"Taina?" Caveira jumped at the sudden sound of Jordan's voice, snapping her out of the dark depths of her mind, "You good?" He always looked concerned, even when he was up all night having drinks with Marius or something. Taina glanced around, slowly remembering what she was doing here, Jordan, Marius, Eliza, Monika, and Mike sat around a table in the rec room, it was 10:00 PM, there were a few bottles of beer at the center of the table, and her comrades were all staring at her strangely.

"Well?" Marius said impatiently, his foot tapped on the ground, the dim light of the lamp above him shone on his shoulders, but somehow masked his facial features, which always seemed to be obscured somehow, "What was your's?" Then she remembered, she'd agreed to play a drinking game with them, but what was Marius talking about?

She looked at him curiously, "What are we doing?" She asked, as Marius's hand went to his face. She had been thinking about the latest operation they were in, but in doing so she'd tuned them all out.

"We asked Marius what the scariest moments of his life were, he told us, now he wants to know your's," Eliza explained, still keeping the aura of authority she always had over people, "And quite frankly, so do I." Eliza leaned on her elbow as she watched the other operator intently. Taina's mind went to the exact moment instantly, the one time she'd felt true fear. Not for her life, or for her friend's life, no this was fear of one specific thing.

Taina sat in thought for a moment, the encounter she had in the city was something that had haunted her for years, before she was with Rainbow, when she was an interrogator for BOPE, "Take your time, love." Mike said, his voice brought a little comfort to her, but only a little. It was a brief moment in her life, a small portion of time, but it had seemed like an eternity. The last time she would ever set foot in that damned city ever again.

The mood in the room darkened when she spoke, "The ten minutes," She said. Marius sat up in his seat, and Jordan nearly dropped his glass, "That was it." This was not something she was willing to speak of often, and almost no one knew about it, but she had told a few people, and word had gotten around the team, the infamous "Ten minutes rumor".

"So the rumor was true?" Monika asked, her face finally off her phone. Caveira nodded, her eyes not meeting her friends'. The team had been frightened by the rumors that Caveira, the only operator on the team who seemed to be fearless, had been scared shitless of something in a city almost eight hundred miles away.

"Not entirely," She mumbled, the people she'd told the story about got a very clouded version of the truth, only some of it was true, "It wasn't the White Masks." The rumor stated that she had been in the city on BOPE business and was working with the police to capture a terrorist that had fled to their city, and had also had a considerable amount of White Masks that had come to aid him against the police. The story changed the most drastically when it stated that she was captured and mentally broken down by the terrorists, which was completely false, "It was one..." She squeezed her eyes shut, choosing her words carefully, "Thing."

Mike tilted his head at her, "What?"

"Something else was in that building with me," Her voice shook as she spoke, and her eyes remained closed, as she remembered it's wings, it's glowing eyes, and it's claws. A monster was in that structure with her that night, something horrible, "And there was no one but me, my team, and the target in that building before. No terrorists." She was very vague with her statements, but the way it flew was seared into her mind, and the image of her team being picked up and dragged into the darkness, only for them to vanish in seconds.

"Tell us." Marius said eagerly, as he kicked his feet up on the table, and then clinking cups with Jordan.

Taina sucked in a breath, "You tell no one, understand?" The operators nodded their heads quickly, as Monika practically threw her phone aside, and Eliza placed her glass on the floor, "Good, now listen closely. All of you."


It was 11:00 at night, on an evening like this one. I was with my BOPE comrades, Leone, Lopez, and Hernandez, a sniper, rifleman, and specialist. We were deployed to find a criminal that Ghost Recon had driven out of Bolivia, a war criminal known as El Cerebro. He'd been involved deeply with the Santa Blanca drug cartel, and vanished before the Ghosts could get their hands on him, fleeing into Brazil, continuing his work there, and since the Bolivian special-forces were still under Sueño's thumb, we were sent to the city to capture him.

"Did you?" Marius asked, but Taina put her finger up, signalling him to wait. We flew into the city he was hiding in by chopper, and landed at the police barricade close to the abandoned asylum. We met the chief of police there, and he explained to us that Cerebro was believed to be inside a building in the eastern area of the city. They had gotten a tip from their mole in the mob that he was hiding out at an old building that had been abandoned, and was relying on a transport from the remnants of Santa Blanca to pick him up.

We rode with the SWAT team to the building, it was a large chemical plant, which supposedly had a rough history when it came to criminals, and when we arrived there, Leone grabbed his sniper and drone, and Lopez and Hernandez took their M16s. Leone knelt next to one of the cop cars and sent his drone up, he scanned the building for movement, but he found nothing, no movement whatsoever. He began to assume that Cerebro had escaped capture once again somehow, but that was extremely unlikely. We were ordered to enter by our handler, and we breached alongside the SWAT team, entering into the dark interior.

When we entered, Lopez commanded me and Leone to investigate the acid vats, which were shutdown a long time ago, while he and the four SWAT ops went upstairs to check the mixing chambers. Leone and I obeyed and broke off from the group, and we entered the area, which was where things really began to become messed up.

"You keep going, I'm going to get in a better position." Leone said, as he slung his rifle over his shoulder and proceeded up the metal stairs to the platforms above, while I continued on with my own weapon. I remember it being very dark, with the faint glow of flickering lights on the ceiling, and four large vats of drained out acid below the platforms I stood on.

