Part I: Catalyst - Chapter 1-2
Mikael casually flips the cylinder of the revolver in his hand open, closed, then open again.
He stands with one shoulder resting against the wall as he watches the city streets below, visible through the shattered glass panes of the window next to him. His eyes trace the geometry of the dilapidated buildings and cracked pavement. The city is an urban carcass: quiet, and not a trace of movement besides the swirling, shifting fog.
F-6’s lone observation post is a second-story studio apartment in a building full of peeling wallpaper, warped flooring, and stained furniture. The room they’re in had any decorations removed in favor of tables chock-full of gadgets he couldn’t name even if his life depended on it, accompanied by tangled heaps of wiring. Other than that, and the boxes and lockers used for storage, the place is sparse.
Sparse, aside from his companions.
Closed. Click. Open.
“Guys, I think this is honestly going to kill me.”
Out of the corner of his vision, Lionel paces around by the front door. The shortest of the group, he runs his gloved hands down the sides of his suit’s neck portion with a dramatic sigh. “This is the most excruciatingly boring assignment the captain has ever given us.”
Click.
Therese sits in a chair at one of the tables with a bulky, laptop-like device nestled in her legs. Her eyes diligently scan the monitor as her gloved fingers dance over the keys. “You said the same thing three assignments ago, didn’t you?”
“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t,” Lionel says. He kicks a small bit of rubble on the floor out of his path. “My point still stands that I feel like I’m going stir crazy in here. How many hours has it been now?”
“Just two.”
“Fucking hell. This is such a waste of time.”
Click.
Rani stands next to Therese with her arms crossed. She holds her shoulders high, but not at the same sharp angle that she usually does. Her voice is level and clear: “The captain wanted us out of his hair while he took care of business. We’d just be sitting around back at the base if we weren’t here.”
Lionel’s posture, on the other hand, is far too loose for a man with a loaded 50-caliber rifle strapped to his back. His overall attitude has been nails on a chalkboard to Mikael since day one.
Click.
“Yeah, but if I’m bored back there, I can just sleep.” Lionel finally stops pacing, but Mikael prefers the sound of his boots against the creaky flooring to the sound of his voice. “That’s kinda weird, actually. I think this is the first outpost I’ve been without beds or anything like that.”
Rani shakes her head. “This place isn’t even filtered.”
“I noticed. Why is that?”
“I’ve gotten a glance at some of the records,” Therese chimes in. “It seems like every request that’s been put in to make this outpost as robust as the others we’ve seen gets immediately denied. Apparently, they don’t want anyone staying here past three-to-four-hour shifts.”
Click. Mikael pauses, the chamber hanging out from the gun in his hand.
A quizzical look comes over Lionel’s face. “That’s…really weird. I mean, I know I’m still new to all this stuff, but I’ve never heard of anything like that. Do you have any idea why?”
Therese only shrugs, and the conversation ends there.
Rani shifts uncomfortably. Her eyes meet Mikael’s, but she looks away just as quickly. It’s not because she’s hiding something, though. He doubts that she knows any more than they do, but he has an idea. This place isn’t much different than the other observation posts he’s been stationed at, but something here is…off.
When Karim explained their reasons for being here, he mentioned something about nightmares. It sounded like a bunch of nonsense that got passed onto them for busy work – they weren’t psychologists. Now that he’s here, though, the air around them has a weight to it. It could be attributed to the fog being the thickest he’s ever personally seen, but he can’t name a time when he’s sensed the ‘weight’ anywhere else.
Click. Back in, the chamber goes.
Rani clears her throat. “Regardless, Lionel, sleeping all the time isn’t exactly conducive to our training.”
“Neither is sitting here and waiting for something interesting to happen, if anything even does,” Lionel retorts, “which is basically what we’re doing right now.”
“You could go out there and play tag with a phantom if you want something to do.”
“At this rate, that might be less fatal than the boredom.”
Click.
Mikael returns to looking back out of his window. That doesn’t stop Lionel from glancing in his direction at the sound of the revolver’s cylinder popping back out. Mikael pretends not to notice, but his jaw reflexively tightens with Lionel’s focus being on him.
“Dude, I can’t help but notice that you always have that thing on you wherever we go, but you never seem to use it. Not even at the shooting ranges or anything.”
His hand stops moving, but he still doesn’t look back at Lionel. Someone was going to ask eventually, and of course, it was going to be him. “It’s broken.”
Lionel takes a small step towards him, head slightly tilted as he inspects the firearm from a distance. “Well, you take guns apart and put them back together all the time. Can’t you just fix it?”
Mikael decides to make eye contact with him then. He hopes there’s enough intensity in his stare and edge in his voice to get the point across: “It stays broken.”
“Oh.” Lionel instantly returns the space that was between them. “Alrighty then.”
After that, Lionel settles down, choosing to sit in one of the chairs and fumble with one of the belts on his suit. Much less noise than his incessant chatter. Mikael allows the muscles in his jaw to relax as he makes a final attempt to resume his vigil by the window.
Click.
He leaves the chamber secure inside the gun and lets his hand go slack. A few minutes of blessed quiet pass, the only sound being the wind as it plays hollow tones through the holes and gaps in the city ruins.
