Interlude 1 - The Loyal Soldier (1/2)

Jessica Flores watched as a wall of fire roared towards her team. The shattered glass windows of the office building had exploded outwards, peppering them with shrapnel carried along by the inital shockwave. The heat had come next, sweltering and burning. The air had ignited, had poured outward in a wave, devouring all in its path. The world was light and noise and confusion, and she had only moments to react.

But she was calm, she was steady. Her training had prepared her for this.

”Bunker up!” she barked into her headset, her voice projecting calm authority.

Valiant, the squad's barrier specialist, stepped forward and slammed his riot shield down between himself and the blast. The concrete shattered under his blow, creating a spiderweb of cracks beneath their feet. Shimmering, golden liquid erupted from the broken ground, gathering into a dome around her squad. The fire struck it and flowed past, around, hungrily searching for holes even as it expanded across the city. The shield rippled beneath the impact but held strong. More importantly, Jessica could hear herself think again.

”We need to bottle this up!” she shouted, fighting back anger at the pointless destruction. Nothing like this had been indicated on her intelligence briefing. Her team was not designed to fight enemies capable of destruction on this scale. They specialized in hostage negotiation and extraction for fuck's sake!

”I can't hold this for long, Sir,” Valiant murmured tensely. His stance was as rigid and unyielding as stone. The riot shield hovered at the edge of the barrier, held in place by one arm and braced by the other. Small indentations in the ground formed at his feet as the relentless wave of fire slowly pushed him backwards.

Jessica focused on her training, on the words of her teachers. Emotions could wait. They were unimportant. They clouded the mind and dulled the senses. She could feel later, when lives were not at stake.

Focus on the now.

Evaluate your options.

Command your soldiers.

”Frosty, ice us down,” she ordered, giving a hard glance to a nearby squad mate.

He stared evenly back, one eyebrow raised, but a thin layer of frost formed over his gloves. There was a cryokinetic in almost every SPEAR team. Ice upgrades were both extremely versatile and well researched, giving users an easier path towards mastery. Even so, covering allies in layers of ice without causing permanent damage was a fairly advanced technique. Hardening it against fire and heat was more difficult still. Doing both, without heavily impeding their movement, strained the limits of what was possible.

But it would buy them precious minutes against the fire, should the shield fall.

Frosty's hands glowed blue, and tiny snowflakes rained down from the air around him. He stepped forward cautiously, placing a frozen hand on Jessica's shoulder. The cold seeped in through her armored vest in seconds. His eyes met hers, and she nodded firmly. Ice bloomed from her shoulder, crawling down her arm in a wave of blue crystals. Jessica grimaced at the cold, but was firmly distracted by the fire guttering out.

It ended as suddenly as it had begun. The parking lot smoldered outside of the barrier. The concrete was warped and melted. Everything was charred black for as far as the eye could see; buildings and grass and trees and ground, nothing was spared.

Frosty paused at the sight, but she quickly urged him onward. The fire was no longer a threat, but the heat remained. They would need his ice just to walk over the super-heated ground. Frosty grimaced, and continued his work.

Call signs were chosen, not assigned. They were a relic of the past, of a time before vigilantes had soured the practice of assuming colorful and descriptive pseudonyms. It was a bit childish, true, to choose different names for themselves, but it helped to divorce them from their civilian identities. When they put on the uniform they became another person, one who fought and killed for city and country.

Childish or not, the practice was taken very seriously. Call signs were rarely shared outside of individual teams and never spoken outside of their comms. Most civilians would not understand the appeal of being someone else. Few could imagine the confidence or relief that sinking into another identity granted.

But none, including herself, could fathom why Frosty had assumed the identity of a fictional talking snowman.

Fortunately, his competence was not determined by his chosen name. He worked quickly, coating all of Javelin squad with a thin layer of heat-resistant ice. Even their helmets were covered, with the ice forming transparent visors over their eyes. A space was left between the helmet's chin and the neck, to allow a small amount of air flow to reach the filters of their masks. Should the blaze come again, simply looking down would seal the opening.

They shivered violently in place, all five members of Jessica's squad, but each stood firm and ready. Five pairs of eyes turned to her, awaiting orders.

She stepped forward, broadcasting confidence with every motion.

”This isn't what we expected, I know,” she began. ”Even so, our duty remains clear. We are now under crisis protocols, as first responders. Prioritize scouting and elimination. Hostages are now a secondary concern, if they are even alive.”

Several members nodded at that, faces grim. The time for negotiation was long past. Whatever mutate that had produced the fire could strike again at any moment. Time was of the essence, everyone understood this.

”Remember your training, maintain your focus, protect your teammates, and we'll make it out of this alive. Backup is on the way, this I can guarantee, but it's up to us to put a stop to this before we lose more of the city.”

Jessica raised a hand into the air and clenched it into a fist.

”We are Javelins!” she roared.

”Javelins!” her team echoed.

”Move out!” she commanded. Instantly, Valiant pulled his riot shield away from the barrier. The golden dome shattered, turning back to liquid and flowing into the ground. Golden tendrils slithering along the cracks in the concrete and back into his body. He nodded once the process was done, and fell into formation.

