Black Silence 2
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Black Silence
File 2: Objective
Cole had a hard time sleeping, even on the plane full of others. Carla sat next to him feigning sleep, but he knew she was awake, only because she noted herself that she did not sleep. Cole tried to close his eyes but each time he did he had to open them again to make sure that Carla was still in her seat. Besides the fact that when he began to drift off to sleep he had images of her turning into one of those undead horrors and trying consume him.
Cole summarize that even though he had been born after the so called apocalypse, the news video footage that he had watched showed what horrid monsters the carriers were. Cole had to review his life, born to a same species parentage he had been raised in relative safety, all he knew was that his parents were in their teens and they had survived on wits and swift legs alone.
Then one day there were explosions in the air and suddenly all the carriers outside fell to the ground inert. They emerged from hiding and wandered together for nearly three months before they were found and taken care of. Then when the world began to rebuild his mother became pregnant with him.
Again Cole looked over his shoulder to Carla and saw her ear twitch indicating she was listening. Slowly she opened her eyes and looked to him.
"Yes dear?" Carla said in mock sweetness only to preserve their cover.
"I... can't sleep." Cole said uncomfortably.
"Hey don't worry I won't bite... hard." Carla said it if it was a joke and Cole gave a nervous and throaty chuckle and turned back over. Cole just hoped that the plane would land soon.
When they finally landed in China they had to stop at a shop to buy something for Carla to eat, then hailing a taxi they got to their hotel room. Once inside they set down their things Cole starting to get a bit nervous as he heard Carla munching away on the candy that she had brought, it had been nearly two pounds of jelly beans.
"Do you even stop to taste those?" Cole asked trying to take his weary mind off the fact that there was a once dead being standing behind him.
"Do I need to?" Carla said popping another piece into her mouth. She then held out her hand to him cupped with some of the candy. "Jelly bean?"
"N-no thanks I... I just need to get some rest." Cole said and lay back on the bed and sighed staring up at the ceiling. Carla arched a brow then gave a sympathetic look.
"I... I understand you're afraid of me... I'll go and take a walk and come back when our mission is ready to start." Carla's expression softened and then she tossed her keys on the bed. "Just be sure to let me back in ok? Cole suddenly felt bad but he nodded knowing that this might be the only way he would get any sleep. Without another word Carla walked out the door and the lock clicked closed behind her.
Cole walked to the door and gently tested the doorknob to confirm it was locked then he lay on the bed and closed his eyes.
Carla walked a short distance down the hallway and then leaned up against the wall with a sigh. She looked at the palm of her right hand and then ran it through her hair trying not to feel hurt. Carla then decided she would sow her sorrows by eating, of course if she were her previous uninfected self she would have been disgusted with the thought of consuming gross amounts of food over stupid feelings. But now, she decided that she would try and find an all-you-could-eat buffet and drown her feelings by giving into her hunger.
It wasn't that hard to find one and for a relatively small amount of Renminbi, Chinese currency, Carla was able to give into her hunger. She was consuming food in little bits for four hours straight before she finally was approached by the restaurant manager who politely kicked her out after she paid them.
Carla only smiled to herself recalling how she had done the same in so many other places. Then she went out shopping a bit looking for clothes and little souvenirs to take back home with her.
Cole awoke feeling relatively refreshed and this time the nightmares had not come. He now thought it over, talk about a turn around, he discerned that maybe they both owed each other an apology and that they really needed to more or less needed to get along. He looked at his watch and noted that Carla would be returning soon, so he got up and got dressed.
There was a knock at the door and Cole walked cautiously over to look through the peephole. Outside stood Carla with a half dozen bags in her arms; Cole opened the door to let her in.
"Can I help with any of those?" Cole offered.
"Sure, here hold this..." Carla said and unceremoniously gave Cole two of the bags. He took them to the bed and set them down carefully as Carla set down the rest of the packages.
"Hey... umm look I know that we got off to a bad start..." Cole said trying to sound honest. "I mean I know that you are trying to distance yourself from others so that you don't hurt them, and I know it was a bit insensitive of me not to try and talk about your condition with you. You said I was a nice guy and well... I didn't act very nice I mean your living so you deserve that respect. I'm sorry if I said I saw you as a monster and not a being."
