Even though it was past midnight, Dr. Zack and his two most frequent visitors were wide awake and exceedingly happy. He had just broken the news to CyberSix and Stryk that the sustenance generator he had been working on was now capable of creating fresh batches of sustenance. Out of the corner of his eye, Dr. Zack noticed that Six wasn’t exactly participating in the celebration to the extent he had expected, but he was too concerned about the antics of Stryk, who was virtually bouncing off of the walls in a display of exuberance that amazed him.

"Stryk, please be careful! I don’t want to be forced into replacing that... too late." One of Erin’s incessant cartwheels caught the edge of a fairly flimsy worktable, knocking the table onto its side, and quite thoroughly scrambling whatever the experiment had been.

Dr. Zack sighed, mentally calculating the damages the loss of that experiment would do to his research. "Well, I guess I’ll need another centrifuge. That’s the third one that’s been broken in the last few years."

Stryk stood up from the pile of debris, dusting off her leather coat as she smiled. She then ran over to Six, hugging the older woman for a few seconds. "Well, you’re in less of a hole now. Actually, you could go and smack José around for a few weeks because you’re no longer dependent on his existence, much less the occasional lightning storm. Probably good therapy to do that."

Six laughed, sounding happier than what she actually felt."Cute Stryk. Why are you so happy now? You don’t have to swallow the equivalent of seven hand grenades every ten days, or have to hunt creatures that actually can hurt you."

Stryk shook her head, bangs bouncing wildly as she did so. "No, I have to play sanitarium patient daily. I’m surprised I haven’t had an electrical lobotomy due to the charges I subject myself to. Anyhow, to answer your question, I’m happy because now Tony can focus on trying to make me, well, normal."

Dr. Zack chuckled, but his reply was cut off by a blinking red light on a wall panel. "Uh oh. We have some uninvited company outside, and from what Sara told us over the last few days, I can guess who’s here for dinner."

Stryk cracked her knuckles, then unsheathed her eight-inch long claws for a few seconds, sharpening the titanium spikes upon each other. "Well, this may be interesting. I’ve always wanted to kick a spec-ops trooper’s butt around the city."

Dr. Zack frowned as he checked his .22 pistol, then pulled on his wave suit’s hood and gloves before removing his sweater. "Just so long as you keep them from Sara’s house, you can do what you want. For now, let’s see what will happen when they find my little surprises that are floating about."

The attenuated squad of spec-ops troops raced towards the ten-foot high stone wall surrounding the objective’s townhouse, led by Wilson and his personal second, a Corporal Stone. They reached the wall without incident, though some strange noises made them pause on the outside of the wall and check their gear. During the delay, Wilson used hand gestures to order the team to split up and scout the area before they attacked, as he knew that knowledge of the terrain was the best weapon he could use, no matter how powerful his weapons were.

The two least experienced members of Beta squad, two young women who had transferred in less than a year ago, Wilson ordered to take up positions for overwatch and covering fire. They easily leaped up onto the wall, setting themselves up to cover most of the yard. Wilson then vaulted over the wall, landing silently on a patch of grass near some holly bushes. Just as he was straightening up, he heard something moving towards his left side.

Turning quickly, Wilson noticed a small bottle moving away from him. He decided to take a closer look, and tried to get close enough to the bottle to check the label. He got to the bottle long enough to notice that it was high-quality Smirnoff vodka, and decided that it was worth a closer examination. At that point, he remembered what his mission was and the obvious question popped into his head. *What the bloody hell is a bottle of vodka doing here? Why would someone do this, unless... it’s a trap. SHIT! We’ve been compromised.*

Nearby, a loud thud heralded the landing of one of the grunts nearby, and Wilson crept over to find out what had happened. When he got to the crouching trooper, Wilson tapped the man on the shoulder and whispered for a report. The trooper nodded and whispered harshly "I landed on the balcony about ten feet up, and when I took a step, my feet slipped out from underneath me like they were greased. I don’t know why it happened either."

Wilson frowned, looking at the yard, and realizing that it was ominously quiet. "It’s okay. This place is really weird. I found a bottle of vodka sitting in the middle of the lawn, totally innocent-looking, but I wouldn’t touch it if I were paid to."

"Why, sir?"

"It’s a trap. This place is rigged with so many tricks it’d take a year to begin to decipher it, and it’s sewn up tighter than a watermelon seed in a frog’s butt. Get onto that wall, see if there’s anything on the roof, and relieve the two rookies up there. They’ll be better suited for the assault anyhow."

"Okay, sir." The trooper jumped onto the wall, gesturing for the two rookies to head to the ground, which they obeyed, and started to scan the roof of the townhouse when all hell broke loose. The first thing that happened was noticed by everyone within five feet of the wall. Everyone’s hair stood on end, as if they had just acquired a massive static charge from something nearby. The second thing that was noticed was that the trooper standing on the wall was suddenly and effectively fried by roughly fifty Gigavolts.

His armour stopped most of the electrical energy that coursed into and through his system, but most of his motor functions shut down as his nervous system was thoroughly scrambled. Smoking, the poor man fell off of the wall, landing face-down in the yard, between two sprinkler heads. Then, the rest of the house’s defensive measures took over. Three of the four machine guns that had been mounted on the roof of the house popped up, and, aiming at the victim of the electrical surge, they all opened fire.

Most of the Armour Piercing ammunition didn’t punch through the armour the trooper was wearing, as the armour had been coded to be heavily reinforced in its basic combat modes. However, the repeated impacts of the large bullets sent a series of painful shocks through his body, pounding at his internal organs with the repeated jolts.

Several of the slugs from one gun managed, mainly through dumb luck, to worm their way through the tough armour’s joints, smashing the hapless man’s knees into paste. Finally, the third stage of the townhouses’ defences kicked in, and the lawn sprinklers turned on.

Each sprinkler had a solenoid charge inside the head, and once fired, the solenoids began to squeeze off arrays of metal spikes in random directions. Each spike shot out to a maximum distance of about two metres, but the high speed they moved at was enough to allow them to virtually ignore any form of armour that they could hit. The poor trooper, still being hammered by machine gun bullets at an increasing pace, died suddenly as a good dozen spikes slammed into his torso, shish-kebabing his internal organs, and with a single lucky strike, ripping out his throat as well.

The remaining nine men were busy dodging the spikes shot at them by the other sprinklers, so they didn’t have time to react to their comrade’s death. Wilson, simply ignoring the potential danger from the machine guns, which were still firing, pulled out his gauss pistol, and fired a half-dozen shots.

