Bravo One, this is Overwatch, how copy?
Joseph opened his eyes. There was a nearly inaudible high-pitched whine as his goggles switched back to active mode, and the mechanical whir of the light apertures going through their test cycle told him he’d been out for more than half an hour. The low-light, infrared optics showed the world on its side, a black sky next to an intensely white landscape of gravel, rock, and cracked asphalt. The rest of his body, covered from head to toe in locally procured desert grass and leafy scrub, didn’t move an inch even as his mind and body registered sore spots where he’d laid in the same position for too long on the cooling desert rocks. At least he’d found a comfortable way to lay his head down down on his upper arm and come out of the experience without acquiring a crick in the neck.
His voice was low, not a whisper, but just enough to activate his vocal cords and allow the sensor wrapped around his windpipe to pick it up. “I copy, Overwatch. Lima Charlie.”
Great. Was getting lonely out here, moving all this heavy equipment by myself.
Joseph started the process of getting moving again by taking several big lungfuls of air and working his aching muscles one by one to get some of the blood back into them. Since he was currently pretending to be part of the landscape, sudden movements were out of the question just now, but he settled for drawn out stretches that barely changed the shape of his outline.
“Maybe next time you can wear this thing and crawl for hours on end,” he replied to Wilhelm as he worked to extend his injured leg.
Sorry, kid. That's a young man's game. While I got set up, I let you get that nap time you've been whining about. Wake up fast 'cause we're behind schedule.
Bravo One blinked at that and moved his eyes up to the display at the top right of his heads up display.
23:10
He’d slept through the agreed upon go time, but Wilhelm hadn’t said anything. The entire trip down here had been spent creating force batteries one by one as time allowed. It wasn’t as mentally taxing as creating the more complicated stuff, but the monotony was taxing in its own way. So, by the time they'd arrived Joseph had been dead on his feet. Perhaps Wilhelm saw that as well and chose to let him rest.
“What did I miss, Overwatch?” he asked, as he languidly stretched stretched his arms and craned his neck to suck down some water from a tube on his shoulder.
Not too much. I’ve kept an eye on things while I got set up. Looks quiet.
Joseph frowned, hoping that calm didn’t portend a failed hunt. “Has our bird flown the coop?” he asked.
Negative. He's here. Believe me. Got the drone up in the air a few minutes ago, and I'm already seeing signs.
A little prompt appeared in Joseph’s heads up display, semi-translucent, pale blue text with the message:
Incoming stream from source: EITS-1. Accept? Y/N.
Joseph moved his eyes over the ‘Y’ and hovered for a moment to allow the data to come through. A high-altitude overhead video of Las Almas appeared in his left eye, allowing his right to keep watch as he viewed the video stream from the little recon drone. The town was a loose cluster of structures in gray, black and white with tiny pale dots that indicated sources of heat. He oriented himself upon the trailer park where he hid and slowly blinked to request a zoomed in view of the area.
He was a blob of white, barely human shaped and discernible from the desert rocks and scrub where he’d hid, but the rest of the area was cool and devoid of life. Joseph gave the camera a little wave.
Vanity doesn’t become you, my boy. I was talking about stuff like this.
The camera’s view zoomed out to its original position then irised in on a cluster of small, warm figures hunched over a spot on the ground behind a building with a walled in backyard. It was hard to see in the thermals but the animals were busy tearing into a figure on the ground, ripping off pieces and carrying their prizes off to chew them away from the others. The creatures bit and scratched at each other when they got too close to one another but went back to chowing down as soon as their disputes were settled.
Ya see ‘em?
“Looks like animals.”
Scavengers. They got a corpse they’re working on. There’s a few others like that too.
“And that means Gull is still here?”
That’s my best guess. Well ordered communities don’t tend to let their dead just sit out in the sun like that. Something’s wrong here, and I think there’d be more cops and E.M.T.s if Gull left and let the brainwashing drop.
“Good enough for me. I’ll start getting set up on my end.”
One more thing you should see.
The display zoomed out again then focused on a pair of vehicles driving through a cluster of homes. They were small pickup trucks, with six men riding around in the truck’s beds, four in one, two in the other. On both, at least one of the men was standing in a harness, looking over the truck’s roof, a long barreled weapon slung over their shoulder or clutched in their hands.
Not sure what to make of ‘em yet. The weapons and trucks look civilian, and their king shit swagger makes me think bike club.
“Well, that complicates things. If they're working for Gull, we’re going to have to do something about these guys before going after the big one,” Joseph observed as he got up on one knee and brought his rifle up to the low ready position. Fighting a flying hypno-bird-man was going to be hard enough without having to worry about a third party trying to put a bullet in Joseph’s back. The problem would be taking out the small fries without immediately alerting Gull to join in or, worse, flee. “Alright, Overwatch. Keep me posted. I’m making my way to the objective.”
Be advised. I haven’t been watching these assholes long enough to know if they have a pattern. Your best bet is to stay off the roads.
“Roger that.”
