The Orphanage

Hanging at his side, Tony’s gun felt icy cold in his hand. Slick with his palm’s sweat, he struggled to find a good grip on it, his fingers slipping out of the grooves put into the handle every few seconds. His other hand stayed inside his jacket, ready to lash out at a moment’s notice.

“Be careful. A squad of Trackers are on the floor above you.”, Eli’s voice whispered in Tony’s ear. There was a momentary pause, accompanied by the clicking of a gun and he added, “I have two of them in my sights. Should I take the shot?”

“No.”, Tori replied. “We can’t let them now we’re here. Our only chance of getting out of here with the target is to avoid a firefight. We only fight them if-”

The sound of a gunshot echoed through the silence and Tony froze.

“Eli! What the hell happened to not taking the shot?”, Mich hissed into her comm-link.

“It wasn’t me.”, Eli replied, his words shaky with disturbing sadness. “It was the Trackers. They…they shot a kid.”

Tony’s eyes widened in horror and he asked Mich, his words shaky as he spoke, “Can you tap into their comm-link signals?”

“Can’t.”, Mich replied after a second of tapping away at her watch. “They seem to have updated their security networks. I’ll need direct access to try and break into their network.”

Tony paused in thought before he barked into his comm-link, “Eli, you can hear what they’re saying can’t you? Well, change your little ear-piece so that you can hear them and tell me why the hell they just shot a kid.”

Eli grunted in acknowledgement and there was a moment of tentative silence. Tony took that silence as a chance to try and comprehend what he had just heard. The Trackers were ruthless, everyone knew that. They did what they were told to do without question. But murdering children in cold blood? Even for them, that was a new low. Something’s changed.

“They’ve got orders to kill every person in this building, the children and the caretakers.”, Eli said, breaking the silence. “It seems like every child in here’s an Outlier.”

“It ain’t like the Trackers to just murder Outliers that aren’t fighting back.”, Mich remarked. “Especially not children. What’s going on?”

“They don’t have the resources to get all of them out of here and-”

He paused suddenly,

“And what Eli? And what?”, Tafon exclaimed.

“They’ve got a bomb in the basement. Once they get the girl, they’re blowing this place to the ground.”, Eli said. “They’ve got a squad guarding the bomb, and the other five can’t be far from the target now.”

Tony turned to look at Sara, who met his gaze with stern eyes burning with a fiery passion. He nodded in response to an unspoken question she asked him and she snapped into her comm-link, “Tori, I’m afraid Tony and I have decided to ignore the Captain’s orders. We’re getting into a firefight.”

He had expected her to fight back more, but there was merely a short sigh before she asked, “Michelle, Tafon, do you agree with this?”

“I will not stand by and let children die.”, Tafon said sternly. “I do not care what the Captain told us. If we must fight to save them, then we shall have.”

“Yeah, what he said.”, Mich added.

Tori sighed again and muttered something in Japanese. Tony turned to Mich and asked, “Can Prowler find where the bomb is?”

“I’m insulted you’d even ask.”, Mich remarked with a strained smirk. She tapped away at her watch’s screen for a few moments before her expression soured and she said, “I’ve got a visual on the bomb now. Have a look for yourselves”

Tony gestured for everyone to gather around Mich, who swiped the image on her screen upwards so that it was projected for all of them to see. At first, Tony saw nothing but darkness, but she zoomed in and he saw red blips of light flashing against the black backdrop. She switched the camera mode to infrared, and he saw six figures of yellow and green light wandering around the bomb, never more than a few feet apart from each other.

“Eli, where’s the nearest squad?”, Tafon asked into his comm-link.

“There’s one a floor above you.”, Eli said after a moment’s pause. “There’s a fire escape staircase behind the door to your left. It’ll lead you three rooms to their left. Be careful.”

Tony nodded in response and walked over to the door. Exit painted in chipped white on a green sign that hung above it, the door groaned open to show a narrow, winding staircase. The stairwell pitch black, he reached into one of his coat’s inner pockets and pulled out a small flashlight. His other hand drew his pistol before he began his ascent up the staircase.

Their footsteps soft thuds in the silence, Tony kept his gaze forwards, waiting for a Tracker to burst out from the darkness at any second. Odds were, his pistol’s rounds would not be enough to get through their armour, but they would be enough to hold them back long enough for Tafon to get his hands on them.

“Stop.”, Eli hissed in their ears as they reached the next floor of the staircase. In front of the door, Tony glanced down at the light that shined through the slit at the bottom and saw the tips of long shadows peeking underneath the door. “They’re right outside that door. I have a shot.”

“Mich, Eli’s gun can shoot through a few inches of steel and concrete right?”, Tony asked, his words a soft whisper.

“Damn right it can.”, Mich’s voice replied in his ear. “Eli, take the shot.”

“Tafon, duck.”

Next to Tony, Tafon dropped down to a knee and lowered his head. Tony stepped back an inch to see a bullet whizzing past his eyes. It ripped through the steel door, an echoing clang following with a resounding thud. Tony took a second to glance through the hole it had left in the outer wall,

“Operative s-seventy-six oh-nineteen has been shot. We are under attack. I repeat, we are under attack.”, a monotone voice said. There was the clicking of a gun followed by, “Scanning the area for assailants now.”

Tony’s hand disappeared into the folds of his jacket to put away his flashlight, pulling out a palm-sized metal cylinder. He glanced at the others, nodding in confirmation of their unspoken questions, before pulling open the door open a crack. He threw the grenade through before slamming the door shut and leaping away, raising his hands to cradle his head.

