Part 30: Mutually Exclusive Termination Orders
#
Daniel Harold Stone, Lieutenant, United States Marine Corps, officially listed killed in action nearly twenty years ago, leaned against the wall of the motel room and tried to find a silver lining somewhere on the horizon. All he saw, though, were dark clouds.
When he had first heard from his contacts about a possible revival of Project Inferno he had been worried. When Julia had reported back from her first scouting mission here in Sunnydale, confirming the rumors, he had been scared. Now he had seen things for himself, had seen what the government he had once sworn to serve and protect had done here in this deceptively quiet little town.
Now he was terrified.
It was not simply the presence of those two super-soldiers, the girl and the young man. Oh, they had been more than impressive, their speed and strength superior to any the members of the so-called Team 666 possessed. Daniel really hated that name, but they had never come up with a better one for themselves. It was fitting somehow.
It was not even the way the two of them had torn into his people and come close to beating them that terrified him so much. This battle they had just finished had been fought under anything but ideal conditions, after all. At first the chaos and confusion had favored them, but that advantage had shifted when the two super-soldiers had arrived, the whole thing turning into a completely chaotic free-for-all. It clearly showed that, after twenty years, his team was in anything but top combat condition.
It was none of these things, though, that terrified him. He was a soldier, he had fought in dozens, maybe hundreds of battles that were every bit as vicious and destructive as this one. He had seen people die right next to him, cut down by bullets that had missed him only by a hair's breath.
What had truly terrified him was the way things had turned out. The wild and insane look in the young man's eyes as he turned on his own people, killing them where they stood. Daniel had watched him beat Julia nearly to a pulp, only to immediately turn on one of the SDO agents barely a minute later. The man had clearly been driven insane and, in the end, had found his end at the hands of the girl, who was clearly in shock about his actions as well as her own.
To Daniel it was not a shock, not as such. He had seen things like that before. Closing his eyes, the memories came back, replaying behind his lids clear as day. It had been their first mission after the 'accident'. He snorted, wondering how they could have been so naive. They had been so young then, so very young.
They moved into this small town, wondering what could possibly pose a threat to national security here. Then they saw their first demons and no further explanations were necessary. Thinking back, was it really all that hard to understand that they had believed whatever lies their superiors fed them? They had just been confronted with creatures that should not have existed outside the fairy tale books. Whatever explanation helped make sense of the world again was very much welcome.
It was during one of their first demon-hunting missions that the 'accident' happened. They pursued a group of vampires through a maze of underground tunnels and ran right into a trap. Daniel did not remember much. A large cave lined with arcane symbols from top to bottom. The humming of generators. The biting stench of chemicals. They were all knocked out and, the next time they woke, they were different.
Not all of them survived. Hanson died immediately, or so Daniel was told. He never saw the body. Chang survived just long enough to awaken, rip one of his nurses to pieces, and then bleed to death after he tore out his own eyes. Bergman did not last much longer. Daniel saw the video footage some days later. Saw him run screaming right into a solid concrete wall and disappear.
They tore the wall down later and found his remains interspaced with the stonework.
What he remembered most vividly, though, was the first mission after the rest of them had more or less recovered from their ordeal. They knew they had changed, knew they were no longer human. They believed the explanations, though, and also saw the wisdom of trying to make the best out of their new state of being. Uncle Sam could certainly make use of soldiers who had telekinetic powers, an acid touch, enhanced strength and speed, superior senses, you name it.
The mission was relatively simple, really. Not even demon- or monster- related. General Elling did not want to endanger his new super-soldiers more than absolutely necessary on their first run. Intelligence had located a large drug traffic point, just south of the Mexican border. A sprawling hacienda that served as a port-of-call for drug smugglers from both sides of the frontier. They were told that the Mexican government had approved their attack. Maybe it actually had, who knew? None of them really cared. They only thing of interest for them was the fact that a lot of armed muscle would be guarding this place and, after being cooped up in military hospitals for quite some time, all of them were itching for some action.
