A plan had been formulated by eight that morning. All hostages had been identified, and an assault was ready to proceed whenever the go-to was given. The absence of hostage deaths had given the impression that negotiations were working, but based on what Elvera had heard from Evalyn, she wasn’t completely convinced.
Demands had been relayed to Sidos, and in a rare turn of events, they had agreed to release some prisoners. Half as soon as possible, and another half when all hostages had been let go. Perhaps it was an attempt at keeping the alliance healthy on the part of the Sidosian government, or they had for whatever reason changed their rhetoric.
If things panned out that way, Elvera could wish for nothing more. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
Roughly an hour and a half ago, reports of an attack at the Sidosian embassy had reached the operation’s headquarters. One guard had been wounded before reinforcements arrived, yet the area was still hostile.
Elvera had dispatched a Platoon from the Royal Urban Task Division in addition to the Military’s reinforcements, yet she couldn't shake the feeling that one of her arms was tied behind her back. They weren’t going to let her play her full hand unless they absolutely needed to.
She had been given a desk only a few minutes ago. A fiercely annotated map of the local area, a personal radio and a telephone sat in front of her. If she was given the go to, she was determined not to waste any time in executing her plan.
“I need the rest of R.U.T.D. D company at the Embassy. Give them something armoured in case they need the cover. Yes, get A and B companies to set up at Tregar street, Hallwark avenue and Briget street. No, there’s no direct line of sight to Salan court that way, that’s my intention.”
An attendant cut through the chaos of the makeshift office and made a beeline towards her, slamming a stack of paper onto her desk, before disappearing once again. Operation Alcove Persons of Interest, the title read. Elvera began to flick through the pages, looking for one name in particular.
Jamie Welrod. According to the findings, he was a known S.H.I.A. operative since 1928. Before then, his name was present in military registries, namely as a member of the 42nd division. To Elvera, that in particular made a lot of sense.
42nd division was present at the Battle for Excala during the war ten years prior, Evalyn had said so, fought them too. One could only speculate, but the dates of his career change matched up with the war all too well. Perhaps his resolve had been broken by the armistice, maybe he was disillusioned by the new state and its views. Changing tides always drowned those left behind, and all they could ever do is kick and scream until their lungs gave out.
“Prisoner release in three minutes!” a beak shouted from the doorway before quickly scurrying to the next room. She heard him repeat himself like a public service announcement until he had exhausted the entire floor.
Evalyn was already standing in front of the building where the barrier had been partitioned as if she were a sea-splitting prophet of sorts. Elvera decided to join her, if only to confirm the transaction would go smoothly.
Upon exiting the building, she was escorted along a heavily defended pathway, weaving between oncoming foot traffic; everything from small supplies to soldiers and officers. Even though each window was still, her instinct told her to watch the building for any signs of movement. The difference in light rendered the inside of the buildings almost pitch black. The one day the Queen’s planned weather patterns had backfired.
She rounded the corner and found herself approaching the partition in the barrier. Soldiers were lined up against it, crouched with their rifles trained on every visible window. Evalyn stood in solitude, staring down the middle of the pathway. A scoured expression ruined her face, and her arms were folded over her chest.
“See anything?” Elvera said, walking up to Evalyn’s side.
“No. Heard nothing neither, ever since that call.”
“You sure that’s all he said to you?” Elvera asked as she tried to peer past the blinds for even a shadow of movement in the lobby, or maybe even a hint of a hostage, yet once again the sun betrayed her vision.
“Yeah. He’s got something to prove, so his thinking is that we both need to be at our best. Do you think he’s taking the piss?”
“No, that can’t be it,” Elvera said, “his methods everywhere else have always been too serious. Not straight-laced, but still to the point. He’s not one to play with his food. Or at least we think.”
The information was anything but conclusive. The only registries that included his name were a birth certificate and the aforementioned ex-military registry. The first confirmed his existence and the second felt tacked on, just to make it believable. Nothing else could be found on him but rumours.
“He asked me who I was,” Evalyn said, almost unsure of what she was saying.
“In a philosophical sense?”
“No, just a straight question. I told him the truth.”
“Did he return the favour?”
“No, but yes. He hid it, obviously, but parts of his answer felt genuine, especially when he talked about why he’s doing all of this. Made it feel real, you know? Almost makes me wonder if my father really did have a point.”
Elvera looked at Evalyn, expecting some change in expression, yet she found none.
“It’s just another one of those situations, isn’t it? The devil that takes everything from one person is the angel that gives everything to another,” Evalyn said, absolutely neutral, as far as Elvera could tell.
“I guess we all fall victim to that, don’t we?” Elvera said, being the only person there able to share the feeling. She grabbed Evalyn’s other shoulder, subtly pulling her closer. She figured the gesture of comfort was received with good intentions, yet seeing Evalyn so mature made her feel her age all the more.
“Here they come,” Evalyn said as radio chatter in their surroundings lit up with reports of the prisoners being released into S.H.I.A.’s custody. The noise lasted for the better part of a minute before the centre blinds of the building began to lift. A pool of hostages was all but pressed up against the window, desperate for a way out. A mixture of Beaks and humans clamouring against the glass, their base instincts being their only motivation forward.
