Reaper/1

A Note from the Author....

I'm finally back! After tremendously painful writers block (I'm still writing Blood of Heroes) I decided to do something that I believe is truly a first in SC.org history. As the title suggests this not-so-short short story gives my take on the life of one of the newest Terran units, and also puts a pretty intriguing plot around it. So sit back, relax, and enjoy.

Reaper

The wind was howling extraordinarily loudly considering that it was nearly summer, though many remnants of spring clung in the breeze, as if hoping that the rush of air would not completely remove them for yet another year. It amounted to little more than white noise for Arturo as he lay in between two large outcroppings of rock that both sprouted out of the ground on either side of him like knives. His enormously bulky armor filled the space as a hand would a glove, giving him mere inches to shift around unless he felt a need to crawl backwards or forwards.

The voices of the other seven men huddled behind him were barely audible against the wind whipping through the two rocks like a wind tunnel. Arturo hardly needed to hear their voices to know what their discussion was about, since he had often been in one of the other reaper’s positions while one was in his, exposing him to the pre-battle anxiety that the squad always indulged in.

Arturo’s anxieties before their missions were never something that he had felt ashamed of, mostly because it wasn’t what normal humans would label it as. The missions themselves weren’t entirely normal either, which he had become quite accustomed to. His understanding that his unit would always be indulging in what they’d come to call “Suicide Raids” was something that dated back to his training at the Icehouse in the Torus system seven months ago today. Unpleasant didn’t even come close to defining the memories linked to that name, and so he rapidly refocused to the images in front of his eyes.

He adjusted the focus on his binoculars as he stared at two marines sitting atop another outcropping of rock several kilometers in the distance. One man bore binoculars of his own, aiming them down into the valley below them. The second lay beside him, obviously speaking to him through what were likely to be whispers as they waited. Had the wind been absent in this situation eerie silence would have fit the picture perfectly. Arturo was and had always been a man of action and down time wasn’t something he was particularly fond of, which he supposed had been beaten into him during his training.

The marine utilizing the binoculars suddenly stirred as if he had seen something, causing him to lift his body up to get a better view. After another moment he leaned over to the second soldier who then turned and seemed to look straight at Arturo. He made several cryptic hand motions, which prompted Arturo to respond with his own, before he began sliding backwards out of the rocks. As he reached the edge of the elevated platform he let his legs dangle off of it until he could squeeze his armored and muscular arms out of the crevasse. They then pushed his body the rest of the way and he landed on the ground several feet below roughly, though stably. The jet pack on his back jostled at the impact before he twisted around. Seven scarred and battered faces stared up at him, waiting for him to report.

“They’re moving—we’ve got four minutes.”

At those words the men began standing up to give their armaments a final inspection. Shade, the largest of the eight reapers and the present commander of their unit decided to refresh their memories on the briefing.

“Alright, we’ve got about a six minute window once the first shots are fired. After that period of time the fuckers will have been able to pull their pants back up and turn their asses around.”

It was only ever at the last minute preparation for a mission that Arturo wished he actually knew the real names of the reapers in his squad. It didn’t feel right that he’d never know anything more than the nicknames of the soldiers that would die today, though none of them could even remember their own real names anymore—the slave drivers at the Icehouse had made certain of that.

Arturo drew both of his gauss pistols, checked the magazines within them to ensure that all thirty-two slugs were present in each, before switching off both safeties. After holstering them the squad’s demolitionist—Fuse—asked the traditional question.

“We packing deuterium bombs?”

“Yes,” replied Shade, before turning to the stack of them that sat in the middle of the eight reapers. “I want three D-8 charges on each of you. Arturo, Fuse, Sunshine, Scar, and Flush—I want you placing bombs. Ace, Trigger, and I have execution duty. As usual there’s no air support, and no pickup.”

Arturo grabbed his D-8 bombs and carefully ensured none of them had been previously armed, before he attached them to his waist. Noting that his fuel level was still high enough to get through the upcoming minutes, he then moved quickly up against the wall beside the other reapers. Shade glanced at each of the seven men as if this was the last time he’d ever see any of them, due largely in part to the fact that he in all likelihood wouldn’t.

“Strike fast, and strike hard,” he muttered. “Move out!”

At those words all eight men moved rapidly to the edge of the cliff on which they were perched. Arturo clutched the jet pack’s control unit in his hand, before punching the red button. The rush of air and pressure against the top of his body caught him slightly off guard as it always did on the first boost. His strenuous hours of training allowed his mind to make the instant calculations needed for him to drop down onto each semi-level outcropping as if the jet pack was a feature of his own body, rather than an extension of his armor. Each reaper of the team made similar thrust-and-glide movements all the way down the steeply-sloped face of the valley wall.

Arturo made his final jump of approximately eleven feet, reversing the throttle at the last second to counteract gravity and give him a smooth, rather than a bone-breaking landing. His boots sunk several inches into the material that he landed in, which quite obviously wasn’t dirt, grass, or rock. It seemed somewhat strange to him that creep would have spread this far from a Zerg base, though that wasn’t something that he needed to be thinking about.

He waited the seven seconds until the others had also reached the valley floor, at which point they all began running toward the Zerg encampment in the center of the valley. As they ran each reaper drew his dual gauss pistols, before taking the cylindrical jet pack control unit and attaching it to their right pistol, allowing them to sustain their mobility along with their lethality. Once the eight soldiers had accomplished this they switched to lateral boosters and launched them, propelling the reapers at double their normal speeds whilst their strides swelled to twelve feet.

Through the organic Zerg structures ahead of them Arturo thought that he could barely make out the large army that had left their safe haven five minutes previously, likely en route to a Terran base in the region, though they would hardly have exited the valley before their own base came under attack.

As they came within one hundred yards of the Zerg base Arturo noticed something new and slightly comical. Sunken colonies had been placed between them and the base, which to a normal person meant that they’d wasted defenses on the side of their base that was protected by an impassable valley wall. To anyone familiar with the “Reaper” program, however, it was obvious that the Zerg had learned from past experience over the last week that the reapers posed a new threat. They just hadn’t learned enough.

“Use the colonies as a halfway point—split into pairs for each one!” ordered Shade through their single COM channel. “Ace and I will clear us an avenue!”

At those words all eight reapers split into groups of two and aimed for different sunken colonies. They’d all made this kind of maneuver before, though they’d not expected to need it today. Arturo moved within three feet of Fuse on his left, while enlarging the gap between himself and Ace by ten. His eyes then moved to the distance measure on his HUD that was currently measuring the distance between him and the nearest structure, which was presently his sunken colony. The eight reapers all hit the absolute edge of the colonies’ ranges at nearly the same instant, at which time they hit the throttle on their jet packs and launched upwards, yet still horizontally.

An enormous spine blossomed out of the ground moments after Arturo had left it, missing his foot by inches. His instincts told him at what point to cut the boosters as they were pushed to the limit and he glided down fast towards the actual structure of the sunken colony. He had been aiming for the thick ring that encircled it, and once he was within two feet of it he reversed his thrusters to cut some of his velocity. His left boot impacted his target, whose flexibility absorbed some of the force. As quickly as Arturo had landed, however, he was once again in the air, making the last leap. His thrusters provided a less than comfortable landing within the Zerg base, which was comprised mostly of hatcheries.

Seven other reapers landed around him, spurring him onto his job as he moved towards the front of the base. Behind him two of the sunken colonies exploded into brilliant flames against the fading light after the D-8 bombs Ace and Shade had dropped detonated.

“Fuse set up our parting gift!” Shade shouted as he, Ace, and Trigger began boosting themselves towards the mineral deposits.

As Arturo weaved rapidly between hatcheries he noticed movement beside him, and watched a zergling leap out towards him. Both beings were in midair as the Terran noticed the Zerg, and the former twisted around agilely and expertly before squeezing off several rounds with his right gauss pistol. By the time the slugs had pierced into its carapace Arturo had reignited his thrusters to counteract his now backwards motion, allowing him to make a stable landing backwards. He quickly slowed himself to a halt before firing several more shots into the twitching corpse.

