Chapter 3: A Mother's Touch

Sarah leaned down to pick her helmet off the floor next to where she’d been, as she held onto Max by the hand. At this point he was a walking weapons platform, with two rifles on his back a grenade launched magnetically clamped to his lower back away from obvious weapons fire, a pistol holstered on his right hip by the same means, including a combat knife on his left one, although this one was marginally smaller, but coated in dried blood from the recent heads he’d had to sever, in their recent plot, which he even now inspected so he could retrieve the magnetic discs lodged inside incised cuts, as he held one up said “this is how I knew where to shoot, the “penetrator” rounds we designed that have a magnetic attraction to the force of the disks as he showed it off by dropping it mid air as it was drawn to his wargear with ease over the less concentrated metallic conductors like the agents guns and even some tactical gear on active SWAT members around then, knowing when they were hunting their own they’d have a much higher concentration of conductive metal in the sleeper agents armour attracting them by much higher degrees than anyone else in the vicinity, mixed in with the other polymers used to fortify their gear beyond anyone else’s, current understanding, along with the aided use of the amplifying discs, having tailored these rounds not just to penetrate anything as thick as concrete but the targets behind it, such as five prone and now headless figures bleeding out onto the floor attested.

As he looked around, he was tempted to retrieve at least one of the miniguns, but decided against it, the weapon was too unwieldy especially if he wanted to stay even slightly mobile after this. Hartwell handed him his helmet back as Max gratefully took it and slid it over his head eagerly. Sarah knew how hard it was for him to live without the custom-fitted piece of his armoury when in combat conditions, which was a more than welcome regular occurrence, in the same way she struggled to ever let go of her knife, as she simply said “we need to get moving”, before slotting on her own helmet back in place over her head, after tucking her hair into the flexible collar of her neck, that had come loose during her near rampage. “Has the server room been compromised? Are there any more traps that your aware of? Or any more sleeper agents roaming around?” she asked inquisitively, her head tilting slightly in an almost avian gesture of piqued interests in his reactions and responses.

The director looked at her, then at Max, and then back at Clara, before finally nodding his head. “No, the server room hasn’t been compromised, we have a team stationed there now, and they’ve secured the perimeter and are awaiting further orders. They were trying to break me before bothering with the room itself, as a result...” he said as he indicated to the handful of bodies of sacrificed agents spread around him. “He made me watch as he shot them over and over again, aiming for non-vital areas, until he executed them, one at a time in succession. The least I could do was honour their sacrifice by witnessing it and not giving in, they understood that this was about more than just themselves”, he said with a steely glint in his eyes that testified to the fact that he had in some way or form, been in active service in the military, navy, air force, some branch that had lent him a perspective unmarred by selfish or self-deluded notions of heroism and left him only with it’s necessary truth at its core.

“Sometimes people die”, Max said sombrely “and just sometimes those who live find the will to avenge them, whether by a bullet a blade or a law that holds the person accountable”, he added. “I see all three of those elements collected in this room”, he said plainly, “all we require is the go ahead or a reason to stand down”, he said “my only advice, consider what’s happening in this room on a global scale, for starters every law enforcement office in the country, then once again shrink it down to every FBI field office, there are currently fifty five of them active from my understanding, and possibly none of them are fairing as well as we are, except maybe the one in Washington, so maybe we count this as the first two hours of a very long day, and we keep visiting and organizing resistance of each which can physically get to today before regroup until tomorrow. My understanding though is their not here to capture the building on a permanent basis or in other words their here to “cripple” you for long enough so you have to retreat back to the safer core of your operations so they can probably eliminate you along the way with hit and run guerrilla tactics or eventually just strike at the main headquarters on their own terms, not yours”, he said as if speaking from experience.

