[TheFightingSpirit]

Incursion Seven: The Need to Strive.

The rangers were left to their own devices for a week before they heard anything from the Agency.

Mr Sanders seemed to drop off the face of the earth after showing them around, and their bills, of which most were taken care of, were to be forwarded to a third party address. The Agency weren’t making it easy.

Yet they had to admit, it was all rather fool proof. All too fool proof.

Robert decided one morning he wanted to talk to Sanders. If they were going work together, however indirectly, then he felt he needed to know a little more about the guy. Would it be considered stepping out of line to be a conscientious human being? He must have had a family, or friends, or some semblance of life outside the military.

He knocked on the door of flat one.

A woman with a military hair cut answer the door. “Yeah?”

“Hi, uh, is Mr Sanders in?”

A twinkle of amusement flickered across her face. She folded her arms. “Mr Sanders has been moved on. I’m your new landlady.”

“New?”

“Yes,” she said. “Now, if there’s nothing building-based I can do for you, I’ve got things to be getting on with. Good day.”

She door slammed down. Her footstep could be heard beating away into the flat.

Mr Sanders has been moved on?! What does that mean? Robert had a feeling he didn’t want to find out. This move out of the city was supposed to be about getting separation from the Agency, when in reality they seemed closer than ever.

He thought back to the General’s dislike of them, and wondered whether, if given half the chance he would move them on as well.

What am I thinking? Of course he would!

o0o

Ken had met up with Brad early on his first morning at the University of Fort Lowsdale. He’d stepped out of the flat to find the man locking his front door, and figured ‘what the heck’.

It turned out that Brad was striving for a bachelors in education. He wanted to teach the curriculum he believed would help society through to the final days of the infection… if they ever came.

Ken realised he could talk for hours about the subject when he finally shut up just outside the UFL library. Apparently, or so Brad thought, the current key stage curriculum was woefully unprepared for the task of bringing up a generation of kids who knew nothing but refugee camps and threats from beyond the wall, kids who may well have come from the foster care system.

All very intriguing stuff that Ken really didn’t care much about. He liked Brad’s dedication though and decided then and there to find something he could be so passionate about... once the Cross Rangers became a thing of the past… if they became a thing of the past.

Ken spent the day trying out half hour segments of a variety of courses.

“As it so happens,” the admissions clerk said. “We don’t usually do this for transfer students, but the dean has granted you permission. Consider yourself lucky.”

He’d laughed for a good minute at that—luck had nothing to do with it—but at the end of the day he was still no closer to registering his major and minors.

o0o

As one of society’s fortunate ones, Allison had so far managed to ignore the problems people were facing thanks to the Black Water.

It took little more than a few seconds on that first morning to realise how stupid she’d been, and just how devastating things had been before the Agency erected the quarantine wall.

She met a family, a young couple and their baby daughter, while shadowing a fellow support worker.

The father had worked as a doctor just south of the quarantine border, bringing in enough money for his family to live in a huge house in Aloha Springs.

About a month before the start of the wall’s construction, a pack of mutated bears had torn through their neighbourhood. He’d done his best to tend to the wounded, but by the end of the night his entire practice lay in ruins. With no source of income and no town left to live in, they’d be forced to travel with a group of refugees headed for Fort Lowsdale.

His little girl had not long come down with a possibly fatal fever from a tick bite on the journey north. Allison listen to him recite the exact medical attention she needed to make it past the end of the month. It all sounded very treatable, but a harsh reality hung over them.

There was simply no money to treat the poor girl.

Back at the flat, Ken and Robert had tried desperately to cheer Allison up, but she simply couldn’t shake that experience. Not in a hurry, perhaps not ever.

She knew now what being a Cross Ranger meant. If they had the power to stop things like that happening, there’d be no further need for initiatives like General Bryant’s Agency and therefore more money to divert to refugees.

o0o

At the weekend, Lt. Moses came over for lunch. Her cover story was that of a childhood friend who lived in the area. She insisted many times they call her Catherine.

In the time since they last seen each other, she been busy. Not only were the ranger’s codenames official Agency designations now, along with Black Cross and all future uses of the format, but they’d been granted project status.

As Catherine explained it, if you had project status you had access to a portion of the Agency’s research and development team.

