It had already been three hours of waiting for the truck to arrive. Three hours of gathering as much intelligence as possible about the warehouse and its current criminal residents. The night was pitch black, the kind of darkness that seemed to swallow everything, leaving only the faintest outlines. I was perched on a hill overlooking the warehouse, the cold night air biting through my clothes. My black combat boots were planted firmly in the dirt, my dark grey camo cargo pants blending into the shadows. A bulletproof vest over a t-shirt and an oversized black hoodie, paired with a mask covering the lower half of my face, completed my ensemble. I was ready for anything, or so I hoped.

With my binoculars that had night vision, I had already seen three men walking around with guns, patrolling the place, rotating shifts every hour. They moved with a purpose, eyes scanning the surroundings, occasionally stopping to talk to each other. Cameras were perched on each corner of the warehouse, four in total, each one slowly panning, surveying every inch of the perimeter. Two men were reported to be inside a control room inside the building, watching the camera feeds, their eyes glued to the screens. They were the eyes and ears of this operation, the first line of defense against any intruders.

Five more men were inside the factory part of the warehouse, loading boxes into trucks. From this distance, it was impossible to see what was inside the boxes, but I had a pretty good idea. Cocaine, disguised as bottled pineapple juice. A clever ruse, but not clever enough. With my binoculars, I had already seen that two of the loaders were hiding handguns in their back pockets. They were ready for trouble, but they hadn't spotted me yet.

I glanced at my watch. It was close to midnight. Any moment now, the truck would arrive, and I'd get the evidence I needed to bring him down. I'd been working this case for months, and it all came down to tonight. I took a deep breath, steadying my nerves. I had to be patient. One wrong move, and the entire operation could go up in smoke.

From my vantage point, I had a clear view of the entire warehouse. The trucks were parked in a neat row, engines off, their dark shapes blending into the night. The men moved like shadows, their voices low murmurs that barely reached my ears. I adjusted my binoculars, focusing on the entrance. Any minute now.

A movement caught my eye. One of the patrolling guards stopped, his gaze fixed on something in the distance. I tensed, following his line of sight. I had spent weeks tracking this criminal organization, finally locating their main warehouse after long, sleepless nights of research and lurking in the shadows of the city. A few days ago, after a particularly grueling stretch of sleepless nights, I had received a tip from a 'friend' within the Hawks, South Africa's version of the FBI. This warehouse was situated on the outskirts of a small city in South Africa called East London. According to my 'friend', this was where these pieces of shit brought the girls to prepare them for shipment from the harbor in East London, one of the biggest ports in South Africa. These poor, abused girls were destined to be shipped to a whole other country without consent or any hope of seeing their families again.

Having a younger sister, this made my blood boil, igniting a dark flame deep inside me. I would not let them get away with this. I would not let these innocent lives be shattered by their greed and cruelty.

Finally, the truck arrived. It was the only truck that came with a shipping container, just as I had anticipated. My pulse quickened as the vehicle rumbled closer, headlights cutting through the darkness like knives. I reached for my pocket and took out a small sack of marbles. The cool, smooth glass felt reassuring against my skin. I closed my eyes for a brief moment, taking a deep breath to steady myself.

This was it. The moment I had been waiting for. The moment I had been preparing for. I braced myself for the bloodshed I was about to commit tonight.

"Father, forgive me," I whispered into the night.

As the truck came to a halt and the warehouse doors began to open, I moved silently down the hill, the weight of my mission heavy on my shoulders. I had one chance to make this right, to save those girls and bring these bastards to justice.

I was crouched down closer to the warehouse, right against the fence. The lights around the building were bright, so I put my binoculars with night vision into one of my many pockets inside my cargo pants and watched as the poor girls were unloaded from the truck into the warehouse. They looked defeated, scared out of their minds, with their hands tied with what appeared to be zip ties. Great—those would be easy to remove with the knife in my pocket. Some of the girls had clearly wet themselves out of fear. The men unloading them were taunting them and handling them roughly. It had probably been days since these girls had seen any sunlight; none of them looked healthy enough to survive the long sea journey ahead. They were likely being brought here to be washed, fed, and cared for until they were healthy enough to endure the horrible conditions at sea, never to see their families again.