Cole looked down at the floor and Carla stood there unmoving only her tail seemed to swish from side to side in thought. Finally she turned to him with a half hearted smile.
"Its ok, the rest of the C.O.A.T. personal who know what I am are afraid of me as well. Don't loose sleep over me Cole, I'm a long way from one of those horrid creatures that ate flesh many years ago... in fact I don't know if I ever even tasted someone else's flesh, I might have unknowingly done it as a carrier before I became aware. But believe me now when I say the thought of consuming another sentient being makes my stomach turn inside out."
Cole saw by Carla's face that she meant it. Carla did seem to be absolutely harmless in that way and he had seem her eat real food.
"I... believe you." Cole said smiled lopsidedly.
"I can make you believe me..." Carla said walking up to him, Cole did not attempt to draw back and Carla grabbed him by the head and planted a gentle little dry kiss on his cheek and then pulled back with a charming smile. Cole was ever so tempted to return the gesture, he began to lean forward and this time Carla pulled back.
"Careful there, I still carry the compound... any mouth to mouth contact might result in you becoming a carrier too... unless you're vaccinated." Carla said gently placing a finger on Cole's lips. Cole thought about it, did they vaccinate him? He remembered only getting the very basic of shots. He could not recall if he had been vaccinated with the anti-gen. Cole nodded in understanding and pulled back but still smiled to her.
"Well what about... ahem... you know?" Cole said wiggling his eyebrows. "Will that also infect me with the compound?"
Carla tilted her head ignoring his innuendo. "I... I really don't know... I don't think that it was blood transmittable..."
"Yet... better to be safe than sorry." Cole finished
"Exactly." Carla said and stepped back from him.
For the next hour they got ready for their next objective which was to meet their contact here in the orient then extract. This area of the world was much rougher than normal so Carla decided to take along ‘the twins' which were a pair of modified MP5-Ks that were attached to a special harness which she wore under a long coat. The harness held spring loaded aircraft cable which would pull the two sub-machine guns back behind Carla when not in use and when she pulled them forward would remain taunt to stabilize recoil.
Carla let Cole tug on one to see if it was working properly. Cole found that it took him both hands pull one of the guns free, he examined the weapon with a slight struggle. It had standard iron sights and a thumb operated green laser targeting pointer.
"Darn! What's the pull on those cable springs?" Cole said moving the gun back into place as carefully as he could.
"Roughly a hundred pound pull." Carla reached behind herself and effortlessly pulled one of the guns free and to the front of her. She then returned it to its position on the small of her back. "Only thing is you can't let these snap back or it will damage the guns."
Carla loaded up on ammunition, eight magazines with thirty rounds of nine-millimeter. Cole also got his firearm set with another grenade in the housing and a full magazine of .45 ammo and an additional five mags.
"Where is our extraction point?" Cole asked as he put on his coat and took up his suitcase. Carla held up a brochure which had the image of the Great Wall printed on it.
By no means were they safe as Cole and Carla made their way through the crowd of other critters. Their stalkers were of course just waiting for the right moment to get them alone. They were having difficulties already and they had not even reached their contact yet. However, they relaxed a little when they got on the bus, Cole put his briefcase under his seat and Carla stuck her small luggage bag into an overhead compartment.
Once they arrived at the Great Wall they cautiously made their way along it until they got into one of the watchtowers. That's when they met their contact.
"Nice weather here." Said a voice from off in the shadows.
"Beats the weather in Greenland." Carla responded.
From the shadows stepped a panther holding a pistol, but he immediately lowered the pistol and tucked it away in his coat.
"We meet again Vee..." Carla said nudging Cole to hand over the suitcase which had been re-encrypted without signs of adverse tampering. "They still got you holed up in the psychic division?"
"Yes... just a moment..." Vee rand his hand over the case with his eyes closed and then nodded. "Get out of here as soon as possible... I'll get out of here on my own accord." Carla nodded and Vee seemed to step back into the shadows vanishing.
Cole and Carla walked hastily away from the watchtower and when they were finally a good distance away Cole looked to Carla.
"So what does he do other than blend in well with black?" Cole said his voice low.
