Interlude 1 - The Loyal Soldier
Interlude 1 – The Loyal Soldier
Jessica Flores watched as a wall of fire roared towards her team. The shattered glass windows of the office building had exploded outwards, peppering them with shrapnel carried along by the inital shockwave. The heat had come next, sweltering and burning. The air had ignited, had poured outward in a wave, devouring all in its path. The world was light and noise and confusion, and she had only moments to react.
But she was calm, she was steady. Her training had prepared her for this.
“Bunker up!” she barked into her headset, her voice projecting calm authority.
Valiant, the squad’s barrier specialist, stepped forward and slammed his riot shield down between himself and the blast. The concrete shattered under his blow, creating a spiderweb of cracks beneath their feet. Shimmering, golden liquid erupted from the broken ground, gathering into a dome around her squad. The fire struck it and flowed past, around, hungrily searching for holes even as it expanded across the city. The shield rippled beneath the impact but held strong. More importantly, Jessica could hear herself think again.
“We need to bottle this up!” she shouted, fighting back anger at the pointless destruction. Nothing like this had been indicated on her intelligence briefing. Her team was not designed to fight enemies capable of destruction on this scale. They specialized in hostage negotiation and extraction for fuck’s sake!
“I can’t hold this for long, Sir,” Valiant murmured tensely. His stance was as rigid and unyielding as stone. The riot shield hovered at the edge of the barrier, held in place by one arm and braced by the other. Small indentations in the ground formed at his feet as the relentless wave of fire slowly pushed him backwards.
Jessica focused on her training, on the words of her teachers. Emotions could wait. They were unimportant. They clouded the mind and dulled the senses. She could feel later, when lives were not at stake.
Focus on the now.
Evaluate your options.
Command your soldiers.
“Frosty, ice us down,” she ordered, giving a hard glance to a nearby squad mate.
He stared evenly back, one eyebrow raised, but a thin layer of frost formed over his gloves. There was a cryokinetic in almost every SPEAR team. Ice upgrades were both extremely versatile and well researched, giving users an easier path towards mastery. Even so, covering allies in layers of ice without causing permanent damage was a fairly advanced technique. Hardening it against fire and heat was more difficult still. Doing both, without heavily impeding their movement, strained the limits of what was possible.
But it would buy them precious minutes against the fire, should the shield fall.
Frosty’s hands glowed blue, and tiny snowflakes rained down from the air around him. He stepped forward cautiously, placing a frozen hand on Jessica’s shoulder. The cold seeped in through her armored vest in seconds. His eyes met hers, and she nodded firmly. Ice bloomed from her shoulder, crawling down her arm in a wave of blue crystals. Jessica grimaced at the cold, but was firmly distracted by the fire guttering out.
It ended as suddenly as it had begun. The parking lot smoldered outside of the barrier. The concrete was warped and melted. Everything was charred black for as far as the eye could see; buildings and grass and trees and ground, nothing was spared.
Frosty paused at the sight, but she quickly urged him onward. The fire was no longer a threat, but the heat remained. They would need his ice just to walk over the super-heated ground. Frosty grimaced, and continued his work.
Call signs were chosen, not assigned. They were a relic of the past, of a time before vigilantes had soured the practice of assuming colorful and descriptive pseudonyms. It was a bit childish, true, to choose different names for themselves, but it helped to divorce them from their civilian identities. When they put on the uniform they became another person, one who fought and killed for city and country.
Childish or not, the practice was taken very seriously. Call signs were rarely shared outside of individual teams and never spoken outside of their comms. Most civilians would not understand the appeal of being someone else. Few could imagine the confidence or relief that sinking into another identity granted.
But none, including herself, could fathom why Frosty had assumed the identity of a fictional talking snowman.
Fortunately, his competence was not determined by his chosen name. He worked quickly, coating all of Javelin squad with a thin layer of heat-resistant ice. Even their helmets were covered, with the ice forming transparent visors over their eyes. A space was left between the helmet’s chin and the neck, to allow a small amount of air flow to reach the filters of their masks. Should the blaze come again, simply looking down would seal the opening.
They shivered violently in place, all five members of Jessica’s squad, but each stood firm and ready. Five pairs of eyes turned to her, awaiting orders.
She stepped forward, broadcasting confidence with every motion.
“This isn’t what we expected, I know,” she began. “Even so, our duty remains clear. We are now under crisis protocols, as first responders. Prioritize scouting and elimination. Hostages are now a secondary concern, if they are even alive.”
Several members nodded at that, faces grim. The time for negotiation was long past. Whatever mutate that had produced the fire could strike again at any moment. Time was of the essence, everyone understood this.