Each slug, having been accelerated to Mach 12, totally destroyed each sprinkler around him in a two metre-radius zone, and carved metre-long divots through the ground before exploding from the sudden deceleration, creating six distinct heat-fused craters in the ground. Yelling out orders, he weathered a volley from one machine gun, which he neatly blasted into scrap by using his gauss pistol to knock off the barrel of the gun.

Wilson pointed at the two closest people, one of the two rookies and a veteran, and yelled at them to take out the machine guns. The two troopers he had selected nodded, and started to get to the roof without difficulty. The first one, the rookie, had used her suit’s augmentative powers to leap onto the roof, firing wildly with her own gauss pistol. She also managed to turn one machine gun into scrap, but when she landed and tried to turn, she realized she couldn’t for some reason. Unhampered by the trooper’s motive difficulty, the two surviving guns flipped inwards, locking on to the hapless trooper.

The twin guns fired a set of bursts first, and then squeezed off a rippling string of blasts, almost all of which hit the poor person in the head, rattling her brains like a pea in a can. The kinetic impacts of the bullets, as well as the virtually frictionless properties of the roof, created a unique set of vectors, namely, every bullet that hit sent the poor woman on a helpless course towards the edge of the roof.

Pushed around by the near-constant impacts, the trooper was finally shoved off of the roof, arms pinwheeling helplessly as she landed on the stone walkway to the front door. Headfirst. The sickeningly wet crunch upon impact told everyone in earshot that the rookie had just bought herself a plot of land six feet deep.

The second trooper, the veteran, was a bit more cautious in going to the roof. He had commanded his armour to create climbing spikes on the hands and feet, and he was surely making his way up the wall by punching the spikes into the wall to support his weight as he climbed upwards. Just as he hit the level of the second floor however, he had to pull himself up over a small ledge to continue on his climb. The veteran trooper managed to get his arms over the ledge, and was about to continue on the climb, when a wet, gooey-sounding SSSHHUNK preceded a pair of wet cracks from his arms.

Looking at his forearms, the trooper could only stare blankly at the set of six steel spikes that had gone through his forearms, shattering the bones, and completely rendering him useless, unless someone needed a living shield. The trooper, losing his grip, dropped like a rock, pulling the spikes down with him on the ten-foot drop. As he fell, he was suddenly stopped in his motion, sending a wave of pain through him, and he realized that the spikes were barbed. Gravity pulled him down again, and the barbs shredded his arms, opening up the arteries in his forearms.

Wilson noticed that only six men and women were left, not including himself. As he neatly blasted the sprinkler heads around him while calmly walking around the perimeter of the house, consolidating his team members. Finally, he stopped in front of the door main entrance to the house, and, raising his pistol, he fired four shots. All four hit exactly where he wanted them to, and the door to the house was literally blown apart in a hail of steel shards that sent an array of shrapnel blasting down the front hallway. Wilson smiled behind his armour, as he knew that if anyone had been behind the door, they had just been turned into strawberry jam.

However, just as he took a step onto the threshold of the house, the owner of the building made an appearance, striding out of the dust and smoke from the shattered door. The person was a trim looking man, dressed in what looked like black thermal underwear, gloves, and a ski mask. Wilson paused, looking at the person for a second, then raised his gauss pistol and fired twice. The first gauss slug hit the man’s chest, knocking him onto his butt. The second slug also hit, smacking into the man’s head where his hairline would be if the ski mask were removed. The second slug, when it hit, knocked the man flat on his back, and sent him skidding a good ten feet backwards.

Wilson walked forwards, keeping his gun aimed squarely at his target’s chest, and so he was completely unprepared when the man’s right arm snapped upwards, holding what looked like a .22 calibre target pistol. The man aimed for a second, then fired five bullets. The first three bullets from the .22 were badly aimed, smacking into Wilson’s chest without even enough force to slow him down. The last two bullets managed, either through blind luck or amazing aim, to hit Wilson in the two weakest points on his armour: the empty points where his eyes looked out from.

The twin bullets shredded Wilson’s eyes, blinding him as blood spurted out of his face, and one got far enough to lacerate an artery in his brain. That bullet killed Wilson as the damaged artery ruptured, causing a massive cerebral haemorrhage which shredded his brain like a piece of tissue paper on top of a fire hydrant. Wilson’s body shuddered for a second or two, trying to understand why it had lost input from its brain, until it got the message; ‘Hey! You’re dead!’

At that point, Wilson’s body swayed slightly for a few more seconds before crashing to the ground, where the dirt quickly absorbed the blood that was slowly being pumped from his body. The six surviving squad members had their own hands full with two dark forms that had leaped into the yard from a second-floor window. The two dark forms were moving at speeds that were difficult to comprehend, though the obvious force the two employed was apparent when the taller form grabbed one trooper, and literally body-spanked the unfortunate person through the outside wall.

The person entered the wall at such an amazing speed that he literally smashed right through the foot-thick stone structure, and he somehow landed on his feet in the street. However, instead of moving, he just stood there, until a gust of wind shifted him, and he literally fell into little pieces. He looked like he had been fed through a monofilament mesh, as his body collapsed into a heap of shredded vital organs and tissue. The five surviving troops looked at each other, and unanimously decided to leave the area before they suffered the same fate.

Two troops had already jumped over the wall when a missile streaked out of the darkness, slamming into the centre of the three-person formation that was laying down covering fire. The blast was mainly concussive energy, designed to stun a living being with a pressure wave, but, if the victim was too close to the source of the blast, would also rupture soft tissues such as arteries and organs. However, the three troopers were little worse for the wear considering they had all been near the centre of the blast. That was right before the source of the missile, a black lawnmower, moved closer to the three people and rippled off a salvo of five more anti-personnel missiles.

The missiles had once been designed to be fired from Soviet helicopters such as the Hind, and many experts called the missile design the ‘Sagger’ due to its uncanny ability to drop down a few feet in flight before popping up in front of the intended victim. All five missiles hit the target that had been designated by the house’s computers and security system, and all five went off almost simultaneously. The resultant cumulative blast was large enough to be seen all the way from the harbour.

An addition to the immense blast was the continued fire from the two surviving machine guns, though the weapons had proven themselves to be virtually ineffective to the defensive measures of the heavy armour the assault team had worn. The smoke and dust kicked up by the concentrated blasts slowly settled down, revealing that the armour the two men and one woman had been shredded in several locations, revealing pain-contorted faces.