Rage boiled inside me, and it took every bit of willpower to stop myself from jumping in there now and fighting these men with guns. It would be stupid since I didn’t have any gun of my own. I focused on the cameras I had spotted earlier tonight on the building. I needed to take them out, but first, I needed to deal with the two men in the control room watching the cameras. They could easily switch on the alarms and put everybody on high alert, ruining my plans to save these girls without any of them being hurt.

I moved to the back of the warehouse, still on the outside. My boots occasionally got stuck in the mud. Finally, I had made it, and from this vantage point, I could see into the control room. Careful not to touch the fence and trigger any alarms, I got as close as possible to get a better look through the window into the control room. Now I could see the two men inside conversing while eating what looked like a bag of Lays. They were both looking at the screens, making sure nothing slipped past them. Damn it. I had hoped they wouldn’t be talking so that one wouldn’t notice his partner falling suddenly and set off the alarms. No matter. I was confident I could take them both out quickly before any alarms went off.

I took out the sack of marbles again and removed two. Placing the sack on the ground, I held a marble in each hand. Taking a deep breath, I concentrated on picturing the human brain. My target was the frontal lobe, more specifically the part around the T-spot on the forehead. For those who don't know, the T-spot is what snipers in the army are trained to aim for when targeting a hostage-taker. It’s located on the forehead, between the eyebrows, and down the line to the nose. Once this part of the brain is hit, the person instantly dies without their muscles suddenly tensing. So, they won't accidentally pull the trigger once they get shot; their body goes limp immediately.

I pictured how it would look and stared at my first target's forehead since I had a clear view of it. Clutching the marble in my right hand tighter, still focused on his forehead, I willed the marble to teleport into that specific part inside the target's head. Instantly, he went limp, his body slumping forward onto the desk in front of him. A moment later, I did the same with the marble in my left hand, teleporting it into the forehead of the other target. All this happened in the span of two seconds. Both targets instantly went limp, their laughter cut off, and fell forward into the desks in front of them. Luckily, they were seated, so not much noise was made.

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I opened my hands, now covered in blood and bits of brain matter the size of marbles. You see, my ability is teleportation. I can teleport anything I touch to anywhere within visible distance that I am looking at. A powerful and scary ability, but the drawback is that my teleportation works by swapping the objects with equal mass. In simpler terms, I switch two objects with each other from a distance. So, I had just taken out those guards by replacing marble-sized chunks of their brains with the marbles I was holding.

With the control room dealt with, I wiped my hands on my pants and retrieved the sack of marbles from the ground. The next step was to disable the cameras and move in to free the girls. Steeling myself, I thought about once more of the frightened, broken faces of the captives. Tonight, I would be their savior. Tonight, I would end this nightmare.

With the two guards in the control room taken care of, I needed to find my way into the warehouse. I thought there might be a small gate at the back that I could easily lockpick, but there wasn't. The only way in and out was through the big gate at the entrance, guarded by two men armed with what looked like AK-47s. Getting there would take too long, and by the time I arrived, someone would have likely gone to check on the control room due to the lack of communication.

I could take out the guards, no problem, the same way I took down the ones in the control room—I still had plenty of marbles left in the sack. However, teleporting inside the control room had its own risks. As I explained earlier, my ability is more akin to swapping two objects with equal mass. When I teleport, my body replaces whatever is in the space I want to go to, with air from where I was before taking my place. This creates an instant vacuum that gets filled immediately, causing a noise like a gunshot due to the rush of air.

That noise would likely alert everyone in the building, which I didn't want. But I had an idea, one that might just work. Time was running out, so I quickly trudged through the darkness, farther away from the warehouse and closer to the nearby highway. Not so close that I'd be seen by anyone driving, but close enough to still see into the control room.

Satisfied with my distance, I concentrated on picturing myself inside the control room while looking into it. Boom. In an instant, I was inside the control room, right behind the chairs of the two dead guards. A loud gunshot-like sound echoed through the night from where I had been the moment before, but since I was pretty far away and close to the road, it sounded more like a car backfiring on the highway.

I immediately tensed up and checked the screens in front of me, watching to see if the noise had alarmed anyone. Through the cameras, I saw the guards and men unloading the girls outside glance in the direction of the sound, alarmed, but after a few seconds, they went back to what they were doing, assuming it was just a car backfiring.

I relax a bit and let out the deep breath I had been holding. They weren't on high alert. Moving around the two lifeless bodies, I took a closer look at the truck unloading the frightened girls through the screens connected to the cameras. They were almost finished, moving them to their new quarters inside the warehouse, which was downstairs from where I was now.

