Mission #2

Once the door shut all of the light spilling in quickly retreated outside. I stood there behind the door for a moment in contemplation. I could feel a smile creep onto my face as I thought about my friend's enthusiasm towards imitating their favorite characters. Maybe I should try that out. After all, I talk about not dwelling on things but I think I'm the one who needs to stop dwelling. "Sigh, this is all a bit too much for me." I turn away from the door and just decide to head up to my room and do some research on the area.

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About an hour or two later, when the sun had long since set, I received a notification from the group chat. They were both deciding on a time so I just quickly answered that I was good all night since my mom has already come home and gone to sleep. They set a time about an hour from now. After the time was squared away, I shared the info I found so far with my friends and began to chat with them.

Liz: Is anyone else feeling a bit nervous

Nathan: Of course, what about you Josh?

Josh: I don't know, I have only done one other mission besides this but I feel surprisingly content with whatever happens. My goal is to make sure none of you end up like me.

Nathan: Thanks man, I didn't know you cared that much about us.

Liz: :)

After that brief exchange, I decided it was best to take a break from all my research. After all, the research only helps up to a certain extent, the rest is situational.

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Under the cover of darkness, three masked figures appear behind a brick building. One petite physique, one large physique, and one well-balanced physique come together to form a line at the very back of a building. All three of them are holding various pistols and are slowly walking towards the front.

At the front of the building the well-balanced physique steps up to the door and with a swift couple of motions, he knocks on the sheet metal door. The masked figure listens for a minute and jumps to the side. All of a sudden he hears the door open behind him. Swiftly turning around, he sees a man with a pipe in his hand. 2 loud bangs are heard and the body of the man falls to the ground with a thump.

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"Oh my god, Iota!" Epsilon shouts.

"WHAT! He came at me with a god damn pipe, I got scared!" I attempt to retort

"Epsilon is right you know, we agreed on non-lethal for- Bleghhhh" Tau turns and vomits the contents of his stomach on the floor. Without waiting for another response, I grab Tau and rush into the building with my gun in hand. Both of my teammates are behind me as I walk into this seemingly empty house. As I walk into the room, I hear two loud bangs from behind me and look back to epsilon, without a word she points to a dead man who was on the ground to my left.

That was close. I guess he heard the shots and hid behind the door. With heavy breaths, I step further into the house and reach a room with a couch, a coffee table, and a flatscreen TV on top of a box. There is a white powdery substance scattered all over the table and several balls of green plant inside of a bag are off to the side. I can hear clamoring in the room ahead and after a moment a door flings open and after seeing a flash of metal I decide to empty my clip into the doorway. The door is practically ripped to shreds by the 45 caliber rounds dumped into it.

I hear all sound in the room stop and motion for Epsilon to take the lead while I take care of Tau. "Listen to me, if you don't pull yourself together right now you will die here, you don't want that to happen do you." I slap him to further my point and eventually, Tau looks up at me and I can see beads of sweat forming on his eyelids. His eyes are filled with distress but he shakes his head and begins to stand up. He looks back at the two bodies and seems to come to a realization.

With a few wobbly steps, he stacks up behind epsilon who is about to breach the room. I change out my mags and store the empty one in my jeans pocket. I head over to tau and stack up behind him. He decides to take point and steps in front of the door, he kicks the door and it practically crumbles. After which he steps away from the door and I rush in while trying my best to imitate the military exercises I saw online. Inside I saw a couple of men cowering on the floor so I pistol-whipped them. The men were surprisingly knocked out very quickly so with one more check of the room I stepped out. "This one's clear, we have a couple more rooms to check still so stay vigilant."

As I said this a door that I had my back to flung open. I saw tau draw his weapon and immediately ducked. It only took one shot to hear the sound of a man's lifeless corpse fall to the ground. I look up to my friend who is visibly shaking and I try to comfort him but before I could say anything, "What you just did was to save our friend! I want you to tell yourself that in your head over and over until you can get that into your skull, do you understand?!" Surprisingly epsilon was the first to realize that Tau was beginning to have a mental breakdown and she quickly got him to come back to reality, once he seemed to be calming himself down, I turned to Epsilon and asked her the question I had on my mind.

"Hey epsilon, how come you are so calm? I still don't feel comfortable with what I'm doing" I say to Liz who is attempting to catch her breath after such an uncharacteristically large outburst. She turns to me and explains.

"My dad is a veteran; I can somewhat understand his logic from the stories that he tells me so I'm trying my best to apply it here" With a nod, I look to Nathan who is once again trying to calm himself down. "You saved my life man, I am grateful, now be the soldier I know you can be and get back on your feet, we're not done here yet." After mustering up the best pep talk, I can give I turn back to the hallway and begin to clear the next room. Upon opening the door, I see several children tied up and gagged. I nearly puke at the state of the room and quickly close the door.

"Don't go in there, we will have the police pick them up later" Tau looks at me while still sweating, and says "The police are probably on their way right now we should hurry." I reach the end of the hallway where the last guy came out and kick in the door. On the inside, a single light bulb illuminates a small wooden desk and a rusty metal chair. I check the dark spots of the room and step inside. Further in I notice a small bed in the corner. There is a small figure strapped to the frame of the bed. Upon further inspection, the figure is a small girl covered in fresh wounds, blood, dirt, and plenty of scars.

On the ground near the bed, I see a bloodied knife. I search the room for a key and eventually find one on the desk. I turn to my silent comrades and we exchange looks of sadness. After unlocking the shackles, we turn and walk down the hall towards the front door of this windowless building. I can hear sirens wailing in the distance getting louder by the minute. After walking over the corpse near the entrance I look back to the building and can feel a portion of myself die. I turn to look at the corpse before turning and silently walking into the pitch-black darkness alongside my two comrades.