“Mooornin there, sunshine.”
“Oh God, where am I?” I started to get up and then felt every part of my body fire up in pain. I chose to grab the pain in and on my head.
“Whoa there, you just lie back down, rest a little.”
“Deroga got away, Carl. I can’t rest with that maniac on the loose.”
“First of all, I know. I was the one who got him out of there, remember?”
“Yeah, thanks for that. He definitely needed an escape route. If you had just given me 2 more minutes, Carl…”
“Then he would’ve killed you and Culda would be doomed. I saved your f%#$ing @$$, dip-$#%@. So just calm down, you’ll get another shot at him.”
“Yeah… sorry I snapped at you.”
“Happens to the best of us.”
“I feel awful…”
“You look awful.”
I gave him a look, “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” He grinned, “You know you were kicking and screaming last night? I nearly had to land due to ‘turbulence’.”
“Sorry, I had a nightmare beyond belief.”
“Yeah? Well why didn’t you ask for a glass of water? All you had to do was yell ‘MOMMY!’ and I would’ve helped you…”
“Ha…ha… but seriously, it scared the crap outta me.”
“Was it about Deroga?”
“No… it was the White Ops.”
“The White Ops? Why would that be scary? You f#*$ing loved those guys!”
“Have you ever had a nightmare? It’s like they’re designed to change everything happy into utter hell!”
“Soooo… they were ugly. That’s what scared you so much?”
“Well here’s the thing, most of the dream was replays of what happened today but every now and then the motion would freeze and a White Op would appear out of nowhere and correct me on my mistakes. They would whip me and beat me for my mistakes and yell in my face. By the end I was cuddled up and crying in a dark corner. All the White Ops were closing in and screaming at me. Then the ground opened up and I fell through blackness.”
“Whoa, intense.”
“You have no idea. Look I’m pretty tired so as long as we’re on the ground I’m gonna try and sleep again.”
“Ok, hope it’s better than last night.”
“Yeah, same.”

I slept dreamlessly that day, but couldn’t get this new image out of my head. All these White Ops, disappointed in what I’d become. But why?!? I’d tried to avenge them, I’d tried to kill Deroga and stop the bombings. But no, I’d just tried to get revenge. In search of a place to think I left the plane and went over to a nearby tree. At first I just sat against it and thought of everything. I thought about the White Ops and how much I wanted Deroga dead. I replayed our fight over and over to see where I had slipped up. When I’d found my fatal error I pushed myself to work through the pain and train to prevent that from happening again. Falling from a twisted ankle, I began to cry. Not much, just a little, I’m still a man, but a fair amount. I realized that as much as I wanted to crap on Deroga’s grave, I was hunting him because I wanted the White Ops back, I wanted Sam back. Now matter how brutally I would kill him, I realized it wouldn’t be satisfactory, they wouldn’t come back with his death.

By now my ankle had started to feel better, so I climbed up in the tree and looked back towards where Rigob used to be. I couldn’t actually see the city, but I would’ve it was still there. Instead of the enormous skyscrapers towering above the ground, thick black ash and smoke rose from Culda. It was like a volcanic eruption, the ash was everywhere in the sky over there. Thoughts came to my mind about my motive for hunting Deroga. Maybe it wasn’t about making myself feel better, even knowing my old life wouldn’t come back. Maybe it wasn’t even about killing Deroga. It was about protecting Culda, and the people on it. It meant destroying Raven Corp and starting a new world order, with new forces and a different future for Culda than Raven Corp had imagined. Whoa there, Ryan, one thing at a time. For now I needed to take down Deroga. If I could, then there would peace long enough for me to round up some troops to take on Raven Corp directly. This is the pushing point, if I kill Deroga we have peace, if not… but he will die.

Carl came dashing out of the plane at that moment.
“Ryan! Ryan, oh thank god there you are!”
“Hey, what’s up?”
“It’s Deroga; he’s on his way here right now. He’s driving from the wreckage of Rigob. He just finished inspecting it. You have to hide, now!”

We ran inside the plane and started scouring the area of the plane for a place for me to hide. When we couldn’t find anywhere better, Carl shoved me into the trash hold. It was extremely smelly and not at all comfortable, but I knew it was the only way to avoid being caught.
“Listen, Ryan, I know this looks like the perfect opportunity, but you can’t kill Deroga this time.”
“What? Why the hell not?!?”
“He doesn’t usually do this, come and find me. I think he’s a little suspicious of what I’m doing with my time off.”
“So?”
“So he could be wearing a wire for all we know, a silent death will still be noticed. If we wait till his next bombing, then I’ll know for sure if he’s wearing one. Just sit tight on this one.”
“Fine.”

An hour later Carl came and got me out of the trash hold, before I let him tell me what happened, I cleaned up as much as I could, considering there was no shower. Then I asked Carl for some new clothes, not his because they wouldn’t be the right size. He explained that Raven Corp monitored his purchases and would make sure Carl was wearing what he’d bought. After groaning I told him to explain what happened.
“Well Deroga boarded and said he thinks he forgot something in here.”
“Forgot what?”
“He never said, I just let him wander around and acted like I didn’t care. I went and pretended to check up on my flight instruments. When he came back he said he must’ve left it in another pair of pants and left. Nothing much to it.”
“And that took an hour?”
“Almost. When he’d left I went around checking everywhere to make sure everything was where I’d left it. It was.”
“Thanks for pulling me out of the trash before then, pal.”
“I wasn’t entirely sure he was gone.”
“But yet you searched anyway. Look I’m tired, I’m gonna hit the hay.”
“Sounds good. Oh, wait, while he was here I asked Deroga when his next job was, so I could pick him up and stuff.”
“And?”
“And it’s in 3 days.”
“Okay, tomorrow we’ll plan out our attack.”
“Sounds good, I’ll have to be free a day extra to avoid suspicion.”
“I can handle that. Night, Carl.”
“Night, Ryan.”

That night I didn’t dream as much. I was thinking I would make it out of that slumber with dream at all, which at that point didn’t seem like a bad idea. Just at the end though. I was back in that corner, and all the White Ops were closing in on me. They still looked the same but I could here them now. They were all telling me the same thing in unison: “You have to stand strong, Ryan. Others are counting on you. Stand strong… stand strong… stand strong…” it went on and on. Slowly I overcame their scary features and stood up. When I was finally feeling invincible and ready for a fight, the ground swallowed me again in to complete darkness. In a hopeless effort I reached my hand out to grab something. I just barely caught a ledge, unseen in the abyss. As soon as my hand hit the ledge everything got brighter and brighter. Briefly, I saw the image of Sam, reaching her hand out to help me up, but then everything was consumed in light. White light.
Yours Truly,






Ryan Garan




-End Transmission