Instinctively splitting the timeline by reflex, after a few horrified seconds, Thomas threw himself to the floor, ripping his sidearm from the concealed holster under the desk on the way down and flipping the safety off in the same motion in both timelines. Cocking it as he rolled under the desk, he listened intently. Aside from the normal sounds of his office, faint humming from the computer, the sound of air in the ducting above him, and a continuous bubbling noise from the small fish tank in the bedroom, he could hear nothing out of place.

He tilted his head, straining his ears. He couldn't smell anything other than the still horrible scent of that chemical, which was slowly dropping in intensity but was still the dominant odor present. It drowned out anything else that might be otherwise detectable.

After nearly five minutes, when nothing at all happened, in one timeline he very cautiously stuck his head around the corner of the desk, his gun-hand leading, and looked around. In the other he stayed safely put under the desk, which was made of half-inch thick armor steel for just such an occasion. The light from the couple of dozen monitors lit the room in an eerie gray-green color, the single line of text the only thing visible. His eyes were sufficiently adapted to the dark now that he could see reasonably well, but there appeared to be nothing else out of place. He checked the corners of the room suspiciously, then very carefully stood, waving his weapon around the entire place.

When he didn't see or hear anything that suggested there was an attack imminent, he sidled over to the door of his bedroom, kicking it open then jumping back. Again, there was no response. After thirty seconds, he leaned in and scanned the room, panning his gun around, before cautiously entering and checking everything in detail.

Nothing.

The bedside light was still on, as were the lights in the tank on the other side of the room. He watched the fish swim around for a moment, before turning around and inspecting everything once more.

Still nothing out of place.

Going back into the other room he felt his way across it to the door, putting his hand on the handle, before thinking again. After a moment he reached to the side and found the light switch, which was in the off position. Flipping it he blinked wildly as the room lights came on.

"What… the fuck." He stared at the switch, then looked around the room. Unable to work out what on earth had happened, aside from the fact that something very odd was clearly going on, he took a deep breath and opened the door…

Gasping as the second timeline collapsed instantly, the now-familiar void seen for a fraction of a second in what should have been the corridor outside his room, Thomas jolted back in his hidey-hole under his desk, slamming his head into the unyielding metal with a dull thud, then swearing viciously. He was terrified all over again.

'That was weird,' Taylor noted, smelling the strange mix of scents coming from the man hiding under the desk. 'He got calmer and more scared all at the same time.'

"I wonder..." The Varga sounded very thoughtful, trailing off for a second or two. "We might have seen the result of his power, I think. Or at least the aftereffects of it at any rate. If we're right about his being able to simulate two separate scenarios at the same time, perhaps he tried to work out how to escape and ran into whatever it is that we seem to do to his type of Thinker power. If one of his simulations went well and the other one went bad, that might explain why he ended up feeling two different emotions at the same time."

'There was a very short delay between them, even though they overlapped,' she nodded, intrigued. 'How odd.' Moving around to where she could see the man lurking under the desk, which was obviously designed to double as a protective shield, she bent down and peered at him at close range. His face was fixed in an expression that mixed extreme worry, anger, careful thought, and a sort of resignation, all in one weird look. She made sure to get a good shot of it with her camera. Lisa would find it amusing. At this range she could see the electrical activity in his brain, particularly around his Gemma, was going nuts, showing his power was definitely in use.

He looked straight through her, making her wonder again what he'd do if she dropped the cloaking spell. Moving back, she kept an eye on him while typing on her wrist terminal. Hitting the Send icon, she grinned when the computer made its little squeak of protest again, the Dragon-supplied override working perfectly. Calvert froze, then looked up at the underside of the desk.

'I wonder if he'll keep trying to use his power to escape,' she idly commented, watching the man visibly try to decide what to do. 'I guess if he's used to being able to try both options at the same time, finding that it doesn't work properly is going to screw him up a lot.'

"I suspect so," the Varga agreed. "I'd love to know what exactly we're doing to his power, and what it seems like to him. Based on his expression, it isn't all that much fun."

The man had, yet again, suddenly emitted two opposite emotional scents, making her smile grimly. It had happened several times in the last thirty or forty seconds. He certainly wasn't enjoying himself, which was odd, because she was. Snickering, she waited to see what he did.

'Let's soften him up for a while before we move on to the next phase,' she said with satisfaction and amusement, her demonic companion feeling the same thing.

