Ethereal Agents

by SCBM

As the battle for Earth draws to its end, the Resistance, backed by XCOM, have turned the tide against ADVENT. Now the war has come to City 31, and with it, comes the hard truth to an unlikely pair of Agents. (F!Viper x M!Human)

8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

1

Zima had always missed wearing her wargear. Having it donned gave her a sense of being stronger than she was, more dangerous – just like whenever she could feel the shape of her pistol pressing into her scales when she hid it in her jacket.

She fixed dragonscale-like underplating on her front and back. Each plate custom-made to hold together right up against her body to protect from shrapnel fire. The plates were onyx-black, a slightly lighter shade than her natural colour, and ended up on her cranium like some kind of serpentine crown. Next went her combat vest, strapping it over her shoulders and fixing it in place with velcro straps and clamps running down her curvy sides. Her tail was lacking in nerves or organs and demanded flexibility, so it was left exposed to the cold air of the night. She slipped on a pair of black bracers to cover up her slim arms.

Armoured up, she reached into the trunk for her battle helm. She wiped away the thin layer of dust across its wide, bulbous visor, the size large enough to compensate for protecting her face as well as her hood. It still had a bit of wear and tear from the last time she'd used it, so long ago now. A slice mark cut right across the left eye-lens was the most obvious at a glance. A man had tried to cut her to ribbons with a katana, she remembered. She'd been naïve enough back then to think melee combat was a pathetic attempt at maintaining honour in a gunfight, and hadn't taken the threat seriously. She wouldn't make that mistake again.

She slipped the helmet on, making the world momentarily dark. She blink-activated the internal HUD, and her visor went transparent. The bottom of the helmet was opened, allowing her to still flex her jaw and taste the air. She got used to its weight with a few flexes of her hood and twists of her neck joints.

Lastly, she dug into the farthest corner of the trunk for her submachine gun. She held it with both hands as she checked the safety and flicked back the bolt. A good many tally marks were etched along the butt of the modified gun, marking all of her confirmed kills. She flicked the primer back into place, hearing the low humming of magnetic rounds chambering into the spine of the weapon. She looked through the thermal scope attached to the midsection, nodded at the working heat-seeking display, and flicked the safety off and on.

She stuffed ammo clips into the pouches on her vest and waist, making sure to pack as many as she could carry. Old Town – the City, she corrected – was on the brink of collapse, and the time for infiltration work was long behind them. She secured the SMG to the maglocks on her back, waited for them to click the weapon in place, then checked her usual sidearm. She would have no use for it now that her favourite weapon was back in her possession, rather than rotting in the Chaser's boot with the rest of their wargear this whole time.

She glanced to her side. Daniel was also geared up, and she doted on his dressing. He had strapped on his own combat vest and pants, giving him a sort of mercenary appearance. He was just adjusting one of the cuffs of his padded sleeves, as he came striding out of the hotel. Under an arm was his own helmet, staring up at her with twin orange lenses. There were bags under Daniel's eyes and his hair was a mess. The youthful human had never looked so old before, and a despicable part of her was glad he was just as affected as she was.

She handed out her pistol, and he took it. Daniel always preferred to duel-wield, she noted. Likewise to her, his pockets were full of energy magazines, and with all his armour on he looked rather capable, his muscles flexing under all the plating she found enticing for a moment. Human skin was easily damaged – smooth, not like her scales, not that she didn't find the contrast between them intriguing. A shy part of her wondered if he wasn't thinking the same of her.

He slipped his and her pistols into the holsters on his belt, then turned and craned his neck up to examine the hotel, there safehouse. How long had this place been there home? Had to be more than the rest of them. Six, seven months?

"Dispatch sure knows how to pick them," Daniel said, as if sensing her thoughts. He took a pull from the smoke in his hand. She stared at him for a moment before replying.

"It was better than living near that sewer grate on the north side. Remember all those rats?" She made a disgusted sound, then her lips curled upwards. "You said something on our first night there. Something that almost made me throw up."

"Was it…" He clucked his tongue. "Something about having rat-kebab for dinner?"

She chuckled. "That was it." She was too afraid to continue ignoring him anymore, even if she still held resentment for him.

"You want the honours?" He held out his lighter.

She took it, flicking the cap back and forth as she looked over the hotel one more time. Discussing that last safehouse brought back a sense of nostalgia. Back then, things had been so much easier, and why was that? Because the resistance hadn't picked up all the momentum they had now? That was a big part of it. It was just plain fact that Advent couldn't lose. Like the sky being blue, or water being wet, the resistance just wasn't strong enough to do anything on this sort of scale.

Another part, the big one, was because they'd been allowed to sleep in more often back in the day. Not like now, where she hadn't got a good rest in days. So yes, she would want the honours. This place sucked ass, to put it poetically.

She flicked the little switch, and a blue flame licked out of the lighter cap. There was a damp trail of liquid by her tail, leading across the pavement and under Daniel's door room. She presented the flame to the start of the trail, and zipped back with a slightly startled hiss as the gasoline they'd set up a few minutes ago erupted into a trailing path of flame.

The door went amber-yellow as the rolling inferno past beneath its frame. She heard a small pop from inside. Daniel's computer, most likely. There was too much risk of it falling into enemy hands, even if he had wiped the drives. There were all those physical papers of his too, the ones that had started his train of thought of turning into a dissident.

The flames consumed the interior, the windows leaking out tongues of red and yellow after they exploded outward like zits, letting loose the scent of cooking fiber. Side by side, Daniel and Zima watched there safehouse slowly burn to the ground. Neither of them knowing that it would be there last one.

"Time to get out of here," Daniel said after a pause. With a heavy clunk, he shut the boot, which now held all of their everyday clothes and bare essentials they'd packed before drowning the hotel in flammable liquid. He got into the driver's seat and shut the door. Zima grabbed her door's handle, but hesitated before tugging it open. She looked over the hotel once more. The irony was not lost on her, that they were destroying a part of the city, even if it had been a crumby little place. Just like all those kidnappings they'd done, they left behind destruction wherever they went. Why had that realisation chosen now, of all times, to make itself so clear to her?

The engine purred to life. For some reason the whirring of pipes and tubes and pumps of machinery beneath the bonnet, sounded almost finalistic in their rumblings.

"You coming?" Daniel peered over at her from inside. He'd put his helmet on now, and she stared at his faceplate longingly for a second.

"Yes." She climbed in, draped her tail into the backseat as per usual. She shut the door. "Let's go."

He nodded, pulled the car into gear, peeled out onto the street, and drove for the Tower.

2

Daniel's shoulders tightened up like he was a nervous wreck, every time they turned a corner or passed an intersection. He couldn't help imagining a death-squad of resistance soldiers hiding around the bends in the road or down any of the numerous alleyways. Automatic gunfire rang out in all directions, and at least one in every ten buildings was either a crumbling ruin, or just about to be. Everything had deteriorated, and not just in a physical sense. He didn't know whether to be glad or not that he'd no longer be able to continue his duties in City 31. Plenty of people would be better off if he were gone, despite appearances of the apocalyptic surroundings.

He patted one of his vest pockets with a hand. The bulge of the detacher's could be felt through the plating. He'd kept them close and hidden from Zima's knowing since acquiring them. But he wouldn't need to worry about that for long, he was certain. Nothing, even the unbeatable regime that was his life's work, lasted forever.

His gloved hands gripped the wheel like a pair of vices, tensing up as they drove to the border between Old Town and Downtown. Here on the bridge they were the most exposed, and there didn't seem to be a security checkpoint on either side. He pressed his foot against the accelerator, keeping the speedometer on the 80. Back in his teens he'd been quite the reckless driver. Reckless, as in, drifting and drag-racing in the late hours of the nights, with lowlifes he wouldn't call friends even if he had a gun to his head. He'd been pretty good at it too, enough to catch Dispatch's attention to give him the very car he was driving now in the first place.

He could go faster, but right now the Chaser could pass as a civilian target, and he'd rather keep that discretion for as long as he could. He glanced out his side of the window, at the setting sun casting a dark range of colours across the western silhouettes of the city with its dying rays of white and yellow. On the lake, boats from both Advent and the resistance were trading fire from the north and south sides of the bay, orange and green tracer rounds trading back and forth across the body of water. Advent transports were crisscrossing through the airspace, dropping and picking up targets as the regime desperately fought to hold their ground.

The sky was a deep crimson, from all the fire and chaos erupting across the city. On the horizon was a massive white cloud rolling in from the north. A blizzard. It really did feel and look like the end of all things. Whether or not they'd evacuate today and start plaguing another city-center tomorrow, or wherever it was Dispatch had in mind, he was convinced his time in the city was almost over. Before it happened, however, he had to know why. Seeing the aftermath of that bomb meant that Daniel was done living with the easy lies and ready for the harsh truth of reality.

Downtown was in an uproar, but there was at least some semblance of order, as most of the remnants of Advent had rallied to Dispatch's city-wide call for evacuation, and the District was mostly clear of hostiles and not a crumbling ruin, yet. They crossed the bridge uncontested, but the direct route to the Tower was blocked by a massive crowd of protesters, wielding signposts and other crude-looking melee weapons. Zima had one word to say during the whole drive, and here she voiced it in a long sigh.

"Fuuuck."

"You said it." He spun the wheel and detoured around the mob, numbering maybe in the two hundreds, possibly higher. One of them through a golf ball-sized rock at the car just before they pulled out of sight. It hit the back window hard enough to make them both flinch.

