Some call it "The New Wild West." A labyrinth of jungles, mountains, paramilitary bases and roads, The Colombian Highlands are ruled by numerous drug kingpins all trying to get their hands on the same few routes capable of securely carrying cocaine out of the country. With the coming of The Gifted, the coke business has changed, but not for the better. Gifted soldiers make drug wars even more destructive, while those Gifted with command over the growth of plants allow certain lucky, small-time businessmen to compete with the cartels. Now more anarchic than ever, the Colombian Highlands are in need of some stability (or at least a change). But will change come to the land? Will the people of the nation finally be free of the organized crime that's run roughshod over part of their country for so long? Though some are still hopeful, the dream no longer looks to be within reach...

It started with a single shot.  Hernan Acosta was killed in his costal villa as he sat on his balcony enjoying a cigar as he watched the sunset from his home on the outskirts of Cali.  A mid-level business man, Señor Acosta had money invested in a number of companies, among them a handful of pharmaceutical companies.  The product of those companies hadn’t been of particular interest to the man who’d put a 12.7mm round in his head from half a mile away, but rather, the liquidations.  Some less successful branches had been closed down earlier in the year, their equipment sold off to recoup losses incurred to the company.  That equipment hadn’t been sold to other corporations, but private citizens, cash on delivery, with a minimal paper trail.  In Colombia, such people tended to travel in particular circles.

So, the killer followed the materials.  Not directly, sorting out one delivery truck from the hundreds in the city limit would’ve taken too long.  Instead, he found the buyer.  Hector, a city man to the bone, he was used to laws and systems and deals.  Hector thought he’d been insulated from the business. He thought he was safely ensconced in layers of security on his home.  Hector hadn’t expected to find some big gringo sitting in the home of his mistress, hadn’t known what to do when the same man casually dangled him out a window.  Hector survived the fall, though he spine was badly mangled by the concrete … getting run over by a car with stolen plates had finished the job.

North.  The truck was moving north, into the wilds, beyond the reach of the policia and the politicos who’d struggled for decades to reclaim their country from the claws of cocaine.  They’d beaten the Medellin Cartel, the Cali Cartel, even the revolutionary FMC who’d used the drug to fund their guerilla war.  Like a bad horror movie though, it seemed like each time the monster was slain, it twisted, changed, and reemerged somehow even worse than before.  These days, it was The Gifted, granted power beyond their fellows, freed from conventional morality by their Dreams, but seduced by black whispers of profit and more conventional power.  A dozen squabbling drug lords with their private armies, each striving against the others for territory

Trucks don’t drive into the highlands.  The roads are narrow, made from packed earth instead of pavement, and tend switchback sharply as they carve their way up the mountain sides.  No, they’d transferred the equipment onto a cargo plane, then flown it up into the mountains.  Finding the pilot hadn’t worked out, but he had a heading from the flight tower.  Renting a prop-plane, he’d followed that heading, finding a small air strip carved out of the jungle, unmanned without even a tower to direct the air traffic.  Once he’d landed, he gotten the lay of the land, bought some local miners drinks … that’s where he’d heard about a bunch of pack horses moving up the slopes under the escort of at least a dozen paramilitaries with Kalashnikovs.

---

That had been three days ago.

Rain drummed down steadily in fat drops, the rustling of foliage and the happy chirping of frogs filled the air in the light of the late afternoon.  Rivulets of rainwater ran over the molded ridge of his mask’s forehead, running into the gaps of the plates to soak the cloth underneath.  The web of leaves and moss he’d tied over the dark colors of his armor did nothing to keep the cool water out … but, truthfully, he couldn’t bring himself to mind.  Colombia was hot and stifling, and the time he’s spent in the equatorial region had taught him that he’d need to improve the ventilation for the next suit.  Still, his blade’s sheathe was water tight, and he’d picked his load for its reliability.  A little water wasn’t going to foul up this operation.

Quietly, unmoving, the Revenant peered through a set of binoculars.  The mist from the rain washed the color out of his view, much as the driving patter of raindrops muffled the sound around him, but it hardly mattered.  He knew what he was looking at.  A camp of guerilla fighters, more than a hundred of them from the headcount he had so far, all housed in simple huts and equipped with old soviet arms and equipment.  The center of the camp was dominated by a massive overhang, camouflaged to look like the tropical jungle around it to any passing air traffic.  Down here, however, with the dirt and the muck running in rivers around him, he could see the chemical drums, the equipment, the rubber trash bins filled to the top with bags of fine powder.

This group wasn’t going to move the stuff themselves, no.  A lot of these camps had grown up after the fall of the Cartels back in the day, organized with a cell-like structure.  Each one specialized in one part of the process, then handed it off to the next cell.  When one cell fell, the orphaned parts just found a new cell to service their needs.  It kept the cops from having a big, juicy target to focus on … it meant that he could lose himself in the work for years down here.  With the lack of communication between cells, his presence might never leak to the outside world.  If he put enough pressure on the drug lords out here, while keeping his presence low, he just might just spark the war that they’d worked to keep tenuously on hold for years.  Let the scum wipe each other out for a bit.

There’d been no sign of the Gifted running this particular bunch, not since he’d set up this observation point.  This was probably a satellite operation.  Still, if he did enough damage, the drug lord should crawl out of his hole eventually.  There was nothing like a personal visitation from a fledgling god to boost morale after a bad hit.  Of course, if the drug lord exposed himself, that was an opportunity as well.

