Matthew Silver and the Monster Hunters, Book One: The Darkest Waters

Chapter Two

SilverCHAPTER TWO

I woke up in a hospital bed with my arm tingling in a funny way. I looked at it, but it was wrapped in gauze. When I unraveled the cloth, I was happy to see that the burns were mostly healed, but the skin was bright red and sensitive. The past day’s events hit me like a bus, but I didn’t get up. This was normal for me. The crazy events, not getting hit by a bus.

An extraction team had arrived and flown us back to our home base. After dropping us off, they’d carted away the Phoenix to our containment units in Nevada, Area 51, no less.

My partner, Jay, and I had spent the rest of the day filling out reports for the captured monster and getting examinations from the medical branch. I looked at a clock hanging on the wall and was pleasantly surprised to see that it was 9:23 PM. I’d slept for over thirteen hours, but in my defense, I’d been exhausted. I was ready to tackle another eight hours of sleep for the rapidly approaching bedtime.

I looked around the empty infirmary, feeling pretty good about myself. Capturing a fully grown Phoenix was not an easy thing to do. Killing one was a challenge, but capturing one was a hundred times more difficult.

My partner and I had been sent to investigate a series of inexplicable wildfires in California during the rainy season. Locals had to evacuate their homes, because the fires were so devastating and erratic. Most would explain this away as a natural phenomenon or even blame an arsonist, but we Hunters knew better. When people start using the words inexplicable, strange, bizarre, and impossible, the CCU keeps a close eye on things.

The CCU (the Cryptid Containment Unit) is the covert organization that all Hunters work for. It is split up into different factions based on location. The CIA controls (more like oversees) the U.S. Faction, while the UN controls (oversees) all the other countries’factions. The U.S. Faction spreads out a bit to cover for most of the Western Hemisphere, like all of Canada and parts of Central and South America.

In each faction, there is a certain amount of CCU bases called Sectors. There are fifty CCU bases in the United States (one for each state). Within each Sector, there are twelve Administrators who run the place and send out Hunters on missions.

Being a clandestine branch of the CIA, we show up in their systems. If any CIA agent tried checking on my ID, I’d show up, but it wouldn’t say I’m in the CCU, but in Counter-Narcotics, which I think is pretty neat.

It’s pretty cool that I get a badge too. It doesn’t look special; just a black and silver circle with the CCU emblem (a silver eagle with a serpent in one claw and a scythe in the other) on the front. Our agent ID is engraved on the back. Nothing special, but it makes me feel mysterious. I used to look in my mirror and flash my badge like a secret agent, then finger-gun shoot at the mirror James Bond-style, but one time, Jay somehow managed to walk in one me while I was doing that. Took me several months to convince her I wasn’t having an identity crisis.

Only a few select heads in the CIA and a handful of politicians in Washington even know about the CCU (I’m not counting the undercover Hunters that the CCU secretly has posted throughout the government). I’m really not sure how the CCU works outside of the United States. I know that the American Faction is the best funded, the most organized, and consists of some of the most skilled Hunters in the world, but I really don’t know how the foreign CCU runs things.

The CCU recruits orphans, starting from around the age of four. They have to start young, because only a child will simply accept that monsters are real when told so. If a recruit was so lucky as to be seen as qualified, he or she would go through six years of serious intellectual and physical training at the Hunters Academy. If the recruit would make it through, he/she’d be recruited by a Sector for actual Hunter training. Some of the bases only accept recruits with skill levels that meet their standards. Recruits are sent to train at a CCU base, normally around the age of ten. Those who fail to meet the qualifications are dismissed and decommissioned.