The men were dead, but the woman clung to life, barely. Her intestines had been shredded by a clump of shrapnel that had moved quickly enough to bypass her armour, and she was going into shock. Outside, where the two other troops had left, an echoing blast that sounded like a howitzer had just been test fired from a mile away rolled over the three standing occupants of the townhouse. Less than two seconds later, the guns shut down, as the spike launchers had shut down when the presence of friendlies had registered on their sensors.

The taller of the two black-clad people jumped over the wall in pursuit of the surviving troops, but was stopped short by a shrill whistle, followed by a second blast, this time muffled by something other than distance. "Hey! Looks like we’ve had some fun."

"Sara? What the hell are you doing out here at this time of night?"

"Freezing my ass off, Six. That little assault woke me up, and I decided you needed some backup." Sara walked into the light cast by a street-lamp, revealing that she was carrying her cut-down Anti-Tank rifle, which was still spitting out a stream of smoke from both barrel and open breech. Also, Sara was only wearing a purple leotard, walking towards the group barefoot, and shivering slightly.

Sara grinned as she looked at the carnage she could see through the hole in the wall. "I missed one, but the second person got a slug through her chest. Had to put a second one into her head to end her misery though. It looks kinda messy though."

Six grimaced, and the gun puffed out an exceptionally thick cloud of smoke as if to emphasise Sara’s statement. "I can imagine. So, wanna see our handiwork?"

Sara shook her head, having noticed the heap of cubed human lying in the middle of the sidewalk. "Not really. However, if my hunch is right, it’s Gen-Core at its worst again."

The second form vaulted onto the top of the wall, crouching for a few seconds before landing next to Sara. "Gen-Core?"

Sara nodded, closing her gun’s breech as she did so. "Yeah Stryk. You saw the Gauss Schematics yesterday, and those grunts probably have some of those beasts. All of it is by Gen-Core."

Sara walked into Dr. Zack’s front yard through the gate, and grimaced at the mist-like clouds of cordite and dust drifting through the yard, unsurprised at the fact that Dr. Zack’s lawn looked like a tornado had touched down on his property. "Uchhh. Hey Tony, looks like we have a major problem."

Dr. Zack was walking around his yard, surveying the damage done as his clothes changed to their normal hue of white. Rubbing the centre of his chest, he turned and looked at Sara, who was gingerly picking her way over the dead bodies strewn over the lawn. "Damn right we do Sara. So, can you identify any of these people?"

Sara nodded, looking at the corpses that were at least identifiable. "Maybe. Looks like some of them will have to be identified through genetic tests or dental records though."

Walking over to the one trooper that had survived the battle, Sara examined the wound, shook her head, and, responding to the unspoken plea in the woman’s eyes, Sara lifted her gun. Before anyone else could react, Sara pulled the trigger. The recoil knocked her back three feet, though she landed, catlike, on the balls of her feet. The shot had sent a massive metal spike through the person’s head, splitting her skull open like a fruit and splattering her brains over the wall behind her. "I’m sorry Jenny. Looks like you joined the wrong crowd once too often."

Stryk stood only a few feet away as Sara closed the dead woman’s eyes, and was the first to speak once Sara stood up. "You knew her?"

Sara nodded. "Yes. She was one of the nurses that cared for me when I was being trained by the company. Only person I truly liked in the entire place, and now she’s gone because of their greed for the information and technology I carry. Here, hold this."

Sara got Stryk to hold onto her large gun, and walked over to where Wilson’s cooling body lay. She kicked over the stiffening corpse, and prodded at his chest and upper arms for a few seconds. Soon, she smiled and pushed inwards just underneath the left armpit, making the armour revert to its dormant form, covering only the chest and upper legs of the body.

Dr. Zack, who had been examining the armour, moved away as it retracted. "How did you know how to do that?"

Sara shrugged. "Fail-safe. If the wearer of the armour’s incapacitated due to internal injuries, this little pressure point causes the armour to shut down for easy access to the injured areas of the body. By the way, who killed him?"

Dr. Zack turned away, coughing, and Sara smiled to herself. "You’re a good shot. I’d say Olympic calibre, especially if nobody tinkers with your firearms."

Sara then asked for, and got, a flashlight from Dr. Zack. Shining the light over the dead body, Sara then cut loose with a bark of laughter. "Well, if you told the FBI about this, they’d pay you almost fifty thousand dollars. They’ve had an outstanding bounty for the capture or confirmation of this one’s death for the last six years."

Erin chirped in, though she was walking through the yard and neatly collecting every gun she could scrape up from the corpses or where they had been dropped. "Fifty thousand dollars? Why so much?"

Sara kicked the corpse in the ribs, venting some tension. "He was a child molester, and a nasty one too. The US. government has been trying to find him just so they can execute him and get it over with. A lot of people will breath a sigh of relief when they find out that he’s dead."

Dr. Zack looked at the damage done to his yard, and sighed loudly. Even the prominent signs stating to keep off the grass had been knocked over, and much of the lawn looked as if a giant rototiller had torn up everything to a depth of two feet. Wincing, he leaned against the wall of his house, and shook his head, as if to clear out some fuzziness.

Sara looked over at the doctor as he shook his head, and then she noticed the large bruise that had taken up occupancy at his hairline. "Hey Tony, are you all right? You look like someone hit you in the face with a ten pound lump hammer."

Dr. Zack winced, taking a deep breath as he did so. "No, I’m not all right. However, I’m in a lot better condition than if I hadn’t been wearing my suit. All things considered, it held up admirably to the effects of a gauss pistol’s kinetic energy. However, if I had set the suit to even ten percent less, I’d probably have a broken rib or two, not to mention a nasty concussion."

Sara raised an eyebrow, then, seeing Stryk beginning to sneak out of the front gate, called the teenager back and relieved her of every weapon the teenager carried, soon creating a pile of eight gauss pistols, nine more conventional pistols, five combat knives, three sets of brass knuckles, two tazers, a micro-crossbow for tranquillizer darts, and one big, nasty cannon. "Stryk, why don’t you go inside and call the police and coroner? You’ll be more useful than trying to sneak off with my gun, not to mention several weapons that could kill you outright with a misfire."

Dr. Zack looked up at Sara’s last statement, and smiled ruefully. "Really. Well, maybe I should look over the information about gauss weapons again. Thank you for sending the information to me in the first place. CyberSix, could you help by retrieving the one Sara shot, as well as the weapons from the one you slapped through my outer wall?"

Six grimaced, but she nodded. "Very well. If it’s as messy as Sara told me though, I’ll go over to her house later and make sure she doesn’t get to sleep until five AM."

