The loss of River Tam may have been a blow to the Academy, but in no way did it deter them from continuing their program to build a team of unstoppable assassins. The program was dubbed PROJECT SENTINEL. After years of horrific experiments and alterations by the Blue Sun and the Alliance, the project has finally come to fruition. The Sentinel teams are the deadliest assassins ever known. Equipped with deadly speed and reflexes, psychic powers, and the most advanced equipment available, they are black-ops teams with unprecedented lethality. Controlled by the Alliance to eliminate any and all opposition to their ways, they are nearly unstoppable. But deep inside the fragmented mind of one of their best soldiers, a change begins to take place…

The story is set before and after the events on Miranda, which are assumed to have taken place in 2519, two years after the beginning of Firefly. Time is given in military time, which is based on 24 consecutive hours. Hours after noon are given in the total number of hours so far, instead of going back to the beginning of a PM set. 1100 is 11:00AM, 1500 is 3:00 PM, 2330 is 11:30 PM, etc. As to technical vocabulary, I've created a bit of my own. For example, Stericrete is a fictitious material used in building walls that protect against pathogens. It should be fairly obvious what most of it is, but if you have a question, please ask.

For some reason, my formatting didn't seem to be working right, if someone could help with this, it would be immensely beneficial. I love reviews, so please share your thoughts on this story. I also pay attention to suggestions or helpful criticism, so don't be afraid to let me know if you think it could have something different!

Archangel

Osiris

2340 hours, November 1st, 2518

-1 Year before Incident on Miranda-

Darkness cloaked the gleaming, sterile hallways of the Archangel Federal Medical Center like a stifling blanket…or a blessed shroud against unwanted eyes. The stale, recycled air was permeated with the stinging chemical smell of the anti-bacterial implants in the building's air-scrubbers. Every 10 yards, small night lamps illuminated patches of the hall with dim spots of cold white light. Beneath the sleek Stericrete walls, miles of wiring, piping and air ducts wound through the building in neat, ordered rows, like a metal version of a 20th century crop field. Hundreds of treatment rooms, surgery centers and recovery wards spread out in an endless maze. The hospital was, for the most part, quiet as a tomb. Most patients were sound asleep, the day shift taking a much needed sleep at home. A smaller night shift was on duty, but their presence was of no worry to a group of four figures, hanging upside down in a ventilation shaft. Their slim, slightly iridescent coal gray suits disappeared almost seamlessly into the shadows. Low profile pockets and pouches studded the fatigues and sleeves. On their chests, dark vests held an array of supplies and tools, all carefully concealed to make as little of an outline as possible. On the back of the suits were sleek gray packs with small vents on the side and several diagonal slits on the bottom. Slung at the sides of the packs were smooth iridescent gray Mk. 7 silenced rifles, their magazines placed behind the trigger in a size-reducing bull-pup style. Their faces were masked in tight full head coverings, with black goggles over their eyes. It had taken them hours to reach this spot, carefully maneuvering through the air ducts to their objective. Now, they hung like spiders in a web, poised to strike. All they needed was the order.

In the center of the group, Shadow Lead looked through his goggles at his surroundings. The goggles provided a multitude of vision options, from normal sight, to infrared, to night vision, which he had on. The world appeared to him in muted colors, tinged with green. With these, he could see up to 100 feet in conditions where someone without the goggles could only see up to 10. Although he tried to keep calm, excitement pulsed through Shadow Lead's head like a drug. This is it, the first mission. We will do this! The training, for so long…,Shadow Lead frowned. The period before the training was fuzzy. Distorted images came to his mind when he thought of it, always the same ones each time. Although they repeated, they were disconnected and difficult to understand, as though they were part of a wholly different life. A woman stood in front of some sort of classroom. Around him, children dressed in white suits listened attentively as the teacher spoke to them. Occasionally he could hear her speaking, but it was always indistinct, and an unidentifiable buzzing often drowned out sections. The memory hovered on the edge of his mind for a few seconds, before flickering and dying, being replaced by sunlight and gleaming skyscrapers. A part of his mind subconsciously recognized it as one of the core cities, but he didn't know where. He was in an idyllic park in the city, burbling with activity. He felt a sudden happiness, but it didn't seem to be something he could control. Even when he tried to be unhappy, he found it impossible. Children played on swing sets, their mothers watching adoringly. In the background, men sat at a group of tables, deep in thought deemed too important for the rest of the family. On a nearby road, a hover car hummed by, carrying food and goods for all the poor border-planet dwellers, deprived of such a paradise…and on the skyscraper above, the Alliance flag fluttered merrily in the warm morning breeze. With a sudden jolt, the scene rapidly changed without warning. His strange happiness was torn viciously away; in its stead, he felt pain and despair. It was the park again, but it was different now. The gleaming skyscrapers lay toppled against one another like a row of dominos, smoke drifting from the gaping wounds in their once majestic sides. The beautiful green grass was burned and parched now, the playground derelict and lonely. He looked around, peering around the empty scene. It was a ghost town (Ghost city? he wondered. What do you call a place like this?) Stepping back, he felt the ground suddenly disappear from beneath his feet. He was falling, falling…and with a soft thump, he landed on something soft and lumpy. Puzzled and alarmed he looked down. Corpses, thousands of corpses. Men, women, children…all dead, all rotting here. Lifeless faces stared in blank terror up at him, bodies contorted in pain. He buckled in shock, in horror, in anger. With a retch, his mind broke apart; he collapsed helplessly amongst the dead. His shattered consciousness lasted just long enough to see the emblem of the hated Independents burned into the skin of the victims…

