The ancient Deep One stood in the middle of the lab. The other Deep Ones had stopped attacking. As near as Kharrn could see, all the mutants were dead.
“I want to see the great depths again,” the old Deep One said. “I can sense what you are about to do. I would not survive such an explosion.”
Crowley grinned. “Kind of the plan.”
“Even you two might not survive.”
“We'll take our chances,” said Kharrn.
“I know that. I can't control either of you, but I can see it in your minds.”
Crowley said, “And you know that even if you fried GI Joe's brain, Kharrn or I can work the detonator.”
“Yes. Enough. We will go.”
“And you won't slaughter the islanders,” said Kharrn.
The old one shook his head. “No. But there are still men alive in this building. I want them.”
Crowley smiled again. “I've got no problem with that. Kharrn?”
“Take them,” said Kharrn.
“What about that one?” The Deep One pointed at the soldier.
Kharrn said, “Not part of the bargain.”
“Don't depend too much on my weariness. You realize that even if you kill me, an army of my people would come here.”
Crowley said, “You'd still be dead. Take your scientists to torture and go.”
The Deep One said, “And then what?”
“We'll give you half an hour to get out of here and then we're going to use this guy's explosives and blow this place to hell,” said Crowley.
“Yes, I would not wish to see this building stand.”
“You won't,” said Kharrn.
“Someday, when I am whole, I would like face you again, savage.”
Kharrn said, “I'll be around.”
The Deep Ones began to file out of the room. The soldier said, “Were you talking to that thing? I couldn't hear it say anything.”
“Be glad,” said Crowley. “It wanted to take you somewhere and kill you painfully over a long period of time.”
“And you're really going to destroy the facility?”
Kharrn said, “We are. Leave the explosives with us. We'll set them properly now and obliterate this place.”
“What do I do?” said the soldier.
Jonathan Crowley said, “You get to be a hero. The only survivor of an ill-fated mission.”
“Probably my last mission.”
“Probably wise.”
“Mind telling me who you guys are?”
“Better that you don't know,” Crowley said. “Trust me on that.”
Crowley looked at the soldier and said the words he almost always spoke with witnesses. Later, if the man found another case where things that should not exist were attacking human beings, he would place a phone call.
The soldier looked like he wanted to say something else, but he shook his head and left the lab. After he was gone, Crowley said, “I had thought the race almost wiped out, but there are apparently a lot of Deep Ones out there now.”
Kharrn nodded as he gathered up the charges and the detonators. “In various places, yes.”
“Sooner or later they'll come into conflict with humanity again.”
“But not today.”
“No not today. So what do you say, Kharrn? Let's blow this place up and then go get drunk and talk about old times.” He paused “And I need to find my shoes.”
“Old times,” Kharrn said, “We're the men for that.”
RAVEN’S FIRST FLIGHT
Alan Baxter
Raven sat on a hard metal chair and scanned the bare room. A huge mirror on one wall was obviously a one-way window. Otherwise there were two chairs and a square metal table, all bolted in place. The room itself lay buried deep in an otherwise normal office complex, on the top floor of an old brownstone on East 72nd Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. An office like a million others across New York. She thought she’d already agreed to join this strange crew, despite the lack of details, but it felt like another interview was imminent. Or maybe she’d misread everything and was being taken for a ride.
Raven. She liked the new handle. She’d never really liked her given name anyway. Real identity no longer exists in the Dark Squad, she had been told. No names, no history, no family, your new life starts here and before that you were nothing. The old you is a ghost.
It suited her fine. Being rid of her loser parents would be no trauma, she’d left them for the Army at sixteen, first chance she got. And they’d left the rest of her family behind in Korea anyway. She hadn’t seen any of them since she was five. Growing up Korean in America, a cultural mongrel, nothing had come easily to her. Estranged not only by distance and emotional coldness, but by her powers too, the odds had always been against much in the way of integration. Which was apparently a large part of why she’d been picked for this weirdo sideline. She was yet to decide if she could really trust the promises that had been made to her, but anything appealed more than a cell. A slight guilt hovered at the thought of her parents receiving a ‘Killed In Action’ notice, the funeral without a body they would have to endure. But still, what did she really care?
A light burst out, blinding her. Raven ducked off the chair, rolled into a crouch by the furthest wall, standard procedure against an unexpected IED. Her Army training fired up and she slipped the automatic 9mm from its hip holster, squinted against the blur as her vision adjusted back to normal. Nothing to shoot at, no burn or explosive damage. A decoy blast? She switched the 9mm to her left hand, trained on where the light had seemed to emanate, and moved her right hand to the jade knife at her belt, slipped it free. Its icy touch emboldened her. Feeling suitably armed, she whispered the samjok-o into her presence. The three-legged raven, it’s jet black feathers glistening under harsh blue strip lighting, stepped as though through an unseen door directly onto her shoulder.
What’s here? Raven mentally whispered to the familiar, the source of her new operative name.
It ducked and blinked, hopped up and circled the room with one wing flap, then settled back to her shoulder. Nothing, it thought at her.
Raven frowned and slowly rose from her crouch. The bird faded back to whatever plane it chose to inhabit once her attention on needing it had drifted. It was never far away, even if it wasn’t always physically with her. A word would bring it every time.
With a sense of disgust, she cautiously lowered herself back onto her chair, slipped the 9mm away, but kept the icy dagger reversed in her grip. The blade pressed coldly against the underside of her forearm. She preferred blades to firearms anyway.
What kind of pointless test was that?
The door behind her opened and she was out of the chair and over the desk in an instant, her small, wiry fame belying her athleticism and strength. Many had underestimated her physical ability to their detriment.
“It’s all right, settle down.”
The voice was deep and accented Scottish, but nothing like anything she had known before. Maybe some country accent, or the remnant of an older dialect. Regardless, it wasn’t broad enough to give her any trouble understanding, but was instantly recognisable. The man who had recruited her, who she knew only as Boss.
“The fuck is going on?”
He smiled at her, wide and open, teeth bright and large in his grizzled head. The man was massive, at least six and half feet, wide as a barn door. His iron grey hair was cut almost to the skull, his stubble a sparse snowscape across a square chin. He looked to be about fifty or maybe a little older, but Raven had rarely seen anyone, of any age, as imposing and dangerous. He put her teeth on edge.
“We’re testing you.”