novelraw Chapter 159 – Faceless
Chapter 159 – Faceless
Chapter 159 – Faceless
“Everyone spies on everyone else while trying to keep people from spying on them while adamantly denying spying on everyone despite them knowing they are being spied on. Got it?” – Anonymous post on /int/
Kurt always wondered what the best way was to onboard someone to an organization. There was the smooth way, incrementally increasing time in office and workload until they reached the normal operating level. Inversely, there was the ‘throw them in and see if they sink or swim’ method. Rindi was getting the latter.
“So how does this work?” Rindi asked as they watched the rift connect to the altar and the portal expand. “We just go in there and kill everything?”
“Please, that’s only half of it.” Kurt said from where he sat on a bench they had installed for waiting.
“OH? Whats the other half?” her tail flicked in excitement as her eyes turned to him.
“We also take everything of value that isn’t bolted down before popping the core and making a run for it.” Val answered for him.
Kristi snorted while Jade and her squad nodded solemnly which just confused the poor felitaur even more. She looked like she wanted to ask more questions as she fidgeted with her armor but was distracted by the image in the portal resolving.
“Ope, here we go.” Kurt peered at the monochrome image that slowly resolved into… an office?
The gathered agents all looked at each other for a moment before Kurt just grunted in resignation before stepping up to the portal. “Kristi on me, Val and Rindi follow. Jade, deploy as you see fit.”
“Yes, sire.”
Kurt then took the familiar long step through the portal and suppressed the shudder that came with the unpleasant tingle of crossing the event horizon. His rifle snapped up as he pivoted to the right and pushed into cover of a half wall to survey the room they entered into. Krisit went the other way and he was joined by Val a moment later.
“Clear. Short room. Hallway right.” He sent to the group over the implant after getting an all clear from Kristi. “Val cover and we push to the door.”
“Cover set.” Val said after casting an illusion over them.
Kurt kept his rifle trained on the only door in the room as he approached. The room they were in was dim, only a quarter of the overhead lights seemed to be on. It was dim enough that he activated the enchantment on his glasses. When he got to the door, he peeked through the window in the middle of it and saw a hallway, twenty yards long and also poorly lit.
“Hallway. One exit, far side.” He reported to the group at large, making sure to include Jade’s pack in the mental communication.
“Like the vampire rift?” Val asked.
“Similar for sure.” He thought this was just the rift and altar doing their strange starting area routine but didn’t want to risk his life on assumptions if he could help it.
Once they were set, all ten people began to push down the hall. He would have liked to start with only his team, but Jade had been insistent on her squad also joining. He thought it was overkill for a ‘medium’ rift but also wouldn’t turn down free help.
“Check the door.” Kurt muttered to Val who then poked her head up into the tiny inset window. She looked around for a moment before ducking back down.
“I got nothing moving but it’s not an office building.” She muttered just loud enough for the group to hear. “It’s a shopping mall.”
“A shopping mall?” Gus asked from where he leaned against the wall and craned his neck to see out the window.
“Yeah, a small one from what I can see. Probably a dozen stores on this side before there is a bend in the main… what do you call it? The open area of the mall that you actually walkthrough?” Val ended her description early and went off on a tangent.
Kurt snapped his fingers. “Hey, focus. Any enemies moving around?”
“Oh, sorry. Nope, don’t see anything other than a slightly odd shopping mall.” Val answered, having the good graces to look slightly chagrined.
“Odd how…?” Kurt lead, stretching out the words and rolling his hand over in the universal gesture to continue.
“Lots of clothing stores. Like, that’s all I see.” She made a face at that. It looked like she had bitten into a lemon which Kurt took to mean she disapproved of the selections in those stores.
Kristi was next to take a peek out the small window. “Isn’t that normal for shopping malls??
Val nodded in the affirmative, but it was Sierra, one of Jade’s wolves, who answered after taking her turn to look out the window. “Yes, they have a lot of clothing stores but not exclusively. We should see some other ones like electronics, footwear, a bookstore, or those stinky candle shops. This is only clothing as far as I can tell since the signs are gibberish.”
Kurt took his turn to peek and had to agree with them about it being odd. He could see five different storefronts in the dim illumination of the ‘night’ setting for the overhead lights. All those seemed to be clothing shops with the typical dressed up mannequins in the front window and some accessories hanging beside them.
He peered inside the one closest to them and saw no security gate but saw racks of clothes and checkout counters just inside. The main hallways of the mall appeared to be completely barren, not even a bench or indoor planter to break up the center space which was over ten yards wide by his estimation.
“How are we going to play this?” Kristi asked after he had gotten a look.
“Want to just go loud and see what happens?” Kurt asked. He was pretty used to sneaking around between rifts and raids but their last rift, with the scorpions and the trench warfare, had gone pretty good with a standup fight. He wouldn’t say he was looking to have fun but…
“I’m down.” Val said.
“Me too.” Kristi gripped her machinegun a little tighter.
Looking to Jade, Kurt waited for her team to confer silently for a moment. “We will follow your lead, sire.”
