The ship disappears as it reaches the nearest dock, causing John to lose sight of the handoff that should be happening to Blackbeard and Bronco, still he waits by the window to watch their eventual approach

  “I have to admit, I am surprised,” Cat says idly, her eyes not leaving her scope.

  “You? Surprised? That’s surprising.”

  “You would think that after the conversation around the fire, they wouldn’t put Kane in the water.”

  John has to stifle a laugh. “Fucking hell.”

  “He was your friend before he was any of ours, you have a lot of explaining to do about that one.”

  “Well, we were kind of busy fighting in bars and crashing jeeps, not trying to fuck whales. He didn’t show that side of himself till later.”

  “He showed the fucking whales side?”

  “What? No... no, his psychotic side.”

  “What happened that finally showed you his psychotic side?”

  “Oh nothing serious.”

  “Do not play coy with me John, what happened?” She presses.

  “He stood shirtless on the roof of a civilian bar, doused himself in liquor, lit himself on fire and jumped fifteen feet into a rainwater collection barrel on the street while trying to impress a group of prostitutes.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “It worked too, he fucked all of them that night.”

  “While on fire I hope?”

  “No, but he did complain about his piss burning every night after that.”

  A click in John's ear indicates Bronco and Blackbeard's approach.

  John watches as the two slink through the alleys and streets of the buildings with the target in hand. Cesar’s eyes scan everything, his enhanced hearing likely to pick up on any of their conversations at this range, prompting everyone to quiet down.

  They keep their eyes on the man until he once more vanishes from view, being brought around to the back.

  The door opening is their signal. John nods to Cat who covers him as they head back down to the main floor where they see team 3 trade guard duty with those in armor, giving them time to get into their own kit.

  “All of this for me? You shouldn’t have.” Cesar smiles, his eyes flicking to the guns trained on his bound and gagged family.

  “You’ve created quite a stir,” John replies curtly, not letting the veritable demi-god from his sight.

  He really fucking hopes these guns work, all the tests say they do, but the real test is still to come.

  “What, protecting my family is a stir? Psh..” the young man rolls his eyes, trying not to make it obvious that he is assessing their guns and armor.

  “Protecting your family involves slaughtering countless men?” Blackbeard asks aloud, shifting his weight.

  “As if you do not slaughter countless men for your own agenda hm?” he rocks back and forth on his feet. “You should just do your job of trying to kill me instead of preaching. The way you stand, hold your weapons, military yes? How many men did you kill because your countries wanted money? You are not military now though. No not here, you are... private?”

  John watches the boy with hard eyes from behind his tinted HUD.

  The boy is right of course, but that doesn’t change the situation, or their mission.

  “Enough chatter, bag him,” John orders.

  “No, I don’t think so.” the boy shrugs.

  John is about to pull the trigger on his rifle, when red and blue lights flicker against the floor from the primary garage entrance.

  “What the fuck...” John gives a signal for Kid to move with him, while the others hold security on the target and the packages.

  The boy just smiles, the arrogance in his eyes making John want to pull the trigger even more, but he stops himself. These weapons aren’t suppressible, not yet at least. While not nearly as loud as 5.56 it still would draw the attention of anyone nearby. With the police lights flashing they couldn’t risk the bag.

  “Fucking feds,” John grumbles, motioning for Kid to take position opposite him as they approach the exit door. “Eyes on the target, We will take care of this.” He calls through coms, getting clicks for acknowledgement.

  John quickly rids himself of his armor, stuffing away safely to avoid drawing much more attention, though he keeps his Williams handgun in his left hand as he opens the single door that leads outside near the garage.

  From his current position, the entire left half of John's body remains hidden inside, while he pressed the muzzle of the suppressed handgun up against the door just in case any one of them wants to try forcing their way through.

  “Is there a problem officers?” John asks with a perfectly innocent smile.

  It is the two from earlier. Evidently bored enough of their post to make the effort to scan the entire zone for his van.

  “Si senor,” The short one narrows his eyes as he gets as close to the door as possible, eyes looking around inside trying to peer past John's massive frame blocking them.

