Wake up.
Surely someone else was qualified to do this, Frank Calhoun thought to himself with a bitter smirk. Someone who was a more appropriate choice. One of those ex SAS bastards the Order seemed to collect like bottlecaps. Or a mage trained in infiltration, schooled in illusion magic. Sure, the Pathfinders had taught him how to get into places and out again unseen. The damned illusionists could be literally invisible. There had to be someone else.
Someone who could do this job better than him.
Someone who was, more than likely, half a world away getting drunk, high, or laid. Or maybe all three. Well, Frank, you wanted to be back in the field so badly, right?
'This,' of course, was the assignment given to him by the Pathfinders. Intel suggested that among the abandoned shipping containers in the Kaidan-cho train-yard was a Manticore cache that had never made its destination. Some kind of portable force field generator that the egg heads at the Hall wanted a look at. So, Frank was here in Tentacleville to see if he could get to that shipment and take a look.
He'd wanted back in the field. Careful what you ask for, indeed.
Frank slowly panned his binoculars over the train-yard from his hiding spot in the rubble of a fallen overpass. Infected, with their oily black skin and skulls blossoming with writhing tentacles roamed here and there, sometimes milling about in groups. One in a yellow hard hat banged a wrench against a junked forklift now and then, as if some distant part of him was trying to remember how to use it.
It's not real. Wake up.
There were other things moving around down there. Orochi combat drones, their once stark white armor now greasy black, deep blue visors changed to a vivid red. 'Compromised,' the phrase was. The Filth infection had taken them too. The humanoid constructs moved stiffly past knots of infected, paying them no heed. A few stood at attention, only moving their heads now and then in jerky, birdlike motions. Together, drones and infected made for what the wags would call a 'target rich environment.'
“Piece of cake,” he grumbled under his breath, sliding the binoculars into a pouch on his webbing. The sun was starting to set, coloring the sky like blood and bathing the train-yard's new keepers in a crimson wash. Anything looking in his direction would have the sun in its eyes as he approached. Probably wouldn't affect the drones, but the infection seemed to weaken their protocols governing threat detection. Hopefully he could avoid any fighting at all.
Moving slowly from cover, boots crunching on the tumble-down remains of the collapsed overpass, Frank picked his way towards his objective. He slid down an angled retaining wall, then scaled over a chainlink fence to drop behind a derelict cargo truck. Taking a knee, Frank twisted his body to peek out around the rear bumper. He could just spy out the shipping containers the intel weenies thought the Manticore shipment would be found in.
It looked like he could get there without bumping into the various nasties now populating the area. It'd be tight, but still doable. Frank waited a few more moments, noting the patrol patterns of some of the mobile drones. If it came down to a fight, he'd rather tangle with the poor bastards who were human infected. The drones could be rough customers, especially the ones with the funky energy bucklers. Hum. Maybe that was an example of what was in the Manticore shipment.
There were a lot of Secret Worlders who would love to have an energy buckler of their own.
With a grunt, Frank got to his feet, bringing his suppressed carbine to his shoulder. A final glance around the truck was taken, and then he was moving in a low crouch towards the shipping containers. As he stalked forward, the carbine didn't bounce or waver, only moving as he shifted aim left or right. So far the trademark Calhoun luck was holding. Drones were always moving the opposite way. Infected sluggishly milled about, looking in the wrong direction.
This isn't real!
An infected to his ten o'clock suddenly looked up from the crate it was banging its head against. It let loose some kind of gurgling shriek and scrabbled to its feet, charging towards him. Three of its fellow tentacle hat wearers chased after, arms reaching.
And things had been going so well, too.
Frank centered the carbine's holosight reticle on the infected's chest, and firmly squeezed the trigger twice, not breaking stride. Pop pop! A pair of anima infused rounds left the weapon, the suppressor snap-hissing angrily. The infected wailed, jerking spasmodically as the bullets struck, punctured, and exploded out the back thanks to the magic powering the shots. Even as it started to fall, Frank has transitioned to the next, double-tapping it as well.
Wake up!
The third joined the first two on the ground, and Frank brought the carbine to bear on the fourth in a smoothly drilled motion.
It stopped running towards him. Before he could fire, it fell to its knees. Frank noticed it was smaller—a child. Oh, God. The children were the worst. Having to fight off what used to be a child, trying to kill you...but this one...
No, no, wake up!
