... you can hear this, it's only because I'm straining bits and pieces of my brain that I don't think were meant to be pushed this much. I feel like I'm taking the great-great-grandmother of all !@#$ right out the front of my skull, and I think I already did it out the back end, too. Damn good thing I'm stark ass naked as a jaybird, then. Hope the monkeys are getting a hard on...
... GORGON bastards have me running through the wet jungle night on my bare damn feet with a hole in my side. Yes, a hole in my side. Whatever they've got can hurt me. I'm healing on the run but I don't want to take too many of those things at once, and they're gaining on me. It's their playpen and they know the jungle gym like no one's business, and Spygod Vision is not helping all that much...
... long story short, they were waiting for us. They knew. They !@#$ knew we were coming. I don't know if we've got a leak or a false face with us. I want eye jelly jabs done on all COMPANY personnel at the Ice Palace and the Flier right the !@#$ yesterday to make sure everyone's who and what they say they are. Hell, do the UN people, too. If nothing else it'll show them who's boss, and it sure ain't Mr. !@#$ USA...
... sent Goldenfist and a few people in first, a few days ago. Figured his skill set would make him a good person for the job. Those hands of his don't just give him the ability to punch hard and fast. They also let him absorb others' skills and memories through touch. It's some alien voodoo technology thing we got from one of our extraterrestrial trading partners back in the late 50's, when everything was super-magical, and you really don't want them as a part of your life. But if you're up against deep cover operatives then he's the man you want on your side...
... hard time finding out where he went. Said something about heading inland to check out a valley the locals have been !@#$ scared of since the last war, east of Manokwari. GPS went down like a bad thai hooker not long after that. Spotty info thereafter. Something about a black temple. Something about thunder and lightning...
... garbled last transmission said something about a hole so deep he couldn't see daylight any longer. I had no idea what the happy unholy !@#$ that could mean, but looking at what we found I think I do. I am not a happy man for the knowing, I'll tell you that much...
... got in to Manokwari on Saturday night. Booked the whole Swiss Belhotel under a cover story and didn't stay there. Had some Agents set up shop a few blocks away and watch the hotel to see who was watching, and then I and a few others set up a few blocks away from them to see who else might be watching. Kept trying to get hold of Goldie and his team and failed miserably. Couldn't reach him by normal means or by "listening" for the distinctive sound of our communication pads. Damn spooky...
... idiots had no idea how to do a stake out. I don't know what the hell they were thinking, at least I didn't. Now I do and, oh crap, they're shooting at me, again. The bullets go straight through trees and don't stop. Weird echo noises from the guns, not just the jungle. Extraterrestrial? !@#$, probably is. Either that or they made buddies with some kind of black magic thing-a-ma-bob from the back cover of a Blue Oyster Cult album. !@#$...
... followed them into the jungle after dealing with their sorry asses in town. The false faces we tagged blew themselves up before we could get to them, and since the explosives are in their eyes we can't eNd them, now can we? Would have been nice to have Goldie along for that, too, but...
... haven't been here for ages. There's a reason the Japanese had such a hard time dealing with guerrillas back during the War. You get out in the boonies and you're walking through thick-ass !@#$ and high mountains. It's worse than Nam ever was in a lot of respects, especially since there were still head hunters in those days. These days, no so much. Officially, of course. I could tell you otherwise...
... bravely commandeered proper transportation from one of the friendly locals. Okay, we stole his truck. But we paid him very well in European money after he insisted that yankee dollars were !@#$ worthless. What's this world coming to when you can't make up for disrupting someone's life by throwing a few crisp bills at them? !@#$ socialists and their temporarily superior economy...
... 40 miles east, over hill and dale. Lost the creatively repurposed truck's suspension going over something that might have been a mobile tree or one really weird looking alligator. Lost one Agent to a !@#$ New Guinea death adder on steroids. Down to five men and a raging mad-on after the firefight in town. Should have gone back for reinforcements, damn it. But they were so close. So !@#$ close...
... really hear them now. Much louder. Screaming my real name in its clumsy, Japanese equivalent. The wind howls through the trees and the hills and shakes everything. Lightning booms coming closer. Alien gunshots echo off the trees. They're herding me towards something nasty, but if I stop or turn back they'll get me right away, and I just finished healing up from the last one. If I don't get a plan I'm dead...
... nothing alive in that valley. We could feel it. It was overgrown with dead things and poisonous creatures no one's seen for far too long. It reminded me of that movie where the Guyver walks into the evil tree and fights Jack Ryan's boss in black armor, only to find out it's his own head under the mask. Never liked that bit....
... dead for days, poor Goldie. Kneeling outside the black temple he'd found, in the bottom of the dead valley. At first I thought they'd ripped his hands off and left him to bleed out on his knees, but then I realized that his hands had !@#$ exploded, taking most of his arms with them. The look on what was left of his face was terrifying. Like he'd finally grabbed hold of the one thing he couldn't process...
... why the !@#$ didn't I think? "The hole so deep he couldn't see daylight any longer?" I know that hole. I've known it since the damn War. We always thought she'd died in the push towards the Japanese mainland, but if you never find the body, you never count them out. And even then...
... felt them before we saw them. Watching us from the treeline. Dozens of buck naked GORGON agents, their false faces turned off so we could see the muscles and skull beneath their masks. Unblinking stares from eyes so pale their electronic pupils were little black dots in endless, shining and crazy white. Big damn knives covered in blood and !@#$. Hissing like snakes...
... two Japanese men, older than dirt but hard as flint, wearing that weird, olive livery GORGON's been using for the last five years. Didn't need a subscription to Jane's Strategic Operatives to know who they were. The one on the left had swirling storm clouds behind his eyes and spoke in mist, and the one on the right had lightning flashing under his skin and a booming voice. Kaminari and Inazuma. The Thunder and Lightning brothers, last seen trying to roust guerrilla fighters from this part of the world in the last years of the War...
... blew us up and out the valley, halfway across the !@#$ stretch of West Papua, and landed us in the trees, ripping our clothes to shreds and taking all our gear off as we went. Everyone I was with was splattered across wood and stone. The only reason I survived is because they intended it that way. And no sooner did I get my bearings than someone stepped out from behind a tree, skull face grinning, and shot me with a big damn gun that actually !@#$ hurt me...
... running now. I know they're getting closer. No idea where the !@#$ I am or where I'm running to. But I know who's waiting at the end of the line. I think I can already hear her laughing, waiting to take me inside her and never let me go...
... Kurai Hoshi. The Dark Star. The hole so deep you can never see daylight once you fall in...
... !@#$ this !@#$ !@#$ !@#$ !@#$ and !@#$...
(SPYGOD is listening to Right this Second (Deadmau5) and drinking the sweat of a doomed man (maybe))
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