>>>>>>>TWO YEARS AFTER THE COLLAPSE OF SIGA<<<<<<<
>>>>>>>BROOKLYN, NEW YORK CITY, NY, USA<<<<<<<
>>>>>>>ILLEGAL UNDERGROUND FIGHT CLUB<<<<<<<
>>>>>>>11:00 PM EST<<<<<<<
One, two….THREE! Captain Jordana “Jordan” Ceva-Ankers’ first two punches struck the muscular, insect-eyed, Stagarante fighter in the chest with quick-timed precision before she plowed her sneaker full-footed into his lower abdomen. He was big, but like many of the rambunctious tough guys she’d dealt with in Theta Base as the Tactical Supervisor of the prison, the blowhard relied on brute strength and intimidation to win. He made a growling sound and returned to his feet, so Jordan returned to her Aikido defensive pose. But she also took a moment to back up against the black-coated, chain link fence that surrounded the ring. The Stagarante wrestler charged her, the ring floor vibrating under its heavy feet. With an elegant dive to her right, though, Jordan instead let the brute crash into the fence. Acrid fumes seeped out from the wrestler’s body as the Stagarante was burned on contact with the Zarium-Sulfate Acid coating on the fence, causing him to growl with painful anger. He then staggered back and fell to the ground, grabbing his arms and chest painfully. Dashing quickly, Jordan swung her leg up high and knocked the guy out for the count with a heel drop to the head.
You didn’t leave me much of a choice, bud. The undercover Captain and Alpha Team’s Second Officer stood to one side as a few humans removed the unconscious extraterrestrial wrestler from the ring. All the while, she casually rolled out her ankles, stretched her arms, and twisted her torso like it was just another day in the gym. Shortly, another two contestants entered. They both had silver skin, thin aerodynamic bodies, and bright blue eyes.
Silver Silurians. Seen them before. Super speed, as I recall. Jordan narrowed her sharp, gray assassin eyes and lifted her hands back in their flat, open-palmed wait stance as the guards shut the gate.
But despite the cheers, it wasn’t Jordan who was the champion of tonight’s match. In the next room, another ring—this one larger—was white lit and had more code-cleared human mafia members in attendance. Standing in tattered clothing—his mint-green snake eyes focused coldly on his opponent and his long pointy fingers clutched together in sharp flat-handed gestures of his own—was Specialist Rister Arshian from the A.T.X.D. Stealth Angels.
A couple of weeks earlier, as the force continued its thorough efforts to root out and purge the toxicity of the fallen SIGA Syndicate’s network, Command had gotten intel about this illegal fight club in the Big Apple. The excitement was hidden in a basement level some fifty feet below a business park in the outskirts of Brooklyn. It was financed and hosted by billionaire and business kingpin Reginald Socorio. On the surface, Reginald made his money through private contracts with the city’s public works and even owned a couple of reputable private schools that had turned around the lives of some of the City’s lowest income children.
But Reginald’s real source of income since the Great Recession of 2008 had been helping SIGA smuggle weapons and other forbidden cargo past the United Nations E.N.C. quarantine to be sold on the black market. Among his most valuable illicit imports, one which Reginald could make double the income off of was kidnapped extraterrestrial fighters: abducted from various communities here on Earth, forced to fight in cages before an attendance of secret passholders and Reginald’s own upper-class contacts, and tortured but denied their right to die if they refused. Thanks especially to SIGA’s collaboration with the sinister Dr. Francis Judd and his secretive Luminara Society, Reginald had managed to stay off of A.T.X.D.’s radar for—surprisingly—more than a decade.
