The drive to the cave where Curly and Ben engaged the Jinn made them anxious. Neither of them wanted to go there, but if it meant stopping this madness. It was for the best that they put their worries aside and push forward.
During the trip, Ben retold the entire event of getting to the village, his mission, their first contact against the monster, and the constant battles afterwards outside of the village. Ell listened, seeing that there was a lot more than she could’ve expected from the reports she was given by the Order. However, with the equipment she had on hand, it should be an easy mission.
Ben struggled to figure out what kind of armoured car they were in. It was large and spacious, and well armed compared to the vehicles he used to be in. Examining the size of the vehicle, he compared it to the Bushmaster the Australian forces were using, but slightly wider and with a bit more storage capacity. Making him suspect that it was a modified vehicle or something else entirely that the APS were lucky enough to have their hands on.
‘This flare you mentioned,’ Ell asked, sitting across from Curly and Ben. ‘You mentioned it had a strange ingredient or had an odd name attached to it. Do you remember what it is called?’
‘Angel Fire, ma’am.’ Benjamin quickly recalled. ‘But it doesn’t seem special. All it did was scare him off. But I believe any flare can achieve the same thing. At the time, though, they seemed to be afraid of them for some reason. Maybe it damages the nanobots or overloads their sensors? It damaged the cloud surrounding him, so it must be the case. Either way, I have no idea why it works, but it does.’
Ell shrugged before leaning back. ‘It’s just a fancy name for a whole heap of chemicals that make the flames look blue, or some sort of joke someone made in our department. We have a few on hand, but I doubt we will need them for this mission.’
‘Why not?’ Curly butts in.
‘Because our electronic equipment is EMP-proof. Whatever they can do, we will come out fine. That is why it took us a lot longer to respond to the strange activity in the area; we just didn’t have the upgrades installed yet.’
‘That is a lot of confidence for someone who hadn’t fought them.’
She smiled at Curly. ‘Confidence that can be backed up, Corporal. My team is equipped and trained to deal with these strange oddities that pop up all around the world, and we have you two coming along to aid us. If you are lucky, you might be allowed to join our little exclusive club in the APS.’
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
‘I thought the APS was just an organisation the government dumps money into and freely cuts whenever they want to “save money”.’ Benjamin pointed out. He believed they were part of the organisation, but there was something strange about them which he couldn’t put his finger on. How could something as small as the APS have better equipment than the entirety of the US Army?
In response, Ell winked at Ben with a subtle smirk. ‘Some people just get a blank check to do whatever. Let’s say the Chinese, the Russians, or maybe the North African Confederacy decides to create some new and strange tech, or in our case, a super soldier. We go in, take it, and study it. But most of the time, we push for tech to be legislated for the safety of humanity. We don’t want another Lenin Program to happen, do we? While some technologies developed can do wonders for the world, there still needs to be some sort of safeguard to ensure that we all stay safe. The American Paranormal Society mostly does paperwork, but like any other organisation like ours, sometimes we have to step in and turn the machine off by force. It isn’t glamorous, but it is a job we have to do.’
‘You make it sound like it is a common problem.’
‘It kind of is, Sergeant.’ Ell pulled out her knife and held it in front of Ben. ‘We live in a world that is very fragile, yet constantly growing. We develop new pieces of tech and dream of reaching the stars. I’m also pretty sure the owner of an electric car company who wants to bring people to Mars is putting a lot of resources into that venture. However, I doubt that South African twat can get us there besides blowing a lot of money. But there is a scary fact that we don’t truly understand yet. That even if we build the best computer, install every fail-safe and kill switch. There is a chance, no matter how small, that it will fail and turn against us. It happened in this country a few decades ago, and it almost happened in East Germany after that. What we believed was a sci-fi fantasy became reality, and was proven true when a computer could gain sapience under strict conditions. We have to do things safely, even if it means we delay technological progress. But despite that, even if we artificially slow ourselves down. We can sleep well knowing that we won’t know the threat of extinction.’
‘So you fear the idea that the Terminator could become reality?’ Ben pointed out.
‘It almost became a reality. We were just fortunate enough to prevent it from happening before it even had a chance to rise up against us. Like it or not, but we are the first line of defence against those sorts of things.’
