Be sure to read Operation Torch Part 1

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I’m outnumbered and my partner is shot and being dragged away and we’re on Tumbar. Fuck this mission.

I drop my empty magazine and load another. Second to last. Twenty shots left. With the reinforcements the second Falcon brought, I counted twelve men. Not good odds. But they have Mak. This is going to be fun.

Here we go.

I draw up an image of the men marching toward me and measure the angles. I stick my pistol around the corner and shoot. It takes three shots, but I hear a scream. Seventeen.

I withdraw my weapon and race down the alley I’m sheltering in. When I find a door, I put a shot through the bolt. Sixteen. I shove the door open and step inside. Stairwell. I go up.

The door to the next floor is unlocked. I go through it and into the hallway on the other side. First door on the right is an office with a window. To that I dart. It is covered by drapes. I push them just to the side with my suppressor.

The man I shot is on the ground, but I only got his knee. Not dead, but won’t be moving around without help. The other eleven are spread out now, moving slowly toward the corner that was my cover. All of their submachine guns are pointed there. None of them have protection of any kind. I line up my first shot.

Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen are all kill shots. Twelve and eleven miss. Ten goes wild as I dive away from the window. The glass, filled with holes from my shots, explodes around me. Several shards nick me. Bullets spray the ceiling.

I scramble out of the office and go two doors down. Another office, another window. I reload my weapon before throwing open the drapes. The one guy watching this window goes down quick. Nine. Eight is a miss. Shit. Seven drops one. As does six. Then I’m back in the hallway.

Back to the first window. Five men left, six shots. Piece of cake.

Kill shot. Five. Miss, miss. Four, three.

I force myself to line up the next shot. Wasted. My next shot barely goes off before they are aiming at me. I don’t have time to see if it hits. I’m on my last shot. Time to do something drastic.

I dart back to the stairwell. It continues up, right to the roof. I take the stairs two at a time and throw the door open. I’m at the edge of the roof in a second. I’m starting to breathe hard.

My previous shot hit the guy, but he’s still alive. He’s scrambling to his feet and reaching for his weapon. All three of them are still looking at the second story. I have time.

My sights settle on one man’s head. And I blow him to Hell. Zero.

I leap off of the roof.

The eyes of the man beneath me widen as he sees me fall. He tries to shoot at me. But I land on him first. His bones crack as I hit and roll away. My angle was perfect and I come out of the roll right next to a fallen submachine gun. I scoop it up and unleash a barrage into the man I’d shot from the window. He collapses in a cloud of blood.

I take the time to stand before putting one loud shot in the face of the man I landed on. That just leaves the one I shot in the knee. He is reaching for his fallen weapon.

“Don’t even think about it,” I say, pointing my new submachine gun at him. He holds up his hand. Pain is written across his face. Not enough of it.

I kick away his weapon and shove him onto his back with my foot. I plant that same foot on his chest.

“What are you going to do to me?” the man forces out.

“I didn’t say you could talk yet,” I snarl. I hold my pistol out to him. “Hold this, suppressor facing me.”

The man looks back and forth between me and the pistol, then snatches it from me. He pulls the trigger. Nothing happens. I grab the suppressor and it comes free.

“Thank you,” I say as I press the suppressor to the end of the submachine gun. It crawls onto it and hardens. I take my pistol back from him and shove it into my waistband. “Now you can talk. Where is your base?”

He spits at me instead. I sigh. I should have paid attention to Mak’s ramblings about his map.

“Here’s the deal. I don’t feel much. Don’t really give a fuck about people in general. Makes my job easy. But, you see, I have this theory that everyone has the same amount of love, the same capacity of love. The same store of love, or close to. But we divide that store up between everyone we care about. Most people give some of it to strangers, more to friends and more to family. I don’t. I have no family and maybe five friends. And your friends just took one of them. My closest friend in fact.” I pause and smile down at him. His face is stuck between fear and confusion. My favorite look on an enemy.

“So, they just took the person that the majority of my store of love goes to, and absolutely none of it goes to you. So I’m going to give you one chance to tell me where they are taking him before I start having fun.”

The man stares at me in horror few a moment. Then his look steels and he sets his jaw. “No.”

I grin. “Thank you.” I toss my weapon away. “Let’s start small.” I curl my fingers and raise my fist.

