Don't Cross This Line

by Michael Anderle

  “Ok guys, ride’s here, let’s go,” she started walking towards the exit when one of the men called out from the other corner that she couldn’t just leave.

  Bethany Anne flipped him off, “Stop us, bitch!”

  They almost made it to the front of the Hotel when she spoke over her shoulder, “We have the Directorate of Special Units and other people congregating outside. Stay here until I explain the situation to them.”

  The two men halted as Bethany Anne continued walking towards the front doors.

  “How does she expect to explain all this ...” the ex-President asked as he looked around, “death and destruction?” He turned towards John, “And can she really get David’s body back. I’m not sure what the hell is real anymore.”

  “Yes to your second question, she can get him back. I imagine she isn’t so much going to explain what happened as explain what will happen,” John answered.

  “What’s going to happen?” the ex-President asked, half-listening.

  “She is going to tell anyone outside we are leaving,” John told him.

  “They aren’t going to want to hear that,” he replied.

  “She doesn’t really give a shit what they want at the moment,” John told him.

  —

  Three different FN SCARS were pulled up to shoulders and aimed at her when Bethany Anne exited the hotel. Lights had been set up, illuminating the area. She used the moment the cops needed, to confirm she wasn’t an enemy, to check out the carnage John had wrought.

  Damn, he’d been busy out here. She made a face and stepped over a particularly large puddle of blood and felt her feet almost adhere to the ground due to the sticky blood she already had on the bottom of her feet.

  Gott verdammt, this was nasty shit.

  “Get on the ground!” A voice, using a megaphone, called out.

  Bethany Anne looked up, shock evident on her face, “Are you fucking crazy?”

  “I said…” the megaphone speaking man came back.

  “I heard what you said, you sick fuck!” She retorted, “Does anywhere,” she pointed around her, “look like a place you want to stick hands or, god-forbid, your face near?”

  “Who are you?” the voice called back after a moment of reflection.

  “I’m the one who needs to put my shoes back on so when I kick your ass, you know it!” She replied as she stepped over another couple of bodies, “Oh, that’s just fucking gross,” she made a face. “Any of you people, who are presently aiming your guns at little ole me, going to come lay down your jacket so my feet don’t have to walk on this shit?”

  Bethany Anne listened to the heated whispering coming from the vehicles setup behind the lights.

  “Sir!” one male was talking, “That’s the TQB CEO.”

  An older voice replied, “The one up in outer space?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is she doing here?” the person in charge hissed back.

  “She,” Bethany Anne pointed to herself interrupting the hastily whispered conversation, “is trying to warn you that you need to move your asses, or you are going to have a very bad hair day in about half a minute.”

  “Why?” the person in charge called back.

  “Because thirty seconds is the maximum amount of patience I have left!” She explained, “If I wasn’t trying to not flush the good cops down the toilet with these,” she pointed around her, “terrorist assholes, I’d already have …” Bethany Anne flashed sideways, using her Etheric enhanced speed to pivot, run outside of the lights and up the side of the courtyard behind the cops and stopped right behind the man with the megaphone. She hissed into his ear, shock written on his face, “kicked your ass!”

  —

  “Yes, I’m leaving of my own free will,” the ex-President told the lead police officer a fourth time, “and if you don’t get out of my way, my ride is going to leave without me.” he told the man.

  Frustrated, but not seeing how the previous President of the United States could be under the mind control of the accused mutant or demon possessed CEO of TQB, he nodded his head and waved to his men to let the ex-President join the TQB people already in their Pod. The ex-President walked over, stepped into the Pod and within seconds, it was disappearing into the night sky.

  The cop looked around, how the hell was he going to explain this?

  —

  Bethany Anne handed the ex-President some wipes, “If you have anything you need to clean?” He looked over and did a double take.

  She was clean and had fresh clothes on.

  He turned around, saw John in the seat behind them, but noticed Anna was missing. “What happened? Is Anna in the same location as David’s body?” He turned back to Bethany Anne, “Is Anna alive?”

  “Yes,” she answered, “Anna is alive and fine. I took her up to the ArchAngel for further treatment. I took a fast shower and changed clothes because, ugh.” She looked out the window for a second, “Sticky bloody clothes are the worst.” She turned back to him, “So… questions?”

  The moment drew out, he seemed to be weighing which question should go first before finally, squaring his shoulders he asked, “Did you know David was under mind control when you killed him?”

  She returned his stare, “No … not until the pain of his death released the mental control on him.” Her shoulders slumped, “Perhaps if I had paused to consider he was acting out of character, I might have been able to figure it out. But …”

  “But,” John interrupted from behind her, “Bethany Anne has a catastrophically bad reaction when she’s shot in the back.”

