡¯s Teeth and other enemies of all peaceful peoples can only be seen as a good thing.¡±

    ¡°I thought you didn¡¯t care enough about propaganda to translate it,¡± I said sardonically.

    Nari shrugged. ¡°I learned. It is an effective way to communicate.¡±

    ¡°We just have one more announcement,¡± Andy said. ¡°Then we¡¯d kind of like you get out so we can sleep.¡±

    ¡°Not a problem,¡± I said. ¡°I actually have some things to be doing.¡±

    ¡°Me too,¡± Nari said. ¡°I have some work to do, and Sunny is planning on having a movie night at her place. I think we are watching something involving over-muscled men with guns kill people. They sound like propaganda films from home¡­ except they are American.¡±

    ¡°Is one of them called Die Hard?¡± I asked. ¡°Or Rambo? Or Commando? Because those are kind of classics when it¡­¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± May said, ¡°focus.¡±

    ¡°Anyway,¡± Andy said, ¡°we¡¯ve told you how the glue¡¯s going to require us to move to the main factory, right? And you know that this factory is slightly farther away than Washington is, right?¡± Nari and I nodded. Andy, seeing that, continued. ¡°Also, if we get the FBI contract, we¡¯re going to need to set up that space for production of the Uilon Mangchi and the Ballpeen as well. This is gonna require a lot of my time, and probably a lot of May¡¯s as well.¡±

    ¡°When are you going to do your schoolwork?¡± Nari asked. I didn¡¯t bother to ask any questions. I could already guess where this was going. There was no way they¡¯d be able to continue their education and run a business as ambitious as Olympus Incorporated.

    ¡°We aren¡¯t,¡± Andy said. ¡°We¡¯re going to be taking a leave of absence. We¡¯re leaving Nowhere Island University.¡±

 4.21: United Fist

    ¡°So they¡¯re gone?¡± Eliza asked. ¡°May, Andy and that Timothy chap?¡±

    It was the first Thursday in November, and Charlotte and Eliza were walking with me to a class. ¡°Well,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°they were the kind of people who don¡¯t really need this place. I must admit, I am quite happy I was able to meet them. May and Andy were quite lovely.¡± She sighed. ¡°I must admit though, Mr. Cheung is a little too good at selling your items.¡±

    Eliza giggled. ¡°Alright, sis, ¡®ow many guns did ¡®e convince Father to purchase?¡±

    Charlotte sighed. ¡°The bodyguards are going to replace the surplus SA-80s with the assault rifles you¡¯re making?¡±

    ¡°You mean he¡¯s already sold the Macabee?¡± I asked. ¡°We¡¯ve only sent it to testing recently.¡± I sighed. ¡°Nari¡¯s been pretty busy. I have no idea how she does it, but she¡¯s already got the blueprints for three underbarrel weapons.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± Eliza asked. ¡°I thought it was just two.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°I suppose shortening the shotgun so it can fit on the Ballpeen might not count, but the internals are radically different.¡± I shook my head. ¡°That girl just does not stop. And these are probably going to be the best of the bunch.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Eliza said, ¡°You did promise May you¡¯d take a break, didn¡¯t you?¡± She gave me a threatening stare. ¡°And you are keeping that promise, right, Nate?¡±

    ¡°I am,¡± I promised. And I was keeping the promise. It was kind of hard, since the nightmares were still very bad. Yet I was getting sleep now. It wasn¡¯t much, but among the time spent alternately trying to go to sleep and fighting it, the dream flashbacks, and the accusatory voices blaming me for more misery and death than I was willing to take stock of, there were now patches of nothing. These, I have to admit, I was eternally grateful for.

    I was considering explaining the situation when we walked into the building our classes were going to be in (none of us had the same one.) I decided against it. After all, the last time I had admitted something like that, I had broken down. It wasn¡¯t a very pleasant experience. My parents and my psychologist had been kind, but I had hated admitting my problem even more than the problem itself.

    Plus, Bai had seen us. ¡°Ah,¡± she said, standing up from one of the chairs next to the door, ¡°I¡¯ve been waiting to talk with you.¡±

    ¡°What about?¡± Eliza asked with a mixture of dread and exasperation.

    ¡°Something that won¡¯t end with Nate and I screaming at each other.¡± Bai sounded business-like as usual, but there seemed to be a bit of wry, self-deprecating undercurrent. I may have imagined it, but it was probably the closest to an apology I¡¯d get from her. Bai then indicated the other people in the reception area/common room a slight nod. ¡°It isn¡¯t the kind of thing that¡¯s their business, though. Do you have a few minutes? I have a few places to go where we won¡¯t be overheard.¡±

    Ignoring one of the reporters on the TV talking about how Russia was still trying to take a more active role in Germany¡¯s fight against the Grenzefrontier and another talking about what appeared to be a Chinese crackdown on dissidents near the Korean border, I said, ¡°That seems like a good idea. I¡¯ve got thirty minutes.¡±

    ¡°Eliza and I only have ten,¡± Charlotte said. ¡°But if it¡¯s important¡­¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s important and it may be quick,¡± Bai said. ¡°You may want to bundle up.¡±

    We, of course, hadn¡¯t even been able to unzip our coats. But that didn¡¯t stop us from following Bai out into the wind and snow. The day was the coldest one yet, but seeing as it was only November and considering what last year had been like, the weather would get much, much more arctic-like. It was still awful with the wind howling occasionally.

    ¡°Nathan,¡± Bai said casually, leading us into an alley, ¡°I assumed you became a bartender to pick up some conversations?¡± The alley in question was a constant wind tunnel. The howling I was hearing probably was mostly coming from that one place.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, mentally bracing myself for the windchill. I didn¡¯t brace adequately, and the gale cut through my coat like shrapnel. ¡°Shame that no one at The Drunken Mercenary trusts me with their deepest, darkest secrets.¡± It was true. I had heard a lot about people¡¯s feelings about how shitty the drinks were, opinions on my (perceived) background and origin, and plenty of interpersonal tidbits that would only be worth the tip they left if they came from celebrities.

    ¡°That was the same reason I became a janitor,¡± Bai said. ¡°Like you, I didn¡¯t learn anything interesting. Or at least I thought so.¡± As we walked further into the artificial vortex, Bai raised her voice to be heard. ¡°The janitors are somewhat fraternal, and pass down all the best spots to avoid being heard. Apparently, in winter, the wind in this particular alleyway disables all the microphones. There aren¡¯t any windows to see us from, either. Now, we just need to find a place shielded from the outside view and face the wall. Then no one can hear us.¡±If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    As we got behind a dumpster, I reflected about the not-so-secret order of janitors. Maybe the tradition of passing down certain points of interest was unique to NIU, but something told me I should keep in mind that janitors and other maintenance workers knew more than people thought. If I ever needed to investigate or assault a place, I should probably speak with a custodian who worked there.

    ¡°Dear God,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°this place is frigid!¡± Already, our faces had begun to turn red and puffy from the biting wind. Charlotte pulled her fashionable wool-lined leather trench coat closer to herself. She was the only one of us who hadn¡¯t double-layered.

    Bai, who was visibly shivering, said, ¡°That is a downside, yes. Anyway, remember how we agreed to keep an eye on Mubashir Mubarak?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Eliza said, shooting Bai a side-long glance. ¡°Did you confirm our theory ¡®bout ¡®im?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Bai said, ¡°but I decided to approach him as an intermediary between him and Nathan. I hope that is ok?¡± I nodded. ¡°Good,¡± Bai said in acknowledgement. ¡°Because he has something that he thought would interest you.¡±

    ¡°Is it about the IDRF?¡± I asked, suddenly curious. According to Alma Hebert, in 1985, the Nowhere Island University Interdimensional Research Facility had been boarded up and the people who had worked there had disappeared. She then had almost outright stated that the people who had vanished had something to do with The Dragon¡¯s Teeth and their invasion with Korea. Apart from that, she had been annoyingly vague.

    ¡°Yes,¡± Bai said, somewhat surprised, ¡°Mubashir found a file on it. But the file did not mention anything about The Dragon¡¯s Teeth.¡±

    ¡°What did the file mention?¡± Charlotte asked. ¡°It must have been something quite juicy for Mubashir to think it was worth our time.¡±

    ¡°Honestly,¡± Bai said, ¡°both Mubashir and I think it is quite cryptic. We were not able to get a copy and I didn¡¯t see it, and apparently much of it was heavily redacted. Yet it did reference some documents that might shed some light on the situation. But Mubashir was able to get the gist.¡±

    ¡°So?¡± Eliza asked. ¡°Sounds like you¡¯ve got a load of useless bollocks.¡±

    ¡°Or something you three are better able to guess than I am,¡± Bai said. ¡°The document mentions two options: The Jason Project and United Fist. It didn¡¯t say what they were¡­¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± Charlotte asked, ¡°did it say who was running United Fist? When was this document dated?¡±

    Bai shrugged. ¡°It didn¡¯t say who proposed or ran United Fist, but the document did claim it was written in ¡®97. Why?¡±

    Charlotte now looked seriously worried. ¡°Bai, Nathan, have either of you heard of a UNIX initiative called GNRF?¡±

    Bai shook her head, but I said, ¡°I think it stands for Global Nuclear Response Force? I heard about it when I was in second or third grade. UNIX was pushing America to join it, and my parents, despite being globalists, didn¡¯t really want to join because of it. Does it really mean that UNIX could use the nukes of member nations?¡± I had remembered hearing that provision and thinking that couldn¡¯t be real. I mean, how crazy would it be to give a foreign power only partially under your control access to your nukes?

    ¡°Yes,¡± Charlotte said. ¡°It really does. Britain was the first nation to sign the accord. The idea is that if some device or natural anomaly gets too out of hand, UNIX can end it. The same year you yanks soundly rejected joining, Indian and Pakistani nukes ended a threat that I¡¯m technically not supposed to know about. Today, Russia, China, the US, and North Korea are the only nations that haven¡¯t agreed to the GNRF. The other five have to cover the entire globe themselves.¡± She paused. ¡°If The President has some control over UNIX¡­¡±

    She let the thought trail off. In my mind, visions of The President typing in a few characters onto his computer and locking out five countries from their own nuclear arsenals filled me with reasonable dread. I could tell that everyone else there was thinking it as well.

    ¡°Ah,¡± Bai said eventually. ¡°I see. That could be¡­ interesting.¡± The way she said made me think of the Chinese curse May you live in interesting times. ¡°Do any of you know what The Jason Project is?¡±

    Charlotte shook her head. ¡°I haven¡¯t the foggiest.¡±

    ¡°Actually,¡± I said, ¡°in Greek mythology, wasn¡¯t it Jason who raised an army¡­¡±

    ¡°¡­By burying the teeth of a dragon in the ground!¡± Charlotte said. ¡°Nathan, if what you are suggesting is correct, then these Jason Project fellows are quite well read.¡±

    ¡°Mubashir managed to write down some notes after he saw the document,¡± Bai said. ¡°He said the person writing the report¡¯s main concern about The Jason Project was they had ¡®command issues,¡¯ and seemed worried about revolt. Their reason is that a test subject had hijacked whatever The Jason Project had been working on and caused a revolt.¡± She paused. ¡°I think that if we want to know about The Lord of Death or this Goddess the Dragon¡¯s Teeth worship, we should make an effort to find out about this first revolt.¡±

    ¡°I would also like to find out about Newton-Howell¡¯s connection to UNIX,¡± Charlotte said. ¡°My father¡¯s organization works quite closely with them¡­¡±

    ¡°¡®E doesn¡¯t trust most of ¡®em farther than ¡®e can throw ¡®em,¡± Eliza remarked. ¡°I like the sound of a few of their people, but father makes the rest sound like the shiftiest lot you can find.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°unless anyone has something to add, I think we can go back inside before we freeze to death.¡±

    ¡°There isn¡¯t anything,¡± Bai said. ¡°Let¡¯s go.¡± Something told me that, despite choosing the location, she was just as anxious as I was to get out of there. It was probably her visible shivering that made me think that. ¡°I¡¯ll be heading off to my class.¡±

    ¡°If you see Mubashir,¡± I said, ¡°tell him be careful. The President basically threatened me when I pushed him to investigate The Dragon¡¯s Teeth at NIU.¡±

    Bai may have said something, but in her hurry to get out, she didn¡¯t fully turn to face me. Also, the wind in the alley picked up, drowning her voice completely. We waited for a few seconds after she disappeared, then we began walking back to the class.

    ¡°It was nice walking with you, Nathan,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°but we really must be getting to¡­ Nathan, what¡¯s wrong?¡±

    I had paused, halfway across the room to stare at the TVs. On them were pictures of tactical police and army units surrounding the capitol building in Washington, DC. Most of them were facing it. The banner for one agency proclaimed ¡°Multiple shooters assault US Senate. More to follow.¡±

    After a second of silence, Charlotte finally said, ¡°Oh bloody hell.¡±

 4.22: Coming Together

    The room turned into kind of a blur at that point. I had to sit down on one of the benches nearby in order to collect myself. Everyone was glued to the TV, most speculating on who had done this and why. Those questions would probably start running around in my head. But right now, I couldn¡¯t really concentrate on anything.

    ¡°Well, this is bad,¡± Charlotte said. ¡°The only way something can come out of this is if the US correctly identifies who did this.¡±

    As she was saying this, my phone rang. Numbly, I took it out. ¡°It¡¯s Timothy,¡± I said, answering Eliza¡¯s questioning look.

    As soon as I pressed the button to receive the call, Tim breathlessly said, ¡°¡­You there? Hey? Hey? Oh, you¡¯re there! Are you seeing the news?¡±

    ¡°About the attack on DC?¡± I asked numbly.

    ¡°Yeah!¡± Timothy said. ¡°This is perfect! If the Maccabee gets ready soon, we¡¯re going to sell hundreds to the DC police alone! And think of the civilian market! The profits will be the stuff of legend!¡± I wanted to scream at him, to ask if he had any soul or if he was just in pursuit of profit, but before I could collect myself enough to draw breath, he said, ¡°I gotta tell Nari, May and Andy the good news.¡± Then he hung up.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°Timothy thinks he could make a profit, so there¡¯s that.¡± I put my phone back in my pocket. ¡°Eliza, Charlotte, if you¡¯ll excuse me, I need to go vomit.¡± And with that, I walked off.

    Needless to say, I couldn¡¯t concentrate classes that day. Especially since when I finally snapped out of it the questions began to surface. For instance, who could pull off that kind of attack? And if they had those kinds of resources, why would they do that? If someone wanted to disrupt the US government, it would be much safer and infinitely more profitable to create a cable channel. While various super criminals and terrorists would sell what remained of their soul to do something like that, I kind of doubted the vast majority of them, even the well-known names, had the resources to pull it off. Most governments, even the ones that hated America, probably didn¡¯t want to provoke the one country to ever drop the bomb on an enemy.

    There was only one group I could think of: The Dragon¡¯s Teeth. However, I wasn¡¯t one hundred percent convinced by that line of thinking. First, I had only been able to look at this kind of thing for a little over a year. For all I knew (and despite my hopes,) there could be other groups similar in power and scope to The Dragon¡¯s Teeth. Also, it didn¡¯t seem like their style. Unless some kind of assault on the continental US was following, I doubted that they¡¯d show their hand so early.

    When I met up with Eliza and Charlotte at dinner, I mentioned this. Charlotte¡¯s response was to say, ¡°Well¡­ do we really know that? After all, the only country they¡¯ve invaded was North Korea. This might be a diversionary tactic.¡±

    I sighed. ¡°You¡¯re right.¡± I laughed suddenly.

    ¡°What¡¯s so funny?¡± I looked up. Bai had a tray of General Tso¡¯s chicken, some rice, and some soda.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°if John, Nari and Sunny show up, we¡¯ll be the foremost experts on The Dragon¡¯s Teeth¡­ outside of their creators, that is.¡±

    Charlotte glowered. ¡°I¡¯m not sure how funny I find that.¡±

    Eliza shrugged. ¡°Better¡¯n crying, innit?¡± She paused. ¡°But ¡®e might not necessarily be right¡­¡±

    As she trailed off, Bai cut in. ¡°Well,¡± she said, ¡°the various government agencies know more. And if we don¡¯t count a certain someone as one of the creators¡­¡± By ¡°certain someone,¡± we all knew she was talking about the school¡¯s President, ¡°¡­or discount the chance he confided in others, there are potentially hundreds who are better informed than us. And that is if we discount the Teeth themselves.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Eliza said, ¡°Those are possibilities, sure¡­ but what about the Grenzefrontier?¡±

    ¡°They¡¯ve been rumored to be running from The Dragon¡¯s Teeth, yes,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°but I fail to see how they¡¯re more¡­ shall we say accessible than the other sources mentioned?¡±

    ¡°Remember last semester?¡± Eliza said, her signature mischievous grin lighting up her face. ¡°We seemed t¡¯get a nice, big influx of the anachronistic bastards. Best part? They¡¯re all nice and gift-wrapped. Anyone can apply to speak to one.¡±

    ¡°But¡­¡± Charlotte said warily, ¡°President Newton-Howell forbade us from investigating¡­¡±

    ¡°¡­From the NIU end.¡± Eliza and I said this in unison. I reached over the table to hug Eliza. It was somewhat awkward, but she seemed to appreciate it. ¡°Eliza, you¡¯re a genius.¡±

    ¡°Oh, believe me, Nate,¡± she said smugly, ¡°I bloody know.¡±

    ¡°How do we get in, though?¡± I wondered. ¡°They probably don¡¯t let just anyone in, do they? I mean, these guys are prisoners, aren¡¯t they?¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s a registry,¡± Eliza said. ¡°An interested person or group need only write their name, reason for visiting, and student identification number. Then, they wait for approval.¡±

    ¡°So we put down the truth,¡± I said. ¡°I mean, I think The President would prefer it if I dropped my Dragon¡¯s Teeth investigation entirely, but I doubt he would believe it if I did. So I visibly go around talking to Nazi refugees, maybe that¡¯ll get him to calm down.¡±If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    ¡°It could work to divert suspicion,¡± Charlotte said. ¡°But what would talking to them gain you, apart from that?¡±

    ¡°No way of knowing until we do it,¡± Eliza said.

    With that, conversation turned to other things. After finishing eating, Eliza and I went to the sign-up station. We decided to have both of us go in to the interview. The reason we stated for the person signing us up was that there seemed to be preferences given to groups of two to four. That had been explained to us by the person on duty, in a rather guiding manner. We obliged him.

    However, one of the other reasons was that I kind of wanted someone who both knew a bit about The Final Prophecy and was more able to maintain emotional detachment to be with me to cross-examine any person we met with. Talking about a group that had killed several people I had worked with to a person who had been trained to hate me for my (very loosely-followed) religion was somewhat likely to make me flip. Plus, Eliza had similar training to me and a different way of thinking. She might be able to spot something I hadn¡¯t.

    Still, according to the person who helped us sign up, the next opening was in January. That was two months away. A little annoying, but there was nothing about it I could do. The next step was to write down a few questions I¡¯d want to ask.

    The only problem was the waiting. Around two weeks later, it got even harder. Turning on the internet and looking at the news, I discovered that the Russian Dumat had just suffered a similar attack. Looking at it, I knew I needed to know more. Two attacks on the capitols of super powers in a single month? That couldn¡¯t be a coincidence.

    The only problem is, I had no idea who had done it, or even if these two attacks were by the same people. As soon as I could get an opportunity, I decided to call upon the mighty Google to aid me. For two hours between classes, I looked at every English-language article on the recent attacks.

    When I did, I found to my surprise how few pieces of information there really were. Yes, there was the massive speculation by hundreds of confused voices, and for the most part they were amplified (or sometimes even started) by the mainstream media, but there seemed to not be a single useful government press release.

    For instance, the American press releases had a lot of patriotic mumbo-jumbo, but it was very vague on any actual details. The number of shooters was confirmed to be greater than one, but the exact number was not mentioned. Secret Service, DC cops, FBI agents, and EMTs were injured and/or confirmed dead at the scene, but exact numbers were not mentioned. Congressmen who had been killed were mentioned, but I assumed that was because they needed to be. Also, there were definite rumors of gas being used, but no one could say which side had broke it out. To top it off, no official time line had been released. The same held true for the attack in Moscow, but since it was still ongoing at the time of my research, I couldn¡¯t really find it suspicious.

    Eventually, I finally found a message board that had what seemed to be an accurate timeline of the Washington attack. The website was also working on a similar timeline for the Moscow one, but that proclaimed ¡°THIS EVENT IS ONGOING! As such, we cannot triage new information as effectively as possible. If we have made a mistake, please correct us in the comments below.¡±

    Seeing as the Washington attack¡¯s thread had less severe warnings, I decided to look at that one first. The first thing it had was ¡°Mattias4994 begins live stream, shooters enter the Capitol building.¡± Since I had time, I clicked on it. It was a YouTube video. As the add played, I checked the description. There were two paragraphs in what I thought was French and two in English. The English part said how the vlogger in question had started the livestream about his DC trip, then all hell broke loose. It also mentioned how if we wanted, we could see the entire thing on Periscope, and that other highlights could be found on his YouTube channel.

    Shrugging, I pressed the skip button on his add. It then showed a cellphone recording of the entrance to the capitol building. Near the bottom of the steps were two DC cops, one with what I guessed was a Bennelli M4 shotgun. The other had an M-4 assault rifle. The pattern was repeated again near the top.

    The scene continued like that for about two and a half minutes. The vlogger talked excitedly in French, tourists wandered by, and the DC cops did their best impersonation of Tower of London guards. Then, things got interesting.

    All of a sudden, there were odd popping sound. Instantly, I pressed j on my keyboard. The video jumped back ten seconds. When I heard it for the second time, I confirmed it. Gunfire. The vlogger and a good chunk of the tourists didn¡¯t recognize it, but the cops did. The two at the top of the stairs entered the building. The ones at the bottom, meanwhile, turned off their safeties.

    Back in the real life, I heard my phone ring. I paused the video and took out my phone. It was Timothy. ¡°Hey,¡± I said, ¡°What¡¯s up?¡±

    ¡°Got some urgent news,¡± he said, ¡°might be good, might be bad. The FBI moved its trials up. We¡¯re going to have to get there December fourth, and will be there until the sixteenth.¡±

    ¡°Am I going to have to be there?¡± I asked. ¡°I¡¯m not really the marketing guy¡­¡±

    ¡°I need you and Nari,¡± Tim said. ¡°I need the designers to give technical details. Normally, I¡¯d be completely confident in my speaking capabilities, but they might want to know some weird bit of technical arcana that I never even thought of. Plus¡­ I don¡¯t want to be the one to say Nari can¡¯t help with the demonstrations.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°I think I can get my gunsmithing teacher to count three weapons and two ammunition types to count as a final¡­ I¡¯ll see what I can do about the others.¡±

    ¡°Good,¡± Tim said. ¡°Just so you know¡­ we¡¯re going to be meeting with other organizations. Anyway, see you soon.¡±

    He hung up before I could get him to clarify. Telling myself that it had to be other law enforcement agencies wanting to buy some more robust weaponry and not an insane plan to arm¡­ undesirables, I turned back to the video.

    The person recording seemed somewhat curious as to what was happening. It was hard to tell as I didn¡¯t speak French. Still, the gunfire had stopped. I wondered why, and the two cops outside were obviously wondering the same thing.

    Then, a man with red hair and wearing a brown coat with oddly long sleeves walked by the vlogger. He made a beeline towards the two cops on the Capitol¡¯s steps. When he got fairly close, one of the cops raised a hand and yelled at him to get back. In response, the red-headed man raised his arm and there was the sound of a pistol. The red-haired man switched his aim and fired again. Both the cops collapsed.

    Then, as if the gunfire was a cue, a bunch of vans skidded to a halt in front of the building. I paused the video after they begun to disgorge their occupants. Since the vlogger had either regained use of his feet or became disappointingly sane and started to run, I saw that the men exiting were all armed and wearing ski masks. There was also something similar about them¡­ something I couldn¡¯t place.

    However, before I could figure it out, my phone received a text. It was from Mubashir.

 4.23 The Architect Revealed

    I stared at the message for a moment. Mubashir wanted to meet me at the male locker rooms in the Sun Tzu student center. Tonight. What had he found that needed me to come so quickly? Why was he risking texting me?

    Still, I had a day of classes. As usual, I was extremely distracted by current events. I had been ever since Washington had happened. Mubashir¡¯s cryptic message wasn¡¯t helping, but I was so off-task that the effect was probably negligible. Or maybe it was able to finally focus me¡­ but not on my studies.

    It eventually came to me that there was something Mubashir had found out that he didn¡¯t necessarily want to tell Bai. But if that was the case, what? I thought I made it clear that he could trust her. Did Mubashir have some reason not to? Was there something he wanted to keep among UNIX agents? Or maybe it wasn¡¯t so friendly. If that was the case, I decided I¡¯d bring John. After all, Mubashir hadn¡¯t told me to come alone.

    When John came back to the dorm, I told him about the message. John, upon hearing it, said, ¡°So¡­ you want me to go to a pool locker room¡­ at midnight¡­ because you think someone might try to get the drop on you.¡± He shook his head. ¡°Nate¡­ first off, it¡¯s Moob. Second, if you¡¯re so paranoid, don¡¯t go.¡±

    ¡°But don¡¯t you want to find out what he wants to tell us?¡± I asked. ¡°Personally, I¡¯m curious. Plus, this way I won¡¯t accidentally wake you up when I come back.¡±

    John shook his head. ¡°No, I am not curious. Actually, I¡¯m going to be¡­ doing something with Bai.¡±

    From the way he said that, it was pretty obvious what John was planning on doing. ¡°Ok,¡± I said. ¡°You¡¯re doing it in her room, right?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± John said. ¡°Anyway, here¡¯s hoping you don¡¯t get into any trouble.¡±

    Eventually, I found myself waiting for Mubashir in the appointed place. The men¡¯s locker room for Sun Tzu¡¯s athletic center was as deserted as you¡¯d expect when I got there at eleven fifty. There was an odd design to it, probably to keep people from peeking in: there was a small sort of antechamber before the actual changing area. I was waiting in the main changing area, just pacing around.

    And I spent a lot of time pacing around. Ten minutes after I had arrived, Mubashir still hadn¡¯t gotten there. I checked my phone. 12:01. That wasn¡¯t late. Then I paced some more. Then I checked my phone again. 12:13. Slightly annoyed by the fact that I hadn¡¯t checked my phone a minute earlier, I continued pacing. At around twelve thirty, I was considering heading back.

    I was by the wall where the exit to the antechamber, but at the opposite end when I was thinking this. Just as I had decided to head back to the dorm, I heard the door to the main hall open. After a pause, Mubashir stumbled through the archway and into the dressing room almost as if he had been flung. He landed on a bench, motionless.

    I ran towards him, unthinking. What had happened? Had he been attacked? I bent down to examine his body. He was breathing, but unresponsive. On his neck was what appeared to be a recent needle puncture mark. Before I could process this, something metal slammed into the back of my head with a large amount of force.

    For a few seconds (or maybe more, or maybe less,) all I could see was white. I could feel people dragging me away. I struggled ineffectually as my vision cleared and time started to pass as normal. However, I sensibly stopped when the barrel of a gun was jammed into my temple. A glance from my now mostly recovered vision revealed that my captors were two of the four remaining Al-Qaeda members. Mubashir was the third. I suddenly realized the reason Mubashir wanted to meet me: he didn¡¯t. Someone, possibly one of the two people who had a death grip on my arm, had stolen his phone.

    ¡°You know,¡± a voice said from the archway to the antechamber, ¡°you do seem to have a talent for making enemies, Jacobs.¡± There, leaning casually against the festively patterned tile wall, was Salim. The side of his face that had been scarred in a drone attack was facing me. In his hand, he held a silenced pistol. The magazine was dripping blood, and with a start, I realized the blood was mine.

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure it¡¯s the quantity that will do me in,¡± I said, glancing at the floor between where I was being held and where Mubashir lay, ¡°but the quality.¡± There, lying hopelessly out of reach of both Mubashir and I, were my Berretta and my SIG. I looked at both my captors. They must have disarmed me as they had dragged me away.

    ¡°I must admit,¡± Salim said, as he slowly walked towards me, pausing to kick my weapons even further out of reach, ¡°I did not expect you to die complimenting your killer, Killer.¡± He chuckled at his play on words, then continued, ¡°You had quite the mouth on you when last we were in this situation.¡±

    ¡°I guess I learned my lesson,¡± I said, remembering how many times I had been stabbed for mouthing off. ¡°But before I die, can I ask¡­¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Salim said, flicking the safety of his pistol off. He raised it to my heart, but was interrupted when we heard a moan.

    Upon seeing Salim¡¯s confused look, I said, ¡°Ah. So you didn¡¯t just want to knock him unconscious, did you?¡±

    Salim, his face hardening, turned around. ¡°No,¡± he said. ¡°I gave him two hundred milliliters of heroin. He was supposed to die.¡± As he spoke, he walked to where he had left Mubashir.

    As Salim stalked off to the ex-comrade he¡¯d failed to poison, I was able to see Mubashir. He had managed to get into a sitting position, his face in his hands. A little later, he made a retching sound, and a mixture of blood and vomit poured from his mouth. I gagged in sympathy and, maybe I was imagining things, but I could feel the trigger of my captor¡¯s gun pull back.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

    Mubashir looked up at Salim. ¡°Let me guess,¡± he said, ¡°Takeda and Brosnan told you, didn¡¯t they?¡±

    Suddenly, things began to make sense. Either Brosnan or Takeda had grown tired of me, but had failed to find an opportunity to do the deed themselves. Still, that left one question. ¡°But why¡¯d they rat you out?¡± I asked Moob. ¡°I mean, I understand why they hate me, but¡­¡±

    ¡°If you really care that much,¡± Salim said bitterly, ¡°apparently we¡¯re not the only ones Mubashir has betrayed.¡± Mubashir, despite still seeming very ill, looked like he was about to correct it, then thought better. Salim continued. ¡°I mean, the CIA still has him for the moment, but hey, who knows when he¡¯ll stab them in the back?¡±

    ¡°Do you¡­ do you want to know why I did it?¡± Mubashir asked. As he said this, he turned around to stare Salim directly in the face. He still looked like he was going to vomit blood again, but there was a note of pure hatred in his voice that I¡¯d only heard once before.

    ¡°I don¡¯t need to,¡± Salim said contemptuously. ¡°How much did they offer you to betray your brother Muslims? Was it five figures? Six?¡±

    Mubashir laughed hysterically. Salim dropped his gun and my captors nearly let me go. If they had, I wouldn¡¯t have tried to escape. I was transfixed. Finally, Mubashir was able to control himself. ¡°You think anyone would have to pay me to hurt you? You who dragged me away from my family? You who call all of Islam brother while you murder, maim, and rape them? You, who follow a book of peace and love by murdering children?¡± He smiled. ¡°No. I sought them out, you semi-human pestilence.¡± He then spat at Salim.

    Salim did not spend half a second to wipe off the bloody saliva. Instead he raised his pistol. Apparently, it was some kind of a machine pistol (probably a Stetchin,) because there was a three-round instead of a single shot.

    For a second, I thought time had completely and utterly frozen. Bits of Mubashir¡¯s brain and skull hung seemingly suspended in mid-air. I could also see Salim¡¯s expression slowly change to one of confusion. Then Salim raised his gun. Mubashir still remained sitting. Salim¡¯s bullets and Mubashir¡¯s expelled bits of head were still suspended in midair. Salim leaned around Mubashir¡¯s head. When he saw the odd sight behind, Salim said something that, based on the context, was probably Arabic for What the hell¡­?

    After considering the scene from a few angles, he began walking back towards me. ¡°I do not know what is going on,¡± he said, clearly beyond disturbed, ¡°but I think it is time to conclude our¡­¡± He stopped. He then tried to take a step, but for some reason it seemed that his feet had been stuck to the floor, as if by some kind of glue.

    He tried again, his face now one of abject terror. He tried the other foot. The same thing happened. He then dropped his gun to pull at his leg. I suddenly noticed that his feet were changing color.

    Then, from behind him, Mubashir turned to face us. As he did so, the ejected bone and gray matter began to fly back into their correct places and Mubashir began speaking. It sounded like Arabic to me, but the other people in the room who actually spoke it didn¡¯t seem to want to engage him in conversation. The one who had put a gun to my head adjusted his aim and began firing at Mubashir. The first few shots hit Moob perfectly in the center mass leaving big red dots, but Mubashir didn¡¯t seem to mind. The rest turned to sand mid-flight, reflecting beautifully in the locker room light.

    Meanwhile, Salim was shrinking. Actually, shrinking was the wrong word. My next thought was that he was melting from the feet up. Then I realized the brown puddle he was forming wasn¡¯t liquid, but stone. Salim realized this and began screaming. At the same time, whispering voices, the same ones I had heard at the beginning of the semester, began to start up. With a jolt, I realized that they sounded a lot like Moob¡¯s voice.

    All of this proved to be too overwhelming for my captors. Letting go of me, they edged out towards the locker room¡¯s rear entrance. That one led directly into the pool that I had never used, despite having brought my swimsuit. When they were out of my sight and safely past Mubashir, they began running.

    I was too transfixed on what was happening to Salim to notice. As he shrunk to thigh-height, his screams began to take on a gargling quality and water began to flow from his mouth. The more he shrunk, the stronger the flow. Eventually, I could see what he was becoming: a water fountain made out of some kind of yellowish-brown sandstone.

    I was distracted from watching the sick transformation when Salim¡¯s two friends ran back into the room. However, they came from the antechamber. They must have been looking over their shoulder, because they bounced off Mubashir. They looked up to see him staring down at them, still muttering to himself. The two sorry bastards sprang up and began to run in the opposite direction and began to run in place. The whole thing reminded me of a Scooby-Doo episode¡­ until they started going backwards.

    In horror, I watched as they were slowly dragged backwards. They then began to start changing as well. By the time they had cleared the bench Mubashir was standing in front of, they had become oddly stretched and starting to take on a rectangular shape. There were also square shapes on them that looked like doors and their skin was taking on a metallic sheen. They could still beg and scream. I know because they did.

    I fell to my knees, hyperventilating. I couldn¡¯t do anything. Even if I still had my guns, it wasn¡¯t like I could stop Moob with them. I mean, two other people had already tried that and I couldn¡¯t even say it had made him mad. Running also seemed to be completely pointless. After all, that was the first thing I had tried when he had done this to me.

    Dammit, I thought to myself as I doubled over and sank to my knees, suffocating yourself isn¡¯t going to solve anything. Since I didn¡¯t have a paper bag, I used my hands to form a mask. I then tried to modulate my breathing, but still, it was hard. I felt myself slipping into unconsciousness, either from rapid breathing or the whack Salim had given me. It wasn¡¯t until the screaming stopped that I was able to start to regain control myself. It was even longer until I felt comfortable standing up.

    When I did, I saw that Salim was now finally a fountain. There was an octagonal pool, and in the center there was a square with a circle on top. Water was filling it up slowly. Mubashir was still standing near that bench where he had been tossed what seemed like a lifetime ago. He and the other voices had fallen silent, but he was still staring blankly off into space.

    Keeping as much distance between the fountain that used to be Salim and myself, I edged closer to Mubashir. ¡°Moob?¡± I asked cautiously. ¡°You ok?¡± There was no response, but as I edged closer, I noticed we had a new row of lockers. That must have been where the other two Al-Qaeda guys went.

    After I called his name a few times, Mubashir suddenly looked up. ¡°Nate?¡± He asked, blinking dazedly. ¡°What happened?¡± He paused, then saw what had once been Salim. ¡°When did we get a fountain?¡±

    I stared at him. I¡¯m not sure if it was in horror, shock, or confusion. As I was struggling to sort that out and say what happened, I heard the door to the main hallway get kicked in. Bai and John then burst into the changing room, pistols drawn.

    ¡°Nathan!¡± Bai said, somewhat surprised. ¡°You¡¯re alive! I was sure Salim was going to kill you.¡± She then paused, then asked with a hint of jealousy, ¡°Why do you have a fountain?¡±

 4.25 Bad News

    ¡°You know,¡± John said, looking at the fountain that had once been Salim. ¡°I actually don¡¯t think we had that before.¡± He noticed the new lockers. ¡°Or those lockers.¡± There was a pause. ¡°Also¡­ wasn¡¯t the d¨¦cor sort of Asian fusion and not kind of Middle Eastern?¡±

    Mubashir, Bai, and I took a look around. ¡°Uh, Moob,¡± I asked, ¡°you really don¡¯t remember¡­?¡± My mind blanked and my voice trailed off. I had no idea how to put what had just happened into words.

    ¡°Never mind that,¡± Bai said, ¡°I don¡¯t know how you got away from Salim, but unless you killed him, we need to get you out of here. And if you did¡­¡±

    ¡°So he did inject something into me,¡± Mubashir said. ¡°I thought it had to be him. Or an NIU employee.¡± He then distractedly asked no one in particular, ¡°Wonder what he gave me?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°according to the man himself, about two hundred ccs of Heroin.¡±

    Everyone turned to me. ¡°Wait,¡± John spluttered, ¡°That¡­ that should¡¯ve killed him! That should¡¯ve killed a horse!¡±

    ¡°But is Salim¡­ alive?¡± Bai asked. ¡°I saw him dragging Mubashir into the student center while John and I were¡­ a little busy.¡± She suddenly looked a little uncomfortable, then she shot John an annoyed look. ¡°Sorry we¡¯re so late by the way. Someone didn¡¯t tell me you two were supposed to be meeting, so it took me a little while to put two and two together.¡±

    ¡°He told me not to tell you!¡± John protested.

    ¡°Guys,¡± I said before Bai could start yelling at me, ¡°We¡¯ve got bigger problems. Mubashir¡¯s the Architect.¡± Bai and John froze, trying to comprehend what I just said. Bai reacted first, raising her Glock. ¡°No no no no,¡± I said, grabbing her Glock by the frame. ¡°That¡¯s a bad idea.¡± Bai, in response, began to struggle with me to try and aim the gun at Moob. Bai¡¯s gun went off in the struggle. Luckily, my grip on the pistol¡¯s slide was tight enough to stop it from chambering another round.

    ¡°What¡¯s going?¡± Mubashir asked over the sound of Bai¡¯s grunts and my pleas to get her to stop and listen to reason. ¡°What¡¯s the Architect? Why am I not dead? Why¡¯s Bai trying to kill me?¡± In response, John shrugged and made a noise to indicate he had no idea what the hell was going on.

    In response, Bai said, ¡°It means he¡¯s going to kill everyone!¡± She paused for dramatic effect. ¡°¡­And I¡¯m the only one who can stop him.¡± She then kneed me in the balls. I let go of her pistol and doubled over.

    After a brief pause, I held up the slide and barrel that had originally been on Bai¡¯s gun. ¡°Looking for this?¡± I wheezed. Fending off Bai¡¯s sudden attempts to steal it, I said, ¡°Dammitt, Bai, fucking listen to me!¡±

    ¡°Why are you doing this?¡± Bai asked as she tried to grab at the missing part of her gun. ¡°You, of all people, should know what he¡¯s capable of!¡±

    ¡°Salim already shot him!¡± I yelled.

    Bai stopped trying to grab the slide. ¡°He did?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± I said, straightening up. As I did, I noticed everyone was looking at me with varying degrees of confusion, shock, and fear. Also, Mubashir was slowly backing away. ¡°He put a three-round burst into his skull. Then, while he was turning into a rather tasteful fountain, one of his friends put a few rounds into Moob¡¯s chest!¡±

    ¡°So that¡¯s why we have a fountain,¡± John said, breaking the understandable stunned silence that followed this statement. ¡°Thanks, Moob.¡±

    Mubashir sighed. ¡°Well, at least someone¡¯s happy about all this.¡± He paused, then suddenly yelled, ¡°Why can¡¯t I ever remember when this kind of thing happens?¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± John said, ¡°you¡¯ve had¡­ more than one incident where you have no idea where you are?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Mubashir said, ¡°and it¡¯ll be up to two hours later and I¡¯ll be in some weird place with some out-of-place furniture that probably wasn¡¯t there before. Or I¡¯ll doze off for a minute or two and something will have changed slightly.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s¡­ disturbing¡­¡± Bai said.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°if it makes you feel any better, you seem to¡­ have a different personality when you¡¯re doing this. It¡¯s almost like you¡¯re sleepwalking.¡±

    ¡°That¡­ is even more disturbing,¡± Bai said.

    ¡°Agreed,¡± Mubashir said with a shudder. ¡°How was that supposed to make me feel better?¡± I opened my mouth to think of an answer. Then I closed it again.

    ¡°Well,¡± Bai said, ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Mubashir, but you need to die.¡±

    Before I could protest, Mubashir asked, ¡°Do you have any suggestions? Because at this point, I¡¯m out of ideas. I tried blowing myself up. I tried eating an AK round. I tried drowning, poison, defenestration, and electrocution. Hell, the first thing I tried after Al-Qaeda came to take me away was cutting my throat.¡± He shook his head. ¡°At first, I thought Allah was just punishing me for my suicide. Now, I¡¯m starting to wonder if he¡¯s punishing me for telling Him I could do a better job.¡±

    ¡°Uh¡­¡± I said, ¡°¡­Aaaanyway, how about we come up with a plan that doesn¡¯t involve Mubashir dying because we like him and that might not be physically possible.¡±If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    ¡°You realize,¡± Bai said, ¡°he¡¯s a time bomb at the moment. He has no idea how to control his powers.¡±

    ¡°Would your¡­ organization be willing to teach him?¡± I asked.

    Bai shook her head. ¡°If they did, other organizations like the one Charlotte and Eliza have joined would be¡­ displeased. If they found out, we would need his protection. Plus¡­ while I would trust my elders with almost anything, this power is so great could corrupt anyone.¡±

    ¡°He made a fountain.¡± John said. ¡°And two lockers. I¡¯m pretty sure people could resist that level of unlimited power.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, ¡°he¡¯s prophesized to be about a third of how the world will end, and from what I¡¯ve heard, I kind of think it¡¯s true.¡±

    ¡°Wait¡­¡± Mubashir said, ¡°I¡¯m going to end the world?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Bai said, ¡°you¡¯ll be one of three forces.¡±

    ¡°And the prophecy was kind of vague on how fucked the world would be, right?¡± I said. ¡°I mean, it didn¡¯t specify whether it would be life as we know it changes fucked, Nuclear war except without nukes fucked, or the Earth physically does not exist anymorefucked. For all we know, you get that power under control, and humanity might end up surviving¡­ right, Bai?¡±

    ¡°Or he could finish off the entire universe¡­ But you are right, I suppose,¡± Bai said with a shrug. ¡°Do you want to take that risk?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± John said, ¡°if what Moob said, it¡¯s not like we have another choice. Problem is, this doesn¡¯t seem like a good place to keep a person who can allegedly end the world.¡±

    I shuddered, thinking of The President finding out how about Moob. On the one hand, he might have a better chance of killing Mubashir. Loathe as I was to kill someone who had helped me in cold blood, in Mubashir¡¯s case, it might actually be for the best. Or, The President could find some way to gain control of Mubashir, reality-warping and all. That thought was enough to give me nightmares.

    ¡°And if I go to the CIA, I¡¯ll run into a similar problem,¡± Mubashir said, obviously thinking along the same lines I was. ¡°Shame. Apart from the people who run it, the US seems like a nice place to live.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± I said, ¡°maybe the CIA won¡¯t find out about this.¡± Everyone looked at me askance. ¡°Think about it,¡± I said, a plan forming as I spoke, ¡°the CIA mostly deals with other spies and terrorists. Bizarre shit like¡­ whatever Moob is, is more a UNIX job. But since UNIX deliberately sold you out, it would seem they¡¯re not speaking.¡±

    Moob nodded. ¡°I suppose¡­¡±

    ¡°And,¡± I continued, ¡°whatever you are, I don¡¯t think it¡¯s something the CIA is looking for. If you contact them and say, ¡®Hey, Mr. Handler, I think UNIX sold me out and the rest of Al-Qaeda is on to me,¡¯ they¡¯ll dump you into their version of the witness protection program. No one who knows you¡¯re The Architect will know where you are and no one who knows where you are will even bother to look for you. I¡¯m not going to say it¡¯s perfect, but it could work.¡±

    There was a pause where everyone else considered my idea. ¡°Come on, guys,¡± I said, ¡°You¡¯ve got to have thought of something I¡¯ve missed. There¡¯s got to be something.¡±

    ¡°So¡­¡± John said, ¡°what are we going to tell Charlotte and Eliza?¡±

    ¡°We tell them that Mubashir¡¯s the Architect,¡± I said, ¡°and we¡¯ve decided the safest place for him to go would have to be someone who doesn¡¯t know he¡¯s The Architect. We just won¡¯t tell them that he¡¯ll be going somewhere courtesy of the CIA.¡±

    ¡°And that will work because¡­?¡± Bai asked.

    ¡°Well¡­¡± I thought about that for a second. ¡°Charlotte thinks similarly to how you do in some ways, right? You both live and breathe this Final Prophecy stuff. If you¡¯re going along with this, Charlotte might as well. And if Charlotte agrees, Eliza will too.¡±

    Bai considered this. Finally, she said, ¡°You¡¯re right. It¡¯s the best chance we¡¯ve considered so far.¡± She collapsed onto the bench. ¡°Ughhhh¡­ why can¡¯t anything be simple?¡±

    Mubashir shrugged. ¡°I don¡¯t know. I guess it comes with thinking for yourself.¡±

    ¡°Well self-determination is overrated,¡± Bai said. ¡°It was so much easier when the elders told Li and I what to do. No need to question, just doing what we were told.¡±

    ¡°You know,¡± John said, ¡°I think even those guys aren¡¯t all-knowing. I mean, if theythought they knew everything, why¡¯d they send you here instead of training themselves.¡±

    ¡°That actually scares me quite a bit,¡± Bai said. ¡°They¡¯re supposed to be infallible, or at least Li and I always thought so.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s one way of putting it,¡± John said. ¡°Or maybe they trust you two enough to compromise between their ways and¡­ whatever method NIU is trying to teach us. Personally, I think it¡¯s a pretty big vote of confidence.¡±

    ¡°You know, John,¡± Bai said, ¡°you can almost always make me feel better. Thank you.¡±

    ¡°So are we doing this?¡± I asked. The answer was a unanimous yes.

    Breaking the news to Charlotte and Eliza was a little trickier. Sitting in the couch across from us, Charlotte leaned forwards, resting her chin on her hands to study us. Eliza stood behind her, obviously feeling awkward. Of the people discussing this, only Mubashir was not present. He seemed to be afraid that one of us might steal him away, which was actually somewhat reasonable.

    As Bai explained our reasoning, Charlotte¡¯s frown grew deeper. Finally, she said, ¡°So¡­ I¡¯m supposed to let you send off The Architect on his own, to a place known only to him¡­ and he can¡¯t even control his own powers? This seems like planting a landmine in the Buckingham Palace gardens in the hopes no one important will step on it.¡± She shook her head. ¡°And what¡¯s annoying is that you don¡¯t trust me enough to tell me who¡¯s taking him in.¡± She then had a horrible thought. ¡°He does have a patron of some sort, no? He isn¡¯t just going to wander the globe, hoping no one comes looking for him?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°He does have a patron, but¡­¡±

    Bai cut me off. ¡°I¡¯m sorry Charlotte,¡± she said, ¡°but I¡¯m not sure we can even trust ourselves with this kind of¡­ responsibility. I¡¯m not even sure I could trust some of the people I respect the most with this. There is also the possibility that taking in The Architect could cause a war between several of our societies.¡± She made a bow while still seated. ¡°Please forgive me.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Charlotte asked, ¡°what¡¯s to stop them from declaring war on whoever¡¯s harboring Mubashir?¡± It was a good question.

    ¡°We aren¡¯t going to tell them,¡± Bai said. ¡°We¡¯re going to leave Mubashir to his friends. No one will know The Architect has even been revealed.¡±

    ¡°Assuming I don¡¯t tell on you.¡± Charlotte¡¯s eyes narrowed. ¡°You know, I would much rather he be with someone, anyone, learning to control his powers, rather than just waiting around hoping he doesn¡¯t turn his neighbors into a cup of tea instead of fixing them one.¡±

    ¡°It seems to be a stress-related issue or physical defense mechanism,¡± I said. Personally, I didn¡¯t like Bai¡¯s insistence that her both own people and Charlotte¡¯s be kept in the dark, but no plan would work without Bai¡¯s consent.

    Evidently Charlotte realized this as well. ¡°Fine,¡± she said. ¡°You have my word.¡± She was obviously lying.

    Bai, probably picking up on that much more easily than I did, said, ¡°I¡­ appreciate your understanding. Thank you.¡± They stood up and shook hands. John, Eliza, and I breathed out sighs of relief. This was going to get interesting.

 4.26: The Shape of Things to Come

    Nari and I stood in the converted warehouse looking down at our factory from the supervisor¡¯s office. Well, technically it wasn¡¯t just our factory, May and Andy had controlling shares and Timothy also owned a significant part of the company as well. The assembly line producing May¡¯s products was next door. After we stood looking down on the assembly lines, we each considered the rectangular pieces of paper in our hands.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°this is¡­ very generous.¡± It wasn¡¯t as much as the money I had stashed into a Swiss bank from my Korean adventures, but it was starting to get there. ¡°I mean, a lot of it is going to go back to the government, but at least I¡¯m going to be able to use it this time.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± Nari asked, frowning slightly, ¡°how much am I going to have to pay?¡±

    ¡°A little over forty percent, I think,¡± I said. Nari frowned. ¡°Hey,¡± I said, ¡°more money than you¡¯ve ever imagined a single person possessing minus around forty percent is still more money than you ever imagined a single person possessing.¡±

    ¡°True¡­¡± Nari grudgingly admitted.

    ¡°Plus, it could be worse,¡± I said. ¡°You could have been working at McDonalds and discovered you still had to pay ten percent.¡±

    Nari and Sunny had both applied for US citizenship as soon as we got into the US. It was decided that she might want to have an official country of residence, and since she was earning all her money there, the US was as good a place as any. Also, she basically told me that she¡¯d be happy anywhere there was a decent metal scene.

    ¡°I wonder,¡± Nari said, ¡°is there some way I can see you? I heard that the New Year¡¯s and Christmas celebrations are quite glorious here.¡±

    ¡°Shouldn¡¯t be a problem,¡± I said. ¡°My parents will be glad I¡¯ve brought a friend over who hadn¡¯t recently been shot at, so that¡¯s a bonus. Maybe May and Andy can drive you guys over.¡±

    There was a knock on the door. ¡°Come in,¡± I said. The door opened and in walked Timothy.

    He had a smug smile on his face that I¡¯d learned to interpret as his ¡°I just got a new customer¡± face. ¡°You were right,¡± he said. ¡°Your hometown¡¯s police were willing to switch to our weapons based on regional affiliation. Based on that, I was able to get full replacement for their pistols. And I got Boston and Worcester to do a full replacement of pistols and a partial replacement of assault rifles and SMGs as well. Plus, many law enforcement agencies across the globe have put in orders for the full-sized underbarrel shotguns. By the way, making the Maccabee and the Ballpeen compatible with M-4 attachments was a stroke of genius.¡±

    We had recently completed the FBI¡¯s contest for a next-generation pistol. It was a particularly difficult one. FN Herstal had, of course, fielded its Five-seveN and the 5.7x28mm round. Heckler & Koch had also dusted off their UCP concept (that, and their 4.6x30mm ammo was their answer to FN¡¯s Five-seveN) and tweaked it around for the competition. Not wanting to lose one of its more lucrative customers, Glock had teamed up with VBR-Belgium to create a pistol that could use both 7.92x24mm rounds and 9x19mm rounds. Both Colt and Smith &Wesson had also wanted to get in on this, so they both had submitted models in 5.7 and 4.6. Needless to say, the competition was quite tough. In the end, the FBI decided to do a limited test run of the Glock-VBR and the Uilon Mangchi among SWAT units.

    The reason we had been chosen is probably because of Nari¡¯s theatrics. The other companies had put their prototypes in nice, sensible shock-padded dust cases. Nari had decided to strap one batch of our models with chains to the rear bumper of a car and let them get dragged the last ten or twenty miles. Another batch had been put fully loaded in a Tupperware container that was also filled with water. Every pistol from all the manufacturers had fired ten thousand rounds without malfunction. But only one had gone through a torture test.

    The other thing that helped was our partial adoption was the sheer power of the round. There were certain types of conventional plate and soft armor that our round could penetrate that the others could not. It also performed much better against exotic one-off types than other rounds. We¡¯d had to make a lot of concessions to actually controlling the round, and as such I think the weight may have thrown off serious military buyers.

    ¡°So,¡± I asked, ¡°who was the first to fully convert?¡±

    Timothy¡¯s smile became even more smug. ¡°Oh, I didn¡¯t tell you two already?¡± he asked with faux innocence. ¡°New York actually fully converted, provisionally. They bought almost everything: the Uilon, the Ballpeen, the Maccabee, and the shotguns. It hasn¡¯t shown up in your paycheck because the first payment hasn¡¯t come in yet.¡±

    ¡°What do you mean, ¡®provisionally?¡¯¡± I asked.

    ¡°Oh, they¡¯re just not going to replace everything instantly,¡± Timothy said dismissively. ¡°They¡¯re going to do it slowly, and if they run into any problems, they¡¯ll either ask us to make the necessary changes or just stop. In the meantime, guess how many Uilons we¡¯ve sold in the first installment to New York alone.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know, a hundred?¡± I guessed.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

    ¡°Well, if you multiplied it by ten, you¡¯d be right.¡± I stared in shock. Timothy laughed. ¡°We¡¯ve got at least thirty-three thousand to go, assuming they don¡¯t want to arm auxiliaries or expand. We¡¯re rich!¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s great,¡± I said. I paused for a bit, then asked, ¡°Any military clients?¡±

    Timothy suddenly looked a little shifty. ¡°Any particular reason you want to know?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°The reason I¡¯m in this business is to stop The Dragon¡¯s Teeth from steam-rolling the entire world. I can¡¯t do that alone, and civilians and law enforcement don¡¯t really have the level of armament to stop something like a Charon or those VTOL gunships the Deets have.¡±

    ¡°Well¡­¡± Timothy said, ¡°¡­I have a client who¡¯s a little closer to the situation than the US is. The problem is I can¡¯t sell directly to them.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re selling to China,¡± I said.

    ¡°Technically,¡± he said, ¡°we, as a weapons manufacturer, cannot sell weapons or the rights to build copies to certain foreign countries, China definitely not being an exception. But if we were to sue them for making unlicensed copies and they were to generously settle out¡­¡±

    ¡°Ah.¡± I said, ¡°If that¡¯s the case, I think Nari and I may have gone somewhat deaf after I asked my question. I think you said that we definitely were taking only legal measures to sell our product because I trust you implicitly, but I couldn¡¯t really say. Especially in court.¡±

    ¡°But he said¡­¡± Nari began. I elbowed her. ¡°Ow!¡±

    ¡°Anyway,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯ve got some unpacking to do. My apartment won¡¯t set itself up, you know.¡± May and Andy had decided to give everyone a sign-on bonus when the first sales from the surgical glue came in. It wasn¡¯t a lot when compared to our first paychecks, but it was slightly more than enough to get myself a decent apartment and a twelve-year-old car. I¡¯d just gotten most of my clothes, a mattress, a dresser, and a fridge in. Now, I wanted to see about getting my desk built so I didn¡¯t have to crouch on the floor to look at my laptop.

    ¡°Ok,¡± Nari said, rubbing her arm. ¡°Have fun.¡± I could swear I her add ¡°jerk¡± under her breath.

    I left them and got into my aging station wagon and headed towards the apartment. The car itself was actually somewhat sporty for a station wagon, but it had gotten pretty thirsty in its old age. Now that my paycheck had come in, though, I didn¡¯t really have to worry about that. I could just pay for the fuel costs, or even see if I could repair or tinker with it to solve that issue.

    I drove the car (my car, I actually had my own car!) through the streets of Worcester. The city had, in the eighties, decided that a boom was coming and that they¡¯d start getting ready by building. Brick and concrete buildings had sprung up. Most were, at most, three or four stories. However, occasionally, a few almost-skyscrapers would loom up over their smaller brethren. The city must have planned that the coming boom would allow them to build many more. Over thirty years later, people were still waiting for the boom.

    In the meantime, most of the buildings were somewhat seedy. Grates stood in front of glass windows, ready to closed on a moment¡¯s notice to protect the grime-stained windows of low-rent stores, and these were some of the better areas. The day¡¯s gray winter skies and biting cold only enhanced the disreputable air. Still, the people were friendly, and the vast majority of areas I had not only felt safe, but welcoming.

    My apartment was in one of the several towers that had been built in anticipation of the boom. Parking was underneath the building, thankfully. Otherwise, I¡¯d have to learn how the bus could get from the building to the factory and rely on my parents for transportation every time I needed to get out of the city.

    Parking my car, I suddenly felt a chill run down my spine, and it wasn¡¯t the cold. I turned around. I was the only one in the parking lot. Unsurprising. It was a little past two-thirty in the afternoon. The weather only made it feel like night. I scanned the empty garage. No one there. I reached for my Berretta, only to remember that I couldn¡¯t legally carry it, so I¡¯d given Eliza all my weapons for safe-keeping.

    Nervously, I got out of my car and began to walk towards the elevator. Suddenly, I heard what I was convinced was a whisper. I turned around. Nothing.

    Before I had discovered Mubashir was the Architect, I would have dismissed it as the wind. Now¡­ I didn¡¯t think it was the wind. I also didn¡¯t think it was Mubashir. I had heard his Architect voices, and whatever that was wasn¡¯t Mubashir.

    As I walked towards the elevator, I considered what it was. It sounded very familiar, like someone else I had met. Then, I heard it again. This time, I realized it wasn¡¯t one person, and it definitely wasn¡¯t the wind. It was at least two people talking in hushed whispers. Again, when I turned around, they weren¡¯t there. But, judging by how loud they were, I should have been able to see them.

    I decided the best thing to do was to get in the elevator and hammer the up button. When it finally came, I rapidly punched the button to my floor. When the door finally closed, I breathed a sigh of relief and leaned against the elevator wall.

    I must have closed my eyes to do it, because suddenly, right directly in front of me, was Richard Forrest Taylor. My first thought was that he couldn¡¯t be there because I had seen him die. During the Grenzefrontier¡¯s attempted takeover of Nowhere Island, he had died in a secret elevator trying to interrogate a Grenzefrontier mole. I¡¯d been too late to stop the mole from shoving a piece of glass into Richard¡¯s neck. If Richard had somehow survived that, he¡¯d obviously not bothered to fix the wound or clean up the blood that had soaked his clothes.

    Before I could process this, Richard lunged forwards and grabbed me by the arms. In this move, I could see his face had become much paler. ¡°Listen, boy,¡± he said, his voice a raspy gurgle, ¡°she¡¯s coming!¡± Speaking of his grip, if he was a ghost, he was remarkably tangible. My arms felt like they were being crushed by vises.

    I gibbered somewhat incomprehensibly, finally managing to get out, ¡°Wh-who¡¯s coming?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Richard said, ¡°but she¡­ she won¡¯t let me go! SHE WON¡¯T LET ANYONE GO, DO YOU UNDERSTAND? SHE¡¯S COMING AND WE CAN¡¯T STOP IT!¡± He began to yell and shake me. ¡°SHE¡¯S BRINGING US BACK! HER GAZE IS FREEZING ME! IT¡¯S TOO COLD! IT¡¯S¡­¡±

    Suddenly, his voice was cut off. It was like he was trying to shout through soundproofing. He suddenly realized that he had lost speech and began shaking me harder. Then he began to turn to dust and blow away. The last part of him to leave was his grip.

    A few seconds later, the elevator opened with a cheery ding. Zombie-like, I walked out of the elevator to my studio apartment. I unlocked the door, took off my shoes and coat, then sat on my bed. Something told me I had just had my first brush with The Lord of Death.

 5.1: Factory

    July was a busy month. Of course, all months for me had been busy, especially the ones spent at NIU. Whether I had been talking to captured Grenzefrontier (a few of which had been surprisingly cooperative, even after I revealed myself to be Jewish,) trying to make a new weapon to justify my position in my own company, see Eliza more often, and also maintain my grades. It was tough, but it was completely worth it.

    Then, when I got back, I had to help out with the company. First, I had to help Andy Sebaldi (our company¡¯s production line designer) and Timothy Cheung (our marketing guy) produce and sell the thing I¡¯d created last semester. The semester before last, I had created three weapons and two ammo types that worked reasonably well by stealing designs wholesale and/or pasting them together like Frankenstein¡¯s monster. Then, last semester, I decided that made me qualified me to make a dual-belt-fed machinegun.

    Nate¡¯s Fuckup, as the project was known as internally, ended up being heavier than an FN Minimi, despite the fact that the NF used advanced materials brought to this world by dimension-hopping Nazis and the Death Goddess-worshipping clones that were trying to kill them. There was also the problem of operating the thing. At the end, it had two cocking handles, and the chain had to be ejected via what looked like a magazine well. Also, to take the most advantage of its dual belts, you¡¯d need three operators, one to fire and two to load. The boxes on either side also prevented the use of folding stocks. Luckily, the design could use a bunch of parts and the ammo from the Maccabee assault rifle. It wasn¡¯t my finest creation, but it worked. Mostly. Nari was also helping to iron out the kinks.

    While I was doing that, I also was the only one able to train armorers in our products. Sure, Nari was just as familiar with the designs as I was, but she was only ten. I could ask potential customers to learn how to maintain their purchases from a girl. If they didn¡¯t like it, well, that would be good for them. Making them learn from a ten-year-old of any gender with a bit of an ego complex¡­ Hell, if I was getting annoyed doing that, I couldn¡¯t ask my clients to.

    There were also the more conventional problems that came from making weapons. The first raised its ugly head. Foolishly, I assumed that selling only to law enforcement would help prevent controversy. Instead, a client police department gave one of our pistols to an officer who shouldn¡¯t have been entrusted with a butter knife.

    What happened next defied all common sense. On his first mission, the cop in question reported to a routine domestic dispute. Things began to go wrong when he pulled up in front of a house five blocks away. Then, claiming he ¡°saw something moving¡± put half a magazine through the door of a random house. Several of those rounds hit an innocent bystander who had been vacuuming. He died almost instantly. Before the police could even make a statement, Twitter erupted with information about how the police in that town had a history of abusing local minorities.

    Meanwhile, somehow our guns were getting shipped to unapproved buyers. The national media hadn¡¯t picked up on it yet, but several unsavory groups (Parahuman Separatists, gangsters, and a white supremacist group) had somehow obtained a few of our weapons. Annoyingly, the serial numbers had all been filed off. I had checked our sales just to make sure Timothy wasn¡¯t breaking our ¡°law enforcement and military only¡± rule. He hadn¡¯t. Every address he shipped to was to a legitimate customer.

    I was busy waiting for the idiot police to make their statement and desperately trying to track down every weapon my company had ever created when there was a knock on the door. ¡°Yeah,¡± I said to the police officer in charge of the armory on the other end, ¡°I¡¯ll call you back when you do the inventory.¡± I put down the phone and walked to the door.

    When I opened up, I saw a blond woman wearing sunglasses, riding boots, wide-brimmed straw hat, and a sundress. Everything about her was expensive. Behind her was a red-haired woman with green eyes and fox ears. The red-haired woman had an umbrella propped against her shoulder, and under her old British army jacket, I could see a bulge under her shoulder that indicated she was carrying a gun.

    ¡°Charlotte! Eliza!¡± I said. ¡°This is quite a pleasant surprise!¡±

    Idiotville¡¯s police chief suddenly interrupted me. ¡°While we admit that Officer Clark may have acted inappropriately, without the penetration power of our new sidearm, Mr. Walker would still be alive today. We need to have a serious conversation about the equipment law enforcement officers are allowed to use.¡±

    I whirled around to face the TV. ¡°You fffff¡­¡± I suddenly remembered my audience. Shutting the TV off, I said, ¡°Anyway, please, sit.¡± I gestured to the two chairs in front of my desk. ¡°We haven¡¯t seen each other since the semester ended!¡±

    ¡°Certainly,¡± Charlotte, the blond one, said. She took off her glasses as she crossed the threshold to take the indicated seat. As she did, she took in my cramped office, a mixture of disapproval and pity on her face. Charlotte Blackmoor-Ward was the daughter of English nobility and not exactly used to offices only able to sit three people, a desk, and a TV. This was a woman who had gotten a Maybach for her sixteenth birthday.This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    ¡°So, what are we interruptin¡¯?¡± Eliza asked in her Cockney accent as she closed the door behind her. Eliza Henderson was Charlotte¡¯s adopted sister. Before the Blackmoor-Wards had adopted her, she had lived her life in complete poverty. She hadn¡¯t completely assimilated into the Blackmoor-Wards, and I loved her for it.

    ¡°Some idiot,¡± I said, ¡°didn¡¯t check his targets. His superiors decided to blame the gun. The gun I sold to them.¡± I gestured to the papers as I sat down. ¡°And, if idiot customers weren¡¯t enough, weapons are ending up in unauthorized hands as well. I¡¯m trying to figure out how before I get in the news for that.¡±

    ¡°Bloody ¡®ell, Nate,¡± Eliza said. ¡°I thought things¡¯d be simpler ¡®round you when you quit spying and started selling guns to cops. Next you¡¯ll be tellin¡¯ me that¡­¡±

    ¡°Yes, yes,¡± Charlotte said, cutting off her foster sister. ¡°Pleasantries are all very fine, but¡­¡± She paused and took a deep breath. I watched her warily. If Charlotte was skipping pleasantries, shit was getting real. ¡°Nathan, we have a problem.¡±

    I knew it. There was no way Charlotte would suddenly fly across the Atlantic Ocean to turn up in my office without any warning under normal circumstances. There was only one thing I could think of that would make her do something like this. It had to be something related to The Final Prophecy.

    The Final Prophecy apparently foretold of three great forces that would end the world. The first force was the Lord of Death. I had met some of her followers, on a trip to North Korea, known as The Dragon¡¯s Teeth. When I had been there, the North Koreans had been losing. Now, The Dragon¡¯s Teeth were globally acknowledged to be in control of Korea.

    The next one said to exist was called The Architect. I had actually met him. His name was Mubashir. He was pretty chill when he wasn¡¯t subconsciously warping the very fabric into whatever he wanted. I had watched someone literally blow Mubashir¡¯s brains out. In response, Mubashir went into this odd, subconscious state, somehow reabsorbed his expelled gray matter and skull, then turned the shooter into a tasteful fountain. He remembered none of that.

    The other group, sometimes called The Angels of Vengeance, other times The Fire Angels, well, I had no clues about what they were. All I knew is if they were anything like the other two, I didn¡¯t want to meet them.

    ¡°What is it?¡± I asked, dreading the answer.

    ¡°Well,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°One group of people who believe in The Final Prophecy called the Defenders of Fuji somehow sealed a group of highly trained warriors in a sort of¡­ pocket dimension, I think. This group, called the Heralds of The Architect, have been trained since birth to seek out The Architect and convince him to save the world from the other Three.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± I said, ¡°a¡­ pocket dimension? How does that work?¡±

    ¡°People¡¯ve been asking for a thousand years, apparently.¡± Eliza said.

    ¡°Apparently,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°this¡­ technology has been around for thousands of years. The means to obtain it¡­ have always been astronomically expensive in the most literal meaning of the word. The materials required are not found naturally on Earth. The only way to get them is to hope an asteroid bearing them falls into your land. Then, you need to run an extremely powerful current through the space materials and the items you wish to transport. Eventually, the items come back. Don¡¯t ask me how it works, nobody knows.¡±

    ¡°You realize,¡± I said, ¡°that this sounds insane.¡±

    ¡°You know a Jumper,¡± Charlotte said reasonably. ¡°How different is this?¡± Jumpers were Parahumans who could ¡°jump¡± between two points in our dimension by going through a different one.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, ¡°but that literally happens every day. I never have even heard of something like what you¡¯re talking about, unless you¡¯re talking about science fiction. This is¡­ this is¡­¡±

    ¡°As weird as The Architect?¡± Eliza asked.

    I thought about it for a moment. ¡°Almost,¡± I finally said, ¡°and thankfully, nowhere near as fucking terrifying.¡± At least whatever this was couldn¡¯t turn you into tasteful furniture while you screamed until you no longer had a mouth or lungs.

    ¡°Anyway,¡± Charlotte said, somewhat annoyed by how off the rails the conversation had gotten, ¡°the point I¡¯ve been trying to make is that the Defenders of Mount Fuji say that their pocket universe is about to break down. When that happens, the team they sent into the pocket dimension will come back.¡±

    ¡°Sounds like they don¡¯t need our help,¡± I said. ¡°What do they need us for?¡±

    ¡°The team went in five hundred years ago,¡± Charlotte said. When she saw my shocked expression, she continued on. ¡°Apart from the culture shock, there is the problem of communications only being one-way. The Defenders of Fuji have only been able to send supplies in. There are reports of Aztecs surviving in these pocket dimensions for hundreds of years, and in 2012, a group of Mayan Parahumans were released from a pocket dimension as part of the Long Count cermony. The thing is, all these groups ingested a type of brew that slows breathing. In other words, they were comatose when they went in, and apparently were comatose for their entire duration. This elite group was supposed to spend the entire time awake.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t fancy that,¡± Eliza said. ¡°I ¡®eard a story Father... er, Lord Blackmoor-Ward, not me biological dad¡­ tell about a guy ¡®oo volunteered for testing back in the eighties. Poor bastard thought ¡®e¡¯d be goin¡¯ in for a few minutes. The scientists got it wrong and ¡®e was in that place until ninety-four. We thought ¡®e¡¯d died, so we didn¡¯t send anything after ¡®im. When ¡®e came back, it was right in a box in an archive. Everyone had just gone ¡®ome for the weekend, so ¡®e spent two days screaming.¡± She shuddered. ¡°Poor wanker almost died in that box from suffocation. ¡®E also can¡¯t talk for some reason.¡±

    ¡°So,¡± I asked, ¡°are we coming in as a rescue mission, first aid, or something else?¡±

    ¡°It depends,¡± Charlotte said. ¡°Nobody knows what they¡¯ve seen or done in there. But the Defenders of Fuji are worried that they¡¯ve given these Heralds of The Architect ¡®an inaccurate picture,¡¯ to use their exact words and they might go rogue. Considering they¡¯ve been given the opportunity to modernize their techniques¡­¡±

    ¡°And how many are there?¡± I asked, a sinking feeling in my stomach.

    ¡°One instructor,¡± Charlotte said. ¡°Plus fourteen Jumpers. You can see why this might be a problem, can you not?¡±

 5.2: Shipping off to Nippon

    I was somewhat surprised to see John at the entrance to the Blackmoor-Ward plane. He had been very clear about how little he wanted to get into more difficult situations. Even before he had been critically injured on an ill-fated mission to North Korea, he had been hesitant. Now he seemed downright allergic.

    ¡°You realize,¡± he said, as if sensing my surprise at his presence, ¡°that things are going to go completely wrong this time?¡± Like me, he had a beard, but his hair was much more closely trimmed and more neatly combed than mine.

    ¡°Really?¡± I asked, as Charlotte and Eliza headed into the plane ahead of us. ¡°What makes you say that?¡±

    ¡°Nate,¡± John muttered, ¡°this is about Mubashir. How the hell can it go right?¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± I said, ¡°isn¡¯t it my job to be paranoid?¡± John shot me a look that made it clear that he didn¡¯t find that funny. ¡°Anyway,¡± I continued on, ¡°Moob won¡¯t be there.¡± He¡¯d be somewhere the CIA thought was safe from radical Islamic terrorists, but I didn¡¯t even feel comfortable saying that. ¡°Whoever, or whatever, is there, they can¡¯t be worse than Moob.¡±

    ¡°Look,¡± John said, ¡°from the sound of it, Moob never tried to hurt you.¡±

    ¡°Well¡­¡± I said, remembering a particularly nasty encounter with The Architect before I knew it was Mubashir, ¡°there was one instance where that might be debatable, but yeah, he never did anything too awful to me as The Architect.¡±

    The reason I drew a distinction was that Mubashir, when using his Architect powers, entered into an odd state where he would seem to act subconsciously. When he was done using his powers, he wouldn¡¯t remember a single thing. Hence, the person Mubashir terrified the most was Mubashir. He even said his abilities were a punishment for thinking he could do a better job than God.

    ¡°My point,¡± John said, ¡°is that these are people who think they can take on Moob or control him.¡±

    I remembered the locker room where Mubashir revealed his power. He had woken up after being injected with enough heroin to kill a horse. Then, after someone had put a three round burst into his head, he¡¯d reassembled his brain and skull and turned his attacker into a tasteful fountain. ¡°They¡¯re wrong,¡± I said. ¡°There is no physical way to stop him.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s not my point,¡± John said frantically.

    ¡°OI!¡± Eliza called from inside the plane, peeking out from inside, ¡°You blokes comin¡¯? Or are you gonna be gossiping all bloody day?¡±

    ¡°Just a minute!¡± John called back. He stared at Eliza. Eliza stared back. Green and brown eyes locked on each other for what felt like a solid minute. Finally, John said, ¡°You can go back in the plane now.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Eliza said slowly. Just as slowly she withdrew from the door.

    John, after a few more seconds turned back towards me. ¡°In a sense,¡± he said, ¡°you know Mubashir better than anyone. I think that we¡¯re going to be used, maybe as a bargaining chip, maybe to get to Moob. Hell, we might even be bait.¡±

    ¡°Eliza wouldn¡¯t do that to me.¡± I was confident in this. Eliza had helped me out of a lot of hard situations.

    ¡°Even if Charlotte tells her to?¡± John asked. I opened my mouth to respond, then closed it. The Blackmoor-Wards were the closest thing Eliza had to a family. As her boyfriend, I was important to her, but maybe not that important.

    I looked around. Standing guard around the plane were a few Blackmoor-Ward bodyguards. I noted sourly that they were all carrying either Ballpeens or Maccabees. I doubted they¡¯d use them on us, but I also couldn¡¯t picture them just letting us leave. Their armament was probably due to fact that the first time Charlotte and Eliza had visited me they¡¯d been attacked, but I suddenly wasn¡¯t a hundred percent sure that was the entire reason.

    John, noticing me looking at the guards, said, ¡°Look, I¡¯m not a hundred percent convinced by what I just said. I¡¯m also sure if we back out now, nothing will happen to us.¡±

    ¡°But you want to go anyway,¡± I said. ¡°Why?¡±

    ¡°Because,¡± John said, ¡°Moob saved our lives. Besides, this isn¡¯t the kind of thing that goes away. We can either deal with it now, seven thousand miles from home, or when some deranged cultist breaks into our house and roughs up our families.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯m convinced. Let¡¯s just get this over with.¡±

    We headed up into the ramp to the interior of the plane. It was nowhere near as fancy as the first of the Blackmoor-Ward planes I had ridden in. Then again, it was still one of the most luxurious spaces I had ever seen in my entire life.

    Eliza and Charlotte were sitting in the rear of the plane. As before, the area was a sort of dining room/kitchen/bar. The decoration, however, seemed to be a lot more sparse. Yet I was pretty sure that the U-shaped couch Charlotte and Eliza were sitting on alone was more expensive than my parents¡¯ car. Charlotte was smiling politely, Eliza was strangely unreadable. Briefly, I wondered if Eliza had heard any of our conversation. Then I remembered that her ears were as functional as they were pretty. Of course she had heard, and she had most likely told her adopted sister.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!

    ¡°Come in, come in,¡± Charlotte said. Gesturing at the couch, ¡°Please, have a seat.¡± When John and I were seated, Charlotte pushed a button on the coffee table in the center. ¡°If you want, we have a variety of drinks to tide you over.¡± A compartment in the coffee table slid open to reveal a compartment full of beer, wine and liquor.

    ¡°I think its best if we take it slow,¡± I said, remembering my second trip to NIU. Most of my fellow passengers had either been drunk or hung over. At the front of the plane, Charlotte¡¯s bodyguards were getting into the plane. I noticed there were a lot more than last time. They were also much better equipped.

    ¡°Oh, of course!¡± Charlotte said. ¡°It¡¯s just that this is all the hospitality we can afford at the moment. We had to get in the air rather quickly, so we did not have enough time to pack properly. We only have enough food for three meals a day. If you want something with less kick, we do have some coffee, tea and water.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll have tea,¡± I said. ¡°Earl Grey.¡± I would have asked for lemon, but I wasn¡¯t sure Charlotte would have that.

    ¡°Coffee for me,¡± John said. ¡°Something strong, please.¡±

    ¡°Very well,¡± Charlotte said primly, ¡°Desmond?¡±

    ¡°Yes, Lady Charlotte?¡± a voice behind me asked. I turned around to see one of Charlotte¡¯s bodyguards, a big black man in a suit. He¡¯d sneaked in behind me without me noticing. Despite the fact that I had seen bigger and scarier be stealthier, it still was a little unsettling. It was probably both expected of him as a manservant and a trick he used to intimidate professional soldiers.

    ¡°Would you put some tea on for us?¡± Charlotte asked.

    ¡°Certainly,¡± Desmond said. He then began to bustle about quietly making our drinks.

    ¡°So,¡± I asked, ¡°what is our itinerary going to be when we get to this place?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°first, we are going to have a meeting with our fellow followers of the Final Prophecy.¡±

    ¡°Which¡¯ll be a right barrel o¡¯ laughs,¡± Eliza said. ¡°From what Char tells me, as well as nationalistic tensions, we occultist nutters tend to kill each other because we can¡¯t agree what color socks the Lord of Death wears or some bollocks.¡±

    Charlotte sighed. ¡°Needless to say, you three don¡¯t need to go to that. Then, we release these heralds.¡± She paused. ¡°You know, I don¡¯t know Mubashir as well as the rest of you, but I get the distinct impression he¡¯d be horrified to find out he has heralds.¡±

    That jibed with what I knew about Moob. I admit I didn¡¯t know much about him, but I did know that he just wanted to be left alone. Having fifteen bodyguards following him around might panic him quite a bit.

    ¡°Plus,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°if the Japanese are anything like you yanks, they¡¯ll have those poor Jumpers in gauche costumes.¡± She sighed. ¡°I suppose that¡¯s why the Americans and the Japanese get along together. You both have quite a taste for bizarre theatrics. And shouting.¡± Eliza then made a gesture indicating Charlotte was being distracted. Noting the gesture, Charlotte got back on track. ¡°Then, after the pleasantries are done, we wait for the heralds to be released.¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s the schedule on that?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Well,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°that¡¯s the thing. We don¡¯t rightly know. We do know that we need to be there in two days if we don¡¯t want to miss it. We do know that the latest they will be released will be by next week. Apart from that¡­¡±

    ¡°Also,¡± Eliza said, ¡°the more shite you send there, the bigger the radius it could end up. We¡¯ve sealed off a ten kilometer radius deep in the mountains under the pretense of a British search and rescue drill. Really, though, we need to seal off at least fifty. This is going t¡¯be a bloody pain in the arse.¡±

    ¡°So,¡± I said, ¡°We¡¯re basically just hoping these heralds, people who¡¯ve been trained as legit ninjas, decide to just walk into our trap. We¡¯re also hoping that our occultist friends and the reinforcements you¡¯ve brought can deal with them.¡±

    ¡°For the direction of where the heralds are heading,¡± Charlotte, ¡°at the center of our radius, we have the Defenders of Mt. Fuji headquarters. And while I can¡¯t speak for the quality of our fellow followers of The Prophecy, we did call in quite a bit of 3 Commando Brigade. The closest analogy to your military would be a sort of combination of the US Rangers and the US Marines.¡±

    ¡°Why can¡¯t we just wait for them to come back?¡± John asked. ¡°I mean, what reason would they have for going rogue?¡±

    ¡°Being in a place like that¡­¡± Eliza said, ¡°¡­like where they were sent, as we said, might drive them mad. As we¡¯ve said before. They also might ¡®ave some issues about bein¡¯ sent to a place like that for five ¡®undred years. And since they¡¯ve not been able, or seen fit, to talk to us¡­¡±

    ¡°If they feel betrayed,¡± John said, ¡°wouldn¡¯t they just go back and kill everyone there?¡±

    ¡°From what I understand,¡± I said, ¡°they could also end up so out of it, they don¡¯t know where they are. Or they could end up trapped somewhere. In a fifty kilometer radius. Of which we¡¯re only searching ten.¡± I sighed. ¡°There¡¯s just so many things that can go wrong.¡±

    ¡°Good lord, don¡¯t we all know it,¡± Charlotte said. ¡°Still, we¡¯re¡­¡± She suddenly stopped and stared, going completely pale. Everyone turned and looked at where she was looking. Then we turned back to Char.

    ¡°Char¡­¡± Eliza said, ¡°there¡¯s nothing there.¡±

    ¡°Are you¡­¡± Charlotte began, then shook her head. ¡°No, of course. That would be impossible.¡± John, Eliza, Desmond and I exchanged looks. ¡°Anyway,¡± Charlotte continued, trying to ignore the looks we were giving, ¡°after the heralds are found, the next step is to figure out what to do with them.¡±

    ¡°Well, that¡¯s simple,¡± John said. ¡°They¡¯re going to be the Defender¡¯s problem, not ours. I mean, they¡¯re part of the organization.¡±

    Charlotte frowned. ¡°Ordinarily, you would be correct. However, they asked for our help. Therefore, we get a say in whatever they plan to do with super team. I don¡¯t want them to be used¡­ inappropriately. I do think that a large degree of freedom can be retained by the Defenders of Fuji, but they would definitely owe us.¡±

    ¡°That attitude isn¡¯t going to go over too well,¡± John said.

    ¡°Also,¡± I said, ¡°you mentioned some other groups. What if they have the same attitude?¡±

    Charlotte took a deep breath. ¡°On the one hand, I respect the fact that they are donating significant resources. On the other, you may note that we¡¯re the only ones bringing in an airborne company. That cost my organization more than a few favors and we expect to be compensated accordingly.¡±

    Eliza winced. I probably did as well. This vacation was going to get a lot more interesting.

 5.3: Their House

    Two days later, I discovered to my great annoyance that when Charlotte had said ¡°deep in the mountains,¡± she had meant it. We got out of her Maybach in front of a clearly renovated Japanese castle. It was located in a small valley that was heavily forested. The road we had taken had passed through more farming towns (more than a few of which had to deal with cramped mountain spaces) than suburbs. Five hundred years ago, this would have had to be a nightmare to pass through due to the dense forest and surprisingly deep river. Now, Charlotte¡¯s convoy (which consisted of us in her Maybach and her bodyguards in several Land Rovers and a Jaguar F-coupe on point) could pass through quite easily thanks to a series of strategically placed bridges.

    I was in the front seat, right next to Eliza. For the entire journey, I split my attention between the road and watching her. Unsurprisingly, she was highly intent on her surroundings. Lupines, especially the sub-type she was part of, tended to be hard-wired for guard duty. From the way she scanned the road, I could swear that she half-expected an IED to blow up.

    "You worried about something?¡± I asked her.

    ¡°Nah,¡± she said, ¡°just get a bit jumpy on guard duty. I love it.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± I asked. ¡°I know when I had to rescue Nari from North Korea, that just made me even more stressed.¡±

    "I guess I hate that part,¡± Eliza said reflectively. ¡°But it¡¯s the adrenalin rush, innit? You know in your heart that the people under your care probably aren¡¯t in any danger, but your body gives you that rush all the same, right?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t ever get that,¡± John said.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, ¡°I just feel this sort of dread when I¡¯m responsible for anyone other than myself.¡±

    ¡°Fackin¡¯ ¡®ell,¡± Eliza said. ¡°No wonder you two are always doing something stupid. That¡¯s the only way you can get that buzz, innit? If it¡¯s just a Lupine thing, that¡¯d explain why you baselines make such a right mess o¡¯things.¡±

    ¡°So¡­¡± Charlotte said, ¡°guarding people¡­ gives you some kind of rush?¡±

    ¡°Kind of,¡± Eliza said. ¡°It¡¯s sort of like ¡®ow you¡¯d used to smoke some ganj, except insteada makin¡¯ me all zombie-like, it makes me focused. Everything slows down, but I¡¯m faster. I think faster, I move faster, and I perceive things faster. I¡¯m in control.¡± She then seemed to realize that Charlotte must have been wondering if she had been put in dangerous situations to satisfy an addiction, so Eliza added, ¡°But when shit actually goes down, like it did last summer, it¡¯s a bad trip.¡± She then added accusatorially, ¡°Like that fuckin¡¯ shite you tried to get me on in Year Nine.¡±

    Charlotte, flustered, responded with, ¡°It¡­ it was a bad reaction. That was quality.¡±

    Eliza made a grunt in affirmation and turned back to her driving. Eventually, she said, ¡°This place is kind of a nightmare to drive in.¡±

    ¡°At least we can drive,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯d hate to walk through this gunk.¡±

    We were interrupted by a voice over the radio. ¡°This is point,¡± one of the guards said. ¡°We¡¯re at Kage Keep.¡±

    ¡°Good,¡± Eliza said. ¡°I was getting tired.¡±

    The Defenders of Fuji had added visitor parking to their keep. Despite the fact that it was paved, it had been there long enough for the walls to have been obscured by trees again. There was a ramp leading up to a gate, indicating that the ground floor of the castle was higher than the parking lot. Surrounding the lot was a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. The point vehicle was already past the security gate and had parked among a variety of cars, ranging from luxury brands I¡¯d definitely heard of to what seemed to be budget vehicles I¡¯d never seen before in my life.

    Eventually, we found a space. When the entire convoy had disembarked, the ornate, yet functional gate opened. Out strode three Japanese men. ¡°Ah,¡± one of them said. ¡°The Fourth Order of the Round Table, I presume?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Charlotte said. ¡°That is us. I am Charlotte Blackmoor-Ward.¡± She then bowed and said, ¡°Ohaio¡­ Gozaimas?¡± She said the greeting like she was asking if she was saying the right thing.

    ¡°For an honored guest such as yourself,¡± our greeter said, returning the bow, ¡°that is close enough. You must want to meet with the Grandmasters. We¡¯ll show your bodyguards to their rooms.¡±

    Charlotte looked a little leery about being separated, but she did as she was told. The first man led her through the door. One of the other greeters began talking to the bodyguards. The third came to talk us.

    ¡°Henderson-san? Marshall-san? Jacobs-san?¡± he said, bowing to each of us. Each of us bowed in turn, John faster than the rest of us. ¡°My name is Nakashima, and I¡¯ll be your guide. A sister group, the Dragons of Life, have requested you have rooms near them.¡±

    Eliza laughed. ¡°That¡¯ll be Bai. We¡¯ve met before.¡±

    ¡°I see!¡± Nakashima said. ¡°Miss Feng-san seems to be the most social one there. Please, follow me.¡±

    We followed him through two gates. When we got through the gate, I stopped short. In front of us was the most beautiful house I had ever seen. Behind it were two more sets of walls, one lower with a ramp leading up to it, and one even higher. The house itself was a three-story Japanese mansion that looked like it was designed to impress guests and repel intruders. What looked to have been a surrounding drill yard had sadly been half-replaced by more parking. The cars in this lot were much more uniform, mostly being the kind of thing a Japanese salaryman would drive to work in.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

    ¡°This keep has been in the hands of the Defenders of Fuji for almost a thousand years,¡± Nakashima said. ¡°It¡¯s been modernized of course. Sadly, though, there¡¯s been talk of abandoning it.¡±

    ¡°Why?¡± I asked. ¡°Look at it! It¡¯s beautiful.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°but it¡¯s in the middle of nowhere, innit?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Nakashima said, scratching the back of his head, ¡°there¡¯s that. But being caretaker of it for a few years makes you appreciate it. It¡¯s expensive, it¡¯s useless, and the security upgrades convinced the Grandmasters that the Ninja was dead, but it is a wonderful place for meditating. It would kill me if they sell it to some developer to tear down.¡±

    ¡°What do you do here?¡± I asked.

    ¡°I work with a skeleton crew, those other guys you saw,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m a cross between janitor, security guard and IT specialist. If you know someone who would want to buy it and could afford it¡­¡±

    ¡°I could be that guy in a few years,¡± I said.

    ¡°Hopefully you¡¯ll have a chance,¡± Nakashima said. ¡°Anyway, I need to get you guys settled in. You¡¯ll be in the third level.¡± He pointed to the third section.

    The second and third sections probably used to be almost carbon copies of the first, apart from smaller drill yards and bigger houses. The differences came from the modifications. The second section had several helipads, at the time mostly taken up by British army helicopters. When we got to the top of the third ramp, I was able to see over the parapets.

    ¡°This is beautiful¡­¡± I said in awe. Unlike I had first thought, we were not at the bottom of the valley. It was hard to tell because the trees masked the ground, but you could tell there was a dip between us and the mountain on the opposite side. The setting sun shone off the leaves and lit up the mountain. I only saw it for a moment before we were led into the third area.

    Then, we were led into the third section. There, we saw that the drill yard had been replaced by a garden. We walked through a path that cut through some of the more maze-like areas. ¡°Before you pass through the door,¡± Nakashima said, ¡°would you please give me any weapons you have? We apologize, but we like to make sure that only our organization has weapons on our premises.¡± He held open a bag

    John and I handed over our weapons over without much hesitation (John had a Bren 10 and a knife, I had my Beretta and my SIG.) Eliza, meanwhile, seemed suspicious. ¡°What if¡­ what if we get attacked?¡±

    Nakashima nodded. ¡°I understand. Apart from your word we will keep all our guests safe, you may need some other facts.¡± He pointed to a place above the door. ¡°Do you see that black dot?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± John and I said in unison.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Eliza said.

    ¡°That is actually a camera,¡± Nakashima said. ¡°It can see the entire approach. It is connected to an automated system that identifies both people and suspicious behavior. There are hundreds of other cameras that come in visible, infrared, and night vision variants. The system has around a hundred and fifty percent coverage of all public and restricted behavior. We also have metal, motion, and explosive detectors in strategic areas.¡±

    ¡°So,¡± Eliza said skeptically, ¡°there¡¯s no way to beat the system?¡±

    "Unless an intruder had inside help,¡± Nakashima said, ¡°No. Even then, it would still be difficult. We know, we spent much time trying to defeat it.¡± Maybe it was just me, but he sounded sad by how impenetrable the defenses of his ancestral home was.