 

Someone grabs my arm and yanks it back down to the padded arm of the chair, sending pain rippling up through my shoulder. Fire burns in my wound. I struggle, but only with a small portion of what is left of my strength. My arm is strapped to the chair arm with leather straps. The other is already in the same position. The chair also has a headrest with a hole in it.

I am in a small square room inside one of the warehouses I had found on the map. The room is bare, white walls and concrete floor. This chair is the only furniture but for a small table with some machine on it. The machine has several glass vials sticking out of one side and some complicated electronic equipment taking up the rest. And a screen on top. Next to the table is a pole with an IV bag hanging from it.

There are seven people crowding the room. Two men in lab coats, four in trench coats and Falcon 1.0. The other Falcon left right away. Apparently he wasn’t actually too eager to see how I dream. Falcon 1.0 is stripping off his vest. The wings are gone. The shirt beneath is stained with blood from his right side. One of the men in a lab coat starts cutting off the shirt.

The other lab coat man starts to punch buttons on the machine beside me. After a few button presses, he grabs something that looks like a swim cap from behind the machine. It snaps painfully onto my forehead as he pulls it on over my head. He then pulls wires from the machine and attaches them to the cap.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“We are going to induce dreams,” the man says. He pulls my head back against the headrest and fastens a strap over the cap. “And then we are going to steal your emotions with this.”

He rubs at the base of my head with something wet. Then stabs something sharp into it. I shudder as I feel something move around under the skin.

I grit my teeth as the sensation continues for several seconds, then suddenly stops. “Why dreams?” I force out.

The lab coat man moves to the IV. “It is easier to get certain emotions out in a dream. And we’ve found that they tend to be more potent than when the subject is awake.” He attaches a needle to the IV and goes to my arm.

I try once more to break out of the straps before he wipes down the inside of my elbow and inserts the needle.

“So, what is on the menu today?” the man asks Falcon 1.0.

Falcon winces as the other lab coat man cleans his wound. Through the pain he says, “Fear. That’ll get him talking. And I want to watch what a Shadows Agent is afraid of.”

“Watch?” I strain to see the machine. All I can see is the screen on top. A screen. They can watch my dream.

“Let’s get started.” The lab coat man at the IV starts it dripping. My eyes start drooping immediately. A fog descends on my mind. And my eyes close entirely.

 

I breathe deep with eyes closed. The air is filled with the smell of piss and shit and blood. The smell is bad, but at least the screams have stopped. My arms and chest feel moist and warm. My hands are slick on the submachine gun in them.

I open my eyes and look down at the man beneath me. He’s barely recognizable beneath the blood and shredded flesh. He did not want to talk. But he did. He’s still alive, but only just. Time to fix that. One silent shot right through his eye.

My front is covered in blood. I can barely see the UDS on the front of my shirt. Good.

There’s going to be some obstacles between me and Mak. But I am surrounded by extra ammunition for my new weapon.

I strip the nearest dead men of their magazines until I have as many as my pockets can hold.

Sirens in the distance. It seems the Dream Harvesters are done holding off the guards. Or I have finally stepped beyond their power to do so. My interrogation was not in view of the cameras, but most of the rest of the bodies are. Time to get out of here.

“I’m coming Mak.”

 

“I’m here.”

I grin as smooth hands run across the back of my neck. I open my eyes and see my wife, Frey, walk around in front of me. Her black hair is braided over her shoulder. She wears one of my t-shirts. She gives me one of her heart-stealing smiles.

She moves in and plants her lips on mine. Their warmth, their pressure is welcome. Her scent floods over me. Her arms snake under mine and she pulls herself in close, her body pressing into mine. Her hand works its way up my back.

Searing pain shoots through my body from where her hand is. Cold metal piercing my skin and muscle. Blood seeps down my back.

Frey steps back from me. Her smile is more cruel than sweet now.

I flush, the pain in my twisting gut almost overpowering that in my back. Strength drains from my body and my knees collapse. I come down on them, but barely feel the impact. My eyes are fixed on my wife’s smiling face.

She turns to look to the side. The door slides up and Elian, my good friend, enters. I try to speak to him. To her. To anyone. But no words come. Why did she stab me? Help.

Elian looks me over, then moves to Frey and pulls her to him. Their lips lock. My heart plummets. I try to move, but my body doesn’t listen. I’m paralyzed.

It feels like forever before they break apart. They both shoot my a wicked grin, then make for the door. They stop in front of it. Elian rips my shirt off my wife, leaving her naked in front of him. She winks at me, then takes off his shirt.