“They left guards behind; watch yourselves!” Arturo announced over the COM channel before he heard several guns blazing at the other end of the compound.

Not even remotely considering what might be happening to the three soldiers that were attacking the base’s drones; he moved rapidly to the outer-most cluster of hatcheries and pulled a deuterium bomb from his waist.

“Most of the zerglings seemed to be with the drones. Set your timers to three minutes—the Zerg force is well on its way back by now!” Shade ordered.

Hearing that number Arturo punched it in on his detonator without even putting much conscious thought into it before throwing it into the midst of the larvae surrounding the hatcheries in front of him. As they began swarming the strange object he was already arming another bomb for another cluster, and once he had tossed that one he caught a glimpse of the returning Zerg force that they had initially waited on to depart.

“Zerg spotted—ETA one minute people!” Arturo shouted before turning back and moving on to his last hatchery cluster, which was dominated by a single Hive.

That was the target of his final D-8 charge, which he set to a mere two minutes in order to detonate with the previous two. He then moved back towards the area from which they had initially come, passing two of the other reapers as he went. Each of the four reported in once they were finished planting their bombs before moving to the fall back point in the base.

“Mutalisks incoming!” cried Sunshine.

Arturo turned his eyes to the sky as he moved quickly over the creep. Sure enough, he spotted their curved figures descending from the cover of the clouds upon their position.

“We need to move! Now!” Shade ordered. “Is our exit set!?”

Fuse acknowledged his commander before coming into sight behind Arturo as he left the forest of hatcheries. Ace, Trigger, and Shade were already at the first rally point along with Flush and Scar. Sunshine appeared off to Arturo’s left as he moved rapidly away from the extractors covering the vespene geysers. Much to Arturo’s surprise they erupted into an enormous fireball as Sunshine barely reached a safe distance. The detonation was sustained by the vespene gas as it continued to erupt out of the crater in the ground.

“Cutting it close?” Ace questioned as all eight reapers were reunited at what used to be the edge of the sunken colony’s range.

There was now an avenue nearly seven feet in width all the way through the defense perimeter that was now untouchable by the living sunken colonies since Shade and Ace had removed two of the more central ones.

Several poisonous glaives pelted the ground around the soldiers, prompting them to turn their arms to bear on the sky. All of them opened fire on the dive-bombing mutalisks in their own selective ways—most using their trained methods of burst fire while Trigger earned his nickname by unleashing a constant stream of slugs, and Ace earned his by picking off targets with single and double shots. All of this occurred as the reaper squad was moving rapidly away from the burning Zerg base as well as the falling glaives. The men kept as close to each other as they could while ensuring that none strayed into the kill zone of any living sunken colonies until they were far out of range.

At that point Arturo twisted his neck around so that his eyes could see the approaching swarm of Zerg reach the edges of their own burning base. They were clearly pursuing their attackers at this point, and now he couldn’t help but smile as his own D-8 bombs detonated in the front of the base, sealing in the vast majority of the army on one end.

“Trap them!” shouted Shade.

Arturo watched Fuse cease firing on the aerial pursuers long enough to draw a remote detonator from his belt. His thumb subsequently forced the prominent button down. The resulting display was courtesy of Fuse’s enhanced deuterium-8 bombs, which he commonly called D-9s. They created a line of fire as the blasts blew pieces of Zerg, hatcheries, and creep eighty feet into the air and carving craters that Fuse often bragged were twenty feet deep.

This event appeared to have absolutely shocked the Zerg, who then proceeded to halt at the barrier he’d created and move toward the center of the base to get out. At that point Scar and Flush’s charges simultaneously erupted throughout the base, creating a fireworks display that beat any mission they’d accomplished yet this week.

Fuse could be heard laughing as all eight reapers sped on with their weapons blazing into the darkening sky. Their self-carved exit was the same as their entry—up the most sloped of the valley walls. As it came closer and closer Arturo began noticing movement in front of them, and to his utter surprise mounds of creep and dirt began erupting out of the ground in front of them.

“What the hell is—” Sunshine interrupted himself as his eyes answered his own question.

Hydralisks were emerging from burrows in front of them, barring them from their escape.

“Shit!” Ace cried.

The darkness prevented the reapers from being able to see the Hydralisks rearing back until it was too late. Spines flew into the cluster of soldiers, peppering several of them. Arturo could barely register a thought at the sight of a spine impaling Scar’s faceplate and being wedged during its exit out of the other side when there was a massive explosion in front of him. The tremendous force of the blast completely overcame the jet pack on Arturo’s back propelling him forward. He was consequently sent end over end backwards before he slammed into the ground head-first and skidded to a halt.

Arturo’s senses were revived as he felt a spine hit the armor on his arm, carving a path through it as it went that included flesh as well as metal.

“Fuck!” he cried as he rapidly stood up, inspecting the landscape around him.

He saw all of the reapers on the ground surrounding a large crater, and he realized what had happened. A spine had hit someone’s fuel tank. A brief retracing of the previous events seemed to place Flush in front of him, which would most certainly mean he was now dead. Arturo opened fire on the line of hydralisks that had just completely fucked up the first mission that had a decent potential for survival. At the same time five of the remaining six reapers still on the ground managed to stand and began to do the same, whilst moving west to the only other valley wall that they could get to. Unfortunately it was substantially steeper than the first, and was going to provide scaling challenges.

“They set a fucking trap!” Fuse shouted angrily as more spines peppered the ground around them.

As they sped across the valley floor with the hydralisks in tow Arturo noticed one reaper—whose large stature seemed to identify him from behind as Trigger—had taken serious damage to his jet pack in the explosion. The right thruster seemed to have been knocked out, seeing as how only one jet of superheated fuel vapor streaked from his back. This was obviously causing him balance issues as he was forced to repeatedly land on his right leg with each stride and then push off in the opposite direction to keep him from veering right. Such an action in itself caused problems with the brain’s perception of balance, though Arturo was impressed with how he was handling it.

At their high speeds it only took the reduced and battered squad forty seconds to get close to the west valley wall. This was enough time for them to once again get their hopes up, though every hopeful thought was crushed at the sight of more hydralisks erupting out of the ground between their final option.

“Jesus Christ!” screamed Shade. “We’ve got to go through them! It’s our only shot!”

Pissed off at just how intelligent the Zerg had grown against the reapers’ somewhat unorthodox methods of attacking, Arturo ejected his mostly spent clips in both pistols before he loaded the final two. He had sixty-four rounds to plow himself a hole through the Zerg, which likely wouldn’t be enough. Unfortunately the reapers were within range before the hydralisks were, and so yet another volley of spines was launched into the group.

Being in the rear of the formation provided Arturo with some cover, while Trigger on the other hand took four spines across his chest. The light armor itself deflected one, which skidded off and flew backwards over Arturo’s head, while one penetrated into his ribs and the other went through his side, emerging on the opposite side. Arturo himself was hit in his thigh, which caused him an extraordinary amount of pain for all of two seconds. At that time a cocktail of synthetic adrenaline, pain killers, endorphins, and anti-toxins were injected through his suit’s life support system, instantly relieving the pain and giving him a sudden surge of energy.

Arturo suddenly opened fire on the line of hydralisks in front of them whilst Trigger fell slowly behind him, as did several other reapers who’d also taken hits. They all were filled with sudden bursts of energy moments later as their suits performed similar functions. Within seconds all six men were charging the creatures with their gauss pistols blazing and Ace—regardless of the three spines protruding from various points on his body—was still as accurate a marksman as ever. Hydralisks throughout the columns in front of them began crying out and crippling over as slug after slug blasted through their carapaces from twelve different weapons.

