iGuard

1st Mission

About 8 days after Brian showed me around Seaton, we received our first mission.

Our employer, who goes by T, is part of California's police force. Once things start getting out of hand, she sends in her "trump card" agents.

So basically we get sent in to help investigate.

The only strange part about it is that no one working on that particular case can know our identities, or else Apple's "big secret" will be exposed to the world, scientists around will have a hay day and run thousands of tests on us, and basically the world will be thrown into chaos. Not that I buy into all that stuff, but I guess it's better that people don't know I'm some type of cyborg freak.

Ok, so our mission sent us to Evergreen forest, a popular tourist spot 7-8 miles East of Seaton. Strange things started happening a month or two ago. Tourists would go into the forest, excited for a day of hiking, and then never come out. The one survivor suffered numerous parts of their skin shaved off, as if someone had sliced it with a knife, and strange stab wounds, as if they were stabbed with a colony of safety clips a thousand times over.

The lone survivor from all the attacks was too traumatized by what he saw in there to report much information, but he claimed to have seen a man hiding in the trees before he got attacked.

So basically, there is a madman in a gigantic forest that we have to capture or eliminate, and the reason the police can't do it is because a number of the policemen have already been killed, and they can't risk anymore losses. So we get sacrificed to the murderer.

Lucky us.

"Are you excited, Levi?" Brian asked me as we packed our small travel backpacks with helpful little things such as rope, handcuffs, a handgun with ammo ( for me because I couldn't 'summon a weapon') and beef jerky, because you never know how long it would be before you found a madman murderer in a forest.

"Yeah, sure. Always excited to track down psycho murderers."

"Well, he's only human, right?"

Brian shoved a pair of handcuffs into his bag.

"We've got this."

Brian spoke with an unshaken confidence.

Brian tugged on a black jacket, and I did the same. The hoods of the jacket would conceal our faces in case the murderer (or anyone else for that matter) saw our identities and our abilities, and decided to tell the police.

Honestly, I don't think the police would believe the words of a delusional murderer, but we still couldn't take that chance.

We walked out onto the porch, passing through the water deprived lawn and the metal gates, and stopped in front of Brian's two seated motorcycle. We jumped on, Brian driving in the front, me sitting in the back, and sped off towards Evergreen forest.

It wasn't a particularly long ride, only about 20-30 minutes long, but it felt nice to stretch after getting off the motorcycle in front of Evergreen forest.

The forest itself was colossal, consisting of trees that seemed to be about 10-15 meters tall. Brian stared up at the trees in shock, and whistled.

"Dang. Levi, look around. Look at all these big ass trees."

"I know, they're enormous."

The size of the forest would definitely complicate things... What if we weren't able to find the murderer? Although the forest is now off limits to tourists, the murderer is bound to come out sooner or later, and when he does...

As if sensing my anxiety, Brian put a hand on my shoulder.

"Hey, we're gonna ace this thing, ok? We've both got some experience in these types of things, we know how to handle this type of situation."