Splinter Cell: Target Lost

Log #1, Date 5/30/2014

When the law is on your tail, what do you do?  You have two options: One, stay and fight it out, or two, run and hide.  Either way, you end up a dead man.  Why?  Let's just say those of us in Fourth Echelon don't like losing priority targets.  A target lost leaves any operative a dead man walking.  If you don't get the job done right, it's game over.  I would never take that risk, and I follow my targets as they run.

I'm a trained government agent capable of taking down even the biggest of crime lords.  I'm the one man you don't want to see standing in the corner of your head office of your secret and most definitely illegal business.  I never make a mistake, never falter, and above all, I never give up.  Yet somehow, the worst has happened.  The target isn't lost, not yet.  He's just on the run.  All I did was follow him...

So why the hell am I surrounded by colorful ponies right now?!

Harper saved the notes of his log onto his OPSAT device on his arm.  While it may or may not be just his ramblings, he didn't care.  He needed to remember what happened and when.

He heard more rustling and pulled out the knife yet again.  Another small creature skittered out.  He sighed and put the knife back.  What was the point?  He was here to find a runner.  O'Malley wasn't coming to him, much less springing a trap on him.  At least, not yet.   As for Masters, well... he was unpredictable.

He turned on the TACCOM again, but the static told him nothing.  He moved forward, getting deeper into the woods.  He tried his night vision, but it still wasn't working.  The goggles clearly needed more than time to be repaired.  He kept moving, thankful that the darkness was around to hide him from these ponies.

"I'm sure he was just around here..."

He jumped behind a bush as three ponies walked towards him.  Two of them had lights.

"Are you sure, Lyra? "

"He must've gone this way!  You can see his hoofprints!"

"If you can even call them that..."

"You know what I mean!  He should be just around this corner! If we find him, then I can finally see what hands look like!  Haha!"

"Calm down, Lyra.”

"I just wanna know everything about the human!  How he works, what he can do... how he ticks..."

Harper did not like the sound of that.  He checked his arsenal, seeing that even though his gun was gone, he still had two frags and three flash-bang grenades.  It was a wonder these didn't go off when he fell.

He took one of the flashbangs, pulled the pin and threw it at the ponies' hooves.

"What the--"

The three were deafened by the explosion and blinded by the light, but only temporarily.  Harper ran as fast as he could, but then realized he had been ignoring the pain in his leg where he had been stabbed.  Kevlar was strong, but the force of that knife probably bruised him pretty badly and possibly made a small fracture in his femur.  O'Malley was strong enough for that, or at least had enough resources for it.  This and the darkness were too much, and he tripped on a root and tumbled down.  He reached out blindly to grab something to break his fall, and he did... not a moment too soon, as he caught the one branch the hung over the side of a canyon.  He brought his other hand up to get a better hold on the branch, but the applied pressure made it snap, leaving him holding on with the remaining end of the branch.

"Shit shit shit shit...."  Harper repeated.  There was no way out of this one.

He saw as the branch bent, hardly sustaining the new weight it had gained.  He looked to the rock face for a hand-hold, but couldn't see one.  It was over.

He felt the branch snap and he fell.  The ground got closer and closer...

***

"Harper is gone, sir," the communications officer told Sam Fischer, leader of the operation to take out the Enhancers.

The Enhancers worked just like the Engineers, but yet so incredibly different at the same time.  Their leader: Byron O'Malley, a crazed psycho murderer gone calculated killer and sabotage agent.  His partner in crime, Peter Masters, was a renowned scientist capable of countering any disease with what he liked to call a Biological Anti-Cure: a disease that would counter-mutate as the disease it fought mutated.  He started his experiments in radiation testing, finding out a BAC for radiation poisoning by creating a virus with a natural immunity and "infecting" hosts with it in hopes of giving cancer patients more radiation treatment and eventually find an anti-cure for cancer itself.  There was a third scientist, named Robert Carson, who had been studying some unknown properties of matter and the transportation of matter, hoping to make the world's first teleporter.  He was captured by the Enhancers, doing work for them at gunpoint.  When the Enhancers found no more use for him, O'Malley personally smashed in his ribcage with nothing more than his bare hands and a roll of quarters. Barbaric, even for him.

With a combination of these three, the Enhancers planned to make soldiers that were immune to all forms of bio-weapons and teleport them to the central United States to take over.  They claimed that is was for the unspoken crimes committed by America, which were covered up by the Geneva Accords.