For a moment, there was silence. Tony lowered his hands and turned hesitantly to look at the door. He opened his mouth to question what had gone wrong when a soft fizzing sound cut through the silence. He froze before ducking again, his hands cupping his ears to protect them from the echoing boom that followed. Smoke hissed through the crack beneath the door.

“Grenade?”, Eli asked. Tony grunted in response and the sniper added, “There’s still two alive.”

“I’ll take care of them.”, Tafon said coldly, pushing open the door and walking through.

Smoke billowed into the stairwell through the doorway, and he disappeared into the screen of thick grey mist. There was a momentary flash of red-orange light, followed a quickly-muffled scream. Tony’s mind struggled to pair that scream, that untamed expression of raw pain, with the cold killers he knew Trackers to be. He had watched them gun down friends like they were little more than walking target practise, yet whenever Tafon did…what it was he did to them, when he heard their screams he could not help but feel some sympathy for them.

When the smoke parted, Tony and the others walked through the doorway into the wreckage of the corridor. The grenade had charred the walls’ paint an ashy black, the air thick with dust and lingering smoke. Trackers littered the floor, most of them not in one piece, his feet thumping into cyborg-like combinations of metal and flesh with every second step he took.

Tafon stood over a Tracker, holding him up by his neck. At his feet, another one laid dead, his cybernetic enhancements melted to form a metal coating across his face. The one still alive, for however long that would be, was unconscious, his metal arms melted to meld him with the corridor’s steel floor.

“Tafon, get away from him.”, Tony called out. Tafon looked over his shoulder at him, a dark look in his eyes that sent shivers coursing down Tony’s spine. He did not protest though and stepped away. Tony nodded his thanks and turned to Mich, saying, “That access direct enough for you?”

“Damn right it is.”, she replied. She hurried across the corridor, dropping into a squat next to the prone Tracker. She pulled out a wire from her watch and ripped off the thin metal plate covering his cybernetic enhancements across the left side of his plate, jamming the end into a port before tapping away at her watch screen. Her expression was one of concentration, muttering under her breath to herself.

“Eli, I’m guessing the rest of the Trackers heard that.”, Tony said. An affirmative grunt served as the sniper’s response and Tony added, “What are they saying?”

“Two squads are moving down to meet you. Two more are staying on the hunt, though they seem more focused on finding their target than murdering children now.”, Eli replied. “The last team is still on the bomb. They’ve got orders to blow the whole damned place up if much more happens.”

“Remember what I said before about not taking the shot?”, Tony asked. Eli grunted again in response and Tony’s lips curved in a devious smile. “I’d like you ignore that. Whenever you’ve got the shot, take it. We’re getting payback for Jameson and his squad today. Tori, you still on the line?”

“I am.”, she replied, her typically cold voice cracking to reveal some frustration. “What do you need from me?”

“You’re a Fixer ain’t you? You know how to get in and out of a place with a package without being noticed. Well, imma need you to find as many kids as you can and get them out of here.”, he said into his comm-link. “Take them to where Eli is, wherever’s safe. Odds are, bullets’ll be flying soon and I don’t want to risk a single one finding it’s way into a kid in the crossfire.”

“Understood. Tori out.”, she said, following by the soft sound of beating wings.

“Mich, you in their network yet?”, Sara asked, smacking her lips with each bite of her chewing gum, occasionally blowing it out into neon green bubbles.

“Almost. The Agency’s boosted its security, and this new level of spray they’re using…well, let’s just say if it wasn’t being such a pain, it’d be turning me on right now.”, Mich said, tapping away at the holographic interface her watch projected. Tony cringed at her remark. “Also, are you honestly chewing bubblegum right now? We’re surrounded to teams of Trackers, and likely minutes away from being shot to death.”

“Firstly, I love the optimism Mich and secondly, if I’m going to die, I might as well enjoy myself won’t I?”, Sara replied, waving her hands as she talk, seemingly uncaring that in each hand she held a loaded pistol. “Besides, it isn’t hurting you is it?”

“Might be. It’s annoying to listen to, and now that I’m talking to you about it, it’s distracting me from breaking through these god-damned layers of spray.”, Mich said, not ever looking up from her screen.

“Well, then stop talking to me about it and let me chew my gum in peace eh?”

“Tony, I blame you for all this.”, Mich said. Tony narrowed his eyes in confusion and shot her a look that said how is this my fault?

“Ever since you two started making the beasts with some backs, or whatever the damned saying is, she’s become more a pain.”, Mich continued, swearing under her breath and hitting the Tracker’s cybernetic implant with the back of her hand. Whatever it did it clearly worked, for her screen flashed with green light and her expression lit up with a smile. Chuckling she said, “But enough o’ that shit. Boys, we’re in. Tapping you into their feed now.”

A hand went to adjust Tony’s comm-link, scrolling through frequency of pure white noise until he heard a robotic, monotone voice in his ear. Three targets located. Request for elimination. I repeat request for elimination.

“Mich, where’s this coming from?”, Tony shouted, his voice blocking out whatever response was given.

She tapped away at her screen for a short second, face twisted in panic and stress, before calling out, “Squad seventy-seven. Two floors above us, three rooms to the left.”

“Eli, do you see them? Do you have a fucking shot on them?”, Tony shouted, scrolling through his comm-link’s frequencies, failing to find his own. He just prayed Eli could hear him. That man can hear a rat fart through a concrete wall, come on.

