It All Started with Advice

[hungercity_hellhound]

“We're going to have to do something with him.”

Tom looked up to see Thomas standing there but staring off into some unknowable distance.

“With whom?” Tom wondered what he was about to walk into or what may have already happened.

“Dominic.” Thomas moved away to pour some gin as if that explained everything. The Anthean must have felt the question because he added. “He is going to start fighting with the other men, including you.”

Tom sighed heavily and texted Damien to come over to the bus. As usual, there was never to be a quiet night. Someone was always causing some kind of trouble. Dominic being the source of the problem was a rarity. There had been one incident at a bar, but he wasn't the only one who had taken a shot at someone flirting with a partner. Tom had long ago accepted that was a risk of having so many couples in one place that had at least one partner that was outright aggressive. Even he had his moments as a younger man, Tom had to admit.

Damien came in not long after the text and simply slid into the seat across from Tom. They had a way of working together after this long. At times, he felt like he served as a military officer when working with the Dogs, especially Damien and some of the older members that helped with security. Then again, they did operate more like a military than a gang. Maybe "militia" would be a better term.

“How is Dominic?” Tom asked while watching the younger man across from him.

“I haven't seen him tonight. I assumed that he was out with Aleksi and some of the younger band members.”

Tom could see in that shrug that Damien didn't know and didn't care to know. There had been strife between the two for weeks. They were getting in each other's faces, yelling, and occasionally there would be a punch swung from one or the other. Once, and only once, Damien had drawn a weapon on Dominic. It ended badly for Damien, who had a wrenched arm for days. Being lame, and all the weakness that came with it, probably put the Dog in his place. Still, there were scuffles that usually ended quickly and without much more than bruised egos.

“Is Darius around?” Tom asked.

Damien didn't answer. He turned toward the door, stared for a moment, and like magic the eldest of the project members appeared. Tom had never gotten used to that with Tommy, and it was even worse with Darius. The man had a presence that always felt vaguely threatening. Part of that was the absolute silence as he walked over and took a seat. Even his footsteps barely made a sound despite his height and size.

“Where is your brother?” Tom knew to be blunt and clear with Darius. If he wasn't, the blonde took it upon himself to look for the answer. Tom understood that was training, but it didn't mean he liked it. Martyn was trying, with some success, to break that habit.

Darius glanced at Damien, who stared blankly at the older man. There was a conversation going on. Tom could sense it after so long among telepaths. He wasn't privy to the contents and waited without much patience for an answer.

“I have sent him away from the others for the evening.”

Tom was ready for many answers but not that one. Half a dozen questions rose up in his mind, but he didn't have a chance to ask before Darius went on.

“He's in the mood to fight, and it has been increasing all day.”

It was an answer, but not one you wanted to hear about a trained killer. Thomas was still there, though he was barely paying attention to them or anything else as he sipped his gin. The Anthean spoke while barely pulling the glass from his lips. “He will escalate without an outlet.”

Tom instantly imagined what "escalate" meant in this situation. Someone was going to end up injured. Hopefully not a tour member, though a member of the public was no better.

“There are a few missions, but they were all scrapped.” Damien spoke up. He and Jack had been working over all the information Dominic had stolen. Stolen twice … three times from the Ministry. Every option was considered too much of a risk.

“Maybe you should unscrap one.” Darius suggested as he settled into actually speaking. He had seen and felt Tom's displeasure with the silent discussions that were happening.

“They're too dangerous.” Damien rarely spoke of anything being too dangerous, which had Tom's attention.

“I'll come along.” Darius could hear Thomas in the background, not words but thoughts. Thoughts about things that Darius didn't quite understand because of his lack of knowledge about Antheans and even more so his lack of knowledge about relationships and sex. However, the thought that circumstance could lead to aggression based on genetic push and brainwashing was loud and clear. Cleanly understood.

“There is one....” Damien trailed off as he stared at the older man standing up.

“I'll get Dominic and Scorn.” Darius was out the door before anyone else could speak.

Tom looked to Thomas and felt like he had something to do with that abruptness. The old Anthean remained blank and unreadable. Tom had questions, but when he looked back across the table, the seat was empty. It was unnerving how quickly and silently the three hybrids came and went. Ziggy was never like this, or rarely so. Training must have been the answer.