It was so easy, so ridiculously easy. The seven of them walked right through nearly a hundred armed men as if they were nothing, slaughtering them left and right. Even to this day Daniel had little pity to spare for them. Drug dealers deserved no mercy as far as he was concerned. Still, no human being deserved to be slaughtered like that, no matter their crimes.
The blowout came right at the end, though. Anderson, Daniel's second-in- command and most trusted teammate, went ballistic on them. He was the first to reach the main building of the hacienda, taking on the remaining guards with nothing but a handgun. He slaughtered his way right through them and reached the office of the local boss well ahead of the rest of them.
Daniel arrived there a minute later and what he saw chilled him to the bone. Anderson had taken a seat behind the drug boss' desk, cheerfully sipping from a bottle of champagne or such. Their primary target, a man in his fifties with graying hair and a curling mustache, stood in the center of the room, Anderson's gun in hand and pointed at his own temple.
Daniel was helpless to do anything but watch as Anderson told the man to smile and then blow his own brains out, his eyes flashing a crimson red as he did. Daniel could almost see the tendrils of energy that snaked out of Anderson's head and coiled into the drug boss' mind, exterminating his free will and forcing his hand. The gunshot was what shook him out of his stupor.
Anderson's face was devoid of all humanity, all compassion. Daniel looked at his friend and saw nothing but evil there, nothing but a lust for slaughter and mayhem that appalled him down to his very soul. Anderson laughed, jokingly telling Daniel that they could have phoned this one in, it was so easy. With the powers they had been given who could possibly stop them?
The others arrived just in time to see Daniel take out his own sidearm and shoot Anderson through the head. He did not quite remember how he managed to explain it to them, but it was on that day that he realized that they had been turned into monsters. Creatures not fit to walk among humans.
A short time later they found out that it had been done deliberately and their fury was every bit as monstrous as they themselves had become.
Today he had seen history to repeat itself. One monster killing another monster. He wondered whether this girl now understood what had been done to her, what they had forced her to become. He wondered whether she would take a route similar to the one he and his teammates had taken twenty years ago.
No, she would not, he resolved. They would not allow things to progress any further this time.
The others all looked at him, their wounds healing at an accelerated rate. Soon they would be fit for combat again. Their first action in twenty years had bloodied them, but old instincts were reawakened again. At one time they had been the best of the best and they would be again. Would have to be if they wanted to pull this off.
"We are agreed then?" Daniel asked, looking at each of his teammates in turn. One by one they all nodded, grim looks on their faces. No doubt all of them were remembering that day in Mexico.
"Very well," Daniel said it out loud. "We will proceed."
History would not be allowed to repeat itself this time. Even if everyone connected with this new Project Inferno would have to die at their hands.
#
"This is a disaster," CIA associate director James Mason sighed, rubbing his graying temples. He had not expected Special Domestic Operations to go down without casualties, not really. The nature of the threat they faced practically guaranteed that some of his people would not come home again. What he had not expected was that his agents would die at the hands of rogue covert operatives from a buried CIA experiment that went down twenty years ago.
Thomas Burke just watched as his superior tried to digest the news. Four men dead, seven more wounded, out of a total of eighteen agents assigned to this operation. Disaster was about the right word for this.
"We have relocated to the secondary staging area," Burke continued his report when Mason did not say anything more for a while. "All of the wounded are stable and should make full recoveries."
"I assume you made sure that the warehouse base was completely destroyed?"
"Yes, sir. Two of my agents planted explosive charges before the fire fighters arrived. There is nothing left for anyone to find." Not even the bodies of the dead, he added silently.
"Good, good." Mason sounded very tired. "What about the collected data?"
"Everything we gathered from our operations and from Mr. Giles is backed up on a server at Langley. No losses there."
Mason nodded again. As silver linings went those were pretty thin ones, but anything was better than nothing.
"I did some more digging," Mason then told Burke, "after Ms. Summers delivered that file to you. I would still like to know how that girl managed to access files here in the Langley database that even I did not have access to until a few days ago, but I'm afraid that is secondary for now."
