by Robert Lyons
“Pretending to sleep?” A gentle laugh escaped from the female warrior.
“How did you think those got there?”
“My favorite flower too … You really are something.”
As if he were beckoned, Drew unwrapped his arms from Zoe’s waist, repositioning himself so that he was eye to eye with her. Leaning forward, he rested his forehead against hers. He exhaled rather loudly, as if he had finally arrived at a solution of a prolonged problem. “Where have you been all of my life? It took you long enough to show up.”
Zoe closed her eyes, reaching out and resting her hands against Drew’s solid, scar-riddled chest. “Same goes for you, but that doesn’t matter anymore. All we have left is what is ahead of us—”
CRACK!
Zoe opened her eyes. She was back in the dark room.
All we have left is what is ahead of us? She recalled what she had said. There is nothing—there’s nothing left!
The corpse of her husband slowly began to move.
“W-Wh—?!” Zoe was robbed of words.
The neck began to rotate, turning the barely visible face and its empty gaze to look right at Zoe. Dark-red blood was flung in all directions in the form of a gory mist as the body suddenly exploded. The black goo compacted the dead body in the blink of an eye, forcing the skeletal structure to nearly flatten out.
“Holy shit!” Steeljaws screamed.
In contrast, Zoe was silent. She stood unnervingly still as the blood of her husband slowly beaded up and rolled down her exposed face.
Her back straightened as her arms flexed, the strong muscles bulging beneath the under suit of the armor system. Zoe took a deep breath, raising her face up to the heavens.
“GET ME OUT OF THIS FUCKING HELL!”
She fired her weapon into the wall opposite to where everyone else was standing. Bullets pierced through the goo, penetrating into the concrete as Zoe’s battle cry resonated in the small space.
Both the medical officer and Steeljaws flinched as they witnessed the Hellcat unleash her rage.
When she ran out of bullets, Zoe ripped out the spent magazine and cast it aside. She made an attempt to reach for another one so she could keep shooting at the living organism that was feasting on the corpses of her husband and comrades.
“Zoe!” John’s hand clamped down Zoe’s wrist.
The Hellcat shuddered as if awakened from a nightmare.
Suddenly, Zoe’s knees gave out from beneath her. She fell down on her rear, shoulders slouching and head drooping, her internal inferno instantaneously extinguished. She vehemently threw her head back, letting out a scream that gave voice to all of the horror and anguish that was her mind, heart, and soul.
5.
“Jim! Night Hawk 3’s ETA—twelve minutes!” Pilot Morales announced on his headset. The ground below was thoroughly decorated with throngs of trees. Unfortunately, it served as the perfect smokescreen for the physically superior predators that bore a physical resemblance to humans.
“Aye!” Jim acknowledged. “Noight Hawk 3, dis is Noight Hawk 2. Yer read me?”
“Night Hawk 3 reads you loud and clear, Night Hawk 2,” the pilot of one of the other helicopter responded to Jim’s inquiry.
“How many men do ya have and what weapons are they millin’ with?”
“Six operatives. Each one is equipped with red-rated weaponry.”
“Shoite.” Jim didn’t bother to conceal the crushing feeling of hopelessness. He switched to local communications for Night Hawk 2. “Yer heard dat, Evan?”
Morales’ pent up frustration brought him to laugh bitterly.
“Not ideal equipment to send a force in with, considering the threat.”
Engaging the Chroma automatically put humans at a disadvantage from out the gate. Thus, the key to fighting the Chroma and surviving the encounter was to use the correct weaponry against each corresponding tier of monster. Red-threat weapons were nothing more than slightly modified, standard-issued rifles. The weapons fired rounds that punched through the regenerating bodies of the red eyed Chroma. A well-placed shot directly to the heart could drop a target.
The purple-eyed Chroma’s body was far more rugged, not readily succumbing to rifle rounds. The only advantage the humans had at the moment was the height provided by the helicopters. Jim’s chain-fed, high-rate-of-fire weapon was capable of bringing down a purple. That was, assuming that Jim could actually hit the speedy form of a purple-eyed Chroma.
