Thanks to a series of modified drones, we could watch the entire operation from our meeting room. The drones provided aerial coverage, followed each soldier in front and back, and did deep recon in advance of their position.

It was a peaceful morning. They went out at 4am to avoid notice from Regulators. A tall, barbed wire fence surrounded the facility but posed no real obstacle for the team. No one appeared either outside the fence or when they made their way inside the property. After New York City, the scene felt quite peaceful.

"How's it going Charlie?" I asked.

Charlie looked into the camera of one of the drones, smiled and waved, "Everything is A OK."

Eyal looked over the various feeds, his hawk like eyes darting from image to image.

They drove up to the entrance of the bunker in Little Jefe and Big Jefe. Charlie developed Big Jefe with the latest alloys and power systems. It spanned the length of a semi truck, yet weighed about the same as the original Jefe. Still, Charlie and Noa preferred the ride in their original wheels.

The back doors of Big Jefe popped open and a swarm of drones and people exploded out to take their positions.

I smiled at the scene. They were a well-oiled machine. It always felt like we were running hard. We never really celebrated our achievements. We should do more of that. When the team got back we’d have a proper party.

Noa approached the door of the bunker. The building itself looked to be made of very thick concrete walls. The door, made of steel, appeared equally imposing. Noa pulled a sword from her inventory, and it lit up. She cut around the door frame. It resisted the way a dense fruit cake would resist a knife. The door fell inward and clanked loudly. Five drones rushed inside and began to explore.

"How's it look?" Eyal asked. Eyal could see the drone feeds himself, of course, but I’d come to realize this was his way to grow Noa. Ask her to form her own opinions.

Noa crouched just inside the hallway and ran her finger on the ground. "A lot of dust, I don't think anyone has been here for a long time."

Charlie chimed in, way too loudly, "I feel like I'm in a spy movie."

I smiled. Eyal did not.

The drones followed the corridors until they mapped all of the spaces they could reach. Charlie still hadn't figure out how to have them open doors, so the team would need to pick a direction and begin exploring further.

The initial hallway led down a flight of stairs into a waiting room. Almost immediately they ran into closed doors. From this point Noa allowed the other team members to lead the way through each door. The drones split up and continued into each hallway.

It was not unusual for buildings in New York to look frozen in time since the Awakening. With the changes people often found new communities. Once a building lost enough people, it often shut down for good. But this facility looked more like it had been frozen in time since the eighties. The building materials, the style of lights in the ceiling, the fake plants in the corners. It was truly awful.

They continued to go through room after room, never finding any surprises. But they were professional and did not allow the monotony to affect their methodical search. Every once in a while, Charlie would chime in with a Charlie-ism, 'No trap doors here' or 'No red wire'.

And then they hit the jackpot. About four levels down they opened a door that led into a concrete shaft that soared above them. Inside, collecting dust, stood an missile.

I had studied ICBMs as a kid. During the Cold War, when everyone else was freaking out about nuclear war, I was geeking out over nuclear weapons. The Intercontinental Ballistic Missile was the go-to weapon of the US military. Because of the long distance from the Soviet Union, our ground based missiles had to travel thousands of miles to reach their target. Only our submarines housed the smaller, short-range missiles where we could get close to our targets before firing.

Noa looked around. "I think Charlie and I will need to climb the ladder to get up to the nose of the missile."

Eyal frowned. "I don't like that situation Noa. What is your emergency exit plan?"

Noa shook her head, "I don't see any other exit from here."

Eyal stared hard, "I don't like it."

Noa asked, "Charlie, how long will you need?"

Charlie looked at the ladder on the side of the wall that led up to the top of the missile and gulped. "I shouldn't need more than a few minutes, once we get the casing removed."

Noa looked into the camera. "I think we go for it."

Eyal looked at the video feeds of the drones circling around outside. Everything looked clear.

"OK. Make it quick."

