We had just finished Monday's protocol, I had come back to our bunk to find a letter. I'm not sure from where, or how it got into our bunk, but it read like this.

  Dear Agent Green

  I know the Trigram Agency has stripped you of your real name, and any chance at a normal life, I represent an Organization in the same field as the Agency, and as you know, their methods have become a bit extreme, the JAB has to end and I think you know it does, tomorrow at Lunchtime, all weapon stations will have their thumbprint registries scrambled, which means that ANY print will open them, this will be your chance to escape, my men will be waiting in the wings to aid in that escape.

  Yours truly

  \-MAL

  Now this was an incredible revelation. Something to hope for, something both I and Green were suspicious of. His budding plans for our escape were not very well rounded and this MAL seemed like he or she had a much safer alternative. Green agreed, however, being an egomaniac, he also decided that he would present the plan as his own. Agents Love, Edge, Ripper, and Wolf all listened in while Green pitched it to them.

  Edge spoke up, "How the hell do you know all this, Green? How do you know the weapon stations are going to scramble? who told you?" Agent Edge had been named our Recon and espionage guy by the supervisory echelon of the Trigram Agency, a responsibility he took too seriously when presented with stuff like this. After Edge's reaction, Everyone eyed us with suspicion and I decided to come clean, over time I'd learned how to cut off Green's control if only temporarily, it helped if he was focused on something else. It's strange how differently they looked at me as opposed to Green, he was always so dominant that when I was in the driver's seat it was painfully obvious.

  "I got this letter, you guys." I took it out and handed it to the group, followed by much cursing and angry words from Green inside my head. Edge looked vindicated as he passed the Letter down to Ripper, "Fucking knew you didn't come up with that one yourself, geezus Green we have an actual lifeline here and you're wasting time trying to convince us it was your idea?"

  Green took back control and snorted at Edge, "Fuck off." Wolf shushed us, "Silence man children, I'm 78% sure that this is probably a trick." She had become the mother figure of the group as well as its leader, as she had beaten all 4 of us at punchies and had been labeled in a support capacity by the higher-ups, viciously but caringly enforcing her strict codes of conduct on the rest of the group, she was our voice of reason, and we respected her for it.

  Ripper spoke up, but because his voice never really seemed to crest over a harsh whisper he had to announce himself twice before we were able to hear him. He, like Love and I had been designated for Heavy combat, or at least that was before Ripper vowed to never take off his gloves again, he was a huge teddy bear, but one you dared not hug without protection, poor bastard. "I feel like it's worth a shot." He said, looking at the letter himself.

  Love, ever the enthusiastic but simultaneously deadly Ditz, still lounging half naked in Edge's bunk under the covers, her wavy blonde hair parting as she turned towards us and nodded her head fast and enthusiastically, "I agree with Ripper, we need to move and soon, plan or not!"

  That was when the drone of the "Bell" sounded, that was the 5-minute warning to get ready for class, today it was combat.

  Goodie.

  We all scrambled to get dressed in our gear as Edge checked team statistics on his PDA.

  Here is where I bitch about requisitions.

  Everyone in the squad had zip-up Kevlar-plated coveralls. BUT ME. I was told by the equipment requisitions officer that due to the nature of my mutation, I did not need the armor plating my squad so enjoyed.

  Green would agree with them but I didn't like getting shot, I didn't enjoy being burned, I did not WANT to get hurt, but despite all that, I got no plates for my Nomex coveralls.

  Green also enjoyed a dismally minimal load-out.

  3 frag grenades, a single Glock standard issue 9mm handgun, and a guard-less straight sword. Green LOVES his swords, ever since the fighting instructor took a liking to us, this was incredibly inconvenient for me, especially in a firefight situation like the one we were going into.

  After we were all relatively armed to the teeth, Edge stopped us, "Guys, I have some good news and some bad news."

  With that, he touched the screen of his PDA and an image appeared on the wall, group sigma and group alpha were the only two groups left.

  Everyone else was labeled "Terminated" or "Sanctioned"

  Love gasped and giggled giddily, "We're the last ones left!" Then she realized what that meant and she started crying, "We're...the last ones left.." Ripper grabbed her and pulled her into a hug as Agent Wolf squared her jaw, "Well shit...this either means their project was a wash or a complete success, I'm not sure which."