“Remember your training, maintain your focus, protect your teammates, and we’ll make it out of this alive. Backup is on the way, this I can guarantee, but it’s up to us to put a stop to this before we lose more of the city.”
Jessica raised a hand into the air and clenched it into a fist.
“We are Javelins!” she roared.
“Javelins!” her team echoed.
“Move out!” she commanded. Instantly, Valiant pulled his riot shield away from the barrier. The golden dome shattered, turning back to liquid and flowing into the ground. Golden tendrils slithering along the cracks in the concrete and back into his body. He nodded once the process was done, and fell into formation.
Jessica took point. Every member of a SPEAR team possessed incredibly refined and highly effective upgrades. As the captain of Javelin, the hostage negotiation and extraction squad, Jessica’s upgrade had been designed to maximize her ability to read and interact with other individuals. It granted her exceptional senses, body control, and reaction speed. She could read facial ticks from a block away, identify a lie from a man’s heartbeat, and more immediately relevant, could dodge bullets based on the orientation of a weapon barrel. Spotting for her team was the least of her abilities.
The doors to the lobby were missing, torn off their hinges in the blast. Jessica’s squad moved in quickly, disregarding the broken glass that littered the floor. Their boots were thick and armored, standard issue for all SPEAR teams. The same could not be said for the rest of their equipment.
Their weapons were as basic as SPEAR could provide. Only Jessica carried an assault rifle, while the majority of the squad had settled for tactical shotguns. Two of her squadmates had forgone weapons entirely, Frosty and Wisp, though both could fight with their upgrades alone.
Most of the squad wore light armor, having expected this situation to be a drawn out negotiation and unwilling to antagonize an unstable villain by appearing in full battle gear. Only Valiant, as a rather paranoid barrier specialist, wore his full set of armor. The layers of ice that Frosty had created would mitigate some damage, but it would be up to Jessica to identify threats before they could kill her squad.
The lobby still smoldered from the blast. The tile floor stuck to their boots as they passed, thoroughly melted. Smoke poured freely out of the shattered building, flowing up through a multitude of newly formed cracks. The lobby’s visibility was low, but Jessica’s keen sight could guide her squad through it with ease. Javelin squad covered each other’s weaknesses well. Together, even this situation was not beyond their capabilities.
The problem, however, was that this was a large building, and they did not have time to spare. Every second wasted had the potential to cost lives. The fire had ended, but it could begin again at any moment. Jessica had to make the call: Split up to find the target faster, or stay together and risk another blast.
She licked her lips, no longer feeling the cold. Anger pooled in her stomach, directed towards whatever corporate bigwig had demanded a hostage negotiation squad instead of a pacification force. Well connected or not, Bantleff’s fate had never been in her hands. Entertaining such naiveté, rather than immediately dealing with the threat, had caused this tragedy. Now she had to balance the lives of her team against the lives of countless more civilians.
There was no contest, unfortunately. Duty was a heavy burden, but she bore it willingly.
“Split up,” she directed. “Groups of two. Frosty with me, third floor. Valiant and Wisp, second. Seeker and Stratus, secure the first.”
The formation shifted as her soldiers complied. It was the best she could do for them. Wisp could animate thin strips of razor wire, half a dozen at a time, and strike from behind Valiant’s shield. Stratus could breathe out a tranquilizing fog, while Seeker possessed and could share a rudimentary, if short-ranged, form of echolocation. Frosty could create cover for Jessica, while she could warn him of enemy locations.
The team was not meant to be split so far apart. Jessica could only hope that they all made it back.
The squad moved towards the emergency stairwell. The elevators would be inoperable for obvious reasons, even if the metal doors hadn’t been melted shut. Jessica clinically noted the lack of bodies in the lobby as they passed through. The building had been locked down, according to her earlier briefing, so it wasn’t especially surprising. She suspected that the third floor, the location of Bantleff’s personal office, would contain whatever was left of the hostages.
She expected corpses, personally.
“Frosty, the door,” she ordered quietly.
Frosty stepped forward, running his hand over the door handle and along the hinges. Ice formed where it passed, melting into water with a soft hiss. With a gentle push, the door swung open.
The concrete stairs were burnt yellow and warped. The steel safety rail glowed a dull red, practically humming from heat. Jessica slowly approached the first few steps and peered up the staircase. She focused her senses, probing, listening, her body taut and ready to fight. No sound found her ears, no movement met her sight. She glanced towards Seeker, who gave her a nod.
Jessica hefted her rifle with one hand, and flashed a series of hand-signals with the other.
All clear, move out.
Seeker and Stratus stepped out of the stairwell as the rest of the squad moved upwards. They took it methodically, each step filled with caution, and every floor greeted with utmost paranoia. Even so, they advanced far faster than Jessica was comfortable with.
