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"The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions, but by blood and iron."
~Otto von Bismarck
Chapter Thirty-eight: Return Engagement
"Fuck. Fuck, fuck..." Jane looked around, but there was nothing: no convenient rope, no ladder, no springboard or catapult...
"Take my hand!" Liang leaned down while Mox continued firing, and Jane sprinted for her. She reached up, standing on tip-toe with her fingers mere inches from the rookie's. Liang nodded. "Jump! I'll catch you!"
"Right!" Jane bent her knees. "I'm coming-"
She screamed as hands caught her sword - her sword, the useless deadweight itself! Jane flailed, lashing out with elbows and feet, trying to swing her shotgun around like a club to break the thing's hold. Liang screamed her name, but then she seized her gun, and bullets lanced into the Lost crowd.
"Get off it!" Jane did manage to shake the Lost's hold after a bullet caught it between the eyes, but then her back pressed into the bus' roof, and she scrambled to fit ammunition in her shotgun. The swarm loomed, like sharks smelling blood.
Boom! Finally, ammunition! Clickity-boom! Clickity-boom!
It wasn't enough. Nothing would be enough, not at this distance. Jane's knees knocked and her eyes widened as they came, in an onrushing unstoppable tide-
"Irish?"
"Mm." Jane cleared her throat. She shook her head too, just a little, trying to get the searing images out from her mind's eye. Even if the ruins of Yonkers looked so much like Novosibirsk...even if she knew what she would find here was just as...
"Are you alright?" David asked. Jane cleared her throat again, thereby certainly eliminating all his suspicions at once.
"I'm fine. It's nothing. I will be fine." Jane turned away from the set of ruined and twisted civilians, frozen in a crowd around an ambulance and a gurney. The only thing that kept them from Lost was the stillness they held: no life lingered in their desiccated remains.
"You didn't have to come," David reminded her, falling in step as they hurried back across the street. "I could have led the op-"
"I said I'm fine!" She'd probably regret that harshness later. Jane proceeded to deploy the cold shoulder, turning her attention firmly away from the Grenadier. "Report, Menace."
"Coming up from the south side." That was Sylvie, and Jane spent a moment picturing her with Mariah and Meysam, the new recruit from Syria. Their street had to look just the same as this one...Jane wondered if any of the three had met Lost before. "We are close to the sound of the gun."
"Yes. The gun." Jane listened, and even then it unloaded another burst of staccato thunder-cracks. "Keep moving. Sing if you hit any resistance whatsoever." She waved to her followers. "Come on."
"Oui, madame." Charlotte and her drone alike hovered on Jane's heels, while David, perhaps sensing the Cold Shoulder, let a little space open up and served as rearguard.
"Stupid..." Jane kept her voice as low as possible, so low she almost didn't hear herself. Every few steps she twitched, certain she saw motion...and always, it proved to be nothing but a fluttering wrapper in the breeze, or a swinging shutter. Nothing lived here.
"Who'd have thought?" she finally wondered. "Yonkers, overrun by the living dead? It's ridiculous."
"This whole war is ridiculous," David said cautiously, and despite her defensive tactics, Jane had to grunt in agreement. Her mind turned to Lost, turned to chryssalids and faceless and mutons and-
It turned so conclusively that she didn't notice the rush from the darkness until it - quite literally - hit her.
"Contact!"
"Shit!" Commander Gallant growled in the back of his throat as thermal signatures burst up around Team One. "More of those dispersal pods screwing with our sensors?"
"Something like that," Tygan allowed. His quiet stoicism seemed a lot more wooden than normal. "Something is messing with Firebrand's scanners. The Skyranger cannot detect anything beyond the portable cannon holding off the majority of the swarm. Communications are going in and out."
"Team Two, report," Bradford ordered. "Talk to me, Sylvie."
"We hear weapons fire from Team One." Those were nerves in her tone, sure as the sun. "We have no visual."
"I hear them!" Mariah warned, perhaps forgetting her com was active. "Down the street! It sounds like sixty billion-"
"Can't be. They're hitting the other team, so it's just thirty billion on your side." Gallant turned to the holodisplay, mind working feverishly. Unfortunately, it was the only thing that was, because information kept appearing and disappearing in quick sequences that could mean life and death on the ground. He worked his jaw for a moment. "Sylvie, push for the VIP. Assume until further notice that Team One is pinned down. We'll try to reestablish contact."
