Chapter 1: The middle of things.
>Florida, 2024. Paul sat in the patrol car thinking about the past few days and their events. The city hadn't been quiet, but since when was Florida EVER quiet? This shit though... Maybe his older brother was right when he went for machining instead of law enforcement or military. Though he hasn't been heard from in something like seven years at this point, since the nukes fell.
>This town was a typical Florida town, there was of course, meth, some gangs, weed up the ass. Cops could drive by three meth labs and a dead hooker in the right part of town just to arrest someone in from Colorado with some weed in their bag. But these last three days... Whoever was behind this shit was clearly motivated, well supplied and FUCKING PISSED.
>It all started, at least as far as we can see, when the local gangs collectively provoked... fuck, SOMEONE. Since then, someone well supplied has been waging a veritable WAR against the gangs in the area. Just yesterday street gang members were turning themselves in to the precinct with small numbers, but this morning when I got to work it was flooded, shady motherfuckers from central and southern america asking what happened to their friends, local crips begging to know if one of their boys was caught up in the fray. A strange sight. 
>As I pulled up to the scene I'd been called in to investigate... I couldn't have been speechless, maybe.. appalled? In any case, I was greeted by a ramshackle neighborhood as was typical for the low real estate value bad side of any sufficiently large town in the entire united states. Only this time, there were bullet holes in about every house for two hundred yards past the isolated zone they called the scene.
>I could see it even as I dismounted from the Patrol car... A fucking mess if ever there was one.
"Okay, who's behind this?"
>"Not funny Berdan, YOU'RE the one who's supposed to figure that out." came Davis.
"Yeah, this shit's just... bad."
>As I Walked past the tape I saw several officers with distressed faces, apparently traumatized by the scene before them, understandably so.
"How many vics?" I asked.
>"Somewhere between *dry heave* forty and sixty, it's hard to tell from the chunks." Sweetwater answered.
"I'm sorry, but... You know, let me get a look at the cartridges... where are they?"
>"They're in the middle of the street." Davis answered as he pointed over to the center marks in the street, where several casings of all sizes and diameters were strewn around randomly, for a large part, not to say the lawn of the bombed out husk that passed as a house wasn't littered with them as well as the burn marks on the house and the blast marks with a couple massive holes in the front side. Come to think of it, what appeared to be holes made by anti material HEI rounds were also present. 
>As I looked over the casings on the ground, walking into the middle of the cordoned street I quickly identified nine millimeter, forty fives, five five sixes, seven six twos of the 39, 51 and 54 millimeter case variety, then I saw something that left me dumbstruck.
>As I knelt down and picked up one of these obscenely large cases I found myself looking at some slightly different cases of about the size of a fifty cal, but... inconsistent in length.
"HEY! Check this shit out!" I called over to a couple investigators, carrying two of the cartridges to them, one of each size.
"Were they using a fucking FIFTY on these people? And what's with these cases? There's no way these longer ones are within tolerance of a normal fifty cal."
>"What else would they be using?"
"... Um. You know, my Brother Michael used to talk about this ONE thing, a Russian gun, name pronounced as Dishka, was a Russian heavy machine gun, but as I understand it, they're super rare here in the states."
>"So, lets say all these casings and belt links on the ground are from heavy machine guns. What kind of vehicles would they be using these with?"
"It would almost HAVE to be either a small pickup truck on up the size scale, I suppose you could use it in a small SUV, but it's hell on the suspension with smaller trucks, we're talking about literally listing the truck, so for it to be a small truck, they'd have to have a camper shell and a way of flipping it off and dropping it quickly or would have to have some sort of soft cover they could open and close to bring the gun to bare and back into the fold quickly. They'd usually also have to have the vehicle stationary because, as we've previously established, lighter vehicles will list under the recoil of the fifty cals. So... Any witnesses who saw the vehicles?"
>"Quite the dissertation there, but no one here saw the vehicles, they all say they were asleep when the shots woke them, or put their heads down real fucking quick. A good thing too, since the shooters fired into any windows they could see to keep heads down."
"Anyone outside this umm. "House," injured?"
>"A couple with minor injuries, but they've all been evacuated."
"Well, let's take a look at the dead, then."
>I walked to the front of the house and braced myself for what I might see... it wasn't enough.
"Whoever did this wasn't interested in witnesses... or survivors."
>The bodies of were packed in so tightly they were practically piled on top of each other... when they were in only one, two or even three pieces that is, otherwise they were more... soaking in each other. Chunks and blood almost flooded the room, creating what was NEARLY a standing puddle, and probably would have if it weren't for the tendency of house flooring not to retain fluids like some kind of giant plastic bag.
>As I looked upon the scene I dry heaved, managing narrowly to suppress it, thanks only to the fact that I hadn't had breakfast yet.
>besides being packed and effectively muched in several instances, the corpses had chunks missing, and were in various states of being mangled, burned along with much of the house, eviscerated by apparent stab wounds and ballistic trauma, chunks blown out, gore everywhere, really the least disgusting ones were the ones that appeared to have been misted by some sort of explosive, giving an airbrushed effect to the walls that hadn't been burned by what ever device of arson was deployed to much of the front side of the house.
>Whoever did this was thorough. The chalk lines outside apparently testifying to their killing of all who were outside of the house to minimize the chance of witnesses fleeing the scene.
>I'd seen enough. I walked out of the house, a large hole in the front from whatever type of explosive they used. My mind traveled in another direction though.
>"Hey! Paul, you got anything on this?"
"I don't care anymore, whoever did this is thoroughly uninterested in witnesses or making a name for themselves, they use heavy machine guns and flame throwers or some shit. Look, THEY have a grudge against street gangs, I quit effective the end of this shift, this is a known gang controlled area, and fighting whoever these fucking psychos are isn't in my interest, especially when it's over the honor of some shithead crips.
>My shift continues on as I eventually get to the morgue to examine some of the corpses, which to the surprise of fucking no one were only more of the same only less scorched by what by now must have almost CERTAINLY been a flamethrower.
>I finally got back to the station after two and a half hours on the job, beginning the task of writing my resignation letter when Captain Peters walks in.
>"Holy shit, they weren't kidding. You're really quitting?" He asked as he looked on at the half begun letter on the desk.
"Look, I'll give my report with a signed statement if you want, but I'm not here to fight whoever they are with whatever they have."
>"If you do this, Berdan, I'll see to it you never work in law enforcement again."
"GOOD. I didn't intend on moving to another station only to be blown away when they call cops from the next three counties to deal with whoever has a fucking M-2 AND a DHsK handy. If that's what you want out of me you can go fuck yourself."
>"WHAT's so bad about ONE M-2 and ONE DHsK?"
"MOTHERFUCKER, THOSE ARE HEAVY MACHINE GUNS, DID YOU SEE THE BODIES?"
>"NO!"
"CHUNKS! NOT BODIES, CHUNKS, PIECES. FUCK THAT."
>"ALRIGHT! ALRIGHT! Let's calm down here. Tell me, CALMLY, what's there."
>Paul took a breath before continuing.
"Chief, whoever's doing this has resources we can't dream of to be able to get their hands on a DShK, legally or illegally. Let alone one AND another heavy machine gun, like an M2, this has to be the work of an organization, or a large conspiracy, edging on the brink of an organization. Think cartels, organized crime, no fucking way street gangs have the power to get their hands on shit like this, whoever did it probably ONE, has an independent machine shop somewhere to make shit like this with an insane degree of reach or talent to reverse engineer or clone one, B, has extensive resources to get the real thing from someone else, or C, IS a government sanctioned corporate military entity, or is the government. Pick one."
>"The government. So you think the government is involved in this?"
"It's as likely as the other *HIGHLY* unusual options there are. Whoever contributed the DShK had to have some far international reach. Maybe a bring back from overseas. I happened to have seen a few in the sandbox during the last decade. In any case, we can only tell that the only thing we know of, at lest, as far as I KNOW OF, that can fire 12.7X108 is a DShK."
>"Okay, so it's a government bring back? Then why use it to smoke a gang like that? What would government want with out city and its street gangs. The CIA usually helps CREATE street gangs, not snuff them."
"Doesn't matter if that's the case. you get a call from that phone over there telling you something along the lines of 'You done a good job, now let our boys higher up than you take it from here,' you put the phone down and never look into it again lest you learn something you're not SUPPOSED to know and some OGA be forced to hunt you and your entire family down and kill you in a convenient and suspicious but only barely investigated accident, or die in a mugging in which nothing was taken from your pockets or you commit suicide by shooting your self twice in the BACK of the hea-"
>"I get it, I get it, let's go with another angle then, shit." peters interupted, a mild laugh overtaking him.
"Cartels... They're taking over out town, better tell all the officers to accept with no resistance or requirement for persuasion, their new salary bonuses in the form of bribes. In fact, make it department policy, or we're gonna start dropping like flies. Whoever's doing this has to have deep fucking pockets, so our other angle is a private military company or some paramilitary group with extreme amounts of resources. There were also blast marks, so explosives suddenly become involved, given the fact that it was a known gang neighborhood with a crip party going... That eliminates muslims, then again so did the nukes. Gotta be paramilitary."
>"So... I don't suppose you happen to know of any paramilitary groups with a shitload of bring backs and financial resources to afford these weapons you say are so rare and who'd have a motive against these gangs?"
"No. I don't know of any such groups, even before the finer points come into the picture. Who could they have pissed off in order to provoke an attack like this? Well, look for the crime syndicate with heavy machine guns and the vehicles to hide them in transit, fire them without rolling over, and apparently the money to hire people with expertise in making small but effective bombs."
>"Oh, there's Murphy from the ATF."
>Murphy walked into the room, and as our usual BATFE liaison, began giving the report.
>"We found multiple calibers at the scene, most notably .50 BMG and 12.7X108MM, though the chamber and extractor marks on the other cartridges show hardware with fluted chambers, of course all the calibers popular for hunting deer coyotes and people, and an explosive residue found at the scene, with blast patterns that render it consistent with AT4s."
"So now our resident dog hunter is telling us the shadowy and until now either super secret squirrel or non existent paramilitary organization has rocket launchers, which makes our first step in searching them out either really damn easy or really damn hard, depending on whether they were smuggled in a cache from sandy land or stolen from a domestic base. So either some remnant supplies from the Osama administration or some else a company with a nebulous name who isn't officially supposed to operate domestically is on the run with some kind of... COUNTER crime operation going on. I don't like where any of this leads. As I've said, I'm quitting effective end of this shift."
>"Don't forget the flamethrower." Murphy added.
"RIIIGHT. Who could forget the flamethrower? They were already apparently exploded shot with anti material shot again and bayoneted, may as well add burning to the list."
Two hours later.
>"Paul, I'm serious, this is fucking crazy, we can't support this!"
"Look, I just want to ask a couple questions, go in, be polite, not take up too much of anyone's time."
>"Tell me, how did you divine that there might be something here, HERE, to go on?"
"Just a small hunch, Four kids from this neighborhood disappeared about four weeks ago, two weeks ago they showed up again with gang markings, beaten to death, apparently slowly, and well. If there were ever an area where someone would be motivated to carry out this war in any numbers this might be the place in some small corner of my mind. Wouldn't explain the logistics though."
>"So kids get mixed up in gang activity, and these suburban folk turn into a literal platoon sized paramilitary organization?"
"More than likely not, but hey, worth a question or two."
>I walked to the first door and knocked. An answer finally came in the form of a blind opening and a set of eyes looking me over before the door opened. The man inside the door was semi well kept, wearing a pair of jeans and a tee shirt, his house on the inside appeared to be a tribute to that rifle's usefulness, a few pictures of himself in deserts and forests and the heads of several animals decorating his walls. 
>"What can I do for you, officer?" He asked
"I had a few questions, if you don't mind, just to canvas the neighborhood more or less."
>"No problem, please, come on in, have a seat." He says as he walks into the kitchen
"I'm detective Paul Berdan and you are?"
>"Jason Rogers. Can I get you something to drink officer?"
"No, thank you."
>"So what was it you wanted to ask?"
"First I'd like to ask if there's been any odd behavior among your neighbors. I understand there's been a tragic occurrence last month "
>"Yeah, the neighbors have turned quite activist about the deaths of four of their kids. Tragedy really, they've been holding vigils every night or so, poor folks probably haven't slept in weeks."
>"Honey! Who's there?" A woman's voice came as she peeked around the corner, her hair quite obviously an unnatural white color, dyed for that deliberate effect, facial features a mix between the sharp features of a European with the slight slant of Asiatic features, and the slight squint of asian eyes present but not as pronounced as in asian women. 
>"Oh, carry on!" She said cheerfully as she disappeared out of view once more, her cheerful humming audible from the other side of the house.
"I'd like to know if you're aware of some shootings that happened not too far from here, just a couple miles away."
>"A shooting a couple miles away? Chance is a million." he said as he rolled his eyes practically into the sides of their sockets.
"haha. Yes, a couple miles away there's been a massive shooting in a gang house, many of the victims had prior convictions... It's a gruesome scene."
>"Well, in the first place, I highly doubt any of the neighbors went on revenge killings, but what really concerns me is that you use this language 'many of the victims.' How many victims are we talking here?" he asked with something approaching genuine concern.
"Best numbers forensics put together is between forty and sixty, they're having trouble counting the remains."
>His face made the traversal from curiosity to surprise as his was ready to spit out his drink, but managed to stop himself.
"Shocking, I know."
>"Zero to a hundred REAL quick."
"Well, if you happen to find anything out or have any information you think might be relevant, feel free to phone us anytime." I said as I got up and walked to the door. Turning to shake his hand I caught a glimpse past him at the woman who lived with him, quartering away she looked much the same save for two cropped ears matching her hair color, fades and all with no apparent device to hold them on, and a bushy white tail that was... posing? 
>"You okay? You look like you're having a flashback."
"Late night."
And I walked away.

Chapter Two: The Beginning Of Things.
Sixteen days ago...

>I lie awake in bed watching the sun rise, or, more accurately, watching the room turn from the dark gray tones of night, to a rich blue that resembled not the glow of a blue light, but rather the reflection of that soft glow upon the surfaces of the room.
>What must've been an hour and a half passes while I sit in the fading darkness with only Marina's steady and slow breaths to break the stillness.
>The alarm clock, one of my hobbyist abortions of wires, tubes and an alarm clock makes a few sounds as circuits switch on and a couple mechanical components inside closed the circuit to the radio, faintly lighting up the tubes in the radio as the the warmly distorted sounds began to flow from the speakers.
>Marina's ears twitch slightly and a few seconds pass before she opens her eyes and gives me a contented smile.
>Her smile is shadowed by a note of embarrassment as I bring my hand to her head and pet her, making sure to give a good couple seconds to each ear. "Stop. Please? You know I'd kill you for this if you were anyone else." She says with her smile taking a shy note.
"What are you getting so worked up about? It's only me, and they're adorable."
>"Jason, we've talk about this." she says with a pout.
"Oh stop it. You've got nothing to be so sensitive about. Besides, I know you like it, you can't hide it in your sleep."
>Her face goes beet red "You were petting me while I slept?" She asked as I smiled on at her.
"Yes."
>"How long have you been awake?"
"Hour and a half."
>"And you didn't wake me?"
"It was so peaceful and comfy, your ears are so soft..." I said as I gave her head another stroke.
>"Debil."
"Well. Suppose it's time to get up."
>Marina and I get out of bed and Marina does her daily full body stretch, sending a shudder from her ears to the tip of her tail, fluffy with white fur in stark contrast to her shapely, otherwise hairless and womanly body.
>I turned off the radio, dimming the soft orange glow of the tubes and turning off the music. After we'd showered and dressed, Marina made breakfast while I decided how I would endulge my desire to subject her to discomfort today.
"Hmmmm... what if I-"
>"Jason, breakfast is ready!"
"It's such a pleasant morning, why don't we have breakfast out on the front porch?"
>"But-but, Jason... People could see me." 
"And?"
>"But Jason... I'm a freak! I mean, look at these! These aren't normal!" Marina says, pointing to her ears
"I'm aware, but neither are the literally white hair or the tail, but no one remarks about that. Besides... they're adorable."
>"Okay." Marina says, defeated.
"Come along." I say, taking the dishes from her and leading her out front.
>As we sit outside and begin eating the blue glow on the horizon has begun to give way to the orange and eventual yellow glow of the sun, which as Florida had it, meant that the day was going to be hot. Some of the neighbors even began exiting their houses and walking about, all of whom seemed to walk the same direction down the street.

>"Is it just me, or does the neighborhood already seem a bit restless today? The neighbors seem like they're all going to the same place."
"Could be they found the four kids went missing a couple weeks back. If I remember, they went boating or something and haven't been seen since."
>"The poor families, misisng their children. Should we go and offer our condolences? I could get my hat on and-"
"No."
>"But it feels so insensitive not to-"
"Again, no. Give them their space. It could also be that their new cult is doing well and they're looking for a couple to sacrifice to Moloch or some such satanic clown fucking."
>"You know what? We should go out and take a walk. Maybe head into the forest and go camping?"
"That would be nice. How about we take that walk in like an hour. We can get on that camping trip a bit later in the day. Sound good?"
>"Yes." Marina said, her ears perking up and her face lighting up with excitement. Her pale blue eyes once bleary and drained of energy now practically shooting out of their sockets in excitement.
>Soon enough Marina and I finished up breakfast, washed the dishes in the sink, Marina put on a hat, and we walked out. On the way out of the neighborhood passing the neighbors, gathered in a yard apparently feeling sorry for each other and consoling a few individuals in the crowd, maybe... eight or ten.
>We stopped walking as some of them noticed us, and looked over. 
"What happened to them?"
>One of them let out a long sigh before answering. "They were murdered by the local nicaraguan gang. Fucking pieces of shit beat them to death and marked their bodies."
"That's fucked up. My condolences to the families."
>"The police probably won't be able to bring in whoever did it. The things I'd like to do to those low life shits."
"I get it. Believe me. I just... I got to walk on for the time being."
>"I feel ya."
>With a mutual nod of acknowledgement, We parted company, Marina and I walking on.
>Minutes passed, Marina and I walking together in silent reflection.
>"You were very reserved." Marina remarks, breaking the silence. "It's admirable, but... You and I both know you're capable of helping them make it right."
"Not right. Just. And you're right, dear. I could have them howling for blood in a week's time and a hardened anti gang deathsquad organization in two. But is it worth it? I don't know."
>"We both know why you're hesitant. I understand. But you have the resources and connections to make such a thing happen without any personal connection, cost and I know you won't have remorse."
"Right again I suppose."
>"Then the only reason you're not on the task as of NOW is that you're worried they'll spin out of control and become too powerful or zealous for their own good. Or is it YOUR own good?" Marina remarked.
"That's what I'm contemplating. Obviously I need to give them some degree of independence so I can have an alibi if one of them talks and outs me. I need an absolute, irrevocable and impenetrable out that would completely dissociate me from their actions, initially our actions. Then of course there are the ever present initiation problems in starting a militia. How do we disguise it? Do we? How do we prevent penetration? If law enforcement, and I KNOW there are some law enforcement who live in the neighborhood were to penetrate the group, or were to get information from someone in the group, it could be disastrous. Next comes the issue of stopping the squeals. If we can't keep it a secret, it won't be much of a deathsquad, let alone for any meaningful length of time. We have to start with only a few, we have to disclose information under the guise that it need be kept secret and listen to hear it echo around, keeping note of who was told what."
>"So you have to establish operational security first. This is understandable. How fast could this be done?"
"Probably within five days if we were to work around the clock. But this assumes we skip our camping trip and go to work right away. If that was the case, we could vet the whole neighborhood in five days, taking who we could use and rely on to keep their fucking mouth shut, throwing out any who couldn't."
>"You've put a lot of thought into this very quickly. Why do I get the feeling you've done this before?"
"How do you think I got into a position to find you?"
>"I hadn't thought of that. I just thought of it from my point of view. I'm made, I get put in a box, next thing I know An American is picking me out of the box in the desert and speaking to me in a strange language I didn't understand."
"Yeah. Speaking to a gun I didn't think would ever speak back, or could ever speak back, no less. I suppose I'll just need more time to contemplate the workings of these things."

Chapter Three: Neighborhood Watch Rising.
>Jason is gone now. I don't know where he went, but I am alone, left only in my faith that he will return. Maybe this is why he made every effort to subject me to discomfort. The ears. The interactions. Maybe he did it to prepare me for this day. What he's doing now? I don't know. I didn't think to ask. I can only sit here and wait.
>Marina sits in place, looking into the darkness. Jason having long since departed. Her ears drooped to her head as she sat. It wasn't Dark when Jason left, he had told her what he was doing but she didn't catch it. She thought back to when they'd met, such good times, though Jason thought this particular AK-74N to be another inanimate object like any other gun he'd picked up in his life, remarking only that it was a fine looking rifle, in excellent condition and with such beautiful furniture, sights and such a smooth action that he just couldn't resist the urge to bring it back home after the Afghan campaign. To Marina the most amusing thing about her meeting with Jason was when he first saw her in her human...ish form. Such a nice day it was, Jason had come home from something, work or some other engagement, though the nature of such things whether he muttered to himself that it was work or an engagement always remained nebulous, as it was always her favorite memory in reminiscing when, eight months after he first picked her out of that crate that came out of the ground, two months after he came back from the Afghanistan campaign, he came home one day to see a woman with white hair, not gray, like that of some geriatric, but literally WHITE hair, ears much like those of a Samoyed a fluffy tail that moved and posed instead of hanging limp, beaming at him exclaiming "Добро пожаловать домой, дорогой!" welcoming him home and lunging to him, wrapping her arms around him. To her, the best part of this moment of surprise was when she brought her head back from his chest and met his utterly stoic and confused gaze. It would be several more months before the two of them could easily communicate with each other while she, so obviously insecure about her ears that even he could tell without speaking a word of Russian, had to put on a hat and accompany him around, learning English by immersion. That was six years ago, when she still had a poor command of the English language and words such as "that" were pronounced with a "Z" at the leading end rather than a typical "TH", not to mention it would be another two years before she grasped the concept of "vehicle," and understood the use of words such as "The," though she still had the accent. That would probably never go away. Not that she cared unless Jason was irritated by it, and he thought it was cute.
"Marina! I'm home!" came the call for which she'd waited the whole day. Jason opening the door to be greeted by the familiar sensation of the little Russian rifle eagerly embracing him.
>"Jason, my love, how did it go?" she said just before drawing him in for a kiss
"Things are progressing quickly,the group are all very tight lipped, and while they may not be sharp shooters, their reflexes and accuracy in shooting at targets up close is phenomenal. In just two days, they'll be testing the breakdown of their value of human life, and in three they'll be trained up enough to use some pf the heacier equipment my contacts have gotten us. Though I doubt an operation of this nature at ANY size will be discreet enough to use the attack helicopter.I should call Tim about that."
>"Splendid! Come, sit down, you must be exhausted." Marina replied, guiding Jason to the couch and nuzzling into him as soon as he'd been seated. It was moments like this Jason enjoyed. Sure, he had the capacity to lay waste to people by the hundreds without remorse, but by no means was he inhuman.
"So, were you okay here while I was out?" Jason asked, lovingly stroking Marina's hair.
>"I was lonely, but other than that, yes." Marina responded.
"I promise when we start out I'll take you with me."
>"Shhhh. Just... let me enjoy this." Marina said with a finger to Jason's lips before contentedly sinking into his side. She could tolerate Jason's efforts to force her out of her comfort zone, it was a small price to her for company and affection. Especially for someone who she held so dear, and knew would return those affections. 
>The night wore on, Jason showered and joined Marina in bed, snugging up to her and welcoming the embrace of sleep. Marina wondered while her remaining energy was channeled into staying conscious. What was it that made Jason so affectionate toward her, you so... cold to the suffering of others? He'd seen his fair share, and here he was coldly bending the neighbors into a deathsquad, yet for her there was warmth and affection instead of cold indifference.
>The only secret Jason could keep from Marina was this solitary answer. What drove him? What did he truly value? What happened in his head? Six years had shaped the truth to her, but it didn't seem specific,was there only one thing? Surely not. But those he determined to be enemies got no remorse or empathy from him, in the six months she sat as his backup rifle, she'd seen and heard enough, at least in the vague expressions of screams of agony to know his was not the face of mercy, but why... 

