21st January 2017

Xavier

My return to consciousness was gradual. Through the fog that filled my thoughts I slowly became aware of people talking in American accents.

“Leave. He’s waking up,” a posh British accented voice said, the other voices went silent and there was the sound of a door closing.

“Mr Costella, can you hear me?”

“Mmm…” I volunteered.

“My name’s Doctor White, I’m a psychiatrist. I’m afraid you’ve had a bit of an episode.” The reassuring voice said.

“What?” I opened my eyes. Above me were ceiling tiles and I could just see an empty drip stand to one side. I tried to move and found I couldn’t.

“I’m afraid we had to strap you down, Mr Costella. You were a danger to yourself and others.”

“Where am I?” I managed to ask, testing the straps holding me to the bed, there was a creak from beneath me and something metallic pinged.

“Please don’t do that Mr Costella, we don’t want you to hurt yourself,” the voice said, a hint of alarm colouring his voice. “You are in a psychiatric assessment unit, you have been sectioned under the mental health act.”

“Can’t this wait until I get home. I can’t afford US healthcare.” I said woozily.

“Where do you think you are Mr Costella?” The voice asked curiously.

“Orlando… Florida?” I said.

“No, Mr Costella, you are in London. in England.” I shrugged as if this was of little interest. As I’d hoped one of the straps loosened minutely freeing my right arm a little.

“What happened.” I muttered.

“What do you think happened?” I tried to think but my thoughts kept slipping away from me. The memory of walking through a car park full of American cars came to me, then nothing.

“Don’t know. Where’s Nat?” I asked. If I was in a hospital Natalie would be close by, I knew. Hospitals and medical facilities were her natural environment.

“Errr… who’s ‘Nat’?” the voice asked, sounding concerned.

“Doctor Natalie Chang. My girlfriend.” I replied, getting a sinking feeling. Something was very wrong.

“You live with Melissa Curr, Mr Costella. She is very worried about you.” I opened my eyes again and tried to crane my head round to look at the psychiatrist trying to protest at the unlikeliness of my ex caring for anyone but herself, but the straps holding my head wouldn’t budge.

“You have been living with her since you were medically discharged from the army. There was an incident in a minefield I believe?”

“The penguins made me do it.” I couldn’t resist saying. If I was having an ‘episode’, whatever that was, I might as well have a bit of fun.

“Made you do what?” the voice asked, suddenly sounding worried.

“Whatever I did. What did I do anyway?” I flexed my arm, the bed creaked again and I felt something in the bed snap.

“Mr Costella, you are not being very helpful, we are trying to help you and we can’t help you if you mess around.” The calm voice was back but this time it had some steel in it. I sighed.

“Can I see Melissa?” I asked, deciding to call the voice’s bluff.

“I don’t think that would be a very good idea, do you?”

“Why? You said she was worried about me.”

“Worried… and scared. Your episode was quite… violent. You broke her wrist.”

“She broke her wrist on my face…” I paused as the humiliating memory of Mellissa smashing me across the face with a dumbbell hit me. But that had been almost a year ago… hadn’t it?

“That is not what happened is it. Tell me what really happened Mr Costella.” I dredged my memories and then smiled as unbidden memories flashed through my mind. Natalie healing my face with nothing but her fingers, then kissing me. Standing next to Natalie in the rain as a dragon loomed over us. Fighting a huge, bearded pirate, his look of surprise as I broke his huge greatsword and rammed the legendary sword, Caledfwlch, into his belly. I decided if I was delusional, I was quite happy to stay that way.

“Best. Episode. Ever.” I murmured.

“Breaking your girlfriend’s wrist?” The voice asked, a note of shock colouring his voice. I didn’t reply as memories were flashing through my head. The voice tried a different tack.

“Tell me about your mother.”

“She died when I was eight. Of hypothermia.” There was a long pause as if whoever was doing the questioning hadn’t expected the answer which was strange. If I was in London they would have my medical notes.

“And your father?” I had a sudden flash of memory, possibly my earliest memory, of being carried in my arms by my mother, she was sobbing as she ran down a long, elegant corridor intricately decorated with flowers and vines.

“I never knew my father.”

“Tell me Mr Costella do you hear voices?”

“Oh, yes, I can hear you quite clearly.” There was a pause, probably the owner of the voice was counting to ten in an effort not to swear.

“I mean, voices in your head, Mr Costella, internal voices, telling you what to do.” The voice said through gritted teeth, and I caught the slight twang of an American accent.

“Ohhh Yes” said the voice in my head and the fog in my mind dissipated.