"He's a postcog... someone who can read objects, that's why I had to set up that slave drive and keyboard when you restored the information and we switched the cases. He would have known that the other case would be tampered, but he can only read who has touched the object and accessed the information. I've fooled him nearly a dozen times before; at least I know he's not telepathic or anything else." Carla said also in a low voice as well.
"So how are we getting out of here?" Cole asked looking around feeling that other eyes were on them. Carla also felt it too, but she looked less apprehensive.
"Violence..." Carla said grimly.
"I would have preferred an alternate method." Cole said with a sigh as they approached the next watchtower. Carla moved with lightning quickness as she suddenly spun around and drew both her SMGs as they clicked off safe and with a single shot from each one she made a head shot to each of the two tigers that had been drawing their guns.
"Cole! Find cover!" Carla called out as sudden gunfire erupted and Carla flicked the selectors onto full auto and responded with guns blazing. Cole dove behind the edged of the watchtower entrances. Cole turned and saw four more assailants come running towards them from the opposite direction.
"Shit!" Cole swore and pulled his pistol and took careful aim. One of the assailants went down as Cole squeezed off two rounds and the others tried to hunker down for cover. But on that wall there was not much cover to be found. Meanwhile Carla was in a bullet frenzy, she was literally walking into the hail of gunfire squeezing off short bursts from her two MP5-Ks. Cole then saw four more of them crawl up the sides of the wall and take up positions.
"Fuck!" Cole hissed and armed the grenade in his gun. He took aim and launched the grenade with a dull thump. The recoil nearly dropped him on his backside as the grenade arched and struck part of the wall detonating. Three of his adversaries cried out as they were thrown from their position. Two of them landing face down, dead on the wall, the third flying off the wall to his death.
Carla looked like a bloody mess with four or five wounds, but she had dispatched most of the assassins and had retreated back to Cole to reload. Cole picked off his targets one by one and then once it was clear he reloaded another grenade into the launcher. Carla finished reloading and retrieved her suitcase. She unzipped a compartment and produced two cables and d-rings.
"Quick hook this up to yourself!" Carla said as she hooked her d-ring to her gun harness. Cole hooked the d-ring to the back of his belt and hoped it would be enough. Carla grabbed Cole by the arm and pulled him out onto the open area of the wall.
"Thirty seconds to extraction!" Carla said and reached for a protruding handle from suitcase. A shot rang out and suddenly Carla slumped to the ground and Cole saw a clean bullet hole in her forehead. Cole spun and instantly saw the culprit perched upon the watchtower with a bolt action sniper rifle. Cole returned fire with the grenade and the sniper screamed as he was ejected off his perch.
Cole yanked the handle and the suitcase blew apart a balloon-like device on a rope ascended up, Cole watched it as it rose up and he grabbed Carla's limp form in his arms before a large airplane suddenly snagged the balloon and Cole felt his stomach roil as he was yanked skyward, a near miss for them as they nearly hitting a watchtower as they were pulled up into the wild blue yonder.
Cole never expected to be pulled up, but it seemed that the agency had a contingency for everything. Both Cole and Carla's corpse were pulled up into the hull of the plane, the cargo doors closing and sealing up the aircraft. There were several armed agents there, most of them in riot armor.
"Agent Hannah step back please!" One of the armored agents said. Cole hastily unclipped himself and stepped back as another one of the agents advanced with his weapon held. "How long ago was she shot in the head?"
Cole gathered his thoughts.
"About a minute..." He replied when suddenly Carla leapt up with a roar. Cole backpedaled as the forward agent raised his forearm and Carla sunk her teeth into the padded armguard. Her eyes were white irised blank and her face was feral, but the agent who she attacked merely held her in place and stood his ground.
"Easy! Easy!" The agent shouted repeatedly using his other hand to grab her around the waist; he bobbing and weaving to fend off Carla's wildly flailing and clawing hands. Cole watched in horror and amazement as Carla's eyes began to glaze over then her irises began to darken, soon they faded back to a light blue.
"Eeeaasy..." The agent said in a calming but pained voice. Carla's feral features began to turn to comprehensive composure and quickly she released her bite on the agent's forearm. She blinked a few times before she looked to the agent still holding her and tilted her head.