'What the fuck is going on?' Thomas thought frantically. 'Who turned out the lights? Who's hacking my system? How did they get access?' The weird message was definitely the results of a pretty effective hack into his computer network, which he'd almost have sworn was impossible without physical access. None of the alarms had gone off, there had been no hint of an intrusion, so it seemed unlikely that anyone could have somehow gained entry to the base without either him or his men noticing. So it seemed more likely that it was a remote hack.

But…

If that was true, who had turned out the fucking lights?

The switch had physically been turned off. But the door hadn't opened, there was no other way inside…

He suddenly looked up at the air vents in the ceiling, thinking hard. No. It was ridiculous, this wasn't a movie. None of the ducting was anywhere near large enough for even a child to get through, and in any case the vents were electrified, alarmed, and welded in place. Not to mention the traps in the ducts. He wasn't stupid, he'd thought of that when he built this place.

Even so he peered suspiciously at the vents for a couple of minutes, pointing his weapon at them the entire time.

While he was doing this, he was also thinking very hard indeed. No one had come in, that he was certain of, yet someone not him had turned the lights in this one room off, somehow.

'Stranger ability?' he guessed with a shiver. 'But no alarms. How did they get into the base in the first place? Or have they been here all along?'

The thought was horrifying. One of the mercenaries, possibly? Or was there a Stranger wandering around, that had been living in the base undetected for the last couple of months? He couldn't see how they could possibly have come and gone without tripping at least one alarm, the number of different systems that would have to be compromised to allow surreptitious entry or exit when a lockdown was in place was insane. It would take at least three compromised locations in the security room, the power room, and the server room to override everything.

Which in turn would need, at a rough estimate, three to five people to be subverted. He couldn't say it was impossible, but it seemed unlikely. One, fair enough, two was possible, but five was pushing it. And why wait until now anyway?

Was it connected to that chemical spill incident earlier?

His paranoia was going into overdrive now.

Perhaps someone had arranged that spill as a diversion, got the PRT to commit their resources to dealing with it and simultaneously managing to have the center of the city evacuated, and was planning an assault on his base. But who? The PRT themselves? Not likely, his moles hadn't had a whisper of anything as complex as this would need. Another government agency? Not impossible, but also unlikely, since he had informants in several places who would probably have warned him. It was laughable to think of the cops as being able to do anything like this, so that really only left a Parahuman group, presumably a villainous one. Possibly the E88, although he didn't think he'd attracted enough attention from Kaiser to warrant an attack yet.

Not to mention that the Nazi fool wasn't much for subtlety, he'd have tried a frontal attack rather than sneaking around.

Splitting off another timeline, in that one he jumped to his feet and emptied his handgun into the room, spinning around to cover the entire place, then dropped into cover again. When nothing happened he peered over the desk at the smoking monitors, several of which had holes in, checking for any sign he'd hit anyone. Nothing showed up, so he dropped that timeline. Spawning another one, he scuttled over to a cabinet on the wall and opened it, retrieving the P-90 that was sitting inside along with two extra magazines. He proceeded to use up the entire hundred and fifty rounds he had on shooting the crap out of both his office and his bedroom, repeating the exercise methodically through six more timelines, until he was satisfied he'd put holes in every possible hiding place.

Aside from deafening himself, he'd achieved nothing at all. No signs of a dead or wounded Stranger-capable cape, no indications at all that anyone other than himself was present. Each repetition had attracted his men within seconds, someone hammering on the door and shouting. Dropping the last timeline again, he sat under his desk and mulled the problem over. It seemed likely that unless they were very quick, there was no hidden person in his suite. He'd either have hit them, or made them give themselves away, he thought. It wasn't a perfect test but it seemed significant.

Even so, he still couldn't figure out how that light switch had been turned off. Everything else could be a remote hack, would almost have to be, but…

That fucking switch was giving him nightmares.

Generating another timeline, he calmly walked over to the door and opened it, just to double-check what happened.

Void.

Fuck.

His heart jumped, making him breath slowly and deeply for a few seconds.

When the computer on the desk above him made the same sound that had heralded the abrupt change in status quo, he froze again, before staring at the bottom of the desk, wondering what fresh hell this was. Eventually he very slowly and cautiously shuffled out from under the desk, raising his head above it high enough to see the screen. He didn't bother with another timeline since it didn't seem to achieve anything useful right now, although the back of his neck was itching as a result.

