《JAB-76842》


 JAB-76842-1

    This story is not fiction, or maybe it is, it''s honestly up ,for you to decide what you believe in life, I''m not the thought police.

    I sometimes have problems believing any of it myself so I won''t fault you. My name in this case is not too important to the progression of the story or to anyone else, so you can call me Green.

    Before we begin I have been advised by my therapist to add a trigger warning, just in general, because of...everything.

    I worked for an international, non government affiliated militarized organization that I''ll refer to as The Trigram Agency. .

    Not really worked for, more like "Belonged to" if you want to go into semantics. It''s where I, and so many others like me grew up.

    The Agency specializes in the Elimination and imprisonment of people, entities and objects that threaten the common good of the human race.

    I am telling you this, because I know that, even if you don''t believe me, my account of events will at least be found interesting.

    It all started in 2005 when I was 11.

    My mother had taken me to a new elementary school in the city of Hurst in Texas, mom wasn''t able to work because of her bad legs, so we went where section 8 took us.

    It was a pretty standard school, i started my year by ingratiating myself to my teachers as usual and I had already started making friends.

    All was good for about a week, then the doctors came.

    Around about lunch time, in November, a man in a white suit took me from my class under the pretense that he was my family doctor, telling me that my mom had scheduled an appointment and couldn''t pick me up, he even had my home address and a copy of my mom''s driver''s license as proof.

    He never brought me back.

    What happened next would literally take up the rest of my life. I was one of five hundred thousand children that the Trigram Agency forcibly kidnapped and signed on to a program they called JAB or Junior Agent Bonding.

    sounds benign doesn''t it?

    You see, The Trigram Agency usually recruited soldiers out of various militaries or independent Mercenary groups when looking for Agents. These didn''t last long, either because of death due to ill preparedness or lack of commitment to the Agency''s objective.

    Because the Agency mainly tracks and eliminates targets that fall under 1 of 3 categories, Cultists, Creatures and Artifacts, and some people find that too intimidating I guess.

    The JAB program was designed to:

    A. Create loyal Agents that would be desensitized to the otherworldly nature of The Agency''s work

    B. Foster deeper, more familial bonds between Agents from a young age, assuring that abandonment would not be an issue.

    C. Create a better soldier, one completely indoctrinated to pursue the mission above all else. That was stronger, faster, smarter and more stubborn than your average mercenary.

    I assure you that it worked, the disgusting pigs got what they wanted.

    But at such a cost? One has to wonder if it''s really as effective as Director Manning said it was.

    in the beginning, I along with the rest of the JAB candidates were shipped to the Appalachian mountains to a secure facility where they told us we would, in all likelihood, be spending the rest of our lives.

    Our clothes were taken and we were given green coveralls, some boot socks and lace up combat boots, after that we had our heads shaved and were covered in delouser.

    Our orientation started with something that resembled the old fitness pacer tests combined with Presidential Fitness day back at school. Assessing our physical condition, our endurance, our strength and agility while also running us until we physically couldn''t anymore.

    I remember only tripping up once after one of the guards pulled out a baton in response to a kid who refused to run. He was ten and I don''t believe he had ever been commanded to do anything in his young life. I couldn''t look away as the guard proceeded to beat the Child, The first two hits eliciting a scream which got everyone''s attention, the next few silencing the scream as the entirety of the group looked on in absolute horror.

    The guard just kept beating away a the kid''s head, he kept beating until the kid stopped moving, and blood coated the man''s Face, his baton, and spattering the walls and floor. I couldn''t believe it, I could only stare, and when one of the guards shouted at me to keep moving, it was all I could do to obey.

    After the fitness test we were put into groups of 5, each group was taken to their own room in a separate wing of the massive underground facility, that wing would be our world for years to come. Even now, all these years later, I can still hear water rushing through the pipes that lined the ceiling of the main walkway of of the residential areas.

    Sometimes I go back there in my dreams and as I hear that familiar gurgling, a horrid fear grips me, that I never really left and that all of my progress since then was in my head. But then I wake up and scream with relief, because for some reason these dreams make me hold my breath.

    we were allowed free reign of designated areas such as the residential and training areas, however, we had to be supervised if we wanted to go get food or walk around areas closer to the surface like the classroom sections, or the administrative offices.

    When I inquired about the strange plastic boxes I saw every few miles inside the facility, I was told by a guard that they were sealed weapons lockers, scattered around the facility, placed in strategic places much like one would do with a fire extinguisher. we were also heavily discouraged from trying to take from these, being that all of them were locked via biometric system and could only open if and a staff member used his or her thumbprint, I assume this information was shared early due to some of the early JAB candidates trying to rebel, although most of us just fell into line, I was glad for the reminder.

    After we were all assigned bunk areas, these were large living spaces that were occupied by an un-walled bathroom and a bunk bed, The researcher that had lead us there told us that we would be participating in various training exercises and classes, using as little detail as he could before leaving, slamming the door as he did.

    I looked around the room at my new friends. one of them, JAB--76843, a boy with black hair, glasses and brown eyes I would later call Agent Edge, was just staring at the wall, the rest of them looked as terrified as I felt.

    Other than him there was JAB--76844, a pretty Blonde girl who wpuld later be called Agent Love, JAB--76845, A young Chinese/samoan girl who would be called Agent Wolf, and JAB--76846, a taller boy who looked Hispanic who would be called Agent Ripper, we were one of the only eight groups that actually survived the JAB program.

    Over the next few months we would be trained in Military and Agency Exercises by veteran personnel. Protocol on Mondays, learning how to handle certain situations and the right equipment to use in each. Things like "what kind of relic or holy symbol is most effective against what subtype of Homo-Sanguisuga" (the Latin name for Vampire) or "how to escape a pocket dimension you''ve been trapped in" (The answer is Find the Totem).

    Or my personal favorite, "how to tell the difference between a Clown and a Klounh." (both are pronounced the same and the only way you can tell the difference between the words is on paper, hint, one of them is a human in a costume and one is a member of some ancient race of monster.)

    However once you meet a Klounh you will most certainly be afraid of clowns for the rest of your life, as the only way to establish observation of a differentiating trait is an up close encounter. no. thank. you.

    Combat was on Tuesdays, we started out with basic techniques, weapons training with some big Russian woman who worked us like we were grown ups, of course at this point most of us were too numb and disillusioned to even be called children anymore. Alena was a cruel taskmaster, making sure that blood was drawn in each training match even when nobody had purposefully hurt anyone else, throwing uncooperative JABs to the floor or into walls when they talked back to her.

    Finally, after a enough of the squads became somewhat adept at weapons and combat in general, mine included, they held these "culling" matches.

    During Culling, groups were pitted against each other for what we assumed was the sport of our captors, but actually it was to put us on a combat ratings chart in order to assess what they called "Combat effectiveness" which would dictate to them how ready we were for the next stage of the program. We would not be able to leave the room unless the other team was killed or incapacitated.

    Much to our horror, the incapacitated JABs would be put down anyway, once we learned this, we stopped trying to spare them. This continued until the number of JABs had been reduced from 499,000 to 600

    On Wednesdays we had what was essentially our one restful day before we began again on Thursday, it was also known as Hygene day, every bunk room would have to be cleaned, every head re-shaved every germ scrubbed from your flesh, and there was only one shower room to spare amongst what could have been, at some points, hundreds of JAB candidates.

    There was more blood shed in that hallway than there ever was in the arena, because if you were caught without having cleaned yourself that day, they sprayed you with dry powdered soap and de-lousing powder, scrubbed you down with steel wool and washed you off with a hose.

    Im not saying my group won every fight for that shower, but we were all S class on the Culling fight charts, we were up at the top of the foodchain in those halls.

    Breaking off THIS depressing subject, lets move on to the next, one, shall we? I was talking earlier the next phase of the project. This was the part where the "Soldier" part of the program came into play.

    After the the doctors had made sure we were two sheets to the wind with Trauma, 4 of us, picked out of the remaining 600 JABs because of our high combat scores.

    We were each, subjected to a form of Brainwashing I later learned they referred to as the "Other self" procedure.

    As if that wasn''t enough torture, they began to pump all JABs full of what they called "Neutral Protocells" which would change us in horrific ways.

    The "Other Self" procedure was confusing for me to grasp when I looked at it later, only because it seemed like pseudoscience. Using odd tonal frequencies and some sort of gregorian chant recited over lound speaker in the conversion chamber, the Trigram Agency somehow took a subject''s disassociation state and turned it into a completely different person, in this case the other personality would be a soldier, plain and simple.

    This is where I got my code name, Green, it was not a name I had chosen, rather something my Other self had chosen. When Green "Took the Wheel" as I understood it, I could see what he saw, I could hear, smell and feel, but I couldn''t control anything I did. It was at this point that I just surrendered to it, because there was literally nothing I could do, I had this murderous monster living in my head that I could do NOTHING to stop.

    On to the Neutral Protocells, the higher you were ranked on the culling chart, the higher a concentration of cells you got. I was told they''d "Make us better", but what I saw them do was something else entirely, my group, called Group sigma, because we were all rank S, got the highest concentration of cells possible along with the other 3 JABS submitted for the other self project, we had to be kept in the infirmary wing for an entire week while the horrible little things did god knows what to our bodies.

    we all had extreme amounts of muscle, bone and skin enhancements that were extremely painful to live through, although I''m just glad we weren''t like a few of the other groups, who had all mutated to death, decreasing the number of JABs down to about 450.

    As our mutations became more evident, Agent Edge began to develop unfoldable sticky pads on his finger and toe tips as well as saliva that, if left to dry, would become an extremely powerful adhesive that lasted indefinitely.

    Agent Love developed monstrous strength that if used without caution, tore her muscles and broke her bones, each muscle able to dish out over 800 PSI of force

    Agent Wolf gained Permanent Night vision so powerful that she had to wear dark goggles to protect her eyes from any ammount of normal light.

    Ripper''s hands became deadly to the touch, halting and ceasing the metabolic process of any living creature he touched.

    and I, for some reason, developed regenerative abilities including HemoGenesis, osteogenisis, neurogenesis, accelerated DermaGenesis and a nigh impenetrable immune system.

    I know what you''re going to say, "That doesn''t sound too bad." and at first it doesn''t, but they began to test us. My team endured horribly traumatic testing, Edge was made to flee up walls to escape attack dogs and spike traps. Love was made to break increasingly harder targets over the course of months, each time breaking her hand, but breaking the target every time, regardless of rigidity or structural integrity. Wolf was made to navigate a trap laden maze in darkness used for sensory derivation.

    Ripper''s and my tests, I feel were the worst, They asked him to pet a dog they had let into the chamber. The dog was super friendly, it seemed like it could be someone''s dog, very affectionate and happy, and it died in his arms after he finally gave in and ran his hand across its head.

    Suddenly, instantly, so quick was the cessation of life that it was still warm when he held it, crying that he didn''t mean to. After the test, he never took off his gloves ever again, not even when he was ordered to, they discontinued tests on him soon after. The only reason his disobedience didn''t get him killed, was the unique nature of his ability and the low number of JABs in general.

    My test involved propane and fire.

    I walked into the test chamber, directing my attention to the two way mirror, behind which I knew the researchers sat, Green was in control and we BOTH knew what was going to happen, but Green did not panic, he smiled as the voice rang over the intercom, "Agent Green, brace for test 1-a" Green let out a haughty laugh and spread his arms in a gesture of overconfidence, "I''m as braced as I can be, let ''er rip." The jets came on in the room, I smelled the propane, that smell would later induce panic attacks and fight or flight responses for years to come. I heard the electric click of the sparker and the entire room was engulfed in flames, I wanted to scream, I wanted to cry, but Green just stood there with his arms out and his eyes screwed shut until our eyelids burned off and our eyes were burnt out of our skull. It wasn''t long till our knees gave way, and we fell to the floor.

    I woke up unable to see, moving was pain, Green was dormant for now so I was left to bare the agony myself, I couldn''t hear, I couldn''t smell or taste, everything was just pain.

    I remember FEELING the flesh on my forehead attempt to grow back three times, the first time it died and peeled back into what I could only assume was where my eyes were supposed to be, the second time it scabbed up and broke apart somehow, finally, I felt cool air on my skin as my body slowly rebuilt itself from scratch. Eventually my eyes returned, but just as slowly as everything else, so when I was able to see the first instinct was to rake the back of my hand across my face to rub whatever it was out of my eyes, I ended up tearing off the scabs that had formed over my eye sockets and the pain of that, made me pass out.

    As the years passed (2 of them to be precise) we became closer as a unit, working better together, sharing more feelings with one another and doing our best to be better, if not to others, but to each other as we battled other squads for survival in the ever present culling tests, always there was a heavy death toll, we worked together to make sure it was never on our side.

    The whole time we were doing this, the Agency was lacing our food with all sorts of chemicals, made to keep our bodies running at peak efficiency and keep our mutations working as intended. at some point they just stopped trying to hide it and straight up gave it to us as a creamy, cold purple beverage that they called B-207 (shit was delicious) however as a nasty side effect, it pushed us deeper into puberty than we were meant to be at ages 13-14.

    Case and point we began to experience strong yet unfamiliar feelings and sensations, leading to fighting, destructive bouts of depression and general inefficiency.

    I remember the inexorable draw to my female bunkmates, not knowing exactly why I felt the need to be so close to them or why any physical contact with them felt like heaven, scared that I might hurt them or myself, I reported it on our bunk''s computer, and was told to standby.

    Apparently it wasn''t just us, because shortly after this began, the Agency organized a class about sex ed where they described in detail the feelings we were feeling and the ways we could alleviate the stress (complete with diagrams)

    Im not going to sugar coat this bit, because in my many attempts to recount this, I''ve always altered it some way.

    But today facts are facts.

    they encouraged us to get intimate with each other, as long as it didn''t effect our classroom and battlefield performance. preaching even, that it may improve team synergy. they even went so far as to add that the mutations we''d undergone had sterilized us, making it safe for everyone.

    And so, with the assurance of the people in charge that it would fix things, we dived into it with the abandon of children in a candy store. The feeling of sex was so incredibly addicting, we didn''t want to stop. There were no boundaries between genders or sexualities, it was pure stress relief and bonding, as horrid as it sounds.

    My first few intimate experiences were bouncing between Wolf, Love, Reaper and Edge in a frenzy of hedonistic experimentation, rewarded and reciprocated by each individual, each trying to get their relief from the other.

    And really, this new coping mechanism did its job at the end of the day.

    Our team grew closer, a bit too close if I''m being honest. My therapist calls it a "Codependency" which, after looking up what that is, makes sense.

    We were more tight knit than before, galvanized by our attachment to eachother, and I swore to whatever powers there were, that if anything happened to anyone in my crew, I would burn this facility to ash.

    But that''s how they liked us, compliant and deadly, with very few conflicts between us after the fact.

    Speaking of conflicts, disagreements within our unit were commanded by the higher ups to be settled with physical (non deadly) violence, the loser had to apologize, no matter how right they felt. This lead to many a strength based heirarchy amongst the JAB populace, and suddenly I''m reminded of that story about the captive wolves and the misconceptions about wolf behavior born from a hostile captivity environment.

    That was us.

    Mostways into the program, they stopped punishing infractions against protocol and staff with physical injury and started simply denying us rations for 3 days, we later learned that the reason for this was that the culling process they instituted at the beginning of the program had worked too well and our generation of JAB agents had whittled its way down from thousands into the low hundreds now.

    It was Green and I that had the bright idea to steal rations for my crew.

    As i got better and better at it, It was often expected by some members of my crew to recieve an extra MRE as a romantic gesture from myself or another crew member.

    However, after a while of watching the other squads suffer, I also ended up stealing rations for other crews, as I was the only one at the time who knew about the security blind spot in the leftmost corner of mess where they brought the food in from the outside, the others gave us things in return, books, spare supplies, ammo requisitions, stuff of that sort.

    This singular advantage didn''t last long and eventually food was being stolen en masse by other JABs who decided to spy on me while I made supply runs.

    It would be much later that I discovered the higher ups meant us to steal when taken from, it was another sick test of our survival instinct.

    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

    I hated this place.

    But we wouldn''t be there for much longer.

    We had just finished monday protocol, I had come back to our bunk to find a letter. I''m not sure from where, or how it got into our bunk, but it read like this.

    Dear Agent Green

    I know the Trigram Agency has stripped you of your real name, and any chance at a normal life, I represent an Organization in the same field as the Agency, however as you know, their methods have become a bit extreme, the JAB has to end and I think you know it does, tomorrow at Lunchtime, all weapon stations will have their thumbprint registries scrambled, which means that ANY print will open them, this will be your chance to escape, my men will be waiting in the wings to aid in that escape.

    yours truly

    \-MAL

    now this was an incredible revelation. something to hope for, something both I and Green were suspicious of. His own budding plans for our escape were not very well rounded and this MAL seemed like he or she had a much safer alternative. Green agreed, however, being an egomaniac, he also decided that he would present the plan as his own. Agent''s Love, Edge, Ripper and Wolf all listened in while Green pitched it to them.

    Edge spoke up, "how the hell do you know all this, Green? how do you know the weapon stations are going to scramble? who told you?" Agent Edge had been named our Recon and espionage guy by the supervisory echelon of the Trigram Agency, a responsibility he took too seriously when presented with stuff like this. After Edge''s reaction, Everyone eyed us with suspicion and I decided to come clean, over time I''d learned how to cut off Green''s control if only temporarily, it helped if he was focused on something else. It''s strange how differently they looked at me as opposed to Green, he was always so dominant that when I was in the driver''s seat it was painfully obvious.

    "I got this letter you guys." I took it out and handed it to the group, to much cursing and angry words from Green inside my head. Edge looked vindicated as he passed the Letter down to Ripper, "Fucking knew you didn''t come up with that one yourself, geezus Green we have an actual lifeline here and you''re wasting time trying to convince us it was your idea?"

    Green took back control and snorted at Edge, "Fuck off." Wolf shushed us, "Silence man children, I''m 78% sure that this is probably a trick." She had become the mother figure of the group as well as it''s leader, as she had beaten all 4 of us at punchies and had been labeled in a support capacity by the higher ups, viciously but caringly enforcing her strict codes of conduct on the rest of the group, she was our voice of reason, and we respected her for it.

    Ripper spoke up, but because his voice never really seemed to crest over a harsh whisper he had to announce himself twice before we were able to hear him. He, like Love and I had been designated for Heavy combat, or at least that was before Ripper vowed to never take off his gloves again, he was a huge teddy bear, but one you dared not hug without protection, poor bastard. "I feel like it''s worth a shot." He said, looking at the letter himself.

    Love, ever the enthusiastic but simultaneously deadly Ditz, still lounging half naked in Edge''s bunk under the covers, her wavy blonde hair parting as she turned towards us and nodded her head fast and enthusiastically, "I agree with Ripper, we need to move and soon, plan or not!"

    That was when the drone of the "Bell" sounded, that was the 5 minute warning to get ready for class, for us today it was combat.

    Goodie.

    we all scrambled to get dressed in our gear as Edge checked team statistics on his PDA.

    here is where I bitch about requisitions.

    everyone in the squad had zip up Kevlar plated coveralls. BUT ME. I was told by the equipment requisitions officer that due to the nature of my mutation, I did not need the armor plating my squad so enjoyed.

    Green would agree with them but I didn''t like getting shot, I didn''t enjoy being burned, I did not WANT to get hurt, but despite all that, I got no plates for my nomex coveralls.

    Green also enjoyed a dismally minimal load-out.

    3 frag grenades, a single Glock standard issue 9mm handgun and a guard-less straight sword. Green LOVES his swords, ever since the fighting instructor took a liking to him, tutoring us privately after class in the "Art of the blade" can you tell how done with his shit I am? especially in a firefight situation like the one we were going into.

    after we were all relatively armed to the teeth, Edge stopped us, "Guys, I have some good news and some bad news."

    with that, he touched the screen of his PDA and an image appeared on the wall, group sigma and group alpha were the only two groups left.

    everyone else was labeled "Terminated" or "Sanctioned"

    Love gasped and giggled giddily, "We''re the last ones left!" Then she realized what that meant and she started crying,"We''re...the last ones left.." Ripper grabbed her and pulled her into a hug as Agent Wolf squared her jaw, "Well shit...this either means their project was a wash or a complete success, i''m not sure which."

    Edge coughed and then looked at all of us, "well whether or not it''s a wash, we need to beat group alpha, my PDA won''t give me their stats, I can''t make a strat..." he started to frantically type out a request to the admin on his PDA but it shut down automatically and he threw it against the wall, destroying the device, "THIS IS MY JOB!!" he started to shake, he was so used to us relying on him to keep us alive, "I''m supposed to be the one who''s ready..." Green was beginning to panic, we began rapidly shifting foot to foot as well when Wolf stomped her foot and the entire room went silent, "We''re going to make it out of here and we''re going to have to do it without a plan, we''ve never had to do this before but maybe this is another test."

    deep down I felt very secure in my belief that we were all going to die, but after all we''d been through, Wolf had hope for us, we all stood at attention, ready for her next order.

    "Green." Wolf turned to me, "you improvise all the time, I move leadership of this squad over to you for this mission." Green was unable to speak as everyone clustered around me.

    before I could say anything, the bell rang and a voice sounded over the intercom, "ALL JAB AGENTS WILL REPORT TO DESIGNATED LOCATIONS OR OCCUPIED UNAUTHORIZED SPACES WILL BE FILLED WITH POISONOUS GAS"

    we booked it to the arena chamber where a guard let us in, the floor of the arena would change depending on what program was running, the way it was now, it was like an obstacle course but it wasn''t? it''s hard to go into it, the point is that it was a controlled environment that was made to look and act like any arena type the administrative staff wanted, whether or not this was achieved through some sort of Holographic or other such science fiction thing, it could put you on the slope of a volcano, or on the moon, it could do ANYTHING they wanted it to, and this time it was a misty forest in the dead of night.

    As soon as we were inside the room, the door shut behind us and it was like we hadn''t even come from anywhere, just standing in the dark woods in the middle of the night! As we got our bearings a loud electronic voice blared as it always does, announcing the terms of victory and any environment hazard we would be facing.

    "FINAL SKIRMISH BEGINS, CONDITIONS OF VICTORY: Subdue or slaughter ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARD: TEMPORAL SHIFT"

    I hadn''t a clue what any of that meant, but in the time it took me to turn to Edge and ask, just like that, my team was gone.

    "GOOD LUCK." and with that, I got shot through the kidney by someone just beyond the trees!

    Green kicked in and he rolled us to the left behind a tree, he pulled out one of his grenades and held it to his chest before shouting, "HEY!!" I groaned internally, what was he thinking? the guy wasn''t gonna, "YEA?" I nearly laughed, it sounded like a small girl, "DON''T SHOOT I SURRENDER!" Green yelled, The little girl let out an unsurprisingly cynical laugh, "That''s a lie and you know it, poke your head out!"

    The following internal conversation went like this,

    Green: I''m gonna poke my hand out, it''ll grow back anyway.

    me: no you''re fucking not! because it won''t hurt you, it''ll hurt ME!

    Green: I need to get a bullet trajectory, then I can blow her ass up! it''ll grow back anyway!

    Me: oh like you can do math!

    Green: I may not be good at long division, but I can calculate throw distance all damn day, you''ve been with me through all my training! it''ll grow back anyway!!!

    me: if we get out of this I swear to god I will let you feed me our own shoes!

    with that, Green cracked a smile and waved his left hand out from behind the tree, and as predictably as water is wet, a 50 caliber bullet shredded through my palm and rendered my hand useless, almost as useless as my right kidney!

    Green then spun and lobbed the Grenade, bouncing it off two trees before it hit a third tree mid trunk and exploded.

    the little girl had this to say, "HA! you missed!"

    Green would normally retort something, I was waiting for it, but he said nothing, "Dude she just set you up for some grade A comeback, what-" he shushed me and suddenly I heard it, the sound of splintering wood, illusory wood chips flying apart and disintegrating and a child screaming as she fell out of a falling tree, landing with a grunt on her back on the ground.

    Green rushed out, stepped on the rather impressive Barrett she had been wielding, and pointed the sword at her, she wasn''t as small as she sounded, she looked 12, one year younger than me.

    "Do it, pussy." she growled as Green raised the sword.

    I would have stopped him, but I knew all the reprimands and screaming in the world would do nothing to stop the arc of that blade, for all our time spent finding common ground, one thing I could never agree with is that he enjoyed killing far too much, because in his mind, the moment someone tried to kill us, they stopped being a they and became an IT, removing the human part from the mental equation, making it less about "why kill." And more about "How kill."

    he brought the sword down into her skull, impaling through her forehead, the blade traveling unimpeded out the rear of her head and into the dirt, I felt my face and chest hurting from how hard he was laughing.