Arturo, who was now leading the squad, slammed into the Zerg line with his pistols firing, ramming one nearly down the first hydralisk’s throat before it was blasted backwards. He quickly began using their confused bodies as his stability, kicking off of them with every stride. The force he transferred into them at his velocity was enough to knock the beasts off balance, and if that didn’t do the trick, the five reapers behind him did. It took a mere twenty seconds for the squad to blast their way through the second-to-last barrier between them and safety, though it only brought them to the final challenge.

In the middle of an all-out adrenaline rush, fueled by his wounds and the endorphins flowing through him, he glanced at the fuel gauge on his arm and subconsciously noted that he didn’t have nearly enough fuel left to rocket up to the top of the steeper valley wall. The threat behind the soldiers was far too substantial for this to bear much influence, however, and so they proceeded to make their jumps up the wall with spines flying after them. Arturo seemed to take a back-seat to his actions, having a kind of out of body experience that he often encountered after having used his stimpacks. It seemed to him that his legs were bounding from outcropping to outcropping on their own intelligence. Spines peppered the valley wall around him and he felt little more than pressure as one entered the back of his shoulder allowing the current cocktail flowing through him to extend its duty.

At that same moment Arturo was whipped back to reality as his jet pack finally ran out of fuel. He had been midway to the final outcropping on the valley wall when it happened, causing him to halt his ascent and fall back down to the previous one. He grunted as he felt the spine in his shoulder get forced out the front, splattering his face with blood.

The jagged rock protruding from the wall provided Arturo with rather efficient cover from the hydralisks still firing below, and so it was at this point that he looked around in search of other surviving reapers. As he did this he realized that he couldn’t see any—the yellow light from their jet packs were absent, as were the cones emanating from their suits. The thought that his entire team could be dead bore very little weight on him as he glanced around—he’d lost many fellow reapers in battles before, and he had also been the lone survivor of several missions.

Noticing briefly that the spine volley seemed to have stopped, Arturo risked a look over the edge of the rock on which he was now perched. To his surprise he saw the light from a reaper’s combat armor shining up into the sky from the valley floor. Curiosity spurred him to pull out his binoculars from earlier, and he aimed them down towards the source of the light. After activating their night vision and adjusting the zoom, Arturo was shocked to see Trigger lying on the ground. Nearly a hundred hydralisks were surrounding him, and he was strangely still alive. His mouth was moving, and it made Arturo chuckle as he imagined what choice words he would have for the bastards as they moved in on him.

Arturo was well aware that he needed to use the distraction to get out of the valley, though as he was about to look away and leave Trigger to his inevitable fate, he noticed something in his hand, that he was now waving around. His memory was revived as he realized that it was a D-8 bomb; Trigger was the only reaper that had not used a single one of the three that he had armed himself with. Arturo couldn’t help but grin as he decided to wait a little longer. He noticed Trigger flick off all of the surrounding hydralisks, before his hand moved to the D-8 charge. There was a brilliant flash of light that escalated as first the initial charge detonated, followed by the two around his waist and finally the fuel canisters for his jet pack. Thirty feet in every direction of him was incinerated by the blast, and every other hydralisk in the vicinity was slammed to the ground by the force. The explosion nearly reached his height, and it was at that point that Arturo took the opportunity to begin climbing the rest of the way up the slope.

He reached the top before many of the hydralisks had even fully comprehended what had happened. Allowing himself to think briefly that he had survived yet again, he flung his battered body over the final ridge. It was here on the plateau that Arturo encountered familiar and friendly faces.



New Styrling had truly blossomed in the numerous years since Korhal IV had been consumed by the fires of nuclear weaponry and radiation. Buildings had risen out of the once toxic soil, and life once again flourished. Arcturus Mengsk’s baptism of the world as the capital of his Dominion was now old news, overshadowed by the violent and shocking demise of its first emperor. What the citizens of the Dominion’s worlds once embraced as a wonderful new order, perhaps only so by comparison to the corrupt Terran Confederacy, was now held in detest by many of them. Both civilians and government officials alike now shared in the thoughts that history was likely to repeat itself, and that the Dominion might soon be overthrown by yet another eager individual who presently lashed out at the common ideal. Jim Raynor, who had now become fabled for his resistance against the rapidly digressing government, was the present domestic issue fighting with the continuous Zerg infestation for time slots on the news. While few knew of his stances on what should replace the Dominion, many had little desire to, and wished to blindly battle against the corruption that was so inevitable an outcome due to the human nature of greed and ambition.

It was these unorganized thoughts that floated through the mind of Arnold Madison, the second emperor of the Terran Dominion. The initial stream of his mind’s conscious thought had originated at his eyes, which presently stared out over the capital city of New Styrling. The view from his office was truly spectacular, spanning the length of the city and giving it an absolutely glorious feel. He of course knew the truth—that the city was only as glorious as any other, and often times had many more problems.

Madison forced himself to stop with his wandering strains of thought and move back to the tasks at hand. The dark and often times brutal scheming that he had indulged in so as to achieve the position where he presently brooded had always been to place him in the ultimate position of power for many of his own purposes, though he never fully understood the complete bullshit that Mengsk had often had to deal with on an almost daily basis as the commander of an empire. Few things more glamorous than Arcturus’ dirty work and incomplete goals were left for Madison to clean up, though he couldn’t deny that his position brought some positives. The one thing that he had been fully aware of was the annoyance of the Zerg, which he almost constantly dealt with—being counseled by his top generals and staff on current situations and then making the ultimate decisions. It was another such situation that he currently resided over, and the same frustrations that had pushed him into pointless and wandering thought processes a minute ago returned to him.

The last four years had been strange times in the military world, as both Terran and Protoss were forced to adapt their weaponry against Kerrigan’s newest and deadliest mutations, which many suspected to be the result of a new strain of the assimilation virus. The newest hot zone in one of the fringe systems had seen more than its share of fighting, and it was only increasing now that the Dominion had introduced their reapers to the vicinity.

Madison’s thinking was suddenly disrupted by the opening of his office door.

“Sir, the reports have come in,” he stated plainly, seeming to be expecting dismissal.

“Bring them in,” Madison replied coldly.

The man obeyed, placing the papers on his desk and then moving back several feet, though not exiting. This action is what distinguished himself from every other employee in Madison’s administration, as this one man alone was trusted with Madison’s worst secrets. Blood relation had much to do with it, though in such a line of work even that was strange.

“Have you already read it?” asked Madison as he singled out a file from the stack of folders.

“I have.”

The emperor made a brief attempt at reading the man’s face so as to receive a hint of the debriefing’s contents, though when none could be discerned he opened the folder. After several seconds of scanning the page Madison calmly set it down before placing his hand across his face.

“Christ.”

“I’m sorry, sir” the man apologized nervously. “That assignment was the most dangerous we had available to give to any squad. I never expected any of them to survive.”

“I read over the God damn field reports of that base’s location—it looked like a fucking death trap!”

“I know, but reapers aren’t given any evac and are thus forced to create their own exit strategies. Perhaps if we moved him to another squad—”

“No!” shouted Madison angrily. “This little son of a bitch has now lasted seven months in the field as a reaper, which has never even been accomplished before! The whole damn point of that program is to dispose of the mistakes that come out of neural resocialization! I’ve covered every track left behind me since the murder of Arcturus except for this bastard, and I obviously made a mistake thinking that our own proven process could do what needed to be done to avoid the justice system and the possibility that something might come out!”

“Then what would you like me to do, sir?” questioned the man, clearly anxious to leave now.

“Use scenario Delta; make up a story for them, insert one of our operatives, and have him taken out.”



Arturo sat quietly on his own in a corner of the camp. It was far from silent between the voices moving back and forth behind him and the gun shots echoing from the field range. After every mission he always needed space to think about things alone. He was always happy to be around his fellow squad mates—especially the ones that he knew—but he could never feel happy after a fight. Such emotions obviously stemmed from the fact that in the last seven months he had not seen an entire team survive without one loss. Someone always died, and he’d come to accept that—his only price was his solitude to think about his life and wonder.

