Thank God For Small Favors, At Least He Isn’t Flying

Mitchell learned a lot in his next few months stationed at HOP2. His reading assignments held an amazing amount of information on the Life Tree Collective. History and personal observation taught him that most of their travelers went out on Branch business. 99% of them returned within a few weeks, 0.99% of them were observed driving on to other Branches, 0.01% of them disappeared into the world. It was almost always babies that fell off the radar, nobody knew exactly why adults didn't or couldn't or wouldn't run. Babies were smuggled out and left at hospitals, police stations and firehouses. At least one was left on the doorstep of a nice house in the suburbs.

The why of it, he wasn't sure about yet. There were theories within the HPI, Rosa and Chuck both favored the refugee theory. The LTC is brutal to the lower castes, you aren't much more than a slave unless you were a member of their aristocracy. People running from that made sense, people wanting their children to not grow up like that made sense. Mitchell felt there was something more to it and he was sure the HPI felt the same way. Why else would they invest so much to track the "refugees"?

That the "refugee" Charles Heton was a large part of the organization, the head of it for all Mitchell knew, was troubling. He liked the man but could never fully shake his skepticism. An almost human from an almost Earth spearheading the obfuscation the plans of his mysterious and surely nefarious natural born kin, really? His doubt had him feeling a bit xenophobic but couldn't help it. Heton had brought him on but that didn't make him one of the good guys. Sure, he was raised among humankind you can never really know the thoughts of someone. He was exhilarated to be part of something like the HPI but also eternally wary.

Mitchell tried to focus, he had read the same paragraph half a dozen times as his mind wandered. He'd started again when headlights shined through the window, blinding him for a second as they slowly brushed their way across him. The car pulled into the parking lot and then backed into a spot directly in front of the motel. Any of the LTCs that came through with regularity he could recognized by their vehicle or even their silhouette and he recognized this car.

Mitchell shot Rosa a message through the radio function on his phone, "We have an Ant, the old woman in seven. Alias Babushka is on the premises. Look alive Rosa." He watched for a few seconds then went back to his reading assignment.

He had read up and reported on this particular 'Ant' after her last few visits. Over the years she had snuck out several babies according to HPI records and it was possible that she was going to sneak out another baby, a "leaf". Her recent activity and the movement of other LTCs in the outside world signaled that something was up. He relayed that all to Rosa.

A message scrolled across his laptop:

"No leaf. She has another Ant in the trunk. Odd. They're getting out and proceeding to the room now."

Rosa always followed protocols when she was manning the ops center. By the book with the silent coms and curious codenames. Leaf, Ant, Bottle, Moon Rock, there were so many codenames for different things in this business. Some of them made sense to Mitchell, some of them didn't. Maybe there was a time when they did but he must have missed it.

Looking up he saw the old woman walking towards her room. She wasn't wearing her usual LTC get-up, she had on a green sweater and pants. Lady in the trunk and a disguise. Something for sure was going down.

Her guest was looking around. Literally around. She did a slow 360 degree turn, taking everything in before following Babushka.

A new message rolled in front of his reading assignment:

"New Ant. Possibly refugee. I'll do some digging to see if she's popped up anywhere else. Keep an eye out."

He watched the new woman follow Babushka. She was dressed in what looked like nightgown. That was new. He dimmed the office lights and switched the sign from open to closed. He moved to the window and watched the young woman move away from him.

When she reached the old woman's room she turned and looked right at him. Mitchell froze in place and felt an urgent need to go to her. She broke her gaze and stepped into the room. The pull he felt to her was almost magnetic. He relaxed and wondered who that woman was.

With the lights off and the subjects in their room, Mitchell couldn't help his curiosity and made his way to Rosa in the creep station. He had to see what was going on inside.

As he made his way down to the HOP2s nerve center, he went over the facts in his head. Babushka was an 'Ant' she came out into the world regularly to get things for her Branch. If he remembered correctly she had snuck out at least three babies in total, two over 40 years ago and one less than a decade past. She was in deep with the LTC but had gone so long without getting caught, she must have been one cool customer.