He looked down to study a folder in front of him.
"I fear that everything she told us is true. General Elling did run a project to create super-soldiers in Sunnydale. What's more, the information Ms. Summers found was just the tip of the iceberg. It appears that, before his untimely demise, the good general requisitioned no less than forty of our best covert operatives for this project." Mason closed his eyes, sighing deeply. "All of them were listed killed in action."
"God have mercy," Burke whispered under his breath. "There is more of these ... things out there?"
"Let us hope not too many more. Considering the ... casualty rate of that first group that went through Project Inferno we might be in luck there. Relatively speaking, of course."
"Very relatively, I would say."
"What is more disturbing than that, though, is the fact that General Elling apparently had some help in his project. Our experts are still trying to figure out exactly what he did to those soldiers in his experiments. Most of the details were never recorded, I fear, or maybe destroyed afterwards. What we do know, though, is that the process was a mixture of advanced genetics and ... magic."
"Magic?" Despite everything he had seen since coming to Sunnydale Burke was still very much reluctant to acknowledge the existence of anything that might fall under the header of magic. Vampires and other supernatural creatures might be explained as freaks of nature, different species, whatever. Magic, though, ... that was a lot harder to believe in.
"Yes, magic. Don't look at me like that, Thomas, I don't like it any more than you do."
"How did General Elling get his hands on magic?"
"Apparently he had some help in that. What little notes we found buried in our archives say that the magical parts of the experiment were carried out with the help of one Richard Wilkins II., Mayor of Sunnydale."
"Richard Wilkins? The same man who transformed himself into some kind of snake demon less than a year ago?"
"His father, or so say the files at least. Considering what we found in Wilkins' private records, though, you are quite correct. Apparently Elling and Wilkins made some kind of deal. Before you ask, no, we have no idea what Wilkins expected to receive in return. Since Elling was killed only a short time later I doubt he ever got it. Even if he did, he's dead now as well, so it does not matter any longer."
Burke nodded. Mr. Giles had told them a little more about Richard Wilkins than they had gathered from his confiscated files. Burke was not the kind of man to classify anyone or anything as pure evil, but this man had apparently come quite close to that.
"If Wilkins was involved," Mason continued, mirroring Burke's thoughts, "that makes it even more important to clean up this mess and fast."
Burke did not have to ask what Mason meant by 'clean up'. He had seen the creatures Elling's experiment had brought into being. They might have been human once, American soldiers betrayed by their own superiors, but they were monsters now. Whatever doubts he might have had about that were erased after this battle.
It was SDO's mission to protect the public from the monsters. By any means necessary.
"I have already mobilized reinforcements," Mason told him. "They will arrive in Sunnydale within the next three days. After they do you are hereby authorized to do whatever it takes to neutralize the threat of this 'Team 666'. For good. Any questions, Thomas?"
"No, sir."
"Good. Keep me informed."
Mason's face vanished from the screen and Burke leaned back in his chair. Neutralize the threat, he said. Now that sounded really easy. Thinking back to the battle that had decimated his command, he was not sure how they were supposed to pull this off.
One thing he was certain of, though. If they wanted to have any kind of realistic chance to do this they needed Ms. Summers. She was the only one who had been able to go toe to toe with these monsters. Well, her and that insane killer Jackson King. There was one person whose death he did not regret. Not in the least.
The question was whether Ms. Summers would be up to another battle this soon. Physically he did not doubt that she was. By now she was probably fully healed and able to kick the combined butts of his entire command. It was her state of mind he was uncertain of.
It had been a long time since his own first kill. He remembered very well how hard it had been, how painful. It got easier with time, as all things did, and that was not necessarily a good thing. Despite her power and skill Ms. Summers was still so young.
He shook his head. This was no time to get emotional about things. Four of his men were dead. Monsters were running loose in the streets of this town. Either Ms. Summers pulled herself together or not, he had no influence on that. He would have to deal with the situation however it might present itself.
"Briefing in ten minutes," he told the others. "We got new orders."