For a moment there was silence, the robotic voice in his head saying, Operative s-seventy-seven oh-twelve speaking. I repeat, request for elimination.

“He says he’s got one.”, Tafon said, his hand on his comm-link.

“Tell him to take the damned shot!”, Tony shouted. He paused for a moment, the voice in his head talking.

Request granted.

His eyes widened with panic and he screamed, “Take the damned shot!”

An echoing boom rippled through the air, accompanied by the muffled shattering of glass and a soft thud. For a moment, silence fell over the room, so thick and tense Tony could almost see it. Fear and uncertain filled his heart with a stabbing pain, and he could not block out the images of dead children bleeding out on the floor, a bullet in their skulls.

Operative s-seventy-seven oh-twelve has fallen. I repeat, an Operative has fallen. Eliminations of targets delayed. Priority, elimination of threats. Scanning for attackers now.

There was another gunshot that rung through the air and Tony heard in his ear. Operative s-seventy-seven oh-thirteen has been shot. Status, deceased. Sniper located. Four remaining operatives targeting threat now.

There was a moment of silence before a burst of gunfire tore through the quiet. It attacked Tony’s ears from two fronts, the comm-link in his ear and the echoes that rippled through the air. Lowering the volume of his comm-link he looked at Mich and said, “You’ve got access to their network don’t you? Is there anything you can do to them, any bugs you can send past their spray, mess with their systems?”

She frowned in thought for a second before chuckling under her breath at an unsaid thought and said, “I think I’ve got something fun I can send. You three go up first, I’ll catch up with you.”

Tony nodded and turned towards the staircase. He sprinted up the stairs, the clanging of metal stairs meeting his hard boots echoing up and down the stairwell. From outside, the unending sound of gunfire filled the air, intermittently filled with the shattering of clash and boom of exploding concrete.

Two floors above where they once stood, Tony kicked open the door with a forceful grunt, rushing to fill the open doorway with a raised gun, his other hand inside his jacket. Empty. He returned to the corridor and moved onto the next door. The voice in his ear, momentarily replaced by the hail of gunshots, returned. Operative s-seventy-seven oh-nine has fallen. Squad now consists of four members. Target located on rooftop of nearby apartment complex. Permission to use high-grade explosive rounds.

Estimated casualties, a voice asked in Tony’s ear. It gave him pause for a moment. He had not heard this voice before, muffled and warped to sound almost like a machine, the white noise in the background almost loud enough to drown it out.

Twelve fatalities, seven wounded, the first voice replied. Tony quickened his pace, following the sporadic bursts of gunfire as they grew louder and louder. Behind him, Sara and Tafon readied their weapons.

Permission granted, the robotic voice said after a moment’s pause. The volume of gunfire had grown louder and louder, the sounds bombarding his left ear just as loud as the gunfire coming from his comm-link. He stopped in front of the door, trying to control his rapid, panicked breaths. Come on Tony. You’ve done this dozens of times before. You got this.

He quickly changed the frequency to their own. First wrapping his hand around the cross that hung from his neck and muttering a prayer, he then charged forwards, knocking the door open with a shove of his shoulder. The sound of gunfire blasted at his uncovered ears, so loud it was almost concussive. His eyes darted around the room, periodically blinded by muzzle flares. Four trackers were spread around the room, their backs to him and guns all pointing at the window opposite Tony. A pair hid behind overturned beds, the others hiding behind a support pillar in the middle of the room.

“Protect the children!”, Tony shouted, the focus of his vision momentarily shifting to the three children that stood near him, frozen in time. He ran forwards, firing off three shots before sliding behind a bed, dropping down to a low crouch. A resounding thud could be heard amongst the gunfire.

He looked up to see Sara marching forwards, her arms growing longer and longer. A bullet narrowly missed her head, Tony’s heart skipping a beat, and she lashed her elongated arms out forwards. Foot-long fingers wrapped around a Tracker’s head, thumbs gouging into his eyes. With a grunt she slammed him into the Tracker next to him, sending both flying into the wall. They slid down the wall, groaning and rolling onto their knees.

Tony glanced over the bed to see the remaining Tracker turn around, his gun raised. A storm of bullets shot out from the barrel, accompanied by a blinding flash. Tony’s eyes blinked and turned to see Tafon surrounded by a field of warped air, distorted by the heat his body gave off. Wisps of smoke rose from his exposed flesh, and Tony watched the bullets melt and explode into minute droplets of orange metal, thudding into his thick body armour like molten rain, hissing as they cooled back into metal. One of his hands lashed outwards and a knife flew from his grasp, the blade a molten amber. It thudded into the Tracker’s face, the molten metal spreading to cover his left cheek. It seeped up his nose and into his eye, the cyborg’s scream of pain echoing. Dropping his gun and collapsing to the floor, his hands rose to grab his melted face. Tafon walked towards the Tracker and Tony turned away. He doubted he could stomach it, though the sent of burning metal and flesh gave him enough of an idea that he still felt sick.

Two resounding bangs came from across the room and he looked up to see Sara standing over the body of two Trackers, a pistol in each hand, wisps of smoke rising from the barrels. Each one had a hole in the centre of their skull, thick blood leaking through. She looked down at them for a moment longer before sheathing her pistols.

“Well, that wasn’t too hard was it?”, she replied with a smirk. She seemed overly carefree, as if blood was not splattered against her tactical vest. Tafon walked up to the pair of them, hands still smoking, his dark face gloomy in a solemn frown. “You enjoying yourself Tafon? Eli, Mich, Tori, what about you? How’re you doing?”