    ¡°And if the power¡¯s cut?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°Well,¡± Nakashima said with a bow, ¡°if each of the four generators, seven batteries, and external lines were cut, they would have to wait until a windless night.¡± As he said that, I suddenly remembered that each section had its own windmill. It would also not be that difficult to replace the roof shingles with solar panels.

    ¡°What about cyber attacks?¡± Eliza asked. ¡°The system¡¯s right fancy. Sounds like you¡¯d ¡®ave to use a lot of computers.¡± I noted that she had calmed down enough to hand over her CZ-75. Also, this objection was somewhat half-hearted.

    ¡°The computers that control the security system are not connected to the internet,¡± Nakashima said. ¡°They are connected to the wireless, but they are set up to be extremely difficult to talk to. Nothing is unhackable, but it would be highly unlikely to hack this system successfully and not be detected.¡±

    Nakashima then led us inside. After a brief pause to check us in and store and label our weapons, he led us to the third floor. ¡°You two,¡± he said, indicating John and me, ¡°will have this one.¡± The door was opened to reveal a small servant¡¯s room that looked over the walls into the setting sun. On the floor were some tatami mats and two dressers. He then turned to Eliza. ¡°You will be rooming in the next room with¡­¡±

    ¡°Bai!¡± Eliza said. The rest of us looked up the corridor. Down the corridor, a short Asian girl with short hair came down the corridor, holding a mug of something hot.

    Bai smiled. ¡°Ah, Nakashima-san. You found my friends.¡± She made a bow that was modified to keep her tea from spilling. ¡°Thank you.¡±

    Nakashima bowed back. ¡°Not a problem, Feng-san. I shall leave you to catch up.¡±

    ¡°Very well,¡± Bai said. ¡°We do have much to discuss.¡± She waited a bit for him to leave, then she said, ¡°I don¡¯t know why I waited. He¡¯ll hear everything we say anyway.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± I said. ¡°You were good at finding weak spots in NIU¡¯s security.¡±

    ¡°There were two differences there,¡± Bai said, ushering us into her room. It was a carbon-copy of ours and right next door. ¡°The first is that NIU was designed as a school first, a social location second, and a secure area third. The other difference is that I had the fraternal order of janitors to help me.¡± She closed the door. ¡°Nakashima is the closest thing this place has to a janitor, and we are reasonably friendly, but he would never help me defeat the security system.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s probably why you respect him,¡± John said.

    ¡°One of them,¡± Bai said. ¡°He is also one of the few people here not intent on throwing out the baby along with the bathwater.¡± She paused, then asked, ¡°That is the correct phrase, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    "Yeah,¡± Eliza said. ¡°So, is ¡®e some kind of conservative or somethin¡¯?¡±

    Bai laughed. ¡°None of these people could be called conservative,¡± she said. ¡°The vast majority just want the Prophecy to be over. Also¡­ the Defenders used to be one of the most prominent Ninja clans.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± Eliza asked. ¡°Think they could show us some cool ninja tricks?¡±

    ¡°The key phrase,¡± Bai said, ¡°is ¡®used to.¡¯ When static emplacements began to fall out of favor for defensive maneuvers, Ninjas began to suffer an identity crisis. The final straw for the defenders came when they upgraded the security on this castle. It wasn¡¯t as formidable as it is today, but they couldn¡¯t get in undetected with traditional ninja techniques.¡±

    ¡°That¡­¡± Eliza said, ¡°must ¡®ave been rough.¡±

    ¡°It was,¡± Bai said. ¡°Now they¡¯re essentially ninjas who don¡¯t want to be ninjas. They¡¯ve turned to more modern techniques and seem to be intent on forgetting the old ways. After the Prophecy is completed, I think they¡¯ll dissolve.¡±

    ¡°That sounds¡­ so sad,¡± I said.

    Bai nodded. ¡°Yes, but it is understandable. There are people that I have to deal with in my group that¡­¡±

    Suddenly, we heard running. We listened as the feet got closer. They stopped outside our door and turned into a knock. ¡°Come in,¡± Bai said.

    The door opened, revealing Nakashima. ¡°The warpstone is almost spent,¡± he said. ¡°They¡¯re coming.¡±

 5.4: The Silent Mountain

    The entire compound came to life. A PA system began announcing something in Japanese, and the Defenders began to translate for the various guests. As I walked down the hall, I began to realize that most of the people in the castle were not even Japanese. Hell, I think I heard more French and Chinese. But mostly, I just heard helicopters taking off.

    We all gathered out in the second section. A group of British officers and Defender elders were trying to organize the mass of people. ¡°OI!¡± I heard one officer yell at two men in suits yelling at each other in obviously different languages, ¡°Stop arguing with each other and queue up!¡±

    "¡®Scuse me,¡± Eliza asked one of the several people jostling for position, ¡°where does the queue start?¡±

    ¡°The what?¡± the man asked. I couldn¡¯t place the accent, but he¡¯d obviously learned English from an American or Canadian.

    ¡°By queue,¡± I said, ¡°she means the line.¡±

    The man directed his look of confusion at me. ¡°Bloody ¡®ell,¡± Eliza said, ¡°this is already a right cock-up.¡±

    Eventually, we were given our assignments, a GPS and some flashlights. Then Eliza made us go back for our guns.

    ¡°You realize¡­¡± I said as I checked the light on my Berretta, ¡°that not only are we unlicensed to carry weapons in Japan, but that these are probably illegal as hell?¡±

    ¡°You also realize I¡¯m not bloody lettin¡¯ any of us go off t¡¯fight fuckin¡¯ ninjas with our bare hands?¡± Eliza said.

    ¡°You know,¡± Bai said, ¡°I am reasonably certain that this is supposed to be a rescue mission. If we treat it like anything else, it could easily become something else. If it does, this exercise will end badly.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re reasonably certain, eh?¡± Eliza asked. ¡°Well, they bloody aren¡¯t.¡± To emphasize the point, she nodded at a group of Defenders. ¡°Ever since they first contacted us, they¡¯ve been bloody vague on whether or not they think their harem of harridans are going to come back willingly. You¡¯re right, it¡¯s gonna get someone killed. I¡¯m just makin¡¯ sure it won¡¯t be someone I care about.¡±

    ¡°Ugh,¡± John said. ¡°I knew I had a bad feeling about all this.¡±

    Then and there, I made a vow to myself be as uninvolved as possible. I would just help everyone find these Heralds, then I would get the hell out of the country, preferably with John in tow. I recognized it was probably one I was going to break because I couldn¡¯t leave anything alone.

    As we headed to our zone, Eliza politely asked Bai, ¡°So¡­ ¡®ow¡¯s Li doin?¡± The sun was almost fully set, and we had our lights out. The mountain path was steep and the path was crumbly, so we had to watch our step.

    ¡°He¡­¡± Bai said, hesitating. Bai, in her own way, was just as loyal as Eliza, which was probably one of the reasons they were good friends. That probably made it hard to talk about her brother. Li, if I was being charitable, could be best described as a complete asshole. Bai, however, wouldn¡¯t ask Eliza for help, mostly because Li¡¯s behavior brought out the worst in Bai. ¡°He is always better behaved around our elders. How is your sister?¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s bein¡¯ difficult,¡± Eliza said. ¡°She told father an¡¯ me this entire thing was gonna be simple. She left out ¡®ow squirrely these Defender people are and her little merger idea.¡± She sighed. ¡°I¡¯m only a tiny bit away from calling father and ¡®aving ¡®im shut Char down.¡±

    ¡°Speaking of Charlotte,¡± I said, ¡°Remember when we were about to take off? There was that weird bit where she was looking out the window. What was that about?¡±

    ¡°Yeah¡­¡± John said. ¡°That was¡­ strange.¡±

    Eliza looked away. ¡°She saw mother¡­ her mother, I suppose, bangin¡¯ on the window, like she was tryin¡¯ to get in.¡±

    ¡°That is¡­ that is completely insane!¡± John said.

    "It isn¡¯t just her though,¡± I said. Everyone turned to look at me. ¡°Remember Richard? When the factory got set up, he¡­ came back. He was trying to warn me about something.¡±

    ¡°What the hell do you mean he ¡®came back?¡¯¡± John asked. ¡°What, did he have a chat?¡±

    ¡°Mostly he just came back and yelled random shit at me that made it seem like he¡¯d talked with a certain death goddess,¡± I said. ¡°Then he kind of disintegrated and blew away.¡±

    ¡°Are you sure he died?¡± Bai asked. ¡°There was a lot of confusion when¡­¡±

    ¡°I saw him die,¡± I said. ¡°His throat was cut right before my eyes, and it definitely severed all his major veins. I don¡¯t remember if we checked his pulse, but we didn¡¯t bother to bandage him. If he was alive when we left the elevator, he wouldn¡¯t have been for much longer.¡±

    ¡°A simple yes would have sufficed,¡± Bai said. Looking back on it, there might have been a bit of a teasing note in her voice, but I was so used to Eliza having a monopoly on that sort of thing.

    ¡°Just explaining my¡­ HOLY FUCKING SHIT!¡±

    Suddenly, something that looked like the Japanese equivalent of a WWII jeep appeared right in front of us. When I say ¡°right in front of us,¡± I mean one more step and I would have kicked it in the tire. The path was too small for it to fit comfortably, so it instantly began to slide down the mountain, crashing into vegetation and mostly knocking it out of the way. When the crashing finally stopped, we moved forwards and peered down the mountain.This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    ¡°Fuckin¡¯ ¡®ell,¡± Eliza said in amazement. ¡°Where¡¯d that come from?¡±

    ¡°It¡­ it¡¯s like a Jumper,¡± I said. Jumpers, as I had witnessed first hand, had a completely silent teleport. One second, they¡¯d be there, then they¡¯d be gone. Or five feet closer. One that I personally knew, Jennifer Kagemoto, liked to creep people out with that trick.

    ¡°That must mean the warpstone let loose,¡± Bai said.

    ¡°Getting back to that jeep,¡± John said, ¡°I can¡¯t even fucking see it. I¡¯m not sure if it¡¯s because the mountain is so steep or if it just went back to where it came from.¡±

    Eliza, considering this, shone her light onto a tree further up the path. ¡°If it went back to where it came from,¡± she said, ¡°then why¡¯s that there?¡±

    I followed the beam. There, lying on the ground, something metallic glinted. It hadn¡¯t been there before the car. We all edged towards it.

    ¡°That,¡± John said, ¡°looks like an assault rifle.¡± He picked it up. ¡°It¡¯s a Type 89. The Japanese use it in their military.¡± John was a fluent Japanese speaker. I had woken up multiple times to him yelling Japanese phrases in his sleep. ¡°Nice, yet pretty standard.¡±

    ¡°Let¡¯s get a bloody move on,¡± Eliza said. ¡°This place gives me the creeps.¡±

    We continued on. As we did, we saw more and more random detritus, including food packaging, weapons, gas cans, and even a few more cars. All were in mostly pristine condition. Occasionally, the radio would crackle and we would hear reports of people finding something particularly strange.

    Eventually, a German-accented voice called in. ¡°Hey, we think we found your Sensei.¡±

    ¡°Is he cooperating?¡± a voice asked. It sounded like the commander of the British forces.

    ¡°He¡¯s not doing much of anything,¡± the German said. ¡°Someone cut his bloody head off. It was recent, but not too recent. I¡¯d say he¡¯s been dead at most an hour, he hasn¡¯t even begun to attract flies. Also, the ground is pretty bloodless. The blighter must have been moved.¡±

    Another voice, this one Arabic, asked, ¡°What did it?¡±

    ¡°Some kind of sharp object,¡± the German said. ¡°Very sharp, and whoever did it must have been either very strong or had a lot of adrenalin. There¡¯s also a lot of stabbing and slash marks on the body, as well as quite a bit of blunt force trauma. Whoever killed him either didn¡¯t decapitate him on the first blow, or had some issues they wanted to work out.¡±

    After that, the bodies kept piling up. An hour or two later, five of the fifteen heralds had been found, all dead. None of them had died naturally. Three were hard to tell if they were suicides or murders, one definitely was murdered. The fifth was weird. We didn¡¯t hear any more than that over the radio.

    A little after that, Eliza said, ¡°Holy ¡®ell, these poor girls¡­ What the hell ¡®appened to ¡®em?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°if we really want to know that, we either have to find a survivor or a diary.¡±

    ¡°God¡­¡± John said, ¡°can you imagine what a survivor would be like? They¡¯ve lived five hundred years in a place you¡¯re supposed to just sleep in. I¡¯m not sure which¡¯d be worse: being with the same fifteen other people, or slowly watching them die.¡±

    ¡°I think,¡± Bai said, ¡°that if even a few of those deaths were murders, there must have been a bit of relief for the last one. Then they¡¯d start to go insane.¡±

    ¡°Maybe the last one¡¯d be ok,¡± John said.

    ¡°John,¡± I said, ¡°you do realize that studies show locking someone in solitary confinement is almost guaranteed to drive them crazy?¡±

    ¡°Almost,¡± John said, with forced hopefulness. ¡°Key word¡¯s almost.¡±

    Suddenly, Eliza stopped. ¡°Did you see that?¡± She seemed to be hyper-focused on something far ahead in the undergrowth.

    ¡°See what?¡± I asked. Eliza didn¡¯t respond. Instead, she broke into a frenzied sprint. ¡°Eliza!¡± I called out. ¡°Eliza, wait!¡±

    Eliza didn¡¯t listen, running with all the speed an adrenalin-frenzied Lupine could muster. In case you were wondering, there¡¯s a reason Lupines have a separate segment in the Olympics. Only Lupines can flat-out sprint for over two kilometers. She quickly pulled ahead of us, running further and further into the darkness. Soon, we would only be able to see her bobbing flashlight.

    I hurried even faster. That proved to be a mistake. The mountain trail, if you could even call it a trail, was crumbling from years, maybe centuries of erosion. The path had given out several times before, so I shouldn¡¯t have been surprised when it gave out under my feet.

    ¡°NATE!¡± John called out. He called out my name a second before I realized I was falling. Before I could draw in breath to ask what was wrong, I found myself tumbling down the slope. For God knows how long, I found myself bouncing down the mountain like a basketball.

    Eventually, I managed to grab onto a root. Looking up, I could see the pinprick of light that indicated John and Bai¡¯s position far above me. ¡°Nate!¡± John yelled. ¡°You ok?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I shouted back, ¡°I¡¯m¡­¡± I heard a creaking sound. In the dim light provided by the people above me, I couldn¡¯t see what I was holding on to. But I did realize I was lower than I was before. ¡°Oh fuck me¡­¡± There was a snap and I was falling again.

    ¡°NATE!¡± John yelled again. His voice got fainter and fainter as I fell.

    Finally, I stopped falling. That, and the fact that everything felt fine (well, reasonably fine for what had just happened,) was the good news. The bad news was that I had landed in something thorny. ¡°John!¡± I yelled, ¡°I¡¯m fine!¡±

    ¡°Jesus Christ, Nate!¡± John yelled. ¡°Where the fuck are you?¡±

    ¡°Bottom of the mountain!¡± I said. ¡°At least, that¡¯s what it feels like! And before you ask, I¡¯m fine!¡±

    ¡°Do you still have your light and radio?¡± Bai asked.

    ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°Light, radio, and GPS are all gone in the fall. I have my phone, but it¡¯s pretty dead.¡± I cursed my stupidity. Just because my cPhone could run for a month without dying didn¡¯t mean I shouldn¡¯t check it before I go out into the fucking wilderness. Especially when it only took a few seconds to charge. I then double checked my inventory for anything useful. ¡°I still have my pistols. One of them has a light on it.¡±

    ¡°Shine it up here,¡± Bai said. ¡°We need to know your position.¡±

    I did. It took John and Bai a good fifteen minutes to spot the weak underbarrel light on my Berretta. Finally, John said, ¡°Listen, Nate, stay right there. We¡¯re coming down to get you.¡±

    ¡°NO!¡± I called out. ¡°You have to find Eliza!¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re at the bottom of a hill,¡± John said. ¡°There¡¯s a good chance you¡¯ve got a concussion or a break. Eliza has her radio. When she snaps out of it, she can call us. If you suddenly go unconscious because your brain¡¯s been scrambled like an egg¡­¡±

    ¡°John,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯m fine. You know my position, you don¡¯t know Eliza¡¯s at all. Go find her!¡±

    John and Bai were silent for quite a while. Or maybe they were talking, and I was just too far away to hear them. Finally, John called down, ¡°Ok, we¡¯re going to find Eliza. What are you going to do?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m going to try to get back to the castle or meet up with another group,¡± I said. ¡°Don¡¯t worry about me. Find Eliza!¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± John said. ¡°We¡¯ll go do that. Be careful down there, ok?¡±

    I then saw the faint pinpricks of light that indicated John and Bai move off, presumably to find Eliza. Once they were out of sight, I got up. When I did, I realized I was nowhere near as fine as I thought I was. A current of pain shot through my left leg when I stood on it.

    When I was finally standing and leaning against a tree (I knew if I sat I would never be able to get up on my own power,) I took stock of my situation. I was in a strange forest-covered mountain with no map or GPS, no phone, and only one good leg. I did have two pistols with three spare mags each and a light. And the best thing? Nobody was trying to kill me.

    At least, that¡¯s what I thought. Then something in the bushes moved.

 5.5: Shadows

    Cautiously, I aimed my Berretta at the point where I had seen movement, my finger resting on the trigger guard instead of the trigger. ¡°Who¡¯s there?¡± I asked.

    Slowly, obviously so as not to startle me, a pale woman in a red kimono emerged from behind the tree. I quickly realized that she must have some form of albinism, because her facial structure was Asian and she seemed to only be sixteen, but her hair was pure white, and her irises were so blue as to nearly be white. The expression on her face seemed oddly cheerful and she carried herself with the hard-won grace of a dancer or martial artist. The cumulative effect was to render her completely otherworldly.

    ¡°Hello,¡± she said, ¡°I am Nakashima Mayu¡­ sorry, Mayu Nakashima. I believe you are looking for me.¡± Her voice was both very high-pitched and bubbly, yet oddly formal. Her English was extremely good, but I noticed that she said her ¡°L¡±s very carefully.

    Letting out my breath, I lowered my gun. The light pooled at Mayu¡¯s feet. I didn¡¯t want to holster the gun completely as I didn¡¯t want to be left in darkness. ¡°Hi,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m Nathan Jacobs. I¡¯m here to get you home.¡± Her breath caught audibly. Ignoring it, I added, ¡°do you have any idea what happened to your fellow heralds?¡±

    Mayu broke down. She went from graceful to collapsed on the ground, sobbing uncontrollably. She was repeating something over and over again, but she was sobbing so hard I couldn¡¯t be sure of the language.

    Instinctively, I moved to comfort her. However, I had forgotten two things. The first was that I was standing in a briar patch. The second was that my leg was busted up. My first step caused me to collapse, body-slamming the thicket of thorns.

    ¡°Oh no!¡± Mayu said. ¡°You¡¯re hurt!¡± I noticed that she sort of tripped over the contraction. She then began to help me out of the thicket.

    ¡°Boy, I¡¯m glad you¡¯re here,¡± I said as she got me supported on her shoulder. ¡°It is a little embarrassing, though. I mean, I¡¯m supposed to be rescuing you, right?¡± I felt Mayu stiffen right next to me. Crap, I forgot about the whole Japanese and honor thing. ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it,¡± I said, ¡°It¡¯s a good reminder that I¡¯m not as useful as I think I am.¡±

    ¡°But if your companions find out you were rescued by a girl¡­¡± Mayu said.

    ¡°Eliza¡¯ll get a kick out of it,¡± I said, ¡°but if anyone really has a problem with it, they either don¡¯t matter or I haven¡¯t been as effective as I think. Besides, it could be worse. I could have landed in some poison ivy.¡±

    In fact, I could almost hear Eliza cackle, ¡°Oi, Nate! You¡¯re supposed to save the damsel, not the other bloody way around!¡±

    ¡°Poison¡­ ivy¡­?¡± Mayu asked, seemingly tasting the words.

    ¡°Nasty weed I have back home,¡± I said. ¡°Instead of getting all these interesting cuts from the brambles, I could¡¯ve ended up with a mildly contagious rash.¡±

    ¡°I see,¡± Mayu said.

    In that instant, I realized how much I missed Eliza¡¯s teasing. She usually knew just how far to go to make me laugh. She also would have laughed at my jokes. Nothing was more gratifying than a pretty woman who laughed at your jokes.

    I then remembered about how Eliza had run off and began to worry again. ¡°Hey, Mayu,¡± I said, ¡°You¡¯re a Jumper, right?¡±

    ¡°Yes¡­¡± she said cautiously, obviously not knowing where I was going with that question.

    ¡°One of my friends is in trouble,¡± I said. ¡°She¡­ saw something¡­¡± I felt Mayu tense up next to me. ¡°I was wondering if you could go find her.¡±

    ¡°I am sorry, Mr. Jacobs,¡± Mayu said. Her voice was still cheerful, but there was an edge to it. ¡°I think that jumping, as you call it, would be a very bad idea tonight.¡±

    ¡°Why¡¯s that?¡± I asked.

    Mayu completely ignored the question. ¡°You know,¡± she said, ¡°all the information I have been given has made me quite curious about what¡¯s happened while I was gone. I know I will be busy, but I would like to sample some of the changes.¡±

    ¡°Mm,¡± I said noncommittally. I would have to tell the Defenders of Fuji about this conversation and how she avoided that particular topic. I also was a little concerned about the constantly cheery attitude. I had noticed the cheer in a lot of Japanese people I had met, but in Mayu it felt a lot more forced. Of course, as she talked about restarting her life, she slowly began to seem more genuine.

    ¡°Of course,¡± Mayu said, ¡°a lot of things will be inevitable. I¡¯ll have to drive, I¡¯ll have to use computers and¡­¡± She paused.

    ¡°What is it?¡± I asked. As I turned around to face her, I swear her expression changed from a frown to her permanent smile. It was dark, but I couldn¡¯t really tell.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± she said cheerfully. ¡°I¡¯m not sure how much I should tell you. After all, you aren¡¯t part of the Defenders.¡±

    I doubted I¡¯d be able to get any more out of her, so I asked, ¡°So, do you know how to get back to Kage keep?¡±

    In response, Mayu took out a hand-held GPS unit that she had tucked in her belt. ¡°Yes,¡± she said. ¡°We should be coming up on a road soon that will lead to the castle.¡± She tucked the GPS back in her belt. ¡°It is very useful, this device, but I do not think I should rely on it.¡± She sighed. ¡°I did not know how badly I¡¯d need it. This mountain has changed much in five hundred years. I expected the trees to be different, but I think the land itself has changed. I believe the process is called erosion.¡±Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

    We pushed through a branch and the light from my pistol illuminated a road sign. ¡°Hey,¡± I said, ¡°I think I remember this stretch of road.¡±

    ¡°That make sense,¡± Mayu said. ¡°If you have come in from the western side of the country, you would have come through here.¡±

    Suddenly, I heard a rustling sound. I scanned around, using my pistol¡¯s light to illuminate the underbrush. At first, I didn¡¯t see anything out of the ordinary. Then I realized one of the trees had something oddly colored behind it. It looked like an arm covered in high-tech armor. The arm belonged to someone huge. The last time I had seen armor like that, I had been in North Korea. The person who had been wearing it had been able to survive the entire street above him crushing him, the explosion that caused it, and at least one magazine from a G-3 at near-contact range before finally dying.

    ¡°Nathan¡­¡± Mayu asked, ¡°what is it?¡±

    ¡°Mayu,¡± I said, ¡°on my left hip is a SIG-Sauer P-229. Do you know how to work it?¡± As I said this, we continued to walk down the path. I avoided looking at where the arm was.

    ¡°I think so,¡± she said. ¡°Is it like a Minebea P9?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, recognizing that the P9 was basically a SIG clone, ¡°but it¡¯s got more of a kick and three more shots. Anyway, I want you to take it and run.¡±

    ¡°Eh? You think something¡¯s out there?¡± Mayu asked.

    Before I could answer, a familiar voice muffled by a helmet said, ¡°Nathan, you¡¯ll have to do better than that.¡±

    My breath caught. Right after I had emptied my first mag into his face, that is exactly what the heavily armored Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldier had told me. Except that then he hadn¡¯t known my name.

    ¡°RUN!¡± I yelled at Mayu. ¡°FUCKING RUN!¡± With that, I turned around and began shooting at the tree where the soldier, I think that kind was called a Berserker, was hiding.

    I turned around to see Mayu looking at me strangely. ¡°Nathan,¡± she asked, staring at me like I was crazy, ¡°there¡¯s nothing there.¡±

    I was about to argue, then I looked at the tree I thought the Berserker had been hiding behind. Not only was the arm gone, but I now realized how small the tree was. Nari couldn¡¯t have hidden behind it, let alone someone as freakishly huge as a Berserker. I lowered my Berretta, my hands shaking and the barrel smoking.

    ¡°Nathan?¡± Mayu asked. ¡°Are you alright?¡±

    I took a deep breath. Before I could answer, the Berserker asked, ¡°Well, Nathan, what are you going to do?¡± That was what the Berserker had asked after my first burst, the only difference was that now he knew my name. I turned around to where his voice was now coming from. Nothing but trees.

    I took a deep breath. It wasn¡¯t the same Berserker. It couldn¡¯t be. I had seen his helmet shattered by my bullets, and the head and brain inside reduced to bloody hamburger. He couldn¡¯t have survived. He couldn¡¯t. Right?

    ¡°Nathan?¡± Mayu asked.

    I took a deep breath. All of a sudden, I realized that Mayu hadn¡¯t heard or seen any of the things I had. ¡°There¡¯s something going on here,¡± I said. ¡°The most likely explanation is that I¡¯m going insane, but other people seem to be going insane in the exact same way.¡±

    Mayu, who had been edging away from me, asked, ¡°How are you going insane?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m¡­¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯m seeing people who should be dead.¡±

    ¡°Who did you see?¡± Mayu asked.

    ¡°Someone I killed,¡± I said. ¡°But it could be¡­ it could be one of his brothers. Let¡¯s just say he¡¯s got a big family.¡± I paused. ¡°If his family¡¯s here¡­ well, it isn¡¯t just me who¡¯s going to be in trouble.¡±

    ¡°I see!¡± Mayu said, brightening at the possibility of an invasion. She then walked back to support me again. ¡°If that is true, then we need to get back to the castle. Let¡¯s do our best, Mr. Jacobs!¡±

    We then began to walk forwards. After a while, I said, ¡°Before I was cut off from my group, we heard that some search parties found some of the people you went in with.¡± Part of the reason I said was to strike up some conversation, part of it was to gauge her reaction. Mostly, though, I was curious. Of the sixteen people who had gone into that weird pocket dimension, the only survivor I knew of was Mayu. Of the six others to have been found, two had definitely been murdered, three could be either murder or suicide, and one apparently was ¡°just weird.¡±

    ¡°Who did you find?¡± Mayu asked. Her cheer was much more¡­ dissonant somehow.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°I only found you. And the people on the radio didn¡¯t say any names.¡± I paused, debating how much to say. ¡°We did find your Sensei and someone whose death¡­ raised a lot of questions apparently. There were a few others, all dead.¡±

    ¡°I see,¡± Mayu said, as if she was just discussing the weather instead of the violent deaths of the people she had known for five hundred years.

    ¡°Do¡­ do you know if there¡¯s anyone else alive?¡± I asked. ¡°I mean, if they¡¯re still alive¡­¡±

    ¡°They aren¡¯t.¡± I shuddered. The way Mayu had said that was too casual for my liking.

    ¡°When¡­¡± I asked, ¡°when did the last one die?¡±

    ¡°When is a very relative term,¡± Mayu said, putting her finger to her chin and staring off into space to contemplate. ¡°Time there went¡­ differently. It was slower. At first we thought that it went at half-speed as compared to the real world. I think the second accident happened when we realized that we were falling farther behind.¡±

    ¡°Uhh¡­¡± I said, trying to process this. I somehow doubted that any death that happened there was an accident. My guess was that that death would¡¯ve been a suicide. Finally, I asked, ¡°What happened to your sensei? From what I heard, it seemed that he was murdered.¡±

    ¡°We feel that murder is the wrong term,¡± Mayu said. It took me a bit to realize that we meant everyone in the pocket dimension. ¡°We were selected to be in there for five hundred years by others. They should have considered we might be in there longer. They should have considered our personalities as well as our skills. They should have considered the safety of the place. Therefore, we prefer words like ¡®accident¡¯ or ¡®mistake.¡¯¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°more power to you, but I think that your bosses might¡­¡±

    ¡°What is it, Mr. Jacobs?¡± Mayu asked. I could understand why she was concerned. I had suddenly stopped and had begun to stare at what probably appeared to her to be nothing. Even more alarming, I was aiming my gun at the spot and my breathing was becoming rapid and shallow.

    ¡°He¡¯s back,¡± I said through my gasps for breath. There, standing between two trees was a large dark shape. It was humanoid, but too big to be fully human, even if you accounted for its armor. The huge shape stood just out of range of my pistol light¡¯s range, but I could see it had one glowing red eye.

    ¡°Mr. Jacobs¡­¡± Mayu said, obviously concerned as I shrugged off her arm and began to walk towards the giant.

    ¡°COME ON, YOU FUCKER!¡± I yelled, my vision blackening. ¡°COME ON! YOU WANNA END THIS? LET¡±S END THIS!¡± As I roared, I began to fire.

    The dark shape didn¡¯t even register my shots. In my state, it was perfectly possible that they were all missing. Of course, knowing Deet armor, it was also possible that they were all hitting and just not doing anything.

    ¡°Finish it?¡± the shape asked when my gun clicked. He then stepped out into the light. I could finally see his helmet. It had been smashed open by rifle fire. My rifle. I could see bits of brain. I fell to my knees, my vision darkening. ¡°I just wanted you to know what you¡¯re up against¡­ Killer.¡± He said my nickname in a way that was both accusation and threat.

    In that instant, I knew. Richard, Charlotte¡¯s mother, and this Berserker¡­ they were all the same. They were dead and buried, but not gone. With that, I passed out, Mayu¡¯s panicked voice slowly fading out.

 5.6: Nightmares

    I woke up in a stone room that had been retrofitted as a hospital. The flickering lights were somehow both dim and harsh, and the colors were weirdly muted. I was lying on a bed. To my right, there was a stone wall. To my left was a green and white checkered curtain. In front of me was another bed.

    The thing in it was slightly strange. I sat up to get a better look. It seemed to be some kind of charred meat resting the pillow. Then, I realized that it wasn¡¯t just on the pillow. There was more of it under the blanket.

    The meat-thing opened its eyes. ¡°Hey, Killer,¡± it said with a familiar voice. ¡°Glad I could catch you.¡±

    ¡°Jeong!¡± I yelled.

    Suddenly, I realized I was awake. Almost immediately, I realized I had been asleep and lying down. Weirdly enough, I was still in the same room, except now the lighting was much better and the room was full. Across from me, instead of a charred corpse of a comrade, a body bag lay on the bed. In the rest of the room, people were working hurriedly.

    I looked around. Again, stone wall on my right, curtain on my left. However, there was one difference. Eliza was sitting on a chair between me and the curtain. ¡°¡®Oo the fuck¡¯s Jeong?¡± she asked. Her fox ears were drooping and her eyes were baggy and bloodshot.

    ¡°One of the guys who went with me to Korea,¡± I said.

    ¡°Did you¡­ did you see ¡®im out in the woods?¡± Eliza asked. There was an odd look in her eye that I couldn¡¯t quite place. ¡°Was that why you ¡®ad your attack.¡±

    ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°I saw someone else.¡± Then I realized why she was asking. ¡°Who did you see?¡±

    Eliza¡¯s eyes widened for a moment. Then she laughed. ¡°You got me pegged, ¡®aven¡¯t you?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯ve just seen dead people for the third time. Plus, I saw Charlotte¡¯s¡­ episode, I guess you could call it. I guess I know the symptoms now.¡±

    Charlotte nodded. ¡°Yeah. You would.¡± She paused for a while. Eventually, she took a deep breath, and said. ¡°I saw me mum and da. My¡­ well, I¡¯d feel guilty sayin¡¯ they¡¯re me real parents, seein¡¯ ¡®ow good the BW¡¯s ¡®ave been to to me¡­ my biological parents, I guess you¡¯d call ¡®em. Then I saw something run after them.¡±

    ¡°So you chased after them,¡± I said.

    ¡°You¡¯d do the same,¡± she said, somewhat defensively.

    ¡°Not denying that.¡±

    She paused. ¡°Would you¡­ would you ¡®ave let me fall?¡± she asked. ¡°Y¡¯know, just kept runnin¡¯ and not looked back?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know¡­¡± I said. ¡°Hell, if you¡¯d reacted the way I did, I wouldn¡¯t have even heard you fall.¡±

    ¡°John called your name, remember?¡± Eliza said. ¡°I didn¡¯t even turn around. Just kept runnin¡¯.¡±

    ¡°Oh.¡± I considered this for a moment. ¡°I¡­ I don¡¯t blame you. You¡¯re¡­¡± I tried to think of a way to describe her Lupine instincts without offending her. ¡°¡­well, you. I would¡¯ve done it differently, but I¡¯m me.¡±

    ¡°Very eloquent,¡± Eliza said, a bit of her humor flashing up.

    ¡°I was going to say more,¡± I said. ¡°All this good stuff about how I didn¡¯t think you needed forgiveness and blah blah blah, but you just had to ruin the mood.¡± I pouted for effect.

    Eliza¡¯s smirk widened in appreciation. ¡°Alright, you made your point.¡± Then, she got serious. ¡°Anyway, what happened down the mountain?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°you know I met Mayu, right?¡±

    ¡°God, yes,¡± Eliza said.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± I said. ¡°There¡¯s a relatively new American saying¡­¡±

    ¡°Is there any other kind?¡± Eliza asked teasingly.

    I continued, ignoring her. ¡°¡­basically, don¡¯t stick your dick in crazy.¡±

    ¡°You think she¡¯s crazy?¡± Eliza asked. ¡°I¡¯ll admit, she seemed a bit off t¡¯me, but so does everyone else in this bloody museum.¡±Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

    ¡°You should talk to her about her time in that pocket dimension,¡± I said. ¡°She¡­ she doesn¡¯t come across as innocent. Speaking of that, did they find all the bodies yet?¡±

    ¡°Yeah¡­¡± Eliza said. ¡°Poor girl¡­ If she really is mad, can¡¯t say that I blame ¡®er. Five ¡®undred years¡­¡±

    ¡°She said that time moved at half-speed there,¡± I said. ¡°She also said it got steadily slower. Still¡­ I don¡¯t think she came out of there without some blood on her hands. I also think some serious shit went down, and she didn¡¯t cope with it too well.¡±

    ¡°If she did,¡± Eliza said, ¡°I wouldn¡¯t blame ¡®er, poor girl. Our test subject was completely stark raving when ¡®e came back, and that wasn¡¯t even a tenth of the time those girls spent in there.¡± She shuddered.

    For a while, we talked about how we¡¯d spent our night. It turned out that the only reason Eliza hadn¡¯t been committed was because a bunch of other people had been seeing dead people. ¡°I mean,¡± Eliza said about that, ¡°It¡¯s bad enough I¡¯m goin¡¯ crazy, now other people are losin¡¯ it in the exact same way? Fuckin¡¯ ¡®ell, oo¡¯s gonna lock me up?¡± We both laughed.

    Eventually, I had to ask, ¡°So, what¡¯s with all the body bags? Are they all the bodies of the heralds?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Eliza said. ¡°This German bloke¡¯s cuttin¡¯ ¡®em up, tryin¡¯ t¡¯figure out ¡®ow they bought it. Kind of interested in what he¡¯ll find.¡±

    ¡°Not much,¡± an elderly man with a German accent and lab coat said as he walked into the room, pulling a stretcher behind him. ¡°For instance,¡± he said, ¡°the one I¡¯ve done my most recent preliminary on had her throat cut. Was it by her own hand? Did someone else help her? And what was the motivation? None of it can be answered.¡±

    Nakashima (the caretaker of the castle) followed him, pushing the stretcher. ¡°More importantly,¡± he said, ¡°what are we going to do about this ice cream now that we can¡¯t fit it in the freezer?¡± As he spoke, he indicated the three cartons of ice cream on the stretcher.

    ¡°If you got any peanut butter cup or chocolate,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯ll take it. Maybe Eliza and I will split it.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re bloody right we¡¯ll split it,¡± Eliza said indignantly.

    ¡°We have cookie dough, vanilla, and chocolate,¡± Nakashima said.

    After a brief discussion between Eliza and I, we relived them of the cookie dough and chocolate, plus a few spoons. Before Nakashima and the coroner could leave, I quickly asked, ¡°Hey, Nakashima, I noticed that you and Mayu have the same family name. Any relation?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure,¡± Nakashima said. ¡°I¡¯ll have to check my family tree. It is likely, though.¡±

    ¡°Cool,¡± I said. ¡°Just curious. Anyway, how is Mayu doing?¡±

    Nakashima had a strange look in his eyes as he replied. ¡°I¡¯m not sure. They have the normal caretakers off their shifts and have brought in agents from other cells.¡± I suddenly realized the strange look in his eyes wasn¡¯t directed at me, but at his own organization. ¡°I am sure everything is fine, though.¡± He bowed. ¡°Now, if you will excuse me, I must see if I can get rid of this last carton of ice cream. We must get not let it go to waste.¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± the German coroner said. Despite his politeness, I could tell he wasn¡¯t convinced by Nakashima¡¯s reassurances.

    When they left, Eliza said, ¡°Fuckin¡¯ ¡®ell, this shit is getting¡¯ too political for my likin.¡¯¡±

    ¡°Yeah¡­¡± I said. After a moment, I added, ¡°Could you tell your sister I¡¯d like to get out on the next flight?¡±

    John walked in suddenly. ¡°Dude, are you serious? We finished the mission ahead of schedule, and we¡¯re in Japan! It¡¯s time to have fun.¡±

    Eliza and I looked at him. ¡°What?¡± John asked. ¡°It¡¯s over. Sixteen people went into the pocket dimension, sixteen people matching their descriptions were found. We won. Now, we take some souvenirs and bring them home.¡±

    ¡°I honestly am not sure what to think,¡± Bai said. ¡°While I would like to agree with John, this all seems mismanaged. They wanted people to protect and shape the Architect, and they ended up with only one, whose sanity is apparently questionable. They wanted the survivors found, so they brought in a large force that deeply indebted them. Then their target walks in, making their expensive force completely unnecessary. What on Earth are they thinking?¡±

    ¡°Maybe some of the Defenders didn¡¯t want the Heralds to survive?¡± I suggested. ¡°If they got us all amped up, we could take care of a few of them. Then they wouldn¡¯t draw suspicion on themselves.¡±

    ¡°But that¡¯s¡­¡± Eliza said, ¡°that¡¯s horrendously cowardly!¡±

    A voice scoffed from the doorway. ¡°I¡¯ll say. These so-called ¡®Defenders of Fuji¡¯ have lost their way.¡± In walked an arrogant male version of Bai.

    Bai, barely containing her eye-roll, said, ¡°Li has some strong opinions about our hosts. He is not hesitant about sharing them.¡±

    ¡°Nor should I be,¡± Li said. ¡°After all, they claim to be experts at subterfuge. How is that true when they lost half our order to the Ministry of Security?¡±

    Eliza, John and I stared at Li in shock. This was news to us. We had sort of assumed everything was normal with Bai and her organization.

    ¡°First off,¡± Bai said patiently, ¡°Most of them were probably lost before we left the country. Second, this is not the thing you tell outsiders.¡±

    ¡°I apologize,¡± Li said as unapologetically as possible. ¡°I assumed you would tell your boyfriend.¡± He turned to us. ¡°Mark my words, these fools are declining. Their elders are senile and uncaring, their youth are either incompetent or jaded, and there are not enough people in between.¡±

    ¡°Why are you here?¡± Bai asked.

    ¡°You¡¯re needed.¡± Li glanced at Eliza, then said, ¡°Please come. The elders want to brief us.¡± Bai nodded and walked out. Li bowed respectfully to Eliza. The reason he was so polite was the last time he had been rude to his sister in Eliza¡¯s presence, Li had not had a good time. Eliza nodded coolly in response.

    We then waited in silence until Eliza felt that they had left. ¡°Fuckin¡¯ prick¡­¡± she muttered darkly.

    ¡°Ok,¡± John said, ¡°You know how I was optimistic earlier? Screw that, we¡¯re all going to kill each other if we stay here too much longer.¡± He sighed. ¡°Every single time I say things are going well¡­¡±

    ¡°Yeah, mate,¡± Eliza agreed blandly. ¡°Every bloody time. Could you just stop?¡±

 5.7: Trip Around It

    ¡°Oi, Nate,¡± Eliza said as we drove to the nearest city, ¡°what¡¯cha readin¡¯?¡±

    I looked up. ¡°It¡¯s PP99. It¡¯s about this weird Psionic phenomena that happened in 1999. It came out last year because something similar happened.¡± We were driving down the road to the nearest city. I was surprised because Eliza almost never talked while driving. I think it was a consequence of how seriously Eliza took guard duty, her earlier bad experiences with driving, and the fact that we were driving her sister¡¯s hundred-thousand dollar car. ¡°You know how Psionic energy exists on a spectrum that¡¯s parallel to electromagnetic energy?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Eliza said. ¡°Just like that theoretical spectrum that Jumpers use to jump.¡± I noticed that her eyes rarely focused on just one thing and her ears were constantly rotating. It was weird how she was simultaneously relaxed and alert.

    ¡°Didn¡¯t know about that one,¡± I said. ¡°Where did you hear that?¡±

    ¡°Jen,¡± Eliza said. That made sense. Before Mayu, Jenifer Kagemoto was the only Jumper we had access to. ¡°At least, at first. Then I Googled, and got a bunch of academic journals that said the same thing, just like complete chunguses.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°I will have to check that out. Anyway, apparently in 1999, the background level of background Psionic energy just spiked.¡±

    ¡°So it doubled?¡± Eliza asked. ¡°Like, just randomly?¡±

    ¡°You got the ¡®just randomly¡¯ part,¡± I said. ¡°But¡­¡± I struggled to remember the exact phrase. I could tell that if Eliza wasn¡¯t on guard mode, she would have turned to cock her head at me in curiosity. ¡°The book says that the electromagnetic spectrum equivalent is like going to sleep in a place with abnormally low background radiation to waking up in the core of a nuclear reactor that¡¯s in the process of melting down.¡±

    ¡°And¡­ and where did this happen again?¡± Eliza asked, understandably worried.

    ¡°It was a worldwide phenomenon,¡± I said. ¡°The interesting thing is how quickly people ignored it. This guy was a scientist studying it, and he had this anecdote about how quickly it was forgotten. This was in ninety-nine, and apparently there were only fifty places you could go to even measure ambient Psionic levels. He was being interviewed by someone at a cable news channel, and when they asked what all this meant. The author had no clue, so the anchor just listed a bunch of scenarios. Each and every time, the author either said he had no clue or dismissed it outright. Eventually, the anchor just got bored.¡±

    ¡°Was it an American one?¡± Eliza asked with a good deal of wide-eyed faux-innocence.

    ¡°Not sure,¡± I said, after failing to find a light-hearted way of reminding her about the existence of things like the Daily Mail or the Sun. ¡°But he talked a lot about how most people seemed to lose interest. He was planning on releasing the book two years ago, but then there was another spike.¡±

    ¡°Does ¡®e know about the Dragon¡¯s Teeth?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°Ironically,¡± I said, ¡°he did theorize that this new spike could be caused by a massive influx of new Psychics. He just never once mentions the possibility of an army of Psychic clones.¡±

    ¡°Oo¡¯s the author?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°Doctor James Breyer,¡± I said.

    "I¡¯ll ¡®ave to check ¡®im out,¡± Eliza said. ¡°Always loved non-fiction. Especially the sciencey stuff.¡±

    ¡°So, what about you?¡± I asked. ¡°You read anything good?¡±

    We were almost to the city. The trees, farms, and mountain roads had slowly turned into houses and small buildings. Now and then, we¡¯d occasionally see areas that were more urban. If the architecture was different, I could almost think I was back home in New England. The only problem was it made Eliza even less focused on me.

    ¡°Oh, what?¡± she asked, somewhat distractedly. ¡°Oh, yeah. Things I¡¯m readin¡¯. Well, this science bloke I follow¡¯s been doin¡¯ a lot of posts about the incomin¡¯ spaceship. That distress signal it sent?¡±

    ¡°I remember John talking about it a bit,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m just not sure if I remember the gist. Something about it trying to translate its message and access the internet, I guess?¡± I paused. ¡°Please tell me someone didn¡¯t give it access to the internet.¡±

    ¡°God, no!¡± Eliza said. ¡°As the guy said, ¡®Everybody there has watched Terminator.¡¯ You¡¯d gotta be a complete idiot to do that.¡± She didn¡¯t sound too convinced, though. ¡°Anyway, they¡¯ve been watching the ship, and it¡¯s moving faster than they thought. The poor bastards break down from time to time, so we¡¯ve no clue when to put the kettle on, so to speak.¡±

    As Eliza pulled us into a parking space, I said, ¡°Is it just me, or do I find the fact we¡¯re being visited by an alien race extremely disturbing?¡±

    ¡°Suppose so,¡± Eliza said, ¡°but it¡¯d be kinda funny if we spent all our time actin¡¯ like this place¡¯s the most important place in the universe, then some¡­ I dunno, feathered avian bastards just casually blow the entire planet up, wouldn¡¯t it? Anyway, I think this is the place.¡±

    ¡°You know,¡± I said, as she parallel-parked outside a caf¨¦, ¡°you have a sick sense of humor.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Eliza said, turning off the engine and putting the car into park, ¡°but it¡¯s better¡¯n bein¡¯ mental, innit?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said as we got out, ¡°you may have a point.¡±

    After I managed to get through enough Japanese to order our drinks and pastries, I sat down across from Eliza. The table itself was near enough to the window to see out, but at sort of an angle so that a shooter would have a terrible angle. ¡°You didn¡¯t tell me that this was a maid caf¨¦,¡± I said nonchalantly.

    ¡°It isn¡¯t a maid caf¨¦,¡± Eliza said, an innocent expression on her face. ¡°There¡¯s also butlers.¡±

    I tried to look stern. Then I broke into giggles. Eliza quickly joined in. ¡°So,¡± I finally asked, ¡°did you come here for the eye candy or to test me for secret fetishes?¡±The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

    Eliza suddenly sobered up. ¡°Actually¡­¡± she said, ¡°I came ¡®ere mostly ¡®cause I wanted to get away from everyone else at the¡­ at the room, y¡¯know?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re going to be staying here a while aren¡¯t we?¡± I asked.

    Eliza nodded. ¡°Yeah,¡± she said. ¡°Charlotte just says she wants to know what¡¯s going to happen with Mayu an¡¯ all, but if she doesn¡¯t like what¡¯s gonna happen to ¡®er, well¡­¡± She trailed off, then looked at my face. ¡°Nate?¡± she asked. ¡°Is something wrong?¡±

    I tried to keep my tone casual. ¡°The maid I took my order from? She took a phone call recently. After that, she¡¯s been staring at us, then at the road.¡± My Japanese course last semester might not have sunk in, but my counter-surveillance course had.

    ¡°D¡¯you think it could be because¡­¡± Eliza said, pointing to her ears. Then she said, ¡°No¡­ she¡¯d have to¡¯ve been staring before the phone call for me to believe that.¡±

    Pretending to focus on Eliza, I watched the maid in question duck back into the kitchen. She came back out with a butler. The butler had a tray with food and drinks on it. They would their way through the tables that were full of people. Despite my semester of Japanese, the only thing I was able to make out was ¡°Bon appetite!¡±

    ¡°Thanks,¡± Eliza said. ¡°But can we get this to go?¡±

    Instantly, the maid and butler began hurriedly trying to convince us to stay. I suddenly realized why they weren¡¯t making sense: they were speaking in English and butchering it so badly I couldn¡¯t even recognize what they were saying. Eventually, I could make out that they were saying something along the lines of, ¡°Your friend is coming!¡±

    ¡°Our¡­ our friend?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Hai!¡± the maid said. ¡°Yes! Your friendu is coming! Pureasu be patient!¡±

    ¡°And¡­ which friend is this?¡± Eliza asked. ¡°We have so many friends, especially in Japan.¡±

    Our servers picked up on Eliza¡¯s sarcasm and became even more flustered. ¡°Kagemoto Jennifer-sama is your honored friend!¡± the butler said, bowing deeply. ¡°She is coming! Pureasu wait for her!¡±

    Jennifer Kagemoto. I never knew her reach extended outside of Massachusetts. That¡­ was not what I wanted. How the fucking hell had she managed to track us? From the expression on Eliza¡¯s face, I could tell she was wondering the same thing. Then horrific realization dawned on her face.

    ¡°We¡¯ll wait for her,¡± I told our servers. They bowed and thanked us, then scurried their way back to the kitchen. I turned back to Eliza. ¡°Do you have an idea how she managed to find out where we are?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Eliza said. ¡°When we parked in her bloody garage for ¡®er bloody New Year¡¯s party. She coulda gotten one of ¡®er minions to get a GPS tracker on the Maybach. If she got it hooked up to an electrical cable, it could run as long as the car.¡±

    ¡°Surely¡­¡± I said, checking to make sure my Berretta and Sig were with me and I hadn¡¯t forgotten them, ¡°surely you had somebody look at the engine. How did they¡­¡± I didn¡¯t think I¡¯d need either of them, but with Jennifer I wasn¡¯t confident I wouldn¡¯t.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Eliza said, ¡°but I¡¯m going to bloody rip that shit apart when we get back.¡± She looked up. ¡°¡®Eads up, I think that¡¯s ¡®er.¡±

    I looked out the window. Right behind the Maybach, a blue Cadillac Escalade was pulling in. When it was fully parked, four people got out. The two of them in the front were Asian, one a woman with a burned face, the other a burly man who was extremely intimidating except for what must have been a terrible case of acne in his youth. The two in the rear seemed less professional. The male was obviously black, the female could have been one of any number of ethnicities or a mix. They all wore suits and sunglasses.

    The four scanned the area for a few moments. Finally, as if from some signal, three doors closed in unison. Simultaneously, the woman in the rear helped out someone from the rear seat while her fellow bodyguards watched for danger.

    The person who emerged from the Escalade was a graceful woman about the same age as Eliza and I. She wore a blue Patriots hat, tightly-fitting Red Sox Matsuzaka shirt, dark blue jeans, and black thigh-high boots. Her gold eyes confidently surveyed her surroundings, pausing only to smile at us. Yup, I thought to myself, that¡¯s Jennifer, all right.

    ¡°So,¡± Eliza said casually as the two females in Jennifer¡¯s retinue followed her inside, ¡°at least half of ¡®er goons are professionals. D¡¯you think she¡¯s got any Paras?¡±

    ¡°She leads a team of supervillains,¡± I said. ¡°Those guys are probably a mix of inventors and serious Paras. Those two that look like amateurs? There¡¯s gotta be a reason she keeps them around.¡±

    ¡°Fuckin¡¯ ¡®ell¡­¡± Charlotte said. ¡°Well, let¡¯s just see what she wants.¡±

    As Eliza said this, the door opened and Jennifer and her two female bodyguards walked in. The woman with the burned face leaned against the wall, gaining a commanding view of the entire caf¨¦. She appeared perfectly still, but I could tell she was calmly scanning the room. The other woman (or maybe girl would be more appropriate, something about her screamed ¡°teenager¡± to me) was taking in the entire room like she had never seen anything like this before.

    ¡°Lydia,¡± Jennifer said as she sat down between Eliza and me, her cold voice warming with amusement, ¡°don¡¯t gawp.¡±

    ¡°Sorry, Jen,¡± Lydia said, smiling awkwardly. ¡°I¡¯ll get back to¡­ you know.¡± She then straightened up and tried her best to be intimidating. I didn¡¯t need the theatrics. If she was on first-name terms with Jen, the chances were pretty high that she was on Jen¡¯s supervillain squad.

    Jen, meanwhile turned to us. ¡°Nathan! Eliza!¡± she said to each of us, giving her predatory smile. ¡°So nice to see you two! I had no idea you¡¯d be here.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure I buy that,¡± Eliza said. ¡°Where¡¯d you put the bloody tracker?¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± Jen said. ¡°I¡¯m surprised. And hurt. What would ever make you think such a thing of me?¡±

    Eliza and I both raised our eyebrows in unison. ¡°Weren¡¯t you the one ¡®oo pretty much bragged you were the slipperiest bastard I¡¯d ever miss?¡±

    ¡°Sadly,¡± Jennifer said, ¡°I¡¯m definitely my father¡¯s daughter and I have the DNA tests to prove it. But yes, I am slippery. And there is a bug in the steering column.¡±

    ¡°Just one?¡± I asked.

    Jen laughed. ¡°I¡¯ll let you find that out for yourself,¡± she said. ¡°It¡¯ll be good for you and amusing for me. Lydia and Andrew made and placed them, so you might have to strip it down to the bolts. Hell, you may even have to dissect the bolts themselves.¡±

    Eliza clutched her head in her hands and groaned at this news. I turned to Jennifer and asked, ¡°So, may I ask why we¡¯re meeting here? We were previously in Boston, you had ample opportunity to meet us there.¡±

    ¡°To be fair,¡± Jennifer said, ¡°you didn¡¯t seem to want anything to do with me.¡±

    ¡°That isn¡¯t stopping you now,¡± Eliza said rather pointedly.

    ¡°Well,¡± Jennifer said, ¡°Lydia happened to note that you were nearby. When I checked, your car seemed to have stopped in what I first thought to be the middle of nowhere. I then did some digging of local news, and found that you were staying at what appeared to be the base of operations for a British military search and rescue training exercise. We also noticed that several rental vehicles had parked there, most loaned out to fellow foreigners. This, understandably, has piqued my interest.¡±

    ¡°And you decided to just up and fly over ¡®ere?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°No.¡± Jennifer said.

    ¡°Trust me,¡± I said, ¡°this is not the kind of thing you want to get involved in. Hell, I¡¯m busy trying to get out.¡±

    Instantly, I realized my mistake. ¡°Really?¡± Jennifer said brightly. ¡°I can help with that, if you¡¯re interested.¡±

    ¡°No thanks,¡± I said. ¡°It¡¯s¡­ basically, it was kind of a treasure hunt, except no one seems to want it. We found the treasure, now people are arguing about what to do with it. We¡¯re just hoping we can get permission to go home sooner rather than later. How about you?¡±

    ¡°Mmm.¡± Jen said. ¡°My business here is¡­ a bit more personal. My brother¡¯s killers might have come from here and I¡¯m looking to have a talk with them.¡±

    ¡°Well¡­¡± I said, ¡°I guess everyone needs closure. I¡¯d offer to help, but I kind of want to be able to come back here someday.¡±

    Jen nodded. ¡°Of course. In the meantime, let me show you some interesting spots. That is, assuming you have some free time?¡±

    Eliza and I looked at each other. Finally, Eliza said, ¡°I guess. Not like we¡¯ve got anything else to do.¡±

 5.8 A Modest Proposal

    We got back to the castle very late at night. The day had been very interesting, as well as somewhat nerve-wracking. After all, not only had we been sharing a car with a Jumper, but a Fire Elemental (Jen told us when we asked) and whatever Lydia was (Jen said she was an inventor, but didn¡¯t mention her specialty,) plus Jen¡¯s other two minions following us in the Escalade. Of Jennifer¡¯s two minions in the car with us, I had no idea which was scarier. I guessed the one papers back home called Hoka (which meant arson in Japanese,) so I had a pretty good idea of how to deal her if she turned on us, but Lydia changed the dynamic. At least we were sitting in their blind spot while they were in our car.

    When Jennifer had finally let us go, she and her two female bodyguards got back in her Escalade and drove off. We didn¡¯t mention her in anything except mildly approving terms until we had arrived back at Kage keep and were several hundred meters away from the car.

    ¡°Well, that was¡­ nerve-wracking,¡± I said.

    "Bloody ¡®ell, that¡¯s an understatement,¡± Eliza growled darkly. ¡°I definitely don¡¯t like that Elemental. Smells too much like petrol for my taste.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°she¡¯s a Fire Elemental, so¡­¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve been around those kinda Elementals before,¡± Eliza said. ¡°the only other one ¡®oo ¡®ad that smell was a fuckin¡¯ firebug. Fucker liked to burn people a little too much for the coppers¡¯ tastes.¡±

    "Well¡­ that¡¯s bad, but expected,¡± I said. ¡°But what the hell are we going to do about the car?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re gonna ¡®ave to rip it to shreds, aren¡¯t we?¡± Eliza said grimly.

    ¡°What car is this?¡± We looked up to see Charlotte and a couple of Royal Marine officers.

    ¡°You know that party we went to in Boston?¡± Eliza said. ¡°It got infested when we parked it there.¡±

    "Oh, bloody hell,¡± Charlotte said. She then turned to the officers. ¡°Excuse us, gentlemen. My sister, Mr. Jacobs and I need to talk.¡± They nodded and walked off. Charlotte turned back towards us. ¡°Now, if you two would come with me¡­¡±

    She led us to a conference room. To my surprise, John was also in there. Charlotte motioned us to sit down. When we were all seated and the door was closed, Charlotte asked, ¡°So, before we get into the real business, why do you think my car is bugged, and why do we need to take it apart?¡±

    As Eliza and I recounted our encounter with Jen, I noticed Charlotte was a lot more thoughtful than I would be if someone had told me my $200,000+ car needed to be ripped down to its bolts. Finally, she said, ¡°You know, there may be ways to make this useful.¡±

    ¡°Uh, how?¡± John asked.

    ¡°Never mind that for now,¡± Charlotte said. ¡°In the meantime, I¡¯d like to have a nice talk with Miss Nakashima.¡±

    ¡°Why?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Oh, no reason,¡± Charlotte said. ¡°I just think she¡¯s quite fascinating. And I do feel quite bad for her, what with her being trapped in some horrid alternate reality.¡± She checked her watch, then stood up. ¡°I do believe our appointment is soon. If you would please follow me¡­¡±

    We followed her out the door and down into the bowels of the castle. Eventually, we came to what obviously used to have been dungeons. Now, they seemed to have been refurbished into rooms for guests. Groups of three cells seemed to have been consolidated into one room. Judging by the heavy iron doors and the fact that two guards with pistols had been stationed by Mayu¡¯s door, the guests may not have been as willing as someone staying in an equivalent room at a hotel.

    The guards let us in, revealing that two of the three cells used to make the room had been turned into a good imitation of a hotel room with a desk, tatami mat, dresser and TV. The door to what had been the third cell was open and I could see it was a bathroom. The tasteful wood paneling was so soothing that at first I truly believed that this was a room designed with comfort first in mind. They had even put in a fake window opposite the door that mimicked sun rising and setting.

    Then I saw the door close behind me. It didn¡¯t look even half as intimidating as it had from the front. Hell, until you noticed that there wasn¡¯t a door handle, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a normal door when it was closed and you were standing in the room. But that one missing feature changed everything. This room was definitely still a prison.

    Mayu, though, seemed not to notice that. She was kneeling down at the low desk, a calligraphy brush in her hand, completely focused on what she was doing. I noticed that she was dressed in a much more Western style, with two tank tops (a white cotton one on top of a pink one) and a pleated blue skirt. ¡°Please excuse me,¡± she said distractedly. ¡°I¡¯m just putting the finishing touches on this¡­¡±

    ¡°Certainly,¡± Charlotte said. ¡°Please tell us when you¡¯re done.¡±You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

    We waited for a minute, watching Mayu work. Her long white hair made it hard to read her expression, but her body language was so focused that it looked like obsession. Finally, she put the brush on a tray beside the paper. Then, she stood up and bowed, smiling so wide her eyes closed. ¡°Hello,¡± she said. ¡°I apologize for my rudeness, but I was busy working on something and had almost finished.¡± She straightened up and her smile returned to its usual position, revealing her so-blue-they-were-almost-white eyes. ¡°I hope you may forgive me and that the rest of your visit may be more pleasant.¡±

    ¡°As I said before, quite alright, dear,¡± Charlotte said.

    ¡°Hey,¡± John said, ¡°do you mind showing us what you were working on?¡±

    ¡°Sure!¡± Mayu said. She carefully (in retrospect, reverently,) picked up the paper, removing the weights. She held it out in front of her with pride. ¡°Do you like it?¡±

    My breath almost caught in my throat. On the paper was a perfect drawing of Mubashir Mubarak, the man we now knew to be The Architect. His blocky head was not the most distinctive or handsome thing in the world, and the black ink couldn¡¯t capture his brown skin, but it was definitely a three-quarters headshot of him. As casually as I could, I said, ¡°That¡¯s very good, Mayu. Where did you get the inspiration for him?¡±

    Mayu stood there for a moment, her usual smile fixed on her face. Now, however, it seemed like it was masking a loading screen. Finally she said, ¡°¡­I must have seen a similar face in a history book. Maybe American?¡± She then pointedly asked, ¡°Why? Does he look familiar to you?¡± In that moment, I knew that she had seen each and every one of us recognize Moob. I also knew, short of getting her to confirm it, I could never prove it.

    I¡¯m not sure if John had come to the same conclusion as I had (namely to not mention Mubashir to Mayu) but he asked, ¡°So, I see you decided to change clothes.¡±

    Mayu smiled. ¡°Oh, of course! I¡¯m not sure if Nathan noticed the smell last night, but I hadn¡¯t changed out of that kimono in hundreds of years.¡± Now that she mentioned it, I did recall a rather foul smell last night. ¡°Besides, I want to get comfortable in these kinds of clothes.¡± She giggled. ¡°After all, I¡¯d look pretty silly going out in public in a kimono!¡±

    ¡°Of course!¡± Charlotte said. ¡°But I am sure you could pull it off.¡±

    Mayu smiled and bowed. ¡°Very kind of you, Blackmoor-Ward-ojou, but I don¡¯t want to pull it off. It¡­ it would feel like stasis.¡± She pulled out of the bow, and I could briefly see a haunted look in her eyes. It was instantly gone and replaced with her usual grin. ¡°Anyway, is there something your Ladyship would ask of me?¡±

    ¡°As a matter of fact,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°I was wondering if you knew anything about The Architect.¡± John, Eliza, and I looked at Charlotte. This wasn¡¯t the deal we had made with Bai. ¡°The Defenders of Fuji have lost much information over the years. At one point, they knew more about The Architect than any other group in the world. They knew how to find¡­¡± there was a barely perceptible pause, ¡°¡­it, how to control it, how to destroy it, things of that nature.¡±

    Mayu giggled. ¡°Well¡­¡± she said, ¡°they last one is easiest to answer. You can¡¯t.¡±

    ¡°But you can?¡± Eliza said suspiciously.

    Mayu giggled again. ¡°Don¡¯t be silly! Your organization has the ear of a Queen of a great military power and an organization that can access the nuclear armaments of multiple nations. And if you are an example of your sister¡¯s servants, I can tell just by looking at you there are only two situations in which I would be superior.¡±

    Ishot a look at Charlotte. I hoped it said, ¡°She¡¯s useless and we shouldn¡¯t be talking to her.¡± I could see Eliza and John giving her similar looks.

    Charlotte ignored these looks. Mayu, I¡¯m pretty sure, saw them. ¡°First of all,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°Eliza is not a servant. She is my sister, if not in blood, then in spirit.¡±

    ¡°Oh!¡± Mayu said, bowing. ¡°Please forgive me! I did not mean offense!¡±

    ¡°Sure¡­¡± Eliza said. With anyone else, she would have either made a joke or remarked how she was pretty much Charlotte¡¯s de facto bodyguard to put them at ease. With Mayu, she just regarded her with suspicion.

    ¡°Second,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°what are these two things you can do better than Eliza?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Mayu said, focusing solely on Charlotte, ¡°the first thing I can do better than her, than anyone, is to find The Architect. I¡¯m the only one on the entire planet who can find him because I¡¯m the only one who knows what to look for.¡±

    John chimed in. ¡°How do you know it¡¯s a him? Couldn¡¯t The Architect be an it or a her?¡±

    Mayu just smiled at him. ¡°Didn¡¯t I tell you I¡¯m the only one who can find him?¡±

    ¡°We don¡¯t need to find him just at the moment,¡± Charlotte said. ¡°But¡­¡±

    Mayu cut in. ¡°Are you sure?¡± she asked. ¡°Could you take out your phone or send an email and instantly know for certain where The Architect is?¡± Charlotte froze. I¡¯m sure the rest of us did as well, and I¡¯m convinced Mayu noticed it as well. Mayu giggled, covering her hand with her mouth. ¡°Silly me! Of course you can. No responsible person would let someone that powerful fall into the wrong hands. Don¡¯t worry, you don¡¯t need to prove that to me.¡±

    ¡°Yes, quite,¡± Charlotte lied. ¡°Of course.¡±

    ¡°The next question,¡± Mayu said, cocking her head, ¡°is what are you planning on doing with him?¡±

    ¡°What we¡¯re going to do,¡± I said, cutting in before Charlotte could say anything else, ¡°is not any of your business. I¡¯m sorry, but if we¡¯re going to keep The Architect safe, we need as few people as possible to know about the situation as possible.¡±

    ¡°So you¡¯re going to keep him locked away?¡± she asked. She sounded innocent as usual, but I could hear something else underneath. Something desperate. ¡°You realize this is a god we are talking about. This is not some lost child or broken man. This is a chance to make the world perfect.¡± She paused, seeing that John and Eliza were looking at her with suspicion. As if she had planned it, she added, ¡°He¡¯s also the only one who can stop the Lady of Death and the Angels. You need him.¡± Not included in that speech, but heavily implied was, You need me, too.

    I had gone very quiet and bland. That was because I had remembered what Mubashir had said to me the night his powers had been revealed: ¡°At first, I thought Allah was just punishing me for my suicide. Now, I¡¯m starting to wonder if he¡¯s punishing me for telling Him I could do a better job.¡± He didn¡¯t want to play God, and after Al-Qaeda, he probably had had enough of being someone¡¯s weapon. Whatever Mayu had planned for him definitely involved both.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, ma¡¯am,¡± I said, ¡°you have an interesting proposal, but it¡¯s the kind of thing we need to discuss in private.¡± I walked over and knocked on the door.

    ¡°Nathan,¡± Charlotte said reprovingly, ¡°Don¡¯t be rude. Surely she has more to say to us.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Charlotte,¡± I said, ¡°But she¡¯s said enough.¡± I stared at her pointedly. ¡°We¡¯ve all said enough.¡±

 5.9: We Have Words

    We didn¡¯t speak until we had left the keep, with me leading the group out of the castle and into the woods. Well, everyone except for Charlotte. For the entire time we walked, she was making comments on my rudeness. Finally, I turned around and said, ¡°Do you realize how badly you fucked up?¡±

    ¡°Excuse me?¡± Charlotte said.

    ¡°You walked into a room with someone who¡¯s clearly nuts,¡± I began, ¡°with powerful people probably listening to every word you say, and told them a hell of a lot more than you should.¡±

    ¡°But¡­¡± Charlotte protested.

    I cut her off. ¡°Did I make a few mistakes? Yes.¡± I dropped my voice to a whisper in the vain hope that if someone were to eavesdrop on this conversation and the one we had with Mayu they¡¯d miss crucial information. ¡°That little picture of hers took me off guard¡­¡± then I resumed in a normal (ok, louder than normal) voice, ¡°but what the hell were you thinking telling everyone you knew The Architect¡¯s identity? And even worse, what do you think Bai would do if she heard that you¡­¡±

    ¡°That was a lie!¡± Charlotte said. ¡°Do you seriously think me so low as to lie to a friend?¡±

    ¡°The question isn¡¯t whether I believe you,¡± I said. ¡°The question is whether they could make Bai believe it. Or anyone else believe it.¡± I paused, remembering how she hadn¡¯t exactly convinced me when she had made the promise. ¡°You have left it alone, right?¡±

    ¡°Well¡­¡± Charlotte said, ¡°Mayu said it best. It would be irresponsible to just leave¡­¡± I tensed. If she said Mubashir¡¯s name, there was a very good chance I¡¯d kill her. ¡°¡­our friend in the hands of people who had no idea what to do with him. I didn¡¯t find him, I just laid a bit of groundwork.¡±

    ¡°Bloody ¡®ell,¡± Eliza said. ¡°You realize everybody¡¯s going to be pissed with you now?¡±

    ¡°Only if they know the truth,¡± Charlotte said. ¡°And even then, they would have to be rather unreasonable, wouldn¡¯t they?¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± John said, taking a deep breath, ¡°what happens if Li finds out Bai told you who The Architect is? Do you think Li is reasonable?¡± He shook his head. ¡°Not only that, but I don¡¯t think Mayu¡¯s even sane. There¡¯s something seriously wrong with her.¡±

    ¡°Um.¡± We all turned to look at Charlotte. ¡°The thing about Mayu¡­ we think people in her own organization are planning on killing her. We¡­ don¡¯t want that.¡±

    ¡°Any particular reason?¡± I asked. Seeing that everyone looked at me with horror, I said, ¡°Look, I know that all life is sacred and stuff. She¡¯s also gotten a raw deal.¡±

    ¡°Fuckin¡¯ A she ¡®as,¡± Eliza murmured darkly.

    I continued, ¡°But to get her out, we¡¯d need to kill a lot of people. Then what? What happens when she finds out we don¡¯t want her anywhere near Mubashir?¡±

    Charlotte cleared her throat, then said, ¡°Actually, we may need her.¡± I raised an eyebrow. ¡°You see, while we don¡¯t need The Architect yet, we need someone who can put a stop to the Dragon¡¯s Teeth and their Goddess¡­ whether or not it they are related to prophecies, final or otherwise.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°but that doesn¡¯t mean we need her. The Architect is in very good hands.¡±

    ¡°As far as we know,¡± Charlotte said. ¡°That being said, any number of things could have gone wrong. His former caretakers may want him back, his new caretakers may find him unsatisfactory, he may leave in a fit of pique¡­¡±

    ¡°This is assuming that you have no resources,¡± I said. ¡°But you do. You don¡¯t need to take in Mayu.¡±

    ¡°What about control?¡± Charlotte asked. ¡°If we need Mubashir, how do we control him?¡± I was about to say something, but Charlotte cut me off. ¡°Oh, don¡¯t tell me how we don¡¯t need to control him. He bloody well admitted to not being able to control himself when his powers were activated. You even saw what happened when his powers manifest on two separate occasions.¡± It was more like three, but I didn¡¯t feel that was important. Plus, I had only seen the aftereffects of the second time. ¡°If he is provoked again¡­ Well, from your own admission, his episodes seem to be getting bigger.¡±

    I considered this. The first time I had experienced his powers, nothing dramatic had really changed. Yes, I had been felt up by millions of hands in a way that had traumatized me for life, and yes, a brick wall had been subtly altered, and yes, time and space had been bent to hell, but nothing really bad had happened. The next time I had actually witnessed his power in action, I had watched as three people had been turned into gym equipment. Also, thinking about it, I was now unsure if the bunker Mubashir had found had been there before. If it had been there before, I seriously wish Eric and his team had found it during the Hell Semester final.

    I also considered something else. ¡°If I¡¯m going to help you,¡± I finally said to Charlotte, ¡°I need to know, when Mayu told you that The Architect was a chance to make the world perfect¡­¡± I paused, because what I was saying sounded insane to me. ¡°¡­how much did you believe that?¡±This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    ¡°I think she¡¯s exaggerating a bit, honestly,¡± Charlotte said.

    ¡°A bit?¡± John asked, raising an eyebrow.

    ¡°Well, a little more than a bit,¡± Charlotte admitted, ¡°but I think she sincerely believes that The Architect could be a greater force for good than anything else. Between cultural differences and desperation to be part of something bigger than herself, one could be forgiven for thinking she lied.¡± The problem with that statement was that I didn¡¯t believe Mayu thought she was lying or exaggerating.

    ¡°That isn¡¯t what I was asking,¡± I said. ¡°What I¡¯m asking is how far are you planning on going with that line of thought.¡±

    ¡°Only as far as our friend wants to go,¡± Charlotte said. ¡°I promise.¡±

    ¡°I will hold you to that promise,¡± I said. I wasn¡¯t sure how, Mayu was right about how Charlotte was so powerful. After all, she had brought with her a significant chunk of the UK¡¯s special forces. But this¡­ I¡¯d need to take a stand on this.

    ¡°Oi!¡± Eliza said. ¡°You don¡¯t get to threaten my sister!¡±

    I took a deep breath, but John said, ¡°Yeah, well, she doesn¡¯t get to lie to people and then ask them to trust her. Oh wait! She¡¯s been doing that for almost a year!¡± He stared directly at Charlotte. ¡°If Bai asks if we kept our promise, I¡¯m either going to have to lie to her or betray you, you understand that, right?¡±

    ¡°I do hope you¡¯ll do the right thing,¡± Charlotte said.

    ¡°You don¡¯t get it,¡± John said. ¡°There is no right thing! I¡¯m probably going to just flip a coin.¡± Even for me, someone who was extremely annoyed at Charlotte, this wasn¡¯t good news. I wanted to know exactly what he¡¯d do.

    ¡°Konbanwa!!¡± a bubbly voice behind us said. Charlotte, John and I turned around.

    Eliza, who had been facing from the direction the voice was coming from, said, ¡°Bloody fuckin¡¯ ¡®ell.¡± I also heard her flick off the safety of her CZ.

    I didn¡¯t have to turn around to know who it was. ¡°Mayu,¡± I said, ¡°we were just talking about you.¡±

    ¡°Oh good!¡± She said, her smile growing to the eye-closing one I had seen before. ¡°I hope you have found my proposal acceptable.¡± As we talked, I heard Charlotte call some of her bodyguards, giving them directions to bring a car. I also noticed that Mayu was bleeding from the eyes and nose.

    ¡°I¡¯m actually a bit curious about how you managed to get out, actually,¡± I said.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± John said. ¡°You were in the basement, and I¡¯m pretty sure the entire building is jump-shielded.¡±

    ¡°I read about that while I was away¡­¡± Mayu said, putting a finger to her lip and staring off speculatively. ¡°They work by flooding the area with particles to stop us from jumping¡­ I wonder, did their machine create a less dense concentration? Maybe that¡¯s why it felt like I was slipping through a crack? And why this jump was so costly¡­¡± Again, I noticed the blood running down her face like wet makeup. She smiled again, one of her big ones, and held up a small scrap of paper. ¡°Or maybe I was just lucky! Just like how Charlotte warned me that the Defenders wanted to kill me!¡±

    ¡°I didn¡¯t think she¡¯d come now!¡± Charlotte said frantically. ¡°I thought that the note would tell her I was working on convincing them not to, and I¡¯d tell her if¡­¡±

    ¡°If you¡¯d waited,¡± Mayu said in her innocent, girlish voice, ¡°the faction that wanted to kill me would have done so, and no one would have been able to prove anything.¡± She gave one of her big smiles. ¡°I could go back if that¡¯s more convenient for you.¡±

    ¡°No¡­¡± Charlotte said. ¡°It would be impossible to get you out then.¡± She turned to John and me. ¡°You two¡­ get her to Jen. She¡¯ll know where to hide her.¡±

    ¡°And then?¡± I asked.

    ¡°We¡¯ll contact you,¡± Charlotte said.

    ¡°And if you can¡¯t?¡± I asked. ¡°What do we do then?¡±

    ¡°Please¡­¡± Eliza said, looking uncomfortable, ¡°can we just go with the plan? This is¡­ we¡¯re wastin¡¯ time. I¡¯m surprised that the alarm ¡®asn¡¯t sounded yet.¡±

    Mayu nodded eagerly. ¡°Yes. They should have sounded it by now.¡± She then looked at John and me. ¡°Even if I wanted nothing to do with the plan, I would want to be far away from what is about to happen here.¡±

    Check and mate, Nate, I thought to myself. Mayu had finally found my button, at least in this instance. I didn¡¯t like her. She was too manipulative for my liking, and Charlotte seemed to have a profound weakness for her. I also didn¡¯t like the fact that she could get to me.

    ¡°Fine,¡± I said. ¡°You win.¡± For now. ¡°I¡¯ll take the car, and then John and I can stash her with Jen¡­ If that¡¯s ok with you, John?¡±

    I was inherently when John glared suspiciously at Mayu and said, ¡°Sure. I¡¯ll come.¡± I nodded gratefully at him. I really didn¡¯t want to be alone with a manipulative assassin who wasn¡¯t quite stable. Especially seeing as how our interests didn¡¯t align even in the slightest.

    We were interrupted by Charlotte¡¯s Maybach pulling up on the road nearby. One of her bodyguards got out. ¡°Well,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°as Miss Nakashima suggested, you three should probably get a move on. Again, we will contact you.¡±

    We got into the car. Mayu, I noticed, got in the back. That defeated my half-fantasized, half-realized plan of wrapping my arm around from behind her and squeezing. You could be wrong, I reminded myself. She might not be evil. Still, I decided it wouldn¡¯t be a bad idea to check the rearview mirror every few seconds to see if she was trying something and lock the doors and windows just to be safe.

    ¡°Hey Jen¡­¡± I said as we started the car, ¡°if you can hear us, please help. We¡¯re kind of in deep shit.¡± We waited. ¡°I got my cPhone, John has his, you gotta have one of our numbers¡­¡± Nothing happened.

    ¡°Who is Jen?¡± Mayu asked. I looked in the rearview mirror, partly to see her reaction, partly because I was due. John, to my satisfaction, was checking Mayu as well. Mayu, for her part, still had her typical smile.

    ¡°A person,¡± I said noncommittally.

    ¡°Are you seriously going to be that kind of asshole?¡± John asked.

    I sighed. ¡°Jen is¡­ basically the only other person in this country we know. I¡¯ve avoided her because even knowing her makes things¡­ complicated.¡± Well, hopefully that wouldn¡¯t be the case now. I mean, if she hadn¡¯t ever gone to Japan before, the local law enforcement wouldn¡¯t be watching her¡­ right?

    Then my phone beeped. Not wanting to crash, I pulled the Maybach over to the side of the road and pulled my phone out. It was a text from an unfamiliar number. I sighed. It could be Jen, so I took a look. After I stared at it for a moment, John said, ¡°Judging by the look on your face, I¡¯m guessing it isn¡¯t good news.¡± I nodded. John sighed. ¡°Fuck me, right?¡±

 5.10: Letâ€™s Jam

    We stood outside the door to the apartment that Lydia had told us was the target. The building reminded me of one of those motels you see in America where the doors to the individual rooms are on the outside of the building. However, this building aggressively displayed the industrial late-20<sup>th</sup> century style unique to Japan.

    As John put the small circle of plastic explosives on the door right above the handle and I drew my Beretta, I said, ¡°I really hope that Lydia and Andrew are steering us straight. It wouldn¡¯t be good to just breach and clear some poor asshole¡¯s apartment all for nothing.¡±

    ¡°Do we still want to do this?¡± John asked.

    I thought about this. Then I nodded, pulling down a ski mask over my face. ¡°Ok,¡± John said, pulling a mask down as well, ¡°On three¡­¡±

    To back up a little, that text I had received while getting away from Kage fortress wasn¡¯t from Jennifer. It was from Andrew, one of the obviously less experienced bodyguards. The gist was that Jen had disappeared and that we should meet ¡°where we had last met.¡±

    We had parked in an abandoned parking lot a few blocks from the Maid Caf¨¦. As Mayu and John got out of the car, I texted Andrew to let him know we were coming. He replied back, telling me to meet him and Lydia behind the caf¨¦. That made sense, seeing as it was pretty late at night by the time we had arrived and the restaurant was a breakfast place. Still, I adjusted my sweater for easier access to my guns.

    We found the two of them waiting nervously, two backpacks at their feet. They looked up in surprise. ¡°Who the fuck¡¯re they?¡± Andrew asked suspiciously, indicating John and Mayu. I noticed that he and Lydia were also armed. Despite being tightly buckled, Andrew¡¯s pants sagged to one side and Lydia¡¯s suit jacket bulged slightly under her arm.

    ¡°This is Mayu Nakashima,¡± I said. ¡°We need to keep her safe and secure. John¡­ If Jen hasn¡¯t told you anything about him, you don¡¯t need to know anything about him.¡± At that last bit, John nodded gratefully.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Lydia said, ¡°but we thought we¡¯d get¡­ you know, someone experienced. Where¡¯s Eliza?¡±

    ¡°Experienced in what?¡± John asked.

    ¡°SWAT shit,¡± Andrew said. ¡°You know, kicking down doors and shooting mofos in the face.¡±

    ¡°You lucked out then,¡± I said. ¡°Eliza¡¯s specialty is foiling the door kickers. John and I are the breachers.¡±

    "Yeah, ok,¡± Lydia said, and I could hear the panic in her voice, ¡°but we were expecting Eliza, y¡¯know?¡±

    ¡°And I was expecting Jen,¡± I said.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± John said, ¡°but life¡¯s full of disappointments. Now, would you kindly take us to a safe house?¡±

    ¡°No.¡± That was Lydia.

    John and I turned our gazes on her. Mayu giggled. ¡°Excuse me?¡± I asked.

    Quailing under Mayu¡¯s creepiness, the negative attention of two trained killers, and whatever other pressures she was under, Lydia said, ¡°Listen, Jen is the one who knows you. I don¡¯t know what kinda deal she has with you two, but she¡¯s gone. Someone gassed our hotel room and took her.¡±

    Ipaused. John looked at them incredulously. ¡°Excuse me?¡± he asked.

    ¡°There¡¯s some good news!¡± Andrew said hurriedly. ¡°Thanks to a subdermal tracker Jen had us implant, we know where she is, but the gas has still got our team¡¯s power houses pretty fucked up. If you can get her back¡­¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°get her,¡± at the word her I gave a shrug indicating Mayu, ¡°to a safe place, and we¡¯ll get Jen back.¡±

    ¡°We will,¡± Lydia said. ¡°Meantime, we got some toys for you in those bags.¡±

    ¡°Two¡­ One¡­¡± There was a thump and a flash of light, and a hole appeared above the door¡¯s handle. In response, I kicked it open. Immediately, I saw a man staggering back, covering his eyes with one arm. The other arm was hanging loosely at his side and carrying what looked like a SIG-Sauer. Behind him were two other men.

    My reaction had been drilled into me by a semester in what was called Kill House Lab. ¡°Drop the gun!¡± I said in a loud, commanding voice. ¡°Hands on your head, face on the ground.¡± John burst in besides me and repeated the commands in Japanese.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

    Instead of following our commands, the staggering man raised his gun. There were several gunshots, only three of which were mine. In between my second and third shot, I felt something hit the plate Lydia and Andrew had given me and I knew I would be feeling it tomorrow.

    The man, however, would probably not be feeling anything ever again in a short while. Each of my three shots had hit him right in the heart. Judging by the red splotches on his once-pristine white dress shirt, he hadn¡¯t been wearing armor.

    Meanwhile, a table had been flipped over. Judging by the spray of blood on the window behind it, John had been able to get at least one of the guys who had been sitting there. A half-eaten meal of McDonalds had been scattered across the floor, the greasy smell of the food and the scent of the coffee already mingling with the coppery tang of blood and the smoky scent of gunpowder. Maybe that was the Japanese equivalent of bad Chinese food on a stakeout.

    As we advanced, the other man popped up from behind the table. He had an assault rifle with a large, bulky silencer. There was more gunfire, not only from John and I, but from the man. Splinters and blood flew, and I was pretty sure that I saw the man fall back.

    I hurried forwards to check the men. Both seemed dead, the one who had shot at us with the assault rifle had holes in his face, neck and chest, the one I hadn¡¯t seen go down had a blood-stained hand clamped around his neck and a pool of blood nearby. I also noticed that a sawn-off semi-automatic shotgun had been taped underneath the table. Judging by the other bits of tape on the table and on the assault rifle, that gun had also been taped to the table.

    I quickly kicked the assault rifle away from its former user just to be safe. I nodded to John, who had come up to me. As I did so, I noticed that he had a few holes where his plate was. He wasn¡¯t limping, so I hoped that meant he was ok.

    I did a quick scan. The room was a sort of kitchen-living room hybrid. There were also four Japanese-style futons and a strange device. Two security cameras, which I recognized as a popular model that could connect to the internet, were mounted on opposite corners of the wall. Off to the side were two doors. One was open to reveal a bathroom. The other was closed. I looked back towards the door we had entered from. There was an umbrella bucket, but instead of an umbrella, there was a curved, wooden handle indicating another sawn-off shotgun.

    I indicated the closed door with a nod. We advanced on it from opposite sides, guns raised. We hadn¡¯t even taken three steps when it opened and the fourth subject leaned out, an Uzi-like gun with a wooden foregrip built in, probably an early Minebea PM-9. There was an exchange of gunfire. I felt multiple impacts on my plate, but the padding stopped enough of the impact to keep me standing and my plate held. The fourth subject had ducked back into the door.

    I looked at my gun. The slide was locked. I reached into a pocket and grabbed what Lydia claimed was a push-button flash-bang. I pressed the button and rolled it into the room. John reloaded while I was doing this.

    The subject didn¡¯t wait for the grenade to go off. He charged us, his right arm hanging loosely by his side, a bullet hole in that shoulder, and a cheap revolver in his left hand. John, by this point, had finished loading his gun. The subject fired once, his bullet hitting the floor. The grenade went off in a flash of light that blurred my vision and a thump that made my chest feel funny. It also caused my ears to ring. John fired five times, all of them hitting the subject in the center mass. All of this happened in such close proximity I wasn¡¯t really sure what order these events happened.

    I reloaded, careful to save the spent magazine instead of letting it drop to the floor. After all, the chances of getting another one were pretty low at this point. As I did so, I remembered that there were people who lived below the apartment. I seriously hoped they were alright. I also prayed to God they hadn¡¯t called the cops.

    When my magazine was back in, we entered the room. It was a bedroom with a Western-style bed, a dresser, a door into the bathroom, another web-accessible security camera, and nothing else. For a second, I panicked, wondering where Jen was. Then I heard a muffled voice say, ¡°So, are you here to save me or kill me?¡± I looked underneath the bed. There was Jen, wearing the same clothes she had been wearing earlier that day when we had met at the maid caf¨¦. She was looking the worse for wear, with her eyes looking slightly defocused and her clothes messed up.

    ¡°Rescue,¡± I said, holstering my Beretta. I turned to look at John. ¡°John, check the bathroom. I wanna make sure we really are alone. Then gather up anything useful.¡±

    John nodded. I turned to drag Jen out from under the bed. ¡°Ah, Nathan,¡± she said muzzily, ¡°howzzit goin¡¯?¡± In the background, I heard John kick open the door to the bathroom

    ¡°Have you heard the term ¡®FUBAR?¡¯¡± I asked as I dragged her out.

    While I asked this, I heard John shout ¡°Clear!¡± from inside the bathroom. While Jen tried to comprehend the question, I heard John move back into the main room and called out ¡°Clear!¡± again.

    After the second clear, Jen finally said, ¡°Yeah¡­ s¡¯rry, jus¡¯ got gassed, which messed wi¡¯ my head. Then they drugged me with something. There¡¯s also th¡¯ ani-jumfield they¡¯ve got.¡± It took me a while to realize that she meant anti-jump field. So that¡¯s what that strange device was. ¡°Fuckin¡¯ hate ani-jumfields. Make me feel like I¡¯m buried.¡± Noticing her arms hadn¡¯t moved from beneath her back, I flipped her over. Just as I thought, she was zip-tied at the wrists. ¡°Hey,¡± she said, ¡°not until our second date!¡±

    Ignoring her, I flipped out the knife and cut the ties. ¡°Can you stand?¡± I asked her.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± she slurred, ¡°buh walkin¡¯s gonna be tricky.¡±

    I was distracted by John calling me in from the main room. ¡°Hey, Nate! You better come take a look at this.¡±

    ¡°Wait right here,¡± I said to Jen, who was busy trying to get up. On the way out, I grabbed the PM-9 and slung it over my shoulder by the strap and tucked a spare fifty-round mag into my pocket. When I was in the main room, I saw John standing over the corpse of the first subject, the shotgun and assault rifle slung over his shoulder. ¡°What is it?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Take a look,¡± John said. ¡°Recognize that face?¡±

    I suddenly remembered our first day at Kage fortress. ¡°He was one of the first Defenders of Fuji we saw¡­¡±

    Suddenly, we heard a laugh. It was a hysterical, drug induced laugh. We turned around to the door to the bedroom. There, leaning against the door frame, was Jennifer. Finally, she stopped laughing. ¡°Well,¡± she said, ¡°it looks like we finally have a common foe.¡±

 Track 11: Breaking New Gate

    Before we could ask Jen what she meant, there were the screech of tires. John and I looked outside. There, between us and the early ¡®90s era Honda sedan we had stolen, was a white Toyota van illegally parked in the middle of the street. Two subjects, probably male and in their mid-to-late twenties, most likely locals, were getting out from the front.

    Every instinct in my body told me that this was not normal. John¡¯s must have been screaming the same thing because we both opened fire in unison. There was the sound of bullets hitting metal and shattering glass and the man closest to us fell down. We could tell he was still alive because he began trying to cover his wounds and calling out in Japanese. I noted, with some degree of relief, that he had dropped a modernized version of a PM-9.

    The man who had been shielded behind the car was also gone. John and I, not wanting to be pinned inside, but also not wanting to be shot in the open, moved into new cover behind concrete pillars outside. This proved to be a wise move because not only did the subject we lost contact with pop back up from behind the van¡¯s engine to take pot shots at us with an SMG, but three people with assault rifles and a fourth with a shotgun began opening fire.

    I looked at John, who was blindly returning fire with the captured assault rifle (I think it was a Type 89-f.) This wasn¡¯t good. They almost outnumbered us two to one, and I doubted they¡¯d run out of assault rifle ammo before John did. Luckily, we still had some of the toys Lydia and Andrew had given us. I began to come up with a plan.

    Before I could signal this to John, I heard several pops of gunfire. There was a weird sensation, like I had been suffocating without realizing it, but now I wasn¡¯t. I tried to look back inside, but some gunfire made me realize what a bad idea that was.

    Instead, I motioned my plan to John. Basically, what I was communicating in sign language was a typical plan called leapfrogging. I¡¯d open fire, making the people in the van get down. John would use that as an opportunity to get to a concrete pillar closer to the stairs. Then he would open fire while I tried to get to the bottom without being shot.