Sara laughed, as she knew that she wouldn’t be getting any sleep. "Yeah, it’s as messy as advertised. Bring a squeegee to get the person’s brains off of the road. I caught the poor sucker in midair, so there’s a pretty long spray of blood as well."

Just as Sara finished speaking, Stryk walked out of the house, looking smug. "Well, the police will be here in a few minutes. Sara, you’d better scoot unless you want to be picked up as an accessory to murder, though the defending attorney would call it self-defence."

Sara laughed. "Actually, being in jail would be safer than being in the open with the goon squads after me. Maybe I should stick around."

Grinning, Erin shook her head. "You wouldn’t like it either way. Besides, for all we know, you’d have problems of the opposite gender in prison, though ut’s more likely you’d emasculate every man in the place."

Sara nodded, smiling, and then looked up as Six leaped over the wall, carrying a corpse that had a fist-sized hole through its chest, and no longer had a head. "Well, I’m off before the police show up, and I hope you all manage to have a good night."

Dr. Zack nodded, standing up. "Good night Sara. Please try to remain in one piece."

Sara smiled. "I plan to. You’ll see me about for a while longer." Sara walked out of Dr. Zack’s yard and returned to her house, picking up the discarded shell casings on the way, as to leave minimal evidence of her own involvement. When the police arrived at the townhouse, followed quickly by several morgue trucks, known as ‘meat wagons’. Six and Stryk had already left, stopping by Sara’s house for a drink and some idle conversation. It was almost three AM before the two women left Sara’s house.

Three people stood or sat in the tiny confines of the shipping manager’s office. One of the two standing people leaned in towards the sitting person, and spoke, slowly and clearly. "Now, tell me what the hell happened. I was expecting no casualties, one dead doctor, and no police notification. Instead, you’re going to tell me why you’re the only survivor."

The trooper straightened up, letting his training take over. "The entire team was wiped out by the building’s defences, as well as the inhabitants. We didn’t even get inside the front door before we were cut to shreds. That building deserves its reputation. There’s a spike field in the lawn, and the spikes move fast enough to punch through our armour. There’s at least two machine guns on the roof, most likely equipped with laser sights and immensely long ammunition belts. Finally, whatever that doctor’s done to his clothes, it makes him capable of standing up to a gauss shell to the head."

The third person in the room, the liaison from the CEO, snorted. "Right. And I’ve been married to the Queen of Spain for the last ten years. Care to tell us the truth?"

The soldier shot a glare at the liaison, trying to keep his composure. "I am telling the truth, sir. I don’t know what that stuff was made of, or who the doctor’s accomplices were, but one of the accomplices was strong enough to literally slam Michaels through a foot-thick stone wall with no visible effort. About then, we decided to retreat. Irwin and I were told to scoot first, so we jumped north boy two houses. During our retreat, we came under fire from Subject Alpha. She killed Irwin in one shot, and nearly got me at the same time. Looked like she had slammed one of God’s hammers into Irwin’s chest."

The commander, suddenly interested, raised an eyebrow. "Wait a second. You said that Subject Alpha managed to use a weapon powerful enough to go right through the armour? Damn. What did she steal when she left? A working gauss rifle?"

The liaison frowned as he mumbled something to himself, seemingly calculating the weaponry requirements to do the damage described, then shuddered. "Shit. It’s most likely that she has a family heirloom. The only weapons she took when she broke away were her personal ones, and none of those have enough stopping power to penetrate the defensive measures we have been equipped with."

The commander grunted, stopping any further conversation. "How do you know it’s a family heirloom? As far as we were told about any possible relations, she might as well have been grown out of a vat of amino acids."

"That’s classified, but I can tell you this." The liaison leaned close to the commander, pitching his voice low in order to make sure that he wasn’t heard by the nervous soldier. "Subject Alpha is stronger, faster and tougher than anyone in this team. She is the product of an experiment to create super-soldiers using nanotechnology, and, for the most part, the program succeeded. However, her conscience won over our neural reprogramming, and she broke away."

The commander nodded, absorbing the information."Okay. Psychological profile on her?"

"Unstable. She’s desperate for any way out of a potentially bad situation, and she should be going up the walls with paranoia right about now. She’s either going to cut and run, or she’ll stand and fight. Note that this information is a few years old, so we don’t have an accurate position on her current psyche. Still, if everything goes our way, she’ll run, and we can nail her at the seaport."

The commander nodded. "Okay. You’re our best bet to capturing her live, and I want her alive, and, mostly, in one piece. Now, about you."

He turned to the soldier, who looked up at the commander, wondering what was going to happen. "You have a very important mission to complete. I want you to join Ivonava at the statue. You’re going to be our eyes and ears on Subject Alpha."

The trooper saluted, turned, and left the room, leaving the commander and the liaison alone. "Now, what else is there on the Subject that you have not bothered to tell me?"

The liaison shrugged. "Only that she had a child. Little tyke looked just like her, at least, with her head on. I don’t think that Subject Alpha would appreciate you mentioning the child’s name. Might make her do something that we’d all regret. Well, those of us who survive."

The commander grunted, then waked out of the office. "Well, I’m going to check on the reconnaissance stations. They should be set up by now."

The liaison tagged along, looking surprised. "Really? When did they leave?"

The response was a curt nod. "They left about twenty minutes ago. I’m not surprised you didn’t see them, considering how involved you were. Anyhow, they’ll keep surveillance on her for the day, then we’ll consolidate and attack. I consider the Anthony Zacharias mission to be a failure, but only because of unsurmountable defences. We rendevous in the park at midnight, so get some rest."

The liaison nodded, looking at the commander. "Fine. Just do me a favour, alright? When she’s either given up or defeated, I’ll have to talk to her for a few minutes. Keep her under your sights, but try to keep out of earshot as well."

"Your funeral. I’m going to check on Ivonava, then get some rest.."

The commander walked over to the small radio set on the trestle table, where, barely twenty hours before, he had held the first briefing of what they had to do. Tuning the radio to a specific frequency, he called Ivonava, who was perched on the shoulder of the City’s Guardian, keeping a close eye on Subject Alpha’s known position. "Ivonava, you in position?"

The response was faint, as she was whispering, but it was also clear as day. "Yes sir. The subject is under surveillance. Can I take a shot at her?"

The commander shook his head. "No. Your mission is reconnaissance. I want you to keep her in your sights as long as possible however, because it’s highly likely that she knows we’re here and gunning for her."

