"Those who play with the devil's toys
Will be brought by degrees
To wield his sword"
~R. Buckminster Fuller
*static*
…
My name is Adrianna.
It's taken from a form of Anna, which in turn is taken from the Hebrew name Hannah.
Hannah was a prophetess of old, so the Bible tells. If you follow that train of thought, I suppose the story that's coming won't be too surprising. It wasn't to me, anyway.
I don't know how these kinds of stories generally start, so I'll start at the beginning. The year was 2015, and the world was going all to hell. Nation fought against nation, people against people, the economy was in the toilet, and I had just graduated college with a degree in Art.
Yeah, I know. Art. Don't know what I thought I was going to use that for.
I'd seen a fair amount of the world by now, and thought I knew what was going on. I'd make a name for myself as an artist, then raise a family. That was the plan, and it might have worked out (with some minor kinks) if I hadn't decided to visit Germany at exactly the wrong time.
The city of Munich was in flames. Everyone had been running around screaming their heads off, and one by one the screams fell silent. Apparently I was one of the only ones to think of going inside an actual building and staying there instead of running through the streets being scooped up by that green… stuff.
*sigh*
Humans are idiots, aren't we. God, until that day, I hadn't thought that people actually took their cues from those old disaster movies.
Anyway. I hid in there for about an hour, until I heard some noises coming from outside. Noises that didn't sound like they were human at all.
I waited until they'd moved past, then snuck as quietly as I could to the window. Outside, I could see the bodies of some of the polizeibeamte scattered around, the smell of their death strong in the air. From what I could see, they hadn't even had a chance to draw their guns.
I crept out as quietly as I could and nicked a pistol. Figured that they wouldn't be needing them anymore. I looked to the left and the right – and up, I'm not about to be taken for an idiot – but didn't see anything, so I popped back inside the store and waited by the window. Someone would come eventually.
When they did it nearly gave me a heart attack, though. A huge… what was that thing, anyway? Like a cross between a helicopter, a jet, and some other weird crap. Whatever it was, it came drifting down slowly and smoothly – so softly I didn't hear it until it was only a foot or so away from landing next to the burned out cars.
I didn't want to get caught in any crossfire – better their skins than mine – so I figured I'd wait until it seemed safe. Men and women in body armor with guns didn't seem safe at all, especially considering they all looked ready to shoot at the first thing in sight. They moved up on a warehouse and went inside, one by one.
Everything seemed relatively quiet, so I slipped behind a window further up, watching.
It was when I saw two small, shadowy figures moving to the side of the warehouse that my heart jumped into my throat.
Those soldiers in there – they had no idea those things were coming. They'd be killed, and then I'd be stuck in this God-forsaken city for who knows how long.
Not on my watch.
I ran as quietly as I could after them, but it was too late – they'd already gone inside. I heard an explosion from within, maybe some kind of grenade? I wasn't sure. I gripped the pistol I'd grabbed from the dead man tightly in my hand.
Sounds of gunfire followed, gunfire and some other kind of weird weapon. I didn't recognize it, it sounded all electronic and crackly, like something out of a bad sci-fi movie from the 50's.
*laughs*
I guess that's kind of appropriate, huh? At the time I could hardly think except for a kind of cold, detached thought that those people in body armor were fighting – and maybe dying – in there, and how dare they for doing that when they were the only ones who could get me out of here.
I heard a skittering sound, and turned. There were two more of those things, and this time I got a better look at them. They were skinny, almost skeletal, with big dark eyes and a weird yellow glow on their chests. The heads seemed too big for the body; I would've thought that any creature with heads that made for targets that good wouldn't make it too long.
I realized that if they made it in, there wasn't a chance in hell the four soldiers that had gone in could get out of there alive.
People later, they think that it must have been so brave for some art student to do what I did. It wasn't, really. It was just common sense. We had to win, you know. I had to get out of there, and I wasn't going to do it if those things lived.
So I aimed my pistol at the head of the first one and emptied the clip into it, already grabbing for the extra I'd picked up.
It had weird blood. Kind of a yellow-green, made me think of puke, and the consistency was pretty close to it as well. It splattered more than I thought it would – thing must've had a glass skull – and the other one gave a little screech in shock and started ducking away. It didn't even raise the glowing pistol it was gripping; I think it was just shocked that its buddy had been killed. These things weren't the proper type for combat. They didn't have the mind for it.
I'd handled guns a few times before, with my family back home doing skeet shooting, and these things (whatever they were) presented a lot better of a target than most of what I'd aimed at before.
The second one died just like its buddy had. You couldn't miss those big heads if you tried.
I was lucky, really, that was all. Just lucky. If there'd been any more of them I wouldn't have made it, I'd only grabbed the one spare clip.
The gunfire inside had died down, and I moved around to the front carefully, holding my now-useless pistol to my side. I could still use it to hit someone, after all.
One man walked out of the front of the warehouse. Even from my distance, I could tell that there was something wrong with his expression. It was… broken, somehow. There was a small flag of Argentina on the back of his armor, and I figured that it was worth risking discovery so long as he spoke English.