“All’s good down here, just putting the final touches on my little present for the Trackers.”, Mich’s voice rung in his ear, metal clicks and beeping in the background. “I’ll be joining you three up there in a moment.”

“Remind me when I get back to get Mich a cold one. This gun, me and Hellman are going to have some fun.”, Eli remarked, an uncharacteristic glee to his voice. It sounded almost childlike, and Tony started to smile. Though he did not quite understand why Eli named his gun after Mich.

“Tori, what about you?”, he asked into his comm-link. Suddenly, there was a violent shattering and he spun to look at the windows. Tori had dived through, standing on a field of shattered glass shards. Her hair, a mix of straight black hair and dark feathers peppered with white, was tied back in a braid, her lean body covered in a tight black camo-suit. A pair of wide black wings shot out from her shoulder blades, almost wide enough to touch both ends of the room. Pulling the wings inwards, Tori walked towards them with a stern expression, slender eyes narrowed in frustration.

“I could hear you three from three buildings down.”, she remarked angrily, glancing down at the six corpses littered around the room, Tafon’s kills still smoking. “You’re lucky we’re in the New Bronx. The Trackers and the Haven police department don’t give a damn about this place, otherwise we’d be running from this place with a small army of them after us.”

“Well, no one promised you that we’d be quiet did they?”, Sara asked, matching Tori’s annoyance with venom in her tone. “We ain’t Fixers, we’re Crewers. We don’t work quietly, but we get the job done.”

“Thanks for the sales pitch.”, Tori muttered as she walked past Sara to the trio of frozen children. That drew a scowl from the Crewer, but Tony raised his hand and shook his head before she could retort. Taking two children in her arms, Tori lifted them up and walked back to the window, adding, “And just so you know, Captain Nedelko promised me that you five followed orders. Clearly, she was wrong.”

Sara opened her mouth to retort, but before she could say a word, Tori leapt out the window, becoming a black winged wraith against the night sky. Sara walked up to the window, watching as the figure of Tori rose up then lowered down, settling on the roof of an apartment complex.

“I really don’t like that woman, you know that?”, she said, pressing the mute button on her comm-link.

“I couldn’t notice.”, Tony chuckled, pressing his own mute button. Sara glanced over her shoulder at him, her gaze as sharp as daggers. “What? I thought it was Tori you hated, not me.”

“You lovers can talk about who you do and do not hate in your own time.”, Tafon said. He paused for a moment, fiddling with his comm-link. His expression darkened suddenly and he walked over the door, adding before he stepped out of the room, “Right now, we have a whole orphanage of children depending upon us, and I for one am not just going to let them die.”

Sighing, Tony hurried after Tafon, following him down the corridor. That man marched with a violent intensity, storming down the staircase. Pressing a finger against his comm-link he said, “Mich, have you uploaded the virus? Is Prowler still in the basement.”

“Yes on both fronts.”, Mich replied, and Tony looked down the staircase to see Mich popping her head through the doorway. “Where the hell are you going?”

“The basement.”, Tafon replied, not stopping in his descent. Mich shot him a confused look and he replied, “Tap into the Trackers’ frequency. Listen to what they’re talking about. They’re about to blow the building up.”

“Oh fuck.”, Tony replied, stopping for a moment. He hurriedly fiddled with his comm-link’s frequency, and his eyes widened in shock when he heard the same. We’ve got to do something, fast. He turned to Tafon, . That man was the best tactician they had, and no one, not even Sara, questioned him.

“The Trackers’ bombs operate on a signal-based detonator. Mich, can you use the Prowler to allow you into the bomb’s private network?”, Tafon asked. Behind Tony, Mich grunted and he added, “We’ll provide covering fire. I need you to get into that network and deactivate the bomb or the detonator, whichever’s easier. Eli, do you have eyes on the bomb?”

“I do.”, Eli said, his always-calm tone offering Tony some minor reassurance. “Got a few good shots on the Trackers around it too.”

“Hold your fire. We can’t risk the Trackers setting off the bomb. We only attack when Prowler is in position.”, Tafon said sternly, stopping at the bottom of the staircase. A thick metal door stood in their way, its handle covered in a thick layer of orange-brown rust. The air down here was damp, reeking of swampy moss and rodent waste. Tafon glanced over his shoulder and asked, “Mich, is Prowler ready?”

“Almost. We just all better hope that his cloaking shields work, else we’ll all be charred meat in a few seconds.”, she replied, tapping away at the holographic screen her watch projected.

Sweat lined her face and dripped from her brow, eyes narrowed in focus. For a moment, she was still, and Tony watched a million lines of illegible code appear and disappear from her screen. Then there was a soft but resounding blip and she remarked, “Prowler’s done it. I’m in their network.”

“Good, then it’s time to attack.”, Tafon said. “Mich, you stay back. Your job is to diffuse the bomb. Eli, make what shots you can, but never shoot a Tracker if he’s close to the bomb. We can’t afford for you to miss and set it off. It’ll be likely that the room is dark, so we’ll need you to keep an eye out for any Trackers. The rest of you, get ready, we’ve got ourselves a gunfight.”

He unslung the rifle that hung off his shoulders and took a deep breath before kicking the door open. The basement was dark, a black abyss that seemed to swallow all light that got close. Tony fiddled with the torch that was attached to his pistol, a strong beam of harsh white light shooting out from the glowing power cells. The others did the same, but darkness still surrounded them. He did not like this. This was their element. The Trackers were dangerous in an all-out firefight, but they were outright deadly in situations like this, when they dictated the exchanges, when they were in the shadows and you were blind. He grabbed his cross and muttered a prayer before continuing on.