She spared twenty seconds to clear the second floor entrance, then Valiant and Wisp split off to search. Frosty stuck to her shoulder as she made her way up to the third floor. The building was not tall, but it was quite long and they were running out of time. Her squadmates checked in every few seconds, staying in constant contact as they cleared their respective floors.
She approached the final door at the top of the staircase. Frosty cooled the handle, and Jessica swung it open. The first thing that hit her was the stench. Even through the oxygen filter built into her mask, she could smell cooking flesh. She moved quickly, flashing a follow signal to Frosty. She followed the scent of burning pork down a blackened hallway, past half a dozen burnt out meeting rooms and a pair of elevator doors.
Jessica could hear voices coming from the end of the hallway, urgent, angry, and arguing. A body lay outside a nearby conference room, covered in blood but otherwise intact. She slowed at the sight, cautiously clicking on her comms.
“We’ve got survivors on the third floor, and an unburnt body,” she whispered, glancing at the nearest door for reference. “Suite 3-11A. Possible hostiles.”
“Acknowledged,” her squad echoed.
Frosty advanced as she spoke, trailing a cold mist from his hands. He pressed his palm down on the smoldering carpet and a wave of ice crept across the floor towards the bloody corpse. Cold mist billowed outward, and crystals sprang into life along the walls of the hallway. Hoarfrost appeared on the body as the surrounding temperature dropped below zero.
Jessica advanced towards the conference room, careful to avoid the brittle ice. She stopped in front of the corpse, prodding it lightly with her rifle. Frosty appeared beside her, kneeling down to check for a pulse. After a moment, he shook his head.
Jessica fought back a scowl. Turning the corpse over, she searched her memory for the man’s face. He hadn’t appeared in her briefing packet, though at this point that didn’t mean much, and his body was covered in large gashes. Almost as if a sword, or a particularly large knife, had been taken to him with great vigor. She had little time to deliberate, however. In the distance, the voices escalated in volume.
“—not what I signed up for! You shouldn’t—”
“—no choice——couldn’t take the risk.”
“That’s——decision to——!”
She frowned at the garbled shouts. Interrogation was a secondary objective. Her priority was to put down whatever mutate had created the initial fireball. Everything else could come after. She moved further down the hall, motioning Frosty to follow.
He obeyed, forming more layers of ice as he moved. He was covering their retreat, should it be necessary. With the ice already in place, manipulation would come much easier to him.
A broken door lay on the ground at the end of the hall, blackened and burned. Parts of the closest wall were shattered, but unlike other rooms, they bulged outwards. This room appeared to be the origin of the blast.
There were no sentries posted, and the door was wide open. Amateurs, Jessica wanted to conclude. Amateurs with an incredibly deadly weapon and the will to use it.
Jessica slinked forward, silent as a cat, and peered inside the open room.
It might have been a dining area, once, but now it was a torched shell of a room. Light streamed in from broken windows, but a dull glow caught her eye. In the corner of the room, a translucent golden field surrounded three huddled shapes, two men and a woman. Jessica recognized the upgrade, as her very own squad mate possessed a variation of it. It was supposedly restricted to SPEAR team members, though there were always ways around such things. A man with enough connections could buy nearly anything.
She would bet every dollar that she had that one of the men within the barrier was Bantleff. The shield was almost opaque, so she couldn’t get a proper look, but obtaining SPEAR resources was no easy task. It also nicely explained why her team was sent. Bantleff’s contact was clearly highly placed. He or she had obviously hoped to avoid a violent confrontation, if only to protect the one man.
Too bad the villains had different plans.
On the other side of the room, the source of the voices stood. A group of men argued amongst themselves. Four of them in total. At their feet lay either a hostage or an incapacitated co-conspirator. The man was curled into the fetal position and whimpering softly, taking the occasional kick from the people around him. Jessica could make out few details about him from her current angle. He was skinny, with wispy blonde hair, and clothes that barely clung to his frame. Something large and bulky hung around his neck.
The arguing men were a different story. Jessica catalogued their features, then their equipment, then immediately called for backup. She didn’t recognize any of them, but nobody wearing a ski mask in Atlanta at the height of summer could be up to anything good. The pistols strapped to their legs and shotguns in their hands only reinforced this belief.
They spoke again, as her team acknowledged her order.
“We have to try again. That barrier can’t hold forever,” one said, snarling at the golden dome.
“I don’t think he’s got another in ’em,” another replied, kicking the prone man viciously.
“We’ll use the collar,” the first replied, drawing what appeared to be a remote control from his coat pocket. “That’s what it’s for.”
“Hit him again,” another agreed stoically. “SPEAR will be here soon, we might get lucky and clear them out.”