TO BE CONTINUED
#
Daniel Harold Stone, Lieutenant, United States Marine Corps, officially listed killed in action nearly twenty years ago, leaned against the wall of the motel room and tried to find a silver lining somewhere on the horizon. All he saw, though, were dark clouds.
When he had first heard from his contacts about a possible revival of Project Inferno he had been worried. When Julia had reported back from her first scouting mission here in Sunnydale, confirming the rumors, he had been scared. Now he had seen things for himself, had seen what the government he had once sworn to serve and protect had done here in this deceptively quiet little town.
Now he was terrified.
It was not simply the presence of those two super-soldiers, the girl and the young man. Oh, they had been more than impressive, their speed and strength superior to any the members of the so-called Team 666 possessed. Daniel really hated that name, but they had never come up with a better one for themselves. It was fitting somehow.
It was not even the way the two of them had torn into his people and come close to beating them that terrified him so much. This battle they had just finished had been fought under anything but ideal conditions, after all. At first the chaos and confusion had favored them, but that advantage had shifted when the two super-soldiers had arrived, the whole thing turning into a completely chaotic free-for-all. It clearly showed that, after twenty years, his team was in anything but top combat condition.
It was none of these things, though, that terrified him. He was a soldier, he had fought in dozens, maybe hundreds of battles that were every bit as vicious and destructive as this one. He had seen people die right next to him, cut down by bullets that had missed him only by a hair's breath.
What had truly terrified him was the way things had turned out. The wild and insane look in the young man's eyes as he turned on his own people, killing them where they stood. Daniel had watched him beat Julia nearly to a pulp, only to immediately turn on one of the SDO agents barely a minute later. The man had clearly been driven insane and, in the end, had found his end at the hands of the girl, who was clearly in shock about his actions as well as her own.
To Daniel it was not a shock, not as such. He had seen things like that before. Closing his eyes, the memories came back, replaying behind his lids clear as day. It had been their first mission after the 'accident'. He snorted, wondering how they could have been so naive. They had been so young then, so very young.
They moved into this small town, wondering what could possibly pose a threat to national security here. Then they saw their first demons and no further explanations were necessary. Thinking back, was it really all that hard to understand that they had believed whatever lies their superiors fed them? They had just been confronted with creatures that should not have existed outside the fairy tale books. Whatever explanation helped make sense of the world again was very much welcome.
It was during one of their first demon-hunting missions that the 'accident' happened. They pursued a group of vampires through a maze of underground tunnels and ran right into a trap. Daniel did not remember much. A large cave lined with arcane symbols from top to bottom. The humming of generators. The biting stench of chemicals. They were all knocked out and, the next time they woke, they were different.
Not all of them survived. Hanson died immediately, or so Daniel was told. He never saw the body. Chang survived just long enough to awaken, rip one of his nurses to pieces, and then bleed to death after he tore out his own eyes. Bergman did not last much longer. Daniel saw the video footage some days later. Saw him run screaming right into a solid concrete wall and disappear.
They tore the wall down later and found his remains interspaced with the stonework.
What he remembered most vividly, though, was the first mission after the rest of them had more or less recovered from their ordeal. They knew they had changed, knew they were no longer human. They believed the explanations, though, and also saw the wisdom of trying to make the best out of their new state of being. Uncle Sam could certainly make use of soldiers who had telekinetic powers, an acid touch, enhanced strength and speed, superior senses, you name it.
The mission was relatively simple, really. Not even demon- or monster- related. General Elling did not want to endanger his new super-soldiers more than absolutely necessary on their first run. Intelligence had located a large drug traffic point, just south of the Mexican border. A sprawling hacienda that served as a port-of-call for drug smugglers from both sides of the frontier. They were told that the Mexican government had approved their attack. Maybe it actually had, who knew? None of them really cared. They only thing of interest for them was the fact that a lot of armed muscle would be guarding this place and, after being cooped up in military hospitals for quite some time, all of them were itching for some action.