The basement was an empty floor that housed only the stone support pillars that helped keep the building up. It was silent, eerily silent, the only noise their soft, cautious footsteps. Every soft noise, imagined or otherwise, drew an exaggerated reaction from Tony. A wild spin, a sudden crouch. The kind of thing he felt stupid for doing when nothing happened. But he knew he had to do it. Because one time, he would be right. One time, he would spin around to see a Tracker walking towards him, and if he was lucky, he’d pull his trigger before the culero did. He found living a worthwhile reason to make the sacrifice of looking like an idiot.

“Tafon, a Tracker on your left.”, Eli said.

Tony turned to look at Tafon, the Crewer spinning on his heel to illuminate the part of the room next to him. Suddenly, a Tracker could be seen, dressed in black tactical gear, a rife in his hands. It turned its head to look at Tafon, cybernetic eyes widening in shock. A gunshot rang through the air, and the figure collapsed, smoking rising from the barrel of Tafon’s gun.

“One down, five more to go.”, Sara said with a fleeting grin, a pistol in each hand. “Not off to a bad start eh?”

“Be on your guard. That was loud, too loud. The other five likely already know we’re here.” Tafon remarked coldly, prodding the corpse with the tip of his gun.

“Tafon’s right. They’re advancing on your position now.”, Eli said. “They’re all in front of you.”

As soon as he finished speaking, a bullet soured over Tony’s head, ricocheting off the metal roof and thudding into the floor a few feet from his foot. Tony raised his gun and pointed it into the darkness. Tafon leapt towards him and pressed the gun down, hissing, “We can’t afford to be sloppy. One stray bullet, and it doesn’t matter what Mich does, we’re all dead. You got a flare in that coat?”

Tony nodded, reaching into his coat and pulling out a long, thin dark red stick with a black cap. He handed it to Tafon, who ripped off the cap and flicked the minute switch underneath before throwing it into the darkness. A trail of glowing red light left in its wake as it soared through the damp air, it thudded against the hard stone floor before exploding in a storm of crimson sparks. Before the flames even settled, Tafon fired three shots into the light, a dark figure falling to the floor. Shadowy figures started to appear in the flashing lights, firing bullets in short, mechanical bursts. Sara fired a volley of shots before dropping to the floor, rolling to hide behind one of the basement’s support pillars. Pressing up against another pillar, Tony peeked out and raised his gun when suddenly, he started to hear voices in his head.

Somebody call the cops, now! He don’t got much time-

Sometimes I really wonder, if everything she tells me is true or is just a piece of-

Come on Johnny, stay with me buddy, stay with me-

How many times do I have to tell him, me and his father-

Hi-No-What is-Welcome-This-dinner-sleep-

A thousand voices rushed through his mind, a million thoughts bombarding his neurones. They strained to absorb the information, every fibre of his mind burning with agony. Screaming, he dropped to the floor, clutching his head as he felt his brain push against the inside of his skull. He felt someone grab ahold of him, dragging him against the harsh floor whilst bullets flew overhead. The world faded into darkness, flashing colours melding to form a mess of light before being swallowed by an encroaching black tide.

A support pillar at his back keeping him upright, he heard muffled shouts. Not his mind this time, but his ears. A shining, burning pain struck his cheek and his eyes flickered open. The shouting continued, slowly becoming louder and clearer. A sharp ringing undercut the muddled noises, accompanied by the constant cracks of gunfire.

“Tony! Wake up god-dammit wake up!”, the voice shouted, words muddled by a thick accent. Tony looked up, his vision clearing itself of the flashing white blotches that blinded him.

Tafon stood over him, his gaze jumping from him to the Trackers that fired at them. He fired two shots from his bullet, and another deathly thud could be heard. He glanced back down at Tony, prodding him with the tip of his gun and tapping him on the shoulder. Groaning, Tony stumbled to his feet, using the pillar as a support to keep himself upright.

“Are you okay?”, Tafon asked, glancing over Tony’s shoulder as he talked. Another burst of bullets was shot into the darkness, followed by the barely audible splurge as it tore through flesh, though there was no fall of a corpse.

“I’m fine.”, Tony replied hesitantly, resting his head in the palm of his hand. There was still a lingering strain from before, but it was beginning to fade. “Just lost myself there for a bit.”

The voices were gone, Tony realised in an amazed trance. They were gone! But for how much longer? He had gone too long without Mich’s cocktail. His mind was vulnerable now, vulnerable to the thoughts that assailed it on all fronts.

“Bomb’s been diffused!”, Mich shouted in his ear followed by an energetic yelp, both too loud for his weary ears. “Prowler’s joining you guys in the field now. Step back and watch my baby in action.”

Tony turned and looked over the edge of the support pillar. The outline of three figures could be seen in the red light of the still-burning flare, advancing on their position, every few steps accompanied by bursts of gunfire.

Suddenly, a squat figure appeared next to the flare. Prowler. The Trackers stopped in their advance, glancing down at the mechanical creatures. One of them fired at it, only for the bullets to ricochet against its thick shields and clatter against the roof and floor. With a whir, Prowler’s back opened up and two guns rose from the opening.

“Boys, here’s a little present from mama! Enjoy!”, the Prowler emitted in Mich’s voice, followed by cackling laughter.