Keeping low and fluid in his movements, Joseph crept from shadow to shadow, around the trailer park and into the town proper. There were no signs of human activity on the streets at all. No cars. No pedestrians. No slamming doors. No voices. Even the lights in the houses were all extinguished. It was like the entire town had decided on a self enforced curfew and were following it religiously.
The streets were dark under the new moon and, aside from the occasional flapping of wings or cricket chirps, silent. A couple times, Joseph encountered packs of roving dogs digging through a pile of refuse they’d spilled out of a toppled trash can or gnawing on an animal carcass they’d found. The animals looked thin, their ribs visible on the short haired breeds, and their mouths foamed as they hunted for their next meals. A pang of sympathy shot through Joseph when he looked at them.
“Overwatch, the animals look like they’re starving.”
Yeah. Looks like there’s a lot of ‘em too, probably the whole town’s pets turned out on their own. Give ‘em a wide berth unless you wanna get bit.
He did just that, electing to go around the long way when he encountered the loose knots of dogs and heading steadily north and east toward the objective, an out of service train depot on the edge of town. The idea was to get a feel for Las Almas and choose a battleground for the fight with Gull. The depot was their first choice, since it was well away from any homes or essential services. With luck, they’d be able to draw Gull into the killing field and finish him before things could get messy, but they wouldn't know until they saw the place up close.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
As Joseph made his way north, the town’s buildings started to show their age, going from relatively new homes with freshly painted siding and tin roofs to the older, adobe places with missing shingles and dirty or outright broken windows patched with plywood. The roads had more cracks here as well, sometimes entire sections of them swallowed up by the desert sand and scrub grass only to reemerge a block later.
When he got to the rusted chain link fence that encircled the depot, it was 01:20. The fence leaned inward on warped supports, resting on a line of skeletal boxcars that hadn’t seen use in God knows how many years, but Joseph wasn’t willing to climb up and over thanks to the barbed wire still affixed to the top of the barrier. So, he traveled along the fence to get to the gate that connected to Las Almas’ main north-south road. Unfortunately, this road was important enough to warrant street lights, so he ended up taking the pokey route anyway, using an old rug he’d purloined from a clothesline to drape over the barbed wire and infiltrate the depot safely. He’d need to stash the rug when he was done for the night just in case someone really kept track of their old dusty rugs and suspected an interloper in their midst.
The old depot’s perimeter was like a rectangle that someone had hit with their car, caving in the southernmost side to form a fat, wonky boomerang shape. Inside, there were several buildings in severe disrepair, tin walls and roofs missing entire sections and exposing the interiors to the elements. Tens of abandoned train cars sat where they’d been for years, arranged around a center sort of courtyard where several charred fire barrels sat empty, and the concrete block that was the old platform was cracked and missing several larger pieces that now lay half-buried in the sand. The wind whistled through the rusted metal bones of the place, and the multitude of spindly desert plants rubbed against the tin of the warehouse walls to create a constant scraping noises like nails on a chalkboard.
He keyed the mic on his throat to broadcast to Wilhelm. “Well, this place is moody,” he said, taking careful steps through the train cars and making his way to the several warehouses that they’d decided to scout tonight. “Not sure what kind of vision Gull has, but there’s shadows everywhere. Might be a good place to hit him at night.”
My intel doesn't say one way or the other if he's got enhanced senses. He's first gen, so anything goes. How’re things looking in there, Bravo One? Anything fit the bill?
“Wait one,” Joseph said, hauling hard at one of the sliding double doors that led into the first warehouse on the list. The inside was dark, but his goggles painted the interior well enough, showing him a forest of old scrap metal beams, rods, and pipes as well as numerous hanging plastic sheets that waved in the draft created by numerous missing chunks in the walls. Not a great place to be stuck on the ground, fighting for your life, he decided. “First building is a bust. Feel like I’m gonna get tetanus just from looking around,” Joseph transmitted, suppressing a shudder. All the jutting edges and impaling spikes reminded him too much of the lasher den.
Roger that. Be advised: that patrol is getting pretty close to your position. They’ve pulled off into a neighborhood on the east side of the north-south road, but they’re working their way to you.
“Right. I'll hurry.”
Joseph made his way to the next building and opened it up to find it mostly intact except for the back corner of the building which looked like a giant rust monster had taken a bite out of the structure just above ground level. The only thing inside the warehouse was a steel container with only one door which swung open wide. The other door seemed to have fallen off at some point, laying on the ground in front of the box. In the interior of the container was a dusty and ripped sleeping bag and a pair of rolled up tarps, probably the property of some long gone transient.
“Second building has promise," Joseph reported while he swept his gaze up, nodding with growing satisfaction. "The roof is intact, and there’s a connex in here I could do something with.”
Marking that building on the map now. Better finish your sweep or pack up. I think the convoy’s coming your way. Aw shit. Wait one.
The line went quiet for a moment, and Joseph used that time to make his way outside. He could hear the revving of engines while the bright headlights of the trucks cast heavy shadows among the wreckage of the depot despite their distance.
Bravo One, the convoy has civilians with ‘em. They picked up a couple passengers at that last stop.