“Night Hawk 3! When targets surface, immediately concentrate all fire on the purple-eyed Chroma! The current weapons you have are not effective to take down a purple!” Evans barked out. “However, if you all simultaneously fire on target, it will be enough to slow down the threat to be finished off with the Heavy Ordinance! I will be the one making the heavy weapon drop for our force!”
“Copy that!” both pilots on board Night Hawk 3 voiced their acknowledgement.
“Commanding Officer McBride, sitrep!” Commander Hemlock was on the line again.
“Thrate level upgraded ter poorpil. We’ll provide suppressive fire while our groun’ team acquires heavy weapons ter kill de poorpil threat,” Jim rattled off.
“Mission is a go! Good hunting!” Hemlock proceeded to leave the line once he obtained the update he needed.
“Appreciate yer blessin’!”
While Night Hawk 2 was waiting for Night Hawk 3’s arrival at the entrance of the base, Jim’s heart beat against his ribcage. He was sure Zoe took it. He just couldn’t bring himself to believe that she would actually do it, considering the consequences of disobeying a direct order … and the danger the weapon imposed on her while using it.
6.
The new grinding sounds emanating from the door was the telltale that the purple-eyed Chroma was far from giving up. Zoe, still on her knees with reddened eyes and flushed cheeks, cried bitterly next to her husband’s corpse. Locks of her black hair protruded from the sides of her face now that the faceplate was removed.
“Relentless fucks! They’re gonna get in here eventually!” Steeljaws flipped open his faceplate as well. “Zoe, we have to move! We’re good as dead the moment that door opens!”
Zoe’s voice was barely above a whisper. “To hell with it…”
“What?” Kubovics interjected.
“To hell with it, John!” Zoe thundered, snapping her head up to look at her captain with the utmost hatred in her eyes. It was a leer so potent, the captain momentarily faltered.
“I—!” Zoe choked out, the sobs robbing her of her ability to speak.
That was a quiet moment for John. This was the first time he had ever seen Zoe in this kind of emotional state. All throughout the years of raising Zoe, she had become what the captain considered to be his masterpiece, a prodigy worthy of taking his place.
She was the textbook definition of a perfected human weapon.
Paired with cat-like reflexes and an indomitable spirit, Zoe was the complete fighter that John could have ever asked for. Out of all the cadets that he trained in the past, it was Zoe who had shown signs of truly reaching the potential of what a human could achieve.
She was a true protégé, one that other Force captains would have traded their entire personal task force groups in exchange to have her by their side. With all of that said, just when the captain though he raised the best warrior the HAWK had ever seen, Zoe did the one thing that no one thought was possible.
She fell in love.
“I can’t leave him, John!”
Her battle-hardened, callous self had vaporized. This was Zoe Arsenault—severed down to the core.
“You can stay here to dig out what’s left of him!” John’s voice was cold. “Or you can leave a dead body and get out of here alive! You can avenge him, but you can only do that if you’re living!”
“Shut up!” Zoe screamed. “Avenge? I’m sick of avenging! You know why, John? Because unlike you, I do have emotions somewhere in my screwed-up head!”
John’s body st
iffened.
“This may come as a shock to you, but Drew taught me how to be human! I’m not that cold-blooded killing machine you found in that warehouse a decade ago!”
Both Steeljaws and Sandy stood by, too dumbstruck to interfere in the screaming match between the two powerhouses.
“When Bodt finally gave up the fight—after being devoured from the inside out—did you feel anything? When Adrianne died, did you feel anything about losing your wife? Because if you did, then maybe you would understand what I’m feeling now!”
The grim look on John’s face was a telltale sign that Zoe’s words struck a nerve. Yet, John stood by silently, his body motionless. He was absorbing all of the frenzied hatred Zoe was spewing at him.
“Oh, I understand.” John’s mouth crinkled. “For me, it’s overwhelming guilt that I couldn’t protect them. As a leader, the blame crushes me when something happens to the ones I’ve looked after for so long. Of course, I don’t expect you to understand that, Zoe!”
Wait … what am I saying? John’s head was starting to spin. John began to realize that the words coming to him were out of character. Are these my thoughts?