Fischer was so close.  He had compromised the mission last time, and was not supposed to be on the ground for this one.  That's why he sent in the best he had to track down the Enhancer's leader and kill him.  It must have been a setup.

But he was not going to stand for this.

"Vital signs?"

"Offline sir.  TACCOM isn't working either."

TACCOM stood for a "tactical communications" device in each of Fourth Echelon's suits that relayed info through a closed radio stream.  Nobody else could hear their conversations when using the TACCOM.

"What is the last OPSAT data he had?"

The OPSAT device was a digital storage and scanning system linked up to the main computers of Fourth Echelon.  It immediately transferred data to and from the battlefield whenever needed.

"One picture, sir.  It's blurry, but it's the best we've got."

"Lemme see it."

The picture showed a huge portal with multiple objects flying towards it.

"It was taken only seconds before his disappearance."

Sam just stared.  "What do you make of it?"

"I think that Mr. Carson's experiment finally worked.  Harper just got caught in the middle of it."

"Same here.  O'Malley escaped through there, and we have to get him back here.  The data on this thing should include the exit to this teleportation device, so we'll start there.  Where is Carson's lab?"

"Not far at all, sir, only a few miles off from our current position.  Calculating path of travel now."

Sam nodded and felt the plane move on.  This whole senario was so strange.  Teleportation, loss of both the target and the operative...

"Make sure this mission doesn't leave the eyes and ears of Fourth Echelon," Sam ordered. "Tell the president the problem is taken care of... for the moment."

"Yes sir."

"And get the TACCOM back online, dammit!  I don't want to be guessing as to what's going on with Harper any more than I have to."

"Of course.  We've reached the lab, sir.  Chopper's ready to go."

Sam said nothing as he left the room, leaving the rest of the team to their work.

***

Something quickly snatched Harper out of the air, knocking the wind out of him.  He felt as he was flying through the air.

"Ugh!  How much do you weigh???" he heard a voice ask.  He looked up to see a cyan pegasus was carrying him.  Not his imagination.  Not something he could perceive, either.

Suddenly, his TACCOM roared in his ear. "Harper!  Harper, are you there?"

He couldn't say anything.  He didn't have the mental capacity at the moment.

"Harper, respond!"

No, no now was not talking time... sleeping time...

"Harper!  Quit playing games with me and TURN ON YOUR GODDAMN TACCOM FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!"

He fell unconscious.  Only a few minutes of being in this world and already he couldn't take it.  It was all too much.  The only thing he needed was a little rest...

Yeah... just a little rest...

***

"Harper is not responding," the communications officer reported, very aggravated.

"Try again!" Charlie shouted.  "He's not dead!  Get vital signs up!  OPSAT status, too!"

"Calm down, tech boy," the officer replied, regaining his own compsure. "There, we've got him up."

"And?"

"Alive, but he has lost some blood.  Stab wound in his leg.  The radiation didn't seem to effect him... due to the experimental drug in his system.  It's illegal, but that's the least of his worries right now.  He really was focused on O'Malley, wasn't he?"

"You said it.  Where is he?"

"Good question.  Picking up coordinates..."

The officer's face scrunched up in confusion.  "Something's wrong with the tracking here..."

"What makes you say that?"

"He's getting picked up all right, it's just... not in the neighborhood.  We're only connecting up to his TACCOM system and vitals through a satellite... in the Andromeda system.  I didn't even know we had a satellite out that far into space."

"It was lauched by NASA about five years ago," Charlie explained, and the officer gave him a strange look.  "What?  I've hacked a lot more secrets than just governmental ones!"

The officer shook his head and continued.  "Still, it doesn't make sense... how in god's name did he get all the way out there?"

Charlie looked at the data.  What he said was right, but even then, it seemed like something was missing.

"Maybe the teleporter had a malfunction?"

"Yeah, that and maybe it was activated before it was ready," the communications officer said.  "Listen to this."

"-- Machine on in five... four... three..."

There was the small pause.  "Stop the countdown, O'Malley, or I'll kill you here and now!  -- You can tell Fourth Echelon to fuck off!"

One of the voices shouted in pain. O'Malley kept on. "Two! One! Now!"

Then it turned to static.

"That countdown was off.  Whether it was too late or too early we can't know, but that's what caused the problem."

"And?"

"That means one thing.  The only way he got teleported so far was by that machine, which had to malfunction.  The only way for him to get back..."

"Is if he had the device and it malfunctioned again," Charlie said, wide-eyed. "He's not coming back, is he?"