“What we do know”, Sarah bean “is we need a long-term safe house that doesn’t have a digital footprint that can be traced as we debrief you and anyone you see fit in accompanying us, currently I can speak on our behalf...”, she said indicating to both Max and herself “ ... by recommending and vouching for agents Clara Ozwynn and Walter Lowe, they have been with us since before she first contacted you via phone call, in the ground floor based interrogation room and so far they seem perfectly able to accept and direct command over the situation along with the coordination of the agents you see here, which have not faltered, even when faced with the most extreme of circumstances as those you have yet to imagine, but you will begin to, as they also debrief you in time”, she said, her surprisingly diplomatic tone catching them all off guard except for Max who squeezed her shoulder thoughtfully, as she panned her head up at him in turn, with what they could only imagine was a thoughtful look, which Max knew for certain it was after fighting alongside her over the past week more than not, often relying on her body language alone over a lack of facial expression to communicate when radio contact wasn’t swift enough to relay information, therefore things like expressing concern or other emotions through bodily gestures along with sign language whenever they felt obvious communication was compromised or too easily intercepted, had been key to their survival along with an innate trust in one another.

“That”, Max added “And obviously our families would need immediate relocation. In Sarah’s case her husband and children, which for all intents and purposes would be better off moving into the safehouse with us, so as not to compromise her fighting ability and my case I’m a currently not affiliated with anyone outside this room”, he said turning his head towards Sarah thoughtfully “and at most I’d recommend relocating my parents separately without debriefing me as to where in case that knowledge can be used against me”, he said not in a cold-hearted way, just a logical and pragmatic one that made everyone in the room understand that this was not a typical operation anymore. “Apart from that, we’d need it to have a workshop for further optimization and maintenance of our gear and armaments”, he said simply.

The director nodded, the gravity of the situation not lost on him as he spoke into his radio, giving orders for the relocation and setting up the safe house. The room was filled with a sudden buzz of activity as the agents around them snapped into gear, following the new orders with a newfound sense of urgency. Clara and Walter exchanged a look, a silent acknowledgment of the trust they had placed in Max and Sarah. The duo had proven themselves, not just in their ability to weather the psychological stress compounded into them, but to lead others effectively who suffered the from its same effects, something that they had been much need of since the beginning of their ordeal and would be again before the days end, since the beginning of this nightmare as they recovered more agents along the upper floors in the effort to secure the building.

“Just how ... what level of threat are we looking at here”, Walter asked, keeping his voice steady as Max pointed to one of the now turned off TV’s mounted via a weight bearing arm in the side of the room. “As soon as this “skirmish” is over, the “real” threat will make its presence felt by doing the one thing no single leader of the world could do by itself, and considering how many agencies and government complexes it had to infiltrate successfully to get it done, aside from this one of course, it’ll give you a taste of their overall reach and agenda”, he stated flatly, as Sarah added “It’ll be unexpected but you’ll see a series of reports highlighting the infiltration of nuclear weapons stations and silos’ targeting the current nuclear arsenals in all available countries worldwide, the more sophisticated, the more likely they’ll be prioritized first over the more rudimentary ones. It’s the reason they didn’t take you out immediately, they needed to make sure they had access to everything they could possible, as they’ve probably already attacked and infiltrated the offices of the Homeland Security department in this very building which we should go about securing and figuring out if they managed to...”, she looked around at the handful of dead FBI agents bodies “ ... for lack of a better word “hack” their way into their own sensitive depositories of data. If they attacked you...”, she said indicating the director Hartwell “their going to attack the Homeland Security equivalent in this building, along with notable National security operatives in their own field offices, with members of the Central Intelligence Agency, along with anyone in the Department of Defence they deem necessary targets to demoralize a nation by virtually whipping out confidence in its internal security infrastructure”, she stated matter of fact.