  Bethany Anne turned to say something to John, but he put up a hand, “It all goes back to Petre’, Bethany Anne. No one can survive an experience like that and not have changes to them. If you get shot or hurt somehow from behind, you immediately go into a protective mode which usually means you immediately attempt to remove the threat.”

  “You’ve been shot in the back before?” the ex-President asked, “I feel like I’ve fallen into the twilight zone.”

  John started counting on his fingers, “She’s been shot, stabbed, burned, shot some more, cut with swords and other sharp instruments including claws and fangs,” he paused a second.

  “Not helping, John.” Bethany Anne told him.

  The ex-President asked, “Why didn’t David’s bullet’s blow you away? I just noticed a couple of shoulder wounds and that’s all.”

  “Bethany Anne doesn’t go anywhere without back protection, now. She’s wearing a specially designed flexible metal shield that is about an eighth of an inch thick,” John supplied.

  “How did you keep it on?” he asked, curious how this woman kept protection on her when he would have sworn she didn’t have a vest on underneath that white blouse.

  “Sticky glue,” she answered, “the protection goes on in sections so I can move around easily. Then, once the sections are on if I need to look presentable, a skin colored cover is placed on my back as well.”

  “Oh,” was all he replied.

  “No, there isn’t anything up front,” she told him, “I worry about my back getting shot. If someone is in front of me, I can deal with that.”

  John leaned toward the ex-President and whispered, “And she hates how the protection hurts the precious pair.”

  “John Grimes!” Bethany Anne’s voice was half embarrassed, half exasperated, “This is the ex-President of the United Fucking States!” She pointed a finger at him, “You have been around Tabitha way too damned much.”

  “I haven’t seen Tabitha in weeks,” he protested.

  “Which, obviously, was still too recently,” she told him before pulling her finger down and addressing the ex-President, “We are going to be at your house in a few minutes. This gets you there before anyone can react to the situation and you can decide what you want to do.”

  The rest of the trip was silent, with everyone in quiet contemplation until Bethany Anne received a call from her father.

  —r />
  Two men stepped out of the black Audi A-6 with license plate A-216. The lead officer walked over. One of the gentleman looked around at carnage, “I’ll be back.”

  Finn Jacobs closed his door and waited for the Special Directorate contact headed in his direction.

  Those that knew license plates numbers, knew he was from the government.

  Finn held out his hand, “Eden, right?”

  The office nodded, “Yes, good to meet you Mr. Jacobs.”

  “Call me Finn,” he told the officer and looked around. “Looks like we have a huge mess here.”

  Eden looked at what he was seeing, “We do. We also have at least ten rooftops with more bodies and we suspect at least a couple of more.”

  “Rooftops?” Finn asked.

  “Yes, the terrorists used shoulder mounted SAM’s to attack TQB ships.”

  “I didn’t hear about that.” Finn rubbed his face, “Sorry, too early in the morning and no coffee, yet.”

  “You really don’t want to eat anything right now, sir.” Eden told him.

  “Who did we lose inside?”

  “Predominantly guards, two innocent hotel attendees and at least four of the hotel employees.”

  “How about the special guests inside?”

  “You knew about this meeting?” Eden asked.

  “Not until I woke up this morning,” Finn admitted. “I got an update from my partner who is out looking around.”

  “Someone I should know about?” Eden asked.

  Finn shrugged, “It could become a problem to know more about him, but I’ll leave that in your hands to decide.”

  Eden shrugged it off. If he needed to know, he’d asked him. He nodded towards the hotel, “So far, none of the VIP’s inside, but one, are dead. That death was VIP on VIP violence.”

  Finn’s eyebrow raised.

  “Seems, for whatever reason, the ex-President of the United States’ security put three or four rounds into the back of TQB’s CEO. The negotiator for TQB jumps him, he puts two rounds into her and she drops to the ground, then TQB’s CEO becomes some sort of demon and punches through his chest and kills him. She forces blood into her negotiator’s mouth and terrorists start shooting as they come in from a broken window. Her security is busy at this time shooting the shit out of…well,” he points to the dead in the courtyard, “All these shitheads. The ex-President takes over guarding the negotiator who is apparently reviving and our demon CEO starts walking towards those terrorists trying to get in through the window.”

  “Did you say three or four rounds in the back?” Finn asked, “I’m just trying to figure out how she stood up.”

  “The bleeding she shows didn’t come from her back, so the thinking is she had some sort of super high-tech bullet proof vest or something on under her clothes.”

  “She bleeds?” Finn asked.

  Eden looked at him and spoke slowly, “Yes, and apparently it makes her angry.”

