The Swan's Song.

Chapter 1

Swan felt a certain degree of humiliation on board that chopper, separated and looked at like a zoo animal.

The furs were almost gawking at him and he could always feel another set of eyes bore into him. His glasses, though old and worn, still concealed his eyes.

He hoped they did, at least. They would look at him and he would look right back from behind the visor.

"The hell do they want me alive so bad? They've spent five years trying to kill me and now they want to take me alive?" He questioned. He looked down at himself, noting the grime and dirt which stained him for a very bad reason.

He had been gone for the past couple of weeks trying to track down a lead for a piece of high tech military equipment that his group had received before they came to the church so many years ago.

"ViperStar Electromagnetics. Project Lorentz." Thought the man. It was a secret among many that he kept, too important to him to be revealed to anyone else.

At the early stages of the war, in the United States at least, a rapid industrialization and nationalization of multiple sectors led the entire world to see the terror of the American War Machine.

Weapons manufacturing, DARPA, scientific development, robotics, and other such leaps in technology were joined together into one massive conglomerate: ViperStar Development.

Swans group had been tipped off about certain... aspects in the large corporation and that had caused them to wander with a goal after certain events transpired.

"I had just come back. Days spent walking and hiding in the elements. Food and water gone." He thought. He looked down to his gloved hands.

"I was so hungry. I am so hungry." His hands were the dirtiest, due to the simple fact that he had been digging with them.

The soft ground had been churned in the church graveyard due to those hands.

"God forgive me." He thought. Somehow, in that starved, dehydrated, and utterly lost mind of his, he had come to the conclusion that the graves could somehow provide sustenance.

Getting three feet down before realizing what he was doing only made his mental state worse. He looked up from his hands to see that the officer wolf was looking at him quite intently. He lowered his hands and then looked around the chopper, finally deciding to lock his eyes on the ground moving past in the window next to him, his thoughts returning to three weeks ago.

"I was so close. What prevented me from getting into the building?" He had spent a long time looking over old maps and half formulated memories to try and find a very specific building that was quite far from the church.

ViperStar Development - Colorado Branch.

The only method of transportation to the ViperStar building was walking, and he had to load down a pack with what remained of his food. The trip there had been grueling. And to arrive at the right location only to be unable to gain entrance for reasons unknown to him had crushed his already failing morale.

And now, for him to lose the one person that had been his mentor and friend for as long as he could remember had been the final nail in the coffin.

"God damn you, Chelikov. Why the fuck couldn't you come back?" Wondered Swan. Chelikov was an older former Russian Soldier who had been a mentor and father figure for as long as Swan was able to remember. He had always been there.

But he and Chelikov had to split up. As far as they knew, the building which held the location of Lorentz was deduced to be one of two locations. Swan went to one. Chelikov went for the other.