“Rindi?”
The tigress nibbled at her lip and was still fidgeting awkwardly in her armor, clearly unaccustomed to it. “Whatever you think is best?” she hedged.
Kurt then turned back to Val. “Looks like you are going to get a break from illusions.” He then did a quick survey of the rest of the agents and saw that everyone was ready. “Alright, Kristi, take us out. Jade, staggered column. My team right side, your team left side.”
With that, Kristi pushed forward through the door and into the open area of the ‘mall’. To their right was a blank wall of white painted brick that made the decision of which way to go an easy one. Across from them was a clothing store that looked to be a sports apparel store and to their immediate left was something catering to a more formal attire.
TACK-BZZZzzzz. As soon as they cleared the door and got into the mall proper, they were immediately assaulted by the lights coming on. Everywhere along the length of their section of hall, the overhead lighting activated like it had been set on a motion sensor and they all swore as their eyes adjusted to the intense light. The interiors of the stores to either side of them and the section around the bend remained dim, however.
Kurt silently thought it was just as well that they hadn’t bothered with Val creating an illusion, he wasn’t sure if she would have prevented that or not. Still, they all hustled, spreading out as best they could as they waited for the other shoe to drop. Nothing happened.
“Alright. Jade, overwatch out here. We are going to push into this store and see what is in there. I get the feeling that the rift monsters are in the stores since they aren’t out here.” Kurt mentally issued orders and moved to the athletics wear store entrance.
Kristi moved up to his left side while Val went behind her and Rindi followed him into the dim interior. They approached slowly, making sure the thermal overlay of their glasses was turned on. Val even ducked low, trying to peek under the clothing racks and shelves to see if anything was lurking.
They were greeted by nothing except stillness and silence as far as they could see to the back wall of the space a hundred yards away.
“Alright, let’s push a little. Nice and slow.” Kurt said and took a step.
TACK-BZZZzzzz. All the lights in the store flicked on and the hum of fluorescent lights was accompanied by the sound of things falling down before Kurt heard a yowl and whirled around to the source of the sound.
“Haia!” Rindi shouted as she threw an elbow into the face of a mannequin that had come to life and grabbed her around her rear set of legs. That elbow was then followed by a loud but muted POP as she pressed the muzzle of her rifle into the thing’s chest and pulled the trigger.
A gout of fluorescent yellow sprayed out the back of the mannequin as it collapsed to the floor, only to be replaced by another that had lunged out of the window display. That one got a double dose of high velocity lead poisoning as Kurt also engaged it.
To his right, Kristi had stepped toward the center of the entrance, likely to get a better line of fire and proceeded to hose down the trio of mannequins that had tried to rush her. Val had stayed facing into the store and was firing short bursts at several more who were making their way up an aisle from the depths of what must have been the men’s section based on their clothing.
“Back up to the entrance.” Kurt commanded through the implant and helped Rindi cover their side of the store and the half dozen blank faced dummies rushing them. Each of them went down to a few shots from Kurt’s rifle or one from Rindi and the SCAR 17 she was using.
Kurt looked over to the left to see that Jade and her team had reorganized and were now covering everything outside the storefront while Connor had joined them, using his machinegun in support of Kristi while standing centrally in the entranceway.
Eventually Kurt ran out of targets and ceased firing, having gone through an entire magazine. He quickly changed to a new one before telling a panting and clearly shaken Rindi to do the same. “Status!”
“We’re good.” Kristi said.
Connor looked over his shoulder before responding. “Gem squad is good.”
“Rindi?” He asked. The woman was still breathing heavily and her eyes darted around from corner to corner. He had to ask her again before she snapped out of her daze and answered.
“Umm, good. Just startled me, jetting jumped on like that.” She said. “And the… noise isn’t the right word but the pressure from the guns. The way it thumped into me was, ahh, very distracting.”
Kurt noticed her front legs were brushing against each other as she pawed at the floor in front of her with her claws flexing in and out of their sheaths. He thought it was a sign of agitation in cats but didn’t know for sure or even if it applied to her unique race.
“Are you good to continue?” He asked, making eye contact.
Rindi turned to him, her pupils dilated before they shrank to pinpricks as she focused on his face. “Yeah, I will just be more on guard is all.”
Telling Jade to hold, Kurt and team pushed into the store, walking along the aisles and staying abreast of each other to provide crossing fields of fire while clearing obstacles. The entire store was a mess of knocked over shelves and splatters of bright yellow blood. He thought it looked like someone cracked open a bunch of glow sticks and sprayed the liquid all over the place.
As they moved, Kurt coached Rindi on what they were doing. He was trying to get her to move like the team was and lead with her rifle when investigating. She picked up the concept quickly and he watched as she rapidly adapted to the new tactic.
They found a few more of the mannequins still alive. Most of them had been severely wounded and were likely on their last legs already before Kurt put them down. As he did, he noticed a strange phenomena.
“Hey, have you noticed these things have like a health bar?” he asked while shooting a crawling one in the head before it could drag itself closer. “Or at least a damage threshold.”