Snowfall had been picking up over the week, and now it was becoming an obstruction. Knee-high patches would block up lanes every now and then he had to detour around, and the tops of buildings were capped with a thin layer of white. Here and there, men and women were lying face down in the snow, blood piles pooling out of their bodies. Daniel drove past several of these post-skirmish situations and grimaced. Some had taken to looting the dead, but Daniel begrudgingly chose to keep on driving. He could tell Zima felt just as eager as he was to drive away the looters with force.

He activated the screen-wipers, brushing the falling flakes from his vision. The Advent Tower came into view after a few more turns. It was remarkably well intact in contrast to the rest of the city, even as it was the biggest building in '31 by a long shot. There were no checkpoints or security measures to stop them from pulling up to the entryway. Daniel hoped security was hiding out in the ruins, and had ignored the Chaser after recognising it, rather than believing anyone in a car could just roll up to the headquarters of the regime controlling the millions of people in this region.

He pulled into the curb, sending up a little wave of snow that piled on the sidewalk. He turned off the ignition and got out. His breath fogged up the inside of his faceplate as the temperature plummeted. He could see Zima shivering as she stepped around the car to his side. She must be feeling it much worse than him, cold-blooded snake that she was.

They craned their necks to look up the massive structure, and a sense of unease passed between them. There were no guards outside on the forty or so steps leading up the slope to the lobby doors, but he could see movement inside on various levels of the Tower. Spread randomly among the higher windows he could see sniper's adjusting scoped rifles. To the right of the snow-lipped staircase was a sculpture in the form of a Sectoid helping a fallen human to his feet. Someone had spray-painted some devil-eyes and teeth on the alien's carved body. Neither of them had to voice how concerning that was – vandalism literally right underneath Advent's nose.

They ascended the steps to the lobby. Zima on the left, Daniel the right, guns holstered but ready to draw at a moment's notice. They passed by a pair of automated defense turrets halfway up the climb. One of them was destroyed, the other was still operational, albeit with a few scorch marks across its bulky midsection. It tracked them for a moment before scanning the street for threats. Zima hissed at it over her shoulder. "I hate machines," she grumbled. "can never tell when they're about to turn on you."

Much like us, he wanted to say, but didn't. He might have been a fool, but he wasn't stupid to voice something so direct now that they were at the heart of Advent. A severely weakened heart, but nonetheless a dangerous place to start flapping his gums now.

The lobby doors welcomed them, parting from their path with a faint whirring sound. They closed behind them as the Agents entered, and the air was warmer inside, if a bit damp with body-odour. Dotted randomly about the lobby was a mix of troopers and aliens, as well as civilians, wounded and unwounded packed into groups clustered inside the small space. To the left a few corridors branched off. He vaguely remembered that way leading to the barracks and storage areas. To the right was a greeting desk, but the clerk had her back to him, talking with someone on the phone.

Zima matched his gaze, then looked at him and shrugged. He led the way to the clerk, but stopped when a group of similarly equipped people like him, hybrids and humans, caught his attention nearby. Something about them seemed so… familiar. It was hard to put to words. He went over and tapped one on the shoulder. The young man turned, eyed him with a mix of caution and respect. "Can I help you?"

"I'm looking for Dispatch," Daniel explained. "He said he'd meet us here." The man blinked at him.

"Fell for that one, did you? He's the leader of this whole cell. He won't come down to talk to us lowly guys and gals of his."

Zima put a hand on her hip, quirked an eye at the man. "'Guys and gals of his'? You mean, you're an Agent, too?"

"Sure, all of us are." He waved a hand at the group of ten or so he'd just been talking with. "Funny how we all work for the same guy but can't identify one another at a glance. Makes for pretty good water-cooler talk. I'm T-16, or Terry if you like. Want to join us?"

"No," Daniel said, even though the offer was a little tempting. He'd never met another Agent besides Zima, and he wondered if their lives had been just as crazy as his had been. "-thanks, but we have to talk with Dispatch."

"Told you, he won't come down, not until the transports come and take us. Could ask the clerk, but, she might be on the phone with a general or something. Has to be a pretty important conversation, the way her eyes bug out every other word."

"Thanks, Terry. I'll try that." Daniel nodded to the man. Terry returned the nod, before whirling back to the group, but not before making sure to keep them in his vision at all times. Terry was geared up, as were the other Agents, but not so much as Daniel and Zima. Something just felt off about that to him. He almost considered stopping Daniel to find out why, but decided to let it go.

Daniel came up to the counter, and hit the little desk bell. Zima leant against the counter on his side, and frowned when the clerk noticed them, but pretended not too. She kept on whispering into that phone like it was the last conversation she'd ever have.

Zima watched Daniel walk around the counter, and pluck the phone from the woman's hands. "She'll be right back," he said into it, before dropping it on the floor. He looked into the woman's – as Terry had accurately put it – bugging eyes. She looked just about ready to explode. "Where's Dispatch?"

"W-Who?"

Daniel blinked. He realised he didn't even know Dispatch's real name, or personal designation or anything. He went over what he did know. "Dispatch? Guy who talks to us over the phone, hands out assignments, sounds like an asshole? Says 'excellent' with an emphasis on the 'e' in a creepy sort of way?"

The clerk shook her head, her pony tail flapping each respective way enough to slap her on the cheeks. She didn't speak. Daniel clenched his hands. "Okay, how about this? Who's in charge of this place and where is he?"

"U-Up in the top floors, but… he... told me he didn't want to be disturbed. He said he'd kill me if I let anyone up there!"

"And I'll kill you right now if you don't," Daniel threatened. He'd had enough by this point. Dispatch could try to keep him away, but it wouldn't work. He sneered at the poor clerk from under his helmet, and made sure she noted his two pistols by fiddling with one of them. "Which floor?"

"E-Eighty! Floor Eighty! Oh god, oh god I'm so screwed."

"You'll be fine," he lied. He didn't apologise as he backed away and returned to the main floor. He started making his way to the north end of the room. Zima came up beside him. "Daniel, why did you do that? We could have waited down here for Dispatch."

He looked back at her, and noticed from the corner of his vision, Terry giving him an impressed look. "He lied, Zee. He's not coming down." Daniel turned away. "So we're going to him. Come on."

There was a service elevator built into the far end of the main floor that accessed the whole Tower, Daniel remembered. He and Zima passed through several winding corridors that split off into various rooms. Some looked like induction classes, tables and chairs arranged for presentations and such, but most were in the process of packing up. People came and went with bundles of files under arms, panicking, but controlling themselves long enough to destroy any evidence that couldn't be carried.

He hit the call button on the panel beside the elevator. A minute passed, and the lift arrived. He held the door open for Zima when he got in, but she hesitated. He couldn't see her underneath that intimidating helmet of hers, but he knew that he was the centre of her attention.

"Zee? Come on, what are you waiting for?"

"… What are you going to do once we face him?"

Daniel opened his mouth, and now he was the one to hesitate. He'd thought about what he'd do long and hard on the way here, but now that he was almost there, eyeing the button labelled 80… "I don't know, Zee."

"Are you going to kill him?"

"… No."

"I can tell when you're lying, Daniel."

"I've always been honest with you," he said. "I-I just want answers, alright? To everything. All my life I've grown up knowing that Advent would protect us, and now that we're abandoning the city, I need to know why, and how. Don't tell me you don't want to know either."

"You never know when to leave well enough alone." The Viper's gaze lowered slightly. "We can still go back. Nobody has to know what you've been doing. We can just go and… and pretend like nothing ever happened, and continue on with our lives."

"You mean our lives as butchers?" The last word cut into the air like a knife. He was glad she couldn't see his face. Zima felt the same way.

"If you go up there, Daniel, it's going to end badly. I can feel it."

"Then you can wait here, because I've made up my mind." He'd been holding the door open, and now let it close. Just for a second he thought she wouldn't come, but she did, slithering through the gap, her tail coming in just as the doors closed. He looked at her and agreed that her intuition was a mutual feeling.

She noticed him staring, and huffed. "What is it?"

"… Nothing." He examined the panel, finding it much easier to look at. He pressed the button labelled 80, and a weightless feeling gathered in his chest as the lift ascended. A floor-counter tallied away above the doors. He watched the number count upwards from one.

He wished someone had installed some speakers or something in here, because the air was rife with hostility and tension. He went to scratch behind his head, but of course his helmet blocked his fingers. He mewled over Zima's words to him – it's going to end badly. He knew what she was implying, and was ashamed to find that he would be ready for it when the time came.

The floor counter reached 50. A minute later and it rose to 70. He wasn't the only one to steal a glimpse at Zima every now and then, as she was doing the same to him. No turning back, now. He'd delayed this meeting long enough already. Elder's knew he'd have to face the fallout of his actions someday. He just wished Zima wasn't here to see it.

"You don't have to be afraid of him." Daniel met Zima's eyes for a second before looking away. "He's just one man."

"It's not that kind of fear," Zima mumbled. Before he could find out any further, the lift stopped.

80. An unseen bell dinged, and the doors parted. Daniel stepped out into a spacious marble floor and examined his surroundings. A grey-painted aisle ran up the centre of the room towards the rear of the space, where at the halfway point, the floor rose one level higher. Up there he could see dozens of office desks and computers. Between him and the rising staircase were two brass-coloured statues on circular pedestals sat either side of the aisle, surrounded by a pair of oval fountains. Both were depictions of the Elders – one was holding its arms up as if blessing something in front of its cloaked body. The other had something cupped in its hands, and orb of some sort, and was raising it above its tipped head as if in the process of offering said orb. Water geysers sprayed crystal clear water into the large knee-high pools around the statues.

