MTOHS - Chapter 2.1

Chapter 2 - Rachel ~ Wordcount: 2016

I woke to what sounded like a small tremor in my bedroom, with paintings seeming to rattle against the walls. My eyes opened, but it all looked the same since I couldn’t make anything out in the thick darkness of my room. My head was throbbing. What time was it? I blinked a few times to chase the grogginess away as another wave of rattles and bangs sounded through my apartment.

The floor was cold against my bare feet as I rolled out of bed, my arm instinctively reaching out to steady myself on the nightstand nearby. I looked up and noticed that the door to my bedroom was wide open, allowing a stream of light to trickle into the hallway from the living room window. That’s odd. I always closed the door before I go to sleep.

An angry voice called to me from outside my apartment. “Rachel! Open the damn door!” The banging then immediately continued. It finally registered that there was someone desperately wanting to be let in.

I moved as fast as my tired legs would allow me, leaving a trail of blankets on the floor by my bed as I staggered through the hall and into the little foyer. Soon, my hand landed on the metal front door, and I flipped the lock before throwing the door open. Light poured into my dark apartment and blinded me as I squinted at the silhouette of a man with his fist raised to where the door used to be. My confusion only grew when I recognized it to be William.

He did not waste any time pushing his way into the apartment and saying, “I called you ten times, and you never picked up. This is a fucking emergency!” He looked around and flipped on the closest light switch. The energy in the room suddenly turned wild and frantic.

“What?” I mumbled. “You just woke me up. What time even is it?” Did he just say there was an emergency?

“That doesn’t matter,” he barked. “Just get your uniform on and let’s go. We’re in a hurry.”

I noticed that I was still holding the door open, and when I peeked out into the hallway, the heads of several angry neighbors stared right back at me. My face flushed red, and I mouthed an apology before promptly closing the door and looking back at William.

“Wait, why aren’t you wearing a uniform?” I asked as I noticed he was still in his typical white lab coat, far from the almost military grade uniform the DAI agents had to wear. “Can you just tell me what’s going on?”

He grabbed my arm and lead me through my own apartment back towards the bedroom and said, “Look, like I said, there’s an emergency situation involving Splinter, and Forber needs you there immediately and … where’s Eric?”

It then occurred to me that my boyfriend and team leader was nowhere to be found. “I… He was here when I fell asleep,” I stuttered. “I don’t know where he is.” When had I fallen asleep?

“Okay, okay,” William said with a sigh. “We’ll figure that out later. Just, go get changed. We don’t have time right now.” At that, I was able to collect my thoughts enough to piece together that William was really freaked out, which is a contrast to his typical stoic demeanor. I nodded at him, darted back into my bedroom, and slammed the door behind me. When I flipped the light back on, I half expected to see Eric still in bed, but with all the sheets abandoned on the floor, there was no one else in the room with me.

I shook my head and swore. What he had gotten himself into to this time without telling anyone, especially me? Hopefully, he wasn’t involved in this emergency. My feet lead me to the back of the room towards the closet where I had hung up my gear. Eric’s uniform still neatly pressed and hung up beside mine, the only thing missing from his tool belt a handgun. I tried not to think about it as I collected a few hangers and charged into the bathroom connected to the room.

The uniform consisted of a pair of padded tan cargo pants, a pitifully thin white t-shirt, and a bulletproof vest labeled DAI on the back in bright yellow letters. I grabbed my pair of thick artillery boots, worn at most three times and now discarded in the corner of the bathroom. Above those was a towel rack holding my weapon belt. The belt was shiny and new, stocked with two handguns and an assortment of knives. Once I’d suited up, I grabbed a black hair tie from a bowl and charged back into the heart of the bedroom.

My final stop was a small desk crammed into the opposite corner of the bedroom. My earpiece was discarded beside my phone, nearly obscured by a few half-opened boxes of bullets. I grabbed both, shoved my phone into my pocket, and inserted the earpiece, hearing a click as it powered on. An electronic woman spoke into my ear, saying, “8 missed calls from William.” I sighed. This was why I typically slept with my ringer on. Why didn’t it go off tonight?

I put my hands on my holster, felt the fully loaded guns, and knew that I had everything I could possibly need. “Alright, William. I’m ready.” I snatched my keys off the desk and threw the bedroom door open. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

It didn’t seem like he had stopped pacing since I’d went to change, but he gave me a quick once over and determined I was probably ready for whatever this emergency was.