"Shouldn't we rescue them?" Mariah asked.
"You have your orders, Squaddie," Bradford snapped. Gallant, mouth half-open, gave him a quick glance. Central shook his head, and Gallant slowly eased back.
"Yes, sir!" Gallant almost heard her cut off an apology. The com deactivated.
"You know," the Commander observed, giving Bradford a searching look, "it was Bernard Montgomery who said 'Every soldier must know, before he goes into battle, how the little battle he is to fight fits into the larger picture, and how the success of his fighting will influence the battle as a whole.'"
"That's true enough, sir," Bradford allowed, "but at the end of the day, orders are orders and are meant to be obeyed, whether understood or not."
"Yes." Gallant was, after all, a product of West Point, which put him one up on his XO. He lowered his voice, trying to exclude the bridge techs from the next part of the conversation. "But you let me be the one to make that call next time, John. Understood?"
Bradford blinked. "Crystal clear, Commander."
Gallant nodded. He returned his attention to the holodisplay, confident that all the potential problems inherent in having Bradford and Mariah on the same ship had been fully addressed and would never rear their ugly heads again.
My, my, the Commander thought, you are awful at lying to yourself, aren't you?
"What are these things?" Meysam Saleh fired another quick burst, ripping through a Lost's skull plate. They came in great tides: four or five dozen, and then half a minute's calm, and then another, larger, pack. Though they moved without individual purpose, it rather reminded him of the times he'd gone diving in the Mediterranean, hunting for equipment from crashed Advent craft. Fish lacked a great deal of individual initiative, but they way they clustered together in schools...
"Zombies!" Mariah cried, from his left. Meysam shook his head.
"No. I have seen zombies and killed them." Why chryssalids had evolved that capability out over the last five years was more than he could say. "These are different." He punctuated that with another burst, mowing down the lighter Lost he could spot with two or three shots each, then pausing to slide a new clip in his mag-rifle while Mariah's shard gun eviscerated the tougher ones.
"Stop talking!" Sylvie Richard slid to a halt by an overturned car that looked older than Mariah. "There are more of them pushing up from this side alley!"
"There are?" Meysam turned, and he shook his head, studying the barren roadway. "I see nothing."
"I don't see them," Sylvie objected. She leveled her rifle. "I-"
"Shit!" Meysam belatedly supposed that psychics were supposed to be able to see things through walls and cursed his arbitrary skepticism. Around the far corner, dozens of the fast dashers appeared, bounding for the XCOM team with wild howls of feral joy. The Arabian opened fire in the same breath as Sylvie, and their tracers smashed skulls and knees and shoulders, sending Lost down in tumbling sheets of green blood and pus.
"I can hold them!" Sylvie cried. She waved over her shoulder. "Get to Doctor Kipler!"
"But..." Mariah hesitated. "But..."
Meysam was made of harder stuff - you didn't get to be a Haven's guard captain by winning a game of air hockey. "Come on!" He nearly tugged Bradford - wasn't that Central's name, too? - in his wake. "You're a CQE specialist, and that's what we'll need to punch our way through the heart of their formation."
"CQE-"
"Close Quarters Engagement." Meysam put the conversation on hold to kill some more Lost. "It's a First Invasion term-"
"Can't this wait?" Commander Gallant asked. Considering he'd been the one to designate soldiers as CQEs, Meysam would have thought he'd have been more interested in seeing his current crop of operatives educated.
Blam! Blam! Mariah's shard gun blew Lost in half, spraying heads and shoulders and knees and arms in six or seven directions all at once. Meysam followed in her wake, putting precise mag-tracers in between the eyes and ears of the ones she missed. Shoulder-to-shoulder they fought, advancing steadily despite the onrushing tide of the living dead. A wave would rise, only to be beaten down in a mad golden storm of angry light...and another would take its place.
"You're a good shot," Meysam muttered, as Mariah potted two with one scattered blast. He chuckled when she, out of ammunition, drew her sword and sliced her way through another trio, leaving her blade embedded to free up her hand and reload. Rotting pus soaked her gloves and dropped over her boots, as well as catching her on the shoulder when Meysam blew the brains out of a brute trying to seize her in her moment of distraction.