“Didn’t I tell you to keep quiet after the thing with the penguins. And again when I blew the airship up.” I thought back.

“Oh come on, I’ve been waiting for centuries for someone to ask one of my chosen if they heard voices in their head, and don’t worry, unlike some of the others you’re sane. And all your memories are real.”

I swallowed. Having an unfathomably ancient alien intelligence sharing my mind was something I thought I’d got used to, but actually hearing them talking to me in my mind was disconcerting in the extreme, although Natalie seemed perfectly fine with it.

“Mr Costella?” The voice asked, sounding worried, a skinny, bearded, white man leant over me, moving something on my forehead. I wrenched my right hand out of the restraints and grabbed the man round his scrawny throat and squeezed.

“The voice in my head says I’m fine.” I growled.

“Let go of me… You can’t… escape,” the man gasped, trying to sound commanding. This irritated me hugely, who was he to try and order me around. I wrenched my left arm free and tried to undo the strap securing my head as I continued to crush the man’s throat with my right hand.

“Let go,” the man wheezed desperately as his face turned red and he scrabbled desperately to break my grip round his neck. I felt my grip slipping so I pushed him as hard as I could across the room in the direction of where he’d been sitting. There was a crash as he fell over his chair and another, even more satisfying crash as he hit what must have been a trolley full of medical paraphernalia.

I grabbed the headstrap with both hands and, concentrating hard, I managed to undo it, then, with a lot more effort than a simple strap should require I undid the one around my chest and sat up. There was a metallic clatter as one of the sides of the hospital bed fell off.

I looked around as I undid the strap around my waist, I was definitely in a hospital, but the other medical bed and the corporate beige décor was unlike any NHS hospital I’d ever been in. The place didn’t look nearly battered enough.

Next to me was a machine on a trolly connected to pads on my forehead that I ripped off. I glanced at the screen where the display looked like the scribblings of a very disturbed child, then followed the power cord back to its socket. An American style power socket confirmed my suspicions that I wasn’t in the UK.

I’d just started on the bottom strap when a man wearing medical scrubs burst through the door holding a Taser. He took in ‘Doctor’ White on the floor holding his throat, then looked at me undoing my straps and raised the Taser. I grabbed the brainwave monitor and threw it at him. It shot across the room, reached the end of its power cord and crashed to the floor a metre from its intended victim. I rolled to one side and the Taser bolt hit the padded, beige headboard above the bed. The strap holding my feet came undone and I fell out the bed.

I disentangled myself from the blanket covering me and stood up, moving towards Taser guy planning a roundhouse kick to his face, instead I staggered across the room and collided with the wall putting a sizable dent in the drywall.

I pushed myself off the wall and staggered back in the direction of Taser guy who panicked and threw his Taser at me, I dodged, grabbed his left arm for support and we spun around the room, for a moment like the worlds most uncoordinated dance couple. I let go, he went flying across the room and hit the wall headfirst, then fell backwards onto the floor with a satisfying thud.

I glanced at my former questioner lying on the floor, holding his throat and struggling to breath, he cringed most satisfyingly when he saw I was looking at him. From the corridor came the sound of running feet.

I grabbed the broken side of the bed, staggered over to the door and rammed the piece of bent metal under the bottom of the door with all my strength. It wedged there with the sound of splintering wood. Seconds later someone tried to enter the room. It was only then I realised I was wearing a slightly too small hospital gown, one of the ones that only does up at the back.

“Joe? Randy? Are you okay in there?” A voice called.

“Everything’s fine. Mr Costella got a hand free. And you call me Doctor White,” I replied in the best approximation of my questioner’s voice as I crossed to the window, threw up the blackout blinds and bright sunlight streamed in. It looked like I was around three floors up in a large multi-story building, just below me I could see a corrugated white metal roofed area. As I looked, a red ambulance pulled out from underneath it. Not in the UK

“Why can’t I open the door?”

“Something must have got wedged under it in the struggle. Give us a minute to finish restraining Mr Costella and we’ll open it.”

“Are you sure you’re okay? He’s one big, scary bastard.” I grinned. It was nice to be appreciated.

“A Tasering quietened him down nicely. Now if you would be quiet, I might be able to savage something from this mess.” I replied, lifting up the table the monitor had stood on and swung it at the bottom corner of the single glass pane. The laminated glass cracked but failed to break, and the whole window frame shifted to the sound of cracking render from outside.

