"Hey, how’s your brother doing? He should be hitting Q week soon. That’s when things start to shake up at the school." Kiki said, her voice coming through their headsets perfectly despite the whirring from the engines of their open-door armored shuttle.

  "Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t checked in a while." Yoli replied.

  Yoli pulled her link from her combat vest and expanded it to a tablet. She clicked through her saved links and found the Academy of Contractor Certification’s Arena Leaderboard page.

  "Looks like he is still in the top 10 in both leagues. 8th in Teams and 4th in Solo. Perfect record in Solo still, and Teams shows 3 losses."

  "That’s really good." Kiki responded. "My team never had that good of a record, so he and his team must be phenomenal. A perfect record in Solo is a really hard thing to do too, almost impossible. Bet his grades aren’t that good and that’s why he’s only 4th."

  "That checks out. He was never as smart as me."

  Solvei and Kiki laughed.

  "Two minutes to landing." said the pilot, coming over their comms.

  In the troop carrier, there was Yoli, Solvei, and Kiki, along with another DOD squad and twenty contractors.

  Yoli had learned from being part of the Disaster Outreach Division, DOD for short, that the Union would hire contractor squads for possibly dangerous missions they needed to send the DOD into. The Union had a military that were referred to as the Peace Keepers but as it turns out, they weren't used for keeping the peace when they were called. They also had a Galactic Investigation Bureau that had already been to the site before sending the DOD.

  According to Solvei and Kiki, government escort contracts were plentiful so they helped teams keep a steady income and get experience so that they could grow their resume. The DOD teams today were accompanied by two ten-man contracting teams that worked escort jobs exclusively.

  The whole mission was organized and commanded by Solvei’s boss Captain Darden. He was a Firan and Yoli had almost nothing to compare his species to back home, her brain was working overtime to normalize seeing aliens on a daily basis. He was in his thirties like Yoli and her team, but he had gone to school for supply chain logistics and had attuned to Connection. He was a company man at heart which is why he was in this leadership role. Yoli thought he was a good boss, different from many of the doctors she had worked with over the years who all struggled with their huge egos and god complexes.

  "Alright squad, according to reports coming in, there was an armed attack that came through the area recently and local authorities were overwhelmed. Something about Leonid mercenaries, but specifics are all over the place as to what actually happened. Needless to say, the area has been cleared, and we are just here to assist with search and rescue. We are splitting into two teams, each DOD squad will be accompanied by one of the contractor teams.” Captain Darden said before turning to the leads of the contractor teams.

  “Your orders are to safeguard your DOD squad from any unmitigated threats, assist with S&R efforts, and escort survivors to medivac point Charlie in that order.”

  The troop carrier performed a slow circular landing motion, hovering over medivac point Charlie as the whole crew exited the craft.

  Solvei, Yoli’s squad leader, pulled up a map in her HUD that showed little red lollipop icons across the city, with a concentration of them less than a mile away.

  "Looks like we are about three-quarters of a mile away from the epicenter. Let’s head straight for it and keep an eye out for possible survivors on the way in."

  The squad escorting Yoli and her team led the way down the street at a slow pace. Yoli took note of the tactical approach the contractors took to clear every street corner and alleyway as they walked. She felt like she was in some kind of war movie. This was real-world, though, and she was apparently walking into a real war zone. One thing that was explicitly different though was that the equipment was different from soldier to soldier. A few had guns, or things that looked like guns, others had mechanical apparatuses that were attached to half or the entirety of their body. Some had weapons like swords, axes, staves, some of the soldiers had no discernible gear or weapons of any kind.

  It set in for Yoli that she really was in a war zone, and that became more evident the closer they got to the area where all the reports were concentrated. Bodies started showing up slowly. At first it was one, and then another as they slowly walked by. Then there were more, and the carnage began to increase.

