“You don’t.” Tessa expected their uncooperative answer. She whispered in the comms to her team, “Stay still. No one fire. I’m going to stretch my legs.” She raised her voice to address the Nightstalkers, “Alright, I’m coming out. Hold your fire. I’m sending you my gun.” Tessa slid her nine-mil handgun across the concrete floor toward her enemy. Then she stepped out from behind the vehicle with her hands up.
The leader shouted more instructions, “Don’t try no Evo stuff neither or we’ll fill you with lead.”
“No need to get hostile. I’m willing to comply.” Tessa tried to use a soft and calming voice to defuse the situation, but it didn’t work.
“Now your friends come out,” he demanded.
Tessa shook her head, “I think we need some assurances from you. You drop your weapons, and my team disarms and reveals themselves.”
The leader was short with a shaved head and wearing a black tank top with arms covered in skull tattoos. “No way. This is my territory, and you do as I say. Nightstalkers don’t put down guns in their territory.”
The Nightstalkers aimed and fired on Tessa as she raised her energy barrier, halting the bullets midair and the lead fell to the floor with a clang of raining metal on the concrete floor. The leader looked surprised but didn’t order a cease-fire. So Tessa instructed Copy to deploy the plan. In an instant, dozens of Copies roamed around the garage, and the Nightstalkers engaged, giving Tessa a moment to slip back behind the armored vehicle.
After mags emptied for the second time, the Nightstalker’s paused, realizing the figures were all Copies of the same person and bullets weren’t effective at all. Tessa harnessed her energy to float wrenches from the tool chest into the air. She hurled the wrenches one by one down the room striking Nightstalkers. She heard them cry out as she pelted them with metal.
Tessa blinked from her secure location to one of the Nightstalkers who she struck with a wrench. She grabbed the muzzle of his rifle and pushed it up into the air. Tessa gave him an uppercut to the nose drawing a gushing stream of blood and then took the rifle in both hands, bending it in half.
The rest of the Nightstalkers continued dodging wrenches while attempting to reload. Tessa worked to take each one of them down, similar to the first. A speedy punch or kick and then rendering their firearm useless. Once they were all disarmed, she blinked in front of them and stopped.
“Can we all sit down and discuss this like civilized folk? Frontline come on out.” Tessa gave the order for her fighters to emerge, but the scavengers remained hidden.
Just when Tessa thought they might move forward to negotiations, fury flashed in the Nightstalker leader’s eyes, “Cyclone.” He roared and charged Cyclone, and the two collided in fists of rage.
Tessa sighed and rolled her eyes at their unnecessary conflict. “Boys, please.” She grabbed the Nightstalker, and Sam took hold of Cyclone pulling the two apart. “We are here to talk about business, not take over.”
The Nightstalker wiggled in Tessa’s grasp, but her strength allowed her to hang on, “We don’t associate with scum like Cyclone.” He spit on the floor toward his enemy.
“Hey, knock it off.” Tessa shook him, “He’s not here as your enemy. He’s here as my ally.”
“You answer to a woman.” The tattooed man laughed.
Cyclone interjected, “I tried to tell you, you can’t reason with these idiots. Just leave him here on earth to rot with H.I.V.E.”
“We will destroy H.I.V.E.” The Nightstalker proclaimed with pride.
“Right, you’re doing such a stellar job.” Tessa let go of the combatant, and he turned to glare at her. “I’m just saying H.I.V.E has all the resources while you scrounge for an existence destined to fail. Earth is dying, and everyone on this planet will die with it. Now H.I.V.E is building a ship to take them to the stars and leave us all here to die.”
He pointed to Tessa, “You’re one of them. You’re a H.I.V.E agent sent to destroy your kind. They brainwash Evos and turn them into assassins.”
“If I were an assassin, you would already be dead. But you’re not all wrong, H.I.V.E does brainwash and recruit Evos. They tried to recruit me. I’m an Alpha, and they need my power to start the core for their ship.”
He snuffed at Tessa, “There are no Alpha Evos. That’s a myth.” He looked to Cyclone, who shook his head no.
Cyclone confided in his enemy, “It true; she’s the real deal. I saw her take H.I.V.E choppers from the sky. Like it was child’s play.”
“So why is the Syndicate working with her?”
“Because she is powerful, and she has intel on H.I.V.E’s operations. She’s working on a plan to take them down so that Evos survive. If H.I.V.E escapes to the stars, all Evos die here on earth. Tessa wants to build another ship to save us.”
“So, are you asking for Nightstalkers to help?” He looked at Tessa.
“I hoped to unify the gangs of Chicago and start building the ship. We must work together if we want to survive.”
“Will I get to kill H.I.V.E agents?” There was a disturbing twinkle in his eyes.
“I’m sure there will opportunities to kill H.I.V.E agents.”
“I’m in.”
11
It surprised Cyclone to witness the Nightstalkers join so quickly, but Tessa understood why. They wanted to kill H.I.V.E agents. The Nightstalkers were out for blood, and she would use that as long as she could control it, which might prove difficult. The tattooed leader of the Nightstalkers called himself Shadow, and he could transform himself into black smoke to move through the air and re-solidify. A unique ability with hundreds of uses. Tessa inquired why he hadn’t used it in their fight. He responded
