Emergence

by Various

  “Where aaaare you?” More giggling, then silence.

  I squatted down behind the couch, pistol ready. If I made it out of here without being killed by a multitude of Little Orphan Annies, I had some hard fucking questions for Mr. White.

  The house rocked as something exploded in the hall, followed by screams. It almost covered the scratching sound that came from behind me. Shit! I swung around to stare at another kid. Or the same one. It was hard to tell the difference.

  She smiled and stepped forward. I grimaced as I shot her in the face.

  Guess who won?

  From the hallway I heard barked commands, loud stomping, more screams that sounded Girl Guide-ish. Shots in three-round bursts. I stayed behind the couch. I’d be stupid to step out, or even reveal where I was, until whatever the fuck was happening happened. Sounded like assault rifles out there, and a Glock was no match for that level of firepower.

  “Clear!” I heard someone yell. “Stoner. You here?”

  I assumed it was one of White’s goons.

  “Yeah. Here.” I grabbed a cushion and threw it to hit the door, worried that if I made a sudden appearance I’d end up riddled with rounds. I heard more boots on the hardwood floor and the door slammed open, showing Dumb in full combat gear aiming an assault rifle in my direction.

  I raised my hands, sure that there were at least a couple more guys stacked up beside the door, ready to clear the room if it came to it. The Glock dangled loose from my trigger finger in the guard. Dumb moved into the room and stepped to the right, rifle still ready just in case. Good training. Behind him, Dumber came in, dressed and equipped the same. They were followed by another two guys I hadn’t seen before. I watched as they looked at the girl behind me.

  “Dead?” asked Dumb.

  “As a doornail,” I replied, “unless they can come back to life from having their head blown off.”

  “You should be ready to talk to White now. Am I right?” Dumb asked, his eyes never leaving the small body on the floor.

  “Yeah.” I looked past them to the blackened walls and burned carpets, to the other three small bodies lying on the floor. “What about them?”

  “We have someone coming to clean up,” said Dumber. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Fine. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  FIVE

  Half an hour later I was in the same office in the same warehouse in the same half-desolate industrial area. White sat across the desk from me, and his two soldiers were, as far as I knew, outside the door. After their rescue, I felt sort of bad keeping them filed in my head as Dumb and Dumber anymore, though on the way back they weren’t forthcoming with names. Anyway, it was just like this morning, but now I was ready to hear White out.

  “So, these things are after me now?” I asked.

  “You saw too much,” said White. “They tend to clean up after themselves when it comes to public knowledge.”

  “What the fuck am I involved in?”

  “Hell on Earth, Stoner. Hell on Earth.” White folded his hands together in front of his face. “You are now part of the enlightened few. Most in your position are dead. You, however, seem a little harder to kill, which is why I need to ask you a few questions and then perhaps make you a job offer.”

  “I’ve got a job, thanks, and I’ll be happy to answer your questions if you do me the courtesy of answering mine.”

  “As to the questions, no problem,” said White. “As to your job, I’m afraid they no longer require your services.”

  “What d’ya mean ‘no long require my services’?”

  “Exactly that,” said White. He reached for his remote, flicking the screen on to a news bulletin. It was a live shot, some reporter on a familiar street; the smoldering ruin in the background was my house.

  …the cause of the fire is unknown. At present there are no further statements, but we have been told, off the record, that the owner of the house is deceased, a victim of the blaze. We will update as more information becomes available.

  “What?” I went to stand. “I’m not fucking dead.”

  White motioned me back down. “Let me explain.”

  “This better be good,” I said. “My insurance is lapsed, and I need to make a few calls.”

  “It will all be taken care of, Mister Stoner.”

  “Yeah, your goon squad told me it would be cleaned up.” I didn’t feel so bad again. “Look at my fucking house!”

  “The house is immaterial,” said White. “You have moved beyond your past life anyway.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a bottle of single malt and two shot glasses. “Drink?”

  “My whole fucking life is burning down, so I might as fucking well,” I said, unable to believe the luck I’d had today.

  “Your body, or at least one matching your physical description, will be identified from the fire. The girls, for want of a better word, are gone, no sign left for anyone to find. You will cease to exist. Your estate, what there is of it, will pass over to your sister in Cleveland, including the fast-tracked insurance payment on your house. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, you will never be heard from again.” White stood and switched off the screen. “For you, the only place left is with us. It’s lucky we want your skills.”

  “And what skills are those, pray tell?” I needed time to think about all this, but it didn’t seem I had any.

  White smiled. “I know about your background, your service with the military.” He poured two shots of whisky and passed one to me. “To be specific, we know you served with the Australian Special Air Service Regiment for seven years. Combat missions and deep cover operations in the Middle East, in Africa, and in Asia.”

  No bluffing this guy. He knew too much about me. “And?” I took a sip of the whisky. It was good. The burn was hardly noticeable. “I don’t remember ever fighting chimerics. Certainly not some rogue group.”

