Jessica sat quietly in a nearby tree, monitoring the surroundings for Infiltrator of Authority’s approach. She saw the three ADF agents stationed for Mr. Lovelace’s protection. Jessica felt a stab of worry. She wasn’t nearly as confident in this plan as she had portrayed to Alice. She wasn’t some master strategist, and didn’t know why Infiltrator of Authority didn’t just go straight for the kill earlier. Why it would warn Alice of its attack like this? Alice left, Mr. Lovelace going with her. Jessica watched in slight confusion as three men approached the various ADF guards and spoke with them briefly.

After some arguments and several phone calls, the current guards left and the new ones took their place even though their standard rotation shouldn’t have been changed for hours still. Jessica hopped onto the roof of the house, to get a wider view of the area. Something was happening.

Mr. Lovelace returned and went back inside, unaware of the growing number of agents slowly surrounding the house. There were over ten of them now, trickling in in pairs and trios over the last ten minutes. It began to grow dark, and Mr. Lovelace still didn’t realize that anything was wrong. There were over fifteen of them gathered around the house now. But Infiltrator of Authority itself hadn’t arrived yet. The sun was going down, and Jessica wondered if the creature was even coming.

Then one of the men held his hand to his ear and raised his rifle towards the house and moved forward. The rest followed him. Jessica carefully crawled to the window for a good angle so she could see the whole room where Mr. Lovelace sat watching TV.

The agents breached and entered the room shouting. Mr. Lovelace seemed confused but put his hands on his head as Jessica watched the armed men carefully. The leader raised his rifle towards Mr. Lovelace who was on his knees on the floor. Jessica watched the armed leader carefully and quickly spun a bridge between their minds.

His mind was Unprotected, like most people. Alice at least had some resistance, but nothing Jessica couldn’t push through if needed. But this man was so wide open that direct eye contact wasn’t even needed here. Jessica felt it as soon as his finger began to twitch on the trigger to shoot his weapon.

Entering his mind, she used a technique she had always considered horrifying. She had been as sick as this squirrel body allowed after she had used it the first time. But she had to use it. She probed his mind and felt the sharpest, the rawest images in his mind. Enhanced them, reinforced them, and interwove them with the images of the rest of the people in the room. Suppress images of the man on the floor. He was unimportant. All that mattered was the negative emotion towards his teammates.

The rifle swung and the man opened fire into the surprised man on the right. He turned again screaming incoherently and crying as he kept the trigger held down as he sprayed the room with automatic fire. The last man managed to take out his raging leader, sending him to the floor dead. His gun next turned to Mr. Lovelace, but Jessica linked to him too quickly.

He froze as Jessica sent a wave of sharp, barbed, images along the link in one massive burst. The man’s face twisted in agony and he dropped to the floor, bleeding from his eyes, nose, and ears. He might survive if he was lucky. Jessica heard vehicles in the distance, and the rest of the men rapidly approaching the house. She had a lot of work to do. None of them would come between her and Robin. She would do what she had to.

— — — O — o — O — — —

David Lovelace was scared out of his mind as he saw the six dead men in his living room. He reached into his pocket with shaky hands and pulled out his phone and dialed the ADF hotline. Surely these people weren’t really ADF were they? They… They must be terrorists and imposters. Why had that one killed the others? One moment he had been ordering David to follow his orders, next he was slaughtering his squadmates. And the last man had just collapsed, a pool of blood forming below his head on the floor.

The phone rang.

David waited impatiently on the line and crouched down as more gunfire came from outside, some of it splintering the wall behind him. The heavy engine of a vehicle was rumbling outside. Another burst of gunfire sent David diving to the floor as it sprayed through the window.

The phone rang.

David army crawled forward to the kitchen to get out of the way of the gunfire now consistently hissing above him in hisses and pops and splintering wood.

The phone clicked. The calm voice quickly became alarmed as there was another burst of gunfire in the room behind David. “David, what is… Shit…” The voice faded a bit as the speaker seemed to turn away from the phone.

