Cole's Haunting Melody (The Gods' Executioner Series)

by A. L. Bridges

  “Doesn’t she know that I’m technically still on vacation?” I rhetorically ask.

  “She does, but she figured you’d be interested in any case involving the Templars.”

  …

  Chapter 11: Let’s Hear it for New York

  [November 3rd]

  I hear Natasha sniffle to my left as I look through a spotter’s scope from the rooftop of the hotel in New York.

  “We’ve been up here for two hours and haven’t seen anything.” I complain.

  “Patience. Counter sniping isn’t a quick task.” Natasha replies from her relaxed position next to me, staring up at the sky with her suppressed M110 sniper rifle set up next to her on a bipod against the guard wall of the roof.

  “That’s easy for you to say; you haven’t been the one staring through a scope for two hours.” I say.

  “I have to let my eyes rest; that’s why you’re the spotter.” Natasha responds.

  “Despite having no training as a spotter whatsoever. I don’t know… something about this just doesn’t feel right.” I tell her.

  “You’re too paranoid, Cole. This mission is fairly routine; all we have to do is find and eliminate the Templar sniper before he kills the Russian President.” Natasha replies.

  “Yes, but why are they targeting the Russian President?” I ask.

  “Presumably to put someone less badass in power.1 We still don’t know what the Templars’ main objective is, but having control over Russia would most likely further their goals.” Natasha says.

  “I don’t know… it just doesn’t add up to me. Before now, the Templars have only targeted supernaturals; why would they go after the Russian President? As much of a badass as he is, he’s still human… Natasha, how well known are your skills as a counter sniper?” I inquire.

  “Well, I did place the top score on The Agency’s exam and I’ve had roughly a dozen successful missions before this. Honestly, I probably could have done this without your assistance, but I usually have a close-quarters operator in case things get messy.” Natasha answers.

  “So there’s a decent chance that anyone with inside information would know that you would be handed a high profile assignment like this one? After all, the Russian President’s assassination on US soil would not make our government look good.” I suggest.

  “Yes, there is a decent chance that someone would guess that.” Natasha thoughtfully says.

  “How did The Agency hear about this assassination?” I ask.

  “Through a bug that was placed in the office of a known Templar…” Natasha replies.

  “And how well known is our relationship?” I question.

  “Pretty damn well known…” Natasha responds.

  “And since our relationship is well known, any attempt to get at you is an attempt at me, and we both know how badly the Templars want me.” I reply.

  “Are you saying this is a set up?” Natasha asks.

  “Yeah.” I say.

  Natasha suddenly tenses up and starts shaking slightly while breathing heavily.

  “Cole! We need to leave, like now!” Natasha exclaims.

  “It’s a little too late for that.” I reply as I see a Predator drone fly around the side of a skyscraper, headed straight for us.

  “Cole, we can still port out of here!” Natasha says as the Predator drone launches a missile at us.

  What in the hell are they doing!? We’re standing on top of a civilian hotel building and they’re just going to blow up the whole building to get at us!? There have to be at least three hundred innocent people in a hotel of this size! I have to stop that missile.

  (Devour it)

  “Natasha, take cover.” I calmly tell her as my arm turns black and I get that bizarre feeling in my eyes.

  I engage my helmet and stand in the path of the missile. The missile is coming in fast as I hold my left arm up. When the missile is about twenty feet away, a tendril shoots out of my palm and connects with the missile. The missile loses substance, turning into black smoke that hits me due to the momentum before dispersing.

  Now it’s time to take out the Templar’s toy. The Predator drone comes in hot and opens fire with dual .50 caliber machine guns. Not seeing another way to do this, I stand in the path of the bullets. The majority of the bullets miss, but I still get hit in my right shoulder, stomach, and a grazing shot to my armored left leg that takes out a large chunk of my thigh. As the drone is passing by, I leap into the air with most of my weight on my right leg, while hold my left arm out. Three tendrils shoot out of my arm and hit the drone in different places, covering the majority of the plane as it disappears in large circles. However, the three large chunks taken out the drone don’t cover the entire tail or wings, which continue their flight path like giant bullets.