  “True, Mister Stoner. Most people who fight these things don’t survive. The few who do are labelled as suffering extreme PTSD. Most end up dead, even if they survive the initial battle. You saw for yourself that these creatures tend to clean up after themselves.” White let his drink sit untouched. “You know, the government has been cracking down lately, with public opinion being what it is, all chimerics have to be registered, monitored, segregated, if necessary. No-one trusts them. No-one likes the fact they have these abilities.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m aware of the situation. I think the vast majority are suffering because of the actions of the few, but I sorta sympathize. Some of these fuckers are vastly powerful.” I finished my glass in one swallow and reached for the bottle. White nudged it toward me. I refilled and drank again. Whisky warmth seeped out from my gut. “First up, tell me how these things are organised. And what the hell is a Dornasian?”

  “The world you live in, Mister Stoner, holds many things that aren’t supposed to be, yet they are.” He reached over and pulled the bottle back.

  “I wasn’t finished.”

  He slid the bottle back into the drawer. “I think you need to stay clear-headed for this discussion, Mister Stoner.”

  I sighed. “Just get on with it.” Then I settled back into the chair and listened.

  Twenty minutes later, I was more informed, yet if I hadn’t seen things with my own eyes, I would have thought him some mental asylum escapee instead of, as he’d said, someone in charge of an agency tasked with defending humanity from the things that creep in the dark. Ever since chimerics had become accepted as public knowledge, the government had done its best to convince the public they weren’t in any true danger. But people had worried. Bias had built, anti-chimeric associations had flourished, and there had been some damned terrible things done in the name of ‘protecting humanity from the freaks’. It was, I always thought, only a matter of time before chimerics banded together and fought back.

  “I know it’s a lot to take in, Mister Stoner, and I know it’s been
a long day. The thing is, time is always of the essence. With the severe losses we’ve suffered recently, we need more fighters, and we need more leaders. You fit both requirements. I am offering you a place with us. A position that will allow you to fight back. A place of both safety and danger. A chance to belong, as you seem to have been sadly lacking of late.”

  I wondered just how much more he knew about the events that led me away from the military. The things that still haunted my dreams. I thought about it all for a minute, during which White sat looking at me, a knowing smile on his face. I wanted to erase that smile, but I was still too shaken up by what I’d seen and by what he’d just told me. An honest-to-god evil society, intent on bringing down the government and ruling over all the normal, lurked among us, and most people had absolutely no idea. It gave me hope for the human race. Maybe we weren’t such self-destructive assholes. Maybe a lot of the violence and horror in the world was actually committed by real monsters among us. Maybe.

  “Fine,” I said. “What do you need me to do? Where do I sign?”

  “Oh, there’s no signature required, Mister Stoner. Your life is your contract. You live with us, and you follow the rules, or you die. If you try to betray us, I’ll have you killed.” He looked serious.

  “Whatever. Just tell me where I bunk down.”

  An alarm sounded, like a ring tone from one of the new smartphones, but louder. The overhead lights flashed three times, then settled back to normal. White hit a button on his desk.

  “No time for that, Mister Stoner. I’ll have someone take you to meet your new team and to grab some equipment. You’re about to get thrown into the deep end.” He pushed another button on that damnable remote, and the door opened. Dumb stuck his head through the door and grunted an inquiry.

  “Mister Stoner is joining us,” said White. “Take him to meet the others and to suit up. We’ve got an alert.”

  “Yes, sir.” Dumb looked at me. “Follow me.”

  He led me out into the hall, where Dumber fell in line behind us as we walked toward the other end of the hall.

  “Okay, I’m part of the crew now, so what’s your name, man?” I asked Dumb.

  “Harley,” he said. He gestured behind me with a thumb as he walked. “That’s Enrico.”

  “Leon,” I grunted in response.

  “We know,” said Harley.

  “Yeah. So, where to now?”

  “Time to load up and kick some ass,” Harley said, grinning. He seemed much more personable now that he wasn’t being all passive-aggressive with a cattle prod.

  “No rest for the wicked.”

  “No, sir,” said Harley, “just a quick death, if we’re lucky.”

  He stopped at a gunmetal-grey door and pressed his palm against what seemed to be some electronic scanner. A light ran the length of his hand, like a miniature photocopier. With a ping, the door opened.

  I followed Harley, and Enrico followed me, into a whole new world of guns and evil. Ten minutes later, I was suited up in combat gear, carrying a brand new HK416, and loaded for bear. They gave me precisely three minutes on an indoor range to make sure the rifle shot well. I was happy enough; HK made good gear.

  Now, I had time to think back on what I’d been told earlier.

  #

  “Normally we just shoot and loot, taking any trophies we can,” White had said to me in the room, “but that was before things changed. The criminals, the drug-runners, the thugs. Like any normal person, chimerics can be good or bad. We take out the bad ones. It wasn’t that hard, because they usually worked alone or in small numbers. Recently, they stopped working independently; we’re seeing something that comes close to teamwork for a lot of them. Now, we need to know what’s different.”

  “Why not just shoot all the shitheads and let God sort `em out?” I asked.

  “That works in the short term, but we’ve been hearing rumors about some sort of guiding force. Something, or someone, is bringing them into line and working toward a common cause. That’s dangerous. They never used to do common causes; they’d just kill, rob, and break the law for the sake of it. It was hard enough to stay on top of things when that’s all they did.” White sat up. “We need to get ahead of the game instead of playing catch-up, Mister Stoner. We have operatives working all over the globe, snooping and checking for HumInt.”

