Episode 7: Kill Team

  *Click*

Voncid:  They found it?

Luca: they did.  

Voncid:  How?

Luca: May spotted it on CCTV in Boston… looks like Hydes Park.

Voncid: How far is that?

Luca: Two hours?

Voncid:  So if I drive like mad we can be there in seventy minutes, excellent, have they found its lair?

Luca: They have, I’m putting May on speaker now… and, wait can we negotiate this whole reckless driving part?

Voncid: Mayberry, you never cease to amaze me.

May: I’m tickled to hear you’re happy.

Voncid: how did you find it?

May:   I’m sure it’s been incredibly careful, but all it takes is one slip.  It looked up.  Just at the wrong moment.  Made a few nice clear frames on a Byron Banking security camera.  It’s still wearing the face of Mathew Gerrard, little green around the gills now, but the software picked him up.  Once I had a neighborhood it was only a matter of time.

Voncid:  Ms. Mayberry I usually do not at all understand what you mean, and I can’t imagine how you have access to a multinational banking conglomerate's security systems, but you are a marvel.

May:  Kind of you to say.  Except the part where you called me Mayberry.

Luca: Isn’t it creepy how he always knows everyone’s real name?

May:  Yeah, and that’s all that’s creepy about him.  

Voncid: I’m getting a text based message.

May: You can just say text message.

Voncid:  It’s Francis Faraday, he says they are at the address you gave them.

This typing takes forever, I’m calling him.

May: Faraday?  You mean Nash Faraday?  The Silver?

Luca: Yep..

May: Nash’s name is francis?  

Luca: I guess so.

May: oh that’s fantastic.

Voncid:  Faraday, tell me you have it.

Faraday: *a greeting* Cid.  The grey team and I have eyes on your hair-eating shapeshifter, or rather its thermal image in the rundown building it's staying in.  Runs hot, 104.  I mean, I guess it might have covid.

Voncid:  Excellent.  Can we get anyone from the Order of Doors there?  Someone needs to ward the building, we can’t let it escape again, it MUST be ready to take a new face by now.

Luca: nobody with the Ianua is in range to get there until tomorrow morning.

Voncid: forget it, Luca and I will be there in an hour.

Luca: We won’t, there’s no way we should be driving that fast…

Voncid: we will.  I’ll do the warding as soon as I arrive.  Don’t let anyone who leaves that building out of your sight.

May: Hey Francis.

Faraday: Is that May?

May: I’m on Luca’s line.

Faraday:  wonderful.

May: bye bye Francis, good luck with the hunt.

Faraday: wonderful.

Voncid: Give me the keys.  We will be there in forty five minutes.

Luca: oh no.

*Click*

Faraday: what’s up with him?

Voncid: oh that’s Luca, my new assistant.

Faraday: No, I mean why is he dry heaving?

Voncid: I drove at an ill advisedly high speed to get here as fast as I did.

Faraday: I can’t really imagine you driving anything that isn’t drawn by horses… 

Voncid:  *Ahem.*  It’s still inside I trust?

Faraday:  Yeah, it’s watching tv if you can believe it.

Voncid: it takes a lot to shock me.

Faraday: I bet.

Voncid: Are you prepared to go in?

Faraday: team’s a little green for my liking, but we’ll get it done.

Voncid:  I’m no expert in wards, you won’t have long.

Faraday:  won’t need it.

Voncid: good.  Here we go.

*we hear Voncid chanting, the words roll forward, then the nonsense words turn around in his mouth running backwards, pitching up and down at the same time.  We hear Hidden Glass forming around the building.  It sounds like a lake freezing over in rapid motion.  Tense and tight and dry.*

Voncid: *out of breath*  The building is sealed.  It won’t be able to get out while it holds.

Faraday:  hear that boys?  Fish in a barrel.  

Voncid:  good luck.

*Click*

Voncid: I am adding the following debriefing of a surviving member of the Grey Team deployed on the night of November 3rd in Hydes Park during that evengings hunt.  

Investigator: state your name for the record please.

Ben:  Ben, uh, Benjamin Scott.

Investigator: this is a simple debriefing.  Repeat what you saw, to the best of your recollection.