    When John nodded, showing he understood, I leaned out and began putting bursts into the car. Behind me, I heard John run down behind me. I had managed to time my bursts with most of them reloading. As I fired burst after burst, I suddenly became aware that the downed subject wasn¡¯t the only one screaming. The civilians in the surrounding area had obviously noticed. We needed to leave.

    My ammo, understandably, ran out rather quickly. Even with the fifty-round magazine and my trigger control, it was still an SMG with a high rate of fire that someone had recently sprayed and prayed with. Luckily, John had gotten far enough. He glanced up at me, waiting for confirmation. I reloaded, dropping the magazine, then nodded.

    In response, John threw one of our party favors. There was a heart-shaking thud, then John leaned out and started firing.

    I ran. The explosion¡¯s bite, while impressive, wasn¡¯t as big as its bark. The wounded subject was still alive, trying to drag himself to safety. The van was relatively undamaged, though some of its windows might have not been shattered before the blast. There was a nice crater in the middle of the street, however, around which bits of flames danced merrily. Huh, I thought as I ran down the balcony to the stairs, must be some sort of super-thermite.

    As I got to the stairs, I noticed that the gunfire had slackened. I then decided to get greedy and continue down the stairs. It was all going well until I got to the bottom and started running towards one of the parked cars. The subject with the SMG saw me coming, turned to aim¡­

    ¡­And his head split open. Based on how it shattered, it had to be some kind of large, low velocity round from behind. The sound of an M3 chattering away backed that assertion up.

    I just ran the final bits to a nearby Subaru four-door. Making sure to get down behind the wheel arches, I took out one of grenades Andrew and Lydia had given us. I flicked it on and rolled it down the street to the van. There were a few seconds where there was a lot of gunfire, but no explosion. Like Marvin the Martian wondering where his Earth-shattering kaboom was, I peeked out from behind the debatable safety of a boxer four.

    I was just in time to see the Toyota¡¯s front end rise into the air on a cushion of flame. It fell back to Earth with a massive crash. Then its fuel tank exploded. I remained crouched for a bit as the van burned, waiting for gunfire to start up again. All I heard was sirens. They were actually getting a little too close for my liking.

    I got out from behind cover and began walking towards the flaming wreckage. A living column of flame staggered out. I drew out my SIG and put a couple rounds in the flaming subject. After he fell, I began walking towards the subject who had been screaming.

    The subject had stopped screaming and seemed to be losing consciousness. He looked up to see me coming and said something in Japanese. I couldn¡¯t make it out, but it didn¡¯t matter. I shot him twice through the heart and once through the head with my SIG. It was both to end his suffering and ensure no witnesses.

    ¡°You two are very good at what you do,¡± Jen said. ¡°Shame that you won¡¯t take my money.¡±If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    Ignoring the heart attack she had given me by jumping right behind me, I said, ¡°Honestly, as much as I pretend the difference between us is moral, I sometimes think it¡¯s because I refuse to shit where I eat and sleep.¡±

    ¡°Interesting theory,¡± Jen said. ¡°I¡¯ll have to keep it in mind.¡±

    I turned around. Not only did I see surprisingly sober and very tired-looking Jen holding an M3 grease gun and a double-barreled shotgun, but I also saw John running down the stairs. ¡°We need to go,¡± he said. ¡°The cops¡­¡±

    ¡°At this point,¡± Jen said, ¡°it would be better to remain here.¡±

    As if to punctuate her sentence, a patrol cruiser turned the corner. Two officers got out nervously, shouting ¡°Anata buki no o otsu! Jimen ni noru!¡± repeatedly. Based on the context and how they occasionally flicked the barrels to the ground, that probably translated to get on the ground. I noticed that they were armed with crappy revolvers and they weren¡¯t shy about pointing them at us. Unless someone had made a rimmed version of the Uilon Mangchi cartridge and given it to Japanese law enforcement without my knowledge, there was no way in hell they could penetrate the armor John and I were wearing. That didn¡¯t mean they couldn¡¯t get us in the stomach, face or legs, or Jen in the everything.

    ¡°Ima sugu sore o doroppu!¡± Even in the dim light, I could tell that the cop who had yelled that would fire soon. I was honestly surprised the two officers hadn¡¯t already opened up on us. NIU campus security would have already ventilated us.

    ¡°Ok¡­¡± I said soothingly, holding my SIG by the butt with my thumb and forefinger and shrugging off my PM-9. ¡°I¡¯m dropping my weapons¡­¡±

    ¡°Yukkuri!¡± one of the officers shouted, pointing his revolver at John.

    ¡°Hai,¡± John said, ¡°Yukkuri¡­¡±

    Suddenly, Jen was on top of the police car. The cops had just enough time to make noises in surprise before Jen opened fire. One got both barrels of the shotgun to the back of his head, the other received a five-round burst to his back. Jen then casually tossed the shotgun away and jumped off the roof of the cruiser. ¡°Always a pleasure to deal with law enforcement,¡± she said. ¡°Especially ones not used to Jumpers.¡± She peered inside the cruiser.

    ¡°Jen,¡± John said, ¡°what the hell?¡±

    ¡°What?¡± Jen asked innocently looking up from the cruiser.

    ¡°You did just kill two cops,¡± I said. ¡°That¡¯s going to cause some problems.¡±

    Jen turned back to the cruiser. ¡°Yes, but we won¡¯t be here long enough for it to matter in the long run. Besides, the easiest way for my former hosts to have captured me would be to have outbid the police.¡±

    ¡°Still,¡± John said, ¡°what the hell?¡±

    Jen rolled her eyes. ¡°Could you be useful and either pass me a bomb or get a car? I don¡¯t think this car has a dash cam, but I do want to make certain.¡±

    I nodded. ¡°John, get the car. Jen, catch.¡± Making sure I hadn¡¯t activated it, I tossed Jen a grenade. I have to admit, it was quite funny to see the look on Jen¡¯s face when she realized what it was.

    ¡°I thought you were trained to be careful with explosives,¡± she said dryly once she had recovered. I would have been impressed if she had recovered instantly. Instead, she had planted the bomb and ran back to the car. As soon as she sat down, a mushroom cloud turned the cop car into a convertible. A huge chunk of metal bounced off the windscreen of our stolen car, causing it to crack dangerously.

    John, who had just started the car and gotten his ski mask off, said, ¡°Fuck this shit.¡± I suddenly began to rocket forwards, nearly hitting the car we were parallel-parked behind. I heard the screech of rubber. As we hurtled down the street, I noticed the speedometer was hovering around 130 kilometers per hour. ¡°Fuck Charlotte, fuck, the Defenders of Fuji, fuck Japan, fuck this place in particular, and fuck you.¡±

    ¡°John,¡± I said, noticing the sign with Kanji and a giant 50 emblazoned on it, ¡°speed limit.¡±

    John growled in frustration and put on the brakes. Luckily for us, he was going at a reasonable speed when what seemed to be twenty cop cars drifted around the corner and began heading to the explosion. I breathed a sigh of relief. Jen¡¯s trick had worked on those two cops, but if there had been four, things would have gone to hell.

    Speaking of Jen, she had been swearing ever since John had stamped on the gas pedal. It had been loud at first, but now, she was just hoarsely whispering ¡°oh shit¡± over and over again. I checked back to see how she was doing.

    ¡°Do you need a paper bag?¡± I asked. She nodded. I reached down to the floor where the owner of the car had left his lunch. I emptied the assortment of half-eaten food into the cloth waste basket in the center console and handed the bag to Jen. She took it, then began fiddling with something. It wasn¡¯t until I heard the click that I realized she hadn¡¯t been buckled in.

    When she was done, she said, ¡°So, do you mind filling me in?¡±

    She then listened somewhat dazedly as we filled her in. ¡°Do you want to know¡­¡± she said, with both a mixture of slyness and lack of breath, ¡°¡­how Kage Fortress got its name?¡±

    ¡°Let me guess,¡± I said, ¡°it was named after the Kagemotos. Specifically, your family.¡±

    ¡°Got it in one,¡± she said wheezily. She coughed for a bit. ¡°My however-many-times great grandfather was lord of the mansion long ago. My however-many-times great grand-uncle, however, was obsessed with some prophecy or something. They had a fight, uncle dies, grandfather gets kicked out, and some creepy Rasputin-like asshole takes over the castle. Despite my family eventually running all the way to the new world, the grudge carried on until my father.¡± She laughed. ¡°I¡¯m actually surprised. I would have thought he¡¯d have fought them just to have someone to hurt.¡±

    ¡°So,¡± I said, ¡°why are they after you?¡±

    ¡°My father,¡± Jen said, in a dangerously conversational tone of voice, ¡°didn¡¯t like it when my brother left. So he lied to them and told them my brother was planning to start the feud again. I¡¯m here to find the ones who murdered my brother, make them talk, then go back home and finally kill my father.¡±

    ¡°Why talk to them?¡± I asked. ¡°Vengeance? Evidence?¡±

    Jen laughed. ¡°Evidence? I¡¯m a gangster, Nathan. I don¡¯t need evidence. I just need to prove I¡¯d be a significantly better boss than my father or the Jade Emperor to justify killing him. Luckily, at this point, a potato could justify being a better boss than my father.¡± She shook her head. ¡°Honestly, I just want to know why.¡±

    ¡°Well, now you know,¡± John said. ¡°Can we leave now?¡±

    I didn¡¯t see Jen¡¯s glare, but I could feel it. ¡°Actually, considering all the property damage and murder, leaving may be for the best. Do you have any idea how we¡¯d do that?¡±

    Then, after a slight pause, Jen said the worst thing I had ever heard up to that point. ¡°I thought you two had a plan.¡±

    John groaned. ¡°Fuck me, right?¡±

 5.12 I Shot the Sheriff

    After we called Jen¡¯s people, we traveled in silence for quite a bit. Then, suddenly, John said, ¡°Shit¡­ Jen, you left that shotgun! Were you wearing gloves?¡± He shook his head. ¡°No, you weren¡¯t. They have your prints.¡±

    Jen laughed. ¡°Could you explain to me what¡¯s so funny?¡± I asked her.

    ¡°Do you know how hard it is to get prints off a gun?¡± Jen asked, a note of amusement in her voice.

    John and I looked at each other and shrugged. ¡°I have no idea,¡± I admitted.

    ¡°Honestly, neither do I,¡± Jen said, ¡°but I have a team of lawyers that can convince a jury that it would be downright criminal to put an angel like me in jail because of that.¡±

    ¡°Are these lawyers certified to practice in Japan?¡± I asked. In the mirror, I saw Jen open her mouth to reply, then close it and consider something in what seemed to be a growing panic. ¡°I see. I guess I should call Charlotte.¡± I pulled out my cPhone and dialed her number.

    I was halfway through dialing when I said, ¡°Wait, for all we know Charlotte and Eliza are still at Kage Fortress. I can¡¯t ask her for a pickup if a bunch of Defenders are sitting around, waiting for us to slip up.¡±

    ¡°What.¡± Jen said, obviously dumfounded.

    ¡°Don¡¯t ask,¡± John said, ¡°it¡¯s so stupid, I can¡¯t even comprehend it.¡±

    ¡°Me neither,¡± I said. ¡°I can just hope that¡­¡± My phone rang, cutting me off.

    ¡°Well,¡± Jen said, ¡°that sounds like that problem has been taken care of, at least.¡±

    ¡°That isn¡¯t Charlotte¡¯s number,¡± I said. John and Jen both opened their mouths. ¡°It isn¡¯t Eliza¡¯s either. It is a cPhone, though.¡± I put it to my head. ¡°Who is this?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Jacobs-san,¡± Nakashima said with strained politeness, ¡°you have been very busy, haven¡¯t you?¡±

    ¡°I would apologize,¡± I said, ¡°but you kind of took a friend of mine prisoner. The only reason I¡¯m sorry is that if I knew you¡¯d taken her¡­¡±

    I heard Nakashima sigh on the other end. ¡°Don¡¯t¡­ lie. We aren¡¯t idiots. We know you helped my distant relative escape.¡±

    ¡°Before I throw my phone out the window,¡± I said, ¡°can I ask your first name? It¡¯s going to get confusing.¡±

    "My name is Hiro Nakashima,¡± he said, ¡°and I would like to point out that you are not the only student of NIU on this island. You cannot win. But you can¡­¡±

    As he had spoken, I had been lowering the window. When it was done, I tossed the phone out of the car. For a few seconds, the car was silent. Then John¡¯s phone began to ring. He took it out of his pocket and handed it to me. I checked the ID. It was Hiro¡¯s number, so I tossed it out the window as well. As soon as it left the car, however, a third phone started to ring.

    It took me a few minutes to find it, but eventually I found the third phone, buried in one of the glove compartments. I tossed it out the window. I only glanced at the caller ID briefly, but I didn¡¯t need to in order to know it was from Hiro. ¡°Guy doesn¡¯t quit,¡± I said. ¡°Jen¡­¡±

    ¡°Already ditched it,¡± she said. ¡°Who was that?¡±

    ¡°Apparently,¡± I said, ¡°while Mayu was in her little bubble with the other heralds, her ancestors went about life normally. End result is we¡¯ve got another Nakashima who¡¯s good with computers. Like, scarily good. Possibly also an NIU CompSci student.¡± I paused. ¡°Anyone have any devices that send or receive EM transmissions? Because we need to dump them yesterday.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Jen said, ¡°There¡¯s my tracker¡­¡±

    ¡°I heard its subdermal,¡± I said conversationally. ¡°Does that mean¡­?¡±

    ¡°That I¡¯ll need a knife and some bandages?¡± I could hear the grimace in Jen¡¯s voice. ¡°Yes. Yes it does.¡± I opened my backpack and reached for some bandages. I then handed them to Jen, along with my knife. ¡°Thanks,¡± she said sarcastically as she took them. ¡°Excellent bedside manners, nurse.¡±Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said. ¡°I just don¡¯t someone to track us.¡± I turned to John. ¡°How close are we?¡±

    ¡°About five minutes out,¡± John said.

    ¡°Ok, circle the block until Jen gets her transmitter out. I don¡¯t want the Defenders crashing our RV.¡±

    John nodded and began circling. I scanned the street, trying to ignore the somewhat disturbing grunts of pain from Jen in the back seat. This went on for a few laps. Occasionally, I¡¯d look back and see Jen working on her forearm with the knife. Blood was getting everywhere, and it was starting to look like Jen had murdered someone in the backseat. Eventually, she started wrapping her bandage.

    ¡°Ok,¡± she said, ¡°I¡¯m bandaged up and I can throw this shit out the window.¡±

    ¡°That may be a bad idea,¡± John said, pointing at the rearview mirror. I looked at it. There, in the rearview mirror, was a cop car, its lights flashing. ¡°What should I do?¡± John asked nervously.

    ¡°Pull over,¡± I said. ¡°He may be going somewhere else.¡±

    He did. I made sure to seal the bag with the Type 89, M-3, and the PM-9, just in case. For similar reasons, I put my SIG between my seat and the door so I could draw it easily. Then I began to pray that the car would pass us. It didn¡¯t. Instead it parked and a police officer got out.

    There was a tense moment as the officer walked towards us. During the time, I tried to see if there was another officer in the car. Eventually, I said, ¡°I don¡¯t think he¡¯s got a partner, but I¡¯m not sure.¡± Jen nodded.

    Eventually, the cop stood out on the driver¡¯s side. ¡°Konbanwa,¡± he said, bowing. I knew that meant ¡°good evening.¡± Then he said something else that I couldn¡¯t make out, but I could guess translated as ¡°Do you know why I pulled you over?¡± Or it could have been ¡°Why is your backseat drenched in blood?¡± It could¡¯ve been either one, really. Then he must have seen our faces, because he must have asked, ¡°Anata wa nihongo o hanasemasu ka?¡± That, at least I knew, translated to ¡°Do you speak Japanese?¡±

    John responded in Japanese. I assume at least part of it translated to ¡°I do, but my friends don¡¯t.¡±

    The officer nodded. ¡°Ah. Excuse me. There is explosion. We are stopping everyone to find suspect. Pureasu step out of the vehicle.¡±

    I came to a decision in an instant. I pulled out my SIG and shot him twice in the chest and once in the head. ¡°GET US OUT OF HERE!¡± I yelled at John.

    ¡°What the hell, Nate?¡± John asked. He stepped on the gas, so I didn¡¯t really complain.

    ¡°Do you really think he would have left us go?¡± I said as the car¡¯s sudden acceleration threw me back into the seat. ¡°And do you really think they wouldn¡¯t have put two and two together and figured out we were responsible for that mess we left?¡±

    ¡°Honestly,¡± Jen said, ¡°I was afraid you¡¯d ask to keep him.¡± She shuddered. ¡°God, can you imagine having two prisoners while every cop in the fucking country is looking for us? That¡¯s the definition of a nightmare.¡±

    John¡¯s only response was to grunt mutinously. I sighed. If we were going to get through this situation, I was going to have to make amends with John. ¡°Listen,¡± I said, ¡°I admit, there were better ways of handling that.¡± Behind me, Jen laughed incredulously. ¡°Or at least more moral ways. But the longer I spent thinking about them, the less likely they would be to work. Then we¡¯d be in prison, and our only hope would be Charlotte.¡±

    ¡°You know,¡± Jen said, ¡°I actually doubt Charlotte would have let us rot in prison. Eliza¡­¡±

    ¡°Has no control over the situation anymore,¡± John said. ¡°And Charlotte only thinks she does.¡± He sighed. ¡°You were right, Nate.¡± He smacked the dash. ¡°God damn it!¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± I said, ¡°think of it this way: you¡¯re the only one who hasn¡¯t killed a cop.¡±

    ¡°So I¡¯m an accessory?¡±

    ¡°Well, yes,¡± Jen said. ¡°The good news is that this is a rather nice city. The cops shouldn¡¯t be too much of an issue. Anyway, there¡¯s the parking lot.¡±

    John pulled into the parking lot. We got out and looked around. ¡°Ah,¡± Jen said, looking up, ¡°they¡¯re here.¡± I looked too. There, towering above all the other cars, was the Escalade Jen had brought with us. Making it even more conspicuous was the fact that all the cars in the lot were cheap, tiny commuters and compacts that fit comfortably into their tiny spaces. The Escalade, meanwhile, was not only scraping against the sides of its space, but its rear also hung out over the edge, blocking the road a bit. Apart from the Maybach, it was the only car I had seen in the area over $50,000. Including the Maybach, it was the only one I had seen with windows tinted that dark. In fact, the windows were so dark I wasn¡¯t even sure it was legal.

    ¡°Very inconspicuous,¡± I said as Lydia and Andrew got out of the car. In unison, they both smashed the doors into the cars on either side of them. ¡°We blend in perfectly.¡± As the door opened, I could hear muffled grunts from inside.

    ¡°I told you,¡± the woman with the burned face said as she exited the vehicle, ¡°you should have gone with something else.¡± On the other side, her hard-faced comrade also exited the vehicle.

    ¡°Hey,¡± Andrew said, ¡°If we had just brought a sedan could we have done this?¡± With what seemed to be practiced fluidity, Andrew and Lydia opened the Escalade¡¯s hatch.

    I stopped and stared. Inside was a man with a bag over his head and his arms bound behind his back. Apart from his bag and some boxer shorts, he was completely naked. Judging by the smear of blood on the bag, he had been trying to open the hatch by banging his head against it. Or someone had punched him in the face repeatedly. The way the night had been going, I wouldn¡¯t rule either possibility out. From the rear seat, Mayu was watching both us and the prisoner with her standard smile.

    ¡°Well now,¡± John said, a note of venom in his voice, ¡°this, uh, complicates things, doesn¡¯t it?¡±

 5.13: Too Late to Say Sorry

    Shit.

    That¡¯s the last thing I had thought after the Escalade¡¯s hatch opened. Lydia and Andrew threw the person face-first onto the pavement. The man landed face-first. As he lay face-first on the floor, I noticed that his legs were splayed at odd angles and the twist ties that bound his wrists were not only tight enough to cut off circulation, but they were also too tight for the old ¡°dislocate your thumb and slip out¡± trick. I knew because both thumbs were broken, as well as both hands.

    ¡°Not so tough now, huh, bitch?¡± Andrew asked.

    ¡°Fuck you, monkey!¡± the man in the hood said in Japanese-accented English. I winced. I didn¡¯t want to see what Andrew would do when pushed too far. ¡°You think I¡¯m scared of some scum American street sweepers failed to pick up?¡±

    Instead, the woman with the burned face stepped in. Brutally, she ripped off his mask. Judging by the way he yelled and the marks on his face, some of his cuts had begun to scab up and mesh with the bag. Leaning in close, the woman said quietly, ¡°Now this brings¡­¡±

    She was interrupted by the man smashing his head into her face. Her sunglasses were knocked askew and she laughed. ¡°Ha ha¡­ this really does bring back memories!¡± She grabbed the man by the shoulder and squeezed. ¡°Maybe you already figured it out by the accent, but I was an enforcer here.¡±

    I suddenly realized what was going to happen. Not only was it going to be immoral, but it was going to be loud and it was going to be a freaking beacon for the cops. The problem was I didn¡¯t want to undermine Jen. I didn¡¯t understand the power dynamics at play. If I seemed to give orders, it could end up with Jen¡¯s subordinates getting ideas or Jen shooting me to prevent the former.

    I looked to Jen. She was staring at a point directly behind our captive, as if someone was there, trying to convince her of something. She frowned, obviously torn about something.

    Meanwhile, her subordinate with the burned face continued her monologue. I swear, it was something she had rehearsed. ¡°The first thing I always had to do with deadbeats,¡± she said, ¡°was teach them respect.¡± As soon as she said ¡°respect,¡± her hand burst into flames. The man screamed.

    That snapped Jen out of it. ¡°Kaori!¡± she said. ¡°This isn¡¯t the time or the place.¡± Kaori nodded sullenly. She turned to address the rest of her team. ¡°Knock him out and put him back in the car. We need to get moving now.¡±

    ¡°Yes, ma¡¯am,¡± Lydia said. She drew a tazer from a holster and shot the man in the back with it. He grunted and convulsed, then slumped down. Andrew drew a Glock, then he and Lydia both pistol-whipped the man in the head several times for good measure. Meanwhile everyone else piled into the Escalade. Luckily, there were eight seats in the monster. John and I sat in the rear on either side of Mayu.

    ¡°So,¡± I asked Mayu, ¡°what the hell happened when we were away?¡± While I asked the question, I noticed Jen was busy texting someone from the row in front of us.

    ¡°Oh,¡± Mayu said, ¡°the Defenders showed up.¡± I noticed she didn¡¯t seem to be taking that too hard. ¡°The Defenders seemed to have thought that they could use the same trick twice. I did not see how Kaori and Hiromasa restrained them. We just found them on the air vent at the top of the building.¡±

    ¡°What happened to the others?¡± John asked nervously.

    From the front of the car, the burly man I assumed to be Hiromasa chuckled. ¡°We made them disappear,¡± he said.

    Doing my best not to shudder, I reached for my phone. Then remembered I had thrown it out a car window. I needed to tell John and Mayu what we were in the car with. John, seeing as he was from New Hampshire, probably had guessed already. Mayu, however might not have picked up how deep we were in.

    Kaori and Hirosama Murakami had been indicted a little after I had started High School. They had been taken into custody after a member of the Minutemen, Massachusetts¡¯s local hero group, had managed to temporarily unmask a female Fire Elemental working for the Kagemotos named Tatsu and get a picture of her face with his body cam. Then he had leaked it to the newspapers and police.

    It was quickly determined that the person in the picture was Kaori Murakami, a woman who officially was a bodyguard to Mark Kagemoto. Her husband and fellow bodyguard, Hirosama Murakami was one of Kaori¡¯s most vocal defenders¡­ at least until a writer at the Globe pointed out that he was of similar build to another supervillain called Dokustsu. Then, probably under the advice of his lawyer, he shut up. Then the rumors came out that before he came to the US, he had been responsible for strange disappearances and his wife had been a particularly aggressive debt collector.

    For a while, it looked like the Kagemotos were going to lose Tatsu and Dokustsu, two of their heaviest hitters. Then there were accusations that the image had been faked. The camera somehow went missing, and the leader of the Minutemen kicked out the member who had taken the picture. A few years later, it was reported that the member had gone missing. The Murakamis were somehow never indicted.

    I looked at John. He seemed to realize the situation we were in, too. Mayu, meanwhile, just seemed her normally bubbly self. Then again, she had seemed her normally bubbly self while watching our prisoner get tased and pistol-whipped. It was obviously just an act, but I had no clue what was underneath.

    Andrew probably was also wondering what had happened. ¡°So, uh, Mayu, right?¡± He asked.

    ¡°Hmm?¡±

    ¡°You done this before?¡± he asked nervously, ¡°I mean, I know Nate and John have done stuff like this before and¡­ and I¡¯ve known a lot of people in this business, but I¡¯ve never seen anyone react like you, y¡¯know?¡±The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

    ¡°Oh no,¡± Mayu said. ¡°This is all quite new to me.¡± I doubted that. She was the last person to survive in a pocket dimension of assassins, the rest had been either murdered or had committed suicide. She must have sensed that people weren¡¯t buying it, because she added, ¡°I have spent a lot of time training for this. It is a shame that¡­¡± she paused, hand on her mouth, ¡°¡­that the people who trained me wanted me to do something different then what I signed up for.¡±

    I nodded. I knew what that was like. When I found out that the international Parahuman investigation agency UNIX had sent me to NIU just for me to die, I had become rightly pissed off. I had felt abandoned and betrayed. I also became a huge asshole and a danger to myself and others.

    I was distracted by John saying, ¡°Hey¡­ do the seats seem kind of hard to you?¡±

    I paused. John was right. The seats were harder than you would expect a luxury car to be. I wiggled my butt around and found that most of it was soft in some places. In other places, it was hard. The shape seemed familiar. Suddenly, it clicked. Oh shit, I thought.

    ¡°Oh yes,¡± Jen said. ¡°That reminds me, I still think we should make the meet.¡±

    ¡°Please, please, please,¡± I begged, ¡°tell me you aren¡¯t gun running as well.¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Jen said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. ¡°Why would I, an upstanding citizen with no need for extra cash stoop to gun running?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± John said while Mayu giggled, ¡°she did say she wasn¡¯t smuggling in guns.¡± I just glared at him. ¡°Hey,¡± he said, ¡°when I¡¯m negative about everything, things still go wrong. I¡¯d rather be positive.¡±

    The car drove on in silence for quite a while. Eventually, we came to a farm. The car pulled onto the dirt road and parked behind some tall stalks of corn or wheat. Outside, the sun was starting to come up. ¡°Everyone,¡± Jen said, ¡°get the product out and ready for display. We have time, so also please remove our friend from the trunk as well. I would like to change into something a little more¡­ imposing.¡±

    ¡°And¡­ where is the product?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Just cut into the seats,¡± Kaori said.

    John and I followed her directions. It didn¡¯t take long for me to see the dust cases and ammo tins. The extremely familiar dust cases and ammo tins. ¡°Jennifer,¡± I said, my voice dangerous, ¡°how the fuck did you get these?¡±

    ¡°Not from you.¡± Jen said. ¡°Really, Nathan, haven¡¯t you heard of the Second Amendment?¡±

    ¡°Are they a special type of gun?¡± Mayu asked.

    ¡°Yes.¡± I said. ¡°I made them.¡± There, in the back seat alone, were at least six Maccabee assault rifles, six Ballpeen SMGs, and twelve Uilon Mangchi pistols, plus several tins of ammo. ¡°I also specifically set up distribution so that civilians couldn¡¯t get them.¡±

    ¡°I thought Kagemoto-sama was a criminal,¡± Mayu said.

    ¡°She should have gotten them in the same way as a civilian,¡± I said. ¡°In other words, she shouldn¡¯t have been even able to put down an offer.¡±

    ¡°Normally,¡± Jen said, ¡°you¡¯d be right. However, the Boston and New York police accidentally over-ordered your weapons and ammo. I took them off their hands. It was quite the steal.¡± She laughed at her own joke.

    ¡°Any reason I should help you sell them?¡± I asked Jen.

    ¡°Our next safe house kind of depends on selling them.¡±

    I let out a growl of frustration and slammed my fist down on a Maccabee dust case. There was a tense silence. Finally, I said, ¡°Fine. Fine. Let¡¯s just get this over with.¡± I also made a mental note to do an investigation into the BPD and NYPD when I got out of this.

    In the meantime, I helped everyone unload the car of all the contraband. In the end, we had around six Maccabee rifles, eighteen Ballpeen SMGs, twenty-four Uilon Mangchis, and a decent amount of ammo. Plus, our friends seemed to have gotten out their own weapons. The Murakamis didn¡¯t seem to have any weapons, but Hirosama was carrying a black case. Lydia and Andrew both had Glocks and tasers holstered underneath their jackets. Lydia had also taken the grease gun from Jen.

    When the product was all unloaded, Lydia and Andrew opened up the rear of the car and threw out our prisoner. We watched him groan a bit for a while. Finally, Andrew asked, ¡°Yo, you guys think she wants this asshole conscious?¡±

    John and I shrugged. Hirosama said, ¡°It is not our job to guess what she wants. Do nothing except watch him.¡±

    ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter,¡± I said, ¡°he¡¯s just faking it.¡± His wrists were now bleeding and the zip tie was slightly frayed. ¡°Apparently, this fucker found a sharp surface.¡±

    The man opened his eyes to shoot me a dirty look as he got to his knees. I noticed that his eyes were different sizes. He said something in Japanese that I doubted was respectful. Even though my Japanese was terrible, I could tell that he was slurring his speech. He then spit at me. A spray of blood and a tooth landed halfway between us. I have to admit, I was impressed. Here he was, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by Parahumans and armed thugs, wearing only his underwear, with both hands literally tied behind his back, and a concussion, yet he was still resisting.

    Then the car door opened. Jen had changed from her street clothes into a dark red jumpsuit with bits styled to suggest or imitate Japanese samurai armor. A smooth, solid white mask with horns dangled from her hand. Our captive saw her and smiled.

    ¡°You know,¡± he said evily, ¡°I think I met your brother.¡±

    Jen just stared at him, her expression unreadable. Our captive continued. ¡°The coward ran away when he saw us coming. When he died, he cried like a little girl.¡±

    ¡°Is there anything else you¡¯d like to tell me about Brian?¡± Jen asked, squatting down so she was at eye-level with our captive. I was suddenly struck by how tired she sounded. No anger, no sadistic glee, just a bone-deep weariness.

    ¡°Just that I thought he was such a woman that I decided to shoot him in the balls,¡± our captive said.

    ¡°You know,¡± Jennifer said, ¡°I think you have an understanding of what is going to happen next, right?¡± Our captive nodded defiantly. Jen sighed and began counting. ¡°So there were my four jailors¡­ the six, right?¡± She looked at John and me for confirmation. ¡°The six who met us outside the apartment¡­ and however many my bodyguards killed back at the hotel¡­¡±

    ¡°What are you counting?¡± our prisoner asked.

    ¡°The number of your friends who died,¡± Jen said, ¡°because you killed the wrong Kagemoto.¡±

    ¡°What do you mean?¡± Our prisoner was suddenly suspicious. ¡°Surely you want the fortress? You want to reclaim your¡­¡±

    ¡°Dude,¡± I said. ¡°I was at your fortress. I talked to some people who maintain it. Not even your elders want it.¡±

    ¡°But¡­¡± he said, ¡°the Kagemotos¡­¡±

    ¡°Haven¡¯t given a solitary shit about it since my father killed grandpa,¡± Jen said, still in that tired voice. ¡°Hell, Brian didn¡¯t even want the empire we did have.¡± She smiled bitterly. ¡°That¡¯s why my father tricked you into killing him.¡± She suddenly made a sound halfway between a chuckle and a sob. ¡°I honestly was hoping I could tell you how badly you¡¯d been manipulated and you¡¯d help me kill my dad, but things somehow got fucked and¡­¡±

    She stood up, took a moment to console herself, and said, ¡°My brother would want me to let you live. Failing that, he¡¯d like to me to at least shoot you somewhere you¡¯d die instantly.¡± She stood up, a look of genuine anguish on her face. ¡°I¡¯m sorry I can¡¯t give you either of those things. Hirosama?¡±

    ¡°Wait, what are you¡­?¡± Our captive began to ask, but before he could, he began to sink into the ground. He tried to scream or beg, but dirt filled his mouth before he could finish a syllable. In less than a second, there was nothing left of him or any trace he had ever been there.

 5.14: Leave Your Lights On

    As soon as our former captive was buried in the ground, Jen smiled and said, ¡°Well, that was easier than I thought it would be.¡± She slipped her mask on. As it went on, the eyes began to glow blue and the mask began to filter her voice. ¡°Anyway, if you¡¯ll excuse me, I need to get into character.¡±

    With that, she turned on her heel and walked to behind the Escalade. ¡°Has¡­¡± Lydia asked, ¡°has she ever needed to get into character before?¡±

    Hirosama shrugged. ¡°Not for this. I mean, she usually needs some time to prepare for talking to a court or her father.¡± His wife shot him a dirty look. ¡°But she is our leader. We should not question her on this.¡±

    I was listening to this, but only enough to hear if they noticed me moving after her. I doubted I was the only one who had noticed her voice crack, or how she was obviously lying when she said how easy it was. Or maybe they did. Jen¡¯s pet supervillains seemed unquestioningly loyal, but they weren¡¯t her friends. I thought it would be best to do a ¡°perimeter check¡± and if I ran into Jennifer, maybe ask her how things were going.

    When I got to where Jen had disappeared, I saw that she was leaning against the car, the horns on her mask touching the window. Her shoulders were also shaking. ¡°Are you ok?¡± I asked.

    She looked up. There was a long silence. I didn¡¯t know what to think for those few seconds, apart from how genuinely terrifying she looked in that mask. I was starting to worry that I had offended her in some way when she suddenly hugged me.

    ¡°Um¡­¡± I said as our body armor clanked together. I was about to complain about how tight she was hugging or how I was currently dating someone else. Then I noticed how much she was trembling. There was also the strange staticky noise that I realized was what her mask¡¯s voice changer did to sobbing. Hesitantly, I hugged her back.

    ¡°Everyone I love dies,¡± Jen said.

    ¡°It¡¯s ok,¡± I said. ¡°It¡¯s ok¡­¡±

    ¡°And then I let them down!¡± Her sobbing doubled as she said this. ¡°Every time!¡± Her hug tightened and then she said something that, between her voice changer and her sobbing, was incomprehensible.

    I was unsure of what to do. On the one hand, at least for the moment, I need her badly. On the other, I wanted to avoid her. She was a liability, and not the kind I could (or wanted to) solve with violence.

    Suddenly, there was a giggle. Jen let go of me like she had been burned and began adjusting her costume and looking innocent. I turned around. To my complete lack of surprise, Mayu was standing behind us, a hand covering her mouth. ¡°I¡¯m sorry to intrude,¡± she said.

    ¡°No you aren¡¯t,¡± Jen said. A bit of her old self had returned.

    ¡°Are we needed out front?¡± I asked, trying to be conversational. Inside my head, I was thinking, Please don¡¯t tell Eliza, please don¡¯t tell Eliza, please don¡¯t tell Eliza. Honestly, I think Eliza would have understood. I just didn¡¯t want Mayu being the one to tell her.

    Before Mayu could answer, Jen said, ¡°I might as well head out. They¡¯ll be here shortly.¡± She then walked off. I followed her. When she was back in front of the car, Hirosama opened his case he was carrying and presented what was inside to Jen. She nodded and took out two chrome and black Berretta 92G Elites. ¡°Thank you,¡± she said as she holstered them. Hirosama then bowed and closed the case. After Jen had finished putting away the guns away, she said, ¡°Well, our friends have another five minutes. I¡¯m not really in the mood for games tonight.¡±

    I relaxed. This was Jen getting back to normal. This was good, at least in this situation. Unless she started a fight, which would be bad. I pulled my mask down and arranged my PM-9 in a way that was easily accessible but not as threatening as it could be. I noticed that Jen¡¯s associates were putting on surgical masks. We began to wait.

    Around four minutes in, John noticed almost everyone else was wearing some sort of mask. Belatedly, he pulled his ski mask down. A few minutes later, Mayu began to realize she was the only one not wearing a mask and began to fidget nervously.

    ¡°Well,¡± Jen said, around ten minutes after they should have arrived, ¡°this seems to be a bust.¡± At this point, it was almost dawn. The night was so dark that the eyes of Jen¡¯s mask were really the only source of light. Apart from the wildlife and the occasional car, silence reigned. ¡°I¡¯ll give them another ten minutes, then we pack up and move to the back-up safe house.¡±

    A few seconds later, I heard the sound of a group of multiple loud engines moving perpendicular to the freeway. ¡°Wait,¡± I said, ¡°how many people did you say were going to be meeting us?¡±Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

    ¡°I didn¡¯t,¡± Jen said, ¡°but there shouldn¡¯t be that many.¡± I raised my PM-9 and John raised his Type 89. ¡°Wait!¡± Jen said hurriedly, gesturing for us to lower our guns, ¡°I didn¡¯t say it wasn¡¯t them!¡± We lowered our guns and took our fingers off our triggers, but didn¡¯t take our hands of the grips.

    As we did, a group of motorcycles turned down a corridor of corn farther up in front of us. Eventually, a formation of ten to fifteen motorcycles, two sports cars (I couldn¡¯t tell their make and model due to the lights blinding me,) and one panel van were arrayed in front of us. The formation seemed to be set up so that the bikes acted as a screen for the sports cars and van. The bright halogen lights were good at preventing me from getting a good count on the men or a read on their equipment, but they seemed to be bikers. This assumption was based on the chains, pipes and giant pompadours.

    The door of one of the sports cars opened, and a man exited the vehicle and began walking towards us. As he began walking towards us, four of the bikers got off their bikes and formed a sort of shield around him. ¡°Hey, Jen,¡± I asked, preparing to raise my PM-9, ¡°how close should we let them get?¡±

    ¡°Oh, stop being so jumpy, Nate,¡± Jen said somewhat dismissively. ¡°They need more from me than just guns.¡± I nodded, noting that she had the straps of her holsters undone.

    ¡°Oi, Kagemoto-san!¡± the man who had gotten out of the sports car said as he got within ten meters, ¡°you brought more people than agreed. What gives?¡± I noticed that part of the reason the lights of the bikes and cars were still on is that I could only make out the vague outlines of the people coming towards us.

    ¡°We ran into problems,¡± Jen said simply indicating John and me with a wave. ¡°My two friends came to help, then they talked me into the rescue business.¡± She laughed. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, I¡¯m not going into the superhero business¡­ at least not full time.¡± Her voice became serious again. ¡°Anyway, I need a place to stay. In exchange, consider the guns a gift.¡±

    The gang leader stared at John and me long and hard. ¡°So,¡± he asked, ¡°who are your friends?¡±

    ¡°Tourists,¡± John said. ¡°Our AirBnB rating is five stars.¡±

    ¡°I highly doubt that,¡± the man said, ¡°considering that either of you on your own outguns all of us.¡± He was right. I saw some chains, a few brass knuckles, and a lot of lead pipes and baseball bats. Not a single person, however, seemed to have any kind of firearm.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, trying not to choke on my words, ¡°if you want to change that, these guns we¡¯re¡­¡± I actually did choke there. ¡°¡­just giving away are very good.¡± I made them, I should know. ¡°Just out of curiosity, why are there so many of you here? Do you really need this many people to make a buy?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± the man said, ¡°there was an incident in the city. Three cops are dead. Would you happen to know anything about that?¡±

    ¡°We want the same thing as you do,¡± Jen said. ¡°We want a place to lie low and not have to worry about police officers. And honestly, I think we want to leave this country more than you want us gone. In exchange, I¡¯ll send you a few gifts from time to time.¡±

    There was a long pause ¡°If I help you,¡± the gang leader said, ¡°you will never set foot in this city again, you will never set foot in this prefecture again, you will never set foot in this country again and you will never contact me directly again.¡±

    ¡°Unless you change your mind,¡± Jen said, ¡°I will never contact you directly ever again.¡±

    The leader sighed and said something in Japanese that I hoped translated to ¡°Good enough.¡± He then motioned for his people to check the boxes. They quickly broke into the crates and began picking up random and breaking down the guns or inspecting the bullets. As they did, they chatted to each other, expressing interest and surprise.

    Eventually, one turned to me and said, ¡°These kinds of guns, I¡¯ve never seen them before. Are they good?¡±

    ¡°On paper?¡± I said, ¡°very good. In practical terms? They¡¯re still pretty experimental. I can¡¯t give you any real details, I didn¡¯t design them. You should note that they use proprietary ammunition and the pistols try to get away from you.¡± Yes, that¡¯s it, Nate, keep badmouthing your own products. That way they won¡¯t suspect who you are. ¡°Also, I¡¯m pretty sure the guy who made it is an idiot whose company gets by on child labor.¡±

    ¡°So?¡± the gangster said. Then he went back to talking to his friends. I went on looking for signs that the deal was going to go bad. There were none and the men packed the guns into the van. When they were done, the leader said, ¡°Get back in your car. I¡¯ll show you where the safe house is.¡± He turned around and shouted something in Japanese to his men. The other sports car, two thirds of the bikes, and the van scattered. A few motorcycles drove past us, but I noticed that they gave us a wide berth.

    When we were finally in the car, we saw the sports car the gang leader had arrived in do a donut and drive back the way it came, albeit at a slower pace. The remaining bikes followed it and we followed those bikes. We drove through the maze of maize (ok, it might have been something else) until we got to a farm house. There, we could finally make out that the boss had been driving a Lamborghini.

    ¡°Ok,¡± the boss said as we got out of the Escalade, ¡°this farm was recently abandoned. We bought it because we were going to see if we could grow weed here. There are other safe houses, but the police have been busy in the past few hours and started to set up road blocks and raiding places left and right. Something about a terrorist attack.¡± He turned to look directly at Jen. ¡°You wouldn¡¯t happen to know anything about that, would you, Kagemoto-san?¡±

    Jen simply looked at the farmhouse. ¡°This is a very good hiding place.¡± She turned back to the gang leader and bowed. ¡°Thank you for this favor. Someday I will return it.¡± She seemed genuinely grateful, but to me it sounded like a threat.

    The gang leader must have thought it sounded ominous as well, because when he returned the bow he said, ¡°Just don¡¯t cause any additional trouble. That is all I ask of you.¡±

    Jen, unable to keep her mouth shut, said, ¡°Me, cause trouble? What makes you think that?¡±

 5.15: Cabin Fever

    We got settled in pretty quickly, along with a lot of the bikers. We promptly sealed off a series of rooms all to ourselves. They seemed to be the section for people who actually lived in the farmhouse. Outside, we could hear our hosts making themselves comfortable. There were only three bedrooms, one master bedroom and two others. Jen got the biggest one, the Murakamis got one of the smaller ones, and Mayu got the last room. John and I crashed on one of the two couches in the common room area.

    When I say ¡°crashed,¡± that implies we slept and didn¡¯t get up until morning. Instead, we ended up waking up every time we heard someone come our way. We had several tense exchanges where some person would knock on the door, only capable of speaking in Japanese and John would have to explain that we wanted to keep the room off-limits or that Jen was sleeping. Meanwhile, I¡¯d be pointing the SIG at where the voice was coming from. Eventually, we just decided not to sleep.

    Around 11 AM, Jen staggered out of bed in her pajamas (a modest white sports tank top and pink Dora the Explorer fuzzy pants,) mask dangling from her fingers in one hand, a pack of grits in the other. ¡°Ugh,¡± she said, ¡°that was a long night.¡± She turned and looked at us. ¡°Why the hell aren¡¯t you sleeping?¡± We explained. At that point, we were so tired, I forget who spoke and what we said. Jen just looked at us like we were hopeless. ¡°Get some sleep,¡± she said. ¡°You need it.¡±

    Mayu walked in just as Jen finished pouring water into a tea kettle. The suite we had taken over had no windows in the common room. When Mayu had walked in, she had opened the door and showed us the light coming through the crack in her curtain. I suddenly realized how much I missed windows.

    ¡°Kagemoto-san!¡± Mayu said with a bow. ¡°May I make a humble request of you?¡±

    ¡°I guess,¡± Jen said, turning on the stove. ¡°Depends on the request, of course.¡±

    ¡°I need some paper and something to draw with,¡± Mayu said. Her manner was much more nervous than usual. I wondered if she actually did need it. ¡°If it would not be too much trouble, of course.¡±

    ¡°It shouldn¡¯t be,¡± Jen said. ¡°Anyone have any other requests?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± I said. ¡°John and I need more ammo and clothes that are clean.¡±

    Jen took a sniff. ¡°Yes,¡± she said, making a comically disgusted face. ¡°You really do. Anyway, what kind of ammunition do you need?¡±

    ¡°Nine millimeter Parabellum and three-fifty-seven SIG for me,¡± I said, ¡°and probably five-fifty-six NATO and ten millimeter auto for John.¡±

    Jen sighed and lightly face-palmed when she heard this. ¡°You couldn¡¯t have brought anything they¡¯d actually have? You know, like a twenty-two or thirty-eight?¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± I said, ¡°the original plan was that we¡¯d be surrounded by a hundred Royal Marines and have an actual supply chain. Plus, I literally only had two hours to prepare.¡±

    ¡°And to be fair,¡± John said, ¡°the assault rifle and the Uzi knock-off were salvaged here.¡±

    ¡°The Defenders of Fuji,¡± Jen said, ¡°have an insane number of government contacts and are very creative. Getting military-grade weapons is probably the most benign thing they can do.¡± She shook her head. ¡°Anyway, I¡¯ll see what I can do. The pistol ammunition is doable. I think. You should probably give up on the rifle ammunition.¡±

    ¡°May I have a weapon?¡± Mayu asked. Everyone in the room immediately stared at her thoughtfully. ¡°If the Defenders find us,¡± Mayu added reasonably, ¡°you would need me able to fight.¡±

    Jen nodded, then went to one of the pieces of luggage that had been scattered around the room. She opened a secret compartment and took out a Heckler & Koch VP-70 with a pink slide and matching silencer. ¡°Here,¡± she said, holding the gun by the barrel. ¡°We took a few spare guns from our armory. This one looked interesting.¡± Mayu took the gun and pulled the slide to check to see if it was loaded. ¡°Can you work a gun?¡± Jen asked.

    Mayu gave one of her huge eye-closing smiles. ¡°Yep!¡± she said. ¡°Not this one, but the Defenders sent us a lot of firearms to use.¡± To prove it, she ejected the magazine and locked the slide back, ejecting the round in the chamber. ¡°You probably shouldn¡¯t store it loaded,¡± she said after she put the mag in a pocket. ¡°It¡¯s unsafe and bad for the magazine.¡± She then sat down at the nearby table and began disassembling the weapon, a happy smile on her face.

    ¡°Well, have fun with that,¡± Jen said. ¡°I¡¯m going to have breakfast, then I¡¯m going to put in our requests.¡± She held up the box of grits and shook it. ¡°Anyone else want instant grits?¡± John and I raised our hands. Mayu was too busy happily examining the VP-70¡¯s trigger group which she had just removed.

    True to her word, after she had eaten her bowl of grits, she grabbed her mask and headed out the door. I was unsure how she was going to intimidate people while wearing fuzzy pink pants with cartoon characters, but I¡¯m sure if anyone could do it, it would be Jen. Before she did, she gave Mayu a couple spare magazines for her new gun.

    Jen came back in a short while. In that time, Mayu had stripped and reassembled the VP-70 several times, each time faster than the last. ¡°So,¡± Jen said, ¡°the clothes can be obtained quickly. In fact, they¡¯re here.¡± To punctuate that sentence, she threw a couple garbage bags onto the floor. ¡°However, the ammunition and any escape will take longer.¡±

    ¡°What about the drawing supplies?¡± Mayu asked, suddenly looking desperate. ¡°When should those arrive?¡±

    Jen, barely suppressing an eye roll, said, ¡°That shouldn¡¯t be a problem.¡±

    ¡°But I need them!¡± Mayu said desperately.

    ¡°In between juggling appeasing newly-armed biker gangs and escaping a secret society trying to kill us,¡± Jen said, sarcasm dripping from her voice, ¡°I promise to do my best to indulge your artistic tendencies. Deal?¡±If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    Mayu¡¯s face froze in her desperate desire, apart from the occasional eye twitch. Finally, her face rearranged itself into its usual non-threatening smile. ¡°Of course, Kagemoto-san.¡±

    The next few days devolved into a pattern. At night, John and I would keep watch, despite everyone but Mayu suggesting it was unnecessary. Then, at around seven or nine in the morning, everyone would wake up and we¡¯d have something for breakfast. Jen would go out and ask the bikers about the various favors we had requested. When she¡¯d come back from the meeting, Mayu would ask her about the art supplies. This pattern would repeat after lunch and dinner.

    On the second day, we got the ammunition and some bento boxes just before dinner. Mayu took exception to that. ¡°How¡­ how are these incompetents able to get ammunition before they can get art supplies?¡± she asked, a temple throbbing.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Jen said, obviously losing her patience. ¡°Maybe, just maybe, it could be because they have much more fucking important things to do with their time!¡±

    Mayu, ignoring Jen, loaded a paper plate with her portion of food, muttering, ¡°Munona, munona, munona,¡± over and over under her breath. She then stormed off into her room still muttering. A few minutes later, we heard a muffled scream of rage. In response, Jen sighed in aggravation.

    After a few minutes, I said, ¡°Hey, Jen, can you ask if there is a nearby British consulate?¡±

    ¡°Actually,¡± Jen said, ¡°there¡¯s one in the city we just left.¡± Her eyes narrowed. ¡°You¡¯re not thinking of going back in there, are you?¡±

    ¡°How bad is it?¡± I asked.

    ¡°They locked the city down,¡± Jen said. ¡°Municipal and Prefecture police and the JSDF have set up checkpoints throughout the city.¡±

    ¡°Ok, where¡¯s the next nearest one?¡±

    ¡°You do realize,¡± Jen said, ¡°that the Defenders of Fuji may have given the police your face?¡±

    ¡°I do,¡± I said. ¡°I also realize that Mayu¡¯s our ticket out of here and if you two spend too much more time here together, you¡¯ll end up killing her out of sheer annoyance.¡±

    ¡°That is a risk I¡¯m willing to take,¡± Jen said. ¡°I don¡¯t want to get arrested here. Even without the Defender¡¯s help, I doubt I¡¯d get less than life plus unnecessary additions.¡±

    ¡°If I may,¡± Hirosama said hesitantly, ¡°the longer we stay here, the more likely our enemies will find us, and I doubt our hosts have the connections to arrange transport.¡±

    ¡°And,¡± Andrew spoke up, ¡°I might be reading between the lines here, but your boy there might not want these bike guys knowing he¡¯s working with the British.¡±

    ¡°Vice-versa,¡± John said. ¡°At this point, I don¡¯t give a fuck about our employers. Literally, the only reason,¡± he smashed his hand down on the table on the word only, ¡°we are even in this Goddamn mess is that someone didn¡¯t think this through.¡±

    Jen blanched at that. I suddenly realized that Charlotte wasn¡¯t the only one who was making rash decisions. ¡°Speaking of our employer,¡± I said, ¡°what do you think she¡¯s doing?¡±

    ¡°No fucking clue,¡± John said. ¡°But I kind of wonder how much of a force they can project.¡±

    ¡°Enough,¡± Jen said. ¡°I was her roommate for two semesters. She¡¯s clever.¡± She got up. ¡°Still, I think we should give our hosts some time to do their thing. That seems safest.¡±

    That effectively ended the conversation¡­ at least until the very next day. The day went on as usual until Jen got back from her post-lunch visit. She walked in wearing her mask and a skirt suit, carrying a bag that seemed to be from some kind of art store.

    ¡°Well,¡± she said with a mixture of relief and forced cheer, closing the door with the heel of her shoe and raising her mask, ¡°I finally have it. Here¡¯s your art supplies, Mayu.¡± She set the bag on the table and then went over to the cabinet where she had stashed some food. She extracted a bottle of painkillers and a paper cup and downed two.

    Meanwhile, Mayu eagerly began searching through the art supplies. First, there was a pad of paper that she seemed to appreciate. Then there were the colored pencils. There were two boxes, each with different colors. She scattered them out onto the table and began testing every brown on the first sheet of paper. As she did, her ecstatic expression began to become more and more forced. Then it began to become panicked rage.

    ¡°You know,¡± Jen said, walking over towards her, ¡°when someone gets you a gift, it¡¯s polite to thank them.¡±

    ¡°Three hundred and fifty.¡± Mayu¡¯s voice, normally high and bubbly, was now a soft whisper. She had frozen, staring at the mass of colored pencils and the unsatisfactory scribbles she had made.

    ¡°Excuse me?¡± Jen asked, her voice conversational but with a dangerous edge.

    ¡°Three hundred and fifty colors,¡± Mayu said, visibly and vocally shaking, ¡°and not one of them is the shade I want, you stupid reprobate.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think¡­¡± Jen began, her voice dangerous.

    ¡°BAKAAAAA!¡± Mayu screamed, launching herself at Jen, colored pencil in hand. She let out a burst of Japanese just as the colored pencil stabbed into Jen¡¯s temple. As she ranted, she stabbed Jen over and over again, Jen trying to protect her face and neck with her arm. I didn¡¯t catch most of it, but after several more stabs, it turned into ¡°BAKABAKABA¡­¡±

    Just as suddenly as she had launched herself at Jen, Andrew and Hirosama pulled Mayu off and flung her onto the floor. I didn¡¯t have the best view of Mayu, but I saw her look of shock to have gone from stabbing someone with a colored pencil to being on the floor to looking down the barrel of a Glock and a Desert Eagle.

    ¡°Give us a reason why I shouldn¡¯t pull the fucking trigger, bitch?¡± Andrew snarled.

    ¡°Because I said not to.¡± Jen¡¯s voice, though at a reasonable volume, rang out through the room. Somehow, despite her two-inch heels and Mayu¡¯s best efforts, Jen had remained standing. She was, however, bleeding from her face, side of her head, and arm. Andrew and Hirosama hesitantly began to raise their weapons. ¡°Did I say to let her go?¡± Jen asked. Her voice was steady and conversational, yet dangerous. Andrew and Hirosama then turned their guns back on Mayu. Once Jen saw her orders were being carried out, she paused, visibly considering her options. As she did so, nobody even dared breathe.

    Finally, she said, ¡°Kaori, set a timer to fifteen minutes. Don¡¯t start it until I say. Nobody. Else. Move.¡± Not even waiting to see if her orders had been carried out, she walked into the suite¡¯s shared bathroom, still bleeding.

    If any of us thought she was going to be tending to her wounds, those thoughts were challenged by the sounds of metallic clanking. After a while, she emerged carrying the hollow metal rod where the shower curtain was mounted. ¡°Get her standing,¡± she said to Andrew and Hirosama. They did.

    When Mayu was on her feet, Jen calmly said, ¡°You just made your next fifteen minutes quite problematic.¡± Then she slammed the curtain rod down onto Mayu¡¯s shoulder. Mayu collapsed with a cry of pain, and Jen tossed the now bent rod away and began stomping and kicking her.

    I started forwards, but Lydia aimed her Glock and pointed it right at my face. I put my hands up and shut up. John obviously got the message as well.

    Jen didn¡¯t stop robotically beating Mayu until Kaori¡¯s phone beeped. When it did, she stepped back and said, ¡°Get up.¡± Mayu staggered to her feet. Her lip was split, her nose was bleeding and bruises were forming all along her unnaturally pale skin. ¡°Let me be clear,¡± Jen continued, ¡°you are here because I allow it. No other reason. You will treat me with respect, or the next time I won¡¯t stop. Do you understand me?¡±

    Mayu nodded. Jen then gave Mayu a brutal backhand across the cheek. ¡°Answer me when I¡¯m talking to you.¡±

    Mayu kept her face turned for a few minutes, then turned back to Jen. ¡°Hai, Kagemoto-sama. I understand.¡± She then bowed.

    ¡°Good,¡± Jen said. ¡°Now get the fuck out of my sight.¡± After Mayu scurried back inside her room, Jen, without turning to face us, said, ¡°Nate, how do you feel about paying a visit to your friends?¡±

    ¡°Whenever you want,¡± I said.

    ¡°How about now?¡±

    ¡°Now works,¡± I said. ¡°Does it work for you, John?¡±

    ¡°Yep,¡± John said, ¡°I¡¯m free.¡± With that, we left as quickly as possible.

 5.16: Have Some Tea

    ¡°So,¡± I said as we walked by the second checkpoint, ¡°Now do you admit I was right about leaving those things behind?¡± By ¡°those things¡± I meant our weapons and armor.

    John sighed. ¡°Ok,¡± he said, ¡°I admit it. We were almost screwed there. But we could have gone around it. Or we could have gone to the third-nearest consulate like I suggested.¡±

    ¡°Honestly,¡± I said, ¡°I think we would have encountered some over-zealous police officers with metal detector wands there as well.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± John said, ¡°but at least I wouldn¡¯t have had to deal with that asshole who patted me down for fifteen minutes. Seriously, if I wasn¡¯t up to anything, I¡¯d sue him for sexual harassment.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, looking at the free leather jacket with spiked shoulders I had been given, ¡°we are dressed like bikers.¡±

    The decision to go to a British consulate had been easy. The hard part had been choosing which one. We both agreed that the nearest one, considering we had just been on a murder spree in the city it was in, would be too hot for quite a while. John had wanted to go to the third-nearest one, but I thought it would be too far away. I had wanted to take the Escalade because it had tinted windows to protect us from prying eyes. John had wanted to take public transportation so we¡¯d blend in. He also wanted us to at least bring some sort of weapon, whereas I thought that if we were going to take public transportation, we should avoid bringing anything that would set off a metal detector. Eventually, we had all gotten what we¡¯d wanted and it had worked thus far.

    ¡°How much more further until we get to it?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Wait,¡± John said. He then pulled out a photograph, inspected it, then looked at a building a little down the street. ¡°That¡¯s it,¡± he said pointing to the building he had compared the photo to. ¡°Should be it, just let me check the address.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure you¡¯re right,¡± I said. ¡°I mean, it¡¯s got a Union Jack and matching awning.¡±

    ¡°True,¡± John said, ¡°but it could be some weird theme caf¨¦.¡±

    ¡°The plan¡¯s for you to wait outside until I come get you in case something goes wrong inside, right?¡± I said. ¡°If it¡¯s the wrong building, you¡¯ll just see me a lot sooner than expected.¡±

    John nodded. ¡°Good luck, man.¡± As I walked away, he said, ¡°You remember where the back-up point is, right?¡±

    ¡°Yeah, creepy dump. Hey, if it¡¯s a weird caf¨¦,¡± I said as I turning back to look at him, ¡°you want me to get you a coffee or something?¡±

    ¡°Nah,¡± John said. ¡°Save your money. You may need it for a payphone.¡± I laughed. ¡°Hey,¡± John said, ¡°don¡¯t laugh. You might need one.¡±

    ¡°I know,¡± I said. And damn did I know it. However, I had a sneaking suspicion that if I needed a payphone in this country, I¡¯d be well and truly fucked. I¡¯d have to travel out to the boonies to find a place backwards enough to have them, and even then, there¡¯d be a chance they¡¯d have skipped payphones and gone straight to modern cellphones. Hell, I wasn¡¯t even sure Japan had boonies.

    I walked up to the door. Judging by the tinted glass and the sign on it that said ¡°Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth¡¯s Royal Embassy,¡± it was probably the right place. I flashed John a thumbs-up and then opened the abnormally heavy door. Inside were two metal detectors leaving me no way choice but to walk through. They were manned by a Japanese police officer with an Akita Inu and two Brits in what seemed to be fatigues and Level IIIA body armor. Beyond them was a tasteful waiting room with prominent framed pictures of the Queen and what I assumed to be the Prime Minister and the ambassador to Japan. There were some other framed pictures including posters for British Invasion bands and famous paintings of even more famous British naval victories, all tastefully laid out but not as prominently placed or as expensively framed.

    ¡°¡­the bird¡¯s puttin¡¯ about the fookin¡¯ Statue of Liberty,¡± one of the guards said in a Scottish accent, ¡°an¡¯ fook all¡¯s ¡®appening. An¡¯ like some kinda mastermind, I says to ¡®er, ¡®the fook you still doin¡¯ ¡®ere, lass? There¡¯s nought ¡®ere!¡¯ And then, just as I said that, she finds the bloody forklifts. She gets innae one o¡¯ the things and starts rooning people down an¡¯ she says to me, ¡®An¡¯ you said there¡¯s nought ¡®ere, ya idjit!¡±

    With that, the three guards burst out laughing. The Scottish guard was about to say something else, but before he could start telling another story, I said, ¡°Hi. I¡¯m doing business with Charlotte Blackmoor-Ward. I can¡¯t find her and I think she¡­¡±

    ¡°Oh fuckin¡¯ ¡®ell,¡± the other guard in fatigues said in a Cockney accent. ¡°One of you.¡±If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    ¡°Errr, excuse me?¡± I said. Everyone else seemed to be as confused. Even the Akita cocked its head and whimpered in confusion.

    ¡°Yeah, Purvis, what¡¯re you on about?¡± the Scottish guard asked.

    ¡°When you get as many hours in Embassy detail as I do,¡± Purvis said, ¡°you get to know the signs. Only the bloody loonies ask for a Blackmoor-Ward. Like ¡®ow the Yanks get someone every few weeks askin¡¯ about Area 51.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said as patiently as I could, ¡°there¡¯s a first time for everything. I¡¯m not crazy, and I do need to see Charlotte.¡±

    Purvis rolled his eyes. ¡°Alright,¡± he said, ¡°I¡¯ll humor you and see if anyone wants to talk to you.¡± He turned to head towards a reception desk. Over his shoulder, he called out to his fellow workers, ¡°don¡¯t let ¡®im come any farther in unless I give ¡®im the ok.¡±

    When he got to the phone, he said, ¡°Got someone down ¡®ere, a bloody Two-Twenty-One¡­. No, not spouting off bollocks, just wants to see¡­ What¡¯s he look like? Got a beard and glasses¡­ Yeah. Yeah.¡± He suddenly looked at the phone in surprise. ¡°Really? I mean, of course, sir.¡± He looked up from the phone and said, ¡°Right, you. Go up to the elevator. Third floor, Military Attach¨¦¡¯s office.¡±

    ¡°Thank you,¡± I said with some accidental venom. I walked into the elevator near to the left, my breath catching as I walked by the scanners. The police officer and his very big dog noticed, but said nothing. As I walked to the elevator, I took a quick note of map of the fire exits by the elevator. Apart from the elevator, there seemed to be only one staircase and exits were only on the ground floor. Luckily, the stairs would take me to the rear of the building.

    I shook my head to clear those thoughts as the doors slid opened with a ding. No, I wasn¡¯t going to need to run out of here. This was a secure building. The Defenders of Fuji would have to have someone on the inside to get in here on short notice. Or they¡¯d have to use enough force to attract the attention of local police. I was safe.

    The doors soon opened again and I found myself literally right across from the Military Attach¨¦¡¯s office. According to the plaque, his name was Lieutenant Simon Windbrooke. Before I could knock on it, the door swung open revealing a very high-strung man in a green suit with military bits. ¡°Ah, Mr. Jacobs!¡± he said in an accent Eliza would refer to as ¡°posh as fuck.¡± ¡°Or is it Mr. Marshall? Either way, I have heard quite a bit about you.¡± He then laughed. It was the most annoying sound I¡¯d ever heard in my entire life.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°Uh, I¡¯m sure you realize that the stuff I¡¯m involved in is kinda sensitive.¡± I paused, waiting for him to take my meaning. ¡°Soooo, can I come in?¡±

    ¡°Ah, yes, of course,¡± Lieutenant Windbrooke said. ¡°My apologies, I do believe I¡¯ve left my manners in England.¡± He then gave a laugh somehow even more annoying laugh. ¡°Do come in, I¡¯ve brewed a cup of tea for you.¡±

    He then ushered me into his office. Apparently, there were two rooms: his real office further in and a nicely furnished, if more than a little cramped, area he could meet with guests. On the wooden table was an electric kettle and a cup of tea. ¡°Come now,¡± Windbrooke said steering me into the seat facing the teacup. ¡°Drink up, drink up. You must have had quite a rough time of it, if what I¡¯ve been hearing is true.¡±

    I sat down. As I did, I noticed that Windbrooke had maneuvered himself into my blindspot. ¡°So,¡± I said, carefully stirring my tea, ¡°what have you been hearing about me?¡±

    ¡°Oh, Charlotte¡¯s been worried sick about you two, dear boy,¡± Windbrooke said. ¡°What with you being stuck with that vicious psychopath. Come on, drink up.¡±

    ¡°Which one?¡± I said jokingly, after lifting the teacup but not drinking it.

    ¡°Why, Mayu Nakashima, of course!¡± Windbrooke said. ¡°Girl¡¯s been trained as an assassin, trapped in some alternate dimension, brainwashed about some mad god or other, and come back to find the plan she¡¯s been programmed to carry out is obsolete. It¡¯s a wonder she¡¯s not a raving loony at this point.¡± He then suspiciously asked, ¡°Who else would I be talking about?¡±

    I tensed. Before, I had just had nagging doubts about Windbrooke. Like why there was only one teacup that he kept insisting I drink, and how it had been prepared before I had even walked in. Now, for some reason, he knew about the Architect and Mayu, but didn¡¯t seem to realize that I was with Jen and her entourage. If Charlotte had been the one briefing him, he would know about Jen and would have no idea about the Architect or Mayu¡¯s¡­ thing about him.

    Still stirring the tea, I asked, ¡°So, how long have the Defenders had you on their payroll?¡±

    An arm circled around my throat. The shock caused me to spill some tea on my leg. It was painful, but it gave me an idea. ¡°It would have been so much easier,¡± Windbrooke hissed, ¡°if you had AGGGH!¡±

    He staggered back, clutching his face where I¡¯d splashed hot tea in it. Before he could recover, I had gotten up and turned around. Making use of the momentum, I smashed the teacup into his face like brass knuckles. ¡°Drunk my tea?¡± I asked. I then stabbed him in the neck with the remaining bits of porcelain still attached to the handle. ¡°You first, I insist.¡±

    As I watched him fall bleeding to the floor, I felt an odd mix of self-disgust and pride. Contrary to what you see in films, I¡¯d never had an opportunity to drop a one-liner like that. I tossed the piece of china away, flung off the stupid biker jacket, then checked myself for blood. Luckily, it had only gotten on my face. As I dabbed at my face, I considered my options.

    First thing I ruled out was going downstairs to explain what had happened to the two Consulate guards and the cop. At best, I¡¯d be delivered to Charlotte wearing handcuffs. At worst, one or all of them could be working for the Defenders. That meant my best bet would be to get out of there by the rear staircase and hope none of the three decided to go on patrol. After that, I¡¯d get John and start putting distance between us and the Consulate. Which direction, however, was the big question. I decided that I could answer that when I got to John.

    Calmly, but purposefully, I left the office and headed for the stairs. Checking to make sure the stairwell door wasn¡¯t set up to trip the fire alarm, I pushed it open. Before I went down, I looked down and listened to make sure no one was coming up. It was clear, so I headed down. As I headed down the stairs, I thanked God nothing else had gone wrong.

    That¡¯s precisely when everything else went wrong.

 5.17: Pachinko Violence

    I heard the explosion outside when I cautiously begun to open the door. Whatever it had caused it, it sounded like it had came from the lobby. I decided that speed was now of the essence so I sprinted the short distance from the stairs to the rear exit. During that time, I heard the muffled sounds of gunfire coming from the lobby. By the time I had completed the five-second sprint to the door, it had ceased. It had sounded like both sides had contributed to around ten rounds fired.

    Shit, I thought as I opened the door. Whoever these people are, they aren¡¯t playing. I walked out into the late afternoon and began to head left. My plan was to double around and hope I could find John, so I made a left turn. Immediately, I saw that several people were fighting against the tide of people running away from the building. I made eye contact with one. He was wearing one of those single-ear earbuds that you see the Secret Service wearing. He immediately saw me and put his hand to his ear and started yelling.

    ¡°Fuck me,¡± I said, and began to run into traffic. A car skidded around me. ¡°Sorry!¡± I yelled to the driver. When I turned around, I saw that someone holding a micro Uzi or MAC-11 had just come out of the Consulate¡¯s rear exit. Thankfully, another car passed right between us.

    Deciding that staying outside where there were clear lines of fire was a bad idea, I decided to run into the building with tacky neon lights directly in front of me. I crashed through the tinted double doors. Inside was a small lobby and a fat man in a suit that even I was able to identify as cheap. He stood up from his stool and began to say something, but I just ran past him and through the door he was guarding.

    When I was in, I suddenly realized why the exterior was so tacky. This was a pachinko parlor. It was a pachinko parlor with the kind of clientele that wasn¡¯t bothered by stuff like gunfire from across the street. I then began to head deeper into the pachinko parlor, making sure to zigzag a bit. I also moved casually so as not to disturb the people there.

    Suddenly, I heard the door burst open and running feet. Eventually, the footsteps started getting closer. The rows were vertical with gaps and the feet were parallel to me so I froze in one of the gaps, pretending to inspect the machine and hoping the feet would pass. Most did, but one decided to run blindly down the hall I was hiding in.

    When he got close, I reached out and jabbed my fingers into his windpipe. Like the rest of his friends, he was wearing business casual. He let out a startled choke and dropped just as a nearby unoccupied pachinko machines said ¡°Phwoar!¡± There was an electronic trill, then I smashed the man¡¯s head into one of the screens just as the machine said ¡°Hit the lever!¡±

    The gambler on the machine looked up just as I had finished collecting the downed man¡¯s revolver. The gambler looked at the twitching hitman, then at me, then at my new revolver. Then he bowed and said something in Japanese, of which I only caught ¡°sumimasen,¡± (which translates roughly as ¡°pardon me¡± or ¡°excuse me,¡±) then he nervously began to pretend to continue playing his machine. I flashed him a thumbs up, then scanned my surroundings.

    That was the right move because had I not looked behind me, I would not have seen the guy behind me lean out with his Glock. It must have been a G-18 or some kind of conversion conversion, because the burst that followed me was definitely full auto. The sparking machines being hit made me feel like I was in some kind of John Woo movie.

    Zig-zagging back roughly the way I came, I hoped my enemies hadn¡¯t decided to leave guards by the entrance. The burst of micro Uzi fire dashed those hopes. I managed to backpedal, but some of the pachinko machines and one of the patrons weren¡¯t so lucky. As his machine sparked, he lay on the ground, clutching his arm and screaming. He couldn¡¯t have been more than fifteen.

    Luckily, he wasn¡¯t the only one screaming now. The parlor¡¯s patrons had finally recognized that there was something hinky going on. I began hearing people screaming and yelling in other parts of the pachinko parlor. There were also a few gunshots. Underneath it, I heard the man guarding the door yelling at someone.

    Hoping to God it was an opportunity and not him yelling at me, I leaned out from behind the row of pachinko machines and shot him in the face. Luckily, I had been right and he had been motioning for someone to get down. His finger hadn¡¯t even been on the trigger.

    Realizing I hadn¡¯t much time and that the micro Uzi was too big to conceal, I didn¡¯t bend to pick it up. I did glance down at the corpse and nudged it with my foot just to see if he was wearing body armor. Yes, he was. Good. Now I knew not to shoot them in the chest. My goal wasn¡¯t to kill these guys, it was to get out safely. The more engagements and the longer they lasted, the worse off I would be.Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

    On that note, I checked the chamber of my revolver as I entered the foyer. It apparently only held a maximum of five .38 special rounds, and I had already used one. In other words, I couldn¡¯t afford to miss, or have a shot hit a plate. It was at that moment I decided I hated revolvers.

    Hiding the revolver in my pants (yes, I know that¡¯s a bad idea, but my only other choices were leaving it out or dropping it,) I then exited the street. Choosing a direction at random, I turned left. After a few blocks, I began wondering where the hell the cops were. After a few more blocks, I began to wonder why there was a white van following me.

    When it started getting closer, I decided that turning into what appeared to be a tunnel of commercialism. Seriously, it was a building with an arch through it, and on the inside of the arch were a bunch of stores. I decided that my best bet would to be to find a clothing store that sold coats and sunglasses, buy them, put them on, then walk out the way I had come in. Or, considering I had nowhere near enough money, find something like a ruler I could use to jimmy a lock on a car. Or find another exit. Pretty much anything except what actually ended up happening.

    A few moments, I saw the clothing store. I also found something standing right outside it. Something I thought I would never see. A line of payphones.

    Not even hesitating, I ran to the payphones and began feeding it money. This was my one chance to talk to Charlotte. While the phone rang, I muttered, ¡°Come on, Charlotte, pick the fuck up!¡± I also nervously scanned the crowd, hoping to God that I wouldn¡¯t be shot in the back.

    ¡°Who is this?¡± A cultured British voice asked. It was Charlotte. Good.

    ¡°It¡¯s me,¡± I said. ¡°The guy who your Military Attach¨¦ just tried to drug.¡±

    ¡°Oh, God,¡± Charlotte said. ¡°You saw Windbrooke, didn¡¯t you? Why couldn¡¯t you have gone one further a¡­¡± There was a pause, as I heard Eliza talking to Charlotte. ¡°Oh bloody hell. Actually, never mind, you made the right choice. Why aren¡¯t you calling on your cPhone?¡±

    ¡°They aren¡¯t secure,¡± I said.

    ¡°What?¡± Charlotte asked incredulously. ¡°They were designed by a Turing student. They¡¯re unbreakable!¡±

    ¡°Ah!¡± a voice cut in from a different source. ¡°That explains why it took me two hours to crack it. NSA encryption usually only takes me an hour and thirty minutes at most.¡±

    ¡°Who¡¯s this?¡± Charlotte asked.

    ¡°That,¡± I said, recognizing Hiro Nakashima¡¯s voice, ¡°is the man who¡¯s forced me to ditch all my electronic devices. Tell me, Hiro, how¡¯d you get the cops to avoid us?¡±

    ¡°A magician never reveals his secrets,¡± Hiro said, ¡°and you, Mr. Jacobs, have more important questions to ask me. For instance, how far away is the cleaner team?¡±

    ¡°I saw them following me,¡± I said. ¡°If they remain true to form, I¡¯d be surprised if it took more than fifteen seconds. If they¡¯re better than I expect¡­¡± I scanned the crowd, ¡°Well, then they¡¯re probably already here.¡±

    ¡°What is your proposal?¡± Charlotte said. ¡°Assuming you aren¡¯t just trying to buy time.¡±

    ¡°It is a fairly simple one,¡± Hiro said. ¡°Give us my ancestor, and everything resets. We will forget about the abuse of our hospitality, the murder of our men, and the damage to our political capitol.¡±

    ¡°That honestly sounds too good to be true,¡± I said. ¡°What guarantee do I have that I can just walk out of here?¡±

    ¡°Nathan!¡± Charlotte said, shocked.

    ¡°Simple,¡± Hiro said, ¡°we do not think that anyone like that should see the Architect. How long have you observed her, Mr. Jacobs? Three days? Four? It only took our psychologists a few hours to determine that she is mentally unstable. She is manipulative, violent, and obsessive. Does that sound like the kind of person you want to expose the Architect to?¡±

    ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter,¡± Charlotte said. ¡°We don¡¯t give up the people under our protection.¡±

    ¡°Very high-minded of you,¡± Hiro said, ¡°but not practical in the real world.¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°discarding people like rags makes them wonder who¡¯s next.¡± She paused. ¡°Doesn¡¯t this situation make you wonder, Mr. Nakashima? I mean, the Defenders spend a damn near unobtainable stone on your great-great-great-great whatever and lord knows how many millions of yen to keep her training current and within hours of getting her back decide to just¡­ toss her away like so much garbage. All they spent on you was just a fancy four-year degree.¡±

    The line went silent for a long time. ¡°Hiro?¡± Charlotte asked innocently. ¡°Are you still there? Or did I hit a nerve?¡±

    ¡°This offer,¡± Hiro said, his voice shaking, ¡°can be redeemed by anyone. If either of you is truly loyal to the other, I would suggest taking it up.¡± He then hung up.

    ¡°I¡¯m going to have to tell Jen about the offer,¡± I said, ¡°but I don¡¯t think she¡¯ll go for it. These guys killed her brother over a five hundred year old feud. She¡¯s about as likely to believe that promise as she is to root for the Yankees.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure what you¡¯re talking about,¡± Charlotte said, ¡°and I¡¯m not sure Jen is as honorable as you¡¯re saying.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not saying she¡¯s honorable,¡± I said, trying not to feel sorry for a murderous gangster who could pass for a sociopath. ¡°I¡¯m saying her interests don¡¯t align with theirs.¡±

    ¡°Do they align with mine?¡± Charlotte asked.

    ¡°I¡¯m going to be honest,¡± I said, ¡°apart from Mayu, you are rapidly becoming the only person who cares about keeping Mayu alive.¡± I sighed. ¡°Keep an eye open for us. We¡¯ll come to you.¡± She started to say something, but I cut her off. ¡°Not over the phone, or near any other microphone connected to the net. People are listening.¡± I then hung up before she could fuck up any more than she already had.

 5.18 Somebodys Watching Me

    It turned out that I was right about how close my new shadows were. As soon as I had walked a few steps into the crowd, they were everywhere. I only saw five, but every time I turned around, one of the five would be in a different place.

    I dived deep into the crowd, but they still followed me. My plan was to see if I could lose them by the time I made it to a subway station. I had seen one on the way there. If there was a checkpoint between where I was and the station, I was more than prepared to simply drop my revolver and its piddly remaining four rounds of .38 Special. Maybe they had deliberately given that idiot such a shit gun so that when he inevitably got disarmed, I wouldn¡¯t have gotten anything good.

    The plan to double back the way I had come was dashed when I heard the helicopter blades. I looked up and saw that a group of three black helicopters, one Huey and two Little Birds, flying towards the consulate and pachinko parlor. I couldn¡¯t be sure, but I thought I saw people sitting with their legs hanging off the sides of the Blackhawk. That could only mean special forces. I rubbernecked long enough to avoid arousing suspicion, then headed down the street in the opposite direction.

    As I did, I saw multiple police vehicles and two Bearcat armored cars marked with Kanji and the Roman letters ¡°SAT¡± on the sides rush by. All of them were heading to the pachinko parlor and Consulate I had just shot up. Thankfully, I had gotten to a subway station soon after I had seen my first LAV. The look on my face was mildly interested/concerned (or at least I hope it was) as I watched a cop car and three green Humvee-like vehicles drive past, M2s cocked and manned. Then I followed everyone else down into the subway.

    The station was crowded. At first, I thought it was because there was a checkpoint in the station. That would make sense, right? Then I looked over the sea of heads of people going down the steps. There was no checkpoint. Oh God, I thought, Is this how it normally are? No wonder there isn¡¯t a checkpoint here.

    The crowd was like a crushing force. I had to fight it just to make sure I was able to pay. I had to fight it again when the next train came and it was going in a completely different direction than what I wanted. Then I had to fight it a third time to get on the right train. That train was standing-room only.

    The quarters were so cramped that I instantly gave up on trying to avoid having my gun grind into anyone. I spent a long time desperately hoping certain parts of my anatomy behaved and trying to find a position that would lead to as little unwanted contact for everyone as possible. Of particular note was the businesswoman in sunglasses who was right behind me, trying awkwardly not to look at me.

    I also scanned the area for people wearing earwigs and casual business wear. Of course, everyone seemed to be wearing casual business wear, and it was really hard to see if they were mic¡¯d up. I sighed. This was the worst thing ever.

    Still, the subway ride wasn¡¯t going to be too long, and when I got out I¡¯d be only twenty minutes away. Still, at each stop, I¡¯d have to brace for the rush of people leaving. It would move me like a fucking tidal wave and I¡¯d have to brace for impact every time I heard a ding. Finally, on the third one, I could go with the flow.

    As the crowd pushed me forwards, I noticed that at the top of stairs, a group of JSDF and local officers were randomly scanning people with wands. I sighed. Well, having the revolver had been fun, but it was time to let go. I reached into my pants, decocked it, made sure it was on safe, and then simply let it drop. The din of people talking and a train taking off masked the metallic clatter as it hit the floor. No one even knew there was even a gun.

    Luckily for me, they were distracted by a huge baby-faced man of European descent to check for the papers I didn¡¯t have. I continued walking, breathing a sigh of relief that I hadn¡¯t been stopped. Then I suddenly realized I had seen the giant before.

    I turned around. The man looked a lot like a fellow student back at NIU. Ulfric Trollbjorn was a baby-faced psycho who was famous among the assorted terrorists, psychopaths and criminals of the Academy of Military Science and Shadowhaven for how many people he had killed with his bare hands. If you told me you had seen him rip out people¡¯s spines out like the Predator or took a man by both ankles and pulled him apart like a whishbone, I¡¯d laugh and say I¡¯d seen him do worse. If you said you¡¯d heard a more disturbing sound than his high-pitched, weirdly innocent giggle that he gave whenever he found something amusing (I hadn¡¯t really got a read on his sense of humor, he rarely talked,) I¡¯d call you a liar. Needless to say, I made a double-take.Stolen story; please report.

    At first, I breathed a sigh of relief. The attitude was all wrong for Ulfric. Ulfric was childlike but obviously scarily intelligent. This guy, however, seemed normal. Where Ulfric would either be wearing his default grin, have some sort of hangdog expression, or be gleefully dismembering people, this man was arguing with several JSDF soldiers, his hands moving animatedly. Another even bigger giveaway was that the man was speaking. Ulfric spoke. Hell, from what I could tell, he spoke every language known to man like a native. The problem was that on a good day he could only seem to speak a sentence or two at a time.

    ¡°Oh!¡± a woman said as she bumped into me. ¡°Sumimasen!¡±

    I waved her off, then continued to stare at the Ulfric look-alike. Everything about him looked exactly the same as Ulfric. His buzzed hair, his sheer massive size, how he was built like a slightly more muscular-than-usual runner, and his baby face were all the same as Ulfric¡¯s. I stared at him for a while. There was no way this man could be anything other than Ulfric¡¯s twin. I refused to believe there were more than two baby-faced giants in the world.

    I shook my head and began to walk away. ¡°None of your business, Nate,¡± I said. ¡°None of your business.¡± This was definitely not something I needed to know about.

    A few blocks later and the crowd had mostly begun to clear out. I then began to notice that there were people following me. I first noticed it when I looked in the reflection of a small electronics store. Pretending to watch the TV¡¯s news report (for some reason, it had a picture of a cartoon UFO on it,) I noticed some familiar faces I had seen on the train, one woman, two men, all three wearing businesswear and sunglasses. I suddenly realized that the woman had passed me when I was staring at the Ulfric-impersonator. She had also been standing behind me on the train.

    It was probably nothing, but I wasn¡¯t going to take any chances. Not today. Not after a Military Attach¨¦ had attempted to poison me. Not after a bunch of his friends had stormed a consulate just to kill me. Not when those friends were from an organization that had been famous for training ninja back in the day. I began dodging them.

    I lost them quickly. All it had taken was going through another shopping mall, this one a lot seedier. Then I was on my way back to the dump.

    When I got to the dump, a nasty thought occurred to me. These were people who had hacked into my abandoned cPhone in two hours, something that should be impossible. They were obviously really good with tech, and that woman had been extremely close to me on multiple occaisons¡­

    I checked my pockets. There was a small plastic strip that hadn¡¯t been there when I had put on my pants this morning. A red dot blinked away cheerily. Shit.

    I sighed and entered the dump. As I did, I tossed the tracker into a pile of rotting food and hoped it sank deep. Then I went to find John. I figured I had five minutes until a Defenders team showed up and shot me to death.

    I had not been looking for even a minute when the business lady who had bumped into me jumped out from behind a pile of garbage and hit me in the face with something. There was a flash of white and I was suddenly looking up at the woman aiming a very familiar revolver right at my face. ¡°I believe you dropped this,¡± she said, smiling evily.

    ¡°How did you know¡­¡± I asked.

    ¡°Later,¡± she said. ¡°Get up.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, following her orders, ¡°but you should know, if that gun is the same one that I dropped, it isn¡¯t loaded.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± she said as I got to my feet, ¡°then rush me.¡± She pulled the hammer of the gun back, her finger resting on the trigger. When I didn¡¯t, she sighed. ¡°Did you really think I was that stupid?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± I admitted, ¡°but considering how I got it, I could always hope.¡± Unless this woman had decided to go on a rampage, that revolver still had four of its five shots left. Not a lot of margin for error, but more than enough to ruin my entire day.

    ¡°Where are we going?¡± I asked. She motioned deeper into the dump. I followed her orders.

    ¡°So,¡± she asked, ¡°why did you even come here?¡± I noticed that her voice seemed slightly nervous.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± I said, ¡°why do you want me alive?¡±

    ¡°Leverage,¡± she said. ¡°If you were us, would you want to fight the combined might of the British Empire? We keep you for a while and negotiate for peace.¡±

    ¡°And what about Mayu?¡± I asked. ¡°I thought you started this because you wanted her dead. Or at least some of you wanted her dead.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not informed about that,¡± she said. ¡°Why did you say you came here again?¡±

    I was trying to think of a lie when we both suddenly heard a series of muffled pops. I turned around to look her right in the face. ¡°Oh, I was going to meet up with my friend, John Marshall. Did Nakashima tell you about the program we went to?¡±

    Judging by how her face went pale, she had. Just as she glanced in the direction the shots had come in, I made a grab for the revolver. It went off, but I had knocked it out of her hands. She kicked it away.

    That¡¯s when I made a mistake. I dived towards the gun, thinking my opponent would as well. I miscalculated, landing a few inches. Before I could adjust, I heard the click of a safety being disengaged. ¡°Don¡¯t do it!¡± I heard my opponent say. I froze. ¡°Put your hands on your neck,¡± she said, breathing heavily. ¡°Interlace your¡­¡±

    She was cut off by the sound of a silenced pistol unloading. Not daring to look up, I asked, ¡°Hey John, is that you?¡±

    ¡°Who else would it be?¡± John¡¯s voice asked. I could hear him moving towards the corpse and me. ¡°The Dragon¡¯s Teeth? Aliens?¡±

    I at this, I got up and looked John right in the eye as he kicked away a pistol from my attacker, a silenced Glock still trained on the corpse. ¡°Knowing your luck,¡± I said, ¡°Both of those are in our near future.¡±

    ¡°You realize,¡± John said, looking directly at me, ¡°I could shoot you and say one of them did it?¡±

 Track 19: Weâ€™ve Got a Fast Car

    ¡°Is she dead?¡± I asked John.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± he said. ¡°She¡¯s pretty dead.¡±

    ¡°Just so you know,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯ve seen at least two other people. Have you seen any others?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± John said, ¡°she¡¯s the sixth person I¡¯ve killed in this dump.¡± He sighed. ¡°Still, there might be more I haven¡¯t seen. You want a better gun?¡±

    He was talking about the revolver I had picked up. ¡°Definitely,¡± I said, ¡°but I¡¯m not leaving this guy behind for them to get prints off.¡± John reached down and gave me the gun from the dead woman. It was a Walther PPK with a tiny silencer. As he did so, I asked, ¡°Do you have an escape plan?¡±

    "Well,¡± he said, ¡°either someone threw out a perfectly good Skyline or we¡¯re stealing it.¡±

    ¡°Either way,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯m down with that. Lead the way.¡± True to his word, an orange 2002 Nissan Skyline GTR was waiting for us, almost hidden among the garbage. The way it was hiding seemed almost deliberate.

    ¡°Hey, John,¡± I said, ¡°can you pop the trunk? Just to satisfy my curiousity.¡± He did. Inside the trunk, underneath the garish spoiler, someone had managed to stuff several suitcases. I popped one open.

    ¡°What is it?¡± John asked.

    ¡°Either someone is clandestinely lending their neighbor a lot of sugar,¡± I said, ¡°or we¡¯ve stumbled upon an LSD buy.¡± I considered the case for a moment. ¡°You know, we should probably leave the briefcases.¡±

    John walked over and looked at the case. ¡°I mean, it could be cocaine,¡± he said hopefully. ¡°That¡¯s less expensive, less likely to get them annoyed if we interrupt their deal. I mean, we¡¯re gonna let them keep their controlled substance either way, but¡­¡±

    ¡°Nah,¡± I said, ¡°It¡¯s more cubed. Not powdery enough.¡± I looked at the car. ¡°Besides, this is a nice car. It¡¯s probably part of the deal.¡±

    ¡°I realize it¡¯s a sweet car,¡± John said. ¡°They should have realized it¡¯s a sweet car and guarded it. Plus, they can get it back if they can find where we ditch it.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯re three other cases in the trunk,¡± I said. ¡°Want to bet there¡¯s more LSD in it?¡±

    John screwed up his face, estimating grams of LSD in a suitcase, then converting to dollars, then using that and other data to calculate ability and willingness to track us back to the US and do horrible things to us and our families. Finally, he said, ¡°Fuck it. We¡¯ve met scarier and pissed them off worse, and I¡¯ve always wanted to drive a Skyline.¡±

    ¡°Fair enough,¡± I said. ¡°Let¡¯s get the fuck outta here.¡±

    We then removed all the suitcases of LSD and made a quick check for other valuables. Then John hotwired the car and began negotiating the labyrinth of refuse. When he finally hit the road, he gunned the motor. The acceleration pinned me back in my seat.

    ¡°Hey John,¡± I said as the needles on the speedometer and tachometer rapidly rose, ¡°maybe slow it down, ok? This shit feels like a fucking cop magnet and I do not want to get pulled over.¡±

    ¡°Well¡­¡± John said, ¡°remember when you asked how they were planning on dealing with Mayu?¡±

    ¡°Yeah?¡± I asked.

