Ed Archer awoke to the sounds of engines in the distance. At least three large ones, and the rumble of a collection of smaller ones. He slid from the covers of the bed, making his way through the unfamiliar room despite the darkness. Pushing the door open with his fingertips, he moved into the parlor, where Almaa, a thin, brown haired young woman with a copper-tinged face, stood and stared blankly at the door. Putting her fingertips against the wood surface for a few moments, she reached out and turned the knob, heading into the darkness.Ed moved after her, but stopped at the doorway, fading into the silence and blackness instinctively. He watched her vanish into one of the other buildings, the inhabitants of which he was still unaware. Rather than following her, he stepped back into his room and retrieved his belongings.
The rumble filled the town from all sides. When Almaa returned, Ed was gone. Neither surprised, nor disappointed, she sat down at her desk and waited. For what, she was unsure, but it was intent on this town. What followed was a mass emigration in the night, dozens of hunched figures moving from the town in the darkness.
Ed sat silently atop the roof, taking aim at the highlighted green forms moving in his cracked sight.
1…2…3…4…5…6…c-tk. Ctk…
"By Venexx…" Ed pulled at the trigger of his rifle repeatedly with no result. Then, after putting the safety on, he slid it over his shoulder and slid down the roof's slope to the sounds of struggling and the hisses of explosive bursts of electricity. Once on the ground, in the darkness, he made his way away.
"Hey, Mikey Mike," Lieutenant Gonn Trevall shouted over his headset, "you got a mark on them?"
"Breaking the horizon right now," and in a sharper tone of voice reserved for the unenlightened masses he was forced to deal with on this side of the globe, "Round them up."
Chaplinn picked up his headset again after a moment of quiet contemplation of the operation to come. "Set the shocks to 32%. I want none harmed and all subdued. Understood?"
A man not clad in the field wear of the Church of the Nuclear Messiah crawled into the only empty seat left in his jeep and pointed towards the town of Bastionn. Accompanied by a halo of dust, the group neared within yards of the town and dispersed into a circular sweep of the town. Upon reaching their positions, they switched off their headlights and waited.
The first to approach were the monstrosities of nature. Some of their deformities were obvious. Scales instead of the normally smooth skin of huumunns, fangs, eyes a little too red. They all fell quickly to the sudden flashes of light and electrical charges from the mercenaries' shock guns. Bound and categorized, they were loaded into the trailer of the semi. Then silence. A mercenary grabbed his radio and spoke into it, "We clear down there? Hey, mutts! Hey, Pralethh?"
Trevall muttered, from the cab of the rig, "Something's up. Ring up the doc."
Into his headset, Carmichaell said, "Sir, we have a bit of a situation here. The Bastion charge is radio dead."
"Really?" Chaplinn asked. On his side of the receiver he smiled, but into the mouthpiece he said, "Careful. Monitor the horizon. What do you see?"
"Six unidentifieds…sir."
"Hm…subdue with caution. Extreme caution, understood?"
"Arrgh!" A strange voice piped in over the speakers, startling everyone listening in.
"Dammit, something's wrong!" Trevall shouted.
In the glow of a jeep's headlights, a huumunn moved forward, insignificant in stature and appearance, except for the sizeable length of jet black hair and the elongated, overly muscular arm that dropped past his knee, coal-black claws reflecting light and brushing at his ankle. A look of utter hatred could be glimpsed as he walked in between the headlights.
Behind him stood a medley of huumunnoids. Three of them would have blended in with the general huumunn population on any day, among them stood Almaa. The other two, one a feral mass of flesh made notable by black eyes, gleaming white fangs, and elongated claws, the other a stout, leather-skinned figure.
"Why have you come?" the feral boy screamed, huddling near a brown-haired, ruddy man who patted his shoulder comfortingly.
Chaplinn had left the trailer and moved into the line of the semi's headlights. Reaching into his longcoat, he drew out a small cylindrical device and spoke into it.
"Subjects seem to hostile in response to threat. Possible mutagenic result. Either that, or they are merely unnerved at our entrance. Either way…"
"Shut up." The hair on the back of the growling boy's neck bristled and he ran towards the scientist. He was struck down by a shock rifle's crackling bolt of electricity. Soon, a rain of electricity dropped down upon the group of biological deviants. Reacting, they responded in kind.
The man with the over-sized arm pushed himself off of it, launching himself into the air and onto the hood of the jeep. With a swift slash, he had torn through the hood of the jeep and a pair of rifles pointed at him. Ducking under another electrical attack, he stuck his clawed fingers through the legs of a mercenary, dragging him from the truck.
"Damn, they're all over us!" a leather-clad mercenary shouted, dropping the shock rifle and pulling a weapon of equal size, but one that fired bullets instead. A single shot caught the large armed man by surprise. The second one caught him in his massive shoulder.
"Aricc!" the brown haired man screamed, stepping back a bit.
Another gunshot rang out and the leather-clad woman dropped to her knees then fell motionless onto her face. Chaplinn muttered through gritted teeth, holstering his sidearm, "I said unharmed."