Although they were a few days from completion she showed them the plans for a series of personal weapons, tailored to individual magi powers. Robert would have access to an extending spear that would channel his fire, Allison, a pair of ornate swords like those used for centuries in Asia, and Ken, a blaster gun. Aside from those three R&D had drafted plans for other such weapons but without a ranger to design them around had put them on hold.

They took a break from work to have lunch and talk about the week, but eventually Catherine worked the conversation back toward the mission.

“I’ve also had another idea. We know there’s a least one other magi active right?”

“Black Cross.” Robert recalled the battle he’d had with the mystery ranger, specifically being shot at point blank range and knocked out of the battle with No-one.

“Exactly,” she said. “And knowing he isn’t really on our side… or any side… gives us even more reason to find the remaining two magi. After all, you’ll have better odds if you work in greater numbers.”

“Sure…” Allison considered this for moment, then pointed out a glaring hole in the plan. “But how do we find them? We can’t just ask.”

Catherine pulled a tablet pc from her bag and booted it up. “Ken, do you remember the blood sample we took when the Agency first brought you in.”

He scratched the crook of his elbow. “Yeah?”

“We had it analysed after you activated and compared against a baseline human. Uh… me. I just got the results back this morning.” She loaded up the data in question and highlighted the portion of Ken’s genome that linked him to the clan power. “Using this, I believe I can find them, the others.”

“We just have to ask an entire town’s worth of people for blood and wait for the results.”

“Enough of the sass, Robert. This is serious.” Though he had only been joking that time, he’d struck a nerve. She’d had more than enough of his constant criticism of her methods, and made a note to bring it up at a later date.

She continued: “A hair will do at a push, but yes, blood is preferable. I’m working on getting access to the national hospital records to speed things up, but in the meantime, make sure you keep an eye peeled for the warning signs.”

Robert grinned at Ken, mischief etched across his face. He turned to Catherine. “What about the guy across the hall? Brad Reiter?”

He sniggered, though the lieutenant didn’t seem to get the joke. Neither did the Powel’s…

He waved a hand around and attempted to backtrack. “You know, because he’s the last person you’d expect? A dork like that... No?”

Catherine folded her arms. Robert was really pissing her off now. “The very nature of this power makes it all inclusive. By definition of genetics, it could be Brad, but we have no way of knowing unless we test his DNA.”

“Dude, I was only kidding around.”

“Well don’t!” Allison snapped. Her mind flipped to the family back at the refugee camp. “You’re still treating this like a game, Robert. I thought it was cute at first, but you don’t know the first thing about suffering, do you? You still have parents, and you’ve never actually talked to anyone less fortunate than you. Just… grow up!”

She pushed her chair back and stormed off to her bedroom. The sudden motion threatened to topple it, but Ken stayed it and tucked it back under the breakfast bar.

“Do you want me to go talk to her?”

“No.” Catherine shook her head and squared up to Robert. “Because she has every right to upset with you. Maybe it was a mistake to give you a job in a kitchen. Maybe you should have been the one to work at the camp instead.”

“I just-“

“Don’t just anything. I’m with Allison on this. You don’t understand the magnitude of the situation.”

Robert stood too and flung his arms up in protest. “But I want to understand!”

Catherine sighed. “I think we better leave it there for today. I have work to do, and I suggest you search for new magi as well.” She pushed her tablet back into her bag and headed for the door to let herself out. “They’re out there, Robert. And by God we’ll need their help.”

o0o

General Bryant stood alone on the Agency HQ helipad.

This time of night the base ran on the barest of skeleton crews, but to make sure he wasn’t disturbed he ordered all personnel away from the hanger levels.

If they wanted to keep their commissions, they’d do what he said.

Finger by finger, hand by hand, he pulled off his gloves to reveal the two glowing magi symbols of the air and darkness clans.

He turned his eyes out to the wilderness around the mountain. The base stood just north of the quarantine wall, and from the helipad one could see the infected lands, huge beasts that didn’t bear thinking about and the rivers of vile black ichor.

And yet his eye glossed over that and to focus on all the abandoned towns and villages. He growled and activated his morpher.

Before he could morph, he felt a wetness trickle down his cheek. He wiped it off on the palm of his hand. Tears of black… Black Water.

I’ll purge this land, I’ll purge it all…

“… If it’s the last thing I ever do!” he yelled into the wind. He turned in the other direction to see the city spread out before him in the shadow of the mountains.

“This is my town.”