An explosion rocked the building straight down to the earth beneath it. The first one in a chain of others, causing the building to glisten in bright red and yellow hues as it began to slowly fall to the ground. Out of the building a single man emerged from the 22nd floor out of a window, flying out about 30 feet from the building, as a small prop plane flew right by and caught him into the open door to the cockpit.
The man who had just landed in the cockpit lifted his head in exhaustion. “Glad to know I could count on you to come pick me up.” The man said to the pilot as he took a hold of the copilot controls, steering with the pilot away from the island as well as the building that by this time had become a part of the past alone.
“The detonation and extraction went as planned, the building was detonated, and there were zero unwanted casualties. We also found a much unexpected but useful bit of information. Your agent will report on what he discovered.” The man turned over the phone to Agent Zero, the agent in charge of the extraction.
“We found that not only were the men housing large amounts of counterfeit cash, but also large amounts of munitions. Not small munitions either, there were a few anti-tank missiles and even a tank itself in their hands. It seems they had bigger plans than what we had originally thought. The money has been transferred into the states to make unauthorized purchases from a military seller. They must have had contacts inside in order to get the weapons they did at the amount they had. I highly doubt that this will be the last time we see them.”
Agent Zero had already set things in motion to get what he wanted done, done. His other agents were getting ready to extract the other locations from the militia men that they had captured.
“Agent Four, we have a suspect en route to the coffee shop right across from your location,” Whispered Agent Two over the radio.
“Agent Four preparing for extraction of suspect.” The man turned a corner and walked into the front door of a building. The man quickly began running once inside but had no chance of escaping as all exits were covered.
While this was happening Agent Zero was preparing a meeting with an informant he had used many times before to get any information he seemed to need. He walked into the building that had been designated to be used. The doors closed behind Agent Zero as he walked into the building.
“You have come for something I cannot give you.” The informant said to the agent out of the mist that encompassed the room. He began to slowly rise and walk slightly out of the mist still enveloped by the darkness of the fog.
“Yes, I did, but I will gladly accept any information you can produce right now. Especially useful right now would be any locations and the arsenals that are at those locations.”
“Of course, I would be glad to offer that information to you,” the man turns around and keys in a few numbers into the console behind him, then removing a flash drive from the console, “here is the information you wanted.” The man offered the drive to Agent Zero. Zero then turned and walked out of the door.
Once he stepped out of the doorway a bullet flew through the air towards him and hit him in the neck. The flash drive in his hand dropped to the ground before his body could even leave the upright position. As his body fell to the ground he placed a small tracking beacon onto the flash drive as his consciousness left him.
Agent Three sat in front of the main base computer as it beeped to let him know that the beacon had been activated.
The body of the dead agent lay neatly on the concrete beside the building he had just recently exited. A man walked up to the body that lay motionless on the ground, he kneeled next to the body, and picked up the flash drive.
“The tracker is moving now. Agent Nine, Agent Seven, go and follow that tracker, if there is something important that Zero wanted us to know about, that’s how he would let us know. Agent Six, go and check out the original position of the tracker, something may be there that will let us know why he set it off.”
Three Hours Later
Agent Six came upon the body of Agent Zero.
“Agent Six reporting in, I found out why Zero dropped the tracker,” Agent six stood in silence over his former mentor’s body, mourning the loss of the man. “He’s dead. Shot through the neck.”
Three Months later
A young man awoke in his bed in the morning, picked his head off the pillow and heard a sound downstairs. At first instinct he grabbed his two samari blades that were sheathed right by his bed. He held them ready to swing at a moments notice.
"Hello? Is anybody down here?" He asked loudly hoping for an answer. He heard nothing, when he got to the bottom of the stairs he saw the man that caused the disturbance, he was a large burly man carrying hand gun with another holstered behind him. "Sir!" He shouted with a sound of agrivation. "If you don't identify yourself right now I will be forced to use deadly force."
The man slowly turned towards the young man. He looked up and was prepared to grab the gun behind him when the boy lifted the swords about eye level horizontally.
“If you even think about trying to reach for that gun behind you, these will separate your head from your body much faster than you thought was even possible.” The young man said, glaring at the slightly shadowed figure standing in the room.
