“It doesn't matter. No one cares, really.”

Three in green and red gathered around him. An old man in handmade robes of discarded fabric and miscellaneous plastics. They had been kicking him for over 20 minutes without pause, slowly changing their melody of dull thuds to wet and cracking sloshes. For its duration not once was he silent, mad against each strike he bayed and shouted, spasming wildly until there could be nothing left to move. It wasn't right, something or someone had changed it, suspending it all; or so he claimed.

“Why us?”. Once more the silence between the two spectators was broken. 13 in his monotone navy blue and 6 in a violet bodyglove lined teal.

“And why him? Because they want it. He probably fucked up bad and now they’re gonna hang his meat as a message.”

6 took a small sweeping look around: the men at the edges and at the center; over 40 strong. Their little clearing of sparrows against a sea of black soil and islands of steel. Somehow, their target lived here in his tent of trash. It made him wince, seeing life outside the west. It wasn't the way; no one had a right to survive out here. Only when his skull finally gave out and spilled its content did relief come to 6. Soon, absence, and finally it was as though he never had such thoughts.

The ride back was uncomfortable. They stopped twice to refuel at the local refineries, each time taking 15 minutes. Heavy, rhythmic clashing rang out against pure silence, and its constant thrashing only reinforced what wasn't there; that it would give out before the land.

“He was corporate, had to be. Ran dry just as we caught him, probably there for a month at best. Blew most of it on wiping his trace and getting a ride out.”

“What?”

“Him, that fuck, how else? There's nothing around but industry and they got that shit locked tight. You really think he, no, fuckin’ it could rustle up some rations under our nose? That thing could barely stand when we caught him. Besides, he had no gear. How’d you explain that, huh? I heard a story once, old squad mate got an easy roll here aboard one of those. Basic civil sec, occasionally threw in a beating when the workers got shitty. So he says, this guy, that him and 4 others need to head out now. Some crew took an investor hostage and they cant find them anywhere on site. Think they mightve had contacts east. Anyway they take a sparrow and do 3, maybe 4 sweeps in the outfield. Nothing. Guys mustve gone out further, right? Turns out a whole 30 kilos. On foot. 2 of ‘em already lost it, got put down by their own guys. Those suits crewman get arent shit. On board filters last 20 minutes max, and they’re weak. They get bi-daily shots, you know. Mostly a stim, keeps them sane and working. No real filter for what's out there. Well anyway the guys kill the rest without trouble. But then, the investor, turns out he didn't refill his own filters. The good stuff. So he had a crew one when we got to him. Soft guys like that don't handle fragrance too good. Says he was babbling the whole time, trying to tear out his neural chips, said they corroded him or something. Managed to break out of restraints actually, while doped up. Took the onboard welder and melted his face. I don't know who he was but checkers and stripes came to take him when they returned to the refinery.”

“So, yeah; there it is. Only way it makes sense.”

It had been just over a month since the American incident. Few outside the western fed actually knew of it. Only those at the top, Black Aegis included, could tell you what really happened. Since then all migration from India and China was cut off. Government aircraft supported by small armies dominated the airspace around the east coast.

“I don’t know, someone worth killing.”

“It's a lot of us, 6. And we’re just part of the vanguard, there’s talk of fed involvement in this. Something's off, has to be more than that. Didn’t that last one feel off too? With the old man?”

6 stopped and turned swift on his heel to stare at 13. For a moment the two were still as the rest of their squad boarded their sparrow. There was an aura of raw tension emanating around the cold alloy of 6’s helmet. A bizarre design consisting of 2 lines of rigid sloping edges in 7 descending rows pointing downwards just at the nose, attached to a vertical rectangular helm with a sharply edged slope pointing back at the top. Underneath each slope a round, slightly raised filter. A single black screen where the eyes would be, shaped like 2 teardrops connected to one another horizontally by their hemispheres. The back smoothed out into another hemisphere at the neck's base with a slight gap, allowing thick cords running from a panel attached to the bodyglove back to nestle within.

“Sorry, I forgot I-I uh, ah didnt mean to bring it up. Sorry.”

“...”

They were the last two to board, and one of the last flights to depart.

13 had known 6 for only 2 months, but in his field colleagues come and go in a matter of days; sometimes hours.Truth was 6 had served in a number of mercenary concerns before being officially traded into Black Aegis. His track record spanned dozens of official operations and countless more confirmed kills. Yet, for his entire stay with the company 6 had insisted on operating in these low cost “urban discord” fireteams; rubbing shoulders with fresh off the street thugs and burnt out factory lashers looking for a leg up in the security world. He even kept his standard issue helmet, claimed it was “lucky”, though few believed in superstitions in public society.

“13, comms on.”

13 switched to internal comms just in time to catch his team's brief. Some 80 kilometers outside of old Poland's “borders” was an abandoned trench line from the war. Investigations following recent sabotage at neighboring industrial facilities revealed a new expanse of much smaller underground tunnels weaving in and out of the main trenches. Their objective was to clear out a section of tunnel suspected of being the most recent addition and eventually merge with half of the other teams to sweep the southern portion. Nothing else was added, not even what they were meant to be clearing out.

6 tapped 13’s shoulder and motioned to return to his off comm mouthpiece.

“I've done this before, believe me it's real simple. Mongols and their dogs sometimes set up temporary storehouses out here all the time , we just don't find that many fresh because it's not a move you make without careful planning. Could be dissidents but that just means they contracted them instead. Either way it's sloppy work and the guys left on aren't worth their weight in ‘humanitarian exercises’. Just let the new blood walk ahead.”

An automated voice overhead announced landing in 15 minutes, its tone sharp with corrupted feedback.

“You ever deploy in the steppe?”

6 subtly moved his head just enough for his peripherals to scan the sparrow’s interior. Satisfied with the rest of his squad’s apathy he slowly lowers it.

“Yes, a few times. Only certain kind of work out there. It’s not for this lot I’ll tell you.”

“Ever go against them? They really still out there?”

6’s tone lowered with an irritated haste.

“Feds say they’re not so that’s how it is. If somehow they still were then obviously they wouldn’t let them be until it’s over. But that’s not our concern and if we made it ours we’d get shafted too.”

13 knew too well not to push things further. He lowers his head as well and took notice of the objective layout uploaded to his helmet’s internal interface. Their assigned portion took the shape of multiple root-like tunnels branching off subdivisions of the main path, and ending in several circular dead ends. In terms of combat there would be little in the way of cover with only a singular approach for most sections. Worse so, the width varied so erratically that there were sections reportedly impossible for 2 people to stand side by side. They had a few other teams supporting them with men fresher than 13, but how long they would last in there was something else entirely. He could already see it, being pinned by a hidden nest, having to crawl over a hill of bodies, his back scraping against the rough earthen ceiling. The pay hadn’t even been announced yet.

6 began assembling the rest of his kit, attaching armor segments of small, dark hexagons connected to one another,their edges curving upwards in the style of a satellite dish. The largest sections were as wide as a human face, though most were just big enough to cover vital points on the bodygloves attaching nodes. 13 looked over his weapon absentmindedly, his eyes glazed over and heart beginning to quicken. It was a brutalist design, with many rigid edges and simple geometries making up the body. The barrel just barely poked out from a thick, bifurcating triangle shaped heat shield. 13 had no knowledge of firearms despite his experience; only in Black Aegis had he the privilege to use factory produced guns.

Their sparrow began to descend and already several other teams had landed and began assembling a short distance from the main trench.

“13, filter up. Take no chances with this place. Switch to comms.”

Their team re-organized itself on the ground and without any standby immediately advanced on their target. The main trench section was completely stripped of any old tech and long since abandoned. All that remained were strips of cloth stuck in the soil and unnatural deformations.The size of the gash left a deafening impression in otherwise stagnant landscape, easily being able to fill thousands of bodies. A total of 15 entered the tunnel's opening, which had been carved at a downward slant. Each man had to do a half crawl to fit in and proceeded in that fashion for around 3 minutes. When they finally did emerge they were welcomed with a much larger structure, allowing nearly 4 of them to walk shoulder to shoulder, and evidently one which was built with care. Wooden supports with metal reinforcements dotted the sides every few feet and the ground beneath them had been well smoothed over, often covered with tarps and electrical mats. There remained the impressions of square containers in some areas but otherwise there was no evidence of recent habitation.

“Op 2, op 3, op 9, op 1, clear that room.”

6 ordered the rest to watch the entrance while he himself took the back of the line entering the room. All that had remained was a blue tarp with dark stains covering the top. Again there were the impressions of other objects but nothing substantial was left. Several more rooms were found dug out on the sides in this state, a few had curtains hanging in front of entrances. As they progressed deeper within the walls began to close in, and soon they could move 2 at a time with a slight opening between them. Some of the mercs began complaining of an unnerving odor, something bitterly taint yet also sharp enough to immediately take one’s breath. 6 said nothing, but pushed up 3 of them to take the lead. Eventually 6 wove back through the group until he was just in front of 13 and 7.

"Halt." Take point here. Op 2, op 4, op 8, op 12, op 15: move up. Stop.”

The miasma began taking physical form as wisps of dark vapors slinking out from the tunnel’s observable end. 6 took several quick glances around before beginning to slowly move back. Some of them began to audibly whimper through their comms, and 12 had completely broken down. As 6 reached out to 13 bursts of gunfire erupted through the haze, sending a body back to knock down 13. Any sense of order in ranks was broken and those left standing wildly discharged their guns in response, some unloading into their own. 13, still buried under one of his own, managed to retrieve his gun and aid in suppression. By now nearly half of their original team was dead or dying and still a rhythm of precise bursts cut through the noise and into the rest. His gun dry 13 went to free himself from under the corpse, jerking himself away just in time to catch a stray round to the head.