"Dammit. Well, Murphy’s law has just reared its ugly head, hasn’t it."

The commander chuckled. "Yep. Here’s another crimp: we have orders to capture her alive and in mostly one piece."

Ivonava cursed for a few seconds, then responded. "So, should I put away my Dragunov rifle and switch to the electro-grapple? Don’t forget that I have to be within six feet of her to hit her with the grapple, and she’ll have guns that easily outrange me on that mark. By the time I’m close enough to zap her, she’ll have filled me with enough metal to start a scrap drive."

The commander grinned. "Well, that just gave me incentive to add a thirty-percent pay bonus to all the members who survive. Now, I’d like you to ready the grapple, but keep your rifle ready. If she starts shooting, we’re going to bring her back in a bag. Also, be careful. With most of Beta team KIA, you’re our only medic."

"All right, sir. Check in at about Eight in the morning, and I’ll give you the sit-rep. Over and out." The radio went dead, and the commander smiled as he visualized one of his best squad members keeping watch over the house that hid his objective.

M-17 and Jess stood in the middle of the firing range of the Mansion, firing their guns at the targets at the far end of the room. After emptying the magazines of their guns, Jess turned and started doing some adjustments with a small screwdriver, properly focussing her rifle’s scope. As she tuned her scope, M-17 spoke up as she was cleaning her own gun’s barrel. "Hey Jess, d’you wanna know what really torques me off?"

Jess looked up, slightly irritated. "What 17? If you haven’t noticed, when I’m adjusting the sights on a gun, I don’t need to be bothered."

Jess put the small screwdriver into a pocket on the pseudo-military fatigues she was wearing, then checked the scope on the rifle she was sighting in. Jacking a round into the chamber, she fired at the circular target two hundred yards away and was rewarded with a hole right where she wanted. M-17 waited for a few seconds, then continued speaking. "José. That stunted little ho-bitch probably has cameras hidden in every room of this place occupied by females, and he’d try and sneak into the ladies room as well."

Three rounds fired in quick succession popped holes into the centre of the target, so close together that they had merged into an oblong gouge. "So, that’s part of the reason why you tossed him into the freezer a few days ago?"

M-17 grinned, nodding. "Yep. That and I wanted out of here so I can kill the other thorn in my ass."

Jess nodded, noticing that M-17 was still cleaning the gun as she fired another six shots, emptying the clip. "What’s really weird is that you haven’t been your usual, unpredictable psychotic self for the last few weeks."

M-17 grinned, finishing cleaning her gun as she did so. "Really? Maybe you’re a moderating influence on me?"

M-17 and Jess both laughed, and Jess started to clean her sniper rifle. "Probably. Can you pass the cleaning solvent? I’m going to be using this thing soon, and want to make sure it’s not that badly fouled."

M-17 nodded, reaching for the bottle. "Yeah, here."

She tossed the small bottle over to Jess, then finished wiping down the blued steel of the BAR’s barrel. "This gun is amazing. Now I know why the allied infantry was so nasty."

Jess shook her head. "That’s not the half of it. When you have the time, take a look through the multimedia library for some video clips of those things in action. The people who used these were reputed to be totally fearless, and some stood up in the line of fire for fun."

M-17 whistled, impressed by the bravado of what she had usually disregarded as beneath her notice. "There must’ve been a lot of Darwin Awards handed out during that timeframe."

Jess grinned and nodded, packing away her now-clean gun in its case. "Yep. C’mon, we want to find a nice hunting spot before the city wakes up too much, and it’ll take us half an hour to drive in."

Jess grinned and put two boxes of heavy slugs into cutouts in the foam padding of her gun’s case. She then checked a second, smaller case, which held her rebuilt Colt Python handgun. She had loaded the big gun with massive FMJ slugs, and had another fifteen speed-loaders racked in the case beneath the gun. "These will make a mark on just about anyone stupid enough to get close enough. I think we’ll actually have some fun this time."

M-17 had already packed the BAR, adding a reserve of twenty magazines and adding a belt of about five hundred rounds of depleted-uranium slugs for added punch. Just as the two were finishing their preparations, José popped into the room. "Hello you two. Your little excursion’s been delayed until tonight."

M-17 snorted, in derision, continuing to place the linked belt of ammunition into the case so it wouldn’t get snagged. "What the hell are you drivelling about José? We’ve been planning this bit since I got my arm in the cast, and now that the piece of plaster is off, we’re gonna have some fun."

José grinned, knowing that his plans would take precedence. "I told you, change of plans. We need someone to get a package from where the observatory was, and you two are the best candidates."

M-17 laughed. "In your ear runt."

José smiled himself, knowing that by keeping calm, he could twist M-17's tail more than if he showed his actual reaction, "Kinky. Get going, and I’ll give you some additional ammunition as well as the stuff you have."

José pulled a key from a chain around his neck and waved it at the two women. Both recognised it as the armoury key, but Jess started laughing, and was soon forced to clutch her stomach as she continued to laugh uproariously. José frowned as M-17 also started laughing, but was struck speechless when Jess pulled on a chain around her neck, revealing an identical key.

"Sucker. If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been living in the armoury for the last six months, as it’s the only place in the entire mansion you haven’t salted with cameras. The key you’re holding is not much more than a copy of this one, and judging by the condition, you had it made less than three days ago."

M-17 started laughing as José’s face turned a neat shade of beet red, and Jess was grinning from ear to ear. She spoke again after José’s face returned to something approximating normal. "Anyhow, we’re off after we change into something that doesn’t stand out like a bruised thumb."

The two young women, both looking and acting older than their appearances suggested, grabbed their weapons cases, left the firing range, and ducked into two small rooms to change into their semi-casual clothes. A few minutes later, Jess reappeared, wearing a pair of black cargos, sneakers, and a tanktop underneath a denim jacket. She had also secreted a pair of P08 Lugers into her clothes, and had several extra magazines for the guns in her pockets.

M-17 also appeared a minute or two after Jess, and grinned wickedly as she showed off her collection of knives that she had strapped to the inside of the leather trenchcoat she was wearing. Underneath the coat, she was also packing two grenades, a four-kilo block of C-4 plastic explosive, and a Heckler & Koch VP70 handgun. "So, ready for our hunting trip?"

Jess nodded, collecting the two cases she had her powerful weapons in. "Yeah. Just let me stop by the armoury for a minute or two. I want another belt for the BAR, and a few more explosive packages to seed over the place. After all, it’s always nice if our target lands on a block of C-4 and promptly launches herself into orbit."