Jessica took point. Every member of a SPEAR team possessed incredibly refined and highly effective upgrades. As the captain of Javelin, the hostage negotiation and extraction squad, Jessica's upgrade had been designed to maximize her ability to read and interact with other individuals. It granted her exceptional senses, body control, and reaction speed. She could read facial ticks from a block away, identify a lie from a man's heartbeat, and more immediately relevant, could dodge bullets based on the orientation of a weapon barrel. Spotting for her team was the least of her abilities.

The doors to the lobby were missing, torn off their hinges in the blast. Jessica's squad moved in quickly, disregarding the broken glass that littered the floor. Their boots were thick and armored, standard issue for all SPEAR teams. The same could not be said for the rest of their equipment.

Their weapons were as basic as SPEAR could provide. Only Jessica carried an assault rifle, while the majority of the squad had settled for tactical shotguns. Two of her squadmates had forgone weapons entirely, Frosty and Wisp, though both could fight with their upgrades alone.

Most of the squad wore light armor, having expected this situation to be a drawn out negotiation and unwilling to antagonize an unstable villain by appearing in full battle gear. Only Valiant, as a rather paranoid barrier specialist, wore his full set of armor. The layers of ice that Frosty had created would mitigate some damage, but it would be up to Jessica to identify threats before they could kill her squad.

The lobby still smoldered from the blast. The tile floor stuck to their boots as they passed, thoroughly melted. Smoke poured freely out of the shattered building, flowing up through a multitude of newly formed cracks. The lobby's visibility was low, but Jessica's keen sight could guide her squad through it with ease. Javelin squad covered each other's weaknesses well. Together, even this situation was not beyond their capabilities.

The problem, however, was that this was a large building, and they did not have time to spare. Every second wasted had the potential to cost lives. The fire had ended, but it could begin again at any moment. Jessica had to make the call: Split up to find the target faster, or stay together and risk another blast.

She licked her lips, no longer feeling the cold. Anger pooled in her stomach, directed towards whatever corporate bigwig had demanded a hostage negotiation squad instead of a pacification force. Well connected or not, Bantleff's fate had never been in her hands. Entertaining such naiveté, rather than immediately dealing with the threat, had caused this tragedy. Now she had to balance the lives of her team against the lives of countless more civilians.

There was no contest, unfortunately. Duty was a heavy burden, but she bore it willingly.

”Split up,” she directed. ”Groups of two. Frosty with me, third floor. Valiant and Wisp, second. Seeker and Stratus, secure the first.”

The formation shifted as her soldiers complied. It was the best she could do for them. Wisp could animate thin strips of razor wire, half a dozen at a time, and strike from behind Valiant's shield. Stratus could breathe out a tranquilizing fog, while Seeker possessed and could share a rudimentary, if short-ranged, form of echolocation. Frosty could create cover for Jessica, while she could warn him of enemy locations.

The team was not meant to be split so far apart. Jessica could only hope that they all made it back.

The squad moved towards the emergency stairwell. The elevators would be inoperable for obvious reasons, even if the metal doors hadn't been melted shut. Jessica clinically noted the lack of bodies in the lobby as they passed through. The building had been locked down, according to her earlier briefing, so it wasn't especially surprising. She suspected that the third floor, the location of Bantleff's personal office, would contain whatever was left of the hostages.

She expected corpses, personally.

”Frosty, the door,” she ordered quietly.

Frosty stepped forward, running his hand over the door handle and along the hinges. Ice formed where it passed, melting into water with a soft hiss. With a gentle push, the door swung open.

The concrete stairs were burnt yellow and warped. The steel safety rail glowed a dull red, practically humming from heat. Jessica slowly approached the first few steps and peered up the staircase. She focused her senses, probing, listening, her body taut and ready to fight. No sound found her ears, no movement met her sight. She glanced towards Seeker, who gave her a nod.

Jessica hefted her rifle with one hand, and flashed a series of hand-signals with the other.

All clear, move out.

Seeker and Stratus stepped out of the stairwell as the rest of the squad moved upwards. They took it methodically, each step filled with caution, and every floor greeted with utmost paranoia. Even so, they advanced far faster than Jessica was comfortable with.

She spared twenty seconds to clear the second floor entrance, then Valiant and Wisp split off to search. Frosty stuck to her shoulder as she made her way up to the third floor. The building was not tall, but it was quite long and they were running out of time. Her squadmates checked in every few seconds, staying in constant contact as they cleared their respective floors.

She approached the final door at the top of the staircase. Frosty cooled the handle, and Jessica swung it open. The first thing that hit her was the stench. Even through the oxygen filter built into her mask, she could smell cooking flesh. She moved quickly, flashing a follow signal to Frosty. She followed the scent of burning pork down a blackened hallway, past half a dozen burnt out meeting rooms and a pair of elevator doors.

Jessica could hear voices coming from the end of the hallway, urgent, angry, and arguing. A body lay outside a nearby conference room, covered in blood but otherwise intact. She slowed at the sight, cautiously clicking on her comms.