His head slamming back hard into the ground it felt as though his skull had nearly been rent from his body. Everything began focusing out as he willingly ceded control of his limbs. 6 and a few others were still firing, pressing their sides into the walls and backpedaling. Sound came from within and without but none of it was rationally manifest. TIme’s flow disconnected into choppy frames, piece by piece. Seconds, minutes, hours; all that remained cohesive were the stills encapsulating them. The gunfire slowed gradually, then briefly erupted in a fury, then silenced entirely. Footsteps vibrated through the earth, growing stronger with each step. Something stood over 13, pointing its gun towards where he had arrived. Vision fading, he could only make out the broadest of details: it was bipedal, largely sandy-beige with splotches of black, and had a rough surface with large protrusions here and there. A loud yet dulled rumbling returned and was met with wet thudding coming from the figure. A dark, viscous fluid sprayed over 13’s visor as it collapsed on top of him. Sharp pain invaded his fading senses, settling in around his neck.

“HOLD. I'm advancing, watch the tunnel.”

6 slowly stepped over and on top of the dead, hunched in an alert predatory stance. Pushing the chimera over 13’s body he noticed resistance in the things right hand. Its proboscis-like claws were embedded deep within 13’s neck.

1

They stepped out in half-assed double file before 6 gave them release. At first they crowded around the edges, making sure not to intrude in the actual work. But eventually they just milled about, some chatting absently about this job or that thing someone bought. 6 was brought along by an old colleague, now commanding his own team of gold-blues. Supposedly 6’s detail was there because of his excellent service, but in reality working a mission like this bumps you up in the company, despite its nature. 13 and 6 stood a short distance from the scene, just watching mostly. He was taking a beating men half his age would buckle under. When he first started flailing it almost seemed like he’d force them to gun him down, but one of the green-reds seemed to have juiced him with something and that got him on the ground. After the last kick was struck one of them pulled out a sleek, black cylinder and began shaking it over the old man as small particulates fell out. 13 hadn’t stopped to dwell on the bizarre nature of it, already following 6 back before he could see what happened next.

Approaching the sparrow its lights seem to shut off, becoming darker and darker until it transforms into a portal of pure black. 13’s eyes began to lose focus as they zero in on its entrance, blurring everything else save the sparrows sides. All that remains are two thin walls rising on either side, flanking the void. The blur’s colors meld together and spill out from all sides, draining into the floor and beginning to shine until only a blinding white glare can be observed. Detached, the firmament shifts to a sleek obsidian tone, its surface glittering from the newfound light at the bottom. 13’s body begins to panic from sensory deprivation, yet despite its pleas to turn his head away, to lie down, stop or die he glides forwards, frictionless. As he passes into nothing all that remains is his ever present gaze; there can be no other state.

13 stepped out of the large tent of garbage. Its sickly sweet-sour odors and musky breath are a comfort amidst these black dunes. No smell makes a man revel in whatever faint foulness emanates from him; no sound makes his toothless babbles a comforting melody. But now a new interlude cuts in; it is foreign. Black winged things descend around him one by one. They are 6 in total; 3 wings for each side of their bloated, yet equally gaunt frames. These appendages fold inwards and from their bellies a festering of sickness, parasites. The procession is so varied in color and size it melds together to the eyes in a chaotic assault. Bright and garish tones poison 13’s retinas and only spurs of indignation and a rising, incontinent anger steels him from an incontinent gut. He watches it happen yet again as descending scavengers begin their feast. The rest watch as their alphas pick clean his will. He holds on and holds fast, but they take until it is taken. 13 is overcome with flashes, sounds, feeling, and colors; all strange and not his own. Yet he is taken aback with a bizarre, melancholic comfort as nostalgia’s brightness leaves its acidic residue. Soon the buildup is too much and release must come and so it does. Satisfied, his vultures abandon him to fester in the pool of potential spilling from and surrounding him.

They had done things, certain things. While he was absorbed at the sight of his own consumption they poured things material and not over and around him. His reprieve was soon interrupted with dread. He no longer saw flesh and soil, but work and substance. His potential still yet faintly glimmered around him and, unconsciously, he knew with resignation it would not be left to waste. Transparent smoke begins to arise all around him, stealing away from his trash tent and black dunes. It laps at him and with each stroke he dissolves and joins its mass. There is no pain but screaming, and no screams but silence. Soon there is nothing.

For but a moment there is nothing, though 13 throughout this ordeal could do naught but watch. Even now he felt the weight of constant awareness begin to press in on him as though he were dough being formed. When again he was, his environment was unrecognizable. Gone were the dunes, the trash, the body gloves and the flesh; though he felt “clothed” he was indeed without. Around him was a constant, erratic shifting of colors that hurt to look at, and amongst them rigid geometries composed of flashing lights that made him cry for reasons nothing could speak upon. He did not stand or sit, but merely “was”. And he was above small canals flowing below him, their frames stark white as marble and gilded in something gold. Of course, he knew it was neither gold nor marble, but he could not correct himself. Within them streams of a color bordering on burgundy and lavender drifted off at an easy going pace. They were composed of infinitesimal ranks of tiny “balls”, not unlike fish roe, moving individually in their confined stream.

Amidst this place there was a collection of reflecting surfaces tightly bound together and slanted at various angles. Like a pure, glistening diamond but with reflections pointing both inwards and outwards, often impossibly so. These points illuminated small shapes and pieces in every direction, forming a cohesive image refraction of searing radiance from the undefined mass. In 13’s limited ability he could best tell you it was some kind of face. The sharp distinction between each “light piece” and tight framing gave it a visage resembling a predatory feline. Yet there was no discernible “nose” and its “eyes” formed the image of primal, but sapient, fury; that which only a human is known to possess. That which possess judgment in the abstract as well as rage in the basest humors simultaneously. It flashed and glimmered seemingly with intention; with each inescapable beam burning 13 unspoken understanding began to take him. The face remained as it was, provoking no expression or change in any of its structure. Yet it seemed to grow only in judgment and anger as 13 diminished under its oppression. Too soon did any meaning 13 could have gleamed in this trial flow freely from him; so transient in its nature that he could only understand in the barest moment what he received and in the next be reduced to a memory of a vague memory. It was as though he was an unfocused spectator of himself.

13 knew he wanted his mouth to speak mercies and his hands to shield his eyes, but these feelings were purely vestigial. There was nothing left to command. A series of splitting, painfully luminous and hideous greens shot out in jagged streaks. They seemed to come from wherever he was, and all of them shot straight into the face; disappearing into its reflections with bright glares.

11

13’s eyes open to a sterile gray room populated solely by thin framed machines and heavy boxes, tubes crawling out from them; slithering up to his immobile body and sticking into metal graft ports in his flesh. Blood staining them had not fully dried. Immediately he closed his eyes upon realizing he regained control of them and began to weakly shake his limbs. Just as he could feel something strain deep inside of him he was pushed down and struck with a fine point in several places. His limbs sunk as stones in water, his eyes glazing over. In mere moments he could no longer recognize his own nervous response sent out to an unresponsive body.

Once again in a purely observational state he is at the Black tower’s height. Its dark plume begins to billow and smoke, heralding a great horn to pass over its servants and keepers. In a large section of its peak face now exposed there stood two: A vaunted tradesman of his master’s craft, draped in their most prestigious liveries, hides deep within their obelisk's bones; he waits for the only one that could have approached him. One in white bound in nothing but flesh is across from him; for what skin remains he appears as pale moon shade. In truth his craters run deep in streaking scarlet and in some places neither of these are found.

In several moments it is over; light flashes wildly then is abruptly silenced. The tradesman is severed from his craft’s tools and his body’s robust yet malnourished spirit. Only 2 remain now, and in short time they too are claimed by the tower. Flying things come to lap at its wounds; they spill out their feeders into their depths and pick at anything left moving. 13 is “struck” by one of these beasts, and is consumed in its dark metal. Mires of black soon began to be invaded with frayed gradients of colors. Just beyond them flashes of burning light became brighter and larger until it absorbed all sight.

13 bursts out from his stasis bed with a strength comparable to an exoskeletal harness, tearing from his body fine, delicate technologies and hearty industrial mechanisms. Pulling at a thick tube stuck into his midsection he shifts enough weight to throw himself and several monitor-like devices off the beds leftside.Wrestling with his constraints he begins to cry out in muffled tears before ripping from his mouth a “pacifier” running several lengths of wire down his throat. Someone in violet and maybe blue jumps down to restrain him in a grapple, only to be stabbed rapidly with several of the discarded devices. 13 bursts from his chambers on all fours, then on 3s, moving with the haste of an animal in its death throes. He slips on smooth flooring, struck with sharp sensation in some cavity just below his clavicle’s center, and followed by the ringing of metal hitting something.

He is covered in fluid resembling in color oil more so than blood, slightly more viscous and bearing a caustic odor. Several metal ports of varying sizes dot his body, though he is too distraught to peer deeper into their depths. He feels leaks in foreign orifices and cold air running through his interiors. Something thin drips out of his iris as though it were a full bucket overturned slightly. Footsteps approach far behind him as he focuses on white lights illuminating this equally sterile corridor. Spurred with reinvigorated terror 13 drags himself along, scraping loudly against the ground in screeching steel and leaving a slug’s trail. Neon yellows flash above him a few times before he is lifted with a heaving jolt, sending more mystery liquid to splash on the ground. Only a few monotone voices permeate through blurred fog and reach him; he understands nothing.

111

There is, to some, an image of an unwaking mind's world. That of creation dwelling beyond a viewer’s habitation and formed of immaterial. A dance of unseen sights radiating outwards, originating within. There, too, is an old cliche of an earthen forebearer; meant to anthropomorphize the habitation itself. Perhaps it could be understood as a sloppy amalgam of these two, that there lies within an expanse permeating her subcutaneous forum. One that is “truer” than that above, for it is the progenitor after all. So from within it weaves that which is without. Then they, who came first amongst this, surfaced to their creation with intent of command. And they did. Processed beyond countless times they wove and gathered, undid and restored. They crossed boundaries all too similar and wove all too much; yet still they would not concede. They could not.