Even with their discovery of this horrendous bloodsport, it wasn’t like A.T.X.D. could simply raid the place and shut down the event. Reginald was well connected, and DESA alone had run into a lot of political and institutional red tape that even their best men in black agents wouldn’t have been able to work around without exposing extraterrestrials to the general public. So instead, A.T.X.D. hatched a risky plot to pulverize the sport from the inside out: Rister was the champion fighter, brought in by a disguised Janeiro Rishin as a captured Vipros street fighter. Jordan was a human “equalizer” as the role was defined: one of several hired by Reginald to take out the top-best extraterrestrial fighters as a way to even the odds, and specially trained by Santanar Luzio—an Autavian shapeshifter like Janeiro but shady in nature and who had been exiled for breaking crucial military edicts in their homeworld’s Security Force. Janeiro was Rister and Jordan’s handler, supervising their fighters and looking for the best opportunity to plant a customized Shade Virus in Reginald’s computers. Once deployed, the virus would automatically copy sensitive intel over to A.T.X.D. servers but also manipulate the data on the collection-end to incriminate Reginald in high profile terrestrial crimes before local law enforcement: some of which were genuine but altered to remove unearthly evidence, and some of which were completely falsified but nonetheless believable.
A quick karate-chop strike to the side of Rister’s bald-headed, pale skinned opponent’s neck knocked her down and paralyzed her due to an abrupt loss of circulation. Right behind him, an armored killer and escaped convict from DESA custody—with a gold-tinted gas mask and a bladed scorpion tail—came up behind and attempted to stab Rister in the back. But the Vipros warrior’s hunter instincts flared up and he quickly somersaulted forward as the armored opponent’s tail jabbed into the floor.
But as soon as he removed his tail from the slender hole he’d carved in the arena, the scorpion opponent was ambushed with an arm grapple that restricted his primary arms. He also felt Rister’s heels dig into his stomach and the latter’s slender head on his left shoulder before the Vipros operative yanked back hard on both arms in a double Catarsha constriction attack, crippling the former’s shoulder blades. As the scorpion tail came down again in another attempted stab, Rister briefly unwound himself and let the tail stab its owner instead. A spray of sparks but no bodily fluid blew out from the wound before Rister latched back on and shoved the tail’s bladed end further into his opponent. As the scorpion convict crashed head first into the ground, Rister gracefully threw himself forward in a ball and somersaulted off his opponent, looking at the rambunctiously cheering audience with salty dissatisfaction as he knelt in a rest pose.
Back in the smaller ring, the two Silurians were literally giving Jordan a run for her money. But super-speed didn’t necessarily mean the person had quick reflexes: Jordan quickly put one guy down with a Taekwondo Rear Horse Kick right as he charged her in one of his blurry runs. Because she was just spinning on her leg and didn’t throw much force into the kick, Jordan let the one Silurian’s momentum throw him back at the same blurring speed right into the acidic fence. The impact knocked the wind out of him and critically injured Jordan’s first assailant with contact burns on his back. The other Silurian charged at normal speed and plowed into Jordan’s torso, trying to force her against the fence and burn her back. Digging her treads into the floor, the dauntless Latina officer did what she could to hold her footing as the chain link got ever closer to her.
With a quick jab from the leg that was pushed furthest back, Jordan cracked the Silurian’s rib—she wasn’t sure which one—and forced him back. But the Silurian doubled on her, and she did a cartwheel to dodge the charge. Right as her opponent turned around, Jordan grabbed his arm, punched him in the throat, and then stepped back before swinging her leg up. The arch of Jordan’s newly purchased Blazer high top connected perfectly with the Silurian’s neck like a jigsaw puzzle piece, and the smack of the leather against his skin was loud enough to partially fade out the crack of his spine being severed. The other Silurian flew into the fence face first and lay limply against it in a sideways slump as Jordan slowly set her foot down from her Neural Whip Kick attack.
A slow clap and a whistle was heard before Jordan turned to see Reginald himself, standing there in the room in one of his nice suits.
“Maria,” he encouraged, using Jordan’s cover name. “If you’re done crushing the weaklings, I’ve got a real nice tough challenger for you next.”
Twisting her head back casually and using her arm to brush some sweat and a couple bangs of her charcoal black hair off her face, Jordan turned and looked at Reginald with cold boredom. “I hope it’s somebody with a little more guts, this time. I’m getting so sick of these guys who are all show and no go.”
“Then you’ll love your next opponent. He’s been rising up the charts and getting the highest bets over the last three days.”
Taking a moment to sweep his hands over his smooth head, Rister turned towards the front of the arena, expecting to see Janeiro watching him as part of the mission routine. But this time, they weren’t in the crowd.
