The Nephilim Protocol

Orientation

"—tupid... dropping in blizz--. Never find..."

"Neede—rop them. Not fly elsewh--

"Saw one land in the wat—" The voices are getting clearer. "Gonna –--awing him out... days."

"—ere's one." Something grabs the back of the bag, rolls me onto my side. I feel air on my face. "Crap, there's Boar! Doc, get over here! Boar's chute must've gotten tangled!"

I open my eyes. I'm staring sideways at a white landscape. White hills, white sky—even the air is filled with white flakes, being whipped about by a roaring wind.

Directly in front of me is a soldier in a light blue camo parka, with the dark helmet and the red goggles from before. A different soldier, though—this one looks Hispanic. He's staring at something just to the left of meand signaling to someone further back. I see what he's stooped over.

Another soldier. His body's arranged in a way a body really shouldn't be, with lots of red soaking through. I realize the wet sensation on my face isn't from the snow.

There's heavy footsteps, and four or five more boots come into view. "Shit!"

"Doc, hurry!"

"Too late, man, that throat's been ripped open!"

Another voice cuts in, calm and deliberate. "A slashed jugular isn't—" a cough, "—isn't automatically fatal." An old man with green eyeglasses and a olive-colored parka kneels on the other side of the body. "But it looks like..." he coughs again, "...there's some internal bleeding also. Give me room."

The boots step back. I can't exactly look away, so I get an up-close view as the old man cuts an x across the wound so that he can fold the skin back from the red tubes beneath. Blood is flowing out, thick and deep red.

It's really sort of fascinating.

"There." The old man's glove comes off, and he neatly pinches the bleeding tube. His spare hand is rooting in his bag. He comes out with some sort of metallic clip, and pressing the tube just enough to make it pucker, he uses the clip to hold it shut.

"That should hold for now," he says, pulling out bandages and wrapping them around the wound. His eyes seem to gleam behind his glasses. "I assume one of you can signal a chopper? This is the airport, after all. Tell them to bring a shock kit and plasma."

"He's been lying in the snow for nearly half an hour!"

"With the young man on top of him providing pressure," the old man says. "He's lost a lot of blood, but he's not gone yet."

The Hispanic soldier snorts. "Guess the neff was good for something." He glances at me, and his eyes widen. "Shit, it's awake!" He stumbles upright, fumbling with his silvery gun. I really don't like the way he's pointing it, and I struggle in the straitjacket.

"Give it an injection!" Someone calls.

Hell no, not that again. Who knows where I'll wake up next? I start to really struggle.

The straitjacket, the bag, and half a dozen leather straps I hadn't even known about rip apart, and suddenly everything is much looser. Huh. I start to get to my feet...

And something jabs into the back of my neck—shit, that BURNS—and things immediately start to fade to black again. As I collapse back into the snow, I have time for one last confused thought.

The heck is a neff, anyway?

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This time I wake up in a glass-enclosed room like the one before. It's not the same one, though—there's a lot of medical equipment all around, and a bed, of course.