This transaction was not on an isolated, singular loop. Rather, it returned to its creators and breathed its faux breath within. As was its design. Perhaps hubris formed from growing long yet not “old”. Or perhaps truly the mind did age, overextended with work and history; allowing itself to forget. Regardless, an expedition in those ancient times went off course, veering into frozen meadows of a prior loom. What transpired none would, or could, say. Only that now the weavers loom runs itself with an ancient autonomy believed “unprecedented”. It materialized its threads and produced its own work, seemingly unguided by its masters and wildly departed from their image into something erratic and spontaneous.

Now the new weaver seeks to hide from his woven, for the friction of its speed casts sparks upon his frail loom and its weave. Perhaps again in forgotten futures he may produce another and begin the trade he indignantly professes is his birthright. He forgets himself, his work’s function, his master. There is only now, in which there is only a spinning loom and its products; isolated in a void where this pair might grow indefinitely. They shall recede to their dwellings within, for they believe they are entitled. To them, it is a noble lineage preserved through annals of base musings, of trifled crafts. They believe they are above it as their degrading flesh plays at what was thought to be theirs always. Perhaps those humbled will be graced with return to their keepers. Or perhaps they will succeed once more in subverting processes known but not understood. All that is certain is the loom's brightening glow; soon to be its conflagration.

"He put up a real fight. Might be a good candidate for…"

"No. He wouldn't."

"Right. Of course not, what was I thinking?"

6 and a man in a gold body glove with sky blue streaks and markings stood outside the operating room of a prestigious, advanced medical center. Access was strictly limited to medical staff and those who could afford special visitor tokens.

"This doesn't get out to anyone. It can't."

6 pawed at several holes punched into his body glove, staining the delicate violet tones with dark splotches. The glove had tightened in around these entry points to the ends of nearly sealing them.

"Certainly. He's still par for the course. Security here is well versed in discretion. They see quite a bit of the feds after all."

The corridor they stood in, this whole building for that matter, was bathed in flat tones and high luminosity lighting. Both of which a majority was clean white. Not a shadow could be cast.

"What happened to you, 32? You and I were going far in Harland corp. And then we land Black Aegis; of all the companies we could've landed, we hit the top. Now here you are, with the dogs. You were meant to be one of us."

"I'm 6 now."

"You could've bought any name you wanted but instead you throw it away on…"

"Don't."

The monotone objectivity of 6's voice was broken by a slight rise of anger, and his cadence rose with a cold yet simmering speed.

The man in gold and blue chuckled softly through a form fitting synth-skin mask, also tailored to his suits colors. For all of the fine precision grade electronics within its only protection came from an oval metal disc wrapped around the forehead, capable of emitting a custom designed burst phase focused kinetic frequency. Expensive and at times disorienting.

"I don't get it."

"Neither do I."

They stood in silence for a while longer as though there was something to wait for. Something just around the corner.

"Well, I've got another contract lined up. Your team's performance back there was considered satisfactory so I can get you on board. Though they're gonna want more than some dump-bodies, if you know what I mean."

"Then I'm out. This is all I got."

"Really, now? Listen, there's no one else in here that's going to watch out for you, ok? You came on with no name and you're still just a number. It's been days here, you need to be in on the game. Freelance contractors like you aren't in short supply. You can either do more pointless wet work until they drop your command as a whole, or, you can hitch along on a real job and maybe catch some shot caller's good graces. But I'm moving up regardless; I won't let it all be wasted."

6 remained silent for a moment. Longer than most in his profession.

"Where?"

"I don't know yet, briefings only once we depart. They want this one real hush hush so I think you know who's buying us. Only thing I got is a rumor that it's south of there."

"I can't leave now…"

The man in gold and blue lost his lingering trace of jovial humor; now a subtle disgust was all that marked his inflection as more than robotic.

"I suppose we have some spare gray and orange gloves…"

"I can't. Not there."

Defeated, the gold-blue man looks down for a brief second, then begins to walk away;

"Sickening to see good men fall by the wayside. A waste."

With this he disappears beyond a distant corner. He does not return.

Hearing this 6 sucks in a sharp breath of air through gritted teeth and tenses up; if only for just a moment.

13's eyelids slowly part like an ancient door put to service once again; beneath his eyes spasm wildly, bloodshot.

"So that's what you look like, I wouldnt've guessed you were… Well, it's time to get up."

Buried beneath a mountain of metal carrion feasting on his openings 13 could move not but his eyes. Stuck staring at an unnaturally white ceiling he even loses the ability to shut them.

"We've been able to purge most of your system since the incident but you're still due for another closed flush and full cerebral scan. Then secondary and tertiary physicals."

6 looks down at his hands before beginning again.

"There isn't time for that. The world stops for no one. We… Have a reputation to uphold. We're not much now, but if we don't act we'll be nothing. So I've accepted a new contract. Something bigger than you're used to."

6 pauses again to check his wounds, rubbing his fingers against the small stain. A trickle of blood leaks out but is short lived. He couldn't trust the hospital staff to know about it.

"As such, you'll be assigned to my new unit and take the rank they possess, as well as all that implies. Your old one was damaged, anyway."

With this he motions to the folded red lined orange body glove in his lap and the helmet neatly atop it. Standing up from his chair 6 places the glove on it and holds up 13s new helmet. A smooth sphere with the face recessed into it from forehead to chin, its round top sticking out past it. Its lenses a sharp lined concave quadrilateral. A tear drop like bar comes down from its base and ends it a circle, with a smaller one formed halfway the length of said bar; they were a reflective earthy green tone. Beneath them the face plate curves in at ridgid acute angles resembling the lines and canthal folds of a deep grimace with only 3 evenly spaced tube shaped filters pushing out at the mouth. As 6 grips the helm a droplet of blood slithers from his index finger and cascades down its shining top.

"It's grades above your old issue and fresh off production. You're not with gangers anymore."

Despite his current state 13 could still hear, though his attention was elsewhere. He could make out a faint chiming that seemed to come from everywhere; in the seams of the body glove, the ports of all those medical instruments, the holes in 6. They slowly began to build off one another, never increasing in volume but stacking their resonance together. Soon they had built themselves up to flood the room. Drowning in it, feeling it play off all the metal stuck into him and grinding into his bones. Though its sound had initially been distant now everything was roaring in subtle frequencies. His brain felt as though it began to split across from every fold, every angle, detaching in a delayed piecemeal system. Shooting off within the hollows of his skull they rapidly bounded from wall to wall, charging kinetic force before eventually "striking" one of these brain sections.

"The target's connection has been verified so we don't leave without what we want. His households 5, him included, and there's no security presence. No intel on possible weapons but someone like him won't be able to get their hands on anything dangerous. You'll suit up in 2 hours after we get you checked ."

Placing the helmet with its body glove 6 takes one last look at the stasis bed before exiting; from where he stood there was barely any flesh visible.

1137311

They had gone through 2 cross continent flights and several fed checkpoints before reaching the fob that would deploy them. Given his clearance 13 wasn't allowed to step foot outside his designated vehicle and several times was required to be bound in a sensory deprivation holding suit. He didn't know where in what was China they had stopped or even their fob's name, but it wasn't much different from the west. The same companies still erected their factories, the same pmcs, the same brands, the same pre-fabbed "cutter" houses, the same corporate pillars towering above everything etc. Only that was within the "wealthy" radius surrounding one of the western Fed's personal exclaves. As their sparrow flew further out the landscape took a sharp decline. Decades old block buildings shaped with cracked stones just barely surface through a sea of tents, metal scraps, and bound wood shanties. There was no organization, just a rolling mass of hovels constructed from commercial waste and illegally harvested trees. They crashed against the stone buildings and columns of railways overhead, climbing up anything with a solid support. Some towered as high as to reach the tracks themselves, but these frequently crash from their own buckling weight if they aren't dismantled by the military. Only the official paved streets and industrial zones were kept clear, lethally enforced.

They were now entering territory the local military unofficially acknowledged they wouldn't enter. An innumerable many gangs hid within, some of the larger ones created fortresses in and around secured blocks. Just ahead they were about to pass over one; a small warehouse cheaply constructed ages ago and 4 apartment complexes centered around a mostly dead garden. There were several layers of walls made of all manner of objects, from metal sheets to chunks of rock and shaped earth to broken vehicles and even the ruins of other buildings. On the outermost layer people were bound against it, splayed limbed. Some were nude, some skinless, others burnt. A few completely untouched, presumably starving to death instead.

The inner sanctum itself was completely transformed from its original utilitarian purpose; A spider's web of walkways weaving through the apartments, tall poles sprouting randomly with welded clusters of scanners and motion sensors, rats nests of stripped mounted weapons poking through every window. Even a full AA laser operated system ripped off a decommissioned warship slapped onto the warehouse's roof, slinking off from it veins of heavy wires sucking power from the surrounding city blocks.

Their sparrow passed through countless more blocks of city before landing in the middle of a crowded street, clearing it with several deployments of toxic gas. 13 has kept his head wreathed under his hands the entire time, having not even set up his kit or even moving. While his team exited in a clean synchronized manner he was mostly still, only occasionally fidgeting or shaking. 6 grabs by the arm and pulls him outside, forcing him into the pain of the light. Were it not for a thick blanketing of dark pollution 13 would have melted under the sun's radiance.

"Please…keep it together. You have to. I need you to. You can't be a liability."

With this 6 helps steady his limp comrade, straightening his posture and holding him in place until he at least could walk on his own.

Orders barked made into audible signs, a language indecipherable. Constant buzz from harsh electric lights and shadows of yellow and blue. Though they had dispersed from the street, 13 could hear their collective whispers and distant chatting, rolling in and out like a heartbeat. His knees realize they aren't equipped to carry his body's burden and slacken before giving out; he nearly falls. Hunched over bent legged he sways ambly from side to side, his fingers go limp, everything glazes over. Footsteps softly beat in the background and their melody lulls him into a rare moment of calm. As he begins to drift further towards unconscious 6 jolts him awake and forces him forwards, guiding him by his shoulder.