“We were supposed to threaten only,” the last snapped at his comrades. “To use the subject twice—”
“Don’t go soft on me now,” the man holding the remote whispered menacingly. “Johann went soft, and you know what happened to him.”
“It’s not about being soft, it’s about achieving our goals! We need Bantleff alive!”
The first speaker sneered at his companion. “He’ll live. Burns can be fixed, and he deserves a little pain.”
He lifted the remote, his thumb over an alarmingly red button.
“Get ready to shield us, Erik.”
It looked like Jessica was out of time. She flashed an urgent hand signal to Frosty, then spun into the room, rifle at the ready. The surroundings immediately exploded into pandemonium as she opened fire on the group of distracted villains.
Jessica’s first shot took off the hand of the man holding the remote. Her second hit his clavicle and turned his breastbone into shrapnel. The third clipped another man’s shoulder, sending him tumbling to the floor. Jessica fell into a smooth roll, dodging a shotgun slug that tore a hole in the floor where she previously stood.
As soon as Jessica cleared the entrance, Frosty acted. He jabbed forward and a gust of cold air erupted from his fist to coat the floor in ice. The remaining villains found themselves slipping in place, shouting and cursing.
A shotgun roared, missing Jessica by inches and punching a hole in the wall. The slippery ice did its job, as the recoil knocked the shooter off his feet. The gun went off again as it hit the ground, pellets peppering a hastily formed wall of ice. The wall shattered a moment later, sliced into thick chunks by a violent hand gesture from the fallen enemy, as he struggled to regain his feet.
With a roar, a massive bolt of lightning emerged from the fingertips of the last villain still upright. It streaked through the air, thick as Jessica’s thigh, and vaporized what was left of the doorway. The thunderclap was deafening, and for a moment spots filled Jessica’s vision.
She compensated as well as she could, memory and instinct guiding her to where the electrokinetic last stood. Her rifle butt nestled itself against her shoulder and sang out an opera of violence. Bodies, murky in her vision, swooned and hit the floor from things far more permanent than emotion. Shrill screams supplanted the ringing in her ears, and slowly her sight returned to her.
Frosty stood near the center of the room, orbited by thick sleet. The group of villains were down to a man, riddled with holes and bleeding out. The unknown mutate, the source of the fire according to the villains, remained curled up and sobbing on the floor. In the corner, the golden shield remained firmly in place.
Jessica approached the pile of bodies, methodically silencing their screams. Her team was not built for on-site interrogations, and she had no way to contain them safely. Her superiors would understand the necessity, even if her conscience struggled to.
She ended her path in front of the weeping— not a man. A child. A sobbing, emaciated child. Jessica stared down at the boy in horror. He couldn’t have been older than fourteen, so short and slight. His skin was dry, cracked, and bright red, as if he’d been sunburned for months at a time. His frame was skinny to the point of starvation, with his ribs visible through the shredded tunic he wore. Around his neck, a bulky metal collar. Sharp metal rods dug into his skin like a inside-out spiked collar, and a heavy padlock kept the abomination in place.
His mouth was moving, whispering, chanting something. Jessica kneeled down beside him.
“Please help me please help me pleasehelpmepleasepleaseplease—”
She reeled back, forcing her shock to stay off her face. This was no willing villain. He seemed as much a victim as those that he had killed. If it were up to her, she’d keep him contained until a way to control his power was discovered.
“Oh lord no, not again, it’s happening again, please please please—”
But it wasn’t up to her. Her duty was clear.
“Make it stop make it stop makeitstop!”
The boy’s skin split along his back and down his arms, peeling apart like a bug’s carapace. A dead layer of flesh flaked off and disintegrated as heat poured out of every crevice. Black smoke flowed out of his nose and mouth, choking him, silencing his words. He looked up at Jessica with a face of absolute anguish, as his surroundings melted around him. His power was activating, and she had no idea how to stop it.
Jessica met his eyes, projecting every ounce of sympathy that she possessed. There was nothing she could do for him except remember his face. Her nightmares would preserve him, and he would join the museum of horrors in her mind. Fire flickered in the corner of her eye, and she knew that she was out of time. She hefted her rifle and placed it against the boy’s temple.
A few angry thoughts passed through her head, in that brief moment before she did what was necessary. Damn the men who had done this to a child. Damn Bantleff for whatever he had done to draw their ire. Damn her superiors, who had sent Jessica on this futile attempt at diplomacy.
Bantleff was fine, safe behind whatever bodyguard he had upgraded. He would have been fine too, had a pacification force simply blitzed into the building like they were designed to do. Damn the fools who thought otherwise.
But most of all, damn her, for seeing no other way forward.
“Sorry kid,” she whispered, and squeezed the trigger.