    After his manic moment, he pulled the sword out with a sickening slurp and wiped it clean with his sleeve, "Cake." He chuckled, almost in spite of my disdain.

    suddenly Edge crashed into me, knocking both of us over, "OH SHIT....Green??"

    we both got up, he was holding a broken looking Love over his shoulder, both her arms were swollen, bruised black and hanging limply at odd angles, she was in tears, "fuck me right? I just wanted to help."

    Edge sighed in relief as I took her, "We''re being chased by...something, I''m not even sure what it is, whether its one of team alpha or not..."

    Green raised his eyebrows, "The fuck do you mean you''re not sure, if it''s hostile it has to be one of them!"

    Edge sighed, "I don''t think its that simple, It looked like something...else..like a Tangible."

    Green and I both look around, "What do you mean?"

    Love scoffed and winced, "Did you not pay attention in class, Genius?"

    Green waved his hands, "I didn''t mean like what''s a tangible, dumb ass, how big was it?"

    for those of you who aren''t in on the whole "Lingo from a super secret monster hunting Agency, the term Tangible and Intangible were used for supernatural creatures both material and immaterial (if you couldn''t already pick up on that, i''ve been told its kind of obvious.)

    Edge jostled Love a bit too much, Love complaining as he raised his hand far above his own head, "Taller than I can reach."

    Green looked at Love''s arms, "I''m guessing she got these fighting it off?"

    Love whined, "No, it threw me and I hit a tree..."

    Green blinked, "Just your arms? I don''t think that''s how that works..."

    Edge growled, ''It''s just how it happened alright Green? stop being an asshole, come with me, I know where the others are."

    Edge didn''t really like Green, but in these situations he was usually more worried about us than angry, and Love wasn''t acting like...Love, but I followed them, keeping an eye on the pair, they were acting a bit off and I hardly believed Love''s story about the reason for her arms breaking, so I began to scan for signs.

    this is where it gets really weird, because in the Agency, we have certain nonverbal means of communication, a way to get info to one another without talking or even really being there.

    These Field signs are actually derived from the more popular hobo signs, and every JAB Agent is made to memorize these.

    I eventually did find a sign, low on a passing tree trunk, just out of eye shot of Edge, it was half a rectangle with a squiggle line inside it.

    this sign specifically means, "Do not trust them." and beside it was another sign, a stick figure with an X through it''s head, meaning "It is not human." and under both was a sign that showed a large u shaped squiggle that meant "Hostile being."

    Knowing that all he had to do was act, Green drew his gun silently, aiming it at the two impostors that we''d been following, that''s when I heard a silent whimper, Green wheeled around and pointed the gun directly at a big kid, about the size of Reaper with hulk-like proportions, muscular and large. he looked slightly older than me, his eyes were full of tears, the gun in his hand hung loosely at his side, "Your friends are unconscious over there by that tree...I drew the signs."

    as he pointed to the tree who''s roots seemed buried in leaves, one question came into my mind, "Why?" the kid dropped his gun and fell to his knees, "I''ve-" Green pulled the trigger, ending the boy''s life, I stood there in shock as Green checked the clip and re holstered it, "WHY?!" I yelled in desperation, Green sighed exasperatedly, like I''d asked him the most idiotic question, "He was stalling, did you notice how he made really convincing illusory copies of Edge and Love? I wasn''t about to wait around for him to tell me his life story, let''s get the others."

    I walked over to the tree the boy had indicated and pulled my two unconscious teammates from the leaves, "I can''t leave them but I can''t carry them with me anyway..."

    suddenly Green just dropped them and walked about ten paces away, then pulled out another of his Grenades with our one good hand, flipping the pin off with his index finger.

    "Green what the fuck are you doing?"

    "There''s someone here."

    "HOW the fuck did you hear anyone and I didn''t?"

    suddenly Green hiked up one of his legs and dropped the Grenade, he crab walked away as I looked down to see what looked like a puddle of goop forming directly underneath us, two pitch black hands clawing their way out of the nebulous void that had at one point been solid ground.

    I watched in horror, Green in elation, as the final member of the enemy team clawed his way into the open air.

    his skin was a black glistening slop, his limbs were long and spindly, ending in sickle shaped claws, dripping with black slime, all I could see for sure of it''s face was this thing''s horrifying smile, toothy and pale, glinting in the moonlight given off by the artificial moon that now had chosen to come through the clouds.

    the grenade went off and the shrapnel from the frag rocked the frame of the creature, but it didn''t move from where it stood.

    Out of frustration, Green drew his sword and raised it above our head, yelling in pain as the creature grabbed our right arm in a slimy, nasty, vice like grip. Green was about to throw the injured hand in a desperate bid to get away, but then our good arm began to sizzle like we''d had acid dumped on us! MY ARM WAS ON FIRE!!

    Green pulled back with a frightened "AAH!" and the arm came loose at the elbow with a ripping, tearing, agonizing, sloppy sounding pop that SHOULD have taken more effort than it did, a small splash of blood spurting from the stump of my elbow. The remainder of our arm in the thing''s hand began to decay before our eyes, the fingers of the hand falling off, dropping the sword as the creature continued to advance on us.

    my mouth hung open in a silent scream, I say silent because after a bit of hardcore yelling or directly after a dire injury, it became hard for me to force air out of my lungs, I staggered away, Green had left me, retreated within to escape the pain. say what you will about his combat prowess, the guy''s a pussy. anyway, after an ineffective attempt to run, I sort of just, fell to my side and curled up around my stump arm, waiting for death.

    I had accepted death at that point, if I couldn''t defend myself, how could I survive in this horrible place, I was ready for whatever came next, my fear had been replaced by pain and all I could think was how easy it would be to just let the nightmare end.

    That was when I heard Wolf, that husky tone that had always made me feel safe, now louder than I would have liked, with a savage snarl mixed in as she bellowed my name, "GREEN!!"

    There was automatic weapon fire and the creature took two steps back, Wolf walked into view with her AR-15 leveled at the thing, more footsteps, more felt than heard at this point, my heart was pounding in my ears. I looked up, there was Ripper, his face was covered in blood, he looked at me with this horrified expression on his face. This expression immediately turned to pure rage as I watched him take off his gloves.

    I grasped vainly with my shredded left hand at his ankle, "NO!" I tried to say, the sound only registering because it came from me, all else was THUMP THUMP, THUMP THUMP as my heart pounded in my ears. he dropped the leather gloves on my chest and stepped over me, showing his hands to Wolf who''s eyes widened under her goggles, she pointed the gun at him, I couldn''t hear either of them anymore, but I saw her repeatedly mouthing the word "no." and brandishing the gun at him, apparently trying to intimidate him into putting the gloves back on.

    he paid her no mind.

    he just kept walking up to the inky black thing with the crooked smile and grabbed it by the throat! smoke rose off of both of them, it grabbed him by the shoulders, it''s claws sinking in. I saw Ripper scream in pain before both of them began to sink into the ground, both their bodies liquefying into the dirt as Wolf and I watched in horror.

    then everything went black.

    what I later learned was a day later, I woke up in a hospital bed surrounded by curtains, next to me stood a tall, beautiful grown woman in a grey suit, her hair was shoulder length and fire engine red, her eyes were silver behind thick lensed glasses, she looked to be in her late 20s.

    "Good morning." she smirked, "I''m MAL, it''s nice to meet you."

    I blinked hard, "What...where am I?" I put my left hand on my head and saw the palm had already healed up and my fingers were aligned again, Mal gave a light sigh as she answered, "You and your squad are in the custody of my employers."

    I nodded, not feeling Green in this situation was super awkward,he usually was the one who did...everything. "so you sent us the letter." I said. Mal nodded, "Yes, I did, except you guys didn''t have to do anything; it turns out the staff of the area had vacated before the final skirmish had ended; we don''t know where they are." I scratched my head, completely numb at this point, I couldn''t even bring myself to cry for Ripper.

    With that, MAL got up and patted me on the shoulder, "Welcome to the Houska Organization. I''ll be back with food in a bit, and we can talk about arrangements for your stay."

    And like that, she was gone.

    Ok because we didn''t figure it out until after we got loose, I want to tell you that this "Houska" organization was literally just Trigram with a fresh can of paint.

    That''ll come back into play later, and I won''t know until much, much later; this is just a hindsight thing.

    It wasn''t exactly ideal, but at this point, we were no longer people, not really. We were weapons, we only needed to be used.

    I''ll try to write some more. Maybe I''ll elaborate on more of my classes/tests from back at the Agency before I talk about our experiences in the "Houska" organization, but for now, I just need to rest after writing this.

    -----

 JAB-76842-2

This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

 JAB-76842-3

On Klounhs</u>

    Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!

 JAB-76842-4

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

 JAB-76842-5

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

 JAB-76842-6

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

 JAB-76842-7

    Return to HQ was less Triumphant than we thought it would be. The older agents steered clear of us, even in the break room and workout areas where we would regularly get bothered.

    The others didn''t think much of it, but it bothered me, it was like we had broken some unspoken rule.

    Benz had given us each the "Special Agent" badge, I had gotten another badge, the Slayer badge, which I was told designated me as their go-to for dealing with level 100+ threats.

    Only one other Houska agent had gotten this honor, and that was Benz himself.

    After recieving that badge, no adult outside of Benz, Pilum or Singleton wanted to talk to me, even going so far as to leave the restroom when I entered it.

    They feared me.

    That fact, to Green, was exhilarating, it put a little more swagger in his step that these people, grown ups, previously so dismissive of and even antagonistic to us, now felt genuine fear at our approach.

    He used this to get our squad good seats in the mess, to walk grown men out of the work out areas, swiftly turning into what I hated the most, a Bully.

    Regardless if my qualms, my team saw nothing wrong with it as this was the norm back at Trigram, the biggest and meanest usually got their way amongst the JABs, Wolf, Love or Edge would correct him if he went too far with the menacing, telling him that he was being a shithead, so I suppose even they had limits to his BS when it came to the strength heirarchy stuff.

    One day, however, as we were working out and chilling, on my way to the bathroom I ran back into MAL, who I hadnt seen since the incident with Doctor Sharp. She was wearing a sports bra and sweat pants, with her bright red hair up in a ponytail.

    She looked down at me with disdain, no doubt having heard of what Green had been doing.

    The look hurt me in my deepest parts, I hated this, she was the first person to lift a finger to help us and now she obviously thought I was worth less than the ink she wrote into the letter she had sent us that fateful night.

    "Move." She said, indicating the treadmill behind me, "I need to use that machine."

    Green was still running off the high of being feared and decided now would be a good time to be a little prick.

    "Make me." Came out of my mouth 2 seconds before the entire room went dark.

    I tried to look around but everything was pitch black!

    "You disappoint me, Agent Green." Came a whisper that nearly carried me off to sleep, my eyes fluttering as I struggled to keep my feet.

    I can''t explain it, but MAL''s voice had an aggressively soporific effect on me, that combined with her apparent ability to induce Sensory deprivation made me contemplate what she could be, while I was genuinely interested, Green was furiously calculating odds of what strategy would work best to defeat her.

    ~need sweeping solution, Gas? Unavailable.~

    ~Sword? Didn''t bring it.~

    ~Fists?? No indication of success, but work with what we have.~

    I felt his thoughts waver as she laughed, a soft chittering, halting noise that once again sent me spiraling deeper into tiredness to the point where I felt like I was speed running my sleep deprivation training back at Trigram, it felt as if I hadnt slept in a full 24 hours, I still couldn''t see.

    ~im certain there will be an attack from behind, the moment something touches you, lash out and strike at weak spots.~

    ~What weak spots?~

    It was then that I felt a hand on the back of my head, cold, she was ice cold to the touch and though I could no longer turn my head, I caught a glimpse of her face as she peered at me through the darkness. deathly pale skin, her eyes were still silver, but luminesced in the gloom of this supernatural darkness, her mouth slid open into a vicious grin, revealing sharp sickle shaped teeth that sprang from beneath her gums like cat claws, circumventing her normal teeth and turning her face into what resembled an organic bear trap

    "Nobody can help you now."

    ~HOMO SANGUISUGA, MAL IS A VAMPIRE~ green shrieked in my head as we continued to weakly flail to absolutely no effect, she held us fast and we were getting tired as we did so, her chuckling voice causing my strength to ebb, even as Green bolstered our muscles with adrenaline and Dragon strength, nothing could fight the oncoming black wave of sleep.

    NOTHING we''d ever been taught about Homo Sanguisuga involved anything like this.

    <u>On Vampires</u>

    Species name: Homo Sanguisuga

    First known account: 1047 AD

    Last known account: 2000 AD

    Defining morphology: every instance of Homo Sanguisuga is characterized by pale, taught skin, growth of a human tapetum lucidum, retractable fangs hidden under the gums and a lean body structure.

    Contrary to popular belief, Homo Sanguisuga are not demons, but victims of the blood infection Hemovorus Pandemus Tenebris, this disease is believed to have been an extremely early attempt at a bio weapon in medieval Russia, concocted by an alchemist at the behest of Yaroslav the wise of the Kievan Rus.

    The disease gives superhuman abilities such as incredibly long life, imperceptable heart beat and other biological processes, enhanced strength, speed and endurance as well as incredible healing speed, as a trade off it eats through the phosphorus in the body, the waste product left in its place being white phosphorus, which is why Homo Sanguisuga bursts into flames when introduced to sunlight. the need for consumption of blood is also caused by the disease''s hunger for phosphorus, once most of the phosphorus in the body is consumed, the host will need to find alternative sources or die when inevitably all the native phosphorus is consumed. however with a steady supply of victims, feeding nightly, a single Vampire can prolong its life ad infinitum.

    At middle stages of the infection, caused by rapidly lowering native phosphorus levels, a previously logical victim will become delusional, believing itself to be demonic or undead in some way

    Later stages of the infection, caused by lower native Phosphorus levels, will cause the Vampire to take on a completely unique appearance as the genetic traits from its most frequent prey animal will begin to appear on its body, this will cause the vampire to develop anything from claws to antlers to wings depending on the most frequently consumed fauna.

    Known weaknesses: Fire, Sunlight, piercing the heart, removal of the head or otherwise destruction of the brain, exanguination via destruction of vital arteries, temperatures over 100 degrees, bright lights, depending on the religion the vampire followed before it died, the holy symbols from their religion may scare them if they are in or past the 2nd stages of infection.

    Edge''s advice: keep your distance, keep it in your sights, aim for the head and the heart, unless you have superhuman strength, you don''t stand a chance against a vampire, even an unarmed vampire can tear you in half without a second thought.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    You see? NOTHING about mental powers in there.

    When we finally became too exhausted to fight back I was expecting her to shred my jugular, but instead her eyes glowed brighter and her bear trap smile fell into a scowl, "after everything you''ve been through, You aught to know better."

    Green had receded because of the sleep miasma we were in, using this opportunity, I spoke to her, struggling to keep my eyes open, "I know...but Green is a narcissistic psychopath."

    She squinted at me, "You and Green aren''t the same person?"

    I shake my head, desperate to communicate the negative even as my neck muscles screamed at me, "I''m not him..."

    She dropped me and I rolled from my knees to my back as my body shook with any effort, "...more than one? There''s more than one of you in there?"

    I cough, breathing began to need more effort, "Yes...there''s more than one...and he''s not the best guy...im sorry..."

    She scrutinized me, apparently seeing some truth in my words, she set me down on the ground.

    The darkness faded away and MAL took a step back, her skin no longer pale, her eyes no longer glowing, I looked up, struggling to even blink as I saw that my team was assembling to my defence, I wiggled on the floor, "Guys...wait..."

    After they seemed to relax, Love picked me up, "you really need to stop instigating, Green."

    As she sat me down in a chair, MAL walked over to me, looking in my eyes, "Who are you? What is your name?"

    "Green." I responded with a wheeze

    She shook her head, "No, your name, before Trigram."

    My head fell forward as I stopped being able to support my head''s weight, knowing as I wracked my tired brain that I had forgotten my own name. "I...I dont know."

    MAL looked incredibly sad as she patted my head, "We''ll help you find out...all of you...for now get some rest....and STOP being an asshole!"

    The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

    As if given leave to die, I faded out of knowing, my mind finally haven given in to sleep.

    I woke up in my bunk back at the Trigram bunker, I gasped for breath, looking down I saw that I was wearing my old coveralls, I was 12 again.

    "Green?? GREEN!?" i shouted, straining to hear if he would respond, only to be met with a disgruntled grunt from above me, Love had woken up and was now looking over the bunk at me, "Shut up ''42, I''m trying to get some sleep!"

    I blinked, 42, that was a nickname I had been given by my squad, I wasnt Agent Green, I was JAB-76842, we were in the early stages of the project still and judging from the long gash travelling vertically up my chest we had JUST placed first in the culling charts after I had taken a spear to my chest only to impale myself further and decapitate JAB-88888, I remember his face too, he had been so sure that his spear would keep me at a distance.

    Without my regeneration powers however, I was never sure if I was gonna die or not, Which is apparently the exact level of badass dumbassery that landed my squad on top of the charts.

    I sat up in bed, "Sorry 44...what day is it?"

    She hisses at me, leaning over the side and slapping me, a light tap compared to what she''d be capable of later, "i said shut up! Its Hygiene day tomorrow and I need the sleep!"

    As she spoke, Ripper leaned over her, his kind face smiling at me from behind her, "Go to sleep, lil'' bro, we don''t get to take naps remember?"

    His smile fractured, the skin of his face peeling off and away from his face to reveal the black oozing skin of that ooze monster, the one who I''m sure had died in the explosion, his smile wide, still speaking in Ripper''s voice, "Not unless it''s forever, y''know?"

    Suddenly I was sitting in another room that I immediately recognized.

    The Trigram Oxygen garden.

    The facility was so deep in the earth that oxygen had to be fed to the lower levels, so every 2 levels or so they had an oxygen garden, a patch of trees and other plants fed by a hydroponics system, inside the garden they kept wildlife to feed the plants, a completely enclosed ecosystem.

    This was oxygen garden 3, 3rd one down from the top level, in this oxygen garden was a raccoon I had fostered a bond with by feeding him at lunch time, I had named him stinky because he liked to mess with the skunk that also lived there.

    In my lap sat an MRE, mashed potatoes and sliced turkey with watery ass brown gravy, Stinky sat next to me, watching me look at him before reaching in to grab a handful of turkey, rushing off to eat it as I paid him absolutely no mind.

    "Hey 76842." A voice that seemed familiar, yet so strangely foreign graced my ears, there were seconds of confusion before I finally saw him standing in the door of the oxygen garden, his perfect grin terrified me, perfectly alligned and white, unnatural and eerily familiar. It was JAB-56473, he was older than the rest of us, closer to 13, larger at any rate.

    "I think that''s my MRE." He said in a nonchalant voice, once again setting off alarm bells in my head, I had heard that voice present day...but where?

    I stood up and defiantly handed the plastic container to Stinky who took the whole thing and ran behind a tree.

    He grabbed me by the front of my coveralls and kneed me in the crotch, I grunted in pain, bringing an elbow up and across his jaw, he staggered away, regaining his balance and swinging a wild right hook that I barely was able to block in time, though I was able to interrupt his swing, his fist still made contact with my eye, rattling my brain and making me fall over.

    He stepped over me and though I was too dazed to see it in reality, I knew what he was about to do.

    As soon as he had passed me, he grabbed for Stinky who was absorbed in eating, as I finally got up, I heard his anguished, fearful hisses and squeaks as JAB-56473 squeezed the life out of him, I turned to rush to Stinky''s aid, too late, I body checked that fucker, knocking him over as I climbed on top, grabbing 56473''s face, jamming my thumbs into his eyes with a yell of anger! Angry tears seeping down my face as I ground down, blood spraying into my own eyes as he struggled. After he had stopped moving, I let go and stepped off him, wiping my eyes.

    When things once again became visible, I was no longer in the oxygen garden.

    I was standing in a living room watching PBS kids.

    I looked around, the walls were a strange but comforting shade of salmon, there were works of art on the walls along with pictures of a family I didn''t know.

    Looking down at myself I could see I was no longer 11, I was younger, much younger, 1 or 2 perhaps.

    Into the room walked a woman, blonde, wearing wide rim glasses, she seemed older, she was holding a stuffed dalmatian, tiny but perfect for small hands, "Here we are, my grandson''s little stuffed friend, whats his name, Jackie?"

    "Didoh..." came out of my little mouth, she pulled me into a hug, "Ben! Get in here, He said his first word!!"

    A man with an oblong head and long hair rushed in, looking excited, "Jack said what? What did he say?"

    She pointed to the dalmatian, "Didoh, he told me the name of his little friend."

    Ben rolled his eyes, "Mom that''s not his first word his first word would have to be-"

    I cut him off, "Daddy!"

    They look at me shocked, then burst into laughter that blasted out my tiny eardrums, making little me cry.

    Suddenly I opened my eyes and saw MAL, she''d been holding my head apparently, there were tears in her eyes as well, "Your name..."

    I hold up a hand, my body feeling very well rested as opposed to how it had felt before that series of flashbacks, while my head throbbed in horrible pain.

    "Do. Not." She looked taken aback at my words, "Why? Aren''t you happy to learn it at long last?"

    I shake my head, the memory she had unlocked burning in my skull like hot iron, "it hurts." I whimper, feeling pathetic as she looked at me, worried.

    I sit up, immediately being forced down by Love who looked at MAL, "Go on, keep digging."

    She sat back down, "No, we''re done here...I know his real name and so does he, now I can start on all of you."

    I sit up and see that my squad and I are in the relaxation room of the gym, dim lights and beds, an empty room, robbed of the people who would usually need it, because of Green''s hubris.

    Love gets off me, touching my face gently, "When we''re done, we can finally know each other''s names!"

    They laid down on the other beds, MAL looked at me sadly, "You can go back to your bunk now...I''ve put Green down for a nap, I will send the others back to you as we uncover their names."

    I feel a twinge of worry, this was a creature of the night, notoriously out for themselves, she seemed way to eager to help us and my head still hurt, "how do I know that you''re not planning on sucking their blood??"

    She stopped, looking offended, "why would you accuse me of that when I''ve done nothing but help you??"

    Edge hopped up from his bed, rushing over and violently shoving me, "leave, now."

    I looked into his eyes as I stopped myself from falling over, they were furious, "Are you seriously going to try and stop someone from helping us get home!?"

    I lower my eyebrows, confused at his choice of words, "You...want to leave?"

    He looked like he wanted to hit me, his hands, shaking at his sides, "I''ve wanted to leave since we started!! At first I thought this was all there is for us, but MAL explained that we don''t have to be this way forever, if we can recall things about our lives we can get free and go home! HOME, Green!! Don''t you want that??"

    I look at my team, at MAL, and then at Edge who looked so angry with me, I felt nothing but pain in my heart and in my head as he seemed so ready to just beat the shit out of me, "but...I am home." My voice wavered as I spoke, the horror on Edge''s face was clear, I had somehow crossed a line, "What??" He seethed and I flinched, "Look, the comfort and love I get from you guys on a daily basis is all I think about when I think of family, our bunk, that''s where I feel at home, being intimate with you...all of you...It''s the closest thing I can think of when I try to imagine heaven."

    As he continued to stare at me in shock, I tasted salt, I was crying.

    He didn''t hit me, that was the worst part.

    He just walked back to his bed.

    MAL tried to say something to me, but I was already moving, I ran out of the room, the hallways turning into a blur as I rushed back to our bunk.

    Upon arrival I laid down, looking at the wall as I allowed myself to make the connection, the baby in that vision is the same little boy I''d been, killing JAB-56473.

    Agent Green

    And

    Jack.

    No longer one and the same, now separate people.

    I was myself...I was me.

    And like that I passed out.

 JAB-76842-8

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

 JAB-76842-9

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

 JAB-76842-10

    We quickly put on our civilian clothes, leaving our work suits in place of them on our beds.

    In doing so we discovered a small wad of hundreds under each pile of clothes.

    Tonight was going to be special.

    After locating the afforementioned lone mustang in the parking lot, Edge jumped into the drivers seat and we headed down the long road into town, blasting music from a CD he had in his glove box.

    We arrived in town at sunset and were immediately assaulted by the lights and sounds of the city!  The square was built more like a circle, a large roundabout packed with stores of all sorts with the City Hall at the center.  A thousand and one wonders and it was buzzing with people, average, normal people.  Coming and going through the shops and restaurants that lined the square, playing instruments on the street, laying in the grass on the front lawn of city hall as a band played on a small stand.

    Edge laughed as he parked the car, marveling at the absolute clusterfuck the square was to our eyes, "Holy SHIT! Tonight is gonna be something special!"

    Love grabbed my hand, buzzing with energy as we all got out of the car, "oh my GOD!! I smell food! Let''s get food!"

    She dragged the group into a British themed restaurant and as I saw the menu I was suddenly glad we hadn''t eaten before we left.