Couches and chairs were arranged around the fountains, alien-looking flora sat in pots in the corners. The rectangular room was enclosed by glass, and an entire three-sixty panoramic view of the cityscape dominated the backdrop. Plumes of smoke and fire were everywhere, bullets and plasma flew about the streets, but it was still an impressive view.

Zima actually stepped first out between the ethereal statues, brushing past his flank with a flick of her tongue. Daniel followed her after they shared an uneasy stare. He had expected… well, he didn't know. Certainly not a place as furnished as this, maybe. The ceiling was vaulted into a dark recess that concealed the 'roof', to accommodate the size of the statues. He saw movement up at the northern half of the floor, where the centre aisle formed into a staircase that led up into the office area up there. A pair of workers escorted by a trooper rushed down the incline and made for the elevator, paying the Agents no heed.

Zima and Daniel made their way up the aisle, the right sides of their bodies briefly illuminated by a distant explosion, its booming report sounding off a moment after detonation. Daniel guessed the glass walls were one-way mirrors, or else they'd be pretty easy targets for snipers.

The upraised northern half of the floorspace was ornate and white, but built with defence in the forefront of design. Up here there was more clutter. Dozens and dozens of office desks were arranged in symmetrical rows. Daniel could almost imagine the numerous operators filing through streams of data at some point in the past, sorting through city-wide and potentially country-wide field reports, but not anymore. Now the space was empty, and most of the terminals were dull or powered off entirely.

There was only two other people up here – one trooper moving around, and one dressed in suit and tie, ordering the trooper to bustle about. Another section of the floor raised even further, and there the man stood, surrounded by a conclave of monitors and keyboards numbering in the hundreds. Some clusters of screens were just parts of one bigger image, and most others depicted various angles of different places.

Daniel approached slowly, and examined at the range of screens. He noticed one of the feeds showing the front entrance to the Tower, and another of the bridge they'd drove over to get here. He didn't need to look at the rest to know the whole city could be seen from that one chair, sitting the middle of the platform to get the best view on all of them.

"-n't you listening? Anything below level nine clearance has to be erased!" The figure had just turned to the Advent trooper before Daniel entered hearing range. "If I have to tell you that one more time I will throw you off the roof. Get moving!"

The Advent trooper clicked a fist to his chest in salute before departing wordlessly. He bent down over a nearby computer and started typing, giving a passing sneer to the two Agents as they walked by.

Daniel climbed the trio of stairs onto the monitor platform. The man spying on all the city turned to face him just as Daniel's boots clicked onto the metalwork. Tight-lipped and terrifying, the man was easily two heads taller than Daniel, with a thin frame that only strengthened his eccentricity. His face was foxy, full of intelligence and mirth. His pupils caught Daniel's attention the most – they would look more at home on a snake than a human, if that was what he was anymore. Scales and cybernetics lathered over his chin and neck and hands.

Dispatch looked Daniel over, and then turned away.

Bastard waved him away like he was trash.

"I told everyone not to disturb me. Please show yourselves out and I'll forget your intrusion."

"W-We…" Daniel gulped, berating himself for sounding pathetic. He took a breath. "You said you would talk with us."

"You and everyone else in this… Oh." Dispatch – if that was his name or not – didn't turn around fully, but he did meet Daniel's eye over his shoulder. "Oh, I'd recognise that voice anywhere. D-49. Pleasure to meet you face-to-face, after all these years. And I see you brought Z-22 as well. Welcome."

"You've got a lot to answer for."

Dispatch raised a plaintive hand. "Now what kind of greeting is that? If you weren't a part of my most valued assets, I'd have ripped out your tongue long ago. After all I've done for you I'd say I deserve a bit of respect, wouldn't you agree?"

"After all you've done?" Daniel echoed. "You made me kill hundreds of people."

"Is that what you came up here to berate me about?" Dispatch looked at the display of monitors, wiping a bit of dust from the front of his suit. "I've been the figurehead of this city for as long as you have been alive, D-49. If you hadn't done your duty, this city would have fallen long ago."

"So my 'duty', is to kill innocent people?"

"Your duty is to halt enemy subterfuge and protect this planet from those that would defy the Elder's will, as it always has been. Nobody is innocent. You should know that, of all people."

Daniel pointed. "Then what about the bomb you had me deliver to the Stacks? What were those people guilty of?"

Dispatch's grin had remained slightly upright until now, and Daniel noticed it slip very slightly at this. "How do you know about that? Who have you been talking to?"

Daniel saw no reason to lie at this point, and told his superior that he had gone and seen it for himself.

"Of course you did," Dispatch grumbled. What surprised Daniel was that he didn't sound as surprised as he should have been, more like annoyed. "You know, I've failed you, D-49. I've been letting you act too independently as of late – busy schedule's gotten the best of me – and now your human nature's taking hold of you."

"So why didn't you stop me?" Daniel asked, waiving an arm at the blazing city. "Why didn't the all-mighty Advent do something about it? About all this?"

"I don't have to explain myself to you, D-49. Trooper? Escort these two out of my sight."

What happened next, all happened in the span of five seconds. First, the trooper from before shouldered his rifle and was in the middle of following his given orders, when something smashed into the base of the Tower. They didn't know what it was just yet, but it was some sort of explosion – the ground rocked beneath their feet for a moment before stabilising.

Second, Daniel took the chance the rumble gave him. His arms were a blur as he reached down for his holsters, his arms crossing at the waist as he drew his two pistols. He shot the trooper in the head with one and aimed the other at Dispatch. Zima watched the trooper curl up on the floor in front of her and die, eyes wide with horror as a bit of blood splattered onto the end of her tail.

She expected troopers, or anyone, to come flooding in from behind, but the whole room had been evacuated, thus making the incident unseen by any, save for her.

Leading with his guns, Daniel took a step toward Dispatch. The head of Advent somehow looked a little less tall, a little more fearful. His alien face was scrunched into a snarl, however. "A-Agent! Just what in the Elder's name are you doing?!"

"What I should have done a long time ago."

"Z-22! Apprehend this man right now!"

Zima was torn. She looked between her human and her boss, and froze. Daniel completely ignored her as if she wasn't even there. In truth the Viper felt like she was a thousand leagues from here, weighing the options of what to do.

"You're going to tell me why blowing up a building in my own city is my duty." Daniel had advanced to the point Dispatch was close enough to kiss the barrels of his guns.

"It was necessary!" Dispatch replied.

"How? Tell me right now or I'll blow off your fucking head!"

Dispatch backed away, ended up in the chair with wheeled legs as Daniel approached him, adding a bit of pressure to the triggers on his guns. The abomination that was his superior raised a hand to ward him away. "Our projections showed the resistance would set up a base camp somewhere near the site. We had it moved into position by another Agent after you delivered it."

"But it was a camp full of wounded!"

"A camp full of friends and families of the very soldiers attacking our city. Removing them would decrease enemy moral, and the operation was a success. The Stacks remained contested rather than captured."

"How can you call this 'success'?" Daniel waved at the view around them. To the side, Zima was staring out across the rooftops. The snowfall was getting heavy, and dousing some of the distant inferno's, creating a thick blanket of dull grey that obscured the far distance. Transport ships were taking off, packed full of civilians and troopers alike, emptying the city.

Dispatch drank all this in with a tight frown. "The resistance has grown too powerful," he explained with a shake of his head.

"Even with all this forewarning? All our troops and tech and… and our Network?" Daniel's aim faltered ever so slightly.

"It's not just City 31 that will fall. Look for yourself." Dispatch gestured to the monitors behind him.

Daniel approached, his knuckles going white at how tightly he held his weapons, and saw that more than half the screens were of places he didn't recognise. There were labels at the bottom of some of the feeds. Montreal, New Isa, Paris, Saint Petersburg – all were showing similar states to City 31. Fighting in the streets, complete chaos. It was a worldwide uprising. Daniel shook his head, not quite believing what was right in front of his eyes. A convoy in flames here, the destruction of an Elder statue there. '31 was almost tranquil in comparison to what was happening out there.

"… Why?" Daniel croaked, looking over at Dispatch. "Why didn't you tell us that we've… That we've lost?"

Dispatch's eyes narrowed. "Isn't it obvious? If you knew, if anyone knew, people would lose faith in Advent, and what has happened today would have happened much sooner, with much more losses on our side. Each city-centre is kept isolated for their own protection. That was your duty, D-49, as was all our duties – to keep this day from coming, to protect our way of life for as long as possible."

Daniel found himself disgusted that he agreed with all the secrecy, that knowing the whole world was under attack would crush anyone's resolve. Daniel could already feel himself giving up on everything at that very moment. He gestured with a gun. "How did they gather up so much strength to do all this? Why haven't the Elder's stopped them?"

"Because the Elders are dead."

Zima, silent up to now, couldn't stop a hiss loosing from her mouth. Daniel shook his head, furrowed his brow, spun and aimed a gun at Dispatch. "No. You're lying."

"It's the truth!" Dispatch exclaimed, staring down the pistol's mouth. "It happened… five months ago. I don't know how they did it, but XCOM stormed the Elders palace and wiped them out!"

