A whisper where no one is...
<Lisa Wells. Codename: Proxy. Combat engineer. Sent here on accounts of "strange looking Merc that one moment was there, the next was gone." Clinically sane but experts suggest a strong case of PTSD.>
Bullets. Fast bullets. Fast bullets that go ping on the concrete some inches above my head. God, I hate bullets.
Life as me should be easy. Fix the EV, escort it to the lift and deliver to the EMP charges to the PCO building. At least life should be easy if it weren’t for the mercenaries hired to guard said building.
Every bullet hole I plug three more take its place. And you’d think that my “teammates” keep me save as I fix the EV. NOOOO. They are too busy in the field of battle to keep little me save. And then when our bosses tell us to retreat they start complaining loudly how useless I am! Well excuse me! I’m the one getting her ass shot at by snipers and defense turrets!
It’s usually Skyhammer and Arty the ones that complain. Yeah right mate! They don’t miss the chance to tell me, “If only you had gone for the objective, we would not have lost the round.” Well I’m sorry I was ducking bullets and missiles!
It also doesn’t help that both Sky and Arty yell out when they call in an airstrike or something like that.
<Miss Wells, please concentrate. What happened exactly?>
Right, sorry. We were fighting for the drug samples. We were all going toe to toe, bullets flying everywhere and Sawbonez was patching up everyone then sending us to the field. Arty and Skyhammer kept yelling out every. single. thing. they. bloody. did. I swear they acted like they were being payed by the enemy team to give them the advantage. Scrubs.
Then came Nader and gave us a breather by showering the enemy with grenades. Heh, she is the one that lasted the longest besides me. We both got matching tattoos...
We all regrouped together to plan out the strategy. Sawbonez finished patching up Aura and Nader, both of whom had taken several nasty hits. I saw Aura and knew for sure she was out of the fight. Girl looked like she had lost several liters of blood. Lucky.
Sawbonez finished patching the girl up as he called a chopper to bring us a new medic and extract the wounded fighter. We all huddled together, trying to talk over the suppressive fire of our Extraction Vehicle.
Thing was as big as a tank. Actually, it was much bigger and had double the fire power. Twice as loud too. I got to know it very well thanks to my teammates forsaking it and letting it be shot down or blown up with missiles.
Stoker was resupplying his Molotov grenades and loading up on ammo. Was extremely nice, very soft spoken he was. Crazy too. Thought he was on the moon. He could almost pass for my gramps. Always telling me what a "Ray of sunshine" I was.
Vassili was counting how many head-shots he had gotten. He might no look like much but his aim was steadier than a ruler. Guy could cut a fly from fifty meters away without trying, and if he tried he also got a head-shot on the enemy sniper behind the dumpster under aforementioned fly.
Obnoxious prick. Never let any of us forget anything amazing he had done on the field that day. I heard he had gone on the business after he missed some important shot that the government had payed handsomely to fire. Turned out the target was his sister. He is still an ass, don't mean I've got to like the guy.
We were taking too long with the vaccine delivery and if we didn't haul our game we would be fired. On this line of work fired is literal. Sawbonez was fixing up Aura. Poor girl looked like she had lost several liters of blood so bad she looked. I gave Sawbonez my phone which he used to call a chopper evac for her from our bosses. She was a good medic, so we heard the blades of an Emergency chopper nary a minute after he placed the call.
I did not know that they had told Sawbonez that a ghost agent was coming with that helicopter. If I knew now what was going to happen, I would have grabbed Arty's artillery marker and marked the helicopter as fast as was humanely possible.
Turtle had given us some shelter with his deployable shield and both us and the enemy team took fivers for resupplying and strategy.
We all huddled close to Aura, partly for protecting her and partly because that was where Sawbonez was and he was the de-facto leader of our rag-tag team of mercs.
As he continued to patch up Aura, Bonez told us what to do next. He wanted Nader to lay suppressive fire with her grenade launcher as he and I ran into the research lab, grabbed the two vaccine cartridges and hauled ass.
He then dropped the news that a ghost agent would be joining us to ensure the smoothness of the mission and that the vaccines were not damaged on their way to the container. Only problem was none of us knew what a ghost agent did, much less looked like. What if we confused him with one of the enemy team?
The sound of the helicopter coming caused us to place a stretcher under Aura, which we used to haul her into the waiting doors of a red and white helicopter from which two soldiers emerged. The two men took the stretcher from us and hurriedly carried it to the floor of the chopper. They climbed after they had placed Aura inside and down dropped a ninja. Least, he looked like a ninja. Had a sword and everything.
But his eyes. I swear he could not be human, those eyes were... were not human. They where the eyes of an apex-predator: hungry, calculating, they bore holes through my skull. He sauntered over to us, passing us by and I swear the temperature dropped a solid ten degrees. Guy just looked at us and activated his invisibility.
We then heard him in our ear-coms. "Do not waste my time. Get going."
Just like that, my nightmare started.
