A story set after Zoey's ending. A culmination of both Sci-Fi and the Supernatural. Review and let me know how to improve! Thanks!

Code 128-07-01-03. Repeat: Code 128-07-01-03.
Confirm: Nature of exposure.
[Unrecognised signature]
Oracle Station: Resend data. Repeat: resend nature of exposure.
Type 2 Rift. Current status: Sealed.
Casualties?
Current data incomplete. Unknown. Priority detected.
Nature?
Stormcaller.
Resend?
Repeat: Stormcaller.
Acknowledged. Suspend all field operations. Repeat: suspend all field operations. Ninth Hell Guard is dispatched. Estimated time to arrival: 6 months. Remove all planetside assets. Continue orbital surveillance. Hold until arrival.

Transcript log 20387985A-5D: Report to Servonian Bacarus, Master of Voices. Origin: Oracle Station 07-01-03: Sol System.

175 days later

Allowing a rare, natural smile to break past her features, Jodie Holmes passed the bound collection of sheets back to the girl who had brought it to her desk. It was a lovely piece of literature; bound with naval cloth, she had rifled through it several times herself, and saw no reason to dispute the young woman's choice. The newcomer accepted it gratefully, muttering a 'thanks' before hastily turning aside, headed for the doorway and home with a gait that failed to conceal her excitement. Jodie did not mind much; it was rather uplifting to see someone with such an enthusiasm.

It would die in time, she knew. The fact she was taller than the company's most recent customer was had been enough to inform her of the girl's youth. In time, she knew, life would begin, and the luxuries of the past would be cast aside to be stored within the depths of one's memory alone, until their grandeur surpassed the excitement they were worthy of.

It was not a busy day; the first days of the week seldom were, and, spotting only a pair of idle readers several rows to off to the right, Jodie allowed herself to relax, falling back into the embrace of the recliner at her back, as her gaze drifted downwards, to watch the thin pointer on her wrist complete another cycle.

Life in a bookstore was not an outcome she could have predicted early; a rogue CIA asset; a girl tethered to something that should have passed over to the other world long ago; none of it indicated the peaceful life she now led.

But like all things, peace was fleeting, as two men stepped past the glass door.

Jodie did not need a second glance to tell that they unwelcome in her place of work, or rather, anywhere that fell within three miles of her very being. Donned in black suits, they were not the average crowd of casual visitors to a bookstore, and she had learnt enough amongst her years at the Agency to ascertain that each had a concealed firearm on his person. With that in mind, Jodie was understandably tensed as they made their approach to the counter.

'Ms Holmes,' the lead man said. It was not a question, but she decided a try was better than none.

'Karen,' she replied, without a trace of understanding, as she tapped the name tag attached to her shirt, 'Hall.'

'My apologies, then, Ms Hall. Or is it Elizabeth North?'

Despite herself, Jodie rose to her feet, placing her palms on the desk as she angrily leaned forward to confront the newcomer. 'What do you want? I told you people to leave me alone.'

'The CIA has an offer for you, Ms Holmes,' the agent continued, unfazed, 'government payroll, and off the radar.'

'I'm not interested in money,' Jodie snapped, 'I already have what I wanted; a place away from the damn mess you people created.'

'Ms Holmes, you have seen the capabilities of the Infraworld. You know what a passage may cause.'

'So you know what to do then. Pull the plug. Look, I know I'm not going to convince you otherwise, even if two, or three massacres didn't tell you otherwise, so I'll just say it now: he's fucking gone!'

'Ms Holmes...'

'When I closed the Black Sun' she elaborated, her voice rising to a shrill pitch, 'I lost him. Do you hear me? Aiden's gone!'

'I'm sorry,' the agent offered pathetically, as she fell back into her seat, her shoulders heaving as she sobbed at the memory, 'I didn't know.'

'Now,' she emitted in a tiny voice, 'I'm just like you. I'm a person; I can't lift cars with my head or stop an entity any more. And you let them go ahead, we all might as well shoot ourselves now. Because there will be nothing you can do to stop them.'

Though she doubted her words would have any lasting impact, her outburst had finally succeeded in convincing them to leave her alone, if only to return another day, again and again, until the day she either met her stillborn brother as a result of natural causes, or they finally succeeded in unleashing their own damnation.