Two men in grey coats pushed through the crowd, unlocking the doors, and releasing the torrent. They ran towards Elvera and Evalyn, making a beeline for the gap in the barrier behind them. They stood in the centre of the flow, carefully watching every hostage.
She saw Evalyn unshouldered her rifle, racking the bolt and sending a round into the chamber, all the while not taking her eye off the crowd. Like a hawk, her gaze was focused, darting from one target to the next. She passed her handgun to Elvera, who took it and did the same, racking the slide back and pulling down on the hammer. Together they watched the crowd, all but expecting something suspicious.
One fleeing hostage after another only shrouded the entire operation’s perception. All eyes were on them, and everyone was utterly tunnel visioned.
“Do you see that guy? He’s not running,” Evalyn said. Elvera looked towards the doorway and caught sight of the man refusing to follow the stream of people towards the beckoning soldiers. No grey coat on him, yet his expression didn’t suggest he was a planted terrorist. He looked utterly terrified, not a shred of relief like every other hostage.
He began to run.
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“Where is he going?” Elvera whispered. The man veered off course, heading west towards the centre of operations. It all happened in a split second.
“Grenade!” Elvera shouted, raising Evalyn’s pistol to her eye line. She squeezed the trigger, timing the shots in between running hostages. She hit her target twice in the back, an explosion of blood following each wound. He fell to the ground as a small, black ball bounced out of it. Elvera grabbed Evalyn by the shoulders and forced her down, ducking just in time.
The explosion cracked the air itself, splitting sound apart in a single, all too familiar bang as shrapnel whizzed overhead, striking hostages and soldiers at random.
Elvera breathed heavily, replaying the scene over and over in her head at what felt like a thousand times a second. The only coherent thought she could muster was gratitude. Gratitude it had been her that had done it and not Evalyn.
She felt herself shaking as Evalyn picked her back up by the shoulders.
“Are you okay?!”
“Yeah…uh…” was all she could muster.
A grotesque and mangled corpse had been thrown down like a gauntlet at their feet, beckoning her to accept the challenge. The operation would commence in ten minutes and every card, including Elvera’s, was to be thrown down on the table.
“Check in,” was the last order Growler 3 heard before it all began. His breathing heavy, his heartbeat ringing in both his ears. His gun, the magazine, the charging handle, the hammer. All were in the right place. He though…no, he was sure. He was sure. He had to be.
He blinked twice as the concealment fell. Plumes of smoke and ash manipulated by magic ran up the walls like rabid animals and clung on, as if they were really alive. He strapped on his gas mask hastily before the devilish mass reached his eyes.
The wave of grey hit him like an ocean wave as he grabbed onto the shoulder of the man in front of him. As a train of soldiers, six or so strong, they began to move through the cloud, only being able to hope they still retained the element of surprise.
A wall. Salan Court’s western wing. He watched as his team lead found a window, the bottom of its frame knee height, just as promised. Team lead swiftly produced a small brown package from his metal plate carrier and stuck it to the window, using his knuckles to knead the clay-like substance onto the glass.
“West side team three, breaching in three, two, one, execute!”
He didn’t know who was talking, yet he heard several similar broadcasts. The package glowed blue as the clay expanded across the window-frame. With a sonic crack, the breach sucked in on itself, leaving nothing but the window frame in its wake as the brown package fell to the ground.
The rabid smoke wasted no time in entering through the windows, as did his teammates. They vaulted the small ledge, just like they had trained, and began to spread out. Left, right, left, right and left again. He went right.
The bathing area was their designation, a fact he remembered as his body sunk waist deep into pleasantly warm water. Fearing for the viability of his remaining rounds, he pressed on forward, with several soldiers on each side.
Through the smoke, he found muzzle flashes beyond his visible range. Random shots with no aim, a foolish attempt at hitting something. He snapped to it, and so did many others. Six shots rang out, and he heard a body drop to the floor. Similar sounds began to echo across the entire complex as fighting broke out. Another muzzle flash, a body splashed into the water, perhaps one of his own, he couldn’t be sure. Another, and another.
He felt himself step out of the water when a long rifle entered his field of vision. The barrel visible, but not yet the wielder. He lunged forward, breaking formation to grab the gun. He pushed it upwards as it began to fire wildly into the air. Growler 3 fired into the general area in front of him, wary of the potential of a friendly fire incident. The body fell forward onto him, slumping dead like a felled log. The kid looked no older than twenty. Not much younger than him.
“Fuck,” Growler 3 muttered as pushed the body off of him, letting it fall into the bath. They pressed on until the smoke began to clear. He recalled there being eighty troops originally, with more from Special Operations arriving later. The west face had twenty soldiers, twenty of which were still standing.
The smoke receded on the troops, but also on remaining hostiles. One up to his chest in water began to fire indiscriminately. He caught one man in the shoulder and another several times in the chest before he was put down. No lives were lost, but a capable twenty had rapidly turned into eighteen.
And that was only the first phase.
