Dakotas knees felt weak, his eyes wide open in terror and from his mouth came a blood curdling scream of pure despair. His partner of 12 years hung limply before him, his head crushed by the hand of a huge unnatural creature. The other grotesque hand slowly removed itself from the abdomen of his partner pulling bits of intestine with it. Surrounding the creature was what could only be described as pure carnage and destruction.

Slowly and deliberately the creature turned his head to look at Dakota as he dropped the corpse in his hand. Fire reflected of its eyes making them glow like the pits of hell as its opened its jaw and let out an unearthly roar.

“ah”

Dakota awoke with a hard breath bordering on a yelp. Cold sweat covered his back and his wide eyes reflected the small amount of moon light in the room. He forced himself to take slow deliberate breaths and focused on the quiet wind outside so as to avoid another panic attack that had become the norm for him. Eventually his heart came under control and his mind cleared.

With that out of the way he rolled over to look at the clock next to his bed. 5:13 AM in dim green light lazily shown back at him. Seeing as his alarm was set for 5:30 he decided to just get out of bed and get ready early. After a warm shower and cleanup, he grabbed some breakfast and turned on the news.

“4 more people affected by The Dentist today, witnesses report seeing him running into an alleyway ….”

He tuned out the new as he thought, The Dentist was one of the group called “eventies” which where people who had undergone an event. An event was the simple random and unexplained acquisition of supernatural powers that had been occurring since the late 2020s. This had caused and continues to cause global instability as random sometimes unsavory or unstable individuals are grated powers that could potentially take on an army. The Dentist was rather harmless as eventies go which is why he remains at large, although people who had been attacked by him would beg to differ. He has the ability to remove teeth telepathically from anyone he could visually see.

Not much was known about his motivations for stealing teeth or why he only took ones that had never had a cavity. However it was known that his real name was Kevin Schwab, he worked as a dentist in Kansas for 20 years until the market crash of the early 2000s put him out of a job. A year after that because of poor financing and no backup plan he was homeless. For 20 years he worked odd jobs until 2021 when, like so many others, he underwent an event. The rest, shall we say, was history.

After finishing his cereal and putting on his uniform he grabbed his keys badge and gun and headed out the door. 20 minutes later he was sitting down at his desk sipping coffee and looking at today’s cases when his partner showed up. Packston was not very tall, and was pretty skinny. The kid was not epically impressive, but what he lacked in physical dimensions, or even brain power for that matter, he made up for with a solid work ethic and pleasant attitude.

“Morning Dak” he said with a smile

Dak?

“Morning” He smiled back.

The kid sat down and started working, sorting cases, paper work, anything that Dakota felt was too tedious for him. Many people thought that being a detective was a cool thing with a lot of action but the reality of it was around 30-50% of it was paperwork. There had been many attempts to go paperless like the rest of the world, and a lot of it was. However paper was inherently safe and easier to work with when it came to actually trying to piece together a case or

“You know the chief was looking for you yesterday” The kid mentioned breaking his train of thought.

“Hmf .. well I better go see what he wants” and with that he stood up, and headed to the chiefs office.

After knocking a quiet come in was heard, opening the door he was greeted by chief Glenn. He was a younger man in his mid 30s with an average build, brown hair and very tired eyes.

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“You were looking for me sir?” Dakota said while standing in the doorway.

“Here.” Was all the chief said as he handed Dakota an envelope while still looking as his work tablet.

He took the un-marked envelope while stepping out and heading to his desk. Once there he opened it and pulled out the single sheet of paper. Instantly he realized this was not normal paper but e-paper, and not normal e-paper at that. This was full color led based e-paper something that only the rich could afford. The battery to power this alone was worth as much as his house mortgage. Curious he opened the letter, upon which the letter glowed softly, and the creases disappeared. A second or two later the words “thumb scan required” appeared along with a picture of a thumb with the words “place thumb here”.

Hesitantly he placed his thumb down on the picture which immediately caused a bright red “classified” to appear at the top with “identity confirmed” written below it in black, thankfully his partner was off doing his morning errands and nobody else was close enough to notice. He swiped left and all that was displayed was an address, a date, and a time. Looking at his watch he was due one hour from now and the distance to go was roughly an hour away.

“What the fuck is this?” he muttered to himself completely confused.

