Vanguard lands at the bottom of the elevator shaft in perfect silence, which is then immediately interrupted by the thundering rattle of fully automatic gunfire. The rounds strike off Condor's extended wings, as he walks side by side with Falcon—a two man phalanx down the long stretch of hallway.

  The Russians scream, voices dull over the sounds of the assault, over the sounds of the tap tap tapping that echoes deeper in Crow’s mind. The phalanx splits just enough to allow Starling to send a volley of feathers down the hall.

  Their sonic booms crack the rough stone, shatter the air and turn the men manning the guns into dust. When the echo of their violence fades, the only thing the crow can feel is bored, and that disturbs him deeply.

  Condor and Falcon pull their wings back, Sparrow nods, and flashes his hand signs to call out where more hostiles are located, and in perfect silence Vanguard splits.

  Bored. The thought of it brings on the noise, a noise he half tries to hold on to and half tries to release as he stalks down the tight corridors of the Russian compound. As he dodges a bullet fired from another soldier, rushes down the hall and removes his head.

  More gunfire from all around him, echoing off the walls, mixing with screams and shouts as the Russians try to find a way to take them down.

  Crow lets out a faint sigh, and rubs at the back of his head, as though feeling the back of his skull might help quell the noise that battles for dominance inside of his mind.

  He pulls his hand away, and examines the streaks of blood that stain his gloves. Likely a small cut from when he shaved off some of his hair.

  More bullets crack through the hallway around him, but Crow doesn’t move, can’t bring himself to do much more than shift out of the way of the rounds that get a little too close. The noise taunts him, whispers in his ear, while the tap tap tapping echoes all around.

  He feels sick catch in his throat. Bored. He’s bored and that idea alone begins to rot and fester in the holes punctured through his brain by site-51. He touches his fingers together, sides steps another round that cracks down the hall, and clenches his jaw.

  Crow meets the shooter's eyes, watches as they narrow into hard, furious slits, but before his pupils can even dilate, Crow chops him down. One clean swipe through the neck, turning off his lights.

  These were his orders, and fulfilling them brings a sickening euphoria. It's like a wash over his psyche, cleansing the festering wound of the noise that only begins to build again.

  His hand slams hard against his mask as he tries to physically catch his breath as it escapes him.

  tap tap tap

  “Shut up.” He mutters, pressing his fist into the mask's forehead.

  Movement sounds further down the hall—he needs to move, but he also needs to think, he can do both, he just needs to breathe.

  How many missions has he done? He knows, he counts them all. How many lives has he taken? He knows the number, but does he remember any of them? He can try, but that just makes him even more sick.

  “Shut up.” He presses his fist into his mask again, tries to force out the noise that eats away at him but he can’t manage to silence it long enough to think.

  Why now? Is it the tapping? Is it the boredom? Is it the realization that he is so far gone that the act of killing people is a chore?

  No. That's not it, the real reason fights its way to the surface but he crushes it down as he presses the mask tighter to his face.

  Now isn’t the time.

  Crow enters a room in silence, his vision fixed to the lab equipment scattered around. It's a larger, more central space, with two additional exits on the ground level and three more on the second level that overlooks them.

  A Russian woman shivers, her hand clutched tight around a large Kjeldahl Flask, using its long neck like a baseball bat. The sounds of gunfire cease, replaced instead by the odd groan and curse muttered from the dying lips of men scattered through this labyrinth.

  “Three non-combatants ready for pick up. Securing them now.” Crow speaks into his comms unit, as he steps deeper into the room. Three more scientists press themselves hard into the corners, likely thinking that by clinging to the shadows they might not be seen.

  “Standby.” James replies curtly

  tap tap tap

  Crow narrows his vision, his Russian isn’t perfect but it's enough to understand that the scientists in this room are begging for their lives.

  “There a problem?” Condor’s voice echoes from an entrance up above. His towering figure frames the doorway a second later as he looks down at the scientists.

  “Waiting on James for confirmation of containment.”

  “Hmph.”

  “Maybe one of them will have answers?” Sparrow's voice comes in next from the ground level. Crow offers him a nod, but it's hard to focus on his teammate's arrival as the Scientists continue to beg. Their voices only bring the noise even further.

  tap tap tap.

  “Change of plans, we are on purge protocol for the site.” James relays, something hard in his tone.

  A spasm works its way through Crow's face under the mask, contorting his features into something so sour he fears he might actually spit up some bile.

  “Confirming, purge protocol. The signal is bad down here…confirming these are noncombatants—scientists.”

  “Confirmed, purge protocol effective immediately. They might be noncombatants but they are still the enemy.”

  That can’t be right, surely it’s a mistake. Crow tries to click into his coms unit again but before he has even a moment to think, Condor drops from the second level in front of the female scientist. She screams, and swings the flask at Condor. It bounces harmlessly off his shoulder, and in one quick motion he grabs her by the throat and squeezes until her neck snaps and his fingers tear through her flesh.

  Blood sputters from her, a few drops managing to splatter against Crow's eyes.