"You know," Jordan mumbled as Caveira continued her story, "This sounds familiar to me, somehow." I peered over the railing to look below at the vats of acid, but found nothing, only drains and various types of equipment. Just as I pulled my head away, something dark and sleek flashed across the room, blending in perfectly. I jumped and fired three shots into the darkness, and listened for the sound of a body hitting the ground, but nothing came, not a sound. I stepped toward the area where I'd seen the object, and found a pair of aviator sunglasses, with gold accents and a word on the rims that read: Flores. Nidia Flores was like a mother to Cerebro, so I naturally and correctly assumed they were his, and I further guessed he was close, very close.

"I got eyes on something!" Lopez's voice screamed from the upstairs, just as flashlights came on from a window from the mixing chambers into the vats of acid. I could see Leone running toward the door, and beckoning me to follow. I rushed after him and opened the door, finding Lopez standing in front of a body, it was hanging by its leg on a thin wire, that was tied to something above. The body had cuts and a scrapes all over it, and tattoos riddled his skin, one of which read "brain". Cerebro means "brain" in English, which meant it was their target, "He's alive."

The door behind Lopez was opened, and the SWAT captain stepped in, "Oh hell," He muttered, and turned behind him, "This is Captain Bullock, priority target is in the area, repeat, priority target is in the building." He turned to Lopez and grabbed his shoulder, whispering something in his ear. Lopez's eyes widened, and he nodded, as the captain backed away and shouted to his men, "Mission update, new target is at large, repeat, fan out and find asset Wraith!" The door closed behind the captain, as Lopez turned to us.

"What is that look on you guys' faces?" Monika asked Eliza and Jordan, who were staring at Taina intently. "You heard the man," Lopez said to us, "We have a new target, the target is known as B-ARRRGH!" A metallic claw latched onto Lopez's neck, as we screamed at him. He fell to the ground and clawed at the tiles, the claw pulling harder and harder, and his eyes met mine for a brief moment, all sound in the room seeming to go quiet, and he said, "Run." A second later he was zipped away into the darkness.

My hand snapped to my belt, grabbing my flashlight, and then holding it out in front of me, pressing the button as a large beam of light illuminated the room, but there was nothing there. Nothing but a few small streaks of blood that trailed up the wall, and disappeared on the ceiling, "Find him," I shouted to my squad, since I was now in command, "Find Lopez!" They nodded as they yanked their guns off their backs, and fell into formation.

"You know how hard it is to believe this, right?" Jäger asked as he took a swig of beer from his glass. I remember everything happening so fast after that, we entered the vat room again, this time every last one of the lights were out, so we were forced to having to use our flashlights to see the room, and we descended down the stairs. Hernandez took point, leading us down the steps with his assualt rifle, before he suddenly stopped, his night vision goggles were on his eyes, and he was staring with his mouth wide open, "What do you see?" Leone asked, "Hernandez?" He continued to stare, and his finger went up slowly, pointing into the darkness.

"There." He whispered, but a hand grabbed his collar and pulled him into the dark, as I raised my light only to see the same dark shape race out of the picture as I had seen before, and Leone let loose his rifle, firing six rounds into the dark, but nothing happened. My heart raced, my fingers were clammy, I turned to face Leone, but there was nothing. Nothing there where he was standing a moment earlier.

"Leone?" I shouted out as I aimlessly pointed my weapon in random directions, the flashlight flying around the room, before I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I quickly turned my flashlight in the direction of what I saw, and then I saw it. It was a dark figure, with a cloak like dark energy over it's shoulders, pure white eyes, and demonic ears that pierced into the light. I screamed and fired six shots, but the figure turned, his cloak flowing behind him, as he vanished as quickly and suddenly as he appeared, "What the hell are you?"

I backed away, and then I broke into a sprint, racing away quicker than what should be humanly possible. I stopped abruptly at the door, and pushed it open, and I could see the exit, I could see the lights flashing through it's glass doors, and right as I was about to press my hand against the door, a clatter came from behind me. I turned around, and saw the figure leaping down at me, it's wings out a jaw stretched out wide, it's ears pointing straight up into the night, and his hand came down over my face, and the last thing I remember was letting out an inhuman scream, then everything went black.


"You mean to tell us," Mike said, "That those ten minutes were all due to some 'creature' that you think you saw." Thatcher was not one to believe in the supernatural, he was an old soul.

"No, I know what I saw, you idioto." Caveira growled, she wouldn't look at them, the defensive operator simply twirled her knife between her fingers, and then brought her hands up on the table, "This is a personal matter, I will personally kill each one of you slowly and painfully if this ever get out.

Marius threw his hands up in surrender, as Eliza nodded, "I understand," She replied, "It's safe with us."

"Good," She mumbled, "Any questions?" She figured everyone would have several, but no one spoke up. Not at first.

A moment later, Thermite spoke up, "Just two," He looked weirdly inquisitive now, which meant he had made quite the deduction, "The commissioner. Who was he?"

Caveira thought for a moment, "Garry? Goranson? Something like-"

"Gordon?"

"Yes, yes that's it," Just as she said this, she furrowed her eyebrows, "How did you know that?"

"And you kept talking about a city. Which city was it?" Thermite tilted his head up, seemingly knowing the answer to his own question.

Taina looked at him strangely, not sure why it was so important, "Gotham," She said, "Gotham City. Why?"

Jordan leaned back in his chair, as Eliza gave Caveira a shocked look, "Oh, no reason," He looked at Eliza, and whispered, "Looks like the skull is terrified of the Knight." And he grinned.


As of right now, this is a one-shot, but if you want more, please review. Also, if you haven't picked up on what I was implying by now, then where have you been for the past eight decades? Anyway, had a lot of fun writing this, thanks for reading!

-MB