Warsaw

Peregrination

Cold, metallic, savage. This was not a battlefield, and they were not soldiers. This was what could've been a thick grass meadow nestled in isolation. They were prey. And somewhere out there, It stalked. It hunted. It called out to them with promises of swift ruination. It taunted them. And all they could do was wait and hope that help would come.

Cold in a place that should not have been. Metallic in a way that detached it from humanity. Savage to instill an endless essence of fear. The voice beckoned to them, calling from the shadows that did not exist. It defied logic and comprehension by relying on the very fear it manifested. It had a voice, Its words were cogent, but It was not a man. It was a monster.

He could feel the cold of the fissured plate pressed against his back. The metallic constant was his only support as he stared forward, the corpse of his comrade laid on its chest, the blood staining the sand. The pure savagery was something he could not halt. There was nothing left for him to do, nothing left for him to save. Nothing left for him to live for.

There are no saints to be found in the devil's world.

Warsaw's eyes snapped open as he lurched forward, banging his head on the metal siding of his living compartment. He let his head fall slowly to its resting point against the bundled up jacket, one of its buttons digging into the back of his ear. Again with the same nightmare, day in and day out. He couldn't remember what a restful night felt like anymore.

He waited for the pounding above his right temple to dull before he rose, swiveling his feet from the cot and rubbing his eyes. If his math was right, they should've been approaching their deployment point soon. They'd made excellent time working their way up the coast of eastern Africa and would be early. Their infiltration would be by cover of night.

He dressed quickly, fitting his shaped Kevlar plates under his shirt and pants to allow maximum protection while still being agile. He grabbed the jacket from the cot and fanned it twice before slipping it on, feeling a lack of familiar tightness in the arms. He hadn't eaten as well and frequently as he should have lately.

His last touch, the one thing he'd kept on his person at all times since receiving it, was a small knife with a retractable five-inch blade that fit into a sheath clamped snugly to his belt and its loop on his middle lower back. The knife had been a birthday gift from Oslo, who had gone to great lengths to discover Warsaw's birthday prior to giving him something so genuine and meaningful.

It was the last material thing he possessed that linked him to his former partner.

Warsaw pushed the metal slab of a door open and stepped out into the main area that he and Sofia had inhabited for over a week. Designed to appear externally like two standard cargo crates, the interior had been retrofitted to be one large space with two side rooms and a bathroom. The side rooms were about the size of a standard hallway, and the bathroom was self-sustaining in a way he didn't care to think about.

It was the vehicle that occupied the majority of the space that really drew attention. The technology They implemented for most major operations served consistently as a testament to the timeless ideology of organizations stealing assets in the form of ideas from one another to advance themselves, especially in an era like now where stealth was being prioritized as society and its governing bodies became easier to monitor on a global scale.

The helicopter Warsaw and Oslo had been on was modeled after a scrapped stealth project the United States designed before the turn of the century, but Their take on it was vastly improved and modified to suit different purposes. The jet he and Sofia had taken across the Atlantic was built using schematics stolen from a secret Russian confederation who'd been as constant and present a threat as Chimaera.