    ¡°I keep coming back to what she said,¡± John said. ¡°You know, about killing Mayu.¡±

    ¡°She wasn¡¯t informed about it,¡± I said, ¡°in fact, her exact words were ¡®I¡¯m not informed about it.¡¯¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± John said, ¡°That means either they don¡¯t have a plan or it¡¯s already in motion. Plus¡­ I don¡¯t know. It seemed like she knew something she wasn¡¯t supposed to say.¡±

    I opened my mouth, considered the logic and John¡¯s uncanny ability to open his mouth when things were about to go wrong. ¡°Can this go any faster?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Physically?¡± John said. ¡°Yes. In practical terms, no.¡± He sighed. ¡°I mean, who doesn¡¯t want to go a hundred fifty miles per hour?¡±

    We continued on the road. Eventually, we got to a large town or small city halfway between our hideout and the dump we had left half a dozen corpses in. Suddenly, traffic slowed to a crawl. We had gone from about forty five miles per hour to five. A long line of cars blocked our path.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    ¡°Should we find an alternate route?¡± I asked.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± John said. ¡°I only gave a slight skim of the map. I got alternate routes, but I don¡¯t have alternate alternate routes. Plus, I have no clue where the blockage is.¡±

    ¡°Fair enough,¡± I said. There seemed to be a blockage somewhere, causing traffic to only flow in one direction.

    We continued inching down the road at a painfully slow pace. Meanwhile, I don¡¯t know why, I was looking at the roofs of the two-to-four-story buildings we were going by. Suddenly, I saw something jump between the roofs. ¡°Hey John,¡± I asked, ¡°Did you see¡­?¡±

    ¡°The roadblock ahead?¡± John asked. ¡°Yes, I do.¡± I looked ahead. ¡°Roadblock¡± was less the word to describe it and more ¡°massive perimeter around a specific building.¡± JSDF soldiers and various light vehicles surrounded what appeared to be a small campus. They looked on edge, and were all dressed for chemical warfare. They also were checking the various vehicles that were passing quite thoroughly, looking at licenses and registrations, opening trunks, and wheeling mirrors under the chasis. I also saw a few of them dragging Jersey barriers, sandbags, and crewed weapons and laying them in defensive positions.

    ¡°I actually did not notice that,¡± I said. ¡°But no, I was talking about the thing on the roof. I thought I saw something get up and then vanish.¡± I considered the vast array of military equipment before us. ¡°You know,¡± I said, ¡°we are at a turn we could easily take. Let¡¯s do it and skip¡­ whatever this is.¡±

    ¡°But no one else is turning,¡± John said. ¡°It might look suspicious or there¡­¡± He was cut off by a burst of gunfire. The soldiers in front of the facility turned around to face it or went prone. They all started shouting. ¡°Was that an M-249?¡± John asked.

    Then there was a massive explosion. A large part of the building¡¯s exterior bulged like a boil, then burst in a mass of debris and fire. The force sent some bricks, office supplies, and what looked to be body parts at least as far as we were. I knew this because a keyboard and two staplers hit the windshield right in front of my face like a shotgun blast and something big and heavy landed on the roof, leaving a dent. Other cars suffered similar damage. Burning paper, cloth, and insulation fell like snow. Understandably, there was screaming.

    One of those people was me. ¡°FUCKING DRIVE, JOHN!¡± I yelled as the smaller stuff sailed towards my face. Before I had said his name, John had already slammed the gas.

    We sped the rest of the way. John also decided to go onto the highway, and damn any possible checkpoints. ¡°The fuck was that?¡± John asked. We had been silent for a long time, due to both of us panicking and we were close to the safe house.

    ¡°Not us,¡± I said. ¡°Not Jen¡¯s merry band of maniacs, not our hosts, and I kinda doubt that the Defenders of Fuji or Charlotte¡¯s people would want to blow that up.¡± I paused, considering everything that had happened on this trip. ¡°You know,¡± I said, ¡°unless the JSDF screwed up massively, I think there might be another game of James Bond being played here.¡±

    John groaned. ¡°Hey,¡± I said to him, ¡°whatever they¡¯re doing ¡­ isn¡¯t our problem. Doesn¡¯t that make you feel better?¡±

    John considered this. ¡°You know what? It does. It really does. But you know what makes me feel even better?¡± He pointed to a cornfield ahead of us. ¡°That is where the safehouse is! In fact¡­ oh fuck me.¡±

    ¡°What is it?¡± I asked.

    "A white van just went straight into the cornfield,¡± John said angrily. ¡°Fuck me, right?¡± As he said this, he made a sharp turn, driving us through five lanes of traffic and a median.

    ¡°John, what the fuck?¡± I asked, each syllable seemingly delivering a new near-death experience as cars clipped past us.

    As we skidded onto the dirt road, John said, ¡°Hey, we aren¡¯t going home without Mayu. Also, as much as I hate her, Jen, and all of Jen¡¯s creepy friends, leaving them to die is going to be the kind of thing that gives me nightmares.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, same here,¡± I said, ¡°but maybe don¡¯t drive like a fucking¡­ like a fucking¡­¡± I searched desperately for something that appropriately conveyed how stupid that was. I gave up and just said, ¡°You and whoever was driving that little compact came close to killing me today then a team of over eleven trained professionals!¡±

    "Shit,¡± John said. Under the roar of the engine, we had both heard a thump that sounded like a hand grenade. The pop of gunfire began soon after that. ¡°They¡¯ve started. We need to¡­¡±

    There was a large bang and our car began to spin like a top. When it finally came to a stop, John and I got out, drawing our weapons. ¡°What happened?¡± I asked. ¡°Are we under fire?¡±

    John checked the front driver side tire. ¡°I think we hit a rock. Tire blew out, we went into a spin.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°I guess this means we¡¯re walking. Let¡¯s move.¡±

    We headed out quickly but cautiously, scanning the area for threats. At first, the gunfire was intense, but after that, it dropped off to scattered bursts with the occasional explosion. They became less and less frequent as we moved forwards. Eventually, they stopped altogether. That wasn¡¯t a good sign.

    We saw our enemy at the same time they saw us. The van was parked directly outside the house, and two operatives in body armor, helmets and ski masks were guarding it. Behind them, the farm house was burning slightly. As soon as the two operatives saw us, they raised their rifles. At that range, an idiot could reliably hit us with the rifles they had. Judging by how fast they were raising their weapons, they weren¡¯t idiots. We, however, had pistols designed for concealability rather than range. Any attempt to hit them would be a dice roll at best.

    Before any of us could fire, however, Jen suddenly appeared standing between the two men, pressing a Berretta to each of their heads. There were two pops and both the men fell dead. Jen gave them each an extra security shot just to make sure they were really dead. Then she slid down the side of the van.

    John and I both looked at her in horror. Then we ran to her. When we got close, we noticed with relief that she had no injuries apart from what Mayu had given her earlier. However, she did look much more tired, plus she was visibly trembling. ¡°Ah,¡± she said, smiling weakly, ¡°Nathan. John. You would not believe the day I¡¯ve had.¡±

 5.20: We Have Big Gun

    We headed towards Jen, our guns still up, but our fingers resting on the guards instead of the triggers. ¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± Jen said, ¡°they¡¯re all dead.¡± She closed her eyes. ¡°They¡¯re all dead. Now, excuse me, I need to rest.¡±

    ¡°First off,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯ll believe that when I fucking see it. And second, they¡¯re not done. I bet we¡¯re going to see a follow-up strike pretty soon.¡±

    That woke Jen up. ¡°You¡¯re right. Fuck. Ok, we need to get our stuff. Meanwhile, I¡¯m going to get Andrew and Lydia to give us some cover. Then I¡¯m going to get my game face on.¡±

    We headed into the room that sort of doubled as a main entrance/mud room for farm hands to take off their boots. Immediately, I saw a biker with several holes in his center mass lying against the wall, a surprised look on his face. Near his hand lay a Maccabee, one of the assault rifles that had been made by Nari and me. Seeing as that was a hell of a lot better than what I currently had, I bent down to pick it up. In the background, we could hear a TV.

    When I did, I noticed that it had several attachments that weren¡¯t factory-standard. In fact, they were the first third-party add-ons for the Maccabee and the Ballpeen. The magazine, for instance, was a prototype octa-stacked magazine, identifiable by the cartoon octopus. The scope was a combination video/x-ray/sonar/thermal/ultraviolet scope. I knew for a fact that there were only twenty prototypes and fifty production models in existence. ¡°Jen,¡± I said, my voice dangerous, ¡°what the hell is all this shit on my gun?¡±

    ¡°Oh God, Nathan, are you going full tech bro on me?¡± Jen asked, then patronizingly added, ¡°You realize that once you sold your weapons to the Boston PD, you don¡¯t get a say in what happens to them any¡­¡±

    She was cut off by the sound of gunfire. We turned around, raising our weapons. That¡¯s when I realized that the idiot who had chosen this gun had elected to put on the twenty-four inch barrel instead of the normal sixteen inch barrel, its heavier brother of equal length, or the nine inch barrel that was, you know, actually designed for this situation. I found this out because the barrel had literally caught on the doorframe.

    ¡°Wait,¡± Jen said, just as I had gotten the barrel unhooked from the door frame, ¡°that¡¯s from the TV.¡±

    ¡°Let¡¯s check it out,¡± I said, ¡°just to make sure.¡± I honestly kind of wanted it to be a continuation of the firefight. If it was, that meant I wouldn¡¯t have to watch how I had almost single-handedly sent two peaceful cities into a panic over terrorism. Still, we moved towards the sound of the gunfire.

    As we did, I suddenly realized that it couldn¡¯t have been me. First off, it was still going on. There had only been one engagement I had had that could have been going on this long, and no cameras could have recorded it. There were also too many explosions. Plus, there seemed to be a Japanese reporter covering it live, with a lot of people yelling and screaming in what sounded to be Russian. That definitely ruled out something I had done, as I had never had fired a shot in front of a TV crew, and certainly had never been to Russia.

    When we got into the TV room, I stopped and stared. Of course, the three other bikers who had been guarding us were all dead. One had been blown up with a well-placed grenade. The other two had been taking down with expertly placed bursts from an assault rifle. Two Ballpeen SMGs and one Maccabee plus assorted magazines and ammo boxes lay on a table far out of reach from the three dead men.

    However, the thing that stuck out the most to me was what the images on TV depicted. Despite the fact that it had taken a few rounds of shrapnel, I could still see what looked to be a naval base under heavy attack. The reporter, a wild eyed Asian woman in a skirt suit and heels, was crouched behind some sandbags and desperately describing the situation in Japanese. To the left were a variety of drab concrete buildings. To the right, a destroyer was moored to the dock. Up the road, there was a hastily constructed barricade of sandbags and barbed wire manned by what looked to be Russian soldiers. They were supported by two BMPs (basically, Russian tank-like things designed to carry troops and kill infantry) and the guns on the destroyer. We didn¡¯t have a clear view of what they were fighting. I did know that whatever it was, it was bad enough that multiple shots from the destroyer¡¯s cannon hadn¡¯t destroyed it.

    The camera panned to people farther down the docks, showing that several subs, destroyers, and even an aircraft carrier were moored at the dock. It then zoomed in on people close by, desperately trying to get destroyer free. There were also others trying to get on board the carrier, some sailors, some soldiers, even a few civilians. I guessed similar scenes were happening at every ship. It panned back down the docks, showing that more barricades were being prepared.

    The camera was then violently jerked to look at a group of Russian soldiers. The leader of the group, who I noted with a shock was younger than I was, said something in Russian that I assumed translated to ¡°What the fuck are you still doing here? Get on the Goddamned boat!¡± The reporter, switching to what seemed to be broken Russian tried to protest.

    Suddenly, there was a flash of light and the camera went dead. After a few seconds, the view switched from static to a pair of stunned anchors. I looked around. Kaori, Lydia, Hirosama, Andrew, and Mayu had come down while we had been watching. I noticed that both Lydia and Andrew were dressed like a villain called Bushido. I briefly wondered if that explained his long disappearance a while back and his newfound ability to be in multiple places at once. I had to admit, I was impressed at how the future biker samurai costume had been adjusted to mask Lydia and Andrew¡¯s physical differences. I also noticed that Mayu had a black eye, a cut and puffy lip and several bruises from the beating Jen had given her, yet still was smiling her standard smile.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    Hirosama and Kaori were also in costume as well. I suppose that I should call them Tatsu and Dokustsu, now that they were in costume. Both costumes were dark red and samurai-inspired like Jen¡¯s, but the Dokusutsu costume had a seemingly eyeless hood and intricate conical hat done up to look like flame. The Tatsu costume had a dragon mask that left the mouth exposed and no gloves. A gas mask hung from around her neck.

    Before I could ask about the costumes, Jen said, ¡°Alright, the Defenders aren¡¯t going to be spending their time watching the news, so neither should we. Bushido, Kuniochi, how long will it take to set up the smokescreen?¡±

    One of the two people in the Bushido costume (I honestly couldn¡¯t tell which one was Andrew and which one was Lydia, that¡¯s how good their costumes were at disguising them) took out a laptop with an antenna attached and said, ¡°Ten minutes or never, if something goes freakishly wrong.¡± The villain¡¯s voice was extremely distorted.

    The other said, ¡°In most cases, it shouldn¡¯t take more than three minutes.¡±

    ¡°Good,¡± Jen said. ¡°Tatsu, Dokusutsu, get the car disguised and ready. Keep an eye out. Our consultants think there may be a second round.¡±

    ¡°Hai, Kagemoto-sama,¡± Tatsu and Dokusutsu both said in unison, bowing. They quickly moved off.

    Jen turned to me and John. ¡°You two, take Mayu and see if you can find anything useful. I¡¯ll be up in the room, putting my war face on.¡±

    ¡°Do you want us to get our clothes?¡± I asked.

    Jen, already almost out of the room, cocked her head, thinking about it. ¡°No,¡± she said. ¡°we have a safe house in mind. It should be secure long enough for us to change into civvies, then head to the Embassy.¡± She then began to head off. ¡°In the meantime, your names while in disguise will be Killer and Driver.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°John¡­ Driver, whatever, you and Mayu, go get any firearms, explosives, body armor, backpacks, and face masks you can find in the room. I¡¯ll consolidate anything useful from the bikers and breachers.¡±

    As John and Mayu moved out, I asked the two costumed hackers who had just pushed off a corpse from one of the couches and sat down to type, ¡°You guys have any spare gloves?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± the one who wasn¡¯t typing said. S/he opened a pouch on their belt and pulled a handful of rubber gloves. ¡°Sometimes I wear these over my costume gloves because they¡¯ve got some pretty unique fibers in them. Not usually a problem, but sometimes I like to play it extra safe.¡±

    ¡°Makes sense,¡± I said as I pulled the gloves on. ¡°By the way, what kind of weaponry do you two have?¡±

    ¡°I got a Glock 33,¡± the one who¡¯d given me the gloves said, patting a holster. ¡°Lydia¡¯s got a Glock 29. We¡¯ve also got a few party favors.¡±

    ¡°Anything else?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Why would we need anything else?¡± the one sitting at the laptop asked. This time I was able to identify her as Lydia.

    I sighed, leaning my Maccabee against the other couch. I walked over to the Ballpeen with the sniper barrel. As I changed it to the ultra-short barrel, I said, ¡°Your Glocks are going to be able to kind of penetrate Level I and Level II body armor. The problem is these guys tend to wear Level III and IV body armor. Those are designed to take multiple AK rounds.¡± I finally got the more appropriate barrel in. ¡°This guy, however, is designed to defeat standard Dragon¡¯s Teeth Legionary armor at pistol range, which I¡¯d guess to be Level VII.¡± I tossed the weapon to the person I assumed to be Andrew. ¡°Safety¡¯s on. It works a lot like an M4, but the magazine release is a pistol release and you cock it and check it like an AK.¡±

    Andrew caught it. When he did, he accidentally pressed the trigger on the foregrip that turned on the laser and light. This one had been set to solid laser on trigger. ¡°Yo, this is awesome!¡± Andrew said, laughing like a kid finding a cool feature on an old toy for the first time. He flipped down the grip and began playing with the light and laser settings. I noticed his finger was on the gun¡¯s trigger as well as the laser/light¡¯s trigger.

    ¡°Hey,¡± I said, putting my souvenir guns on the couch opposite the villains, ¡°keep that shit pointed in a safe direction.¡± The safety was still on, I knew for a fact that there wasn¡¯t a round in the chamber (I had checked before I switched barrels like a safe person,) and I had removed the magazine (Again, part of good barrel-changing discipline.) Still, trigger discipline says a lot about whether or not you should work with a person.

    ¡°Sorry,¡± he said. Even though his voice was extremely distorted, he still sounded sheepish. I began to replace the barrel on my Maccabee with a more appropriate 14-inch heavy-barrel. Meanwhile, Andrew sat next to Lydia, suitably cowed. ¡°Hey,¡± Andrew asked when I had put in a standard sixty-round mag, ¡°any other cool stuff you can show me?¡±

    Smiling, I began to explain him the various advantages of the gun, such as its MP-5 style stock, how the magazines worked, and how to change barrels. I was just explaining the advantages of a tactical sling when John and Mayu came back in, their arms full of weapons. John had wrapped his bundle in plate carriers, Mayu had hers in two backpacks.

    ¡°Nice,¡± I said, ¡°but we can¡¯t take all of them and I don¡¯t want prints.¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± Jen said, walking into the room, now in her Hinomoto Oniko costume. ¡°That¡¯s why we¡¯re going to burn the building down when we leave.¡±

    ¡°Fair enough,¡± John said, handing me a ski mask and my pistols.

    As I put my mask on, I told John, ¡°Thanks. By the way, I want you to take one the other Maccabee and put it into a SAW configuration. You¡¯ll be the closest thing we¡¯ve got to a machinegunner out there and I do not want to be trapped out there without some suppressive fire.¡±

    ¡°Gotcha,¡± John said. ¡°I also brought some medkits.¡±

    We then took the guns we needed. John and I just took the Maccabees, our personal guns, and the body armor we had worn when we¡¯d rescued Jen. Andrew and Lydia took the Ballpeens and a Benelli M3. Jen took her Kriss Vector and the M3 Grease Gun. Mayu retained her pink VP-70 and took an HK 417 with an underbarrel M-26 and EOTech holographic reflex sight, a Walther PPK, the shitty pistol I had hoped to abandon, the PM-9 I had taken from Jen¡¯s rescue, and a relatively undamaged plate carrier that had obviously come from one of the Defenders that was loaded with grenades of various types. I noticed that Mayu had somehow managed to conceal her selected pistols extremely well.

    When we were done, Jen said, ¡°Ok. Let¡¯s get to the car.¡±

    ¡°Are we really going to be taking the Escalade?¡± I asked. ¡°Isn¡¯t that a little obvious?¡±

    I was pretty sure Jen smiled under the mask as she gestured for us to follow her. We did. When we got to a barn, I saw the Escalade. It had changed color from black to white and I¡¯m pretty sure the license plates were different as well. ¡°What do you think?¡± Jen asked.

    Mayu immediately began teleporting around the car like an anime character, gushing in Japanese. ¡°First off,¡± I said, ¡°It¡¯s still a big luxury American SUV in a country that hates SUVs. Secondly¡­ should Mayu be able to jump that much?¡±

    ¡°You know¡­¡± Jen said, ¡°I¡¯m in the 99<sup>th</sup> percentile of Jumpers in terms of teleportation. That kind of strain would kill me.¡± Mayu stopped her jumping and giggled nervously. She didn¡¯t even look strained. ¡°Then again, everything about her is somewhat impossible.¡±

 5.21: Life in the Fast Lane

    ¡°So,¡± I asked Jen, ¡°what¡¯s the smokescreen you¡¯re planning on using?¡± We were driving down the highway, Jen, Andrew, and Lydia in the middle row. Mayu, John, and I were in the middle. Hirosama was driving and Kaori was on the passenger side. John and I were scanning the road for threats. I didn¡¯t know if he felt it too, but I had a bad feeling.

    ¡°Well,¡± Jen said, ¡°apparently, the vast majority of known spy satellites have a certain flaw. Let¡¯s say someone launches a fairly sloppy hacking attempt on them.¡±

    ¡°Which I just did,¡± Lydia (at least I think it was Lydia, the costume made it very hard to tell.) ¡°Well, it¡¯s more like a DDoS on all the ones that will cover Japan for the next eight hours¡­¡±

    ¡°Anyway,¡± Jen said, cutting her off, ¡°when the hack¡­¡±

    ¡°Technically, attempt at unauthorized access,¡± Andrew (at least, I¡¯m pretty sure it was Andrew) interrupted.

    ¡°Whatever!¡± Jen¡¯s outburst made Andrew and Lydia shut up. ¡°When the thing happens, the satellite shuts down. Quite the equalizer, right? And all you really need is a way to contact the satellite.¡±

    ¡°Is that something you used your botnet for?¡± Mayu asked excitedly.

    ¡°Oh hell yeah!¡± Andy (or Lydia) said. ¡°That¡¯s exactly what that¡¯s for!¡± He or she laughed. ¡°Can you imagine? Billions of dollars¡¯ worth of government equipment brought down by smart appliances.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± I said dryly. ¡°I honestly can imagine some of these governments dropping a smart bomb on some poor bastard¡¯s home because his toaster is spamming a spy satellite with dank memes.¡± This truly was the dumbest future.

    ¡°Oh don¡¯t be such a killjoy,¡± Jen said as Lydia and Andrew laughed. ¡°Oh, and Bushido? Kuniochi? In the future, please remember: a magician doesn¡¯t reveal their secrets. Except to their patrons, of course.¡± Lydia and Andrew got the message and shut up.

    We drove along for a little while in silence. Mayu then asked, ¡°So¡­ what is a smart home?¡±

    ¡°Basically,¡± John said, ¡°it¡¯s a way of connecting various appliances and utilities to the internet. If you want your heating system or AC to be off while you¡¯re at work, but you want your house to be the perfect temperature when you walk in the door? That¡¯s part of a smart home. Want to be able to unlock your door if your parents show up when you¡¯re at work? That¡¯s part of a smart home. Want to have a camera system connected to the internet? That¡¯s part of a smart home. The problem is, these systems are currently kind of a patchwork, fuck up a lot, and are really, really easy to hack. I actually took a class about how to kill people just by using their own smart home.¡±

    ¡°So¡­¡± Mayu asked, ¡°is Kage fortress a smart home?¡±

    I considered this for a moment. ¡°Yes. But probably a lot more elegant and secure than most, if you listen to Hiro.¡±

    ¡°Just like a government spy satellite is more elegant and secure than a home security system?¡± Mayu asked?

    I nodded, wondering where Mayu was going with this. She just continued to sit there, smiling her fixed smile. We drove in silence for a while longer.

    Eventually, Jen said, ¡°So, apparently the Defenders have figured out how to miniaturize Anti-Jump fields.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± John asked. ¡°How do you know?¡±

    ¡°Because,¡± Jen said, ¡°they were using them. Don¡¯t worry, they aren¡¯t really that good, I was still able to jump. It just took a lot out of me. That reminds me¡­ did we bring the drone?¡±

    ¡°The one with the anti-Anti-Jump field?¡± one of the people in the Bushido costumes asked. ¡°Got it right here.¡± There was a sound of a belt being patted. ¡°Your pet genius did it again.¡±

    ¡°I thought you were her pet geniuses,¡± I said.

    ¡°And I thought you had learned to stop asking questions,¡± Jen responded. ¡°Really, Nate, you have too many habits that will get you killed.¡± I took the somewhat subtle hint and shut the fuck up.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

    A long silence followed. During that time, Kaori turned on the BBC. It quickly became apparent that Russia wasn¡¯t the only one having to deal with a sudden influx of what sounded to be Dragon¡¯s Teeth. The partial list seemed to be Germany, Russia, France, South Korea, India and Pakistan. Then, there was the news that Belgium had already fallen. Other countries were also reporting terrorist attacks. It all seemed so unreal.

    Mayu was the one to break the awkward silence. ¡°Oh! I¡¯ve been meaning to ask you this, Kagemoto-sama!¡± she said. She reached into a pocket on her skirt and handed Jen a folded piece of paper. ¡°Does the person I drew look familiar?¡±

    Jen took the paper. ¡°Huh. He looks a lot like Mubashir.¡±

    I tensed. So did John. Mayu must have noticed, but she gave no sign of it. ¡°I am curious,¡± she said, ¡°where did you meet Mubashir? Was it at this fabled Nowhere Island University?¡±

    ¡°How the hell did you even hear about that?¡± Jen asked.

    ¡°Jacobs-san and Marshall-san both had the logo on their jackets when I first met them,¡± Mayu said, referring to our hoodies. ¡°The logo is also on the back of their phones, and the phones of Blackmoor-Ward-ojou and Henderson-san. My relative met with me briefly and noted that he was trained there. Or did you mean how did I know who Mubashir is?¡± Her voice had the same bubbly cheeriness, but I could hear a bit of bitterness underneath.

    ¡°Mayu,¡± I said, ¡°Is now really the time to be talking about this?¡±

    ¡°Considering what¡¯s on the radio,¡± Mayu asked, her mask of perpetual cheerfulness slipping, ¡°it¡¯s almost too late to talk about it.¡±

    ¡°What is this we¡¯re talking about?¡± Jen asked.

    ¡°Remember how you told me not to ask questions?¡± I shot back. ¡°You¡¯re not allowed to know, you don¡¯t need to know, and honestly, you don¡¯t want to know.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Jen said, ¡°I just thought the fact that, you know, being right in the middle of whatever you¡¯re doing would give me some right to know what¡¯s going on.¡±

    ¡°Trust me,¡± John replied, ¡°this entire thing is so stupid. You don¡¯t want to know.¡±

    ¡°Look,¡± I said to Mayu, ¡°this is stupid. If you think I¡¯m going to stop you and Charlotte from going after Mubashir, even now, I wouldn¡¯t do anything that could stop you.¡±

    ¡°But if you could,¡± Mayu said, ¡°you would, wouldn¡¯t you?¡±

    I considered this. ¡°I would want to make sure you realized that Moob¡¯s human,¡± I said eventually. ¡°Not some sort of weapon or tool.¡± Mayu was about to say something, but I added, ¡°I¡¯d also want you to talk to some sort of psychologist. You know, make sure you¡¯re in a good place. That sounds reasonable, doesn¡¯t it?¡± Actually, considering Mayu¡¯s outburst earlier today, Charlotte would probably find that reasonable as well. Maybe I could get what I wanted after all.

    May¡¯s already near-albino complexion somehow went even whiter and her eyes widened. She began gripping her rifle much tighter, as if she was trying to hang on for dear life. ¡°Of-of course, Jacobs-san,¡± she said. I noticed her breathing was labored. I suddenly realized she was having a panic attack. ¡°Completely reasonable.¡± She laughed, obviously trying to make me think she was fine. It didn¡¯t work. She then turned to face the road ahead. ¡°Completely reasonable.¡±

    There was more silence. Mayu wasn¡¯t relaxing. The road we were driving on was a raised highway. Lydia had apparently checked it ahead of time for roadblocks and there weren¡¯t any. The traffic was at that point where it was as heavy as it could be without slowing down, and there was a bit of a mist and some rain. Occasionally, we had heard helicopters fly overhead. However, there had been one for the past few minutes that had been hovering directly over us. I was starting to get a little suspicious.

    Just before I was about to voice my suspicions, I suddenly felt like I had been buried. Jen let out a gasp and Mayu¡¯s grip on her HK 417 somehow got even tighter. ¡°Shit!¡± either or Lydia or Andrew said, ¡°anti-jumpfield!¡±

    ¡°Launch. The. Drone.¡± Jen said through gritted teeth.

    ¡°We can¡¯t,¡± Lydia or Andrew said. ¡°The car¡¯s going too fast and the traffic¡¯s too heavy. The wind¡¯ll make it impossible to launch, and a car could hit it.¡±

    ¡°We have a problem,¡± Kaori said.

    ¡°I noticed,¡± Jen growled, holding her head. Then she snarled at her two techs, pain evident in her voice, ¡°Launch it anyway.¡±

    ¡°It would only be a temporary¡­¡±

    ¡°The brakes are disabled!¡± Kaori yelled.

    ¡°What?¡± Jen asked. ¡°Turn off the engine! Use the e-brake!¡±

    "I can¡¯t!¡± Kaori said, obviously panicking. ¡°The car just keeps accelerating!¡±

    ¡°Heh,¡± Mayu said, her fixed grin morphing into something malevolent. ¡°Sayonara, baka.¡± Even I knew what that meant, but before I could do anything, she jumped. Only thin air remained behind: no weapons, no equipment, just air. The seatbelt retracted immediately after.

    ¡°Mayu¡¯s gone!¡± I said. ¡°She just jumped out of here!¡±

    I looked back just in time to see the stop indicator lights of the van in front of us turn red. ¡°Kaori, turn!¡± Someone yelled that. It may have been me. It may have been someone else. Either way, it was too late. As soon as the last consonant was uttered, we hit the van. Before we had any time to react, something slammed into us from the rear.

    We all took some time to recover. I turned to look at John. He was bent forward, blinking in shock. The roof of the Escalade had caved in to dope slap him. ¡°Holy shit,¡± I said. I turned to the rear. The thing that had hit us was an eighteen-wheeler. ¡°Holy shit,¡± I said again.

    ¡°Yeah, I know, right?¡± John said. He looked just as freaked out as I felt.

    Then the helicopter above us smashed into a building nearby.

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said as everyone groaned, ¡°everyone, sound off. Tell me what your status is.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re a little¡­¡± someone from the middle row began.

    Then the minivan hit us.

 5.22: Zero to One Hundred

    ¡°Shit!¡± I said. This wasn¡¯t an accident. The Toyota Sienna that had side-swiped us had clear windows, so I could see the frightened family inside. The hadn¡¯t meant to side-swipe us. If what had happened to us was any indication, they didn¡¯t have any choice. ¡°I think this is a cyber-attack.¡±

    ¡°No shit, Sherlock!¡± Andrew or Lydia said.

    ¡°You¡¯re the hackers!¡± I said. ¡°Do someth¡­!¡± Another car, a BMW Z4, side-swiped us, knocking the minivan into traffic. Two other cars hit the minivan, one right after another, leaving it a crumpled mess. The driver of the Z4, a woman in a fancy evening gown, may have been saved by her airbag, but her passenger, a man in a suit, hadn¡¯t been wearing a seatbelt. He¡¯d gone through the window and smashed his head against the side of the Escalade. I felt the walls of the Escalade hit my leg.

    ¡°Already on it!¡± one of the hackers yelled. ¡°The fix should be taking effect¡­¡±

    I looked up to see an old Toyota pickup barreling towards me.

    ¡°¡­About¡­¡±

    It was hard to tell in the dark and at a distance, but I think the driver looked just as terrified as I did. He was obviously trying to turn, but the car wasn¡¯t responding.

    ¡°¡­Now!¡±

    At the last second, the pickup swerved. He missed us and the Z4, but was T-boned by a delivery van. Then a Subaru hit his bed. Cars were beginning to stop. Then the lights began to turn off. Soon, the only sources of lights were headlights. Someone or something had cut the power.

    ¡°Did you just hack the city¡¯s power grid?¡± I asked the hackers.

    ¡°Don¡¯t sound too impressed,¡± one of them said, grunting in pain. ¡°We bought a¡­ agh! A backdoor from some Russians¡­ or people pretending to be Russians. All we had to do is¡­ ahhh-ah-ah-ah¡­ type in the zip code and all the power in the area shuts off. Cameras¡­ traffic lights¡­ they also fuck off.¡±

    ¡°You ok?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Didn¡¯t¡­¡± the hacker said, ¡°¡­didn¡¯t put in the pads on my armor. Seatbelt just cracked my sternum.¡±

    Resisting the urge to berate the hacker for not bringing the pads, I asked, ¡°Can everyone move? We need to get moving.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll¡­¡± Jen said weakly, ¡°I¡¯ll be a minute. My head¡­¡± There was some fumbling, then a wretching sound.

    "Aw, gross!¡± one of the hackers said.

    ¡°We are trapped by the console,¡± Hirosama/Dokutsu said. ¡°However, this is the exact reason we sewed some granite plates into the frame. ¡°I should be able to get us free, but it will take time. Also¡­¡± That sounded ominous.

    ¡°Also¡­¡± Kaori/Tatsu said, obviously in intense pain, ¡°¡­I seem to have a compound fracture. If someone could get me a cast, I could cauterize and set it while we work.¡±

    ¡°I got you,¡± John said, reaching into his pack. He took out a pack with a red cross and handed it over the middle seat. ¡°Hey, someone pass this up to Tatsu.¡±

    ¡°While they¡¯re doing that,¡± I said, ¡°we need to set up a perimeter. Kuniochi, Bushido, you head out first, I¡¯ll follow you. John get a neck brace on just to be safe, then follow us out. Jen, don¡¯t come out unless you¡¯re sure you¡¯re fine.¡±

    ¡°Oh, don¡¯t worry about that,¡± Jen said. Her voice was unfiltered, so she¡¯d probably taken off her mask. Then she vomited again.

    ¡°Door¡¯s jammed shut,¡± one of the hackers said.

    ¡°Is it blocked?¡± Jen asked, annoyed.

    ¡°No.¡±

    ¡°Then blow the fucking charges.¡±

    ¡°Wait!¡± I said. ¡°Before you exit the vehicle, I want you two to understand how we¡¯re going to behave. We are going to show our weapons, but we will not aim them at civilians unless we suspect they¡¯re not, or that they¡¯re going to play hero. We¡¯re going to be firm and only as loud as needed to be heard. I don¡¯t want any dead civvies, and if you follow these rules there won¡¯t be any. You understand?¡±

    ¡°Got it,¡± one of the hackers said, cocking the Maccabee. ¡°Don¡¯t fuck up the normies.¡±

    Before I could express concern that I had given a 4chan troll automatic weaponry and told them to do one of the hardest jobs a soldier could do, the door blew open. The two hackers exited the vehicle and instantly began shouting curses and threats.

    ¡°They¡¯re going to start shooting civilians any second, aren¡¯t they?¡± John asked as he fixed his collar in place. I nodded. John sighed. ¡°Fuck me, right?¡±

    I exited the Escalade, unfolding my stock as I jumped out the hole where the door used to be. ¡°What,¡± I asked dangerously, ¡°did I say about controlling the civilians?¡± I paused, and saw that they both were pointing their guns at a man cowering by the crashed minivan, their lasers and lights illuminating him. I didn¡¯t need to see them to know that their fingers were in their triggers. I did see that the man wasn¡¯t holding anything and was obviously being as compliant as he could. ¡°And what the fuckdid I say about pointing weapons at civillians?¡±This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    ¡°Uh¡­¡± one said, ¡°¡­I¡¯m thinking ¡®don¡¯t point weapons at civilians?¡¯¡±

    ¡°For future reference,¡± I said, ¡°Only point your weapon at a civilian if you can¡¯t see their hands or if they enter this zone.¡± I indicated a semi-circular area around the Escalade. ¡°If they start to get too close, use hand signals as well as words. Only pull your weapon if they get within twenty steps or have some sort of weapon. If you see a gun, call it in.¡±

    ¡°Follow those steps to the fucking letter,¡± John said, coming out towards us, ¡°Or I¡¯ll shoot you myself.¡± He looked at the man Bushido and Kuniochi had been terrorizing. ¡°What¡¯s his deal?¡± The man in question was sobbing and pleading. He may have been crying, but it was hard to tell in the rain.

    "We don¡¯t know,¡± one of the two hackers said. ¡°We can¡¯t speak Japanese, he can¡¯t speak English.¡±

    ¡°I think I recognize him,¡± I said. ¡°He was driving his family somewhere in that minivan.¡± I pointed to the crumpled minivan. The darkness, rain, fog and flickering headlights shining right at us made it hard to tell, but the driver¡¯s side was empty and the door was open. The front windscreen shattered and bloodstained and the frame made it seem miraculous that anyone inside was even alive, let alone walking.

    ¡°Shit¡­¡± John said.

    "I know,¡± I said. John began to move to help the man, but before he did, I said, ¡°Hey, do you have a spare flashlight? I want to check to confirm the lack of hostiles and help any civvies as much as I can. Figure if the cops get us that would count for something, right?¡± Plus, there was the matter of the Geneva Convention and basic morality. John saw the logic and handed me a flashlight.

    My first stop was the van we had hit. The man inside, a young Japanese man about my age, was breathing into a paper bag. Shining the light inside with one hand, I knocked on the window with the other. ¡°Sir,¡± I asked, ¡°are you alright?¡± He shook his head, then locked the door. He must have noticed that I was carrying an assault rifle. I sighed and moved on to the Z4.

    As I did, I heard Kuniochi and Bushido securing the perimeter in a much more professional manner. Good. That meant we had a chance of not hurting civvies.

    That is, assuming any had survived the crash. The BMW had thrown its passenger through the windscreen and into the side of the Escalade. Judging by how much of his brains were showing, the funny angle of his neck, and the stains on the side of the now white Escalade, he was dead. If he was still alive by some miracle, he¡¯d be dead soon. My guess was that he hadn¡¯t been wearing a seatbelt. The hood of the car was crumpled like an egg carton that had been stepped on and all the windows had been cracked to hell and back by the impact. Through the spider web of cracks that had turned the windows snow white, I saw the driver move.

    I ran to the driver¡¯s side and knocked away what was left of the window. ¡°Ma¡¯am?¡± I asked the woman. ¡°Are you OK?¡± She was slumped over her airbag. Her evening dress and much of the interior of her car was surprisingly clean, her gauzy blue-green dress with sequins only slightly ruffled and the gray and black leather of the interior mostly spotless. ¡°Ma¡¯am.¡±

    She turned and looked at me. Her nose was broken and bleeding, her lips were cut, one of her formerly perfect teeth was loose, and her blood was causing her makeup to run. It was hard to tell because one of her eyes was swelling up, but I think the pupils were different sizes. Bits of safety glass glinted in her hair as she moved. ¡°Kouta?¡± she asked, her voice slurred.

    Shit. That was probably the person she had been driving with. ¡°No.¡± I said. ¡°Do you speak English?¡±

    ¡°H¡­hai¡­ I mean yes,¡± she said. ¡°I speak English. I can speak English.¡±

    Ok, that would be useful. Then I saw her attention drifting to where her passenger had impacted. ¡°Hey!¡± I said sharply. ¡°Look at me. Look at me.¡± She did. ¡°Can you get the door open?¡± This served two purposes. The first was that if she looked at her passenger, she¡¯d most likely be a gibbering wreck for the next few hours. If I hadn¡¯t gone through Hell Semester, I¡¯d be wondering how she could even function right now. The other reason was that I wasn¡¯t sure if she would be safe in there. I needed her out of the car in case it was a time bomb.

    She began pushing the door. As she did, I heard one of the people in the Bushido costumes shout, ¡°Hey, I¡¯m seeing movement further up!¡±

    ¡°Listen,¡± I said to the woman, ¡°I¡¯m going to check something out. If I¡¯m not back when you get out of there, I want you to move behind the wheel near the engine. That will keep you safe for a little while. Do you understand?¡± She nodded. I continued. ¡°If you hear gunfire, leave through the window and run towards the exit ramp.¡± I looked at her feet. She was wearing six-inch heels. ¡°Do you have any shoes without heels?¡±

    She nodded. ¡°I do. They don¡¯t really go with my dress¡­¡±

    ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter,¡± I said, ¡°if things go bad, and if you can run in those shoes, they may just save your life.¡± I looked for the exit. It was about fifty meters away. ¡°You may need to sprint fifty meters. You won¡¯t be able to do that in heels.¡± She nodded. ¡°I¡¯m going to be meeting with my friends. They¡­¡±

    ¡°Oh shit!¡± I heard one of the hackers yell. ¡°Gun! Gun! Guh¡­!¡±

    Maccabees and Ballpeens have distinctive sounds due to the extremely unconventional ammo and mechanism they use. Mostly, it¡¯s just loud, louder than any other gun in their respective categories. The first burst wasn¡¯t a Maccabee or Ballpeen. It was hard to tell who shot second, but I could tell that Lydia and Andrew were engaging multiple hostiles.

    ¡°Shit,¡± I said. ¡°Listen, you need to crawl out of here and run. Use the other side.¡± I turned to head to the gunfire, turning the flashlight off and putting it in my vest¡¯s webbing. ¡°JOHN!¡± I yelled, ¡°FINISH UP AND GET OVER HERE!¡±

    On the side of the highway moving in the other direction, I saw a van pull up and start to disgorge people. I moved to the trunk, raised my gun and switched to thermal vision. That was the only way I would be able to see the subjects. They were armed. Of course they were.

    ¡°WAIT!¡± I yelled. ¡°GET DOWN! CONTACT LEFT! CONTACT LEFT! CONTACT LEFT!¡± I began firing, trying to suppress them.

    I was too late. One of the subjects had pulled out a rocket launcher and fired, causing him to light up on my scope. I saw John a few meters away from the minivan backlit by an explosion. He was firing his Maccabee at the van as well. The sound of his bursts of automatic fire and my semi-auto shots were much louder than their weapons. The enemy also discovered very quickly that hiding behind the walls of a van did nothing against someone with a Maccabee and X-ray/sonar scope.

    John eventually got back to the Z4. By that point, the subjects in the minivan were either dead or thoroughly suppressed. ¡°So,¡± he said, still aiming his gun at the now fully perforated van, his see-through magazine showing it was still mostly full, ¡°things are going well, aren¡¯t they?¡±

 5.23: SHOT THROUGH THE LUNG

    I was about to respond to John when a burst of gunfire hit the Z4. I turned to see that the driver had climbed out the window while I had been dealing with the flanking force. She was lying on her side and seemed to be in shot. ¡°Are you shot?¡± I asked. She shook her head. ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°if you can, run. Stay low, take the exit, and keep moving until you find shelter.¡±

    She nodded, but just as she was about to get up, a burst of gunfire hit her car again. She screamed and put her head down. ¡°JOHN!¡± I yelled. ¡°COVERING FIRE!¡± We both opened up, hitting where we thought the shooter was coming from. ¡°RUN!¡± I yelled to the woman. She didn¡¯t need any more urging.

    Finding places to aim that wouldn¡¯t hit civilians but would hit whoever was shooting at us was a hard task. The entire road was filled with civilian vehicles, and our attackers didn¡¯t seem to be hesitant to use them as cover. Combined with the fog and rain, identifying targets was pretty much impossible.

    ¡°John,¡± I said, ¡°cover the other side of the road. We need to¡­¡± I was interrupted as a massive explosion rocked the overpass we were on. I turned to look at it. Apparently, the flanking force had more explosives than just the one rocket launcher. A small car had found this out the hard way when it had smashed into the back of it.

    ¡°Jesus!¡± John said. On cue, there was a series of smaller secondary explosions. The overpass shook a disturbingly large amount for something that was suspending us high above a concrete surface.

    ¡°Make sure no more of those things sneak up behind us to fuck us in the ass,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m going to Bushido and Kuniochi. We need a perimeter and we need it now.¡±

    ¡°Oh hell yeah,¡± John said. ¡°Get one of them to help me cover the rear.¡±

    I nodded and moved to the sound of Ballpeens firing, making sure to stay in cover. The traffic was backed up farther than I could see. Of course, due to it being a foggy, rainy night, that wasn¡¯t very far. Plus, an eighteen-wheeler had skidded over, forming a sort of blockade. It rose out of the mist like an alien structure. I switched my scope to its thermal mode. There was no other way to see anything except vague muzzle flashes.

    As I headed forward, I tried to ignore the crashed cars. The dead were fine, I had seen dead people enough times to realize they didn¡¯t matter anymore, at least during combat situations. The living and obviously fine civilians were emotionally gratifying but tactically worrying. After all, the ¡°uniform¡± our attackers were wearing was only slightly different from civilian clothing, or some idiot could pick up an abandoned firearm and play hero.

    The worst part was the people who were dying. I don¡¯t want to scar you with the details, but if you¡¯re a paramedic with a lot of car accidents in your territory, you can probably fill in the details.

    I turned around a station wagon. A man in business casual, raid vest, and a surgical mask was bent over another man in the same uniform lying face-down in the rain-soaked road. The second man had several holes in his back, holes I recognized as exit wounds from a Maccabee¡¯s six-and-a-half millimeter cartridge. He seemed to have dragged himself behind the car, despite the fact that most of one of his lungs was now outside his body. Blood flowed across the tarmac.

    The subject checking the downed hostile noticed me at the same time. His Type 89-F was pointed in the air. He lowered it to point at me, but I had already been aiming at him. I fired, twice at his chest and once at his head. I spared a brief moment to look at the blood trail. It led to some kind of M-4 clone (probably an HK 416 or 417) abandoned behind a coupe. I then moved forward and kicked the Type 89 away from the two subjects and moved on.

    Eventually, I found one of the hackers crouched behind a car. ¡°Bushido?¡± I asked as I got behind the vehicle. ¡°That you?¡±

    ¡°Close enough,¡± the hacker said. ¡°Have you seen my twin?¡±

    It took me a moment to realize that s/he was referring to the person in the matching costume and not a relative. ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°I was hoping you¡¯d seen him.¡±

    ¡°Fuck.¡±

    I agreed with Kuniochi. This was not good. I looked up and saw an even worse thing. Four men, three with belt-fed weaponry and one with what looked to be a six-shot grenade launcher were closing in. If they had seen us, I wouldn¡¯t be able to raise my gun in time. ¡°GET DOWN!¡± I yelled.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    Three machineguns began to tear into the car in short, controlled bursts leaving no time for me to pop my head. I had followed my own advice and got behind the wheel underneath the engine block. The problem was that meant Kuniochi had to hide behind a door. I also realized that there was someone inside. Several bullets smashed through the flimsy metal and knocked Kuniochi on her back. Also, a few of the shards of glass were blood-stained.

    Before I could worry about Kuniochi, she had raised her Ballpeen and began firing through the thin metal. ¡°DIE!¡± She yelled. ¡°FUCK THE FUCK OFF!¡±

    ¡°JESUS CHRIST!¡± I yelled as she began dry-firing, obviously wondering why her gun had stopped working. ¡°STOP WASTING YOUR AMMO, AND TRY TO MAKE DECENT ONE-LINERS!¡±

    My yelling was cut off by a grenade exploding on the roof of the car right in front of me. The shrapnel cut into my face. I was momentarily thankful for buying the scratch-resistant lenses for my glasses. Without them, I would have been blinded! Then the blood started leaking into my right eye.

    Meanwhile, the machinegunners behind us were still firing. One bullet came so close that it passed through the sleeve of my sweater, so close it burned me. With a yell of pain, I lifted my arm to my face, just in time to block more shrapnel. The good news was my throat had been saved and my Maccabee took the brunt. The bad news is that my arm was now bleeding profusely and the only thing I owned that could hide injuries with was ruined.

    Meanwhile, the car that doubled as our only source of cover was being ripped to shreds. A subject with a shotgun came into view. I fired, he fired. My shoulder was suddenly lacerated. He fell back, a few new holes in his chest. As this happened, a grenade flew through the now-fully shattered windows of our car and landed smack-dab in the center of the one I was facing. From inside that car I began to hear screaming.

    I then noticed that the MGs had gone silent. I popped out of cover, still able to hold my gun. There, standing on a panel van, M3 in one hand and Vector in the other, was Jen. Well, she was in costume, so technically Hinomoto Oniko. She was obviously tired, despite the fact that she was wearing a mask and I could barely see her. She jumped down and began walking towards us.

    ¡°Damn!¡± I looked over to around where shotgun-subject had taken a pop. It was Bushido. ¡°This is getting intense.¡±

    Jen¡¯s masked face turned to look at Bushido. ¡°How the hell,¡± she asked, directing the question to both him and Kuniochi, ¡°did you two think it was a good idea to split up?¡± I noticed that the visor on Kuniochi¡¯s helmet was cracked. Either car doors were more bullet-resistant than I thought, or her visor was really tough.

    ¡°Good question,¡± I said, ¡°but let¡¯s save that for the after-action report, shall we?¡± I noticed that I was grabbing my arm. I pulled it away and noticed my hand was now soaked in blood. Ignoring it and the sting from rain falling into my wound, I began to use it to gesture. ¡°Right now, we need to fall back and shore up the perimeter. We¡¯ve left John alone too long.¡±

    We began to head back to the where the Escalade was. I was falling behind, letting Bushido and Kuniochi take point. I should have been moving faster, considering that I was starting to hear gunfire again. Jen noticed this and fell back.

    ¡°Are you alright?¡± she asked.

    ¡°Kuniochi got shot in the face,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯d be more worried about her.¡±

    ¡°I have access to her diagnostics,¡± Jen said. ¡°Perks of our armor. Her brain scan is normal and she doesn¡¯t seem to have whiplash. You, however are wincing like a puppy with a broken leg whenever rain hits your shoulder. That concerns me.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m good,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m fine.¡± Jen made a little ¡°I see¡± noise. ¡°Hey,¡± I said, ¡°you should have seen me when I took a rifle grenade at Hell Semester.¡± Jen was unconvinced.

    She was about to say something when the stray bullet hit her in the chest. Her armor was so good she only staggered a bit, but we both got to cover. I looked to see that it had come from several white panel vans that were now forming a barricade between us and the nearest exit.

    Before I could switch to X-ray or sonar mode on my scope, the line of vans rocked, nearly crushing the people behind them. Dokutsu then got out, firing his Desert Eagle at the vans. He stomped his foot, and one of the vans flipped. Tatsu hurried out after him. She leaned back then forward, like the big bad wolf about to huff and puff.

    The idea was probably the same because a cone of fire shot from where I assumed Tatsu¡¯s mouth would be, explaining her lack of gas mask. The fire engulfed the vans and, I assumed, the fuel tanks as well because they began to explode.

    ¡°Come ON!¡± Jen yelled. ¡°We need to get out of here!¡±

    We advanced towards the exit ramp and the burning wrecks. No subjects popped out from the burning wrecks, but we still had someone cover them just in case as we headed down the ramp.

    ¡°Look,¡± Tatsu said pointing to a nearby building as we got to the base of the off-ramp. ¡°That looks like a parking garage. We should be able to find some transportation in there.¡±

    ¡°Good,¡± Jen said. ¡°We needed to have left half an hour ago.¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± John said as we sprinted towards the building, ¡°do you hear that?¡±

    I listened. The whump-whump-whump of helicopter blades was getting louder and louder. ¡°Shit,¡± I said. ¡°Chopper. Here¡¯s hoping that it just passes¡­¡±

    There was a thwip and I felt something like a bee sting. Before I could even work out what had happened, I was face down, in extreme pain, and was having trouble breathing. Whatever had just happened was not good.

 5.24: Deet Barz

    I fell onto the ground, face first. As I struggled to breathe, I heard John, Bushido and Kuniochi open up. I then heard Jen say ¡°Shit¡­¡± Hands gripped me, turning me on my side. ¡°Well, at least it went clean through. What the hell did they shoot at you?¡±

    Itried to list off a few suggestions like armor-piercing .338 Lapua, but instead, all that came out was a gasping sound. ¡°Shut up, you idiot,¡± Jen said, moving into my field of view. ¡°You have a collapsed lung.¡± She turned her head. ¡°Anyone have some saran wrap?¡±

    ¡°Why the fuck would we have saran wrap?¡± one of the hackers asked.

    ¡°It¡¯s in Nate¡¯s pack,¡± John said. ¡°Hurry up, I¡¯m pretty sure that chopper is coming back.¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± Jen said, fiddling with my pack, ¡°Ok. Tatsu, Dokutsu, get to that garage and get us a car. Preferably one that was made before the Nineties and has a lot of floorspace. Bushido, help me get him into cover.¡±

    The act of picking me up caused me such an intense amount of pain that I blacked out. When I came to, my vest and pack were off and I was behind a car. Someone had lifted my shirt up and the entry wound in my back had been wrapped up with saran wrap like a sandwich. There was also the sound of a chopper overhead and John firing. I then heard the crack of a gunshot and John cry out in pain. Then there was the sound of something large and metal snapping apart. The chopper then began to sound a bit strange, and something large hit the ground.

    ¡°Listen,¡± Jen said, her masked face suddenly looming into mine. Behind me, I heard the chopper crash. ¡°I¡¯m about to shove a metal straw into a hole in your chest. It may hurt.¡±

    Funnily enough, the actual insertion of the tube wasn¡¯t the painful part. Yeah, it hurt, but Jen¡¯s attempts to secure it in place with surgical glue hurt a lot more. I suddenly realized that she was turning me into a human blow-up doll.

    ¡°Yo, Driver!¡± Kuniochi asked, ¡°You ok, man?¡±

    ¡°Fucker got me in the arm,¡± John said. ¡°Guy¡¯s in a fucking helicopter going what, a hundred twenty miles an hour? Plus the little shit¡¯s three or four stories up. And he goes fucking two for two.¡± There was a pause, during which I assumed John was trying to get up. ¡°Fffuck that hurts¡­¡± he groaned.

    ¡°He sounds fine,¡± Jen said. ¡°Bushido, throw him a bandage.¡± She turned back to me. ¡°Damn it, this thing is too small.¡± She laughed. ¡°If I was a terrible person, I could make a lot of penis jokes right now.¡±

    I groaned, as I had been thinking of those as well and knew that none of them could be good. If the groaning hadn¡¯t hurt like hell, I would have attempted an emergency ¡°That¡¯s what she said.¡± Instead, I kind of passed out again.

    I woke up in a room filled with mist. Richard was bracing a door with his back. Someone was also there, holding the door. He turned, and I recognized him as Jeong by his charred face. ¡°He¡¯s here,¡± Jeong whispered.

    ¡°The fuck?¡± Richard said. ¡°How does that work?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± hissed Jeong, ¡°Also, shut up! Do you want them to hear you?¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s going on?¡± I asked. I looked around. ¡°Oh fuck me, am I dead?¡± That, honestly, was the most logical explanation to what I was seeing. Richard and Jeong, after all, were both dead and I doubted they had ever met in life.

    ¡°Unless you know something we don¡¯t,¡± Richard said, ¡°I doubt it. You¡¯re probably just asleep.¡±

    ¡°We are,¡± Jeong said, ¡°but you might have noticed we¡¯re a bit more active.¡±

    ¡°About that,¡± I said, ¡°I mean, the ¡®knowing something you don¡¯t¡¯ thing¡­ I was recently kind of shot in the lung. It¡¯s being treated, but¡­¡±

    ¡°God fucking dammit!¡± Richard said, hitting the wall in frustration.

    ¡°Shut. Up.¡± Jeong growled. He then turned back to me and said, ¡°Listen, Nate, there¡¯s been something weird going on. People who are dying¡­ aren¡¯t going away anymore. It¡¯s hard to explain. We definitely are dying, but some of us can visit.¡±Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, remembering the previous visits from supposedly dead people I¡¯d experienced, ¡°I¡¯ve noticed that.¡± I paused. ¡°Does knowing someone make it easier to appear in front of them?¡±

    ¡°Slightly,¡± Richard said. ¡°The bigger factor, though, is whether or not Dragon¡¯s Teeth are around. Knowing you is like having better tires. Having Dragon¡¯s Teeth around is like having a bigger engine.¡±

    ¡°But I first saw you when you were in Worcester!¡± I said, ¡°The Dragon¡¯s Teeth were only in North Korea at the time. And if they weren¡¯t, they¡¯d be preparing for Russia or India or France¡­¡±

    Richard laughed. ¡°Well, apparently they had at least two hundred to send to Worcester.¡±

    ¡°Wait, wait, wait,¡± I said, ¡°There were two hundred Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldiers in Worcester? They could spare that much for a city of that little tactical and strategic importance in a country they weren¡¯t even planning on invading?¡±

    ¡°What makes you think they aren¡¯t planning on invading the US?¡± Jeong asked.

    My blood ran cold. ¡°How¡­ how many are currently in this city?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Before you started blowing shit up?¡± Richard said. ¡°More.¡± I felt myself go gray. ¡°But after you rescued Jen? The Japs started looking for shit and finding it. Mexican Cartels, Yakuza, Russain Mafia, Triads, petty street criminals, spies, radical Islamitists, radical Parahumans, Commies¡­ Even a few Dragon¡¯s Teeth.¡±

    ¡°So,¡± I said, ¡°I may have stopped an invasion of Japan?¡± I suddenly began to feel a lot better about the chaos I¡¯d been causing. Maybe I¡¯d even gotten a good chunk of them killed.

    ¡°That¡¯s not what we need to talk about,¡± Jeong interrupted. ¡°The thing is, the Deets have this¡­ network. In their minds. We, that is, us dead people, think it¡¯s been pulling our souls into it somehow.¡± I must have made a pretty impressed holy shit face because Jeong said, ¡°Yeah. There¡¯s a lot to unpack in that statement. There seems to be two networks: one goes in a pretty clear path. Soldiers are on the bottom, more senior people are at the top.¡±

    ¡°And the other?¡± I asked.

    ¡°It¡¯s a web,¡± Richard said. ¡°Every Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldier is equal, every Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldier is connected to every other one. It¡¯s beautiful.¡± He shook his head. ¡°The other¡¯s just straight lines with dull colors, but this one¡­ I¡¯ve never seen anything like it. The lines bend and twist beautifully, they grow and shrink, and there¡¯s colors I didn¡¯t even know existed¡­¡±

    ¡°But there are still patterns to this one,¡± Jeong said. ¡°Look.¡± The walls except for the door suddenly¡­ disappeared? Began to display?... what seemed to be a ring of white light, but on closer inspection were many small lights, each a different color with yet with billions of still differing colors connecting them to each other dot.

    As I looked, I noticed that the dots and their connecting bits were¡­ warped. They seemed to be leaning towards a secondary ring. This secondary ring formed a ring of pure white light with only one of the colored dots. In the center was pure darkness. I suddenly realized I was looking at a black hole.

    ¡°Jesus¡­¡± I said when I had somehow made sense of what I was seeing. ¡°That¡¯s¡­ that¡¯s the complex psionic network.¡± Complex seemed to be too tame a word to describe what I was seeing. The same could be said of words like awesome or beautiful. Yet something about the vision seemed to be self-explanatory. I mean, the image before me was somehow explaining itself like a teacher carrying out a lesson. However, there was one thing I did not get.

    ¡°What¡¯s the big black thing?¡± I asked, pointing to the black hole.

    ¡°That,¡± Jeong said, ¡°is where they throw the souls of people who aren¡¯t Dragon¡¯s Teeth.¡±

    ¡°They seem to worship it,¡± Richard said. ¡°They¡¯re a fucking cult. They say it speaks to them.¡±

    ¡°Where is it?¡± I asked. ¡°Like, geographically?¡± They turned to look at each other. ¡°I mean, each of those dots of light is a Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldier. You can figure out where they are. Can¡¯t you do the same thing with that?¡±

    ¡°We think¡­¡± Jeong said, ¡°that whatever it is, it spends most of its time at NIU.¡±

    ¡°Excuse me?¡± I said. ¡°How can¡­ how can anyone live there with¡­ with¡­ whatever the fuck that is? And it moves? Something like that should cause cities to¡­ to¡­¡±

    ¡°To what?¡± Richard asked. ¡°You have even less of an idea of what it is then we do.¡±

    ¡°To be fair,¡± Jeong said, ¡°that¡­ thing seems to have some sort of quantum physics type thing where it can be in multiple places at once. Its bulk just seems to usually be centered in NIU.¡±

    I remained silent for a long time, considering the implications of that. Was it something The President had made, or had he somehow bitten off more than he could chew? Of course, considering the size of that thing, those two were by no means mutually exclusive.

    I was interrupted by Richard saying, ¡°Uh, hey y¡¯all, we seem to be getting closer.¡± He was right. We were hurtling towards the main ring of light at incredible speeds.

    ¡°We need to leave,¡± Jeong said. He opened the door, and he and Richard filed through. ¡°Come on, Killer,¡± he said, ¡°We¡¯ve spent way too long here.¡±

    I got up and followed, but I bounced off an invisible wall. We stared in horror. ¡°Go,¡± I finally said.

    ¡°Wait,¡± Richard said, ¡°You need¡­¡±

    ¡°I might be dead,¡± I said. ¡°I might not wake up. Go.¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s right,¡± Jeong said. ¡°We need to leave.¡± Just before he closed the door, he said, ¡°Good luck.¡±

    Not even a second had passed before it burst open. I flew back. As I struggled to get to my feet, the armored figure of the Berserker I had killed in Korea walked in. Just as I was getting to my feet, he kicked my chest. I felt ribs shatter and my lung collapse again. He then grabbed me by my throat and lifted me so I was looking him right in his glowing eye.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± he said, ¡°it¡¯s all over now.¡±

    My eyes opened as I let loose a scream. ¡°Shit!¡± I heard someone say. ¡°His lung is going to collapse again.¡± Then my lung collapsed again.

 5.25: Lying on the Floor

    After a few tranquilizers and pain killers, I was lying on my side on a bunch of blood-stained plastic garbage bags. I still hurt, but whatever I had been shot up with was so good that I didn¡¯t care. To celebrate this rather nice feeling, I began singing a song about sweaters and the unraveling thereof that played a lot on a local Alt Rock station. It was a terrible rendition, sung wheezily with long pauses in odd places when the pain got too much for the painkillers to block out. At the time, though, I thought it was great. Not even someone asking, ¡°Can¡¯t we just knock him out?¡± could convince me otherwise.

    I eventually came to my senses somewhat. Key word being ¡°somewhat.¡± I muzzily said, ¡°Heyyy¡­ this isn¡¯t the farmhouse¡­¡±

    ¡°We told you,¡± Hirosama said, ¡°we¡¯re in an abandoned industrial office park.¡±

    ¡°You did?¡± I asked, then began coughing. I looked around. I suddenly realized I was lying on my side in what appeared to be a reception area. My shirt and vest were off and I was wearing an oxygen mask.

    ¡°Is he lucid?¡± Jen asked, coming in through the door. Her mask was pushed up over her face, but apart from that, she was still in costume. ¡°Or is he still high?¡±

    ¡°The two aren¡¯t mutually exclusive¡­¡± I wheezed. I giggled. That hurt like hell, but I was so high, I didn¡¯t give a shit. ¡°Hey¡­ does everything like crappy phone speakers¡­ or is it just me?¡±

    ¡°Ugh,¡± Jen said, ¡°you¡¯re having a bad reaction to the meds, aren¡¯t you?¡±

    ¡°Naw¡­¡± I said. ¡°This isn¡¯t bad. Like, I literally don¡¯t give a shit.¡± I giggled, then coughed in pain. ¡°It¡¯s like magic.¡± I then began humming another song.

    ¡°Can we give him something stronger?¡± Kaori asked wearily. ¡°He¡¯s going to blow his lung. Again. And he¡¯ll have driven me insane in the meantime.¡±

    Jen groaned and sank into a waiting room chair. I noticed that the gloves were wet. ¡°Ugh,¡± she groaned, burying her face in her hands, ¡°what the hell did I do to deserve this?¡± She raised her head. Her face was covered with a sticky red liquid. ¡°Ok,¡± she said, ¡°we can¡¯t leave him here. We¡¯re going to have to move him.¡±

    I suddenly realized that the liquid staining Jen¡¯s faces was blood. Probably mine. That sobered me up extremely quickly.

    ¡°We can¡¯t move him.¡± That sounded like John. His voice came from behind, so I turned around. A desk was in the way. I guess I wasn¡¯t as sober as I thought, because for a horrible second, I thought he had been turned into a desk. Trust me, that¡¯s possible. Just as I figured out that John was just behind the desk, he said, ¡°Look, none of us were doctors. It was a fucking mistake to move him out of that van without a stretcher.¡±

    ¡°Then what are we going to do with him?¡± Jen asked.

    ¡°Leave me,¡± I said.

    ¡°Unacceptable,¡± Jen said.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± John said. ¡°Remember rule number one of combat tactics? No heroics.¡±

    ¡°This isn¡¯t heroics,¡± I said. ¡°If they find you, and I¡¯m traveling with you, it¡¯d be another shootout and I¡¯d probably die.¡±

    ¡°They won¡¯t find us again,¡± Lydia said. Everyone turned to look at her and Andrew. They quailed. ¡°Well,¡± Lydia admitted, ¡°it¡¯d be highly improbable.¡±

    ¡°But if I stay here,¡± I said, ¡°and someone finds me¡­ well, I¡¯m not in any shape to fight, and I¡¯m pretty useful alive.¡±

    ¡°You know,¡± John said, ¡°we could split up. Some of us remain behind to guard you¡­¡±

    ¡°And basically be sitting ducks if the police or Defenders or Dragon¡¯s Teeth show up.¡± I paused. ¡°Wait, did I tell you that the Dragon¡¯s Teeth are here? Because I had a really weird conversation with Jeong and Richard.¡± At Richard¡¯s name, Jen froze like I had insulted her.

    ¡°Who?¡± Lydia asked. I heard Kaori make a noise suggesting she didn¡¯t know.

    ¡°Uh¡­¡± John said, ¡°If you¡¯re talking about who I think you¡¯re talking about¡­¡±

    ¡°Yeah, they¡¯re dead,¡± I said. ¡°That¡¯s how they were able to contact me. Like, the Deets have this psionic network and¡­¡±Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    ¡°HE¡¯S DEAD!¡± Jen yelled. ¡°SHUT UP!¡± Everyone stared at her. ¡°Sorry,¡± Jen said. ¡°But dead is dead, and if they can come back, they should either come back immediately, or leave me the hell alone!¡±

    ¡°You¡­ you ok?¡± I asked.

    Jen sighed. ¡°No,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯m not ok, I never was ok, and I never will be. I hate my life, my father killed my brother, my best friend was killed by her own family, the first person I ever tried to save cut her own throat right in front of me¡­ And now the dead are talking to me. Did Richard say anything to you?¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± I said, ¡°you know him?¡±

    ¡°We bonded over having psychotic family members,¡± Jen said. ¡°It was before we came to NIU. His sister was my best friend, she was dating my brother, and she¡¯s¡­ she was one of the best people I have ever met. Needless to say, her parents and my father wanted her dead. Anyway, what did Richard have to say to you?¡± Her slight emphasis on you conveyed how rude she thought it was that Richard had contacted me and not her.

    After I explained the entire conversation I had had with the two ghosts, John groaned. ¡°So, basically, we¡¯ve been living with Thana or whatever the Dragon¡¯s Teeth call her or it right next to us? Fuck me, right?¡±

    ¡°But this could all be Nate¡¯s drug dreams,¡± Andrew said. ¡°How do¡­¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve been seeing them too,¡± Jen said. ¡°They¡¯re really full of themselves.¡±

    ¡°You guys need to get out of here,¡± I said. ¡°They¡¯ll find us.¡± I paused to get my breath again. ¡°Only way we survived last time was to get mobile. Can you even get me to the car?¡±

    Jen looked grim. ¡°I¡¯m not sure,¡± she said. ¡°I took a few classes at NIU in first aid because¡­ I know how my life works. I also know you need a real doctor.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said. ¡°Take my weapons and get out of here.¡±

    ¡°But¡­¡± Jen protested.

    ¡°Look,¡± I said, ¡°if they come while you¡¯re gone, the second-best scenario is to get captured, not die in some heroic last stand. Not having any weapons would aid in that. I¡¯ve given Charlotte as much as I could, she doesn¡¯t think I¡¯ve done enough, then she doesn¡¯t have to pay whatever price the Defenders of Fuji are asking.¡±

    ¡°Fine,¡± Jen said, ¡°but you better be here when we get back.¡±

    ¡°Will do¡­¡± I said. Even in my drug-addled state, I knew better than to move. The pain was deadened, but it was still noticeably there. When everyone left, I realized I had forgotten two important things. First, I had forgotten to request additional painkillers when the ones I was on wore off. Second, I had forgotten to ask for some sort of entertainment. Now, I was in a boring room with increasing pain, unable to move, with my only source of entertainment wondering what the hell the Dragon¡¯s Teeth were doing.

    So, that¡¯s what I did, because I needed an ulcer to go with my collapsed lung. There was so many things that they could be doing. I knew they were in Russia, Germany, France and India, but had no idea how they were doing. Also, did they really think that the world would just sit back and watch? I mean, I get that Russia had been really straining its relationship with the rest of the world, but it still was a country that did business with everyone. India also did business with everyone, but had much better neighbors and was a UNIX member. Germany, due to an influx of Grenzefrontier, had NATO forces and was also a UNIX member. France also was a NATO and UNIX member. In fact, it was where the headquarters for UNIX was.

    In fact, all of these countries were the exact opposite of North Korea in terms of industrial development, global relations, and military modernization and strength. These weren¡¯t countries that existed at the whim of some superpower. Hell, one of those countries was the kind of country that propped up psychotic dictators. Plus, unless they were really dedicated to avoiding pictures, every single piece of their tech and a lot of their tactics would be recorded.

    Then there was the fact that it had taken so long for them to take down North Korea. North Korea, a backwards country struggling to industrialize, where the people starved, mostly due to the corruption of their leaders, had held out against the Deets for at least a year. That did not speak well to their ability. Either that, or they were just testing things. That, however, seemed like a huge waste of resources. Plus, North Korea¡¯s one friend was China. China had a multi-million man army that could have crashed across the border and kill every single person the Dragon¡¯s Teeth had sent in.

    Of course, there were still a bunch of Dragon¡¯s Teeth running around the city. Plus, I was possibly the first to have killed a type of Deet soldier called a Berserker. I hoped they weren¡¯t vindictive enough to risk a few soldiers to kick me in the chest and/or torture me.

    Suddenly, there was a knock on the door. ¡°Who¡¯s there?¡± I asked.

    ¡°It¡¯s me,¡± a female voice with a slight Chinese accent said.

    ¡°Bai!¡± I said happily. ¡°Great to see you!¡±

    ¡°And me,¡± a voice said sullenly.

    ¡°And Li!¡± I said, my happiness now faked. ¡°How¡­ wonderful.¡±

    ¡°Are you armed?¡± Bai asked as she and her twin brother edged cautiously into the room. I noticed that their hands were on their guns, ready to draw them out of their holsters.

    Suddenly, despite the pain meds, alarm bells were ringing in my ears. ¡°No¡­¡± I said as they entered the room. ¡°I thought Jen would have told you that.¡±

    ¡°Jennifer?¡± Li asked. ¡°Jennifer Kagemoto? What is her involvement in all of this?¡±

    As he said this, I heard a voice say something in Japanese. Four men in surgical masks, dress shirts, combat backpacks, khakis and Kevlar moved quickly, calmly and quietly into the room. Each of them carried assault rifles with holographic sights and laser/flashlight combos. I could feel the red dots on my chest and head like little bugs crawling all over.

    Instantly after, Hiro Nakashima came walking in, his arm dangling by his side and clutching a Taser. ¡°Kagemoto-san,¡± he said, ¡°has apparently been a pain in my organization¡¯s ass for the past year.¡± He squatted down near me. ¡°And you, Jacobs-san, have only magnified that pain.¡± He extended his arm until the less-lethal device was almost touching my chest and asked, ¡°Do I need to use this, or will you come quietly?¡±

 5.26 Giving Up

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, eyeing the Taser warily, ¡°If you cave a stretcher you can carry me out on, there¡¯s no reason I can¡¯t come with you.¡± My breath was extremely shallow and it kind of hurt for me to speak. There were also a lot of long pauses.

    ¡°So the chatter was right for once,¡± Hiro said. He stood up, and gave an order in Japanese. Three of the Defenders slung their rifles behind their back. Two of them broke open a stretcher while the third waved a metal detector wand over me. Hiro, meanwhile, stood back and opened up a cellphone.

    ¡°What do you mean, ¡®the chatter was right for once?¡¯¡± I asked. ¡°How do you not know not¡­¡± I began coughing.

    ¡°Stop talking,¡± Li said contemptuously. ¡°We need you alive.¡±

    The Defender who had been scanning me with the wand called out that I was clean. At least, I assumed he did, because the two who had been setting up the stretcher picked me up and placed me on it, then proceeded to flex-cuff me to it. The plastic dug into my wrists. Then they used the standard straps that, as well as preventing me from escaping, would also keep me from falling out. They then picked up the stretcher and we began to move out of the office building.

    The office building was pretty standard. As we moved, one of the Defenders carrying me said, somewhat bitterly, ¡°You realize, none of this had to happen.¡±

    ¡°Yep,¡± I said. ¡°I told Charlotte¡­¡± I paused for coughing. ¡°But she just had to make the¡­ dumbest plan.¡± Seriously, why the hell couldn¡¯t we have just left the country? What the hell was Charlotte thinking? I couldn¡¯t really communicate due to the collapsed lung and tied hands.

    ¡°So,¡± Hiro said, ¡°you don¡¯t have any love for my ancestor?¡± I nodded my head. I mean, I did think that the people who had wanted to pop her as soon as she had gotten back had been a little premature, but I recognized she was severely disturbed. Finding her and neutralizing her (temporarily or permanently, right now I was pretty flexible about that) could only be a good thing. Hiro continued. ¡°Then tell me where she went. This can all be ended with only one more life.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t know,¡± I said. ¡°Goals were incompatible¡­ she fucked off. That¡¯s probably how¡­¡± I broke down in coughing again, ¡°¡­how your first chopper was blown up.¡±

    ¡°Liar,¡± Li said. ¡°I refuse to believe you just let her get away.¡±

    ¡°I believe him,¡± Bai said.

    ¡°I do too,¡± Hiro said. ¡°They did not have enough manpower to fight us and secure a prisoner. Plus, my ancestor was deemed highly obsessive by the psychologist.¡± He looked at me, and I got the idea that he was contemplating something. ¡°Now, Jacobs-san, what did you say your disagreement was about?¡±

    Ipretended that I had also been deafened by the recent gun battle. It wasn¡¯t as big of a stretch as it normally would be, seeing as how I¡¯d been in a gun battle where I¡¯d been firing one of the loudest guns I had ever used. That reminded me that I needed to get a way to reduce the Maccabee¡¯s noise. That probably would have been a better use of time then the dual-belt-fed MG.

    The door opened and we began to move into a parking lot. I noticed that there were a few Defenders pulling security. I noticed that the Defenders tended to use either Type 89 assault rifles or what seemed to be Hecker and Koch HK 416s and 417s, usually with holographic sights, lasers and flashlights. They also all looked extremely tired. I felt briefly proud having led these guys on such a wild goose chase. Then I realized they had finally caught me and probably hated my guts.

    The parking lot had an interesting feature. Around the parking lot (which was empty except for two vans,) a small wall ran around the lot. If an average person ran around it crouched, they could be concealed. I wasn¡¯t sure how much protection it offered, but it was there. Why did I notice it, you ask? Well, first off, it was an odd thing. Second, a bunch of people had just popped up from behind the walls.

    They were extremely hard to see, partly because it was dark, partly because they were shining lights directly at us. However, they had set up in a sort of T-shape pattern, and, judging by the sudden severe case of acne the Defenders had sprouted, they were armed. Instantly, a variety of English, Scottish and Welsh voices began calling out things like ¡°SAS! DROP YOUR WEAPONS!¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Li said, and suddenly, something hard and metal was pressed to the side of my head, ¡°you put down your weapons.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± a dangerously pissed Cockney voice casually commented from behind the wall to my left, ¡°this is quite a weird definition of neutral, innit Bai?¡±

    ¡°Eliza?¡± Bai asked. ¡°You¡¯re here?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Eliza said. ¡°I¡¯m ¡®ere alright. And I¡¯m quite surprised to see you.¡±Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

    ¡°And we¡¯re surprised to see you,¡± Hiro said. I noticed that he had maneuvered so the people ambushing him couldn¡¯t see his hands. I could, and he was fiddling with something in his pocket. ¡°You had to have some sort of warning we had beaten you.¡±

    ¡°And we¡¯d like to know how you got here first,¡± Eliza said. ¡°Life¡¯s full little disappointments. Now put Nate down. Gently.¡±

    ¡°You won¡¯t open fire,¡± Li said. ¡°You didn¡¯t come out all this way just for Jacobs just to get a bullet in his brain or for him to find out what happens when a person with a collapsed lung is dropped.¡±

    Eliza didn¡¯t order the SAS operatives to drop the weapons. I don¡¯t know if that was because she wasn¡¯t allowed, if she was bluffing in hopes of intimidating them, or if she was more pissed at Bai then she was protective of me. Finally, she asked, ¡°Bai¡­ why? Just why?¡±

    ¡°We owe the Defenders,¡± Bai said. ¡°They helped us when¡­¡±

    ¡°I would¡¯ve helped,¡± Eliza said, her voice cracking with emotion. ¡°I would¡¯ve come even if everyone else¡¯d told me to fuck off and leave you. You do know that, right?¡±

    ¡°And you know,¡± Hiro said, ¡°that you attacked us first. You set something that should never have seen the light of day free.¡±

    ¡°First off,¡± Eliza said, ¡°You¡¯re talkin¡¯ about a person, not some fuckin¡¯ cursed artifact. Second, I wasn¡¯t talking to you, you git.¡±

    ¡°Heyyyy¡­¡± I said, ¡°Maybe we can make a deal? Like set me on the ground¡­ gently, very gently, and Eliza lets you drive off?¡± That was quite painful to say, but at that point I thought it was necessary. ¡°I mean, that way, everyone gets what they want. You guys get to leave, and I¡¯ve already told you all I could.¡±

    ¡°Which was nothing,¡± Hiro said.

    ¡°Exactly,¡± I said. ¡°The only way I¡¯m useful to you is exchange. This is the time to do that.¡± I looked at Hiro as I said that. He was considering it, and seemed very receptive.

    ¡°Wait,¡± Li said, ¡°this seems like too good a deal.¡± He looked¡­ suspicious.

    ¡°Honestly,¡± Bai said, ¡°It¡¯s the best deal we¡¯ve got and¡­¡±

    Now, before I tell you Li¡¯s response, I need to say a bit about Bai. As soon as she had heard the SAS and seen their lasers and lights, she had aimed her Glock in the direction of the SAS. Her hand was on the trigger, even squeezing it slightly. Her safety was also off. Having gone through the same training, that meant she was willing to fire.

    ¡°You¡­¡± Li said. ¡°You set us up.¡± He then shifted his aim from my head to Bai.

    My breath caught. Oh my God, I thought to myself, this guy is insane. Of the many things that had been drilled into our heads during Hell Semester, gun safety was one of them. If you pointed a weapon at something the instructors didn¡¯t want you to destroy, the best case scenario was a grueling forced march, then grueling calisthenics, then skipping the next meal. The worst case scenario was being shot by Campus Security. It didn¡¯t matter whether or not your weapon was loaded, you were not allowed to treat it like a toy. If Bai had sold Li and the Defenders out to Eliza, the gun would be pointed at the ground.

    Bai began protesting in Chinese, but Li shouted something back. ¡°Oi!¡± Eliza yelled, ¡°Put down the fuckin¡¯ gun! I mean it!¡± The Defenders whose faces I could see were eyeing each other nervously. Hiro, on the other hand, suddenly became extremely calm. He muttered something in Japanese. Underneath Bai and Li¡¯s argument and Eliza¡¯s shouted warnings to calm down (which wasn¡¯t helping,) I made out the word ¡°San.¡± That meant, if I recalled correctly, three.

    He then began counting slowly. ¡°Ichii¡­ nii¡­ san.¡± Then he took something out of his pocket and rolled it right underneath my stretcher. It was a grenade. Fuck me.

    ¡°Grenade!¡± I heard someone yell. Then the grenade burst into smoke. I tried not to breathe but that was not really an option, due to how short of breath my collapsed lung made me. I breathed in the smoke. Luckily, it wasn¡¯t designed to be harmful. It was just smoke. Unfortunately, it wasn¡¯t oxygen or anything else I needed. That gave me the unpleasant sensation of breathing in and not getting enough of the stuff I needed. I was choking and coughing, which was intensely painful.

    Of course, the smoke had been like a starting gun. Everyone began firing at once, or at least in seemed that way. The people carrying me also began hurrying into the van. As soon as my shoulders were in the van, I heard the person carrying the stretcher near my upper body gasp and I felt myself drop. I looked behind me. The Defender carrying that end was lying on the ground, the pavement he was lying on slowly turning red, a stunned look on his face. From what I could see through the fog, there weren¡¯t many Defenders still standing. One even dropped while I was looking.

    I then heard a thump of someone getting in the van with us. I looked back in the van. On the side that was hard to see was Li. He was the one who had just got in, and he was reloading a Makarov. On the other was Hiro. He was firing a SIG one-handed and gripping onto my stretcher with the other.

    I looked behind me. The other Defender who had been moving my stretcher had set me down and was now returning fire with his rifle, his gun so close to me that I was afraid the bullets might veer off and hit me. He was promptly hit by a burst of fire and slumped down over my legs. Something wet and sticky began to cover my pants and the smell of shit, piss and blood began to fill the van as well as the smell of gunpowder. Over the din, I could somewhat make out someone with a Scottish accent calling out ¡°Cease fire! Cease fire!¡± I prayed someone would listen to him.

    In response, Hiro yelled to the people in the front seats of the van. It must have been something like ¡°Get us out of here!¡± because there was a second of wheel spin and then the van began moving out of the parking lot like a bat out of hell. Just before we exited, I heard a thump on the side of the van. Then a man in full body armor and a ski mask lunged for my stretcher. Before I could decide whether it would be a good thing or a bad thing if he caught it, he had missed and Li and Hiro had opened fire.

    The van had made a handbrake turn, so I couldn¡¯t tell if they had hit or if the SAS operator had escaped. The turn, however, revealed another operator with an MP-5 pointed at the ground. He hesitated, seeing me.

    Li and Hiro did not. I heard them fire at the rapidly disappearing operator and saw him go down. I suddenly realized that a rescue attempt had just been made on my behalf, it had failed, and people had died because of it. I was unsure how that felt, other than that it didn¡¯t feel good.

    Hiro, meanwhile, turned to Li. ¡°We,¡± he said dangerously, ¡°are going to have to talk.¡±

 5.27: Tragic Monsters

    We had to stop halfway to Kage castle. The driver had pulled over because he was about to pass out. Li and Hiro pulled both him and the navigator into the rear bay with me and the dead Defender operator. The navigator seemed fine until they dropped him. It was then that I noticed he had four holes in his rear plate where his heart was. Judging by how his hastily applied bandage was already soaked red, the driver had several entry wounds in his back just underneath his plate and some exit wounds on the other side. I was surprised he had lasted as long as he did.

    Li then got into the driver¡¯s seat. That meant both Hiro and I got to sit in the back and watch the time between the driver¡¯s breaths get longer and longer. As Hiro watched, he gripped his mouth, both in thought and to stop himself from saying anything. His other hand held his sidearm, finger in the trigger guard. I suddenly wondered if he hadn¡¯t made Li drive to avoid the temptation of shooting him.

    Eventually, we got to the castle. Hiro and Li had gotten out of the van. For a while, I wondered if they were even going to come back. Then eventually someone got back in and drove the van into what felt like an underground area. When it stopped, Hiro opened the door, revealing what looked like a loading bay. Four Defenders opened the door and grabbed my stretcher. Hiro began walking down with them, chatting with them all the way.

    For a second, I wondered why he was going with them. Then I noticed how tired they all looked. I also remembered how many Defenders I¡¯d killed recently and that I hadn¡¯t been the only one killing them. They may have been running low on manpower.

    We were eventually led into a room that was a cross between a feudal dungeon and medical facility. That didn¡¯t augur well for me.

    Using a knife, they ripped off my clothes, patted me down for subdermal implants, inspected my mouth and anus, then ran several detectors over me. Then, when they were satisfied that I had nothing inappropriate I could literally pull out of my ass, they put me in a surgical gown and strapped me to the bed. They then hooked me up to an oxygen mask to help my lung heal.

    There was nothing to do after that except to stare at the wall. At least I couldn¡¯t hear news about the ongoing Dragon¡¯s Teeth that would give me an ulcer to match my collapsed lung. Of course, that didn¡¯t stop me from worrying about what was going on. It was all so stupid. Here we were, killing people over a single time-traveling Parahuman when we could be doing something to stop the real threat.

    I waited. And waited. Due to how boring it was, I was waiting a long time. Then the door opened. A man walked in and started to inspect me. I remembered him. He was the German coroner who had investigated the bodies dumped around Kage keep.

    ¡°Hey,¡± I said, ¡°Long time no see.¡±

    ¡°Ah, yes,¡± the doctor said, ¡°I remember you. I would like to apologize in advance, I have very little experience working on the living.¡±

    "Are you going to operate on me?¡± I asked as he began inspecting my chest. ¡°Because that wasn¡¯t very comforting.¡±

    The doctor held up his hands to quiet me and then continued checking my body. Mostly it was just checking my chest. Finally, he said, ¡°No. But if you keep living this lifestyle, young man, you will end up on my slab.¡± He stood up. ¡°I am going to go back to your English friends. Is there anything you would like me to tell them?¡±

    ¡°Maybe like where I am?¡± I suggested. ¡°Y¡¯know, slip them a map with a big red dot that says ¡®Nate¡¯s here?¡¯¡±

    The coroner laughed. ¡°That doesn¡¯t sound like something I can do. I am supposed to be keeping neutral, you know?¡±

    "Speaking of third parties,¡± I asked, ¡°did you hear anything about Bai Feng? She¡¯s¡­ well, she might not be a friend anymore. She was helping the Defenders drag me away when her brother shot her.¡±

    ¡°She must be with you,¡± the coroner said. ¡°If she was with the English, from what you tell me, they¡¯d be using her as leverage.¡±

    ¡°She didn¡¯t come back with us,¡± I said. ¡°Trust me, I was there.¡± This provoked a coughing fit. My question now wasn¡¯t whether or not Bai was free. It was if she was still alive. I was¡­ sad. I never really liked her, and she had never really liked me. Still, we had a lot of shared experiences. Of course, I was writing her off early. She might have somehow escaped.

    ¡°You really should stop talking,¡± the coroner said. ¡°It¡¯s going to be quite hard to recover if you don¡¯t shut up.¡± I was about to respond to that, then shut up. ¡°Good,¡± the coroner said. ¡°You¡¯re learning. I¡¯m going to suggest that they give you some painkillers.¡±Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    ¡°Noted,¡± a voice said. I looked up. Hiro and several armed Defenders walked into the room. ¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m just going to talk to him, and these guys are just going to make sure he doesn¡¯t leave.¡± The coroner looked at me, handcuffed to the bed and hooked up to an oxygen machine. He then looked at the three Defenders with knockoff single-stack SIG-Sauers and raised an eyebrow. ¡°You haven¡¯t been the one chasing him around the Prefecture for the last week,¡± Hiro said. He sounded extremely tired. ¡°Go, you have a lot of things to tell Blackmoor-Ward-sama.¡±

    One of the Defenders escorted the coroner out. Hiro began pacing for a while. Then he said, ¡°You do realize you¡¯re in trouble, right?¡±

    ¡°Where¡¯s Bai?¡± I asked. Ok, more like mumbled.

    ¡°What?¡± Hiro asked, understandably not hearing me. He leaned in closer and when I repeated myself, he said, ¡°We have no idea. That, and your concern, honestly lends some credibility to Li¡¯s theory.¡± I stared at him. Noticing my look, Hiro said, ¡°Yes, I know. He¡¯s insane. Was he always this crazy?¡± I shook my head.

    ¡°Anyway,¡± Hiro said, still pacing and making nervous motions with his hands, ¡°before she escaped, I honestly agreed with Blackmoor-Ward-sama. My ancestor is a human being. A human being who gave up a life for the Defenders of Fuji. It is not her fault it changed while she was gone. I mean, if the council had decided to¡­ to retire her, I wouldn¡¯t have defied them. Yet¡­ there was a difference.¡±

    He paused. I motioned for him to continue. He shook his head and said something in Japanese. One of the words sounded like ¡°television.¡± He took deep breath. ¡°Are you sure,¡± he asked slowly, ¡°that there is no information you have to The Architect¡¯s whereabouts? No ways to narrow down the search?¡± I remained silent. ¡°You don¡¯t have to tell me where the Architect is, just¡­ do you know what it looks like? Or if it could be described as a he or she? What ancient traps protect it? Hell, you could just tell me if you have a way of finding out more.¡±

    I decided to see if I could give him my best ¡°Why should I tell you?¡± face. At this point, I didn¡¯t give a shit about Charlotte or Mayu, but I did care about Mubashir. The guy had risked his life for me, delaying people who wanted to kill me. Well, technically, he was immortal, so he just risked some minor inconveniences. Still, I owed him.

    ¡°You don¡¯t speak Japanese, do you?¡± Hiro asked. I shook my head. ¡°Then the video wouldn¡¯t change your mind. Except maybe the last part.¡± He took a deep breath. ¡°I¡¯ll just summarize. After all, I¡¯m the guy who was monitoring her first debriefing.¡±

    I froze. The other Defenders became much more attentive. Hiro laughed. It was the kind of laugh that was less about mirth and more about releasing tension. ¡°Yeah, pretty cool right? I get to watch my ancestor talk about how she spent the past five hundred years. Well, for her, it wasn¡¯t five hundred years. They lost track at a thousand, and that was when they got their first revolver. You see, according to her, time there would slow down compared to our world if there were more people. If someone died, time would accelerate for a little bit.¡±

    "Wait,¡± one of the Defenders said, ¡°if time worked like that, wouldn¡¯t they die from starvation?¡±

    ¡°Apparently,¡± Hiro said, ¡°that wasn¡¯t really a problem. At least, if you took what she said at face value. However, she mentioned that they did feel hunger and thirst. Maybe that contributed to the massacre.¡± He paused for a moment, then said, ¡°You see, some of the bodies were¡­ infected by something, of course. But the rest, the majority died to conventional means. Mayu¡¯s explanation to these were usually reasonable, but¡­ once in a while we would get some inconsistencies. Inconsistencies that could only mean she was lying.

    ¡°It was when we got to the sensei sent with them that she snapped. You¡¯ve been with her more than any of us. Surely you¡¯ve noticed how disturbingly happy she always is. That smile is a mask, and an obvious one. But when we talked about the sensei, it began to slip. Her smile remained, but you could see the panic.¡±

    ¡°I know¡­¡± I rasped, ¡°¡­that part of her.¡± I paused to get my breath again. ¡°Did¡­ you see what¡­ happens when she loses it?¡± The painkillers had finally worn off, and I was finally being smarter about speaking. I did it because I wanted to test if I could speak in short bursts without pain and maybe get some information.

    ¡°Yes,¡± Hiro said. ¡°In fact, when one of the guards mentioned how revered the sensei was before he went into the pocket dimension, she¡­ flipped out? Is that how you say it? Anyway, the person who praised the sensei was killed instantly, one guard is still hospitalized, and three others were injured.¡±

    ¡°Flipped out¡­¡± I said, ¡°¡­is right. Just¡­ gave her wrong colored pencils.¡± That last burst was way too ambitious, and I struggled not to cough again.

