Interlude 1 - The Loyal Soldier (2/2)
”We've got survivors on the third floor, and an unburnt body,” she whispered, glancing at the nearest door for reference. ”Suite 3-11A. Possible hostiles.”
”Acknowledged,” her squad echoed.
Frosty advanced as she spoke, trailing a cold mist from his hands. He pressed his palm down on the smoldering carpet and a wave of ice crept across the floor towards the bloody corpse. Cold mist billowed outward, and crystals sprang into life along the walls of the hallway. Hoarfrost appeared on the body as the surrounding temperature dropped below zero.
Jessica advanced towards the conference room, careful to avoid the brittle ice. She stopped in front of the corpse, prodding it lightly with her rifle. Frosty appeared beside her, kneeling down to check for a pulse. After a moment, he shook his head.
Jessica fought back a scowl. Turning the corpse over, she searched her memory for the man's face. He hadn't appeared in her briefing packet, though at this point that didn't mean much, and his body was covered in large gashes. Almost as if a sword, or a particularly large knife, had been taken to him with great vigor. She had little time to deliberate, however. In the distance, the voices escalated in volume.
”—not what I signed up for! You shouldn't—”
”—no choice——couldn't take the risk.”
”That's——decision to——!”
She frowned at the garbled shouts. Interrogation was a secondary objective. Her priority was to put down whatever mutate had created the initial fireball. Everything else could come after. She moved further down the hall, motioning Frosty to follow.
He obeyed, forming more layers of ice as he moved. He was covering their retreat, should it be necessary. With the ice already in place, manipulation would come much easier to him.
A broken door lay on the ground at the end of the hall, blackened and burned. Parts of the closest wall were shattered, but unlike other rooms, they bulged outwards. This room appeared to be the origin of the blast.
There were no sentries posted, and the door was wide open. Amateurs, Jessica wanted to conclude. Amateurs with an incredibly deadly weapon and the will to use it.
Jessica slinked forward, silent as a cat, and peered inside the open room.
It might have been a dining area, once, but now it was a torched shell of a room. Light streamed in from broken windows, but a dull glow caught her eye. In the corner of the room, a translucent golden field surrounded three huddled shapes, two men and a woman. Jessica recognized the upgrade, as her very own squad mate possessed a variation of it. It was supposedly restricted to SPEAR team members, though there were always ways around such things. A man with enough connections could buy nearly anything.
She would bet every dollar that she had that one of the men within the barrier was Bantleff. The shield was almost opaque, so she couldn't get a proper look, but obtaining SPEAR resources was no easy task. It also nicely explained why her team was sent. Bantleff's contact was clearly highly placed. He or she had obviously hoped to avoid a violent confrontation, if only to protect the one man.
Too bad the villains had different plans.
On the other side of the room, the source of the voices stood. A group of men argued amongst themselves. Four of them in total. At their feet lay either a hostage or an incapacitated co-conspirator. The man was curled into the fetal position and whimpering softly, taking the occasional kick from the people around him. Jessica could make out few details about him from her current angle. He was skinny, with wispy blonde hair, and clothes that barely clung to his frame. Something large and bulky hung around his neck.
The arguing men were a different story. Jessica catalogued their features, then their equipment, then immediately called for backup. She didn't recognize any of them, but nobody wearing a ski mask in Atlanta at the height of summer could be up to anything good. The pistols strapped to their legs and shotguns in their hands only reinforced this belief.
They spoke again, as her team acknowledged her order.
”We have to try again. That barrier can't hold forever,” one said, snarling at the golden dome.
”I don't think he's got another in 'em,” another replied, kicking the prone man viciously.
”We'll use the collar,” the first replied, drawing what appeared to be a remote control from his coat pocket. ”That's what it's for.”
”Hit him again,” another agreed stoically. ”SPEAR will be here soon, we might get lucky and clear them out.”
”We were supposed to threaten only,” the last snapped at his comrades. ”To use the subject twice—”
”Don't go soft on me now,” the man holding the remote whispered menacingly. ”Johann went soft, and you know what happened to him.”
”It's not about being soft, it's about achieving our goals! We need Bantleff alive!”
The first speaker sneered at his companion. ”He'll live. Burns can be fixed, and he deserves a little pain.”
He lifted the remote, his thumb over an alarmingly red button.
