OUT OF THE ASHES

CHAPTER 1

A FEW DAYS AGO

Chicago Megacity was a humid, crowded mess on the best of days even after the Apocalypse happened and a lot of people died.

Still, the place is far more crowded than other cities, probably because a lot of awakened had come to this place, so the government converted it into a safe zone. So when a Necromancer terrorist group waged war against law-abiding citizens and started wreaking havoc, the Chicago became a shitshow and immediately converted to a worst kind, not even the local normie police could handle.

Which meant the best counterattack came not from local human authorities but in the form of government-backed Awakens.

“Where the f**k is our cover fire?”

Knight Adamson gritted his teeth and raise his hand casting a shield but flinched when magic bullets started raining down at them.

He glanced over at his second-in-command and communications and infiltration specialist Sergeant Rina Abello, as she dropped down beside him, magically enhanced AKR-75 assault rifle tightly gripped in her hands.

“This is getting ridiculous,” Rina said by way of greeting.

“You’re telling me now,” Knight replied.

“How the f**k am I supposed to shoot at someone I can’t even see?” their temporary sniper snapped over Alpha Team’s encrypted comms channel.

“Tanner already gave you the target’s position,” Knight replied coolly.

“Well the target ain’t there!”

Knight glanced up at the building across the Chicago River from them, eyeing the general area their sniper should have made his nest. Knight tilted his head at Rina and tapped at the side of his own earpiece with two fingers. “Tell me Easton has eyes on us.”

“You know what happened the last time I telepathically scan for him? He screamed like a little girl and Bones almost took a bullet to the ass. You really want to risk that again?” Rina retorted.

“No LOS!” their sniper said, sounding more than a little frantic. “No LOS!”

As far as Knight, a captain of the Awakaned Human Defense Force’s Alpha Team was concerned, if an ordinary human soldier on secondment couldn’t stomach working with them, Awakens, then they shouldn’t be on his team. After three years of training and field deployment under the AHDF banner, Knight thought the higher ups should have figured that out by now.

“He’s gone after this,” Rina said flatly, looking Knight straight in the eye.

“The second we get back to base,” Knight promised before shifting the position of his own magically enhanced rifle against his shoulder. “Tanner, you got eyes on the target?”

The deep voice of Alpha Team’s transport specialist came through the comms loud and clear from his position on the other side of the bridge.

William Tanner sounded beyond thrilled to finally finish the damn fight. “Fucker hasn’t moved and he neither started summoning any monsters.”

“That's good. But he looked like he knew a lot of bombardment spells though,” Angel Nova reported. Their demolitions specialist sounded way too cheerful about that fact. “Permission to move in, Captain?”

“Negative, Nova,” Knight replied. “Wait for Bones to get in position.”

“What are you freaks waiting for down there?” their sniper snapped over the comms in an agitated voice.

Knight narrowed his eyes, cold anger at the insult flung toward his team coursing through him. Rina leaned in close beside him and murmured, “Orders, sir?”

Fuck it, Knight thought. He was done with catering to the asshole. He doesn’t deserve any respect anyways. The brass could write him up for dumping the latest i***t they’d assigned his team in the middle of a fight for all he cared. Not like a black mark on his record would be detrimental career-wise with the AHDF as it would in any ordinary human military forces.

Awakens, especially military-trained ones, were difficult to come by. Their kind was still not enough to cover and defend the whole American soil, that's why he knew that they wouldn’t want to give him up over something like this.

“Knight to Easton, stand down. I say again, stand down. We’ll handle this problem without you,” Knight announced to the team at large and their misbegotten add-on specifically. “Ludwig? You’re taking overwatch.”

Any further insults to their temporary sniper over the comms were blocked by Rina’s smooth intervention. She cut him out of the team’s encrypted comms channel with a swipe of her finger against the rugged, curved control screen strapped around the underside of her left forearm.

“Copy that. Y’all couldn’t’ve cut him out earlier?” Isa Ludwig drawled.

The former Night Stalker pilot sounded only mildly irritated. Anyone else would’ve been spitting nails, as she liked to say. Isa rarely deviated from her calm-under-pressure attitude, but when she did, Knight did his best to fix whatever it was that pissed her off. Knight never want to piss a trigger happy woman like her. Well besides that, he was always happiest when his team was happy too.

“Yeah, like last month?” William muttered.

“Cut the chatter and focus,” Knight said. Rina moved up beside him, both their weapons primed and held at the ready. She used a quick series of hand signals to inform Knight of her preferred position and he nodded silent agreement.

“I got eyes on the bridge. The bastards hunkered down at their makeshift perimeter ain’t movin’,” Isa said.

Knight scanned the sky for a few seconds, finally locating the small, human-shaped speck that was Isa hovering next to a skyscraper somewhere near the ninetieth floor. He trusted Isa in the overwatch position over the i***t assigned to them, but giving her that task took her out of the main fight for the remainder of the mission.

“Wounded are secure. I got eyes and a shield on the bomb,” Ralph Bones said twenty seconds later.

As their resident medic and telekinetic, Hunter had tasked him with protecting the civilians against any stray terrorist attack and getting them out of the line of fire before rejoining the main fight.

“Copy that, Bones. Tanner, relay position of the target to Nova for a hard strike. On my mark.”

Knight listened to the stream of chatter over the comms with one ear while he mentally ran through the revised plan on the fly.

They had a limited window of time to pull this off without incurring any further casualties to the civilian population or damage to the surrounding buildings. Thankfully though the Necromancer group had deployed only one dark magician for the fight, but when that one could use stealth magic, it made everything all the more difficult.

But Alpha Team excelled at overcoming difficulties. And this time would just like any other times.. They would still win in the end.

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