"Thanks." Her brown curls flew as she lunged back into the fray, shouting in Spanish. Meysam held to his position at Mariah's flank and rear, covering her as she beat a path through the marauders.
"A very good shot," he repeated, well under his breath.
"Commander? Central? Avenger, come in!"
"Forget it, Jane!" David rammed the butt of his cannon into a Lost's face. It caved in - their bones were hardly more durable than the rest of them - and the now twice-dead body tumbled in a heap. Charlotte's rifle went off with a chain of harsh magnetic reports, mowing down a pair of the creatures trying to jump David from an overhead walkway.
"Forward!" Jane ordered, as her heart flew into her mouth. Tingles shot out down her arms and legs, and breathing was hard. She couldn't fill her lungs no matter how intently she tried, as if twenty percent of their space was filled with sand or mud and couldn't take air.
"VIP should be up at the intersection ahead," David reminded her, before he opened fire. Conversation was impossible when the air filled with his searing mag-tracers and the harsh, mechanical hum of his weapon in action. He ripped through a half-dozen in one burst, and only resumed when he had to pause and shove a new magazine into place. "Thought that turret was keeping them at bay-"
"These ones must have heard the engines and tried to flank our contact's position," Charlotte hypothesized. She bounded past Jane, showing suicidal eagerness to get into the thick of things, and perched atop an old taxi. "I see the flashes from the turret ahead!"
"Then push in!" Jane wanted to do absolutely no such thing, but she wasn't about to let the blonde think she had a monopoly on the organization's guts. In she pushed, working the pump on her shard gun as quickly as she could. Three weapons combined their firepower, and whenever one of the trio had to reload, the other two picked up. Together, they waded into the thick of things, hardly bothering with cover in the face of foes that had no guns.
We're winning, Jane realized. We might actually win this-
"No!" Charlotte howled, and Jane spun. Three of the Lost had seized her - from behind, just like the others racing in while the soldiers were distracted by what was ahead. Jane cried out.
"Hang on!" She fired before she could think, and luckily the Frenchwoman ducked. Jane's fire blew two of her foes off, but the last one hung on grimly, shoving Charlotte head-first into a wall. The blonde cried out, and again when the Lost leaned in and bit her hard, right where her armor tapered off into her neck. The blood that ran now was red.
"Son of a bitch!" Jane was out of ammunition, and she lunged to drive her gun butt into the Lost's head just like David before her. She got almost as dramatic a result: the thing collapsed with a visible split running from chin to crown, leaking emerald goo that dripped and slid over cracking flesh with exposed veins.
"Are you alright?" Jane demanded. She pulled Charlotte to her feet. "Are you-"
"I will live." She was in pain, no two ways about it, but despite her hand coming away from the side of her neck soaked red, she didn't have any quit in her. "It missed the carotid artery. I have bled many times and yet I am here to do it again."
"Alright," Jane allowed. "We need to-"
They caught her from behind: at least three, maybe more. They hauled Jane back onto the ground, and she cried out as they lunged in, kicking and striking and biting. Her hands caught a head, and without thinking Jane twisted it around to point the wrong way. The Lost stumbled away, blindly feeling ahead of it while it grappled with its new reality.
"No! No!" Jane drew her arc blade. She lashed out, striking at ankles and femurs, cutting legs and slicing at hips. The Lost retreated, but on they came again, reaching and reaching. Someone was shrieking like a lost soul, shrieking and sobbing at the same time.
Jane's heart might have exploded. She burned, from the inside out, with a wildfire of surging heat she couldn't immediately quantify. She screamed as the creatures caught her hands and bit at her armored plates, grabbing for her throat and reaching for her eyes. She hacked madly, forgetting her lessons and her skills in the grip of that rush. She didn't realize what it was until she finally connected that the one shrieking and sobbing was her.
Lost.
Screaming Lost, shrieking Lost, tumbling over each other, spittle flying and pus leaking, reaching out with decaying hands-
Click! Click! Gun empty. Back pressed against a wall. No weapons. No defenses.