  My raised brow forced him to clarify. “Human intelligence,” White said, “from boots on the ground. We can’t trust satellite imagery.”

  “So, what are you?” I asked. “Some sort of deep-cover bullshit agency?”

  “We have nothing to do with the government. That’s how it needs to stay. Those fools have no idea what is really going on. They think they can control the chimerics. In truth, it’s us that’ve managed to maintain control.”

  “Sounds good to me,” I said. “Everything they touch goes to shit anyway. So, you’re nothing to do with the government?”

  “No. We’re a private group.”

  “You must be well-funded to keep the sort of shit you do this far under the radar,” I said. “Been around long?”

  White paused, obviously for effect. “Our group was formed over a thousand years ago,” he said.

  For the first time that day, I had nothing to say. No amount of smartass could possibly match that claim.

  “For the record, we are called the Varangians. Our order was founded as an elite guard for the Byzantine emperors, but our forebears’ skills were soon better utilized hunting monsters. Turns out chimerics have shown up for a lot longer than anyone realizes. Where do you think the myths and legends come from? Vampires. Werewolves. They were all explanations for the very real monsters in our midst.”

  “Wait…what? Are you trying to tell me you’re some super-secret group that’s been fighting chimerics for over a thousand years, and no-one knows about it?” I shook my head, unable to accept this, which was weird considering everything else I’d seen today. “Really? A left-over from the fucking Middle Ages?”

  “By the end of Middle Ages, we’d already been established for approximately five hundred years.” White pressed another button on the ever-present remote control. A minute later there came a knock at the door, a small dark man entered once bidden, pushing a tray bearing empty cups into the room.

  “Wanley, this is Mister Stoner,” said White.

  Wanley gave a shy grin. “Would you like to be coffeed, sir?

  “Coffee me up, Wanley, and the name’s Leon. My dad was Mister Stoner.” I smiled at the man’s obvious good nature. He was tiny, barely up to my chest, and built like a teenager. His two shoulders together were not much bigger than one of mine. I dismissed him as any threat while noting that he seemed a nice enough guy. And I liked him even more for making coffee.

  “Do you believe me, Mister Stoner?” asked White.

  “Well, what choice do I have? Either chimerics are going bad more than ever, or I’ve gone stone cold fucking crazy and I’m sitting sedated somewhere, imagining all this shit.”

  Wanley handed me a coffee. It looked like a flat white. “How did you manage?” I asked, looking around for an espresso machine. “I didn’t hear any steamer?”

  “Wanley is our resident thermo-geek,” said White.

  I looked at him. No words. Just looked. I’d heard of thermos before. I knew they could control temperatures, locally, and sometimes in larger areas.

  “What’s the problem, Mister Stoner? Is that too far a jump, even after all you’ve seen today? Even if the heat is just another gift?”

  “Well, chimerics who grow claws are one thing,” I said. “That can be explained away by science and the DNA. Controlling temperatures outside of the body? That’s a whole different ballgame.”

  “As Arthur C. Clarke stated, ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’,” said White. “We’re still examining the concept, but the systems of magic we’ve found so far seem to be an ability among certain in
dividuals to channel the natural forces of the universe, as distinguished in the new quantum science, in ways we are yet to understand. Just another chimeric gift, albeit a rare one.”

  “English, please,” I said.

  “Don’t yank my chain, Mister Stoner. My day has been as long and disruptive as yours,” said White, finally showing some emotion. “I lost good men and women today.”

  I leaned back in the chair, finally able to put a human face on the previously-inscrutable Mr. White. There was a crack in the façade. He cared for his soldiers, that much was obvious. A good quality for a leader of men and women. “Yanking chains is how I roll. Don’t like it? Don’t listen.”

  “What it comes down to, Mister Stoner, is that there’s a brave new world out there, and we need soldiers to fight the dangers that most people in the government don’t believe exist. Are you that brave?” White leaned back in his chair, waiting for my answer.

  “Well, I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

  “Everything is a choice, Mister Stoner. Some choices are easier than others, but that’s the nature of the beast, isn’t it?”

  #

  I came back to the present as three others walked into the room. Two guys and a woman. I noticed them all, but her in particular. She was plain to look at, but at the same time seemed more alive than most women I knew. I couldn’t judge, I guess, as I was pretty fucking plain myself. She had a slim and tight body, outlined well in black combat gear with distinctive electric-blue trims, but no curves, more like a guy than a girl. Short black hair and dark eyes. The guys with her were more notable, that’s for sure. One Asian, with the whole Bruce Lee-dangerous thing going on, and the other looked like an escapee from a Wild West show.

  They all carried the same equipment I’d been issued: HK assault rifles and Compact Tac .45 pistols. Nice equipment. These guys knew what they were doing. I looked around as I checked load and safety on both my weapons, stowing the pistol in the holster on my thigh and holding the rifle like an extension of my arms. Warriors never fully sling a rifle, and never bothered with safeties. As the Delta operators say, my finger is my safety.