“I actually came looking just for you, you must be Andrechovich. The only Russian I’ve ever heard of that can wield a blade with more precision and accuracy than a samurai himself. I am a member of a special task force; this task force has no laws binding it, and has no limitations. It is a militia of sorts, the best of the best, and it would be an honor to induct you into this ‘family’ of ours. You would become Agent Zero, replacing our lead agent; he just recently was killed in the line of duty.” The man looked down mournfully, as if to give an unannounced moment of silence to the fallen leader. “From this day on, you will be known as Agent Zero. No one can learn of your job, and no one can become familiar with your work. You will be bound by no laws, if you are apprehended, show them your I.D. and you will be freed immediately, you will never have to pass through a medal detector, or a random search of any sort. You will become above all law, you are the law.”
“So, basically, I can do whatever I please, no matter what?” Andrechovich said with a slight bit of dismay. “Doesn’t that cause a great deal of injustice rather than allowing for more justice?”
“You will understand better when you see them in person. By the way, I never introduced myself. I am Agent One, your right hand man; I do everything to make your job easier; if you’re in of course.”
He lowered his swords to his waste finally, and began to sharpen them against each other. “I’m in!”
After several hours of traveling to the main stronghold of these agents the two men got out of a small sports car. The stronghold seemed to be an enormous underground bomb shelter, concrete with steel enforcement.
“Very good architectural design, sturdy but not too clumsy, not very elegant, but who am I to complain.” Agent Zero said, scanning the building stopping at every movement in the room. “I’m guessing those are my agents?”
“Very good deduction, that they are. Every single one of them has a skill that no other human on this planet possesses. You have the skill of trickery, the form of a master samurai, and the agility of a leopard. You are a match for any man in this room, by far.” Agent One said, in a sense of almost shocked awe.
“What is your skill?”
“Mine, I can think, my mind is faster than the average human by over 200 percent. I can make immense calculations in a millisecond, and can learn things in no time at all, nothing nearly as elegant and graceful as your talent, but just as useful in my humble opinion”
“I see, so you are the brains of the outfit.” Zero asked with great interest.
“Me, along with Agent Two; both of us work together in order to cover all bases for you agents out in the field.” One pauses to get a message through one of the men walking in the room. “Your first mission, this is your clue, find the killer of your former self.” One tosses Zero a large bullet casing, and walks away from him.
Zero looked into the concrete walls once again, waiting for something to happen; something to tell him where to go or what to do.
“You must be the newest agent, come with me.” A man wearing a suit told me. I followed him into a room, smaller and than the last, and much cozier; it had rugs, windows, and chairs. In that room, there were 18 men. Apparently this was my team. All of whom were about 20 years my elder and yet looked at me with deep respect.
“Agent Zero; what is our mission?” One of the agents asked.
“Our mission is to find your former leaders killer. Our only real clues we have is this casing from the ground around the building that the sniper was nesting in.”
“We recovered a flash drive that was encrypted and we haven’t yet decrypted it. It probably has information that Zero had received from his contact. It should be decrypted by the end of the week.” One of the agents who discovered the drive said.
“Until then all we have is this casing, which I don’t think will really be of much use, as it’s a generic sniper round, most likely off the black market, so no tracking or anything to find the owner of it. I doubt the guy who shot Zero was stupid enough to go through legitimate channels since they could easily just rat him out. So I would suggest someone go and find some ‘shady’ characters and get some intel on any underground trading rings of arms, we don’t know what he looks like or what he may have been looking for specifically, so you’ll have to make assumptions. Hopefully the flash drive will reveal a lot that we don’t know, for some reason, I don’t really think that will be the case however.” Zero said with great confidence in his team, and hoping that they wouldn’t question what he said, since he didn’t have much of a clue what he was actually telling them.
“Zero, if we know so little about this man wouldn’t it just be better to wait until we had the flash drive decrypted. Then we would at least have a lead of some sort.” One of the agents said looking through a dark helmet.
“What is the problem with trying to look for something, even if we didn’t have much luck; it’s better than not looking at all. If we don’t look at all we have 0 chance of finding anything. If we look we may just hit a lucky break, in which case we would learn something and may be one step closer to finding his killer. And if we don’t find anything useful on the flash drive that means we’ll already be on our way to finding the killer even if we found nothing at all. Knowing where not to look can be just as important as knowing where to look.” He looked around the room with a lot of confidence, even though he didn’t think they would have any luck he knew he had to act his way through this so that they would have some confidence in him.
“What should we be looking for on the black market?” One of the larger agents asked.
“Look for anything Austrian. It seems that this was manufactured specifically in Austria," he said as he looked over the casing, looking at different markings on it. “Ok, so if we find anything than report back to me with any information you may have, dismissed.” He waited for all of them to leave. One of the agents remained sitting at the table. “You were dismissed.”