It had only been six weeks since he’d come to the realization of the likelihood that he had been resocialized. He was well aware that this realization was not something normal and as such did not advertise it—he’d spoken of it only once to a dying friend. Piecing it together was one thing, which was fairly simple from the broken memories in his mind that still had seams in them, though accepting it was entirely different. Arturo had always heard about the concept of rearranging one’s mind, and always thought it to be terrible. He never wanted it to be done to him—never realizing that it had been done. It was an incredibly awkward thing to know that there was probably a family out there, that thought their son—their husband—their father was dead.

“Hey,” a voice muttered behind him.

For once Arturo was happy to have his thoughts interrupted as Fuse took a seat next to him. He was out of his combat suit, just as Arturo was, allowing him to see the two bandaged locations on his right arm where he had been hit.

“I know you like to have some time to yourself after missions,” he muttered. “And I always try to respect that.”

“It’s alright,” Arturo replied. “I needed something to get my mind away from my past.”

Fuse paused for a moment at those words, as if wondering whether or not his new discussion would be preferred by Arturo to his previous train of thought.

“I know that you and Trigger were good friends. And I watched what happened just as you did. I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry about him, and that he wouldn’t have wanted to die any other way. He took more of the bastards with him than we ever will.”

“Thanks Fuse” Arturo said as he nodded his head in appreciation.

He nodded back with a weak, understanding smile before standing up and walking away. Fuse was the one man in the squad that had always been able to do that. Whenever someone died, he always gave his condolences to those closest to the deceased. That wasn’t a quality readily available in the military anymore, least of all in a combat unit as dangerous and rough as the reapers.

“Arturo!”

He twisted around at the sound of his name, and spotted Shade near the command center, beckoning him over. Arturo obeyed his commander and stood painfully, glancing briefly at his wounds before moving over in that direction.

“What’s happening now?” he questioned.

“We’ve got a new guy, and it’s your turn to feed him bullshit.”

Arturo scowled at the remembrance that it was his turn to show a new recruit around the unit. Then a thought occurred to him.

“Just one?” he asked after having passed Shade. “We lost three guys.”

He simply shrugged. “Ask command.”

It was unusual for them to receive only a partial fill for newly opened vacancies, especially in their line of work. It had only happened once before, which wasn’t very often considering that he’d been part of two hundred and thirty seven missions. Dismissing the line of thought Arturo put on an annoyed face, which didn’t make much change from his normal one.

“Arturo?” asked a soldier who had been doing the usual “Where the hell do I go?” circles in front of him.

“Yeah, you the new fish?”

“So I’ve been told,” replied the man, who wasn’t much taller than Sunshine.

“You got a name?”

“Most guys call me Hammer,” he continued, making Arturo chuckle.

“You better come up with something better than that, kid, or the squad’s gonna have a field day with you.”

The man grinned at those words, which were far from a joke considering his stature.

“Where the hell did you come from?” Arturo questioned at the smile.

“The Icehouse, like all your new recruits, why?”

“I’ve never seen anyone so happy after being freshly packaged out of there—they manage to suck just about every ounce of pleasure right out of you.”

What he said was most certainly true; in all his months of seeing new squad members, none were very pleasant at all, and he hadn’t been either when he was first released back into the real world. It was certainly a strange circumstance, though he thought little more of it.

The two men stopped in front of a fire, which the surviving members of Arturo’s reaper unit were sitting around.

“Ladies, this here is Jackass, our new recruit,” he announced, before leaning over and whispering to the new guy: “I usually feel bad for the shape most new reapers are in, but since you’re just as happy as could be I figure you can handle being thrown in with the sharks.”

At that Arturo pushed him into the center of the laughing men, who all seemed to be glad to have something other than their dead teammates to think about. It only took all of them ten minutes to have their fun with him, at which point Arturo interrupted the jokes and laughing, which were of course all at Jack’s expense.

“I suppose some formal introductions would be good at this point.”

Jack seemed more than happy to get out of the spotlight for a moment as he went and sat down next to Arturo.

“Aww, he likes you,” remarked Sunshine with a grin, causing Arturo to turn and look at him.

“This strapping young fellow,” procuring the finger from Sunshine and laughter from the others, “is Sunshine. Before you he was probably the happiest bastard in the squad, hence his name, although with you around he might have some competition. I’d tell you not to underestimate his height, but seeing as how you’re not much taller I would just avoid him altogether.”

Several of the men broke out laughing before Jack scowled at Arturo.

“Next we have the guy with his cute little goatee. Most of us call him Ace—a name that he has certainly earned. He brought down six guardians with single shots on his first mission out, and since the Air Force bastards only needed five to become an ace, we made him ours.”

Ace stood up and gave an exaggerated bow, pending laughter from Fuse.

“The big guy with the giggles over there is what passes for our squad’s demolitionist, even though none of us truly have combat specializations. Fuse has been happily wedded to his explosives since he joined us—even though he just calls it a hobby.”

“We can see through that bullshit,” Ace chuckled before Fuse hit him over the head.

“Fuse has enhanced his traditional D-8 bombs slightly, and has been trying to convince the military to upgrade for weeks,” Arturo continued.

“Can’t get the fuckers interested in a stable alternative,” said Fuse, procuring laughter from Sunshine.

“Stable?”

Fuse flicked him off before turning and looking back at Arturo.

“And that of course leaves only Shade, our squad’s commander,” muttered Arturo.

“How’d he get that gem of a name?” Jack questioned, speaking for the first time since the introductions started.

“Because we know almost nothing about him,” Sunshine responded. “He’s one helluva commander, but also has a pretty shady past.”

Several of the men nodded silently, as if all remembering their attempts at prying his past into the present, all of which had erupted into memorably unpleasant experiences. Arturo finally interrupted the silence as he stood.

“Well I should go and get Jack suited up.”

The happy mood had been efficiently drained from the small ring at this point, and so those who didn’t ignore the two of them said brief good byes, though no more jokes were cracked. Once they were a few steps away Jack spoke again.

“What happened with Shade?”

“It’s not something any of us need to relive and that includes me,” Arturo muttered

Silence floated between the two men for several minutes, before Arturo felt the need to lighten the mood.

“Anything new or interesting happening in the news lately?”

“Why? You don’t get news out here?”

“Nope,” Arturo answered. “The only information we get is by word of mouth, so we’re always on the lookout for more.

“Heard about Arcturus Mengsk’s death at his son’s hands?”

“Christ, of course,” said Arturo. “That happened what—eight months ago? I was still in the Icehouse when all that shit came out.

“A friend of mine got word to me that the son is being executed today,” Jack continued.

“Took them long enough.”

“I suspect they had to wade through the usual political bullshit first, considering the magnitude of the situation. And it’s all been under wraps of course, the Dominion hasn’t let the media have any coverage on any of it. Madison just released a statement today that the hearings were over.”

“Hey Joe,” Arturo suddenly interrupted as the two men stopped in front of a small building.

The man to whom he was speaking lifted the welding helmet from his face and turned away from the mechanical contraption that he had been working on.

“Arturo, Jesus,” the man muttered. “I thought you were dead!”

“I wish,” he responded with a chuckle.

“Seven months, wow,” continued Joe. “You’re a legend among reapers now.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ve been listening to that shit all morning. I need to get Jack suited up, think you’re up to the task?”

“I’ve probably got some spare armor around here somewhere,” Joe said. “By the way, let your team know that I fixed their suits.”

“What?” Arturo asked.

At his question Joe seemed to have a temporary lapse of thought. His face contorted briefly before he recovered, as if he’d caught himself from saying something.

“The others were having some static issues with their COM units so I had them checked out. Was yours having a problem?”

Arturo stopped to think for a moment, and certainly not about whether or not he’d experienced static lately. He then looked at Joe, who looked nervous.

“No, it’s fine,” he muttered. “I’ll let them know.”

“What was that about?” Jack whispered.

“I don’t know; something just doesn’t feel right. Meet us back over there when you’re done.”

