Footsteps, coming from someone casually walking down the hall, brought the small, tired group out of their slumber.
Gunner:
15:05.34
>Target approaching?
Mole 3:
15:05.35
>Target confirmed. Armed with S24 Autofire.
Captain:
15:05.40
>No other weaponry?
Mole 4:
15:05.42
>Possibility of other more advanced technology, unlikely chance of powder weaponry.
The captain gave a little smile. Autofire was a joke, but he knew that their target was the type who would go for that type of at-home defense. Because he was considered a threat level four, they weren't allowed to approach him and instead were forced to lie in wait, but he knew that there really wasn't much point in it. The Counsel knew it too, that's why they had appointed the assignment to the captain and his group. They were supposed to be on leave, but three of them had come to do it.
Well, with him and the gunner having had no sleep the previous night, the three only really counted for two people.
Mole 1:
15:05.51
>Target approaching.
15:05.52
>Ready weapons. Five.
15:05.53
>Four.
15:05.54
>Three.
15:05.55
>Two.
After a second, the captain narrowed his eyes. A bead of perspiration formed on his brow but his worry went away a moment later. The mole should have reported a one, but perhaps their target had simply stopped moving or gone a different way.
Captain:
15:06.01
>Mole one, report in.
15:06.06
>Mole one?
Tech:
15:06.13
>I'd like to report a possible malfunction in software, all moles have gone down.
Captain:
15:06.17
>Did you say all moles?
15:06.32
>Tech? Tech? Gunner, should we abort?
Gunner:
15:06.36
>Something's definitely up, Captain. I'd say yes but it might just be a Tech thing. You know him. Besides, there's two of us and one of him. What could he do?
The captain smiled. Yes, what could he do? The mole had only reported an Autofire, and him and Gunner were ready for their target.
Their target.
Where was their target?
The captain slowly inched forward, peering around the doorway quickly. The hallway was deserted.
"He ran, Gunner. We were scared for nothing." The captain stood up and brushed himself off, the taller man doing the same.
"It feels nice to talk out loud, doesn't it, Captain?" His blue eyes lit up, and the captain smiled. Usually, captains and their groups didn't care for each other, but the gunner and him were friends.
"Yup. Let's head out, grab the moles first. Heard anything from Tech?"
The gunner frowned. "Not anything that you haven't. You know Tech. He's way too formal. But it is weird that he'd blank out for so long. Probably getting a drink or something. Right in the middle of the important part, too."
The powerfully built captain nodded. He liked his tech, but the man wasn't very nice. It wasn't that he did it on purpose, more that he had been brought up the way he had - approving only of things that were normal. Lately he'd been doing stuff that could get him a demerit to protest the captain's and the gunner's friendship, but the captain never liked saying bad things about his group.
"This time Tech's going to hear something from me," said the captain, worry creasing his face for a moment before resolving into a hard expression.
The gunner looked away. "So, nobody's on this floor? It's not a trap?"
The captain consulted something on his wrist. "Nothing for a little while now. No explosives either. That's what's great about these new heat-sensing bands. They can detect most kinds of explosives."
"What about the ones it can't detect?"
The captain rolled his eyes. "Mostly low-powered ones. Our armor is strong enough to easily take those."
The gunner nodded, satisfied. "Can't wait to get home. My link is finally going to get back."
"That's great," said the captain with a smile. He walked into a different room for a moment, grabbing one of the moles. It was a strange contraption, very large and in the shape of a disk. It had human-sensing abilities beyond what the public knew, and thus they used them despite their bulky size.
"That isn't our mole," said the gunner, freezing in his place. "Captain. That isn't our mole."
The captain wasn't big on that type of electronics, so he normally couldn't tell one mole from another, but he recognized in a few moments that the mole they had placed in the room had a small scratch on it. In another few moments, he recognized what it meant.
"It's-" the captain stopped mid-sentence.
"Captain!" The gunner ran forward at the frozen figure of his friend, but to his surprise the captain began to move again.
"Take it. Please." He held out the contraption to the gunner, who accepted it.
"Why?" The gunner looked at the device in his hand, then at his friend who suddenly fell backwards.
Then the world ended.
***
Was word choice there bad? Then the world ended? Cause the world didn't actually end. That would make for a really boring book.
Anyway.
So, this is just a kinda random idea I was going to use for a project with a friend but it got discarded and I thought that I really liked it. :D Tell me what you think, I'm going to write up a first chapter now.
