I looked out at the crowd of people who had volunteered to come to his aid. We asked for volunteers to install the sensor and hundreds responded to the call. They treated Charlie like a national treasure. So many benefited from his inventions. And anyone who met Charlie liked him.

After receiving the scanner they began walking the streets, picking up code changes and sending them back to me. Still, it didn’t help. First, I didn’t have a dictionary of which person went with which code snippets. I began by sampling code from interactions from our own team. Then, I attempted to find people that only Charlie would interact with and sampled their code as well. My computer would then look for overlapping code fragments, while attempting to exclude any false positives from our own code. I wish I had more time. It felt as though we were inventing an entirely new field of science, as important or more important than Genetics.

While we waited for reports to come in, we set up a makeshift control center next to Noa’s bed in the medical ward. Sara took charge of executing Charlie’s plans for enhancing our soldiers. We’d been lucky that he’d laid everything out before he left for the nuke site. Again, volunteers streamed into the Beacon when they heard of Charlie’s abduction. While they weren’t trained fighters, the equipment Charlie designed included sophisticated computers that could take partial control of the suit when being attacked. I wish we had rolled these out before our jaunt.

And then John’s chat came in. I relayed it back to the team and we all agreed that we wouldn’t allow his threat to slow us down. Soon after, we began receiving reports that Regulators were disappearing off the streets.

Eyal reacted to that news, “He’ll be upgrading them all now. We won’t have much more time.”

I replied, “I looks like they are headed for the old UN building.”

Eyal nodded, “We should begin our preparations.”

Again, we all agreed.

Throughout the day I received snippets that included a bit of Charlie’s code. One by one I plotted them on a map of New York. Eventually the algorithm hit an inflection point and identified the UN as the most probable site. We looked at it up on the screen.

Sara squinted at the image and turned to the rest of us, "OK, we know where he is. Eyal, it's your operation."

Eyal nodded. "Who's coming with me?"

I raised my hand. Sara raised hers.

"I'll stay back and keep an eye on things here." Wen said, tilting his head towards Noa.

Eyal nodded and led the way to the elevator. They took it down to basement level 10. Two months ago this level didn't exist. The doors opened into a large cavern. A transport vehicle stood waiting for them. It looked like Little Jefe, but it had treads instead of wheels and I’d heard it could drive up walls.

They boarded it and began their way through the tunnel. Eyal had already instructed the teams to prepare for the assault and the bulk of the team sat waiting for instructions underneath the UN building.

When they arrived Eyal wasted no time. A new chat channel began with the leads of every team, including Sara and myself.

"Proceed."

The attack began with the Sandworms: five vehicles like our own, but these possessed a spinning nose cone that chewed through the concrete foundations of buildings with ease. They took up position around the edges of the UN building and tilted the machines up. Tunnels sloping upward trailed behind them until, one after another, the Sandworms popped out of the ground. Most broke up into basements filled with old storage crates, although one entered a machine room surrounded by steam pipes and electrical panels.

As holes formed, the Sandworms backed down the ramps and the shock troops prepared to make their way up the improvised entrances. The plan had been for these shock troops to form a sort of phalanx dozens deep and push their way through the halls of the building.

What happened instead was that a steady stream of mutated humans began streaming down the ramps at shocking speeds. Multiple tunnels were attacked simultaneously. And while the action differed a bit in each tunnel, they generally mirrored each other.

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The first mutations to come through jostled each other as though a grand prize awaited the first to break the Beacon’s line. We had seen this type at the nuclear site. The hulking Rhinos blocked out the light previously spilling from inside the building into the tunnels. Only these looked like another evolution of the beast people. They stood 9 feet tall and their skin shone more like gray plate armor than skin.

Our shock troops divided themselves into units based on their specialization. Red were our equivalents of the Rhinos. They had massively charged batteries powering thick red armor that lifted its occupant to a height fifty percent taller than a normal person. Their job was to hold the attacking forces in place. The tunnels spanned 15 feet in width and height. Lines of four Reds spanned the tunnel, with each line behind them only a half arm distance back. Their chat systems were wired into the suits, enabling the entire phalanx to act as one coordinated unit. The line behind could press against the line in front, greatly amplifying their forward momentum. It should have been unstoppable.