"You can let go now..." She said politely. The padded armored wolf stepped back and clutched his arm and immediately the aircraft assigned medic went over to look at him.
"Just very bad bruising, she bent the titanium shank we have to get this off to take a look." The medic said. Cole turned away and had to gather his nerves against what he just saw. So he was right, she could still be one of the monsters from long ago. But them again, she really didn't have a choice in the matter.
Cole looked over his shoulder to see another of the agents shining a light into Carla's eyes and moving it back and forth. Carla followed the light and then nodded to the agent who stood back up and went to a box. The agent took the box and opened it setting it down as Carla began to pick up the jerky from the box and chewed ravenously as she consumed the food.
Cole went to the far side of the plane away from Carla and sat down closing his eyes with a heavy sigh. Cole felt someone sit next to him and his eyes shot open. It was the wolf who Carla had bitten, his arm was bandaged with an icepack. He took off his helmet and nudged Cole.
Your partner has one hell of a jaw. I'm Tom." The agent smiled and extended his uninjured hand to Cole. Dubiously Cole shook it and then looked to Tom's arm.
"Are you going to be ok?" Cole asked.
"Oh yeah! It's not like I haven't taken the love-bite before." Tom said almost jokingly and rubbed his forearm.
"The love-bite?" Cole arched a brow.
"Look buddy what you have to realized is that Carla is a nice gal, but unlike the original carriers the compound has evolved in her. When she gets shot in the head she does not die, per se, but she goes into a sort of recovery trance. When she does that then she has no control over her actions other than her hunger. Every single guy here has had to at one time take what we call the ‘love-bite'; Carla will bite down while her brain is regenerating, but once she comprehensive again then she's fine." Tom said in a lengthy explanation.
Cole looked over to Carla who now was getting up and walking over to them still chewing on some jerky.
"Sorry Tom." Carla said with her eyes downcast.
"Its ok. Soon we are going to need something stronger to keep you from breaking arms." Tom said with a smile.
"Cole I'm sorry you had to see me that way." Carla said gently biting her lower lip. Cole looked to her and tried to shake the image of her feral face from his mind.
"Give it time buddy. Carla's sweetness far outweighs her bite." Tom said and got up picking up his helmet. Tom winked to Cole and then walked back over to the rest of his fellow agents who fawned over his injury.
Cole walked down the hallway with Carla right behind him; they had to report to the director for debriefing. When they entered into his office Kerigan spun in his chair and gave a lengthy lecture about the meaning of covert operation. When neither of them answered the director shrugged. The leonine head operations manager knew that sometimes things went downhill and he decided that letting them off the hook for this would be excusable.
"Well I guess it was unavoidable... here is the breakdown..." The director ruffled out his mane and picked up the remote on his desk and clicked on the screen on his wall.
"This information does not leave this room... some of the other countries have been researching the E.E.M.C.2 virus and one country has succeeded in turning the compound into a deadlier strain. This one will not mutate, it turns the subject into a pure killing machine with only final death by full incineration." Kerigan explained as Cole and Carla watched the video that they had secretly seen already.
"We have found out that each country you have gone to is considering an offer by a single auctioneer. The terrorist, Aalem Mohammad Abd Al Krim." The director turned to Carla and Cole. "He's wanted in four countries and we have been keeping tabs on him for the last year or so. He's caused the death of over thousands of beings." A very blurry picture of a jackal came up on the screen.
"We believe that he is currently somewhere in Egypt, we have our psychics division working on it. You are both going to Egypt, Cole you'll be working with Carla as her electronics specialist, your going to be in charge of intel for her. Dismissed!" Kerigan then turned off the screen and swiveled his chair away from them.
Cole once more had trouble sleeping on the plane, but this time he at least had the courtesy not to look over his shoulder at Carla. Even if he did see her coming he doubted he could stop her. So instead he just reasoned to himself that if he was going to die by her hand he'd just let it happen. Like it mattered anyway, he would be killed or come back as a carrier. Shit, he had forgotten to ask about his vaccinations, oh well he'd just have to deal with it.
