Chapter One
The sunset blazed against the High Zaphias skyline, edging the tall buildings in liquid gold as the dark haired young man watched from his perch, bathed in the warm light that caused the intense purple highlights of his hair to shine. He was the picture of serenity, his dark violet eyes half lidded and long locks swaying in the breeze.
A beautiful beginning to the night he loved.
Yuri Lowell, twenty two years old, a lifelong resident of Lower Zaphias and all around good guy in the eyes of his neighbors.
Even if they had absolutely no idea what he did for a living.
As the last of the sun's rays died beyond the skyline, the cell phone at the young man's belt chirped. He flipped it open and held it up.
"Yo, what's up?" he asked.
'Agent Ashce, report to base immediately for your assignment.'
"Understood." he said, and snapped the phone shut.
Of course, his neighbors would never believe he was a secret underground agent even if he told them.
Vaulting off his perch on the edge of the roof he landed catlike on the fire escape outside his apartment window and headed in. Five minutes later he reemerged with a duffle bag slung over his shoulder and locked the window behind him. With a leap he sprang off the railing and off the walls to the ground eight floors below.
No one knew what he could do, nor did he want them to know...
People tended to keep their heads on their shoulders better that way.
A short walk down the block had him standing in front of an office building, one that housed the entrance to a hidden underground garage. He waved to the guard, swiped a key card, and went inside, through a disguised door, and down a flight of stairs.
"Mornin' Sooty!"
Yuri tensed at the name, and glared at the offending speaker. "David, for the last time, don't call me that!"
David, or Davy as he preferred, grinned at him. He was a weedy guy, short, and with an untamable mop of dirty blond hair that made him look five years younger than his twenty years.
"Aww, don't be like that! It's a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky and no moon out, gorgeous!"
Yuri sweatdropped at the utter bubbliness of the man. "Says the guy on desk duty underground." he drawled. "And if you don't stop calling me that ridiculous name you'll find your twiggy ass booted out onto the field in your underwear."
Davy quailed under Yuri's dark gaze, but relented and meekly handed the taller man a set of keys. "Vehicle Thirteen sir."
The underground garages were caches of vehicles for agents, all with interchangeable plates and high performance upgrades, from the mundane to the muscle to the exotic, take your pick.
Yuri's personal favorites were darkly painted sport cars and a particular black and red motorcycle. He loved that bike, particularly on the rare occasions he needed to be seen.
But alas, tonight was not a bike night. More than likely he'd need the cover the more common car provided, given that it was assigned tonight. He always had a sort of forewarning by what kind of vehicle he was told to use before an assignment, and if was right, tonight was a 'very likely to get caught, shot at, and chased to hell and back' kind of thing.
'Number Thirteen' was a throughly uninteresting looking car, the kind the average joe drove, a compact black car, but with an low-reflective black finish and quite a few interesting gizmos, some of which promised quite a bit of pain to a pursuer. The fact that he was given this car for the night sent a shiver up Yuri's spine, it wasn't labeled with the unlucky number for nothing.
Swallowing his trepidation, he got in the car and set out along an underground tunnel to the base outpost.
A ride down an elevator and a short walk through a couple security checkpoints had Yuri standing in his superior's office.
"Welcome, Agent Ashce." came a rough, but oddly feminine voice.
"You called, Commander Cerius?"
Commander Cerius was an unusual woman, tall, with a powerful frame, ice-blue hair pulled into stiff loops at the sides of her head, and apparently an extreme distaste for normal, daylight hours. She supposedly had a sister not unlike herself on another continent in the agency, but no one knew for certain.
"I have." she growled, eyes narrowed. "Your services are desperately required tonight Agent Ashce, no other operative has the skills necessary to pull this off."
Yuri frowned. 'Great, here we go again...', he mused.
"Your objective," Cerius continued, pulling out a file and tossing it down on her desk, "is to infiltrate the South Aspio research facility and retrieve the new blastia project. This is a matter of national security!"
Yuri opened the file and scanned it's contents, eyes widening in shock as he saw the specs drawn there. "You...you can't be serious!"
"Very serious Agent Ashce. This new blastia could mean we'll have a war on our hands if it is completed and mass produced. These 'Hopelon' blastia can apparently level a city! Get out there, retrieve the project and destroy the research at all costs!"
He snapped to attention immediately. "Yes Ma'am!"
"Get going."
Clutching the file, he sped from the office to the armory. Skidding around a corner he dodged a paper-laden tech before reached his goal.
"Eve! Mission!" he yelled into the maze of weapon racks and shelves.
"Ashce? Whazzup?" replied a girlish voice, and a head of frizzy blond curls poked out into the aisle.
"No time to chat Eve, I'm needed in the field ten minutes ago." he ground out. While he genuinely liked the little weapons tech, he was in a rush.
"Yeah, yeah, keep your pants on speedo. I got your stuff." she huffed, and waved him into a cubicle. "You're lucky you thought to wear loose clothes here today, 'cause you're getting a full suit this time. Bullet resistant spy-boutique, stylishly skintight and light absorbent, complete with grappler harness and utility holsters. Now get changed, I'll have your weapons in a sec."
Finished speaking, she turned and left, drawing the curtain closed behind her.
Yuri blinked at the abrupt dismissal, but shook it off and stripped off his clothes. Pulling out the suit left folded on the shelf, he grimaced. The little technician wasn't kidding when she said it was skin tight, it was so tight it was practically spandex, but he pulled it on anyway. He finished just in time to hear Eve holler at him to come out.
He sighed, gathered his street clothes and shoes, and left the safety of the changing room to a chorus of wolf whistles from the gathered women technicians.
