[Inquisitor Rosenadel]

The man in the black trench coat who had slammed into his van got up, staggered for only a second or two, and then ran off into the night. Kevin would have chased after him, but the huge hairy thing that landed on his van next made him decide to stay inside. It was tall, hairy, and its eyes glowed from the car’s interior lights. Kevin could see it breathing heavily. It looked like the beasts he had only read about in books.

It was looking straight at him with its yellow eyes, as if deciding what to do with him. Kevin jumped out of the van and sprinted towards the nearest house. He heard a scuffle behind him, and turned to see that the dark clothed man had tackled the beast, and the two were fighting in the street. The man was holding his own for now, but he couldn’t hold out long against the inhuman strength and ferocity of the beast-man. Kevin saw a glint from the streetlight on a black object by the street curb. It was a handgun. He picked it up, felt its weight in his hand. He pointed it at the scuffling pair. “Stop,” he said, “or I swear I’ll kill both of you.” The beast released the man, who rolled away and got up. Kevin kept the gun on the hairy thing. “You stay put,” he told it. It snarled at him, a half-human snarl, and stayed still.

The other man did not move, either. But he spoke. “Please, I’m on your side. Give me the gun, and I’ll get you home safe, and get your car repaired. No one but you must know that this ever happened. On pain of death.”

Kevin was shocked. “I just saved your life!” he nearly shouted at him. But that man was already moving. Kevin was not fast enough to stop him, and felt a sharp pain, and then nothing as his vision faded… until he woke up next morning, with no pain, and his father explaining the accident he got into with the van after Kevin got home and was safely in bed…

The six dark-clothed, armored figures moved as one unit, reacting to each other as a single entity. They all based their movements around a single point, the figure of Ghost. He was not the original leader of the group. But now, he gave commands with little more than a thought, and the rest of the Coven, his podmates, reacted instantly. And he did it all without speaking.

The six friends were all herded into a black van. They tried asking questions, but the agents in the van merely signaled them to be quiet as a medic went around and applied antiseptic and gauze to their wounds. They were still in shock over the massive, beast-like men that had tried to kill them. The agents had come to their aid at the last moment.

They arrived at Furmon Orchard South high school, and the agents rushed them into the building, through the plain wooden door, down the stairs, and through the heavy iron door. They then took an elevator down, and felt as though they were nearly weightless, as if they had just taken an elevator ride down a skyscraper. What they saw as the huge doors opened awed them.

It was a vast complex, with stainless-steel walls and floors. They could see computer terminals, libraries, laboratories, and training grounds. They saw huge vats that contained teenaged specimens, including the two football players all six friends recognized as being from their high school, and also as star athletes. A man in a jet-black suit approached the party of agents and teenagers and motioned for the six to come with him. Sven started to ask a question, a look of defiance on his face, but the man in the suit interrupted him. “I am Montre’gärd. You undoubtedly want to know ‘what the Hell we’re doing with you’. What you need now, I assure you, is rest. I will tell you about your situation when you awake.” He took them to their sleeping quarters, which were quite spartan. “Sleep well, children. Tomorrow your innocence ends.” The lights turned off, and the six teenagers found themselves immediately asleep.

The Coven moved to the maximum-security hangar. They split up, each moving to a different door on the hangar. They manually entered the codes to open the doors. The doors opened with a hiss, and they all started to run out to their respective stations. But they all stopped, and stared with awe at the gargantuan machine in the center of the hangar.

“What I’m about to tell you may shock you, but it’s the truth, so you’re going to have to deal with it.

“For centuries, a war has been waged in the shadows of humanity. It is between us, the Praetorians Aetas, and the so-called “League of Truth”. We fight for the purity of humanity and its right to justice and freedom. They fight for chaos and anarchy. We have been at war since before known history.”

“Wait a minute,” Eric said unbelievingly, “we’ve found Dead Sea scrolls, writings from ancient Greece, and even wall paintings that say we’ve been around for a very long time. When does ‘known history’ start? How many years B.C.?”

Montre’gärd snickered. “Well, if ‘Christ’ were real, we have been at war since 9872 B.C.”

It looked roughly humanoid, but had missile racks on its shoulders, its feet had blades, and its arms were weapons. One ended in two short barrels, with a huge spherical bulb just before its elbow. The other was a very long rectangular box with a large cube where its shoulder would be. It had several point-defense pods at various point on its torso. This was the Retributor.

“Like modern nations, we have each developed new weapons to use against each other. While the rest of the world fell beneath swords, we were annihilating our enemy with the first experimental lasers. Over time, we focused less on actual technology, and more on the people wielding the weapons. We started modifying our willing soldiers to have enhancements. We started with simple things, like better hearing, low-light vision, and more efficient blood. Then we started gradually modifying more and more. Our latest weapon is the ‘Sentinel’. They were in your classes, and they brought you here yesterday. They are clones of one of our past agents whose fieldwork was exceptional. Their DNA is periodically modified to introduce some new gene that will better help them combat whatever new threat the League of Truth comes up with. They are a testing platform, if you will. They were created when we realized that we would always see new threats, so we would simply modify what we had to combat specific threats. We’re currently working on another weapon that should prove even more effective that Sentinels.”

“Sentinels were in response to the League’s latest weapon: what we have taken to calling ‘Grendels’. They have increased strength and aggression. One side effect is that they have increased hair growth, which they obviously see no reason to trim. They were the things that attacked you last night when you were brought here. They killed your families. And most likely and other loved ones you had who had regular contact with you.”

Peter interrupted. “How often is ‘regular contact’?” Everyone else was silent, and they all felt empty.

“We don’t know,” said Montre’gärd sadly. “From what we can tell, you now have no living relatives aside from distant ones, and no friends aside from those who barely remember you from school. And even they will be mind-wiped and convinced that you died in tragic accidents. Or were kidnapped. It doesn’t matter. The point is that, at this point, you do not exist. Not within government records, not within the memories of the people you knew. You were never born.”

Ghost climbed into the cockpit of the Retributor. He could see the outside world through the holo-viewport in front of him. Once he commanded the rest of the Coven to plug in their USB cables, he could see their holo-viewports, as well. Seemingly all on its own, the machine started its power-up sequence. Ghost commanded the computer to open the hangar. Daylight burned into Ghost’s retinas, and his irises immediately closed to slivers. This was the first time in more than 6500 years that the Retributor saw the sun.