Fic: I Am What I Am (51/67)
Interlude 24: Getting the Message
*November 13th, 2017*
Michelle Glaster smiled to herself as she slipped past the oscillating magical detection net. Her aura flashed wildly as she did so, matching the shield at every point. An ingenious security method to be sure, but still not beyond her talents. As far as she was aware, there was only one set of wards in the world that were powerful and skillful enough to keep out one such as her, and those were the ones that were personally erected and maintained by Willow the Witch.
Of course, she hadn't yet given that her full attention. Given time, she figured she'd be able to crack those too. She was a firm believer in taking things one step at a time. First you take out the heart, and then she'd go after the brain.
It made her sick to watch her brethren scattering around the globe like roaches when the light came on. After the first failed attempt to assassinate Protector Harris, the Protectors had been quick to respond. Already there were reports that a good third of the Order was either dead or in custody. Most of the others were running scared or simply standing their ground, ready to fight it out to the death.
Not her though. Michelle had always suspected that most of her fellow members were more talk than they were action. The Terakans had one simple code: Success or Death. As long as the contract was in place, they were to abide by it. Many senior members of the Order had attempted to void the contract, but as long as the client was willing to pay, the Order had no procedure to call off a contract. It had been this way for thousands of years, and it would continue for a thousand more, if Michelle had anything to say about it.
The rest of the Order might be running scared, but she wasn't. If that half-wit lizard could get into a settlement, she could too.
Michelle had the unique talent of passive-nullification of magic. Most magical sensory creatures or devices could not register her, and she was able to nullify most active spells with a thought.
While human beings had almost uniformly joined forces to combat the increasing menace of demons, demons themselves were not so quick to work together. Dozens of different factions existed, and more often than not, these factions were as happy to kill each other as they were to kill humans. And luckily for Michelle, the Protectors were holding the demons back enough that they were not (usually) waging their wars on the open streets. That meant that they needed assassins, and Michelle was a perfect choice. She'd made quite the decent living since joining the Order.
These days, life outside of a settlement could best be described as similar to life in Sunnydale Pre-Awakening. While demons did not openly roam the streets for fear of mass reprisal, they definitely had a firm grip on most areas of the world. Nighttime was very dangerous outside of a settlement, even with the Protectors staging patrols in as many areas as they were able to handle. Life was still going on, since not everyone could be fortunate enough to live in a Settlement, but it was a life filled with hidden dangers. Life had gone on in Sunnydale too, but it wasn't always easy.
Yet while most humans had come together, a few - a very select few, had not. Those like Michelle saw opportunity for themselves, and thrived in the new underworld spreading throughout the globe.
So when the shit really hit the fan and the Protectors began striking back against the Order, Michelle decided to kill two birds with one stone. She would fulfill her duty as a member of the Order, and at the same time, she would save the Order from destruction, all by killing Alexander Harris.
It shocked her that it hadn't already been done years ago. Surely the Order could have taken down Protector Harris long before now. The man was little more than a politician, a reassuring face on the television that told people of the various dangers of modern life. A worn out general that commanded from his cushy office. He couldn't even do his own fighting. Hadn't he let his wife die just so he could live? This one-eyed man was who humanity had chosen to lead their fight against demons?
She'd never really understood other people, so it was no surprise to her that she just didn't get the awe over the man. The dumb fuck had let someone gouge out his eye for god's sake. That wasn't the kind of leader she respected. That was weakness, pure and simple.
The electronic security was perhaps slightly harder for her to bypass than the mystical. Her nullification ability required only a modicum of training to fully utilize. It came to her naturally. Electronics and computers were another matter altogether, and had required many hours of careful study, training, and practice. Still, it was part of her job, and she was very good at her job. The motion detectors, infrared cameras, and laser sensors were all disabled in under three minutes, without anyone at either of the Settlements three separate command centers any the wiser.
Michelle fought the urge to chuckle as she stealthily made her way past the outskirts of the city. The settlement was a large one, encompassing close to half of the state. Once inside the boundaries of the settlement, it was just like any other city or town, except it was, as far as she or anyone else knew, demon free. Breaches were known to occur though, so she would have to do her best to avoid the regular patrols. The last thing she needed was to run into a damned Slayer.
She made her way to the spot she had plotted out, just in time for the Uni-Rail. On it she could be at the suburbs inside of six minutes, or the main city itself in ten. Modern transportation was a wonderful thing.
Her stolen and carefully re-worked Trans-ID card worked perfectly with the bio-masking unit she'd purchased for an obscene amount of money. By morning the system would have worked out that she was an impostor, but by morning she would be out of the settlement and on the road. Maybe she'd hit up Vegas again, celebrate with the lucrative money of the contract. Tourism might have been down for non-settlement cities since Revelation, but Vegas was still one hell of a town if you wanted some fun. Literally, sometimes.
She hoped the blow she'd be dealing to the Protectors of Humanity wouldn't be too harsh. Her continued happy existence relied on keeping both the demons and the humans at a balanced level of hostility. After all, Vegas wouldn't be any fun if it was completely overrun by demons. She liked things the way they were, for the most part. Life outside of a settlement was exciting, but not horribly dangerous for someone like her. You could still raise a family and live a normal life outside of one; you just had a sixty percent higher risk of dying from something besides natural causes, that was all. Hadn't Harris himself grown up in Sunnydale? It was no worse than that.
