by Oliver Tuson
“Who’s your friend boss?” Hawkins was smiling and pointing down to Clarke’s ankle. The Stalker’s hand was still gripping him. Smashed and cut away by the rocks at its wrist.
“Well, we came here for proof of the WMD’s gents…” Jasper said as he joined the group. His wounds re-bandaged and looking better than he did down in the storage area. By his side was Sarah, still sheepishly stood on the outside of the group.
They all helped Clarke to his feet. Unlatching the clawed hand and all staring at it, they all thought about the past events. All the death and destruction caused by the madness of the facility.
“Weapons of Mass Destruction?” Clarke said softly to no one in-particular. “Whoever is behind this, is going to pay for the deaths of our men.” He thought of Millerchip sacrificing himself to save bravo team. His sacrifice that also kept Clarke’s promise and saved his own life in the process. He thought of the man's family back home now without a husband and father. Then onto all the other men that lost their lives today to this illegal weapons facility. His old promise fulfilled, he could sense a new promise… a new meaning to his existence. And that was vengeance.
He touched the outside of his pocket, where inside was the manifest, he took from the shipping container far below them in the storage area. Then he looked to Sarah and all the information she held and the promises she made to speak up about the operation before looking back to the clawed hand. “We have the proof alright…” He held out the stalker’s remains as if it represented all of his enemies. “But now I want revenge!”
Epilogue
The predator drone circled high above the mountain and isolated village in the evening Iraqi sky. The bodies of soldiers lay sprawled between the buildings. Shelled creatures lay amongst them, motionless on the dry desert floor. Blood pooled around human and monster alike. The drone drifted away from the village, up the track that disappeared suddenly into a fresh pile of rocks that was once a cave. And continued over the rocky mountain that contained the facility deep within its belly. The drone went on, descending down the far side, where five survivors were walking away into the open deserts of Iraq.
The grainy image from the drone high above them was being sent to a terminal in the Green Zone where the sniper that had ended Doctor Ahmed’s life so expertly, was secretly rebroadcasting the findings to another monitor far away in a small operations room on the top floor of an expensive building in London.
“Orders sir?” The assassin operating the drone asked over phone. The man watching the feed folded his arms as he thought. His costly pinstripe suit creasing at the shoulders. He said nothing. Just silently watched the group walking.
“We could have a drone with a missile payload on target in thirty minutes sir?” The assassin suggested. The man in the suit considered that. But then this was getting out of hand far too quickly. A runaway doctor had caused this. A run away employee of all things. And he needed to cover it up. Quickly and discreetly. Drone strikes were not discreet. Anyway, the desert would swallow them up eventually, he thought to himself. The nearest life was many miles away from that facility. That's why he had chosen it. For its discretion and isolation. They would die out there, no doubt. But he would still need to be sure. And to reclaim that clawed hand. Couldn’t have that appearing on the media. And send a team to clear the evidence from that village. So much to do.
“No drone strikes. Go do what you do best…” The man in the suit ended the phone call whilst imagining the smile on the assassin’s face. She was good at what they paid her for. And she enjoyed it. Maybe a bit too much. Compared to some of their created weapons, she was by far more terrifying, he mused.
His thoughts were ended as the phone on the operations desk rang loudly. It was answered quickly by a communication tech working in the operations room. They listened carefully before eventually turning to face the suited man, covering the mouthpiece of the phone.
“Sir, it’s the Guatemalan prison facility, they need to report an update on the human trials. It's been a success…” A smile crept over the face of the man as he considered the implications of the success. He needed some good news after the disaster in Iraq.
“Excellent.” An idea crossed his mind as he watched the five people walking through the desert. The cause of so much stress for him. “Ask them if they need more test subjects…”
He didn’t wait for a response. Instead he crossed the operations room and entered his expensive office. Closing the door behind him. He walked up to the window that overlooked the London skyline and stared out whilst he thought of the relevance of the success. Behind him on his desk, his computer was displaying a live feed of a shipping container being loaded onto a transport truck by armed guards. Its contents displayed on another smaller screen. The ten-foot glass canisters filled with thick red fluid. All rigged up to a terminal and generator in its centre.
The man sighed as he turned from the window to face a huge painting that dominated one wall of his office. A famous painting of the Greek god Prometheus that the great Professor Richard Morgan had given him. A one of a kind. Hand painted. Only it was altered from the original slightly. Prometheus wasn’t moulding man from clay this time. The great god was moulding man into something much more deadly. Something much more terrifying. The title over the painting simply read ‘Our Prometheus’.
It was a gift. A thank you to the extra funding he had given the professor for his ideas… for his weapons. An idea that the suited man had liked. So much so, he had much bigger plans for the ideas of the dead scientist…