Isla came to in a bush, though this wasn't an unusual occurrence for her. In fact, it was so common an occurrence that she’d constructed a tier list of all the bushes in the area. She’d fallen into a bramble bush – it wasn't the softest of landings, but at least she could get a good punnet of blackberries out of the ordeal. Her dress, once again, bore the brunt of her disagreement with gravity and the general concept of aerodynamics, and lay beside her as a tattered, unrecognisable rag comprised of different styles, materials and colours. In many respects, it was no different than usual, except this time it was unwearable. She clambered out of the bush and took a long last look at her dress. She stood, by bird standards, completely naked. This is to say, not very naked at all.

  “Well, then, Isla,” she said to herself as she often did, and started the practised flailing that would get her back into the air. She ran, she hopped and then she flopped beak-first into the ground. Isla lay on her back and tried to move her left wing. Her whole body shuddered as an electric shock ran up her left side and her wing thudded to the ground. She rolled to her knees, which was really quite hard as they bent backwards. Popping round to Isla's for tea was always an awkward experience, as her chairs looked like Escher paintings and required an intermit knowledge of non-euclidean geometry to use. The tea always got cold. Isla gathered her bearings and followed the river back towards Mayflight. She had no idea what she was going to do when she got there, or how she was going to explain why it was she was now a nudest.

  ***

  “Check the body, please.” Edevane spoke in the sort of clinical, detached tone that implied he'd said the exact same thing at least three times that day. Private Mason, a gangly, uncoordinated man, bumbled forward. He made no attempt to survey his surroundings, or recall a moment of a training so brief it was measured in seconds. He rolled the mangled form of Lieutenant Martin onto his back. Edevane took several discreet steps back and started mentally filing the paperwork.

  “Rifle and ammo pouches missing, sir,” he reported.

  “Safeties off. Canteen is for drinking, not pouring. Private Mason, take the house in front of you,” he gestured to the Hubert house. “Private Fenton, the house by the ugly fountain. I'll take the house with the windmill. Rendezvous here in ten minutes. And stay away from the windows.” He didn't need to explain why that was so important, but then he remembered his luck with recruits and explained anyway.

  Edevane approached the front door of the cottage and replayed the initial confrontation with the large dog-beast in his head in a level of detail that was considerable enough to be bordering on obsessive. Had it been him, he'd have snapped Brandon's neck and seized upon the confusion to withdraw to a defensible position. Farmers at best, the lot of them. He took up position against the side of the door frame, gave the door a push and silently berated the inability of people to oil their front doors. He came in low and aimed high, his eyes swept whippet-like across the room, followed a fraction of a second later by the barrel of his gun. The entryway was small enough to be described as bijoux by an estate agent and tiny by someone much less dishonest.

  There was a mezzanine floor towards the back of the room and two doors leading off from the hallway, both closed. He sidled to the door on the right and repeated the process as he had a hundred times before. It was a cupboard, a cloakroom, that seemed to hold the sum total of the house's, if not the entire village’s, dirt, as if attracted magnetically to it. He ticked it off his mental list and pressed along the back wall to the second door. The door squeaked open into a kitchen that looked to be at least four times larger than the entry hall. As the Tirren's passion for all things cooking grew, so did the size of their kitchen, much to the detriment of several other rooms.

  The lower floor was mostly kitchen, in fact, with a small dining room and lounge area squeezed off to the side. The Tirrens lived for their kitchen and mostly lived in their kitchen. The escapade earlier that week had been neatly tidied up almost as soon as it finished, and the one floor tile that received a small chip from a flying saucer of the terrestrial kind had been replaced with exacting precision. The room was a fortress of doors, and every good fortress had a hundred good places to hide – fortunately for Edevane, they were all next to each other in the same room. He methodically travelled the room, opening and closing every door to every cabinet, leaving behind a small strip of tape across every gap as he went.

  The rendezvous was for ten minutes, and the kitchen alone had taken five of those already. If he overran or let time escape his calloused hands, he would look distastefully suboptimal. Through the numerous layers of filtration that his helmet provided, Edevane noticed two things: the first was that the filter in his mask was obviously just made of cotton wool, the second was that the room smelled delicious. Once the village was fully secured and a perimeter established, maybe he'd send one of the Privates to retrieve any food supplies. Edevane had a full and frank conversation with his stomach and told it that it should really know better – and if it could please stop it, its cooperation would be noted.

  There was only one door out of the room, but this time he didn't have the option to keep to one side of it, as the wall either side of the door was crammed with as many cabinets and cupboards as it was physically possible to fit. He wasn't concerned about being shot. A bulletproof vest, much as the name implies, is bulletproof, or bulletproof to a degree that is neither here nor there when dealing with firearms that were designed during a lunch break and were obsolete some time during the first sandwich – not stab-proof. If there was one thing this kitchen had, it was many very large knives. Without a full inventory of the kitchen, he would have no way of knowing if one was missing, and without a full census of the village, he would have no way of knowing if someone was waiting for him behind the door.