Probably found an ample opportunity to insert the Shade Virus. Good, we’ll be out of here soon. Now, all I gotta do is hope that Jordan is up next.
As a human equalizer, Jordan—like Rister—had been working her way up the charts under Santanar’s tutelage and gaining Reginald’s trust as one of his best in the role. If she could win that trust fully by the time the three-day-mission reached its peak—and she did—, Jordan could request to fight a specific opponent. Having practiced with each other in training fights back at HQ, Jordan and Rister would have “the fight of the century” so to speak, and Jordan would ultimately defeat him in a carefully-staged knockout. This would result in Rister being pulled from the tournament where, ordinarily, he would have been executed if he wasn’t killed in the ring. Instead, a few Stealth Angel teammates would extricate him, Jordan, and Janeiro before a raid from Alpha Team shut down the event for good.
But as the gates opened to let the next opponent in, Rister froze. His opponent had glowing blue muscular skin, a lion-like mane, some cartilage protrusions from its back, and a bearded face.
Oh no, we’ve got a problem. It wasn’t that Rister couldn’t take on his opponent. Quite the contrary, he’d heard the tales of his people fighting this race honorably on the defensive back on Viek’ Taurusa. Rather, it was the consequences of fighting this particular opponent that Rister was concerned about. A Senturi Spectre Form was one of the most influential, bipedal members of the Senturi Hivemind, being a critical nerve in the Lifeforce’s collective. Taking out one of these beings would trigger a psychological response in the collective equivalent to one of those painful ice-pick headaches which some humans complained about having. If I kill him here, I might prompt a response from the Senturi against Earth. But if I spare him, he’ll be killed anyway. Skikes, where is Janeiro when I need them?
The Spectre Form charged and Rister countered with a handstand flip kick to the shoulders. But as the Specialist leaped up onto his opponent’s shoulders and tried once again to wrestle him to the ground, the Spectre Form spun itself in a twist and landed on its back, sandwiching Rister against the floor with a hissing squeak and a grunt. Rister felt like he’d been run over, but quickly reinflated his lungs and rolled like a log to avoid the Spectre Form’s foot as it smashed into the ground next to him. Ducking right between the Spectre Form’s legs, Rister spun around and launched a kick into its back in a failed effort to knock his opponent into the fence. Maybe if I can knock him out and pretend to kill him, I might be able to spare him from being executed if his ring death looks convincing.
But the Spectre Form wasn’t playing nice: it roared at him and charged angrily. Rister jumped and secured his arms to the Spectre Form’s shoulders near what would have been its brachial nerves. But the Form just kept charging, and Rister had to launch his legs out into the fence to keep his full body from smashing into it. But the painful, sizzling feeling on the soles of his compact clawed feet was excruciating, and Rister had to quickly jump off. Because the Spectre Form was still moving forward, Rister flipped overhead and let his opponent barrel into the fence face first. It roared angrily as Rister flipped overhead and bounced in a couple of twists back to a standing position. As the Spectre Form detached itself from the acidic grip of the fence—some blueish-black on its neon-glowing skin marking where the fence had made contact—Rister locked his eyes on the being but then knelt down towards the ground in supposed surrender.
Spirit of my Mother, Rister called upon internally, Hashikta, I call for your strength. I call for your precision. I call for that which made you the quickest in our clan when we went out hunting.
The Spectre Form roared and pounded towards him again, but Rister looked up and shot a deadly glare towards his opponent. Right as the Spectre Form lowered an arm in an attempt to sweep him into the air, Rister boosted off his kicking leg and flew hands first into his opponent’s abdomen. Deflecting off the bulky muscle, Rister spun back in a ball and landed in a crouched position with his arms out to the left. The Spectre Form growled painfully and looked at its torso, finding itself unable to move in response to Rister’s Silenkoto paralysis jump. Skipping around to the side, Rister grabbed one of the being’s outstretched arms, kicked one of its rounded bulky feet out from under it, and knocked the Form on its back. A quick karate chop to the forehead knocked out the Spectre Form and made it look convincingly like it was dead.
