She was sitting in a tropical themed bar she was dressed in a bikini with a blue sarong around her waist. She knew she looked good. On the bar was a coconut drink complete with flowers and a pink tiny umbrella. “Never.” A voice called.

Emily turned around to see David in a Hawaiian T-shirt wearing a pair of swim trunks. The shirt was open down the middle showing off his great chest and abs. He had his beard again. “Never.” He said knocking in the air. “Never.”

Emily shot up from her bed startled. There came a knock at the door again. “Never are you ok?” A voice that she recognized as the Staff Sergeants asked.

“Yea sorry I'll be out in a minute,” Emily said swinging her feet off her bed. She let her feet hang down for a few seconds as she stared at the floor in silence. Shaking her head she jumped up from the bed and quickly got dressed. Grabbing her weapons she opened the door to find the Staff Sergeant waiting on her. He nodded to her and she nodded back.

It was raining when she got outside. The rain felt funny. It felt a little oily. The Staff Sergeant drove her to where the platoon was using a large empty hanger as a staging area. They had two armored personnel carriers ready to go. The team was already abroad and waiting for them. Emily made another private move so she could have the seat closest to the door. The team looked a little nervous. The door closed and a red light switched on.

The drive was not long at all. When they stopped Emily climbed out and looked around. The first thing she noticed was that it was darker out than it had been before. Everything had the same bluish black color to them that Emily remembered from when she had been here before but it was more pronounced. There was also a powerful smell of ozone in the air. The way was blocked with cement barriers and sandbag walls that looked to be encircling the Hole in the sky at about six hundred or so feet away. There was a bunch of gun emplacements along the walls and a sign that informing everyone that the area ahead was a minefield.

From where she was at she could see the hole in the sky. It had gotten much bigger than she remembered. As she stood watching the hole she heard a telltale sound of a mortar going off. Started Emily turned around to see a mortar pit behind her with six mortars set up.

As she watched they fired off one mortar after another until all the mortars had fired once. A Sergeant stood on a raised platform looking at the hole in the sky with binoculars. Emily turned around as the mortars landed around the hole. She watched the explosions with a detached feeling.

“Never, is that you?” A voice asked from her left.

Emily turned towards the voice and found Bubbles walking towards her. “Bubbles!” Emily shouted happily.

“Holy crap it is you.” Bubbles said breaking into a run and slamming into her hugging her. “Last I heard you were in the hospital. Hey is it true you got stabbed in the heart by a tentacle and walked all the way back to the aid station by yourself.”

Emily shook her head feeling embarrassed. “I got stabbed in the stomach.” She told him.

“But you did walk back to the aid station by yourself right.” Bubbles said leaning back to look at her stomach.

“Kind of? I had a few medics with me. I walked because I weight too much for them to carry me.” Emily said shrugging.

“Hey man sorry about David. I know you guys were close.” Bubbles said sadly. Emily felt herself tearing up. Wiping her face with her sleeve she, while she took a step back, nodded to Bubbles. She looked around and found that she and Bubbles had become the center of attention by both soldiers and the civilians alike. She gave the people around her a glare and they turned back to what they were doing.

“So what are you doing here,” Emily asked him looking back at the hole in the sky.

“Messenger duty and general super related jobs. They have me running messages to and from the command center at the moment. Communications are down this close to the gate.” Bubbles said turning to look at the hole in the sky with Emily.

“Isn't it too dangerous to fly right now?” Emily asked looking away from the hole to look at him.

“As long as I stay under a hundred feet it's fine but start to go over that and it gets bad fast even for me.” Bubbles said not looking away from the hole in the sky. Behind them, the mortars went off again.

It wasn't long before the old Lady got into an argument with the Captain who was in charge of the checkpoint where they had stopped. The team, according to the old Lady, needed to get closer because they were too far to get any sort of reading from the gate. The argument got really heated and the captain called it in on the radio. Emily looked at Bubbles.

“Feel like getting closer to the gate?” She asked him. “If my weight is not too much of a problem you could take me and one other closer so they can get their readings.”

“I got nothing else better to do today.” Bubbles said smiling.

“Bubbles. Never. I got a job for two of you.” The Captain said getting off the radio.

Bubbles shook his head and smiled at Emily. Together they started to walk over to the group. When she got there she took off her rifle and leaned it up against the armored personnel carrier and unbuckled her gun belt.

The Captain was arguing with the old lady again when Emily was done. “Look, Captain, I need to be there. I have to take the readings. None of my people can do what I do.” The old Lady said angrily.

“Doctor, it is far too dangerous for you to go. Why doesn't one of your team members go in your place?” The Captain asked.

“I am not a doctor, Captain. I am a Technomancer. My method is not repeatable. I don't use the scientific method to build my machines.” The old Lady said annoyed. “My team members are good at what they do but they can't do what I do. If you want your gate closed your going to have to let me go.”