************************************************************

Darius, Dominic, Scorn, and the two older children were already waiting for Damien when he got to Hunger City. Dominic's Ministry uniform gave the Dog a pause in his approach. Unlike Damien, who struggled to look like Ministry these days, Dominic slid easily back into the role. He looked the part and felt the part. It was that feeling that caused Damien's skin to crawl.

“We're going to the outpost they built recently.” Damien wanted to get them up on what they knew, but Dominic was already walking across the bridge. His children hesitated but then followed their father.

Darius started walking slowly while waiting for Damien. The Dog was seeking answers; Darius could feel it. “I will stay outside with the children and cover you. Dominic should go in first.”

Damien shook that off. “He's less trained in tactics.”

Darius picked up the pace to keep up with the others in front of them. “You don't want to be between Dominic and the Ministry.”

Darius had felt that hatred. It burned white hot. The kind of hatred that could make a project member blackout, break down, and go berserk for lack of a better descriptor. Darius had seen that happen with one of the fifth generation who had been tortured and knew Dominic also had the potential. When they had attempted to vaporize Dominic, he had broken the metal restraints off a table in an act of brute force and rage.

To everyone's relief, Dominic had stopped at the treeline. His eyes were locked on the compound across the open field. The children were milling there in the trees. They had been in a couple skirmishes, but not a night siege like this was about to be.

“We should clear the compound.” Dominic spoke flatly when the other two were within earshot of a whisper.

“Clear it?” Damien asked for clarification. Last they checked, the number of Ministry soldiers here was close to two hundred, maybe more now.

“Yes.”

Damien glanced at Darius because they both knew that tone. Dominic was running on his programming, the scraps of Ministry brainwashing that Martyn hadn't been able to break yet. Damien shivered when Dominic glanced over to them as they stepped up beside him. The way his eyes glowed pale green in the dark felt predatory tonight. His attention turned to Darius, who was watching a helicopter on patrol at the far end of the compound.

“We can manage the helicopter and any reinforcements.” Darius called the children over to him.

Every time he spoke to one of the others now with the Dogs, Damien felt a growing gratefulness that they were all on this side of the fence, so to say. He would not want to run into them on the other side, though he is now aware that they might activate the remaining fifth generation at any time. It might be the only way to stop the two adults now with the Dogs, at least from the Ministry perspective.

There was no more time to linger on those thoughts. Dominic and Scorn were already starting across the open field. Darius walked half the distance with Damien. “There are prisoners inside and a lot of civilians.”

Damien nodded and then trotted after Dominic. Though Scorn was bound to Damien, the mechanical dog had also formed a strong bond with Dominic. They had similar personalities, if one could claim a robotic animal had a personality at all. As Damien watched the two working on the fence, Scorn biting through the chain link and Dominic quietly peeling it back, there was understanding. Damien wondered if he had been wrong thinking that these robots were made to pair with his generation. Maybe they were not.

He followed Dominic through the opening and paused with him in the tall grass against the fence. A glance was all it took for Damien to know that the older man was deferring to his assessment of the situation. The Ministry didn't use guards, not physical ones, but cameras. They were everywhere and often hard to see. However, Scorn could sense them and was feeding data about their location directly into Damien's brain. He may never get used to it but had learned to listen and accept the intrusion as best he could. It was easier out here on a mission, which was likely the purpose and intent.

They all fell silent. Damien was listening to Scorn and the weaker telepathy of Dominic, at least compared to the other Anthean hybrids around. Damien had neither ability but knew he was being understood by the response. They were heading for a corner, low to the ground and out of sight of the cameras. The Ministry relied too heavily on their fences, as much as they relied too much on the cameras.

Damien froze when Dominic held up a hand, a universal sign for stop. His nostrils were flaring. Damien couldn't help but see a bit of angry bull in the sound of those breaths to his more sensitive hearing. Then the thought came loud. “One of the Ministers is inside.”

Damien glanced around and then dared to peek into the window above them. It was dark inside, but he could see in the dark, though not as well as Dominic. Dominic joined him to look. Then Damien saw the alarm wire on the window. Maybe the Ministry was learning from how the Dogs got into their facilities.

“The door?” Dominic offered silently.

It was a bold move, but then if they were expecting them at the windows, who would expect the door?

“My hand scans still work.” Dominic was shifting to look out at the area around them. It was still empty this late at night. The pause was barely a second before he slid around the doorframe, and Damien heard the whirring sound of the hand scanner. He joined Dominic in the doorway and felt Scorn slink and cram himself into the dark cove too. No cameras, Damien noted. He imagined the hand scanner was the camera equivalent.