  He threw the door open, it cracked the plaster on the wall and bounced back towards him. He casually stopped it with his lead foot as he strode into the room. Opposite the door was a small staircase that went up a flight, turned off to the left and doubled back on itself. To the right was a small seating arrangement centred around a fire that was roaring to an empty room. Three half-empty cups sat on a lounge table along with a teapot and an assortment of biscuits and pastries. The back end of the already cramped room was ruled over by a rustic dining table made from several thick planks of oak, and was unadorned with the exception of a small fruit bowl.

  He scooped up an apple and one of the pastries and slid them into one of an assortment of pouches on his belt as he pushed towards the stairs. Off from the landing were three doors. The door at the far end led into a tastefully decorated but towel-strewn bathroom. It was like every towel had agreed beforehand that they'd not match in size or colour or shape. The window sill was covered in various bath toys and, if Edevane had known anything about toys, several that weren't bath toys but had still somehow been drafted into Harry's navy to the detriment of their paintwork or mechanical parts.

  The room to his immediate right was just wide enough to hold a double bed that was far too pink and frilly for the liking of anyone in the entire world except Bridget Tirren. Ninety percent of the bed was covered in cushions and there wasn't enough floor or storage space in the room to put them when the bed was in use. This led to many a night where Bosco would lie awake wondering exactly where they'd all disappeared to, and how they all seemed to magically reappear when he came back from the toilet in the morning. On the shelf above it were numerous sentimental trinkets and photo frames. “Oh, I see,” he said quietly to himself.

  The last room, as Edevane had already worked out, belonged to the child. As was the overarching theme with Harry Tirren, his room was an explosion of toys and games and of numerous things that had places to be put away in but had never seen them. There were dozens of half-started games and pictures and wonderful ideas that he'd never quite gotten around to finishing, but they stood in perfect preservation as a testament of his intention to finish them. Around the corner from Harry's room, the hall continued a short way out onto the mezzanine. There were planks and bags of sand, and various tools and such lined up against the back wall. Edevane hopped the railing and landed in a roll. He came to his feet with his weapon raised in a single fluid motion, which wasn't, strictly speaking, necessary, but he didn't have any real hobbies and allowed himself the odd indulgence. He had two minutes to rendezvous, still plenty of time to check the kitchen seals.

  An almost indistinguishably faint light rose up through a crack in the floorboards at the bottom of the cloakroom. He moved towards it by way of the kitchen door, which he shut for his own peace of mind. Cautiously he pressed on the floor of the cupboard with his foot. It creaked and groaned like old floorboards tended to want to do, but it moved slightly and there was scraping of metal-on-metal – hinges, a trapdoor. He reached down and pulled back the shabby piece of carpet that had been lining the cupboard to reveal a small trapdoor with a knotted piece of rope for a handle. Even without the carpet, the hatch wouldn't have stood out against a passing glance.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  Edevane removed a small grey canister from his belt. He’d requisitioned fragmentation grenades from the armoury, and to highlight how important an item this was, he underlined it three times, each line getting more aggressive until he'd worn a hole in the paper – what he got was a single flash grenade of indeterminate age and make. He pulled and pocketed the pin, then counted to three and raised the trapdoor slightly before he dropped the grenade down the hatch, then shut it carefully and waited. The faint traces of light that shone through the cracks in the floorboards flared up like six-million angry candles and lit up the cupboard and most of the main hall. A cockroach hissed at him, and over the uproarious bang that followed, he could have sworn it yelled something off-colour before it scurried away. He threw back the trapdoor and hurried down the ladder.

  The bottom rung twisted and spun under his weight and sent him helix-like from the ladder. As he spun, a second, louder bang bounced off the walls of the small cellar. It didn't reach him until after he felt the thud of the bullet in his chest – the vest was nowhere near the grade he’d requested, but neither was the gun. The creature that attacked him leant heavily against a stack of boxes. It blinked and rubbed at its eyes furiously with one hand while the other waved the gun in the general direction of the ladder. It looked nothing like the previous two specimens he encountered – it was a monkey, an ape, Edevane didn't really know for sure. He grumbled and stepped forward, covering the distance between himself and the creature in a couple of strides, and slapped the gun from its hand. The gun clattered to the floor and drew the attention of the two other creatures in the room.

  Bridget sat hunched forward on her knees, her hands pressed to her ears. Her eyes had readjusted and she sat transfixed on the intrude. Her snarling lips offered murder, her eyes said read my lips. Tobias spun aimlessly beside her, every attempt to right himself added more momentum to his spin. Each revolution was accompanied by a litany of ‘ums’ and ‘oh dears,’ and every ‘um’ or ‘oh dear’ was itself accompanied by a confused glance towards the intruder.