  Edge coughed and then looked at all of us, "Well whether or not it's a wash, we need to beat group alpha, my PDA won't give me their stats, and I can't make a strat..." he started to frantically type out a request to the admin on his PDA but it shut down automatically and he threw it against the wall, destroying the device, "THIS IS MY JOB!!" he started to shake, he was so used to us relying on him to keep us alive, "I'm supposed to be the one who's ready..." Green was beginning to panic, we began rapidly shifting foot to foot as well when Wolf stomped her foot and the entire room went silent, "We're going to make it out of here and we're going to have to do it without a plan, we've never had to do this before but maybe this is another test."

  Deep down I felt very secure in my belief that we were all going to die, but after all we'd been through, Wolf had hope for us, we all stood at attention, ready for her next order.

  "Green." Wolf turned to me, "You improvise all the time, I move leadership of this squad over to you for this mission." Green was unable to speak as everyone clustered around me.

  Before I could say anything, the bell rang and a voice sounded over the intercom, "ALL JAB AGENTS WILL REPORT TO DESIGNATED LOCATIONS OR OCCUPIED UNAUTHORIZED SPACES WILL BE FILLED WITH POISONOUS GAS"

  We booked it to the arena chamber where a guard let us in, the floor of the arena would change depending on what program was running, the way it was now, it was like an obstacle course but it wasn't. It's hard to go into it, the point is that it was a controlled environment that was made to look and act like any arena type the administrative staff wanted, whether or not this was achieved through some sort of Holographic or other such science fiction thing, it could put you on the slope of a volcano, or the surface of the moon, it could do ANYTHING they wanted it to, and this time it was a misty forest in the dead of night.

  As soon as we were inside the room, the door shut behind us and it was like we hadn't even come from anywhere, just standing in the dark woods in the middle of the night! As we got our bearings a loud electronic voice blared as it always does, announcing the terms of victory and any environmental hazard we would be facing.

  "FINAL SKIRMISH BEGINS, CONDITIONS OF VICTORY: Subdue or slaughter ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARD: TEMPORAL SHIFT"

  I hadn't a clue what any of that meant, but in the time it took me to turn to Edge and ask, just like that, my team was gone.

  "GOOD LUCK." and with that, I got shot through the kidney by someone just beyond the trees!

  Green kicked in and he rolled us to the left behind a tree, he pulled out one of his grenades and held it to his chest before shouting, "HEY!!" I groaned internally, what was he thinking? the guy wasn't gonna, "YEA?" I nearly laughed, it sounded like a small girl, "DON'T SHOOT I SURRENDER!" Green yelled, The little girl let out an unsurprisingly cynical laugh, "That's a lie and you know it, poke your head out!"

  The following internal conversation went like this,

  Green: I'm gonna poke my hand out, it'll grow back anyway.

  Me: no you're fucking not! Because it won't hurt you, it'll hurt ME!

  Green: I need to get a bullet trajectory, then I can blow her ass up! It'll grow back anyway!

  Me: oh, like you can do math!

  Green: I may not be good at long division, but I can calculate throw distance all damn day, you've been with me through all my training! It'll grow back anyway!!!

  Me: if we get out of this I swear to god I will let you feed me our shoes!

  With that, Green cracked a smile and waved his left hand out from behind the tree, and as predictably as water is wet, a 50 caliber bullet shredded through my palm and rendered my hand useless, almost as useless as my right kidney!

  Green then spun and lobbed the Grenade, bouncing it off two trees before it hit a third tree mid-trunk and exploded.

  The little girl had this to say, "HA! you missed!"

  Green would normally retort something, I was waiting for it, but he said nothing, "Dude she just set you up for some grade A comeback, what-" he shushed me and suddenly I heard it, the sound of splintering wood, illusory wood chips flying apart and disintegrating and a child screaming as she fell out of a falling tree, landing with a grunt on her back on the ground.

  Green rushed out, stepped on the rather impressive Barrett she had been wielding, and pointed the sword at her, she wasn't as small as she sounded, she looked 12, one year younger than me.

  "Do it, pussy." she growled as Green raised the sword.

  I would have stopped him, but I knew all the reprimands and screaming in the world would do nothing to stop the arc of that blade, for all our time spent finding common ground, one thing I could never agree with is that he enjoyed killing far too much, because in his mind, the moment someone tried to kill us, they stopped being a "they" and became an "it", removing the human part from the mental equation, making it less about "why kill." And more about "How kill."