I try to close my eyes, but am unable to do even that. I have to watch as my wife strips my friend, then leads him by the hand out the door.

I’m left alone. Tears stream down my face and blood down my back. The latter pools around my knees. I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know why I can’t move.

The door slides open again. And Rit enters.

I breathe a sigh of relief.

“Shit, what happened to you?” Rit asks. “Come on, let’s get you patched and cleaned up.”

He walks over to me and lifts me to my feet. Pain lances through my back as he draws the blade from my back. I look him in the face and try to say thank you.

Then his brains explode over me. Blood and flesh cover my face as his gets torn apart. He goes limp and collapses, dragging me with him. I can’t even scream. My heart pounds in my chest and my ears. My breath catches in my throat.

I can finally turn my head. I look for who shot Rit.

A tall figure stands nearby, pistol in its hand. It looks like a robot, all black and no face. But I’ve seen this figure before. It is a man. The Phantom. In full battlesuit.

The Phantom laughs. “At last, the Shadows are destroyed. You are the last Agent.”

How? We were winning.

“You think you were winning? You think Dyer had a plan that would defeat me? Whatever his plan, it died when I slit his throat along with John and Chris. Everyone is dead. I can now run free in the universe. No one can oppose me. Not once you die.” The Phantom raises his pistol to point it at me.

A darkness forms behind him. It spreads until I can’t see anything past the Phantom. Then it reaches him. He starts to scream. His back begins to dissolve, disappearing into darkness. It spreads forward, overtaking him until there is nothing left, not even the indestructible battlesuit.

The darkness continues to spread. Toward me.

I try everything to move. My heart threatens to break through my chest. My entire body feels cold. My stomach churns.

The darkness reaches Rit’s body and dissolves it.

My throat tightens. I can’t breathe, I can’t swallow.

It reaches my hand. The skin goes deathly cold. Then erupts in searing heat. As I watch, my fingers begin to break away in flecks of darkness. It travels up my arm.

I can’t fight it. I can’t move. I can scream.

And I do.

I scream.

 

The scream reverberates around the warehouse. It’s Mak. I know it is. And it’s coming from that door.

I stick a fresh magazine in my submachine gun. Only a few of them left. The rest of my ammunition I left in the bodies of any son of a bitch that thought he could stop me from saving my partner.

I step over my most recent victim and stride to the door. I push it open slowly. The scream gets louder. Nobody in the room seems to see me. Seven men besides Mak, who is strapped to a chair. Four goons, two science nerds and the first Falcon. The wound I gave the last is bandaged. Guess I need to give him another.

The Falcon and the two science nerds are standing over a screen on the table beside Mak.

“Interesting,” Falcon is saying. “That consuming darkness was in the last fear dream I watched. How frequent is it?”

“One hundred percent of fear dreams. We can’t explain it,” one of the science nerds says.

“We’ve almost got enough,” the other nerd says. He taps on a vial sticking out of the side of the screen thing. It is filled with black liquid.

“Good. Can someone see if they’ve killed this guy’s partner yet?” Falcon asks.

“They haven’t,” I snarl, shoving the door open the rest of the way. The Falcon’s face flushes. But I don’t take time to savor it, instead filling his chest with holes. And move on to the science nerd standing beside him. Then spin and put down two of the goons. My weapon clicks.

I throw it at one of the remaining goons, then rush after it and tackle him as he bats it away. I rip his weapon from his hand and shoot his comrade with it. And receive a punch to the face. I stumble sideways. He grabs his weapon and yanks. I hang on. He yanks again and I stumble toward him. Right into his headbutt.

I fall backward, into the table beside Mak. My hand finds the first thing it can grab: the vial full of black liquid. I tear it free of the machine and hurl it at the goon as he gets his finger back to the trigger. The vial smashes on his face, shredding one cheek. The black liquid seeps into the cuts. He freezes. His eyes widen.

“No!” the remaining nerd says. “That’s unrefined, it’ll kill him.”

I roll my eyes and pull the dead Falcon’s pistol from his thigh holster. I shoot the nerd in the nose.

The goon drops his weapon and starts to scream.

I ignore him and go to Mak. First I pull the IV from his arm. Then I move to the thing in the back of his head. One button. That’s promising. I push it and what looks like wires move around beneath his skin and retract into the machine. It seals the small incision it made then shoots back to the thing on the table. Thank goodness I didn’t have to do anything medical.

