They called me Aerys, and yes, my mother is a big fan of A Song of Ice and Fire, and no, I’m not mad like the Mad King, but I might be mad over you. Aerys updated his profile on a match-making site, hoping he would find the One. He smiled as if he had written the best lines that could even triumph against Casanova himself. The lad never had any luck with dating these days, and in his line of work, meeting potential love interests was a pretty hard thing to do.

Aerys glanced through the porthole. There was nothing but darkness except for the blinking light on the airplane’s wing and the unhindered full moon hanging in the night sky. He stared at the pale white moon and wondered what it would feel like to be in a place other than earth. He wasn’t into space per se, but he was just curious about the experience of going somewhere unknown and interesting.

Aerys sat alone, humming along to the tune of The Nights that played through his earphones. Caring less about the constant shaking seat he was on along with the turbulences that paid a few visits every now and then. The big metal bird he was in was his transport to his workplace, and seeing he didn’t have much of a choice of choosing another mode of transport made him kind of grow accustomed to all the shenanigans of this old bird.

I was told we’re going to Switzerland, Aerys thought. Thinking of a certain dish made famous by the Swiss. I’ve heard they make one hell of a fondue. His mouth was salivating just from the mere thought of it even though he never had one before. But rather than tasting it, he could only sigh. A pity I can’t see the beautiful city under the sun. I think it would be a lot of fun if I went sightseeing with the guys.

His gaze fell upon the five figures sitting in the shadows. The red light of the cargo hold barely did its job as Aerys couldn’t see any of his teammates' faces. I wonder whether the guys would like fondue, Aerys thought, grinning.

Someone nudged him by the side. The visage hidden in the shadows made its entrance. A man riddled with scars stared with cold eyes, pointing at Aerys to lose his earphones. Arys did as told and wore the headset properly over his ears.

“Double!” One-Eye said, blaring through the microphone. “You’re daydreaming again, aren’t ya?”

“Guilty as charged,” Aerys said. Raising both his hands in surrender. “But um, which one of you is One-Eye again? I can’t really see you with all this darkness around,” Aerys said. Looking around the figures in the shadows.

“We don’t have time for that. Our target is within distance,” One-Eye said. “So get your head in the game, and get ready to move out.”

One-Eye was devoted to the mission like always, and no wonder he was still the leader after all these years. Aerys even had a hunch that this long-time comrade of his would even ditch him if it was for the sake of the mission completion. He couldn’t really blame the old war dog as the man had been living his whole life as a soldier and nothing else.

Loyalty to the mission was the most practical quality to have in a soldier, and for Aerys, he was still a bit doubtful if he had the same flame in him like One-Eye. After that clause he signed, and the pain he went through, his loyalty was only on paper for now.

“Look alive,” One-Eye said. “We’ve arrived at the drop point.”

Here we go again, Aerys thought. Rolling his eyes upward as this part of the mission always bugged him the most. He stood up with his back straight. His eyes lingered at the sight of the cargo hold door opening, revealing the vast blackness of the night. It was time for another high-altitude low opening (HALO) jump.

His comrades headed out first, jumping out from the plane like it was a Friday night drive to the local fast food joint. One by one they went, and then there were two. He felt a tap over his shoulder and saw One-Eye under the bright red light of the cargo hold.

“Lose the headset,” One-Eye said. “We don’t want you to lose another one of those.” Oh, yes. How could Aerys forget? The last time he jumped, he forgot to put away the cargo plane headset and brought it along with him. That incident really made his ears bleed as the nagging he received after the mission was more dreadful than a bullet through his flesh. It was enough of a reminder for him not to book a session with Major Ross ever again.

Aerys lost the headset and stood at the edge of the cargo hold. I can never get used to this, Aerys thought. Swallowing a mouthful. Just think about the money, Aerys. Just think about the load of cash you’ll get after this mission. He took a deep breath and he jumped.

* * *

Aerys landed on an open field and quickly ditched the parachute behind. Making a beeline to the nearest woodland edge. He leaned his back against the tree trunk and flipped down his night vision goggles. His sight turned green, and he activated the comms in his left ear.