  Kid positioned himself in the near corner of the room, so that he has a clear view of the officers in the entryway without revealing his presence there.

  John doesn’t say anything further, instead he waits for the two cops to fumble their way through an excuse.

  “We tried to stop you but you keep driving, this is no good.”

  “Stop me? But I already paid you didn’t I? I’m not sure I have any more money...”

  “No no, money no issue sure, your van is problem. We hear something in the back, you open for us?”

  “No, I’m not sure I can. There are a lot of confidential real estate documents back there.” John weaves the shitty lie as best he can. There was no disguising the thump of a body and even the most unaware person would deduce no amount of documents would have made that noise.

  “Si, you open for us or you have to come with us.”

  John makes a show of sighing and walks out into the front, closing the door behind him.

  “Alright alright.” John meanders with them towards the open garage space where the van is parked. John makes a mental note to prep car tarps the next time they need to ditch a vehicle. He makes a show of unlocking the vehicle, and dramatically opens van’s back door, gesturing to the empty space with a flourish. “See? Nothing.”

  One of the men turns on a flashlight to take a closer look, moving closer to the back.

  “Nothing but you two.” John grabs the door and slams it into the man with the flashlight, the sound of metal of meat reverberating through the space with a resounding thud.

  He crumbles forward, and John wheels on the other man, a single, powerful fist connecting to his jaw and turning the lights off before he even falls to the ground.

  John pulls his suppressed pistol from his pants and trains it on the man in the back of the van as he holds his ribs.

  “Shhhh, not a fucking sound amigo.”

  The officer’s head is surely spinning, a groan barely escaping his lips while a single hand fumbles around at his shoulder.

  “No you fuckin’ don’t.” John grabs the man by the leg and throws him from the back of the van onto the ground, driving a knee into his chest while stripping the gun from the officer's holster and the radio from his shoulder.

  Kid appears from the shadows, evidently having followed John to ensure everything went well. He is eternally grateful all their training makes moments like this easy. John doesn’t need to communicate anything to the young man, he simply knows what to do.

  “Lets get them unconscious and—”

  Both men's heads snap to the side as suppressed rounds penetrate their skulls. Blood nearly explodes from their noses as the rest flows from the exit wounds in their temples, some of it splattering John's hands as he holds the now limp man.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  John's ears ring, though not for the sound of any weapon. Blood pumps from the man's nose, saturating John's hand. His eyes roll lifelessly into the back of his head. Sure the officer was a crook but that didn’t mean he deserved to fucking die.

  “Jesus fucking Christ, Kid!” John drops the body and wheels on him, though his expression is impossible to read under the tinted helmet of the specialized Armor kid still wears.

  “No other option. They knew your face. The spooks can clean the site easier than they can scrub their heads,” he says nonchalantly.

  “What the fuck.” John can feel his hand shaking. He had dropped a number of bodies in his time but both of these men were defenseless, they were practically fucking prisoners. One was unconscious, the other had no weapon and was too injured to move... John had killed terrorists and cartel gangsters, men trying to kill him or his brothers and sisters, never in cold blood.

  “Take it easy John, it's within our contract ROI.” Kid nods his head towards the main room. “Let's go, they are waiting on us.”

  John watches Kid head towards the room, unable to bring himself to say anything more.

  Sure it’s in ROI but that doesn’t mean it’s fucking right. How the hell could this kid so easily murder two officers in cold blood? John was damn well prepared to defend himself if they forced their way, he was prepared to shoot them all the same as Kid was but the context is what made the two things different. This was murder...

  John struggles to keep his cool as his mind races and blurs. He gets into his armor in a haze. He takes a tarp from the back of the van, and wraps their corpses up inside of it, before dumping them in the back of the van and slamming the door on them.

  Those were two men, who made a shitty choice, an unlucky choice, and because of that they lost their lives. Kid wanted to talk about what was easier for the spooks? Blackwood has enough money to buy the world, John is sure he could have paid to get their heads washed, but instead the remnants of their brain matter litters the floor.

  John clenches his jaw, and steals himself as he enters the primary warehouse once more, rejoining the others, his eyes constantly flicking to Kid.