  “I think I would be fuck-all angry if someone shot me in the back. Especially if they were supposed to be protecting me.”

  “Not this kind of angry,” Eden told him.

  “Ok, surprise me. What kind of angry?”

  “The brilliant red eyes kind that creates glowing red balls of energy she throws into two of the terrorists. Energy Balls that somehow burn the shit out of them. Killing them and burning their eyes completely white.”

  “Ok, I’m surprised,” Finn thought about it, “What kind of technology does she have that she can create red balls of energy, and where did the energy come from?” he wondered. “Ok, so they took the body of the guy she killed, right?” Finn asked, “I mean, we didn’t get lucky and she left us that guy?”

  “Uh, well… the guy is gone,” Eden equivocated. “But no, they didn’t take the body with them. Eyewitnesses inside say she did something and the body just disappeared.”

  Finn looked up into the night, this project was getting more and more frustrating. Finally, he looked back down at Eden, “Video?”

  “Well, that’s where we got lucky,” Eden answered.

  —

  Paula hid in the shadows, just a mile from the ambush that had gone so terribly wrong.

  What the hell was that woman?

  Her feed from the hotel video had allowed her to see the beautiful opening salvo in the operation. The freedom fighters had done an amazing job of surprising the gate guards. No hesitation to kill, just focused on getting inside and it looked like the quantity of extra fighters Abdullah had brought to this little party in TQB’s honor was going to be a wise move.

  It was supposed to be Bethany Anne’s final going away present from Majestic 12. Apparently, all of Paula’s efforts to learn about Bethany Anne’s security had missed a few very important abilities.

  Like being fucking bulletproof and throwing around balls of burning energy like some sort of comic-book hero.

  Paula successfully resisted the desire to throw her phone.

  Paula was in the basement of an old empty hotel. She chewed on the inside of her mouth, deciding what she needed to do next when she got a call on her private line.

  One from the home office, so to speak.

  She picked up that phone and put it to her ear, “Yes?” She listened to Patrick’s monotone recitation of events in outer space. Her shoulders drooped, her eye’s closed and she replied, “I got it. We lost Antony and Tyler. No, the mission here was a bust. I’m sending you an info burst in a few minutes. Then, I’ve got to get out of here. I don’t want to be caught in a dragnet. What? No. No, let me find my own way back to base. I need some time to process everything.”

  Paula grabbed the little wireless mouse she was using for her computer and started flipping it end over end as she listened to Patrick talk.

  “No, I don’t know what happened to any of the men here. Yes, I implanted the dead man’s signal in Abdullah per our operations and tactics rules. Me, you, I don’t care. Here, hold on.”

  Paula stopped flipping her mouse over and set it back on the little pad. She wiggled it until she could find the mouse pointer and used it to move to another window screen. Clicking on a text box, she typed in a code and clicked ‘send’.”

  She went back to her call, “Ok, Abdullah, if he was alive, is now brain dead. So, he’s the last complication from the operation here.”

  “Yeah, I’ll miss them too. Yeah, we will fuck them up, that’s for damn sure.” She listened for another few moments, “Ok, I’ll be back within seventy-two hours. Bye.”

  Paula hung up the phone and put it down. Reaching for the little mouse and then, as the first tear dropped down her face she turned and threw it against the far wall, “FUUUUCK!”

  She put her head down on the little table which held her laptop, her shoulders heaving as the tears soaked the floor beneath her.

  She wasn’t sure how long she had been crying when her early warning alarms started beeping. She jerked up, noticing the movement alarms in the alley on the south side of the building. “Dammit!”

  —

  The wolf, a female, was following the scent she picked up that had been with a group of the men from earlier. Whenever one tried to figure out the truth, her love had told her that if something didn’t belong, that was usually the string to pull to get an answer.

  Since Stephen was so old, Jennifer gave him the benefit of the doubt as to whether it was true, or not.

  Age was supposed to bring wisdom. He certainly had the age, Jennifer just hoped it equaled wisdom.

  Behind her, five men in tactical gear glided through the night. The scent went into a building. She waited for the men to come and open the door for her.

  Door opened, she looked around for traps and sniffed to see if she could detect any explosives.

  Clean.

  She padded into the foyer of the empty building.

  Jennifer followed the trail to the door which led down. Being careful, she and the five men opened the door and checked out the landing before slowly desce
nding. The main lead released multiple three inch drones which checked down the staircase before giving off a beep the five men could hear in their implants.

  Two minutes later, the team broke into the bottom basement, only to find no one was inside.

  Jennifer changed back to human right next to a wall, disgust evident in her voice, “The bitch went through here some how.” The team tried to figure out how to open the hidden door. Three minutes later, they got the call to return to the ArchAngel.