M-17 laughed, nodding. "That would be nice. Still, I think she isn’t too stupid." The two took a small side trip to the armoury, where Jess collected a dozen grenades for each of them, two more belts of depleted uranium slugs for the BAR, and a half-dozen more blocks of C-4, with radio detonators. Finally, followed by José, they entered the mansion’s fairly extensive garage and found Jess’ personal vehicle.

Climbing into the beat-up Jeep, the two looked at each other, looked at José, who was still trying to get their attention, and Jess floored the accelerator, aiming to flatten one of José’s feet. They succeeded, and were chased from the garage by the runt’s yowls of pain. Jess turned on the radio, laughing to herself as she and M-17 sped towards the slowly awakening city.

Sara looked at her watch, not comprehending what the LED display was telling her, then groaned as her brain kicked into gear, making her realize that she had to be at the school in just under twenty minutes. Sighing, Sara leaned back in her seat and rubbed her bloodshot eyes. Sighing again, and muttering to herself, she looked at the six letters she had written. Four of them had already been addressed to her friends, namely Six, Erin, Lucas and Dr. Zack. The last two letters were what irritated her, as they were a reminder of her own mortality and fears.

One of the two was a legal will, which stipulated what to do with her belongings. The other letter was unique. Only a few lines rested in the middle of the paper, and it simply said ‘I believe in Three Angels. Angels of Life, the givers. Angels of Death, the takers. And Angels of Redemption, the helpers. I only hope to have redeemed myself.’

Sara looked at the short line, smiling slightly as she remembered the philosophical questions her belief had sprouted from. Personally, she didn’t believe in any higher power or great evil, though she used the curses more often than most felt they should have a right to. However, Sara had always thought that everyone should have a little guardian on their shoulder. Looking down, she folded the letter up, thinking on the permutations on the short line.

Nodding to herself, Sara stood up, heading into her room to get dressed. A few minutes later, she returned to the desk, this time clothed in a pair of relatively tight jeans, and an extremely tight T-shirt, which accentuated her figure more than hid it. As a precaution against any possible muggers, Sara put on her coat as well, and checked to see that her knife was still resting smoothly in the coat sheath she had painstakingly created.

After making sure of the blade’s safety, Sara looked down at her right arm, where an intricate bracelet resided. Whispering a few words caused the bracelet to smoothly slide up her right arm to her shoulder, where, under her coat, it created a small, flat plate that conformed to Sara’s skin. Sara then grabbed the four letters that she had addressed to her friends, and, as a change of pace, she decided to walk to the school.

As she walked towards the school, Sara decided to stop off at Dr. Zack’s place first and give him the letter that she had written for him. When she arrived at the front gate of the house, instead of having to rush to catch up to the good doctor, as she normally did when she had decided to walk to the school, she found herself waiting for him. When he did arrive however, Sara neatly fell into step beside him without saying a word. He soon looked up at her, smiling as he did so.

"Hello Sara. How are you today?"

Sara yawned, feeling tired considering her lack of sleep. "Tired. That little fracas last night did nothing for my beauty sleep, and I’m beginning to feel the effects. How about you? Didja sleep at all last night, or were you busy trying to decipher one of those Gauss pistols?"

Dr. Zack grinned, neatly stepping over a small dog as he did so. "Actually, I’ve had the police crawling over my front yard since about One in the morning. Well, at least I only had to shut down parts of the defence system instead of all of it. By the way, tell your friend that the suggestion to use infra-red targeting lasers instead of the normal ruby lasers was inspired. Really keeps a target on their toes when they can’t see the targeting beam."

Sara shook her head. "Well, it seems that the next upgrade you’d want to invest in is some better armour. Maybe metal-laced polymers that can regenerate damage would be a good investment. By the way, but what are you using for a front door? Last I saw your original one had been well and truly shattered."

Dr. Zack shrugged. "True. My current front door is an exact replacement of the original. I’ve had a good relationship with some local contractors, and a few always keep a reserve item for me, as there are some experiments that get a bit out of hand occasionally."

Sara laughed. "I can bet. Still, I wish I hadn’t popped up last night. I may have tipped one of my aces out of my hand, but I think the result was worth it."

Dr. Zack frowned, shaking his head. "That ‘result’ as you put it, was one decidedly vicious example of skilful mayhem ever applied to a being. The person’s torso looked like you had turned it inside out, and whatever was left of the person’s head had been scattered over the road."

Sara smiled. "Point blank range with a thirty millimetre gun will do that. I told Six to bring a squeegee."

Dr. Zack grimaced, then turned and looked at Sara as something under her coat seemed to shift in an unnatural manner. "Umm... there seems to be something under your coat that is moving. Care to explain?"

Sara shook her head, smiling. "No. By the way, I want you to have this."

She handed over the letter that she had addressed to him, and let him notice the neat writing underneath his name on the outside of the envelope. "To open upon the event of your disappearance or your death? What’s with the doom and gloom?"

Sara looked down at the ground, feeling like she was pushing it a bit more than she wanted to. "It’s a precaution. I know that I’m going to get hurt when the spec-ops team comes for me, but I don’t know how badly I’ll be injured. As a result, my close friends are getting a letter each. If I’m still alive and in one piece at the end of the year, burn it."

Dr. Zack, sighed, putting the letter in one of his coat pockets."Okay. You win However, I expect you to show up and tell me to torch the damn thing in a few weeks. Who else is getting the letters?"

Sara smiled slightly, noticing that they had just walked past the café where she usually had dinner with Lucas and Adrian. "Lucas, Erin, and Cyb. Also, I’m not coming into school tomorrow, so most of my students get extra homework today."

Dr. Zack smiled, tugging at his moustache. "They’ll enjoy that. If you show up on Thursday, will you be able to continue your faculty lessons in aikido? I sat in on one a few weeks ago and found it intensely interesting."

Sara smiled, letting the grin play over her face like a beam of light. "I noticed. Was that the one where Lucas was used as the practice dummy, or when Mr. Tilman fell over and just couldn’t get back up?"

Dr. Zack also grinned, remembering the incidents Sara had mentioned. "The Tilman incident. I can’t believe that the pompous, overweight blowhard tried to pull off a block and sweep move, especially because he can’t see his own feet."

Sara laughed at the description of the principal, and nodded in agreement. "Yeah, that was pretty pathetic. It took four of us to get him back onto his feet, and he instantly tried to tear a strip out of the rest of us. It made me feel damn good to verbally shred him in front of everyone too. Well, looks like we get to deal with our classes soon enough."

