Writer's note:

The day I started this, I had very little experience both in writing and in English, and of course my lack of vocabulary can still be felt in the later chapter of this story, but the first few chapters are very "erratic", so I decided to rewrite them to "please?" ones' reading experience.

Hope you enjoy reading or rereading it. CYA.

Middleton, December 22nd, 2027

It was a full moon, and just as every single day for a really long time everything was silent, in fact since the Reckoning ten years ago, Middleton was nothing more than a ghost town.

No... Calling it a ghost town would be a euphemism, the town was a wreak, only a few houses were still standing and the rests was blown to bits.

The school was in the worst shape since it had collapsed from an explosion within the structure, leaving only the main door, few rooms and the cafeteria in a 'fine' shape.

But from time to time, footstep could be heard, in the devastation, but humans' they were not.

Robotics foot-soldiers we called Sentinels roams the town, searching for eventual survivors, not that they ever found any, these machines and their masters did their job well ten years ago.

The mall was probably the only place that was still ok, for some reason the place hasn't been blown up, but it wasn't in great shape either, pieces of glass were on the floor, and some of its outer walls were down.

But that night, unlike any other nights, a sound could be heard from within the mall, me and my group moved a big piece of metal covering a hole on the floor that leads to the sewer, and we got out, the four of us, covered in pieces of cloth and hoods and we started running toward our objective not too far from the mall.

The fact that it was a full moon, made that this night, wasn't the best one to act, not clouds to cover us, too big a chance to be seen by roaming patrols and ruining everything we have worked on for the last eight years, and even today I still thinks that if I ever had the chance to, I would have called the mission off, if only I had knew...but.

No... it had to be that night, there was no way we could have known, all the Intel we had gathered, pointed to the fact that, that day, the facility's' systems were supposed to purge itself from useless data, and then reboot for about ten minutes, not much sure, but enough for us to do what we had to, and get the hell out of the enemies' stronghold.

After reaching a spot behind some trees we stood there and talked a little repeating one last time the plan, then right before telling the other three that is was time to go, I gave them a little privacy, so they could talk, and embrace each other.

The two smaller of our group, team Omega, ran toward the main entrance of the alien construct called Ground Zero, to distract them from us during the purge, while we, team Alpha, infiltrate the place through an interstice in a wall, hidden by myself from a previous excursion a long time ago, when we were more than just four left in our group, to snatch the last piece of tech we needed to do something impossible.

Once in position, we didn't have to wait long before the power went down, that was when we heard an explosion from the main entrance, that was our cue, I blew open the small interstice and we rush in the now bigger crack.

Two minutes in.

In our search, we met only little resistance nothing my smaller friend couldn't handle with his incredible capacities, and when we reach the research lab we found what we needed but it was locked behind a plasma shield.

Five minutes in.

"Damn it..." said the less physically impressive of the two.

"We knew it was going to be a bit harder than we thought... Can you bypass it?"

"Can't you just blow it up?"

"We can't risk destroying the device."

"Yeah I know, bypass... let's begin."

Years ago I would have done it myself, but it required finger skills that my body didn't have anymore...

"Hey guys, it's getting crowded out here!" said a female voice with the sound of blast and lasers in the background from seemingly nowhere.

I picked up my radio and answered.

"Copy that Omega." I turn to face Drew working the plasma shield power cell. "How long do you think you..."

"Tell her about two minutes of rewiring, to get the shield down. "

"He said.."

"I heard, tell him to hurry up if he doesn't want me to do his job myself."

"HEY!... That woman is killing me..." was all I could hear before he refocused on the work at hand.

Eight minutes in...

BOOM!

As someone wiser than me said once, "Nothing is written in stone" so if I made a mistake or mistakes, please let me know.

Also, leave a review if you feel like doing so, it is always appreciated.