It called out to him. In English, not Japanese. In the voice of a young girl.
“Help me! Please! Help me!”
Frank halted. He knew he should squeeze the trigger, but...infected never showed this level of awareness. Of lucidity.
He could see the fire red eyes squint in misery, the tentacles writhing from her skull twisting as she began to sob at him.
“Help me! You came here to help us, didn't you? Help me! Do something!”
“I...”
Of course they don't usually show this level of awareness, because they don't have it! Wake up!
The infected started to crawl towards him on her hands and knees, begging. He should shoot. Or move out of the way. Or something, but he couldn't. He just stood there, staring in disbelief.
“There's...still a way. Still a way to change me back. Please help me!”
Her whole body shook as she wept, trembling, inching closer and closer to Frank. Every instinct howled at him to put a round through her face, move on to the objective.
But he couldn't.
Now she had reached him. Now she was clutching his leg. He could feel her fingernails digging into the fabric of his pants. Oh God. Oh, God, why couldn't he move?
“Why won't you help me!?” She shrieked at him now, tears streaming down her oil slick of a face.
The ground was shaking. Why was the ground shaking?
Slowly, haltingly, Frank managed to look to the side. One of the massive quadruped walker-mechs was stomping towards him, weapon pods spooling up.
Wake up! Wake up now! Wake up!
It broke into a run. Frank couldn't bring the carbine around, as the infected girl was now holding onto that as well. With aching slowness, Frank drew his sidearm from its shoulder holster, pointing it futilely at the large construct.
Frank, you have to wake up right now!
With a gasp, Frank bolted upright on the bed, chest heaving. The ground was shaking, shaking as the mech...no. The apartment was shuddering as an elevated train went by. It always went by this time of night in Darkside. Frank sucked in breath after breath, then realized he was aiming his pistol at his bedroom door. He'd pulled it out from under his pillow in his sleep.
Drenched in sweat, Frank collapsed back onto the bed.
Jesus.
He lay there for several minutes in the darkened room, waiting for his heart rate to drift back to normal. The sheets, like his undershirt, were damp from perspiration. Another nightmare. The third since he'd come back to London, rotated into 'ready reserve' status for two weeks. Exhaling slowly, Frank looked over and noticed he'd even thumbed off the safety in the dream.
He moved the switch back to 'Safe.'
Eventually Frank got up off the bed and padded in bare feet out of the small bedroom to his bathroom, pistol still in hand. He flipped on the light and set the weapon on the sink, then turned on the faucet, cupping his hands to catch the cold water. As he splashed it on his face, he thought about what had been happening to him of late.
Frank knew several bee-stung who struggled against the whispers of the Filth. Against the Black Signal. Some had dreams, nightmares, visions. Others had even descended into temporary insanity. And yet Frank, despite being constantly deployed to occult hotzones where the pathogen was present had never had that problem. He'd even been almost killed one day in Agartha during the long siege some were calling the Battle of the Whispering Tide, his augmented body nearly overcome by the Filth, and still he'd survived.
Though, he admitted only to himself, his memories of that particular day were...incomplete. Try as he might, he couldn't remember all that had occurred. He always assumed that was probably a good thing.
Frank had thought he was just too stubborn—or too stupid—for the Filth to affect him that way. Maybe the Calhoun magic protected him. Or the Bees. Something.
Now he was having nightmares. Was it a matter of critical mass? Had he seen and done so much that even that magic Bee wasn't able to cushion his mind any more?
He looked up at the haggard face in the mirror, splashed more water on his face. Kaidan was a carnival of horrors. And the deeper into the district one went—the tenements, the quarantine camp, the docks—the worse it got. Infected, rogue drones, horrible fungal creatures. Tendrils of Filth choking the ground and covering buildings, great birthing pods and more besides. Parts of it no longer looked like a place that was on Earth. Most were convinced the only way to 'save' Kaidan-cho was through nuclear fire.
The one saving grace of the nightmares was that he always managed to wake up before something truly horrendous happened. He always managed to...
Frank stopped, blinking, listening to the water run. Once more he slowly turned his gaze to the mirror as he realized something. Droplets of water meandered down his rough features, sliding into the sink.
There had indeed been a voice each time that shouted at him to wake up.
But the voice hadn't been his own.
