Samuel Bohovic - Hybrid - Project Vigil

“That would be nice. I could use seeing some trees after so many years in desert.” That was truth. He saw almost every terrain during training, but spent last year in desert.

“I’ve always wanted to see desert.”

“It’s overrated.”

Like this it went on for about thirty minutes until all second floor windows had screen foils on them. They stood in front of the big window on front side of house.

“Why those UV filters have wires in left upper corners?” She asked after installing last one.

“Check if laptop in my bedroom is turned on and I’ll show you.”

Emily came back from his bedroom. “It’s turned on.”

“Now watch this.” John watched lines of code on his HUD.

All screens lit up with data from John’s memory drives. Photo of Gillian was on the biggest part of screen.

“It works.” He knew it will, but didn’t really believe it.

“Who is that? Your girlfriend?”

For once John rather decided not to lie. “Yes, she is. I miss her.”

“What is her name?” Damn it, she’ll never stop asking.

“Gillian.” The more he was thinking about her the more pictures appeared. He just raised his hand and swept them away from screens. He really missed her, after less that 24 hours.

“Will you ever see her again?”

“One day maybe.” And anyone in my way will die a horrible death. John added for himself. His thoughts summoned pictures of fighting.

“What’s that?”

“Just some games.”

When their guests left the house it was late afternoon and John was hungry. When he came down to the kitchen Caroline was expecting him.

“How much you told her?” She asked with interrogative face.

“She has no clue who I am, thinks I have sun allergy. What about the other one, Miranda it was?” John inspected contents of fridge.

“Good, I hope you behaved nicely. Anyway what were you two doing upstairs? Don’t worry I told Miranda same thing, Claire sent me message with details. What a smart A.I.”

She gave John a plate with few sandwiches.

“She helped me set up the screen foils. What else Miranda wanted? Except the thing about you having a son without her knowing.”

“You used that? Good idea. They want to put some meat on the grill tomorrow, we’re invited.”

Their conversation in the kitchen lasted for hour. After it John went back upstairs to have a look at something, computers in basement can wait for now. He took the sheet of paper from Briggs and began to work. There was a small version of living room upstairs so he was comfortable. All he knew was on the big screen. Soon he added a photo to each name, later a personal file from C.I.A. database. It was hard to hack through it. At first he tried if he has access with his ID. Few times he went down for something to drink. Most of the time Caroline was on the phone. When he sat down again he had no ideas how to move forward. He started to focus, slow down breathing, focus. Sub-reality was same as he left it. Instead of thinking about the names he decided to find out more about Emily.

“Why do you spy on her John?” Claire asked.

“I want to know something more, that’s not spying.”

“So you’ll have a file on her, some dirt if you need to blackmail her.”

“You think I’ll have to?”

“Maybe.”

When he gathered what he could, there wasn’t much dirt he could dig up but lots of information on her. He woke up from sub-reality. Sun was about to go down judging from light. Twenty names, photos and some personal details were on the big screen.

“Where are they?”

“I don’t know yet but I’ll find out.”

“Good, good.” He was satisfied with Claire’s progress.

“What do you want to do with them?”

Most of the men were from special forces. Recruited in early stages of project.

“They know how to kill hybrids. They already killed some of us. If they ally with wrong people we’re all dead. These men must be eliminated.”

“If I may ask. What happened at that oil rig? Frontier?” Caroline said over Sunday breakfast.

“We screwed up.” His memory played it again as many times before.

He was in the helicopter heading for oil rig hijacked by some terrorists. He was young but it was his sixth real action. It was just before dawn, he could see first light on the horizon.

He turned his NOD’s on to see the rig not so far away. “One minute!” He pulled charging handle of his M4A1 backwards, round was loaded into the firing chamber. It wasn’t so long after he was woken up when Pentagon gave “greenlight” for them to go in. Four squads of Hybrids alongside with two squads of SEALS were about to attack from air and sea. They landed on the rig. All lights were out. Then the hell broke out. They were everywhere! John found himself pressed against a wall in the middle of firefight.

“That’s not enough do blow a oil rig up causing an oil spill of enormous size.” Caroline interrupted his story.

“There was more.”

“ RPG incoming on the right!” John ducked behind some crates, after the rocket exploded he sprayed shooter with bullets. He loaded his last mag. Somebody yelled. “Ammo status!” “Last mag!” John answered. They needed to get the bomb squad to disarm explosives around drilling mechanism, but they were pinned down by RPG and MG fire. ”Suppressing fire!” John yelled so everyone heard. At once all of them lined up their guns and hammered elevated platform where all enemy fire was coming from with bullets. Bomb squad moved through. As soon as they opened the door they ran out. “We set it off! Jump off the rig!” John didn’t think twice, he leaped over the railing to the sea. Above him rig disappeared in flames. He hit the water hard. After he managed to catch his breath he contacted command.

“HQ this is Crisis. We’ve lost the objective.”

“So that’s it. What about Sierra Leone?” She asked further.

“You said only one a day.” John turned her audio recorder off. Caroline wanted to make record of every mission John participated in. Not all of them have been such a mess like this, just some of them.

“You know that’s the worst part of it.” John spilled some coffee over his right hand, but he couldn’t feel it.

“What?”

“It’s not the standing over coffins of your comrades that makes you miserable, not even healing your own wounds. It’s that feeling in your chest. You know you did your best and despite that you failed and they paid the price. You know you did what you could but it wasn’t enough.”

John went back to his search. He moved the chair to better place.

“We’ve got twenty names and we want to kill them all…”

“You want to kill them all.”

“…and I want to kill them all. I don’t know where they are. Claire tell me you have something.”

“John, you can’t do this!” Claire wanted to convince him while he was still at home deciding what weapon he should take.

“He is here. I’m not risking it what if he tries to kill me again?”

“That’s different. Now you go there to kill him.”

John was determined to kill the man. The one he saw yesterday. He couldn’t believe they released all of them. This one lived alone, no family and not so far away.

“I’m going out.” He just said to Caroline.

“Okay, just be back for lunch!”

He jumped into the car and drove it out of front yard. He drove at 100 miles per hour, nobody seemed to care.

When he was there he jumped out of the car with pistol in hand. Door didn’t give much resistance. What John found inside wasn’t what he expected. The place was empty except…