A Dragon's Tale #Watty's2015

Unchartted Territory

Location: Cheyenne Mountain Complex

Time:2200 Hours

Task Force: Raven

Hudson's POV

John's words to Emelia tugged on my heart strings.

"Marines don't die",he said with his last breath.

John was dead,and there was no getting around it. I wanted to wake up from this nightmare, I wanted to wake up and find all my friends alive and well. Part of me believed this was nothing more than a horrible nightmare and that I would soon wake up. The bigger part of me, however, my mind, my heart, my soul, knew that this was no nightmare. John was gone, and a lifelong friend with him. We had been friends since he was 14 and I was 16,l ike a younger brother to me almost. My heart felt like it had been ripped in half, my soul crushed, my mind numbed. All that echoed in my head were Issac and Emelia's sobs. Wyatt was standing in the corner, his pistol clutched in his hand, tears going down his red face, thumb feeling the safety selector, clicking from auto to burst, auto, burst, auto, burst. I was doing the same, it was all I could do to keep from venting my anger at John's death on my friends. Emelia was licking John's face,crying and whimpering as she did. The sound she was giving off put made me want to quit all that much more. I was trying desperately to keep from crying as the doctor walked in with another needle.

"What the hell is that?",I barked at him.

"Bonding agent",the doctor said,"it's what we will actually use to integrate his memories and triggers into the new body."

"If it works fuck head",Wyatt barked,feeling the safety selector on his handgun even faster.

"Yes",The doctor replied,seeming as if he wasn't afraid for his life,"if it works and I have all the confidence in the world that it will."

The doctor plunged the needle, half full of a blue liquid into John's neck and drew out enough blood to fill most all of the syringe.

"If you fuck this up",Wyatt said,"your a dead man,do you understand me?"

The doctor suddenly looked scared. Emelia gave an extremly low,rabid dog like growl,as if she was making the same threat. He turned around to face Issac, who was also staring daggers at him. I snuffed angrily and shoved my handgun back into it's holster. The doctor looked relived that one of us wasn't going to kill him,and it only made me angrier.

"I don't need a gun,knife or a weapon of any kind to break you into tiny pieces",I snuffed in his ear,"I can break a hardened steel padlock like it's a toothpick, I'll have very, very little trouble snapping your twig of a neck."

Turning so as not to let my friends see my tears, I left the lab.

Two Hours Later

I sat in the dark,empty cafeteria. It was around one AM or so and everyone was asleep,everyone but me. I sat in a metal chair in a corner table staring at my half eaten chicken sandwich. Johns words were still rattling my brain.

"Marines,don't,die",I repeated in a whisper,"they regroup."

No one was around to hear me. It was nothing but empty,I was nothing but empty. My entire body was numb,absolutely no feeling was present. My mind was blank as well. Normally whenever we ate,our meals would be full of conversation, Jack's jokes and my inebriate sarcasm and occasionally Wyatt wold do something stupid and make us all laugh. I wished for it to return, how I wished it. I looked down at the stitching running down my arm. In the crash, I'd taken a long piece of metal right through it.

"I got off easy",I said to myself,"why did John get so much more than I did?"

I looked down at the table again. In front of me sat

John's modified B32R,dog tags,a bottle of half drunk Jack D and a picture of Raven Team. I held John in a soft headlock,but it looked like I was trying to kill him. His weapon dangled just out of his reach and it looked like he was trying to grab it before I choked the life outta him. Issac stood leaning against the wall with his M16 up in the air and a smile on his face while Wyatt and Jackson crouched in their Gillie suits and Frank,dressed all in black stood behind them. I ran my hands over the picture, three of the men, my friends, my brothers, were gone form this Earth forever.

"What would I give",I asked  myself,"to bring them back?"

A faint clicking sound soon began echoing down the hall. The tap, tap, tap of talons on the concrete told me it was Emelia, she was accompanied by Issac, who had an empty forgotten look on his face. He sat down in front of me and looked over the items on the table before sighing.

"Alcohol and handguns are a bad combination brother",he said,"I figured you of all people would know that."

I sighed. My Dad was killed by a drunk man with a Grach pistol who showed up at our house one night. Dad tried to help the man, but when he pulled the gun, Dad had gone for his own Sig 226 and the man shot him four times dead in the chest. I managed to subdue him and disarm him while Mom had called for an ambulance, but Dad bleed to death before he made it to the hospital. Mom had followed him shortly after in a car wreck with a drunk driver, of all things. I'm still not over either of the deaths, maybe I never will be. I had promised myself that I would never drink, but here I was,braking my promise. It made me feel so much worse.

"How are they planing on turning John into a dragon?",I asked.

"They're going to fuse his human mind with an unborn dragon",Issac said,"if it works,the resulting dragon will essentially be John in his personality."

I sighed. Now I had that on my conscious. I felt sorry for the mother and the father of the dragon cub they were going to use. That wasn't right, robbing two dragons of their child.

"That's all kinds of fucked up",I said reaching for the whiskey.

Issac seized it.

"No way in hell am I letting you become a drunk over this",Issac said,"I promised my little brother that he'd find a combat ready team when he returned and I damn well mean to deliver."

"Yes sir",I replied,"did they say how long it would be?"

"Before what?",Issac asked.

"How long it would be before we got our brother back?"

"No",Issac sighed,"they told me,Wyatt and Emelia they can't even began to estimate."

My heart finally stopped and sank into my boot. Emelia started crying again and lay her head in my lap,her eyes were squeezed shut and tears were streaming down her scaled cheeks.

"Why did he have to die!?",she asked through tear filled whimpers,"why did he have to leave us!?"

I began stroking her neck. Her scales were smooth like the metal of a combat knife blade, cold like one as well,I looked up at Issac,who also had tears streaming down his face.

"What do we do sir?",I asked with cracks in my voice,"what are your orders?"

Issac looked me dead in the eyes. "We solider on."