    We each got a different thing, Edge got a full English breakfast, saying it was the biggest thing on the menu and that he was starved, Love and I both got Bangers and Mash, and Wolf ordered the Beef Wellington.

    We each did our best (or worst) British accents talking about how good the food was until we were done eating, I hurriedly dropped a whole hundred on the bill as we tore out of the shop onto the square to continue our day out.

    We went to a few thrift stores and gawked at the varied and copious amounts of paraphernalia each had to offer, one of them was brimming with swords of all shapes and sizes, and the other had military surplus gear out the ass.

    Edge and Wolf begged to go home with a few things before remembering they had money.

    Edge took time between expousing  vehemently about each antique weapon and piece of equipment on the shelf to buy a Vietnam era army jacket.  Wolf, interested in the shape and color, bought a World War 1 army helmet, putting it on her head and giggling while she paid for it.

    I offered to buy Love something similar but she was already weighed down with vintage toys, which we stored in the car.

    The next destination was an arcade, which was where I fell in love with a certain breed of brutal fighting game that I''m sure you''re familiar with, but will remain unnamed.

    To finish out the night we sat on the lawn of city hall and listened to the band play.

    And as we all enjoyed, Love looked at me, her smile will forever be embedded in my memory right alongside the kiss we shared there in the grass shortly after, it was the happiest I''d ever seen her, and nothing can take that from me.

    Because for once, we were human, we felt like people.

    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

    Not weapons.

    Not monsters.

    People.

    I can''t stress how important that was, the feeling of personhood, you couldn''t really understand unless you had it, lost it and gained it back, only then I feel would you be able to quantify.

    After they were done playing, the band started packing up and everyone was leaving, and suddenly we were alone with each other, Love looked into my eyes with an earnest and loving expression, "Green...today was the best day of my life."

    I laughed, "Yeah?" I almost asked her if she was sure, but then I remembered what we were going back to, and then I nodded, "Yeah...mine too."

    Suddenly, She pulled me toward her with a grip that could bend steel, and pulled me into a kiss so hot it could melt tungsten, her hands gently but firmly cupping my face as we descended into a moment that unraveled the very threads of time. Her lips, soft as whispers yet fierce as tidal waves, met mine with a surge that could drown the stars. The world around us blurred; the air thickened, pulsing with the rhythm of our hearts. Her fingers held me captive, their warmth leaving trails of electricity across my scalp that sparked my already thundering heartbeat into a tempest.

    When she broke the kiss, I was barely conscious, "wow..." was all I could say, there were no more words, it was so different than all the other kisses we''d shared before, to this day I really don''t know why.

    Edge whistled and Wolf huffed, "Hot DAMN, Why don''t you kiss ME like that, Love?"

    "Because Holy shit," Edge affirmed with a loud chuckle.

    She blushed, looking to the side as she still held me, "I could if you wanted..."

    Wolf waved a hand, "You can make it up to me later, it feels like you two just had a moment and I dont wanna ruin it."

    Finally around midnight we drove the car back to the facility and went to bed, Love climbing into my bunk and snuggling up to me before we passed out.

    It was around 4:00AM that I was woken up by a melodic whistling echoing through the facility. Blinking, I noticed that Love was missing from my bunk.

    I get up to go look for her and end up in the room where the mermaid is, between our residential area and the administrative residential area.

    As I was crossing the bridge I was suddenly bathed in an unearthly light from below me, I looked down and saw the mermaid looking up at me from the pool which was full of green glowing water, she was the one whistling, smiling up at me, raising her flippers to me as if asking me to jump in.

    Her massive eyes, once blue were now aglow with the green light, fixed on me.

    I was transfixed, completely so that before I knew it, I had fallen over the edge and into the green water.

    She was on me in less than a second, but instead of attacking me, she grabbed me with her fins and kissed me deeply, reflecting in my mind, the kiss I received from Love earlier that night.

    She twisted and twirled in the water with me in her arms, I lost track of where I was, and when she submerged, all I could see was her beautiful glowing eyes, the twirling sped up as I looked into those eyes, so bright I could see nothing else, but not so bright they burned my eyes, as we spun, I could feel something tingling in my chest,  my heartbeat accelerating, something else was happening as we spun but I couldn''t describe it.

    Round and round, deeper and deeper into the water as she still held me in that locked embrace, deeper and deeper until I couldn''t see the surface, I felt myself beginning to fade.

    But then we surfaced and as I gasped for air, using her fins which were stronger than they looked, she lifted me out of the water and set me on my back on the wet floor, I was dazed and confused, there was something in my arms.

    Looking down I saw the ornate onyx scabbard of a strange sword.

    As it was, it was completely featureless, with no differentiation between hilt and scabbard.

    Unsheathing it was trouble, I had to grab each end and pull to see which end was the hilt and which one was the scabbard, the sword within was guardless, Riven, double edged and straight with a wicked point.

    "What..." I look at the mermaid who squeaked at me, "A-nochd tha thu a�� cleachdadh cumhachd toibheum" She whispered before sinking back into the pool and swimming to the bottom, the glow subsiding inwards from the rim.

    Suddenly I snapped back to reality, I was Stinking and wet in my pajamas with this new sword in my hands, looking down into the now dark tank I shouted, "The FUCK is this!?" An immediate echo followed by Silence greeted my words.

    Being too tired for this supernatural BS, I sheathed the sword and climbed up the ladder back to the causeway, remembering as I did that I had been looking for Love.

 JAB-76842-11

    After I had gotten back up the ladder, I started back towards the bunk, looking for evidence that I''d just had an uncharacteristic, smelly, soggy sleepwalking dream, when I heard more sex noises coming from the game room.

    I looked back towards the game room, confused, but then heat surged in my head, making my scalp prickle as I heard Doctor Sharp''s voice, "You like that?" And in response, "Stop...please...PLEASE!!" Love''s voice, it sounded hoarse, like she''d been screaming.

    I sprinted towards the game room, hoping to god that I hadnt heard what I thought I was hearing, that this was all still some weird dream!

    Foot over foot, growing ever faster with every panicked step, slamming into the door and bursting it open with how fast I had been running.

    And there I saw them, Doctor Sharp, pants down, hat off, with Love''s ankles on his shoulders while he held her wrists against the couch cushion behind her head.

    Suddenly we locked eyes, he grinned at me, licking his lips, and like that, I was a monster again.

    A wordless yell of rage and pain escaped my throat as I drew the sword and catapulted myself across the room towards him, fear struck his face as he threw himself to the side.

    I landed knees first into the TV, destroying it and Shattering glass everywhere. I wrenched myself free, Tearing myself bloodily from the hole I had made as he abandoned his pants to run down the hallway.

    No time to worry about injuries, I chased after him, barefoot, like he was, the new sword raised above my head as I easily overtook him, the adrenaline making me animal-like, tripping as he dipped out of the way of my initial swing, landing on one of my hands, I pivoted and swiped at him with my sword, slashing him across his right arm as he held it up to defend himself.

    "FUCK!!"

    He spun away from the blow and I grabbed his ankle, causing him to fall on his face, "We TRUSTED you!!" Green bellowed at him while all I could do was shed tears, "Why do all this if you''re just...WHY make us feel safe!?" with a desperate grunt, Sharp kicked me in the face, the fear I saw on his face sped my footsteps as I vaulted off a nearby wall to stab him, the Sword passed through him like butter, shearing through his shoulder before he seemed to fall through the floor.

    I looked down at the hole he had fallen through, it was an octagonal hole with edges that seemed to fluctuate as I looked at them, he was standing on the floor below us, looking down at a device in his hands, aggressively hammering some of the buttons as I lept through, sword held at the ready.

    I slashed at him but he immediately fell through another hole that I again pursued him through, this time landing directly on top of him and pinning him to the floor, Green wordlessly hissed at him as we raised the sword again, only for both of us to fall through another octagonal hole into the now dark city square, once we hit ground, Sharp kicked me in the chest, sending me off him so he could get up and run.

    This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

    "The fuck!?" I looked around for a split second and immediately scrambled after him, not heeding the fact that we had JUST been in the sub-levels of the facility but were now in the square my squad and I had been partying In, miles from the facility.

    He fell through another hole and I dived in again before it could close, I kicked at his knees mid-air and he fell beneath me once again, I had him, I had his ass.

    "PLEASE!! PLEASE!!" He shouted from under my bare glass-filled foot as I thrust my sword forward only to be tackled by two security guards.

    They held me down and kicked my sword away as I writhed under them, screaming, "LET ME GO!!" I was seeing red, kicking, and punching, they kept holding me as I looked the smug bastard dead in the eyes, "The JABs are beyond saving." He said to someone I couldn''t see as he broke eye contact to look to his right, playing up the now bleeding stab wound, clutching at his arm as it hung limp, "violent and irresponsible...they stole my car last night and when I confronted them about it they-" that was when I heard a punch, Doctor Sharp fell to the floor with a bloody nose, dazed.

    "Let him up." I heard MAL''s voice from behind the guards, they parted and let me get up but stopped me from advancing towards Sharp, "We know you''re not at fault here." Said MAL, her silver eyes boring into mine, "Ever since you got this assignment, we''ve been waiting and watching, when Sharp sounded the alarm after he grabbed the space pincher, we got into the security tapes and saw-" I held up a hand as I staggered and sat down, noticing the glass in my feet for the first time since this chase began.

    A dull pain that slowly began to ramp up to unbearable as the adrenaline wore off.

    I blink hard as I start pulling glass shards from my foot, "where am I?"

    I look up at MAL, who winces as she watches me just pulling the glass out with my bare hands, digging in the wound to find any fragments, "Headquarters, where you were before we assigned you, Jesus."

    I nod and pull the rest of the glass out of my left foot, then move on to my right foot, everything felt hazy, like a dream, but I''m pretty sure that was just the trauma of what I had seen slowly squeezing my brain, "He made some sort of holes...that was how we got here...how do I do that?"

    I tried to stand but couldn''t, My body was remembering just how tired I had been at the outset as my anger subsided and MAL explained about the weird "space pincher" device that Sharp used to get us here.

    What I gathered from it was that the machine used some form of localized gravity well to bring two points in space and time together in a single instant for what basically functions as a handheld portal device.

    When the explaining began to steer towards metaphysics I held up a hand.

    "MAL....I''m all torn up and Love is back at the facility, probably drugged...I need to go back there."

    MAL nodded, looking concerned as I squeezed the wounds on my feet to make sure there were no more foreign bodies, "you need a bandage?"

    I wave her away and she punches Sharp again as she takes his space pincher thing out of his jacket pocket, by now the guards had pulled him to his feet and cuffed him.

    He looked at me with a crooked smile, the same smile he always wore, with no variation, only now did I see that smile for what it was, it disgusted me, "How was your peace, kid? I hope you enjoyed it, because it''s the last peace you''ll see-" MAL turned to him and whispered something, his head slumped forward, then she turned to me.

    "I have the original coordinates plugged in, you kids are probably going to be there for another week."

    I pause as she starts activating the device, "Then what?''

    She didn''t even look up from the device as she answered me, "Reassignment, probably to a mission that matches your skills more."

    Only then does she look up at me, her eyes widen momentarily at the rageful expression on my face.

    I don''t say anything, I just look her dead in the eyes as the octagonal hole in the floor opens, wordlessly stepping down through it.

 JAB-76842-12

    MAL looked terrified as I dropped down through the hole into the ruined game room where Love was struggling to her feet off of the couch, shakily trying to avoid all the glass on the floor.  I drop the sword and ignore the fact that it vanishes immediately upon hitting the floor. I rush to her and she swats me away, her strength seemingly gone or I would have been sent flying, "Get away, GET AWAY!! I''ll- Oh..." she paused when she saw me, her already tear-streaked face being washed with more, "Green!" She grabbed me and pulled me close, her muscles shaking with the effort, I picked her up and carried her back to our bunk.

    "It''s OK, it''s alright, I''m here, he can''t hurt you anymore, I took care of it."

    Green was mercifully quiet during this latest part, for once in our lives, our purposes aligned enough that I didn''t require chiding or manipulation.

    She was sobbing so hard she could barely speak but managed to croak out, "It was my fault..."

    The sound of her crying woke Wolf and Edge as I sat her down, "It''s not your fault, don''t you DARE say that."

    "What''s not her fault??" Wolf sat bolt upright in bed, I stroke Love''s hair as I hold her, she presses her face into my chest, "tell me what happened...please." I whisper.

    She presses herself harder into my chest, my shirt soaking with her tears, my shirt muffling her voice slightly, "I couldn''t sleep...he met me on my way to the bathroom and said he wanted to talk to me, he gave me a drink, ''just a nightcap'' he said, to celebrate my first night out...I''d never had alcohol before...I felt so grown up...and then I felt...weak...I couldn''t stand."

    Rage seared my scalp again as she began to shake with renewed sobs, attempting to continue the story, but I stopped her, I got the picture.

    He had DRUGGED her, that two-faced piece of shit had roofied MY Love.

    Our love.

    After everything he''d done to make us feel safe, he was domesticating cattle, had Houska planned this?

    I couldn''t think about that now, i couldnt focus on rage, she needed comforting, we all crowded around her, all airs of sleepiness gone in the face of this new terror.

    She passed out from minutes of sobbing as we all lay together on my bunk, I looked at Edge, about to say something, but then Green spoke, "Make me a promise, guys."

    Edge and Wolf looked back up at me, "what promise?" Asked Edge.

    My lips quivered as Green could barely hold back his rage, "We never let this happen again, everyone has a bathroom buddy, nobody goes anywhere alone, twos, always in twos, ok?"

    Edge nodded, Wolf nodded, "Never again." Edge summed up, I bury my nose in her hair, she smelled like lavender.

    I look back up at them, "We can''t trust anyone outside of this group, not even MAL who seems to have our best interests....seems to."

    Edge nods but Wolf looks apprehensive, "I wouldn''t say that."

    Green growled, bristling at her, "we''re not people to them, it''s no different from Trigram, they didn''t talk about leave or sending us home, but they did say the word reassignment when I spoke to them last."

    Wolf''s brow furrowed, "Who did this to Love? Is he dead?"

    Green winces, the pain of the past hour still very fresh, but we had to explain, Wolf and Edge had been asleep for the better part of this, "Doctor Sharp did this."

    Wolf''s face dropped into a mask of shock and disbelief, Edge clung to Love''s hand tighter, Horror permeating his face, "That fucking-" Wolf put a hand over his mouth and pointed at Love with the other, she was sound asleep in my arms, to me she mouthed "lay her down slowly."

    Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

    I did so and she beckoned to both of us, walking slowly out of the room as we followed her.

    "How the hell did we get into this situation again? Where they treat us like property" Asks Wolf

    Edge gestures around the facility at large, "it''s not like they''re not paying us to do our jobs!"

    Wolf grabbed Edge by the throat with a snarl, "I will NOT be made into a plaything for some freak in a LABCOAT!"

    I pushed them away from one another, inadvertently becoming the target of violence myself as I was punched in the face by Wolf, I grabbed her other hand as she was about to swing again, "Hey, HEY!!" She headbutted me and threw me into a wall, I fell to the floor, dazed as she rushed towards Edge who immediately lept up onto the wall to get away!

    Wolf stood there and stared at him from the floor as I struggled back to my feet, "I said we can''t trust anyone else, why does that mean we need to attack one another??"

    Wolf looked at me, "Apologists get attacked, Green, on SIGHT!!" She raised a fist to strike me, but I fell to my knees and held out a hand, "Wolf I''m not making apologies, Edge was just making the argument that we''re employees and not what we were."

    She brought the hand down across my forehead and I felt my skull rattle as my head hit the metal floor, I was expecting a stomp next but then we heard Love, "What the FUCK!?" I roll over to look in the direction of the yelling.

    "Something horrible happens to me and suddenly it''s a free-for-all?? let me in on this, I need to HIT something!" She stormed up to Wolf and pushed her away, sending her rolling towards the Mermaid''s pool, picking me up off the ground and flicking me on the forehead, breaking the tip of her index finger and causing my skull to crack, "I can''t believe that I''m the victim here and I have to mitigate this BULLSHIT!!" She grabbed my shirt and threw me back against the wall, cracking the wall and my ribs, further fracturing my skull.

    As a direct consequence of my injuries, I passed out and woke up amid a warm cozy pile of bodies.

    Sitting directly next to me with her cheek pressed directly into the side of my face was Love, who snored deeply. Smushed between us both was Edge, curled up with his face pressed into Love''s chest, tucked against me on the opposite end of Love and mumbling in her sleep, was Agent Wolf.

    I guess the argument has resolved itself and now we had the pile.

    The pile was always the result of a lot of hurt feelings and one Greivous injury, and in my experience that was usually mine.

    The following day we went about our usual day-to-day, but given that the game room had been decimated, we opted to return to our oldest favorite pastime, which I mentioned earlier and will not mention again.

    The week ended and Houska took us back to headquarters where we were given medals for undermining a potentially dangerous Houska official.

    We were assigned a bunk in HQ and it was that night that a guard came to get me.

    "What is it?" I asked, getting up out of bed, the guard shifted in his stance, "I need you to come with me...there''s a problem."

    I put on my suit and follow him, tightening my tie as I follow the guard, "any sort of intel on the problem or am I just an unwitting participant?"

    The guard doesn''t stop walking, "Doctor Sharp''s court Marshall went under, there''s evidence exonerated him."

    I stop, fear making my face flush, "what the fuck do you mean?"

    He doesn''t stop moving so I rush to catch up, "Hey, HEY!!"

    We rounded the corner into a block of holding cells, in the closest one I see Doctor Sharp in a prison jumpsuit, smoking a fucking churro.

    He grinned at me, "Hey there, Green."

    I leap at the bars but the guard grabs me, "WHY did you do it!?" I snarl

    Sharp shrugs, "I didn''t, kid, I just made it seem like I did."

    I stop flailing in shock but Green renews our efforts, giving the guard a run for his money, "You lying sadistic FUCK!!"

    He chuckles, "I''m not lying, Green, I never did anything but put on a big show for you." He mimes doing squats, "This is all I did, no penetration, my dick wasn''t even out."

    Even Green pauses, "Wh...a show?? Why? For what purpose!?"

    Sharp sits down in his cell, "So that you would be skeptical, every time someone from Trigram was nice to you."

    I blinked in confusion, "Trigram? But...we''re in a Houska facility...they''re different"

    Sharp rolled his eyes and explained to me everything I had explained to you at the beginning, with a faux lamentation that they hadn''t managed to save more of us.

    Of course, I was flabbergasted.

    "No, no, no, that''s..." I feel like I''m having a fit, "why would they lie to us?"

    Sharp ashed his churro, "Keeping you calm is key to making sure they don''t have to kill you, years of development was put into your creation, it would be a shame to waste it."

    I look back up at Sharp, "Why tell me this??"

    He laughed, "Because there''s no evidence, because, despite the fact that I did nothing but scare you, they aquitted me without evidence I did nothing, and I''m free to resume my work watching the mermaid....an organization that does that without any oversight deserves to be scrutinized, and deserves none of your trust."

    I wasnt sure what to think now, he just admitted there was no proof behind his words, I couldnt believe a thing this man told me. "I don''t believe you." I said, Green balling up our fists, readying for another attempt on Sharp''s life, but then he smiled at me, "Good, lesson learned then, goodbye Green."

    And like that, the guard led me away.

    I never really learned if he was telling the truth or not.

 JAB-76842-13

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    <u></u>

 JAB-76842-14

    And like that we were off to Colorado, to hunt some Klounhs.

    The flight over was fun, with lavish meals and an in-flight movie, an animated movie based on the works of Poe, a set of vignettes, one of which is narrated by Bela Lugosi.

    Edge had introduced me to Poe back in 919 and I was familiar enough with his work to thoroughly enjoy the movie, even if it went over Love''s head.

    We arrived in Crested Butte to an eerie silence, there were cars parked neatly in their carports of the houses on the mountainside but no people, we went to the next town over and booked a motel so we could begin investigations.

    Our investigations were stopped before they started, however, when we all developed altitude sickness upon arrival, except for Singleton, who was very disappointed when none of us felt up to the first trek into the mountains.

    In response to this bullshit, Singleton brought us some pseudoscience bullshit called "adjustaid" which was supposed to help us adjust to the altitude.

    It settled our stomachs, so I guess it was effective, but whatever. I refuse to give credit to anyone who puts "full of essential oils" on their product.

    After each of us downed the horrid liquid, we were made to do six push-ups to get our blood flowing and hopefully help the weird mixture to circulate properly.

    We left the motel into the night and were immediately greeted by some oddly sweet-smelling mist, it smelled like every carnival rolled into one, I smelled funnel cake, cotton candy. Hot dogs, popcorn, pretzels, the works.

    We were dazed and confused; it seemed to have an analgesic effect on us as we inhaled it.

    In all our studies of all the supernatural creatures we had been told about, the course on Klounhs never mentioned tasty fog, I was befuddled and unable to stop from chuckling.

    "It smells like a carnival..." giggled Love.

    "Where''s the Klounh?" Mumbled Edge.

    "Mmmmm..." was all that Wolf could say.

    It wasn''t long before even Singleton got into sniffing the fog, "holy shit, is there a... wait a FUCKING minute!"

    His tone snapped us all out of our stupors, looking around as he continued, "This is some sort of miasma, this shit smells too good to be fog...something seems fucky."

    I had just enough time to watch everyone nod in halfhearted bleary-eyed agreement before we were all scared into attack mode by a Klounh standing just beyond the trees! Illuminated in part by our flashlights, in part by the streetlamp some four feet from the trees, casting a wide enough beam to catch the top of the Klounh''s massive head and its shock of blue razzberry-colored hair. Its made-up face, colorful costume, and childish, bouncy demeanor were offset by the amount of blood that it had been drenched in, as well as the corpse of a child that it was dragging. It pointed at us and made a laughing gesture, only emitting a series of honks that sounded like they came from one of those clown squeeze horns.

    The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

    "Oh, THERE''S the Klounh!" Sighed Edge before Singleton clapped him on the back, shaking his brain free of the fog later than the rest of us.

    "AFTER IT!" Singleton shouted as the Klounh dropped the corpse and ran the other way at an unnatural pace, I popped off a shot that put a hole in the thing''s back before giving chase, out of the hole flew a spurt of that glitter powder as well as a series of red "handkerchiefs" that had been tied in a rope, as it ran, more and more handkerchiefs came out, leaving a clear trail for us to follow.

    I checked the bullets in my revolver and replaced the one I had used as we arrived at the trailhead.

    "I think its a trap." Says Edge with a slur, still breaking up the brain fog as we caught up to where the Klounh had been standing.

    Love picked up the dead child with mortified anger in her eyes, "I''m going to kill that thing..."

    Wolf looked at Singleton who had stopped at the bottom of the hill we had to run up, "how many did the report say?"

    Singleton shook his head, resting his hand on the duffel he was carrying, "indeterminate, more than ten in the pictures I showed you guys."

    Wolf growled, "Edge what are the statistics of success if we just burn down the forest?"

    I looked at Wolf with surprise, "Afraid of Klounhs are we, Agent Wolf?"

    She punched me in the chest, "Just so happens that I am scared, I can still kick your ass though so don''t FUCK with me right now."

    Love got between us, still holding the child''s bloodless corpse, and pointed at the trail, it was retracting.

    Green took off after the trail, Singleton straight behind, "Fuck it, if we walk into a trap, we have what we need to kill these things right?"

    As we''re walking after the quickly receding Handkerchief rope through the moonlit mountain woods, Singleton asked me the oddest question I''d ever heard, "better question, what level Tangible are these Klounhs?"

    "Level?''" I look up at him as I wait for the rest to follow, "are we in an RPG game?"

    Singleton sighed, stepping over a log, "In the Houska Bestiary a Tangible''s level is determined by how many Agents one creature can kill before getting killed, how has this not come up yet?"

    Edge shrugged with a disgruntled look on his face, as he stepped next to me to address Singleton, "At Trigram we were taught that we weren''t to assume anything like casualties before the outcome of a fight, because the JAB was supposed to be a game changer, one Agent to replace that army of 10 gun-toting idiots."

    Singleton scoffed, "You want me to believe that each of you is level 10?"

    Edge responded with an annoyed groan as he kept pace with Singleton behind me, "Enough with the levels...I''m having trouble with variables and strategies as it is...I''m sure I''ll adapt but until then, keep it at a minimum"

    Singleton looked pissed, "you work for Houska, you should have been briefed on the Tangible ranking system!" After a long silence of remembering all the training material on how to deal with Klounhs, and remembering the death toll associated with the first documented Trigram encounter, I finally decided on an answer, "25."

    Singleton looked at us, "say again?"

    I looked back at Singleton, "Each Klounh is...level 25...that''s my estimate."