“Double, rendezvous at the designated location on your GPS tracker,” said One-Eye.

“Affirmative,” Aerys said. Moving forward through the darkness of the forest, glimpsing a few times at the tracker screen latched on his forearm as guidance. After a few twists and turns, Aerys crouched low, nearing a tree as all five of his comrades were within his sight.

“Took you long enough, Double,” said Bull. “Did you pee in your pants again while jumping?” Bull chuckled.

“Ha-ha, laugh all you want. At least I didn’t squeal like a little girl after seeing a cockroach,” Aerys said. Breaking the group into snickering chuckles.

“Hey! It’s a one-time thing, and that cockroach is freaking—”

“Pipe down!” One-Eye said. Silence took over the comms feed. “We’re not here for a picnic, men . . . We’re here for a mission, and we’re here to save the fucking world. So get your heads straight again, or else I’ll report this back to the Major.”

The mention of the Major sealed the deal for them. Aerys wasn’t the only one who had a personal meeting with the devilish mouth Major Ross as the others had their fair share of getting their ears bled.

Ah, yes. The usual saving the world nonsense. Sometimes I can’t believe the words that came out from One-Eye’s mouth, Aerys thought. But I guess that’s how it is when you are able to do something, unlike any other normal human being can. Or perhaps he watched too many Marvel movies.

The squad traveled through the cover of trees. Making their way closer to the facility they were targeting. Aerys trailed from behind, last on the line. He carried an MP7 in his arm with nothing fancy unlike everyone else. Out of six of them, he was the least geared up, and it wasn’t without reason.

One-Eye raised his fist and the whole squad stopped in their tracks. They were near the border of the facility, hiding behind the tall grasses.

Aerys glanced around him, and at first glance the security of this place was pretty lax for a place that researched high-energy physics or in layman terms, nuclear.

“Hush, you’re up,” One-Eye said. Giving a thumbs up at the man who didn’t say a thing throughout the whole mission.

Hush placed a finger on his lips, and hushed. “Ssh…”

A few seconds later, the silent man gave a nod at One-Eye. “Good, let’s move out,” One-Eye said.

To strangers, it might be a weird interaction between two loonies, but to them, Hush just erected a silent barrier around the whole squad that blocked off any sound from coming out. And yes, this special ops squad was not your typical squad.

The clattering of their boots echoed, running on the pavement with no intention of masking the sound. Soon, they reached the most obscure-looking building among the CERN buildings, the sports complex. Rather than going for the Antimatter factory which was just across the border to France, their intel had determined their mission was located here in the sports complex.

“Bogey up ahead,” One-Eye said. Spotting a lone security guard making his round in the empty sports complex. “Bull you’re up.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Bull said. Shortening the distance between him and the security while still within the perimeter of the silent barrier. The man with scars on his face choked the clueless security guard from behind and within seconds the poor fella was out.

They hid the guard in a closet, covering their tracks from being discovered, and continued their path until they found what they were looking for.

Aerys stood before the entrance of the changing room. “Are you sure the intel said is here?” he had to ask. For a mission to save the world, the location of it was rather questionable.

“As strange as it sounds, I’m with Double,” Bull said. “This shower room doesn’t make any sense. It isn’t like the Chamber of Secret where we need to—”

“Quiet,” One-Eye said. Focusing his sight at a particular spot under a showerhead. His one eye narrowed as if seeing through the shower room tiles.

Aerys kept his sight at the squad leader as the man scrambled his hands over the tiles. Soon, everyone heard a click. One-Eye pressed one of the tiles inward, and open-sesame, the walls began to shift, revealing a hidden door like something straight out of a double-o movie. And despite having only one eye, his eye was better than most people.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Bull said. He was confused like the rest of the squad members. The range of One-Eye’s sight ability was mostly enhanced visual acuity and range of view, seeing through walls was quite a discovery for all of them.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Keeping secrets, captain?” Aerys asked.