"Hey there hot stuff!" called one tech, boldly smacking his backside before he could turn to face her. "Doing anything later tonight?"
"Back off." he growled.
"Aww, be nice Ashce." scolded Eve, a mess of straps hung over one arm. "They're just your fan club. Now stand still."
Yuri rolled his eyes, but complied and stood with his arms spread. He hated this part of suiting up, the intricate harnesses had to be fitted by a practiced technician so that they wouldn't slip and possibly get him killed, but it was still awkward having to do so in front of so many people, mostly women, thank god Eve was entirely clinical about it.
Ten minutes had him fitted, outfitted with his gear, armed with his favored weapons, and out the door.
"Good luck Ashce, catch ya on the flip side!" called Eve.
"Later E'."
Pulling on his street clothes over the suit he left the base and drove off to his mission.
It was nearing midnight when Yuri finally managed to get on the rooftop of South Aspio Development Headquarters in Higher Zaphias. According to the intel, the target protptype and it's documentation were being kept in a thirtieth floor lab, the second to top floor. It was easy enough to scale the building without being detected, but now he had to get inside.
Well, utility ducts seemed rather welcoming right now, and large lab buildings like this were required to have well maintained ventilation systems to air out dangerous fumes...
So without a second thought he tied up his long hair in a tight high ponytail, and slipped into the ducts.
'Gods, I hate doing this.' he thought as he slid through the slick metal ducts. 'Makes me feel like a cliche spy from the movies, even if I am one...' His shoulders ached slightly from the cramped conditions, but he pulled forward to room the blueprints indicated.
"Shit!" he hissed as he recognized infrared laser modules on the walls of the duct just in front of the internal fan of the vent. It was unusual to rig something like this in an air duct, but it's presence either meant he was on the right track or that these people were utterly paranoid.
In the faint light and cramped conditions he worked the rigs free from their housing, disabled them, and then levered the fan and grill open.
It was spooky in the darkened lab, the only light coming from Yuri's dim flashlight and scattered modules. Papers littered nearly every horizontal surface save the floor, miscellaneous sketches, formulas, and notes, but nothing of actual use.
'Strange...where are the prototypes?' Yuri thought, scanning the room. The ghostly forms revealed in the faint light did not resemble anything out of the ordinary for a normal office, albeit a rather messy one.
Cautiously stepping over a haphazard stack of papers in an effort not to disturb anything, his foot caught on something and he almost lost balance.
"What the heck?"
His left ankle was ensnared in a mess of wires leading from a strange machine behind him. Made of a strange, grey-gold metal and covered in strange symbols.
A blastia.
Yuri grinned. Dislodging his foot from the snare he inspected the blastia carefully. It vaguely resembled a machine-gun turret, but more angular and streamlined, roughly four feet high. This had to be the prototype he was looking for.
A glance to the left revealed a computer module, obviously connected to the blastia for programming. He took out the hacking device Eve supplied him with and connected it, watching the screen light up as the data flashed across.
He frowned. This was simply too easy. Five minutes and he already had what he came for.
A loud beeping interrupted that train of thought.
'Formula inscription complete.' read the screen in big red letters. 'Module Vector-Beta now operational.'
"Complete? It's finished?."
With a hiss the upper casing opened, revealing a series of half rings that gave the impression of a gun barrel. Curious, he leaned closer to inspect the device, noting a single ring was a more true gold and scribed with runes. Puzzled, he poked at it with a gloved finger, and something chirped.
"Host subject required, request compatible host subject at terminal Alpha."
Yuri had no time to react before he was suddenly grabbed from behind, powerful arms restraining him and ripping his left glove off. The figure forced Yuri's hand over the machine, keeping him still as it made a strange humming sound and a needle jabbed into his wrist.
"Subject compatibility verified...aer compatibility rated at ninety-four percent...beginning grafting process."
Yuri's eyes widened in alarm at the monotone announcement, struggling against the arms holding him.
But his struggles were in vain. The arms tightened and the second half of the ring slammed onto his exposed skin, and a white-hot pain shot up his arm. He watched in utter panic as the machine's arms pierced into his wrist and tightened the band, bolting it into his bones. After several agonizing minutes he was finally released from the machine's grasp, the thick band heavy on his pain-numbed arm as blood seeped from beneath it.
"Grafting complete...Bohdi blastia Vector-Beta now acclimating to host." said the computer. "Terminal blastia shutting down."
The person holding him did not release him, actually tightening his grip on Yuri as he shuddered violently, waves of pain and nausea crashing over him.
Then, the man moved. Grabbing the data chip and tucking it into Yuri's equipment harness before half dragging the stunned agent from the room.
"Keep breathing." he said to Yuri, his deep voice low and almost rumbling. "You need to breathe if you don't want to pass out Phoenix."
The words barely reached Yuri's pain fogged mind, nor did their strangely uninterrupted path down through the building, never once meeting any other human or locked door. The man led Yuri outside and to his car half a block away, setting him down gently.
"You need to stay alive Phoenix, there are few enough of your kind as it is. It will be painful, but your change will help cleanse this corrupted world. Brightest Star, you will need to find your sister. Keep her safe, Phoenix."
And with that, the man left in swirl of long, black hair, leaving the barely conscious Yuri alone.
For half an hour the agent sat there, unable to move, until finally he fought through the pain enough to think straight.
'Shit shit shit shit shit! This is bad.' he thought, gasping as another stab of pain ran through him. His vision was blurring, but he had the presence of mind to reach his emergency transmitter hooked onto his harness. 'Have to call Eve...'
"T-this is agent Ashce. Recovery of target unsuccessful...trap of some kind...need...recovery..."
And with that, he blacked out and knew no more.