Giving up on any chance of going back to sleep, Frank had hidden the pistol once more and wandered out to the space that served as his living room. A month in to living there and he'd finally sourced some furniture—a battered table, couch with zero give to it and a notched and chipped side table that he'd put a lamp on. None of it matched, all of it was well used, but that didn't bother him much.
Looking for furniture in Darkside wasn't precisely like making a trip to Ikea.
Giving the small television resting on an overturned milk crate a brief look, Frank instead pulled out his smartphone. Issued by the Order itself, it was probably the most expensive and technologically advanced thing in the apartment. Entering his password, he snorted under his breath.
No, the most expensive thing was probably the heavily modified Tikka bolt action rifle. Or the gun safe it hid inside.
The Templar operative skimmed through some reports that had been sent to him, using his index finger to 'flick' each one in turn. If his alert status had changed, he'd have been repeatedly—and insistently—messaged until he'd responded. He hadn't. Everything on the phone was 'not his problem' for the moment; a few updates from the desk of Officer-in-Charge William Abbott, some other general 'be advised' statements.
All Kaidan operatives were to forward any and all information concerning the 'Rabbit Killer.'
All Kaidan operatives were to forward any and all information concerning the Fear Nothing Foundation.
All Kaidan operatives were to forward any and all information concerning the presence of Phoenician agents in the district. And so on.
And that led to the most recent incident to grip the Secret World at large, and Ealdwic in particular.
He'd already looked over it several times, but Frank placed the phone on the table and read this newest report again.
'Mass casualty event.' 'Unknown number of hostiles still at large.' 'Paladin teams put on high alert.' And so on. He'd first gotten the message while in Kaidan. Apparently a number of Phoenicians, heavily armed and in full body armor, had mounted a brazen assault on the Albion Theater in Ealdwic. They'd proceeded to shoot up the place, even using grenade launchers as they killed or grievously wounded the crowd of hapless civilians inside. All to get one person.
Unfortunately for the Phoenicians—and fortunately for everyone else—a small number of the people in the audience were anima infused. Bee-stung. Whoever they were and whatever faction they were from, they'd engaged and beaten back the raiders. Most of the raiding party had joined their victims on the blood slick floor of the theater. A smaller number had managed to escape somehow. One of these had been killed in Ealdwic by a group of novice Secret Worlders on their way to a Radio Free Gaia party.
He smirked at this. Tough shit, Mister Tango. Ealdwic was full of civilians, but it also had one of the largest concentrated populations of awakened and augmented humans in the Secret World. And the majority of them were already honked off at Team Purple to begin with, before they'd decided to gun down a bunch of people out to see the opera. Other locals had done the best they could to save those in the theater who had not died of their wounds.
A week had gone by. The Albion was shuttered, the Paladin teams still on high alert, and Ealdwic still on edge, though it looked fairly certain none of the raiding party were still present. Frank propelled himself up and off the couch, leaving the phone on the table for now as he walked into the kitchen. He was awake now, and five in the morning was as good as time as any for breakfast. Only a second later he walked back out, grumbling as he searched for the alpaca socks his grandmother had knitted for him. The tiles in there were fucking cold.
Dismissing the idea of a healthy breakfast before a morning run, Frank had broken out the eggs and bacon. His coffee pot burbled and bubbled to itself happily on the counter as he worked. Wasn't going to be good for him, but hey. He'd had a shitty night, he felt terrible, so fuck healthy. A dry chuckle escaped him as he cracked the eggs into a frying pan he'd purchased from the Haitian Market. It was going to be bad news indeed if one day the blessings of the Bees left people like him and the bad health habits caught up all at once.
As bacon joined the eggs, sizzling and popping, Frank's thoughts once more turned to his own problems.
He knew he ought to seek help. If the nightmares were a sign of some lingering Filth influence, or post-traumatic stress, he needed assistance. Counseling, maybe something pharmacological as well. Perhaps magic. Checking on the coffee, the backwoods outdoorsman turned Templar sighed.
And yet.
The struggle between ARTEMIS and Inquisitor Grey had landed him in a cell. He'd had his pay docked, his rank reduced. He'd had to work hard to be reinstated, and was still in the process of convincing the Hall of his worth all over again.
If he let someone in the chain of command know he might be having psychological issues, it was almost guaranteed he'd be yanked from the field again. Frank plucked up a set of tongs and turned the bacon over. He knew from friends in mundane military service that that sort of thing stayed in your record forever. It would affect chances of promotion and how one was posted—if it didn't end your career entirely.