No recourse but to scream. She screamed when undead hands seized her, pulling at her and hauling her into the throng, where waiting morbid fingernails would scratch for her eyes and her throat and-
Jane covered her head, still screaming, as mag-fire tore into her tormenters. They tumbled and fell, dousing her in their reeking innards, and she got a healthy wallop of steaming green goo in her mouth. She spat and nearly vomited.
"Get up!" David caught her arm, pulling her from the field of bodies. Jane clung to him until she got her feet under her, leaning down to recover her weapons as quickly as possible. She stayed close to the Australian, worried that her legs would yield rather than hold her weight.
"I'm fine," she lied in a breathless gasp. "I'm fine, I'm fine. I'm fine."
"-ay again, Team One, please respond if you can-"
"Central!" Jane cried. "We're alive!"
"Good!" And that was as sentimental as he got. "Get back on the horse and push up the street! Doctor Kipler's turret is about to run out of juice and someone's got to clear a path to him before it goes dry."
"But..." Jane swallowed on a dry throat. "Y-yes, sir."
"Jane, I can call Firebrand-"
"Shut up!" She pulled hard away from David's steadying presence. "Let's go, chickens!"
Jane tried to scream away all her fears as she once again charged straight into her worst nightmares.
"I'm not sure letting Kelly take point was a good idea."
"You think, John?" Gallant let out an annoyed grunt. "I'm going to have words for her upon her return. Pulling her shit together is one thing, but if she lets her stubbornness jeopardize the mission..."
"She doesn't sound okay." Shen chewed her lip for a moment. "Should we order her to withdraw?"
"How?" Gallant demanded, a bit testily. "There's only one clear drop point in the whole area, and that's where Firebrand set them down. If Kelly's to evac, she's going to have to pull back all the way to the DZ, and there's no way she'll make it through all of that-" he waved generally at the holodisplay and its chicken pox of hateful dead "-without support. That means detaching Moineau, maybe White too. And that means entrusting Kipler's immediate security to-"
"We meet again on the field of trials, Commander."
Probably, Gallant supposed, it was for the best that the Chosen made its grand entrance at that exact moment, before he'd finished his sentence with entrusting Kipler's immediate security to Mariah Fucking Bradford, and I want a show of hands from the bridge crew: who thinks that's going to end in anything but disaster? John was, after all, right there. Maybe he wouldn't have taken offense. Maybe he would have agreed. Maybe that was the worse of the possible outcomes. Gallant didn't know.
He did know the op just got a lot more dicey.
Blam! Blam!
"Yeah, that's how it's done." Mariah ejected her spent clip and shoved a new one in place. Meysam had fallen behind keeping the path clear, and now the brunette was all but on her own. Fortunately, the roar of the automatic turret wasn't far, and that meant there weren't very many Lost to go around either. She came across two or three at a time, and she could easily take them all down with a sheet of flying alloy shards and move on.
Through the darkness she advanced, following the staccato-bursts of machinegun fire and guiding herself along by following the flashes in the shadows. Dust and dirt rose around her, stirred by the wind. It seemed to build as she reached the last corner, turning into the shadows between two tall buildings-
She didn't have time to think. Mariah's pulse quickened as she saw the turret spitting flame, and then the figure prostrate on the ground. One glance and she knew he was human. That had to be Kipler, didn't it? And the figure over him...
It wasn't a Lost. In fact, Mariah almost thought he was human, despite the Advent coat he wore. She almost hailed him.
Almost, because he raised a portable communicator and spoke into it and...and...
"Hey!" Mariah leveled her gun, and the Adventer twitched. He broke off from his litany in the evil language, and Mariah distinctly saw his eyes widen as he saw her weapon at the ready.
"Wait!" he cried, but the Ranger had heard enough. No trick would be enough to keep her from-
"Jesus Christ, rookie!" A hand seized her gun and roughly shoved it to point down between her feet. Startled, Mariah nearly hit the trigger, but refrained in the nick of time.
"I'm not a-"
"That's our bloody contact you nearly shot!" Jane shouted, and Mariah blinked.
"But...he's...that's our contact?"