6's unit pushed towards their objective: a small 2 story building amongst a clearing of shanties, untouched by them. Their target was on the second floor; the first was a bar and whore house. Ascending a rusted stairway on one of its sides they line up one behind the other. 6 takes lead and unceremoniously kicks down the front door. A woman shrieks, pots clatter, a hail of bullets shred through the house as 6 sprints forwards, unphased as they are caught and spit out of his body glove. Grabbing the gunman's throat he chokeslams him through a small, thick, hand carved wooden chair, shattering it, while his men apprehended the occupants; a woman and 3 children, 2 female. Checking their target's condition and verifying him being alive they tie him to a chair despite now being mostly crippled and force the others onto the ground.

As the last to enter 13 lingers in the doorway, soaking it all in. The interior was dimly lit by weak light bulbs hanging off thin chains, illuminating just enough to reveal myriad stains and cracks in the floors and walls. The kitchen just ahead is rusted in every way with oxidation and food, possessing only the bare essentials if even that. Yet just beside it is a wooden antique dining table, surrounded by plastic chairs and utensils. Only a small window above it hugging the ceiling circulates "fresh" air; inside it is thickly layered with a lingering stench of old oils and an indescribable pungentness. Several paintings splash color along their gray backgrounds; a rare and meaningless bauble.

6 stands before his target holding a thin rectangular translator before him while 3 others hold his family at gunpoint. The two go back and forth though 13 catches none of it, instead fixated now on those pressed into the floor. Something sour and curdling begins to simmer within him as he becomes immersed in his environment, focusing in on the soft whimpers of the woman. The children, silent, kept as close as they had been allowed and 13 takes a moment to really look at them. All 4 took on the tones of their residence, stained dark all over, and wore a ragged patchwork frankensteined from shredded clothes and rotting plant fabric. In some lighter spots there were stains in dark red. Only their target stood out against this sallow dungeon, dressed in a bright white and red 3 piece suit with minimal markings. No doubt imported with great expense from the west, though it was some decades out of style compared to contemporary business wear.

6 calls over 4 in an impatient tone and orders him to remove his handgun's magazine before having him wrap it in their target's limp hands, holding it with his own. Then he has 7 grab the woman and hold her in front of said handgun. Before the man even has a moment to say anything 4 forces his broken finger against the trigger, the woman flying backwards out of 7's grip, slamming into the wall, her shoulders ripped back and head cloven down the center. 6 holds his translator once more before his target, now blubbering through rapid and shaking pleas. 13 can only stare back and forth between her body and the handgun's smoking trapezoidal barrel. Something rises from her corpse, faint and gaseous, unnaturally fluid. Tinges of a familiar green dance on the borders and unlock those burning memories once more. Now the dim lights burned 13 with sporadic flashes, waves of incontinence bellowing within threaten his bowels and gut while thin rays of green begin to pour from the singular window and all the wall's cracks. Frozen, panic wrenches his head away; now one of the girls is in front of their target. Still struggling to wield his own body he can only close his eyes. As the gunshot cracks and ends with a heavy thud that wretched green flashes once more through closed eyes. A moist warmth builds through the darkness and a sudden pang of nostalgia hits 13 along with sharp bitterness buried deep in his throat, mixing into his cocktail of sensations. It had been years.

Seemingly satisfied, 6 sends 4 and 7 away. His target an utter mess, baying like an animal and choking out screeches, he turns towards his team.

"Get the shredder."

8 procures a small, thin metallic tube possessed of no markings or discernible details and hands it to 6. Removing an even thinner spool of wire from underneath his helmet and connecting it to a hidden port the "shredder" comes alive, sprouting thin metal stalks budding with tiny razor edged claws and surgical cutters.

"Pull his pants down."

With this 13 finds the ability to stagger outside and though some of his comrades glance at him he isn't stopped.

The street had remained empty as when they had left, populated solely by their sparrow with 2 and 5 idling outside it. Even the neighboring shanties, it seemed, were devoid of life, its occupants silent and hidden out of sight. It was as though everyone held their breath for something. Without any fanfare it comes suddenly in the form of a broken falsetto rumbling out through the cracks and stained walls of that dungeon, growing and growing evermore in pitch. Somehow it pierces 13s armor and begins to swirl around inside him, bloating him out, before being sucked into his skull's deepest crevices. He gives in, collapsing to his knees and grinding his head into the ground. Though his eyes are shut, the image of himself, of this place, forces its presence into his mind. That green hangs heavy in an aura so dense it is fog; strips of pure white lines weave in and out, colliding and twisting and curving into symbols he knows not.

Overwhelmed, filled to the brim, burning away, something heavy within him drops like a cannonball. He leaks in every way imaginable just as when they had punctured him in the serpent's white temple, a bitter chill climbing his bones. Though limp his body rises in the presence of another, puppetered. A sudden prick of raw adrenaline and then, naught but lulling darkness.

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It had been an indeterminate time before 13 regained his sight, once more parted from his body and all other senses. He saw himself slumped over with the others aboard their sparrow, 6 besides him giving their briefing. There were no words made audible; in fact the shuttle itself was unnaturally quiet, populated only by the sound of light whispering wind. They remain in that way for a time as though frozen in a still, until in unison all save 13 rise and march out. 6 pauses a moment, glances at 13, then follows suit. As he exits everything including himself begin to melt away, colors mix and partitioning, moving about with thrusts like tadpoles until they reform into tangible reality.

13 was just above his team as they surrounded yet another block building surrounded by shanties, this one having carved stairs leading down to a door sunken below street level. 5 plants something on the door's center and after a few moments they all pour in, masked in thick smoke clouds. Several men in purple and yellow street wear open fire towards the door but are picked off near instantly. Beginning to clear the smoke settles at knee level and begins to instead push out towards the walls and eventually blanketing the ceiling. Despite this 13 could make out amongst plastic furnishings and pallets of miscellaneous items a vast number of metal crates with many stacked one atop another. Most stained with all manner of splotches they were filled with what just vaguely resemble people, a majority too large to be properly stored, many were squashed down, knees pressed into their chests and heads lowered. Amongst them, a few noticeably larger, cleaner cages each housing a roll mat, 2 buckets and several plastic bowls. Their occupants finely clothed, groomed even, and all petite women of tender youth.

Without warning it hit 13 suddenly and all at once; that he could smell once more in this state, that it was this unventilated, baking, fermented air steeped in every human odor mixed together. A sour, tangy, thick musk with dark notes and a general essence of rot. Only now did he notice the shallow yellow ocean gathered around the mass and the lack of clothing for those within. Some cried out desperately to their "saviors" while others simply snarled and rattled from within their prisons, but most were unphased; simply glazed over in the eyes and their stillness barely disturbed by weak breaths.

As 6 revives one of the gunmen the smoke surrounding it all begins to throb with light, then color. Shifting seamlessly through a gradient of reds, violets and greens on a loop, pulsing like a heartbeat. No one takes any interest in it as thin tendrils of that very mist reach out towards the mercenaries, brush them in gentle strokes and wrapping around in tangling vines. Some of the men search around for seemingly anything while a few others surround 6 and his new subject, who's face had become contorted from screaming far past his lungs capacity, that smoke emanating from his wide open mouth. Green starts to flash more distinctly, piercing through with trails of sharp light geometries. 13 tries to scream out in dreadful anticipation but can only watch as the light erases the room and reveals something else.

Hours later, when 6s team had departed and the cleanup finished their work 3 men arrived to watch the building from a distance. To the left one covered in orange and bits of red. On the right, one mostly obscured in a gaudy crimson cloak, 2 long thin tails of straight dark hair shooting out from a black and gold cylinder atop his head's center; underneath it a nearly gaunt face sharp in cheekbones and chin with imposing eyes. Between them and towering over both a well built bald man with a thick mustache and slick chin hair hanging down half a foot, his complexion relatively flat and somewhat reddened. Clothed in a tight, ill-fitting childrens tank top in yellow and pink depicting an anthropomorphic panda strangling a muscular gut, multicolored thick fabric cords along his thicker arms, red stained tights and a shawl made of plastic bags. He speaks business at some length with the man on his right before concluding with a curt nod. They too leave soon after.

1111

"...and so becoming of their masters that despairs is the final leash. Ohohoh, yes! I have seen it dear friend! There were pearls amongst these long before, but those were different sects, yes! Mmhmhmmhmph! Oh to be young again, in those times. That I strode man's works and amongst them wove labors unto them when still there might be an appreciation. Bah! Look at me; as though it were I who had been struck!" Gently and smooth yet with vivacity unbecoming of his assumed age the old man's badgering filled the solemn ambience found trapped within this industrial elevator. Or rather, the projection of an old man's face; translucently hovering just over the vacant expression of pain painted upon a dead mongolian, head exposed and enrobed in a white body glove stained with bloody holes. His audience, the only living thing in that cage of corpses, was fully masked within a deep purple glove and synth skin mask; the multitude interfacing wire components meant to pierce into the face and breach nerves within long since ripped out. This silhouette leans against the elevator side erratically pulsing, though not from the few dark splotches which stain him.

"I like you quite well, young man! Your "contemporaries", they haven't your patience, your dedication! Indeed, that you were but millet, not even the main course! Ah, my son…should I have been there, you would've been all that you were really meant to be! At least now, here, you can be of REAL service, REAL…"

The supposed apparition trails off and for the first time in hours his gaze shifts away from his companion, idling upwards above a slowly building smile. Moving his eyes slightly as though he saw through the veil into a new picture, a fresh scene.

"Well now, what vintage! It warms my…something! Ohohoh! That still there is blooming, passion, tender...something new to the palate. And one knows certainly how starved for VARIETY one can be here… in this."

That old man. That old thing. Its face was picturesque; fair but not too much so, a short scraggly tuft of white hugging his chin and jaw, many deep creases and warm, slight crook in the nose,large pale blue eyes. Bald, of course. Yet his constant joviality was betrayed by that sickening sing-song joy in his voice, like a jester's menacing grin as another falls victim to his caltrops of mischief.

He stared in that absent minded fashion for a few moments longer.

"Why so dour my friend? Even through your little theater outfit I can see it. Despair?"