“...Code red! Code Red! What? Don’t bullshit me, I can hear the fucking gunfire over the phone! Don’t tell me… How have… Hands off the console! MPs, arrest him. Find out who else is in on this. I want a team there, Now!!! Do you have any idea…”

More gunfire drowned out the ADF man’s words as David pressed himself into the floor. The gunfire was concentrated behind him, they didn’t seem to have noticed him switching rooms. David kept crawling until he found the closet door. He reached up and quickly opened it before rushing inside and closing it.

It was just in time. There was shattering of glass and then heavy footsteps as men shouted, searching for him as they ran throughout the house. David muted the phone and held his breath as one set of footsteps came to a stop in front of his door. The knob on the door began to twist, but before David could react more booms of gunfire matched liquid squelches from the other side of the door.

A second later a body hit the floor, and the closet door swung open slightly, the man’s fall further twisting the knob. David edged forward and carefully closed the door again as silently and slowly as he could. He sat down and huddled in the corner in darkness as things grew eerily quiet. Were more coming? At least the ADF was coming for him. At least Alice wasn’t here for this.

— — — O — o — O — — —

Jessica leapt to a better position on the roof as the jeep came to a screeching stop on the street, its back covered in a brown tarp. A man jumped out of the cab and quickly released the tarp, revealing a heavy duty machine gun mounted in the back. Holy Shit! More vehicles arrived and more armed men poured out for the assault. Jessica’s mind boggled at the size of this assault. Who the hell were these people?

A man hopped onto the turret and reached to the side and primed it in one smooth motion. He’s used it before. I should target him first. Jessica connected to his mind. The connection was weakened by the distance, but the man’s mind was weak. Already unstable, primed for violence. Jessica reached into his mind and considered the patterns of suppression and activation for a moment.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Finally, she found the central image shard in his mind. The source of the trauma. Barbed and twisting, breaking the happy stable images around it. Well, the few that remained in the man’s mind. Jessica had never seen a singular image so virulent and sharp before. She quickly copied it and stored it for later in a safe place in her own mind. She suppressed the man’s memory of his current task and released the twisted and hungry image from its cage. She empowered it and watched it twist and grow to consume the man’s mind. She amplified the memories of the men alongside him as well, until all he could associate with them was this singular horrible memory he had buried deep down.

Jessica felt like a villain. No one deserved this. But she did it anyway. She had to. For Robin.

— — — O — o — O — — —

Janfrey mounted the turret and armed it. The surrounding men waited in silence, waiting for the orders to proceed. Something had killed the first wave of men, and no one knew what. They would make the assault together. But suddenly a deep well of emotion welled up within Janfrey and it burned in his chest. It spread and Janfrey felt his thoughts twist and leave the present moment. All he could think about was that day so long ago when he was a boy…

Janfrey kicked the rawhide ball with the other village boys. He was happy and the day was beautiful. He had just gotten back helping his mother carry water back from the stream, and his arms ached. It was many kilometers, and they had to make the journey twice each day. So he was glad they were playing football again so his arms could rest.

They usually played football, all of them had to help carry water for their families and their arms were always sore. Their mothers just gave them more to carry if they were too energetic. And faking being tired never worked either. Somehow their mothers always knew.

Janfrey kicked the ball and the other boys groaned as the rawhide ball launched to the side and rolled down the hill. Janfrey looked back and the scene flickered in and out. Suddenly the buildings were burning. Men with machetes cut down the women and children as he watched from the bushes, laughing as they did it.

The world flickered again as Janfrey watched in horror. The village was peaceful again and his mother was waving at him. The other boys made fun of Janfrey for the terrible kick and he was forced to retrieve it from the brush. He reluctantly chased the ball deep into the brush, carefully maneuvering to not be whipped by the branches.

Janfrey picked up the ball and turned around confused as the mocking from behind him stopped. He could only hear the crackling of flames behind him. The sky was filled with gray ashes casting everything in a sickly pallor. The fires raged across the village and the bodies littered everywhere. The boys were all taken, recruited by the militia, or killed. The adults were all killed to the last. Only Janfrey went unnoticed, clutching his rawhide ball in the bush. Alone.

Janfrey staggered out and finally allowed himself to let out his tears he had held in out of fear of being heard. He stumbled forward and turned the corner and saw the pile of corpses laying haphazardly strewn about in the village center. There was a body of a woman near the top who was wearing a familiar floral dress. His mother’s dress. At the sight, the memory twisted and Janfrey felt the uncontrollable rage flood through him. He screamed into the sky as the world fractured around him into shards of memory.