    Singleton looked slightly comforted, "that means that if it''s just the one we can-"

    Wolf cuts off Singleton, "It''s never just the one Klounh, there''s a big top somewhere."

    Singleton looked at Wolf as we began to pick up the pace, "...a Big top??"

    Edge shushed us, the trail had come to a halt, we got ready for a fight and Green hissed, "Guys, they''re right on top of us." Allowing Green to use our eyes, he saw something I hadn''t seen at first, I could see through the darkness, the bright green eyes of three Klounhs crouched just beyond the trees in front of us, including the one we''d been chasing who had fallen on its belly in the middle of the path, seemingly having succumbed to its injuries.

    its arms and legs shaking violently as the other 3 slowly moved from cover

 JAB-76842-15

    The three Klounhs were just as colorful as the one we''d met, clad in similar colors of red, white, and yellow, although they weren''t drenched in blood, one had a huge clown afro and seemed to be much bigger than the others, like 12 feet tall but bent double to glare at us though the darkness as they moved from the trees, I jumped when I saw them, holstered my revolver and patted Edge''s shoulder, "2 medium and 1 extra large just beyond the treeline at 5:00."

    Wolf patted my shoulder, her back to us, looking back I saw she''d taken out her contacts, screwing the lid shut on their container, "3 more over here, approaching fast from 10:00, 2 medium one small."

    Singleton opened his duffel and pulled out A deconstructed Barrett 50cal sniper rifle along with four small silver spheres, "everyone, get back."

    He threw the spheres in each direction indicated, they immediately began to release copious amounts of gas, "the hell is that?" Asked Green, Singleton smirks, "tear gas grenades, these things have to breathe, right?"

    Immediately after Singleton tossed them, the Klounhs began to hack and cough, looking around, I could see the smaller Klounhs making a beeline deeper into the woods, but the larger one inhaled, it kept inhaling and the tear gas got sucked up into its massive lungs, it coughed like an 80-year-old chain smoker but it didn''t seem very bothered otherwise.

    "Fuck." Was all Singleton could say as everyone but Love pointed guns at the monster and started emptying their clips into the thing.

    Green however decided to start humming and rushed it with our sword poised to strike!

    Green dodged under a swing from one of its massive arms with a twist of his body and with the ensuing momentum, used his body weight to drive our sword point first, hilt deep through the thing''s hide (currently resembling a colorful clown suit) into its thigh muscle (this creature was bent double, remember I said) which made the creature holler with laughter, oddly enough I think that''s just how they scream in pain, but it began to immediately gush more red scarves, ropes, and ropes of the stuff, spouting everywhere.

    Green grunted and with a savage twisting pull, he opened one of the thing''s arteries in its leg, once he pulled the blade from its thigh we were COVERED in red scarf ropes and glitter.

    The thing wasted no time falling over exaggeratedly with a massive thud, giggling a bit more before it stopped moving altogether.

    While Singleton was staring at me, incredibly shocked, Edge had a sniper scope he was using to look for more, "One of them this big means we''re close to the big top, its up that way, its where the other Klounhs ran off to!"

    "Come on let''s go then!" Green shouted, now eager to get this over with so he can wash the glitter off.

    Everyone, now armed and ready began to rush in the direction indicated, except for Love, who hung behind still looking sad as she was carrying the dead child.

    Stolen story; please report.

    A child whose dry exsanguinated eyes had begun to move, looking at her as she sobbed, Green saw it, he agreed that something was wrong.

    Green stopped and walked up to her, pulling the kid out of her arms, and dropping him in the undergrowth, Love looked at us like we''d killed her grandma, "You''re worth nothing in this fight if you refuse to even draw your gun, arm yourself and follow them, I''ll be right behind you."  Green said slowly, cautiously, he knew she could snap us in two if she wanted.

    She looked at the kid, then back at me as Green tried to look as empathetic as possible.

    Then the child''s mouth sprang up into a rigorous smile, startling Love and I both!

    Once she saw what we had seen, she drew her shotgun out of the holster she had on her back and trudged after the group.

    As she left, I saw the child seize, looking at him, I saw his skin beginning to turn white, colorful shapes manifesting all over his arms and legs like boils, so THIS is how they do it, THIS is how they procreate...God dammit.

    As the change became more and more pronounced, I began to realize that I''d need to act quickly, or I''d have another one to deal with.

    Green positioned the blade tip over the Child''s chest, watching as the once dead eyes waxed a sickly piss yellow, gaining an unholy fervor to them, panting from both the corpse and me getting louder until he plunged the blade through the child''s chest, the crunching of bone and gushing of fluid meant we had killed something human, the child''s half turned body went limp and Green placed his boot firmly on the kid''s head as he forcefully pulled our sword from his corpse.

    Without words Green watched as the swords Riven blade buzzed away the blood that was smeared on it, all we needed to do now, was get to that big top.

    I followed the trail left behind by my group, when I reached the end, I ran into them, standing on the edge of a huge clearing where, visible in the darkness, there was a massive big top tent in the center, the whole clearing might have been about a mile from one end to the other, so it was pretty far away.

    "Hey guys what''s up?"

    Wolf shushed us and pointed, there was a procession of Klounhs going to and from the big top, carrying bodies in and walking out empty handed.

    "A huge tent." Says Singleton, "They bring the bodies in and... what? Do they eat them?"

    Green shakes our head, "No, that''s a conversion tent...they kill people, infect them, and the dead...become Klounhs."

    He sounded so certain of it, even though we''d only just learned how it was done.

    Suddenly there was a loud WHOOSH and Love was charging full tilt toward the tent, she was screaming as loudly as she possibly could, firing her shotgun in random directions!

    Bibs growled as he aimed his sniper rifle, "fucking...you guys get her under control, I''ll cover you."

    We all began to rush after Love who was now tearing down the tent with her bare hands, she''d dropped the shotgun and had succeeded in tearing a whole section off the tent, revealing at least twenty dead bodies, all in various stages of conversion.

    From where we were running, we could see this as well as the twenty something Klounhs of various shapes and sizes closing in on her from all sides, a loud buzzing noise resonating through the dark trees, Edge was pumping up his Adhesive gun, Wolf had reloaded with a full drum clip of Riven rounds for her Assault rifle.

    The Klounhs turned to see us charging, some broke off to intercept us but were stopped in their tracks by a volley of adhesive which Edge sprayed on their feet!

    My sword created a deadly arc as Green cut their legs out from under them by slicing their knees open, Wolf emptied her rifle into what was left, and the rest of the Klounhs began to move away from Love, still emitting that loud buzzing noise, like static in the air.

    Coming for us.

 JAB-76842-16

    Wolf blasted another one, blasting its skull apart like a carnival water balloon game, "Wow these things are easy to k-" Suddenly Wolf was barreled over by a larger Klounh with blue and orange coloration whose hide was much thicker than the others, allowing him to shrug off Bullets like they were nothing, it laughed and giggled manically as it wrapped its meaty hands around her throat, she kicked and flailed but it was no use, the vice like grip of the Klounh was like steel!

    "FUCK OFF, BOZO!!" Edge kicked it but was immediately seized by another Klounh with blue spots that dragged him backward with jagged claws, Green strode over and raised our sword but we were punched square in the back by a solid orange Klounh with overlarge hands, sending our spine through our lungs and out our front, we fell in the grass as Green receded once more, I gasped helplessly for air as I heard Edge angrily attempting to get free, Wolf wasn''t moving, I panicked and As I began to pass out I heard a scream like wrenching metal, that sword from before fell into my hand, once it touched my palm, I felt a rush like adrenaline and I was suddenly able to breathe again, I stood up unevenly and physically JAMMED my spine back through my chest as I felt my healing ability pick up speed!

    Raising the blade above my head I was blown off my feet by a goddamn sonic boom, I flew backward and landed on my ass! I quickly realized that the Klounhs had all already been killed, they''d been obliterated, nothing visible anymore but colorful flesh streamers and HEAPS of glitter with fragments raining down from what had just happened.   I stopped and looked around wildly to see Love lying on the other end of the clearing, both her arms and a single leg were being held still by the insta-splint, she was sobbing as she struggled to move.

    Meanwhile, Edge was shaking Wolf who was not moving.

    "Wolf! Come on! Please! Don''t do this to me! Not NOW, not you, NOT AGAIN!"

    My pain came back all at once as I fell once more to my knees, then to my side, coughing blood.

    Singleton rushed over and felt Wolf''s chest area, then pulled out a med kit.

    I watched as he pulled out a Tracheotomy kit from said med kit, applying it a little lower on Wolf''s neck than I would have liked, which meant that he''d figured out that her windpipe had been crushed by the Klounh, I needed to give him more credit for his skill set.

    Wolf gasped awake as she was finally able to breathe, coughing and feeling the straw, "wh... ow..."

    Singleton held her hand down, "don''t move, I''m calling a medivac, Green you can stand, can''t you?"

    I groan and I sit up, "yea...fuckin spine..." I manage to cough before standing up with difficulty, looking at the sword in my hand, "You again..."

    The blade whispered incoherently in my head, the blade glistening with glowing runes that to my eyes spelled out the word "Blasphemy" right before my eyes before the light faded and the runes were just runes again.

    Singleton looked over at me, "What''s that, Green?"

    I looked back over at him, "A sword...one that..." I mulled over Lying to him before deciding on the truth, "That I got from the mermaid at 919."

    I grunted as I felt my spine properly set, "it''s supercharging my healing."

    This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    Singleton''s eyes widened as he saw the blade, "Green...hand that to me..."

    I walked over and handed the blade to him but as soon as the hilt left my hand, scabbard and blade vanished in a flash of green sparks.

    Singleton grasped at the sparks, "What...Green what the hell??"

    I flex my newly healed back, "at this point I''ve learned to stop looking gift horses in the mouth, Agent Singleton."

    Edge carried Love''s rigid body to where Wolf lay, I joined him as he set her down.

    Love whimpered as I sat next to her, "I''m sorry Green...I didn''t know there were so many...I nearly got us killed."

    I reach over and pat her head, "It''s...OK."

    She nuzzles my hand with a sad smile, "hey at least you don''t have to wait to heal."

    I nod, feeling out her injuries through her suit, making sure she wasn''t too busted up, what I felt was pretty bad but not as bad as it usually would be.

    Love cringes and I remove my hand, she smiles painfully at me and the look of worry on my face. "I love you..."

    I blink, it was odd to hear her of all people say it, like it even needed to be said, but I returned it in kind, patting her head, "I love you too."

    She giggles, a fun and bubbly noise that tickled my heart and my brain alike, "Don''t feel special, I love All of you.... you''ve been here for me since the beginning of this thing, and I want you to know just how much I value you all..."

    I laid my forehead against hers, listening to Singleton on the phone with the cleanup department, "I''m serious, a big fucking tent"

    Love sighed, looking sad, "I''ve always loved all of you...you, Edge, Wolf...Ripper..."

    Tears filled her eyes, "and the thought that Wolf might..." she began to sob again, "might end up like Ripper...I don''t know what I''d do if..." she broke down into unintelligible sobs once more.

    I couldn''t help but tear up as well, I hadn''t thought about it, but I felt the same way.

    I looked over to see Edge, bloody and bruised with finger gouge wounds from that Klounh in his shoulder. running his fingers through Wolf''s hair, "It''s going to be ok; we''ll get you fixed up and then we''ll-" she swatted his hand away, "ge-HT fucked!" She coughed, this time it was Edge''s turn to swat her, "Don''t you FUCKING talk, you''re trached you could get...worse." I saw that he had tears in his eyes too, "y''bitch..." he followed up with, Wolf saw this and put a hand on his chest, then sat still and focused on her breathing.

    I stood and walked back towards Singleton who was throwing up as he was on hold with Houska''s cleanup team, I chuckled, "You ok?"

    He looked at me angrily, "How are YOU ok?? Look at that!!" He gestured to the pile of bodies inside the ruined big top, "And GOD the smell.

    I shrug, "I''m used to stuff like this, Singleton, I was raised in it."

    This was the first time, I think, that Singleton registered that we weren''t just kids who knew how to hunt, the look on his face made my heart hurt as he wiped his mouth.

    "I keep forgetting that...you''re not altogether human yourself, are you, Green?"

    I splayed my arms out and twirled on the spot, showcasing the blood running down my front and back from the spinal abnormality which was still properly setting, "what gave it away?"

    Singleton gagged and then waved me away, after which I went to sit with my crew.

    "You''d think this guy hadn''t been in it for as long as he says he has," I say as I walk over to sit next to Edge.

    Edge doesn''t take his eyes off of Wolf as the cleanup team pulled up, "Maybe, Green, and this is just a guess, his version of "in it" is different than yours."

    I shrugged as the paramedics came to ship us off back to home base, "maybe you''re right."

    Soon enough the cleanup crew got there, burning everything in the tent and getting rid of all the corpses they could find. The report on arrival was that the infestation had been cleansed with "no further incident" what I learned that meant was that this was the last pocket of a dying race.

    We had extinct an entire species, granted, it was a horrible, sadistic, parasitic, masochist species, but a species, nonetheless.

    The world wouldn''t be seeing any more Klounhs, or at least not that I could tell.

    Agent Singleton would go on to be a favorite of my squad, earning the nickname Kraft Singleton, after the slices of cheese.

    When we went home it was heavily bandaged, but we had done our job the way we had been trained to do it, I was proud of us.

    Our next mission would be much more difficult...

 JAB-768420-17

    Healing periods always feel shorter every time they happen, granted the last time I was injured I had been miracle healed by that vanishing sword "Blasphemy" but my team began to get back on their feet immediately after returning to base.

    It wasn''t long before we were working out regularly again and once more gaming in the lounge room and engaging in intimacy (not in the lounge room).

    Singleton had reported the events of the mission to Benz and them, and so we were recognized for our skills and given more medals for distinguished service and raised an agent rank.

    Whatever that meant, nobody ever bothered to tell us what that meant, so yay rank up, I guess?

    The mission that I''m about to detail has a bit of a windup, events that led to us getting assigned THIS mission in particular, so bear with me.

    Because of our mission success, we felt pretty badass, it was like we''d been validated for what we were for the first time since Trigram, so we got a little cocky.

    We were playing a fighting game on the TV in the lounge room in our pajamas basically, generally being loud teens about it, cheering each other on and whatnot, when a large man in Houska uniform walked over and turned off the game console.

    I''m not talking color coded fatigues like Singleton wore, the pressed jacket adorned with medals and the slacks with nary a wrinkle told me he was someone close to Benz or Pilum.

    I had been winning, so I put the controller down and stood up, the top of my head coming up to about this guy''s chest, he was swole and he looked pissed.

    "The FUCK was that for??"

    He set a hand on my shoulder, the subtle weight was telltale of an attempt at intimidation, his voice was even and calm, but I knew he had nothing but contempt for me and mine, "Son, if you''re gonna make noise in here, I suggest it be taken down to a dull roar, for now though, you and your friends can leave, the boys and I want to watch the game and we''re tired of waiting for y''all to finish up."

    I hear a general murmur of approval from the table across from the couch, peopled with other Houska employees, wearing the same fatigues as Singleton had.

    "Am I clear, Agent Green?"

    I hear my squad stand up behind me as I look him dead in the face, he wasn''t twitchy, that meant he was confident and that was gonna make him sloppy.

    "I''m not your son," I say as I purposefully fall backward. he makes a pretty fast grab for me but my torso is already out of reach as I bring my foot up, using the momentum of my fall to connect the inertia enhanced kick to his crotch as I collide with the floor, he grunts in pain and instead of pausing or bending over, raises a penny loafer covered foot to stomp on me only to be taken the fuck out by Edge who had been thrown by Love, Edge latching on to laughing boy''s head, using his gecko fingertips to dig into to his face as he flew past, removing a large shred of skin, the momentum of the throw still carrying him past our attacker, the sudden stop of latching on to his face throwing both of them to the floor, blood everywhere, screaming as the guy''s friends came to back him up.

    Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

    "We thought you kids had been taught to take orders!" shouted one of them as he rushed forward.  I looked at him with a squint in my eye, "We were taught to take orders, not disrespect."

    Another of the big guy''s friends menaced us with a pool cue, "I''m gonna do a lot more than disrespect you, if you don''t leave, Kid!"

    I looked at the others with a questioning look, seeing I was handing her the proverbial mic, Wolf spoke up, "No, you guys were fucked the moment Laughing boy, here, turned off our game!"

    There were 6 of them, but Love evened the odds pretty easily by using a piece of the couch (it was a sectional) we''d been sitting on as a shield and club, swinging it in large arcs to clear any attackers.

    Wolf did a straight leg slide between Love''s legs and pounced on one of the guys she had been swinging at while Edge made sure the big guy was unconscious.

    I looked for an opening and dove between an additional attacker and Wolf, laughing as he hadn''t seen me coming, I used my elbow to fracture his jaw! Another of the guys immediately pounced on me as Edge joined the larger fight.

    I was being pummeled in the face by this new guy before we were all forcibly separated by security personnel who held us at gunpoint until the captain took us all to a separate room where we were made to wait.

    A few hours later, MAL came in with bad news.

    We were being sent on another mission as punishment for our misconduct.

    Team Sigma had no clue why this was bad news (we wanted more work) we didn''t ask why, we just cared about where what and how.

    Apparently, the derelict Trigram splinter had shown its ugly mug again outside a distant mechanized Houska facility used for containment of indestructible threats, mechanized meaning that all the defenses and security measures were lorded over by a cold, calculating computer overlord known as "AI-742."

    Anyway, the whole thing is called "The Box" and it''s on a small island just off of Galveston.

    We suited up and met Singleton at the loading dock where he greeted us, looking upset, "You guys can''t just relax can you?"

    I squint at him, confused if nothing else at what he meant, he elaborated, "So the guy you guys so casually disfigured was a friend of mine, I was on leave when I got the call that you guys were being sent on another punishment mission."

    I shrug, still feeling immense satisfaction that we taught big shit a lesson, "maybe you should pick better friends, he''s a prick."

    Singleton looked upsetedly at me, "He JUST got that promotion, and your friend Edge ripped his face off."

    Edge scoffed, "part of his face."

    Singleton snarled, "Thats not better!!"

    I sighed, but then so did Singleton, "It''s alright...I''ll let it go for now, we''ll deal with this later."

    After that small argument, we all loaded up in the APC for a three-week-long mission and started for Galveston.

    It took half a day to get to "The Box", 5 hours to Galveston from Love Field where HQ is, and then another 6 to the Island in question. The Box itself was a massive structure looming out of the ground on a large rock poking out of the sea that looked to be 40% cliff with a small quarter being devoted to a tranquil-looking beach, the building on the sand bar looked like a big bucket.

    It was large, metal, and round with no other discernible features.

    Don''t know why they called it "the box." The thing was a cylinder.

    Anyway, it wasn''t immediately evident that any intruder was present, so we decided to make camp on the beach where we landed.

    The island was more than just a rock, now that we were here near it, we could see it obviously had trees, oddly enough they were oaks and not palm trees.

    Singleton left to collect firewood, Wolf and I set up the tents, Edge set up the generator and Love opted to sit in the sand, because why not?

 JAB-76842-18

    The island had some small semblance of wildlife as well, these little chipmunk looking rodents that lived in the trees that Green was told NOT to eat, because Wolf had brought three weeks'' worth of MREs. For those of you who don''t know what an MRE is, I''m sorry because you are missing out.

    The term MRE means Meal Ready to Eat, now some people think that means you can just up and eat out of it but THAT''s where your wrong, usually it needs to be heated up first depending on what food is in the MRE, right now the entire crew had what looked like Beef lo mien in a light sauce, so yea that''s going on the hot plate on the generator for a bit before I do anything with that.

    "This tastes like hot donkey piss." Grumbled Singleton as he ate from our ration pile like the ungrateful ass that he is.

    "What did you bring to the table then, Cheese boy? If it''s any better let us know." Wolf huffed, and I could understand why. These MREs were all we''d had to eat usually back at Trigram. I know there was other food around now and I had free reign of it, but there was something about the return to routine that made us all feel...right.

    Singleton huffed, reached into his bag and pulled out a sub sandwich, "I have makings for days, you guys have fun with your slop!"

    "Thanks! We will!" Giggled Love as she happily slurped up some noodles, either purposefully ignoring the snark or letting it whoosh blissfully over her cute blonde head, I envy her sometimes.

    It was then that Green whispered in my head, "Someone''s coming up that ridge."

    I leapt up off the ground and drew one of my swords, looking around, I saw them.

    Three kids our age staring at us far away on the other side of the beach at their own campsite...which didn''t make sense being that we hadn''t seen them when we got here.

    Two I didn''t recognize, were a boy covered in fur with sharp talons where his fingers should have been and a girl with two extra arms.

    The third one was one I''d never forget, his grin haunts my dreams to this day.

    It was that black slime monster.

    The one that killed Ripper.

    The entire group was wearing those Trigram jumpsuits, they were unmistakable.

    "GUYS!"

    Wolf stood up first and she saw it too, she angrily pulled out her gun, cocked it, and leveled it in their direction.

    Edge swelled up and pulled out his glue gun and Love got up shakily, her fists clenched and her face bright red.

    "Love...love get behind me..." Green called to her, all too aware what was going through her head, "Love NO!"

    "YOU KILLED MY BROTHER!" She shouted across the sand in what was supposed to be a threatening tone, but the sad frail breaks her voice takes on when she''s in tears ruins the effect. the three at the other end began to exchange looks of "Did you do that?" In a fashion that would have been comical if it had been anyone else.

    A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    She began to stomp across the sand towards the other group, her fists clenched, murder in her eyes.

    Wolf wordlessly followed her, along with Edge and eventually Green.

    This was as personal as it got, Green even kept me from doing or saying anything, they were all so focused that they barely noticed the two others pulling guns.

    "Ah ah ah." Chuckled the girl, who seemed to be in charge, pointing 4 handguns in our direction, "Not so fast, Friends."

    Edge scoffed, "Friends my ass! You''re team Beta! And he''s the last living member of Team Alpha! I thought you''d been sanctioned?"

    The Girl huffed, "Sanctioned obviously doesn''t mean what you think it means, smart one. We''re here to obtain an asset that Houska stole...and it''s in there." She points to the Box.

    Edge raised an eyebrow, "you want...in? What''s in there that could possibly be of interest to you?"

    The girl sneered, "None of your business kid, we just want you to open the front door."

    Edge laughed, not sarcastically, but with genuine humor in his voice, "you don''t want in there."

    Green piped up, "What''s in there, Edge?"

    Edge shrugged, "I was told this is where they put what they can''t kill, not something I''d want to plunder."

    The girl looked at the boy just in time for the boy to get shot right between the eyes by who I assumed was Singleton, he fell over and the girl dropped her gun to scream, and then Edge shot a glob of adhesive directly into her mouth, she staggered back and hit a tree, clutching at her throat and sliding down it, convulsing as the glob turned solid, cutting off her air supply.

    It was a solid ten seconds later that we realized that the bastard we''d come over to kill was gone.

    A black trail of stained sand lead from the camp off towards the building, Love gave chase, turning a corner around a rocky cliff face giving the rest of us little choice but to follow.

    We were getting closer and closer when I heard love shout, just out of sight, "DIE!"

    Then there was a resounding earth-shattering sound like wrenching metal, followed by a clang and a scream from Love herself, "DAMMIT!"

    We rounded the corner to see Love lying on her back in the sand holding her shoulder, her arm bent at an odd angle. In front of her was a massive hole in the metal building, it seems that she hit it directly on some sort of brittle weld seam, sand was now leaking from the beach into the cavity of the building that we could see was MUCH deeper than it appeared from the outside, that slimy fucker had planned this!

    "My arm...'' she whimpered as she struggled to move but it seemed as if her body glove had tensed up too much, "I''m sorry..."

    I rushed forward to help her sit up but a noise came from the hole that made me stop and raise my sword, it was the sound of skittering, like a metal roach climbing up a metal wall, the sound was metallic but the pattern gave me the shivers, which is why I compare it to a roach, because if you''ve ever heard a roach moving around you know what I mean. "Guys, form up I think something''s coming."

    True to my words, a large mechanical SOMETHING clawed its way into the air! It had 8 limbs placed randomly around its ramshackle body, some of them not even touching the ground as it scuttled into the light, its body was a mishmash of metal and exposed wiring, either this thing was made sloppily by someone very smart or whoever made it barely had a grasp of technology,

    Green and I both let out a panicked squeak as it grabbed Love, then immediately began to move back towards the hole. Green lunged forward, swinging our sword with a savage yell without even thinking that swords can''t cut through metal unless there''s a ton of force behind them, the sword plinked off the metal shell, but I managed to kick the thing over, as it fell it released Love.

    Edge and Wolf grabbed Love and Singleton ran over as the monstrosity flailed, "holy shit what did you do!?"