"Doctor Matthew Kipler," he agreed. Hesitantly, he rose, tugging on that dark Advent-emblazoned coat again. Behind his glasses, blue eyes shone with worry. "How soon can we get out of here? I don't have much ammunition left."
"He...he was talking," Mariah mumbled, as Jane hurried to kneel over the senseless body. "He was talking in Advent-"
"I come from New Providence. I learned the language as part of my studies, and have used it frequently in recent days. I lapsed into it without thought." Kipler also glanced down. "That's Johannes Vermuelen, my bodyguard. He took a nasty hit when we hunkered down."
"Right." Jane didn't seem alright. Mariah almost asked, but she beckoned before the squaddie had a chance. "Mariah, carry him."
"He looks heavy-"
"I don't care if he has bricks in his trousers: carry him!" Jane rose. "It'll keep you from shooting anyone else you're not supposed to." She ignored Mariah's wince. "Doctor, the rest of my team's down that street, there. I'm going to pull our forces back toward the extraction point. I want you to keep your head down no matter what happens and do whatever any one of us says."
"I will try my best," Kipler promised. Mariah side-eyed him, wondering if her lingering dislike for the scientist was just her trying to convince herself she hadn't made a mistake pointing a gun at him. Morosely, she was sure it had to be.
"Okay. Come on." Mariah took Vermuelen's arm, hoisting him over her shoulders in what Sergeant Liang had called a "fireman's carry". Gasping and straining, the brunette fought to her feet, growling curses through her teeth. He was still really heavy...
"Let's move," Jane ordered. She waved. "Follow me-"
Blam!
Ten thousand condemned souls shrieked to bass accompaniment, and Mariah howled. She couldn't clutch her ears with Vermuelen on her shoulders, so she could merely suffer and stagger into a lamppost. Jane and Kipler cried out, the scientist shouting something emphatic that Mariah couldn't hear.
Then purple forms rose from the ground, and Mariah's heart stopped as she remembered the last time she'd seen them.
"Come forth!" commanded the echoing voice of the Warlock. "Fight and die for the glory of the Elders!"
Sylvie screamed.
She heard the Voice: the Voice that had struck deep into her heart and soul and ripped away what it wanted with nothing but a tender touch and a decidedly un-tender command. It slithered over her senses, reminding her of her frailty in the face of beings bigger than herself, and remembered and real terror alike seared deep in her blood. Ice filled her veins and tense pain exploded across her chest, all in the time it took her to open her mouth.
"Hey!" Someone caught her arm, and Sylvie lashed out frantically, covering her head as she imagined the huge purple demon looming over her. "Wait!"
She didn't. She struck with elbows and with her feet, but the Warlock didn't let go. Sylvie sucked in terrified gasps of air, hoping her arms over her head were enough protection...
Gradually, the surge subsided. Sylvie fought it down with everything she had.
Julie would never panic, she told herself, again and again. Julie would be strong no matter what came. So too must I!
Thinking of her friend was enough to break the spell. Sylvie shook her head, still feeling the pounding surge but able to think and control it now in a way she hadn't before. She limply reached for her rifle.
"Are you alright?" demanded her attacker. With a start, Sylvie realized his hand was still on her arm, and also that he was far from strong or large enough to be the Warlock.
"Oui. Yes." Sylvie made a nervous humming noise in the back of her throat. "Where is he? What are we-"
"Captain Kelly's called the evac order," Meysam told her. He tugged, and Sylvie obediently trailed in the rookie's wake. "We've got to get back to Firebrand before-"
"Purple!" Sylvie cried, which was a terrible warning. Humanoid shapes surged around the corner of the nearest street, glowing and pulsing with inner light. Sylvie recognized them as the same sort of transparent psi-zombies that had hit the team in California.
"Go!" Meysam opened fire, and his shots ripped one to shreds. Sylvie heard more weapons-fire from the other street, and she hoped Mariah hadn't gotten herself eaten. She scurried back to the first overturned dumpster she could find, then hunkered in, took up her own rifle, and aimed down the street.
"Come on!" she ordered, as Meysam ran out of ammunition. He bolted past her, reloading on the move, and Sylvie sprayed fire down the alleyway in short bursts, picking off one zombie, then two, then-
Ka-boom!
