Back to the Now

After the years had gone by, Michael finally knew the secret. Given the new situation, there was no choice but for him to know the truth. Lani knew that eventually he’d find out that she was planted. What she hoped was that he’d find out that she was genuinely happy to stay. And while she was happy to finally have the weight of the secrets released, she was still stirring with a bit of anger as to the situation that brought this about.

A while went by as Michael napped involuntarily. He began to open his eyes again, looking around for Lani. As he tried to sit back up, Lani walked into the basement with a bag. Knowing what happened last time Lani had caught him awake, he started trying to crawl back. “I don’t need to sleep,” he muttered as he tried to gain his footing and stand up.

Lani moved quickly to grab his hands and hold him still. “You’re not ready to get up yet,” she pleaded with him. “Please don’t get up yet.” Though Michael was still trying to scramble, she didn’t let up. “You’re able to heal quick but you gotta lay still.”

Michael whimpered, breathing fast and starting to panic. “Don’t make me sleep again,” he managed to mutter during his hyperventilating. “I feel like I’ll wake up there again.”

Lani placed her hand on the side of his face, worried that he’d start making bigger movements and tear open his bandages or rip the IV catheter out of his arm in careless rage. She also remembered the visions, and how this was very much like a bad time Michael had been through in his younger years. “Please don’t fight me on this,” she whispered as she wrapped an arm around him, “I know this reminds you of bad times, but I won’t leave you like this, you’ll be safe.”

Michael paused, his mind coming to a focal point. “Lani,” he asked softly, “I haven’t told you about my hospital trauma.” As Lani positioned herself on his lap, Michael looked directly into her eyes. “How do you know?”

Realizing that she’d have to admit it at some point, Lani decided to explain the visions. “I don’t know the details,” she said in a matter of fact tone. “I just know you have some kind of terror in your head that’s related to hospitals.” she ran her hand over the side of his head, “My exposure to the red crystal showed me something when it knocked me the fuck out.” She paused as she observed Michaels face relaxing. “It showed me your face, and it showed me that you fought things.”

“What kind of things?”

“You fought bad people and you fight memories and thoughts in your head.” she took a breath. “Not details, but enough of your mind was shown to me that I knew you were a good person.”

Before any clarification could be given, the discussion was cut short by an explosion. Outside, an overwatch position had been set up and instead of waiting for vehicle movement, they decided to simply destroy the house. Firing rockets and machine guns at the structure, the shooters aimed for where they thought the structure supports would be. Long bursts of fire tore through the structure. In the shooting position, there were two machine guns in action, though only one of them fired at a time. They knew that a pair of belt fed weapons would be very vulnerable if they both had to stop to reload, so they planned carefully to minimize any halting in the fire.

Lani grabbed the arm that was set up with the catheter and carefully began removing it. Shutting off the drip in the line, she ensured that he was safe to use his arm before grabbing one of his own plate carriers and handing it to him. “We gotta go, I have an escape route.” she shouted as she grabbed her armor out of the bag she had carried down the stairs.

“Good” Michael replied loudly as he got up, as if seemingly nothing was wrong with him though his chest still ached a little bit, “Use it. We’re not done talking, I’ll meet up with you once I take care of what’s going on outside.”

Lani put on what looked like a set of ancient Japanese samurai armor. This was not the wood layered metal stuff used hundreds of years ago. This armor was layers of ceramic plating, ballistic metal and an experimental dragon scale armor. On anyone else Lani’s size, this armor would be heavy and cumbersome. On Lani, a vastly enhanced individual, she could move quite freely in this armor. She could even operate a sword or a rifle as she saw fit. After tightening her armor to herself, she slid the M60 to Michael. “Take this, bring it with us, we’ll get an advantage on them.”

Michael picked it up and racked the action back. Loading it, he picked it up and looked at the belt. Armor Piercing and incendiary in a two and one feed ratio? He looked at Lani, wondering where she got this.

“Last time some assholes set up an ambush for you.” Lani said, reading Michaels confused face. “I thought you’d like the nice gun they had.”

“This would have disabled my car,” Michael said softly, “They might have actually taken me out.”

“And I couldn’t have that!” Lani snapped at Michael. “Now you’re gonna show them how to run it.” She smiled as she thought of how nice it would be to see Michael fight. She grabbed her helmet and affixed it to her head. Placing her sword on her back and grabbing her AS VAL, she unloaded it and grabbed another set of magazines. This time she was loading it with supersonic ammo as she wasn’t so concerned with concealing the fact that she was shooting people. Though the weapon would fire quiet, the rounds would fly faster, make snapping noises in flight and hit harder. “Once I get to my exit,” Lani said as she placed her hand on his shoulder, “wait one minute, then get up there and start shooting back.”

Michael was nervous of this plan. A little girl he hired out of school at 18 somehow had a suit of armor, a russian special rifle and was laying out a tactical action. He didn’t feel like arguing as rounds and rockets smashed his house apart. He nodded slowly.