The two stopped, looking up at the slowly mouldering facade of the old school. "True. I’ll see you in the afternoon. By the way, if you want Cyb to talk to you I’ll leave her a message."

Sara nodded, shifting the lump underneath her coat as she did so. "Thanks Tony. Well, I think it’s time to face the music and try to survive another day in the school. Hope Lori doesn’t try to lace your coffee with Ex-Lax. I think she’ll try to do that to Lucas though."

Dr. Zack nodded. "She only tried that once, and I caught it because I drink tea instead."

Sara shook her head. "True. I’ll probably see you after school."

Dr. Zack also nodded, gently clasping Sara’s right hand with his own. "I’ll see you later Sara."

He then walked into the front doors of the school, the letter sticking out of his coat pocket. Sara watched him enter the building, then limped over to one of the larger trees nearby, where, while leaning against the tree, she slowly straightened out her right leg. When she completed the extension, Sara sighed in relief as her kneecap popped back into place, causing a brief flare of pain as the joint popped back into its normal form with a neat little thunk.

Sighing to herself as she gently flexed the muscles around the bad joint, Sara felt a faint tingle at the back of her neck. Grumbling to herself, she looked up at the sky through the leaves of the big tree, and cursed under her breath for almost two minutes. She finally entered the school, and almost every student that saw her scattered like she was holding an assault rifle. Sara’s foul mood lasted for another ten minutes, and then it ended when Lori entered the classroom, sat down, and instantly jumped back up screaming. Pulling up the rubber rat Sara had placed on the seat, Lori instantly became the butt of the class joke for the rest of the period.

Erin had watched the entire proceedings from her usual perch at the back of the classroom, and couldn’t help but smile as Sara went through every student presentation without even yawning, even though Sara looked like she’d rather be at home in bed. However, she was surprised when, on the break between the double period, Sara asked to talk to her for a few minutes. Erin agreed, and they let the rest of the class clear out before Sara spoke up.

Sara reached into one of the drawers in the desk she normally sat behind, rummaging around for something as she spoke. "Well, I’m not one for beating around the bush. Here."

Sara found and handed over Erin’s letter, then watched as Erin studied the note, privately amused at Erin’s reaction. "Why the hell are you giving me this? I think you’re closer to Cyb or Lucas than me."

Sara shook her head, pointing at Erin’s forehead, which was hidden underneath her bangs. "Not true. Lucas knows next to nothing about me, but he is getting one as well. Tony’s already gotten his, and Cyb will get hers tonight."

Erin sighed, giving in to Sara’s logic. "Okay then. But still, why? You’re not gonna croak anytime soon, and If anyone tries to mess you up, you’d rip their balls off."

Sara smiled, agreeing with Erin’s assessment, though the truth was distanced from what was thought. "Not exactly effective, but true. Actually, I’m more concerned about my friends than about myself. That letter will explain some things, but tonight, I think you should go out and have fun. Hell, I’d pay for the pizza, but I’m gonna be busy all night."

Erin frowned at the quiet dismissal in Sara’s voice, as she was about to voice a protest of her own, but tucked the letter into her backpack. Then, she went out to her five-minute break to get a pop, despite the rules against food and drinks in the science wing.

The observer lying down on a flat rooftop about two hundred yards from the school grounds grinned when he saw the objective. *Yep, about five-eight, seems to be a bit lighter than stated in the dossier. Long reddish-black hair... that matches. Hello, what’s this?*

He scaled the zoom on his binoculars in to get a closer look at the person’s face, and saw some pale, almost silver, lines on her right cheek. *Odd. That’s not hair, and I don’t think she has scars on her face, but the info is out-of-date. Looks like her hobby backfired on her. Kinda rare that she’d wear a T-shirt though. Dossier said that she doesn’t like showing off the results of her injuries too much. Still, the scars on her arms match, so we have confirmation she’s there.*

The observer turned on his radio and contacted the commander, back in the warehouse. "Sir, we have confirmed contact with the subject. Apparently, she’s a teacher of some sort at the local high school, and has forged friendships with several students, along with a least two teachers there. You want me to collect her?"

"No. We do not want to reveal ourselves until tonight. Keep an eye on her, and tally a list of people who seem to be relatively close to her as well as their physical descriptions. Over and Out."

Growling slightly, the observer turned off his radio and refocused on the subject with his high-power binoculars, just in time to see a slim, black-haired man walk up to the subject and strike up a conversation. *Damn I wish I had brought a parabolic microphone. I can barely read what the subject’s saying.*

The observer was madly writing down what he was translating from his lip-reading, and when he looked at the transcription, only about half the words were intelligible. *Well, she was saying something about a letter, but who’s this ‘Cyb’ she referred to a few times? Also, why the hell would she stay at home tomorrow? Maybe she’s found us out, and is preparing for a fight. I’d love to try and investigate, but my mission is to keep this dump under observation until tonight.*

Deciding to vent his frustration, he headed down one floor, picking an apartment with a vantage point that was almost as good as the rooftop perch. Finding one, he noticed that the apartment was occupied by two young people, obviously engrossed in the act of propagating. Shaking his head, he pulled out his secondary sidearm, a silenced P229 semi-auto, and put a bullet into the young woman’s head. The other occupant, the young man, immediately tried to get away from the observer, but stopped when three bullets found their mark in his spine, severing his spinal column and killing him instantly.

The observer, pleased at the silence of his kills proceeded to look out the window at the school yard. However, the yard was deserted, and he had inadvertently failed his mission, as he had lost contact with Subject Alpha. Using the radio, he informed the commander of the situation, and was rewarded with a recall order.

Sara had just opened her safe and was retrieving her cut-down AT gun for a long-overdue cleaning when she heard the window slide open. "Hello Six. Why didn’t you use the back door?"

Six smiled as she finished climbing into Sara’s bedroom, then wrinkled her nose in distaste at the sight of the big gun resting on Sara’s table. "Boredom mainly. That and I really want to find out why you’re giving out these letters."

Sara smiled, opening up her cleaning kit as she seemed to relax. "Precautions. I told Tony the same thing. Now, you want yours or not?"

Six frowned, but nodded. "Fine. I’ll take it, but only to make you happy."

Sara nodded as well, putting down her cleaning materials. "You don’t know the half of it. Now, where did I put it?"

