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Cypher kicked a rock across the floor, uncaring of where the small bit of rubble would wind up. It didn't matter anyways, with the piles of debris and smashed furniture thrown about the entirety of the protocols’ tropical bungalow. Dust was still kicked up in the air, presumably from whatever had gone down last night. From the looks of it, it had simply been a massacre, swift and brutal in its execution. It made Cypher sick, though he took care to hide his distaste.
The bodies had been cleared out by now, stark white lines outlining how each of them had been found. It did nothing to communicate how they had looked, bodies and expressions twisted in agony, blood-flecked lips and blood shot eyes, staring blankly ahead. Reyna. Killjoy. Raze. Sova. Brimstone. All dead, painfully. And they might not come back.
There was nothing more he could do; their corpses were already back at the protocol with Sage, though it remained to be seen what could be done for them.
Next to him, Fade sighed angrily, feeling all the frustration he couldn't bear to show. Several other agents were patrolling the perimeter on high alert, with the rest retreating back to the main compound with Sage as she attempted to work her revival magic, or prepared to perform autopsies if she couldn't.
Cypher shuddered at the idea of having to do something like that on the corpses of his fellow agents.
In the aftermath, with Brimstone being currently indisposed and Sage otherwise occupied, Viper had decisively risen to fill his place with Vyse appointed as deputy. Despite his vast network and skillset, Cypher still didn't know much about how Viper and Vyse had known each other prior to the protocol, though whatever that was it clearly allowed a large degree of trust. Thankfully Vyse was acclimating to the role like a fish to water, lending much needed stability to the agents of the protocol in the aftermath of such a foundation-shattering event.
Surveying the area, Cypher couldn't help but calculate the force that would be required to crumble a cement wall so completely, the speed at which an impact would have to occur to fling wood shards as far as they flew.
How unprepared an armed group of agents would have to be to get caught so painfully off-guard. Whatever resulted from this, they would certainly be implementing many, many more safety protocols to ensure something like this never happened again.
"These look like drag marks leading to where we found Raze." Fade said, crouching down as she gestured to the parallel lines drawn through the dust, stopping short at the white outline and ensuing blood splatter. "Whoever dragged her caught her by surprise rather than over powered her, or there would be more struggling." Her voice was clinical, though her eyes were tight. Cypher could appreciate the professionalism.
Cypher looked at what she was referring to for a second before dipping his head in assent. "It looks like she was separated from Killjoy. Divide and conquer." He nodded at another, taller outline curled up on the floor a ways away from Razes. "Though that wouldn't be effective unless their vision was obscured. And these here look like scorch marks from one of Sova's shock darts, where Reyna collapsed."
"Could have been a misfire from Sova." Fade answered, peering at the marking on the floor left for Reyna.
"Could have been." Cypher agreed.
"What about this?" Fade asked, pointing to the smashed table. Bits of food were scattered about, shattered glass shards still coloured by the beverages they contained. Their splatters mixing with the blood and bullet casings that littered the ground. "It would take a large object or a weapon with a lot of power to break it like that."
"I was wondering about that too. Seeing as there is no object left behind that could do that, it must have been a weapon of some sort." He thought out loud, tapping a finger on his chin as he continued. "Now, what do we know of that could do something like that?"
There was a pause where they both thought for a moment, then spoke at the same time. "Breach."
Fade went on, "It could have also been tech we haven't seen yet, from Kingdom or the Scions, or any of our enemies really."
"Yes you're right. Though we can probably cross the Scions of the Hourglass off of that list, since Omen, Iso and Vyse were all out last night as well, and would have much sooner been targeted."
With that, Fade stood up and scowled at the ground as if it could immediately confess all the secrets it held simply from the force of her glare. "And you're sure none of your cameras or recording devices caught anything?"
Cypher burned hot under his mask, fist tightening ever so minutely as he forced out lightly, "Certain. I had practically nothing set up here anyways. I believed this location was as hidden as our properties got." A hint of anger had crept into his voice. He took an unusually heavy breath through the nose to calm himself, attempting to quell his building emotion. He was more upset at himself than he was at the others anyways.