    ¡°Wait,¡± one of the guards asked, ¡°she killed someone over the wrong colored pencil?¡±

    I shook my head. ¡°Injured,¡± I whispered.

    ¡°But you are not surprised.¡± Hiro said. ¡°May I ask why you helped her?¡± I shrugged. I wasn¡¯t exactly sure, other than that she had already escaped and I didn¡¯t really want to argue that much with Charlotte while Eliza was still there.

    We sat and stared at each other for a while. None of us said anything. I think the Defenders were waiting for me to speak. That would be a long time, as I had come to the conclusion that I would not hurt myself to tell them anything they didn¡¯t know. Then there was a distant thump. Dust fell out of the walls and the lights flickered.

    Hiro¡¯s phone beeped. ¡°That was server one.¡± He looked up from the phone, a look of panic on his face. ¡°We¡¯re vulnerable until server two and three pick up the slack.¡± He looked at my confused expression. ¡°We have a server for each section of the castle. If one goes down, the workload changes to the other two. We lose some features like automated threat detection and other features get slower.¡± I nodded, mentally thanking him for that bit of information.

    ¡°Well,¡± one of the guards said, ¡°we still have the other two. That should¡­¡±

    There was another explosion, much closer this time. This time, the lights went out permanently. After a few seconds, red back-up lights came on. ¡°That,¡± Hiro said, ¡°was server three.¡±

 5.28 Anime Beauty/Anime Psycho

    ¡°Jacobs-san,¡± Hiro asked, ¡°Does my ancestor have any reason to suspect you¡¯d know where The Architect is?¡± I nodded, but didn¡¯t elaborate. In the dim red light, I could see Hiro¡¯s eyes narrow. ¡°Mmm. I see.¡± He got up. ¡°Well,¡± he said, ¡°If you¡¯ll excuse me¡­¡± He then called out some orders in Japanese. Two of the guards got up and followed him out, one drawing what was a SIG-Sauer P220 or a Minebea P-9 pistol, the other bringing up a PM-9.

    The other six guards took up anti-Jumper positions. Four moved into the corners of the room, drawing their pistols, the ones with underbarrel lights switching them on. The other two stood right next to me. One drew a shotgun with a high-powered light built into the slide and began nervously scanning the room. The other had a Heckler & Koch pistol. He kept it pointed at the floor, rightly realizing he was too nervous to be aiming it.

    From far away, I could hear people shouting. Then there was a brief exchange of gunfire. Everything went disturbingly quiet. One of the guards asked something, but he was shushed. We went back to waiting. Occasionally we would hear gunfire in other areas of the castle. It appeared to be getting further and further away, but if it really was Mayu, that meant absolutely nothing.

    Eventually, silence reigned again. That didn¡¯t stop any of the guards from lowering their weapons. That was smart of them, but it didn¡¯t save them.

    What felt like an eternity later, I was stretching my neck to my left to avoid it seizing up. That was the only reason I saw it.

    Suddenly, Mayu was in between the two guards, two green metalic pear-shaped objects in her hands. ¡°Tsukamu!¡± she called out cheerily as she tossed the objects at the guards standing beside her.

    Recognizing what they were, I turned my head to the right, hoping to shield my face from whatever fun contents the grenades were about to vent. There, standing between the guards on the opposite side, was Mayu. She had her shitty five-round revolver and pink VP-70 aimed at their heads. She fired just as the grenades went off. One guard fell sideways, his head blown apart by a three-round burst. He had just squeezed out a few shots where Mayu had been. The other collapsed against the wall, clutching his neck. Blood spurted out between his fingers. Judging by the rate at which it came out, he would be dead by the time he had hit the floor. Heroically, he tried to adjust his aim to where Mayu had been standing.

    The guard with the shotgun also had the same idea. However, by the time he began blasting away, Mayu was gone.

    I turned to hear the guard at the right of my bed yell something. There was the crunch of the door being kicked open, and the guard fired. At the same time, someone else fired a short burst from an assault rifle. I turned to see Mayu standing in the doorway, aiming down the sights of her HK 417. She adjusted her aim and let off two more bursts. She then moved into the room, making sure her back was to the wall and not the door, and quickly and professionally scanned for hostiles, her usual grin plastered onto her face.

    When she was satisfied that everyone was dead, she lowered her gun and gave her big, eye closing smile, bowed, and said ¡°O-jama shimasu!¡± If you had told me that, from her first appearance, to this cheerful pleasantry, the massacre had taken fifteen seconds, I would have said that sounded too long.

    ¡°Jacobs-san,¡± she said with concern, ejecting the magazine. It was translucent, so I could see that it was not empty. She quickly inserted a new one. As she did so, she said, ¡°You don¡¯t look well.¡± I stared at her, trying to determine whether or not she was faking the concern. It was hard to tell.

    We were interrupted by the sound of gunfire. Mayu paused, turned and asked worriedly, ¡°Nani¡­?¡± The gunfire didn¡¯t stop. If anything, it began to increase in volume. Mayu turned back towards me, her usual smile back. ¡°Well, it doesn¡¯t seem like we have too much time to talk.¡±

    ¡°Stop the bullshit,¡± I murmured. ¡°You know¡­ this isn¡¯t a¡­ good time for¡­ whatever this is. I¡¯ve got¡­ collapsed lung¡­ Defenders or whoever¡­ are coming¡­¡±

    ¡°So you¡¯ll just have to talk faster, won¡¯t you?¡± Mayu said in a perky voice, her smile expanding again. As she said this, she took out a wicked-looking switchblade from seemingly nowhere and opened it in a menacing manner.

    I laughed. ¡°Experienced torturer¡­ would break me in six months¡­ maybe six days. You don¡¯t even¡­ have six minutes. No knowledge of psychology¡­ no carrot¡­ just a stick.¡± I laughed. Then began coughing. ¡°You don¡¯t¡­¡± I rasped, ¡°¡­have any reason why¡­¡± I gasped for breath, ¡°¡­I should give you The Architect.¡±

    Mayu froze like a deer in the headlights. It was like something large and unforeseen was barreling straight towards her. ¡°Why¡­ I should be given¡­¡± she said. ¡°Ah. Oh dear. It seems like you misunderstand my intentions.¡± She walked towards me and knelt by my bed. Looking directly into her eyes, I could see that she had that same spark of insanity in her eyes I had seen all too often back at NIU. ¡°I¡¯m not trying to take the Architect. I¡¯m not trying to kidnap¡­ Mubashir, that¡¯s his name, right? I¡¯m trying to prove myself.¡±If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

    I been staring at her while she said this. ¡°Explain,¡± I said.

    Mayu got up. That¡¯s probably what saved her. There was the pop of a pistol shot and she stumbled back into the wall. The follow-up shots missed her and hit the headboard of my bed. She vanished just as I turned around to look at the shooter.

    There, standing in the doorway was Li, holding a P9. Directly behind him was Mayu. She grabbed the arm Li was holding his pistol in and smashed it into the door. ¡°EHHHH?!¡± she screamed. She then slammed Li¡¯s head against the doorframe. Li collapsed as Mayu began ranting in Japanese. When he was on the floor, Mayu began to slam the heavy iron door into his head over and over again. As she did so, I notice the arm she was gripping the door with was bleeding from the shoulder. The door closed more each time until eventually it was just clanging against the frame.

    After a while, Mayu looked down at what she had done. I couldn¡¯t see the mess, but Mayu¡¯s assault on Li had been so vigorous that bits of blood had spattered her face. Her expression of rage froze, a look of panic bubbling just underneath the surface. It was quickly replaced by her standard smile. She walked back into the room, closing the door behind her.

    ¡°Anyway,¡± she said, ¡°You are Christian, right?¡±

    ¡°Jewish,¡± I said. I stared at the person before me. Was she seriously going to pretend that she hadn¡¯t just beaten a man to death? Could she really just change gears like that? More importantly, did she really think I¡¯d buy the truck driver¡¯s gear change in conversation?

    ¡°So,¡± Mayu said, her face taking on a zealous glow, ¡°if you found the Messiah, would you try to control it or fall at its feet and beg forgiveness for your sins?¡± I held up two fingers to indicate choice two. I would have said something about maybe not begging for forgiveness, but I wanted to see where she was going with this. Plus, you know, collapsed lung.

    Mayu nodded. ¡°See?¡± she said. ¡°We both have the same goal. To make the world perfect.¡± Ok, that was a leap of logic, but I¡¯d let it slide. Mostly because speaking hurt. ¡°The person you call Mubashir, or The Architect, is also what you¡¯d call the Messiah.¡± The evangelical fervor in her voice was reaching a fever pitch, her smile gone. ¡°I am here to be his Herald. I shall find him and expunge my sins at his feet. Then he will fix the world, ending want and suffering.¡± She smiled at me. It was not her normal smile, all mask-like and plastic. It was much more disturbing. She then held out her hand, offering me to take it. ¡°Tell me, Jacobs-san, will you help me find Mubashir? Will you help to make the world perfect?¡±

    Isat there, trying to unpack the various flavors of crazy. There was a lot, and I¡¯d need to defuse it all if I wanted to live. If I said the wrong thing, she would start beating me. Or maybe she¡¯d start cutting into me. I noticed that her other hand was soaked in blood and clutching the knife. I¡¯d have to move fast, because she was looking impatient.

    I was saved by what felt like a lead curtain falling down over me. Whatever it was, Mayu felt it more. She doubled over and vomited a mix of blood and something chunky onto my bed. Some of it splashed onto my bare arm and I recoiled. Most of it sloshed off the bed and onto the floor. After the third retching, Mayu looked up. The sick had sloshed over her mouth and her nose was bleeding profusely, but it was her eyes that scared me. The previously clear whites were now turning pink, with a few cuts starting to leak tears of blood.

    ¡°They¡¯re coming¡­¡± she said. Then she vomited again. Outside the door, I heard muffled shouting. I couldn¡¯t be sure, but it sounded like English.

    ¡°Give up¡­¡± I said to Mayu. ¡°¡­can¡¯t get out of¡­ this. You can¡­ survive.¡± This wasn¡¯t because I cared about her. I just didn¡¯t want whoever came through the door to accidentally shoot me. The last thing I wanted was to die in a room that smelled of gunpowder, blood, excrement and vomit.

    Mayu raised her head, glaring at me with enough rage and determination to kill. In what must have been an act of supreme determination, she stood up and aimed her revolver at my heart while pulling back the hammer in one smooth move. Then the door was kicked in, John, Eliza, and someone I didn¡¯t recognize coming in. Eliza was carrying an L1A1 battle rifle, John his Type 89-F, and the third guy seemed to be an SAS operative with some sort of M-4 clone.

    ¡°Drop the gun, sunshine,¡± Eliza said, staring down her rifle¡¯s infrared scope. ¡°I¡¯ve just about ¡®ad it with this mess.¡±

    Mayu, her voice cold, simply said, ¡°No.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m warning you,¡± Eliza said, ¡°I will put a bullet through your fucking skull¡­¡±

    ¡°Which will cause my grip to tighten,¡± Mayu said. ¡°Do I have to explain what would happen then?¡± Her voice, in what I assume had to be more herculean willpower, returned to its normal bubbly demeanor.

    ¡°What do you want?¡± John asked.

    ¡°Mubashir.¡± Mayu made it sound like the most innocent thing in the world. ¡°You know where he is. I would like to talk to him.¡±

    ¡°We don¡¯t know where¡­¡±

    ¡°LIAR!¡± Mayu shrieked. Her finger tightened on the trigger. She took a deep breath and cleared her throat. ¡°I¡¯m sorry for that outburst,¡± she said. ¡°That was rude. But so is lying.¡± Her voice was bubbly except for how acidly she said lying. ¡°You know, this has been such a disappointment. I thought for sure you would understand. But if you insist on being so unreasonable, I will have to kill Jacobs-san.¡±

    ¡°We don¡¯t know where Moob is,¡± John said. ¡°We specifically set it up so we didn¡¯t know in case of situations like this.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s a shame,¡± Mayu said. ¡°There¡¯s no point in leaving him alive then.¡±

    ¡°Wait!¡± Eliza said desperately, lowering her weapon. ¡°We don¡¯t know where he is¡­¡±

    ¡°Not what I¡­¡± Mayu began.

    ¡°But we know who¡¯s holding him,¡± Eliza finished.

    ¡°Eliza¡­¡± I said. ¡°Not¡­ good¡­¡±

    ¡°Nate,¡± Eliza said, ¡°the CIA know their business. If she makes trouble, they¡¯ll smack her down.¡± She turned to Mayu. ¡°Now come on, lower your gun. There¡¯s no way you can get out of here. You got what you wanted, now come quietly.¡±

    ¡°What about the second-best option?¡± Mayu asked.

    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± John asked. Then Mayu vanished. ¡°How¡­? What¡­? What?¡± John sputtered this, lowering his gun. He then sighed and just said, ¡°Fuck me, right?¡±

 5.28: King of Wishful Thinking

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± the SAS operative said, ¡°We¡¯ll find ¡®er.¡± I shook my head vhemenently. ¡°Listen, mate,¡± the operative said, ¡°she was bleedin¡¯ from ¡®er eyes from the field. I¡¯m surprised she¡¯s even still standing.¡±

    ¡°Everything¡­¡± I said, ¡°about her is¡­ wrong. Find her.¡±

    Eliza slung her rifle over her shoulder. ¡°Right,¡± she said, ¡°You need to stop talking.¡±

    ¡°She was trained as a ninja,¡± John said, ¡°and she knows this castle and the surrounding area inside and out. How long have we got again?¡±

    ¡°Half an hour,¡± the operative said with a sigh. ¡°You¡¯re right.¡± He then put a hand to an ear and said, ¡°Package is secure. We need a stretcher over ¡®ere. Be advised, Maiden is armed, dangerous, and active in the area. Repeat, Maiden is on site.¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± Eliza said, ¡°we¡¯ve got to get him moving.¡±

    ¡°Did¡­¡± I began.

    ¡°Shut up, Nate,¡± Eliza said.

    ¡°Did you find Bai?¡±

    Eliza stared at me. Then she said, ¡°Shut the fuck up, Nate.¡± The dangerous look on John¡¯s face made me think he seconded that sentiment.

    ¡°She¡¯s¡­¡± I gasped out, ¡°another¡­ loose end. Just as dangerous. Also, what about¡­ Jen?¡±

    ¡°Jen and company are heading back home,¡± John said. ¡°I¡¯m going with her. We haven¡¯t found Bai, but I personally don¡¯t give a shit.¡± He shook his head. ¡°Can¡¯t believe I slept with her.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m¡­ I¡¯m sorry¡­¡± I said.

    ¡°Not your fault, Nate,¡± John said. He looked pointedly at Eliza as if to say who he thought was to blame. ¡°And I can¡¯t entirely blame her. I mean, she had her loyalties, and she knew what was going on. Unlike some people.¡±

    ¡°You fuckin¡¯ what, mate?¡± Eliza whispered, her voice strained.

    ¡°Oh, was I being too subtle? YOU FUCKED EVERYTHING!¡± John yelled. He took a step forwards. ¡°You and your dumbass of a sister¡­¡±

    ¡°You,¡± Eliza said, her face white, her claws popping out and her voice deadly quiet, ¡°leave Char the fuck¡­¡±

    ¡°Oi!¡± the SAS operator said, quickly stepping between them and physically pushing them apart. ¡°Stow it.¡± He glared at them in turns. ¡°You said you were professionals. Act like it.¡±

    John and Eliza glared at each other for a few more seconds. ¡°I¡¯m going to check the route back to the LZ,¡± John said. ¡°Make sure it¡¯s clear.¡± He then stalked off, Eliza glaring at him all the way.

    Eliza began pacing and muttering under her breath. From what I could tell, it was mostly swearing directed at John. I just sat there awkwardly, listening to gunfire. From what I could tell, it was dropping off. Whether that meant someone was winning or if perimeters had just been secured and defined, I couldn¡¯t tell.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    Eventually, several operators, most with M-4 pattern weapons and one with what looked to be an internally silenced G3, came into view. I made a note of that last weapon because I instantly wanted it. Two stood outside the room, aiming down the hallway. Three more began quickly and efficiently unpacking a stretcher. A fifth began checking the medical devices I was hooked up to and a sixth was checking me.

    ¡°Either these guys aren¡¯t very devious,¡± the one checking the medical devices, ¡°or they¡¯re incredibly scary. This stuff is clean.¡±

    ¡°You certain?¡± Eliza asked. ¡°I don¡¯t want to unhook ¡®im and find out that that triggers a bomb or some sort of toxin.¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s got no IVs in him, no EKGs, no wires of any sort,¡± the operator said. ¡°There shouldn¡¯t be any way to trigger some sort of trap. Unless there¡¯s something you want to tell us?¡± I thought for a moment, then shook my head.

    ¡°Right,¡± the operator who had been checking me over said. He took out some clippers. ¡°Let¡¯s get him outta here.¡± Quickly and efficiently, he used the clippers to cut the chains of the handcuffs. I was then removed from the Defender oxygen machine and hooked up to a portable one the SAS medics had set up.

    The process of getting me onto the stretcher and off the bed was quick, yet painful. ¡°We¡¯re going to buckle you in, ok?¡± one of the operators said. ¡°We don¡¯t want you falling off the stretcher.¡± I nodded. ¡°You¡¯re sure?¡± the operator asked. I could imagine them doing a similar operation where someone they had rescued freaked out when the restraints came out. To reassure them, I gave an exaggerated thumbs-up. The operators all sighed in relief as they strapped me in.

    When I was secure, the operators radioed their status, then began hurrying out. We passed a lot of bodies. When we passed a pile of corpses outside a room with what looked to be a burning server farm, I noticed with a start that one of the bodies was Hiro. The way the bodies were arranged, it was like someone had appeared in the midst of them and sprayed them with automatic weapons fire. It had to be Mayu who did that.

    Eventually, we got to the stairs. It was still a great place for someone to ambush us, and it was a lot slower than it should have been because I was on a stretcher. Eventually, we came out to the door. Outside, I could hear jets circling around. The radio crackled. ¡°Orbit is touching down,¡± a staticy voice said. ¡°Repeat, Orbit is touching down for dustoff. Move fast, we¡¯re still receiving reports of hostiles active in the vicinity.¡±

    The SAS operators and Eliza all exchanged some unspoken signal. Then we burst through the door. Ahead of us, a stealth VTOL designed for troop transport was waiting for us, complete with side bay doors and miniguns. Inside were medics getting ready for my arrival and people manning the miniguns. Its wheels were down, but since the jets were still on they were hovering a few inches off the ground.

    One of the medics yelled something at us, but it was impossible to hear him over the whine of the jet engine. Then something hit the sides of the VTOL, making sparks. I thought I heard the sound of an SMG coming from the window above. I turned around just in time to see what the minigun was doing to where the gunner thought the shooter was. Multi-century-old brick was turned to powder and dust.

    As soon as we were all buckled in, the VTOL screamed off into the air. Someone had put noise-canceling earphones on my head, but the sound was still ear-splitting. If I hadn¡¯t been strapped in, I would have been thrown around wildly.

    ¡°So,¡± Eliza said, her voice crackling over the radio in the helmet, ¡°I don¡¯t think we¡¯ve told you, Nate, but we¡¯re going to NIU.¡±

    I considered responding, but they hadn¡¯t given me a mic. Trying to yell above the noise was going to be like trying to stop a tsunami using only my pinky, and that was pretending my lungs were working.

    Eliza, correctly realizing the situation, continued. ¡°I know you can¡¯t talk, so I¡¯m going to tell you as much as I possibly can. We have no bases in country that the Japanese wouldn¡¯t poke their noses into. We also need to keep this quiet. Not sure if you know the situation, but the world¡¯s gone to shite. The Dragon¡¯s Teeth are fucking everyone up, and the last thing ¡®Er Majesty wants is to piss off a potential ally against them. We¡¯ll need to disappear after this, as well as get you healed up. NIU¡¯s a brilliant place for both those things.¡±

    Inodded. I wasn¡¯t sure what kind of reception I¡¯d get there, but at least I¡¯d be safe. I closed my eyes. For now, my fight was over. Now it was time to take a well-earned nap.

 6.1: When the World Comes Down

    My name is Nathan Jacobs. And I¡¯ve fucked up.

    The first thing you need to understand is my jobs. I can make some firearms (in fact, I¡¯ve got my own firearm company), but mostly I¡¯m the guy who shoots them. The problem, it seems, is figuring who I should work for.

    My first employer was the United Nations Investigations, eXtranormal (or UNIX for short.) In fact, those guys were the reason I was in this mess. If not for them, I would have gone to a normal college. Instead, I decided to go to Nowhere Island University to be a soldier and spy. The school taught me how to fight and kill in the most brutal way possible, and UNIX wanted me to spy on them.

    Or at least that¡¯s what UNIX claimed it wanted me to do. I should have been suspicious when my handlers didn¡¯t give me any specific objectives or prior training, and I shouldn¡¯t have been shocked when it turned out that I and one other student I¡¯d been sent in with had been sent there to die. The goal was to prevent UNIX from finding the other two spies. In some perverse twist of fate, the two agents who were supposed to make it were compromised. One had gotten killed by literal space Nazis and the other¡­ Hell, I saw what happened to him and I still don¡¯t know what happened to him. Long story short, the other guy supposed to survive had his cover blown to his ¡°buddies¡± and he had to get some CIA protection. In between, weird shit happened.

    Oh, and did I mention the weird shit? Yeah, I actually got to witness a certain clone army rise up in North Korea. If you¡¯re reading this far enough in the future to not know what the Dragon¡¯s Teeth are¡­ good. That means something¡¯s eventually gone right. I also had to deal with other Parahumans and a disturbingly relevant prophecy about the world ending (and the people who believed in it a little too much.)

    There was a period of time I had been listlessly working for myself. Mostly that involved poking my nose into places I shouldn¡¯t. Then, at the start of summer, I was approached by Charlotte Blackmoor-Ward and her adopted sister Eliza Henderson. They wanted a friend (the other UNIX infiltrator, his name is John Marshall) and me to go to Japan with them to get talk to some people called the Defenders of Fuji.

    Things went horribly wrong. We¡¯d found that they had sent a group of assassins to act as personal bodyguards to a coming entity known as the Architect into a pocket dimension in response to a prophecy made five hundred years ago. Only one of these assassins, known as Heralds, had come back. Somehow, Charlotte had heard that the Defenders were attempting to kill their last Herald.

    As soon as John and I had gotten the first part of the escape done, we found ourselves cut off from Charlotte and stuck with the Herald. It turns out that the Herald, Mayu Nakashima, had not had a good time in the pocket dimension. In fact, she was a more than a little psychotic.

    Hounded by the Defenders, we had no choice but to turn to fellow NIU classmate and Oni-themed, Boston-based supervillain named Jennifer Kagemoto and her team of super-powered gangsters. She hadn¡¯t brought out the best in Mayu, and Mayu, beneath her creepy mask of cheer, sometimes seemed to be insulted by Jen¡¯s existence. Eventually, after a severe incident between her and Jen and discovering that John and I knew the Architect (he was the other UNIX spy) and kept that from her, she ditched us. Then the Defenders attacked and I ended up shot.

    After briefly being captured by the Defenders, confronting an unhinged Mayu, I had been rescued by John, Eliza and the SAS. Whisked away in an experimental jet VTOL called a Fairey Nightdragon, I was informed by Eliza that the safest place for me (and least embarrassing place for Her Majesty¡¯s Government) was NIU.

    In the meantime, the Dragon¡¯s Teeth had stepped out of their stronghold in North Korea and simultaneously attacked multiple countries. France, home of UNIX headquarters, had held out for five days despite massive military, law enforcement and civilian casualties. Russia¡¯s forces were being smashed faster than they could be assembled and, with a recent massacre at the Duma and additional assassinations at the start of the invasion, their civilian government was essentially non-existent. India was on the verge of collapse, Pakistan was subsumed. Germany had already been weakened by fighting an influx of space Nazis and had decided Dragon¡¯s Teeth occupation was better than Nazi occupation. Turkey had been trounced by the Dragon¡¯s Teeth and Kurdish allies. China had been shaken by a blatantly Dragon¡¯s Teeth-backed Tibetean uprising and multiple units of Dragon¡¯s Teeth appearing at random throughout the country. A Dragon¡¯s Teeth breakout from North Korea had tied down a good chunk of the Chinese army and simultaneously taken South Korea. Even worse, the number of countries being invaded by the Dragon¡¯s Teeth or reporting fifth-column movements from a technologically advanced force was growing by the day.

    Due to my recovery from the collapsed lung I had sustained in Japan, I was mostly confined to bed rest with only the news for company. It was summer, so the student-run channels were down and all I had was the satellite news channels and the internet. Of course, that¡¯s like saying I had run out of some weird local potato chip some kids were making using their mom¡¯s kitchen and only had a free lifetime supply of Lay¡¯s left. Needless to say, I was kind of depressed. At least I was well enough now to pace.

    Oddly enough, there were guards outside my door. When I had gotten done from my surgery, I had asked Eliza about it. Her tired face had suddenly become suspicious. ¡°You know,¡± she said, ¡°I¡¯m not quite sure.¡±

    The thing about Eliza is that she¡¯s a Lupine, a kind of Parahuman. Physically, Lupines have increased senses of smell, bone claws in their hands (and, in most female cases, feet, but Eliza¡¯s an exception,) and some, like Eliza have dog-like ears. They also have extremely strong protective instincts. I could see those instincts go into overdrive, her green eyes narrowing and her red, fox-like ears flattening.

    Hurriedly, I said, ¡°I¡¯m sure it¡¯s nothing.¡±

    ¡°And you said you could handle Japan¡­¡± Eliza said.

    ¡°HEY!¡± I said, suddenly pissed. ¡°I thought we were going to talk to some people. Have a nice vacation. But no! No. Instead, your sister-¡±

    ¡°Oi,¡± Eliza said warningly, ¡°watch what-¡°

    I continued over her, genuinely pissed. ¡°-changes all the fucking parameters and sends John and me off in a random direction with a collection of nutjobs! I¡¯m sorry, but she fucked up. Now, innocent people are dead because of her and a complete nut is headed straight for what just may potentially be the most powerful being in the entire universe.¡±

    Eliza stood up, her face a mask of white. ¡°I saved your life, Nate,¡± she whispered, always terrifying in a cockney accent. ¡°All I ask is that you don¡¯t fuckin¡¯ talk shit about my sister.¡±This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

    I remembered how Eliza, John and an SAS operator had burst into the room I was being held and how Mayu had held a gun to my head. When Mayu had demanded the location of the Architect, Eliza had admitted he was being held by the CIA. Then Mayu had escaped. ¡°Saving me,¡± I said, ¡°wasn¡¯t helpful.¡±

    ¡°Go fuck yourself,¡± Eliza said. She stalked out of the room and the next few times I saw her, she barely talked to me.

    It was now July. I had been in recovery for two weeks. Eliza would come back in occasionally, but things were a lot chillier with both of us not wanting to admit. She also seemed a lot more suspicious of the guards. ¡°Somethin¡¯s wrong,¡± she said one visit when I asked how things were going. ¡°Bloody entire campus is on lockdown. No messages in or out, and nobody¡¯s tellin¡¯ me what the bleedin¡¯ fuck¡¯s ¡®appenin¡¯.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°at least we¡¯ve got those SAS guys with-¡±

    ¡°They left,¡± Eliza said. Seeing my incredulous look, she laughed. ¡°Nate, Look at what¡¯s goin¡¯ on back on the Continent. Clone bastards runnin¡¯ around like they own the place, givin¡¯ us the eye from across the channel¡­ They need ¡®em over there a ¡®ell of a lot more. Especially since we¡¯ve got the nice, highly trained NIU Campus Security to look after us.¡± She laughed bitterly. ¡°Fuckin¡¯ ¡®ell, we¡¯re screwed.¡±

    Meanwhile, I was slowly recovering. I was eventually able to get out of bed and walk around. I¡¯d even stopped taking painkillers and removed my IV. It was such a nice feeling to not be hooked up to a tube, except for the occasional twinge in my chest. My head was so much clearer.

    Then one day, I woke up from a nap to find that one of the security cameras was disabled. It was single-directional and, when functional, was set up to give me and potential occupants privacy without sacrificing security while it swiveled on its perch. Now, however, it stood stock still, its normally solid green light now blinking red.

    Being a helpful person, I looked outside to tell the CampSec guards that the camera was acting funny. They weren¡¯t there. This was suspicious, to say the least.

    The armrest on the bed I¡¯d mostly been confined to had several buttons. Most were off-white or black buttons that controlled the TV. One, a green button with a phone symbol, was for calling the nurse¡¯s station in a non-urgent manner. A yellow button with a needle was there if you were hooked up to some intravenous painkillers (which I no longer was, thank God) and you wanted to get comfortably numb. The other was a red button with an exclamation point. That one you pressed if you were dying.

    I pressed the call button. ¡°Hey,¡± I said, ¡°can anyone tell me where the security guards are?¡± I waited. Then waited some more. And more. Nothing.

    I was about to get up and investigate when a man in scrubs came in. He was an older, tanned man who looked extremely suave. I recognized him, but not from the hospital or medical program. While I was trying to place him, I asked, ¡°Hey, just so you know, the call button isn¡¯t working.¡±

    ¡°Oh yeah,¡± he said, ¡°that¡¯s been happening a lot recently.¡± I tried to suppress a frown. It hadn¡¯t happened to me once. ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it. Anyway, I need to medicate you. Mind if I just poke this into your tube?¡± He held up a needle with a clear liquid in it.

    This guy was not assigned to me in the hospital, and I doubted he was even a doctor. This was an assassination attempt. The camera being off, the guards leaving, the call button not working¡­ the evidence pointed to one thing and one thing only. Turning myself so he couldn¡¯t see me do it, I pressed the big red button.

    I had never pressed the big red button before. I had foolishly figured that I could press it and then manipulate the impostor into a position where I could get the drop on him. Instead, alarms on my bed, in the room, down the hall and at the nurse¡¯s station began to blare and flash blue. A gruff, pre-recorded male voice, began saying ¡°BLUE ALERT! PATIENT IN DISTRESS!¡± and what I assumed to be the same thing translated into Spanish, Arabic, and Chinese over and over again. In the hallway, I could see that the floor had big blue arrows pulsing down the hallway, ending with a bigger one pointing right at the door to my room.

    The impostor doctor turned around to look at the arrows. Then he turned to see me getting out of bed, no IV on my arm. There was a dawning look of comprehension on his face as he moved to stab me with the needle.

    Luckily, I caught his arm as I slammed into him. We both fell on the floor, but he twisted at the last minute so that we were on our sides instead of me being on top, me pinning his other arm beneath my body. Then he began to slowly inch the needle towards me, despite my grip on his arm.

    If someone pulls an automatic pistol on you in a fistfight, a good idea is to grab it by the slide and force them to fire prematurely. That way, they¡¯ll have to spend precious milliseconds trying to pull the slide back in order to cock the gun. There¡¯s a similar principle when an opponent has a needle. You push the plunger before he stabs you. That way, whatever chemicals are in the needle can¡¯t get into your bloodstream. I decided to use that method instead of just trying to avoid being stabbed. It wouldn¡¯t fully render the needle useless (after all, it was still a sharp object and, knowing NIU and the people who worked there, the liquid could be so toxic that even amounts invisible to the naked eye could kill me in fifteen minutes,) but it would be a good idea.

    The problem was that I depressed the plunger too quickly, not realizing where the needle was pointing. The liquid squirted out the needle in an arc and landed in my beard, moustache and on my lip. That was not good.

    The man, meanwhile, continued to force the needle towards me. I let go of the plunger and was now gripping his wrist with both hands.

    Then, out of nowhere, a brown combat boot slammed into the fake doctor¡¯s arm. There was a snap, the man screamed, his arm bent where it wasn¡¯t supposed to and the needle fell away.

    I looked up as the impostor was dragged away from me. I looked up. I recognized the two people dragging him off. Ray-Gun and Eric were people I had met in Hell Semester, part of a group of child soldiers from Africa. When I had first met them, they had still appeared malnourished. As a white middle-class kid from the US, meeting and befriending (well, let¡¯s be honest, I didn¡¯t befriend them, they took pity on and befriended me) these scrawny black kids had sort of made me realize some stuff. For instance, this game I was playing had the highest stakes. And everyone else playing played to win.

    ¡°Thought you could come in and just kill our friend, huh, you bastard?¡± Eric asked, putting the man in a choke hold. Ray-Gun, meanwhile had pulled out a MAC Mle 1950, a 9mm 1911 clone with distinctive bronze-colored slide, and was holding it to the impostor¡¯s head. ¡°Talk! Who put you up to this? Howell? Krieger? Antionette? Or did you decide to do it on your own?¡±

    As I wiped off the poison from my lips, I reflected how bad things had just become. ¡°Howell¡± was President Anthony Carter Newton-Howell, the President of NIU and who I had reason to believe could influence the world outside the campus to a terrifying degree. ¡°Krieger¡± was Professor (or Sergeant during Hell Semester) Karl Krieger, a South African nutcase who taught for the Academy of Military Science who was intent on removing the President via what I assumed to be lethal means. From what I could gather, he was suborning CampSec and Shadowhaven/AMS students. ¡°Antionette¡± was Louise Antionette, the head of the Rogues Academy, another sub-school, this one focused on infiltration and espionage. I had no idea why she¡¯d want me dead, but program heads tended to build up a lot of loyalty and favors. Basically, three of the four people mentioned could order a variety of highly trained assassins to kill me.

    The fake doctor¡¯s response to being put in an arm bar and having a gun put to his head was to smile in a way that bared his teeth and bite down on something. There was a crunch. Shortly after, he began to foam at the mouth and thrash about. His smile became more rigid and I smelled pee and fecal matter.

    The seizures stopped almost as soon as they began. Eric let the body drop. ¡°Eugh,¡± he said disgustedly, ¡°the bastard shit on me!¡±

    Before we could talk, we heard someone scream. We turned around to see nurse, a muscular man who was probably a student, covering his mouth to stifle a scream. Beside him was a Campus Security officer in patrol gear. The officer drew his sidearm (either a FN FiveseveN or a FN FNX-45 Tactical) and yelled ¡°Drop your weapons! Hands on your heads!¡±

 6.2: That You Hold Over Me

    ¡°So,¡± Officer Mendez, a Campus Security officer from Mexico said, looking down at his notes he had taken while interviewing me, ¡°You have no idea who that man was? Or how your two friends found you?¡± I had dealt with Officer Mendez and his partner, Officer Gupta before. Some of these encounters had been positive, some negative, some ambiguous. For instance, in one encounter, they had expressed doubts about the President and I had subtly pointed them in Krieger¡¯s direction. Then I had let Krieger know about them.

    Seeing how this room was most likely bugged (if not by Campus Security, then by the President himself) I knew I couldn¡¯t directly ask them. But I couldn¡¯t exactly trust them if I didn¡¯t know where their loyalties lay.

    ¡°No,¡± I said, responding to Mendez¡¯s question as calmly as possible. ¡°Do you know what happened to the guards who were supposed to be near me?¡±And why they were there in the first place?¡°Because it seems to me that whoever that guy was, he had some help on the inside.¡±

    Mendez and Gupta exchanged dark looks. ¡°Dead or disappeared?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Disappeared,¡± Gupta said. ¡°I¡¯m curious as to how you guessed.¡±

    I blinked. That was like being given a multiple choice question with only possible answers and saying, ¡°I don¡¯t know, either A or B.¡± There were only two possible outcomes for those guards. I mean, you could say that they could end up getting caught, but in this scenario I sort of lumped that outcome with dying. I stared at them for a moment, then asked, ¡°Are you fucking serious? Was there a magic third option, or did you two seriously expect them to justhappento be getting coffee when my killer stopped by?¡±

    Mendez nodded. ¡°I see,¡± he said.

    ¡°And,¡± I said, ¡°if you¡¯re pissed off that I¡¯m implying they¡¯re extremely unprofessional, I¡¯m not. I¡¯m implying that anyone in your job wouldn¡¯t have lasted if they thought they could get away with not guarding someone their boss told them to guard.¡±

    ¡°Do you know why you were being guarded?¡± Gupta asked.

    ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°I don¡¯t have a reputation for making trouble at school,¡± at least I didn¡¯t think I did, ¡°and I think the Japanese law enforcement and the Defenders of Fuji have bigger problems than me at the moment.¡±The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

    ¡°Hi there,¡± a masculine voice said. We turned around to see a man who looked a lot like a taller version of Robert Downey Jr, flanked by two CampSec guards in full combat gear and a third man in a more ornate version of the Campus Security patrol uniform. It was President Anthony Carter Newton-Howell. He looked peeved. ¡°Any¡­ any particular reason you two¡± he said indicated Mendez and Gupta with an awkward wave of his hand, ¡°are interviewing Mr. Jacobs, Officers¡­?¡±

    Mendez and Gupta had stood up and saluted as soon as they had heard the President¡¯s voice. ¡°I¡¯m Officer Mendez and this is my partner, Officer Gupta. We¡¯re following standard protocol and-¡±

    ¡°Interviewing the victim and the suspect,¡± the President said, rolling his eyes. ¡°Very efficient, in a self-defense case. He¡¯s both.¡± He paused, then said, ¡°Thing is, I specifically asked Chief Gonzalez to interview the people involved in the incident myselfbefore anyone else gets a chance to talk to them.¡± He turned to the man in the fancy version of the patrol uniform. I noticed that the gold badge he wore identified him as I. Gonzalez.

    ¡°Correct, sir,¡± Chief Gonzalez said.

    ¡°Sorry, sir,¡± Gupta said, ¡°Our supervisor, Sergeant Berthier assigned us and-¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± Gonzalez said. ¡°Berthier disappeared four hours ago.¡±

    Gupta and Mendez exchanged nervous glances. Only Gupta and Mendez could tell if it was because they were caught in a lie or if their only hope of salvation had just disappeared. ¡°We got the call from him fifteen minutes ago.¡± Mendez said. He held up his cPhone. ¡°Well, it was a text, but¡­¡±

    ¡°I think,¡± Gonzalez said, ¡°that you should go with Officers Landers and Sato.¡± The two CampSec officers in combat armor had been fidgeting nervously with their P90s. Despite the bulky uniforms and dark sunglasses, I could tell that they didn¡¯t want to be arresting fellow officers.

    ¡°Things going wrong?¡± I asked innocently as the security officers left the room.

    I instantly regretted my flippantry. The President¡¯s eyes hardened even more. ¡°You wouldn¡¯t happen to know anything about that, would you?¡± he asked. He was still calm and casual, but his voice was dangerous.

    ¡°Um,¡± I said. Me and my big mouth.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± the President said. ¡°You¡¯re going to have a chance to make it all up to me.¡± He leaned in close so his face was almost touching mine. His face was blank and the most intimidating thing I¡¯ve ever seen. ¡°First, you¡¯re going to tell meeverything.Every question I ask, you will answer truthfully. Then, you¡¯re going to repeat these answers again until I¡¯m sure you¡¯ll say the same exact thing tomorrow.¡±

    ¡°What happens tomorrow?¡± I asked.

    The President smiled. It was genuinely happy, but only because I was in a tight spot. ¡°I believe,¡± he said, ¡°one of the things you said you liked to do as an extracurricular was to act. Well, tomorrow, you¡¯re going to say all these things you say to me today in front of an audience. Think of it as a mock trial.¡±

    A horrible, horrible image of me in a kangaroo court appeared, with everyone at NIU who hated me lining up to say bad things. ¡°Do I get a lawyer?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Nathan, Nathan,¡± the President said, his smile getting bigger. ¡°You don¡¯t need a lawyer. You¡¯re a witness.¡±

 6.3: The Coup

    The President was true to his word. We really were holding some kind of trial. It was large auditorium, with chairs removed around the front-center. The remaining chairs were arranged in a C-shape, most facing towards the stage, a few near the front were facing the gap. In that gap were two lecterns facing the stage, upon which the President sat on a fancy leather swivel chair behind a heavy wooden desk, smiling down at me with a quiet satisfaction. Behind him stood Gupta and Mendez One lectern was unoccupied. The other one had Professor Karl Krieger at it. He turned around and smiled at me.

    As he did, I noticed he wore handcuffs that forced his wrists to touch. They were painted a dull black, but as usual, his light brown eyes and bushy mane of hair and wild beard made him look like a demented lion. He was smiling like he was genuinely happy to see me. ¡°Boyke!¡± he said happily, his accent as South African as ever. ¡°Been busy, yeah?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, slightly guilty. I hadn¡¯t completely betrayed him, but what I did was still treachery. No matter how much I reminded myself how crazy Krieger was and how there was a chance he was even worse than the President. It felt hollow.

    ¡°I take it you talked?¡± Krieger asked. ¡°I was¡­ wondering.¡±

    ¡°Oh he sang,¡± the President said. ¡°Like a canary.¡±

    As I walked down the central path to the unoccupied lectern, I noticed that everyone was watching me like I was the key witness in a courtroom drama. In the parts of the circle facing the stage, there were a mix of professors, students, and off-duty Campus Security. In the seats left to of the lecterns, a group of older, more important faculty members sat just beyond Krieger. In the seats to the right, closest to the empty lectern I noticed what looked to be most of the AMS and Shadowhaven faculty handcuffed and held at gunpoint by Professor Johnathan Blunt, the leader of AMS, and six CampSec guards with patrol uniforms and either SPAS-12 shotguns or P90 submachineguns. I also noticed that there were two guards by the only doors. They were both armed with black SCAR-L assault rifles. Besides them was what appeared to be a weapons rack.

    On my way down, I passed Eliza. She gave me a thumbs-up sign and smiled, but she seemed nervous. She wasn¡¯t the only one. Everyone seemed on edge. Especially the small group of AMS/Shadowhaven students who had entered NIU the year after me who were sitting in the back.

    ¡°Naturally,¡± Krieger said, responding to the President. ¡°You have quite the way of convincing people, at least initially, Mr. Howell. Quite something, really.¡±

    As I got closer, I noticed something else. The Rogue faculty seemed somewhat split. Fifty percent seemed to be on the chairs facing the imprisoned AMS/Shadowhaven faculty, one percent was mixed in, along with some other faculty and staff who obviously weren¡¯t from any of the three groups. Suddenly, it hit me. The President was initiating a purge of the AMS and Shadowhaven faculty. After all, they were the biggest physical threat apart from Campus Security. Despite their tiny size, the combined firepower of Shadowhaven and AMS could potentially topple Campus Security. The only other school that could even hope to match their combat experience were the Rogues. As for the other schools, well, I actually had a chance to fight some of the Business majors in Hell Semester. If I wanted someone to take out AMS/Shadowhaven, I would sooner give guns to the least physically active students from the Turing Computer Science School.

    When I finally got to the lectern, I saw Professor Antionette and Professor Rosalia Zemylachka, the leader of Shadowhaven, kneeling on the ground. Behind each, a CampSec guard stood, aiming their service pistols at their heads. Professor Antionette was nervous. Professor Zemylachka looked impassive, despite having a cut lip, forehead, and multiple bruises on her face.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    ¡°So,¡± the President said as I got to the lectern, ¡°shall we begin?¡±

    ¡°Certainly,¡± I said.

    ¡°First off,¡± the President said, ¡°could you state your name for the record and how you know the defendant?¡±

    ¡°My name is Nathan Jacobs,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m a student at the Academy of Military Science and I met Professor Karl Krieger at Hell Semester as my section¡¯s sergeant. After completing that, he became my advisor.¡±

    The President nodded. ¡°I notice,¡± he said, ¡°that you haven¡¯t visited him as often as required. Is there a reason for this?¡±

    ¡°May I answer this?¡± Krieger asked.

    ¡°No,¡± the President said. ¡°For obvious reasons.¡±

    ¡°He hasn¡¯t told you everything,¡± Krieger said. ¡°In fact, our lad hasn¡¯t told you the juiciest parts. For instance, what did he tell you about me infiltrating Campus Security?¡±

    ¡°He¡­¡± the President began, arrogant as usual. Then his face changed to one of utter horror. ¡°Fuck m-¡±

    Before he could finish, Gupta and Mendez fired in unison. Well, not exactly in unison. Gupta¡¯s shot from her Five-seveN passed cleanly through the President¡¯s skull, with only a small spray of blood, bone and gray matter. The velocity of the round was such that the President¡¯s head didn¡¯t even move. Barely a millisecond passed when the first of the .45 ACP slugs from Mendez¡¯s FNX-45 Tactical slammed into the President¡¯s head. It exited from between the President¡¯s eyes, causing to his face to explode like a watermelon struck with a hammer.

    I didn¡¯t see the second round. I had ducked behind the podium as soon as I saw the President¡¯s head burst open. I looked to where Krieger was. He was also hiding behind his podium and laughing. Behind him the supposedly ¡°loyal¡± faculty was busy killing each other. Apparently, some of the Rogue professors had smuggled in garrotes and ceramic blades and seemed to be massacring the others in a methodical manner.

    From the section the captive faculty members were being kept, I could hear gunfire. Turning around, I expected to see them being massacred by CampSec and Professor Blunt. Instead, it seemed most of the CampSec officers and Professor Blunt were turning traitor. What I assumed to be the loyal guards had been almost immediately gunned down and the ones who¡¯d thrown in with Krieger were now split between freeing the captives and moving towards the audience. The guards for Professors Zemylachka and Antionette were on the ground. The ones guarding Zemylachka had bled out, one guarding of the ones guarding Professor Antionette was catatonic, and the final one was desperately trying to stop Zemylachka from stabbing him.

    Behind me, most of the audience was either panicking or getting as low as possible. I did notice, however, that some of the AMS and Shadowhaven students I had seen earlier were heading towards the entrance. One of the guards had slung her SCAR-L over her shoulder and was opening a weapons case. Meanwhile, her partner had executed two CampSec officers in patrol uniforms coming to investigate the sounds with one shot each.

    After the initial purge had died down, the members of the coup began to free the prisoners and control the audience. Calm shouts of ¡°Stay in your seats and put your hands over your heads!¡± began to echo throughout the chamber. From outside the room, I could hear gunshots. Whatever the plan for the coup was, it was just getting started.

    Professor Blunt walked over to Krieger, Gupta and Mendez jumping off the stage to join them. After Blunt unlocked Krieger¡¯s cuffs, he handed Krieger a custom silver or chrome-plated 1911. I recognized it from Hell Semester, specifically when Krieger had pointed it in my face when I was goofing off during practice for disarming people. ¡°Here, you crazy bastard,¡± Blunt said. ¡°Figured you¡¯d want this.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Krieger said, ¡°Might be bit helpful.¡± He grinned and turned to Mendez and Gupta. ¡°Still, did you see the look on Anthony¡¯s face? Been dying to wipe that smug grin off since the nineties?¡±

    ¡°Must have been something,¡± a voice from the stage said. We turned around to see the President shakily standing up. ¡°Shame I didn¡¯t have a mirror.¡±

    In response, Professor Blunt, Mendez, and Gupta unloaded their weapons into him. After the President collapsed, I thought I heard him weakly gasp, ¡°Not¡­ gonna work, guys.¡±

    Krieger, suddenly very calm, said, ¡°Well, I guess we¡¯ll have to go with plan B.¡±

    Professor Zemylachka, who had finished butchering the remaining guard and stealthily approached us, said, ¡°I think I have a few ideas.¡± I turned to look at her blood-spattered face. She seemed disturbingly eager.

 6.4: You Got Me Up in a Cage

    The battle to take the campus had, from what I could tell from the various safe areas I had been stored in, been chaotic and brutal. Nobody, especially Campus Security, could tell who was on what side. To top it off, some of the students, staff and faculty appeared to have taken the opportunity to settle old grudges and/or enrich themselves.

    Two days later, the campus was secure again. The last burst of gunfire had been very methodical and it was around this time Krieger came to collect me. ¡°¡®Allo, Boyke!¡± he said, popping his head into the room. ¡°Would you like to talk with a deposed despot?¡±

    As he walked into the room, two people filed in. I recognized both of them. One, a blond woman a little older than I was (I think her name was Edda Stauffenberg,) I only knew of because she had been in Hell Semester the year after me. She wore a blouse, grey slacks and a black Kevlar vest loaded with grenades and ammo and carried a G36C. One of the few clues to the fact that she hadn¡¯t started her NIU career in Shadowhaven was that her hair hung loosely down beyond her shoulders.

    The other I recognized as Oro Okoro. We had been in Hell Semester together and, while not close, we had both been in a certain short-lived club. She had gotten her dark hair cut short and wore yellow-brown fatigues and a similar vest. She carried a pump action shotgun and had her SMLE slung over her shoulder. I also noticed that all my visitors had a blue ribbon with a red stripe around the center tied across their right arms.

    ¡°I¡¯d much prefer it if I could go home,¡± I said.

    ¡°You can go home,¡± Krieger said, ¡°I just need you to confirm a few things. Then you, your girlfriend, and your pet FBI officer can go home.¡±

    I clammed up. Early on, they had given me my cPhone back. I had called Eliza first, of course. She sounded glad to hear from me, then things had gotten awkward. As soon as she had hung up, I had called Agent Hicks, an FBI agent. I had an urgent need to contact him, and I needed that conversation to be unheard by Krieger. Hoping that they had only gotten the number and conversation length, I opened my mouth, trying to play dumb.

    ¡°By the way,¡± Krieger said, ending that plan before it could even start, ¡°I liked Mubashir. Is there anything I can do to help him from this Nakashima person?¡± I tried to keep my emotions from showing. Mubashir Mubarak was a former Al-Qaeda terrorist who had been recruited against his will. He had finally escaped when he was revealed to be a) a mole for the CIA and b) a godlike entity. Mayu Nakashima, meanwhile, was an assassin who had been trapped for half a millennium in a hell dimension because several secret societies had prophesized Mubashir being, well, God. Now she was looking for him. ¡°It sounds like a very interesting story,¡± Krieger said. ¡°Would you care to tell me why a Japanese person is after an Al-Qaeda operative?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± I said, keeping my response short and truthful. ¡°Anyway, how¡¯s Eliza doing?¡±

    ¡°She doesn¡¯t trust us,¡± Oro said. ¡°She¡¯s already tried to break out twice.¡± She was obviously bothered, and who could blame her? Eliza had been closer to her than I was, and possibly anyone else since her parents had been killed.

    ¡°Not surprising,¡± I said. ¡°You are holding us at gunpoint. Plus, Eliza has a few trust issues at the moment.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ve contacted her father,¡± Krieger said, ¡°and he¡¯ll pick both of yeh up as soon as you help me with this one little thing.¡±

    ¡°Ok, fine,¡± I said. ¡°Lead the way.¡±

    Krieger nodded. Edda rapped a pattern on the doorframe with her fist. ¡°Paris!¡± she called out.

    ¡°London!¡± a voice responded. We then walked out into the hall. There were several more people guarding the hall. I recognized two. Camilla Reyes was another fellow Hell Semester graduate from Mexico and there was a young brown-haired guy with a Ruger Mini who I remembered being in Edda¡¯s year at Hell Semester.

    ¡°Right, boys and girls!¡± Krieger said cheerily. ¡°Let¡¯s go!¡±

    We then began to head out into the island¡¯s sweltering summer heat. Because everyone there was from AMS/Shadowhaven, it was a very good close protection setup. ¡°So,¡± I said as we got out of the building, ¡°how¡¯s the purge going?¡±This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

    ¡°Not well,¡± Krieger said. ¡°We¡¯ve had to kill too many otherwise good people.¡± He shook his head and sighed. ¡°The thing is, we don¡¯t have the facilities for containing some of the President¡¯s scarier supporters. Nowhere Island¡¯s for keepin¡¯ people out, not keepin¡¯ ¡®em in. And if a few of these people get out, too many people would end up dying.¡± He looked at me. ¡°I did this to stop students from dyin¡¯, boyke. To stop Hell Semester. If I let some psycho or loyalist live and they go around killin¡¯ students, then what the fuck did I do any of it for?¡±

    ¡°Ah,¡± I said. ¡°I see.¡± We walked a while longer. I saw a Bearcat (an armored car used by CampSec) that had been disabled. By ¡°disabled,¡± I meant that it had been hit with some sort of anti-tank weapon that had smashed craters into the troop bay and engine compartment. I could see bloodstains where people would have been sitting through the holes. It had then careened into a building. ¡°Tough fight, huh?¡± I asked.

    Oro nodded. ¡°A few loyalist CampSec officers were put in Bearcats. They did a number on us until we were able to take the anti-tank weapons.¡±

    ¡°How many did you lose?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Too many, man,¡± Edda¡¯s buddy from Hell Semester said in an earnest Southern accent. ¡°Bastards cut us up pretty bad.¡± He shuddered. ¡°They were right to, though, after what we did to the HQ.¡±

    ¡°And what did you do to the HQ?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Pumped it up with gas,¡± another person in the escort group said, ¡°then locked the door.¡± Judging by how guilty they looked, I assumed it wasn¡¯t something that killed instantly. I wondered how many of the CampSec guards in there were really loyalists and how many were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

    ¡°Where are we going?¡± I asked.

    ¡°President¡¯s mansion,¡± Krieger said. ¡°We¡¯re keeping him in one of his personal laboratories. Apparently, the bastard was a scientist.¡±

    The mansion, located in the heart of the campus, was one of the few buildings relatively untouched by the fight. Instead, Campus Security officers and AMS/Shadowhaven faculty were busy ripping it to shreds. I mean that literally, through the double doors I could see people with sledgehammers, pneumatic battering rams and chainsaws ripping out the walls. Also, carts with electronics and paper files were being collected in the lobby.

    ¡°Ah! Karl!¡± A large, bald man with a Russian accent came out to greet Krieger. I recognized him. It was Dmitri Popov, the owner of the AMS/Shadowhaven haunt called the Drunken Mercenary. I had tended bar for him. ¡°We are doing quite well as you can see. Bastard¡¯s got all these hidey-holes. What do you want to do with the money and valuables we find?¡±

    ¡°If we want to keep this shit running,¡± Krieger said, ¡°we¡¯re going to put it all in the treasury somehow. Anything more, ask the board.¡±

    ¡°They¡¯re going to make you President of this fucking place, you know?¡± Dmitri said.

    ¡°They can bloody well try,¡± Krieger growled. ¡°And I¡¯m not going to do that thing where I turn ¡®em down twice before I accept. I want to teach, and if they won¡¯t leave me alone, I¡¯ll quit and go find a Uni where I can without bein¡¯ harassed.¡± He turned around, remembering our guard was still with us, and said, ¡°You lot, wait outside before you hear any more you ain¡¯t supposed to.¡±

    Popov laughed at the last bit and ushered us further in. ¡°Everyone knows that they¡¯re going to ask you.¡± Krieger muttered something under his breath. When we were further in, Popov murmured, ¡°And seriously, you are the right person for the job.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s others,¡± Krieger said, ¡°and I¡¯ll only take the job if I¡¯ve bleedin¡¯ got to do this again.¡±

    ¡°Fair enough,¡± Popov said. ¡°But you realize, even if you don¡¯t take the big job, you can¡¯t just be a normal teacher. You brought a coalition together and if it falls apart too soon, before we stabilize it, people could die.¡±

    We walked further into the mansion. Eventually we got to a small sitting room in the basement. Krieger walked to a gap in the wall that revealed an elevator. Hinges and splintered remains suggested that the elevator had once been disguised by a book case. Popov, meanwhile, walked over to a liquor cabinet. ¡°Here,¡± he said, handing me a glass bottle of a clear liquid. ¡°You¡¯ll be needing this. Rosie¡¯s preparing him.¡±

    ¡°Key word, preparing!¡± We turned around to see Professor Zemylachka hurrying towards us. ¡°This process, it will take very long to break him. Potentially weeks, months even. Now is not the time.¡±

    ¡°We might not have that time,¡± Krieger said. ¡°This is supposed to kill him, after all. Added to that, these Dragon¡¯s Teeth blighters might not give us weeks before they come a-knocking.¡±

    ¡°Fine!¡± Zemylachka said. ¡°We rush it like amateurs.¡± We all got into the elevator, except Popov. ¡°Dmitri,¡± Zemylachka said, ¡°are you coming?¡±

    ¡°I saw it once,¡± he said, ¡°don¡¯t need to see it again.¡± The door of the elevator closed shut, then Krieger punched in a code and down we went.

    After the silent elevator trip, the door opened onto a long hallway. It was brightly lit, painted a dark blue or gray, and had a clean-room feel to it.

    ¡°So,¡± I said, ¡°can I ask how we¡¯re killing the President?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Zemylachka said, ¡°regeneration like that requires large amount of energy, yes?¡± I nodded. ¡°So, we simply limit access to energy.¡± With that, she pressed a button. A door opened with the hiss of a rapid change of pressure. Disturbingly, the escaping air blew

    Inside was a sort of med lab. Medical equipment and computers were arrayed around the room. In the center was an operating table with a bunch of scanners aimed at it. In the bed, strapped to the bars by his wrists and ankles with handcuffs and several belts securing him, lying naked in his own bodily waste, was the former President.

    ¡°You know Nate,¡± he said conversationally, raising his head, ¡°I¡¯m starting to think you weren¡¯t entirely truthful when we had our little conversation.¡±

 6.5: Kidney Stones and Confessions

    It was a testament to the deposed Anthony Carter Newton-Howell that he could still sound casual after having been strapped naked to a table for several days. I¡¯m not going to lie, it was also intimidating as hell.

    ¡°You¡¯re really not in a position to be making threats,¡± Krieger said coldly. Behind me, I could hear the rustling of paper.

    ¡°Did that sound like a threat?¡± the President asked innocently. ¡°Nathan, if I¡¯m threatening you I apologize.¡± Something about the tone of his voice made it clear that it was an insult, but a reasonable person would have some doubts.

    We were then interrupted by Zemylachka loudly eating a breakfast sandwich. She had to be deliberately eating the thing as loudly as possible. I recognized the paper bag. It was from Galahad¡¯s Caf¨¦. They made good food, but even so, the happy noises Zemylachka was making was probably faked.

    ¡°Can you stop that?¡± the President asked.

    ¡°Shtop what?¡± Zemylachka asked, her mouth full of breakfast sandwich.

    ¡°Really?¡± the President asked. ¡°I thought you were more sophisticated than this. You¡¯re just being kind of a dick now.¡±

    ¡°Insults?¡± Zemylachka asked, after swallowing loudly. ¡°And I was going to give you something to eat if you cooperated.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± the President asked suspiciously. ¡°I mean, the goal is to kill me, right? Oh, by the way, assuming you get creative, this¡¯ll probably work in three to six months.¡±

    ¡°But we have so much to learn!¡± Zemylachka said. I shivered at how she said that. ¡°You could help us a bit.¡±

    ¡°So that¡¯s why this is taking so long,¡± the President said as Zemylachka moved to kneel beside him. ¡°You know, a lot can change in six months. For instance, I could be a free man having lunch at five-star restaurants in Zurich.¡±

    ¡°Or,¡± Zemylachka said after loudly swallowing some of her breakfast sandwich, ¡°you could seriously reevaluate your endurance. For instance, how often do you test your ability to go without food?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m a scientist,¡± the President said. Krieger and Zemylachka looked at each other and laughed out loud at this. ¡°Ok, I know about science. I think I¡¯m good. I''m not going to break easily.¡±

    ¡°You won''t last a day, you love luxury too much,¡± Zemylachka said. ¡°Look at your house.¡±

    ¡°Which bloody one?¡± Krieger asked. ¡°I¡¯ve seen the one on the Volga, the apartment in London, the one in Shanghai¡­¡±

    ¡°How¡­?¡± the President asked. ¡°You shouldn¡¯t know about those.¡±

    ¡°You might want to talk,¡± Zemylachka said. ¡°Life will get much more comfortable if you cooperate.¡±

    ¡°For instance,¡± I said, ¡°did you create the Dragon¡¯s Teeth?¡±The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

    The President stared at me for a second in disbelief. ¡°Are¡­ are you sure you don¡¯t know the answer? You know about the Interdimensional Research Facility, you¡¯d have to be dumber than even I think you are to not know about my hoarding of technology, you just heard those two idiots talk about how rich I am, and you know how much talent I can access here. What do you think?¡±

    I suddenly remembered Kyle Rockford. He was a transgendered man who had gone to NIU with me. His grandfather had taught at NIU and gotten some advanced gene therapy to help him transition. Then the person who had invented the treatment had gone missing. I also remembered Mubashir mentioning the reason Al Qaeda had been on-campus was that the President let them train for a reduced price or free in exchange for favors. Other groups had the same deal, and, according to Moob, the favors usually involved delaying scientific progress made by NIU graduates. ¡°Speaking of the tech hoarding,¡± I said, suddenly angry, ¡°how many could have been saved, how many lives could have been improved, if you hadn¡¯t gone around ruining your graduates so they couldn¡¯t work?¡±

    The President shrugged. ¡°Millions. Billions. Who cares? It¡¯s a rounding error compared to what the Dragon¡¯s Teeth can save.¡±

    ¡°The Dragon¡¯s Teeth,¡± I said, ¡°are out of control.¡±

    ¡°You sure?¡± the President asked. ¡°I mean, I may have lost control of the people I delegated them to, but-¡°

    Krieger and I spoke at the same time. ¡°Sounds like you¡¯ve lost control,¡± he said.

    I, meanwhile, said, ¡°They¡¯re plotting an uprising!¡±

    The President turned to me. ¡°What makes you say that?¡± he asked, mildly interested.

    ¡°I¡¯ve heard them in Korea, remember?¡± I said. ¡°Their Death Goddess.¡± The President opened his mouth and I said, ¡°Yes, I know you think that the Final Prophecy is bullshit, I don¡¯t blame you.¡± Zemylachka and Krieger looked confused, so I added, ¡°Basically, a God or Goddess of Death, a reality-warping entity, some supernatural beings ¡®from the sky,¡¯ and their minions are going to duke it out according to a prophecy from the 1500¡¯s. And the thing about the Death Goddess¡­¡± I took a deep breath. This was going to sound crazy. ¡°I saw her. Or at least how she or it¡¯s connected to the Dragon¡¯s Teeth.¡±

    ¡°How¡­?¡± the President asked, looking at me like I was crazy.

    ¡°Dead people took me to see¡­¡± I struggled, looking for the words, ¡°the psionic representation of their bond, I guess? It was beautiful, but I had no idea what I was looking at.¡±

    ¡°Do¡­ do you want to see someone?¡± Zemylachka asked. ¡°Someone who specializes in¡­¡± From her tone of voice, it sounded like she was looking for

    ¡°Mental wellbeing?¡± Kreiger supplied helpfully. He then turned back to the President. ¡°Anyway, before we get too distracted, what are you saving everyone from? And how are you planning on getting things under control?¡±

    ¡°The immediate threat?¡± the President asked. ¡°You¡¯ll meet them in about, oh, a few months. Personally, I¡¯d let the Dragon¡¯s Teeth take over, then let them do their job. Unless they¡¯ve gone truly psychotic, they¡¯re going to fight the bigger fish.¡±

    ¡°And then what?¡± Kreiger asked.

    ¡°You know,¡± the President said, ¡°I think I¡¯ll save some of that for another time.¡±

    ¡°You aren¡¯t exactly in a position-¡± Krieger began.

    ¡°No, no, no,¡± Zemylachka said. ¡°Is fine, is fine, I think. Interrogation, even torture, is like therapy.¡± She reached into the bag and brought out a breakfast sandwich and placed in on the President¡¯s chest. She then reached in and brought out an IV bag. ¡°After I ensure more productive sessions, I will feed you your treat.¡±

    As she stuck the bag into him, I asked, ¡°So, what is that?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± the President said. ¡°I¡¯m a little interested as well.¡±

    ¡°Some calcium, some oxalate, bit of uric acid,¡± Zemylachka said. ¡°Harmless, really.¡±

    ¡°Oh my God,¡± I said, suddenly realizing what she was doing. ¡°You¡­ you¡¯re giving him artificial kidney stones.¡± In case you¡¯ve never had one, if they get big enough, they¡¯re painful. I¡¯d never experienced one, but I had heard a medically-minded friend talk about them once. ¡°You¡¯re a monster.¡±

    Zemylachka rolled her eyes. ¡°Of course I am. Have you not been paying attention?¡±

 6.6: In the Middle of the Night

    ¡°I swear,¡± Eliza said for the seventh time as we trundled along in a Bearcat to the airfield, the sound of helicopters overhead, ¡°I meant to tell you but I was freaked out that they were listening in! I mean, when Krieger butted in on my conversation with Father¡­¡±

    I listened politely. Again. So did Krieger and the CampSec officers. ¡°Eliza,¡± I said for the seventh time, ¡°it¡¯s ok.¡±

    "I should have told you,¡± Eliza said, ¡°but¡­¡±

    ¡°You told me eventually,¡± I said. Then I remembered something. ¡°Actually, there¡¯s something I need to tell you.¡±

    ¡°What?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°Um, you know that person you had me protect?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Oh good God, the little psycho didn¡¯t contact you, did she?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± I said, ¡°I just gave a friend a heads-up that she¡¯s coming to see someone.¡±

    Eliza sighed. ¡°Please tell me that¡­¡±

    ¡°I didn¡¯t tell him about why,¡± I said. ¡°But he can pass it on to the people who¡­¡±

    ¡°Oh fuckin¡¯ Christ, Nate,¡± she said. ¡°D¡¯you really think that¡­ that¡­¡± she sputtered, shifting from glaring angrily at me to looking at Krieger suspiciously.

    ¡°It¡¯s a lot better than them not realizing she¡¯s coming,¡± I said. ¡°I mean, can you imagine what happens if she gets¡­¡±

    ¡°Am I right in thinking that you are talking about Mubashir, Agent Hicks and this mysterious woman from Japan?¡± Krieger asked.

    ¡°You¡¯d be right in thinkin¡¯ we aren¡¯t talking to you,¡± Eliza said. She then sighed and muttered, ¡°Suppose they¡¯d find out ¡®bout Moob sooner or later. Anyway, ¡®ow¡¯s this handoff gonna go?¡±

    ¡°Very simple,¡± Krieger said. ¡°We drive you two to the airfield, your dad picks you lot up, and maybe I have a little chat with him.¡±

    ¡°About what?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Well,¡± Krieger said, ¡°I¡¯d like to be left alone, obviously. I¡¯d prefer not to have a lot a bunch of gobshites deciding to kill my students. If he can help with that, I¡¯d be very happy. Also, there¡¯s some things I want to ask him about this island. Things that the Blackmoor-Wards specialize in.¡±

    ¡°What do you think the Blackmoor-Wards specialize in?¡± I asked. ¡°Because you¡¯ve got a pretty good knowledge of spy stuff.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s stuff on this island,¡± Krieger said, ¡°that just isn¡¯t right. Not natural, I mean, and from what I can tell, it was a little weird here before Howell ever stepped foot on this island.¡±

    I was about to say how I thought that was stupid. Then I realized that this was an island that, despite appearing insignificant geographically, strategically, and politically, had been somehow important enough for the Japanese to occupy during WWII and the US to expend enough shells and bombs to crater the landscape. During Hell Semester, I had made use of these craters frequently, as well as been bedeviled by them. To top it off, I had even heard stories of people accidentally setting off unexploded ordnance. That battle had occurred in the early forties, and NIU had been founded in the eighties. I closed my mouth.

    ¡°If there is something ¡®ere,¡± Eliza said, ¡°Father won¡¯t tell you.¡±

    ¡°Well, I¡¯m sure your dad has his-¡° Krieger began.

    ¡°Father,¡± Eliza corrected. Her eyes misted up a bit. ¡°Me dad died a while ago.¡± She then continued on, more annoyed. ¡°Also, apparently, ¡®e won¡¯t tell me or Char what¡¯s up with this bloody island either.¡± That was disturbing. He had told Eliza and Charlotte some highly sensitive information in the past. Like that they¡¯d broken UNIX codes and I was working for them.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry to hear that,¡± Krieger said.

    Suddenly, a voice crackled over the radio on Krieger¡¯s shoulder. ¡°¡®Allo, boss,¡± a staticky voice with a French accent said, ¡°are you there, over?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Krieger said. ¡°I copy. What is it, Hollande?¡±

    ¡°Kowaleski and Obiozor are reporting some strange heat signatures around the airfield and Kassem is reporting something triggering the pressure sensors. Should we abort?¡±Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

    ¡°No!¡± Krieger almost shouted. Then he calmed down. ¡°I mean, we¡¯ve got a buncha bloody Brits thinking of wiping us off the face of the Earth over these two. Tell them we¡¯ve got some guests and we need to do the swap a lot faster than we were planning. Maybe send a couple Bearcats to investigate. Krieger out.¡±

    ¡°Got it, boss.¡± As the French CampSec officer signed off, I could hear the whine of jet engines. The Bearcat stopped for a moment, I heard the sound of a metal grate open, we drove forwards a short ways, then we stopped again.

    ¡°Right,¡± Krieger said, getting up. ¡°Here¡¯s our stop. Oh, before I forget.¡± He reached under his seat and pulled out a bag. ¡°Your weapons.¡±

    As Krieger and the CampSec guards left the Bearcat, Eliza and I opened the bag. Inside was a Berretta 92 Inox, a two-tone SIG-Sauer P229, a chrome CZ-75, holsters for all the pistols, a G3KA4 modified with rails, vertical foregrip, EOTech hybrid sight, and several magazines for each weapon. ¡°Holy shit,¡± I said, quickly moving to get my holsters on my belt and my pistols in my holsters, ¡°I forgot I kept my G3 here.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯ll notice,¡± Eliza said, smacking a magazine into her pistol and chambering a round, ¡°that you have three different guns, one of ¡®em bloody ¡®uge, and I¡¯ve only got one pistol.¡±

    ¡°You realize,¡± I said, ¡°that you¡¯re the one who always carries around a FAL, right?¡± I grabbed a G3 mag, realized I couldn¡¯t put it in my pants pocket, so I shoved it in my sweater. I was only able to fit three in each, plus one in the gun. That was three G3 mags I couldn¡¯t carry with me. I sighed, and slung it over my shoulder by its broken strap. Then I headed outside to wait with Eliza.

    When I got out, I saw we were at the airfield. Lights were illuminating the approach as well as the landing strip and hangars. Parked outside the gate to the airstrip were two Bearcats disgorging heavily armed CampSec troops. A third Bearcat was slowly driving off across the moonscape of overgrown craters, a floodlight on its turret dissolving the night like acid. Beyond that moonscape was the forest. Not even the floodlights made a dent in it

    Surrounding the airfield was a tall chain link fence topped with barbed wire and reinforced with sandbags and Jersey barriers. Groups of four patrolled, the interior and there were a series of towers with either floodlights, heavy machineguns, or snipers. I noticed that the ones with floodlights weren¡¯t manned.

    ¡°OI, NATE!¡± I turned around. Despite Eliza yelling, she was being drowned out. The sound of the jet engine was much closer. She was standing near Krieger and surrounded by the CampSec that had been on the Bearcat. ¡°DID YOU LOAD YOUR¡­¡±

    The jet noises were getting so loud my ear drums felt like they could implode any second. I looked up. Hovering above us and slowly descending was what looked like a private jet modified with VTOL capability. Assuming Eliza wanted me to load my pistols, I did so.

    When I looked up again, the VTOL had descended dramatically. The distinctive angel wing pattern of flares lit up the night and the smoke trail of a rocket had whisked past the plane, barely missing it. Meanwhile, many were flinging themselves to the floor and shouting for others to do the same.

    Of course, I didn¡¯t realize any of that at the time. I just stared at the plane gormlessly. It wasn¡¯t until a familiar bluish-white light flashed behind me with the accompanying heat surge that I realized what was going on. We were under attack, most likely by the Dragon¡¯s Teeth, and they¡¯d brought one of their bouncy balls of plasma death.

    Before I could get down, something grabbed me and forced some sort of cloth to my face. I instinctively held my breath, but still got a whiff of whatever it was coated with and began to feel woozy. As I struggled, I saw a CampSec officer who had been lying near me get up and open fire. I noticed that she was using her scope (which appeared to be a thermal one) and yelling something into her throat mic. Her fire was also very calm. Two shots to my right, then she shifted her aim and fired one to my left. Each set caused a man in futuristic armor to fizzle into existence and fall down, bleeding. I recognized the uniforms. They were Ninja, Dragon¡¯s Teeth units that could literally go invisible. They have shimmery outlines if you shine a light on them and are paying attention, but the best way to spot them is to use thermal imaging. That must have been what the bulky scope on the CampSec guard¡¯s SCAR-H was.

    She was aiming for the one holding me when suddenly her head was sliced off mid-neck. Steam smoked off.

    Meanwhile, I had drew my P229 from the holster on my left hip, pushed it against where I thought the head of the Ninja was, and pulled the trigger. The Ninja shuddered, tightening his grip temporarily, then collapsed. I followed a second later as leads shot out from an invisible point and hit me in the chest. There was a crackling noise and I blacked out.

    I came to, I¡¯m not sure how long, Eliza throwing me over her shoulders like a sack of potatoes and fucking booking it to the now-landed VTOL, Krieger yelling encouragement. Or at least running as fast as she could with a hundred and eighty pounds of dead weight on her back.

    I took the opportunity to look around and saw that things were kind of fucked. Several of the watch towers were burning and sagging from the intense head of the Dragon¡¯s Teeth plasma weaponry. Streams of tracer fire raked the cratered area of the field around the airstrip and the forest. Then a rocket arced up from the ground back towards the place in the sky the deluge of gunfire was coming from.

    I then had the frustrating experience of being able to feel Eliza talk, but not be able to make out the words. I then suddenly realized I couldn¡¯t hear anything. I could feel Eliza speak, I could feel the backwash of the choppers, but I literally couldn¡¯t hear anything except an annoying ringing in my ears. I guess shooting off one of my pistols had finally deafened me.

    Then there was a resounding thump-thump-thump as rockets streamed from the sky onto the ground below. A Hind and a Blackhawk helicopter sporting glow-in-the-dark NIU logos flew directly over our heads, both strafing the ground.

    Soon we reached the VTOL. A group of people dressed in fatigues and carrying M4 clones ushered Eliza up the ramp. Once inside, she collapsed.

    I rolled off her. ¡°Eliza,¡± I said, somewhat loudly in case she was deafened, ¡°What you did was amazing. Thank you.¡± Then I lapsed into unconsciousness.

 6.7: They Have Marched 1,000 Miles

    The plane was much like a previous version of the Blackmoor-Ward plane that I had been in. The interior furniture was mostly made out of a light yellow-brown wood veneer and warmly lit. The difference was all the SAS in desert camo filing in. I couldn¡¯t hear a Goddamn thing, but could guess that there was a lot of shooting and yelling.

    I got off of Eliza¡¯s back and helped her up. She smiled tiredly and said something, and I responded by saying ¡°Sorry, I¡¯m deaf at the moment.¡± She laughed and said something else that I couldn¡¯t make out. ¡°If you want me to let you go,¡± I said, dragging her over to a couch, ¡°just elbow me in the stomach or something.¡±

    I could feel Eliza shake with what I¡¯m pretty sure was laughter as I moved her to a couch. Sitting there, looking somewhat embarrassed, was the blond, aristocratic Charlotte Blackmoor-Ward. She said something as I set Eliza down, and I said, ¡°Hey, I¡¯m deaf, remember.¡±

    I sat down heavily and began buckling myself in. I was pretty sure I¡¯d need it soon. As I did so, I saw a man with short black hair and a fancy trench coat by the door helping SAS operators close hatch. He then sat down in a nearby seat. After the SAS operators got back into their seats, he said something into his headset. Then the plane rocketed straight off the ground so fast I felt my spine compress. It was extremely weird having it be in complete silence, except for the ringing in my ears.

    I then fell asleep. I mean, it was probably around two in the morning and I¡¯d been drugged by someone. You¡¯d go to sleep as soon as you found a relatively safe place as well.

    During the time I was sleeping, my hearing came back. Not fully, but enough for me to hear things as if I was underwater. It came back slowly, so I didn¡¯t wake up. That was good, I really enjoyed that.

    What finally woke me up was a rather high-class British voice saying ¡°Good God, is he dead?¡±

    It sounded like it was coming from far away, so I assumed he was talking about someone else. ¡°Wha¡­?¡± I said, coming to my senses. ¡°Who¡¯s dead? Is everyone ok?¡±

    When I opened my eyes, I saw that the man in the trench coat was staring at me, and some SAS operators moving about were giving me nervous looks as well. When I started talking, he seemed relieved. ¡°Oh lovely,¡± he said, ¡°I was quite worried there for a few minutes.¡± He then moved over to the opposite couch and sat down heavily.

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said. ¡°Just trying to-¡± I noticed he was flinching whenever I talked so I lowered my voice to the point where I was having trouble hearing myself. ¡°Just trying to get some shut-eye. Big thanks to your daughter for getting me out. You are Lord Blackmoor-Ward, right?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Lord Blackmoor-Ward said, ¡°I am.¡± I noticed he had smiled approvingly when I had called Eliza his daughter. ¡°And I understand you are one of the poorly used mercenaries my daughter hired on her most recent adventure?¡±

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t say hired,¡± I said carefully, ¡°and I do like the humanitarian spirit behind what she was trying to do.¡±Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

    ¡°Oh come off it,¡± Lord Blackmoor-Ward said angrily. ¡°We both know that even if Miss Nakashima was the sweetest girl in the world, Charlotte did not have enough intelligence to be sending you on that mission. She had no idea the size of the enemy force, or their equipment, or how far they¡¯d go to kill Miss Nakashima.¡±

    ¡°I take it,¡± I said, remembering the SAS operator who¡¯d dived for my stretcher as I¡¯d been driven off by the Defenders of Fuji and been shot in the head for his troubles, ¡°I take it there were heavy casualties getting me back.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Lord Blackmoor-Ward said. ¡°You may have seen a few when they initially tried to pick you up and a few more at your successful rescue. You did not,¡± here his voice got dangerously low, ¡°get to see what the Defenders did to her close-protection unit. Four dead, all because she couldn¡¯t cover up her rescuing that girl.¡± There was a pause. ¡°At least you¡¯ve been very accommodating about the whole thing.¡±

    ¡°About that¡­¡± I said. ¡°I may have told-¡±

    ¡°Agent Hicks,¡± Lord Blackmoor-Ward said. ¡°I know. Eliza told me all about him. Honestly, I¡¯m lucky you haven¡¯t done worse. With all that¡¯s going on, your friend needs someone between him and Miss Nakashima but¡­¡±

    A haunted expression crossed over his eyes. ¡°Did things get worse?¡± I asked, knowing full well the answer would be yes.

    ¡°Yes,¡± Lord Blackmoor-Ward said. ¡°Dragon¡¯s Teeth don¡¯t have a navy, so they¡¯re stealing the ships of others. In fact, the ship we refueled on is probably overrun by now. And to top it off, we¡¯re getting reports of those bloody clones mucking about near our missile silos in Scotland. Do you mind terribly if we drop you off in Hawaii before heading to Austrailia?¡±

    ¡°Honestly not a problem,¡± I said. ¡°But I do have some questions about NIU. Or Krieger did, and I¡¯m honestly a little worried. Like, a guy who¡¯s been there since the nineties according to some people still has questions? And he thinks a complete outsider has the answers?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Lord Blackmoor-Ward said. ¡°Some of that has to do with my reputation. You know about my primary duties serving the Queen and monitoring the Final Prophecy, but I also have a¡­¡±

    ¡°Cover story?¡± I suggested.

    ¡°Somewhat,¡± Lord Blackmoor-Ward said, ¡°but a cover story implies what everyone thinks I do is false. Those who know of me, but not of the prophecy, believe I am an expert in the occult.¡± He paused. ¡°Which I am. I can¡¯t really tell you much more, as you don¡¯t need to know, and Charlotte would be very cross if I let you into this world before I let her in. What I can tell you is that Nowhere Island has some rather interesting magical properties, some of which make it rather difficult for outsiders to discover. Others are rather more¡­ shall we say, robust. It is quite the relief to all in my community that the former President has been ousted before he could master even its most benign abilities.¡±

    ¡°So,¡± I said, ¡°not only did Howell get in on infiltrating UNIX when it was brand new, not only did he create the Dragon¡¯s Teeth, but he¡¯s also fucking around with literal magic?¡±

    ¡°He what?¡± Lord Blackmoor-Ward said. Then added, ¡°Well, I suppose I shouldn¡¯t be surprised. The amount of talent he has there is incredible, but I can scarcely believe he was able to put something like that together.¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s been actively suppressing technologic advances,¡± I said. ¡°He¡¯s basically keeping everything for himself. Crushing progress, hopes, dreams¡­ he says it¡¯s just to stop aliens, but I¡¯m pretty sure any alien invasion is going to end up with him in charge.¡±

    Lord Blackmoor-Ward leaned back on the couch, considering my words. ¡°He had better remain deposed,¡± he said after absorbing what I¡¯d said. ¡°The more I learn this man, the more I believe we were lucky to bring him to heel this time. It¡¯s quite doubtful we¡¯ll be able to do it again.¡±

    ¡°Completely agree,¡± I said. As I thought about this, I suddenly became very concerned by the fact that the President was still alive.

 6.8: FBI Surprise

    The plane touched down in Hawaii around five hours later. As I got out of the plane, Charlotte and Eliza waved goodbye. ¡°You sure you can get out of here yourself?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°cPhone¡¯s have a web browser,¡± I said, holding up my cPhone. ¡°I can get a ticket home and maybe reserve a room online. As long as I don¡¯t need to use cash, I should be good.¡±

    ¡°What about eating?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°seeing as I somehow lost my credit card, I was thinking I could skip a few meals.¡±

    ¡°Jesus bloody Christ,¡± Eliza said, shaking her head. ¡°Right. Char, I¡¯m going off with Nate to make sure ¡®e bloody gets something to eat. Also, ask the others if they want anything.¡±

    ¡°What are you getting?¡± Charlotte asked.

    ¡°Pizza sound good?¡± Eliza asked me. I nodded. ¡°Pizza, then. Easy to feed everyone.¡±

    ¡°I suppose it will be American style,¡± Charlotte said, obviously disappointed. ¡°Well, as long as you are back with the grease-soaked approximation of Italian food in six hours

    We made our way through the airport and caught a cab. Eliza still had her credit card, so she paid for it. The driver was very talkative guy about my age, and without prompting, began launching into a thing about how he was moonlighting for Uber and Lyft at the same time and vlogging about the experience.

    ¡°Is¡­ is that not against their rules?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°Probably,¡± our cabbie said. ¡°But I haven¡¯t been caught yet.¡± He then continued talking about some of the hijinks his fellow cabbies got into and lamented about how ¡°Ridesharing drivers are so insular, you know?¡±

    We just nodded along as he continued the one-sided conversation, with Eliza texting back and forth. From what I was able to make out, she was trying to get everyone¡¯s orders for pizza. I turned to look out the window. We were passing a large, government-looking office building that was part smooth brick, part glass. The sign on the fence outside the building said ¡°FBI Honolulu.¡± As we passed the security gate, it opened and a black Dodge Charger pulled out behind us. I noticed that there were police lights on it. I knew this because they were flashing.

    ¡°Aw, what the hell?¡± our driver said as he pulled over. ¡°I was only going twenty over the speed limit!¡± I noticed that on the left, all that separated us from a drop off a cliff was a flimsy guard rail. To risk that, I¡¯d have to have Eliza get out first. To the right were multiple lanes of traffic, and cars were going by us at over thirty miles above the speed limit. I took a deep breath. It was the FBI. I could always call a lawyer. That was assuming they were even after me.

    Then I saw Eliza fumbling with something at her waist. She was wearing a loose hoodie and semi-baggy jeans. Just enough to conceal her CZ-75. ¡°Eliza,¡± I said desperately, ¡°for the love of God, don¡¯t do what I think you¡¯re doing.¡± Behind us, four men were getting out of the car. One of them, I recognized as Agent Hicks. His graying military-short hair and craggy face was fixed in a frown and was coming towards us with a purpose. His three companions didn¡¯t look any happier.

    ¡°This is a Second Amendment thing, innit?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°First,¡± I said, ¡°you don¡¯t have a license, second, you aren¡¯t a citizen, and third,the Second Amendment doesn¡¯t protect you from shooting FBI agents!¡±

    ¡°You sure they¡¯re FBI?¡± Charlotte asked.

    ¡°I recognize one.¡± I said. ¡°Plus, they just came out of a building with a huge-ass sign saying ¡®FBI,¡¯ so, yeah, probably FBI.¡±

    Eliza coolly took her hand away from her waist and readjusted her shirt. Before she did so, I caught a glimpse of the blue-black grip of her pistol. The look on her face said, ¡°You¡¯d better be right about this.¡± I smiled, trying to calm her down.

    Meanwhile, one of the younger four agents (she was a black woman of around thirty, which tells you how old this crew was) knocked on the driver¡¯s door. The driver rolled down his window. ¡°Anything I can do, officers?¡±

    ¡°License and registration, please,¡± the woman said. Everything about her voice was neutral. Her accent, her emotion. This only made her seem more intimidating. To add to the intimidation factor, Hicks and what appeared to be the other senior agent, a balding, slightly pudgy man who looked like an accountant, had moved to my window to glare at Eliza and me. I looked at Eliza and noticed she was glaring back. I decided to study the back of the chair and pray that this would end with no one getting shot or disemboweled.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

    Our driver handed over his license and registration. ¡°Anything that can hurt me in this car?¡±

    I stared at Eliza as the cabbie assured the FBI agent he didn¡¯t have anything. ¡°Alright,¡± Eliza said, ¡°I¡¯m armed. ¡®E doesn¡¯t know about it. ¡®E just picked me up.¡±

    ¡°Do you have a concealed carry permit?¡± the Agent asked.

    ¡°¡­No.¡±

    ¡°Everyone please get out of the car.¡± We did as asked, the driver giving us dirty looks. I honestly didn¡¯t blame him. ¡°Feet apart, hands on the roof of the car.¡± We lined up, and the FBI agent who had talked to the driver began patting us down while the other three agents watched.

    ¡°Enjoyin¡¯ the show?¡± Eliza asked when it was her turn, turning her head towards the other three agents and giving her signature smirk.

    ¡°It just got more interesting,¡± the FBI agent patting her down said. I looked and saw that she¡¯d taken out Eliza¡¯s CZ and had removed the magazine. ¡°So, you¡¯re a foreign national, right? You might want to read up on our gun laws. Hawaii doesn¡¯t allow magazine capacities over ten rounds, and I doubt you have a concealed carry license in this county.¡±

    ¡°Actually,¡± Eliza said, ¡°I thought cops in this country needed things like warrants¡¯n probable cause.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re consorting with a terrorist wanted in South Korea and Japan,¡± Hicks said, ¡°who¡¯s wanted in question for the murder ofmultiplelaw enforcement officers. You donotwant to test me.¡±

    ¡°Can¡­ can I have a lawyer?¡± I asked. ¡°And can we get her a lawyer as well?¡±

    After a short walk into the basement of the FBI building, I found myself sitting down on a table, my hands in cuffs behind my back, and two extremely pissed off FBI agents.

    ¡°So,¡± Hicks said, ¡°you wanted to talk. Talk.¡±

    ¡°Not like this,¡± I said. ¡°Before I¡¯d even consider talking, I¡¯d need these cuffs off and I¡¯d need a lawyer present. Before, I was willing to just talk. You fucked up.¡±

    ¡°We didn¡¯t,¡± Hicks¡¯ partner said. This bald accountant-looking dude¡¯s name was apparently Agent Barton. He threw down some pictures. ¡°We don¡¯t need a confession. We just have to show these pictures to a court.¡± I leaned over and looked at the pictures. ¡°If you help us, we can reduce your sentence. If you don¡¯t-¡±

    ¡°You have nothing,¡± I said, cutting off Barton and looking up from the pictures. ¡°Those are grainy images of someone who¡¯s face you can barely see, usually wearing dark glasses. And that¡¯s when the person you say is me is facing the camera. I don¡¯t suppose you have more proof?¡± I felt like a friend, Jennifer Kagemoto, when I said this. Being in the mob, she must have been in similar situations.

    ¡°But it could be you?¡± Barton asked.

    ¡°If I was on a jury, looking at these photos,¡± I said, ¡°I could concede that it looked a lot like me. But the images are either so blurry or at such bad angles that I wouldn¡¯t convict based on them. There¡¯s literally hundreds of people that look like me. I even saw a YouTuber that looked exactly like me once.¡±

    ¡°Incheon, South Korea!¡± Hicks yelled, slamming his fist down on the table. ¡°A team of heavily armed nut jobs and a minor land on a dock to meet up with mercenaries. A fire fight starts, and dozens of South Korean SWAT officers and an FBI HRT officer on loan were killed. Even more injured!¡± He gestured at half the pictures. ¡°Then, someone who looked ahellof a lot like one of the suspects at Incheon kills a British military attach¨¦ in Japan and shoots his way out of that and startsanotherfirefight in a pachinko parlor filled with civilians. It wasyou.Don¡¯t lie to me.¡±

    ¡°You know,¡± I said, somewhat more coldly than I intended, ¡°If I was a cynical man, I¡¯d think the only reason you cared about those situations was because an FBI agent died. Someone you cared about more than the people who arecurrently dying.But I¡¯m not that cynical.¡±

    ¡°Greg,¡± Hicks said, his face apoplectic, ¡°How about you check on our limey friend?¡±

    Agent Barton considered this a moment, then said, ¡°Sure.¡± He stood up and whispered into Hick¡¯s ear and said, ¡°Make him talk.¡±

    We waited in silence for the next few minutes. Hicks spent most of the time staring at the camera so I did too. I was the first to notice the light go out. ¡°So,¡± I said, ¡°are you going to threaten me with police brutality, or are you going to lay hands on me?¡±

    ¡°It depends,¡± Hicks said. ¡°on whether or not you cooperate.¡±

    ¡°There are several options,¡± I said. ¡°You can do things like a normal cop, and I can lawyer up, that¡¯s the first option.¡±

    Hicks leaned in close to me. ¡°This Nakashima person¡­ she¡¯s killed twenty of the FBI and local officers sent to apprehend her, plus nine TSA and airport SWAT officers when she touched down. Not to mention torturing five CIA agents to death. She needs to be stopped.¡±

    I did some math. Thirty four people dead. That was more than I had expected. Hell, it was even more than I had thought possible. I continued listing my options. ¡°The second option is I answer all your questions about her in exchange for walking out of here with Eliza.¡±

    Hicks snorted derisively. ¡°Or,¡± I said, ¡°you go with option three and beat on me a bit.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s looking better and better,¡± Hicks said.