“More than anything “they” want to neutralize the threat of nuclear retaliation in any way, on real or perceived enemies, and most likely will launch the missiles into space with a calculated trajectory towards the sun, which will be like launching a pebble into the ocean for it”, Max stated. “Those that can’t be launched this way will either be converted given the time to do so or they’ll manage to “allocate” certain government resources to transport and then execute these weapons harmlessly into places like open deserts or oceans, eliminating their potential destructive capabilities. They won’t work to stockpile or allow anyone to produce anymore, they’ll be depending on “conventional” warfare in whatever form that takes other than nuclear”, he stated, his tone equally matter of fact as Sarah’s had been, as he reached out with his open hand towards a remote placed haphazardly on a nearby desk, as it flew into his magnetized grip with ease, before he pointed it at the TV screen mounted on the wall, a red LED showing off it still had functional power source as he turned it on. The gesture of power was not lost on anyone, as the director nodded sombrely, his face a mask of understanding and horror, as the first new reels began to scroll over the screen as seemingly panicked news anchors trying to maintain their composure and failing, reported the chaos that had been unfurling across the nation. “You need to make a statement, use the Manhattan field office to anchor everyone to some level of stability”, Sarah said as they watched the chaos unfold.

The director took a deep breath and nodded, his face a mask of determination. “I’ll get on it immediately, but we need to move quickly,” he said, gesturing towards the secure line in his office. As he entered it and dialled the number, the room fell silent, the gravity of the situation weighing heavily on everyone present. “Meanwhile me, Max and handful of “composed agents”, she said looking around knowing some were obviously too nerve wrecked or too exhausted to be of any immediate use “will go and secure the Homeland Security department, we’re going to need all hands on deck for that, Clara and Walter should come with us, as potential “liaisons” between departments, because I doubt we’ll be eligible for that level of subtle diplomacy any time soon”, she said as she started looking up and down at Max’s gore splattered and blood stained frame as he did the same to hers with calculating eyes wondering how much internal damage she had really suffered so far that had been suppressed by the suit and essentially removed by the “contingent’s” chemical solution.

“We also advise you do the save with server room in person and allow the SWAT team there know your fine and not being coerced into doing anything, allowing them to stand down for the time being but that they should remain on alert in case of surprise attack until every floor in the building is recovered securely”, Max stated. Allot of the agents they saw now, had actually funnelled down in the initial chaos and anarchy only to be caught in the crossfire of turned SWAT members, alongside other employees evacuating from the Department of Health and Human Services, the Social Security Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Federal Executive Board. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’.

It was basically a mess of random people both living and dead and they still had eighteen floors to run through up ahead. The idea of contacting other departments for help had obviously been floated around but with the obvious incursion of sleeper agents, no one had been willing to trust anything beyond what they were able to see and act on themselves, which was understandable and why they tried to stay together as a whole, the majority of which now was made up of non-FBI agents from the other working departments in the building and had never held a gun in their lives, compared to the solid few who had and were now unlikely to be any support unless they could stomach almost another twenty floors of this same mayhem they had already been forced to witness in its aftermath let alone whatever the infiltrators had planned for them. “We won’t lie and tell you there won’t be more “traps”, as a result we might have to resort to more gruesome ways of bypassing them, as we’ve had to already, namely in the most dire cases involving “genetic, infrared or motion” sensors which we have to feed corpses to, just to get here”, Max said plainly. “With permission from the other agents of course, seeing as we had no counter measure for “Ogre’s”...” Sarah said as she nudged the dead spider operative with her boot “ ... particular specialty in warfare, which would have been otherwise like walking into a handy garrotte wire meat grinder that took just under ten corpses to clear a floor after we shredded both the overtaxed cables and pneumatic motors, just to give you an idea of their tactics”, Sarah added.

“Before we do anything long-term we’ll head up, with anyone here and along the way that is both capable enough and willing to aid us, otherwise anyone we meet who are either medically or for any other qualifying reason unfit to do so, we will send them back down here. My advice is to vet everyone here, make sure everyone is who they say they are with authenticated credentials, as part of the buildings official personnel for one. “They” like to keep an eye on things with troops on the ground even when they fail”, he said, as Sarah nodded in agreement, “they like to keep a tally so they can adjust and compensate with enough allocation of force and units to their evolving methods as they learn to project a working solution for future problems they’ll predict they encounter by dissecting past mistakes”, she said.