  A chunk of wing smacks me in the stomach, driving the .50 caliber bullet deeper into my torso. I fly back and land on the far edge of the roof with most of my weight on my left leg, tearing the small amount of remaining muscle that was allowing me to even stand.

  “Cole! Are you okay!?” Natasha asks with concern as she runs over to my seated position against the guard wall of the roof.

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine.” I reply as I shove the wing off of me.

  I hope no one else was injured by the flying pieces of scrap metal. Natasha suddenly tenses up; uh-oh.

  “Stairs!” Natasha exclaims.

  Shit! I’m in no shape to do any fighting. Natasha takes one look at me and her eyes narrow, realizing that I can’t fight them off. She quickly takes a small black tube out of her cleavage and flicks a cap off; an epi-pen? Natasha unzips her suit a little further and stabs the pen into the left side of her neck. Her outer aura suddenly turns into a silver-red mixture and Natasha rushes over to her M110 faster than what should be possible for her. She snatches the rifle up as the steel door that leads to the stairs is kicked open. Natasha turns and fires three times; I hear the thud of three bodies hitting the ground in quick succession. Suddenly a bullet strikes my left arm and becomes compacted before dropping to the rooftop.

  (Sniper, 12 o’clock)

  “Natasha, sniper on a rooftop, building’s twelve.” I think to her.

  Natasha turns, looks through the scope, and quickly fires twice. I see a body fall over the edge and plummet towards the street. A metal tube lands at Natasha’s heels; she quickly turns and kicks it back into the stairwell before diving behind the steel door and slamming it shut. I hear the concussion grenade go off, probably killing whoever was in the stairwell due to the enclosed space and close quarters.

  (Sniper aiming at Natasha, 7 o’clock)

  “Tasha, building’s seven! Move!” I hastily think.

  Natasha throws the steel door open as a bullet thuds right where her head was. She pops around the corner, looks through the scope, and fires twice. She goes back around the door and fires three more times; I listen as the bodies drop in the stairwell, but now Natasha is out of ammo and we didn’t bring any spare magazines. I bend forward painfully, feeling the inch and a half of metal digging deeper into my stomach, and reach behind me, grabbing my 10mm auto and the suppressor. I quickly screw the suppressor on with my left hand.

  “Tasha! Catch!” I think as I hurl the gun at her. She drops her M110 and catches my gun in her right hand.

  “Since you can use my armored plating, you should at least be able to fire my 10mm auto. It’s loaded with JHP rounds so go for flesh shots!” I think to her and she nods in response.

  Natasha jumps six feet and effortlessly pulls herself up onto the eight foot roof of the stairwell and waits for the next squad of enemies. I could help out with my .460 but the noise would certainly attract attention, although it’s not like the guys with body armor and guns haven’t already attracted enough attention. The steel door bursts open and five Templars with body armor, silenced MP7A1 submachine guns, and red auras step out.

  “Let me see your hands!” a Templar orders. I hold up my hands.

  “Where’s the g
irl!?” another Templar shouts.

  Natasha drops down from the stairwell rooftop and fires into the back of a Templar’s neck before wrapping her arm around said neck, holding the body in front of her. The surprised Templars turn and open fire as Natasha sinks two to three rounds into the faces of each Templar.

  “That… should be the… last of them.” Natasha says while out of breath. Then she collapses to the rooftop, her aura fading back to white

  “NATASHA!” I shout.

  I drag myself the thirty feet over to her position. I quickly check her vitals and feel that her pulse is really weak. I cradle her on top of me, grab my gun, holster it, and touch my triskele.

  “SARA!” I shout in the kitchen. Sara rushes in from her room.

  “Cole!? What happened!?” Sara asks.