“What was that?” The annoyingly persistent voice asked. I sighed in irritation, grabbed the Taser off the floor, lurched over to the door, pulled the wedge away and pulled it open. A man in his twenties, clad identically his colleague fell into the room and I discharged the Taser into his bare neck. He screamed and arched his back in a most satisfying manner. I bashed his head on the floor and he went limp.

I lurched back over to the window and gave it a good push. Whoever had fitted the window hadn’t bothered to bolt it to anything and it was solely held in by the render on the walls outside. It fell out, landed with a massive crash on the metal roof and cartwheeled off. The hot, humid outside air outside fought the air conditioning as shouts of shock and alarm came from below.

I clambered up into the window opening, meaning to carefully hang off the window ledge and let go and land cat-like on the roof below. I’d forgotten I was drugged up to the eyeballs and had all the co-ordination of a drunken elephant on ice. Instead I lost my grip, fell out the opening and hit the metal roof with an even bigger crash than the window had made.

For a moment I lay on the uncomfortably hot metal roof, glad I was in the shade as I stared woozily at the cloudless blue sky wondering what the hell had happened, then I tried to move. It hurt, but in an ‘everything still works but you’re going to suffer tomorrow’ kind of way. I rolled over, pulled my way out the crater I’d made and crawled to the edge of the roof. Directly underneath me was the red roof of an ambulance that had come to a stop.

The ambulance driver had opened his door and was peering up at me as were a couple of other medical staff and an armed security guard was speaking urgently into his radio. To my surprise there didn’t appear to be anyone filming on their phone.

“Are you okay, sir?” the ambulance driver asked.

“Oh, yes I’m fine,” I replied more brightly than anyone who’d just fallen out a third story window had any right to do. “You might want to avert your eyes,” I warned, dropped onto the ambulance’s roof and slid off the bodywork until I hit the ground in front of the ambulance, no doubt giving my audience an eyeful

I picked myself up. The security guard, a beefy white guy with cropped hair, put away his radio and put his hand over his gun.

“Really?” I said to him, raising my hands to show him there was no way I could be armed. The security guard relaxed.

“Hey, I’m just doing my job, buddy, I don’t want no trouble.”

“Do I look like trouble?” I asked, trying to look harmless.

“You look like you’re a whole load of paperwork for someone… Oh please, not him…” The security guard said looking at another guard barging through the doors towards me. He was, skinny, sallow, had lank hair and bad teeth. A poster boy for Florida man.

“Can he write?” I asked the first security guard who shrugged.

“Hold it, buddy.” the new guard shrieked, drawing a massive pistol. It was too heavy for him to hold straight and the gun waving in front of my nose was just too much of a temptation. I grabbed his arm, gave it a sharp twist and took the gun off him. There were screams and the sound of people running away.

“Oooh nice, a Desert Eagle” I said examining the gun.

“Arrghh… what the fuck are you doin’,” the scrawny guard whimpered as I continued to push his face into the floor. I glanced at the other guard who was watching his colleague’s distress with every sign of enjoyment from behind the Ambulance.

“You told me to hold it, so I am.”

“Narrrgh. Let go of me.” The guard wailed. I looked around me. The bystanders had disappeared, and from the end of the hospital access road I caught a flash of a brown car heading down the ambulance only access road. I smiled.

“Well, it was a pleasure meeting you, but I really must be going, my lift is here” I let go of the Guard and he collapsed onto the floor whimpering, then I wandered around the back of the Ambulance leaving the shade. As the full force of the Florida sun hit me a wave of nausea hit me.

I looked at the gun, considered keeping it for a second, then reluctantly decided my skin was the wrong colour to wander around Orlando with any form of weaponry, especially as I was lurching around like an incompetent zombie in a hospital gown. Anyway, Natalie was nearly here. I threw the pistol up onto the roof just as the brown, 1981 Rolls Royce Corniche Convertible with the roof down pulled up in front of me.

A stunningly beautiful woman of Asian ancestry lowered her dark glasses, Her long black pigtailed hair had a Minnie Mouse headband in and she was wearing a long green dress that gave the impression she'd escaped from a Renaissance Fayre. She looked me up and down and smiled showing slightly uneven teeth.

“Hi Xav. I like your gown,” Natalie said in her gloriously sexy accent. I couldn't help but smile back as I opened the passenger door and fell into the soft cream leather seats. A few seconds later all hell broke loose as the FBI descended on the hospital.

***

An hour later I was back in the Rolls, top up, in my own clothes, with the taste of terrible FBI coffee in my mouth. I’d been missing for a total of three hours.