Noa and Charlie made their way up. Noa cranked up the ladder without looking back. Charlie stopped and looked down every few seconds. I was glad I didn't go on this little excursion, I hated heights.

Charlie finally made it to the top. Noa was already turning a hand crank that slowly spun the catwalk they stood on towards the head of the missile. When she couldn’t get them any closer, Charlie materialized an electric screw driver and began detaching the nose cone. It took a lot longer than a few minutes, but he eventually removed the metal by pulling it straight up and off. Doing that revealed a series of smaller looking missiles. A nuclear missile wasn't just one warhead. When this bad boy reentered the atmosphere from space, the top would open and a bunch of these mini warheads would spread over a wide area. Maximum destruction.

Charlie prepared to absorb one of the warheads into his inventory, and then hesitated. He looked back at Noa, “Maybe you want to step back.”

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A barking laugh escaped from Noa, “Like how far? Five miles?”

Charlie chuckled, “Yeah, I guess not.”

Charlie scanned the first warhead into his inventory. They both waited a second for a big boom. Seconds ticked by, and nothing.

“I can see it in my inventory!” Charlie blurted.

And then one of the aerial cameras blacked out. And a second.

Eyal signaled the alarm, "Two aerials down. I need our eyes pointed up."

The drone cameras stationed outside began panning up. A third aerial blacked out, but not before it caught something. Eyal quickly replayed the video and took it frame by frame.

It was hard to see. More of a blur. It looked like a huge bird, but in the last frame we caught the look of a human face. Whoever it was, the snarl of their face did not exude friendliness.

Eyal called out, "Probable Enhanced Regulators in the area. We need five eyes on the sky and another five watching the ground. Noa, get your team out of there."

Noa nudged Charlie to the ladder. He took it slow. Too slow. Noa walked back to the warheads and looked down. Her team took up positions on either side of the door.

The Regulators attacked all at once.

In a street brawl a Beacon Knight, as they were nicknamed by New Yorkers for their shining silver armor, could take on four or five people at one time. Even people with high skill levels in fighting couldn’t compete with the technology of our teams. Which is why it was a shock when our teams were cut down so easily by these… things.

From the air they dove down at the soldiers defending the bunker. Our team began firing into the air, but we soon realized the fliers were just the distraction. A group burst out of a nearby grove of trees at near eighty miles per hour into the team. Our cameras could barely keep up.

“What is that?” I asked Eyal. Some of them looked like their arms were replace with something metallic.

“Looks like a blade.” Eyal said.

Within seconds they were on the soldiers slashing at the knights’ armor. The armor took cut after cut, the attackers moved so fast that they couldn't fight back. Then the fliers engaged.

We watched in horror as one member after another were grabbed by the fliers and lifted hundreds of feet into the air. They dropped them from the sky. The armor was tough, but it hadn't been designed for a fall like that.

“You bastards!” I yelled. I lost all control.

Eyal did not. "Plan B" Eyal said to Noa.

Noa looked into the drone camera and nodded.

"Plan B," she called out to the knights that had accompanied them inside.

I looked confused, "Wait, what is Plan B?"

In the knights’ hands materialized what looked like land mines. They began to spread out and place the mines in every corridor. And then their armor turned from the gleaming metal into something that looked more like a deep space getup. Noa went over to Charlie and transferred a suit to him. He switched it on.

I realized what the mines were now. Over the last few months Noa leveled up her chemistry skills and had begun experimenting with chemical weapons. We agreed not to use them, because the wind could easily spread them into non-combat areas. Still, Noa argued that if we could develop stronger armor, so could others.

A few of the drones remained operational outside. We saw the flyers take up position on the roof above the entrance. There looked to be eight of them.

"What are they waiting for?" I asked. The answer came from the forest. What looked like something out of a fantasy movie emerged. Humans that looked as wide as they did tall. And they were tall. Their skin reflected the sun with a metallic glint.

"What the?" I couldn't finish. I was pretty sure they had armor for skin. They moved slow, but I had a feeling they had been built for something else.