Once they landed in Cairo they took a taxi to the hotel and Carla booked separate rooms for them which put Cole at ease a bit. They each went up to their respective rooms and before he could relax Cole got a satellite transmission to his laptop. He was surprised to find Vee on the other end of the line.
"Agent Hannah report in." Vee said over the static.
"I read you." Cole responded.
"The Psi-div has got a fix on Abd Al Krim, the precogs have predicted that he'll be in a small cluster of caves far to the southwest; tomorrow you'll be given transportation methods as well as some gear to accomplish your mission. Carla will be briefed in a few moments. Vee out." With that the panther's image flickered and the screen went blank. Cole then closed the laptop and then lay back with a sigh.
Carla had never had reason to sleep before and now she closed her eyes and saw images. Maybe it was her own imagination mixing with the excitement of the mission, the rush she always felt before the storm. She lay back and thought she felt warm hands on her. She did not want to open her eyes and instead she let her thoughts wander. She felt a warm breath on her neck and over her; she let the touching continue as she moaned lightly.
She didn't even know who it might have been, but she suspected the only person she knew was close to her now as the culprit. But she didn't dare resist, maybe she wanted this to happen and she didn't even protest in the slightest as she felt a hand trail down between her legs and rub over her mound gently. She went with it and cooed lightly as she felt fingers probing into her tenderly.
Carla gasped lightly at the prospect of this encounter turning wild and intimate; after all she had not been with a male for a very long time. Now her hands reached up and explored over the body of her dark lover. Her hands ran over a toned and muscular chest and abdomen all the way down to that erect member which now throbbed in her hand.
She felt the male move into position over her and she eagerly awaited his penetrative thrust. He obliged and his shaft drove into her depths as Carla's fingers grasped the fur on his back and she moved into a more suitable position for him. Her eyes still closed as she felt his thrusting begin.
In return she rolled her hips back to his as he drove forward only to pull back halfway and piston into her once more. Carla moaned and writhed letting this male take her as he wanted. She could feel the bed shake as he pumped into her relentlessly. Her heated gasps came in short breaths as she felt him grinding into her mercilessly, causing his malehood to stir around inside her. Carla softly cried out and arched up to him.
She felt him starting to go faster and could only conclude that he was about to reach his climax. She would not deny the ecstasy of release and she moved her hips around to stimulate him further. She felt him stiffen above her and then go limp panting and she sighed as she felt his hot liquids spill forth crashing into her belly. Carla was panting as well and she softly sighed and opened her eyes.
Carla gasped in horror to see a half torn face of Cole over her snarling and dripping with dark red fluids, Carla could do only one thing... she screamed.
Cole kicked down the door with his pistol at the ready. But he only saw Carla in the bed sitting up panting with wide eyed fear. He cautiously walked over to her and looked at her naked form still sitting up paralyzed.
"Carla...?" Cole asked cautiously. With an almost blank gaze she looked to him before he saw comprehension come back to her eyes.
"Are you ok? I heard you scream..." Cole still trained his pistol to the dark corners of the room with suspicion. Carla shook her head and blinked a few more times.
"I... I'm fine... just fine... I... I just had a nightmare." Carla said doubtfully.
"I thought you said you didn't sleep." Cole said carefully holstering his pistol.
"I never use to before..." Carla said looking at her hands.
After reassuring that Carla was fine Cole took Carla back to his room now that her room was no longer secure. He moved her luggage and everything else and when they had transferred everything from her room into his Cole sat next to her.
"Are you sure you're ok?" Cole asked looking to her, Carla nodded in response.
"Anything you need like... water or more food or something?" Cole said trying to be as kind as possible. He was not aware that Carla could spook like that, but she did and that meant that she like Cole did have the right to be alive. Carla shook her head slowly and then looked at Cole.
"I was... imagining I guess... and well it turned out for the worse... I guess even sometimes even scary things get frightened as well..." Carla sighed and closed her eyes hanging her head.
"S-so what kind of injuries have you recovered from? I know that if a carrier gets shot in the head usually it means death for them..." Cole was unsure if this was a subject to be discussed, but he was honestly curious. Carla smirked and looked at him.