Jack nodded as Arturo walked away quickly. That was probably one of the most awkward conversations he’d ever took part in, and couldn’t get Joe’s expression out of his head. He likely would have continued down this avenue of thought had he not turned the corner and run into the other four reapers of his squad exiting the briefing tent.

“Where were you?” Shade asked hotly.

“What?” Arturo questioned. “I told the guys I was taking Jack over to get suited up!”

The looks on Sunshine’s, Fuse’s, and Ace’s faces were next to unreadable, and all of them avoided eye contact.

“Sorry, man, we didn’t think about that,” Sunshine muttered.

Confusion didn’t even come close to defining the state of mind that Arturo was currently in.

“That was our briefing, command is sending us on some dumb ass scouting mission,” said Ace, though his usual tone of voice was absent.

“We’re moving out in ten; we’ll fill you in on the way,” said Shade.

Fuse walked past Arturo silently before turning the corner toward the equipment shack. As Sunshine began moving past Arturo grabbed his arm.

“What the hell is going on?” asked Arturo.

“Nothing man. The guys are just pissed that command is wasting our time on scouting.”

Arturo wanted to say more, though Sunshine had clearly had enough. He pushed right on past, and kept walking. Arturo had been pissed over worthless mission detail before; this wasn’t the same thing. As he watched the unit stalking away he found himself unable to remove the look on Fuse’s face from his mind. Something was wrong,



“It was like someone had died,” Arturo whispered, before shifting the weight of his jet pack on his back. “I haven’t seen the four of them like that since they were fresh out of the Icehouse for Christ sake.”

Jack shook his head, before looking at each of the four reapers ahead of them as they walked.

“I don’t know man. I saw it too when they were getting their gear.”

“It makes me nervous for some reason and I can’t even figure out why,” Arturo continued.

“Hold,” Shade ordered from up front.

In front of the six reapers stood a quiet little Terran town. It was small, though Arturo had certainly seen smaller. The skyline was dominated by mostly three and four story buildings, though in the center of town stood a structure that seemed eerily out of place, standing at nearly twelve stories in height.

“Alright, since two of you missed the briefing,” Shade paused to glare at both Jack and Arturo, “I’ll give a quick refresher. Seven hours ago command received a jumbled transmission that suggested the town was under attack. That was the final message received before all contact was lost. Now, as we all know, there’s plenty of Zerg activity in the area, and so they are presently suspected. That means that there will likely be some hostiles, along with a lot of dead citizens. Our mission is to confirm what actually happened here, and if hostiles are encountered we evac and radio in for the cavalry.”

“Certainly is the first time I’ve ever had cavalry there to back me up,” Arturo muttered.

The silence that followed was the most disturbing sign he’d encountered yet. There were no wise cracks, not even nods of agreement. Reapers were never given backup, but regardless of the uniqueness of the situation not a single soldier made a comment. It was almost like he’d been placed with another unit.

“Sunshine, you’re with me,” Shade said. “Fuse go with Ace, and Arturo take Jack. Each pair takes a different sector of the town, and I want situation reports within the hour. If you discover anything substantial before then report it over the COM channel.”

As Arturo checked his weapons he noticed something strange.

“You brought D-8 on a scouting mission?”

Fuse ignored him for a moment, clearly not realizing who Arturo had been talking to. After another moment Ace and Sunshine both looked at him, and so he looked up at Arturo, and then down at his waist.

“Oh, yeah,” he replied with a static monotone before an unnaturally long pause. “I’d rather be over prepared than under prepared.”

As Arturo glanced at them again he realized that they were unusually high up, almost to the point where they were around his chest. At such a height Fuse’s armor almost completely concealed them.

“Alright, let’s move,” Shade ordered.

There were several weak acknowledgements of the order, before the men began moving in separate directions. As Arturo and Jack peeled off from them he caught Fuse glaring at him, almost with a look of disappointment in his eyes.

“Hey,” Jack muttered beside him. “Get your mind on the mission; God knows what’s out here.”

Arturo forced his eyes back toward the sector that they were walking toward.

“Come on, the faster we get this done the better,” he said before he ignited the boosters on his jet pack.

Jack followed suit beside him, and the two reapers moved quickly over the remaining elevation in the terrain until they encountered a road that originated up in the hills, and went directly into town. It was fairly apparent that something wasn’t right from the moment that they passed the first buildings. The streets were absolutely deserted, and all of the windows were dark. If the sun wasn’t setting Arturo wouldn’t have found that so odd, though considering the obvious lack of light in the sky he did.

“Where are all of the cars?” Jack questioned as both men stopped and shut off their jet packs.

It wasn’t until he had mentioned it that Arturo really took a good look down the four lane street that appeared to go from one end of the town to the other. There wasn’t a vehicle in sight—not even a bicycle. After a moment of examining the pavement beneath him he once again turned his attention to the structures on either side of the road. They weren’t really free standing structures as was customary in a non-urban environment. Many of the buildings were connected, seemingly forming blocks, which were separated every so often by a small narrow alley.

“We should check some of the buildings,” Jack stated as he turned to look at the front door of a three story building in between two store windows, both of which were dark.

Arturo nodded and the two men walked over to the teak door. The wood was stained a rich brown, and made an echoing noise as his hand rapped on it. They waited for a moment, neither of them expecting anyone to answer, before Arturo tried the door knob.

“It’s locked,” he muttered, somewhat shocked.

“Survivors?”

Arturo bent down slightly and inspected the door, not finding any marks or signs that something had tried to get in. He banged on the door several more times.

“This is a Dominion scouting party! If anyone is alive in there open the door!”

Silence was all that responded to Arturo’s announcement. He glanced over at Jack, who subsequently nodded. Arturo switched the safety off of his left gauss pistol, before aiming it at the door and firing several rounds into the lock. He then raised his boot and slammed it into the wood, cracking parts of it and ultimately causing it to give way. The sudden opening revealed an empty stairway, which went up a flight and then disappeared around the corner.

“I’ll take point,” Arturo whispered as he switched on his suit’s lights and flicked the safety off of his second pistol.

He stepped clumsily over the door—making certain that his jet pack would fit through the opening—and began moving up the stairs one step at a time.

“Hello?” he asked.

Arturo glanced down to make certain that Jack was still behind him before emerging up on the top landing. It was a simple hallway, which wrapped around the staircase and ended on the other side. Several doors lined the walkway, each with different numbers. He turned to the first one, and hit the door several times.

“Is anyone in there?”

Now getting slightly annoyed, Arturo kicked the door in, revealing an apartment. The first room was evidently a living area, being dominated by a small couch facing a dusty, empty stand.

“Well isn’t this cozy,” Jack remarked from behind him.

Arturo ignored him and moved quickly into the bedroom adjacent to the living room. To his surprise, the bed was unmade. It almost appeared as though someone had just gotten out of it, though there was a large piece of conflicting evidence.

“Look at the dust,” he said, pointing at the bed.

Arturo moved into the room to allow Jack a better view.

“So?”

“There’s at least three weeks of dust on these sheets,” Arturo stated as he swept his gloved hand through the thick layer of it. “Shade said the transmission came through seven hours ago. And look at the drawers!”

He moved past Jack around to the other side of the bed where there was a desk full of opened drawers. Closer examination of them showed them to all be empty.

“Someone took the time to pull out everything and take it with them. If you were under attack, would you do that?”

“No,” Jack muttered as he shook his head. “So what are you saying?”

Arturo paused for a minute, looking back and forth at the bed and the desk as he realized what was happening.

“This town was evacuated weeks ago,” he whispered, more to himself than to Jack, before his eyes widened.

Both men turned their heads as something heavy dropped on the wooden door downstairs, and Arturo pushed past Jack into the small hallway. He reached the banister and looked down to where the door was before seeing the red numbers ticking on the detonator of a D-8 bomb.