A storm of bullets fired from the pair of guns on Prowler’s back, their muzzle flashes blinding and filling the room with harsh white light. The sound of unending gunfire rippled through the air, bombarding Tony’s ears even as he covered them with his hands.

When the gunfire eventually ceased, the three Trackers laid dead on the floor, their bodies bloodied messes of flesh peppered with metal rounds and filled with holes. Prowler retracted its guns back into its body before scurrying back off into the darkness.

“Mich, remind me never to get on your bad side again.”, Sara remarked, stepping out from behind a nearby support pillar. Holstering her pistols, she glanced down at the corpses of the Trackers and said, “Looks like someone left three mounds of mincemeat down here.”

Tony chuckled grimly at the quip, walking towards the bodies when he felt a stern tap on his shoulder. He glanced back over his shoulder to see Tafon standing there with arms crossed, his dark eyes narrowed in a stern frown. Where Eli failed to make Tony even the slightest bit fazed, Tafon’s glare was enough to make his heart freeze up in his chest out of panic.

“What happened back there?”, Tafon growled. Tony opened his mouth to reply but before he could speak, Tafon snapped, “Don’t give me that crap about you losing yourself. We’ve been in dozens of firefights together. If you were the kind of man to breakdown in a fight, I would know, and you’re not. So what was it?”

“It was the same thing that happened earlier wasn’t it Antonio?”, Sara asked. Her use of his full name made his expression sour. She only ever did that when she was annoyed with him, or worried. Both were much the same to him, as they both ended in her angry at him.

He looked at Sara, then at Tafon, then back at Sara. He saw the concern in her eyes, and the intensity in his, and he sighed, “It was. It’s…it’s my powers. They’ve been going haywire for a few months now. It wasn’t too bad at first, just lasted for a few seconds, and it was just the voices nearby. But it’s lasting longer, and each time its been more voices. Mich…she’s been giving me something to deal with it all.”

“You mean she’s been drugging you?”, Sara snapped, and Tony turned to look. He met her gaze for but a second, noticing the raging fires of passion in her eyes, before looking down at her feet in shame.

“I…I suppose you could say that. She’s got a cocktail of pills and the like that she gives me, helps keep the voices silent. I get a new batch from her every week, supposed to take it every day. Haven’t taken it for a few days now.”, Tony replied nervously. In the corner of his vision, he could see Tafon glaring at him, the dark look in the Crewer’s eyes impossible to comprehend.

“This cocktail of drugs, it weakens your powers doesn’t it? That’s why you’ve just been fighting with pistols and grenades these last few outings isn’t it? You don’t have the option to use your powers?”, Sara asked. She said it in such a way that Tony knew she knew the answer, but she was hoping that she was wrong.

He nodded and she swore loudly in accented Cantonese before saying, “You fucking liar Tony! You told me that you have your powers under control, that you were fine. Turn’s out you’ve just been drugging your brain and suppressing your powers. Why lie to me Antonio? You know if you just told us, we would’ve helped you. We would’ve found something better than drugging yourself certainly.”

“Would you have? I know you care Sara, but I’ve been dealing with this since I was a boy. There’s never been anything anyone could do, not even myself. It’s just up to the old man up there how things go, simple as that. This, Mich’s cocktail, it’s the only way I’ve found so far.”

He paused, expecting Sara to interrupt him with a violent retort. Her silence came as a surprise to him, the anger in her eyes quelling to give way to something that pained him much more to look at. Disappointment. He felt his own anger calm and his mind scrambled for something to say. It found nothing.

“We can talk about this later.”, Tafon said, breaking the silence. “Right now, we still have three squads of Trackers in this building, and they’re most likely advancing on our position as we speak. We don’t have much time.”

“Tafon’s right.”, Eli’s voice said in his ear, and Tony realised with dread that they’d kept their comm-links open for the entire argument. That meant Mich heard it all, and more importantly, Tori. Well, if my crew were going to keep it from the high-ups, Tori sure ain’t. “I was listening to their feed for a bit. They’ve given up on eliminating the kids for now. Their new objective is getting rid of you.”

“How far are they?”, Tafon asked into his comm-link.

“They’re gathering in the lobby above where you four are.”, Eli said, and Tony looked over his shoulder to see Mich walking over to them. “Two squads are already there. They’re just waiting for the third one to arrive. If any of you’ve got a plan, I suggest you get it done quickly.”

They all turned to look at Tafon, waiting desperately for him to say something. He met their pleading, inquisitive stares with quick glances before scratching his chin in thought. A few, tense moments passed before he broke the silence and said, “Tony, I’m going to need every grenade and explosive you’ve got in that coat of yours. Sara, search the bodies of the Trackers and get me the same. Mich, how quickly can you set up a tripwire?”

“If I’ve got everything in my bag, thirty seconds tops.”, Mich replied.

Sara nodded, walking over to the nearest bodies and rummaging through their vests. Tony reached into his jacket and handed everything he had to Tafon. Grenades, flash bangs, minor EMPs. The Crewer looked them over with a cold, contemplative gaze before handing them to Mich.

“Set them up at the entrance. We’re going to give them a fiery welcome.”, Tafon said. Oh great, you’re making puns now are you Mr. Serious? Everything’s truly gone to shit hasn’t it?

Mich nodded. Tapping away at her watch, she glanced into the shadows to see Prowler appear. A proud smile on her lips, she scurried off towards the door, her path illuminated by a pair of Prowler’s headlights on. Tafon checked his rifle before following Mich to the doorway, stopping at the support pillar closest to it. Tony walked up to him, his pistol in his hand. Tafon grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled Tony towards him.

