“Chris? Are you alright?” she asked.
I shook my head and stared at the door, twisting the knob without result. I knew I could force it open, but that didn't seem to be the answer. Paige stepped up beside me, looking at me with a worried expression.
“Did you lock yourself out?”
I nodded.
“What about your spare key?” She reached up, on tip toes, and brushed the top of my jamb. I don't keep my key there, but her motion triggered a memory and I moved to the building Super's closet at the end of the hall, between our apartments. The spare was above that jamb. Wow, real clever. I fumbled it at the lock, till Paige gently took it from my hand and unlocked the door. Later I would look back and wonder at how I must have looked; barefoot, torn black tee, leather pants, unkempt; but at that moment I simply nodded thanks and slid into my apartment dragging my bag behind me.
“Okay, well...I guess I'll just head out on my run. Do you need anything?” she asked.
I shook my head and sat on the edge of my futon, and listened to her gently shut the door. She stood outside my door for a moment, perhaps deciding if she needed to do anything else, then padded down the hall for her morning run. I won't bore you with the details of my morning, but just a comment on the daily grind. As mundane as our regular lives can be, sometimes, when we've had a great shock, that steady regular routine can be a God send. It certainly was for me, in fact, it may have been the only merciful thing that God had ever sent me.
Much later in the day, I arrived at work, more or less on time, dressed more or less respectably and essentially functional. Ignoring the steady stream of stares that I seemed to get now days, I settled into the Muster room, waiting for the briefing. The room was buzzing with excitement and after a time it penetrated my haze. Something big was up. Twenty minutes behind schedule, the Lieutenant took the podium and called us to attention.
“Listen up. We have a big operation going down tonight, here in the Sixty-Eighth. The short and long of it is, we've got info on the location of the Hance lab and we're hitting it in about forty-five minutes. Special Ops will run the show, we're providing backup, security and support. Captain Ortez will brief us on the op order.”
Ortez was my height and built like a salt and pepper haired bull. He spent the next twenty minutes detailing the operation and then we broke out by squad to head to the lab location.
Our squad was specifically tasked to follow the main entry teams into the warehouse where the labs were supposed to be located, an order that puzzled all of us. When I spotted Roma and his Triple S team conferring with Ortez, I understood. Roma was arraigning some special backup if something unusual popped up. The fact that he was using me and putting my unsuspecting squad in harm’s way at the same time only added to the pit of rage doing a slow burn in my belly.
The Special Ops teams formed up, the snipers got in position, security fanned out around the property and the command van was up and running. We hung back, at the very rear of the entry formation, Roma's team just ahead of us. Sommers and the Asian guy were suited up SWAT style, but the rest were dressed normal, with the addition of heavy body armor. Although I did notice the Triple S folks inserting forearm-length thirty-three round magazines of nine millimeter ammo into their Glocks. Velasquez looked my way a couple of times but Roma ignored me. Most of the Sixty-Eight guys were geared normal, but my squad rated assault weight vests and shotguns for Sarge and Henderson. We all had earpieces for our radios. With everyone in position, we hunkered down and waited.
Finally, the word came down and almost anticlimactically, the operation was underway. Sometimes a raid will be noisy and full of flash, but on a big building like this, with multiple levels and potential booby traps, discretion is a better choice. The doors were breached with a modicum of fanfare, and the teams entered fast, but carefully. Bomb squad guys were with each of the entry teams, looking for trip wires and beams of light. It turns out Silly String is great for finding trip wires without setting them off. There were gobs of bright blue and green chemical string smeared into the concrete floor of the warehouse as we moved into the darkness. Sarge and Henderson were following the rest of us, as the squad's ostensible purpose was rear security and they had the firepower. I moved myself up to the front, as I was aware that I was the firepower if things got hincky.
Some of the troops ahead had spread out to clear the first floor, but most headed into stairwells that only went down. As we started down the industrial metal stairs I noticed that it was the lanky tech guy Aikens who was just ahead of me. More cops split off to cover the first underground level and a second, but we kept going down and were just reaching the third when the shooting started. The sound of full auto fire ripped through the stairwell from below with a secondary echo coming through the earpiece. Unnaturally calm voices that could have been talking ball scores detailed the action to the rest of us. Groups of crazies like the ones in the park, some apparently armed with guns, were slowing our advance. The well trained Ops guys were taking them apart with professional ease.
We reached the third level and broke out into a vast underground room, entering at the top level. For some reason it reminded me of Plasma, with the dance floor being below ground level entry. Flashes of M4 assault rifle fire lit the dark and hand held lights were probing the darkness in every direction below us. Suddenly the chatter on the radio became panicked at the same moment an unholy roar filled the room. Magnesium flares burst into light and the action below was revealed. Teams of Ops guys were bunched up, back to back, firing in every direction. As I watched, horrified, one team was suddenly swept away like bowling pins, but I couldn't see anything hit them.
I unfocused my eyes and looked with my Sight. Something big was moving at incredible speed around the room, ignoring gunfire and swatting men around like toys, roaring as it tore through the heavily armed cops. I couldn't see its shape clearly, but it had four legs and its aura was green, red and PURPLE. A greasy black strand strung from its neck, stretching back into the inky darkness at the other end of the huge room. A man-sized blot of deeper black moved about in that gloom and I instantly knew that a Hellbourne held the reins of the monstrous thing crunching up our guys. Without thinking about what I was doing, I hit the stairs that clung to the wall and raced down to the floor below. As I ran I tried to watch the hell beast with my Sight, but moving while using Sight is like running with three-D glasses on. Not good. But after reverting to regular vision I discovered that the thing gave off sparks as it ravaged the cops in its path. Not a lot but enough that I could track its otherwise invisible position with some accuracy. “Hey Sparky, over here!” I yelled at it and two glowing red eyes suddenly swung in my direction. Uh oh! That worked a little too well. It charged me instantly, but things slowed down and it didn't seem quite so fast anymore. I jumped to my right as it ripped through the space I had been occupying and also through the steel railing of the stairway I had just jumped from. I struck at it with my pooled aura, and I know I touched it, because the giant beast grunted, but didn't slow.
>Do you like my pet, Gordon?<
I looked for the source of the voice but it had come from everywhere and nowhere.
>I brought him here just for you<
Hellbourne had never spoken to me this way before, but the vile quality the words carried with them could only belong to demon kind. I spoke normally, knowing it would hear me as I readied for another charge.