As the door chimed softly at the men's retreat, Jodie wiped the stream of salty water from her face with an open hand, failing to stifle her emotions, until the black car beyond the store had departed her sight.

Something moved; a wind in a concrete cage, that moved down the spine of her back, and she shuddered at it's cold touch, sorrow quickly turning to only light annoyance.

'Well, what was I supposed to say?' she asked the air, 'That we're still tethered? 'Cause that would just be a one-way ticket back into a lab.'

Nothing audible; only a brief rattle of pottery, as her half filled coffee mug slid across the flat table top, into her open palm.

'Thanks, Aiden.'

It was nearing dark when she returned home, holding the brown, paper bags of goods close to her chest as she checked her surroundings quickly, before she finally stepped out of the cold. Perhaps it was for fear of the Agency's unheralded arrival, or perhaps even older memory, of the youths that stalked the windswept streets. Her head still ached at the memory, and she quickly marched inside, leaving the thought on the doorstep, to die under the snowfall that would come with the evening, as she ascended the flight of stairs.

The house was, like many of her days themselves, quite. Strangely, Stan was nowhere to be found; Walter had provided a somewhat haphazard explanation, but in truth, he knew little more of Stan's whereabouts than Jodie had, and thus the matter was dropped. Tuesday was in Zoey's room, tending to a toddler's needs, whilst Jimmy simply lounged about on the sofa, flipping the set from channel to channel, until the constant alterations of the differing frequencies finally compelled Walter to remove the control from Jimmy's possession, and they settled with a show neither particularly enjoyed, nor did they particularly dislike.

Jodie, on the other hand, simply seated herself on a convenient chair, reaching out for the book she had studied over the most recent days. Letting out a groan of annoyance at her inability to recall the exact page she had left the narrative, she began to riffle through it's contents, before it slipped from her fingers and landed upon the tabletop before her, open and exposed. The error earned Jodie's ire, until, upon returning it to her hands, she realized it was the same printed scrawlings; the sheet she had searched for.

She did not know if it was the now-unbound spirit's doing, but she accepted the gift regardless, as she allowed her eyes to flicker too and fro, immersing herself in a fiction, away from the truths she had endured.

Barely half an hour earlier, a black vehicle had pulled up to a barren faced building. Officially, it read 'Halthson's Construction Works', though if it was indeed as it claimed to be, the building would be a derelict one now, for it received little from the service it declared itself to provide.

After being waved through by a lone receptionist, the two men marched on through the dimly lit offices, barren of any true personnel, until they came to the vault. Positioned behind an innocuous door, the unpainted wooden surfaces gave way to a corridor decked in stone and hard concrete, illuminated by fluorescent lights atop the rafters. At the very end of the corridor, two men in unmarked uniforms stood to attention; their weapons held tightly to their chests upon receiving the warning from the lobby, as they moved to intercept the newcomers.

Their brief search of the offered documents and identities found an absence of anomalies, and the pair that had approached an innocuous bookstore earlier in the day were quickly permitted entry into one of the more classified examples of the government's attempts to discern the enigma left behind six months past.

Dozens of experiments lined the corridor's walls; each a separate chamber, divided into a testing facility, and a heavily shielded observation post. If one so wished, a multitude could be examined from the bullet proof screens that provided immediate access to each unit, though neither wished to commit to such, for fear of ending their lives amid ravings of madness. Security, of course, was not taken lightly either, for walls of shifting light blocked their passage repeatedly; one laid upon every intersection; each a means to assure most desirable outcome in the event the worst came to pass. A prototype design produced in the wake of the after action report of two discharged agents, following a raid on a certain installation on the far side of the world, that the USA had officially condemned, alongside the now forgotten murder of a Gemaal Sheik Charrief. True, he had been an elected head of state, but only of a Third World nation, and now the details were all but forgotten. His death had become twisted; distorted, until it became little more than a rallying cry by lesser men, in their bid for something greater for themselves alone, keeping a nation at war. Though they had not know it, Somalia was sitting upon one of the larger Rifts known to the enlightened. The assassination had brought valuable time, and given the United States the prerogative to advance a notion of peace; all the while, allowing the DPA to mine whatever they could out of the cave networks below the desert sands. It had been one of McGrath's finer schemes, and he tucked the file aside into an unmarked folder as his door opened, to admit the two men he had briefed but a day earlier.