Two days later.
>I've trained the neighborhood watch into a bunch of mentally unhinged recluses who live in a nightmare alternate reality fueled entirely by small bits of ideas engraved into their collective consciousness. Marina is in her rifle form and in my hands as I wait. Tonight we go to the warehouse district on the south side of the town. My outs have been worked out, but hopefully the militia remains low enough that I never have to remember them, or dig up the notes on them. Today we're just getting their hands dirty.
>Phase one began as the forty people pulled up, suppressed SMGs at the ready, My own Marina wearing a suppressor with an oversized bore, as her threads are not concentric. I set the selector to the middle setting marked AB for avtomat, and draw her charging handle back. 
>It begins, bullets start flying as crackles are heard from the other side of the warehouse, I sight in on one of the guards onthis side of the warehouse as he turns on his heal and fire a burst into his rear right flank from behind a conex box as the other five guards, clad in bluejeans wifebeaters and green bandanas, showing off their many religious tatoos of likely catholic origin develop a similar condition in the next two seconds. 
>Banging is heard from the other end of the warehouse as flashbangs and M-67 Frag Grenades begin detonating.
n seconds the twenty or so guards INSIDE are reduced to four, who are quickly pinned down, managing to get one magazine off between them before bullets pierce cover and ventilate them. 
"Fuck that's a lot of weed heroin and coke, YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO!" I call as I begin to dig some pyrotechnical charges out of my rig and flip a switch, turning on a green light before tossing them into the stashes of drugs. 
"This whole city's gonna be high in an hour, I want you gone in two minutes!" I yell to the other side of the warehouse while the half the charges are still being thrown.
"Rally at objective Apperture!" Comes my last order before I rush back to the Pickup truck on route to a known Hideout of the local chapter of the crips.

>The vehicles disperse. Easy shit so far. Using these tactics of showing up quickly and disappearing quickly after using overwhelming amounts of firepower and high volume fire was working just as I'd figured. In forty-five minutes the warehouse would be a blaze worthy of every pyromaniac and junkie's dreams or nightmares, more than likely giving off toxic fumes that would have a tangible effect on the city's production, and almost certainly on the news.
>As the teams converged and radioed in that they were in position, I loaded a fresh mag into Marina and rolled down the window. With my newest accessory in my rig, I cued the driver to start rolling, giving the radio signal to the other team. We came to a park a quarter block away, and set up, two teams of four on each side, and began our work. 
>Flashbangs went in partially cooked and men starting firing into the windows and dropping bodies, I came through the window and began my sweep of the house.
>The door to the room I was in linked the the main hallway, I opened it and cleared the end of the hallway to my left, then bounded out to my right, seeing a black man in bluejeans and a white tee shirt, a blue bandana on his face swinging a MAC10 at me.
>I pour him a ten round burst.
>I see a mass run across my vision and fire a burst at it, unsure if I hit it, the bright colored shirt giving his affiliation away. Another comes, this one bending down to pick up the mac before I spray him with a five round burst while a longer burst shreds him.
>"FRIENDLY." comes the call from the source of the burst. 
"Team one!" I call back to ackowledge.
>Two men cross the hall, one looking at me, recognizing me in the black shirt and vest, while the other procedes ahead. 
>I round the lefthand corner to see a small sitting room, the man on point kicking into a bathroom, cries coming out 
^"AY, YO MANG! YOU CAN'T DO THIS!"^ the paniced and pitch elevated voice squeals before a deeper, youthful voice clearly no older than twenty five boomed out.
>"MY MEMES ARE IRONIC...*Seven round burst from smg* MY DEPRESSION IS CHRONIC!" *five round burst* 
>Calls of clear are hollared out as the man on point comes out of the bathroom reloading.
>I pull spray paint cans from my vest and spray a crude crucifix with the words "LOS DIABLOS TURF, Niggas!" on a wall and call for the teams to clear the fuck out quick as fuck. 
>"That was fucking awesome!" comes one of the voices as we diverge back to our vehicles and leave the scene, carefully watching to make sure any witnesses present were dead, luckily only the people in the house we raided were around to see us.

>We arrived back to our neighborhood through the darkened rural road route, and stashed guns and equipment as practiced. In three quarters of an hour it'd be midnight, and nothing would look out of place, our staggered approach patterns and 
choice of targets ensuring no one we didn't kill would see us engaging in illegal activity. 
"Three minutes and fifty-eight seconds of action, must've been something like forty kills and we've provoked a gang war we aren't involved in. Now we keep it quiet."
>I walk back into the house with Marina, the neighborhood watch meeting concluded for the next couple days. Marina once again in her human-ish form, even while I still carry the rifle. Marina and I sit in the garage.
"Now lets get you clean."
>"You know, Jason, I appreciate this, but... do you really feel you have to use corrosive ammo?"
"No, I kinda realized I had it and was too lazy to unload all the mags."
>"Oh really? Not because you like getting inside me?" Marina said, draping her arms on my chest and head on my left shoulder while I stripped her bolt and patches her down with solvent, paying close attention to everything between the muzzle and the trigger group.
"Well, you think I LIKE the smell of hoppes?"
>"You don't say no when I wear it."
"Well... when you wear it, it's like a scent, not a sickeningly thick vapor, like its liquid form." I say while brushing out her gas tube.
>"Well that ugh. That at least makes sense. Hey what are you doing huuuuuuuu~" Marina gets out as I scrub the carbon and salts off her piston.
>While I brush and patch her bore, I notice Marina is being awfully quiet, seemingly just enjoying her pampering until I finish applying a film of oil to her bore when.
>"uuuhhuhuhuhuhuh." escapes her as she shudders a little, her rifle form disappearing from my hands. "Jason, Folllow me, NOW." She says, taking my hand and leading me at a brisk pace before we arrived in the bedroom and she pushed me onto the bed.
>Before I knew it a naked Marina had stripped me and reduced my mind to a twitching blur.
>I woke the next morning to Marina shifting around on top of me, lying on my body like a living blanket.
>"Oh. You're awake. Back to sleep. Five more minutes." She demands. I'm not one to defy her when she's lying naked on top of me, resting her head on the base of my neck. I'll just enjoy the moment for the time being.
>I close my eyes and put my hands around her while I drift back to sleep. 
Why not? I think we've earned it after last night.
>the alarm goes off.
>As I look over to it I see that it's ten in the morning. Not as bad as many degenerates, but unusually late. As Marina's head rises, her eyes meet mine before she draws me in for a kiss and rolls off me.
"Did you... change the alarm clock?"
>"Yes. After all that shooting last night, you deserve to sleep in." she replies.
"Oh, right. We did a lot of that."
>"And not just the killing kind." She teases. As we start to get up, I notice something.
"What did we do?" I ask, probing for an answer to why my joints are sore.
>"Like I said, shooting. you were amazing."
"Oh. THAT's why my joints are sore."
>"Come on, lets see what our work is doing in the news." Marina said before stretching, and bounding out of the room in only a small tee shirt and a pair of panties, leaving me to find some shorts and wander out with her. 
>"In other news, approximately forty eight dead in large scale gang violence across town this morning, as thirty three bodies of gang members with prior convictions have been found in warehouse and industrial districts, with another ten were found in an abandoned industrial building, and five more scatter across town this morning, inspectors are warning to lock your doors and exercise caution if you live in thenvicinity of these districts. On the fire desk, we have reports of a warehouse fire which is now seventy percent controlled in the afforementioned warehouse district, and the sherrif released a statement confirming this will be investigated as an arson."
"Hmm. Son of a bitch."
>"forty eight dead?" Marina questioned, looking to the screen with a puzzled expression.
"At least five of them were actual gang violence, I figure. Hang on, I have to make a call."
>"Ok. Ooh, I got a request, see if he can get me some bakelite magazines, I want plum!" Marina calls 
"But we have like ten of those."
>"Oh. Right. Well, can you get me some ammo that isn't 7N6?"
"Alright, less work for me anyway."
>As I got to the other room and dialed the phone, I made sure to close any blinds that might be open and seal any points through which the sound of my conversation might be recorded. Seconds passed as the phone rang.
>"Hello?"
"Tim, hows it going?"
>"Well, I remember some business with you and I look on the news this morning... did you start a central american drug cartel? Did you do this?"
"Hehehe, no I didn't start a central american drug gang."
>"I see, so what do you need?"
"Some of the good food, some night shades if you got'em. Maybe take back the um. Helicopter."
>"I can certainly do all that, but you know, you didn't say you DIDN'T have anything to do with that."
"Wha- oh, right. You got a moral problem with that?"
>"No sir, I personally think it's overdue, so I'll show my support with some of the good stuff. Prepare for some of the good Liquid, motherfucker!"
"That's what I like to hear. See you at the usual place and time." The line went dead and I dropped the phone.
>Walking back into the room I sit back on the couch and Marina assumes her place on my side nuzzled up against me while we sat.


Chapter 4: The Dark Side Of The Mind.
Groom Lake Airforce installation, 2016.
>I sit in a void of darkness, the voices coming and going. I know I was placed in this void, and it was somewhere else, I know I had to have been moved, but I do not know anymore where, only that I used to know where I was put in this void. 
>The balance is perfect, between levels of noise so low that they register as negative decibels and cause one to hear the forces acting internal to their body, and noise levels that would allow me to perceive brownian noise anytime I'm not moving.
>"They don't want you." a voice comes, just subtle enough to be in my head, yet... I wouldn't.... would I? "They want to destroy you." Comes the voice again. loud enough to hear, not loud enough to have come from someone else. 
>"They have no value." the void says.
>"Hide yourself, don't show your darkness." 
"You know, I don't remember anything specifically from before this void... I remember remembering, but it's all such a blur. A single fuzzy tablaeu with no meaning, only a moment that was once twenty years."
>"They would destroy you. Hide within yourself." came another whisper from the void. "Let the truth lie in the dark, even if in the open, let them do your will." 
"Are you... crazy?" I ask the no one in the nothing before me. I feel an odd sensation, the sensation feels like my mind simply becoming empty.
>"Hide yourself in their number." the last whisper comes before I feel my consciousness drift from me. I seemingly only ever see this place and hear these voices after I go to bed, but... I don't actually remember going to bed where I wake up. It seems a new place each time.
>A light seems to pull me. It's so far and so dim that I can barely see it, but so bright at the same time that even with hands over my eyes I can't seem to drown it out.
>I open my eyes to a white room, I'm layed out in a cot, the light above me is to the right and... well, It was to the left and in the directon of my feet, when I went to sleep. Come to think of it, the walls were a subtle off white, not the glossy bright color they are.
>"Private Rogers, I hope you're hungry!" Came a female voice from my right. For some reason I was conflicted. I wanted more than anything to reply with the utmost cruelty I could command but something not only kept me from coming up with something, it only told me to say "Yes, thank you."
>After I ate and the woman left wiith a smile and my tray I sat in the room. Waiting.
>The door finally opens, A sergeant stepling in and instructing me to follow him, leading me through a maze of hallways with sun glaring through the windows. We come to a door marked "EXIT." Upon walking through the door, a first disorienting contrast occurs. The moonlight casts a silver tone on the sergeants face as he tells me to walk into the cargo bay of a nearby plane. As I wall in, the ramp closes, and a voice tells me to sit down. The next wait commences.

Afghanistan, February 2018.
>"Jason, what do we do with the locals?"
"It's fucking simple, ain't it Johnson, you fucking idiot. First we frenzy them, then we turn them loose on the local insurgent faction, THEN we leak our manufactured compromising information on their leaders and watch them collapse." 
>"How do we frenzy them in the first place?" 
"Must I be the only one here blessed with a brain cell? Dress up like a goatfucker and shoot a couple of them just away from witnesses. Even better, LET THERE be witnesses. Then we can conclusively point the finger at whoever you claim to be."
>"Why are we doing this?"
"Simple, the conflict will draw more victims for the neurtron bomb."
>I remember a lot of things from those days I don't tell anyone. I suppose I've become more normal since then, but you can never really take back calling in a neutron bomb on the justification of "Because it's cool," can you? Not that I considered them people anyway. After all they were enemies from the start, I just didn't tell them. I still feel nothing for them. 
>I found later from leaked documents what had happened to me, at least what the voices were. It had been maybe a week after I got home that a program was exposed in which candidates were taken to bases, and moved into sensory deprivation chambers while they slept, subjected to depricating suggestion to instill a general misanthropy into them, and condition them to hiding their personality to blend with, or rather remain separate from, and unempathetic to those they'd be tasked to fight. It changed... nothing, but it did explain why to this day I still don't remember the time between 1996 and 2016.
>To say the leaks changed nothing isn't to say the change didn't come. I came home to my house in good ol' Florida and one day I came home to a woman in my house who'd seen me and with no reason to see me as good, embraced me with an expression seemingly of joy, as I later found she was my own AK-74.
>Whether she knew about the neutron bomb or not, or what I first used her for, remained unknown, but she clearly held affection for me, despite most quite possibly knowing I'd spent my entire known life as a walking malignancy. I suppose I wanted to change for her. To give her a reason to have those affections for me. Maybe one day I'll even find out what was in the twenty years before I walked out of the room that day.
Sometimes I lose myself in the progression of time as I recount, but I always have to double take on that day. Such things many would consider attrocities I did with only minor hesitation. 

April 13 2018 The Day it dropped.
>I drop pictures of Mahmud muhammed or whatever the fuck his name is fucking a goat into the slot of a young man who had been contending for control of their particular insurrection. Leaving I find that in a matter of an hour at the most the streets are flooding with people on all sides in the movement at eachother's throats. Truly a marvel.
"Let's get the fuck out of here." I say to Johnson when we begin our trip to the extract and our team of...specialists... board the helicopter, just then this woman with a wounded child comes running toward us. The child clearly mangled beyond saving, practically cooling off already. 
"Yes, I'm calling a strike with a neutron bomb, ON MY POSITION..." I pause my support call as I look up to her, clearly not in the know that she and her cult of rocks and goat shit were the enemy no matter what we spurred them to do.
>"Respond!!!" came the radio
"Mark my position, I want a neutron bomb where I'm currently standing." I say as I step into the cargo bay. As she attempts to board I simply smirk and push her back out. 
>"RESPOND!" comes the radio again.
"Sorry, what?"
>"What is your reason for calling this strike?"
"Because it's cool, tell the general that, he'll get it."
>"Wait one." A mile of distance forms between the helicopter and the strike point before the dispatch comes back "Support granted, ETA forty minutes."
"Good copy, we'll be at safe distance before then." Come my last transmission over the net.
>"So... you called in a neutron bomb 'because it's cool,' and it got approved? Fucking legendary."
"Yeah. It's happening, isn't it!? It's REALLY happening. Nice."
>"How's it feel to be the fourth horseman?" 
"Cool, I guess."
>Looking back, even if they were enemies, it would have been at least more proper in operating procedure to shoot her, if not more decent than leaving her while the neutron bomb made its way there. 

June 2018 
>I walk into my house, having just made a... financial arrangement which profited me greatly, ensuring that for at least another many years I could focus on hobbies, or making my own weaponry, even just general crafts. Somehow something was very satisfying about taking a high difficulty shot at a thousand yards and watching that bullet arc down into the target.
"...There'll be forty nine broken hearts when I-" My singing stops as I step past the door and turn, seeing a white haired woman with what looked like the ears of a Samoyed dog and a wagging tail. Her arms together in front of her as though she were sitting proper.
>She takes only a split second to scan me from head to foot and back before an obvious smile overtakes her face. She shouts something that innately sounds Russian before sprinting to me and wrapping her arms around me, burying her face in my chest for a moment before drawing back, then leaning up on her toes to kiss me on the cheek.
>She's visibly amused by my apparent confusion, not just at her identity, or more precisely her motivation for being in my house, but also at her non human features. Plenty of people wore fake ears and tales, but the ears didn't blend in with their hair and the tales didn't move aside from swinging under inertia. I can only imagine what my face must've looked like while she tried to explain with the translator software on my phone, in russian no less, that she was my rifle.
Pesent day.

>I finally come to my senses, an endeavor so normal it didn't merit remembering even a moment after completion had finally come to an end. I'd met with this guy before, and before him I met with another guy for reasons that were similar but different.
>The similarities started and stopped of course, in the essence of my deeds. I turned a group of people into bloodthirsty death machines where the group I sought to eliminate would never expect it. After all, who would expect of all things, THE FUCKING NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH to be death machines who manipulated the politics of ganglife and warfare? let alone by killing street gangsters in the dozens. The difference though, were that those I'd converted were people to me, their fates mattered, and this time, meeting this kind of man, I hadn't come alone, I had Marina with me, and genuinely cared what happened to her.
>We stepped from the truck to see Tim, the local disposal expert for this neck of the woods, if you needed government hardware, this was almost certainly the guy to talk to. They needed rid of it, after all. We approached him as he stood in place.
>"Who's the woman?"
"I ain't tellin' you, but we can trust her."
>"Any reason not to tell me her name?"
"It would defeat the purpose if I told you."
>"Of course. Well, I got the night vision goggles and the lasers. I'll take care of the attack helicopter for you. I've unloaded them for you, of course as requested I've brought the ammo for your AK at home. Non corrosive is what you wanted right?" 
"Correct."
>"Well, if you don't need any more help, I'll be,on my way." Tim said, waiting a moment for a reply before getting in his supply truck and driving away.
>Marina and I were at home in another hour with a truckload of nightvision goggles, infrared lasers, helmets and of course a couple crates of non corrosive 5.45X39 ammunition.

>The time came to escalate things, and I happened to know just the time and place.
"Marina, could you be a darling and do me a favor?"
>"What do you need?" 
"Go around the neighborhood and call the watch to meeting. We need to distribute the night vision and the lasers. Of course AFTER we unload the crates of ammo for you."
>"Oh. Ok." She replies with a slight nerve in her voice.
>in about an hour everyone simultaniously converges on my front lawn, looking up at the moon and waiting for me to speak.
>As I walk out a man of about fifty, probably a veteran of the first Iraq war by his marine corps hat asks the first question of the meeting. 
>"What's this about? It's getting late, you know."
"I know, I just thought now would be the perfect time, follow me." 
>I led them to the garage where the truck was packed, and opened the tailgate, pulling out two cases, one oblong, and the other rectangular. 
"I figured now would be the right time for THIS." I say, opening the oblong case first, revealing a helmet.
>"A helmet?" one of them asks, clearly a relatively young member.
"Not just any helmet, a ballistic helmet. They provide protection against pistol caliber rounds up close, rifle rounds from far enough, shrapnel, and best of all you can mount ear protection to them... ooh, and they have a shroud for this." I say as I open the rectangular case, pulling a duel tube night vision goggle and a mount, snapping it to the helmet and seating the interface shoe into the mount.
"Everyone take one tan case, and one black case. play with it in your own house, but don't break it, we'll be training with it tomorrow night and using it in operations will be almost manditory."
>in a matter of minutes most of the night vision units had been taken along with helmets. The next couple hours would almost certainly be spent playing with the new NVGs, but for Marina and I? Well, we had... other curiosities to attend to.

Chapter 5: In The Middle Of Things/The Prototypes.
"Marina, I don't think you're gonna like this."
>"Please tell me you didn't actually go through with the straighpull rifle."
"I didn't actually go through with the straightpull rifle." I answer in a dry tone.
>"Jason be serious with me- BE FUCKING SERIOUS WITH ME!" She begins, agitated to the point that her accent became thick.
"I AM serious. The straightpull rifle is still just a drawing on a piece of paper."
>"Then WHAT DID YOU. NO, YOU FUCKING DIDN'T!" She barked, her agitated state more than a little amusing. "WHERE IS IT?" She asked, clearly it was all she could do to keep her voice below a scream that reverted to Russian.
"They." I answered, a wild fist coming at my face, only failing to crack my skull by the fact that I saw it coming and leaned back and to the right.
>"YOU MADE TWO?!"
"YUP."
>"Кaкoгo чepтa! BЫ BЫPAЖAETECЬ CЫHOM C TOБOЙ !!!" She started, her eyes bulging from their sockets as she screamed profanities, almost every single word of which flew right over my head.
"Marina, calm down."
>"NO! I TOLD YOU NOT TO DO THAT, YOU COULD DO ANYTHING BUT THAT AND THE STRAIGHTPULL RIFLE, BUT YOU SOMEHOW MADE THOSE... Abominations." She says, emphasizing the last word.
"So I made a couple modifications to the FN MAG technical drawings and made a couple 
M-240's chambered in .300 RUM, what's the big fucking deal?"
>"I-IS THAT A QUESTION?"
"Yeah, it's not like being .300 RUM and a belt fed general purpose machine gun means they'd actually-"
>"Shut the fuck up. You'd better hope there aren't fucking geists in those bolts... WAIT, DID YOU DO IT MANUALLY?"
"What?"
>"MAKING THE BOLTS, DID YOU DO IT MANUALLY?"
"YES, WHY IS THIS A PROBLEM?"
>"That's it, you're officially the most reprehensible person I've ever met, and the last one stuck me in a box to be buried in the sand for forty years." marina scolded."Absolutely heretical." she said before walking away from me, clearly not interested in my defense.
>The sound of a door slamming could be heard across the house as she locked the bedroom door. I walked to the door and knocked.
"So that's a 'no' on the raid tonight?"
>The only answer came after several seconds.
>The sound of an AK bolt being cycled, and feeding a round into the chamber.

>I know when I'm the problem. The way she said it though... Did manual machining increase the odds of geists being in the bolts? Whatever, I care about her, so I'll leave her. Maybe she'll cool down eventually, maybe she'll kill me when I get back. In either case I have a raid to stage.
>I get to the garage and open up the parts cabinet, two extra long M-240 receivers, feed trays elongated to allow the feeding of the admittedly rather large rounds. It was time for the assembly process to begin. They'd been tested at the range, of course they didn't draw much attention, seeing as anything went these days, the NFA having been repealed somewhere around 2017 or 2018.

>In short order I turned two heaps of parts into two M-240's in .300 Remington Ultra Magnum. 

>What possessed me to build these monstrosities was a question even to me, the ammo stockpiled over a course of years was certainly not cheap, not even by the standards of those who loaded fifty cal ammo, at three dollars a shot. Links were interestingly easy to adapt, but only good for a single use, as they typically snapped as the round was extracted, luckily they reliably spit out the bottom when fired, the barrels length reduced from twenty-four to eighteen inches.
>As I started toting them to the truck, I noted that the guns, normally the Lima model, being the lightest of the FN MAG family at twenty three pounds felt about as heavy as the older and Bravo variant.