Ben: I… I don’t think…

Investigator: I know.  We know.  It’s not typical.

Ben: I’ve seen some messed up things.  Iraqi freedom.  Tour in afghanistan.  I’ve seen things… I… I don’t want this recorded, we’re not being recorded in here are we?

Investigator: No.  Only record is the notes I’m taking, purely internal.

Ben: I never should have done mercenary work, what the hell was I thinking.  Worst part is that it isn’t even the money.  I’m one of the lucky ones, I did ok coming back.  I had family to help me get a job, things were ok.  I wasn’t broken, well, I guess maybe I am, but not like some of us.  Never should have said yes.

Investigator:  we don’t need your life story.  Just the events.

Ben: *Clears his throat* yeah.  Ok.  So I was on the team that went in the front.  Six of us in front, six in back.  We piled out of the truck, slapped the velcro on, the stuff that said SWAT on it and did a last quick gear check before we went in.

It wasn’t raining hard, just enough that the street was all hazy.  I remember seeing some civvies out front, or I thought they were.  One was up on his tiptoes so he could hold an umbrella over the head of this massively tall man.  I remember wondering why he wasn’t holding his umbrella, but he was so pale, his arms were shaking, looking  like he could hardly stand up.  The man looked dead but standing, those pale eyes were locked on me.  When I saw his eyes, that’s when I realized something unnatural was happening, but I didn’t have time to dwell on it.  We got waved in and then we went through the front… man… now that I'm thinking about it, I could have sworn I felt something… like the air changed… going from outside in the light rain to inside was part of it, but it was like walking through a wall of static, got this wild head rush, but it passed as we went in.

We were three two man elements, we knew where the target was, second floor apartment six.  We were quiet, fast.  It was after three in the morning, there was no one in the halls.  It was dead quiet.  Just our heavy boots on the carpet.

I don’t know how he heard us.

Squad Lead, Charles, still don’t know if that’s a first or last, he had just held up a fist for us to stop.  We could see the team two at the far end of the hall, coming from the back of the building, we got to the door first and were just about to set up to breach when the operators in the truck outside, they came on the comms

“It’s up.  It’s looking at the door.”

We all tensed.

“It’s gone cold, we can’t see it.”

The SL stepped back from the door and, I could hardly believe it, but he signed for us to shoot.  A moment later he was spraying short rifle rounds through the door.  We lined up and unloaded through the walls.  Those short barrel rifles you gave us, I can’t believe how quiet they were, but still, it was a residential district in Boston, USA for fucks sake, it was… I couldn’t believe it.  

We tore the inside of the room apart right through the walls, then the breacher with the ram hit the door, popped it open… 

None of us aimed high enough he was… the target, he looked like the images we had been given but, I don’t know, sick, kind of saggy?  Not to mention he was clinging to the ceiling.  

*pause*

He spun around… I grew up near Tampa, you get these lizards and they run along a wall or ceiling like it's nothing… he scuttled away, swung down feet first into the window.  So, so fast.  None of us could get a bead on it, but it hit the window hard and, I don’t know how, he was moving with such force, but it hit the window and bounced off?  No… that’s not right, because the window shattered… it was something else, it was like there was a second pane of glass, but it was only there for the instant that it hit the window.  There was this loud crackle crackling*… like ice breaking?  

I’m doing my best to describe this shit but it's hard, I don’t understand half of what I saw.

Investigator: you are doing just fine.  Keep going.

Ben: ok, so after that it was kinda chaos, it bounced off the window and back into the room, that gave us enough time to get some rounds into it, but it didn’t bleed.  Its flesh opened up and filled with holes, but blood didn’t come out, it just opened up, made me think of a pomegranate, it seemed compartmentalized… 

It didn’t slow down for long though, it tore off towards the adjoining wall and just went right through like it was made of paper.  We heard screaming from the next apartment over.

We followed the SL’s orders, he was breathing heavily and shouting.  He and his partner followed it directly through the hole, the rest of us went down the hall and kicked in the door. There was this guy on the ground screaming, Charles and the other guy were screaming at him to stay down. There was another hole in the wall on the far side of the apartment, so we kept going down, splitting off by twos, sweeping as we went… 

We were buddied up, the guy who was with me… I, I can’t remember his name.  I think he said what it was, but I can’t remember.

