I sidestepped as a burp of fire exploded outward, singing the hairs on the back of my hands. I snarled from the pain of my hairs crackling, crisp as charred meat, flaking upward. My knife was in my right hand with vines entwined around it, the tendrils stemming from my clenched fingers. It didn’t matter at the moment that they were exposed since I had one goal in mind.

I retaliated by leaping forward, slamming a sudden gale of wind against my own back to rocket forward. My assailant, a medium-sized man dressed in a jokingly cliched black, didn’t have time to react as I catapulted toward him head first. As I went by, my mouth grazed his neck, and I used my Needles to inject him with venom.

My Needles are two incredibly sharp, needle-like teeth as hard as steel. They’re located to the inside of my canines, just next to the gum line, and have bi-jointed muscled appendages that rocket them forward first down to clear my teeth and then out beyond my mouth. If I had to compare them to anything, I’d say they’re like spider mandibles. But before you flip a shit and gag, they don’t look like spider mandibles, but more like little pink, slimy, spiked worms... I really need to find a better comparison. Jesus, eloquence isn’t one of my strong suits.

I removed my twin icicle-esque-fangs before he probably even registered they had pierced his skin. Momentum carried me several feet away diagonally into the hallway wall and I gasped as I impacted its surface. My assailant held up a hand and I recognized the gesture his hand made, like pushing a wave of air forward.

He looked deeply perturbed when nothing happened. I walked toward him slowly, watching him back away as he repeatedly failed to conjure up the fire he had grown dependent upon. I gave him a grim smile, then jumped forward, seized his neck in my left hand, constricted, and knocked him out with a blow of my knife’s hilt to the head.

He slumped to the floor, very much alive, and very much unable to play with fire for the next few days.

So he was one of the two esps that were supposedly going to break in. I didn’t trust the intel, but at least however many esps were supposed to come were one less. Usually esps came in much bigger packs than two, like wolves. Ravenous, pooling their resources for big game.

“-just finished up. The guy was a fire spinner, right Ciaran?” Eric crackled in through the headpiece.

“Yes,” I replied quickly, still a bit out of breath.

Eric continued, his voice clearer after the signal stabilized. “Rex already engaged another intruder.”

“Not an esp, so it was easy,” Rex replied, his lilting accent jovial. He loves using his guns, Rex does. Can’t use them in the ways he wants in any normal profession.

“No other sightings,” Alice replied before I had the chance to ask. “Olivia thought she sensed something, but that’s it.”

“Thanks for the update,” I replied. It irked me that Rex finished off his opponent before I did, but then again it was easy to mow someone down in a stream of well-aimed bullets, especially if they weren’t an esp. It must have been a planned, simultaneous attack. I wondered if there was a mother-queen esp coordinating from afar.

I grabbed a packet of zip ties from my inside jacket pocket and bonded the man’s hands and feet together so he would be useless if he woke up. He already was severely hindered without his fire, but anyone can hold a gun and get a lucky shot. It’s best not to take risks.

“The target you took down is neutralized, right, Ciaran?” Eric asked. The team knew I somehow could lock down esp abilities, though they didn’t know how. For all Eric knew, I had to simply touch the fire spinner and he’d become impotent.

What they didn’t know wouldn’t kill them.

“Yes.” I smiled coolly at a nearby camera, a tiny box hidden nicely in the corner of a hallway that branched into two sectors. “He won’t be using any of his familiar tricks for a few days at least.”

“Good,” Veex added. “I hate fire spinners. Freakin’ torched my boxers last time I encountered a group of them.” The team snickered and then quieted down as everyone resumed their quiet patrols of the lab.

“What exactly are we guarding, Eric? It’s probably classified, but, um,” Alice wondered out loud, pausing to gather her thoughts. “I’m kind of curious.”

“I’m not sure, but it’s probably not some piece of data. That’d be a stupid reason to call us here.” Eric laughed dryly. It’s a running joke that people call us instead of much-needed cyber security pros. People don’t get that you need a good cyber security pro to deal with a cracker. Sure, we can watch your computer, but we can’t protect it from remote attacks.

Actually, Olivia could, but cyber security’s not her job and she sure as hell is not doing anything extra. Her philosophy is to do the bare minimum, a frame of mind which normally deposits people in the overflowing trash heap of dead-end, low-wage jobs. By grace of fate, she’s been able to get by on her absurdly powerful “minimum” her entire life, unlike the rest of us who have to give a shit. Lucky her. Can’t say I’m not curious to see what kind of power she can pack when she can bring herself to care. I definitely wouldn’t want to be on the receiving side of it.

“You all saw that tiger,” Eric reminded us in that tone he uses when he implies we’re all mentally challenged. “Maybe we’re protecting some rare animal or genetically modified organism being held in the lab for a day. Either way, we’re just supposed to incapacitate any and all intruders.”

“Incapacitate...?” Rex said slowly, questioningly, like the word was bitter and slippery.

“That or kill,” Eric said dismissively. Cream or sugar? It sounded so nonchalant from their lips, so unimportant. Knock someone out or kill him, almost like the two are the same. In a way they are: knock someone out and he’s sleeping for a day, kill someone and he’s sleeping for years, but he’ll wake up regardless into the light of the world. He’ll wake up on Earth, past the land dominated by the blinding gate, awake and alive. It’s a matter of when and where, after all. Everyone dies, everyone enters the desolation of Respite eventually.

I’m not sure why I care, but I do. I don’t like to kill people if I can avoid it. I don’t like to send anyone back to the grave any sooner than necessary.

Of course, there are exceptions to my general philosophy. Many exceptions, actually. There are true monsters walking among us. Some of them you can smell, some of them you can’t tell unless they reveal the festering rot of their minds, let their brain-sewage mixture seep out, permanently staining their face until you can’t take it anymore, the truth of the wolf in sheep’s clothing. You see the blood on their teeth, their jaundiced eyes, always staring, and it’s terrifying because once you see one you know there must be more, hiding, all around you, maggots lurking under still flesh.

There are countless shades of monster, lurking all around, and the most of the ones I’ve found fit for slaughter have been human.