Astralis

Episode Eight

A video played across a projection screen in a darkened room. A dozen men and women watched the screen carefully.

"Satellite capture of Karachi, February 2014" Vaughn announced.

The video showed a van crashing into a large, dark blue bus filled with people. An explosion blossomed from the van as it slammed into the bus - which rocked back from the force and promptly caught on fire. A few more minutes of chaos played, before Vaughn paused the video.

"Did anyone catch anything unusual in that clip?" he asked the group.

Looks of confusion and frustration flickered across the faces of the team. Heads began to shake as they admitted none of them had caught 'it'.

"Let's see it again, shall we?" he asked rhetorically and rewound the video to just before the van crashing into the bus. He paused it precisely after the explosion went off, then played the video forward again in slow motion - revealing a small figure fleeing from the van. The person was uninjured and apparently a small boy of about eleven or twelve years old. Several people gasped.

Vaughn then played several more videos, spanning from Pakistan to India, then from Yemen into West Africa. They all had a peculiar similarity. That of a small child fleeing the radius of destruction, unharmed and whole. Only twice in the videos did the child look the same. Sometimes it was male, other times female.

One of the team members broke the stunned silence. "So we're looking for an indestructible child?"

"Essentially, yes," Vaughn answered. "You've all been briefed on some of the details of incident N5438. What wasn't explained was why you were briefed on it in the first place. As you no doubt heard on the news, one of the country's top officials eventually admitted that the targets for recovery were located weeks before their release was secured. While that was an unfortunate slip that led to later complications, initially the worldwide outrage provided a nice distraction from our involvement. All the attention was focused on the President's inaction. What you never would have heard on the news is that the reason the negotiations were stalled was because the kidnappers were unwilling to hand over the same thing we're going after now. Astralis was in the militants' custody and though they didn't have a clue what she is, or exactly how to utilize her, they understood they had an asset of immense value. After a select few leaders of the movement were made aware of how...dire the situation could be if they did not comply and after a few more weeks of negotiation, Astralis was handed over to the U.S."

Another team member spoke up as Vaughn paused in his briefing. "How was Astralis involved with the militant movements in the area to such a degree, if it's programmed as a child?"

"Atralis is programmed as a normal eleven year old girl, now," Vaughn explained. "Someone clearly figured out how to program her in a way that would exploit her more violent abilities. What is more perfect than a suicide bomber that never dies? She has been extensively reprogrammed since then, our best guess is by the Aries Project."

The man nodded, an uncomfortable look on his face.

"How did we lose her?" one of the women asked.

"Mm. Quite ironic, really." He shook his head. "We staged an internal leak back to West Africa, informing the country that we had lost custody at a layover in Venezuela. Not true, obviously. But we did lose custody of her two days later, while transporting her from the drop location in Texas, to D.C. The important question here is, how do we get her back? There is only one way, as far as we know. We developed a safe disabling device for her acquisition in West Africa, which was effective. However, it's possible that despite her reprogramming, she may still recognize it, if she's embedded the recognition into her self-preservation matrix. So we may have to resort to subterfuge, and employ extreme caution with its use. We are still finalizing details on the mission. Project Aries is basically impossible to infiltrate and a forceful entry and extraction will endanger everyone. And I mean everyone. The team, Astralis herself, the target data, the entire district and potentially the whole eastern seaboard...we cannot afford a single mistake. Is that crystal clear?"

The team nodded silently.

"Dismissed. Report back here at 0300 hours. We've got a lot of work to do."