Snippets of memory echoed back to Daniel at that moment. Suddenly a whole lot of things made sense. He could almost remember the time frame Dispatch was talking about, all those months ago he'd felt… strange. Like a part of him had been erased, but said part wasn't actually there all along. He'd waved it off as nothing at the time, but now that Dispatch had voiced an explanation…

A few recent memories flashed by like a little mental slideshow.

They're no better then what they portray us as, said the resistance doctor.

It seems you dogs have got a lot of faith to throw around, said Conner.

How can you let these things process us? said the woman from the Thompson's smuggling ring.

We've had some technical difficulties lately, said Dispatch.

The Network doesn't have as strong a hold as you think, said Ramos. That was the most important of all, the most obvious. How could have been so blind? He scratched behind his ear; his voice no higher than a whisper.

"… There is no Advent Network, is there? That's why you've been giving us faulty intel all this time, how most of our operations don't go as smoothly as they used to. Why our standards have dropped, why there are so many alien dissidents popping up recently. That's why we've lost the war."

"H-How?" Zima chose this moment to speak up. "If it's gone, then why does it still feel like it's there?"

Dispatch spread his hands as he elaborated. "Before they killed the Elder's, XCOM sabotaged the Network Tower in South Africa. We have several Towers on each continent, but even losing just one started a catastrophic chain reaction that spread across the world. The chips kept us tethered, but the Network's influence is slowly being wilted away. We'd need only look at you, D-49, to see proof of that."

It felt like a void had consumed his soul. The Elders were gone, the Network was on its last legs. All he could feel now was the bitter emptiness of pure defeat. For a long time, nobody spoke, and all that was heard was the far-off rumblings of the world falling apart around them.

"… So that's it then?" Daniel murmured. "All the people I've killed, all the lives I ruined… Was it all for nothing?"

"Not necessarily," Dispatch said sternly. "I've received word that our scientists have found a way to stabilise the connection. We need only take a dropship out of here and regroup. After that we can focus on reorganising and assembling hit-and-run strikes."

The only people who'd relied on that tactic was XCOM, Daniel noted. His frustration had reached the turning point, and now it was his turn to be stern. "No," he said. "I'm done with you, Dispatch. It's over."

Dispatch smirked up at him, even with a gun in his face. "Really, now? And what are you going to do once you betray the only people who can save this world? Are you thinking of turning yourself in to XCOM? They'll never take you in alive and you know it. I am the only chance you had of surviving. You've doomed yourself."

"Maybe I have. But I'd rather die than serve a freak like you for one more day. I still believe in the Elder's, even if they're gone. But I don't believe in you, Dispatch." Daniel clenched one of his guns harder.

"You'd kill me after I plucked you out the gutters of this world, D-49? After I gave you a home, a place in the new world's order?"

"... I..." Daniel faltered, a thousand thoughts trying to form to words, but none of them getting through. He wanted to kill this man so badly, toss him out of the tower for good measure for concealing how desperate the state of the regime really was. And yet... those people at the resistance camp, all those bodies. He was a murderer, but was he cold blooded as well?

"... No," he said, answering his mental question as well as Dispatch's. Even the Advent commander was surprised when Daniel lowered his gun. "No, I'm not going to kill you. Elders know you deserve it. You're coming with me, Dispatch. The resistance could learn a thing or two from you."

"I took you for a lot of things, Agent, but a turncoat was not one of them. How could you betray this world's best hope, and side with a bunch of terrorists?"

"You're both terrorists. XCOM, Advent, I don't see much difference between them. They both use people like me to do the dirty work, and its us that suffer for it. Well I'm done. I'm turning you over to them, and then I'm going to surrender myself."

Dispatch's jaw quivered for a moment. "Y-You've truly lost your way, Agent. There's no chance of me coming quietly, and you're not leaving this room alive unless you recant everything you just said."

Daniel shook his head, with as much conviction as he had on the day he'd signed up to serve the very man he was now resigning from.

"Very well. I can always recruit more Agents, ones more capable than even you. Speaking of which... Z-22? Shoot this man."

Daniel turned to his partner, and his heart sank as he watched her bring her rifle to bear, and aim the muzzle at him. Now he knew what she was implying earlier, how this was going to end badly.

"Zee..." he began, but she cut him off.

"Is that truly the way you feel. Daniel?" she asked. He noticed her hands were trembling.

"Yes," he admitted, pointing at their boss. "He has to answer for everything he's done. You know that as much as I do."

"... No, Daniel. We have to stay with Advent. We have to."

"That's the Network talking through you!" he pleaded. "You have to fight it! You, have to."

Shaking her hood ever so slightly, Zima whispered. "I can't..."

"I gave you an order, Agent," Dispatch interrupted. "Carry it through, as you always have."

Zima's eyes flashed from one man to the other, her SMG pointing somewhere between them. Daniel thought he had a slim chance of disarming or perhaps wounding her if he was quick enough, after all he was still holding his gun, aimed at the floor. But he brushed the idea away, and let his weapon fall to the ground. He could have said much mroe to sway Zima, but in truth... he didn't want to. He closed his eyes, seeing the bodies of all those he'd killed. Perhaps it would finally stop, and his partner would be the one to end it.

He closed his eyes and waited, suddenly feeling very tired.

"My whole life is a lie," Zima said. "And it's all your fault."

He thought for a second that she was tlaking to him. Daniel slowly opened his eyes, and saw Zima aiming her weapon at Dispatch.

"Wait!" Daniel and Dispatch cried out at the same time. But the deed was done. Zima compressed the trigger, and shot Dispatch between the eyes.

Dispatch's reptilian gaze rolled upwards, as if to look at the new hole on his forehead. He slumped back in his chair, head tilting to the side. Blood clotted in the wound and rolled down his thin nose. Dispatch released one last breath, and the head of Advent in City 31 was no more.

Daniel cursed and rushed over to the body. As stupid as it looked, he tried to find a heartbeat on the obvious corpse. Suddenly Daniel was overcome with anger, and he looked back over his shoulder at his serpentine friend. "What the hell have you done, Zee?!"

Zima on her part, was completely stunned, whether by his reaction or her execution was hard to tell. "W-What?"

"He might have known something!" he growled. "Something to help save what's left of this city. Damn it, you didn't have to shoot him!"

"I could have shot you!" she snapped. "Would that have been a better alternative?"

"Yeah, actually!" he said. He turned round and came right up to her. "You realise what you just did? We had the most sort-after target in the whole resistance and you just killed him! We had a way out, Zee, and you fucking shot him. Why don't you just put a bullet in my head too, for all the good you've done!"

Something flashed in her serpentine gaze, and for a moment he thought she would do just that. Her whole body was trembling at this point. Seeing her like that broke his heart, and he took a breath to calm himself down. "... It's all over anyway," he said, more to himself than her. "Just... Just kill me, Zee. You'd be doing the world a favour."

"..."

He closed his eyes once again, and waited for the end.

But the end didn't come. There were no more Elder's, no Network, no hope, just as Dispatch said. He was as ready as he would ever be. He'd always known Zima was too devoted to the cause to let something like this pass. He'd rather be killed by her than anyone else, for his own selfish sake.

When he heard nothign but the sound of her and his breathing, his features hardened. "What are you waiting for?" he growled, edging her on. "I want to die! Can't you see that? Just end it!"

"… How could you ask me to do that?"

He opened his eyes. Zima's face was flaming with emotions he couldn't decipher. The SMG visibly quaked in her grip. "How could you ask me of all people to kill you?"

He gestured at what used to be Dispatch. "My whole life's been devoted to Advent and I just threw it all away. I'm a traitor, just like you've been saying. You've threatened to turn me in ever since I went to the Stacks. Why don't you go through with it already and just kill me?"

"Why?" Zima asked. She frowned and turned her face away. "Because I… Because I love you, Daniel. Can't you see that?"

Daniel trembled, and was speechless as Zima poured herself out to him. "My whole life people have look at me as something they hate or fear. Even my own mother couldn't stand my presence for more than five seconds. And then… And then you come along. This human goof who tried to make me smile any chance he could get."

"… Zima, I'm…"

"-And now you want me to kill you? Well I can't. Traitor or no, I can't do it." She lowered her gun, and the will to fight drained from her body. She coiled into a pathetic pile and hunched over, slipped her helmet off, and buried her face into her hands. "I can't do anything. I couldn't save Dispatch. And I couldn't save you from turning… And now I..."

She trailed off, and began to sob. Daniel's stomach turned at the sight. "Zee," he said, lowering to her level. "why didn't you…?"

"-Say something sooner?" she finished for him. "I tried but… it's because of him." She pointed a claw without looking "When he first recruited me he told me that if I made one mistake, one slip up, and I was out. I'd heard what happened to other servants in the city that strayed, and I believed him. And now that he's gone, though, and the Elder's as well? … There's nothing more to lose, is there?"

Daniel never felt so… sick, at himself for not realising sooner. She must have been so worried when he'd started to work with the enemy Colonel. How many social-cues had she given him that he had missed because of their differences? Too many, he reckoned.

He put a hand on her shoulder, but she didn't react to the contact. Just continued to heave dry tears. He felt an icy stab of guilt through his gut seeing her like that.

"… Look at what this place has done to us, Zee," he said. "We need to leave."

"But the war…"

"Forget the war. You heard Dispatch it's… it's over. All we can do now is run."

Zima looked up at him, her eyes glistening, tears spilling down her snout. Although she had been crying a lot lately, it hit him that this was the first time he'd actually seen it happen. "I… No, I can't. Advent, the dying Network – they're all I have left. If I leave them behind… I'll be alone."