Backing up and letting the usual two honchos drag the unconscious Senturi Form out of the ring, Rister hesitated with cold worry when his sharp hearing picked up a troubling sound: the faint grumble of his opponent still breathing.
No, no, no, play dead you idiot, Rister fretted. But finally, things seemed to be turning around.
Stepping up onto the floor in her still remarkably clean Blazer high tops, yoga pants, tank top, and gently cracking her neck into a comfortable position, Jordan walked into the ring and stood ready to face Rister. But instead of bending into a calm kneel, Rister stood there firmly and kicked a toe into the ground: the symbol to Jordan that something was wrong. Janeiro would see it too, as she was watching what Jordan saw via nano-camera contact lenses in the Captain’s eyes.
As the gate closed and the two began to circle each other, Jordan tried to mouth while keeping her cold look, “Rister, what’s up?”
Rister raised his hands and beckoned both forward, which Jordan approached warily. He then threw a straight, flat-handed jab that Jordan dodged easily and caught. “My last opponent,” Rister growled hoarsely, “You need to rescue him.”
“Why?” Jordan kicked Rister’s heels out and flipped him to the ground. “You’re the priority here.”
“He’s….he’s Senturi,” Rister growled, reaching up and carefully latching his hands around Jordan’s throat.
“What?” Jordan was shocked. As part of their efforts to dismantle SIGA, A.T.X.D. had begun to receive troubling intel that a certain extraterrestrial race was being trafficked to Earth by an unknown party. They only knew the name of the race—Senturi—but Command had no idea what they were being used for.
“He’s one of the more powerful forms,” Rister briefed before throwing Jordan off. They then charged and collided in a hugging tussle, digging their feet into the ground. “If he dies, it could trigger a response from the Senturi Hivemind.”
“Where was he taken?” Janeiro’s voice inquired through Jordan’s earpiece, and the latter relayed the question before shoving Rister off. Rister flicked his eyes to his left and aggressively jabbed a hand down in the lower left direction. “Got it, I’ll check the back hallways on the west side of the basement and work my way up from there.”
“What kind of viral beast are you?” Rister commented to Jordan—a codeword phrase meant to inquire the status of the Shade Virus’ deployment.
When Janeiro confirmed the drive had already been installed and was injecting its contents, Jordan commented coldly, “The kind that will put you to sleep, you shady thing. Quick and painless.” She clutched her fist in her palm before re-engaging.
With the drive inserted into Reginald’s personal laptop, Alpha Team’s Autavian Tactical Chief quickly hurried out of the room. They transformed into a small mouse and squeezed under the door to the second security room, which monitored the spaces here in this underground hideout independent of the one that was just for the public building up top. A large man lay back in an office chair, eating a greasy pizza and staring lazily at the screens, mostly watching Rister and Jordan’s fight. By the time he noticed the awkward purplish-pink glare behind him and turned to see the Asian-American woman’s bright purple eyes, Janeiro quickly flicked their fingers into the guy’s forehead. The guard slumped down in his seat, his pizza slice landing back in its greasy paper plate as his hand relaxed its grip on the crust.
“Where, where, where,” Janeiro muttered worriedly, flipping through the security feeds. A few seconds later, they saw the two honchos hauling the big neon-glowing Senturi Form upstairs via a freight elevator. Tracking it, Janeiro found that the freight elevator led to a small receiving dock at the back of the building. “Gazelle, I’ve found him.” Janeiro reported via her earpiece radio. “But they’re halfway up to the surface floor. I’ll need more time to get up there and intercept them. That means you’ll have to keep your fight up longer, though, girl.”
“And don’t get Mantis killed in the process,” Major Rowan Nichols—Alpha Team’s TL—added. Surprisingly, she hadn’t expressed any objection to going after the Senturi fighter.
I guess she got the memo about the exploitation. Glad to see people are taking it seriously so quickly, Janeiro thought with only the slightest relief.
“I’ve got plenty to show you, snake boy,” Jordan commented over the radio; a competitive way of giving her wilco.