The director nodded, understanding the gravity of the situation, as he made his call. Max and Sarah exchanged a knowing look, they had been through hell and back and it was clear to both of them that it was far from over, but with every step they had taken they had become more than just two lost prototypes looking for a way out of the nightmare that was their life. They had become a catalyst for a change that neither of them had anticipated. “I’m gonna’ need your full names”, the director said to both of them before he added “for the record, I want to be sure we know exactly who we are dealing with here.”

Both of them nodded in agreement “Max Mercer”, he said indicating to himself “Sarah Reed”, she said doing the same.

The director scribbled their names down on a notepad with a pen that felt far too small in his hand for the weight of the information it now held. He paused for a moment, looking from Max to Sarah and back again, as if trying to fully grasp the implications of what he had just heard. “Understood,” he said finally, his voice firm. “I’ll have the necessary protocols initiated immediately so we can...”, his voice trailed off as he seemed to stare into space for a second as all of them faced the same direction he was, noting the TV had shifted to a live feed where seemingly airborne projectiles had been spotted leaving the earth’s atmosphere, their contrails cutting across the afternoon sky as they watched objects too lethal to be simple planes race off into the sky headed for ... the sun.”And there they go”, Sarah said as if she were calling a horse race as she watched the news anchor stumble over their words trying to explain the sudden, unexpected event. Soon more missiles on a global scale began to form a steady bee-line for the sun, as the worlds most powerful and deadly arsenals were emptied in favour of the enemy’s preferred battlefield, chaos and confusion. Max and Sarah watched the agents around them seem to wither on spot, looking for cracks in their reactions knowing at least one of them must be a sleeper agent but not knowing who until they had a way of weeding them out. Sarah knew much like Max that it could be anyone, even someone like Clara and Walter, who both stood mouths equally agape, as both former sleeper agents stirred the group out of its reverie, as Sarah nudged the director with a squeeze of her hand on his arm indicating with her other hand as she raised it roughly around where her mouth should be with a curled index and thumb finger indicating he should take charge and snap them all out of with a high-pitched whistle, as he did so, everyone’s eyes snapped to him and they all visibly straightened their backs, as if bracing themselves for what was to come, before he offered them a few words of encouragement and a brief outline of their new mission as he said “We need to make sure that those whom we’ve lost today get a decent remembrance, a decent burial to honour them and that fact that they gave their lives in the hope we might not have to, that we might yet fight to see a day where the horrors witnessed, can only be remembered as the day we grew closer together, not further apart as a result of the incursion we’ve endured. We’re going to need to move quickly,” he said, his voice echoing through the room. “We can’t let the enemy think they’ve won. We’ll target the Homeland Security department first, and then we’ll reassess from there as we aim to re-secure the building.” The agents nodded, their fear replaced with a newfound determination. Clara and Walter stepped forward, ready to follow Max and Sarah into the fray once again despite their own personal reserves about what more they’d come into contact with. They knew that their skills were needed now more than ever, providing a human face to their monstrous element, as good chunks of their armour were beginning to smell like fresh corpse meat, and the distinct and coppery sweetness was being replaced by a stronger more potent odour of lingering death that spoke of prolonged exposure to decay.

They moved through to the stairway, passing the aftermath of the ‘Spider’ agents’ handiwork, a grim reminder of what they were fighting against. Max and Sarah led the way, their eyes scanning the environment for any signs of traps or remaining threats. Despite the horrors around them, their steps were swift and sure, their focus unwavering. The group encountered survivors, some of them injured and all of them traumatized, huddled in makeshift shelters of empty rooms and side offices. Clara and Walter by way of explanation of the day’s events provided some comfort to each member of the adjoining departments work force they funnelled down to the twenty third floor, whilst Sarah and Max, provided by their silent presence alone, offered a sense of protection and stability amidst the chaos. When asked if there were any more noticeable agents killing off or rounding up people in the floors ahead, they replied with a firm “No,” but the underlying tension in their eyes and the tightness of their jaws spoke volumes of the unspoken “yet”.

