Damage Control

by Eric Alan Williams

  For the life of her, she had no clue who these two women were. Lucifer was direct in killing those that displeased him, so she ruled him out quickly. It had to be someone from The Society, or perhaps another faction.

  She went to her glass case, opened it with a handprint identification module, and started arming herself.

  _____

  The hallway was dim with a red circular orb at each corner, flashing while recording. Seven men were armed and running around a bend.

  Whoever it was that was the shortest of the attackers coming up quickly. She ducked down fast, obviously anticipating the counterattack. She reached into the sides of her grey cloak and flung seven throwing knives before the thralls could blink. They each died with a blow to the left eye nearly in unison.

  The woman was fast to collect her toys. Wiping them off by cleaning them with her victim's uniforms. Her body posture hinted at her being delighted in what she had just done.

  A man was coming up from behind her. He started to transform. Black feathery wings sprouted as his flesh became as black as coal. A beak grew from his thin face, right as talons formed on his fingertips. He leaped, directed by his yellow piercing eyes. He made no sound, but his intended prey did. She was armed with a blaster pistol. She blew his head off, vaporizing it instantaneously. His lifeless body fell to the floor of the dimly lit hallway. The mysterious figure cocked her head, and with her left hand, threw another throwing knife. Another guard had come around the corner.

  The tallest assassin was making headway. She had reached the factory floor. Droids designed like human skeletons were standing in her way. Her bullets couldn't penetrate their exterior and began to ricochet off their hulls. She had to take cover.

  Janice watched from above. She could see the firefight. Her combat droids were of her own design, something that paid homage to a movie she loved from her mortal years. There was no mowing them down with gunfire. Janice smiled. "If thralls can't do it, then metal it is..."

  Another Harpy began to rip at his white uniform, so did another. Their bodies quickly transforming into horrific beasts infused with man and raven qualities. They had sharp teeth, vicious claws on their feet and their hands. They began climbing the equipment to get above the woman that was taking cover.

  Fifteen humanoid raven monstrosities came flocking into the factory. More droids joined the fray.

  They were closing in on the woman hunkered down behind a large metal vat.

  Above the fight, from the rafters, the shorter of the two assassins dropped gracefully like a pebble into a pond, leaving not a ripple from her decent. Upon landing, she threw her hands in front of her and made a crushing gesture with both fists, clinching them tightly. As she did, she unleashed an unseen force upon specific targets, the droids. The heads of each droid began to crush inward with the clinching of her fists. They dropped like flies flying into a bug zapper.

  Her attention quickly shifted to that of the black feathery beasts coming her way. One of them, leaping from above, had his clawed feet open like some prehistoric beast about to rip into his prey upon landing. The cloaked figure raised her left hand at him, catching him in mid-pounce with the same force. She didn't crush him like she did the droids, no, this time, she did something else. Her hand made an opening gesture. His body exploded, sending his feathers, entrails, bones, and limbs flying in all directions.

  Janice was watching from her window. She gasped and started walking backward slowly.

  Her companion that was hidden came out of hiding and started climbing up the wall like a spider. She leaped from the tops of the metal vats, and did a backflip into the air, landing behind one of the harpies. Two quick movements of her blade, she cut his arms and wings off, the next action, was straight through the heart with the sword she had hidden under her cloak.

  Seconds past, everyone on the factory floor was dead, both droids, her remaining thralls, and the last of Janice's Harpy next mates.

  Janice reached out to turn the doorknob leading into her office. The Glass behind her crashed. Glass flew everywhere. The woman ducked down from the noise, covering her face. When she stood up, the tallest assassin was standing there with a curved blade in each hand, kukris.

  Frantically Janice stood up and opened the door. A quick thrust to the stomach and a punch to the throat caused the CEO to fall backward, unable to catch her breath. The other assassin had already made it there and was waiting.

  Janice stood up, one hand on her throat, another firing a gun at the door. The figure moved faster than she was used to seeing. She felt the woman's fingers around her neck, lifting her up off the floor. "Well Janice, I see your aim hasn't improved much."

  Janice's eyes were wide open. She was trying to shift now. Her face was becoming crow like, her high heel shoes fell to the floor as her feet twisted into vulturous clawed feet. The hooded figure flung her against the back wall, crashing into a bookcase, smashing it into rubble.

  Janice stood up slowly, the hooded figure began pummeling her face, hitting her so hard that her newly formed beak smashed inward.

  Janice laid down. Her transformation halted from the stinging pain.

  The masked figure looked around the room and let out a high-pitched bat like scream. Every bit of Glass in the room shattered, including the recording equipment. Janice's eyes, ears, and nose started gushing blood more than they already were from her beating. The mighty sonic cry of a powerful vampire was deadly to most.

  The room filled with chattering of teeth. Assured that the room's recording equipment had all been destroyed, the hooded figure pulled back her hood, then removed her tight-fitting mask. Her red hair laid perfectly at her shoulders. Her pitch-black eyes looking down upon the Harpy Queen. Her lateral incisors and canines elongated to two inches of deadly flesh ripping fangs. She knelt down, eye to eye with Janice. Janice looked at the woman. Her own eyes widening with shock. She looked into the vampire's pitch-black eyes and scanned them. She realized the woman standing in front of her should be someone that shouldn't be here. Someone that should be dead. "Sara…"

  "Oh good, you remember," Sara said menacingly.