“…What’s this now?” Phillip growled under his breath, turning the wheel on his binoculars as he changed the focus.  While most of the camp was huddled under overhangs to escape the rain, there was a small batch of men who’d just arrived on the outskirts of the camp.  A half dozen of them in fatigues surrounded a pair of figures wearing dark green parkas, their hands bound in front of them.  They were escorted just inside the camp where they were met by a man with burns along the left side of his face who did not seem pleased to be outside, the Revenant had seen this man barking orders before.  One of the guards jerked the hood back from the heads of the two parka clad individuals … pale white faces blinked back at the rain.

“Nothing’s ever simple.” He groused.  The FMC used to grab tourists to ransom back to their families, had a history of holding them for years sometimes.  It looked like this group weren’t above using similar tactics when it suited them.  Whatever these two were doing out here, it complicated the op.  It was no longer a target rich environment where he could act without restraint.  He’d need to get them safely out of the line of fire first.  He watched as the two foreigners were escorted towards one of the shacks, noting it in his memory.  Then, he slowly slid back away from the cliff, picking up the rifle he’d been cradling in one arm under a cloak of brush, and made his way steadily back to his camp.

He was going to have to act tonight.
This message was last edited by the player at 08:10, Sun 05 June 2016.

Night swallowed up the mountains, a black curtain drawn across the tropical sky.  Heavy clouds shrouded a fat, full moon and hid away the twinkling stars above, turning the wild reaches into an unknowable abyss.  The rain kept pounding the earth, but, as the temperatures dropped down into the sixties, it no longer represented a reprieve from the oppressive heat.  Instead, the cold soaked into his bones, even as the water weight dragged at his limbs.   Still, under the cover of a hastily constructed lean-to, he assembled his operations kit, making last minute checks before sliding each weapon home in its holster on his armor.

There was a problem.  He didn’t have enough bullets for a protracted firefight against the entire camp.  Normally he’d have used fire to help with that, sew chaos in the camp and divide groups from reinforcement.  The heavy rain made that impossible.  He was carrying some shaped charges, but those were going to have to be used to demolish the lab.  All signs pointed to the fact that he was going to have to do some work close and personal.

As he did before every operation, Phillip reached into his pocket and produced a battered old photograph.  The picture was of three people, a man and two women sitting on a dock with the sun setting behind them.  They looked … happy.  Close, the man’s arm was circled around the older woman’s shoulders.  The younger, a child really, sat at their feet beaming brightly.  Some time ago, he’d written on the photograph with a Sharpe, put names to the faces in front of him.  Autumn.  Phillip.  Allie.  On the back of the photograph was the phrase “Don’t Forget”, each name repeated with a date of birth and a date of death scrawled onto the white back.

It was hard to believe the man had ever been him.  He couldn’t remember where he’d met his wife, what they’d been doing … but he still remembered the way she’d looked walking down the aisle in her dress.  He couldn’t remember her favorite food, or color, or even movie any more … but he remembered her taste in music.  Specifically, he remembered hating her taste in music, because she’d inflicted it on him for the six hour road trip they’d taken for their anniversary one year.  Autumn was even harder … what he remembered, he did so with such fervent detail, he knew she’d been an important part of his life.  Yet, he couldn’t remember ever once celebrating her birthday … didn’t remember the name of her school, any of her friends.  He remembered the shooting though.  He remembered feeling the strength fade from her fingers as he clutched her hand, as though he could will her to stay alive.

That flash of guilt and white-hot anger flooded him with an intensity that had not dulled with years of destructive self-abuse.  He’d been burned, stabbed, shot, and blown up … he deserved every wound, a thousand deaths, because he hadn’t saved the people who’d put such blind faith in him.  If he deserved a thousand deaths though, They deserved much worse.  Parasites who destroyed lives and supped on misery.  Killers who spread their filth into the souls of others, turned them into slaves and desperate men with shaky hands who would in turn kill more.  He held no illusions that he was a good man, if his family was returned to him he knew they’d be horrified at what he’d become.  He wouldn’t stain their memory by claiming he did it for them.  No, the Crusade could not absolve him of his failures.  It was possible, however, that if he pursued it stalwartly, one day he could be made to forget them … and then maybe this torture would end.

Or, perhaps the mission would go on, and he would simply be numb to its cost.

Rising to his feet, the Revenant peered into the blackness, his inhuman vision slicing through the lightless domain with supernal clarity.  He wasn’t sure what it was his vision was based on these days, but it wasn’t light.  With his heavy gear weighing on his shoulders, he started into a loping run, trusting the jungle and the crashing rain to muffle his steps as he began to move downhill.  He had his goal, he had his motivation … it was time to get to work.

Katie wasn't anything special to look at nor was Kent. Khaki shorts, matching floral pattern shirts, and bright gree parkas hid lean toned bodies but nothing inherently suspicious. Nevermind that both of them had IQs in the 160 range, that Katie had broken county and state records in track and field. Ignore that Kent had been all state hockey and football. Of course, none of that matter as all those stats had never belonged to the people named Katie and Kent. The girl who had broken all those records died in a car accident years ago; that boy had gone missing while hiking in the rockies. The people they had been were wiped from existence when they had signed that contract so many years before, the subsequent training had hardened and sharpened them into living weapons, and they were here on business. Katie and zkent were designated as Sidhe within the ranks of SA and that made them important in a world their previous selves could not imagine.