“How do you mean?” Val asked from where she was examining a shirt that was sewn shut at the sleeves and neck. Just another rift oddity among the various nearly correct clothes they had seen in the store.
“I mean like I can put three rounds into them anywhere on the torso and have the same effect.” Kurt explained what he had noticed. “I can have a center mass shot in the heart and have the exact same effect as a lower gut shot. One headshot, even the neck, shuts them down instantly regardless of where it hits above the collar bones.”
“How many in the legs and arms?” Kristi asked from behind a display of single leg jeans.
“Don’t know. We can experiment a bit in the next store.” Kurt answered before giving the store one last look around. “Let’s head back out.”
They exited the store and met up with Jade who had continued to use her squad to overwatch the rest of the rift. They had noticed pretty quick that only the store they were in would have active mannequins in it. They hadn’t figured out the exact mechanic to it but had realized that much.
“Sire, can my team take the next store?” Jade asked as he approached.
Kurt shrugged. “If you want to. We can hold down the fort out here.”
Jade quickly got her team together and had a small… prayer session. At least he thought it was since they had bowed heads and he could feel the faith circulating around them and condensing into Jade. The sight also reminded him that he needed to meet with Alexi some more and get better details on what exactly he was supposed to do in these situations.
Before he could contemplate the religious component of his situation, his faithful followers entered the store. It ended up being a repeat of when Kurt’s team had entered the first one but this time, they were ready and none of the dressed up dummies got the drop on them.
Interspersed with the snap-thump of suppressed rifles, Kurt could hear a voice. As he had come to expect it was Jade. This time she was cajoling her team with some sort of call and response scripture that caused the faith energy coming from them to surge in volume before being recycled back into the squad.
Outside, in the main hall, Kurt and team watched the other darkened storefronts in alert boredom. Val kept darting looks to the stores one after the other and seemed to be concentrating on something.
“Sup, Val” Kurt asked in a whisper, forgoing the implant for the moment.
“The shadows are weird here. I feel like they aren’t real shadows until there is light.” Her very confused response came in a halting cadence.
“Like the areas aren’t real?” Kurt asked.
“No, they are real, but the shadows aren’t. It’s almost like the lights don’t so much produce light as they remove the fake darkness.”
“That is not at all helpful or reassuring.” Kristi muttered as Rindi nodded along.
“Well, just keep an eye or whatever on it.” Kurt said and turned to see Jade and her team exiting the store they had fought in. “Looks like it’s our turn to do another one.” With that, they got up and moved over to the next opening along the hall.
*****
Marc Durand quickly walked down the hall to his boss’ office, skipping past the secretary and knocking on the door. He heard a muffled voice telling him to enter and pushed through the surprisingly heavy door into the spacious room.
“What is it Durand?” Asked the Direction Generale, Charles Pimme, of France’s DGSE. He was a densely built man of middling height with more than a little silver mixed into his brown hair. He also despised wearing a suit as evidenced by the jacket on the coat rack and the tie discarded to the edge of his desk.
“Director, I just received a report from the intelligence division. That name we have been looking for came up on a scrape of a US data server and we picked it up from a German cell network.” Marc handed the folder to the director who opened it after clocking his computer and taking his access card out of the reader.
“Is this the… the Rooosk individual?” He pronounced the name poorly despite having been in several meetings where it had been said aloud.
“One mister Kurtis ‘Rosk’ as the data is now showing.” Marc subtly corrected. “He is the one that our US counterparts have been so interested in because of some… well we don’t know all the reasons but suspect it’s from some organization he is with.”
Charles finished reading the sparse file and closed the folder again before leaning back in his chair. “What else do we know?”
“We think he is para, based on our previous cell intercepts, and we know he lives in the northern state of Michigan.” Marc was looking through a binder he had also brought that contained the last info intercept. “Uhh, he is a former soldier, a ranger, and has quickly amassed a large amount of wealth based on the public record documentation of real estate purchases.”
“That isn’t a lot.” Charles said. “But you confirm the Americans and Germans are interested in him?”
“Yes, director.”
“Then I assume the other powers know as well. Have we heard anything from them? Any intercepts?”
“We had one possible from the BND but we can’t be sure. It was around the same time as we got a packet on them being after an enchanter of some sort.” Marc flicked to the cross-reference pages they had collected from other organizations. “Also, there are several mentions of a ‘Kurt’ from Russia and Poland.” He flipped a few more pages. “Mossad too. Annnndddd possibly India.”
That was enough for Charles and he leaned forward. “Get me the operations director and your director. If they are looking at this guy, then we might have to grab him before they do.” He picked up his office phone to call his secretary. “We can figure out what makes him interesting after we have him.”
“Shall I prep my teams, sir?”
“Not yet but put them on notice. We still need a plan and to double check things before we move.”
“Yes, sir.” Marc said. He turned and quickly retreated to his office to begin rounding up everyone the director asked for and to alert his teams of the standby order. He was looking forward to doing some proper work in a near-peer country for a change.