The message had changed.

For Great Justice

What the fuck did that mean?

"Who the hell is doing this?" he snarled, ducking back into hiding. Again, nothing happened, and eventually his patience ran out. If there was anyone here and they wanted him dead, it would have happened already.

Even so, he waited another minute before he stood up, panning his gun around for a moment. Walking over to the weapons cabinet he flipped the lights on as he moved past the switch, then pulled out the machine-gun, putting the magazines on the desk and slinging the strap over his shoulder. Going back to the computer, he sat down in front of it and stared at the screen for a moment, then looked up at the other monitors, all of which were patiently showing him those three words.

"What do you want?" he said under his breath, then twitched violently as the message changed again without warning.

You

"Jesus!" he yelped, jumping to his feet and whipping the gun up. He turned in a circle, not seeing anyone, yet again.

"This is insane," he growled. "Is there someone here?" There was no visible response, although he kept looking around, even checking the bedroom again. Going back into his office he twitched when the lights in the room he'd just left went out as he walked through the door. Checking, he found that the switch next to the door was now off. He turned it back on, gritting his teeth. His fear was quickly turning to rage. Someone was definitely fucking with him.

When he sat down again he found that all the monitors had resumed normal operation. Staring at them, he flipped through all the camera channels, looking for something out of place. All he found was patrolling mercenaries, all of whom looked alert but not worried. Clearly none of them had spotted anything amiss.

He suspiciously checked the whereabouts of all his men, seeing all forty seven of them either patrolling, monitoring the security and comms consoles, or in the case of four of them, eating in the cafeteria. These last ones clearly had strong stomachs, the smell was still bad enough that the thought of food made him ill.

Taylor watched Calvert obsessively checking everything, grinning to herself. He knew something was going on but he obviously couldn't work out exactly what, which was making him very upset. She wondered how many simulations he'd run so far, and how they'd gone wrong.

"Time for the next part, I believe," the Varga commented.

'I think so,' she smiled, poking her override terminal. This one had taken some thought to set up.

IM IN UR COMPUTR EATIN ALL UR MONEIZ

Thomas stared at the message that had taken over all his monitors other than his desktop computer, horror going through him again. What did that…

A sudden ghastly thought striking him, he frantically accessed his ultra-high security banking link, typing in password after password, eventually reaching the relevant page of data. He checked the various accounts and sighed in relief. Nothing amiss.

Smiling nastily, Taylor prodded another control, then watched the result with enormous satisfaction. Lisa was probably going to frame a still from this video.

The page suddenly refreshed, the updated screen changing in a few key places. Thomas stared at it, his mind blank, for several long seconds.

It was impossible.

Reaching for the mouse, he clicked the page refresh icon, watching as the screen flickered as it redrew. The results were exactly the same.

Breathing heavily through his nose, he logged out, then went through the entire long process of getting access back again. When he arrived at the same page for the second time and saw that every one of his accounts was showing as completely empty, he closed his eyes and counted to ten.

Opening them, he screamed at the empty room, his fists clenched so hard he nearly broke a finger. "FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!" he howled, hammering the desk and making the keyboard jump. "HOW! WHO! WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!?"

The by-now familiar sound of whatever was hacking his computer came again. Reluctantly, still raging, he turned his head away from the desktop monitor and stared at the video wall.

CEILIN LIZARD IZ WATCHIN U

The lights went out again. Very slowly, he looked up, to see in the dim glow of the monitors a pair of glowing eyes above a mouth full of teeth that were exposed in a wide grin, one he'd seen on the news more than once.

His heart nearly stopped.

"Saurial," he choked out. "How..."

Grabbing the P-90, he opened up on the reptilian figure that was clinging to his ceiling, wildly firing as it scuttled around. Bullets pinged around the room, smashing several of the monitors but miraculously missing him completely. More worryingly, he was certain he'd hit the rapidly moving creature at least once but it didn't stop or even flinch.

When his gun finally ran out of ammunition he quickly reloaded, then looked around frantically. There was no sign of her.

Missed me

The message taunted him.

He shot out some more of the monitors in fury and fear.

Would you like to play a game?

Watching the remaining screens with wide eyes, Thomas wondered how the hell the fucking lizard had got inside his base.