"We can't let Fischer know.  He'd go into one of those killing frenzies like after he heard his daughter was dead."

Charlie shuddered at the thought. "Yeah, that'd probably be for the best."

"Charlie!" a voice shouted from his laptop.  He rushed over and put in the earpiece.

"What is it, Sam?"

"Found the schematics for the teleporter."

"Already?"

"Nobody was home."

"Huh."

"I'm sending them to you now.  They look like encrypted files, and I know that's more your domain."

"That it is.  Workin' on it now, Fischer."

"Charlie?"

"Yeah?"

"Make sure you get Harper home, okay?  Promise me you will.  I'm not losing another agent."

Charlie was silent for a second.

"I promise," he said, knowing that when the time for the truth came around, he would be the first one beaten to a pulp because of this little conversation.

***

"What in Celestia's name is that thing???"

Applejack asked this in surprise, and the others of the Council of Harmony just stared.  They had restrained the human in a chair, hoping it wasn't strong enough to break the ropes they had tied him down with.

"It's called a human," Twilight explained, "and we need to figure out what to do with it.  The last time we encountered it when it was awake, it ran."

"It's just a poor, scared little animal..." Fluttershy cooed.

"That thing's, like, twice your size, Fluttershy." Rainbow said, raising an eyebrow skeptically.

"Still, it's obviously not from here.  Foreign lands can be scary, darling, I should know from my visit in Prance," Rarity said.

"You guys are missing the point!" Pinkie shouted. "This guy just needs to feel welcome here!  We should throw a party for it!"

Twilight looked towards her.  "I'm not sure about that one, Pinkie.  I mean, it had some form of self-defense that blinded and deafened me and two others, if only temporarily.  If it does that at a crowded party..."

"Oh.  Yeah, I guess I see the point," Pinkie said, all too seriously for her usual self. "Maybe just an introduction will do? A fun introduction?"

"Yeah!  I'll introduce him!" Spike announced. "I mean, we kinda look the same... maybe it'll be a little more friendly to things it can relate to."

"That... actually makes a lot of sense now that you say it," Twilight said, her hoof on her chin.

"But what if it knows what a dragon is?  Maybe it'll think you're dangerous!"  Rainbow intervened.

"That's also a possibility," Twilight agreed.

"So then what should we do?" Spike asked.  None of them answered. "If you don't have any better ideas, I think it's the best shot at something we've got here."

"Alright," Twilight said.  They all heard a loud groan.

"Quick, he's waking up!  Everpony out!  Good luck, Spike!"

The six ponies ran out the door.

"Yeah, thanks..." he said briefly.  He turned to see the human roll his head up.

***

Harper's head hurt like all hell.  The bright colors were enough to cause a slight headache, but this shiny place was giving him just the worst kind of migrane.

"Hey, buddy!  You okay?"

He cringed at the sound, his head pounding. This must be a human and not some pony.  It's about time his head was clearing up.

"Yeah, fine..."

He tried to get up from the chair he found himself in, but found he could not move.  He was tied down with taut rope which was not about to give out.

"Shit."

"Don't worry about all that!  It's only a precaution!"

"You captured me... a kid..."

His vision cleared up.

"A dragon kid."

Seconds passed.  Then, his brain registered the thought.

"A DRAGON KID?!  WHAT THE HELL?!"

A flailed around in the chair, knocking it backwards.  He hit his head again, but this time there was no mercy of darkness.

"Heyheyhey!  Calm down!  I'm not here to hurt you," Spike said, pushing the chair back up to an upright position.

"Where's that goddamned pony?!  I want to speak with her!"

"Just a minute."

He watched in wonder how the dragon obeyed his order.  A captor that met his demands?  What the hell???

A purple pony walked into the room.  She had wings and a horn.

Great, what the hell is *this thing now?  Some kinda unicorn-pegasus?*

"You wanted to talk to me?" she asked politely.

"Yeah," Harper said in a tone that could kill, "I wanted to talk.  But I'm done talking.  I demand to know what is going on here!  Why the hell are you ponies here?  Why are you restraining me? Explain!"

He shouted so loud the whole room shook with his fury.  He noticed and slumped back into the chair, breathing heavily.

"That's why you're restrained," Twilight said, composure still intact, "And we live here, so it's only natural that we're here.  The real question is: what are you doing here, human?"

