“Good job today, guys. Take a day off.” Tao chuckled as he jokingly slapped Lay on the shoulder. Like always, they were gathered around their glass table in their ‘professional room’ like they always would be after a case. Several well-prepared files were laid out before them, all about the thing they had just executed.

Anyway, it was a joke, of course. Not even Sehun, their useless errand boy whom they kept around mostly for decoration, had taken a day off before. Things were happening around no fixed schedule, and they had to be ready for it. Days off were unheard of, and mainly useless, since the outside world was so full of suffering that it was better to just work anyway.

“What was that thing, Luhan? I didn’t get a good look at it.” Tao adjusted the black scarf he kept over his one eye whenever he was indoors. Even so, a faint blue ring of light shone through the cloth.

“Well,” Luhan slid a file smoothly over the table over to Tao. “We think it was a Naur, a subspecies of Korath, but heavily disfigured.”

“A Naur.” Tao murmured as he flipped through the file.

‘Naurs have bear-like facial features that look almost human. Their bodies are covered with thick, dense fur which keeps dust and dirt from getting to their skin. They first appeared in Russia, near one of the first damaged nuclear plants in the world. Since then, Naurs have spread and thrived all over the world. As the number of nuclear plant leaks around the world grows, more subspecies of the creature are evolving as a result of the radiation. Their aggressive and territorial personalities keep potential predators and enemies away. They are highly unsociable creatures and males have been known to kill females if their territory is invaded.  If you come into contact with a Naur, it is best to avoid eye contact and walk away slowly, but do not turn your back on it.’

“Its back leg was mangled.” Luhan leaned forward a little. “It had cuts along its side and half its face was ripped to shreds. Something did it. Someone.”

Tao glanced up briefly from the notes to see Luhan dart his eyes from the left side of his face down to the table.

Tao sighed. “We’re not going after it. We have better things to worry about than the death of some mutants.” He shuffled the notes together and handed it back to Luhan. “Send some people to trace the Naurs back to their nests and exterminate them.”

Luhan nodded, still not making eye contact with Tao. “We’ll send Zelo and Jongup.” He said more or less to Lay. “They need to do something.”

“Anything, anything.” Tao waved a hand dismissively. “Chanyeol, how are the Caugori breeding sites coming along? Have you found a way to clear them out yet?”

Chanyeol jerked at the mention of his name and nervously glanced back and forth from his notes to some place behind Tao’s head.

“We- we’re actually having some problems with getting through the maze they’ve built. We’ve tried using sensory trackers but the Caugori attacked them before we could get deep. We’re running out of trackers.”

A blinding headache suddenly crashed into Tao, blanking out any thoughts in his head and leaving only pain behind. Somewhat used to this, Tao closed his eyes, frowning, and pinched the bridge of his nose as his eye began to whirr on its own, frantically spinning uncomfortably against his shut eyelids. It began to flash red, a signal he had learnt to interpret as ‘intruder alert’.

“There’s something in our building.” Tao announced, standing up and sliding the scarf over and off his head. The headache was already subsiding, thankfully. “To your stations. Lay, Luhan, go find out what it is. Sorry Chanyeol, we’ll discuss the tracker problem later.” He hastily threw the scarf over the back of his chair and followed the others out, pulling out a sleek gun from his jacket.

Chanyeol remained in the meeting room, twiddling his thumbs, because he only did research and wasn’t trained in any way to fight. Once, he had tried to engage in battle, and that had resulted in him being trapped by a very angry cluster of Vaeths. That in turn, led to the whole force being called out just to save him. Sure, they had been finding a way to get the Vaeths out of their nests for ages, but there was surely a better way.

So, from that day onwards, Chanyeol simply stayed away in his lab and did the technical stuff. It was better.

Down the hall, Tao was barking out orders every now and then to either Lay or Luhan, and telling Sehun to help as he scurried past. Their building wasn’t very big; just two stories and a few hundred metres of space. He could hear the intruder’s footsteps ringing throughout the corridor.

He slid down the steps quickly using the railing and carefully made his way to somewhere with cover, so he could at least see what the thing was.

He settled for crouching behind a large cabinet, his eye blinking red occasionally. Lay and Luhan had gone off to the rooftop to their vantage points, where they could see the intruder properly.

“I can hear it.” Tao whispered into his mike. Slow, wet thumps filled the air, gradually getting louder.

It was coming closer.

Tao squeezed his eyes tightly shut and opened them again to activate his night-vision sight. His eyes now saw grainy pale green and black, and nothing could hide in the shadows anymore. His eyes adjusted to the light filtering in, so that he would see everything in the same light.

He stuck his head out a little further, to see past the few tables they had. All he could make out through the forest of table and chair legs was a stooping figure. It was limping across the floor, leaving a trail of what Tao assumed to be blood.

“It’s injured.” Tao whispered and the feeling of déjà vu swept over him. “Attack, but don’t kill it yet.”

There was that beep again of Lay and Luhan turning off their mikes so that the sound of whatever they attacked wouldn’t be broadcasted to all of them directly into their ear.

The pause.

And then they came, out of the darkness, like angels of death.