Chapter 5 - Present

The survivors, Donnelly, Graham, Fig, Epps, Lennox, Ruins, Anna, and Mahfouz were resting in the shade of the broken down tank that they had used to get away from the death and destruction of the base the night before. Anna leaned against the side of the tank, her head resting on top of her knees as she struggled to come to grips with what had happened. Her brothers, her comrades, men that she had known since she had came to the Qatar base, men that she had joked with, hung out with, were gone… And she couldn't save them. But her eyes roamed over the members of her team. She couldn't help but feel guilty at the relief that no one on her team had been killed.

Something was digging into her mind, trying to figure out what weapons manufacturing company could have designed and built the thing that caused so much destruction and devastation in a matter of minutes. She knew that when she had last hacked into SI that they were years away from things like that, the closest being Tony's newest missile he had designed that he was going to be demostrating in the next couple of weeks in Afghanistan and so hadn't been released yet… And that thing that had attacked the Qatar base wasn't even close to being a missile. The head of Hammer tech was an idiot so he was out. But before she could continue to ponder, a hand touched her shoulder, startling her.

"Anna, you okay?" Lennox asked. She looked up into her friend's, her brother's face, and saw that he looked just like how she felt.

"I will be, Will, I will be."

Before Lennox could respond, Epps' voice sounded. "Man, I would kill for a drink right now!" Epps groaned.

Epps's words triggered the memory of what she had in her bag. She might be a genius about things but right now she was a complete idiot! She had forgotten about the water bottles at the bottom of her bag. She fished around until she had a couple bottles in her hand.

"Hey, Epps! Heads up!" Epps turned around and barely caught the bottle in his hands. When he realized that it was a semi-cold bottle of water that he had, he looked at Anna with shock.

"You couldn't have mentioned you had this hours ago?" He said. The rest of the men caught the bottles that she tossed to them. They chose to drink their waters and dampen the backs of their necks instead of talking and watched the show. Anna smiled sheepishly.

"Well genius I may be, eidetic memory I may have… Sometimes I forget somethings… and one of those things this time was that I had put some water in my insulated bag before the attack." Epps just stared at her disbelief, but began to drink his water gratefully and chose not to say anything.

Anna handed Lennox one as well and grabbed one herself, leaving thirteen bottles left to split between the eight of them.

"Man, that was good!" Epps said, throwing the bottle into the open hatch of the tank.

"How many more do you have?" Lennox asked, copying Epps.

"I have thirteen left."

They all began to become grim at their situation now. They had no food, limited amount of water, and were stuck in a hot desert. Epps took out the still vision camera that doubled as binoculars that Anna had invented and gifted to him for his birthday.

"I've never seen a weapons system like this." He said as he looked at the image he'd taken. "It looks like something Stark Industries would make, - " Anna tried not to show any outward reaction when Epps mentioned the company that she owned half of " - but it's far too advanced, even for a genius like Tony Stark and even for that Hammer tech guy. The thermal shows this weird aura around the exoskeleton like it's cloaked by some kind of invisible force field."

Donnelly snorted. "That's impossible. There's no such thing as invisible force fields except in, like, comic book stuff, right?"

As one they all looked at Anna, even Mahfouz.

"Actually, it is not as impossible as you might think. Whenever we've been able to go home, I've been tinkering with something like that and I had it almost complete too but then this happened… And I wouldn't be surprised if Tony Stark was in the process of planning to build one as well."

"Well great." Lennox muttered, taking a turn to look at the picture Epps had taken. Fig nodded at Anna in agreement.

"Man, I don't know," Fig said, fingering the rosary around his neck. "My mama, she had the gift, you know? She saw things. I got the gene too, you know. And that thing that attacked us? I got a feeling that it ain't over."

Anna felt her stomach drop. Well s**t! If Fig was feeling it too, then something definetly was going to happen. But still she couldn't help but berate Fig for saying it outloud. "Don't say stuff like that outloud, Fig!"

Epps seemed to not have heard as he was still thinking about the picture that he had taken. But what he said next, cemented the feeling in Anna's stomach that something bad was going to happen. "When I took that picture, I think it saw me. It looked right at me."

"We gotta get that to Pentagon. They need to know what we're dealing with." Anna said, standing from the tank and settling her gear, knowing that they were about to be heading out.

Epps tried again to get his radio to work but Anna had a feeling that that thing that had attacked them had somehow messed with communcation frequences and that no matter how much they fiddled with it, the radio would never work.

"Hey Mahfouz. How far you live from here?" Lennox asked, kneeling down in front of the boy.

Mahfouz pointed in a direction. In the same direction where we could see the top of the telephone pole we had been heading towards.

"Not far. Just up that mountain."

"Do they have a phone?"

"Yes."

"Alright." Lennox began, standing up and adjusting his pack. "Let's hit it."

We continued on, leaving the tank behind, as it would not start because of running out of gas.

linebreak

Anna clapped Mahfouz on the shoulder when the village came insight.