  The first bodies they found and scanned had one or two burn marks indicating a blast from some kind of weapon that could leave a burn. The closer to the epicenter, however, the bodies had many more holes and limbs were missing as well. As they continued to walk, the bodies showed signs of other types of damage such as bites, deep slashes, and explosives.

  "Alright, looks like we are right in the middle of it. Let’s secure this building here and use it as triage as we start to clear the surrounding buildings." Solvei said. A contractor that had a different insignia on his shoulder started barking orders and pointing at the different alleys and street corners for their squad to cover and clear of threats.

  Yoli was distracted by the gore though and didn’t pay attention to what their escorts did next. The bodies were torn apart by multiple means of destruction. The buildings had gone through an ordeal as well. There wasn’t one single window on the block that was intact and most of the walls had holes and burn marks from various weaponry. Others had larger holes which Yoli implied they were hit by larger ordinance. Some walls were outright missing and Yoli questioned how some of these buildings were even standing.

  Yoli stepped into what used to be a shop—a bakery, by the looks of it, that Solvei had designated as their gathering point. The escorts had already moved the tables and chairs out of the way and cleared the dining room floor of the blood and debris that littered it.

  That’s when Yoli saw something even more unnatural on the floor; a dark purple-colored liquid that had that rainbow reflective surface like it was mixed with oil. The liquid outlined a shape on the floor that didn’t resemble any of the other body shapes that were in the cafe. Examining the scene closer, she noticed that while the purple liquid was splattered against the wall and puddled on the floor, some of it was smeared, leading towards the stairs.

  The smears stopped just before the stairs and turned into drops, as if the wound that was producing the blood was lifted up off the ground.

  "Hey soldier, is the upper floor of this structure clear?"

  "Yes ma’am. No threats." The soldier turned and went back to clearing the main floor.

  Yoli stepped up the stairs and followed the blood trail to the second floor and then to another set of stairs that was tucked away into the corner. The blood trail led all the way to the roof, where the drops of blood led to the center of the roof before it just stopped. There was a small collection of blood but it led nowhere else.

  "You find something?" Kiki asked.

  Yoli was startled, not realizing she had been followed up to the roof.

  "Yea, sorry. I found a blood trail, I think, or thought there was a survivor, but it’s just gone."

  "I bet they got airlifted. Whoever was here and did… this. Solvei is looking for you downstairs. I think she’s ready to get started."

  Downstairs, the floor had been cleared and a number of cots had been spread out along the floor for survivors to be placed on for Yoli to do any necessary healing before they were transported to the medivac.

  "Hey girls, the escorts are ready to spread out and bring folks in. They will radio us if they find someone, so in the meantime, we are going to clear this structure across the street."

  "Copy." replied Yoli and Kiki in unison.

  Solvei nodded and held her hand to her ear, "Sergeant, you’re clear for S&R. We’ll be clearing building seven if we lose connection. Alright ladies, let’s head out."

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Outside of the cafe and across the street was what Yoli assumed was building seven. Hand Me Up was written in stylized lettering in a diagonal ascending formation. The words “Hand," and “Me Up." had their own lines and were started from the bottom left pointing the end of the word to the top right of the sign. The name of the store attempted to describe the clothes that were being sold inside, but the clothes could no longer be considered hand-me-ups and were too far gone for hand-me-downs as well. Blood was everywhere, but there were no bodies. Solvei was on the same wavelength as Yoli and was already asking the soldiers for a report.

  "Sergeant, did your team already clear building seven?"

  "No ma’am, as discussed we are clearing the buildings adjacent to rally point Alpha."

  Solvei took on a more serious tone, realizing that building seven may not be secure.

  "Copy, divert a squad to building 7 for additional security."

  "Copy." the Captain replied.

  "Ladies, let’s close up formation and wait for the extra squad. Sergeant, secure that stairwell and the back stock room."