Among these tanks walked a man not quite as big, but James thought he recognized him.

"Can we zoom in on this one?" I asked Eyal. Eyal sent directions to the drone and it zoomed in.

"John." I said.

As though John heard his name, he looked up at the drone and smiled.

"I need an exit." Noa called out.

I wasn't a strategist, but I could still use my computer to calculate a solution. I piped in all the video footage so far and set my algorithms to work.

"The hatch for the missile, is there a way to open it?" I asked.

Noa didn't hesitate. She climbed up the ladder again and examined the hatch from the highest landing.

"Yeah, we can either cut through it or blow it up. But once we do, they will have a second way to get at us."

"Would this help?" Charlie asked.

He had materialized what looked like a rocket backpack.

"Charlie you crazy son of a bitch," I yelled out.

Noa scanned a copy of the backpack and produced her own. The other soldiers did the same.

Eyal took over again, "Ok Noa, you're going to want to wait until they enter the facility. We want to engage as many of them as possible before you make your escape."

As though on cue, the big tank people made their way into the building, all but four of them. The speeders and flyers remained outside.

"Damn." I said.

Eyal shook his head, "No, that is good for us. If those fast ones had gone in first they would have set off the mines too early." He pulled up the chat for two of the Knights. “I need you both to intercept the tanks and engage. Then pull back as fast as you can.

Seconds felt like hours as they approached.

Eyal added, "Try to get footage of what happens when our bullets hit their skin."

Then we could see the first of the tanks on the video of our lead knight. It didn’t try to hide and when the shots rang out, it didn’t even flinch. The bullets dug into the metal, but didn't seem to penetrate more than a centimeter. Like bee stingers lodged in skin. Based on their reactions, they probably had removed the nerve endings.

"Time to go." Eyal said.

Ten seconds later Noa set off the gas. It exploded out and filled the halls with a gray mist. We could just make out the lead tank on a trailing drone. He continued forward as though nothing had happened. I began to panic. And then the gas did its job. The giant's eyes rolled back and it toppled forward.

I watched the outside camera. John seemed to frown. Could he see what went on inside? I doubt the tank had been able to signal back via chat.

John signaled to two of the High Speed Regulators to enter. Then he frowned again and gave the signal to pull back.

Eyal frowned, “Blow it.”

Noa blew the hatch above the missile. The explosion startled John and the others and they looked over in the direction of the smoke.

Noa and team came out of the hatch, fire shooting from the rockets strapped to their backs. Unfortunately, none of them had trained with the packs before, and they struggled to stay in any real formation. Charlie did the worst of them all, almost crashing before he even got out of the tube.

John motioned and the flying Regulators shot straight for them. The team attempted to shoot at them while in flight, but they were failing miserably.

"How many drones do we have left?" I shouted.

Eyal looked, "Eight."

I continued, "Noa, have your people attach those gas bombs onto the drones."

She understood instantly and gave the command.

One of the knights couldn't move fast enough to block an attack. The winged creature sliced the rocket of his back and both he and the rocket tumbled to the ground. The others managed to attach and the bombs to the drones. Eyal and I took control of the drones and directed each towards a target.

The bombs went off one after another. We took down six almost instantly. Two others avoided the gas by flying above it.

It was then that I saw my mistake. One of the drones panned back and I caught sight of Charlie. There hadn't been eight of the fliers after all, there had been ten. Two must have been circling high above. They swept in and cut the pack off Charlie. But they didn’t let him fall. Two of them had Charlie by the arms and were flying away with him. We couldn't shoot at them without hitting Charlie. The other two fliers who had avoided our drones reappeared directly above our remaining team. We could see them materialize something and drop it into our group. An explosion went off and all of the helmet mounted cameras in that area went dead.

We pulled up one of the drones that remained out of the immediate area and saw the aftermath. All of our people were falling to the ground. I looked to see if the attackers were moving in. They weren't. John smiled at the camera. And then walked back into the forest.

I punched the screen.