She stood, and lifted the visor on her helmet, “I know that I was dismissed, I’m not deaf you know, I just felt that I should talk to you in private about some of the men, I seem to have gotten to know them a lot better than the other men in your squad.” She looked at me until I realized just what she meant. “There are some things you should definitely know about some of your men. Three and Nine act about ten, acting on impulse rather than reason, and our former leader let them get away with it, I would suggest you don’t. Six is quiet, likes his space, and doesn’t work well with others, don’t make him, everyone after ten is too new for me to get to know, I am agent ten, you can call me ten, or red,” she said as she pulled her helmet off of her head and her long red hair flowed out, “most people call me red, I just seem to like it better.” She said as she winked at me, and then walked out of the room and replaced her helmet.
I had to think about what to do. Now that I know how much everything would change for me and how my life would work. Thankfully I had dropped out of High School, so I don’t really need to worry about school. My girlfriend however, not sure how she would work out in this, would I have time for her anymore, would I be able to tell her, would she even believe me. I sat down at the table, and pulled my head back and stared at the ceiling. I didn’t know what I could really do…
The room was full of people, merchants, all of whom were selling at least one illegal item, if not more.
“We’re here looking for a man,” the man with the shotgun announced. “If you help us out, this operation will not be disrupted, if you don’t it will be shut down. Now listen carefully, I’ll say it once, and only once. He’s a white man, about 200 pounds, probably ex military, and was looking for Austrian bullets, large bullets.” As he glanced around the room, he noticed a man slink off into the back door trying to escape the inquisition. “You! In the back, stop moving.” He stopped in his tracks, looked at us, and resumed his stride, quicker this time.
The silent partner jumped over the people grappling the ceiling with his blades and gliding towards the character in the back of the room. “Stop now!” He yelled calmly at the man, when the man did not listen, he began running through the people in the back of the room, and jumped over the man and stood in front of the door with the blades staring the man in the face. “What is your name?” He stared intensely at the man, “If you do not cooperate, we will shut down this entire operation, you gain nothing by not cooperating.”
“I gain my life.” The man looked at him and said with a hushed voice.
“No, you don’t.” He said, as he lifted the blades and walked towards the man until the blades were up against his neck. “It will be much less painful if you cooperate.”
“Kill me, get it done with, I do not fear you.” Those were the last words out of his mouth. Once the man said this the blades quickly sliced away the man’s trachea and killed him almost instantly. As this happened the man with the shotgun lifted his gun and began firing into the crowded room.
“Since no one else seems to know anything, all trading has stopped.”
The men in the room all dropped whatever they had and pulled out whatever measly weapons they had on them and began firing towards the man with the shotgun. The man with the shotgun fired off three rounds and then rolled over to where a table was set up, pulled the legs out so it was lying in front of him, placed the gun to the wooden table, and fired off shots.
As he was doing this the swordsman was dodging and blocking shots fired from the men in the room, as well as from his partner. With every jump off the ground another man would fall to his swords. And every shot that came out of the shotgun echoed loudly through the room as men fell to the ground, with large holes bored through them.
“We are done here.” The man with the shotgun said as he turned to walk out the door, and as the swordsman flung a blade through the air into the last surviving man who was preparing to put a bullet through his partner.
“Now, we are done. Shall we inform Zero of our findings?” The swords man asked as he sheathed his short blades.
“There is nothing to tell Zero, nothing was found to assist us, we only know that the man is greatly feared, most likely very influential,” He lifted his radio from his belt. “Agent four and seven reporting in, one black market ring was subdued and cleared. I suggest the building be torched to get rid of any evidence.”
“Copy Agent four, good to hear you got out ok.” Agent two responded back as he put in for a torch on the building where the two agents had just cleared out.
While setting up for the burn on the building Agent Zero swiftly walked through the doorway.
“Why are we setting up a burn on a perfectly good building?” Zero said as fiercely as the young man could bear to be.
“We need to dispose of the evidence.” Agent Two said calmly to him as if nothing important was even happening.
“With all this technology you can’t get rid of the evidence some other way? Cancel the burn, and recall Agents four and seven. I’ll need to talk with them.” He said as he left the room quite cross with a disdainful look across his face. “And tell them to get back here now!” He yelled as he exited the doorway.
“Agent four and seven, report in.” He called through his headset as he keyed in the cancelation code for the burn on the building.
“Agent four reporting in, as well as seven, what is it Two?”
“Zero wants you back here on the double; it seems he is nothing like his former self.”
“Oh great, this is going to be fun.”
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