After thinking for a minute or so he decided it would be best to see what this was about as there really could be no harm in just investigating this and he did not see any better options. He wrote a note to his partner and taped his watch to summon his car to the door. Once inside the car he entered the address into the cars nav and it drove off.

One hour later he arrived at the edge of the city where a nondescript warehouse stood. Many cars were parked around it and he was immediately let in by the guard when he arrived without even having to show an ID. This seemed weird to him but he put it to the back of his mind as he told the car to look for a place to park. Immediately after pulling into a parking spot he heard a knock on his window causing him to jump. A person who had not been there before was standing in a full butler outfit looking at him calmly. Dakota stepped out of the car while the butler stepped causally to the side and bowed slightly.

“Um hello?”

“Greetings sir, the captain would like to see you please follow me.” As soon as the butler finished he began walking to the entrance of the warehouse.

Confused Dakota followed after a short pause. After entering the building and passing by a receptionist desk with the name “Storage Incorporated” written above in blue letters, they entered an old looking elevator that smelled of smoke. The butler pressed floor 3 (the top floor) and the elevator gently moved up.

“Mind telling me what this is about?” Dakota asked.

However, the butler remained silent, deciding that he would not learn anything more from this man he waited in silence as the elevator lazily moved up. In all his life nothing like this had ever happened and there was no way some storage company could afford that kind of e-paper or even talk to his chief. This was an obvious front of some kind, but he did not know for what.

“ding”

They had arrived at the top, the slightly gold doors opened slowly but smoothly. He could not help but take a breath in in shock at what he saw. The ancient looking fake wood paneling and slightly orange carpet that smelled on the lower floor was replaced with a brightly illuminated hallway that seemed to have no separating of floor and ceiling.

It was as if he was walking on a gray path in the middle of the rain forest with only the lack of sound and the ever so slight distortion giving away the effect. He knew what it was, the walls and ceiling where made out of the same material as the e-paper. this combined with some head tracking could make for a realistic illusion for the majority of the people in the hallway. Of course this would be ruined if two people stood at opposite ends of the hallway and looked at each other. It would be simply impossible to get the perspective correct however this alone would cost a staggering amount and was really impressive.

“It’s to provide a calming effect on the people housed here” said the butler, probably noticing his shock.

The butler started to walk down the hall and Dakota followed looking around in wonder, even if he saved all his life he could never afford something like this. Just what had he gotten into and who were these people. He felt fairly certain that this was some part of the government but why expend so much money on the decorations. “It’s to provide a calming effect on the people housed here” flashed in his mind, the way he said that seemed odd “people housed here” implied living not working here. Who would the government go to such great lengths to calm and contain, was it an eventie? No they should all be killed on sight not housed. If not that then what though?

Suddenly the butler stopped and pressed against a random patch of the forest wall. Surprisingly it moved opening to a plain white room with a long table and multiple chairs. At the end of the table sat a man in his late 20s with a plain suit, black hair and sharp eyes. After entering the room the butler bowed and exited.

“sit” the man disinterested.

“is someone going to tell me what is going on? Dakota said as he sat.

A pause as the man looked though some papers.

“You have been selected by our team, your name, your life, all of it is over by order of the emergency act 54. Your new name and position is X1 unit commander” he said with a semi disinterested tone.

Shocked it took his brain a second to digest what it had heard. “Excuse me! Who the hell are you? Why the hell am I here?! And what the fuck do you mean my life is over?” His voice neared a shout.

“All of that will be explained after you meet your team which should be here any second.” He said calmly

Dakotas sat confused, thinking over the new information he had just gotten. Just as he was about to speak the door opened. His mind went blank, the creature which had crushed his partner slowly waddled in, his arms to big for his body. Panic took over and he immediately tried to flee falling backwards tripping on the chairs as he stood up too quick. Those eyes full of rage and destruction looked at him and its mouth slowly opened revealing crooked yellow teeth. He could not comprehend, this thing should be dead, he should not be here, what the fuck was going on! Was this where he was going to die?

Suddenly the creature spoke “are yu o k mistir”

Shocked Dakota realized something was off about the creature, its eyes which he thought where full of rage actually seemed to not really focus on anything and one was slightly off. Also his voice sounded like he had one too many chromosomes and the way he moved was not normal.

Soon 4 more people shambled in, all equally disproportionate and … off.

“This is your new team” said the man in the suit

Dakota just stared unable to comprehend what was happening.