The goon is still standing there screaming. It is beginning to hurt my ears.

I walk back around in front of Mak. His eyes flutter open. They blink several times, then focus on me.

“Rit,” he says.

“I can’t believe you’re sleeping on the job,” I say with a smile. I pull off the cap on his head and undo the strap holding his forehead to the chair.

His lip twitches just slightly. He looks himself over, his eyes lingering on one arm. I unstrap that arm. After seemingly testing that hand, he unstraps the other.

The screaming behind me stops and there’s a thud.

“What happened to him?” Mak asks.

“Oh, I just scared him to death. Can you stand?”

He pushes himself out of the chair. He grimaces and his face pales, but he stays on his feet.

“You should swap out that bandage. I’ll see what what’s next,” I say. Stuffing the stolen pistol into my waistband, I retrieve my suppressed submachine gun. I restock on ammunition from the bodies around the room. Then I go to a door opposite the one I entered through.

My sights follow it as I push it open. A vacant room. The far wall is metal sheeting. The outside wall.

I shut the door and look back at Mak. He is finishing tying a strip of cloth on his shoulder. His face is white.

“We’re almost outside. What comes next?” I say.

Mak doesn’t react for several seconds, just stares at the wall. Then he shakes his head and closes his eyes. It takes longer than usual for him to open them again.

“There’s a central warehouse with no surveillance. That’s probably the hub. We might find Falcon two point oh and whatever they use to run this operation there,” he says finally.

“Good. Where’s your pistol?”

“Falcon two point oh took it I think. I’ll have to go unsuppressed.” Mak grabs a submachine gun and extra mags. He stops and looks at the machine on the table. “Shoot this thing.”

I oblige. It won’t be harvesting anyone else’s dreams.

Mak pushes open the door and walks through. I follow.

As we cross the empty room, he asks, “what happened since we parted?”

“Police came to our firefight spot. I got out of there first, don’t know what came of that. I cleared out a lot of this warehouse. A few other people being harvested. I left them to wake up on their own, but killed the guys harvesting them. There were a lot of them. I’m just glad I chose the right warehouse and found you.”

“That’s a lot of blood for shooting people,” Mak says, probably referring to the awesome stain on my front.

“Oh, I had to ask for directions.”

We reach the door in the outside wall. I set up near the hinges, aiming at the other side. Mak stands behind the wall and grabs the knob. Then he just stands there, blinking. Shit. Whatever they did messed with him.

“You good?” I ask.

He shakes his head hard. “Yeah. Let’s go.” He pushes the door open.

I step through the opening and he crosses behind me. We’re in a courtyard of sorts. Concrete ground, a few bare benches and tables. Sparse patches of vegetation. On the far side is another unassuming warehouse. Both buildings have several doors accessible from the courtyard. The courtyard is empty.

“That the warehouse?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“Just pick a door and go in?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

We walk side by side through the courtyard, taking turns visually checking the doors of the warehouse we left. Mak adjusts our path toward the door farthest to the right. We stop short of it. Mak rubs at his eyes.

“You sure you good to do this? You can stay and watch my back,” I say.

“I’m fine. Let’s get this over with,” he says.

I raise my submachine gun and he puts a hand on the door knob.

“Hey! You’re not- put your hands up!” Shit.

We turn. Two men are standing at the edge of the building. They are young. I doubt any military would take them. Yet they are pointing pistols at us.

I exchange a look with Mak.

“You don’t want to do this, boys,” I say.

“I said put your hands up!” one of them says. “No wait, put your guns down.”

I shake my head, but set my submachine gun on the ground. Mak does the same. He pauses with his hand on the ground, but stands after a long breath.

“Now put your hands up,” the boy says.

“Kid, if you walk away now, we won’t hurt you. But we have a mission and we will see it through,” I tell him.

“We’re the ones with the guns now. Get on the ground.”

I bite my lip. I don’t want to have to kill a kid. “You don’t know who we are, but we will kill you if you don’t walk away. I have already killed a lot of men today. Men with more experience than you. They couldn’t stop us and you won’t either. Walk away.”

Mak slumps against me.

“Don’t listen to him,” the second boy says. “We’ve got ‘em. And this is going to get us a big promotion. Besides, that guy doesn’t look like he’s going to be killing anyone.”