Lani walked up the stairs, still having structure to hide her movements to the sink where she had escaped before. The rounds were not flying through her path. She ran low to the floor and made it halfway to the cupboard before one stray shot hit her leg and caused her to trip over herself. Michael watched in horror as she fell, but his urge to run out to her subsided as he watched her immediately get right back up and continue moving as though nothing happened. That’s some great fuckin armor he thought to himself as he heard Lani giggling loudly.

He waited as she asked him to do. The minute was almost up. How far is she gonna get? He trusted her, having no choice in the matter. He charged out of the wreckage coming down around him. Wielding his M60 with the ease that most men would carry a carbine, Michael brought the weapon up and sighted in on the muzzle flash. He opened fire with long angry bursts that stayed well grouped on the enemy position. At least two men had fallen from the first spray of fire. Michael ducked quickly behind rubble and began quickly crawling to another vantage point once both enemy machine guns began targeting him directly. Rockets flew overhead, one even falling short. He wasn’t sure about the total count but the position had to have at least five to seven people from his perspective, and there had to be at least one more team somewhere ready to help these guys if they were bold enough to use explosives and machine guns in Germany of all places.

As he found his position and prepared to start shooting again, Lani had emerged from her exit and found the enemy position. Little snaps could be heard as she let loose with a tightly grouped volley of fire. She could see that the position had eight people, two of which Michael had killed. Lani managed to get four of them before having to reload. She made a mad dash to another position of cover as she reloaded.

Before the remaining men could fix their attention on Lani, Michael let out a long burst of fire and began cutting the top of the ground where the men had positioned themselves. There were only two men left, one who had caught a round through his shoulder and had been rendered ineffective. The last one lay flat to the ground, unable to pick his head back up to find a target to engage.

As Michael fired away at the position, Lani walked quickly to the cowering man and unloaded into him and the last wounded man. The enemy had been eradicated for the moment. Lani knew that there wasn’t time to waste trying to sift through their equipment. She quickly began running back to Michael. “What’s next?” she asked as she got close enough to communicate with him quietly.

Michael carried his weapon with him back down to the basement, as Lani followed him with a somewhat frantic shaking in her hand. As he went back into the basement, he pulled a case from under a workbench and opened it. Inside was an M16 with an aftermarket handguard, a four power fixed ranged combat optic and a simple three point sling. The magazines were loaded with 77 grain match rounds, which he grabbed up and placed in pouches on his vest. Once he finished doing that, he looked to Lani who had gotten the hint and replaced her two spent magazines with fresh ones. “How much did you get taught?” he asked her as he adjusted his sling.

“I can ninja people up if that’s what you’re asking, and I got taught how to make the bullets go where I want,” Lani answered through a smile. “You were amazing.”

“How?” Michael muttered back as he rolled his eyes. He had no idea what great amazing thing he did, though even if he had it would not be in his way to gloat over it.

“Watching you wreck shit,” Lani said softly, “I really like it.”

“Well I can’t leave you behind anymore,” Michael said through his teeth, “If there’s bad guys around who have our power and you were never a soldier,” Michael said as he turned to Lani and stopped as he realized that something he said had struck her feelings.

“I had two months to learn it all,” she said, holding back tears. “I didn't have an army job to go to the middle east with.” she took a few deep breaths in quick succession. “I don’t wanna fail you,” she said as a tear escaped.

Michael walked to Lani and wrapped his arms around her tightly, holding her close for a brief moment. “You haven’t failed me,” he whispered in her ear as he let out a slow breath. “You have done far more for me than anyone could expect.” He brought his head back as he held her shoulders to keep her attention. “You may have only had two months of training, but we have the rest of our lives together. I’ll show you what they couldn’t teach.” he said as he had a soft smile escape.

Lani smiled back with tears still flowing down her face. “Michael,” she said as she reached up and touched the side of his face. “That’s the most real smile I’ve ever seen of you.”

As they shared this brief moment, a truck arrived outside the wrecked house. This time, about twenty men jumped out of the back. This box truck looked like a normal twenty foot rental, but inside the space in the back was much like a military troop transport two ton truck. The twenty men in the back who had dismounted were dressed in full armor as any modern army would be. All of them were equipped with G36’s, some of them the Kurz models, some of them the Commando variation. In the back of the truck, one man hadn’t stepped out yet. He stood with a cigar in his hand, dressed in the same kit as all the others, he had a long gray beard. He did not have a G36 like the rest of the men, but he was armed with a well restored MG42 that didn’t seem to be impeding his movements whatsoever.

The men began searching through the rubble of the house that had finally finished collapsing. The path to the tunnel route was fully exposed and could not be used without someone seeing. Footsteps could be heard, though the location of the basement was not exactly known to everyone. A large piece of wall had fallen on top of the stairway, making the aspect of finding the basement that much harder.

Michael and Lani looked up as they heard the men walking around. “Whoever sent these fuckin idiots,” He began to mutter, “Eventually we’re gonna have a talk with someone.” he picked up the M60 as he pushed the M16 to his back. He walked to the bottom of the stairs and aimed his weapon up to the wall that had fallen over their escape.