But the pale, shaking figures that stood here now looked nothing of the part. That very innocence and their blundering "lost" in the jungles had landed them exactly where they wished to be. It had been laughably easy once they had applied their resources and analysis to the mission; that had been done as soon as thei boss back in Curacao had ordered them to tap into the lucrative drug trade to recoup recently lost resources. The goal was to locate a likely warlord or three, take them out, take control of their infrastructures, then redirect the hijacked funds into SA's considerable portfolio. The manner the funds were generated matrered little in the face of the profitability if the resource and the instability of the government trying to control it.

They were shoved in front of the butned man and Katie let herself stmmble and be caught by Kent. She was annoyed more than anything but put her frightened doe look on; one of the many things she had been trained to do was play to people's prejudices and biases about women. She could have snapped this man's neck five times just then and not because he was week. She saw it in his eyes, he was wary of Kent's powerful frame but ignored her lithe one. If she got any look, it was avarice. Another woman in her position might worry about her purity or such; Katie had been made to give that up long ago quite publicly. SA torture resistance training was brutal stuff. Kent knew she was the more combat capable one as he had had such biases removed just as brutally as she.

The man ispected them and spoke rapidly in a Colombian accented Spanish. Katie looked innocent again and let her eyes twitch in a mockery of panic as she heard every word. As her eyes flicked, she took in defenses, man power, resources, and patrols. She looked up into the jungles and noted lines of fire, defensive positions, and killboxes. The man spoke to them in heavily accented English and zkent fielded the questions while putting on the brave, husbandly face. Katie's eye stared at the man in apparent fear but was recalling and reaffirming her organizatin's information on the man. She was grinning internally. The man was making this idiotically easy. A babay could have taken all the world from him.

The pair were eventually shoved into a small tent and guards put at the tent flap. Katie stumbled again and wailed in fear then staggered to a corner where Kent held her hair as she retched in apparent fear. Their guards laughed at her weakness; Kent held her hair; and Katie used her teeth to strain the vomit and held onto the three capsules she had vomited. The pair then huddled in the corner in a tight ball of "fear." From the first pill she extracted a small transceiver that she stuck to her throat, then a tiny bud she inserted into her ear canal, and the third was a pair on contacts she placed in her eyes while sobbing.

Even as the HUD registered her DNA and fired up and the ear piece expanded and crackled into life, her hand snaked down Kent's back, down his shorts, then insterted a finger expertly into his anus. He didn't even flinch as she found the ring and smoothly pulled with confident strenth a small tube from its hiding place. She opened it with praticed ease. Words of rabid fear were exchanged then they sobbed and kissed. Kent's own radio set went into place and a collapsed shiv was put into his waist band. Guerillas rarely searched tourist that well after all. He bud crackled as she blinked to sent a morse signal over it: "Reading you five by five. B1 and B2 are taking positions. Squad Entling fives minute from position: Squad PewPew waiting and ready."

The couple cowered in fear, prepared mentally, and waited for nightfall. They have two sniper teams in position as well as two full squads of ghouls out there in the jungle. They had followed them ever since they were taken. They also had Katie and Kent's personal combat gear.

The Revenant watched from his position In the dark.  Just as had happened in the nights he’d observed before, the paramilitaries moved in coordinated groups of four as they made their way around the parameter of their camp.  They walked the old trails, conspicuously avoiding points that he suspected were covered booby-traps, rifles kept in hand as they moved steadily through the dense vegetation.  Whoever they worked for clearly believed in investing money back into the organization, Kevlar vests with composite armor plating were strapped over their camouflage uniforms, assault rifles slung at the ready, and night vision goggles to help them see through the bleak night.

Not for the first time, he considered how much more like soldiers the locals operated compared to the street gangs he was used to from back home.  The money played into it, certainly.  Even if they lost twenty to twenty five percent of the product moving north, at a 900% profit made up the losses handily.  The numbers had only gotten better with the introduction of Gifted with movement powers becoming traffickers; a border patrol meant little to a teleporter.  Beyond that, there was the nature of the local talent, home grown guerilla fighters, mercenaries, people used to handling military equipment and skirting the law when it suited them.

That was fine though.  It felt appropriate.  Wars should be fought by soldiers.

<Hey, do you see that?>, he heard the husky whisper in the dark, a quick jerk of the pointman’s head indicating some of the flora up ahead.  Thin pink streamers of blood swept into the expanding puddles along the foot path.

<Jesus…I think it’s Eduard> came a more feminine tone, using the barrel of the gun to brush some of the foliage to one side.  The ruined remains of a human being lay on the dirt, one hand curled into a claw reaching for the skies, his upper body torn open.  <Shit, do you think it was a cougar?>

<A cougar?> came an incredulous voice, the third man speaking with a bit more force, but the rasp of a smoker in his tone, <Cougar might pick off a lone man, but his team would’ve called it in.>

<The rest of his team’s dead too.> the first man spoke up again, raising his head slightly to look into a low gully along the side of the road where someone had apparently rolled the bodies, <No…it’s no mountain lion.  Look, there> he pointed with the barrel of his gun, <Something went clean through the bone, severed the leg … no ragged edge, had to go through with one strike.>

<Fuuuuuuuuuuuck …> said the female voice again, casting a look at their surroundings, <You don’t think it’s The Hand do you?  Heard that the Ghost Dogs have been pissed since someone blew up the dock where they were hiding their submersible down by the coast … maybe they sent their Gifted to secure a land route for moving product ‘til they can replace it?>

<Over my head.> the smoker responded with a shake of his head, <Doesn’t matter, either way, we call it in.  Jorge, heat up the set, will you?>

<~GRRRK--! >

Three heads swiveled in unison at that, regarding their rear guard.  Jorge’s hands flapped weakly, almost comically, at his head as he stumbled a step backwards … something had twisted his head around a full hundred and eighty degrees, tearing flesh and breaking bone in the process.