  Crow blinks a few droplets of blood from his eyes, wipes away the rest that saturates his mask with one gloved hand, and bites back the noise that builds even stronger at the base of his skull.

  It’s impossible to ignore now, tearing away at his mind, it won't let him focus. James's orders echo in his ear, forcing him forward, towards the next scientist but each step feels impossible.

  Condor moves past Crow, his stride more confident, more focused, as he pulls a feather from his wings and throws it into the next scientist's head.

  This is wrong, something about it is logically incompatible but he can’t place it yet, only feel its effects. The memory of Director Williams's apathy is just one of the many pieces not sitting right.

  His conversation with Director Catherine, the fact that another unit was sent in first, followed by a second unit. This whole mission was sprung on Crow and his team. Usually for an operation like this they would be briefed, they would plan. Is it a test? Or something else entirely?

  But now the noise is so consuming he can’t manage to parse the data at all. His vision focuses, his breathing steadies, he doesn’t know why at first. A slow build of euphoria, a wash of release, of pleasure, of comfort as he feels blood soak through his hands.

  The relief doesn’t last for long. More noises rise up as he examines the cold, dead eyes of the corpse in his hands. Something primal inside of him not liking the feeling of his hands being soaked with this man's blood, while the conditioning forces him to feel almost right, and that almost makes him sick.

  Crow drops the corpse and lets it bang off the table in front of him, the torrent of conflicting emotions and logic too much for him to handle any longer.

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  The air shifts behind him faintly, time slows, and with another sigh Crow shifts his head to the left.

  A bullet zips through the air and collides with the stone wall in front of him. Crow turns and mindlessly throws his sword back, cutting the head off the attacker a few hundred feet down the hall. Mechanical, without thought.

  The body collapses to the ground without so much as a gurgle, while Vulture grabs the head from the air and looks it over.

  “But what did I do!?” He mocks, using his free hand to force the head’s mouth to move, while one eye shifts as though it can see what Vulture does.

  Condor slaps Vulture on the back, sending him stumbling forward and dropping the severed head. Before Vulture can do much more with it, Condor kicks the head into a blood filled room.

  “What? He was already dead.” Vulture reasons, and stuffs his hands into his trench coat pockets. “I'm just supposed to let you all have the fun?”

  “Be faster.” Condor counters

  “It would all be very fast, if I could use my fear aura.”

  “And a pain in the ass for everyone else.” Condor grumbles in response. “God forbid we get to do our jobs.” He presses forward through the stone labyrinth, while Sparrow keeps quickly pressing his ears to the stone, trying desperately to identify the exact location of the missing vanguard unit.

  “Crow, you alright?” Falcon asks as he makes his way into the lab.

  Crow nods, eyes focused on ahead, his senses tuned to anything order than the fading heartbeats of the bodies around him.

  “You don’t look alright. Talk to me.”

  Crow closes his eyes, and steadies his breathing. Once, twice, three times, and when he opens his eyes again, Falcon is in front of him, concern saturating his eyes behind the mask.

  “Somethings wrong here, I can’t place it. It’s fucking with me.”

  Falcon nods along as he watches Sparrow give more signals to the locations of movement. “They were ready for us, that's for sure.” Falcon lifts his mask enough to press his fingers into his eyebrows and works the muscles underneath while eyeing Vulture who takes to squatting in front of one of the bodies.

  “Ready for a Vanguard unit, not for us.” Condor corrects.

  Sparrow dances over the pools of blood growing in the room, trying not to get his feet bloody, until Vulture pushes him and forces his next step into one of the steadily growing puddles.

  “I feel it as well.” Sparrow scowls, trying to clean the blood from his feet.

  “You are all stuck in your own heads. Let's get this all done and over with him?”

  Condor nods, and notes Starling's arrival as she is the last to join the team in the lab.

  Sparrow looks Crow up and down, unable to hide his concern. “Anything we can do to help?”

  “No…just, be ready for something.” Crow lets out a breath in time with another distant tap tap tap that echoes off the walls.

  Every inch of stone lingers with that copper tang of blood as they move deeper through familiar halls.

  Familiar? That can’t be right, this is the first time any of them have been here and yet each bend in the stone, each room, each hall feels familiar.

  “This place is modeled after site-51.” Starling notes.

  “It is, isn’t it?” Falcon confirms, picking some bone fragments from his hair.

  More noise bleeds into Crow's mind, making him wince.

  “You are sure you’re okay?” Sparrow asks.

  Crow shakes his head. “No, I’m not, but I’m well enough to continue the mission.”

  Sparrow searches Crow's eyes, but doesn’t say anything further.

  “Just give me a second.” Crow lingers in the hall, creating some space between Vanguard as they continue forward down the linear path. A large primary hallway splits into armored defense rooms and guard quarters with progressively larger and larger blast doors, almost exactly how the containment building operates on the way to the primary anomaly silo.

  Crow can still hear everything, still feel everything, but the physical space from the other members of his team as they clear each room helps him feel a little less claustrophobic.