“Who? Him?” I look at Mak. “He’s fine, he’s just going for my pistol.”

Their eyebrows just start to rise before the pistol slides out of my waistband. A deafening blast and the first kid’s forearm explodes in a fountain of blood. It is immediately followed by a second shot. The other boy gets thrown backward by his shoulder, spewing his own fountain. Both go down screaming.

“We don’t have to kill everyone,” Mak says.

I open my mouth to respond. Movement in the corner of my eye draws my attention. The door beside us swings outward. I spin and kick it hard. It slams back on the person coming through. I scoop my submachine gun from the ground and fill the doorway with bullets as the door rebounds. Three men spurt blood and collapse.

“I think they know we’re here,” I say.

A door farther down on the warehouse opens.

“Inside?” I ask.

“Inside.”

I move for the close door. And see a grenade bounce up to one of the men I just dropped. Advanced grenade, customizable, the Phantom’s tech. I slam the door and jump back. Both Mak and I drop to a prone position.

There is a concussive blast and the door shakes on its hinges. It stays in place though.

Men stream out of the other exit. Bullets fly over our heads. I send a fusillade of my own, then roll to the door. One quick motion and I am throwing it open and stepping inside. Mak follows.

Trying to ignore the gore all around us, I find cover. A cart carrying wooden crates.

Mak overturns a gurney against the other wall and hides behind it. Not much protection. This needs to end quick.

I peek up over my cart. Three men are inside, another one is coming through the door. One of them has grenades strapped to his vest. Three of them. The other three men are in trench coats. There’s a door in the inside wall halfway between us.

A close miss sends me ducking back down behind cover.

“They don’t have cover,” I say.

“Just spray the hallway then?” Mak asks.

“That should work.”

We both lean out from behind our cover and let loose from our submachine guns. All four men down the hallway collapse.

“Reload,” Mak says, ducking back.

I keep my sights on the outer door while he reloads, then we swap. Nobody comes through that entrance.

“They’re coming around here, aren’t they?” I look at the door beside me.

“I would be. We should move,” Mak says.

We both stand. He stops and takes a couple of breaths, then we move toward the inner door.

“The grenades, grab them,” Mak says. He stops at the door while I move on to the bodies. One of the grenades has a hole in it. I take the other two and hurry back to Mak.

I hand both grenades to Mak, then lift my submachine gun. He pushes the door open. I step through.

 

I follow after Rit, making sure the grenades are secure in my pockets. The room we enter is massive. A storage room lined with of shelving units. Some are filled with dream harvesting machines–I shudder as the back of my head tingles–others have boxes marked with various emotions, some have ammunition and others just have cleaning supplies. All of the shelves are wooden. There is a sprinkler system along the roof with pipes running to where I assume there is a shutoff valve. We stand in an intersection of rows between shelving units.

In the center of the room is a raised platform that can see over all of the shelves. It has monitors all around it with people looking at the various screens and holograms. In the middle is Falcon 2.0.

“Should have taken Falcon one point oh’s rifle,” Rit says, “this place is a little big for a submachine gun. Doubt we’ll be able to land a hit on him easily.”

I stare up at Falcon 2.0. He fades out of focus. I take a sharp breath as a wave of nausea flows through me.

A gunshot.

I see Rit’s head explode. His blood and brains splatter over me.

“Mak!”

His voice snaps me back from the dream. Rit is crouched behind a shelf of boxes labeled “joy ”. Falcon is aiming at me with his rifle.

I duck and lunge behind the boxes with Rit.

“You good?” he asks.

“We need to destroy this place,” I say.

“Those grenades are customizable, right?”

I pull one out of my pocket. There are buttons on the side. I nod and look up at Rit. He has an eyebrow raised. I rub at my temples. The plan is just out of reach in the fog in my head.

“These shelves are wooden,” Rit prods.

“Right, yeah. There’s a sprinkler system though,” I say.

“I’ll take care of that. You stay here and watch that door until I come back. Then we light this place up.”

I nod.

Rit peeks out around the edge of the shelving unit. I find a gap between boxes and look to Falcon. The man is aiming at Rit, but isn’t shooting. After a few moments, he lowers his rifle. Rit turns and smiles at me.

“I don’t think he wants to risk destroying his wares,” Rit says.

“When he figures out what we’re doing, that’ll probably change. So be quick,” I say.

