Interval 01: The Advent of Annoyance

The drive to the 'rendezous' point was a short, and awkwardly silent one, and Keller already regretted being in F.E.A.R. He had heard rumors of just how strange and inconsistent the agency was (an operation to rescue a kitten trapped in a tree had infamously resulted in the severe injuries of two F.E.A.R. agents and five rescue workers), but the dumpy old man seemed like a precursor for things to come.

They pulled up suddenly beside a dilapidated freeway, and Keller was shocked at just how empty the whole place was. The lights were still on, but there seemed to be no sign of life. Either the citizens had been evacuated, or it was not a very popular place.

"Get out."

He jerked his head back at the ridiculous old man, and then, with a helpless shrug, opened the door and stepped out. Was this his first mission?

"I'm gonna introduce you to your 'squadmates', Keller." The old man said, doing a rather obnoxious hand gesture when he spitefully mentioned Keller's team. The young man looked around, finding nothing but an old, green dumpster hanging suspiciously in the middle of the freeway. Keller looked at it oddly for a moment, and then suddenly charged towards it.

Suddenly, the top of the can flew open, and the wild, gunk-covered face of the man inside shocked Keller. The man had a dirty condom on his forehead, a banana on his shoulder, and he was pointing a broken bottle at the recruit.

"Put your hands in the air now!"

Keller sighed in disappointment. A drunken hobo? Was that his 'initiation'?

"I think you've had a little too much to-"

"Raynes, here's your new recruit" shouted Betters loudly and quickly, his contempt more than a little apparent in his voice. Keller stopped again, his mouth wide open. This…thing…was his squadmate?

"This is 'Captain' Daniel Todd Porilander Constantino Salieri Brolinio Andrew Wilson Raynes. We call him Raynes for short"

The "Captain" lifted a disgusting hand, and offered a shake.

"Welcome to F.E.A.R., brother, hope you'll survive it"

Lawrence said nothing. He was still in shock. "Rowdy" grabbed the young man by the neck, and whispered in his ear.

"Look, Keller, I'm sorry about this, I really am. You're a great guy, but I really need an extra team for this operation. Oh, and just so you know, he's not a captain. He's just some deluded guy who banged his head a little too hard and told us that he was seeing…martians, wasn't it? Anyways, I didn't WANT him on the team, but I needed SOMEONE on it. So…just humor him, alright? Good man."

He swung the speechless young man back, and then oddly enough, whistled loudly. He then walked up to the dirty old hobo (who had now crawled out of the dumpster), and then whispered something into the man's ear.

The cool night air washed over his face, and Keller felt almost…relaxed. He walked forward, towards the forbidden territory of the garbage can, and then leapt back as another figure came from behind the can, zipping his pants up. He had either been answering the call of nature, or perhaps, something else. Quickly, he straightened up, and then rapidly introduced himself.

"Hello, my name's Lawrence Keller, I'm the new operative for Bravo Team, and I have no idea what the fuck is going on."

The man, a thin, obnoxious-looking Asian man, grinned at him, and then walked forward.

"Ah, fresh meat! Welcome to the lowest paying job you've ever had, Keller, my name's Steve Chen and I basically run everything here. Electronics, First-Aid, Lock-picking, Combat….everything they forgot to put in the budget."

Keller smiled weakly, and then shook his hand. Suddenly, he heard the screeching of tires, and to his shock, realized that the F.E.A.R. Coordinator's car was already way ahead of them, a light in the distance. He had ditched them. Keller gave the finger to the car, and then buried his face in his hands.

"What a bastard! Now what?"

Chen slapped him on the back a little too enthusiastically, and then said

"First, prove yourself to the 'Captain.'"

He shoved the recruit over, and then to his horror, realized that the Captain had moved very close to him. He instinctively recoiled, and nearly shrieked in surprise. The man had his hand out, a filthy old thing. Keller looked at it as if it were a rotten fish.

"Shake."

Keller gave himself a mental slap. He was a soldier, part of a group dedicated to fighting paranormal threats. A little dirt, even from a psychopath, wouldn't hurt him. He gulped, and then stuck a reluctant finger at the proffered limb, closing his eyes. He ignored the fact that the man's vice-like grip was crushing his hand, because he knew that he had to be brave.

