1 Death From Above

"Justice and fairness are all created by humans, mother nature doesn't care if a lion kills a deer."

12:30 AM, somewhere in Afghanistan.

A squad of eight soldiers is scouting an abandoned village with a clear mission: Secure the town, find and capture as many enemy troops as possible.

Despite the oppressiveness of the mission, their scouting was more like a vacation with no signs of humans or any potential existential threat.

"This place is god damn silent Sir." a soldier said.

"Watch your mouth, private Beck." The sergeant who is leading the squad replied in a whisper.

"Sorry Sir, it's just that we have never gone scouting at late night like this. Why can't we wait until the day?"

"If this were just regular reconnaissance then we wouldn't have to go during midnight. The commander told me that this place is where the enemy tests the new weapons, some of them are powerful enough to wipe out the entire platoon of 30 elite soldiers.

That's why we wait until the night when they are all going to sleep and dark enough for us not to be discovered."

"Well, let's hope that they are not sending us to die first then." Beck responded with a worried smile.

"I hope not."

The squad then continues to move on, searching for the house by house, building by building until they find something suspicious. It took them a while to realize that there was a strange building, a three-story structure that was unlike any other in the area.

Every house, store, and even toilet in the area is identical to each other since either they are all destroyed by bombers or are full of bullet holes. But this building, not only appears to be brand new with no damage or holes but it is also fully closed.

There was no reason to close all doors, even windows, when no one was inside and there was nothing to hide, especially in this no-man place.

The sergeant was the first one to recognize, he gave a signal to others.

"On my mark" He whispers.

And then, using all of his leg force, he kicked the door violently, so strong that the door swung open instantly and exposed everything inside.

"GET DOWN!!!"

He yelled right after the moment the door got kicked off, ordering anyone inside to surrender.

...

But to their surprise, instead of a group of terrorists planning their sinister plans, they see nothing. The room is surrounded by darkness, with the cold and dusty air showing that it had been abandoned for more than a week.

The sergeant split the squad into groups, five men go upstairs while he, Beck, and another soldier go check the ground floor. All of them are moving with high alerts, keeping in mind that someone might be waiting for them to come and ambush them.

The group led by the sergeant searches every single room on the floor, pulling up every bed and opening every closet, and yet they can't find a single bug.

After five minutes, the sergeant confirmed that they didn't find anything valuable on this floor, he decided to sit down on a chair in the living room and wait for others to finish their job.

Finally, they hear the footsteps from the staircase, the last couple has completed their search and is on their way down. The sergeant approaches them.

"Tell me what you found, kid." He asked.

"Aside from the trash and dust, nothing important, Sir."The soldier responded with a disappointed voice.

"But we did find this." He takes something out of his pocket and hands it to the sergeant.

"Huh. This looks weird, Beck can you check this?"

Beck takes a look at the device, and he instantly recognizes it.

"I've seen this before Sir, it's a radio transmitter, used to send rescue signals in emergency situations, this thing has been forgotten since smartphones were created."

"Okay, so do you know who it's communicating with?"

"I don't think it can Sir, this thing is a one-way transmitter, meaning that it can only send radio signals but not receive them."

While others are still focusing on investigating the suspicious device, a man notices something weird, there's a bright spark in the sky out of the window. A very, very bright spark, akin to a beacon. Knowing that something was wrong, he called the sergeant: "Sir, I think you need to see this."

"What?" The sergeant answers the call of the soldier and comes near the window to have a look.

"What the hell is that?" he continued to look in the light as it began to get bigger and brighter.

The spark looks like it originated from a distant hill. Fifteen seconds ago, the spark was just dimly bright similar to a small star in a dark night shrouded by city lights, but now that star is big enough to be seen during the day.

It takes only a second for the sergeant to understand the seriousness of the situation.

"Oh shit! EVERYONE TAKE COVER!!!!" He screamed to everyone and started running by himself.

The others are also shocked by what he said, it happens so fast that their bodies don't have time to move.

The room went from gloomy black to blindingly bright and white in an instant. The entire area was wiped out by an explosion and blazing in a giant fire.