Remember I said we were told we had a dragon to slay? Well, I wasn't kidding, Houska had confirmed that the Dragon I'd met in the box had appeared in several towns across North Carolina and was causing rampant destruction.

  The Organization had it on the news as a hurricane so people would avoid the area.

  Transport was a parachute drop from a plane to a base camp area on the beach. If you're wondering why I'm not giving locations this time, it's because I'm not even sure they're in the same places now that everything's been reset, you know, the usual, clone the casualties we could find, report the rest missing, victims of flooding in the area, flood the area to make it look authentic.

  The Base camp was not just Houska territory, other groups were there too, a sea of tents full of armed and ready personnel.

  Mostly.

  The groups, as I learned them are as follows:

  1. Houska (duh)

  2. The Ouija society (some weird guys in grey robes with Viking runes all over them that only spoke French)

  3. The institute for higher learning: (some eggheads in suits that run some school, accompanied by some foreign, ill-prepped looking mercs and a few students no older than me)

  4. Nobody (some weird nondescript generic-looking dude in a black suit with a nondescript generic voice who knew WAY too much about everyone there and their reasons for being there)

  5. The Midnight Men (a small company of men and women dressed in odd-looking bodysuits that refused to speak to me)

  The groups' leaders were all clustered around an improvised meeting table when Sigma touched down. Singleton walked to the table and after some conversation, Sigma was called forward.

  The faces that we saw weren't glad or welcoming, they were angry, and the looks were all directed at me.

  Grandmaster Benz spoke to me from the head of the table, "Agent Green you are here because of your deeds, deeds that were unnecessary and just plain stupid."

  All the people at the table murmured in agreement, Green and I both kept our mouths shut, "you broke the Labyrinth device, set the Son of Apohpis loose and destroyed the Box." The murmur from the rest was more of a mob style angry noise this time around, "but." He said with raised hands, "you and your team are more than willing to attempt to clean up your mess, even though this creature can't be killed, by any means."

  Edge threw his hands up angrily, " If we can't kill it we can at least take it down, we're not measuring casualties before we even engage!"

  After Edge had spoken, a student from the Institute for Higher Learning spoke up, "I think it CAN be killed."

  Everyone looked at the student, she wore a British schoolgirl uniform, she was thin and petite with long straight red hair and freckles, her eyes were bright green and she held a dossier, which she dropped on the table, "there's a sword that is named in this Dossier as "the Fang of Apophis, the god slayer."

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Everyone let out a collective groan, and one of the Midnight men finally spoke, "We don't have TIME to look for some old sword! We need to re-contain this fucker!"

  Wolf raises her hand, "where IS the fucker? If you guys don't mind, I'll just take my team and go get him."

  Benz rubs his temples, "Wolf...because of Green's role in the creature's release, Sigma will not be alone on this, you'll be having help, two of the allied organizations are contributing a few of their personnel." As he said this, the girl who spoke up earlier stepped forward, "Alexis Rowston, reporting for duty!" One of the Midnight Men stepped forward, he was an athletic man with an untidy shock of brown hair, with sky blue eyes, "Lewis Svensta reporting for duty."

  I groan, "No, we can handle this."

  The two applicants looked confused as Benz boomed across the table, "You are about ten seconds from getting your asses handed to you by a small army of armed men, now follow my orders or I will HAVE those asses swept under the rug!"

  Wolf elbowed me hard in the ribs, "Sir yes sir! We'll follow orders, sir!"

  Benz nodded, wiping his forehead, "Thank you, Agent Wolf."

  As per his orders, we took the new applicants in and boarded a Boeing CH-47 Helicopter bound for the current resting place of the dragon.

  Alexis wasted no time in shaking my hand vigorously, "I've heard a lot about you, Agent Green! I've wanted to study you up close for a while."

  Before I could respond she had some instruments out of her bag and was measuring the slope of my head, I raised an eyebrow, "What's different about the shape of MY head?"

  Alexis chuckled, "You and your group, You're 3rd generation JAB, Trigram uses incredibly cruel and destructive methods, but they're monstrously effective, have you encountered scales in any odd places?'"

  I blinked, "wait a second, third Generation? And what does that have to do with the shape of my head?"

  Alexis nodded, "your bones are thicker, making the crest of your skull half an inch higher than normal people, as for what I said, it means that you're the third generation in a five generation series of soldiers made by Trigram, because you're third Gen, you had the straight Protocell injection as well as no neural implants or control devices."

  I studied her face as she fascinatedly continued to examine me, she was beautiful, especially when she smiled, absolutely covered in freckles, "how do you know all this??"

  She looks at me, "the institute of higher learning prides itself on giving its students access to all knowledge of the esoteric."

  She'd studied the JAB case files, somehow her school had made that possible, "but why are we so special?"

  She ignored my question and just kept talking, "I've studied 5th gen JABs but they're little more than jacked meat robots, all machine-controlled with code phrases and pre-programmed behavior, whereas your bones are just a bit thicker, muscles stronger and your reaction time is faster..along with the mutations of course, I'm not even sure why they went beyond Gen 3." She starts rubbing the sides of my head with her fingertips.

  "I'd love to articulate your skeleton postmortem...your bones must look fascinating."

  Thoroughly creeped out, I swat her hands away, "Eyes front, we need to focus on the dragon."

  Alexis sighed, "Oh it's not a dragon, it just looks like one! It grew wings out of necessity to escape from an enclosure, but it's not a dragon."

  I narrow my eyes, "if it's not a dragon then what the hell is it?"

  Alexis shrugs, "It's just a really...big... hard to kill Lizard."

  Wolf laughs, "an immortal flying alligator."

  Edge corrected her, "crocodile."