ARMAGEDDON

12: Heresy

As soon as I woke up, Daniel went off to consult with the senior leadership about an extraction mission regarding Malice when I told him about my dream. Apparently, I've been in a coma for a month so a lot of shit has happened. Japan fell entirely to Baphomet's forces, and South Korea is now being invaded by demons.

Meanwhile, NATO and almost all of the governments from around the world have unified to respond to the demonic threat. A covert defense and crisis response project was created, called the "Archangel Initiative", which is essentially a group made up of numerous scientists, demonologists, strong military leaders, and last but not least a large number of SOCOM operatives from different countries acting as boots on the ground.

Their mission is to better understand the demonic threat, and to also respond to crisis areas and save as many civilians as possible. That makes the lives of us Hell Walkers much easier, so that we can instead focus on operations in Hell and avoid worrying about saving lives at the same time. As large as we are, we have limited resources compared to a massive multinational group with a lot of international funding.

Now, our job is to find ways to multiply our force and obtain as many assets as we can to fight the invasion. Malice is one of those assets. Once a demonic asset is located in Hell, we make it our job to extract and provide protection while they brief us on everything going on in Hell.

But first, I need to prioritize. I need to make sure I can get out of my bed, and on my feet. Thankfully, the infirmary room I was in was empty, so I had privacy. I slowly let my feet touch the cold floor, and carefully sat up. I felt woozy, but felt so much better considering the beating I took from Baphomet. While Frank and I had driven off Baphomet, other Hell Walkers came to the scene and detonated the Black Pyramid, essentially ending any easy passage into Egypt. I slowly walked around, getting the feel of being back on my feet again. I changed out of my medical gown, and into a fresh pair of jeans and a shirt that I found in a nearby drawer.

I lumbered out into the hallway, and saw Frank sitting on a balcony, smoking a cigar. He waved as I passed by. I basked in the artificial sunlight, and even though it wasn't an actual sun, it still felt good. I sat on the marble steps to the infirmary for a good five hours, remembering details from my coma induced dream. It disturbed me deeply. Especially the Specter. What exactly it was, I didn't know. I didn't feel like looking for answers.

When the artificial sun went down, it became night time. I didn't see Daniel again until somewhere around midnight.

"Well?" I asked.

Daniel grinned and said "We're doing it. Leadership is drawing up the plan."

I asked "Do you have an idea of how it'll go down?"

Daniel shrugged and said "We'll send you and a few others on a VTOL plane into the circle of Heresy. Basically, the extraction team will grab Malice and get on the plane, wasting as little time as possible."

"So now what?" I asked.

"You and I get to oversee the recon phase of the operation." Daniel replied.

We Hell Walkers are highly advanced when it comes to technology, so it wasn't a huge shock to me when I learned that we had drones built capable of withstanding the trip to Hell. This was useful, as it let us get a perspective of a place where the geography constantly shifts and changes.

We got a steady camera feed with 4 interdimensional drones, and we were able to chart out a battle map from the data we got. I would be in a group with three other Hell Walkers. One was a CQB specialist, one was a marksman, and the last person was a heavy weapons specialist. Our window to extract Malice was a maximum of 25 minutes.