As Dominic had asserted, the door opened. Inside was black. Darker than a moonless night. He knew they were going to be using thermal cameras. Dominic held him back and shifted to allow Scorn space to the pad. The dog pressed its face to the pad. Damien couldn't tell what was happening, but the pale green glow of the hand scanner flickered and then went dark.

“I disabled the security systems.” Scorn's mechanical voice came into his brain and had his eyes wide.

Damien knew they would be in the dark, but unlike the Ministry, they would not be blind. They could all see in the dark and, to varying degrees, sense heat, navigate by sound and smell, and use sheer instinct. Damien let Dominic take point as they stepped inside. The older man had better senses in the dark and was better in close combat. Damien would be of more service at a distance even if gunfire would draw unwanted attention. They passed rooms; storage, currently quiet computer rooms, and eventually came to a junction.

Dominic took his time. His head cocked, and Damien thought it looked like an animal assessing a situation. He didn't often see Dominic's animal traits, but in that moment, there in the dark, all he felt was the animal. He could hear the breathing change as Dominic sensed the air and then the way his eyes stared down the halls, unblinking and vaguely shining in the dark. Damien felt a creep of terror shiver up his back. Even as an ally, there was something instinctually unnerving in watching Dominic hunt people. It was unnatural in the most natural way, unnatural for a human... natural for a predator. Damien was acquainted with predators. All the zoo animals they had freed and bred and trained. They now went to war beside the Dogs when necessary. Damien saw it there, the big cat stalking a dark alley, maybe a tiger or a jaguar.

Dominic's hand signal to go left broke him out of his thoughts. “Take Scorn. The captured are down there.”

Damien wanted to protest, but he heard Darius in his mind. Maybe it was an echo of what was previously spoken or a gentle reminder sent right now. He couldn't be sure, but he heeded the older project member's warning to not get between Dominic and the Ministry. There was a Minister here. Dominic could smell him. Damien felt the thought of a hunting predator slink back into his mind as he watched Dominic walk purposefully down that dark hall.

They hadn't even made it to the room with the captives before people came rushing toward him in the hall with flashlights. He stepped aside and prayed to the deities he didn't even believe in that he would go unnoticed. Then he heard it, a scream that made his ears ring briefly; even Scorn shook his head. Damien faltered out of curiosity before feeling a very real and current push from Darius' mind.

These were missions he was used to, rescuing prisoners. It was like autopilot once he started. The people here looked to be from the smaller gangs that lived south on the outskirts of Ministry territories. He recognized some of the marks and regalia they wore. Every band and gang had one. He didn't need to wear one any longer. He was known to most of the East Coast gangs, just like Jack was known.

****************************************************

Darius stood there at the edge of the fence with the two children. They were almost adults in Ziggy's world, and here, they were adults. Six years ago they would have taken up their duties had they not been treated as disposable. He hated the Minister now that he was free and could think without others hearing or caring to hear. The instinct was there, and he reached back to touch the lumps still in his back. They had yet to discover a way to do surgery. Darius was at the point he wanted to demand they do the surgery without anesthetic. They were implanted that way, with no relief for the pain.

Shifting, he focused on the building. He could hear the other two or more feel them. They were fine for now. The children were both watching the helicopter on the pad and the immediate area. Everything was too easy. So easy that he distrusted the very air right now. Ministry land wasn't safe. Maybe it never had been, but it was certain now.

Dominic came across his mind, quiet and weak. Dominic lacked the strong telepathy, but he made up for it in other ways. Then a loud thought came from his brother that brought Darius out of contemplation. A Minister. Dominic had met almost all the Ministers on the East Coast. If he said one was there, Darius wouldn't question it. They also had to prepare for refugees on the return trip.

Damien would never leave people behind. It was an admirable quality that Darius appreciated. Even under the Ministry's command, he had done his best to uphold the same ideals. Darius felt a physical and mental nudge from the children. They were watching people moving around out on the helipad.

Enforcers. They were likely getting ready to move, or execute, the people they had captured. Unsurprising from these people. Darius had grown an innate disgust for the Ministry being around the Dogs. It seeped into him. Not that he thought it was undeserved or tried to fight that change. The first thing was to reach out and give the other two a mental push to get going. They were capable men, but Darius didn't like the risk. The Ministry wouldn't kill them. They would do something much worse if they caught Dominic or Damien.