All that was truly left was to call the watch to meeting and brief them... And pray that the geists either weren't there or that Marina's apparent dread was misplaced.
>I walked out to the neighborhood and called the watch to a meeting, the prototypes in my truck, the time passing. Life in 2024 felt so... odd. There was a heavy note of silence in the air as I awaited the congregation of this particular creation of mine. An hour passed before the first of them showed up. A woman with an AK, about fifty-five years of age, hair as grayed out as it got, her glare was as hostile as any one would see in their lifetime. Maybe her grandchild was one of those who'd died almost four weeks ago. Soon more showed up, all wearing the same expression.
>"Where's your AK, Jason?" One of them, a forty five year old man asked, looking me over with realization.
"She's not coming this time. I've got some prototypes to test anyway. Anyone want to volunteer?"
>"What kind of prototype? I'd think those big machine guns a couple of us have on our trucks would be enough, it wasn't easy to improvise a way of hiding them, you know."
"I understand, however this is going to be not only a rather heavy strike, but a new evaluation for something I haven't seen anywhere else. We're going to be striking a house party on MLK drive with an expected guest list of over forty people. The house will be densely packed, if you volunteer for prototype duty, you'll sit in the same truck bed as I will, and you'll firing only about a hundred rounds before you put it down and jump out with your main weapon."
>"So what's the plan?" finally came the question.
"Follow me. You're gonna like this." I say, leading them to the garage and showing them satellite view of the target. An empty lot behind it the perfect vector for the flamethrowers to go to work on the back of the house, run around and link up with the vehicles while funneling the party goers, most of whom are street thugs with priors into the guns on the trucks and the line of fire of the shoot teams. They stood effectively no chance of survival.
>"I'll take the prototype." Came the middle aged man.
"Good, you'll be riding under the bed cover with me, I've got the M-2 mounted there. we ride under the camper shell and swing it open when we start shooting, then we'll swing it back down and lie under it while we make our escape."
>"Easy enough."
"I want two volunteers to pick up those flamethrowers over there and be ready, they'll be dropped off in the lot behind the house and as soon as they hear any shooting from the front, I want them to start torching the back and burning any routes of escape, as well as any backyard and side party goers. They'll rapidly advance to the front before providing fire from the side and into the house, meanwhile we'll carefully start emptying heavy machine guns and all our other weaponry into the house and anyone coming out. I fully expect that we'd spend no more than two or three minutes on location before we make our escape."
>We waited until the sun went down, inserting flamethrowers, loading the heavy machineguns and the prototypes. It was perfect.
>The vehicles come to a stop and the heavy machinegunner swings the camper shell off, the first of the shots come out, several people standing out front of the house being gunned down in the matter of a second and a half as the light of the flamethrower begins to glow from behind the house, a few screams reaching us as the back of the house is consumed in fire and I begin to hear automatic fire from both small arms and the two heavy machine guns roar while we heft the prototypes up, bringing them to bare on the house, and pushing the cross bolt safeties to expose the red section of their shafts.
>The sound of thunder filling the air seems to thicken as the .300 RUM machine guns begin to fire, no amount of ear protection could have spared anyone's ears from hearing damage as the forty automatic weapons began firing on the house, though we were all thankful for plugs and muffs...
>The 300 RUM fired for a solid ten seconds before The middle aged man ran out of ammo, switching to his G-3 rifle, firing from a fifty round drum into the house as gang bangers began to emerge, many of who were wounded or scorched just focused on running like hell away from the fire or getting out of the house where the gunshots were perforating the air without regard for the lives of those within. 
>No screams could be heard as those within the house were drowned out by the sounds of a DShK an M-2, My own prototype now beginning to fire again, and the thirty five or so automatic rifles and submachineguns being emptied at the house and its occupants, reloaded and emptied again, the flamethrowers had by now made their way around the entrance and fired in all side entrances or escape vectors, setting the rooms within on fire and were now firing from the sides of the entrance, merely emptying the remains of their fuel, before ten seconds later retreating to the safety of their designated vehicles.
>A flash comes from the window of the house, prompting me to swing the prototype onto him, visibly disemboweling him as he fell even among the chaos and stimuli of the strike, The man next to me finishes his second drum and goes for one of the two AT-4s in the bed of the truck, firing it right as I finish my second belt with the prototype and reach for the other, firing it in the other half of the house.
>The shoot teams advance on the house emptying a couple magazines in bursts each into the house and the bodies on the lawn before moving back to their vehicles, beginning to fire into any and all visible windows. All was going according to plan. the heavy machine gunners orient their guns forward before flipping the camper shells back over the guns who the rest of the shooters keep the neighborhood pinned
>In another few seconds we find ourselves driving away at a rapid pace as the house behind us burns, picking a load of assorted alleyways about a mile away to stop a car at a time separating from the convoy and ripping masking tape off their license plates and driving out a different direction, a tightly choreographed schedule becoming a dictating window in which the cars had to drive out into the country, and come around the rural roads to a road that led into our neighborhood at a seemingly random and unconnected rate. Synchronization between our arrivals seemed to hold no interval. A true praise to the neighborhood watch monster than I have created.

>My vehicle arrives into the neighborhood somewhere in the middle of the schedule, seemingly an hour and a half later. As we pull into my garage, the door closing before we begin dismantling the M-2 and stashing it in a locker. The location of which would be invisible to all but the most unscrupulous inspectors with the best tools for detecting a hollow spot under the floor in tow. 
>I invite the shoot team in my truck into my house for a shot, and two of them oblige.
"Anything i can offer you?" I say opening the liquor cabinet, noting that the two bottles of vodka, one having previously half full are missing from the cabinet, but not skipping a beat, lest the neighbors start talking about some kind of domestic problem between 'The woman that lives with Jason' and I.
"Scotch, mash... Gin?"
>"Scotch." The five of them state in unison. I pull out six glasses and pour us all a shot or two.
"Bill, nice trigger work on the prototype."
>"Thanks, but what I gotta know is where you get these ideas... or this hardware."
"For the hardware, I might tell you later, if I decide that the watch needs to operate independent of me. Or that I want out."
>"You want out? You create a monster or something?"
"No, not yet anyway. Just gotta keep the doors open."
>"Yeah, I suppose it's a thin line we're walking, going around like some sort of death squad. But... what would you do if you had to STOP us from operating?"
"Hard to say, I don't think, even with as much faith as you guys have shown, even for a second that I could just get you to stop by asking or demanding. I don't think I'd be able to take you all at once, and I seriously doubt anything would REALLY stop you from operating directly."
>"Hmm. Definitely one of the harder things to contemplate I suppose."
"Certainly. On the other hand, what would YOU do to stop ME? Not much I think."
>"And what makes you think that?" Bill prods.
"Well, consider if you will, that I got you all this equipment and trained you to operate it. Consider that I am currently the only link between you and the supplier, and none of you have to any apparent extent made yourselves independent of me to operate, and that if you TRIED, you wouldn't have the first idea of how, let alone WHERE to start and who to talk to, and on the unlikely probability you do, you'll NEVER get equipment like that which I've given you, to which I can easily cut off the supply. Sure you'd be able to operate for some time on what you have,and at great expense you could merely sustain some of it... but you'd never be able to use or acquire it on the scale that we have. How many rounds have we EACH fired in the past few days? five thousand? Seven?"
>"I see. So, I know you won't answer this, but where did you get those prototypes? A .300 RUM machine gun? That's not something you ever see."
"You're wrong about that one, I WILL answer you. I made it."
>"You MADE that thing?"
"Yep."
>"How did you come up with that? Why even?"
"I don't know really what possessed me to do it, I just wanted to see if I COULD. Maybe, as Marina suggested, I was so caught up in whether I COULD that I never stopped to think I SHOULD. Three dollars a round is expensive for a general purpose machine gun, after all."
>"Hahaha, maybe so. Anyway, I suppose it's time I head home, try to get some sleep."
>"yeah, I should probably get going too."
"I feel ya, brother. hey, on your way out just do me a favor?"
>"sure." one of them replies, to which I walk into the garage, coming back with the prototypes.
"Two of you take these, keep'em or pass them to someone single... Those faggots have too much money, they clearly need machine guns in a caliber that has no business in a machine gun. If nothing else, they can be some nice little curiosities of your collection that you shoot once in a while."
>"...What's the catch?"
"Three bucks a round. And the belt links are easily bent into shape to take the .300 RUM casing, just crack when they feed, so you can only use the links once. I got a thousand rounds of belts left, take it."
>"...After all that time and investment that must have went into that, it seems like there'd have to be a good reason to get rid of it."
"Ok, you got me, the links only work once, it costs three bucks a shot and they're taking up more space than I'd like. That's all."
>"Well, ok. That's all you had to say." one of them says. 
>In another couple minutes they'd departed, two prototype general purpose machineguns and five hundred rounds of .300RUM on belts each for the two that wanted them in tow.
"Fuck that was too long, I need to check on Marina." I manage to mutter past my own exhaustion 
>I walk into the bedroom and find Marina on the floor, she is lying on her side, vomit streaming out of her mouth. I kneel down and pick her up, making sure to further roll her over to drain the vomit from her mouth. 
>could be worse. could have been on her back and fucked up her bolt...
>I take her out of her clothes and put her in my bed, making sure to tuck her in on her side and clean up the vomit and the bottles. 
"Well. Guess I'm taking the couch tonight. Sleep tight...Fucking drunk." I whisper before I leave the room and take up the couch for the night.
>I find myself alone, in my living room around sunset, looking around the house I find no trace of... anything. Nothing at least that I didn't have before I went off in 2017 to start the next war... had the next seven years been a dream? Cerainly not I'd like to think.
>As I struggled to put it all together, I walked around the house, this place With which I'd shared my solitude for... seven more years? 
>As I walked outside the house, looking at the streets, I had to wonder where everyone was. Granted in the twenty-first century neighbors didn't tend to be outside their houses, and neighborhoods were reminiscent of ghost towns, but... this wasn't right.
>I looked up at the sky to see that it was dark, as though night had set, but that the neighborhood and its features seemed to be lit as though the sun was still above the crest of the horizon.

>I walked back into my house, and looked at the clock on the wall.
"Sure enough. July twenty-ninth twenty seventeen. I'm due to the base tomorrow. But... wasn't there someone else? wait... someone else... that's not. Me. I don't care about people... do I?"

>I walked into the garage, seeing my old sedan that I could have sworn I sold.
"This can't be real. I'm in a fever drea-"
>In an instant the lights came on.
>Not the house lights... spotlights.
>The house darkened immediately as though the sun had finally set on the earth as it had on the sky. Suddenly the world was no longer the silent chamber of echoing sounds that it'd been... this wasn't right.
>"JASON ROGERS! COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP!" came a voice from the ether outside the house. "WE KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE! COME OUT OF WE WILL BURN YOU OUT!"

>What seemed like hours passed, as I struggled to move my limbs, or make a noise, managing only to tire myself as though I was moving through light epoxy and rasping in a low volume at the sounds echoing from the ether.
>"HAVE IT YOUR WAY! FIRE!" came the voice again.
>The thunder starts.
>In a flash furniture around the house begins shattering and splintering, lamps breaking and couches spawling out as bullets pass through their cushions and structure, then it happens. A sharp pain in my side errupts as one of the rounds now perforrating the building hits me on the top of the pelvis, then another to the ribs, and one just below them.
>The world goes black as I fall fo the floor.
>The pain in my side persists, the black world that was once the dream giving way to an oncoming sense of awareness.
>What had been the floor of a relatively empty house gave way to the lightly colored ceiling, a dull mumble at first, and then a sharp exclamation bombarding my ears.
>I came to consciousness with heartrate elevated, respiratory rate resting. I quickly took in a sharp breath to make up for the lack of oxygen that had been caused by my low resting respiratory rate.
>in seconds I was partially alert, parts of my body still asleep as I'd been rushed to awaken, the pain in my side still persistent.
>"Where are the prototypes? I want them OUT OF THIS HOUSE!"
"What- oh, they are out of the house."
>"Oh? what did you do with them?"
"I handed them off to a couple of the neighbors." 
>"You'd better hope any geists in those things were dormant, or that they don't come out with some mental aborition that makes them kill their owners or something!"
"What's the big deal?"
>"It's a DEFORMITY, an abomination Jason."
"Well, it's someone else's problem now, and if nothing else, they'll have a large geist who's cheaper to take fine dining every night than shoot once a month."
>"You're right... Probably. It's just such an irresponsible thing to do, You remember they're huge, right?"
"Yes, I remember. I just..." I let out a sigh and caught my breath before continuing on, knowing that more than likely Marina was kicking my side to wake me up. "You were right, I just got caught up on if I could. Can ya forgive me?"
>Marina's rage falls from her face, as she sighs and sits down, the wind taken from her sails as she looks at me.
>"Jason, what do you care about?" I had to think, seriously consider a ponderance that usually left me stumped in the past as I thought about it, or I never thought about it in the first place.
>As I considered and weighed what it really was... I finally reached an uncertain conclusion.
"There's only two things. The first one is you, but the second isn't so clear. I guess it's some sense of being useful. Having a skill that I can use for something besides the malignancy I usually inflict on people."
>"I guess that makes sense. I need a cigarette." Marina remarks, going for her pack that she dug into occasionally. I got up from the couch and followed suit.
"Mind if I join you?"
>"Sure." 
>Marina and I stood out on the back porch as she handed me a cigarette. Smoking had been a habit I never really picked up on, as I never did it twice in one day... or week for that matter, and Marina held that tendecy the same way. 
>I pull out a match and place the tip against my jaw, making a fast stroke down the side, striking the match off my stubble and lighting my cigarette before holding the flame to Marina's.
>A long draft from the cigarette fills my lungs with nicotine and brings home the final feeling of being awake.
"Should we shoot today?"
>"I was kinda thinking long range. I can make breakfast and we can go shoot but.. I don't think I feel it today."
"That sounds good, I can dig out the bolt gun and we can head out, make a day of it."
>"Well... lets get started then. oh, and take a shower, you already reek of cordite. I know you didn't get one last night after you apparently tucked me in. Thanks for that, by the way."
"Don't mention it. Though, maybe also don't drink a bottle and a half of vodka in a night again." I remarked, heading off to the bathroom for a shower and a change of clothes.
>Before I knew it, I was fresh and soft, wearing some cool clothes that didn't feel like I'd been heating them with my body for a whole day, and soon after, I was on the road with Marina and the .338 to the two thousand yard range.


>"One mill right, come up 8.7 mils."
"One right, eight point seven up." I say, dialing the scope for the last firing solution of the day.
>"Send it." 
>I gently milk the trigger, holding the reticle over the target until it happens.
*BANG* Comes the report from the rifle, kicking straight back into my shoulder, but not moving, thanks to the muzzlebreak, even if it meant Marina, a fairily good shot herself, had to spot from behind my leg in order to avoid the blast.
>as the scope's millimeters of movement come to an end, I briefly see a trace as the bullet leaves a funneling dent in the air around it, before slamming into the steel target.
>"Good hits. You're getting better at this." Marina assessed.
"Thanks. Not many are lucky enough to have a good spotter though."
>"You weren't when you started doing this. but you seemed to slowly unlearn a lot of it for a while."
"Maybe so, then again, I can't say where I learned to shoot like this... or industrial craft."
>As we packed up, Marina pated my back and helped me carry equipment to the car. We began the drive home before she started speaking again.
>"You know, Jason, There's a lot you don't seem to be able to explain about your past."
"Oh?"
>"Yeah, I hardly ever noticed, but well, since I met you, what you spoke of abour your past seemed like you materialized just in time to go to war. You don't talk about where you're from, childhood friends, hell, not even fond memories... we're you an orphan?"
"No. I don't know."
>"A loner? Come to think of it, we basically live like a married couple, why haven't I met your parents, or other family? Are you estranged from them?"
"Like I said. I don't know. I remember being able to remember at some point, but... yeah, all I know is that the paperwork says my name is Jason Rogers, I know I remembered at some point, but truthfully the first thing I remember was at age twenty."
>A couple hours pass, a detective drops in, asking if anyone from the neighborhood had a motive, and he thanks me and leaves, saying he's done with the job. minutes pass after he leaves.

"Well, shit. It looks like we're gonna see some interest in our activities." 
>"Well, we could tell the neighborhood watch to stop operating the way they have. I'm sure it was already sufficient to damage the gangs of the city beyond repair."
"Fucking great. It's a good thing that the NFA was repealed, or ATF might be all over this shit. God knows they're interested already just from our use of explosives."
>"What... kind of explosives?"
"Rocket launchers."
>Marina's face grows flat and joyless "Idi nahoi." she mutters, putting her head in her hand.
"You think the officer was a little concerned when we had a rifle on the table the whole time?"
>"O-oh!" Marina utters as her face grows shocked and embarrased.
"Oh well, they don't operate without my go ahead anyway, I'm sure they'll go along."
>"The news last night said five hundred have died in the gang war we caused so far. we couldn't have been responsible for more than a hundred twenty. Do you think they'll find us?" 
"Ha! don't leave town."


Chapter 6: Project Harbinger.
DATA FILE 6581
Dr. Patricia Cantrell PHD Reporting, Geographic expedition of post nuclear war California is underway. The day is august third twenty seventeen. 

"Seals are good, team, suit check." A female voice demands before a slew of voices echo a "Suit status green" to her. 
>The team disembarks the vehicle and begins looking around, taking samples of decayed wood, pictures of shadows in the sides of buildings. 
"So this was Bakersfield California. A residential area was once where we are to be sure, but this is just ominous." The lady says to herself as she looks around at the houses, now mostly shells of their former selves. Burned, collapsed under shock.
>Cantwell walks down the neighborhood, looking at the area that was once where people lived. There was life here, most of it wasn't even degenerate. people who worked for a living, people who didn't GET the luxury of moving out when the tensions rose. They weren't the shithead celebrities who eventually got tossed back into the zone after a few days of living outside.
>A house strikes her notice, yellow and blue, though much dingier than it probably was during the time this wasn't a zone. Most of the house was in tact, save a collapsed wing of the house, likely a kitchen. 
>Patricia made her way inside the house, seeing three corpses, lined up in the front room, burned over much of their bodies and barely recognizable as humans. An audible gasp escapes her.
>"Cantwell, are you okay?"
"Y-Yes, it's just... I've got some... Human artifacts."
>"What?"
"Looks like three corpses, caucasian, two females, one male."
>"Take samples, but be careful, there's a lot of hazards around this place."
"The inside of this house doesn't look too badly burned. I'm gonna keep looking around." 
>"Got it, get some samples while you're at it."
"Samples. Yeah, I'll get some samples from the corpses on the way out. Relatively unburned, the rest of these people seemed to have foamed at the skin."
>Patricia walked the downstairs, finding pictures on the floor of a family of four, a dog, two children, a redheaded girl of about ten and a blonde haired boy of about five. The picture seemed to be about fifteen years old, taken around the turn of the millenium. 
>Progressing further in, she found a computer room, pictures on the wall of a blonde child, this time older and a bald man with brown eyes, maybe his father were on the other walls. The pictures seemed to be spaced out by decades based on the quality and style of apperal. Pictures of the father with a downed helicopter, the son with a rifle, dated 2008, the father in a military graduation picture, dated 1981, retirement plaques... Were these people in the front room? 
>Patricia heads up the staircase, seeing a rifle rested on a dresser in plain view of the stairs.
>Patricia slowly advanced into the doorway, seeing a man, apparently in the first stages of whithering, he appeared to be still, save for a slow, steady rocking on top of his bed. 
>She looked around the room, seeing a set of four driver's licenses resting next to the rifle, she picks them up, seeing the names Allan Kelly, Jason Rogers, Tatiana Kelly, and Robert... Hmm. The last name on that one must've burned.
>she turned back to the man slowly swaying on his bed, a thick dogtag was hanging from his neck, having lost its luster, reading Jason Rogers. She decided it was time to extract this one. 
"Hey, I got a living human here, get over to the yellow house and help me move this guy."
>"WHAT?! WHY would we want a living human artifact?"
"This one could be very useful, experimental medicine and all that. Could be a raise in it for us."


Within days, Jason was moved to a laboratory for experimentation.
File 5928 Doctor Russel Hayden MD
Lab Recording, August 9 2017
"So what's the status of the subject?"
>"From all we can tell, he's been subjected to a shitload of radiation, burned with rads and fire, and he's been out there... fuck, must've been near two months. He's psychologically unresponsive, but on the plus side, he's making a fast recovery and has proven a great deal of our newer methods of healing previously permanent damage to the body."
"So... what can we do with him?"
>"That's one of the more unfortunate ones, if he doesn't come to, and I have no reason to believe he will in the next week, best case we let the military wing try their luck at him. They're always looking for test subjects for their newest program."
"What could they likely do for him that we couldn't?" 
>"Suggestion therapy, sensory deprivation, we've already healed his eyes, though I can't say they'll ever be blue again, but maybe they can unlock his mind... If nothing else they can probably give him a new one, not that their program has shown all too promising results in retaining the certain... special characteristics of that mind once he comes under social influence."
"Poor guy. You think he'd object if his mind was with him?"
>"How so?"
"Well, he gets nuked, irradiated, burned, a scientist comes along and takes him to a lab to be a guinea pig, them they send him off for brainwashing. Hell, the only thing he even has left is his dogtag. Strange dogtag at that."
>"When you put it that way, he'd probably be in an uproar right about now... Poor bastard certainly has every right and reason to be."

A week later
>"Davis, how's the subject?"
"He has a name, you know?"
>"Oh, really, the subject has a name does he?"
"Yeah. Jason Rogers."
>"Oh? And does this man RESPOND to it?"
"Yes, though only when we have a female nurse in. The gentle one, too."
>"Kelsey?"
"Yeah. She's the only one that can talk to him so far."
>"So... about that dogtag. How... or rather WHY do you think he had it? doesn't come across as a military tag, too thick, made of titanium. A memorial tag for a friend?"
"You've seen it. It's a medical aid tag. probably won't be needing it now that he's been treated for whatever it was here. Or because it's highly radioactive..."
>"Right. So what are you thinking we should do with him?"
"Easy. We'll keep his same identity, change his point of origin to somewhere else in the united states, give him implant memories in place of his past, which he doesn't seem to remember at all anyway, then we'll send him out to a specialist team in october. Give him a home in... florida, then when he's no longer any good in eight months time, we'll just cast him back to florida and as far as he'll know, he walked out of a base last year, went to war about now for the SECOND time and the closest thing he MIGHT have is the impression that he had memory of the past once."
>"Damn. You got this all figured out. I'm not sure who's more detached and cold, I refused to call him by his name, but you? You're a monster."
>The doctors looked at eachother, straight faced for a moment. Then burst into laughter.



	Present day
>The raindrops patter on the roof of the house, the sound of their assault loud enough to keep Marina up, even if she was in the most comfortable position of her life.
>Jason, not an inch away from her twitches as he sleeps, his right hand occasionally twitching on Marina's chest, matching that of his face, which she could feel through a vibration in his body every time it happened, his accelerating pulse being the only thing she couldn't normally sleep through.

>"Something isn't right. Inside and out." Marina thinks as she looks up and out the window to the clouds, their images and shapes blurred and distorted by a torrent of rain.
>A loud thunder rolls across the distance, its low sound vibrating the house, windows audibly rattling.
>"How can you sleep through this?" She whispers to Jason, expecting no answer, and being rewarded by an expected lack of a reply.
>Something buzzed in her head before she felt something off...
>"WHAT THE FUCK-"*bang*

>I woke up seeing Marina jolting from the bed, her naked body flailing through the air as she traveled on a parabolic arc, landing on the ground, and grabbing our SMG's, throwing mine to me as I stood out of the bed and readying her own. 
>As I brought my hand to the charging handle, cranking a round into the suppressed MP-5, I heard it too. A gunshot rang out in the neighborhood, too sharp to be thunder, too high to be distant.
>Marina allows me to take point while she readies her PPS-43. We reach the front door when we hear more shots start to ring out, and upon looking we see numerous black figures in white tee shirts.
>They were firing handguns into the air and screaming into the neighborhood something that sounded like "Ay Yo bib, we are rubbin this john bin!!!" Fucking ebonics.
>Just then, it happened. From one of the windows across the street, a stuttering burst of staccato cracks signaled off by intermittent but sporadic flashes burst from the darkness.

>I watched for a moment as one burst turned to three, then more lights began firing, and before they could properly react to anymore than the first of the shooters, they had all fallen, people emerging from their houses, and shooting at the fallen and writhing assailants.
"Fuck. You think they know it was us?"
>"...No, just trying to make a show of strength. Obviously in the wrong neighborhood, but that doesn't indicate they know, Lyublyu." Marina answers, oddly calm and collected as always.
"Hmm. If that's the case, I suppose we should get another operation in, but I'd think we should keep ourselves on guard and out of the spotlight for a while. We already might see something along the lines of a retaliation for their associates lying dead and dying in the street out there."
>Marina looks at me for a moment, her face as hard to read as the best of poker players as she merely stares at me, breathing slowly, as slow and calm as though she had been asleep before breaking eye contact and walking briskly out the front door, looking over the men in the street.