  Blackbeard and Bronco keep their weapons trained on Caesar, while Kid and Cat have their own rifles pointed at the boy's family bound and gagged on the ground.

  The family needs to be alive in order to get Caesar to cooperate, to get him restrained in their new tech without resistance, to transport him to the Kraken without issue.

  The family needs to be alive, for now. But what happens once Caesar is bagged?”

  “TOC this is team two actual, relay protocol for package.” John calls into his coms, a realization falling on him, a realization that he doesn’t want to be true.

  “TOC to team two actual, unable to relay at this time. Package protocol is team 1’s prerogative.” The TOC’s response is practically “go fuck yourself, mind your own.” which is more than enough proof to solidify the sinking feeling in Johns guts as his eyes shift to Cat and Kid, their weapons now trained on the families. The mother and father, the 9 year old girl…

  Cat wouldn’t… she absolutely wouldn’t, but as he watches Kids finger graze the trigger he second guesses everything.

  “Bag Caesar,” John orders, mind racing, hunting for an excuse, an out, a way forward without drawing too much suspicion to himself.

  He needs to make sure this family got out of there alive, but first they need to secure their target.

  The words barely leave his lips when the ground cracks from the force of Caesar’s counterattack. He smears across John's vision like a streak of light before his momentum stops, with his fist plunged into Bronco’s chest.

  Her armor ripples, then explodes along with the soft flesh underneath, blood and flesh sent showering into the back wall behind her.

  “FUCK!” John pulls his trigger.

  Waves of light nearly blow out his vision as everyone's rifles target Caesar's new position before the HUD’s adjust the light level to allow them to see again.

  The air crackles with the sound of the gas ionizing, like a warbling tesla coil humming a low bass note.

  Each wave of light crashes into the boy, sending him to the ground, thrashing, screaming under the bass note of the energy weapon.

  “Hold!” John commands, his eyes focused entirely on Cesar as he struggles up from the ground, screaming, fighting against the force of the energy weapons that tear through his clothes and begin to rip apart his ultra-durable flesh until it’s pink, then red, then black as the blood is evaporated from the wounds.

  In rotation their guns overheat, and in rotation they reload the heat sinks to keep the pressure applied.

  Caesar’s body tries to heal itself, John can see the skin fighting against the waves of energy but the atomic destabilization radiates out faster than it can repair itself.

  “Push!” John orders, and they all take three large steps forward while rotating reloads of heat sinks again.

  “Hold!”

  Caesar digs his hand into the ground, and rips it towards them in an arc, faster than bullet pieces of concrete explode on impact against their armor, scraping the black paint and denting the angular segments while they force their position to hold.

  “Team one target arms! Push!” John commands again, praying to god that this works.

  Cat and Kid focus the energy streams on his arms, severing them at the elbows and preventing him from trying that trick again. The close proximity forces Caesar's screaming body into the ground, cracking the concrete underneath him.

  John's eyes snap to his legs, “team three, legs! Push!”

  He doesn’t know why he says team three. Bronco is dead... only Blackbeard remains. Blackbeard targets one leg and watches as it severs while the other one tries to drive itself into the ground.

  John shifts fire to the other leg but not before it makes contact with the ground, sending a shockwave vibrating out over the warehouse, cracking the foundation and sending the roof shuddering above.

  “Push!”

  They move forward one final time, the weapons burning Caesar nearly to the bone.

  “Hold!”

  They rotate reloads for what feels like an eternity, burning through nearly every last one of their heat sinks until the residual destabilization reaches an equilibrium with whatever power source this anomaly derives from.

  Caesar continues to scream, so Spaz turns his burning body over and stuffs a gag in his mouth while Blackbeard tosses his stubby body into one of the duffels the family had been in hours ago.

  “Secure!” John calls, and Spaz produces a device kid had cooked up a year back, to try to draw energy out of the anomaly, and prevent the use of their abilities. It’s worked some times, other times it hasn’t this time, it needs to.