'Report.'

'She's uncooperative, sir. Wouldn't take the deal.'

Mcgrath only scoffed. He had never expected the ploy to fly far, but it was a necessary formality to keep the top brass off his back for the contingency they all knew was about to come to pass.

'I never expected it anyway,' he muttered, 'besides, it's easier this way.'

'Sir?' It was the younger agent this time; uncertain in the face of authority, 'There is something you may need to know. Ms Holmes; she's no longer tethered to the entity.'

'She told you that?' A nod, to which the general could only respond with a mordant laugh. 'And you believed that?'

'Sir,' the recruit's senior spoke up, 'I served on the security detail assigned to the girl over ten years ago. I know what I saw, and none of it matched today. Happenings were all tied to her emotions; if it really was still tied to her, we wouldn't be standing here right now, sir.'

'So nothing happened?'

'Nothing out of the ordinary.'

'Thank you gentlemen; you are dismissed.'

Even before the pair had provided a customary salute, and closed the door behind them, Mcgrath's mind was already wandering; contemplating the intriguing turn of events.

So Jodie Holmes is no longer gifted. No longer a girl who can play God; just a woman. A woman who knows too much of the other side.

His mind resolved, he snatched the phone at his desk, and dialed in a series of digits, before he placed the receiver to his ear, waiting, until the ringtone disintegrated

'Karen, get me a secure connection to Field Ops. Coordinate with local law enforcement; tell them to remove their people from a mile radius, around the residence of a Jodie Holmes; currently listed as Karen E. Hall. And activate assets 6-1 through to 6-5.'

A curt acknowledgement followed, and he killed the line.

Unfortunately for Jodie Holmes, whose only wish was to complete a simple life of peace without any more drama than was necessary to see her through the ages, she was not only the focus of attention within a secure CIA bunker, though the other location was one that neither she, nor her previous colleagues in the Bureau, could have ever imagined. High out of Earth's atmosphere, aboard a black clad station that continued to orbit the blue planet like a second moon, Guardsman Torus Sevatus ran the final system checks as the Behemoth competed it's docking procedures.

So far, he noted, so good, and he thumbed a metallic switch on the panel before him, extending the cloaked Station's own umbilical cord, until the two respective tubes interlocked, and embraced.

Without much warning, the blast shields mounted on the far side of the hanger abruptly slid aside, to the thunder of steel boots, as the assembled garrison stood to attention in respect for their long anticipated visitor. From a distance at least, however, Venatus failed to impress Sevatus by any grave measure, though he masked the neutrality well, as he stepped back from the console, and interlocked his digits behind his back in the colloquial stance of attention.

'Warden Vigilus Venatus,' Sevatus' commander, Taurus, spoke up at last, as the armored titan strode across the pristine deck, 'welcome to Outcast 07-01-03.'

The words themselves would have held little meaning for the senior Guardsman, and even less for an observing human, if it had not been for the audio regulator that was placed within the Veteran's helmet, providing a practical, if monosyllabic means of translation between the differing dialects that composed the Council.

In all actuality, having halted beside his counterpart stationed aboard the Outcast, Venatus looked like a twig. Unlike Taurus, who would have filled a corridor space even without the grey armored plate that covered each segment of his body, Venatus was a thin, and unsightly figure, standing slightly hunched as he addressed his counterpart. He was undoubtedly tall, easily capable of towering over any of them if he so chose to stand at the full height the Great Father had blessed him with, but if Taurus' arms were tree trunks, Venatus' were the width of insects. He more or less resembled any human they might have plucked off Earth if the need came down for a direct abduction over the long years Sevatus had spent locked up in the observation post seeded by a pioneer team he had already cursed a dozen times to the Storm, and for a while at least, Sevatus found himself wondering how on earth a being such as Sevatus had earned his own company as a Warden of the Ninth Regiment.

'Save the formalities, Veteran.' the Warden's own helmet whispered in the Council's common tongue, though Sevatus noted with some unease that it lacked the metallic quality of his own commander's speech. Rather, it was silky, and serpentine, as if Venatus had a problem overcoming his sibilance. Evidently, the Warden had submerged at least some effort in learning the tongue few ever bothered to develop, what with translation softwares being distributed on a daily basis on the Core Worlds.