"Merde!" Sylvie exclaimed, as the third one exploded. Violet light seared and surged across the street, ripping up pavement and hurling rubbish left and right. Sylvie had to cover her head again.
And as she did, she heard the Lost howling.
"Oh, shit," Meysam whispered. Footsteps thundered all around them as the creatures bore in on the source of the blast.
"Run!" Sylvie commanded, turning to sprint for the side passage back to Firebrand. Meysam was only a second behind her. They barreled through dust patches and leapt discarded rubble, skidding whenever they had to turn. Sylvie's heart thundered and her breaths came in half-formed and shallow, grating down her throat as her lungs tried to reject anything she put in. Under her armor and her gloves, she sweated. She faintly felt her bun come undone, but she was hardly going to stop and fix it.
"Sylvie!" That was Jane, appearing at the end of the alley. She beckoned. "Move it!"
"What do you think we are doing?" Sylvie demanded, before tearing past so quickly she nearly caught Jane on her shoulder and brought the captain with her. "There's a bunch of Lost behind us-"
"Join the party, sister!" David laid down a stream of fire from his position in the center of the street, and Sylvie nearly threw herself flat before she saw the tracers roaring off toward the other end of the street. A blue beacon burned in the roadway, and a dark man Sylvie supposed was Doctor Kipler huddled by it, with Mariah and Charlotte for company.
"Now, David!" Jane ordered, grabbing Meysam and hustling him out of the alley. Sylvie frowned - then cried out as the Grenadier swept his launcher off his back.
"What are you doing?" Sylvie demanded. "You'll bring more of them-"
Whump! The grenade flew out, and the psi-op ducked for cover. She winced when the grenade detonated, loud and angry and full of hate...
...and at least three stories up.
"What?" Sylvie turned...and gasped as the apartment building on the left side of the alley groaned. Weakened supports cracked under the force of the blast, and then tons and tons of rubble rained from above, dropping into the narrow passage between structures. The alley filled in a flash, and Sylvie had to cover her mouth to avoid being suffocated by the dust cloud.
"Let's see them get through that," David spat, before switching back to his cannon.
"Firebrand?" Mariah demanded. "Where the hell are you?"
"Keep your pants on, Bradford." Sylvie wondered if the pilot was really as calm as she sounded.
"You were supposed to be on standby!" Mariah cried, as Charlotte opened fire on the Lost coming down the main street. Meysam and Jane joined her, and Sylvie supposed she should as well.
"At a safe distance, yes." And then the roar of engines filled the world, and the dropship appeared overhead. "'Safe distance' means distance, kid."
"Alright!" Jane beckoned, and lines dropped from the Skyranger's drop bay. "Get the VIPs out and-"
Thud!
"I'm afraid I cannot allow that."
Meysam hesitated as the huge thing came down with a crash, landing between Lost and XCOM. The Warlock was bigger than he'd thought, and the power that glowed in his eyes was, if anything, more intense than should be possible.
"Go!" Jane cried. "Doctor Kipler, Mariah, go!" She brought her shard gun up. "Let's see how you-"
"The unknown enemy is within!" the Warlock cried, and a bolt of purple light shot out and smote the captain between the eyes. She let out a high-pitched wail, then collapsed to her hands and knees, gasping for air.
"Jane!" And then David made a similar noise as that...light jumped to him as well. He fell, and abruptly both of the veterans lay in a daze.
"I'm sure they will take comfort in knowing the other suffers less for their cooperation," the Warlock mused. "I can work with-"
Violet light seared through the air. The Warlock looked absurdly surprised as it bore down around him, forging a dome over his head and sunk into the road. Pavement cracked and twisted, and in an instant...
"Well done!" Charlotte cried. Sylvie made a strangled noise, amp still in hand and her whole face glowing purple.
"I can't-" She screamed as the Warlock struck the barrier "-hold him long!"
"Wake up!" Meysam grabbed David rather roughly, nearly pitching the Australian to his feet. "Get to the ship!"
"She's not responding," Charlotte warned, doing the same for Jane. The Irishwoman leaned heavily on her, mumbling something about obsidians and a woman named Irina.
"Get her out, then," Meysam ordered, falling back on his role from the Haven without conscious thought. "You three, get into the ship with Kipler and Mariah."