She hopped off the Uni-Rail at the Anya district. It was one of the nicer suburbs of the main city. Of course. Only the best for the great Protector Harris. Poverty rates might have been at an all time low thanks to new jobs created in the anti-demon market, and it wasn't like over-population was much of a problem anymore, but something about Protector Harris living in such a nice, peaceful neighborhood really pissed her off. In fact, nice, peaceful neighborhoods in general pissed her off. She fully suspected that the ridiculously low human-on-human crime rate in the world was nothing but propaganda put forth by the Protectors.
It was night, but the streets were well lit thanks to powerful streetlights. One of the first rules of demon prevention was well-lit areas. Without shadows to hide in, demons were far less likely to feel able to move about freely. They preferred to hide in the darkness.
Luckily for Michelle, she was not a demon, and didn't care about such things. To any passing observer, she would simply look like an average citizen strolling down the street. It might have earned her a curious look outside of a settlement, but even then it wouldn't have aroused too much suspicion. In a settlement? No one would give her a second thought.
The house, surprisingly, wasn't as opulent as she'd expected. It was fairly large, yes, and definitely very nice, but she'd been expecting something close to a mansion. It was probably a three-bedroom affair. She wished she'd been able to find schematics of it, but she'd been unable to break through Protector security for that information.
There was one light coming from the first floor. Michelle moved forward, carefully bypassing several more wards, including a fairly tricky one that she suspected was probably devised by Willow the Witch herself. It had her sweating for a minute or two before she finally circumvented it. She was glad that the Witch wasn't there to personally maintain such a ward.
Michelle slipped into the house easily, and made her way through the darkened rooms without making a sound. She silently drew the wickedly sharp dagger she always used when she wanted to get up close and personal with her target.
He was alone in what looked to be a den, a single reading lamp on beside the armchair he sat in. A book lay open on his lap, and his head was slumped down. He snored softly.
Good, he was alone. The Slayer was probably asleep or, with any luck, still out on patrol. She idly wondered if she could kill the little girl on her way out, just for kicks.
Grinning to herself, Michelle stalked closer, raising the dagger.
"Are you serious?"
She froze. Was he talking in his sleep? His tone sounded as if he were talking to a friend about some tall-tale, and his head was still slumped to the side. She tightened her grip and moved forward for the kill.
"Guess so," he sighed. His head rose. She screamed and drove the knife down, hoping to paralyze him with fear for the instant she needed to plunge the knife into his neck.
Instead, his hand shot up, and caught her wrist as she tried to drive the knife down. His grip was far stronger than she had imagined, and suddenly she found herself being tossed headfirst over the chair. She crashed against the wall with a heavy thump, losing the dagger in the process. She rolled and got to her feet quickly.
He stood across from her, his one eye staring at her with complete focus.
"That was your big plan? Sneak up behind me and stab me? I thought you guys were supposed to be great big assassin types."
Her response was to spring at him, unleashing a vicious combination of strikes that should have shattered his nose, snapped his femur, and crushed his lungs. He deflected every blow with an easy, smooth motion that looked almost lazy. He surged forward, slamming his elbow into her solar plexus. She staggered back, gasping for air.
"You think I was going to let another one of you in here after one managed to slip by?" he shook his head sadly. "They just don't make Terakans like they used to anymore. In my day they at least had the decency to turn into bugs and crawl under the door after disguising themselves as door-to-door salesman. They had concepts and ideas! What's your concept? Sneak up behind them and hit them when they aren't looking?"
She lashed out at him with a wild backhanded blow. He caught her by the wrist and spun her violently towards him. Suddenly she was in his grip, his arm crushing her windpipe as he effectively immobilized her.
"Here's the thing," he said coldly, his joking tone gone. "You fucks tried to kill my little girl. That puts you all firmly in the land of the fucking stupid. Now, most of your idiot pals have decided against any further hits, but unfortunately there are those of you who are, shall we say, deeply stupid? They've decided the best thing to do is keep trying to kill me and my family."
Michelle tried to gasp in pain and terror as his crushing grip tightened around her throat. She struggled to free herself, but he had her arms locked to her sides and she could find no leverage to escape. She couldn't even cast a spell, as she was unable to gesture with her hands or speak any words of power. Her vision began to waver.
"You get to be the messenger," Xander growled. "I'm done with you. The Order of Teraka is gone, and that's that. All we're doing now is picking off the stragglers. You got it?"
She tried to nod, tried to do anything that would get him to release his grip. How could this be happening? She was a Terakan! The best of the best! The...
"No you don't. But it doesn't matter what you get. You're just going to be the messenger. Your pals will learn from you."
The grip tightened. "Oh wait," he said, as if he'd made a mistake. "No, you're not the messenger."
There was a crack and suddenly she couldn't feel anymore. She slumped to the floor.
"You're the message."
Her world went black.