"What the hell was that about?" I mutter to no one in particular before bounding up and following suit to her.
>The rain pouring down had somewhat flooded half the sidewalks of the neighborhood, overfilling the gutter, causing one of the dead assailants to drift ever so slightly in the gutter, inch by inch, blood staining the water in the gutter as it began streaming down the gutter toward the drain.
"EVERYONE OKAY???" I shouted to the heavens, the neighborhood now becoming active and waking from its sleep to come to life and answer. 
>Thankfully none were hurt, though I felt a little guilty being the one to bring them the news like this, especially when a want for revenge seemed to come from every one of us so powerful as to hang in the damp air, as our clothes became soaked.
>"What are we gonna do, Jason?"
"Well I don't think we can hide the bodies from those we can't trust. We abide by the law."
>Whispers and mutters came from all ends of the crowd, speculative whispers, subtle questioning of my sanity or authority. One finally stepped forward, our youngest member, a boy named Henry of about nineteen, one of the first to come on board, and one of my most trustworthy members.
>"Sir, what do you mean that we'll abide by the law? We have to hit them back!" He said, evidently trying to get me to see reason. I couldn't blame the boy, he'd seen the worst of humanity our two times out, and done deeds far worse still to them.
"Look, I know you want to, but we have to find something out first, and the only way to do that is to waitand see. Frank! What's the body count in the gang war that we started?"
>Frank thinks briefly before shooting back that it was "About Six-hundred from what the news said."
"Alright, so at this point being a street banger is becoming so dangerous that they're likely attempting to show strength in a way that exposes them to as little risk of running into another gang. The way I'm seeing it, Marina, feel free to swing in if you see something I don't, is that they're looking to display dominance or secure some margin of safety, maybe by looking for new territory, or terrorizing a neighborhood in the suburbs. It's most likely that they're trying to put themselves in an area where they can expect some degree of safety. What better way to do that than to create a new slum on the down low where they can hide with the expectation of not getting caught up in a firefight. After that, they could just be trying to protect their rep by terrorizing us. In either case the best course of action is to stay put and wait to see if more show up. No more and the neighborhood is secure, more show up and we might leave the place vulnerable if we're not on our guard. The other possibility is that they DO know, but we have no way of knowing that just yet. In all cases the best move looks from my perspective to be staying in and on guard."
>"Okay, I can see the reason in that, but what about the night hours?" Henry shoots back.
"Simple as fuck, we need to have sentries at all times of the day. Everyone has an SMG or other full auto small arms for home defense these days. You all have night vision, you've all trained with it, and most of you are exceptional, I knew people who had to do this professionally and weren't as good as most of you. Of course you won't want to start walking about in a lightning storm like this, but I think it's about time we dispersed, lest we catch a bolt, but I know many of you have the schedules to be up these hours of the night. Enough to at least have sentries up at all hours everyday."
>"But that's boring!" Came Alice, one of the somewhat old, but not really residents in the watch.
"Look, there's forty of you, I've taught you well, and I know you're used to being on the attack, but for the next couple of weeks at least, I can't see any other way to ensure our safety and that of the neighborhood any better than to be ready and waiting at all times."
>"I understand that, but why DON'T we strike back actively, instead of waiting passively for another wave?" She came back, this time Marina responded.
>"You can't be THIS dense? There's such a long list of enemies on their mind that we won't even register unless we MAKE ourselves register, if we just wait, we'll know for sure whether they know who we are, but if not, we're more likely to be detected, and if the attack came so soon after an effort to get a foothold HERE, they're much more likely to trace us and concentrate an effort on attacking us. As it stands they might cut their losses and move on, now you understand?" Marina finished, waiting as a moment or two slipped by in silence before she decided to adjourn this meeting.
>"GOOD, Because I'm tired of standing out in the rain, IDI NAHOI, CYKA!" she snarled before beginning to walk back to the house.
>They looked at me in silence.
"You heard the lady! Go home."

>As I followed her back I realized why they were so willing to stare at me in shock. I finally understood as I saw her walking back into the house. Holy. Fucking. Shit.
>I get into the house and followed suit after the clearly frustrated Marina, cold, shivering... shiny.
>I place my weapon with hers as she shivers, raving mad, her deep blue eyes in a full glare, irises showing perfectly round and fully exposed. "I can't believe that fucking bitch, who the fuck does she think she is?"

"I know, we're both soaked and cold. More so because she wants to question. Is it just me... or did they take a really long time to notice, if at all?"

>"Notice what? What are you taking about?"
"You know? I don't think I noticed either."
>"Notice what?" Marina demands, her fury now clearly directing itself toward me.
"I wouldn't have had the NERVE to tell them off in the state we were in, I gotta say, I wish I could be as calm as you anymore."
>"JASON WHAT ARE YOU REFERRING TO?" She raises her voice, her eyes practically giving off a soft glow as her pale face took on a slight red tint as her fury was fully focused.
"I mean... telling them off NAKED. That's a new one." I said, as I approached her with a smile, gently flicking her left breast for effect.

>The look on her face... PRICELESS. 
>Marina's anger ceased as she looked down, realizing that she was as naked as the day she was made.
>Her face turns a far deeper shade of red as she realizes that the whole neighborhood saw her in all her glory, fury turned to dismay and she flinched, covering her vagina with her arms stretched straight down, shoulders hunched in to cover her breasts.
>"W-w-why didn't you Tell me?!?!?!" She exclaims, eyes now widened and sunken in as she realizes just what she said to everyone in her birthday suit.
"Truth be told, I didn't realize. I thought we were in our skivvies at the LEAST until I started to follow you back in, imagine MY SURPISE when I see your bare ass." I say with a laugh.
>"You were naked too." She said, apparently searching the words for some individual shred of solace.
"That I was. They didn't say a thing about it, either. We must be the most attractive couple in the neighborhood at this rate. Or they're the most diciplined militia I've ever created."
>"Militia this, militia that. Jason, you owe me for putting me through that." Marina said, collecting herself and slowly unwinding from her previous frame of mind.
"Oh? You're the one who charged out there without a word." I shoot back.
>"I expected you to stop me, since you should have known I was NAKED in the first place."
"You've got a point there. I suppose that was a failure on my part."
>"Well, you can always make it up to me by drying me off and warming me up." She says with a slight smile as she shivers in place.
>I head to the towel cabinet, coming back with a pair of towels, first drying myself off with a quick once over, dropping the towel to the floor and taking the fresh one to her, starting with her face, a shy smile coming over it as I wipe the moisture off, then work my way down her back.
>Marina, clearly not used to having someone else wipe her down like this suppresses an urge to recoil as she enjoys the special attention given to wiping down her back side.
>With her backside dry I sit on the bed, taking Marina on my lap, wiping off her stomach before taking a moment to knead her breasts with the towel. After her breasts are dry I begin the delicate work of drying her legs before spreading them and wiping the moisture from her inner thighs.
>She gasps as I finish it with a wipe of her crotch, giving me a small coo as I rub the towel on her "chamber."
>Marina reaches down and places her hand on mine, halting it, while drawing my head in for a kiss with the other. I let the towel fall to the ground, using my fingers to slowy rub her mound, massaging it until it's slick, teasing her feedramps as she decides it's time for the next step.
>She pulls her head from mine, reaching down and massaging my member to erection while making those longing eyes at me.
>she comes in for another kiss as she rotates, on my lap, levering her weight into me, not hard enough to force me into position, but enough to get me to roll her on her back while I get into position on top of her.
>She wraps her arms around me as I slowly tease her chamber with the tip before I slide it in. The thrusting begins as the last chills of the cold are finally warmed, the friction of our bodies sliding together with each thrust giving way to a layer of sweat, building with each thrust, every sultry moan, and every increasingly energetic breath.

>As the moans get heavier, I pick Marina up, bracing my arms behind her back and sitting upward with her still intertwined on my cock. As I come to a rest, she starts bucking her hips, allowing me to take one of her breasts in my mouth, massaging the nipple with my tongue as she rides.

>In a matter of minutes, her pace has picked up from a strong and steady thrust to a frantic and almost spastic motion, I playfully nip at her neck while using my arms to pull her waist in as she bucks back with her hips and thrusts her hips over mine.
>"Hhhh uuuugh. Finish me!" She yells as she makes a few last spastic thrusts, her insides throbbing, sensitive to the slightest touch.
>I lean her back and she leg locks me as I make a few last thrusts, causing her insides to contract and tighten, sending us both over the edge as I fill her chamber. She twitches, bucking her hips a few times at the impulse of the sensation while ragged shallow breaths turn to deeper more controlled ones.
>"Snuggle me." she says through her still ragged breaths, reaching her arms out to me as I bend down and scoop her up, placing her at the headboard and disengaging myself from her before and placing myself behind her, taking hold of her body with the right hand, and supporting her head with the left arm.
"Such a bad little rifle. What am I going to do with you?" I say whisper into her ear.
>"What Won't you do with me?" she coos back, scooting herself deeper into my grasp and nuzzling her head against my arm before drifting back off to sleep.
Dateline, California. July 23 2017.
>My party and I set out, our AR-15's a month since seeing their bullet buttons switched for standard releases. Magazines once limited to ten rounds having blocks removed or crimpes cut off their bodies. Simple home made suppressors direct thread mounted to them, the result of having a lathe in my garage shop. How I managed to keep that thing running BEFORE the apocalypse that took over the place much less a mystery than my ability to run it after.

>Their faces since dyed red by the intense sun beating down on them, much of the dust settling in their head covering scarves beating down on them with neutron radiation. We've only managed to stay alive this long by sheer virtue of our proximity, or more accurately lack thereof to the blast that turned Bakersfield into one of the worlds largest open air furnaces.
>In a month's time I had gone from a person who lived a fairly normal life to a forsaken survivalist in a wasteland in the middle of California. Not that it was too much of an environmental change. It merely expressed itself more overtly.
>The members of my party numbering four including myself consisted almost entirely of those I knew from high school... or rather those I knew to still be alive. To start were the couple leading the expedition. Charles Thurmond was a red headed ginger who I didn't initially get along with when I met him, but had grown rather friendly with in recent years.
>His girlfriend was another acquaintance from school, name of Haley, a rather bitter acquaintance to my perspective, having hated me for some reason or other. At this point I didn't care.
>The last one of the group who wasn't me, a girl who I never told my name. She found my name by my interactions with others, searching for the reference that didn't fit. One of my favorite methods of figuring out names. Her name was Jane Sutherland. She seemingly followed me everywhere since a week after Mary died.
"So what's it we're lookin' for, Charlie?"
>"Do you ever shut up, Jason?" Haley back.
"That's funny, shitcunt, but I seem to remember addressing Charlie."
>"We're looking for food, a few fuses, some batteries if we can find them."
>"I could do with some more ammo." Jane adds in.
>"And why are YOU here?" Haley prodded at Jane, who walked by my side, an improper feature in the column formation we normally kept.
>"Well... I guess it's because he's here. I don't know why he keeps himself from me like he does, but I'll follow him. What else have I to do?" Jane answers.
>"I can't imagine WHAT defect of the mind would draw someone to JASON of all people." Haley remarked.
>"Hmm, that's curious. Jason... what have you to say about that? Surely a man such as you has a defense. What are you, some kind of faggot?"
"Oh, me? I'm here to make my not very long I have left in the world just a little longer. Now if Mary was still alive, I'd have no problem trying to spend it in someone's arms. As it stands though, I think we're just prolonging the inevitable because the middle part of the brain says we have to. Maybe we'll get out some day, but it's been a month, NO ONE is coming into the state as far as I can tell, and SHE's still following me everywhere I go."
>"Yer' damn right I'm following you everywhere you go. I don't know why you won't at least fuck me. I know you need some stress relief after some of the shit we've been stuck in. Certainly at least some carnal pleasures."

"How the grammar of a bunch of meth and dirt farmers in the middle of the radioactive pit goes from low to high class in a single sentence, I'll never know, but I'll tell you what Jane, I'll make you a deal. Charlie, Haley, you can be my witnesses, since this is probably the closest I'll ever come to getting married and you'll hold me to it. We've got enough supplies to get a few dozen miles if we need to. After today, we;ll pack up, and if we make it out of the state alive, I'll fuck you. Deal?"
>"Not only do you have a deal, I'll demand a raise of the stakes on top of that." Jane shot back with a manic grin, her light brown eyes lit up by the prospect of getting the thing she'd been pursuing with at first veiled and then overt offers and pleas for a month.
"So spill it, What more do you want than getting me to take you to bed?"
>"I want you to ACTUALLY marry me."
"I'd have to think on it."
>"Come on, Jason, she's willing to put in the effort to get out of the state if you'll get out, you'd owe her a bit more than a night, don't you think?" Charlie said over his shoulder slyly.
>"If that was the case I think it's the LEAST he could do, Charlie" Haley said in that oh so teasing not subtle peer pressure voice.
"Fine, you two. Jane, if that's what you want and how far you'll go, I'll give it to you. If we can get out past the border then I'll not only get on one knee for you, I'll take you to bed afterwards and stay with it, I'll even stop keeping to myself so much. In fact, I'll do you one better and we can have a kid together."
>"Eh... Maybe not the best Idea after all the shit we've been exposed to. At least not until after a year and a checkup. Maybe a shower too."
"You got a point there. In any case, am I the only one who thinks it's odd that we're betting AGAINST ourselves?"
>"What do you mean?"Charlie questioned, slowly reaching my own conclusion.
"Okay, so we're setting ourselves up with consequences, on the other hand, while they're not necessarily unpleasant consequences, Jane being the sweet little woman she is, much to my dismay as I try to keep myself separate from her until the next month or so I have is up, all these consequences we're inflicting on ourselves are all predicated on the idea that we WIN, IE survive and escape the state and the hellhole it's transformed into."
>"I see what you're saying... For once I agree." Haley replied.
>"Jason, what do you think the odds are that we DO escape?"
"Radiation sickness out of ten."
>"So you're stacking on the odds because you KNOW we're not gonna make it." Jane observed, now seeing the picture.
"Look, Jane. The way I figure it, I've got a month. Maybe. You've probably got a similar amount of time if you stick around me, since you always walk with me, shoulder to shoulder. Anyone who starts shooting at me will likely kill you too. Way I see it, we have odds that run astronomically against us reaching the border to the east, but if we are to maximize our odds of surviving and actually getting to the border... well I have the perfect strategy. We have to simply leave as soon as possible and keep moving. Think of it like the top of mount Everest, but with second degree terminal sunburn, and a lot slower, probably more painful on the joints and organs."
>"So, that's a yes." Jane says, a sour look on her face as she questions the very possibility of me developing some affection for her.
"Look, Jane. It's not that it wouldn't be something to celebrate, I'm just a pessimist. Maybe you'll prove me wrong. In a few days we can stop by my parent's house in Bakersfield and see what's up there, then we can continue to god knows where."
>"So you DO have some love for me."
"I could if I let myself. I'd have no reason not to if I didn't think death by glorified sunburn was an imminent reality."
>"But why not when it IS?"
"Too short to mean anything. I'm a prude like that."
>"So, you've agreed to marry if we both survive on the way out of here, with a woman you've known for a month if that, and you don't think another month would be long enough to mean anything? I can see how we'd have no time to enjoy it, but what is it about the apocalypse that changes people?"
"Smaller pool and higher mortality rates."
>Jane lowers her voice to a murmer. "Strange, Charlie and Haley haven't chimed in for a while."
"Probably enjoying the loop being between us."
>Over the next few days we stalked our way from Calder's corner into Bakersfield, stopping to plan.
July 27 2017. Departure delayed.
>I get into my log, not updated since I moved into Calder's Corner, a small residential area outside Bakersfield to the west. 

7-27-17. Certain Death. 
Upon using what electronics were left to look at the map, I've identified massive problems with our plan to escape, namely that my original plan to go to the south was as foolhardy as it was ignorantly planned. To the south of us, only a few measly miles distant are the lowest and easiest to surmount reaches of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, easily passable in a day of walking for people who aren't disabled. The problem with this plan is that crossing these reaches immediately places us in the Mojave desert, where we'd surely die of thirst before reaching the northern most cities in the Mojave. Another plan in escaping California was to simply follow the Kern river which passes to the north of town to the east. Theoretically we COULD get into the mountains with that method, and within only days. Unfortunately crossing it we'd end up at the source and over a hundred miles still across the desert from any city in Nevada. The only other option that involves not moving into the more irradiated northern sections of the great valley region is to follow the Kern River East until it goes north, taking us a distance multiple times that of the distance from Vegas to Reno.
This would be a possible goal in a time that allows for our escape in a time frame conducive to my surviving more than another four weeks, given the fortunate time of year and warm weather, except that the fallout from the nukes has started to sprinkle down, and I can't convince Jane to leave Charles and Haley to their fates, though Charles complains of aching joints while he nurses Haley, who's been vomiting blood for about a day and a half now. I don't think I'll last through it all. I can only sit back as Jane leans on me for comfort. If I'm not careful I might enjoy it.

7-29-2017
I'm making what will probably be the last log entry in here. They've all succumbed to radiation sickness. Every one of them. First was Haley, who was an obvious terminal case even three or four days ago when she was vomiting up blood and we had no antirads.
Charles went second, as was fairly predictable by the joint pain, anemic appearance and unusual paleness of the skin. He fell off the wagon only five hours after my last entry. While I expected he might succumb to it, I didn't think it would be so fast. Then Jane... well. She was in good shape until about noon yesterday, succumbing in the night from an evident dose of rads that must of been on the order of a thousand or more given her rate of decay. One moment a pretty, sweet young thing, the next hour a ghost of herself and in short order she was coughing blood and teeth, complaining of the taste of metal. She fell in about ten or eleven hours. For what ever reason I haven't fallen yet, though radiation burns have began forming on my skin. I have no hope of escape anymore, the simple long and tall of the issue is that anyone who could have helped me manage the workload of an escape, which would take the better part of a thousand miles, is dead. If we'd started out a week or two ago we might have stood a chance, but we didn't have the supplies to try then, nor did we account for the relatively short time fallout stays in the atmosphere. I can only wait to die at this point, as I'm bombarded with a constant sheet, a film even, of essentially dust that causes sunburn. For the last time, Jason Rogers signing off, July twenty-nine, Twenty-seventeen.
>With that I place the log in one of the drawers of my dresser, leaving my rifle on top of it, and think of what might have been. What happy or sad things I might have shared in had we escaped. Oh well. Can't fight the random number machine in the sky.
File 9720
Psychological experimentation ward. Groom Lake AFB.
>I awaken inside a room with a glass observation window looking upon me as I stand ready, waiting for some degree of situational awareness, a sense of place in the world not given by the surroundings telling me exactly nothing about where in the world I am.
>Two men in lab coats escort a man in digital camouflage who asks them questions, referring to someone they call the subject. He asks questions about abilities to reason, and perform normal complex cognitive functions, to which the men in coats answer proudly, posturing as though the man should be giving them a raise any second now. The voice finally came through the room, apparently they'd forgotten to shut off the mic or wanted me to hear their boasting. "Good, good, now box him up and we can send him out. The data he's provided has been invaluable, now lets see how he performs out there."
>The men exited the room before a light began glowing out of the room, eventually growing harsh before giving way to a darkness which consumed not only the room of origin, but the room in which I stood.

>"JASON. Jason, wake up!" The voice comes, piercing the darkness.
>I open my eyes to see a worried looking Marina, knelt over me on her knees with her hands on my shoulders.
>I lock eyes with her for a minute straight before she finally speaks.
>"You were groaning about someone named Mary in your sleep, talking about shipping out some 'subject.'"
"It was like a memory. Like I remembered twenty one years and what came up to it... but it didn't make sense. I remember as clear as day walking out of this house to go to war in twenty seventeen... but... I remembered having never seen this house before the next year entirely. I... I just don't know what it was."
>"Are you... distressed?"
"There were friends. And they all just... died. we were going to escape together and she just up and died. Strange world. But... how am I alive."
>"Jason, you couldn't have been in that situation, you're here right now, that should be testament. Come to think of it, wouldn't you have been twenty one? A whole year AFTER you say your first memories were?"
"Yes, but I'm sure that first memory was the result of... wait, I don't remember seeing this house at all before I went off that year... I remember I had the memory but-"
>"Jason, stop it. It's just a bad dream."
"No. It wasn't, I remember my family! I had parents who were out on vacation to the caribean at the time, and a sister who moved to Texas... I wonder if she still uses that number. It'd be hard to miss her if she still does."
>"But I thought you didn't remember anything from before you were twenty, you said so yesterday." Marina remarked with a puzzled expression on her face.
"Look, I know you think I'm lying, and if what's come to me is true, there's certainly some continuity issues, given that I remember walking out in twenty sixteen, despite the other thing happening when I was a whole year older, but I think I've got a way to figure it out."
>"Well, we can talk more over breakfast."
"Speaking of, what time is it?" I ask as I notice the rather bright lighting behind her naked body as she climbs out of bed and walks toward the shower, her hips swaying back and forth as though she felt sexy this morning.
>She stops and looks over her shoulder, addressing me in that 'you did good last night' tone she occasionally spoke in. "Nine forty or so. You slept right through the cops taking statements and the morticians taking the corpses."
"Damn. Did I miss anything else?" I ask as I sit up and bring myself to my feet.
>"Nothing of note. I was thinking about the day we met, do you... remember it?"
"Yeah. Hard to believe it's been eight years."
>"What song were you singing?" She asks, turning to face me before continuing "It was such a sweet little tune but in eight years I never once heard you sing it again."
"Yeah, forty nine broken hearts. I guess I never really felt the need to sing about being happy after I met you. Every day was a new challenge, every evening felt like the end of some wild dream, and every morning when I knew in every fiber of my being that I'd wake up to nothing but cold empty space, I woke up to you and your warmth instead."
>"Aww, Jason, that's the sweetest thing you've ever said to me. I want you to get your head checked, because there's no way you're that sentimental and emotional. In the meantime, I'll shower and make you breakfast, don't try to think about anything too hard, okay my love?" She asked with a gentle smile before turning and walking toward the bathroom.
>She takes three steps before she stops and looks over her shoulder at me. "Are you coming?" she asks
"Yes, dear." I reply with a smile.
>Her smile takes on a nervous quality as I approach her and gently caress her cheek, flipping my hand over her ears, clearly nervous about my touching of them, but offering no resistance.