It also began to explain the oddities surrounding Venatus, as Sevatus isolated the strange variant of helmet the Hell Guardsman wore; it was too long for a humanoid skull, as if it had been lengthened slightly to accommodate a beak, or a snout. Vigilius Venatus, Warden of the Ninth Hell Guard's Second Company, was a Dracoii. With that assessment, Sevatus withdrew his earlier doubts as to the Guardsman's potential.

The Snakes of the Eternal Night, they were a dangerous breed that had been permitted into the Council, and only on the basis that they were exceptional warriors, that could, usually, be trusted sufficiently to kill the enemy, and the enemy alone.

'You have the data on the Breach?'

'Affirmative,' Taurus responded in the same robotic tone, 'all compiled and awaiting transfer to your vessel.'

'And the Stormcaller?'

A stifled pause, and the Guardsman opened and closed his mouth a few times, trying to find the exact words.

'Not...exactly, Warden. Encryption surrounding the subject's files is either too heavy, or they are non-existent. So far, we...'

'...have nothing,' Venatus sighed, 'I understand.'

There was a brief, uncomfortable moment as the two titans stood motionless whilst their minds continued to race without pause, though each was concerned with vastly differing scenarios, until the Dracoii broke the silence.

'Send all the data you have to the Herald of Judgement,' the Warden commanded, 'synch all of your planetside relays to our data feeds as well; I want us on the same page as fast as possible. Halus, Pharos?' his words caught the attention of two members of his entourage, and they lifted the cowls adorned upon their heads upon his notice. Seers, Sevatus recognised; the data miners of the Council, schooled in the art of manipulating the digital code, until producing a binary sequence became no more difficult than lifting one's own hand. 'Accelerate the process; get our Seers on cracking down whatever barriers these fellows couldn't bypass on their own. And I want the Second moved to full combat status.'

A series of nods and affirmations responded to his instructions, before the Guardsmen in question marched back down the hollow tube, relaying his directions to the waiting cohorts beyond.

'Is there,' Taurus asked, hardly containing his irritation that his command would soon be usurped by something that was universally known to be an untamed berserker, 'anything else I may provide you with, Warden?'

'A bottle of Narx, and a drop in the attitude.'

For a moment, Sevatus was not quite sure if Taurus was about to throttle Venatus where the proud little upstart stood. Truth be told, he wouldn't have minded watching the Veteran pumble the Warden into the steel floor, but then again, he told himself, the Council rarely made mistakes on the matter of military appointment. Venatus had to have proven himself someplace, though where it was, Sevatus could not tell.

Before he could make up his mind to predict the victor though, he was broken by raucous laughter.

'I'm just messing with you, Taurus,' the Warden sighed, as he turned back towards his own vessel, 'just send me the update once comms are up to speed. And on a serious note; if you happen to find a bottle, you let me know. That's an order.'

And so it was that the Warden departed the Outcast, in return for his own gloomily lit vessel, leaving a rather perplexed Taurus, and an entirely bewildered Sevatus, as they continued to gaze past the observation port, attempting to fathom just what on earth they had borne witness to in the short space of time since their relief had arrived.

Aboard the Herald, though, Venatus skulked back to his cabin, the friendly demeanor replaced by the soldier that had warranted a field command, as isolation forged readiness. Carefully, he rechecked his pack, ensuring everything, from the Storm Rifle, to a nearly five kilograms of high explosives in the form of spherical containers set to blow at the removal of a digital pin, was perfectly arranged as he needed it. A week's supply of admittedly frugal rations; a medical trauma kit, a high altitude deployment canopy; the list of oddities went on, as he refolded the extensive set of hardware back into his field pack.

Such was the worst of war he knew, as he kicked himself back into the hard chair that, aside from the steel bed, provided the only comfort he would ever know amid the spartan lifestyle of the Hell Guard, waiting for Taurus' report.

Waiting.

Waiting for the hunt to being. Waiting for the thrill of the moment when the prey reared it's head amidst the grass, and the undeniable satisfaction of a hunter when the hunted finally fell to the ground, stripped of all will to fight any longer.

Kicking the chair about once more, Venatus settled himself against the viewing port, gazing out into the darkness beyond. Waiting.

Waiting for the Storm to unveil it's chosen.