“A warrior shouldn’t show all of his cards on the table,” One-Eye said. “Now enough small talks. Jolt, do your magic.”

None ventured further into One-Eye’s new ability as the rest kept their questions to themselves for the time being. Jolt, the lone woman of the squad got close to the door, and place her hand over the keypad. She closed her eyes and did her thing. Same as the rest, her power was not fancy and flashy like in those superhero movies.

“We’re in,” Jolt said, grinning. In a matter of seconds, the door opened up.

One-Eye gave the signal and all of them moved in. Bull bumped shoulder with Aerys and leaned closer to him. “You think Jolt ever use her power to hack into a bank and steal a few million?” Bull whispered.

Aerys gave him the eye. “Is this really the time to talk about that?” Aerys asked.

“What? It crosses my mind, and besides, I know you would. With your dick-showing power, I know you would pull off a daylight robbery like it was Ocean Eleven,” Bull said. “Ow.”

Aerys elbowed Bull by the flank. Giving him the eye. “My power isn’t dick-showing. It just happens that my other half has to be naked as my power doesn’t create clothes out of thin air,” Aerys said.

“Like I said, dick-showing,” Bull said, looking naive rather than teasing. He walked off after saying his piece as Aerys could only shake his head.

Unlike the rest, his power was sort of on the less glamorous side, and not the most useful bunch. Heck, he had never imagined that he would get a superpower through a drug trial of all things. That one day when he was broke during his college days really led him to where he was now. But he couldn’t say the same to his dearly departed college mates.

Aerys buried those thoughts and followed behind his squad mates who were dressed in all-black. He too was the same, and yet he had never felt at ease with what he was doing. If it wasn’t for the damn contract he signed, he wouldn’t even be here. But hey, at least the pay was great.

Going deeper through the corridor, they reached an elevator. Judging by the keypads and whatnot, it seemed Jolt had more tasks to handle. She did her talking to technology and the door was opened as if she was simply twisting an unlocked doorknob.

The squad went down through the elevator, and by the time the elevator dinged, their gun muzzles aimed straight. Preparing for a possible gunfight.

One-Eye took a quick scan over the vast space. It was your typical generic research facility that you could find in a science fiction big-budget movie. White walls, white floors, white ceilings, and tempered glass partitions. “Clear,” One-Eye said. His sight saw it all.

The rest came out from the cover of the elevator as their stance showed they were readied for a fight. But too bad for them, the whole floor was empty with not a soul in sight.

“Um, I’m going to ask again. Is this really the place?” Aerys asked. From afar, he could see a few computers were still on with no one on the keyboard. Aerys drew closer to the closest glass partitioned room and peeked inside. There was nothing out of the ordinary except for a white lab coat on the floor. It must have fallen off from the chair, Aerys thought.

“I think we should retreat,” Jolt said.

“I recall your power doesn’t include danger detection, sweet tits,” Daze said, giving a side glance to Jolt.

Jolt glared at Daze for a brief second and turned to One-Eye. “One-Eye, you know my instinct never let me down, and you know well you once got out of a mess because of it. So trust me in this, I think we better leave,” Jolt said, taking another glance at the empty surrounding. The squad’s techie was getting cold feet.

“The mission takes priority. Search for any clue or any hiding facility personnel,” One-Eye said. “Everybody fan out. Hush, you with me. Bull and Daze. Jolt with Double. Move.”

Aerys took the far right side of the whole place with the frowning Jolt taking the lead. They entered a glass room, with books and documents strewn over a wide glass table. Again, the first thing that caught his sight was the white lab coat on the floor. It was oddly strange how out of all things to drop on the floor it was the white lab coat and not the papers on the table.

He looked through the papers, reading through them as if he had a Ph.D. in nuclear physics. But unfortunately, he only has a college diploma. The jargon words were basically a whole new language to him even if they were English. Yup, this is definitely beyond me, he thought.

“Oh my God,” Jolt said. Her unusual trembling voice was something Aerys hardly heard.