  “Natasha and I were attacked; I was too injured to fight back so she used a thing that resembled an epi-pen to inject something into her neck. She had increased speed, strength, and reflexes, but when the fighting was done, she collapsed and now her pulse is really weak!” I quickly explain.

  “Damn… What she injected was a special compound that I gave her and told her to use in case of emergencies.” Sara replies as she kneels down to check Natasha.

  “What?” I ask, perplexed.

  “I helped The Agency develop a compound that would rival the enhancement virus, but the compound was modified to have a shorter life; it’s not permanent. When injected, it feeds on the user’s adrenaline in their bloodstream. Once the adrenaline runs out, the compound dissolves and the virus dies. This was put in place as a preventative to keep any corruption down to a minimum. While I was working on that compound, I made a special version for Natasha. This virus was further modified to work in correlation with your blood that is inside of her; it allows her to increase her strength and speed far more than the regular compound, in an effort to keep up with you and Rei.” Sara explains.

  “So why is she like this?” I ask.

  “The toll of this compound is much higher than that of the normal compound. I ran three trials with ten rats each: five that had been injected with your blood, and five without. I injected the compound into all ten, and all ten died, or so I thought. Upon closer observation, the five that had your blood were still alive, but in a mild comatose state. Four woke up the next day, but the last one never did. The second trial yielded a one hundred percent survival rate for the rats injected with your blood, and a one hundred percent fatality rate for those without it. The third trial ended with a total of seven dead rats.” Sara reports.

  “So there’s a twenty percent chance that she won’t wake up!?” I shout.

  “This is why I told her to only use it in case of extreme emergencies…” Sara quietly replies.

  “I’m taking her back to Niflheim unless there’s some reason she needs to be here?” I angrily ask; Sara shakes her head in response.

  “You and Tia should probably go someplace and lay low for a few days; they sent a Predator drone after us this time and they were prepared to blow up an entire hotel building to get me.” I inform her.

  I lift Natasha up, keeping most of my weight on my right leg; while my left leg has healed enough for me to have it bear weight by using my blood to reinforce it, it’s still painful to do so. I touch my Haglaz and port to Jason’s room. I carry Natasha out of Jason’s room, down the hall, past Reyna’s room, and into the guest bedroom that she has been staying in.

  “Cole! What happened!?” Cheza asks from the doorway as I set Natasha down on her bed.

  “The mission was a set up for Natasha because of her association with me… I had to take out a Predator drone and was injured in the process. More enemies were coming and I couldn’t fight back, so Natasha injected an experimental compound into her neck and killed them all… and now she’s like this.” I inform her as I grab a chair from the corner and pull it over to the side of Natasha’s bed.

  “Well we need to get her to Sara! Maybe she can do something!” Cheza replies.

  “Who do you think gave her the compound?” I reply.

  “Well, Natasha will be alright, won’t she?” Cheza timidly asks.

  “Yeah, she will.” I say.

  She’d better… I’m not losing someone else I care about due to my own incompetence… I refuse to.

  “She’ll be fine, Cole.” Cheza whispers into my ear as she hugs me from behind and kisses my cheek.

  I hear Natasha’s phone ring from somewhere on her person, remembering where the injector was and realizing that her suit doesn’t have pockets.

  “Don’t even think about it.” Cheza sternly says and fishes the phone out of Natasha’s cleavage before handing the phone to me.

  “Natasha’s phone.” I answer.

  “Cole? How are you guys doing?” Carla asks.

  “Natasha is unconscious. Listen, the mission was a setup; you most likely have an agent that has turned.” I tell her.

  “I know. We just discovered him planting false intelligence in the system. I was calling to ask Natasha if she wanted to sit in on the interrogation.” Carla says.

  “Where?” I ask.

  “Seattle’s office.” Carla replies.

  “I’ll be there in a few.” I inform her.

  “Cole, you will only be observing, do you understand?” Carla asks.

  “Yeah… see you in a few.” I reply and hang up.

  “Cheza, can you watch after Natasha for me?” I ask as I set the phone on the bedside table.