Arturo’s mind had barely registered what it was and certainly not what it meant before he’d twisted his bulky frame around and ignited his jet pack’s boosters. Time seemed to slow as he saw Jack’s eyes widen in front of him at the sight of his squad mate accelerating dangerously fast right at him. A period of a second passed between the lighting of Arturo’s thrusters and his collision with Jack, after which time both men flew into the bedroom. They had hardly even touched the back wall when light erupted behind them and a deafening roar blasted past them as the bomb detonated, ripping through the small stairway and blasting into the open apartment door.

Arturo felt immense heat on his back moments before the floor gave way beneath them, sending them plummeting into a store below. Jack hit the floor first, with Arturo hitting him shortly thereafter. A large portion of the roof that had once been above them—along with pieces of the bed—came down on top of Arturo as small balls of flame rained down from above.

“What the FUCK was that!?” Jack cried from beneath him.

“D-8 bomb,” Arturo coughed before rolling off of his teammate.

He cringed as he did so, knowing full well that his back had been badly burned. The poor armor that reapers wore was finally catching up with him. It appeared that they were sitting in what had been a supply closet ten seconds earlier, though now all that remained of its walls were shattered stumps barely two feet in height. Several fires were now burning around them on the edge of an enormous spherical hole in the middle of the apartment building. Arturo realized with dread as he looked at the destruction that only enhanced deuterium bombs could have caused it.

“Jesus,” Jack groaned as he stood up allowing the rubble to separate from his armor.

Gunfire suddenly lanced the wall behind Arturo, causing him to drop down on top of Jack again. Dust showered them as more slugs flew through what remained of the glass storefront.

“Who the hell is that!?”

“It’s our own fucking squad!” Arturo yelled as he lifted onto his hands and knees and started crawling farther back into the store. “Come on!”

Jack was muttering inaudible things behind him as he was dragged along with wall fragments raining down over them. Arturo moved around a corner and saw what he had been praying for—a back door.

Whatever understanding he thought he’d had previously had been obliterated with the bomb. His own damn squad was now trying to kill him for God knows what reasons. He put his thoughts on hold as he reached the door and kicked it open. Glancing behind him briefly to make certain that Jack was still breathing he started out into the alley on the other side. Gunfire forced him back inside almost immediately as he felt a slug whistle past his ear. He attempted to ignore his heart pounding in his throat as he slid his visor back up, only to realize it had been cracked in the fall.

“Jack!” Arturo cried. “I need you lucid!”

“Okay, what!?”

“We’ve got a reaper at the end of the alley! I’m going to give us some covering fire to get us into that door across from us!”

Jack acknowledged the order as Arturo pulled out both gauss pistols and hooked the jet pack’s controls up to his right one.

“Ready!?”

Before Jack could even respond Arturo watched as another D-8 rolled to the floor behind them. He subsequently grabbed Jack’s arm, twisted to face the door across from them, and slammed his finger down on the button. Both men rocketed across the alleyway as the charge ignited behind them and something stung Arturo’s side. His brain had hardly been able to register pain when his body slammed into the door going fifteen miles per hour. The explosion in the previous store augmented their speed as the door’s hinges gave way easily and the two reapers went flying into a counter.

“Holy fuck!” Jack cried breathlessly as Arturo scaled the counter and dropped down on the other side.

The new building was most identifiably a bar judging by the large numbers of bottles containing liquor behind the counter. Arturo glanced down at his side, which was bleeding.

“Get your ass back here!”

Jack obeyed as Arturo found a rag behind the bar and stuffed it between his armor. From what he could see the bullet appeared to have passed right through his side, though with the stimpack already at work he couldn’t be certain.

“Are you hurt?” Arturo asked.

“How the fuck should I know!? I have so much adrenaline pumping through me I can hardly think!”

The last several words of his reply were lost as the glass in the front window shattered and more rounds began slamming into the wall behind the bar. Arturo swore as he started moving again whilst the liquor bottles on the bar began exploding. As the two men moved around the edge of the bar another back door came into sight, along with a staircase. Assuming a similar situation would be awaiting them in the alley again, Arturo opted for height.

“Take the stairs!” he shouted as he stood briefly and dove onto them.

He felt bullets narrowly miss him yet again and he quickly moved to provide Jack with some room. He followed suit shortly thereafter and they scrambled upward until they reached a door. It led into another hallway, which was eerily familiar to the first apartment building they’d entered. It was lined with doors, which Arturo then proceeded to attempt to open one after another. The third one was unlocked, and so both men quickly moved in.

After shutting and locking the door, Arturo had a moment to think. The room that they had walked into was a one room studio, dominated by a bed in one corner and a desk in the other. A window overlooking the street was placed over the desk, and another peering into the alley was above the bed.

“Why the hell are they trying to kill us?” whispered Jack.

“Do you want me to go down there and ask them!?” Arturo shot back angrily.

That silenced Jack, though it revived Arturo’s memory. He quickly turned on his COM unit to the reapers’ only channel and started talking.

“Shade!” he said furiously. “What the fuck are you doing? We’re on the same side!”

“No, we’re not,” he replied. “You made certain of that.”

“What?” Arturo asked in complete confusion.

“I don’t have anything more to say to you.”

Jack gave a quizzical look to Arturo as Shade finished.

“Shade!”

Only silence followed, until holes erupted in the door. Jack was able to drop down to the floor seconds before slugs filled the air where he had been. For the first time Arturo actually opened fire, peppering the door in return and then moving onto the wall beside it. Silence followed for a moment once Arturo’s clip was empty, and then there was a thud outside the door.

Breathing heavily, he reloaded his right pistol and then allowed it to rejoin his left in the air, prepared to fire. Several more seconds yielded nothing new, and so he took a step toward the door. Every few seconds he would take another step, until he finally reached the door and pried it open. On the right side of it was Sunshine, bleeding badly.

Jack and Arturo both frantically hauled the reaper into the room, before the former shut the door, regardless of its present shape.

“Sunshine!” Arturo muttered.

The soldier convulsed momentarily before coughing up blood. He’d been hit four times, though his armor appeared to have taken six more.

“Get awa-away from me you s-son of a bitch!” he choked.

“What the hell are you doing Sunshine!?” Arturo questioned.

“Killing a-a traitor you mother fucker!”

“What?” asked Arturo in shock.

“We know w-what you d-did,” he stammered as more blood began flowing from his lips. “That y-you gave us the g-go ahead ev-ven though the scouts said to c-call it off. And th-that you rigged F-Flush’s fuel tank to blow, and how you d-did the s-same to Trigger!”

As Sunshine choked out his final dying breaths Arturo stood slowly, before reactivating his COM.

“So that’s what it’s all about? That’s why we’re trying to kill each other?” Arturo said as anger began mounting inside him again. “Someone fed you all a load of complete fucking bullshit and you ate it up!? Why the fuck would I intentionally try to get myself killed!? Or kill Flush, or even Trigger!? Christ Fuse, you said you saw him die; you know what happened! He blew his own D-8s to take as many Zerg with him as he could! Why the fuck are you believing any of this!?”

Silence was all that could be heard in the room after Arturo ceased speaking. Just as he was about to add something else, however, there was a voice below them. Both men looked down at Sunshine, and then at the COM link attached to his helmet.

“He’s trying to lie his way out now,” said Shade angrily. “Move around the back of the building, see if we can flush them out!”

Confusion once again gripped Arturo as he touched his own COM unit and then looked back at Sunshine’s. The reapers’ suits only had the capacity for a single channel, and yet Sunshine had two. Revelation struck him all at once, and he was almost forced to sit back as he made a small connection.

“Joe was adding a second COM channel to their devices,” Arturo whispered. “That’s why he had their suits.”

Jack’s eyes widened as he heard this, also understanding. Arturo then bent down and carefully removed Sunshine’s COM unit and disconnected the cables.

“What are you doing?” Jack asked.

“Giving us an edge.”

As he said it Arturo ripped his own COM unit from his helmet and dropped it on the floor, before he attached Sunshine’s. There was a sudden sound outside in the hallway, prompting him to pick up both pistols. He moved quickly to the window over the bed before firing several rounds though it and into the window across the alley until both had shattered.

