Fear of Its Prey - First 3 paragraphs

Lucien pulled back the hammer on his flintlock musket and waited. His breath misted, floating up like smoke. Something touched his skin, colder than the snow, more invasive than the wind. It watched him, not human, but aware, hatred emanating from it.

Beside Lucien crouched Gabriel, of the Tribes. His eyes closed, Gabriel's lips moved, though he did not speak. In one hand he held his musket. With the other he rubbed the small leather pouch hanging at his neck. His tribe considered Gabriel some kind of holy man or sorcerer, but Lucien had never seen his magic. The priests all called the magic of the Savages unholy. Lucien crossed himself. For the moment, while they might endanger his soul, Lucien prayed to God that Gabriel's spells would drive away the thing in the forest.

Clouds obscured the sun. Snow drifted down, lightly touched by a wind that didn't disturb the trees. Nothing moved. No sound reached Lucien's ears. He attempted to breathe silently, but it hissed between his teeth.

the Crew: Fuck You Sundae

I hate the masks. My favourite part of the day is when I get to mess one of them up.

It’s not because they’ve sold themselves for a corporate pay check, though that annoys the piss out of me. It’s not because they play at being cops, deputized by some backwater municipal force, or even the big metro cop-shops. I hate the masks because they're a bunch of self-centred pricks, who hide behind their masks so they can fuck over anyone and everyone. I'd say they sold their souls, but I don't think many of them have any.

Sounds like sour grapes, right? Maybe it is, but let’s look at our little situation here by way of example.

See the cowering civilian there? The one whose young daughter--what is she, six?--was being threatened by the mask in the colourful costume? That civilian was a reporter, and he’d been reporting on some of the underhanded shit the corporations were doing. Now, along with the dick threatening the kid--and that dick calls himself ‘Uptown,’ for whatever fucking reason—we had a pack of three other masks.

Watching the door was ‘Hawk.’ Yeah, there were like twelve different Hawks. Everyone loved the name. This lady, we just tagged ‘Chicken Hawk.’ We hadn’t seen her mix it up with anyone actually dangerous. The dude in the black and gray was ‘Piledriver,’ I guess after his favourite wrestling move or something. He was a standard physical-enhanced, big and tough, bullet-proof and all, but dumb as a post. The last one, the one in red and blue, that one was ‘Paradigm.’ She was supposed to be a big deal. Pretty much invulnerable. I’d always wanted to find out how true that was.

Now my little team and I had been watching this situation develop. The reporter was doing good work. We didn’t want him to stop. The problem was, we didn’t want the masks to know about us. We’d been working from the shadows pretty effectively, but protecting Mr. Wilson--our poor, frightened reporter--was going to put us on the radar.

“You will stop your little crusade against Optimadyne, Mr. Wilson.” Paradigm used that same ‘I am your god’ voice she used in all her public appearances. I really wanted to kick her in the teeth. “My associate is going to inject a virus into your daughter. It is dormant, but we can activate it at any time. If you do not do as we ask, or if you reveal what has happened here tonight, your daughter will die, slowly and in great agony.”

“Fuck that, boss.” Dog looked at me, his rage palpable. “We can’t let them do that.”

My crew listened through a parabolic mic. We heard everything going on. Dog voiced what all of us were thinking. We stop this, we reveal ourselves. We don’t, we were as culpable in the girl’s death as those fuckers down there.

I made the decision. I’d live with it. “Wraith, do not let that girl get dosed.”

We all had code-names too. We chose our own, just like the masks did. Me? I took King--that’s what I was, king of the world.

“Get ready for it.” Wraith cosyed up to his specially designed sniper weapon system, put his eye to the scope. “This is going to get real fucking messy.”

Paradigm and Piledriver were bullet-proof, but not so for Uptown and Hawk. Wraith could put those two down. The rest of the crew would need to take care of the heavy-hitters. We started moving.

“Dog, you and the Geek take Piledriver.” I took out my sidearm and took off the safety. “I’ve got Paradigm.”