Chapter 7: Forgotten acquaintance.
>Hours passed since Marina and I woke up. The news said that the death toll in the ensuing gang war had reached seven hundred and fifty-two. We decided it was time to go on that camping trip. Packed up and left to the everglades for the weekend.
>"Think the militia are gonna be okay on their own?" Marina asked, breaking a comfortable silence that had been going on about an hour and a half.
"They better be. I think I'm about to the point that I want to turn'em loose. Get them connections for armaments that they could only dream of. I think they might even be able to take off on the run without me."
>"You really think so?"
"After that cop showed up, I really don't think we want to keep this shit going. Somehow this gang war hasn't effected too much of the city, apparently the gangs have been focusing on going at it rather than demonstrating their reps to the folks who just try to get by. Truth be told, I kinda feel bad for all the mothers who are burying their children. It was bound to happen sooner or later, sure, but not to all of them, and certainly not at this rate."
>"When you put it like that, it does seem kind of tragic, but then again, everyone sells something to someone, or serves themselves. What did they sell? Drugs that ruin the mind and body? Murder? What did they sell themselves? Harassment of people who don't partake in their depravity? Arson?" Marina asked coolly.
"I'm not saying they aren't a human plague. They are exactly wrong, or maybe they're just from another perspective on morality. Maybe when they sell their goods and services, the plague they are, morality doesn't come into it."
>"Are you going soft on me?" Marina asked incredulously.
"Maybe. I'm just assuming they think like I did. If so, what moral question is there? There's a goal, there's means to achieve the goal. I certainly didn't consider any means to be unacceptable when I had a goal. I only ever had to consider whether any means conflicted with other goals. When you only have one goal, any means to achieve that becomes acceptable."
>"What are you sayin-"
"Even a neutron bomb."
>"Eh. Would they have taken any more time to fry you like you did them if they had the power to?" Marina asked, obviously a rhetorical question, but she did have a point. "No, they only wanted to keep you alive as long as you were useful. Take it from me, I heard what happened to my countrymen before I was shipped into Afghanistan in 1984. They don't like each other, they don't like you. So it has been since the beginning of time, so it shall be." Marina stated.
"Would be. We neutron bombed them, remember?"
>"Right. What's on the radio?" Marina said, switching it on and beginning a search through the stations.
>"American 'wumerns' like this music, yes?" Marina asks, her Russian accent leaking through her speech like water through a screen door, as the sounds of Unknown Hinson announcing that he was "gonna pick one" flowed into the cab and one of his rather distinctively jazzy yet somehow country solos followed as Marina smiled, closing her eyes and grooving along with the music as it played.
>Outwardly I tried to only let off an air of enjoying the moment as it was one of those moments you wish you could frame and reenter later to revisit how happy it made you. Inwardly I was making absolute certainty of not verbalizing the punishment for her changing of the mood, which would be administered in the tent tonight, much to our mutual pleasure or how cute her accent was for that split second while she was imitating the comical euphemisms of the country vampire himself. Truth be told, I hadn't forgotten the conversation that took place only a moment earlier... however it fell by the wayside next to her cuteness.
>Another hour of country music that couldn't have been approved by Trashville Tennessee and their pop labels masquerading as country labels on music row and we'd arrived, beginning the task of setting up our camp. 
>Marina approached me as I set up the tent. "Jason, when you're done with that, could you be a dear and get the fire going?"
"Sure. Just let me finish up the tent." I answered, continuing my work on the stakes for the tent.
>"You do that, and I'll go get the water from the river." She offered before grabbing her Rifle, a short M-16 and her hat, then heading off with the bucket towards the river.
>Some time passes as I get the tent up and set, dig the firepit and place some rocks around it before lighting a campfire.
>Minutes pass. The sun is low in the sky to my side as I sit and watch the crackling of the fire.
>Something rustling to the left of me catches my eye as a couple people in very apparent dual kit in something of a chocolate chip green. The men looked somehow vaguely familiar, but I had no memory of seeing them in my life.
>"Mind if we set a spell?" one of them, wearing a helmet with a more tan than green helmet asked.
"No problem."
>The two men sit down, their differences in kit immediately differentiating them slightly more than their faces, on gaunt and hollow and the other's face slightly rounded as well. 
>The one with the rounded face speaks. "Hello Jason." His face turning stern and composed as a wall.
"Do I know you from somewhere? I'm pretty good at remembering faces."
>"Do you remember Antoinette Rodriguez's face?" The gaunt one asks.
"No, I can't say I do."
>"Then why would you remember us? You've forgotten far more important people." He replied.
"Ain't that the damn truth?" I retorted with a sigh, the significance of that... maybe not lost on them.
>The one with the rounded face spoke up, apparently now in turn. "I for one admire you."
"Where do I know you from?"
>"I don't know, no one does, though some time ago you'd be FAMOUS, there'd be no denying that you were there, decided right from wrong in so many places, between men, women and children and death. Hell, decided by the thousands, even carried out the decision a few hundred times."
"Suppose I'll let the appropriate authorities judge my deeds, friend."
>"Oh, they will. Sure enough."
"So how DO you know me?"
>"Well, suppose you wouldn't believe me if I told. but for now? Well, we've got to make treads." The gaunt one said, the two of them rising and walking toward a clearing. In about five seconds they were a couple feet away to my left when Marina's voice came from the foliage to the right of me. 
>"Jason, who're you talking to?" she said as she appeared out of the bushes.
"Them." I said, pointing to the men on my left, who'd still be getting just into the clearing about now.
>As I looked to them, I heard her start saying "There's no one there. Are you alright?" As I behold the empty clearing where the two men should be.
"You know? I'm not so certain anymore..."

The next morning.
>The evening's deeds had been dirty, starting with Marina making me some tea as she liked to do, followed by sitting by the fire. It was a quiet evening for the largest part. Marina tended to me, making sure I was okay, hardly letting me lift a finger, despite our being on a camping trip. Eventually we retired to the tent, and "punishment" for her acts of cuteness on the drive out took place.
>The first light of the day finally peeked over the forest, the top of the tent gently glowing in the blue color of its fabric as Marina and I lie in the sleeping bag snuggled up, her head buried into my shoulder.
>She eventually stirred with my hand on her ear. Her eyes opened and a smile spread across her lips as she seemed to coo and purr while she gazed contentedly at me. As I continued to gently stroke her ears she gave no resistance, none of the usual apprehension, she just laid still and enjoyed the gentle touch.
>"Good morning, Jason." Marina cooed, lifting herself a little before bringing her head precious few inches closer to mine before coming down to a rest and rolling into my side with a grunt.
"Good time?" I asked, a smirk crossing my face as the minor pain crossed her face for a moment before dropping under a knowing yet smug smile.
>"I'm a bit sore. Probably gonna be bruised later." She answered with a smirk of her own.
"Not gonna walk right today are you?" I ask with a rueful smile.
>"Nope. You'll have to carry me."
"A price for every pleasure."
>"I hope it's worth it. Mine is."
"You get to be carried around like the old days. I do the carrying, along with both our other rifles."
>"Hey! It hurts. I mean, I love it!... But did you really have to literally fuck me black and blue?" She asked, somewhat to my distaste.
"I know I literally might have, but do you actually HAVE to repeat Hank III's euphemisms?"
>"I like saying these things." She said, a slight spiking inflection followed by a flat one relaying the defensive tone.
"Reprehensible." I let out with a smug sigh. "Let's get up and get going. We can go hiking."

Meanwhile In Everettville. 
>A man exits a motel with his trusty glock 19 in its holster in the small of his back.
"What do you see? So far what have we heard? Are there really any leads?" He thought to himself.
>As he mounted up into the 2005 Ford Explorer, he decided the warehouse district would be a good first place to look around, and maybe see if he could gather some insight into just how what he was convinced to be a single group or gang operated, and then from there, to look around for consistencies and inconsistencies between the various major incidents, of course he'd make sure not to get swept up in anything if he could avoid it.
>Driving around town he made sure to come to the warehouse district from the west where he'd be moving in a direction different from the motel he'd lined up as a safehouse.
>As he came to Fire street he slowed down to a calm twenty miles per hour to match the slowly congesting traffic, noting that there appeared to be dozens of men in what he suspected to be gang colors roving the sidewalks, many of them acting cagey as they looked every which way furtively and alternated their gaze between traffic and down the alley as they crossed.
"Eyes ahead, keep 'em in the periphery." he mouthed to himself as he watched the shady looking men walk past the vehicle.
>His cellphone rang and he glared to it before answering and putting it on speakerphone.
"Go for Harris."
>"Ted, what progress have you made?"
"Well, I've made no progress and I've been on the case for about two days. Maybe I'm a day late and a dollar short to get on this, but no matter on that, I've been talking to the shady motherfuckers and they say they have no idea WHO might be doing this, speculating that it may only be some kind of cartel coming in on the territory."
>"So, you think you might find anything or be able to sniff out any leads?"
"There's a couple high profile events, if I can't find anything to make a lead out of, I'm gonna have to go back to Virginia"
>"What are you hoping to find?"
"Maybe who's doing it, confirm the presence of a cartel operating in everettville."
>"Well, you got another two days before they call in someone up the chain. So make what you can of those days." A silence takes over the cab for a few seconds as a woman, an very apparent latina, walked down the street, her apparel not slutty enough to be that of a prostitute, or even really fit in with this seedy area of the town. Like the men who'd been walking the streets moments ago, she acted cagey, though with discomfort more contained than that of the men, who's eyes darted all over furtively, where her's tended to smoothly slew from feature to feature, apparently only to a trained eye, searching for potential points of surveillance.
>"Ted? TED. Answer me."
"Huh?"
>"I said make the most of those two days, and asked what odds you'd put on it, but you're giving me the dial tone!"
"Sorry, sir."
>"What? Did you see a pretty woman?"
"You could say that."
>"Well, we're not gonna call you in the field from this point, call us if you see anything."
"Well, if it counts, she just walked past my car and she's carrying a pistol, looks like she just stuffed in in her crack... wait is that a... NO. No way a gun like that is..."

Chapter 8: The Life Forgotten
>My vision comes. Quicker this time than ever, clear in only a couple seconds. Sunlight enters the room and casts a warm and bright glow on everything in sight, somehow giving away to me, though I can't hear it, though I can't see it, or even smell it, that I am near a beach. As my other senses come to me, I am greeted by a pleasantly strong, but not overwhelming array of stimuli which only serve as a comfirmation that I am indeed at a beach house, viewing the beach and the soft, warm white sand of it through the window as the waves of the beautiful bright blue ocean wash over.
>The sight of this beach seems to be so pleasant, so peaceful, so relaxing, so welcoming, yet so irritating.
"What am I doing here? How did I get here?" I think to myself, as I try to interpret my environs. 
>The peace of the sounds of the seagulls and the waves washing over me like the warm sun in the air over the sand give way to absolute silence as the thought sounds through my mind.
"Where is here?"
>A day of wandering begins. Through the house, onto the beach... where else could I go? I suppose I'll go there, as no one seems to be around to stop me.
>before I get to the door I find myself in front of a mirror in nothing but a pair of shorts and a tank top. Looking into the mirror I see a fellow with a pale looking face, almost gray... could he have been sick? Eaten something too greasy for his body to tollerate? hung over?
>As I see my face, looking sickly in that mirror, I make one last check.
>Tilting my head downward I see my lower eyesockets devoid of angular reflection and apparent the appearence of being smaller than they are due to the inability to perceive such small distances diagonally. What I see is not pleasing.
>The fellow in the mirror either lives too hard or barely clings to life. All the more reason to leave the house and see if I make it back.


Fifteen days prior.
>Marina awakens from a nightmare clutching out for Jason, but like so many other nights in the month and a half since it happened, she reaches only cool air, and not the warm body that'd slept by her side ready to come to her cries with the assurance that he was there and wouldn't let anything happen to her.
>In a month and a half since He'd vanished she'd only been able to coax the neighborhood watch into action twice, and only in relatively small numbers, who'd be convinced logically that her plan was sound, rather than emotionally by the confidence and a certain perceived something that'd somehow enticed them into following Jason into actions involving killing people on multiple occasions.
>Marina was bleary eyed and depressed. The person she trusted was now gone, whether either of them wanted it or not. For the time being, she was only doing all that she could, which for the moment, was nothing.
>Bathing, normally a daily ritual for any woman, human or geist, and especially so in Florida, had only barely managed to remain a bi-daily function at the best of times since the incident, and fallen further by the wayside as only a way to regain an irritatingly lost sense of consciousness, or rather feeling of it, during her now frequent drunken stupors.
>She rises from the cold bed she shared with a man once a familiar stranger, and then her only love in the world. She shuffles out of the room, looking back at the bed, in which she'd had nightmares for the past month and a half and she walked out of the room.
"Why does this darkness encircle me?"
>The doorbell rings and she looks up, distracted from the emotional presence of the room she walks to it and looks out to the porch, seeing Henry and Carilyn McCarthy standing with concern on their faces.
>She slowly opens the door, the darkness of the house giving way to the cold harsh light of the sun, scathing her eyes so, causing her to shield them with her hand as she slowly opens the door.
"Carilyn? Henry?" She croaks as her wind begins coming to her.
>"Oh, dear, Marina, is that you in there?" Carilyn begins "Are you wel-"
"Is something wrong?"
>"We came to check up on you because we were worried, we haven't see you at neighborhood watch meetings in two weeks, and you've been so reclusive lately."
"I'm fine. Physically. I'll survive, I just need to-"
>"Look, Marina, what she's trying to say is, we know you're trying to be strong, but we're worried for you, would you please at least let us try and help you? I know it's a lot to ask, but Jason wouldn't want-" Henry started.
"DON'T YOU DARE USE HIS NAME! DON'T YOU DARE INVOKE JASON! YOU DON'T SPEAK FOR HIM, YOU UNDERSTAND THAT, DEBIL!? IDI NAHOI! GO AWAY! WALK THE FUCK ON!" Marina screached, seething with anger as she slammed the door, tears quickly welling in her eyes and beginning to stream down her face as she slowly crumbled down against the door, her sobs of agony masking the sound of the defeated couple's guilty retreat as they walked away, heads hung low in shame that they were powerless to even attempt to help.
"Don't you ever try to speak for him." She whispered in between gasps of dispair.

>Hours passed as the lives of the neighborhood went on. Marina finally managed to pry herself from the spot and walk back to the kitchen to retrieve a bottle of vodka when she noticed Jason's phone, having been left on that fateful night, and not touched or signaled to since, vibrating, the screen flashing to life. A text message from "Tim" spelled out on the screen.
>Her mind flashed back to that night. He's sent him an exactly similar message on that night. "The usual spot. No tracking devices. Six pm"
>With what little spirit was left in her to mount an impulse, she grabbed a set of keys and checked the clock, taking note that the time was 4:53 PM. Drunken sadness and reminiscing about her former happy life could wait. 
>She walked out of the house armed and threw her weapons in the truck, driving away as sober and resolute as she'd been in the past month and a half, much to the distress and astonishment of the unknowing neighbors, some running to try and halt her for fear that she'd decided to go out fighting drunk and alone, only to be swiftly placed in the dusty tracks.
>As the miles came and went, she felt the silence of the vehicle was necessary, giving her crucial time to think and contemplate as she made her way to the meeting place.

Night of Jason Roger's disappearance. sixty-two days prior.
"They're okay, the last days of may but I'll be breathing dry air. I'm leaving soon, the others are already there." Jason sang as he approached the meeting point. As always Tim emerged from the shadows with a neutral yet somehow wry expression upon his face. An expression Jason had learned to enjoy.
>"Well fuck, it looks like the number one customer really wants this information." 
"So you say there's a dogfaced hag carrying a C-96 in shit condition who I might not want to meet?"
>"Well, no, I said there was a beuatiful latina carrying a richly embelished pistol."
"Oh, sorry. I must have missheard, got it, a walking case of the clap with a shirt lever rifle."
>"You need to lay off on the racist shit. I find it kind of hard to believe someone capable of such vulgarity on the fly can live around here for so long."
"And I find it hard to believe the cocaine importation agency here can't handle a little race joke. If you think this is bad, whatever you do, don't look up project monarch. God forbid you grow some self awareness."
>The two stared at eachother, a look of disapproval on one face and a scoff that could he seen from space on the other.
>Seconds passed.
>The atmosphere grew tense and as Marina looked on, readying herself to act. 
>"HAHAHAHAHAHA" The two burst out simultaniously. As the tension dissapated Marina found herself amused at their foolish humor.
>The laughter slowly died down as Tim began "Oh, MAN! I almost thought someone was going there for a minute. Oh, lord I trained every pimp here to condition whores." He said, wiping a tear from his eye.
>"Anyhow, I've gotten a report about what she carries, but I don't believe that shit. If you got the time and inclination, I suppose you got an appointment with a miss Victoria Rojas De La Rio."
"So I gather that she's some kind of HVT. What's she to all of this?"
>"She's the daughter of a cartel kingpin and a high level leautenant in a rather major cartel."
"Care to tell me which one?"
>"Who cares? they all more or less do the same shit and come from the same direction, hell they even SOUND the same. They're cutting in on my company business. Less of them the better."
"Understood. I suppose I'd like to interrogate this person before killing them. Or just scatter her on the pavement."

fifteen days prior. 6:00 PM
>Marina walks under the overpass of the highway where Tim emerges from the shadows.
>Tim looks at Marina, her face stone and conveying an air of hostility.
>"Where's Jason?" Tim asked as he looked on at the lone woman.
"He's not able to come." Marina answered with a voice of stone, turning her deflection into an answer he'd have to accept.
"So. What information do you have for me?"
>"Well, I was hoping to relate this to Jason, but I guess you'll have to do. There was someone escorted from the Airport, some sources say it was a leautenant in a cartel. The person in question was apparently bringing someone in tow who was in need of medical treatment. From the looks of it, someone who had been injured in what I assume was YOUR attempt on Victoria De La Rios' life. Since the night we last spoke, she's gone to ground and hasn't been heard of or confirmed dead since, so it's a strong if not certain possibility that it was her. If your attempt on her failed and you got out with no casualties, I can understand why you'd lay low for so long. Well, in any case, tell Jason to call me anytime he needs something, information, hardware, whatever. I got what he needs. Oh, and I almost forgot. Take this." 
>Tim handed Marina a yellow envelope, explaining "It contains the locations of identified cartel safehouses. All observers are unaffiliated, so you don't have to worry about interference."
"Thank you for the information." Marina said as she began to walk away.
>"Thanks for comin' out." Tim replied, making his own exit.
"So we've kept CIA out of the loop." Marina thought to herself as she walked to the truck. "Jason certainly trained them to be discrete very well." 
>Through the drive home, Marina's mind started to form ideas, and when she could no longer tolerate the silence, she turned on the radio, Unknown Hinson's "Closer to the light" filling the cab of the truck, changing the nature of the ideas as they formed, yet slowing them for the time being.
>Upon entering the house she finally came to a conclusion. She stood in the doorway to the bedroom looking upon the bed and making herself a promise.
"Jason could be alive somewhere, writhing in agony. I'm not sleeping in that bed again until I bring him home. I can't let him get executed by that mexican whore with her ultimate beaner pistol, Just to THINK lf all the shame I'd feel if I let Jason get killed with a..."

Night of Jason's disappearance. Sixty-two days prior.
"I know they're about to shot that guy, but is that a... Gold damascened Hi-Point?"

Awakening. present day.
>I walked out the door, exploring the beach outside the house in which I had awaken. Finding that it ended on a cliff. 
>I started exploring the cliffs which surrounded the house and the beach, within hours, surmounting all of them and viewing over their crests to find a forestry as far as the eye could see, in a fashion which wouldn't be very informative but for the fact that at no point in my exploration did I see any man made exit routes, which indicated to me that either whoever resides here, who I felt was not myself, wanted a high barrer to entry, or otherwise didn't traverse these features regularly as a means of entry and exit.
>With that, I drew the only conclusion I could. Looking on the position of the sun, the shades of the sunlight, sky, the colors of the ocean, how directly overhead the sun seemed to be, and how soft, warm and powdery the sand was, I could only conclude that I was somewhere in the tropics, likely, judging by the slight deviation of the sun from being straight overhead, somewhere between the tropic of cancer, and the equator.
"Well. I guess that's that. I suppose I'm on an island... do I... live here? Am I in the atlantic or the pacific? hmmm..."
>A thought comes to me, a realization so absurd, placing me to be so empty headed that I couldn't bare it!
"I!? WHO AM I?!?! FUCK!" I scream out to the ocean at large, and whoever else may be, but probably isn't on the island.
>With no ideas,where to start on any thing further but to walk into the forest and take my chances, I slide and bound my way down the cliffs, resigning myself to simply going back to the house to look around for something, maybe some sunscreen, or a shade, and lying out on the beach.
>The house, upon further inspection, and the frame of mind to think of such things had an elegant sparcity to it. There was relatively little furniture, the essentials were there, and a few carefully chosen luxuries.
>The house had everything you'd need for surviving, it had plenty of room to avoid the feeling of being cramped, and yet, while it had some luxuries, it didn't contain so many that you'd find them in your way while you walked around, or tried to do something, though the balance was such that there weren't so many easily conceivable things you could even do that would send you into a position to run up against things, aside from wandering around the recreation room drunk with a few friends, and forgetting about the various furniture of the room, which one could get around rather easily even while piss drunk.
>Altogether, one could easily be expected to come here with a small number of people, maybe only a significant other, and just take a load off both their feet and mind, of course they could come here and live it up with some friends if they wanted. There was room to relax, the extranious things around the hosue weren't so numerous that they'd become obtrusive, and the house wasn't so big that it would become an obstacle to enjoyment in and of itself.
>Altogether, whoever thought this house up was pretty smart. a stretch of tropical paradise in which to lay out and unwind, jungle to hunt, beach to swim, lie out, and play on. This place was pretty nice... which makes it all the more irritating that it isn't for me. The picturesque cliffs, the beach, the jungle... it's all things that I would enjoy, but not somewhere I'd choose to be. Even an enjoyable beach is still a beach, which draws some ambiguous antipathy out of me, and upon searching the house, there was an everpresent realization in my kind that while heavenly, there was some hellish wrong to the house on the beach, perfectly suited to my tastes... it was something I'd have never known myself well enough to make for myself.
>I found the sunscreen next to a gold damascene hi-point... How do I know what it is? Sure it says hi point c-9 on the side... but why damascene? Defeated,I head to the beach.
>Lying in the soft sand, a feeling of pleasant warmth washes over me. Allowing me to simply straighten out my back, and lay against the firm ground while my mind loses track of all its concerns, the questions that lingered, and simply drift off on the heat.
>"Michael? Miiiichael. Meeechel! MIKE!" A high voice calls out to someone, just barely echoing into my psyche as some woman calls for the attention of someone who must have been fairly endeared to her.
"Some fella must be getting in trouble with his lady friend." I murmer to myself, putting on a purposeful grin as my mind stirs into consciousness, and situational comprehension increases, darting from the small situation of presumably some fellow down the beach getting yelled at by his woman, to the world at large around me.
"Huh, the others must be back."
>"Michael, wake up." The voice says, this time sharply defined and accompanied by a tap to my shoulder by a small foot, wafting into my nostrils, the gentle scent of a fragrant perfume.
>My eyes open to see a couple bright and well cared for toenails attached to a lightly bronzed leg, skin taut and pronounced of a well toned calf muscle. As my gaze floated upward, it crosed a well toned set of thighs, passing a set of sizeable but also well toned glutes, accompanied by the rounded and moderately large posterior before crossing a tight and clingy set of purple panties, a subtly pronounced pack of abdominal muscles and a set of well rounded D cup breasts contained by a thin bikini top before floating onto the face of the woman looking down over me.
>"Well, Michael? Are you just going to look me over or are you going to get up and come inside for drinks? Not that I'm complaining." she asks, adding the last bit with a mischievious smile.
"I suppose so. Something just doesn't seem right."
>"Oh, really? How so?"
"Well, speaking candidly I didn't know who you were calling 'Michael', I don't remember your name, and I don't remember anything before 10Am."
>"Don't say that! We've been dating for seven months." She said, a certain wry humor exuding from her voice, as though she believed it to be sarcasm.
"I'm serious, though." I reply while sitting up. "I can't remember anything from before I woke up this morning."
>"Well, you met my family, they challenged you to a drinking contest, and you held your tequila better than most of them, though I suspect you were impossible to wake up this morning because you managed to hold your tequila instead of vomitting. I think they like you, of course I had to take them to the mainland today to stock up and recover."
"I outdrank your entire family? Somehow I don't think that explains why I have an apparent case of amnesia... or how I'm still alive unless they're a bunch of featherweights."
>"I don't know what to tell you, baby." She said, kneeling down next to me with a smile "You must have a hell of a hangover."
"Despite my oh so lovely appearance, I didn't FEEL green around the gills when I woke up."
>"Really? No headache?" 
"No."
>"Haven't felt sick?"
"No."
>"Hmm. Did you take your pills?" 
"I don't take pills... do I?"
>"May as well not, at the rate you forget to take them." she said, an accent bleeding through her voice.
>I stood up and the woman took up my arm, leading me into the house.
>"Here, take two." She said, producing a pill bottle with the name she kept calling me on the label.
>I swallowed the two tablets with water and sat down while the woman came back, sitting beside me on a couch and leaning herself on me, the soft mounds of her breasts pressed seemingly deliberately against my arm.
"I don't want to ask this especially if we've been dating for seven months, but what's your name?"
>"Victoria. I'm sure it'll all come back to you when the meds kick in." She said reassuringly.
>I get a feeling, reach forward and read the label of the bottle. 
"Methoxetamine... why am I taking... dissociative..."
>As my mind becomes strange, I feel myself being straddled.

Ten days Prior. 
>Marina awakens from another nightmare, another day, another cell, another awakening from the newest image of her imagination running dark, Jason writhing in agony, dismembered and disfigured by some wealthy whore before being dumped at the side of a desert road like a defiled corpse and left for dead by the stings of scorpions and the bites of snakes.
>The difference being that now, she had an agenda, and the nightmares no longer drove her to drink, but to a methodical and brutal warpath. 
>She woke up, lit up a cigarette, jumped from the floor and took one smooth draft as a ring shaped ember burned from the tip to the filter before she went to the shower. In the past four days since she'd gotten the information from Tim, she'd managed to sober up, and coax ten of the neighbors into being her own version of what she thought as a self admitted indoctrinated soviet, to be her own einsatzgruppen, raiding eight Huerta cartel safe houses, and today she intended to raid two or three more.
>She considered for a brief moment whether she wanted to continue on with this... then came immediately to the conclusion that the only thing that MIGHT stop the nightmares would be to bring Jason home, or at least to determine what happened to him.
>She walked into the shower and washed herself before heading out into the neighborhood and bidding her team of specialists to assemble.