Sara flipped through the pile of papers she had put on the night-table, accidentally knocking over the now-dim vial of sustenance that had been collecting dust for the last six months. Picking up the vial, Sara shook it for a few seconds, knocking off the dust and at least temporarily restoring the vial’s original glow. "Hmm. Interesting. If you agitate the substance here, it seems to emit more than its fair share of chemical illumination. You’d better inform the mad doctor about that. I think he’s still angry at me for seeding his physics room with cherry bombs after lunch."

Soon, despite Six’s almost convulsive laughter, Sara found the letter, and handed it over. "Here you go."

Six looked at the letter, nodded to herself, and put the envelope in a hidden pocket of her suit. Six looked at Sara, who had once again bent herself over her gun, and listened as Sara spoke. "I hope you have a good night too. Too bad that I’ll be busy all night, as well as a fair chunk of tomorrow. By the way, try to keep low on Wednesday. I don’t want you being hit by friendly fire."

Six nodded, noticing the look of concentration that had covered Sara’s face completely."Thanks for the warning. You be careful too."

Sara nodded, opening her gun’s breech so she could start cleaning out the bore. "Damn right I’ll be careful. Look, I’m going to be pretty busy for a while, so could you come back in a few hours, depending on the availability of your favourite snack?"

Six laughed, then shook her head. "I’ll be busy all night as well. Our least favourite hassle has stepped up his attacks, and I’ve been keeping a lid on the thing for a while now."

"Well, I’d still like it if you could show up later. Have fun Six." Six nodded, leaning over and gently kissing Sara on the forehead before she left by the window, leaving only the faint flutter of her cape behind her.

Sara gently touched her forehead where Six had, and, smiling, she finished cleaning her gun. Then, standing up, she walked over to her safe and collected several items. Twenty rounds of ammunition for her massive gun, followed by a handful of strange little objects travelled onto the table, usually in a neat ballistic arc caused by Sara’s decent throwing arm. After the items had finished moving about, Sara went back to her desk to tinker with everything.

Looking at the twenty shells, Sara separated them into two piles. The first pile of ten shells looked like solid spikes that were over an inch in diameter, and Sara knew that the armour-piercing effects of the tungsten-reinforced steel was enough to punch a hole right through three inches of armour plate. The second type of ammunition, a rounded slug that looked more like a thinned-out grenade cartridge also had twice the explosive potential of a NATO grenade.

Using the same chemical mixture as her cards, only in a much larger and more focussed package, the Chem-Ex shells could easily cause enough damage to burn out the interior of a tank, if they could get inside in the first place.Sara looked at the two types of ammunition, grinned maliciously, and started fitting the strange objects to each shell, spending almost two hours before she was satisfied.

*Well, I just took a page from the history books. A couple of these moaning minnies should keep their heads down, and get their trenches much deeper by the morning.* Sara chuckled as she finished putting the noisemakers on the shells, then, just to make sure they worked, she loaded one on the AP spikes into her gun through the breech, made sure that the noisemaker was fitted correctly, and aimed out of the open window, bracing herself for the massive recoil.

Sara slowly squeezed the trigger, letting the pull break cleanly, and was nearly knocked off her feet by the massive blast. The shot’s recoil was powerful enough to stagger her, and the muzzle flare was over four feet long, temporarily blinding her, but the slug went flying out the window, and, instead of the usual whistling THOOMP that could best be described as a miniature thunderclap, the shell was producing a mixture of howls, groans, screeches, and the occasional whine. The only way Sara could describe the noise is as if someone had used a set of assassin’s claws and scraped the edges of the blades down a chalkboard.

As an instant result of the horrible noise, Sara saw every light go on in the immediate vicinity, and heard about ten car alarms start howling as well. "My god. I think I just scared the crap out of every person under twelve in the area. Damn, that will set anyone’s nerves on edge, and now I get to use it whenever I want to."

Sara ejected the empty cartridge, revealing that the brass casing was heavily scorched and blackened from the incredible heat produced by the powder charge that had been fired off. She then gathered several empty magazines for her gun, and carefully loaded one moaner into the first slot before randomly filling in the remaining four slots in each magazine with either High-Ex or AP slugs. Soon, the twenty magazines were loaded, and Sara locked one into her gun, chambering a round before turning on the safety. Sara put the gun away in her safe, closing and locking the thick door before she went into her basement room.

There, she picked up her sword, noticing that it seemed almost to be happy that she was once again paying attention to it. Sara almost welcomed the caress of energy from the ancient weapon, revitalizing her as she looked around the small room. Her eyes landed on the card pouch, and the seriously-reduced heaps of cards on the table. Smiling, she grabbed all of the chem-ex cards she could fit into the pouch, managing to stuff sixty of the glowing red cards into the small fabric container before it wouldn’t hold any more.

Sara slung her sword across her back ash she finished closing her now-bulging card pack, and, finally, she grabbed her remaining throwing knives, grimacing as she noted that there were only four left. Sara then smiled as she remembered where the last two had been, as she had driven the sharp blades into M-17's torso a few months back.

Sara finally picked up her armour’s cloak, noticing that the spikes on the pauldrons had been worn down to not much more than a series of knobs on each shoulder. Sighing to herself, Sara picked up a combination tool, deciding to bring it upstairs as well.

She left her entire collection of items on her bed, then went back downstairs and collected her big knife, which joined the growing collection of edged weapons in her bedroom. Sara then headed into her kitchen, and, opening up a drawer, she reached underneath the counter and pulled out a .38 special revolver.

Finally, she walked over to her wide-screen television, and, from the drawer where most normal people kept videos or DVDs, Sara pulled down the false back of the drawer and pulled out a Mossberg 12-gauge pump shotgun. The final two weapons in her arsenal were also placed into her room, where, spread over her bed, were a collection of five knives, one sword, a shotgun, a self-defence revolver, and a cloak loaded out with enough defensive treatments as to make it virtually invulnerable to everything smaller than a .45 calibre bullet.

Sara spent almost two hours cleaning her weapons, taking the utmost care as she cleaned her blades with a weak acid solution that removed any traces of rust or grime. After minor consideration, the shotgun and revolver were left underneath and beside her bed, respectively, though the weapons wouldn’t do much more than knock one of the spec-ops team around.

Sara knew from experience what a point-blank load of double-ought buckshot could do to someone though, so she kept the shotgun ready anyhow. Then, after she finished cleaning all of her weapons, and spent almost two hours slowly and methodically sharpening the spikes in her cloak’s pauldrons, she finally decided to get some sleep. And so, surrounded by implements of death, destruction and mayhem, Sara finally went to bed, sleeping peacefully for the first time in a long time.

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