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  He brought the sword down into her skull, impaling through her forehead, the blade traveling unimpeded out the rear of her head and into the dirt, I felt my face and chest hurting from how hard he was laughing.

  After his manic moment, he pulled the sword out with a sickening slurp and wiped it clean with his sleeve, "Cake." He chuckled, despite my disdain.

  Suddenly Edge crashed into me, knocking both of us over, "OH SHIT....Green??"

  We both got up, he was holding a broken-looking Love over his shoulder, both her arms were swollen, bruised black, and hanging limply at odd angles, she was in tears, "fuck me right? I just wanted to help."

  Edge sighed in relief as I took her, "We're being chased by...something, I'm not even sure what it is, whether it's one of team alpha or not..."

  Green raised his eyebrows, "The fuck do you mean you're not sure, if it's hostile it has to be one of them!"

  Edge sighed, "I don't think it's that simple, It looked like something...else..like a Tangible."

  Green and I both look around, "What do you mean?"

  Love scoffed and winced, "Did you not pay attention in class, Genius?"

  Green waved his hands, "I didn't mean like what's a tangible, dumb ass, how big was it?"

  For those of you who aren't in on the whole "Lingo from a super secret monster hunting Agency, the terms Tangible and Intangible were used for supernatural creatures both material and immaterial (if you couldn't already pick up on that, I've been told its kind of obvious.)

  Edge jostled Love a bit too much, Love complaining as he raised his hand far above his head, "Taller than I can reach."

  Green looked at Love's arms, "I'm guessing she got these fighting it off?"

  Love whined, "No, it threw me and I hit a tree..."

  Green blinked, "Just your arms? I don't think that's how that works..."

  Edge growled, 'It's just how it happened alright Green? Stop being an asshole, come with me, I know where the others are."

  Edge didn't like Green, but in these situations, he was usually more worried about us than angry, and Love wasn't acting like...Love, but I followed them, keeping an eye on the pair, they were acting a bit off and I hardly believed Love's story about the reason for her arms breaking, so I began to scan for signs.

  This is where it gets really weird, because in the Agency, we have certain nonverbal means of communication, a way to get info to one another without talking or even really being there.

  These Field signs are derived from the more popular hobo signs, and every JAB Agent is made to memorize these.

  I eventually did find a sign, low on a passing tree trunk, just out of eyeshot of Edge, it was half a rectangle with a squiggle line inside it.

  This sign specifically means, "Do not trust them." Beside it was another sign, a stick figure with an X through its head, meaning "It is not human." under both was a sign that showed a large u-shaped squiggle that meant "Hostile being."

  Knowing that all he had to do was act, Green drew his gun silently, aiming it at the two impostors that we'd been following, that's when I heard a silent whimper, Green wheeled around and pointed the gun directly at a big kid, about the size of Ripper with hulk-like proportions, muscular and large. He looked slightly older than me, his eyes were full of tears, and the gun in his hand hung loosely at his side, "Your friends are unconscious over there by that tree...I drew the signs."

  as he pointed to the tree whose roots seemed buried in leaves, one question came into my mind, "Why?" the kid dropped his gun and fell to his knees, "I've-" Green pulled the trigger, ending the boy's life, I stood there in shock as Green checked the clip and re-holstered it, "WHY?!" I yelled in desperation, Green sighed exasperatedly, like I'd asked him the most idiotic question, "He was stalling, did you notice how he made convincing illusory copies of Edge and Love? I wasn't about to wait around for him to tell me his life story, let's get the others."

  I walked over to the tree the boy had indicated and pulled my two unconscious teammates from the leaves, "I can't leave them but I can't carry them with me anyway..."

  Suddenly Green just dropped them and walked about ten paces away, then pulled out another of his Grenades with our one good hand, flipping the pin off with his index finger.

  "Green, what the fuck are you doing?"

  "There's someone here."

  "HOW the fuck did you hear anyone and I didn't?"

  Suddenly Green hiked up one of his legs and dropped the Grenade, he crab-walked away as I looked down to see what looked like a puddle of goop forming directly underneath us, two pitch-black hands clawing their way out of the nebulous void that had at one point been solid ground.

  I watched in horror, Green in elation, as the final member of the enemy team clawed his way into the open air.

