American Gate

Chapter 1: The Attack

Daniel checked on the police officer and child who stared back at him in shock. He ushered them down East 84th Street, away from Central Park. As the three of them ran down the road, they heard the sound of police drones flying overhead.

The drones used by the police department are large quadcopters about the size of a car. Each drone carries two police droids, lying prone, under its belly. Daniel watched as the two droids lowered into their vertical deployment position. They fell to the ground, landing in perfect unison, and looked up towards the approaching enemy soldiers and cavalry.

The droids tried to protect the fleeing civilians, but with only hand guns, tasers and batons, they were unsuccessful. Daniel watched as three of the enemy cavalry charged towards the two police droids.

"New York City police department, HALT NOW!" The droids shouted as the horsemen got closer. The police droids had an artificial, but almost human, voice.

Daniel noticed something off about the enemy cavalry. The riders were sitting too far up on their horses, almost as if they were sitting right on the horse's neck. Showing no signs of stopping, the cavalry continued to charge at the droids, who opened fire with their hand guns. One of the horses tumbled to the ground after being shot several times, but the other two kept going and trampled the droids into scrap metal with their hooves.

Everything around Daniel was absolute chaos. He had already lost track of the police officer and child. As everyone ran down the street, more police showed up, only to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of hostiles. There weren't enough officers or droids to protect everyone; countless people were mercilessly slaughtered.

Behind him, Daniel heard a loud bull-like roar. He turned around to where the sound came from just in time to see a woman in plain clothes get cut clean in half at the waist by a gigantic sword. Fear and shock overcame Daniel as he saw the beast wielding the sword–a huge creature covered in dark brown fur with two horns at the top of his head. It had inhumanly shaped legs, with hooves instead of feet, and stood over seven feet tall.

It looked like a much more realistic version of Daniel's minotaur costume for Comic-Con. Except it wasn't a costume at all; it was a real, live minotaur. It locked eyes with Daniel. Then, it started running towards him far faster than any human could run. There was no way Daniel could outrun this thing, so he pulled out his sidearm.

As a marine, he had a habit of never going anywhere without his sidearm, if it could be helped. The minotaur raised its massive sword, ready to slice Daniel in half in one swing. He quickly took aim at the massive beast running towards him and fired several shots. The minotaur staggered, but kept running towards him. He adjusted his aim and fired another shot, this time at the minotaur's head. The beast fell to the ground and rolled a few more meters before coming to a stop.

Daniel snapped out of the shock of what just happened. More and more enemy soldiers and cavalry were coming down the street and there weren't enough police to stop them. Daniel gathered as many people as he could and ran into a nearby office building.

Inside the lobby, there were dozens of scared and confused people, some of them wounded. Two police officers saw Daniel's group come in and walked over to herd them towards the back of the lobby with everyone else. Daniel walked up to them and, with authority, said, "We need to get these people out of the lobby and up to the roof."

The police officers looked at Daniel with an unearned sense of superiority. "Who the hell are you to be giving us orders? Get in the back with everyone else."

Only slightly fazed by their incompetence and confrontational stance, Daniel replied with his full marine voice, "Second Lieutenant Daniel Ramirez, United States Marine Corps. There are more hostiles following us. We need to get these civilians upstairs and out of harm's way RIGHT NOW!"