Through the Ghost
Chapter 25

Tal walked alongside Anna through the streets of New Azariah. Each step felt more leaden than the last. The dead air made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

“I don’t like this,” he announced.

Anna scanned the area silently. Her head nodded slowly as she took in the sights surrounding them. The closer they got to town hall, the more the lack of people or sounds of life became unnervingly apparent. The fact the place could be more ghost-like than the last time he visited it set off all kinds of instinctual alarms. He ascended the steps one at a time. They carefully approached the door, grasping the cool handles only to be met with resistance when trying to open them.

He looked at Anna nervously. “That’s not good,” he stated.

“Let’s try again,” she commanded.

“There’s a reason they sealed it off.”

She ignored him and backed up to the edge of the patio. She sprinted forward, crashing into the door. A reverberating rattle ensued as the door absorbed the impact. She moved back for another assault. An exasperated sigh escaped his chest as he joined her on the edge of the deck. He looked at her warningly, knowing full well she wouldn’t like whatever was on the other side.

Unperturbed, she held up three fingers, then two. As soon as her final digit collapsed into a fist they charged the massive door. The frame creaked again. They backed up once more. She raised her fist once more, then counted down, 3..2..1.

They slammed into the door, wood shards flew out in front of them as the weakened hinges were torn from the door. They violently collided with the floor, there’s a brief moment where the air refused to fill his lungs. He managed to catch his breath only to lose it again once his eyes focused on the scene around him.

There were bodies strewn across overturned gurneys, blood and brain matter scattered around the piles of corpses. Some of the colonists lay dead-eyed with their throats slit, soaking up the strands of light filtering into the room. Others were disfigured to the point that an exact cause of death was unknowable. One could barely cross the room without stepping on another person. A faint dripping sound that slowly filled the void left by the silent corpses.

“How did this happen?” Anna asked bewilderedly. She remained framed by the doorway.

Tal crouched next to the nearest body. The eyes had been scratched out. Several cuts had been inflicted on the face and arms. At least three of the colonist’s fingers had been brutally removed from the body. Tal hoped it was post-mortem, though that didn’t reassure him.

Before he could hazard a guess as to the cause for such violence, a voice replied from the shadows. “The darkness took hold.”

He instantly turned towards the source, weapon at the ready. Out of the shadows walked a figure covered in blood. Grey, dry, mud caked her skin and clothes. Her hair was a mess, and based on the smell she hadn’t washed in days. The woman moved into the light revealing a washed-out expression accentuated by the dark-red bags around her eyes.

“Anna?” she asked, a light returned to her hollow eyes upon recognizing the female operative. She turned to him. “Tal?”

“Caroline,” Anna pushed past Tal to reach her friend. Tal grabbed her arm, stopping her short of embracing the colonist leader. “What happened?” she inquired, realizing her mistake and stepping back.

“They turned on each other. The healthy and the sick. Blood, everywhere.”

Caroline hesitated, closing her eyes in an attempt to retrieve an old memory, or banish a particularly nightmarish one.

Anna tried to move closer to her friend, but Tal gently held her back. “Kir?” she asked in reference to the Rugarugi companion that’d stayed to help.

Caroline’s eyes glassed over. “He’s gone too.”

“He left?” Tal inquired hopefully.

“No. No, one of the…the first patients to…to lose themselves. The screaming. He tried to calm them, they attacked him, stabbed him right in the throat. Blood pouring… pouring out… on my hands, my clothes.” She looked down at herself, her eyes widened as if it was happening all over again.

I am picking up a lot of movement outside, as well as in the back of the building, Allie notified him.

Caroline continued to ramble but his attention had shifted to detecting anything that could alert him to a possible attack. He placed a hand on Anna’s shoulder, carefully pulling her back towards the door. Caroline stopped talking, her eyes go distant once more. She looked back at Anna, recognition twinkles in her eyes as if seeing her for the first time.

“You came back,” she smiled hopefully.

Then just as quickly her lips began to curl, her brow arched downward, and her head craned giving her a more feral look. Then came the scream, a horrible, ear piercing, rasp.

