Chp 2: Bug (Sophia Pottermouse)

   The duo perched like giant magpies upon a thin line of thread strung across the light posts, some 30 feet in the air. Their OSR provided stealth suits cast their silhouettes as near invisible shadows against the black sky. The window that occupied their focus was dark. They waited patiently. They had all night. And to rush it could spell disaster for them both. For the whole damned neighborhood. 

   "Copper for your thoughts?" Heyden whispered through his internal comm unit. His voice echoed in the hollow of his beaked mask, muffled slightly by the alchemical herbs stuffed therein.

   "Nice house." Jangus replied, unmoving.

   "Funny. Funny guy, my partner." Heyden was no longer monitoring the window, but staring right at Jangus. "Seriously. You read the file. Is this one going to be trouble?"

   Jangus kept his peace. He hadn't anything to offer, in any case. 

Name:

Gender: Female

Classification: Uncontrolled/Untrainable

Age: 

Threat level: REDACTED

Collateral Damage: Acceptable

Intel: REDACTED

Objective: Decisive Termination

That's all the file said. Heyden would've known, if he had bothered to read it. It wouldn't have changed anything for him though. It was a Burner, after all. He couldn't remember the last time they bothered to fill out a name. (Who even used their real name anyway? No one hiding from the OSR. The age though… that was unusual.) "Probably just an oversight. It's Back Office, you know them." The director had told him.

   The window brightened with light from within. "Shh!" Heyden snapped his head back towards the window, as the light flashed brighter and brighter, in random pulses. "You hear that?" He asked his partner.

   The anguished screams of an aether wracked voice came sharp and shrill on the wind. "Fook! She's breaching! Go! Go!" Jangus shouted, no longer concerned with maintaining their stealthy position. Even as he leaped forward, Heyden was already halfway there, running faster than the eye could keep up with toward the house, but Jangus reached the window first, opening it as his partner scaled the wall behind him.

   The girl lay on her bed, shaking in the throes of her seizure. Aether swirled around her violently, scorching her sheets and floor as it strobed in uncontrolled and unpredictable waves. As Heyden climbed through the window, the door swung open.

   "Bug?! Bug!" That was all the man had time to say before a dagger imbedded itself hilt deep in his right eye. He crumpled to the floor like a bag of dropped groceries. The pair turned on the girl, unphased.

   "Fook, Hay. She's a fookin' child." Jangus said, sadly.

   "She's a Goddamned bomb, Jangus! I don't care if she's the Holy Mother herself! She's Uncontrolled!"

   "She's a fookin' child, Heyden. We can't." Jangus' voice was firm.

   "Look at her, she could blow any second! You know what? F**k this." Heyden drew another dagger, and went to lunge. 

   A familiar hand gripped his shoulder, and held him in place. "No, Hay."

   "What?! No, Hay?! Have you lost your goddamned mind? She'll kill us all! Or they will. Her included."

   "No!" Jangus' other hand grabbed his partner's utility belt, and with a swift heave, tossed the man out the open window. Quickly he turned and, retrieving a hypodermic sedative he had secreted from his partner's locker, pounced on the girl, injecting the mixture into her jugular vein. His suit took the brunt of the damage as the aether gave a final flailing shudder, and she finally lay still.

   Jangus wrapped her up in the ragged remnants of her bedsheets, and hoisting the child on his shoulder, made his way downstairs to exit the house via the back door. He was gone before Heyden even regained consciousness.

Reviews

[Papaya]

I like how this is building. You're doing well giving your reader just enough with each chapter to want to read more. I'm intrigued.

[Dripping Chocolate Madness]

They got increasingly more fun to write...
The DM was psyched to use them, then the campaign hit a wall when someone dropped out.
But it left me with some really cool stuff.

[Papaya]

N e r d .

(Joking)

It's cool stuff. Sci-fi and fantasy are my favourite genre books.