"No, you won't." Then he leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth.

Unseen to him, Zima's eyes widened straight out of there sockets, the blue orbs blazing with surprise. Her hood flexed wider than it had ever done before, stretching out to full-mast, even making little tiny flag-flapping sounds as it did. He had intended on just giving her a peck, but as she parted her lips and darted her tongue against his teeth, he put an arm around her hood and deepened the kiss. Even with the corpse of Dispatch nearby stinking up the place, neither of them could care less in that moment.

He welcomed her forked muscle, her tongue easily overpowering his as she explored every inch of his mouth, even the places he didn't know existed. The difference in anatomy made it look like she was engulfing him with her gums. She pressed against him with enough force that he almost fell over, tasting every drop of her metallic saliva as she forced herself on him, squishing her breasts up against his chest. The kiss went so deep it made him feel lightheaded.

Zima piled against Daniel clumsily, her tail going wild, and he had to force her away in order to catch his breath. She panted as she gazed at him hungrily, before an inch of doubt clouded over her eyes. "D-Daniel? Does this mean… that you…?"

"I do." He didn't need to let her finish. He smiled at her. She blinked, and smiled back. "I promised I wouldn't leave you, didn't I?"

She replied by holding his hands and nuzzling him. He rubbed his hands across her waist, and Zima let a purr rumble in her chest, slipping her tongue out and tracing Daniel's face with flecks of her saliva. They simply stayed like that for a time, embracing the only other thing that gave a shit about either of them anymore. After a few minutes, Zima lidded her eyes, traced the line of the human's jaw, as if to make sure he was real. "I was wrong," she said out of the blue. Daniel quirked a brow at her.

"What about?"

"I said there was nothing to lose." She cupped his cheek. "I guess there is one thing now."

"Yeah," Daniel agreed. He broke eye contact with her and scanned the room. "And all it took to get it was to commit treason… Not the most romantic place, is it?"

"It's no Paris," she agreed, but she didn't care – at least it had happened. "… Should we go?"

"I want to check out Dispatch's setup before we do. Should only take a second."

They approached the raised platform housing all the computers and data streams. Daniel pushed the wheeled chair holding the corpse of Dispatch out of his path. Her former boss' elbow banged against the railing and settled there. Zima scanned over the various displays. Some of the lower ones had the words AWAITING INPUT printed in dull yellow letters on the screens, underneath paragraphs of data she couldn't make sense of. But there was one in particular that caught her eye. This had been the terminal Dispatch had been standing next to when they'd first walked in. Written on it was this:

CITY-WIDE PURGE PROTOCOL MS9-3. All MEC-BAYS ON STANDBY

CONFIRM?

"Purge protocol?" Zima echoed. She clicked her nails a couple times on the keyboard, and found a series of entries she deduced were camera feeds related to the purge. She brought up the first one. A camera showed her more MEC suits than she could count, all lined up neatly in some underground bunker somewhere in the city. She pulled up the next feed, and the image was roughly the same. Hundreds and hundreds of mechanised infantry bots, armed with rifles and self-destruction protocols.

"Looks like Dispatch was about to let them out," Daniel said, peeking over her shoulder at the screen. "Probably to keep the resistance distracted while Advent evacuated."

Another protocol, this one called CH-442, was also a purge. But this time instead of an army of robots, there were cages filled with rabid Chrysallids, snapping their ant-like mandibles up at the camera they were looking through. According to the location, one such cage was right in the sewer's underneath Old Town. Control of several other cages had been transferred to another undisclosed station.

A few more minutes of flicking through, they discovered yet another purge. An orbital strike on the very building they were stood in. The projections showed the blastwave would reach across several blocks.

"He was going to wipe '31 off the face of the map!" Daniel said. "Son of a bitch didn't want anyone else to have this place. Take a look at this one." He typed away on another terminal, and read out loud. "Water control, energy distribution… 'Elder Illusion Program?' That must have been that broadcast we saw the other day. It was all just smoke and mirrors. He had the entire city under his thumb from just this one room."

"And now it looks like we're in charge. For whatever that's worth." Zima found a particularly disturbing camera feed after another browse. It showed the hotel safehouse from an angle across the street. It was completely covered in flames, so it must have been a live broadcast.

"No wonder I always felt like I was being watched," Zima whispered, as if afraid of being overheard. She looked at her friend. "If he was watching all this time, he must have seen whoever wrote my name on the door. Why didn't he do anything about it?"

"I don't know. He must have seen me coming and going when I was… collaborating. Maybe he was too busy setting up all these purges, or maybe he just didn't care. Doesn't matter now, does it?"

"No," she said. But it still irked her, and either possibility was disturbing to mull about. Daniel had questioned Dispatch over and over again on the radio, even back when things had been relatively stable. Maybe he wasn't so wrong as she initially thought, and she would never forgive herself for that.

"We could do it you know," she said. Daniel angled his head at her. "We could activate these purges right now. There might be a chance we can still save the city, give Advent the fighting chance it needs. Or we could do nothing, and let the resistance win."

Daniel pondered on it for a moment, but his response was firm. Hearing the truth about Dispatch, and the fate of the Elders, had made him turn a new leaf. Everything he'd been worried about, Advent's barbaric methods of control, what was right and wrong, it all just seemed so… clear. "It's too risky. Those MEC's are set to target indiscriminately, and we both know Chryssalid's will eat anything that moves. Dispatch had all this power and look what he did with it. No one should have this much control over anything."

"… You're right." Zima rubbed his head, right over that mark where her own chip had been implanted. She nodded as if to affirm this. "You're right," she said again. "We need to get rid of all this. Any idea how?"

"Grenade, maybe? There could be a… What's that sound?"

Something was beeping, a high pitched, urgent note set on loop off to her right. On the third row up the conclave of televisions, one had a red blinking light on its top. Daniel peered up at it, and from this angle, blocked her view. "Oh, shit," he murmured.

"What is it?" She nudged him out the way and looked. The feed had to be coming from a drone, because the recording was in mid-air, following after two aircraft from a distance. The pair of planes were flying fast over a vast cityscape she knew all too well. One of them, the one in the lead, looked vaguely familiar.

The craft lagging behind was of old-world design, similar to those old F-22 Raptor constructs that had been used in the initial invasion's defence twenty years ago. The one in front was large, big enough to carry troops. Printed on the tops of its wide wings was the XCOM insignia.

"That's the Skyranger," Daniel said in awe. That ship was one of the most high-valued targets of the whole war, and Zima couldn't help but blink in surprise. It had eluded every attempt at capture or destruction. She'd once seen it outrun an Advent battleship, ducking and weaving out of the great ship's deadly barrages as it exfiltrated. Zima's clouded mind slowly cleared as she pieced together the implications of its presence.

The Skyranger banked left suddenly, heading straight for the largest building in '31, the Tower. The nose rose into the air, slowing the approach speed. The escort craft zoomed past and out of sight, and the drone focused in on the rear of the Skyranger. It landed on the roof of the Tower, and four people armed in strange-looking armour and wielding various plasma-grade weaponry hopped out of its troop bay. They brutally, but efficiently, cleared the roof of the waiting Advent forces before piling into the elevator.

"And that's an XCOM squad," Zima murmured. Behind them, she heard the lift begin to descend, and gulped.

4

Captain Andrew Carter spun his sword through the air, catching it by the hilt and flicking a button under the guard. Electricity coursed through the blade, little sparks flicking away randomly in short whips. Enough energy to stun a target for a few hours, not that he'd be bringing back prisoners tonight.

"What's the point of bringing a sword to a gunfight?" asked Corporal Duncan. Duncan was sitting in one of the crash chairs lining the left side of the cabin. The Specialist was holding a screwdriver to his GREMLIN warbot, making final adjustments on the back panel despite the thing being calibrated well before they'd even got in the Skyranger. Everyone always did something with their hands whenever squads were deployed, Carter noted. He wasn't above that observation either.

Carter shrugged. "Same reason we keep you along, Corporal – back up plan for when we're out of ammo."

"… Are you implying you'd actually toss me at Advent, Cap'? Who would hack their MEC's and steal their goodies if me and Grease were gone?"

"He's right, sir." The third member of the squad, another Corporal – Lennox was his name – was sitting next to Duncan. His W.A.R. suit made him look twice his usual size, comically large in the tiny chair he sat in. "He's irreplaceable. The drone, that is. Things are worth a frickin' mint, and a bitch to repair."

"I think the sword suits him." The final member sat across from them. Lieutenant Katina had donned a cloak and hood, padded with light armour in favour of manoeuvrability. Her foot was clicking on the metalwork impatiently, and the boot made no sound each time it met the floor. Carter knew better than anyone just how quick and quiet she could be in that getup. It was unnatural. Just like the rest of her organisation.

"Of course you'd say that," Duncan chirped. "you Reapers gut and skin every alien you come across. It's capricious!"

"Reaper's draw strength from the blood of our foes. My people will do what must be done if it means taking back our world."

"… That's the most edgiest thing I've ever heard in my-!"

The GREMLIN, Grease, flew out of Duncan's arms, back panel flipping closed mid-flight, and bonked him on the head. Carter let the smallest of grins come and go. Most squads had the annoying, but light-hearted member of the group – a stereotype XCOM had adopted when they'd began openly recruiting a few months back – and although he'd never say it out loud as acting CO, Duncan was all right in his book.