Finally, it was over. It seemed as if a curtain had been lifted over the proceedings. The "Captain" suddenly straightened up, shook the dirt off like a rabid dog (Keller had wisely backed away a few meters) and then glared at a mysterious point a few inches left away from Keller's face. The recruit assumed that he was attempting a thousand-yard stare, but the idiot was doing it wrong.

"Listen up, men! Our commander has been kind enough to leave us with several armaments"

He reached into the dumpster, and threw out several black things at Keller. After a rather awkward dodge, Keller picked up one to find a rather dusty old sub-machine gun. He smiled. At least he might have a chance to see some combat tonight.

"Armacham Technology Corporation has officially declared war on F.E.A.R., and they are now scrambling to destroy information. Our destination, a minor database, is only a few blocks past this freeway, and it's relatively empty."

Dozens of emotions swirled and battled through Keller's mind, and confusion won through. ATC? That absolutely massive corporation that practically owned everything in the city? It didn't surprise him that they'd be a bunch of scumbags, but openly attacking the military? He grinned, suddenly. He'd actually be uncovering a goddamned conspiracy tonight, and the F.E.A.R. team was beginning to look…not so bad.

................

Morrison wiped his forehead anxiously, desperate not to piss himself in front of the mercenaries. He hadn't heard much of the bastards, but it was pretty clear that they made the Nazis positively hospitable. They had entered the data center an hour ago, easily wiping out any civilians in the area (there were only a few overweight bastards who were jacking off in the locker room, easily dispatched.)

As for the data….there was a puny little laptop lying around, a password the only bar between them and the success of the mission. It require the encryption codes of an ATC employee….except Morrison had wiped out all the employees of the area. He was now terrified, trying desperately not to show it.

He wondered though, how lowly ATC would be to actually trap all their data, hundreds of hundreds of Gigabytes of sensitive data, into an old computer that should have been decommissioned decades ago? Odd, really.

The man beside him, a helmeted mercenary, flicked him on the shoulder and sent him sprawling onto the floor. The mercenary laughed softly, his voice disguised to resemble Darth Vader. It was certainly overkill, he could barely understand what they were saying.

"Wons zee teem gets hear, vee chow youse zem as ze key too dees."

"I'm sorry, what?"

The mercenary growled, pressed a button in his suit, and suddenly became a lot clearer.

"We got news of the F.E.A.R. team heading our way. They're the best of the best, and they've supposedly got knowledge on ATC's encryption codes. We'll FORCE them to help us…"

"Oh, okay. You can do that."

The mercenary walked on, giving the former NSA agent a kick in the head. Morrison's world was plunged into darkness.

…………..

Theta-12, otherwise known as "Ares" was fucked. That was certain. Paxton Fettel had been in a panic, literally throwing every available clone into the path of the F.E.A.R. Point Man, desperate to delay the killer enough for the commander to reach the Vault. Theta's team had been assigned to literally run over the Point Man.

"I see you, fucker, you're not gonna get away!"

The Point Man stood calmly in the headlights, less than twenty feet away from Theta Squad's Armored Personnel Carrier. His mask and goggles concealed what he was truly feeling, but Theta-6 was pretty sure that he was dead meat. Suddenly, right before he heard the satisfying noise of flesh being ground into human hamburger, the Point Man disappeared.

"What the-"

They smashed through a wooden wall, and suddenly fell into a convenient abyss. The Point Man slunk around from the corner, and ran forward, not even sparing a second glance at the fiery ruins of the fallen truck a hundred feet beneath him.

He was the only survivor of that failed assassination attempt. He had no weapons, he was bleeding out, and he was far from rescue. His radio was out; only playing re-runs of "London Bridge", and for the first time, the calming, soothing voice of Paxton was gone. He was alone. He shivered, not altogether instinctively. What was he going to do?

………

Keller was the first one to spot the soldier, a few hundred feet away from them, and immediately took cover behind a fallen truck. Chen had suggested that they use the old aqueducts beneath the freeway as a shortcut to the Data Center, and Keller couldn't really argue. Of course, looking back on the dump, it was certainly bad on the eyes. It looked like a whole pile of garbage. It seemed that wide-open spaces weren't everything.

They were now smack in the middle of a field of gray, with fallen pieces of rubble surrounding them. The fiery ruins of a truck illuminated the ruins enough to show the staggering figure of a soldier walking around. No, not any soldier, Keller told himself. It was a goddamned Clone Soldier. ATC had made a project to develop an army of clones, and now they were loose. Already, the absurdity level was pretty damn high.