Tal instinctively readied his rifle. Caroline lunged forward, and his finger presses down on the trigger. Anna knocks him aside at the last moment, forcing the shot go wide. Caroline charged past him, throwing herself on the female operative. Her gnarled, blood-caked hands were outstretched like talons. Anna desperately tried to keep the assault at bay as the fingers pressed closer to her face.

“LOOK AT WHAT YOU’VE DONE! YOU’VE KILLED US!” Caroline screamed at the top of her lungs.

Suddenly, a round tore through Caroline’s forehead, spraying Anna in the older woman’s blood. Anna pushed the body off herself and looked at Tal in shock. He was crouched low beside her, he warily scanned the room around them.

“I had it under con-,” she began to say.

He held up a finger to silence her. Then shook his head. He tilted his rifle to show her the counter on its display. He’d only fired the one shot.

They started to move away from their current location when a series of crashes erupted from the side windows. Smoke began to fill the room. The two operatives choked on the irritating vapors. Blue and gold soldiers soon followed the smoke screen, rifles at the ready. Ten red lights cut through the smoke to land on their chests. Tal’s hands remained tightly grasped around his rifle as he stood to his feet.

“Easy men!” a muffled voice called out from the entry way. Through the haze, Tal could just make out a tall being wearing a protective mask strutting towards them with unafraid confidence. The smoke quickly dissipated, one of the soldiers turned and gave the newcomer a thumb up. The apparent leader of this group dramatically removed their mask at an agonizingly slow pace. It was a man, around the same age as the operatives, with dark hair and a sharp jaw. An amused grin spread across the man’s face. He wore no armor, just a clean suit that contrasted against the grime that surrounded him.

“You’re welcome, by the way,” he added stepping closer to Tal and Anna. The soldiers all lowered their weapons slightly. Tal’s fingers twitched around the hilt of his rifle while he reciprocated the action.

“Make sure they’re all dead,” the man in the suit commented to the soldiers. They immediately set about investigating the corpses that littered the room.

He returned his attention to the glaring operatives. “Don’t give me that look. If you didn’t kill her, she’d have killed you. Besides she would have experienced a much more painful death sooner rather than later. You really should be thanking me,” he said while gingerly stepping around Caroline’s corpse.

“And who do we thank for such a generous action?” Tal responded suspiciously.

“Tomas Devlin,” the suit explained. “Liaison to Councilor Elah DeVreis. And I believe you to be Operative Tal Revin and the infamous Tannah West, correct?”

They met his smile with poker faces. Tal could feel Anna beside him, her body bristling with anger. A glance showed the blood streaks trickling down her face like tears. The burst of a rifle in the distance caused Tal to raise his own. Three red dots instantly zeroed in on him. Devlin raised his hand to calm the room. The dots dropped away and Tal lowered his weapon.

“I actually received their initial distress signal weeks ago, I even dispatched a recon team to survey the infected. But imagine my surprise when I heard that not just two Orothros operatives, but The Avenger herself made a trip to this little backwater blip on the galactic radar. That really got my attention. So, I’m going to ask you straight out, what are you doing here?”

Neither operative replied. Tal’s heart beat a little faster. He has no idea about Chara, Allie reassured him. If he did I would have heard about it.

His body relaxed as he prepared to converse with the agent. “Anna had friends here, we came to check on them,” Tal commented.

“Did you now?” Devlin inquired with a glance at the former operative. Another gunshot echoed through the building, Tal kept his cool.

“Well, you see Tomas,” Tal answered. “Despite our somewhat altered appearance, we still have a shard of compassion towards most of our fellow humans. I’m not entirely sure I can say the same for yourself.”

Devlin smiled wickedly. “I won’t argue with that, but you see,” he’d been facing Anna but abruptly refocused his attention on Tal. The operative’s heart dropped into his stomach.

A third gunshot rang out, this time closer. “My team has actually been here quite a while, observing the outbreak until a cure was synthesized at one of our research facilities. And when they told me they saw two operatives leave a few days ago with one of the children. This got me very, very curious. Not long after that, I hear from that very same research facility that two Orothros members stole the very medication my people had been working on.” He continued to pace before them with a self-assured grin.