  His skin was a black glistening slop, and his limbs were long and spindly, ending in sickle-shaped claws, dripping with black slime, all I could see for sure of its face was this thing's horrifying smile, toothy and pale, glinting in the moonlight given off by the artificial moon that now had chosen to come through the clouds.

  The grenade went off and the shrapnel from the frag rocked the frame of the creature, but it didn't move from where it stood.

  Out of frustration, Green drew his sword and raised it above our head, yelling in pain as the creature grabbed our right arm in a slimy, nasty, vice-like grip. Green was about to throw the injured hand in a desperate bid to get away, but then our good arm began to sizzle like we'd had acid dumped on us! MY ARM WAS ON FIRE!!

  Green pulled back with a frightened "AAH!" and the arm came loose at the elbow with a ripping, tearing, agonizing, sloppy-sounding pop that SHOULD have taken more effort than it did, a small splash of blood spurting from the stump of my elbow. The remainder of our arm in the thing's hand began to decay before our eyes, the fingers of the hand falling off, dropping the sword as the creature continued to advance on us.

  My mouth hung open in a silent scream, I say silent because after a bit of hardcore yelling or directly after a dire injury, it became hard for me to force air out of my lungs, I staggered away, Green had left me, retreated within to escape the pain. Say what you will about his combat prowess, the guy's a pussy. Anyway, after an ineffective attempt to run, I sort of just, fell to my side and curled up around my stump arm, waiting for death.

  I had accepted death at that point, if I couldn't defend myself, how could I survive in this horrible place, I was ready for whatever came next, my fear had been replaced by pain and all I could think was how easy it would be to just let the nightmare end.

  That was when I heard Wolf, that husky tone that had always made me feel safe, now louder than I would have liked, with a savage snarl mixed in as she bellowed my name, "GREEN!!"

  There was automatic weapon fire and the creature took two steps back, Wolf walked into view with her AR-15 leveled at the thing, more footsteps, more felt than heard at this point, my heart was pounding in my ears. I looked up, there was Ripper, his face was covered in blood, he looked at me with this horrified expression on his face. This expression immediately turned to pure rage as I watched him take off his gloves.

  I grasped vainly with my shredded left hand at his ankle, "NO!" I tried to say, the sound only registering because it came from me, all else was THUMP THUMP, THUMP THUMP as my heart pounded in my ears. He dropped the leather gloves on my chest and stepped over me, showing his hands to Wolf whose eyes widened under her goggles, she pointed the gun at him, I couldn't hear either of them anymore, but I saw her repeatedly mouthing the word "no." and brandishing the gun at him, apparently trying to intimidate him into putting the gloves back on.

  He paid her no mind.

  He just kept walking up to the inky black thing with the crooked smile and grabbed it by the throat! Smoke rose off of both of them, it grabbed him by the shoulders, its claws sinking in. I saw Ripper scream in pain before both of them began to sink into the ground, both their bodies liquefying into the dirt as Wolf and I watched in horror.

  Then everything went black.

  What I later learned was a day later, I woke up in a hospital bed surrounded by curtains, next to me stood a tall, beautiful grown woman in a grey suit, her hair was shoulder length and fire engine red, and her eyes were silver behind thick-lensed glasses, she looked to be in her late 20s.

  "Good morning." she smirked, "I'm MAL, it's nice to meet you."

  I blinked hard, "What...where am I?" I put my left hand on my head and saw the palm had already healed up and my fingers were aligned again, Mal gave a light sigh as she answered, "You and your squad are in the custody of my employers."

  I nodded, not feeling Green in this situation was super awkward, he usually was the one who did...everything. "so you sent us the letter." I said. Mal nodded, "Yes, I did, except you guys didn't have to do anything; it turns out the staff of the area had vacated before the final skirmish had ended; we don't know where they are." I scratched my head, completely numb at this point, I couldn't even bring myself to cry for Ripper.

  With that, MAL got up and patted me on the shoulder, "Welcome to the Houska Organization. I'll be back with food in a bit, and we can talk about arrangements for your stay."

  And like that, she was gone.

  Ok because we didn't figure it out until after we got loose, I want to tell you that this "Houska" organization was just Trigram with a fresh can of paint.

  That'll come back into play later, and I won't know until much, much later; this is just a hindsight thing.

  It wasn't exactly ideal, but at this point, we were no longer people, not really. We were weapons, we only needed to be used.