    Before Green could answer, more metallic sounds were heard as several similar robots rushed out and grabbed hold of me! I was unable to move, and the claws of the creatures dug into our flesh!

    Green retreated once more from the pain as I saw Singleton rushing the others to the boat with more robots in hot pursuit, Love screaming over his shoulder for me, as the machines dragged me back, I heard Singleton say " Thanks to your overreaction, the defenses have activated! we need reinforcements! He''ll be fine for now, let''s go!"

    "That bastard." Whispered Green as one of the claws wrung my wrist, severing several nerves and making me drop my sword!

    "No..." I choke as they drag me back into the hole, as the deadly unfeeling claws change position suddenly, tearing holes in my shoulder and side, causing me to bleed BADLY!

    Everything went black.

 JAB-76842-19

    Our eyes opened slowly after I didn''t know how long.

    The first thing I remember was the smell, it was horrible, it was like a rotting body was floating in rusty water, the metallic smell and the smell of death made a disgusting combination that made my MRE come back up and splatter on the concrete floor, I coughed as I stood up, my legs shaky as I tested my faculties, my sword arm was able to be moved, but I couldn''t squeeze my fist, it just wouldn''t do it. The wound in my left shoulder had stopped bleeding but the wound in my side was still in full swing like a blood waterfall, I was fucked up pretty bad.

    This was compounded by the fact that I had LOST MY SWORD!

    I punched the concrete wall in frustration, my team had abandoned me and all I had to defend myself were a few grenades and my revolver which I didn''t have any more ammo for, as I had also been relieved of my ammo pack.

    I looked around me and saw I was in some sort of concrete tunnel with pipes running through and around it with vents every two feet along the ceiling.

    I took a step and realized that I had been laying in a thin puddle of this rust water, "great now I''m gonna get lockjaw." I grumbled, "Green? You there?" No answer, he must still be under.

    A few more steps and I heard a voice coming from the wall, "Hello?"

    It was the voice of a woman, I didn''t know how much I trusted it, so I kept quiet until the vent at the top of the wall opened up and a girl my age poked her head out.

    She was dirty, covered in a thin film of blackened grease, likely due to lack of bathing but through all the grime I could tell she was Caucasian with blonde hair under a set of improvised clothes made of filthy burlap, she hissed at me from the vent, "dude, get your ass up here!"

    I blinked, "excuse me, what?"

    "Come on before the drones hear you!"

    As she extended a hand, a loud booming voice was heard, "I CAN SEE YOU, DESIR��."

    That fucking frantic metallic skittering again, I suppose the AI knew I was here too, I had no choice, I grabbed her hand and with her help, I got into the vent, it was surprisingly spacious.

    She pulled me deeper in as the large mechanical thing tried to get into the vent unsuccessfully.

    "Come on dude, I know a safe place!"

    Doubled over, I rushed with her deeper into the facility where we came out of a ground-level vent into what looked like the boiler room, concrete floors decorated with an array of pipes just like the sewers before, but with giant tanks between them, like large water heaters. Desir�� sat down and patted the floor next to her, "so..." she said as I sat down, "Are you from Trigram? Are you here to rescue me?"

    I hesitantly shook my head, "No, I''m actually from Houska, my team and I were sent here to find out what the disturbances on this island were all about."

    "I expected to have company from Trigram..." she sighed and laid back on the floor, "you''d think they''d give more of a shit about me..."

    If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    I craned my head to look around the dank boiler room, she''d re-purposed it into quite a suitable living area, one of the pipes had been torn open and leaked clean nonrusted water into a low area with drains in it, and there was some sort of fabric stretched between two other pipes in the approximate shape of a hammock. I could see she had several rats strung up over a vent that was blasting hot steam, food! Suddenly it dawned on me that she''d been here a long ass time.

    "When did they put you here?" I looked at her and she looked away, "I don''t know how long I''ve been down here...I just know that I was sent by Trigram to kill a Houska official, they tore me to pieces, but I kept coming back...so eventually they locked my carcass down here and... viola."

    I couldn''t believe what I was hearing, was this girl like me?

    Deciding to keep my origins a secret, I decided to press her about the Drones and the facility and the tale she told me was rather grim, to say the least.

    As soon as she began trying to leave the cell she''d been locked in, the walls shocked her, and shocked her, and then when she didn''t let up, the cell filled with poison gas, when she woke up next she was down here, because apparently the AI that ran this place dumped the dead things its drones found in the sewer beneath the facility.

    "As soon as the AI realized his mistake, the drones started to patrol down here, looking for me and placing new cameras everywhere...I don''t think he knows this room exists though, also because it''s only accessible via that vent, I don''t have to worry about drones stumbling into me...they''re too big to fit into the vents."

    She sounded confident, but she looked so tired when she said that thing about the drones, I could only guess that she''d had some trial and error finding safe places to sleep.

    "What?" she saw my staring, "what''s wrong?"

    "you look SO tired." was all I could say, I didn''t much care to tell her why I was down here, the circumstances that led up to this moment made me feel like the most idiotic person in the history of the world, knowing that That black goo monster wanted in, we knew that and my squad still having fallen into that trap, I just couldn''t stop kicking myself.

    "You''d be tired too if you were worried about your freedom every second of every day...I''m scared to sleep." Desir�� had curled up into a little ball, sitting with her knees on her chest, "I''m usually the tough kid, but I''m not sure I can go on like this."

    I take out my revolver and wink at her, trying to give off some of Green''s confident mojo, "It''s alright, take a nap, I''ll stand guard, we''re in this together now."

    She looked uneasily at the revolver, "Wild west much?" I shake my head, "my only other weapon was lost to me on the surface, big iron here is all we got."

    She shrugged and got into her hammock, "You''ll wake me if something comes up?"

    I once more gave her that reassuring nod and she laid in the hammock, almost instantly falling asleep.

    It felt like a full day before she woke back up to go to the bathroom, to achieve this, she dropped Trow and squatted over one of the drains in the divot beneath the broken pipe waterfall, taking time to let the water wash over her, attempting to wash off the grime. After she was done, she walked back over to me, it was only just now that I truly looked her over, she was beautiful, in the way that not even a large layer of grease could disguise, she was also emaciated and wearing a set of grimy, soaked tan pants, a pitted out, torn, long sleeve shirt and a burlap hat that covered her filthy hair,  no shoes, and her feet looked all kinds of fucked up.

    "So, no disturbances?" she asked me, I shook my head, "Nothing to report here."

    She smiled and poked me on the nose, "You''ll be MUCH more useful than I initially thought! We''re gonna escape."

    Those words brought the widest smile to my face, "YES! So, what''s the plan?"

    "First, names." she huffed, "Partners should tell each other their names."

    I nod, "JAB-76842, Code name, Agent Green."

    Her eyes widened, "You''re a JAB?"

    I nodded, finally deciding to come clean, "I''m also a regenerator, JUST like you, I was rescued by Houska and now I''m free to do what I want...most of the time, I can help you get free too."

    I could see a hundred questions flash before her eyes, but then she stood at attention, "JAB-56473, Agent Mercy, BUT, Mr. 76842, YOU can call me Desir��, because FUCK Trigram and FUCK Houska!"

    I blinked, trying to remember my name, my REAL name, I couldn''t remember for the life of me.

    It had been Green or Agent Green or JAB-76842, had I... forgotten my name? Had I forgotten ME??

    Green was Green but I was...

 JAB-76842-20

    I stood and stretched, determined to change the subject, "So, what''s the plan, man?"

    She sat back down in her Hammock, "In the depths of this facility, lower even than the sewers, lies a massive metal labyrinth made to contain a dragon!"

    I blinked hard, "A Dragon?"

    She nodded, "As in giant quadrupedal reptile with huge wings, the talking intelligent type dragon." There was this evil gleam in her eyes I hadn''t seen before, it entranced me.

    I coughed a bit, having inhaled some of my own spit on accident, "And your plan is what?" I asked, attempting course correction after that embarrassing shit.

    She leaped out of the hammock and rushed up to me, placing two hands on my chest with incredible enthusiasm, "We get down there and reason with it! Then we free it and use it to escape!"

    A split second of "GOOD IDEA!" turned into the realization that THIS was probably not such a good plan, "Won''t that let the thing escape?"

    Desir�� crossed her arms, "I thought of that, and I have a solution! This facility is armed with 4 nuclear warheads rigged to go off if the AI deems that it has failed in its mission to contain the threats presented to it, effectively scrubbing everything in the general vicinity and freeing us from any actual responsibility!"

    I raised my voice for the first time in a while, "AND OUR CORPOREAL FORMS! WELL, DONE! YOUR IDEA IS TO KILL US! BUT THAT''S TRUE FREEDOM, ISN''T IT?!"

    Desir�� sighed and slumped, "I thought you were smarter than that, we''re regenerators! if we''re blown up, we''ll just wait a bit and we''ll be fine!"

    I rubbed my eyes with my hands, "Look here, lady, I know what I can endure, BUT I''m not so FUCKING sure that nuclear hellfire is survivable!"

    She socked me right in the face, it didn''t hurt much, but it woke Green up, "You''re gonna chicken out on me now!?"

    Suddenly Green seized control and wrapped our hands around Desir��''s throat, squeezing as hard as he could while the look of surprise on her face was compounded by Green snarling, "FUCKING PUNCH ME!? YOU PUTRID CUNT!?"

    We were killing her; I couldn''t fucking stop him, and he was going to shatter this alliance I''d just forged!

    Finally Green let go and dropped her as the memories from earlier rushed back to him, he remembered everything I remembered, "WAIT, sorry...I... this is gonna take some explaining."

    Before Green could say anything else, Desir�� jumped to her feet and planted two super-fast kicks into our side, then one upside our head, Green staggered, "shit..." he clutched at our face, "this bitch can fight..."

    "OK, who''re you!? Because you sure as hell aren''t the kid I was just talking to!" Asked Desir�� in an accusatory tone, to which Green responded, "You don''t have someone crawling around inside your head?"

    Desir�� finally caught on, "So you''re two people in one, a soldier and then there''s..."

    "Him, yea, the kid.''

    Hey, fuck you, Green!

    If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    "Well, he said no to my request for help in freeing the dragon, will you stand with me?"

    Green no, could you not?

    "I''m in, but if it gets mad, I reserve the right to slay it!"

    God damn it!

    The next part of her plan seemed like it wouldn''t work, to be honest.

    "You see that pipe?" She pointed to the broken pipe waterfall, "that is only one of four clean water pipes that run through the facility, two run through here but the second one is connected in part to the septic tank, if we flood the water system with septic water, the AI will initiate a system reset to fix the problem, which will temporarily unlock all doors in the lower levels."

    Green blinked, "I''m guessing you''ve done this before?"

    She nodded, "Once before I found this room, I lived in a curved hallway next to the crank that controls the septic tank, after I was chased, I found the labyrinth and the dragon chased me out, that''s how I know all this."

    Green looked at the tank he suspected was the septic tank, "what do you want me to do?"

    She points to a lever just above the tank, at least three feet out of her reach, "I''ve laid hands on that lever, but I can''t turn that valve."

    "You what?"

    "No, I''m serious, it''s rusted shut! I need some brute strength to prize this bitch open."

    This seemed like it was too simple, a rusty lever, you Might as well ask me to open a jar of pickles!

    However as Green and I soon found out, the lever was SECURELY rusted in position.

    Tugging devolved into hitting devolved into doing pull-ups on it devolved into screaming at it devolved into finally, FINALLY turning it, flooding the water lines with septic matter!

    There was the sound of more skittering, Desir�� looked up at the vent in horror to see an army of tiny drones scuttling through the fucking vent that was the only entrance or exit!

    In response, Green pulled a grenade and lobbed it at the mechanical bugs! The grenade landed amongst the swarm, and they immediately gave back, Green then took that opportunity to get the fuck out of dodge! Grabbing Desir�� and scrambling through the vent!

    The grenade going off shook the vent and made us deaf, but it seemed to have shaken the swarm of mini drones. Desir�� steered us through the ducts to the entrance to the Dragon''s labyrinth!

    We got out of another floor level vent into an open hallway area to see the door at the end of the hall was open wide, Desir�� pointed at it and waved frantically!

    "Yea, yea I get it." Green chuckled, taking a step forward, only to come up short when he saw what was at the end of the hall.

    The slime monster guy strode into the hall from a hallway at the end where the door was, he was blocking the door.

    Desir�� looked confused as she saw him, "who''re you?"

    It was then, for the first time that I heard the grinning abomination speak, "JAB-88888, Agent Onyx, I''m here to take you home." His voice was like sandpaper on a chalkboard, i cringed just hearing his voice.

    "No."

    For once the smile adorning the thing''s ugly head turned into a rather nasty snarl, "excuse me?"

    Desir�� took my hand in hers as she stood tall, "I''ve been promised my freedom."

    The monster laughed, an even more uncomfortable and unnatural sound, it stretched out one of its overlong droopy arms, "You don''t have a choice, Agent Mercy."

    She puffed up angrily, "MY NAME IS DESIR��!"

    The thing began to slog towards us, not even moving its legs as it burned a black slug trail into the concrete of the chamber!

    I pushed Desir�� out of the way and braced myself when I suddenly felt something appear in my hand, I looked down and saw BLASPHEMY! It was HERE!?"

    The sword whispered as I raised it, I had no clue why it was here, but I was sure as hell going to use it!"

    The slime thing stopped in the hall as it saw us advancing at a similar speed, "I thought you''d learned your lesson, Green."

    "GIVE RIPPER BACK YOU BLOTCHY ASSHOLE!"

    Green charged at him with Blasphemy leveled in his direction, our arm curled into a coiled forward spring, ready to impale this fuck with everything we had!

    All my zeal vanished when I saw him recede back into the blackness of the open door, that sickening slimy grin shining down into the darkness, "gonna have to catch me first asshole!"

    I stopped and looked back at Desir��, "So... shall we?"

    She rushed up to me and pointed to my sword, "That was up your sleeve this whole time?"

    Green shrugged, "it keeps vanishing and reappearing, ah well, gives me something to slay the dragon with."

    With a sword on our side and two monsters dwelling down there in the darkness now, we marched down the stairs into the blackness...of the labyrinth...

 JAB-76842-21

    Deeper and deeper we walked step by echoey agonizing step down the concrete staircase, we couldn''t see anything or anyone, so our brain began to play tricks on us. Green could swear he saw someone just ahead of us, keeping pace but not moving a muscle, immediately we were reminded of the slime monster and how it moved without any ambulatory motion, but it didn''t seem to be doing anything else either.

    Eventually, Green had it and closed his eyes, it wasn''t much of an improvement, "Fuck this, I need light!".

    Without any response, our sword lit up the passageway, glowing with a yellowish glow that mimicked a candle, "ah, that''s better, HOLY SHIT MY SWORD GLOWS!" To which Desir�� responded angrily, "What''s better? If it can glow then light it up, I still can''t see shit.".

    Green looked at her, "The corridor''s all lit up now, you''re gonna tell me you can''t see anything?"

    Desir�� growled at me, still clinging to my sleeve, "This isn''t funny, Green. I''m not laughing. Stop it!"

    The Sword giggled like a terrible myriad of fucking children as our new friend got all anxious, I huffed and grabbed for her hand, "It''s OK even if you can''t see, I can."

    She fumbled for a bit as we switched sides, eventually, I found her hand and she gasped, blinking hard as she got used to the light, "holy shit what kinda magic bullshit is your sword even?"

    I shrug and we continue, eventually becoming all too aware of the black trail that slithered down the stairs a ways before turning towards the wall and then going up it to yet another vent, he''d escaped me once again.

    "Damn it..." I groan and Desir�� nudges me, "Hey, worry about your boyfriend later, we have a Dragon to woo."

    Green and I got to thinking about this, then something occurred to me.

    "Desir�� you said you''d been down here before, why haven''t you tried this already?"

    She sighed, "got attacked for my trouble, but not by the dragon, he just roared and chased me, I was actually attacked by this...thing they keep down here with him... it''s like a kid...but shrouded in living darkness..."

    Green raised an eyebrow, "go on."

    "It was some sort of living shadow...I can''t explain it effectively, we''ll have to kill it before we get to the dragon though."

    When She didn''t say anything else, Green didn''t elect to start the conversation back up again, it was odd, because I think this was the only time Green had ever been forced into silence by his own contemplation of a possibility.

    After a long tenuous silence, Finally we reached the bottom of the stairs, immediately in front of us was a large metal door like the door we''d come through, this one was ajar instead of wide open, but it had some type of runes inscribed in lines all around the door, the script was one I recognized but I couldn''t place it, but then I looked at the softly glowing sword in my hand, the word I had previously believed to be in English carved into the blade was in the same script and for some reason Green and I had understood its meaning and seen it as English originally, beyond this revelation, I couldn''t discern the writing on the door.

    Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

    I wanted to say something, but it felt like there was a weight on my very being, it''s not like I couldn''t, not like I was incapable, but it''s like when you''re in a church and its deadly quiet, so quiet all you can hear is crushing, ringing silence and yourself breathing, and for some reason it just doesn''t feel safe to speak.

    I looked at Desir��, she looked just as terrified as I moved to open the door. The door made a loud, ungodly wrenching sound as I pushed it open. I stood stock still after I''d finished opening the door, half expecting to be struck dead, or ambushed or SOMETHING, but nothing came, so I pulled Desir�� along as she still held desperately on to my hand so she could see.

    We were walking for a while before I realized that there WAS no labyrinth, it looked like a wide open room, "I was picturing something like the maze of the Minotaur."

    Wordlessly Desir�� guided me to the left, showing me the wall of the chamber, at this point, I began to see the proper shape of the chamber.  floors, walls, all of it as far as I could see was made of what looked like super smooth black marble, still without saying anything she walked me along the wall, and after 30 seconds of walking, another passageway was revealed in the limited light of the Blasphemy''s glow, it was JUST as wide as the corridor we were already in, "holy shit." Green said, "That dragon must be...huge."

    Desir�� nodded with a shiver, apparently still under the effect of whatever fear ward we had walked into.

    "So..." I chuckled, "Which direction are we going?" I decided to ask, now that I had the nerve to speak again.

    "Neither." Said a small-sounding voice behind us.

    I wheeled around and pointed the glowing sword at the source of the noise!

    It was a child, a grey-blue skinned 7-9 year old with tightly curled black hair, wearing a prisoner''s uniform, Desir�� hid behind me!

    "Hey there little guy..." Green tentatively smiled, "do you know which direction the dragon would be in?"

    Finally, Desir�� spoke, "That''s him! That''s the weird kid!"

    "I''M NOT WEIRD!" The darkness began to churn around him, the shadows manifesting shapes like animals, teeth, claws, eyes, tentacles, tears began to form in the kid''s eyes, "I''m not...i''m not..."

    "Oh yeah, then why did you attack me?" Countered Desir��

    Green Jack slaps Desir��, having not expected it she fell to the floor with a pained yell, "You stupid bitch, don''t call the kid weird, he''s such a little cutie!" The tone with which Green said this was one I wasn''t very familiar with, "I''m sorry about my friend, Little man, come here, what''s your name?"

    The boy was still sniffling as he walked over to us, looking up at us with big puffy eyes, "M-Markus..." he sniffled, "Monsters always come down here and try to hurt my friend and I...I keep him safe!"

    Green pats him gently on the shoulder, "What a strong little dude! Hey, man listen...we''re here to break you guys out, all we need is some help from the Dragon."

    Markus looked at me with hopeful curiosity in his black eyes, "really? You want to help us escape?"

    Green nods with a wide, warm smile, "You look like you could use a hug, bring it in!"

    Then, sword arm still raised to keep the illumination even, extended a single arm to Markus, to which he quickly responded with a rushing hug, wrapping his arms around my stomach and pulling himself close as he started to cry, I was getting a bit teary eyed myself, but then I saw Green move our sword arm, he was positioning to strike, NO! NO, YOU FUCKING DON''T!

    I kept a firm arm around Markus''s tiny body as I wrestled with Green for control of our body.

    The following conversation is internal, I am not shouting this out loud.

    "WHY!? HE''S JUST A KID!"

    "This "kid" is down here for a reason! If we don''t do this then he''ll escape WITH US!"

    "Down here in a place full of UNKILLABLE threats! All you''d be doing would be making him angry! And he''s A FUCKING KID!"

    "ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT FINE!"

    After a long long hug and some much-needed crying from Markus, Green let Markus go, saying to me internally "on your head BE IT!" Before going back to his friendly babysitter voice, "so, Markus, can you show us to the Dragon?"

    Markus nodded enthusiastically, wiping his nose and face in the normal Allergy salute before walking down the center hallway of the maze, revealing as he did that human bones cover the floor of the obsidian maze down this way, "Dragon likes to be left alone usually...But I think he''d like you."

 JAB-76842-22

    I helped Desir�� to her feet. She was too shocked by my actions to say anything but gladly took my hand as we followed Markus.

    We walked for a while and Markus began to skip and hum with what i can only describe as childish innocence, I envied this boy SO MUCH.

    Eventually, a deep heavy breathing became evident over the noises of playing, I can''t really narrate 5 minutes of solid walking, but I think I can intimate to you how loud the breathing was by the time we reached the Dragon''s chamber.

    It was deep like thunder, with the exhaling being like a smelly blast of hot air from the other end of the hall, the smell was like rotting meat and bile.

    To my surprise he wasn''t just at the end of one of the hallways, the floor tipped downward at a gradual angle, a ramp leading down into a chamber where Markus told us the Dragon was.

    "Markus." The voice was a thrum like a shotgun blast to my chest, something that shook my bones, he didn''t even sound like he was trying to be loud but The Dragon''s voice was such a deep base that it shook the ground on which I stood.

    "Who are they?" I couldn''t even see this thing yet and I was already scared for my life, Markus spoke up, "Dragon these two want to help us escape!"

    The Dragon chuckled, each "Heh" knocked in my chest like a second heartbeat as Markus beckoned us closer to him, finally the glow of my sword washed over a massive rugged, grayish-green surface, it took me a few seconds to register that this HUGE surface, bigger around and taller than me, was a muzzle, a massive nose, and mouth, resting with the chin on the floor of the chamber, I saw its nostrils flare open, once barely perceptible twin slits in the rocky rugged structure of its snout, now wide open pits that sprayed hot steam!

    I shit you not, both Green and I jumped a bit as the massive creature opened its massive reflective eyes, not just the two large ones that conventionally adorned its head, but it had 4 more eyes, two small ones right above the larger ones and two more that sat just above its nostrils.

    Usually, The  Tapetum Lucidum only reflects green in these types of predators, but these were reflecting red back at me, and from the sword, it could see my light!

    "So, two immortals walk into a Dragon''s lair...I suppose there''s a joke here somewhere..." mused the beast in it''s thunderous voice as I stood in sheer awe while Desir�� was crouched behind me, "will you help us?" Green asked in the most serious voice I''d ever heard him use, "please!"

    The dragon snorted, blowing my hair and nearly sending me off my feet, not taking its eyes off me as it responded, "no."

    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

    Our mouth hung open, "what do you mean no!?"

    The Dragon shifted position, revealing its massive front claws as it placed them under its chin, five fingers, each tipped with a talon, each covered in those same scales. Each talon made gashes in the obsidian of the floor as they scraped past, "because there IS no way out."

    Green growled, sick of this Dragon''s shit already, "Yes there IS! We just came from the exit!"

    The Dragon let out an exasperated grumbling sigh, "I don''t believe you ,why did you bring me Liars, Markus?" The Dragon looked at Markus who shook his head, "Dragon we''re telling the truth! Come with me! I''ll show you!"

    The massive creature placed its titanic redwood limbs underneath its huge body that I STILL couldn''t see all of, lifting itself off the ground to where all I could see was the creature''s front legs and armored chest, it''s neck was as short as a crocodile''s, it''s legs bent outwards at the joint like a crocodile''s limbs too, its massive digits splayed to take the weight! "alright Markus." It rumbled, shaking the dust from its incomparably large  body, "Show me the exit."

    As Markus lead the creature towards the ramp, I was able to see its massive body, huge and muscular topped by two appendages that looked to be MASSIVE wings, folded against it''s body, currently resembling a cape, all with a long sweeping muscular tail that I had to duck under, true to its gait it walked like a crocodile or an alligator, it was a truly intimidating sight as it stomped after the small boy.

    Green looked back at Desir��, "good?" He asked, she nodded frantically, "I just pissed myself..."

    Green laughed, the sound filled the chamber, "well we''re almost out of here, come on."

    The Dragon''s footsteps shook the floor, and caused Desir�� and I to lose our footing more than once, thank god we were directly next to each other, it helps when you have someone to hold you up.

    Finally we got to the hallway with the door that was still hanging open, The Dragon chuckled once more, again I felt it in my chest, I can''t emphasize enough how gun shy I was about this thing just laughing, its...its quite something.