  Nine minutes and thirty seconds, Edevane recalled in his head. He removed a set of steel-link cuffs from his belt and snapped them over Bridget's wrists – he’d seen what one of these things was capable of already. The ape creature staggered towards him and limply seized him around the forearm. He threw his arm back and sent the creature stumbling into the crates. Its second wind was met with the butt of his rifle to the side of its head, it impacted soundlessly across the side of its face, both fur and flesh muffling the noise of wood on bone. It didn't fall backwards or sideways, it didn't stagger or stumble forward dramatically; the entirety of its motor functions simply popped out for a quick one and forgot to come back. It collapsed into a crumpled heap. The leg it favoured twisted underneath it at an angle that would have been uncomfortable even to a contortionist without any bones, though the one small consolation to Rasmus was that he was unconscious before he hit the ground. He awoke ten seconds later with a startled scream. “Sir?” a muffled voice called. Edevane silenced the screaming in the most efficient method available to him and kicked the creature in the head. He knelt down and straightened its legs.

  “In the basement, Private. Hatch in the cloakroom.”

  “You're a monster,” Bridget hissed. He stood there and waited for her to make a point, then realised that was the point and summarily ignored it. The hatch creaked open and thudded against the far wall of the cupboard.

  “Private Mason?”

  “Sir.”

  “Get down here and cuff the chimp.”

  “Yes, sir.” Mason clambered down the ladder, shakily and unsure of himself.

  “Where's Private Fenton?”

  “Standing guard, sir. Should I fetch him?”

  With a competent squad, Edevane wouldn't have needed to ask, but ever since Brandon, he felt the need to ask if anyone had wandered off and accidentally set themselves on fire. “That won’t be necessary, Private. I do have one more question.”

  “Sir?”

  “How did you know about the ladder?”

  “The ladder, sir?”

  “Don't make me repeat myself,” Edevane said as he immediately repeated himself. “How did you know it was broken?”

  “I was doing so well,” Mason said dejectedly, his whiny, nasally tone shifting. Edevane swept his right hand up to the knife fastened across his collar. He pushed forward and extended his left hand to check Mason’s gun and push it down and away from him; Mason in turn gave up any pretence of using the weapon and let it clatter to the ground. He stepped back from Edevane as the knife flashed towards his throat; it cleaved through his armour and came to a stop against his collarbone with a grisly ceramic clank. His palm connected with the underside of Edevane’s wrist and pushed the knife up and away from him. The knife-shaped void glistened and welled with blood. Edevane hadn't struck a fatal blow, and he knew it.

  Edevane readjusted his stance and launched a telegraphed strike towards Mason’s throat. He’d be ready to intercept the arm when Mason stepped in to control it, then he’d thrust straight to the windpipe. His least expected response was for Mason to bodily threw himself backwards to the cold, hard floor and produce a small black box that resembled a doorbell push from his pocket.

  “You are such an arsehole, you know that, Edevane? Complete arsehole!” Mason flicked his thumb across the switch and the comm unit in Edevane's helmet crackled and hissed and filled his ears with the death moans of a speaker that just received far too much voltage and was quite unhappy about the whole thing. He felt his eardrums rupture in unison as the speakers crackled into silence. His ears filled with a deafening tumult followed by red hot shards of metal that had chipped away from the inside of the helmet, and he collapsed to the ground, having neither the wherewithal nor the animus to break his fall. He wanted to ask what was going on, he wanted to ask who this man was – in fact, he asked both of those things, he just didn't hear himself do it.

  Mason struggled and failed to get to his feet. The wound wasn't fatal, or at least it might not be, but he'd already lost enough blood to feel more than a little light-headed. Not to mention it bloody hurt. He crawled across to Bridget, the gap between them felt significantly further than it was even a second ago, and pawed at his belt with his increasingly numbing fingers. A small loop of keys clattered to the ground – he thumbed through them to find the one to the cuffs. He'd made sure to mark the keys he thought he'd need later, so it was as simple as finding the key with the blue dot. He was glad he didn't choose to mark it in red, as his vision swam in a maroon haze and everything had begun to look a little bloodshot. The cuffs clanked to the floor and Mason took that as a sign to join them and rolled to his back. He struggled with the clasps as much as he was with breathing, and he didn't feel fully qualified to do either right now. “Help Emmanuel, I'll be fine,” he wheezed. Bridget crawled across to Rasmus and carefully raised him up and cradled his head on her knee.

  A large portion of Rasmus’ face just above his jawline was swollen and red and clumps of fur had been torn away from his face by the rubberised grip of the rifle. He was vaguely aware of the confrontation and that both men were now lying on the floor with him. His head thumped like a bass drum and his eyes seemed thoroughly unable or unwilling to stop watering. Mason flicked open the last clasp on his helmet and got it off just as a torrent of vomit escaped his mouth. He lay for a moment hunched forward with his forearms resting on the rough cellar floor.

  “You're one of them. Why did you help us?” Bridget asked.

  Mason unclenched his fingers and placed the flats of his hands on the floor. It took considerable effort, and he had to pay exacting attention to not aggravate the wound that spanned the length of the left side of his collar bone, but he eventually fumbled to a kneeling position. “Hello, Bridget, love. Where are my daughters?”