  “Of course; go.” Cheza softly replies.

  “Thanks.” I say, give her a kiss goodbye, and run back to Jason’s room.

  I pull an inch and a half of metal out of my right shoulder before taking off my jacket; there’s nothing that can be done about the bullet in my stomach at the moment anyway. I quickly change my shirt and pants so that I have some fresh, non-bullet-hole-ridden clothes on before touching my Haglaz.

  “Hey Cole, long time no see.” Carla greets when I appear in her office in Seattle.

  “Yeah, it has been a while. How are things working out with the enhancements?” I ask as I follow her out of her office.

  “With the compound that we now have access to, our operators can meet the criminal suspects on equal grounds so the fatality rates have dropped drastically. Incidents involving the enhancements have also dropped significantly and are still continuing to drop; I believe that you have really taken out the source this time.” Carla reports as we step in the elevator and she presses the button marked -4.

  “How are the operators handling the toll from the compound?” I inquire.

  “We have them on rotational shifts so that no operator uses the compound more than once every three days. Did Natasha take some of the compound? Is that why she was unconscious?” Carla asks.

  “Yeah, something like that.” I reply.

  It appears that Carla might not know about the special compound so I’m not going to say anything. The elevator doors ding open to a sterile white hallway, much like the armory. I follow Carla down the hallway and we enter a small room that is similar to the ones seen in nearly every police drama: the small room on the other side of the two-way mirror. We take a seat, causing pain to flash through my stomach as a reminder of the bullet that needs to be removed, and I look at the man that nearly helped assassinate Natasha. He is sitting at a steel table, but he is probably in the ballpark of six feet tall with light brown hair. If this were following the script for a cop drama, then I’d say that he’s black or Hispanic, but he’s not; he’s pasty white, muscular, and is so full of shit that his eyes are brown.

  “So how did you catch him?” I ask as I feel my left thigh knitting back together more quickly now that I’m resting and have stopped using my blood to reinforce my leg.

  “When I was looking over the intelligence report from the bug, I felt that something was odd. I pushed it to the back of my mind and sent Natasha on the assignment, but it kept eating at me. When we got reports of a Predator drone in the ar
ea, I tried calling to warn you guys, but the call wouldn’t connect so I went back through those reports and noticed what was wrong; the conversation about the plot was dated for the day before President Putin had even made plans to come to the states. I was able to trace the error back through a blackmailed analyst to our culprit.” Carla explains as the interrogator enters the room.

  “How did the Templars get clearance for a Predator drone in a major metropolitan area?” I inquire.

  “It seems like the Templars have some serious pull with the certain areas of the government…” Carla answers as the interrogation starts.

  The interrogation goes on for about an hour with the culprit not giving anything up. It’s not like the interrogator does a shit job; it’s just that the culprit is savvy to his tricks.

  “Look, stow the threats; it’s just getting old. I know that you can’t touch me and I’m not saying shit!” The culprit says with a smug smile that makes me shake with anger. The interrogator stands up and exits the cell.

  “Perhaps I should go talk to him.” I suggest.

  “Not a chance, Cole.” Carla replies.

  I glare at her for a few moments, but she doesn’t budge so I formulate a really stupid plan.

  “I need to use the bathroom.” I announce.

  “I’ll show you where it is.” Carla says and escorts me down the hall.

  “Will this work, Airi?”

  (I should be able to repair the damage more quickly this time, provided that you don’t port again before I finish)

  I enter the bathroom and touch my triskele. I already know that Carla is familiar with the time limitation and can feel it when I port, but she doesn’t know that I can port within a one hundred meter distance. I appear in the interrogation cell with blood squirting from my mouth, startling the culprit. I think about jamming the door with a chair, but I don’t think Carla knows I’m still in the building so she most likely won’t sprint here, giving me about a minute.

  “Not even the mighty Feros will get me to talk.” The culprit confidently tells me.

  “Hehe, that’s cute.” I chuckle.