“What was that?” he heard Ace ask over the second COM channel.

“Jump to the next building,” Arturo ordered Jack before receiving a confused look. “NOW!”

As he rapidly obeyed more gunfire lanced through the walls, and Arturo hurried after him. He gunned his boosters as he was midway over the alley, spotting Ace briefly before he entered the new building. Slugs followed them as Arturo twisted around to see Shade standing over Sunshine’s body. He had continued to fire, forcing both Jack and Arturo to scramble out of the way. Barely thinking of the consequences, Arturo then dove back into the line of fire and returned his own, which wasn’t aimed at Shade, who was now moving behind cover.

Instead the rounds managed to find Sunshine’s exposed fuel tank, which subsequently blossomed into brilliant fire. Shade was blasted out of sight as the explosion tore through the apartment’s roof and mushroomed out of the open window.

“Jesus!” Jack cried. “Nice shot!”

Had Arturo not spent the past several weeks fighting for the man that he’d likely just killed he might have felt some happiness at the lucky shot.

“Shade’s down! Shade’s down!” Fuse cried over the COM channel.

“Forget him,” Ace returned. “Arturo is on the move!”

Arturo was slightly shocked by the tone of Ace’s voice, which didn’t seem at all calm, as it usually was even in the most intense situations. Upon thinking about Ace’s words, however, Arturo decided that sounded like a good idea. He quickly forced Jack to get up and the two of them began moving through the attic that they had landed in, before reaching the end. A small staircase lead down to the second floor, which they descended rapidly.

“What the hell are we doing?” Jack questioned.

“We’ve got to get the fuck out of this town,” Arturo muttered. “And I don’t want to have to kill the other two.”

“Are you shitting me!?”

Arturo stopped to look at Jack.

“These guys are trying to fucking kill us and you won’t want to kill them!?”

At those words Arturo grabbed Jack’s armor and slammed him up against a wall.

“I’ve bled with these men for the past three months! They’re the closest thing I’ve ever had to a family and someone is clearly putting bullshit into their heads; so no, I don’t want to kill them!”

As Arturo let him go and moved away Jack remained for a moment; almost stunned. Arturo walked to the corner of the new room that they had entered before he froze. He placed his finger on his lips as Jack opened his mouth to talk, and then he heard it too: someone was walking around below them. Jack lifted his left leg and moved it several feet, placing it down on the wood flooring. As luck would have it the plank emitted a long, loud groan. Within an instant of the sound Arturo dove toward the edge of the room, quite close to a window.

Luckily the entire room was empty, although obstacles would have been useful when bullets began blasting through the floor an instant later. The firing stopped shortly thereafter, at which time Arturo risked a glance out of the window at the street below. He noticed that they were now only a block away from the twelve story structure shortly before he heard the glass in the window directly behind him breaking. Jack was shouting his name by the time he twisted around to see a D-8 charge not fifteen feet from him.

Arturo barely even had a chance to think before the bomb detonated right in front of his eyes. For the first time he got to see how it happened—got to watch the chain reaction from detonator to charge. It happened almost in slow motion, and before he knew it he had been enveloped by flames. The force of the explosion blasted Arturo out of the window behind him and down two stories to the ground. At this point life sped back up to real time and he observed as the cloud of smoke enveloped the large structure that now had a large amount of open air space.

As he laid there Arturo realized that it had not been one of Fuse’s bombs, because if it had been the entire building would be leveled and he would have been incinerated. Instead he was on the ground with a high likelihood of broken bones and second degree burns on his face. Somewhat comically he would have never known, however, since the cocktail circulating through his bloodstream was still hard at work. He began to move when he heard a very familiar voice.

“Don’t,” Ace cautioned.

Looking up again, Arturo spotted his former squad mate standing at the opening of the now-burning building. Not wanting to get Ace jumpy, Arturo raised his arms.

“Don’t do this man,” he pleaded. “You know that this is all bullshit!”

There was a brief silence as Ace seemed to consider this. During this moment Arturo spotted Fuse up on the second floor above Ace, where the deuterium charge had gone off thirty seconds before. He glanced down at Arturo, and then over at Ace with an unreadable expression as he waited for the verdict.

“I’m sorry.”

Arturo jolted as gunfire erupted, though to his shock he didn’t watch the bullets blast through his own body, but through Ace’s. They went through his back and out the front, moving in a downward path from his right shoulder to his waist. It was at this point that one of them managed to hit a D-8 bomb still on him.

Ace was gone in an instant—he was replaced by a fireball that grew exponentially in size as first one, then two D-8 bombs exploded, followed by the fuel tank on his jet pack. The entire building that he had been standing in completely disintegrated, and Fuse fell screaming into the burning debris as portions of the two buildings around it collapsed in on themselves. Arturo could do little else than watch in horror as the last two members of his team were swallowed by fire.

“Arturo,” a voice groaned over the first COM channel.

“Jack?” he asked.

“Yeah; Jesus what happened?”

“When you shot Ace you hit his D-8 charges and set them off—where are you?”

“I was in the back of the house when it happened. The blast blew me clear out the back door and into the alley. I’m coming around now, stay put.”

Arturo obeyed his friend’s request as he struggled to sit up. The entire time he found himself unable to remove his eyes from the crater twenty feet in front of him. After a minute he zoomed out and actually twisted his head around to look at the town. Fires were now burning in several areas, marking the path that he and Jack had taken. The flames blazed brilliantly against the night sky.

A large piece of debris toppled over from one of the side buildings suddenly and Jack slid down the heap of wreckage. He was a mess—almost all of his combat suit was now charred, and his faceplate had been seriously cracked. Once he reached Arturo he offered him a hand, which he gladly accepted as he stiffly got to his feet.

“Thank you so much,” Arturo whispered.

“Come on,” Jack muttered. “Let’s get inside.”

The two men then limped together across the street to the twelve story building. It really did seem tall when standing at the base of it, especially around structures that were substantially smaller than it was. Jack smashed the glass on one of the automatic sliding doors since, being locked, they didn’t slide open. Their two lights illuminated the simple lobby fairly well, although it was still quite dark.

“Hang here, I’ll try to find some lights so we can think.”

Arturo gladly obeyed and moved over to one of the lobby’s four supporting columns before sliding to the floor. It only took Jack a minute to find a panel behind the security desk, and so the room’s lights flickered to life. In the better illumination it was easier to see just how plain the area was. Aside from the security desk and the columns it was empty. Two hallways branched off on either side of the desk, one labeled as leading to the elevators, and one to offices. The light panel that Jack had activated only lit up the lobby, causing there to be a barrier of darkness a few feet down each hallway, which seemed quite creepy.

“Christ this is a mess,” Arturo muttered as Jack walked over to him.

“No shit. Where do we go from here?”

“I have no idea,” Arturo whispered. “Someone in command obviously wants me dead, so I can’t go back there.”

He stood up suddenly, seeming to startle Jack.

“Fuck.”

Jack eyed him closely as he paced back and forth, before he turned and looked at him.

“I never even found out why you ended up on my side,” Arturo said before turning back toward the door that they had entered through.

He spent a moment staring at the broken glass, half expecting an answer, though not the one that he received.

“I didn’t.”

Jack’s tone of voice changed completely when he said it and Arturo turned around, not fully comprehending what he said until he saw the barrel of a gauss pistol pointed in his face.

“Jack?” he asked nervously. “What the hell are you doing?”

“My job,” he replied without emotion.

Arturo glared into his eyes in complete disbelief.

“But…my team….You helped me kill them!”

“Of course,” Jack started. “My assignment was to terminate you, and due to their proximity to you, your team. I deemed it easier to help you eliminate your team first considering the circumstances at the time, and now that we’re alone, I’ll deal with you.”