Ready Player One

The latest message formed on the last few monitors, making him shiver. There was something completely horrific about the way it didn't appear all at once, this time, but came up letter by letter.

There was a long pause, then it changed one final time.

Game On

Five seconds later, the power went out entirely, the room going totally black and silent, everything dying completely. Thomas, despite his best efforts and many years of military service, couldn't help himself. He screamed in shock, holding tightly onto his weapon. At the back of his mind he was frantically wondering why this time no one had come to investigate all the shooting.

And trying to remember if his office door would open without any power.

{Cut the computer access,} Taylor's voice sounded in Amy and Lisa's earpieces. She sounded very pleased with herself. {We're ready for the next phase.}

{How is poor Mr Calvert taking it?} Lisa said, Amy seeing that she was grinning widely.

{He's a little excited,} Taylor snickered. In the background they could hear a burst of gunfire. {But I think he's getting into it. Remind me to tell Über and Leet about this, I think they'd appreciate it. I got the idea from them in fact.}

Amy waved Armsmaster over and requested that he pass on the message. With a nod, the Tinker got to work.

{Keep us updated,} she said. {We're going to be heading that way soon, I think.}

{No hurry,} Taylor chuckled. {I've hardly got started yet.}

She looked at Lisa, who was smirking, and laughed under her breath. The video was going to be impressive, she was completely sure of that much.

As an alarm twittered on the main console, Morales looked up from the tablet he was reading, attracting attention from Sergeant Owens on the other side of the room where he was trying to ignore the smell. "What's that?" he asked, getting up and walking over to where the man was working on the keyboard.

"The main data link went down," his subordinate said, bringing up the window he was after with a few clicks of the mouse. "Just went completely dead a few seconds ago. No errors logged previous to that."

"How's the primary backup?"

Morales checked. He looked up at the other man, concern in his eyes. "Also down. At exactly the same time."

"Shit." Owens grabbed one of the walkie-talkies that worked in the base, via embedded feeders in the walls, and pressed the transmit key. "Captain Smith to the control room," he said, then released the key.

"What is it, Owens?" the voice of the mercenary leader came back a few seconds later, sounding like he was annoyed. Nothing unusual there.

"Problem with the external computer feed, sir," he explained.

There was a pause, then the captain replied, "On my way."

By the time he arrived just under two minutes later, Morales had run diagnostics on everything and was looking very worried. "It's not a problem inside the base, sir," he said as he turned around. "Both primary and secondary fiber links are down, copper backup is down too, and the wireless connection is either dead or being jammed. We're completely isolated."

"Were there any signs of anyone fucking with the tunnels or outside?" Smith demanded.

"No. Nothing, we've been monitoring it since we first detected the chemical spill," Morales replied. "Do you think they're connected?"

"Of course they're fucking connected, you idiot," the captain snarled. "Someone is attacking the place."

"The PRT?"

"It might be, or it could be the E88, or for all we know right now, the fucking dock worker's union," Smith said with extreme annoyance, checking all the various sources of information. "Cable's out too. Definitely an attack of some sort. But no attempts to get inside, no signs on the cameras of any external threat… What the hell is going on?"

Grabbing his radio, he raised it to his mouth. "Everyone get off your asses and check all exits, all critical systems. Find out what is going on." Putting it back onto his belt, he turned on his heel. "I'm going to talk to Coil. Check all the security feeds, inside and out. Look for any sign at all of something not right."

He'd reached the doorway when another alarm went off. Turning around again, he shouted, "Now what?"

"The power just went out in Coil's section of the base, sir," Morales said, while Owens quickly brought up a schematic of the power grid. It was showing an entire section that was blinking red, indicating a major failure. "Primary and backup grids both shut down in that sector. Looks like they were cut in the power room, that's the only place that could be done so cleanly."

"Bring up the cameras in there," Smith snapped. All three of them looked at the array of monitors, which picked that exact moment to suddenly go blank, all the images disappearing. While they were staring, the one in the exact middle of the array popped up some text.

No cheating

"What in god's name…?" Smith whispered, his face showing shock. Morales, after a short pause to gape, started hammering the keyboard and clicking on icons.

"Captain?" he said after a little while. Smith turned away from the screen that was still taunting them to look at him. "That hack..." He indicated the monitor. "It's coming from inside the base. Something is tapped into the main server, somehow. I think it has to be in the computer room."