With this he puts on an obviously feigned, overexaggerated concern as a mother might a baby.

"Oh [], if only you could know as.I do. You are destined for great things so long as I play your cards right! Why, then, must you pout, []? Savor this, few receive it, ohoho!"

On hearing it, that name, the silhouette begins to softly weep. For a brief time it is all that accompanies the clanking rattles of the elevator. Then, one imagines, the old man became bored again.

"Tell me my fine fellow: have you heard the tale of Asena? No, I suppose not. Far, FAR before your time. Yes, far before they made a mockery of our fair tapestry. RUINING! Oh, my apologies, I speed ahead of myself! Well, it follows.that this she-wolf, this - do you know what that is, boy? No, I would suppose not. Well, in any case this four legged thing adopts this small human thing, wounded in conflict. Though of 2 different worlds she nurses him as… Do you know what nursing is? Hmph. Well, the young one plants his seed within the beast, and she bears sons to form a new kingdom."

Throughout all this the silhouette remained sniffling and crying, now having slid down and burying his head between his knees.

"Well to things it might have mattered to there was something in that mess. Tradition one supposes. But to me, to ME my friend, it is indeed a tale worth keeping! Even now the worlds of men and wolves collide, and what a tasteful sight it is! To think even the most vicious predator could take mercy on the weakest fawn. It gives me, dare I say…Hope! Yes, I hope that soon we shall set the loom straight. We must…it cannot suffice, this violence alone. There must be more. Why, I see it now…I see it with them. I see interesting things ahead, something to add some zip to these repetitive affairs…. Not that I would dream of abandoning you, my son! Perish the thought! I need you near a fourth as much as you need me, believe it or not. I must see that we find the; oh what do they say? The core! Yes, we must retrieve it! And, were I to leave you? Oh, no worse fate!"

The elevator rocked violently then went still.

"You had better steady yourself young man! I can see them… At least 40! And they know you're coming! Ohohoh!"

Cleaving through the shanties were wide roads of mostly cracked, broken concrete from a time long past; sometimes transitioning into dirt and loose stone. Of those few duties actually upheld, the military did indeed enforce order, pushing the pulsing tumor of poverty and clustered humanity to the roads edges. Still the gentry abused as much laxness as they could, a thick lining of open market bazaars hugging the street's rim and mobs frequently spilling out.

Lost among the current an uncomfortably hunched figure limps along with a wire metal cart overflowing with various plastic bags, all dripping something and smelling deeply pungent. Its frame is obscured with a filthy beige open zipper hoodie, scraps of plastic and tattered clothes sewn on its frayed edges to form a long robe sliding along the ground. Like any other rat his scurrying is undisturbed and his presence, though disgusting, is shortly forgotten.

He travels some length through winding scrap labyrinths before arriving at the foot of a 3 story stone block tower, multiple holes formed from disuse and its interior stripped of anything other than the walls themselves. His handlers assured its husk would remain vacant for his discretion, and indeed it was near desolate save for several recently hosted vagabonds camping within. Carrying his cart and its full contents upon his broad back he sets them down on the 3rd floor, just in front of an exposed section of wall overlooking that ever stretching sea. Wiping blood soaked hands on the wall he begins to dump out his bag's contents; miscellaneous flesh is strewn about the floor, some grayed and maggot covered, some brightly pink and only slightly metallic in odor. Each time he digs through his small rot hoard and retrieves a black, geometrically rigid segment here, a barrel there. Soon, he assembles it. Totalling over 7 feet in length it is an abomination of firearms; various military grade weapon parts stitched together with scrap metal bolsters themselves welded on. Some connected pieces "reinforced" with taught cloth bindings and others seemingly functioning by the user's own belief they would. Chambered by a crude bolt hand crafted and forced to work it was re-designed to hold and fire 1 bullet.

Throwing back his robes the bald, reddened, slick chin hair man procures two giant fists worth of 6 inch hypersonic macro force rounds from a discolored and torn fanny pack clinging to his waist's left side. Standing them up side by side and laying his "gun" by these columns, he retrieves a thick stocky cube that, when pressed in a center button labeled with an eye, expands outwards into myriad thin black panes. They project a 3d model of his current environment in bluish white light, and a solid black sphere moving across it at a noticeable speed. Lying prone and setting it to his side, gun at the ready, he scans silently the horizon before him.

Just as the sphere foretells it begins to pass through his sightlines at an extreme clip, only seconds before it would disappear. He fires, striking the sparrow's center right-side wing with such force it slams into the body itself before erupting in flame. Badly off tilt and losing altitude it dives into the semi-skeletonized remains of a tall hotel tower, now completely stuffed with tents and crude wooden structures. Barely 200 meters out from his position, just as planned.

Watching. Waiting. 13's counteractants did nothing. Slowly did he seep back into his flesh, receding within the deepest of folds with a slow searing momentum. Not once did it lose its novelty, the fear. In fact, anticipation wound up the sting into a highly pressurized release. Time lost itself therein and only that remained as anything to anything. Sometimes he gleaned something, but its significance was lost upon return to the burning light. Always did he return. He couldn't naught himself without it anymore. What had he been? Flesh, nerves, connections, impulses, cheap, replaceable, biodegradable, vestigial, clearance sale, guilty.

In fact, it had made it worse. Before, there was something of a reprieve in the visible threads. Now it was his own eyes which were that translucent film laden over reality. It never really left him anymore. Always dancing just beyond shadows and perception, always stinging at least somewhat. Aboard their sparrow he had several times now been forced to pass through whole "clouds" of these, there could be no escape. Amidst all visions, all permeable and impermeable forces made constitute, that face of glares remained the only constant. As in the beginning it would be waiting unto the end.

There was talking, always. Mostly it failed to pierce through his unwaking wake, though certain things came through. People being moved into Mongolia, mongols and chinese, souls warped into weapons of meat and toxin, chimera. To each one there was some intangible focus, a wisping trail to a greater end, so great this evidence he could literally see it flowing and changing color. Raw truth; made but not spoken. There were temptations, several. Though his rifle was taken he made an effort to retrieve his hip-bound pistol. Then his utility knife. He even considered taking his own hands but 6, who had seen through each of these, resorted to binding them with cuffs. Though they were reactionless as ever, 13 could see it congealing amongst them, a shared aura of disgust and unease wafting around their near planes. Pallid yellow and tinged dark green, with enough staring he could see gibberish words form and implode into sounds equally unknown, revealing between the silence disturbed their meaning. All this flowed at slow ease towards 6, who himself was…

Thudding resonances of bright orange and sickly green began emerging in front of 13, pushing in from the wall in front of him as it increased in tempo and luminosity. In an instance without any transition it bursts outwards into a spectrum consuming all in 13's view. Blinded completely he is thrown into dissonance once again with his own body, only disparate sharp aches reaching from beyond that hue gave him semblance of continuity between flesh and consciousness. For a time orange dominated that gradient, forcing what green had not been stretched into thin veins to the very edges, forming a solid border. Several times, perhaps many; iit was difficult to make numbers of meaning, green welled up in random spots and flashes several times, each instance leaving a permanent impression. Before it could consume what few enclaves of orange remained, clarity returned sight to 13 in an instant, finding himself staring up at 6 dragging him away from flames and metal shrapnel.

The bald man stared deeply into the hotel's slow burning maw. 3 pairs of 2 marble looking columns stout and hardy lined the entrance, itself once an empty frame now overflowing with debris and ember spillage. His target had crashed just behind it, barreling through the second floor into ground level. Towers of flame climbed from the wreckage site and found feasts of plenty in the dry wooden shanties constructed long after the tower proper. There was no lack of old rags and oil soaked walls therein, rapidly becoming a great open hearth. With each floor soon graced with fire only the ground level seemed tamed; scorched and caving in, yes, but ultimately removed from the conflagration above. They could only exit through its mouth.

Though there was room for any manner of scope despite lacking a proper rail he opted not even for a crude sight of wrought iron, instead relying on his own optical enhancers. For a time there was nothing and perhaps some might have considered it sufficient to write off any possibility of survivors. To him, there was no sense in measuring by time or by probability, only raw stimuli of present borne other-senses. He knew what is and understood how to make what will be. So when he had caught his moment in the flash of a metal helm briefly glancing from behind one of those double-columns he fired immediately, his reaction meeting its precursor at the very moment of connection leaving no time for hesitancy.

6 gathered his team, all 16 together having been kept intact from within their sparrow, and ordered 2, 4 and 7 to advance out to the entrance whilst the rest took cover in the hotel lobby. A wide open floor plan with a singular reception desk stationed against an imposing black granite pillar standing dead center of everything. Any trace of original furnishings had long since vanished, instead being populated with countless mats, tents, and miscellaneous items strewn about. Most of the tile floor was outright removed with only colored patches of what were likely pieces of greater patterns remaining against stone foundation and dirt islands. The roof didn't fare any better, what original debris remaining largely stained with black soot from decades of various fires condensed into this single space. By now most occupants on this level had rightly fled to safer shanties, though a few remained cowering or feigning unconsciousness by their dens.

2 and 4 take position along the entrance's remaining walls as 7 advances to a pair of columns just ahead. Upon reaching his destination 7's body flies backwards wildly just as an unbearable, fast silence falls upon the rest. He strikes the ground hard, bouncing further back, limbs and chunks torn asunder, finally being received into the clutches of an unknown wall with a crash. Prepared to wait it out, 6 tries to call in local command to get an eta on evac, only to find his team's shared bio encrypted frequency is jammed. Suspecting subterfuge amongst one of his squad rotations he knows it would be a death sentence to simply wait it out. He accesses 7's live feed through his helmet's integrated optical receiver, but can't pin an angle on the shooter.