Sixty two days prior. Disappearance.
>Jason looked on from a bluff on the outskirt of the town as he readied his FNC, fixing its suppressor in place and flipping the switch. *Click* *click *click* 
>The rifle was set and so was he. as he watched the warehouse, he began his search, eventually seeing a fit woman of about five feet four, her rather chesty appearance almost distracting from the large and seemingly inane protrusion from her posterior at the top of her pants.
"An odd look for someone surrounded by violent criminals. I'm guessing she's either in or it or else she has a damn good reason to believe no one would dare touch her." Jason murmered as he looked on.
>"Well, what do you think? She our girl?" Marina inquired.
"I don't know. In any case, I'm not interested in leaving her alive. Maybe interrogate her before, but I'm not leaving a witness."
>"Hey, what's she doing?" One of the ten Jason had brought with him for this assassination attempt inquired before noting "...She's drawaing her gun!" under his breath.
>Jason looked back into the area of interest, seeing that someone was being dragged out.
>A man of a medium build was dragged from a warehouse and placed on his knees in front of the woman by a couple of the apparent henchmen.
"I know they're gonna shoot that guy... but is that a gold damascened hi-point?" Jason asked, looking on.
>There were murmers from the team he'd gathered, questions like "What's a hi-point?" amd "what's damascene?" for a few seconds before as Jason observed, and as the crowd had heard, a crack erupted from the distance, and the man on his knees lost al rigidity of form, crumpling onto the ground where his body slowly made its last movements, a feeble spreading that could have only been the result of a completely limp corpse's weight stacking on itself and spilling to any side, taking the path of least resistance to the force of gravity before the body became still, drained of life, and reduced to nothing more than a heavy lump of mass.
>"Well, she certainly acts like our girl." Marina remarked coldly.
"Alright. Lets kill everyone inside and see if we can't have a little chat with her. Anyone onboard to abduct her?"
>Silence filled the air as guns were readied and no answer was spoken.
"Alright. Move in." Jason said, looking on as just a hundred yards in the distance the woman walked into the warehouse.
>The team bolted imto action, crossing the void between them and the side of the warehouse in a fraction of a minute. Quickly, quietly, they were on the side of the warehouse when Jack spotted a sentry turning to face them, and released a burst into him, dropping him to the floor, sputtering in a pool of blood.
>The sounds of footsteps approaching the door on which four including Jason had stacked was recognized and cued two muzzles to point at the door, letting loose in bursts as the door was flung open and the two guards inside flew from the portal past the team and were soon perforated by small entry wounds and gore seeping exit wounds.
>Mags were changed as the team members who'd fired blasted blindly down the halway, finishing off the last third of their mags before Jason stormed through on point. 
>In a matter of another thirty seconds Jason had reversed his heading, moving up the second level. He kicked the door open and threw in a flashbang, disorienting and fumbling the three guards in the upper office as he simply ran through mowing them down by the heads while the sounds of vitrifying mayhem erupted from below, as Marina and her team began ripping through bodies.
>Jason decided it was time to pop out and provide fire from yet another angle, to complicate the day of whoever was down there. 
>As jason approached the door, he saw that his shadow was being projected forward of him by a light to his rear, sending a signal out the door. He decided not to chance it on such a bet that he'd been unnoticed, turning back to smash the light.
>Jason approached the light and swiped his suppressor across its side, shattering the bulb turning around and beginning his trip back to the door as a strange feeling came across his being.
>Something had felt as though it'd hit him, he felt for just a split second, a rush of air impacting him, without a doubt it was some kind of concussion. The burst of air felt like he'd been hit with a brick tossed at his chest, but the impact spread across his entire body. As the wall next to the doorway imploded, he realized what had happened. The rocket had exploded, directing most of its energy into the wall, and much of it outward, collapsing the soft unstructured metal walls thirty feet across the room.
>Jason felt the impact, and a wave of heat that must have been a hundred and seventy degrees before the world went dark.
>The sounds of the impact had deafened him, and the actual blast had concussed him. He was only vaguely alert to his surroundings several minutes later when he heard them speaking.
>"¡Señora, ésta sigue viva!" One of the men's shouts softly echoed through the distance from his ear to his mind.
>"Interrogale, pero manténgalo en una sola pieza. Si no lo haces hablar en dos semanas, dámelo. Creo que puedo tener algo de... diversión con él." A female voice seemingly replied.

Fifty-Two days later. Ten days Prior.
>The clock struck noon as the members of Marina's team, five of whom had been on that fateful raid approached the house, where Marina had opened the door and waited for them to come in, counting their heads as they did.
"Alright, everyone's here." she remarked, closing the door after having it open for a solid forty seconds.
>"Ok, Marina. What's on the roster for today?"
"Well, just like yesterday, I intend to raid two more of the Huerta cartel's safehouses today. Any objections to this plan?"
>"Well... It's not that I'm against raiding their safehouses and destroying cells, but what's the plan here? What purpose does this serve in the bigger picture? Does a bigger picture even exist?" On of them answered. Some note of calculating consideration in his voice.
>"I understand why you want to pursue this, Marina, I would too, if I was in your situation, but What's the endgame here? What does this do for us except use up supplies?"
"We have supplies for quite some time at the glacial pace we're keeping these days."
>"I understand, but my concern is what happens if we can't resupply and we become compromised."
"Yes. That is a valid concern..." Marina acknowledged, pacifying the dissent that threatened to grow in the room. "... and I don't intend to keep you in the dark if my motivation for continuing this, despite Jason's disappearance is in question. So, if you're out now, go ahead, or you could let me explain myself and decide if you'd like to continue then."
>That shut them up...
"Did anyone here confirm Jason's death?" Marina asked as she looked around the room, her question greeted with a listening silence that would come from someone waiting to hear further extrapolation from someone who stopped to ask a question, the answer to which they already knew.
"Well, in the time that we've been raiding these safehouses, I've been hoping to capture documents that might give us an idea where someone would be taken if captured by the cartel." Marina explained, awe crossing a couple of the faces of the team while the rest remained stoic or indifferent.
>"IS this about-"
"Yes. I received intelligence the night before we started carrying out these raids from a connection of Jason's. It said that someone was taken along on a flight out from the airport in a medical litter. It could be our target for that night, Victoria De La Rio. No one confirmed her to be dead. Alternatively, it could have been Jason. I don't have much more to go on besides that tip, but I don't know Jason to be dead or alive either."
>"Did they say any details about this? When it left? Anything like that?"
"The documents he handed over detailed the flight's departure about fourteen or fifteen days after the raid, some of the little known information about our target for that night, which isn't much other than that she comes from the Oaxaca region of mexico, carries that damned Hi-Point, and has a reputation for engaging in what you might call the 'family business' with great zeal as something of a low level lieutenant, going to the field to personally oversee operations and report back to her father Jaun De La Rios."
>"So... what would they want with Jason to keep him alive that long?"
"I don't know, but I intend to find out. Working on the assumption, and it's a big assumption, I know, that he WAS on that flight out, he could be in any state from somewhat still alive to rotting on the side of the road somewhere. Now, if I can find out where a live prisoner might be taken, if they were to be extracted from the country, then I can trace that forward, and find out where Jason might have gone... if nothing else, it's something to go on for the time being until we either turn up no leads and never see or hear about him again, find out where he was dumped, or until we find something that leads us to him."
>"Well... Curiosity's got me in her sharp talons, I'd like to know this as well. A question does come to mind though. What will you do if we can't bring Jason home? I mean, not to be a pessimist before we even start, but there's a good probability we never find a corpse, much less bring him back alive at this stage."
"I thought about it. It's not something I want to confront, but I'll have no choice if we can't recover him. I can't sleep in the bed I've shared with him. I can't live in this house with only the memories we've made living here. Often I forget that I was once just another rifle the soviets shipped to Afghanistan that was thought to be less of an expense to just bury and abandon in the desert rather than to bring back and retain. There was a time that I didn't speak a word of English and even he was apprehensive to accept my embrace. In the end, he accepted the embrace, he used his phone to translate my Russian and even learned it to some extent to help communicate back when I had only remedial English skills. He took me to English classes and clothed me. I can't live here with that void. No one can replace him. If I can't bring him back, I can't live here anymore."
>A contemplative silence washed over the room before someone asked. "Where would you go?"
"I don't know. I'll have to cross that bridge when I come to it." She solemnly replied.
>"If we could get away from that subject, I think I have an idea that might help you along, if we're to try to bring Jason back from wherever you seem to think he may be."
>"Well, let's hear it? I'm sure Marina doesn't want to hear you drag it out."
"Please explain fast and in as much detail as possible."
>"Now... what if they had some information that they didn't document, but were somewhat known?"
"So they know but they don't write it down? And these would either be common knowledge that would be useless to most or would be esoteric to only some who might be concerned with such a thing, going through a few middle men who don't talk to each other to keep it a secret."
>"That's the idea. Now we have to figure out how to get it out of them."
"So we're gonna kidnap them... Jason DID do some welding in the garage, and I'm sure we could give them some convincing with some of the various welding equipment..."

5:30PM
>Looking out on the cityscape before him, even more decayed than usual the past couple months, Enrique was displeased, but soon, at least he'd be going home to his girlfriend rather than staying at this cheap hotel in god damned florida, nowhere near a coastline, or a land route from mexico.
>This wasn't his job. 
>Something about today just seemed endlessly negative. He couldn't tell, but if he or his contact said a word to each other today, something told him they'd both forego professional courtesy in favor of violence.
>Whatever it was that filled the air around him, he couldn't place it, and really felt no benefit would come from naming this sense of ennui, though he felt some kind of tension in the air. Like someone was watching him with infinite malice. Maybe he was just crazy. Surely they hadn't caught an EMBEDDED agent, who's taken so many precautions to avoid this, and the only way someone could have proved his activities is if they had some extreme NSA level tracking capabilities with either easily provable illegal operation in the US or cooperation with the federal blackmail institute.
>"It's just another quiet day in country and I'm going home next weE-"
>A cracking sound followed by a maelstrom of angry voices and a few dull cracks low in tone communicated the fact that someone was raiding the hotel room on the second floor, having rendered his associate almost immediately incapacitated.
>Enrique made his attempt to jump from the balcony, a burst of cracks coming from behind him just as he started the impulse to leap off the balcony and begin his attempt to run.
>He looked lower than he'd already been to see his left forearm's internal structures become external, his carpal tunnel, radius and ulna being bared before his eyes as the structure of the arm lost most of its rigidity, yielding beneath him and dropping him first onto the bottom on his collar bone and then slamming his chin into the the concrete barrier of the balcony, chipping a couple teeth.
>Enrique looked at the noodle like remains of his left arm, blood and tissue having ejected, spraying onto his side, the barrier he was attempting to jump and over the edge into the parking lot, most likely meaning that if anyone investigated it, some poor fucker was going to have his car impounded as evidence, or he'd be lucky enough to drive away and wash it off, making no news of it, and get away free of scathing. But he was getting ahead of himself, since as of two point three seconds prior, Enrique's forearm was disintegrated from three shots placed in his wrist, middle anterior forearm, and just below the elbow, whoever was raiding had no intention of talking things out, and there was someone in a black mask, body armor and pale white skin running at him, rifle butt cocked and wound up for a swift strike at his skull.
>The next thing Enrique perceived was himself being thrown into the back of an SUV, restrained, with a great deal of pressure on his left bicep and a black bag over his head.

7:12 PM.
"Bring him in here." Marina ordered in a cold voice, which she knew made her sound impressively Russian, cold and merciless.
>The mexican man was sat in a chair, his restrained arms briefly unrestrained to allow him to be tether to it, his associate tossed in the corner, blood staining him from a now empty and fully drained arm, which would almost certainly require amputation, assuming he lived long enough to receive something resembling medical attention, rather than having a gangrenous infection spread to his organs.
>The black bag came off the first subject, his battered head hurting somewhat less than the ballistic trauma in his shoulder, disintegrated shoulder socket, and broken ribs from being beaten senseless before being black bagged.
"Step out of the room. You hear nothing that goes on in here." Came this man's new sound of terror.
>He waited while multiple clicks echoed from the inside of the building, fans and some electronic device whirring to life with distinctive low and high pitched hums.
>"Where am I?!" The man pleaded before a fist from nowhere swiped into and followed through, glancing off his skull, succeeded by the icy voice.
"I'll ask the questions, mestizo shitbag."
>"Hey, what do you have against my people? I got rights, pig! This is an-" Another fist slammed against his skull.
"You don't speak unless asked. You have NO rights here. I am not some police department janitor with any obligation to ask questions nicely and give you ice cream afterwards. Now we're going to start, and until then, you remain quiet. Am I understood?"
>"Yeah!" He answered exasperatedly before beginning on a blue streak cursed out under his breath in spanish.
>The black bag was lifted from his head, his eyes greeted by no less than a bright work light glaring, which he hadn't perceived in its full magnitude under the hood.
>His face rook a full wince at the unpleasant brightness of the light, which seemed so intense as to shine through his eyelids.
"Lets start with your name. Given name only."
>"Jaun."
"And you work for the Huerta cartel?"
>"Who are you? Russian intelligence? Interpol?" Juan asked, prompting Marina to grimace at this particular waste of organs and his stupidity.
"Lets go back to the beginning. Not only would none of these agencies be permitted to operate in the united states, I am not a cop, you have no rights here, and next time you ask a stupid question, I'll get the protective gear and go to work on you with the clamps and electrodes. Now, unless you want to see me in the leather coat, gloves and helmet, or ask about some other group sho can't save you, We'll move right on to whether you and your associate work for the Huerta cartel."
>"I work for the Huerta cartel, yes. I organize drug shipments, and various other smuggling related things for them."
"Oh? Well, Juan, you've peaked my interest." Marina said, donning a tan leather Jacket a few sizes large for her, taking her time to button it. "Now, you see, Juan, I have an interest, if you would be so kind as to help me out, with the smuggling of Humans."
>"Well, I'm not INTIMATELY familiar with that, but I'll answer anything I can about it. But I want medical attention. Waddya say, gringa?"
"Alright, something for something. You give me this information, and we'll patch you up before releasing you into the woods outside a town." Marina offered as she walked past the work light in the shed, now wearing a jacket, a welding visor, and putting on a pair of welding gloves.
>"What's with the get up?"
"I ask the questions, remember?" She asked, pulling a few electrodes from a cylindrical oven.
"Do you know what these are?" She asked, pointing the electrodes accusingly at him.
>"No."
"They're electrodes. For arc welding. Do you think an electrode would arc on a human body?"
>"I don't know, but I don't want to find out." He chuckled out nervously, continuing, "But I believe you wanted to know about Human trafficking."
"Good boy. So, I want to know about smuggling humans out."
>"I don't know how they do that, I only help them get in."
"That's not good enough." Marina said, clipping the electrode into the holder and slowly moving it toward the man.
>"No! PLEASE, NO!-YAAAAMZZZSHZZZZSHZHZZ" Came from the man's mouth as he was zapped with about a hundred and ten amps of electricity for two seconds.
>Marina waited for the man to recover from the electrocution, which he didn't, instead sputtering to death, and turning dormant.
"Guards, come get this asshat out of here." Marina called, murmering under her breath "So, I guess it WON'T arc on a human body." 
>While Marina went about putting that electrode away and turning off the welder, reaching now for a set of tanks which held a cutting torch, two of her specialists dragged out the man who'd been in the chair, throwing him into the trunk before coming back and setting her next victim up. By the time they'd finished, she'd turned the valves and was just about ready to start cutting, be it metal or people.
"Name."
>"Enrique, I specialize in human trafficking, I'll tell you anything, PLEASE!"
"Ok. Lets talk, then." Marina said coldly, removing the bag from Enrique's head.
"I have an interest in someone who's been taken out of the country, possibly as a prisoner. Answer me and you'll get antibiotics and a sling before we release you just outside a city."
>"Look, I can't say I know all the specifics, but, We've been smuggling people out occasionally. Aside from the occasional street gang guys, we've had one notable case, and I don't think the gangs would be the culprit, scooping my associate and I up like that, since they're all standing with their tails between their legs. I'm guessing You're after a white guy, right? went missing around two months ago?"
"It sounds like I've heard of this guy, but then again I'm not sure, keep talking and maybe I won't test the effects of an oxy acetyline cutting torch on a human body today."
>"Blonde hair, blue eyes, from what I was told, he was trying to kill a woman of high rank in the cartel when he was captured in the warehouse district."
"Yeah, I'm interested. Go on."
>"I made arrangements for him to be smuggled out of the country to our interrogators in la paz, though I don't know what happens to him beyond that. He gets held and interrogated. If you want more about him, I can't help you, you'd have to ask someone over there, not that you could miss the building where the interrogations happen, it's the only fortified warehouse in town."
"Always with the warehouses. Fuck, La Paz, warehouse. I'll be back.
>Marina left the shed, returning after verifying the location of the warehouse.
"So, what reason do I have to trust that you aren't putting us on?"
>"We fly them into La Paz. If there's anyone who'd be taken to THOSE interrogators, there's only a few good possibilities. Either he'd end up in a ditch on the side of the road, he'd still be there, or in the middle, he might have been taken to Victoria De La Rios' private island, rumor has it she ordered the guy to be taken to her in two weeks."
"An island?"
>"Yes, she has an island off the coast of Mexico somewhere, but I don't know where beyond it being in the south west."
"You've been very helpful, Enrique. Guards!"
>The guards came in and stood to attention.
"Take him and release him in the forest near a city. Not this city. You." Marina said, pointing to the man on the left before continuing. "Have your phone ready for further instructions."
>The guards unrestrained Enrique, taking him to the trunk of the SUV while Marina wrote a note and handed it to one of the men. It read "Bury both of them, burn this note."

Seven Days Prior. 
>The neighborhood watch gathered, waiting as they set around a fire and many questioned just what issue they could take at following Marina after all her work, shared mutually with them, and the now missing Jason, who'd not been seen in months... Could they really raise any legitimate concern over her planning? They seemed to be so perfect for each other, even if Jason was something of a gregarious introvert, while Marina was fairly timid at times, for little apparent reason.
>More importantly, in the minds of about half the watch, was why, on this evening, had she called them? Would she have a good reason? If she did, would they bother to respond to it? Or go back inside?
>Marina approached, her face starkly contrasted to her timidity in normal situations, indicating to all around that something was occurring, or she was intent on making something occur.
>"What's going on?" a voice echoed past the crowd.
"I need volunteers for something a bit more extreme than we've done before." She answered, continuing on to say, "A rescue operation for Jason, who I have reason to believe is still alive from some information we got out of a couple human traffickers."
>Many from the crowd began to raise their hands to volunteer, beginning to voice their support before Marina's hand went up and so did her voice.
"WAIT A MINUTE." She commanded firmly, eliciting obedience from the crowd. "Like everything so far, there's a catch, and unlike anything HE planned, or even I planned in the past, this one has a very substantial one. This isn't a simple drive out at night with a return scheduled before dawn, like many of our previous attacks. This is going to be long, potentially on the order of weeks, it isn't planned out yet, but we're planning a raid on a prison.-"
>"WHAT? ARE YOU INSANE?!" came a voice from the crowd.
"No, I'm not."
>"So let me get this straight, Jason's in prison, the raid to get him out is going to take weeks, and even then, we don't KNOW he's still alive, but rather have information that he MAY be alive, the probability of which grows seems, given the situation, to grow lesser every day, meanwhile we'd also be reliant on information from the enemy to assume he's alive. Am I missing anything here?"
"Yes, all that, and it's in another country, with the possibility that there's TWO probable locations for him that aren't a ditch on the side of the road somewhere, we can't fly in country due to the fact that we need our weapons, and it's pretty deep in. We'd need to cross through country trails, avoiding several state border stations, a national border, and then we'd have to drive on deep into mexico. Basically, we'd have to get into arizona, cross the border near Yuma but not on a road with a checkpoint, and with all this, which would take several days of driving, avoiding any security measures on state and national boundaries, then we'd have to run basically to the southernmost threshold of the baja California peninsula, under somewhat elevated radiation levels, THEN we'd have to raid the prison, and do it all again on the way back. This of course assumes we find him there, if not, we'd have to go part way back to the border, and drive our way down to the coast, somehow getting ourselves across a stretch of ocean to an island that our target that night keeps to herself, since we've gleaned that she might have had him sent here. This is all subject to change as new information becomes available, of course, the island could be a longer or shorter extension than I think."
>"Damn. I didn't think it was that bad. So... cross country two ways, potentially crossing two countries while passing through borders with hidden hardware and an invasion of a foreign country with intent to wreak havoc within?"
"Yes. I still need some time to plan out a route that avoids inspection stations and doesn't take us into the California wastes."
>"Well, I have ONE further question to consider before I volunteer. Is this plausible?"
"Challenging, but once I've got a route planned, yes."
>"Then I'll do it." The first volunteer stated, before about half the crowd volunteered, the other twenty left, before ten of them were to be selected out for team size.

Somewhere, time indeterminate. Objects and time frame conflicting.
>I set out today for a new place, only a new darkness finding me in my home.
>I drive along the country roads through a rural town on my way out, the town isn't much bigger than Sattley, a town I once saw many years before in my youth. 
>I'm talking on the phone, which I have on speaker phone in the old '02 Saturn Vue, a car with a semi responsive V6 engine, and a rough set of suspension, which just as I remembered, had a tendency to toss me around inside, not that the brand new truck that would take its place was all that much better in that regard, Having a V6 3.5 liter engine, which required a bit more of a push on the pedal to start accelerating, and with suspension that still relayed all the same shock into the cabin, but only slightly more dulled them. Really the only difference was that the truck MAY have gotten better mileage, sat higher from the road, and rather than coughing until it caught in a level start to idle, tended to start with either just the right amount of starter, coughing until it let out only a mild growl as it came to life, or in response to too much or too little, coughing for about a second and a half before a sharp and aggressive growl emanated from the engine compartment.
>The sunset behind me had grown orange and shadows black in the glare of the orange sunlight. As I bumped on down the country road, contently going at a too slow for comfort twenty five miles per hour, I noticed something seemed to be... off.
>The orange light began to expand, and so did the shadows as black as tar.
>In mere seconds I'd let off the pedal, allowing the car to slow to less than fifteen miles per hour, as the light began to fade.
>In no time at all, the sunset had gone from daylight with orange glare to dusk with about no light out. I couldn't see the area of the headlights once they'd turned on... in fact I could hardly see out of the car.
>I reached over to the passenger seat to grab my helmet, planting it on my head and swinging down the goggles mounted in the ball detent mount. Their intensifier tubes glowing to life with the click of the gold plated electrodes in the mount. The image in the tubes coming to sight clear and defined... and within four seconds, the gray haze had pervaded the tubes, rendering the image gray and indistinguishable in all but the center of the tubes, rendering the goggles useless as I lightly tapped the breaks to stop the car, unable to even see into the boxy cabin now as the darkness and the haze consumed me.
>My breath grows short and stagnant.
>The next thing I feel is the breath being sucked into my lungs as the darkened ceiling, brighter than that of the haze comes into focus.
>As my vision comes to me, I finally see the darkness recede. Looking around the room, there's only myself, a naked woman, her dark brown hair spilling like liquid over the bed.
>I can't stay in this room anymore, the feeling of a receding nightmare and the smell of a sweetened aroma of sweat hanging in the air, mixed with that of the sea sickened me. The feeling of dread seeping back into my mind from... somewhere.
>I slowly walked, quietly from the room, down the hall, and through the side of the main room and to the kitchen.
>Going through the medicine cabinet, I see something that catches my eye. Not a dissociative, not an opioid, but a bottle that only says, "Red Pills: Warning, may cause inner awakening, clarity of outlook."
"Fuck it. Might just take my mind off this shit." I mutter to myself.
>Popping the cap off the bottle, I decide to take only one of... whatever the fuck these are. Dropping one into my hand, and piling the rest back in, I threw it into my mouth, and as soon as it hit my tongue, as soon as I swallowed the pill, I was hit by great realization.
>Worlds of imagery, information, illumination and knowledge flash before my eyes, at the center of my rational mind as I'm confronted with the most forefront and central facts of my world.
>These things all merge into a great truth, molding itself, shaping itself into words, hissed through great irritation and the sharpest of surprises.
"Hey! These are Mike and Ikes."