He woke up manning the turret, the rage still burning within him. He looked around, and he knew. Not in a concrete way, but in his heart. These men around him had been there. They had been laughing, cutting down the villagers. His family. And they would pay! Just like the others he had tracked down before. He turned his turret, and with a roar of rage opened fire on the men’s backs. He would avenge them!

— — — O — o — O — — —

Jessica watched as the man on the turret roared and started mowing down the other men with his heavy weaponry. Some of the rounds sprayed wide into the house, but Jessica could only hope that Mr. Lovelace would get lucky. The other thirty men were caught flat footed at the betrayal as the man on the turret began shouting curses in an unfamiliar language. Ten of them were killed in seconds as they were shot in their backs by the turret.

Jessica was impressed. The man on the turret ended up taking out almost twenty of the thirty men before they managed to stop him. Even in his last breath he shouted something and set off his grenades, setting off the ammunition under him and destroying the car in a massive explosion. The blast killed three more of the closest men at the time and injured several of the survivors. The seven remaining men seemed stunned at the massacre of their allies, but only for a moment.

They put their hands to their ears shakily and received their orders. They glanced at each other nervously and gulped, but moved forward anyway.

Jessica shifted herself and froze when one of the jumpy men swiveled towards her. One bullet and she would be dead. But the man relaxed when he saw that she was just a squirrel. Well, she wouldn’t waste the direct eye contact. She established a strong connection between them and tried to manipulate him.

Resistant. He had resistance. Weaker than Alice, but there. Jessica pushed through and manipulated his perception through the emotional associations again.

He turned on the others, but only managed to take out one more before the rest gunned him down. The remaining five entered the home, eyeing each other nervously, fingers on their triggers. Jessica leaned over the gutter on the roof and got a good angle to look inside.

Unprotected.

Two living men left. One lay dead half way through opening a door, and Jessica noticed the door briefly shifting to shut again. Mr. Lovelace must be in there.

One man went to run, and Jessica linked with him. Unprotected. She sent a weaker pulse of images, knocking him out, but it was recoverable. Maybe the ADF could get some information out of him. The last man was missing. She climbed back onto the roof and inspected the surroundings, the man was fleeing on foot down the street, limping from a gunshot in his leg from one of the men Jessica had sent into a blind rage.

She narrowed her eyes on the fleeing man. He was far enough that it was nearly at the edge of her range. She tried to connect, and it sputtered for a bit. Jessica pushed harder and the bridge connected, but getting weaker by the moment as the man kept retreating.

Jessica sent the particularly nasty image from the gunner on the truck down the connection. She had been careful to not personally inspect that one and keep it in quarantine from the rest of her mind. But it was a powerful weapon. Jessica watched as the man fell on his face and curled in a ball in the middle of the street shaking, his escape forgotten. He wouldn’t be going anywhere soon.

Jessica sat back and inspected the carnage as the ADF finally got off their asses and arrived nearly fifteen minutes after they were needed. What would her old human self have thought about her actions here? She could see the horror on the ADF agent’s faces as they took in the carnage.

But now all she could think of was that they probably deserved it. They had tried to kill an innocent man without hesitation. There was no need to feel guilty. So she didn’t. Maybe it was the squirrel in her, not seeing the use in analyzing the past. If it didn’t help her survive then it could be ignored.

Now she wondered if she really had changed so much. Did she even want to care about the deaths of these people? All of this she pondered as the ADF descended on the scene and quickly went to retrieve Mr. Lovelace.

Jessica wondered where Infiltrator of Authority had gone. It certainly wasn’t among these men. She had thought it would… Alice! Before she could panic, Jessica decided she needed more info. She would follow Mr. Lovelace. Surely they would tell him at some point what had happened. And Jessica would never be able to make it to Alice in time.

Best to stay close to Alice’s father if she could, protect him as she had promised. When she saw him emerge from the house, she quickly formed a mental bridge with him then immediately muted the connection. It should let her feel his location, but only allow communication if she opened it further. Eventually Alice would come back for him. Then it would be Alice’s turn to help Jessica.