<Fuck!> two rifles swung up as the point man reached for the radio at his own hip.

--fsst-- >SHUK< a brief flicker was the only real warning before the point man’s head jerked back, a carbon fiber blade having buried itself up to the hilt in his face, cutting through the night vision mask he was wearing in the process.

Shing!  SHRAKT, the smoker opened his mouth to shout an order, but it died in his throat.  The arm gripping his rifle slid off, casually, as if his shoulder was simply no longer interested in holding the rest of the arm up.  His head rolled backwards as well, the big man collapsing like a puppet with his strings cut.

BRAKKA-BRAKKA-BRAKKA the girl managed to pull the trigger, that got put her ahead of the last seven of her fellows.  Orange muzzle-flares lit up the night in a hellish strobe of fire light.  Sparks rained off of his upper body where lead flattened and deflected off of his hardened armor at point blank range, the unfeeling glare of a skeletal grin looking back at her as his eye seemed to shine white through the flickers of darkness between the gunfire.

>SHUK!!< in the staccato light, she barely saw him cover his face with left arm before lunging, the broadsword punching easily through the armored plate covering her sternum as he drove the point of the blade through her body and into the tree behind her.  Sweat beaded on her suddenly ashen face, shock paralyzing her limbs as she stared uncomprehending into the blank white eyes of the Revenant’s mask.

<Finally.> he rasped in Spanish, twisting the blade and carving a pit in tree and guerilla fighter both, <I was starting to think I’d run out of guards before one of you got a shot off.> he pulled hard on the hilt of his blade, jerking it free of tree and fighter with a single motion, the rain-slickened blood flicking off his blade in an arc.  He stepped aside, watching the woman stagger forward before falling forward, faceplanting into the muck.  He kicked the rifle away from her hands, watching it spiral off into the tall grass as he looked down at her, the whites of his eyes fading to pitch black as streamers of black smoke began to escape from the seams of his armor plate.

---

<Dead man … goggles don’t work … glowing eyes …> the words repeated again and again, as though the mantra allowed her spirit to cling to her body.  Sandra hadn’t had to wait long for the next patrol to burst on the scene, pointing rifles in all directions.  They’d found her propped against a tree, her shirt packed tightly around her wound to try and staunch the bleeding.  She’d seen enough dead men to know that she wasn’t going to make it, but she had to hold on, to get word back to the camp however possible.  So, she’d weakly grasped the pants leg of one of her fellows when he’d stepped close, murmuring those words over and over again.

Luis was a good man.  He didn’t leave her there in the rain, radioing ahead about the potential intruder as he and another of his men lifted her onto a makeshift stretcher.  The camp was coming alive in the night as they double-timed it beyond the parameter, rushing for the long tent that served as their hospital.  A dark-skinned man with a thin mustache and a white coat blinked blearily from the makeshift desk where his instruments were laid out, clearly having been roused from sleep to look at her.  Luis couldn’t stay, he had to get out there and help the search, but he squeezed Sandra’s hand, told her to be strong before he left.

<Dead man … goggles don’t work …> she responded, her mind not focusing on him.  The tent flap slapped close as the soldiers hustled out again, muffling the sounds of rain and the shouted instructions in the camp.  The doctor perked his ear, hearing her words trail off in the absence of Luis.   He turned from where he’d been preparing his tools, taking her cool, pale wrist and pressing his fingers to her pulse line.  A few seconds passed, and he sighed, shaking his head sadly.  The doctor had become too accustomed to death since coming to this place.

Then an armored forearm snaked its way around his throat, another hand grabbing his wrist and forcing it behind his back, wrenching him upright and putting pressure on his windpipe.  He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t struggle, the arms that held him were like pythons of iron more than the sinews of a man.  He tried to call out, but all that came out was a faint rattle.  As he was lifted off of the floor, he kicked, trying to upset his unseen assailant and perhaps slip away.  A menacing voice dripped venom in his ear as the edges of the world began to turn black around him, closing in as his brain went longer and longer without oxygen.

<There’s nothing you could do for these people, Doctor … I don’t leave survivors.> His kicking came more sporadically, weaker, and finally stopped.  The man holding him didn’t slacken his grip for long minutes, the Revenant’s senses watching the life bleed out of him second by second until he was cold and black.  With a grunt of disgust, he set the man down on the floor, picking over the slim pickings of the triage center with a practiced eye, grabbing an old leather doctor’s bag from a cabinet and filling it with choice items.

---

A few moments later, the Doctor (or, more accurately, the Doctor’s body) brushed open the flap of the long tent, shaking his head wearily at the two guards post in front of it.  Portable generators had apparently been wheeled out, powering lighting fixtures that were casting their pale light out towards the parameter.  The light was rare, normally the camp forewent lighting in favor of hiding from government aircraft in the area.  A few dropped bombs or helicopter strafes had long ago taught the people hiding in the highlands to keep their heads down.