Chapter 9: Like a bolt from the heavens.
74 Days After disappearance.
>After a couple days of planning, ten volunteers, some hours spent packing and some time on the road, which had all added up to well over a week and not too much less than two, Marina had finally reached her destination, or close enough to it that she'd known that any winds from the north would bring elevated levels of radiation.
>The questions on her mind were now narrowing down, zeroing in on the issues of what had happened to Jason, what had been done to him? Was he even still alive?
>She knew she was in the desert, and that she had, along with her team, infiltrated Mexico by an unguarded route. To her east was the way back, to her west was a slightly irradiated desert, which to her surprise had actually had some abandoned border crossings, not that anyone would want to guard a border receiving half a rad per hour. To her south was the country of Mexico, or the bulk of it, seeing as the border wasn't too far to the north, and speaking of the north, in that direction only lie the California wastes.
>Marina thought to herself for a moment. "God knows what ghosts, creatures and things inhabit that hell if any at all could even survive that." Before pushing the thoughts from her mind, and instead focusing on the tasts at hand.
>Marina didn't know if Jason was there, she thought about all the eventualities that awaited him when he got there, probably around seventy days prior.
>All the eventual horrors that could have befallen him since...
>Had he been killed? Dumped somewhere? Would they still be trying to interrogate him or negotiate a ransom with god knows who for payment in exchange for his release? If not her, who would they negotiate WITH? His as of yet not apparently existent parents? His claimed but not as of yet provably existent sister? Had they programmed him?
>...Could he even BE programmed? She'd suspected he'd been programmed from the start of their relationship, having spent a good five years of it understanding him and realizing that...He seemed to have no past beyond walking out onto an airfield in the desert. His family was something she'd never heard of until one morning when... could his programing have failed?
>Could further programing take place on top of previous ingrained tendencies or triggers? Seeing the amoral things he'd done, the neutron bomb, the neighborhood watch, the way he never seemed to have remorse or regret when killing, even though he showed full awareness of the consequences, the impact a death would have, even if it was better that the person in question die than live. How would that be programmed? would it be an ingrained tendency? a set? A specified or set of specified triggers? What would they be? 
>For a moment, Marina tried to imagine herself in Jason's position, were he to have survived these past months. Tied up. Alone. Frustrated. Abused. She'd had enough as soon as she started.
>In only a matter of hours she would be at the prison, and she'd hope to get her answer there.

>"Michael, why are you staring out the window?"
"Huh?"
>"You've been staring at the sea for an hour, come here and give me a foot massage."
>I walked from the window to Victoria as she threw me a bottle of lotion, sitting on a piece of furniture that could be an end table or an ottoman as she placed a foot on my lap.
"But am I the only one?" I mutter to myself, thinking of the feeling that it wasn't right for me to be called this name. 
>She says something as she tilts her head back, eyes closed. Relaxed.
>"You're the last."
"Omega... I am omega..." 
"The fuck does that mean?" I think to myself, before she starts again.
>"The gun is on the counter, go out to the beach with it after the massage..."

Five hours later
"Now, here's how this works. You give me information, I spare your life."
>Marina jabbed a now glowing hot knife into the man's side, eliciting a groan of pain before a nod of compliance.
>Marina removed the gag from the man's face before beginning her interrogation.
"Now... Without any BULLSHIT, you're going to tell me how many whites have been through here in the past three months."
>"About five!" The man whimpered out in clear distress, his eyes misted with tears and face a clear indicator that he'd not been ready for any semblence of the agony he'd probably helped dish out.
"Now, of those five, how many were men?"
>"Just two!"
"Give descriptions."
>"They both looked pretty similar, blonde hair, blue eyes, but one had more muscular limbs and the other one was skinnier, they were both about six feet tall!"
"WHEN?"
>"One was more recent, probably about two months or so, and the other passed through here last week."
"Good, Gooooood. Now, you're going to tell me. WHAT. Was. Done. To. The. Earlier. One?"
>The man's eyes grew wide as he thought of what laid in store for him, he shrunk further from the questionably human woman, whose red eyes were now boring into him, and then he let the last bit of information out.
>"He was conditioned and sent off to Victoria de la Rios as something like a servant."
"Conditioned?"
>"I don't know what you call it! It came from a CIA project in the seventies and human traffickers have been using it ever since! Something about an Alpha beta and omega stage!"
>Marina's heart sank in her chest as she realixed that it could have only been descended from one program...
"I've got all I need from you." Marina stated coldly as she turned on her heel from the man.
>"N-Now you'll let me go, r-right?"
>At the sound of that question, Marina's mercy ran out. She turned back and took a slash athis throat with the knife, silencing a forming scream by slicing through the front most third of his neck while he looked on in horror, the realization that in mere minutes he'd be dead with or without aid setting in.
"So... Fall in." Marina commanded, greeted by a team of ten standing around her, a couple of them who got there last turning around and taking their positions to provide security.
"So... Suppose... I've had my concern for a while... Jason's programmed from the start. What happens if they REPROGRAM him? Particularly Omega is a concerning piece."
>"What's omega?"
"Jason used to talk about it, and in my education, we suspected something similar to this existed in the west. There was a CIA program you've all probably heard of, it was called MK Ultra. It had an offshoot which was referred to as project Monarch. It was leaked and its procedures became popular with people smugglers who wanted to condition willing sex slaves."
>"Are you suggesting that Jason's been conditioned into a prostitute?"
"Possibly. Thing is, after about a year of living with him like I did after he came home, I kind of suspected he might have been programmed in some way. He never talked about his past or family or really anything before he pulled me out of a crate in the desert. Like none of it existed. Now what if you put programming into programming?"
>"I don't know. Maybe it just... overwrites. Maybe it malfunctions?"
"Maybe Jason's been conditioned with omega, a self termination tendency. Does it still work? Does it fail somehow?"
>"... I don't know Marina. I can't say."

Meanwhile...
>I finish rubbing Victoria's feet as she stands up and walks to the window I was standing at earlier.
"Omega... Omega... Die..."
>As if I was posessed, not actually performing my actions but rather witnessing them.
>before I know it, I'm looking at the back of Victoria's head, feeling my own face, blank and stoic. Eyes wide. I smell her scent, a fragrance, a pheromone so rousing that I can't put myself off alert, that I have yet another large signature of presence of another person. I feel a moderately small, soft shoulder carressing my hands as she turns to look on uncertainly at me.
>And squeeze...
>"Mich- hchchchchs" She managed to get out as the hands tightened on her throat, the imagery of what happened since before I woke up in this beach house flashing through my mind... In reverse... What they did to me... at her behest...
>She knees me in the sternum, loosening my grip on her neck as she manages to rasp out, "Michael, why-" before the grip tightens back up, the thumb on top of her traquia clamping it shut.
"My name... Is... fuck, I can't remember, but I know it's not Michael! Shut the fuck up!"
>My body winds back before slamming her body into the wall from the neck first, rolling the upper spine and back of the skull into the wall.
"You're the reason I can't remember shit! YOU'RE THE ONE WHO HAD ME TORTURED, YOU FUCKING SHITSTAIN! AND THEN! *Slam* YOU TRIED *crack* TO MAKE ME KILL*SLAM* MYSELF?" 
>Her face fades from a look of terror to a limp as she loses consciousness and goes limp.
>A strange voice intervenes... a male voice. 
>"Gray? GRAAAAAAAAY??? COME ON! I won't bite!"
>Looking to my left, I see a man, like my mirror reflection but with a rifle and a set of equipment worn on him. A rifle in hand... A rather unique rifle.
>The man in question stared with gray eyes, a nuetral expression somehow not casting dissapproval, but still conveying it. 
>His rig held several AK-74-esque magazines that seemed to be of larger dimensions than those that... Her name will come to me, took.
>More striking than the gray eyes, the odd magazines in the rig, and more outstanding than any of these features, which I surprisingly noticed first, was his rifle.
>The rifle had a seemingly angled foregrip built in, a Barrel of such diameter that it was obviously an integral suppressor or some other sort of barrel jacket. Most strikingly, the rifle had a PSO-1 on it and a blonde stock that seemed to come from an SVD. We locked eyes for a moment before he began to speak.
>"What's wrong with being named Michael?" He asked with a smirk.
>looking into the grayed out irises as his eyes softened, one could easily deduce that he had no business being out here... at least none that wouldn't be held close to the chest.
>Gradually, he brought his rifle to a low ready from his shoulder before asking "Anyone else here?"
"No. She was... shit, I guess she was fucking me against my will. I don't know if there's anyone else on the island, but I can tell you no one else is in the house."
>"I see. So what's your relationship to her?" he asked, throwing his eyes downward and to my right to cast a cue to Victoria's collapsed body.
"Uncle Ruckus, no relation."
>"Smartass, you keep talking like that, there'll be no witnesses."
"Okay, I'm a dude from... Everettvile Florida. I guess. Though I might have had some Hallucinations about California... or memories. She had me on like... a lot of drugs. Dissociatives. Hallucinogens."
>"Huh. I came out of there too. So what puts you here?"
"Uh. She did things to me..." I state matter of factly.
>"Oh."
"What brings you out here?"
>"Well, you'd never be able to track me anyway, so I suppose I'll tell you. I've been tracking an assassin named Gracie, alias Gray. My search led me here. So tell me. You seen her?"
"What should I have seen if I saw her?"
>"Amber hair, blue eyes, bob cut, five foot two to five foot four, possibly intervened when some woman tried to talk to you saying you 'need to stop.' overall timid physique?"
"Hmmmmm. You know, sounds familiar, but it doesn't describe anyone I've seen since I woke up here with no idea how I ended up here. To be honest, you don't have to worry about me trying to track you... actually... now that it occurs to me, I started a neighborhood watch organization that was basically a fucking death squad."
>"Wait, that was YOU?"
"Yeah. What about it?"
>"DUDE, you made my brother resign the police department there!" He stated in a growing cackle.
"Oh, did I?" I ask, the amusement that gave me a smile at the thought of causing some poor bastard to quit his job somehow not registering in the front of my brain.
>"Yeah..." he said between falling chuckles before continuing on to say "...imagine my shock, I call up my brother Paul, and find out he's just quit his job as a detective because, and I fucking quote 'Man, there's some fucking deathsquad going around town killing street bangers by the dozens and I just interviewed some dude whose wife had a fucking tail and dog ears and shit!'"
"How do you come to the idea that I'm the one? There could be multiple deathsquads."
>"Going on like he did about the gore and the number of victims a few months back, you'd think he'd seen the aftermath of a fight from 300, but with all the bodies stuffed into one house."
"Back to this Gray character, I'm guessing she crossed you pretty good. Something about your search must have led you out here, right? I mean... we're on an island in the middle of the ocean, why would she be here?"
>"Well, before you- she's still alive." he stated, flashing a glance at Victoria, who was now beginning to stir on the floor.
"Tell you what, mister..."
>"Michael. Michael Berdan."
"Well, I have no attachment to her, and honestly, her still being alive is a bit of a disappointment, so, since you're clearly after this Gray person and somehow felt SHE'D be pertinent to your pursuit, why don't I step outside while you get whatever it is you want from her?"
>"I'm not letting you get away that fast."
"Bonus, there's a really tacky pistol in the kitchen. A gold damascened Hi-Point."
>"Why would that be appealing?"
"Ask her, I'm sure she'd have some sort of answer, since she's apparently got some sort of access to gold damascene services."
>"A good point."
"And did you happen to say your name was Michael Berdan? Your brother wouldn't happen to be Paul Berdan, Everettville PD, would he?"
>"You're taking a BIIIG risk saying names like that around me, bitch! DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? AND YOU, MICHAEL! YOU'LL DO AS YOU'RE-" Victoria managed to get out before the sound a loud snap rang my ears, a blood curdling scream emanating from her general direction as she'd apparently started lunging back to her feet before Berdan put a nine millimeter bullet into her knee cap, causing her to collapse against my leg, grabbing hold of my shin, clawing into it with her well kept fingernails.
"Who're you talking to here? My name's not Michael." I state before the fact that I'm stating it occurs to me, delivering a heel to the top of her skull, and crushing her face into the floor of the house.
>"Hehehe, we ain't cops sweetheart. You're due no process, and a confession under duress is every bit as good as one given in an air conditioned room after you've had your ass wiped with silken fucking handkerchiefs for the past couple months. So I tell you what. Seeing as this guy over here, who, by the way, seeming your fault here, doesn't seem to remember his name and looks like he wants to do a lot more than kill you with a lot more than simple malice, you cooperate with me, and I send bad cop over there outside so he doesn't force feed you your own tendons. Sounds good, yeah?" Berdan mused, walking to my side and taking a squatting position to put a hand on her now bleeding face and squishing her cheeks together in pure condescension.
>Yeah, no doubt he's on his own side, and it aligns with my own.
>"Why don't you wait outside?" He says to me.
"Yeah. I'll try to remember my name."
>Walking out of the house, I could only here the sounds of a question being asked, the occasional moan of agony.
>As I walked out onto the beach, it dawned on me that my name was Jason Rogers... and that I didn't remember how I got out of California after the nukes.
>After about ten minutes, a bang is heard from inside the house and Berdan walks out. 
>"You're... still here?"
"Unaffiliated. Like I said. Look, I don't know where I am and I don't think anyone's gonna come looking for me. I need to find my way back... could you take me with you? At least to the mainland? Wherever it is?"
>Berdan looks me over for a moment in incredulity before a Blonde haired woman carrying a pistol emerges. She looks at me with visible suspicion before speaking with an unmistakable accent that practically screamed "Russian" or rather, somehow 'Soviet".
>"Michael? I thought he'd have ran off by now. Why's he still here?"
>Michael turned half way around with a "great, now you made me answer concerns." uttered in a hushed tone before he spoke to her. "He says he doesn't know where he is or how he got here. He doesn't think anyone's gonna come for him."
>"So you want to take him with us?"
>"Yeah, at least to the mainland. I think we'd be able to get him back into the united states pretty easily at least. Think it'll be a problem?"
>"Your call." The woman said before walking toward us. Amending that "If he fucks with us, I'm putting him down."
>Michael looks at me as the woman passes us on the way to a boat.
>"Well, you heard the lady. Before we take you anywhere though, I want one thing from you."
"And what's that?"
>"Your name."
"Jason Rogers."
>"Alright, Jason. Come on. We'll drop you off in Dallas."


Chapter 10: A Hard Stop And The New Road.
>Several hours having passed since we'd left the island, I found myself in the darkened cab of a truck heading north east from the land of mexico toward a border crossing on the as of yet unpatrolled US border. Silence, long since hanging in the air like a body bag as I stared into the desert, spellbound by what little landscape I could view of a strange place I'd never seen before and one which, hopefully, I'd never see again. At least not without having a say in the matter beforehand...
>The terrain passed by at quite a rapid pace, the desert and its vegetation standing on its own as a mesmerizing influence as it passed by.
>A feminine voice, by now becoming familiar, rose from the infinite darkness, catching me off guard and tearing me from one world of my own to the one in which I shared a reality universe and... even a little world with others.
>"mgmmg, mhmhmhm.mgmhmh -live back there?"
"H-huh?"
>"Are you alright? You haven't made a sound in hours."
"Yeah, I'm okay. Just caught in my own little world a bit."
>Michael glanced from the drivers seat before muttering "Эй, Экатарина, спроси его, какой это день." To which the woman, whose name I was almost certain was among the blur of syllables, visibly responded before she turned back to me and began to speak.
>"What day is it?"
"May 26, 2024." I answered, to which her eyes, open and alert, went wide, exposing the full circular form of her irises before she speaks to Michael.
>"Это далеко не так, что происходит?" She conveys to Michael at the wheel before he starts to lean forward in thought, Probably furrowing his brow to such a degree that it could be felt with no line of sight to his face.
>"Экатарина, они промывали мозги в советском союзе. Вы знакомы с методологией?" He asked, somehow the tone of a question leaking through... somehow...
>"Да, у нас были методы, основанные на соблазнении, которые имели высокие показатели успеха и требовали всего несколько часов один на один, используя гипноз и различные лекарства, чтобы ввести очень убедительное предложение. Вы принимаете социального девианта, изгоя, избыточного веса общества и превращаете его в фанатика, который верит в то, что он делает по воле проводника, так же глубоко, как и свое собственное долгое убеждение." She answered. Somehow the speech, only a moment earlier being a total blur of meaningless syllables not taking on meaning, but starting to become more clearly defined as Michael began to speak.
>"А, хорошо. Говорят, как русскую винтовку. Ну, в Америке больше искусства направлено на результат методов «промывания мозгов», но наши разведывательные службы используют методы, основанные на травме, которые приводят к невротическому субъекту с множественным расстройством личности, один из которых любит обработчик и в высшей степени послушным...-that's the theory behind it anyway."
"That's the theory of what?" I asked, both of them obviously going beyond wide eyed. 
>"Ahhh... More than once. Jason, you've been brainwashed more than once." Michael answers in a reversion back to English.
"WHAT?!" 
>"The loss of time is a pretty sure sign of it. What do you remember?"
"Wait, loss of time? What day is it? WHAT YEAR!?" I ask, alarm slipping into my mind at the prospect that the present was disconnected from the past, and that I might not be in the same YEAR that I last remembered.
>"ANSWER. The question, Jason. What do you remember. We're talking life story."
"Well... I was born in Bakersfield California. I spent my time growing up being bullied when I was little, then I attacked this fucker and the bullying stopped when I was in ninth grade... I graduated Highschool, went on to college for an education in skills based labor, gaining a pipe fitting certification, then the day I got that certification the nuclear war between California and... California occurred. I lived for a month or so in the fallout, I met this girl who I hardly spoke to for a long while, traveled with some friends, then they all fell ill. She died, I went to sleep and well... Next thing I know I walk out of an air conditioned building with sterile white corridors like a laboratory onto an airfield in the middle of the desert. I got on a plane and got off on another airfield in the desert with some notion that I had to turn some desert people against some more desert people."
>"... hmmm. When was that?"
"It was twenty eighteen."
>"And what's happened since then?"
"Well, I got back onto a plane and got off in Florida, I made a certain financial arrangement that allowed me to live without seeking professional employ, and make projects when I saw fit. Well, the day I made that arrangement, which I... won't go into, I came home, opening the front door to see a woman with white hair, a pair of fluffy white ears like that of a dog such as a Samoyed, and a fluffy white tail flicking behind her, a pair of red eyes with a soft expression on her face. She shouted 'Dobro pozhalovat' domoy, moya lyubov'!' before running up to me, giving me a hug and a kiss, laughing at my confusion because I didn't speak a word of Russian. Then I started finding I had all these constructive abilities, skills I never remembered picking up, like long range shooting and fabricating guns. Eventually we'd lived together for six years, then it happened... Ma'am, are you okay?"
>"What?"
"You're crying."
>"No, I'm fine! it's just a touching story. Keep going, take us to the present."
"If you say so. Well, some kids from the neighborhood got murdered by a south american gang. So I decided it would be a public service to radicalize them, which went great for about two weeks before a big hit scared most of the gangs off the street, and a cartel seemingly moved in. Did you hear about the house with about eighty liquified people in it? That was us. Well, we struck a warehouse going after the woman you two killed on the island, I get to an internal structure at the top of a warehouse and... next thing I knew I was staring you down with her throat in my hands. So, now that we're at the present... when is the present?"
>"August 4, 2024."
"Well, fuck."
>"Hey, Jason, would you mind if we took you all the way to Everettville instead of dropping you off in Dallas?"
"Why, that's very kind of you, I'd be much obliged."

Meanwhile. Just off the island.
>Frank Keegan sits aboard a stolen motorboat a few thousand yards from the small island identified by the men in the prison as belonging to Victoia, the HVT of approximately two months prior, whose escape or death had gone unverified. If she was still alive, more importantly if Jason was still alive, he'd almost certainly have to be here. He watched patiently as the sun went down, Marina giving the signal to drop the night vision goggles over the eyes. As the sound of twenty dull clicks from the mounts proceeded to clatter through the evening breeze, he couldn't help but wonder if Marina's ears ached under her helmet. 
>Before too long, the boat had been quietly rowed to shore and all had jumped our, advancing up the beach slowly and silently toward a darkened and quiet house. 
>If what he'd taken away from the interrogations had been any indicator, Marina would likely be seething with rage at what a programmed Jason and a sweaty Victoria might be doing in that house. Not that he personally disapproved, though the man he'd come to know Jason as, valuing loyalty intensely, might disapprove if her were aware, probably to the point of homicidal rage. What he could not gauge however, was what Marina's inclination toward catching Jason, even brainwashed in such a state of affairs might be.
>The advance continued until they were ten yards from the house and began flanking around, finding any other entrances that might exist and be used, if only to occupy them and prevent an escaping occupant, who might certainly know a million little things about the island and routes of egress which or even the Marina did not.
>The three entrances to the house were stacked with armed people in their night vision goggles with short rifles in a matter of seconds before the word came from Marina.
"BREACH!"
>A storm of boots clattering against the wood flooring of the house ensues as shouts from spot to spot, no more than every five to seven feet someone might move a shout of was heard, and in a small space of time, the house was cleared, finding casings on the floor of the house, for the distinctive nine by eighteen millimeter caliber, no less. Looking this over, Frank saw a woman with a pale brown complexion heaped on the floor in a puddle of dark and congealed blood.
>Marina looked this body over before looking to Frank to ask the question that he'd been dreading, feeling his stomach turn and sensing Marina's heart drop at his three quarters of a second hesitation.
"Is Jason here?"

August 9, 2024
>In a haze I find myself on the doorstep of a house, the once sharp idea that I should be here now only a vague sense. The conversations of the last four or five days traveling with those two in the truck becoming ever less sharply defined and turning into a smear in the seat of my consciousness. 
>Reaching for the door handle, I grasp the knob and attempt to tunr it, only to find it locked...
>There's a key under a wooden bear that sits propped up in the garden, though I don't know how I know this, it merely comes to me.
>Sure enough the key fits and the door opens, the interior of the house feeling familiar, and the pictures on the wall seem to feature myself or myself with a woman, often with rifles, and sometimes in groups or in one particular instance, holding a trophy.
>I decided that the thing to do was to wait for this woman to show up, and then she could help reorient me into what appeared to be my own world.
 
August 10, 8:47 AM
>Marina sat in the back of an SUV speeding down the road back home to Everettville thinking about the things that had kept her up in her night vision goggles staring out into the road instead of asleep at night whether they drove or stopped.
>Jason's absence, The factor of Victoria's death prior to their arrival, the presence of the nine by eighteen millimeter casings at the scene... The state of the corpse, indicating that death had occurred several hours earlier.
>Pragmatically speaking, Jason's death was not verified or unverified, then again, the same could be said of his survival. Files found in the house that night were indicative of Jason's conditioning, though what "conditioning" or "the personal use of victoria de la Rios" meant was an ambiguous question, and a disturbing proposition on which to postulate. 
>In that moment, Marina decided on her optimistic side that maybe she'd see Jason again. In any case, in about an hour, she'd be back at home, she could take a shower, give it some time. Like Cliff Richard singing about a woman who'd walked out on him, and the tradition a south african soldier might celebrate in his final days of national service, she'd give him forty days to get back.