Joseph stopped cold, a hand of ice gripping his heart. “What kind of passengers.”
Hard to tell. Unarmed. Smaller than the guys in the truck. I advise you to get out of sight and see for yourself, 'cause they’re coming your way.
Joseph was already moving, climbing up and into the remains of an old boxcar, sliding the door shut and making a note of the hole in the back where he would potentially be exposed if the patrol decided to do a sweep. Then he lay down on his back until he could peek out at the courtyard under the door with his right eye. He clutched the battle rifle to his chest, using his fingers to reseat the magazine in the well out of habit.
He didn’t have to wait long before the trucks pulled into the courtyard, the intense beams of their headlights flashing over his position and making the irises on his goggles shrink to near pinpricks to spare him momentary blindness. The trucks did a circle, pulling around the fire barrels before finally parking and killing the engines, allowing the woops and cheers of the rough men that jumped down from the beds to carry far into the night.
The men, all of them wearing faded jeans, boots, and some form of head covering like scarves or caps, carried long guns on their shoulders or pistols in leather holsters inside their open leather jackets. Joseph could see patches sewn onto the backs and shoulders but couldn’t see their shapes or text particularly well. Still, he was inclined to agree with Wilhelm's assessment that these guys belonged to a motorcycle club, despite the obvious lack of motorcycles.
From the back of one of the trucks, one of the bikers slid a coffin sized cooler bed to land with with a *wham* on the dirt then cracked it open to toss various bottles and cans to his brothers in arms. Another biker poured the contents of one of the bottles into the fire barrels and lit them up with a *fwoosh.* They must have had fuel in there already, having used this place before. Joseph cursed himself for not checking inside the barrels before to see if the place was recently occupied.
From the back of the other truck, a short, spindly man with a red skull cap and long hair pulled a pair of women down off the bed, gripping their forearms and leading them to the center of the circle where the fire barrels sat. The women appeared to be in their sleeping clothes, one wearing a night gown and the other in a long sleeve shirt that draped down over her bare legs. The looks on their faces were frightened but... off. Their eyes were glassy and distant like they were drugged, but they didn't move like they were under the influence. The men in the circle hooted and grunted with approval as the short biker presented the women to his friends with exaggerated gestures like a game show host presenting prizes to the audience, and the little man raised his arms and smiled smugly as he reveled in the cheers his performance earned him.
Joseph reached up and keyed his earpiece to equalize sound, and the voices of the rowdy gang were suddenly blaring in his ear along with the crackling of the fire and the wind blowing through the yard. A lot of the communication going on in the circle was non-verbal, but he caught a few snippets that all ran together in his earpiece.
“-can be my f-”
“Taking bets on how long-”
And
“Did you see that, earlier? I smashed hi-”
A few of the older bikers were content to drink their fill, sitting on the truck beds or pulling up old lawn chairs and leaning back to look at the stars as they warmed themselves by the fire. Others, though, only had eyes for the women, taking them into their arms and forcing them to dance to the music that was now blaring over out of one of the trucks' cabins. The woman only wearing the shirt fared the worst, getting the most attention from intoxicated brutes that picked her up and spun her round over and over again, hands always lingering in the more intimate areas of her body.
Joseph flexed his hands nervously around the grip of his rifle. There was a decision in front of him. Intervene now and risk alerting his quarry before he'd made his preparations or let this particular tragedy play out in front of him and maintain the element of surprise for the big fight.
He knew what he wanted to do. It involved fire and blood and probably extensive counseling for the people he wanted to save, but was it the logical thing to do?
Gull was the cause of this in one way or another. The way the women looked, the way they complied even as terror swam under the surface of their blank expressions. That was Gull's doing, Joseph was sure.
What about the bikers? Would they act like this without Gull's influence? They obviously had more agency left to them than their victims, but did Gull have his hooks set in their minds too?
Gull was a cancer to those around him. No matter where he went, he left a trail of broken people in his wake. Joseph had read as much, but it was another thing to see it happening right in front of him. Was it worth allowing this one horror to take place here to have a chance at cutting out that cancer forever?
The gang didn't even make it the entirety of two songs before the majority of the men were on their feet, tightening the circle, getting louder and rougher, grabbing, sometimes biting. They were escalating, building on one another's debauchery, pushing each other to take greater liberties with their victims. Joseph knew where this was going. They were a pack of wolves now, enjoying themselves before the climax of the kill.
Joseph reached up to one of his pouches and extracted a magazine marked with black tape wound around the bottom. Then he very carefully inserted it into his weapon, racking the slide. His pulse pounded behind his eyes, and the white of the infrared display took on a reddish hue.
“Overwatch, are you seeing this?” he asked, struggling to keep his volume low so only his throat mic could pick it up.
Yeah. They doing what I think they’re doing? Wilhelm’s voice sounded frosty over the radio.
Bravo One let out a long, shuddering breath, entering that place in his mind that he set aside for this kind of thing. The place he went when he hunted. The place empty of emotion, empathy, or mercy. He entered that place, discarding the better parts of his humanity and leaving only razor sharp killing intent. “Not for long they’re not.”