Fade clearly picked up on his slip up though, as small as it was. It was scary sometimes how sensitive she was to things like that. She looked at him apologetically, "It's alright, you couldn't have known this would happen. As far as I was aware, this was our most secret location by far."
They both took a silent moment to stew in their failures. Then whipped their heads to face approaching, stomping footsteps as someone trudged over broken rubble and turned the corner of a crumbling archway.
It was Yoru, face still as stormy as when he had first touched down with the rest of the strike team to re-secure the area in the early hours of the morning. He somehow scowled harder as he stepped around the outline of Sova, slumped against the wall and eyeless. When he spoke, it was with bitter, unadulterated hatred.
"God, I'm going to fucking murder every last one of the people who did this." He muttered under his breath murderously.
Cypher couldn't disagree with that logic. "You and me both, Yoru."
Yoru surveyed the scene for a second, expression darkening with each passing moment, before decisively pulling his attention to the two agents gathered there. "Have you two eggheads found anything yet? Viper wants us to start packing up in the next 15 minutes."
Fade shook her head. "No, we just barely finished taking pictures and documenting everything. We need more time to look around for anything we might've missed."
"Then you be the one to tell that to Viper. She is paranoid enough as it is without the threat of another targeted attack happening at any moment." He sniffed, crossing his arms. "Anyways, I'm out of here, this place stinks. Be ready in 15." With that, he turned around and stalked off, carefully picking his way through the rubble and disappearing around the bend from where he came.
"He is right though, there is definitely a distinct smell here." She mused.
Cypher inhaled deeply through his mask. Most of what he could smell was muted, the smoke of burned-out fire and the iron trace of blood. But underneath it all, there was a sharp tang, bitter, acrid, putrid. Recognizable.
"That's Vipers' poison gas." He exclaimed, snapping a finger.
Fades' eyes widened in recognition as the answer came to her. They immediately set about searching the ground again, now that they knew what to look for.
Fade found one first, while digging through the rubble piles. It was small and unassuming, easy to miss amongst the blackened rubble surrounding them. The diamond shaped sphere fit easily in her closed fist, the notched surface perfect for the release of concentrated, noxious gas.
Fade carefully picked it up with a freshly gloved hand, placing the orb into a sealed bag. In the meantime, Cypher collected a second sample, scraping the dust off the edge of a wall to test for traces of poison. It would be sent to the lab and cross referenced with other samples of Omega Vipers gas they had collected, to confirm their suspicions, but with the discovery of a poison cloud emitter, the picture was becoming quite clear.
Fade's face was stone cold as they worked. She was thinking the same thing he was.
They collected a few more samples as quickly as possible before their time ran out, bagging a bloody arrow they found last minute, buried under more rubble and nearly identical in make to Sova's own.
A little while later, Yoru came back. "Time's up, let's get out of here." They acknowledged him with silence, moving faster to finish their current tasks and gathering up their supplies and evidence.
As they walked back to the parked VLT/R, its engines revving as Kay/O and Skye prepped everything for take off, Clove sidled up next to Cypher, sombre in a way Cypher had never before witnessed them.
"So, did you guys figure out who did this?" They inquired quietly.
Cypher just tilted his head downwards, gripping the brim of his hat. "Nothing concrete yet."
"Aw, c'mon. I know that's just code for you know but you don't want to say. Spit it out."
Cypher kept silent for a moment longer. He could feel the eyes on him from all over the compound. Jett eavesdropping subtly as she carried another evidence crate to the back. Skye blatantly staring as she hung out the VLT/R door. Clove's eager, mutinous expression as they waited for his next words. Yoru, ever vigilant to their surroundings yet just as tuned in to the conversation as Clove or himself. He could even imagine Kay/O at the front of the plane, turning up his audio sensitivity to hear what Cypher had to say.
With how Fade was glowering silently behind him, she was waiting for Cypher to make the announcement they both hated to put words to. His own mood darkened at the thought of the perpetrators who had killed his friends.
With one last defeated sigh, he started.
"It seems to me like Omega has finally decided to fight back."