The Captain keyed up his radio annoyed at having to call it in again. Emily pulled off her tan Beret and put on her boonie-hat that she had in her pocket. She lost her only other tan beret during her last fight by the hole in the sky. She was not going to lose this one as well. She put her beret on her muzzle of her rifle. She pulled Righteous from her back and the little black knife from its sheath at her hip.

The Captain was ordered to let the old Lady go. “Bubbles, Never, you're going to…. Ok never mind. I see you guys figured it out. Bubbles fly low but watch out for land mines on the ground. They are open to air, so don't fly too low. Never, stay at least 100 meters away from the gate. Ma,am you have five minutes inside the dead zone then you're coming back.”

“I need at least fifteen minutes just to calibrate my instruments.” The old lady said shocked.

The Captain cursed and turned away from the group. “Fine but not a minute more. If things get hot, you get to Bubbles and let him pull you out. If you don’t he has orders to grab you and run. Do you understand? This is non-negotiable.”

“Yes, Captain I understand.” The old Lady said nodding.

“Fifteen minutes Bubbles no more.” The Captain said turning back around.

Bubbles waited until the Captain had walked out of earshot before saying “Impossible orders.”

Emily shook her head. “Impossible orders,” she replied back.

“Ah Never is it.” The old lady asked.

“Yes Ma,am.” Emily replied turning to face her.

“Why are you leaving your gun.” The old Lady asked confused.

“All my guns are going to do is piss them off,” Emily replied. Beside her Bubbles chuckled.

“Is that going to be enough.” The old Lady asked pointing to Righteous.

“Worked the last time Ma,am.” Emily told her. The old lady hesitated for a few seconds before asking Emily if she would pick up a large black bag. Emily put her weapons away then picked the bag she indicated.

“Never you're going to have to squeeze that kind of close to you. It might not fit inside the bubble.” Bubbles said looking at duffel bag.

“This good?” Emily asked squeezing the bag gently.

“Yea. Should be. Just watch it when you jump.” Bubbles said frowning. He had the old Lady to stand up next to him and put his arms around both of them. “On the count of the three jumped.”

After the count down they jumped and the bubble appeared. Soon they were in the air. “Oh, this is lovely.” The old Lady said looking around as Bubbles kept them low going about ten or so feet above the ground

Emily snorted and looked down as they passed the wall. The land mines were obvious as the passed. The mines were not buried at all but were just sitting on the ground. Emily tried to identify the mines as they passed. The mines looked all the same. They were about as large as very large of a dinner plate and about four or so inches think. Emily frown and looked closer as they passed by. “Those are either anti-tank or Sk mines.” Emily thought in shock. “Either way a few of those things are fatal to an even a Main type super. Note to self don’t step on those things.”

The Sk mines were designed to kill a Brute by hitting them where their immunity was at their weakest which was a very large shock wave from an explosion. The immunity field did mitigate some of the damage insulating the super from some but not all of it. The minefield extended nearly all the way to the hole in the sky. Bubbles angled them to a small clear area on the tarmac about a hundred feet away from the hole in the sky. “This close enough Ma'am?”

“Yes this is fine but I am not going to get any good readings from in here. You’re going to have to bring your forcefield down before I can get started.” She told him.

Bubbles sighed and brought them down to the ground turning off his bubble. Emily immediately dropped the bag on the ground and took a few steps towards the hole in the sky pulling out her weapons. It was darker here than the makeshift checkpoint behind them. As Emily watched a small mortar round landed by the hole and exploded. The old Lady shrieked.

Emily found the place looked completely different since she was last there. The tarmac around the hole in the sky was completely gone and all she saw dirt and rocks. The cement barriers were mostly gone and she could see pieces of the barriers on the ground all around the area. The place smelled like explosives and spoiled meat. The strangest thing to Emily was how still and quiet everything was. There was no wind at the ground level and nothing moved.

“This place is creepy let's hurry up.” Bubbles said like he was reading her mind. His voice came from behind her. Turning to look at him Emily saw him rubbing his arms up and down looking around nervously.

The old Lady opened her bag and took out an old looking wooden box with some gauges on it. She then took out a spool of copper wire and cylinder with a little rope at the end. Emily turned her attention back to the hole in the sky as another small mortar exploded. She watched the hole in the sky nervously. She wondered if the mortar had been fired a lot soon than the past couple she had seen. She had not been counting.

A few minutes later Emily saw a jumper fall from the hole in the sky. As soon as it fell Emily started to count the seconds under her breath. The jumper paused in obvious disorientation once it landed on the ground and picked itself up. At three seconds the jumper seem to come out of whatever disorientation it was under and spot them. At four seconds a mortar exploded close to where the jumper was standing completely obliterating it. Emily took a deep breath and let it out.