  Condor turns into one of the rooms, and Crow tries to drown out the sound of the men inside screaming as he makes quick work of them. Blood splatters from the doorway, though this time it doesn’t reach Crow. Instead, the droplets collide with Starling who intrudes into this personal space. He doesn’t know when she got there but he figures it was recently.

  She doesn’t acknowledge him directly, but doesn’t give any indication that she is bothered by his staring either.

  Condor emerges, spares them both a look, and then presses on down the halls while Vulture, Sparrow, and Falcon investigate the other rooms and their access passages.

  Crow and Starling walk together in silence for a time, watching as Condor continues to move ahead, making his way into the next room

  The silence grows dangerous, as his mind struggles to pick apart the logic in a way it isn’t ready to deal with. The noise, the euphoria, the orders, the information, it's too much to handle.

  Crow breathes slowly, tries to quell the anxiety that threatens to build but in doing so only finds his brain tries to solve the problem more feverishly. He needs noise, he needs something, anything to break his spiral.

  “Do you think the fragmentation rate is an average across all of us? Because I doubt he keeps any fragments.” Crow asks, listening to the sound of breaking bones and faint gurgles from beyond the walls.

  “More than likely, given the fact that I have no fragments.” She responds, pausing at the entryway, watching blood pass the threshold. A millimeter before the blood touches Starling's shoes, she takes a step back.

  Her voice is its usual monotone, her response largely uninterested, no indication at all that she cares and yet the fact that its another human being speaking helps. He latches onto her words, digests them each in full. It's small but it takes up enough space in his awareness to force his spiral down. He can use this, keep it going, continue the conversation.

  “I wouldn’t say no fragments. If you had 0% fragmentation you wouldn’t have an opinion on my hair..”

  Starling seems to pause for a second on that, but doesn’t give any indication that she has anything more to say on the subject.

  Shit, he lost it, he shouldn’t have said that, why did he say that?

  Crow watches from the hall as Condor closes his fist tight around a woman's neck. The light in her eyes goes out, her mouth grows slack, and Condor drops her to the floor to join the pile. The noise threatens to return, and Crow curses under his breath.

  Condor turns to exit the room, but Starling blocks his exit. Condor's eyes narrow.

  “What would you say your fragmentation rate—” She begins, but Crow clears his throat, cutting her off.

  Condor’s eyes shift to meet Crow, Crow shrugs, and Condor grumbles, forcing his way past Starling back out into the hall.

  “Zero.” he responds coldly.

  Crow gasps with relief as the conversation continues. “See that I can believe.”

  “I do not believe it.”

  This time it’s Crows turn to cock an eyebrow under his mask, but once again Starling refuses to elaborate, and presses on.

  All the power in the world and he can’t strike up a halfway interesting conversation. Maybe he should come right out and ask her to just talk to him? No, that's desperate, he doesn’t want to appear weak, shit.

  Shaking his head, he lurches towards a different line of thinking instead, desperately grabbing at any other sensation to pull focus from the growing sense of unease. The breathing isn’t working, the conversation is failing, he needs something else, something tangible and unchanging.

  Crow finds himself trying to filter through the noise enough to identify his own fragmentation. But willing something to happen does very little. He feels the weight of the mask on his face more than anything, hearing his breath come hard against the material that separates the two different pieces of himself. The mask. He needs to use it more, focus on it. If there has ever been a time to invest in a coping mechanism, it's this very moment.

  For as much as the noise wants to build, for as much as his mind wants to question and pick apart this logical hole he can feel, the mask on his face needs to be the barrier that stops him.

  He is Crow, that's his name, his designation, his orders. The mask is his separation, his barrier. Crow isolates those thoughts, bundles them up and forces them into the holes in his brain. Separation, compartmentalization. Attributing a state of mind to a physical material is dangerous but it’s all he has right now. While he has the mask he is the tool, he is the soldier. Once he takes his mask from his face he can afford to process the other information but right now he needs to be a tool.

  It’s a good thing, it has to be, it's the only way forward. Even if there is a logical error he can pick it apart when he doesn’t have the mask. The weight on his face is a comfort, it needs to be, and as he presses his fingers to it he can feel his eyes narrow and his breath steady as he’s reminded of the mission.

  “I believe it is the same for me,” Starling announces.

  “Are you sure mind reading isn’t one of your secret gifts?”

  “If it was, I fear I wouldn’t be so inept at this.”

  “You’re inept? What does that say about me?”

  “Nothing good I am afraid. A lost cause, really.”

  Crow cracks a smile, and it feels real despite the mask.

  How the hell does she do it?

  Condor breaks off and enters another room, while more movement sounds further down the hall.

  “Crow.” Condor nods,

  “On it.” Crow confirms, and walks with Starling down the hall to approach the next room.

  At the end of the hall are more familiar blast doors. It's like they were stolen straight from site-51 and affixed to the stone walls of this Russian prison. Crow places his ear to it, and confirms the sounds of movement beyond it.

  Crow looks to Starling and she raises her hand, five teleports remaining.

  “Bring us in.”

  Starling nods, and in an instant the two appear on the other side of the blast doors.

  tap tap tap