"Let's get a few things straight," Harper said angrily, "One, my name is Harper.  That is the only name you get to call me.  Two, I never intended on being here.  One second I was on a mission, the next I'm in a forest with talking horses.  Three, this chair is about half the size of regular chairs and god damn if I don't get out of it soon, I'm gonna be aching in more ways than one."

Twilight sighed.  "Promise not to hurt anypony?"

"I promise," Harper said in an serious tone.

The chair and rope disappeared from under him,and he fell to the ground.  He picked himself up and dusted himself off.

"How did you get here, hu-- I mean, Harper?"

"Some kinda portal.  Can't really explain how it worked since I didn't create it."

"Well, who did?"

His eyebrows lowered. "A dead man."

Twilight looked confuzed for a second.  "Wait, how?  Dead things can't-- Wait, that was a figure of speech, wasn't it?"

"It was.  Another human and his friend came here just as I did."

"Oh, good!  They're frie--"

"They like to kill things."

Twilight froze after hearing this.  A look of shock covered her face.

"W-WHAT?!"

The chair reappeared.  She shoved the human back into it and the rope restraints went back on.

"Hey!  What's the big idea?!  I said they like to kill things, not me!" He had had enough, no, more than enough of these ponies now.

"Then tell me, Harper..." She used her magic to pull his knife from his sheath. "What is this used for?"

Harper said nothing.  There was no point in arguing this.  She knew he was a killer.

"I take back everything I've said.  You humans are monsters!  I'm going to find these two other humans!  Everypony could be in great danger!"

She rushed out of the room.  Harper was all alone.  His knife lay on the ground, far out of reach.  Sitting here was going to get boring.

Suddenly, his TACCOM screeched in his ear.

"Harper!  Harper, I thought I heard something coming from your com!  Are you there?"

"Charlie?" he asked, surprised.

"Oh my god, you're still alive!  I don't believe it!"

"Charlie, what happened?  Where am I?"

"Look, it's a long story, one I can't get into right now.  Just stay calm for now.  I'm working on a way to get you home."

"I'm kind of stuck right now."

"What?"

"There are other beings here, and they captured me."

"Aliens?"

"Almost.  They speak English."

"How?  Our language was built up after generations and generations--"

"Yeah, yeah, spare me the lecture.  The point is they understand us.  They even know what humans are.  They might be dangerous.  If they get to Earth, who knows what would happen?"

"All right, I see your point."

"Hold on, I got another transmission coming in... oh my god..."

"What is it Charlie?"

"Harper, guess what?"

"What?"

Charlie laughed hysterically for a seoncd and then said, "Help is on the way!  Holy shit, this is awesome--"

The TACCOM cut out as a tactical EMP was set off.  The room was mostly naturally lighted, so it hardly made a difference, but then Harper realized something.

Only those in Fourth Echelon would have something like that.  So then... who just did that?

He saw two figures, both in black suits.  One had a red pair of goggles, the other had green.

No way.

***

"Charlie, what's our status on that teleporter?"

Charlie peered over the notes on his computer.  "I'm not entirely sure about the specifics, but I could give you the general idea of how it works."

"And what about getting Harper back?"

"These things take time, Sam," Charlie replied.

"Well, any ideas right now?"

"Unless there's a teleporter where he went, I don't have any ideas." Charlie replied. "I'm sure there's a way, though.  If we could just reverse-engineer the matter transportation to retrieve matter instead of send it, we could get him back."

"How long would it take?"

"A year and a half, tops."

"You've got five minutes," Fischer joked.

"Yeah, yeah, I've heard that one before," Charlie replied sarcastically. "Just be patient.  Don't you have some mission Grim is working up for you?"

"With the Blacklist done and O'Malley gone, we don't have much else."

"You sure?  What about the rest of the Enhancers?"

"They were taken care of.  Most of them have been jailed, and some of them were killed or will be executed."

"How many?" Charlie asked, typing away.

"Doesn't matter.  Besides, I don't know the numbers."

"Alright..."

There was an awkward silence, with only the clacking of the keyboard making noise.

"I'm gonna work on getting the teleporter functional for Harper's return."

"You do that."

Sam left the room, and Charlie sighed.  Sam didn't ask about where Harper went.  Charlie hoped it would stay that way.  Working with Sam was like hunting with a lion: once it felt the need for more than it was getting, it would go after you.  That, and if you pissed him off, he would kill you or ruin your life.  Or both.

He pushed these thoughts to the back of his mind and typed away, piecing together the code to retrieve Harper.  While it would take a long time, he didn't care.  He had more than enough time.  More than enough time for anything...