It was so easy, so ridiculously easy. The seven of them walked right through nearly a hundred armed men as if they were nothing, slaughtering them left and right. Even to this day Daniel had little pity to spare for them. Drug dealers deserved no mercy as far as he was concerned. Still, no human being deserved to be slaughtered like that, no matter their crimes.
The blowout came right at the end, though. Anderson, Daniel's second-in- command and most trusted teammate, went ballistic on them. He was the first to reach the main building of the hacienda, taking on the remaining guards with nothing but a handgun. He slaughtered his way right through them and reached the office of the local boss well ahead of the rest of them.
Daniel arrived there a minute later and what he saw chilled him to the bone. Anderson had taken a seat behind the drug boss' desk, cheerfully sipping from a bottle of champagne or such. Their primary target, a man in his fifties with graying hair and a curling mustache, stood in the center of the room, Anderson's gun in hand and pointed at his own temple.
Daniel was helpless to do anything but watch as Anderson told the man to smile and then blow his own brains out, his eyes flashing a crimson red as he did. Daniel could almost see the tendrils of energy that snaked out of Anderson's head and coiled into the drug boss' mind, exterminating his free will and forcing his hand. The gunshot was what shook him out of his stupor.
Anderson's face was devoid of all humanity, all compassion. Daniel looked at his friend and saw nothing but evil there, nothing but a lust for slaughter and mayhem that appalled him down to his very soul. Anderson laughed, jokingly telling Daniel that they could have phoned this one in, it was so easy. With the powers they had been given who could possibly stop them?
The others arrived just in time to see Daniel take out his own sidearm and shoot Anderson through the head. He did not quite remember how he managed to explain it to them, but it was on that day that he realized that they had been turned into monsters. Creatures not fit to walk among humans.
A short time later they found out that it had been done deliberately and their fury was every bit as monstrous as they themselves had become.
Today he had seen history to repeat itself. One monster killing another monster. He wondered whether this girl now understood what had been done to her, what they had forced her to become. He wondered whether she would take a route similar to the one he and his teammates had taken twenty years ago.
No, she would not, he resolved. They would not allow things to progress any further this time.
The others all looked at him, their wounds healing at an accelerated rate. Soon they would be fit for combat again. Their first action in twenty years had bloodied them, but old instincts were reawakened again. At one time they had been the best of the best and they would be again. Would have to be if they wanted to pull this off.
"We are agreed then?" Daniel asked, looking at each of his teammates in turn. One by one they all nodded, grim looks on their faces. No doubt all of them were remembering that day in Mexico.
"Very well," Daniel said it out loud. "We will proceed."
History would not be allowed to repeat itself this time. Even if everyone connected with this new Project Inferno would have to die at their hands.
#
"This is a disaster," CIA associate director James Mason sighed, rubbing his graying temples. He had not expected Special Domestic Operations to go down without casualties, not really. The nature of the threat they faced practically guaranteed that some of his people would not come home again. What he had not expected was that his agents would die at the hands of rogue covert operatives from a buried CIA experiment that went down twenty years ago.
Thomas Burke just watched as his superior tried to digest the news. Four men dead, seven more wounded, out of a total of eighteen agents assigned to this operation. Disaster was about the right word for this.
"We have relocated to the secondary staging area," Burke continued his report when Mason did not say anything more for a while. "All of the wounded are stable and should make full recoveries."
"I assume you made sure that the warehouse base was completely destroyed?"
"Yes, sir. Two of my agents planted explosive charges before the fire fighters arrived. There is nothing left for anyone to find." Not even the bodies of the dead, he added silently.
"Good, good." Mason sounded very tired. "What about the collected data?"
"Everything we gathered from our operations and from Mr. Giles is backed up on a server at Langley. No losses there."
Mason nodded again. As silver linings went those were pretty thin ones, but anything was better than nothing.
"I did some more digging," Mason then told Burke, "after Ms. Summers delivered that file to you. I would still like to know how that girl managed to access files here in the Langley database that even I did not have access to until a few days ago, but I'm afraid that is secondary for now."