"What about you two?" demanded David.
"Just go!" Meysam stepped up to Mariah's side, and his rifle thundered as he picked off the brave Lost trying to inch around the Warlock in his prison.
"You are an affront," the Chosen declared. He rubbed his hands together, sneering at Sylvie. "What you have taken can be reclaimed. You will suffer tenfold compared to your companions, for they know not your arrogance in thinking to equal the power of the gods!" Worryingly, purple light seared off his hands when he did his thing.
"I've got Kipler," Firebrand reported. "White and Kelly are coming up. Girls, you'd better step lively!"
"I'm working on it," Mariah snapped. "This guy is-"
Bang!
"What the fuck?" Mariah cried, as Meysam's shot whizzed right past her head. She paused when a Lost tumbled before her, its own skull blown into three pieces.
"You're welcome," Meysam told her, before returning his attention to the main street.
"Come, now," the Warlock growled. That light built and built around him, and Meysam swallowed when he saw Sylvie blanch. The Frenchwoman held on, but her hand started shaking even before-
The light burst out like a wave, and Sylvie's barrier came apart in a thousand splinters. Psionic energy split and twisted off into the air in all directions, smashing windows and ripping gouges in buildings. Meysam covered his head...and he swore when Sylvie shrieked and flew, her amp breaking in two. Both smoldering pieces clattered down by the rookie's feet even before the ravenette landed with an ominously hard thud by the beacon.
"Let us begin, then!" the Warlock shot its hand out, and Meysam sucked in breath as he saw its taloned finger leveled at Charlotte. The blonde, hanging halfway between Firebrand and the ground, let out a cry almost as wild as Sylvie's, and she thrashed on her line.
When her eyes opened, they were bright purple.
"And now you stand alone," the Warlock reminded Meysam, starting for him. The Saudi hit his trigger, but his rounds seemed to bounce harmlessly off of the Warlock's armor. Meysam backpedaled, listening to the fiasco over his com as mind-controlled Charlotte entered the Skyranger, only for David and Jane to tackle her. The Warlock laughed as Meysam ceased fire. "What do you mean to do, man with no powers?"
Meysam let out a single breath. He felt his heartbeat for a moment that stretched out through time, and he supposed it was as close as he would ever get to a genuine religious experience.
Then he brought his gun up, sighted, and gently squeezed the trigger.
The Warlock didn't dodge. Why should he? His armor was proof against Meysam's fire, and it wasn't like he'd unloaded on full auto, with some chance of accomplishing something through sheer volume of fire. A single shot was harmless.
Or it would have been, if Meysam hadn't put it right into the Chosen's left eye.
The scream dug knives into his ears. Meysam didn't bother watching as the Warlock keeled over, hands over his face, yellow leaking through tightly-clenched fingers. While his enemy howled in agony, Meysam seized Sylvie in a bridal carry, racing for the beacon and the last hanging line. Thoughtlessly, he flipped the ravenette over his shoulder, keeping her in place with one arm while he attached the line to his harness with the other-
"For that, you will suffer!" A hand caught the back of his shirt, and then it was Meysam's turn to scream as those talons punched into his armor. They didn't fully penetrate, but they warped the metal, and that was enough to almost literally drive nails into his back.
Blam!
The grip vanished. Meysam heard more screaming, more howling...and then a sudden blast of purple light seared past him, hot and reeking of ash. When he spared a glance over his shoulder...
"It's gone," he whispered. "It's...it's gone-"
"You're welcome."
Meysam glanced up the line. He stared, open-mouthed, at the brunette framed in the open door at the back of the Skyranger's drop bay, shard gun in hand.
"Come on," Mariah ordered. "Get up here before the Lost come back!"
Author's Note 38: Lost My Way
Just what the hell are the VIPs doing in Lost territory, anyway? Is there any conceivable reason for them to be there, apart from - maybe - trying to shake Advent pursuit? That's the most logical explanation for covert op ambushes being set in Lost ruins, but why...just...why...
This chapter is already very long, so I'm going to keep this AN short so I don't have to cut it in two. I'd really prefer to avoid that, since I need chapter length for some later scenes that very well do deserve to be multiple chapters.
Until next time, Vigilo Confido.