Finding the heart

Chapter One

Prologue

She sat at her desk in the quiet building and was about to start pounding her head against the empty desk as hard as she could. Sitting idly was not something she was capable of when she had been put on desk duty for a small oversight that wasn't her fault she knew she was in the long haul. The sounds of her computer cycling was the only thing that filled her office with sound. The hustle of the ordinarily busy office was at a standstill. She knew why they had been called out for a mission, but she was stuck in her office. She was tempted to tap into the feed to at least listen in when there was a rap on her closed door. The offending person broke the silence as they opened it without her calling out to them as she really didn't want to talk to the person on the other side of the door. She looked up at him, and his ordinarily decent face was ashen, and he looked at her with a graven expression that left her concerned and speechless. In the ten years, they had worked together she had never seen that face except for one time. She knew what was going to be said; she didn't have to wait for him to speak.

"Who?", she asked.

"Everyone.", he replied in a voice that wasn't his; it was far off and distant.

"What?", she asked. "How? What the hell happened?"

"I don't know. They were all there and then they were gone. Totally gone. No heat signatures, no bodies, nothing. They are just gone."

"You're not making any sense. They can't just disappear. This isn't the Bermuda triangle. This is downtown Kyoto.", she replied and questioned.

"How do you know where they were?", He asked looking at her questioningly. She was supposed to be in the dark about the mission.

"Talk to your personnel who leave folders on my desktop about classified missions.", she said. "I just opened the file."

"You know better.", he said.

"Really you lost 12 men, and you are going to lecture me about reading a file on my computer?", she asked.

"We need your help.", he said.

"I can't. remember my hands are tied.", she said.

"Consider them untied. Do your thing, and freaking find them.", he said.

"I will try.", She said and went to work hunting for them. The first thing she did was listen to the mission tapes. She listened to them twice. Nothing seemed amiss in them except for the last minute or so. Something happened that she couldn't explain. She wanted to see if there was any real-time video. She was going to get a fight because she knew that her hands being tied wasn't her supervisor's doing it was the new commander and he hated her and her freedom to do whatever. It was like trying to leash a rabid dog without getting bit dealing with him. He wouldn't grant her access to the video she would have to go in a back way. Lucky for her she helped design the computer software they used in this building, she helped designed the entire building, to be honest, and she knew every exploit there was. She had placed them there for a reason. She knew this day would happen eventually. She tunneled through the firewall and hacked into her own system to find what she needed. They hadn't moved the files, yet so she could see them as they were. She quickly downloaded the originals as she knew whatever was on them would probably be edited and then saved. If the op was bad, the commander would do anything to save his own ass. Her team was on that mission, her friends; she didn't care about the commander's ass the least bit. She knew saving them on her computer wouldn't be an option and so she did something highly illegal and uploaded them to a private drive out of the building. She didn't care. She then watched the video. She was in awe of what happened. She could clearly see it; she thought they were just fiction a fantasy that she had heard of in sci-fi shows and her own imagination from childhood. It was exactly as she pictured it. She now knew where her team had gone, how 12 highly trained military men could just vanish into thin air. She had to try to figure out where they had gone. A wormhole had swallowed them but where did it lead too? A new world? A new time? She knew the where and the when but not the where. Who would believe her when she told them, probably no one.

Six months later.....

She had walked around the city again. Her trips to Japan were increasing as she started to notice a pattern of weather around the time her team had disappeared. She had kept her findings close as not to jeopardize the entire op she had built around the disappearance of the team. She had worked with both her government and the Japanese government in setting it up. The past few months she didn't even report to the commander of her unit as faith in his abilities to even understand the process had been brought to an all-time low when he questioned everything she had said as fake and trying to make herself as necessary. It was the meeting to which he had showed up late for with his own video of the original op which as she had suspected had been altered. She had already admitted to the other high ranking officials what she had done and the reason why and they had swept it under the rug when they watched the video for the second time and saw that it had been edited from the original which she had shown fifteen minutes prior. He had been almost relieved of duty, but in an ironic twist of fate she had stood up and requested that he stay in command as long as she didn't have to report to him any longer. She smiled to herself as she fondly remembered his reaction which was comical as he turned a shade of purple in indignation.

She knew something was different about this day then her other trips. The air was electric, and you could feel it. The guys on her team had often called her a weather barometer as she could connect on a level that they didn't understand. She could feel the changes, the pressure changing, rain coming, snow, whatever it was, today was very much like that. She often walked around the city and could recognize the sights from the video she had watched probably a million times. She had planted herself in front of the Honno-Ji monument just looking at the stone when the air felt full yet again. She instinctively backed up, and it began to downpour hard. She glanced around the city sky, and this storm was just in front of her. A lighting crash that brought her to her knees as she saw the swirling and the sight before her became warped and then figures appeared, not just her friends but in total twenty-two men hit the pavement hard. Suddenly the distortion she had been waiting for disappeared. She walked over to the pile of men and crouched down next to one. "Welcome home.", she said softly as his head popped up and he looked at her in the eyes.

"You!", he said as his smile erupted on his face. "You're here?"

"I am. I have been waiting for you all.", She smiled back as she stood and started to help the other members of her team to their feet. All equally shocked to see her standing before them. The other ten men took notice and waited not so patiently for an introduction to the woman in front of them.

"How are you here?", one of the men asked.

"It has been six months.", she replied.

"Six months?", He asked and shook his head in disbelief. He looked at one of the men and looked murderous. "You said it would be a few weeks. WEEKS, not MONTHS!"

"Hey!", she said. "Calm down. Don't start here. Let's go to the warehouse I have. To see what exactly happened. Okay?", She said as she got in between the men.

"Fine, Princess. Six months?", he asked again.

"Yup. So who are these guys?", she asked quietly.

"Yeah about that...... that's a pretty big story in itself.", Her closest friend leaned over to say as she waited for the explanation. She knew she would have to wait then....... A