Briefly transforming into the guard she’d knocked out, Janeiro carefully opened the security room door and walked back out into the hallway. Taking another quick look around, Janeiro reverted to their default human-female form with the added hoodie jacket, jeans, and combat boots. But as they walked past Reginald’s primary viewing room that overlooked the main ring, Janeiro halted and saw somebody on the laptop she had just been uploading the Shade Virus to.
“Santanar, what’s going on?” As the one who had “smuggled” Rister and Jordan in for the fights, Janeiro had gotten to know Santanar along with Reginald’s other shady associates pretty well, so they were free to refer to the fellow shapeshifter by name.
“Somebody’s been in the laptop, Kate,” Santanar informed, hurriedly typing on the computer. “Looks like someone plugged a drive in here and uploaded a virus. I pulled the device out, but it looks like the virus is already in the system. Lucky for us, I’ve got the skills necessary to countermand something of this magnitude before it reaches the most critical folders.”
“Yeah, that is a relief for us.” Janeiro exhaled with false relief, then asserted, “I’ve got a little tech experience myself. Let me help.”
“There’s a hardline cable down on the floor,” Santanar pointed out. “I need you to find where the adapter is and pull it out before whatever this is gets off the laptop via the power cord.”
Janeiro got down on their knees and started searching. They then found the cable coming down from the table and headed towards a nearby sofa, but saw that it was already disconnected from the adapter. An ethernet cord suddenly looped around Janeiro’s throat and threatened to cut off circulation as they were pulled to their feet.
Down in the ring, Rister and Jordan continued their face off, keeping the audience—including Reginald and his wife Clara—focused on them with heart-pounding excitement. Ducking a forward sweep kick, Rister sprung up behind and looped his elbows under Jordan’s armpits in an attempt to lightly perform his Catarsha move.
“Hey, Mantis…check this out,” Jordan encouraged playfully with a strained tone as her chest muscles flexed outward harshly. She kicked her toe into the ground before lifting her foot and setting it on the fence. With surprising speed, Jordan managed to magnetically attach her high top sneakers to the fence, twist gracefully around, and get out of Rister’s grip. She then forced both herself and her opponent flat onto the center of the ring floor with a powerful repulsion boost from the same shoes.
“Ugh…how did you…do that?” Rister expressed with surprise.
“Whoa…,” Jordan was briefly thrown off in a roll and swept herself back into a standing position. “Kalo Xatana. Who else? And get this.” She waved Rister forward. Upon approach, Rister was suddenly thrown back to the ground when Jordan again activated the magnetic soles in her feet and swept a directed wave of invisible, polarized energy his way. “You’re gonna have a hard time touching me now, huh?”
Up in Reginald’s viewing suite, Janeiro was slammed face first into the desk as Santanar continued trying to squeeze the life out of them. But in a still bent over position, Janeiro stamped their heel onto Santanar’s arch, bruising it and forcing the latter to cut their would-be victim a little slack. Grabbing the male Autavian by their own shoulders while still restrained in the torn out ethernet cord, Janeiro forced Santanar’s face into the desk and managed to break the latter’s nose. As they recovered and snuffed back some purplish-red blood, Janeiro unwrapped the cord around their throat and punched the evil Autavian in the eye.
Satanar transformed into a reptilian Quasai bounty hunter and tried to counterattack, but Janeiro quickly flexed into a Vipros warrior themself. Taking a couple of pages out of their friend Rister’s fight book, the disguised Janeiro clapped Santanar in the throat, then jumped onto the desk and flipped over their opponent. As they leaped over, Janeiro strung the ethernet cord over Santanar’s currently scaly and thick Quasai neck. With an anguished snarl that was audibly both Vipros and Autavian-Human, Janeiro flexed their back forward and threw Santanar overhead. An ordinary human—even an Autavian—would have gotten their neck broken from this move, but Quasi biology was more resistant. The momentum, however, caused the disguised Santanar to roll forward into the glass window of the overlook, which smashed.
Santanar howled as he fell through the air and landed right in the fighting arena. Jordan and Rister were of course startled by this and paused in their staged combat as they looked up at the viewing room.