    The Dragon stopped at the human sized door, turning to look at us, "Usually this entire maze will rotate in unforeseen ways just to keep me at the center...whats different about now?"

    Desir�� took no time to take responsibility for her plan, "My friend and I caused a System reboot! That''s how we got down here!"

    The Dragon snarled at the small opening, a guttural, primal noise that caused us to quake at our very core, "then let me show you how we leave this place."

    With a mighty thrust of its huge shoulders, the Dragon slammed his armored head into the exit door, busting out the frame and causing the concrete to fracture, a second thrust caused the entire wall to give way, giving the Dragon access to the stairwell, which he smashed too, carving a path inexorably upwards that made me realize why this thing was contained, it was indestructible!

    "Go dragon!" Giggled Markus, looking at me and asking for ups like a 3-year-old, his arms out in a Y position.

    Me being a giant softy, I lifted him and carried him, following the Dragon''s path of destruction upward, eventually, we got to the sewers, then we got to the upper levels where other inmates began to follow us, creatures with pale skin and red glowing eyes that I recognized as Cenosaphali, one that was quite obviously a Mummy, one that looked like a werewolf,  I was about to squander all the Organization''s hard work to get my ass out of a prison, and for some reason I was OK with that.

 JAB-76842-23

    Finally, the Dragon had reached the front doors, they were massive and looked like they could take a tank shell!

    Suddenly a voice, the same voice I''d heard earlier when I met Desir�� made itself evident over the intercom, a deep mechanical baritone, like HAL 9000 on steroids. "AH, AGENT GREEN, WE HAVE BEEN BUSY."

    I looked up, "so you know me, why''d you bring me down here?"

    The machine responded to me, "YOU REPRESENT THREAT LEVEL 10, BEINGS LIKE YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO EXIST, I WAS MADE TO CONTAIN BEINGS LIKE YOU."

    Everyone had stopped to look at me now as I spoke to the AI, "open the doors or I''ll have our friend here bust them down!"

    Then it went crazy, like truly crazy, HAL would be proud.

    "ALERT! ALERT! OBJECT 793 IS ABOUT TO ESCAPE! INITIATING NUCLEAR WARHEADS 1-4! COUNTDOWN BEGINS IN TEN SECONDS!"

    With that cue, The Dragon began to ram its head against the doors, causing them to shake and dent outward, slamming itself against the doors with all it''s strength as the countdown til the nukes were primed rang in our ears!

    10 SLAM

    9 SLAM

    8 SLAM

    7 SLAM

    6 SLAM

    The other inmates crowded around the massive beast, pushing against the door with all their might!

    5 SLAM

    4 SLAM

    The door buckled but did not fall, the Dragon pushed hard on it, causing the huge door to fall with a massive BANG, revealing the sunset beyond! We were free!

    5

    4

    3

    The Dragon opened its massive wings and took flight with the force of a hurricane! Knocking everyone else off their feet, The sickly green creature hurried for the edge of the blast zone! Leaving us behind...

    2

    1

    "DETONATION IN 5 SECONDS!"

    With that I rushed out, trailing Desir�� and still carrying Markus with Blasphemy in my other hand as the assorted creatures, inscrutable monsters of the night that they were, poured forth from the doors.

    5

    4

    As I rushed out I saw we were at the top of the Island''s cliff, looking down I saw a dock down below, without thinking I tossed Markus and Desir�� over the edge, doing my best to aim for the water.

    The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

    3

    2

    I was about to Jump myself when suddenly I felt the world around me explode! I was on fire! The last thing I saw was the skin of my hands, charring over like a fucking cigarette! White flakes blowing away from an interior that had been set ablaze, my body had been jerky-dried and lit on fire by the explosion. It reminded me of the one time I saw a log burning in a fireplace, the outside was black and charred, but the interior is what seemed to be burning.

    I was falling through the air in a hail of rubble. Trailing bits of myself, a wash of cold water, and then I felt nothing, blackness.

    Yes, I know the initial blast of the warheads should have completely vaporized me, I never figured out why it didn''t, but to be fair, I don''t know how much was left of me afterward.

    I woke, I don''t know how long later in some sort of bathroom in the tub, as usual Green had receded to my innermost psyche.

    I tried to take a breath in, but there was nothing to breathe with, I sprayed ash in an attempt to scream from whatever orifice was left, whatever it was, sure as hell wasn''t my mouth, I couldn''t feel anything and I could barely see.

    That''s when Desir�� rushed in, "Oh god! I KNEW you''d be OK! Um...shit..." She ran her fingers through the running sink and dribbled a few drops into my...I''m gonna say trachea.

    After she''d done that. I felt a wave of fatigue wash over me, Desir�� began to run the bath water, "You''ll be needing lots of this stuff...it''ll help you heal!"

    My vision blacked out as the water washed over my head.

    While I was under, I had a dream. I was back at my family''s house, my mother was bitching at my grandmother about something I couldn''t make out, my grandma had made potato soup but not mac and cheese for my picky-ass little brother.

    I don''t remember their faces, I don''t remember the conversation, I just remember the general noise accompanied by the delicate and sumptuous taste of the potato soup in my mouth, my favorite food in the universe.

    It was then that I realized where I was, I stood up and looked at the blurry figures as they argued, my little brother crying over the "injustice" of it all.

    As I rushed in to hug them, trying desperately to cling to this memory, the dream turned to ash and blew away in the wind, taking everything I had ever known with it.

    As the dust blew away completely, it revealed a pile of screaming corpses, bloody and gasping even as they all turned their overlarge eyes towards me, I screamed as I suddenly realized that they were speaking, screaming at me, "OUR MASTERS HAVE RETURNED! OUR MASTERS WHO HAVE BURNED! COME AND EASE YOUR BURDEN! COME AND TAKE YOUR TURN!"

    Then, the horrible vision of a field of bloody corpses began to mold itself into a mountain, steps of pure bone appearing on the incline as a throne of bones and viscera appeared on the peak.

    Suddenly I saw a boy that looked just like me take the first step, his eyes were burning red, it was Green! He was the one the throne was for! Only...as he took the second step, he reached out to me, wordlessly he smiled at me and I took his hand.

    And with that we fused again, taking the stairs up and sitting down on this throne of corpses.

    "OUR MASTERS ARE WHOLE, AND THUS YOU SHALL BE KNOWN AS AGENT GREEN, THE PRINCE OF MONSTERS! ALWAYS AND FOREVER!"

    I woke coughing, finally able to breathe, but barely, coughing up more ash, with an actual cough this time as I tried to sit up in the bath, only to scream as I felt my scalp slough off my skull!

    "DEHH-HIH-REHH!" I couldn''t fucking speak, she rushed in and gasped, "Oh wow..OK...guess we need to drain this water...and throw away the dead skin..."

    She spent half an hour in the bathroom cleaning my regenerating body of all its dead flesh, draining the tub, and moving me with Markus''s help to a table, where I became aware with the feeling of my teeth loosening in my gums, that my body was still enduring a half-life from all the radiation, Desir�� would not shut up about how excited she was and how much she owed me and then, even weirder, kissing me on the cheek, which would have been dandy if I had much of a face to begin with, but all it did was make my nerves sting.

    "Don''t worry honey we''ll have you all better in no time." She would say before stuffing bread, cheese, and bologna into my mouth hole and making me down a gallon of water.

    The consumption of appropriate food and water amounts is something that I learned from Desir��, it''s the way to properly regenerate from an ordeal like this, the nutrients help form new limbs and organs, I would form them anyway, but food, sugar, and water helped.

    Over the next few weeks, I had less and less fainting spells, my skin had grown back but I was still horribly dry.

 JAB-76842-24

    Apparently this ship had been just sitting there at the dock since the Trigram kids had brought it, it was a motor boat with general amenities like a bathroom and a kitchen and a living area.

    Nothing special to report about that, partially because I didn''t have time to explore and partially because I didn''t really care.

    Over time a one-sided seafaring romance bloomed between Desir�� and me, she was by no means a good person, but she seemed to have developed some super abusive strain of Florence Nightingale syndrome, which by itself is an odd mental condition where you fall for someone you''ve been taking care of, convinced they need you.

    An example being that she now took to feeding me with a spoon instead of letting me handle it by myself, violently reprimanding me if I tried to handle my own food. not the WORST treatment I''d had at the hands of a woman, but this was making me miss my squad.

    She took to sleeping in bed with me, not like having sex but actually cuddling and sleeping in bed together.  Again all it really did was hurt my healing body and made me miss my squad.

    We were also having sex though, I''m not even going to skirt around that, and it wasn''t something I had a choice in. She got violent when she wanted to have sex, even more so when I didn''t want to, like, breaking fingers, punching my face violent, and it''s not like I didn''t put up a fight, but being that I was still repairing myself from the blast, I was very weak.

    Then, after she''d gotten her rocks off, she''d go right back to being my Friendly, sexy nurse, it was like that one book where the fan of a famous writer breaks his legs, can''t remember the name off the top of my head..did she fuck the writer in that book? Not sure.

    While all this was happening, Markus became like our child, I didn''t want to enable this delusion of hers, but like most people with these problems do, she used poor Markus as an emotional shield, so long as I didn''t want to upset or sadden the poor little guy, this fragile fantasy would stay intact.

    It was not long after we fell into this routine that I realized we weren''t anywhere near Galveston anymore, in fact, looking out the window, I saw Cuba, more specifically, Havana Harbor.

    I looked back in at Desir��, "Dez, you know I need to go back home, we can''t keep this up."

    Desir�� looked up at me from the dining table she was sitting at, all teary-eyed, "I knew you would say that eventually...I was beginning to hope you''d forgotten..."

    Without warning she leapt across the table and swung a pan at my head! I moved out of the way, such a sudden swing caused me to lurch rather than properly dodge, making me fall across a chair, shattering the piece of cheap wood, Desir�� stood over me with the pan as Markus walked in, "mama whats wrong?"

    Her expression changed from one of manic anger to one of nurturing kindness, "nothing sweetie, daddy fell."

    I glared up at her angrily, "This whole family on a boat fantasy you cooked up in your head''s a gigantic farse, Desir��! You''re crazier than I am!"

    She pointed the pan down at me, murder in her eyes, trying to keep her tone level as Markus looked more and more distressed, "I won''t let you go back...not when we have a family to take care of!"

    I snarled at her, "you can''t keep me here! Break me and I''ll just come back, you said it before,  that''s how it works!"

    She had tears welling up in her eyes as she raised the pan, "I''ll kill you before I let you escape!" Finally letting herself scream.

    "Then do it, you bipolar hag!"

    With a pained wail, she brought the pan down on my head.

    I woke up in a state of delirium on my back facing the a burning sun, I sat up and saw Blasphemy was lying next to me with an oar beside it.

    My immediate reaction was to punch the side of the boat, "SON OF A BITCH!"

    That bitch had stolen the boat and left me to float about in this goddamn dinky dinghy!

    It was then that I saw a note inside a plastic bag under Blasphemy, I picked it up.

    It read as such.

    My Love

    Nothing saddens me more than letting you go back to that awful place.

    Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

    But because I know you, I also know that I would be unable to stop you.

    I''ve given you your sword and a paddle, if you ever want to find me, I''m going to be holing up in Havana for a while with our little Markus.

    Love

    Desir��

    I dropped the letter in the water, so ready to just drop this crap, I nearly dumped Blasphemy just because no fucks given, I was STRANDED, in the middle of the ocean!

    It was not long before I felt hungry, thirsty, and tired.

    I know it sounds whiny, but I had eaten nothing but rat for weeks, and I hadn''t eaten before Desir�� jumped on me.

    On top of that, my body still had lots of healing to do.

    Resolved to my fate, I picked up the oar, paddling north.

    My pain got worse and worse as the sun slowly vanished.

    Before you ask me about my timekeeping, every JAB Agent is taught to keep an internal clock, any of the others would tell you the same.

    6:30 PM: sun starts going down, we call this "eye stabbing time"  getting hungry, my stomach has never talked to me before now.

    7:30 PM: the sun is now mostly down, is the simultaneous need to drink and piss normal? I need to piss.

    8:30 PM: the sun is setting, I''ve decided to drink the ocean water, it''s salty and tastes like shit, but my mouth isn''t dry anymore.

    9:30 PM: the sun is down, the moon isn''t up yet, and the saltwater does not agree with my stomach, I puked up what felt like a gallon a few minutes ago

    8:00 AM the following morning: woke up from a stupor I was in and just remembered I fucking drank sea water, the fuck was I thinking?

    I puked up bile in my mouth, the taste causing me to throw up what little was in my stomach again, I horked it into the water next to the boat and I curled up into a ball once I was done, it was then that I realized JUST how lucky I''d been to grow up in a place like Trigram, relatively safe with food and water always close at hand, I know it sounds laughable, calling Trigram safe, but I''d never felt this way BECAUSE of the Agency, even days when we went hungry I could usually steal something to fix that and now I was certain I was going to starve in a fucking rowboat till I hit land or...god forbid...sank.

    "Green!"

    The ocean is the world''s largest graveyard, with depths still unplumbed by man, what would stop this vomitous void from opening up and swallowing one more, a man who would die over and over again deep in the depths?

    "GREEN!"

    Funny, thinking of Trigram is already causing me to hallucinate about Love, shouting at me from the top of a boat across the way.

    "OH GOD HE LOOKS UNCONSCIOUS!"

    Now I saw Edge standing beside her, Wolf and Singleton too, holy shit why Singleton? Why couldn''t my near-death hallucination have been Ripper?

    But as the boat touched my rowboat, I was thrust into reality, Wolf jumped in and seized me, pulling me upwards so Love and Singleton could pull me into the boat, "no, not unconscious, I think he''s out of it though."

    Coming to, I blinked, "huh? Guys!? How the hell did you get here?"

    It was then that I looked beyond the boat, the first thing I noticed was the small group of military boats that were following the one that had picked me up, "how did you find me?"

    Love hugged me and kissed my cheek, "Just out of Galveston and floating in a rowboat! How could we not find you?"

    Edge and Wolf crowded around us and hugged me close.

    I couldn''t help it, I cried, I had been SO close to Galveston and I''d been too fucked to notice.

    But I was safe now, I was in the hands of the people I loved, I was. But Then Green woke up for the first time in what I think now was a day, and ripped himself out of the gang hug to grab Singleton around the throat, "YOU LEFT ME IN THAT HOLE! IF I GET COURT MARSHALED FOR THE THINGS I''VE DONE, I''M TAKING YOU DOWN WITH ME, YOU BASTARD!"

    Singleton flipped us, pinning us to the metal floor of the boat, "Whatever you think I did to deserve that, I DON''T!" He pulled our arms taught, Green thrashed our legs, "says the motherfucker who left us to ROT in that PRISON to DIE!"

    Singleton slapped the ever-loving shit out of our left ear, after the ringing had subsided, Singleton growled, "You FUCKING numskull, I had to pull the team out or EVERYONE would have been dragged in!"

    Green took a few seconds to process, "I... hadn''t thought of that."

    Singleton laughed, "Also I wanted to see how durable you were....holy shit."

    Green turned bright red with rage and Singleton let out another laugh, "fucking with you Green...I''m sorry we had to leave you all by yourself, seems you managed it though, even if you ended up destroying the place."

    Green looked confused as Singleton let us sit up, but then Edge made an explosion noise with his mouth, causing the entirety of Sigma to hug me again, murmuring general approval of my actions, in the midst of the cluster, Love pulled me into a deep kiss that once again made my hair stand on end, when it broke she looked kind of sad, "did you get him?"

    I shook my head, "he WAS there...I doubt he made it out before the explosion."

    Love didn''t look as relieved as I wanted her to, but it was mainly due to the whole reason they were out here in force to begin with.

    Apparently after AI-742 got a hold of me, it refused to respond to Houska''s requests to let me go free, partly because it couldn''t get a hold of me and partly because I met the exact criteria of its objective.

    To contain the un-killable threats.

    On the day of our escape, Houska sent their armada to have the box disassembled, but just as they were getting in the water the box detonated, they''d been scouring the waters around with radiation scrubbers and re-capturing any escapees for a full week, while Desir�� and I were out there flirting with the Cuban border, they were looking for me, this was actually the last sweep they had decided to perform before calling it quits and I was incredibly lucky to have been found.

    Back at the Love Field bunker, I learned they''d held the court marshal without us, meaning that we were not being killed or kicked out, rather we had another "punishment" mission with only a day of rest between the two, after the completion of said mission, we''d be back to normal Agent status again.

    Honestly, I was just glad to be with my crew again.

    Love slept in bed with me that night and was slightly bummed Green didn''t want to have sex, but was understanding when she heard our collective ego had been irreparably bruised by an extremely violent possibly bipolar nymphomaniac.

    Edge in bed with Wolf next to us responded to this by laughing his bag off at the irony.

    The next morning we had a dragon to hunt.

    Seems like Green would get to slay this bastard after all.

 JAB-76842-25

    Remember I said we were told we had a dragon to slay? Well, I wasn''t kidding, Houska had confirmed that the Dragon I''d met in the box had appeared in several towns across North Carolina and was causing rampant destruction.

    The Organization had it on the news as a hurricane so people would avoid the area.

    Transport was a parachute drop from a plane to a base camp area on the beach.  If you''re wondering why I''m not giving locations this time, it''s because I''m not even sure they''re in the same places now that everything''s been reset, you know, the usual, clone the casualties we could find, report the rest missing, victims of flooding in the area, flood the area to make it look authentic.

    The Base camp was not just Houska territory, other groups were there too, a sea of tents full of armed and ready personnel.

    Mostly.

    The groups, as I learned them are as follows:

    1. Houska (duh)

    2. The Ouija society (some weird guys in grey robes with Viking runes all over them that only spoke French)

    3. The institute for higher learning: (some eggheads in suits that run some school, accompanied by some foreign, ill-prepped looking mercs and a few students no older than me)

    4. Nobody (some weird nondescript generic-looking dude in a black suit with a nondescript generic voice who knew WAY too much about everyone there and their reasons for being there)

    5. The Midnight Men (a small company of men and women dressed in odd-looking bodysuits that refused to speak to me)

    The groups'' leaders were all clustered around an improvised meeting table when Sigma touched down. Singleton walked to the table and after some conversation, Sigma was called forward.

    The faces that we saw weren''t glad or welcoming, they were angry, and the looks were all directed at me.

    Grandmaster Benz spoke to me from the head of the table, "Agent Green you are here because of your deeds, deeds that were unnecessary and just plain stupid."

    All the people at the table murmured in agreement, Green and I both kept our mouths shut, "you broke the Labyrinth device, set the Son of Apohpis loose and destroyed the Box." The murmur from the rest was more of a mob style angry noise this time around, "but." He said with raised hands, "you and your team are more than willing to attempt to clean up your mess, even though this creature can''t be killed, by any means."

    Edge threw his hands up angrily, " If we can''t kill it we can at least take it down, we''re not measuring casualties before we even engage!"

    After Edge had spoken, a student from the Institute for Higher Learning spoke up, "I think it CAN be killed."

    Everyone looked at the student, she wore a British schoolgirl uniform, she was thin and petite with long straight red hair and freckles, her eyes were bright green and she held a dossier, which she dropped on the table, "there''s a sword that is named in this Dossier as "the Fang of Apophis, the god slayer."

    If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    Everyone let out a collective groan, and one of the Midnight men finally spoke, "We don''t have TIME to look for some old sword! We need to re-contain this fucker!"

    Wolf raises her hand, "where IS the fucker? If you guys don''t mind, I''ll just take my team and go get him."

    Benz rubs his temples, "Wolf...because of Green''s role in the creature''s release, Sigma will not be alone on this, you''ll be having help, two of the allied organizations are contributing a few of their personnel." As he said this, the girl who spoke up earlier stepped forward, "Alexis Rowston, reporting for duty!" One of the Midnight Men stepped forward, he was an athletic man with an untidy shock of brown hair, with sky blue eyes, "Lewis Svensta reporting for duty."

    I groan, "No, we can handle this."

    The two applicants looked confused as Benz boomed across the table, "You are about ten seconds from getting your asses handed to you by a small army of armed men, now follow my orders or I will HAVE those asses swept under the rug!"

    Wolf elbowed me hard in the ribs, "Sir yes sir! We''ll follow orders, sir!"

    Benz nodded, wiping his forehead, "Thank you, Agent Wolf."

    As per his orders, we took the new applicants in and boarded a Boeing CH-47 Helicopter bound for the current resting place of the dragon.

    Alexis wasted no time in shaking my hand vigorously, "I''ve heard a lot about you, Agent Green! I''ve wanted to study you up close for a while."

    Before I could respond she had some instruments out of her bag and was measuring the slope of my head, I raised an eyebrow, "What''s different about the shape of MY head?"

    Alexis chuckled, "You and your group, You''re 3rd generation JAB, Trigram uses incredibly cruel and destructive methods, but they''re monstrously effective, have you encountered scales in any odd places?''"

    I blinked, "wait a second, third Generation? And what does that have to do with the shape of my head?"

    Alexis nodded, "your bones are thicker, making the crest of your skull half an inch higher than normal people, as for what I said, it means that you''re the third generation in a five generation series of soldiers made by Trigram, because you''re third Gen, you had the straight Protocell injection as well as no neural implants or control devices."

    I studied her face as she fascinatedly continued to examine me, she was beautiful, especially when she smiled, absolutely covered in freckles, "how do you know all this??"

    She looks at me, "the institute of higher learning prides itself on giving its students access to all knowledge of the esoteric."

    She''d studied the JAB case files, somehow her school had made that possible, "but why are we so special?"

    She ignored my question and just kept talking, "I''ve studied 5th gen JABs but they''re little more than jacked meat robots, all machine-controlled with code phrases and pre-programmed behavior, whereas your bones are just a bit thicker, muscles stronger and your reaction time is faster..along with the mutations of course, I''m not even sure why they went beyond Gen 3." She starts rubbing the sides of my head with her fingertips.

    "I''d love to articulate your skeleton postmortem...your bones must look fascinating."

    Thoroughly creeped out, I swat her hands away, "Eyes front, we need to focus on the dragon."

    Alexis sighed, "Oh it''s not a dragon, it just looks like one! It grew wings out of necessity to escape from an enclosure, but it''s not a dragon."

    I narrow my eyes, "if it''s not a dragon then what the hell is it?"

    Alexis shrugs, "It''s just a really...big... hard to kill Lizard."

    Wolf laughs, "an immortal flying alligator."

    Edge corrected her, "crocodile."

 JAB-76842-26

    I looked over at Lewis, he was manifesting some sort of bladed weapon out of the wrist of his suit, then retracting it again repeatedly, it wasnt a mechanism, it just formed and unformed out of the...fabric?

    "Lewis, focus, we''re talking." I announce, he looks at me and nods, "oh I can hear you, its just nothing you''ve said is new to me." he replied, "we get to this thing and immobilize it."

    Edge sighs, "I wish there was some record of this big ass reptile, then we''d be able to formulate a good strat...but as it is, I''m just as in the dark as I was the night we escaped the Agency."

    Alexis, laughed, "sorry do you not know?" She looked at all of us with disbelief, to which we responded with incredulous stares, "oh, but you have to know!"

    "Know what!?" shouts Edge, done with her shit already.

    Alexis sighed, putting her hands in her lap as if she were explaining math to first graders, "Team Sigma, the source of the neutral protocells that mutated you all is the very creature we''re facing today, I''m appalled that your bosses would keep this info from you."

    The hair on the back of my neck stood on end as she told me, "You mean that thing out there is why we''re like this?"

    Alexis nodded sadly, "It''s seriously sad, the induction of its DNA is very fatal to anyone older than age 12 due to the fixed nature of the body after puberty settles, which is why Trigram has to kidnap children."

    Wolf grabs her by the front of her shirt, "How do you know this!?"

    She smiled as if Wolf wasnt threatening her, "Oh I''ve been studying you all for quite some time, you, Trigram, The monster, all of it! You could say I''m a spe-." Just then we all lurched forward as the Helicopter was slammed from the side, we began to go down in a wide set spiral as the blades of the Helicopter tried frantically to regain their previous rhythm.

    The pilot started cursing angrily as he picked up the radio, "FUCK! Mayday! Mayday! We are-" Suddenly another pass took out the cockpit, taking the entire front of the helicopter with it! We were dropping now and all we could think to do was bail out!

    For Sigma it went well, we landed and rolled to assuage any leg breakage, Lewis fell on his face and Alexis landed as if she''d just stepped off the front porch!

    The Helicopter crashed down behind us, the remains burying themselves in the ground before bursting into flames!

    Backlit by the burning Helicopter, Alexis smiled at me, speaking matter-of-factly and not at all like we were in danger, "We have company."