“So, I dug a little deeper, I checked the surveillance footage my team sent back to me. Despite fortuitously bringing it to its intended destination, the colonists failed to be cured of their ailments. That is, except for the girl.”

Both operatives instantly raised their weapons at Devlin. Tal’s nanites began to ready themselves for combat. There was a surge of electricity that sent vibrations through his muscles. His hearing intensified, he could hear the breathing of each soldier as if they were directly behind him. The click of their rifles being readied inched his finger closer to the trigger. Allie began analyzing escape routes. Devlin, however, showed no sign of fear, despite his predicament. The same self-assured grin remained plastered on his features.

“So, I’m right. I’d heard whispers of an Orothros child, never any concrete info of course; certainly nothing that indicated they would be related to The Avenger herself,” Devlin taunted.

“We’re leaving,” Tal told the council agent.

“I highly doubt that,” Devlin responded. Three more soldiers entered the room. “However, I’m not confident you won’t kill me, so I offer you a non-violent solution. Well, more like a less violent to myself solution. You see, the moment I discovered who you were I set out to meet my team here. I was hoping you’d have just enough humanity in those augmented heads of yours to return to your dying friends. It took a bit longer than I’d hoped, I’ll admit. I began to get worried once the colonists started killing each other. So, I did what any self-respecting agent of The Council would do, and re-released an altered version of their initial distress transmission. Then, like a beacon of hope, your ship descended from the heavens. Now, I have just one question for you. How badly does The Avenger want to avenge these poor colonists?”

Tal expected Anna to spit in his smug face but when no response came he looked at Anna curiously. The hesitation on her face was plain to see.

“Let’s hear him out,” she suggested, lowering her rifle.

Tal wanted to argue. He wanted to remind her that Agents couldn’t be trusted, they always had an ulterior motive.

The soldiers have you cornered fairly well, there are a few more waiting outside. I cannot guarantee Anna’s safety, nor your own for that matter, if it comes to a fight, Allie informed him. Tal lowered his gun reluctantly.

“I knew you could be reasonable. Have you ever heard of The Rising Sons?” Devlin asked.

Both operatives shook their heads.

“Not many outside the Intelligence community have I’m afraid. It’s run by three upstart brothers that’ve done very little of note except for a few anti-government and anti-alien rallies. You may be more familiar with their father however, Linden Swann?” The name escaped Devlin’s lips with all the dramatic bravado he could muster. A look of pure glee was etched on the agent’s face.

Tal knew all too well the effect that name had on Anna, it was the one that turned her into The Avenger in the first place.

“They’re behind this?” Anna inquired. Tal could see her mentally connecting the dots.

“Yes, I’m afraid they found it appropriate if they tested their bioweapon on a colony named in remembrance of their father’s most infamous atrocity,” Devlin admitted.

“What do you need us to do?” Anna asked angrily.

“Using my considerable resources, I’ve managed to track down the youngest of the three brothers, Daneel. Unfortunately, its location is outside my jurisdiction.”

“So, you want us to assassinate the little bastard? We try to avoid the whole killing humans thing,” Tal replied.

“It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve broken that rule,” he commented with a glance at Anna. “But no, I want you to extract him and bring him to me so I can interrogate him about not only his brothers, but any future attacks they might be planning.”

“I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to get someone else to be your lap dog. I suggest Boca Alacran, tons of soulless mercs looking for jobs,” Tal stated with mock sympathy. He took about three steps then noticed Anna’s lack of presence.

“If you leave, I will have the whole galaxy out for that girl of yours, not to mention a substantial bounty on your heads,” Devlin countered coldly.

“Tal.....” Anna’s voice called out to him. He released a heavy sigh as he turned around. The look on her face told him everything, the heartbreak, the guilt, it had all built up, and one more thing could break her.

Tal faced Devlin. “Where is he?”

Devlin’s grin returned. “El Dorado.”

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