“What’s Kate doing up there in my private viewing suite!?” Reginald demanded, quickly pushing his way upstairs.
“Gri’Shio,” Janeiro cussed frantically. Hurriedly retreating and blocking the door with an overturned book case, the Autavian hurriedly informed, “Dragonfly to Alpha Leader, mission compromised. Requesting backup and extraction now.”
“Alpha Leader, copy. Hunker down and activate your PulseAlert, Dragonfly. We’ll be down there soon.”
With the audience in a pandemonium, Rister and Jordan looked at each other.
“Now might be a good time to go after that Senturi fighter,” Jordan muttered. Rister nodded in agreement and the both rushed for the fence. Kicking the gate open, Jordan went down into the chaotic crowd that was making its way towards the exit. One of the guards tried to intercept Rister, but he quickly slapped the guy on the sides of his tough head with both hands and then shoved him against the fence. The guard’s bulldog-like face was briefly parboiled by the acid coating as he fell and disappeared beneath the fleeing crowd.
With Santanar out of the way but the Virus’ progress impeded if not deleted, Janeiro ran back to the laptop. Fortunately, Santanar had only managed to quarantine the threat by the time the Tactical Chief stumbled upon their fallen brethren, and reversing that was easy for a supercomputer-equivalent Autavian mind. As soon as they removed the safeguards and resumed the upload, Janeiro ducked down and hurriedly connected the power cable back into the adapter so the virus could continue on its infiltration path.
The crowd of at least twenty mafia VIPs hurried into the lobby of Reginald’s main building but soon wished they had packed their guns with: a firing line of armed, dark blue-uniformed A.T.X.D. operatives blocked their way.
“Down! Down! Hands! All of you!” Rowan barked angrily through her mask. Staff Sergeant Jose Mendez and Sergeant Lucia Vallejo added in the harsh orders, and most of the fleeing spectators quickly surrendered.
“A.T.X.D.! God damn you! I should have known you would try and wreck my evening with my wife!” Reginald exclaimed as the rest of his audience got down. But as Lucia and Jose advanced with their XT-5 laser rifles up, Clara ushered her husband to comply with their orders, which he reluctantly did. As Lucia strapped on the laser cuffs, Reginald hissed, “There will be consequences for this, you know.”
“Oh is that right?” Lucia questioned with hostile sarcasm and a mocking jerk of her head. “Well, how about we ameliorate that issue.” Jose read her mind, quickly forcing his Shade Device into Reginald’s open hands. The hostile glower on the kingpin’s face shortly faded to blank confusion.
“Let’s save the coverup for later,” Jose advised. “Gotta get all these high and mighty, first-class hooligans loaded into the Rhinos first.”
“This is Alpha Leader to Command,” Rowan informed. “Objective secured. Reginald Socorio and his wife in custody. About twenty other attendees in custody as well. Dragonfly, Gazelle, status update.”
“Shade Virus has been successfully uploaded. Give my apologies to Command for the delay,” Janeiro replied with hasty embarrassment.
“Gazelle? You and Mantis okay?”
Outside in the rear loading dock, a receiving door was forced off its hinges by a polarized kick from Jordan’s Blazer before she and Rister hurried outside. Behind them in the corridor were the two honchos who had dragged the Senturi Form out of the ring after the Spectre had lost to Rister. They were slumped against either wall, having been knocked out by the duo's quick fight moves.
“Oh no.” Lying in a large freight dumpster with a few other bodies was that of the Senturi Spectre: a clean shot in the forehead signifying its death. When Rowan again requested a status update, Jordan took a finger up to her small earring-disguised comlink. The chilly evening air provided the perfect encouragement for Jordan’s shaky, wary voice. “Gazelle to Alpha Leader and Command, we need a HazMat team on the northeastern loading dock of Socorio’s building. I count maybe….six bodies in a cargo dumpster right outside; all extraterrestrial, all former fighters. Advise Command…one of the bodies is of a Senturi fighter.”
Rister continued to stare into the dumpster with morbid worry. Even when Jordan nudged him for a reply with, “Now what?” he found himself unable to give a solid reply.