“What happened?” I asked Natalie. The antidote to whatever my abductors had given me was kicking in and my head no longer felt it was filled with cotton wool. I was pretty sure I’d be able to walk in a straight line very soon.

“They darted you when you went to get brunch, As soon as I realised you’d disappeared I called James.”

“What did he do?”

“He said he’d call in some favours.” I nodded wondering who James, even with his contacts, had called to get such an instant and overwhelming response. Not that finding me had been hard as the idiots who’d abducted me had forgotten to turn my phone off.

“Did anyone say who they think is responsible.” I asked.

“Those FBI guys didn’t want to say anything to me, but I heard them saying it was another Agency, they seemed very smug about catching them.” I laughed. In the cut and thrust of every day intelligence gathering, publicly catching out another Agency doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing was the espionage equivalent of winning the lottery.

“I bet they were. Are the guys here yet.”

“They landed a couple of hours ago; they’re waiting for us at the park.”

It took us forty minutes to make our way through the Orlando traffic to the abandoned theme park. It had been abandoned a decade ago and I doubted even when new it had given Disney any headaches. There was one remaining rickety rollercoaster, lots of weed encrusted concrete where smaller rides had once stood before being sold on, and a few rotting buildings. When we’d arrived three weeks ago there hadn’t even been a creepy security guard or unhinged janitor to greet us.

At the back of the lot, set apart from the park itself was a large house built in the Victorian Haunted House style. It looked abandoned and badly in need of a coat of paint. It was this building Natalie aimed the Rolls towards and parked in the third bay of the three-car garage. Five people piled into the garage to meet us.

“Afternoon, how was Disney?” Mode, a compact, capable man who in a former life had been an SAS medic, greeted us as we got out.

“Practically perfect in every way. Apart from the walking. And the queues.” Natalie said smiling. I glanced at her. She obviously hadn’t informed them about this morning’s excitement.

“Yeah, Nat loved it.” I added, unwilling to admit that I’d enjoyed visiting the parks too, mostly due to Natalie’s almost childlike enthusiasm for everything Disney.

“Nice car, where did you find one of those?” Blue, the large, tattooed Māori, and former Marine asked.

“It was left here in the garage by the former resident. How’s the head?” I asked

“I’m fine, I was fine a few days after it happened.” Blue answered as if he were tired of the question.

“I haven’t seen you since you started Sheriffing in Dragons Landing.” I reminded him.

“Come on boss, it was only his head, it’s not like anything important was damaged,” Tommy said. Every squad has a Tommy, the one with the big mouth who’s always in some sort of trouble, unsurprisingly he’d once been a Para.

“I’m not the one who thinks that wearing that piece of shit on my head is a good idea,” Blue bit back, gesturing to Tommy’s red MAGA baseball cap.

“You told me to blend in. I’m blending in.” Tommy protested.

“Where did you even get it?” I couldn’t help myself from asking.

“Found it.” Tommy replied unhelpfully.

“You’ve been in the States for what? Three hours?”

“Yeah, about that long,” Tommy replied and disappeared into the house before he could be questioned further. I sighed and turned my attention to the last two members of our entourage

“Any problems?” I asked them.

“Lots of tiresome questions, but no problems,” Juan, an older, Hispanic man with an air of command replied with a formal nod, before he went back inside. He looked tired and stressed and I guessed now we were so close to our goal the reality of what I was asking him to do was starting to hit home.

"Is he okay… Are you okay?” I asked Ren, dark haired, dark skinned, androgynous, possessed of an inner calm, and very hard to read. I needed Ren for this mission, possibly even more than I needed Juan. Ren smiled at me and put their hand on my arm.

“No one ever asks me if I’m okay, but I am fine. Lord Juan’s worried of course. He can’t see what the five of us can do, nor can I actually, but I know you’ve been planning this for more than a season. Are you okay Governor? You don’t seem yourself”

“I’ve had a rough day.” I admitted as I followed Natalie through to the large kitchen/diner where the rest of the party had congregated. In contrast to the outside that was tatty and badly maintained, the interior of the house was clean and comfortable albeit in a beige and dark wood style that had last been fashionable in the UK back in the 1990s.

I wasn’t surprised to find Tommy and Mode were raiding the cupboards and a there was already a fry up on the go. Blue had found the mugs and poured me a coffee.

“This bread is sweet.” Tommy accused, a half-eaten buttered slice in his hand.

“That’s American bread, the proper stuff is in that cupboard on the left,” I told him.

“Why did you even buy it?”