”Get ready to shield us, Erik.”
It looked like Jessica was out of time. She flashed an urgent hand signal to Frosty, then spun into the room, rifle at the ready. The surroundings immediately exploded into pandemonium as she opened fire on the group of distracted villains.
Jessica's first shot took off the hand of the man holding the remote. Her second hit his clavicle and turned his breastbone into shrapnel. The third clipped another man's shoulder, sending him tumbling to the floor. Jessica fell into a smooth roll, dodging a shotgun slug that tore a hole in the floor where she previously stood.
As soon as Jessica cleared the entrance, Frosty acted. He jabbed forward and a gust of cold air erupted from his fist to coat the floor in ice. The remaining villains found themselves slipping in place, shouting and cursing.
A shotgun roared, missing Jessica by inches and punching a hole in the wall. The slippery ice did its job, as the recoil knocked the shooter off his feet. The gun went off again as it hit the ground, pellets peppering a hastily formed wall of ice. The wall shattered a moment later, sliced into thick chunks by a violent hand gesture from the fallen enemy, as he struggled to regain his feet.
With a roar, a massive bolt of lightning emerged from the fingertips of the last villain still upright. It streaked through the air, thick as Jessica's thigh, and vaporized what was left of the doorway. The thunderclap was deafening, and for a moment spots filled Jessica's vision.
She compensated as well as she could, memory and instinct guiding her to where the electrokinetic last stood. Her rifle butt nestled itself against her shoulder and sang out an opera of violence. Bodies, murky in her vision, swooned and hit the floor from things far more permanent than emotion. Shrill screams supplanted the ringing in her ears, and slowly her sight returned to her.
Frosty stood near the center of the room, orbited by thick sleet. The group of villains were down to a man, riddled with holes and bleeding out. The unknown mutate, the source of the fire according to the villains, remained curled up and sobbing on the floor. In the corner, the golden shield remained firmly in place.
Jessica approached the pile of bodies, methodically silencing their screams. Her team was not built for on-site interrogations, and she had no way to contain them safely. Her superiors would understand the necessity, even if her conscience struggled to.
She ended her path in front of the weeping— not a man. A child. A sobbing, emaciated child. Jessica stared down at the boy in horror. He couldn't have been older than fourteen, so short and slight. His skin was dry, cracked, and bright red, as if he'd been sunburned for months at a time. His frame was skinny to the point of starvation, with his ribs visible through the shredded tunic he wore. Around his neck, a bulky metal collar. Sharp metal rods dug into his skin like a inside-out spiked collar, and a heavy padlock kept the abomination in place.
His mouth was moving, whispering, chanting something. Jessica kneeled down beside him.
”Please help me please help me pleasehelpmepleasepleaseplease—”
She reeled back, forcing her shock to stay off her face. This was no willing villain. He seemed as much a victim as those that he had killed. If it were up to her, she'd keep him contained until a way to control his power was discovered.
”Oh lord no, not again, it's happening again, please please please—”
But it wasn't up to her. Her duty was clear.
”Make it stop make it stop makeitstop!”
The boy's skin split along his back and down his arms, peeling apart like a bug's carapace. A dead layer of flesh flaked off and disintegrated as heat poured out of every crevice. Black smoke flowed out of his nose and mouth, choking him, silencing his words. He looked up at Jessica with a face of absolute anguish, as his surroundings melted around him. His power was activating, and she had no idea how to stop it.
Jessica met his eyes, projecting every ounce of sympathy that she possessed. There was nothing she could do for him except remember his face. Her nightmares would preserve him, and he would join the museum of horrors in her mind. Fire flickered in the corner of her eye, and she knew that she was out of time. She hefted her rifle and placed it against the boy's temple.
A few angry thoughts passed through her head, in that brief moment before she did what was necessary. Damn the men who had done this to a child. Damn Bantleff for whatever he had done to draw their ire. Damn her superiors, who had sent Jessica on this futile attempt at diplomacy.
Bantleff was fine, safe behind whatever bodyguard he had upgraded. He would have been fine too, had a pacification force simply blitzed into the building like they were designed to do. Damn the fools who thought otherwise.
But most of all, damn her, for seeing no other way forward.
”Sorry kid,” she whispered, and squeezed the trigger.