Crossfire

Chapter One - Starry Eyes

On a rooftop, a few miles away from New York City, a man lay with his hands behind his head, gazing at the stars. He picks out the constellations, as he does most nights.

The stars seemed to be the only things that were still as pretty now as they were five years ago. Of course they were, they weren't drowning in radiation, or suffocating under a dome. They just sat there, glittering above the grey and brown earth.

He was quite peaceful, until a buzzing started in his ear. The man groans, sits upright, and tunes in the earpeice.

"Repeat yourself." he says coldly.

"I said," a man on the other end responds, the squads captain, "Eclipse is here. We're expecting them to use the riot as cover. Watch our backs."

"Got it." he yawns.

Jobs like these sucked. It wasn't that they were boring, it's that they were too tense. The organization he had been hired by, Blossom Corp., had seemed so uptight and cold that they might as well have a stick up their ass and call themselves Popsicle Corp.

They were the "Tool that would pave the way to recovery," or so they said.

They were a tool, alright. A bunch of big headed science millionaires that looked down on wastelanders as nothing more than ants, while they sat inside their domes, free from the starvation, the storms, the violence. Made him wonder why they bothered to come outside for negotiations like these.

Their CEO was nice enough. Nice enough to send an intern to fill him in, that is. He would be working with the covert ops division of the superficially peaceful scientific research community. Tonight, their job was to keep a building secure as one of Blossoms founding members held negotiations inside with a potential business partner.

That was their usual shtick, secure assets or protect their public servants from protesters of Blossom. But, for some reason, this division was kept secret, even from mostly all employees of Blossom. Every battle scene was covered up, media silenced and witnesses paid to keep quiet to keep the companies peaceful reputation alive.

Not that he cared, he was just a mercenary, and once he was paid, none of this would be his problem, he could get back to his warehouse, and-

"Shrike!" the captain growls, clearly irritated.

"Hm?" Shrike mumbles in response to his tag.

"Get your head out of the clouds, we've got movement, one and three o' clock from our position, we'll handle the ground."

Shrike sits upright, and unslings his sniper rifle, crouching low. His gun clicks silently as the display hud on his scope comes online. With his night vision enabled, he makes out of the shapes of eight figures coming out of a nearby building, walking in loose formation into the crowd. Then, to his right, his thermal vision finds a team of three snipers watching their partners make their way across the ground, set up on a nearby rooftop.

Using their divided attention, Shrike attaches his silencer and swaps out his tracer rounds. One slow pull of a trigger later, and one of the enemy snipers is dead where they stands.

The remaining two jump, and scan the environment for the shooter. Shrike was feeling quite nice about himself.

Then all hell broke loose.

The dead snipers standing body slips, and tumbles ten stories down.

The rioters stood silent, a silence which was then broken by an ear-piercing scream. The crowd scatters, and more screams follow as the eight men on the ground pull their weapons on the black ops members, and the firefight begins.

Shrike curses as comms explode over his earpeice, and he yanks it out, unable to focus.

Upon reactivating his scope, he sees one of the snipers bump their partner and point in his direction. He has a fraction of a second to aim and fire before his eye was nearly taken out by the remaining sniper.

While locked in a duel, he could no longer protect his team, leaving them vulnerable to any outside attacks, so he would have to be quick.

Taking a deep breath, he lunges from behind cover and looks down his scope, praying he wasn't too late, but the enemy sniper was gone.

He lowers his gun in confusion, before something hits him in his back. He nearly tumbles off the roof, his gun skidding across the ground and out of his reach.

"Buenas noches." a female voice says from behind him.

He whirled around to find a sniper in black fatigues, her long black hair tied in a ponytail behind her, a black bandanna covering everything but her deep brown eyes and olive skin.

Shrike wonders how she crossed so quickly, but he shakes off his confusion and growls, and pulls a knife on the woman, who chuckles and presses the end of her snipers barrel to his throat.

"Relajate, I'm not going to kill you." she smiles, "I just wanted to see the look in your eyes when you thought I was going to." she laughs.

"Bien, pues," she throws her sniper aside, and whips out two hunting knives from her cloak, "let's begin."

Shrike charges her, but she sidesteps and slashes his side. Snarling like an animal, Shrike charges her again, and waits for her to sidestep. When she does, he spins to slow his charge, but keep his momentum, the point of his knife just barely missing the woman's chest, but she blocks, and the horrible noise of silver cutting silver throws him off balance, and he falls, his split knife on the ground beside him.

"You were a good adversary, amigo, but I can't let you live." the woman says, her dark eyes gleaming as she stands over him.

His adrenaline passes, Shrike stands, quietly, taking the woman by surprise. He just nods at her and walks over to his gun, picking it up.

The woman tilts her head, to which Shrike raises his eyebrow. He silently thanked whatever was out there that this worked on such a high caliber soldier. Being able to twist a situation and confuse your opponent was key to surviving a failed duel.

"You would do well with Eclipse, why don't you come with me?" she offers, to which Shrike shakes his head.

"You know that means I have to kill you then, right?" she reminds him, and Shrike nods. She sighs "You've got guts, niño, just don't tell anyone that I didn't rip them out of you." she laughs.

"Zorra, where are you?" her earpiece hums on her shoulder.

She rolls her eyes and says, exasperated "Doing my job, we had a problem, but I killed it." she winks at Shrike, who blinks.

"Get back to base, our mission failed." the man growls, his anger audible even over the comms.

"You got it, boss." she replies casually.

"Those are orders, guess I gotta go." her eyes narrow as she smiles at Shrike. "I'll see you around, try not to put up a better fight next time. Also, have a nice nap."

Shrike was about to respond, but paused at her last comment. He didn't have a chance to answer, as the butt of her sniper slammed into his head, and he passed out cold.