Seohyun sat at the central table, to the far side of the other Angels.  She scrolled through pages from the electronic Codex, pushing aside pages and notes across the table.  The opposite side remained talking about the missions as they currently stood.  Occasionally, Taeyeon and Helix would come over to check on their Cadet, offering any assistance needed.  Helix had already opened up the Codex and elevated her rights to viewing certain articles in there and offered additional agents to help speed the work along.  Seohyun reluctantly accepted the help of one agent, who was currently trawling through similar articles.

“How are things going, Cadet?” Helix asked.

“Still nothing, Admiral,” Seohyun reported, her eyes reading through more documentation.

“Do you need more agents?”

“Negative.”

“Greater Codex access?”

“Negative again, Admiral.”

“Smoothie?” Taeyeon teased, walking passed her Cadet.

“Taeyeon,” Pegasus glared, “this is no time for a smoothie run.  We need to be focussed.”  As much as Taeyeon’s temperament would annoy him, Pegasus did have an immense soft spot for her.  It was almost paternal, or as close to paternal as angels could become.  He was an authoritarian when he needed to be, but he did quietly appreciate her consideration for her Unit.  It was because of her dedication and loyalty to her Unit that he bestowed more leadership responsibilities to her than the other leaders.  A fact he preferred to keep to himself.

“Sorry, Sir,” Taeyeon apologised.  “I was just …”

“Apollo?” Helix tapped his headset, “Helix.  Omega needs refreshments.  Smoothies a must.”

The two commanders, some of the agents, Taeyeon and Seohyun all stared at the Admiral as he made a request for his second-in-command to purchase food from outlets for the Unit.  And smoothies, too.  All because of Taeyeon’s playful jibe.

Helix ceased the conversation.  “They need refreshments.  We don’t know how long we’re going to be here.  Besides,” he sat down on the nearby chair, “I haven’t had Shaky’s in too long.”

“You buy from there too?” Seohyun beamed.

“Of course, they’re the best!” Helix smirked.

“Commander,” Yoona reported.  “Delta Unit have eyes on their target, although the situation in Greece looks a little quiet.”

“Alpha have eyes on Imhotep,” Tiffany reported.

“What about Beta?” Pegasus asked.

“Nothing yet, Sir,” Bodhi, the Elite intelligence agent assigned to their feed, reported.

“What’s the overall situation like?”

“Quiet, Sir.”

Helix wheeled his chair to Seohyun’s side of the table, took one of the stacked Codex documents and read it.  “Becomes a leader in one of the most spiritual civilizations at the age of twelve,” he mused.

“One of the most deadly, as well,” Optimus added.  “Spiritual sacrifice was rife in these areas.”

“The number of angels we’ve sent back to Earth because of that,” Helix conceded.  “But they had an abundance of something that we could never have perceived.”

“Sharp implements to torture their victims with?” Optimus responded tersely.  He was becoming impatient, especially with having to keep information from his Unit.

“Faith.”

“Yes sir,” Optimus retracted bashfully.

“Although instruments of torture were a close second,” Helix remarked, sending the article back and selecting another.  “And they sure had a lot of uses for intestines.”

Seohyun giggled as she picked up an article she had read once already.  It seemed sparsely sourced and had only minor details.  It spoke of the events that happened across the globe on October 21^st: The fall of the People’s Crusade and the start of the First Crusade; forces defeated in the Battle of Sekigahara; Union forces defeated in a battle of the American Civil War.  Ships were launched, kings crowned, authors, painters, poets and philosophers were born and died, and the lightbulb was invented.  There were no signs as to why the date was so important now.  Even future events were equally vague; the proposition of a Sino-American Alliance in 2034 and the Unification of North and South Korea in 2089 being two events of note.  All that occurred in 2015 referred to a science-fiction fantasy film and an event called “The Revival Festival”, a music festival held on Sailsbury Plain.

“Omega Control, this is Omega One,” Yuri’s voice called through the communication headsets.  “We might have a situation here.”

“Come in, Omega One,” Helix stood from the table and walked towards the monitors that were tracking her team.

“We’ve picked up a faint distress signal,” she reported.  “Can anyone verify what’s happening?”

Helix looked at the display in front of him, as Raphael shook his head.  “Give me a wider view,” he ordered.  As Raphael took the display out, a faint marker appeared at the far edge of the screen.  “We have a visual,” he confirmed.  “It’s further than your usual radar.  I’m impressed.”

“Sunny has become more in tune with her abilities, Sir,” Yuri praised her team mate.

“Sunny, can you sense anything else?”

A few seconds of silence passed.  “No, Sir,” Sunny answered.  “Just the one disturbance.”

“Good,” Helix breathed a small sigh of relief.  “It looks to be a low level distress call, nothing usually important.  But I would suggest a recon to be sure, especially given your location.”