With a sudden snap, Shadow Lead found himself back in reality, his skin sweating and burning from the daydream. Get back on the mission! What are you thinking, just letting go back there? He admonished himself harshly for losing his thoughts. I'll ask Doctor Proctor about it later. Doctor Proctor is always right… The sharp crackle of his Secure Cortex Communications (CORCOM-SU) headset sounded in his ear.

Eagle Lead to Shadow Lead, come in, over

Shadow Lead flicked his radio to Voice Activated.

"This is Shadow lead"

Target location has been confirmed. Sub-floor level 5, room A156. Exit holding pattern and execute strike plan Alpha-6

"Shadow Lead copies, executing strike plan Alpha-6, Shadow Lead out"

Shadow Lead flicked his headset to the Shadow team frequency. "We're moving out. Shadow One, take point. Shadow Two get behind. Shadow Three, you're on rearguard. Maintain stealth discipline at all times, silenced weapons only." The team reacted with fluid precision, rappelling quickly down the air vent and un-slinging their rifles. They crept silently through the metal maze, cushioned boots barely audible on the duct panels. With the quick press of a button on a small arm mounted keypad, Shadow Lead brought up a map on his goggles digital Heads-Up Display (HUD). 200 yards until a left, then another 50 yards to another left, down a small drop…it seemed to pass in a heartbeat, even though the creeping pace took them half an hour. Suddenly, a light appeared at the end of the next shaft. He had known it was there, he had calculated their position perfectly. But it still sent a shiver through him. We're here; this is the grate to the targets position. Who is he? He's an enemy, enemies mean to hurt the Alliance, hurt us. That cannot be allowed to happen. Shadow Lead was decided, this was his mission. He decided to try out his "special talent". He didn't know how he developed it, maybe it was associated with the fragmented memories that he couldn't access. What he did know was that he could read other peoples minds. He couldn't get it quite focused enough to read regular thoughts, but he could read intentions. Focusing his mind, Shadow Lead reached out tendrils of thought to the people in the room. There were four of them, all preoccupied on their work. None of them were paying any attention to the panel of grating to their right. Shadow Lead and the other team members pressed other buttons, activating their suits cloaking devices. With the top secret nature of PROJECT SENTINEL came nearly unlimited funds, and the cloaking device was the pinnacle of the Alliances military technology. The iridescence of his team's suits was the fibers of the device. Not only did it make them nearly invisible, the technology had been carried over to their equipment as well. Rifles, handguns, even bladed weapons had the capability to disappear into an almost imperceptible shimmer in the air. ."There's the grate, you are weapons free, get ready". A chorus of "Rogers" responded to him. Shadow Lead took a look around his team. He could hear the apprehension in their voices, he knew they were ready. They were the brightest minds in the 'verse, their coordination and training was perfect. And they were his to command. With a deep breath, he prepared to give the go order.