“We didn’t want to waste time shopping, I got the cleaner do it for us.” Natalie replied.

“Is this an Agency safe house?” Blue asked.

“This was our late friend Mr Bonner’s personal residence, after he lost access to the Gateways, the Agency made sure they snaffled all his assets up.”

“What did he actually do on this side of the Gateway,” Mode asked.

“Oh, lots of dodgy stuff through several front companies, the CIA taught him well how to stay under the radar. There are a couple of mines out west, there’s an army surplus store, a chandlers and boat broker, a logistics company… He was basically selling gold to buy stuff he couldn’t make on the other side… And he had a nice line in people smuggling.” I explained

“I take it none of the people he smuggled ended where they thought they were going?” Blue said.

“I doubt it, and if anyone complained there’s a couple of big fat alligators in the lake out back. Also, when this place was cleared out they found a load of human sized cages in the garage.”

“That was for his house slaves, he liked to be attended,” Juan said, with a note of distaste in his voice.

“He was an evil person. He enjoyed making people suffer.” Ren said, taking an experimental sip of coffee.

“Definitely one of the more unpleasant people I’ve encountered over the years. Not that I've ever actually met him in person.” I said.

“You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to obliterate someone you’ve never met, and now you are intent on destroying his legacy no matter what the cost.” Juan said and I turned on him.

“You of all people know how Father Callis died. You know what they did to Sebastian. In my nightmares I have lived the deaths of a thousand of my predecessors and his death was the worst. The Spirit didn’t chose me for my laid-back attitude and sunny disposition. I was chosen to make sure Bonner never has a legacy.” I told the renegade Iron Brotherhood commander, who to my shock and horror was cringing back from me. I looked at the others who were staring at me in shock, all except Natalie, who was looking at me with a slight smile on her face.

“I’m sorry, Governor, I spoke out of turn. I came to hate the man as much as you, well maybe not quite as much as you. I… I am merely worried about what you have planned for the population of the Iron Mountain. Whatever Bonner did, I do not want to be party to another wholesale slaughter, most of the people there are not bad people.” Juan said and I saw how much it had cost him to say it. I took a deep breath.

“Your people named you Lord Protector for a reason. Don’t worry, if things go to plan hardly anyone will get hurt. After dinner we’ll go down to the dungeon and go through the plan.”

“This place has a dungeon?” Tommy asked excitedly.

“It’s more of an extended basement, but as the water table is so high here it’s as dungeony as you’re gonna get in Florida. Unless you’re Disney.” I replied.

So, we had dinner, a full English breakfast, because as Tommy and Blue argued, it was morning somewhere. There was much debate of what this tradition British dish actually consisted of. Bacon and sausages, definitely. Fried eggs were compulsory, although it was allowed that scrambled or even poached eggs could be substituted if you were a health-conscious wimp. Baked beans, fried bread and fried mushrooms, were permitted additions, although what brand of baked bean was up for discussion. It was after that the arguments started.

I kept diplomatically silent as my stomach was rumbling and I hadn’t had a proper home fried meal for a while. After stuffing my face, I felt a bit more human and could have quite happily fallen asleep. I also knew I really should talk to James about the morning’s events.

The guys however were keen to get on and showed not a bit of fatigue despite having just endured a 10-hour flight, persuading James to upgrade them to business class had obviously been worth it. I made them clean the kitchen up while I changed into my combats, then called everyone into the garage.

Two of the three bays were empty apart from a new electric car charging point I’d installed.

“I get to do the thing,” Natalie said with an almost childlike enthusiasm, waving us to stand by the Rolls, she got out her phone and opened an app. Even though I knew what was going to happen there was a moment of disorientation before my brain caught up with reality and we started to descend, Rolls Royce and all. The others made murmurs of appreciation.

“This one of your builds, boss?” Mode asked me.

“No, this was put in by Bonner, no doubt to cause shock and awe in his minions. I just did the wireless operation.” I replied.

The basement mirrored the upper floor plan of the villa. Brick arches supporting the house giving it a Spanish feel and I wondered how long a building had been here. The basement looked far older than house above, possibly even dating back to Conquistador times.

Along the walls there were empty metal shelves and lockers that could have come from anywhere and interesting looking crates were piled neatly up against the walls. In the centre of the room a tiny forklift was dwarfed by a wide pallet of large blue plastic barrels with ‘Drinking Water’ stencilled on them. A couple more identical pallets were stacked neatly, obscuring one of the alcoves.