Carter flipped the sword over his shoulder and into the sheathe on his back in one smooth movement. He moved over to the portside windows and grabbed a branch of bulkhead to steady himself for the coming turbulence. Down and across, the city was a decimated ruin that made him scowl. He hadn't believed the rumours back at the support camps that the civilians here had been a balanced mix of aliens and humans. Coexisting? He didn't think so. More lies and Advent propaganda. The brainwashed people down there didn't know the first thing about living in harmony. Traitors, all of them.

"Captain? Raven-4. I've got dozens of contacts lifting off and headed for the city limits. Looks like dropships. They're unarmed."

Raven-4 was there escort interceptor. A few weeks back they'd managed to capture an Advent airfield, and in the storage bays they'd found half a dozen old interceptors from the original XCOM arsenal. Shen and Tygan had done quick work in getting them operational. Carter remembered seeing all those dropships come down on his Haven back before XCOM had recruited him. Just feeling that sense of security, that they also had air-support now, that they were the ones controlling the skies – it made Carter feel proud that all the sacrifice was starting to pay off.

He put his hand to his ear peace. "Destroy them all, Raven-4. Show no mercy."

"With pleasure, sir."

The interceptor peeled off its escort path, and just before it disappeared, Carter saw two of its missiles sound off with muffled thrusters. He switched the commlink back to the local channel. "Firebrand? How long until we drop?"

"Two minutes out," the pilot replied. "Landing zone is hot."

"We'll be ready." He cut the feed and turned to his squad. "We drop in two! Helmet's on!"

The squad followed his example. Carter slid his combat visor over his head, waited for the tell-tale hissing as it connecting to his suit at the neck. That done, he went to grab his plasma storm gun from the rack on the wall, but stopped when he saw his gauntleted hands shaking.

They used to fidget around like that when that Chosen freak was getting ready to torture him. Every time he closed his eyes he could still hear the Warlock's nightmarish laughter like he was still there in that cell. The Commander had welcomed Carter back into the ranks after the rescue, but only because XCOM had no other officers like him. Even after Tygan had diagnosed Carter with PTSD.

He had given the doctor a good mouthful after Carter heard the news. He had said all those foul things out of spite in comparison to the Avenger's cushy scientific life that Tygan had. He didn't care how much the Warlock had fucked with his head. He would fight Advent until his last breath, just to prove the Chosen wrong. Even on the contrary that said Chosen had been killed a few months ago. How much he would have given to have been the one to deal the final blow…

"Everything all right, Andrew?" Katina came up beside him, using a private commlink to speak with him. He noticed he'd been staring at his hands like a crazy person this whole time, and let them fall to his sides.

"It's 'Captain'," he snapped. "And I'm fine. Thank you."

"Someone's got there nickers in a twist." Katina loaded and unloaded her modified dragunov rifle, then placed it on her hip, right next to the hooked knife she'd been using since the day they'd met. There was enough blood on that blade to fill an Olympic pool.

"Apologies," he said. "It's Captain, when we're around the others."

"I understand. Still not used to all this rank and by-the-book stuff the Commander has us running. Things were a bit laxer back in the cities."

"I'd hardly call living with the Lost 'lax'."

"It's eccentric. And that's why you like me."

Carter shook his head in good humour. Katina elbowed him. "Look at it this way – all we have to do is cut off the head of the city, and the day is ours. Then we can head out for some dinner."

"As long as it's not chrysalid stew again, I'm down."

Katina grinned from under her faceplate. Carter shouldered his plasma shotgun and stood at the front of the cabin, turning to his team. "Alright everybody – Advent's been destroying our Haven's for years. Let's give them a taste of what it's like, and take this city for ourselves."

The three squad members flicked the safety's off on their various weapons. The Skyranger reoriented towards the Tower's rooftop below. The nose lifted up, and a few seconds later, the craft thudded to the concrete, and the loading ramp opened up like a mouth.

Carter leading, the XCOM squad poured out of the craft, plasma weapons pointed over their leader's shoulders as they lined up in a row behind him. A pack of eight or so Advent troopers immediately fired upon them from across the way.

"Spread out!" Carter barked, and they began to clear the roof.

5

Daniel could hear automatic fire coming from the levels above. These top levels housed the most important heads of Advent, and were well guarded. He could see from Dispatch's conclave what was happening up there. The XCOM squad was ruthless as they cleared out floor after floor without taking so much as a scratch. They kept checking some of the more remarkable bodies after each gunfight. They were looking for someone. Daniel had an idea who exactly that was.

"Shiiiit," he said, dragging the word out. "Can we stop the elevator from here?"

"Maybe, but there's so many programs and I-"

Daniel didn't wait for Zima to finish. He turned and bolted for the doors. He even jumped over the stairs to the lower level rather than walking down them, rolling as he landed and pumping his legs as hard as he could. He hit the red call button on the panel when he reached it, but the lift was already in use. He checked either side of the room for a fire escape, or a stairwell, but there was nothing. They were trapped.

He doubled back to Zima. She met him at the top of the stairs. "I can make them stop at every floor, but they're already doing that." She looked over his shoulder at the lower lobby. "Is there another way out?"

"No," he said, glancing back at the lift doors. The gunfire upstairs had stopped. He could see it in his mind – the squad piling into the lift, guns at the ready, the doors shutting, them hitting the level eighty button. "Maybe there's a chance they'll see reason."

"Reason?" Zima echoed. "That's a kill squad, I've faced a few of them in the past. They show as much mercy as we do to them."

"We have to try, at least," Daniel said. "That's all I'm asking, okay? I'll kill them if I have to, but even if there's a chance they'll listen, I have to take it."

"... Okay," she said. "Just don't go getting yourself killed."

"Not planning on it."

"I'll hide on the right side, and follow your lead."

He brushed her cheek with his thumb and grinned. "We can do this, Zee. Besides, if things go south there's only four of them."

Zima pecked him on the lips, not as forceful as before, but still enough to make him blink in welcome surprise. He waited patiently to let her relieve herself, and when they parted, he smiled, and donned his helmet. She did the same. Zima moved and planted herself behind a filing cabinet on the right half of the room. Daniel mirrored her on the left, drawing his pistols as he moved behind the balcony guardrail and planted his back against it.

They set up positions, and waited. Nothing moved save for the backdrop of chaos that was City 31. Dropships numbering in the dozens were lifting off and flying out of the city limits. That interceptor from the drone feed was shooting them down, completely uncontested as it racked up kills two, sometimes three at a time. He couldn't worry about that now, though, and tried to put the image of all those people dying out of his mind.

Muffled, the elevator began descending, motors whirring and creaking through the walls. Daniel exhaled slowly to try and steady his heartbeat. He was no stranger to the staggering kill count some of the veteran operative's had racked up since XCOM had started being more open about their choice of targets.

With an almost peaceful ding, which marked the start of all hell breaking loose, the elevator arrived, and the doors slid open. Heavy combat boots clicked against the marble, making Daniel freeze up in anticipation. Daniel looked across the way to Zima, and nodded. She nodded back. Then he stood out of cover, leading with his duel-pistols intending on being the one to land the first shot.

Just stepping out of the lift were three of the XCOM operatives in a wedge formation. Daniel had seen four on the camera's, but paid it no mind now. There was also a drone trailing behind the trio, similar in design to the one that had stunned him back in the Stacks. Without popping out off cover, Daniel tried in what he already knew was in vain, to call out to the squad.

"XCOM? It's-"

That was all he got out before his position was suprresed with a flurry of gunfire. Cursing, he repositioned slightly and waited for a break in the suprression. When it came he stood up and aimed his pistol down at the squad. The leader held the fastest reactions - not surprising there - rolling out of the way behind a nearby couch, but he wasn't Daniel's intended target. One of the soldier's was holding what looked like a futuristic machine gun. Daniel shot him twice in the chest, and he went down to a knee with a grunt. The third operative fired on the move with his plasma rifle, forcing Daniel to duck away as the beam of energy whizzed past his cranium. Blue-hot streams of weapon-fire ate into the panels Daniel hid behind, and he quickly displaced to the west of his vantage point, using the Elder statue down there to keep him out of the line of sight.

He peaked over the railing, and the guy he'd shot started to get up. He registered a scattershot of green-coloured bolts peppering through the air towards him, and he ducked. Even through the helmet he could feel the heat from the bolts. He didn't even bother aiming as he blind-fired over the railing in return fire.

The pair of unwounded XCOM soldiers were moving from cover to cover, taking turns shooting up at Daniel while the other moved closer to the stairs. Zima turned out of her hiding place, unhooked her jaw, and spat a gob-full of poison at one of the soldiers' backs. The ball of cyanic liquid venom smacked the closest operative right between the shoulder blades. The effect was immediate. The acidic substance melted right through the armour and over the skinsuit the operative was wearing underneath. He cried out and fell onto his side, his rifle pinned underneath him. Zima brought her SMG to her eyes and prepared to execute him.

Then she flicked her tongue out on pure instinct. She would have died then and there if she hadn't. Her eyes narrowed to needle-thin slits, she forgot about the soldier down there and coiled her tail, using it like a spring to launch herself to the right, her strong side. She spun in mid-air and aimed her weapon to her flank. Zima couldn't believe the fourth operative had snuck up behind her without her seeing, but didn't waste time mulling over it. A bolt-action rifle barked, and the bullet narrowly zoomed past Zima's head, finding its destination on one of the large glass walls. A spider-web pattern of damage cracked over the glass, the golden bullet its centre point.