Investigator: Dak.

Ben: right right, Dak-ho.  He said it meant Deep Lake, yeah… We swept in, saw a spot where this guy… this thing… the target,  had tried to break through an exterior wall, but I guess he’d been unable to, there were big cracks in the brick…

We could hear the shower going, so there was someone in there… we went in… who ever it was, who’d been in there taking a shower… the target had… my best guess is it just pushed them aside, but had done so with such force that they pulped when they hit the wall.  There was a clear impact point, red… *uncertain what word to use* material and bone bursting out from that point, it was everywhere…

The bathroom had a tub with a shower in it… the shower curtain was one of those clear plastic ones so with the viscera all over it seemed like a, what do they call the place where they kill cows and pigs?

Investigator: An abattoir?

Ben: yeah.  From in the tub we could hear this sound, repetitive, suction… 

Dak said: “target is in the bathroom *sounds of scrambling and squirming* of the eastmost apartment on the second floor.”

I wasn’t sure that it was the target, the tub was low and if they were in there we would have seen them, but before I could do anything, Dak said “engaging” and moved up, so I went with him.

He was right, it was in there, it was trying to shove itself through the shower drain.  *The squelching sounds continue* It was like putty, pushing in, everything just going soft, bones and joints, and it was squeezing in, but then it would hit something and get pushed back.

***pause***

I can’t be ok anymore… I don’t think I’m going to be ok.

Investigator: You’ll be fine, we will help you.  Finish your report.  

Ben: I don’t know if Dak or I started shooting first, the porcelain tub went to pieces, it made this sound, what we could see of one of its eyes… it looked so mad, so frustrated, I thought maybe we had finally hurt it…

Maybe we did…

But I guess it had a lot of itself in the pipes below us, because the floor burst upwards underneath Dak.  A floor tile hit the visor of my helmet and damn near snapped my neck.  I fell onto my back as this liquid flesh, deconstructed-man slithered over Dak.

He didn’t scream.

A mouth appeared in the mass and it… it bit through his helmet *squelching and crunching* .  His big flat teeth just sheared through his helmet, and his skull, so cleanly, like it was biting into an apple…

Through the space it had opened up, I could see it chewing…and  it was chewing on his hair.

Its body started pulling back together, it happened so fast… one second it was chewing on his hair… the next it dropped his body on the ground with his arm, stood over him with his body, looking down at him with the face it had stolen from him.  

It started to pull Dak’s plate carrier off, like it was going to just step into his clothes and be him, but then it looked at me, like it was realizing I was still there.

It frowned with Dak’s face.

I definitely have a concussion from that shot to the head, so I don’t know how much anything I have to report can be taken as… I don’t want any of this to be real… except this last part… where he killed it.

One of the civilians from out front, not the tall one with the dead eyes, or the little one with the umbrella but the other one.  He was dressed like a… like a detective from an old movie, real dark hair, he was there then… he had something, a weapon in his hand, it was like a trench knife, but the metal hissed.

The thing wearing Dak’s face rushed him, they collided, I heard the guy in the coat’s ribs break from the force, he flew out the bathroom, but the knife was sticking out the creature’s chest.

Right through the heart.

It… it looked down at it… Dak’s face looked so surprised.  There was some kind of chain reaction happening, its chest was bubbling…

I think… I think it started to cry right before it fell apart into a pile of arms and legs and faces…

*we hear someone else entering the room*

Voncid: Hello, Benjamin. *To the investigator* Do we have what we need?

Investigator:  We do.  He’s done great.

Take the whole night from him.

Voncid:  Very well.  Benjamin, I’m going to help you.  What has been seen, will be unseen.  

Benjamin: I… 

Voncid:  Try to relax.

*Click*

Voncid:  it’s been an eventful evening, but a successful one.  Still… such a huge task, loss of life, incredible effort to conceal the night’s events.

For one.

We stopped one… 

Still…

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may

Old time is still a flying

And this same flower that smiles today

Tomorrow, will be dying.