    I laughed. ¡°I don¡¯t know if it¡¯s good sense, cowardice, or if you never were going to do it. If I¡¯m wrong, I just want you to know this:¡± I leaned in as far as I could. ¡°I¡¯m not scared of you. I was in a room withMayu. She also was going to torture me. I¡¯ve faced space Nazis, terrorists, the Dragon¡¯s Teeth and people that makethemshit their pants and hide in their closet.¡± I leaned back. ¡°Think about that, and what you, as a cop can do with a door closed.¡±

    ¡°Or I could send you to Gitmo,¡± Hicks said.

    I shook my head. ¡°You don¡¯t get how connected I am, do you?¡± I asked. ¡°Ask yourself: How did manage to get multiple assault boats to pick me up at Incheon? Why had I come there in the first place? How did my guns get considered to be adopted by the FBI and the army? And who dropped me off here? Hint: only two situations had the same benefactor.¡±

    ¡°Fine.¡± Hicks said. ¡°I¡¯ll let you go if-¡±

    He saw my eyes widen at something behind him. Before he could turn around, his service weapon was out of his holster and pressed into the point where his neck met his shoulder.

    ¡°Or,¡± Mayu Nakashima said, her eyes gleaming with religious fervor, ¡°we can all fall at the feet of the Messiah and beg forgiveness for our sins.¡± She giggled girlishly, her smile becoming so huge her eyes closed. ¡°I vote for option five!¡±

 6.9: Losing Her Conviction

    ¡°There¡¯s supposed to be an anti-jumpfield here,¡± Hicks said.

    He was very calm, considering that Mayu Nakashima had stolen his service weapon and jamming it into his neck. They actually made an interesting contrast, with Hicks¡¯ greying hair and age-weathered face compared to Mayu¡¯s unnaturally pale skin and pure white hair. Mayu¡¯s mask-like smile was plastered on her face, and Hicks¡¯ face was sour and unreadable as always. I noticed that both Hicks¡¯ gray eyes and Mayu¡¯s near white ones were both bloodshot, like they hadn¡¯t been sleeping well.

    ¡°They don¡¯t work on her,¡± I said.

    ¡°Really?¡± Hicks said.

    ¡°SHUT UP!¡± Mayu screamed, her face contorting into a mask of rage. Hicks made a choking sound as the muzzle of his Glock was drove further into his neck. A few drops of Mayu¡¯s spittle hit me in the face. She saw the wetness on my extremely terrified face, then a look of confusion passed over hers. She blinked, then just as quickly relaxed. ¡°I am sorry,¡± she said, bowing her head slightly. ¡°That was uncalled for.¡±

    ¡°I apologize, too,¡± I said mimicking her head bob, ¡°We shouldn¡¯t have ignored you. Right, Agent?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Hicks said. He was terrified and out of breath, but he seemed to have a plan. I wondered if he realized I was trying to talk her down. ¡°Any reason you¡¯re visiting us?¡±

    ¡°Why,¡± Mayu said, ¡°I said it already. I am here to lead you to the Messiah!¡±

    ¡°I was hoping,¡± Hicks said, giving me a meaningful look, ¡°that someone could elaborate.¡±

    ¡°Mayu¡¯s been a bit unwell,¡± I said. ¡°She¡¯s been in isolation for over a while and has some¡­¡±

    ¡°LIAR!¡± Mayu screamed, her face contorting with rage. Shit. What the hell had I been thinking? Hicks could tell she was crazy, she¡¯d killed fourty-four people on his watch, five having been tortured to death. ¡°I¡¯M NOT CRAZY! I¡¯M NOT CRAZY, YOU¡¯RE LYING! YOU¡¯VE SEEN HIM WITH YOUR OWN EYES! YOU KNOW HIS-¡± She halted mid-paranoid rant, her face lighting up with realization. Then she began to laugh hysterically. When she was done, she asked, ¡°You haven¡¯t told him, have you? You haven¡¯t told Agent Hicks about Mubarak-kami, have you?¡±

    ¡°No, he hasn¡¯t,¡± Hicks said, shooting me a rightfully annoyed glare. ¡°Mind filling in?¡±

    ¡°Did he tell you about Mubarak-kami?¡± Mayu asked. ¡°I bet he told you he was just a turncoat and a spy, nothing really special. Just some lowly, dishonorable coward.¡±

    ¡°He didn¡¯t say anything like that,¡± Hicks said. ¡°He only told me his name, that he was under the protection of the CIA and you were after him.¡±

    ¡°Look,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯m not trying to throw Mubashir-¡±

    ¡°Show some respect,¡± Mayu snarled. I suddenly realized that the honorific that Mayu was using on Moob¡¯s name was extremely strange. I had heard kami, the Japanese word for spirit or god before, but had never heard it used in that way. I wondered if it a sign that Mayu¡¯s mind was fraying even more.

    ¡°Mubarak¡­ kami?¡± I said making sure I had gotten it right. ¡°Listen, the guy¡¯s my friend and I¡¯m just trying to protect him. If I tell Hicks he¡¯s with the CIA, he doesn¡¯t ask questions, and neither does the CIA.¡±Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

    ¡°So,¡± Mayu said, her face in its normal smile, ¡°for you, protecting him means lying?¡± I hesitated, my mouth opened. She obviously was with it enough to trap me. ¡°Well,¡± she said, her smile becoming so wide for a moment her eyes temporarily closed, ¡°I think that says how much we can trust Jacobs-san, doesn¡¯t it, Hicks-san?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Hicks said noncommittally.

    ¡°What you need to know about Mubarak-kami,¡± Mayu said, ¡°is that he is God. He¡¯ll fixeverything.¡±That last word was said with such an intensity that Hicks and I flinched, even though it wasn¡¯t angry. Then, she added so quietly I could barely hear it, ¡°He¡¯ll fix me.¡± She then reverted back to her normal smiling self. ¡°That¡¯s why I need you two. Jacobs-san, you know him. You can help convince him to use his power. Hicks-san, you helped the CIA with its informant extraction and relocation program.¡± At this, Hicks suddenly looked like the floor had fallen out from under him. ¡°If you help, if you join me, we won¡¯t have to kill anyone else.¡±

    ¡°Mayu,¡± I said, ¡°There are a few reasons I¡¯ve been uncooperative with you and Hicks.¡±

    ¡°Like he¡¯s not really God?¡± Hicks said. ¡°I figured that one out.¡±

    There was a long silence. Finally I said, ¡°The evidence,¡± I said, ¡°actually indicates him being a God being a possibility.¡±

    ¡°What do you mean?¡± Hicks asked.

    ¡°You¡¯ve seen it, haven¡¯t you?¡± Mayu asked excitedly. ¡°You¡¯ve seen his power?¡± Suddenly, she got suspicious. ¡°Why aren¡¯t you worshipping him right now?¡±

    ¡°Can we talk about the things we¡¯ll all agree on first?¡± I asked. Mayu nodded.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Hicks said, glancing at where Mayu was pressing a gun into his neck. ¡°That¡¯d probably be safer.¡±

    ¡°This is a person,¡± I said, ¡°who, in what appears to be a limited range,¡± or what I genuinely spent some nights praying was a limited range, ¡°can make the laws of nature his bitch. If he¡­ wants to, he can choose not to die if you put a three-round burst in his skull. If he wants to, he can turn someone into a fountain. If he wants to turn the immediate area into a cross between an Escher painting and one of those Scooby-Doo chase scenes where the doors lead into the hallway, he can. I mean, wants to is a strong word, but-¡±

    ¡°He can turn people into a fountain.¡± Hicks¡¯ tone of flat disbelief was frankly expected.

    ¡°He can,¡± I said. ¡°And I really don¡¯t want the CIA doing their MK ULTRA crap on him. And don¡¯t tell me that it¡¯s stopped, or it doesn¡¯t exist, or that they won¡¯t try to do it to him. This is way too much of an opportunity for some of the people there not to take.¡±

    ¡°So,¡± Mayu said, ¡°why aren¡¯t you helping me?¡±

    This was going to get me shot. I knew that as soon as I realized I had to say it. ¡°Mayu,¡± I said, ¡°Mu-Mubarak-kami isn¡¯t who you think he is.¡±

    ¡°Yes he is,¡± Mayu said. ¡°He¡¯s the Architect, isn¡¯t he?¡±

    ¡°Mayu,¡± I said, ¡°the Architect isn¡¯t some all-loving person. The Architect is a scared, traumatized kid with a split personality that controls his power.¡±

    ¡°What¡­ what do you mean?¡± Mayu asked.

    ¡°Mayu,¡± I said, trying desperately to connect with her on some level, ¡°ever since he was taken by Al-Qaeda, Mubarak-kami has been trying to kill himself. He told me this after saving my life for the third time, when I realized he¡¯s the Architect. He¡¯s not Mubarak-kami, here to usher in some golden age. He¡¯s Moob, a kid from some Middle Eastern village trying to leave the past behind him. He¡¯s Moob, a guy who has this power he literally believes is a curse from his God for thinking he could do a better job.¡± I took a deep breath and said, ¡°Mayu, Mubashir¡¯s not the person you want him to be.¡±

    Mayu had been becoming more and more panicked as I spoke. Finally, she whispered, ¡°Liar.¡±

    ¡°Mayu,¡± I said, ¡°why would I lie to you?¡±

    ¡°LIAR!¡± Mayu screamed. She then aimed her gun at me again. This time Hicks grabbed the gun. I didn¡¯t see because I had launched myself sideways. The gun went off, but thanks to my dodge and Hicks¡¯ grab, the shot went wild and hit the mirror.

    I heard something smash into the table. Hicks grunted in pain. Meanwhile, I tried to step through the handcuffs. As I tried, I heard what sounded like Mayu pistol-whipping Hicks and yelling. ¡°You moron! I was trying to do this right! I was trying to save you! I was trying to save the world! Why do hate me? WHY DO YOU HATE ME? WHY DO YOU HATE MEEEEE?!¡±

    This,I thought to myself,actually might be going better than I expected.

 Track 10: In the Den

    I had gotten my hands in front of me when I suddenly realized Mayu wasn¡¯t taking the opportunity to kill me. Instead, she seemed to be sobbing. I paused, unsure what to do. The table seriously blocked my view. I couldn¡¯t tell if Hicks was fine or if he was dead. I also couldn¡¯t tell if Mayu really was this unstable or if she was trying to lure me out from behind the table.

    By the time I had realized that it was probably that Mayu might actually be too emotionally incapacitated to kill me, she had staggered zombie-like into my field of view, the Glock hanging loosely at her side. She raised it to her head and I could see that the grip was slick with blood. My breath caught in my throat. Before I could figure out how I felt about that, she adjusted the gun to aim directly at my heart. Then she shifted back to her head.

    This process repeated several times, ending with the gun pointed at my chest. ¡°Well,¡± she said, ¡°I¡¯m sorry it didn¡¯t work out. I thought you wanted this. I thought you wanted to help people.¡±

    ¡°Mayu,¡± I said, ¡°I do. But there¡¯s something wrong with you.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s nothing wrong with me,¡± she said.

    ¡°Really?¡± I asked. ¡°Then why aren¡¯t I dead?¡±

    At this, Mayu¡¯s eyes widened and her hands began to shake. I had her. If I could just find the right words, maybe nobody would have to die today.

    Then the door burst open. I turned just in time to see two men in suits open fire. One fell, a bullet in his head. The other advanced into the room. ¡°Target has left the area,¡± he said. I noticed that he had a Visitor tag and a US Marshal¡¯s badge on a chain around his neck. Also of note was that he wore cowboy boots that probably added a few inches to his height. ¡°We have survivors.¡±

    ¡°Shit!¡± a man said, running into the room, this one without a badge. ¡°What the hell happened?¡±

    ¡°Someone tried to kill the person we¡¯re trying to take into custody,¡± the marshal said as he grabbed me by the arm, lifting me up. ¡°You do have a mole, and we need to get our suspect out of here.¡±

    As he lifted me, Hicks suddenly said, ¡°Hey.¡± I turned to look at him. His face was extremely bloody and his eyes were slightly unfocused. As the most recent arrival tried to bandage him, Hicks stared at the US Marshall for a moment, taking him in from head to toe. Then he looked at the dead Marshal. He then turned to me and said, ¡°Be careful, kid.¡±

    I nodded, a little confused. Why was Hicks wishing me luck? I¡¯d severely screwed him over, and here were a bunch of US Marshals coming in to whisk me away to a place where he probably couldn¡¯t arrest me. Maybe the concussion was talking.

    ¡°Please accompany me,¡± the marshal said, still grabbing arm. He didn¡¯t have to pull very hard. I was actually very curious as to what was going on.

    Out in the hallway, I immediately noticed six men. When I turned around, there was a seventh. Of them, only one wasn¡¯t wearing a visitor tag and a US Marshal badge. Except for the person I assumed to be the FBI escort, there seemed to be something similar about them. Not their height, they were all the same size. Their faces and hair colors were all different as well.

    ¡°We need to get him out of here,¡± a Marshal said. ¡°This building is not secure.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ve got time,¡± the FBI agent said. ¡°Nakashima¡¯s a lone wolf. We should go to the security station on this level and-¡±

    ¡°We need to leave,¡± the Marshal said. ¡°If her information is open-source, we might have more incoming.¡±

    ¡°Like what?¡± the FBI agent asked.

    ¡°We have reason to believe that the Dragon¡¯s Teeth wants to apprehend him.¡± Once I heard this, it made sense. After all, they had made a serious attempt to take me alive at the NIU airfield. Then, I instantly began to wonder why they wanted me and how the US Marshals knew that and the FBI didn¡¯t.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    ¡°Well,¡± the agent said, ¡°can we compromise and stop off at the people in the National Security Branch? Maybe tell them how you know?¡±

    ¡°Affirmative,¡± a Marshal said. ¡°But all we can really do is put them in contact with those who do.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± the FBI agent said. ¡°I¡¯ll lead the way.¡± He began to walk off. When we finally got to an elevator and all crowded into it,  the FBI agent commented, ¡°Never worked with marshals before. You guys are really formal.¡±

    The one who had been leading me by the arm suddenly clenched it. ¡°We are just-¡± four started at once. Then they cast a few looks around and one said, ¡°We¡¯re just a little new with working with our counterparts as well. We are being a little extra professional to make a good impression.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± the FBI agent said. Then his phone beeped, indicating a text message. ¡°Wait, I gotta take¡­¡±

    The FBI agent was by the door controls and I was in the corner at the opposite end. He was mostly blocked by the six Marshals so I couldn¡¯t see what the text said. I could, however, see that everyone had adopted ¡°oh shit¡± expressions. The FBI agent even managed to say it partly before one of the Marshals pulled out a strange pistol and executed him with a shot to the back of the head. There was no exit wound, and I couldn¡¯t see the entry wound. I could, however, smell something sweet and spicy, as well as burning hair and flesh.

    I recognized the pistol instantly. The immediate giveaway was the lack of noise. The thing that movies don¡¯t really tell you about guns is how loud they are, even with silencers. Even a nine millimeter pistol with a good silencer would probably alert everyone within fifty meters that a gun had been fired. A rifle like an AK or an AR might have deafened everyone in such cramped conditions, even with a silencer. They just might think it had been from a lot further away.

    This pistol, known as a Sgian, was so quiet I could barely hear it, even in these cramped spaces. It was very rare. So rare that there was only one group that I or anyone else to my knowledge had seen use it. They were called the Picts, and they were an elite group of Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldiers. That, combined with the dead FBI agent, meant that these weren¡¯t US Marshals.

    This was confirmed a few seconds later when they began pulling off their faces and hands. Underneath were the same neutral faces, red hair and green eyes¡­ but wildly different tattoos.

    I had never personally seen under a Dragon¡¯s Teeth helmet, but I had managed to get some documents that, among other things, analyzed the tattoos the Deets decorated themselves with. I was still surprised. Several had Mexican Day of the Dead-style skulls tattooed over their faces. Some had Celtic trees of life on their cheeks or back of their neck with the lines made out of a mix of Japanese and Chinese characters, Gaelic writing, and Latin. Those words appeared other places as well, often seeming like a translation. All the work was done in either white or black ink, with the white ink reserved for the skulls.

    There were exceptions to how the body art was only in white and black ink. I noticed that some had raised scars that seemed to be names or numbers. There was also a color portrait of a naked skeletal woman with dark hair on the back of one of their necks. Unlike many pictures of naked women, these seemed to have more in common with pictures of Jesus. It was very Day of the Dead, but there were also some elements of old Japanese paintings before they had started using perspective.

    I was suddenly slammed against the wall, a pocket gas mask of some sort forced over my face. A Pict suddenly loomed into my face, his face tattooed with a skull mask. On the center of his forehead, in the center of a yellow circle, was another Japanese/Day of the Dead-style image of the woman, except this time she was clothed in a dark robe, had six arms, and was comforting a severely injured Pict. Once he had made sure my mask was on, he moved back.

    From my position, I couldn¡¯t really see the person pinning me, but I could kind of see the elevator door and a few other Picts if I strained. They had all gotten their gas masks on. That could only mean they were planning on using a chemical weapon, and I had a pretty good idea on what that was. They also had drawn what either were captured Glocks or Dragon¡¯s Teeth weapons designed to look like Glocks. One Pict, shielded from view from those outside the elevator, even had a small black spherical object.

    Suddenly, the elevator doors opened with a ding. Outside, I could see at least two FBI agents crouching behind desks, Glocks aimed at us. They weren¡¯t wearing gas masks. The Pict operator body slammed me further into the elevator wall, both controlling my movements and shielding me from any incoming fire.

    At the same time, I heard agents call out things like ¡°Drop your guns!¡± ¡°Hands on your heads¡± or ¡°Release the hostage or we will open fire!¡±

    ¡°Shoot them!¡± I yelled. ¡°Shoot them now!¡±

    Then somebody, I¡¯m not sure who, complied with my request and everything went to hell.

 6.11 War Picts

    Before I could get a good look at what was going on (or as good a look as I could, given the circumstances,) the Pict guarding me bodyslammed me further into the elevator wall as soon as the gunfire started, controlling me and shielding me from any incoming bullets. The sound of pistol and shotgun fire was almost literally deafening.

    The engagement only lasted a few seconds. Then there was a longer period where I just stood there, pressed into the wall by my captor, my ears ringing. Slowly, I could hear screaming. That confirmed that they¡¯d been using their hallucinogenic gas. I¡¯d never been hit with it, but I¡¯d seen its effects. The people I¡¯d seen it used on had, at best been, stricken by paranoid hallucinations for a few hours, and at worst, been stuck like that permanently or committed suicide. It was invisible, odorless, and could fill large areas instantly, but thankfully (probably by design) it was easily defeated.

    Before I could be thankful for the gas mask, I was dragged out of the elevator. Apparently, the rest of the Picts had left already, and a few had even salvaged weapons, amounting to an M4 with reflex sights, an MP5/10, and a black shotgun, probably a Remington. I noticed that several of the Pict operators were doubled up, and one was limping slightly. Two were out of sight, but they were probably still up.

    The FBI agents hadn¡¯t fared as well. We were in what appeared to be some sort of bullpen, with desks scattered all around a large room. The ones who had intercepted us near the elevator had mostly been shot in the head. Judging by the doubled-over Dragon¡¯s Teeth, they had followed standard law enforcement training and aimed for the Picts¡¯ chests. That had come up against Dragon¡¯s Teeth armor. Meanwhile, the Picts had been aiming for headshots, probably because Sgians were shit at penetrating anything thicker than skin. I¡¯d killed a squad because it had been close-quarters and they had been aiming at my armor¡¯s plate. They had Sgians and an SMG using the same ammo, I had a G3 firing 7.62¡Á51.

    Then I heard a large thump, so loud I felt my internals vibrate like it was the Fourth of July. I turned around as best I could. Out of the corner of my eyes, I could see that the two Picts had been standing by a door. That door had now been mashed into what seemed to be a jail cell door. One of the Picts let out a yell of frustration and kicked the wall when he saw the results.

    Then there was another thump, this one less loud and less chest-rattling. Before I could even turn to the source, I saw the Pict who had kicked the wall in frustration jerk back and slump against the wall as what sounded like an M4 opened up.

    My Pict handler bodyslammed me into the ground, but not before I saw some men in body armor, gas masks and dark green fatigues file into the room, shooting M4s and MP5/10s. Judging by how well they were equipped and the fact that they just happened to be on site, these had to be either FBI SWAT or HRT.

    From my position on the ground, I could hear the Picts return fire. The Glocks they had were particularly pathetic. Then there was a huge explosion. Several somethings slammed into the wall behind us. I turned and saw that an FBI SWAT operator had been thrown like a ragdoll into the elevator behind me, his pants looking more like a skirt and one leg severed at the calf. The shooting stopped pretty soon after that.

    Even though it seemed safe now, the Pict was still pinning me. As the other Picts began moving around, occasionally executing a SWAT operator who wasn¡¯t dead enough for their liking, I realized that the Pict pinning me was actually extremely light. Now wasn¡¯t the time to resist, but it might come in handy.

    When I was dragged to my feet again, the Picts had more firepower. Now, most of the seven had M4s and MP5/10s to supplement their Glocks and Sgians. Even the Pict who I had seen go down had an M4. They had also taken off their dress shirts and suit coats, revealing flexible bullet-proof vests, skinny, muscular arms, and more tattoos. They¡¯d also donned what appeared to be sunglasses at first glance, but on second look seemed to be some kind of imaging device. Normally, I would say it would either be thermal or UV, but with the Dragon¡¯s Teeth I couldn¡¯t be sure.

    The interesting thing was that they seemed to be preparing the one who¡¯d been shot for a final stand. He was sitting in the corner on a chair, his vest a mess of fibers. The desk had the shotgun and several pistols, and he gingerly gripped an MP5/10.Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

    Then I noticed that there were a bunch of small spheres taped to the floor near me, connected by wires. I then remembered that the gas bomb that the Picts had thrown had been a small black sphere. ¡°Oh shit,¡± I said, ¡°are you going to blow through the floor?¡±

    The ¡°blow through the floor¡± part was cut off by the bombs going off. Dust flew up, covering everything. Then I felt myself being pushed towards the hole. ¡°No no no no no!¡± I yelled. It became a scream as I was lifted up and tossed in.

    I fell, with my ankle going in a weird way due to my angle and the scattered debris. Then my knee hit a large chunk of concrete and my hand hit another chunk. Then I hit my head on a rock. My eyes burning from the dust and my head swimming from the pain and the bump it had recently taken, I tried to gain an idea of what was going on.

    Judging by the moans of pain and swearing, there were people there. As the dust cleared, I noticed that buried underneath the debris was a man in a suit and gas mask. Using my good hand, I got to my knees. Farther around the room, outside of what was apparently the kill zone, several FBI agents were drawing their guns. I could barely make them out through the still-floating dust, but one close by saw me instantly.

    ¡°Hey!¡± he yelled, drawing his Glock, his voice muffled by his gas mask, ¡°Put your-¡±

    He was cut off by the Picts above us opening fire. One had targeted him, and the agent fell, dropping his gun. I crawled towards it as fast as I could. Around me, the FBI agents were dropping like flies as they fired blindly into the hole in the ceiling. We must have been in some kind of command post.

    Speaking of things dropping, I could hear the Picts joining us. One was even running straight towards me. I sped up, despite the pain that shot through my injured hand and knee every time I moved. Finally, I got to the discarded Glock. I flipped around and aimed to see a Pict almost on top. I fired, the Pict kicked. The Glock went skittering away, and the Pict fell, his crotch landing on my face.

    Before I could complain or wonder about the sticky wet stuff on my face, the Pict rolled off me. I looked and saw he was clutching his leg with both hands. As one of his buddies knelt besides him knelt down and fired an MP5/10, the injured Pict drew out his Sgian with a blood-soaked hand, put it in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

    Several other Picts descended on him. The dead Pict was stripped of his vest, weapons, and ammo. Others forced me to my feet. I screamed as I put weight on my bad leg. One Pict, hatred evident behind his professional tone, said, ¡°You¡¯ll live.¡± Then, they forced the jacket on me so that it doubled as a straightjacket. To add to that, a Pict hooked the sling of an M4 so that if I wasn¡¯t pointing the way they wanted, I¡¯d get choked. Also, the vertical foregrip was digging into my shoulder like crazy. I was then spun around and force-marched towards the stairwell, along with most of the other Picts.

    Every step was painful and slow. I could hear firing both ahead and behind me, and it echoed in the stairwell, causing my ears to ring. When we came to the bottom floor, I saw that one of the Picts was firing through the door between the bars that had just gone up, return fire bouncing off the heavy door he was using as a shield. Two with MP5/10s were setting bombs on the wall.

    They did not wait for any more to join them before blowing the wall. As the three other Picts filed through and the gunfire became more intense for a brief moment, I wondered if the other two had died.

    Then we were through the wall, moving as fast as we could through the hallways. My Pict handler was going so far as to lift me up with his other hand. Occasionally, we would come up against FBI agents. A few times, the gun that would cut them down would be the one right next to my ear. Eventually we turned a corner. There was the lobby. Outside were dozens of cop cars and police officers. It seemed like almost every single one of them had some sort of long gun like a shotgun, rifle or SMG. And they were all trained on us.

    ¡°THIS IS THE HONOLULU PD!¡± a voice over a megaphone said. ¡°DROP YOUR WEAPONS AND RELEASE THE HOSTAGE OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE.¡±

    The Picts did not drop their weapons. But they didn¡¯t fire either. Then one moved his hand towards a pocket.

    Instantly, what felt like every cop in the entire state of Hawaii opened on us. I saw at least one Pict go down instantly before my handler dragged me away, the intensity of fire so great that not even his body armor could keep up. A few bullets even hit my chest. It felt like I had been hit by multiple trucks.

    I was frog-marched down the hallway. I was forced into the cleanest public bathroom I had ever seen, the Pict using me as a battering ram to open the push-open door. The rifle¡¯s sling was unhooked from my neck, and I fell, landing on my bad knee and injured hand. If I hadn¡¯t been somewhat asphyxiated, I would have screamed. Instead, I gasped for breath. I then looked up to see that the Pict shoving the M4 through the handle of the door.

    He looked at me. It was the same one who¡¯d shoved me into the elevator wall, and he wasn¡¯t happy with me at all. I was suddenly very conscious of how much trouble I was in. Then my phone rang.

 6.12 Boom, Clap

    The first thing the Pict did was dig around in my pocket, grab my cPhone, and silence it. ¡°Can¡¯t really deal with that at the moment,¡± he muttered, tossing it on sink. I winced. Yes, this phone was designed to take a .44 Magnum round or two to the screen and still function, but it was still a valuable piece of equipment.

    ¡°You know,¡± I gasped, worried that my lung had collapsed yet again, ¡°that¡¯s not going to hold them forever.¡± It was true. That M4 basically would only stop someone trying to kick the door down. If you got a battering ram or some breeching charges, the bathroom door would cease to be a door.

    ¡°It doesn¡¯t have to,¡± the Pict said, pulling out two of the old, bulky flip phones, a more modern one, a Gameboy Color, a metal water bottle with a strange box attached, a few cable splitters, and a bunch of wires. He then began hooking them up on the table.

    ¡°That¡­¡± I said, ¡°that¡¯s not¡­ You wouldn¡¯t. You¡¯ve put in too much effort.¡±

    The Pict turned around and smiled. ¡°Are you sure?¡± he asked.

    ¡°It¡¯s not a bomb,¡± I said, as he began sticking the daisy-chained electronics into my vest. ¡°Those¡­ those are¡­¡± I took a deep, gasping breath. It burned. ¡°Those are a bunch of obsolete¡­ electronics you found at garage sales¡­ and the last Radioshack on Earth.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s amazing,¡± the Pict said, standing back to admire his handy work, ¡°what even people in caves can make explosives look like. Of course, I had some help.¡±

    This wasn¡¯t right. He couldn¡¯t be doing this. He¡¯d come so far trying to take me alive. ¡°Motive¡­¡± I began. Shit. This wasn¡¯t as bad as the collapsed lung, but I was still having trouble speaking. Maybe I had some sort of concussion as well.

    ¡°Spite.¡± Despite his goggles and gas mask, I could feel his look of disgust, even as his voice remained highly professional. ¡°My motive is spite.¡±

    ¡°Makes sense,¡± I said. Before, I had been seventy-five percent positive he had been lying. Now I was only fifty-one percent sure. But the real question wasn¡¯t whether I believed it. It was whether or not the various angry cops would even bother to check before blowing open the door with shaped charges and shooting everything inside.

    As I considered this, the Pict  seemed to be checking his inventory. He took out a Sgian, a Glock, a SIG-Sauer, and 1911 of some kind and laid them on the sink counter as well as some spare magazines. Judging by the fact that he threw both the spare magazines and the Sgian in the trash with a noise of disgust, those mags were for the Sgian. He then took out a nightstick and several more shiny black spheres and placed them on the counter in an orderly manner as well.

    Then I saw something move under the door. It was something I only used once or twice in CQB courses. They¡¯re called snake cameras and they¡¯re the coolest things ever. Basically, they¡¯re a camera at one end of a skinny hose, with a viewing device on the other end.

    The Pict saw it as well. ¡°Like it?¡± he asked loudly so the people on the other side could hear, patting my shoulder. ¡°It will blow this building to bits and disperse a hallucinogenic gas in a one hundred meter to twenty-kilometer radius, depending on atmospheric conditions. If you follow my directions, it won¡¯t detonate.¡±The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

    ¡°What do you want?¡± a voice responded nervously.

    ¡°I want you to move your line back to the nearest intersection,¡± the Pict said, ¡°and I want you to remove the snake cam. I will issue more demands at-¡± The phone rang. ¡°Excuse me,¡± he said.

    ¡°Is that your boss?¡± the person on the other end asked. Honestly, seeing as the Picts had a psionic link, the likelihood of his boss calling him on my cellphone was astronomically low. Still the FBI couldn¡¯t know either of those pieces of information, so his guess made sense.

    ¡°Leave the hallway,¡± the Pict said. ¡°Now.¡± I heard boots quickly back off. The Pict waited a while, then stuck a small object underneath the door. I wondered if it was a booby trap or his own camera. He then went over to my phone and hung up again.

    Immediately after he had set it down to check the stalls, it began to ring again. He yelled in frustration and began kicking open doors angrily. When he was done, he walked over to the phone and answered it sweetly with, ¡°Hello, Mr. Jacobs is busy. Can I-¡± He was instantly cut off. ¡°No, I¡¯m very busy, and so is he. Please¡­ no, I¡­ no I¡¯m not going to let talk to my hos-Mr. Jacobs. Yes, he¡¯s in trouble. Now please¡­¡± For about five minutes, he just listened to the person on the other end. Finally, he sighed and said, ¡°It¡¯s for you.¡±

    As he held it up to my ear, I wondered who it was. ¡°Hello,¡± I said hesitantly.

    ¡°Nate.¡± Ah. It was May Riley, friend and business partner. She made medicine, I made guns. ¡°Where the fuck have you been?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± I said, ¡°things got kind of messy in Japan.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± May said. ¡°FBI messy! Nari, Andy and I are in fucking Australia and an FBI officer just had a talk with us. About you. I didn¡¯t even know they could do law stuff internationally!¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, ¡°they kind of can. Hey, why are you in Australia?¡±

    ¡°We got a bunch of emergency contracts after you left,¡± May said. ¡°We¡¯ve been setting up medical and weapons contracts all across the Pacific. I¡¯ve been bouncing from Japan to Australia to Vietnam and back for weeks.¡± She paused, then said accusingly. ¡°You¡¯re distracting me.¡±

    ¡°And myself,¡± I said. ¡°And I apologize.¡±

    ¡°Get on with it,¡± May said.

    ¡°I¡¯m actually in a bathroom in the Honolulu FBI building-¡±

    ¡°How many people did you kill this time?¡± May asked in exasperation.

    ¡°It¡¯s fair to ask that,¡± I said, ¡°but I actually haven¡¯t killed anyone in weeks.¡±

    ¡°I shouldn¡¯t be pleasantly surprised,¡± May said. ¡°Why are you there and not an interrogation room?¡±

    I leaned towards the Pict. ¡°Hey,¡± I asked, ¡°how much can I tell my friend?¡±

    ¡°Who¡¯s your friend?¡± he asked. I didn¡¯t answer. There were reasons they might want to go after May, Andy and Nari. Chief among them was that they were all pretty much geniuses with very applicable skills for someone planning an invasion. The Pict, realizing how long it was taking me to respond, took the phone away from my head. ¡°Conversation¡¯s over,¡± he said.

    We then spent several hours with me just kneeling there and the Pict just pacing around. Eventually, I asked him, ¡°Shouldn¡¯t they be asking for demands?¡±

    ¡°Maybe,¡± he said. ¡°They might be looking into my threat.¡±

    ¡°Is it real?¡± I asked.

    ¡°What do you think?¡± he asked.

    ¡°Honestly,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯m not sure. It seems more like you¡¯re delaying. After all, you¡¯re Dragon¡¯s Teeth. For all I know, you could have an invasion force ready to-¡±

    ¡°Quiet,¡± he said suddenly. ¡°I hear something.¡±

    ¡°Hear what?¡± I asked. ¡°All I can hear is this ringing sound.¡±

    ¡°I forgot,¡± he said. ¡°You¡¯re baseline. You don¡¯t have reinforced eardrums.¡± He picked up one of the pistols, the 1911, and walked over to the wall. ¡°Someone will need hearing aids.¡±

    I craned my neck to see him put his head to the wall. ¡°Look at the door,¡± he said.

    ¡°Why?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Look at the door.¡±

    I rolled my eyes and looked towards the door. ¡°Ok,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯m looking towards the door. Can you tell me what you hear?¡±

    ¡°Oh.¡± The Pict suddenly seemed very resigned. ¡°Well I guess-¡± Then, for either a brief moment that felt like an eternity or an eternity that felt like a brief moment, the ringing became everything. Well, the ringing and pain.

 6.13: Boom to the Head

    ¡°Hey,¡± I asked an FBI HRT operator as I was being rolled away on a stretcher, ¡°how long was I out?¡± I sounded a bit congested, and something was leaking from my nose. As if from a muffled distance, I could hear people shouting orders or screaming in utter terror.

    ¡°You weren¡¯t,¡± the operator said, somewhat concerned.

    ¡°Oh,¡± I said. ¡°Is that my blood and vomit all over my shirt?¡±

    ¡°Most of the blood belonged to your friend,¡± another operator said.

    ¡°Oh, good,¡± I said. Then a light went off. ¡°Just so you¡¯re not angry, I don¡¯t think he liked me either.¡±

    ¡°We figured.¡±

    I was going to ask him why they blew me up. Then wondered if they just didn¡¯t care. If they¡¯d come to my conclusion about the bombs being a (probable) bluff, they¡¯d have to choose between my life and being able to say they¡¯d eliminated all hostiles in under an hour. I didn¡¯t like it, but I understood.

    Amongst the other people yelling, I heard a familiar voice say, ¡°Be calm? Fuck you, mate!¡±

    ¡°Eliza!¡± I said, somewhat muzzily. ¡°You¡¯re still here.¡±

    There was a bit of commotion. I could hear Eliza yelling angrily, and the operators telling her to stay back. Then other voices came in and the operators backed off. I couldn¡¯t really tell what was happening, because everything sounded too echoey and everything was too blurry. Eventually, I was able to focus on Eliza. ¡°¡­Nate. Oi, Nate. Say something, bloody ¡®ell.¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± I said, looking up at her concerned face, shrouded a bit by a rebreather. ¡°How are things?¡±

    Meanwhile, I could hear what sounded like Agent Hicks yelling at an operator. ¡°¡­only lead in the Nakashima case, and you decide to blow him up? And potentially set off a bomb?¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± Eliza said, with forced cheer, ¡°pretty swell. Just still handcuffed, dealing with FBI assholes, the usual.¡±

    ¡°Branch director¡¯s orders,¡± the operator responded to Hicks. ¡°Look at how crazy everything is. We can¡¯t have a hostage situation in an FBI building.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, ¡°things are pretty insane. Getting stopped by the FBI, dealing with Mayu again¡­¡±

    ¡°And you blew up a suspect we were supposed to protect,¡± Barton said. ¡°We were screwed either way, but word of this getting out could be more damaging.¡±

    ¡°Fucking Mayu,¡± Eliza said. ¡°¡®Eard all about that. You were right, should ¡®ave blown ¡®er bloody ¡®ead off when I ¡®ad the chance.¡±

    ¡°I think,¡± I said, ¡°I think that the people who took me were Dragon¡¯s Teeth.¡±

    Everyone turned to stare at me. ¡°How would you know?¡± an operator asked me.

    ¡°If you believe him,¡± Hicks said, ¡°He¡¯s one of the few people to have fought them and lived.¡±

    ¡°And do we believe him?¡± an operator asked.

    ¡°Evidence points to him being right,¡± Barton said.

    ¡°And my gut says he¡¯s right,¡± Hicks said.

    "I think,¡± I said, this talk about the Dragon¡¯s Teeth bringing back a vague feeling, ¡°I think that Pict was stalling.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Hicks said, ¡°he didn¡¯t want to get blown up.¡±If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    ¡°That¡¯s not it,¡± one of the operators said. ¡°These guys¡­ they left one of their buddies behind. When we finally got into the room, he¡¯d blown his own brains out with a shotgun rather than get taken alive.¡±

    ¡°Invasion, maybe?¡± I suggested. ¡°I mean, they¡¯ve got a teleporter.¡±

    ¡°They can¡¯t,¡± the operator said. ¡°They have to be stretched too thin.¡±

    ¡°Do they?¡± Barton asked.

    ¡°What are you guys talking about?¡± an authoritative female voice asked. ¡°And why are these prisoners still here? That guy looks like he should be in the hospital.¡±

    ¡°Mrs. Patchett,¡± an operator said. ¡°These two think the Dragon¡¯s Teeth might be responsible for the second attack and that it may be a prelude to something bigger.¡±

    Patchett considered this for a moment, and even I could tell she was getting more worried. She then took out her phone, a Blackberry, and began calling. ¡°What is it?¡± Barton asked.

    ¡°The Third Fleet has two carrier strike groups and its expeditionary strike group moored in Pearl Harbor,¡± Patchett said. ¡°If they wanted, they could re-enact the Japanese attack there, except worse.¡±

    ¡°This just keeps getting better and better,¡± Barton said. ¡°Look, if this guy is even half the expert on the Dragon¡¯s Teeth that he claims he is-¡±

    ¡°I just fought them multiple times,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m not an expert!¡±

    ¡°You copied their weapons, you great tit!¡± Eliza said incredulously.

    ¡°Then we need to get him out of here.¡±

    ¡°More importantly,¡± Hicks said, ¡°the Dragon¡¯s Teeth want him. That¡¯s good enough for me to want to get him to a safe house.¡±

    Patchett held up a hand as her call went through. ¡°Ralph, this is Linda. I need you to put all military posts on high alert, lock down all bases and break out all the thermal imaging devices you have. The Dragon¡¯s Teeth are making a move, and I think¡­ They¡¯re here already? ¡­Put some guards around the ships. It seems like¡­ Yes, I know they¡¯re over there, but that could be a diversion. Be careful, I¡¯ll call you again when things calm down.¡±

    ¡°Let me guess,¡± Hicks said, ¡°they¡¯re here.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Patchett said. ¡°They¡¯re here, and they¡¯re digging in in the less populated areas of the island.¡± She shook her head. ¡°I don¡¯t like it.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Hicks said, ¡°me either.¡±

    I tried to think. It was harder than normal. Understandable, considering that I had been blown up recently. Patchett and Hicks were both in agreement that something else was coming, and maybe Barton too, and I knew they were right. But why did I think that? I shrugged and got on. Maybe I could sleep.

    I must have done so, because Eliza was shaking me awake. ¡°Nate!¡± she said, ¡°Oi, Nate. We need you to walk.¡±

    We were back in the hangar with the Blackmoor-Ward jet. FBI HRT and SAS operators were staring at each other warily. I also notice that at one corner of the hangar were a collection of dead bodies wearing high-tech body armor. From inside the plane, I could hear Lord Blackmoor-Ward, Barton, and Hicks talking about something.

    I got up. Instantly, I felt sick to my stomach and began to sway. ¡°Right,¡± Eliza said, putting my arm around her shoulder, ¡°off we go.¡± She was trying to be confident, but could tell it was just an act. The trip up the stairs were extremely nerve-wracking. I almost tripped and vomited many times during what seemed to me to be a nine-hour trip.

    ¡°Good God!¡± Lord Blackmoor-Ward said as soon as he saw me. ¡°That man is concussed! Why isn¡¯t he in a hospital?¡± I noticed that he wasn¡¯t looking that well himself. He was lying on one of the couches, his fancy silk suit completely burned away and bandages on his chest. I also noticed that there were several patches of burns on his skin, some quite intense. Another thing I noticed in the luxurious plane were two body bags strapped to the floor.

    ¡°The Dragon¡¯s Teeth were able to infiltrate an FBI facility and would have walked out with him if a Jumper who can ignore anti-jump fields hadn¡¯t attempted to assassinate him,¡± Barton said. ¡°We need to get him to a secure facility to debrief.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m going with him,¡± Eliza said.

    ¡°You are?¡± I turned to see Charlotte, a look of shock on her face.

    ¡°Listen,¡± Eliza said, ¡°You¡¯re with the SAS and father. You don¡¯t ¡®ave a concussion.¡± She shot a suspicious glance at Hicks and Barton. ¡°And you aren¡¯t going to be interrogated day and fuckin¡¯ night by relentless arseholes.¡±

    ¡°But what about you?¡± Charlotte asked.

    ¡°I¡¯ll be fine,¡± Eliza said, ¡°as long as I can stop this idiot from bein¡¯ a fuckin¡¯ idiot.¡±

    ¡°Eliza,¡± Lord Blackmoor-Ward said, staring at the two FBI agents on his plane, ¡°would you please buckle Mr. Jacobs in one of the back rooms? We will have lift-off soon.¡±

    Eliza nodded. ¡°Right,¡± she said, helping me down the hallway. I was placed on a chair facing a window in a bedroom with a soft thump. Eliza moved to buckle me in, but I waved her off. A few minutes later, the plane was taxiing down the runway. Soon we were lifting off.

    As we were flying by Pearl Harbor, Eliza said, ¡°Oi, you see that?¡±

    I followed her finger to see that she was pointing at some of the warships moored in the harbor. ¡°See what?¡± I asked.

    ¡°There¡¯s these flashes of light on the decks of a few,¡± Eliza said.

    I looked closer, but by that point, we were already past the harbor and heading east to California.

 6.14: Whispers

    Around three hours into our flight to California, Eliza left the room to get something to eat. ¡°I¡¯ll be back as soon as I can,¡± she said.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯ll be fine. Or as fine as someone with a concussion can be.¡± Eliza looked at me hesitantly, then left.

    Then everything became strangely sepia-toned and the edges of things began to flow like waves, like still-wet ink. Outside, the view of the sea was replaced with a familiar display of millions of lights, each a different color. The door opened and in walked two familiar people.

    ¡°Nathan,¡± Alma Hebert said. ¡°It¡¯s been a long time, hasn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, making contact with Alma¡¯s dead gray eyes, but occasionally I looked at the huge man who¡¯d come in with her. Ulfric Trollbjorn¡¯s tall and sturdy frame was so huge he had to duck and twist to get through the door. Since he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and long pants, I couldn¡¯t see his muscles, but I¡¯d remembered them. They were big enough to be intimidating, but small enough for him to be as much dancer or runner as weightlifter. ¡°It¡¯s been a while, hasn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°You know, don¡¯t you?¡± Alma asked. As I stared at her, I noticed that occasionally there was a bit of a flicker where she went from appearing to be a healthy (if extremely pale) teenager/young adult to a more skeletal figure.

    ¡°I¡¯m not entirely sure what you¡¯re talking about,¡± I said. Alma looked at me like I was an idiot. Then I remembered where I had seen those colored lights before. ¡°Fuck. You¡¯re their death goddess, aren¡¯t you?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Alma said. ¡°The question is, what are you going to do about it?¡±

    ¡°Right now,¡± I said, ¡°nothing. This is a hallucination, right? Nothing I can do here.¡±

    ¡°Hallucination is a good enough term to describe what this is for your purposes, I suppose,¡± Alma said. ¡°And, as near as I can tell, there¡¯s a decent chance you¡¯re right about not being able to do anything here.¡±

    ¡°Only decent?¡± I asked.

    ¡°The people at the IDRF,¡± Alma began slowly, as if not really being able to believe what she was saying, ¡°the best and brightest Nowhere Island University had to offer in all their fields ruled physical methods pretty early. From what I can understand, though, this state can cause psionic backlash if I¡¯m not-¡±

    ¡°What do you mean, ¡®ruled out physical methods?¡¯¡± I asked.

    I was suddenly struck by a literal cold rage. The cold burned me and the impact of the literal waves of emotion radiating from Alma could be measured by my stomach turning. ¡°They killed me,¡± Alma said, her voice even more monotone somehow. There was also a tightness about her face. ¡°Starved me to death, then dropped my corpse into an incinerator. One of their few acts of mercy.¡±This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    She stopped. ¡°Sorry, but I had a bad time with them. The question is, are you going to help?¡±

    ¡°Is this about the Architect?¡± I asked. ¡°Because I¡¯m not going to help you knock off one of the other thirds of the Final Prophecy.¡±

    Alma was visibly confused. ¡°What prophecy?¡± she asked.

    I laughed. I couldn¡¯t help it. It was wild, hysterical laughter. Ulfric and Alma stared at me like I had just gone insane. Honestly, though, I¡¯d probably lost it around Freshman year and people were just now realizing. ¡°You really don¡¯t know?¡± I asked. ¡°Five hundred years, this has been around, and you¡¯re telling me that you don¡¯t even know what the hell I¡¯m talking about?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Alma said.

    ¡°Apparently,¡± I said, ¡°there¡¯s three people or entities that are coming. They¡¯re going to have this big fight, and in the process, the whole world gets fucked. You¡¯re number two.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not trying to end the world,¡± Alma said, ¡°I¡¯m trying to save it. If the prophecy says anything else-¡±

    ¡°I believe you,¡± I said, ¡°but your Dragon¡¯s Teeth buddies? Those hallucinations that people around the world are getting? That doesn¡¯t make you seem benign.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve made mistakes,¡± Alma said, ¡°but it¡¯ll be worth it. If you¡¯re smart, you¡¯ll see someday.¡±

    ¡°Is this where you tell me I¡¯m either with you or against you?¡± I asked.

    ¡°No,¡± Alma said. ¡°This is where I tell you what I need. I need Mubashir.¡±

    ¡°How do you¡­? Why?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m psychic,¡± Alma said. ¡°You, Mubashir, and his Al-Qaeda buddies walked into the Sun Tzu boy¡¯s locker room. The Al-Qaeda terrorists are still there to this day.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± I said, ¡°they¡¯re¡­ alive?¡± I remembered how those Al-Qaeda operatives had been twisted into tasteful, Arabic-inspired decorations.

    ¡°In a sense,¡± Alma said and shivered. ¡°I can still feel them. One of the reasons I¡¯m leaving NIU.¡±

    ¡°And why do you want Mubashir?¡± I asked.

    ¡°They¡¯re coming,¡± Alma said. ¡°There¡¯s a reason the President created the Jason Project. Originally, I was just going to kill him, but when I got here, I found he couldn¡¯t sleep. He¡¯s spent his life running from something. That¡¯s why he¡¯s created the Jason Project, UNIX, the University¡­ plans within plans, contingencies for contingencies¡­ He¡¯s scared, so I¡¯m terrified.¡±

    She leaned closer and touched my hand. It was as cold as a corpse¡¯s ¡°I need Mubashir. If I¡¯m not strong enough, the world could end.¡± She got up and headed towards the door. Ulfric held it open for her. When she was at it, she turned towards me and said, ¡°All you need to do to help save the world is make one introduction.¡±

    ¡°Is this where you pretend to walk out?¡± I asked.

    ¡°No,¡± Alma said. ¡°I have things to do and I¡¯m pretty sure you won¡¯t help me. Yet.¡± Then both Ulfric and her walked down the hall, the world slowly fading back to normal. Her voice floated back to me, distorted and echoing. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, I¡¯ll know when you change your mind.¡±

    The room changed completely back to normal and suddenly I realized the tactic Alma was using on me. It was the same one that UNIX had used to get me to go to NIU. It was the same one Charlotte had used me to go to Japan. Then and there, I made the decision to not to give in. Every time I¡¯d given into self-importance, I¡¯d just brought more misery on myself.

    Still, deep down, I wondered if Alma had  some other way of convincing me. Or if she even needed to.

 6.16: Calm Before the Storm

    I hadn¡¯t even been mulling over Alma¡¯s statement a minute when Eliza came back in. She was paler than usual and she sat down heavily. ¡°What happened?¡± I asked.

    ¡°It¡¯s fallen,¡± Eliza said.

    ¡°Really?¡± I asked. ¡°I mean, I know Hawaii probably wasn¡¯t prepared, but¡­¡±

    "No, not Hawaii,¡± Eliza said, ¡°The UK.¡± We shut up, me mostly because I was stunned. ¡°Though Hawaii probably¡¯s going down soon.¡±

    ¡°What do you mean, ¡®England¡¯s fallen?¡¯¡± I asked. ¡°England doesn¡¯t just fall. They aren¡¯t fucking Denmark.¡±

    ¡°I bloody know, mate,¡± Eliza said. ¡°But they¡¯ve got our silos, Buckingham¡¯s in their control, and pretty much every major city and military base from Edinburgh to London¡¯s got a nice ol¡¯ infestation of Drake.¡±

    ¡°But¡­¡± I said, ¡°but how? Yesterday they were on the other side of the channel!¡±

    ¡°Probably has something to do with their gateways,¡± Eliza said. ¡°But yeah, that was record time for them. From what we can gather, they put a huge amount into this one. Seemed to be a higher ratio of Dragon¡¯s Teeth to defenders than normal. And they were a lot less concerned with civilian casualties.¡±

    ¡°Jesus¡­¡± I said. ¡°What the hell?¡±

    ¡°I know,¡± Eliza said. ¡°D¡¯you think they¡¯re gonna stop there?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°I wish I could say they would, but I¡¯d be willing to bet I¡¯m going to figure out first-hand what you¡¯re experiencing soon.¡±

    ¡°Oh, by the way,¡± I said, ¡°I lost my phone.¡±

    Eliza groaned. ¡°Jesus Christ, now those bastards have a direct line on everyone in your contacts.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°Can I borrow your phone to give them a heads up?¡±

    ¡°Better do that,¡± Eliza said.

    As I was texting everyone possibly affected, I said, ¡°By the way, you remember Alma Hebert?¡±

    ¡°My creepy first year roommate?¡± Eliza asked. ¡°Yeah, definitely.¡± She shivered theatrically. ¡°You know she hung around with Ulfric? Saw ¡®em together multiple times. Guess they were off in the same ways.¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s the Death Goddess,¡± I said.

    ¡°Fuckin¡¯ ¡®ell,¡± Eliza said.

    "And I think that Ulfric might be Dragon¡¯s Teeth, now that I think about it,¡± I said. ¡°I actually saw a few guys that looked a hell of a lot like him.¡±

    ¡°I refer you to my previous statement,¡± Eliza said. Then she groaned. ¡°Gah, how the fuck didn¡¯t anyone realize this?¡±

    ¡°I get the feeling that there wasn¡¯t much coordination between the guys who made the Dragon¡¯s Teeth,¡± I said. ¡°The Jason Project, that¡¯s what they¡¯re called¡­¡±

    ¡°¡®Course they are,¡± Eliza said,

    ¡°¡­Couldn¡¯t really be in regular contact with the President at the beginning, plus there was plausible deniability and then they went rogue.¡±

    Eliza laughed. ¡°Fuckin¡¯ typical, innit? Goddamn conga line of betrayal. The President hires some people to make monsters to take over the world for ¡®im, they make the monsters and decide they don¡¯t need to follow orders. Then the monsters start tryin¡¯ to revolt.¡± She paused. ¡°¡®Ow¡¯d you figure out that Alma was¡­?¡±Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

    ¡°She contacted me with her psychic powers,¡± I said.

    Eliza groaned something about ¡°not signing up for this¡± and threw her head back in exasperation.

    ¡°My life,¡± I said, ¡°is just so incredibly strange right now.¡±

    ¡°Warn the people your weirdness might rub off on, weird boy,¡± Eliza said.

    ¡°Getting on it right now,¡± I said.

    John Marshall was the first person I called. He had been my fellow UNIX infiltrator (well, one of four, but he had been the one I had made contact with in Hell Semester) and we had been close for a while. The problem was that John wanted out, and I may or may not be an addict. When he went to North Korea, he had ended up getting shot in a firefight with South Korean police. Then there was Japan, and John had decided he was out.

    After listening to my explanation, he said, voice dangerous, ¡°So, basically, because of you, I might have been doxed by the Dragon¡¯s Teeth?¡±

    ¡°Potentially,¡± I said. ¡°In my defense, this was not my fault.¡±

    ¡°You had my number in your phone,¡± John said, ¡°despite the fact that you knew people could hack it. But yeah, completely not your fault.¡± He then hung up. You can¡¯t really slam a cPhone, but if he could, he would have.

    ¡°Well fuck you too,¡± I said. Then I called Eric. Eric, Ray-Gun, the Monk, MC Disaster, and Doc were some former African child soldiers I¡¯d met in Hell Semester. My knowledge of their days back home was sketchy. For instance, I wasn¡¯t entirely sure which country they were even from. I did, however, know that they¡¯d done something to piss off a local warlord.

    ¡°Thank you my friend,¡± Eric said after I had filled him in. ¡°I will tell the rest of my crew.¡±

    ¡°Thanks,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ll call Cross next.¡± Croccifixio ¡°Cross¡± Castellan was another buddy from Hell Semester. He was from New York and was the son of some sort of mobster.

    ¡°Excuse me a moment,¡± Eric said, then yelled away from the phone, ¡°Cross! Stop fucking Doc in the ass for a few minutes! Nathan needs to tell you something!¡± Turning back to me, he said, ¡°He got back here a few hours after we cleaned up from the Dragon¡¯s Teeth attack. Whenever he and Doc want to have sex, they kick everyone else out.¡±

    From inside the room, I heard Cross yell, ¡°Fuck you! We weren¡¯t doing anything!¡±

    ¡°I will refrain from your kind offer for the moment,¡± Eric said.

    ¡°I didn¡¯t mean to interrupt whatever it is you¡¯re doing there¡­¡± I began, but I heard the door open and Eric hand off the phone to Cross. ¡°Hey Cross,¡± I said.

    ¡°¡®Sup?¡± Cross asked.

    ¡°So I lost my cPhone and it had your cPhone number on it,¡± I said, ¡°Plus a Deet got a good look at it. Now it¡¯s sitting in the FBI Honolulu office, waiting for invading Dragon¡¯s Teeth to find it.¡±

    ¡°How the fuck did¡­ never mind, I don¡¯t want to know,¡± Cross said. ¡°Those assholes just show up everywhere. That¡¯s why my dad sent me to school. We¡¯ve been hearing shit in New York for months now.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± I asked. ¡°How come I haven¡¯t heard anything?¡±

    ¡°Look,¡± Cross said, ¡°I don¡¯t mean to diss newspapers, but they don¡¯t spend hours talking to bums and crackheads unless they have some bullshit ¡®human interest story.¡¯ They don¡¯t poke around abandoned buildings and bumfuck-nowhere wilderness looking for stories. People I know? They¡¯re interacting with those people and going to those places every fucking day.¡±

    ¡°And what are they noticing?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Activity.¡± Cross said. ¡°One guy of ours was burying a corpse in his favorite spot. Then he struck this hunk of prime rib. Few feet beneath that? Fucking junkie with a hole through her heart that looked burned around the edges. That¡¯s how it started.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, ¡°those injuries sound like something only Dragon¡¯s Teeth can make.¡±

    ¡°Basically, they¡¯re setting something up,¡± Cross said, ¡°and the junkies and bums are accidentally stumbling on it ¡®cause they¡¯re looking for places to sleep for the night or get high. We¡¯re hesitant to tell the cops ¡®cause, y¡¯know¡­¡±

    ¡°Why were you digging a hole there?¡± I finished. ¡°Why were you talking to that guy?¡±

    ¡°Exactly,¡± Cross said. ¡°We don¡¯t want to tell the police because that¡¯s gonna fuck things up. Even if leaving things as-is will fuck things up worse.¡±

    ¡°What about the super heroes?¡± I asked. ¡°I mean, isn¡¯t this the kind of stuff that-¡±

    ¡°Nate,¡± Cross said, ¡°here¡¯s a tip: capes don¡¯t give a fucking shit. Maybe some of the noobs do, but most of these ¡®heroes¡¯ are just in it for the fame and¡­ and the fucking, I dunno, Sprite deals. You should know. You live in Boston.¡±

    "What¡¯s that supposed to mean?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Vast majority of those guys,¡± Cross said, ¡°fix their fights. Your girl Jen was probably the last to fix hers.¡±

    ¡°Why?¡± I asked.

    ¡°I dunno,¡± Cross said. ¡°Probably because she needed the cash like all the rest.¡±

    ¡°No,¡± I said, ¡°why didn¡¯t she think of it first?¡±

    ¡°Jen¡¯s weird,¡± Cross said. ¡°Smart, good at business, but weird.¡±

    ¡°Speaking of Jen,¡± I said, ¡°I actually need to call her about this.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Cross said, ¡°You definitely should start in on that.¡±

    As soon as I hung up, I had an idea. ¡°Hey, Eliza,¡± I said. ¡°You know how I don¡¯t know that much about lawyers?¡±

    ¡°Yeah?¡± she asked, her eyebrow raising suspiciously.

    ¡°I think I know who does.¡±

    ¡°Fucking Christ,¡± Eliza said. ¡°It¡¯s Jen, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°Do you trust Hicks not to arrest us as soon as we touch down in LA?¡± I asked. ¡°I mean, I like the guy, but he¡¯s a cop.¡±

    ¡°Fuck no,¡± Eliza said. She sighed. ¡°Call her, I guess.¡±

 6.16: The Person on the News

    ¡°So,¡± Hicks said, rubbing his temples, ¡°why, exactly, was this friend of a friend digging in national wildlife reservation at three am on a Monday?¡±

    Before I could answer, Ken Watanabe, the Boston lawyer that Jen had sent us, cut in. ¡°Mr. Hicks,¡± he said in his mostly Texas accent (with a creeping intrusion of Boston Townie,) ¡°I fail to see how this is relevant to the conversation in any way.¡± Ken Watanabe was a slightly comical man with Asian facial features, short stature, and a penchant for cowboy clothing mixed with expensive suits. He was also Jennifer Kagemoto¡¯s lawyer, which made me wonder how ridiculous he actually was.

    ¡°I¡¯m just wondering,¡± Hicks said, ¡°because that particular reservation isn¡¯t open to the public at that point.¡±

    ¡°And that,¡± Watanabe said, ¡°is why our friends wish to remain anonymous. Y¡¯all are gonna harass them over minor infractions, despite the fact that they¡¯ve been very helpful to us.¡±

    ¡°Much as I doubt that¡¯s they were doing was minor,¡± Agent Barton said.

    ¡°Without any evidence,¡± Watanabe muttered under his breath.

    ¡°We have more important things to do,¡± Barton said, pointedly ignoring Watanabe. ¡°And we need to contact these people. There¡¯s a lot of very disturbing things that they¡¯ve seen and we need to find a way to collect and collate the information, assuming it isn¡¯t too late already.¡±

    ¡°I understand the gravity of the situation,¡± Watanabe said, ¡°but I need to do what¡¯s best for my client. That¡¯s my job.¡±

    ¡°Maybe,¡± I said, ¡°we should take a break?¡± We weren¡¯t in an interrogation room, thankfully. Instead, we were in a little suite of apartments in what appeared to be a hotel. However, something about the perky female receptionist who¡¯d had one hand under the desk when we¡¯d checked in and the man at the bar who drank nothing but water seemed to suggest that the clientele wasn¡¯t exactly normal.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Hicks said. ¡°Sounds like a good idea.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said to Watanabe as soon as Hicks and Barton were gone, ¡°How likely is it that Hicks is going to nail someone if I give him the opportunity?¡±

    ¡°Hundred percent,¡± Watanabe said. ¡°Maybe not immediately, but it¡¯s in his nature. Barton¡¯s too. You want to protect your friends-¡±

    ¡°Who are also yer clients,¡± Eliza said. ¡°Or do business with yer clients.¡±

    ¡°That has no bearing on the situation,¡± Watanabe said. ¡°If you¡¯ll excuse me, I need to make a few phone calls.¡±A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    ¡°Sure thing,¡± I said. He stood up, we shook hands. ¡°I¡¯ll see you later, I guess.¡± As soon as he had left, I said, ¡°He¡¯s going to call Jen, isn¡¯t he?¡±

    ¡°Possibly not,¡± Eliza said. ¡°They¡¯re probably bugging him.¡±

    ¡°Like he doesn¡¯t know that,¡± I said. We considered our problem. ¡°Calling Jen was a mistake, wasn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Eliza said, starting to count off options, ¡°we could¡¯ve decided not to ¡®ave a lawyer. That¡¯d be just as dumb. We could have hired another lawyer and stonewalled, but time¡¯s of the essence. We also don¡¯t know any other lawyers in this country. We might be able to hire a lawyer for a second opinion, but I got a sneakin¡¯ suspicion ¡®e¡¯ll end up with a bullet in the back of his head. Also, we don¡¯t know any bloody lawyers in this bloody country.¡±

    After a few silent moments of me considering Eliza¡¯s wisdom, I said, ¡°Fuck, you¡¯re right.¡± Eliza mad a noise of agreement, then there were a few more moments of silence. Finally, I said, ¡°So, you want to watch the news?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Eliza said, ¡°but it¡¯d probably be better than worrying about what the hell will happen next.¡±

    We turned on the news and began watching one of the major networks. There were several stories about missing journalists, a new defensive pact including US, Mexico, Canada, and several other countries, and a few scientists talking about how close a space object was getting and arguing whether or not it was a spaceship that contained life or an asteroid. Of course, the thing they mostly talked about was how Hawaii was under Dragon¡¯s Teeth control and how nobody had heard anything about it since the invasion. I estimated ninety percent of the conversation was pure speculation.

    Then, during a piece on the seedy world of super hero/super villain fight betting and fixing (I noticed that some Massachusetts heroes were mentioned, much to my distaste) when it was announced. ¡°We interrupt this segment for an important message,¡± one of the anchors said. ¡°We¡¯re just getting word that two fleets of warships are heading towards the US coast. We now have footage.¡±

    When it came on, my heart sank. ¡°Shit,¡± I said. ¡°I recognize those ships.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Eliza said. ¡°Those carriers and landing ships were at Pearl Harbor, weren¡¯t they? And there¡¯s some English, Australian and Indian ships as well.¡±

    "No,¡± I said. ¡°I mean, I¡¯m sure you¡¯re right, but that ship the camera person is getting close to? That¡¯s a ship that was at that Russian port.¡± I squinted. ¡°And yep, those are Deets on deck. You can sail away now, camera person. I really don¡¯t want to see you die.¡±

    The anchors, who had seen the Dragon¡¯s Teeth a second after me, and realized what they were only a few seconds later, had the exact reaction. As they clamored and begged for the sailor with the shitty phone and a streaming service to get closer, I began to realize I hated them. Then the close-in weapons system opened up. Despite being a hundred and fifty meters away from the ship, the roar from what appeared to be three six-barreled 20mm turrets was loud enough to cause the microphone on the camera to crackle. I saw a brief glimpse of red tracers, the deck splintering and the water going from calm green to roiling, frenzied-piranha white, then the feed cut.

    One of the anchors said, ¡°We apologize for the disturbing footage. We.. we will be back after the break.¡± As the camera switched to an overhead view, I heard what I assumed the producer shouting and the anchor say, ¡°Dammit, I know! I know Rob! But I can¡¯t. I just can¡¯t.¡±

    Then the door opened. In walked Hicks and Barton. ¡°We¡¯re leaving.¡± Barton said. ¡°Now.¡±

 6.17: Badlands

    ¡°So,¡± I asked, as we boarded a military plane, ¡°why are we leaving?¡± Several families and individuals, maybe other people in witness protection, maybe families of military brass, and some soldiers and FBI agents were also crammed in with us.

    ¡°Did you see the traffic on the way?¡± Barton asked.

    ¡°Kind of hard to miss it,¡± Eliza said. ¡°We were bloody in it on the way to the police station.¡±

    ¡°Exactly,¡± Barton said. ¡°It¡¯s going to get a lot worse. Everybody on the west coast is going to want to get to the east coast.¡±

    ¡°Which is going to be a problem,¡± Hicks said, ¡°because the army¡¯s going to want to get here as fast as possible.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Barton said, a haunted look in his eyes, ¡°that¡¯ll be a nightmare.¡±

    ¡°So,¡± Watanabe asked, seemingly trying to hold back his barf, ¡°where are you going to keep my clients?¡±

    ¡°Can I make a suggestion?¡± I asked. Hicks made a grunting noise and nodded, which I assumed he¡¯d listen, if not follow it. ¡°My company¡¯s factory has been experimenting with automated defenses for a while.¡±

    ¡°That shouldn¡¯t be necessary,¡± Hicks said. ¡°But New England might be a good place to lay low.¡±

    ¡°What if they win?¡± Watanabe asked, instantly sucking all the air out of the room. ¡°There¡¯s a good chance that the Dragon¡¯s Teeth will win. They¡¯ve already steamrollered most of Europe, including France, Germany and England. Russia won¡¯t last the month. China¡¯s already admitted it¡¯s lost more people than it can replace, and India isn¡¯t looking too good either.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said eventually, ¡°that¡¯s actually somewhat reassuring. Hopefully, they¡¯re spent. I mean, do you have any idea how much manpower all this is taking? Since the US spends more money on defense than Russia and China combined, we might be the straw that breaks the camel¡¯s back.¡± That seemed to cheer up Watanabe and some of the people we were flying with.

    ¡°Do you really believe that?¡± Eliza asked in a disbelieving monotone.

    ¡°I don¡¯t believe my theory is impossible,¡± I said, hedging. ¡°I mean, it makes sense, doesn¡¯t it?¡± The people became less consoled. A baby started crying. Even Hicks looked a little sick, and something told me it wasn¡¯t because of the plane ride.

    Watanabe, head in his hands, said, ¡°Nathan, you realize you aren¡¯t in a courtroom and can¡¯t be sued for perjury as such?¡±

    I shrugged. ¡°Not like I can lie now. Anyone know where we are?¡±

    ¡°Probably around the Grand Canyon,¡± Hicks said. ¡°Unless the Dragon¡¯s Teeth are trickier than we thought, we-¡±

    Suddenly, there was a loud thump and the sound of screeching metal. The plane began to fall out of the sky as warning lights blared. I would have said something snarky, but I didn¡¯t think anyone could hear me above the new ambient noise. Also, most of the younger children were screaming now. Now was neither the time nor the place.

    The plane, after what seemed like a millennia of plummeting to the ground, finally hit the ground with a crunch. One person, a weaseley man who¡¯d been screaming louder than any of the children, hadn¡¯t been buckled in and hit the ceiling of the plane with his head. As the plane skidded along, he turned into a projectile, narrowly missing a family, slamming his spine into someone¡¯s knee, and breaking his neck when his head hit a soldier¡¯s plate at a weird angle. Meanwhile, people were getting shaken up and loose items were being tossed around. I, like many other people, had my head slam into the wall. Then, while I was trying to get my bearings, a soldier¡¯s M4 flew into my face so hard I could feel that the receiver and handguard left an imprint.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

    Then everything in the cabin became very, very still. After a prolonged silence, the children began crying, adults began panicking, and the FBI agents and soldiers who had their shit together began trying to restore order. Naturally, Barton and Hicks were part of that last category.

    After our two FBI friends had wandered off, Watanabe asked, ¡°You going to help them?¡±

    "No,¡± I said dully, as a massive headache set in.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Eliza slurred as she clutched the back of her head, blood leaking through her fingertips, ¡°we¡¯re just going to sit down ¡®ere for a bit an¡¯ let the professionals do their job for a bloody change.¡±

    As we were talking, one of the pilots stumbled out of the cabin. I think he might have been the captain. ¡°Listen up!¡± he yelled. We all turned to look at him. ¡°You¡¯ve probably figured it out already, but that wasn¡¯t mechanical failure. We¡¯ve called in to the Arizona Air National Guard, and it seems that something¡¯s attempting to shoot down planes between the Sierra Nevada and the Rockies. We¡¯re one of the unlucky ones they hit.¡±

    ¡°Who are ¡®they?¡¯¡± someone asked.

    ¡°We¡¯re unsure,¡± the captain said. ¡°Still, all we need to do is sit tight and wait for the National Guard to pick us up.¡± I rolled my eyes at the lie. If multiple planes were going down, then there was no chance it was anything other than Dragon¡¯s Teeth. The only question I had was how? If it was via air-to-air, I had no idea how it had gotten here. If it was surface-to-air, then we could be in serious trouble.

    ¡°Hey, Hicks?¡± I asked

    ¡°What is it?¡± He asked softly, having just been comforting a sobbing child. For once I was glad I was in the mercenary and weapons business. There weren¡¯t many screaming children, at least not the way I did it.

    ¡°Shouldn¡¯t someone go scout around a bit?¡± I asked. ¡°Just¡­ to make sure things are alright? You know, get a good idea of where we are.¡±

    Hicks considered this for a moment, then said, ¡°Yeah, that¡¯d be a good idea.¡± He got up, and, indicating the child and her mom, said, ¡°Take care of them, ok?¡± He then left me alone for a few minutes of awkward conversation. I eventually ended up having to talk about how I appeared so calm. That involved lying about how I was still loopy from my head injuries and instead saying something about how panic wouldn¡¯t help.

    Eventually, Hicks came back. ¡°You were pretty good,¡± he said.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. I thought I was talking utter shit. ¡°Anyway, what¡¯s the situation?¡±

    ¡°Marines are going to form a perimeter,¡± Hicks said. ¡°I¡¯d like us to go up a hill, get a better look.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said.

    The ramp at the rear of the plane opened and we began to leave the plane. The Marines headed out first, their weapons loaded, but hanging from their slings. Hicks, Barton, Eliza, Watanabe, and I continued up a hill. By the time we were at the first lip, the sun was starting to set. From there, we could see that several over planes had come down in the area. We seemed to be the only survivors.

    ¡°So,¡± Watanabe asked, completely out of breath, ¡°what¡­ what¡¯s happening?¡± As he talked, we could hear an airplane flying overhead. I turned to look at it. At the height it was flying, I couldn¡¯t really tell what kind of plane it was, other than some kind of jet. It looked big, but again, I couldn¡¯t really tell from the ground.

    ¡°Good question,¡± Hicks said. ¡°The people on-site don¡¯t seem to-¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± I said, pointing to the plane, ¡°why¡¯s that plane falling?¡±

    "Oh fuck,¡± Eliza said. ¡°That¡¯s what I ¡®eard.¡± I turned to her, and she said, answering my unasked question, ¡°I ¡®eard a bit of brrrt sound. Must¡¯ve been gunfire.¡± She then pointed at the sky. ¡°Think it was air-to-air. Look.¡±

    I followed her finger. She was pointing to the plane¡¯s contrails. There, much fainter, ran a parallel line. At a certain point, the falling jet¡¯s contrails began to dip, but the other set continued on. As I studied it, I heard a large thump. Turning to the source, I saw a cloud of dust and debris rise up from behind a mountain. A few seconds later, I felt some clumps of dirt hit me and saw large chunks of metal fall within a few hundred meters of the plane we¡¯d been on.

    ¡°So,¡± I said. ¡°That was air-to-air with one plane being invisible.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Eliza said. ¡°That¡¯s¡­ disturbing, innit? I mean, where the ¡®ell did that come from? Either it¡¯s got a big enough range and a fast enough engine to fly all the way out from the Pacific to shoot down a single jet liner, or it¡¯s launched from somewhere much closer.¡±

    ¡°I hope it¡¯s from one of the carriers in the Pacific,¡± I said. ¡°Because if it¡¯s land-based, there¡¯s a much higher chance of us getting company soon.¡±

    ¡°Does that answer your question?¡± Watanabe asked, pointing. In the distance, heading towards the downed plane, were several trails of dust. Squinting, I could see what appeared to be solid darkness speeding towards the planes.

 6.18: 21st Century Warfare

    We hunkered down as the dust trails came closer, the black shapes still hard to identify. Looking at the plane, I could see movement. The Marines must have seen or heard what I assumed to be Charons and were moving into firing positions. They must have known that four or five men with assault rifles didn¡¯t stand a chance against four conventional APCs, let alone ones made out of whatever super space substance the Dragon¡¯s Teeth.

    Meanwhile, the civilians, FBI agents, and the pilots were taking off running. Some were heading towards us, which was smart. We had hiked up a hill that should have been impassable to wheeled vehicles like the Charon. The others were running along the relatively flat ground. That wouldn¡¯t work. Charons could theoretically beat most sports cars on the track.

    Their speed was demonstrated pretty quickly, appropriately enough. The vehicles came into range and the Marines began to open up. Unsurprisingly, they were ineffective and most of the vehicles simply ignored them. One cut off the people heading down the flat area. Twelve Dragon¡¯s Teeth Legionnaires exited the vehicle and began controlling the runners. Two sped up to cut off the people heading up the mountain. When the dust cleared, I could see that they¡¯d parked close enough that I could see that they¡¯d parked perpendicular to us and opened their doors facing us, revealing their clinically white interior. Legionaries, in their Roman-inspired armor, were getting out and controlling the crowd. The last Charon, meanwhile, had slammed on its brakes, smashing into a Marine and enveloping itself in dust. When that dust cleared, it revealed six newly deployed Legionnaires who then proceeded to kill the remaining Marines. Then the Charon sped off to ride heard on the passengers from the plane trying to escape via the flat lands.

    Meanwhile, we were lying down prone on the ground behind rocks and cacti. ¡°Do you think they can hear us?¡± Watanabe whispered. Despite being about three hundred meters away from the soldiers, everyone else shushed him.

    We watched as the Legionaries slowly herded the groups back towards the plane, occasionally firing off rounds. As they did, Eliza whispered, ¡°Does anyone else ¡®ear motors?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°Where are they coming from?¡±

    Eliza pointed in a direction that was about thirty degrees off from where the Charons had come from. ¡°¡®Eavy vehicles, comin¡¯ from over there. ¡®Bout four, and they sound different from Charons. They¡¯re goin¡¯ slower an¡¯ they¡¯re usin¡¯ petrol or diesel engines ¡®steada electric.¡± She then turned and pointed behind us. ¡°And some SUVs, plus a few other trucks. Bit more of them.¡±

    ¡°Hopefully that¡¯s the National Guard,¡± I said. Then, from the first area Eliza had pointed, there was a gout of fire from a cannon¡¯s muzzle flash and an equally impressive crack. Something, probably a 105mm HEAT shell, smashed through the side doors of one Charon and kicked up a spray of dust. ¡°Yep,¡± I said, watching the four Stryker Mobile Gun Systems (basically slower, less technologically-advanced versions of Charons with bigger guns) crest the hill, ¡°it¡¯s the National Guard.¡±

    The Charon that had been was able to speed off in a cloud of dust. What I could see of it showed that, since the HEAT round had hit its doors, the damage was only cosmetic. Another Charon, however, wasn¡¯t so lucky. I saw a HEAT round smash down right in front of it. Whatever the Charons were made out of must have been extremely lightweight, because it flipped over onto its roof, its gun turret jammed into the Arizona sand, rendering the vehicle disabled. It was a humiliating injury.

    The Strykers, meanwhile, were pressing the attack. Every time a 105 fired, my chest would rattle like one of those big fireworks like the Fourth of July. The impacts of the shells were even more awesome. I felt like I was about to have a heart attack, it was so intense.

    It would have been awe-inspiring if not for the fact that they weren¡¯t hitting anything. A Stryker MGS is a platform with an anti-tank weapon given to people who are trained to hit broadsides of barns and not much else. They¡¯re there to remove bunkers, fortified buildings of no strategic importance, and maybe a swarm of counter-attacking infantry. Expecting them to hit something as fast as a sports car is both unrealistic and unfair.

    Charons, meanwhile, seemed to be designed for just this kind of situation. As soon as they took off, it became clear that any normal gunner couldn¡¯t hit them without some sort of aim assist. Then they opened fire.

    Their guns were around twenty or forty millimeters and fully automatic. The first time one of the Charons burped out some rounds, they exploded and bounced of one of the Strykers, causing the armor to crumple. The second time, they penetrated the armor of the cockpit and the vehicle swerved. Then another Stryker was hit, its front blowing out and its wheels collapsing. It coasted to a halt and lay there, smoke emitting from the holes.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

    Meanwhile, one Stryker got a miraculous hit on a Charon. The HEAT round must have impacted on the side-front, because the Charon¡¯s rear raised up and it did an odd sort of pirouette on one of its front tires, its rear ramp falling open.

    The two remaining Charons pulled up alongside their remaining attackers and released stunning broadsides. One Stryker had its front end seemingly melt from a long burst of the Charon¡¯s autocannon. The last remaining Stryker, however, must have taken a round to its magazine or fuel tank. The darkening area was illuminated by multiple explosions from the stricken vehicle. It was then engulfed in flame and kept rolling, carried by momentum.

    The Charons, seemingly unperturbed by the loss of half their team, slowly returned to patrol around the crashed plane. They¡¯d been hit pretty hard, but I had to admit one was only due to surprise and another loss was completely due to either unearthly skill or a freak accident. Meanwhile, the soldiers they had disgorged were just finishing up herding the last few crash survivors back into the downed plane.

    Then, from behind us, the missiles came. I¡¯m assuming they were Javelin missiles, but I don¡¯t really care. I just love the way they fucked up the Charons. Each one disappeared in a cloud of smoke and dust. One emerged, coasting along, smoke billowing out from a hole in the top, its front windscreens shattered and blood staining the hood and its turret spinning wildly. The other just stayed in its little cloud, explosions sending bits and pieces of it flying as its magazine exploded in a chain reaction.

    I turned around. Soldiers, either National Guard or regular Army, were cresting the hill. They began firing their M16s, M249s, and M14s down into the somewhat clumped up Legionnaires. The Dragon¡¯s Teeth should have been slaughtered.

    Instead, that first wave of soldiers were mostly wiped out. They were good, but a lot of their shots missed. Again, at that range, in that light, with mostly just iron sights, it was understandable. And the shots that did hit were mostly stopped by the Legionnaires¡¯ armor. The Legionnaires, meanwhile, had fancy optics, what was probably intense training, selective breeding, and genetic enhancements out the wazoo. They were slaughtering the first few to come over the hill.

    Then two Stryker ICVs (like the Stryker MGS, but carries infantry and has machineguns instead of a cannon) and three Humvees crested the hill in V-formation. Three of the Humvees and the Strykers were equipped with M2 .50 caliber machineguns which seemed to be pretty good at knocking down Legionnaires in a way that made them unable to get up. The middle Humvee had an Mk. 19 automatic grenade launcher which didn¡¯t seem to be as effective, but made me feel a lot better. Then, there was the sound of a 105 firing, and a group of Legionnaires disappeared in a cloud of dust and smoke. Apparently, there was a Stryker MGS out there that wasn¡¯t as dead as the Charon operators would have liked.

    Soon, there was little left of the forty-eight Legionnaires except corpses. Between the small-arms fire from the troops, the heavy machinegun fire from the supporting vehicles, and the formerly resting Stryker, the Legionnaires had been defeated. Barely. If half of those Charons hadn¡¯t been taken out by the initial Stryker assault, or if the Javelins had missed, there would be a lot more US soldiers bleeding out on the sand and a lot less Dragon¡¯s Teeth.

    The soldiers advanced cautiously. Every time one of the Legionnaires twitched, the soldiers would open up again, raking the area with firepower. Eventually, their line advanced so far that one stepped on Watanabe. The soldier¡¯s first reaction was to nearly blow Watanabe¡¯s head off with an M16. Watanabe¡¯s reaction was to let out a strangled cry.

    ¡°Jesus Christ!¡± the soldier said. ¡°What the hell?¡± I noticed the soldier was wearing a gas mask. That explained why the Dragon¡¯s Teeth wasn¡¯t spamming hallucinogenic gas like they normally did.

    Hicks, thinking fast, held up his ID. ¡°It¡¯s ok,¡± he said, ¡°we¡¯re FBI.¡±

    More soldiers came over, training rifles on us. When there were about two or three soldiers for every one of us, one shone a light in our faces and checked Hicks¡¯ ID. Another pinched our foreheads with his thumb and forefinger and pulled, obviously checking for masks. ¡°You¡¯ve been having infiltrators, too, huh?¡± Barton asked.

    ¡°How¡¯d you find out about the masks?¡± one soldier asked.

    ¡°Some bastards with them,¡± Hicks said in annoyance, ¡°managed to get into the Honolulu field office by wearing them and flashing US Marshall badges.¡± After a pause, Hicks said, ¡°In retrospect, we kind of deserved that.¡±

    ¡°You guys can write up the after-action reports later, sir,¡± one of the soldiers said. ¡°In the meantime, please stay here.¡±

    We spent a while under guard while the Guardsmen advanced on the plane. I noticed that behind the armed Strykers and Humvees were two unarmed Strykers and two green Bearcat armored cars. The Bearcats sped past and approached the plane, running over the downed Legionnaires. I wasn¡¯t sure whether or not that was on purpose. Some of the SWAT officers entered the plane, most stayed out and began checking the dead Dragon¡¯s Teeth.

    Then, the two unarmed Strykers moved in. One pulled up to the plane and the SWAT officers began bringing the civilians into the vehicles. The other collected the dead and injured Guardsmen, then pulled up next to the still-functioning Stryker MGS and began evacuating the people from it.

    ¡°So what happens now?¡± I asked.

    ¡°We get you guys back to base,¡± a Guardsman said, ¡°and hope no more shit goes wrong.¡±

 6.19: Brighter Nights

    Surprisingly, nothing new went wrong until we got back to base. Even more surprisingly, things didn¡¯t go wrong for a while.

    That¡¯s not to say, however, that things weren¡¯t completely fucked around us. Throughout the entire trip to the base, I could see scenes of destruction through the window of the Bearcat I was in. Planes of all shapes and sizes had crashed to the ground. Most of them were civilian airliners carrying people fleeing from the expected Dragon¡¯s Teeth amphibious attack, but there were plenty of military and cargo planes as well. A few even appeared to be Dragon¡¯s Teeth.

    There was also the expected mass exodus of civilians and police and military frantically directing them. People were angry and scared, and the fact that we seemed to be ¡°cutting¡± when we were traveling via evacuation route pissed a lot of people off. Most of the populated roads we were passing were in good shape, but some were blocked by fallen planes, collapsed buildings, and wrecked, broken or abandoned buildings.

    Then you¡¯d get to a place where there had obviously been some sort of battle. Apparently, the Dragon¡¯s Teeth had been raiding the line of evacuees. We¡¯d see hastily barricades hastily erected by civilians and cops and the remains of pitched combined arms battles. Apparently, the Dragon¡¯s Teeth had tanks, too. Like the Charons, they looked a lot like stealth bombers. There were also Charons with missiles and four-barreled miniguns for AA purposes and what appeared to be their answer to the Hummvee, except disguised as a luxury SUV. When you looked at how many wrecks Abrams tanks, Bradleys, Strykers, and Humvees there were per equivalent destroyed Dragon¡¯s Teeth vehicle, you began to realize that the only reason the Teeth weren¡¯t in control of that area was sheer numbers.

    The worst part, though, was seeing what the civilians had faced when the battles began. Trapped by the sheer number of cars, they were essentially in a shooting gallery. Many wrecks had to be pulled off the road and body bags had apparently run out, as many unlucky enough to be hit were pulled off the road and left for all who drove past to see. Occaisionally, I¡¯d see a mixture of civilians, soldiers, and first responders digging mass graves and checking ID. Most of the time the manpower seemed to be needed elsewhere.

    As we moved on, I noticed that I could always hear gunfire and explosions. Mostly it was the thunder of big guns and impacts of those and missiles. When I say big guns, I¡¯m talking stuff like 120mm mortars and 150mm Howitzers, things that were making my chest rattle just by firing at distances so far I couldn¡¯t even see them. And they must have been firing faster than intended. Occaisionally, we¡¯d hear small arms fire chattering. Sometimes it was even disturbingly close.

    However, the scariest bits were the blue-white flashes of light off in the distance. We couldn¡¯t get a good look at them, but I could tell that it was from Dragon¡¯s Teeth plasma weaponry. That could not have been a good thing.

    Eventually, we came got to a Guard base. It wasn¡¯t a real base, more like a hastily fortified town near the Arizona-Utah border. The basic layout was an irregularly-shaped town with various sandbag emplacements and vehicles around it. Traffic was so bad that you simply could not cut through it, so makeshift bridges had been constructed. A little ways away, planes were landing on makeshift runways. They were mostly big C130s, and they were dropping off supplies, vehicles, and soldiers and taking away VIPs and wounded. I hoped I was a VIP. I didn¡¯t want to get captured by Dragon¡¯s Teeth.

    We staggered out of the Bearcat, having been standing for what felt like several years. We couldn¡¯t get a chance to sit because we were instantly swept up in a tide of mostly uniformed people. Some were attempting to herd us in different directions, others were accidentally shoving us along like a stream. I can¡¯t speak for anyone else in that Bearcat, but I went along with it mostly because I was dead tired. Every few seconds, someone would pull on my forehead to see if I had a mask. Eventually, I was placed where I was supposed to be: an office of some sort that had been converted to VIP area. I fell asleep instantly.

    I woke up after a while. However long I had been asleep wasn¡¯t long enough. I¡¯m not sure what woke me up because nothing had really changed. The TV that was on had been on since I¡¯d come in, the guns were still going, and vehicles were still moving.

    Speaking of the TV, I was now awake to tell what it was saying. A bunch of talking heads were sitting around, saying stuff that was probably completely wrong. Behind them was a map of the United States. Much of it was blue. However, there was an L-shaped area of either solid red or cross-hatched blue that started at Washington State and Montana, then went down the coast. Once it hit Mexico, it then headed East, taking New Mexico, Arizona, Louisiana, and Florida as well as much of Texas and taking chunks out of states immediately to the North.

    I blinked at the map uncomprehendingly for a few minutes until I realized what it was of. It was of the area the Dragon¡¯s Teeth had taken. The four anchors on the screen were talking about the morality of the US breaking out the chemical weapons. My first reaction was outrage. Of course it was a good idea! I admit, normally I¡¯d say the kind of stuff they were talking about was immoral, but if it was effective, then that was probably the only chance we had.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    I was wondering whether or not poison gas would be effective (probably, at least at first, the Deets had this filter on their masks that could remove their own gases but not more permanent stuff,) when one of the anchors asked the question I should have asked at the beginning. ¡°Hell yeah,¡± he was saying, trying to shout over the over three who were shouting over him. ¡°We got-excuse me-we got all this stuff lying around and they ARE INVADING OUR COUNTRY! The only Goddamn question is why the hell aren¡¯t we using our nukes?¡±

    I paused. That was a good question. Why the hell weren¡¯t we using our nukes? We had enough nuclear weapons at our disposal to end life on Earth and possibly break the back of the Dragon¡¯s Teeth invasion. Were the people in charge hesitating to use them? Or could they not use them for some reason?

    Either way, I was disturbed. My tired mind began racing with all the possibilities that could account for the lack of nuclear response. The best one was that the people in charge knew things I didn¡¯t and the situation wasn¡¯t that desperate. The alternative was they thought they knew things I didn¡¯t and didn¡¯t realize the gravity of the situation which was one of the worst options. Another was that they were worried about the political fallout as well as the other kind, or reports were so confused that they didn¡¯t know where to aim. An even more disturbing possibility, looking at the map, was that the Dragon¡¯s Teeth had found a way to destroy, disable, or capture the nuclear arsenal of the United States. At that point, I noticed that I was hyperventilating and made a conscious effort to stop.

    A soldier, her gas mask and helmet off, wandered in. She began brewing coffee and when she noticed me staring at her blearily, she asked, ¡°Y¡¯all want some?¡± She looked to be in her thirties, but I couldn¡¯t tell how many of those years had been added in the last few hours.

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said. I¡¯m not a really big fan of coffee, but I was so tired it hurt and I wasn¡¯t really able to go back to sleep. Since tea, soda, and hot chocolate weren¡¯t on the menu, I¡¯d be willing to try coffee. As she brewed, I asked, ¡°So, how¡¯re things going on outside?¡±

    She laughed bitterly. ¡°Well, I got my wish and went from a boring ass-desk job to this bullshit. You believe I wanted to be in the SEALs?¡±

    ¡°Careful what you wish for, sunshine,¡± Eliza said, opening her eyes a crack, ¡°Y¡¯just might get it.¡±

    ¡°Wish you¡¯d told me that before today, ma¡¯am,¡± the soldier said. ¡°I¡¯m Private Owens.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t give me that ma¡¯am bollocks,¡± Eliza said. ¡°We might not¡¯ve ever worn a uniform, but we¡¯ve been in the shit before, an¡¯ we¡¯ll be in the shit again before this is all over.¡±

    Private Owens considered this for a moment, then said, ¡°Ok.¡± She held out her hand. ¡°I¡¯m Nadia Owens.¡±

    Eliza shook it. ¡°Eliza Henderson. And the zombie¡¯s Nathan Jacobs.¡±

    ¡°Pleased to meet you,¡± I said. ¡°How are things going out there?¡±

    ¡°I been fightin¡¯ for about twenty-four hours,¡± Nadia said. ¡°Those fuckers have been kicking our asses for most of it. I was lucky. By the time I¡¯d gotten out there, we¡¯d managed to get enough ground fire to make it possible to send up something.¡±

    Eliza sat up, suddenly awake. ¡°We got shot down by those fuckers. D¡¯you know where they¡¯re coming from?¡±

    ¡°Girl,¡± Nadia said, ¡°We can barely even see those shits, you think we can find where they came from? Anyway, I watched several dozen of our birds fall right out of the sky. Meanwhile, I¡¯m with the 19<sup>th</sup> Spec Ops like I¡¯ve always dreamed, manning 249, which is-¡±

    ¡°A machinegun,¡± Eliza said, ¡°I know, I¡¯ve been shot at by one.¡±

    ¡°What¡¯d ya¡¯ll say you did?¡± Nadia asked.