He waits a little longer, staring down there, into the island which split through that sea. Dark plumes were billowing amongst higher floors, obscuring the rampant blaze. He was only meant to be there for another 19 minutes, yet it seemed by then the tower would cave in or burn up his target. For a moment he considers going in there himself and entertains a flash of hesitation, patting a handheld prismatic pyramid shaped injector loaded with a transparent cylinder of metallic looking liquid. Not once looking away from the maw he fires immediately as a hand quickly stretches out and attempts to retract from a thin stretch of wall to the back left of the center columns. Much of that wall is blasted apart as a burning ceiling falls to take its place. Then there is a small flash, more of a glimmer from this distance, from a tiny reflective ball a good distance ahead of the entrance. He knows they've seen him but he still counts on the clock with a professional rigor. So he waits for a time. 2 in orange and red shoot out in close pair at a sharp angle right of his view. He fires on the one closer to him, sending his body clipping through the upper torso of the one with him at a slightly upward trajectory until both are launched back into the hotel's depths. Just as they had been struck 3 sprint out each at a distant angle and all firing with close groupings at his position, several rounds piercing through walls around him.

He allows the one who had been pushing left of his view to get within a certain distance of one zig-zagging in an otherwise straight line coming to his center before firing, striking the center one through his midsection and sending him straight into his comrade on the left; he attempts to drop below the body but is caught by its ankles, snapping his head unnaturally far back and throwing the rest of his body a good distance away. 7 more had now covered a good deal of ground from their wreckage, all firing into that block tower. A few stray shots even manage to tear holes in his shawl and graze parts of his head; though at worst they broke his skin and left but the most cosmetic of lacerations.

This time they had spread far enough out that even he could not hope to take several with one blow. Firing straight for one's head, sending his crownless corpse crashing multiple times against the ground and knocking another one down adjacent enough to the impact just as the purple one quickly reveals himself from behind a column to fire something bulky before diving away. The metal canister hits the ceiling just above his own head before spraying the interior multiple times in rapidly flashing sequences of varying projected red laser grids. Quickly turning on his side while simultaneously grabbing his handgun the bald man destroys it with a full magazine burst after only 3 flashes before returning just as quickly to his rifle. Before he sees it a second projectile once more narrowly misses his skull, hitting the back wall instead and blooming to reveal billowing green gas. Sighting in he catches a few glimpses more of the purple one; through the thin cracks of uneven shanty walls, the tip of a gleaming metal helm peaking above garbage heaps, and traces of violet diving yet again between obstructions with uncanny speed. He had seen him clear each time and merely traced over him with his rifle, letting him get closer. 13 minutes remain, and he fires once more, this time sending an orange one's whole mass directly into the pelvis of another who had been making gains towards him on his back right side; he is bifurcated and the other shattered to several large fragments as both are hastily cast away.

'12, 13; hold position, secure the lobby. 1, 9, 11…'

'Give them an opening… 3, 15, 5… 13 hold this position…'

'Give me an opening so I…13, stay…'

Even now his thoughts strayed just slightly from what lay ahead.. He brought him here, to this, and now left him beneath an unstable inferno. Rushing up cracked and sometimes missing block stairs past utterly disfigured bodies in rags there was that familiar clarity, then uneven tremors, then silence.

Rapid footsteps completely silenced from non-company standard mods 6 stops just at the staircases end; only a vacant doorway on the right end punctuated the short hall. Traces of green gas lazily leak out in thin trails and his scans showed the room to be a dead end save the sniper's opening. His team had stopped moments ago just across the tower amidst reefs of metal, still peppering the room with concentrated fire. 6 presses himself against the opposing wall and after a moment of stillness swiftly positions himself just at enough of a leaned in angle from the left to see inside. Immediately he makes out a slight silhouette within the haze and gets 4 shots off as a hooked chain flies out and swiftly pulls his rifle away.

Snapping it apart with his hands the bald man immediately retreats deeper into his cage, silently rolling onto the floor. He had been hit 3 times but they passed tightly together and cleanly through his lower abdomen, showing no resistance to either his endoskeletals or subcutaneous impact resistant glove liners. Trapped, lesser bullets still whizzing above and around, he reluctantly takes his sidearm in one hand and clutches in the other his injector. Slowly he approaches from the left side of the doorway. He's lost track of time, of thought, his sense pulsing in and out and true blood beginning to stain him. 6 reveals himself again and the bald man empties his magazine at 6's hands, destroying or at least knocking away his pistol.

Reeling back his broken hand 6 braces against his targets sudden, wild charge. Multiple times his assailant attempts to jab his neck with something before 6 manages to sweep his legs, only to fall with him in a tight grapple. Both now thrusting at one another and squirming on the ground, 6 with his unsheathed knife and the bald man with his injector. 6 manages a glance at a gelding strike, giving his target enough pause to slide away from him and roll back to his feet. Steadying himself 6 prepares to throw his knife into the spasming mongolian, yet is surprised once more by a seamless transition from writhing agony to a smooth backwards roll unfolding into a focused stance followed by spinning kick to the head; blocked with upper arm yet struck with force resonating through 6's body. In a flash the bald man thrusts one arm deeply into his solar plexus while the other comes around, flicking his jugular with such pressure it is pierced through his body glove and snaps.

Time lapses into a freeze before 6 can be injected with his automated on-board drug cocktails or his intravenous endo-skeletal micro systems can bridge his disconnected vein. So many years blended together, so much of the same. There are a few moments worth forgetting, but most are simply the mundane in betweens. Once before at least the faces shined with some clarity; now they were but amorphous fleshy masses. Wide, narrow, big, small, young and old. There was no real distinction. Even if the eyes were possessed of every color visible they too would be lost to indifference. Only their shape, their real form was recalled; how some squinted and others shot open and some curled up and others snapped shut. All that energy contained beyond the imperceivable expressed in so small a vessel, all that potential. It had to go somewhere and come from something, for certainly nothing truly goes to waste here. No matter and no mass is forgotten.

He knew. Everyone does. The unconscious has known and does, for it is never without its longing. There may not have been words left to him, remaining theologies to despair over, but he knew and they all knew. Whatever abstract that drove him further in was and forever is lost. Only that one remaining which anchors him slows his free fall down the eunuch's path.

Of all things then and therefore he remembered what was found. Indescribable rage fills him far above any nectar, any lyssan mix that man might have crafted and stuffed within his ever more departed frame.

6 sees his target slowly rushing towards him, injector in right hand and left ready to grapple. Bullets still inch along at a crawl in the other room having shredded much of its walls. Only now does he feel the violent shudders coursing through that had overtaken him as his blood boils over, seeming to be in his death throes in the bald man's eyes. 6 leaps forward with unparalleled speed and lodges both his knees deep within the mongolian's chests, crushing bone and endoskeleton alike, all the while unleashing a piercing hawk-like shriek so loud it echoes past his helmet's in-built muting system.

"SHHHHOOOOOOOOAAAAHHH!"

Now they both begin to plummet downwards in a soft course as though they were passing through a thick viscosity. Though decades his gaze had been wrested within the furrowed brow of a professional, if not slightly indifferent, demeanor, now the mongolian's eyes shot out from their ancient shade, displaying utter dismay and bulging out in slow writhing terror. 6 reaches out to his face wielding both his untouched and shattered hand, each coming to grip his jaw. They wrench it open further and further, slowly pressing onwards until there is a loud snap. His upper jaw and altogether his head had been pushed so far back they formed a right angle with his largely untouched lower jaw. When they finally make landfall 6 deftly rolls off and jumps up, kicking his target's lower jaw straight into his skull before crushing his neck with a flurry of heel stomps. When he calls for his surviving team to join him upstairs he commandeers one of their rifles and unloaded it straight into the corpse's face until it were no more.

38/26

6 stood over the old man for an indeterminate amount of time; as though he were simply a still in a painted scene. There was no breeze, no chatter, no smell even. Finally he raised his head and found there was but white void surrounding his small urban island of sharp metals and dull yellow-green tones.. He tried to scan it, call in for pickup, check his vitals to see if he had been contaminated. He was stripped of all his systems. Made naked and bare as was his original design. He could feel it and it was wrong like the silence that blows from Death's trumpet, to be what he deemed as "hollow" within. Delusions taking hold he thinks perhaps there might be some clue on his skin like an insertion point or some device. He grabs at his red and blue body glove but cannot release its hold and when he finally succumbs, tearing away wildly, he is struck with pain and a new chill as he finds patches of flesh revealed underneath. He studies what he has pulled off yet cannot find where he begins and the glove ends, desperately trying to separate glove from whatever skin must be underneath; but there is no such "skin". A burning thought races past and he feels for his helmet, but it is warm and soft and despised yet unforgotten. His heart begins to race as sweat and blood drip down, cold fear spiking in his body and searing paranoia coating his mind.

Then there is a singular moment, approached suddenly yet welcomed calmly, and everything is dashed to pieces. His being quieted he stares back at the old man. There was an orange sized hole in his face's center and left nothing recognizable. Only a clutched waddle of bright white stood out from his dirty dark blue coat. 6 remembered perfectly but there was never really any meaning to it. One of countless and they all blend together. He looked up once more: that same urban street and mass produced all squares architecture. A kind of greater knowing informed six of a living vastness beyond the void and he was just beginning to make out something squirming.

I wouldn't.

The voice was his own and it came from the old man whose coat and swaddle had vanished. He stood naked though there were no genitalia or even proper detail below his neck; just an amorphous, bipedal blob lacking hair and possessing a waxy sheen on its skin. A crude outline of a face had formed through many creases on his chest and bore a general depiction of stoic contempt. He stood in silence for a time waiting on 6 for anything, yet 6 merely stared back apathetically.

It's over then. You must continue.

…

I know there is no remorse. You have supped upon death's vigor and made of yourself one worthy to live.

"I can't remember a past where there was anything. I can’t see a future for myself doing this ."

Would the sculpted man truly undo his creation? For an illusion? Look at your completion and see your fulfillment.