  The squad that had already accompanied them into building seven was silent as the sergeant moved his hands rapidly with signals that Yoli didn’t recognize. The contractors approached the back stock room door slowly and tried the door slowly and found it was locked. One soldier took out a small black rectangle from their utility belt, expanded it almost like a link, and pressed a button after he placed it between the door handle and the doorjamb. The edge of the black device by the door jam had a faint light and made a very high pitch sound before abruptly stopping.

  The soldier kicked the door open and another stormed the room to the right, with another following close behind and rushing to the left. Yoli couldn’t see anymore but heard the soldiers yell, "Clear." Yoli relaxed, feeling a little bit more safe than before. The second squad arrived, and the sergeants walked up to Solvei.

  "Squad one, clear upstairs. Squad two, clear down." Solvei said.

  "Copy." the sergeants replied, and again started moving their hands rapidly, signaling commands to their teams.

  Solvei walked over to Yoli and Kiki and did her own hand signals to her team except that they didn’t have hand signals, and Solvei was clearly mocking the soldiers she had just given orders to.

  "Maybe there’s a shelter down there or something? What do you guys think?" Solvei asked.

  "As good an idea as any." Yoli said.

  Solvei nodded and followed the squad down the staircase. Once they got down the stairs and once the squad confirmed it was clear, Kiki flipped the light switch on to reveal the same scene as the upstairs.

  The walls, the floor, clothes on racks—all covered in blood, but not a single body.

  This room was considerably smaller than the upstairs, so it wasn’t long until the contractors pointed out the out-of-place keypad in the middle of the wall behind a rack of clothes.

  "Ma’am?" the Sergeant called out, summoning Solvei to join him next to the keypad.

  Yoli followed Solvei to see and saw an analog keypad like something she would have seen back home.

  "This is old tech." the sergeant started. "Just looking at the wall I can’t find any seams for a door to force open, so I’ve called the tech down from the other squad. Do you recognize that symbol?"

  Solvei and Yoli leaned in closer to the keypad and saw in the bottom right corner of the keypad a thinly lined circle with two diagonal lines in the center. The symbol immediately reminded her of the sign of the store out front. There was a lit-up circle around the words Hand Me Up, with hand spaced apart from the other two words as if it were its own line, like in the symbol they were seeing now.

  "No, doesn’t ring any bells." Solvei replied.

  She held up her link to take a picture.

  "I’ll report it to HQ once we get back."

  The tech from the other squad arrived and walked over to the sergeant.

  "Can you crack this?" the Sergeant said.

  "Possibly… Give me a second."

  He pried the keypad panel open to reveal some complex wiring.

  "Wow… this is some old tech. This is like pre-pre-conflict."

  Yoli, looking at the keypad, thought she was watching any regular spy or heist movie but then realized she was on a different planet than Earth, one she arrived at via spaceship that had been driven through a portal housed next to a small, planet-sized space station.

  The keypad sparked, and the wall next to it sunk in and started separating. The paint made a light cracking sound as the wall separated from itself, signifying someone had tried to hide the door. Once the door had opened, it revealed a long hallway leading to another door at the end. There was more blood, but this time it was covering two turrets nested into small concrete one-person bunkers that were facing the door at the end of the hall.

  “Whoever was trying to hide this must have been in a rush.” The tech spoke up.

  “That’ll be all, Corporal.” The sergeant replied quickly dismissing both the tech and the comment.

  The sergeant then turned to his team, made some hand signals, and the squad proceeded to clear the hall. At the end of the hall, one of the soldiers produced a crowbar from her utility belt and approached the door, ready to pry it open but before she could it opened on its own, revealing an elevator.

  In the back of the elevator was the symbol they found on the keypad, a circle with two diagonal lines in the middle.

  At the sight of the door opening to reveal an elevator, the sergeant gave the universal hand signal for the squads to hold position. Yoli noticed that the sergeant had paused, and his eyes were quickly darting back and forth, which meant that he was probably communicating via a secure link to just the officers.