August 10, 9:03 AM. Rogers residence.
>I sat on the couch, I watched the events of the world portrayed through the ever manipulated narrative of the last of the old big television news networks, Fox, owned by a dying corporation once called "news corp." This year, being an election year, attendance of the old traditional news networks was, as had been the case in twenty twenty, going through a deep slump on top of the longstanding and already deadly trend of dwindling views to any of the old vanguard, the intellectual clique who all held similar or aligning interests and a virtual stranglehold on things like print, television, mainstream digital media and the dissemination of information on a near global basis, save to those countries where such a thing wouldn't matter, and gaining it would garner no further influence.
>Today's topic, was of course what seemed to be the most unbelievable and irascible candidate in any election held to date. As the camera zoomed in, and the voices of the commentators, thank fucking god, quieted down, the candidate went on to speak, discussing a myriad of topics, before going on to subjects such as Tax plans, stating "I got a tax plan RIGHT HERE!" before spitting on the stage, and pointing to it while saying "there it goes right now!"
>Before long he touched on subjects such as his recorded and documented service in the Spanish American war, claiming pride in a picture of himself with twenty-sixth American President Theodore Roosevelt, his Two months as sheriff of Diablo River mining settlement, and addressing his critics and their conduct, along with its subsequent backlash with the departing theme that "You can't put a bucket over a pig's head, it'll just make him SKITTISH!"
>Failing to make sense of much of his positions relevant to the present day, and not wanting to hear the voices the commentators attempting to be reticent of the speech while providing anything remotely related to a coherent analysis, I decided to simply turn off the television, and maybe never turn it on again.
>Just then I heard a buzzing coming from a nearby room, jumping to my feet and finding the source of the noise, I manage to pull a phone off a charger and answer.
"Hello?"
>"Ah, Jason, I caught you! Meet me at Mary's Diner in half an hour."
"What, who is-"*click*
"AH FUCK. well, Might as well, Mary's is on 9th and Patterson... Time to run... I guess."
9:26 AM 
>Marina found herself looking on the house she'd left uninhabited for approximately two weeks. She found it as unsurprising as anything else that the truck was gone. Town being what it was, though that complicated things, particularly in the neighborhood. Though with a large portion of the neighbors still there, the number of thefts outside what was ostensibly her property seemed to be rather small. Nonexistent in fact. 
>Before anything else, she unlocked the door, dropped her bags and her kit, and dressed rather informally, settling on a pair of chocolate chip pattern pants and a red tee shirt. though something seemed to be off, the dresser maybe just a little bit emptier of Jason's clothing than it should have been.
>At this prospect Marina found herself disturbed, catching a quick, cold shower for only a couple minutes to wash away the haze and grime of the past two weeks quickly, and bring her mind into focus.
>Duress was one thing, the way it could seep into one's mind and linger for long periods could alter a view of one's surroundings for a long period, though it didn't dismiss the absence of previously present items. It was time to pay Henry and Carilyn McCarthy a visit and ask if they saw anything.
>As she exited the house, she noticed that something was off, a dark object in the corner was absent, but what was it? There'd be time for that later.

Mary's Diner. 9:35 AM
>"So, Jason, how have you been?"
"I can't say I'm sure what to tell you."
>"Oh, really? Because I find it strange how I give you that information about that woman and you disappear for two months."
"Huh. I think I remember it now. Gal named... Victoria, was it?"
>"Why, yes. I'd heard that she walked someone out in a medical litter on a flight to Mexico. That someone happen to be you?"
"Painful couple months. You know, you get battered but that doesn't compare to YOUR methods, Tim."
>"MY methods you say?"
"Yeah, seems you guys invented a good way of doing things, if not just a popular way."
>"That sounds terrible. What do you remember of the last two months?"
"Well, I remember her visiting me regularly in the hospital room, having such positive things to say about my feelings for her, how good I've always been to her. Maybe a bit misguided."
>"Oh, THOSE methods. Now that makes all the sense in the world, she does have something of a reputation for being a sweetheart to men she catches if they look handsome enough."
>At about this time a waitress had come up to the table, a dirty blonde haired woman with softly expressed facial features, clad in a pink jacket over a somewhat dressy shirt, with a form fit pick skirt going down to her knees and a white apron. A polite smile crossing her face as she took this gap in the conversation to call attention to herself.
>"Excuse me, gentlemen? Are you ready to order?"
>"Sure," Tim answered in an image of absolute professional politesse that would fool anyone who didn't know better, before turning to me "Jason, I recommend the-"
"If you recommend it, just order it, I got a trap to watch, and if I spend all day here, the animal's gonna get in and out before I get back."
>"Okay, will do. I guess we'll get two orders of the breakfast special."
>"Coming right up, sir." The woman responded, scribbling the order down on a notepad for a hot second before walking off to another table.
>"Little curt today, are we?" Tim asked, furrowing his brow smugly.
"She used YOUR methods. If your department was run by anything you'd call professionals I might have something worth remembering for the last two months. You really screwed the pooch."
>"My, my. What else is new?"
"How she cries out in pain as she strikes you?"
>"Hehehe. Good one. I take it she's a screamer?"
"You'll have to enunciate better. When you speak, all I hear is cities burning, nightmares crying and dogshit wearing deoderant."
>"A fair criticism. Though in all honesty I can take no credit for it. These developments came long before my time."
"Yeah, they did. Back in the labs of Princeton where every program director's niece or nephew just HAPPENS to be best friends with or related to an influential personality or person in the developments of sixties folk and rock music."
>"Haha, guilty!" Time chuckled, seeming to genuinely enjoy some friendly yet sharp banter directed at 'the company' "While we're on the subject, would you mind explaining something to me?"
"Anytime."
>"Here's you're order's gentlemen." the waitress from earlier stated, placing the dishes down and walking away.
>A few seconds passed as Tim looked over and tracked her back into the kitchen.
>"A good thing she came and left when she did." he said from under a sly grin before producing a yellow envelope "Now, mind explaining the contents of this envelope to me? I find it rather perplexing."
>As he handed the envelope over to me, I read the small tag on the corner, it's barcode and stamped black logo, stationary evidently of the central intelligence agency, the tag on the envelope read "Asset file: Jason Rogers."
"I don't know the meaning of this, but lets see if we can deduce something from it." I remarked, bending the small sheet metal tabs up and opening the envelope, a small packet of contents detailing an "active asset." coming out of it. Reading through the reports while eating, I couldn't help but feel several pieces of information present in the packet were... inaccurate. Maybe an accounting scheme? 
>Something enshrouded in the guise of the "black budget?" The big no questions asked money packet?
>Physical reports, birthday, federal database numbers, Information on next of kin... the last could certainly be useful. Treatment schedule? Effective as of September 2017? Preliminary testing deployment scheduled December 13, 2017? Something was definitely off.
"Where did you get this?"
>"I asked for information and mentioned your name. This is what came down."
"You see, the part that concerns me is how little of this I can actually remember. It's been coming back to me, but I'm still a bit shaky."
>"So, level with me, we're you out on assignment?"
"Not at all. I haven't talked to anyone from the agency... ever, so far as I know. Well, apart from you. I don't get assignments, you give me equipment and I use it for what you might call personal projects."
>"That was the arrangement, yes. But my concern lies in the fact that you're listed as a known active asset."
"That's a bit concerning to me, though it explains some of the things I remember a little bit more than I'm comfortable with."
>"Suppose you explain to me just how you ended up down there."
"Alright. Let's see if I can recount that. If I can even remember."
>"Let's go back to our last meeting. Must've been about... June fourth?"
"Around there. I get the team together the day we met and we staged a raid on a warehouse, particularly, the one she's said to be at, as per your intel."
>"So, continuing on..."
"We come to the warehouses and we see this woman. She carries a gold damascened hi-point. One of the most gawdy and unflattering guns I've ever seen. Well, they drag out this dude and shoot him. SHE shoots him. In the face."
>"Interesting. It seems an FBI agent who was poking around at the time turned up like that. Guy named Ted Harris. Ring any bells?"
"I don't know if it was him. I couldn't be of help there."
>"Continue."
"So we're stacked up, ready to go, when I catch this guard coming to alert and dump a good burst into him. Everyone's on alert after that, no question. So we start to push through. I find myself clearing a topside room in the warehouse. I moved to break a light at the back of it when BOOM, there's a thud and a concussion and the whole thing collapses. Next thing I know, SHE's in the hospital room pawing at me."
>"Hell of a story." He said, Finishing off his breakfast. "So, what are you doing after all this?"
"I don't know. I've opened the box, destroyed most of the contents. Now all that's left to do is close it, I guess."
>"So. You want to finish this thing."
"Yeah. Maybe that's not what your friends in the office want, since I can see a number of ways this would be beneficial to them, particularly since the product that these people pump out is competing with theirs for revenue, and we all know the company's main stream of it lies there, but to leave it at this? It'd just feel unfinished. Unsatisfying."
>The day kept on and the breeze was shot until soon enough, we looked up and it was nearly eleven in the morning. 
>After we got our check, we headed out and I began my trip home, after all, I wasn't lying, I had someone to wait on and I might have missed her if I stayed around too long.
>The sound of the old music played on the radio was rather nice, it felt good to listen to some relatively low fidelity recordings of the singers of yesteryear, what some might call "The good old days" was pretty nice. 
>Before I knew it, or rather... before I know what I was doing or where I was going, I found myself, as though by reflex, I found myself in the drive way, a slight weary grin on my face. 
>Dismounting the Truck, I found a general sense of electricity lingered in the air as I unlocked the door to the house and began my walk into the interior. Why this electricity was to hang in the air was not known to me... and then. I felt it.
>Hearing it more than I felt it, The soft sensation of something hot and liquid, as though running down my insides just below my ribcage and to my side. 
>My eyesight blurs in the reflex triggered by the blow.
>The next blow comes, only mildly felt but this time the sensation staying on the surface as my already blurred eyesight catches something moving to my head, and promptly loses it.
>Everything feels... dull, fuzzy. the environment around me no longer registers as I feel only that I'm on my face, knocked over. A slight buzzing sensation tells me I'm floored as the world around me emerges from the dull haze and blooms into focus.
>A pair of feet and a knee come into view as the assailant crouches down over me. 
>Words are voiced, but only enter my head as dull hums before I see nothing but darkness once more.

Thirty minutes later.
>Marina sits on the bed for the first time in weeks, though in significantly less pleasant circumstances than she'd hoped.
>Marina thought, as the two red haired women gazed on, about what the important aspects of the situation were. On the up side, Jason was back, which explained the note on the fridge that said "Give us a call when you feel like you've got it figured out again, your friends, Mike and Ekatarina." This also explained the absence of some of his clothing, since he'd been wearing it. On the downside, she hadn't recognized him fast enough to entirely avoid planting her knee in the side of his skull, even if she had slowed it just enough to avoid cracking it, and now she needed help to take care of him, and... who "better" than his own creations, who came to be called Sarah and Eva. A couple of red haired women with relatively large frames, presenting themselves at an unusual height of five feet and eleven inches, their green eyes and bodies that presented lean, with a little more than a hint of definition to their muscles than of normal feminine curves, stared on, visible concern in their faces.
>Marina herself sat on the bed, Jason's head rested on her lap while she looked over him, running her hand through his hair as he lie inert.
"Jason's returned..." she thought to herself, the situation somehow not bringing her comfort, instead prompting her to the wonderment of "...But does the king return or wander back to his domain?"
>As Marina sat caressing Jason's hair, she wondered in her long grief ridden and now guilt ridden conscience, just how much damage she might have done to Jason's brain to knock him out for a solid thirty minutes when a voice she recognized as 'her daughter' Eva.
>"...Mother.... do you think father will be okay?"
"I don't know Eva. I don't know." she said with a tear in her eye. "Sarah? Could you go make me some tea?"
>"Yes, mother." The MAG, stated, before slowly rising, back straight, and marching from the room.
>Reflecting on this action, Marina tried to search her mind for a time when she might have had such an abnormal vocabulary. 
>Of course she remembered that these anthropomorphic presences that accompanied weapons came into the world with the mind of a newborn and the body of... well, a gun could come in all ages, from a small child to middle age.
"Maybe my old age is getting to me, I don't remember ever being like that." Marina thought to herself as she sat in silence with Jason and Eva, waiting, hoping some form of a positive development would occur.
"I wonder if he'll survive." She thought to herself gloomily.
>Merging back onto the question of her "daughters," Marina wondered on a muse if she'd ever been so uncomfortable in what would be equivalent to her native language, and her human vocabulary.
>Twenty seconds passed as it occured to her that she knew exactly what point in life she'd been that way.
>All at once the feeling of having a knife in her chest turned to that of having a knife twisting in her chest as she looked down to Jason's inert form, and tears quickly welled and filled her eyes.
"Please wake up! Don't leave me alone!" the impulses in her mind screamed as she struggled to keep them inaudible.
>In a few seconds she felt a warmth leaving the lower edges of her eyesockets as several drops of saline clear liquid bombard Jason's face, eliciting only a very slow twitch from him as she feels a presence coming to her side.
>Another couple seconds pass before Marina becomes acutely aware that she's being moved. 
>Marina looks around, finding Eva at her side, struggling with the decision to break free of her or to simply allow herself to be moved for a second and a half before the decision is made for her.
>Marina feels it more than she feels the gun that's actually touching her. A thud brings her to her senses as the shockwave reverberates through the house.
>The sounds of screams and the clatter of boots rumbling through the house finally catch her attention.
>Marina's posture straightens as she comes to alert and summons her natural form... for approximately zero point zero seven seconds before the door is kicked over and both the guns are subdued with black bags to boot with the hand cuffs.
>Marina's thoughts travel on along a trail of anger as she tries to conceive a possible way this day could get worse for her.
"I've injured my Jason, I'm stuck with these guns that can't even grasp informal speech, I'm being black bagged. What's next? Is the CIA taking us somewhere to torture me?"
>In a few minutes, and without the vehicle moving, she senses the opening of one of the doors and hears the cuffs and bags being taken off the others.
"Next I'll be listening to some nerd talking about how he's never been 'Jason Rogers.'" She thinks as the seconds pass and she notes that she's not being released.
Some time later
>The veil of darkness that enshrouds Marina's world lifts as a female face appears in front of her.
>Her features sharp, but composed into a lascivious grin that would only be at home on a predator, savoring the distress of its prey. Hardly moving a muscle, she speaks.
>"Ooh, you're a cute one. They didn't tell me you were coming in with my other plaything, only, now they tell me you broke him." She mused before continuing, appearing to savor Marina's distressed and vastly angered expression.
>"He's been so dreary the last few hours, like he doesn't even notice my thighs wrapping-" she gets out, with grant enjoyment from the anger that seemed to heat within Marina until she was practically glowing red, alas, being interrupted finally by a firm male voice.
>"ALICE, GET YOUR ASS BACK TO RECEPTION!" he yelled out at the woman, irritation crossing her face along with the knowledge that she wouldn't get to scratch that psychotic, sadistic itch today.
>"But can't I at LEAST-"
>"SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET OUT OF HERE." the guard hollared with a firm gesture. 
>"Fine." She said before standing and walking away in a brisk pace, each step precisely choreographed, each strike of the heel echoing the sound of her discontent, a complaint in and of itself against the requirement to obey the order.
>"Fuck. It's bad enough what she does to the inmates, but now on her shift?" The guard mutters, staring seemingly through the ceiling of the room in a pause of contemplation, perhaps wondering the mysteries of the universe, action to be taken against the woman, or perhaps why he was here in the first place.
>He approached Marina and produced a key, unlocking her restraints before issuing a command, though worded as though it were a request, to follow him. 
>As marina travelled through the corridors, her eyes to the guards back, mind confused, she wondered what had become of Jason. Was he the one the woman was referring to? Had he been left for dead in the house?
>The guard comes to a door with several non descript boxes on the wall next to it, pressing a button in a lower one before flashing a badge to a camera, stating "I've got the guest you wanted, open up." 
>The door responded with a harsh buzz of about three quarters of a second in duration, then a click, allowing him to sling the door open and step aside.
>"Right this way ma'am, the doctors in the observation boother have some questions for you."
"Oh... ok." Marina answered, taking several small and tentative steps until she'd eventually passed the threshold of the door, seeing three people in lab coats looking on. 
>"Ah, you're here. So, I suppose we'll start bluntly. What in the FUCK did you do to our killbot?"
"I..."
>"Did you brainwash him?"
"No! I would never do that to Jason! I saw him coming through the door and didn't recognize him... so I knocked him out."
>"Then the brainwashing isn't your doing? Just the brain damage then?"
"What?"
>"It seems he's incurred some serious traumatic brain damage. If it was a blunt strike like you said, it must've been a hell of a strike."
"How... how bad is it?"
>"He can live. We can fix it. It's just a matter of some expensive resources but we're on the black budget here, accountability is a lie. unfortunately we still need to justify doing that."
"What do you mean? What would it take, I'll do anything!" 
>"Well, Jason's story is kind of... sad. We found him with a bunch of dead, severely radiation burned, he got to be the testbed for a large number of experimental regenerative treatments for things no one OFFICIALLY has access to, all of which doesn't exist. Here's a picture of him on the day we got him." The man in the coat, whose badge read "Jerry Sloadman" stated before reaching into a file and flipping out a photograph, extending it to Marina. 
>The thing in the photograph barely resembled a human at all.
>"Continuing on, I suppose we COULD do this, fix him so he doesn't waste away and die in his current state, the thing is..."
"What?" Marina questioned, doubting she wanted to know the answer.
>"Well, he can be regenerated, but he can't be an asset anymore. He's too far gone. Oxytocin is up, and pain resistance is down. Dopamine is down, and seratonin is up, he's gained several tendencies that just aren't practical to break down, the only thing we gave him that seems to have lasted is his sense of detection. In stimuli bombardment tests, he seems to pick up at extremely high frequency and effectiveness, reactions to his presence."
"What does any of this mean? What do I have to do to have my Jason back?" Marina pleaded, the anwer... not certain to be less than grim.
>"You have to become his handler."
"What?"
>"Look through that window. There he is. This is the real Jason Rogers." The man in the coat said, pointing out the window to a form visibly reacting frantically, shackled to a slab in the room the booth overlooked.
"I've never seen him like this."
>"That's because his frontal lobe is too shocked in its current state to inhibit his middle and rear brain. For him, it's still six years prior, he doesn't know the things that've happened. He'd only know Alice because she was initially his handler before we sent him out into the world ingrained with inclinations toward certain actions. He seems to have been busy with those inclinations. It took so much work to make him an asset. A shame to waste it. So, you want to handle him, or would you rather put him down?"
"What are my options? Is there a humane way to do this?"
>"If you put him down, that's self explanitory, we bury him in the forest, it'll be like he never existed. Alternatively, there are a couple ways we could make you his handler. We can clear him of programming and then reprogram him with you as the handler, this has a higher probability of failure, but would produce anything of Jason that you'd like. Is there something you wish he'd do, or not do? You can do that. But you'll have to beat him until he loves you. Alternatively, also on the moderate probability of success, we could go to work on him and render him amnesiac. He'd still have his cognative ability, just... wouldn't remember anything. He'd conform to anything pushed to him as the normal state of life for an indeterminite period of time, though I suspect with his pain tolerance down, he might hide behind you for a while. In this way, we can just render him unconscious and leave him in your care before he wakes up."
"What would you recommend?"
>"Take some time to think it over. If you brainwash him, it might not be the same as having him back, but in the other case, he will need to hide behind YOU."
>A set of metallic clacking noises rises from behind Marina's back as Alice walks in, her red hair tied up and her demeanor much more serious than before.
>"Where were we?" Alice asked as she looked to the floor, face marked in a distressed distance.
>"Eh... You were going to give your report on his condition. The data."
>"He's... In there. I haven't been able to get him singing with me in all the normal languages. He's getting English, Russian and some slurred German." She says, seemingly somewhere else as she speaks these words even in the very room.
"What languages didn't he get? And... why is it important?" Marina asks through a furrowed brow.
>"Well, starting with what he didn't have, Urdu, Farsi, Portuguese, and on the subject of why it's important, the loss of the ability to sing heavily impressed songs shows a lack of retention. A once encyclopedic knowledge of remembered information now suppressed with either a personality that DOESN'T include those, meaning we couldn't brainwash him again, since this one's somehow set in, or that he's just lost a significant amount of his conditioning due to something. A blow to the head, perhaps."
"Is there anything that could be done to tell?"
>"He... can't be salvaged..." Alice stated to the room first before snapping to Marina "...Lucky for you, it's still cheaper to abuse the black budget and get more money the allocation of which we can't tell congress than to simply shoot him and dump him in the ground."
"So, about brain damage?"
>"We've handled worse, In fact..." Alice trailed off, grabbing a file and flipping a photograph from its confines before continuing "... This decrepit thing was him when he arrived to this very laboratory about seven years ago."
>Marina looked at the photo for several seconds, closely examining and reexamining it before her mind made sense of the image she was seeing, and her stomach turned, nearly rendering her sick.
"...Hell of a sunburn..."
>"You see... He was my first play thing in that respect. He was the first I ever programmed with this targetting, destabilizing, predatory personality. He was far more brain damaged, well, brain dead, when he first came here. It'll be a sad thing to see him leave like this, but I suppose I've had my share of fun with him."
"What?"
>"Come walk with me." Alice stated before she started walking, pulling Marina along with her by pull of attention.
>"I was his handler. I'm the one who ordered him to be the way he was. It must have been hard for you to live with him. Calm, cold, predatory."
"No. In fact it was the best time of my life. He would tease me, he'd always play with my ears because it made me uncomfortable, and maybe he genuinely thought them to be cute. He would bully me just about every day, but when he handled me, he was always gentle. Then he disappeared, but like always he was apparently endlessly adaptable, even hard to kill. So he eventually, even after being gone for months, wandered home to me. I wouldn't trade him for the world."
>Alice turned to Marina wiping a tear from her eye and smiling.
>"I've seen how he acts, thinks, evaluated and shaped how he reasons. He's yours now." She stated through a smile.
"What are you choked up about?"
>"I'm not sure. I guess I always thought of him as something of a progeny. But one can only serve one master. He belongs with you."
"I... don't know what to say."
>"'Wipe him and make him inert for a couple days while I think up how I want to live with him.' would be a good start if you said it to the guys in there, and then maybe finish with 'Don't worry Alice, I'll take good care of your boy.'"
"Hmm. I guess I'll just do it the way you suggested."
>"There you go. And can you do me one final favor?" Alice asked as she walked along, Marina's attention now falling from the task of following Alice to notice she was... in an entirely different part of a facility.
"What's that?"
>Alice produced a key and entered a room labeled "E-21," which appeared to be a bedroom, in which she lifted a book from a shelf inside, opening it and pulling from its contents, a bulged envelope. Handing it to Marina.
"What's this?"
>"In the envelope, is an item. If you wanted to see the original Jason, before we brought him here all those years ago, you take the items in the envelope to the adress written down in it. The guy there has an item that I'd give a five percent chance of jogging Jason's memory."
"So, it wouldn't be worth my time to deliver it. Why pick me for this?"
>"Just thought you might like the option, just hide it somewhere under your clothes. So... Shall we?" Alice asked before leading the way back to the lab, Marina stuffing the envelope under her clothes before they got there.
>As the two women arrived to the lab, they were greeted with questions of "Back already?" and "Have you decided yet?" before Marina gave her answer.
>Two hours passed before Alice told Marina to get in the laboratory and stand over Jason as his eyes opened, once again reborn into a strange world in which he knew nothing.
>Watching the eyes open, this time, both Alice and Marina thought, maybe this time, they'd first see someone who cares.
>In another few hours, Jason and Marina were back in their own home, Jason passively sitting on a couch, awaiting the point when he'd become self aware once more, the moment he'd start learning once more to be human.
>Marina sat in wait, pondering to herself.
"What was he pondering that day? Whether it was worth it? Oh, well. I suppose he'll be unscathed in a way."
June 14, 2025
>Jason woke to the sensation of Marina shifting onto him. The cool summer morning prompting them to cuddle up closer so Jason could stroke her ears. Think quietly about the dreams of the nights before, the dust, the neighbors, Marina. Too vivid and lasting to be a dream.
>"Jason? How long have we been together?"
"How long..."
>"Jason?"
"Seven years." Jason said from under his smirk.

[fin]