“Captain!” Steeljaws stepped in, his voice irritated. “I believe that’s enough.”
“Stay out of this, Gunnar!” John cautioned. “Keep that gun pointed at the enemy instead of the ground!”
There was a slight pause.
“What does it matter, captain? These weapons barely slow a purple down!” Steeljaws took a deep breath, his eyes shifting to unfocused. “As long as we stay cooped up here, we’re all going to die!”
Zoe looked up to see that Gunnar, the boy she had grown up with into adulthood, was bringing his UMP-45 up to his shoulder, pointing the barrel at her.
John said nothing as he was incased in his own internal struggle. The thoughts that were flowing through his mind were not his own. He was being told what to think. He looked around, breaking away from Zoe’s soon-to-be fatal dilemma to look around the room.
As his muddled gaze scanned the area, John happened to look at the beam of light at the end of his rifle from the fixed flashlight. The movement caught his eye.
Is that … smoke?
Small plumes of vapor were rising from the black goop that covered most of the surface area of the room.
Was that gas there when we first came in?
John realized that everyone in this room who wore armor had committed a HAWK taboo act. Everyone’s faceplate was removed while in an unsecured environment.
Straining to lift his arm, the captain reached up and slammed his faceplate down to reestablish the seal around his head. His vision instantly cleared, as did his cognizance.
“Gunnar, what are you doing?” Zoe began to quiver in fear.
The SCAR-FN that had John’s name carved into it was pointed right at Steeljaws’ exposed face. “Drop your weapon, Gunnar!”
“Negative!” Steeljaws sneered. “This girl—is going to get us all killed! I can’t let that happen!”
John ran straight at Steeljaws without speaking another word. The deranged young man was still pointing his weapon at Zoe, finger reaching down toward the trigger. That wild look in Steeljaws’ robin-egg-blue eyes could mean only one thing. The smoke was making the self-defense mechanism in his brain go haywire.
Grabbing the shroud and bringing up the front of the gun as the muzzle flashed from the gunfire, John slammed his elbow into Steeljaws’ face, stunning the young man long enough for the captain to reach up and snap the faceplate back in place.
“Manual override! Activate air filtration system!” John spoke into his microphone. In response, little fans and filters in Steeljaws’ helmet began to spin up and secrete fresh, filtered air into the young warriors’ lungs.
Steeljaws’ went down to one knee, slouching over himself.
“Zoe! Put your faceplate back on!” the captain barked out the order.
Her reaction was slightly delayed, but with trembling hands, Zoe reached up to where the faceplate was slid back, pulling it back down until the seal was reestablished. Once the clear, filtered air was coursing through her system, Zoe snapped out of her state of uncontrolled, chaotic emotion. Her sorrow disappeared, but her anger was far from being sated.
Zoe let out a shout, looking down at her two shaking hands. Once she became fully aware of her formerly unstable condition, her body stopped twitching at once. She took a deep breath to collect herself.
“John…?”
“At ease, Zoe. We overstayed our welcome. It’s something that this goop is spitting out,” John said in a low voice. “Whatever it is, it’s making us go crazy—”
BANG! BANG! PLINK!
Gunshots fired from behind John, the bullets striking his partially exposed back. Pain shot through his entire body, the vast majority of the agony radiating from the new wound that was next to his spinal cord.
The medic!
Before John hit the ground, Zoe was already soaring across the room, arms raised and shielding her weak points with her forearm plates. The medical officer gawked with glazed-over eyes, firing off one more shot. The projectile bounced off of Zoe’s armor with absolutely no effect.
Smashing her metal-plated kneepad into the medical officers’ stomach, Zoe immobilized and disarmed Sandy with a fluid-like motion.
“John!” Zoe shouted, dropping the motionless body of the medic and running back to her downed captain.
“Please tell me you didn’t kill the medic.” John coughed.
“I moved her guts around a little. She’ll survive,” Zoe growled. She analyzed the wound with a quick glance. “She got you good.”