Turning up the collar of his lab coat against the wind and rain, the Doctor clutched his leather bag tightly and began trudging through the camp, his loafers sliding unsteadily over the slippery mud wherever he strayed from the scattered straw that served to firm up the camp grounds.  Hunching his shoulders uncharacteristically, he made his way towards the holding area where the camp was hiding its foreign “guests”.

For most of the day, the pair had played the terrified white people routine. The guerrillas were so used to seeing it that they never questioned it for a moment. It was rather terrifying the amount of intelligence one could gather sitting exposed in the middle of the enemy encampment. She overheard details of patrols, personal conversations between personnel, and even schedules. All of this was relayed via her small comms set to her squad. This information was plugged into a tactics simulator.

It was an undeniable fact that access to her infromation banks increased her ability to tactically assist, but all Sidhe were more than capable of such while in the field and unequipped as well. They sat, listened, and waited for the most part.  A couple times, Kent was dragged off and interrogated about resources and contacts back in America, his identity, and what he had been doing in the jungle. he played his part stoically and gave up the prepared information. They even had a dummy contact stateside waiting to be contacted, not that it would happen but possibilities needed to be covered.

The plan was to act around midnight, so by then the various men of her unit had begun to move through the bush. The guerrillas were competent men, but the ghouls were world class soldier and commandos. Each of the sniper teams found a place with a slid vantage while the insertions teams split up. One covered the road in and the other staged near the tent she was held in with her and Kent's gear.

Things changed when the alarm went up though. +Report+" Katie snapped a little too loud. Luckily, the guard at her tent wasn't paying attention to her. She listened to the panicked Spanish and picked up bits and pieces. Her men all reported staged; none had acted. A moment later it was obvious, +There is second player. All units stand ready.+

A second later, +Ma'am, target moving toward your position. Camp doctor. Orders?+ She considered it for a long time and then shrugged. <b>+Take aim, do not fire unless I say so. Let's see what this is.+</black>

The tent flap opened into the downpour once again as the guard posted outside lifted it.  Fairly soaked, the man in the white coat ducked as he made his way through the interest, taking a moment to examine his surroundings.  He paused a moment to let a critical eye sweep over the two huddled tightly in the corner … it didn’t look like they were sporting any noteworthy injuries at the moment.  They must’ve been fairly forthcoming when interrogated … or no one could work up the energy to properly put the screws to them with this dreary weather.  It paid to remember the human element of these situations.

<Watch them.> he said to the guard inside the tent as he set the leather bag on top of a stool that had been left in one corner.  The guard gave him the stink eye regarding that, as if to say “what do you think I’ve been doing for the last three hours?”  Still, he took a step away from the wall and made a show of lifting his rifle as he glared at the pair of unfortunates.

He never saw the needle coming, the doctor jabbing it into the side of his neck and pushing the plunger hard.  The guard slapped at his neck reflexively, glaring uncomprehendingly at the doctor.  The man in the white coat grabbed the barrel of the rifle, twisting as he pulled it away roughly, the first muscle spasms hitting his body in seconds.  He clutched at his throat, gurgling as a filmy froth bubbled to his lips and he fell to the ground, his body curling into a tight ball as he instinctively hugged himself, trying to keep his body under control.

The doctor looked briefly over the rifle, turning his eye away from the convulsing man and to the two huddled in the corner.

“Do you speak English?” he asked flatly, watching their reactions closely for the moment.  The words felt foreign and wrong in “his” mouth, this body’s lack of muscle memory for forming the words requiring him to manually construct each syllable … it was annoying, but he’d had plenty of practice over the last few years.  At least he’d gotten to the point where he no longer had to to haltingly enunciate each syllable like a child learning to read.

“Are you hurt?” he added after a moment.

AS he entered the room, she spotted the difference in how this man moved. She had done surveillance on the doctor beforehand and this was a different person. It was amazing to her what some allowed themselves to not notice. She was trained to have to expectations of people, so she spotted the differences in gate and movements instantly. She watched as he dispatched the guard. She watched his eyes and saw nothing there in the act itself. While the man was entangled with the guard though, she sent a quick burst through her comms to signal the attack. She then decided to test this man.

The woman stared at him hard. The eyes watered and the face shivered, but anyone looking for it saw the calculation there instead of fear. The man moved his body to be in a position to interceded between him and the woman. It looked like a protective but futile romantic gesture, but an experienced eye could spot a well-trained soldier's movements. These two were probably not as imprisoned as they had looked from afar.

Katie listened carefully and she heard the foreignness of the man's language. She squinted at him and wondered for a brief second what was going on here.

Kent was the one who spoke, "Yes, we're unhurt. Who are you?" He held out his bound hands expectantly.

Outside, at the signal the SA soldiers went about their task. Whatever might explain the proceedings, the guerrillas were exposed and vulnerable at the moment. A search party moved through the area Sandra had been found searching for their comrades. A sergeant found the first victim and called for men to fan out from the area. Even as they obeyed, his eyes went blank and he fell over as a soundless bullet from a rifle far away pierced his windpipe perfectly. The men were a second late in realizing this as they were searching and were just raising their weapons as four figures fired from the darkness around them. No terror tactics or fancy blade works, just a few flashed of suppressed gunfire and the men fell. Meanwhile, in the camp the shadows moved. Each shadow had a small caliber pistol fit with a silencer and used the advanced systems in the insectoid helmets to isolate target though tent material and put expertly fired bullets into targets, two centermass and one in the head.