“More than likely a separate “Spider” operative, they don’t like working together, too many daggers and too many backs to sink them in, even if it’s just their own. They’ll follow orders but they “don’t play well” with others, their more like solitary predators like a sniper who refuses to be caught running in plain sight and be made a target when he could just relocate stealthily”, Max said. “But when they have to, they have to”, Sarah said “My own class isn’t designed to work in smaller groups, we prefer the more “advantageous” level of destruction that can be achieved as a more well organized platoons or above”, she said with more than a hint of a smile on her voice before Max chimed in and said “they call them “Furies” like from Greek mythological legends, they are the apex in co-ordinated ground personnel warfare, they move they lightning and seem to surf through the air on when their fully equipped with all the right “instruments”, he hinted at cryptically. “In their original assignment to a task, they were considered the elite, if they came after you, you might aswell have signed over your own death certificate then and there, even the “Chiroptera” class, who were similarly built male counterparts, specializing in terror tactics, were not in my opinion anywhere near their fighting capability or graceful form. I’m sure Sarah would have made an elite Fury captain, without any doubt”, he said teasingly as he nudged her playfully with his elbow.

Sarah in turn simply said “stop it, your embarrassing me”, she said in a tone that indicated she was blushing from the sound of her voice as she nudged him right back with her own elbow as she released light hearted chuckle. “What about you”, she said as they maintained a steady defensive formation into the next floor having proceeded through the stairwell cautiously with no sign of traps of other agents, either lethal or friendly, with Clara and Walter in toe behind them, along with several other agents, including armed members of SWAT that had made it this far from the original six man group that had travelled with them from the interrogation room. “You wanna’ become a “Chiroptera” and soar through the skies?” she said, an obvious smile in her words as she said them before he answered simply “only if I get to share them with you”.

Their banter, while seemingly out of place in such dire circumstances, served as a morale booster for the agents that had witnessed them in combat, they had seen their effectiveness, and their humanity, something that had been lost on them since the beginning of the attack. It was a stark reminder that even in the face of such horrors, there was a time and a place for humour, for connection and for hope, even if they didn’t understand the context for their conversation, they understood it was rooted in the culture of war they’d been brainwashed in, used as a form of coping mechanism to deal with the sheer scale of death that was all around them. “Okay I have to ask”, Walter said “before the curiosity or something else kills me, what is a “Chiroptera”, to which Max simply said with a newly hardened tone, with a hint of natural trepidation underlying it “pray you never have to find out”, before Sarah added with a softer more understanding tone, knowing they were just understandably curious “the term is just a adaptation from the Latin word for “hand wing”, which as you can probably imagine does not attach a very “happy” mental picture to it. They were extremists, even amongst our own; they were cruel and violent, out of hand in general, some though their best pushed through these “defining” qualities to make them more than just a bunch of “wailing demons” waiting to put you down. They were men first and monsters second, it probably didn’t help though that the “mobile suits” they donned began to wear them instead, at one point they became trapped in them and they truly did become demons of sorts”, she said with a suddenly tired note in her voice. “It’s one of the darker parts of the “Cultura Wars”, they programmed it in like a mental history lesson, with endless dossiers acting as examples to be recalled at once”, he said noting her exhaustion “it’s like having a living library in your head, hosting a whole armies worth of the dead and gone, screaming in your head for attention sometimes as you have the same conversations with yourself over and over as you review the information, it can get ... taxing, which is why debriefing at a safehouse will likely require much needed rest afterwards, we’ll be able to grab onto that to allow us to relax and process what’s gone on here today”, he said.