And then, the Replica spotted them.

"Sergeant, take him out before he calls his friends!"

Keller hadn't given them his rank, and Chen had given him the nickname "Sarge." To be honest, he didn't mind it.

He nodded, and gave a mock salute to Raynes

"Aye, aye, Captain."

He then sprinted towards the escaping soldier, firing his sub-machine gun a little too enthusiastically. His heart was pumping, and he felt as if he was in a big game. The fact that the gun sounded rather…fake helped a big deal as well.

The Replica disappeared into a drainage pipe, only a hundred feet away from Keller, and he ran on. There was light in it, and he was glad to see another color that wasn't gray. He dived in, aiming his gun around, and then realized that there was a rusted old bridge a couple dozen feet ahead of him, and the Replica was standing weakly on the other side, daring him to come on. Keller wasn't one to avoid an invitation, and ran on.

As soon as he took a step on the bridge, he realized just how obvious the trap had been. The whole thing gave way, and he was suddenly falling, falling way down, way, way, waaayyyy down.

He fell into an ocean of muck, of shitty green crap. He was breathing it in, and the smell was unbearable. He lifted his head out, desperate to shake out the sludge, and took in a breath of stinky air. It honestly smelled like the world's worst case of body odour.

"Oh Laaawwwrreeenncceeee, I've come baaaaack for yoooouuuuu!"


A great brown face came up to him, all burnt up and ruined. It was the shit monster, back to wreak its vengeance on him. Keller gulped. The monster was in its element now.

Suddenly, it disappeared. He was dry, suddenly. He looked around, noticing that he had apparently been transported onto the set of a sci-fi film. It was a dark, creepy place. Perhaps it belonged to the UAC? Or maybe Weyland-Yutani? Or was it the Von Braun? It didn't matter, it was just a generic, haunted house that looked like it was in space.

"Where the fuck have you been?"

It was Chen, who was looking rather worse for the wear. Namely, his clothes were covered with blood.

Suddenly, his eyes dropped out, and he started coughing. First, blood, then teeth, and then, suddenly, a whole load of organs. Keller began to feel…not scared. It appeared that he had coughed up at least a few dozen hearts, a couple of spleens, six lungs, nine eyeballs, fifty-five legs, and a whole load of bizarre organs. It was a little too bloody to be frightening.

And then it was over.

……..

A few minutes later, a manhole opened up, and the stinking, slimy figure of a F.E.A.R. agent climbed out. He was thankful that he hadn't met any opposition yet, but the hallucination was rather odd. He hoped it wouldn't interfere too much. He looked around, noticing that he had managed to conveniently find himself beside the ATC Data Center (a sign next to a rather old looking building told him that) The city itself looked pretty abandoned. He wasn't sure, but there was absolutely no sign of life, and it looked as if everyone had simply vanished. Even odder.

He saw a shadowy figure walking into a nearby alleyway, and suddenly desperate to meet up with someone, he ran in. Surprisingly, there was no sign of anyone. It was just a pile of garbage cans.

"Is someone there?"

A soft voice behind Keller asked, but before the young man could respond, something else happened.

"Nothing here except us garbage cans."

Keller backed away slowly, unaware that he walked right through the eyeless apparition of Spen Jankowski. The spectral F.E.A.R. operative buried his face in his hands, and dissolved into a small pile of ashes, making Keller cough.

He walked around the side of the building, noting that the other F.E.A.R. agents had already found the backdoor, and were now intricately examining it.

"What's the problem, 'gentlemen'?"

Chen grinned

"Well, I'm pretty damned sure that ATC'd bother to lock their doors. I'm trying to remember my five-minute course in lockpicking"

Raynes chuckled.

"Yeah, he read it off a magazine in the laundry."

"Cosmogirl's informative, didn't you know?"

Keller groaned, walked over to the door, and pulled it open.

"Here you go, master of unlocking."

Chen looked strangely at Keller for a moment, and then shook his head. The two F.E.A.R. operatives walked inside, and after a while, the "Sergeant" followed.

(There. A little rushed, but I think it's good. ChildofAlma, I hope you'll like the shout-out I gave for one of your characters. Any other comments are welcome!)