Opening the door he saw Rosa wearing the obscenely large head phones engulfing her ears and a portion of her cheek. They made eye contact when she turned for a quick glace at the opening door which she broke off when she turned her face back to the monitors. She was gazing at them intently while also fidgeting the audio board.

"The audio dropped out when the girl entered the room." She said loudly, not able to correctly regulate her voice volume with the headphones on. She continued flipping switches and turning dials. Mitchell hadn't a clue as to what she was doing but he got the idea.

Reaching forward he removed the headphone off her right ear, "Want me to go listen at the door?"

Her only response was a frown and quick shake of the head.

"They're just talking, maybe arguing." Rosa said, loud but, not as loud as before.

Mitchell focused in on the monitor. Their talk was definitely leaning towards heated. The body language of the woman who'd been in the trunk read like that of a caged tiger. They both stopped and looked towards the window. The old woman moved to the window and looked out into the parking lot, she dropped the curtain and moved back to fully engage with the younger woman. Damnit he wanted to hear what they were saying.

He searched the monitors for what she may have been looking for in the parking lot. His first quick perusal of the monitors he saw nothing. He moved his eyes back to the room that Rosa was fixated on before sparing a second look at the parking lot camera feeds.

He saw a hulking man rise from between two cars. He popped Rosa on the shoulder and pointed at the monitor with the huge man. He wore a tight grey shirt, his hair was black and his beard was red. There was dirt all over him and something dark and wet. Blood. His shoulders rose and fell with his breathing. He was facing something off camera, something at the edge of the woods. In a flash his hand shot up in front of him and there was a solid metal short spear in his hand, maybe 3 feet long. Mitchell thought he'd brought it up from his side but realized that the tip was less than a foot from his face. He'd snatched it out of the air. Someone had thrown it at him and he'd snatched it out the air!

In a graceful movement using just his right hand, he tossed the spear into the air, catching it with less than an inch or two of the haft poking out from below his hand and he hurtled it end over end towards whatever he was facing. In the millisecond that it took Mitchell to try and track the spear the man shaped mountain stooped down, scooped up something roughly the size of a dog off the ground and sprinted in the direction he'd thrown the spear. He disappeared off camera before Mitchell could center his attention back on him.

Mitchell turned towards the door. He needed to get out there and figure what the hell was happening. Rosa grabbed his hand tightly and he stopped walking towards the door and turned to look at here.

"We'll head out there later if we need. When it's safe. You and I are staying in here until I decide we're not." She said. Her voice was firm and commanding, but it also held a beseeching tone.

"Ok." Mitchell replied, squeezing her hand in reassurance. He moved into a seat beside her.

"Roll the footage back, we need to see what happened." Mitchell said, his hands automatically moving towards the mouse and keyboard setup that controlled the system.

"No," Rosa said as if she'd already considered doing that, which Mitchell was sure she had "We can look over the video later. For now keep your eyes on the live feeds. We need to see what's going on. Watch the surrounding area, I'll watch the room."

Rosa picked her phone up and shot off a quick text that simply read 'Midnight' to a number that Mitchell assumed was Heton or maybe a contact closer to their location. He hoped she was asking for help. There was a giant chucking spears and dragging dogs around in the parking lot, he wished Rosa would have sent out more than a single text.

As much as he tried not to focus on the room, his eyes abandoned everything other than the room. The young woman looked angry and the old woman was holding her hands out, to stop her advance if Mitchell were to guess. Now with the old woman's hands touching her arms, standing less than a foot from each other, their height difference was stark. The young woman in the nightgown towered over the old woman.

The arguing continued for a few moments more. They stopped speaking and the cameras filled with static for a few seconds. When the monitors were clear again the young woman was sitting on the edge of the bed, still as death, facing the door. Codename Babushka was walking out of the door into the parking lot. He hadn't seen a sign of the big man since the initial spear flinging incident.

He and Rosa both tracked her as she walked to her car. She stood at the drivers side door, looking out into the night but not getting into her car. The unknown LTC woman sat on the edge of the bed unmoving.

Mitchell pulled a headphone up once again and asked, "Have you tried the parking lot audio?"