“What’s going on? Is something wrong?” he drew closer to Jolt who was staring at the computer screen.

Jolt gazed at him with her complexion getting paler by the second, and it was not hard to notice the changes.

“What’s with that look? Because if I’m being frank, you being white as a sheet isn’t my definition of feeling safe,” Aerys said.

“We need to leave, right now,” Jolt enunciated her last word. Her hands grabbed Aerys by the shoulders. And if he wasn’t imagining things, he sort of felt the trembling of her hands.

“You're freaking me out, Jolt. I know you’re sort of the paranoid type, but at least give me an explanation,” Aerys said.

“Sorry, Double. But this mission is crazy,” Jolt said, drawing closer to him. “I’ve dug through their archives and what they’re doing here is worse than making a nuclear warhead.”

Aerys narrowed his eyes. “Whoa. Slow down there,” Aerys said. “What do you mean worse.”

Jolt frowned. “They’re making a fucking particle accelerator, and this one is full of fucking flaws,” she said. “We need to leave now or we’ll get—”

“Double and Jolt,” One-Eye’s voice came out from the earpiece, cutting her off. “We need you at the end of the floor, pronto.”

“Shit,” Jolt said.

“How about we try to convince One-Eye, and who knows, perhaps he will—”

“No!” Jolt shouted. “The only thing in that military freak’s head is mission and more mission. So no, I’m not going to reason with him. I’m going to leave before whatever I’m feeling comes, and I advise you to do the same.”

“Jolt, let’s calm down and take a breather. You can’t leave the mission, not until One-Eye said so. If you do, things won’t be pretty for you out there,” Aerys said. Reminding her of the danger of being a runaway from an entity that governed their squad.

But Jolt wasn’t going to take no as an answer. “Fuck it. I’m leaving you fools,” she said.

Jolt left without looking back. Aerys stared at her back, weighing between following her or continuing on with the mission. She must be right, but I can’t really leave not when I’m still under contract, Aerys thought. He was chained by the contract he signed and knowing what sort of entity was behind the contract, abandoning the mission would be suicidal.

“Oi, you two” One-Eye’s voice came out from the earpiece. “We need you at the end of the floor, now.”

He left the room, heading towards the end of the floor. Aerys peeked around the empty rooms as he went by, and by chance, he noticed something strangely similar. Why are the lab coats are all on the floors?

Out of curiosity, Aerys made a short pit stop in one of the rooms. He immediately went for the white robe on the floor, pushing it around with the muzzle of his MP7. His eyes widened. Is that a bra? He picked up the lab coat and saw what was underneath. A set of woman’s clothes along with undergarments. Then something struck his mind.

He ran out and went to the opposite room, seeing the same thing, a set of clothes underneath the lab coat. This is bad, Aerys thought. He bolted out of the room and raced towards the end of the floor.

One-Eye spotted Aerys coming, locking eyes with the only man. “Did she leave?” One-Eye asked.

“She did, and she’s right,” Aerys said. “She hacked into their main servers, and found something dangerous being built here, and she told me it was more dangerous than a nuke.”

The word ‘nuke’ raised a few eyebrows around his squad. Dealing with nukes was something most of them did not expect.

“And something else is going on here. Those clothes on the floor had definitely something to do with this floor being empty,” Aerys said.

“We know, but that doesn’t matter,” One-Eye said. “The mission takes priority, and we need Jolt to open up this door.”

Aerys looked at the secured door that resembled more like those metal doors you could see in a submarine. He spotted the keypad and knew it was something only Jolt could do. But the question about those clothes bugged him. “What if whatever happened to those people will happen to us?” Aerys asked, looking straight at One-Eye’s eye.

One-Eye’s stone-cold face stared down at Aerys. “If we leave, who else is going to save the world?” One-Eye said. His conviction was unwavering. One-Eye really believed he was saving the world.

Aerys glanced at the rest, hoping one of them would put some sense into their leader. But judging by those steadfast faces, he knew he was the only one on the other side. Aerys sighed as he accepted as it was. It was pointless for him to argue with soldiers who only obeyed their orders.