Dog could go toe-to-toe with the biggest, toughest enhanceds the masks could put forward, except maybe the optimal supers like Paradigm. The Geek? The Geek was especially good at getting inside people’s heads. I’ve seen him literally make a mask’s head explode. He was also hellish good with martial arts and fisticuffs. He said he could go through the fight in his head, knowing how the opponent would react, before the first punch was even thrown.

We got close enough to hear Paradigm. “You’ve brought this on yourself.”

None of us could hear Wraith’s shot. A small spray of blood marked the bullet entering Uptown’s head, and the back of that head exploded, spraying Hawk and Piledriver with its contents.

No one in that room moved for a heartbeat. Fucking amateurs.

Hawk got one in the chest next. The impact threw her back. Piledriver looked like he had just shit himself and was screaming.

Still, no one moved.

We were in the room. Dog went flying at Piledriver, knocking him off his feet, beating him mercilessly. The Geek stood ready, allowing Dog to get his frustrations out.

I faced Paradigm. She looked down the barrel of my weapon and sneered. “I don’t know who you think you are, but I’m going to enjoy killing you.”

“Will you people stop talking like fucking comic book characters?” My eyes narrowed. One right through the head, as soon as I pulled the trigger. I should have done it then. Considering her speed, I should’ve just shot her as soon as I had the solution. Fuck it. I was going to enjoy this.

“Fine, then.” Her voice changed. It was her real voice. Kind of sultry. She had an accent. American born and bred my ass. “If you stupid fucks had done even rudimentary research, you would know I’m bulletproof.”

I smiled. “Yeah, but we figure this laser here’ll do the trick.”

That penetrated. Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. I saw the fight or flight response kick in, then I bored a hole in her head. I had to be careful with the shot, fire from low so the beam would ascend. I knew the laser would just keep going, out into space. There was the possibility it might hit a satellite, but the space station wasn’t around and there were no flights on radar.

Paradigm’s body hit the floor. Dog rose up, holding Piledriver by the throat. The Geek had a laser trained on his temple. Piledriver’s mask was soaked in his own blood.

“Good evening, Mr. Anderson.” The fear in Piledriver’s eyes was a nice little cherry on this ‘fuck you’ sundae. “Yes, we know who you are. We know who all of you are. You’re not going to die, at least not unless you force us to do it. No, you are going to scurry home and tell your masters all about this. The police and ambulance are on the way, as are Mr. Wilson’s colleagues from the media. Good luck covering this one up.”

I got real close, so close I could smell the onions on his breath. “If any of you try shit like this again, we are going to fuck you up, then we are going to fuck your family up. You come at us all you want, and we’ll play fair. You go for civilians, you threaten someone’s fucking child, and we will get Old Testament on your ass. Genocide, motherfucker. We will wipe you and yours from the face of the planet.”

Dog dropped him as we heard the sirens approaching. “It’s war, bitch.” Dog kicked him in the gut for good measure. “And we do war very, very well.”

I turned to Mr. Wilson. He held his daughter close, fear still in his eyes. Could you blame him? That girl was going to need a shit-load of therapy. “You keep writing if you want, Mr. Wilson, or you stop. It doesn’t matter to us. You want protection for you or your family, you’ve got it. We can keep them away from all this.”

“Who are you?” Was he considering the offer? Who knows. He was doing the reporter, asking questions. Guess that’s as engrained as soldiering or spook-craft.

“We’re just a crew, Mr. Wilson,” I said. “We’re a bunch of ghosts. No one sees us unless we want them to. You just saw us declare war. Optimadyne isn’t the only corrupt corporation using these masks for their own ends. You can quote me on that.”

Wilson stared at me hard, memorizing my face, maybe my voice. “Quote who?”

“They call me King. That’s all you need to know.”

And we made our exit.

I hate the masks. Now it looks like I’ll get to mess them up on a regular basis.

Likely Cause

So what's the point?

This is where stuff that is too hot or too strange will be found. I'm not linking back to anything from here, there'll only be links to here.

If you found this, bully for you. If you didn't, well, that's a metaphysical can of worms I don't want to deal with.