She watched the scene play out over and over. It wasn’t always a jumper. In fact, it was mostly the three-legged beasts that fell out of the hole. Sometimes more than one fell out of the hole in the sky at the same time but they always landed really close together so only one mortar was needed to take them all out.

Emily counted eleven times something fell from the hole in the sky and just after the last mortar took a three-legged beast out she heard the Old Lady say “Fire in the hole.”. Before she could move or say anything a red flare trailing a copper wire flew overhead and disappear into the hole in the sky. Emily cursed and was about to turn around to chew the old Lady out when a huge group of beast things poured out of the hole.

They all fell onto of one another in a big pile and a few bounced further away than what Emily thought should be the range of a mortar. “One one thousand, two one thousand, three one-thousand.” Emily counted as more and more things started to fall from the hole. She got to four one-thousand and a mortar detonated on top of the pile of things. There was a large explosion that threw body parts everywhere and knocked over some of the ones that were just out of range of the mortar.

A lone jumper stood up from the ground and looked towards them. Emily cursed as she saw it jump into the air and sail towards her. She stepped to the side and brought Righteous down on its head killing it. She looked up and saw several more jumpers already in the air. Behind the jumpers, she saw a couple of three-legged things get over their disorientation and charge towards at them.

Emily started to move as the jumpers started to land all around her. “Bubbles take the Lady out of here!” Emily shouted as she beheaded a jumper and slashed another one. Emily was spinning around a three-legged thing when she saw Bubbles holding the old Lady fly above her and slam into the jumper. The jumper fell back broken but Bubbles and his force field was knocked backward. She stepped aside as one of the three-legged things got too close and she had to fight it. After taking out two of its legs she took a quick look behind her and saw Bubbles and The Old Lady floating just off the ground surrounded by the Bubbles force field. The old Lady looked scared.

“Bubbles get the hell out. I’ll follow.” Emily said yelled dodging a stingray thing’s tail. In the distance, she could the near constant explosions of mortars going off around the hole in the sky.

“Grab a body. I need one to study.” The old Lady yell from above Emily as they left.

Emily was to busy to answer her. As she got swarmed by a bunch of stingray things. Unlike last time she was hampered by the mines surrounding her. The space she was fighting was about twenty feet wide. It did not give her all the much room to maneuver.

Every time she swung Righteous she felt a burning pain right where she got impaled with the tentacle the last time she fought the things. The pain got worse the more she fought. She started to hope that Bubbles was coming back to get her. She sliced upwards cutting a spider looking thing that was walking on tentacles instead of legs. Luckily it was about the size of a really small car. She cut under its chin and through its head with her little black knife.

She looked around for her next target but saw nothing but dead bodies. She relented and bent over in pain. She wanted to just lay down and wait for Bubbles to come back but she knew that she didn’t have time to wait. She slid her little black knife back in its sheath still dirty and not caring. Dropping to her knees she scooped up the spider looking thing with her left hand and threw it over her shoulder. With her right hand, the one that held Righteous, she held her stomach. Her old wound felt warm. She half stumbled and half ran towards back to the line.

Six hundred feet back to the line seem to take forever. “Put one foot in front of the other and you will eventually get where you're going.” Emily thought to herself as she made her way to the line. It was old advice from her old cross country coach. She also had to focus on the ground so she wouldn’t run over any mines. She was so caught up looking downwards that she nearly ran into a cement barrier. Panting she looked up. She was about twenty feet from the line. Taking a deep breath she half ran, half stumbled towards the line. She looked up as someone picked up another cement barrier by himself and move it out of the way as she came running in. She was too tired to acknowledge him as she ran past.

She dropped the spider thing on the ground. She turned and sat beside it holding her stomach. She felt something tear inside her while she was fighting now her wound felt really hot. Groaning she closed her eyes and leaned forward. She heard some call for a medic but she was in too much pain to look who it was. She was still hunched over when a medic came running up to her.

“Where are you hit?” He asked her.

She shook her head and he lifted her shirt. She looked down at her stomach with him. Aside from the scar she had from being impaled nothing looked wrong. “It feels like something inside me is ripping.” She told him gasping.

“This where you were hit before?” He asked her and she nodded. He called out for stretcher bearers and she was in too much pain to argue with him. To her surprise, it only took two people to lift her and put her onto the ambulance. She was surprised until she noticed the EXO emblem on their shoulders. She leaned back and tried to get into a comfortable position but couldn’t find one. She squirmed in pain on the stretcher all the way to the hospital.

After a battery of test including an MRI and a CAT scan, a doctor sat down next to her. “Your abdominal wall was torn when you were injured. On top of that, your healing ability was weakened by the strain you put in under while fighting and then healing a massive and life-threatening injury. Adding to that is the fact that you did not have enough time to heal completely.”

