Level-7: FUBAR

All Bastions had one form of prophetic sight or the other.

The Bastions of Tryggr could see how to set anything in order and bring about peace and stability to anything in chaos. The Bastions of Treta could see how to initiate a state of chaos upon anything. According to Blin they knew everyone’s weakness, chink in armor, pressure point, etc. They could ignite chaos with just a mere word.

The Bastions of Lihtine could see exactly how to bring about brightness to any construct of the dark, hope to any bleakness, and brilliance to every ignorance. And their opposites, the Bastions of Kimmerien could see the exact opposite; they could bring about the great night, a night eternal of hopelessness and despair. They could see every action it would take to drive any man or nation into their darkest personality. They instinctively knew how to corrupt and spread corruption.

For the Bastions of Ativ and the Bastions of Zid, the former could see anything about life and the latter anything concerning death. It was almost similar to the sight of the Bastions of Genesis and Finire, but a bit bit more minor.

And as for Bastions of Noyanu and Xim, Blin had been unsure what they could see, due to having never met a Bastion of either Aeon, but knew they had the sight.

I guess it had something to do with unity and accord, synchrony, for the former, and dissonance, divides, and fractionality for the latter.

I reached Lynx's office and knocked then waited, impatiently tapping my foot on the hard concrete floor.

I got no response and decided to knock again, a bit louder this time, in case she had fallen asleep or was in the office’s bathroom.

When I got no response, I realized she wasn't there. I'd have opened the door if my key card was authorized for her office. I tried it anyway, but the door remained locked.

That meant she wasn't in her office. If she wasn't there that left the conference room as the next place she could possibly be.

I turned around and retraced my steps, returning to corridors I'd already traversed.

M was silent in my head, I knew what was going on. She was analyzing the vision I'd had from my Power of Magnitude for every squeeze of detail she could drain out of it to use as extrapolating data to create a prediction for what was happening and how we could possibly counter it.

I left her to work on it, better she than me.

*

When I arrived at the conference room, tucking my key card back into my wallet as I gently closed the door, I found that I was the last to arrive. It was not surprising at all as most of my colleagues slept here.

Well, they did most of the time, especially when they had active missions.

I did too when I had an assignment, this was like my free time, this why I'd been doing bodyguard for Stiff the previous day.

Lynx, her red hair in a bun, sat at the head of the table. Lynx had been my teammate when I was still a newbie, now she was the commander of our squad. Most of our teammates from back then were either dead or in other squads now.

The only person I was familiar with, in the room, for as long as I've been with Lynx was Chasm.

The African American raised his head and nodded at me as I took a seat at the table. “Now that Shade is here, how about we get this show started, Lynx?” Chasm asked.

Lynx looked at me, giving me a nod then looked at everyone else sitting. All in all, there were eleven of us. Without M I was not even sure I'd be able to remember half of their names.

Unlike my time in the army, there were no team building exercises here, only brutal training. There were no after action hangouts, only more training. There were no sleep overs and friendships, only even more training.

And one would think that with the amount of training we were having it would be enough to build up a relationship with others. Well, it would have been if it weren't for the competition.

Here, if you weren't good enough, you would be transferred to a junior squad filled with incompetent agents like you. Such squads don't get to last long on the field—give or take, four months.

Stiff’s crew gave a whole new definition to ride or die.

As I thought that, Lynx got up and approached the projector screen at the far end wall of the conference room.

“I called you all here,” she began, her voice sharp, arresting their collective attention, “because we have new orders. First of all, all ongoing operations have been put on hold.”

Muttered noises rose up around me. Some were cursed and others expressions of relief, but a glare from Lynx silenced them all quickly.

“It is important that you all realize something,” she said, her voice hard as stone and cold as ice as she glared at anyone who dared to not pay attention to her words. “This mission I'm about to brief you on is a Level Seven Mission.”

Fuck, I thought, sitting up. It indeed had to be one hell of a mission. It was not surprising, especially if my suspicion was true and it had something to do with the Panamerican War Stiff was starting behind the world's back.

Code Omega Nuclear Nova, also known as Level-7 was the zenith of all important missions. If it was a mission that started world war two, it would have been Level-7. The mission that ended Kennedy's life had been Level-7, the final infiltration mission of the allies into Paris before the city's liberation from the hands of the Nazi Germans had been Level-7.

For a moment, as the impact and the ramification of such a mission registered with me, I considered the possibility of reaching out to the military or even the CIA about it before discarding the idea.

Stiff still had friends in the force and the government. There's no telling whose hands my whistleblower info would pass through on its way to the top of the chain of command.

“I’ve been expecting something like this for a while now,” Chasm admitted to the room, shrugging when he received some weird looks. “So who are we up against? The Queen of England?”

“No,” Lynx said grimly, “we are heading to the North Korean embassy and taking everyone we meet there hostage.”