Before Arturo even realized what he was doing, he took two steps forward and shifted his head as Jack fired. He then grabbed the pistol and twisted his arm around until he’d broken Jack’s wrist. At that point he groaned and dropped the pistol to the floor, though Arturo kept twisting. Bones audibly cracked until Jack had been forced onto the ground, at which point Arturo kicked away the pistol, fell onto his chest, and placed his hands around his neck.

“You two faced mother fucker!” he cried.

“Wait!” Jack choked.

“Why the fuck should I wait another second for you!?” Arturo screamed.

“Your…your name!”

“I know my fucking name! It’s Arturo you son of a bitch!”

“That’s your first…I know your last.”

“Oh really? Then what is it asshole?”

“….Mengsk”

The grin that was plastered across Arturo’s face a second before completely vanished. Nearly a hundred images flickered through his mind in an instant, and he released Jack.

“The son and murderer of Arcturus Mengsk,” he murmured as a smile crept across his lips. “Is it all making sense now? Never wondered why we only let you into basic military outposts, and never sent you anywhere near a populated area? You’ve only ever been around resocialized convicts, so it would be hard for anyone to have ever recognized you.”

Jack took the opportunity and punched Arturo in the jaw, sending him sprawling backwards. He hardly even moved after skidding to a halt. He was in a state of shock.

“Madison decided to ship you off to the “Reaper” program after you murdered your father, though not before you were resocialized. He knew that by doing that he could keep you out of a legal system that had the potential to bring out some fairly ugly things—and with the enormous death rate in the program he assumed the missions would do the job that the gas chamber could. I must admit you’ve proved to be quite a skilled combatant, and have thus broken every record the Reaper Corps has to offer.”

By this point Jack was back on his feet, and had drawn his second gauss pistol from his belt. He aimed it once more at Arturo, who was now finally regaining some sense, though his eyes still were glazed over. Jack grinned suddenly.

“When I told you earlier that Madison declared you were to be put to death today I was telling the truth,” said Jack. “What I didn’t tell you was that I’m the executioner.”

At that instant gunfire erupted, and Arturo was jolted from his trance. He looked down, expecting to see blood flying everywhere, but instead saw Jack slip to the floor with two holes in his left shoulder. Looking up, Arturo saw a burnt and battered Fuse standing at the door, with his gauss pistol in hand.

“You slimy mother fucker,” he spat. “This whole fucking time you’ve been playing all of us!”

To Arturo’s shock this comment was not directed at him, but at Jack.

“I bet you helped make up that bullshit story on Arturo too, didn’t you!?”

Jack continued to sprawl around on the floor and Fuse came closer and closer until he was practically on top of the man. As soon as Fuse stopped, Jack did as well.

“Get up you piece of shit!”

Jack remained still until Fuse bent down, at which point he suddenly twisted around and brought the muzzle of his gauss pistol to the armor over Fuse’s stomach. He squeezed the trigger and the first two rounds were caught by the armor. The third, fourth, and fifth rounds, however, blasted clear through his abdomen.

“NO!” Arturo screamed as he scrambled to his feet and moved at Jack.

The latter was unfortunately faster, slamming the pistol into his forehead as he flung Fuse to the ground. The force of impact caused Arturo to flip in the air before coming down on his neck.

“Pathetic,” Jack muttered as he threw Fuse’s gauss pistol out into the dark night.

He then moved swiftly over to Arturo and kicked him square in the face. He grunted in pain, allowing Jack time to remove both of Arturo’s weapons before placing them in his own holsters. Jack squeezed the trigger on his own lightly, allowing one shot to blast into Arturo’s knee cap.

“It really is amazing how much you managed to clean things up for me tonight,” Jack said over Arturo’s screams.

He grabbed Fuse, who was now bleeding profusely, and froze, noticing the one remaining D-8 charge on his waist. Jack smiled as he removed it and tossed it on the floor before sliding him next to the security desk.

“Thanks to you, every one of your squad members was essentially disintegrated through a blast, leaving hardly any trace that anyone was ever here. Once the fires have all burned out tomorrow the military will move in and sort through the wreckage. Conveniently for Mr. Madison, there will be nothing to find.”

As he said these words he dragged the writhing Arturo next to Fuse, who was losing consciousness and blood. Jack then proceeded to pick up the D-8 charge, and began arming it. Arturo did his best to block out the pain, knowing that he had to do something. He looked around frantically for anything that could help them. After a moment he spotted something that got his adrenaline pumping again—it was the gun from earlier. When he had kicked it away from Jack initially it had slid back behind the security desk. It was out of his reach.

Running thin on options very rapidly, Arturo managed to sit himself up against the back wall beside Fuse. He attracted the attention of Jack briefly, though he then finished arming the charge. As he was about to place it on the nearest column, Fuse spoke.

“You’re forgetting one thing, Jackass,” he spat with what was easily a grin. “That’s not D-8—it’s D-9.”

The very instant Fuse had ceased speaking Arturo lunged for the gun, knowing full well that if he didn’t reach it they were both dead. For once luck was on his side, and his fingers closed around it. By the time Arturo had brought it to bear on the other side of the security desk Jack was already pointing his own pistol right at him. There was a single shot, and then time seemed to freeze.

Arturo honestly didn’t know if it had been him or Jack that had gotten the shot off first, but that question was solved an instant later. Time suddenly sped up, and in front of him the D-9 charge erupted into glorious flames. They engulfed both the column and Jack as Arturo slid in an effort to grab Fuse. He managed to pull him behind it with not a second to spare.

The explosion erupted in front of them as two entire floors above the charge were incinerated. The enormous security desk was bent backwards by the sheer force, and flames lashed over them into the wall. At that point Arturo shut his eyes and prayed for the first time in his life.

The roaring stopped six seconds later, and was replaced by a loud rumble as the building began to shake.

“Fuse!”

Arturo’s friend laid unmoving next to him. Several ceiling panels fell to the floor as Arturo tried to shake him awake.

“Wake up God damnit! We’ve got to get out of here!”

To his great relief there was a response. After a moment Fuse moved his head slightly as if he was trying to lift it. Arturo assisted by flipping him onto his back.

“Fuse!” he cried. “Come on!”

“You’ve got….” Choked Fuse. “You’ve got to…to go without me.”

“I’m not fucking leaving you damnit!”

“Please…just go….”

Arturo grabbed Fuse at that point and began to drag him.

“No!” he shouted more clearly than any of his previous words. “Leave me here Arturo! Get out!”

Arturo couldn’t take his eyes off of the man that had saved him. From the moment that he’d been told the lie that his friend was a traitor he had not wanted to believe it. Arturo had seen it in his eyes every time they glanced at each other. And now he was dying.

A portion of the roof collapsed on the other side of the security desk, prompting Arturo to stand once again, and start moving away.

“Arturo, I’m sorry,” Fuse whispered, too quietly for it to be audible as his squad mate backed away.

Arturo limped from the building painfully as the final column supporting the lobby splintered and sundered. As soon as it had the entire lobby was violently crushed by the floor above it as it slid downwards. Every one of the twelve floors shifted, causing them to pancake on top of each other and buckle under the weight. Arturo moved frantically to a safe distance as he watched the top of the building sway and finally pick the side on which it toppled, birthing a massive cloud of ash, dust, and smoke.

It took only twenty minutes for Arturo to mass a large amount of medical supplies, at which point he sat down in the street to watch the buildings burn. He carefully tended to each of his many wounds, all the while thinking. He had an identity now. It wasn’t a good one—wasn’t even one that fully existed anymore—but it was a start. There were still pieces missing; Jack hadn’t filled in all of the holes. The more he thought about it, however, the less that bothered him. He had to find Madison, of that he was certain. Arturo didn’t like the future that he now had in store for him, though he felt that he could accept it. For Seven months he’d survived Zerg, Terrans, and even his own unit. Now he had a different enemy; that was obvious.

As he finished wrapping the wound on his knee he did his best to stand up, before taking one last look at the flames before him. He watched them move back and forth, almost as if dancing, and he smiled.

“I am Arturo Mengsk,” he muttered. “And I am a Reaper.”