Zima sprayed the operative with a burst of pulse rounds once she'd landed. Cartridges discharged from the SMG's midsection and danced past her face. Coiling herself upright, Zima ducked behind an office desk and aimed at the spot the cloaked operative had been. But she was gone. Zima blinked and tasted the air once more. Her mind reported back to her:

Left.

She let out a hiss, and another ball of poison flew from her snout. Zima was quick, but the operative was quicker, dancing out of the venom's path where it landed harmlessly on the carpeted floorspace. The smell of burnt fabric soughed through the air.

Zima flinched as the rifle sounded off and another round flew and smashed into the computer screen on the desk she hid behind. Sparks and wires went flying in random directions. A single spent ammo casing clicked onto the ground by the operative's flank. Zima curled around the desk and scanned her surroundings. She could see a humanoid shadow sprinting across the opposing aisle of work desks. She aimed, pulled the trigger, spraying down the places the operative had just been. Zima huffed in frustration as she ejected the magazine and slipped a fresh one smoothly in. She chanced a look in Daniel's direction.

The guardrail had been obliterated, and he had abandoned the high ground, jumping over the balcony and landing in a roll to try and get an angle. When he was up, he saw the operative with the machine gun had recovered, and the barrel of the canon he was wielding was rotating, glowing brighter with energy at the end of every spin. Daniel dove behind the Elder statue just before a hellish barrage of suppressing fire demolished the space he'd just vacated.

Chips of golden material flicked away as the heavy gunner mowed down his position, firing from the hip. Daniel held one gun against his chest in a guarding posture as he hunkered down and held a scream between his teeth. The canon roared with cauterized heat, vibrating the very air as its payload sailed across the room and demolished the base of the statue, chunk by chunk. When there was a break in the suppression, Daniel leaned around the pedestal and shot the gunner three times. Two of his bolts missed, but one smashed against the plasma canon's whirling barrel, and the weapon blew up in the operative's hands in a tiny, blue-shaded mushroom cloud. The man yelled out and dropped the weapon on the floor like it had burned his hands.

Daniel prepared to follow up his attack, when he heard a buzzing sound above him. He glanced up, and saw the GREMLIN drone baring down on him, stun baton's for arms protruding from its circular body. He angled up and fired a barrage of bolts at it, not missing once. The drone smashed down right beside Daniel, sending up a wave of water on impact. Below the water's surface he could see its little eyes flicker once before powering down.

It's owner, screaming under his helmet, dashed around the lobby floor to get an angle on Daniel while his drone provided distraction. Daniel didn't react fast enough. A plasma beam grazed him on the side of his helmet, and he fell on his back and splashed into the water, partially submerged.

His would-be killer ran for his drone, thinking the immediate threat was dealt with. The operative's armour was still sizzling from Zima's prior venom attack, plumes of greenish steam rising in little plumes off his shoulders. Daniel feigned death until he got a clear shot, leaned out the water, and put a round in the operative's faceplate. His target slapped a hand to the puncture, looking as if he'd just remembered something. Daniel put another round in his chest, and Corporal Duncan crumpled to the floor, blood and brains gushing from his body and pooling beneath his corpse.

Daniel's helmet was cracked down the side, his faceplate mangled and ruined and obstructing his vision. He ripped it off and threw it over his shoulder, where it rolled once before settling.

Then something else rolled to a stop just behind him, making little clinking sounds against the marble. Daniel took half a moment to realise the egg-shaped device that had been thrown by the operative whose weapon he'd permanently disabled, was in fact a customised fragmentation grenade.

"Oh fu-!" Daniel dove forward. The grenade detonated in the middle of his jump, amplifying his distance as he barely managed to avoid the blast zone. A few shards of shrapnel dug against his backside. His armour protected him from serious wounds. He fell onto his face and groaned as his limbs struggled for purchase on the tiled floor.

The lower half of the Elder statue he had been hiding behind was obliterated in a cloud of soot and chunks of alloy. The sculpture rocked back and forth, back and forth, teetered, and then toppled in the direction Daniel had fallen.

Cursing, he rolled out of the way just as the carving of his literal God smashed beside him, creating craters of cracks in the floor and sending up a fat cloud of dust and metal.

Daniel's ears were ringing as he blinked clear his vision and scrambled to his feet. When his hearing vaguely returned, he could hear gunfire from the place Zima was holding position up above. He just had half a thought to go help her when someone spear-tackled him into the nearby window-wall.

The operative smacked him against the glass, back-first. Daniel had just enough time to register one of the heavy gauntlets pulling back with a whine of motors, and ducked out of the way before the closed fist connected with his face.

The gloved hand pounded into the glass with enough force that Corporal Lennox could feel his hand numbing beneath all the plating. Daniel managed to hold onto one of his pistols during all this, turned, and shot the operative twice in the chest. But he might as well have been shooting at the hull of a gunship with a pea-shooter. The bolts cauterized the cuirass with trailing black marks, but did not pierce the heavy armour variant. The Corporal underneath the W.A.R. suit staggered. It was his only reaction to being shot.

Daniel noticed the severely weakened glass behind the XCOM operative, and thought of something. He shot the heavy gunner in the leg to buy himself some time, then peppered the glass with a quadruple set of bolts. On the fourth shot, the glass gave way, exploding outwards into thousands of jagged pieces. Daniel's eyes squinted when the massive outside gale breached the interior.

The blizzard's fury pressed hard against the operative's back plating. Even with the suit's weight, Lennox lost his balance for a precious moment. It was all Daniel needed. He sprinted forward and shoulder-checked the operative, and they both went flying toward the newly created breach.

The operative's arms flung out wide, probably in an attempt to catch onto something, but his fingers found nothing, and he was sent into freefall, limps flapping uselessly as he fell the hundreds of meters to the streets below. Daniel reached out and snagged on a piece of glass before meeting the same fate. Cutting his hand through his glove painfully, but catching himself just in time.

Seeing the XCOM operative slowly shrink in size from the fall made Daniel freeze up. The man was letting out the most horrible scream he'd ever heard, the kind that makes the blood curl up enough that you can almost start screaming yourself. Daniel watched for a few moments, then visibly quaked when the operative met the ground, popped like a shrunk cherry, and the scream cut abruptly.

A burst of gunfire followed by a pained hiss brought him back into his situation. He forgot about the fallen operative and looked over his shoulder back at where Zima was.

She was like liquid shadow, slithering and coiling as she relocated around the office space as she traded fire with the squad leader with precise, alien agility. Daniel had to force himself to look away before he could get distracted. He spied a green, sleek shape on the ground beside the toppled statue. His other pistol. He snatched it up and vaulted over the golden sculpture, sliding out both energy clips and stuffing fresh ones in, all while climbing the stairs two at a time, not missing a beat.

Coming to the raised section, Daniel went to a knee and levelled the iron sights, one arm slightly more bent then the other. He fired two pairs of bolts at the squad leader just as he was about to shoot on Zima's flank as she arched away. Three of the bolts connected, two on the forearm, and one on the soldier's Captain-rank bars tattooed on his pauldron.

Said Captain whirled his attention on Daniel, but his arm was crippled, and when he fired a scattering of plasma pellet's at Daniel, the shot sailed harmlessly to the right. The Captain tried to pump his plasma shotgun, but his arm failed to lift up above his waist-level. Daniel stuck his pistols out, angled them slightly inwards, squeezed an eye shut, and fired again.

Then someone came up behind him, knocked him and his aim off-balance, grabbed him in a choke hold with one hand, and used the other hand – one holding a wicked-looking, curved knife – and stabbed him in the gut. The blade buried into his skin all the way up to the hilt. Daniel looked down at the blood spluttering out of himself with a stunned, almost wondrous expression on his face. He felt his hands relax, and the Reaper kicked his fallen guns off the balcony.

"Daniel!" Zima sounded like she was on the other side of the world. He growled through his teeth, and grabbed hold of the gauntlet-covered hand running him through. He spun his attacker around and slammed the Reaper on the ground. All that movement caused the knife to displace. He could actually feel it twisting.

Zima let loose a combined serpentine hiss/roar, something he hadn't heard her use before. Her tongue snapped through the air like a fleshy whip, moved across the fifteen or so meters between them, and wrapped around the overcoat the Reaper was wearing. Zima's target found herself in fat, muscular coils before she could even scream.

Even as Daniel fell in a growing pool of his own blood, he could hear the Reaper's bones snap and flesh crumple as Zima tightened her tail with her anaconda strength. A horrible, salivary-like sound signalled a ruptured organ, making even Zima wince. Katina tried to voice one last word, or maybe it was a scream, but all that came out was a pathetic exhale. Zima's eyes blazed as she crushed the human to death.

"Get off her you bitch!" Captain Carter cried out, and slashed down and across Zima's tail with his sword. Daniel felt like yelling out himself when he saw Zima's yellowy blood fly out like a stream of tossed paint.

The Viper screeched and uncoiled, Katina flopping off of her tail to the ground like a sack of flour, masked helmet staring somewhere out across the cityscape. The Captain had dropped his shotgun, and Zima tail slapped against its spine, sending its skidding across the room.

Zima raised her gun and pulled the trigger. She shot him three times before he charged forward and batted the weapon out of the way, pairing the attack with an upward slice across her side. The rest of the bullets went wild and scattered across the ceiling, creating a squiggly pattern of holes. Carter swirled his electrically-charged blade in a clockwise motion, and her submachine gun was sent flying across the room.