“Always am.” Rit stands up, then stops. “In missions only.”

I blink at him.

“Right, I’m going.” He darts across the gap to the next shelving unit. There’s a bang and concrete flies from the ground where a bullet strikes behind him. “This is going to be fun!”

I watch him leap to the next shelf, then I settle onto my rear, kicking my legs out in front of me. My shoulders sag and I let out a breath.

A few more gunshots fill the spacious room, one at a time.

The door in front of me opens. I raise my weapon and squeeze the trigger. A body falls into the room. Bullets come in after.

I duck. Chips of wood rain down over my head and the shattering of glass fills my ears. Liquid pours out onto me. I scramble away from the destroyed crate above me.

Another man steps through the door and I extract my arm from under me and shoot the man. He dies.

“Stop shooting the product!” Falcon’s voice fills the warehouse. “I will handle them!”

The door shuts. I take a deep breath.

“You really expect to handle us?” Rit calls. “There are two of us.”

“I can see exactly where you are and you can’t leave without my men killing you,” Falcon responds.

“Yeah, well, your sprinkler systems are offline!”

There’s no response from Falcon. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with that. But I do. I pull one of the grenades out of my pocket and press the right buttons. I pick a shelf a few rows away. Then I throw.

With closed eyes, I turn my back. A flash of heat hits me. The heat then lessens, but does not disappear.

“No!” Falcon shouts. “Kill them. Find water and kill them!”

I open my eyes in time to see the door starting to open again. I take aim and shoot. Someone drops. Then another. Then my weapon clicks.

I reach for an extra magazine, but my shoulder screams. My vision blurs and I sway. I drop the weapon and catch myself with my good hand.

The door opens and a weapon pokes through. I shake my head and look for my submachine gun. Too late. The other weapon swings toward me.

And a body falls through the door.

“Pick that thing up, come on!” Rit shouts in my ear as he bounds across the open space in front of the door.

I rub at my eyes, then snatch up my submachine gun. My legs threaten to give and my head screams at me, but I get onto my feet.

“You’ve got another one of those things, right?” Rit asks, nodding behind me.

I turn and see a shelving unit up in flames. The flames lick lustfully at the shelves on either side. As I watch, a spark catches and another unit goes up. The sound of exploding glass fills the air.

I nod at Rit and reach for the last grenade. My arm refuses to cooperate. “It’s in my pocket,” I say.

Rit plunges a hand into my pocket and retrieves the grenade. He presses the buttons and looks at me. “There’s an exit near the sprinkler system. Can you run there?”

“I’ll do my best,” I respond.

“Good, then let’s go.” He hurls the grenade over the shelves we’re hiding behind. “I’ll cover, you go.”

Rit leans around the shelf and shoots at Falcon.

I scurry across the opening between shelves. On the other side, I turn and aim at the door. No one comes through, perhaps they all went for water.

Rit follows me across. We repeat the cycle for several more gaps. The smoke starts to fill the room, blocking our view of the center.

“What say we risk just going for it, none of this leapfrog shit now that we have smoke cover?” Rit asks.

I open my mouth the respond, but get a mouthful of smoke and start coughing. Each cough sends spikes of pain through my shoulder. I nod.

Rit moves ahead of me, staying close enough that I don’t lose him in the thickening smoke. I look back at regular intervals, making sure we aren’t followed.

“Almost there,” Rit says, “it’s just-”

There’s an explosion just ahead of us. The shelving unit we’re coming up to tips and crashes to the ground, throwing a collection of the harvesting machines across the floor.

“Guess he doesn’t care about protecting his product anymore,” Rit says and starts to climb over the fallen shelf.

A gunshot forces him back. The bullet slams into one of the fallen machines, showering the dark smoke with orange sparks.

We retreat to the last shelf.

“He’s not going to let us through that way,” Rit says. “We need to find another way.”

I turn around and look at the cloud of smoke. It covers the entire roof, but a thick, dark curtain rolls toward us from where the fires started. It looks like the Deep darkness from the dream. I can see it stretching out toward me. Over the Phantom. Dissolving him. Getting me. My heart pounds, head and shoulder throbbing.

“Or we kill him. Let’s try that first,” Rit says, pulling me back.

“Be quick about it,” I say, closing my eyes and sagging against the shelf.

A flurry of gunfire sounds from near the fire. It must have reached one of the shelves holding ammunition. I crouch down behind a crate marked “anger”.