The Doctor looked Emily in the eye. “Your intestines are trying to protrude out into your abdomen. While your abdominal muscles are strong enough to keep your intestines where they belong there is still the damage to your muscles that have not healed all the way in that area and it is causing complications. On top of that, the tear to your abdominal wall has gotten bigger. Normally that would require surgery but with your power of healing, we believe that you just need time to heal. You also need time for your powers to recover. This constant abuse has left you in a weakened state that I am uncomfortable letting you back on full duty. I am going to place you on light duty for three days.”

“As long as there are not aliens wanting to burst out of my stomach.” Emily joked.

“No, we checked for that.” The doctor said seriously.

“Oh,” Emily said not knowing what to say to that. They sent her back to the hanger with some pain pills. They gave her some before she left so by the time she got to her room she was tired and fell right to sleep.

Emily slept for nearly eight hours in a drug-induced sleep. A night of rest did a world a good for her stomach and besides the occasional twinges of pain, Emily felt almost completely better. She went and checked in and was told that they were still going over the spider thing she had brought back. She was told that they would come and get her if something happened today but she should take it easy. She grabbed some sandwiches from the chow hall and headed back to the hanger. After eating she popped some pills and zone out watching TV.

She woke up the next morning on the couch and feeling more tired than when she went to sleep. She looked at the pain pills and toss them in the trash. She went back to her room to shower and change into a clean uniform. She checked in and was told that the old Lady had found what she was looking for and that she was currently building a bomb to close the gate. She was told again to take the day off as she was still on light duty.

The following day she found herself at the hospital getting her stomach looked at. The doctors told her that she was cleared for active duty but she should be careful about what she did. She could still make things worse. She reported in and was sent to the firebase as the checkpoint was called now by the hole in the Sky for duty. She was to replace Bubbles who was, in turn, to replace her later the days. Together one of them was to be on duty at all times.

Duty at the firebase was fun. Most of the remaining EXO pilots were there. Emily learned that her friend EXO was there but at a different firebase. It was a relief just to hang out at the firebase and man a gun. The only annoying part was that every ten seconds or so they fired off a mortar round. She spent the night at the firebase but couldn’t sleep. She told herself that it was because the mortars were kept her awake.

The next morning a rumor spread like a wildfire that the old Lady had completed her bomb and that they thought they were going to be able to close the gate around lunchtime. Everyone at the firebase was excited. Around noon two armored personnel carriers arrived at the firebase. Bubbles stepped out first. Then the rest of the old Lady’s team.

“Bubbles!” Emily said happily.

“Never!” Bubbles said giving her a hug. He had left that morning but had not returned.

Emily watched them pull out a what looked like a rolled up sleeping bag made out of metal. “That it?” Emily asked Bubbles.

“Yes and yours truly is the delivery system.” Bubbles said proudly.

“What?” Emily said turning towards the French Canadian.

“Yea it’s not going to be that bad. Fly up to the gate. Toss it in. Get the hell out.” he told her smiling. “Then drinks all around.”

“You can toss that thing through your bubble?” Emily asked impressed.

“Nah I got to drop the bubble then toss it then pop my bubble up again. A piece of cake,” he told her giving her a dorky look.

“Just how fast can you bring your bubble up again after dropping it?” Emily asked concerned.

“Fastest I ever dropped it and put it back up was about three seconds. It gives me just enough time to toss the bomb through the gate then get it back up before the boom.” He said giving her two thumbs up.

Emily smiled at him. “You’re a crazy man.”

“But if something goes wrong, you come and get me right?” He said smirking.

“Is that a movie quote?” Emily asked frowning.

“Nah TV,” he said shaking his head. Someone called for him and he turned to acknowledge them before turning to her again. “You think they’ll give us metals for this?”

Emily laughed. “You’re a ribbon whore.” She told him as he gave her a cocky grin. He turned back to his team and walked up to the bomb.

Emily climbed up on top of one of the bunkers to get a good view. She watched the group hammer out the details then get ready. Bubbles grabbed the bomb and waited. The Captain ordered a full barrage of mortars and as the last mortar fired Bubbles launched himself into the air. Emily watched him in her rifle scope as he flew towards the hole in the sky.

He flew low until he was almost to the hole then climbed sharply. At the top of the hole, he stopped to hover. Emily watched nervelessly as he dropped his bubble. He tossed the bomb into the hole as he dropped. Emily smiled as he popped his bubble back up. Behind her, the firebase cheered. Emily watched as he turned away.

She was still watching as a huge tentacle exploded out of the hole and pierced Bubbles right through his force field and into his chest. He jerked once then he went limp. Emily froze as in her scope she watched him go limp. The tentacle retracted pulling him into the hole.

“Bubbles!” She screamed standing up. She jumped down and had just made it to the wall when the hole exploded in a brilliant white light. She flinched and looked away. When she looked back the hole was gone and so was Bubbles.