"Fuck." Smith didn't look pleased. Raising his radio, he keyed it up. "Four-man squad to the server room, we have an intruder. Another squad to the power room, check for sabotage. Chen, get down to the armory and start handing out the heavy weapons. Lock down internal corridors A-1 through D-3, close internal blast doors at all exits. I want every free man sweeping the entire fucking base, if there's one intruder there's probably more. Shoot to kill."

He let go of the key, listening to a dozen messages of acknowledgment. The three could hear boots tromping around outside the security center as everyone rushed to follow the orders. Morales was already flipping switches, having pulled a key from around his neck and inserted it into the relevant lock on the control console and turned it.

A series of deep rumbling sounds came through the walls as the internal barriers operated, separating the base into a number of semi-autonomous sections, with only certain personnel having authority to open them. It limited their ability to move around to a certain degree, but should in theory limit any intruder's ability much more since they wouldn't have the codes to open any of the barriers.

"Do you think that will work, sir?" Owens asked.

"Since we have no idea how they got inside, who the hell knows?" Smith grumbled, checking the graphical representation of the base on one of the monitors. Blinking red icons showed where key doors had operated. After a moment, he nodded. "That should slow whoever it is down at least, gives us time to arm up properly and find them." He looked up at the monitor that was still displaying the message from their unknown intruder and glared at it. "Fucking funny, I'm sure," he added with venom in his voice.

"Captain Smith, Chen reporting," the radio in his hand squawked. "We have a problem."

"What is it?" the captain replied, scowling even more blackly.

"Um… It's the armory."

"What about it?"

"We… can't find it."

There was a very long pause, during which Smith's face became an unhealthy red color. "What the fucking hell do you mean you can't find the armory?" he finally said into the radio, his voice deliberately even and controlled.

"Exactly that, sir. We've walked up and down the hallway four times now and there's no sign of the door." The armorer sounded both very puzzled and not a little worried.

"For fuck's sake!" Smith shouted, pinching the bridge of his nose. Then he raised the radio again. "I'm on my way down. If this is a joke I'm going to shoot you myself. Many, many times."

"Yes, Sir," the distant man said, still sounding extremely confused.

Smith clipped the radio back onto his vest, then punched the wall beside the door. Growling under his breath, he turned to leave. "Hold the fort, see if you can get the cameras back, and do what you can to figure out what the hell is going on," he said to Owens.

"What about Coil, Captain?" the sergeant asked.

"Fuck Coil, he's on his own for now," Smith replied angrily. "He's armed to the teeth and behind three feet of steel and concrete. I'll go and talk to him when I find out what Chen has been drinking and beat it out of him. The intruder is more important than one cape right now."

"Sir." Owens nodded, watching as their leader stomped off grumbling to himself in a way that promised considerable pain for anyone who got in his way. When the man was out of sight, he turned back to the console where Morales was still running diagnostics. Glancing at the monitor with the message on it, he stopped dead.

Bad tempered, isn't he?

His in-drawn breath made Morales look at him, then follow his eyes. Both of them stared for a moment, exchanged glances, and pulled their sidearms out.

"What the hell is it?" Morales whispered, looking uneasily around.

"I have no idea," Owens replied in a low voice, panning his weapon around. The new message strongly implied that their intruder was actually watching them. "They must be tapped into the camera system or something. If they are in the server room they could be watching everything going on in the entire place."

"That hack is definitely from the inside," his companion noted. "I checked, all the lines are still dead."

"Crap."

A flicker of light attracted their attention back to the rogue monitor, which now displayed a different message.

Look behind you

Both of them stared for a moment, then exchanged glances. Owens raised an eyebrow very slightly. Morales nodded just as slightly. Both of them whipped around and raised their weapons, to see…

An empty doorway.

Feeling a little foolish, but still very tense, Owens relaxed slightly. "Shit. They're playing with us."

"Yep."

The amused yet very non-human-sounding voice was right in his ear, making him spin around with a yell. Once again, there was no one there. "Jesus Christ!" he shouted. "Morales. Can you see anyone?"

"Morales?"

Backing into the corner, he looked frantically around. He was the only person in the room now, and there was no trace at all of the man who'd been standing next to him seconds ago. "What the fuck is happening?" he muttered, more worried than he'd been since he left the service after one cluster-fuck too many.