“But how are you going to open up the door again?” Aerys asked. “Our only techie isn’t here.”

“We do it the old-fashioned way. Bull, Hush, Daze,” One-Eye called them one by one, throwing something at them. “Set up the detonator, and get ready to blow it up.”

All of them were dumbfounded. They weren’t brief about blowing things up as all of them thought they were here to snatch something and go.

“Wait, are you mad? Are you really going to blow an explosion this close to something more powerful than a nuke?” Aerys said. His words drew the frightened gazes of his squadmates.

“For the mission, I would do anything,” One-Eye said. “And to begin with, our real mission is to blow up whatever behind this metal door.”

“To hell with the mission!” for the first time, Aerys raised his voice. “If we blow this up, not only us, but the whole of Geneva will be swallowed up by the explosion, and millions will die.”

“So be it,” One-Eye said, nonchalantly. “I don’t care how many will die, but for the sake of peace, I will do—”

Gunshots were fired. Aerys and the rest of the squad raised their weapons at the shooter. Smoke lingered near the muzzle of Daze’s Desert Eagle, a sign it shot just a second ago.

“You shot One-Eye,” Bull said. The barrel of his machine gun aimed right at Daze.

“Your welcome,” Daze said. His face was as white as a sheet.

“Your welcome? You just killed our captain, you piece of—”

“Shut it, Bull,” Hush said.

“What? Now you’re siding with this gigolo prick, Hush?” Bull said. His face reddened as anger started to swallow him.

“Daze did the right thing,” Hush said. “We’re trained killers, but we’re not going to blow up a nuke, and commit genocide.”

Bull couldn’t say a thing. Despite his loyalty to One-Eye, nuking a whole city was way crossing the line.

Aerys watched and listened from behind. The situation escalated beyond the scope he could imagine, and One-Eye’s death was not something he had expected to…

“No!” Aerys shouted. An accidental glance at One-Eye made him react by instinct. He pulled the trigger of the MP7, and bullets rained down through One-Eye’s body.

Bull, Hush, and Daze glanced at Aerys.

The man they thought was dead was still alive, and seeing the bandoleer in One-Eye’s grip heightened their danger sense.

“Grenade!” Daze shouted.

One-Eye’s hand went limp, falling with the bandoleer of grenades in his hand with one of the pins falling first. Everyone scrambled on their feet within that one second, trying to futilely leave.

Yet within that split second, Aerys’ body started to distort as another face emerged from one side of his head. Not a second too late, a separate naked body emerged from Aerys and the identical man that was similar from top to bottom leaped over the grenades.

A muffled explosion detonated, and a shockwave blasted across the whole place, sending everyone to the floor. Blood and gore flew, staining the pristine white floors and ceiling. The other Aerys managed to lessen the explosion and what was left of the other Aerys was now reduced to nothing but mushes of meat.

While others got up, Aerys was still on the floor. The aftereffect of his double getting blew up bit him back as his whole body ached as if getting pierced by a million needles. It wasn’t to the point of feeling the full scale of getting blown up by a bunch of grenades, but enough to render him motionless for a while.

“Hey,” Bull said. Gazing at Aerys from above. “You okay?”

“Are you just going to stand there or are you going help me?” Aerys said.

“Oh, right,” Bull aided Aerys on his feet.

Daze drew closer with eyes full of disgust. He kept spitting on the floor as if something disgusting just got in his mouth.

“Fuck you, Double,” Daze said, flipping his middle finger.

“Yea, your welcome for saving your life,” Aerys said. If he could move his hand, he would have already flipped his middle finger too.

“Your dick flew right into my mouth, damn it!” Daze fired back. “You know how dis—”

Daze’s words fell short as a sudden flash of red light burst from the walls of the particle accelerator chamber. All four of them glanced at the same time and before they could react, a wave of reddish light engulfed them whole.

Slowly the red light dissipated, and the floor was once again empty without a soul.