The leader of the squad, spotted a soldier emerging from his tent and froze a second until the man's head jerked as a concealed gunman high in the trees shot him through the cranium. He stepped forward smoothly to catch the falling corpse and drag it back into the tent. There were four more men who all looked at him in a brief instant of pause. He acted first firing his pistol twice. The first man dropped as he spun to retarget but the space was small and the veteran fighters were acting now. One slapped his pistol away. Rather than try to retrain it, he spun with the force and twisted to sweep the man's legs. He came up and flicked his collapsible truncheon to full length and cracked the man's skull open. Three was going for a gun and four was rushing him. His helmet saw the red line targeting three from outside the tent so he focused on four. He sidestepped and hit the back of his neck with a crack. He kicked the man toward a bunk then followed in with the truncheon. Two rapid strikes to the head and the man was incapacitated. He looked around to the the man bring the Ak up only for a second sniper's bullet to put him down. He secured his truncheon, put a round into each man, then reloaded.

In the jungle, a second search group was walking a game trail when four flashes of muzzle fire announced their death as the ghouls' assault rifles opened up a crossfire.

A few more men were dropped by sniper fire.

The Guerrillas were running out of bodies very quickly.

Back in the tent, Katie looked up at the man and wondered how this would play out. Most of the Guerrillas would be down soon but there was the boss yet.

There was a brief moment where the doctor regarded the two of them.  The longer they looked at each other, the more it became apparent that neither was precisely what they seemed.  Crocodile tears did little to hide the hardness of the eyes they slid from like ice, and it was impossible for him not to notice the familiar way that the “husband” had planted his feet.  The man knew his way around a fight, for sure.

For his part, the Phillip’s façade as the Doctor was embarrassingly simple as well.  Any muscles he wasn’t explicitly controlling stay taut and set, a mask as sure as the ballistic shield built into his helmet.  There were no incidental motions to betray his thoughts, and his unblinking eyes seemed dull and unseeing as they stared forward and took in the scene in front of him.  Phillip held himself like a bigger man than he currently was, hunched forward slightly at the shoulders to loom ineffectually.

No one commented on the dying man on the floor who was busy choking on his own tongue.  Every person present knew their way around death.

“…Phil.” The doctor answered Kent’s question, finally, stooping down to retrieve the survival knife from the convulsing soldier’s simple utility belt.  Something was definitely going on, but his objectives were still the same.  Serrated steel bit easily into the ropes binding Kent’s hands together as the doctor began sawing through the loop around one wrist, cutting faster than a man with the doctor’s build should have been able.  The Revenant’s puppets didn’t benefit from adrenaline, but neither were they inhibited by the brain’s limiters that were designed to protect a person from harming themselves.  He didn’t feel the pain in his palms as he used the body’s full strength.

“This camp will be erased by morning.  You’re in the way.” He said by way of explanation, dull eyes meeting Kent’s, watching him to see if the larger man would make a move.  “So, I’ll help you leave, before someone thinks to use you as hostages or a shield.” With a soft –snkt- the rope gave up the last of its resistance, one loop dangling uselessly from the knot still hanging around his other wrist.

He looked at Katie for a moment, taking his first step towards her to cut her free next…and then he stopped.  He looked over his shoulder back towards the tent entrance.  The heavy drumming of water against the canvas around them made it difficult to hear the greater camp around them, but the tingling in the back of his neck told him that things were getting too quiet out there.  As if to highlight his instinctual misgivings, at the limits of his range, he felt a life snuff out like a candle in the night.  Then another followed it.

“…Something is happening.” He warned, before suddenly thrusting the rifle he’d taken from their guard towards Kent, “You move like a veteran, take the rifle.  Night vision goggles are in the bag, along with some basic medical equipment.  I’m going to check things out, but, if you see an opportunity to escape before I get back, take it.” His eyes glanced down at the blade in his hand for a moment as though he was weighing something in his mind.  Then, he flipped it over to offer it to Keith, handle-first, glancing over at Katie again.  “I guess you’ll want this too.”

There was a certain amount of tension when he turned his back on the pair of them, apparently unarmed as he was.  He didn’t really know their intentions and he’d just handed one a gun after all.  Of course, there was a certain amount of safety in knowing that it wasn’t his body on the line right now.  Pushing open the tent flap once again, he turned his wrist, letting a scalpel slip out of his sleeve and down into his left hand as he poked his head back out into the night, unwittingly back into the line of sight of the sniper.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:43, Tue 14 June 2016.

The exchange was tense, rife with violent possibility. Everyone was on their toes, on edge, waiting to see. Finally, it was the stranger that made a decision. He seemed decisive and comfortable in the situation. Katie was already analyzing him. The comfort and the level of disguise, the man was skilled, dangerous, and solo. He was obviously used to working by himself in these situations. The language inquiry meant he was probably fluent in the local languages and dialects. How knowledgable was unknown. He handled the knife and the gun with familiar ease. He had handled the close quarters combat and needle with equal ease.

This man was dangerous, knew his tactics, and had obviously used many methods of killing. The problem she had was that there were too many unknown and unquantifiable factors in the matter. The way he behaved and spoke indicated deep experience but his body and movements were wrong, poor, weak. The two didn't match. Too, she had a deep knowledge of the doctor, the man did not speak like that and that sort of emotionlessness was impossible to hide. The doctor was no longer at home and that spoke to the gifted. Another soldiermight not make that connection, but Katie worked in the SA and had seen Mr. Green, Lady Scarlet, and many others in action.