“Listen…about back there.”, he started to say, almost panicked.

Tafon raised a hand to silence him, interjecting, “I am not Sara Antonio. I don’t care about how you deal with your problems. We each have our own issues, and we deal with them how we want. I respect that. But in the field, when our lives are in danger, we need to be able to count on you. Otherwise, I can’t be in the field with you and I’ll make sure the Captain hears about that. So, can I count on you?”

“You know you can Tafon.”, Tony replied with a strained smile.

Tafon looked him up and down with a suspicious gaze before nodding his head and saying, “Good. In that case, I need you on that pillar to our left. When the Trackers come into view, we need to draw them towards us, so that they don’t just use the doorway for cover. When I give you the signal, you stick your head out and you shoot. Clear?”

Tony nodded, walking over to the pillar. He glanced over the pillar’s edge to see Mich tampering away at some bizarre little contraption when he heard Eli’s voice say, “Whatever you four’ve got in store for our guests, I suggest you do it quickly. The Trackers are beginning to go down the staircase.”

“Mich, get back.”, Tafon hissed.

The engineer scrambled to her feet and hurried to the safety of a nearby pillar. She unslung her bag, reaching into it and pulling out a compact metal cuboid she extended into what seemed to be a shotgun. Never one for subtlety were you?

Tony started to hear footsteps, accompanied by an almost mechanical chorus of incomprehensible muttering. Tafon gestured for them to turn off their torchlights, which Tony did hesitantly, not liking the prospect of fighting the Trackers in pure darkness.

The footsteps grew louder, and he slowly started to make out the voices more clearly. Cold and robotic, they sent shivers up his spine. Even after all the time he had spent fighting trackers, they still terrified him to no small extent.

“They’re not far now.”, Eli said through his comm-link, the footsteps even louder now. Then the footsteps stopped. “They’ve stopped in front of the doorway. Only a few feet away from Mich’s tripwire."

“Tony, Sara, on my mark.”, Tafon’s voice hushed via Tony’s comm-link.

He turned to fix his gaze on where he remembered Tafon to be, waiting for a signal. Waiting. Waiting.

Then there was the sound of a gunshot, a violent crack cutting through the silence. Tafon’s voice echoed through the darkness, his outline illuminated by the periodic flash of gunfire.

“Come and get me you bastards!”

Gunfire flashed from across the basement, a seemingly endless burst that filled the room with harsh, almost blinding light. With a scream, Tony and Sara both rolled out of their cover, blindly firing off into the darkness. The clanging of ricocheting bullets echoed, joined in their deathly chorus by the soft thuds of bullets piercing body armour and the occasional thump of a falling corpse.

“Fuck I’ve been hit.”, Tafon called out, barely audible amongst the cacophony of violence. In the flash of gunfire, Tony saw the dark figure of Tafon stagger towards the nearest pillar, slumping down against it. He did not stop firing though, blindly firing at the doorway.

“They’re moving forwards.”, Eli said, the three of them, joined by Mich, continuing to fire aimlessly at the Trackers. “Hell, one of them is standing right above the damn wire! If you could get him to-”

A sudden burst of bright orange light filled the room, accompanied by a deafening boom that Tony felt rip his eardrums apart. The blinding light lingered in his vision for many moments longer than it did in real life, eventually fading into flashing blotches of light. When his vision finally returned to him, a ringing noise still lingering in his ears, he saw that the doorway had been reduced to a mound of rumble. The broken limbs and cybernetic appendages of Trackers stuck out through cracks in the pile, unmoving and bloodied.

“They’re all dead.”, Eli said in Tony’s ear, almost drowned out by the still deafening ringing. “Every last one of them.”

A whoop of elation left Sara’s lips. Tony smiled, fiddling with his gun’s torch so that it shot out a wide cone of harsh white light. Sara did the same, turning to meet Tony’s gaze with eyes twinkling with light. Then she glanced down at Tafon’s body. Her eyes suddenly widened in horror, as did Tony’s, when they saw the extent of his wounds.

Around his stomach, the body armour had been ripped apart, small lead pellets embedded in a sea of minced flesh. Blood dripped from dozens of freshly formed orifices, coagulating on the floor to form a thick crimson pool.

“Mich, get over here! Tafon’s hurt real bad.”, Sara shouted.

The engineer’s hurried footsteps echoed through the basement, and she dropped down into a squat right above Tafon. Her eyes filled with panic and she scrambled to reach inside her bag and pull out a roll of canvas labelled with a red cross. Unrolling it, she grabbed a metal syringe and a piece of firm leather.

“Bite on this if you wanna scream”, she said, pressing the syringe’s fine tip against the very edge of Tafon’s mangled flesh. She offered him the band of leather and added, “Be warned. This is going to hurt like hell.”

She pressed the syringe into the bloodied flesh, and the screams that left Tafon’s lips, even though he bit on the leather, were so loud and raw with pain that Tony almost covered his ears to spare them from the noise. Injecting the clear liquid inside the syringe, she tossed the metal container aside and reached for the roll of bandages. Tearing off a long chunk, she wrapped it around Tafon’s midsection, the rough white cloth quickly staining with blood.

“That should keep the wound from getting infected and bleeding too much until we can get back to the Underground and have a proper look at it okay?”, Mich said, rolling up the canvas and stuffing it back into her bag. Clambering to her feet, she offered Tafon a hand. With a groan, he reached up and grabbed it, pulling himself to his feet. “That’s it buddy. Fresh as new eh?”

