We Exist

Target excepted

The explosion was deafening. The lighter had been large, a novelty one, probably a gift. Never been used so it was still full. Now the flames licked at the wood and latched onto it while a few soldiers crawled away, their friends pulling them back. They may’ve been the bad guys but in their eyes what they were doing was right. The blast had blown my eardrums; just a high pitched ringing in my ears remained. I pushed Michael and Morrice to the exit, practically throwing them outside. The fire had already eaten away the first pillar. We stood back and watched the destruction at a safe distance. Second pillar down. My mind ticked away telling me how long to the building’s collapse. Third pillar. A few short seconds and the fourth pillar was gone. There was a horrible creaking as a few unseen pillars tried to hold the whole top story up. Then it crumbled, as if God’s hand had pressed down onto the complex. The screams still haven’t truly left my ears.

*                                                                           *                                                                   *

I found a nice abandoned lodge on the Everest slope. Probably built when they were constructing ‘The Road’ to the summit, but the amount of protesting had stopped its development dead in its tracks; making them completely forget about the place. Morrice made short work of the wooden floor and ice beneath it to create a basement. Michael ‘persuaded’ a worker to install the heating. He also ‘persuaded’ some computer geeks to install some monitors, motion sensors, GPS, everything in the basement. Then he ‘persuaded’ them to forget the whole thing, that they’d simply stumbled into a natural cave system, one devoid of anything. The next six months passed sluggishly. We didn’t hear anything. The contact never called, something which worried me deeply, but I was helpless. Anyway, she could look after herself. And we had all the information gathering tech we needed; just a shame it couldn’t do what it was designed to do. We built a little armoury for ourselves. Grenades, rifles; bolt action, semi and auto, pistols (my favourite place), LMGs, shotguns, PDWs, you name it we had it or at least something like it. Even a few RPGs and surface-to-air weapons. Scopes and ammo scattered about the place like decorations. We were officially prepared for war and I began to really think about things. The vampire I’d killed, the fact of vampires existing itself and whether anything else mythical existed. Six months crawled by and then we got something. One of the monitors had picked up something that matched our description of Jarek which was stored on the database they’d rescued from ‘the house’. A police dispatch describing a male arsonist in Arabia less than ten minutes ago. Without talking it was settled, we were going to Arabia.

*                                                                           *                                                                   *

Well, the airport was out of the question from the start. Because of the amount of populace in Arabia we couldn’t just teleport there, I was determined on this being an operation with no PNA interference, unless people saw us. So, for a while we were stumped as to how we would get to our target. And then we realised we’d have to go to more extreme solutions. So that’s how we ended up sneaking onto the gigantic plane which was transporting supplies to the soldiers over there. The conflict between England and America had escalated, resulting in America trying to take over English Arabia. Apparently things were really bad over there, but then again, most wars were. Maybe, the two country’s presence had something to do with Jarek’s appearance. But, whatever the reason, I didn’t care. Michael shook me out of my thoughts, ones intent on figuring out why Jarek was there. I un-holstered my Walther P99 and peeked over the boxes. Fifteen plus armed guards patrolled the area near the plane, another ten armed people loaded it, two heavily armed men wearing bullet proof vests stood by watching the proceedings and Michael had picked up the brain activity of two well experienced snipers on the roof. I breathed out, the plane was too well guarded for me to just appear there so we were basically going to have to do it with no powers. I put a thought in my mind, I’ll go take out the snipers, whilst Morrice makes a distraction, take out a generator or something. We’ll sneak on board the plane and I’ll teleport Morrice on board.

Okay, I’ll tell Morrice, Michael thought back. He looked at Morrice and then Morrice nodded to me. I scrambled up the side of the roof. I peeked over the roof and saw the two men. I pulled myself up and crept up behind the first man. I snapped his neck and dropped him down to the ground, text book death by falling. Then I snuck up behind the other man and knocked him out. I left him there and found some cans of Fosters. Pouring it over the first man and some of the roof I made sure I’d thought of everything. My gloves removed traces of fingerprints, the alcohol made it look like he got drunk, knocked out his bud, then fell off the roof. Perfect. I watched as the men finished loading the cargo, the doors starting to close. Shit, I thought as a loud explosion shook the ground slightly. The soldiers went running, my plan working perfectly. I flicked beside Michael, grabbed his arm and flicked inside the plane. I took note of my surroundings and flicked back out to stand by Morrice’s side as he came back out position. I took him by the wrist and flicked back inside.

“Well that went very well,” Morrice said, nodding to himself.

“Mmmm, surprisingly so,” Michael said, scratching his chin thoughtfully. The first dart hit his leg, making him curse. The second hit Morrice in the arm. I located the shooter and popped his head, his brains covering one of the supply boxes. I went first to Michael and Morrice who waved me away. I scrambled over to the dead guy. His gun was a standard issue Glock 17, but modified to fire darts from a second barrel below the normal. I checked the man over and found a radio, a lighter, keys, a note and some darts. I checked them over, definitely not standard issue tranqs. I split the case and looked inside to find a glowing purple liquid inside. Not any kind of poison I’d ever seen. I looked over to the two men, they seemed fine, no signs of weakness or anything. And then Michael looked at me, into my eyes almost into my soul, but not quite, in puzzlement.

“I…I can’t hear you.” And I knew he wasn’t talking about my voice.