    The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

    Everyone looked up to see the Sickly green, scaly "Dragon" diving through the sky towards us, wings open but tucked, its claws out in front like it was a falcon coming after a rabbit! "Here he comes!" Gleefully Shouted Alexis.

    Everyone but Green scattered, the rest of Sigma drawing guns while he stood in place and drew Blasphemy, which we''d replaced one of our swords with, "Come get it you fuck!"

    Alexis stopped in her sprint to turn and pull out a notepad, scribbling in it only to be grabbed by a now bloody-faced Lewis, "Get out of the damn way!"

    As the Dragon charged through the sky towards us, I could hear my sword murmuring, looking down in my peripheral I saw the runes manifested on the blade again, glowing bright green, it was a beautiful light, something I had trouble looking away from. but then Green made me snap around and leap directly before The creature''s claws gouged into the dirt below me!

    I came down in a perfect parabola, landing on the Dragon''s back, using Blasphemy to dig into this thing''s back flesh directly behind the left shoulder blade! It Let out a choked scream as its back began to gush brown thick glutinous blood around the hilt of my sword, then without another warning it took off into the sky again, from the ground I heard Wolf shouting, "Green you idiot!"

    The ground quickly vanished as we went skyward, the creature looked back at me, malice in its eyes as its muscular, armored body flexed in flight, it spoke to me in an angry voice and the vibrations through my fucking sword hand made my body feel like it had in the box, "congratulations, boy, you''re the first to pierce my hide in over a century, but I''m afraid that, in doing so, you''ve made the last mistake of your life."

    Green latched his free hand around one of the creature''s alligator scales to keep an even footing, our face being blasted by the wind as I steadied myself, "I suppose its a matter of opinion! Being that I''m part you, I''m not sure I have a last of anything!"

    The Dragon actually seemed shocked for a split second, it''s eyes widening as they stared at me from over its shoulder, "what!?"

    Green grinned, but stayed silent as he tugged Blasphemy free, jamming it back into the Dragon''s scaly flesh at a different point further up it''s shoulder, once again the blade passing through it like butter!

    "Get off me!" The creature did wheels in the air, barrel rolls, aileron rolls, back flips and front flips, but we hung on, "What''s the matter? Scared of me?" Taunted Green, but instead of responding, the creature pumped its wings and flew even higher, higher and higher until the sky ceased to be blue and turned black! We held our breath as the creature tucked its wings and began to dive back down to earth!

    I gasped for air as soon as I could see clouds, it wasn''t much help as the air around me began to heat up and burn, the friction was too much and my fireproof coat caught fire! So did my hair and pretty much everything, I was literally on fire, burning alive again as I held on for dear life!

    "What the hell are you doing!?" I screamed at the thing, again it wouldn''t answer.

    Almost in reaction to my screams, Blasphemy began to speak, screaming like the corpse throne had in my dream.

    "CALL UPON US, CALL OUR NAME! SUNDER YOUR ENEMIES IN ETERNAL FLAME!"

    "Don''t you fucking do it!" Shouted The creature, turning its head as far as it could, snapping at me, but its neck was too short, making it snap at thin air as we began to spin out in the air!

    Without hesitation, I took a deep breath of the burning air and choked out, "Blasphemy!"

    The creature screamed as a white light enveloped us both.

 JAB-76842-27

    I woke up in a soft feather bed, I wasn''t in any pain, looking under the covers I saw I was completely naked, all of my gear, clothes, and weapons gone!

    "What...the hell?"

    It was then that I heard a voice, "Oh! prin harul lui Dumnezeu! el se treze?te!"

    I looked up from under the covers and blinked hard, standing at the foot of the bed was a nun, she looked to be in her late 20s, looking around I could see I was in some sort of monastery or a convent. I''m not sure what you call a place where nuns live.

    "Uh...I must''ve hit my head, please tell me you speak English and you''re not speaking something else." I sit up, the sight of my unclothed toned midriff causes the Nun to look away nervously, "??i voi aduce haine..." she turned and left, while she was gone I did my best to try and remember when I''d heard that language before, It was familiar to me.

    She came back carrying some jeans and a plain T-shirt, she tossed them at me and left again.

    "Great...I''m a victim of the age old language barrier." I got dressed, the pants and shirt were both overlarge so I used a small length of what looked like a flagellation rope as a belt. the room I was in had a true Gothic appeal to it, it had stained glass windows and everything but the wood furniture was stone.

    It was not very long before three older nuns were in my room looking me over, reading from a large leather-bound book and inspecting me, "Is that the bible?" I asked tentatively as they babbled at each other in the same language that the younger one was speaking

    One of the older nuns shushed me and they approached closer, running their hands through my hair and feeling my face with their gross old hands.

    "What...the fuck?"

    One of the not-so-old ones (still old tho) whacked me on the ass with a stick, "Hush! We''re looking you over." The accent was unmistakable, I was in god damn Romania, "Okay...so you guys DO speak English."

    The stick came round again, PAP, "I said HUSH! I''m one of the few here who can understand you, I will answer questions later."

    They seem to finish their examination, and then the oldest flings a vial of water on me, muttering this time in Latin.

    "In nomine patris et filii et spiritus sancti" she mutters, apparently it was a test because she nods at the English speaking one who walks away, "come with me."

    I follow, now thoroughly confused, she takes me out into the courtyard and I see the crater I made in its full glory, inside the crater is a pile of bones, it''s the Dragon''s skeleton, blackened dry bones unmoving in a blackened pit that took up half the courtyard.

    The crater still wasn''t as big as the creature had been, depending on when he broke apart, his bones must have been scattered further than this.

    "Hey..." I ask, "hrm?" Asks the old nun as we continue past it, "how long ago did we fall out of the sky?"

    The nun laughed, "you fell at 8:00am on Monday week before last! Gave us all quite a fright."

    I shrug, the knowledge that I had been gone a week not as hard-hitting as I assumed it would be, I responded to her with apologies, "I''d assume, since I destroyed your courtyard, I''m so sorry, this must be very strange for you."

    The Nun smiled at me with genuine joy on her face, "My child, Pietra Nonia has been a hotbed of odd comings and goings for years, everyone here is used to it... it''s not often we get visitors however, it is an honor to play host to so many unique visitors."

    I blink, "you get a lot of people like me?"

    She shakes her head, "no, not like you. Just very similar...I have to thank you."

    I must have looked confused because she smiled widely, "Thank me?"

    She nods, "You slew that horrible monster, we heard its roar before you hit the ground, a fearsome creature to be sure, and it must have tuckered you out, you slept a whole fortnight!"

    "A whole...two weeks?" I blinked hard, the weight of my missing time finally hitting my brain, "and I''m in Pietra Nonia...Romania?" The Nun and I reached the other side, at the chapel, "exactly, my sisterhood has overseen this chapel for so long, I''ve seen so many things, this is not the strangest, but you are, by far the most vocal of our visitors."

    "Did I have a sword with me?" I hadn''t seen Blasphemy in the crater, it must have vanished again.

    "No, no sword, did you have one before you crashed?" I nod fast, "it''s very important that I find it."

    She placed a hand on my shoulder, "We must first introduce you to the rest of the convent."

    Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.

    She pulled the door open and walked in with me behind her, the heavy door shut behind us.

    Inside the chapel were a dozen or so postulate nuns clustered around the statue of Mother Mary, praying.  Postulates are nuns who haven''t taken their nun vows yet so they wear different colors, and that is exactly all I know about that. "why are there so many new nuns?" Green asks, the sound causes everyone to look up from their prayers. The Nun I was with smiled again, "There was a bout of illness that took a large amount of the sisters last year, we''ve received an unusually large amount of new Postulates since then."

    I nod pensively as the older nun turns to the Postulates, all looking to be in their late teens, some a bit older but not much, telling them in both Romanian and English in turn that I was the one who fell out of the sky.

    After they all looked at me with these shining pure eyes, Green got all sorts of sacrilegious thoughts and I decided all of this needed to stop.

    "Ladies, I''m very far from home, and I just need a phone!"

    The postulates continued to ogle and it began to bother me.

    "Its not like I''m the archangel Michael, My name is Green, and I need a phone."

    In the midst of their contemplation of me, the older Nun sighed, "no phones in here, you''d have to go into town for that." As she said this, one of the Postulates reached out to touch me and for some reason it really freaked me out.

    I threw my hands up and left, pushing the doors back open to go look at the crater, followed by ALL the postulates, falling over each other to keep looking at me. I turned to the left and jumped about a mile high when I saw the older nun who had not left my side since I stormed out, she looked at me with raised eyebrows as I straightened my shirt, "We need to bury this thing...do you have concrete?"

    A few of the English-speaking postulates run off around the chapel and come back with powder in large bags, "We found this, is this what you''re looking for?" I walk over and inspect the bags, "Brick Mortar...close enough."

    The older Nun put another hand on my shoulder, "But what about your sword?"

    I rubbed my nose with my thumb and forefinger, eyes closed in exasperation, I was just a guy who lost things and it bothered me.

    "we''ll get to my sword later, it''s not going anywhere.

    The older nun nodded, "as you wish." And with that, I began the lengthy process of breaking the bones apart and filling the crater with Mortar to keep this thing from rising again, The Postulates that I hadn''t asked to help all watched in apparent awe as I used the one sledgehammer I could find in the abbey to shatter the thing''s bones, legs, arms,  toes, fingers, wing bones, jaw, tail, all the while pouring mortar and lime between the cracks and fractures, hoping this at least would keep it down for a little bit.

    You see I was under the assumption that it wasn''t dead, when in fact Blasphemy had killed it pretty damn dead, but I didn''t believe that for a second.

    The T-shirt was soaked with sweat and itching me so I pulled it off to wring it out, this got a collective gasp from the surrounding postulates.

    "Come on ladies, don''t you have THINGS to do!?" I turned to face them to see that some had pulled up chairs, my scalp prickled with embarrassment.

    Now I want it understood that I do not consider myself handsome, nor do I consider myself physically appealing as my body was a tool for my job, all the time I was forced to put into honing it was like sharpening a blade or cleaning a gun, I had no idea what kind of figurative tunnel into hell, I was digging myself into when I took off my shirt that day.

    Later in the day, the hole was finally full of Mortar, Lime and Bone chips, I hadn''t bothered to put my sweat soaked shirt on and was now using it as a hat to block the sun and cool off my back.

    All the while I''d been working and the Postulate Nuns had barely left me alone, only leaving for chores and meals, after which they would bring me food and water. They even attempted to make conversation with me.

    "You said your name is Green?" Asked one named Sister Eva, "Yes." I groan as I swing the hammer into the wedge I had placed in a hole in one of the shin bones, driving the wedge deeper and causing the bone to crack wide open, "like the color?"

    I stop swinging the hammer and she hands me the mortar pan, I take a glob out of the pan and slather it into the fracture, "Yes, like the color." I sigh and she rushes back towards the small crowd and I hear a slew of giggles before I continue hammering away.

    That''s most of what I was dealing with, other than that, a few more asked if I was an angel and I usually didn''t even dignify those with answers.

    I still don''t know why they persisted in this delusion.

    Finally, after I had made sure the whole corpse was buried properly, I muttered to one of the nuns that I was exhausted, staggered into the room they made for me, and fell face-first into the feather bed.

    What felt like an instant later I was snapped out of a dreamless sleep by the nuns who had flagged down a car to take me into town so that I could use the phone.

    One of the younger, non postulate nuns was sent to accompany me, she spoke English as well as romanian and was willing to translate for me.

    "Hello, I am Sister Madelyn, I apologize for our Postulates, most of them come from incredibly repressive families and have read too many filthy books."

    I blink, "That doesn''t make any sense."

    She laughed, "You''ve never been repressed."

    We set off and arrived in a quaint little town whose buildings looked to be older than most of the older residents.

    "Welcome to Busteni, where you will find a phone to call whatever masters you serve and be gone from this place."

    I look at her disgruntled face with a furrowed brow, "Sister, have I upset you in some way?"

    She looked at me with a serious glare, she wasn''t bad-looking honestly, looked about 20 or early 20s, "I meant no offense, I only meant that once your masters hear you call, they will come to get you and there will be trouble for this town."

    I look down for a second, "you sound like you''ve experienced this before."

    Madelyn nods, "There have been other visits and other retrievals, often messy and troublesome for the people of Busteni."

    I became more and more concerned with each word she spoke, "How bad are they usually?"

    Sister Madelyn looked away, her eyes becoming glassy as she remembered, "There were fatalities last time...two children and their father."

    I blink, shocked, "Do...you know why?"

    She sighed, "One of the children got too close to the retrieval team and was reprimanded by the leader, the father stepped towards the man, whether to strike him or chide him for yelling at a child, we will never know, because the leader ordered his men to open fire on the family...they didn''t stand a chance."

    I paused, the idea that such a simple mission could go so badly really put me off, but I had faith in my squad, I put a hand on her shoulder, making her jump, I tried to smile to reassure her, "I''ll make sure it''s not messy."

    She looked up at me out of her reverie, "How can you do that? Even if you ask, how can you be sure?"

    I smile wider, the solution was all too easy, "I have a different number to call."

 JAB-76842-28

    We got to the nearest gas station and I sat in the owner''s office while he let me use his shitty fuzzy sounding landline.

    "Green??" Singleton answered the phone, he had given us all the number for his SAT phone before we left to fight the dragon.

    "Easy, Cheese boy, the target has been neutralized."

    "Bullshit." He chuckled

    "I''m telling the truth and I''m stuck in Romania...a little town in the mountains called Busteni...do me a favor?"

    Singleton paused, "...what?"

    "Just bring the guys and an APC or a helicopter, apparently this place is like Point Nemo for people like us, everything weird ends up here eventually and retrieval efforts in the past have ended in casualties."

    Singleton was silent for a bit before he spoke, "Alright, we''ll do that...where is the body of the creature?"

    I look at sister Madelyn, "Bone chips in a crater on one of the mountains, I broke the bones apart and filled the cracks with brick mortar."

    Singleton chuckled, "alright...we''ll need a picture of the crater before we can go...do you remember where it is?"

    "Yeah, I can get you there but you have to promise it''s just the guys and you."

    There was a short silence before he spoke again, "It''s a deal, we''ll roll out in 2 hours and see you when we see you."

    "That''s good to hear," I say, "Can I get an ETA?"

    Singleton murmured somewhere away from the phone for a second, "Two days "

    I close my eyes, "Great...I''ll be staying in a nun convent in the mountains, right near the crater, it''s called Pietra Nonia.".

    Singleton grunted and affirmative and hung up, I look back at Sister Madelyn, "and that''s how you keep casualties to a minimum."

    She crossed her arms, "You do not know that yet."

    I shrug, "They said two days, so let''s get back to the convent...at least if im up there, even if they dont make good on their promise, the townspeople wont be in danger."

    Her brow furrowed for a second and then her eyes widened, "youre right! With you at Pietra Nonia there is no danger to the people of this town!" She sighed, obviously heavily relieved.

    She drove me back to Pietra Nonia and I volunteered to help with chores to pass the time.

    Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

    There were still a few eager postulates who ogled me as I raked leaves, mowed the grass, and swept and mopped the corridors, though considerably less than there had been. I suppose the novelty of the boy who fell from the sky had worn off.

    I helped snuff the candles in the chapel and went to bed only to find another nun sitting on my bed, "Hello."

    I blinked and my look of confusion must have been funny because this new nun began to laugh, "How forward this must appear...no, I''m not here for that, I am a nun after all."

    I gesture towards her, "Ok but surely you must have known I would assume..."

    She waved a hand and presented me with a plate of dinner, "You didn''t eat at dinner...here."

    I take the food and sit next to her, the meal was some sort of grey flank steak with peas, carrots and mashed potatoes, "Thank you, sister...what meat is this?"

    She looks at me, a suspicious glint in her eyes, "mutton."

    I looked down at the rare meat, the suspicious side-eye made 3 scenarios go through my head all at once.

    1. She was trying to poison me, which wouldn''t work but would imply some things about her I wasn''t comfortable contemplating at this time.

    2. She had cooked with consecrated ingredients in a roundabout way of finding out if I was demonic in origin, this would be the most logical of the 3 scenarios

    3. She had no ill or nefarious intentions and was simply a good Samaritan giving me food when I had forgotten to go to dinner.

    At any rate, I was hungry and the worst thing she could have done was poison me.

    Right?

    The mutton wasn''t mutton though, mind you I''d never had mutton before, but I''ll tell you what I had eaten as a child before Trigram took me.

    Alligator nuggets.

    The smell and taste were unmistakable, of course without the Cajun twang of the holy trinity, the flavor and mouth feel of the meat was all I had to go on.

    There were no alligators in Romania, I look at the Nun, her smile widened to inhuman proportions and her eyes began to luminesce, "How does the flesh of your kill taste?"

    My brow furrowed and my stomach churned as I stood up, "What meat is this??"

    The nun shrugged, "It fell out of the sky, I can only assume that it came from the beast..."

    I retched as I felt the meat squirming in my esophagus, I lunged forward and grabbed her by her front, Green growled at her, "T-take me to the rest...NOW!!" I can feel my insides wiggling as the meat flexed within me, it was trying to escape.

    She effortlessly removed my hands with a slowness that made my heart sink and, my wrist in hand, took me into the kitchen where a single leg attached to a quarter of a section of the Dragon''s tail was twitching all by itself, the leg freshly grown, baby toes flexing, laying on the cutting board, bleeding actively from a grown over burn scar.

    I knew I hadn''t seen all of it in the crater.

    In the middle of my puzzling on how to get rid of it, Green or something else made me grab the length of tail and start taking bites, my teeth shearing through the tough, stringy, raw flesh and bony scales as I swallowed without really chewing. Driven by nothing more than some sort of primal instinct to do away with all of it!

    I could feel the meat trying to wriggle away as I chewed it, the sinew trying to wiggle out of my teeth as I tore chunks away from the bones.

    Before I knew it I was munching on those bones, crunching and then swallowing the vertebrae, and the more I ate the better I felt.

    Finally the tail had been consumed entirely, I looked down at my belly to see if I looked like I''d just consumed a quarter ton of meat, but no, there was nothing but a full feeling.

    It was then that I heard a dark chuckle in the back of my head, once and then it was gone, and then my body was wracked by horrific pains, all the muscles in my body flexing in unison as I screamed.

    Eyes luminescing in the dark, the nun vanished around the corner as I clawed at the flesh of my stomach as I felt it writhe, a deep anguished roar coming from my throat as I headbutted the nearby wall, I felt the stone crack as my skull burst through!

 JAB-76842-29

    After I pull my bleeding head from the wall,  a dark voice speaks to me, not Green, not me, something else.

    "Well, well, well, Agent Green, eating me? Do you think you''re tough enough? Think you can take it?"

    It was the Dragon.

    Unable to control myself, I ran to the gate that had been shut and locked, I grabbed at the bars and screamed as more pain wracked my body!

    Once more that dark voice, thumping like a second heart in my chest, "You may think you know what you''re doing, but you have no idea what you''ve just done, you have to let go."

    I was forced to let go of the gate, becoming woozy, staggering away towards the crater, suddenly I felt something coming up my throat and I bent over to retch.

    The Dark voice was growing in anger and ferocity as I felt like I was about to throw up, "You have NO idea what kind of pain you''d be taking on!! LET ME OUT!!"

    A HAND covered in sickly green scales, sporting claws bursts out of my mouth and reaches for the crater, only to be sucked back in against my volition.

    the voice howls inside my head, "FINE Boy, if you think you''re tough enough to believe you can unseat me, "Prince of monsters."  Take this gift as a final caveat to what you''ve inherited, may you choke on all manner of foulness."

    I fell to my knees and clutched at my belly as the dragon meat slowly calmed down.

    "Beast eater." I heard the dark voice in the back of my head one last time before it vanished for good.

    I flexed my hands, they felt stronger.

    "The fuck was that??" Asked Green

    "You dont know??" I ask in terror, "We just ATE part of the dragon!!"

    Green violently shrugged, "Now I feel like I could fight god!!"

    I roll my eyes, "You always feel like you can fight god, but out of curiosity what do you mean?"

    He raised our left hand and the fingers suddenly thickened, bones crackling as they swelled, scales sprouting from the skin along with a small fountain of blood, my nails creaking as they elongated and thickened into familiar looking talons.

    Green purred, "Looks like the old bastard left us a few things in his will."

    Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

    He gently but quickly slashed a claw across the the skull of the dragon which poked out of the crater, the bone, previously so stonelike and immovable, came open under my claw, which quickly receded into my normal hand after I had done that.

    "Oh..." I exhaled, my pulse quickening as I realized what I had just done, "That is a KILLER power...do we have ALL his abilities?"

    Green looked at our hand and flexed it, "I wanna see if we can make wings...we''ll be like a flying demon!!"

    I sighed as he took off our shirt, "Ok, alright, we''re doing this."

    He raised his hands and roared at the sky as once again, spontaneous and explosive limb growth sent a shock through my system, blood spraying all over the courtyard as 30-foot batlike wings sprang from my back!

    I coughed in pain as I felt that my torso was now slightly longer, with new ribs and additional shoulder/collar bones flexing as I flexed my new wings.

    Green laughed as they flexed, "Yes!! Fucking yes!!

    And with a motion I didn''t know we could do, the bones began to crunch back into my back, quickly and at speeds I had never thought possible, our body resuming it''s traditionally humanoid shape with NO sign we had ever done anything remotely similar to what I had seen.

    I looked down at my hands, I could see something beneath my dermis hardening as I looked, the flesh of my arms writhing, "Why do I get the feeling that we''ll only be able to do that a few more times before it becomes permanent?"

    Green shrugged, "We''ll burn that can of beans when we lay in it....for now let''s find that freaky Nun, she''s obviously not like the others here."

    After unsuccessfully looking for the Nun who had given me the meat, I cleaned up the mess left by the tail and went to bed.

    The morning came and I was attacked by Agents Love, Wolf, and Edge, who all dove on top of me in bed.

    I screamed and then I started laughing as they slid off me, Love still lying on me as I looked at her grinning face in disbelief, "I thought Singleton said 2 days!?"

    Love pulled me into a hug, "Like we were gonna get a full night''s sleep without getting you back!"

    Edge clapped me on the shoulder, "Yeah man, we missed you!"

    Wolf pushed Love aside to punch me in the chest, then hugged me, "Dumbshit! I can''t believe you pulled that off..."

    I grunted as she squeezed the air out of me, "You guys are never gonna believe how it all went down..."

    "I think I''d like to hear about it." A voice from behind us caused me to look and see, Pilum standing there next to Singleton in the doorway, I sat up fully.

    "Sir."

    In the next half hour, I took great care to explain everything that had happened to Pilum, right down to recounting the events inside The Box with Desir��.

    "You''ve been through a lot this last couple of weeks, Agent Green, but you, against all odds and scientific data, killed a creature that all Houska scientists past and present thought was unkillable by any means...a commendation is in order....but first we have to get you all home."

    As we were leaving, I saw Pilum put a huge wad of cash into the hand of an even older Nun I hadn''t seen before, different from the one who had sent me into town.

    She looked up at me as we passed and I saw that same inhuman smile on her face.

    "What...is she?" I asked Pilum as we got into the Helicopter that sat just outside the convent

    "Kid, if I knew the answer to that, I''d probably have sent you guys here already to deal with them...but so far the nuns of this convent''s true nature have eluded us, and they are very cooperative....so we leave them be."

    I looked down to see the nuns all congregating in the courtyard around the buried bones of the dragon and I felt a sinking in the pit of my stomach as we flew away.

 JAB-76842-30

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    <u></u>

 JAB-76842-31

    When we finally became too exhausted to fight back I was expecting her to shred my jugular, but instead her eyes glowed brighter and her bear trap smile fell into a scowl, "after everything you''ve been through, You aught to know better."

    Green had receded because of the sleep miasma we were in, using this opportunity, I spoke to her, struggling to keep my eyes open, "I know...but Green is a narcissistic psychopath."

    She squinted at me, "You and Green aren''t the same person?"

    I shake my head, desperate to communicate the negative even as my neck muscles scream at me, "I''m not him..."

    She dropped me and I rolled from my knees to my back as my body shook with any effort, "...more than one? There''s more than one of you in there?"

    I cough, breathing began to need more effort, "Yes...there''s more than one...and he''s not the best guy...im sorry..."

    She scrutinized me, apparently seeing some truth in my words, and she sat next to me.

    The darkness faded away and MAL leaned towards me, her skin no longer pale, her eyes no longer glowing, I looked up, struggling to even blink as I saw that my team was assembling to my defence, I wiggled on the floor, "Guys...wait..."

    After they seemed to relax, Love picked me up, "You need to stop instigating fights with our friends, Green."

    As she sat me down in a chair, MAL walked over to me, looking into my eyes, "Who are you? What is your name?"

    "Green," I responded with a wheeze.

