Rise of the Phoenix

EXT – Dusk 

Ominous dark clouds weighing heavy on the atmosphere, they look ready to unleash a sudden down pour of torrential rain. John can’t shake the feeling of loneliness and a deep chill in his bones that just seem too much to bear. He looks up at the sky wondering where the hell he is. Then suddenly the clouds become still and begin to part revealing a beautiful sunshine. The Sun Rays touch his skin and warms him to his very core, he sees his daughter across the grassy field; her head and shoulders barely visible above the flowers surrounding the both of them. The wild blue, red and yellow colors playing with the cool breeze and forming a path leading up to their favorite park. “Daddy I missed you so much” she says as she embraces him. “Where did you go this time?” “Oh honey, daddy missed you too, I am back now and that is all that matters. Hey, you want to go for a push on the swing?”  She shakes her head with delight in agreement.  John starts pushing his daughter Grace on the swing, her long blonde hair gently brushes his face as she flies up to meet him and then swings off really fast as she giggles with sheer joy and excitement. John, finally made it home after his last assignment and can finally breathe in a sigh of relief. As he takes in the moment he notices a woman badly injured across the park staring at him. She looks war torn, her head bandaged up and a fresh cut across her check still in need of stiches. As the blank expression on her face almost puts John in a trance he hears the voice of his daughter fading away as she is calling for him to come back to her. He begins to walk towards the woman and cannot find a way to stop himself as he moves closer and closer.  “JOHN!!” he hears ringing in his head, “JOHN GET UP!” He looks down at his SHD tech watch on his wrist, an orange pulse shoots out from his wrist in all directions. The ring spreads across the park and reveals to him the true terrain this dream world has been hiding. The grassy fields once covered in flowers are now all covered in Concrete and pavement, the trees reveal themselves as the massive buildings they actually are. John finally realizes he never left his assignment in New York City.  John now recognizes the woman in his dream, it was Lieutenant Faye, and she screams “Get up John we have to go now! We lost the prisoner, Fall Back!” John tries to get up on his feet as one of the JTF officer drags him back to safety. They open the checkpoint doors of the DZ and the team of twelve pile in as fast as possible, the door seals up behind them as bullets and fire turrets whiz past them. 

“What the Hell happened out there?” asks one of the JTF officers addressing Faye. You can see the anger in his face as he sneers toward Agent John and his inability to help in the fight at that crucial moment. “It’s no one’s fault” snaps Faye, “We were ambushed by Rogues, and we should have known this was going to happen considering the circumstances.” “Circumstances?” Asked the JTF officer. “When the Hell were you going to inform us that we were using a Rogue Agent as a Prisoner for bait in the DZ? Maybe if you shared that little bit of Intel we could have been more prepared!” The JTF officer now so upset he can’t even catch his breath. His name tag had fallen off in the gun fight, he picks it up off the ground and stuffs it in his pocket. “Well, now what Agents?” Ramirez says snidely. “We had one of the most dangerous Rogue operatives in custody and you lose him because you were trying to dangle bait for a bigger catch. Now who knows how many more JTF officers will die at the hands of Agent Torex.” Faye angrily stands up to Ramirez “You know damn well this Rogue group is our problem! We need to cut the head off the snake if we are going to have any chance of gaining control of the DZ again.”  Ramirez starts to snicker at Fayes remark. “You telling me you thought this little plan of yours was going to get you Phoenix?”  The look of disgust and disappointment is written all over Ramirez’ face, some of the other JTF men find it just as delusional, the other SHD Agents don’t. After the sarcastic huffing had died down Ramirez turned to Agent John “You are damn lucky we survived that little skirmish with Agent Eagle Eye today.” The rest of the men became silent and they all had a look of worry on their faces. “Don’t they call him Phoenix sometimes?” Asked one of the younger JTF members. “Yes they do” answered Ramirez. “Would you like to know why son?” the young man forces his head to signal for a yes. “Faye, why don’t you enlighten our young JTF officer here about who Agent Eagle Eye is and why they call him Phoenix?” Faye reluctantly standing up on her one good leg to address the room struggling to find a good starting point.  “Agent EagleEye1298 was part of the second wave of SHD Agents that came to NY to help eradicate the LMB and Cleaners that have taken control of the Dark Zone. He was very cunning In his method of fighting, rather than focusing on dealing out damage to the enemy he was more focused on healing the group and keeping them alive long enough to endure any battle. Over time word spread around of his amazing revival abilities and he quickly became very popular among the other agents. No one wanted to patrol the Dark Zone without him because they knew that their only chance of survival was going in only with him. Well, because of his unique talents and my need to fill the void of patrolling the DZ, I assigned him to strictly DZ patrols only so I could get more Agents into rotation in there. We were actually making good progress until one day Eagle ran into Disavowed Torex, another former agent that recently turned rogue. Something happened that day, no one really knows what or why but he turned on the agents he was patrolling with. We found their dead bodies hanging from the rooftop of the Police station never to have heard from him again.” 

The air of the room was so thick you could cut it with a knife, every Agent in there hung their heads low listening to the blistering reminder of what a losing blow the Agents took that fateful day. The young JTF member then humbly asked “But that still doesn’t explain the name Phoenix where did that come from?”  Agent John jumped up to explain that part of the story. Eager to show that this last encounter didn’t shake him at all he proceeded to say “One night long after Eagle defected as a Rogue, we were patrolling the DZ looking specifically for him. We came across some Rogue agent lead by their newest officer StonR. StonR happens to be another Rogue Agent at the top of our list to capture. We had eight agents that night and StonR was putting up one Hell of a fight, he had already taken out four of the eight agents single handedly with only one other Rogue agent with him. We finally had the perfect opportunity, the other Rogue agent died in the fight and StonR was finally put down. The remaining four agents went in to capture him when out of nowhere a single Defibrillator shot came down and landed right on StonR, when I looked up, Eagle was standing on a nearby rooftop monitoring the whole street the entire time. Before we realized what had just happened, StonR jumped up fully revived from the Defib and killed another agent. We fought for another hour, each time we thought we were going to get the upper hand on StonR, Eagle was right there with a revive. It was almost as if no one could kill anyone that was under the healing care of Eagle. I barely got out of there alive when Eagle threw out his seeker mines to assist in the final blow to our team.” The entire room was now completely silent, John finished by saying “That day agent Eagle died and through the ashes arose the Phoenix.” As John Started walking towards the exit of the checkpoint to head back to the Base of Operations the young JTF officer asked “Are there other Rogue Agents out there just as dangerous?” Agent John smiled at him and said “I think we need a drink first, then I can tell you about another former agent you will not want to run into. He goes by the name of EO3 Daddy.”