  She raised up. "I was pretty sure you imprinted my eyes once. Good thing for me, that I was right, bad for you I'm afraid."

  "What do you want?" Janice whimpered.

  Sara looked over at the desk and reached out her right hand. A chair came floating up from behind Janice's desk and landed right in front of the Harpy for Sara to sit in. "Janice, do you remember when you worked for Jaxalon? You used to taunt me, you and your friend, oh what was his new name?"

  The other woman took off her hood and mask too. She looked older than Sara, early forties, same color hair, same eyes, with a lean look to her face. "Daniel Fobian, Mother."

  Sara looked at Janice, "That's right, Daniel Fobian. At least he changed his name, making it a little bit of a challenge to track down, but you, you kept naming yourself after yourself. Not exactly original."

  Janice spit up blood as she tried to talk. "You're the one that killed Daniel, not Lilith?"

  Sara grinned even wider. "Ah, Lilith, so you all thought, my dear sweet absentee mother, killed him. Interesting."

  Janice coughed up more blood. "What do you want from me?"

  Sara's devious grin lit up what was left of the room. "Well, I want a lot of things Janice, most of which only you hopefully can give me now that every single one of your underlings are melting into puddles, your thralls dead, and by the way, my daughter here hacked your mainframe rendering all your software into oblivion making it absolutely useless to Lucifer. Looks like the humans are going to acquire your company without having a single mole from The Conclave at their disposal. But that's not what I really want Janice, that's just a side effect…"

  The Vampiress leaned forward. "What I want Janice, is what Daniel wouldn't tell me."

  Cecilia came up behind her mother and looked down. Her eyes were not pitch black like a vampire, only the complete absence of green in her eyes, the whi
te was still there, but the pupil had engulfed the rest.

  "Tell you what?'

  Sara crossed her legs and leaned back. "You and Mr. Fobian made it out The Hand, then defected to The Conclave. Who else is still alive that might could have imprinted off my eyes, or had information about me?"

  "Who else is still alive from The Hand?"

  Janice's face was starting to heal. She leaned back. "I ain't telling you anything you fucking cunt!"

  Sara rolled her eyes. "Wrong answer." She looked over her shoulder, "Cecilia?"

  Cecilia drove one of her blades downward hard enough to go through Janice's kneecap, and ten inches into the flooring. The woman screamed.

  "Next time it will be your other knee. Now… WHO THE FUCK IS LEFT ALIVE THAT COULD I.D. ME?"

  Janice's lips remained closed. Cecilia drove her other blade downward. The Harpy cried out again.

  Sara handed her daughter one of her swords. "Next time cut off an arm darling."

  Janice yelled. "Harry York, Chris Hall and…"

  "AND?"

  "Bob Wayne."

  Sara smiled. "Where are they now Janice? And did they change their names unlike you?"

  Janice trembled. She knew that she wasn't going to make it. The other three were friends of hers, one of them being a claw-brethren, scratched by Jaxalon himself. Like vampires or thropes, harpies could make others, but their conversion glands were in their claws. Janice wasn't about to give them up.

  Sara was getting tired of playing torture. She realized that Janice was the link she needed to find the others. Sara decided to deploy another power of hers. She stood up and reached down for Janice's head, placing her hands firmly against her temples. The vampire's eyes began to glow, every vein in her pitch-black eyes lit up with a faint red light. Her mind reached deep into Janice's brain, digging around. The experience caused the Harpy to cry out, her head was splitting from the mind reading ability being used. Sara's facial expressions went from smiling after finding out what she wanted to drop her jaw when learning something else. She dropped Janice's head and stood up. Janice was one of a few conclave members that knew about Lilith being captured, but also information that Sara had never found, who her real father was. Now Sara knew, and she knew that The Conclave had both of them.

  Sara took a deep breath, flung her head forward with her arms throwing behind her and let out a high-pitched bat cry. The last thing Janice would ever see was the pitch-black eyes of the angry vampire's feral nature. The Harpies head exploded.

  Chapter 4.3

  Xairin had just arrived at his assigned temporary residence. The tent looked like a cream-colored dome. Substantial on the exterior, hard like a turtle shell. It had a door that slid to the side and required a retinal scan for entry. Xairin thought that was a nice touch. He walked up, pressed the handprint module to activate the retinal scan that opened the door. He went inside, thankfully due to some strings pulled; it was a single unit. It had a cot, and a hanging bar eight feet off the ground built into the center of the ceiling. It didn't have a shower, but it did have a small fridge stocked with blood. Xairin found that out when he opened the white colored door and saw cans of it with the picture of a pig’s face on the front of each metal container. He popped the top to the aluminum can and chugged.

  He noticed a micro warmer and scoffed. "PFFT." He was so thirsty that he didn't realize it was right beside the fridge. He hated cold blood. This time he grabbed another can, and placed it into the cylinder-shaped device, pressed the button 100.3, and a second later it dinged. He reached for the can, popped the top, and guzzled another can again, this time getting some on his chin. He wiped it away, sloppily with his left arm.