So, as the man turned to leave and Kent raised the rifle and her sniper squaked "Clean Shot." She reached out and put a hand on Kent's rifle and did not send the kill order. They dared not risk provoking a potentially gifted individual with this much unknown information. As soon as the man was through the flap though she acted. The way he had spoken indicated he knew that another force was present but not that it was connected with her or Kent. That presented an opportunity.

+B1, B2: overwatch and ghost mode. Do not fire unless ordered. PewPew, withdraw to Viktor-Tango-Omega-Lima. Entling, let yourself be seen by target engaging guerrillas. We will use operation FOFF modified.+

Kent silently removed the rest of the ropes and then the couple moved to the flap. She stepped out and looked around while Kent moved around to the side facing the jungle. The HUG on her contacts indicated that her orders were being followed as she watched the dots of her operatives move. She saw the four black dots of Squad PewPew converging on the doctor. She flicked her gaze toward the medical tent. +B1. Overwatch the medical facility. Full sensor scans.+ She was obeyed even as Kent moved to her with a duffle. She casually reached down and extracted a black, insectoid helmet and donned it. Her full HUD light up. Kent ditched the Ak and combat knife as he donned full ghoul gear, black with two green stripes on the shoulder.

Katie considered then indicated he follow as she moved toward the jungle. Just in case, she wanted to be clear of combat. It was not her role.

In the camp, a trio of guerrillas approached the doctor, "Doctor, tiene que ponerse a salvo. Hay un fantasma en la oscuridad de esta noche."*

The ghoul approached from three vectors in precision form. They three tight, rapid burst of fire sent arterial sprays of blood from each guerrilla. The three men were each dressed in matching matte black armor with characteristic insectoid helmets. The visor was split into two, large, circular, multi-faceted lenses. Their armor was medium weight kevlar with military grade rigging. Each was armed with an assualt rifle of American make with a Colt 1911 handgun. They moved in on the targets on the ground. One covered the doctor while the other two put single shots in each targets head. Then all three rifles were on him, "We have orders to take you peacefully, Doctor." A fourth ghoul waited silently in the dark scanning the surroundings using the helmets full sensor arrays.

Katie watched through one of the helmets' cameras and waited to see what happened even as she made for the VTOL they have waiting a klik away. Kent followed closely behind. Whatever else may happen this night, it was imperative this information make it back to HQ.

* - Doctor, you need to get to safety. There is a ghost in the darkness tonight.

The camp was bathed in swatches of brilliant light and deep, foreboding shadow, each in turn wrapped with a smothering kind of silence.  The rain tamped down the scent, but the sheer amount of bodies meant that he could pick up the smell of blood on the air.  The doctor hadn’t so much as twitched as his protectors had been efficiently gunned down around him, a splatter of red blood spraying across his face as the man who’d called out to him fell forward.  Under the scrutiny of the multi-spectrum visor, the puppet’s nature was much clearer, thermal patterns showing the doctor’s body was the same temperature as the air around it.

His sodden white coat hanging from his shoulders, the doctor looked back at the man who’d spoken.  They were good, he had to admit that.  It was difficult to surround someone who didn’t require line of sight to track the people around them.  They were well-drilled, efficient and brutal in equal measure, at least on par with the men he’d worked with in the Army.  If they weren’t pointing guns at him, he might even have paused to admire their tactics.  After all, they’d saved him a lot of trouble and ammunition.

He quickly ran through the angles in his mind.  He was surrounded by well-trained and expensively equipped soldiers who each had a bead on him.  Meanwhile, he was wearing the body of an underfed intellectual who probably hadn’t seen the inside of a gym in years, and armed with a surgical implement that was unlikely to meaningfully pierce the body armor they were sporting.  The American arms suggested they weren’t representatives of the local government … Colombia licensed and produced the Galil locally to serve as their army’s service rifle.  That suggested they were a competing faction. Either they were looking to simply bump off a rival, or, more likely, this was a raid for materials.  They didn’t fit any of the rumors he’d heard so far though … a new player on the scene?

His eyes narrowed slightly.  The man had called to him in English … an interesting choice, given that they had orders to take this body alive, and Phillip was certain it hadn’t spoken English in life.  Normally, you’d default to the local language.  That opened up another ugly possibility … they were here for him.

“You’re going to be disappointed.” He said, shrugging his shoulders slightly before he tossed the useless scalpel safely to the side.  Slowly, to demonstrate his compliance, he raised his hands up, elbows out, palms forward about at head level to show he didn’t have any tricks up his sleeve.  He listened to the splish-splash of rain drops pattering across the tops of puddles, his plain leather shoes sinking into the muck.  He was turned in such a way that he could keep two of the soldiers in front of him … which left the last free to approach him from behind.

Deep breath in.  Splash.  Deep breath out.  Slosh.  Breathe, you damned corpse … pump oxygen to your muscles, stave off the rigor mortis.  I need you limber a little longer.

He felt the rough grip of a nomex glove gripping his right wrist, pulling it down and behind him.  Breathe in, the guy was strong, that much was certain, though the doctor’s brown eyes never wavered from the guns in front of him.  He heard the mechanical clinking of a pair of binders being produced … that was both of the man’s hands accounted for.

Phillip spun sharply, his elbow slicing through the air towards the soldier’s throat as he twisted to reclaim his wrist.  The other man ducked and stepped instinctively to protect himself, but the step put him between the guns and the doctor, giving him a temporary measure of cover.  At least, he assumed they would hesitate to shoot at their own man, give the scrap a second to play out.