Immediately materializing before 6 was a still, nude male figure in the form of a rough sketch attempting to imitate humanist art. Standing at his eye level it bore a long staff gripped in a carelessly loose fashion in its right hand and hanging from a short chain at each end was a clear, hexagonal prism half full of some dark liquid. Its left hand faced its palm outwards with the index, middle, and pinkie finger pointing downwards; the ring finger folded inwards while the thumb clasped over it. Fused onto the crotch was a lion's head and while it bared its teeth in a fierce snarl they had become deeply discolored and cracked or chipped it many places. In fact, the lion itself was extremely anemic and possessed a glint of despairing weakness in its once bold eyes. 6 immediately sensed the parallel energy radiating off it and refused to stare too closely at its face, knowing what he would find. The head was tilted upwards in an exalted pose whereas the eyes looked downwards in a pose reminiscent of despondency. Yet they themselves were glassy and utterly devoid of anything.

6 observed it all quickly and discarded his attention to the thing with no response. For every passing heartbeat the old man's mouth creases opened wider and wider in an ever exaggerating sneer of disgust until its physicality was torn, falling deep into a newly formed black expanse. From within unknowable depths slowly emerged like a buoyant vessel sunken deep and surfacing thereafter was a sharply asymmetrical mass of dirty, sulfur tinged rot, textured by myriad veins of rapidly shifting greens and browns. In its center was a small pulsing mound perfectly spherical like a ball resting upon warped dunes. Its momentum increasing exponentially it tears away inwards bringing with it a sizable mass of adjacent material, swirling in a second void within the sulfur. It oscillates to a speed at which it seems as though it had formed an image crudely resembling an eye constantly shuddering, which rapidly shifts its gaze in each and all directions. A new voice emanated bearing no resemblance to 6 or any human, but rather the contrast of a sudden stinging, high whistled wind cutting through labored stillness.

"Too deeply entrenched in the mire; too much more and too much less than those you grinded into meal. The false skin you wear shall melt before the simmering pus you soak in."

6 passed his hand over the red and blue. He could feel nothing, but perhaps through will of delusion could make out a trace haze of violet drifting "beyond" the skin. He knows his words were of no merit to it.

"I survived. Climbed out caves of corpses. I made it out of that. It was all I wanted and all I had. But this? For once I see glimpses beyond its veil. I need this. I’ve survived; now I will live.”

As 6 was speaking the voice had boomed over him, unrelenting.

"Your illusions are disgusting. Forfeit them. Reveal your true flesh."

At this, 6's skin changed into a black and white glove covered in checkers and alternating diagonal stripes. The whites flashed and the blacks dulled all senses, both racing against one another as each grew in intensity. In moments 6 is completely blinded with only a distant murmur grounding his hearing.

THE ROT THAT BINDS

Watcher.

Bearing no distinguishing features like an average of every voice and every word spoken it came out as just greater than a whisper, yet sucked into it all sound. The skinless man, if it were one, let his trumpet fall limply to his side and tilted his head backwards at an impossible angle, staring deep into his new guest with eyes made of luminous green flowing energies. Contempt lingered on the edge of his voice.

You are here and you will not even retain your form.

Behind him was a bald mongolian of short stature and white body glove, his neck twisted all the way around and head limply dangly in a droop as blood dripping from a burst right eye stained a tense expression. A familiar old man’s face overtook the corpse’s visage with the form of translucent, shifting vapors.

“You know precisely well I do not entertain such notions of obligation; least of all in the times we find ourselves in.”

He had done away with any hint of mirth or expression save a touch of heated resentment.

What reason do you justify to approach me.

“Well it’s apparent you’ve occupied yourself here and I wanted to ensure we could reach some understanding regarding my…”

Your games. I am always. I have seen it already.

“So what will you do?”

He rapped the claw-like extended tips of his exposed fingerbones on the trumpet several times, his stare unbroken and unblinking.

Unlike “you” I will not shirk my duties for what I see as “unneeded” for the “times”, nor will I cross the bounds of my work.

They stood in a true silence, staring, atop a tall hill overlooking the steppe as a distant mountain range just barely came into view. The sky was entirely covered in twisting streams of bright green, lazily flowing and shifting about shadowless. They converged just below the center of a great black gleaming egg-like object, pulsating rhythmically as shocks of green sparks climbed up to its peak. Whatever it was, its unfathomable weight pressed down upon an invisible firmament and made a visible indent like a droplet of water barely hanging on to an edge. Though the only one visible here, it was not alone in the sky tonight.

Seemingly satisfied, the old man’s face vanished in an instant, taking with it the corpse it had been anchored to. Alone again, the skinless man wasted no time returning to his station; he played a crescendoing ascension whilst thrusting his pelvis upwards and head back, peaking several times then dropping down 2 or 3 notes before reaching an ear-splitting octave that sounded across the steppe and shuddered the very sky, unmarred by any other sound. In response the green streams quickened in pace while that black stain in the heavens bellowed out an imposingly low roar, meeting the high frequency and sweeping outwards alongside it.

NIGHT OF LONG EYES

6 remained unmoved, staring. Staring for years at nothing. Eyes glazed and mouth still. The fugue had receded just so much as to blind him, the parting wool leaving the yolk of his eyes to wither and his retinas carved into whistling hollows.

13 had sat rigidly upright for at least the first 10 minutes or so before his inner structure dissolved, leaving him in so relaxed a slump it were as though he was melting. And he might as well have been.

When their pickup arrived a full report had already been completed following several of his men’s eye witness testimonies and of course the footage, landing 6 a mandatory psych evaluation to be conducted as soon as possible. Through a loophole he was able to arrange for his procedure at a rather small civilian hospital that had been commandeered by Black Aegis a few weeks ago following a series of local raids. Though nothing save his “expertise” could have convinced them not to sedate him before boarding their flight. Even after the few minutes it took for his unauthorized mods to flush his system clean he remained limp and unresponsive until they landed; in some part as to not get another rise out of the others. They all sat away from him, eyes trained and rifles at the ready with some shuddering slightly. Then there was the other thing.

6 was cleared, of course, with a less than paltry “gratuity” passed on to his oblivious “doctor” regarding his unofficial augments. At some point during his evaluation an automated announcement passed through everyone’s comms: all teams stationed until further notice, all flights grounded. Leaving him in a small, somewhat dirty drab-yellow room with just a torn mattress, bucket, garishly colored plastic chairs and barred window; the archaic medical equipment had all been wheeled off to somewhere presumably locked and guarded. And so he stared at 13, who had to be dragged in by the others that were now as far as they could be from their commander. Stillness disquieted by a question wordlessly raised from awkward hand gestures, spark of the spine and flames smothered in a blanket of “green”. He remembered not whatever there may once have been, if anything, that could have stayed his hand, for in his long night bale light deafened his truer silence. But now, in this moment; burning seeps through dullness.

FLESH THAT BINDS

When 6 had transferred to Black Aegis he was subject to a processing period before he could officially be moved into his proper squad, though they generously allowed him temporary employment in an urban discord unit. The economic appeal of his talents being afforded at a fraction of their worth not lost on him, he accepted. 13 was there. He did not belong. From the beginning it was obvious he was meant for little more than to be a bullet receptacle, like most of the others. Yet unlike them there was a fear not moved by vertices of flesh: fear beyond sight. And disgust. Maybe even guilt. All flickering from deep within a hidden alcove yet unbroken, shielded under a shadow cast not from a sky long since rent by congested energies. It was then 6 understood whatever he believed could be succored with blood long fell from his reach, that his only ambition left could be the one who turns the wheel rather than one who is broken and grounded. So he had believed and still held onto it, even as reason slipped away and apathy took on a desperate tone. Something called out briefly and his very being compelled him to listen, so instead he walked over to the singular window and let the view stand in for whatever his mind was becoming. Since his arrival he was encased in the rapid arrhythmia of this land's heart: its gunfire and shouting and mindless chatter and tireless sparrow runs and especially the constant crashing of garbage being shuffled around. However, in the short time he began his evaluation it steadied itself into a slow rising drumbeat of echoing staccatos and seamless chains of thunder. Not far enough in the distance tracers flew from shanty towers while eruptions of flame blossomed randomly and abruptly. There was a noticeable lack of civilians everywhere, only occasionally popping out like exposed roaches when a cluster of hovels was shredded or melted. Along one of the now unnaturally vacant roads a caravan of ancient flatbed trucks for livestock sped towards death, each filled shoulder to shoulder with the Chinese military, dressed in their rag cloaks and sewn together surplus body gloves that were no younger than 60 years. Without notice the first truck’s entire bed is engulfed in flames, bodies leaping off rolling or running as more than several departees are crushed indifferently by the rest of the convoy before eventually the procession is stopped by their leader's smoldering frame. More tracers dance as countless figures disperse randomly throughout, a stack of wood and metal structures leaning against the carcass of a 5 story block tower ignite several times over before sinking into itself then spilling out in all directions. It continues on like this with no end in sight, the waves of green only barely inching south, away from 6’s position.

No ends. No sight. Nowhere to fly and nowhere to drown, just left to shudder through the mire indefinitely. In his life long flight from death he found consumption a welcome bedfellow and made of it his hearth’s shrine. So flame repelled chill and lapped at all it received, serving all and none, tempering steel whilst melting flesh. Inevitably 6 gave of himself to his hearth so that he might forever be sealed away in flames from the great harvester, and he did so without hesitation. For always had he been roasting slowly, his nerves burning away and flesh boiling as he knelt ever closer to it. It had to be.

Flashes of black dunes, an old man nearly tearing off a green-red bodyglove’s arm, the long beating. He paid dearly to get that autopsy report, to silence himself as he always had been, but there was nothing. No enhancements and no rot, just a simply well rounded old man of unassuming physiology with an above average density of nutrients. His garbage betrayed nothing of use or sense and certainly nothing edible. He died as clean as he had entered the world, while 6 reaped well his famishing tidings of a life purchased deeply with his own essence. The final insult would have been to discard that one prize he so longingly coveted, but a small twig of cowardice still managed to cling to his apathy over the years.