When nothing horrible jumped out at him, he eventually lowered his weapon slightly, trying to pull himself together. He looked at the monitor, then shivered involuntarily at the new message. It was simple, but horrifying in its implications.

Level 1

Mercenaries 46 Me 1

Reaching for his radio, not taking his eyes from the screen, he keyed it up. "Captain? We have another problem..."

Giggling to herself, Taylor carefully put the sleeping merc down on the floor on a quickly-generated pad. She'd decided that the medbay was a good place to put her collection for now. "How many are you planning on grabbing?" the Varga asked with a chuckle.

'Not that many, half a dozen or so maybe?' she replied, arranging the limp man neatly on the ground and manacling him. 'Just enough to get them really worried, I think. I'll leave the rest for the PRT. If I can demoralize them enough they might even give up.'

"Possible. I suspect there will be some who are dedicated enough to fight to the end, but at the same time there may well be a number who will give up fairly easily. Perhaps you should point out how they're not going to get paid, and in fact haven't been paid for nearly two months?"

'I'm keeping that for the right moment,' she said, grinning. 'Right now, I'm having fun.' Satisfied her captives were safe, she popped back into the corridor which had the armory on it, climbing swiftly up the wall and clinging to the ceiling, just in time to see the mercenary captain come storming up to the two men who had been wandering around with lost expressions trying to find where they'd left all their weapons.

"Chen!" the man shouted as he approached. "What's going on?"

"I have absolutely no idea, sir," the short Asian looking man so addressed shrugged. He held up one of the tablets that seemed omnipresent in this place. "The armory should be right here. I've been here hundreds of times. But we can't find the door. And we're both getting vicious headaches looking for it."

"It's right the..." The lead mercenary turned and pointed, then stopped dead. Moving slowly over to the side of the corridor, he felt it, a flabbergasted expression on his face. Taylor grinned, the cloaking spell was definitely pretty effective in this sort of application. They knew without doubt that what they were looking for was there somewhere, which meant that the cognitive dissonance was painful, as had been the case with her father when the Varga had originally hidden her tail. But at the same time, the spell prevented them seeing, feeling, or in any way detecting what was right in front of them. Or, in this case, about fifteen feet to the left.

"I could put more energy into the spell and they'd probably forget they even had an armory if you'd like," her friend snickered. "But I have to admit this is more than a little amusing to watch."

All three men, after a short and heated discussion, had spread out and were tapping on the wall, working their way down to the other end of the concrete hallway, as if they thought that the door they were looking for had been bricked up and painted over. One of them actually ran his hand over the door in question without noticing.

By the time they'd gone all the way down one side and back up the other, the captain looked like he was about to scream in anger and the other two were definitely appearing a little scared, although they were hiding it well. Their scents betrayed them to her, though.

"When I find out who is doing this I'm going to rip their heads off," the captain growled.

Their radios crackled. "Captain?"

He grabbed his and lifted it to his mouth. "What!"

"Ah… we can't find the server room." The mercenary reporting sounded extremely puzzled, even more than the armorer had. "We've checked the entire sector, I could swear we were in the right place, but we can't see any trace of it."

"Oh, for fuck's sake," the captain half sighed, half snarled. "Any other problems anyone wants to report?" he said into the radio with enormous sarcasm and a considerable amount of irritation.

"We've lost the power room," a different voice said, this one very definitely not happy.

Their captain started banging his head on the wall.

Taylor and the Varga snickered.

When his percussive anger management had finished, the mercenary leader held his radio in front of his mouth. "I want every one of you to check everything. Make a list of anything out of the ordinary. I don't believe that someone has stolen the armory, the power room, and the server room, we're being fucked around with. Holograms, force-fields, I don't know, but I'm going to find out and there will be blood..." He took a deep breath. "MOVE!" he shouted into the radio, before lowering it and turning to his subordinates.

There was a pregnant pause.

"Chen?"

"Sir?"

"Where… is… Hoskins?"

The other man turned around, then looked wildly about him. "He was just standing right there..."

Clinging onto the wall, holding an unconscious mercenary by the back of his tactical vest, Taylor smirked then disappeared, leaving two very worried people behind her, weapons out and standing back to back as they retreated.

Level 1

Mercenaries 45 Me 2

Owens stared at the screen, then reached for his radio again.

Today was not going to be a good day, he felt.

When all the rest of the lights went out throughout the base, he decided that was a serious understatement.