Parked at an angle facing the water barrels was a 1990s Ford Ranger truck, hand painted a vile khaki colour. Despite being relatively low to the ground it had chunky off-road tyres, a winch and looked like someone was trying to get the Technical look on a budget. It wasn’t very convincing until you looked at the back where a Browning M2 heavy machine gun was fixed below the roof line in the truck bed on a stand designed to rise and swivel. It had taken me ages to construct the stand, and I was rather proud of it. There was also a power cable plugged into to where the fuel filler of the truck should have been.

“Did you manage to build an electric Technical in just three weeks?” Blue asked in delight, running over to inspect the truck.

“Not me, I found this on eBay, minus the gun of course. It uses Tesla motors and battery packs. You won’t believe how fast it is.”

“Where did you get the gun?” Mode asked.

“Army surplus.” I replied.

“Did the army know it was surplus?” Tommy asked. I just looked at him and he grinned unapologetically back at me

“Behind those crates is the Gateway that takes us right to the Iron Mountain, the last remnants of the Iron Brotherhood hold the settlement and as you all should know by now the Iron Mountain is pretty much the planet’s only easily accessible source of iron ore.” I said.

“And you want to claim this source of iron for yourself?” Juan asked.

“Nope, I’m leaving that economic shitstorm for the new Emperor of Midriver. I’m purely in it for the vengeance. The voice in my head wants me to make an example, well, more of an example than I’ve already made.”

“Way to go with the reassuring explanations boss.” Tommy said. The others laughed, even Juan cracked a smile.

“Stop fannying around and get your kit sorted, we’re doing a reccy in ten.” I informed them.

There was the usual moaning about lack of notice as they got ready while I moved the water barrels back from the Gateway was. In well under ten minutes, we were all stood around the seamless, thick, black, rectangular frame of the Gateway, guns at the ready.

I looked around to make sure everyone was paying attention and put my smart glasses on.

“Nat is about to open the Gateway to the Iron Mountain. They used this Gateway for years so there’s no way they’ll have forgotten it exists, and they have been expecting a visit from us since Beltane, although every bit of intelligence we have says it’s not guarded.

“Mines… or IEDs, I bet.” Tommy sighed.

“Possibly. I hope they’re not that sophisticated. Anyway I’m going to send a drone in first. You ready Nat? I asked putting on my smart glasses and checked the drone was ready.

“Yes honeybum,” Natalie replied to a few chuckles. There was a whine, and I flew a small drone flew across the room trailing a wire. A screen came up on my smart glasses showing the drone’s camera view. In front of me, the area between the black frame turned a pure reflectionless black and the drone disappeared.

The screen showed the drone had entered a cave with rough stone walls, it spun around slowly, night vison making the view monochrome and spooky. The entrance was a bright area where I could just about make out stars and an outline of vegetation.

“It’s about midnight, we have roughly six Earth hours before dawn. No sign of any recent human activity yet,” I said, almost to myself.

“Pity there’s no moon over there,” Mode commented.

“The stars are brighter than Earth. Not a good place to be if you’re a werewolf, though.” Tommy muttered.

“Quiet. Anyone see anything…?” I asked. Before anyone could reply there was a massive crash from the back of our side of the Gateway and I swear the wall I was leaning against shuddered.

“CLOSE IT,” I yelled, the infinite blackness of the Gateway was replaced by the friendly reality of the brick alcove and the video feed from the drone flickered off. In the alcove, blinking in the bright lights stood a massive bear looking around the cellar in confusion.

“I always wondered what would happen if something entered the Gateway from the rear.” Natalie said, unconcerned. The alien bear turned to her voice, sniffing the air. It didn’t look happy and if I didn’t do anything it was going to spread its unhappiness around.

The others raised their assault rifles.

“Don’t shoot,” I said as calmly as I could, and walked over to where the bear was standing, reached up to grab the scruff of its neck and pulled it towards the Gateway. To my surprise and probably the bear’s, it allowed itself to be manhandled.

“Open the Gateway.” I commanded.

“A please would be nice,” Natalie replied, waving her hand, the blackness returned. I turned the bear’s head towards the darkness and slapped it on its rump raising a cloud of dust.

“Go on, git.” I said, and the bear disappeared into the darkness. We all breathed again as Ren swore in a language that sounded like Russian.

“Thank you, my love,” I said to Natalie.

“Who needs IEDs when you’ve got a BFB guarding the Gateway,” Tommy said.

“BFB?” Mode asked.

“Big Fucking Bear” Tommy replied.

“Let’s go see what’s on the other side.” I said and stepped into the blackness.