The device in Therese’s lap makes a pinging sound. She jerks upright.
“Uh, guys, I think I’ve…got something.”
Mikael turns his head back towards the group. Rani leans to get a look at the device’s screen.
Lionel perks up, eagerness in his widened eyes. “What do you mean by ‘got something’?”
“Based on the heat signature, it’s a person,” she answers, “but it does look like a phantom is in pursuit – er, two now.”
“Are they one of ours?” Rani asks.
“I don’t think so. They’re alone. They ran into range from the northeast, and we don’t have any outposts in that direction. To my knowledge, there isn’t supposed to be anything in that direction, only woods, so…”
“So, there’s just some random person out there, by themselves, getting chased down by not one, but two phantoms, which isn’t great odds?” Lionel starts to get to his feet. “Maybe I should’ve kept my mouth shut earlier about being bored.”
You should’ve done that anyway, Mikael would say, but instead, his eyes go towards the window again.
Through one of the larger alleyways that come out into the street, he thinks he catches a glimpse of movement. It’s hard to tell for certain with the constant shifting of the mist, let alone if it’s human. Or phantom.
He stands up off the wall and holsters the revolver. Something wells up in his stomach that he finds difficult to put a name to. Fear? No, phantoms don’t scare him. At this point, they’re pests. Pests that cause unique problems and require quick thinking to be exterminated.
Still, he breathes in, and his chest feels tight. The air’s ‘weight’ has gotten heavier.
Mikael turns away from the window and back towards his crew. From behind the transparent portion of her helmet, he makes out hard lines of concern on Therese’s face as she continues pressing keys and watching what’s on the screen of the device.
I don’t think there’s supposed to be anything in that direction. Beneath the confusion, there was an uneasiness in her tone of voice when she made that comment.
She looks up towards Rani. “What do you want us to do?”
Rani remains silent as she adjusts the strap securing an assault rifle to her back. Her hands are less steady than they should be, and her eyes are still locked on the screen of Therese’s device.
She snaps herself out of it with a shake of her head. The gaze of everyone in the room follows her as she straightens, her chin held high. “Technically, we have standing orders to help any survivors, so that’s what we’re going to do.”
Lionel’s eyes widen even more behind his helmet’s visor, so much so that Mikael pictures them popping out of their sockets. “Since when have ‘survivors’ been a thing in like, the past decade at most? We should contact the captain first.”
This grates more on Mikael’s ears than anything else that has rolled out of his colleague’s mouth in the past couple of months, but he takes the strong desire to sock Lionel in the face and tightly locks it away. Better to direct that energy toward the task at hand.
“Waiting on that requires time that we don’t have,” Rani states firmly. “Therese, where are they now?”
She rapidly taps a few keys. “It looks like they ran inside a large building not too far from us. I think it was an old department store…? They’ve stopped moving, so they might have found a hiding spot. Not for long – the phantoms are closing in fast.”
“Then we need to go now. Therese, stay put and inform the base of the situation, but we’re not waiting around to get anyone’s approval. I’ll take point, Lionel comes with me, and Mikael…” She pauses as her eyes drag over to him, “…I trust you to do your own thing.”
His only response is a curt nod.
Lionel lets out another heavy sigh as he prepares his rifle. "Rani breaking explicit instructions she was given,” he says. “What’s next? Flying phantoms? The captain’s gonna be thrilled.”
“I’ll take the fall for it. If there’s a person out there who’s trapped and helpless, it’s our job to do something. Now get a move on.”
Mikael studies Rani. Her posture is still oddly stiff. He’s not sure how to judge this. Breaking the rules is out of character for her in a sense, but he never took her as someone who would prioritize protocol when someone is in imminent danger. On the other hand, there’s an underlying nervous energy to her that tells him she isn’t thinking with her usual level of clarity.
She must be feeling it too.
Assault rifle held at the ready, Rani exits the room. Lionel drags behind her, his earlier enthusiasm for something to do no longer present.
Mikael waits until they’re gone, turns back towards the window, and pops the latch that still holds steady despite the state of the building. He hears Therese shuffle around before faint, crackling static cuts through the quiet.
“Eta-12 Robin to Foxtrot-6 Paragon. Hostiles detected in pursuit of an apparent non-combatant. Unit is moving to engage–”
Mikael tunes her out as he slides the window open and looks down over the street below. There’s no trace of the movement he saw in the alleyway earlier. The distance to the ground isn’t too far; he’ll drop from the window and roll through the landing for good measure. Simple.
Therese finishes her transmission, and the static fades out. Her voice is unsteady when she speaks up: “Rani’s right. We’re supposed to be rescuing people if they’re in danger, but… I don’t know. Something feels weird. This isn’t a populated area.”
“Yup,” he says, without turning back to her.
“Are you really about to…jump out of the window?”
It’s an unimportant question, but he assumes Therese is asking it more out of unease and the fact that she’ll be left alone with that unease as soon as he leaves.
Which isn’t his problem.
“This isn’t the first time—" Mikael braces his hands on the windowsill and presses the heel of one of his boots up to it, “—and it won’t be the last.”