He started to move down the fence with the other two in tow. He was instructing them as they moved silently through the shadows. The Ministry never trained them to do damage with their minds. Darius had needed that training. Dominic did it on instinct. He had heard about the escape from the lab and how Dominic had deafened a guard and forced him into a coma with his voice. No one taught that. The Ministry didn't even know it was possible. The Ministry, thankfully, didn't know that was how Dominic had inflicted that injury.

Darius paused and guided the children through the mental actions of forcing the pilots to shut down the helicopter. The humans obeyed as the young ones instructed them to walk off into the deep grass, lie down, and sleep. Darius came out of the mind link and didn't have time to react to what had happened out of their field of vision.
The children cried out as the spotlight flooded onto them. All project members had eyes too sensitive for sudden bright lights. The Fifth were more susceptible still and Dominic's line seemed devestated by the pain it caused. Darius, shocked by the instinct as much as the light, put himself between the children and the Ministry. He didn't have time to do anything else before they lit up his electrodes. It wasn't the slow escalation of a reprimand but instantly at full strength. He couldn't even scream as he went to the ground, but he could feel the children trying to hold on to him mentally, to keep him awake. That connection went dark like a light switch.

The next he knew, his body was being dragged to its feet. Blood was blurring his vision on the one side. Fighting was forgotten, though, when he couldn't hear anyone. They had silenced him. He thought it was the electricity until he felt the pinch of the dart still in his side. The cowards couldn't even face him down while he was conscious. However, their focus on how dangerous he was left the enforcers around him blind. He didn't need his telepathy to see Damien coming to the doorway or to know that Dominic would hear his daughter cry out as they pulled her hair. Darius knew he was a dangerous man, but he would be nothing compared to the hell they had unleashed, making that young woman scream in pain.

************************************
They were heading outside when Damien froze still concealed in the doorway. Darius was on the ground and looked drugged and like he was trying to shake it off. Damien had watched Dominic behave the same way with tranquilizers in the past. He wondered what they hit him with but imagined that the Ministry had something. The way they were roughing up the kids, though, had him stepping out of the shadows with a silent command to Scorn to get the people with them to safety.

“The Dog.”

The tone the Ministry used caused his stomach to churn with anger and disgust, but he stepped defiantly into the space halfway between the building and the Ministry people.

“Where's the third? We'd like our property back.”

Damien stared straight at the speaker, but he could feel it. Death was coming. No other words could describe the wave of empathy he sensed. The children were both unscathed and awake. Damien caught broken transmissions from them calling to their father. He turned his eyes to Darius and saw blood running down from his hairline. That explained how they caught him.

Then one of the Ministry enforcers simply disappeared. Damien jumped from it as much as the others. It was like he blinked out of existence without a sound. The sensation was there in Damien's mind and threatened to push him into flight. Dominic was out in that tall grass, completely invisible. Tiger drifted back so very briefly until he saw the children. Lion. He corrected himself, and this time he saw it happen. Blood-soaked hands grabbed another, and he flashed out of existence too. Dragged into the grass to some silent, unknowable death. Damien had seen it happen and felt... he didn't know what he felt, but the children turned on the person holding them.

Training kicked in, and Damien shot both men next to Darius in quick succession as he ran across the gap. One of the children cried out, and then the guard screamed. It was a bloodcurdling scream like Damien heard in one of the movies Jake had worked on, only this was real. His eyes darted to the guard, who was missing a chunk of his neck. Dominic was standing there, hair disheveled, blood splattered across his face, blood on his arms to the elbows, and eyes closed. He was listening.

Damien turned to Darius. He knew the head hit was likely not too bad; they always bled like this. Darius came up with a dart he tore out of his side. “It disrupts our telepathy.” Darius snarled those words out as he sent the empty dart careening toward the ground.

Telepathy down or not, Damien took a half step away but didn't flee. They were on his side despite the uniforms. Scorn had taken the people to the fence, and Damien motioned for the children to join the dog and refugees. They obeyed after a brief look over from their father.

“You're right,” Damien told Dominic. “This place needs to be cleared out.”

Dominic grinned and walked over to join them. They were going to spend the night hunting like a pack of dogs... or maybe a pride of lions.