"I've been shot, stabbed, hung, gutted, disemboweled, poisoned, burned, minorly dismembered, and been cut in half... all of it I've recovered from. The cutting off body parts I need to have the dismembered part to heal." Carla pointed at her left arm. "Fifty cal round took my left arm completely off... That one took a while but I put it back on."
"D-does it hurt...? I mean when you get injured?" Cole gave a concerned look. "I don't mean to pry or anything but I'm just very curious about you, you're a complex being."
"It does hurt for a bit, but I kind of learned to just turn off the pain." Carla gave a slight smile. She looked at Cole. "What about you? Does it hurt when you get shot?"
"Don't know never been shot before." Cole said holding his hands up in surrender.
"Just teasing..." Carla snorted and chuckled to herself. Cole managed a half-hearted laugh and nodded. Carla looked back to her hands and sighed "Maybe someday you'll learn that."
Next morning they were greeted by another agent who dropped off their vehicle which was a slight variation of a military humvee. The back of the vehicle was an electronics suite with multiple computers and other equipment for Cole to use; the rest was weapon racks with a selection of firearms for Carla.
They geared up and then set off across the desert, lucky for them the vehicle came standard with air conditioning. Across miles they drove, it also seemed that the vehicle was equipped with something other than a standard gas tank because there was no fuel indicator. They just drove until night and then stopped after a reasonable amount of time. By the time they turned off the engine it was twenty-two-hundred hours.
"I guess we can sleep in the back we just have to make sure that the vehicle is locked up." Carla said, once they were sure that the transport was secure they settled into the back for the night laying side-by-side. Once they got used to the blinking of small lights and the gentle whirring of computer fans they fell silent and that night neither of them had bad dreams.
In the morning they hit the road again and this time Cole was in the back monitoring satellite feeds and intel reports. He signaled to Carla through their tactical ear-pieces and Carla stopped the truck.
"Yes Cole?" Carla said then blinked realized she was using his first name more than his last name, she cursed herself but kept her composure.
"Carla we are coming up on some cave, these must be the ones that were mentioned in the briefing, I'm getting infrared imaging up as well as deploying the ‘scuttler' to scout." Cole said, the scuttler was a remote controlled robot which was equipped with sensing equipment. It was mocked up to be a small cave lizard no longer than a foot, with the tail acting as its antenna; it could reach land speeds of 15 miles per hour, and had a range of fifty miles.
"Roger that Co-Agent Hannah, deploy the ‘scuttler' and get us some intel." Carla said and brought up the internal monitor screen. The robot was dropped off from the back of the vehicle and Cole carefully controlled it. For the first few minutes Carla watched the ‘scuttler' crawl rapidly over hills of sand before it reached rock.
"Switching to infrared..." Cole said over the channel. The image turned from full color to hues of white, blue, green, red, orange, black, and yellow. The robot scurried forward and Cole carefully edged it towards the caves.
"Audio on..." Cole advised and then the ‘scuttler' moved forward into the darkness. Cole was able to use the ambient noises to navigate the robot in the caves as it went down deeper into the caves. Then the ‘scuttler' picked up something and Cole navigated it in the direction of the sound. Conversation was overheard and Cole amplified the sound so that Carla could listen in.
"... will you pay for our new weapon?" Came one voice
"We have not decided if we trust you yet." Came another voice clearly it was digital, the buyer probably preferred to remain anonymous.
"Come come now, we have other buyers that would be eager if you are unwilling to pay our price." Came the first voice again. Cole was already on it and in fifteen seconds confirmed it was Abd Al Krim.
"Confirmed target..." Cole said to Carla who locked and loaded. The conversation continued.
"I will give you a generous twenty four hours to consider my offer then I will choose another buyer." Abd Al Krim said and then switched off something. Cole was already guiding the robot back to the surface and as he went he used the sonar to map out the caverns.
"Are you sure you'll be ok in there Carla?" Cole asked concerned.
"Yeah, I'll make short work of the bastard." Carla said with her tone turning dark and edgy. "You just give me the layout and stay out here."
"Roger that." Cole said with a disappointed tone.
"Aalem Mohammad Abd Al Krim... time to pay the devil his dues..." Carla said and stepped out onto the harsh desert sand.