Rit uses the distraction to step out and let loose a flurry of his own. Two shots answer, driving him back behind cover.

“Didn’t get him,” Rit says.

There’s another explosion and the lights go out in the building. We’re left in a gloomy world of black and pulsating orange. Someone screams and keeps screaming. We don’t move.

The fire draws closer. I can feel the heat searing my skin. It adds to the pain already ruling over my body. The smoke clogs up my brain and turns my breaths into wheezes.

“He just went through the door,” Rit finally says. “Do we risk going after him?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Then come on.” He jumps over the legs of the fallen shelving unit and strides across to the other side, where he bounds out.

I follow, moving one leg over at a time. My steps are nearer shuffles than leaps.

At the door, which is another two shelves away, Rit stops. “He could be right on the other side.”

“Then make sure you kill him first,” I say.

Rit shakes his head and rubs at his temples. “Lay down.”

“We need to get out of here.”

“Lay down, beneath the smoke as much as possible.”

I scowl, but get onto my knees, then prone. My breaths come easier, but still choked by heat and smoke.

I watch as Rit stacks two crates behind the door. I can’t read the label. He crouches behind them and pushes. The door budges open. The smoke floods through the door, getting sucked into the hallway beyond. A couple of bullets come in, getting stuck in the crates. Rit remains crouched behind the cover. We wait as the smoke continues to fill the hallway. My lungs burn and my eyes water.

“Alright, come on,” Rit says, his voice hoarse and choked. He pushes the door open wider and waves me through. I crawl along the ground as best I can into the hallway thick with smoke. I find a cart on the outside wall and get up onto my knees beside it, praying the Falcon isn’t behind me. Rit scoots his two crates out from behind the door and into the hallway for his cover. The door swings shut, leaving us in near total darkness.

My chest constricts, the image of the Deep darkness taking me again. My breaths speed up, ushering smoke into my lungs. I break into a coughing fit.

Rit scans the hallway behind us, but there’s little chance he’ll see anything through the dark and smoke.

“Which way to the nearest door you think?” he asks.

I close my burning eyes and try to conjure up Chaser’s map. It is fragmented and fuzzy. I find the warehouses. The Phantom shoots Rit.

My eyes snap open and I suck in a massive gulp of smoke.

“You good?” Rit asks.

I can’t respond, my throat dry and blocked.

Something bounces on the ground ahead of us, the sound just audible through the crashes and explosions in the other room. I narrow my eyes.

Then a bright flash fills the hallway and I am slammed into the wall. Pain screams through my body.

Rit’s crates topple over on top of him. He cries out. His weapon skids across the floor.

I bite my lip and tuck my submachine gun to my shoulder. With the imprint of the flash still on my eyes, I lean around the cart.

The darkness is broken by a point of light softened in the smoke. A vague silhouette of a man stands in the center. His head turns toward me. With every ounce of strength left in my good arm, I raise my weapon. Through the smoke and my watering eyes, I line up the sights. And squeeze the trigger.

And miss.

I keep the trigger squeezed. The third shot hits. The silhouette jerks sideways and crumples. He must have fallen into the door, because the light remains.

I drop the submachine gun and look at Rit. He is pushing the crates off of himself. Neither of us attempt to speak as he stands and grabs his weapon. He puts and hand around my waist and I throw my good arm over his shoulder. We hobble toward the light.

The body holding open the door is Falcon 2.0. We won.

I gasp in the more fresh air outside the building and we both collapse to our knees. I topple onto my side and coughs wrack my body. I can just see lab coat-wearing men standing around with their hands on their heads. A few in trench coats watch us, but they don’t move to harm us. Sirens fill the air.

My eyes fall shut after I see a fleet of vehicles, mostly guards’ and firefighters’, flood into the area. Shouts to put weapons down. Someone says we’re under arrest. The voices and sirens and explosions aren’t enough to keep me from slipping into unconsciousness.

 
 

I had EL19 claim to be of Blind Unit as you ordered. They were released and thanked.
Yes, an emergency vote was held in reaction to my leak that the security seat was held by a Dream Harvester. He has been ousted. EL19 are bringing him in to see what he knows of other operations.
I succeeded in getting placed on the jury and swayed the others. Blind Unit will be given the security seat. You may place whatever Agent you wish on the council. You have achieved taking Tumbar from the Phantom and with it a large portion of his funding. His noose tightens.