“I thought you guys were supposed cover my back,” John joked and then winced in pain. “Nice reflexes, Zoe. I could’ve been a goner had you not intervened.”
Steeljaws stirred, shaking his head and trying to clear his though process. The world around him was surreal. Over in one corner, the medical officer was crumpled up against the wall. A dirt mark that happened to be in the exact shape and size of Zoe’s knee plate was mysteriously imprinted on her uniform. In another corner, in the faint light that bled in from the other room, was Zoe, standing next to John. The bullet hole in John’s back was visible against the dark Aeonian armor under suit.
Steeljaws got up to his feet. “Captain, can you stand?”
“Yeah, I think I should be fine.” John coughed up a spot of blood, which splattered on the inside of his faceplate. “Well … I should be able to pull through.”
“What a fucking disaster … this entire mission.” Zoe placed a gloved hand on her hip. She had to come to terms that the Ninth Force’s best team was currently on the verge of being wiped out on what used to be their territory.
“Steeljaws, carry the medical officer out of here.” John turned to his subordinate. “Get her off of the floor. We don’t know if this creature will start to eat her if she is left there for too long.”
“Did she shoot you, sir?” Steeljaws asked as he looked around.
John winced. “Yes, but she wasn’t in her right mind. None of us were.”
“Damn, John, what happened?” Steeljaws’ voice was peaked with confusion.
“What? Don’t you remember?”
The captain could recall the unmerited anger that welled up inside of him so suddenly. It was contrary to his personality. That was what threw up John’s internal red flag. Yet, was it really just a matter of losing control of a feeling? Or was it something much darker in nature? Second-guessing himself, John began to reason that the anger that he felt was not anger of his own. It had to have been planted there.
“Sorry, I can’t recall anything after we arrived in this room. My head is still swimming a bit.” Steeljaws stood awkwardly.
“Don’t sweat the details. What matters is that we’re all sane, I think.” John turned to look at the goop was still seeping the thin vapor into the air. “Turning us on each other—that’s effective.”
“Zoe, did something ha
ppen … between you and me?” Steeljaws was starting to get a feel for the situation.
“It was a close call. Thankfully, the captain jumped in when he did.” Zoe sighed, shaking her head. “Now come on, John. I’ll give you a hand.”
Extending her gloved hand out to John, who was still down on one knee, Zoe let out a small chuckle. “Is this how it felt on your end when you found me in that warehouse?”
7.
Ten years ago…
The rain was thinning to a drizzle as the clouds overhead fell apart. The streetlights cast their orange glow, the air reeking of oil particles floating off the soaked roads. Lying in a puddle of rainwater and oil was a young teenager. Her battered body was covered with mud and her own blood. Her breaths came painfully as she glared with hatred in her eyes.
“Those damn tweakers … Recruiting this young? She’s a child, for God’s sake.” A man stood in front of the downed teenager. John Kubovics, captain of the HAWK’s Ninth Force, was clothed in what appeared to be a dirty throw cover. It was a guise that concealed the armor he was wearing. The soaked cloth clung to him, accenting the precursor Aeonian Armor system’s bulky armored plates.
The wounded girl shivered as she scooted away from John, which was a fairly short retreat, since the wall was already right behind her. There was enough hostility projecting from her to make John hesitate to take a step forward. She was afraid. Who was this man standing before her, whose presence demanded so much respect?
In the year 2027, the existence of the HAWK and its affiliations was still kept hidden from the public’s knowledge, ordained by the collective governing body known as the United Nations. It was determined by the global leadership that humanity had no need to know of the existence of a humanoid race that was hell-bent on devouring the flesh of Homo sapiens. That was what the United Nations initially assumed. The secrecy of the forces capable of wiping out such a terrifying predator had to remain undisclosed to avoid a worldwide panic. They didn’t stay in one place for long, and there was no way the government could predict what the monsters would do, but hindsight was always twenty out of twenty.
The HAWK team was dropped next to the abandoned warehouse when the sensors placed outside of the city limits were tripped. The readings revealed that there was some Chroma activity brewing. Contrary to John’s expectation, when the HAWK arrived on scene, the humanoid beasts were not the only party present.