“But you keep talking about it like it’s already happened, but I remember no conflict large or localized enough which constituted the usage of advanced weaponry like what you’ve described or even what you have on you at the moment”, Clara stated as she halted the groups advance, unable to let the issue lie still. “Yet you keep referring it in a past tense, like it’s already happened regardless. Hinting at either a massive conspiracy to hide unknown war of which no one at least none in the FBI know about or...”, Max and Sarah let the insinuation hang in the air before he said “keep going, your almost there, if I tell you you’re right, then you truly will believe I’ve gone mad, I essentially need “Alice in Wonderland” to say the words that are burning to come out of me, but simply telling you won’t be enough anymore, you have to start accepting the truth, at least in small non-lethal bites for now, he said, as Sarah agreed with a simple nod.

“So your saying these events, this war has happened, but “we” haven’t and essentially no one else has learned of it yet because it’s been covered up by whole governments?” she said as Max and Sarah jointly released an exasperated sigh. “No”, Sarah said “But close ... I guess”, before she added “this isn’t a government cover up, no current super power or otherwise has the ability to conceal something were discussing like we’ve lived it and yet we couldn’t have because we’ve only been active as “agents” for about three months of training and a week of “active duty” before we defected. The imprinted knowledge stowed in our brains and applied learning we can take advantage of from it doesn’t refer to any “current” war, hint, hint”, she said with what Clara and Walter knew was a definite smile on her lips.

“But if not a “current” war, then what?” Walter asked as he cocked his head to one side as he took in her words, trying to piece together the puzzle that was their past. “We’ll it’s nothing as stupid as a computer simulation, that would be lame”, Max said flatly, “otherwise where would we get the suits, the knowledge, the behavioural modification and indoctrination to compensate for all the potential PTSD running around this place”, he said indicating around the desiccated and destroyed floors they’d made it so far through in general. “The best we can do for now, is let you sit on this information until we all debrief later on at the secured safehouse, the director is setting up right now, we need to focus on the immediate threat and appreciate there are some things better left said behind closed doors, at least for now. Eventually for the sake of survival the government will release this same information we have to give you, but not before we have a tighter grasp on a reformed infrastructure”, Max said before Sarah added “trust me it only gets worse from here”, she said, the ever present smile on her voice carrying into her words before she said “but that’s why we’re here, we saw what “they” were planning and the outright horror of it all compelled us to act and risk this gamble, which so far has succeeded nicely, but we need more organization and more than just two former sleeper agents like us to help you through this, allot more”, she said steadily, as Clara and Walter shared a look of understanding, they knew that Max and Sarah had seen something that was so monstrous, so large scale that it had made them turn on their own, and if it was as bad as they were implying, it was something they’d need to be prepared for, something that could change the face of their world forever.

Although a few pockets of resistance did present themselves in the form of tactical SWAT turned sleeper agents, the level of retaliation was minimal compared to what they’d expected, by the time they reach the Homeland Security offices some ten floors up from the main FBI office, they found out why, they had essentially gotten what they had come for. When they had failed to take the FBI field offices server room they had pushed their initiative here to secure a victory no matter the cost or the method. Before even stepping into the room, knowing a “Spider” operative had likely been there, they tested the room first with spit, attracting any number of garrotte fibres flying from the walls as if possessing and unnatural life of their own as they snatched the genetic material, hungrily searching for new prey, before they started feeding it the bodies of turned tactical agents, with a tired sign of acceptance and overall consensus that “Spiders” were now their newly found and eternally lamented enemy. “Trust me, they’ve probably left some “surprises” inside”, Max said bitterly “they’ll likely arm the corpses we’ll find like small treasure troves of explosives.”Remember what they did in the Caribbean, with the chess board?” Sarah said with an obvious smile of appreciation for the macabre on her lips. “On my god yes, I swear if they did that here, I am playing them right now, in a full bomb-squad gear, just in case I lose”, he said almost eager. “You mean for when not if you lose”, she joked darkly, as they heard her laugh echo through her helmet just as Clara and Walter shared a look that tempted eachother to ask the question they were almost afraid to, before Sarah obliged for their sense of security.