Operation Hades

Setting the Stage

Operation Hades

A Prelude to a Legend

"For some reason, I don't feel particularly motivated from all that."

The entire lecture he had just been made to sit through was sending mixed messages throughout his mind.; an overbearing shock and surprise, opposed to ironic humor. Even so, over his decade of experience he'd learned that many, many things were possible. The young man who'd made the remark leaned back further into his seat. The shine from the overhead light shifted across his snow-white hair.

He sported a distinct style with the unique hair color, parting the cheek length strands to cover the right half of his face, and keep everything out from in front of his left eye. The strap from an eyepatch ran across the cleared half of his face, directly above his black eyebrow. His face itself was mostly unblemished from what could be seen, aside from the scar running along his jawline. It was obvious that he'd come from Japanese descent from his facial structure, namely the eyes. It didn't greatly match his slender stature.

His form-fitting jacket was a royal blue, with divots and zipper visible on the outside.  It was thin, probably made for autumn weathers.

The heat from the end of the shortening cigarette had reached his fingertips. Instinctively, he smothered and discarded it into the metal ashtray on the table. His name was simply 'Acheron'. Where he was, was a rather familiar place to him. Although, not very pleasant. An Agency facility. The very Agency that he'd escaped from, and fought against. The very Agency that had deprived him of a life. Yet here he was, civilly conducted in a briefing room with an officer of this organization.

In fact, the man sitting across from him was known to Acheron as Project Director Thane Klarke. This was the one who'd taken away his humanity. The one who'd betrayed and brutalized him. Acheron's outright malice and complete hatred for the individual directly across from him was easily masked with a straight face and some dry humor. It was a trick he'd picked up a long while back.

Thane was a man of gaunt features, and short brown hair that had probably been buzzed within a few weeks of then. Stress marks and the outlines of his cheekbones were very prevelant.

Thane appeared to completely disregard Acheron's statement, and produced a manilla envelope from a briefcase beside his chair. Acheron's attention immediately shifted to the uniformly-colored paper in the man's hands. His initial assumption would be that Thane would attempt to convince him with some sort of phony document or report. Even after he forced himself to file out most of the bias from his thought process, it still came to several similar hypotheses.

A small bundle of papers stapled together was removed from the package, and layed neatly in front of him. The first thing that caught Acheron's eye was a unique watermark in the top right corner of the document, which labeled it as an object of the highest security clearance in the Agency's database. Stuff that wasn't allowed on computers. This still didn't rule out the possibility of false documents in his head.

He leaned forward once more, and slid the documents closer. The header read that it was an incident report, and something had went down just two days ago. Three pages of details in chronilogical order. Acheron quickly glided through some of it. What he'd read had forced his brow to furrow, in some form of disbelief. He analyzed every single word of the next few pages for a minute or so, even going to reread it a single time.

"I hope you don't expect me to believe this rubbish," He stated half-heartedly. He simply didn't want to believe the text.

"Believe what you want. It's not going to change the reality of it," Thane retorted with a bland tone, and a glazed look. Acheron didn't have anything to spit back to that. "That's not even all of it. We haven't had ample time to actually write the records for the other raids. Which include five dead Agents, a missing Specialist, and two units from the mobile task force who have both sustained crippling casualties. That's at least all I've been told about, so far." Thane matter-of-factly clasped his hands together, and leaned forward with his elbows on the table. "And I'm entirely sure that that's not all that's been wasted from this predicament."