“Hi, I’m supposed to meet my dad here for lunch,” Cal said in the best innocent child voice he could muster. One of the benefits of looking like a kid whenever the loop restarted was that it was surprisingly easy to blend in. Harold had given him a few basic instructions on how to look different, and he followed them entirely. He had changed his clothing from the usual t-shirts and jeans to something a bit more formal, and they had dyed his hair. So far, he had sat in an Agency building waiting in line to talk to the secretary for thirty minutes, and no one seemed the wiser. The name he had used had come from a list of people Harold was reasonably sure worked at the location. They cross-referenced it and found out who had kids, and now Cal was here about to make them regret letting him pass security so easily.
“What’s his name?” The lady behind the desk asked, in that semi-dismissive tone adults often use for kids.
“James Elroy,” Cal answered with a slight smile.
“Alright, one second,” she replied before picking up a phone and saying, “Yeah, hey James, your son is here to see you,” followed by some silence before she resumed. “He said lunch; I don’t know why he thinks that look. I’m just going to send him back. You can deal with it,” She finished and hung up the phone. “Go ahead and head back. He’s in office seventeen on the second floor, don’t get lost.”
“Thanks,” Cal said. He didn’t like her at all. She seemed like the type to be cruel to kids just because, but considering where she worked, he shouldn’t be surprised at all.
He walked through the corridors, just fast enough to seem like he knew where he was going but slow enough to take in as much of his surroundings as possible. This was about to be the second battle of their war, and he intended this one to be a complete victory. The building was mainly a series of corridors, and once he reached the elevator, he found buttons for three subfloors as well as the second floor. He assumed there was at least one more subfloor with a different way to access it.
He pressed the button for the second floor, waited for the elevator to beep, and found the door he had been looking for. Now, the trick would be getting through the door and taking the man out quickly and quietly enough before he realized that Cal wasn’t his son. He knocked on the door. “It’s open; just get in here,” he heard a voice call from the other side.
As Cal opened the door, the man he claimed to be his dad was already ranting at him, somehow apparently too annoyed to notice that Cal wasn’t his son. While he was glad the plan was going so well, he did feel a pang of sadness for the man’s actual kid. He certainly wasn’t the father of the year material.
“Sorry to interrupt, but yeah, not actually your kid. " At the same time Cal said this, he hit the man with a weaker bolt of electricity while leaping over the desk and punching him in the face. “Form the gateway here,” Cal said in his head, knowing Fulginanis had been waiting for the signal. “Here’s the deal: you get to stay alive as long as you make any noise, got it?” Cal said to the man who was writhing in pain below him.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
His answer came between pained sobs. Moments later, the gateway formed in front of the desk, and Stan stepped out. “Need any help?” He asked, looking at the man on the ground.
“Yeah, get him back through. Have Lightspeed and Andrew handle it for now. We likely have only a few minutes before the gateway is noticed, so get the others back here as soon as possible, and then we can start the carnage,” Cal answered.
Stan didn’t waste a moment with an answer, instead quickly grabbing the downed man behind the desk and vanishing back through the portal, only to return less than a minute later with Frank, Twonger, Bug, and Gretel behind him. “You all know the plan. They get one chance to surrender, but we are taking down everyone in the building,” Stan said with a look of grim determination.
“Teams of three, Twonger, Bug, let’s go,” Cal said, walking towards the door. “Good luck, dad.
As Cal and his group reached the end of the corridor in search of the stairs, he heard gunfire erupt somewhere behind them. He thought he could make out Frank yelling something before the gunfire abruptly stopped. That meant the stealth portion was over. He turned around and launched several large balls of lightning down the hallway they had come through, detonating them once they were spread out enough to take out most of the offices. Within seconds, the second floor had erupted into a chaotic firefight as the Agency’s men tried to respond to what had happened, not fully realizing just what was happening.
The door to the stairwell opened just as Cal reached it. “Drop the weapons, only warning!” Cal yelled. No one listened. Electricity arced off his body through everyone in front of him. Each of them dropped to the ground where they stood, dead. He knew the regular humans had basically zero chance of standing against them at this point. The only thing he considered potential threats were any ogres housed here. At each floor they passed as they descended, Cal stopped briefly before continuing the descent to launch another volley of lightning balls through.
“Yos feel that?” Twonger asked as they reached the bottom.
“No?” Cal said questioningly. What was Twonger picking up on that he wasn’t?
“There’s something different on the side of the door. I can kind of get a reading on the mana type, but not fully, so be careful,” The alien warned.
Bug walked in front of Cal before he could open the door, and Cal felt himself enveloped in some kind of shield. “Open the door, but I’m staying in front,” she said.
Cal pushed the door open and immediately understood what Twonger had been feeling. Down the corridor in front of them was something out of nightmares. It looked like three people had been melted together. Two of the heads seemed to be already bleeding, and based on the lines, he guessed that was just what they did now. The Agency had created some sort of chimera ogre. Cal added that to the ever-growing list of reasons to destroy them utterly.
Cal looked into its horrifying eyes, and that was when it started crying.