Only when the Rhinos hit, the red shock troops found themselves sliding backwards into each other. The added height of the Rhinos gave them a much higher center of gravity. They ran at a ferocious speed and at the last second dropped their bodies down onto the heads of the soldiers forming the Red wall. The front line tipped back into the line behind them and they all began to fall like dominoes. By the seventh line of Reds the fall slowed. The soldiers eight deep in pushed row seven up, and they began to push row six up, when another wave of Rhinos barreled into them. But it didn’t stop there.

A hodgepodge of humans mixed with bat, eagle, and even inorganic parts like jet engines screamed over them in the limited space at the highest point of the tunnel. They varied from person to person, reflecting the wild experimentation that John and O must have performed to get these outcomes. Some of these people had distorted faces. A nose replaced with holes, carbon fiber feathers coating only portions of the body, fingers and toes replaced with talons of steel. They may have been grotesque and rushed, but they were brutal and effective.

The flying creatures soared just above the Rhinos and dove into the Reds, carving metal apart like a Sanduko knife through a tomato on a late-night infomercial. Fortunately, they didn't have nearly the advantage they would have in the open air, and several were taken out by shock troops simply reaching up and pulling them down. Most fliers made it through, only to be greeted by rockets that streamed from soldiers in green armor.

Behind the Reds stood the Greens. The greens were mobile rocket launchers, every part of their bodies covered in something that could hurl death. Missiles launched from their backs, guided by lasers set within the visors, overlayed on a view of the battlefield. A mix of guns, grappling hooks and smoke screens dotted their arms and legs, ready to deploy.

The first line of flying Regulators dropped as rocket after rocket pummeled them. Red dots from the laser guidance system appeared on each mutant’s body a split second before they burst into fragments of their former selves. It looked like the Greens’ salvos would turn back the next line of flyers when the first of the Rhinos burst through the line.

Even though the Greens were armored, the think plates of the first line were replaced by offensive weapons. The result gave them a distinct disadvantage when confronted with shock troops like the Rhinos. The gray tanks barreled into the Greens like a bowling ball knocking down pins.

Behind the Greens stood the drone captains. Their blue metal exterior played the role of a command pod. They could take a significant blow, but not really maneuver. This was by design. The arsenal of drones that erupted out of their pods acted as their appendages. Each person could control ten of these flying devils.

The drones looked like a sci-fi horror creation that mixed an operating room robot with a floating platform. Out of each drone clattered ten mechanical arms. Thin, light, strong and scary fast. The center base housed a simple looking jet nozzle pointing down. The inside of that jet merged many technologies that enabled it to lift the weight of a small car while pivoting in any direction to avoid incoming attacks.

The Rhinos charged down at the Blues, and for a moment it looked like they would push through without even the slightest resistance. At the last second before the front line Rhino hit the front line Blue, the beast floated up into the air. Two drones grabbed the back of the arms of the monster and were lifting it off the ground, robbing them of their greatest weapon, momentum. One by one the Rhinos floated up. They twisted and turned, yanking the drones around but not pulling themselves free. Without the ability to turn around and bash the drones, they could do little about their plight.

No longer stopped by the Greens, the flying mutations made their way into the fray. The drones avoided the first, but the tunnel limited movement and soon half bats and half eagles crashed against the arms of the drones. The bots ripped wings out of bodies and at first they withstood the attacks. But keeping the Rhinos aloft while fending off flying beasts proved to be too much. A few of the Rhinos wriggled free and continued their assault on the Blue pilots. The batteries within the Blue suits provided plenty of protection from the assaults, unfortunately it didn't protect them from being slammed against the walls, their more fragile bodies bouncing off the interiors of their protective cocoons.

As the first of the Rhinos broke through the blue line, a sea of yellow stood between them and the command post. These were the runners. Super enhanced for speed, they had the lightest of armor. But boy could they move. They would blur in from the sides and knock targets off balance. Against normal regulators they would be unstoppable. In this limited space, and with the Rhinos nearly unstoppable momentum, they wouldn't stand a chance. Still, they prepared for their run.