  Caesar screams again, muffled by the gag, as the massive metal collar drills into his spine, tapping the fluid, and sending waves of energy throughout his nervous system. Blackbeard zips him up in the duffle, putting and end to the sight of his charred body, but not the wriggling as he struggles powerless against his containment.

  From here, the plan was meant to be John and Spaz drive to the Kraken while Blackbeard and Bronco run security in the back with the target, meanwhile Kid and Cat were to return the hostages, but now that sinking feeling in his gut returns, as his eyes flicker to the back of the van where the corpses of the two officers lie, a feeling that only grows as the TOC refused to relay their orders to him.

  “Change of plans, We need two people on security and the next best driver we have is Spaz. I want Spaz on transport, Cat and Kid on security and Blackbeard with me to deliver the packages.”

  “Negative, team one’s orders are from Blackwood,” Kid cuts in, his attention shifting to John in that moment, his rifle freshly reloaded and his weapon trained on Cesar as Blackbeard and Spaz begin moving him to the van.

  “Cat, what the fuck are your orders?” John snaps to her, hoping with everything in his heart she wasn’t on board with this.

  “Orders are to deliver them back home,” Cat calls out, confused by the sudden tension between the two engineers.

  “Kid, what are your orders?”

  “Now isn’t the time John, we need to get the target to the Kraken and we need to do it now. We can talk later.” Kid tries to take a step towards John but he tenses his grip on his rifle, he doesn’t want to raise it, he doesn’t want to push that hard, he doesn’t want to compromise this team but he is not about to let Blackwood order the slaughter of a family because they happen to be related to an anomaly.

  “TOC this is team two actual, get me Blackwood, now.”

  “Negative, actual. Proceed with operation.”

  “TOC don’t fuck with me, get me Blackwood on these coms right fucking now.”

  There is a faint crackle, and Blackwood's voice comes in through his ear as cold as ever.

  “John, Listen to the TOC, you are to proceed with your team to—”

  “I’m not letting you do this Blackwood.” John snaps, putting himself in front of the family who still sit bound and gagged, eyes wide, confused, the children trying their hardest to get close to one another for comfort.

  “This is an order John, you are to proceed with your mission as directed or you will be released from this team. I will not compromise with you.”

  “Kid, you don’t have to do this,” John tries, shutting Blackwood out of his mind.

  “Orders John, I do. Please let's just talk later and make sure we get this done, we waste any more time and the target’s healing will ramp up. He needs to be in that Kraken at the black-site ASAP or else he will be at us.”

  For a split second, John watches Bronco’s blood drip from the far wall, her torso several feet away from her bottom half, his mind filling with a thousand different things.

  “Get in the fucking van and drive Kid, I’ll deal with Blackwood,” John tries once more.

  Kid shifts his head, the muscles in his neck working as he shoulders his rifle, keeping it in the low ready position, his finger dancing along the trigger.

  The pause he gives is noticeable, noticeable enough for John to guess that the TOC is in his ear.

  “Fuck.” John nearly raises his rifle to the young man but Cat steps in, her hand forcing the barrel away as she gets between them, her helmet moving to look at the family on the ground behind John before turning back to him.

  He wishes he can see her eyes, her expression, he needs to see what the fuck she is thinking, instead her voice comes over his private coms channel.

  “Easy John, I’ll make sure they are alright. You have my word, alright?”

  John nods almost imperceptibly and lets his weapon rest lower.

  He has to trust Cat, it’s the only way forward right now. He would have to save ripping Blackwood a new one for later, and if Kid hurt Cat he would rip his fucking head off.

  “We need to go!” Blackbeard calls out from the far end, slapping the roof of the van.

  “TOC this is team two actual, we need cleaners at site Alpha. Priority red.” he spits the words, and doesn’t bother to wait for a response as he jogs to the van, jumping into the driver seat.

  “We ready to go?” Spaz asks, shifting around in his seat.

  “Get in the fucking back Spaz, watch the target.”

  “Uh yea. Sure thing.” He obeys, and John slams the van into reverse, watching through the driver side window as Cat and Kid disappear behind the walls.

  He has to trust Cat, Bella, he has to. Because if he can’t trust her then he might as well drop right back into the fucking ocean.