Though, at the tight uppercut that came up from below his chin, Phillip had to admit, the other man might not need the help.  He weaved his head back, causing the punch to miss by inches, before throwing a right cross that caught on the outside of the man’s guard.  A flurry of blows exchanged between the two of them, throwing arcs of water drops with each swing as they kept in tight.  Phillip managed to dig a deep body blow on the masked soldier, though the armor blunted the strike.  As a return, a helmeted headbutt shattered the bridge of his nose, sending a torrent of blood dribbling down his face, making it harder for him to keep breathing.  It was a bad trade.

A sharp hook snapped his already damaged head to one side and rocked him back a step.  For a second, Phillip imagined he could feel the tension of fingers on triggers, prepared to riddle this body full of holes.  The man he was currently fighting, however, closed the gap and buried another blow in his solar plexus, riding his momentum.  Phillip felt the air driven out of his chest, a wheeze escaping his lips.

He stopped breathing.  The damage was adding up, but the pain couldn’t touch him.  He was only riding the body, and it was ultimately disposable.  His left arm flashed out with inhuman speed, smashing directly into the bug-eyed faceplate of the soldier, a low --crunch-- punctuating the blow as the other man’s head snapped back.  The mask had protected his face, even if one of the round bug-eyes of the helmet disappeared under a spider-web of cracks, but his brain was rattled inside his skull.  As Phillip pulled back, the fingers of his left hand were clearly broken, bending at bad angles and dangling loosely, the flesh having torn on his knuckles where it had impacted.

The doctor hooked one of the man’s arms and pulled him into a hard arm drag.  The mud splashed high at the impact of both bodies, though Phillip was ready to ride the motion.  He circled quickly, bracing the arm with the broken left hand around the soldier’s throat and half-pulling him on top as he faced the two remaining guards with their guns.  Somehow, he’d gotten his opponent’s sidearm out of the holster, and was pointing it steadily at the men who still had him drastically outgunned.

“Don’t interfere with my mission.” He said grimly, the hammer cocked back and ready to fire.

There was no sound.  He simply rocked forward suddenly, the dome of his skull exploding a geyser of gore as someone took their shot, trying to spare the hostage.  The armored man made to push the corpse off of him, but the arm around his throat tightened impossibly.  The doctor picked his face up again, one bloodshot eye glaring over his hostage’s shoulder as rain water splished and splashed into the open wound atop his head, running over in places and carrying with it bits of the contents.

“Last warnng.  Walk away.” He said, the Doctor’s voice mingling the echo of a second voice, like some manner of grotesque duet, “You won’t like what comes next.”
This message was last edited by the player at 23:25, Fri 17 June 2016.

The two men kept their weapons trained on the scuffle as it progressed; they were motionless and reactionless. Their insectoid helmets registering nothing of the men underneath's possible thoughts. AS the corpse threatened their companion each man had a grim expression hidden. Sa personnel valued one another highly; loyalty and fraternity were trained into and reinforced in all agents. However, in this case, that meant vengeance was the name of the game as giving up a mission for such a situation was beyond the pale.

From near the team's VTOL, Katie watched the scene play out and felt a bit of horror as the man whose head had nearly been disintegrated continued to threaten her man. She too had a strong vein of loyalty and fraternity trained into her and had not wanted to risk the man's life for more information. She had ordered one of the Banshees to take the shot, expecting it to resolve the matter or move it to the next stage. Instead, the situation had evolved but not been resolved.

She eyed the link symbol that was just now blinking green. Her uplink to the satellite had been reestablished and she instantly uploaded the video of the real ghoul and waited for an analysis and reference. It would take seconds as the personnel back at the Curacao base looked into it. But the situation was still progressing and need addressing.

Back at the scene, the ghoul in the headlocked noted a signal in his now cracked HUD. That alone spoke to the direness of the situation. That material was hard to just break with a backhand, even if it did destroy the said hand. He sight activated he signal and noted his external speakers being accessed.

KrshSHkk. "And I was kind of hoping that you were a total professional not just skilled at this." Shshkk. The voice was autotuned and modulated so it was not clear who was talking.

She deactivated the speakers then sent an order +B1, shoot the shoulder. Wound but do not kill our operative if necessary. PewPew, Disassemble the corpse. B2 maintain ghost protocols and watch that tent.+ She reactivated the agent's speakers.

"Us interfere with your mission? We have a mission, too. Please be professional enough to respect that we are not just randomly here."

On the battelfield, an agent prostrate against a tree's branch retrained his weapon and noted briefly that the trajectory most optimal would indeed injure the SA agent. The trigger was pulled. Even as the doctor was registering the contents of the second message, the corpse's shoulder disintegrated and a spray of blood shot forward from where the bullet exited the ghoul's body armor. The arm's grip weakened and the soldier dropped down heavily. This left the corpse exposes and two bursts of tight fire from each M4 targeted clusters of organs. Shortly, the body was rendered what would normally be considered inoperable. It still staggered and the men reached for grenades even as the third man cleared the zone. The first man threw a sphere that was obviously a high explosive device while the second put out what looked like a flashbang.

In a burst of light and sound, the corpse shattered into ragged chunks of viscera while the team of mercenaries disappeared. Katie eyed the scenario and sighed heavily, +All operatives, prepare to engage unknown hostile. Gifted abilities are to be assumed.+ Just as she said this, a dossier presented itself in her HUD and she groaned as she read it. This guy was a monster.