    ¡°Things,¡± I said. ¡°Anyway, how¡¯d you guys stop them?¡±

    Nadia looked at us for a while, trying to figure out what we were. Eventually she asked, ¡°What makes you think we stopped ¡®em?¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re standing here,¡± I said, ¡°and they aren¡¯t.¡±

    ¡°By that definition I suppose you¡¯re right,¡± Nadia said, shrugging. ¡°I say I only slowed ¡®em down. When we could get the A10s and Apaches in, they¡¯d take out a few vehicles, then they¡¯d get shot down. We didn¡¯t get any real breathers until we dropped some mustard gas on ¡®em. Takes about five or so minutes for the gas to seep through, then they start hackin¡¯ their lungs out.¡±

    ¡°Sounds bloody awful,¡± Eliza said.

    ¡°The reason I¡¯m back here,¡± Nadia said, ¡°is because when we came back to base to change our air supply, some bleeding heart idiot told us to take a rest.  Complete fuckin¡¯ bullshit, we need every person capable of shooting to get out there and shoot.¡±

    ¡°Trust me,¡± I said, ¡°these people you¡¯re fighting, they¡¯ve got a lot of tricks up their sleeves. We haven¡¯t seen everything, and you¡¯ll need to be rested to counter it.¡±

    ¡°Is that just a theory,¡± Nadia asked, ¡°or are you speaking from experience?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure if I¡¯m allowed to say,¡± I said.

    ¡°Mmm,¡± Nadia said, ¡°well, let¡¯s just say that the things I¡¯ve seen so far make me really hopeful I don¡¯t see any more. No new toys, and not a single Dragon¡¯s Teeth fucker that hasn¡¯t already been shot.¡±

    ¡°Have you seen the invisible people?¡± Eliza asked. ¡°Well, not seen, but experienced?¡±

    ¡°Invisible Goddamned people?¡± Nadia asked. ¡°They haven¡¯t graced us with their presence. I¡¯m pretty sure those planes are invisible, but it just ain¡¯t right that they can give their people some Harry Potter-ass shit.¡±

    ¡°Use thermal imaging,¡± I said. ¡°They light up like fucking Vegas on those.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll tell my people,¡± Nadia said. ¡°In the meantime, coffee¡¯s just about¡­¡±

    She stopped and stared at the door she had just came in. She had the coffee pot in her hands and it was shaking wildly, the coffee making waves. ¡°Frank?¡± She asked. Eliza and I turned to look where she was staring. There was nothing there.

    ¡°D¡¯you see them too?¡± Eliza asked.

    Nadia turned. ¡°Do I see who?¡± she asked, a note of dread in her voice.

    ¡°The dead people,¡± I said. ¡°If you have, we¡¯ve been seeing them as well. You should probably listen, they know more then we do.¡±

    Nadia slowly and carefully set down the pot of coffee. ¡°Well,¡± she said, ¡°it was nice talkin¡¯ to y¡¯all but I¡¯ve got to go now.¡± She then hurried out of the room as fast as possible.

 6.20: Gods of Hellfire

    The next stage of the journey was getting into another military cargo plane. We¡¯d be flying to Kansas City. Then, depending on the amount of groundfire, we¡¯d either drive to Saint Louis or get back on the plane. Seeing as the choices were either C130, military Humvee, or MRAP, I didn¡¯t really have a preference.

    However, other people did. ¡°I just think,¡± Watanabe said, ¡°that going by plane is a really, really bad idea. If we get shot down like we did last time, I don¡¯t think we¡¯re going to be as lucky.¡±

    ¡°And driving¡¯ll be better?¡± Eliza asked. ¡°Sorry, mate, but the only dif between travelin¡¯ by air and travelin¡¯ by car¡¯s that we¡¯re going to be in the car for longer, and longer travel time means more chances for fuckery.¡±

    ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter what you think,¡± Hicks said laconically. ¡°Air National Guard wants us off their plane. We¡¯re going to hitch a ride with a supply convoy, then play it by ear.¡±

    Kansas City was chaos when we touched down. On the approach, Barton looked out the window and said, ¡°Look at all the cars¡­¡± We crowded around. Below was Interstate Route 70. There was a long line of cars that seemed solid from Utah to Maryland on one side and completely devoid of traffic except for a convoy of tanks on trailers and two-ton trucks on the other.

    When we landed on the terminal, we were greeted by four National Guard troopers wearing thermal goggles. After checking everyone to make sure they weren¡¯t wearing masks (which, of course, involved being held at gunpoint) and that there were no stowaways, we were bundled into an MRAP and transported to the FBI office. This office was more heavily guarded. SWAT operators and Guardsmen were stationed around the building with every Guardsman and many SWAT operators equipped with some kind of thermal vision. We were pinched on the forehead multiple times. I also noticed that everyone there seemed to mainlining caffeine and many people I assumed were FBI agents were wearing traffic vests.

    Eventually, we were taken to the building cafeteria. ¡°Here,¡± the guide of the minute, a female FBI agent slightly older than Agent Hick, said. ¡°Rest. I¡¯m going to get coffee, then I¡¯m going to direct traffic for another twelve hours.¡±

    ¡°But you¡¯re on the anti-fraud task force,¡± Agent Barton said. ¡°Shouldn¡¯t you be chasing down the profiteers?¡±

    Our guide shook her head and laughed ruefully. ¡°Ha. I wish. We¡¯ve already had a bunch of locals get shot because of panicky assholes and Dragon¡¯s Teeth fifth columnists. We¡¯re going insane trying to keep these people moving. Wish they¡¯d stay where they were.¡±

    ¡°They¡¯re afraid the Dragon¡¯s Teeth are going to get them,¡± Barton said. ¡°If my family were there, I¡¯d be trying to get them out as well.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Hicks said, ¡°but they aren¡¯t helping.¡±

    ¡°Amen,¡± our guide said walking off. ¡°Especially when they run people over trying to keep them out of the Army lane.¡±

    ¡°Jesus Christ,¡± Eliza said. ¡°¡®S¡¯all gone mad, innit? The ¡®ell ¡®appened?¡±

    ¡°I guess we got used to having the most advanced tech and the baddest motherfuckers,¡± I said.

    ¡°We still have the Marines,¡± Hicks said. Eliza and I exchanged glances. ¡°You ever fought with Marines?¡± Hicks asked.

    ¡°Look,¡± I said, ¡°I know you were in the Corps, but right now, our only hope is that the Dragon¡¯s Teeth has miscalculated and we¡¯re the one they didn¡¯t throw enough bodies at. They¡¯ve got better guns, better training, and I¡¯m not sure they¡¯re mentally capable of giving up.¡±

    ¡°Are you saying we should give up?¡± Hicks asked.

    ¡°The exact opposite,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m saying we have to bleed them. The basic law of physics says that they can¡¯t keep what they¡¯re doing up forever. The more resources they spend taking us down, the less they can spend elsewhere. If the world has any chance of beating them, this country, and every country they invade, needs to either become Stalingrad or the Khyber Pass.¡±

    ¡°And if we can¡¯t?¡± Barton asked. ¡°If we don¡¯t have the resources or the will?¡±

    ¡°I think,¡± I said, ¡°it¡¯s possible for the Dragon¡¯s Teeth to take this country. Staying in it will be another thing. And it¡¯s not just this country that¡¯ll fight back after being taken. I can¡¯t imagine the British just going quietly into the good night, the French resistance probably formed an hour before the surrender came in, and I can¡¯t imagine any former colony being too thrilled about giving up their independence. The Dragon¡¯s Teeth have legitimately taken on an impossible task.¡±

    ¡°So the key thing¡¯s bein¡¯ alive to point and laugh when they fall flat on their fuckin¡¯ faces?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°Basically, yeah,¡± I said.

    We rested in the cafeteria as best we could. Eventually, I noticed that a bunch of people in costumes were coming in as well to get food, coffee and rest as well as FBI agents, police, and National Guard officers. When I pointed it out to Hicks, he said, ¡°Local heroes and a few villains have been in the thick of it since it broke out. This is pretty much the only place that isn¡¯t complete chaos at the moment.¡±Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

    ¡°Really?¡± I said. ¡°Because every thirty minutes it sounds like they¡¯re trying to repel a determined attack.¡±

    ¡°They are,¡± Barton said. ¡°The invisible ones have made several attempts to get into the building.¡±

    ¡°When we get to safety,¡± I said, privately doubting that was even possible at this point, ¡°what are you going to do with me?¡±

    ¡°Ask you not to leave the country,¡± Hicks said. ¡°Then probably go out and direct traffic. I honestly have no idea.¡±

    ¡°Because I have a weapons factory,¡± I said. ¡°And I make guns specifically designed to defeat Dragon¡¯s Teeth armor.¡±

    ¡°Are you asking me for a deal?¡± Hicks asked.

    ¡°If the courts are still functioning,¡± I said, ¡°talk to my lawyer. If they aren¡¯t, well, I might as well give them away. Just give me the raw materials, and I¡¯ll give you weapons and ammo.¡±

    ¡°I cannot promise you anything,¡± Hicks said.

    Eventually, we got a ride. An army truck was heading East to pick up supplies and could give us and a bunch of wounded a ride to Saint Louis. We were pressed in towards the front of the cab with the injured soldiers near the front. In the center, there was enough room for stretchers. You could put two side by side and three top to bottom. The people on them were either suffering from hallucinogenic gas, horrifically burned but stable, or both. The other injuries included amputations, burns, paralysis, neurological damage, deafness, and blindness. They could sit on a bench in a bouncy truck for long hours without dying, but that was about the closest to physically being combat-ready they could be. A few were physically and mentally capable of holding a P90, MP5, MP5K, Tommy gun, or M3 that had been broken out of the reserves.  This made them feel like they could still fight.

    I felt sick looking at them. The hodgepodge of museum pieces, military police weapons, and conscripted law enforcement equipment wasn¡¯t given to them to assuage their ego. It had to be because they felt that there was no one else to guard the transports and even something as plentiful and basic as an assault rifle was desperately needed elsewhere. So here we were, with men almost literally scraped off the battlefield in pieces with a hastily assembled mish-mash of inadequate weaponry. If Dragon¡¯s Teeth attacked us, a trained marksman at the top of their game with an MP5 or P90 might be able to hit them at two hundred meters reliably, but even a P90¡¯s 5.7mm ammo wouldn¡¯t have a prayer of piercing their armor. The charitable explanation was they weren¡¯t there to stop the Teeth, but instead panicky, angry civilians who might think we¡¯d be carrying supplies.

    It happened almost as soon as Saint Louis came into view. I felt everything fall away from me. My seat, the truck, everything. Suddenly, I, and what seemed to be everyone else on Interstate 70, were now standing in infinite whiteness.

    ¡°Greetings!¡± a voice thundered. Towering above us was a giant. His race appeared to be Mediterranean or Arabic, but something told me he was Dragon¡¯s Teeth. ¡°I, Nero Mortus, am the commander of the Dragon¡¯s Teeth in the Central US Heartland. By the bidding of my creators, I am told to give you a message. Surrender. What has already happened is child¡¯s play. What shall happen next is a demonstration. If you have not surrendered after this, we shall continue to unleash hellfire upon you. You have been warned¡±

    Instantly, I was back in the truck. I was lying on my legs, I ached all over, especially around my lap belt like I had been knocked around, and there was a strange dusty smell. Everyone else had been thrown around. The two medics, who hadn¡¯t been seat-belted, were the worst off. One had landed against the backflap of the truck, her neck at a strange angle. The other had several compound fractures on one arm. His screams and the bones poking out through his formerly green fatigues were nightmarish to say the least. Several of the more damaged soldiers seemed to have external and internal wounds re-opened. From the cab, I could hear someone panicking.

    ¡°We need to get out of here,¡± I said, fumbling with my seat belt.

    ¡°No. Safest place to be in an accident is a car,¡± Barton said. ¡°If we get hit again-¡±

    ¡°Agent Barton,¡± I said, looking pleadingly into his eyes, ¡°as the person with the most knowledge on the Dragon¡¯s Teeth, I am begging you to help me get everyone out of this truck.¡±

    ¡°Why?¡± Hicks asked.

    ¡°Instinct,¡± I said. I truly had no idea why I thought this. I had no idea what about that hallucination told me that staying in the truck was a bad idea, I just knew.

    Not even taking a moment to consider my reasoning, Hicks barked out, ¡°You heard the kid! Everybody out of the damn truck!¡±

    ¡°And if you¡¯re able to walk,¡± I said, ¡°we need all the civvies out of their cars and off the highway!¡±

    Where we were was not ideal. We were in what was essentially a dirt field. Around us were the crop fields that you typically associate with the heartland, but we were in the only barren one for what had to be hundreds of miles. For what seemed to be hundreds of miles of highway, cars, trucks and armored vehicles had crashed. Most had been going under five miles an hour, so most people were realatively unhurt. Further from where we were, I saw an obvious exception where a Bradley APC with a smashed turret had run over several civilian vehicles.

    The only people in the truck who were physically capable of aiding the evacuation were Hicks, Barton, Watanabe, one of the drivers, and me. Luckily, most of the nearby civilians and five Marines in a nearby Humvee were able to help. The marines hadn¡¯t needed our prompting, their leader, an elderly colonel, had the exact same idea as I did. ¡°Move those people farther from the road!¡± I yelled as I helped an elderly woman out of a Jeep and over all the cars.

    ¡°Larson! Daniels!¡± the colonel yelled in a voice that had obviously been subjected to a pack of cigarettes a day for the past forty years, as he, Hicks, and the second-highest ranking Marine (a corporal) were passing young children out of a school bus and over cars, ¡°I want an air raid trench! Give that lawyer with the stupid hat an entrenching tool and make him useful!¡±

    Then, from the direction of Saint Louis, there was a flash of bluish-white light and the temperature had to have increased from ninety degrees Fahrenheit to a hundred and twenty. I knew what that meant. ¡°WE¡¯RE OUT OF TIME!¡± I screamed. ¡°OFF THE ROAD! OFF THE ROAD!¡±

    Everyone panicked. People started running, the temperature kept rising, and the light got brighter. ¡°DON¡¯T GO INTO THE CORNFIELDS!¡± I yelled, dragging the old woman towards the barren field. ¡°STAY ON THE DIRT! STAY ON THE-¡±

    Then there was a roaring sound and the wheat field behind the dirt farm we were on went up in blue flame. A wave of heat hit me hit me like I¡¯d opened an oven that had been broiling for an hour People screamed in terror and everyone began panicking.

    ¡°Young man,¡± the old woman I was helping along said, ¡°please, save your-¡±

    Then blinding bluish-white light and intense heat washed over us.

 6.21: Too Many of my Friends are Criminals

    Somehow, I woke up. I think I had woken up several times before, but I didn¡¯t count that in the same way I don¡¯t count getting up at 2 AM to get some water as waking up.

    The first thing I felt when I woke up was how much it hurt. I moved, and I could feel bits of my skin catch on the fibers of the bedclothes I was on. ¡°Oi.¡± I looked up to my side. There sat Eliza in a hospital gown, head, left arm, and various other body parts wrapped in gauze. The parts that were visible had either first or second-degree burns. ¡°You awake, or are you going to just going to go back to sleep again?¡±

    ¡°I might,¡± I said. My lips were sticking together. I wondered if that had something to do with me being out for however long I was out.

    Eliza smiled. ¡°I¡¯d hug you, but you wouldn¡¯t thank me. Just so y¡¯know, we¡¯re in Worcester. They detonated some sort of plasma weapon in Saint Louis and a few of the little bits munted us.¡±

    ¡°I know,¡± I said. ¡°I remember that part. I take it that they didn¡¯t use one of those personal launchers?¡±

    ¡°They ¡®ave personal ones?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°Trust me,¡± I said, ¡°they¡¯re nasty, but nowhere near what that thing was.¡±

    ¡°We think it was a bomber,¡± Hicks said, barging into the room. He was badly burned, but not as burned as Eliza. ¡°We managed to shoot down a couple, we meaning us, the Canadians and the Mexicans. We even shot down and secured the one that nuked Saint Louis.¡±

    ¡°How do you know?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Every time the government can get a news broadcast over the Dragon¡¯s Teeth propaganda they¡¯ve been bragging about it,¡± Hicks said. ¡°They have to. Fourteen cities destroyed by a new weapon, most of Europe and Asia completely dark, allies chickening out, what the hell else can they do?¡±

    ¡°Wait, wait, wait,¡± I said. ¡°What? What¡¯s going on? Is the government nationalizing industry? The people in charge-¡±

    ¡°Mosta your reps got murdered around the time we were burning,¡± Eliza said. ¡°They nearly took DC, killed damn near everyone in the White House, includin¡¯ the President, Vice-President, and Cabinet, then ran ¡®round breaking things in Capitol Hill before your blokes were able to stop them.¡±

    ¡°The¡­ the president¡¯s dead?¡± I said.

    "He''s not the only one,¡± Hicks said. ¡°Greg¡¯s dealing with your lawyer¡¯s real boss, just so you know.¡±

    ¡°Oh God,¡± I said. ¡°Please tell me Ken isn¡¯t dead. Jen¡¯s going to-¡±

    ¡°Going to what?¡± Jennifer Kagemoto asked as she and a few bodyguards walked in, her green eyes flashing angrily and her ponytail swaying. ¡°As people have constantly been telling me there isn¡¯t anything I can¡¯t do. I lose dozens of people killing my father, I lose even more when the Jade Empire and the Irish start sniffing around with their little rat noses, and now the Dragon¡¯s Teeth are killing my people? My unarmed people. They¡¯re going in the book.¡±

    ¡°Is that a confession?¡± Hicks asked.

    Jen turned around to glare at Hicks. ¡°You¡¯re the only cop in the Goddamn building not on painkillers, in a wheelchair, and/or on the take, the district court¡¯s a fucking refugee center, and I am extremely perturbed. Shut your trap, you arrogant, hypocritical, myopic piece of shit.¡±

    There was a knock on the window. I turned.

    I had only seen the woman floating outside my fourth-story window once in the flesh. If her long braid didn¡¯t fall out of her Viking-style helmet, it would be hard to tell her gender from underneath the heavy breastplate and fur cloak. Everyone in Massachusetts knew her name. Valkyrie, the Champion-type Parahuman from the Minutemen, the state¡¯s largest super hero group. Through the thick window, I could hear her ask, ¡°Mind if I come in?¡±

    Jen glared.  ¡°I don¡¯t know if I can stop you.¡± Then, as an afterthought, she added, ¡°Bitch.¡±The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

    ¡°I¡¯m only going to force my way in if anyone¡¯s in danger,¡± Valkyrie said. ¡°But we need to talk.¡±

    ¡°About what?¡± Jen asked. ¡°If you want in on the fixing, that¡¯s about a few weeks too late.¡±

    ¡°We both know there¡¯s more important things,¡± Valkyrie said. ¡°If I was the one pulling the plug, I¡¯d be looking for a fight, too.¡±

    Jen snarled, drawing her twin Berettas and unloaded them into Valkyrie. Eliza and Hicks got down on the floor, and I tried to drill myself into the bed. The last time I¡¯d been in a hospital bed, unable to move, with an unstable Jumper, it hadn¡¯t exactly improved my recovery time. One of Jen¡¯s thirty-two rounds (a guess, based  on my own less fancy Berettas) ricocheted  and hit me in the head.

    ¡°Please stop,¡± Valkyrie said, ¡°before you actually kill someone.¡±

    I couldn¡¯t see Jen¡¯s reaction because I was busy clutching my bleeding temple and swearing, but I could hear the fear and struggle in Jen¡¯s voice as she holstered her pistols. ¡°So, what did you want?¡±

    Valkyrie climbed through the window. ¡°In case you haven¡¯t heard, the Minutemen aren¡¯t on the job anymore.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± Jen asked, her voice brightening a bit. ¡°What happened?¡±

    ¡°Some,¡± Valkyrie said, ¡°are heading off to Canada. Others are joining some national groups who¡¯re taking advantage of the cease fire to do God-knows-what to stop the Dragon¡¯s Teeth. I¡¯m trying to put together some capes to do something more productive.¡±

    ¡°And you¡¯re desperate to come to me for help,¡± Jen said. ¡°Why?¡±

    ¡°Because people like you know things about this state I¡¯ll never figure out in a million years,¡± Valkyrie said.

    ¡°You could ask the FBI,¡± Hicks said. ¡°And we¡¯re not unstable.¡±

    ¡°If I thought the FBI knew the things she did or had a tenth of the capabilities it did six months ago,¡± Valkyrie said, ¡°I would be talking to Massachusetts¡¯ Field Director. Hell, if he was still alive, I¡¯d be talking to him. But he¡¯s dead and ninety percent of you are on traffic detail now.¡± She pointed to Jen. ¡°We need people like her, Agent Hicks.¡±

    Jen¡¯s eyes narrowed at Valkyrie. ¡°I¡¯ll think about it.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s all I ask,¡± Valkyrie said.

    As the hero started to leave, Jen called out, an exceedingly fake smile on her face, ¡°By the way, it would be nice if you¡¯d keep me informed as to who¡¯ll be in this little club.¡±

    After the hero flew off, Hicks said, ¡°I don¡¯t like it.¡±

    ¡°What part?¡± Jen asked sweetly. ¡°The part where the country¡¯s burning or the part where someone admitted that your agency is completely ineffective? Because honestly, I¡¯m not really happy about either as a tax payer.¡±

    ¡°So, in other bits of news about resistance,¡± I said, trying to stop things from getting heated, ¡°has anyone taken me up on my offer for weapon upgrades? I know from personal experience that the current stuff the US has can¡¯t penetrate the standard Legionary armor that well.¡± That had been a bit of an overstatement. They had fallen down from my G3, albeit after what felt like twice the normal amount of bullets at half the average range. Berserkers, infantry with even heavier armor, were an even tougher nut to crack.

    ¡°Do you know how much it takes to replace a standard piece of equipment?¡± Hicks asked. ¡°Even if we were able to just magically buy them all-¡±

    ¡°Not magically,¡± I said. ¡°I just want the materials.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Hicks said rolling his eyes. ¡°I¡¯m no economist and I wasn¡¯t a quartermaster, but I know enough about logistics to know that little request¡¯s going to be an absolute nightmare.¡± I had no solution for that. ¡°Then, you have to deal with training every soldier how to use the damn things.¡±

    Yes! There was a problem I¡¯d actually designed the weapons to side-step. ¡°That shouldn¡¯t be a problem,¡± I hurriedly said. ¡°The Maccabee and the Ballpeen mostly use bits of the AK and AR-15 platform, so-¡±

    ¡°So they¡¯re basically neither,¡± Hicks said.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°I suppose you could look at it that way.¡±

    ¡°And I have five bucks that the internals are nothing like an M16,¡± Hicks said.

    If I was Nari, I would have immediately veered off that previous point and dissed the mechanical forbearers of our weapons and creators thereof. Instead, all I could say was, ¡°They¡¯re a lot better than what we have currently.¡±

    ¡°Whatever,¡± Hicks said, getting up to leave. ¡°We literally don¡¯t have enough resources to put you in prison, and I doubt we¡¯d have a leg to stand on, seeing that you haven¡¯t done anything in a country that¡¯s in a position to extradite. Stay here until you¡¯re healed or whatever, then give your bed up to the next poor bastard who needs it.¡± Judging by the tone of his voice, if there weren¡¯t a lot of people in line right now, there would be soon enough.

    Still, the Maccabee assault rifle, the Ballpeen SMG, and the Uilon Mangchi pistol could all pierce Dragon¡¯s Teeth body armor of all kinds according to our computer simulations. The as-of-yet unnamed dual-belt-fed machinegun I¡¯d made could do the same, except you could hold down the trigger for a lot longer. The sniper/anti-material rifle Nari had made could theoretically combined the anti-armor capabilities with something like a Barret M82 (but increased to possibly pierce Charon armor) and the range and accuracy of a more traditional sniper rifle. These could make a serious difference.

    Jen had waited a bit while Hicks left. When he finally did, she turned back to me and said, ¡°Such a shame. Those guns were quite excellent from what I saw.¡±

    ¡°Mm,¡± I said noncommittally. While in Japan, I had found out that Jen had managed to get a few crates through her police contacts. She only had seen the Uilon Mangchis, Maccabees, and Ballpeens, thanks to helping me test them and using some to shoot our way out of a nest of angry cultists.

    ¡°Imagine,¡± she said, ¡°what would happen if you found people who could use them. People who were very, very good at blending into the woodwork.¡±

 6.22: Slippery People

    ¡°So,¡± Eliza said as we stood outside the brick perimeter wall to the factory, ¡°is this really going to kill us if we don¡¯t put in the correct codes?¡±

    ¡°According to Andy,¡± I said, ¡°that¡¯s an option that he doesn¡¯t think is on. We didn¡¯t want people taking things that didn¡¯t belong to them and Andy wanted to test out some autonomous defenses. We honestly didn¡¯t think something this bad would happen, but we decided what the hell. Have multiple layers of security in case of apocalypse. Right now, though, the shaped charges aren¡¯t active, so all that should happen is the cops get called.¡±

    ¡°But you aren¡¯t a hundred percent sure,¡± Eliza said.

    ¡°No, I¡¯m not.¡± Between that knowledge and my painkillers wearing off, my hands were shaking as I typed in the code. ¡°Hey, hey!¡± I said as there was a buzzing sound that cause Eliza to jump. ¡°First try!¡±

    The door opened to reveal a long hallway. Mounted on the ceiling was our prototype machinegun set into a prototype automated mount. ¡°Fuckin¡¯ ¡®ell, Nate,¡± Eliza said as she pushed me in my wheelchair down the hall, ¡°Please tell me the damn thing¡¯s human-controlled.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°with Andy, May, and Nari out of the country, and with most of our staff being former military and law enforcement people who signed back up, we couldn¡¯t really have them be remote controlled. Don¡¯t worry, that one isn¡¯t on at this level.¡±

    ¡°Great.¡± Eliza said. ¡°It¡¯s so nice t¡¯know that at least one death trap isn¡¯t functional.¡± I decided, at that point, not to tell her about the auto-turret behind us. Or the claymores and C-4 built into the walls. Or the Punji sticks in the grates below us. Only the turret was active anyway.

    Before the door swung shut, we heard a soft thump. Eliza turned around. ¡°Oi,¡± she said. ¡°I think Valkyrie¡¯s ¡®ere.¡±

    ¡°Let here in,¡± I said. ¡°It¡¯ll be good to talk to her before the others get here.¡±

    Eliza mad a grunt of affirmation and opened the door. ¡°Thanks,¡± I heard Valkyrie say. ¡°I¡¯ve heard things that make me¡­ hesitant about just barging in here.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, ¡°probably for the best. Let¡¯s just get in so I can set the security to a more appropriate level.¡±

    ¡°Just so you know,¡± Valkyrie said, walking besides us, ¡°there are several dead Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldiers in the courtyard around the building.¡±

    ¡°I thought they might try and infiltrate the building,¡± I said. ¡°After all, they did make several attempts to catch me. I think they might want me and one of my engineering partners because we can make better weapons than they can.¡± Valkyrie raised an eyebrow. ¡°Really,¡± I said. ¡°They can¡¯t make rifles for shit. Vehicles are a different story. There¡¯s other reasons, but I¡¯m not going to get into them.¡±

    ¡°Maybe we should get the bodies out of the way,¡± Eliza said.

    ¡°Let¡¯s turn off the turrets first,¡± I said. ¡°Those things are set to motion and they can¡¯t really tell the difference between good guys and innocent bystanders yet.¡±

    ¡°Why are they in a city of almost two hundred thousand?¡± Valkyrie asked.

    ¡°They¡¯re facing inwards,¡± I said defensively.

    ¡°I swear,¡± Valkyrie said, ¡°one of these days, I¡¯m going to be here to give you an ass whooping.¡±

    ¡°¡®E means well,¡± Eliza said.

    "That¡¯s what makes it so frustrating,¡± Valkyrie said. ¡°With people like Minute Man, you expect them to be pieces of shit-¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± I said, ¡°Minute Man¡¯s a piece of shit?¡± Minute Man was a hero who¡¯d been in the cape scene since the eighties. He¡¯d been the leader of the group by the same name and done the whole save kittens in tree and kiss babies thing for the entire time.

    ¡°Yes,¡± Valkyrie said. ¡°You just have to look for it. Of course, the fucker¡¯s gone to Canada, so you¡¯ll just have to take my word for it. But he¡¯s a piece of shit, and only in it for himself. What¡¯s frustrating are the people who are doing awful shit for others, or seem like they want to be good but it never works out.¡±

    I considered her words as I began to fiddle with the security systems. I wondered if she was, other than me, she was referring to anyone I knew. Eventually, I got the systems tuned to an acceptable level (and discovered that most of the active turrets were out) and Valkyrie was able to fly the bodies to an Army command outpost nearby for disposal and analysis.

    When she came back, I said, ¡°So, how are we going to control the murderous criminals once they get their highly advanced firearms? I mean, I think this could be a good idea, but we have to take into consideration that they might be more interested in killing each other or in intimidating civillians than killing Dragon¡¯s Teeth.¡±

    ¡°Could you put in some way of disabling them?¡± Valkyrie asked.

    ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°There¡¯s a whole litany of reasons. Like if I could turn off the guns, so could the Dragon¡¯s Teeth, for starters. Or I, or whoever I get to design this magic switch, could make it so that the gun accidentally turns off in the middle of a firefight. In any case, putting in a backdoor or remote off switch defeats the purpose. There¡¯s also how long it would take to design and retool the factory, which is actually something I can¡¯t do unless I get Andy back here. Whatever solution we come up with, it has to be social or political. Either that, or we have to decide that the worst thing they could possibly do will be offset by the thing they¡¯re most likely to do.¡±

    ¡°That is a question really only you can answer,¡± Valkyrie said. ¡°We¡¯re not hearing anything from the captured areas.¡±Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

    ¡°Which is pretty disturbing,¡± Eliza said.

    I considered this. If Alma was telling the truth, the Teeth might be under new management soon. Also, the one time I had been behind Dragon¡¯s Teeth lines had been during a test phase. That could mean what happened in Korea wouldn¡¯t happen again. On the other hand, even though I hadn¡¯t encountered any mass graves there, I had only seen two civilians. One had been in the company of UNIX agents. The other had been Nari. Genocide seemed to be a very real possibility.

    ¡°Is there a way of distributing them so that they can¡¯t access them until the Teeth show up?¡± I asked. Then I answered my own question. ¡°No. They move too fast.¡± I took a deep breath. ¡°The best case explanation for I saw in North Korea was that the DPRK and the Dragon¡¯s Teeth had been supernaturally good at evacuating civilians. I don¡¯t think that explanation is likely.¡±

    An alarm buzzed. ¡°Well,¡± Valkyrie said, ¡°they¡¯re here.¡±

    ¡°Let me check,¡± I said, getting out of my wheelchair.

    ¡°OI!¡± Eliza said. ¡°Don¡¯t you fuckin¡¯ get out of that.¡± She walked over to the monitor. ¡°It¡¯s not just Jen. ¡®Parently, all the other fuckin¡¯ reprobates showed up as well and they¡¯re ¡®avin¡¯ a chat.¡±

    ¡°So should we bring them in here to kill themselves or let them get it out of their systems?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Don¡¯t even joke about that,¡± Valkyrie said.

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said. ¡°You two go bring them in, I¡¯ll go over this stuff some more.¡± Eliza picked up a Ballpeen on her way out. ¡°Leave that here.¡± I said.

    ¡°No,¡± she said, pulling out a forty-round magazine she¡¯d taken from somewhere and inserting it into the well in the grip. ¡°I ain¡¯t lettin¡¯ those fuckers shoot one of us ¡®cause we weren¡¯t prepared.¡±

    I sighed as Eliza and Valkyrie walked off. As usual, the painkillers weren¡¯t being too effective today. Funnily enough, I hadn¡¯t felt like a piece of steak that had been in the oven too long until after I¡¯d been scooped off that fallow field in whatever bucket had been handy. I looked at the shitty phone I¡¯d salvaged, a budget model from the early two thousands. It was two hours until the next time I could take the super-addictive narcotic that didn¡¯t do anything.

    Valkyrie and Eliza brought in the first group. ¡°You should wait until they all get here,¡± Valkyrie said. ¡°I¡¯ll go out front to buzz them in.¡±

    ¡°This isn¡¯t all of them?¡± Eliza whispered. I had to agree with her somewhat fearful tone of voice. There were at least fifteen people in the conference area I¡¯d picked out. I consoled myself in that they¡¯d divided themselves into groups of two or three and were too busy regarding each other warily to consider rushing the sample table. I decided then and there that I¡¯d skip the portion of the event where I¡¯d bring the group down to the firing range, partly because I genuinely didn¡¯t feel safe doing that, mostly because we were already halfway to the point where I¡¯d either have to limit range time or get more product.

    Something I learned about Massachusetts organized crime was that it seemed to be well-heeled and very white. Most of the people spoke like they were from either the North End, the South End, Worcester, or Russia. There was one group of black people, and two groups of Latino people. They were the only groups that approached friendly, but even I could tell there was a bit of restrained edge to their greetings.

    Then the two elephants entered the room. Separated by Valkyrie, and looking like they would kill each other were the representatives from the Jade Empire and the Kagemoto family.

    The Kagemoto family probably had the tiniest base in Massachusetts. They were genuine Yakuza and, from what I¡¯d heard, only managed to maintain their pool of hardened gunmen by importing people from Japan. Jen was there, of course, flanked by Hirosama and Kaori Murakami, a husband and wife team of Parahuman enforcers who worked under the names Dokutsu and Tatsu. Jen wore a red Boston Red Sox sweater and blue jeans, while the Murakamis looked as intimidating as usual in their sharp suits and tinted shades. As usual, despite being smaller, Kaori¡¯s burns were more intimidating than her husband¡¯s acne scars.

    The Jade Empire was a different story. Three of the four representatives were Asian, which, despite the gang being inspired by the Chinese Triads, was unusual for the group. Most of the people were bored, middle-class suburban kids, low-income people in their twenties, or Brazilian immigrants. Jaime Washington followed this rule. He was one of the few black kids from my hometown and had somehow gotten into the Jade Empire early on and now seemed pretty high up in the hierarchy. Lang and Bao Zi were exceptions. The Lupine brother and sister pair were from China. I¡¯d only heard that they were Lupines as they didn¡¯t have the dog ears like Eliza did, but they had a certain confidence to their movement that indicated powers. Those three people wore green: Bao Zi wore a green waist-length peacoat, black vinyl skirt, high-heeled boots, and green aviator sunglasses, Lang wore a Celtics jersey and matching track pants with long gold chain, and Jaime was wearing a green hoodie opened up to reaveal a Kendrick Lamar t-shirt and baggy jeans.

    The fourth Jade Empire member was someone I never thought to see, but should have expected. Mai Lau was a small Asian girl who had been a few years behind me in school. She had somehow come into a large amount of money and, in retrospect, her fortune and business ventures had grown with the rise of the Jade Empire. She was the only one in her party not exchanging murderous looks with the Kagemotos. In fact, she was dressed in an orange Maynard High School tee, jeans, and sneakers. She was even carrying a notebook like she was going to class again. Then she saw that I was there. Her eyes widened in shock as she met mine.

    Jen noticed her reaction and began staring from Mai to me and back. Mai noticed this, and her face became more guarded. It was at this point that the rest of the room noticed the new arrivals and the atmosphere somehow became even more tense.

    ¡°Alright,¡± Valkyrie said, ¡°Kagemotos over there, Jade Empire over there.¡± The places she pointed to were on opposite ends of the room. The two groups made some last attempts at posturing, then moved to their assigned locations. Valkyrie took turns glaring at them until she was satisfied they wouldn¡¯t kill each other, then made her way back to us. ¡°Do you know them?¡± she asked me under her breath when she arrived.

    ¡°Good question,¡± Eliza said in a neutral tone.

    ¡°I went to NIU with Jennifer Kagemoto,¡± I said. ¡°Mai Lau was from high school, we only knew each other from theater class and a play or two.¡±

    ¡°Is that all?¡± Valkyrie asked.

    ¡°For Mai, yes.¡± I said. I turned to look Eliza in the eye. ¡°I swear to God, yes.¡± I turned back to Valkyrie. ¡°Jen, well, you¡¯ve dealt with her. Jen makes everything complicated.¡± I considered this for a moment. ¡°By the way, why the hell is Mai here?¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s the Jade Emperor,¡± Valkyrie said. ¡°When Jen killed her father a few weeks ago, she made a grab for Kagemoto territory. When Jen consolidated control, part of her retaliation was to dox Mai. She won¡¯t admit it, but everyone knows Jen did it.¡±

    ¡°I take it that isn¡¯t the first time they¡¯ve fought?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Sort of,¡± Valkyrie said. ¡°Mai¡¯s been hidden pretty well. I think Jen only knew it a few minutes before the rest of us. Also, Jen hadn¡¯t really had much control over the Kagemotos before she did her takeover. I think things got more intense.¡±

    I sighed and buried my face in my hands. ¡°Jesus fucking Christ, why the hell couldn¡¯t this be easy?¡± I raised my head and said, ¡°Well, you might as well give your speech.¡±

    Valkyrie considered me with narrowed eyes for a moment. Then she turned around and slammed the pommel of her axe on the floor a few times. A gust of wind blew throughout the room each time the pommel hit. ¡°Everyone!¡± she said. ¡°I know each and every one of you are, to some extent, in this for money. We all know that there¡¯s a new and very disruptive force that wants to take over pretty much everything. I thought, before I made my proposition, you¡¯d want to hear from one of the few people with first-hand knowledge of them.¡± She stepped back and gestured to me.

 6.23: Is it Just Me?

    I don¡¯t really remember what I said about my time fighting the Dragon¡¯s Teeth. I just remember that nobody¡¯s expression changed. I¡¯ll admit, I was just dryly presenting the facts of my visit to Korea and some of their attempts after, but still, the facts should have been pretty riveting. I didn¡¯t know why they were staring at me until one of the mobsters, an elderly man in a suit that was probably expensive, raised his hand.

    ¡°So,¡± he asked in a Boston accent when I called him, ¡°you just go on a stroll to North Korea?¡±

    ¡°As I said,¡± I mentioned, ¡°I was paid.¡±

    ¡°But you didn¡¯t say by who,¡± the mobster said. ¡°I kinda wanna know.¡±

    ¡°Is it important?¡± I asked. ¡°Because if you want to talk to him, he¡¯s not available.¡± The mobster didn¡¯t say anything in response, but he did tent his hands and stare at me suspiciously. I suddenly realized that he wasn¡¯t the only one. ¡°Look,¡± I said, in response to his unanswered question, ¡°there¡¯s just some things that are too big for you. Accept it and move on.¡±

    People around the room murmured in a mixture of amusement and shock. Jen seemed to be trying to suppress a headache. Mai was writing in her notebook. Both their retinues seemed somewhat impressed. Valkyrie seemed¡­ annoyed. ¡°Kid,¡± the mobster said, ¡°Do you, or your friends, know who the fuck I am?¡±

    ¡°I personally don¡¯t,¡± I said. ¡°But I can tell you right now, you¡¯ll be a lot happier not asking questions about my life¡¯s story.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± the mob boss said, standing up. ¡°I guess I can deal without your guns.¡± He left. His retinue and several other representatives from other gangs followed.

    Another man raised his hand. He was also dressed in a suit, but he seemed to be one of the guards. ¡°So how do we know you ain¡¯t a fed?¡± He asked. He also had a Boston accent.

    ¡°If I was a fed,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯d be directing traffic.¡±

    ¡°Did Agent Barton tell you that, or did Agent Hicks?¡± the junior gangster asked. Instantly, a bunch of the assembled crooks began clamoring. Some walked out, some in more of a panic than others. Others began reaching for their waistbands. ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s right!¡± the junior gangster said. ¡°Burnie McWheels over there¡¯s been traveling cross-country with clean feds and is being sponsored by a clean cape!¡±

    Valkyrie slammed her axe on the floor again, creating another gust of wind. Judging by the crack it made ¡°Do you want to mouth off, or do you want to listen?¡± Valkyrie asked.

    The room was silenced. The person the mouthy mobster was guarding, a positively ancient man, said, ¡°I think what Junior is trying to say is that he¡¯d like to leave before the cops come.¡±

    ¡°Then go,¡± Valkyrie said. ¡°Unless things have radically changed, the cops aren¡¯t coming, so you have all the time in the world.¡± The people who left, which was a good chunk, didn¡¯t seem to believe her. Hell, even the few remaining didn¡¯t seem that keen.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

    Once the people who were leaving were gone, one of the few remaining mobsters finally asked, ¡°So, how do we know that you aren¡¯t going to favor your two exes with the weapon distribution?¡±

    I looked at Valkyrie for help. She rolled her eyes. ¡°He¡¯s the manufacturer. I¡¯ll work out distribution with you at later.¡±

    ¡°Thank you,¡± I said. I did not want to know where these guns would end up. I definitely didn¡¯t want to know what these people would do with them.

    One of the only black people in the room raised his hands. When I nodded, he said, ¡°So, y¡¯all givin¡¯ us guns, but those guys have fucking tanks and shit. I am not sending my boys into a meat grinder.¡±

    I picked up the rifle Nari had made. ¡°This,¡± I said, ¡°is the Mjolnir. It fires a 10.4mm bullet. It¡¯s a hybrid of long distance precision and anti-material rifle. It can probably penetrate five or six millimeters of seltsamemetall, which is probably what the Charon uses for armor.¡±

    ¡°And how many inches thick is their armor?¡± he asked.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°the doors seem to be about four or five millimeters and the windows are pretty big so you can probably shatter them easily.¡± The gang leader raised his eyebrows. ¡°The average body seems to be ten millimeters.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, we dead,¡± he said, rolling his eyes. But he didn¡¯t leave.

    Mai then raised her hand. ¡°Yes, Mai?¡± I asked, a sinking feeling in my stomach.

    ¡°Well,¡± Mai said, ¡°there are some people who can¡¯t be trusted to act in good faith. What¡¯s to stop them from making a move?¡±

    Someone from the Kagemoto camp must have muttered something because Lang turned towards them and angrily asked, ¡°The fuck you say?¡±

    ¡°Hey!¡± Valkyrie said as Kaori and Hirosama stepped in front of Lang. I noticed that Jaime and Bao were also moving in. ¡°Do I need to separate you?¡±

    ¡°No ma¡¯am,¡± Mai said calmly. ¡°My people will behave.¡±

    ¡°So will mine,¡± Jen said sweetly, ¡°but I have to wonder what Miss Lau¡¯s definition of behave is. After all, a few weeks ago, her people were killing my people unprovoked.¡±

    ¡°Shit, girl,¡± Jaime said, ¡°We had no idea which people were yours and which people were your dad¡¯s. Think we did you a favor.¡±

    ¡°Oh really?¡± Hirosama asked. ¡°Why, then, were some of Mark Kagemoto¡¯s people given World War Two surplus? Why did some take to dressing in green?¡±

    ¡°Enough!¡± Valkyrie shouted.

    ¡°Guess they know what a winner looks like,¡± Jaime said with a smirk.

    ¡°I said-¡±

    ¡°Hey, Jaime,¡± Kaori asked, flames dancing from her fingers. ¡°How¡¯s your mother?¡±

    ¡°You fucking bi-¡± Jaime said, reaching for his waistband. I could see the cylindrical grip of a Broomhandle Mauser. Meanwhile, Hirosama was going for his Glock, Lang had his hand on a green polymer grip for a pistol, and Bao was pulling a sawed-off from seemingly out of nowhere.

    ¡°OI!¡± Eliza yelled, bringing up her Ballpeen, flicking off the safety, and turning on the laser in one smooth motion. ¡°You fuckin¡¯ pull a piece in ¡®ere an¡¯ I¡¯ll pop you in your ¡®ead, swear on me mum!¡±

    ¡°Eliza¡­¡± Jen said holding her hands up. I noticed she¡¯d opened her shirt to reveal her two chrome Berettas.

    ¡°You know what?¡± the gang leader who¡¯d asked how to deal with tanks said angrily, ¡°Y¡¯all should kick those motherfuckers outta here. The got Uzis, they got AKs, they got ARs, they got belt-fed shit. Hell, they even got capes. Meanwhile, my boys can barely scrape together some pistols and shotties. They don¡¯t need any more shit.¡± The rest of the remaining criminals murmured in agreement.

    ¡°Listen, you little shits,¡± Jen said, ¡°I don¡¯t remember you having trouble a few weeks ago. Stop playing the underdog, and pay attention to what¡¯s coming.¡± She stood up. ¡°I don¡¯t have to deal with this bullshit. The Kagemotos will guard their territory.¡± Her glare travelled around the room. ¡°From everyone. Even if we have to throw rocks.¡± Before anyone could comment, she stormed out, her two bodyguards following close behind.

    There was a moment of awkward silence. Mai stood up. ¡°Nate,¡± she said, ¡°I¡¯m sorry, but I don¡¯t feel like we can make a deal in this environment. If you would like to make a deal with competent people, you know where to contact us.¡± She smiled and walked out, her entourage pausing for posturing.

 6.4: Old Friends

    From that day forward, I had pretty much decided that leaving the factory was a bad idea. Eliza managed to get my Subaru from the apartment and into the parking lot. I didn¡¯t know how she did it in the midst of all the panicked people.

    Speaking of the refugee situation, it seemed to be untenable. People were running east and north in a panicked rush while the armed forces desperately tried to organize. Israel, Iran, and Turkey had gone under, as well as many NATO nations and other allies. The Dragon¡¯s Teeth controlled the air and the sea. What forces we had abroad were either isolated or fighting for their lives. Many people had either given up or were trying to get to Canada.

    In fact, in a strange twist of fate, Canada, Mexico, and the other American nations looked like one of the US¡¯s few chances of salvation. When I could turn on the news, all they¡¯d talk about was the coalition that was being assembled and the counterattack they¡¯d lead. I didn¡¯t buy it. The Dragon¡¯s Teeth were probably digging in, and it¡¯d take a lot more than a three-to-one ratio to dislodge them.

    Valkyrie was doing the distribution for the weapons and ammo. Occasionally, I¡¯d ask if the people we were equipping were doing what they were supposed to or if they¡¯d started killing each other. Her usual response was, ¡°As far as I can tell? Neither.¡± Then she¡¯d go back to helping the people load whatever van they¡¯d brought in, and Eliza and I would go back to watching them to make sure they didn¡¯t take anything they weren¡¯t supposed to or go anywhere we didn¡¯t want them. After they were gone, we¡¯d then go back to making the place habitable.

    It was one of the times in between visits from crooks converted to teamster duty that we heard the intercom by door sound. I went to the security panel. There, pushing his face into the lens of the intercom camera so much it fish-eyed, was John Marshall¡¯s short beard and close-cropped hair. From another view, I could see he was with Kyle Rockford, a somewhat unassuming, if generically star-quarterback-looking guy waiting behind him. Behind them was an old 90¡¯s era Acura coupe packed full of luggage.

    ¡°Nate!¡± John was saying, somewhat frustrated. ¡°Come on, I know you¡¯re in there.¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said, picking up the mic as I wheeled over, trying not to spill the laundry basket full of clean clothes. ¡°I was just trying to get some housecleaning done.¡±

    ¡°Oi!¡± I heard Eliza shout from somewhere in facility, ¡°¡®oo¡¯s  thaAAAGH!¡± She was cut off by metallic clattering. Then there was a stream of creative cursing.

    ¡°I see Eliza¡¯s here as well?¡± Kyle asked.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°Let me see if I can help, then-¡±

    ¡°No!¡± Eliza said. ¡°You¡¯re in a bloody wheelchair, y¡¯can¡¯t ¡®elp! You let ¡®em in like-¡± There was a thunk that sounded like something metal had hit something fleshy, then the clang of it falling onto the floor. Eliza screamed, more in frustration then in pain.

    ¡°Are you all right?¡± I asked.

    ¡°I¡¯m FINE!¡± Eliza said.

    After I had let Kyle and John in, we came in to the room Eliza had been attacked in. She was putting pipes back into a cupboard, muttering angrily. ¡°Fuckin¡¯ bloody pipes, bloody cabinets, bloody yanks and their bullshite washing machines. Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks!¡± With a scream, she kicked the wall.

    ¡°She¡¯s trying to set up a washer and drier in here,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ve been helping where I can.¡±

    ¡°You can help?¡± Kyle said. ¡°I¡¯m surprised that you can move on your own.¡±

    That reminded me, I was due for painkillers. But now was not the time to mention that. ¡°It¡¯s no biggie,¡± I said. ¡°What are you guys doing here?¡±

    ¡°I live in the Midwest.¡± Kyle said. ¡°Or lived in the Midwest. Then the Teeth rolled in and started shooting everyone.¡± He¡¯d obviously intended to stop there, but he just had to continue. As he did, his voice became more and more choked up and he began to cry. ¡°They burned most of the houses and dragged people out to the center of town. I managed to hide, but my grandad¡­ he told them I¡¯d died in Iraq when they asked about who I was in the picture¡­ I heard him say it.¡± By this point he was in tears and had collapsed on the floor. ¡°They shot him,¡± he said, so choked up from tears I could barely understand. ¡°And while he was dying, they poured gas or something and set the house on fire. I hid in the bomb shelter and then¡­¡±

    It was there that language failed him. He sobbed and began rocking back and forth. I wheeled over to him and patted him on the shoulder. ¡°Hey,¡± I said softly. ¡°We¡¯re here. What do you want to do?¡± I kept repeating that last sentence over and over again until he calmed down.Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

    When he did, he said, in a gasping, post-crying jag voice, ¡°I want to honor my grandparents¡¯ memory. I want to do what I can to stop them.¡±

    ¡°Damn,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m not sure I can help with that. Will killing the bastards suffice?¡±

    John looked at me. ¡°You don¡¯t have a plan?¡±

    ¡°Did you expect us to?¡± I asked. ¡°Look, you know my area of expertise. Hell, you share at least eighty percent of my skillset. The military isn¡¯t buying my guns, and even if they were, well, what use are small arms going to be against tanks and aircraft?¡±

    ¡°Oi,¡± Eliza said, looking at me, ¡°D¡¯you need anti-depressants as well as painkillers?¡±

    ¡°Probably,¡± I said. ¡°Or, like, a bottle of Jack or something.¡±

    ¡°So,¡± John said, cutting in, ¡°what are you doing?¡± At my blank look, he said, ¡°You know, about the Dragon¡¯s Teeth.¡±

    ¡°What can I do?¡± I asked. ¡°At some point, they¡¯re going to start advancing again, and when I do that, I guess I can kill a few of them. Until then, I¡¯ve done all I could and boy, was it not enough.¡±

    ¡°Have you been drinking?¡± John asked.

    ¡°John,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯m taking industrial levels of Ox, even though it barely lets me function. If my grape juice is a little elderly, I¡¯d fucking die.¡±

    John nodded. ¡°Ok, fair enough. You got anything to eat?¡±

    ¡°Power Sludge,¡± I said. ¡°And no, there aren¡¯t any restaurants open that we can reasonably get to.¡±

    The thing I quickly noticed was that certain things we had done to get the place habitable for Eliza and me carried over. The two completely useless fridges, for instance, would probably hold enough food for all of us and the washer and drier (when we got them set up) was more than capable of handling all our demands. Other things like beds were harder to deal with. Eliza and I were sharing a twin-sized mattress, for instance. John and Kyle did not want to share a bed with us or each other.

    Around the start of September, Valkyrie came back. The factory was functioning as a living space and occasionally we¡¯d be able to get food that wasn¡¯t awful synthetic glop that looked suspiciously like vomit. That didn¡¯t mean it was great food. So when we let Valkyrie come in through a window, we were all happy to see she was carrying several boxes of pizza.

    ¡°Valkyrie!¡± I said happily. ¡°Where¡¯d you get that?¡±

    ¡°I may be on the up and up,¡± Valkyrie said, setting down the pizzas, ¡°but that doesn¡¯t mean I don¡¯t have connections. I literally got what might be the last takeout pizzas in Worcester. Plus,¡± she unhooked a bag from her arm, ¡°some big sodas.¡±

    We began to dig in. After a few slices of cheese pizza (there was only cheese pizza,) I asked, ¡°So, how¡¯s the arm distribution going?¡±

    ¡°Reasonably well,¡± Valkyrie said. ¡°They haven¡¯t started killing each other and there hasn¡¯t been too much extortion of refugees.¡±

    ¡°Always nice,¡± John said. Reasonably, he didn¡¯t exactly approve of giving people like Jen scarily effective firearms, many of which were easy to conceal. Yet he didn¡¯t really see any alternatives. Basically, we were in agreement.

    ¡°Any sightings of Deets?¡± Kyle asked. ¡°I¡¯m¡­ a little conflicted on how soon I want to see these guys again.¡±

    Valkyrie shrugged. ¡°Not sure. Jen¡¯s looking, and I¡¯m reasonably sure she¡¯s telling the truth. The others could be, or they could be in the process of cutting deals with them.¡±

    ¡°Any you suspect in particular?¡± I asked. Valkyrie looked hesitant. ¡°If you say Mai¡¯s playing both ends against the middle, I won¡¯t bite your head off,¡± I said. ¡°Hell, I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if Jen was playing us. Disappointed, but surprised.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re right,¡± Valkyrie said. ¡°Jen will try to use this to get ahead, but she¡¯ll just try to screw the other leaders so that when things calm down she¡¯ll be in a better position. Mai, meanwhile, is going to disappear as soon as the Teeth get into town.¡±

    ¡°Dealt with these fuck eggs a lot, ¡®aven¡¯t you?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°Oh yes,¡± Valkyrie said as Kyle and John giggled at ¡°fuck eggs.¡± ¡°I swear, ninety percent of my job involves talking to these guys and asking them stuff like ¡®what did you assholes do now?¡¯ over and over.¡±

    There was a buzz. ¡°Someone¡¯s at the door,¡± I said, moving to get it.

    ¡°Oi,¡± Eliza said. ¡°You fuckin¡¯ stay there.¡± She got up muttering darkly about invalids who thought they were well. We sat there as she talked to the person happily. I drank some soda. John and Kyle had their hands on their guns. Valkyrie calmly ate her pizza.

    Eventually, Eliza came back into the room, smiling. ¡°Guess ¡®oo¡¯s ¡®ere!¡± She said. ¡°Eric an¡¯ ¡®is mates!¡±

    ¡°Who?¡± Valkyrie asked.

    ¡°We¡¯ll bring them in,¡± John said, ¡°you can meet them then.¡±

    They all left hurriedly. Valkyrie raised her eyebrows. ¡°Eric¡¯s a former child soldier from Africa,¡± I said. ¡°He¡¯s very friendly, but he and the rest of his group would prefer you not ask about their past.¡± Valkyrie nodded, examining me, as if calculating how much more damage would be done.

    When Eric came in, it wasn¡¯t just with Doc, MC Disaster, Ray-Gun and the Monk. Oro and Cross were also there, as well as a lot of other students from NIU¡¯s AMS and Shadowhaven programs. All of them seemed to have some sort of concealed weaponry, judging by the bulges in their clothes, and many of them were chattering excitedly. A few began to reveal their weapons (mostly assault rifles and pistols, but there were also some SMGs, shotguns, sniper rifles, anti-tank rockets, grenade launchers, and belt-fed machine guns,) and unloading them.

    ¡°Valkyrie brought us pizza,¡± John said, ¡°but I don¡¯t think there¡¯ll be enough.¡±

    ¡°Do not worry, my friend,¡± Eric said, pointing to a Hispanic woman chatting with Eliza and carrying several boxes, ¡°Camilla is also bringing gifts.¡± He pointed to an Asian man carrying several bags of what appeared to be Mexican food. ¡°So is Bunrouen.¡±

    After I had watched the room slowly became covered in weapon parts, ammo, grenades, what appeared to be bricks of C4 or worse, and people eating junk food and drinking soda and alcohol, I nervously turned to look back at Valkyrie.

    Her face did not express amusement.

 6.25: The Takeover

    ¡°Eric,¡± I said, after Valkyrie had finally left, ¡°any particular reason why you showed up? I¡¯ve noticed that everyone was¡­ vague with our friendly neighborhood super hero.¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± Eric said. ¡°We don¡¯t really want to talk about NIU with her around, you understand.¡±

    ¡°Or why you¡¯re here,¡± I suggested. Eric had mentioned something about personal vendettas against the Dragon¡¯s Teeth, but apart from the two white people who weren¡¯t Cross and some of the Middle Easterners, I had a sneaking suspicion that most of the people were from countries that the Dragon¡¯s Teeth didn¡¯t consider strategically important. Apart from some border clashes with Egypt, most of the African countries were relatively Deet-free and many of the South-East and Central Asian countries like Vietnam, Taiwan, Burma and the Philippines were only being menaced by the Teeth in China and India and annoyed by refugees instead of dealing with full-scale invasion.

    ¡°Well,¡± Eric said, ¡°we are mostly here to observe and report. Some of us are going to attempt to blend in among the populace if the Dragon¡¯s Teeth come in full force. Others are going to attempt to keep you alive and this facility out of Dragon¡¯s Teeth hands.¡±

    ¡°Makes sense,¡± I said, ¡°But-¡±

    ¡°That first goal is going to be very hard,¡± Eric said, completely po-faced. ¡°You seem to like getting yourself into stupid situations.¡±

    ¡°Fuck you,¡± I said, punching him in the arm. ¡°I¡¯ve been good recently.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Eric said. ¡°Very well-behaved. In fact, diplomats will be using your behavior in Japan as an etiquette guide.¡±

    ¡°That was an accident.¡±

    Eric laughed. ¡°Then if I ever get fine china, remind me to always give you paper plates, my friend. In fact, if that is your idea of an innocent mistake, I should probably stay a couple kilometers away from you just to avoid your blast radius.¡±

    ¡°Very funny,¡± I said, trying not to consider the costs of my ¡°mistakes.¡± ¡°But seriously, there isn¡¯t any hidden agendas? Nothing you¡¯re hiding from me?¡±

    ¡°No, Killer,¡± Eric said. He smiled. I was not reassured.

    Over the next few weeks, I showed Eric and the rest of the people how to work the guns I¡¯d developed. Eric, Ray-Gun, and MC Disaster figured a way to use the Fuckup effectively at the firing range. Eric would fire the gun and clear the inevitable malfunctions. When a belt ran out of ammo, he¡¯d pull the cocking lever for the belt on the other side. Meanwhile, Ray-Gun and MC were on either side, ready with extra belts and spare barrels. Thus, when on a bipod or tripod (and ignoring the many, many malfunctions,) the Fuckup could fire near continuously, because it could be reloaded while firing. When they weren¡¯t doing maintenance or reloading, Ray-Gun and MC Disaster would help Doc and the Monk provide covering fire.The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

    Meanwhile, the news seemed to be getting better and better. Canadian forces were massing to the north, with the occasional reinforcements from Austrailia, New Zealand, and various exiled Asians, and to the south, most of the Latin American nations were moving troops to the US-Mexican border. As I was watching a report about the overseas reinforcements, MC Disaster said, ¡°We shouldn¡¯t expect too many.¡±

    I turned to him. ¡°There¡¯s a reason they captured all those ships instead of sinking them,¡± MC said. ¡°They¡¯re patrolling the seas, sinking anything bigger than a rubber dinghy and capturing oil derricks to use as lookout towers. We almost got sunk by destroyers several times.¡±

    ¡°Dragon¡¯s Teeth or scared and confused runners?¡±

    MC grimaced. ¡°Hard to tell. The Dragon¡¯s Teeth don¡¯t keep their flags up. Either way, we think our subs looked too much like the kind of subs the Dragon¡¯s Teeth look like on radar.¡±

    ¡°By the way,¡± I said, ¡°any news on where the other people are?¡±

    ¡°What other people?¡± MC asked.

    ¡°The people you came in with,¡± I said. ¡°There were like, twenty or thirty so operators you came in with. I mean, there still are, but a few are different.¡± MC suddenly began studying his palms like he was trying to see the future. ¡°Look,¡± I said, annoyed, ¡°I accept that you¡¯re going to be doing recon. I can help. But if you¡¯re going behind my back, and I don¡¯t know what you¡¯re doing, and you do something big enough to draw attention, then I¡¯m going to have to give you up. If you let me help you, we can avoid that.¡±

    ¡°As long as the Dragon¡¯s Teeth don¡¯t occupy this place,¡± MC said carefully, ¡°we won¡¯t be attracting attention. Until then, our silence is your protection.¡±

    ¡°Why¡¯s that?¡± I asked.

    ¡°The Dragon¡¯s Teeth wants you alive,¡± MC said. ¡°If they take this city, we want them to take you. If they give you some liberty, then we want you to be an asset.¡±

    ¡°And if they break me or Eliza,¡± I said, ¡°then you all are compromised.¡±

    ¡°Who says it¡¯s just us?¡± MC asked.

    I turned back to the TV. A reporter was in Boston Common, facing the State House, talking about something or other. In the background, for some reason, I noticed that some cops with long guns were walking to the left, like there had been a non-urgent disturbance of some sort.

    Then, there was a crashing sound, and a vehicle that, from the distance the camera was at, looked like an Escalade or similar SUV, raced into view, running down the cops before they could eve raise their guns. ¡°Oh my God!¡± The reporter said. ¡°You just saw this, a car accident outside Beacon Hill, hitting multiple police-¡±

    Then five more SUVs also raced in from the same direction and seven from the opposite one. All thirteen changed color from various civilian colors to an urban camo pattern. Simultaneously, a turret raised from where a sunroof would be on a normal SUV, and Picts began dismounting. I noticed that they had supplemented their Deet-issued weapons with various captured guns.

    ¡°So,¡± I said, turning to MC, ¡°assuming they¡¯re not in Worcester already, how much do you want to bet they won¡¯t be here by October?¡±

    MC laughed. ¡°That¡¯s three weeks away. They¡¯re going to be here by Friday.¡±

 6.27: Twilightâ€™s Last Gleaming

    ¡°How long before they get here?¡± I asked.

    Jen was set down on a comfy piece of floor. ¡°I have no idea. It could be a few weeks. It could be a few hours. It all depends on how long the guard can hold out.¡± She paused, looking like she was about to burst into tears. Then she asked hopefully, ¡°Do you think there will be reinforcements? I haven¡¯t heard anything in days.¡±

    I then realized that I hadn¡¯t heard anything from beyond Massachusetts in days. ¡°I¡­¡± I began.

    Eric cut me off. ¡°I am sure everything will be all right,¡± he said. ¡°There is no way they have enough firepower. They have taken on China, the EU, Russia, India, and much of the Middle East. They have to break.¡±

    Jen glared at Eric. ¡°I know when I¡¯m being lied to,¡± she said. ¡°You aren¡¯t telling me the whole story.¡±

    ¡°We haven¡¯t heard from the Canadians in days,¡± I said.

    ¡°I have,¡± Eric admitted. ¡°We got a report from NIU observers. They dropped two plasma bombs on the Canucks advancing on us, but the Canadians seem to be still advancing.¡±

    Most people made noises of surprise, but Eliza laughed. ¡°Those mad bastards! It was the same in the first World War, those mad men would charge inna clouds of mustard gas and machinegun nests an¡¯ win.¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s the likelihood of them winning now?¡± Cross asked.

    ¡°Zero,¡± she said. ¡°But hopefully it either makes those motherless freaks think twice ¡®bout moving farther or teaches the Canucks something useful about fighting them.¡±

    ¡°So I came back just to watch them roll over everything?¡± Cross asked. ¡°When the hell are we going to stand and fight?¡± He then walked over and kicked a wall. I heard a crack that was probably his toe. ¡°FUCK!¡±

    ¡°Not everything,¡± I said. ¡°We¡¯re the speed bump.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t want New York to be a speed bump!¡±  Cross yelled.

    ¡°Well too late,¡± Jen said. ¡°From what I heard, it already was, and it wasn¡¯t as good a speed bump as Boston.¡±

    ¡°Oi,¡± Eliza said, ¡°I¡¯ll fuckin¡¯ cut you gibbons if you make it a stupid regional thing, swear on me mum.¡±

    ¡°But there are things we can do,¡± I said. ¡°Things that don¡¯t involve strapping C4 to ourselves and throwing ourselves under a Charon.¡±

    ¡°Please don¡¯t joke about that,¡± Jen said.

    ¡°For instance,¡± I went on, ¡°there¡¯s still a few rifles. We have¡­¡±

    ¡°No there aren¡¯t,¡± Eliza said. ¡°What weapons you ¡®aven¡¯t given to our guests and random reprobates amounts to about five bloody Mjolnirs and four NFs. There¡¯s some ammo, but it¡¯ll run out pretty quickly, splittin¡¯ it up among all of us.¡±

    ¡°We made thousands of them,¡± I said. ¡°We can¡¯t have sold all.¡±

    ¡°You did,¡± Jen said. ¡°My contacts at the BPD were complaining because your waiting list was backed up for decades and they¡¯d wanted to keep those toys you made for themselves.¡±

    ¡°They are quite good,¡± Eric said in agreement. ¡°Shame that they sold so quickly.¡±

    I thought of these guns, all distributed to police departments across the country and a few around the world. Apart from maybe my very, very sketchy first customer, I had reason to believe that not a single military or counter-terror unit had come into possession of my products and I had no intention of selling on the civilian market. All those firearms, in the hands of people with no prayer of using them effectively. I hadn¡¯t even managed to get it adopted by the FBI.Stolen novel; please report.

    ¡°Hey,¡± I asked, ¡°Did the Chinese manage to put their version of the Maccabee into production?¡±

    ¡°I think they¡¯d just gotten the assembly rolling,¡± Jen said. ¡°The problem was, the province it was located in was the first to be hit.¡±

    ¡°Maybe they¡¯ve developed a taste for your guns,¡± John said. ¡°I remember you saying something about them trying to get you.¡±

    ¡°There were other reasons,¡± I said. ¡°Anyway, let¡¯s get everyone settled.¡± I then wheeled around to the garage, desperately trying not to think about the incoming wave of Teeth.

    The inspection didn¡¯t reveal anything good. We couldn¡¯t fit the seventy assorted gangsters, mostly Kagemoto grunts, but some from other gangs, for any real length of time without running into food problems. We also had only enough ammo for a day of fighting at most, and no weapons designed to take down the various nasty vehicles they had. Still, I wasn¡¯t going to sit down.

    We were preparing the defenses, with me talking to Jen¡¯s pet code geeks, Lydia and Andrew, about ways to improve the automated defense systems, when someone turned on a radio.

    For a moment, there was static. Then, with AM quality, a soft-spoken voice came over the speaker. ¡°My name,¡± he said, ¡°Is Brigadier General James Connolly of the US Marines. From what I can tell, I am the highest ranking US officer left alive and at liberty.¡±

    By that point, everyone in the room had stopped talking. From outside, I could hear trucks drive by, broadcasting the message and people, possibly soldiers, shouting something. I wondered if everyone in what remained of the US was listening.

    ¡°I am broadcasting on several shortwave and local radio channels,¡± General Connolly continued, his voice shaking. ¡°The Canadian forces sent to assist my position have been pushed back. This is not because they are cowards, it is because that they were asked to do the impossible. They have done the impossible three times now, and I cannot in good conscience ask them to do it a fourth.¡±

    At this there was a murmur of shock. Everyone, even me, had somehow believed that this would not be the end. That the Canadians would come and save us, or the Latin-American coalition.

    ¡°I am broadcasting to all who can hear me,¡± the General continued, ¡°so that those who still remain under my care can attain an honest assessment of the situation and those out in the rest of the world will know of what in all likelihood will be our last stand.

    ¡°In July, the United States had over three hundred million people living in it, spread out over three point eight million square miles. For those outside my country, that¡¯s roughly nine point eight million square kilometers. Worcester County, where I have made my base, was not seen as a significant part of it in any sense. Around eight hundred thousand people living in four thousand square kilometers.

    ¡°Now, we of the US are facing our darkest hour. Some of you may not know the extent to which this military has failed its people. We have no planes. Only a handful of artillery and vehicles remain. If they let us live, we will run out of food and water within a few weeks.

    ¡°Even more egregious, a week before the first major Dragon¡¯s Teeth push into China, they managed to capture our nuclear weapons and we did not inform you. We have reason to believe that all thermonuclear devices and most other chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction are in their hands.¡±

    That news caused my stomach to drop. Of course they had them. If they didn¡¯t have all the nukes, someone would have used them. Who the hell would hesitate to nuke faceless soldiers murdering their way across your own country? Other people didn¡¯t take it so well.

    The General continued on. ¡°Right now, I control two thousand five hundred of the four thousand square kilometers of Worcester County. I have over three million charges, most of them unarmed refugees.

    ¡°Outside my defensive perimeter is an enemy that has been confirmed to kill innocents, mostly the sick and the elderly. They have done so with a high-tech, organized barbarity that pales to anything we¡¯ve ever seen. This force is poised on the doorstep, ready to strike.

    ¡°It was the duty of the United States Armed Forces to stop this kind of threat. I think it is fair to say that we have failed utterly. Many, both in and out of my country, have looked to us to face this threat. If we had done everything we could, there would be no shame in that. But we haven¡¯t. Our failure goes back decades, if not to the foundation of this country.

    ¡°A few months ago, we were the greatest country in the world. Instead of sharing that greatness with the rest of the world, we instead took the best from other countries while giving the minimum in return. We promised so much, and in the end, all we have to give is this.

    ¡°To those remaining under my command and protection, I would encourage you to fight. We still have a chance to make a difference. If you want to run or surrender, I would not recommend it as the Dragon¡¯s Teeth have rarely taken prisoners. If neither option sounds appealing, the only other I can think of is spending time with those you care about. Thank you all, and God bless America.¡±

    With that, the radio switched to a slow, mournful rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. For a few seconds, there was a silence. Then Eliza loudly proclaimed, ¡°Fuckin¡¯ ¡®ell that was an awful speech!¡±

 Health Issues

    This is not a suicide note. In fact, I think it¡¯s a sign that I¡¯m relatively quite far off from that. But I have to warn you up front that I am unwell and have been that way for a long time. Also, in case you are easily triggered (and I mean that in the clinical sense</a> of the term, not the ¡°lol, I¡¯m a troll top kek fuck ur feelings dur-hur-hur¡± sense,) the tl;dr is that I¡¯m dealing with a wonderful cocktail of clinical depression, anxiety, uncategorized learning disability, and possible internet addiction.

    I don¡¯t know if you¡¯ve picked up on it. One of the things I¡¯ve learned about myself the past few months is that I¡¯m very good at hiding when I¡¯m in pain or need something. I¡¯m what I call ¡°the designated good kid.¡± I¡¯ve been the DGK longer than I¡¯ve had my other issues. I may or may elaborate on that, but right now, I need to talk about why I haven¡¯t been putting out content as consistently as I used to.

    You see, I have depression and anxiety. Those words are interesting ones in that have one or more definition person (like Feminism, Capitalism, Free Speech, etc.) and as such require me to define my terms.

    From what I can tell, when most people encounter difficulties or have something good happen, they assign responsibility quickly and move on. There is a slight bias in their thinking in that they believe the majority of their good fortune is due to themselves and that the bad is the fault of Them.</a> They also decide on a course of action and identify their feelings, usually very quickly, and usually move on. Or they can consciously move on. Sometimes, on good days, I am like this.

    Other times, things most people (or maybe I¡¯m just thinking of the mythical Normal Person) would think of as trivial annoyances or even good things, are existential terrors to me. I subconsciously bottle them up inside me, because I know that the mythical Normal Person wouldn¡¯t even bother to laugh it off. I keep it inside until it manifests physically. Usually, I get coughing jags. Horrendous, hacking fits that can last for minutes and echoed up and down the school corridors during my middle and high school days. Most recently, at my awful, awful former job, it manifested as vomiting before I went to work, sometimes as many as seventeen times in under two hours, not even able to keep down small sips of Ginger Ale. Sometimes, as if by magic, these symptoms would calm down or even magically vanish when I called it in or got sent home.

    Other times, I have debilitating panic attacks. The reason I checked myself into the hospital in January is that every time I tried to do something, my breathing would become ragged, like I had run a mile under heavy fire. I¡¯d break down in tears and shake uncontrollably. My thoughts would race, somehow always circling back to one simple question: Wouldn¡¯t it all be easier if you were dead?  I was driving at the time, and eventually I had to pull the car over and have my mom and sister come pick me up because I was seriously considering crashing full-speed into a tree. Half my mind was focused on trying to stop these thoughts and come up with a plan to get out safely, the other half was plotting the best angle to hit to instantly kill myself but not inconvenience any of the other drivers on the road.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

    Almost constantly, even when the other situations are going on, I¡¯ll feel stuck. I¡¯ll blame myself for small mistakes or things that I rationally know are out of my control. Instead of asking for help or what some would say I deserve, I worry about inconveniencing others or overstepping my bounds. When I try to do things, I become convinced that it doesn¡¯t matter. When I think of approaching people romantically, I become convinced that people will find my sexual tastes, appearance, and personality repugnant and, in my less lucid moments, wonder if all the evidence to the contrary is some sort of conspiracy.

    As these thoughts increase, I sink deeper into this despair molasses. The deeper it increases, the more I believe nothing coming from me matters. Since I believe nothing matters, I just sit around and play computer games or screen suck¡­ until I become too disgusted with myself to be relieved by that. I was going along this path.

    Each one of these three paths always leads to one question. Wouldn¡¯t it be better for everyone if you were gone? Then I begin to think up ways to ¡°go away¡± that won¡¯t bother anyone. So far I¡¯ve been realistic enough to know that there¡¯s no way I can end myself without hurting the people who care about me. I just can¡¯t. That¡¯s stopped me many times before, but that excuse is wearing out, and it scares me.

    Some of the more perceptive of may be saying ¡°Wait, you said you went to the hospital. Why aren¡¯t you cured?¡± Well, I have a learning/social disability. Some people say it¡¯s an Autism spectrum disorder, with a few going as far as saying it¡¯s Asperger¡¯s. Some say it¡¯s ADD or ADHD. My favorite is the one that says ¡°Other, Unspecified.¡±

    What does this mean? Well, apart from being bad at math and programming (yay for breaking stereotypes! Whooo!) it means I naturally favor a coping mechanism called isolating. In plain English, by default, I avoid people when I feel hurt, afraid, bored, overwhelmed, anything, nothing, etc. Sometimes that¡¯s good. People are like big cats at a zoo. Viewed from behind a nice sturdy wall or on a screen, they¡¯re cute and beautiful. In real life, they can seriously hurt you.

    However, humans aren¡¯t designed to live without contact with other humans. And my constant state of feeling awful is proof. I want to keep writing. That can be good for me. But I need human connection, and fixing myself might take a long time.

 6.28: Massachusetts Is Beautiful This Time of Year

    For some of us, our work took on a new urgency after that. Others became despondent. From what I could tell though, nobody left. After all, where was there to go? Most of their friends and family were either dead, far out of reach, or in the room with them.

    For the first time in a long time, I thought about my family. I suddenly realized that I had no idea if they were alive or not. I didn¡¯t even know whether or not Maynard was part of the area that had been taken. Normally, it was just a thirty-minute drive by highway. Now it was probably a world away, through Dragon¡¯s Teeth patrols, ruined roads, blasted landscape, destroyed houses, wrecked and abandoned vehicles, and corpses.

    Until the invasion, I may have been one of the most knowledgeable people on the subject of Teeth weapons and tactics. I knew what could, no, what would happen if you were hit by their weapons. Hell, a near-miss from their personal plasma weaponry had inflicted some of the most horrific damage I¡¯d ever seen on a human being. If it hit my parents or my sister¡­

    I excused myself quickly. I knew why I hadn¡¯t been thinking about it. I couldn¡¯t bear it. I was a coward. I was distant from the world I was thought I was helping. What the hell was I doing? Did I really think that any of this was doing anything? I was just a dumb kid from Maynard who was good at killing people on occasion.

    As soon as I found a room, Eliza found me. ¡°Oi, Nate,¡± she said softly. ¡°You alright, mate?¡±

    ¡°Where¡¯s my family?¡± I asked, turning to look at her.

    Eliza looked thoughtful. After a long while she said, ¡°I think we both know. But there¡¯s really only one way to be sure.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°And I don¡¯t think that I can go out looking for them. If they¡¯re in Dragon¡¯s Teeth territory, well.¡± I gestured to my wheelchair. ¡°I can¡¯t exactly ask you to push me the entire way.¡±This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    ¡°Or you could just call, you git,¡± Eliza said, pointing to a landline on the wall.

    ¡°The cell towers are all dead,¡± I said morosely. ¡°And the landlines are cut.¡±

    "You sure?¡± Eliza asked. ¡°Your ¡®ouse still ¡®as a landline, doesn¡¯t it?¡± She grabbed my chair and wheeled me to the phone. ¡°Call ¡®em. Apologize for being a wanker and not calling ¡®em sooner or I¡¯ll dump you outta the chair, lock you in the room, and leave you to your own devices.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said, taking the corded phone off its cradle and punching in the number. ¡°I¡¯ll do it.¡± Putting the phone to my ear, I heard the reassuring dial tone. Eliza was right, the phones were still working.

    But when I finished punching in the number, a gruff, professional voice said, ¡°We¡¯re sorry, but due to recent events many numbers have been disconnected. This number,¡± the next phrase was in a different military voice, ¡°is located in an area that has been confirmed destroyed.¡± The first voice began speaking again. ¡°If you have any questions, please contact General Paulson¡¯s office at-¡±

    I didn¡¯t hear the rest of the voice. I hung up, rather than listen about how I should contact a dead army officer. ¡°Apparently,¡± I said dully, ¡°My home¡­ my family lives in an area that ¡®has been confirmed destroyed.¡¯¡± I broke down sobbing.

    ¡°Well,¡± Eliza said, ¡°you can-¡±

    ¡°Avenge them?¡± I asked. ¡°Really? And what happens if the reason they¡¯re dead is that they were in a US barrage?¡± Eliza looked shocked. ¡°It. Doesn¡¯t. Matter. What matters is that I was out doing something utterly stupid instead of being with them.¡± Before Eliza could respond, I quickly added, ¡°It isn¡¯t your fault or Charlotte¡¯s. It¡¯s mine. I believed I could save the world. At any point on this whole crazy ride, I could have said, ¡®you know what, I¡¯m just a dumb kid in over my head,¡¯ and left. And at most points, I could have done it and no one would have thought any less of me.¡±

    ¡°Nate,¡± Eliza said, ¡°Do you want to leave?¡±

    ¡°Now?¡± I asked. ¡°No. I might have a way out of this, but nobody else here does.¡± I sighed and laughed. ¡°We¡¯re fucked, but we can at least die standing. Or sitting,¡± I added, remembering my chair.

    Eliza smiled and hugged me. ¡°I¡¯m glad you¡¯re here.¡± Her hug tightened. ¡°And I¡¯m glad you want to be here.¡±

    Hugging her back, my voice breaking with tears, I said, ¡°I¡¯m glad you¡¯re here, too.¡± Getting my voice under control, I tried to add in a flippant tone, ¡°Shame we don¡¯t have a view of the trees. Massachusetts is beautiful this time of year.¡±

 6.29: The Lights Go Out

    From what I understood, Andrew and Lydia had managed to decrypt the army¡¯s radio feed. When I asked them if they should tell the army how easy it was to crack their encryption, Andrew shrugged. ¡°We told one of the Rangers we fought with in Boston about it. He laughed and said that they knew and everyone we had who could come up with a new code was dead or captured.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Lydia added, ¡°didn¡¯t you realize we were all fucked, Killer?¡±

    ¡°I did,¡± I said sheepishly, ¡°I just didn¡¯t know how bad.¡±

    Everyone who was off-duty was listening to the Bluetooth speakers that Lydia and Andrew were using to listen in on the army. Normally, the chatter wouldn¡¯t be interesting. Just some guys occasionally saying all clear. Yet we were all waiting for the time when they¡¯d start seeing something else.

    I looked around. The only other two people I saw that I recognized were Cross and Doc, holding hands and looking ill with worry about what was coming. I didn¡¯t blame them.

    ¡°Hey, Andrew, Lydia,¡± I said, ¡°Can you guys broadcast as well as receive? If things start to get hairy for them, they should know that the door is open.¡±

    ¡°Not a problem,¡± Andrew said. He then fiddled with a laptop for a bit, then said, ¡°US forces, US forces, this is what remains of Bandits one through four. We got ourselves a nice little place. You need to crash, we got a place, over.¡±

    I was somewhat surprised to hear General Connolly himself respond. ¡°This is Alamo Actual. I¡¯ve heard about you guys, Bandit. The 75<sup>th</sup> spoke highly of you.¡±

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t be putting those guys in past-tense yet, sir,¡± Andrew said. ¡°They were pretty bad themselves.¡±

    ¡°Maybe,¡± Connolly said. ¡°But they¡¯re not going to come help us. Anyway, I take it you¡¯re at a certain weapons factory?¡±

    ¡°Hell yeah,¡± Andrew said.

    ¡°I¡¯ll pass on the information. If you are who I think you are, we got your message. In the meantime, stay off the net. They¡¯ll contact you.¡±

    ¡°Huh,¡± Lydia said. ¡°We actually have a smart person in charge. That¡¯s always nice.¡±

    I nodded. Still, this was a guy who¡¯d said he¡¯d spent a lot of time behind a desk taking a tired, tiny force up against potentially millions of the greatest army ever seen. I shook my head at thinking this. We could have the greatest commander and a week to prepare, but we¡¯d still be fucked. Hell, maybe if the US government had known that the Teeth had this level of power back before I¡¯d gone to North Korea, we still might be in the same situation.

    Around four in the morning, we began hearing the first bits of fighting. ¡°This is Echo Niner. We¡¯re seeing movement on the other side of Lake Quinsigamond. Looking to confirm it is Drake, over.¡±

    ¡°Roger that,¡± General Connolly responded. ¡°Be advised, though we cannot provide fire support at this time. Alamo out.¡±

    Lake Quinsigamond. That was close, maybe even inside city limits. Of course, the Teeth were everywhere now. There were millions of them versus thousands of us.Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

    ¡°Watershed Nine here,¡± another voice said in a low whisper. ¡°We¡¯re at a junction between State Routes Twelve, One-Ten, and One-Forty. Teeth are massing right in front of us to move into West Boylston. Requesting Watershed Nine blow the One-Forty bridge across the Thomas Basin as we start our ambush. Over.¡±

    ¡°Negative, Watershed Niner,¡± Connolly said, ¡°Wait until Drake begins crossing the bridge. Watershed Ten-¡±

    The general was interrupted by an urgent voice. ¡°This is Watershed Ten. We¡¯re observing Dragon¡¯s Teeth spec ops scaling the bridge supports. Your orders, sir?¡±

    ¡°Engage with snipers,¡± Connolly replied. ¡°Keep them off the supports as long as possible. Watershed Niner, go weapons free. Repeat, Watershed Ten and Niner are weapons free.¡±

    ¡°Roger that,¡± Watershed Ten said. The last word Ten said was cut off by two roars, one of static, the other on Watershed Ten¡¯s end. Watershed Ten then said, his once-clear voice now severely distorted by static, ¡°Well, I think Watershed Nine is compromised. Multiple plasma bursts impacting at what appears to be their command center and apparently Charons are now amphibious. We¡¯re opening fire with the Abrams and Javelins as we speak, over.¡± Despite the horrible sound quality, I could sort of make out the loud cracks of big guns.

    "Roger that,¡± Connolly said. ¡°Give ¡®em hell, Watershed.¡±

    Suddenly, a panicked voice came over the radio. ¡°This is Echo Niner! Dragon¡¯s Teeth heavy vehicles are crossing Quinsigamond and our charges are non-functioning. Repeat, charges are a no-go, the bridge will not fall. Orders, sir?¡±

    ¡°Make them bottle up,¡± Connolly said. ¡°We need to do as much damage as we can.¡±

    It went on like that for hours as the Dragon¡¯s Teeth began to tighten the noose on all sides. I tried to get to sleep, but I was slowly hearing more and more gunfire and explosions. The last US artillery began firing. Everything they had left: shrapnel rounds, high explosive, incendiary even poison gas was launched, judging by the chatter. The only thing they weren¡¯t deploying were the biological and nuclear weapons. I wondered if they were avoiding releasing something like super Ebola because they weren¡¯t that desperate or if the Dragon¡¯s Teeth had secured our bio weapons like they had with the nuclear stuff. Or even worse, they could be deploying them right now and I¡¯d survive the battle only to come down with a flesh-eating virus that would slowly and painfully eat me alive over the course of years.

    More and more, the Teeth seemed to be getting closer. We¡¯d even hear jets fly by over the building on occasion. Judging by how quiet they were and considering how the war had gone, they had to be Dragon¡¯s Teeth. Judging by the sound of gunfire and explosions and the radio chatter, the Teeth were trying to use a mix of artillery, air strikes, and human wave tactics to break through a series of positions on Interstate Route 290.

    It was working. The blocking maneuver was working wonderfully, but the people manning it were only holding on because of a huge amount of mustard gas and conventional shells being dropped. The various soldiers manning the ambushes were tiring, and the howitzers were running out.

    Finally, a tired female voice came in over the radio. ¡°This is Hotel. We¡¯re dry, and down to only one MLRS, anyway.¡±

    ¡°Roger that,¡± Connolly said. ¡°Can you get back to position Alamo?¡±

    ¡°Maybe,¡± Hotel said, as suddenly there was the sound of an explosion close by. ¡°Wait, no. We¡¯re cut off. Good luck. Hotel out.¡±

    The defenses all over began dissolving. I finally knew what so many others had felt across the globe as the Teeth had slowly, inexorably pushed out their nation¡¯s last remaining troops in the area. The Teeth had taken the seas, the skies, and utterly humiliated and annihilated the three great super powers and any player that could have potentially stepped in to fill the void. Still, I hadn¡¯t given up some strange irrational hope that some hero would blow up the thing shooting light into the sky or kill the bad guy or even that God Himself would come down and lay the hurt on these motherfuckers.

    Then the retreat began. After what seemed like hours of chaos, Connolly contacted us. ¡°This is Alamo. Bandit, you guys ready to take in some strays?¡±

    ¡°Yes sir,¡± Andrew said. ¡°We are one hundred percent ready.¡±

    ¡°I hope that¡¯s true,¡± Connolly said, ¡°because it looks like the main axis of Drake¡¯s attack could bear down on you.¡±

 6.30: End of the End

    I moved back to the cameras. It wasn¡¯t long until I saw the first US soldiers come down the street. The first wave were in trucks and they passed by. Some of those trucks had their canvas covers burned off and I could see that they were carrying heavily injured troops who were too messed up to fight. The next wave were the able-bodied and walking wounded. If you could move by leaning against a more able-bodied buddy or being dragged along by the hand, you were in this wave.

    I opened the doors facing them. ¡°Hey everybody,¡± I said over the loudspeakers. ¡°Incoming US troops, please use the doors facing you. Also, if some of the guys who can stand could pull security. And people inside the factory, please do not shoot at the guys in multicam. That¡¯d be great.¡±

    I felt a gloved hand on my shoulder. I turned around and saw Jen in her terrifying Hinomoto Oniko getup. ¡°Make sure you check them all to make sure they aren¡¯t wearing masks, though,¡± she said, her voice eerily distorted by her mask. ¡°I don¡¯t want to get blindsided again.¡±

    She then leaned against the wall and began checking her weapons. I noticed that she had added two Uilon Mangchis and a Ballpeen to her arsenal as well as her usual twin Beretta 92 Elites and Kriss Vector. ¡°You should have made more ammo,¡± she said. ¡°If my experience is correct about this, we should only have enough for a day or two of constant fighting.¡±

    I was about to say some things. Such as, ¡°Assuming we last that long,¡± or ask her why she had jumped in behind me. Instead, I said, ¡°In case I don¡¯t see you again, uh, good luck?¡± I held out my hand.

    Jen let the Ballpeen fall loose in its sling and grabbed my hand. ¡°Good luck.¡± Then she cocked her head to the side. ¡°Do you have a weapon? You might need one.¡±

    I reached under the desk and pulled out a Maccabee and laid it in my lap, careful to keep the barrel pointed away from Jen. ¡°Nice thing about these guys is that they¡¯ve got almost no recoil,¡± I said. ¡°I can pretty much spray and pray without having to put my brakes on.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯ll be useful,¡± Jen said. ¡°I have to¡­¡± she made a vague gesture with her hand, then left.

    I went back to the monitor. Outside, there was a small stream of soldiers coming in. If things kept up, we literally would not be able to hold any more people in a few hours. Inside, we were already feeling the strain. Gangsters with no military training were doing their best to make tired, stressed, and heavily armed soldiers form an orderly cue so their faces could be pinched. I was surprised that nobody had shot each other yet.

    I looked back at the screens viewing the outside. In front of the factory, I could see various fighting vehicles slowly backing down the various streets, firing all the way. Several of these streets had larger vehicles firing over the tops of smaller ones. Then the cameras facing the Teeth¡¯s axis of attack went blank for a bit and the others suffered a drop in quality. What I could see of the firing vehicles showed that there had been a huge blue-white flash. When the video came back on, I could see smoke from farther up the street.

    I turned on the intercom. ¡°Get those new arrivals processed quicker. They¡¯re fucking coming.¡±Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

    I watched the columns of armored vehicles slowly got worn down. I didn¡¯t really have a great angle on them, but I knew that every time there was a bright flash of light and the cameras went out, the odds were extremely high that another tank had been destroyed or disabled.

    ¡°Come on, come on, come on¡± I murmured repeatedly looking at the various internal cameras where the triage was happening and the rush of incoming soldiers. We didn¡¯t have time for this. The whole army was closing in on us and we had a line going out the door. At least it was starting to move quickly.

    There was a knock on the door outside. I looked at the camera viewing the hall. A US soldier, his various recent burns and cuts prominent against his black skin. I saw only one side of him due to the camera angle, and one hand appeared to be clawed and he seemed to be favoring the leg I could see. I opened the door, turned to shake his hand and said, ¡°I¡¯m Nathan Jacobs and Jesus Christ you need medical attention!¡±

    The camera view hadn¡¯t really prepared me for the mass of cuts and burns on the poor man. The pant leg on the side I couldn¡¯t see was in tatters, with the leg itself having multiple cuts, burns, and bits of shrapnel stuck in it. I could also tell why his hand was clawed: a rod of metal had gone through it. I¡¯d seen his face from the camera feed, but that had been distorted. The burns and cuts were even more pronounced and I could see the bits of shrapnel now.