  Yoli hadn’t gotten an implant yet, but the idea of being able to communicate pretty much telepathically was appealing enough.

  “Ok, we are moving out and calling in an investigatory battalion.”

  “But what about survivors? We haven’t cleared the area yet.” Solvei replied.

  “The captain is killing the op, sorry ma’am, we have orders to—”

  The sergeant was interrupted by the elevator doors closing and the very faint sound of it ascending to where the team was.

  “Code Extract! Code Extract!” the Sergeant started screaming.

  Before Yoli knew what was happening, she was picked up by both arms by two soldiers and carried out of the long hallway. Yoli frantically looked back and saw that Solvei and Kiki were running at full speed behind her. Yoli, still being carried, passed another two soldiers pointing long black rifles down the hall, waiting for the rest of the crew to make it out.

  The techie corporal was back down the stairs working on the keypad, trying to seal the wall. One of the soldiers carrying her stumbled as they tried to get up the stairs so Yoli used it as an opportunity to take back some control and make it up the stairs before the soldier could regain their footing.

  Yoli sprinted out of the building, where she found the entire company of contractors swarming on her position and into the storefront. She turned and saw the rest of her team and the soldier carrying her make it out of the building before she heard a loud bang, followed by a plume of dust coming from inside the storefront.

  “Yoli!” Solvei screamed at her.

  She heard another loud boom before she saw the craft they flew in on quickly circle and land on the roof of the cafe.

  Yoli felt a huge, muscular arm wrap around her and pick her up like a football. She looked up to see Kiki’s eyes straight ahead, running for the temporary base camp they had been at just before they walked into the store. Kiki, unlike the two soldiers carrying her before, effortlessly flew up the stairs with Yoli in tow.

  The spacecraft was already waiting for them as they got to the roof. Solvei rapidly got in her seat and buckled herself before Yoli was placed in her own seat by Kiki. Yoli instinctively clicked in her seat buckle across her chest and felt it gently tighten and restrain her to her seat.

  “Go! Go! Go!” Solvei yelled out, and the craft slowly lifted from the roof before launching like a bullet from a gun.

  Yoli’s head was thrown back into her seat’s head cushion from the sudden speed of the craft. She strained to turn her head to look down at the scene below and saw a massive dust cloud had taken the place of the town intersection where they had just been. In the midst of the dust cloud, however, there were loud pops, bangs, and other sounds that didn’t sound typical to war movies she had seen back on Earth. A large column of fire erupted from one end of the intersection towards the shop they came from. The scene quickly faded from view as the shuttle closed its doors and prepared to leave the atmosphere.

  “What the hell just happened?” Yoli said, turning to Solvei.

  “I can’t say, but as soon as the Captain saw that elevator start working without us doing anything, he called for our extraction.”

  “Are they ok? We need to get back down there and help them!”

  “You’ll get yourself killed. I don’t know if you remember, but I had to put you in your seat myself.” Kiki chimed in.

  Yoli turned away, ashamed that she had let her team down. “I’m sorry. I froze. I…”

  “It’s fine, it happens. We are a non-combat team, that’s why those soldiers picked you up in the first place.”

  “Yeah, I’m too damn big, so when Solvei started running, I figured I better follow.”

  The team laughed, but it quickly died down.

  “Are they going to be ok?” Yoli asked.

  “I really don’t know. They would be operating under a combat comms channel now. I’ll reach out in a day or two.”

  “Where did that elevator go?” Kiki asked.

  “I can say that no one in the officers’ chat had seen anything like that or had seen that symbol before.” Solvei said.

  “Yeah, clearly someone organized was running that… whatever it was. It’s not normal for a second-hand clothes shop to have a basement elevator going deep underground.” Kiki added.

  “We just flew away from there on a spaceship headed for a portal to take us to a bigger spaceship that we happen to live on. I’d say anything is possible.” Yoli breathed out heavily trying to release the stress and tension that erupted from the battle that she almost got caught up in.