Daniel must have severed a nerve or something in his prior attack, because the Captain's right arm dangled and flopped around like all the bones in the limb had disappeared. The limb flapped against his back as the Captain twisted and turned, lunged and retreated. It would have been a comical sight under different circumstances.

Zima manoeuvred her tail in an attempt to trip him, but the Captain thrust out his blade and gave her another gash across her scales. Her tail was practically liquid muscle, and she hardly felt the pain, and she would have been unaffected if she weren't so squeamish.

He came at her with an overhead chop. She deflected it crudely away with the raise of her arm bracer. Zima made to splash him with poison, but when her jaw unhooked, Carter sliced her overly large tail again, and instead of poison coming out of her mouth, a curse in her native tongue flew instead.

Carter kept Zima on the defensive, forcing her to back up, knocking over chairs and tables and stray machinery as her large tail wound little 'S' shapes after her. She tried encircling him, but each time she did, another bucket of her blood was sent flying. Her tail was practically covered in little criss-cross shapes, oozing bile and stinging like hell.

Carter was a whirlwind of movement, his sword a blur and almost looking like a bending shape in the air as he flourished it around his body and kept Zima at a distance. She spiralled out of the way just as the blade ran through the space her stomach had been not a second earlier. She noticed that in her retreat she was leaving coats of her own blood in a sickly-looking trail.

A dropship flew past the backdrop at that moment, trailing red sonic-waves from its quad-engines. Raven-4 flew by and launched a rocket at it. The dropship was reduced to dust as the entire craft erupted into a red haze of fiery destruction. Both Carter and Zima went temporarily blind at how close it had come to the Tower.

"Zee! Here!"

During her one-sided duel, Daniel had plucked the knife out of his stomach in one slow, agonisingly painful motion. He'd managed to get to his feet and lean up against desk. He raised the blade over his shoulder, further breaking the tendons in his wound, and chucked it across the room. It fell short, but Zima snapped through the air, dove, and caught it before it even touched the ground.

Leading with a weapon, dripping with Daniel's drying blood, she wheeled on Carter and punctured him through the knee joint, where the armour was weakest. She pulled the knife out in one hard motion, a satisfying stream of more blood coming out the leg, and dove forward for another thrust, intended for the human's gorget.

Carter brought down his own blade and blocked it. They battled against each other in an attempt to overpower the weapon-lock. Zima's arms were frail in comparison to the Captain's, and her grip was quickly weakening, but she was grinning.

She wrapped Carter in her coils, and like some sort of sick fleshly knot, tied the Captain up with a single crunch of flesh. Then she spat in his helmet for good measure. His head began to trail steam as her acidic venom melted into the alloy.

The Captain dropped his blade, his head lolled back, and his muscles relaxed. She chucked him across the room using just her tail. With a clutter of banging metallic plating, the Captain came to rest on his back in the aisle running down the centre of the floor.

Zima curled her tail back under her torso, and hissed in exhaustion. She was covered in blood, most of it hers, and her tail unconsciously writhed and squirmed from all the cuts on it. Her shoulders lifted and relaxed as she tried to control her breathing. She threw the knife away, found her SMG nearby, and magnetically holstered it to her back.

"Ah… Fuck. All that… sexual tension and I-I'm going to bleed out now?"

"Daniel!" She snaked past the Captain without looking at him. Her friend had slunk to his ass against the desk he'd thrown the knife from, one hand on his knee, the other on the dark patch on his stomach. She slunk to his level, ripping off her helmet and holding his shoulders. "Daniel! You're…" She looked at his wound and blinked.

He looked down to and removed his hand for a second. Zima never thought humans could bleed so fast. There was just so much of it, leaking out an endless stream of crimson liquid. But even with that, coupled with his mangled hand, ringing ears, plasma marks on his armour and shrapnel in his back, he still managed to smirk up at her.

"I'm fucked. That's what you were going to say, right?" He coughed, a fleck of blood seeping past his teeth and down his chin.

"No! No, you're not fucked. There'ss some medkitss in the car we jusst have to –I'm not losing you now!"

Her speech was slipping but she didn't care. She helped him to his feet, and with a few groans of pain on both their parts, they managed it. She slipped one of his arms over her neck, locked her helmet onto her hip, and aimed for the elevator.

"Wait," Daniel croaked. Zima frowned at him.

"We have to get you out of here, Daniel!"

"That Captain's s-still alive." He coughed. "I have to talk with him, Zee."

She considered ignoring him and just leaving, but she'd learned the hard way about waving away his views. Trusting him, she turned them around and staggered back to Carter, who indeed was still alive, if only just.

He had taken off his helmet, the poison layering it would have killed him if he had kept it on for any longer. The operative had the beginnings of a beard on his cheeks, couldn't have been older than thirty maybe even forty, and he had red rings under his eyes. He sneered up at the pair of former-Agents. He was holding his injured arm with his good one. She noted the hands were quivering.

"Brainwashed fucks." Carter gagged, all his muscles convulsing without his input. Zima had done a number on him, and yet he still had the strength to talk.

"Maybe you're right," Daniel said. Without a word he took Zima's SMG and pointed it at him. "Call off your fighter, or else."

"'Or else'? You're going to need a better threat than that. Kill me if you want – if I'm dying tonight I'm gonna take as many of you with me."

"Those…" Daniel clutched at his wound, grimaced. "-Those transports are carrying civilians!" Zima brushed his legs with her tail to keep him from falling. "You have to call that fighter off; those people aren't a threat to you."

"I used to be a civilian, too, and now look at me – XCOM Captain." Carter spat out a drop of blood. "Any one of those transports could be holding a future Advent officer. I'm not negotiating with you, Advent, so just go ahead and shoot."

Zima saw Daniel was considering going through with this, but she put a hand on the barrel. "Wait," she said. She stretched her tail out, and didn't have to move as the limb brought forth another body. She tossed the Reaper harshly in front of Carter. The padded chest of the woman was rising and falling very slightly. Daniel got the idea. He lowered the SMG to the body and pulled back the bolt for emphasis. The Captain's eye twitched.

"You heartless... bastard." Carter looked up at Daniel with a sneer.

"How's this for a threat, Captain? Call off the interceptor, or else, she dies."

They'd both seen how angrily Carter had reacted to Katina's near-death experience, and knew there was something there that they could use. For a long moment Carter refused to speak, but eventually, he cursed under his breath, and hit the transmit button on his walkie-talkie strapped to his breast. "… Raven-4, break off your attack."

A voice cackled back immediately. "Captain? What about the transports? It's a duck-shoot out here!"

"Break off. Now. And consider that a standing order."

"… Roger that, sir."

Zima saw from the corner of her vision, the interceptor pulling away from its pursuit from a pair of dropships. Through all the pain that was plaguing her world right now, she managed a small grin at the sight. Carter let out a defeated sigh, and Daniel lowered his weapon.

"We destroying Dispatch's setup while we're here?" Daniel asked Zima.

"I'll grab a grenade."

She plucked one from a holster on the Reaper's chestplate, resting Daniel against a desk, but keeping close in case he should fall. As she did this, Carter took a glance over at the very conclave they were intent on destroying. He quirked a brow at Dispatch's corpse. "He's… already dead…?"

"I'm guessing you were after him, too?" Daniel asked, watching his former superior's body for a while. "Good thing we got here first, then, or else…" He trailed off.

"Got it." Zima almost casually chucked the grenade from one hand to the other. "Should we kill them?" she asked, as if Carter couldn't even hear her. "After all, we are heartless, brainwashed fucks, according to this one."

Daniel looked to consider this for a while, then shrugged. "You have a point, but… He's called off the fighter, so... no. Let's just get out of here."

Zima swept under his arm, and underhand tossed the grenade over her shoulder at the conclave. It landed perfectly in the middle of the platform. A dull green explosion vaporised the hundreds of keyboards and terminals, and the ones that survived the sphere of plasma, dimmed down and powered off. The orb of light illuminated their backsides as Zima helped Daniel down to the lift.

Carter watched them go, opening his mouth to ask why they'd spare him, why they'd killed his intended target, but found himself frozen, speechless. They descended the stairs and out his sight. A moment later and he heard the lift doors open, then close.

The Captain stared at the body they'd called 'Dispatch' for a long moment. Eventually he crawled over to Katina and checked her pulse, before changing the radio frequency with the turn of a little dial.

"Central? Target is neutralised."

"Killed or captured?"

"Killed. Someone else got to him first, though."

"What? Who? Did you get an ID?"

"Yeah, one human, male, and one Viper. They're Advent, well, former Advent I should say. They might have been Target Omega, the descriptions match, but I'm not sure."

"Omega? They've been a thorn in our operations in this sector for years. Why would they turn on Advent?"

"… I'm not sure, sir," he parroted. "Looks like they executed the target just before we showed up. They killed Lennox and Duncan, severely wounded Katina... but let me go."

"Firebrand's standing by, Captain," Central said. "You can tell us all about it in your report when you get back."

"Will do, Central. Carter out."

He cut the connection. He had an idea why those two had let him live, but didn't mull over it for long. Soon he forgot about his peculiar encounter with his enemy, scooped up Katina in his arms, bridle-style, and headed for the roof, two men less in number. He could have recalled Raven-4 to continue the attack on the fleeing ships now that Katina was out of harm's way, but…

He couldn't believe he was trying to prove a point to a pair of Advent double-traitors. Firebrand flew back out to the east, where the Avenger was waiting, as was all the questions Central and the Commander would have for him. Carter groaned as his hands began to fidget again.