The remaining teams formed up and began to move in their lines once again. Sticking close to the walls, they reached their first staircase. A small doorway leading out into an enclave in the courtyard’s arcade housed their staircase. Two formations, each of nine, stacked up on the left and right side of the doorway. The left point man watched the courtyard with his rifle, while the right undid the pin on a small canister.
Growler 3 stayed in the middle of the line as he watched the smoke plume on the other side of the doorway. A Sidosian model smoke bomb that didn’t plume nearly as much as theirs. Better for confined spaces. The two lines began to move, the first two of each line revealing small bracelets they had around their trigger hands.
The gunners fell into position in front of the staircase to create cover as Aether interacted between their bracelets and their guns. Blue shields formed around their barrels, swirling into one another as the others took the opportunity to advance.
A flurry of weapons swiftly made their way up the stairs, their boots creating a cacophony. Upon reaching the first level balcony himself, Growler 3 watched as the frontman swiftly executed a hostile that had run out of a room. Walking over the body, him and two others entered the first room, all tapping their bracelets twice before entering.
Whatever happened to them didn’t concern Growler 3, he walked straight past them and rounded the corner into the second, the person behind him pressed against his six. Tapping his bracelet against his waist, he whipped his submachine gun into the right corner as the next in line whipped it into the left. The bed in the room had no one beneath it, at least as far as he could see. Yet the corner did.
Grey coat, straight ahead, small calibre submachine gun pointed directly at him. He squeezed the trigger just as his right shoulder was thrown backwards. A bullet hit his chest plate with the force of a freight train throwing a right hook, yet his bullets hit harder. His gun glowing blue, the average service submachine gun could shoot twice as fast, if only for a few seconds. He placed ten bullets in the man’s chest in just under a second. Confirming his kill with two bullets to the temple, he swept the rest of the room rapidly. Two hostages, just as promised. Even if Deity division couldn’t direct each team individually and all at once, their intel was good.
He and the other two soldiers in the room moved to secure the two civilians, forcing them to the ground and tying their hands behind their backs with rope. The way it coiled itself around its target saved them the time and trouble of tying it themselves. They were immobilised in a hostile area, but extraction teams would follow as closely behind them as they could.
He took point as the other two stacked up behind him. Not a second passed before he saw the team from the first room exit.
“On you,” he called out before reaching forward and linking up with the other squad. In the brief moment of respite, only now, did he notice what was in the centre courtyard.
He had never seen one, not this small, not this close. The ones he was used to were unfathomably huge. This one was the size of the Spirits that had the ability and lack of intelligence to claw you to pieces on sight. The largest of the wild ones. Even missing its legs, the sight of it being propped up against a truck was almost immobilising.
If humans had predators, the Higher Order Armour was the perfect representation.
They passed five rooms before reaching number six through to ten. Number seven came all too soon. He stopped on the right side of the doorway, the hinges an inch away from his nose, while the other two members of his team stacked up near the door hinge. With a nod, the soldier across from him reached for the handle, turning it. Tapping his bracelet, he entered yet again.
There was an immediate reaction. The hailstorm of rounds made mulch of the sturdy wood as the two by the door shielded their faces from the debris. His teammate abandoned formalities and kicked open what was left of the door. Growler 3 entered swiftly, panning his weapon metres in a single moment, visually scanning every nook and cranny, his eyes shifting rapidly, barely sustained purely by adrenaline.
He heard shots right behind him, submachine gun calibre. His teammate’s shots right on his six, most likely shots that had saved his life.
The bed, movement. Always under the bed.
He squeezed the trigger as fast as he could muster, the mechanical cycling action of his gun high on Aether hosed round after round into the mattress. He stopped for a fraction of a second, perhaps even that was too long.
A bullet tore through the muscle above his ankle, the subsequent ones missing him as he fell to his knees. At this point, the fire was indiscriminate. He unloaded his magazine into the bed frame as he clenched his teeth, what felt like a years-worth of grinding in a few seconds. He couldn’t even be bothered to confirm his kill as he ran out of ammunition. Clicking the now dormant trigger, he struggled to keep his eyes focused and his breathing level as he felt the wound through his gloves.
Bits of flesh hanging, muscle tissue was exposed, but no bone. The bullet had gone straight through. He felt someone move his hand out of the way, tying pressure wrapping around the wound. A bandage. He winced as it was tightened, choking the wound of any blood circulation.
“You golden?” the voice said from behind.
“Yeah,” he said as he got up, the pain washing over him, turning into a burning white noise all over his body. Ever-present, but somewhat in control. The firing under the bed had stopped, but he checked just in case. Whoever was there, only a bloody mess of flesh and cloth remained.
He turned and saw the hostages being placed under arrest and was all but thankful they were still on schedule.
Leaving behind pieces of himself in the room, he reloaded and once again stacked up with the rest of his team.
But a barrel stared back at his him.
A person’s head was in front of him, but even beyond that, a cavernous cylinder stared back. The size of an artillery cannon, yet no high-ordinance of the sort existed anywhere near here. He saw a fire light itself from deep inside the darkness. The sound didn’t even reach his ears.