    ¡°With all due respect, sir,¡± the soldier said, his eyes bloodshot from what was probably a lack of sleep, ¡°Y¡¯all look like shit as well.¡± He pulled out a stray bit of shrapnel that had lodged right next to his eye, then took my hand. I tried not to recoil or flinch, seeing as how it was the same hand that had that had removed the metal chunk. ¡°I¡¯m Captain Aaron Castle, and near as I can tell, I¡¯m the ranking officer in this shit show. How long you keeping the doors open?¡±

    ¡°As long as those tanks are holding,¡± I said. ¡°As soon as I see them stop holding the lines, or as soon as the people out in front get in, I close the doors and turn on the auto-turrets.¡±

    ¡°Can the turrets identify friendlies?¡± he asked.

    ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°When they¡¯re on, everything in pre-designated killzones is a valid target. But it¡¯ll be way better than them just pushing on into the building.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t dispute that,¡± Castle said, ¡°but I¡¯d prefer that all my boys make it in.¡±

    ¡°I want them all to make it inside,¡± I said, ¡°I too want to be able to sleep at night, if we survive this. But if we want to be a speedbump, we cannot let Dragon¡¯s Teeth into the building. We also need to consider the fact that all the food and ammo you guys are bringing in is all that they¡¯re going to get. They also are going to have to worry about the fact that the Teeth can cut the water at any time.¡±

    Castle looked at me in disgust. ¡°Are you suggesting it might be beneficial to leave men out there to die?¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re a smart man,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m not going to insult your intelligence by pretending that¡¯s not exactly what I¡¯m saying. But there aren¡¯t a lot of options other than that.¡± I paused, then asked, ¡°Serious question: do you know what happens when you try surrendering to these people? Because I legitimately don¡¯t know.¡±

    Castle looked at me, his eyes narrowed. ¡°At this point,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯d be willing to surrender, and I think most people in the building would be as well. Alternatively, we could use the people pulling security duty as guinea pigs. Have them surrender, and use that as a delaying tactic.¡±

    Castle shook his head. ¡°No,¡± he said. ¡°We aren¡¯t surrendering. We¡¯ve lost too many people to give up now.¡±

    ¡°I understand,¡± I said. ¡°You should go back down and try to organize your men. Ideally, they¡¯ll all be inside.¡± I smile reassuringly, and the Captain nodded and turned around. When the door closed, I make sure the heavy metal door is locked. Then I pull down the ballistic curtain.

    As I said to Captain castle, ideally, every single US soldier will be inside the factory when the Dragon¡¯s Teeth begins their assault.

    Of course, the world hadn¡¯t been ideal for a long time.

 6.31: In the town known as Worcester, MA

    For what seemed to be several hours but was probably not even a half an hour, I watched the incoming stream of soldiers trying to get into the factory. The vehicles were still holding the line, but barely.

    ¡°Where the fuck are all these people coming from?¡± I muttered under my breath.

    I heard a knock on the door. On the camera, it revealed it to be Eliza. ¡°I¡¯m kind of locked down at the moment,¡± I said into the intercom. I made sure it was only directed into the speaker outside the door to the security room.

    ¡°Good,¡± Eliza said back into the intercom. ¡°That¡¯s where you need to be. I take it yer ready to push the button?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°I am.¡±

    ¡°I like it even less than you do,¡± Eliza said, ¡°but those tanks won¡¯t ¡®old forever. Also, I¡¯m worried about the basement. Buncha pipes and conduits leadin¡¯ in, right?¡±

    ¡°Create a detail for that if you want,¡± I said, ¡°but I¡¯m not too worried about that. We¡¯ve got bigger problems than-¡±

    There was a roar that reminded me of one of my last years in high school. Behind my school, they had been building a replacement for my old crappy school and part of that process involved breaking ground using explosives. Those explosives, up until recently, had been the second-most powerful weapons I had experienced. Only the Teeth¡¯s plasma weaponry had impressed me more than the humble excavation tool that had caused that tarp behind my school to lift up, propelled by literal tons of dirt and rock.

    This sound, however, was like someone had dropped dozens of bombs hundreds of times more powerful in rapid succession. The shock wave was so intense that it felt like my heart would burst and I was nearly thrown out of my chair. Ears ringing, I turned back to the monitor to check what had happened.

    The exterior cameras facing the areas the tanks had been defending were useless. Either they were displaying an error message, or they were showing an odd swirling gray mist. Upon looking on the ones viewing the rooms where the soldiers were being triaged, I learned it was dust. Dust that was still pouring in, causing everyone who breathed it in to break down and cough. Dust that was sticking to clothes and skin. I wondered what it was from, then realized with horror: it was from the buildings outside the factory that, along with the tanks, had been blocking the advance of the Dragon¡¯s Teeth.

    I slammed the button to the intercom for a general announcement. ¡°GET INSIDE!¡± I yelled. ¡°EVERYONE, GET INSIDE NOW!¡±

    Then, one of the Dragon¡¯s Teeth planes must have flown too low, because all the dust was blown away. There, advancing over rubble that used to be several blocks of city street and methodically killing US Armed Forces stragglers, were what had to be Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldiers. They seemed to be a new type, with a different kind of armor and were moving along in groups of three, with one in front holding a riot shield and two in back using the one in front as cover.

    I frowned. The weapons they were holding didn¡¯t seem to be the typical Pilum bullpup assault rifle or Gladius SMG used by the mainline Legionnaires. I zoomed in. ¡°The bastards¡­¡± I muttered as I saw some reach into a hastily restored Sherman tank to remove a crew member.

    Some of the ones hiding behind the riot shields were carrying M249s, M240s, or M60s. But most were carrying Maccabees. It was difficult, but I could tell by the fact that the M4-like rifles were oddly thick around the magazines and ambidextrous AK-style charging handles. The ones with the shields were either carrying Maccabees or Ballpeens with flat butt plates that had slings around their shoulders.

    They¡¯re using my weapons, I thought in shock. The bastards are in my country, killing my fellow citizens with weapons I made.

    Between the shock of seeing my weapons in the hands of the enemy and disorientation from the bomb, I was too stunned to do anything. I watched as the few remaining US soldiers outside the factory capable of doing anything started to fire at the advancing Teeth. Their fire did very little, with many bullets bouncing off the ballistic shields and sometimes even the helmets of the advancing Teeth. Many more shots missed. It was a miracle, in my opinion, that any of the US soldiers had hit them.

    The Dragon¡¯s Teeth, meanwhile, were moving with inhuman speed and returning fire with equally impressive accuracy. In the rare circumstances that one of them was dropped by the fire from the US soldiers, his buddies would step over his body and continue onwards. I suddenly realized that the soldiers still outside the factory were screwed, and the Dragon¡¯s Teeth were entering optimum range. I pushed the button.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    The doors slammed shut. A soldier had been trying to get through the pedestrian entrance and was crushed by the iron blast door. Their buddy just ahead turned around and began screaming causing other soldiers to turn around. On the vehicle entrance, some soldiers had been dragging in wounded. Some were still outside, and began banging on the door only to be cut down by Dragon¡¯s Teeth fire or to get down. I was unsure which. One soldier who had been dragged by his or her fellows (the body armor most of them were wearing and shitty image quality made telling gender hard) had their legs caught by the falling door. The people dragging the wounded soldier in were now trying to free them.

    Meanwhile, the auto-turrets had come up. The perimeter around the doors had mostly contracted into the turret¡¯s minimum range. Mostly. A few soldiers outside that small bubble were instantly chewed up by the dumb devices.

    Luckily, the Dragon¡¯s Teeth took the brunt of the robotic wrath. A short burst into Dragon¡¯s Teeth clone with a riot shield would seemingly penetrate the shield, its wielder, and, if the burst was long enough, the armor of the other two Teeth in the triad.

    I looked out into the hellish landscape outside the factory that I had helped to create in several ways. Buried, maimed, and dead littered all the debris from the bombs. The ringing in my ears from the bombs was slowly dying away and I could hear footsteps and voices outside the door of the security room as people began running to firing positions inside the factory walls. In the cameras looking inside the factory, I could see soldiers and gangsters running to firing positions, checking for masks, or trying to find a place to put the dead and wounded so they at least wouldn¡¯t get trampled. Thanks to what I¡¯m convinced was a Deet carpet-bombing, I think there were a few more potential murder holes than there would have been otherwise.

    I realized that the explosion had shaken a huge amount of dust loose from the tiles above me. I brushed myself off, which irritated my burned skin. I then began to wonder what else I was missing. My chest was still aching from the blasts, and I wondered how anyone was still moving.

    Due to a combination of finally being able to catch my breath and the ringing in my ears dying down, I finally noticed that some of the thumping was coming from the door to my security room. I looked through the camera just in time to see Captain Castle get slammed against the wall by Eliza.

    ¡°Hey, Eric,¡± I said into the intercom, ¡°Eliza¡¯s having a dispute with one of our guests. Can I have some assistance here?¡± There was another thump as Castle slammed Eliza back into the door to the security room, and another when he headbutted her. Seeing as there was no way anyone would have been able to make out that what with the explosions and gunfire, I added, ¡°Can you please hurry?¡±

    Castle got Eliza into a headlock somehow, then hammered on the button. ¡°Jacobs, you piece of shit!¡± he yelled. ¡°Open the fucking gate or I break her GAH!¡±

    Eliza had simultaneously bit Castle¡¯s arm and brought her foot down on the Captain¡¯s shin, causing it to bend where a human leg definitely should not be bending. She then ripped out of his grasp and threw him back against the door with a thud.

    At that point, I genuinely expected him to go down. Instead, from the side I could see, three bone claws popped out of his hand and he somehow lunged towards Eliza. In response, Eliza popped her own claws. Shit, I thought. He¡¯s a Lupine as well. This will only end badly.

    There was a brief flurry of violence in which I couldn¡¯t see anything. I could see the results. Both combatants had been flung back against their respective walls, Eliza bleeding from the face and Castle clutching his stomach with one hand. Eliza yelled something, but I could barely make out a sound through the reinforced wall and the gunfire.

    Castle ignored her and took a step forwards. Then, from the blurry camera feed, I saw him stumble back and I could hear several gunshots striking metal. Whoever was firing at him quickly shifted aim and the result was a massive red hole in his forehead.

    Eliza slumped to the ground as Doc and Eric came into view. Eric went over to Eliza while Doc kept his gun trained on Castle¡¯s corpse. Satisfied that the threat was over, I wheeled to the door and began the process of opening it. When it opened, something squishy fell on my legs. It was Captain Castle¡¯s head. I looked down. His stomach was ripped to shreds.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Nate,¡± Eliza said, her eyes filled with tears. Well, eye. One of them was completely gouged out from Castle¡¯s swipe. ¡°I tried to get ¡®im to reason wi¡¯ me an¡¯ then ¡®e took a swing an¡¯ things just snowballed. I didn¡¯t¡­! I didn¡¯t mean¡­!¡±

    I knew. It wasn¡¯t her fault. Two Lupines, one trying to enter the room where the person who had killed all his men was sitting, the other, who wanted to defend said person in the room. I personally was surprised that Doc had arrived in time to end the fight.

    The Monk, Ray-Gun and Cross had joined me, Eliza, Eric and Doc. I only barely noticed them. ¡°We have to do something,¡± I said. ¡°We have to hide the body. How¡­?¡±

    Cross took off his jacket and threw it over Castle¡¯s head. ¡°We¡¯re putting bodies out in the back. Most people aren¡¯t back there anyway. Plus he¡¯s just one more body. Easiest stiff disposal job I ever did. You and Eliza just go back in there. Is there a cleaning cupboard?¡± He then looked down the hall. ¡°There it is. You got a key?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s got a number pad,¡± I said. ¡°Four, five, seven, nine.¡±

    ¡°Got it,¡± Cross said. ¡°We¡¯ll fix this shit up. You and Eliza stay in there.¡±

    Once Eliza was shepherded into the room, I turned my attention back to monitoring the hell I had created.

 Track 31: Last of the BLUFOR

    The Dragon¡¯s Teeth assault had completely stalled. For several hours, nothing they were doing was allowing to get much closer to the factory. But the longer I watched, the more convinced I was that they weren¡¯t trying that hard. If they really had wanted to do us in, that airstrike would have hit the factory. Something was up.

    ¡°¡®E was a fuckin¡¯ idiot.¡± I turned around. Eliza was still curled up in a fetal position, hugging her knees, still crying, but a look of rage was across her face. ¡°Fucker could ¡®ave not done that. I didn¡¯t ¡®ave to kill ¡®im.¡±

    ¡°If it makes you feel better,¡± I said, ¡°technically, it was Doc who killed him.¡±

    ¡°What¡¯d make me feel better,¡± snarled Eliza, ¡°is if that fucker ¡®adn¡¯t tried to break in.¡± She added as an afterthought. ¡°Besides, even Lupines can only take so much punishment. Odds are ¡®e wouldn¡¯t¡¯a last the night without some serious ¡®elp.¡±

    We sat in silence for a while longer. Finally, Eliza asked, ¡°So, ¡®ow¡¯re things goin¡¯ out there?¡±

    "Well,¡± I said, ¡°the factory appears to be surrounded. There¡¯s Dragon¡¯s Teeth on all sides, and the buildings that didn¡¯t get blown up seem to have snipers in them.¡± I watched as a soldier on the roof of the factory above us fell down, shot from above and behind. Several more soldiers, gangsters, and militia fell before they realized where it was coming from. ¡°And they, or he, appears to be doing a really good job. The guns in the front of the factory are pretty much out. Also, for some reason, I don¡¯t see any vehicles.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± Eliza said suspiciously. ¡°Why¡¯s that?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± I said, ¡°and the more I think about it, the more it bothers me. Most benign reason I can think of is that they¡¯re sending troops somewhere else. Problem with that theory is that they¡¯ve literally got millions of people in this area alone and I¡¯ve got a feeling that they don¡¯t have too many civilians to take care of.¡±

    ¡°Still think they¡¯re gonna come in through the basement,¡± Eliza said, somewhat petulantly.

    I considered that for a moment. ¡°Shit, you¡¯re right,¡± I said. ¡°I just hope it isn¡¯t too late.¡±

    ¡°No it isn¡¯t,¡± Eliza said, pointing at some of the cameras that viewed the dark, empty construction area. Nothing was there, except for some construction supplies. ¡°Nothin¡¯ there ¡®cept¡­¡±

    ¡°Eliza?¡± I asked as she trailed off. ¡°Something wrong?¡±

    ¡°That bucket there,¡± she said. ¡°It tips over one second, then the next¡­¡±

    I followed her finger. A metal bucket full of what might have been paint kept tipping itself over every few seconds and spilling, then righting itself again. ¡°We¡¯ve been looped.¡± We said it at the same time.

    ¡°Everyone!¡± I said through the intercom, ¡°they¡¯re coming through the basement! They¡¯re coming through the basement!¡± I then began the process of rebooting the security computer. ¡°Why are they doing this?¡± I asked as I waited for the systems to power up again. ¡°I mean, we haven¡¯t been instantly splattered by an airstrike or artillery bombardment? Not that I¡¯m complaining, though. It just seems like they could have ended it easily enough.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Eliza said, ¡°they went to some right long lengths to get t¡¯you didn¡¯t they? Fuckin¡¯ breakin¡¯ inna an FBI buildin¡¯ an¡¯ tryin¡¯ t¡¯do a raid on Nowhere Island. Alma¡¯s got a bit of an interest in you. I¡¯d even wager that this would be the least risky operation to get you she¡¯s carried out. Hell, there might ¡®ave even been a few attempts to nab you that we don¡¯t even know ¡®bout ¡®cause they got busted.¡±

    I thought about that for a second. ¡°Well,¡± I finally said, completely annoyed, ¡°I now really fucking wish that I had some method of communicating with them. Could have possibly bought some fucking time.¡± I slammed the desk as hard as I could. ¡°God fucking damn it! Agh!¡±

    Then the monitors came back on and my swearing and inarticulate yelling was silenced. The new kind of Dragon¡¯s Teeth was making a combined offensive throughout the facility with some familiar faces. Both the new Deets and the Picts were clearing rooms like the supernaturally-enhanced badasses they were, flash-bangs and frags causing enough distraction for the nimble cloned operators to burst in and shoot the tired defenders in the face with near-impunity.

    Also, the Berserkers were back. They kicked through most walls like they were the Kool-Aid man, flung the defenders around like rag dolls, and used their captured machine guns like normal people used Uzis. A few even had bigger, thicker ballistic shields, adding to their seeming invulnerability and what appeared to be backpack-fed miniguns.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    Most of the defenders fought bravely. The result was like a less-organized version of the opening of the first Star Wars movie, and they were the rebels fighting the storm troopers. The two biggest differences were that the Dragon¡¯s Teeth had a lot better armor and that many of the defenders the Deets encountered were looking the other way. Only pockets of defenders were able to hold their ground for any length of time.

    The result was pretty much a massacre. Every soldier or gangster who decided to fight back ended up dead, and the tide of black and grey armor slowly began moving up the floors. As I watched, my heart broke. I had done so many horrible things. I had lied. I had murdered. I had made it easier for others to murder. All in the name of stopping nebulous bad things.  And now, despite everything I¡¯d done, I was watching what was possibly the last group of organized resistance to the Dragon¡¯s Teeth in America evaporating like morning dew. Like they¡¯d never even existed.

    I wanted to apologize, but the truth was, what was happening wasn¡¯t even my fault. I¡¯d done everything I could. This massacre would have happened without me. That was somehow worse. I never would have been in this situation if I didn¡¯t think I could save the world.

    Suddenly, I heard Jen¡¯s voice. ¡°Nathan, Eliza, we need to get you out of here,¡± she said.

    I didn¡¯t turn from the scenes of death that were occurring, but Eliza said, ¡°I¡¯m down. ¡®Ow are we going to do that?¡± If I cared, I would have asked roughly the same thing in the exact same defeated, critical tone. Maybe with a different accent, I¡¯d admit, but the meaning would be pretty similar.

    ¡°We¡­ we¡­¡± Jen said, trying to find something to say.

    ¡°Y¡¯can¡¯t teleport anyone but yourself,¡± Eliza said in a dull, defeated voice, ¡°we¡¯ve got no helicopters, we¡¯re surrounded, walled in, an¡¯ the enemy¡¯s cocked up any chance of goin¡¯ out through a tunnel. I¡¯d like to run. Really, I would. But we can¡¯t.¡±

    As Eliza was saying this, I noticed that Andrew and Lydia were leapfrogging down a corridor away from some Picts, firing Maccabees wildly. As soon as Eliza had said, ¡°but we can¡¯t,¡± a group of the new type of Dragon¡¯s Teeth had turned a corridor and shot the two in the back. Jen must have seen it too, because I heard her gasp.

    I turned around and saw that she was bleeding. The vest on top of her Oniko costume had been penetrated slightly, and she was down to only her Berettas. One of the glowing eyes of her mask had been knocked out and bits of shrapnel had cut her costume in the non-armored bits. She was leaning against the wall, possibly because of the cuts on her legs.

    Yet she stood and ripped off her mask. ¡°I,¡± she said, her face pale with pain and voice shaky but defiant, ¡°am not leaving anyone. I¡¯ve let too many people I love die. I will get you out of here. No more dead friends.¡±

    ¡°Nice sentiment and all luv,¡± Eliza said, forcing some of her humor back into her voice, ¡°but we¡¯re already dead. Jus¡¯ walkin ¡®round a bit mor¡¯n usual, is all.¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Jen said, starting to cry, ¡°there¡¯s a way for you to get out, there has to be, there-¡±

    ¡°Jen,¡± I said, ¡°Eliza¡¯s right. Unless there¡¯s some other Jumpers here I don¡¯t know about, you¡¯re the only one who can escape.¡± I took a deep breath. This next part was going to be hard. ¡°Look, this has gone to hell. I got into this whole¡­¡± I wracked my brain for a second, trying to find a word to describe the hopeless horror of the situation, ¡°mess to ¡®save the world.¡¯ Well, right now there¡¯s only one person I can save.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t you dare play hero on me,¡± Jen said. ¡°I know what you are.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re right,¡± I said. ¡°I was never a hero. I was kind of a self-important piece of shit. And I can¡¯t really take off after you, because, well.¡± I gestured helplessly to my wheelchair. ¡°So there¡¯s no benefit to saving me. Or dying with me. I do have one realistic request.¡± I took a deep breath. ¡°Run.¡±

    ¡°Wouldn¡¯t you want to save Eliza?¡± Jen asked.

    ¡°¡®E said reasonable,¡± Eliza said.

    ¡°Look,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯ve saved nobody in this stupid war. So please, if only to serve my ego, run away. I don¡¯t care if you run away and rejoin the fight five minutes later, or if you run so far away that the Dragon¡¯s Teeth never find you. I just want to know that you last five minutes longer than I do.¡± Jen looked like she was about to argue for a second. ¡°Jen,¡± I said as softly as I could due to the gunfire, ¡°please. There¡¯s nothing for you here and I¡¯m tired of all this waste.¡±

    ¡°Fine.¡± Jen said, her voice cracking. ¡°I¡¯ll-I¡¯ll go. I just¡­¡±

    For a second, she looked like she was going to burst into tears. Then she jumped.

    I almost burst into tears myself. I had lost one¡­ well, maybe Jen wasn¡¯t exactly a friend, but she had been a contact for a long time. I had known her since Freshman year at NIU and now she was gone. But she was alive. Hopefully for a long time.

    ¡°Well,¡± Eliza said, ¡°d¡¯you think we saved ¡®er, or is she going to come back with the cavalry?¡±

    ¡°There is no cavalry,¡± I said.

    Eliza nodded. ¡°Point,¡± she conceded. She got up and gave me a hug. ¡°But a girl can dream, can¡¯t she?¡±

    I returned the hug as best I could, despite the awkward angle and my wheelchair. ¡°I honestly think everyone should dream. Especially in a situation like this, it¡¯s probably healthier than the other option.¡± I patted the Maccabee on my lap.

    ¡°There¡¯s a lot of options healthier¡¯n blowin¡¯ your own brains out,¡± Eliza said disapprovingly.

    Then there was a knock on the door. From the intercom, a familiar voice said, ¡°Mr. Jacobs. We¡¯d like to have a conversation with you.¡±

    I looked at the camera feed outside the security room. There stood ten Dragon¡¯s Teeth Berserkers in full armor, all armed with either machineguns taken from dead US troops or ballistic shields and miniguns. Those were just the ones I could count.

    ¡°So Eliza,¡± I said, ¡°do we want to die fighting or see if we can save a few more people?¡±

    ¡°See if we can save a few more people,¡± Eliza said with a shrug. ¡°Why not? If whatever plan you have doesn¡¯t work, there¡¯s always the die fighting.¡±

 6.33 This is the End

    I take a deep breath and say to the Berserkers, ¡°If I surrender, will you let everyone else surrender as well?¡±

    ¡°Take a look,¡± the Berserker said. ¡°I know your cameras are up.¡± I did, and quickly notice that the defenders who aren¡¯t fighting back, the injured, the tired, and the ambushed, were being zip-tied and secured. ¡°If I had it my way,¡± the Berserker talking to me said, ¡°I¡¯d drop a tactical plasma bomb on you and piss on the ashes. But the Death Mother wants you alive. Oh, and don¡¯t think about fighting back. Your little rip-off guns may work on the other Believers, but not on our armor.¡±

    I looked at the fight again. Sure enough, they were doing fairly well except against the normally armored Deet soldiers, but were bouncing off the Berserkers like spit balls. It didn¡¯t really affect my decision. I was done. I turned to the intercom once again, and said, ¡°Ok, the Teeth have offered a deal. Basically, unconditional surrender. Do what you want with it.¡±

    I then turned to Eliza. ¡°Well, we might as well give up.¡±

    She stood up and began to roll up the Kevlar panel. ¡°I don¡¯t think of it as giving up,¡± she said, her voice so quiet I could barely hear. ¡°I think of it as living to fight another day.¡±

    She then opened the heavy security door, revealing the massive frames of two Berserkers. They were too big to fit through the door, so the stepped aside and gestured for us to come out. I pushed myself out, and Eliza, after realizing I was moving out under my own power, exited before me.

    The Berserkers quickly searched us and took any weapons they found. Then, one threw Eliza over his back and another did the same to me and the group began heading downstairs. When we got to the basement, I saw all the injured and captured defenders were brought down there. The one carrying Eliza threw her on the floor, but the one carrying me continued to walk off.

    ¡°OI!¡± Eliza said, getting up, ¡°THE ¡®ELL YOU TAKING ¡®IM?¡± The Berserker, in response, kicked her in the stomach and stood on her.

    ¡°Hey!¡± I yelled. ¡°What the fuck?¡±

    The two Berserkers carrying me just continued on. We went through the sewers, eventually, after a good long while of walking, coming up around the train station. That station was now crawling with Charons, vehicles that seemed specifically designed to imitate Chrysler Escalades, and a new tank that looked like one of those WWI landships, except bigger. The vast majority of Dragon¡¯s Teeth were Legionaires, and I could see that they, at least, were still mostly carrying their Pilum bullpup rifles and Gladius SMGs. Their distinctive Roman-inspired armor was either in a pixelated urban pattern, or a shiny chrome-like color polished to mirror finish. I saw a few armors change color.

    There were a few of the new type of Dragon¡¯s Teeth in what I now saw was African-inspired armor, and I noticed that many of them carried Pilum and Gladius as well, but they seemed to use my weapons when they could get their hands on them. I also saw Picts in their darker than black armor inspired by Gaelic designs, and to a man they had ditched their primary weapons for AK and AR-pattern weapons with the occasional MP5, MPX or FAL.

    I was taken up into an office. The only other Berserkers I had seen were standing by the door, three on each side. Two had miniguns and ballistic shields and their Norse-inspired armor was bulkier and appeared to have a more powerful exoskeleton system than the others. The other four seemed to have taken their machineguns from dead US soldiers. Unlike the other Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldiers who had only looked at me in passing, these guys had their glowing red eyes locked on me.

    Inside the room, was a wooden desk and several bits of creature comfort. I knew this because the Berserker threw me down onto the desk, shattering it. A picture of what had to be the children of the office¡¯s owner fell onto my face, and an LCD monitor clattered to the ground. Underneath my back, I could feel wooden splinters lacerating my back and a smashed plastic keyboard. My back hurt like hell. Above me, the fluorescent lights set in cheap, ugly asbestos ceiling tiles vibrated and other lights danced, mocking the pounding in my head.

    ¡°Please try and escape,¡± the Berserker said. I looked at him. He was wearing the bigger armor, but his ballistic shield was missing and his minigun was holstered on a backpack-like device. He then kneeled down and leaned in close so his huge mask was almost touching my face. ¡°The Death Mother might want you alive, but I want you dead. You and your little team were the first infantry unit to kill one of us with small arms, and then you scrapped my mission to Japan.¡± All I could do in response was groan in pain.

    He stood up suddenly. ¡°Excuse me. I need to talk someone. Hopefully, I¡¯ll be able to give him a retirement present.¡± He then left the room. His exiting through and closing of the door was surprisingly graceful for someone who had to exit at sort of an angle while ducking. His boots, however, caused the entire room to shake and dust to fall off the walls.

    I, on the other hand, was dealing with what had to be a concussion. My back was also in such bad shape to the point that I was surprised to be feeling my legs. Even if I wanted to leave (which I didn¡¯t,) it would have taken a superhuman effort just to sit up. I rolled off the desk, hoping to be able to find some painkillers in the shattered drawers, but instead spent the next several minutes crying in pain.

    To distract myself from the pain, I began to wonder what kind of person had used the office. Not whether or not they were alive, no. That was too depressing. Instead, I tried to guess what kind of person they were. For instance, did they get that original Star Wars poster because they became a fan when they were a kid like I had, or did they watch it in theaters? Or, as the other posters indicated, did he just like to collect advertisements and propaganda? What was that award with the statue of a train in recognition of? Those certificates, were they for graduation? Awards? Something else? When I tried to get a better look at the framed pieces of paper, pain shot up and down my spine.

    I decided to turn back to the desk. Well, apparently this guy had some chronic pain. First drawer had a bottle of prescription-grade ibuprofen. The bottle said ¡°Take one every 12 hours,¡± but I took two. They did nothing.

    For fifteen or so minutes, I waited for them to kick in. I also waited for my head to stop spinning like a dreidel. The sound of a landing VTOL didn¡¯t really help matters. At least the telepathic communications and electric motors made the Teeth relatively quiet for a military. Then I heard shouting and stomping.

    The door flung open and a man stomped in. ¡°Your rules of engagement don¡¯t allow the taking of prisoners! And you¡¯re only allowed to use weapons provided by the Jason Project! What the hell is going on, Commander Olaf?¡± He then paused, and asked, ¡°and why is that person still alive?¡±This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.

    A Berserker, possibly the one who had brought me up, said, ¡°Orders. Wish I could kill him, make it nice and violent.¡± I could almost hear him shrug as he said that.

    ¡°Wait¡­¡± the man said, ¡°Who ordered you?¡±

    The Berserker, or Commander Olaf as he was apparently known, laughed. ¡°You know who.¡±

    ¡°Capsaicin Umbra,¡± the strange man said in clear voice that was doing a very good, but not quite convincing, impression of someone who wasn¡¯t panicking.

    ¡°What,¡± Olaf said, with a barely contained chuckle, ¡°do you think she was doing for the past ten years? Do you really think Ulfric or any of the others leaving was an accident? She was weakening our triggers.¡±

    ¡°Olaf,¡± the Jason Project member said, ¡°You can¡¯t trust Subject One-Four-Eight. She¡­ she¡­¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s been in my head since before you started your brainwashing,¡± Olaf said. ¡°Comforting me and my brothers. Even the dead. Even people who we¡¯ve been forced to kill for your stupid little quest to destroy the world or whatever.¡±

    ¡°We aren¡¯t destroying the world,¡± the Jason Project member said, ¡°we¡¯re saving it.¡±

    In response, Olaf sighed. ¡°You¡¯re lucky that She ordered the retribution to be painless.¡±

    ¡°Wait! No no-!¡±

    There was a crack of a pistol, and the Jason Project member began screaming. ¡°Whoops,¡± Olaf said. ¡°That round didn¡¯t go where I wanted it to. Too bad, we¡¯re low on ammo and I don¡¯t really want to waste another bullet.¡± I heard the thump of Olaf walking to the window sill. Eventually, I could see Olaf¡¯s armored body appear in my field of view. He took his helmet off with a hiss and turned around. ¡°Shame I couldn¡¯t do that to you.¡±

    Seeing his face finally confirmed something I had suspected for a while now. ¡°Ulfric¡¯s a Berserker, too, isn¡¯t he?¡± I asked. ¡°That guy I knew at NIU. He looked a lot like you, except with crazy eyes.¡± The square, baby face, the gray eyes, the brutally short hair¡­ Physically, he looked exactly like Ulfric. However, there was something more¡­ there about him, if that makes sense. If he ripped off someone¡¯s head, I wouldn¡¯t be wondering if he knew what had done.

    ¡°Exactly like me, I¡¯d bet,¡± Olaf said. ¡°Luckily he¡¯s¡­¡± Suddenly his face went extremely pale.

    ¡°He¡¯s here, isn¡¯t he?¡± I asked. Olaf, meanwhile, began to pace nervously. ¡°Hey, Olaf?¡± I asked. ¡°You ok?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± he said. ¡°But not for long.¡±

    The door smashed open. A large whirlwind of blue NIU hoodie, black cargo pants, and combat boots ran around and smashed Olaf through the window. The figure let Olaf dangle through the window for what had to feel to the victim like an eternity, the newcomer¡¯s other fist raised, ready to smash into Olaf¡¯s face. I couldn¡¯t see either one¡¯s face or even much of Olaf¡¯s body, and I definitely couldn¡¯t make out any psionic conversations. Eventually, the figure I assumed to be Ulfric pulled in Olaf and threw him away one-handed like garbage. Olaf seemed to be thankful nothing worse had happened.

    Ulfric, meanwhile, turned around to survey the scene with a look of horror on his face. I must have looked like shit and the Jason Project member was now moaning horribly. ¡°Please¡­¡± he whimpered, ¡°help me¡­¡±

    Ulfric¡¯s look of horror turned to one of disgust when he saw the Jason Project member. He then turned to me and picked me up like a baby. I screamed and groaned as my back moved. Ulfric, with his typical grace, managed to get us out the door without bumping my head. As we walked down the stairs, he said, ¡°Sorry.¡±

    ¡°You seem¡­ better than you were,¡± I said.

    ¡°Still have trouble talking,¡± he said. ¡°Because of my meds. I¡¯m more alert. More aware.¡± He paused, then said, ¡°I hate it.¡±

    ¡°Why?¡± I asked.

    ¡°I have to live with the stuff I do when I have a ¡®good¡¯ day,¡± he said. ¡°And I realize the stuff I don¡¯t have.¡±

    I suddenly was reminded of what I had seen in Japan. The hallucination of what seemed to be a representation of the Dragon¡¯s Teeth hive mind. Thousands, maybe even millions, of lights, in colors I couldn¡¯t even comprehend surrounding a black hole. And close to the black hole, was a speck of light separate from all the others. ¡°Hey, Ulfric?¡± I asked. ¡°Are you, you know, connected to the rest of the Dragon¡¯s Teeth?¡±

    He stared at me for a while. ¡°Sort of,¡± he said. I noticed that as we walked, the various Dragon¡¯s Teeth recoiled from him. Again, I was reminded of the hive mind. He eventually set me down among injured Dragon¡¯s Teeth and began to wander off, leaving me alone in a room full of dying clones and clone medics.

    The room turned yellow and things began to swim. I turned around to see Alma looking out over the casualties. ¡°I failed,¡± she said. ¡°These are good people, compelled to do horrible, horrible things from birth.¡±

    ¡°So,¡± I said, ¡°I take it the Jason Project weren¡¯t good people?¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Alma said, ¡°I might not be the best person to ask. They did kidnap and technically kill me.¡±

    ¡°Technically kill you?¡± I asked.

    ¡°I was the anchor for their entire psionic network,¡± Alma said, looking out over the injured soldiers. ¡°I think that¡¯s why I survived. I was split among all the clones. All my children. I remember every single one of them and I keep their souls in me.¡± She shrugged. ¡°I guess it¡¯s not really scientific, but it¡¯s the best way to describe it.¡±

    ¡°Any other non-Dragon¡¯s Teeth souls get sucked up?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Yes,¡± she said. ¡°Everyone¡¯s. It¡¯s hard. So many people die in pain and rage, and I can feel all of it, the bad bits especially. Someday I¡¯m going to either become numb or insane. Or maybe I¡¯ll finally just stop existing.¡± She turned to look at me, and I heard a bit of hope in her dead monotone. ¡°It¡¯s physically impossible to last forever, right? I¡¯m not a god?¡±

    For some reason, the idea of her being hopeful that she¡¯d die chilled me to the bone. It also reminded me of how Mubashir believed his powers were a punishment. To avoid thinking about it, I asked, ¡°So, what do you want from me?¡±

    ¡°Not just you,¡± Alma said. ¡°There are probably only one or two things that only you can do, but you might be able to convince your friends of some things.

    ¡°First, I don¡¯t want any more of my children to die. You aren¡¯t fully in control of that, I know, but you and your friends could do enough damage to be¡­ mildly tragic.¡±

    ¡°We don¡¯t seem to be able to do that much,¡± I said.

    ¡°You gave them enough hope to keep fighting,¡± she said. ¡°And now I have to spend all eternity with people who died killing each other, feeling the pain they felt at the moment of their death.¡± I looked away uncomfortably. ¡°All you did,¡± Alma said, her voice breaking with sadness, ¡°is cause a thimbleful more suffering.¡± She composed herself and then, in her normal monotone, said, ¡°I¡¯d prefer to minimize that. You understand, right?¡±

    ¡°And I¡¯d prefer that the Dragon¡¯s Teeth hadn¡¯t wrecked everything,¡± I said, ¡°but here we are.¡±

    ¡°Do you think that I didn¡¯t try to stop that?¡± Alma asked, her skin-crawling monotone becoming more and more icy. ¡°Do you think I like feeling the eternal torment of everyone who died in this useless war?¡± She looked slightly upwards, as if looking through the building. ¡°Something is coming. It¡¯s going to kill even more people. Stay out of my way or I might get tired of you being alive. Understand?¡±

    I recoiled at the anger. Alma turned back to me. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. I shouldn¡¯t have snapped. But I¡¯ve worked hard to get to the point where I can have coup.¡±

    ¡°Honestly,¡± I said, ¡°you can do whatever you want. You have the power.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s another thing,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯m too powerful. I¡¯m losing my connection with the rest of humanity. That¡¯s the reason I went to NIU. The rest of the people I know, except maybe Ulfric, treat me like either a god or a monster.¡± She paused. ¡°Never mind. The last member of the Jacob Project has been accounted for.¡±

    ¡°They really were terrible, weren¡¯t they?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Most of them, yes,¡± Alma said. ¡°There were a few exceptions, but we¡¯re getting off-topic. The thing is, I need an anchor.¡±

    ¡°An anchor.¡±

    ¡°Someone, or several someones, to talk to. To listen to. To make sure I¡¯m not becoming too divorced from reality. Who better than some of my former classmates from NIU?¡±

    ¡°And am I the first?¡± I asked. ¡°I¡¯m flattered.¡±

    ¡°No, I asked Eliza first.¡± She then said, ¡°There¡¯s also another person who might need help. Mubashir Mubarak. In terms of power, he¡¯s the closest thing to me. He¡¯ll need help eventually, and he might go to you.¡±

    ¡°And why don¡¯t you go help him yourself?¡± I asked. ¡°You¡¯re probably the only one who can understand him.¡±

    ¡°I already have too much power,¡± Alma said, ¡°and you want me to cozy up with Mubashir? Besides, I don¡¯t think he¡¯d take too kindly to me just suddenly appearing.¡±

    ¡°Point taken,¡± I said. ¡°But what about Mayu? And what¡¯s this horrible thing that¡¯s coming?¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t need to worry,¡± Alma said, ¡°let me worry about that.¡±

    And then she left and the room went back to normal.

 7.1 Welcome to the Occupation

    My beat-up Subaru station wagon drove down 495 from Worcester to Boston. It probably was one of more well-maintained things on the road.

    For instance, my body was still recovering from the various burns that I had sustained in the Dragon¡¯s Teeth plasma bomb out west. They still hurt and itched, and my back wasn¡¯t doing too well from where a Dragon¡¯s Teeth Berserker had thrown me through a desk. Also, my leg, which had been injured in a training session, had been acting up recently as well.

    The few other civilian vehicles on the road were also pretty messed up. Unlike my Subie, there were only a few cars on the road that didn¡¯t have shattered windows or smashed bodywork. Many had their frames bent so badly that I was sure they shouldn¡¯t be driving. Every so often, I would see a car that had finally stopped working somewhere in the process of being pulled off to the side of the road where Dragon¡¯s Teeth spider droids would dismantle it. Sometimes, I would see them broken down, either on the side of the road or in one of the lanes, other times I would see Dragon¡¯s Teeth vehicles pulling them onto the vehicular graveyards on the sides of the road, and other times I would see spider droids breaking them down and putting the bits in dumpsters. Most often I would see the graveyards off to the sides of the highway, a relic of America¡¯s former status of a nation of drivers.

    The vehicles I saw the most were under the control of the Dragon¡¯s Teeth. Over a year ago, these psychic clone soldiers had invaded most of the world. Russia, China, both Koreas, all of Europe and a triangle between Turkey, Israel and Iran had all been taken over as well as the United States. Almost every naval vessel had been sunk or captured, as well as most of the shipping. The US and several other major food-producing nations had most of their harvest destroyed, livestock slaughtered or accidentally released, and many of their farmers murdered, so starvation was rampant. Luckily, there were a lot less mouths to feed.

    The Dragon¡¯s Teeth had been, according to their new leader, created and controlled by a group called the Jason Project. They had apparently planned on liquidating a larger chunk of the population of captured nations and pushing onwards. That was also evidenced by the bombed-out buildings I¡¯d pass. The East Coast had been one of the last places to fall, and, when it looked like Canada and South America may have saved us, the fighting had been intense.

    Eventually, I got into Cambridge. The Dragon¡¯s Teeth had set up a regional HQ in what had been the Harvard campus. Somehow, that hadn¡¯t been destroyed. Most of the other buildings had been leveled and a few were still burning from plasma weaponry.

    The depopulation of Cambridge was made painfully clear by my ability to find a parking space. I parked in front of what had once been a store, but was now bits of crumbling frame and a crater made out of charred construction material and glass. Another casualty of the Dragon¡¯s Teeth¡¯s plasma-based weaponry.

    Several Legionnaires, Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldiers with Roman-inspired armor, began checking under my car with little wheelie mirrors. An Arachne spider droid also was using a chemical sniffer to check for explosives. Eventually, one Legionnaire signaled for me to get out of the car. I did and they quickly frisked and scanned me. Then one Legionnaire motioned for me to follow.

    The Harvard campus had significantly improved from the last time I had been there. Six months ago, I had been locked up in those dorms and had seen the various methods of punishment the Dragon¡¯s Teeth had employed. During the first week, they had been hanging two or three people to each streetlight and lining people up against the wall every four hours around the clock. By the second week, executions had almost completely stopped. That didn¡¯t mean that people weren¡¯t still dying. Starvation and crime were starting to kill hundreds, and the Jason Project apparently had no idea how to deal with that other than killing. Most of the Dragon¡¯s Teeth, however, were tired of killing.

    The person I was about to see, however, just wanted to kill one more person. When I got into the room, I saw that Olaf was still massive as usual. The man, with his baby face, pale skin, and huge body, was using a desk as a chair. Dragon¡¯s Teeth Berserkers were so huge that most chairs were ridiculously tiny. Olaf had also removed his exosuit to avoid shattering the desk. I remembered how he had thrown me through one a little over a year ago. Olaf didn¡¯t like me.

    ¡°Nathan,¡± he said, looking at me coldly, ¡°how¡¯s the factory going?¡±

    "As well as can be expected,¡± I said. I looked out into the courtyard below. ¡°I thought Alma said no more executions.¡± In the courtyard below, a dozen or so men in ratty clothes were being lined up against the wall.

    ¡°She said no more civilians,¡± Olaf corrected. ¡°Those guys are JTF2. Canada¡¯s been violating the cease fire a lot recently.¡± As a peal of gunfire rang out, he said, ¡°I think the reinstated cops have been helping them, but the Death Mother wants hard evidence before I liquidate them. Anyway, we¡¯ve been getting off-track.¡±This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

    ¡°The factory is at capacity,¡± I said. ¡°In fact, it¡¯s going over-capacity. I¡¯m pushing the machinery to its limit. By the by, you should know that when it breaks down, and it¡¯s a miracle it hasn¡¯t broken down yet, the only one who can fix it is Andy Sebaldi. And he¡¯s in Australia.¡±

    ¡°And are you sure that all the weapons are going to Dragon¡¯s Teeth forces? No clandestine deliveries to any resistance forces?¡±

    ¡°What resistance forces?¡± I asked. ¡°If there are any resistance forces, none of them have made a move to contact me. Besides, I¡¯m not stupid. I know you have a bunch of my friends.¡±

    ¡°The Dragon¡¯s Teeth high command is turning over a new leaf,¡± Olaf said in a bored, sarcastic tone of voice, rolling his eyes dramatically. ¡°We¡¯re shocked, shocked, that you would make such accusations.¡±

    ¡°Let me rephrase that,¡± I said, ¡°I know you have my friends. And I know Alma doesn¡¯t have as tight a leash on you guys as she¡¯d like me to believe.¡± After a pause, I added, ¡°you know, I¡¯m still not sure how many of my friends survived. I haven¡¯t talked to them in several months, either.¡±

    ¡°And what are you going to do about it?¡± Olaf asked. ¡°Right now, I¡¯m just surprised you¡¯ve been able to sober up enough to drive down here.¡±

    ¡°How-?¡±

    ¡°I can see you shaking,¡± he said disgustedly, ¡°and I have some contacts among you people. What have to be the last few bottles of Jack Daniels from here to Worcester came into your possession and you¡¯ve been moving on to the Johnny Walker and Knob Creek. Just keep making guns, and we¡¯ll keep your friends alive.¡±

    ¡°Maybe,¡± I said, a rage burning inside, ¡°this is a sign I need something else. A carrot.¡±

    ¡°My carrot is that I follow orders,¡± Olaf said, ¡°and I act within the Geneva Convention.¡±

    ¡°You wanna see my stick?¡± I asked. ¡°I can go home, get loaded as fuck, and break every single assembly line except the ones that make food and medicine. God knows everyone needs those two, and I won¡¯t increase starvation just to get back at you.¡±

    ¡°I thought you said you didn¡¯t know how those machines worked,¡± Olaf said, as if he had caught me in a lie.

    ¡°I have no clue how to repair serious problems,¡± I said, ¡°but I spent several years learning how to break things. Then, after I¡¯m done, I might just kill myself. That sounds like fun.¡± I began counting on my fingers. ¡°The Picts will be pissed off because my redesigned of the 416 will stop, the Zulus will be pissed because they like the armaments I make, Alma will be pissed because I¡¯m dead and that fouls up her plans, and the Legionnaires will be pissed because Alma¡¯s pissed.¡± Olaf¡¯s eyes narrowed. ¡°And,¡± I said, on a roll, ¡°even if none of that matters, I still win because I¡¯ve turned off one more stream of resupply for you.¡± I sat down on a chair, breathing heavily.

    In the silence that followed, Olaf¡¯s head twitched. Finally he said, ¡°You¡¯ve got a very good understanding of how things work.¡±

    ¡°I doubt it¡¯s any better than most of the countries you haven¡¯t taken over,¡± I said. ¡°You¡¯re not as mysterious or unknowable as you think you are. And your position isn¡¯t sustainable. You¡¯ve taken a beating and overextended yourself. There¡¯s no way you haven¡¯t, and the other countries players are going to catch up.¡±

    Olaf cocked his head. ¡°Are you saying we should have kept going? Because that¡¯s what I¡¯ve been saying.¡±

    ¡°No,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯m saying you¡¯re lucky you stopped when you did. It¡¯s only a matter of time before the first mass uprising happens. It¡¯s only a matter of time before the first IEDs are planted. And I know that they¡¯ve already started sniping at you guys already. You¡¯re going to spend the rest of your lives putting down partisans, no matter what I do.¡±

    ¡°I think the world is going to be too busy starving to be fighting,¡± Olaf said, ¡°but I might welcome that. It¡¯ll solve the food distribution problem.¡±

    I laughed. ¡°Oh my God,¡± I said, trying to breathe, ¡°the Jacob Project had no idea how to lead. We¡¯re all going to die. We¡¯re all going to slowly starve to death because they forgot people need food and people to grow it!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m glad you find this amusing,¡± Olaf said. ¡°But that reminds me, we need to produce more Power Sludge.¡±

    ¡°The reason those lines are running at eighty percent,¡± I said, ¡°is because if we fuck those up, that source of food disappears. I am not risking that.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s too bad,¡± Olaf said, ¡°because we¡¯ve killed most of the farmers.¡±

    I leaned back. ¡°Then congratulations,¡± I said, ¡°The Jacob Project has killed us. We¡¯re fucked. Farming is hard.¡±

    ¡°In other news,¡± Olaf said, trying not to seem worried, ¡°The UN, or what¡¯s left of it, is requesting they send in a monitoring detachment to prevent human rights abuses.¡±

    ¡°That should be fun,¡± I said. ¡°You guys are pretty much designed to commit war crimes and they can¡¯t do jack shit.¡±

    ¡°So you aren¡¯t going to help?¡±

    ¡°What am I going to do to help?¡± I asked. ¡°If I tell them what angels you are, all that¡¯s going to do is just make them not trust me. You guys used psychoactive gases and left millions of witnesses, that has to be about thirty-six war crimes per person exposed or something.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s not the point,¡± Olaf said. ¡°The remaining nations know that we¡¯ve radically changed doctrine. They want to know that it¡¯s moving in the right direction. There¡¯s also secondary concerns, like non-proliferation, environmental protection, and economic recovery.¡±

    ¡°Did they say it was secondary?¡± I asked. ¡°Because all of this seems like they¡¯d be primary.¡± Environmental concerns, to me at least, seemed like it could be a huge concern. After all, the most powerful remaining member of the UN was Canada. Canada was near the northern ice caps. Based on how Christmas this year was a chilly seventy degrees Fahrenheit, those ice caps must be decreasing at a rather alarming rate.

    ¡°No,¡± Olaf said, now obviously concerned. After a while, he asked, ¡°Would you like to meet with the people who¡¯ve been captured?¡±

    ¡°That is what I¡¯ve spent the past few months lobbying for,¡± I said.

 7.2: End Run

    We left the office and headed to one of the dorm rooms in the Harvard quad. On the way, we passed the executed JTF2 operators. I had been hearing some things about Canada and how they were dealing with the fallout of the Dragon¡¯s Teeth War. Mexico was being cautious; after all, they had their troubles before the war. Canada, meanwhile, had taken two strategic plasma forces when they had advanced south before retreating. The first thing they had done after signing the armistice was make a compact with New Zealand and Australia that was very much like what had been the EU, except they also were uniting under a join military structure.

    ¡°So,¡± I said, ¡°You planning on taking the fight to Canada?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Olaf said. ¡°We¡¯re using the Swiss strategy.¡± When I shot him a quizzical look, he said, ¡°Switzerland was one the only European country to resist longer than a few months. After we defeated this country, we decided that if they didn¡¯t want to submit to the Death Mother, we didn¡¯t have to feed them. The problem is, their population was too bloated to be maintained without assistance and they¡¯d forgotten how to grow their own food. Besides, their soil is pretty much completely barren. We didn¡¯t say it, but their choices were to join with us, starve to death, or find¡­ other means of sustenance.¡± He turned to me and smiled. ¡°They just agreed to join us last week.¡±

    ¡°Your idea?¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± Olaf said. ¡°Shame that we are reconsidering using the tactic.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°considering it¡¯s technically genocide, I¡¯m glad you aren¡¯t doing that.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s the only way to win,¡± Olaf said. ¡°The Jacob¡¯s Project put us on this path, and we have to complete it or die. We can change course slightly so the Death Mother isn¡¯t too pained, but I will put the lives of my brothers over her comfort.¡±

    ¡°Alternatively,¡± I said, ¡°you could always leave Earth and go back to whatever planet you came from.¡± We had entered one of the dorms just as I said this. Dragon¡¯s Teeth lounged in the various tasteful chairs and their boots had scuffed the fine wood floor. Guns rested against richly paneled walls, wood tables and leather chairs. If the Dragon¡¯s Teeth ever left, it would take a fortune to restore it.

    Two Legionnaires in full body armor frog-marched a pale, red-haired woman with green eyes and fox ears down the stairs. She stared at me hesitantly, and looked back and forth from me to Olaf, as if she wasn¡¯t sure I was real. It was Eliza.

    ¡°Eliza,¡± I said. ¡°You ok? Have you heard from the others?¡±

    ¡°They say they put me in isolation a week ago,¡± she said slowly, as if she¡¯d forgotten how to speak. ¡°but they lie ¡®bout that. ¡®Aven¡¯t heard from any of them since.¡± She paused. ¡°Where were you?¡±

    ¡°I was in solitary for probably about six months,¡± I said. ¡°Then they let me out.¡±

    ¡°I think it was only a few days we held you,¡± Olaf said.

    ¡°Fucking liar,¡± I said. ¡°The leaves were falling when you brought me in, they were blooming when you brought me back out. Where are the rest of them?¡±

    ¡°I have a deal for you,¡± Olaf said. ¡°When the UN makes its little inspection, you can get everyone back. All at once. Just be cooperative.¡±

    ¡°When?¡± I asked. ¡°I want a concrete time frame.¡±

    ¡°I was thinking that the first stop on our tour would be to release some prisoners,¡± Olaf said. ¡°They see how well we¡¯ve kept prisoners, and that we¡¯re reintegrating them into society.¡±If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    ¡°Such as it is.¡±

    Olaf rolled his eyes. ¡°Such as it is. We will fix much of this by the time they arrive.¡±

    Eliza was looking at us questioningly, so for her benefit, I said, ¡°Mass starvation and multiple outbreaks aren¡¯t something you can fix in¡­ how long? A month? A week?¡±

    ¡°Sounds like fun,¡± Eliza said, some of her normal sardonic behavior coming back in. ¡°Can I go back to isolation?¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s getting full rations,¡± Olaf said, ¡°despite being an ungrateful little shit. And if you really want to go back to isolation¡­¡± Eliza¡¯s face went even paler and she began to tremble. ¡°Thought not,¡± Olaf said. ¡°It¡¯s amazing how normal humans think brutality is the end-all be-all to horrible things. The success rate for making people talk just by locking them in a room with no human contact or knowledge of the outside world astounds people.¡±

    ¡°The UN inspectors will realize its torture,¡± I said, ¡°and they will ding you for it.¡±

    ¡°Ooooh, scary,¡± Olaf said.

    The room went yellow and things began to blur. ¡°I am going to ding you.¡± I didn¡¯t need to see all the Dragon¡¯s Teeth drop to their knees to know it was Alma. The creepy leader of the Teeth was pretty much a ghost at this point. ¡°Olaf,¡± she said, her monotone voice more dangerous than usual, ¡°of all clone commanders, you seem to be the one having the most difficulty adapting. It¡¯s almost like you prefer the old ways, if not the old commanders.¡±

    ¡°The old ways are satisfying,¡± Olaf said.

    ¡°The old ways are going to kill millions,¡± Alma said. ¡°I only allowed Switzerland because it was a back door into Europe. Never again. If you fail the UN inspection, I will send you back to Thebes. Are we understood?¡±

    ¡°Nobody¡¯s going to pass,¡± Olaf said. ¡°No matter what we do. And eventually, you¡¯ll need me. So everything you¡¯re doing here is pointless.¡±

    ¡°You have your orders, Commander,¡± Alma said. ¡°Follow them.¡±

    Olaf glared at her for a moment. Then he said, ¡°Yes. Ma¡¯am.¡±

    Alma turned to me. ¡°I have something to tell you, Nathan.¡±

    ¡°No, you don¡¯t,¡± I said. ¡°I think we¡¯re done talking after you let him¡± I jerked my head over to Olaf, ¡°run roughshod over my home for about a year. Now if you¡¯ll excuse me-¡±

    ¡°Mayu Nakashima is not accounted for.¡±

    ¡°What?¡± I asked. ¡°How can she not be accounted for?¡± If there was one thing that could be worse than the Teeth, it was Mayu Nakashima finding what she was looking for.

    ¡°We don¡¯t know,¡± Alma said.

    ¡°If she¡¯s in the US, and if I were her, I wouldn¡¯t be anywhere else, she¡¯s somehow managed to avoid thousands of checkpoints manned by highly trained individuals equipped with tech she couldn¡¯t have thought up while she was in stasis,¡± Olaf said. ¡°She¡¯s been¡­ a pain.¡±

    ¡°Let me guess,¡± I said. ¡°she¡¯s killed a few more Berserkers than I have?¡± Olaf glowered.

    ¡°We decided,¡± Alma said, ¡°that it was safer to have her go after you than have her head straight to Mubashir. That¡¯s why we¡¯re releasing Eliza.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± Eliza said, ¡°I can barely bloody walk, and you¡¯re asking me to do 24/7 protection on someone? I mean, I¡¯ll do it, but ¡®e¡¯s a fuckin¡¯ goner.¡±

    ¡°She won¡¯t kill him,¡± Alma said. ¡°She needs him to get to Mubashir.¡± Mubashir Mubarak (also known as Moob) was the thing that could make Mayu worse than the Dragon¡¯s Teeth. He had powers that could reshape reality and seemed to control him rather than the other way around. He could avoid unleashing them, but Mayu might have a way to change that.

    ¡°She won¡¯t mean to kill ¡®im, but she¡¯ll flip for ¡®alf a bloody second an¡¯ he¡¯ll be chokin¡¯ on ¡®is own blood!¡± Eliza yelled, incensed. ¡°Did you fuckin¡¯ see ¡®er when she went for ¡®im in Hawaii?¡±

    ¡°I know you didn¡¯t,¡± Alma said. ¡°And I know that when I can make contact with her, her mind is becoming rapidly more organized.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± I said, a sinking feeling in my stomach, ¡°you can¡¯t find her with you power? And she¡¯s becoming functional but still trying to find Moob?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s her only way of focus, I think,¡± Alma said. ¡°Her obsessiveness is letting her do incredible things. I just have a suspicion that if someone doesn¡¯t let her down gently, she¡¯ll snap. Or she¡¯ll somehow shape Mubashir into what she thinks he should be.¡±

    ¡°You can¡¯t pay me enough to get close to her,¡± I said. ¡°Being around her, no matter what my history with her is, is pretty much an end run at this stage. The likely scenario, no matter what safeguards you put in place, no matter how much progress she¡¯s made, is that she will kill me. She¡¯ll find out I don¡¯t know where Mubashir is, or she¡¯ll snap like Eliza said, or you¡¯ll send the Teeth to try and rescue me, and I will die. And I¡¯d be fine with that, but you decided to release Eliza just in time for¡­ for this. Fuck you.¡±

    Alma stared at me for a long time. ¡°You,¡± she said, ¡°are not the only one with a death sentence. I am trying to fix that, but I need help.¡±

    I sighed. ¡°I know, something worse is coming.¡± I looked at Eliza. If I pushed this, she would probably be sent back to solitary. ¡°Fuck. I have no choice, don¡¯t I?¡±

 7.3: Meet the Police

And maybe also to come get her boy, I added silently.

 7.4 Somebodys Watching Me

    I got out of the car and walked over to one of the Legionnaires. ¡°Hey, uh, what¡¯s happening?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Your backup generators were shut off fifteen minutes ago,¡± the Legionnaire said. ¡°We thought that it was a bomb or technical failure, but we were rapidly able to determine that someone manually shut off the power.¡±

    I froze in horror. ¡°You mean,¡± I said, horrified, ¡°someone came in to the factory, without tripping alarms, walked either into the courtyard or the basement, again, still no alarms tripped, and turned off the backup power. That¡¯s guarded by the most advanced security system in several hundred miles.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± the Legionnaire said.

    ¡°You wanna maybe give me some idea as to how that happened?¡±

    ¡°No.¡±

    I turned and walked back to Eliza. ¡°So,¡± she said, ¡°sounds like someone¡¯s testin¡¯ our defenses.¡±

    ¡°What do you want to bet it¡¯s our Japanese friend?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Everything I ¡®ave,¡± Eliza said. ¡°Which is basically my dad¡¯s army jacket an¡¯ th¡¯ rest of my clothes. But I¡¯m just concerned ¡®bout ¡®ow we can stop ¡®er.¡±

    ¡°No idea,¡± I said.

    We waited around a bit for the Dragon¡¯s Teeth to signal the all-clear. As we did, I noticed that people were starting to mill. Between the deaths from the war and the rampant disease and starvation, the cities had emptied out. Worcester, for instance, had gone from around a little over 180,000 people to several million refugees to just under fifty thousand. Most of the people who were still there who hadn¡¯t spread out to the surrounding areas to forage or escape disease were now working on what appeared to be emergency shelters. These people seemed to be on break or too weak to do heavy lifting, so they had gone scavenging.

    ¡°When¡¯s the last time these people¡¯ve eaten?¡± Eliza asked. ¡°It looks like a bloody zombie movie, don¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± I said. I only partially agreed with Eliza. Yes, these people looked skeletal and most had an odd, shuffling gait, but they were extremely silent. Not a one moaned. Instead, they looked at us with a restrained loathing, and there was a low, resentful muttering.

    One of the Legionnaires raised his rifle and cocked it menacingly. ¡°Shit,¡± I said, getting out of the car. ¡°Hey!¡± I yelled, walking over to him.

    ¡°Oi! Nate!¡± Eliza yelled, ¡°The fuck you doin¡¯?¡±

    I noticed that the other Legionnaires were cocking and raising their Pilum rifles, the hundred-round drum mags of 6.5mm caseless ammo more than enough to shred the crowd. I positioned myself between the Legionnaires and the crowd and said, ¡°Stop. Think about what you¡¯re doing.¡±

    ¡°Standard protocol,¡± one said. ¡°Raise the stakes. If they refuse to disperse, open fire.¡±

    ¡°Great,¡± I said, ¡°they taught you riot control on opposite day. No, you tell the crowd to disperse using your big boy words.¡±

    Behind me, I could feel the crowd getting angrier. I could hear things like ¡°Fuck you!¡± and ¡°This is still America!¡± being shouted occasionally. The slogans were a little worrying.

    ¡°This isn¡¯t a riot,¡± the Legionnaire said. ¡°This is a potential follow-up to an attack-¡±

    ¡°Or it¡¯s something unrelated!¡± I said. They paused. ¡°Please,¡± I said after a few seconds, ¡°try deescalating.¡±

    There was a pause. During that time, I noticed that the crowd had become a bit less resentful and a bit more curious. Finally, the Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldier said, ¡°All citizens, this is an illegal gathering. Disperse in fifteen seconds, or we will open fire.¡±The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

    There was grumbling. One angry civilian pointed directly at me and yelled, ¡°Fuck you, snitch! We gon¡¯ get you!¡±

    ¡°Disperse immediately!¡± a Legionnaire yelled back in response.

    Meanwhile, another Legionnaire said, ¡°Please enter the building.¡± He ushered me back into my Subaru and I drove into the factory.

    After the Legionnaires and Picts that had made up the quick response force were all gone, I went to check out the security logs. Eliza followed me. ¡°So I guess we¡¯re collaborators or somethin¡¯?¡± she asked. ¡°And I guess you¡¯re going t¡¯pick at your flakin¡¯ skin in front of a lady?¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said, stopping my fiddling with some of the burns I had experienced from America¡¯s brief, tragic war with the Dragon¡¯s Teeth. ¡°It itches a lot.¡±

    ¡°Better than hurtin¡¯ I guess,¡± Eliza said.

    ¡°It does that, too,¡± I said, ¡°and I don¡¯t think I can get painkillers anymore. The Jason Project didn¡¯t feel that giving their creations painkillers was economical-¡±

    ¡°Fuck me¡­¡±

    ¡°Yeah, I know, and plus the painkillers, and the means of producing more, are pretty much gone,¡± I said. ¡°As for me being a collaborator, well, I¡¯ve given up. You were there, weren¡¯t you? You saw what all my bullshit amounted to in the face of them. Nothing.¡± I paused, ¡°Plus, we¡¯re one of the few sources of food left. Parts of the Midwest are still burning. I don¡¯t collaborate, and even more people starve.¡±

    ¡°¡®Ow many people are starving?¡± Eliza asked grimly, obviously not wanting to know the answer.

    ¡°Have some of the Dragon¡¯s Teeth taken off their masks around you?¡± I asked. ¡°Because sometimes they do around me, and you can tell that they aren¡¯t eating that well. In fact, it¡¯s easier to list the people who aren¡¯t dying of malnutrition.¡±

    Eliza suddenly looked very guilty. ¡°I¡¯m not sayin¡¯ we were in a five-star ¡®otel,¡± she said, ¡°but I¡¯m pretty sure we got at least three meals a day. At least, we got that when we weren¡¯t in isolation.¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± I said, ¡°don¡¯t feel guilty about eating. I¡¯ve bartered with people who¡¯ve done a lot worse than I thought possible to get booze and I don¡¯t judge them.¡±

    ¡°What had they done?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°I¡­ I don¡¯t want to talk about it,¡± I said. ¡°Some people, when they hear or do horrible things need to talk about it. Others need to avoid talking about and¡­¡±

    ¡°I understand,¡± Eliza said.

    We sat in silence. ¡°I¡¯m gggoing t¡¯check the factory,¡± Eliza said. ¡°Make sure our friend hasn¡¯t left us any surprises.¡±

    ¡°Go ahead,¡± I said. ¡°Scanning the security logs might take a while.¡± The factory, being entirely automated by Andy, was a thing of beauty and the security system was no exception. It didn¡¯t cover against Jumpers, Parahumans who could teleport or ¡°jump¡± short distances, but they could be blocked by certain radio waves (unless their name was Mayu Nakashima) and only a select few could do a jump to place they didn¡¯t have line-of-sight on without suffering horrible consequences. What the factory did have were a series of laser trip-wires (invisible and full-length lattice weave so that if something tripped it, it would be identified and classified,) atmospheric sensors that could ¡°smell¡± poison gas and explosives, automated turrets, locking blast doors, 360-degree cameras, discrete metal detectors, dedicated lines that used to go to the Worcester PD department and now went to the local Dragon¡¯s Teeth HQ, and, at the center of all of it, an AI that interpreted everything and made decisions. Badly. Before the Dragon¡¯s Teeth had shut them off, I had only turned the ones with arcs of fire outside factory grounds on when the Teeth had come knocking and we hadn¡¯t installed any interior ones. We also had turned many of the systems off because normal factory operations and literal bugs would cause the system to freak out and act like we were under attack.

    Another problem with the system was that there were so many data points I couldn¡¯t even begin to see what was going on. I would probably need a year to decipher it. Andy had been highly pressed for time, so everything was a basic command-line system and organized haphazardly. Many commands were broken and/or unintuitive.

    As I was fighting with the interface, I heard Eliza come running back. She threw open the door to the security room, her hair askew and a piece of paper in her hand. ¡°Nate,¡± she said, ¡°you need to see this.¡±

    I looked at the paper. It was actually an envelope with odd black stains on it, and smudged Japanese characters in what appeared to be¡­

    ¡°¡­Is that blood?¡± I asked.

    ¡°The moon script? Yeah,¡± Eliza said, ¡°and it smells like Miss Nakashima¡¯s.¡± I kicked myself for forgetting Eliza¡¯s Lupine powers included enhanced smell. ¡°It¡¯s slightly differen¡¯ but I¡¯d wager it¡¯s ¡®er¡¯s. That¡¯s ¡®ow I found it. Like she knew I¡¯d be released and left it out so that only I¡¯d find it.¡± She cocked her head. ¡°Don¡¯t know what the black stuff is. Grease paint, maybe? Smells like it, but I have no clue why it¡¯d be there.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t know either,¡± I said, ¡°but the Hiragana spells out Nakashima.¡±

    ¡°Didn¡¯t know you passed Japanese.¡±

    ¡°I didn¡¯t,¡± I said, ¡°but I learned some things. Anyway, what does it say?¡±

    ¡°If it¡¯s in Japanese,¡± Eliza said, unsealing and extracting the letter, ¡°we¡¯re probably screwed.¡± She opened the letter and her face fell. ¡°Oh. Well, at least we know what it says.¡±

    She turned the letter around. I never really learned cursive, so reading the beautiful calligraphy took a few seconds.

    I know where he is. You will help me.

    After I read it aloud, I said, ¡°We¡¯re still pretty screwed though.¡±

 7.5: Bourbon, Scotch, Beer

    Eliza watched as I boiled the rice. ¡°Is this all we¡¯re going to ¡®ave?¡± she asked. ¡°Thought we¡¯d get more stuff than this.¡±

    ¡°Actually, you¡¯re kind of lucky,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ve been saving this hot meal for a special occasion. Apart from some cake mix I found, most of what we¡¯re going to be eating is bread.¡±

    ¡°What kind of bread?¡± Eliza asked. ¡°Please tell me it¡¯s not that crusty stuff they fed us in prison.¡±

    ¡°The good news,¡± I said, ¡°is that they¡¯ve got the Wonderbread factory working again.¡± I opened a loaf and hander her a slice.

    Eliza took it and nibbled on it. Her face slowly became more and more disgusted with each chew. ¡°So they didn¡¯t give us that awful stuff as punishment.¡± She took a few more chews. ¡°You sure this is the bread and not the cake?¡±

    ¡°They kept the original recipe because it¡¯s high in calories,¡± I said. ¡°When you get a loaf of this stuff per person per bi-weekly period, you need every calorie you can. I¡¯m an ¡®important war asset,¡¯ so I get two loaves per week. So I go around and trade my spare loaf with people for booze or give it away to people who really need it.¡±

    Eliza looked at the loaf with dawning horror. ¡°I got three slices a meal,¡± she said. She did some quick math. ¡°I was eatin¡¯ better¡¯n you.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°Probably. Almost everyone here is dying, as I said before.¡± There was a long, long pause. ¡°Want to celebrate by getting totally drunk?¡±

    ¡°How drunk can we get?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, ¡°seeing as how paper currency is only used for kindling and toilet paper, that loaf of bread you¡¯re holding is this brave new world¡¯s version of gold.¡±

    ¡°This shite¡¯s worth its weight in gold?¡± Eliza said incredulously.

    ¡°You¡¯re thinking in pre-war terms,¡± I said. ¡°Gold is fucking worthless now. Food, any kind of food, is one of the few things that are worth anything. Guns and other weapons are worth more. Medicine tops even that.¡±

    The assembly line below had been rumbling the entire time, but as Eliza¡¯s eyes drifted down, I could tell she was suddenly remembering that I was making all three. ¡°So this¡¯s a bloody diamond mine, innit?¡± she whispered. ¡°Don¡¯t that make you nervous? Bein¡¯ ¡®ere alone, with nothing but the three most valuable things in the world?¡±

    ¡°Come with me,¡± I said, motioning her to follow me. We walked down into the basement. Two things were obvious: the hole where the Dragon¡¯s Teeth had blown their way into the basement and took the factory that was now patched up and the shelves and the nine shelves of liquor.

    Eliza paused, wondering what was so interesting, then she realized. ¡°How did you fill all those shelves?¡±A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    ¡°Bread and Power Sludge,¡± I said. ¡°People will eat it now.¡±

    ¡°Jesus Christ,¡± Eliza said, shaking her head, ¡°this truly is the worst timeline, innit?¡± She walked over to it and picked up a bottle of American whiskey that wasn¡¯t bourbon shaped like a hip flask. ¡°How the hell did this even survive?¡±

    ¡°Dunno,¡± I said, ¡°but these bottles end up in a pile over there, ¡®cause I¡¯ve got nowhere else to put it.¡±

    Eliza stared at the bottle for a moment. ¡°Never heard of this before,¡± she said, ¡°but now¡¯s a good time to find out what it¡¯s like.¡± She popped off the cork and took a swig. ¡°Gah, ¡®s been a while. Forgot ¡®ow much this shit burns.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s the spirit!¡± I said. ¡°Ha. Spirit.¡± I walked over and took a random bottle. I gave it a quick look-over. It was potentially the last bottle of over-proof rum in the state. It was at least a gallon bottle. I unscrewed the top and took a swig. The swig turned into a gulp, and that nearly turned into a chug. I stopped. I wanted to get shit-faced, not choke on my own vomit. I¡¯d almost done that enough times these past few months. ¡°It¡¯s ok,¡± I said, seeing Eliza¡¯s look of shock and worry. It wasn¡¯t, but she didn¡¯t have to know that.

    ¡°If you say so,¡± she said, and took a pointedly ladylike sip from her bottle. ¡°Anyway, the Final Prophecy-¡±

    I took another swig from the jug. Eliza shot me a look. ¡°Sorry,¡± I said, ¡°but that prophecy bullshit just never ends well for me.¡± The Final Prophecy had already predicted Alma and Mubashir. And Eliza had always been a big believer in it, and so was Mayu. I¡¯d been introduced to Mayu¡¯s obsession because of Eliza¡¯s near-religious belief, and also been shot in the lung during an ill-fated expedition to Japan. My chest still twinged thinking about it. Just like other parts of my body ached and twinged from the combat I¡¯d been in.

    Eliza shrugged. ¡°Fair ¡®nough. Any rate, it ain¡¯t over.¡± I took another swig. Luckily, Eliza had taken a sip as well and couldn¡¯t say anything. ¡°We ¡®aven¡¯t seen the fiery angels come down from the ¡®eavens to wreak vengeance upon us yet, and they aren¡¯t fighting.¡±

    A few years ago, I would have protested. I would have told her she couldn¡¯t have known that, that all this was crazy. That prophecies were bullcrap. Instead, I took another swig and said, ¡°If we¡¯re lucky, they¡¯ll kill enough of us so that the famine won¡¯t be a problem anymore.¡±

    ¡°Bloody ¡®ell,¡± Eliza said, ¡°You¡¯re drunk already.¡±

    ¡°No I¡¯m not,¡± I said. Or at least not drunk enough yet. Depending on what I was drinking, sometimes I didn¡¯t realize it until I had reached my goal of blacking out twice a week. Once or twice, I¡¯d woken up with the circles from a gun barrel on my skin, or one of the pistols I¡¯d designed still in my mouth. That had been less a bug and more a feature, so I upped the nights I got drunk to three.

    Suddenly, the overproof rum hit me like a freight train. My thoughts became muddled, and I blinked. ¡°Now I am,¡± I said as things started to darken. I took another swig.

    The next of the night passed in bits and pieces. One point, I remember yelling ¡°THE LAST THERAPIST I HAD WAS NAMED JACK FUCKING DANIELS AND I KILLED HIM!¡± to an empty room while waving a bottle around. The next scene was me lying at the bottom of a staircase, my leg at a funny angle and Eliza calling my name from somewhere far off in the factory. The final time, my vision was blurry and I was looking at a wall, wondering why my hand, face, and foot hurt, and why there was a red spot on the wall, and why it was slowly falling to the floor.

    Finally, I woke up in an office, light streaming from the window. My leg was in a make-shift cast, my nose had a splint, and the fingers of my left hand were also in a cast and bandaged, with the bandage having some red leak through. My throat was also sore like I had been shouting for hours on end. Across from me, Eliza glowered, her eyes puffy.

    ¡°You,¡± she said, ¡°¡®ave a fuckin¡¯ problem.¡±

 7.6: People to be put against the wall

    ¡°The booze is gone,¡± Eliza said as we were making the cake mix. ¡°An¡¯ you aren¡¯t getting it back.¡±

    ¡°Ok,¡± I said.

    ¡°You¡¯re taking this very well,¡± Eliza said suspiciously.

    ¡°That¡¯s because now you have to decide an alternative,¡± I said. Eliza stared at me blankly. ¡°You took away the booze so you have to think of something to do today.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Eliza said, ¡°is the internet still on?¡±

    ¡°In a manner of speaking,¡± I said. ¡°We have internet but the vast majority of sites are down. That includes all social media, Netflix, and YouTube. Even PirateBay is down, and the sites that are up have no one on them.¡±

    ¡°TV?¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s some Dragon¡¯s Teeth propaganda for about two hours a day. It¡¯s static the rest of the time.¡±

    ¡°What about playing cards or board games?¡±

    ¡°Apparently, most of them got burned for warmth. The books as well.¡±

    ¡°How the fuck were you able to find all this booze, then?¡± Eliza asked.

    ¡°That¡¯s the fun part,¡± I said. ¡°It¡¯s dangerous, but, judging from my little escapade last night, I think that may have been more of a feature than a bug.¡±

    Eliza shook her head. ¡°Bloody ¡®ell, I¡¯m gonna go crazy ¡®ere instead of in Isolation.¡± She stood up. ¡°At the very least, we¡¯re gonna see if somethin¡¯s on the telly. D¡¯you reckon we¡¯ll ¡®ave to pay a license fee to the bastards?¡±

    ¡°At this point,¡± I said, ¡°I think they¡¯re trying to get everyone to watch TV at the set times. Some people seem to be protesting by refusing to watch.¡±

    We stopped talking for a while. Suddenly, I heard something fain from outside the factory. Eliza did too. ¡°Sounds like someone¡¯s talkin¡¯ over a microphone,¡± she said.

    ¡°Makes sense,¡± I said. ¡°They¡¯re probably trying to get people to watch TV.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± Eliza said, ¡°that¡¯s what we¡¯re going to do.¡±

    I walked down to a ruined meeting room that hadn¡¯t been used until the last battle, Eliza following. The door lock had been fused shut by a defender who had gotten a welder or some acid, so we walked through a hole the Teeth had so courteously blown in the wall with shaped charges. The TV had been right next to the hole and apart from a couple stray bullets to the screen, it was pretty much intact. The rest of the room, however, was a complete mess. The conference table and chairs were gone except for some splinters and scraps of fiber I¡¯d missed, and the opposite wall had been turned from a calming blue canvas into Swiss cheese and stained a disturbing brown in places. Luckily, the smell of the massacre that had abated, instead leaving

    ¡°Well,¡± Eliza said, ¡°Under normal circumstances this¡¯d be sarcastic, but you¡¯ve cleaned it up nicely.¡±

    ¡°Thanks,¡± I said. ¡°That¡¯s been one of the few things I can do here. And there¡¯s a lot of work to do. A lot I can¡¯t because, well, I saw it through the security system and I just keep reliving it.¡± I stared at the wall. ¡°I have no way of cleaning blood and¡­ other liquids. The Deets took all the cleaning supplies, so there¡¯s a lot of stains. Luckily, the ground in this room was carpet and I could just rip it out.¡± After that task, I had almost been too mentally and emotionally exhausted to continue. Then, when I had left the blood and piss-soaked carpets and the wood boards that had held them in place just beyond the factory walls, I noticed that they had disappeared. Hoping it was because they had gone to a good cause, I did the same with all the ruined wood and carpet I could find.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

    We turned on the TV and sat down on the cold concrete. A Legionnaire spoke to us, his helmet off to reveal a rather Mediterranean complexion. ¡°Civilians in the US-NE Precinct, welcome to the daily briefing. We now have the resources for daily broadcasting. Please tune in every day.¡±

    I rolled my eyes. ¡°Like that¡¯ll work.¡± From what I could tell, for all our talk of being a proud nation, we US citizens hadn¡¯t really taken up arms after being taken over. We¡¯d been completely exhausted by the massive death and destruction. Instead, most had been relatively compliant with a growing amount of civil disobedience.

    The announcer continued on. ¡°In other news, multiple refugee convoys are making their way to this Precinct. We would prefer all convoys move East past the Appalachin Mountains. We have also increased automation thirty-three percent. Now all raw materials gathering positions have been automated. All other jobs except in the medical, law enforcement and instructional fields are being reduced to fifteen hours a week.¡±

    ¡°So what¡¯s everyone else going to do?¡± Eliza asked. ¡°From what it looked like, labor was the only thing most people were doing.¡±

    ¡°More importantly,¡± the announcer said, ¡°this Precinct will be home to the first UN-Dragon¡¯s Teeth Summit. In several week¡¯s time, there will be an influx of UN humanitarian and security personnel. For those of you who are originally from a foreign country not under our control this will be your opportunity to leave.¡±

    ¡°Bet that got some attention,¡± I muttered.

    ¡°As you may have noted,¡± the announcer continued, ¡°the docks in Boston have been under guard for several weeks now. This is where the security zone shall be located. Security will be split between Dragon¡¯s Teeth warriors and UN Peacekeepers. Unarmed humanitarians and journalists and armed Peacekeepers will venture out with Dragon¡¯s Teeth guards. They arrive in two weeks.¡± That was sooner than I expected and not something I¡¯d heard about. News was traveling a lot slower, because I¡¯d heard nothing about Boston docks having higher security. Of course, due to the fighting, the subsequent migrations, the Deet¡¯s insistence no one live to close to the coast, and possible deliberate genocide, Boston had gone from a bustling city to a ghost town.

    The announcer continued, ¡°Commander Brosnan of the UN Security Force asks that you not make any contact with the UN unless asked.¡±

    ¡°Wait, Brosnan?¡± I asked. ¡°One of the two people who sent me to die in NIU so a fucking Klansman could steal tech for them to sit on?¡±

    ¡°If it¡¯s him,¡± Eliza said, ¡°¡®Ere¡¯s ¡®oping that Takashi died. Painfully.¡± Takashi and Craig were the two people who had recruited me to go to NIU for UNIX. One time in my second year at the college, almost two semesters after I was supposed to have died, Takashi had threatened me in front of Eliza and I (much to my regret) had to stop her from disemboweling him in the middle of a fancy restaurant.

    As the announcer continued talking about the UN, I said, ¡°Fuck, isn¡¯t¡­ wasn¡¯t? UNIX based in France? Hell, does it still have enough members to exist at this point?¡±

    ¡°They¡¯re fucking rats in UNIX,¡± Eliza said, ¡°and the higher up they are, the better they are at getting off a sinking ship. I¡¯m surprised Carter-Howell thought he could trust them.¡±

    I thought about President Anthony Newton Carter-Howell of NIU. He seemed to have a problem with people stabbing him in the back. I wondered how much of that was his fault, and if the core founders of UNIX who¡¯d graduated NIU had been as slippery before learning from him. Of course, before I¡¯d been to NIU, I had never even touched a gun or even been in a real fight.

    The announcer suddenly got my attention again. ¡°And now for the list of public enemies. These people are dangerous and are clear and present threats to the peace we are working so hard to build.¡±

    He seemed to be listing from least to most threatening. I saw several cops, soldiers, politicians, and activists from before the war. I noticed very few super heroes and villains were mentioned.

    ¡°Oh hey,¡± I said, ¡°they didn¡¯t list Jen. Have you heard anything about her?¡± Jennifer Kagemoto was a Jumper like Mayu. Before the war, she¡¯d been high up in organized and costumed crime in New York and a fellow NIU student. She then fought with us in the last battle before we convinced her to teleport away.

    ¡°No,¡± Eliza said. ¡°But they¡¯re just about to tell us enemy number two, so there¡¯s time yet.¡±

    Instead, we saw a grainy picture of Mayu Nakashima shooting an elderly man in the head with a pink and black VP70 machine pistol. ¡°Enemy number two is Mayu Nakashima,¡± the announcer said. ¡°Before the war, she had killed multiple FBI and CIA agents. Now she is torturing former US intelligence and law enforcement agents and kidnapping and interrogating members of the Muslim and Latino population. She is also wanted in the deaths of multiple Dragon¡¯s Teeth Warriors.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± Eliza said, ¡°how the ¡®ell¡¯s she number two?¡±

    ¡°Took the words right out my-¡± I began. Then they showed the next picture.

    ¡°And number one,¡± the announcer said, ¡°wanted for violations to disrupt the peace process, trafficking arms, and providing aid and comfort to Canadian and Mexican Special Forces, is former FBI Agent Connor George Hicks.¡±

    ¡°Well,¡± I said, looking at the craggy face of the man who had investigated me, ¡°someone¡¯s been busy.¡±

 7.7: Once a Cop

    ¡°Nate,¡± Eliza said as we walked through the bombed out buildings of Worcester, ¡°You  sure this is a good idea?¡±

    Around us, dozens of people walked milled in an open-air market. A few of the reconstituted cops and Dragon¡¯s Teeth soldiers walked around, making sure none of the stalls made out of rubble were being looted.

    ¡°You¡¯re only saying that because you¡¯ve only been in there a few days,¡± I said. ¡°Trust me, voluntary confinement in a big building isn¡¯t much better than involuntary confinement in a small room.¡±

    I scanned a shop. The guy running it was extremely chubby, but that didn¡¯t fool me. One of the few remaining reliable source of food was cake mix. If you ate nothing but birthday cake (minus the icing,) you would probably end up fat. Everyone was suffering from malnutrition, and judging by the man¡¯s straw-like hair and flaking skin, he was no exception.

    ¡°I heard about you,¡± he said.

    ¡°Really?¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, but my girlfriend just got out and is making me quit the booze.¡±

    The man looked at me for a while, a cold expression on his face. I noticed he was staring at my hands. That¡¯s how I realized they were shaking.  ¡°Not what I meant,¡± he said. He then looked behind me and nodded.

    ¡°Nate¡­¡± Eliza said. I turned. A small group of cops and better-fed civilians had surrounded us. It wasn¡¯t surprising that the cops were armed, but underneath the weathered clothes, the civilians had bulges or clothes pulled down in odd ways. Behind them was a van with open doors.

    ¡°There¡¯s a five-minute window,¡± one of the cops said, an elderly black man. ¡°These ladies and gentlemen would like you to meet someone. Without the Dragon¡¯s Teeth knowing.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said.

    ¡°Get in the van.¡± One of the people dressed like civilians said this. She was in her fifties and had an anarchist symbol tattooed on her chest right beneath her collar bone.

    Eliza gave me a look that just screamed ¡°this is not a good idea and you should feel stupid.¡± I shrugged.

    ¡°Get in the van,¡± the woman repeated. ¡°They could be back any second.¡±

    I began walking and Eliza grudgingly followed. It was set up for cargo, so there were no seats or windows and the view to the front was blocked off. Four of the civilians followed us in and shut the door. In front, I heard the driver¡¯s door open, then slam shut. A few moments later, the engine started up and the van began moving.

    ¡°This is puttin¡¯ me on edge,¡± Eliza said.

    A burly white man who was about my age, maybe a little older, and sporting a buzz cut responded, ¡°My plan was to shove a bag over your head and force you into the van, ma¡¯am.¡±

    I looked him over. ¡°Let me guess: Marines? Law enforcement?¡± The man looked surprised for a second, then returned to his stony silence. ¡°If it had just been me,¡± I said, ¡°it would have worked.¡±

    ¡°But if we got caught,¡± a nerdy-looking black man said, ¡°you would just say we kidnapped you. But now, if we get pulled over, we¡¯ve got a bunch of witnesses saying got in willingly.¡±

    I nodded. It was a fair point, especially how it was implying that I¡¯d have to back them up on whatever story they made up or be in trouble. But I could always say they threatened me. Then it would basically be a game of chicken, seeing if they cared about the people fed by my (theoretical) ability to keep the factory running. It also depended on whether or not they thought they could capture May and Andy wherever they were or train a replacement.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    ¡°But you didn¡¯t want us seeing where we¡¯re going,¡± Eliza said.

    No one responded to that, apart from a few looks of ¡°what do you expect?¡± We drove the rest of the trip in silence. Eventually, we came to a stop and heard a garage door close. The driver got out, waited for a bit, then knocked on the door to the cargo area. One of our hosts opened the door, revealing a parking garage.

    ¡°Come with us,¡± the elderly anarchist said. We walked down a ramp, past several derelict wrecks. I had a hunch we were underground. Finally, sitting on the hood of a very scuffed-up Dodge Charger was the man himself.

    ¡°Agent Hicks,¡± I said. ¡°I had a suspicion we¡¯d meet.¡±

    He smiled cynically. ¡°Nate, you sound like a Godamn cape. I think we both know that you wanted this meeting. If you decided you didn¡¯t want to talk me all you¡¯d have to do is stay in that factory of yours and no one could touch you.¡±

    So he hadn¡¯t heard about Mayu. Eliza looked at me questioningly when he said that. I said, ¡°Well, there are some exceptions.¡±

    ¡°And those exceptions would be very unhappy with you coming to me,¡± Hicks said. His tone was still conversational, but there was an edge. He was being cautious. He stood up, and walked over to me. Despite the fact that he was shorter than me, it was very intimidating. He then said, all the warmth in his voice gone, ¡°I wonder why you¡¯re doing this.¡±

    ¡°The truth?¡± I said. I began ticking off the reasons. ¡°There¡¯s boredom. That¡¯s a big one. Almost killed myself because all there is to do in the factory is alcohol. Guilt. I mean, I basically talked people into coming into a death trap? And for what? Look at what¡¯s happening. Plus I was released pretty early and am starving slower than most other people. And I¡¯m still, y¡¯know, under the delusion that you can change all this. Oh, and a bit of wounded American pride as well.¡±

    ¡°So,¡± the Marine said, ¡°you¡¯re going to do this partly because you¡¯re bored?¡±

    I turned around to face him. ¡°Never been in solitary, have you?¡±

    ¡°How long did they put you in?¡± Hicks asked.

    ¡°A long time,¡± I said. ¡°If they ever catch you,  remember: they lie about how long you¡¯ve been in.¡±

    ¡°So there¡¯s an element of revenge?¡± Hicks asked.

    ¡°Not on my part,¡± I said. ¡°I mean, I don¡¯t owe them, I don¡¯t like them, but I respect the fact they could have just murdered me.¡± I sighed. ¡°I just want this to end, you know?¡± I composed myself. ¡°Anyway, what do you want?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t like the Dragon¡¯s Teeth either,¡± Hicks said, ¡°and I need your help.¡±

    ¡°As long as it doesn¡¯t involve fucking with the food,¡± I said. Hicks raised his eyebrows. ¡°You didn¡¯t know?¡± I asked, surprised. ¡°We¡¯re producing medicine and food. If you¡¯ve been eating from Dragon¡¯s Teeth stuff, you may have come across some awful sludge.¡± I noticed that the people in plainclothes who didn¡¯t look malnourished made some gagging noises in response to that. ¡°You must be choking it down, Hicks. You don¡¯t look like you¡¯ve been eating bread and cake mix like the rest of us.¡±

    ¡°Is that really something you need to know?¡± Hicks asked. I suddenly realized that knowing that kind of information could get his location uncovered. If he was working for the Teeth and in my position, that would have been the first thing he¡¯d ask. I also decided not to ask about his partner, Agent Barton.

    ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°Just some pride in my creation, that¡¯s all.¡± I waited a few minutes. ¡°Anything you want?¡±

    ¡°Information,¡± Hicks said. ¡°We¡¯re going to push, and I want to know if they¡¯ll push back. Also, do you know where your friend Jennifer Kagemoto is?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°We convinced her to run rather than being captured.¡± Suddenly, a thought struck me. ¡°Oh, and by the way, ask Mai Lau how the Dragon¡¯s Teeth managed to open up a portal in her territory without her noticing.¡±

    ¡°First thing I did,¡± Hicks said. ¡°She snuck me up into her penthouse to discuss her desire to be a double-agent. She also wants to know where Jen is.¡±

    ¡°If Jen is still around,¡± I said, ¡°I would be very disappointed if you gave her up.¡±

    ¡°I want the option of having her rally the local criminal population instead of Lau,¡± Hicks said. ¡°I trust her more.¡± He stood up. ¡°In the meantime, write down everything you know about the Teeth, even the stuff you think I already know, and give it to¡­ who¡¯s their contact again?¡±

    ¡°He met him already,¡± the anarchist woman said. ¡°Looked at his stall and everything.¡±

    ¡°Good,¡± Hicks said. Then he waved us off. ¡°Go on, get outta here. I¡¯ll be in touch.¡±