"They're back up. They went out when the room mic's went out but they're back up now. The old woman is humming. The room..." She paused and flipped a switch, a few seconds later she flipped it back, "the room has sound again but she isn't doing anything in there, just sitting and breathing. Nothing else." She said matter-of-factly as continued to watch the monitors.

He reached to pull the headphones off again to ask a question and Rosa smacked his hand away.

"Stop! I'll miss something. Watch the damn feeds for the other." She said it in a loud whisper. She was wearing noise canceling headphones, whispering loudly made less sense than shouting but Mitchell skipped trying to joke about it and did as she said.

Twenty three minutes and thirtyish seconds later Rosa informed Mitchell that someone was coming. He turned to the door and she said, not there, I can hear someone moving through the woods. He was surprised at the power of whatever kind of mics they had set up.

He looked at every monitor that came remotely close to the tree line and eventually he was rewarded with the sight of the parking lot warrior returning. No bodies and no spear, still a bit dirty and still a bit bloody though the blood was dried.

He approached the old woman, walking towards her and stopping in front of her. The old woman opened the back door and grabbed a bag, handing it to the oversized red bearded man.

Babushka reached up towards his face and he leaned down to her, if he hadn't she would not have come close to touching his cheek which she cupped and patted. He stood up straight and nodded to her as she climbed into her car. She closed the car door and drove back towards the Branch from whence she came. They exchanged no words.

The big man walked towards the room that the young LTC woman was in. He moved with ease, not the lumbering uneven gait that Mitchell thought someone of that size should move. He entered the room and checked the closet and bathroom, he even checked under the bed. After his search was over. He entered the bathroom and squeezed into the shower and began to clean the dirt and blood off.

Mitchell felt uncomfortable watching the man get naked and get into the shower, he had never really watched anyone shower while stationed her. The thought of doing it made him feel dirty. With the giant however, Mitchell was curious to see if the blood had been his. He turned his head to Rosa and she was rewinding parking lot footage on a different monitor. He stopped his search for wounds on the big man and instead watched the recording of what had happened in the parking lot.

Seconds after the two women had entered the room, a rat monster the size of a dog bolted into view. Rosa paused it, clipped the video and saved it. She zoomed in and as best he could tell it was maybe three or four feet tall, he had fur and scales, claws and what fittingly looked to be a rats head. Mitchell didn't know what to think, so he didn't he took it as a fact of their current predicament and decided that he'd probably process it later.

The creature's quick sprint from off camera to where it hid itself between two cars is all that they would see of it. Alive at least. The humungous man appeared in their view out of midair. It looked as if he dropped out of the sky and landed between the two cars that the rat monster had hid in. Mitchell made a move to pull up Rosa's headphone but saw that she'd slid it off her ear.

"Did he just fucking fly?" Mitchell asked, afraid of the answer.

"Not sure." Rosa replied, shockingly unshocked by the possibility of flying, rat monster murking giant in their vicinity. She paused the video and rotated the headphone back onto her ear and worked both the audio board and cycled through a few cameras.

She pulled the headphone off her ear again, "He was on the roof, we don't have footage but I can hear him running and jumping faintly from the parking lot feed and his footsteps in the audio from a few of the rooms."

"Thank God for small favors, at least he isn't flying." Mitchell said, trying hard to force humor into the room.

A placating smile and nod was Rosa's response. He couldn't blame her for not mustering up a fake laugh. Action like this, creatures like that, none of this was in any of the reading that had been made available to him. In that moment of realization he knew that they weren't giving him access to everything. He was upset but he understood. But he was still upset. If you want your people to be prepared, tell them everything. Holding things back just left people unprepared for situations like the one happening right then.

Rosa started the footage from where they'd paused it. After he landed, the cars rocked for a few seconds. He stood and Mitchell recognized the view from the footage they'd seen earlier. This time it was obvious that the spear had been thrown at him, it was still crazy that he caught it, resituated it and flung it back in the direction it had come from. He watched the man again scoop up what he had first thought might be a dog but, now knew that it was definitely a rat monster, and run in the direction of the spear he'd thrown. He again ran out of the view of their security footage.