“Yes, Sir,” Sunny acknowledged.

“We’ll keep an eye on things here as best as we can, but the second anything turns south, I want you back at the monument.”

“Yessir,” Yuri acknowledged.  “Sunny and I will take the recon.  Let us know if anything changes here.”

“Roger that,” Helix affirmed, before cutting the connection.  He looked at the flashing blip for a few moments, before taking a deep breath.  “Keep monitoring the target site,” he ordered.  “Any slight blip, you let me know.”

Raphael nodded and, using his hands, moved the window to one side and pulled up a second.  The situation was so quiet, he wasn’t sure why he was asked to monitor the area at all.  “Sir,” Raphael spoke, “does the recon really require the two of them?”

Taeyeon looked up and stared at him.  Even if it would be sufficient for only one of them, a second should go to protect her cadets, especially in such a heightened sense of security.

Something Helix was equally quick to point out.

-----

A flash of light and gust of wind brought the two cadets into an alleyway in the nearby village.  Traversing from one point to another cause little to no irritation to their senses, and they looked around to assess the situation.

“Sometimes you amaze me, Sunny” Yuri praised, dropping her grasp on her pendant.

“Just doing what I do best,” Sunny responded nonchalantly, turning to look directly behind her.  “There it is,” she announced, pointing towards the local pub they had arrived at.  “The Royal George” stood, although not as majestically as it sounded.  It looked quite like the pub one would expect in a small English village, although the houses weren’t as quaint.  They looked rather modern, yet as though they hadn’t been touched for a few decades.  The pair walked towards the white building, a little apprehensive as to what they might find.  Being an Angel did afford them with the ability to pass through solid objects, as any spirit or ghost from Hollywood would confirm, although it did take a little more concentration than they depicted.  As an Angel, they were taught that the matter that makes up the human body also makes up the Angel’s soul, the same particles that created the animals and plant life that roamed across every planet in existence gave the same life to their own existence.  Using their finely tuned skills, Yuri and Sunny stepped through the wall and into the pub.

The sight before the pair assured them that this indeed was a village pub: the magnolia walls, the lower half of the window side walls displaying wooden benches that had been varnished a dark oak colour.  The floor saw clusters of between four and eight chairs surrounding each of the five tables on the floor.  Opposite the girls, near the rear entrance, sat an open, brick fireplace, in which sat logs ready to be lit, but no flame for which to burn.  The floor was covered with a well-worn, ruby colours, patterned carpet, the kind of floral pattern that would have been popular in the 60s.  Opposite the window stood the old bar, above which sat a myriad of bottles of spirits and liquors, with lager, ale, cider and soda pumps sitting on the wooden counter.  Waist height stools were placed around the bar.  Behind the bar stood a tall, uninteresting man, greying hair and a disinterested expression, half of his attention focussed on the task of drying the freshly cleaned glasses, and the other half wistfully daydreaming about where he would rather be.  In the far corner, crowding around a small table, sat four older gentlemen, each with differing states of balding scalps, all playing a quiet and gentlemanly game of dominoes and drinking their pints of ale.  Old songs from the 40s and 50s were playing on the old jukebox, which stood a few metres away from the old gentlemen.  It looked quiet.  It felt quiet.  Any person to walk through the door would have found it almost silent, except for the chatter between the seemingly firm friends, placing their chosen tiles into the game.

Sunny looked around, her eyes focussing on the bar, in particular to the thick, heavy door that seemed to separate the main area of the pub from a function room of sorts.  The bar seemed to extend into the function room from the right, with the left heading towards either a store room or a staircase, she couldn’t tell from her vantage point.  The pair walked towards the door, stopping after a few steps as the door opened outwards.  A young man, possibly in his mid-twenties pushed the door open with his back, carrying a very large cardboard box, his face and body hidden by his cargo.

“Careful, Gary,” the barkeep remarked, not once looking up from his glass.

“It’s fine, I’ve got it,” the younger man replied, carrying the box around tables that he could barely see.  Sunny’s eyes fixed on him; he was their target for sure.  As the pair watched Gary, they couldn’t work out why he was their target.  There was no other danger around, no signs of distress in his mind, no signs of sorrow in his eyes.  For all intents and purposes, he was just an ordinary guy, and yet both Sunny and Yuri were certain that he was the issue that Sunny had sensed earlier.

Then they felt it.  The heavy, sticky feeling of invisible treacle pouring all over their bodies.  The ethereal stench of rotten flesh hanging in the air.  The supernatural dimming of the light and the deceptive draining of all of the energy from the building, being into a void of nothingness, lost from time forever.

“Gary, need a hand?” a sinister voice called out as the human body opened the front doors.  Yuri and Sunny turned to see the source of the sound.

An agent of the Fallen had arrived.