A grunt was his response before he glanced over at the doorway and remarked, “In hindsight, perhaps blowing up our only exit was not the smartest strategy.”

“Don’t worry about that pal. Prowler’s got that covered.”, Mich said. She whistled and the crawler appeared from the darkness, bobbing up and down softly on its claw-like legs. Tapping her watch once, she gestured up at the ceiling and slowly moved backwards, adding, “I suggest you three move back too, unless you wanna end up like those fellas there.”

Two guns emerged from Prowler’s back, and Tony hurriedly followed Mich’s advice. The guns tilted to point at the ceiling, firing a burst of bullets that tore through the concrete ceiling. For a moment, nothing happened, then the ceiling collapsed in a hail of dust and rubble. Coughing and wheezing, his lungs filling with fine concrete particles, he looked up and saw a hole in the ceiling.

“Come on.”, Mich replied cheerily, jogging over to the hole and leaping up to pull herself to the floor above. “We’ve got some kids to rescue.”

Sighing, Tony did the same, as did Sara. They both knelt down for Tafon, each offering him a hand to pull himself up with. Pulling himself through the hole, he rolled onto the floor and took a few deep breaths before climbing to his feet.

“Tori here. I’ve gotten almost every child out of here.”, Tori’s voice said in Tony’s ear. Her typically flat, calm voice broke slightly to reveal some degree of nervousness and uncertainty, and that unnerved him. “I think…I think I’ve found the target.”

“Eli, where is she?”, Tony asked.

“Top floor.”, Eli replied. “I’d hurry if I were you. I’m not sure what I’m seeing, but I know that something’s wrong.”

They did not delay themselves, running towards the staircase. The explosion had blown apart most of the lower part of the stairwell, the bottom half of the steel steps to the second floor now mangled, charred metal. But it was close enough for them to grab onto and pull themselves up with, and so they did. The orphanage was quiet, almost silent aside from the metallic pitter-patter of their hurried footsteps clanging against the metal stairs. Tony tried to ignore the nervous tingles pulsing through his body, dismissing them merely as his powers going haywire on him. But even though he tried hard, he could not deny the message they told him. Something strange was going on.

They reached the fifth floor to see Tori standing outside the staircase. Her sharp, long face, typically devoid of much emotion, betrayed panic, and in her almost black eyes Tony saw fear. Inviting the screams back into his head for a moment, he grimaced as he searched his mind for her voice. Grunting with effort, he found it, shocked to hear it only repeating one word over and word again. El Diablo.

“Where are they?”, Tafon asked, doing his best to suppress his pain.

Wordlessly, Tori turned and marched down the corridor, her black wings long enough to block out the hallway to either side of her even though they were retracted. They were silent as they walked down the corridor, the strange tingling feeling that Tony felt growing stronger with every step he took. He turned to glance at Sara to see that she shared his discomfort, her dark eyes darting around the room at every small sound that wasn’t a footstep.

“We’re here.”, Tori said, stopping at a door only a few rooms away from the end of the corridor. The door was ajar, opened just a crack, and when Tori pressed against it, it did not move. “Be careful. I don’t know what’s happening in here, but it’s bad. It’s really bad.”

She slid through the crack into the dark room beyond. One-by-one, the rest of them did the same, Tony going last. He paused for a moment, waiting to hear shocked gasps, angered cries, just anything that gave him a clue what waited beyond that door. But there was nothing, only silence.

He muttered a prayer before stepping into the room. It was dark, illuminated only by the torches of their guns. The air in the room was dry, and so thick that he found it difficult to breathe. Fine particles of dust hovered in the air, vibrating between existence and non-existence. He looked around, and saw that the whole room was flickering. One second, it was all there, the walls, the table, the bed, everything. The next, it was all gone, and he found himself floating in the air, looking out at the shining city of Haven, the run-down district of New Bronx.

Every step he took, he was filled with fear that he would fall to his death. One second, the concrete floor would be firm beneath his feet, the next it was gone, and he would begin to fall, only for the concrete to return a millisecond later. And it was all because of her.

Ahead of them, standing in the centre of the room, was a girl. No older than eight, ten at the oldest, her face was covered by locks of messy black hair, parting down the middle to reveal light brown skin and a pair of coffee-coloured eyes that glowed with energy. Around her, everything was wrong. Everything was shifting so quickly that it was all there yet not there at the same time. Even the torchlight was effected, one moment there, the other moment there was only darkness.

“What the hell is happening?”, Sara asked.

“I think…I think the girl’s stopping time around her.”, Mich replied. She tapped away at her watch, pulling up an image onto the screen it projected. “It’s the security camera feed from seven hours ago. The last time the cameras showed anything.”

Tony watched. For a while, everything was normal. Children playing, women in plain nurses uniforms walking up and down the corridors. Then there was a blast of energy, barely noticeable. The movements started to slow, and Tony noticed the number showed by the clock’s timer started to slow too until eventually, they just stopped. Then everything went black.

“If everything here’s frozen in time, then why aren’t we?”, Tony asked.

“Tori, when you took the children out of here, were they still frozen?”, Mich asked. The fixer nodded and Mich added, “This initial blast of…whatever the hell that was, it seems to have distorted how time affects the people that it hit. Anyone who’s come in afterwards seems to be fine, except for that little space around the girl. The question remains, how the hell do we fix it?”