"Good work!" the boy grinned up at her. Anna returned it and joined her team on the top of the hill from where they were observing the village below and by the telephone pole.

"Let's hope this telephone line works." Lennox said as he studied the village layout.

Anna noticed Epps getting a drink from the well and dumping the water over his head to cool off.

She began to get that bad feeling again, only it was more intense this time when she heard a sound like deep rumbling before there was a sharp screech of metal. Swinging around from where she was standing next to Donnelly, she pulled Donnelly out of the way of the falling metal structure as the rest of her team ran out of the way as they had been closer.

"What the hell, guys?! What did you do?" Anna exclaimed. Epps gave her a dirty look.

"Oh, yeah, Jackson! We totally are the reasons why the telephone pole fell." He said saracastically. Anna rolled her eyes at him, distantly hearing Donnelly reprimanding Fig to speak English.

Anna turned back to continue studying the buildings of the village when she heard Epps scream, "Woah!" and begin to spray what ever he saw with bullets.

That caused everyone to turn and fire at the tail that had been aimed at the back of Lennox.

After a minute of firing, Donnelly and Anna were still next to each other and had paused, waiting for the dust to settle. Anna then began to feel an almost excrutiating pain in her stomach and knew that whatever was going to happen next was going to happen to either her or Donnelly.

"DON! Move!" Anna commanded, sprinting towards where the rest of her team was, Donnelly following her but he wasn't quick enough as this metal imitation of a scorpion shot out of the sand and stabbed Donnelly through the chest, instantly killing him.

"Everyone move!" Anna screamed, not allowing herself to feel the grief of losing one of her brothers yet. She needed to concentrate on saving the rest of her brothers. They surged through the sand, towards the village where they would have cover and hoepfully a working telephone.

In the village, the people had begun to gather, some of the men fired warning shots in the air as others screamed and darted to hide in the buildings. They raced over towards the buildings, Lennox and the other men leaping over short walls of brken homes before turning to fire as Anna followed Mahfouz through the village.

"I need a telephone!" Anna shouted at who she assumed to be Mahfouz's father.

"Telephone! I have here!" the clearly frightened man shouted, thrusting the satellite phone into her hand and ushered his son into his home to hide.

She began to sprint back towards her team, dialling the number for the Pentagon that she knew by heart.

"This is an emergency Pentagon call," Anna said when a voice answered. "I need you to connect me to the Pentagon! This is an emergency! I don't have a credit card!"

Anna wanted to reach through the phone and strangle this man on the other line. Did he not hear the sounds of gunfire and explosions?!

"Sir, the attitude is not going to speed things up at all. I'm going to ask you to speak into the mouth piece very clearly." the man said.

Anna landed next to Lennox and Epps from where they were firing at the enemy. She couldn't believe this man.

"I'm in the middle of the war!" Then she decided to get the man to understand how important this was. And she didn't care if Lennox and Epps heard or not. They were getting out of this alive. "Sir, my name is Anna Maria Stark, sister of Tony Stark, co-CEO of Stark Industries. You connect me to the Pentagon now!"

"Oh! Sorry, Miss Stark, I will transfer you now. Please don't tell my boss." the man pleaded before she was transferred. Anna was making no promises.

"EPPS! PENTAGON!" Anna said, handing the phone to Epps and taking his spot as he ducked behind the wall to speak.

"I ain't never seen this in my life. We need gun ships on station asap!" Epps said. He must have been asked a question for what he said next. "Unknown, man. If you've seen this s**t."

"Seven man team and civillians north of orange smoke." And then tossed a smoke grenade towards the robot. "Attack direction west. You're clear! LENNOX, THE HEAT'S COMING!"

"Okay, laser the target!" Lennox commanded, going out into the open to lase the target, Anna following.

What they didn't realize was that before the airstrike got there, the metal thing had fired something at the wall covering Fig, causing it to explode and Fig to start crying out in pain from the wound he received.

"Heat's coming!" Lennox called.

After the two planes had fired rounds off at the being, and after the smoke cleared, Anna and Lennox, who had rejoined Epps, couldn't believe their eyes.

"You've gotta be kidding me." Anna said.

"That thing still isn't down." Lennox said.

"Use 105 rounds. Bring the rain." Epps said into the phone that he still had that was connected to the Pentagon.

The smoke began to clear and the metal thing was gone, leaving behind the end of its tail as it burrowed away. They had did it.

"Where's Fig?" Lennox called, looking around and seeing Anna, Epps, Ruins, and Graham, but not Fig. That was when they heard the cries of Fig coming from the village.

They sprinted towards the cries, Lennox being faster.

"Oh, god, Fig! Get a medic!" Lennox ordered. Fig's wound had been getting pressure put on it by one of the villagers with a once white cloth but blood was still seeping through. "You're going to be okay. Hold on."

It was a flurry of activity as they all, except Epps who was on the phone requesting medical transport, began to pack his wound as best as they could until the medcopter got there.

It arrived as soon as possible, Fig having lost consciousness. But they were going home. And they were leaving these strange, evil, metal beings behind.