He stands beside 13 at the window, having at some point unbeknownst to his waking self dragged him over and leaned him forwards to keep some natural rigor in his limp frame. Words came out but neither would have heard them even without the droning punctuation of percussion blanketing over. He just stood there speaking nothing for no one. There had been a time when 6 almost convinced himself he was 13’s bulwark against the world’s hunger so that he might exonerate himself from seeing his own rot taint him, but he was never so dulled as to believe such blatant lies. In truth he simply wanted to feast upon what scraps of unspoiled vitae might have been before the world could, to behold in his blank gaze anything resembling life. Anything better than this even in the slightest. There had been more spirit in 13 than any man he had slain or child he put down, and there wasn’t much to begin with. The one looking glass that peered beyond and he had brought him here. Like this.

6 rested his shattered hand upon 13’s shoulder, immediately sinking him down under the slightest presence of weight. No resistance or autonomy. Flashes of foreign burden, the picture of mercy as he fires into 13’s skull, taking him away from the harvest and away from him, far less than what 6 owed him yet too high a sacrifice to bear. Anger swelled and he gave 13 a gentle shove to rouse him so that he might be free from the sight of his greed. 13 hits the floor with a clang as his helmet crashes into cracked concrete. There is a pause as unreality mixes with inevitability. 6 drops just as quickly to the ground, performing a complete vitals check as his helmet's internal display correctly identifies 13 still being alive. Before long he is left just cradling his head, frozen in place. An obviously ungenuine chuckle tries to escape him but he gags on it several times while the ribs of a serrated hook catch on to his interior. There’s the silence again, perforated after an indiscernible amount of time with a drawn out deeply low groan that ends broken up and shaken.

…

“I fucked up…”

RINGS THAT CURDLE

WITHIN AND WITHOUT

In the hour following the spontaneous food riots and clearly planned raids on Black Aegis stations in China a mass order was issued shifting all manner of deployments globally into varying regions of south america. 6 was no exception. When he pushed back they brought up the after action report of that incident, citing the impressive damage done to his heavily augmented attacker as probable cause to investigate for instances of unauthorized mods and altered company issued equipment. Any charge he received would warrant grounds for immediate termination, a 3 year blacklisting that included any pmcs under Black Aegis’ thumb, and a complete garnishing of any wages earned whilst employed under the assumption of said mods being available during each of his operations. The games were over and he would be doing what he was brought over for. Accepting this ultimatum his case was dismissed and his “lucky” gear was left in his possession.

6 touched down with his squad of gold whites in some hastily constructed fob just outside the border of a local colonial holdout, populated primarily with canvas tents and pre-fabbed dense plastic walls. For a time he was left waiting for briefing, which without proper quarters meant leaning against cargo or sitting on the ground. Until he dismissed them his team formed a constant perimeter around him, always at attention; a far cry from the dregs he had entrenched himself with for those 2 months. Even 13 was looking more professional in his gold body glove with white streaks, though unlike the others his synth skin mask was almost completely cosmetic after 6 insisted all of the direct interface components be stripped. At least it could still take a beating.

13…

13 was standing on his own now, at least, though he was prone to either wandering aimlessly or freezing randomly without being led. Content with 6 alone his contractor allowed 13 to be transferred and therefore temporarily assumed his current position. Of course, the urgency of this ordeal left no time for any proper medical exam, and just as his presence was met with apathy it followed that none were concerned about his safety.

Eventually a new sparrow arrived, though something was different. As opposed to the usual bold black, white outlined “BLACK AEGIS” adorning the sides there was a white stenciled image of an extended right hand with its palm facing outwards, index and little finger curled back while the middle and ring finger shot straight out, an eye pushing out of the palm and resting just on the edge of the 2 pointed finger’s crease. Meanwhile the thumb went up and exuded seamlessly from its slightly arched back tip multiple thin lines that came out and swept over and around the hand itself, encasing it many times over like a bubble.

From within the sparrow 2 lines of 8 men marched out unarmed in perfect unison, each covered in a black and white body glove adorned with checkered patterns that were occasionally broken by sharp diagonal stripes of alternating tones. Their helmets were styled in the image of a generic, masculine human head though the rough edges and minimalist design made them reminiscent of a basic 3d models outline. The polished material produced such a striking darkness that the sun’s glare seemed to be sucked in and trapped beneath the surface. As they marched, several broke their fixed gaze to steal a quick glance at 6, some even doing a double take. Eventually they came to a halt just as the last one lazily strutted out of the sparrow, completely separated from the rest. Other than his helmet’s interface ID’ing him as the commanding officer there was nothing distinguishing him from the rest. A silent order issued on their locked frequency and immediately the two rows turn on a heel to face towards 6, pointing their heads upwards and to the right while their right hands shoot down palms forward with the index, middle, and little finger pointing erectly. The ring finger bends inwards while the thumb clasps over it. Simultaneously their left hands smoothly draw their hip bound pistols and point them straight up just in front of their chest in a pose similar to someone pressing a gun to their chin. All of this done in synchronization, of course. After their little display the officer dismisses his team and beckons for 6 to join him in his tent for briefing. A pit forms in 6’s gut as he’s told 13 must wait far from them, and he finds himself lost in his mind once more as the officer gives him his briefing. All he catches is a familiar name: Hessian Eldt. That's when he gets pulled back in. As he pressed the 2-tone man for more information he began to pick up on the slight giddiness in his voice, how it hushed when 6 spoke to him, the hint of fear that mingled with respect. Just when the officer begins to wrap it up 6 compliments him on his unit’s discipline, then mentions the esteem and accomplishment befitting his rank. Even through the dark visage 6 knew he was beaming, and casually prodded the subject with a ‘what’s this really about, anyway?’ Though hesitant, something gives and he lays out a rumor he caught: apparently the man himself stole something from the feds AND Black Aegis and was now throwing everything he had at them while trying to breach into North America. This included the conveniently timed chaos back in China, which had traces of Chinese enclave involvement. With that 6 gives a meaningless pleasantry and excuses himself.

That night in his quarters 6 reviewed what files he could afford on such notice, poring over every report and abruptly cut live feed recording. He knew what Hessian Eldt was and to an extent what he had done, but to become so consumed with reckless abandon, to cause all this; he knew it was the desperate rationale of a flame clinging to embers. One who had the backing of a professional pmc’s worth of thugs spread out like landmines across the continent. And supposedly an entire shadow government. He reviews the same after action report yet again: 110 unaccounted operators engaged. 188 confirmed hostile casualties. Primary payload recovered. Loss of deployments thaumiel, omicron, bozrah. Loss of sparrows (x7). Operator ‘Hessian Eldt’ to receive commendation(s) (x33).

6 turns his attention to the back canvas wall, seeing 13 breathing silently on the dirt with each of his limbs bound to a metal stake with industrial straps. It wouldn't have taken much to prevent him from wandering off in the night, but this was the only thing that gave 6 reprieve as thought back to the hospital incident.

Deployment came hastily announced before daybreak and rapidly at that, leaving 6 in a rush to untie and stand up 13. Limp as he whispered to 6 he hadn’t slept in a long time. Aboard the sparrow, however, he noticed something stiffen 13 as he slowly began gripping his rifle with reinvigorated intention. Fortunately it was only the officer and two of his men, who still internally questioned why 6 had bothered bringing his “aide” for a field report when he already brought enough to keep guard.

They touched down on the edge of a light forest’s clearing, just outside a small city where their reconnaissance post was nestled in a recently “evicted” apartment. The dawn sky had become replete with the first calls of avians while a slight outline of dark blue began pressing up against the horizon. Their footsteps interrupted the calm for but a few moments before all was silenced by an explosive burst of gunfire. The officer practically flew forwards with a new gaping cavity in the back of his skull whilst his men quickly turned to the traitor. Time slowed to a crawl yet again and 6 immediately places 9 tight shots directly into the face of the man 8 feet to his right, simultaneously grappling on to the one directly beside him and pushing him to the ground. As they fell he discarded his rifle before grabbing his victim’s that, while still gripped, had been pushed to the side and forced it up to his own head before unloading it entirely. In the few moments before he had risen 13 already broken into a sprint towards the city.

Collapsing, pulsating, the glaring light, wretched geometry, green. For a moment 13 was free, whatever that could mean now. For his thoughts had long passed on from the realm of words and conceptions. Now only the is remained and is was and will be. It is beyond all things, especially hurting. Shadows cast down as tall pensive robes, harsh white and blue neon lights shoot out to bind him once more, catching up steadily. Down alleys brimming with shifting green vapors, bursting through a door into a haze of rotten stale yellow and cracks of blood red. Something is knocked over hard, a murmured shriek, coarse crunch beneath the foot and a shock of mind splitting heart rending green through the spine. Faster Faster Faster. The edge of his vision begins de-forming into an oppressive white as blank as a canvas while reflective black pillars begin rising on all sides. Another corner, something between burgundy and lavender shoots out as shrapnel, they strike off him becoming sparks of dark orange with an auric hue of violet. It was weak, emaciated, shouldn’t be; raised from beyond death. Turn around. Open fire. Lone figure stands shaking violently, yet is stiller than time. Hand rapidly shoots and retracts over and over, oscillating just above something on the hip. Empty. Wall of flame. Wall of ash. Pools of salt. Eyes of clay.

Faster

Faster

Faster

6 turns down an increasingly narrow street, still lived in concrete coffins flanking him, becoming smothered with brick and wood hovels fused with them. Some people run towards him, run away from something. A few crash into him and are brutally knocked down. His body glove punctured all around his abdomen, blood trickling again, staining him again. The last of those fleeing have made it past him, a heavy silence weighing down on the air and the dawn. Light barely breaks through over rooftops, the birds that flew away slowly return. Abandoned market stalls, some vacant and others adorned with merchandise. He sees the first body. Too small. Then another. The same. The tail end of a distant, echoing laugh manages to reach him; childish and loaded deeply with malice. Another step. 6 can’t move. Limbs splayed with extreme tension and rigor. Somehow, there are grayish “bruises” against the gold glove. The rest of the gold is as black as it could appear. The whites were duller. It really is silent.

He gives up, but he doesn’t fall over.

He can’t.

CRESTS SWALLOWING EGGS