He looked down to study a folder in front of him.
"I fear that everything she told us is true. General Elling did run a project to create super-soldiers in Sunnydale. What's more, the information Ms. Summers found was just the tip of the iceberg. It appears that, before his untimely demise, the good general requisitioned no less than forty of our best covert operatives for this project." Mason closed his eyes, sighing deeply. "All of them were listed killed in action."
"God have mercy," Burke whispered under his breath. "There is more of these ... things out there?"
"Let us hope not too many more. Considering the ... casualty rate of that first group that went through Project Inferno we might be in luck there. Relatively speaking, of course."
"Very relatively, I would say."
"What is more disturbing than that, though, is the fact that General Elling apparently had some help in his project. Our experts are still trying to figure out exactly what he did to those soldiers in his experiments. Most of the details were never recorded, I fear, or maybe destroyed afterwards. What we do know, though, is that the process was a mixture of advanced genetics and ... magic."
"Magic?" Despite everything he had seen since coming to Sunnydale Burke was still very much reluctant to acknowledge the existence of anything that might fall under the header of magic. Vampires and other supernatural creatures might be explained as freaks of nature, different species, whatever. Magic, though, ... that was a lot harder to believe in.
"Yes, magic. Don't look at me like that, Thomas, I don't like it any more than you do."
"How did General Elling get his hands on magic?"
"Apparently he had some help in that. What little notes we found buried in our archives say that the magical parts of the experiment were carried out with the help of one Richard Wilkins II., Mayor of Sunnydale."
"Richard Wilkins? The same man who transformed himself into some kind of snake demon less than a year ago?"
"His father, or so say the files at least. Considering what we found in Wilkins' private records, though, you are quite correct. Apparently Elling and Wilkins made some kind of deal. Before you ask, no, we have no idea what Wilkins expected to receive in return. Since Elling was killed only a short time later I doubt he ever got it. Even if he did, he's dead now as well, so it does not matter any longer."
Burke nodded. Mr. Giles had told them a little more about Richard Wilkins than they had gathered from his confiscated files. Burke was not the kind of man to classify anyone or anything as pure evil, but this man had apparently come quite close to that.
"If Wilkins was involved," Mason continued, mirroring Burke's thoughts, "that makes it even more important to clean up this mess and fast."
Burke did not have to ask what Mason meant by 'clean up'. He had seen the creatures Elling's experiment had brought into being. They might have been human once, American soldiers betrayed by their own superiors, but they were monsters now. Whatever doubts he might have had about that were erased after this battle.
It was SDO's mission to protect the public from the monsters. By any means necessary.
"I have already mobilized reinforcements," Mason told him. "They will arrive in Sunnydale within the next three days. After they do you are hereby authorized to do whatever it takes to neutralize the threat of this 'Team 666'. For good. Any questions, Thomas?"
"No, sir."
"Good. Keep me informed."
Mason's face vanished from the screen and Burke leaned back in his chair. Neutralize the threat, he said. Now that sounded really easy. Thinking back to the battle that had decimated his command, he was not sure how they were supposed to pull this off.
One thing he was certain of, though. If they wanted to have any kind of realistic chance to do this they needed Ms. Summers. She was the only one who had been able to go toe to toe with these monsters. Well, her and that insane killer Jackson King. There was one person whose death he did not regret. Not in the least.
The question was whether Ms. Summers would be up to another battle this soon. Physically he did not doubt that she was. By now she was probably fully healed and able to kick the combined butts of his entire command. It was her state of mind he was uncertain of.
It had been a long time since his own first kill. He remembered very well how hard it had been, how painful. It got easier with time, as all things did, and that was not necessarily a good thing. Despite her power and skill Ms. Summers was still so young.
He shook his head. This was no time to get emotional about things. Four of his men were dead. Monsters were running loose in the streets of this town. Either Ms. Summers pulled herself together or not, he had no influence on that. He would have to deal with the situation however it might present itself.
"Briefing in ten minutes," he told the others. "We got new orders."
TO BE CONTINUED