He wasn't about to let some paper pusher banish him from his duty. As much as he might grumble, as much as he might complain—complaining was the sacred right of the soldier, after all—he knew that being a field operative was what he wanted. In some ways, what he needed. Frank couldn't go and drive a desk for the rest of his possibly immortal life. He'd never make a difference that way.
Plate of bacon and eggs in hand as he poured out some strong black coffee, Frank frowned, his brow knitting.
He did have to do something. But what?
Perhaps a hour or so later, Frank was clomping down the steps that led out of the main entrance of the ramshackle apartment stack he called home. In lieu of his usual morning run, Frank had decided to just take a walk around Ealdwic. He'd thrown on the olive-drab Army parka he'd scored from a surplus store to ward off the morning chill, along with the ratty knit cap that had made the initial trip with him to London in what seemed a lifetime ago.
The clothing made people think he looked like a hobo, but it kept him warm.
His pistol came along as well.
Ambling his way towards the wide stone steps that led one out of Darkside into Ealdwic proper, Frank cocked his head. He could hear...singing?
As he got closer to the steps, he began to grin crookedly, his spirits starting to lift. He recognized the heavily accented voice. And the lyrics.
“I fell down into a burning ring of fire...” The voice was thin, reedy, with the 'g's sounding like 'k's. Accompanying the voice was the plinky-plunk of a ukulele. Just ahead, Frank could now see the singer, practicing outdoors despite the fact it was not even seven in the morning. Then again, Darkside and Ealdwic never really went completely to sleep.
“Hey, Florin. How are ya?” Frank waved down at the little singer. The blajini looked up, pinched, almost mole like features screwing up as he smiled, displaying pointed teeth. A comically large ushanka perched on top of his small head, almost covering his eyes.
“Mister Frank! Am good, very good. Am practicing!”
Florin and his family of Transylvanian faerie folk had fled to 'secret' London as refugees several years ago. Diminutive burrowing creatures out of legend barely three feet tall, the blajini often found themselves on the receiving end of violence from strigoi, varculac, and worse. Frank had started to get to know them a week or so after he'd moved to the low income area of Ealdwic known to all as 'Darkside.'
The little family of blajini were honest, hard working, and on occasion their behavior reminded Frank of some of the people he knew back in Harlan.
Minus the fact they were faerie creatures who lived like hobbits underground, of course.
“I hear that! But damn, Florin, ain't it kinda early?” Frank folded his arms across his chest and leaned against a graffiti covered wall, still grinning. Florin shook his head firmly, still picking at the ukulele.
“No, no. Most are already awake here. And I am very good at the dodging when someone throws something from up there!” He nodded up at some third story windows above them. Frank snorted.
“Not music lovers, huh?”
“No. They are not liking the Johnny Cash.”
Frank laughed softly at the earnest and perplexed expression on Florin's face. Somehow, the Transylvanian exile had come into contact with the music of one of Arkansas's most famous sons. He'd confided in Frank that it was his goal to play some day at The Crusades, or perhaps The Horned God up in Ealdwic. Out of respect for his dreams, Frank sometimes called him 'The Blajini in Black.'
“Well, there ain't no accountin' for some folk, Florin. Hey, I'll see ya aroun', pal. I got some walkin' t' do.”
“Goodbye, Mister Frank.”
Halfway up the steps, Frank stopped as Florin called up to him.
“Oh! I am wishing you a very merry Christmas, Mister Frank!”
Frank blinked down at him, uncomprehending for a moment. Placing hands on hips, Frank snorted softly, his breath misting in front of him.
Well, damn. It was Christmas Eve.
“Merry Christmas t'you too, Florin.”
Florin's warm and friendly goodbye still ringing in his ears, Frank walked through the long alley that marked the boundary between Darkside and Ealdwic. Yeah, Florin and his family reminded him Darkside really wasn't that bad.
Halfway through, Frank spotted a trio of heavily cloaked and coated Darksiders hiding in the deep shadows of the alley. Anima enhanced eyesight caught a glimpse of one fingering an ice pick with dark brown stains. All three watched him.
Frank stared them down as he approached, then slowly, heavily patted the side of his parka where his Sig was concealed. The three, almost certainly some of the other Transylvanian exiles found here, backed off. One even raised gloved hands in a placating gesture.
Nodding gruffly, Frank emerged from the alley into Ealdwic.
Really. Darkside wasn't that bad.