    She shook her head, "No, your name, before Trigram."

    My head fell forward as I stopped being able to support my head''s weight, knowing as I wracked my tired brain that I had forgotten my name. "I...I don''t know."

    MAL looked incredibly sad as she patted my head, "We''ll help you find out...all of you...for now, get some rest."

    She then swatted me in the face, "And STOP being an asshole!"

    As if given leave to die, I faded out of knowing, my mind finally haven given in to sleep.

    I woke up in my bunk back at the Trigram bunker, I gasped for breath, looking down I saw that I was wearing my old coveralls, as I was looking around, there was that familiar gurgling wash of water through the pipes in the corridor outside our room, the proof was right in front of me, I was 12 again.

    "Green?? GREEN!?" i shouted, straining to hear if he would respond, only to be met with a disgruntled grunt from above me, Love had woken up and was now looking over the bunk at me, "Shut up ''42, I''m trying to get some sleep!"

    I blinked, 42, was a nickname I had been given by my squad, I wasn''t Agent Green, I was JAB-76842, we were in the early stages of the project still, and judging from the long gash traveling vertically up my chest we had JUST placed first in the culling charts after I had taken a spear to my chest only to impale myself further and decapitate JAB-43561, I remember his face too, he had been so sure that his spear would keep me at a distance.

    Without my regeneration powers however, I was never sure if I was gonna die or not, Which is the exact level of badass dumbassery that landed my squad on top of the charts.

    I sat up in bed, "Sorry 44...what day is it?"

    She hisses at me, leaning over the side and slapping me, a light tap compared to what she''d be capable of later, "I said shut up! It''s Hygiene day tomorrow and I need the sleep!"

    As she spoke, Ripper leaned over her, his kind face smiling at me from behind her, "Go to sleep, little brother, we don''t get to take naps remember?"

    His smile fractured, the skin of his face peeling off and away to reveal the black oozing skin of that ooze monster, Agent Onyx,  the one who I''m sure had died in the explosion, his smile wide, still speaking in Ripper''s voice, "Not unless it''s forever, y''know?"

    Suddenly I was sitting in another room that I immediately recognized.

    The Trigram Oxygen Garden.

    The facility was so deep in the earth that oxygen had to be fed to the lower levels, so every 2 levels or so they had an oxygen garden, a patch of trees and other plants fed by a hydroponics system, inside the garden they kept wildlife to feed the plants, a completely enclosed ecosystem.

    This was oxygen garden 3, 3rd one down from the top level, in this oxygen garden was a raccoon I had fostered a bond with by feeding him at lunch time, I had named him stinky because he liked to mess with the skunk that also lived there.

    The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    In my lap sat an MRE, mashed potatoes, and sliced turkey with watery ass brown gravy, Stinky sat next to me, watching me look at him before reaching in to grab a handful of turkey, rushing off to eat it as I paid him absolutely no mind.

    "Hey 76842." A voice that seemed familiar, yet so strangely foreign graced my ears, there were seconds of confusion before I finally saw him standing in the door of the oxygen garden, his perfect grin terrified me, perfectly alligned and white, unnatural and eerily familiar. It was JAB-88888, he was older than the rest of us, closer to 13, larger at any rate.

    "I think that''s my MRE." He said in a nonchalant voice, once again setting off alarm bells in my head, I had heard that voice present day...but where?

    I stood up and defiantly handed the plastic container to Stinky who took the whole thing and ran behind a tree.

    He grabbed me by the front of my coveralls and kneed me in the crotch, I grunted in pain, bringing an elbow up and across his jaw, he staggered away, regaining his balance and swinging a wild right hook that I barely was able to block in time, though I was able to interrupt his swing, his fist still made contact with my eye, rattling my brain and making me fall over.

    He stepped over me and though I was too dazed to see it in reality, I knew what he was about to do.

    As soon as he had passed me, he grabbed for Stinky who was absorbed in eating, as I finally got up, I heard his anguished, fearful hisses and squeaks as JAB-88888 squeezed the life out of him, I turned to rush to Stinky''s aid, too late, I body checked that fucker, knocking him over as I climbed on top, grabbing 88888''s face, jamming my thumbs into his eyes with a yell of anger! Angry tears seeping down my face as I ground down, blood spraying into my own eyes as he struggled. After he had stopped moving, I let go and stepped off him, wiping my eyes.

    When things once again became visible, I was no longer in the oxygen garden.

    I was standing in a living room watching PBS Kids.

    I looked around, the walls were a strange but comforting shade of salmon, there were works of art on the walls along with pictures of a family I didn''t know.

    Looking down at myself I could see I was no longer 11, I was younger, much younger, 1 or 2 perhaps.

    Into the room walked a woman, blonde, wearing wide rim glasses, she seemed older, she was holding a stuffed dalmatian, tiny but perfect for small hands, "Here we are, my grandson''s little stuffed friend, whats his name, Jackie?"

    "Didoh..." came out of my little mouth, she pulled me into a hug, "Ben! Get in here, He said his first word!!"

    A man with an oblong head and long hair rushed in, looking excited, "Jack said what? What did he say?"

    She pointed to the Dalmatian, "Didoh, he told me the name of his little friend."

    Ben rolled his eyes, "Mom that''s not his first word his first word would have to be-"

    I cut him off, "Daddy!"

    They looked at me shocked, then burst into laughter that blasted out my tiny eardrums, making little me cry.

    Suddenly I opened my eyes and saw MAL, she''d been holding my head apparently, there were tears in her eyes as well, "Your name..."

    -

    I hold up a hand, my body feeling very well rested as opposed to how it had felt before that series of flashbacks, while my head throbbed in horrible pain.

    "Do. Not." She looked taken aback at my words, "Why? Aren''t you happy to learn it at long last?"

    I shake my head, the memory she had unlocked burning in my skull like hot iron, "it hurts." I whimpered, feeling pathetic as she looked at me, worried.

    I sit up, immediately being forced down by Love who looks at MAL, "Go on, keep digging."

    She sat back down, "No, we''re done here...I know his real name and so does he, now I can start on all of you."

    I sit up and see that my squad and I are in the relaxation room of the gym, with dim lights and beds, an empty room, robbed of the people who would usually need it, because of Green''s hubris.

    Love gets off me, touching my face gently, "When we''re done, we can finally know each other''s names!"

    They laid down on the other beds, MAL looked at me sadly, "You can go back to your bunk now...I''ve put Green down for a nap, I will send the others back to you as we uncover their names."

    I feel a twinge of worry, this was a creature of the night, notoriously out for themselves, she seemed way too eager to help us and my head still hurt, "how do I know that you''re not planning on sucking their blood??"

    She stopped, looking offended, "why would you accuse me of that when I''ve done nothing but help you??"

    Edge hopped up from his bed, rushing over and violently shoving me, "Leave, now."

    I looked into his eyes as I stopped myself from falling over, they were furious, "Are you seriously going to try and stop someone from helping us get home!?"

    I lower my eyebrows, confused at his choice of words, "You...want to leave?"

    He looked like he wanted to hit me, his hands, shaking at his sides, "I''ve wanted to leave since we started!! At first I thought this was all there is for us, but MAL explained that we don''t have to be this way forever, if we can recall things about our lives we can get free and go home! HOME, Green!! Don''t you want that??"

    I look at my team, at MAL, and then at Edge who looked so angry with me, I felt nothing but pain in my heart and my head as he seemed so ready to just beat the shit out of me, then it hit me that everything was about to change, a Renaissance, enlightenment, but maybe the cost of that is that I''d never see any of them again, my scalp prickled with fear, my face flushing, the words came out of my mouth before I could stop them,  "but...I am home." My voice wavered as I spoke, the horror on Edge''s face was clear, I had somehow crossed a line, "What??" He seethed and I flinched, "Look, the comfort and love I get from you guys daily are all I think about when I think of family, our bunk, that''s where I feel at home, being intimate with you...all of you...It''s the closest thing I can think of when I try to imagine heaven."

    As he continued to stare at me in shock, I tasted salt, I was crying.

    He didn''t hit me, that was the worst part.

    He just walked back to his bed.

    MAL tried to say something to me, but I was already moving, I ran out of the room, the hallways turning into a blur as I rushed back to our bunk.

    Upon arrival, I lay down, looking at the wall as I allowed myself to make the connection, the baby in that vision was the same little boy I''d been, killing JAB-56473.

    Agent Green

    And

    Jack.

    No longer the same, now separate people.

    I was myself...I was me.

    And like that, I passed out.

 JAB-76842-32

    When I awoke next, I was surrounded by my squadmates, all of whom were looking at me with mixed looks.

    Love looked worried.

    Edge looked less pissed than he had, more upset.

    Wolf looked sad.

    I opened my mouth but Edge put a hand over it to prevent me from speaking, "I''m sorry...I didn''t mean to get so upset with you, just because we want to leave Houska doesn''t mean we want to abandon you."

    The words visibly relaxed me, it must have shown because everyone unclenched, I hadnt noticed they had been coiled like a spring in anticipation of some sort of violence until I saw them unfurl.

    Edge looks at Wolf who nods, they had practiced this.

    "Now..." Says Wolf, "we''re going to let you up, and then we''ll share our names with eachother, ok? Our real names."

    I nod and Edge''s hand leaves my mouth, I sit up, "Jack."

    Edge chuckles, rolling his shoulders as he says it, "Blaine."

    Love sighs as if this is a big weight off her shoulders, "Emma."

    Wolf closed her eyes, "Anna."

    We linked hands, we knew each other now, really knew one another.

    We were no longer just Agents, no longer Team Sigma, we were us.

    And I think thats something I can''t really communicate, the feeling of being human again after 919, something we felt was impossible.

    I blink as everyone lets go, "So...do we call one another by those names or..."

    Wolf shrugged, "Well we''d like to...but it''ll take some getting used to..."

    It hit me just then that we HAD spent more time in...here, than free.

    "Damn...ok then I''ll start it, fuck you, Blaine!" I push Edge off the bed and he busts out laughing, grabbing a pillow that fell off with him and leaping on top of me from the floor, "Eat shit, Jack!!"

    Love pulled Wolf into a kiss, "C''mere Anna...mmmm..."

    Wolf let out an exaggeratedly aroused gasp, "Emma! Mmmmm..."

    This began a cavalcade of sexually charged roughhousing that kept us rolling with laughter until the PA system ripped our ears a new one.

    //TEAM SIGMA REPORT TO ADMINISTRATION FOR MISSION BRIEFING//

    we began to suit up, I pulled on my pants and did my belt, both of which I never left separate. as I pulled on my button up shirt, Edge looked at me, "dude why do you always leave your belt in your pants?"

    Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

    I shrug as I pull on my trench coat, "It''s faster? What you just wanna loop your belt every time?"

    He gestures to his waist where his belt sat firmly in its loops, "It''s easier on my pants AND my belt."

    Wolf smacked us both in the heads as she started for the door, "we''ll be late."

    We finished getting ready and as we headed for the door, Love picked both Edge and me up unexpectedly, rushing after Wolf as we hightailed it to the admin office.

    Upon arrival, Benz greeted us with Singleton and MAL standing there next to him, "Ah! There they are, my slayers!" With an enthusiasm that told me he wanted us to forget the fact that he was threatening to have us killed not 4 days ago.

    Love set Edge and I down and we all sat at Benz''s desk, "boy oh boy do I have a mission for you." His smile was forced and his tone was exhausted.

    I didn''t like the sound of that, but kept quiet as he continued, his fake joviality falling away as he delivered the news, "You four are going to school."

    My team and I let out a weak chuckle but Benz''s expression remained firm, "that wasn''t a joke, you''re going to Pampa Texas, reports from the local PD have been...harrowing to say the least...a proper dossier of all information available will be dispensed to Agent Edge before you leave."

    Wolf looked at us and then at Benz, "Ok so it''s a mission to Pampa, why are we going to school?"

    Benz smirked, "This is a deep cover mission, you''re each 15 years old, and the best cover for a mission of this nature would be to have you at school...which will also function as a perfect Rumor mill to pinpoint odd occurrences in the town....and on top of that, I hear you four have just re-learned your real names, this could also be a good opportunity to use them."

    This made the others in my team brighten up, but my heart sank into my stomach.

    This was going to be difficult, for me probably more than them, I wasnt really sure why, I had done my best to acclimate to the new name situation, but my real name filled me with a sense of dread, that fear of being abandoned, even though they''d said they wouldn''t.

    Benz continued, looking at us and taking in our reactions, "alright, with the mission accepted, I want to let you know that Singleton will not be your handler this mission."

    I looked at Singleton, who looked away from me, "Then why is he here?"

    Benz''s smile became malevolent, "So that he can hand over your care-book."

    Edge blinked, "Care-book??"

    It was then that we all caught a familiar whiff of burning cinnamon as the door behind us opened, "Reporting for duty."

    We turned in shock to see Doctor Sharp standing in the doorway, that grin, that shit-eating grin playing across his lips, his white hat concealing his eyes, "Heya kids."

    We all stood at once, ready to pounce, but Benz swung a fist and destroyed his desk, splitting it in half and sending both halves flying towards opposite walls from each other, splinters, a nameplate, and a hail of pens and paperwork flying everywhere, his eyes livid as he looked at us, "YOU WILL ALL SIT DOWN!"

    We immediately sat back down, with Doctor Sharp sitting in a 5th chair none of us had seen directly next to me, all of us completely shocked at Benz''s reaction and his sheer strength, "Doctor Sharp has been exonerated of all wrongdoing by our investigative team...and he''s the one to call on for these sort of clandestine missions, you WILL cooperate, you WILL be civil or I WILL have you all punished to the full extent of my power!!"

    The response came automatically from all of us, Doctor Sharp mirrored us as we each nodded our heads, lest we suffer the same fate as the desk, "Yes sir!"

    "Good..." Benz huffed, "Good...and my threat extends to you as well, Sharp! Don''t you dare do anything to fracture the delicate-" he grabbed the Doctor by the front of his lab coat, pulling him out of the chair, getting in his face, "-DELICATE trust I have in you, or I will personally skin you alive."

    Doctor Sharp''s smile faltered, the churro drooping, "Yes sir..."

    And like that, we were put into a moving truck with a crap ton of furniture, we were given the chance to ride with Doctor Sharp in his car, but none of us wanted to for obvious reasons.

 JAB-76842-33

    We sat in the truck, looking at one another in the dim light given off by the one bulb we had, jostling slightly every so often.

    Finally, Love broke the silence, "Its gonna be weird, having a bunch of teachers and other kids our age calling us by our actual real names....I think I might like it."

    Wolf nods, "We''re going to have to be careful."

    I shrug, not exactly sure what I''d get out of it, but wanting Love to feel valid in her desires, "I guess it might be fun."

    Love leaned against me, pulling me close to her, rubbing her face on my shoulder, "AND we''ll have a real shot at living out a high school romance! And maybe even go to prom!"

    I look up at Edge who seemed lost in thought, "Hey Edge, looking forward to Highschool?"

    He looked up at me, "Do you think Benz is one of us?"

    Wolf laughs, "Yeah, didn''t they say he''s the only other Houska employee who got the Slayer Badge?"

    The thought hit me like the bump in the road that sent pillows falling onto my head from the couch above me, "He did just...anime villain that desk apart didn''t he?" I chuckled a bit, the idea that I was on the same level (at least in name) as someone as strong as Benz was daunting.

    After a brief silence, Wolf spoke up, "What the fuck was he thinking, putting Sharp in charge of us again?"

    Edge huffs, "He probably wants him dead."

    Love sat up, looking just as upset as she should, "We eat NOTHING he gives us, we drink NOTHING he gives us, we make and buy our own food, agreed?"

    We all answered in unison, "Agreed."

    We sat in silence for the better part of an hour before the mover finally stopped. We disembarked to see we are in a literal scrubland, sure we were in the middle of a suburb, but at the same time the suburb and I suspect the entire town was encompassed in this flat land that extended far beyond where my eyes could follow.

    I look at Love who''s clinging to my arm, as if we were standing at some great height and she was worried we might fall into the abyss of flat we saw stretched out before us.

    "....wow..." she sighed, Edge laughed, "Talk about the middle of nowhere..."

    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    That was when Doctor Sharp came into the open, "Ok kids, go get your work clothes off and your school clothes on...we''re enrolling you guys today....your clothes are all set out."

    We don''t say anything to him, I grab Love around the waist and walk her inside without making eye contact, half expecting a further attempt at levity, only for him to be totally silent and even absent as we got dressed.

    It was disconcerting, as I had expected him to be overbearing at the very least.

    But then again, he was this absent the first time too.

    "Does this feel wrong to you?" I asked Wolf as I pulled on a pair of jeans, she shook her head, "He has survival instincts at the very least...he''s also not stupid, Benz probably told him to keep his distance."

    We were driven to school by Doctor Sharp who gave us a briefing on the way there, "the reason we''re here is the sightings of supernatural entities in the town, as well as our only surviving witness talking about a secretive Kabal known only to the people of this town as "The Shadowyn." Which has been cited in several historical Houska documents, it''s not superstition, it''s a problem, and it seems we''ve finally found where they live."

    We didn''t respond, just nodded, so he continued, "their agents are everywhere in this town, including in the classrooms, We''re here to weed them out and to keep casualties and sightings to a minimum, that includes you, Green, Silence protocol is in effect."

    He looked at me and I suddenly realized that I hadn''t heard Green''s voice since that therapy session with MAL.

    Had she killed him?  Could that even happen?

    "Yes...sir." I say as stiffly as possible, to which Doctor Sharp smiles, "Good."

    We arrived at Pampa High School (go harvesters) and enrolled us all under the surname "Smith" we were given school books and told to go to class.

    We would not fare well, in social endeavors or in class.

    It was good to be back in school, around kids who didn''t want me dead, but this new social freedom came with a price.

    None of us had any idea how to properly socialize with kids our own age and we decided sticking together during social times would be the best idea when it came to social survival.

    At lunch time, I got a square pizza and sat next to my squad who all looked at me with exhaustion.

    "How''s everyone doing?"

    Everyone groaned

    Edge sighed, "These chess club kids are so high off their own fumes, I''m surprised they can take air into their lungs, if I have to hear the term "euphoric" one more time, I''ll step in front of a bus."

    Love looked at me with tears in her eyes, "There''s like 3 different cliques of girls...none of them like me...even the socially awkward girls didnt like me."

    Wolf put her head down, "I punched a kid who was beating on another kid and I get called a dyke for my trouble...by the kid I saved."

    I take a bite of my pizza, I hadn''t fared much better, except on one count, one I announced to the group, "Guys I think i found a group of kids that could help us find what we''re looking for....I overheard them talking about the Shadowyn."

    I had heard the word Shadowyn escape the tight knit circle of a group of lanky goth students, who, upon further listening, seemed to have knowledge of this town''s dark, supernatural underbelly.

    Edge looked up at me with a surprised expression, "Tell us more."

    I gesture towards this group who I just realized were eyeing us, I immediately looked away but they were already on their way over.

    There were 8 seats at our table, and these other students immediately and seamlessly slipped into the other 4, as if they''d always been there.

 JAB-76842-34

    As I looked at him, the leader of the group glared at me, he had a look like a goth shaggy Rodgers, very lanky, a soul patch, baggy clothes.

    "Don''t say that word." He said to me, his face serious as can be, "They can hear you."

    "Who?" I was confused for half a second but then I got it, he saw the comprehension on my face and rolled his eyes, "Yea, THEM, Don''t speak the name, don''t ask anyone about it, do not let them know youre looking for them, or THEY will find you."

    I chuckled, "Funny, that''s exactly what we want."

    He sighed and the girl of the group patted his back, "No...I promise you, you dont."

    Edge sat up in his seat, "And how would you know about this?"

    The boy gestured to all of us, "Not here...meet us by the football field after school."

    And like that, they were gone.

    We all high-fived, it was our first lead of the mission and it only took half a day.

    They wouldn''t all be this easy.

    After school we met the other students by the football field, they were all waiting for us.

    Introductions were not lengthy, but I''m gonna write it all down anyway, because like I said at the beginning, we''re doing facts.

    There was Hunter, who seemed to be their de facto leader. Once again, goth shaggy.

    There was Robyn, a very pretty but naturally lean emo girl, petite in frame but tall, willowy I suppose would be the word.

    There was Charley, wore the dark clothes attributed to the group''s aesthetic, but had a head full of blonde curls and bright blue eyes, he was an artist and drew the things they had seen in the town for our benefit, trying to explain stuff to us.

    Then there was the party of the 4th part.

    He didn''t give us his name, I mostly just called him fedora kid in my head because of his choice of headwear (a plaid fedora). He was as lanky as Hunter but not as tall, he had badly dyed black hair and obviously was obsessed with Robyn, but she was dating Hunter and the fact party 4th was obviously head over heels for Robyn often sparked arguments between the 3, leaving Charley the odd man out.

    (Merely an observation, this was not discussed with us during the introduction)

    After they had introduced themselves and told us what theyre all about, they spoke to me of encounters with The Entity (name changed for licensing reasons, apparently because of a certain movie he''s copyrighted), Vampires, werewolves and zombies.

    This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

    "Ok, no."

    Edge immediately called BS, their first contribution to our discussion had surely exposed them, right? A tell that could not be denied, The Entity has never been real, its a bunch of stories on the internet.

    But as he spoke thusly, Robynn pulled up one of her sleeves to reveal a massive and extensive burn scar, segmented like the exoskeleton of a centipede but without legs, it snaked its way from her wrist all the way up her forearm, coiling around her arm above her elbow, tapering to a sharp tip, everyone stared in horror, aghast at this Greivous injury.

    "He did this to me." She said in a deadpan voice, looking Edge in the eyes as Hunter grabbed her other hand in a comforting motion, I didn''t know what to say.

    She went on to describe her being cornered in her backyard by this creature, it had grasped her arm, and the appendage seared this scar into her arm before it vanished.

    "He marked her, for what reason...isn''t exactly clear...We know you''re not normal kids, nobody comes into this town knowing about the Shadowyn...you were sent here, weren''t you? Sent to help us?" He looked increasingly desperate, his movements became increasingly erratic as what must have been years of desperation surfaced in a few seconds, "They''ve taken women and kids from the people of this town, OUR families, we''ve been fighting for our lives out here, all under their radar!"

    He grabbed me by the front of my shirt, a wild look in his eyes, "Tell me you''re here to help us!"

    We looked at one another, Wolf shook her head, but then I turned back to the locals, "We''re here to deal with them...we''ve trained for this."

    Edge growled and got in my face, "Green I swear to god...you probably just compromised the mission!"

    Hunter held up his hands, "hey! Hey! Chill!" I pushed Edge away and gestured to them, "Their childhoods have been robbed by a secret group, JUST like us, we can help them!"

    Wolf grabbed me by the ear, "We could get them KILLED, Green!!"

    Party 4th interjected, "Hey we''ve been doing fine without you assholes!"

    I groan at Wolf, "They need our HELP!!"

    Love pushed us apart, determination in her eyes, "Stop it! we don''t have time for this, they need help, we can help them!"

    I look at Hunter and the others as I hug Love, "Do you know where we can start looking?"

    Hunter patted Charley''s head, "He''s working on pinpointing the Shadowyn''s actual base of operations, for now, we have places we need to take you, to show you what the Shadowyn are doing to our town."

    Edge nods and pulls out his cellphone, "give us addresses and we''ll-" he''s cut off by a stiff arm and a grin from Hunter, "No, no, no Blaine, my town, my knowhow, MY mission."

    Edge swells up, "look-"

    Hunter booms out in a shocking display of vocal force, "No YOU look, do you know anything about Mr. Teeth?"

    Edge blinks, "Huh??"

    Hunter smirked and continued, "What about the rules of the Lizard Bridge?"

    Edge''s face fell into a scowl, "What the fuck is the Lizard bridge!?"

    Hunter was grinning triumphantly now, "Thought so, what about the after-dark rules?"

    Edge didn''t even respond to this, he sighed and put his phone away.

    Hunter spread his arms in a direct challenge, backing away, "If you think you can find these places by yourself, then you don''t even need us."

    Edge looked angrily at us, a glance over at Wolf showed me she was just as disgruntled. This would be an easy fix for our problem, a day one lead, skipping the line of combing the town for clues, but the breach in the silence protocol meant that if news of this reached Sharp''s ears then there''d be more than hell to pay.

    A price I was willing to pay immediately, their scars were proof enough of their conviction.

    Finally Wolf nodded and shook Hunter''s hand, "you have a deal, but before we get into the tour, we need our weapons and equipment, can you take us to our house? Do you have any transportation?"

    Hunter walked us behind the football barracks to show us his large black van.

    "This was my dad''s bus before he got got, it does its job."

    It was pretty spacious and had plenty of seating, we all got in and he started up the GPS to take us to our house.