  "Guess I need to report to my first training assignment." He said.

  He pressed a button on the bottom of the dial on his armband, prompting a hologram to display. It gave a list of items to read. He pushed the link in mid-air, that was blinking the words "NEW ORDERS."

  The hologram returned to that of the woman in the white robes. "Please report to the location shown by the red arrow. Please wear your white training shirt, shorts, and arrive with no shoes at this time. Your first training assignment is scheduled every morning at 4 AM. Please report promptly." The display burst into airborne pixels, shrinking to the red arrow. "Okay, then."

  Xairin stripped down and put on the white t-shirt, tan shorts. He thought it was odd that the request required him to go barefoot. He figured he had to walk through hot coals or something. After all the Major did make a comment or two about it testing every fiber of his being. He left his backpack in his tent. Since his new home required a retinal scan and a handprint to enter, so he felt safe in leaving all of his belongings.

  He followed the arrow through the training camp until it led him to a rectangular building outfitted with a camouflaged exterior. It too required a retinal scan to enter. After entering, he walked into the large room and saw several seats, many of them filled already. He took up a place near the back and waited patiently until the room filled to capacity. Seventy-six new recruits in all.

  At 3:49 sharp, a dark-headed man entered the room wearing the red kevlar gear. He went to the front of the class with a white tablet in his hand. The man had a British accent and spoke clearly and with a stern voice. "I am Officer Wisman. I will be grading your performance while running the obstacle course here at the Academy. Each morning you are expected to be on the course at no later than 4 AM, and finished and off the course before 5 AM so that those who have passed the obstacle course previously can train without any new recruits getting in their way and slowing them down."

  The man paced. Xairin thought he looked middle eastern, though his skin was lighter, not entirely Caucasian, he definitely had features hinting that he wasn't from England originally, that perhaps his background came from elsewhere.

  "I want to make a few things clear. This obstacle course has many challenges. Some of which, many of you will find inhumane." He turned and faced the class. "Each and every person in this room, none of you are human. You will be expected to perform feats that no human can endure. Your first three days, a preceptor will be assigned to each of you. Each preceptor is, of course, an individual who has already completed the course and moved on to being in one of the teams. Your preceptor will guide you for three days, along the course. By day four, you will be expected to complete the course without the help of a preceptor."

  The handsome dark-haired man went back to pacing. "Your armband will record your performance of which I will grade. Starting on day four, you will be eligible to compete in the labyrinth trails. To advance to your team, you must do one of two things, the easy way out is waiting your fourteen days, and it is automatically assigned. For those of you that are ambitious enough, starting on day four, you may enter the labyrinth trail. Should you complete the course, and the labyrinth with an overall score of an eight or higher, then you may be assigned your team. Are there any questions?"

  A man with jet black hair sitting two rows up and directly in front of Xairin raised his hand. He was sitting beside a woman that looked somewhat like him. "Yes, I have a question?"

  Officer Wisman looked at his tablet, then at the blue-eyed man with his hand raised. "Yes, Mr. Dodson?"

  "What exactly is this labyrinth trial?"

  Officer Wisman titled his head while holding tightly to his tablet. "The labyrinth trial Mr. Dodson is a combat zone in which you and one person of your choosing may pair off to compete against other recruits. By competing, I do mean, subdue. You and your teammate must render either unconsciously or wound another player to the point of them being floor bound for more than a minute to recover in order for it to count. Should you down, at least six or more recruits, and exit the labyrinth, you pass that trial. To score your full eight to ten points, you must complete the obstacle course, and the labyrinth trial."

  Officer Wisman smirked. "In the labyrinth trail, fighting fair will get you nowhere ladies and gentlemen. Your enemy will not fight fair and
will try to kill you in any way they can, and I expect you to do what you must to succeed. HOWEVER! Should you kill one of your fellow recruits, you will, of course, be executed, unless your recording band proves it to be purely accidental."

  The man stood cold as stone. His voice even colder by this point. "Weakness is something that neither Aeonians or Immortium value. If anyone falls on the obstacle course, you are to treat them as a comrade that has fallen in battle and push forward to complete the mission. I will deduct points for showing too much compassion, or hesitation that could, in theory, corrupt a mission goal. Am I understood?"

  The Aeonian waited until everyone nodded their heads.

  "WHAT THE HELL DID I GET MYSELF INTO?" Xairin thought loudly.

  Officer Wisman called Xairin out after looking at the tablet in his hands. "MR THUNDER? Stand, please?"

  Xairin stood up slowly.

  "Mr. Thunder here is wondering what he just got himself into." He looked at Xairin. "You, and everyone in this room, willingly signed yourselves into a war. A war that has been raging for countless centuries, and now, with the Aeon Strain, a war that has become more perilous than ever. What you have signed your name into Mr. Thunder, is the fine line between what allows the human race, and all the Immortals worth a bloody shit in remaining friends in this fragile coexistence we are attempting. And if any of you so much as falter in battle, you give the enemy and the beasts the chance to eat away at that existence."