“I’ll tell you when we get in the car,” he said, grabbing my arm and pulling me after him. After making a quick stop to lock the door, we sprinted down the hall towards the emergency exit stairs. The three flights of stairs flew by as our feet pounded on the metal, echoing all the way up the stairway.

When we barged into the lobby, the security officer sitting at the front desk gave us a nasty look. He clenched his teeth in anger and opened up his mouth as if to say something, probably about the noise complaints William had stirred up, the police car with lights still blaring parked in from of the glass doors, or both. I gave him an apologetic look and yelled a sorry as we rushed out the front door and jumped into William’s car.

In the next few seconds, his siren wailed to life, and the car lurched forward. My first instinct was to pull out my phone and try to find out any information I could, as William was preoccupied speeding his way into the city. I pressed my thumb against the bottom of the screen, and it lit up with the message, “Welcome, Agent Axaili.” I also noticed that the time was currently 2:14 am.

William didn’t take his eyes off the road as he said, “You should have gotten some files by now. Forber needs you to interrogate a woman about the situation, so there’s probably some information on her. But you need to watch the security footage first.” His voice was grim, his knuckles white as he gripped the steering wheel.

I found a notification about a group of files that had been shared with me and opened them. Just as William had said, it started with a folder that contained some standard records about a woman by the name of Margaret Boyd. I scrolled past those and saw another folder that was labeled as “EMERGENCY”, “ongoing investigation”, and concluded with the day’s date. Inside, were some miscellaneous files, but I first opened a video that was called security footage.

After a second of buffering, a dark, grainy image appeared on my screen. It showed a scene in a cramped storage space with a large group of people gathered in it. There were a few people on the right standing in a doorway, which were likely a few agents as they appeared to be holding guns and huddled close together. On the other side was a much larger crowd, and while apparently there was no color to the footage, every single person had a white glob over their face.

“This looks like some kind of rally,” I observed. “Splinter supporters by the looks of it.” William didn’t add anything, but his jaw clenched when I looked over at him.

When I studied the scene closer, I made out three or four agents in the doorway, every single one of the with their guns raised. The camera must have been set up in a corner because I couldn’t tell exactly where they were aiming, but my educated guess was either at the guy leading the rally from the top of a crate or someone standing on the outskirts of the crowd, just about the cross the gap between the people and the agents. Nothing else seemed especially out of the ordinary from a typical rally bust, so I pressed the play button.

Initially, nothing moved as I realized that the video was very slowed down, and only a few frames passed each second. Then, out of nowhere, the agent standing in the center took a step back backwards and landed into an agent beside her. I watched one, two, then three bullets creep out of each agent’s gun, hurdling towards the person, who looked to be a woman, at the edge of the crowd.

In the next frame, the bullets weren’t there anymore, and I learned there was audio with the video as a warbled bang sounded out of my phone. Shreds of metal flew back towards the agents in the next frame and by the third, they began to fall to the floor. My heart sank to the bottom of my chest, and my entire body ran cold. I couldn’t process what had just happened. It looked impossible.

Just as I thought it was over, there was a burst of movement, and the person on top of crate ran against the wall towards a door partially concealed in the back. Immediately, a third person tore after him from the crowd. Finally, the woman followed, and they were all gone in a few seconds. That was when the video cut off. 

Tears trickled down my cheeks as I looked back at the road in front of me. My mind and body felt completely numb from the information I’d just learned. William flew past other cars, mentally noting the license plate of a cab that refused to get out of the middle of the road.

He noticed I’d finished the footage and muttered apologetically, “I… Sorry. I didn’t know how to tell you. You just had to see it for yourself.”

All the questions flooded out of my mind as I blurted out, “How many were there? Are they alive? Who was it? Who were those people?”

William pinched his lips into a frown and said, “There’s a whole report in there if—”

“Please, just tell me who was there,” I said, struggling to hold back a sob.

His discomfort rose. “Okay, alright. The party was made up of Miller, her team, and two others from Jayden’s who showed up to the call early.”

“Six of them died?” I cried out. “But there were only three in the video, maybe four. That was all from the bullets?” The woman standing on the edge of the crowd wasn’t an ordinary rally attendee. From the way she reacted so quickly and so violently she had to be a high up, maybe even a Class Four in disguise. My skin started to crawl as the realization hit me. Splinter was on the move again.

William cleared his throat and said, “I really don’t know all the details. Just that someone from Splinter was at that rally, maybe even two. And now more blood has been spilled.”