The next step was to go down there, take out the armed guards, and possibly the workers unloading the disguised cocaine if they put up a fight. I needed to keep the girls safe from any potential crossfire, take out the two guards out front since they would likely come to the aid of their colleagues, and then tip off the Hawks to come and save the girls. They were better equipped to return the girls to their families. All this had to be done before any of the bad guys could alert their big boss and call in reinforcements.

Seems simple enough, right? Wrong. Nothing ever goes to plan on these missions, though I always wish it would. Why am I saying this? Because at that instant whilst looking at the camera, the door bursts open and I am greeted by a figure wearing a white mask with a creepy smiling face on it, decorated with the words “GOD” on the forehead in paint made to look like blood. The figure was wearing red Nike basketball shoes, dark grey compression tights with black shorts on top and a grey weathered graphic t-shirt with a Metallica design on it. He was sporting bleached dreadlocks with the tips dyed in rainbow colors, tied up in a top ponytail. The figure was dark-skinned tall with an athletic build, but the most striking feature on him had to be his right arm. Which looked like some horrible accident left it completely mangled to the point where the hand was gone and the bone of his fore arm was sticking out. Taking a closer look I see that the mangled arm is shaped like a sword, muscle fibers moved around the sharpened bone structure like tentacles. Some steam was coming from the arm, it was pretty cold today, but after a few seconds of awkward silence because I was staring at his arm I realized that this person had abilities like me, shit. I didn’t know that they had a super in the warehouse.

I barely have enough time to process everything as the figure lunges at me pointing the sword arm directly at my torso. He moved at an incredible amount of speed and I was forced to teleport myself out of harms way, which was right behind him. Again at incredible speed he turns around and slashes towards my torso. Only to find me not there anymore, the sounds of me teleporting echoing throughout the room, wind gushing everywhere, throwing small things like papers and pens around. I quickly pick up the baton that was on the corpse of one of the guards and swing as hard as I can at the back of his head. Crack! I hit the figure square on the back of head, a blow like that should knock him out completely or hopefully kill him.

The figure goes limp and starts falling forward to the floor, but suddenly as it looks like he is reaching the floor, he pops out his right hand and foot catching himself and stabbing the floor simultaneously. He swiftly roundhouse kicks me right in the chest, knocking out all the air from my chest and sending me flying towards the wall with the screens. In which I slam into and slam back into the desk below. Winded, head, back and ribs hurting I sneakily reach into my pocket with the marbles. I usually don’t try to use my ability when the target is moving because it throws off my switch and I end up switching with the wrong thing, but right now it’s an emergency. I grab a handful of marbles and try to locate the figure with my head spinning.

But as I look up my head is grabbed swiftly and a knee slams into my face, nose first. Loosing consciousness and head spinning, I tighten my grip on the marbles and concentrate on where I want the marbles to go, right now being the closest thing to my face his leg as he lifts my head again preparing to slam my face in again. I concentrate on his thigh and instantly multiple small holes grouped together appear on his thigh, I feel the satisfactory squishy, wet and sticky consistency of warm flesh and blood in my hand and blood squirts all over my face. The hold he had on my head disappears and my head hits the floor. I use this opportunity to try and lift myself and get ahold of my bearings and most importantly wipe away the blood in my eyes so that I can teleport away. As I look up again. I see him clutching and looking at his thigh, presumably with a pained and perplexed look on his face underneath the mask. But it doesn’t seem to bother him that much, he didn’t even scream when I took a chunk of his flesh off his thigh. After a few seconds the bleeding stops on his thigh, and I cuss out loud,

“Fuck, you can heal.” I say as I cough out blood, that knee I took in the face and that first kick took a lot out of me. I can only teleport no other abilities, so I am human just like anybody else and the supe in front of me seems to have enhanced physical attributes on top of his disturbing sword arm and healing. Surprisingly he responds to my comment, which is the first sound he has really made through out this entire altercation.

“Yep.” He says and lets go of his thigh and turns his attention to me, ignoring his injured but now healing thigh.

“And I’m fucked, huh?”

“Yeah, big time.” He says in a laughing tone. I don’t even have the opportunity to accept my fate before he moves so quickly that he disappears out of my sight and another knee slams into my face for the third time, and everything goes black.