"Hey!" I yelled at him. "Hey, over here!" I walked up slowly and carefully, making a big show of throwing my pistol away to prove I was unarmed. If he was safe, then it wouldn't matter. If he wasn't, I already had at least three different ways out of here that would work before he could bring his gun up to me.
He looked at me blankly for a moment, then brought up a hand up to his ear and said in a low, accented voice, "Central. Found a survivor."
There was a brief pause while he listened to the voice on the other end, then he looked up and said gruffly, "How'd you survive?"
I shrugged. "Killed a couple of those bug-eyed freaks back there with a pistol I picked up. How'd you?"
My question stops him for a second before he holds a hand to his ear and mumbles an answer.
Finally he looks up.
"You're to come with me. Back to base."
He turns, and I'm obviously expected to follow with no argument. Not that I was about to offer any, I just want to get out of here, and to somewhere where someone knows what's going on.
We climb in the back of the air vehicle he calls the "Skyranger" and strap ourselves in. It's a rattling old thing, sounds like it hasn't been upgraded since the 70's at the least.
"My name is Victor Chavez." His voice came sudden in the noisy place, the thick accent making it even harder for me to work out what he'd said.
Trying to make my voice as loud as I could without shouting, I answered.
"Mine's Adrianna Coe. I'm an art student, I've been traveling overbroad to…"
He interrupted me.
"Their names were Chris Hudson. Kaori Goto. Sergey Smirnov. They were good people."
I stayed silent, not sure how to respond, or even if I was supposed to. He stayed silent as well. The rest of the flight was what you might call "awkward".
I didn't see where we were going – there were no windows, and I've never been good with geography anyway. All I know was that it felt like we were going fast, and then slow, and then down.
The hatch popped open and Victor stalked out silently, not saying a word, not looking back.
I followed, hoping that wherever we were, it was someplace with a bathroom. That flight had taken a few hours.
As I stepped towards a hallway, a man with a horrifically ugly green sweater called me over. Despite his dress sense and generally smarmy demeanor, he had the appearance of someone in charge, so I stepped his way as he held out a hand.
"I'm Central Officer Bradford," he began, "and I'd like to welcome you to XCOM HQ. I heard you did rather well out there."
I raised an eyebrow.
"First," I began briskly, "I'd like to know what XCOM stands for, because it's been driving me half-crazy the whole way here. Second, I'm pretty sure that those were aliens, and I'd just love to hear that story as well. Third, I think that 'rather well' doesn't quite cover an art student killing two aliens."
One thing I had to give the guy, he had a truly excellent poker face. His expression never changed once as he answered me.
"Fair enough. You want to know secrets, then. Well, that's easy enough. Just join up with XCOM. The pay will be awful, the environment ridiculously dangerous, and there's no death insurance. What's your name, miss, and do you have a family?"
I nodded. "My name's Adrianna Coe, and I have a family, all right. They're in California right now. They're good people. Will they be safe through all of this, or will I get a message one day that they've been found dead in a probing bed?"
His expression stayed the same, with not a single deviation. "They'll be as safe as they would be if you weren't an XCOM soldier. That may not be very much, I should warn you. Alien life nowadays seems somewhat... hostile."
"It wasn't before?"
"You know what I meant. Now get along – I have to report to the Commander. The signage should get you to the barracks."
With that, he turned and walked away. As ordered, I followed the signs that said "Barracks" on them. As I walked, I considered my new life. I'd have to give a change of address at the very least. I'd have to be ready for any combat that might come. Why the hell was XCOM hiring a civilian, anyway? Hopefully I'd have plenty of time for my drawing.
When I stepped through the doors, I saw a pair of men in white coats carrying something out of one of the rooms.
"What's happening?" I asked.
I had to repeat the question a couple of times before an attractive woman whose bedside sign said, "Patel, Varsha" answered.
"It's Victor Chavez. Mad bastard put up pictures of his dead squadmates on the Wall of the Fallen, and after that…"
The men in white coats were carrying a body bag, and I understood even before she made the universal symbol of holding a finger gun to one's head, cocking it, and pulling the trigger.
I looked at the giant "X" that was inscribed in the badges I saw everywhere, and the words above it.
"What does it mean?"
She gave a grim grin. "It means hopeful words for people with not much hope. Sure, the nations say they'll band together, but they won't put anything into it. It's just words. They barely give us any funds, and they give us no soldiers at all – all of us here, we're all just volunteers."
I gave a polite smile. "That's very nice, but it's not a translation."
She shrugged. "Sorry if I thought I'd found someone who listened to what was being said, instead of the words only. In any case, it's Latin, obviously. The translation's been a bit tricky for all of us, so we asked the Commander. What he said seemed to sum it up quite well."
"He said, I am watchful. I am necessary."
Vigilo Confido
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Hello, loyal fantasticks!
XCOM: Enemy Within is out, and so I may provisionally start on this dear story of mine, which (no doubt to the utter confusion of all) I'm simply calling "XCOM: Enemy Within". It may be considered a prequel to my other XCOM story, but if you like this one better please feel free to ignore the other as non-canon territory, and revel in the True XCOM Splendor that I hope to bring.
Voila! Chapter 1. And chapters will be coming quite quickly until Chapter 4 or so, as I've been working on these beforehand with the plan to change them into the Enemy Within continuity.
~The Once and Future Overlord