In the room beyond the grate, a man in his fifties hunched over a data port, downloading information onto a data stick. His face was wan and pale, creased with months of worry. He had seen too much in his 30 odd years in the Alliance. At first, he had dismissed his feeling s as merely getting used to his new job as a computer technician. Then he had decided that he was just misinterpreting them, that it was all a big mistake. The Alliance was for the good of humanity wasn't it? Wasn't it? He had asked himself that question so many times; he couldn't even begin to recall why he had asked it in the first place. It had seemed so natural to follow the Alliance. They were here to help they said. They were organized, they were powerful. How could they be lying? How could so large an organization lie to so many people? But slowly, inexorably, he had asked himself that fateful question, was the Alliance really there to help. The medicine, the communications, the order, it seemed to support it. But then he had looked closer. Beneath the exciting gleam, beneath the placid society, there was rot. There was corruption, there cruelty. And as he dug deeper, he saw that the rot was not only at the core, but that it extended outward throughout all aspects of the Alliance. For the first few months of his examining, it was difficult to find what he was looking for. He could see the injustice in the 'verse, how the border planets had next to nothing, while the people of the Alliance core planets lived in luxury and splendor. But, there was nothing he could use to stop it; there was no weapon that he could use against them. Whatever arguments he made would be summarily discarded, and then he would be simply thrown in prison, or worse. He could do nothing until he found something he could use against them. Then, roughly eight years into his job at the Alliance, he made the most important discovery of his life. The secret, he decided, was not to look directly for the proof of Alliance wrongs, but to look for where is wasn't. The Alliance destroyed any records of their crimes, so that there wasn't evidence. But he learned to look for the blank spots, the black holes in history. When he had found them, he had examined the information associated with them. By looking at the non-incriminating data, he was able to back-track to the site of the Alliances transgressions. He had listened to the people, to the stories, to the mythical folk-legends. The Alliance thought nothing of them. What possible harm could become of a worthless pauper? Their silly stories were just figments of their overactive imaginations. But he had known better. He listened, and he talked with them. He had known that what he was doing was treason. The people he had talked with often hostile to the Alliance, many of them were former Browncoats during the War of Unification. They were supposed to be the enemy, he was supposed to fear and loathe them. But he didn't. And that was why he was in the hospital. He had snuck in, accompanied by three of his Browncoat friends in disguise. He had wanted to access the secure database here, deep in the bowels of the Archangel Federal Medical Center. While it hadn't taken long for him to hack it, he had had a deep sense of foreboding on this job. He knew that he couldn't evade the Alliance forever. For all he knew, he could have been discovered already, and his contacts would die as a result of his actions. He had known that this was risky, that it had a high risk of failure, and with it, his death. So, he wasn't very surprised when there was a loud bang from the right side of the room as a flash bang went off. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw flickers of movement. His ears still ringing from the flash bang, he couldn't hear the suppressed pops that Shadow teams' weapons made as they sent 4.73mm hollowpoint bullets from their caseless cartridges into the heads of his Browncoat friends. Turning towards them in the last instant of his life, he saw the flickering figure in the train his weapon on him. He wondered who the assassins were. They couldn't be much older than 17 or so. Ho wondered what would happen to his campaign against the Alliance when he was dead. He didn't even have a chance to see the concealed muzzle flash from the rifle before his life ended with an abrupt snap.

Shadow Lead lowered his Mk. 7 and flipped his CORCOM-SU to the command band.

"This is Shadow Lead to Eagle Lead, target is eliminated. Three accomplices have also been neutralized. Zero casualties here"

Roger Shadow Lead, targets eliminated. Search the area and exfiltrate to extraction point.

"Understood Eagle Lead, ETA in 45 minutes"

Received Shadow Lead, prepare for debriefing at base. Good job out there

Shadow Lead broke off the connection and relayed the orders and congratulations to his teammates. Looking around, Shadow Lead reviewed the take-down. Elapsed engagement time- 5 seconds, 150 milliseconds. It had been flawless. The Browncoats lying dead on the floor in front of him had in all likelihood not even realized what had happened before they were taken out by the other members of Shadow team. But the man he had killed…he had looked right at him. He had known what was happening; he had seen who had killed him. He watched me kill him. Shadow Lead didn't know how to explain it. Should he feel proud that he had done his job? Glad that an enemy of the Alliance was dead? Or should he feel how he felt right then- at a loss. Shadow Lead didn't know. None of his training and conditioning had prepared him for this. Whatever had happened before was useless, as he couldn't remember anything. Lost in thought, he walked slowly over to the fallen body of the man. Shadow Lead read the nameplate on the man's shirt- Smith Holloway. It was mess, the hollowpoint bullets had performed as advertised. Shadow Lead glanced at his teammates; they were all spread out checking the room, not looking at him. Without thinking about what he was doing, Shadow Lead turned his head away. Not to hide from the grizzly sight in front of him, but to ensure that the mission camera did not record his next action. With a deft tug, he pulled the data stick out from the computer, and slipped it into his pocket. He didn't grasp why he did it, it just seemed the right thing to do at the time. It was a curious thought. The right thing to do.

Over the course of the story, Shadow Lead will develop, learning more about himself, his fragmented past, and the truth of PROJECT SENTINEL. If someone could give me a few pointers as to how to get formatting to work, I would be much obliged. Again, please review and share your opinions on the story!